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It's amazing to me the amount of negativity directed toward his projects and the millions of reasons people give for why they "won't work" (not necessarily on H

It's amazing to me the amount of negativity directed toward his projects and the millions of reasons people give for why they "won't work" (not necessarily on HN, but at least on general news websites). I'm starting to believe the only difference between those who start their own companies and those who don't is that the latter convinces themselves that it is impossible, never builds anything, and from their own lack of having ever produced anything, concludes that their original supposition was indeed correct.

dustinupdyke 10y ago
Many people think and are incentivized to think about how to optimize for today. Thinking about tomorrow can be counter-intuitive as to the way things work today, and it is pretty easy to construct negative arguments about tomorrow that are based on what we know right now.
aaron-lebo 10y ago
edit: don't feel like arguing. Best of luck to Musk.
- darawk 10y ago
  > The Hyperloop was supposed to be a revolutionary form of transport, turns out it was overblown. He didn't launch the Hyperloop, though. He explicitly said he wasn't personally going to pursue it, he was just putting the idea out there. You can't put the fact that it hasn't yet been implemented (even though there are people working on it) on him. I've seen no evidence that the concept is infeasible, or poorly thought out.
  - jodrellblank 10y ago
    It is infeasible, if it's going to be vacuum, for a pile of practical and safety reasons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNFesa01llk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNFesa01llk Maybe it will pivot into something not-as-originally-hyped by the same name.
    - mdekkers 10y ago
      What a terrible video. "I can't imagine anybody can make this work, so it is absolutely impossible"
      - jodrellblank 10y ago
        Did you miss the bit where he says the idea of travelling fast in a vacuum is fundamentally sound and workable? Did you miss the bit where he never at all claimed it was 'impossible', only that it was bullshit that it would be doable within two orders of magnitude of the claimed price, with the claimed speed advantages, or with any acceptable amount of safety? What a terrible misrepresentation of the video.
        darawk 10y ago
        Ya, but he doesn't actually justify his position. And to the extent that he does, his calculations are inaccurate. The only legitimate criticism he makes is the one about depressurization (all the others are trivial and can be solved trivially in ways that have already been addressed in the whitepaper). And fotunately for the hyperloop, his calculations on that one issue are off by six orders of magnitude, per the videos that respond to his video.
    - anko 10y ago
      Thunderf00t always comes up in these discussions - here's a counter video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kx52A-v65Q8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kx52A-v65Q8
- Inconel 10y ago
  >The fact that people feel the need to defend unfinished projects of a billionaire says a lot. I'm confused as to who exactly you're referencing here seeing as Musk has no stake in any of the hyperloop companies currently operating.
- alain94040 10y ago
  > Musk is a master of hype. > If you live by hype at some point you gotta start delivering In your book, Musk hasn't delivered enough yet? But why am I arguing with a Ph.D student. I wish you that your life is as fullfilled as Musk's.
- haberman 10y ago
  > The fact that people feel the need to defend unfinished (and very unproven) projects of a billionaire says a lot. The fact that people think they can spend two seconds evaluating and dismissing an engineering idea from someone who literally sends things into space is hilarious. > If you live by hype at some point you gotta start delivering. If putting cars on the road and rockets on the launchpad doesn't count as "delivering", I don't know what does.
  - deleted 10y ago
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- Denzel 10y ago
  Where have you been exactly? He receives the hype precisely because he has delivered after people insisted he couldn't. He and his companies have delivered the Falcon, Model S, Modex X, and a concept Model 3 set to be delivered soon, along with a Falcon Heavy. If any person were able to deliver even one of those products, they'd be deserving of attention. And that's not even everything he's delivered. If delivering three groundbreaking products (as in you can go out and use them right now) is hype, then I think maybe you need to revise your definition of "hype".
  - stupidhn 10y ago
    The SpaceX stuff is actually amazing. The Tesla stuff is over-hyped by people who think that it's currently the global leader in everything they do, be it manufacturing or self-driving tech. In reality, the EV space is competitive as all get out and Tesla is a pretty small player. The boring stuff? I have no idea.
- CamperBob2 10y ago
  If you live by hype at some point you gotta start delivering (edit: this is overstated, but whatever). He's delivering to the freakin' International Space Station. What have you delivered lately?
- psyc 10y ago
  You don't have an argument.
Anderkent 10y ago
>I'm starting to believe the only difference between those who start their own companies and those who don't is that the latter convinces themselves that it is impossible, never builds anything, and from their own lack of having ever produced anything, concludes that their original supposition was indeed correct. The latter are also aware of survivorship bias
- Xcelerate 10y ago
  > The latter are also aware of survivorship bias While that may be true, it would be interesting to compare the frequencies with which successful founders bring up the topic of survivorship bias vs the rate at which those who never found anything bring it up.
  - ryandrake 10y ago
