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Gifted and talented communities are all the persons who meet a criteria to join said community. In children this is often scoring beyond grade-level in tests.

If a picture is a thousand words, then surely video is several orders of magnitude more powerful for brainwashing, especially in short form.


What we often think of as Insider Threat in the west is just another Tuesday in Chinese business. I have many experiences of this in the video game industry. This industry sabotage and theft is a very real part of getting ahead, even amongst companies that are owned by the same parent company (ex: studios owned in part by Tencent).


And it doesn't stop at sabotage or theft ;)

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/xu-yao-death-sentence-poisoning...


that link doesn't really do it justice. this was a vendetta


Definitely not mutually exclusive but yes agreed.


for every gifted, motivated, positive, constructive person in the world, there are probably 100,000 that want to tear them down and eat the carcass.


10,000 people is as many people as some entire towns, I don't think society would hold together very long if it were true.

100,000 supposes that there are... hmm... about eighty thousand non-evil people in the world, and (odds are) exactly none of them are Marshallese and about 2 are Samoan, to give a sense of how silly this is.


I think you are assuming there are a unique 10,000 people for each gifted individual. I think it safe to say there is overlap and that those 10,000 people are each going after several gifted people.

You also appear to be assuming there are no mid range people who everyone ignores, that is going to be the majority of the population.


But those people don’t have to be evil all the time.

Society holds well if someone steals a candy from the shop.

Those people can become shitty and despicable for that one person they envy and can be great for their friends and family all the other time.


It doesn't . But usually that third of the population is busy going for each others throat and ignoring the "fools" while then taking the coins that mysteriously spawn near those as psychopath price mobey.


Oh, so for every 2 good people there's actually 1 bad person. That's a very different ratio.


I believe the opposite. The issue is that destroying requires much less effort than creating.


You can have both at the same time: Say, 15 who want to help them, and 5 who would want to hurt them. And then you can be right both of you. Although the angry ones would be harder to see (sychopants)


Even better imagine people don’t have to be mean/awful all the time. They can be shitty for a coworker and then be great for friends and family or be great for people at other job.

There are really evil people that might be shit all the time but society is rather good at spotting them.


Also, those who want to destroy are easier to herd than those who want to create, or even those who just want to maintain the status quo.


Only in low-trust societies. Modern, higher-trust society can only function because this isn't true.


There is probably a high percentage of tearing down, I doubt its so extreme.

I think maybe 1 in 100k is actually anything special, but odds are you aren't special, you just noticed that 20% of the population is as gifted/motivated/constructive as you are (statistically speaking, assuming a bell curve).

And of those, yes, some small percentage will still feel "special" and affronted that other people have the same ideas/goals/desires as them.

It's a rat race and it's not your fault.


The world does not work like that. Sure, for every person, there may be 100_000 that do not share their ideals. But even 10/100_000 would seem ridiculously high as a percentage of people who actively try to destroy and cannibalize the work of others to showcase their own. Another commenter said it here - it's easier to destroy than create. I guess by my vibe-based estimates, it's at least 1_000 times easier to destroy than create, in aggregate.


No there’s not. This is what narcissistic assholes tell themselves when someone calls them out for being a narcissistic asshole.


[flagged]


Yet oddly enough, the vitriol didn't turn up against him when he was creating awesome stuff, but when he was creating awesome stuff and behaving like a monstrous asshole. Curious!

(There are plenty of people bandwagonning on Musk hate, and definitely some for his political bent, but there are also plenty of totally valid and non-political reasons to have disdain for him)


I remember plenty of naysayers claiming that Musk was going to go broke with Tesla and SpaceX, driven more by vitriol than fiscal arguments. Astronomers (and only astronomers) also hate Starlink.

I'm going to agree with Walter that it's just human nature to want to drag down the successful. Envy is one of the seven deadly sins, after all.


Pride is also one of the deadly sins.


If anyone has a justification for being proud of his accomplishments, it's Musk.


That's why you see everyone losing their goddamn minds over Warren Buffet. They just can't stand to see success. Jensen Huang. Michael Dell. John Mars. Alain Wertheimer. Phil Knight. Dustin Moskovitz.

People literally just trawl the most-successful-people list and find folks to hate. Simple as.


Mark Cuban is an interesting in-between case. But yes, you have shown that wealth doesn’t do it; but wealth and an appetite for publicity (especially for wealth-related attributes) seems a solid predictor.


Part of that correlation is because one of the best ways to get publicity, as Musk has discovered, is to be a monstrous asshole.

