I also used to like him or at least respected him a bit more, I think the best way I can put it is that he seems lost in his own sauce.
I remember listening to someone describe a conversation they had with him or where he was speaking, and he relayed that Elon was telling them that in his world he can't relate to people because to him its like everyone is a toddler mentally and he has to go down to their level....now, I just fully don't believe that, that sounds like the most contrived "I'm a genius peasants" story imaginable, something out of a movie.
He seems to open up more when talking to people he considers "on his level" or at least deeply interested in what he is interested in. Take for example photographer and journalist Tim Dodd. Since Tim has a huge passion for rockets and actually wants to dig into the details of rocket engine cycles, manufacturing scale up - all the stuff Elon finds interesting - he really opens up.
That's actually pretty common among those "gifted with mild ASD/ADHD" types, they can't be assed to talk about anything that doesn't pique their interest. I struggled with it a lot until I learned to be more social with other folks' topics of discussion. I think Elon is the logical endpoint of what happens when you have zero pressure to socially accommodate.
It does seem like he's increasingly emboldened to act an ass since being crowned world's richest man.
On the other hand, he says outright stupid things all the time and only if he gets into a topic you know a thing or two about, you realize how wrong he often is.
One thing that almost everybody on HN should be able to judge as completely wrong is his claim about "L5 autonomy very close / later this year" [1].
L5 autonomy is the equivalent of the halting problem. L5 is a goal that can't be achieved [2], just like no program can be written that determines if the input program will ever terminate. [3]
So what to make of this, if this apparently smart guy says entry-level stupid things?
Edit: Because so many replies here about why I compare it to the Halting problem: That comparison is invalid as many of you pointed out. My reasoning was not in a strict mathematical sense, but more like this: even experienced humans can't drive in every condition. There are situations where you just need to stop. L5 autonomy will only work if we create AGI (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_general_intelligenc...), so that the system can observe itself and think about itself. An AGI might be possible (in the far future), whereas the Halting problem is mathematically impossible. Thanks for pointing this out.
The difficulty of creating L5 autonomy and the provable impossibility of the halting problem are not comparable at all.
There is absolutely nothing fundamental that makes L5 autonomy impossible, while the halting problem is provably impossible, as normally formulated.
I don't know how close or far away L5 autonomy is, but it's definitely theoretically reachable, while the halting problem is always going to be impossible.
Halting problem comparison is silly, but L5 autonomy as defined ("all conditions") is probably not attainable.
A car that would complete all the trips I'm willing to complete, and some more, but refuses under some circumstances (e.g. whiteout blizzard conditions) would be a L4 vehicle under the ISO definition.
When we are actually have cars that sufficiently close to what humans can do in terms of range of condition, I suspect the level 5 definition will be updated to be more like:
Can drive in approximately the same set of conditions as a human (professional driver?), possibly being unwilling to drive in certain (seldom encountered) conditions where most humans would, but offset by being willing to drive in conditions few people would.
Importantly, the car must avoid completely giving up on driving mid trip (as opposed to deciding "too dangerous, turn around and go back at next opportunity"), unless conditions are comparable to those in which a human would give up mid trip (which are pretty limited, as humans seldom just stop and give up on the road unless the car is broken down, or fully stuck. At worst, in some really bad conditions, humans may pull other to wait for the storm/extreme-fog/etc to blow over.)
Or perhaps at that point we won't need the definition anymore. It becomes a bit arbitrary and market-y at that point. Assuming that we don't end up with a single vendor.
"My BMW still drove during the snows in February, but my neighbor's Tesla said it wouldn't drive 2 of the days." "Yah, but mine doesn't insist that the windows are perfectly clean and pristine before starting a trip!"
We probably should never have had level 5, but split L4 into a couple levels: heavily geofenced/restricted vs. relatively unlimited applicability with some restrictions.
L5 autonomy is a absolutely a long way off (if ever practially acheivable) and Elon is a bullshit artist, but I don't understand your comparison to the halting problem. Could you elaborate?
I interperate your comparison to the halting problem to mean that even if we ignore the feasability of a particular solution, it is literally an impossible problem to solve.
My understanding of L5 is driving without external human intervention.
In one sense we already have the technology to do that - our brians. It would never be feasible (or ethical), but if we could put a human brain inside every tesla, wouldn't that achieve L5?
I think equating to the halting problem is silly, but the ISO levels are a bit of a mess.
* Level 5 is a vehicle that never needs a human to take over and can drive in "all conditions". Humans do not meet this driving standard.
* Level 4 is a vehicle, that within a set of vehicle-defined conditions can drive the vehicle without a human ever having to take over. It refuses to drive unless the conditions are met.
So a level 4 car could be a vehicle that can drive in a 1 block area of residential streets only... or something that can drive in way more conditions than I could safely attempt, but refuses to drive in say, whiteout blizzard conditions at night.
