Elon Musk's lies, propaganda, etc. - Page 5
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Nebuchad
Switzerland11821 Posts
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DarkPlasmaBall
United States43607 Posts
On October 28 2024 07:14 BlackJack wrote: Political commentator Van Jones made the point "If progressive have a politics that says all white people are racist, all men are toxic, and all billionaires are evil it's kinda hard to keep them on your side." It's a good thing that progressives don't have those political messages then, as those are strawmen that non-progressives construct so that they don't have to engage with racism, toxicity, and (omg I feel like GH) the potential abuses of capitalism. | ||
WombaT
Northern Ireland23378 Posts
On October 28 2024 07:36 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: It's a good thing that progressives don't have those political messages then, as those are strawmen that non-progressives construct so that they don't have to engage with racism, toxicity, and (omg I feel like GH) the potential abuses of capitalism. If people still don’t understand that something like ‘toxic masculinity’ doesn’t mean masculinity is toxic, but refers to the toxic aspects of masculinity by now, I really have to question their sincerity in attempting to understand the term. | ||
DarkPlasmaBall
United States43607 Posts
On October 28 2024 08:28 WombaT wrote: If people still don’t understand that something like ‘toxic masculinity’ doesn’t mean masculinity is toxic, but refers to the toxic aspects of masculinity by now, I really have to question their sincerity in attempting to understand the term. Yeah, seriously. You have Tim Walz - who is a military veteran, a sports coach, a hunter, a loving husband, a loving father, and a successful politician - and he still cares about protecting women's rights, solving children's hunger, and spreading joy to the world. Tim Walz is one of many great examples of successful, positive masculinity, and he's even white and straight and cis and Christian. His very existence threatens the conservative view that you need to be an opportunistic "alpha" jerk like Donald Trump, Elon Musk, or Andrew Tate to be a "real" man. Republicans assert that Democrats hate white, straight, cis, Christian males, just because we also advocate for other groups too, while they put scumbags up on a pedestal. | ||
Nebuchad
Switzerland11821 Posts
On October 28 2024 08:28 WombaT wrote: If people still don’t understand that something like ‘toxic masculinity’ doesn’t mean masculinity is toxic, but refers to the toxic aspects of masculinity by now, I really have to question their sincerity in attempting to understand the term. Maybe, but I think it's not very difficult to only be watching media that caters to that view. Conservative thought leaders understand that they're bankrupt ideologically so they can't portray the opposition's ideas honestly, and also if your audience is reactionary it's good for you if they feel under siege constantly. There are clear incentives to keep a bunch of people honestly thinking that. This only refers to men and white people btw, those two are not true but it is true that billionnaires are evil | ||
Turbovolver
Australia2350 Posts
On October 26 2024 03:35 BlackJack wrote: @TurboLover, what kind of argument are you looking for me to give to you? SpaceX just caught the starship booster out of mid-air with mechanical chopstick arms. If you want to overlook that and consider it fraudulent because he hasn't delivered on Mars colonies yet then that's your right. If you want to overlook all the things Tesla has achieved and overlook it because the Robotaxis aren't here yet then that's your right. You're obviously not going to be swayed by anything I have to say. The problem is, the successes of specific events at his companies isn't really a marker of Musk's success. It'd be like pointing to Starcraft II or that new WoW expansion that was apparently back to being good again, and saying "see how amazing Kotick is?" (okay sorry we have someone on these boards that does do that, but, y'know). Kotick actually feels like a pretty good parallel in the sense that he's close to people on these forums, and his main defender here can point to all his business acumen, but no real reason beyond that to like him. I can understand it if someone says "I respect business go-getters, he went and he got". That seems at least a better reason than "he's out here owning the libs", especially because he only started doing that after nobody else really wanted to give him the attention he wanted out there on Twitter, and after he spent all that money on it too! It's actually kind of sad to see him on stage at rallies or at comedy shows like "they love me! They really love me!", but as Nebuchad says the same narcissism that's necessary to get oneself into Musk's position is what leaves them deeply unsatisfied with getting there. Narcissim is not overconfidence, it's a reaction to poor self-esteem. But yeah, as I acknowledged talking to ETisME, Musk does have that "aim for the stars and maybe even hit a few" quality to him, I do get it if people can appreciate that. I'd just be a lot more impressed if we saw some direct actual evidence of Musk's apparent genius. Maybe the media overall is biased about showing his dumb moments, but where are any of the concrete smart moments? Like, it's hard to believe the guy who wanted everyone at Twitter to print out their code they'd worked on is some whiz at the keyboard, y'know? I did look up that article about changing to steel instead of fibreglass and it turned out it was "because it was cheaper". Like, I dunno, doesn't seem like much to lionise him over. | ||