Of course you can also get it for philanthropic acts, but Musk doesn't, again because he's an asshole.


[flagged]


I'm curious. In your opinion, what makes him a "monstrous asshole"?


1. Calling a rescue worker a pedophile because the rescue worker saved kids and made Elon look like a useless diva

2. Firing employees at a company he purchased (i.e. people who did literally nothing to him), in as vicious and demeaning way possible

3. Sexually harassing an employee on his airplane

4. Frontrunning a story about sexually harassing said employee by suggesting that it was some political issue, thus making his own sexual misconduct a red vs blue problem in an already deeply polarized society

5. Advancing falsehoods about election security in the US

6. Releasing a product to public roads called "Full Self Driving" which is, in fact, not fully self driving

7. Hiding data required for the public to evaluate the safety of this "Full Self Driving" which is already operating on public roads

8. Was such a hysterical crybaby about rebranding PayPal to X that the board had to fire him from the CEO role while he was on vacation

9. Requesting permission for Bladerunner imagery for his We, Robot event, having that request declined, then stealing said imagery anyway

10. Deliberately overplaying the viability of Hyperloop in order to kill high speed rail projects (https://time.com/6203815/elon-musk-flaws-billionaire-visions...)

Idk do I need to go on?


1. After he was insulted by the rescue person. Besides, have you ever insulted someone? I when I was young a common insult was to call someone "gay". It doesn't mean anyone thought they were gay, it was just an insult. The worker sued Musk over it, and lost, because it was just an insult, and didn't rise to defamation.

2. Firing people is not about them doing nothing to the owner. It is about getting rid of employees who were not core contributors in a company that was losing a lot of money fast. They were all well paid, there's no need to feel sorry for them. If they're competent, they'll have no trouble getting hired elsewhere. Besides, every person I personally knew who were fired thought they were treated unfairly. Even the ones who were embezzling, padding expense accounts, and showing up for work drunk (I'm not suggesting that the Twitter workers were that, just illustrating how everyone thinks they are unfairly treated).

3. He said / she said is not evidence. If it was, he would have been prosecuted. Wealthy people are usually counseled to avoid situations where they could be falsely accused. Did you know Tim Walz is also accused? No evidence there, either.

4. Maybe it was a political issue. A lot of people don't like his politics, and so may think it justified to go after him.

5. Nobody has proved that US elections are secure. In Washington State, the elections department as official policy does not verify that registered voters are citizens. A secure system would welcome audits, not prevent them.

6. Full self driving is a spectrum, not an obvious yes/no line. Human drivers have car accidents all the time. Everyone in my family has been involved in a car accident in one form or another. My grandmother was killed in one, I nearly was killed in another.

7. Don't know about that.

8. So the board fired him in as vicious and demeaning way possible?

9. Oh, the monster! Jeez. You're talking to the wrong guy, I give my IP away for free.

10. The Boring Company is profitable and now valued conservatively at $7 billion and optimistically at about $125 billion. TIME magazine hates him - I wouldn't take what they wrote seriously. Nor do I believe that Musk is responsible for the total failure of California's high speed rail.

On the other hand, the people who invested in his companies have done very well. Every Tesla owner I know loves their car. Starlink has been crucial in helping the Helena disaster victims. He's making science fiction real.


If you can't see the difference between a child on a playground calling someone gay and one of the most powerful people on the planet calling a random civilian a pedophile, you're in a cult.

Think on it!


They insulted him, he angrily insulted him back with "pedoboy". Childish? Sure. So what. Nobody believed he was really a "pedoboy". Musk did not mount a campaign against him.


Are you forgetting the part about hiring a private investigator to go dig up dirt on the man who risked his own life to save a bunch of trapped children? Not jealous of whatever weird reality you're living in that this is all even remotely similar to a child calling another child "gay" on the playground, but that's cults for ya!

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/ryanmac/elon-musk-unswo...


Forgetting? No, I never heard of it.

It seems from the article that he hired the investigator because of the "imminent lawsuit". So yeah, he went looking for dirt to defend himself against a guy who was suing him over a childish insult.

Both parties behaved poorly here. But stepping back a bit from it, the whole thing was a nothingburger.


Bummer all your comments got flagged. It was actually much better as a cautionary tale of motivated reasoning and cult beliefs.

For future readers, WalterBright here thinks that one of the world's richest (adult) men publicly calling a rescue worker a pedophile is pretty much the same as a child calling another one "gay" on the playground.

