Comment by nkoren | Hacker News Reader

Comment by nkoren | Hacker News Reader

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The issue is the sheer odiousness of Musk's political machinations. Claude has never tried to inject racist "white genocide" conspiracy theories into every unrelated conversation. You don't have to be much of a pearl-clutcher to find that shit (or a thousand other things that Musk has involved himself in) extremely disturbing.

I'm a longtime space guy, so Musk has been on my radar for decades -- since long before he was a billionaire. He actually first hit my radar even before founding SpaceX, when he made a "Mars Greenhouse" presentation to the Mars Society in 2001 (I'm a founding member). Since then, I've built up a huge amount of respect for his technical accomplishments, which are indeed extraordinary. I wish to hell he'd stayed apolitical -- if he had, then we could indeed just talk tech.

But he didn't, and we can't. There was a time when the absolute best rockets in the world were German -- but if it's 1942 and you're talking about sourcing rockets from the Luftwaffe, then I hope to hell you'd be focused on a few things beyond just the technology itself.

>I've built up a huge amount of respect for his technical accomplishments

Are these his actual accomplishments or is he just taking credit for the accomplishments of others in his companies. Just like he took credit for being a founder of Tesla and pushing aside the actual founders.

Those are his actual accomplishments.

So what are his actual technical accomplishments? Other than marketing and promising FSD is ready tomorrow or we'd land on Mars in 2026, or getting Billions from tax payers in subsidies that allowed him to be as successful as he is ---- what are his actual technical accomplishments?

Has he invented anything, e.g. a new space bracket, or some better radiation shielding or anything that's in heavy use now at SpaceX, Tesla, xAI, etc?

EDIT: clarity

Ya maybe. But gemini didn't want to make all white families (or even white nazi soldiers). Isn't that just as racist and more importantly, counterfactual? Or is that good, because we should all strive to make our personal lives look like The Odyssey?

The world is more nuanced (or should be). But up till Trump (who is a loathsome cheap crook, so Im not saying this in support, but stating a fact) the whole Silicon valley other than Karp and Thiel was basically one hivemind. And btw that's ok, they/you are allowed to have your worldviews. But don't mistake morality for preference similarity. Fine, you like your elves black, your models chinese, your religion from the Arab peninsula and your sexual preferences lean towards the rainbow (the cliche right wing characterization of a "lefty" in 2026), you have every right to have that view. And also every right to say Elon suck (and yes, he is marketing over matter, I agree, but he is the only serious westerd large scale industrialist). But then let's not pretend that the reason why Dario or Sam are "ok" isn't because you're lifestyle and worldviews are more aligned with them. And not because of an objective real metric which makes Elon bad and Altman better (example, pick any tech CEO/founder other than Karp or Luckey).

Sorry, is your argument basically “Elon is totally fine, actually, if you agree with his workview?”

No. I'm saying people make this whole charade about being rational where in reality we are much more preference-driven. And usually the algorithm is: 1. do i agree with this person and 2. lets build arguments that support the affiliation and make it sound objective.

I will admit this is not always the case. But humans weren't built for consistency. And my point is merely (was making it to another commentator in this thread), that Elon gets more flak up here not because he is inherently less moral than, say Larry Page, but because more people on HN are ideologically closer to the other side of the political spectrum. Which, I will again reiterate, is fine. But then I would expect (or actually, see first paragraph - I wouldn't) that the vitriol would be consistenly dished. But it isn't. Now to be sure, partly this is due to Elon's move into politics and his personality, but I doubt he would have got the same amount of hate if he went into politics in the Biden administration.

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