Trump is going to win the election

[aurum]

9 minutes ago, Joshe said:

Totally disagree! Trump doesn't care anything about saving the world

I said they think they are saving the world. 

There's a difference.

One is conscious, one is unconscious.

9 minutes ago, Joshe said:

Neither does Elon

Elon cares more than Trump. Don't oversimplify and write them off as the same.

9 minutes ago, Joshe said:

Both men are driven by their own self-aggrandizement

Unconsciously, yes.

Consciously, no.

Trump is driven more by his own self-aggrandizement than Elon.

9 minutes ago, Joshe said:

If Elon and Trump actually cared about the world, they wouldn't be so bad

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.

[Leo Gura]

Musk is not a conartist.

Be careful with leftist narratives about Musk.

If you actually listen to Musk with charity, you would see he's serious and thoughtful. He just doesn't fit your leftist agenda.

[CARDOZZO]

Musk is playing the game.

He wants to be successful with his companies/mission on earth - even if he needs to shake hands with devils.

[Leo Gura]

8 minutes ago, Bandman said:

as a political actor he is one of the worst people of today. his own trauma from his trans daughter made him a literal nazi; he literally retweets actual nazis on twitter who respout goebbels level propaganda, and he has advocated for a racewar in the UK.

That has nothing to do with conartistry.

Those are just Musk's polticial biases.

So what? He is allowed to be biased.

You guys need to get over this idea that everyone needs to fit your leftist ideals. No. This is Green self-deception.

Edited August 13 by Leo Gura

[aurum]

35 minutes ago, Emerald said:

They are both megalomaniacal. But I sense that Elon has justified the lying and doesn't see himself as a conman... while Donald Trump is okay with being a conman and knows that he lies.

I see Elon Musk as unconsciously being driven to being a megalomaniacal conman out of a desire to redeem himself and be validated in the eyes of others. And the lies he tells, in his mind is a sort of Machiavellian "ends justify the means" desire to be the hero in others' eyes he imagines himself to be. 

And if he were to see himself as a conman, he would probably feel ashamed. So, he is unconscious to it.

Conversely, I see Trump as consciously being driven to being a megalomaniacal conman out of a desire to achieve maximum power and that he values power and strength over a claim to goodness and honesty (which he may view as weak and therefore bad).

And he doesn't mind the lying as he just sees it as a neutral tool of power acquisition and something that strengthens him. 

So... Donald Trump's guiding compass is more akin to... "More power is good... less power is bad." than "Honesty is good... lying is bad."

So... my sense is that Elon has lots of moral justifications for his lies that make it do all sorts of mental gymnastics to avoid seeing himself as a conman because he is motivated along a moral self-identity narrative of saving the world.

And my sense is that Donald Trump knows he's lying and doesn't care. So, he doesn't need to trick himself into believing he's not lying... as he motivates himself along a warlord-ish strength narrative. And the only bad thing is weakness from that paradigm.

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.

[Joshe]

50 minutes ago, aurum said:

I said they think they are saving the world. 

I know what you said. If you think Donald Trump thinks he is saving the world, you've read him wrong. Of course an egotist in his position would court that idea from time to time, and I'm sure he does, but he isn't driven by it and it's not common in his consciousness. 

Regarding Elon, yes, he's more conscious, which is precisely why his ego needs more sophisticated deceptions. OF COURSE the great Elon cares about humanity. I'm sure the thinks he's saving the world when he needs to think that, but you make it sound like he's a crusader, and I just disagree. 

Maybe I shouldn't have used the word "con artist" for Elon. But IDK, he sure seems like a con artist to me. 

Edited August 13 by Joshe

[aurum]

1 minute ago, Joshe said:

I know what you said. If you think Donald Trump thinks he is saving the world, you've read him wrong. Of course an egotist in his position would court that idea from time to time, and I'm sure he does, but he isn't driven by it and it's not common in his consciousness. 

Regarding Elon, yes, he's more conscious, which is precisely why his ego needs more sophisticated deceptions. OF COURSE the great Elon cares about humanity.

I grant you that Trump is worse than Elon. But even Trump has some internal lies about the good he does.

1 minute ago, Joshe said:

I'm sure the thinks he's saving the world when he needs to think that, but you make it sound like he's a crusade, and I just disagree

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.

[Leo Gura]

Trump is so depraved I don't think he believes he is saving the world. It's all cynical for him. He thinks his supporters are suckers.

