Seriously, after decades of nonsense coming out of Musk's mouth (he's the 'pedo guy' guy after all), why isn't the default to assume Musk is not credible or constructive?
Because daddy Musk is the paragon of knowledge, efficiency and business acumen, don't you know? Everything he says is of course, by default, the truth and constructive.
/s in case it's not obvious.
The world can remain irrational longer than you can remain alive.
I stopped by the elon musk subreddit the other day.. they haven't gotten the memo yet.
Because he built a massive electric car company, launched a new global satellite internet service with micro-satellites, and successfully launched reusable heavy rockets?
(In before someone replied with the famous Obama quote “you didn’t build that”)
He said he was going to do huge, groundbreaking things and actually delivered on them?
Elon is clearly capable but I get it, people disagree with his politics so they pretend he not credible at all?
> Because he built a massive electric car company, launched a new global satellite internet service with micro-satellites, and successfully launched reusable heavy rockets?
That's a non-sequitur.
> Elon is clearly capable but I get it, people disagree with his politics so they pretend he not credible at all?
Exactly wrong, and I'd turn that around and say that people tolerate his nonsense because they agree with his politics, and defend him beyond reason.
All I'm saying is people should be judged on what they say and do and the relationship between the two. They shouldn't be excused from lying, abuse and dissembling just because they're successful in business.
> That's a non-sequitur.
It's not based on the comment I replied to.
Musk is making a claim about DOGE - the savings. Comment is saying he's not credible.
I'm saying Musk made claims about Tesla (creating a successful e-car company), Starlink (creating a constellation of satellites for internet globally), SpaceX (land a massive booster). And these were not small claims, they had a high probability of failure and I'd argue most people thought he would fail.
Yet he delivered on all of them. Delivering on one would be amazing, yet alone three massive advances in technology.
So Musk makes a claim about an agency he's helping run and the comment I replied to says "why isn't the default to assume Musk is not credible or constructive"?
I think you can see the ridiculousness in that comment and how my argument is not a non-sequitur.
Pointing out Tesla and spacex is fine but kinda glossing over some important details about this companies - he routinely over promised on products and delivers years late if at all. Definitely worse with Tesla than spacex. And he destroyed twitter, his latest venture. He’s quite obviously not the same person he was a decade ago.
It's the very definition of a non-sequitur.
You're loading up my comment with things I did not say or reference.
Just look at the plain meaning of the words I'm using. They refer to what comes out of his mouth, that's all.
I copy-pasted your comment? How can I be "loading up your comment with things I did not say or reference"?
If what you are saying is - "my comment did not accurately reflect what I was trying to say" then ok, but I can only go by what you write. I can't read your mind.
> I'm saying Musk made claims about Tesla (creating a successful e-car company), Starlink (creating a constellation of satellites for internet globally), SpaceX (land a massive booster).
Each of these are neat.
Each of these has had complete bullshit claims attached. Mars mission by 2016; “full self driving” and robotaxis and summoning the car from LA to NYC.
He’s a fabulist. Sometimes that’s good. Often it isn’t.
> He said he was going to do huge, groundbreaking things and actually delivered on them?
How many huge, groundbreaking things that he promised has he _not_ delivered on?
And how many of those groundbreaking things have been accomplished by abusing people -- employees, customers, or even rescue divers?
Tesla – Musk did not found Tesla. It was started by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning in 2003. Musk joined as an investor in 2004 and later took over as CEO. Tesla’s engineering and production achievements are the result of work by thousands of engineers and employees. Bought, not built.
Starlink is a project within SpaceX, which Musk co-founded, but the development of its satellite internet network has been carried out by SpaceX engineers and scientists. The technology and execution come from a large team.
Reusable Rockets – The success of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy reusability was achieved through the efforts of SpaceX’s engineers, especially Tom Mueller, who led the development of the Merlin engines.
Is your criticism really that Musk didnt build stuff HIMSELF but had a team of engineers? Yeah of course no one thinks he designed and assembled every starlink sattalite himself. Thats a preposterous contention. He did, in facf, lead the teams that accomplished this stuff.