    A measurement, which itself would suffer from the same bias.
- natoliniak 10y ago
  I don't know if there exists a proper antonym of "survivorship bias" but here is a nice "casualty" list of failed ventures from which plenty of good insights can be taken. https://www.cbinsights.com/blog/startup-failure-post-mortem/ https://www.cbinsights.com/blog/startup-failure-post-mortem/ I think that taking advice from those who failed is as important as from those who might suffer from a "survivorship bias". I am sure most of these failed startups initially followed Musk's (et al.) "impossible is nothing" mantra before venturing out into the market.
talamown 10y ago
'The millions of reasons people give for why they won't work' are so important and useful not only for the development but for other possible innovations. They should be welcomed. And I think there are no causation and correlation between thinking reasons that make it impossible and starting a company.
- Xcelerate 10y ago
  > 'The millions of reasons people give for why they won't work' [...] should be welcomed. Not really. It's easy to think of reasons why something won't work. It requires an insanely small amount of effort compared to finding a way to make something work. "Reasons why not" are a dime a dozen. > And I think there are no causation and correlation between thinking reasons that make it impossible and starting a company. I certainly think there is. I haven't collected any evidence, but I wouldn't be surprised if those who find success are always looking for reasons why something will work, and those who run into failure are always looking for reasons why something won't work. Now, to be fair, thinking of reasons "why not" does have its specialized use cases. Safety, for instance. But even then, that requires thinking outside of the box for unusual failure situations.
  - aaron-lebo 10y ago
    Criticism is the sign of a healthy society. If someone is afraid of criticism or doesn't want to take it, then they are only hurting their own work. That's not to say Musk is guilty of that, but his fans could accept it. If we didn't have critics we'd still have kings with divine right. This seems like an exaggeration, but it's really just to say that we need people to look at things critically. I haven't collected any evidence, but I wouldn't be surprised if those who find success are always looking for reasons why something will work, and those who run into failure are always looking for reasons why something won't work. This isn't that far from prosperity gospel preaching. Believing doesn't make things happen, otherwise NeXT would be dominating the industry and not Apple because boy did Jobs believe and give it his all. Sometimes smart people are wrong, and it doesn't hurt those people anyway if dummies are discussing their work.
pikzen 10y ago
>I'm starting to believe the only difference between those who start their own companies and those who don't is that the latter convinces themselves that it is impossible, never builds anything, and from their own lack of having ever produced anything, concludes that their original supposition was indeed correct. And not because of socio-economic factors, obviously, no, it has to be that. The fucking pretentiousness HN can have never ceases to amaze me.
- aaron-lebo 10y ago
  You're just not believing hard enough.
- kitsunesoba 10y ago
  Both groups are real. Certainly there are many, many disadvantaged people who never had much of an opportunity. At the same time, though, there are also plenty of people who have had opportunities and could've created something but didn't due to defeatism, and they're often the most vocal naysayers.
accountyaccount 10y ago
I get what you're saying, but sometimes a bad idea is a bad idea. You can't just positive think yourself out of it.
- bbcbasic 10y ago
  And there is the dilemma. :-)
- idlewords 10y ago
  Not with that attitude!
- jaimex2 10y ago
  Sure, but you can't make that call when you have no real clue what the actual idea is or have the full details.
  - accountyaccount 10y ago
    The video has a lot of bad details. That's the call being made.
  - legolas2412 10y ago
    If Elon has figured out how to make tunneling cheaper, then he can dig tunnels and demonstrate it. The video is clearly made to just hype it up. It serves no purpose other than Science fiction.
idlewords 10y ago
It's possible to start your own company and still think Musk's ideas are foolish. People are giving millions of reasons why they won't work not because they are haters, but because there are millions of reasons why they won't work.
- oska 10y ago
  > and still think Musk's ideas are foolish With Musk's established track record I think it's pretty arrogant for anyone to call his ideas foolish. He has achieved things that people thought were impossible or bound to fail. You can say: “I can see this potential problem”, or “I wonder how he's going to deal with this physical limitation” or similar sorts of statements. That's feedback and analysis given with respect. Simple dismissive negativity against ideas put forward by a person who would already rank in the top 10 in the world today for technological and engineering achievement is arrogance and narrow-mindedness.
  - andrepd 10y ago
    So because he has a "track record" of founding companies that achieved impressive feats he it's now forbidden to call out his ideas as foolish?
    - spectrum1234 10y ago
      ...yes
    - oska 10y ago
      > it's now forbidden I dislike this sort of miscasting of what I just said. I'm a very strong proponent of free speech and the right of anyone to say anything. But with my support for free speech comes a commitment to try to be considered and careful in what I personally say and I'm encouraging others to do the same in this particular context. You can take it or leave it and of course you can go on calling him foolish if you like. Musk doesn't probably care a whole lot and in the end, I would say that the negativity simply reflects back on you.
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cbhl 10y ago