WombaT
Northern Ireland23378 Posts
On October 28 2024 10:34 Turbovolver wrote: The problem is, the successes of specific events at his companies isn't really a marker of Musk's success. It'd be like pointing to Starcraft II or that new WoW expansion that was apparently back to being good again, and saying "see how amazing Kotick is?" (okay sorry we have someone on these boards that does do that, but, y'know). Kotick actually feels like a pretty good parallel in the sense that he's close to people on these forums, and his main defender here can point to all his business acumen, but no real reason beyond that to like him. I can understand it if someone says "I respect business go-getters, he went and he got". That seems at least a better reason than "he's out here owning the libs", especially because he only started doing that after nobody else really wanted to give him the attention he wanted out there on Twitter, and after he spent all that money on it too! It's actually kind of sad to see him on stage at rallies or at comedy shows like "they love me! They really love me!", but as Nebuchad says the same narcissism that's necessary to get oneself into Musk's position is what leaves them deeply unsatisfied with getting there. Narcissim is not overconfidence, it's a reaction to poor self-esteem. But yeah, as I acknowledged talking to ETisME, Musk does have that "aim for the stars and maybe even hit a few" quality to him, I do get it if people can appreciate that. I'd just be a lot more impressed if we saw some direct actual evidence of Musk's apparent genius. Maybe the media overall is biased about showing his dumb moments, but where are any of the concrete smart moments? Like, it's hard to believe the guy who wanted everyone at Twitter to print out their code they'd worked on is some whiz at the keyboard, y'know? I did look up that article about changing to steel instead of fibreglass and it turned out it was "because it was cheaper". Like, I dunno, doesn't seem like much to lionise him over. The reason people hate Kotick is his apparent contempt for his chosen industry as a hobby, or as art and those that have that passion. What I certainly don’t doubt, and I think many (even reluctantly) would concede is, he is bloody good at being a cold-hearted financially motivated bastard. Aside from his more recent overt political interjections, I think people increasingly hate Musk for essentially the opposite reason. He has all these passions and cool pie in the sky ideas that many of us do. But the guy who somehow became one of the wealthiest in the planet and able to actualise these fantasies, is increasingly showing himself to really be nothing special at all. It’s tolerable if he really is some genuine like John von Neumann type genius, and you need that kind of brain. As for the bolded, great example, and the more he does things like that, the more the Emperor is shown to have no clothes. I can’t remember the phase I was at in my perhaps ill-advised decision to return to study and retrain as a software engineer, it was quite early. Even at that nascent stage I knew every second Tweet he was making about overhauling things was complete nonsense. Amusingly in my work placement year, we had a good chuckle as Twitter effectively broke briefly due to our product. It turns out if you performatively and unilaterally fire people and purge them from your system, you may purge the employee account of the only guy you employee with credentials for some of your DevOps and automation pipelines. It can still be intolerable if you’re in a room with someone who thinks they’re the smartest person there and loves to let you know, but it’s slightly mitigated if that person actually is. Mr Musk most certainly is not in many of the rooms he frequents | ||
BlackJack
United States10105 Posts
On October 28 2024 10:34 Turbovolver wrote: The problem is, the successes of specific events at his companies isn't really a marker of Musk's success. It'd be like pointing to Starcraft II or that new WoW expansion that was apparently back to being good again, and saying "see how amazing Kotick is?" (okay sorry we have someone on these boards that does do that, but, y'know). Kotick actually feels like a pretty good parallel in the sense that he's close to people on these forums, and his main defender here can point to all his business acumen, but no real reason beyond that to like him. I can understand it if someone says "I respect business go-getters, he went and he got". That seems at least a better reason than "he's out here owning the libs", especially because he only started doing that after nobody else really wanted to give him the attention he wanted out there on Twitter, and after he spent all that money on it too! It's actually kind of sad to see him on stage at rallies or at comedy shows like "they love me! They really love me!", but as Nebuchad says the same narcissism that's necessary to get oneself into Musk's position is what leaves them deeply unsatisfied with getting there. Narcissim is not overconfidence, it's a reaction to poor self-esteem. But yeah, as I acknowledged talking to ETisME, Musk does have that "aim for the stars and maybe even hit a few" quality to him, I do get it if people can appreciate that. I'd just be a lot more impressed if we saw some direct actual evidence of Musk's apparent genius. Maybe the media overall is biased about showing his dumb moments, but where are any of the concrete smart moments? Like, it's hard to believe the guy who wanted everyone at Twitter to print out their code they'd worked on is some whiz at the keyboard, y'know? I did look up that article about changing to steel instead of fibreglass and it turned out it was "because it was cheaper". Like, I dunno, doesn't seem like much to lionise him over. I’d recommend the biography on Musk by Walter Isaacson | ||
