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Comment by throwaway3699 | Hacker News Reader

> getting himself knowledgeable enough about a subject to fool laymen and investors but not deeply understanding it enough to provide reasonable estimates

This is both a strength and weakness. How many times have people wished CEOs actually knew what they were talking about? As long as Elon knows enough to build a decent team and lead it well, he doesn't need to know everything.

From the outside it looks like he sees himself as 'one of the engineers' which is something I deeply respect, even if there's major issues as well (FSD and Hyperloop being the big ones).

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Yeah, I appreciate any engineering firm that at least attempts to have some engineering leadership in charge.

> major issues as well (FSD and Hyperloop being the big ones).

That Vegas loop too... That's going to be a truly awful tunnel fire someday, and the safety systems there seem seriously lacking. (Also, the whole project feels like a grift.)

It’s in a conceptual prototyping stage, jeez. Criticism is fine but you gotta let the bud flower, come to fruition and then put regulations. That’s how literally every single world changing technology is invented. If Elon’s ideas don’t work out, fine. It was a boondoggle on his own dime, what’s anyone’s business in slamming down on the efforts?

Risk taking is amazing. I’m not sure if I want to live in a risk averse world where ideas are nipped in the bud by CEOs of GE and Honeywell.

"Tunnels" is not something that is at a "conceptual prototyping stage". We've built tunnels for hundreds of years. We know what the dangers are, we don't need a prototype to kill a bunch of people to find that out.

You could make a similar argument against electric cars.

Electric cars? Perhaps. Self-driving cars? Not so much.

I'm not sure what down-voters are disagreeing with: electric cars have been in existence for over 100 years, there are very few unknowns there. Self-driving cars are a very recent development, and not a single developer has achieved widespread Level 5 autonomy. I thought that'd be pretty uncontroversial, but this is HN, I guess.

Ah yes, the world changing technology of putting a potential fire hazard in a narrow tunnel with no escape routes. What could possibly go wrong? [1]

More information https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-RPMt_FS-s8

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Tunnel_disasters

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