The ongoing Elon Twitter saga: "insert demographic" melts down

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My two pennies whilst you all squabble about who's the alpha or whatever you're talking about.... ;)

This is an excellent point. Both Peterson and Musk are undoubtedly intelligent in any standardised measure (eg IQ, domain knowledge or success), so anyone suggesting otherwise is being a bit silly or emotional (ie because I don't like you, you're not intelligent).

The real danger with anyone here is back to the greek philosophers and Plato's republic. They tried to design society to avoid things that cloud judgement - eg too little wealth makes you desperate and greedy, too much makes you reckless and care less about impacts. Latter is certainly a risk that Musk must bear...

I'd also add that he's an engineer - and an extremely capable one at that, but engineers will tell you how to make things (like the atom bomb) - a humanities student will tell you why it might not be a good idea..... he will likewise have a blindside here.

Everything he's done so far is 'logical' - ie I've read countless studies (eg Google's Project Aristotle) which have shown how a very small number of 'hyper performers' really run companies and they always carry huge amounts of average/plodders, so an engineer mind would logically conclude that if you're short of cash, then just get rid of the 'baggage' and you're sorted. However, people are not logical and so it'll be interesting to see how this plays out.

I suspect he will fix the engineering challenges (eg twitter will radically increase their development speeds, attract more users, accelerate speed, balance income/cost etc), but whether he can win the public debate, the emotional side of leading etc I don't know.

One thing that should be considered is that Twitter was a car crash before he took it over - as Dorsey had admitted and given up on, so the folks at twitter's opinions on Musk should be taken with just as big a pinch of salt, as the 'beloved' company they worked for was a lame duck....


The problem with Peterson, is people fall foe the appeal to authority fallacy's. He may posses knowledge and ability in his academic domain, although i have seen that is disputable, but that knowledge provably doesn't translate to the other areas he writes about. Actual domain experts in areas all his populist books cover rip his theories and analysis to pieces. peterson puts on a show by using eloquent language and misquoting diverse sources as a clever rouse to try and fool the gullible. Oftentimes his quoted material is completely irrelevant to his point or worse still is complete contradiction, but not many people are knowledgeable about obscure 17th century philosophers, so he ends up freely misrepresenting material. He also employs the age old trick of espousing a few well known tautologies to gain trust in his readers, before diving in to a load of verbal diarrhea selling to his readers exactly what they want to here.

Peterson is a shrewd businessman. He knows how to sell books to the desperate incels. But he is certainly not an intellect rather the stupid person's idea of an intellect.




Musk is similarly idolized without actually being the great intellect his groupies mistakenly view him as. His story is the same as anyone who by chance becomes incredibly rich (while his contributions to paypal may have been significant, nothing he did is commiserate with gaining such wealth, much like a lottery winner. With great wealth comes great power. Musk has big visions and is not afraid of barriers. He can sell his vision successfully, but he is not a genius engineer, just very rich. SpaceX and Tesla worked because enough smart engineers were excited by his vision AND, and it is a very big AND, he could pay them above market rates to put up with his style of management. But by all means that is not wholly successful. Both companies stuffer massive turnover and brain drain. I especially like what Musk did with Tesla, and shook up the car industry..But he was not a genius. He just had money and paid a lot of smart people a lot of money to engineer a solution. This is why he is failing at Twiiter so badly because he lacks any knowledge how to run a social media company and he is failing to motivate Twitter's workforce as most of them don't share his vision of an incredibly rich person having massive power.
 
I agree with Gordy.

There is no doubt Peterson is intelligent.

Problem often comes with intelligent people they fail to understand their bounds, assume their intelligence will carry them through and they will by default make correct decisions when they need to take more time and think more clearly.

I don't think Elon and twitter could demonstrate that any more clearly.
I also think Elon will probably fix most of the damage he has done to twitter and quite quickly. I suspect however he will actually seek expert counsel into order to do this, but in private and not in public.
I have seen a few CEOs do this in my time and it will work out fine I am sure. Slowly reversing and just dropping things they publicly say in quiet as they are advised.

Whether Elon is going to be able to fix the equation of loading lots of debt onto twitter, opening it up to far more free speech and being able to increase income and reduce expenditure to make the books balance, I am far less certain of.

There's no denying that Elon is also intelligent. He has to be one of the best self-marketers out there. No wonder he doesn't like PR teams, he's mastered PR all by himself.

Does that make him a genius, alpha male or a god, only you can decide.
 
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There's no denying that Elon is also intelligent. He has to be one of the best self-marketers out there. No wonder he doesn't like PR teams, he's mastered PR all by himself.

Does that make him a genius, alpha male or a god, only you can decide.
He's a genius bull excrementer, so I guess it does need some intelligence to pull off and con so many people
 
What are you talking about. Look at the figures. Google 96 % Facebook 94.5%. 13 of the 18 companies listed are in the 90s.

