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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 10, 2025

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Surely he’s burning credibility, too.

You know, I want to take a longer stab at this part. This is less "What I believe" or even "How I think things should be" and more "Is this just the human condition?"

What even is credibility? Is it being absolutely truthful and aligned with reality in every word you say? Or is it delivering the goods, what you said along the way be damned? Musk has a long record of optimistic timelines for various technological achievements. I recall full Falcon 9 reusability was regularly years behind where Musk would confidently say it would be. All's said and done though, none of those "lies" mattered. SpaceX developed a fully reusable rocket and nobody else is even close a decade later, much less beat SpaceX to market in the few years Musk was off in his estimates.

I also recall the story about how Tetris was licensed to Nintendo. Some businessman shamelessly lied that he had the rights to it, signed the paperwork with Nintendo, and then flew off to Russia to do whatever it took to actually secure the rights. He lied... but he did deliver the goods. What does that say about his credibility? He certainly wasn't blacklisted or anything, and in fact goes around bragging to an adoring press, telling the story over and over again.

I was reading The Odyssey lately, and towards the end there was this peculiar part that really struck me where it's mentioned that Odysseus' maternal grandfather was a "world renowned perjurer and thief". Just the way it was phrased, as an admirable thing to be known as struck me as a hilarious bit of bronze age morality. But this more or less meshed with the rest of the bronze age morality on display in The Iliad and The Odyssey, where lying, cheating and stealing is just smart and brings honor if you succeed. Only failure is dishonorable. The line about his grandfather just served to further snap it into focus. One might think we've left that behind, but we're the same human animal now as we were then.

We still say "Fake it till you make it" after all.

So, with respect to Musk, Trump, or anyone's credibility, I think they can lie as much as they want so long as they deliver the good more often than not. Zelensky has a 4% approval rating? Fuck it, why not. Does a ceasefire get declared soon, or some sort of lasting peace agreement? That's credibility. Nobody will remember Musk's tweet when peace and prosperity returns.

World War 3 breaks out and Kiev eats a few megatons? Well, that tweet might end up in the history books, and not in a good way.

I don't especially enjoy this view of the world. And when the shoe is on the other foot, I will likely be losing my ever loving fucking mind that the other side is lying up a storm and "getting away with it".