Uldridge
Belgium4480 Posts
Also, maybe this is actually what has been plaguing the US for the last 15 years: the current ideological conflict is one that fights for patriarchal hegemony. | ||
Acrofales
Spain17752 Posts
On October 28 2024 16:11 Uldridge wrote: The reason you let people print out their code is a basic audit of productivity. As in: more lines = good, less lines = bad. I'd be very surprised if it was anything else but that. Also, maybe this is actually what has been plaguing the US for the last 15 years: the current ideological conflict is one that fights for patriarchal hegemony. Why the hell would you print code, when you can just have git count lines committed, if that's what you're after. It also means that you think many lines is good, few lines bad. When a lot of the time a good commit will be removing a few hundred lines of code and replacing it with a few dozen. Lines of code, number of commits, etc. have been proven time and time again to be completely uncorrelated with productivity in software companies except for the most mundane stuff. It's the equivalent of measuring how well your constructors are working by counting the number of bricks every one of them laid. So if that's your goal (and I don't think you're wrong about that), it's an exceedingly dumb goal, and an exceedingly dumb and wasteful way of going about it. Which was kinda the point wombat was making. And I have also been a hater for a long time now. Basically since he started being invited as a futurist to talk about AI, a topic I know a lot about, and a topic it was immediately clear Musk knows next to nothing about. That said, he was less harmful as a Church of Singularity alarmist than as a "Dark MAGA" cultist. | ||
Godwrath
Spain10107 Posts
On October 28 2024 16:11 Uldridge wrote: The reason you let people print out their code is a basic audit of productivity. As in: more lines = good, less lines = bad. I'd be very surprised if it was anything else but that. I hope you are being sarcastic and you are aware how stupid that is. | ||
Uldridge
Belgium4480 Posts
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Harris1st
Germany6673 Posts
On October 28 2024 16:11 Uldridge wrote: The reason you let people print out their code is a basic audit of productivity. As in: more lines = good, less lines = bad. I'd be very surprised if it was anything else but that. It actually is the exact opposite :D But I can see that line of thinking. I've heard from some people working in big corpos that "productivity" is measured in stuff like "number of meetings held" or "number of mails send" | ||
Uldridge
Belgium4480 Posts
Also: fundamental question: how does one measure productivity really? Like what are actual good metrics? | ||
Harris1st
Germany6673 Posts
On October 28 2024 19:32 Uldridge wrote: What do you mean with it's exactly the opposite? Also: fundamental question: how does one measure productivity really? Like what are actual good metrics? Good code is usually held short since it is more efficient and less chance of bugs but it has to be clear, readable, and maintainable. To the second: I can only come up with "money generated" which might be diffcult to calculate in a lot of cases. I mean there is a whole work sector that does nothing else but calculate and control. | ||
Magic Powers
Austria3568 Posts
On October 28 2024 19:32 Uldridge wrote: What do you mean with it's exactly the opposite? Also: fundamental question: how does one measure productivity really? Like what are actual good metrics? Whatever makes the CEO the most money until the company inevitably goes belly up from crime/corruption, incompetence of leadership, lack of vision, or anti-customer practices. In all seriousness though, productivity is literally impossible to measure. There are too many variables that can't be objectively accounted for. Human bias always takes over. That's why I've always been a huge opponent of the grading system in school. | ||
Uldridge
Belgium4480 Posts
On October 28 2024 21:03 Harris1st wrote: Good code is usually held short since it is more efficient and less chance of bugs but it has to be clear, readable, and maintainable. To the second: I can only come up with "money generated" which might be diffcult to calculate in a lot of cases. I mean there is a whole work sector that does nothing else but calculate and control. I mean, yes. But we're talking about Musk's perspective here. Why do you think he asked for it? | ||
Harris1st
Germany6673 Posts
On October 28 2024 21:35 Uldridge wrote: I mean, yes. But we're talking about Musk's perspective here. Why do you think he asked for it? I honestly have no idea. My best guess is, he was looking for excuses to fire people and that's what he came up with | ||
WombaT
Northern Ireland23378 Posts
On October 28 2024 21:35 Uldridge wrote: I mean, yes. But we're talking about Musk's perspective here. Why do you think he asked for it? Because he’s an idiot. Or at least, doesn’t know what he’s doing in this particular domain. | ||
Godwrath
Spain10107 Posts
On October 28 2024 19:13 Uldridge wrote: I would never do that. Elon on the other hand? What do top level people do, besides looking at big number = good, small number = bad? Don't know, i have worked for a few of corpos, and none had top level people this stupid and still being lauded as genius. Most top level people know how to delegate so they don't look like complete fools to be honest. | ||
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