5 ms·

Maybe slightly off topic, but Musk’s companies are likely to be the biggest human decentralizing force in history. Leaving aside that Spacex is trying to decen

Maybe slightly off topic, but Musk’s companies are likely to be the biggest human decentralizing force in history. Leaving aside that Spacex is trying to decentralise at a planetary level, the solar roofs and batteries allow you to live anywhere in the world without an electric grid (water is generally easy to get with a borewell), Teslas will drive you anywhere (mostly) by themselves, and Starlink will give you high speed Internet. Given the way lifestyles are changing, I don’t actually think people of the future will cluster in cities.

mellosouls 7y ago
Musk’s companies are likely to be the biggest human decentralizing force in history. He's an interesting figure, but it's a little early to be eulogising him this way.
twic 7y ago
Right, because the reason i live in a city is the easy access to electricity, water, and high-speed internet access!
- hexomancer 7y ago
  I don't know if you were being sarcastic or not but for me the reason that I live in a city absolutely is easy access to those.
  - riantogo 7y ago
    Then considering moving to cheaper rural places where in 2019 all three are easily available.
navigatesol 7y ago
>but Musk’s companies are likely to be the biggest human decentralizing force in history. Are you completely unaware that Musk and his family are being sued for self-dealing and fraud? Are you not paying attention to what's happening to cash bleeding companies? >the solar roofs The solar roofs that the CFO at the time they were demonstrated publicly didn't think were real, or that the global sales manager for Tesla energy didn't know if they sold a single one during his tenure? Those are changing the world? SpaceX can't go to Mars. Teslas don't drive themselves. The Solar Roof doesn't exist. Starlink has yet to prove viable. Neuralink and The Boring Company are jokes. These are money-burning "ideas" to get to the next funding round.
- mft_ 7y ago
  It's easy to be a nay-sayer, when the subject of your criticism is taking on long-term difficult problems. I wonder whether, four years ago, you'd have written "SpaceX can't land or reuse rockets - that's a pipe dream"? Or more recently "Tesla is a basket-case that can't return a profit and will go bust"? * SpaceX can't go to Mars... yet; but that's really hard, so they're working on it and are closer to it than anyone else * Teslas don't drive themselves yet; but that's really hard, so they're working on it and are showing constant improvements to their software in pursuit of that end * Solar Roof v3 probably does exist, and might be a viable product - let's see * Starlink has yet to be in a position to be proven viable; but that's a question of time No doubt Musk over-promises and under-delivers (to the extent that it's a meme at this point) but he has already delivered hugely in some areas, and I suspect he'll prove you wrong time and time again over coming years.
  - jjeaff 7y ago
    Waymo and others appear to be far ahead of Tesla in the self driving realm.
    - mft_ 7y ago
      Indeed; once again, Musk is making it hard in the shorter-term for himself/Tesla by going a route based on a totally different vision (i.e. eschewing LIDAR) to the rest of the industry. Time will tell whether he'll win out in the long term; will this be another landing and reusing rockets moment, or will his approach to self-driving cars be a relative failure?
      - jjeaff 7y ago
        Seeing as he has to know that the cost of Lidar will continue to fall precipitously, I have to believe the only reason he is actually going all in on cameras only is because he has to be able to continue selling the fantasy that the Tesla you buy today will be fully autonomous with nothing more than a software update.
- 7y ago
vvillena 7y ago
Leaving aside the terrible environmental consequences that lowering population density results in, there's two main reasons that keep people living in cities: work and service availability. Tesla is doing impressive work, but they won't have an effect in how people cluster into cities.
- JoeAltmaier 7y ago
  That's completely backward? Its centralized human settlement that's cause environmental collapse over history.
  - ben_w 7y ago
    That’s a surprising thing to read, do you have any references? While I would accept that centralised human settlement has been a contributing factor to certain diseases, I had always been told that environmental collapses have generally been caused by either natural disasters or wide-scale rather than centralised overpopulation.
  - vvillena 7y ago
    Collapse is usually caused by overpopulation and mismanagement of resources. Decentralize the people and the collapse just comes sooner. The total human impact is way way bigger when population is sparsely distributed. Cities enable people to live close together, ensuring more land is kept free of negative human influence. Think about it: if the population is the same, the needs are the same. Food, water, waste treatment, transport, luxuries. At the very least, you need the same of everything, but if the density isn't big enough there's no economy of scale that can kick in. I remember reading about how some US suburbs are effectively bankrupt, because they can't maintain their infrastructures due to not enough people living there. Imagine it, a high-class neighborhood that is forced to replace asphalt roads with gravel roads.
    - ben_w 7y ago
      Ironically I live in a house on what seems to be a fairly affluent street [0] in Berlin, yet the road outside the house is unpaved gravel. [0] seems to be, but I don’t know if the appearance is deceptive as I’m a foreigner who only speaks the local language to the level of simple newspaper stories.
cko 7y ago
I choose to live in cities because I want to be where the people are. And I'm not much of a "people person." Nothing beats being minutes away from face to face interaction.
- avmich 7y ago
  If you cover great distances per minute - say, 600 km/h airplane does 10 kilometers per minute, and 50 kilometers per 5 minutes - then you can live in a sparse (average 50 km between people) environment.

