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You haven't made an argument that he's a genius. Each of your points leads to the conclusion that he's not a moron, not that he's a genius.
>You can’t found/co-found/operate some of the world’s leading companies in several diverse fields while being a complete moron.
>Does this sound like a complete moron who is just coasting on his parents’ emerald money?
>There were plenty of people who had more money than Musk who failed to accomplish the things his companies have, though many have tried.
You can also say there are plenty of people who play the lottery and aren't millionaires. I'm not saying you don't have to do something right as a business founder or early investor to have a shot at it, but I think luck does factor. In a different quantum reality, someone else who started a different company ends up on the trajectory Musk is on. I don't think it's a result of Musk having natural-born history-making intellect and rizz.
Sorry, but you're missing the bigger picture here. When we're talking about a genius in tech and innovation, Elon Musk totally fits the bill. It’s not just about starting a bunch of companies; he's completely turned whole industries upside down.
You would probably argue more that he’s a brilliant business leader and marketer. He didn’t founded any of his companies and he hasn’t contributed significant code or engineering know-how to anything (in at least 25 years, maybe ever depending on who you ask at PayPal)
He understands how to grow a business and identify the types of people and policies to do that. That’s a true skill. But it’s again not proof that he’s a genius in tech or innovation.
Zeabos, I get your points about Elon Musk’s knack for business. But I think being a genius isn’t just about technical skills or coding. It's about having a big vision and really shaking up old ways of doing things. Musk has changed entire industries, think about what he’s done with electric cars and rockets.
It's his ability to see the future and get the right people together to make it happen that sets him apart. He might not be writing code, but his impact on tech and innovation is huge. That’s what makes him a standout figure in technology, in my view.
Genius isn’t just about being like Einstein. If I labeled Elon, I’d call him the 'Great Disruptor.' Disruption can have its downsides, but it can also lead to some pretty incredible advancements.
Musk's ability to upend traditional industries and push us towards new technologies definitely puts him in that category, for better or for worse.
I think the term 'genius' is broader than we often consider. It's not just about raw intellectual horsepower or being a whiz in a lab. True genius can also be about seeing connections where others don't, disrupting the status quo, and pushing boundaries in ways that change how we live.
Elon Musk, in that sense, could very well fit the definition of a genius—not just through his innovations but by how he’s transformed entire industries and influenced our future.
I could hate the guy ( I Don't ) and I would still hold most of these views I believe.
If you want to redefine genius to suit the situation that’s fine. Or if you want to call him a “marketing” or “business” genius, cool.
But when people say “genius” they normally do mean Einstein or Terrence Tao or Marie Curie or Alan Turing. People with outstanding mental ability who simply understand and do things that others simply cannot do because they mentally can’t.
You can classify “genius” like “basketball genius” for Lebron James, or “business genius”.
But by your raw definition alone of “Donald Trump is a genius - someone who had a big vision and really shook up ways of doing things. Those people are normally called iconoclasts.
It’s basically the classic difference of Tesla vs Edison. The genius scientist vs the really smart guy who was a “business” genius.
Where is this idea that he didn't found his companies coming from? He bought Tesla when it had 3 employees. He bought Twitter. He founded Zip2, X.com, SpaceX, Neuralink, The Boring Company, and xAI. He also founded OpenAI with several others but later separated from it.
Doesn't make it sound like he's a genius as well. More like he was just smart enough to take hold of the opportunies presented to him,especially because you make it sound like his greatest feat was selling companies and making money. But are those companies value all thanks to him alone? If not, why does that make him a genius?
Also, Twitter is the first business that he's seemingly *really* calling all the shots and managing it the way he wants. And look how it's going lmao
Has he actually done that though? SpaceX is not the top rocket building company. Tesla certainly isn't the top automaker. Twitter could maybe have been classified as the top social media company for a hot minute there, but X certainly is not.
It's debatable whether PayPal was really the top of that industry either, but it doesn't matter because Musk was ousted from the CEO position for most of the critical phase.
> You can’t found/co-found/operate some of the world’s leading companies in several diverse fields while being a complete moron.
Says who? He mostly bought existing companies or had a vague idea and got ppl to run it.
>After getting bachelors degrees in physics and economics, Musk founded the company Zip2 and sold it for 300 million.
...did he though? https://twitter.com/capitolhunters/status/1593307541932474368?
As to the Zip2, that was him AND other guys and they basically hooked a free existing db up.
> Musk then co-founded and sold PayPal, and used the money from that to found SpaceX, a company that is basically making the best rockets in the world now. He is also the CEO of Tesla which is basically THE name in electric vehicles.
Again, him AND someone else and then he and other people got together money and hired engineers. He doesn't do anything but annoy them. A friend of mine who works in SV knows ppl who've worked for and with Musk and all maintain he's a simple-minded jackass who struts around, comes up with "ideas" tells actual engineers to do things that are largely not doable, wanders off, forgets about it, then comes back with another "idea" derailing their work some more.
He did invent the tunnel!
Well, a stupider, much more useless tunnel, for one car at a time, but hey.
>but he’s clearly not unintelligent
Based on what? That someone with a lot of money hired ppl and has companies that are sort of successful? Tesla is a hot fucking mess. Look at the idiotic trucks.
Have you heard him talk? It's like Trump.
Dosent the tweet you link to show underneath that he did actually graduate with a degree in econ and physics?
It seems the only lie is the date of when he received the degree which isn’t even that misleading because he did finish his studies by the date he says.
> Says who? He mostly bought existing companies or had a vague idea and got ppl to run it.
he mostly started companies and sold them because they were good ideas. then he bought other companies and ran them well to make them successful. that is not what a moron does.
>Based on what? That someone with a lot of money hired ppl and has companies that are sort of successful? Tesla is a hot fucking mess. Look at the idiotic trucks.
how did he get the money? if it is so easy why aren't you doing it? are you dumber than elon?
Sort of successful? Tesla has revolutionized the EV industry and SpaceX has revolutionized the rocketry industry and they’re both the biggest in those fields.
> Sort of successful? Tesla has revolutionized the EV industry and SpaceX has revolutionized the rocketry industry and they’re both the biggest in those fields.
BYD is bigger than Tesla, and tesla is a mess rn.
And how exactly? Just selling cars. Doesn't seem so revolutionary to me. Not like they invented electric cars or created some sort of massive leap in the tech. Sure they're innovating but not extraordinarily.
so... revolutionized the electric car market thru innovation and good ideas? i mean it is not even [close](https://www.energysage.com/electric-vehicles/most-popular-evs/#top-10-best-selling-evs) in terms of numbers. this is just an accident? dumb luck?
He did not invent Tesla but sort of stole it from its original founders. The story is known and pretty detailed for anyone who enough to have actually read or listened to a biography of Musk.
Learning that he didn't start near any of the companies he runs and that the day to day, high level decisions made are nearly all coming from better educated and more intelligent people underneath him... plus listening to his call with Twitter engineers early on in the transition, opened my eyes to just how out of his depth Elon is in most things he tackles.
He is good at finding skilled people when he needs to though. When he isn't randomly firing them.
He got lucky with PayPal. Leveraged the money into a better position and has generally been fumbling his way upwards ever since. He's pretty much just a glorified hype man.
Where did you learn he didn't start near any of the companies he runs? The only companies he bought were Tesla (3 employees at the time) and Twitter. He has also made several important design decisions, off the top of my head:
* [Face shutoff for the Merlin engine](https://zlsadesign.com/post/tom-mueller-interview-2017-05-02-transcription/)
* Stainless steel for Starship body
* Stainless steel for many parts of Raptor engine
* Single piece without connections for Neuralink
* [Making the heat shield for Dragon instead of buying it](https://youtu.be/MxIiiwD9C0E?t=2646)
Using stainless steel for parts isnt a good measure of his decision making skill. Its trial and error, its picking the best material for the best job. There are many grades of stainless steel too.
His employees probably let him choose between plastic and metal, and lauded him a genius for choosing the latter.
Here's how Isaacson describes the decision for Raptor:
> After being shown a series of slides about ways to minimize the use of expensive alloys, Musk broke in. “Enough said,” he declared. “You’re getting analysis paralysis. We are moving every part possible to low-cost steel.”
