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Not fair to Michael Jackson. He had talent and defined multiple cross cultural trends/memes (not memes as in internet memes). He was deeply troubled, but he st

Not fair to Michael Jackson. He had talent and defined multiple cross cultural trends/memes (not memes as in internet memes). He was deeply troubled, but he still had a huge, lasting impact

vanviegen 3y ago
Are you suggesting that Musk is not having huge lasting impact? Perhaps his name won't be as sticky as Michael Jackson, but some of his companies are definitely changing society, partly thanks to him.
- ffsm8 3y ago
  Musk likes to take credit for things he at most participated in. Electric cars where already gaining traction by the time Tesla got their production in order, so if he had an impact there, its only in marketing a product you could only buy from other companies. The charger network maybe? But wasn't most of that heavily subsidized? SpaceX's success is massively overstated, every time it's brought up. Their rockets are still not stable and if you actually tally up all the money they've received from the state, it'd be way more expensive - even adjusted to inflation - then the space shuttle launches from the nineties. What other impact are you thinking of? The hyper loop? The solar rooftop's? His vaporware robots? The boring company? Everything turned out to be pure hype with hilariously overstated success. Or maybe the autopilot which is still only usable by people that enjoy gambling with pedestrian lives?
  - tomoyoirl 3y ago
    Musk’s true talent is hype, fundraising, and getting buy-in from a crowd of people who Want To Believe. He does an incredible job of this, attracting capital investment on absurdly favorable terms. (Delivery on his wild promises, well, sometimes the true believers he hires make that happen, sometimes not.)
    - nkozyra 3y ago
      > Musk’s true talent is hype, fundraising, and getting buy-in from a crowd of people who Want To Believe. I wonder how long this lasts, though? The more we see of him, the less smart/magical he seems other than to devotees. I feel like his getting in the limelight has pulled the curtain back quite a bit.
  - ajford 3y ago
    Exactly. Musk makes a passable "hype man" that would do great on a sales pitch. But it's the same story as every sales team where he promises so much that isn't feasible to deliver on the timelines he promises.
  - itsoktocry 3y ago
    >Electric cars where already gaining traction by the time Tesla got their production in order, so if he had an impact there, its only in marketing a product you could only buy from other companies I'm as cynical about Tesla as anyone, as my comment history will show. I think they played fast and loose with financial data when celebrity and anything tech put you above the rules. If he had the enemies he has now, I don't think they would have made it. But...Elon Musk is a force. I was skeptical of him in, maybe, 2016, but the guy has managed to continue to do stuff no one else seems capable of, even in the face of haters. There's no way pre-Elon Tesla does what he did, I don't believe it for a second. Even Twitter; yes he fired too many people and it's a bit of a fiasco (and hard to kill, apparently). But the fact that he's using it to explicitly push an agenda is wild. There's no one else like him.
    - ffsm8 3y ago
      And yet you fail to name something. What tomoyoirl said is correct. Musk's talent is mainly in raising hype which results in incredible funding. he's definitely the most successful person at that since Steve Jobs. Everyone that ever worked in large enterprise knew that Twitter would be fine after the mass terminations. The only thing you lose at that point is the ability to maneuver, the platform will be mostly automated and barring incompetence or malice, things will just keep chugging along with a skeleton crew.
      - nebula8804 3y ago
        > Electric cars where already gaining traction by the time Tesla got their production in order, so if he had an impact there, its only in marketing a product you could only buy from other companies. The charger network maybe? But wasn't most of that heavily subsidized? Given how shit even current EVs are compared to the early Model S, you are totally wrong. It was always at most a side project for ALL the existing OEMs as we now know. They have have had chance after chance after chance to prove the thesis that "if they cared, they could produce a Tesla killer overnight". None of the OEMs have produced anything that is competitive with Tesla in all metrics (price, range, features etc.) all of them compromise in one or more areas. The only real serious competitors are the Chinese. There is a reason when teardown analysis