Elon Musk: I thought he was a genius?

I’m confused. I thought he was a genius but he is turning out to be something else. What, I don’t know.

I’m having a hard time reconciling how he is handling Twitter versus his Tesla and SpaceX. As far as I have read, those companies are doing fine. They are not on the brink of implosion. I have read stuff about the brutal long hours, even times that he slept at the plant to get Tesla over the production hurdles.

But I don’t remember reading about any chaos at Tesla or SpaceX or employees fleeing the company.

The imagery of what is going on at Twitter is completely different from that I have of Tesla or SpaceX.

Twitter is different in that it is not an engineering manufacturing company and so it does not have manufacturing problems to solve. Instead, it’s problems are tougher: the slippery management of humans in communities. No one knows how to solve the issue of the hellscape of lies, misinformation, and bullying.

How do you balance the free speech with the bad actors running roughshod over other people? I wonder if we had the same issue with bad actors in a real public square instead of a public one. Wouldn’t we police it somehow to prevent the real atmosphere from devolving into physical fights or worse? I think we would have had some code of behavior and some kind of police force to keep people from getting out of hand.

I’m hoping that Elon will come to the conclusion that having absolute free speech is not workable much like you would not want hate speech percolating in a real public space.

He’s a genius in engineering and manufacturing but he may not be a genius in corralling people in a virtual environment to act in a moral and classy manner. His management of Twitter is highlighting his weakness with people in the way he manages his employees and in his understanding of limits of free speech.

It is looking like absolute free speech will not work.

Also, he should have learned that working those “hardcore” hours do not really work; he once admitted that working 20 hours or thereabouts makes him do bonkers things. It appears he has forgotten how poor his judgment becomes when he lacks sufficient sleep.

I can’t see how working intense hardcore hours will bring about a new Twitter.

Lack of sleep dries up ideas and problem-solving capabilities.

I read an article today about Jaron Lanier and his idea that due to technology, “extinction is on the table.”. Within that article there was an apt description of how social media molds been molding people, with the adverse effects very prevalent in uber wealthy men:

“He singled out people who have recently been in the news: Elon Musk, Donald Trump and Ye (Kanye West).

Once distinct personalities, he wrote, each had “veered into being bratty little boys” in their public behavior – a result perhaps of being “Twitter poisoned”, a more contemporary term for operant conditioning.

“I have noticed that all these people converge on a similar personality type that wasn’t present before. If that has something to do with social media addictions, or Twitter poisoning, what is that?”

The Guardian, “‘Extinction is on the table’: Jaron Lanier warns of tech’s existential threat to humanity”, Edward Helmore, November 27, 2022

Bratty boys…yeah, that pretty much describes them.

Right now, it is looking like Elon Musk is really not a genius, at least not in the social media environment. But it could be he truly is a genius but nobody can see where he is going. For a while, people thought Tesla would not be successful but it is still around today. The same thing may be true for Twitter.

(But I’m not looking forward to the hellscape that is coming into play with all of the hate speech rising in numbers. It looks like Twitter is turning into a Hieronymus Bosch hellscape.)