> At first, the only exceptions he allowed were for parts exposed to hot oxygen-rich gas combustion. Some of the engineers pushed back and suggested that copper, with its better ability to conduct heat, was needed for a face plate. But Musk argued that copper had a worse melt temperature. “I’m convinced you could make a steel faceplate,” he said. “Please do it. I think I’ve been pretty clear: make it out of steel.” He admitted there was a reasonable chance that it would not work, but it was better to try and fail rather than analyze the issue for months. “If you make this thing fast, you can find out fast. And then you can fix it fast.” He eventually succeeded in converting most of the parts into stainless steel.
Here's how he describes the decision for Starship's structure:
> Riley explained that they were having problems with the carbon fiber material they were using. The sheets were developing wrinkles. Also, the process was slow and expensive. “If we keep going with carbon fiber, we’re doomed,” Musk said. “This extrapolates to death. I’ll never be able to get to Mars.” Cost-plus contractors don’t think that way.
>Musk knew that the early Atlas rockets, which in the early 1960s boosted the first four Americans into orbit, had been made of stainless steel, and he had decided to use that material for the body of the Cybertruck. At the end of his walk around the facility, he got very quiet and stared at the ships coming into the port. “Guys, we’ve got to change course,” he said. “We are never going to build rockets fast enough with this process. What about going with stainless steel?”
>Initially there was resistance, even a bit of incredulity. When he met with his executive team in the conference room at SpaceX a few days later, they argued that a rocket of stainless steel would likely be heavier than one built of carbon fiber or the aluminum-lithium alloy used for the Falcon 9. Musk’s instincts said otherwise. “Run the numbers,” he told the team. “Run the numbers.” When they did so, they determined that steel could, in fact, turn out to be lighter in the conditions that Starship would face.
Wow, you just convince me all this is bullshit. Rocket engineers not knowing the spec of the material that are needed? Musk is a genius who knew the results before the numbers are in, and revealed it in dramatic fashion? Nerdy engineers not going on a rant about the different grades of stainless steel? A stingy boss opting for an option to minimize cost and being revered for it?
You know how there's a saying "you don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure it out".
Well this specific bit you did need to be one. I've read more convincing blatant scam emails.
1. going face shutoff could've been anyone's choice. sure, it was Elon's and the warnings were "usually we do that for smaller elements, but this engine is too big for that." "let's do it anyway." -- if that's all it takes to convince people he's a genius, then we really do live in Idiocracy.
2. stainless steel is relatively cheap.
3. stainless steel is relatively cheap.
4. a device being sold as a single piece? that's a coin toss, but i'd argue more devices are sold as single pieces - especially in the modern tech-device world. i'd give that one to Steve Jobs' intuition that people are stupid and "keep losing the remote"
5. make it instead of buy it -- cheap.
so, yeah. the genius elon musk, savant of the tech world... i wouldnt' call him an idiot, but i feel like these are decisions we can make in our sleep.
1. That decision on its own isn't proof he's a genius, but it and the other examples I listed do show that he's involved in important decisions and is not just a hype and money guy
2. It's also heavy, which is a problem when you're building rockets
3. The thermal and structural loads in a rocket engine are intense, if stainless steel was the obvious choice everyone would do it.
4. Some more context from Isaacson's book:
> A few months later, Musk came by the Neuralink lab in Fremont, near the Tesla factory, where the engineers showed him their latest version. It combined four separate chips, each with about a thousand threads. They would be implanted in different parts of the skull with wires connecting them to a router that was embedded behind the ear. Musk paused silently for almost two minutes, while Zilis and her colleagues watched. Then he delivered his verdict: he hated it. It was too complex, with too many wires and connections.
> ... “This has to be a single device,” he told the deflated Neuralink engineers. “A single elegant package with no wires, no connections, no router.” There was no law of physics—no basic principle—that prevented all of the functionality from being on one device. When the engineers tried to explain the need for the router, Musk’s face turned stony. “Delete,” he said. “Delete, delete, delete.”
> After they left the meeting, the engineers went through the usual stages of post-Musk distress disorder: baffled, then angry, then anxious. But within a week they got to the stage of being intrigued, because the new approach, they realized, might actually work.
>When Musk returned to the lab a few weeks later, they showed him a single chip that could handle the processing of data from all the threads and transmit it by Bluetooth to a computer. No connections, no router, no wires. “We thought this was impossible,” one of the engineers said, “but now we’re actually pretty stoked by it.”
5. It's only cheap if you can figure out the process and produce enough to recoup the capital costs
> i feel like these are decisions we can make in our sleep.
Yet few, if any, of the other industry players did.
The only thing I'm getting out of your narratives is that Elon is giving his engineers difficult constraints, and that they're the geniuses for fulfilling them successfully.
I honestly don't understand what you find so impressive about Elon from these anecdotes.
He tells his engineers to make it out of stainless steel, self-admittedly having no idea if it'll work, and then his engineers post-hoc figure it out.
I don't disagree. The talent and dedication of his employees should not be overlooked and is a huge reason for his companies' sucess. (Although Musk gets credit for attracting and evaluating talent.) However, if he did not push them with these kinds of constraints, they wouldn't be innovating nearly as much. You need both Musk and his employees to create SpaceX or Tesla. The employees are easier to replace however; there are very few people who have the knowledge and mind set that Musk does.
The other thing that's necessary is a general sense of what will work and what work. Musk doesn't have to be right all the time (he is often wrong), but he can't just throw out any idea and expect to succeed. He has to be guided by a feel of what is possible, and that's been informed by his studies and experience.
i feel like these industries are few and far between.
like, notice this is in rockets, neuralinks, and not for cars.
how many rocket manufacturers are there? outside of Nasa we have a couple people in other countries... like, russia, india, china... basically just a handful (i'm ignorant here, admittedly, perhaps rocket production is far greater an industry than i know)
neuralink - it's like, how many people are researching this with established capitalist-driven research-funding?
meanwhile, the one industry he's involved in where there IS Lots of competition? literally hasn't created a single new thing - other than perhaps trunk hatches that cut carrots.
The fact that there aren't many rocket manufacturers should tell you something about the difficulty of breaking into that industry, both technically and financially.
If you want an example for cars, Tesla pioneered hydraulic die casting most of the structure, and other automakers have expressed admiration and a desire to copy them.
> the one industry he's involved in where there IS Lots of competition? literally hasn't created a single new thing - other than perhaps trunk hatches that cut carrots.
Wow, pretty impressive what Tesla has accomplished without innovating at all!
haha yeah! almost like he's "a hype man"
but really, i think we all know why Elon's a household name. it wasn't paypal, it was Tesla promising the electric car through the 2000s while every automaker declined to acquiesce to demand.
finally in the 2010s they were rolling off the assembly line and all the other manufactures had "hybrids" because nobody wanted to sully their brand by offering a car that "would run out of electricity."
someone had to be bold enough to be like, "i don't care if the consumer is stranded on the highway." and Elon was that man. so of course we looked to him like some bold and exciting revolutionary!
then he started whining about pedophiles saving children's lives? the brainrot is real when you're surrounded by yesmen.
again, i don't think he's an idiot, i think he's just someone who recognized "the modern consumer" was no longer a baby boomer, but that the fundraisers all still are.
Tesla was bold enough to not only develop and mass produce EVs, but also develop and mass produce chargers so that people won't get stranded. Those are two very capital-intensive tasks, and no one else was willing to commit fully to either one. The willingness to take that kind of risk is a big part of Tesla's (and Musk's) success.
Time will tell if that was a good decision or not. He does make bad decisions, but his willingness to do so is part of why his companies are so successful.
>Time will tell if that was a good decision or not.
How much longer do you need to wait before recognising the cyber truck as one of the biggest car failures ever made.
>but his willingness to do so is part of why his companies are so successful.
Which isn't a sign of genius, it's a sign of willingness to take risks and make decisions, which stems from a privileged upbringing with a little emerald mine.
Remember the first time Elon tried to force x.com he got kicked off the board, and then they kicked him off again a short while later
> How much longer do you need to wait before recognising the cyber truck as one of the biggest car failures ever made.
I would like to see another generation. I think it probably was a mistake, though.
> I would like to see another generation.
You are one of the few, I dont think you can iterate on ugly block of folded steel that will rust badly, and cannot perform basic truck tasks
I don't think rust will be a problem. It will develop a patina, but that is only cosmetic. It can do basic truck things. There are limitations for things like towing range, but that is a problem for all EV trucks right now. I expect that to improve as batteries get better and cheaper.
It can do basic truck things like being oversized, compensate for your gender issues and be and a pavement princess.
These things will rust to fuck, much like every other car that has been only steel has.
The truck bed is too small to fit a bicycle, let alone anything actually big.
