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Elon Musk is unethical and it’s amazing how he has gotten away with so much simply by associating himself with positive trends. People see him and they think ab

Elon Musk is unethical and it’s amazing how he has gotten away with so much simply by associating himself with positive trends. People see him and they think about clean energy and space colonization, but they ignore his casual disregard for human life evidenced by misrepresenting autopilot’s current and future capabilities, leading to at least 5 deaths at this point. He has also promised to cure autism via Neuralink, a baseless claim. He claimed that a monkey has controlled a computer at Neuralink, almost certainly untrue. He has destroyed his skeptics through questionable tactics, Fossi, Martin Tripp, skabooshka, Vernon Unsworth. The man is a disgrace, but his fans defend him as if he was the Messiah. How people can rail against Trump while supporting Elon Musk is mind boggling.

cameronbrown 6y ago
Most founders keep to themselves because they don't want to overpromise. Musk does the total opposite, by tweeting all the random thoughts in his brain and I suspect it mirrors his thinking and the thinking of other founders (Zuck, Page, etc..) closely. The latter are just much quieter. Anyone would look stupid with their unfiltered thoughts broadcast to millions, but it's one of the things that people like about the dude.
- camjohnson26 6y ago
  People say the same thing about Trump. I say when you’re a billionaire and have millions of followers it’s important that you self-filter and choose your words carefully. Quite literally people may die if you don’t.
  - radu_floricica 6y ago
    > Quite literally people may die if you don’t. I never liked this argument. Partly because if you take it to its logical conclusion, any sufficiently successful individual would be paralized - which is an obviously wrong conclusion. The more successful you are, the freer you should be. The solution is to also look at gains, not just losses. Billionaires can kill people with a tweet, but they can also inspire and, yes, save lives with a tweet.
    - camjohnson26 6y ago
      If you agree the words are powerful I would hope you agree they should be used carefully.
    - CarbyAu 6y ago
      ?!? Your last sentence seems to demonstrate exactly why they should self-filter and choose their words carefully. You can be incredibly successful and not be famous. That's fine. But if your success includes fame then... I like my social leaders to be nice to their own social group and not kill them very much.
    - D-Coder 6y ago
      > The solution is to also look at gains, not just losses. Billionaires can kill people with a tweet, but they can also inspire and, yes, save lives with a tweet. If I save six lives, I can then kill six people?
  - DaniloDias 6y ago
    I say that there are a lot of countries on the planet where you don’t have the option to speak your mind honestly. I’d rather live in the one that is rewarding Elon.
    - camjohnson26 6y ago
      Freedom of speech isn’t the issue. He can be allowed to say what he does, but that doesn’t exempt him from the public consequences of lies and abuse. It’s admirable that a company can reach a $200 billion valuation in the USA weeks after the CEO tells the SEC to suck his cock. The issue is with investors who aren’t questioning if that’s a sign of lack of ethics.
      - DaniloDias 6y ago
        What’s the ethical failure here? I would agree that it doesn’t look like good judgement- but shorts are literally betting against him and his company. It’s not obvious to me where that behavior (crowing against his adversaries) crosses a line into being wrong or evil.
  - AbrahamParangi 6y ago
    Would Tesla or SpaceX be what they are if not for the extreme reputational risk of saying "we're going to do X"? Maybe. But it's hard not to see the parallel between massive risks taken and massive progress made.
imglorp 6y ago
Lets examine autopilot's 5 deaths compared to human drivers? There are roughly 3 billion autopilot miles driven [1] and we'll take your 5 deaths as a given [0]. That's 1.7 deaths per billion miles. Overall US deaths is around 15 per billion miles driven (in 2000, before Tesla) [2] ... around 8x worse than autopilot. Is autopilot saving lives? Expecting zero mishaps is not reasonable because all software has bugs and bugs can be reduced with effort while compute power improves with time. Humans on the other hand will not likely improve. 0. citation needed? 1. https://electrek.co/2020/04/22/tesla-autopilot-data-3-billion-miles/ https://electrek.co/2020/04/22/tesla-autopilot-data-3-billio... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_U...
- llukas 6y ago
  Your reasoning is broken. Human miles include all conditions/situations. Autopilot disengages whenever it is convenient and human handles all harder situations. How about comparing same type of miles?
  - jcims 6y ago
    Most crashes aren't in difficult situations. https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/812115 https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...
    - close04 6y ago
      Current self driving stats in general are meaningless because all that driving is done under constant human supervision. But if the car drives itself for 20Km and then needs intervention to avoid a fatal crash it will still count as another 20Km of self driving with no incidents. The human saves don't make it into the publicized stats. There are 2 stats that could prove meaningful for this: some average of distance driven between human interventions, and percentage of driving conditions covered. Then compare this to human stats, I'd assume the average human driver might go 10000Km without incident while covering 90% of driving conditions (like everything except extreme weather or road conditions). A self driving car would have to match that. In other words AP only has 5 deaths because those were the only drivers who left it unsupervised. I'd guess that if every car in the world today would suddenly be driven by a computer we'd see worse numbers than with human drivers one way or another (efficiency, deaths, etc.). Self driving today is great as an assist, with the human still fully in control.