> In one sense we already have the technology to do that - our brians. It would never be feasible (or ethical), but if we could put a human brain inside every tesla, wouldn't that achieve L5?
It would achieve L5 of a sort, but people don't usually mean "L5 autonomy" in the sense of "capable of crashing the vehicle deliberately to protest the horror of their existence".
I mean, he has a pretty clear financial incentive to say stuff like this given that he runs an auto manufacturer that heavily invests in vehicular automation.
Not saying he's right, but find me a company that doesn't polish their own turds, even just a little bit. Everyone trying to sell something is painting the best picture of their product possible.
Yeah, but even this doesn't seem very thoughtful. He recently acknowledged his predictions around full self-driving were wrong, and said it was because he'd failed to appreciate that it would essentially require artificial general intelligence.
Then he claimed we'd have that solved by 2023.
Not sure what the upside is of being known for repeatedly making non-rational predictions and being wrong.
> Not sure what the upside is of being known for repeatedly making non-rational predictions and being wrong.
It can significantly move markets in the short term, which he seems to have become adept at doing over the last few years. And unfortunately, the stock market isn't really interested in long-term thinking, it's largely about breaking news and twitter rumors nowadays.
Well, he's definitely mastered market manipulation. I take your point there.
But, the degree of absurdity across predictions undermines even that strategy over time. I think he does himself a disservice here. He should get out of his own way and allow his actual achievements to speak louder than irrational predictions (and other distractions).
I think he knows intellectually that a lot of his claims and predictions are bogus, but he also knows that his fanboys are all over it. Look at the amount of preorders for cars that - as it turns out - were years away still, if at all (thinking of the new roadster, pick-up truck and big trailer truck at the moment). Look at Tesla's stock which is based entirely on hype and less so on actual product, market share or financial results. Look at how many companies and universities around the world started developing a Hyperloop just because he mentioned it - I don't even know if there was like a grant for it or some other financial incentive.
Intellectually everyone can deduct that a long distance hyperloop is science fiction, ridiculously expensive, complicated, and will likely face long outages at any incident (see the channel tunnel, but like if it was 10-100x as long and a vacuum). But because Musk says it with Confidence, an army of fans jumps onto it.
Unfortunately you are doing the very thing that you accuse Musk of doing. L5 autonomy is not formalized (nor do I think it is able to be formalized) to the extent that would permit a rigorous proof showing it is isomorphic to the halting problem.
Your claim conflates a nebulous, squishy, human goal with a formally and rigorously proven mathematical problem. The only support offered is links to wikipedia and news articles, none of which help connect the two in an equally formal and rigorous fashion.
I know what the halting problem is and I had to study why it cannot work.
However, for L5, you just have a quote saying it doesn't work. We know it is mathematically possible for L5 to work because, well, humans perform at that level. We know that our vision, our ears, our hands and senses are enough input to solve the problem.
Do you have a direct connection between them or are you just using it as a metaphor for an unsolvable problem?
I mean, they already ship it, don't they? How do their customers square these statements with what they were sold and can enable with the flick of a button?
Or is this FSD in the sense of "my car can drive itself home after dropping me off" type of thing?
Hmm... While I don't see any evidence that L5 autonomous driving is near, I don't follow your argument that L5 is equivalent to the halting problem. Can you explain?
I am not convinced that L5 is fundamentally impossible (unless we posit that humans are also not L5 autonomous, which I suppose one could argue, as they are prone to driving errors). Granted I subscribe to Universality, and assume that humans are not capable of hyper-computation.
That Waymo CEO quote is about feasibility of fully autonomous driving in snow / rain. Seems unreasonable to even expect that. But I don't think it's as intractable as the halting problem. There's no formal proof against feasibility of L5.
But as far as Musk, yes he lies and isn't shy about it. It's shameless and overt. Perhaps he justifies it as being part of his job.
Will never be achieved? Only if humanity dies ous quickly. If, literally, even the dumbest people can learn how to drive, I'm sure with enough time we'll be able to replicate that autonomously.
I watched those interviews on his Everyday Astronaut YouTube channel.
Musk looked bored with Tim, was often evasive, gave the appearance of wanting to get away from a fanboy.
The few times he would "open up" it was more like a recitation from someone to a disinterested audience — or as though Musk's mind was somewhere else, not really engaged or focused on the interviewer.
EDIT: Skimming the two-part interview again, Musk seems to switch between seemingly being engaged to not. Maybe it is because the interview went on really long and appears to be uncut.
That's charitable. That was a really long interview/behind the scenes. I also interpreted it mostly as being tired (he normally works obscene hours and around this time he was particularly burning both ends).
I think it's telling that he didn't tell Tim to scram or he even got that close of a look at all. If he wanted to get away, he could have easily done so.
