4 ms·

You seem too easily persuaded that Elon Musk is a con man. Have you taken into account the massive empire he has already built - if he were truly as nefarious

by mmjaa 8y ago

You seem too easily persuaded that Elon Musk is a con man. Have you taken into account the massive empire he has already built - if he were truly as nefarious as you seem to imply, its hardly likely that he would've been able to effectively build rockets that land themselves, cars that drive themselves, alternatives to the oil-addiction we're all suffering under, etc. I mean, put some balance in your argument: What has Musk done right, in your opinion? Anything at all?

dotancohen 8y ago
> I mean, put some balance in your argument: What has Musk done right, in your opinion? Anything at all? The roads go without saying.
neotek 8y ago
Buying, or investing in, existing companies and then using his marketing skills to convince other investors (and governments) to pour billions of dollars into them is hardly the same thing as "building rockets that land themselves" - you can thank the engineers and visionaries at SpaceX for that. And his cars absolutely do not drive themselves despite his constant reassurances that they'll be able to do so Real Soon Now™. In fact, as an aside, I would argue that Tesla's marketing is disgustingly misleading - their website loudly proclaims that all Teslas are equipped with every piece of hardware necessary for fully autonomous self-driving, and in a much smaller, much quieter voice they subtly admit that none of their cars are capable of actually doing that yet. You may handwave that away as marketing fluff, but if you asked the average person in the street whether Teslas can drive themselves, 90% of them would say yes, of course they can, when in reality they're merely on par with other makes and models that have had the exact same driver assist features for years. It's misleading at best, and lethal at worst - lives have been lost because drivers blindly placed their faith in autonomous driving features that simply do not work as implied. Go ahead and chalk that up to the drivers not being attentive enough, of course they share the bulk of the blame for not being in control of the vehicle they're driving, but it's hardly a surprise that many Tesla drivers have been lulled into a false sense of security by Tesla's marketing. But again, nobody is arguing that Musk is running a straight up scam or that the products don't exist, the criticism is that he is constantly making promises and predictions he can't fulfil, constantly making claims that sound impressive until you look beneath the veneer, and whenever he is challenged to back up his assertions he either messily dodges the question or launches into yet another Twitter rant, and all the while his fans eagerly accept whatever he says without any care for objective reality.
- mmjaa 8y ago
  If life were only about making claims one can fulfil, it'd be entirely boring and hardly worth any effort at all. This predilection towards 'maximum correctness, always' seems to me to be a thinly veiled attempt at justifying totalitarianism. You don't get to the moon by doing everything you can not to break things - you get to the moon by not minding if things break, if it means you can improve conditions in life. We wouldn't have gotten to the moon, maybe, if the Apollo 1 incident didn't occur - perhaps if it hand't been so serious, it would have hamstrung the program later on in history. But, we learned from the incident, redesigned things, and radically improved the state of the art at the time. The same is true now, of Elons' efforts - certainly he has made many big leaps in terms of projected goals and plans, but - so? Have you, with as much visor as you profess, not noticed the many, many times that Musk&co. have learned from their big mistakes, fixed things, and radically improved things as a result? How many times do there have to be big booms on the pad to satisfy your lust for self-introspection? Nobody ever gets anywhere by saying "you know what would be good - if we just did the mundane, boring, safe things ..." With that kind of mentality, we'd all be running Windows. "Objective reality" is a fallacy. Objectively, we should've just stayed up in the trees. Subjectively, I'm glad there are individuals out there to push our species above the fray, all the while ignoring the sanctity of the mob.
  - neotek 8y ago
    ...what on earth are you talking about? How is any of that relevant to any of the points I've made? Did I at any point state or even imply anything even remotely approaching "maximum correctness, always"? Did I advocate for "mundane, boring, safe things"? Are you going to address the actual points I made regarding Tesla's misleading marketing and the literal, actual deaths that have resulted from it? Why is it so difficult to hold any kind of honest discussion with Muskovites on the subject of his intentionally misleading claims and absurd pie-in-the-sky overreaches? What drives you to make excuses for a loudmouthed anti-worker billionaire who has so constantly and consistently failed to live up to his promises?
    - manicdee 8y ago

by mmjaa 8y ago

dotancohen 8y ago

> I mean, put some balance in your argument: What has Musk done right, in your opinion? Anything at all? The roads go without saying.