I think it's more nuanced than that. You can break down the world into the 99% that "know" that it's impossible. They'll never invent that world-changing thing. That leaves 1% that "don't know" that it's impossible. Of that 1%, 99% will try and fail. The remaining 1% of the 1% succeed, like George Dantzig (who came late to a Stats class at UC Berkeley, thought some problems on the board were homework, and a few days later handed the professor solutions to some famous open problems in statistics), and Jack Kilby (who, seeing computer performance limited by the number of wires soldered by hand, demonstrated -- against the protests of his "we-know-better" co-workers -- that you could get rid of the wires, resulting in the integrated circuit). It's important to remember the 99% of the 1%. There are probably people on HN who have tried and failed. But rather than simply saying that it is impossible, we should encourage people to share share how and why the problem is difficult, so that hopefully the next person to try won't waste their time retracing the failures of the previous generation.
- chronic940 10y ago
  I love Elon as much as the next guy. I think SpaceX, Tesla, OpenAI and even Neuralink are great companies tackling meaningful problems and wish them the best. The Boring Company however, yeah, he messed this one up. HN is full of Elon fanboys. I'm one myself. The die hard, willing to say "the world is flat" fanboys are out here defending him. Look, I like Elon. But the sane fanboys are trying to save Elon a lot of headache by not pursuing this venture.
  - deleted 10y ago
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  - mcbutterbunz 10y ago
    Care to explain how he messed this one up?
    - mozumder 10y ago
      Because you are now more dependent on private cars for transport. Why would you use this instead of a system where you take a neighborhood bus to the local transit station & shopping center where you can pick up a light rail to the closest subway station, where you take the express train downtown to the high-speed rail station, where you take that to visit the next state for the day? No cars, and you can sit and read a book or take a nap or enjoy the view if you wanted to. The only scalable transit solution is mass public transit. The world can't afford to pave a private luxury road for everyone to go wherever they want to go. They need to learn to sit next to random strangers on the subway or the bus. If people can't sit next to random strangers on the subway or on the bus, they should be seen as dysfunctional and sociopathic. This really is one of the worst things I've seen. It may possibly be worse than his Hyperloop, another truly awful idea. Elon Musk strikes me as one of those guys that defunds mass transit, and then wonders why mass transit is so bad. "It's always breaking down and never on time hurr durr.. So, therefore, buy one of my shiny new cars!" He really hates mass transit for some reason. Maybe he just can't stand the general public? Is that why he's so into Mars, because he hates everyone here? We need less pampered and coddled people like Musk, and more people with grit that has the ability to interact with the general public.
amorphid 10y ago
Who cares if The Boring Company fails? It looks cool! You know what happens if you don't try? Nothing. You never score for a shot you don't take!
- bfred_it 10y ago
  But you can score if you take the right shot. It's about wasting time and money and talent instead of directing it towards "winning" ideas.
  - amorphid 10y ago
    If you learn how to take the right shot beforehand, let the rest of us know :)
- vertex-four 10y ago
  If cities decide that The Boring Company is the way forward and it turns out not to be, that's lost opportunity cost and likely decades of people suffering increasingly poor transport infrastructure leading to more wasted time and less time that people can spend doing important things, like spending time being a productive member of society (not necessarily working a job - things like spending time with family and friends, educating oneself, etc etc, come under this).
  - drakonandor 9y ago
    Learning what strategies don't work well is being a productive member of society.
rayiner 10y ago
Engineers skew rational. They know that most ideas won't work. It's like aspiring actors or singers. Statistically, any given aspiring actors or singers won't become famous. The existence of Tom Cruise or Taylor Swift doesn't change that. Think about the dozen articles you read every day about some promising lab result or prototype that. How many of them do you ever hear about again? Meat-space engineering is hard. I'm an early '90s kid who grew up hearing about how we're going to put people on Mars by 2020.[1] I got a degree in aerospace because of that! Then I realized that physics hates you most of the field is about eking out 1% more fuel economy every decade so United can turn a slight profit. Even Space X is more interesting from a business model point of view than an engineering point of view. It's like someone figured out how to make a $10 iPhone 3g in 2017. Neat, I guess. [1] Almost everything pop science said would happen was a lie. Moon bases, NYC-London flights, flying cars, etc. Outside of computers and pharma, technology has progressed at a glacial pace over the last 40 years. If you transported someone from 1890 to 1950, planes, international calls, etc. would blow their minds. If you transported someone from 1950 to 2010, I think that they'd frankly be disappointed.
- crush-n-spread 10y ago
  I don't really get the point of this comment. I'm also early 90's and I'm wondering why you're not more heavily for or against either side. You're living in an insanely fast paced world where, in 50 years, we will either be dead and roasted in Earth-Venus, or we will have carbon sequestration figured out and be on Mars. We need engineers to get option two, and you being neutral increases the chances of Earth-Venus.
  - smbullet 10y ago
    Wait, there are actually people who think the Earth will be roasted in 50 years?