The disparity is even more obvious in the pressers when reporters ask typical reporter questions, vs when someone (often Tim, but there are others) asks something technical.
> The disparity is even more obvious in the pressers when reporters ask typical reporter questions, vs when someone (often Tim, but there are others) asks something technical.
Can you even imagine being Musk and running an EV company and a rocket company and having to field questions from your typical journalists? Like that Q from a journalist about why the new image of the black home at the center of our galaxy is so blurry: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31353677.
one thing about that interview i've always wondered about. There was a part where Musk was talking about the heat shield and lamenting about progress and then watched some guy bang on a heating tile with their hands for about 10 seconds. After that, he picks up his phone to make a call then the interview cuts to a different scene entirely. I get the feeling that phone call was not a pleasant one and SpaceX asked it be removed from the footage.
Later on when he was giving that update at Starbase he mentioned the heat shield and thanked someone for a "robust" shield. I couldn't quite tell if he was being sarcastic or not.
not trying to make excuses but Musk mentioned at the end he was suffering from pretty bad back pain too. Back pain on your feet really sucks and can destroy a coherent thought.
Having said that, Musk is pretty much the worst communicator i've ever heard at the C suite level. I hope/pray he's better when talking to direct reports trying to get his crazy ass ideas and timelines done. Those poor poor people if he's not...
> That's actually pretty common among those "gifted with mild ASD/ADHD" types, they can't be assed to talk about anything that doesn't pique their interest.
Despite people in tech conflating ASD/ADHD and using them as some kind of weird bragging right (and excuse for not considering others), I don't know that there is any public information about his having either condition.
> He seems to open up more when talking to people he considers "on his level" or at least deeply interested in what he is interested in.
That's just called childish behavior, and despite it's name it is common in a lot of adults, not just Musk.
But most adults who act that way can't get away with it. When it is paired with wealth and a megaphone as it is with Musk and others like him, not only can they get away with it, but it can be amplified by a mass following of people who wish they could get away with it, and live vicariously through them. That is basically how cults work.
He openly admitted to having (deprecated term) Asperger's syndrome on SNL.
> That's just called childish behavior,
That's pretty judgy, IMHO.
> But most adults who act that way can't get away with it. When it is paired with wealth and a megaphone as it is with Musk and others like him, not only can they get away with it, but it can be amplified by a mass following of people who wish they could get away with it, and live vicariously through them.
Let’s not diagnose him sympathetically without evidence
He’s posting his cold brew pics to Twitter. Caffeine is a psychoactive substance that can foster manic behavior. Lack of sleep can create cognitive stability issues. Been there with both.
Who knows if he’s taken other things here and there as Mr Private Plane bounces around socializing.
Despite Twitter, how much of Elon’s life we don’t see is significant.
That’s pretty evident with his technobabble. He uses just enough technical buzzwords that impress non-technical folks and acts like he is an expert in every topic he talks about.
Currently being in my x-th, and out of order rewatch, of DS9 I kind of blame Star Trek for that. Technobabble, check. Geniusus saving the day and universe, check. Moral superiority, check. Throw in some Tony Stark vibes and you have it. And social media influencing.
> Technobabble, check. Geniusus saving the day and universe, check. Moral superiority, check.
It's a shame that these are so often the takeaways from a show that is at its core about a group of people with different skillsets and backgrounds working together with mutual trust and respect to further a common goal.
I mentioned that it is my x-th tike watching DS9? I like Star Trek, there simply are some aspects that didn't age too well, or that I see differently now.
As a comparison, back the day I t liked Babylon 5 better. Tried watching it again and just couldn't the way I can always rewatch ST TNG, DS9 or even Voyager.
Apologies, I didn't mean that as a statement about you personally. I more meant to agree that those are aspects of Trek that many latch on to (while missing some of the healthier lessons).
Trek has a lot of those. Dax as a gender fluid character for example. Or Data being an artificial life form. The risk of the Federation becoming military dictatorship.
On the other hand there is the fact that Starfleet is the de-facto military junta, a morally fine one of course. Or moral high horse crap like the prime directive. The overall optimism is good so, and especially DS9 did a good job in showing the ambivalency that comes from ideals meeting real politics. E.g. the arc between Sisko and the Maquis, having Sisko side with, of all people, war criminal Dukat.
I agree but I'm also unsure if he's putting on that persona because his audience has reacted to it in a positive way. Flanderisation, I think they call it?
Flanderisation is a little different -- generally applied to fictional characters, its when a single trait overrides every other aspect of your personality. Ned Flanders on the Simpsons is the inspiration for the term: a character initially created as a foil and mirror for Homer Simpson (kind, calm, and collected where Homer is typically brash, emotional, and chaotic) became a one-note character defined by his faith.
