Musk offers to buy Twitter

We're off topic with Mars stuff anyways -- Elon can't even operate Twitter or build cars without big panel gaps at the moment

He's not our savior

The emperor has no clothes.

This is the clown who duped local politicians into his hair brained "Boring company" (see.. build tunnels for cars) nonsense with the express purpose of derailing high speed and light rail projects around the country.

@Cmaier I know from your posts here and back on MR that you're a very smart person. Surely you see completely through Elon at this point.
My thoughts on Musk are pretty clear, I think. But even a stopped clock is right twice a day (or once in a 24-hr clock jurisdiction). We won’t populate the galaxy unless we take steps to do that. SpaceX has done amazing things - if it weren’t for them, the US would be begging russia for rocket engines right now. Obviously Musk had little to do with those accomplishments, but I believe the spacex mission makes sense, and I am not going to tell anyone they need to spend their money on other stuff.
 
My thoughts on Musk are pretty clear, I think. But even a stopped clock is right twice a day (or once in a 24-hr clock jurisdiction). We won’t populate the galaxy unless we take steps to do that. SpaceX has done amazing things - if it weren’t for them, the US would be begging russia for rocket engines right now. Obviously Musk had little to do with those accomplishments, but I believe the spacex mission makes sense, and I am not going to tell anyone they need to spend their money on other stuff.

I'm not against anything with SpaceX (or other space firms) -- by all means continue all that.

I'm just not at all worried about Mars or becoming a species that can live there full time (which would be awful and in no way a substitute for Earth), or anywhere beyond our solar system. Feasibility on any of that is so so so far beyond our lifetimes and any technology we've even dreamed of, that I just honestly don't bother thinking about it personally.

Happy to watch people attempt Mars stuff as long as it's not distracting or diverting resources away from *way* more important near term concerns.
 
Given what we've done to this planet and each other there is no good reason for us to further spread ourselves out across the universe. It's the ultimate elitist vanity project.

I don't normally applaud the bad guy but... agent Smith FTW

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I'm not against anything with SpaceX (or other space firms) -- by all means continue all that.

I'm just not at all worried about Mars or becoming a species that can live there full time (which would be awful and in no way a substitute for Earth), or anywhere beyond our solar system. Feasibility on any of that is so so so far beyond our lifetimes and any technology we've even dreamed of, that I just honestly don't bother thinking about it personally.

Happy to watch people attempt Mars stuff as long as it's not distracting or diverting resources away from *way* more important near term concerns.

Honestly, there’s enough disinformation related to climate change out there that Mars isn’t a very good distraction in comparison. The oil companies don’t need to point to SpaceX, they just need to make people believe climate change isn’t a real thing, and they’ve been far too good at it. Mars isn’t even a good option for those short term concerns because a colony would be dependent on Earth for quite a while, and so if Earth‘s ability to support us collapses, then the colony is going to be one of the first things cut off, and it will be gruesome.

As for the tech though, I think it’s closer than we think, but there’s still too many unknowns and so it’s going to be perpetually 10-20 years away until we fully solve them. There’s some space infrastructure projects that I think are much more valuable in the short term, and help deal with the unknowns. As for inspirational stuff, I want to see us analyze some exoplanet atmospheres and maybe find an Earth-ish planet in my lifetime. Getting a good idea what the Proxima Centauri system looks like, well enough to start mapping it, is another.

As for the whole “Sun being a problem in 5 billion years”, it’s guaranteed that the Sun will render Earth uninhabitable long before that. Still hundreds of millions of years, but still an order of magnitude sooner. Generally, I’m more concerned about probabilistic events such as asteroids that are hard to predict, but statistically likely to happen in our future. There’s other stuff that could be really bad (gamma ray bursts and supernovae that occur too close to the sun), but those are not feasible to defend against anytime soon, and you don’t exactly get advance notice.
 
He recently had public conversations with right-wing agitator Andy Ngo, which resulted in Elon banning some accounts that Andy claimed were of violent or pedophile groups. This is at the same time he is reinstating accounts associated with far worse violations. And those violations were not documented by a far-right provocateur, but by a presumably non-partisan group of professional content moderators, acting off a prescribed set of rules.

Sorry, but are there really worse things than pedophiles?
 
Mars is not a substitute for Earth unless someone is suggesting we can somehow completely remake the atmosphere and basically Star Trek style terraform it ... which is just so far beyond anything we can even sniff, it's almost laughable for me to mention it.

We aren't going to have a civilization living in pods

I'm all for being excited about space stuff (I'm a Star Trek kid through and through), but I honestly think shows like that maybe have really distorted where and what we should be focusing on and aspiring towards.

Our planet can be and should be a total utopia if we'd tweak our behaviors towards it and other species on it.

