Elon Musk

[FlatSix911]

Back on track... JB was clearly a big loss for Elon when he left Tesla to form Redwood Materials.

Elon Musk says JB Straubel should have been Tesla’s only other cofounder, dredging up the past

Dredging up the past, Elon Musk said today that “starting Tesla” with the two original cofounders instead of just JB...

electrek.co

"Dredging up the past, Elon Musk said today that “starting Tesla” with the two original co-founders instead of just JB Straubel was the “worst decision” of his business career. The comment brings back to light Tesla’s controversial founding.

During a live interview at TED 2022 today, Musk was asked by a fan which one thing he would change if he could go back in time. The CEO’s response was interesting. He linked his answer to Tesla, saying he believes that the worst decision of his business career was to not start Tesla with just JB Straubel, co-founder and longtime CTO at the automaker."

 

[mongo]

Back on track... JB was clearly a big loss for Elon when he left Tesla to form Redwood Materials.

Elon Musk says JB Straubel should have been Tesla’s only other cofounder, dredging up the past

Dredging up the past, Elon Musk said today that “starting Tesla” with the two original cofounders instead of just JB...

electrek.co

"Dredging up the past, Elon Musk said today that “starting Tesla” with the two original co-founders instead of just JB Straubel was the “worst decision” of his business career. The comment brings back to light Tesla’s controversial founding.

During a live interview at TED 2022 today, Musk was asked by a fan which one thing he would change if he could go back in time. The CEO’s response was interesting. He linked his answer to Tesla, saying he believes that the worst decision of his business career was to not start Tesla with just JB Straubel, co-founder and longtime CTO at the automaker."

Not sure how to reached your conclusion from that.
J.B. got Tesla going and trained his replacement, Drew. How was his departure "clearly a big loss"?

 

[Daniel in SD]

 

[Cosmacelf]

It looks like Musk is starting to consider some of the dilemmas of implementing free speech. He wants to ban scambots, for instance, and things that are "illegal".
It's a long way from "free speech absolutism".

Only because you were taking his words ultra literally. Which ironically is something Musk said he himself used to do and had to slowly learn that people meant all sorts of other things than the literal words. It was obvious to me that he meant within the confines of the law.

It's nice that he wants to improve things but it really looks like a large distraction without any clear benefit.

Benefit to whom? During today‘s Ted talk/interview, he said he is doing this to benefit civilization, and democracy in general. Now, we can debate whether Elon is correct that having a more free speech Twitter will benefit civilization, but assuming Elon is right, then there are in fact far reaching benefits to society. It fits in exactly into everything else Elon does which is fundamentally to increase the likelihood that the human light of consciousness will be preserved.

 

[Cosmacelf]

Not sure how to reached your conclusion from that.
J.B. got Tesla going and trained his replacement, Drew. How was his departure "clearly a big loss"?

I agree. Flatsix jumped ahead a bit in his thinking IMHO. JB could have been absolutely instrumental in starting Tesla AND not been a big deal when he left. Drew may very well be a step up, or at least as good as, JB. And JB obviously liked the idea of running his own ship rather than always be under the shadow of Elon, which is perfectly understandable.

 

[Cosmacelf]

TMC should get rid of all moderation in order to comply with the Master Plan.

You joke, but this cuts to the heart of what makes a social media platform work.

IMHO, TMC works well because of human moderators. Without moderators, the noise level would get too high. But moderators aren't a perfect solution since they continually make judgement decisions and sometimes their biases creep through (especially when our mostly technical board strays into politics). But overall, they work well.

Reddit, which is a huge diverse collection of discussion forums, has four or five mechanisms. First, and not obvious, is that each subforum is run differently. Among other things each sub reddit has their own moderation policies and rules. /r/SpaceX (1.4M subs) is very heavily moderated and good luck posting a new post there. /r/SpaceXLounge (300K subs) is much looser and posts are welcomed. And /r/SpaceXMasterrace (66K subs) is a site for shitposting. And beyond that, each post is voted up or down and that actively changes what new people see when they look at a thread. You generally see brand new posts first, then heavily upvoted ones. Finally, reddit posts are structured hierarchically meaning it is easier to ignore subtopics that wander too much away from what you're interested in. Oh, and you also give coins and awards to posts making them even more visible, and then there is a karma system.

Anyhoo, even with all that (and these mechanisms all generally work well), a lot of reddit's general forums are a disaster. Way too much groupthink and piling on. But for specific topic areas, reddit is great.

Facebook and Twitter both heavily rely on The Algorithm to show you content that aligns with your views and shields you away from posts that you would not like. While this is great for retention, it isn't so great as a town square to help democracy. If Elon has his way, Twitter is going to be even more of a metaphorical war zone than it already is (and BTW, he likes that aspect of it).

 

[FlatSix911]

Not sure how to reached your conclusion from that.
J.B. got Tesla going and trained his replacement, Drew. How was his departure "clearly a big loss"?

According to the article...

"Dredging up the past, Elon Musk said today that “starting Tesla” with the two original co-founders instead of just JB Straubel was the “worst decision” of his business career. The comment brings back to light Tesla’s controversial founding.

