Elon & Twitter

[Tiger]

I came across the above via Techmeme. Their link text/synopsis was "Interviews with 36 current and former Twitter employees and people close to the company detail the excruciating fallout of Elon Musk's first two weeks in charge".

Some of what was there I knew and some was insightful.

If one gets hit by paywall, these should work:

Two Weeks of Chaos: Inside Elon Musk’s Takeover of Twitter

Mr. Musk ordered immediate layoffs, fired executives by email and laid down product deadlines, transforming the company.

web.archive.org

Inside Elon Musk’s Takeover of Twitter - The New York Times

archived 12 Nov 2022 07:12:15 UTC

archive.ph

Seems like a nothingburger - Elon likes time boxing and people get most creative under pressure. So far nice to watch.

On a side note, gotta say, that rocket cartoon was hilarius, and much of recent Twitter mishaps too, fun.

 

[PeterJA]

The fact he's had to walk it back multiple times is, yet again, evidence he never had a PLAN for twitter, just some vague ideas he thought would be cool and is now realizing maybe this "human behavior" thing is more complicated than he realized.

I see you've added to your post that I replied to.

I'd call your two examples clarifications of Elon's goal of free speech, not "walking back" the goal. Apparently he thought folks knew hellscape was "obviously" not what he intended. But the smear campaign against him has made half-informed folks believe he is pure evil. Hence the clarification.

I also disagree that modifications of a plan are evidence of no plan. Elon has tweeted that Twitter will try new things and discard those that don't work, which is a strategy that made Tesla and SpaceX so successful. Elon-haters call it "chaos" but they jeered similarly when Elon's rockets exploded and crashed, and look at them now.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1590384919829962752

 

[Knightshade]

Well, you're right, I should have qualified "giving everyone a chance to speak" with within limits of the law. Shouting FIRE! in a crowded theater is not allowed. But "within legal limits" is also what Elon has said from the beginning.

Cept there's nothing in the law requiring you to add PARODY in writing, in multiple places, before engaging in parody.

There is (only now) something in Twitters rules requiring it though.


So no, if you think he still intendeds to "only restrict speech based on the narrowest reading of the law" that's also factually inaccurate.

Because again, people can't really be trusted to be cool... which Elon appears to continually think they can be, then keeps being surprised there needs to be actual content moderation because of how actual humans actually behave when otherwise left unsupervised.

But I suspect Elon's understanding of AI will help Twitter's AI weed out "DIE [EXPLETIVE] DIE!" from the tweet stream. Your more subtle incivility will probably not be censored.

The only AI anything related to anything Elon has done has shown is an ability to perceive objects from real time pictures and video, and some very limited driving path planning.

The system does no reading of anything other than speed limits (and even then fails to understand any actual text around them like hours or specific vehicle restrictions)- it only reads and understands the number.


So again projecting this somehow makes him an expert at AI that can recognize violent hate speech is... perhaps overly optimistic.

Heck the fact we're ~7 years past Elon saying FSD is basically a solved problem and it's not remotely solved ought tell you Elon himself is overly optimistic in what AI can do right now.

CERTAINLY it can help-- and get better at helping over time-- but it'll also make a lot of mistakes in both directions on the way.

I also disagree that modifications of a plan are evidence of no plan. Elon has tweeted that Twitter will try new things and discard those that don't work, which is a strategy that made Tesla and SpaceX so successful.

Except again- with physics you have at least a reasonable guess at what will work- because you know all the rules of the game before you begin. You may have multiple ideas to try, but none that anyone who understands the science would call "dumb"

So Elons fast iteration looks like "Ok, this material might be ideal, let's try it" "Nope, it blew up, ok, next material test on a short list of materials that science already tells us may be the solution"



Human behavior- no such rules. Hence why Elon explicitly said they'd be trying lots of dumb things because there's no "plan" other than "make it better"

Which is more of a goal than a plan really.

So Elons fast iteration looks like "Eh, let's charge people $8 to get a checkmark because we need money and people like checkmarks" "Oh... people are doing horrible things with that...lets turn that off and....see if anyone else has any ideas..."