    - baq 10y ago
      In 400 years of exponential 1% energy consumption growth it's possible.
ankurdhama 10y ago
This can work if you are starting on blank slate aka building a new city from scratch. It won't work with an existing city.
Svexark 10y ago
One group convinces themselves that it is impossible and never builds anything. Musk's group convinces themselves it is possible and never builds anything. At least the former is honest.
bingomad123 10y ago
I think the skepticism and pretty much well deserved. I would like to see both spaceX and Tesla being well profitable and sustainable without the need for direct/indirect taxpayer support. Most of Musk's companies are about kicking the can down the road. I admire that he is mostly burning his own money on this but then skepticism of such ideas is natural. The man should probably stick to one thing and take it completion than starting 10.
dzink 10y ago
Society or a company of people operates like an organism at scale - it can get sick with the slightest imbalance of resources, so its collective experience builds antibodies to protect itself. If this was an idea for a portable gadget, it would probably be welcomed, but the underground tunnels and the risks that come with them (collapses, maintenance, infrastructure shifts, ecological impact) are scaring people. California's central valley and a lot of building foundations have been moving up and down with the drought and rains of late. Now imagine that happening with a mesh of concrete tunnels carrying people underneath. That said, to assume feedback against one project is a testament to lack of entrepreneurial spirit, rings about as true as claiming people who don't like Justin Bieber are deaf.
stupidhn 10y ago
It's amazing to me the amount of negativity directed toward his projects His projects are cool. The incessant "Elon is so smart and will save the world!" from this place is tiring. Everytime he tweets it makes the front page. Some people see there's more to these businesses than Elon being generous to us,and run a bit more skeptical. Perhaps it's you that needs to take a step back and assess what the other side is saying?
- deleted 10y ago
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- erikpukinskis 10y ago
  > Everytime he tweets it makes the front page Not even close to true.
kome 10y ago
Well, that's a well-deserved negativity: they are the Juicero of mass transportation... they are trying to solve a problem that is already resolved with a very complicated and frankly ridiculous solution. The lack of good mass transit is a political problem: why European mass transit is in general so good and why American mass transit is problematic? It's not a problem of technology. It's Politics, stupid. :)
spir 10y ago
I wonder if these naysayers realize that their modern lives stand on the shoulders of giants like Musk, and that Musk's predecessors had to deal with the naysayers' predecessors. Reminds me of the "Are we the Baddies?" sketch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU (I'm not calling anyone nazis)
Altay- 10y ago
This 'boring company' is one of the worst ideas ever. The intelligent criticisms I have read of this concept don't claim that it "won't work" or that it isn't possible. Its just a really bad solution to a problem we have at least a dozen other, easier, cheaper, simpler solutions for already. Imagine we wanted to go to the moon, but the shuttle and all its parts had to be made of platinum. We also have to make sure all the astronauts have at least a 40 BMI and will bring everything they currently own with them. It might still be possible, but its stupid.
sigi45 10y ago
There is often enough a clear understanding why something is stupid. Freaking solar roadways got 2 Million and more. A City payed them 500k to install that stuff. It is not hard to calculate the stupidity of this. Especially of a couple who is doing this in a garage. There is a reason why big companies are not doing it. It has to make sense and money. This video above looks nice but if you think just a step back, it is probably 1000x cheaper and a much better solution to make the existing streets automaticly drivable instead. How much does it cost to build this? How much does it cost to build automatic driving into every car who wanna use a highway which is only accessible to automatic driving?
- taway_1212 10y ago
  You can't have cars driving at 200 km/h on city streets.
  - sigi45 10y ago
    I was not talking about city streets. And it doesn't matter. How long do you think does it take for a car to go to a highway? It doesn't take to long is still much cheaper. In munich you have a autobahn/cityring in the city. It takes perhaps 20 Minutes in city traffic to get onto the autobahn / highway. There is a reason why we have only underground trains and why it takes years to build a new tunnel for them. Also having the city traffic more autonomous would increase the traffic flow.
jackshepherd 10y ago
The play on words in the name is used also used by a charity: Well Boring, who digs wells in rural Africa. The fact that we, as a species, have failed to deal with challenges like providing global simple access to water, make me think that a project like this is unrealistic in many ways. Post-war London tried something similar, a futuristic vision of pedestrian walkways ("pedways") to separate people from the traffic. This failed, for various practical reasons, and you can see the remnants of the experiment throughout parts of London to this day. This scheme would come at an unimaginable cost, surely changing planning laws to create less car-centric cities is a more realistic approach to the problem?
macawfish 10y ago
It's not about what is or isn't possible. This video participates in an awful kind of ignorance about the ecological impact of tunneling.
scrame 10y ago
The Genius of the Crowd: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gifEn61dZBc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gifEn61dZBc
deleted 10y ago
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dustinupdyke 10y ago

