15 ms·

Cus he's not that bright. Isn't this the elephant in the room that no one wants to consider? Why do we have to start with the assumption that Musk is a genius,

by pkulak 5y ago

Cus he's not that bright. Isn't this the elephant in the room that no one wants to consider? Why do we have to start with the assumption that Musk is a genius, then work back from that? The dude thought covid would go away last May. He thinks it's easier to make Mars habitable than it is to keep the Earth habitable. He's thought that full self driving was 6 months away for literally 4 years now. And he didn't really understand what Bitcoin was when he sank 1.5 billion into it.

onion2k 5y ago
SpaceX wins lots of space contracts with the help of Musk's "Occupy Mars" marketing. Tesla sells lots of cars on the promise of self-driving in the marketing. Musk bought BTC, single-handedly pumped the price of BTC, and then sold at a huge profit. I don't think he's a genius but Musk is definitely not stupid. He's just not playing the obvious game you think he's playing.
- pkulak 5y ago
  And denying covid kept workers in his factory, against the law. I think there needs to be some rule in discussion that as soon as you start arguing over if someone is dumb or evil, you have to stop. It's impossible to figure out which (or what mix) it actually is.
  - fastball 5y ago
    I'm fairly certain it was not in violation of "the law", but rather in violation of edicts from unelected officials.
    - wffurr 5y ago
      "The law" gives public health officials authority to issue those "edicts". Try taking them to court and see how far that gets you. Hint: not very.
      - fastball 5y ago
        Well, given how nobody was prosecuted, taking it to court seems unnecessary, which was my point.
        martimarkov 5y ago
        Not being prosecuted is not the same as not guilty.
        wffurr 5y ago
        If that was your point, you did a poor job of making it.
      - logicchains 5y ago
        Some people seem to have done pretty well in court bringing a case against unconstitutional edicts: https://www.npr.org/2021/04/10/986010977/supreme-court-rules-for-worshippers-and-against-california-covid-restrictions https://www.npr.org/2021/04/10/986010977/supreme-court-rules...
        wffurr 5y ago
        Restricting religion and regulating a factory are pretty different. The first runs directly afoul of the constitution, while the second is clearly within the purview of regulators and public health officials. I was thinking of Jacobson v Massachusetts in my original comment, which upheld state and local governments' broad authority in public health. Here's a balanced view of the powers affirmed in Jacobson and how that has changed over time to better protect individual liberty: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1449224/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1449224/ Note however that applies to individuals, not factories or places of business which are subject to much more regulation.
      - nl 5y ago
        Ironically, I believe this was overturning a law made by elected officials (on constitutional grounds)
    - TomSwirly 5y ago
      It makes me so sad that it's impossible to have a polite conversation these days without clinical paranoids popping in at every juncture to say, "COVID is a hoax! Public health officials are frauds! Medicine is meaningless!"
      - fastball 5y ago
        Huh?
    - nonameiguess 5y ago
      The California Executive Order creating a shutdown was issued by the Governor, who is elected.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - learningwebdev 5y ago
    > I think there needs to be some rule in discussion that as soon as you start arguing over if someone is dumb or evil, you have to stop. I really like this, and I propose it be called "Kulak's Law".
    - fao_ 5y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor is basically the same thing Also the word "kulak" is loaded - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kulak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kulak
  - cryptonector 5y ago
    Wait, did you not just do that above, calling Musk not that bright?
    - loceng 5y ago
      Clearly they don't pay attention to what they say.
    - pkulak 5y ago
      As far as I know, when I made my first comment we weren’t yet debating dumb vs evil.
      - cryptonector 5y ago
        It was practically an invitation to though.
  - DonHopkins 5y ago
    Acting that dumb when you literally employ a huge team of top-notch rocket scientists to advise you is absolutely evil.
  - akouri 5y ago
    Tesla would have been dead if he had not brought the Fremont factory back online. I give him credit for this, as I think ignoring the “rules” was one of the smartest business moves ever made in 2020.
    - martimarkov 5y ago
      Would you think the same way if it was your life on the line? Not livelihood. Live. I think when evaluating situations compassion for people's lives is a more important matter than economical wellbeing. (Even if it's their wellbeing)
      - logicchains 5y ago
        Most of his workers were in an age group at negligible risk from covid; they'd be more likely to die in a road accident driving home.
        logicchains 5y ago
        Wow, people here really hate statistics. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10654-020-00698-1/tables/3 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10654-020-00698-1... ; if you're aged under 34 (as are the majority of tech workers), in the USA you're almost ten times more likely to die from "other acccidental fatalities" (0.0032) than covid if you catch it (0.004). Note that to assess risk the covid IFR there should be multiplied by the chance of catching it, to make it more comparable with the other columns, so if the chance of catching covid is less than 50%, then overall you're also more likely to die in a traffic accident.
        logicchains 5y ago
        What's wrong downvoters, salty that you've been manipulated by the media to vastly overestimate the risk of covid for your age group? https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/18/briefing/atlanta-shootings-kamala-harris-tax-deadline-2021.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/18/briefing/atlanta-shooting...
  - koonsolo 5y ago
    If you've done what Elon Musk has done, you're definitely not dumb. That's what I hate about people telling Trump is dumb. If you've done what he has done, he's definitely not dumb. Funny thing is that although I never liked Paris Hilton, I was pretty sure she was not that dumb (turned out she wasn't). The same story when I look at my Facebook feed. Plenty of smart people have all kinds of different views on Covid and vaccination. And all of them call the 'other group' dumb. Seems like political viewpoints have nothing to do with being smarter than someone else.
    - SturgeonsLaw 5y ago
      If it's true to say that there are different types of intelligence, then it's true to say that there are different types of dumb
      - ptr2voidStar 5y ago
        Interesting comment. Never quite thought about it that way.
    - PopsiclePete 5y ago
      If you started your adult life with the same help from Daddy that Trump had - and did nothing, literally besides putting all of that money into an index fund - you’d be richer than Trump is today. They did the math. So what exactly are Trump’s accomplishments? It’s not like the dude started off selling hot dogs. He made a lot of shitty investments, lost a lot of money, and is one of the few people on this planet capable of bankrupting a casino. In Vegas. Yes he’s famous, of course, but his “look at me I’m a successful billionaire” image is all smoke and mirrors.
  - DyslexicAtheist 5y ago
    > And denying covid kept workers in his factory, against the law not sure if there even can be a complete list with Musk but, let's also add: 1) privileged background thanks to emerald mining fortune made in apartheid South Africa, 2) union-busting and abusive employer, 3) hoarding $175.6 billion in stolen wages during a pandemic, 4) encouraged a coup
    - bhelkey 5y ago
      > 3) hoarding $175.6 billion in stolen wages during a pandemic, I hadn't seen this before. Do you have an article diving into this number?
- dylan604 5y ago
  >Musk bought BTC, single-handedly pumped the price of BTC, and then sold at a huge profit. Doesn't this have legal ramifications when done in the stock market? If it is shady for that market, why is it acceptable in other markets? Oh, right, they're not regulated.
  - belltaco 5y ago