 

[PeterJA]

Oh god, I just realized I mistakenly omitted a crucial word from one sentence, and it's too late to edit it.

I didn't mean "Free speech does require humans to stop being jerks." I meant to say "Free speech does NOT require humans to stop being jerks."

@Knightshade's intelligent debate got me too excited to proofread properly.

 

[Knightshade]

Oh god, I just realized I mistakenly omitted a crucial word from one sentence, and it's too late to edit it.

I didn't mean "Free speech does require humans to stop being jerks." I meant to say "Free speech does NOT require humans to stop being jerks."

@Knightshade's intelligent debate got me too excited to proofread properly.

Thing is, your original wording... assuming you want useful and productive speech....DOES largely require humans to stop being jerks (or requires heavy enough moderation to weed out those who won't stop).


Which nobody has found the magic formula for- and Elon clearly doesn't have it either--- which is why all social media devolves into some combination/iteration of bubbles, echo chambers, and/or people being horrible to each other- and typically the less moderation on a platform the faster it goes that way.

 

[PeterJA]

...we're ~7 years past Elon saying FSD is basically a solved problem and it's not remotely solved...

You might be a little behind on the FSD news.

Human behavior- no such rules....

Thousands of behavioral scientists would disagree. Do you really believe that no such science exists?

 

[unk45]

Looked up M-Pesa. Interesting to say the least.
One could see why Elon would admire this, or at least the underlying principles.

Is this where all the synergies of Twitter, Starlink and Tesla AI come together?
One could dream ...

M-Pesa - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Obviously there are varied opinions, some being quite pessimistic. My personal view is that one way or another Elon will end out fulfilling his 2009 financial services vision. Nearly everyone disagrees with that. For me, in 2009 I was doing a job in San Francisco for another party, who introduced me to X.com as it was morphing into PayPal with a vastly reduced vision which still has been hugely successful. M-Pesa, by making prepaid cellular deposits transferrable, quickly transformed small business in Kenya first, and even ended out as M-Paisa in Afghanistan making government salary payments.

The vision of Elon Musk, I believe, is as you are suggesting. Having Starlink communications, New Twitter data flows, and Tesla Energy solutions coexisting, all coordinated and enabled by AI-administered risk management and presentment...is truly mind-boggling in potential. When adding the additional capabilities of TE to power things like desalination, grid establishment and management..there suddenly opens the vision of a much more sustainable society in many sports fo the world that cannot be easily managed today.

In the first principles realm all fo this si very plausible and even can be rapid. It is potentially transformational, but, as you say, requires reimagining of several capabilities of Tesla, SapceX and, probably, Twitter. Getting from here to there is very, very difficult, of course, not so much technically as politically. The overall challenge is simply to convince politicians that all this is not insane.

By parallel I recall people who thought the Euro was crazy. The implementation really did depend on IBAN. I remember that project. Nobody much paid much attention to that; after all it was simply an expansion of the SWIFT idea, itself Scandinavian in origin and just accepted at technical, not political levels. M-Pesa happened much the same way by being invisible until it wasn't, and opposition was useless then.

When thinking about how much all this can mean it becomes rather natural to think of values that are almost inconceivably large.

This is what made me go all-in on Elon intellectually, and over time, financially. Electric cars, Reusable rockets, VPPs and Grid services are all steps along the way. FWIW, Thomas Edison invented passive water distillation and did not even patent the idea. I think of Elon in much the same way.

Tactically that makes me HODL and ignore the price movements. This is all about advancing the survival of humanity in out home planet and finding others that can accommodate humans also. All of us need to remind ourselves of the Tesla mission.

 

[Knightshade]

You might be a little behind on the FSD news.

I'm really not.

I'm driving the latest public build right now. It's a LONG way from actual self driving. Like crazy long.

It's a very good, still not quite perfect, L2 system though.

The next version just went to employee testing- I'd be happy to make as large a bet as you like it's also just L2 and miles from being actual self driving.

