14 ms·

Saying you want to climb Mount Everest and not being able to get all the way to the top is failure, not fraud. The fact that Musk charged people to watch muddie

Saying you want to climb Mount Everest and not being able to get all the way to the top is failure, not fraud. The fact that Musk charged people to watch muddies the waters a bit, though.

qzw 4y ago
How about charging $10k for the “Full summit of Everest Experience” when you’re still sitting at base camp? Is that fraud or just failure? Or maybe it’s ok because it’s beta?
- rootusrootus 4y ago
  > Or maybe it’s ok because it’s beta? Definitely not. I sat down in my wife's new Model 3 to help her configure it to her liking, and I was surprised to see that autosteer is still listed as beta. Clearly the meaning of 'beta' has lost all meaningful definition.
  - ben1040 4y ago
    > Clearly the meaning of 'beta' has lost all meaningful definition I think that ship sailed when Gmail kept a “beta” label for five years.
philjohn 4y ago
Putting up a doctored video demonstrating FSD to me seems like a massive fraud.
- fbdab103 4y ago
  I am not familiar with the referenced video, but I thought Nikola [0] was in hot water (ie real legal trouble) for their video of an electric truck coasting down a hill. [0] https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/315151-electric-vehicle-company-admits-it-faked-fuel-cell-semi-truck-demo https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/315151-electric-vehicle-...
- SpicyLemonZest 4y ago
  "Doctored" as a colloquial term covers a lot of things, some of which are massive frauds and some of which aren't. It's misleading for sure to have the car drive around a bunch and release only the best 3 minute segment. But as long as the car really was driving, I don't think it's fraud, any more than it's fraud for a restaurant to post only their most perfectly plated dishes to Instagram.
  - sangnoir 4y ago
    If you release a video claiming a car was driving itself, and delete the footage where it was failing to drive itself - say, buy driving into fences - then that is a fraudulent video. "Best 3 minute segment" does not capture the intentional deception because the product is incapable of attaining claimed capability. Not too far off from "This saline injection will cure headaches" and pick the best 40% of trial results to film an ad
SCAQTony 4y ago
I would venture to say that attempting to climb Mount Everest and failing but saying you had indeed climbed Mount Everest would be a fraud. How many times did Elon Musk say he climbed "Mount Everest" or "we have a fully self driving car now" when Tesla didn't?
- unyttigfjelltol 4y ago
  More like, selling the Everest experience but failing to equip yourself with oxygen, climbing axes, etc., and not arranging for transport anywhere near the mountain. Instead, travelling to a idyllic mountain retreat 500 miles away. And then watching a video on a big screen of someone climbing. Definitely a contrast between the sales pitch and reality.
  - sudhirj 4y ago
    That sounds uncharitable. The Tesla ML model is among the best on the market right now, with millions of miles of training video, lots of FLOPs spent on training and a top-tier engineering team, no? Let’s say the system responds correctly to X% of stimuli, what’s the delta here? We do know that effort and difficulty increases exponentially as we approach 100%, but what’s fraud here? That someone thought they’d hit 99.999999% already but only hit 99.9%?
    - mrWiz 4y ago
      Did Elon advertise a system built with # miles training videos & FLOPS spent on training or, or did he advertise a working system? I don't care about how much work went into it (well I do actually, but that's beside the point) I care about how well it does what they say it does.
joering2 4y ago
Many people successfully climbed Mount Everest so this is not apples to apples. Musk said it is economically insane to buy any other car, because in the near future they will update your Tesla with newest self-driving software, and you will be able to make at least $30,000 a year by using your car as a self-driving taxi. With Tesla at price-tag of around $60,000, he was advertising a staggering 50% annual rate-of-return. If you want to make a similar claim, it would be like he advertised getting to the Mars (something hasn't been done before) and make it so cheap you be able to sale tickets to other people at huge discount and make profit that way but only if you buy his non-existing technology now.

Saying you want to climb Mount Everest and not being able to get all the way to the top is failure, not fraud. The fact that Musk charged people to watch muddies the waters a bit, though.

qzw 4y ago

How about charging $10k for the “Full summit of Everest Experience” when you’re still sitting at base camp? Is that fraud or just failure? Or maybe it’s ok because it’s beta?

rootusrootus 4y ago
> Or maybe it’s ok because it’s beta? Definitely not. I sat down in my wife's new Model 3 to help her configure it to her liking, and I was surprised to see that autosteer is still listed as beta. Clearly the meaning of 'beta' has lost all meaningful definition.
- ben1040 4y ago
  > Clearly the meaning of 'beta' has lost all meaningful definition I think that ship sailed when Gmail kept a “beta” label for five years.

philjohn 4y ago

Putting up a doctored video demonstrating FSD to me seems like a massive fraud.

fbdab103 4y ago
I am not familiar with the referenced video, but I thought Nikola [0] was in hot water (ie real legal trouble) for their video of an electric truck coasting down a hill. [0] https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/315151-electric-vehicle-company-admits-it-faked-fuel-cell-semi-truck-demo https://www.extremetech.com/extreme/315151-electric-vehicle-...
SpicyLemonZest 4y ago
"Doctored" as a colloquial term covers a lot of things, some of which are massive frauds and some of which aren't. It's misleading for sure to have the car drive around a bunch and release only the best 3 minute segment. But as long as the car really was driving, I don't think it's fraud, any more than it's fraud for a restaurant to post only their most perfectly plated dishes to Instagram.
- sangnoir 4y ago
  If you release a video claiming a car was driving itself, and delete the footage where it was failing to drive itself - say, buy driving into fences - then that is a fraudulent video. "Best 3 minute segment" does not capture the intentional deception because the product is incapable of attaining claimed capability. Not too far off from "This saline injection will cure headaches" and pick the best 40% of trial results to film an ad

SCAQTony 4y ago

I would venture to say that attempting to climb Mount Everest and failing but saying you had indeed climbed Mount Everest would be a fraud. How many times did Elon Musk say he climbed "Mount Everest" or "we have a fully self driving car now" when Tesla didn't?

unyttigfjelltol 4y ago
More like, selling the Everest experience but failing to equip yourself with oxygen, climbing axes, etc., and not arranging for transport anywhere near the mountain. Instead, travelling to a idyllic mountain retreat 500 miles away. And then watching a video on a big screen of someone climbing. Definitely a contrast between the sales pitch and reality.
- sudhirj 4y ago
  That sounds uncharitable. The Tesla ML model is among the best on the market right now, with millions of miles of training video, lots of FLOPs spent on training and a top-tier engineering team, no? Let’s say the system responds correctly to X% of stimuli, what’s the delta here? We do know that effort and difficulty increases exponentially as we approach 100%, but what’s fraud here? That someone thought they’d hit 99.999999% already but only hit 99.9%?
  - mrWiz 4y ago
    Did Elon advertise a system built with # miles training videos & FLOPS spent on training or, or did he advertise a working system? I don't care about how much work went into it (well I do actually, but that's beside the point) I care about how well it does what they say it does.

joering2 4y ago

Many people successfully climbed Mount Everest so this is not apples to apples. Musk said it is economically insane to buy any other car, because in the near future they will update your Tesla with newest self-driving software, and you will be able to make at least $30,000 a year by using your car as a self-driving taxi. With Tesla at price-tag of around $60,000, he was advertising a staggering 50% annual rate-of-return. If you want to make a similar claim, it would be like he advertised getting to the Mars (something hasn't been done before) and make it so cheap you be able to sale tickets to other people at huge discount and make profit that way but only if you buy his non-existing technology now.