We can do that and still have million and millions of years to worry about what might be next and technology to tackle that.

Humans have only even been a thing for a tiny fraction of time.
We have civilization for 6,000 years and people are worried about 3,000,000,000-4,000,000,000 in the future?

It makes very little sense to even think about it.
Future humans will -- if we make sure they even get a chance to exist (fix Earth and our behavior on it)
 
In 5 billion years or so the Sun will explode.

No.

Five billion years from now, the sun will go into red giant phase, expanding outward possibly as far as Mars. However, given the mass of the sun, the natural distribution of densities in a gravity well, and the overall volume involved, the region of the sun that the Earth will be plowing through, the local solar medium, will be somewhere between two and three times as dense as the current local medium – it will be almost as though nothing has changed.

Except, of course, the amount of solar radiation the Earth receives from the sun will be very different in intensity and profile. More importantly, though, the second half of main sequence (the intervening 5 billion years) will see a gradual, steady increase in solar radiation. The Earth will get slowly "migrated" past the inner boundary of the "Goldilocks Zone", and LAWKI will almost certainly become untenable long before all the water boils away.

At best, we might be able to squeeze out another couple billion years on this here rock. A hundred million is much more realistic (and still insanely optimistic). We better get on these problems, not much time left.
 
Sorry, but are there really worse things than pedophiles?
No, so why do Republicans keep falsely accusing Democrats of running rings? It's ridiculously offensive and way out of line, disagree with the other side all we want, but we need to learn where to draw the line with such insidious attacks.
 
About Twitter and the concept of Free Speech. I agree with your boundaries, can't yell fire in a crowded room, etc. My main objection with this "Town Square" concept is that Twitter isn't a town square, and the people there are mostly anonymous. If you want to shout out some really offensive and objectionable thoughts in a "Town Square", you have to get the nerve up to stand on your soapbox and let your neighbors hear them. You cannot be some faceless, nameless handle on twitter.

So you if you want to scream those thoughts (that most likely should remain silent), then everyone should know who said them. Let your family, friends, neighbors, community, employer know who you really are, and potentially become a social pariah.
I didn't expect my thoughts on Elon Musk to be popular, but fellow poster and good chap @Yoused has encouraged me to share my contrarian opinions in the past, and I did so in my small way here. As I said, I don't have strong opinions on Mr. Musk, as a human being. I certainly don't worship him, as some apparently do, but I don't hate him, either. I'll save my ire for real dictators. (Which, after an extraordinarily unpleasant experience concerning that subject, I have banned myself from the politics forums.)

As I said, I'm not diagnosing Mr. Musk, just speculating on what may inform us on some his behavior. After I made my post, I found that Musk claims to have Asperger's, a now defunct term to describe those on the spectrum. Also, I never claimed that a mental health diagnosis can explain his publicly known persona, just that a mental health component could be involved, and not necessarily ASD. I listed many disorders, and wasn't aware of Mr. Musk's diagnosis before I made that post; I was speaking in generalities.

Regardless, I appreciate your responses and critiques.

Okay, well, since you asked, I shall do my best to reply, despite my strong inclination to remain silent. I would first ask my left-leaning friends here to keep in mind that I am very much outnumbered here, on this specific issue, and I am not trying to start a one-man war on my favorite forum. This is simply me stating my personal opinion, I know everyone else here will disagree, which I am perfectly fine with.

I shall start out with the bad about Mr. Musk. I think he spreads himself too thin, makes impulse decisions, and doesn't understand the wisdom of silence. He has his hands in too many pies, can't focus on any one thing, and his mercurial nature has lead to a poorly planned acquisition of Twitter, from a business perspective. I think he hurt his newly purchased company by not thinking through staffing decisions. He should have already had a game plan long before the acquisition was completed, and now he and his remaining employees are suffering from that lack of foresight.

On the good side, I see SpaceX. I consider this to be Mr. Musk's greatest achievement and what will define his legacy. While his social media shenanigans feel important in the moment, his other companies like Tesla, the Boring Company, and yes, Twitter, don't really matter, not in the long-term. If humanity wishes to ensure its ultimate survival, we must become a space faring species. That means Mars colonies, that means an outpost on Europa, that means landing on Titan, that means venturing to Proxima-Centauri.

None of these things will happen in my lifetime, but they will eventually happen, as long as we continue to invest in enterprises like SpaceX. I value his drive to push humanity outward, over any of the other endeavors of Mr. Musk, and would prefer that he spend all of his time working on his rocket ships. We need to think big, need people who are willing to push forward, and I think SpaceX is at the forefront of much of that, along with Blue Origin and such. I think private enterprises in concert with organizations such as NASA and the ESA, along with contractors like Northrup Grumman, are vital to the future of our species.