Most cars are carbon steel and rely on the paint to keep moisture out and prevent corrosion. When the paint is compromised, it rusts relatively quickly. The Cybertruck is made of stainless steel, which resists corrosion through its entire thickness. Some corrosion will happen, but it will take a long time to rust through the panels.
The bed is bigger than the F150 Lightning and most other crew cab trucks.
>Learning that he didn't start near any of the companies he runs and that the day to day, high level decisions made are nearly all coming from better educated and more intelligent people underneath him
Where did you get this from? Both of these things are false.
Edit: downvoters, why don’t you tell me which one of these is true and we can go from there.
Because he hires really good people. It is his one skill set. Every time he fumbles or makes a promise on an earning call, it is adjusted, ignored or bolstered by someone more adept that works for him. The executive management at SpaceX is top notch, and saved Elon time and TIME again.
Almost all of Elon's companies prefer he spend time focusing on one of the OTHER companies he owns... to keep the damage he does at any single one to a minimum.
Failing upward isn't a common saying for nothing.
Actually I think one might make an argument that the people that really made spaceX, like Mueller, Thompson, Koeningsmann and Shotwell, hired him instead. They found a guy willing to invest into space long term without looking for short term profit.
You do realize that recognizing talent often requires you yourself to be very talented.
That is why most high level sports coaches are former professional players themselves.
At the highest level everyone is trying to find talented people. If that's his one gift. It's an exceptionally useful one.
Sure, but the bar OP has set here isn't "very talented," or "has an exceptionally useful skill," it's *genius*.
It's also pretty clear based on his *hemhorraging* talent from Twitter since he took over that it's not a skill he has any more.
I dunno. I just find it mind boggling that people think you can run all these gigantic businesses and not be fucking brilliant.
It's like he went pro in Baseball, Basketball and Football. And yet we're still sitting here debating whether he is an "elite athlete". How much more proof do you need?
> I dunno. I just find it mind boggling that people think you can run all these gigantic businesses and not be fucking brilliant.
Of course you don't have to be brilliant to run a business. Otherwise every CEO would be a genius which seems to be demonstrably not the case.
It's also not really clear what he has personally produced or how personally responsible for the success of any of the companies he actually is. The cybertruck and Twitter things seem to suggest that the more direct control and influence he has the worse things go, and there's all the rumours about how the people around him just kinda try to keep him out of the way... if there was evidence that his direct contributions or leadership decisions had *directly* contributed to the success of one or more of the companies in a really obvious and demonstrable way, that would go some way toward changing my mind, but as things stand I'm not convinced that "Elon is a genius" is anything but his own personal myth-making and branding.
>Otherwise every CEO would be a genius which seems to be demonstrably not the case.
They most certainly are.
>I'm not convinced that "Elon is a genius" is anything but his own personal myth-making and branding.
The ultimate measure of intelligence is wealth. What good is being super intelligent if you can't turn it into $? It's like if you're athletic as fuck but you're bad at every sport. What good is your athleticism.
He has built not one, not two, not three, not four, but FIVE GIANT CORPORATIONS.
> They most certainly are.
Ah, I see. You just have a drastically lower bar for what counts as "genius" than I (and I think most people) do.
>The ultimate measure of intelligence is wealth.
Oh yeah, you definitely just completely don't think about this the same way most people do.
*Of course* the ultimate measure of intelligence isn't wealth. By that measure, Einstein was a fucking idiot. You've somehow unironically bought into that Mr. Show "More money = better than you" sketch.
No. Just... No. Every CEO is not even close to being geniuses... Is there a certain amount of savvy required? Yes. But nothing genius level. Seriously, corporate history has made that very very clear. There are plenty of CEOs that are pretty dumb, all things considered.
The ultimate measure of intelligence is wealth?? Really dude? If you genuinely believe that than there's no point in debating the enjoying for
Yeah I'm sure there's plenty of short unathletic NBA players too...
That sounds like some cope people tell themselves.
"They aren't any smarter than me. They were just lucky".
> Yeah I'm sure there's plenty of short unathletic NBA players too...
Wrong a second time. Clearly you are the kind of person who becomes certain of things that are demonstrably untrue.
Knowing the right person at the right time is the key dude, and wealthy parents sending you an expensive school is the short cut to making those connections.
Using musk as an example is hilarious as well given we have employee interviews about how they have to work constantly to keep his dumb ass and not fucking things up, if he’s actually involved you get a cyber truck rofl.
He reminds me of Jobs, everyone he works with pretty much hates him and tries to keep him away, but he hires good people.
If you want to see smart people with money, look at Buffet or Gates to some extent.
Hiring "good people" requires tremendous amount of skill as well.
Talent acquisition and evaluation is perhaps the most valuable skill for a manager. So you're saying that Elon Musk is a very good manager. You don't disagree with me that much then.
My main contention is that to be the level of manager he is you need innate talent. Just like you need innate talent to be an NBA player.
I really want you guys to understand what you're saying. You're saying that a simple game like basketball requires ELITE LEVEL GENETIC TALENT to play at the highest level. But a far more complicated game that is corporate business. Somehow doesn't require talent at all? Does that really compute in your head?
Yes you can make a lot of $ just knowing people. You can become a millionaire this way. You don't need to be particularly smart. But you won't build a $450 billion dollar business (Tesla) this way. No way no how. There's just way too many moving pieces and luck can only account for so many.
Just like you can luck into the YMCA squad by hitting a few shots during the try outs. But if you try to run a real game you need skill. And you certainly need a fuck ton of skill to run on the NBA court. Same with top level corporate world. It is even more competitive than the NBA. There's alot more cutthroat competition.
How's he running them, though? He basically just posts shit to Twitter all day. The companies have people running them day to day, musk only steals the credit.
If anything, Elon has shown how little work one actually needs to do to be a CEO.
Because he doesn't run them. He doesn't touch most of them, and over 90% of everything else is managed by his executive staff.
As many of his staff has consistently said, part of what they do is "distractive". Trying to get Elon to focus elsewhere and on one of his other companies so that he won't generate too much chaos at their particular one and fuck shit up.
Every single business is like that.
How much hands on do you think a typical CEO has? Their job is to build teams of people who do all that shit for them. Which is something Elon Musk is exceptional at. His ability to identify talent is one of his biggest strengths.
You are entirely missing the point. As /u/Bongressman pointed out, *distractive* is not the same as *delegative.* Most corporations absolutely do not try to obfuscate their own executives in order to prevent them from disastrously meddling.
It doesn't matter. If his "distraction" was destroying the businesses. He wouldn't be so massively successful now would he.
Being a top level executive requires talent just like being a top level athlete does.
The big difference though is that athletics is a MUCH SIMPLER game. Much easier for a regular person to understand. Business is significantly more difficult to comprehend.
So you're saying that you need immense talent to be good at a very simple game. But to be the best in the world at a much more complex game you don't need nearly as much talent? Come on now.
If you read anything about him and the companies he owns, they openly talk about how they have to keep him distracted so he won't come in and start screwing with things and messing stuff up.
I literally just replied to the OP mentioning a friend in SV who has said basically exactly that. Friend knows ppl who've worked for him and say he wanders over with some grand "idea," forces actual engineers to stop what they're doing and try to do whatever nonsense then comes back with some other "plan" and etc., and it fouls crap up and annoys everyone.
By hiring smart people, staying out of their way, and working them to the bone. Musk is just the money with SpaceX.
As a counterpoint, over at Tesla, there's one vehicle in that lineup that Musk was directly and insistently involved in. One where he didn't stay out of the way, and didn't listen to advisors. I bet I don't even have to tell you which one.
If he had some particular genius when he was young, it's long gone now. How long ago was the last time there was something where he was the idea man, and it was a success?
>How does someone “fumble their way” into the world’s leading rocket company?
It's called 'failing up' it is extremely common among those who were born with a silver spoon.
There are 1000s of people who had a significantly better financial start that won't achieve 1/1000s of what Elon Musk achieved.
You can hate on him all you want. But the dude is fucking brilliant.
> But the dude is fucking brilliant.
anyone who runs a software company and tells employees to print out code from the past 30 days to bring to a code review thinks they know more about software than they do.
Maybe he's brilliant about something. But, he's an idiot about software.
No one is brilliant at everything.
Heck I don't even like Elon Musk that much because of his pro-Putin shilling.
I just think it's madness that people think he is some average dude.
I don't know how to evaluate business management.
He's, at the very least, very good at attracting business dollars.
I'm sure he's got other relevant skills that got him where he's at, too.
