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He also loves free speech except when employees discuss unions.

He wants Twitters algorithms to be open, but his cars must stay closed.

Requesting anything of him is anti-freedom then he projects at others how they could do better in the same contexts.

He’s like a crazy TV Lenny salesman who has never actually invented anything net new. He’s playing the acquisitions of other people work game to prop up his preference to not work.

Normal humans should not be given extreme leverage over other normal humans. Lie to me about “free markets” but as one of the 13% with and advanced degree, mine being in math, the average person has no ability to smell through his BS in detail, but they have a gut sense he’s just another used car salesman.




> He’s like a crazy TV Lenny salesman who has never actually invented anything net new.

Lol, literally nobody invented anything new by this metric.


When people say inventor, they think Nicola Tesla or the Wright Brothers.

Elon musk is more analogous to Stebe Jobs, primarily a businessman with some engineering backgrund.

Then there is the whole controversy of tesla being funded by two guys, him being an investor and forcing them out of the company.


I would say closer to Thomas Edison - at least Jobs didn't go out stealing other peoples work.


Didn't he steal the GUI from Xerox?


Xerox licensed it to them. They had no other path to market since nothing at PARC had to do with selling printer paper or whatever it is they did in the 70s.


Musk isn't an engineer, he didn't engineer anything.


What is your point? You think he is literally a talking head and all of the spaceX employees and tesla engineers did the hard work lol?

I suspect he has achieved more than you ever will.


Given that Musk has said himself that his titles don't mean anything[1], and the fact that he chose to give himself the title of Chief Engineer in response to people on Twitter making fun of him, it makes me believe that his self-appointed title as Chief Engineer is about as meaningful as his title of Technoking at Tesla.

Musk isn't an engineer, he has no engineer credentials and isn't licensed to engineer in any country. Moreover, Musk has never engineered anything.

Given the fact that both companies hire hordes of real, licensed and credentialed engineers, says that, yes, the engineers at both companies are responsible for the hard engineering work.

I prefer to stick with actual facts and not feelings or insults. I'm not sure why stating the basic fact that Musk is not an engineer would upset you so much.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2021/12/07/elon-musk-ceo-is-made-up-tit...


It doesnt upset me, it goes against all evidence. There are hours of video online about him answering details about rocket technology, battery technology etc. He is a very technical CEO, not some bullshit artist like the Nikola guy.

He doesnt have an engineering degree, that doesnt mean a whole lot anyways.


[flagged]


No way man, didn’t you know OP has an advanced degree in math?!


This is the exact type of bias that Musk is trying to address with his stake in Twitter.

Nothing you stated can be backed up by anything real - all of it is taken directly from leftists twitter headlines that are more concerned with moral grandstanding then facts.


The hypocracy is literally backed up by the post he is replying to.

It is not chear to me that this person is left wing, they sinply dislike Musk.

I do not recommend you go around accusing everyone of being left wing - otherwise peiple might start asking:

Is asking that you practice what you preach leftwing these days?

Is being a two-faced lyer a concervative value?


In the GP’s defense, the most vociferous anti-Elon folks online tend to also identify as leftists. It makes sense that they are because Elon is a capitalist billionaire known for being anti-Union, for overworking employees, and for being a general critic of leftists on his social media. He is the antithesis of most people on the left’s ideology.

>”Is asking that you practice what you preach leftwing these days? Is being a two-faced lyer a concervative value?

Now this is just playing dirty. This is a rhetorical cheap shot combined with moral grandstanding while also being nakedly partisan at the same time.


My disdain for them is about personal integrity.

For years I used to be a fan of both Elon and Steve jobs, but when I learn about how Jobs treated his child or the 'diver saving kids in a cave is a pedo' incident, I have to conclude that they are shitty people.

I can imagine how a man forces another man out of a company, offers him a rotten deal or even robs him at gunpoint.

I cannot understand how a man abandons his child in poverty. The degree of irresponsibility required to live with yourself, to me is incomprehensible.

