[this_user]

You misunderstand Musk's motivation. This was never about money for him, but about control over a key technology. One of the main reasons he exited OpenAI was the fact that the other co-founders wanted to create a structure where no one, Musk included, would be able to seize full control of the company. That was the thing that prompted him to leave, which tells you a lot about what he really wanted in the first place.

But he also falsely assumed that OAI would die without his money. Yet, they managed to pull through, and Musk is now on the outside looking in with very little influence in the AI space. xAI is his desperate attempt to get back into the game. That is why he won't give up.

[m463]

> This was never about money for him, but about control over a key technology.

I think he just wanted to have a sci-fi future, and because many other people think similarly he has tapped into that shared desire and has been succeeding.

Looking at things from the other side, musk is good at making physical things, where other companies are weak.

Grok in a tesla car is actually well integrated and kind of nice. You can ask the car about things to do, and it will drive you there.

[Zardoz84]

Musk itself doesn't make things. He only puts the money, and other people build the things. How many times, they need to work around him or fix his crazy ideas ?

People must stop trying to compare it to Tesla or Tony Stark. He is more like the bad guy of Jurassic Park 2.

[aikinai]

Weird how other people can put up more money and not be able to make the same things as Musk’s companies.

[hello4263]

The people with that level of money are very few.

[aikinai]

Companies aren't funded by one person, even his. After their current round, Blue Origin will have raised more than three times as much capital as SpaceX, and SpaceX is obviously far more advanced and has already gone public.

Rivian used ten times more capital to reach their first delivery and twenty times more before their IPO as compared to Tesla.

It looks like it's not Musk's money making his companies successful.

[antonvs]

He's good at exploiting naive people's dreams.

[Gareth321]

Musk had around $180M when he founded SpaceX in 2002, and purchased Tesla in 2004. ChatGPT tells me that more than 55,000 people in the world have more wealth than this. So either people who have money choose not to make such risky investments, or they're incapable of it. Probably both. We're very lucky that someone who is both capable of building companies like this and is willing to go bankrupt doing it exists.

[lookdangerous]

Profound. 1/55k regarding wealth really diminishes the role wealth plays.

[bell-cot]

Musk seems obsessed with making socially valuable physical things which are extremely difficult to make. And (overall) he's darned good at it.

Back when America's star was rising, that was far more common.

[exadeci]

Easy he constantly forces them to cut corners and take risks put their lives in danger "Tesla Has Highest Fatal Accident Rate of All Auto Brands", "Reuters documented at least 600 previously unreported workplace injuries at Musk’s rocket company: crushed limbs, amputations, electrocutions, head and eye wounds and one death. "

[aikinai]

That's a somewhat valid point about the "move fast and break things" culture at SpaceX. I'm sure there's some correlation between the pioneering, hyper-productive culture at Elon's companies and safety violations, but there's no way you could claim that lax safety standards account for the massive gap between SpaceX and the rest of the entire industry. It's not like they're just pumping widgets out of a factory faster and cheaper. They've revolutionized the cutting edge across all aspects, including design, software, etc. If the best companies could be explained by cutting safety corners, then China would be leading America in everything.

And that was the first I'd heard about high fatality rates for Tesla, so I looked it up. The cars themselves are always rated as very safe, and it seems the reason for high fatalities is just who buys them. Apparently, it's young, affluent, more risk-tolerant people who frequently drive fast on highways.

[bell-cot]

I'm no ER physician, nor OSHA expert - but if 600 accidents with the sorts of heavy equipment and rocketry that SpaceX does every day included only one death, then my conclusion would be that the vast majority of that 600 were pretty minor stuff. You'd have a lot more bodies otherwise.

Also, Musk is nothing special this way. Honest comparisons would be to cell phone tower workers, steel mills, hazardous chemicals handlers, farmers, and such.

Vs. most people's mental comparison is to working in a comfy office.

[dmarcos]

I’m a big fan of Musk. One of the few criticisms I have is how xAI is also inconsistent with original OpenAI mission. I had imagined xAI as en effort to correct and fully embody all original values of OpenAI and that Elon says they betrayed. That makes his criticism weaker and I understand why some can think it was all about control. In his words:

"I'm the reason OpenAl exists. I came up with the name. The name OpenAl refers to open source... The intent was - what was the opposite of Google? It would be an open source non-profit."

I sometimes feel xAI wants to live up to those open values so I always celebrate when they decide to engage in open source. They still don’t fully embrace it. Perhaps because they think is not practical or will make them less competitive?