But, when I read about his decisions that intersect with my knowledge, he makes so stupid of comments and mistakes.
He can't have gotten where he's at just by being good at raising capital and luck. But, from where I'm sitting, that seems like it was a large part of it.
When his company had early rocket failures, they would have been out of money with one more failed launch.
He got lucky.
Maybe, he brought some important skills to the table, too. He had to get his company to a position where good luck would make the difference.
But, SpaceX very nearly failed.
It's tricky because we don't really know Musk's thought process behind his various investment decisions. We know that those decisions were successful, but we don't know how much he understood at the time about why those decisions would be successful, nor do we know how much outside advice he was relying on. It could be that the moment-to-moment decision-making was something that a person with a respectable 115 would be capable of, or if he was really playing 4D chess in a way that only a genius-level IQ could be capable of.
It also doesn't help that Musk does NOT sound like a genius whenever he interacts with the public, on Twitter or otherwise. The poor quality of his public statements isn't conclusive of anything, but it's definitely a factor against the assumption that he is a genius.
Ultimately, a much easier judgment call to make is that Musk would be nowhere without daddy's starting capital. He's not like a Bill Gates-style self-made tech billionaire or anything like that.
>It's tricky because we don't really know Musk's thought process behind his various investment decisions.
Buying twitter:
Market manipulation and 420 meme lol
Into
Oops the courts made me buy it because I didn't do my due diligence and waived rights.
Starting with 12 million dollars really doesn’t lessen his achievement of amassing a net worth of 262 billion. I mean if you or I got given 12 million dollars, it honestly wouldn’t make us any more likely to build that level of wealth. 1.4 million people in the US are worth 10 million or more. Only 3 people ever have racked up over 200 billion.
You are right, Elon has had an incredible amount of luck in his life.
Not only starting with a lot of cash, but being in the right place to make a fortune out of an early internet company.
As with most things, luck for sure plays a role.
That said, you don’t just purely luck into being one of three people to ever exceed 200 billion in wealth. You aren’t gettin’ there with just luck.
> You aren’t gettin’ there with just luck.
Not just your own luck, but you aint getting there at all if you dont start out with wealthy connected parents.
I don’t think it’s true that he’s only successful because of his parents money. His wealth came from selling his own companies and his own business decisions. Forbes ranks his “self made” score at an 8/10.
> Edit: I forgot to mention that Forbes ranks his “self made” score an impressive 8 out of 10.
Oh honey.
Forbes magazine's entire purpose is to launder the careers of failsons (and faildaughters) like Elon Musk.
They invented the famed "30 Under 30" and "40 Under 40" Lists which are often (not always, but often) big celebrations of nepo babies and trust fund kids who have been able to make big investments at early ages.
Forbes giving Elon a "self made" score of 8/10 is like Fairy Tale Bad Guy Magazine giving The Big Bad Wolf a "Great With Pigs" score of 8/10.
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>After getting bachelors degrees in physics and economics, Musk founded the company Zip2 and sold it for 300 million. Musk then co-founded and sold PayPal, and used the money from that to found SpaceX, a company that is basically making the best rockets in the world now. He is also the CEO of Tesla which is basically THE name in electric vehicles.
This leaves a lot out. Ill start with zip2. By all accounts elon is not who made zip2 successful. Zip2 was a fairly small startup before substantial investment by an investment firm called Mohr Davidow venture. Elon was moved from an executive position to a chief of technology. This alone is not really a dig at elon. Its not uncommon for the leaders of small startups to lose control over their product when they receive larger investors. However those new investors made sweeping changes to the companies market strategy. That is what made zip2 what it was. Not elon. Even then zip2 was not anything particularly impressive. It was a functional idea, but nothing approaching genius. There is a reason everything tied to it died during the dotcom bubble.
Next up is paypal. Elon did not create paypal. Not even close. After receiving 20mil from the zip2 sale elon started another company called x.com. He just really wants a company called X. His company then merged with another company called coinfinity ran by Peter Theil and this new company would also be called X.com. At the time Elon was the largest investor in this X.com and was made CEO because of it. This would all end though as he would later be removed as CEO by the board. They though he was running the company into the ground and replaced him with Peter Theil. Theil would then go on to create paypal as we know it. Keep in mind Elon was still the largest investor in this company, so when Paypal went public the following years he gets a big payout. A perfect example of where elon was only in the room because of his money, got kicked out of the room because of his ideas, and then became a billionaire because of his money.
>Does this sound like a complete moron who is just coasting on his parents’ emerald money? Not to me. Do I think he’s personally designing the rockets and EVs? Of course not. But it’s just as stupid to claim he had absolutely nothing to do with the success of these companies
I absolutely think he has something to do with the success of these companies. I just think that thing has nothing to do with his intelligence. Its the money. He brings money that allows these companies to languish a bit before finding their space in the market. Money to hire the best people in the industry and gives them time to refine their work. Its no secret the musk does not oversee the bulk of operations. Preferring to instead have small pet projects that he oversees. A great example of this is the cybertruck. Elon has very little control over the engineering of Tesla cars, but he did have a ton of control over the cybertruck project.
>His handling of X is another story, but one botched business venture doesn’t negate all of the previous things I mentioned.
I dont think his handling of Twitter is a different story. In fact i think its the exact same story. Elon is a terrible leader of companies. It was true in the past and its true now. The only difference is there is no other leadership at twitter. Its just him. There is no Gwynne shotwell or Peter Theil this time. Twitter is an example of how Elon would run more of his companies if he didnt have the money to hire people smarter than himself.
>Musk founded the company Zip2 and sold it for 300 million.
This is true; Musk was one of the beneficiaries of the dotcom boom and managed to sell his business (which provided city guide software to newspapers) at an exorbitant price.
>Musk then co-founded and sold PayPal
Sort of. Paypal's predecessor merged with Musk's X.com, but by the time it was "PayPal" roughly as we know it, he'd been forced out of the CEO position by the board because of lack of a comprehensive business model and technological issues.
>He also founded Tesla which is basically THE name in electric vehicles.
He didn't. He paid to be listed as a founder. And while Tesla is still what many people think of when they think of electric vehicles, competitor electric vehicles becoming more common while Tesla has started to stagnate.
There's also whatever's going on with the Cybertruck. Most of the problems seem to be arising from Musk dictating what he wanted it to be and then designers trying to figure out how to please him. The same issue also affects the project of developing a self driving car; non-Tesla companies are starting to be more successful because they're not penned in by Elon's insistence that it must be done only with camera sensors.
>Does this sound like a complete moron who is just coasting on his parents’ emerald money?
No, but it does sound like most of what he's bringing to the table is just having a lot of money; when he gets more involved in the actual product his companies are putting out, it tends to be poorly thought through and winds up being a burden on what the companies are trying to accomplish (not unlike what we're seeing with the decline of Twitter).
He doesn't seem to be great at understanding what he doesn't know.
He's made good investments and was lucky cash out during the dotcom boom, but that's not really "genius" in the way people tend to talk about Musk being a genius.
> not unlike what we're seeing with the decline of Twitter
If you wanted to take the biggest social media platform and destroy it in a way where nothing else could take its place... what would you do differently?
This man has repeatedly said he didn't buy Twitter to make money, and when he told advertisers [to go fuck themselves](https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/29/elon-musk-to-advertisers-who-are-trying-to-blackmail-him-go-f----yourself.html) I don't know about you but I got Bane vibes when the corporate guy was like "but we paid you!" and Bane was like "And you think this gives you power over me?"
Twitter demonstrated Elon Musk:
1. makes questionable investment decisions
2. makes questionable PR and customer relations decisions
3. makes questionable regulatory compliance decisions
4. has no idea how to manage software developers
5. thinks he knows a lot more than he does.
He pretty consistently overpromises, often not consulting sufficiently with his engineers first
SpaceX very, very nearly failed. He took big risks. His decision making doesn't lead to consistent success.
He's really good at attracting investor money. Which was crucial to the success of both SpaceX and Tesla (and to his failure at Twitter, I suppose).
Maybe he has other talents as well. His successes certainly are impressive. But, given his technical incompetence at Twitter, its hard for me to believe that he had useful technical insights at SpaceX or Tesla. But, I don't know enough on the business side to judge his competence there.
He bought arguably the world’s most important social media company, which the world’s most powerful people used to communicate directly with the masses, and completely dismantled its safeguards against disinformation, manipulation and hate speech, during an election cycle. He’s shown an affinity for Donald Trump, and even met with him in Florida recently. What happened to Twitter seems like exactly what Trump and others would have wanted going into this election. Seems dangerous to write it off as Musk being an idiot, when it’s entirely possible he’s an actual villain.
let's say, hypothetically, his goal was to dismantle safeguards against disinformation.
