Me singing "Imagine" both accompanied by John Lennon and by myself.

 

Why on earth do people admire Elon Musk?

An article on Elon Musk.

Surely We Can Do Better Than Elon Musk 

[T]he CEO of Tesla, Inc., celebrated entrepreneur Elon Musk, is a liar, huckster, and moron, who regularly says things so ignorant that I cannot understand how they can come from a human adult, let alone one treated by his fans as a super-genius.

Musk comes out with most most obvious nonsense and ridiculous predictions imaginable.  It's bizarre that people think he's a genius. What's he ever said that would suggest this? He's a buffoon. It seems to me that most people are absolutely clueless when it comes to assessing someone's intelligence.

Regarding autonomous cars the article says:

Indeed, customers’ lives were very much at risk. Tesla drivers took Musk’s claim of an “autonomous” car seriously, and some over-relied on the system and got themselves killed. Now, sensible auto journalists are even refusing to use Tesla’s term “Full Self Driving Mode,” believing that it is false and dangerous. Musk has nevertheless charged customers $10,000 each for the promise of a “fully self-driving” feature on their cars. The fact that no such car is here, and none appears likely to be here soon, means there is already talk of class action lawsuits among those who forked over large sums on the assumption that when Musk said the cars would drive themselves he meant it. As Jalopnik asks: “Is [full self-driving] a genuinely earnest project with real goals and deliverables, or an elaborate scam to get a lot of money while delivering nothing?” If the latter, it’s the kind of deception that one might expect to result in a criminal trial—Elizabeth Holmes is currently facing felony charges for misleading people about what her blood tests could do. But Musk seems to skate through every scandal.

An elaborate scam I reckon. This will be why he's rich, by deceiving people with his preposterous predictions and promises.

We're decades away from full-driving cars, and anyone with any sense would realise they're not coming any time soon. (see all my posts on autonomous cars here, here, here, here, and here).

Naturalism isn't nihilism?

Someone just said to me in a facebook group:

 "I believe there's a reason and purpose to our lives. Naturalism isn't nihilism."//

I responded saying:

It is. It holds we are mere sophisticated biological robots with no free will living out our purposeless lives in a purposeless Universe. Very soon, we shall all cease to exist. Human beings will become extinct. The Earth will be swallowed up by the Sun when it turns into a red giant. And eventually, all life in the Universe will end. And nothing will ever happen again.

Naturalism could not be more bleak in its outlook. Of course, whilst we're still alive, we can enjoy ourselves. Create temporary meaning before eternal nothing descends upon us all.

I don't believe in any of that nonsense though. We have no reason to subscribe to naturalism.

The fetishizing of work

I read the following article:

The Cult of Busy-ness

The author says: 

[Steve Jobs] was a man who lived a life almost completely devoid of any reason to be alive. His renowned ascetic existence was grey and cheerless and boring beyond endurance. And… well… he’s dead. How is this success?

Our culture has a fixation on work. Success and worthiness, one's standing, have been defined by how hard one works and how much money one earns. For many people, work becomes the point of their existence. Without it they would become lost, be forced to look inside themselves and face the inevitable existential angst. We all need goals, and the goal of being a "success" and held in high esteem by others has a certain appeal.