(though it'd still be 5-7 years late from Elons original predictions even if it were)

Thousands of behavioral scientists would disagree.

I don't think they would. They generally admit human behavior isn't nearly as consistent, reliable, or predictable as the hard sciences.

Laws in behavioral science have to be very general as a rule, and even so, human behaviors can always fall outside a specific law — unlike how we expect physical matter to adhere to certain laws. As psychology is considered a “soft” science, the field is generally averse to theorizing fundamental rules that govern behavior.

Do you really believe that no such science exists?

it does not.

Much like technical analysis of the stock market, you can find MANY experts who tell you what they think their rules are- but they don't tend to agree with each other much.

And then it turns out they only work some of the time, under only some circumstances.

One will tell you the 200 day DMA is critical- another the 5, another the 50.... one will tell you it's all about the fibs, another it's all about the waves, another it's all about stoich and SDs.... And many will have some combo of these.

NONE will produce one coherent set of rules that works all the time for everything though.



But if you imagine such rules comparable to physical scientists where they always hold, everywhere, at all times, exist for human behavior- please list or link to them.


They don't exist though. There's tons of behavioral science that can be HELPFUL, in a fairly generalized way... but nothing remotely comparable and universally applicable and useful, as offered by say physics.

 

[ohmman]

Thousands of behavioral scientists would disagree.

They wouldn't. They would tell you that their science explains some of human behavior but cannot be prescriptive. The best strategies are often pretty low impact, like what is detailed in Richard Thaler's Nudge.

 

[Tiger]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1591138316862488578

 

[PeterJA]

Thing is, your original wording... assuming you want useful and productive speech....DOES largely require humans to stop being jerks (or requires heavy enough moderation to weed out those who won't stop).


Which nobody has found the magic formula for- and Elon clearly doesn't have it either--- which is why all social media devolves into some combination/iteration of bubbles, echo chambers, and/or people being horrible to each other- and typically the less moderation on a platform the faster it goes that way.

History shows that the doubters of Elon's abilities keep being proven wrong, eventually. I have pleaded for patience with his latest endeavor, but apparently this is impossible for some.

 

[Knightshade]

History shows that the doubters of Elon's abilities keep being proven wrong, eventually.

I mean- often it does.

Sometimes Elon instead admits he's the one who got something wrong- which he has done a number of times (his ability to do so, often far more quickly than his fans will, is a towering strength of his).


Some folks never want to admit that second thing though, even long after Elon has.

 

[PeterJA]

But if you imagine such rules comparable to physical scientists where they always hold, everywhere, at all times, exist for human behavior- please list or link to them.


They don't exist though. There's tons of behavioral science that can be HELPFUL, in a fairly generalized way... but nothing remotely comparable and universally applicable and useful, as offered by say physics.

We'll have to disagree that a statistically applicable science is not science, since that would be claiming there is NO science in medicine or advertising.

I find that most folks are ignorant of the behavioral science that exists, such as Skinner's laws, which is why such science is often not applied for human progress.

But note that Elon never claimed that he will please everyone "everywhere, at all times." He said he'll settle for everyone except the Far Left and Far Right.

(FWIW, my double-major in college was Physics and Psychology.)

 

[sleepydoc]

Thanks--this article does the most to explain what might be going on with Elon and what we've been seeing for the past couple of years. The blunders and chaos keep piling up. I don't know what the answer is. I worry about the long-term impact on EM's reputation and the blow-back on Tesla, SpaceX. Whatever happens, I'll sure be glad when this period is over.

What’s ironic is that Nicolai Tesla was brilliant but then spent the latter part of his years losing money pursing wireless power transmission and other fruitless ideas. Hopefully the same fate doesn‘t befall Elon.

 

[PeterJA]

I mean- often it does.

Sometimes Elon instead admits he's the one who got something wrong- which he has done a number of times (his ability to do so, often far more quickly than his fans will, is a towering strength of his).


Some folks never want to admit that second thing though, even long after Elon has.