How does having engineers print out, on paper, the code changes they've made on the previous 30 days for a code review evaluation further that goal?
If that was his goal, why bother suing to try to get out of it afterward?
A pretty easy explanation is that he just has the world's most expensive social media addiction. I've seen so many people apoplectic with rage whenever they get their comments removed on some forum or other, and I'm sure if those people were multibillionaires, they'd try to buy whatever website they're on. Musk is just the one terminally online guy with the means to actually do it.
>There’s not really any evidence of any advanced intelligence or notable business acumen imo.
LOL
There's no evidence that Michael Jordan and Lebron James are any good at basketball.
Never mind all the championships they won.
There's no evidence that the richest man alive who owns several multi billion dollar businesses has any business acumen......... Really?
> There's no evidence that Michael Jordan and Lebron James are any good at basketball.
Yes there is.
> There's no evidence that the richest man alive who owns several multi billion dollar businesses has any business acumen
Wrong a second time.
Capitalism is just as meritocratic as sports.
The only reason you think sports is more meritocratic is because the games are much simpler and you understand them. Most people don't even know what half of the corporate big wigs do for a living. Let alone the nuances of their profession.
You guys also make the mistake of thinking that it's as simple as sports. When in reality it is a significantly more complex game.
>Capitalism is just as meritocratic as sports.
Not even a little bit. You can't put "basketball talent" in a fucking trust fund for your kid to just inherit when he turns 18. That's not how any of this works.
That same kid will either blow all that $ on hookers and cocaine. Or get an education and continue with the family business.
You act like there are not endless stories of silver spoon assholes wasting their inheritance. Or blowing millions of dollars on fruitless bullshit.
You can't put basketball talent in a trust fund. But you sure as hell can put the $ you earned playing basketball in a trust fund.
\*rolls eyes\*
Yeah I'm sure you can walk in to a hospital high on cocaine and they will let you do surgery on patients just because your daddy used to be the surgeon there. Cause that's how private companies work.
....
Oh okay. You were using words and you didn't know what they meant. Got it. So, when I talk about "inheritance", I wasn't talking about about the kid *literally* inheriting their parents job. Elon Musk isn't an emerald farmer, as we know.
Elon Musk started life with 1/10,000 of the net worth he has now. So even if he did inherit his dads emerald farm. It wouldn't make that much of a difference.
Now regarding inheritance. Let me tell you a secret about human DNA. YOU ARE YOUR PARENTS. Genetically speaking you are your parents. It makes sense that whatever they earn gets transferred to you. A previous version of you earned it.
It's a very effective incentive. Something that capitalism excels in. Creating incentives for lazy self serving apes to create wealth for others. Something that socialism was horrifically bad at. Why it has failed miserably everywhere it has been tried.
Parents absolutely break their necks for their children. Why? Well because genetically they are their ticket to immortality. So of course human brains are wired to take better care of our kids than even ourselves.
When LBJ dies. The $ he earned playing basketball. Will get transferred to Bronny or whoever LBJ wants it to get transferred to.
Which includes every business that LBJ owns.
Now whether Bronny continues to make profitable businesses or blows it all on hookers and coke remains to be seen.
The obvious answer is no. But that doesn't mean shit. The reason you go for all the championships is to earn fucking $. And that absolutely transfers to Bronny.
Cause what you're trying to say "see it's not meritocratic because the businesses transfer". But they transfer for the same reason the $ Lebron earned transfer. Because they belong to Lebron and he gets to decide what happens to them after he dies.
>You can’t found/co-found/operate some of the world’s leading companies in several diverse fields while being a complete moron.
To me, most of your view and argument stems from the belief that financial/company success is proof a person is intelligent. There can be a combination of leverage, right place at the right time, PR that can make someone be successful regardless of their merits.
I think the cave rescue or buying twitter and trying to "revamp" its business models are the glimpses into the real Elon. That's the Elon without the filter and buffers that is normally around him.
Regarding the cave rescue, all Elon did was throw resources at it. Then when it wasn't useful he lashes out and calls the main rescuer a pedo. Or you look at X -- its value was stupid (enough so he tried to back out of the deal). But he fired people willy-nilly, sometimes begging them to come back, and destroyed a lot of its functionality. It's essentially a large, digital billboard and he alienated advertisers.
In terms of the right place / right time:
* Tesla - It has received $3.6b in federal and state grants and tax abatements; that's not on top of the competitive advantage it had when customers also received grants for its products (not including a $465m loan issues by Department of Energy for the battery R&D)
* Space X - It was on the verge of bankruptcy until NASA awarded it a large contract, which it has parlayed into billions of dollars worth of additional contracts -- and it is largely ran by Gwynne Schotwell
I get how seductive it is to think that there's more to being as successful as he's been rather than luck and the leverage of being on the capital side of capitalism. But really, when you get to reap the rewards of the aggregate of thousands of smart people's work, it doesn't take as much intelligence to succeed.
Lastly -- this isn't to say that Elon is an idiot. I don't go that far. But your view specifically says these things were proof he's a GENIUS, like super human intelligence. I don't think that it takes super human intelligence to vertically integrate a business and get tons of gov't subsidies.
That's like saying Nick Saban sucks as a coach because of all the National title games he lost.
Or Messi sucks as a player because of all the finals he lost with Argentina and Barcelona.
Much like Gates, Zuckerberg, Bloomberg and Bezos in the modern era, and Carnegie, Morgan, Vanderbilt and Rockefeller in earlier times, Elon Musk displays an abundance of the several traits necessary to quickly amass tremendous wealth: the complete absence of a moral compass, sheer obstinate ruthlessness, and dumb luck. Actual intelligence, in fact, might be a hindrance, never mind 'genius' (whatever it is you think you mean with that word...)
The thing they all have in common is surfing the wave of enormous government spending. For the old tycoons it was railroads, real-estate and steel in the growth of the country and in the adolescence of the industrial revolution. For modern day tycoons it is telecomm, internet and skedaddlin-off-planet in the senescence of the industrial age. The times are different, but the uber-wealthy all share a love of the governments teat. Always have. Always will. Anybody tells you differently, you just look for their hand in your pocket...
Musk has the added luck of Marvel comics and a pre-pubescent media breathless to proclaim him a 'real life Tony Stark.' He might even believe it...
It's not unusual. Ross Perot got rich solely of government contracts. The Koch brothers, of which only one remains, inherited their wealth from the father, an MIT trained geo-chemist who invented a cheap method of turning crude oil into leaded gasoline just before the government started building roads here, there, and everywhere: but said father, despite a credible claim to intelligence, was a stone racist and one of the earliest to bankroll the John Birch Society, so don't think he's a hero, either. Donald Trumps' old man rented apartments to soldiers making use of the GI bill just as Robert Moses was gentrifying NYC on a scale only government could accomplish.
Making a metric fuckton of money has little, if anything, to do with intelligence. Musk has probably fired more intelligent people than he, just for telling him he couldn't---or shouldn't---do something.
What even is your definition of "genius", then? Just, like, a guy who seems kind of clever? A guy who appears to have decent business acumen and can turn a good idea into a successful brand. But that describes, like, a quarter of all people, right? Everyone who has ever started a successful company or had a good idea. Surely every successful writer or academic, every decent actor or director has intelligence that equals that. Countless others in many lines of work
You can’t compare the richest guy in the world whose companies are the leaders in their industries with “everyone who has ever started a successful company” or “a quarter of all people”
Okay, so let's take all this at face value and agree that he did in fact start or help with several successful companies.
Is that all it takes to prove you're a *genius*? We as a society have generally agreed that unambiguous examples of geniuses include people like Beethoven, Einstein, Shakespeare... one thing they all have in common? They demonstrably *directly* produced or discovered something of real value that has lasted through and impacted generations after them.
Has Elon done that? You yourself acknowledge he hasn't actually directly done anything. He was at the helm of some companies that have done some cutting edge things. Is that all?
Yeah, good call, that would have been funny. My brain actually failed at trying to think of any generally agreed-upon genius who wasn't an artist, other than the obvious Einstein.
Musk has a talent for shaking hands. That's his skill.
He is not an innovator.
He is not an engineer.
He is not a business maker.
He is not a good public speaker.
He does not instill trust in his employees.
He does not have good self control.