Here, he's explaining that a rescue worker calling Musk's useless PR stunt a PR stunt is "behaving badly" the same way as Musk calling a rescue worker a pedophile when that rescue worker risked his own life to actually succeed in rescuing a bunch of kids.

And yes, as far as I can tell, he's serious.


If there was a crisis that captivated worldwide attention, and you offered your time, millions of dollars, and your engineering team to help out, and the response was "useless PR stunt", would you be mad about that? (All they had to say was "no thanks, we'll handle it".)

What do you feel about Musk providing Starlink to the Helene victims?


Do you call people pedophiles when they hurt your feelings? If so, you're an asshole too. Do you do it to your 22.5 million followers? Then you're an even bigger asshole.

> What do you feel about Musk providing Starlink to the Helene victims?

To the extent that he did: great! People believe it was philanthropic to a far greater extent than it was. He didn't give away or even loan any Starlink terminals, he gave people essentially 2-3 free months of service after they purchased the ~$400 terminal. The free service is cool! Generosity is good and I'm thankful he gave away what he did.

And obviously it's great that Starlink exists at all to be able to help out in such a situation, even if victims and/or the federal government are footing the majority of the bill.

And FWIW, I think Musk's heart was in the right place trying to help those kids. I was very excited by his work while it was happening. But yeah, the pedoguy thing was a turning point and, unfortunately, quite indicative of an overall slide into a very, very weird mindset that afflicts him to this day. It's a real bummer, because he's obviously capable of incredible things.


https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/03/media/elon-musk-testifies/ind...

"He can stick his submarine where it hurts" said Unsworth first on CNN.

> 22.5 million followers

What's CNN's audience?

It's two grown men childishly insulting each other. A big "so what". It's hardly monstrous.


Sounds good dude! You’ve done a fine job illustrating my point. There are plenty of legitimate reasons to have disdain for him and the people who can’t see that are engaged in remarkable gymnastics.

Have a good week!


Order of insults:

"Stupid PR stunt" - Unsworth to reporters

"He can stick his submarine where it hurts" - Unsworth to scores of millions on CNN

"Pedo guy" - Musk replies on twitter to 20.5 million

Sorry, I don't find your case persuasive at all. The court didn't find Unsworth's defamation suit to have any merit, either.


Why do you feel the need to simp for this man? Is it a parasocial relationship? I imagine he wouldn't be making lists about your good points if the shoe was on the other foot


> Why do you feel the need to simp for this man?

Because the complaints about him do not rise to the level of "monstrous". They smack of someone disliking Musk for other reasons, and going looking for something, anything, to justify their opinion.

Musk has not destroyed anyone, gone on any vendettas against anyone, robbed people of billions of dollars, swindled anyone, funded any terrorist groups, framed anyone, or done anything deserving of "monstrous".

It offends my sense of justice and fairness.

> I imagine he wouldn't be making lists about your good points if the shoe was on the other foot

I can't imagine him making lists of reasons why he hates me, either.

BTW, you tried to insult me with "simp", which means "someone who gives excessive attention or affection to another person, typically in pursuit of a sexual relationship or affection". Is that "monstrous"?


but you are "someone who gives excessive attention or affection to another person, typically in pursuit of a sexual relationship or affection"

you're literally doing it right now. i'm just curious why?

edit: You said offends your sense of fairness and justice, but this can't be the most unjust thing you saw today so i'm just disregarding it. Can't be the real reason


Musk actively interfered with military operations, ostensibly to “prevent nuclear war”. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/musk-stopped-ukraine-atta...

Whether or not you like the guy, which you clearly do, whether or not we “go to nuclear war” was not his call to make. He’s not an elected official, it’s really bizarre that he’s trying to get involved in geopolitics.

Based on our past interactions, you tend to be pretty dishonest in how you respond to these things, so before you say “oh! So you’re in favor of nuclear war??????” and pretend that that’s a win, I will go on record and say “no, I do not want nuclear war”. It doesn’t change anything about what I said.


His company owned those satellites, and so was unintentionally involved whatever he did. Would he have been charged with treason (aiding and abetting the enemy) if he left it operation?

Would he be a horrible person if he didn't allow his starlink to be used to kill people?

Was there time to go through channels?

I hope to never be forced to make such a decision.

I don't think it's so simple.


OR, and hear me out on this, he defers the decision to elected officials and/or military personnel. You know, the people who we choose to make these decisions.