Do you really believe two weeks of Elon's work at Twitter is long enough to declare he failed there and always will?

 

[advocate8]

Thanks--this article does the most to explain what might be going on with Elon and what we've been seeing for the past couple of years. The blunders and chaos keep piling up. I don't know what the answer is. I worry about the long-term impact on EM's reputation and the blow-back on Tesla, SpaceX. Whatever happens, I'll sure be glad when this period is over.

Yes it’s the complete explanation of what has happened with Elon and Twitter…and the other two people mentioned.
And what Twitter addiction does to the the minds of even exceptional humans.
If you read this and Knightshade’s thoughts above, that’s it. That’s the whole story.
Zero 4D chess. Just addiction and rationalizing and a chaotic scramble….
Not sure there is anything else I need to know on this topic, at least for another six or eight months when may or may not be worthwhile to dip back in and see what Elon’s managed to do.
He’s smart (duh) but it’s a tough problem …and long term it will be interesting.
Short term it’s just gonna be a dumpster fire with fanboys droning on about Elon’s plans for the greatest barbecue anyone ever saw.
Twitter was corrosive to society before, though, and will remain so. No matter how much failure or success Elon has with it.

 

[Knightshade]

We'll have to disagree that a statistically applicable science is not science

We will also have to disagree that that's actually what I ever claimed- since it's not.

But again "Applying always-true, extremely well known, laws of physics to a very specific subset of rockets you yourself get to design and engineer, all of which is executed by a relatively small, highly trained, highly educated, hand-picked, team of people all being highly compensated to work toward the same goal"

is universes away from

"applying general human behavior theories- of which there are many competing ones- and that may work some statistically significant amount of the time, but often does not-- to hundreds of millions of different humans not on your payroll, from vastly different backgrounds, education, and perspectives, none of whom have any obligation to work well with any other, many of which have not just opposing views and goals but often actively hostile to each other ones"


Being good at the first is very roughly zero percent useful in judging how likely you are to be good at the other.


In fact- the social sciences you love so much have a specific name for the effect of projecting being smart in one area into thinking you're smart in all other areas...perhaps you've heard of it?

Do you really believe two weeks of Elon's work at Twitter is long enough to declare he failed there and always will?

Do you really believe building strawmen out of things I never said then knocking them down will contribute to the discussion?

(FWIW, my double-major in college was Physics and Psychology.)

Applied sciences (so physics with a bit of a bias toward the applied/engineering side rather than theoretical-plus some CS stuff) and Psych in my case FWIW. But I do hope you're not trying for an appeal to authority fallacy here.

 

[ZenRockGarden]

Do you really believe two weeks of Elon's work at Twitter is long enough to declare he failed there and always will?

No, but given he's headed in the opposite direction of successful, the trend doesn't look good for his intuition in the space

 

[PeterJA]

We will also have to disagree that that's actually what I ever claimed- since it's not....

Then I misunderstood your statement "Human behavior- no such rules."

Do you really believe building strawmen out of things I never said then knocking them down will contribute to the discussion?

I'll take that as a no, you don't believe two weeks is long enough to judge whether Elon failed at his Twitter goal.

Applied sciences (so physics with a bit of a bias toward the applied/engineering side rather than theoretical-plus some CS stuff) and Psych in my case FWIW.

Interesting. I also learned that psychologists are bitterly divided into a "hard science" tribe (Skinner and his school) and a "soft science" tribe that is generally ignorant of, or misunderstands, Skinner's work (like the quote you posted without attribution). Both tribes call themselves psychologists. So I wouldn't blame you if you studied the subject but not Skinner's Behaviorism.

Edit: In case anyone is interested in the subject, this is my favorite introduction:

Amazon.com

But I do hope you're not trying for an appeal to authority fallacy here.

Your hope is not in vain.

 

[JRP3]

Do you really believe two weeks of Elon's work at Twitter is long enough to declare he failed there and always will?

At least he wasn't talking about bankruptcy in the first two weeks of Tesla or SpaceX.