I guess you could kind of apply it to Musk in that he seems to revel in being something of a jerk, but (in the view of someone who's been very skeptical of Musk for a while) it's not an all-consuming thing.
My thoughts on this are that extremely smart, hard-charging people with heavy narcissistic traits are "constrained" in their earlier years by:
1. They still need to follow the basic rules of society, i.e. people haven't started "God-Emperor Elon" memes yet, so not every single person is going to bow down.
2. Before they've achieved amazing success, they aren't 100% confident in their other-wordly abilities. Now, given his success with PayPal, Tesla, and Space-X, it's easy for him to believe his own press.
Thus, Elon is now at the point where all of his negative traits are essentially allowed to "run wild" because they are constrained neither by society at large, nor his own doubts.
I would have genuinely laughed out loud if someone said that to my face. My reaction would have been to give him a reality check - "My man, you may know some things, but definitely don't know it all!". Perhaps, also ask him - "Have you considered that some of those people considered talking to you as dealing with a toddler who thinks he knows it all?"
Then he laughs, turns away and talks to somebody else and leaves. He will still feel superior and not waste time.
See for instance https://youtu.be/ye8zcgxWMDc where he only stays as it's a major presse event (the guy buy his side was running for chancellor to succeed Merkel; and yeah the questions were "dumb" but with your questions you won't get a better response)
At least for Assange, one can say that being holed up for years in an embassy room and now having to face decades in an US prison (or even the death penalty!) isn't going to make anyone feel well.
I do, I happen to be one, but I've never approached someone who wasn't an engineer like they have the mental capacity of a child (baring literal children). I can't play the cello, but I know music majors who can and they would struggle in Thermo. I don't see how anything but hubris can make someone see differently.
> I can't play the cello, but I know music majors who can and they would struggle in Thermo.
You can use thermo to build civilization, but you can't use a cello to do that!
> I don't see how anything but hubris can make someone see differently.
We don't know the context of this conversation with Musk. In "just between us engineers" conversations, there's plenty of hubris to go around. It's not just engineers, of course. Many of the highly educated professionals I know will express demeaning opinions about religious people or rural folks after a few drinks.
To be clear, I don't think being condescending is a virtue. But I don't see any reason to single Musk out for that specifically. I don't see him talking shit about how stupid everyone is, like many people do.
Good engineering is a team effort. Engineers unwilling to listen because of some self-percieved superiority complex are bad at that. And they hardly get any better.
I don't mean to defend snobishness, but it is possible to be in the top 10% of your field and dismiss anybody not in the top 30% of your field. That comes across as arrogant and dismissive to almost everybody because it is. But it doesn't mean you can't work in a team of equals.
Somebody like Anish Giri might be a very good sport and play a (very short) game of chess with me, but I doubt he would expect to learn anything from it. Of course, he probably wouldn't waste his time on me. Either way, he would still be a great asset to help somebody like Ian Nepomniachtchi prepare for a tournament.
Of course, being considerate and welcoming to everybody all the time is super awesome. Those who manage it have my respect whether they are perceived as the best in their field or not.
> it is possible to be in the top 10% of your field and dismiss anybody not in the top 30% of your field
This is how the 10% end up with 5 jobs in 8 years, watching those who they thought were beneath them rise up and take leadership positions because they're too much of a pain in the ass to work with.
It's a particular kind of intelligence. I'm actually in a relationship with somebody who tends to lean this direction. If you know what you're dealing with it's not too burdensome.
What's happening is, you have a person (Elon) of exceptional intelligence, so they can recognize a thing or concept and instantly follow it out to rational conclusions faster than the people around them, but they have not developed their intuitive side and don't respect the empty part, the unknown part, of the problem space.
It's like that halting problem thing: they become so accustomed to being able to see 'the answer' that they get blind to the mystery, the ambiguity of the non-answers and the areas where a real innovation will come from. They're not surprised by anything, or surprisable, so they become a specific kind of intelligent, very very quick and correct.
If you're a designer/inventor/artist type person you rely much more heavily on the non-answer spaces because those are where you work. That's not Elon. He has people for that, and takes the credit for their work, and impresses them so much with his ability to be quick that they go right along with it. In real terms they could not get their stuff done without him as that ringleader, figurehead, the 'Mr. Outside' there to impress the masses and get them to give him their money. It's a symbiotic relationship and Elon has done that over and over.
Don't look to Elon personally to have the revolutionary idea. However, if you show him one, he may well see where it leads way quicker than you do… and take it, and make a business out of it, and then hire you and have you doing it whilst taking a big cut of what you earn from it.
In this way Elon 'gets' capitalism as well and quickly as he gets everything else. He's definitely the man for late stage capitalism.
