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(Sorry, you caught my post while I was editing it in the first two minutes.) I don't see why shouldn't try to do both: a) Lower the earth's surface temperatur

by tpmx 5y ago

(Sorry, you caught my post while I was editing it in the first two minutes.) I don't see why shouldn't try to do both: a) Lower the earth's surface temperature b) Begin the process of building a backup of humanity on Mars

dragontamer 5y ago
Because B) is a waste of time, money, and effort. Whether or not A) is true has nothing to do with whether or not B) is worth doing. There's no reason to imply that I'm making a false dichotomy fallacy.
- tpmx 5y ago
  I'm sorry, but short of instating a dictatorship you can't really stop people betting on things you don't like.
  - dragontamer 5y ago
    I'm not saying you're not allowed to work on it. If its a task you feel like wasting your money on, that's fine. But don't expect me to support the effort by any means, not until you give me an argument for why Mars Terraforming would be a worthwhile use of resources I control or resources I have otherwise influence over.
    - jokethrowaway 5y ago
      It's a private enterprise, not the government Nobody wants your support, they just need crazy enough wealthy people
      - dragontamer 5y ago
        Sure. But we're discussing Elon Musk here. The fact that he's spending resources on nominally going to Mars is completely idiotic. I've got enough of a brain to figure that out. Its a free country. Which means I'm free to make my opinion on how others spend their money and resources. ----------- This is relevant because of all of the highly questionable moves Musk has done in the past weeks. He pumped BTC, pumped DOGE online. He pretends that he's a busy and (Aspergers) CEO despite spending huge amounts of effort on pop culture like Rick and Morty, Saturday Night Live, and other cultural mainstays. He proposes that terraforming Mars is a fruitful endevour. He lies about "Full Self Driving" to the public for years, even as news reports come out as people literally die and burn to death inside of the cars his companies make. He claims COVID19 is a hoax, in an effort to keep his factories open. He publishes a Finite-Element-Analysis of Hyperloop so basic that a 1st year college student could have done it. He builds tiny tunnels without any emergency contingencies while putting highly flammable lithium Ion batteries inside of those tunnels for Las Vegas. And then finally, we come to this topic. Where he first hypes BTC (after buying it), and then after selling a huge chunk of it (over 10% in the past quarter), seemingly moves to dump the price of BTC. Etc. etc. At some point, we have to recognize that this guy is not an "engineer" at all. Musk is a hypeman at best. His lack of focus (so many topics covered...) suggests mania (as opposed to Aspergers). I dunno. Its getting harder and harder to take Musk seriously on any of these issues.
        SZJX 5y ago
        Nicely put. Just one point on the last paragraph, I guess somebody with Asperger's could also have ADHD. They can concentrate on something that catches their interest and forget about everything else for a while, but they can also shift their focus to whatever draws their attention next. In fact sustaining their effort over one long-term thing might be a skill they have to hone just like many other people. There doesn't seem to be a contradiction IMO.
        dragontamer 5y ago
        > In fact sustaining their effort over one long-term thing might be a skill they have to hone just like many other people. There doesn't seem to be a contradiction IMO. What is Elon Musk's "one long term thing" ? * Payment Processors? (Paypal? X.com? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.com) * Electric Cars? (Tesla?) * Solar Panels? Utility scale electric generators? (SolarCity?) * Space? (SpaceX) * Infrastructure? (Hyperloop? Boring Company?) * AI? (Self-driving cars) * Internet infrastructure? (Starlink?) * BTC / DOGEcoin? Crypto-currencies? For Payment Processors: we're looking at web technologies like Javascript, Two-factor authentication, Back-end Web processing, etc. etc. That's very much in the know for us nerds who hang around here in ycombinator: an extended "hyperfocus" on Payment Processors is a lifetime of effort alone. There's simply not enough time for Elon Musk to reach "expert" levels of understanding in any of these subjects. Anyone who knows anything about these subjects knows that Musk's discussion points are EXTREMELY shallow. They're deep enough that maybe a layperson thinks that Musk is smart, but... seriously, look at his recent DOGEcoin / BTCcoin discussion points. The dude barely understand cryptocurrencies (or at least pretends he barely understands them, as he "suddenly" realizes the energy implications of BTC). ------------ I'm not really doubting the ability of someone with Asperger's to change subjects. But given how quickly Elon Musk changes subjects, its my personal opinion that he probably doesn't have Asperger's. Do remember: that all the while he's changing these subjects, Elon Musk is partying hard and participating in pop culture (Saturday Night Live, Rick and Morty, Twitter rants, etc. etc.). His behavior does NOT match any Asperger's individual I've ever met. I know everyone's case is unique, but... that's a lot of "non-Asperger's" things going on (social partying, pop culture, appearances on TV, live talks, CEO position, "jack-of-all-trades" behavior instead of depth into particular subjects... etc. etc.) I'm no expert in psychology. But this behavior is _mania_: common in say Bipolar individuals. Which is useful in its own niches of course (much like Asperger's is useful in engineering: mania typically causes an individual to visit many subjects... albeit shallowly but yeah, that's probably useful to a typical CEO moreso than hyperfocus actually)

by tpmx 5y ago

dragontamer 5y ago

Because B) is a waste of time, money, and effort. Whether or not A) is true has nothing to do with whether or not B) is worth doing. There's no reason to imply that I'm making a false dichotomy fallacy.