Many people think and are incentivized to think about how to optimize for today. Thinking about tomorrow can be counter-intuitive as to the way things work today, and it is pretty easy to construct negative arguments about tomorrow that are based on what we know right now.

aaron-lebo 10y ago

edit: don't feel like arguing. Best of luck to Musk.

darawk 10y ago
> The Hyperloop was supposed to be a revolutionary form of transport, turns out it was overblown. He didn't launch the Hyperloop, though. He explicitly said he wasn't personally going to pursue it, he was just putting the idea out there. You can't put the fact that it hasn't yet been implemented (even though there are people working on it) on him. I've seen no evidence that the concept is infeasible, or poorly thought out.
- jodrellblank 10y ago
  It is infeasible, if it's going to be vacuum, for a pile of practical and safety reasons: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNFesa01llk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNFesa01llk Maybe it will pivot into something not-as-originally-hyped by the same name.
  - mdekkers 10y ago
    What a terrible video. "I can't imagine anybody can make this work, so it is absolutely impossible"
    - jodrellblank 10y ago
      Did you miss the bit where he says the idea of travelling fast in a vacuum is fundamentally sound and workable? Did you miss the bit where he never at all claimed it was 'impossible', only that it was bullshit that it would be doable within two orders of magnitude of the claimed price, with the claimed speed advantages, or with any acceptable amount of safety? What a terrible misrepresentation of the video.
      - darawk 10y ago
        Ya, but he doesn't actually justify his position. And to the extent that he does, his calculations are inaccurate. The only legitimate criticism he makes is the one about depressurization (all the others are trivial and can be solved trivially in ways that have already been addressed in the whitepaper). And fotunately for the hyperloop, his calculations on that one issue are off by six orders of magnitude, per the videos that respond to his video.
  - anko 10y ago
    Thunderf00t always comes up in these discussions - here's a counter video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kx52A-v65Q8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kx52A-v65Q8
Inconel 10y ago
>The fact that people feel the need to defend unfinished projects of a billionaire says a lot. I'm confused as to who exactly you're referencing here seeing as Musk has no stake in any of the hyperloop companies currently operating.
alain94040 10y ago
> Musk is a master of hype. > If you live by hype at some point you gotta start delivering In your book, Musk hasn't delivered enough yet? But why am I arguing with a Ph.D student. I wish you that your life is as fullfilled as Musk's.
haberman 10y ago
> The fact that people feel the need to defend unfinished (and very unproven) projects of a billionaire says a lot. The fact that people think they can spend two seconds evaluating and dismissing an engineering idea from someone who literally sends things into space is hilarious. > If you live by hype at some point you gotta start delivering. If putting cars on the road and rockets on the launchpad doesn't count as "delivering", I don't know what does.
- deleted 10y ago
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Denzel 10y ago
Where have you been exactly? He receives the hype precisely because he has delivered after people insisted he couldn't. He and his companies have delivered the Falcon, Model S, Modex X, and a concept Model 3 set to be delivered soon, along with a Falcon Heavy. If any person were able to deliver even one of those products, they'd be deserving of attention. And that's not even everything he's delivered. If delivering three groundbreaking products (as in you can go out and use them right now) is hype, then I think maybe you need to revise your definition of "hype".
- stupidhn 10y ago
  The SpaceX stuff is actually amazing. The Tesla stuff is over-hyped by people who think that it's currently the global leader in everything they do, be it manufacturing or self-driving tech. In reality, the EV space is competitive as all get out and Tesla is a pretty small player. The boring stuff? I have no idea.
CamperBob2 10y ago
If you live by hype at some point you gotta start delivering (edit: this is overstated, but whatever). He's delivering to the freakin' International Space Station. What have you delivered lately?
psyc 10y ago
You don't have an argument.