[Leo Gura]

1 minute ago, Bandman said:

he doesn't need to fit my leftist ideals, I have some right wing ideals as well but, that's beside the point. It's not green self deception to know that the twitter account @iamyesyouareno is a literal fucking nazi account, and that when Elon retweets this acc it's just pure shite. It's just madness in the same way Kanye is just madness. its beyond bias and into denial of reality. I have a feeling you haven't looked at the tweets he has retweeted. I'm not some snowflake who thinks all right wing stuff is nazism.

He literally spouts falsehoods and nazi propaganda, it's beyond bias. when you tweet that a racewar should ensue in the UK because white people have been taken over by jews, that's not bias anymore.

By the same logic Hitler and Goebbels were allowed to have their bias. You have to call absolute shit out when it's absolute shit, instead of taking this centrist relativist approach.

By the same logic RationalWiki's article on you is just "bias" instead of a blatant smear piece.

Twitter makes people into lunatics.

It's a bad idea to understand people based on the Twitter memes they share.

[Emerald]

11 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

That has nothing to do with conartistry.

Those are just Musk's polticial biases.

So what? He is allowed to be biased.

You guys need to get over this idea that everyone needs to fit your leftist ideals. No. This is Green self-deception.

No, he's definitely a conman too. He just often doesn't realize it because of his self-justification biases. He definitely doesn't see himself as such.

He has a lot of ideals that he holds. So, anything he does that's dishonest seems to get categorized as working towards the greater good in accordance to his worldview. 

For example, he purportedly values free speech... which is why he claimed he wanted to buy Twitter in the first place. But once he purchased it, he chose to censor certain viewpoints and bolster others. And this is the very behavior he was supposedly against.

He either is fully aware this is a lie and justifies it with his biases. Or he's unaware that he's lying.

Also, before he became known as he is today... he was once known as this billionaire genius guy because that is the public image he built for himself.

But in actuality his accomplishments came from other people who were the inventors... while he was the money guy because he had the wealth from being born into a family that owns an emerald mine in South Africa.

For example, he didn't invent the Tesla. He just invested in the company and took over as CEO.

So, his facade is that he was creating all of these technologies when he was really just the investor.

 

[Joshe]

3 minutes ago, aurum said:

I grant you that Trump is worse than Elon. But even Trump has some internal lies about the good he does.

I am not blind to this. I recognize this fully. I have consciously loved evil people. But my point is the driver. What drives them. If they woke up and had the thought "I better get going, the world needs me", they would be better than what they are. People like them are not driven by anything like duty or service. They only use those ideas to serve their actual drivers. 

I'm open to being wrong a little about Musk but there's no doubt he intentionally lies, cheats, and deceives on a mass fucking scale. The fruits of Musk's deceptions are more subtle than Trump's. Trump fleeces money. Musk fleeces opinion. 

I don't see a case for Musk not being a con artist. 

[Emerald]

8 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

Trump is so depraved I don't think he believes he is saving the world. It's all cynical for him. He thinks his supporters are suckers.

He definitely doesn't value saving the world. It's all about him and gaining more strength... and his supporters are just a means to an end.

That's the biggest difference between him and Elon.

Elon wants approval. Trump wants power.

[Leo Gura]

4 minutes ago, Emerald said:

He has a lot of ideals that he holds. So, anything he does that's dishonest seems to get categorized as working towards the greater good in accordance to his worldview. 

For example, he purportedly values free speech... which is why he claimed he wanted to buy Twitter in the first place. But once he purchased it, he chose to censor certain viewpoints and bolster others. And this is the very behavior he was supposedly against.

So what? That is not a conartist.

Does he BS himself about free speech? Of course.

Quote

But in actuality his accomplishments came from other people who were the inventors... while he was the money guy because he had the wealth from being born into a family that owns an emerald mine in South Africa.

For example, he didn't invent the Tesla. He just invested in the company and took over as CEO.

So, his facade is that he was creating all of these technologies when he was really just the investor.

This is a low quality Green perspective on Musk.

Edited August 13 by Leo Gura

[Joshe]

18 minutes ago, Leo Gura said:

This is a low quality Green perspective on Musk.

I don't think it's a perspective so much as it is data points or instances of deception. I think she, like me, uses the amount of deception one engages in as a heuristic to measure the integrity of character. For example, if Musk wasn't as deceptive as he is, I wouldn't call him a con.

