After Thai boys were rescued from the cave everyone is happy except Elon Musk (update: Elon apologizes)

[mr moose]

14 minutes ago, yian88 said:

The one thing EM is guilty of is "overextending", he should stop trying to play the PR stuns he does, with australia power, central america power after hurricane, the thai bois and so on.

He wants to keep his momentum started with spacex/tesla and keeps making these adventures playing "the god of technology and the saviour", eventually it will backfire, one stunt at a time his rep will go down not up.

He needs to focus on those goddamn Tesla trucks to meet demand and goals, and BFR wont happen if hes busy 24/7 sleeping in a factory and trying to play hero in thailand, i think the world can take care of itself, if EM has some technology that only he owns and only he can help then he should intervene otherwise stay aside and mind your business.

He's not actually overextending, those "PR stunts" are his marketing campaign they are his ads.  His whole strategy is to establish a brand personality, when people think tesla/spacex/elon musk, he wants them to think, future driven, philanthropic humans first, green, slick and forward thinking.  He has worked out how do that, how to save a few people from blacks outs, make money and build an empire.  

[Dash Lambda]

I'm kind'a curious how his other attempts to help worked out. The pod was just one suggestion.

I remember news about him sending over engineers from The Boring Company to help with digging and Tesla to help with the water pumps. They obviously didn't tunnel the children out, but did they manage to do anything about the water pumps?

... Though of course, at least as far as I've heard from Level1 News, one of the water pumps broke down after they got the last kid out and forced the remaining rescue workers to abandon their equipment to get out in time. For whatever that's worth.

 

Not that any of that matters, the children got out safe. I'm just curious now that people are attacking and defending Musk over this.

 

 

[Teddy07]

Musk is an attention whore in my eyes.

[ItsMitch]

6 minutes ago, Dash Lambda said:

I'm just curious now that people are attacking and defending Musk over this

There's nothing to defend imho, you don't just call someone a pedo because he called out a submarine that could of got a kid killed. 

[mynameisjuan]

4 minutes ago, SC2Mitch said:

submarine that could of got a kid killed. 

I mean the kids were more likely to die the way they rescued them. A trained diver lost his life. 

 

Hes being defended because he was called for help, tried to help and did it their own way anyway then people gave him shit for it. He was being attacked and blew up. Pedo was a little over the top but why he blew up is understandable. 

[Dash Lambda]

1 minute ago, SC2Mitch said:

There's nothing to defend IMHO, you don't just call someone a pedo because he called out a submarine that could have gotten a kid killed. 

That's an attacking argument. The defending argument is that he was responding to a childish attack on his own efforts and character.

 

As far as I'm concerned, this whole situation is just a few people getting pointlessly childish on Twitter.

[spartaman64]

3 hours ago, mynameisjuan said:

I mean the kids were more likely to die the way they rescued them. A trained diver lost his life. 

 

Hes being defended because he was called for help, tried to help and did it their own way anyway then people gave him shit for it. He was being attacked and blew up. Pedo was a little over the top but why he blew up is understandable. 

the diver died when they dont know where the kids are and the water level is high. there are more points of failure with elon musk's method

[S w a t s o n]

4 hours ago, Teddy07 said:

Musk is an attention whore in my eyes.

Really? We have literal attention whores. LITERAL ONES. *cough* Instagram & Boob Streamers *cough*

He can't help it that the media latches on to everything he says and spins up a whole news cycle about it, he can express his feelings like any other human being

[mr moose]

1 hour ago, Swatson said:

Really? We have literal attention whores. LITERAL ONES. *cough* Instagram & Boob Streamers *cough*

He can't help it that the media latches on to everything he says and spins up a whole news cycle about it, he can express his feelings like any other human being

The price of fame, whether you want it or not.

[Bensemus]

On 2018-07-17 at 2:05 PM, maartendc said:

the fact that you could just give these trapped kids diving equipment seems way more logical.

Diving equipment isn’t straight forward to use. Add in ~10 days of no food and the inability for some of the kids to even swim makings diving a deadly challenge. A Tai Navy SEAL died on the dive the kids would have to do. 

[Bensemus]

5 hours ago, spartaman64 said:

the diver died when they dont know where the kids are and the water level is high.

They knew where the kids were when he died. He was on his way back after dropping of oxygen I believe. The water levels were higher though. 

[intertan]

who shot first? guy who told elon to shove the sub or elon?