Regarding the ongoing Twitter saga, daily matters are always in the forefront of our minds, it's the immediacy of the news cycle. Right now we are still in a global pandemic, undergoing an energy crisis, sustained economic recession, a brutal war in Europe, many are facing risk of famine, and Elon Musk has purchased Twitter. One of these things is not like the others, so I'm going to prioritize what I consider to be the most important of those issues. I just can't get myself worked up over a social media platform. However, I can understand why other folks here do, because it's at the intersection of both technology and politics, which is of great interest and concern to most of the people who visit Talked About.

Now, in regards to Twitter itself...

Firstly, I shall state the obvious. In the United States, First Amendment protections only apply to prosecution from the government, except in rare cases. Being a U.S. citizen, I'm going to approach it from that stance. I realize that other countries have different laws concerning speech, but Twitter is a U.S. company. I know that private entities, such as social media, can police their own business, and who posts on their sites, as they please. I don't think the government should dictate what should be said on social media, whether that be the owners, or the posters. That also goes for advertisers and users, who can spend their dollars and time elsewhere, of course, if they are dissatisfied with the platform.

While I think Mr. Musk has been quite ham-fisted in the way he has handled the acquisition, I am far more inclined to agree with his "free speech absolutist" mentality, than the restrictions that had been in place. I very much believe that the more voices, the better. I don't think the public should be infantilized by censoring things that make us uncomfortable, we should all have the right to be offended, not be coddled by the whims of corporate policy.

Unless somebody is literally breaking the law, I think they should be able to say what they want on Twitter. You can't yell "fire" in a crowded theater. You can't make terrorist threats or threaten to assassinate a politician. You can be taken to court for slander or libel. Twitter has become the online "town square", in many respects, and I think it should be treated just as a physical town square.

I may find someone's words to be disagreeable, I may find them repugnant, they may make me angry, but I'm not going to stand in the way while they say them. Mr. Musk's thinking on the issue is similar to my own.

As I said, my thoughts on this issue are going to be extraordinary unpopular around these parts. I like all the folks here, please don't associate your anger with Mr. Musk with my personal opinion on the issue. I'm not Elon, I think he has handled the transition poorly, I simply agree with his general philosophy regarding free speech on Twitter.

"When you tear out a man's tongue, you are not proving him a liar, you're only telling the world that you fear what he might say."
- George R.R. Martin

Many others have already covered much of the salient points but I need to make something clear - a lot of the restrictrictions you seem to think apply to the 1st amendment ... don't.

The "yell fire in a crowded theater" is a common expression, but has in fact been superseded. I won't go through the whole history, but it is in fact protected speech and that's why as @Cmaier points out Covid misinformation is protected speech and Elon Musk is allowing it back. Ted Nugent screaming on stage with a machine gun that he's going to lift it up Hilary Clinton's c*** and pull the trigger is protected (as he did do and he was not prosecuted for). Hell making a video of yourself shooting a life like replica of a human being you don't like, especially a public figure, is protected (as politicians have done in campaign ads which they aired). Nazis posting "we should all burn the hook nosed jews" is protected speech. Saying "female-person-I-don't-like should be raped to death" is protected speech. In most of these cases it is both civilly and criminally protected as well and even if it could be found to constitute harassment if directed at most normal everyday people, they don't have the time, energy, resources to sue.

As @leman said, running a large social media site with such limited restrictions is impractical. Most people don't want any part of such a townhall and leave when it becomes inundated with such speech and advertisers don't want it either. Unsurprisingly most advertisers don't want "sponsored by me" next to "burn the Jews". It's simply not tenable to build stable non-extremist online communities based on those principles. And forcing people to join or stay in such communities is in fact abrogating their freedom association and speech. Heck at that point why not just get rid of the block/mute buttons while we're at it? We aren't standing in the way of people saying them. They can say them all they like. We're standing in the way of building communities with them. That's why as @Cmaier the Mastadon solution is different. You can join a server and its rules. Effectively it's like its own independent Discord or email server, but people can choose to federate or not. So if a server is overrun by Nazis with rules that allow that, no one else has to federate with them. The server can be blocked by the other communities that don't want to deal with that. Basically anything from hosting to security services to social media don't have to make it easy for such speech to be spread. That is not a requirement of the 1st amendment nor what it was meant for. It is meant to keep you safe no matter how odious or unpopular your speech is, it is not meant to force other people to even acknowledge your speech if they don't wish to.
 
Sorry, but are there really worse things than pedophiles?

As @Eric said the point is they're not actually pedophiles and whatever violations they did commit to cover for the ban (Edit: and that's if they did commit any infractions in the first place, in some cases it's not clear that any actually were) are far less egregious than the accounts that are being let back on committed.
 