    Telling people that you bought a certain stock isn't illegal wtf. Have you watched CNBC or Bloomberg? They have hedge fund operators come in and praise or criticize stocks that they have bought or sold short.
    - admax88q 5y ago
      It is when you do it for the purposes of market manipulation. Intent matters, which also makes market manipulation so difficult to prove.
    - ipaddr 5y ago
      Allowing people to buy cars in bitcoin and telling people might be.
      - belltaco 5y ago
        Then maybe Satya Nadella should've been put in prison first. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/microsoft-starts-accepting-bitcoin-for-digital-windows-xbox-products-2014-12-11 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/microsoft-starts-accepting... Start with the guy who started accepting bitcoin for pizza. https://ln.pizza/myfirstbitcoinpizza/ https://ln.pizza/myfirstbitcoinpizza/
  - grumpitron 5y ago
    The SEC doesn’t consider Bitcoin a security, so it can’t be securities fraud. Also there usually must be lies (or intentional omissions) involved to prosecute these things, and I don’t think either of those apply here.
  - api 5y ago
- arez 5y ago
  He's a con artist, that's all
  - mr_woozy 5y ago
    woah get a load of the philosopher over here guys.
  - hellbannedguy 5y ago
    No--there was no movment on electrical vechicles before his interest. That alone should be enough to put his image on a coin.
    - andrepd 5y ago
      Please do not attempt to rewrite history. The electric vehicle has a long and storied history, and the modern revival was well underway in the 90s and 00s. Tesla Roadster was the first (I think?) highway-legal EV.
      - saalweachter 5y ago
        The Roadster was the first highway-legal EV to use a lithium-ion battery. The GM EV1 used 16.5 kWh of lead-acid batteries.
    - DonHopkins 5y ago
      The first electric vehicle was developed in 1832, 24 years before Nikola Tesla was born, 139 years before Elon Musk was born. https://www.energy.gov/timeline/timeline-history-electric-car https://www.energy.gov/timeline/timeline-history-electric-ca...
- smoldesu 5y ago
  Yep, plus one to this. A lot of people are quick to either rationalize his behavior as either awesome or stupid, but I think Musk is really a misunderstood mogul who's intention is to turn a profit, not deliver on his ridiculous worldview.
  - rorykoehler 5y ago
    Can't it be both? You won't get anywhere today with a world view that doesn't integrate financialisation.
- Traster 5y ago
  Isn't this just the same thing idiots did for Trump though? Look at whatever Trump does, and then find a reason in retrospect why actually that was a smart move. SpaceX wins contracts because they are able to send payloads into space, nothing to do with marketing, and sending payloads into space isn't even that hard - they basically beat out Nasa who weren't allowed to compete and Boeing who can't send a plane to 30,000ft without fucking it up. Tesla sells lots of cars because they're electric and Apple made battery technology cheap. BTC has been running up and down far longer than Musk has been involved and it'll continue after he's gone.
  - soperj 5y ago
    If they are so easy, why isn't everyone doing it? Why can't Bezo put payloads into space with a billion every year invested? Why can't every other car manufacture seem to put together an electric car with the same range? I don't want to buy a Tesla, I'd rather something with physical knobs, but there's nothing that quite hits the mark yet.
    - tenpies 5y ago
      > Why can't Bezo put payloads into space with a billion every year invested? Because he was busy changing the face of consumer retail, the internet, and other huge aspects of society up to a few months ago. Give it a couple of years and you'll see Blue Origin eat SpaceX's cake. > Why can't every other car manufacture seem to put together an electric car with the same range? Mostly because other car manufacturers are very serious about not lying about things that are easily demonstrable like range. There's a reason Teslas are the only EV that no one can get the advertised range from, but all the other EVs crush their advertised ranges. Your question is "why doesn't every other car manufacturer lie psychopathically to the consumer?".
      - pkulak 5y ago
        And other companies aren’t willing to sacrifice what Tesla is for range. It’s not like an egg is the best shape for an SUV and other companies just haven’t figured it out yet.
- api 5y ago
  While I really dislike some of his behavior, this goal post moving to try to deny Musk credit for what he's accomplished annoys me. Before Musk we had no economical reusable launch systems, economical space flight was sci-fi, and in the 2000s there were many people who thought modern civilization must inevitably grind to a halt as we deplete oil because oil is absolutely irreplaceable for modern transport. SpaceX built the first economical to operate reusable space hardware at any scale, and Tesla validated the market for EVs. Even if Tesla fails, without them I highly doubt the EV revolution would be happening. Traditional car companies would never have cannibalized their ICE sales with EVs without a hard kick in the ass to do so.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    Yes, those comments are right up there with the 'what have the Romans done for us' list. Like him or hate him, no point denying Musk his achievements, which are more than many of us here will manage in our lifetimes and Musk appears to be far from finished. His biggest enemy at this point is himself, that unstable streak is a real worry. But here's to hoping that he will notch up a longer list of achievements.
    - DonHopkins 5y ago
      As long as you're quoting Life of Brian: "He's not the messiah, he's a very naughty boy!"
      - jacquesm 5y ago
        Hehe, he definitely is not the Messiah, and it is very well possible that he indeed is a very naughty boy. For Musk being grounded will have a completely different meaning though :)
  - roca 5y ago
    SpaceX is excellent. EVs would have happened without Tesla. The "kick in the ass" is the same thing that has driven all other emissions improvements: government regulation.
- jlokier 5y ago
  > and then sold at a huge profit No they didn't, according to the announcment: >> Tesla will not be selling any Bitcoin and we intend to use it for transactions as soon as mining transitions to more sustainable energy.
  - tenpies 5y ago
    Realistically we won't know until the Q2 financials are out. Note the wording "*will not* be selling any Bitcoin" not "*has not* sold any Bitcoin". There were major dumps a couple minutes before Elon's announcement. It should be no surprise if Tesla front-run Elon's announcement, knowing that it would affect the price. They'll keep a trivial amount on the financials, but I suspect the majority was off the books. They will also use this an excuse to realize revenue in what will appear to be a very lean quarter. I mean they can't exactly sell to "test liquidity" again.
    - jlokier 5y ago
      They are publically on record as having bought $1.5billion Bitcoin. I don't think that counts as a trivial amount on the financials.
  - Axien 5y ago
    Why do you need to own Bitcoin for transactions? Someone wants to buy a 50k car. They give you 50k worth of Bitcoin. You immediately sell the Bitcoin for 50k of dollars. At no time did you need to own Bitcoin before the transaction.
    - toomanybeersies 5y ago
      I read it as implying Tesla intends to use BTC for outgoing payments. Of course, that would require Tesla's vendors to start accepting BTC. I strongly suspect LG Chem and Panasonic don't accept bitcoin payments.
  - bhelkey 5y ago
    From their Q1 disclosure, Tesla made $272 Million from 'Proceeds from sales of digital assets' [1]. From the same disclosure, Tesla still holds $1,331 Million (~$1.3 Billion) of digital assets. As this is from their Q1 disclosure, they may have sold more since March 31st. [1] https://ir.tesla.com/ https://ir.tesla.com/
- deepsun 5y ago
  > and then sold at a huge profit Are you sure he has sold?
  - asimpletune 5y ago
    Tesla sold 10% of their btc
    - jpadkins 5y ago
      before, not after the announcement.
- sva_ 5y ago
