I initially found this article pretty convincing and it made me like Elon Musk a bit more. There's certainly truth to the idea that some of the disagreeable idiosyncrasies that highly productive/intelligent people exhibit are the same things that make them as useful as they are and that too try to mitigate the idiosyncrasies is to mitigate the individuals future accomplishments. What I should have done next is outline what type of behavior is "disagreeable" and what behavior is harmful. When disagreeable behavior becomes a production function it pivots from disagreeable to endearing. In theory, it should be a simple task to distinguish between quirks and immoral decisions, but some accomplished public figures show that the lines tend to become blurred (likely true for normal human relations as well).
It should be noted that Greenspan bears a clear disdain for Musk and his "disagreeability." This shows through and prevents much of a sense of objectivity. In spite of this, there is still a robust and objectively accurate case to be made that Musk has ventured from disagreeable to fraudulent. Are the fraud and lies an additional disagreeability that we must accept in exchange for the chance of putting humans on mars? Does the world want the man at the helm of space exploration to be one who's tweets need a serious dose of scrutiny from the SEC?
Where is the equilibrium between disagreeability and innovation? What is the upper limit on lies that are acceptable from the man who does things like drive SpaceX to send Americans to the ISS from United States soil again? If the cost is acceptable to most where it is, how do you dissuade others from following a similar path of extreme disagreeability and the aforementioned dishonesty and fraud? Maybe most individuals can tolerate fraud in exchange for the wonder of space exploration, but we certainly cannot start tolerating it from anyone else.
Lots of great quotes like this at the link:
"When questioned about how the company reached its conclusions at Autonomy Investor Day, Musk responded, 'We just randomly threw some numbers on there.'"