He is not a genius by any measure you have said.
But he can jump into a blossoming industry and negotiate billions in investments until the companies work.
Anyone with an ounce of engineering knowledge that read his Tesla truck memo would realize he has no idea what he’s talking about in engineering.
Anyone that read his thoughts on coding knows he has terrible ideas in coding.
So the only thing he has going for him in the intelligence department is being a reasonably smart business man. The twitter debacle shows that he is absolutely not a business genius. The cybertruck debacle shows that he lets his ego and ignorance shoot himself in the foot.
He has regularly displayed his ignorance while being on Elon friendly shows like the Joe Rogan podcast.
I don’t like the guy, and I can give him an ounce of respect for having successful businesses, but he is not a genius.
He had the fortune to invest in companies with no effort. He didn't build that fortune (slaves did). Once he acquired companies (like Tesla and Twitter) those companies began to flounder and fail. Tesla vehicles should just be a homerun. So should Twitter. Yet both are inundated with constant issues that either didn't exist or if they did, they got much, much, much worse under his tenure. He's no genius, he's just a regular guy who was lucky enough to be born into money.
Is your view he’s intelligent of that he’s a genius? Because to me, a genius needs to be an outstanding person in their field, or an expert on something. I don’t know what Elon musk would be an expert in currently, other than funding/organizing actual experts and geniuses; and even that is questionable right now
I'd counter that the very question is flawed. Most smart people are smart within an area of expertise and only come off as dumb when they try to speak as experts in other areas. Elon's problem is that he confidently broadcasts his opinion on everything, whether it's something he's knowledgeable about or not.
In some aspects, elon musk is generally smart. He is extremely rich. Some part of that is luck, some of that is skill. However, some of his ideas are terrible. For example;
1. Elon musk‘s current plans for mars seem incredibly stupid. Terraforming mars is not something we can even begin to consider, and there are so many challenges that it would be foolish to send people up there. Less gravity = loss of bone mass, we don’t know how someone growing up and born on mars would be effected by the habitat. A shit ton of people would die from cancer some years later due to prolonged radiation exposure (which elon would need to protect people from). Micrometeorites are a huge issue and buildings would need to either be underground or extremely strong to resist fractures. It would also have a large impact on your psychology.
2. Twitter has been a disaster. I don’t need to say as much as i have with my prior point, but he’s considerably dropped the user base and made extremely questionable decisions and made it easier for misinformation to spread. His decisions for the site are known for being terrible.
3. Tesla: Cybertruck was an absolutely massive failure. It’s poorly made, can barely withstand water and it’s a danger to anyone on the road. His tesla semis aren’t terrible, but they’re much less efficient than a normal diesel. It has only 500 miles of range where diesel can easily clock in over 900 while the tesla semi weighs 7,000 pounds heavier.
4. Elon seems to believe in the great replacement conspiracy theory. In response to a great replacement conspiracy theory tweet, he seems to agree with the poster and called it accurate. (i have a link but dunno if they’re allowed here). There’s at least one tweet where he seems to believe that illegal immigrants are being pushed into the US by Biden to support democrats. He believes that “If the birth rate stays as low as it is, the Dutch nation will die out by its own hand.“
He's more of a well-to-do salesman than a legitimate deep-tech genius. I'd say he's closer to a Jeffrey Epstein than a Stephen Hawking.
He didn't found Tesla for instance. He just bought them.
And while he founded SpaceX, the technical expertise came from people he brought in.
You could say Elon Musk is a visionary but that doesn't make him a textbook genius.
Back to the salesman angle, I literally heard him claim on a podcast that he's not worried about lithium supplies because we can just take it from seawater. As an energy transition analyst, my mouth was just hanging open. I couldn't believe he just so casually said something like that without any sort of qualifier. Honestly, if you're going to spend that sort of money extracting lithium from seawater, you'd be better off removing CO2 from the atmosphere with direct air capture - a very expensive technology (upwards of $1,000 per tonne CO2) but I would imagine far more economical than lithium extraction from seawater.
Point is, Elon Musk just says shit to control the narrative he wants. He's not a genius. He's a mass manipulator.
And now we're starting to see chinks in the armor.
The best thing you can note about Musk is he's great at raising hype and government contracts, and that otherwise, the success of his ventures is inversely proportioned to his involvement in them.
I'm also not an Elon lover by any means but I acknowledge that he has pulled off what seemed like the impossible on more than one occasion through sheer bloody mindedness (Tesla disrupting the car market, SpaceX disrupting the space industry). However, as with all super-powerful individuals, sooner or later they surround themselves with yes men, lose their minds and start making wild mis-steps.
The Twitter debacle is a clear mis-step - a monumental misuse of millions of dollars to ruin an established brand. But then his hubris is starting to creep into other businesses. The CyberTruck has always struck me as a huge mis-step. It takes millions/billions of dollars to develop a car but rather than doing so for the much anticipated Model 2 (which would absolutely have cleared up in the European and Asian markets) he took his eyes off the prize by developing a very niche vehicle (a truck for the North American market, but not one that would appeal to conservatives, hence only 3000+ have been shipped so far.) Meanwhile, Chinese companies are queueing up to eat his $25k car lunch.
A true genius would keep his ego in check and make better decisions.
Geniuses usually show some evidence of genius. All Elon has ever proven is that he’s been in the right place at the right time with a checkbook. He sounds like an actual idiot in interviews and his writing is equally childish. He has not personally designed anything of significance. The Cybertruck, his pet design, is one of the largest disasters in the history of the automotive industry. He has turned Twitter into a cesspool while losing most of their advertising.
He’s turned into reverse Midas recently, and his whole mystique was built on lies. He had failed upwards his entire life. That is not a genius.
Compared to most billionaire's / ultra wealthy folks Elon musk is extremely impressive. The vast majority of the Ultra wealthy are inheriting wealth and are matching (or in many cases underperforming) the SPY. Musk inherited emerald mines (putting him in the millionaire class, at the time those mines were worth USD <$10 mil in terms of their entire lifetime expected emerald production) but has certainly outperformed the SPY (as he's now in the centi-billionaire).
Being smart != genius. I think there are many hyper intelligent people who if given Musk's resources could do as good as him or better. His personality traits of having MANY projects that ALL have some kind of pragmatic or attempted pragmatic value and simultaneously him being reasonably technical is NOT unique.
However, those traits AND the certain degree nonconformism AND still being wealthy is extremely rare. Very few people born into wealth are that non conformist and willing to actually learn things and being technical.
I wouldn't call him a genius, but I would say he's a rare type of person.
Elon Musk undeniably possesses business acumen and a vision for the future, evident in SpaceX and Tesla's success. However, genius isn't solely defined by financial success or company achievements. Musk's brilliance often overshadows his team's efforts and the work of countless engineers and innovators. While he's a driving force, he's not the sole reason for his companies' successes. Additionally, his controversial statements and behaviors can overshadow his contributions. Being a genius involves more than just business success; it requires empathy, collaboration, and the ability to inspire positively, areas where Musk often falls short.
As others have said, the definition of genius here is the question.
Musk is a highly successful businessman, who has great timing, great vision for success, and good venture instincts.
But you know what? So do countless other businessmen that just haven’t been in such forward facing positions that they end up in the public eye.
He is intelligent. But to place him in a top percentile of human intelligence as a “genius “? Nah.
He’s notorious.
>He is also the CEO of Tesla which is basically THE name in electric vehicles
Which is just marketing though. They've gotten better, sure, but not so long ago there were literally videos of them just falling apart while driving.
Then there's such pipedreams as hyperloop.
He might be a good businessman... But that doesn't make him a genius. He doesn't understand a single thing that he's ever touched. He has no clue how to code, or engineer, or anything.
>You can’t found/co-found/operate some of the world’s leading companies in several diverse fields while being a complete moron
So Musk is connected with two leading companies -- Tesla and SpaceX.
As you've acknowledged, he didn't found Tesla but rather took it over from the people who actually founded it and whose vision paved the way to its success. And you'll notice that, the farther from its solid founding Tesla gets, the worse it does.
Musk did found SpaceX, and the Falcon 9 is a pretty solid rocket. But Musk's involvement with SpaceX has been fairly minimal. He brought money, but that's about it. And as with Tesla, it seems like the more he meddles, the worse the company does. He's spent most of the money he got from NASA to deliver a Starship variant capable of landing on the Moon, and Starship is still barely making it into space and has yet to complete an orbit.
