Both, in person with very good friends that I respect and others online have responded this cliche argument. If you peel the layers of your argument, embedded within it is basically political disagreement. Which is perfectly fine, but I wish people would cut the chase to it.

To distill it further: A bottom-up argument would be that "Because Elon has done X, Y and Z; I dispise him". What's going on here is "I disagree with Elon's fundamental values, but let me pick X, Y and Z to make my case".

Without weighing in on the broader issue, the two options you present are a distinction without a difference. If someone's actions reflect values that are reprehensible to you, you dislike/disagree with that person. If you disagree with someone's values, you arrive at that disagreement by noticing actions they take which represent those values.

Cherry-picking examples that don't accurately reflect someone's values is a common problem, but that doesn't seem like what you're describing.

"Values" aren't some abstract thing; they're only visible through actions. Saying things is an action like any other (an unusually significant and/or representative one if you are a public figure).

Good response.

Rephrasing my statement: What's going on here is "I disagree with Elon's fundamental values, but let me pick X, Y and Z to make my case and ignore his accomplishments, almost impossible achievements and world of good he has done for the planet, humanity more broadly."

So, it doesn't hold water IMO. Future generations will look at HN discussions (if they're perverse) and exclaim "They really argued about a rude pedo tweet vs. making our species multi-planetary. Boy,..oh boy."

That's a very bad distillation of my argument, firstly because personally I don't despise Elon (but do attempt to interpret properly articulated criticisms from those that do in good faith, and think a lot of them have a point), secondly because there is no layer of an argument that Elon's politics are not particularly prominent or unusual that has disagreement with non-prominent or usual politics embedded within it, and thirdly because there are a vast number of prominent people who are similarly "not your traditional progressive leader" (who in business is, frankly?) who don't get so much criticism for doing x, y and z on account of not doing x, y and z.