Musk is fascinating for the Rationalists ideasets, as he clearly is really inspired by Rationalism (and follows a few of them, ssc iirc). But he also so mid and bland that he draws the Rationalists ideaset down with him. If you heard him talk about space colonization (esp the argument he had with Bezos, who is more of a O’Neill Cylinder guy which iirc caused one of those weird dismissive Musk reactions (dismisses it as dumb without any good argument (if there is one at all)) which people mistake for genius), simulation theory, AI and esp AI safety (ow to see the LW reactions when Musk said ‘we are just going to make the AGI safe by building in safety’, etc.
It is like as a metal fan you hear a big celebrity is into heavy metal, but turns out all he knows is Metallica. A politician who claims he is into warhammer, but all he has is a few tactical ultramarine squads.
It is a bit of a pattern, there in something dumb, a new even more popular thing or person appears which sucks in all the attention and then draws all the ideas down by being even worse. Which causes people to look more clearly into the first thing and see how bad it is by association. For example cryptocurrencies and NFTs, the obvious uselessness and scammyness of NFTs revealed the similar qualities in the cryptocurrencies space. But also just every culture war Vox Day parasitically attaches himself too (He does this a lot, any rightwing thing that becomes a bit popular he leeches himself onto, often makes a worse related movement (the sad vs angry puppies for example) and then drags it all down by being an open sexist/white nationalist/all out horrible dumb person who thinks he is smarter than he is.
Musk is fascinating for the Rationalists ideasets, as he clearly is really inspired by Rationalism (and follows a few of them, ssc iirc). But he also so mid and bland that he draws the Rationalists ideaset down with him. If you heard him talk about space colonization (esp the argument he had with Bezos, who is more of a O’Neill Cylinder guy which iirc caused one of those weird dismissive Musk reactions (dismisses it as dumb without any good argument (if there is one at all)) which people mistake for genius), simulation theory, AI and esp AI safety (ow to see the LW reactions when Musk said ‘we are just going to make the AGI safe by building in safety’, etc.
It is like as a metal fan you hear a big celebrity is into heavy metal, but turns out all he knows is Metallica. A politician who claims he is into warhammer, but all he has is a few tactical ultramarine squads.
It is a bit of a pattern, there in something dumb, a new even more popular thing or person appears which sucks in all the attention and then draws all the ideas down by being even worse. Which causes people to look more clearly into the first thing and see how bad it is by association. For example cryptocurrencies and NFTs, the obvious uselessness and scammyness of NFTs revealed the similar qualities in the cryptocurrencies space. But also just every culture war Vox Day parasitically attaches himself too (He does this a lot, any rightwing thing that becomes a bit popular he leeches himself onto, often makes a worse related movement (the sad vs angry puppies for example) and then drags it all down by being an open sexist/white nationalist/all out horrible dumb person who thinks he is smarter than he is.
Sorry this turned into a bit of a rant.