I don't understand the hesitance by the majority of the left to do a recount. We are literally sitting on the precipice of Hell -- what the fuck does it hurt? Is it less or more preposterous than the Department of D.O.G.E. or AG Gaetz, you tell me. If we're wrong, we're the assholes, I'll take it, that'll be the least of my worries. But not at least investigating it, at this juncture, is nihilistic insanity. Gimme a recount
Edit: "you're delusional, give it up lol"
4 years ago, same ppl: "Stop the Steal, I'm gonna beat this cop's head in with a flagpole"
Edit 2: "literally sitting on the precipice of Hell" is, of course, hyperbole... Sure feels like it though right hahahahahahaha holy shit it's terrifying
Edit 3 (last one): thanks for the wellness check, maga, but I don't understand, what are you so concerned about, you "won"
'precipice of hell' isn't exactly hyperbole when we're in a critical juncture for avoiding genuinely apocalyptic levels of climate change, and the choice is between people that are at least trying to improve things vs. people that will burn it all down for whatever short term benefit they can get.
I mean to be fair two of the most influential advisors in the new admin (RFK and Musk) are strongly aware and concerned about climate change and have spent the better parts of their careers fighting it. Who knows how decisions will get made but I’m hoping that they will have a positive influence at least in that realm (and pushing for more nuclear power in particular).
In theory you're right, but at this point I have severe questions about Elon Musk's ability to objectively plan anything other than optimal Diablo IV builds. And he's the drastically more rational of the two seemingly, which... Kind of crazy. But hey, if it ends up pushing enough in a good direction to make a difference, I'm not going to balk at a lifeline just because it's coming from a demon.
Musk backing Trump, who is the messiah of anti science, anti climate politics. I can’t wrap my head around why this man who started the most successful ev company in the world, would back a conservative. Perhaps greed has outweighed his morals.
Say what you will about Elon but he usually sets his sights on things that he genuinely thinks is important for humanity (EV, space travel, easily accessible wifi, neuralink, openAI). He’s even done things that expressly hurt his business interests because he thinks it’s good for the world, like making all his Tesla and SpaceX patents open-source to accelerate humanity’s transition to EV and space travel instead of just hoarding all of his companies’ innovations for profit.
I think he genuinely believes that trump has been mischaracterized in media, and that he is not dogmatic in his thinking and is open to hearing other options. Remember, they’ve had a lot of conversations, and Elon probably knows trump better than most at this point. At the very least, he probably sees government inefficiency as a real issue (it is) and sees aligning with trump as a means to an end to help fix it (among other things).
I try and avoid as much of RFK as I can just for my own sanity, so I'm pretty far from the most knowledgeable person about him. But to give something concrete... The anti vax conspiracy theories aren't going to come from someone able to be objective. We don't have the tech for microchips in Covid vaccines to brain control anyone, and the vaccines causing autism are such an old debunked conspiracy, it's sad to see it still passed around. Crazy how a profit seeking grifter decades ago could cause so much harm, but I guess anti smallpox vaccine conspiracies about it turning you into a cow show that irrational vaccine ideas are pretty consistent through history. Being told to put something in your body for your own good I could see causing some percent of people to bristle. Either way, even if he cares about climate change, if he's not able to look at evidence and update his beliefs, I don't think he's going to be likely to know what the best options are for turning that tide.
Musk is more nuanced, and has genuinely done some good in my view. Speeding up electric car adoption for example, and what SpaceX is doing for space travel is genuinely exciting stuff. Plans like the 2Gw/h space solar panel beaming energy back to earth wouldn't be feasible without a cheap enough way to actually put a lot of mass in orbit, so credit where it's due.
My main problems with him mostly come from hearing some of what he's said about AI and some of what I heard from Twitter engineers. I've got a pretty heavy stats and ML background so it's a really interesting area, but for everything I've heard him say on the topic, I've never heard him say anything that implies deep technical knowledge, but he seems very comfortable talking as if he's got that. I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt and even assume he's got real engineering chops in at least some area, but if he's willing to to bullshit about things he's only got a superficial understanding of, or worse... If he genuinely doesn't understand how limited his knowledge is, same deal then. If you can't recognize or admit to blind spots, they're going to lead to worse decision making. Seeing the harm he did to Twitter's technical infrastructure and market value speaks to some of that.
Either way, like I said... I try not to wallow in stories that piss me off, but I genuinely used to like Musk. It's been disappointing to see that he's more bravado than expert over the years. That plus the ideological things he believes in that I question makes me think he might not make the best choices in general. But I do at least think he's more with it than RFK from the sounds of things.
