• tias@discuss.tchncs.de
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    10 months ago

    These terms tend to get abused by jerks so much that they start to mean something else. I have seen too many people identifying as “woke” who use bullying as a method of getting their way, lack compassion for anyone who doesn’t share their views, shaming others, and are generally tribalistic.

    Basic human decency would be to see the person behind a political view and understand that they have fears and pains, to be curious about them and try to understand where they’re coming from. And then talk with them from a place of compassion. We’re all a product of our genes and experiences, and everybody is a hero in their own story.

    Elon too, while misguided, wants to do good. But look at how his dad has treated him growing up: called him an idiot his entire life, impregnated his step sister, and emotionally and physically abused him. If anybody wants to get Elon to see the error of his ways, more abusive language is certainly not going to help. He’s being pushed into a corner and in his mind he sees a world that is increasingly broken by vile people who don’t understand him or his vision for improving the world. I think he believes his own words when he talks about “neutral” politics, but his idea of neutral has been severely skewed. Elon has in fact done a lot of good for the world, but he needs people he trust to keep his feet on the ground. That can’t be achieved by chastising him, but by praising the things he does well and getting him to spend more time among “normal” people and good role models. In the meantime though, to protect the world from powerful broken men, we need regulation to keep them fenced off.

    • ram@bookwormstory.social
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      10 months ago

      Elon too, while misguided, wants to do good

      There’s no reason to believe this.

      But look at how his dad has treated him growing up

      An explanation as to why someone’s a bad person doesn’t make them less bad.

      Plus I’m pretty sure he’s neurodivergent.

      He’s autistic. Most autistic people aren’t narcissistic megalomaniacs, and if they are, they should be called out for it.

      If anybody wants to get him to see the error of his ways, more abusive language is certainly not going to help.

      A moot point, he will not accept anything but the yes men he grew up around and lived the last 52 years being applauded by.

      He’s being pushed into a corner and in his mind he sees a world that is increasingly broken by vile people who don’t understand him or his vision for improving the world.

      I do understand his vision, and the vision is broken and harmful.

      Elon has in fact done a lot of good for the world, but he needs people he trust to keep his feet on the ground.

      He has? Like his racially segregated factories? Or the monkeys he experiments on the brains of?

      That can’t be achieved by chastising him, but by praising the things he does well and getting him to spend more time among “normal” people and good role models

      This is ineffective with people in such a power position.

      In the meantime though, to protect the world from powerful broken men, we need regulation to keep them fenced off.

      Agreed.

      Ultimately, Elon Musk is a genuinely harmful and bad person, who is both uncritically malicious to those who dare criticize him, and is incredibly foolish at every endeavour he involves himself in. “His” successes come as a result of people he hired walling him off in his companies so that he continues to invest in technologies while being blind to any important part of production he might find interesting enough to meddle in.

      Your take on him is one I can empathize with, and I even held myself for a while, but at the end of the day, it’s a benefit of the doubt he expressly does not deserve.

      • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
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        10 months ago

        Yeah I want to believe everyone including him is actively a moral actor trying to make the best world they can, but I know better. His motivations aren’t subtle. He desperately wants to be admired and seen as cool and smart. That’s fine when handled responsibly, but he isn’t. He left his wife once he became rich. He went on a crusade against trans people when his daughter came out as trans and said she hates billionaires. He’s become 4chan because when he says shitty right wing bullshit they praise him. He’s probably still seeing himself as a bullied nerd getting picked on by people cooler than him, or maybe he sees it as he’s getting his nerds revenge. But either way, it’s clear he’s more concerned with being the underdog hero of his favorite type of story than building a world worth living in.

    • Necronomicommunist@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      10 months ago

      Maybe this is somehow enlightening to someone who has never considered someone they (morally, religiously, ethically, politically) oppose human, but I am aware of all this and recognise that Elon Musk is still a piece of shit whose bigotry has made him hated in public and his private life. Over and over he makes the choice to be a dog turd, and that’s not somehow the fault of wokies, even when they’re misguided. It’s like when racists say “well they kept calling me a racist for no good reason, so now I actually am”. He’s not a 4 year old that just needs to be gentle parented. He’s a full-grown adult that needs to stop perpetually throwing temper tantrums when someone disagrees with him.

      • tias@discuss.tchncs.de
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        10 months ago

        But he’s not going to do that on his own. Stop thinking in terms of whose fault it is and instead think about what is effective. Yes, the racist is a bigot but he’s also right: the treatment he was subjected to did result in him becoming more racist. So if you truly want fewer racists in the world, look for another strategy. That is the adult thing to do.

