Came across Teslacharts' podcast [1] (now the Chartcast) and oh boy was I wrong.
This is only the latest in a long series of red flags around Tesla/Musk and however it ends, it will not end well.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sagan_standard
I've been beginning to wonder for a few years now if there's a fatal flaw in the scientific method in that, at some point, giving proper validation to a piece of information or claimed knowledge becomes so resource intensive that it becomes cost prohibitive in time, energy, capital, etc. to validate or invalidate.
In fact, I've been wondering if science itself can get to a point where the body of human knowledge becomes so large that even the typical process of conducting a literature review becomes so costly in some form, you're better off just to do the experiment, study, or whatever. There may be some benefit in this allowing independent consensus of knowledge but you ultimately need some sort if more refined knowledge management system.
The society we live in of self-interest perpetuating disinformation and misinformation for personal interest sort of brings this issue on extreme. If you've ever seen absurd claims and wanted to earnestly validate or show how a claim is off, you've experienced this. You can not only make absurd claims now, you can often provide massive bodies of supposed evidence that are difficult if not impossible to tell what is accurate or inaccurate.
It's not only enough to provide extraordinary evidence for extraordinary claims, you need to provide focused evidence or evidence that can be reasonably independently validated.
Here is a good overview in written form [1] but as long as you don't verify the credibility of the writer, it won't say much.
When you have millions of followers and billions of airtime on you, it's absolutely inexcusable to call a random guy a pedo.
When he did that my view of him went from a "fake it till you make it" type, to a dishonest and malicious person.
However, we all have our moments where we do dumb things. If you expect anyone to be perfect, you're in for a rude surprise. One has to look at the whole picture, and that incident was an anomaly.
I've noticed a tendency for people to jump on one thing someone says or does and try to ruin them over it and de-platform them, as if that one mistake defines their whole life. I think it's uncharitable, and hypocritical. I don't like that trend.
Let him who is without sin among you be the first to cast a stone. I'm not religious, but you have to admit, there's some wisdom in that. To be clear I'm not saying you can't criticize someone, especially a public figure, who does something wrong. I'm saying don't stone them to death over it - there's some proportionality missing in the response of the twitter mob.
> One has to look at the whole picture, and that incident was an anomaly.
My point is that this episode was not an anomaly. There are dozens of examples, where Elon personally tries to "take revenge" on whistleblowers, critics, and journalists.
E.g. Elon called and threatened the boss of the (at the time) anonymous critic Montana Skeptic. He was going through the facebook history of journalist Linnette Lopez and taking screengrabs that he shared on Twitter to defame her. His lawsuit against whistle-blower Skabooshka is currently ongoing.
"our moments"? Didn't he double down on it? Didn't he offer someone a bet, that it would eventually be discovered that the could was a pedophile?
It's in "these moments" that you can peer inside a person's mind. In normal times, anyone can put up a facade.
It is also not OK in general to accuse people of being a pedophile! Not sure why that is controversial.
There are lots of examples of important artists, politicians, scientists, etc, who were total jerks and dirtbags. I think it is fine to recognize them for their talents and achievements but also call out their faults too. It isn't mutually exclusive.
Just don't see how it "breaks the camels back" or in anyway discounts his incredible achievements, any more than Jobs being an asshole to some of his employees makes the iPhone less of a world-changing invention.
When I say "what do you mean by 'I'm discounting'?", is "What do you mean when you say that I'm regarding a possibility as being unworthy of consideration?" What possibility are you referring to that I'm regarding as being unworthy of consideration?
The comment from Musk was inexcusable but it didn't come out of nowhere. Elon Musk offered help and Mr Unsworth decided not to use it. In a TV interview, he further labelled it a "PR stunt" and suggested that Musk could "stick his submarine where it hurts". That led Musk to respond with the "Pedo guy" comment. Yes, that comment was totally inexcusable and uncalled for but it didn't come out vaccum.
To me it sounds like a person with an obsession trying to scour the internet for anything potentially bad, and it’s just sad.
Elon’s flaws are pretty transparent. You don’t have to dig for them that hard.
He lived and worked in the Bay Area and L.A. - he's intimately aware of how pathologically bad car-oriented low-density city planning is, which is why the most economically successful place in the world is so hilariously bad to travel in.
