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> We now live in an era where raising a billion dollars of other suckers' money and developing a new "app" to take selfies or find imaginary creatures in a port

> We now live in an era where raising a billion dollars of other suckers' money and developing a new "app" to take selfies or find imaginary creatures in a porta-potty is considered the apex of human civilization but investing your entire fortune in a quest to build a self-driving electric car is treated like dangerous, egomaniacal adventurism. It makes you wonder why Elon Musk couldn't just be content sitting on his Paypal money and living the lifestyle of the famous one percent. It certainly would have been less hassle. I wish this sentiment was more common. Don't we all want the future to win?

adventured 10y ago
> We now live in an era where raising a billion dollars of other suckers' money and developing a new "app" to take selfies or find imaginary creatures in a porta-potty is considered the apex of human civilization Except what the author said isn't actually true in any regard what-so-ever. Point out the start-up that has raised a billion dollars to take selfies or find imaginary creatures. It's such a wild exaggeration, it missed by 10 or 20 fold. Further, I can't locate nor have seen any evidence to support the claim that anybody considers those types of apps to be the apex of human civilization. Despite that bogus claim being endlessly repeated by the press and other cynics. Meanwhile Tesla has actually raised billions of dollars in capital. And meanwhile, Elon Musk is considered a visionary that is taking the human race forward and has accomplished breathtaking feats of technological integration and application. Tesla and SpaceX are renowned for what they're accomplishing, apps to take selfies are not - and they're not being lauded anywhere. (and no, Snapchat isn't an app to take selfies, it's a communication platform that is extraordinarily valuable to people and properly so) The author rehashed a very commonly abused strawman and then proceeded to beat on it.
- ethbro 10y ago
  > Further, I can't locate nor have seen any evidence to support the claim that anybody considers those types of apps to be the apex of human civilization. http://blog.samaltman.com/hard-tech-is-back http://blog.samaltman.com/hard-tech-is-back I think the public perception problem is that "people invest in / read about things they understand." By definition, people are less likely to understand an enterprise predicated on cutting edge research than a realization of an existing market need by deploying existing technology. So the bubble talks about Snapchat but not battery technology startups (side gripe about deplorable state of popular scientific reporting).
- fweespeech 10y ago
  > Except what the author said isn't actually true in any regard what-so-ever. Point out the start-up that has raised a billion dollars to take selfies or find imaginary creatures. It's such a wild exaggeration, it missed by 10 or 20 fold. --- Snapchat is an example of one that has, just fyi. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-snapchat-funding-idUSKCN0YH13Z http://www.reuters.com/article/us-snapchat-funding-idUSKCN0Y... > Messaging app Snapchat has raised $1.81 billion in funding, the company reported in a U.S. regulatory filing on Thursday, a sign that investor interest is strong despite concerns among some venture capitalists that the platform is struggling to attract advertisers.
  - danso 10y ago
    Snapchat is far more than a selfie-app. As the quote in your excerpt says, it's a "messaging" app. I don't use Snapchat myself, but the fact that it has enamored both the kids and whatever the hell pre-millennials who are too young to be Gen-X are called, even to the point of replacing Facebook as their goto way of communicating and sharing life experiences, makes me think that it's worth something to society.
    - rplst8 10y ago
      These platforms are worth nothing to society per se. They are worth something to investors in the potential returns they might yeild once they find a way to turn the aggregate data and metadata into a more acurate advertising model.
    - fweespeech 10y ago
      > Snapchat is far more than a selfie-app Yeah, a "selfie-app" is basically a "messaging app that is used primarily to send pictures". I'm sorry but there are 239042903490232930 of these and they don't justify this sort of fund raising in practical value to society.
crikli 10y ago
Everyone wants the future to win, even if they can't articulate what the hell that means, but who wants to disagree with it, because it sounds really cool, and nobody wants to not be cool. It's easy to take this glowing 10,000 foot view of Musk/Tesla. Get down much lower and there are...issues that smack very much of dangerous, egomaniacal adventurism. Exhibit one is marketing a car that as being able to drive itself, then blaming drivers when the car fails to drive itself. Also, I call bullshit on the idea that Musk isn't sitting on his fortune. It's everyone else's money he's using for fuel...$4.1B in government money IIRC plus god knows how much VC.
- themartorana 10y ago
  Pure electric cars, pushing towards driverless electric cars. I'm fine with government money being spent on a future free of fossil-fuel-fed explosion engines and human-driven bumper cars.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- btilly 10y ago
  Also, I call bullshit on the idea that Musk isn't sitting on his fortune. It's everyone else's money he's using for fuel...$4.1B in government money IIRC plus god knows how much VC. This comment doesn't even pass the laugh test for anyone who knows what happened to him in 2008 when all of his money was tied in his companies and then he got sued for divorce. He literally wound up running 3 companies that were imploding in different ways, and had to borrow from friends just to make living expenses. He pulled everything off by the skin of his teeth, starting with his 4th SpaceX launch getting into space instead of blowing up as the first three rockets did. He will raise money in every way that he can. Yes, this includes finding ways to get subsidies from the government if the government is willing to provide them. But it also includes investing his own money, time and effort. (And risking his life - his roadmap includes colonizing Mars, and he's serious about moving to that colony.)
  - 10y ago
krisoft 10y ago
I want the future to win. And we are one bug away from a Hindenburg moment. So if I think what they do is reckless I will say so. It's ludicrous to expect that an otherwise untrained, average human can keep up his or her attention while day by day the automation just works. It's just not how human psychology works. Someone called this particular kind of operation here the "deadly valley" because it's good enough to lure you to be relaxed and not good enough to solve all the kind of possible problems. I absolutely want the future to win, and I'm terribly afraid that Tesla in its hastiness might hurt the progress.
