6 ms·

FSD rollout is purely driven by Elon’s ego. He’s addicted to fame and power, and that comes from image he created of himself being an Iron Man. I’m pretty sure

FSD rollout is purely driven by Elon’s ego. He’s addicted to fame and power, and that comes from image he created of himself being an Iron Man. I’m pretty sure he got to a point where he believes in it, and thinks he’s invincible and can solve any problem, because he’s so much smarter than everyone. Stock bubble making wealthiest man only helped to solidify that.

dilap 6y ago
I don't know, I don't get that feeling. What makes you think that? I don't know much about Elon, but I listened to one of his interviews with Rogan, and he struck me as extremely optimistic, but also grounded and not arrogant. (I do agree partial-self-driving just seems like a terrible idea. I guess crash stats can reveal if this is true or not, but are perhaps not available.)
- Barrin92 6y ago
  his covid comments last year were beyond the pale. The low point for me was when Shannon Woodward, who played a scientist on TV and to my knowledge isn't one, had to explain to him that tests are indeed not a big pharma conspiracy https://twitter.com/shannonwoodward/status/1327517694099275778?s=20 https://twitter.com/shannonwoodward/status/13275176940992757...
  - jiofih 6y ago
    I don’t see any explaining going on in that thread?
  - cbozeman 6y ago
    LOL, I love it... an actress with no higher education has to explain antigen tests to the world's richest man. We really are in the best possible timeline for general lulz and nonsense.
    - NeutronStar 6y ago
      Who would've thought that an engineer isn't isn't an epidemiologist!
  - danielscrubs 6y ago
    There is a lesson in sales and trust hidden in there. No matter how good your device is, an inexperienced (and worse when famous) person can sow distrust in it instantly. Wouldn’t surprise me if next machine is just 4 machines glued together to make it Elon Musk proof.
  - smaryjerry 6y ago
    “Had to” and she just replied on Twitter with some odd assumptions are very different. I think anyone would agree that a test that is wrong half the time is not a good test.
- snoshy 6y ago
  Autopilot and FSD beta are not the same. The latter is currently available to maybe a couple dozen testers that are clearly very well informed about the capabilities of the system, as well as the changes in each update. If you really don't believe it, watch their hours and hours of (frankly boring) videos of analyzing the behavior of the system in complex situations while still staying on top of safety. It does remain to be seen how well Tesla will trust the general public with this level of improved autonomy. As you get closer and closer to the uncanny valley where things just appear to work, you get into the more tricky situations that truly befuddle humans and machines alike. NHTSA scrutinizes crashes that involve anything close to Autopilot and FSD quite heavily. Aside from one or two incidents they've had complaints about, none of them have risen to the point where they had to put their foot down. Admittedly, Tesla were a big bunch of jerks about how they handled the situation, but still, these were isolated incidents with clear misuse from the driver's part. I agree with you, in that Musk is overly optimistic (no shit, he's been saying this would be ready in 2018, and it's unclear if it will be in 2021). But he's also quite well informed of the facts on the ground, and is clearly aiming for the moonshot-winner-take-all prize by skipping Lidar and high-precision mapping. That might be a gamble, but need not be an inherently dangerous one, depending on how Tesla handles the super-grey areas around the uncanny valley, where the system appears to work, but really isn't worth risking your life upon. To some, it's already there, as you can see from idiots sleeping in their Teslas while on Autopilot. But again, outside of a couple of incidents over years and millions and miles, the rate of catastrophic failure (accidents) has been surprisingly low.
  - Pyramus 6y ago
    > clearly very well informed I completely underestimated the role of professional safety drivers for autonomous vehicles. I thought it's "just a guy" sitting in the car for good measure, but it turns out that the majority of drivers is not fit for the job even after lengthy training, see e.g. [1] (a gread podcast in general). Also all autonomous driving companies employ safety drivers - except one. > NHTSA scrutinizes crashes that involve anything close to Autopilot and FSD quite heavily. I wouldn't put too much hope into the NHTSA regulating Autopilot. It took a two year legal battle to get the data driving their analysis of the Autopilot in 2017, turns out it was completely provided by Tesla, but worse, when confounders where removed, it still showed a higher crash rate for Autopilot. If you take a non-American view of Autopilot, Europeans agencies did scrutinize the crashes more closely and as a result have restricted the use of Autopilot. If you are interested in the topic of autonomous driving I recommend the Autonocast podcast. [1] http://www.autonocast.com/blog/2020/10/29/205-why-teslas-full-self-driving-beta-is-dangerous http://www.autonocast.com/blog/2020/10/29/205-why-teslas-ful... [2] https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/02/in-2017-the-feds-said-tesla-autopilot-cut-crashes-40-that-was-bogus/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/02/in-2017-the-feds-said-t...
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- Judgmentality 6y ago
  Elon will get into some pretty bizarre bouts on twitter. I realize this is common for celebrities, but that whole "diver is a pedophile" thing was truly wtf. https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-pedo-guy-doesnt-mean-pedophile/ https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-pedo-guy-doesnt-mean-p...