But his hatred for transit demonstrates an almost absurdly opaque blind-spot for somebody who wants to get his businesses involved in urban transportation planning.
edit: corrected his experience with California commutes after reply informed me he was no longer involved in SF bay.
The only big advantage I could see is their charging infrastructure.
If they worked hard on the Bikes, they may be able to ameliorate some of the issues around modern day commuting.
This is not normal and rare to be so talented in that aspect.
Hard to predict success/failure or bet against when you have someone like this.
Did I misunderstand when I thought he was a liar in two out of three of those cases?
You mention the podcast, but not why it has made you think of it as a set of red flags.
* Tesla's net profit doesn't come from selling cars to consumers but from selling tax credits to other companies [1].
* Tesla is quite aggressive and creative in its non-GAAP accounting, famously 20% of quarterly profits are accounts receivable.
* Elon is not a founder of Tesla, but sued the founders to be able to call himself one.
* No competitor working on autonomous driving thinks that Tesla will get there, yet Elon promises that robotaxis are just around the corner for several years now.
* Elon was one of the first prominent Covid deniers, then had to turn around and promised to deliver ventilators, none of which were delivered.
* When customers came in for warranty repairs, Tesla had them sign an NDA that the repair was goodwill, therefore not having to report numbers on warranty repairs to NHTSA and being able to use different accounting methods.
* During factory visits with journalists, no worker is allowed to speak with visitors or vice versa.
* Quality assurance in the Fremont factory is sub-par, assembly is done in a tent outside of the factory, even Elon himself says don't buy cars during end of quarter production ramps.
* Tesla is facing several hundred litigation lawsuits each year.
* Tesla is the company with the most OSHA violations in the US, and, according to whistleblowers, in emergency situations workers are sent back to work or taxis are called instead of ambulances so that no accidents have to be reported.
* As the CEO of a billion dollar company, Elon personally likes to "take revenge" on whistle-blowers, journalists and critics.
This is just from the top of my head, there are a lot more red flags here (each one being a massive rabbit hole).
For the record, I think EVs are a net win, Tesla/Musk have done a great job promoting EVs, Tesla cars do offer a great experience, I have no stock position on TSLA etc.
[1] https://edition.cnn.com/2021/01/31/investing/tesla-profitabi...
/Edit plainsite has a good report here: https://www.plainsite.org/realitycheck/tsla.pdf
Is it? Such a moonshot ( Marsshot if you will) requires enormous resources, resources which can be better spent to improve the planet we have, and stop the damage we're doing to it. I don't believe all of humanity can move to and sustain on Mars within a reasonable timeframe and budget ( 100 years, tens trillions of dollars). What exactly is the point of doing so? To run away from the mess on Earth? That's a very shit "solution" and a huge waste IMO.
Also: The last round of space innovation was funded by two nuclear armed superpowers competing to show off while simultaneously threatening each other with a war of planetary annihilation. Before that the first rocket capable of reaching space was funded by Hitler. Going from blood soaked warlords to nutty manic billionaires is moral progress.
That said, what surprised me here is how dangerous this is: Musk's Twitter is probably world's number 1 place for peddling Bitcoin scams. Anyone reasonable would of course immediately recognize the scams because there's no way Musk would have anything to do with cryptocurrency. But now, I predict a lot of folks will get scammed.
Why?
Who is “we”?
There's a reason that sci-fi with space flight is almost always more optimistic than sci-fi without space flight.
Can you explain your theory in the context of the American West “frontier”?
Of course the American West was not a pure frontier. It was already populated, so pushing West involved displacing other people. Space on the other hand would be a pure frontier, something that hasn't really existed on Earth for thousands of years.
A better picture of what you might get with a pure frontier would perhaps be Polynesian culture before colonization when they hopped from largely unpopulated island to unpopulated island. It would be more peaceful than the American west, more focused on exploration and settlement since there would not be conflict with existing occupants. Conflict between settlers is not even very likely due to the sheer amount of empty space.
You could argue that in the far future we might meet some aliens, but I'd counter that space is so f'ing huge that conflict between even massive civilizations would be unlikely unless it were driven by irrational motives.
"It's called space for a reason."
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2019-06-26/everyt...
He should be busy enough that he can stick to his knitting on executing with SpaceX and Tesla that he doesn't have time for this kind of stuff that will get him into real trouble with the government at some point.