4 ms·

Why aren’t we allowed to criticize these lunatics before their companies fall apart? It was obvious to many commenters on HN that these people were crooks long

by txsh 8y ago

Why aren’t we allowed to criticize these lunatics before their companies fall apart? It was obvious to many commenters on HN that these people were crooks long before the media caught up. But comments critical of them were often flagged or deleted. Musk’s house of cards receives the same preferential treatment. How many lives does a wacky billionaire get to destroy before HN stops running interference? How much blood does a god need to bleed before we stop worshipping them?

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
citrablue 8y ago
The answer, of course, is hindsight bias. It says more about our inability to understand the probabilistic nature of the future than any sort of commentary about the downfall of civilized society. Call to mind the Michael Dell letter about Apple. Think in terms of your confidence about the current environment, right now. Would you bet something invaluable -- your children's lives, let's say -- that e.g. Uber will not be worth $10b on public markets in 5 years? If not, we have to ack there's uncertainty in the moment. It's only after the fact that the probability density function collapses to 1, and we forget about the other options.
- aaron-lebo 8y ago
  It's maybe hindsight that allows us to know whether the schemes of a huckster are going to fail, but it's not hard to see people who are hucksters. They make big promises and don't meet them, and when that happens they just make another promise (usually including excuses or distractions from why they were previously wrong), and people worship them for that. These people are either liars or just wrong most of the time, but people don't seem to care. It's not that it isn't obvious, it's that people don't want to admit what's right there. Maybe it is from growing up in an environment where I've seen people who love power and control (even if that's only over a very small amount of people), it desn't shock me that ramps up with increasing power and fame. There are a lot of people on the scene today which are obvious hucksters, but nobody is going to admit that (and some won't) until their lies actually ruin things. Again, see Draper whom even knowing what he does is willing to lie or be delusional about what happened there. Consider that there's lots and lots of people who are willing to actually give up their lives for weird cult leaders. If that's the case (and those lies are very obvious to all but a small few), there's so much room on the other side of that where you can be equally as manipulative and fraudulent but because it's only business or politics and not religion, people aren't willing to apply the same standard and say, yeah, that guy is a liar who likes people talking about him (or whatever gender). Usually people in positions of power have actively sought that power, and it attracts a very specific kind of personality.
  - mrep 8y ago
    Are you saying Musk is a huckster who makes big promises and don't meet them because he has hit most of his promises from what I have seen (albeit they are always delayed but that is just his management strategy to incentivize his employees to work harder)?
    - aaron-lebo 8y ago
      Didn't mean to target Musk, but he certainly is in the same area. You ever notice how thin-skinned he is towards criticism and how he's constantly pivoting to projects which are years away? Besides the actual lies/exaggerations about Autopilot (people have died because of this), forgive this first title. The important part is the quote: http://www.businessinsider.com/musk-epic-failure-2016-5?op=1 http://www.businessinsider.com/musk-epic-failure-2016-5?op=1 Tesla reported first-quarter earnings last week, and while they were better than Wall Street expected, the earthshaking news that emerged was that Musk is taking the carmaker in a new strategic direction. Tesla, which delivered about 50,000 vehicles last year, is aiming to deliver 500,000 in 2018. The production target isn't new, but the timeline is. Tesla had previously said it would build half a million cars a year by 2020. This did not happen, which led him to Tweet last July that they could deliver 20k cars per month by Dec. This did not happen either. Investors were relieved they managed to hit 2k per week as of March (this is down from the 2.5k they were targeting). https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/881757617416056832 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/881757617416056832 It's really not a difficult tactic. If you have lots of money you can subsidize lots of failure. The failure ends up ignored, but your 10% hit ratio is looked at as though you're some kind of visionary. You can do that for a long time, if you've got the runway. Holmes will probably be running a very big company in about a decade.
      - mrep 8y ago
        > Besides the actual lies/exaggerations about Autopilot I'm a big Musk fan but Autopilot definitely pisses me off. It's a hugely exaggerated term for laypeople which is why people keep dying on it and I'm highly skeptical they can get full autonomy with their current sensors (and apparently some of his autonomous workers agree which is why they left). You win that round because I agree that is a bullshit promise which will likely be unsolved in its current iteration due to his cop out of "bar regulatory approval". Your other points are all about timelines which I and most others know he always always always underestimates (I don't even know of one that he actually has hit). However, I still feel as though he hits most of those targets eventually and he is definitely moving way faster than other companies towards the hard problems he is trying to solve which is why I don't care nor believe any of his timeline estimates.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
dwaltrip 8y ago
HN admins are giving preferential treatment to Theranos? Do you have evidence of this? Also, equating Musk to Theranos is a bit ridiculous.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
TheCowboy 8y ago
Wow. There have been negative stories and critical comments about Theranos for years. Do a search for yourself. I feel like it was on HN where I first heard about Theranos as a potential sham. Just one example that criticism of Theranos wasn't suppressed as far back as 2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10397149 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10397149 More exists.
- skosuri 8y ago
  Here’s a comment from me 10 months earlier. It was clear it was super sketchy for a while. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9072470 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9072470

