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I don't precisely know where Elon lands in the Motte's situation evaluation of the Culture War at present, but I think I've got an example than can be used as a lense beyond The MuskATeer himself.
This is a very recent (x)weet from Elon. If you really, carefully parse it with your far less powerful brain (than Elon's, that is) you might be able to understand that - this is just basic macroeconomic understanding. Holy shit this is fucking Econ 101
But, as I've said before, Elon has adopted just enough PodCaster Bro aesthetics to know that slight rephrasings of 1+1=2 obvious insights, combined with "thoughtful" pauses and idiosyncratic speech patterns can make you look deep to the midwits. I am convinced this is also 90% of Sam Altman's playbook.
Business-eese and consulting speaking get a lot of flak for being made up pseudo-languages that exist to further unearned vibes of authority and experience on the part of the speaker. It's fun to point and laugh that it's all either nonsense or very obvious truths dressed up in jargon.
I think the cycle is repeating itself with many different sides of the AI wars. Connor Leahy is even more egregious than Musk, and also triples down by trying (and mostly failing) to pin people down with gotcha hypotheticals that are worded to sounded apocalyptic in their profundity.
I think a good heuristic for valid expertise in a subject is the degree to which it gets a little boring. Scott Alexander's posts often veer into "holy shit, get to the point, dude!" territory. Many posts related to SCOTUS here on The Motte (of which I am thankful for, please keep them going!) often get just a little tedious - not because of jargony pablum, but because the authors generally really know what they're talking about and go multiple layers deep in reference and citation.
I'm someone who's been in the Tech industry (or, maybe more accurately, technology focused parts of several industries) for my entire career. At least at the start, "tech" was looked at as a weird subculture - the bosses knew they needed it, but it wasn't the show. In the middle 2010s, that started to change as the FAANGs became the largest and richest companies on the planet. Now that we are at peak AI hullabaloo, not only do you see people with zero technical capability presenting themselves as experts, you have an entire aesthetic-cultural superstructure. I think Musk is not only part of it, but one of those who built it. Altman as well. If you peer into their backgrounds, their techincal bonafides are questionable at best. Musk seems like a hacker level dev who brute forced his way into PayPal (and was then brute forced out). His claims about being deeply involved in engineering to this day have to be impossible (SpaceX, Tesla, and Xwitter couldn't run if so much was contingent on him). It's more likely he injects himself into meetings and initiatives here and there and mostly serves as a slight derailing force to otherwise normal activities. Altman seems to have zero background and is perhaps the poster boy for weird SF striver life.
I seek the opinions of the Mottizen community.
Kevin Durant is an all time great NBA player. He's a multi time NBA MVP, has won NBA championships and came a shoe size from another. He's worth $170mm, and he's in Paris surrounded by hot athletic people. He just starred in an all time great Olympic basketball game, coming back from 15 points down in the fourth against Serbia (a game which proved American racism!) and he's going to star in the gold medal game against France tomorrow.
And he was up at 5am Paris time shit posting against his haters on Twitter. He's got things to do, and if he didn't he could eat at any restaurant or go to any theater or get tickets to any Olympic event or find a groupie or hire the highest end prostitute. But there he is, fighting on Twitter.
Durant, and musk, and bill ackman, prove that shit posting is one of life's great joys. It is something Foucault would have written about (the way he wrote about fisting) as a truly new modern form of joy. And even when you're rich and important and famous you can't resist it. It's too fun. Isn't it magical that we can all access this kind of joy that Elon, who can do whatever he wants, still finds irresistible?
Elon on Twitter is just another guy on Twitter. And for the most part his tweets should be treated as though he's a JAG. That means both not giving him too much extra credibility, and also giving him grace. We're all wrong on here all the time, but nobody cares. And we all love to do 101 econ or history or bio. Give the man the same mercy, that's the level he's playing at.
I actually think it is less one of life's great joys more than a modern drug; and like most drugs you build up a tolerance the more you use it and it will turn you into a real bastard and husk of a man if you let it.
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