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Elon Musk advertised as a feature that he would cut Twitter staff to bring the revenue per employee in line with industry standards. But I’m curious - What ide

Elon Musk advertised as a feature that he would cut Twitter staff to bring the revenue per employee in line with industry standards. But I’m curious - What ideas of Elon do you find to be delusional bullshit?

kyralis 4y ago
"Full Self Driving"
claytonjy 4y ago
saying "self driving cars are 2 years away" for the last 5+ years sticks out to me
clpm4j 4y ago
I would say that "living on Mars" could be classified as delusional.
- mschuster91 4y ago
  It was, but once Starship becomes operational, the financial game changes by many orders of magnitude - to a point where a single billionaire with no fucks to give can actually book themselves a ride to Mars. One may hate on Musk for a number of very good reasons, but it cannot be denied him, Shotwell and the rest of the SpaceX team have thoroughly kicked the established space industry mooches into their asses.
  - stephc_int13 4y ago
    Elon Musk has unfortunately a very long track record of over-promising and under-delivering. Anything he say should be taken with the proverbial grain of salt. I don't think he is a complete fraud, but I would not bet my shirt on his Mark colonization project.
  - andsoitis 4y ago
    > billionaire with no fucks to give can actually book themselves a ride to Mars What is a billionaire gonna do once they get to Mars?
    - rsync 4y ago
      "What is a billionaire gonna do once they get to Mars?" Undergo profound physical atrophy leading to organ dysfunction and eventually cancer ... ... since Mars gravity is something like 1/3 that of Earth.
  - ryandrake 4y ago
    There's a huge chasm between "disrupting an already inefficient space industry" and "living on Mars". We barely have the capability of living long term on Antarctica, and it has plentiful water, oxygen, gravity, a magnetic field, and doesn't have lethal radiation. Until I see a 100K population colony on Antarctica, I'll be unconvinced that we even have a prayer of building a 1K population colony on Mars.
    - Firmwarrior 4y ago
      We could easily build a 100k colony in Antarctica or out in the ocean right now (or in the Australian Outback or Canadian north or any other inhospitable boring hellscape) I'll admit that I'm not sure what the point of a mars colony is either, except for science and to act as a forward space outpost.. maybe it would be useful for industrial purposes? I guess you wouldn't have to worry about utterly destroying the environment. If it were mostly self sufficient it could act as a seed to repair earth society in the event of a catastrophic asteroid strike or nuclear war, I guess
    - mschuster91 4y ago
      Meh. No one wants to live on the poles, not even for bragging rights, other than a few scientists. Mars however? There's a shitload of people who'd volunteer to go there simply for their entry in the history books.
viscanti 4y ago
I don't know enough about the science to have a strong opinion, but I've heard a lot of people who have been critical of hyper loop, a very expensive tunnel filled with Tesla cars in Vegas that has much less efficiency than a subway from 50+ years ago, and saying that full self driving would be easy and finished years ago (he's since said full self driving is actually much more difficult than he initially thought). Maybe no visionary is going to get everything right. But there do seem to be some pretty major areas that have received critical feedback from people who seem to understand those domains.
paganel 4y ago
Not the OP but the hyperloop thing is, imho, total bullshit. Not such a big thing though because he hasn't poured billions and billions of dollars into it as Zuckerberg has done with the VR stuff. On the other hand Tesla has been a huge thing. I'm a big anti-EVs guy because I'm, at heart, a petrolhead, and at the beginning I was of course very skeptic of him managing to pull it off. But that opinion of mine changed completely the moment when I realised that a Tesla vehicle is basically a piece of software running/controlling a battery that happens to have 4 wheels attached, and that the Tesla engineers have managed to make good on that. The rocket stuff is also quite cool.
- alliao 4y ago
  i wish tesla would make hvac for houses to be honest, the amount of thought into managing heat in a tesla is something special; or maybe it's AI
stephc_int13 4y ago
Most of his AI claims are, so far, backed by nothing. The demos are underwhelming, to say the least. The rockets and car factories are impressive. But the tunnels, the robotaxi, the hyperloop, the solar roofs... So far, a lot of over-hyped promises that are looking more and more like vaporware. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0PHv3E8jpY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0PHv3E8jpY
vic20forever 4y ago
"Shoot first, ask questions later"[0] when cutting staff seems like a delusional idea to me. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33496808 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33496808

kyralis 4y ago

"Full Self Driving"

claytonjy 4y ago

saying "self driving cars are 2 years away" for the last 5+ years sticks out to me

clpm4j 4y ago

I would say that "living on Mars" could be classified as delusional.