Musk’s skill seems to be building and fostering a successful team, and picking up engineering-related skills quickly. Those skills arguably transfer to what DOGE’s goals are better than being a really great mechanical engineer or being a really great chemist.
Musk has a history of driving talented people away rather than fostering strong teams [1] — just look at the high turnover at Tesla and SpaceX, and the chaos he caused at Twitter/X. Many of his top engineers and executives have left due to his management style, which is often described as erratic and demanding to the point of burnout. As for engineering skills, he’s more of a charismatic salesman than an actual engineer.
Unlike a private company, where a CEO can make unilateral decisions and push employees to extreme workloads, the government requires collaboration, compromise, and stability. Federal agencies rely on institutional knowledge and long-term strategy, not impulsive shake-ups and mass firings.
He’s a controversial leader, sure. I get the impression people work under him because he gives them opportunities to work on cool stuff, not because he’s a kind, compassionate boss.
But what I’m getting at is that he’s successful. Unless you believe all his amazing successes are due to luck, you have to admit that he’s very, very effective as a leader. Even if we can’t understand why, he’s still affective.
It’s easy to seem successful when you’re rich.
That's beside the point; he's a compulsive liar, so it shouldn't be surprising when he lies.
“Capable” and “credible” are two different things, and as much as hus record at Tesla may arguably support “capable”, it certainly goes the other way on “credible”.
(And “capable” often translates poorly between dissimilar domains, while a history of lying like a rug is more transferrable.)
Those achievements were in a different domain. He has never had success in the domain he’s playing in now.
Also, his behavior smacks of arrogance that his past successes mean he’ll always be right.
Granting him the credibility associated with building and running some pretty successful engineering companies, in whatever the dimensions of that are deserved, is arguably warranted. Within that space the always coming next year or two FSD has proven to be hugely optimistic at best and blatantly manipulative otherwise however do some skepticism is still needed. The misrepresentations and lies he is telling as the defacto head of DOGE are so many and broad (and laced with such heavy personal and political bias) that the only pretending going on is when you say they are credible by default.
So less than half a day of trump golfing, huge work
meanwhile, the SSA's international offices have gone dark, leaving millions of US retirees without administrative services or support. in my case, due to banking regulations in the country where i am retired, i have to open a new bank account; but the office in Philippines that handles those matters is unresponsive to emails or calls. that means after next month's benefit payment, i will not receive my retirement pension. thanks elon!
What can I say. Watched Bill Gates talk about this. He called them dickheads. Not literally, he is very diplomatic, but when you between the lines that is what he is saying.
Watched the Maryland Governor on Trump and his team. He called them dickheads. Not literally, he is very diplomatic, but again, between the lines.
Watch any seasoned person on it and it is the same.
They are dickheads running (SIC) your country to boost their ego, interests and familiar wealth. It's fucked.
I take it you aren't a US citizen.
It boggles my mind that anyone with more than 2 brain cells doesn't see they're dickheads.
BillG used to not be very diplomatic, he had a rough edge, would yell at people, and speak his mind without much of a filter (BillG reviews at Microsoft were famous after all). And he was never anywhere near as bad as Musk, the most people could say about him was that he wasn’t very nice.
I wonder if it is hard to be rich and too critical. After all you are just one exec order from being wiped out. This government can do anything now!
Related: Stock markets have caught up now and are spooked. There will probably be a recession.
Another political post got bumped off the front page again.
Not that anyone gives a shit what I think, but it seems like there should just be a filter for politics on this site. That way the people who want to talk about it can, and the people that don't can ignore it. Clearly the upvotes suggests people are interested in these topics, not to mention the actual debates in comment sections about how they're being moderated.
Would need category tags for each post, but actually would be an awesome feature applicable to all sorts of posts.
For instance AI speculation threads are really, really tiresome. It's easy to get tricked into reading such threads because the discussion is often off topic to the linked article.
I get what you're getting at, but that's not actually what I'm advocating for here.
