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It seems to me yet another confirmation that there is no man (or woman) for all seasons and all situations. Musk looks like the disorganized mess he's making a

It seems to me yet another confirmation that there is no man (or woman) for all seasons and all situations. Musk looks like the disorganized mess he's making at Twitter, the kind of "visionary" we've all had to work with and who has sucked the will to live out of us: unreasonable expectations, constant changes of trajectory, the feeling that one well-spent night or one too many drinks for them would make our lives heaven or hell. Zuck is spending billions on a bet that, frankly, seems like nothing more than a nerd's dream. I am cautious in my observation, and I think it is a caution shared by many, for who could have predicted the adoption of the automobile, the personal computer, the internet, the smartphone, social media? And so much leeway is given to this case as well, forgetting that other supposed "manifest destinies" of technology, such as flying cars and robotic sex dolls, have gone by the wayside partly because of technical limitations and partly because, in the end, no one cares about them, either for now or forever. But we have seen the same ups and downs in many historical figures, the Churchills, the Napoleons, the Einsteins, who, after proving themselves to be brilliant as well as favored by the stars, failed to repeat later what gave them notoriety, success and admiration. Perhaps they ran out of luck, perhaps no one had the courage to tell them that it was time for retirement.

pkoird 4y ago
I wouldn't know much about Politicians but I'm certainly curious about Einstein's inclusion in your examples. Just how do you think that the discoverer of Photoelectricity, Brownian Motion, Special & General Relativity, and one of the founding fathers of QM failed later in his life?
- borroka 4y ago
  One can read about Einstein's search for a unified theory of physics (see, for example, https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200512/history.cfm https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200512/history.cfm). "Failed" is a big word, which I do not like to use. I prefer to say that his gamble, which consumed the second part of his professional life, did not pay off. And the way you describe Einstein's work is the same way someone might describe, in other contexts, the work of Zuck or Musk. How is it possible that Zuck "failed" with the metaverse (remains to be seen, of course, I don't have a crystal ball) after he founded Facebook and had the genius intuition to buy Whatsapp and Instagram?
  - andsoitis 4y ago
    I don’t know that I’d compare Mark of Elon’s successes to that of Einstein. Einstein’s contributions to this world tower above theirs.
    - borroka 4y ago
      I am comparing trajectories, not values, as the units of measure are different.
      - theCrowing 4y ago
        Typical "Hot Hand Fallacy" just because someone had success before, even if he had a lot of success in a row doesn't mean he will have it forever.
        borroka 4y ago
        It is not a "Hot Hand" problem because the context changes. Hot Hand is when you face the same problem (shooting a 3 in basket), not when one has to choose what to bet on, since the variability of the conditions surrounding the bet are likely to make every bet a unique situation. Like saying that Einstein delivering results that change a whole field of physics every 5 years is a "Hot Hand" problem, is surely misguided.
  - pkoird 4y ago
    The search for a unified theory of physics was not unique to Einstein and thousands after him have continued to look for it still. The only "failures", so to speak, of his would arguably be the Cosmological Constant or his denial of the Quantum Mechanics. But, given how profoundly bizzarre these phenomena are, not even the greatest of Physicists can blame him for having doubts, much less you or I.
    - JamesianP 4y ago
      They were comparing later Einsten to young Einsten, not to the rest of us. Most of the discoveries you listed earlier came during the "miracle year" in his mid 20s. The remaining one (general relativity) came about ten years later, though it's the one that made him really famous. That's more than probably every other physicist so maybe it's unfair to keep ask what he did next. But it makes sense that lots of early success can lead someone to overreach and reduce their later accomplishments. Didn't Feynman say something like that regarding the negative effect of the Nobel prize on physicists.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
ldjkfkdsjnv 4y ago
"Musk looks like the disorganized mess he's making at Twitter, the kind of "visionary" we've all had to work with and who has sucked the will to live out of us: unreasonable expectations, constant changes of trajectory, the feeling that one well-spent night or one too many drinks for them would make our lives heaven or hell." He has been in control for what, one week? I would examine your own political leanings and motivations for wanting this assertion to be true
- borroka 4y ago
  It is said that sometimes one can recognize the love of their life at first sight. I say that sometimes one can recognize a disorganized mess in five minutes. And that's what I see in Musk's (early) management of the company. I have no political leanings, and I'm not particularly interested in the fate of Twitter. I'm there, I find it instructive, I've learned quite a bit about my areas of interest by reading what other people write on Twitter. I used to tweet more, but I realized that to contribute meaningfully you have to have a position and personality traits that I don't possess.