  > He's just not playing the obvious game you think he's playing. I think I would agree with that. Take note of that last part of his tweet[0]: > Tesla will not be selling any Bitcoin and we intend to use it for transactions as soon as mining transitions to more sustainable energy. We are also looking at other cryptocurrencies that use <1% of Bitcoin’s energy/transaction. Here he posed a problem that is now on people's mind. Soon he will offer a solution and people will go nuts about it. He often does that kind of thing. [0] https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1392602041025843203/photo/1 https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/13926020410258432...
  - Alkhwarizmi 5y ago
    YESS!! Finally, an insider I know has suggested that this is some sort of a move to offer a complementary service or clean technology to take over the basic mining operation for a lot cheaper vs now. It’s the long game he’s playing in a weird way
  - koonsolo 5y ago
    So you mean starting his own crypto?
    - rorykoehler 5y ago
      He will sell an all in one renewable energy crypto mining pods or similar.
- elevenoh 5y ago
  "and then sold at a huge profit." I don't think musk/tesla has sold a single btc..
  - asciimike 5y ago
    They sold ~270MM in Q1: https://www.coindesk.com/tesla-sold-bitcoin-in-q1-for-proceeds-of-272m https://www.coindesk.com/tesla-sold-bitcoin-in-q1-for-procee...
- esalman 5y ago
  In some ways he is the Donald Trump of Silicon valley. Just like many Americans failed to understand Trump, many in tech fail to understand Musk.
- bryananderson 5y ago
  I certainly won’t argue that Musk is stupid, but trust me, his Mars marketing has never won SpaceX a launch contract, and if anything it probably hurt them in the early days. This business was long dominated by stodgy defense giants, and it has seen a lot of wild-eyed idealists with big dreams and a little too much money come and go. Government and commercial launch contracts have never been awarded on the basis of idealistic excitement, and the conventional wisdom used to be that the SpaceX mentality just didn’t work in this Very Serious and Difficult Field. In recruiting, on the other hand, the Mars marketing has helped them a lot.
tpmx 5y ago
No comment on how smart or stupid Elon is (he is somehow effective), but I'm with you on all of those things except "He thinks it's easier to make Mars habitable than it is to keep the Earth habitable": The concept of having humans on another planetary body makes a lot of sense as a backup-plan for humanity. The Drake equation be damned - in case we're actually alone, we have a pretty strong moral requirement to make sure that (human) life survives.
- pkulak 5y ago
  Yeah, you're right. I reached a bit on that one.
  - anonporridge 5y ago
    He's also never said anything of the sort. He regularly admits that Mars is going to be an insanely tough place to live.
- TomSwirly 5y ago
  > The concept of having humans on another planetary body makes a lot of sense as backup-plan for humanity. Sorry, but it's like planning your workout routine in a burning building. The climate emergency is building right now, this instant. Cosmic threats like asteroids happen on the order of millions of years apart. We need to stabilize the planet, now, in this generation, immediately, or we will doom a million species and most of humanity. Once that is done, we can look at problems on the ten thousand to ten million year scales that cost quadrillions of dollars to solve, like "moving to a second planet". Let me be blunt - unless we go all out, the collapse will happen a hundred years before any Mars colony is self-sufficient, and none of them will survive.
  - halfmatthalfcat 5y ago
    We can do both at the same time and we should.
    - 5y ago
tom_mellior 5y ago
I'm with you on everything except the Bitcoin bit. I think he knew exactly that (a) it's a highly speculative asset, and (b) he has enough rabid fans and general publicity to move the market in exactly the ways that he benefits from.
- kingo55 5y ago
  That makes it sound like he was doing a cheap pump and dump. Maybe you're right.
  - samatman 5y ago
    Tesla still has 90% of the Bitcoin they bought. If his proclamation knocks, say, half the value off Bitcoin, and it stays there, that wasn't a very clever pump and dump, because they kinda skipped the 'dump' part.
    - de_nied 5y ago
      Perhaps it's a chump and pump. Bring down the value to buy the dip.
    - bhouston 5y ago
      They only declare their sales after the fact. There is a chance that Tesla owns no bitcoin at this time. Probably they still do, but...
      - ChrisClark 5y ago
        Then won't they get in trouble? The most recent statement directly says they have not sold any, just stopping accepting payments in it. That would be an explicit lie then, something the SEC has jurisdiction over? (I'm not actually sure)
        p_j_w 5y ago
        SEC doesn't regulate Bitcoin.
reader_mode 5y ago
I mean you will see people here on this forum argue that bitcoin mostly uses up peak energy and unused capacity and such bullshit nonsense - it's frankly not that hard to spin a narrative that could sound plausable. But then when you see people firing up coal plants in your back yard just to mine BTC (as opposed to China) reality suddenly kicks in and it's hard to spin bullshit arround that. Regulators are really dropping the ball on crypto - corporate entities should not be allowed to fuel this shit.
- kofddfjdfdfdff 5y ago
  You see people firing up coal plants in your back yard? That's not an experience most people ever have.
  - Analemma_ 5y ago
    https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/private-equity-firm-revives-zombie-fossil-fuel-power-plant-to-mine-bitcoin/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/private-equity-f...
    - mthoms 5y ago
      That's natural gas, not coal.
  - reader_mode 5y ago
    Figurative, it's easy to ignore when those power plants get started in third world countries, when it's NY it's suddenly much harder to ignore the reality.
- hellbannedguy 5y ago
  Yea--it's gotten out of hand. Hedge funds are being chastised for not getting in early enough. Crazy? Why do I feel like lobbyists right now trying to kybash to any politician who even mentions regulations? I heard one financial talking head say today that he's buying gold. If worse cone to worse at least he can make some jewelry. I'm all for bitcoin, but wasting energy throughout the world seems wrong. And man's quest to make money knows no boundaries.
m463 5y ago
I think it's ok for him to change his mind after further consideration. ...and it would give me hope that we might get round steering wheels and individual non-touchscreen controls for critical driving functions.
fastball 5y ago
Most of those things sound like techno-optimism, which isn't really the same as being dumb. COVID could've started to go away in May with HCT / massively more aggressive vax.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- p_j_w 5y ago
  Vaccinations weren't an option last May, which is when Musk was saying Covid would be gone by, not this May.
  - fastball 5y ago
    Vaccinations could've been an option last May. The mRNA vaccines were designed days after receiving a full genetic sequence of the virus (in January). Those are the same two vaccines we are currently injecting people with – we just spent a long time on trials/approval/ramping up production. Far longer than necessary.
    - tzs 5y ago
      Previous attempts at mRNA vaccines had failed, due to the side effects being too serious. There was no reason to believe in May 2020 that a COVID mRNA vaccine would be any different than all the previous mRNA failures.
      - johnisgood 5y ago
        Can I have sources to that claim? I would like to use it.
        jcranmer 5y ago
        https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/04/15/coronavirus-vaccine-prospects https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/04/15/co... is a post from April of last year detailing the different types of vaccines, which does mention some of the issues mRNA vaccines have had in the past. I think there's a fuller discussion of mRNA somewhere on that blog, but the gist of it is "we've been trying this for about a decade and we might finally have all the kinks worked out."
shiyoon 5y ago
It's not that he's dumb, he's just not as transparent or even ethical as people paint him out as.
- ecpottinger 5y ago
