[rootusrootus]

Equally, I'm fascinated by people who white knight for him. I assume to some extent it must just be ideology. Objectively, he has a history of making bold claims about his products that either never come to fruition, or are delayed for years. Being skeptical of what he says is the rational choice.

> have probably been positively impacted by him

Well, every time my Model 3's wipers go batshit insane, I get a little irritated with his decision to forego a known good solution that the rest of the world has been using for decades. Not feeling positively impacted at that moment ;-)

[Dig1t]

I have good internet because of Starlink. Before I had absolutely terrible options and there was no hope on the horizon. Starlink specifically is very good for the world, it's giving rural people access to the full experience of the internet, which people in cities have taken for granted for a long time.

Developing reusable rockets was thought to be impossible and there was no hope for lowering the cost to orbit on the horizon _at all_ by anyone in the world, country or company. Rocket technology developed by governments is laughably bad compared to what SpaceX has built. Now, Starship promises to lower the cost to orbit to an incredibly low number and open up access to space to normal people. This is not a pie in the sky plan, the rocket is literally sitting on the pad in south Texas, waiting for bureaucratic rubber stamping so that it can launch.

I am not white knighting, I don't care about the personal foibles of the man running the thing, I am cheering on science, technology, and the progress of the human species.

[JumpCrisscross]

> he has a history of making bold claims about his products that either never come to fruition

To my knowledge, he has never lied about the present financial state of his companies. That gives him credibility in a way e.g. Yaccarino bullshitting about what fraction of Twitter’s advertisers have returned does not.

[Atreiden]

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/elon-musk-funding-secur...

[theultdev]

Then a jury ruled in Musk's favor, right?

https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/03/cars/musk-tesla-tweet-lawsuit...

The end result is left out every time the "court finds" articles are linked. The jury found the opposite, which is what actually matters.

[Atreiden]

The jury finding was that he was not personally liable for investor losses, not that his tweet was in fact accurate.

The facts are not in dispute here. He tweeted "funding secured" and funding was not secured. He announced intentions to take it private at a given price, which did not happen.

He misrepresented the financial state of his company.

[theultdev]

Musk was railroaded by the judge and the Saudis on that one.

Luckily the jury had sense that the tweet was harmless in the end.

The judge ignored his stake in SpaceX he could have leveraged and mainly the Saudi Arabia firm that he was in talks with in taking Tesla private would not testify and then said the exact opposite:

https://www.theverge.com/2022/4/25/23040961/elon-musk-saudi-...

https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2023/1/23/musk-on-trial-sa...

So in the end it's do you believe Elon or the Saudis?

The judge sided with the Saudis.

[rootusrootus]

Well, a jury also ruled that his pedo comments were totally okay, so I don't know if I'd use that as a metric for what constitutes truth.

[theultdev]

Well, courts have also persecuted and jailed innocent people so if you don't trust what a jury of your peers say you should also have a hard time trusting what a "court finds".

Do you agree with that logic or do you trust the courts over your peers?

(ie. what "metric" would you use "for what constitutes truth"?)

[TheLoafOfBread]

I mean its jury - https://calendar.eji.org/racial-injustice/sep/23

[theultdev]

Timely! Now do the courts (or have those been perfect over the decades?)

Under that logic, maybe Musk is just another African American being persecuted by the US government.

[TheLoafOfBread]

Jury is mob-based justice. If mobs likes you, then you are basically immune to consequences as illustrated by the link above.

[NoMoreNicksLeft]

I'm mostly neutral in all things Musk. I can make arguments without appealing to his virtue or criticizing his flaws.

I've been reading about low-orbit satellite since at least the late 1990s when it must have been Slashdot articles then. There have been several plans, but the one whose name I remember was Iridium. I believe it became operational, but only ever managed to be used for voice telephony. It's been bankrupted and bought by other companies since then.

This is an absurdly difficult market to break into, and everyone has failed to one degree or another, with the degrees of failure all clustering around the really extreme end of that spectrum. This is ignoring any technological challenge (of which there are apparently more than a few).

He is claiming to have done a (business) thing that has been demonstrated to be nearly impossible. A thing which, if he hasn't done it and is merely lying about, we might not know for months or years.

It is perfectly reasonable to be skeptical of this, and no one owes him the benefit of doubt on this issue or any other. It is perfectly reasonable to remain skeptical even if you do not believe the man a liar. It is an extraordinary claim, and requires extraordinary evidence.