This is a pretty good observation IMO. I've always wondered why his timelines are so ridiculous. It jives with what you said because maybe he looks at current state and can follow it to the end state but misses the unknowns in-between. The devil is always in the details. But i would expect that of someone relatively new to the job of GettingThingsDone and Musk has been doing this for a long time. I can't get my head around why his timelines are so outside the realm of reality. Any date he gives i just mentally ignore because it's wildly unreliable.
> not that uncommon among people with Asperger-like traits
Lets get one thing straight. If you are on the spectrum, the reason you act like this is because you don't understand that you are doing something wrong. Its a spectrum, normally around social interaction, and not understanding, or being able to pick up on the slow of social information.
However for most high functioning people it is possible, with work, to mitigate those "negative" qualities.
It is not an excuse to be a dick. What Elon is doing is a choice. He is perfectly capable of interacting with people enough to have a series of relationships with people without making them feel like shit. I would therefore postulate that whilst he might be on the spectrum, he has worked hard to mitigate it.
> Lets get one thing straight. If you are on the spectrum, the reason you act like this is because you don't understand that you are doing something wrong.
This might be a nitpick, I wouldn't describe it as an "understanding" problem. Usually we understand that there are social cues and what they mean (at least in the mild cases). The difference is in the strength of that signal.
It's like as if people have a warning indicator when doing things socially inept. Most folks seem to have a loud klaxon "You are being an ass! Stop that!". With ASD, it's more like a quiet "check engine" light that's easy to overlook.
If you never experience the social pressure to actively look for that indicator light (see exhibit E.), you never really build strong social graces. Or, maybe you just don't give a damn about masking, too tired, just not interested.
> Or, maybe you just don't give a damn about masking, too tired, just not interested.
I strongly feel this is the case with not only Musk, but a lot of high ranking "leaders"; I believe that you need an amount of ruthlessness, of indifference, an ability to turn off your morals to be in that position and get even richer. I mean just look at how he fucks his staff over and expects them to work ridiculous hours, bragging about how much he works (the difference being he gets paid for every second he is alive, while staff only gets paid for contract hours).
My 13 year old child reached this epiphany just this week (ADHD, not Aspergers). They told me "whenever I think about something, I am really interested in it but then I simply stop thinking about it and do something else." They were a little upset because they wanted to continue with those interesting activities. We had a nice long talk about reaching a maturity point where their active thoughts can control their impulses.
Yes, it is more complex than simply "mind over matter", but it's still an important development milestone.
> If you are on the spectrum, the reason you act like this is because you don't understand that you are doing something wrong.
completely untrue, nearly all autistic people I know including me are hyper-aware of social situations and specifically act in ways to avoid being a dick. this is a pop-psychology notion of autism.
Yeah, but that's because we spent our childhoods and young adulthoods dealing with the consequences of not understanding what we were doing wrong, and put effort into figuring out what we were doing wrong and fixing it.
Now, I don't think Musk never faced consequences when he was young, and never learned this stuff, but I do think he faces absolutely no consequences today, and is happy to not put in any effort.
Your last sentence resonates with me. I would add that he might consider different efforts he might make and determine that it wouldn't change the results. He might offend a different 2/3 of the audience and please a different 1/3 of the audience. So why exhaust yourself all the time when the outcome is arguably indistinguishable?
Somebody on the outside might see a big difference in result, say a 50% approval rating vs a 35% approval rating. But from the inside it can all look the same: "everybody hates me anyway" or "most people love me anyway".
> Now, I don't think Musk never faced consequences when he was young, and never learned this stuff, but I do think he faces absolutely no consequences today, and is happy to not put in any effort.
my late step-father would say this person needs an "ass-whoopin"
> the reason you act like this is because you don't understand that you are doing something wrong
No, it's actually because you don't think it's wrong in the first place.
I understand why people prefer to lie to protect other's emotions, or why people prefer being high-status rather than being right, but I disagree with that, I think it's wrong.
> but are so fucking tired of masking all the time you just do it anyway.
I feel like "masking" is being used for "be polite". I didn't decide to be rude, I decided not to mask my disability.
That is bullshit.
People on the spectrum may have a harder time understanding what is rude, and that may give some passes when you don't realize it. But if you decide to ignore what you've learned is rude, you're just an ass.
"Being polite" is emotional labor, whether or not that labor takes the form of "masking" a disability. While of course we should be respectful of those we engage with, avoidance of emotional labor should always take precedence over shallow notions of politeness that have nothing to do with actual respect for others.
And "going to bathroom and not pissing on the floor" is physical labor. Even more so if you are on crutches.
I completely disagree with your artificial distinction between "being respectful to others" and "politeness". Politeness is defined as being respectful to others
We all benefit from a more polite interaction. To refuse to be polite because it requires effort is just taking advantage of the system without paying it back.