[Guest]

On 7/18/2018 at 9:05 AM, maartendc said:

I mean, if you saw a video of the actual "submarine" propotype... the name submarine is a bit generous:

 

https://www.theguardian.com/news/video/2018/jul/09/elon-musk-tweets-video-of-kid-sized-submarine-for-use-in-thai-cave

 

Seems it was more like a little tube with air canisters attached to it, that divers would have had to push forward through the cave. Seems impractical, and the fact that you could just give these trapped kids diving equipment seems way more logical.

 

Also, who asked for his help in the first place? Elon Musk must have an ego the size of the moon to think only he could come up with a solution to save the kids, and then be upset when they got saved some other way. What a complete maniac.

?

So if a trained navy seal ran out of oxygen during one of the trips, what makes you think its easier for a child to just strap on some gear and go for it?

 

Elon and his team came up with a solution within a few days, it was all very against the clock. Elon had every right to be mad, but he shouldn't have vented on twitter. 

[Okjoek]

The update gives me a little sliver of more hope in humanity. It'll probably be crushed by this time next week though.

[Blake]

3 hours ago, RorzNZ said:

Elon and his team came up with a solution within a few days, it was all very against the clock. Elon had every right to be mad, but he shouldn't have vented on twitter. 

Turns out they just drugged the kids and dragged em out, no need to fancy submarines.

[kasugatei]

A "submarine" would be highly impractical PERIOD. It would just raise chances of shutting of the only (narrow) passage and then all people on the another side would die for sure. Human body is flexible enough to pass through some narrow places, piece of metal isn't at all and it could stuck in. 

Regarding Musk, as I mentioned somewhere before, he is generally good guy, but he likes attention A LOT. He tried to help, but in this case it was highly unpractical solution. Something like using rockets for transportation of people from one city to another as he proposed.

 

I must say that British diver did a bit rude reaction, but in this case Musk was the one who crossed the line.

[LAwLz]

4 hours ago, intertan said:

who shot first? guy who told elon to shove the sub or elon?

The diver. He told Elon to shove his submarine up his ass and that it was just a PR stunt. 

Elon reacted by calling him a pedo. 

[Serin]

This whole thing could've been avoided if he just you know... kept the whole thing lowkey.
Make the pod, deliver it. Don't talk about it.
No complaints about 'just doing it for publicity'. No mindfucked pedo comments and probably a lot of media attention afterwards when some journo discovers that SpaceX team members contributed to the effort in some way, whether the pod was used or not.
Ah well.
Weird.

[LAwLz]

1 hour ago, Niksa said:

A "submarine" would be highly impractical PERIOD. It would just raise chances of shutting of the only (narrow) passage and then all people on the another side would die for sure. Human body is flexible enough to pass through some narrow places, piece of metal isn't at all and it could stuck in. 

Regarding Musk, as I mentioned somewhere before, he is generally good guy, but he likes attention A LOT. He tried to help, but in this case it was highly unpractical solution. Something like using rockets for transportation of people from one city to another as he proposed.

 

I must say that British diver did a bit rude reaction, but in this case Musk was the one who crossed the line.

I think it is hilarious, and sad, that you think you are smarter than a dozen rocket engineers, as well as the Thai rescue team.

Do you honestly not think that they had thought of that? Do you honestly believe that people just worked on this without thinking of the dimensions?

 

 

Oh boy, thank God we have Niksa on the LTT forums who cracked the case.

Without him, I am sure Musk's team of highly skilled engineers would have tried to shove a Boeing 747 down a path the size of a garden hose.

 

 

Not only where the submarine built after the dimensions measured out by the divers before, but they had also made an inflatable version with the same dimensions, which they had tried inside the tunnel (inflatable so that if it got stuck, they could deflate it without blocking a passage).

 

 

The amount of bullshit people in this thread are spewing is astonishing. It's like people believe they know more about submarine development and rescue work than the people actually there, doing the work. Not just that, but apparently they also know more about the dimensions of the cave than the rescue workers, despite not having the slightest clue.

[LAwLz]

Here is a good breakdown of what actually has happened. It paints a very different picture from what the media wants you to believe. Not a surprise if you know how much the media hates Elon right now.

Elon suggested a website a few weeks ago where reporters would be rated based on how truthworthy they are. Since the media is mostly lies (Politifact found 53% of stories on CNN to be mostly true, with the remaining 47% being between "half-true" and "pants of fire false", the numbers were even worse for FOX).

 

 

This summary was written by Jeremy Arnold on Quora.

