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Comment by tavavex | Hacker News Reader

> He's literally so rich that he can get caught personally looking through chat sessions and it wouldn't slow him down a bit.

Looking through chat histories is boring, mundane stuff. He's richer than that, think bigger. I think he could kill a random person in front of thousands, and by the next day we'd see articles arguing why the random person actually deserved it and why it's not that bad. Whatever consequences would be lined up would inevitably face unexpected roadblocks which would all result in nothing happening.

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> He's richer than that, think bigger.

that's the hilarious paradox at the center of his antics. Musk is infamously petty and insecure. We're talking about the guy who tweaked Grok's system prompt to flatter him and paid someone to boost his fucking Diablo character for clout. I wouldn't put "looking through chat histories" past him for one second.

I'm not saying Musk isn't petty, I just think that in this crazy world, especially with the lines between public and private slowly blurring, we could have news like "some AI lab let the owner or a higher-up read chat histories" come out of any company and barely make a splash in the mainstream. Maybe it would be discussed for a few days on HN before something else takes the attention away.

Reddits owner is also petty and insecure and edited other peoples posts, Elon hasn't done that yet. Didn't seem to stop reddit from getting popular, people don't really care that much.

...but people don't just hate Elon because he's petty? they hate him for the prejudiced BS and his actually harmful meddling in politics

They hate him because he's a huge fucking douchebag

And that, unlike most politically active billionaires, he's so publicity-seeking we've all heard of him.

I can't even remember the name of the eBay people in e.g. this without actively re-reading the story, though we all know it was Musk who reacted with petulance to being told his cave submarine wouldn't help: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EBay_stalking_scandal

> I think he could kill a random person in front of thousands, and by the next day we'd see articles arguing why the random person actually deserved it and why it's not that bad

Think even bigger. How many deaths is he responsible for as a result of DOGE cuts to overseas aid? This seems to be water that passed under the bridge a long while ago as far as 'societies attention' goes.

https://hsph.harvard.edu/news/usaid-shutdown-has-led-to-hund...

https://www.doge-impact.org/

Humans are terrible at seeing and really internalizing second-order impacts of things, even if they are horrific. That's why I think directly killing one person would have a far greater impact on the average person than indirectly causing the deaths of thousands with the stroke of a pen.

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