cameronbrown 6y ago

Most founders keep to themselves because they don't want to overpromise. Musk does the total opposite, by tweeting all the random thoughts in his brain and I suspect it mirrors his thinking and the thinking of other founders (Zuck, Page, etc..) closely. The latter are just much quieter. Anyone would look stupid with their unfiltered thoughts broadcast to millions, but it's one of the things that people like about the dude.

camjohnson26 6y ago
People say the same thing about Trump. I say when you’re a billionaire and have millions of followers it’s important that you self-filter and choose your words carefully. Quite literally people may die if you don’t.
- radu_floricica 6y ago
  > Quite literally people may die if you don’t. I never liked this argument. Partly because if you take it to its logical conclusion, any sufficiently successful individual would be paralized - which is an obviously wrong conclusion. The more successful you are, the freer you should be. The solution is to also look at gains, not just losses. Billionaires can kill people with a tweet, but they can also inspire and, yes, save lives with a tweet.
  - camjohnson26 6y ago
    If you agree the words are powerful I would hope you agree they should be used carefully.
  - CarbyAu 6y ago
    ?!? Your last sentence seems to demonstrate exactly why they should self-filter and choose their words carefully. You can be incredibly successful and not be famous. That's fine. But if your success includes fame then... I like my social leaders to be nice to their own social group and not kill them very much.
  - D-Coder 6y ago
    > The solution is to also look at gains, not just losses. Billionaires can kill people with a tweet, but they can also inspire and, yes, save lives with a tweet. If I save six lives, I can then kill six people?
- DaniloDias 6y ago
  I say that there are a lot of countries on the planet where you don’t have the option to speak your mind honestly. I’d rather live in the one that is rewarding Elon.
  - camjohnson26 6y ago
    Freedom of speech isn’t the issue. He can be allowed to say what he does, but that doesn’t exempt him from the public consequences of lies and abuse. It’s admirable that a company can reach a $200 billion valuation in the USA weeks after the CEO tells the SEC to suck his cock. The issue is with investors who aren’t questioning if that’s a sign of lack of ethics.
    - DaniloDias 6y ago
      What’s the ethical failure here? I would agree that it doesn’t look like good judgement- but shorts are literally betting against him and his company. It’s not obvious to me where that behavior (crowing against his adversaries) crosses a line into being wrong or evil.
- AbrahamParangi 6y ago
  Would Tesla or SpaceX be what they are if not for the extreme reputational risk of saying "we're going to do X"? Maybe. But it's hard not to see the parallel between massive risks taken and massive progress made.

imglorp 6y ago

Lets examine autopilot's 5 deaths compared to human drivers? There are roughly 3 billion autopilot miles driven [1] and we'll take your 5 deaths as a given [0]. That's 1.7 deaths per billion miles. Overall US deaths is around 15 per billion miles driven (in 2000, before Tesla) [2] ... around 8x worse than autopilot. Is autopilot saving lives? Expecting zero mishaps is not reasonable because all software has bugs and bugs can be reduced with effort while compute power improves with time. Humans on the other hand will not likely improve. 0. citation needed? 1. https://electrek.co/2020/04/22/tesla-autopilot-data-3-billion-miles/ https://electrek.co/2020/04/22/tesla-autopilot-data-3-billio... 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_United_States https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_safety_in_the_U...

llukas 6y ago
Your reasoning is broken. Human miles include all conditions/situations. Autopilot disengages whenever it is convenient and human handles all harder situations. How about comparing same type of miles?
- jcims 6y ago
  Most crashes aren't in difficult situations. https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/812115 https://crashstats.nhtsa.dot.gov/Api/Public/ViewPublication/...
  - close04 6y ago
    Current self driving stats in general are meaningless because all that driving is done under constant human supervision. But if the car drives itself for 20Km and then needs intervention to avoid a fatal crash it will still count as another 20Km of self driving with no incidents. The human saves don't make it into the publicized stats. There are 2 stats that could prove meaningful for this: some average of distance driven between human interventions, and percentage of driving conditions covered. Then compare this to human stats, I'd assume the average human driver might go 10000Km without incident while covering 90% of driving conditions (like everything except extreme weather or road conditions). A self driving car would have to match that. In other words AP only has 5 deaths because those were the only drivers who left it unsupervised. I'd guess that if every car in the world today would suddenly be driven by a computer we'd see worse numbers than with human drivers one way or another (efficiency, deaths, etc.). Self driving today is great as an assist, with the human still fully in control.