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Elon Musk as educator
- Thread starter MoireBass
- Start date
I keep forgetting about those raised since Star Wars.
Elon seemed quite popular here at one time. What happened?
Elon seemed quite popular here at one time. What happened?
Probably just time, which caused envy to grow and fester.
Nope, Elon just opened his mouth and let everyone know who he is.
That, along with other questionable actions he's taken, folks take notice. Pretty simple.
998
His buying of Twitter and making it more tolerant of unpopular ideas is what happened.
Elon considers this to be an essential component of free speech and a net benefit to society. Others disagree, believing that his new policy endorses hate speech and is a detriment to society.
In today's ultra polarized sociopolitical world, where Twitter wields a tremendous amount of influence and power over nearly everything that happens, a change in how ideas and ideologies are communicated and exchanged in the public forum (and particularly, who gets to participate) necessarily causes a lot of controversy.
Free speech is a highly emotional topic and there are a lot of very passionate people and powerful institutions on different sides of the issue, all believing they hold the moral and ethical high ground.
A great many people oppose what Musk has done with Twitter (now X) and they consider it outrageous. Musk's supporters consider it to be a defense of the core principles of free speech in a time when they believe that free speech is under assault.
Musk himself has repeatedly made this claim during interviews and speeches. In fact it seems to be the main reason why he bought Twitter in the first place.
Elon Musk's business ventures have never been socially or politically contentious, but with his takeover of Twitter, he's dived right into the deep end of the pool and has started making some pretty big splashes.
The result is everybody lining up on one side or the other, where his supporters consider him a hero and his critics consider him a villain. Both sides claiming the moral high ground, whether supporting free speech or opposing hate speech.
If Musk starts a school that teaches students how to think in ways that reflect his ideology, then that's going to be equally controversial, with the same people who oppose what he did with Twitter opposing what he might do with his school.
Elon seemed quite popular here at one time. What happened?
His buying of Twitter and making it more tolerant of unpopular ideas is what happened.
Elon considers this to be an essential component of free speech and a net benefit to society. Others disagree, believing that his new policy endorses hate speech and is a detriment to society.
In today's ultra polarized sociopolitical world, where Twitter wields a tremendous amount of influence and power over nearly everything that happens, a change in how ideas and ideologies are communicated and exchanged in the public forum (and particularly, who gets to participate) necessarily causes a lot of controversy.
Free speech is a highly emotional topic and there are a lot of very passionate people and powerful institutions on different sides of the issue, all believing they hold the moral and ethical high ground.
A great many people oppose what Musk has done with Twitter (now X) and they consider it outrageous. Musk's supporters consider it to be a defense of the core principles of free speech in a time when they believe that free speech is under assault.
Musk himself has repeatedly made this claim during interviews and speeches. In fact it seems to be the main reason why he bought Twitter in the first place.
Elon Musk's business ventures have never been socially or politically contentious, but with his takeover of Twitter, he's dived right into the deep end of the pool and has started making some pretty big splashes.
The result is everybody lining up on one side or the other, where his supporters consider him a hero and his critics consider him a villain. Both sides claiming the moral high ground, whether supporting free speech or opposing hate speech.
If Musk starts a school that teaches students how to think in ways that reflect his ideology, then that's going to be equally controversial, with the same people who oppose what he did with Twitter opposing what he might do with his school.
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FRoss6788 just said it short and very well:Elon seemed quite popular here at one time. What happened?
...Elon just opened his mouth and let everyone know who he is. That, along with other questionable actions he's taken, folks take notice. Pretty simple.
It's happened in all of our lives. You meet someone you like or respect, then after getting to know them better, you lose that respect and don't like 'em anymore. Pretty simple.
At first, I was enamored and dazzled, too, with the things he offered as he became more publicly known. No doubt, the space and earth-side tech that Elon has initiated is advanced, forward thinking, and useful.
But as he spoke more over time, he revealed his core being character, beliefs, worldview. Which turned out to be exclusionary, hateful, petty, self-centered, delusional, and threatening to some.
"Judge a man by his actions, not his words." Elon's words were loud enough, but his actions shouted at a much higher volume.
For an action example, take Twitter. Elon has tweaked Twitter to reflect his nature, his core character, opinions, and things he values. His character is showing loud and clear in the message Twitter is now sending.
