701–710 of 1001 posts
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Elon could both be smart and making huge mistakes. It happens all the time.
Elon is definitely not a smart human. Maybe 25 years ago he did a thing. Ok.
I'm not leaving Twitter. It seems more likely than not that Elon will reverse the ban on links to other social media sites. I just don't want to hang out there in the meantime. Plus given the way things are going, it seemed like a good time to learn about alternatives. I still think Elon is a smart guy. His work on cars and rockets speaks for itself. Nor do I think he's the villain a lot of people try to make him out…
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Fair enough. I don't think he will be able to salvage this and I've deleted my account to reduce the temptation to return. A reputation is not like a piece of software that you fix and then re-run as though it never broke in the first place. Elon has utterly wrecked his reputation over the last couple of months (and probably longer than that) and it is getting worse, not better. Edit: I guess Paul won't be going back…
Well said, good analogy. There’s the immediate issues of the policy. But there’s the bigger issue of the thought process that led to the policy. One of Elons central criticism of old Twitter management was unfair content moderation policy. And almost immediately he enacts a far worse content policy than anything old management did, in a brazen display of hypocrisy. Even if he reverses course on this one issue, he’s d…
The guy is happy to consume and repeat QAnon propaganda(E.g. Pelosi’s husband).
Is happy to lie(journalists who didn’t fix him got banned).
Takes emotional decisions to only reverse them hours later.
Lacks any logical thinking, keeps gaslighting and cannot keep a consistent line(he is a free speech absolutist who believes hate speech and call to insurrection is ok but not doxxing)
Has no morals and uses anything under his power to achieve his goals(banning external links to social media)
I'm not leaving Twitter. It seems more likely than not that Elon will reverse the ban on links to other social media sites. I just don't want to hang out there in the meantime. Plus given the way things are going, it seemed like a good time to learn about alternatives. I still think Elon is a smart guy. His work on cars and rockets speaks for itself. Nor do I think he's the villain a lot of people try to make him out…
In light of recent events, have you considered updating the essay?
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I'm sorry but saying "he is a smart guy" is a bit ridiculous at this point. A "smart guy" certainly may not know everything about running a social network, but he _would_ listen to the advice from those around them. Being smart also means understanding what you don't know and not surround yourself with sycophants.
> but he _would_ listen to the advice from those around them. At this point, I'm assuming he is surrounded by people too eager to please him. > Being smart also means understanding what you don't know and not surround yourself with sycophants. The inescapable conclusion is that Elon is not as smart as he thinks. Whether he can learn is open to debate and will become evident shortly.
He definitely is. Or at least people pretending to.
I think this is one of the biggest risks of being too successful, too rich: it becomes too easy to surround yourself with people who will only agree with everything you say, and you end up believing in yourself too much, any criticism is jealousy, any contradiction is sabotage, and obviously you must really be so smart you can do anything, because look at all the people telling you so.
(Unrelated, but I think that's also what hurt the Star Wars prequels; Lucas was the legend. He either didn't get or didn't accept the constructive criticism that made the originals great.)
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I read some advice that it's better to lock the account than delete it, especially if you had a decent number of followers. Reduces the likelihood of impersonation.
Good point, well, too late for that I guess. But at the rate Twitter is heading for the scene of the crash I don't think it will matter for much longer.
Paul is now suspended on Twitter: https://twitter.com/paulg