[procombo]

Sorry you're so glum. Buy a Tesla. It'll put a smile on your face.

-Space access is leading the world. Satellites bring freedom, access, and peace.

-Cars are the safest, fastest, and smartest you can drive.

-Tunnels solve waaaay more problems than they create. Hyperloop isn't so much an 'active' project, see tunnels.

-Robots are extension of AI work for self driving.

-Brain project will help those with physical disabilities, and learning.

-Solar roof and battery at home is wicked cool and useful.

I'm leaving stuff out. Don't know if they take a loss on their cars, but if so that's very common for hardware manufacturers.

I'm not an Elon apologist by any stretch, but you have objectively bad takes here. I can only imagine you just don't like his personality.

Are his companies not leading in Space access? Clean energy? Transportation? Maximizing life? Fun.

The guy is a workhorse He innovates at every turn. He hires the best, and expects the best. He has done a marvelous job incentivizing great engineering, science, and research. Their goals are lofty. He thinks long-term. His teams are largely motivated for the right reasons, and he helps make many of his employees very wealthy.

His intentions are good. He's an environmentalist. He loves Earth. He loves people. He's positive and optimistic for the future. He can be abstract, artistic, and goofy.

From our perspective, he's rarely wrong, and when he is, he owns it. Is he perfect? Hell no. But he accepts responsibility. He engages with the public, and his fans.... and his haters.

One thing is for sure so far, people who bet on him win.

We'd be so lucky to have Elon lead a communication/social platform.

[micromacrofoot]

> Buy a Tesla. It'll put a smile on your face.

This is a little silly. I returned a Model 3 after they told me I'd have to wait months to get body defects repaired. These were defects that were apparent within 2 days of having it. They refused to simply swap the car out. For a little while it seemed unclear that they were going to repair it at all... just abysmal service.

> I'm not an Elon apologist by any stretch

I'm sorry, but you really really are (and that's fine, people like what they like). You're practically fawning over him in this comment.

[ipython]

Really? You want a guy who publicly trolls people on Twitter and libels others as pedophiles leading a social network?

[daniel-cussen]

> We'd be so lucky to have Elon lead a communication/social platform.

I think the opposite. He is in fact an excellent physicist. Like Nikola Tesla if Nikola Tesla both cared more about money, though he did a lot; and was better at getting money; and critically, if he had a predecessor who got fucked he could learn from (hence the name of the company, and why I say "Nikola Tesla" instead of "Tesla", because at this point the brand is bigger than its eponym). Only 99% sure about these statements, not absolute. And people remember Nikola Tesla because of the electricity, well he also designed the Tesla valve, a valve with no moving parts. Who knows what else.

So keep in mind while Elon Musk has a lot of monetary capital ie rich, and sure he's also still in the game of pushing the boundaries, he's not better than anyone. He's not better than you. So for there to be things he's that good at, to get to that level of success by the metrics most people are obsessed with, he has to be bad at other things. Well not exactly, it's not like skill points. In fact physics is highly analog, so that limits how good you can be at digital. They just naturally compete for neural resources.

So in fact, he's vulnerable to ML, he's been getting hacked by its promises for the longest time, Achilles heel. But you realize it cannot be any other way? You can't have an Iliad with no Achilles heel, it doesn't work as a story, like Superman without kryptonite, you can tell the story of Popeye without spinach but not Superman without kryptonite.

Like he sees demos and he's like "finally shit that actually works" and then it's like no, this is more shit that doesn't actually work, one-trick ponies, not even, one-trick PhD's disguised as ponies. Like he believes he needs PhDs because at some level he believes in credentials, when what he obviously needs are dropouts like him. Day one dropouts ideally. I mean if he wants inventors. If he wants to prove something is impossible, then yeah a PhD is the best. I don't know what the hell it is, maybe it's a recent thing, I believe in the idea of a PhD, I like people with PhDs.

I think it's because they're intelligent, they're not stupid enough to try to fly by flapping their arms. They don't do one single flap. No idea what happens if you flap your arms. Sounds stupid right? That's how aviation came into existence, guys would try flying off the Eiffel tower with a bird costume, splat. But then less stupid guys said, OK you can't use your arms, you need wings in a stronger structure, and that's why airplane wings are called wings. They're not actually wings, that's a really weird metaphor for birds' arms. And it was strictly necessary for guys to go splat for there to be gliders and all the rest.