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Comment by ctvo | Hacker News Reader

Chamath and others using Elon's playbook of leveraging social media to create a brand mostly opposite of what reality is continues.

Elon: I'm a genius! Also TSLA's self-driving technology is better than Waymo's

Chamath: Big Wallstreet needs to be taken down! Get off of Robinhood! Use SoFi instead! I'm taking it public via a SPAC

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These are ridiculously broad strokes. It's not at all obvious to me that the notions you're derisively referencing are 'opposite of reality'.

When you respond with pure rhetoric to an op-ed it just sounds like an echo chamber.

It seems relatively easy to find references to the what the parent author is referring to:

elon: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1353564655088619520

chamath: https://twitter.com/chamath/status/1354947541863780365

I'm not sure what you mean. How does that substantiate the parent's derisiveness...?

How are Chamath/Musk so obviously wrong?

I'll admit the parent was caricaturizing these two figures. As far as whether two well-known people might be 'wrong', I say it's worth starting to find the journalists and academics who try really hard to not have a bias and tried to understand things over the years. Hold space for the perspective of the reasoned skeptics/short-sellers but also understand their own character flaws.

The caricatures are likely correct at some level, since the mark of a good businessman, especially in the modern day, is ability to build hype...

Serious question: How is Waymo’s tech better?

I know Tesla’s FSD is used by people quite successfully. Don’t know if people have experiences with Waymo’s

Depends on metrics you choose to evaluate. Tesla is leading on deaths occurring with FSD (many), Uber 1, Waymo 0.

Curious on the down votes, these are verifiable numbers and related deaths seems like a reasonable metric.

Probably because you ignored the fact that Tesla is the first to deploy, so obviously there have been more crashes. but on a per mile basis maybe not. It's such an oversight that it comes off as dishonest.

I can see your point and it makes sense. Counterpoint, if I had answered "depends on the metrics you choose but Tesla was first to market" or "depends on the metrics you choose but Tesla has the greatest miles driven" do you think the reaction would be the same?

Not op, but people here don't generally take to clearly misleading data that was presented that way to make a point. The population here is probably sufficiently enriched for data peeps.

And I mean this in the least hostile way, though my choice of language above may sound sarcastic.

This is the type of disingenuous analysis that greatly skews reality; breakdown for distance driven, % of road types driven on, driver neglect, etc.

If Waymo is at 0 then normalizing by miles driven doesn't really matter...

It does if they’ve driven zero miles

It matters because a low enough miles driven would show insufficient data.

Agree on distance driven as an important metrics, road type too. However, is driver neglect really a variable for self driving cars? If yes, then is it a self-driving car?

Tesla is at the level Waymo was when they started running Waymo service in Chandler with safety drivers. In Tesla's case, you are the safety driver. That's a huge achievement, but Waymo is now running with no safety driver at all. People will say "but it's a geofenced area". Sure, but Tesla is a ways off from doing even that.

Are they a "ways off"? It's not clear to me that the two are in a linear progression.

Is Tesla even attempting tests with no safety driver? They're selling personal auto mobiles, not ride sharing cabs.

Come on man. They latest spacex sn1 crash happened because the motherfucker is trying to stand the rocket up vertical just before landing. The bro is way doper than any billionaire ever and deserves all the hype.

Just take a moment and watch those videos and tell me your conclusion is ‘yeah, this guy is a charlatan’. Also, mainstream EV talk started with Elon. The hype is real and believe it or not, he earned it.

It is possible for these things to be true at the same time: Tesla is overvalued, spacex is not, Elon started both.

It's also important to note that Musk is not SpaceX. He leads and funds it, but it's a bunch of hard working engineers and scientists doing the work.

Needs air quotes: “started”.

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