  I think it is the opposite. He is very transparent - it is just people do not want to believe his goals are exactly what he says they are. I have lost count the number of times in the past about something I have told people the truth, the 100% truth and they tried to skip over what I said because it did not match what they wanted to believe. Worse, afterwards when events prove they were wrong they then try to make all sorts of excuses to support their original claims. You can try and pick on Elon's fine details, but look at the stuff people said he could not push thru. If this was before 2010 the idea of the Tesla cars, Solar Tiles, Power-walls, Falcon Rockets, Dragon Capsules, Boring Tunnel and Neuralink all seem like fantasy - yet today they all exist. Instead I see people send lots of time concentrating on things like Hyperloop not working out so far while trying not to mention the successes.
- techrat 5y ago
  Required reading for anyone who thinks otherwise: https://elonmusk.today/ https://elonmusk.today/
outside1234 5y ago
Or he is really good at PR and know that he can raise money off of that and delegate the rest. And therefore smart.
kevinbache 5y ago
He's single handedly accelerated the adoption of electric cars by 10 years while advancing literal rocket science to the point where launches will be done 10x cheaper. For those of us who measure by outcomes, he's a genius.
- jreese 5y ago
  > He's single handedly Tesla employs almost 80k workers, and SpaceX employs almost 10k. Elon might have had the idea, but it's the employees that made it possible and a reality.
  - api 5y ago
    Traditional car companies and traditional aerospace employ far more people, and those people are not dumb. Leadership matters. I do agree that it isn't "single-handedly," but when I hear Elon speak he definitely does shout out to the team. I haven't heard him take 100% credit for these things.
  - sumedh 5y ago
    > Elon might have had the idea, and the money to convert the idea into execution with a high probability of losing his money.
  - refurb 5y ago
    Without Musk would that same group of people accomplished those things?
- mbesto 5y ago
  > He's single handedly Fun reminder, Musk did not start Tesla and bought his way into the company. His involvement should not be understated, but it's had years of management shuffles and changes of direction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Tesla,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Tesla,_Inc.
  - intotheabyss 5y ago
    I'd also note that SpaceX wouldn't be where it is today without Gwynne Shotwell.
sbarre 5y ago
There's a really big difference between what public figures say and what they believe. When you have the power to influence policy/markets/opportunities simply by saying the right or wrong thing, that starts to factor into public statements a lot more than what you actually believe.
soheil 5y ago
I think what you want to say is that he doesn't have a crystal ball instead of him not being that bright. How can anyone predict any of the above before hand? Bitcoin remains probably one of the few perplexing behaviors from Musk.
caeril 5y ago
This is really no different from any other "engineering visionary" executive, everywhere. These types have a solid understanding of what's technically possible by the laws of physics, but wholly underestimate the feasibility of a complete implementation. It's an open discussion whether these types are "bad" or "good". I tend to believe that hyper-optimists have a role in this world that drives progress forward. Teddy's Roosevelt's "Man in the arena", if you will.
77pt77 5y ago
> He's thought that full self driving was 6 months away for literally 4 years now. He might be completely aware that it's not plausible while still publicly saying otherwise for financial gain.
- jon-wood 5y ago
  In which case he’s guilty of securities fraud, and is going to have a very bad time.
  - 77pt77 5y ago
    That's a maybe. Even if he really is guilty he might not have a bad time. The world is not just and there's very little justice in the judicial system. He called a guy a pedophile with absolutely no evidence and paid no price for that.
api 5y ago
That's not the answer but it's close. The correct answer is that "geniuses" can be dumb. Intelligence doesn't make one invulnerable to bad ideas, cons, indoctrination, herd behavior, logical fallacies, addictions, delusions, or anything else. Related is the fact that billionaires and millionaires are just humans with lots of money. People seem to think a lot of money makes people somehow superhuman, or vice versa. It doesn't. Billionaires are subject to all the same fallacies and errors as anyone else. There is no superhuman enlightened "illuminati" that is somehow above and beyond the rest of us, at least cognitively. They might have a little bit more information but they are no more rational than we are. Based on the COVID denial, cryptocurrency stuff, and memes if I didn't know better I'd say he's been hanging around on the 'chans... and I don't know better.
toephu2 5y ago
> The dude thought covid would go away last May. > He's thought that full self driving was 6 months away for literally 4 years now. He can't predict the future, so what? >He thinks it's easier to make Mars habitable than it is to keep the Earth habitable. He never said this. > And he didn't really understand what Bitcoin was when he sank 1.5 billion into it. How can you prove he doesn't understand what Bitcoin was?
- user-the-name 5y ago
  > He can't predict the future, so what? Literally everyone else with half a clue could predict that one correctly.
stuaxo 5y ago
Or it's that + some skin of the teeth grifting.
EthanHeilman 5y ago
>He thinks it's easier to make Mars habitable than it is to keep the Earth habitable. It probably is easier to survive long term on Mars than Earth because Mars has a very thin atmosphere. Earth could pull a Venus. Earth life on Mars requires underground small sealed compartments with radiation shielding which is a more survivable architecture than one big shared ecosystem.
- coptun 5y ago
  Your definition of "long term" is stretching it a bit. If Earth "pulls a venus" it will be 100+ million years from now due to the expansion of the sun.
  - DangitBobby 5y ago
    I thought the surface Venus was incredibly hot and uninhabitable mainly to the thick greenhouse gases in it's atmosphere. Why does the sun need to expand for that to happen on Earth?
simonswords82 5y ago
I admire you for calling Musk out on this platform. He's a quandary for sure...I've not worked him out. He's done too many amazing things to be an idiot - but yeah, he's done some super dumb shit too.
loceng 5y ago
"Cus he's not that bright." I think you're confusing mental bandwidth with intelligence, likewise you seem to be putting him on a pedestal expecting him to have an amazing network of advisors on every conceivable topic. No, he's human and his limited attention is split between Tesla, SpaceX, and arguably the other projects he has. Likewise these are complex organizations with a lot of moving parts and it's impossible to not delegate to other competent people, hopefully more competent than not, and then if bad decisions are made by say a Board of Directors and/or CFO then it's perfectly reasonable to reverse course - it's more reasonable than expecting Elon to be an expert of everything, he's not super human. However I imagine the situation's more complex than meets the eye, some people like you are sticking to cherrypicked facts, others are putting forward conspiracy theories founded on no evidence that this was Elon pumping and dumping purposefully, or that he's just doing it to piss off the SEC because he hates the SEC. Who knows. Elon in the not so distant past tweeted: "Bitcoin is almost as much bs as fiat money" - so he certainly has enough of an idea to make that statement.
guram11 5y ago
>he didn't really understand what Bitcoin was He's not dumb for a scum that scam billions in profit
agumonkey 5y ago
I'm no fan but 1) any moron on the web know about energy consumption of Blockchains 2) musk cannot be more stupid than them. He's (sadly) trolling the system imo
andrepd 5y ago
On the contrary. It's not that he's not bright, it's that is is a brilliant conman. Re self-driving: Tesla's boom in the past ~1.5 years coincided with his laughable claims about self-driving and robo-taxis. And re bitcoin: the guy literally tweeted two words "buy doge" and sparked a pump-and-dump bubble. Then he went on SNL, didn't plug doge enough, and it tanked instantly. Then a couple hours ago he tweeted more doge stuff and it started rallying again. Crazy stuff.
generalizations 5y ago
Your first two points are basically political positions. I know it's fun to imagine that the other political side is less intelligent, but don't take that impulse too seriously.
ajuc 5y ago
When your profits depend on not understanding something chances are you won't understand it :)

