Comment by 40four | Hacker News Reader

Comment by 40four | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure why this really matters? As someone who is personally indifferent to Elon, this is not very interesting. To Elon detractors and people who want to see him fail, it just seems like an opportunity to 'dunk' on him in the media. People come and go from companies for various reasons, doesn't mean they are doomed.

I'm not an expert on Neuralink, but the little bit I've seen from them it seems like they are in very early exploratory stages. I imagine this is an area of science that's very well understood. So they are likely blazing a path into uncharted territory. If the least they do is make meaningful contributions or discoveries in this field, I still think that's pretty awesome.

As far as delivering a product? I'm not aware that they've promised anything as far as that. Sure like most Musk companies they talk big game and throw around lofty concepts, but that's always been their strategy to churn up interest in the media.

Presumably they intent to start out with some type of device to assist paralyzed folks interact with computers/ phones. If they do achieve this, that would be remarkable. But this is realistically still what, just a guess, 3-5 years away?

To me, it's a very, very bad sign if a co-founder leaves before there is a product.

The founders are supposed to be the biggest believers, and the biggest champions, devoting themselves to a cause. If THEY can't believe in the company, it's not a good sign. Their vision and leadership is integral to keeping a company moving towards a goal.

It's not a mark of death (it could be a good thing, if there is conflict, for example), but overall I'd say it's not a good omen of how things are going at the moment.

> but overall I'd say it's not a good omen of how things are going at the moment.

I wouldn't say it's a bad omen, either. There is clearly insufficient information to reasonably declare it a sign of anything meaningful[1].

1. https://templatetraining.princeton.edu/sites/training/files/...

By the way, I meant to say it’s an area of science that is not very well understood. Sure the concepts of connecting computers to our brains have been around for a long time, but these guys are actually trying to do it, and pioneering modern techniques and research.

Kudos to that I say. At the very least they are pushing the research in this field forward. At best if they are lucky, they will achieve things we’ve only dreamed of. Literally making science fiction a reality.

And honestly isn’t that the point of every company Elon creates? Yeah I get it, he’s a weird, sometimes annoying personality. But I’m glad he exists. His creations are literally pushing us into a areas of technology we never thought possible. And it’s happening right before our eyes.

I think the hate on Elon has gone too far. We need to learn how to separate ourselves from our own personal opinions, and appreciate what his companies are actually attempting, and more often than not making reality.

It is because Musk is making claims that are not technically possible, and may never be technically possible. Experts have warned him against making these claims, but he is in contempt of them. So, it is no wonder why people are leaving.

Knowing how Silicon Valley operates, it would be likely that he would copy somebody's groundbreaking research (without giving proper credit) and make a few changes (to commercialize it, with gimmicky features) and have his claim to fame.

'may never'

and here u got it.

By "never be technically possible" do you mean:

Not possible in the usual 10 year timeframe we consider for Silicon Valley type companies.

Or

Never in a million years, completely violates the laws of physics.

> Musk is making claims that are not technically possible

Which ones specifically?

If he had listened to the "experts", there would be no Tesla and no SpaceX.

Love it (no sarcasm)

If he had listened to experts, Tesla's little driver assist would not be called 'autopilot' and ending in 4 hour long lithium fueled human barbecues.

Less people have died from Autopilot than eating lettuce contaminated with E. coli over a decade. Everyone still eats lettuce.

Stupid people doing stupid things on Autopilot (watching a film [Florida], jumping in the back seat [Texas]) would’ve died doing stupid things eventually. Can’t blame Autopilot for when the monkey tries to defeat the safety system. No system is foolproof.

That doesn’t make Musk any less of a liar (with his successes amplifying the hopium), but let’s not pretend people aren’t culpable for their failings. The nuance is important.

I don't think "Well you know, these people are idiots and they'd have killed themselves anyway" is going to win any hearts and minds.

Or persuade a jury, if it ever comes to that.

No system is foolproof. But systems that encourage or tolerate foolish and dangerous behaviour can't be considered well-designed.

You can blame the system when it misleads its users. To this day, the Model S configurator calls the system "Autopilot" and uses "Full Self-Driving Capability", "Navigate on Autopilot", and "Full Self-Driving Computer" as bullet points of things it can currently do.

https://i.imgur.com/3cQRMwZ.png https://www.tesla.com/models/design#overview

The fine print isn't a justification when you're saying as loud as possible that this is a magic machine that does everything. Describing it as such is misleading.