tpmx 5y ago
I'm sorry, but short of instating a dictatorship you can't really stop people betting on things you don't like.
- dragontamer 5y ago
  I'm not saying you're not allowed to work on it. If its a task you feel like wasting your money on, that's fine. But don't expect me to support the effort by any means, not until you give me an argument for why Mars Terraforming would be a worthwhile use of resources I control or resources I have otherwise influence over.
  - jokethrowaway 5y ago
    It's a private enterprise, not the government Nobody wants your support, they just need crazy enough wealthy people
    - dragontamer 5y ago
      Sure. But we're discussing Elon Musk here. The fact that he's spending resources on nominally going to Mars is completely idiotic. I've got enough of a brain to figure that out. Its a free country. Which means I'm free to make my opinion on how others spend their money and resources. ----------- This is relevant because of all of the highly questionable moves Musk has done in the past weeks. He pumped BTC, pumped DOGE online. He pretends that he's a busy and (Aspergers) CEO despite spending huge amounts of effort on pop culture like Rick and Morty, Saturday Night Live, and other cultural mainstays. He proposes that terraforming Mars is a fruitful endevour. He lies about "Full Self Driving" to the public for years, even as news reports come out as people literally die and burn to death inside of the cars his companies make. He claims COVID19 is a hoax, in an effort to keep his factories open. He publishes a Finite-Element-Analysis of Hyperloop so basic that a 1st year college student could have done it. He builds tiny tunnels without any emergency contingencies while putting highly flammable lithium Ion batteries inside of those tunnels for Las Vegas. And then finally, we come to this topic. Where he first hypes BTC (after buying it), and then after selling a huge chunk of it (over 10% in the past quarter), seemingly moves to dump the price of BTC. Etc. etc. At some point, we have to recognize that this guy is not an "engineer" at all. Musk is a hypeman at best. His lack of focus (so many topics covered...) suggests mania (as opposed to Aspergers). I dunno. Its getting harder and harder to take Musk seriously on any of these issues.
      - SZJX 5y ago
        Nicely put. Just one point on the last paragraph, I guess somebody with Asperger's could also have ADHD. They can concentrate on something that catches their interest and forget about everything else for a while, but they can also shift their focus to whatever draws their attention next. In fact sustaining their effort over one long-term thing might be a skill they have to hone just like many other people. There doesn't seem to be a contradiction IMO.
        dragontamer 5y ago
        > In fact sustaining their effort over one long-term thing might be a skill they have to hone just like many other people. There doesn't seem to be a contradiction IMO. What is Elon Musk's "one long term thing" ? * Payment Processors? (Paypal? X.com? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.com https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X.com) * Electric Cars? (Tesla?) * Solar Panels? Utility scale electric generators? (SolarCity?) * Space? (SpaceX) * Infrastructure? (Hyperloop? Boring Company?) * AI? (Self-driving cars) * Internet infrastructure? (Starlink?) * BTC / DOGEcoin? Crypto-currencies? For Payment Processors: we're looking at web technologies like Javascript, Two-factor authentication, Back-end Web processing, etc. etc. That's very much in the know for us nerds who hang around here in ycombinator: an extended "hyperfocus" on Payment Processors is a lifetime of effort alone. There's simply not enough time for Elon Musk to reach "expert" levels of understanding in any of these subjects. Anyone who knows anything about these subjects knows that Musk's discussion points are EXTREMELY shallow. They're deep enough that maybe a layperson thinks that Musk is smart, but... seriously, look at his recent DOGEcoin / BTCcoin discussion points. The dude barely understand cryptocurrencies (or at least pretends he barely understands them, as he "suddenly" realizes the energy implications of BTC). ------------ I'm not really doubting the ability of someone with Asperger's to change subjects. But given how quickly Elon Musk changes subjects, its my personal opinion that he probably doesn't have Asperger's. Do remember: that all the while he's changing these subjects, Elon Musk is partying hard and participating in pop culture (Saturday Night Live, Rick and Morty, Twitter rants, etc. etc.). His behavior does NOT match any Asperger's individual I've ever met. I know everyone's case is unique, but... that's a lot of "non-Asperger's" things going on (social partying, pop culture, appearances on TV, live talks, CEO position, "jack-of-all-trades" behavior instead of depth into particular subjects... etc. etc.) I'm no expert in psychology. But this behavior is _mania_: common in say Bipolar individuals. Which is useful in its own niches of course (much like Asperger's is useful in engineering: mania typically causes an individual to visit many subjects... albeit shallowly but yeah, that's probably useful to a typical CEO moreso than hyperfocus actually)