I don't think being rich is his end goal. His goal is to do great things, to advance humanity (in very specific ways), maybe having a great legacy. Being rich helps him achieve these goals, but so does building hype and being present in the media. Being rich and unknown isn't a great strategy to achieve his goals.
> Being rich helps him achieve these goals, but so does building hype and being present in the media.
Does it? I know literally nothing about the personality of the Wright brothers. Or Henry Ford. Or Thomas Edison. Their legacy is their inventions. Hype and media coverage are temporary at best. And unfortunately, Musk's hype and media presence tends to show him at his worst. I'm not sure whether Musk fans realize how many non-fans actually despise the guy. If anything, he's wrecking his legacy. Shut up and build stuff.
Alternative take, things like the space program; while there are some prominent names in there like Wernher von Braun and Louis Armstrong, the endeavour which changed human history was an endeavour by many people, not just a few individuals with Personalities. Same with other current endeavours like nuclear fusion and the LHC; I can't name any individual person behind those projects. They are a lot more selfless.
Meanwhile, there's great engineers working at both Tesla and SpaceX, but the only person you know is Elon.
I mean, Thomas Edison may as well be a 200 year old Elon Musk. Practically all he did was be a hype man.
Ford was pretty similar from my reading.
Both men had early career success and worked harder than most at achieving their goals. But their ongoing successes were very much political and public perception. Ford especially was incredibly politically active and noisy about it.
I imagine Elon's legacy (should he be remembered) will not be his twitter shitposting, but electric cars and rocketry.
> But their ongoing successes were very much political and public perception. Ford especially was incredibly politically active and noisy about it.
Nobody remembers Ford's political activism. Apparently he ran for US Senate once and lost. Is there any reason to think that Ford's political activism had anything to do with the success of the Ford Motor Company?
Ford hyping cars is fine and expected. Ford hyping politics doesn't really seem to add anything. In fact, it appears that there were some antisemitic writings associated with Ford, there was a lawsuit and a consumer boycott, and he was forced to apologize.
A common fallacy is to assume that everything a successful person does in life contributes to their success. OJ Simpson was one of the greatest football running backs ever, and he was also a murderer. You might say, "if he wasn't a violent person, then he wouldn't have been a great running back", but somehow Barry Sanders managed not to murder anyone.
Edison and Ford had the small detail that the product they sold became widespread among the population very quickly.
They represented the last effort after standing on the shoulders of giants, basically being the person who got to sign off the quality of life improvement and reap the financial reward. It happens, could have been somebody else but in the end it was them.
mr.Musk has been at the helm of Tesla for 20 years and his product is nor widespread (only 1% of total number of global vehicles sold in FY21) nor revolutionary from a quality of life standpoint (at the end of the day it's a car and you can hardly tell the difference between Tesla EVs and MercedesEQS, iBMW, Toyota EVs etc....if anything the Quality Of life gap is towards the other automakers)
That's like saying a 1930 Ford Model A is not that different from a 1930 Cadillac. That doesn't mean that Ford didn't change the automobile industry in a historic way before 1930.
Yes. Tesla changed the way people feel about Tesla.
Importantly, some of those people were in positions of influence at other auto manufacturers. So Tesla didn't have to capture 95% marketshare to change the industry.
I think that the blinding glamour of a Tesla has faded quite a bit. I think, 20 years on, we expect to see strong competition to them. The lane assist, the adaptive cruise control, the touch screen console... these are a bit boring now. Others have had them for a long time. Some probably had them before Tesla. Hopefully, several competitors will start offering 500 km range EVs. Tesla can still cult that advantage.
But the cult of Tesla scared established players. Everyone has scrambled to adapt since. And the public has been persuaded to keep the pressure on. Tesla represents an historic shift. I don't have to like them or buy them. But I recognize their place in history.
I have not enough karma to make the point above and not risking ending up underwater.
But the hell with it...I can always delete it.
I think people are taking crazy pills, they religiously follow this guy and his delusions about becoming a multiplanetary specie before the Sun becomes a red giant....5 billions years from now.
As they have such thoughts they have to walk through human feces and scenes from the Walking Dead...only with the homeless instead of zombies.
Stuff that would scare them to death if they saw it in a movie or compel them to pity if they happened in the background of a live news reportage from Ukraine.
Instead it's happening under their nose as they wonder if Mars is ambitious enough or we should aim directly for the Andromeda Galaxy.
I can't buy this. He very clearly seems to relish public attention for its own sake. Otherwise we'd have to accept that his hyping of random crypto tokens (e.g. DOGE) is somehow indirectly connected to saving the world or advancing humanity.
but he was the only black person I've ever met who hated Barack Obama. He was an extreme Republican, thought Democrats all worked for the anti-Christ, etc.
I figured there was no way he'd succeed at what he was trying to do because he'd need to make nice with the government no matter who the administration was. I haven't heard from him again.