Elon's 'pedo incident' is simpler - he tried to butt in into a rescue mission with a submarine PR project, made a fool of himself, and instead of admitting his mistake has displayed infantilism and self control of a moody teenager. He could have shown at least some respect to the diver that has saved many lives. So maybe not irredeemable, but does not sound like someone you'd invite over for dinner.

Maybe it's not their fault, maybe the flaw is in our society and when you become super rich and people line up in a mile long-queue to kiss your ass, it starts messing with your head and you really start to believe that the sun shines out of your arsehole and other people are lesser to you, the ubermench. Thats just a hypothesis.

I know right wing people who hate both of them, reasons vary: disrespecting family values, pushing green agenda, whatever.

But sometimes you dislike a person because they are a shitty person, and it has to do with their action, not political leanings.


Everyone is a hypocrite from some context.

Really I just don’t think anyone should be above the real hands on work of supporting their existence.

Term limits for these roles should be explicit, not a game of they who can possess the most minds the longest wins.

The promise of human colonization of all of space time is still a high minded fantasy which makes this “hype/gossip my way to wealth” seemed designed to intentionally manipulate the same basal biology religion accidentally latched onto.

Who knows, maybe rockets to Mars are all wrong and we should be doing something completely different; information doesn’t need to just travel in a ship, but Star Trek seems to live long and prosper in his head.


yes


All of it is taken from him not releasing source code.

From him not unionizing his companies.

From the officially documented history of his business acquisitions where he bought up business that already existed.

This approaching 1984 level double speak. It’s the lack of effort that speaks to his motives. Where is the code for his machines that can choose to plow into us? But somehow Twitters algorithm is super important.

Edit: tacking on his desire to burn up fossil fuels on rockets while the UN is announcing we’re firmly on track to an unlivable ecosystem. We are not optimizing human economics but Elon’s.


There is a clear difference between open sourcing Twitter's algorithm that promotes certain tweets over others and Tesla's IP.

Musk has a very high IQ. Unionizing his company would be a very dumb decision.


> There is a clear difference between open sourcing Twitter's algorithm that promotes certain tweets over others and Tesla's IP.

Given that the IP in question includes whatever solution Tesla adopts for the trolley problem, there certainly is a clear difference. Twitter's algorithm is for arguing about, Tesla's algorithm is going to be directly the cause of death for someone (arguably, it already has).


The "trolley problem" isn't real, cars have brakes.


You cannot be serious.


I am serious and any self-driving car engineer would agree with me. (I got this opinion from an AI lawyer at such a company.)

The truth is the opposite - not only will cars never make a "trolley problem" decision (because the only thing they should be doing is braking), it would be immoral to give them the capability, because it might decide it's in a trolley-problem scenario at the wrong time and randomly decide to sacrifice you.


I agree braking should be the default. But if any self-driving car out there steers to avoid collision, then it is already facing the 'trolley problem'.

In fact self-driving cars normally change lanes as part of their path finding. So a failure to change lanes in an emergency would be unusual.

Disagreement over the correct behavior will result in lawsuits of course. "It should have attempted to miss me!" vs "It should have stayed in it's lane!"

We'll need legislation to settle this, for insurance purposes at the very least.


It shouldn't do what's correct, but rather what's predictable. Anything else is less safe for other people around it.

If the brakes turn out not to work, that is quite the problem, but hopefully it'll notice in time to not accelerate in the first place. Maybe it can still engine brake.


Apparently you don't understand the trolley problem. In the context of self-driving vehicles:

Action A: kill N people, including occupant

Action B: kill M people, not including occupant

Both pathways are predictable. Which one do you choose?

ps. solve for: N == M, N > M, N < M


You don't "choose" because, as I said, it is unsafe to program your system to make choices. You brake because that's what a car does.

