[aaron-lebo]

Criticism is the sign of a healthy society. If someone is afraid of criticism or doesn't want to take it, then they are only hurting their own work. That's not to say Musk is guilty of that, but his fans could accept it.

If we didn't have critics we'd still have kings with divine right. This seems like an exaggeration, but it's really just to say that we need people to look at things critically.

I haven't collected any evidence, but I wouldn't be surprised if those who find success are always looking for reasons why something will work, and those who run into failure are always looking for reasons why something won't work.

This isn't that far from prosperity gospel preaching. Believing doesn't make things happen, otherwise NeXT would be dominating the industry and not Apple because boy did Jobs believe and give it his all.

Sometimes smart people are wrong, and it doesn't hurt those people anyway if dummies are discussing their work.

[leot]

> If we didn't have critics we'd still have kings with divine right. This seems like an exaggeration, but it's really just to say that we need people to look at things critically.

That's an extreme straw man that trades a lot on what a "critic" is.

Martin Luther didn't criticize the papacy because he doubted the papacy's capacity to realize its ambitions. He criticized the way the papacy was then operating.

People holding forth on how something can't be done are best described not as critics but doubters (or haters). "I can't imagine a way to do X, therefore X can't be done." How many impossible things does Musk have to do before people take serious Musk's ability to realize his visions?

Hating is so easy. But today's capacity to develop technology is utterly unprecedented.

Lead. Follow. Or get out of the way.

[aaron-lebo]

People holding forth on how something can't be done are best described not as critics but doubters (or haters). "I can't imagine a way to do X, therefore X can't be done." How many impossible things does Musk have to do before people take serious Musk's ability to realize his visions?

We're talking about strawmen: nobody is saying that. Nobody is saying it can't be done. They are saying...let's wait until it is done, because right now it's just a video. Is that hating or an entirely reasonable stance to take?

[simonh]

Remind me, what does the NS at the beginning of class names in the OSX frameworks stand for again? It's on the tip of my tongue.

The technology Jobs believed in and developed at NeXT really did dominate the industry. It's in the phone I'm typing this on right now.

[aaron-lebo]

Completely fair (and cool!), but the use of nextstep at Apple is really a side-effect of NeXT failing to be what Steve wanted it to be (a competitor to Apple or simply successful).

[simonh]

I think you were making a very valid point, having faith and following your dream far more often leads down a blind alley than to fortune and success. But at the level Must operates at, it's the only way to do the things he does. Dedication isn't enough though, it has to be well judged dedication to viable goals backed with the right skills and talent.

I think Linux on the desktop would have been a better example though. Millions of hours of dev time have been spent on it and it's no closer to providing any competition to Apple or Microsoft now than it did in the 90s. I think there was a complacency in the Linux desktop world that success was inevitable given enough effort. I don't think Musk has ever been complacent about the success of his businesses. I don't think Jobs was either.