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If he had listened to the "experts", there would be no Tesla and no SpaceX.

Tallasatree 5y ago
Love it (no sarcasm)
abxytg 5y ago
If he had listened to experts, Tesla's little driver assist would not be called 'autopilot' and ending in 4 hour long lithium fueled human barbecues.
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  Less people have died from Autopilot than eating lettuce contaminated with E. coli over a decade. Everyone still eats lettuce. Stupid people doing stupid things on Autopilot (watching a film [Florida], jumping in the back seat [Texas]) would’ve died doing stupid things eventually. Can’t blame Autopilot for when the monkey tries to defeat the safety system. No system is foolproof. That doesn’t make Musk any less of a liar (with his successes amplifying the hopium), but let’s not pretend people aren’t culpable for their failings. The nuance is important.
  - TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
    I don't think "Well you know, these people are idiots and they'd have killed themselves anyway" is going to win any hearts and minds. Or persuade a jury, if it ever comes to that. No system is foolproof. But systems that encourage or tolerate foolish and dangerous behaviour can't be considered well-designed.
  - Arainach 5y ago
    You can blame the system when it misleads its users. To this day, the Model S configurator calls the system "Autopilot" and uses "Full Self-Driving Capability", "Navigate on Autopilot", and "Full Self-Driving Computer" as bullet points of things it can currently do. https://i.imgur.com/3cQRMwZ.png https://i.imgur.com/3cQRMwZ.png https://www.tesla.com/models/design#overview https://www.tesla.com/models/design#overview The fine print isn't a justification when you're saying as loud as possible that this is a magic machine that does everything. Describing it as such is misleading. For comparison, here is how Cadillac describes Super Cruise, a comparably-rated driver assist suite: "Super Cruise" drive assistance feature. That's it. That's all you get when picking out the car. It frames it as an assistance, not a replacement or autopilot. If you go into details, you get "A driver assistance feature that allows hands-free driving under compatible highway driving conditions" https://www.cadillac.com/sedans/ct5/build-and-price/packages https://www.cadillac.com/sedans/ct5/build-and-price/packages If you search out their detailed marketing materials, the message is consistent: "Hands off the wheel. Eyes on the road." "Adaptive cruise control". "Stay centered". "Lane change on demand". Note that none of these promise that the computer takes over everything. The closest they come is "the first true hands-free driving-assistance", and that word assistance is absolutely key in framing this as not a replacement for all driving. https://www.cadillac.com/world-of-cadillac/innovation/super-cruise https://www.cadillac.com/world-of-cadillac/innovation/super-...
  - gamblor956 5y ago
    Less people have died from Autopilot than eating lettuce contaminated with E. coli over a decade. Everyone still eats lettuce. OTOH, more people have dried as a result of Autopilot/FSD failures than the entire rest of the self-driving vehicle industry combined. And the worst part is, Tesla doesn't even know what caused the failures, since at least one of those deaths were caused by regressions to Autopilot (for example, the Bay Area incident where the car swerved into the divider).
- xedeon 5y ago
  > Tesla's little driver assist would not be called 'autopilot' and ending in 4 hour long lithium fueled human barbecues The fire did NOT last "four hours". It was put out in 2-3 minutes. “With respect to the fire fight, unfortunately, those rumors grew out way of control. It did not take us four hours to put out the blaze. Our guys got there and put down the fire within two to three minutes, enough to see the vehicle had occupants,” Source (from the Fire Chief): https://www.houstonchronicle.com/neighborhood/woodlands/article/Woodlands-fire-chief-says-Tesla-fire-example-of-16113029.php https://www.houstonchronicle.com/neighborhood/woodlands/arti...
  - abxytg 5y ago
    Surely you don't think this technicality is compelling. My original comment contained hyperbole.
    - xedeon 5y ago
      Hyperbole or not, it sounds like you're now backpedaling. Moreover, it's also the same (fire lasted 3-4 hours) false narrative that many media outlets ran. Even though there was never an official report or account of the firefighting measures taken.
toiletfuneral 5y ago
genuinely curious, what experts said you couldn't build electric cars or reusable rockets? are you taking about investors?
vaer-k 5y ago
It was the experts that you disdain with quotation marks, but the rest of us call scientists and engineers, who made Tesla and SpaceX, not Musk. It was not scientists and engineers who scoffed at the ideas of Tesla and SpaceX, but businessmen and other non-creators. The ideas that Musk is promulgating through Neuralink are decades old; the technology he is using is hardly anything special. What scientists are pushing back on is the unrealistic timeframe Musk promises to achieve his scifi fantasies within, the consequences and repercussions of those technologies, and the short term effects of overselling and propaganda about these ideas, which are otherwise in fact valuable.
- disabled 5y ago
  Thank you for this thoughtful post. You hit the mark on the situation at hand.
- gmadsen 5y ago
  hardly anything special? have you seen the new press release? the prototype has an order of magnitude better resolution of brain signals. It is special if it was stopped right now and just given to neuroscience departments at universities.
- deepnotderp 5y ago
  > It was the experts that you disdain with quotation marks, but the rest of us call scientists and engineers, who made Tesla and SpaceX, not Musk. It was not scientists and engineers who scoffed at the ideas of Tesla and SpaceX, This is definitely some rewriting of history. Plenty of engineers gave a long list of reasons why reusable rockets couldn’t work. Difficulty of station keeping for the drone ships, cost of refurbishment, safety margins, etc
mempko 5y ago
He didn't start Tesla. And you can thank NASA for funding SpaceX. In both cases you can thank generous government subsidies for keeping his businesses afloat until they started making money. Let's also thank the thousands of engineers who made both Tesla and SpaceX work. We need to stop giving one guy all the credit.