  - daveevad 4y ago
    > I have no political leanings I am rather incredulous at this statement but if you are being truthful, please help me arrive at this same locality. The closest I can manage is all of my political leanings are derivative of those who raised me. I wish I could be more neutral, objective from my own observation, existence.
    - borroka 4y ago
      I have policy leanings, but not political leanings. I reside in the United States, but I was born and raised abroad and have not voted in political elections for more than 10 years. I really appreciate the opportunity to vote and I would never give up my right, but I can't bring myself to go to the polls and support, first and foremost, people I don't admire or don't feel represented by. Curiously, until my early 20s I was very passionate about politics, now I just observe.
ryuuji 4y ago
You are familiar with the phrase "Man's reach exceeds his grasp"? It is a lie. Man's grasp exceeds his nerve. The first time I tried to change the world, I was hailed as a visionary. The second time, I was asked politely to retire. Society only tolerates one change at a time. -Nikola Tesla (in "The Prestige")
- KerrAvon 4y ago
  Tesla, like Preston Tucker, was his own undoing. Tesla did not manage his business relationships well. He needed someone to help him with that, and didn’t have such a person.
tech_tuna 4y ago
The thing about Facebook is that it started from connecting people: friends, families, long lost co-worker, etc. Nowadays, there's so much outside content (some of is interesting sure) that it's a lot more like Reddit or Twitter. And the Metaverse feels like more of a detour away from other people. I liked Facebook when I got to connect with a bunch of people I hadn't seen in year. I don't want it to be like Mike TV from Willy Wonka. I get plenty enough escapism from movies and shows.
- borroka 4y ago
  It is true that it was started as a way to connect people, and I remember the excitement of finding out whether the old classmate got married, the colleague got fired, or the ex-boyfriend got uglier. But it also got old pretty quickly, like lunches with ex-colleagues: the first one is interesting and lively, the second one is forced, and when they call us for the third one we say we're sorry, but we just ate a pangolin at the wet market. To keep engagement high, other activities on Facebook were needed, so groups, news, marketplace, etc. A simplified view, sure, but novelty wears off, and that is especially true and noticeable for fast-growing platforms, sports, tourist spots that cause feverish excitement.
  - smnrchrds 4y ago
    I don't agree with this assessment. Instagram today is rather close to the Facebook back in the day. It does not have groups, marketplace, news (unless you follow a news agency), etc. And it is very popular.
    - borroka 4y ago
      It is similar in terms of the user demographics to Facebook back in the day, but the revealed preferences of the users and way of using the social media are not similar at all.
  - YZF 4y ago
    > we're sorry, but we just ate a pangolin at the wet market. rofl. I meet ex-colleagues for lunch every now and then. It ain't that bad... But I mean it depends. There's also a lot of ex-colleagues I never see again. Some are more like friends, some less.
ip26 4y ago
The car, the computer, the spreadsheet, the internet - correct me but I believe most of these examples solved clear problems or dramatically accelerated some type of work. Each time, they succeeded because people loved this new tool enough to throw money at it - far more money than expected. That got the ball rolling to refine the offering. I'm not sure what new problem the metaverse solves, aside from boredom (video games) or loneliness (social networking).
- karmakaze 4y ago
  Blackberry/RIM also saw no problem that the iPhone was solving. Sometimes markets are created with a product everyone didn't know they needed/wanted, even the first Sony Walkman. I'm reserving judgement until I experience first-hand what it's like to share a virtual space with someone I care about when we're physically hundreds/thousands of kms apart with real-time facial expressions on a photorealistic model of their face.
  - clhodapp 4y ago
    Meta haven't made anything remotely resembling that yet, though. They've got pretty generic avatars performing canned animations in a VR environment. It seems like it will probably take them 5-10 years of hard research, likely with many dead ends and false starts, to get there. In Apple terms, they have announced the iPhone before doing all of the capacitive touch research and UX development that actually made the pubic want the product. While it might be possible for them to eventually achieve their vision, it seems like a bad idea to try to drive so much hype this early with faked videos. It's very likely that the public (especially Wall Street) will lose patience waiting for them to actually make what they've promised.
    - karmakaze 4y ago
      With all the deepfake demos, I would think this is immediately realizable. The facial tracking demos for Quest Pro on a deepfake of yourself would certainly be possible and compelling.
  - 4y ago
paulpan 4y ago
> seems like nothing more than a nerd's dream Interesting description as that's similar to the perception of Facebook when it was first widely launched. It was even popularized in films like The Social Network with the insinuation it was designed by nerds make their lives less isolated. Look at where we are 10 years later...
- overkill28 4y ago
  That's not my recollection at all. College kids of all stripes were dying to sign up for it as it rolled out school-by-school.