For comparison, here is how Cadillac describes Super Cruise, a comparably-rated driver assist suite:

"Super Cruise" drive assistance feature. That's it. That's all you get when picking out the car. It frames it as an assistance, not a replacement or autopilot. If you go into details, you get "A driver assistance feature that allows hands-free driving under compatible highway driving conditions"

https://www.cadillac.com/sedans/ct5/build-and-price/packages

If you search out their detailed marketing materials, the message is consistent:

"Hands off the wheel. Eyes on the road." "Adaptive cruise control". "Stay centered". "Lane change on demand". Note that none of these promise that the computer takes over everything. The closest they come is "the first true hands-free driving-assistance", and that word assistance is absolutely key in framing this as not a replacement for all driving.

https://www.cadillac.com/world-of-cadillac/innovation/super-...

Less people have died from Autopilot than eating lettuce contaminated with E. coli over a decade. Everyone still eats lettuce.

OTOH, more people have dried as a result of Autopilot/FSD failures than the entire rest of the self-driving vehicle industry combined.

And the worst part is, Tesla doesn't even know what caused the failures, since at least one of those deaths were caused by regressions to Autopilot (for example, the Bay Area incident where the car swerved into the divider).

> Tesla's little driver assist would not be called 'autopilot' and ending in 4 hour long lithium fueled human barbecues

The fire did NOT last "four hours". It was put out in 2-3 minutes.

“With respect to the fire fight, unfortunately, those rumors grew out way of control. It did not take us four hours to put out the blaze. Our guys got there and put down the fire within two to three minutes, enough to see the vehicle had occupants,”

Source (from the Fire Chief): https://www.houstonchronicle.com/neighborhood/woodlands/arti...

Surely you don't think this technicality is compelling. My original comment contained hyperbole.

Hyperbole or not, it sounds like you're now backpedaling.

Moreover, it's also the same (fire lasted 3-4 hours) false narrative that many media outlets ran. Even though there was never an official report or account of the firefighting measures taken.

It was the experts that you disdain with quotation marks, but the rest of us call scientists and engineers, who made Tesla and SpaceX, not Musk. It was not scientists and engineers who scoffed at the ideas of Tesla and SpaceX, but businessmen and other non-creators.

The ideas that Musk is promulgating through Neuralink are decades old; the technology he is using is hardly anything special. What scientists are pushing back on is the unrealistic timeframe Musk promises to achieve his scifi fantasies within, the consequences and repercussions of those technologies, and the short term effects of overselling and propaganda about these ideas, which are otherwise in fact valuable.

Thank you for this thoughtful post. You hit the mark on the situation at hand.

hardly anything special? have you seen the new press release? the prototype has an order of magnitude better resolution of brain signals.

It is special if it was stopped right now and just given to neuroscience departments at universities.

> It was the experts that you disdain with quotation marks, but the rest of us call scientists and engineers, who made Tesla and SpaceX, not Musk. It was not scientists and engineers who scoffed at the ideas of Tesla and SpaceX,

This is definitely some rewriting of history. Plenty of engineers gave a long list of reasons why reusable rockets couldn’t work. Difficulty of station keeping for the drone ships, cost of refurbishment, safety margins, etc

He didn't start Tesla. And you can thank NASA for funding SpaceX. In both cases you can thank generous government subsidies for keeping his businesses afloat until they started making money.

Let's also thank the thousands of engineers who made both Tesla and SpaceX work. We need to stop giving one guy all the credit.

To which claims are you referring to?

Impossible for now

I'm so sick of this overly negative and defeatist way of thinking. You don't have to go back in time all that far to have people from that time think most things in our day to day life would be impossible to make.

Maybe you don't realize this, but Elon knows he isn't setting easy goals. He knows they'll miss sometimes, but having a deadline and all eyes on you helps progress. But yeah sure, let's just keep selling ads back and forth forever and push down anyone who tries to do anything good for society. Great input.

Dude, I am an electrical engineering graduate student, who is proficient in controls, among other things. I also am very aware of what is technologically possible, versus what is a marketing gimmick.

Musk has been in trouble several times with the NTSB, which is not an honorable thing to be on your record.

It is unsafe to drive any self-driving car without full human attention. This is going to be this way for quite awhile. It was irresponsible of Musk not to integrate technologies to ensure that the human at the wheel was paying attention to the road (eye gaze analysis, posture, facial emotions, hands on the wheel detection, etc.) for every single second that the driver was operating the car, with a mode such as autopilot.

It's already there. no seat belts, hand not on wheel, etc the car slows down and parks on the side of the road. I suggest you research and verify yourself.

It's discouraging that so many users here are absolutist now.

There use to be insightful conversations. Now it seemed to have devolved to nothing but dunking and negative (typically wrong) attitudes.

Just like this comment claiming that they're an EE student. Yet, everything they claimed can be easily disproved. Objective thinking be damned...

It reminds me of the CoinBase and Dropbox replies:

https://twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/13827241974582149...

https://twitter.com/brian_armstrong/status/13827275442233712...

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