[estearum]

> This was never about money for him, but about control over a key technology

That's too flattering. It's about ego.

[vladmk]

Agreed - if you read any Elon books that’s a part of it. He always had someone to prove himself to from his dad to the world. It’s almost Michael Jordanesque except business wise.

[halfmatthalfcat]

So just like Trump. Birds of a feather.

[nchmy]

Doesn't saltman effectively have full control of the company?

[furyofantares]

no

[beanjuiceII]

what do you mean they couldn't even get rid of him, then people left because of that

[imtringued]

Honestly, this is exclusively about money. xAI and X were complete money pits, Tesla's brand was tarnished and SpaceX was the only remaining untainted brand but it has an obvious problem.

Starship didn't turn out to be the obvious victory that Musk had in mind. He basically threw away the Falcon 9 mindset of incremental progress and is instead trying to use a completely different methodology on what amounts to be a vertically stacked shuttle.

Just look at the first thing SpaceX did after selling more than $60 billion worth of shares during the IPO: They borrowed another $20 billion to turn the junk bonds (11% to 16%) from X and xAI into lower interest (5%) long duration (2030s to 2040s) debt. They're probably saving a billion USD per year just from the debt restructuring alone and the IPO lets Musk keep funding the endless money pit that Starship represents.

[dzhiurgis]

> They're probably saving a billion USD per year just from the debt restructuring

Cool. Sounds like a wise financial management. Musk's early background is actually in finance.

People call him software and physics but rarely remember he's a finance genius too.

p.s. you probably wanna have a look how indebted legacy auto is compared with Tesla. That's why merger with SpaceXAI makes sense.

[jimmygrapes]

What happened to the rule about steelmanning? I know it's chic to post super hot takes about what we assume a persons intentions are, and I know there are plenty of "if you can't see how bad they are you're the problem" type justifications; I know the supposed goal of empathy is tossed aside at first hint of disagreement whether real or perceived, and I know there is "evidence" of justification for hatred/dismissal. Yet still there is self-righteous presumption bandied about in a negative way that violates that steelman rule. Justified of course by the idea that there are no negotiations with terrorists, no association with Nazis, no forgiveness or understanding given to the Other.

I just don't get it, I'm sorry.

[brokencode]

What rule about steelmanning? We’re commenting online, not writing peer reviewed research.

And yeah, some people lose the benefit of the doubt. Sorry, but actions have consequences.

Elon doesn’t just get to kill hundreds of thousands of poor people by eliminating USAID and expect everyone to treat him the same way.

He’s made enemies for life, and he deserves it.

[Barbing]

  Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[xp84]

Wait, you think not giving additional aid = responsibility for whatever happens in the developing country? Does this blame go for the rest of the year, decade, or century?

Does giving aid in the first place automatically trigger this? If I gave $500 to kids cancer research every year for 5 years, and then I don't give this year, do I have blood on my hands every time a kid dies of cancer from now on? And if you didn't ever donate, you don't?

How does this work?

[nextaccountic]

> If I gave $500 to kids cancer research every year for 5 years, and then I don't give this year, do I have blood on my hands every time a kid dies of cancer from now on? And if you didn't ever donate, you don't?

> How does this work?

Okay, since the topic at hand is steelmanning, that is, replying to the strongest possible argument, let's practice that.

I invite you to watch this video, which is a short lecture that indeed exposes the strongest argument for this exact proposition.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KVl5kMXz1vA (Peter Singer - ordinary people are evil)

I think the video is the best short exposition but you could try reading the paper the video is about

https://rintintin.colorado.edu/~vancecd/phil308/Singer2.pdf

Or reading about the paper

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine,_Affluence,_and_Moralit...

[metabagel]

The issue is that only Congress had the authority to cut funding to a congressionally authorized program. What Elon did was illegal and also heinous.

[mikem170]

There were a lot of voters who didn't want those cuts. So they complain. Is that what swing voters thought they were getting?

The government spends like 1000 billion on the military, a couple/few 10s of billions on aid is just being charitable. And projects soft power, buying good will. And was probably well used by the cia.

And then there's the philopher Peter Singer, who would say that not helping other people is immoral. Most people wouldn't go that far, but some do. Some religions ephasize such things.

Opinions differ.

[darkwater]

> Some religions ephasize such things.

Theoretically, the religion of most of the voters of the current POTUS emphasizes and almost mandate being charitable and help the poor.

[Aurornis]

> Wait, you think not giving additional aid = responsibility for whatever happens in the developing country?