So now you can tell from that list which companies in the 90s have either "liberal centrist or center left voting democrat and leftist/progressive types" wow there is no end to your talents. Twitter is a social media company, Tesla is a car company, of course their corporate culture is different but radically different? Tesla is based in Texas yet still 94% of its staff donate to Democrats, not Republicans.

No that isn't what I said and you've still managed to misread the chart... 94% of its staff who donate, donate to democrats... not 94% of its staff.

You seem to have completely missed the point being made here a second time re: the chart, again you just reiterate the obvious point that shouldn't have even needed to be stated (that tech firms skew left in general) yet somehow you still manage to misstate that too.

You've also managed to get the argument backwards, you've decided that the chart tells us that Twitter has leftist progressive types rather than the other way around, that it's known that Twitter has lots of leftist progressive types and the chart skewing further than other large companies reflects that. Re: the car company, I'm not referring to the factory workers here... but the tech side, Tesla is quite heavily invested in ML and a portion of it is run like a tech company, if you don't understand that then I can see why that may be confusing.

Pls do point out that the companies in general, as a baseline, skew democrat and totally miss what was being highlighted yet again if you like.
 
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I was never a fanboy of his, i didn’t really hold an opinion on him either way, but in general I would have expected a lot more from him.

Seeing this stuff makes him look pretty silly in my opinion; it’s the sort of thing I used to see from brand new, totally inexperienced, low level managers back when I was corporate director.

Honestly, seeing these emails has really made him drop in my estimations.

Who knows? Maybe he’s operating on such a high level that his leadership style just happens to result in him acting in a way that someone hugely inexperienced and ignorant would do?

It's just a different way of working it's clearly worked for him already several times over else he'd not be where he is today so whether it's similar to something experienced in some other companies isn't particularly relevant, just different strokes for different folks. I guess with silicon valley/SF there are a lot of innovator types, start-ups etc.. who are keen on grafting and engineering focused orgs and are happy to put in the hours.

It's not for everyone so he's offered severance, the number of people with blue/pink hair has perhaps been reduced but you're left with a core of White and Asian engineering guys who'll be working long hours, ordering pizza to the office at 10pm on a Friday and just building/fixing stuff.

He wants to know who the good engineers are, it's a crude way of doing it but while he's likely lost a fair few good ones he can also weed out the dead weight, the ones he actively does want to get rid of likely didn't have much to show for themselves when he originally asked for the code printouts for Tesla guys to review and then later had this opt-in and 1 on 1 meetings/show me some of your best contributions etc.

It's still a huge risk, the severance payouts are going to be a significant expense plus he'll have to recruit more in the near future too, I doubt he's going to keep it super lean in the long run and there will be gaps from the semi-random way people have been culled (some voluntarily quitting rather than being selected for the chop).
 
No that isn't what I said and you've still managed to misread the chart... 94% of its staff who donate, donate to democrats... not 94% of its staff.

You seem to have completely missed the point being made here a second time re: the chart, again you just reiterate the obvious point that shouldn't have even needed to be stated (that tech firms skew left in general) yet somehow you still manage to misstate that too.

You've also managed to get the argument backwards, you've decided that the chart tells us that Twitter has leftist progressive types rather than the other way around, that it's known that Twitter has lots of leftist progressive types and the chart skewing further than other large companies reflects that. Re: the car company, I'm not referring to the factory workers here... but the tech side, Tesla is quite heavily invested in ML and a portion of it is run like a tech company, if you don't understand that then I can see why that may be confusing.

Pls do point out that the companies in general, as a baseline, skew democrat and totally miss what was being highlighted yet again if you like.

Of course its 94% of those that donate :rolleyes: Even in America where people do donate its still a minority of people that actually do.

Again you are assuming that the leftist progressive types as you call them are the ones donating but at the other companies those that donate to the Democrats they are centrist Democrats. You have nothing to back up your assumption, it just fits the view you want to sell. You don't know the make up of the workforces of those companies anymore than I do. There might be a lot of progressive types for all you know at Facebook, Google, Apple, its just that a big deal has been made of the Twitter workforce
 
Maybe he's replaying Tesla and the roadster story applying his engineering mantra

Make the requirements less dumb - question the question.
Similar to Framestorming, the first step of this process involves challenging and questioning the requirements, no matter who gave them to you.
Delete parts or process.
Next, try to start from the core and add when required. Resist the urge to add things ‘just in case’.
Simplify and optimise.
Now you’re answering the right question and have stripped it to the core you can begin to optimise what you have.
Accelerate cycle time.
Again, knowing you’re moving in the right direction, its time to iterate faster.
Automate.
Finally, consider how to automate processes moving forward.
 
