A somewhat better URL, a primary source http://jalopnik.com/5935362/elon-musk-pledges-to-support-nik... (note Inman's "pledge drive" letter is classic Inman and amusing to read as usual)
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Elon Musk Tells The Oatmeal He’s “Happy To Help” Fund Tesla Museum
11–20 of 41 posts
Re: Elon Musk Tells The Oatmeal He’s “Happy To Help” Fund Tesla Museum
#12This is bothersome as I have no beef with Tesla but his history of eugenics promotion gets swept under the carpet. His business failures, of course, have nothing to do with poorly thought out concepts and questionable return on investment, but by dirty tricks by Edison. Its also worth pointing out most, if not all of Tesla's patents, are based on previous works and are not original works. Apparantly, Tesla fandom is…
I admired Tesla's research. Now I've heard his words on eugenics, my admiration only grows. Eugenics is not about killing people. It's about ensuring children are born into the best possible environment for them to succeed.
Left-wing metropolitan elites always seem to crush any debates around eugenics, but whilst we're not allowed to talk about it, it's happening here in 2014. Project Prevention are doing great work in sterilizing drug addicts (voluntary sterilization in exchange for cash) to prevent children being born into misery.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Prevention
We need to stop reeling off Godwin's law straw-man arguments against Eugenics and consider why a number of national heroes (including Winston Churchill, Walt Disney, Theodore Roosevelt, George Bernard Shaw, John Maynard Keynes, John Harvey Kellogg) were proponents.
Re: Elon Musk Tells The Oatmeal He’s “Happy To Help” Fund Tesla Museum
#13This is bothersome as I have no beef with Tesla but his history of eugenics promotion gets swept under the carpet. His business failures, of course, have nothing to do with poorly thought out concepts and questionable return on investment, but by dirty tricks by Edison. Its also worth pointing out most, if not all of Tesla's patents, are based on previous works and are not original works. Apparantly, Tesla fandom is…
While eugenics is indefensible, it was an extremely popular theory at the time with support from a large portion of the scientific community.
I'm not saying we should whitewash history and avoid talking about this detail of his life at all costs, but it is not a huge black dot on his record either that is relevant to the narrative of his life. Plenty of worthwhile individuals in history were slave owners. Homophobia only became socially unacceptable in the last decade. You can't always apply modern standards of morality to historical figures.
Re: Elon Musk Tells The Oatmeal He’s “Happy To Help” Fund Tesla Museum
#14This is bothersome as I have no beef with Tesla but his history of eugenics promotion gets swept under the carpet. His business failures, of course, have nothing to do with poorly thought out concepts and questionable return on investment, but by dirty tricks by Edison. Its also worth pointing out most, if not all of Tesla's patents, are based on previous works and are not original works. Apparantly, Tesla fandom is…
It's easy to absolutely hate Edison without being obsessed with Tesla.
As for his beliefs on eugenics expressed in that quote, they were very popular at the time and not even particularly illiberal by contemporary standards - being more associated with a sort of scientific socialism like the Fabians - unlike the beliefs of Ford, or Shockley, for example, which were far to the right of their peers.
Re: Elon Musk Tells The Oatmeal He’s “Happy To Help” Fund Tesla Museum
#15This is bothersome as I have no beef with Tesla but his history of eugenics promotion gets swept under the carpet. His business failures, of course, have nothing to do with poorly thought out concepts and questionable return on investment, but by dirty tricks by Edison. Its also worth pointing out most, if not all of Tesla's patents, are based on previous works and are not original works. Apparantly, Tesla fandom is…
I admired Tesla's research. Now I've heard his words on eugenics, my admiration only grows. Eugenics is not about killing people. It's about ensuring children are born into the best possible environment for them to succeed. Left-wing metropolitan elites always seem to crush any debates around eugenics, but whilst we're not allowed to talk about it, it's happening here in 2014. Project Prevention are doing great work…
The "real" problem of Eugenics is that, much like Communism inevitably mutates in an ugly direction, no matter what Eugenics starts as, it virtually always turns into something really, really ugly where some group of people, no matter what pretty words they may use to draw a veil of obfuscation over their actions, are just killing off some group they don't like.