I see Musk going down the same road. I can only imagine the last man is dying on Earth 1000 years from now and cursing: "If only Elon Musk didn't have to post that tweet we would have made it to Mars."
There’s absolutely no reason to believe he’s on the right track
No science says “yes rockets and spreading through the stars is definitely the future for humans.”
The odds he’s just exacerbating damaging industrial feedback loops and a worse mess for the future are much higher than successful Mars colonies and extrasolar expansion coming from his efforts
He uses that attention and focus in ways that benefit the world at large. Like helping build more ethical AI's, or getting people to Mars. There's nothing wrong with that IMHO.
My concern is he losing his focus. I know I get distracted from the work I am supposed to be doing (sometimes my paid job but even more so at home). I really should be finishing some home renovation work but there is that mail box I need to finish, and the 3D printed lid for a mouse trap, and the synthesizer I am thinking of building, oh wait there is an nice branch from the plum tree we trimmed that I could turn into a flute on the lathe...
Elon really needs to focus on the energy and transportation thing that he really is good at.
sorry to pick you up on this, and i’m unable to phrase this in such a way as to not sound inflammatory (again, apologies):
* which ethical AI would that be?
* how many people has elon sent to mars now?
elon has marketed an image to people, one of a tony stark-like figure, that might do or say the wrong thing at the time, but who truly wants to make everything better.
the reality is that, whilst perhaps not a conman (although i find my opinion of him leaning to that end more each day), he’s definitely just another profit-driven business man, with little to no regard of the people around him. and probably a sociopath.
bill gates has done (a lot) more for humanity. and i’m not particularly fond of him, either.
There is something wrong instigating further extreme resource exhaustion to serve boyish Star Trek pipe dreams.
There’s absolutely no guarantee he’s on the right track. Humans expanding away from Earth is as likely as us being able to rewrite the speed of light.
There’s no rewriting the fundamentals of reality. One really bad day and Mars colony is wiped out. How much damage we do here before getting there is a real concern.
It never ceases to amaze me how many people consider some problems here on earth to be hopelessly intractable, but simultaneously consider a livable human colony on Mars to be not only achievable, but also not subject to the same supposedly intractable problems of today.
There really isn't a comparison between engineers figuring out how to build a sustainable biosphere on Mars, and the problems that we're presumably discussing on Earth, like climate change and pollution, which are political problems inasmuch as billion dollar business models are benefiting from them, and actively fighting your efforts to interfere.
I like how you try to extricate getting to Mars as it’s own thing despite the industrial effort to do so exacerbating climate problems that are political problems.
Please, go on. I want to hear more about how thermodynamics can be waved away for “just an engineering project.”
This is what I mean. Obsession and success with engineering has titillated people to the point of blind faith. Externalities do not exist in their conceptual void. It’s become akin to unfalsifiable religious belief.
> I like how you try to extricate getting to Mars as it’s own thing despite the industrial effort to do so exacerbating climate problems that are political problems.
If humanity doesn't spend the resources on spreading humanity throughout the universe, then the resources will be spent on disposable plastic toys that fill landfills. It's not as if an edenic utopia is being despoiled for this boondoggle. Our environment isn't in its precarious state because of too much space travel. We're debating over the disposition of a tiny fraction of our dwindling material resources, negligible in the grand scheme.
> I want to hear more about how thermodynamics can be waved away for “just an engineering project.”
If we have a limited period before climate doomsday, then we'd better get cracking on space travel before it's too late.
I don't take anyone that uses the Asperger moniker seriously anymore; the guy was - in all likelihood - an eugenicist who picked out the "good" kind of autistic children and sent the "bad" ones off to get "euthanized"; see e.g. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5907291/.
Plus, it's often used as an excuse or a mark of honor; an excuse for unacceptable behaviour, and a mark of honor for being super smart and not like those Other Autists who struggle in their day to day.
The word has been besmirched by its namesake and the behaviour of those using it to distinguish themselves from "other" people with autism.
I think it would just be different people complaining in that case.
(My impression of his politics is more that they’re anarchic then left/right, but I’m not excited enough by his words to listen beyond the presentations and random support for e.g. UBI).
Please cite examples to support this, er, rather extraordinary assertion. Which prominent left-wing figures have acted like Elon Musk and have been "completely forgiven"?
I'm struggling to understand what Elon Musk's crime actually is?
Being successful?
Having influence on the internet?
Not following the narrow railroad tracks of a particular ideology?
I don’t think they were stating it as in they had examples, they were extrapolating from other left leaning activities like BLM vs Insurrection. Similar aggressive approaches but only insurrection gets attention as bad.
> Jan 6th wanted to stop / prevent a democratic election process.
