[stcredzero]

I wish people would have a little optimism, or at least just say things like "wow, I personally don't think it's possible, but damn it's going to be exciting to watch them try".

Uninformed optimism? Not so much. How about some charity and informed, insightful analysis?

We need people who are working hard to build a better future, so lets not bury them in a pile of hate and negativity.

Agreed. By the same token, we can ditch the hate and have more informed negativity when it's warranted. It's mental laziness to just slam the lever all the way up because you like the feel of "up," or to slam it all the way down, just because you think "down is cool." The difficult and valuable thing is to move the lever to where it needs to go through technique and good judgement.

[grecy]

> How about some charity and informed, insightful analysis?

I agree, that would be great. Let's analyze stuff instead of just screaming out our opinions.

> we can ditch the hate and have more informed negativity when it's warranted

How does negativity (even informed negativity) help us?

How does it increase our knowledge, or ability to do new exciting things, or our ability to "push the envelope"?

It doesn't. It's a waste of time and effort. Worst case, just say nothing at all rather than being negative about a certain topic.

When working on an extremely complicated problem the last thing in the world anyone needs is a bunch of people reminding them it's really hard and that nobody has done it before and that it's going to fail for reasons x,y,z.

Remember, every breakthrough that has ever happened had a long list of reasons why it was "impossible".

[Robotbeat]

What's needed in the skeptic analysis is people who actually understand the point Elon is making. So often, the skeptics just completely don't understand what he's saying as he's speaking in terms of limits and fundamental principles, i.e. as a physicist.

In any good discussion and healthy argument, it is critical to be able to understand your opponent's point, be able to restate it accurately in a way they'd agree with, before being able to point out exactly how it's wrong (or at least unlikely).

Instead, we often see pile-ons and other supremely mentally lazy attacks.

[stcredzero]

How does it increase our knowledge, or ability to do new exciting things, or our ability to "push the envelope"?

It keeps resources from being wasted that would otherwise actually contribute to our ability to "push the envelope."

It doesn't. It's a waste of time and effort.

When something which really is impossible or impractical is called out, then huge amounts of resources can be redirected to genuinely beneficial projects.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=obS6TUVSZds

Are you advocating that we never doubt? Should we just "listen and believe" and somehow our positive energy will make things happen? Sorry, no. Scientific analysis has predictive power. That's what Elon Musk is all about.