reports are offered on all the EVs, the Chinese care about one company and one company only: Tesla. Everyone else is just a follower and the Chinese are not even bothering to waste their time looking at them. You even see it in their actions. Tesla is the only "legacy western" company without a JV partner in China. China can happily dump all the other losers any time they want. They can't afford to lose Tesla so they have accommodated them. >SpaceX's success is massively overstated, every time it's brought up. Their rockets are still not stable and if you actually tally up all the money they've received from the state, it'd be way more expensive - even adjusted to inflation - then the space shuttle launches from the nineties. Are you for real? In 2021 they launched ~380 Metric tons of mass to orbit while the rest of the world combined launched about 400 metric tons. In 2022? They were double what the rest of the world did and finally in 2023, they were 80% of all the mass to orbit launched. When I mean rest of world that includes: Rest of the US industry + Europe + India + China + Japan + Russia + everyone else. If you look at the other launch providers in the US they get far more subsidies and have delivered not even a fraction of what SpaceX has provided. Can you think of many industries where a single company is doing 80% of worldwide effort? And they are on track to increase that by 50% this year (a metric they will likely achieve given their track record). In the last couple years they have sent 42 humans to orbit and back. They year they are on track to do their first spacewalk. Starlink now has 2.3 Million customers in over 70 countries. I am seeing this outright dismissal of Musk more and more since the whole Twitter saga. Its reeks of ignorance just like all the people that repeatedly make fun of Apple users as idiots who just get duped by fancy marketing. Even in 2024 people here make that silly argument. Musk bashing is the new version of that. It just makes you look ignorant because you are so blinded by what you don't like that you have dismissed all these amazing achievements that no one else is doing.
- steve_adams_86 3y ago
  I'm not a Jackson fanatic, but everything Musk is doing could have (and very likely would have) been done by someone else in a relatively close timeframe. I won't claim Jackson couldn't have had a similar counterpart on an alternate timeline or there won't be more like him, but there are remarkably few artists and performers who are so prolific and talented to such a degree that they noticeably shift the direction of popular culture for decades. If Musk went away today, frankly I don't think many people would think of him within 5 years or so.
  - vanviegen 3y ago
    > everything Musk is doing could have (and very likely would have) been done by someone else in a relatively close timeframe Why do you think that? As far as I can tell, both electric cars and reusable rockets technically could have been done decades earlier. But for all this time nobody was crazy enough to go all-in on it, until Musk did.
    - steve_adams_86 3y ago
      I’ll concede that I can’t prove anything in one direction or the other. Years ago I did admire Musk for these things though, and yet the more I learn the less confidence I have that he truly was instrumental in these developments in a way that meaningfully changed the course of history (sorry determinists). His individual actions certainly bumped things forward. I suppose what I doubt is that no one else would have done that, or that steady gradual adoption wouldn’t have been as far off as we imagine. I should add a disclaimer here that I don’t feel very strongly about this stuff, and I’m pretty comfortable with being wrong. I also don’t have any major hang ups about Musk; he has undeniably done some great work.
denton-scratch 3y ago
I didn't mention Jackson's talent (nor Musk's). I mentioned the singer in passing, in the context of a "rich kook", and I implied that he was a kook because he was rich. The Orange Man is another example. It does seem to me that extreme wealth is a severe risk factor for untreatable kookiness. And arguably, being a talented entertainer is a risk factor for extreme wealth. I don't deny Jackson's talent, and I assume Musk is very good at several things I've never tried. I would cheerfully forgo even modest wealth, if the deal was I didn't have to be like them.
- iLoveOncall 3y ago
  It's more that extreme wealth allows kookery without consequences. As Musk said it himself when asked what he thought about the fact that his tweets may cause billions of dollars of stock drops: "I don't care".
  - singleshot_ 3y ago
    Instead of a lack of consequences, I’m concerned that the consequences of kookery for the rich is more money.