        Edit: I should add that I reject the idea of anyone making a choice. Neuroscience is pretty confident that choice is not an actual thing; it’s all cause and effect. The behavior we are seeing from Elon Musk now is caused by his genes, how he was brought up, and how people are treating him. We can control one of these three things to get the effect we want.

        • ram@bookwormstory.social
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          10 months ago

          I should add that I reject the idea of anyone making a choice. Neuroscience is pretty confident that choice is not an actual thing; it’s all cause and effect. The behavior we are seeing from Elon Musk now is caused by his genes, how he was brought up, and how people are treating him. We can control one of these three things to get the effect we want.

          Is this how you excuse any wrongdoing of any person who’s ever existed? Holding people accountable, both in private and public, is a part of that influence upon who he is. At this point, I’m comfortable saying Elon Musk is a lost cause, and the best thing we can do is make him less capable of harming society yet further.

          Not everyone gets a redemption arc, that’s only a thing in novels. Elon Musk has no desire to understand normal people, and that’s something is simply impossible to contend with.

          • tias@discuss.tchncs.de
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            10 months ago

            Tigers are dangerous animals that sometimes eat people. They have brains, they make “choices” in the sense that there is a decision process going on in their brains. When a tiger eats a human we can call that tiger “evil”, maybe try to get back at it by torturing it to teach it a lesson.

            If I tell you that this is just in the nature of tigers, and torturing the tiger does little to prevent tigers from eating humans in the future, then that’s not an “excuse”. The word is kind of meaningless in this context. If we don’t want to get eaten by tigers we can stay away from tigers, or keep them locked up, or possibly kill all of them (not as “revenge” but as a preventative measure). Moralizing their behavior does little to prevent future deaths. We used to have trials for animals, but we grew out of that.

            So I disagree with your categorization of this as an excuse. I’m not excusing anything, and I’m not promoting a redemption - that too is a concept steeped in the idea that people have choices. But I agree with you that holding people accountable can be an effective way to influence people. We have a justice system both to rehabilitate people from repeating crimes, and to discourage people from committing crimes in the first place. The key is to think rationally about how to influence people in an effective way. I’d argue that the prison system in the US, for example, has not been effective in preventing crime because it forgets both about the rehabilitation part and the socioeconomic factors that make people commit crimes. And much of the reason for this is the religious conditioning that causes people to get caught up moralizing and seeking vengeance instead of keeping their eyes on the end goal.

            Elon may very well be a lost cause as you say. Even so, I believe chastising him on social media is making things worse, not better, so the people who do that are not acting rationally. The adult approach is to think about an effective way to prevent him from doing more damage while not giving the wrong signals to the rest of society. He has a tail of followers so care needs to be taken that he doesn’t become a martyr for them.

          • tias@discuss.tchncs.de
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            10 months ago

            No, choice is universally an illusion. The things I am saying here are also the effect of past events, as is the fact that you responded. The point I’m trying to get across is that moralizing and saying things like “he’s an adult, he should change his behavior on his own” is wishful thinking and neglects a rational approach to what will actually achieve what you want.

            • Necronomicommunist@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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              10 months ago

              It’s incredibly rational to dunk on an idiot with a superiority complex.

              Why do you think getting a point across matters? When getting a point across to Elon Musk it isn’t worth it since he’s got no free will.

              • tias@discuss.tchncs.de
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                10 months ago

                Free will has nothing to do with the ability to be influenced, in fact you might even say the opposite is closer to reality. The more predictable something is, the easier it is to influence it. I’m sure you agree that your computer has no free will, and you can easily get it to do different things just by clicking the mouse.

                So what’s the rationale for dunking on an idiot? Do you believe that people shitting on Musk on Twitter will actually cause him to be more woke and compassionate toward others?

        • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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          10 months ago

          I should add that I reject the idea of anyone making a choice. Neuroscience is pretty confident that choice is not an actual thing; it’s all cause and effect. The behavior we are seeing from Elon Musk now is caused by his genes, how he was brought up, and how people are treating him. We can control one of these three things to get the effect we want.

          We can’t control any of these three things because I am unable to make a choice in how I treat him. My behavior in how I treat Elon Musk is caused by my genes, how I was brought up, and how people are treating me.

          So with that in mind: Elon Musk is an idiot causing actual harm to the world and people need to stop enabling this piece of shit. The world would be a better place if he lost all his money and was a poor man with no platform to spread his hateful ideas.