by pkulak 5y ago

onion2k 5y ago

SpaceX wins lots of space contracts with the help of Musk's "Occupy Mars" marketing. Tesla sells lots of cars on the promise of self-driving in the marketing. Musk bought BTC, single-handedly pumped the price of BTC, and then sold at a huge profit. I don't think he's a genius but Musk is definitely not stupid. He's just not playing the obvious game you think he's playing.

pkulak 5y ago
And denying covid kept workers in his factory, against the law. I think there needs to be some rule in discussion that as soon as you start arguing over if someone is dumb or evil, you have to stop. It's impossible to figure out which (or what mix) it actually is.
- fastball 5y ago
  I'm fairly certain it was not in violation of "the law", but rather in violation of edicts from unelected officials.
  - wffurr 5y ago
    "The law" gives public health officials authority to issue those "edicts". Try taking them to court and see how far that gets you. Hint: not very.
    - fastball 5y ago
      Well, given how nobody was prosecuted, taking it to court seems unnecessary, which was my point.
      - martimarkov 5y ago
        Not being prosecuted is not the same as not guilty.
      - wffurr 5y ago
        If that was your point, you did a poor job of making it.
    - logicchains 5y ago
      Some people seem to have done pretty well in court bringing a case against unconstitutional edicts: https://www.npr.org/2021/04/10/986010977/supreme-court-rules-for-worshippers-and-against-california-covid-restrictions https://www.npr.org/2021/04/10/986010977/supreme-court-rules...
      - wffurr 5y ago
        Restricting religion and regulating a factory are pretty different. The first runs directly afoul of the constitution, while the second is clearly within the purview of regulators and public health officials. I was thinking of Jacobson v Massachusetts in my original comment, which upheld state and local governments' broad authority in public health. Here's a balanced view of the powers affirmed in Jacobson and how that has changed over time to better protect individual liberty: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1449224/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1449224/ Note however that applies to individuals, not factories or places of business which are subject to much more regulation.
    - nl 5y ago
      Ironically, I believe this was overturning a law made by elected officials (on constitutional grounds)
  - TomSwirly 5y ago
    It makes me so sad that it's impossible to have a polite conversation these days without clinical paranoids popping in at every juncture to say, "COVID is a hoax! Public health officials are frauds! Medicine is meaningless!"
    - fastball 5y ago
      Huh?
  - nonameiguess 5y ago
    The California Executive Order creating a shutdown was issued by the Governor, who is elected.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- learningwebdev 5y ago
  > I think there needs to be some rule in discussion that as soon as you start arguing over if someone is dumb or evil, you have to stop. I really like this, and I propose it be called "Kulak's Law".
  - fao_ 5y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanlon%27s_razor is basically the same thing Also the word "kulak" is loaded - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kulak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kulak
- cryptonector 5y ago
  Wait, did you not just do that above, calling Musk not that bright?
  - loceng 5y ago
    Clearly they don't pay attention to what they say.
  - pkulak 5y ago
    As far as I know, when I made my first comment we weren’t yet debating dumb vs evil.
    - cryptonector 5y ago
      It was practically an invitation to though.
- DonHopkins 5y ago
  Acting that dumb when you literally employ a huge team of top-notch rocket scientists to advise you is absolutely evil.
- akouri 5y ago
  Tesla would have been dead if he had not brought the Fremont factory back online. I give him credit for this, as I think ignoring the “rules” was one of the smartest business moves ever made in 2020.
  - martimarkov 5y ago
    Would you think the same way if it was your life on the line? Not livelihood. Live. I think when evaluating situations compassion for people's lives is a more important matter than economical wellbeing. (Even if it's their wellbeing)
    - logicchains 5y ago
      Most of his workers were in an age group at negligible risk from covid; they'd be more likely to die in a road accident driving home.
      - logicchains 5y ago
        Wow, people here really hate statistics. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10654-020-00698-1/tables/3 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10654-020-00698-1... ; if you're aged under 34 (as are the majority of tech workers), in the USA you're almost ten times more likely to die from "other acccidental fatalities" (0.0032) than covid if you catch it (0.004). Note that to assess risk the covid IFR there should be multiplied by the chance of catching it, to make it more comparable with the other columns, so if the chance of catching covid is less than 50%, then overall you're also more likely to die in a traffic accident.
        logicchains 5y ago
        What's wrong downvoters, salty that you've been manipulated by the media to vastly overestimate the risk of covid for your age group? https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/18/briefing/atlanta-shootings-kamala-harris-tax-deadline-2021.html https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/18/briefing/atlanta-shooting...
- koonsolo 5y ago
  If you've done what Elon Musk has done, you're definitely not dumb. That's what I hate about people telling Trump is dumb. If you've done what he has done, he's definitely not dumb. Funny thing is that although I never liked Paris Hilton, I was pretty sure she was not that dumb (turned out she wasn't). The same story when I look at my Facebook feed. Plenty of smart people have all kinds of different views on Covid and vaccination. And all of them call the 'other group' dumb. Seems like political viewpoints have nothing to do with being smarter than someone else.
  - SturgeonsLaw 5y ago
    If it's true to say that there are different types of intelligence, then it's true to say that there are different types of dumb
    - ptr2voidStar 5y ago
      Interesting comment. Never quite thought about it that way.
  - PopsiclePete 5y ago
    If you started your adult life with the same help from Daddy that Trump had - and did nothing, literally besides putting all of that money into an index fund - you’d be richer than Trump is today. They did the math. So what exactly are Trump’s accomplishments? It’s not like the dude started off selling hot dogs. He made a lot of shitty investments, lost a lot of money, and is one of the few people on this planet capable of bankrupting a casino. In Vegas. Yes he’s famous, of course, but his “look at me I’m a successful billionaire” image is all smoke and mirrors.
- DyslexicAtheist 5y ago
  > And denying covid kept workers in his factory, against the law not sure if there even can be a complete list with Musk but, let's also add: 1) privileged background thanks to emerald mining fortune made in apartheid South Africa, 2) union-busting and abusive employer, 3) hoarding $175.6 billion in stolen wages during a pandemic, 4) encouraged a coup
  - bhelkey 5y ago
    > 3) hoarding $175.6 billion in stolen wages during a pandemic, I hadn't seen this before. Do you have an article diving into this number?
dylan604 5y ago
>Musk bought BTC, single-handedly pumped the price of BTC, and then sold at a huge profit. Doesn't this have legal ramifications when done in the stock market? If it is shady for that market, why is it acceptable in other markets? Oh, right, they're not regulated.
- belltaco 5y ago
  Telling people that you bought a certain stock isn't illegal wtf. Have you watched CNBC or Bloomberg? They have hedge fund operators come in and praise or criticize stocks that they have bought or sold short.
  - admax88q 5y ago
    It is when you do it for the purposes of market manipulation. Intent matters, which also makes market manipulation so difficult to prove.
  - ipaddr 5y ago
    Allowing people to buy cars in bitcoin and telling people might be.
    - belltaco 5y ago
      Then maybe Satya Nadella should've been put in prison first. https://www.marketwatch.com/story/microsoft-starts-accepting-bitcoin-for-digital-windows-xbox-products-2014-12-11 https://www.marketwatch.com/story/microsoft-starts-accepting... Start with the guy who started accepting bitcoin for pizza. https://ln.pizza/myfirstbitcoinpizza/ https://ln.pizza/myfirstbitcoinpizza/
- grumpitron 5y ago
  The SEC doesn’t consider Bitcoin a security, so it can’t be securities fraud. Also there usually must be lies (or intentional omissions) involved to prosecute these things, and I don’t think either of those apply here.
- api 5y ago
arez 5y ago
He's a con artist, that's all
- mr_woozy 5y ago
  woah get a load of the philosopher over here guys.