For people who think Musk isn't deceptive as hell.... one of us is wrong. Maybe I've fallen victim to anti-Elon propaganda or maybe you all just haven't seen the same videos me and Emerald have. 😂

Edited August 13 by Joshe

[Emerald]

Just now, Leo Gura said:

So what? That is not a conartist.

This is a low quality Green perspective on Musk.

Fair enough.

I'm not a fan of Elon Musk. I personally see Elon Musk as pretty foolish, largely because of his lack of emotional intelligence and inconsistencies. But many people see him as a genius, largely because of the image he's created for himself and because of him possessing some degree of intellectual intelligence.

So, it's a pet peeve of mine that I see as dishonest and inauthentic because his image and his level of emotional maturity don't match.

But you are correct, that I wouldn't call him an outright "con-artist" as it's not like the blatant lies that a con-artist tells, used car salesman style. He's not actively and constantly and deliberately trying to con people.

So, he's not lying on a Trump-scale. 

But he definitely has dishonest tendencies that seem to largely come from his own biases and self-deceptions.... and his desire to see himself a certain way and have others see him a certain way.

For example, recently he fabricated untrue stories about his trans daughter to build a specific narrative to score points with anti-trans people on his platform... like claiming that 'his son' was into musical theatre at 4 years old and would always call things "fabulous" to build the narrative that 'he' was gay and not trans until the woke mind virus came in and got 'him'.

But those things weren't true and never happened. So, he's no stranger to lying.

But it's definitely not deliberate or "artful" like a con-artist. 

His dishonest tendencies, come more from him tricking himself and bending the truth into narratives to look better to those he wants to impress than deliberately tricking others.

[Emerald]

15 minutes ago, Bandman said:

@Emerald

yeah, I used to think this way also, but its not so simple, being a CEO is one of the hardest jobs, plus corpos can do things that would cost the government 10x more time and 10x more money, think about building the pyramids, yes it was very low consciousness to have slaves do it, but we all marvel at the pyramids today, and there was no other way to do it. in the same sense with musks ventures. not that I don't agree corpos should be a lot more humane, but I came to the realisation that evil and good are intertwined so deeply and its a really difficult issue when talking about biz and the economy, we can't just expect society to work efficiently without massive oppression and exploitation. I'd still argue we have to sacrifice efficiency to have more humane economy, but in the current economy and world, Musk played the game very well.

Plus musk took a lot of risks with spaceX etc, that could have cost him all his money and ended him up broke.
It's just a dark truth of the world.

I'm not saying being a CEO isn't difficult. I'm a business owner myself and I know it's difficult with a small business.... and I'm sure that it's so much more difficult when you're running a huge structure.

What I'm saying is that people are largely under the impression that Elon himself is doing all the brainy science stuff because of how he presents himself.

People believe that Elon is inventing all of these things. But he's not. He's using his wealth to get talented people to work under him.

So, his image is one that isn't authentic.

It's different than being a con-artist. But it's certainly inauthentic. And if you add on top of that he's fine with lying and being inconsistent in his values if it gets him approved of.

[Joshe]

2 minutes ago, Emerald said:

People believe that Elon is inventing all of these things. But he's not. He's using his wealth to get talented people to work under him.

and then intentionally making people think he designed the batteries and the rockets.

How is that not a con artist? He's not fleecing people out of money, but he's fleecing something else, and he does it all the time, with intent. 

[Frylock]

Elon Musk is a token eccentric, money worshipping, self-aggrandizing billionaire. He's definitely more annoying and obnoxious than other billionaires, quite petty and sensitive as well.

But a con artist he is not. Trump, on the other hand, just reeks of being a felonious grifter. Anyone with a shred of common sense could see through his baloney. His only interests are his own selfish gain.

[Leo Gura]

2 minutes ago, Joshe said:

intentionally making people think he designed the batteries and the rockets.

Not a thing.

[aurum]

37 minutes ago, Joshe said:

If they woke up and had the thought "I better get going, the world needs me", they would be better than what they are.

Not necessarily. But I get your point, you'd like them to be more selfless.

37 minutes ago, Joshe said:

People like them are not driven by anything like duty or service. They only use those ideas to serve their actual drivers

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.

37 minutes ago, Joshe said:

I'm open to being wrong a little about Musk but there's no doubt he intentionally lies, cheats, and deceives on a mass fucking scale. The fruits of Musk's deceptions are more subtle than Trump's. Trump fleeces money. Musk fleeces opinion. 

I don't see a case for Musk not being a con artist

The difference is ultimately in how much you deliver vs not. Results matter.