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Comment by mettamage | Hacker News Reader

I’m not surprised. As a former Elon fan, it never struck me that he thought about this from first principles, whereas for SpaceX he did.

For as long as we can’t understand AI systems as well as we understand normal code, first principles thinking is out of reach.

It may be possible to get FSD another way but Elon’s edge is gone here.

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SpaceX is a success despite Elon. Maybe setting an extremely lofty goal helped somewhat but Gwynne Shotwell and all the actual engineers at SpaceX deserve the credit for their success.

How is it despite Elon? I don't know the history too well.

I agree that the team deserves most of the success. I think that's the case in general. At best, a CEO puts down good framing/structure, that's it. ICs do the actual innovative work.

Napoleon didn't fight much at all in battles, too.

Wikipedia says Gwynne Shotwell joined after the first successful launch. Elon founding it and getting a rocket up must count for something.

I used to think engineers should get all the credit for the successes of big engineering projects, and they should probably get more credit than they do, but over time I’ve realized how important good leadership is. SpaceX and Tesla absolutely would not be where they are today without Elon. Anyone who claims otherwise either hasn’t paid attention or is being disingenuous because they don’t like him.

Saying despite Elon is delusional. You probably watched some left wing propaganda at some point to come to that conclusion. Just because he supported Trump doesn’t take away from all his achievements.

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