- hellbannedguy 5y ago
  No--there was no movment on electrical vechicles before his interest. That alone should be enough to put his image on a coin.
  - andrepd 5y ago
    Please do not attempt to rewrite history. The electric vehicle has a long and storied history, and the modern revival was well underway in the 90s and 00s. Tesla Roadster was the first (I think?) highway-legal EV.
    - saalweachter 5y ago
      The Roadster was the first highway-legal EV to use a lithium-ion battery. The GM EV1 used 16.5 kWh of lead-acid batteries.
  - DonHopkins 5y ago
    The first electric vehicle was developed in 1832, 24 years before Nikola Tesla was born, 139 years before Elon Musk was born. https://www.energy.gov/timeline/timeline-history-electric-car https://www.energy.gov/timeline/timeline-history-electric-ca...
smoldesu 5y ago
Yep, plus one to this. A lot of people are quick to either rationalize his behavior as either awesome or stupid, but I think Musk is really a misunderstood mogul who's intention is to turn a profit, not deliver on his ridiculous worldview.
- rorykoehler 5y ago
  Can't it be both? You won't get anywhere today with a world view that doesn't integrate financialisation.
Traster 5y ago
Isn't this just the same thing idiots did for Trump though? Look at whatever Trump does, and then find a reason in retrospect why actually that was a smart move. SpaceX wins contracts because they are able to send payloads into space, nothing to do with marketing, and sending payloads into space isn't even that hard - they basically beat out Nasa who weren't allowed to compete and Boeing who can't send a plane to 30,000ft without fucking it up. Tesla sells lots of cars because they're electric and Apple made battery technology cheap. BTC has been running up and down far longer than Musk has been involved and it'll continue after he's gone.
- soperj 5y ago
  If they are so easy, why isn't everyone doing it? Why can't Bezo put payloads into space with a billion every year invested? Why can't every other car manufacture seem to put together an electric car with the same range? I don't want to buy a Tesla, I'd rather something with physical knobs, but there's nothing that quite hits the mark yet.
  - tenpies 5y ago
    > Why can't Bezo put payloads into space with a billion every year invested? Because he was busy changing the face of consumer retail, the internet, and other huge aspects of society up to a few months ago. Give it a couple of years and you'll see Blue Origin eat SpaceX's cake. > Why can't every other car manufacture seem to put together an electric car with the same range? Mostly because other car manufacturers are very serious about not lying about things that are easily demonstrable like range. There's a reason Teslas are the only EV that no one can get the advertised range from, but all the other EVs crush their advertised ranges. Your question is "why doesn't every other car manufacturer lie psychopathically to the consumer?".
    - pkulak 5y ago
      And other companies aren’t willing to sacrifice what Tesla is for range. It’s not like an egg is the best shape for an SUV and other companies just haven’t figured it out yet.
api 5y ago
While I really dislike some of his behavior, this goal post moving to try to deny Musk credit for what he's accomplished annoys me. Before Musk we had no economical reusable launch systems, economical space flight was sci-fi, and in the 2000s there were many people who thought modern civilization must inevitably grind to a halt as we deplete oil because oil is absolutely irreplaceable for modern transport. SpaceX built the first economical to operate reusable space hardware at any scale, and Tesla validated the market for EVs. Even if Tesla fails, without them I highly doubt the EV revolution would be happening. Traditional car companies would never have cannibalized their ICE sales with EVs without a hard kick in the ass to do so.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  Yes, those comments are right up there with the 'what have the Romans done for us' list. Like him or hate him, no point denying Musk his achievements, which are more than many of us here will manage in our lifetimes and Musk appears to be far from finished. His biggest enemy at this point is himself, that unstable streak is a real worry. But here's to hoping that he will notch up a longer list of achievements.
  - DonHopkins 5y ago
    As long as you're quoting Life of Brian: "He's not the messiah, he's a very naughty boy!"
    - jacquesm 5y ago
      Hehe, he definitely is not the Messiah, and it is very well possible that he indeed is a very naughty boy. For Musk being grounded will have a completely different meaning though :)
- roca 5y ago
  SpaceX is excellent. EVs would have happened without Tesla. The "kick in the ass" is the same thing that has driven all other emissions improvements: government regulation.
jlokier 5y ago
> and then sold at a huge profit No they didn't, according to the announcment: >> Tesla will not be selling any Bitcoin and we intend to use it for transactions as soon as mining transitions to more sustainable energy.
- tenpies 5y ago
  Realistically we won't know until the Q2 financials are out. Note the wording "*will not* be selling any Bitcoin" not "*has not* sold any Bitcoin". There were major dumps a couple minutes before Elon's announcement. It should be no surprise if Tesla front-run Elon's announcement, knowing that it would affect the price. They'll keep a trivial amount on the financials, but I suspect the majority was off the books. They will also use this an excuse to realize revenue in what will appear to be a very lean quarter. I mean they can't exactly sell to "test liquidity" again.
  - jlokier 5y ago
    They are publically on record as having bought $1.5billion Bitcoin. I don't think that counts as a trivial amount on the financials.
- Axien 5y ago
  Why do you need to own Bitcoin for transactions? Someone wants to buy a 50k car. They give you 50k worth of Bitcoin. You immediately sell the Bitcoin for 50k of dollars. At no time did you need to own Bitcoin before the transaction.
  - toomanybeersies 5y ago
    I read it as implying Tesla intends to use BTC for outgoing payments. Of course, that would require Tesla's vendors to start accepting BTC. I strongly suspect LG Chem and Panasonic don't accept bitcoin payments.
- bhelkey 5y ago
  From their Q1 disclosure, Tesla made $272 Million from 'Proceeds from sales of digital assets' [1]. From the same disclosure, Tesla still holds $1,331 Million (~$1.3 Billion) of digital assets. As this is from their Q1 disclosure, they may have sold more since March 31st. [1] https://ir.tesla.com/ https://ir.tesla.com/
deepsun 5y ago
> and then sold at a huge profit Are you sure he has sold?
- asimpletune 5y ago
  Tesla sold 10% of their btc
  - jpadkins 5y ago
    before, not after the announcement.
sva_ 5y ago
> He's just not playing the obvious game you think he's playing. I think I would agree with that. Take note of that last part of his tweet[0]: > Tesla will not be selling any Bitcoin and we intend to use it for transactions as soon as mining transitions to more sustainable energy. We are also looking at other cryptocurrencies that use <1% of Bitcoin’s energy/transaction. Here he posed a problem that is now on people's mind. Soon he will offer a solution and people will go nuts about it. He often does that kind of thing. [0] https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1392602041025843203/photo/1 https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/13926020410258432...
- Alkhwarizmi 5y ago
  YESS!! Finally, an insider I know has suggested that this is some sort of a move to offer a complementary service or clean technology to take over the basic mining operation for a lot cheaper vs now. It’s the long game he’s playing in a weird way
- koonsolo 5y ago
  So you mean starting his own crypto?
  - rorykoehler 5y ago
    He will sell an all in one renewable energy crypto mining pods or similar.
elevenoh 5y ago
"and then sold at a huge profit." I don't think musk/tesla has sold a single btc..
- asciimike 5y ago
  They sold ~270MM in Q1: https://www.coindesk.com/tesla-sold-bitcoin-in-q1-for-proceeds-of-272m https://www.coindesk.com/tesla-sold-bitcoin-in-q1-for-procee...
esalman 5y ago
In some ways he is the Donald Trump of Silicon valley. Just like many Americans failed to understand Trump, many in tech fail to understand Musk.
bryananderson 5y ago
I certainly won’t argue that Musk is stupid, but trust me, his Mars marketing has never won SpaceX a launch contract, and if anything it probably hurt them in the early days. This business was long dominated by stodgy defense giants, and it has seen a lot of wild-eyed idealists with big dreams and a little too much money come and go. Government and commercial launch contracts have never been awarded on the basis of idealistic excitement, and the conventional wisdom used to be that the SpaceX mentality just didn’t work in this Very Serious and Difficult Field. In recruiting, on the other hand, the Mars marketing has helped them a lot.