- intrasight 10y ago
  This issue has been long studied by the airlines and airplane manufactures, and they've still not found a solution http://news.nationalpost.com/news/world/disaster-on-autopilot-how-too-much-of-a-good-thing-can-lead-to-deadly-plane-crashes http://news.nationalpost.com/news/world/disaster-on-autopilo...
  - webXL 10y ago
    > While flight experts credit automated systems with helping improve safety and making airline operations more efficient, they caution that an overreliance on automation leaves pilots unprepared for tricky situations that require their expertise. Despite more crowded skies and terrorist attacks, airline safety has improved since (or perhaps during) autopilot came along [1]. Definitely not causation, but you could argue that autopilot allows pilots to fly more and make air travel more affordable, reducing the reliance on less safe forms of travel. Plus, if it bleeds it leads, and the public wants solutions for everything, despite having an improved quality of life from the technology (most likely). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_safety#Comparison_to_other_modes_of_travel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_safety#Comparison_to_...
    - intrasight 10y ago
      There is no doubt that we are better off with autopilot than without (true in planes and will soon be true in cars). The point of this ongoing research in human factors is to create systems where the pilot/driver work in tandem with the autopilot so that when the autopilot needs to hand control back to a human, the human is capable of receiving back control.
Shivetya 10y ago
The comparison is shit. Anyone can make a comparison that puts their position first, it is no different than politicians selling our rights down the drain "for the children". Your hyperbole isn't much better. The simple facts are, it does not work well enough to ensure the absolute safety of those using it or those not using it. It is horribly named for what it can actually do. Tesla needs to step up and admit it is not ready for prime time and since they cannot guarantee how their customers use it they cannot in good faith allow non designated testers from using it
FilterSweep 10y ago
On the contrary, the fact that it takes an entire fortune to build a self-driving electric car is also very telling. Building an "app" to take selfies or find imaginary creatures in a porta-potty is a lower CODB, obviously, but it's a product people apparently value and it can be done by a small team[0] instead of a fleet. There have been a few HN threads that discussed successful software/games/webapps that were developed by a single person (Slither.IO) Are we sure the future is really "winning" when it's headed toward a fully-immersive VR and hyper-intelligent AI that will essentially replace the need for most human labor? The chief point I'm making is it's all very relative. Rushing headfirst into a new world sounds nice, but have we even stopped to consider and react on the negative impact that Social Media and our current innovations have made? [0] http://www.wired.com/2015/09/whatsapp-serves-900-million-users-50-engineers/ http://www.wired.com/2015/09/whatsapp-serves-900-million-use...
- brandonmenc 10y ago
  > Are we sure the future is really "winning" when it's headed toward a fully-immersive VR and hyper-intelligent AI that will essentially replace the need for most human labor? If it's coupled with basic income, yes.
  - FilterSweep 10y ago
    Where is this "basic income" coming from?
    - brandonmenc 10y ago
      Yeah, that's definitely part of the problem.
gkya 10y ago
What does it mean for future to win? Is this a buzzword for transforming people's daily lives into a market for the latest brain farts of bright kids? Does it mean to over-spendingly reinvent the wheel?
forgetsusername 10y ago
>I wish this sentiment was more common. It might be a valid argument if any of us actually thought that Pokemon Go was the apex of human civilization. But we don't.
studentrob 10y ago
> Don't we all want the future to win? Yes. To get there, we can ask for more transparency from Tesla and other companies offering driver-assistance systems.
ModernMech 10y ago
If the "future winning" means beta testing driverless car technology on unsuspecting victims, then that's not a future I want to live in, sorry. Look, I'm a robotics engineer, so my job security and career prospects directly depend on technologies like autonomous cars becoming mainstream. That said, the way Tesla is rolling out this technology is just irresponsible. An excellent post from yesterday [1] succinctly outlined the deficiencies of the system, which are now obvious to people outside of Tesla. Given this list, if I were in charge there, this technology would NOT see the light of day until these defects were properly fixed. Beyond the technical problems, there is also a social issue that Tesla is exacerbating. For the last few years now, the general public has been hearing from a variety of popular media sources that autonomous cars are "right around the corner". People have been told that these cars will use their superior computer minds to virtually eliminate traffic accidents. Now you have Tesla producing a car with a feature that sounds a lot like "driverless car" to normal people; right or wrong, it seems like people are treating it with the expectation that it's one of these magical life-saving driverless cars they've been hearing about. To Tesla's credit, the feature does work well given the correct conditions. The common user probably couldn't tell you the difference between "autopilot" and an actual autonomous car. Yet, the user is not properly aware of the limits of the system, and Tesla itself doesn't do much to educate users about those limits. Further, Tesla doesn't seem to do anything to keep users safe when they get close to those edges. What you have here is insufficient and untested technology being used in a production environment by users who have the wrong expectations about what the technology is. The result, as we have seen, ends in death. And no, these failures are not inevitable conclusions of statistics. These failures are due to concrete, identifiable engineering and messaging issues that can and should have been corrected before the product was ever introduced to production cars. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12084011 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12084011
- chronolitus 10y ago
  I agree with that sentiment, however > unsuspecting victims Is a bit much in my opinion. They are operating heavy machinery, and decide not to follow the clearly stated operational guidelines. People are not children, driving a car is a responsibility. Note: I'm not saying that such accidents aren't tragic, or that the drivers 'deserve it' in any way. Simply pointing out that no one forced anyone to take their hands off the wheel, or subject themselves to driverless testing.
duaneb 10y ago
> Don't we all want the future to win? Just because you call it progress doesn't make it so.