Your problem isn't real because the car doesn't exist in a logical world with N or M discrete things, it exists in a real world where it can be mistaken about what's happening outside it. Letting it make choices like that would have a bad outcome if it hallucinates (occupant+1) grandmas in front of it and decides to heroically sacrifice itself and you.

https://twitter.com/Theophite/status/1364765059860209664


As noted by someone else above:

> But if any self-driving car out there steers to avoid collision, then it is already facing the 'trolley problem'.

Even the tweet you've cited says:

> there is nothing in the street which you want to collide with. the correct response in every case is to evade the thing that's in the street.

(emphasis mine)

So braking is clearly not the only option.

I truly hope that you do not work on software or hardware that is in any way close to areas like this. You seem completely blind to the real world issues that driving (among other things) forces onto a system. Cars have brakes and steering wheels. Any real world system will use a combination of the two of them to try to keep the occupants and those outside the vehicle safe. Pretending that there will never be situations where there are conflicting choices to be made is ... well, I just find it unbelievable that anyone reading HN could try to deny that there will be situations like this.


> As noted by someone else above:

I should point out that the guy I linked is an AI lawyer, so the replies aren't actually as valuable input in this case… also, I think he uses "evade" to mean "not hitting something" so braking still counts.

I've had other discussions with literal self-driving car company engineers where they told me it's not a real problem as usually defined. Though I can't link those, here's one where someone asks the Aurora people about it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/q1fsvz/we_are_chris_u...

> So braking is clearly not the only option.

It's the best option because you're not the only moving thing on the street. Braking in response to a car in front of you is normal, but evasive maneuvers at speed aren't. You don't know what other people are going to do in response to that.

Oh, but I will let you turn or reverse as long as you signal first. I just don't think you should do it at speed with no warning even in a "least bad option" situation.

> You seem completely blind to the real world issues that driving (among other things) forces onto a system.

Sorry for being a theoretical murderer, but you weren't talking about real world issues, you're talking about a trolley problem! That's defined as:

- there's 2+ discrete paths you can take. (semi-true for cars)

- there really is something on each path you'll hit. (semi-true, in reality they'd react to you in good and bad ways)

- your knowledge about this is correct. (not true, SDCs' world-knowledge is not perfect)

- you are going fast enough to be dangerous. (semi-true, SDCs will drive at safe speeds more often)

- you must go forward. (not true, SDCs can brake or reverse)

#3 and #5 being the big problems making this unrealistic.

Maybe a real world problem would be driving on a mountain road and there's a boulder about to fall on you? In that case, I agree braking would not be safe.


Yeah there is a clear difference. I never said there was not.

Strawman.

I have a very high iq; in a past life I designed power switching machines and high performance boards for Nortel. Also that’s an appeal to higher authority.

Also these companies are pretty data driven through automation; big banks are run from 2GB excel sheets. It’s just people doing math and the ones doing best also happen to have political tradition on their side.

Musk is still just one man.


UAW is corrupt, encouraging them is a bad idea. Unions are symptom of corporations where employees don't have enough equity. Also a symptom of incompetent governments. If you fix the government or give employees equity you don't need unions. Tesla aspires to give employees equity. There are many who became millionaires after joining tesla early and working the line.


There are many who became millionaires through unions.

It’s almost as if humans will work to enrich each other and the numbers game is artificial political semantics; millionaires appear in both constructs!

At least I can vote and discuss openly union operations.

Not so with Papa Elon. The outputs of labor are his preferred targets.

Why does humanity keep doing this?

Oh and governments serve at the will of the people which seems fine with the status quo. I’m not expecting much movement there. Any improvement on Main Street has to occur within politics as usual which means deflating Elon for change.

It’s really sus to suggest his vision for the far future is possible given he sits right at the same edge of discovery we do. “Outlook uncertain” for that far down the road is the only honest answer. Especially when “build rockets to nowhere” and even EV production are exacerbating industrial feedback loops threatening the species.

Diversity in thought leadership is good, imo.


prove it.




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