Quote

What's the full story behind Elon Musk's involvement with the Thai cave rescue effort?

 

As is often the case, there’s a nuanced story with multiple morals here — one that most news outlets have, for whatever reasons, failed to tell.

Let’s start with the common narrative, which I think is fairly represented in this tweet (chosen randomly among hundreds like it):

We have a few inter-related claims here:

1. That Musk’s involvement was primarily about PR.
2. That his “expensive toy” was of no value to rescue efforts.
3. That he was disrespectful of rescuers in the plural.

And then, of course, we have Musk’s already-infamous “pedo guy” dig.

We’ll take each of those in turn, using context to determine how fair or unfair each claim might be.

 

#1: The massive PR stunt.

This criticism came in three somewhat contradictory flavors. Some blamed Musk for making too much of his efforts, some blamed him for not making a different contribution, and some blamed him for not solving totally unrelated problems.

To give a few representative examples:

So an engineer hasn’t used his free time to solve a border-control problem that’s outlasted every elected politician and subject-matter expert that’s ever been paid to figure it out? Time for the tar and feathers, I guess.

More to the point, though, one does wonder why Musk was ever vocal about this particular issue in the first place?

Well, as it turns out, we know exactly why.

Note the date. The boys went missing on June 23rd. It had been a national news issue for well over a week at that point — i.e., just long enough for engineering types to begin wondering if perhaps they could do something to help.

As for why Musk thought that open conversations on Twitter were a positive means to that end?

But surely he could do more than just facilitate dialogue on social media?

So, in sum, a wealthy problem-solver with a long history of responding to charity requests on Twitter is asked to see what he can do to help. He agrees, opens dialogue for ideas, takes them to the on-the-ground experts for feedback, then sends some of his best engineers to work pro bono on practical mechanics.

And this is a bad thing…?

___________________________________________________________

#2: The expensive toy.

From his first announcement that his team was working on a miniature submarine to help the divers, Twitter was quick to criticize.

Of course, one could point out that SpaceX and Boring Co. engineers had also “studied engineering” at some point in their careers — being that many of them are literal rocket scientists and all (not to mention their knowledge advantage re: the specific cave system in question). But why let that obvious truth get in the way of cheap criticism for some sweet, sweet internet karma?

Sadder yet, this skepticism wasn’t limited to internet trolls.

Note that last sentence:

Quote

If it isn’t needed or won’t help, that would be great to know. Otherwise, it would be very helpful to have as much design direction as possible.

Clearly the words of an egomaniac dedicated to inserting himself into a process where he was neither invited nor desired.

Anyway, to expand a bit more on the details here:

• Narongsak Osotthanakorn, the provincial governor quoted by BBC, went on to say: “Even though their equipment is technologically sophisticated, it doesn't fit with our mission to go in the cave.” In other words, the problem wasn’t that the sub was useless. It was that they’d already come up with an alternate plan before the sub arrived. (Note: Narongsak was actually transitioning out as governor. He just stayed on as the political head of the rescue team until it was completed.)
• From the description of the rescue efforts (which had to be expedited because of a lull in the rain before the cave flooded again), the sub still could have been useful. At the very least, it could have replaced the need for the stretcher and pulley system used in the more open areas. It just arrived too late to make it into the planning process.
• Some suggested that the length of the sub might have kept it from navigating some of the cave’s tight corners. But you know who else thought of this? Musk and his engineers. Hence why they sent an inflatable version built to the same dimensions to test it without the risk of blocking the passage.
• You know who was excited about the sub? The Thai Navy. Musk even loaned out his engineers to teach them how to use it for future missions.

So, again, we have a wealth of condemnation and ridicule directed at Musk for what exactly? For collaborating with the dive team to come up with something that, at worst, would add to their toolbox for other rescue missions?

Something’s messed up indeed.

___________________________________________________________

#3: Disrespecting the heroes.

As everyone knows, Musk’s tweet history is littered with examples of him taking credit at the expense of those actually “in the arena”.

Ok, so maybe not. But what about all those nasty things he said about the divers? You know, the ones he couldn’t speak well of on account of his seething bitterness and jealousy?

He also went out of his way to give three separate shout-outs to the pump and generator teams — as self-obsessed types do, I guess.

___________________________________________________________

#4: The final straw.

Thus far, Musk has come out pretty well. But that’s about to get complicated.