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In 5 billion years or so the Sun will explode. Long before then we could get hit by a planet-killing gamma ray burst or rock. A disease that spreads like covid but is far more deadly could come along at any time.

There are plenty of reasons why it makes sense for humanity to spread out onto other planets, and Mars is the first step.
Sorry, what? Disaster from human-caused climate change is literally happening right now. You want to justify spending the resources on spaceflight instead because the sun will explode in 5 billion years? You're naming apocalyptic events with a chance of occurring 1 every 500 million years, why should we care about that right now with climate change threatening doom within the next hundred or so?

This is absolutely horrific logic. If we can't learn to maintain the planets we occupy, spreading out to other ones is pointless. It's the difference between being a civilization and a planetary disease.
 
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Sorry, what? Disaster from human-caused climate change is literally happening right now. You want to justify spending the resources on spaceflight instead because the sun will explode in 5 billion years?

This is absolutely horrific logic. If we can't learn to maintain the planets we occupy, spreading out to other ones is pointless. It's the difference between being a civilization and a planetary disease.
Solving one problem doesn’t mean you have to ignore other problems. We could get destroyed by a gamma ray burst tomorrow, for all we know.
 
Solving one problem doesn’t mean you have to ignore other problems. We could get destroyed by a gamma ray burst tomorrow, for all we know.
Hmm, no, we won't. I can say that because the chances of a civilization-ending gamma ray burst are comfortably close to zero in the next 24 hours. Climate change on the other hand is a near certainty. If Musk wants to save humanity, where are his efforts to fight climate change? Show me.
 
Hmm, no, we won't. I can say that because the chances of a civilization-ending gamma ray burst are comfortably close to zero in the next 24 hours. Climate change on the other hand is a near certainty. If Musk wants to save humanity, where are his efforts to fight climate change? Show me.

None of us actually know the chance of a rock or burst hitting us on any given day, but putting that aside, why is it Musk’s responsibility to solve your preferred problem? It’s his money, and I won’t begrudge him for using it to solve a real problem, even if I don’t agree that it’s the most pressing problem of the moment.

If nobody is allowed to spend any effort or money to solve the problem that earth will inevitably become uninhabitable until all of the more immediate problems are solved, then it will never be addressed. We will always have problems that seem more important, until it’s too late. That, by the way, is how we got to where we are on climate change. Even people who believed in the science had other, more pressing concerns. Why should we switch to electric cars when we have high unemployment and people can’t afford to eat?
 
If nobody is allowed to spend any effort or money to solve the problem that earth will inevitably become uninhabitable until all of the more immediate problems are solved, then it will never be addressed.

It’s the difference between putting out a house fire and worrying about when the roof needs to be replaced in 30 years.

The second concern won’t matter without dealing with the first immediately

It’s not a perfect comparison of course, as nothing really is…
Main point being.. no reason to worry about stuff so way way way off because it won’t matter if we don’t deal with pressing stuff now
 
It’s the difference between putting out a house fire and worrying about when the roof needs to be replaced in 30 years.
Ok. But if Musk is a roofer and not a fireman, let him worry about the roof and let others worry about the fire. It’s truly bizarre to me that anyone thinks they have a right to demand that Musk spend his money the way they want him to. There will always be fires. The roof will always need replacing. Let‘s solve both problems.
 
Ok. But if Musk is a roofer and not a fireman, let him worry about the roof and let others worry about the fire. It’s truly bizarre to me that anyone thinks they have a right to demand that Musk spend his money the way they want him to. There will always be fires. The roof will always need replacing. Let‘s solve both problems.

Ok. Fair enough.
Let’s not tell Elon what he has to do…I agree totally

But, the roofer should get down and help in the fire fight because we don’t need him at all if we don’t solve the fire
 
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Ok. But if Musk is a roofer and not a fireman, let him worry about the roof and let others worry about the fire. It’s truly bizarre to me that anyone thinks they have a right to demand that Musk spend his money the way they want him to. There will always be fires. The roof will always need replacing. Let‘s solve both problems.
How can you make this argument seriously? Didn't Musk throw his hat into trying to solve the Thai cave rescue? Solving traffic with tunnels? But somehow climate change is out of his wheelhouse? How dare humans have the gall to demand someone with vast resources devote them to saving the planet.

Enough already with the bad faith arguments. The science on climate change is crystal clear and the problem is immediate, and you know it. Humans on this planet will be toast long before a gamma ray or asteroid if we don't do something, right now. The risks are orders of magnitude apart, stop insulting us with these responses. Some humility and self-awareness would be appreciated so we know we're not just arguing with a robot.
 
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Ultimately I just believe we should expect more of a billionaire like Elon

We need his resources and attention on the most pressing problems not whatever fantasies get him excited on a whim or “seem cool”

Concerns about living in different solar systems in 900,000 years are not pressing issues
 
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