Sure, but that argument is specious as hell, right? Like, if everyone in the United States decided to give you a $5 bill, does that instantly make you a bad person who exploited labor to get where you are?

“There is no ethical consumption under capitalism” is simply a rhetorical device to outline the flaws in the system. It completely breaks down when used as justification to villainize someone.

Your position could be equally stated as, “anyone who has more money than me is a worse person than me, and anyone with less money than me is a better person than me.” It’s a misuse of the “no ethical consumption” idea on its face.

A fair point. It’s been a while since then. I didn’t recall that.

That said, he’s just an easy example. There’s a few other people who could be used. There’s a billionaire who was an early Bitcoin adopter for example.

And it certainly would have been possible for Notch to become a billionaire without hiring people. The company only had 25 employees in 2014, and was doing $330million in revenue every year. There’s certainly a path he could have tread to still becoming a billionaire without hiring anyone.

It would have been harder, taken longer, and not been as profitable for sure, but doable.

Sure, but if that’s the argument, then everyone who has ever bought a laptop that shipped with Windows on it is equally guilty.

Perhaps even moreso. Those people are giving money to Microsoft. He took a billion dollars away from them.

But like, this is classic motte and baily. Your initial position was “all billionaires exploit labor for profit,” but when under scrutiny you just retreat to “there is no ethical consumption under capitalism, so he’s guilty by virtue of simply participating in the system.”

You’re moving the goalposts though, you realize that right?

Your initial position was that you have to have exploited people to be worth a billion dollars (with an implicit “directly exploited,” since if you can’t make any money without indirectly exploiting people, which would make your point even more pedantic than I’m being.)

Other people later exploiting others to profit off your product is irrelevant. Hell, it’d be irrelevant if you made your billion dollars and then started exploiting people yourself. You still would have, in fact, become a billionaire without exploiting people to do so.

He could have known Notch, though that guy doesn’t seem the climbing type, lol.

Notch is a billionaire. He made Minecraft as a solo project, it became what it was, then he sold it to Microsoft.

Not saying that most billionaires didn’t get there via exploitation, but I don’t think it’s a strict prerequisite.

Yeah, I can’t find a news article or anything, lol. Definitely confused.

Why not just compare the model 3 to an 18-wheeler then? Those weigh way more. Would have made his point better.

And it’s a completely meaningful comparison, as long as you throw away the fact that different vehicles are used for different things.

A model 3 to an f150 is absolutely apples and oranges.

I was gonna post this if you didn’t, lol.

Oh, so you’re just gonna ignore how Sarah treated Hagar and lay it all on Ishmael, huh? :P

Fun fact, whether this meme is pro-Israel or pro-Palestine is 100% decided by what date you consider the “start” of the Israeli/Palestinian conflict.

Why not just launch it directly but background the process so it doesn’t hang up your terminal?

I would think the bigger issue would be the permanent ceasefire.

I would think Israel doesn’t trust Hamas not to break it, and it complicates the question of, “how do we respond if Hamas kills a bunch of people.”

Yeah, I’d be interested in how many people go to the inauguration of other countries heads of state.

Like, my best guess is that it’s a dig at, like, Gov Abbott, but I agree that I don’t think I’d expect him to, even if he was a Democrat.

Do they have the exact same amount of experience as well?

Like, even if their platforms are the same, they probably have different backgrounds and accomplishments.

But does it protect a company who is throwing out food that someone then eats? They aren’t a good Samaritan in that case.

And even if it’s lawful federally, they may run against local ordinances.

And even if every single thing is above board, that still doesn’t stop them from getting sued. It just means they’d win. But legal costs being what they are, it’s probably cheaper to just run off anybody who might be litigious before something can happen.

I think this theory of science is so prevalent in this thread because you have to adhere to it in order to dunk on Elon Musk.

I doubt most of these ardents would have taken this position in a random thread about sea cucumbers or something.

I like dunking on Musk as much as the next guy, but the amount of double-think people are willing to commit to to do it is always pretty off-putting to me.

It’s like every ArsTechnica article on SpaceX has people come out of the woodwork to say that their accomplishments are trash and not even worth reporting because of Elon, which, like, you have to be delusional if you don’t think SpaceX is absolutely killing it.

Believing in alchemy isn’t quite the slam dunk you think it is, since at the time we didn’t even know atoms existed, lol. It turns out that people who have massive gaps in the information available to them come to wrong conclusions sometimes, lol.

You’re just restating the position that I’ve already argued a ton elsewhere in the thread, so instead I’ll ask for a moment of introspection.

Do you believe you would have taken this stance if Elon Musk hadn’t taken the opposite one?

You are currently arguing that Isaac Newton wasn’t a scientist until that moment someone found his notebooks, at which point he magically became one. You’re arguing that none of the people who did the research on nuclear physics during WW2 that led to the development of the atomic bomb were scientists, since none of that research was intended for publication or peer review.

Would you have said Oppenheimer wasn’t a scientist outside of the context of this image we’re responding to?

At this point I just feel like I’m arguing against people who are knowingly taking a position they never would have taken if not to “own Elon Musk.” It’s the knee jerk reaction of “I can’t agree with that person I hate, so I’ve gotta argue the opposite.”

Which, look, I get the hate and like to see him dunked on as much as the next guy, but it’s the definition of arguing in bad faith if you don’t actually believe the thing you’re arguing for.

Peer review isn’t typically included in the list of steps to the scientific method. Or, if it is, it’s a coda, not part of the main steps.

Dictionary.com for example lists the commonly accepted steps, and then follows it up with “usually followed by peer review and publication.”

https://www.dictionary.com/browse/scientific-method

Note the “usually.”

It’s also worth noting that there is no real “formalized” or “official” scientific method. Just some agreed upon commonalities. Any dozen science books will give you a dozen different graphs of the steps, and no two will be the same.