> We now live in an era where raising a billion dollars of other suckers' money and developing a new "app" to take selfies or find imaginary creatures in a porta-potty is considered the apex of human civilization but investing your entire fortune in a quest to build a self-driving electric car is treated like dangerous, egomaniacal adventurism. It makes you wonder why Elon Musk couldn't just be content sitting on his Paypal money and living the lifestyle of the famous one percent. It certainly would have been less hassle. I wish this sentiment was more common. Don't we all want the future to win?

adventured 10y ago

> We now live in an era where raising a billion dollars of other suckers' money and developing a new "app" to take selfies or find imaginary creatures in a porta-potty is considered the apex of human civilization Except what the author said isn't actually true in any regard what-so-ever. Point out the start-up that has raised a billion dollars to take selfies or find imaginary creatures. It's such a wild exaggeration, it missed by 10 or 20 fold. Further, I can't locate nor have seen any evidence to support the claim that anybody considers those types of apps to be the apex of human civilization. Despite that bogus claim being endlessly repeated by the press and other cynics. Meanwhile Tesla has actually raised billions of dollars in capital. And meanwhile, Elon Musk is considered a visionary that is taking the human race forward and has accomplished breathtaking feats of technological integration and application. Tesla and SpaceX are renowned for what they're accomplishing, apps to take selfies are not - and they're not being lauded anywhere. (and no, Snapchat isn't an app to take selfies, it's a communication platform that is extraordinarily valuable to people and properly so) The author rehashed a very commonly abused strawman and then proceeded to beat on it.