The advertisers understand the message he's sending and want nothing to do with it. Here's a list I found of companies and brands that have left. Canadian companies are leaving, too. To be fair, some advertisers on the list were considering leaving before Musk bought Twitter. List from Nov this year.:
It doesn't take a genius to figure out a bad message is being sent when so many companies, in a short period of time, leave a large advertising platform. If I'm driving to the beach, but see everyone there getting in their cars and hauling-butt away from it, I gotta conclude something bad is happening there. Pretty simple.
And this thing with Musk turning off the strategic capabilities of a country during a war? WTH?? His messaging, a reflection of himself, on a big platform like Twitter is small potatoes to the messaging he can send thru a worldwide web of his satellites. Scary is an understatement.
All that said, he and his messaging need to stay away from our youth. Kids and young adults are still developing their character and core values at those ages. As parents and educators already, these are the best times to shape young minds. And some of history's bad actors have known this also.
My opinion.
So, what do you say about a man who gives a platform for those whose core agenda is intolerance?
He can't actually erase anyone, although he likes to think he can. People who think they have that kind of power tend to go a bit nuts and do crazy stuff when they realise it's just an illusion
which is why he, and those like him, cannot be ignored.
Exactly.
You get a malignant megalomaniac in charge of a platform like X, and able to influence outcomes of conflicts worldwide, he becomes a very dangerous person whom you ignore at your own peril.
Has no business being involved with anyone's children, (to circle back around...)
He runs a company that has as its core mission to provide a platform for the widest possible set of ideas to the masses.
Before he took it over, Twitter's management had its finger on the scale of who would be allowed to speak and who would not and those decisions were clearly made on an ideological basis. Ideas that they approved of were given priority while ideas they didn't like were eliminated entirely.
Of course Twitter is a private company and they can choose who gets to say what on their site, for whatever arbitrary reason. But Musk was motivated by the idea that all ideas should be allowed to be presented in the public arena for open discussion, even ideas that some may find offensive.
The concept of free speech is utterly meaningless unless it applies to speech that is unpopular.
Nobody objects to speech that isn't controversial and everybody accepts. Only speech that's generally unpopular needs protection. In fact, it's absolutely essential to the proper functioning of democracy that unpopular and offensive ideas are allowed to be aired in public. Suppressing those ideas always leads to degradation of all freedoms.
This isn't just my opinion.* Freedom of speech is literally the most talked about, discussed, and debated topic in the area of law and government. The dividing line where speech is protected and where it isn't protected has been firmly established in all modern secular democracies. Speech that is an incitement to violence or that advocates for action that would result in an immediate threat to public health and safety is not protected, plus libelous or slanderous speech and a few other very specific exceptions. All other speech is allowed, regardless of whom it offends, or how many people disagree with it.
This concept of "hate speech" is insidious because it essentially conflates speech that is merely offensive with speech that is inherently violent. The intention is to claim that certain ideas are so offensive that it causes immediate physical harm to people and therefore must be silenced.
The problem with that is that it's completely arbitrary. There is an objective standard that can be used to determine if what someone says is an incitement to violence, but that's not the case with speech that's offensive.
Once you start labeling unpopular speech as "hate speech" and banning it because you believe that the public has a right not to be offended, you've just created a precedent where all speech can be banned. And eventually it will be.
* See John Milton, Thomas Payne, John Locke, George Orwell, Frederick Douglass, Baruch Spinoza, John Stewart Mill, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Albert Einstein, Martin Luther King Jr, Noam Chomsky, Christopher Hitchens, and if you want to include some contemporary voices, Penn Jillette, Parker and Stone, Bill Maher, Joe Rogan, etc..
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I'm fairly certain no children will be forced to attend this school Mr. Musk plans to open. It's simple enough then, don't send your children to school there if one is uncomfortable with him.
-Mike
-Mike
I don't generally disagree with what you're saying. We could debate where the exchange of differing ideas, decidedly good for a civil society, becomes a cesspool of disinformation and hate, decidedly not good for a civil society. This probably isn't the appropriate venue for that.
We have seen where, if social media sites do not self-police, the government is willing to get involved. I would much rather they don't, for many reasons including valid constitutionality issues.
Lots and lots of places out there to share ones popular and unpopular opinions. What Twitter does is not unique.
-Mike
-Mike
In terms of sheer volume it is. When certain people post on X, the whole world is listening.