  - pmorici 6y ago
    If you go read the court testimony it isn’t as strange as it seems on the face. The diver started the tiff and the insult Musk sent in return was said to be common vernacular in South Africa where he grew up.
    - detaro 6y ago
      Is it also tradition in South Africa to then e-mail press to insist that it investigate the target and pay "private investigators"?
      - frankzinger 6y ago
        Good point, but the whole thing is a made-up excuse. "Pedo" just means pedophile in South Africa.
  - mhh__ 6y ago
    The whole thing just screamed of a man with with an issue surrounded by yesmen.
  - nemrut 6y ago
    Westerners living in Thailand and elsewhere in SE/E Asia have gained well-known reputation for such questionable behavior among other things.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
xirbeosbwo1234 6y ago
He didn't create that image on his own. He had a lot of help. He had a cameo in Iron Man 2 where Iron Man treated him as a peer! (That scene, by the way, is a perfect example of why I hate superhero movies.)
- repsilat 6y ago
  Kinda weird comment. Not that it matters, but in the scene Iron Man brushed Elon off -- He was "politely rude", and the scene (while serving as an ad for Elon) served the film by giving cred to Stark by having Elon fawn over him. More importantly though, treating someone "as a peer" is kinda a weird criticism? Superheros on TV these days don't seem terribly stuck-up. When other characters in the films seem honest the heroes usually treat them with respect and dignity. Anyway, thanks for the heads-up that you hate superhero movies, will keep it in mind next time I see one on a plane.
- pb7 6y ago
  RDJ’s portrayal of Iron Man is partially based off Elon Musk, not the other way around. Edit: Since I’m being downvoted, here you go, today you learned: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/true-story-elon-musk-robert-downey-jr-tony-stark-ashlee-vance https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/true-story-elon-musk-robert-d...
  - ardit33 6y ago
    and Larry Ellison, Elon Musk was still too young on the scene in 2008, and not the celebrity he is today.
    - pb7 6y ago
      https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/true-story-elon-musk-robert-downey-jr-tony-stark-ashlee-vance https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/true-story-elon-musk-robert-d...
      - ardit33 6y ago
        Not sure about that tibit, but in general that book is said to be inaccurate/too rosy of musk. From what I have heard, it was both: Elon Musk, Larry Ellison Appear In Iron Man 2 https://www.forbes.com/sites/velocity/2010/04/29/elon-musk-larry-ellison-have-cameos-in-iron-man-2/?sh=19a14298d978 https://www.forbes.com/sites/velocity/2010/04/29/elon-musk-l...
threeseed 6y ago
He also personally received an obscenely large windfall as a result of this strategy. Debatable how significant this impacts his decision making but it's pretty hard to argue that doesn't impact it at least a little.
scythe 6y ago
I don't think FSD rollout is the central goal. The goal is to build hype and thus market cap that Tesla can use to build factories. Ten years ago, Tesla had no factories (at high capacity). They've had absolutely ridiculous velocity since then precisely because of their ridiculous valuation. Even if this FSD thing doesn't work out, it might have been necessary for Tesla to get this far. If Tesla's stock crashes, they still have the factories. All they need is to make sure nobody can prove Elon knows he's full of it (securities fraud). His Twitter persona suits this strategy to a T.
- nickik 6y ago
  Conspiracy level nonsense here. Elon tried to take Tesla private. He himself didn't want raise money on higher evaluation. He himself multiple times said they don't deserve the high stock. He has been an optimist on this technology of a long time and has made that argument for a long time. The claim that the FSD testing is to boost the stock price is truly bizard, specially because there is very little evidence of any correlation between FSD and stock price. Go look at the Wallstreet models, most of them don't have large considerations income from FSD. If you look at FSD testers, their videos don't have millions of views.
naebother 6y ago
My man has the Iron Man costume on display in a glass case at spacex. And the recruiters give you a spiel about it that feels very much like you're about to join a cult.
rendall 6y ago
> FSD rollout is purely driven by Elon’s ego. He’s addicted to fame and power... Whoa. You have strong feelings. One of my Life Rules that has served me enduringly well is to avoid believing that I can confidently have real insight into what motives drive someone. That rule is not for their benefit, but for my own: to putatively "know" something is to invite an incorrect model of reality and thereby incorrect action. It doesn't actually matter what drives Musk or anyone else: ego, pure business interests, a desire to take humanity to the stars, boredom, pathology, space ghosts, whatever. What matters is behavior and its effects. If you criticize Musk's ego, ambition, pride, there's nothing actionable for anyone, neither Musk himself nor Tesla's potential customers. If you criticize the Tesla FSD rollout, now there's something people can do.

dilap 6y ago

I don't know, I don't get that feeling. What makes you think that? I don't know much about Elon, but I listened to one of his interviews with Rogan, and he struck me as extremely optimistic, but also grounded and not arrogant. (I do agree partial-self-driving just seems like a terrible idea. I guess crash stats can reveal if this is true or not, but are perhaps not available.)