by txsh 8y ago

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

citrablue 8y ago

The answer, of course, is hindsight bias. It says more about our inability to understand the probabilistic nature of the future than any sort of commentary about the downfall of civilized society. Call to mind the Michael Dell letter about Apple. Think in terms of your confidence about the current environment, right now. Would you bet something invaluable -- your children's lives, let's say -- that e.g. Uber will not be worth $10b on public markets in 5 years? If not, we have to ack there's uncertainty in the moment. It's only after the fact that the probability density function collapses to 1, and we forget about the other options.

aaron-lebo 8y ago
It's maybe hindsight that allows us to know whether the schemes of a huckster are going to fail, but it's not hard to see people who are hucksters. They make big promises and don't meet them, and when that happens they just make another promise (usually including excuses or distractions from why they were previously wrong), and people worship them for that. These people are either liars or just wrong most of the time, but people don't seem to care. It's not that it isn't obvious, it's that people don't want to admit what's right there. Maybe it is from growing up in an environment where I've seen people who love power and control (even if that's only over a very small amount of people), it desn't shock me that ramps up with increasing power and fame. There are a lot of people on the scene today which are obvious hucksters, but nobody is going to admit that (and some won't) until their lies actually ruin things. Again, see Draper whom even knowing what he does is willing to lie or be delusional about what happened there. Consider that there's lots and lots of people who are willing to actually give up their lives for weird cult leaders. If that's the case (and those lies are very obvious to all but a small few), there's so much room on the other side of that where you can be equally as manipulative and fraudulent but because it's only business or politics and not religion, people aren't willing to apply the same standard and say, yeah, that guy is a liar who likes people talking about him (or whatever gender). Usually people in positions of power have actively sought that power, and it attracts a very specific kind of personality.
- mrep 8y ago
  Are you saying Musk is a huckster who makes big promises and don't meet them because he has hit most of his promises from what I have seen (albeit they are always delayed but that is just his management strategy to incentivize his employees to work harder)?
  - aaron-lebo 8y ago
    Didn't mean to target Musk, but he certainly is in the same area. You ever notice how thin-skinned he is towards criticism and how he's constantly pivoting to projects which are years away? Besides the actual lies/exaggerations about Autopilot (people have died because of this), forgive this first title. The important part is the quote: http://www.businessinsider.com/musk-epic-failure-2016-5?op=1 http://www.businessinsider.com/musk-epic-failure-2016-5?op=1 Tesla reported first-quarter earnings last week, and while they were better than Wall Street expected, the earthshaking news that emerged was that Musk is taking the carmaker in a new strategic direction. Tesla, which delivered about 50,000 vehicles last year, is aiming to deliver 500,000 in 2018. The production target isn't new, but the timeline is. Tesla had previously said it would build half a million cars a year by 2020. This did not happen, which led him to Tweet last July that they could deliver 20k cars per month by Dec. This did not happen either. Investors were relieved they managed to hit 2k per week as of March (this is down from the 2.5k they were targeting). https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/881757617416056832 https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/881757617416056832 It's really not a difficult tactic. If you have lots of money you can subsidize lots of failure. The failure ends up ignored, but your 10% hit ratio is looked at as though you're some kind of visionary. You can do that for a long time, if you've got the runway. Holmes will probably be running a very big company in about a decade.
    - mrep 8y ago
      > Besides the actual lies/exaggerations about Autopilot I'm a big Musk fan but Autopilot definitely pisses me off. It's a hugely exaggerated term for laypeople which is why people keep dying on it and I'm highly skeptical they can get full autonomy with their current sensors (and apparently some of his autonomous workers agree which is why they left). You win that round because I agree that is a bullshit promise which will likely be unsolved in its current iteration due to his cop out of "bar regulatory approval". Your other points are all about timelines which I and most others know he always always always underestimates (I don't even know of one that he actually has hit). However, I still feel as though he hits most of those targets eventually and he is definitely moving way faster than other companies towards the hard problems he is trying to solve which is why I don't care nor believe any of his timeline estimates.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

dwaltrip 8y ago

HN admins are giving preferential treatment to Theranos? Do you have evidence of this? Also, equating Musk to Theranos is a bit ridiculous.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

TheCowboy 8y ago

Wow. There have been negative stories and critical comments about Theranos for years. Do a search for yourself. I feel like it was on HN where I first heard about Theranos as a potential sham. Just one example that criticism of Theranos wasn't suppressed as far back as 2015: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10397149 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10397149 More exists.

skosuri 8y ago
Here’s a comment from me 10 months earlier. It was clear it was super sketchy for a while. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9072470 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9072470