And possibly abduct or murder congresspeople (thinking of the guy with clearly visible tie wrap restraints, or the republican that was telling where to find democrat members of congress)
It feels like Elon Musk read that anecdote about how von Neumann spoke with three year-olds as equals, and somehow managed to conclude that the lesson was about expressions of superiority rather than about expressions of empathy.
The core difference is that von Neumann was a genius and did many, many things single handedly. I feel Musk is a businessman who would take credit for the work done by someone like von Neumann.
well given enough time who knows how history will judge Musk. Take Bill Gates, anyone working in tech in the 90s knows he's about as ruthless as you can possibly be. Now Gates is known as a saint as he tries to buy his way into heaven.
How has he lost his sauce? He's actually delivering on his two major companies. He's shipping electric cars at an insane growth rate. He's doing what car companies had 100 years to do and still can't get right in the US. All the other electric car companies are basically vaporware VC money pits. He's also delivering on SpaceX. I get it, you don't like his politics or share his sense of humor but don't pretend like he's some unhinged twitter personality.
Tesla revenue for the quarter ending March 31, 2022 was $18.756B, a 80.54% increase year-over-year.
Tesla revenue for the twelve months ending March 31, 2022 was $59.810B, a 74.73% increase year-over-year.
Tesla annual revenue for 2021 was $53.823B, a 70.67% increase from 2020.
Tesla annual revenue for 2020 was $31.536B, a 28.31% increase from 2019.
Tesla annual revenue for 2019 was $24.578B, a 14.52% increase from 2018.
> I get it, you don't like his politics or share his sense of humor but don't pretend like he's some unhinged twitter personality.
He called Vernon Unsworth a "pedo guy" in a tweet after he rescued all of those kids in Thailand and criticized Musk's plan to build a small submarine to get them out. That wasn't a joke, it wasn't meant to elicit a humorous response, it was clearly meant to defame someone. Notice that accusing folks of pedophilia has become a pretty common tactic for the right nowadays.
Calling someone a pedo seems pretty unhinged for a billionaire responsible for running major companies, it honestly surprised me how Musk would spend his public energy saying that kind of stuff, and especially when you consider the power dynamics involved, it's hard to interpret his actions as anything other than driven by insecurity. But I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
It's slang. Maybe not tasteful or obscure but it is just an insult. You ever have someone attack you and call them a name? It's pretty human. Someone's life isn't defined by an insult he used years ago. You need to get over it...
No. A person in Musk’s position should know better than to behave this way, and perhaps to even bounce drafts of his communications off a trusted confidant for feedback before hitting “send.” Heck, I do this myself a couple times a month, and I’m nowhere near his level of power and influence. It’s not like he can’t afford an army of comms people.
When you have tens of millions of Twitter followers and are an international celebrity, it's reasonable expect a modicum of care when making public statements about a private individual. I don't really care how that phrase would be interpreted at a private school in South Africa in the 1980s. What matters is how it can reasonably be expected to be interpreted by the millions upon millions of people who heard it as a result of Musk using it.
It doesn't really matter if this was intentional malice or reckless negligence. It was wildly, wildly unacceptable either way.
> You ever have someone attack you and call them a name?
No, I'm a mature adult. Sure, I'll disagree with someone. Hell, I'll even say things like, "that was a bigoted statement", but I will never make up an insult to avenge an attack. I work every day to prevent that behaviour in my kids. I'm not going to replicate it in my life.
It's also not up to you to decide when someone "needs to get over it."
You know, it's funny to me how often the "just kidding, it's slang" argument gets used. You'd think someone as smart and talented as Musk would've figured somewhere along the way to actually say what they mean. Which strangely enough, he seems to do just fine most of the time. But you're right, it's all my fault and I should really get over it and be more empathetic towards the billionaires that can't seem to communicate clearly.
He didn’t just call him a pedo guy. Elon also emailed a bunch of journalists to make serious (and untrue) accusations that the guy was a “child rapist.”
Sure he's arrogant but I wouldn't rank his accomplishments and person hood by tweets. He has an incredible record as an engineering manager and investor and to brush that off is just silly.
I will brush that off, because the character of our leadership matters. It would be a regrettable outcome if our next generation of leaders acts as boorishly as Elon Musk does. We want leaders who inspire others to be the best version of themselves, and that includes treating others with respect and care.
I never liked him before and probably won't in the future. I doubt I'd like anybody who's literally dragging humanity into the future, but he is doing that.
Whether he's doing it right, or whether he's doing it well is an open question, but no other single person is to this degree shoving humanity forward this often and this much, as far as I know.
I remember listening to someone describe a conversation they had with him or where he was speaking, and he relayed that Elon was telling them that in his world he can't relate to people because to him its like everyone is a toddler mentally and he has to go down to their level....now, I just fully don't believe that, that sounds like the most contrived "I'm a genius peasants" story imaginable, something out of a movie.