Barrin92 6y ago
his covid comments last year were beyond the pale. The low point for me was when Shannon Woodward, who played a scientist on TV and to my knowledge isn't one, had to explain to him that tests are indeed not a big pharma conspiracy https://twitter.com/shannonwoodward/status/1327517694099275778?s=20 https://twitter.com/shannonwoodward/status/13275176940992757...
- jiofih 6y ago
  I don’t see any explaining going on in that thread?
- cbozeman 6y ago
  LOL, I love it... an actress with no higher education has to explain antigen tests to the world's richest man. We really are in the best possible timeline for general lulz and nonsense.
  - NeutronStar 6y ago
    Who would've thought that an engineer isn't isn't an epidemiologist!
- danielscrubs 6y ago
  There is a lesson in sales and trust hidden in there. No matter how good your device is, an inexperienced (and worse when famous) person can sow distrust in it instantly. Wouldn’t surprise me if next machine is just 4 machines glued together to make it Elon Musk proof.
- smaryjerry 6y ago
  “Had to” and she just replied on Twitter with some odd assumptions are very different. I think anyone would agree that a test that is wrong half the time is not a good test.
snoshy 6y ago
Autopilot and FSD beta are not the same. The latter is currently available to maybe a couple dozen testers that are clearly very well informed about the capabilities of the system, as well as the changes in each update. If you really don't believe it, watch their hours and hours of (frankly boring) videos of analyzing the behavior of the system in complex situations while still staying on top of safety. It does remain to be seen how well Tesla will trust the general public with this level of improved autonomy. As you get closer and closer to the uncanny valley where things just appear to work, you get into the more tricky situations that truly befuddle humans and machines alike. NHTSA scrutinizes crashes that involve anything close to Autopilot and FSD quite heavily. Aside from one or two incidents they've had complaints about, none of them have risen to the point where they had to put their foot down. Admittedly, Tesla were a big bunch of jerks about how they handled the situation, but still, these were isolated incidents with clear misuse from the driver's part. I agree with you, in that Musk is overly optimistic (no shit, he's been saying this would be ready in 2018, and it's unclear if it will be in 2021). But he's also quite well informed of the facts on the ground, and is clearly aiming for the moonshot-winner-take-all prize by skipping Lidar and high-precision mapping. That might be a gamble, but need not be an inherently dangerous one, depending on how Tesla handles the super-grey areas around the uncanny valley, where the system appears to work, but really isn't worth risking your life upon. To some, it's already there, as you can see from idiots sleeping in their Teslas while on Autopilot. But again, outside of a couple of incidents over years and millions and miles, the rate of catastrophic failure (accidents) has been surprisingly low.
- Pyramus 6y ago
  > clearly very well informed I completely underestimated the role of professional safety drivers for autonomous vehicles. I thought it's "just a guy" sitting in the car for good measure, but it turns out that the majority of drivers is not fit for the job even after lengthy training, see e.g. [1] (a gread podcast in general). Also all autonomous driving companies employ safety drivers - except one. > NHTSA scrutinizes crashes that involve anything close to Autopilot and FSD quite heavily. I wouldn't put too much hope into the NHTSA regulating Autopilot. It took a two year legal battle to get the data driving their analysis of the Autopilot in 2017, turns out it was completely provided by Tesla, but worse, when confounders where removed, it still showed a higher crash rate for Autopilot. If you take a non-American view of Autopilot, Europeans agencies did scrutinize the crashes more closely and as a result have restricted the use of Autopilot. If you are interested in the topic of autonomous driving I recommend the Autonocast podcast. [1] http://www.autonocast.com/blog/2020/10/29/205-why-teslas-full-self-driving-beta-is-dangerous http://www.autonocast.com/blog/2020/10/29/205-why-teslas-ful... [2] https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/02/in-2017-the-feds-said-tesla-autopilot-cut-crashes-40-that-was-bogus/ https://arstechnica.com/cars/2019/02/in-2017-the-feds-said-t...
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
Judgmentality 6y ago
Elon will get into some pretty bizarre bouts on twitter. I realize this is common for celebrities, but that whole "diver is a pedophile" thing was truly wtf. https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-pedo-guy-doesnt-mean-pedophile/ https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-pedo-guy-doesnt-mean-p...
- pmorici 6y ago
  If you go read the court testimony it isn’t as strange as it seems on the face. The diver started the tiff and the insult Musk sent in return was said to be common vernacular in South Africa where he grew up.
  - detaro 6y ago
    Is it also tradition in South Africa to then e-mail press to insist that it investigate the target and pay "private investigators"?
    - frankzinger 6y ago
      Good point, but the whole thing is a made-up excuse. "Pedo" just means pedophile in South Africa.
- mhh__ 6y ago
  The whole thing just screamed of a man with with an issue surrounded by yesmen.
- nemrut 6y ago
  Westerners living in Thailand and elsewhere in SE/E Asia have gained well-known reputation for such questionable behavior among other things.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