mellosouls 7y ago

Musk’s companies are likely to be the biggest human decentralizing force in history. He's an interesting figure, but it's a little early to be eulogising him this way.

twic 7y ago

Right, because the reason i live in a city is the easy access to electricity, water, and high-speed internet access!

hexomancer 7y ago
I don't know if you were being sarcastic or not but for me the reason that I live in a city absolutely is easy access to those.
- riantogo 7y ago
  Then considering moving to cheaper rural places where in 2019 all three are easily available.

navigatesol 7y ago

>but Musk’s companies are likely to be the biggest human decentralizing force in history. Are you completely unaware that Musk and his family are being sued for self-dealing and fraud? Are you not paying attention to what's happening to cash bleeding companies? >the solar roofs The solar roofs that the CFO at the time they were demonstrated publicly didn't think were real, or that the global sales manager for Tesla energy didn't know if they sold a single one during his tenure? Those are changing the world? SpaceX can't go to Mars. Teslas don't drive themselves. The Solar Roof doesn't exist. Starlink has yet to prove viable. Neuralink and The Boring Company are jokes. These are money-burning "ideas" to get to the next funding round.

mft_ 7y ago
It's easy to be a nay-sayer, when the subject of your criticism is taking on long-term difficult problems. I wonder whether, four years ago, you'd have written "SpaceX can't land or reuse rockets - that's a pipe dream"? Or more recently "Tesla is a basket-case that can't return a profit and will go bust"? * SpaceX can't go to Mars... yet; but that's really hard, so they're working on it and are closer to it than anyone else * Teslas don't drive themselves yet; but that's really hard, so they're working on it and are showing constant improvements to their software in pursuit of that end * Solar Roof v3 probably does exist, and might be a viable product - let's see * Starlink has yet to be in a position to be proven viable; but that's a question of time No doubt Musk over-promises and under-delivers (to the extent that it's a meme at this point) but he has already delivered hugely in some areas, and I suspect he'll prove you wrong time and time again over coming years.
- jjeaff 7y ago
  Waymo and others appear to be far ahead of Tesla in the self driving realm.
  - mft_ 7y ago
    Indeed; once again, Musk is making it hard in the shorter-term for himself/Tesla by going a route based on a totally different vision (i.e. eschewing LIDAR) to the rest of the industry. Time will tell whether he'll win out in the long term; will this be another landing and reusing rockets moment, or will his approach to self-driving cars be a relative failure?
    - jjeaff 7y ago
      Seeing as he has to know that the cost of Lidar will continue to fall precipitously, I have to believe the only reason he is actually going all in on cameras only is because he has to be able to continue selling the fantasy that the Tesla you buy today will be fully autonomous with nothing more than a software update.
7y ago

vvillena 7y ago

Leaving aside the terrible environmental consequences that lowering population density results in, there's two main reasons that keep people living in cities: work and service availability. Tesla is doing impressive work, but they won't have an effect in how people cluster into cities.

JoeAltmaier 7y ago
That's completely backward? Its centralized human settlement that's cause environmental collapse over history.
- ben_w 7y ago
  That’s a surprising thing to read, do you have any references? While I would accept that centralised human settlement has been a contributing factor to certain diseases, I had always been told that environmental collapses have generally been caused by either natural disasters or wide-scale rather than centralised overpopulation.
- vvillena 7y ago
  Collapse is usually caused by overpopulation and mismanagement of resources. Decentralize the people and the collapse just comes sooner. The total human impact is way way bigger when population is sparsely distributed. Cities enable people to live close together, ensuring more land is kept free of negative human influence. Think about it: if the population is the same, the needs are the same. Food, water, waste treatment, transport, luxuries. At the very least, you need the same of everything, but if the density isn't big enough there's no economy of scale that can kick in. I remember reading about how some US suburbs are effectively bankrupt, because they can't maintain their infrastructures due to not enough people living there. Imagine it, a high-class neighborhood that is forced to replace asphalt roads with gravel roads.
  - ben_w 7y ago
    Ironically I live in a house on what seems to be a fairly affluent street [0] in Berlin, yet the road outside the house is unpaved gravel. [0] seems to be, but I don’t know if the appearance is deceptive as I’m a foreigner who only speaks the local language to the level of simple newspaper stories.

cko 7y ago

I choose to live in cities because I want to be where the people are. And I'm not much of a "people person." Nothing beats being minutes away from face to face interaction.

avmich 7y ago
If you cover great distances per minute - say, 600 km/h airplane does 10 kilometers per minute, and 50 kilometers per 5 minutes - then you can live in a sparse (average 50 km between people) environment.