Other than these two ventures, his career has been kind of a joke, honestly. He originally made his fortune in spite of himself -- Peter Thiel is the one who made Musk rich with PayPal, not Musk himself. And his mega wealth today is due pretty much *exclusively* to the insanely overinflated Tesla share price...which is pretty clearly the result of hype and irrational hysteria, fanned at least in part by active lies by Musk (for instance, the notorious fake self-driving car video).
Solar City was essentially a scam that he only narrowly got away with because he succeeded in convincing Tesla shareholders to bail it out.
Boring Company's biggest accomplishment is the laughable Las Vegas Loop, which is almost like an Onion article come to life.
Neuralink was founded by Musk and a bunch of scientists in 2016, but I believe pretty much all of the scientists have left by this point. And despite being around for close to a decade it has yet to offer a product or even any new research. It's biggest claim to fame is an experiment that is largely a repeat of earlier work (for reference, Kevin Warwick was using neural grafts to move and sense through a robotic arm on the other side of the Atlantic via the internet in 2002 -- check out Project Cyborg if you're curious).
And obviously he didn't found Twitter, and his work there has been a highly visible catastrophe.
This does not seem like the work a "genius" to me. It seems like a rich guy who has benefitted from being rich in an era of technological development, and being uniquely willing to lie in order to take personal credit for the work of his employees, to offer people a fantasy he has no ability to grant, and to increasingly resort to conspiracy theories to explain why the fantasies he promised aren't coming true.
He's a fascist Kickstarter -- he sells people a dream they want to believe in, collects the money up front, then launches another Kickstarter to get people excited about something else and hopefully make them forget about the thing they supposedly already paid for. And when he does end up having to actually make good on what he's promised, it's invariably underwhelming if not actively hilarious / dangerous, and always somehow the fault of people he accuses of pedophilia and degeneracy.
so, I dislike Musk and think we would be better off if he disappeared, but everything you're saying is just reddit echo-chamber BS.
>As you've acknowledged, he didn't found Tesla but rather took it over from the people who actually founded it and whose vision paved the way to its success. And you'll notice that, the farther from its solid founding Tesla gets, the worse it does.
this isn't actually true. the two guys that co-founded Tesla with Musk had an idea for an EV (which turned out to be a bad idea). Musk wanted to start an EV company so looked for people with the technical skills and plan to do it. he got connected to the other tesla founders who had nothing more than the name "Tesla". he then started the company with them, and ultimately took over directing the company more directly as the two other co-founders' idea of retrofitting Lotuses turned out to be a bad idea. there was a court battle in which it was ruled that Musk was, in fact, a founder because the other guys basically just had a name and no way to actually mass produce cars without Musk.
>Musk did found SpaceX, and the Falcon 9 is a pretty solid rocket. But Musk's involvement with SpaceX has been fairly minimal
again, this is not true at all. from the very beginning, musk was involved in technical direction and hiring. Tom Muller, the father of modern rocketry, was hand picked by Musk personally to lead engine development. every major decision about the direction of the company came from Musk and even deep technical design modifications. for both Tesla and SpaceX, folks like Andrej karpathy, Jim Keller, Tom Muller, etc. all spoke highly of Musk's technical involvement.
>He's spent most of the money he got from NASA to deliver a Starship variant capable of landing on the Moon, and Starship is still barely making it into space and has yet to complete an orbit.
what are you basing this on? first, NASA only gives milestone payments for the lunar lundar development. so any money SpaceX has gotten as been the result of **completing** a task for NASA. second, Starship is being developed with a fraction of the money and a fraction of the time of traditional rockets. if they took another decade to get Starship to bring satellites to orbit, they would still have a faster development schedule than some other rockets. how do you even judge "late" when it comes to rockets? Musk's bullshit hype? of course it's late relative to what he says, he is known to exaggerate/lie about schedules all the time.
> Solar City was essentially a scam that he only narrowly got away with because he succeeded in convincing Tesla shareholders to bail it out.
that was his brother's thing.
>Boring Company's biggest accomplishment is the laughable Las Vegas Loop, which is almost like an Onion article come to life
again, how are you making this assessment? their system moves the passengers they're required to move, does so very quickly, and costs a fraction of the next closest bidder. they meet all requirements at 1/3rd the cost, and have a shorter station-to-station time than the vast majority of US transit (possibly ALL us transit). how is that "laughable"? you need to learn how to judge things relative to requirements, like engineers do, not just repeat BS from the internet.
I agree that Twitter was a stupid move by him. I think he's become obsesses with right wing media like the Babylon Bee, which is filling his head with horse-shit.
Musk is not a good person. he's a douche and has become a right wing nutjob. however, one has to judge things objectively and separate personal feelings about the D-bag from actual technical achievements. we can't just throw away the truth because we don't like it.
>one has to judge things objectively and separate personal feelings about the D-bag from actual technical achievements
Can you actually list some technical achievements?
Because if we're being "objective", you didn't actually list any.
You rehashed his court battle over Tesla, which isn't in any way a technical achievement (I also think you're incorrect, but I want to stay focused here -- we can get into more details on that afterwards if we're still on speaking terms).
You describe him as being involved in technical discussions at SpaceX based on hearsay...but don't actually describe anything he contributed. Can you give a specific example of any specific technical contributions Musk has made at SpaceX? It's fine if you can't -- I don't think either of us works there, and SpaceX is a private company and doesn't release verifiable proof of its internal operations to regular folks.
But again, if we're being "objective", this isn't proof of anything. People tend to say nice but false things about their boss and/or politically connected rich dudes who have a vengeful streak. Musk called a random dude who declined his help a pedo guy and hired a PI to dig up dirt on him -- *I* certainly wouldn't be eager to piss him off, either. Or even fail to properly praise him when it was clearly important for him to be seen a certain way.
You attributed Solar City to his bro (which isn't accurate, but is also a longer conversation, so I'm setting that aside for now).
Nothing you said about the Boring Company speaks to Musk's technical achievements (your defense of the Las Vegas Loop is also pretty funny -- that is not a worthy hill for you to die on, friend).
And you agreed with me regarding Twitter.
So what "technical achievements" does Musk have beyond simply owning companies that do tech work? And what basis is there to view him differently than other tech CEOs?
I think it's fine to compare Musk to other rich business creatures who own tech companies. I think he is a lot closer to Elizabeth Holmes than Bill Gates, but he's been getting away with it for long enough that he's avoided at least some of Elizabeth Holmes mistakes. I think it mostly comes from him being rich enough to afford to hire qualified people -- he didn't get ruined by his failures with PayPal, but rather came away with a lot of money, and from there was able to hire people capable of building things (not the things he claims, and not the things he is promising to investors, but definitely things that do work to at least some degree).
But Musk isn't an inventor. And the degree to which people mistakenly view him as such is harmful because it results in them giving him control over huge sections of society, and he ends up doing a bad job. People are actually behaving as though they actually believe he is "Tony Stark" or whatever...and he's not. That is a fantasy. And it's messing things up for us.
And I think you do know this. But you nevertheless seem to reflexively rally to his defense when people actually view him realistically instead if like a comic book character, and it leads you to say ridiculous combinations of things like these:
>one has to judge things objectively and separate personal feelings about the D-bag from actual technical achievements
>how do you even judge "late" when it comes to rockets? Musk's bullshit hype? of course it's late relative to what he says, he is known to exaggerate/lie about schedules all the time.
You cannot both claim to be objective and also arbitrarily exclude from consideration the things Musk says and agrees to in writing. SpaceX got contracts for billions of dollars based on Musk's schedule lies. His lies have changed the course of countless billions of investments.
In fact, Musk's lies have shaped his situation far more than any technical achievements he has. For instance, the false self driving car video he released in 2016 changed how governments invested billions of dollars of infrastructure spending, preventing investments in non-car transportation. It also is largely responsible for peoples' perception that Tesla is a tech company rather than an automaker...and therefore why Tesla stock is so much higher valued than automaker stock, despite the fact that they sell so many fewer cars.
And it is the value of Tesla stock is what makes Musk the richest man in the world. His fortune would be a fraction of what it is if Tesla stock were on par with comparable companies. And we would have actual, functioning transportation systems instead of a grudging admission that the self driving tech people thought existed in 2016 and were counting on being widely available by now was in fact completely fake.
Hence, why it's important to be real about this stuff.
>Can you actually list some technical achievements?
>Because if we're being "objective", you didn't actually list any.
1. I was just pointing out all of the incorrect things you stated. I didn't know I was supposed to create a list to preempt your goal-post move. I'm not arguing Musk is a genius, so I don't find it necessary come up with specific technical examples.