mschuster91 4y ago
It was, but once Starship becomes operational, the financial game changes by many orders of magnitude - to a point where a single billionaire with no fucks to give can actually book themselves a ride to Mars. One may hate on Musk for a number of very good reasons, but it cannot be denied him, Shotwell and the rest of the SpaceX team have thoroughly kicked the established space industry mooches into their asses.
- stephc_int13 4y ago
  Elon Musk has unfortunately a very long track record of over-promising and under-delivering. Anything he say should be taken with the proverbial grain of salt. I don't think he is a complete fraud, but I would not bet my shirt on his Mark colonization project.
- andsoitis 4y ago
  > billionaire with no fucks to give can actually book themselves a ride to Mars What is a billionaire gonna do once they get to Mars?
  - rsync 4y ago
    "What is a billionaire gonna do once they get to Mars?" Undergo profound physical atrophy leading to organ dysfunction and eventually cancer ... ... since Mars gravity is something like 1/3 that of Earth.
- ryandrake 4y ago
  There's a huge chasm between "disrupting an already inefficient space industry" and "living on Mars". We barely have the capability of living long term on Antarctica, and it has plentiful water, oxygen, gravity, a magnetic field, and doesn't have lethal radiation. Until I see a 100K population colony on Antarctica, I'll be unconvinced that we even have a prayer of building a 1K population colony on Mars.
  - Firmwarrior 4y ago
    We could easily build a 100k colony in Antarctica or out in the ocean right now (or in the Australian Outback or Canadian north or any other inhospitable boring hellscape) I'll admit that I'm not sure what the point of a mars colony is either, except for science and to act as a forward space outpost.. maybe it would be useful for industrial purposes? I guess you wouldn't have to worry about utterly destroying the environment. If it were mostly self sufficient it could act as a seed to repair earth society in the event of a catastrophic asteroid strike or nuclear war, I guess
  - mschuster91 4y ago
    Meh. No one wants to live on the poles, not even for bragging rights, other than a few scientists. Mars however? There's a shitload of people who'd volunteer to go there simply for their entry in the history books.

viscanti 4y ago

I don't know enough about the science to have a strong opinion, but I've heard a lot of people who have been critical of hyper loop, a very expensive tunnel filled with Tesla cars in Vegas that has much less efficiency than a subway from 50+ years ago, and saying that full self driving would be easy and finished years ago (he's since said full self driving is actually much more difficult than he initially thought). Maybe no visionary is going to get everything right. But there do seem to be some pretty major areas that have received critical feedback from people who seem to understand those domains.

paganel 4y ago

Not the OP but the hyperloop thing is, imho, total bullshit. Not such a big thing though because he hasn't poured billions and billions of dollars into it as Zuckerberg has done with the VR stuff. On the other hand Tesla has been a huge thing. I'm a big anti-EVs guy because I'm, at heart, a petrolhead, and at the beginning I was of course very skeptic of him managing to pull it off. But that opinion of mine changed completely the moment when I realised that a Tesla vehicle is basically a piece of software running/controlling a battery that happens to have 4 wheels attached, and that the Tesla engineers have managed to make good on that. The rocket stuff is also quite cool.

alliao 4y ago
i wish tesla would make hvac for houses to be honest, the amount of thought into managing heat in a tesla is something special; or maybe it's AI

stephc_int13 4y ago

Most of his AI claims are, so far, backed by nothing. The demos are underwhelming, to say the least. The rockets and car factories are impressive. But the tunnels, the robotaxi, the hyperloop, the solar roofs... So far, a lot of over-hyped promises that are looking more and more like vaporware. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0PHv3E8jpY https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z0PHv3E8jpY

vic20forever 4y ago

"Shoot first, ask questions later"[0] when cutting staff seems like a delusional idea to me. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33496808 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33496808