To set context, Vern Unsworth is a retired British expat who’s been living in Chiang Rai. And it so happens that he’d been exploring the particular cave system where the boys went missing for some six years prior. This let him predict with fairly close accuracy where the lost party would be found. He was also instrumental in bringing in the overseas caving/diving experts.

This past Friday, after the rescue was complete and those involved were shifting into debrief mode, Unsworth gave an interview, a clip of which went viral.

As to why Unsworth chose to throw scorn at Musk’s motives, only he can say. Perhaps he was simply riding the false narrative supported by so many others.

All we do know is what he said — which was, at best, rather uncharitable.

Musk didn’t take it well.

Yikes.

Now, in Musk’s (very) limited defense, the pedophile accusation wasn’t quite random. While Thailand has a reputation for sex tourism in general (particularly marketed towards single European pensioners), Chiang Rai itself is a known hot-spot for “sex trafficking and child prostitution”.

But does this trivia make it likely that Unsworth himself ever indulged in the local trade? Of course not. Unless Musk had some private information, it seems that he was seeing red and just grabbed at a convenient stereotype.

Gross as that tactic is, it suggests a deeper question: what drove a well-respected public figure to make such an extraordinarily negative claim?

Without attempting to exonerate him, I think that’s worth getting into briefly.

___________________________________________________________

Musk & The Criticism Machine

For all Donald Trump’s complaints about the “fake news” media conspiracies against him, Elon Musk has by far the more legitimate claim. Apart from Obama and Clinton, I’m not sure any other public figure has been the victim of such a relentless wave of vicious, unfounded criticism in the social media era.

The tweets in the early sections barely do it justice. While I’m no blinders-wearing fanboy, I read a fair amount of articles about Musk and his companies. I think what they do is important and generally worthy of regular coverage. But what they don’t deserve is the tone of their regular coverage.

This deep-dive gives the sense: Elon Musk vs. Short sellers. In a nutshell, a non-trivial group of people (in number, funds, and collective influence) have been crusading against Musk’s success for a long, long time. The net result is that it’s weirdly difficult to get a balanced view of the man and his work. Most pieces are written by either uncritical supporters or those eager to feed the short/bear narrative (for whatever personal motivations).

While there are exceptions to the rule, the average piece looks something like this: Just How Many Dimensions of Chess Is Elon Musk Playing?

To save you the read (and to prevent them from gaining from your click), I’ll sum up their thesis: Elon Musk called Unsworth a pedophile to distract the world from the recent revelations that he’s made public donations to the GOP.

Well, about that:

• Those donations were small (< $40,000) in relative terms.
• He gives often and in moderate amounts to both sides.
• These amounts are dwarfed by his donations to issue-based causes (like his recent $6m give to a climate change fund).
• None of this has ever been a secret, and isn’t something he’s been uncomfortable discussing.

Being honest, giving token amounts to various political groups is the cost of doing business. This often includes giving to those you disagree with ideologically. I’m resolutely against the current administration (and many GOP senators), but I’d do the same in his shoes. Most would, with clean consciences.

So why write an article about it as if it were news? I’ll leave that to the reader to ponder.

This kind of sustained siege against one’s character and motives has a predictable effect on people (remember Obama’s before/after photos?), especially when the victim sees few journalists interested in stepping in to tell the full story in a way that might slow the deluge.

As per a recent interview with Bloomberg, Musk is aware that this is making him prickly.

Quote

I never launched an attack on anyone who did not attack me first. So the question is: If somebody attacks you on Twitter, should you say nothing? Probably the answer in some cases is yes, I should say nothing. In fact, most of the time I do say nothing. I should probably say nothing more often.

I have made the mistaken assumption—and I will attempt to be better at this—of thinking that because somebody is on Twitter and is attacking me that it is open season. And that is my mistake. I will correct it.

He may yet correct it. And perhaps his failing this week will encourage him to redouble his efforts. Personally, I hope he hires someone to run better PR for him. Instead of the fact-checking service he proposed last month, perhaps he just needs a contractor to deconstruct stories about him and his companies on his behalf.

(While I see why Musk often responds himself, I think some remove would be advantageous for him. Not only would it add a layer of objectivity, it would allow the other to highlight Musk’s positives in ways he could never do himself with any propriety. For example, did you know that he made two separate commitments to help the people of Flint while this other narrative was going on? Or that he donated a batch of RadioFlyer Teslas to children’s hospitals across Europe? I’m guessing you didn’t, and I’m guessing I know why.)