Love it (no sarcasm)

If he had listened to experts, Tesla's little driver assist would not be called 'autopilot' and ending in 4 hour long lithium fueled human barbecues.

toomuchtodo 5y ago
Less people have died from Autopilot than eating lettuce contaminated with E. coli over a decade. Everyone still eats lettuce. Stupid people doing stupid things on Autopilot (watching a film [Florida], jumping in the back seat [Texas]) would’ve died doing stupid things eventually. Can’t blame Autopilot for when the monkey tries to defeat the safety system. No system is foolproof. That doesn’t make Musk any less of a liar (with his successes amplifying the hopium), but let’s not pretend people aren’t culpable for their failings. The nuance is important.
- TheOtherHobbes 5y ago
  I don't think "Well you know, these people are idiots and they'd have killed themselves anyway" is going to win any hearts and minds. Or persuade a jury, if it ever comes to that. No system is foolproof. But systems that encourage or tolerate foolish and dangerous behaviour can't be considered well-designed.
- Arainach 5y ago
  You can blame the system when it misleads its users. To this day, the Model S configurator calls the system "Autopilot" and uses "Full Self-Driving Capability", "Navigate on Autopilot", and "Full Self-Driving Computer" as bullet points of things it can currently do. https://i.imgur.com/3cQRMwZ.png https://i.imgur.com/3cQRMwZ.png https://www.tesla.com/models/design#overview https://www.tesla.com/models/design#overview The fine print isn't a justification when you're saying as loud as possible that this is a magic machine that does everything. Describing it as such is misleading. For comparison, here is how Cadillac describes Super Cruise, a comparably-rated driver assist suite: "Super Cruise" drive assistance feature. That's it. That's all you get when picking out the car. It frames it as an assistance, not a replacement or autopilot. If you go into details, you get "A driver assistance feature that allows hands-free driving under compatible highway driving conditions" https://www.cadillac.com/sedans/ct5/build-and-price/packages https://www.cadillac.com/sedans/ct5/build-and-price/packages If you search out their detailed marketing materials, the message is consistent: "Hands off the wheel. Eyes on the road." "Adaptive cruise control". "Stay centered". "Lane change on demand". Note that none of these promise that the computer takes over everything. The closest they come is "the first true hands-free driving-assistance", and that word assistance is absolutely key in framing this as not a replacement for all driving. https://www.cadillac.com/world-of-cadillac/innovation/super-cruise https://www.cadillac.com/world-of-cadillac/innovation/super-...
- gamblor956 5y ago
  Less people have died from Autopilot than eating lettuce contaminated with E. coli over a decade. Everyone still eats lettuce. OTOH, more people have dried as a result of Autopilot/FSD failures than the entire rest of the self-driving vehicle industry combined. And the worst part is, Tesla doesn't even know what caused the failures, since at least one of those deaths were caused by regressions to Autopilot (for example, the Bay Area incident where the car swerved into the divider).
xedeon 5y ago
> Tesla's little driver assist would not be called 'autopilot' and ending in 4 hour long lithium fueled human barbecues The fire did NOT last "four hours". It was put out in 2-3 minutes. “With respect to the fire fight, unfortunately, those rumors grew out way of control. It did not take us four hours to put out the blaze. Our guys got there and put down the fire within two to three minutes, enough to see the vehicle had occupants,” Source (from the Fire Chief): https://www.houstonchronicle.com/neighborhood/woodlands/article/Woodlands-fire-chief-says-Tesla-fire-example-of-16113029.php https://www.houstonchronicle.com/neighborhood/woodlands/arti...
- abxytg 5y ago
  Surely you don't think this technicality is compelling. My original comment contained hyperbole.
  - xedeon 5y ago
    Hyperbole or not, it sounds like you're now backpedaling. Moreover, it's also the same (fire lasted 3-4 hours) false narrative that many media outlets ran. Even though there was never an official report or account of the firefighting measures taken.

toiletfuneral 5y ago

genuinely curious, what experts said you couldn't build electric cars or reusable rockets? are you taking about investors?

vaer-k 5y ago

It was the experts that you disdain with quotation marks, but the rest of us call scientists and engineers, who made Tesla and SpaceX, not Musk. It was not scientists and engineers who scoffed at the ideas of Tesla and SpaceX, but businessmen and other non-creators. The ideas that Musk is promulgating through Neuralink are decades old; the technology he is using is hardly anything special. What scientists are pushing back on is the unrealistic timeframe Musk promises to achieve his scifi fantasies within, the consequences and repercussions of those technologies, and the short term effects of overselling and propaganda about these ideas, which are otherwise in fact valuable.

disabled 5y ago
Thank you for this thoughtful post. You hit the mark on the situation at hand.
gmadsen 5y ago
hardly anything special? have you seen the new press release? the prototype has an order of magnitude better resolution of brain signals. It is special if it was stopped right now and just given to neuroscience departments at universities.
deepnotderp 5y ago
> It was the experts that you disdain with quotation marks, but the rest of us call scientists and engineers, who made Tesla and SpaceX, not Musk. It was not scientists and engineers who scoffed at the ideas of Tesla and SpaceX, This is definitely some rewriting of history. Plenty of engineers gave a long list of reasons why reusable rockets couldn’t work. Difficulty of station keeping for the drone ships, cost of refurbishment, safety margins, etc

mempko 5y ago

He didn't start Tesla. And you can thank NASA for funding SpaceX. In both cases you can thank generous government subsidies for keeping his businesses afloat until they started making money. Let's also thank the thousands of engineers who made both Tesla and SpaceX work. We need to stop giving one guy all the credit.