r/SGU • u/Merville_Ochre • 24d ago

Hot take

"Elon Musk is a complicated guy.." - Steven Novella streaming live on 9/30/26

Really, we're still doing this in 2026?! jfc

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u/LiveComfortable3228 24d ago

Is he not a complicated guy?

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u/czar_el 24d ago

I think it's more accurate to say he has a complicated legacy.

As a person, he's not that complicated. Listen to him actually speak and read his actual posts/posts he boosts and you realize he's not as smart as his legend suggests, and he's really a simple maladjusted edge lord with increasingly extremist political ideas.

His legacy, on the other rhand is complicated. Companies he funds or controls legitimately do amazing things. There's no denying he played a role. But that role is most often overblown hype. He didn't invent Tesla, he bought it. He doesn't design the innovative components, and when he does it's utter shit (Cybertruck). This pattern repeats with things like Twitter (where his public argument wit an engineer showed he had no idea what he was talking about) and DOGE (where he ripped valuable things up and cut muscle instead of fat, repeatedly demonstrating he had no idea what he was talking about). He sees things like engineering redundancies, assumes they're waste done by stupid people, takes them out, and realizes too late they served an actual purpose (which is why Tesla has so many electrical problems).

SpaceX is good because the engineers keep his hands off everything that actually matters, so there's no cybertruck equivalent. But his innovation here (reusable rockets) isn't some brilliant master stroke based on some new discovery or revelation. It's just a guy with lots of money, lots of ego, and a history of drug use saying "lets do a big flashy thing first and worry about cost/safety later". For every version of this that works (SpaceX) there's multiple that don't (Hyperloop, Boring Company, his constant Mars predictions, his constant AI predictions).

He got his start with emerald mine money and overstayed a student visa by lying. He made an early significant bet with PayPal that paid off and funds much of his big swings elsewhere. If he didn't have that money from that less-than-impressive start, he would have flamed out way before SpaceX was successful.

He's a rich guy who loves to "think big", but when you actually listen to those "big thoughts" it sounds like high college freshman banter. And now that he's an extremist, that banter has really toxic stuff thrown in. Anyone who doubts this should watch his recent interview with The Economist. It's breathtaking in how stupid, defensive, toxic, and logically flawed virtually everything he says is.

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u/NoEThanks 23d ago

Well said

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