I'm pointing out that multiple times a day a political post gets bounced off the front page, and it's frustrating that the conversations are being quashed. I'd just like to be able to talk about the stuff we know people want to talk about (upvotes are the simplest metric we have for this). And there's a very simple binary filter we can apply that costs very little overhead in terms of UX and engineering.
If I wanted to go somewhere else I would. I'm suggesting how we make this site better for users, or at least a sizable amount of them. And it would make almost no difference to the users who'd like to just ignore it. You can even have it off by default so only logged in members are able to see political posts and even then only opt-in.
I have zero expectation of this ever happening.
> I get what you're getting at, but that's not actually what I'm advocating for here.
I know, I was just floating an idea.
> it's frustrating that the conversations are being quashed
The silent ideological and political battle of flagging uncomfortable truths is trampling curiosity. Interesting how they get a way with violating the guidelines, and yet people who want to have a conversation are accused of and sanctioned for it.
The small mistake you make is assuming the users doing the flagging merely want to ignore it. They don't want anyone participating in it. The very topic is persona non grata. The guideline itself is written in newspeak.
At sometime yall have to stop pretending that this is something that will just go away if you ignore it long enough. This administration wilm have surely life altering consequences that will persist for decades. This isn’t reasonable people disagreeing. This is insurrection.
YCombinator is probably involved in this stuff to some degree; Peter Thiel was part of of yc for a while and Garry Tan has been pushing stuff closer to Thiel/Moldbug's ideology in SF and worked for Palantir.
Elon is a speaker at the Spring YC conference!
There kind of is. Most political threads end up flagged, not dead, and you can see them on the real front page at https://news.ycombinator.com/active.
It's not about politics. It's fanatics who think the leader of their tribe needs them to defend him.
It wouldn't surprise me if Elon is using bots, he's certainly petty enough to do so.
[flagged]
[deleted]
[flagged]
Am I expected to remain “intellectually curious” about what is clearly an existential threat?
[flagged]
[flagged]
Sometimes people react because you’re way off target.
Seriously, after decades of nonsense coming out of Musk's mouth (he's the 'pedo guy' guy after all), why isn't the default to assume Musk is not credible or constructive?
Because daddy Musk is the paragon of knowledge, efficiency and business acumen, don't you know? Everything he says is of course, by default, the truth and constructive.
/s in case it's not obvious.
The world can remain irrational longer than you can remain alive.
I stopped by the elon musk subreddit the other day.. they haven't gotten the memo yet.
Because he built a massive electric car company, launched a new global satellite internet service with micro-satellites, and successfully launched reusable heavy rockets?
(In before someone replied with the famous Obama quote “you didn’t build that”)
He said he was going to do huge, groundbreaking things and actually delivered on them?
Elon is clearly capable but I get it, people disagree with his politics so they pretend he not credible at all?
> Because he built a massive electric car company, launched a new global satellite internet service with micro-satellites, and successfully launched reusable heavy rockets?
That's a non-sequitur.
> Elon is clearly capable but I get it, people disagree with his politics so they pretend he not credible at all?
Exactly wrong, and I'd turn that around and say that people tolerate his nonsense because they agree with his politics, and defend him beyond reason.
All I'm saying is people should be judged on what they say and do and the relationship between the two. They shouldn't be excused from lying, abuse and dissembling just because they're successful in business.
> That's a non-sequitur.
It's not based on the comment I replied to.
Musk is making a claim about DOGE - the savings. Comment is saying he's not credible.
I'm saying Musk made claims about Tesla (creating a successful e-car company), Starlink (creating a constellation of satellites for internet globally), SpaceX (land a massive booster). And these were not small claims, they had a high probability of failure and I'd argue most people thought he would fail.
Yet he delivered on all of them. Delivering on one would be amazing, yet alone three massive advances in technology.
So Musk makes a claim about an agency he's helping run and the comment I replied to says "why isn't the default to assume Musk is not credible or constructive"?
I think you can see the ridiculousness in that comment and how my argument is not a non-sequitur.