During a live interview at TED 2022 today, Musk was asked by a fan which one thing he would change if he could go back in time. The CEO’s response was interesting. He linked his answer to Tesla, saying he believes that the worst decision of his business career was to not start Tesla with just JB Straubel, co-founder and longtime CTO at the automaker."

 

[mongo]

According to the article...

"Dredging up the past, Elon Musk said today that “starting Tesla” with the two original co-founders instead of just JB Straubel was the “worst decision” of his business career. The comment brings back to light Tesla’s controversial founding.

During a live interview at TED 2022 today, Musk was asked by a fan which one thing he would change if he could go back in time. The CEO’s response was interesting. He linked his answer to Tesla, saying he believes that the worst decision of his business career was to not start Tesla with just JB Straubel, co-founder and longtime CTO at the automaker."

Needing J.B. at the start doesn't directly determine his criticality 15 years later. Tesla's cell, battery, and motor technology was well established and staffed at that point.

 

[FlatSix911]

Needing J.B. at the start doesn't directly determine his criticality 15 years later. Tesla's cell, battery, and motor technology was well established and staffed at that point.

I see your point, however, JB was a critical player at Tesla 15 years later according to analysts.

The argument for Tesla's JB Straubel being the world's foremost expert in batteries

What is Tesla’s core technology advantage over competitors? Does it even have one? Those are questions that often come up...

electrek.co

 

[wdolson]

Musk is another Steve Jobs. He's brilliant, and unfortunately that brilliance comes with a side helping of borderline personality disorder.

You won't change him. You can accept him for who he is, and and either embrace the trade off as worth-it, or decide that the toxic aspects are just not forgivable and walk away.

I fall on the side of knowing what he is, embracing that he poses a constant risk of doing inappropriate things, and it's simply worth it for Tesla and Mankind's success. But I don't pretend he's all-good or not often a total a-hole. It's simply worth it.

I've known borderlines and Elon doesn't fit the profile. For one thing all personality disordered unravel when things get tough and he's faced some very difficult challenges at all his companies. Challenges that would have driven any PD to nutty extremes. He always hunkered down and dealt with the problems.

He has said he has Aspergers (which is a mild form of autism) and I think he has ADD too. People with Aspergers are blind to social cues and don't really "get" people very well. They can excel at intellectual things, like Elon has done, but they struggle socially because they just don't get human behavior. Having someone with Aspergers running a social media company is a very bad idea. He will likely run Twitter into the ground.

All social media ends up requiring some kind of policing eventually or they devolve into cesspits with people attacking each other and nothing else. I ran a large listserv back when that was the form of social media. We had quite free ranging discussions on any topic people wanted. The only caveat was attacking people was not allowed. We had a year or two of trouble when some "free speech" advocates who were great rules lawyers did everything they could to cause trouble and not overtly attack anyone. It was a handful of about 4 people and they turned the community upside down. We eventually ran them off and they started a competing community that was "free speech" and it died after a few months.

Free flow of ideas is a good thing, but personal attacks end up destroying that. It becomes lord of the flies and anyone with ideas goes somewhere else.

We also have bad actors in this world, many of them national counter intelligence agencies, who have weaponized social media to get people to believe things that are untrue. That needs to be policed too.

Twitter does have a lot of people from the left end of the political spectrum, but there are also lots of people from the right end too if you want to find them. What they don't allow are trolls who stir up trouble rather than share thoughts and ideas.

I was on Twitter very infrequently until the war in Ukraine. I've found it's the best source for war news. Though there are some very poor sources for war news on the same platform too.

 

[Cosmacelf]

We also have bad actors in this world, many of them national counter intelligence agencies, who have weaponized social media to get people to believe things that are untrue. That needs to be policed too.

Actually the Russian (and maybe Chinese) agents in particular will simply stir the pot on both sides of a issue to foment social unrest and de cohesion. They aren’t easy to spot unless you look for them since these aren’t bots, but real people.

Twitter does have a lot of people from the left end of the political spectrum, but there are also lots of people from the right end too if you want to find them. What they don't allow are trolls who stir up trouble rather than share thoughts and ideas.

I was on Twitter very infrequently until the war in Ukraine. I've found it's the best source for war news. Though there are some very poor sources for war news on the same platform too.

I have found the same thing. I was also tracking the Canadian trucker protests in the same way. Unfiltered on the ground reports.

On blogs that have Ukraine stories, I have found many Russian agents trying to push the narrative towards something favorable for Russia. They’ll pick an angle like anti-war and then use that to push back against Ukrainian support.

Your overall point that content moderation is hard is correct. Weaponizing social media has made immensely harder.

 

[Cosmacelf]

I've known borderlines and Elon doesn't fit the profile. For one thing all personality disordered unravel when things get tough and he's faced some very difficult challenges at all his companies. Challenges that would have driven any PD to nutty extremes. He always hunkered down and dealt with the problems.

I agree. Frankly that model 3 manufacturing push would have driven almost any “well adjusted” person to a break down.

