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djcooley ◴[] No.12509856[source]
I have all the respect in the world for what Mr. Musk has accomplished, but it has come at an amazing cost to the people around him.

He is worshiped from afar but reviled by many the closer you get to his inner circle. Go read "Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future."

The question I always ask myself with the people who move mountains is what cost did that progress come at? What would someone's spouse, kids, friends, etc. say about the person?

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rwallace ◴[] No.12510876[source]
There are any number of people who are far more toxic to those around them without having accomplished any significant progress in the process, so Elon Musk is a poor choice of target for that criticism.
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projektir ◴[] No.12510978[source]
I don't know about that, Musk has that effect on some of the best people, and his effect, due to his status, is very strong.

I'm actually highly concerned about Musk's overall effect on society, specifically due to the kind of people he'll have that effect on.

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sheer_horror ◴[] No.12512366[source]
I don't understand why you would be concerned and not elated by his effect on society. Tech has been stuck for 40 years in most major industries, and in a time when it seems impossible to overcome the entrenched incumbents of those industries, here comes a person who shows us that it is in fact possible. Now people have hope that our future will be decided not by frail, unmoving conglomerates, but instead by nimble and innovative start ups. There are going to be more science ventures thanks to that.
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projektir ◴[] No.12518621{3}[source]
Because the message of "only superhumans who work 80 hour weeks can accomplish great things" is not the kind of effect I want on society. We have enough of that as it is. We need less of it, not more.

Does it not concern you that tech has been stuck for 40 years? That space has been stuck for however many years? Despite all this hard work everywhere? I'd rather resolve those problems at the core than address the symptoms or possibly worsen them by betting everything on one person and hope they will bring us salvation.

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1. sheer_horror ◴[] No.12535207{4}[source]
>"only superhumans who work 80 hour weeks can accomplish great things" is not the kind of effect I want on society. We have enough of that as it is. We need less of it, not more.

I don't think you know what you're talking about here. Let me explain why 80 hours a week is a good thing.

At large, people lead lives of quiet struggle against forces they do not understand. They continue this because they are in a local minimum of daily energy expenditure, and like simulated anealling, you stay stuck unless you keep putting in more energy. Women return to husbands that beat them because that's their local minimum, even though they have the option of returning to the dating pool, moving out, creating a new social circle: These tasks are putting energy into their lives so that they might arrive at a new minimum with a value much lower than the previous minimum. You could say that they are better off for it, thanks to the energy put in.

She puts in more energy, then she ends up closer to the global minimum.

This can be applied to society. If people are relaxed as they are today, they are probably in a local minimum and not the global minimum. But in some form, analogously, the wife beating continues, and we simply rationalize it like you have shown here, and we continue.

I am 22. I assume you're in your 30s/40s. We have no future, my friend, and it's thanks to collective 'shrugging it off' decade after decade since WW2. I won't accept that, and you should not either. You are making up silly excuses to protect yourself from the truth which is 'Wow, America really does need this man, and he truly is doing great things'.