tpmx 5y ago

No comment on how smart or stupid Elon is (he is somehow effective), but I'm with you on all of those things except "He thinks it's easier to make Mars habitable than it is to keep the Earth habitable": The concept of having humans on another planetary body makes a lot of sense as a backup-plan for humanity. The Drake equation be damned - in case we're actually alone, we have a pretty strong moral requirement to make sure that (human) life survives.

pkulak 5y ago
Yeah, you're right. I reached a bit on that one.
- anonporridge 5y ago
  He's also never said anything of the sort. He regularly admits that Mars is going to be an insanely tough place to live.
TomSwirly 5y ago
> The concept of having humans on another planetary body makes a lot of sense as backup-plan for humanity. Sorry, but it's like planning your workout routine in a burning building. The climate emergency is building right now, this instant. Cosmic threats like asteroids happen on the order of millions of years apart. We need to stabilize the planet, now, in this generation, immediately, or we will doom a million species and most of humanity. Once that is done, we can look at problems on the ten thousand to ten million year scales that cost quadrillions of dollars to solve, like "moving to a second planet". Let me be blunt - unless we go all out, the collapse will happen a hundred years before any Mars colony is self-sufficient, and none of them will survive.
- halfmatthalfcat 5y ago
  We can do both at the same time and we should.
  - 5y ago

tom_mellior 5y ago

I'm with you on everything except the Bitcoin bit. I think he knew exactly that (a) it's a highly speculative asset, and (b) he has enough rabid fans and general publicity to move the market in exactly the ways that he benefits from.

kingo55 5y ago
That makes it sound like he was doing a cheap pump and dump. Maybe you're right.
- samatman 5y ago
  Tesla still has 90% of the Bitcoin they bought. If his proclamation knocks, say, half the value off Bitcoin, and it stays there, that wasn't a very clever pump and dump, because they kinda skipped the 'dump' part.
  - de_nied 5y ago
    Perhaps it's a chump and pump. Bring down the value to buy the dip.
  - bhouston 5y ago
    They only declare their sales after the fact. There is a chance that Tesla owns no bitcoin at this time. Probably they still do, but...
    - ChrisClark 5y ago
      Then won't they get in trouble? The most recent statement directly says they have not sold any, just stopping accepting payments in it. That would be an explicit lie then, something the SEC has jurisdiction over? (I'm not actually sure)
      - p_j_w 5y ago
        SEC doesn't regulate Bitcoin.

reader_mode 5y ago

I mean you will see people here on this forum argue that bitcoin mostly uses up peak energy and unused capacity and such bullshit nonsense - it's frankly not that hard to spin a narrative that could sound plausable. But then when you see people firing up coal plants in your back yard just to mine BTC (as opposed to China) reality suddenly kicks in and it's hard to spin bullshit arround that. Regulators are really dropping the ball on crypto - corporate entities should not be allowed to fuel this shit.

kofddfjdfdfdff 5y ago
You see people firing up coal plants in your back yard? That's not an experience most people ever have.
- Analemma_ 5y ago
  https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/private-equity-firm-revives-zombie-fossil-fuel-power-plant-to-mine-bitcoin/ https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2021/05/private-equity-f...
  - mthoms 5y ago
    That's natural gas, not coal.
- reader_mode 5y ago
  Figurative, it's easy to ignore when those power plants get started in third world countries, when it's NY it's suddenly much harder to ignore the reality.
hellbannedguy 5y ago
Yea--it's gotten out of hand. Hedge funds are being chastised for not getting in early enough. Crazy? Why do I feel like lobbyists right now trying to kybash to any politician who even mentions regulations? I heard one financial talking head say today that he's buying gold. If worse cone to worse at least he can make some jewelry. I'm all for bitcoin, but wasting energy throughout the world seems wrong. And man's quest to make money knows no boundaries.

m463 5y ago

I think it's ok for him to change his mind after further consideration. ...and it would give me hope that we might get round steering wheels and individual non-touchscreen controls for critical driving functions.

fastball 5y ago

Most of those things sound like techno-optimism, which isn't really the same as being dumb. COVID could've started to go away in May with HCT / massively more aggressive vax.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
p_j_w 5y ago
Vaccinations weren't an option last May, which is when Musk was saying Covid would be gone by, not this May.
- fastball 5y ago
  Vaccinations could've been an option last May. The mRNA vaccines were designed days after receiving a full genetic sequence of the virus (in January). Those are the same two vaccines we are currently injecting people with – we just spent a long time on trials/approval/ramping up production. Far longer than necessary.
  - tzs 5y ago
    Previous attempts at mRNA vaccines had failed, due to the side effects being too serious. There was no reason to believe in May 2020 that a COVID mRNA vaccine would be any different than all the previous mRNA failures.
    - johnisgood 5y ago
      Can I have sources to that claim? I would like to use it.
      - jcranmer 5y ago
        https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/04/15/coronavirus-vaccine-prospects https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2020/04/15/co... is a post from April of last year detailing the different types of vaccines, which does mention some of the issues mRNA vaccines have had in the past. I think there's a fuller discussion of mRNA somewhere on that blog, but the gist of it is "we've been trying this for about a decade and we might finally have all the kinks worked out."

shiyoon 5y ago

It's not that he's dumb, he's just not as transparent or even ethical as people paint him out as.

