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Comment by BurningFrog | Hacker News Reader

Or were the sexual assault allegations part of the political attacks on him?

How would you tell?

You would tell by checking whether he had been asked for comment on the story before making the claims that there would be political attacks on him, which would reveal that he tweeted a few hours after he learned of the story.

How does this rule out that it's a political attack?

How does it imply that it is a political attack, except for Elon saying so?

Of course, it's not really so easy to tell. A lot of people select a certain narrative beforehand, and then adapt their interpretation of the facts to match it in retrospect. Or maybe they just made an honest attempt at figuring out the truth. And they're wrong. Or they're right.

The world is really complicated, and figuring out the truth from subtle signals is really hard. At best it's a game of probabilities, and I don't think we're often seeing the best in short-form comments on the internet.

A lot of commentary I see regarding the most successful entrepeneurs really triggers my suspicion for fallacious thinking, most often confirmation bias for a worldview where "the rich" are out to get everyone else and therefore are expected to lie all the time. I think that generally, the most correct explanations for the comments and behavior or entrepeneurs like Elon Musk are much more complex than that.

One thing though; I've become quite jaded towards this after seeing the firehose of lies and distortions regarding the Model 3 production ramp-up in 2017-18. It's hard to take any direct skeptical claim at face value after seeing that; the best I can do it noting that someone said this and concluding "not enough information yet to be certain".

Occasionally, there really is a conspiracy, in the sense that a lot of people have a vested interest in having things perceived a certain way. Don't dismiss the idea just because it has the word "conspiracy" in it.

Is there a situation where you would not expect the dirt of the rich and famous to be reported on? Where journalists collectively, ALL OF THEM, right-wing nutjobs and useless centrists alike, would say let's not?

This whole attitude of expect political attacks on me is disingenuous at best. Anybody with power should always expect their personal faults to be reported, whatever their political colour.

You seem to completely ignore the possibility of false or exaggerated accusations?

We're talking about professional journalists working for mainstream publications publishing unflattering facts about the richest man in the world; I err on the side of caution, but I do not fall in the trap of believing journalists should be treated by the sole measure that everything they do is bad.

There was a settlement. He can sue for defamation.

While blabling about freedom of speech.

Generally, the fact of a settlement would preclude him from winning a defamation suit, since introducing the existence of the settlement would satisfy the defendant's bar of establishing affirmatively that there was some sort of actionable sexual harassment at the "more likely than not" threshold for civil cases.

Additionally, the existence of the settlement would likely make any suit for defamation fun afoul of the anti-SLAPP laws.

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