This is, of course, taking Musk at his word, which I am skeptical of his truthfulness on this, but even taking him at his word makes him look bad.


See my comment about there may not have been time to go through channels. It's not like you or I could phone the President or the Pentagon.

I also have a hard time seeing him as a "bad guy" for not letting the country we're fighting a proxy war with use his equipment.


Ok, so if there were time to go through appropriate channels, would you agree that it’s extremely inappropriate for Musk to be making these decisions on behalf of humanity?


> Nobody has proved that US elections are secure. In Washington State, the elections department as official policy does not verify that registered voters are citizens. A secure system would welcome audits, not prevent them.

Oh my, I really didn’t think that you of all people would start peddling election conspiracy crap.

The claim of “prove there was no election fraud” is trying to prove a negative, which is generally an impossible task. Every lawsuit by the Trump campaign to try and challenge election results was lost, indicating that the courts didn’t see sufficient evidence of voter fraud that Trump and Musk are alleging.

You know, years ago you purposefully pretended to misread some of my comments to make me seem like a nut and kept asserting that I believed in aliens visiting earth (which I don’t, and didn’t at the time either), and I thought that surely it was just a mistake in his end, and that Walter Bright is not lying.

Now I am not so sure, because frankly I really cannot believe that you don’t see how bizarre the claim of “no one has proved that the US elections are secure” actually is.


The claim of “prove there was no election fraud” is trying to prove a negative

I agree, you cannot prove a negative. You also cannot prove elections are secure. But you can make an effort to have the elections auditable.

> election conspiracy crap

"An official list of citizens to check citizenship status against does not exist. If the required information for voter registration is included – name; address; date of birth; a signature attesting to the truth of the information provided on the application; and an indication in the box confirming the individual is a U.S. citizen – the person must be added to the voter registration file. Modifying state law would require an act of the state legislature, and federal law, an act of Congress. Neither the Secretary of State nor the county auditor has lawmaking authority."

https://www.thurstoncountywa.gov/departments/auditor/electio...

> you purposefully pretended

I don't recall that, and apologize for having come off that way.


Patiently waiting for the list of successful countries that don't control access to their resources via borders.


Hackers can start to learn what kinetic response is then.


"far more concerning".

Israel, not a peer adversary to the US. China is. So no, it is not more concerning.


As long as we're comparing ways in which China and Israel differ, I wonder how many US state governments require all government employees and contractors to sign a loyalty oath to China? Less than the majority of states, you think? https://www.newsweek.com/pro-palestinian-protest-states-coll...


Speak for yourself. Israel is most certainly an adversary for everyone in the US who values democracy and free press.


I'm sure a solution exists that can take inspiration from the digital rights people, anti-cheat developers, cryptography, and other industries interested in provenance.

Of course, nothing will be fool-proof, but perhaps something strong enough that social media websites require the uploaded media to have this provenance attestation as well.


You may be interested in the Content Authenticity Initiative:

https://contentauthenticity.org/

They’re the folks behind things like Content Credentials, and stuff like building digital signatures into the physical cameras taking the pictures.


This is really awesome, thank you for sharing!


I wouldn't be opposed to similar outcomes as the Chinese baby milk scandal in the end.


From Wikipedia:

> A number of trials were conducted by the Chinese government resulting in two executions, three sentences of life imprisonment, two 15-year prison sentences, and the firing or forced resignation of seven local government officials and the Director of the Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine (AQSIQ). The former chairwoman of China's Sanlu dairy was sentenced to life in prison.

Yeah, that sounds nice :-)


To save everyone the google, several people went to jail with terms ranging from 5 to 15 years (after reduced sentences). Two people were executed.


Nothing special, and an exceeding amount is above board. Everyone is playing the same game, using mostly the same tactics. Get wealthy people on board, use that to get policy makers on board while buying up advertising to target and sway people one way or the other.

All foreign powers will try to do the same thing, through the legal channels, and the not so legal channels. The current order enforced on the back of the US dollar is simply too powerful to not do that. Americans are broadly naive about this, so it's relatively easy to "shock" them into caring about it.


Ally doesn't mean you stop your intelligence services against them. It simply means there are things you agree about, currently, and agree to do. Everyone is always jockeying for power. No one stops trying to influence their allies.


Yeah, I'm aware. I didn't say I'm surprised Israel is trying to influence US public opinion, I said I'm surprised how brazen they are being about it. Using your intelligence services behind the scenes is very different to paying to publicly promote tweets from your official national account.


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