ethbro 10y ago
> Further, I can't locate nor have seen any evidence to support the claim that anybody considers those types of apps to be the apex of human civilization. http://blog.samaltman.com/hard-tech-is-back http://blog.samaltman.com/hard-tech-is-back I think the public perception problem is that "people invest in / read about things they understand." By definition, people are less likely to understand an enterprise predicated on cutting edge research than a realization of an existing market need by deploying existing technology. So the bubble talks about Snapchat but not battery technology startups (side gripe about deplorable state of popular scientific reporting).
fweespeech 10y ago
> Except what the author said isn't actually true in any regard what-so-ever. Point out the start-up that has raised a billion dollars to take selfies or find imaginary creatures. It's such a wild exaggeration, it missed by 10 or 20 fold. --- Snapchat is an example of one that has, just fyi. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-snapchat-funding-idUSKCN0YH13Z http://www.reuters.com/article/us-snapchat-funding-idUSKCN0Y... > Messaging app Snapchat has raised $1.81 billion in funding, the company reported in a U.S. regulatory filing on Thursday, a sign that investor interest is strong despite concerns among some venture capitalists that the platform is struggling to attract advertisers.
- danso 10y ago
  Snapchat is far more than a selfie-app. As the quote in your excerpt says, it's a "messaging" app. I don't use Snapchat myself, but the fact that it has enamored both the kids and whatever the hell pre-millennials who are too young to be Gen-X are called, even to the point of replacing Facebook as their goto way of communicating and sharing life experiences, makes me think that it's worth something to society.
  - rplst8 10y ago
    These platforms are worth nothing to society per se. They are worth something to investors in the potential returns they might yeild once they find a way to turn the aggregate data and metadata into a more acurate advertising model.
  - fweespeech 10y ago
    > Snapchat is far more than a selfie-app Yeah, a "selfie-app" is basically a "messaging app that is used primarily to send pictures". I'm sorry but there are 239042903490232930 of these and they don't justify this sort of fund raising in practical value to society.

crikli 10y ago

Everyone wants the future to win, even if they can't articulate what the hell that means, but who wants to disagree with it, because it sounds really cool, and nobody wants to not be cool. It's easy to take this glowing 10,000 foot view of Musk/Tesla. Get down much lower and there are...issues that smack very much of dangerous, egomaniacal adventurism. Exhibit one is marketing a car that as being able to drive itself, then blaming drivers when the car fails to drive itself. Also, I call bullshit on the idea that Musk isn't sitting on his fortune. It's everyone else's money he's using for fuel...$4.1B in government money IIRC plus god knows how much VC.

themartorana 10y ago
Pure electric cars, pushing towards driverless electric cars. I'm fine with government money being spent on a future free of fossil-fuel-fed explosion engines and human-driven bumper cars.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
btilly 10y ago
Also, I call bullshit on the idea that Musk isn't sitting on his fortune. It's everyone else's money he's using for fuel...$4.1B in government money IIRC plus god knows how much VC. This comment doesn't even pass the laugh test for anyone who knows what happened to him in 2008 when all of his money was tied in his companies and then he got sued for divorce. He literally wound up running 3 companies that were imploding in different ways, and had to borrow from friends just to make living expenses. He pulled everything off by the skin of his teeth, starting with his 4th SpaceX launch getting into space instead of blowing up as the first three rockets did. He will raise money in every way that he can. Yes, this includes finding ways to get subsidies from the government if the government is willing to provide them. But it also includes investing his own money, time and effort. (And risking his life - his roadmap includes colonizing Mars, and he's serious about moving to that colony.)
- 10y ago

krisoft 10y ago

I want the future to win. And we are one bug away from a Hindenburg moment. So if I think what they do is reckless I will say so. It's ludicrous to expect that an otherwise untrained, average human can keep up his or her attention while day by day the automation just works. It's just not how human psychology works. Someone called this particular kind of operation here the "deadly valley" because it's good enough to lure you to be relaxed and not good enough to solve all the kind of possible problems. I absolutely want the future to win, and I'm terribly afraid that Tesla in its hastiness might hurt the progress.

intrasight 10y ago
This issue has been long studied by the airlines and airplane manufactures, and they've still not found a solution http://news.nationalpost.com/news/world/disaster-on-autopilot-how-too-much-of-a-good-thing-can-lead-to-deadly-plane-crashes http://news.nationalpost.com/news/world/disaster-on-autopilo...
- webXL 10y ago
  > While flight experts credit automated systems with helping improve safety and making airline operations more efficient, they caution that an overreliance on automation leaves pilots unprepared for tricky situations that require their expertise. Despite more crowded skies and terrorist attacks, airline safety has improved since (or perhaps during) autopilot came along [1]. Definitely not causation, but you could argue that autopilot allows pilots to fly more and make air travel more affordable, reducing the reliance on less safe forms of travel. Plus, if it bleeds it leads, and the public wants solutions for everything, despite having an improved quality of life from the technology (most likely). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_safety#Comparison_to_other_modes_of_travel https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aviation_safety#Comparison_to_...
  - intrasight 10y ago
    There is no doubt that we are better off with autopilot than without (true in planes and will soon be true in cars). The point of this ongoing research in human factors is to create systems where the pilot/driver work in tandem with the autopilot so that when the autopilot needs to hand control back to a human, the human is capable of receiving back control.

