[scottious]

I remember when Elon came up with the hyper loop idea and everybody I worked with at the time thought it was revolutionary. These were very smart people who were fooled.

In hindsight, how could we all have fell for this? What a profoundly stupid idea, but I distinctly remember at the time it felt right.

I guess what I'm saying is that I think a lot of people just wised up and started seeing through his B.S.

[Animats]

> I remember when Elon came up with the hyper loop idea and everybody I worked with at the time thought it was revolutionary.

When I first saw it, my thoughts were 1) it can't possibly be that cheap, and 2) the turning radius!

It's not that it can't be done. It's that it would probably cost like the very expensive Chūō Shinkansen maglev, which really does work. And has all those necessary things Musk hand-waved, such as emergency access shafts in case there's trouble deep under a mountain, cross-tunnel connections for emergencies, fire suppression...

[NegativeK]

Anyone who assumes they won't be fooled is setting themselves up for disaster.

The biggest of Musk's warning signs, for me, was the hype. Hype can drown out valid criticism. When the hype is big enough, valid criticism ends up being drowned out by rage based, critical rhetoric that's in a screaming match with proponents.

(The worst part about being hype averse is that I can end up averse to legitimately exciting things.)

[scottious]

> Hype can drown out valid criticism

It's funny you mention that because I remember at the time of HyperLoop somebody said "what about just ... trains?" and we all scoffed at it as if trains were some outdated technology

Let's just say I'm on team trains now.

[simianwords]

I genuinely don't know how the mental model of such a person works where they look at Elon who got multiple world changing bets right but they focus on the ones that were wrong.

[scottious]

I feel like a lot of the ideas are over-attributed to him. Tesla already existed, electric cars aren't really a revolutionary idea. He's a hype man and he does the hype stuff well. Cybertruck was a pretty unmitigated disaster. self-driving is not really working out as he promised. I still remember arguing with people in 2020 who thought you'd be able to sleep in your car in a few years. Seems like Waymo is beating them to robo-taxis. Hyperloop was a bad idea.

Starlink + reusable rockets... alright, not bad, but not exactly a "world changing bet". Seems far more hyped than anything. So he gets credit for just combining the idea of reusable rockets to send satellites into space? okay fine.

He had a lot of money and threw a lot at the wall to see what stuck. If I were a betting man, I'd bet against his "next big idea". He'll over-promise and under-deliver.

[Animats]

Space-X's success is due to Gwynne Shotwell, who really is a rocket scientist.

Musk didn't originate Tesla's car concept. He did, however, promote into a large scale business. That's the real achievement.

Promotion isn't enough, though. I heard Shai Agassi of Better Place speak once. That was the Israeli guy with the car battery swap startup. He was really good looking, a great speaker, and his 10x growth per year business plan was utter bullshit. Better Place went bust. It wasn't a totally unworkable idea; there are successful battery swap operations in China. But he spent time and money schmoozing with heads of state and setting up demo centers in multiple countries, while not delivering much.

(More fundamental problem: battery swapping is a bet against fast charging and battery progress, which appears to be a losing bet.)

[ryandrake]

In general, people who focus on the many things he got wrong or lied about, will all at least admit that he got a few things right.

But the people who focus on his successes always seem to downplay, blame-shift and defend when it comes to his negative side. They'll never admit he was wrong about anything. It's the same worship / cult of personality that affects politics too.

[simianwords]

Name a person who say he was right about everything. I can name a person who say he was wrong about everything (my sibling comment)

[insane_dreamer]

I really dislike Elon as a person, but didn't the hyperloop POC work? I admittedly haven't followed it in long time.

[scottious]

Definitely not. The companies that were prototyping it all went bankrupt. The "Vegas Loop" is just a tunnel with Tesla car traffic in it and I don't even think they're fully self driving! Very very underwhelming. Not even remotely close to the "NY to DC in 29 minutes" which he promised.

We would have been much better off with investment in tried-and-true boring old trains.

[insane_dreamer]

The Vegas Loop was the Boring Company (building tunnels), not Hyperloop. You might be confusing the two projects.