Or maybe people want him to fail for the same reason they want someone like Martin Shkreli or Kanye West to fail: because he's bad for society.

I think there are better ways to make the world a better place than wanting someone you don't like to fail. Besides, there's often an ulterior motive - not just for wanting that person to fail, but also for telling yourself that they are "bad for society".

Where one cannot love, one should – pass by. - Nietzsche

Really? It's hard to imagine him doing anything at this point that would offset the good he's done for society.

He upset and tore down the military-industrial complex launch monopoly saving the collective US tax payers billions through starting SpaceX (and could soon revolutionize access to space for the average person within the next decade). (Also note that without SpaceX, we'd still be paying money to Russia to send US astronauts to space, which wouldn't be a good look during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.)

He created an electrical vehicle revolution that's taking the world by storm, changing industries and pushing us much faster toward ending global warming than would have happened without. It's hard to imagine a few misguided political opinions could offset all of that. Let's be realistic here.

(Yes you can't attribute all that to him solely, as Elon himself says commonly, the praise should be given to the workers at SpaceX and Tesla, not him. But at the same time, without him, they would have never happened.)

This feels like some kind of the opposite of the sunk costs fallacy. Like a “past gains” fallacy.

None of those good things magically disappear if Elon fails in his Twitter purchase or changes. Those past gains have already happened.

If your argument was forward looking it would make more sense to me (if he fails with this Twitter program, he won’t be able to deliver Starship which would be bad because XYZ; or it would impact his ability to continue Tesla forward because ABC). I don’t know that I agree with the forward looking argument, but it seems more sound to me than the backward looking argument.

You said it well.

I actually suspect that many people hate him not in spite of what he has done, but because of it:

They think if they acknowledge what people like Elon Musk have done in their lives, they'd have to loathe themselves, their own choices, values and weaknesses.

Which is, of course, quite silly. Each human being has their own path in life. Comparing yourself to anyone, no matter who, is going to cause misery. But with people like Elon, the threat to the ego is particularly great.

So, hate and schadenfreude are the easy way out. "He, too, makes mistakes. So I'm not that worthless after all".

(The irony being that many of these people say that Elon Musk is self-centered. Though the question he is asking is "What do I believe is greatest good to humanity as a species", whereas they, by their very act of comparing themselves to him, are asking "How can I be greater than and more right than Elon Musk".)

I actually suspect that people who idolize Elon Musk are subscribers to the Just World Fallacy, believing that he represents the kind of person that they -- though in a temporarily diminished and embarrassing state -- can become. They can't wait for the time when they too have the consequence-free power to sneer at disabled people, spread lies about victims of violent attacks, and call people who mildly disagree with them "pedo guy".

(By the way, I don't actually agree with any of what I wrote above. It's just another example of a bad-faith argument like the one I'm responding to.)

> sneer at disabled people, spread lies about victims of violent attacks, and call people who mildly disagree with them "pedo guy".

Note: None of these things, as described, are things he actually did.

The disabled person was not sneered at. There was a misunderstanding of employment status and it was resolved and apologized for.

No lies were spread about a victim. He replied to a tweet that was spreading such lies, not spreading it himself.

The person who got called "pedo guy" was not in "mild disagreement". He was not called as such for disagreeing with Elon. (This is the most common mistake about this event that people repeat. Elon encourages disagreement against himself.) He was called as such for pushing similarly rude insults against Elon (calling for the sodomizing of Elon) and Elon responded in turn.

I could never accomplish what he has. He is so many standard deviations away from a regular person that it’s ridiculous to to feel anything but admiration. He’s human and imperfect like everyone and that’s ok. He was born with certain abilities and drive and he has made the world a better place by using those gifts. He is not beyond criticism either and some of his fans are too eager to dismiss them.

Precisely put. I wouldn't attempt to ignore his work on SpaceX, Tesla, etc since those companies have kickstarted their own revolution(s); electric vehicles and Starlink, even though I think Tesla FSD is a dangerous scam. Without it, the cars are fine.

Before, almost all the techies here were dreaming and begging to work for Elon Musk. Then the blue bird happened, got bought out and gave them 'emotional distress' and Elon immediately became public enemy number 1.

> So, hate and schadenfreude are the easy way out. "He, too, makes mistakes. So I'm not that worthless after all".

Hence that, the same techies who loved him are now eternally desperate for Twitter to be Elon's biggest failure as much as possible, giving 24/7 over-coverage about Twitter schadenfreude.

The manipulation of human psychology due to over-coverage and creating villains every month or year is just too easy to create a story out of that is guaranteed to attract eyeballs and clicks. It is an symptom of obsession.

Curious question I have. What makes you think FSD is a “dangerous scam”? It’s quite functional even if it doesn’t quite meet the advertising yet. Maybe dangerous yes, but hardly a scam.

I tend to agree. By tearing him down as much as they can, and making his minor issues stick out more than his major good sides they can offset his "worth" per-se. Additionally there's the narrative that all people with lots of money are automatically assumed to be evil, so if they're not evil they need to be torn down enough that they fit with the stereotype.

A good reason to want self-absorbed bullies to publicly fail rather than publicly succeed is to discourage others from adopting similar attitude and methods.

Verily, I have beheld greater self-absorbed bullies than the man who speaketh thus. [1]

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2WX_mgnAFA0

If Elon was self-absorbed he'd be buying private yachts or private islands or massive mansions. He wouldn't be constantly talking about existential risks to humanity and trying to come up with ways of fixing them. Is Bill Gates self-absorbed? Much of what Elon Musk does is in a similar vein as the Gates Foundation, though often through for-profit companies.

And also wouldn't deny that he had a threesome Amber Heard and Cara Delevingne. [1]

> I think people think these things are generally more salacious than they are.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/25/style/elon-musk-maureen-d...

I'm not sure what you're saying, but the source is actually him denying it.

> About the contention that he had a threesome with Ms. Heard and her friend Cara Delevingne, Mr. Musk said, laughing, “We did not have the threesome, you know. So I think people think these things are generally more salacious than they are.”

He's laughing at the reporter for even proposing the idea, followed by downplaying it in a way that makes it clear that this was the media being sensationalist for clicks again.

Are there people who think Bill Gates is not self-absorbed?

> If it makes you feel better that Elon Musk (or anyone else) failed at something, you may want to re-evaluate your life's loss function.

Unfortunately I haven't reached that level of enlightenment yet.

I root for Elon to fail in the same ways I root for Donald Trump to fail. He's destructive, self-serving, thinks he's above the law, and hasn't faced real consequences for his actions.

I'm rooting for him to fail because he constantly lies, about big and small things. An example: He claimed Substack is downloading Twitter user data to power their competitor. There's no evidence of this. He said this before backtracking because he knew he was looking bad.

I'm rooting for him to fail so folks, like the ones in this very comment chain, can come back to reality and see that he's a flawed human like the rest of us and stop the blind worship.

In this specific case, I'm rooting for him to fail because he's proven over and over he's unfit to lead Twitter and make it a better product.

Sure. If I had never heard of Elon, and suddenly saw his name everywhere, and bros who cheer and justify him and feel like they’re the chosen people… and Tesla this and Twitter that... I'd be turned off as well, call him a nuisance, and steer clear of anything that has to do with him. And yeah, maybe I’d even try to level the scales, so to speak, by publicly speaking against him simply because I couldn’t bear the hype.

Its not that. I want elon to fail, because he tried to ruin that cave divers life by claiming that he had a childbride in thailand. I want elon to fail, because he gives voice to Russian war criminals, because he is a union buster, because he fired most of the twitter employees and made the rest work long days.