Shivetya 10y ago

The comparison is shit. Anyone can make a comparison that puts their position first, it is no different than politicians selling our rights down the drain "for the children". Your hyperbole isn't much better. The simple facts are, it does not work well enough to ensure the absolute safety of those using it or those not using it. It is horribly named for what it can actually do. Tesla needs to step up and admit it is not ready for prime time and since they cannot guarantee how their customers use it they cannot in good faith allow non designated testers from using it

FilterSweep 10y ago

On the contrary, the fact that it takes an entire fortune to build a self-driving electric car is also very telling. Building an "app" to take selfies or find imaginary creatures in a porta-potty is a lower CODB, obviously, but it's a product people apparently value and it can be done by a small team[0] instead of a fleet. There have been a few HN threads that discussed successful software/games/webapps that were developed by a single person (Slither.IO) Are we sure the future is really "winning" when it's headed toward a fully-immersive VR and hyper-intelligent AI that will essentially replace the need for most human labor? The chief point I'm making is it's all very relative. Rushing headfirst into a new world sounds nice, but have we even stopped to consider and react on the negative impact that Social Media and our current innovations have made? [0] http://www.wired.com/2015/09/whatsapp-serves-900-million-users-50-engineers/ http://www.wired.com/2015/09/whatsapp-serves-900-million-use...

brandonmenc 10y ago
> Are we sure the future is really "winning" when it's headed toward a fully-immersive VR and hyper-intelligent AI that will essentially replace the need for most human labor? If it's coupled with basic income, yes.
- FilterSweep 10y ago
  Where is this "basic income" coming from?
  - brandonmenc 10y ago
    Yeah, that's definitely part of the problem.

gkya 10y ago

What does it mean for future to win? Is this a buzzword for transforming people's daily lives into a market for the latest brain farts of bright kids? Does it mean to over-spendingly reinvent the wheel?

forgetsusername 10y ago

>I wish this sentiment was more common. It might be a valid argument if any of us actually thought that Pokemon Go was the apex of human civilization. But we don't.

studentrob 10y ago

> Don't we all want the future to win? Yes. To get there, we can ask for more transparency from Tesla and other companies offering driver-assistance systems.

ModernMech 10y ago

If the "future winning" means beta testing driverless car technology on unsuspecting victims, then that's not a future I want to live in, sorry. Look, I'm a robotics engineer, so my job security and career prospects directly depend on technologies like autonomous cars becoming mainstream. That said, the way Tesla is rolling out this technology is just irresponsible. An excellent post from yesterday [1] succinctly outlined the deficiencies of the system, which are now obvious to people outside of Tesla. Given this list, if I were in charge there, this technology would NOT see the light of day until these defects were properly fixed. Beyond the technical problems, there is also a social issue that Tesla is exacerbating. For the last few years now, the general public has been hearing from a variety of popular media sources that autonomous cars are "right around the corner". People have been told that these cars will use their superior computer minds to virtually eliminate traffic accidents. Now you have Tesla producing a car with a feature that sounds a lot like "driverless car" to normal people; right or wrong, it seems like people are treating it with the expectation that it's one of these magical life-saving driverless cars they've been hearing about. To Tesla's credit, the feature does work well given the correct conditions. The common user probably couldn't tell you the difference between "autopilot" and an actual autonomous car. Yet, the user is not properly aware of the limits of the system, and Tesla itself doesn't do much to educate users about those limits. Further, Tesla doesn't seem to do anything to keep users safe when they get close to those edges. What you have here is insufficient and untested technology being used in a production environment by users who have the wrong expectations about what the technology is. The result, as we have seen, ends in death. And no, these failures are not inevitable conclusions of statistics. These failures are due to concrete, identifiable engineering and messaging issues that can and should have been corrected before the product was ever introduced to production cars. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12084011 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12084011

chronolitus 10y ago
I agree with that sentiment, however > unsuspecting victims Is a bit much in my opinion. They are operating heavy machinery, and decide not to follow the clearly stated operational guidelines. People are not children, driving a car is a responsibility. Note: I'm not saying that such accidents aren't tragic, or that the drivers 'deserve it' in any way. Simply pointing out that no one forced anyone to take their hands off the wheel, or subject themselves to driverless testing.

duaneb 10y ago

> Don't we all want the future to win? Just because you call it progress doesn't make it so.