"flies in the face of everything I understand about complex systems" indeed!
Forgive me for this analogy but it's in the news: Imagine if NATO just said one day, "you know what, !@#$ it. We're done managing this complex system. Let's assume Russia doesn't have or won't use nukes and change our entire doctrine overnight. Get ready to deploy everything."
There's a real possibility Elon buys Twitter for billions and runs it straight into the ground because he does not understand complex systems. Or maybe he gambles and is lucky. Or maybe he really does _get it_ and this is all in some absolutely bizarre way, calculated.
Musk has a reality distortion field. I think he is a bloviating jerk but I know a lot of really really smart and dedicated engineers in software and in more traditional fields like mech-e and aerospace who would rather work for Musk than any other person and are willing to take pay cuts to work for him. This means he really can surround himself with very skilled people who can distill his "fuck it, we are doing FOO" commands into real plans.
What this tells me is not that Musk is a visionary but that a lot of shitty visions are nevertheless achievable if you've got enough smart people around you.
I think that a lot of people also don't have to directly work with him, and there are a lot of assholes running companies. That being said, Musk's behavior personally turned me off from all of his companies' products, despite maybe 5 years ago thinking "if I ever buy a car, it'll be a Tesla"
For me, there is enough track record to prove he has some very unique business skills, and often succeeds by doing things that conventionally looks crazy.
That said, Elon's Twitter may well be a failure regardless. Pretty sure it won't be boring though :)
(And regardless of any of the above, I've never been particularly enamoured of criticism of a person because of who their parents are or what their parents did. Blaming Elon for being the son of white people in South Africa is kinda gross, actually.)
"Who payed for those computers in the 90s that Musk had access to?"
Its like yeah ok, he wasn't found in a dumbster during a civil war. Is that the level now, where nobody can get any credit because they were not born into abject poverty?
That just basically means that 99% of people who achieve anything don't deserve credit for anything.
Its basically materialist logic taken to an absurd degree.
For instance, his connection to Roelof Botha, who in turn leveraged the connections made by his father when he was spending a lot of time in the US as South Africa's last apartheid-era foreign minister.
https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/elon-musk-fired-twi...
"The basic problem with Musk’s efforts to walk away from these severance agreements — beyond the lack of actual arguments — is that if he can stiff these executives then no golden parachute is binding. The point of a golden parachute is that a CEO with a golden parachute will sell his company to a buyer whom he doesn’t like, if that’s what is best for shareholders. If the buyer can stiff the CEO on the parachute payments because they don’t like each other, then no buyer will ever pay severance, and no CEO will ever trust it."
[0] https://web.archive.org/web/20221031165639/https://www.bloom...
Oh, this is going to be a fun read.
In response to your quote, I guess he did it as revenge for making him go through with it.
If you dig significantly you might find that they're not as impulsive as they seem, that the person was actually considering many aspects but playing their cards close until cut-off time.
But I do think one difference at least from where I’m sitting, is usually the response is, that’s crazy, but if it works you’ll be rich!
I’m not even really clear on what the “if it works” is in this situation, I guess if he proves that people are willing to pay $8 per month for a social network?
And when it comes to a $44 billon purchase, it sounds like a nightmare to affect it so impulsively.
At least, unlike the nuclear fallout, it's not my money, I guess.
No, I definitely won't forgive you your 'analogy', because it's sneaking in a highly irresponsible argument for military escalation into a completely unrelated discussion.
I think one could criticize that the analogy hyperbole, but I’m quite amused at the pearl clutching that somehow I’m trying to push for nuclear annihilation. Saying the words three times in a mirror doesn’t make it happen.