Anderkent 10y ago

>I'm starting to believe the only difference between those who start their own companies and those who don't is that the latter convinces themselves that it is impossible, never builds anything, and from their own lack of having ever produced anything, concludes that their original supposition was indeed correct. The latter are also aware of survivorship bias

Xcelerate 10y ago
> The latter are also aware of survivorship bias While that may be true, it would be interesting to compare the frequencies with which successful founders bring up the topic of survivorship bias vs the rate at which those who never found anything bring it up.
- ryandrake 10y ago
  A measurement, which itself would suffer from the same bias.
natoliniak 10y ago
I don't know if there exists a proper antonym of "survivorship bias" but here is a nice "casualty" list of failed ventures from which plenty of good insights can be taken. https://www.cbinsights.com/blog/startup-failure-post-mortem/ https://www.cbinsights.com/blog/startup-failure-post-mortem/ I think that taking advice from those who failed is as important as from those who might suffer from a "survivorship bias". I am sure most of these failed startups initially followed Musk's (et al.) "impossible is nothing" mantra before venturing out into the market.

talamown 10y ago

'The millions of reasons people give for why they won't work' are so important and useful not only for the development but for other possible innovations. They should be welcomed. And I think there are no causation and correlation between thinking reasons that make it impossible and starting a company.

Xcelerate 10y ago
> 'The millions of reasons people give for why they won't work' [...] should be welcomed. Not really. It's easy to think of reasons why something won't work. It requires an insanely small amount of effort compared to finding a way to make something work. "Reasons why not" are a dime a dozen. > And I think there are no causation and correlation between thinking reasons that make it impossible and starting a company. I certainly think there is. I haven't collected any evidence, but I wouldn't be surprised if those who find success are always looking for reasons why something will work, and those who run into failure are always looking for reasons why something won't work. Now, to be fair, thinking of reasons "why not" does have its specialized use cases. Safety, for instance. But even then, that requires thinking outside of the box for unusual failure situations.
- aaron-lebo 10y ago
  Criticism is the sign of a healthy society. If someone is afraid of criticism or doesn't want to take it, then they are only hurting their own work. That's not to say Musk is guilty of that, but his fans could accept it. If we didn't have critics we'd still have kings with divine right. This seems like an exaggeration, but it's really just to say that we need people to look at things critically. I haven't collected any evidence, but I wouldn't be surprised if those who find success are always looking for reasons why something will work, and those who run into failure are always looking for reasons why something won't work. This isn't that far from prosperity gospel preaching. Believing doesn't make things happen, otherwise NeXT would be dominating the industry and not Apple because boy did Jobs believe and give it his all. Sometimes smart people are wrong, and it doesn't hurt those people anyway if dummies are discussing their work.

pikzen 10y ago

aaron-lebo 10y ago
You're just not believing hard enough.
kitsunesoba 10y ago
Both groups are real. Certainly there are many, many disadvantaged people who never had much of an opportunity. At the same time, though, there are also plenty of people who have had opportunities and could've created something but didn't due to defeatism, and they're often the most vocal naysayers.

accountyaccount 10y ago

I get what you're saying, but sometimes a bad idea is a bad idea. You can't just positive think yourself out of it.

bbcbasic 10y ago
And there is the dilemma. :-)
idlewords 10y ago
Not with that attitude!
jaimex2 10y ago
Sure, but you can't make that call when you have no real clue what the actual idea is or have the full details.
- accountyaccount 10y ago
  The video has a lot of bad details. That's the call being made.
- legolas2412 10y ago
  If Elon has figured out how to make tunneling cheaper, then he can dig tunnels and demonstrate it. The video is clearly made to just hype it up. It serves no purpose other than Science fiction.

idlewords 10y ago

It's possible to start your own company and still think Musk's ideas are foolish. People are giving millions of reasons why they won't work not because they are haters, but because there are millions of reasons why they won't work.

oska 10y ago
> and still think Musk's ideas are foolish With Musk's established track record I think it's pretty arrogant for anyone to call his ideas foolish. He has achieved things that people thought were impossible or bound to fail. You can say: “I can see this potential problem”, or “I wonder how he's going to deal with this physical limitation” or similar sorts of statements. That's feedback and analysis given with respect. Simple dismissive negativity against ideas put forward by a person who would already rank in the top 10 in the world today for technological and engineering achievement is arrogance and narrow-mindedness.
- andrepd 10y ago
  So because he has a "track record" of founding companies that achieved impressive feats he it's now forbidden to call out his ideas as foolish?
  - spectrum1234 10y ago
    ...yes
  - oska 10y ago
    > it's now forbidden I dislike this sort of miscasting of what I just said. I'm a very strong proponent of free speech and the right of anyone to say anything. But with my support for free speech comes a commitment to try to be considered and careful in what I personally say and I'm encouraging others to do the same in this particular context. You can take it or leave it and of course you can go on calling him foolish if you like. Musk doesn't probably care a whole lot and in the end, I would say that the negativity simply reflects back on you.