[benzible]

See: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:https:...

Capital Raise

4,281 days since Elon Musk said Tesla will never need to raise capital again. (2/12/2012)

"Tesla does not need to ever raise another funding round." Elon Musk, quoted by John Voelcker in Green Car Reports

4,052 days since Elon Musk raised $195.7M in common stock. (9/28/2012)

3,822 days since Elon Musk raised $313M in common stock. (5/16/2013) 3,822 days since Elon Musk raised $600M in convertible notes. (5/16/2013)

[...]

1,157 days since Elon Musk raised $5B in common stock. (9/1/2020)

1,059 days since Elon Musk raised $5B in common stock. (12/8/2020)

[e63f67dd-065b]

With Tesla stock as overvalued as it is, he'll be really dumb to not sell issue more. Tesla is the original meme stock: if people are willing to pay much more for AMC/BBBY/whatever meme stock than it would otherwise be worth, you should get in front of the money printing machine and issue more stock. Good for him.

[mrangle]

In fairness, and while Musk cerainly has a fan club, the "white knighting" tends to be in response to the aforementioned hating. Not the inverse.

There are few such men, and arguably fewer who have the enthusiastic haters that Musk does.

I understand criticism. However, a (multiple) path of innovation is always going to be riddled with mistakes and failures. Within this context, the specific enthusiasm for hating Musk, by some, seems petty to others.

[good8675309]

So if we don't dog-pile on a specific tech CEO and give the rest a pass we are white knights? I like to push back against the crowd when I see irrational dog-piling. Why is it that when Facebook is mentioned, the comments aren't trashing Zuckerberg in every other comment like when Musk is mentioned? Like he gets a free pass. That actually seems more ideologically driven, especially when you compare what Musk has done for humanity versus the destruction that Zuckerberg has brought. And I have deep concerns about Musk but I'm not irrational about it and I'm not constantly outraged and triggered when I see his name or companies mentioned.

Edit: Lol, bring on the downvotes, it only serves to prove my point.

[coding123]

The funny thing about Zuckerberg is that he's also shifting to the right if you watched some videos about the FBI discussing covid. I mean come on, Zuck showed up on Joe Rogan!

[rootusrootus]

> So if we don't dog-pile on a specific tech CEO and give the rest a pass we are white knights?

No, white knighting is accusing skeptics of being emotional haters who just don't appreciate all the good that Musk brings to the world. Accusing them of being short sellers, etc. Jumping to the defense of someone who is more than capable of defending himself.

[badlucklottery]

> So if we don't dog-pile on a specific tech CEO and give the rest a pass we are white knights?

The problem with bringing up those other tech CEOs vs. actually defending Musk is it starts looking like whataboutism.

I personally think there's enough hate for tech CEOs to go around and we don't need to ration it out.

[good8675309]

Sure, but it's just when I see Facebook, Google, etc mentioned in a headline, I see rational conversation about the topic, but when I see a Musk company mentioned in a headline, I already know what the comments are going to look like.

[rootusrootus]

Do you assign any responsibility for that to Elon? Compared to the CEOs of Facebook, Google, etc, Elon engages in far more incendiary rhetoric every day. He's chosen to become an outspoken public figure, criticism comes with the territory. Especially when it is tribal politics.

[good8675309]

Sure, he has full responsibility for it and he seems to have embraced it but while Elon is outspoken, the other big tech CEOs are just as engaged in politics, they are just more effective and quiet about it which to me is much more insidious. I'm sure they love watching Elon get all the attention, it takes the pressure off of them. As they influence policy, have armies of attorneys and lobbyists, buy senators, etc. At this point they are more powerful than our own government and our representatives are useless except for the rare virtue signal about keeping big tech accountable. I don't put Elon or any of his companies in that category when it comes to power, so he is less of a threat in my opinion. But I get it, HN is definitely a place where the tribal outrage comes out of the woodwork, it's likely because of the demographic here is of people that mostly benefit from the technocratic system so they see Elon as a threat to that or something.

[theultdev]

You missed his point. He's saying not picking up a mob pitchfork and challenging irrational statements does not mean you are white-knighting.

He's not saying "look over at that other CEO".

Even still, it's not whataboutism to put things in perspective as you may see that you're blowing one thing out of proportion due to bias if those same values are being violated by another entity but you are okay with it because of the entity itself.

It's always a good exercise to check for contradictions in your values.