Re: Elon Musk Tells The Oatmeal He’s “Happy To Help” Fund Tesla Museum
#16This is bothersome as I have no beef with Tesla but his history of eugenics promotion gets swept under the carpet. His business failures, of course, have nothing to do with poorly thought out concepts and questionable return on investment, but by dirty tricks by Edison. Its also worth pointing out most, if not all of Tesla's patents, are based on previous works and are not original works. Apparantly, Tesla fandom is…
While eugenics is indefensible, it was an extremely popular theory at the time with support from a large portion of the scientific community. I'm not saying we should whitewash history and avoid talking about this detail of his life at all costs, but it is not a huge black dot on his record either that is relevant to the narrative of his life. Plenty of worthwhile individuals in history were slave owners. Homophobia…
> You can't always apply modern standards of morality to historical figures.
That's fine, but lets understand that this applies to Edison as well. Tesla fanatics judge him by modern business practices and regulations, but Tesla gets the hand-wringing reply of "but but at the time..." which seems unfair.
Lets also get something straight, its one thing to have a positive view of eugenics and another to be a fervent supporter. Tesla published that screed in, what we would call a sci-fi or futurist magazine, and signed his name to it in 1935, during the height of Jewish persecution in Germany. As an educated Serbian I'm sure he was fully aware of this.
Re: Elon Musk Tells The Oatmeal He’s “Happy To Help” Fund Tesla Museum
#17This is bothersome as I have no beef with Tesla but his history of eugenics promotion gets swept under the carpet. His business failures, of course, have nothing to do with poorly thought out concepts and questionable return on investment, but by dirty tricks by Edison. Its also worth pointing out most, if not all of Tesla's patents, are based on previous works and are not original works. Apparantly, Tesla fandom is…
I admired Tesla's research. Now I've heard his words on eugenics, my admiration only grows. Eugenics is not about killing people. It's about ensuring children are born into the best possible environment for them to succeed. Left-wing metropolitan elites always seem to crush any debates around eugenics, but whilst we're not allowed to talk about it, it's happening here in 2014. Project Prevention are doing great work…
Eugenics generally gets lumped into the activities of the Nazis leading up to and during WW2. Because of this, most people probably don't know that the United States and its citizenry were fairly fond of it and put it into practice regularly: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States
Re: Elon Musk Tells The Oatmeal He’s “Happy To Help” Fund Tesla Museum
#18Super admirable that Mr. Musk is willing to help given his extremely busy schedule. Shows that he understands the importance of the public being more knowledgeable about the origins of what our present-day technology relies on.
Re: Elon Musk Tells The Oatmeal He’s “Happy To Help” Fund Tesla Museum
#19This is bothersome as I have no beef with Tesla but his history of eugenics promotion gets swept under the carpet. His business failures, of course, have nothing to do with poorly thought out concepts and questionable return on investment, but by dirty tricks by Edison. Its also worth pointing out most, if not all of Tesla's patents, are based on previous works and are not original works. Apparantly, Tesla fandom is…
Do you know the movie Idiocracy? That is basically propaganda for that idea.
You have to see that in context, this was before the second world war and he wasn't aware that in the future you can manipulate/analyze genes.
Today he would probably just be an advocate for that kind of technology.
Definitely not an easy topic, but also not black and white.
Maybe there is more from him, but your source indicates an opinion like that.
Re: Elon Musk Tells The Oatmeal He’s “Happy To Help” Fund Tesla Museum
#20I've wondered how well being The Oatmeal has financially treated Mr. Inman. Even with the popularity, does he still barely pay the mortgage? Olympic-size pool in the backyard full of $100 bills? If he's driving around in a top-shelf Model S, I guess he's not starving. Regardless, very cool that Musk ponied up. Makes me want to go buy a Tesla even more now.
From his wikipedia page "In 2012, its annual revenue was around $500,000, 75% from merchandising and the rest from advertising"- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Oatmeal