Pointing out Tesla and spacex is fine but kinda glossing over some important details about this companies - he routinely over promised on products and delivers years late if at all. Definitely worse with Tesla than spacex. And he destroyed twitter, his latest venture. He’s quite obviously not the same person he was a decade ago.
It's the very definition of a non-sequitur.
You're loading up my comment with things I did not say or reference.
Just look at the plain meaning of the words I'm using. They refer to what comes out of his mouth, that's all.
I copy-pasted your comment? How can I be "loading up your comment with things I did not say or reference"?
If what you are saying is - "my comment did not accurately reflect what I was trying to say" then ok, but I can only go by what you write. I can't read your mind.
> I'm saying Musk made claims about Tesla (creating a successful e-car company), Starlink (creating a constellation of satellites for internet globally), SpaceX (land a massive booster).
Each of these are neat.
Each of these has had complete bullshit claims attached. Mars mission by 2016; “full self driving” and robotaxis and summoning the car from LA to NYC.
He’s a fabulist. Sometimes that’s good. Often it isn’t.
> He said he was going to do huge, groundbreaking things and actually delivered on them?
How many huge, groundbreaking things that he promised has he _not_ delivered on?
And how many of those groundbreaking things have been accomplished by abusing people -- employees, customers, or even rescue divers?
Tesla – Musk did not found Tesla. It was started by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning in 2003. Musk joined as an investor in 2004 and later took over as CEO. Tesla’s engineering and production achievements are the result of work by thousands of engineers and employees. Bought, not built.
Starlink is a project within SpaceX, which Musk co-founded, but the development of its satellite internet network has been carried out by SpaceX engineers and scientists. The technology and execution come from a large team.
Reusable Rockets – The success of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy reusability was achieved through the efforts of SpaceX’s engineers, especially Tom Mueller, who led the development of the Merlin engines.
Is your criticism really that Musk didnt build stuff HIMSELF but had a team of engineers? Yeah of course no one thinks he designed and assembled every starlink sattalite himself. Thats a preposterous contention. He did, in facf, lead the teams that accomplished this stuff.
Musk’s skill seems to be building and fostering a successful team, and picking up engineering-related skills quickly. Those skills arguably transfer to what DOGE’s goals are better than being a really great mechanical engineer or being a really great chemist.
Musk has a history of driving talented people away rather than fostering strong teams [1] — just look at the high turnover at Tesla and SpaceX, and the chaos he caused at Twitter/X. Many of his top engineers and executives have left due to his management style, which is often described as erratic and demanding to the point of burnout. As for engineering skills, he’s more of a charismatic salesman than an actual engineer.
Unlike a private company, where a CEO can make unilateral decisions and push employees to extreme workloads, the government requires collaboration, compromise, and stability. Federal agencies rely on institutional knowledge and long-term strategy, not impulsive shake-ups and mass firings.
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-loses-4-top-execut...
He’s a controversial leader, sure. I get the impression people work under him because he gives them opportunities to work on cool stuff, not because he’s a kind, compassionate boss.
But what I’m getting at is that he’s successful. Unless you believe all his amazing successes are due to luck, you have to admit that he’s very, very effective as a leader. Even if we can’t understand why, he’s still affective.
It’s easy to seem successful when you’re rich.
That's beside the point; he's a compulsive liar, so it shouldn't be surprising when he lies.
“Capable” and “credible” are two different things, and as much as hus record at Tesla may arguably support “capable”, it certainly goes the other way on “credible”.
(And “capable” often translates poorly between dissimilar domains, while a history of lying like a rug is more transferrable.)
Those achievements were in a different domain. He has never had success in the domain he’s playing in now.
Also, his behavior smacks of arrogance that his past successes mean he’ll always be right.
Granting him the credibility associated with building and running some pretty successful engineering companies, in whatever the dimensions of that are deserved, is arguably warranted. Within that space the always coming next year or two FSD has proven to be hugely optimistic at best and blatantly manipulative otherwise however do some skepticism is still needed. The misrepresentations and lies he is telling as the defacto head of DOGE are so many and broad (and laced with such heavy personal and political bias) that the only pretending going on is when you say they are credible by default.