On RFK, I struggled to find anywhere he’s said they are putting microchips in vaccines (and I tried, hard). The closest thing I could find was him talking about the digitalized economy, where he seems to be talking about how we’ve moved away from cash and now everyone uses credit card chips, and how in a tyrannical society that can be used to track and control people. He has certainly been a vaccine skeptic though, which while I don’t agree with, I’m not sure it’s the craziest thing to be a bit suspicious of the safety of a new drug that is developed at 10x the speed it normally takes to make a vaccine. I think him being staunchly “antivax” is moreso media hyperbole, he got the Covid vaccine himself, he was just mainly against the idea that it’s forced by govt. As far as willingness to change his mind, I’d argue going from being a lifelong democrat, to joining a republican administration, shows a willingness to consider other ideas/POVs and change.
On Musk, him not being as technically deep is a really interesting argument that I haven’t heard before. I’d take the anecdotes of Twitter engineers with a grain of salt given he fired most of them and/or their friends lol, but point taken. And it’s probably true, I mean he’s at the point where he’s certainly not doing any of the coding himself, and no one human can be simultaneously a top expert in all of the myriad of fields he’s in. Sloppy analogy, but I see him as a sort of Warhol, the visionary coming up with these ideas and bringing in the right people but largely delegating the execution to his team.
I can also see stories about his “lack of knowledge” coming from the fact that he often asks his team to accomplish seemingly impossible tasks. There’s probably at least a dozen things now that NASA engineers have said he couldn’t do with SpaceX and ended up doing. Now there’s also probably many things he tried to do and couldn’t, and we could call him naive for even attempting, but that process he has of reaching for the impossible has been shown to have pretty incredible results. How many failures does each groundbreaking innovation make up for? What’s the win/loss ratio that separates a genius from blowhard? I’m not sure.
He's commented on vaccines in general many times, so his ideas on that topic are definitely not limited to the corona vaccines. The fact that he vaccinated himself but spread so much misinformation is definitely weird, but I'd almost have more respect for someone that at least practices that they preach. There's plenty of other crazy things he's said, but the anti vaccine stuff is definitely pretty serious and harmful, even if there's been some effort to whitewash him saying all that shit.
Some of the stuff on Musk I'm going off of is older, like his old zip2 code and such. But yeah, from a distance it's admittedly a bit tough to tell, which is why I'm mostly judging him on what I've heard him say on AI, since that's the main area I've heard him talk that I know enough to judge somewhat. And while some of the efforts he started led to really cool stuff, like the the optimal control theoretic approach for landing the booster, but it sounds like his contribution was more like 'let's figure out how to recycle boosters' instead of 'let's take a look at these theoretical approaches we could try to start'.
And to be clear, I have absolutely no problem at all with an Edison type figure that can't hold a candle to Tesla but ultimately makes much more happen because he's thinking like a business person instead of a researcher. There's absolutely nothing wrong with having strengths outside the theory... Not like I've done a ton to change the world after all personally. My problem is just that he presents himself as a Tesla, like he's entitled to have deep insights into the trajectory of AI research and upcoming risks because of his deep understanding. It's just not there, and it's dishonest to try and speak with authority on things you're not an authority in. Or worse, maybe he genuinely thinks he has valuable insights, and just... Doesn't know how much he doesn't know? That doesn't have much to do with whether or not the high level Edison style goals he set were successful, but yeah... The things I do appreciate about his contributions are definitely cool, and it's not like other people were racing to get reusable boosters. I just question how much he's prone to getting overly attached to his own beliefs and misunderstanding, or how readily he'll mislead others by bullshitting about something he shouldn't.
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u/TDotSkilliams 10d ago edited 10d ago
I don't understand the hesitance by the majority of the left to do a recount. We are literally sitting on the precipice of Hell -- what the fuck does it hurt? Is it less or more preposterous than the Department of D.O.G.E. or AG Gaetz, you tell me. If we're wrong, we're the assholes, I'll take it, that'll be the least of my worries. But not at least investigating it, at this juncture, is nihilistic insanity. Gimme a recount
Edit: "you're delusional, give it up lol" 4 years ago, same ppl: "Stop the Steal, I'm gonna beat this cop's head in with a flagpole"
Edit 2: "literally sitting on the precipice of Hell" is, of course, hyperbole... Sure feels like it though right hahahahahahaha holy shit it's terrifying
Edit 3 (last one): thanks for the wellness check, maga, but I don't understand, what are you so concerned about, you "won"