pkoird 4y ago

I wouldn't know much about Politicians but I'm certainly curious about Einstein's inclusion in your examples. Just how do you think that the discoverer of Photoelectricity, Brownian Motion, Special & General Relativity, and one of the founding fathers of QM failed later in his life?

borroka 4y ago
One can read about Einstein's search for a unified theory of physics (see, for example, https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200512/history.cfm https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200512/history.cfm). "Failed" is a big word, which I do not like to use. I prefer to say that his gamble, which consumed the second part of his professional life, did not pay off. And the way you describe Einstein's work is the same way someone might describe, in other contexts, the work of Zuck or Musk. How is it possible that Zuck "failed" with the metaverse (remains to be seen, of course, I don't have a crystal ball) after he founded Facebook and had the genius intuition to buy Whatsapp and Instagram?
- andsoitis 4y ago
  I don’t know that I’d compare Mark of Elon’s successes to that of Einstein. Einstein’s contributions to this world tower above theirs.
  - borroka 4y ago
    I am comparing trajectories, not values, as the units of measure are different.
    - theCrowing 4y ago
      Typical "Hot Hand Fallacy" just because someone had success before, even if he had a lot of success in a row doesn't mean he will have it forever.
      - borroka 4y ago
        It is not a "Hot Hand" problem because the context changes. Hot Hand is when you face the same problem (shooting a 3 in basket), not when one has to choose what to bet on, since the variability of the conditions surrounding the bet are likely to make every bet a unique situation. Like saying that Einstein delivering results that change a whole field of physics every 5 years is a "Hot Hand" problem, is surely misguided.
- pkoird 4y ago
  The search for a unified theory of physics was not unique to Einstein and thousands after him have continued to look for it still. The only "failures", so to speak, of his would arguably be the Cosmological Constant or his denial of the Quantum Mechanics. But, given how profoundly bizzarre these phenomena are, not even the greatest of Physicists can blame him for having doubts, much less you or I.
  - JamesianP 4y ago
    They were comparing later Einsten to young Einsten, not to the rest of us. Most of the discoveries you listed earlier came during the "miracle year" in his mid 20s. The remaining one (general relativity) came about ten years later, though it's the one that made him really famous. That's more than probably every other physicist so maybe it's unfair to keep ask what he did next. But it makes sense that lots of early success can lead someone to overreach and reduce their later accomplishments. Didn't Feynman say something like that regarding the negative effect of the Nobel prize on physicists.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]

ldjkfkdsjnv 4y ago

"Musk looks like the disorganized mess he's making at Twitter, the kind of "visionary" we've all had to work with and who has sucked the will to live out of us: unreasonable expectations, constant changes of trajectory, the feeling that one well-spent night or one too many drinks for them would make our lives heaven or hell." He has been in control for what, one week? I would examine your own political leanings and motivations for wanting this assertion to be true

borroka 4y ago
It is said that sometimes one can recognize the love of their life at first sight. I say that sometimes one can recognize a disorganized mess in five minutes. And that's what I see in Musk's (early) management of the company. I have no political leanings, and I'm not particularly interested in the fate of Twitter. I'm there, I find it instructive, I've learned quite a bit about my areas of interest by reading what other people write on Twitter. I used to tweet more, but I realized that to contribute meaningfully you have to have a position and personality traits that I don't possess.
- daveevad 4y ago
  > I have no political leanings I am rather incredulous at this statement but if you are being truthful, please help me arrive at this same locality. The closest I can manage is all of my political leanings are derivative of those who raised me. I wish I could be more neutral, objective from my own observation, existence.
  - borroka 4y ago
    I have policy leanings, but not political leanings. I reside in the United States, but I was born and raised abroad and have not voted in political elections for more than 10 years. I really appreciate the opportunity to vote and I would never give up my right, but I can't bring myself to go to the polls and support, first and foremost, people I don't admire or don't feel represented by. Curiously, until my early 20s I was very passionate about politics, now I just observe.