So less than half a day of trump golfing, huge work
meanwhile, the SSA's international offices have gone dark, leaving millions of US retirees without administrative services or support. in my case, due to banking regulations in the country where i am retired, i have to open a new bank account; but the office in Philippines that handles those matters is unresponsive to emails or calls. that means after next month's benefit payment, i will not receive my retirement pension. thanks elon!
https://archive.is/73szW
What can I say. Watched Bill Gates talk about this. He called them dickheads. Not literally, he is very diplomatic, but when you between the lines that is what he is saying.
Watched the Maryland Governor on Trump and his team. He called them dickheads. Not literally, he is very diplomatic, but again, between the lines.
Watch any seasoned person on it and it is the same.
They are dickheads running (SIC) your country to boost their ego, interests and familiar wealth. It's fucked.
I take it you aren't a US citizen.
It boggles my mind that anyone with more than 2 brain cells doesn't see they're dickheads.
BillG used to not be very diplomatic, he had a rough edge, would yell at people, and speak his mind without much of a filter (BillG reviews at Microsoft were famous after all). And he was never anywhere near as bad as Musk, the most people could say about him was that he wasn’t very nice.
I wonder if it is hard to be rich and too critical. After all you are just one exec order from being wiped out. This government can do anything now!
Related: Stock markets have caught up now and are spooked. There will probably be a recession.
Another political post got bumped off the front page again.
Not that anyone gives a shit what I think, but it seems like there should just be a filter for politics on this site. That way the people who want to talk about it can, and the people that don't can ignore it. Clearly the upvotes suggests people are interested in these topics, not to mention the actual debates in comment sections about how they're being moderated.
Would need category tags for each post, but actually would be an awesome feature applicable to all sorts of posts.
For instance AI speculation threads are really, really tiresome. It's easy to get tricked into reading such threads because the discussion is often off topic to the linked article.
I get what you're getting at, but that's not actually what I'm advocating for here.
I'm pointing out that multiple times a day a political post gets bounced off the front page, and it's frustrating that the conversations are being quashed. I'd just like to be able to talk about the stuff we know people want to talk about (upvotes are the simplest metric we have for this). And there's a very simple binary filter we can apply that costs very little overhead in terms of UX and engineering.
If I wanted to go somewhere else I would. I'm suggesting how we make this site better for users, or at least a sizable amount of them. And it would make almost no difference to the users who'd like to just ignore it. You can even have it off by default so only logged in members are able to see political posts and even then only opt-in.
I have zero expectation of this ever happening.
> I get what you're getting at, but that's not actually what I'm advocating for here.
I know, I was just floating an idea.
> it's frustrating that the conversations are being quashed
I'm very much right there with you: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42993029
The silent ideological and political battle of flagging uncomfortable truths is trampling curiosity. Interesting how they get a way with violating the guidelines, and yet people who want to have a conversation are accused of and sanctioned for it.
The small mistake you make is assuming the users doing the flagging merely want to ignore it. They don't want anyone participating in it. The very topic is persona non grata. The guideline itself is written in newspeak.
At sometime yall have to stop pretending that this is something that will just go away if you ignore it long enough. This administration wilm have surely life altering consequences that will persist for decades. This isn’t reasonable people disagreeing. This is insurrection.
YCombinator is probably involved in this stuff to some degree; Peter Thiel was part of of yc for a while and Garry Tan has been pushing stuff closer to Thiel/Moldbug's ideology in SF and worked for Palantir.
Elon is a speaker at the Spring YC conference!
There kind of is. Most political threads end up flagged, not dead, and you can see them on the real front page at https://news.ycombinator.com/active.
It's not about politics. It's fanatics who think the leader of their tribe needs them to defend him.
It wouldn't surprise me if Elon is using bots, he's certainly petty enough to do so.
[flagged]
[flagged]
Am I expected to remain “intellectually curious” about what is clearly an existential threat?
[flagged]
[flagged]
Sometimes people react because you’re way off target.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Nijmegen
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aerial_incidents_in_Switzerlan...