Elon Musk *spawn*

Was that the Tim Dodd one? I don't remember anything that showed a lack of knowledge, care to elaborate.

Aerospikes do seem to be typical dead end theoretically optimal but just not really practical. To contextualise Musk's comments in Dodd's interview, economic TSTO reuse seems to favour high thrust to weight, which rules out aerospikes unless we have some wizzy new idea of how to make them. They make sense for SSTO, but then SSTO doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

 

Pretty sure that was the case. They interviewed a bunch of people and musk was the least clear on technical details. He basically handwaved and spoke in generalities. Technical wizardry has not been his strong suit though so it is hardly surprising. Fundraising is his forte. Without that nothing interesting ever happens.

 

I wonder how many people where have actually built something really big before.......

Its pretty clear what Musks strengths are to any one who has worked in large , corporate entities and try to actually deliver things .......


1. All requirements are dumb , make yours less dumb, smart people produce the dumbest requirements
2. Delete things/requirements , if you aren't forced to add 15% of the things you deleted back your not deleting enough
3. optimise , dont optimise until after first 2 steps are completed, engineers are really good at optimising things that shouldn't exist ( im pretty damn guilty of this)
4. scale production
5. then automate ( musk was hurt badly with model 3 by trying to automate to get scale)

The amount of times things haven't made it past step 1 in the industry i work in......

 

He makes cool stuff.
He says dumb stuff.

 

And is HE the one REALLY making them?
Or is he taking more credit than he deserves at the expense of those who work under him?
Also a lot of concepts and technologies that come from his company may be impressive but they are also extremely worrisome.

The guy has a lot of psychological issues and traumas and such people shouldnt be in such a powerful position.

Also this: https://www.aa.com.tr/en/americas/was-coup-against-evo-morales-over-bolivia-s-lithium/2213267

He is an egotistical greedy arrogant individual that has no real boundaries because he is suffering in his own existence..

Usually when such people became super rich they have the luxury to create their own mythos and backstories for the media to spread out there for us to consume and marvel. But there is no billionaire who became a billionaire because of their own production and through moral means.

 

You guys should move to Australia, you will fit right in will all the tall poppy syndrome you have.
I wonder how you guys would stack up if you held yourself to the same standard?

 

Who did Vitalik Buterin enslave and whose babies did he murder?

Fixed that for you.

 

I think you vastly underestimate how much of these things are based on luck. That is common though. The Uber wealthy also do that which is why they often think they are special and rules do not apply to them. It is also why they think they can magically solve intractable issues and then discover they are actually hard. It is just another mental lapse. Humans want the world to make sense. It makes sense if you pretend that luck plays a much smaller part in the way things go than it does. That desire tends to make people hero worship the wealthy.

As I said previously SpaceX is actually a good thing. They changed the culture of spaceflight and took lessons from other industries. That is the beginning and end of any revolutionary things so far though.

I'm not sure what standard you think we have, but mine is just to try and be honest and treat other humans decently as well. He fails at both of those things quite severely. Someday when all the hype fades away and pretending that he has super insight into the universe no longer pays the bills he may try to rehabilitate his image and behave differently, but we will just have to wait and see.

 

I can understand where the sentiment that Musk is horrible to people come from. He is. He's been a twat on Twitter, boneheaded on COVID, litigious about his public image and there are several accounts of him chewing out staff.

The fact remains he has really loyal staff, attracts praise from people who'd be unrestrained if they had a dim view and really high approval ratings from his staff. That doesn't come nowhere. It certainly suggest he's treating many of his employees and people he comes into contact with decently.

The discourse around Musk does get weird. He deliberately become a celebrity as it's cheaper than advertising. He reaps and creates the rewards and negatives of that.

Can you imaging the pages of press and social media guff that surrounding Musk being said about Tory Bruno or Herbert Diess?

 

People say plenty about flamboyant folks such as Jeff Bezos. Think how much effort Gates went to to make himself look decent in the last couple decades. He has given away a lot unlike many rich people and I will give him credit for that but it doesn't mean he is suddenly a person of virtue. Like everyone they are not perfect but their wealth sometimes amplifies their negative qualities and certainly amplifies the coverage of them.

I would be surprised if we don't hear about a toxic workplace at musk's companies to be honest in the future, but we will see. I don't mind being pleasantly surprised. My belief is that those sorts of things take time and are way more likely when stratospheric growth no longer seems feasible. When the gravy train of exploding stock options end suddenly people remember how terrible everything was.

 

Luck, sure thats prolly the most important thing

(some of the following he also done with other ppl)
at 12 sold a computer program he wrote for $500 1983 dollars
started company zip2
started company paypal
started spaceX
played a large role in tesla
started the boring company

he certainly has been very lucky, I can't think of anyone else whos been this lucky in various fields, maybe edison?

 

Clearly an outlier who got rich because of the irrationality of the market that gave value to something intangible he created, based solely on expectations, thus increased the price, not because he is constantly producing a real service or product.

 

Yeah you can successfully argue that cryptocurrencies are easily a net negative overall.
In fact I'm practically certain I (and prolly everyone here) have had less negative impact on the world than Vitalik Buterin mainly cause Im a nobody loser

A better example would be Soros, the backwards fav punching bag

 

intelligence plus luck plus timing plus x factor...

 

Regarding Edison, like Jobs, as well as an inventor/innovator, he is well known for taking credit for other people's work.

 

Sure that's true with Edison. Tesla also took credit for other people's work.

 

like?

https://www.escapistmagazine.com/7-tesla-inventions-that-others-took-credit-for/

Tesla is least known compared to a lot of other inventors.
I didnt know him, but I knew Edison, Graham Bell etc
Without the help of the internet I would have never known. And after I learned about him and mentioned him to others they also had no idea.
And he also did not patent many of his inventions so people would use them freely.

Which is also one of the reason others took credit when they invented something similar or the same later.