In addition, most highly technical people literally run away from conflict and also especially from complex businesses that require dealing with governments and regulatory agencies (which both Tesla and SpaceX need to do in the extreme). That Elon runs these companies as well as he does is a testament to his mental strength.

But Twitter … man that’s the ultimate challenge

 

[jabloomf1230]

What people are forgetting in this whole free speech argument is even aside from the gobs of bots and fake follower accounts, most people on Twitter are anonymous. Other users don't know a specific Twitter user's real name, where they live or what their eye color is, except for the few verified celebrity accounts. That's the problem. It's easy to rant anonymously. There I just did it.

 

[wdolson]

Actually the Russian (and maybe Chinese) agents in particular will simply stir the pot on both sides of a issue to foment social unrest and de cohesion. They aren’t easy to spot unless you look for them since these aren’t bots, but real people.

I didn't say what political views the trolls have. I know someone who is very liberal but gullible and she's been taken in by a lot of these trolls.

The objective of the trolls is to find existing fault lines in a society and drive in wedges to make them worse.

I have found the same thing. I was also tracking the Canadian trucker protests in the same way. Unfiltered on the ground reports.

On blogs that have Ukraine stories, I have found many Russian agents trying to push the narrative towards something favorable for Russia. They’ll pick an angle like anti-war and then use that to push back against Ukrainian support.

Your overall point that content moderation is hard is correct. Weaponizing social media has made immensely harder.

Having the BS antenna turned on is necessary online these days. Analyzing the war for me is helped by the fact I know a lot about military stuff already. If someone is saying something that is militarily impossible, they go right to the bottom of the list.

 

[mspohr]

The New York Times: Elon Musk Is a Digital Citizen Kane.

Elon Musk Is a Digital Citizen Kane

What would Twitter look like with Musk as its sole proprietor?

www.nytimes.com

When you own a powerful internet site, you might be on the receiving end of threats from the Russian government to imprison your employees over posts they don’t like or a family member asking why a stalker is allowed to harass them in their private messages. Musk might not want to deal with the ugly details of owning a tool of global influence, but he wouldn’t have a choice if he were Twitter’s sole proprietor.

Truth Social does not permit absolute free expression. Few people want to have their social media feeds clogged by spammy advertisements for cryptocurrency, terrorist recruitment pitches or harassment of children. No one is sure what a Twitter that is accountable to no one but Musk would be like. (One intriguing question: Would Musk restore Trump’s Twitter account?)

 

[spacerfc]

The New York Times: Elon Musk Is a Digital Citizen Kane.

Elon Musk Is a Digital Citizen Kane

What would Twitter look like with Musk as its sole proprietor?

www.nytimes.com

When you own a powerful internet site, you might be on the receiving end of threats from the Russian government to imprison your employees over posts they don’t like or a family member asking why a stalker is allowed to harass them in their private messages. Musk might not want to deal with the ugly details of owning a tool of global influence, but he wouldn’t have a choice if he were Twitter’s sole proprietor.

Yeah right, it's not like Starlink hasn't been actively helping Ukraine to fight a war against Russia, or that Elon Musk already said publicly he's delaying Starship and Starlink Gen2 so that resources can be diverted to fight Russian jamming and cyberattacks... Oh, no, that's not "global influence" at all, and he certainly does not want to "deal with the ugly details"... /s

 

[mspohr]

Yeah right, it's not like Starlink hasn't been actively helping Ukraine to fight a war against Russia, or that Elon Musk already said publicly he's delaying Starship and Starlink Gen2 so that resources can be diverted to fight Russian jamming and cyberattacks... Oh, no, that's not "global influence" at all, and he certainly does not want to "deal with the ugly details"... /s

I think you've proved her point.

 

[spacerfc]

I think you've proved her point.

I didn't realize this needs to be spelled out: I was being sarcastic, the NYT article is non sense because it assumes Elon Musk is buying twitter just so that he can have his own mouthpiece, that's an insane take for anybody who has been following Musk for a while. Did he start SpaceX so that he can fly to space? Did he start Tesla so that he can have an electric car to drive? So far all the takes from mainstream media about this twitter thing has been amazingly misleading, if not downright entertaining due to the mental gymnastics performed. Nobody is actually listening to the reasons Musk give, even though 99% of the time that reflects his true intentions.

 

[Cosmacelf]

I didn't realize this needs to be spelled out: I was being sarcastic, the NYT article is non sense because it assumes Elon Musk is buying twitter just so that he can have his own mouthpiece, that's an insane take for anybody who has been following Musk for a while. Did he start SpaceX so that he can fly to space? Did he start Tesla so that he can have an electric car to drive? So far all the takes from mainstream media about this twitter thing has been amazingly misleading, if not downright entertaining due to the mental gymnastics performed. Nobody is actually listening to the reasons Musk give, even though 99% of the time that reflects his true intentions.

Actually, it is amazing how often people do this … guess about motivations even when the person tells you why they are doing things. Mark Cuban just tweeted that he think Elon is doing this to make money and get back at the SEC. Actually, that might be Elon’s plan B, but it isn’t his primary plan.

 

[ohmman]

This entire thread is basically TMC members guessing about Elon's motivations. Hell, 25% of this site is.