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cbhl 10y ago

I think it's more nuanced than that. You can break down the world into the 99% that "know" that it's impossible. They'll never invent that world-changing thing. That leaves 1% that "don't know" that it's impossible. Of that 1%, 99% will try and fail. The remaining 1% of the 1% succeed, like George Dantzig (who came late to a Stats class at UC Berkeley, thought some problems on the board were homework, and a few days later handed the professor solutions to some famous open problems in statistics), and Jack Kilby (who, seeing computer performance limited by the number of wires soldered by hand, demonstrated -- against the protests of his "we-know-better" co-workers -- that you could get rid of the wires, resulting in the integrated circuit). It's important to remember the 99% of the 1%. There are probably people on HN who have tried and failed. But rather than simply saying that it is impossible, we should encourage people to share share how and why the problem is difficult, so that hopefully the next person to try won't waste their time retracing the failures of the previous generation.

chronic940 10y ago
I love Elon as much as the next guy. I think SpaceX, Tesla, OpenAI and even Neuralink are great companies tackling meaningful problems and wish them the best. The Boring Company however, yeah, he messed this one up. HN is full of Elon fanboys. I'm one myself. The die hard, willing to say "the world is flat" fanboys are out here defending him. Look, I like Elon. But the sane fanboys are trying to save Elon a lot of headache by not pursuing this venture.
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- mcbutterbunz 10y ago
  Care to explain how he messed this one up?
  - mozumder 10y ago
    Because you are now more dependent on private cars for transport. Why would you use this instead of a system where you take a neighborhood bus to the local transit station & shopping center where you can pick up a light rail to the closest subway station, where you take the express train downtown to the high-speed rail station, where you take that to visit the next state for the day? No cars, and you can sit and read a book or take a nap or enjoy the view if you wanted to. The only scalable transit solution is mass public transit. The world can't afford to pave a private luxury road for everyone to go wherever they want to go. They need to learn to sit next to random strangers on the subway or the bus. If people can't sit next to random strangers on the subway or on the bus, they should be seen as dysfunctional and sociopathic. This really is one of the worst things I've seen. It may possibly be worse than his Hyperloop, another truly awful idea. Elon Musk strikes me as one of those guys that defunds mass transit, and then wonders why mass transit is so bad. "It's always breaking down and never on time hurr durr.. So, therefore, buy one of my shiny new cars!" He really hates mass transit for some reason. Maybe he just can't stand the general public? Is that why he's so into Mars, because he hates everyone here? We need less pampered and coddled people like Musk, and more people with grit that has the ability to interact with the general public.

amorphid 10y ago

Who cares if The Boring Company fails? It looks cool! You know what happens if you don't try? Nothing. You never score for a shot you don't take!

bfred_it 10y ago
But you can score if you take the right shot. It's about wasting time and money and talent instead of directing it towards "winning" ideas.
- amorphid 10y ago
  If you learn how to take the right shot beforehand, let the rest of us know :)
vertex-four 10y ago
If cities decide that The Boring Company is the way forward and it turns out not to be, that's lost opportunity cost and likely decades of people suffering increasingly poor transport infrastructure leading to more wasted time and less time that people can spend doing important things, like spending time being a productive member of society (not necessarily working a job - things like spending time with family and friends, educating oneself, etc etc, come under this).
- drakonandor 9y ago
  Learning what strategies don't work well is being a productive member of society.

rayiner 10y ago

Engineers skew rational. They know that most ideas won't work. It's like aspiring actors or singers. Statistically, any given aspiring actors or singers won't become famous. The existence of Tom Cruise or Taylor Swift doesn't change that. Think about the dozen articles you read every day about some promising lab result or prototype that. How many of them do you ever hear about again? Meat-space engineering is hard. I'm an early '90s kid who grew up hearing about how we're going to put people on Mars by 2020.[1] I got a degree in aerospace because of that! Then I realized that physics hates you most of the field is about eking out 1% more fuel economy every decade so United can turn a slight profit. Even Space X is more interesting from a business model point of view than an engineering point of view. It's like someone figured out how to make a $10 iPhone 3g in 2017. Neat, I guess. [1] Almost everything pop science said would happen was a lie. Moon bases, NYC-London flights, flying cars, etc. Outside of computers and pharma, technology has progressed at a glacial pace over the last 40 years. If you transported someone from 1890 to 1950, planes, international calls, etc. would blow their minds. If you transported someone from 1950 to 2010, I think that they'd frankly be disappointed.

crush-n-spread 10y ago
I don't really get the point of this comment. I'm also early 90's and I'm wondering why you're not more heavily for or against either side. You're living in an insanely fast paced world where, in 50 years, we will either be dead and roasted in Earth-Venus, or we will have carbon sequestration figured out and be on Mars. We need engineers to get option two, and you being neutral increases the chances of Earth-Venus.
- smbullet 10y ago
  Wait, there are actually people who think the Earth will be roasted in 50 years?
  - baq 10y ago
    In 400 years of exponential 1% energy consumption growth it's possible.

ankurdhama 10y ago

This can work if you are starting on blank slate aka building a new city from scratch. It won't work with an existing city.

