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You can almost completely write the article off considering he's characterizing Musk's achievements with such dismissive condescension.

• simonh 13y ago
  No, you really can't. How he characterizes Musk is irrelevant to whether his criticisms of the proposal are valid or not. Just because he deploys dismissive condescension is no excuse for also resorting to it. This is Hacker News, not Slashdot.
  • vidarh 13y ago
    In an ideal world where we have infinite time to consider all comments, you are right. However if one has to choose what to spend time on, it is prudent to filter, and for blatant subjectivity to be used as one such filter, as it is reasonable to consider it likely that arguments made by someone who is so obviously biased against someone in the first place is more likely to be careless about the arguments he makes against their ideas. So a a time saving exercise, it is absolutely relevant to consider other factors than the argument itself. And yes, it is imperfect and will result in a lot of people discounting valid concerns.
• scotty79 13y ago
  What I got from article: Author is: - unfriendly towards Elon Musk - unfriendly towards people who voice ideas of what the author thinks is not their area of expertise in general. - fond of high speed trains. - thinking that Elon Musk wants to kill trains to sell more cars. ... oh yeah, and he has some concerns about Hyperloop estimates. Mainly that cost and disadvantages are underestimated. Also somehow author managed to overlooked the fact that Elon Musk delivered some stuff to International Space Station, most likely at fraction of NASA cost which consist of very experienced people. If experienced specialist tells that something in his area of expertise can be done. He's most likely right. If he says something can't be done, there's a fair chance he's wrong.