Here's one: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33390278

As for gods-gift-to-humanity, there are very, very, very few people who have contributed to humanity like he has.

Your link brings us to a 3-day old comment which argues SolarCity failed (which, yeah, nobody disagrees there) and that Musk "failed upwards" and is not a "tech deity". This is not claiming Musk is overall a "fraud and failure."

It’s totally legitimate for you to think that Musk is the target of unfair criticism, particularly around the influence he’s had on his businesses’ obvious successes. But you don’t have to build a straw man to make this argument. Virtually nobody would describe Musk as a failure - but they will argue frequently that he’s an arrogant narcissist, or that his success is unjustified. There’s plenty of criticism like that out there—justified and not—and it’s weird to make stuff up to get all “lol u mad bro” about.

Private Joker: I think I was trying to suggest something about the duality of man, sir.

People aren't pissing on him when he's right, they are pissing on him when he's wildly, wildly wrong, because he can't stay in his lane. Pedo guy submarine cave rescue is a great example of that. Covid will go away by April 2020 was another. Full Self-driving Tesla robotaxi that makes you money while you sleep in 201? is a third...

However that argument alone doesn’t support the posts conclusion: “he's simply a highly privileged technocrat who has quite successfully failed upwards his entire career”

Imagine how suffocating life would be for him if he endeavored to live up to the expectations of his detractors.

He would never start a company without being certain of success.

He’d be super nice to the diver (who told Elon to stick a submarine up his ass).

He’d never speculate about anything or discuss his vision for the future, because imperfect foresight makes people mad!

…and the haters would still hate. Happily for Elon, he seems content to be himself and deal with the silly complaints.

Pulling a publicity stunt while people's lives were literally on a deadline was not helpful, and only served to distract the professionals involved in the rescue.

Throwing a tantrum and calling the diver a paedophile when they declined (on the basis that the submarine would not be able to fit into the caves and thus would be unfit for purpose, assuming it could even be built before the trapped group were killed by the monsoon) was a spectacularly awful move. And that's just one of the many fiascos he's been involved in.

Elon may be a successful businessman but he is also a disaster of a human being and has thoroughly earned any "haters" he may possess.

So was everyone who offered to help the trapped kids presumed to be a self-serving asshole for doing so, or only Elon?

> Throwing a tantrum and calling the diver a paedophile when they declined (on the basis that the submarine would not be able to fit into the caves and thus would be unfit for purpose, assuming it could even be built before the trapped group were killed by the monsoon) was a spectacularly awful move.

But the diver didn't just decline. He declined and told Elon to stick the submarine up his ass on national television. In that context, Elon's reply is childish, sure, but you'll have to explain what makes it "spectacularly awful" and/or a "fiasco".

> Elon may be a successful businessman but he is also a disaster of a human being

Help me to understand the standard by which I can judge whether someone is a "disaster of a human being". Is one bad tweet sufficient? Or one bad tweet and one bad prediction regarding future tech? How many judgmental internet posts would be required to hit the standard? I'm genuinely curious.

From the abrupt change in discourse about Elon in the last couple years, I assume most are judging him by his politicos he recently started expressing.

I'm sure the offers of help from experienced cave divers, folk who could help with logistical support, etc. were appreciated. Even the SpaceX engineers and supplies Elon sent were probably appreciated (I could not find anything about them actually being used, although I did not search extensively).

A techbro CEO throwing out half-baked whimsical bullshit ideas for social media attention, not so much. Not to mention personally injecting himself into the situation, touring the rescue site, and otherwise getting in the way of the rescue workers.

>In that context, Elon's reply is childish, sure, but you'll have to explain what makes it "spectacularly awful" and/or a "fiasco".

Falsely accusing someone of being a paedophile is not just childish, if taken seriously it can completely derail a person's life, get them fired from their job, turn them into a social pariah, and even result in them being assaulted or killed by vigilantes. Thankfully no one took Elon seriously.

Even if the diver was impolite when calling Elon out on the submarine thing, it was a completely disproportionate escalation.

>Help me to understand the standard by which I can judge whether someone is a "disaster of a human being".

Making such judgements can be complex. But attempting to socially destroy a person who is literally risking their life [1] to rescue children from certain death because they were mildly rude when rebuking them for being an attention-seeking twit is about as clear a signal as you can get.

[1] and that was not a hypothetical risk, two of the other divers involved died either directly during or later as a result of injuries sustained during the rescue.

Elon/SpaceX's offer to help _was_ in fact appreciated by the lead diver.

Disingenuous, bad-faith half-truths are the most you will get out of the anti-Musk crowd.

It is simply too fashionable; and any iota of defense will get you labeled a boot-licking puppet.

It is just raw, distillable jealousy, combined with the new social paradigm of "this man is uber-bad and the single point of all problems" that long-Trump-Derangement-Syndrome has left ingrained into the thoughtless, NPC-eqsue masses.

Elon Musk is no worse than any other billionaire, and by many objective counts, the best yet for humanity.

You will be forgotten, he won't - and that pisses most off at a mammalian level.

Sometimes I think that the fact that he looks so superhuman sort of proves that wealth is not a meritocracy. If it were, Musk would be an average billionaire at best.