xirbeosbwo1234 6y ago

He didn't create that image on his own. He had a lot of help. He had a cameo in Iron Man 2 where Iron Man treated him as a peer! (That scene, by the way, is a perfect example of why I hate superhero movies.)

repsilat 6y ago
Kinda weird comment. Not that it matters, but in the scene Iron Man brushed Elon off -- He was "politely rude", and the scene (while serving as an ad for Elon) served the film by giving cred to Stark by having Elon fawn over him. More importantly though, treating someone "as a peer" is kinda a weird criticism? Superheros on TV these days don't seem terribly stuck-up. When other characters in the films seem honest the heroes usually treat them with respect and dignity. Anyway, thanks for the heads-up that you hate superhero movies, will keep it in mind next time I see one on a plane.
pb7 6y ago
RDJ’s portrayal of Iron Man is partially based off Elon Musk, not the other way around. Edit: Since I’m being downvoted, here you go, today you learned: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/true-story-elon-musk-robert-downey-jr-tony-stark-ashlee-vance https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/true-story-elon-musk-robert-d...
- ardit33 6y ago
  and Larry Ellison, Elon Musk was still too young on the scene in 2008, and not the celebrity he is today.
  - pb7 6y ago
    https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/true-story-elon-musk-robert-downey-jr-tony-stark-ashlee-vance https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/true-story-elon-musk-robert-d...
    - ardit33 6y ago
      Not sure about that tibit, but in general that book is said to be inaccurate/too rosy of musk. From what I have heard, it was both: Elon Musk, Larry Ellison Appear In Iron Man 2 https://www.forbes.com/sites/velocity/2010/04/29/elon-musk-larry-ellison-have-cameos-in-iron-man-2/?sh=19a14298d978 https://www.forbes.com/sites/velocity/2010/04/29/elon-musk-l...

threeseed 6y ago

He also personally received an obscenely large windfall as a result of this strategy. Debatable how significant this impacts his decision making but it's pretty hard to argue that doesn't impact it at least a little.

scythe 6y ago

I don't think FSD rollout is the central goal. The goal is to build hype and thus market cap that Tesla can use to build factories. Ten years ago, Tesla had no factories (at high capacity). They've had absolutely ridiculous velocity since then precisely because of their ridiculous valuation. Even if this FSD thing doesn't work out, it might have been necessary for Tesla to get this far. If Tesla's stock crashes, they still have the factories. All they need is to make sure nobody can prove Elon knows he's full of it (securities fraud). His Twitter persona suits this strategy to a T.

nickik 6y ago
Conspiracy level nonsense here. Elon tried to take Tesla private. He himself didn't want raise money on higher evaluation. He himself multiple times said they don't deserve the high stock. He has been an optimist on this technology of a long time and has made that argument for a long time. The claim that the FSD testing is to boost the stock price is truly bizard, specially because there is very little evidence of any correlation between FSD and stock price. Go look at the Wallstreet models, most of them don't have large considerations income from FSD. If you look at FSD testers, their videos don't have millions of views.

naebother 6y ago

My man has the Iron Man costume on display in a glass case at spacex. And the recruiters give you a spiel about it that feels very much like you're about to join a cult.

rendall 6y ago

> FSD rollout is purely driven by Elon’s ego. He’s addicted to fame and power... Whoa. You have strong feelings. One of my Life Rules that has served me enduringly well is to avoid believing that I can confidently have real insight into what motives drive someone. That rule is not for their benefit, but for my own: to putatively "know" something is to invite an incorrect model of reality and thereby incorrect action. It doesn't actually matter what drives Musk or anyone else: ego, pure business interests, a desire to take humanity to the stars, boredom, pathology, space ghosts, whatever. What matters is behavior and its effects. If you criticize Musk's ego, ambition, pride, there's nothing actionable for anyone, neither Musk himself nor Tesla's potential customers. If you criticize the Tesla FSD rollout, now there's something people can do.