This, and your $500 cancer donation, is an absurdist reduction of the problem.

The USAID contributions weren’t anything like your $500 example. It was the entire infrastructure for medical care and immunizations that people relied on.

The proper way to wind these programs down, if it was appropriate, was to give an off ramp so their governments and other organizations could minimize a plan to fill the void by a certain date.

If you take responsibility for something medical on a large scale, doing a sudden rug pull has predictable consequences. Those predictable consequences cannot be separated from the person who made the decision.

I think these terrible analogies about donating $500 indicate that you don’t understand the problem.

[verytrivial]

Well said.

[brokencode]

I don’t know, does global cancer research shut down when you stop giving the $500? Do kids immediately stop receiving treatment?

USAID literally ran ambulance systems that shut down due to lack of diesel. They delivered lifesaving drugs that stopped.

We made commitments to communities to run these services, then suddenly killed them off. We didn’t try to find other countries to step in. We didn’t try to get the local governments to take over.

We did jack shit to try to preserve lives in this transition process.

[xp84]

But if we never had, those deaths would have been happening that whole time, wouldn't they?

Unless you're saying that the aid being there in the first place was actively discouraging any self-sufficiency by the sovereign governments who are actually responsible for those areas... in which case I can see why some people (both in the West and the developing world) oppose foreign aid in the first place. Even if we passed the baton around to other countries, the band-aid will still have to be ripped off at some point.

I'm actually not anti-foreign-aid entirely, I think in addition to the humanitarian benefits which I do value, when done well it helps project soft power, giving normal people a concrete counterpoint when extremists like Islamists try to claim "America is an evil empire that hates you and wants you to die." So in that way I don't endorse eliminating USAID... I admit that mainly it was a circus trick to try to hand supporters a concrete W for the vibe of "America First" and/or "Saving Money"

[brokencode]

Maybe the deaths would have happened, or maybe these places would have become self sufficient or received aid elsewhere. There’s really no way to know.

But we committed to providing this aid. Even if we think it would be better in the long term for others to do it instead, there’s no excuse to cut it off suddenly without making reasonable efforts at a transition.

Imagine you’re the long term caretaker for a family member, then just decide one day you’re tired of it, so stop. You make no attempt to find somebody else to take over, you simply stop bringing them their meds/food or whatever.

Do you think your family should then forgive you after grandma dies? I don’t think so.

[permalac]

Pretty easy.

Nazi salute. Supporting all nazi and far right movements in Europe, publicly. Inventing DOGE so he could fire judges and pave his way out of trouble.

Yes. Is easy to see why some hate him, for life.

[FeepingCreature]

I don't think that one USAID tracker website is very reliable, sadly. I also believed this. A bunch of programs were rolled into the state department, and for instance mortality stats for South Africa are significantly upwards-diverging from their model. Now SA is an unusually well-put-together African state, but the study could have modeled this and didn't, so I don't think it should be taken as gospel until more countries report in.

[Brian_K_White]

You don't sound sorry.

I can't help you with your problem getting something this thoroughly gettable.

I can only assume it's deliberate.

[mandeepj]

> This was never about money for him, but about control over a key technology

It's very comforting to know for those reasons he'd never be able to become POTUS; although there's still a way, I hope he never gets to know about it. Otherwise, he'll make it a fascist land.

[Gigachad]

He needs to be able to skew the worlds AI towards racism and whatever else he believes at the moment.

[piokoch]

There is also a simpler explanation that does not make Musk looking like an evil wrongdoer - Musk is working on human-shape robots, for this he needs AI.

BTW. Musk started electric cars revolution (which is supposed to help the planet?), he made space flights way cheaper and accessible, his Starlink/Starshield saved Ukraine from being defeated right away by Russia, but, because of his political views, he is considered an evil man.

[azinman2]

He didn’t start Tesla, he bought it. To his credit he probably saved it. But we also don’t have the counter factual.

“Because of his political views” This is a beyond charitable take. He brought in a chainsaw to the US gov (literally and figuratively), after buying his way in with trump with his 250M donation to create a new part of gov that was not democratically assembled. This isn’t just him tweeting a perspective.

[monknomo]

"political actions" even!

not to mention his current 'Tommy Robinson' political opinion spree is sufficient to have very serious objections to his political opinions. I'd no more associate with him than I would Henry Ford at the height of his Dearborn Independent stuff or Theodore Bilbo etc. Of course a person's views can be so bad that they take on a moral dimension, that seems very obvious.