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> He did, but that doesn't come close to the whole story: Sure, maybe I was being overly simplistic, Tesla did grow under his watch so he probably deserves som

> He did, but that doesn't come close to the whole story: Sure, maybe I was being overly simplistic, Tesla did grow under his watch so he probably deserves some credit for it. Again, though, I'm not sure how much the CEO actually has to do with that stuff, and I really don't believe that he was directly involved with the engineering. > Agreed; some of his recent hubris does seem related specifically to this. What really bothers me are his attempts to intervene in the Russia/Ukraine conflict, to a point where I think that the DHS might need to investigate his bank transactions. I must have missed the election where we decided to choose him to lead the ministry of defense. > I view him as being a relatively unfiltered stochastic genius. How much of this is "genius" and how much is just "a stopped clock being right twice a day"? I'm not going to pretend to know, but I could probably write a markov chain to generate a dozen ideas for a product, and if one of them happens to be successful, does that imply that the markov chain is some kind of complicated genius? I think the way he's handled Twitter has demonstrated that he might not be the genius we thought; I wonder how many of his dumb ideas were quietly rejected when he had some oversight; if nothing else he had to answer to investors and whatnot with Tesla and SpaceX and the like. With Twitter, it's more of a dictatorship and it's a mess.

misiti3780 3y ago
[flagged]
- tombert 3y ago
  He initially said that Starlink was going to be free for Ukrainians, and then changes his mind [1]. He disabled it to (ostensibly) prevent nuclear war. I really don't feel that was his decision to make. It's really bizarre that anyone thinks it is. He's not a politician, he's not part of the UN, he's just a fucking businessman and a former software engineer. He does not have any credentials for war strategy, he doesn't have any experience leading a military, he doesn't know anything about politics, he doesn't know anything about foreign policy. He just decided he is going to intervene. That is weird, it's obviously weird, it's unambiguously weird, it would be weird if I did it, it would be weird if you did it, it would be weird if any civilian did it. And to be clear, he claimed it was to prevent nuclear war. As I've stated multiple times, he lies all the time. I cannot know the inner machinations of his brain, but I do think it's worth the DHS investigating to see if Russia is secretly bribing Musk. [1] https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/13/politics/elon-musk-spacex-starlink-ukraine/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/13/politics/elon-musk-spacex-sta... ETA: > Tom, stick to software and steer clear of geo-politics, it's obviously not your thing. You added this after the fact, but I feel the need to reply to it. You're absolutely right, it is really weird for software engineers to intervene in politics. I absolutely agree that civilians have no place in figuring out foreign policy. It would be extremely bizarre for a civilian to do that. I cannot think of any reason for that not to be the case. So why exactly are you defending Musk on this?
  - misiti3780 3y ago
    What part of concept of "private" do you not understand. It's 100% his decision to make as CEO and majority owner of SpaceX. You may not agree w/ the decision, and it may not be good for the network or the company, but the decision is still his. If the Biden administration disagreed, they could have used executive power to force him to do whatever they wanted, he said as much publicly. The government has done this before in the past.
    - tombert 3y ago
      I didn't say he wasn't "allowed", I said it was "weird". It is weird, and potentially concerning. I don't really see how you can disagree with that. It's not a civilian's job to try and intervene with foreign policy. I don't know enough about law to say what he did was "legal", but assuming that it is, it's still weird. What would probably be illegal is taking money from Russian in exchange for disabling it, and then claiming it was to prevent nuclear war, which is why I think it might be worth investigating bank accounts. I'm not a lawyer, though, so it might just be "gross", and not illegal. This isn't even getting into the fact that he tweeted multiple times about how he would solve the Ukraine conflict, around the same time, basically just saying "Ukraine should surrender to Russia cuz it'll save lives". > If the Biden administration disagreed, they could have used executive power to force him to do whatever they wanted, he said as much publicly. The government has done this before in the past. The US isn't officially directly involved with the conflict so I don't actually know that they could force him. They're providing funding and the like, but I don't know that they could use any kind of wartime acts without direct involvement into the war. I know he says that the Biden administration could force it, but, for the millionth time, he lies an awful lot, and never takes responsibility for anything, so it's hard to know if that's actually true.
      - inemesitaffia 3y ago
        You do realize he intervened by sending the equipment in the first place? And the Biden government refused to derisk things for him?
      - 3y ago
throw0101a 3y ago
> I think the way he's handled Twitter has demonstrated that he might not be the genius we thought; I wonder how many of his dumb ideas were quietly rejected when he had some oversight Reminiscent of George Lucas and the first Star Wars trilogy (IV-VI) versus the second (I-III): in one he had people around him pushing back (being part of a team), and the other he basically had carte blanche.
- tombert 3y ago
  Yeah, that's kind of what I was thinking of too. And I suspect most M. Night Shyamalan movies after The Sixth Sense. I think it's a mistake to think that most notable things are the result of "one person". Most big projects, good or bad, are a group effort, and which is why it really bothers me that people act like Elon is singularly responsible for every cool thing to come out of SpaceX or Tesla.
  - ben_w 3y ago
    I don't think I've met anyone willing to express that opinion, but would also roll my eyes at them if I did.
ben_w 3y ago
> How much of this is "genius" and how much is just "a stopped clock being right twice a day"? I'm not going to pretend to know, but I could probably write a markov chain to generate a dozen ideas for a product, and if one of them happens to be successful, does that imply that the markov chain is some kind of complicated genius? I've played with Markov chains, and… no. While you can totally generate some stuff with them, they're not even close to the level of ChatGPT — and ChatGPT is the reference point I use these days for "are you sure you know about this subject?", in part due to someone else describing it as "mansplaining as a service". For a lot of the stuff Musk suggests which horrifies domain experts (like how the tunnels are so narrow that if a car catches fire the people in it can't get out), what he says is stuff I'd put in this category. But he seems to have more lucid and self-aware moments besides those, and many of which are also things which are more mocked than being horrifying (e.g. powered vertical landing to reuse rockets). It comes across to me (not a psychologist) as something of a bipolar personality — or as if some of his ideas resulted from snorting a white powdered stimulant (a category which includes caffeine, unwise as that is).
- tombert 3y ago
  > I've played with Markov chains, and… no. While you can totally generate some stuff with them, they're not even close to the level of ChatGP Even before ChatGPT you had things like Context Free Grammars [1] that could give results kind of like GPT, superficially. You could certainly get it to generate a bunch of sentences that could be used like business ideas. That's kind of what I was going for. > powered vertical landing to reuse rockets Most of your points are fair, but I reject that this is actually a clever thing on Musk's end. NASA experimented with reusable rockets in the 60's. The X-15, for example, while slightly different, demonstrates that this was something being toyed with quite awhile ago. No doubt, SpaceX's achievement here is notable and cool, and to whatever extent Elon helped with that he deserves credit. But I think "having the idea" does not really count. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCIgen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCIgen
  - ben_w 3y ago
    > But I think "having the idea" does not really count. Indeed. But between this and what you say of CFG generators, I think you misunderstood me. He didn't just have the idea, he got it to work. If it was just ideas that counted, I've got one for 3D printing diamond with CVD, and metal with electro-deposition, and a way to radically improve Farnsworth-type fusion. You'll note I'm not even the most famous person with my own name, let alone for any of those things.