___________________________________________________________

Final Thoughts

Musk’s PR needs aside, I think we’re right to condemn him for words to Unsworth (a provoked but disproportionate response). Working under the assumption that Unsworth is innocent of the charge, he should sue for libel. If he can’t afford to, he should be helped. Or Musk should reach out proactively to donate to a charity of Unsworth’s choice to begin his amends.

That notwithstanding, I have a hard time identifying with the cries of villainy. Musk made a terrible judgment call, sure. But to over-focus on that is to excuse ourselves at the same time. The waves of shoddy journalism exacerbating his behavior are coming from somewhere, supported by many a someone’s clicks. And as the old saw goes, no raindrop likes to see itself as responsible for the flood.

Overall, I think what Musk wants most is fairness. That doesn’t strike me as unreasonable. There’s a balance point between hero-worship and demonization, and we ought to do a better job of demanding that our press aim for it.

 

[kasugatei]

24 minutes ago, LAwLz said:

Oh boy, thank God we have Niksa on the LTT forums who cracked the case.

Oh boy, thank God we have LAwLz on the LTT forums who is in love with Musk. Your ad hominem sounds like that. You are obviously a Musk fanboy as we could see in this topic. 

 

If that "submarine" were that great, it WOULD be used during the rescue. I rest my case with that.

[spartaman64]

5 hours ago, intertan said:

who shot first? guy who told elon to shove the sub or elon?

 

1 hour ago, LAwLz said:

The diver. He told Elon to shove his submarine up his ass and that it was just a PR stunt. 

Elon reacted by calling him a pedo. 

here is my speculation. when i first saw this tweet i was really angry because it seemed like Elon was trying to erode trust in the rescue chief which is accurately described so the rescue plan gets canceled and they instead use his sub and maybe unsworth interpreted it this way also. looking at some of musk's other tweets i now think that its not what Elon meant but you can probably see why it seems that way. also a spokesperson for Stanton, the person that Elon quotes here, stated that the cave is too narrow for the submarine and obviously Unsworths said so as well so im not sure whats up with that. maybe they just have two different definitions and the submarine does fit but you have to push and prod it to get it through which the divers count that as too narrow and doesnt want to risk it

[LAwLz]

12 minutes ago, Niksa said:

Oh boy, thank God we have LAwLz on the LTT forums who is in love with Musk. Your ad hominem sounds like that. You are obviously a Musk fanboy as we could see in this topic.

There was nothing ad hominem in that post.

What I did was mock you for thinking that they hadn't thought of such a fundamental thing, and then explained to you that they had already done tests for it.

 

12 minutes ago, Niksa said:

If that "submarine" were that great, it WOULD be used during the rescue. I rest my case with that.

What do you mean? Have you not been following the story?

The submarine was not completed in time. The rescue team found another way of saving the children, before the submarine was completed.

The submarine was certainly not great in the state it was, because it wasn't even done. If it had been done and in working condition however, it might have been great. It getting stuck was not one of the risks (because again, they had already tested that with an inflatable version of the same dimensions).

[Marinatall_Ironside]

8 hours ago, LAwLz said:

Oh boy, thank God we have Niksa on the LTT forums who cracked the case.

 

7 hours ago, Niksa said:

Oh boy, thank God we have LAwLz on the LTT forums who is in love with Musk. Your ad hominem sounds like that. You are obviously a Musk fanboy as we could see in this topic. 

 

You two played both the Appeal to Ridicule and ad hominem cards. What good is it to have a civil and rational discussion if this is called "civil"?

 

Trying to use logical fallacies to make yourselves look "credible" does the exact opposite in my eyes: it makes you all less credible, therefore I have no reason to take you guys seriously, even if what you present is worth consideration.

[LAwLz]

28 minutes ago, Jurunce said:

You two played both the Appeal to Ridicule and ad hominem cards. What good is it to have a civil and rational discussion if this is called "civil"?

 

Trying to use logical fallacies to make yourselves look "credible" does the exact opposite in my eyes: it makes you all less credible, therefore I have no reason to take you guys seriously, even if what you present is worth consideration.

First of all, I did not use a logical fallacy. 

I ridiculed him because I am getting quite tired of armchair experts who don't think literal space rocket engineers think of things like size into account. 

 

Secondly, ignoring someone for using a fallacy is in and of itself a fallacy, called the "fallacy fallacy" or "metafallacy".

 

Thirdly, you're not really contributing anything to the conversation.

You sit on a high horse and preace about how others aren't worth listening to. You're doing the same thing you're telling others not to.