Kee HinckleyMar 8, 2025

“The fundamental weakness of Western civilization is empathy, the empathy exploit,” Musk said. “There it’s they’re exploiting a bug in Western civilization, which is the empathy response.”
-Elon Musk, Feb 28, 2025

“In my work with the defendants (at the Nuremberg Trials 1945-1949) I was searching for the nature of evil and I now think I have come close to defining it. A lack of empathy. It’s the one characteristic that connects all the defendants, a genuine incapacity to feel with their fellow men. Evil, I think, is the absence of empathy.”
-Captain G. M. Gilbert, the Army psychologist assigned to watching the defendants at the Nuremberg trials

https://www.cnn.com/2025/03/05/politics/elon-musk-rogan-interview-empathy-doge/index.html

Elon Musk wants to save Western civilization from empathy

Americans are still in the dark about the scope and scale of what Elon Musk is doing with DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency, which is working to drastically shrink the size of government by aiming to cut $1 trillion or more in government spending.

CNN
Show threadChristo. London, EnglandMar 8, 2025
@nazgul
Is Musk a sociopath or a psychopath?
Show threadMidniteMikeWritesMar 8, 2025
@Christo_459 @nazgul Probably a narcissist, him and Trump both. Everything he says is projection and designed to inflate his own ego. Became really obvious to me after the Thailand diver incident.
Show threadmaptoMar 9, 2025
@MidniteMikeWrites @Christo_459 @nazgul a very effective way to fight back is to deprive him of his only authority: his richest man status. This means devaluing Tesla, and this is already happening. We need more of it.
Show threadWilfried Klaebe

@mapto Also, get him out of control (and the revenue stream) of SpaceX.

@MidniteMikeWrites @Christo_459 @nazgul

Mar 9, 2025 at 12:06pmWeb
Show threadNikitaTarsovMar 9, 2025

@wonka @mapto @MidniteMikeWrites @Christo_459 @nazgul SpaceX isen't a company but a scam model. They don't invented a single technology there but cross-promoted Musk stock market values and derived critically unprotected tax money.

So it basically is a part of Musk and can't (and shouldn't) operate without him.

Show threadWilfried KlaebeMar 9, 2025

@NikitaTarsov So then, kick Musk out, maybe split off Starlink, and integrate the rest into NASA.

@mapto @MidniteMikeWrites @Christo_459 @nazgul

Show threadNikitaTarsovMar 9, 2025
@wonka @mapto @MidniteMikeWrites @Christo_459 @nazgul
SpaceX has no product but liabilitys. Imagen it as a company is flawed in the first place. It has bought voices in NASA to get the deals (and later put these bought people in their supervisory board) and take the money. There is no reason to have a product in the first place.
And btw. NASA has shown to not have a immune system able to handle systemic corruption to get trusted with anything, without it being reviewed externally ...
1/
Show threadNikitaTarsovMar 9, 2025
@wonka @mapto @MidniteMikeWrites @Christo_459 @nazgul
... (and there is no goverment able to do that as well).
Spaceship is prooven by many engeniers to be incapable of doing the trick they offered by many times overrun their time/money limits. They managed to fail on tasks we as mankind do reliably for 60 years.
Starlink isen't a marvel but one of several products using a specific setup, and alone, as well as a leading horse in PR for the idea, it is one of ...
2/
Show threadNikitaTarsovMar 9, 2025
@wonka @mapto @MidniteMikeWrites @Christo_459 @nazgul the most critical threats to mankind right now.
Let me explain, bacuse i think it's important to understand the gap between public perception of a technology and its actual problems.
Starlink cosnsits of an array of microsatelites to cover a huge surface area on the ground. These satellites are extremly short lifed due to its small failure mass.
3/
Show threadNikitaTarsovMar 9, 2025

@wonka Once they decay, they set free a specific constelation of materials that are very interactive in the EM spectrum. This system and its follow ups will shorten the timeframe until the Kessler-syndrome might look us from having satellite communications at all - of spaceflights, for that matter.

So that's the gap. SpaceX is seen as a company doing more or less free market stuff, but it isen't.
4/

Show threadNikitaTarsovMar 9, 2025
@wonka It's a dystopian storyline too dumb to write in a book. ESA is warning, other space agencys are warning, but NASA isen't. So there is no use of SpaceX nor a functional agency in NASA that is worth to be rescued. And we could advance this train of thought quite a bit longer and get pretty pessimistic, but i'll try to stop here.
5/
Show threadNikitaTarsovMar 9, 2025
@wonka I feel it super disturbing that most people handle free market statements as if they would be connected to science, functionality or reality in general, cause that mindset make exploiting public opinion such a easy target for amoralic entitys - may it be companys or random James Bond Villain cosplayers like Elmo is.
6/6
(my lousy attempt to keep stuff short, but i'm kinda in a toxic relation with context. So I'm sry for the wall of text)
Show threadmaptoMar 9, 2025
@NikitaTarsov @wonka @MidniteMikeWrites @Christo_459 @nazgul I'm sorry, but I'd need this explained in more detail, for dummies. Would you bother to do so? Thank you!
Show threadNikitaTarsovMar 10, 2025

@mapto @wonka @MidniteMikeWrites @Christo_459 @nazgul
Starlink is a dangerous product of short lifespan. Exloding nukes in orbit would be less of a problem.

That's an example of how much we need SpaceX or Elmo and 'his' inventions.

If something is unclear, plz specify what in particular.

Show threadMidniteMikeWritesMar 10, 2025

@NikitaTarsov @mapto @wonka @Christo_459 @nazgul

I think I understand. His playbook's similar for other companies. Neuralink was headed by Max Hodak who worked at Duke under Miguel Nicolelis. Much of Nuralink's experiments are duplicates of the work at the Duke lab (Nicolelis had monkeys at Duke controlling a robot in Kyoto in 2008). In so far as Nuralink is doing something "novel" it's just packaging a bunch of best practices together (if that). Example from Duke: https://today.duke.edu/2014/10/nicolelis

Mind Over Matter | Duke Today

Duke Today
Show threadmaptoMar 10, 2025
@NikitaTarsov @wonka @MidniteMikeWrites @Christo_459 @nazgul Starlink is currently the only organisation in the world capable of launching reusable rocket platforms. How is this a liability?
Show threadNikitaTarsovMar 10, 2025
@mapto @wonka @MidniteMikeWrites @Christo_459 @nazgul I lack the durability to go through it point by point, but luckily we can grab a random number of people who made a good job in doing exactzly this.
Some of those most familiar with Musks endevours and the scientifical backround (and the nerdyness to chew through all the data to explain it) is this guy:
Starship(part 1):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4TxkE_oYrjU
Starlink(+stuff):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zaUCDZ9d09Y
1/
SpaceX: BUSTED!! (Part 1)

YouTube
Show threadNikitaTarsovMar 10, 2025
@mapto But feel free to ask google for any risc or absurdity of any of Musks 'ideas'. It absolutly is one blast of a rabbithole.
2/2
Show threadmaptoMar 9, 2025
@wonka @MidniteMikeWrites @Christo_459 @nazgul it's a private company. Is there a way of getting him out other than the DoJ starting an antitrust case? Because this is certainly not happening in the next 2 years. A best-case scenario would be Trump flipping the coin to save his ass after the mid-terms. But even he is not so stupid to think that his ass could be saved after all this.