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Heaven forbid someone has a radical new idea for fusion power or to reduce carbon in the atmosphere or to cure cancer. They may just keep it to themselves knowi

by grecy 3y ago

Heaven forbid someone has a radical new idea for fusion power or to reduce carbon in the atmosphere or to cure cancer. They may just keep it to themselves knowing the reaction they'll get. I think it's a sad state of affairs when someone simply puts an idea out into the world and says "We think it will work, but needs more input" and people get extremely angry and spew vitriol and hatred towards them simply for sharing an idea. Back in the day Musk and SpaceX engineers put out a white paper about Hyperloop. In it they laid out as much of the work and calculations they had done, and they said "We're pretty sure this can work, but it's a first draft, and it needs more input and refinement and testing and all the rest. We're not going to do that. But hopefully others will pick it up and run with it." Then some test tracks were built to foster student input/learning/ideas (Great!), then everyone called Musk a scam artist and says it was a crock of shit from the start. I wish we lived in a world where new ideas were encouraged and discussed in a productive manner so that we can all learn and improve the world around us. Of course not all of them will "work out", but that is the whole point of learning and trying new experimental things.

seattle_spring 3y ago
If you think people are calling Musk and his ideas names purely because of his company's "whitepaper", then you really aren't paying attention. Any negative press happening to Musk is purely his own doing.
tjpnz 3y ago
>I think it's a sad state of affairs when someone simply puts an idea out into the world and says "We think it will work, but needs more input" and people get extremely angry and spew vitriol and hatred towards them simply for sharing an idea. I was open minded, until I read the white paper.
- grecy 3y ago
  > I was open minded, until I read the white paper. OK, so your feedback is "I don't think this will work for reasons x, y and z." We can learn from that and either modify the design until it does work, or move on with other projects that do work (i.e. High Speed Rail). In either case, anger, hatred and vitriol are not required for a productive outcome. We should not shoot down people for sharing information about possibly new and better ways of doing things, lest we discourage everyone from doing so.
  - jeffbee 3y ago
    It is not even a matter of disagreeing with the proposal. If we take all of the numbers in the hyperloop whitepaper at face value—and I want to be clear that all of the numbers in that whitepaper are bullshit—even on those terms it doesn't solve a problem that anyone faces. Hyperloop under its own assumptions has a fraction of the transportation capacity of a railroad.
    - grecy 3y ago
      OK. In your assessment it's not a good thing to build. Evidently the rest of the world agrees. Again, that is perfectly fine and someone putting an idea out there that doesn't work should not result in attacks and name calling. It's just petty high school garbage that doesn't help anything, and in fact hinders future discussions about important topics.
    - snovv_crash 3y ago
      It would work pretty well on Mars, which IMO was the actual intended application. The rest was hopeful thinking.
      - jeffbee 3y ago
        Martian hyperloop is the practical side of the plan? Listen to yourself.
dpflan 3y ago
Remember when ICOs had white-papers about their magical game-theoretic rube-goldberg-machines and the incredible future they would unlock?
Workaccount2 3y ago
The biggest problem Musk has is that he is a nerdy engineer who thought it would be a good idea to interface directly with a general public. I think his biggest failing was not hiring a top-shelf PR team to handle his communications. There is a good reason companies keep engineers in the back room away from customers. They are masters of machines, not people.
- stilist 3y ago
  How is that his biggest problem? He has no impulse control, or no desire for it; he lies incessantly to further his interests; he's a horrible manager; etc.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  - randomdata 3y ago
    The things you mention may be the problems he thinks he has, but none of them are a problem from our point of view. From our perspective, his problem is that he doesn't hide out in the server closet like a nerdy engineer should.
  - Workaccount2 3y ago
    He lies incessantly because he is a nerd with fantastical ideas and enormous resources. But regular folks won't see this because they put their regular self in his shoes to decide what his motivations must be. If he used a proper PR team, they would filter most of this out, and shape his communications into a form meant for regular people.
notahacker 3y ago
> Heaven forbid someone has a radical new idea for fusion power or to reduce carbon in the atmosphere or to cure cancer. They may just keep it to themselves knowing the reaction they'll get. Or, y'know, they might put the idea as an idea rather than an argument about why the government should stop funding wind farms or chemotherapy... Elon can trash and actively try to stop infrastructure projects actually due to be built all he likes, but as soon as someone suggests his vaporware alternative might not be proposed in the best of faith, we have to worry about about how hurting his feelings might set back infrastructure growth?
turquoisevar 3y ago
> I think it's a sad state of affairs when someone simply puts an idea out into the world and says "We think it will work, but needs more input" and people get extremely angry and spew vitriol and hatred towards them simply for sharing an idea. The way you characterize it, Musk came out with an itty bitty idea, said “hey I think this might work but I need some help figuring things out” and the whole world hated him for it. This is a very generous characterization of Musk, but it has little to do with reality. What actually happened was that Musk has a history of floating ideas around by presenting them as the best thing since sliced bread. Shitting all over conventional wisdom, going as far as to say that it’s all BS in an effort to add credence to his own snake oil because conventional wisdom happens to debunk his claims. All while promising the moon on timelines that would put the Lord Almighty to shame with his 7 days and then, when there’s a big enough wake of unfulfilled promises and exposed BS that could sink an entire continent, that’s when people started to get suspicious en masse. Maybe if he was more focused on improving his plan instead of “faking it till he made it” by claiming he had approval to start building[0], people would take him more seriously. And that’s not even touching on the question of if we actually should entertain every random piece of science fiction, which you seem to imply. Because I don’t know if you’ve read the alpha paper, but we’re dealing with “the laws of physics don’t exist” levels of fiction here. 0: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/20/elon-musk-hyperloop-verbal-government-approval https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/20/elon-musk...
- SmartJerry 3y ago
  In this case he hasn't done anything except release an idea. As the saying goes, Buyer Beware. Musk gives out a free idea and people are mad at him for it? If anything they should be mad at themselves for investing in it when Musk literally said he won't invest in it himself.