misiti3780 3y ago

[flagged]

tombert 3y ago
He initially said that Starlink was going to be free for Ukrainians, and then changes his mind [1]. He disabled it to (ostensibly) prevent nuclear war. I really don't feel that was his decision to make. It's really bizarre that anyone thinks it is. He's not a politician, he's not part of the UN, he's just a fucking businessman and a former software engineer. He does not have any credentials for war strategy, he doesn't have any experience leading a military, he doesn't know anything about politics, he doesn't know anything about foreign policy. He just decided he is going to intervene. That is weird, it's obviously weird, it's unambiguously weird, it would be weird if I did it, it would be weird if you did it, it would be weird if any civilian did it. And to be clear, he claimed it was to prevent nuclear war. As I've stated multiple times, he lies all the time. I cannot know the inner machinations of his brain, but I do think it's worth the DHS investigating to see if Russia is secretly bribing Musk. [1] https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/13/politics/elon-musk-spacex-starlink-ukraine/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2022/10/13/politics/elon-musk-spacex-sta... ETA: > Tom, stick to software and steer clear of geo-politics, it's obviously not your thing. You added this after the fact, but I feel the need to reply to it. You're absolutely right, it is really weird for software engineers to intervene in politics. I absolutely agree that civilians have no place in figuring out foreign policy. It would be extremely bizarre for a civilian to do that. I cannot think of any reason for that not to be the case. So why exactly are you defending Musk on this?
- misiti3780 3y ago
  What part of concept of "private" do you not understand. It's 100% his decision to make as CEO and majority owner of SpaceX. You may not agree w/ the decision, and it may not be good for the network or the company, but the decision is still his. If the Biden administration disagreed, they could have used executive power to force him to do whatever they wanted, he said as much publicly. The government has done this before in the past.
  - tombert 3y ago
    I didn't say he wasn't "allowed", I said it was "weird". It is weird, and potentially concerning. I don't really see how you can disagree with that. It's not a civilian's job to try and intervene with foreign policy. I don't know enough about law to say what he did was "legal", but assuming that it is, it's still weird. What would probably be illegal is taking money from Russian in exchange for disabling it, and then claiming it was to prevent nuclear war, which is why I think it might be worth investigating bank accounts. I'm not a lawyer, though, so it might just be "gross", and not illegal. This isn't even getting into the fact that he tweeted multiple times about how he would solve the Ukraine conflict, around the same time, basically just saying "Ukraine should surrender to Russia cuz it'll save lives". > If the Biden administration disagreed, they could have used executive power to force him to do whatever they wanted, he said as much publicly. The government has done this before in the past. The US isn't officially directly involved with the conflict so I don't actually know that they could force him. They're providing funding and the like, but I don't know that they could use any kind of wartime acts without direct involvement into the war. I know he says that the Biden administration could force it, but, for the millionth time, he lies an awful lot, and never takes responsibility for anything, so it's hard to know if that's actually true.
    - inemesitaffia 3y ago
      You do realize he intervened by sending the equipment in the first place? And the Biden government refused to derisk things for him?
    - 3y ago