ryuuji 4y ago

You are familiar with the phrase "Man's reach exceeds his grasp"? It is a lie. Man's grasp exceeds his nerve. The first time I tried to change the world, I was hailed as a visionary. The second time, I was asked politely to retire. Society only tolerates one change at a time. -Nikola Tesla (in "The Prestige")

KerrAvon 4y ago
Tesla, like Preston Tucker, was his own undoing. Tesla did not manage his business relationships well. He needed someone to help him with that, and didn’t have such a person.

tech_tuna 4y ago

The thing about Facebook is that it started from connecting people: friends, families, long lost co-worker, etc. Nowadays, there's so much outside content (some of is interesting sure) that it's a lot more like Reddit or Twitter. And the Metaverse feels like more of a detour away from other people. I liked Facebook when I got to connect with a bunch of people I hadn't seen in year. I don't want it to be like Mike TV from Willy Wonka. I get plenty enough escapism from movies and shows.

borroka 4y ago
It is true that it was started as a way to connect people, and I remember the excitement of finding out whether the old classmate got married, the colleague got fired, or the ex-boyfriend got uglier. But it also got old pretty quickly, like lunches with ex-colleagues: the first one is interesting and lively, the second one is forced, and when they call us for the third one we say we're sorry, but we just ate a pangolin at the wet market. To keep engagement high, other activities on Facebook were needed, so groups, news, marketplace, etc. A simplified view, sure, but novelty wears off, and that is especially true and noticeable for fast-growing platforms, sports, tourist spots that cause feverish excitement.
- smnrchrds 4y ago
  I don't agree with this assessment. Instagram today is rather close to the Facebook back in the day. It does not have groups, marketplace, news (unless you follow a news agency), etc. And it is very popular.
  - borroka 4y ago
    It is similar in terms of the user demographics to Facebook back in the day, but the revealed preferences of the users and way of using the social media are not similar at all.
- YZF 4y ago
  > we're sorry, but we just ate a pangolin at the wet market. rofl. I meet ex-colleagues for lunch every now and then. It ain't that bad... But I mean it depends. There's also a lot of ex-colleagues I never see again. Some are more like friends, some less.

ip26 4y ago

The car, the computer, the spreadsheet, the internet - correct me but I believe most of these examples solved clear problems or dramatically accelerated some type of work. Each time, they succeeded because people loved this new tool enough to throw money at it - far more money than expected. That got the ball rolling to refine the offering. I'm not sure what new problem the metaverse solves, aside from boredom (video games) or loneliness (social networking).

karmakaze 4y ago
Blackberry/RIM also saw no problem that the iPhone was solving. Sometimes markets are created with a product everyone didn't know they needed/wanted, even the first Sony Walkman. I'm reserving judgement until I experience first-hand what it's like to share a virtual space with someone I care about when we're physically hundreds/thousands of kms apart with real-time facial expressions on a photorealistic model of their face.
- clhodapp 4y ago
  Meta haven't made anything remotely resembling that yet, though. They've got pretty generic avatars performing canned animations in a VR environment. It seems like it will probably take them 5-10 years of hard research, likely with many dead ends and false starts, to get there. In Apple terms, they have announced the iPhone before doing all of the capacitive touch research and UX development that actually made the pubic want the product. While it might be possible for them to eventually achieve their vision, it seems like a bad idea to try to drive so much hype this early with faked videos. It's very likely that the public (especially Wall Street) will lose patience waiting for them to actually make what they've promised.
  - karmakaze 4y ago
    With all the deepfake demos, I would think this is immediately realizable. The facial tracking demos for Quest Pro on a deepfake of yourself would certainly be possible and compelling.
- 4y ago

paulpan 4y ago

> seems like nothing more than a nerd's dream Interesting description as that's similar to the perception of Facebook when it was first widely launched. It was even popularized in films like The Social Network with the insinuation it was designed by nerds make their lives less isolated. Look at where we are 10 years later...

overkill28 4y ago
That's not my recollection at all. College kids of all stripes were dying to sign up for it as it rolled out school-by-school.