neotek 8y ago

Buying, or investing in, existing companies and then using his marketing skills to convince other investors (and governments) to pour billions of dollars into them is hardly the same thing as "building rockets that land themselves" - you can thank the engineers and visionaries at SpaceX for that. And his cars absolutely do not drive themselves despite his constant reassurances that they'll be able to do so Real Soon Now™. In fact, as an aside, I would argue that Tesla's marketing is disgustingly misleading - their website loudly proclaims that all Teslas are equipped with every piece of hardware necessary for fully autonomous self-driving, and in a much smaller, much quieter voice they subtly admit that none of their cars are capable of actually doing that yet. You may handwave that away as marketing fluff, but if you asked the average person in the street whether Teslas can drive themselves, 90% of them would say yes, of course they can, when in reality they're merely on par with other makes and models that have had the exact same driver assist features for years. It's misleading at best, and lethal at worst - lives have been lost because drivers blindly placed their faith in autonomous driving features that simply do not work as implied. Go ahead and chalk that up to the drivers not being attentive enough, of course they share the bulk of the blame for not being in control of the vehicle they're driving, but it's hardly a surprise that many Tesla drivers have been lulled into a false sense of security by Tesla's marketing. But again, nobody is arguing that Musk is running a straight up scam or that the products don't exist, the criticism is that he is constantly making promises and predictions he can't fulfil, constantly making claims that sound impressive until you look beneath the veneer, and whenever he is challenged to back up his assertions he either messily dodges the question or launches into yet another Twitter rant, and all the while his fans eagerly accept whatever he says without any care for objective reality.

mmjaa 8y ago
If life were only about making claims one can fulfil, it'd be entirely boring and hardly worth any effort at all. This predilection towards 'maximum correctness, always' seems to me to be a thinly veiled attempt at justifying totalitarianism. You don't get to the moon by doing everything you can not to break things - you get to the moon by not minding if things break, if it means you can improve conditions in life. We wouldn't have gotten to the moon, maybe, if the Apollo 1 incident didn't occur - perhaps if it hand't been so serious, it would have hamstrung the program later on in history. But, we learned from the incident, redesigned things, and radically improved the state of the art at the time. The same is true now, of Elons' efforts - certainly he has made many big leaps in terms of projected goals and plans, but - so? Have you, with as much visor as you profess, not noticed the many, many times that Musk&co. have learned from their big mistakes, fixed things, and radically improved things as a result? How many times do there have to be big booms on the pad to satisfy your lust for self-introspection? Nobody ever gets anywhere by saying "you know what would be good - if we just did the mundane, boring, safe things ..." With that kind of mentality, we'd all be running Windows. "Objective reality" is a fallacy. Objectively, we should've just stayed up in the trees. Subjectively, I'm glad there are individuals out there to push our species above the fray, all the while ignoring the sanctity of the mob.
- neotek 8y ago
  ...what on earth are you talking about? How is any of that relevant to any of the points I've made? Did I at any point state or even imply anything even remotely approaching "maximum correctness, always"? Did I advocate for "mundane, boring, safe things"? Are you going to address the actual points I made regarding Tesla's misleading marketing and the literal, actual deaths that have resulted from it? Why is it so difficult to hold any kind of honest discussion with Muskovites on the subject of his intentionally misleading claims and absurd pie-in-the-sky overreaches? What drives you to make excuses for a loudmouthed anti-worker billionaire who has so constantly and consistently failed to live up to his promises?
  - manicdee 8y ago