How many hours of him speaking have you listened to? Does it start and end with 0?
You should see the twitter thread I posted a few days ago that actually shows him to be the *********** he is and his lack of a BS (ironic for Elon) in Physics that he claims he has

He's nothing but a con artist thanks to people like you believing in what he says, he's the literal personification of the monorail salesman from the Simpsons
 
You should see the twitter thread I posted a few days ago that actually shows him to be the *********** he is and his lack of a BS (ironic for Elon) in Physics that he claims he has

He's nothing but a con artist thanks to people like you believing in what he says, he's the literal personification of the monorail salesman from the Simpsons

He has a BA in Physics, a BS in Economics, and was offered a PhD spot to study material science. Absolute con artist. He's basically pulled the wool right over everyone's eyes there. How did he ever become CEO of Tesla, Twitter, SpaceX, Starlink, Neuralink, and The Boring Company?
 
He has a BA in Physics, a BS in Economics, and was offered a PhD spot to study material science. Absolute con artist. He's basically pulled the wool right over everyone's eyes there. How did he ever become CEO of Tesla, Twitter, SpaceX, Starlink, Neuralink, and The Boring Company?
The people that believe him to be a moron are worse than those who think he can do no wrong, must be very tiresome to live your life being that envious of someone.
 
The problem with Peterson, is people fall foe the appeal to authority fallacy's. He may posses knowledge and ability in his academic domain, although i have seen that is disputable, but that knowledge provably doesn't translate to the other areas he writes about. Actual domain experts in areas all his populist books cover rip his theories and analysis to pieces. peterson puts on a show by using eloquent language and misquoting diverse sources as a clever rouse to try and fool the gullible. Oftentimes his quoted material is completely irrelevant to his point or worse still is complete contradiction, but not many people are knowledgeable about obscure 17th century philosophers, so he ends up freely misrepresenting material. He also employs the age old trick of espousing a few well known tautologies to gain trust in his readers, before diving in to a load of verbal diarrhea selling to his readers exactly what they want to here.

Peterson is a shrewd businessman. He knows how to sell books to the desperate incels. But he is certainly not an intellect rather the stupid person's idea of an intellect.

Musk is similarly idolized without actually being the great intellect his groupies mistakenly view him as. His story is the same as anyone who by chance becomes incredibly rich (while his contributions to paypal may have been significant, nothing he did is commiserate with gaining such wealth, much like a lottery winner. With great wealth comes great power. Musk has big visions and is not afraid of barriers. He can sell his vision successfully, but he is not a genius engineer, just very rich. SpaceX and Tesla worked because enough smart engineers were excited by his vision AND, and it is a very big AND, he could pay them above market rates to put up with his style of management. But by all means that is not wholly successful. Both companies stuffer massive turnover and brain drain. I especially like what Musk did with Tesla, and shook up the car industry..But he was not a genius. He just had money and paid a lot of smart people a lot of money to engineer a solution. This is why he is failing at Twiiter so badly because he lacks any knowledge how to run a social media company and he is failing to motivate Twitter's workforce as most of them don't share his vision of an incredibly rich person having massive power.

By the same fallacies you cite, I can't grasp what you're pointing at beyond the hyperbole. Could you give any examples? I studied Psychology as part of my second degree units, so know it reasonably well and his domain knowledge is excellent - which you'd expect from the 30+ years he's studied, taught and worked in it. I've seen little beyond psychology that he talks about - his whole tenet is self-help, psychological theory etc? Any examples would be great, but I struggle to see your point of conjecture - it's a bit like saying Bill Gates is a moron as he talks about climate change now, when he has only experience in computing. I think the only stuff I could think of is the pretty metaphorical/analogous examples he produces - but again that makes little sense.

Likewise with Musk (ironically you've picked my home two degrees, as engineering was the first!) - I can't see the point - are you trying to say that because he didn't physically build everything at Paypal, Tesla, SpaceX, etc he's a rubbish engineer or not a genius??

I guess it might be easier if you gave some examples of who you actually think are geniuses?! Eg Edison obviously didn't like Musk, nor did Steve Jobs, nor did Bill Gates, da Vinci had a team of people doing his art and cheated with projection etc etc etc!
 
The problem with Peterson, is people fall foe the appeal to authority fallacy's. He may posses knowledge and ability in his academic domain, although i have seen that is disputable, but that knowledge provably doesn't translate to the other areas he writes about. Actual domain experts in areas all his populist books cover rip his theories and analysis to pieces.

I wonder if some of this is like the JK Rowling effect*... did any of these critics (at least those who were around at the time) also pan his 99 book prior to him gaining widespread notoriety following his objection to pronouns?

*You see people ranting about Rowling's names for people from different backgrounds, claims that she glamourizes slavery, loves nazis etc. but lots of this sort of criticism of the Harry Potter books came after she was deemed by the woke mob to be some evil transphobe (despite her having made it quite clear that she actually supports trans rights). The anti-Harry Potter people at the time the first books came out weren't SJW types worried about house elves being slaves and death eaters being like nazis but were right-wing Christians worried about Christian children being exposed to literature they'd decided glamourised the occult and took them further away from god.
 
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