Not fair to Michael Jackson. He had talent and defined multiple cross cultural trends/memes (not memes as in internet memes). He was deeply troubled, but he still had a huge, lasting impact

vanviegen 3y ago

Are you suggesting that Musk is not having huge lasting impact? Perhaps his name won't be as sticky as Michael Jackson, but some of his companies are definitely changing society, partly thanks to him.

ffsm8 3y ago
Musk likes to take credit for things he at most participated in. Electric cars where already gaining traction by the time Tesla got their production in order, so if he had an impact there, its only in marketing a product you could only buy from other companies. The charger network maybe? But wasn't most of that heavily subsidized? SpaceX's success is massively overstated, every time it's brought up. Their rockets are still not stable and if you actually tally up all the money they've received from the state, it'd be way more expensive - even adjusted to inflation - then the space shuttle launches from the nineties. What other impact are you thinking of? The hyper loop? The solar rooftop's? His vaporware robots? The boring company? Everything turned out to be pure hype with hilariously overstated success. Or maybe the autopilot which is still only usable by people that enjoy gambling with pedestrian lives?
- tomoyoirl 3y ago
  Musk’s true talent is hype, fundraising, and getting buy-in from a crowd of people who Want To Believe. He does an incredible job of this, attracting capital investment on absurdly favorable terms. (Delivery on his wild promises, well, sometimes the true believers he hires make that happen, sometimes not.)
  - nkozyra 3y ago
    > Musk’s true talent is hype, fundraising, and getting buy-in from a crowd of people who Want To Believe. I wonder how long this lasts, though? The more we see of him, the less smart/magical he seems other than to devotees. I feel like his getting in the limelight has pulled the curtain back quite a bit.
- ajford 3y ago
  Exactly. Musk makes a passable "hype man" that would do great on a sales pitch. But it's the same story as every sales team where he promises so much that isn't feasible to deliver on the timelines he promises.
- itsoktocry 3y ago
  >Electric cars where already gaining traction by the time Tesla got their production in order, so if he had an impact there, its only in marketing a product you could only buy from other companies I'm as cynical about Tesla as anyone, as my comment history will show. I think they played fast and loose with financial data when celebrity and anything tech put you above the rules. If he had the enemies he has now, I don't think they would have made it. But...Elon Musk is a force. I was skeptical of him in, maybe, 2016, but the guy has managed to continue to do stuff no one else seems capable of, even in the face of haters. There's no way pre-Elon Tesla does what he did, I don't believe it for a second. Even Twitter; yes he fired too many people and it's a bit of a fiasco (and hard to kill, apparently). But the fact that he's using it to explicitly push an agenda is wild. There's no one else like him.
  - ffsm8 3y ago
    And yet you fail to name something. What tomoyoirl said is correct. Musk's talent is mainly in raising hype which results in incredible funding. he's definitely the most successful person at that since Steve Jobs. Everyone that ever worked in large enterprise knew that Twitter would be fine after the mass terminations. The only thing you lose at that point is the ability to maneuver, the platform will be mostly automated and barring incompetence or malice, things will just keep chugging along with a skeleton crew.
    - nebula8804 3y ago
      > Electric cars where already gaining traction by the time Tesla got their production in order, so if he had an impact there, its only in marketing a product you could only buy from other companies. The charger network maybe? But wasn't most of that heavily subsidized? Given how shit even current EVs are compared to the early Model S, you are totally wrong. It was always at most a side project for ALL the existing OEMs as we now know. They have have had chance after chance after chance to prove the thesis that "if they cared, they could produce a Tesla killer overnight". None of the OEMs have produced anything that is competitive with Tesla in all metrics (price, range, features etc.) all of them compromise in one or more areas. The only real serious competitors are the Chinese. There is a reason when teardown analysis reports are offered on all the EVs, the Chinese care about one company and one company only: Tesla. Everyone else is just a follower and the Chinese are not even bothering to waste their time looking at them. You even see it in their actions. Tesla is the only "legacy western" company without a JV partner in China. China can happily dump all the other losers any time they want. They can't afford to lose Tesla so they have accommodated them. >SpaceX's success is massively overstated, every time it's brought up. Their rockets are still not stable and if you actually tally up all the money they've received from the state, it'd be way more expensive - even adjusted to inflation - then the space shuttle launches from the nineties. Are you for real? In 2021 they launched ~380 Metric tons of mass to orbit while the rest of the world combined launched about 400 metric tons. In 2022? They were double what the rest of the world did and finally in 2023, they were 80% of all the mass to orbit launched. When I mean rest of world that includes: Rest of the US industry + Europe + India + China + Japan + Russia + everyone else. If you look at the other launch providers in the US they get far more subsidies and have delivered not even a fraction of what SpaceX has provided. Can you think of many industries where a single company is doing 80% of worldwide effort? And they are on track to increase that by 50% this year (a metric they will likely achieve given their track record). In the last couple years they have sent 42 humans to orbit and back. They year they are on track to do their first spacewalk. Starlink now has 2.3 Million customers in over 70 countries. I am seeing this outright dismissal of Musk more and more since the whole Twitter saga. Its reeks of ignorance just like all the people that repeatedly make fun of Apple users as idiots who just get duped by fancy marketing. Even in 2024 people here make that silly argument. Musk bashing is the new version of that. It just makes you look ignorant because you are so blinded by what you don't like that you have dismissed all these amazing achievements that no one else is doing.
steve_adams_86 3y ago
I'm not a Jackson fanatic, but everything Musk is doing could have (and very likely would have) been done by someone else in a relatively close timeframe. I won't claim Jackson couldn't have had a similar counterpart on an alternate timeline or there won't be more like him, but there are remarkably few artists and performers who are so prolific and talented to such a degree that they noticeably shift the direction of popular culture for decades. If Musk went away today, frankly I don't think many people would think of him within 5 years or so.
- vanviegen 3y ago
  > everything Musk is doing could have (and very likely would have) been done by someone else in a relatively close timeframe Why do you think that? As far as I can tell, both electric cars and reusable rockets technically could have been done decades earlier. But for all this time nobody was crazy enough to go all-in on it, until Musk did.
  - steve_adams_86 3y ago
    I’ll concede that I can’t prove anything in one direction or the other. Years ago I did admire Musk for these things though, and yet the more I learn the less confidence I have that he truly was instrumental in these developments in a way that meaningfully changed the course of history (sorry determinists). His individual actions certainly bumped things forward. I suppose what I doubt is that no one else would have done that, or that steady gradual adoption wouldn’t have been as far off as we imagine. I should add a disclaimer here that I don’t feel very strongly about this stuff, and I’m pretty comfortable with being wrong. I also don’t have any major hang ups about Musk; he has undeniably done some great work.

denton-scratch 3y ago

I didn't mention Jackson's talent (nor Musk's). I mentioned the singer in passing, in the context of a "rich kook", and I implied that he was a kook because he was rich. The Orange Man is another example. It does seem to me that extreme wealth is a severe risk factor for untreatable kookiness. And arguably, being a talented entertainer is a risk factor for extreme wealth. I don't deny Jackson's talent, and I assume Musk is very good at several things I've never tried. I would cheerfully forgo even modest wealth, if the deal was I didn't have to be like them.

iLoveOncall 3y ago
It's more that extreme wealth allows kookery without consequences. As Musk said it himself when asked what he thought about the fact that his tweets may cause billions of dollars of stock drops: "I don't care".
- singleshot_ 3y ago
  Instead of a lack of consequences, I’m concerned that the consequences of kookery for the rich is more money.