ecpottinger 5y ago
I think it is the opposite. He is very transparent - it is just people do not want to believe his goals are exactly what he says they are. I have lost count the number of times in the past about something I have told people the truth, the 100% truth and they tried to skip over what I said because it did not match what they wanted to believe. Worse, afterwards when events prove they were wrong they then try to make all sorts of excuses to support their original claims. You can try and pick on Elon's fine details, but look at the stuff people said he could not push thru. If this was before 2010 the idea of the Tesla cars, Solar Tiles, Power-walls, Falcon Rockets, Dragon Capsules, Boring Tunnel and Neuralink all seem like fantasy - yet today they all exist. Instead I see people send lots of time concentrating on things like Hyperloop not working out so far while trying not to mention the successes.
techrat 5y ago
Required reading for anyone who thinks otherwise: https://elonmusk.today/ https://elonmusk.today/

outside1234 5y ago

Or he is really good at PR and know that he can raise money off of that and delegate the rest. And therefore smart.

kevinbache 5y ago

He's single handedly accelerated the adoption of electric cars by 10 years while advancing literal rocket science to the point where launches will be done 10x cheaper. For those of us who measure by outcomes, he's a genius.

jreese 5y ago
> He's single handedly Tesla employs almost 80k workers, and SpaceX employs almost 10k. Elon might have had the idea, but it's the employees that made it possible and a reality.
- api 5y ago
  Traditional car companies and traditional aerospace employ far more people, and those people are not dumb. Leadership matters. I do agree that it isn't "single-handedly," but when I hear Elon speak he definitely does shout out to the team. I haven't heard him take 100% credit for these things.
- sumedh 5y ago
  > Elon might have had the idea, and the money to convert the idea into execution with a high probability of losing his money.
- refurb 5y ago
  Without Musk would that same group of people accomplished those things?
mbesto 5y ago
> He's single handedly Fun reminder, Musk did not start Tesla and bought his way into the company. His involvement should not be understated, but it's had years of management shuffles and changes of direction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Tesla,_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Tesla,_Inc.
- intotheabyss 5y ago
  I'd also note that SpaceX wouldn't be where it is today without Gwynne Shotwell.

sbarre 5y ago

There's a really big difference between what public figures say and what they believe. When you have the power to influence policy/markets/opportunities simply by saying the right or wrong thing, that starts to factor into public statements a lot more than what you actually believe.

soheil 5y ago

I think what you want to say is that he doesn't have a crystal ball instead of him not being that bright. How can anyone predict any of the above before hand? Bitcoin remains probably one of the few perplexing behaviors from Musk.

caeril 5y ago

This is really no different from any other "engineering visionary" executive, everywhere. These types have a solid understanding of what's technically possible by the laws of physics, but wholly underestimate the feasibility of a complete implementation. It's an open discussion whether these types are "bad" or "good". I tend to believe that hyper-optimists have a role in this world that drives progress forward. Teddy's Roosevelt's "Man in the arena", if you will.

77pt77 5y ago

> He's thought that full self driving was 6 months away for literally 4 years now. He might be completely aware that it's not plausible while still publicly saying otherwise for financial gain.

jon-wood 5y ago
In which case he’s guilty of securities fraud, and is going to have a very bad time.
- 77pt77 5y ago
  That's a maybe. Even if he really is guilty he might not have a bad time. The world is not just and there's very little justice in the judicial system. He called a guy a pedophile with absolutely no evidence and paid no price for that.

api 5y ago

That's not the answer but it's close. The correct answer is that "geniuses" can be dumb. Intelligence doesn't make one invulnerable to bad ideas, cons, indoctrination, herd behavior, logical fallacies, addictions, delusions, or anything else. Related is the fact that billionaires and millionaires are just humans with lots of money. People seem to think a lot of money makes people somehow superhuman, or vice versa. It doesn't. Billionaires are subject to all the same fallacies and errors as anyone else. There is no superhuman enlightened "illuminati" that is somehow above and beyond the rest of us, at least cognitively. They might have a little bit more information but they are no more rational than we are. Based on the COVID denial, cryptocurrency stuff, and memes if I didn't know better I'd say he's been hanging around on the 'chans... and I don't know better.

toephu2 5y ago

> The dude thought covid would go away last May. > He's thought that full self driving was 6 months away for literally 4 years now. He can't predict the future, so what? >He thinks it's easier to make Mars habitable than it is to keep the Earth habitable. He never said this. > And he didn't really understand what Bitcoin was when he sank 1.5 billion into it. How can you prove he doesn't understand what Bitcoin was?

user-the-name 5y ago
> He can't predict the future, so what? Literally everyone else with half a clue could predict that one correctly.

stuaxo 5y ago

Or it's that + some skin of the teeth grifting.

EthanHeilman 5y ago

>He thinks it's easier to make Mars habitable than it is to keep the Earth habitable. It probably is easier to survive long term on Mars than Earth because Mars has a very thin atmosphere. Earth could pull a Venus. Earth life on Mars requires underground small sealed compartments with radiation shielding which is a more survivable architecture than one big shared ecosystem.

coptun 5y ago
Your definition of "long term" is stretching it a bit. If Earth "pulls a venus" it will be 100+ million years from now due to the expansion of the sun.
- DangitBobby 5y ago
  I thought the surface Venus was incredibly hot and uninhabitable mainly to the thick greenhouse gases in it's atmosphere. Why does the sun need to expand for that to happen on Earth?

simonswords82 5y ago

I admire you for calling Musk out on this platform. He's a quandary for sure...I've not worked him out. He's done too many amazing things to be an idiot - but yeah, he's done some super dumb shit too.

loceng 5y ago

"Cus he's not that bright." I think you're confusing mental bandwidth with intelligence, likewise you seem to be putting him on a pedestal expecting him to have an amazing network of advisors on every conceivable topic. No, he's human and his limited attention is split between Tesla, SpaceX, and arguably the other projects he has. Likewise these are complex organizations with a lot of moving parts and it's impossible to not delegate to other competent people, hopefully more competent than not, and then if bad decisions are made by say a Board of Directors and/or CFO then it's perfectly reasonable to reverse course - it's more reasonable than expecting Elon to be an expert of everything, he's not super human. However I imagine the situation's more complex than meets the eye, some people like you are sticking to cherrypicked facts, others are putting forward conspiracy theories founded on no evidence that this was Elon pumping and dumping purposefully, or that he's just doing it to piss off the SEC because he hates the SEC. Who knows. Elon in the not so distant past tweeted: "Bitcoin is almost as much bs as fiat money" - so he certainly has enough of an idea to make that statement.

guram11 5y ago

>he didn't really understand what Bitcoin was He's not dumb for a scum that scam billions in profit

agumonkey 5y ago

I'm no fan but 1) any moron on the web know about energy consumption of Blockchains 2) musk cannot be more stupid than them. He's (sadly) trolling the system imo

andrepd 5y ago

On the contrary. It's not that he's not bright, it's that is is a brilliant conman. Re self-driving: Tesla's boom in the past ~1.5 years coincided with his laughable claims about self-driving and robo-taxis. And re bitcoin: the guy literally tweeted two words "buy doge" and sparked a pump-and-dump bubble. Then he went on SNL, didn't plug doge enough, and it tanked instantly. Then a couple hours ago he tweeted more doge stuff and it started rallying again. Crazy stuff.

generalizations 5y ago

Your first two points are basically political positions. I know it's fun to imagine that the other political side is less intelligent, but don't take that impulse too seriously.

ajuc 5y ago

When your profits depend on not understanding something chances are you won't understand it :)