aurum

Fine, but that's still your criticism of them. Why should they take your criticisms seriously if you're not going to take theirs seriously?

Yes, but I'm not talking to a feminist. I'm talking to you, and how you can understand their perspective better.

Mostly because they don't feel listened to. When someone brings up a good faith criticism, the right response is to seriously take it in. Don't argue. If your immediate response is to start arguing with them, you're not really listening. Instead of arguing about how you're right, consider how they might be right.

The point being made here is that there is more to Musk than exploitation. And if you just focus on the exploitation and other critiques you have, you lose sight of the bigger picture. It also helps to take into account just how ubiquitous exploitation is in the world. That should provide some perspective.

Do you anticipate putting any of your work out into the public? E.g a book, online course etc.

That's a very good question. The answer is: being unbiased is a natural consequence of valuing truth. The more you care about truth, the less unbiased you must become. The left IS right. But only partially so. And there's the rub. Synthesizing partial truths is where the gold is. Benevolence is an obvious fantasy. No one should take that as a serious position towards anyone, including Elon.

Then I'd say you would be wrong. It's not a tactic. It's inevitable. Judgements of Elon will be relative, including the ones you are making. This is me discerning what is true about reality. You're witnessing it. It's not about being passive, it's about the attempt to be unbiased. Fair enough. But then I expect you to extend that courtesy to me as well. You have to at least admit your critique is similar to the one made by many leftists, even if you don't see yourself as one. I do have critiques of Elon. We could do a whole thread just on Elon's flaws if we wanted. My intention here is to balance the critique. It's extremely easy to become unbalanced when it comes to these kind of topics, which I know from first-hand experience of being wrong so many times. So here's the punchline: Elon is indeed a morally complex person. This cannot be helped, it just is the reality of the situation. I'm not going to attempt to put numbers on it, but suffice to say he's not a cartoon character conman. He runs real, innovative businesses and is quite exceptional at doing so. But he also is part of a toxic Stage Orange-type environment dominated by survival, which creates various problems. And he himself still has much personal growth to aspire to, both spiritually and otherwise.

Sex is obviously not purely altruistic. There's probably some degree of self-deception there. But also, he might have legitimate concerns about population. That's not an unreasonable position. That's not how truth works at all. You're using a mental shortcut rather than dealing with each claim individually. Elon could be full of shit on 99.9% of his claims and still be right 0.1% of the time. Every operates from a mix of both benevolence and selfishness. It's just a question of degree. The position being taken is that Elon is less self-absorbed than you and many leftists portray him as. Part of the reason Musk has fans is because some of his business accomplishments are legitimately impressive and of value for humanity. Personally I don't really have strong feelings one way or another towards him. 1) That's not my position 2) If Fox News, OAN and Newsmax happen to be more correct on this particular issue, then they are more correct. Just saying "Fox News believes this, therefore it must be wrong" is again another mental shortcut. This is not about engaging in the culture war. They have their own bias. Good. Then seriously consider everything I've written above.

Elon supports Trump, yes.

Trump is worse than Kamala by orders of magnitude on all these issues.

One of the things I appreciated in the TED interview was Elon’s answer about his motivation to help humanity. He mentions that he is looking to preserve consciousness (sort of unnecessary, but okay). And he also is looking to provide a foundation for humanity to answer more philosophical, deeper questions about existence. I think he was genuine in his response on this, despite whatever ways devilry might corrupt things. And I would think most of us here could appreciate that response as well, given the goals of this forum.

This is a good interview, probably more along the lines of what Leo was talking about:

He makes some decent points.

Your example is not strong at all. Consider that things like jerseys and pride month are nessesary in order to stand up against conservatives, such as yourself, who would still like to role back LGBTQ rights. And that some players may actually may want to wear those jerseys because they genuinely care about the cause. It's quite a leap from "people forced to wear jerseys" to "LGBTQ people are forcing you to be LGBTQ". And yes, you are to certain degree being left behind by the culture. It's going to feel like you are being forced into things you don't like, and it's because many people have gotten past this issue already.

Not necessarily. But I get your point, you'd like them to be more selfless. That's what it means to be unconscious. Also, Elon does have some genuine drive for service larger than himself. It's not complete self-service for him. Trump is more self-focused. The difference is ultimately in how much you deliver vs not. Results matter.

I grant you that Trump is worse than Elon. But even Trump has some internal lies about the good he does. Of course it's a crusade, he wants to "destroy the woke mind virus" to protect people from wokeness. Crusades can be highly destructive and full of devilry.

Trump is much more egregious in terms con-artistry than Elon. And Trump certainly still lies to himself plenty about the good he does, warlord-narrative or not. Even warlords have things they care about.

I said they think they are saving the world. There's a difference. One is conscious, one is unconscious. Elon cares more than Trump. Don't oversimplify and write them off as the same. Unconsciously, yes. Consciously, no. Trump is driven more by his own self-aggrandizement than Elon. Yes and no. "Care" is a tricky thing. You can care and still do much devilry. In fact, sometimes the more you care, the more devilry you do.

I would not make your LP about pickup unless you want to seriously handicap your growth.

No he does not. This is unconscious for both of them. They think they are saving the world. Edit: Trump less so than Elon.

The LGBTQ community does not want to force people into being gay. This is an absurd strawman and slippery slope fallacy. What they want is acceptance for who they are and equal citizen rights.

It's complicated. I'm saying American culture continues to move more Green. Look at how badly unpopular the social conservative agenda from Project 2025 has turned out to be. Most people do not think we should be banning porn and premarital sex. We've moved past that. Perhaps most people wouldn't consciously understand it if you ask them. But yes, sometimes right-wing policies fail badly and get weeded out as a result. Too much deregulation of the market is a good example of this.

Most definitely not.

A couple different perspectives we could take on this: 1) Leftists policies can sound nice on paper, which then creates a kind of a surface level agreement. But these policies are also much harder to implement in practice and can easily be used as a nice-sounding smokescreen for lower development survival agendas, e.g Nazi "socialism". 2) Leftist policies generally favor populism over a minority of elites. But the elites have the power and can bully the majority 3) The left is actually winning the culture war, and Blue conservatism is losing. Especially among younger people 4) Many right-wing policies have been disasters when tested in real-life policy scenarios, and people who are informed understand that.

Looks like Jamie Wheal asking the question. Makes sense that he would have been influenced by Wilber.