by grecy 3y ago

seattle_spring 3y ago

If you think people are calling Musk and his ideas names purely because of his company's "whitepaper", then you really aren't paying attention. Any negative press happening to Musk is purely his own doing.

tjpnz 3y ago

grecy 3y ago
> I was open minded, until I read the white paper. OK, so your feedback is "I don't think this will work for reasons x, y and z." We can learn from that and either modify the design until it does work, or move on with other projects that do work (i.e. High Speed Rail). In either case, anger, hatred and vitriol are not required for a productive outcome. We should not shoot down people for sharing information about possibly new and better ways of doing things, lest we discourage everyone from doing so.
- jeffbee 3y ago
  It is not even a matter of disagreeing with the proposal. If we take all of the numbers in the hyperloop whitepaper at face value—and I want to be clear that all of the numbers in that whitepaper are bullshit—even on those terms it doesn't solve a problem that anyone faces. Hyperloop under its own assumptions has a fraction of the transportation capacity of a railroad.
  - grecy 3y ago
    OK. In your assessment it's not a good thing to build. Evidently the rest of the world agrees. Again, that is perfectly fine and someone putting an idea out there that doesn't work should not result in attacks and name calling. It's just petty high school garbage that doesn't help anything, and in fact hinders future discussions about important topics.
  - snovv_crash 3y ago
    It would work pretty well on Mars, which IMO was the actual intended application. The rest was hopeful thinking.
    - jeffbee 3y ago
      Martian hyperloop is the practical side of the plan? Listen to yourself.

dpflan 3y ago

Remember when ICOs had white-papers about their magical game-theoretic rube-goldberg-machines and the incredible future they would unlock?

Workaccount2 3y ago

The biggest problem Musk has is that he is a nerdy engineer who thought it would be a good idea to interface directly with a general public. I think his biggest failing was not hiring a top-shelf PR team to handle his communications. There is a good reason companies keep engineers in the back room away from customers. They are masters of machines, not people.

stilist 3y ago
How is that his biggest problem? He has no impulse control, or no desire for it; he lies incessantly to further his interests; he's a horrible manager; etc.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- randomdata 3y ago
  The things you mention may be the problems he thinks he has, but none of them are a problem from our point of view. From our perspective, his problem is that he doesn't hide out in the server closet like a nerdy engineer should.
- Workaccount2 3y ago
  He lies incessantly because he is a nerd with fantastical ideas and enormous resources. But regular folks won't see this because they put their regular self in his shoes to decide what his motivations must be. If he used a proper PR team, they would filter most of this out, and shape his communications into a form meant for regular people.

notahacker 3y ago

> Heaven forbid someone has a radical new idea for fusion power or to reduce carbon in the atmosphere or to cure cancer. They may just keep it to themselves knowing the reaction they'll get. Or, y'know, they might put the idea as an idea rather than an argument about why the government should stop funding wind farms or chemotherapy... Elon can trash and actively try to stop infrastructure projects actually due to be built all he likes, but as soon as someone suggests his vaporware alternative might not be proposed in the best of faith, we have to worry about about how hurting his feelings might set back infrastructure growth?

turquoisevar 3y ago

> I think it's a sad state of affairs when someone simply puts an idea out into the world and says "We think it will work, but needs more input" and people get extremely angry and spew vitriol and hatred towards them simply for sharing an idea. The way you characterize it, Musk came out with an itty bitty idea, said “hey I think this might work but I need some help figuring things out” and the whole world hated him for it. This is a very generous characterization of Musk, but it has little to do with reality. What actually happened was that Musk has a history of floating ideas around by presenting them as the best thing since sliced bread. Shitting all over conventional wisdom, going as far as to say that it’s all BS in an effort to add credence to his own snake oil because conventional wisdom happens to debunk his claims. All while promising the moon on timelines that would put the Lord Almighty to shame with his 7 days and then, when there’s a big enough wake of unfulfilled promises and exposed BS that could sink an entire continent, that’s when people started to get suspicious en masse. Maybe if he was more focused on improving his plan instead of “faking it till he made it” by claiming he had approval to start building[0], people would take him more seriously. And that’s not even touching on the question of if we actually should entertain every random piece of science fiction, which you seem to imply. Because I don’t know if you’ve read the alpha paper, but we’re dealing with “the laws of physics don’t exist” levels of fiction here. 0: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/20/elon-musk-hyperloop-verbal-government-approval https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/jul/20/elon-musk...

SmartJerry 3y ago
In this case he hasn't done anything except release an idea. As the saying goes, Buyer Beware. Musk gives out a free idea and people are mad at him for it? If anything they should be mad at themselves for investing in it when Musk literally said he won't invest in it himself.