Svexark 10y ago

One group convinces themselves that it is impossible and never builds anything. Musk's group convinces themselves it is possible and never builds anything. At least the former is honest.

bingomad123 10y ago

I think the skepticism and pretty much well deserved. I would like to see both spaceX and Tesla being well profitable and sustainable without the need for direct/indirect taxpayer support. Most of Musk's companies are about kicking the can down the road. I admire that he is mostly burning his own money on this but then skepticism of such ideas is natural. The man should probably stick to one thing and take it completion than starting 10.

dzink 10y ago

Society or a company of people operates like an organism at scale - it can get sick with the slightest imbalance of resources, so its collective experience builds antibodies to protect itself. If this was an idea for a portable gadget, it would probably be welcomed, but the underground tunnels and the risks that come with them (collapses, maintenance, infrastructure shifts, ecological impact) are scaring people. California's central valley and a lot of building foundations have been moving up and down with the drought and rains of late. Now imagine that happening with a mesh of concrete tunnels carrying people underneath. That said, to assume feedback against one project is a testament to lack of entrepreneurial spirit, rings about as true as claiming people who don't like Justin Bieber are deaf.

stupidhn 10y ago

It's amazing to me the amount of negativity directed toward his projects His projects are cool. The incessant "Elon is so smart and will save the world!" from this place is tiring. Everytime he tweets it makes the front page. Some people see there's more to these businesses than Elon being generous to us,and run a bit more skeptical. Perhaps it's you that needs to take a step back and assess what the other side is saying?

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erikpukinskis 10y ago
> Everytime he tweets it makes the front page Not even close to true.

kome 10y ago

Well, that's a well-deserved negativity: they are the Juicero of mass transportation... they are trying to solve a problem that is already resolved with a very complicated and frankly ridiculous solution. The lack of good mass transit is a political problem: why European mass transit is in general so good and why American mass transit is problematic? It's not a problem of technology. It's Politics, stupid. :)

spir 10y ago

I wonder if these naysayers realize that their modern lives stand on the shoulders of giants like Musk, and that Musk's predecessors had to deal with the naysayers' predecessors. Reminds me of the "Are we the Baddies?" sketch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU (I'm not calling anyone nazis)

Altay- 10y ago

This 'boring company' is one of the worst ideas ever. The intelligent criticisms I have read of this concept don't claim that it "won't work" or that it isn't possible. Its just a really bad solution to a problem we have at least a dozen other, easier, cheaper, simpler solutions for already. Imagine we wanted to go to the moon, but the shuttle and all its parts had to be made of platinum. We also have to make sure all the astronauts have at least a 40 BMI and will bring everything they currently own with them. It might still be possible, but its stupid.

sigi45 10y ago

There is often enough a clear understanding why something is stupid. Freaking solar roadways got 2 Million and more. A City payed them 500k to install that stuff. It is not hard to calculate the stupidity of this. Especially of a couple who is doing this in a garage. There is a reason why big companies are not doing it. It has to make sense and money. This video above looks nice but if you think just a step back, it is probably 1000x cheaper and a much better solution to make the existing streets automaticly drivable instead. How much does it cost to build this? How much does it cost to build automatic driving into every car who wanna use a highway which is only accessible to automatic driving?

taway_1212 10y ago
You can't have cars driving at 200 km/h on city streets.
- sigi45 10y ago
  I was not talking about city streets. And it doesn't matter. How long do you think does it take for a car to go to a highway? It doesn't take to long is still much cheaper. In munich you have a autobahn/cityring in the city. It takes perhaps 20 Minutes in city traffic to get onto the autobahn / highway. There is a reason why we have only underground trains and why it takes years to build a new tunnel for them. Also having the city traffic more autonomous would increase the traffic flow.

jackshepherd 10y ago

The play on words in the name is used also used by a charity: Well Boring, who digs wells in rural Africa. The fact that we, as a species, have failed to deal with challenges like providing global simple access to water, make me think that a project like this is unrealistic in many ways. Post-war London tried something similar, a futuristic vision of pedestrian walkways ("pedways") to separate people from the traffic. This failed, for various practical reasons, and you can see the remnants of the experiment throughout parts of London to this day. This scheme would come at an unimaginable cost, surely changing planning laws to create less car-centric cities is a more realistic approach to the problem?

macawfish 10y ago

It's not about what is or isn't possible. This video participates in an awful kind of ignorance about the ecological impact of tunneling.

scrame 10y ago

The Genius of the Crowd: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gifEn61dZBc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gifEn61dZBc

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