throw0101a 3y ago

> I think the way he's handled Twitter has demonstrated that he might not be the genius we thought; I wonder how many of his dumb ideas were quietly rejected when he had some oversight Reminiscent of George Lucas and the first Star Wars trilogy (IV-VI) versus the second (I-III): in one he had people around him pushing back (being part of a team), and the other he basically had carte blanche.

tombert 3y ago
Yeah, that's kind of what I was thinking of too. And I suspect most M. Night Shyamalan movies after The Sixth Sense. I think it's a mistake to think that most notable things are the result of "one person". Most big projects, good or bad, are a group effort, and which is why it really bothers me that people act like Elon is singularly responsible for every cool thing to come out of SpaceX or Tesla.
- ben_w 3y ago
  I don't think I've met anyone willing to express that opinion, but would also roll my eyes at them if I did.

ben_w 3y ago

> How much of this is "genius" and how much is just "a stopped clock being right twice a day"? I'm not going to pretend to know, but I could probably write a markov chain to generate a dozen ideas for a product, and if one of them happens to be successful, does that imply that the markov chain is some kind of complicated genius? I've played with Markov chains, and… no. While you can totally generate some stuff with them, they're not even close to the level of ChatGPT — and ChatGPT is the reference point I use these days for "are you sure you know about this subject?", in part due to someone else describing it as "mansplaining as a service". For a lot of the stuff Musk suggests which horrifies domain experts (like how the tunnels are so narrow that if a car catches fire the people in it can't get out), what he says is stuff I'd put in this category. But he seems to have more lucid and self-aware moments besides those, and many of which are also things which are more mocked than being horrifying (e.g. powered vertical landing to reuse rockets). It comes across to me (not a psychologist) as something of a bipolar personality — or as if some of his ideas resulted from snorting a white powdered stimulant (a category which includes caffeine, unwise as that is).

tombert 3y ago
> I've played with Markov chains, and… no. While you can totally generate some stuff with them, they're not even close to the level of ChatGP Even before ChatGPT you had things like Context Free Grammars [1] that could give results kind of like GPT, superficially. You could certainly get it to generate a bunch of sentences that could be used like business ideas. That's kind of what I was going for. > powered vertical landing to reuse rockets Most of your points are fair, but I reject that this is actually a clever thing on Musk's end. NASA experimented with reusable rockets in the 60's. The X-15, for example, while slightly different, demonstrates that this was something being toyed with quite awhile ago. No doubt, SpaceX's achievement here is notable and cool, and to whatever extent Elon helped with that he deserves credit. But I think "having the idea" does not really count. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCIgen https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCIgen
- ben_w 3y ago
  > But I think "having the idea" does not really count. Indeed. But between this and what you say of CFG generators, I think you misunderstood me. He didn't just have the idea, he got it to work. If it was just ideas that counted, I've got one for 3D printing diamond with CVD, and metal with electro-deposition, and a way to radically improve Farnsworth-type fusion. You'll note I'm not even the most famous person with my own name, let alone for any of those things.