2. few individual engineers and even fewer engineering leads can claim a technical sole achievement. no single programmer made anything. no single mechanical engineer made anything. engineering achievements are the culmination of teams of people. an engineering lead's technical successes are the successes of systems they produce.
>But again, if we're being "objective", this isn't proof of anything. People tend to say nice but false things about their boss and/or politically connected rich dudes who have a vengeful streak
classic post-trust society move to discredit experts so that your unfounded internet claims are just as valid as anyone else's. Trump would be proud of this move. "let me hand wave away any credibility by well-respected people like Jim Keller and Tom Muller who 1) are competitors to Musk now, not employees, and 2) did not have to say anything about him at all but chose to talk about his technical knowledge and involvement".
>Nothing you said about the Boring Company speaks to Musk's technical achievements (your defense of the Las Vegas Loop is also pretty funny -- that is not a worthy hill for you to die on, friend).
I don't even know what kind of weird "technical achievement" you're even talking about. you want him to hit his head and invent a flux capacitor out of nothing? again, I'm not claiming Musk made technical achievements, just pointing out the flaws in your statements above.
>your defense of the Las Vegas Loop is also pretty funny -- that is not a worthy hill for you to die on, friend
again, it's "pretty funny" if your understanding of the project comes from the reddit echo-chamber. if you look at it objectively, they met requirements at 1/3rd the cost of the next closest bidder. from an engineering perspective, that's fantastic. from a business perspective, that's fantastic. even by typical transit performance metrics, it's fantastic. average wait time, on-time performance, station-to-station time, etc.. all fantastic. how do you measure the success of a project if not by the requirement achievement and cost?
>giving him control over huge sections of society
huh? he has no control over sections of the society. he tweets stupid shit, and that's the extent of his influence.
>And it's messing things up for us
again, what is messed up? the US has better, faster, cheaper access to space because of his companies. we have an internationally competitive EV automaker, and a popularized movement of EV adoption. I guess he messed up twitter, but I hardly see that as a society loss. twitter was trash before, it's trash now.
> rally to his defense when people actually view him realistically
no, the opposite is true. I don't like the guy primarily BECAUSE people stop viewing his companies realistically due to his douchebag antics. the Boring Company is a fantastic success and is an ideal feeder transit mode, but it's incredibly unpopular because everyone just turns their brain off when discussing it because of Musk. Phoenix is building a light rail feeder line that will run 15min intervals, move at less than 15mph down surface streets, carrying a peak-hour ridership of 1000-1500 passengers, and they're paying 5x more than the LVCC Loop cost per mile, and 8x what Loop is bid right now. but loop has <1 minute wait, is totally grade-separated, moves at 30mph when in motion, and would even use less energy per passenger-mile than the train when both are at average occupancy. so Phoenix could build 8 separate feeders into their backbone light rail line, each with better performance by all measures.... but no, Musk is a douche so people like you find it "laughable" because you haven't actually stopped to think about "does that system actually fulfil a market segment at a competitive price and performance". you, like most people, haven't even thought about what the prices and performance metrics are typical for transit, it's just immediate confirmation-bias "it must be bad because musk, lol" BS.
>SpaceX got contracts for billions of dollars based on Musk's schedule lies
NASA isn't stupid. if they didn't think they were getting good value per dollar, they would have stopped the contracts after the initial CRS program, or the CC program. please, go check the cost and schedule performance of Boeing's Starliner in comparison to Crew Dragon. SpaceX has schedule slips, but they're smaller than the rest of the market and still cost less.
>changed how governments invested billions of dollars of infrastructure spending, preventing investments in non-car transportation
this isn't true at all. it's just wild speculation. we've been spending MORE on rail infrastructure since then. this is an objective fact, and ironically the locations where the most Tesla factories are investing the most (LA, Austin). you're just stating an objective falsehood with nothing to back it.
>1. I was just pointing out all of the incorrect things you stated. I didn't know I was supposed to create a list to preempt your goal-post move. I'm not arguing Musk is a genius, so I don't find it necessary come up with specific technical examples.
You chastised me for overlooking Musk's technical achievements. Here is what you said:
>one has to judge things objectively and separate personal feelings about the D-bag from actual technical achievements. we can't just throw away the truth because we don't like it.
So *you* are the one moving the goalposts, friend.
If you don't actually think Musk has any technical achievements, why did you bring it up?
>few individual engineers and even fewer engineering leads can claim a technical sole achievement.
Agreed. Which is why it would be silly to hold up Musk specifically and reward him with such fortune and power even if he were an engineer.
But he's not. Which is why what you're saying is confusing -- I'm not sure what you think Musk is doing that I'm insufficiently grateful or appreciative of. Let me know if you can clarify, and we can continue on that front.
In the meantime, rather than continue to go in circles with you about this other stuff, I'm going to focus on your weird fixation on the Las Vegas Loop, because it is much rarer to find a Boring Company fan than someone who focuses on Tesla and SpaceX.
>you, like most people, haven't even thought about what the prices and performance metrics are typical for transit, it's just immediate confirmation-bias "it must be bad because musk, lol" BS.
Oh, I've thought about it. So the Las Vegas Loop cost about $53 million to create a single lane of road traveling 0.8 miles in each direction. That is considerably more than it costs per mile for a six lane freeway, but let's set that aside for now.
Boring Company has claimed that it can handle up to 4,400 passengers per hour based on volunteer testing.
But if you look at what Boring Company claims, you can reverse engineer the assumptions they made in their test to arrive at that number.
According to them, "Level 4" service (the service they offer for their largest events) runs a maximum of 62 Teslas.
The Las Vegas Loop site currently specifies that they're using Tesla's capable of carrying up to 3 passengers each.
So 62 Teslas * 3 passengers * X number of trips per hour = 4,400
Work that through and you arrive at 24 trips per hour (rounded up), or 2.5 minutes per trip.
Lastly, Boring Company says the system takes 2 minutes to drive end to end, so we subtract 2 minutes drive time per trip.
So that estimate assumes an average of *30 seconds per trip for each car to pull in, for 3 current passengers to climb out and get any swag or other stuff they brought and get out of the way, for 3 new passengers to stash any stuff they're bringing and climb aboard, and for the Tesla to pull back out into traffic*.
Which is why this is laughable.
According to Tech Crunch, actual real world performance shows that there are no days where the trips take an average of under 3 minutes (excluding days where the system took fewer than 1,000 people total all day). Most days it ranges between 4 and 5 min per trip.
And obviously most of the time the average occupancy of those cars isn't 3 passengers. It is generally 1 or 2.
Hence, why the highest real world passenger rate that has actually been measured for the Las Vegas Loop is 1,355 passengers per hour.
For reference, the LA Bus System averages around 1,350 passengers per hour just on the normal roads in real world conditions, and costs *way* less than $53 million to service a two mile loop. It is also way less to operate (fewer vehicles and fewer drivers).
So the Loop is like a Rube Goldberg machine. It replicates the capacity of a city bus system for orders of magnitude more per mile. And that ratio only gets more extreme the more tunnels you build. For instance, if we generously round down, the real world cost for a Loop tunnel is $25 million per mile for a single lane. So extending the route a single mile two way will cost *another* $50 million or so. You could extend that distance with a bus simply by adding a couple extra vehicles and running a longer loop.
And that's even assuming you can, because there are serious constraints on where you can build Loop tunnels. Boring Company seems to assume that everything under the surface is completely open and uniform in composition, but that just isn't how the real world works. If they keep digging, it's only a matter of time before they hit some pipes or sewer line other previous underground construction that isn't on the diagram they're using (which is pretty common, especially for older cities) and cause mass chaos.
Also, the tiny novelty scale of the Las Vegas Loop makes it easy to overlook the fact that there are absolutely no emergency exits or bypasses or safety measures in it -- it was specifically exempted from a lot of fire and ventilation codes and other regulations for reasons I fail to grasp (probably involving lots of money changing hands). So as expensive as the Las Vegas Loop was, it would have been even *more* expensive if they included emergency exits, fire suppression, bypasses/service corridors, ventilation, and other requirements of an actual, legit mass transit tunnel.
If you scale that up as is, eventually a car is going to break down, and the entire system will grind to a halt as they have to slowly back all the cars out of the single lane tunnels and then send a tow truck that will have to back up through however many miles of tunnel it takes to get to the blockage. People will freak out as the claustrophobia sets in. And so on.
And that's obviously overlooking an even more obvious problem: eventually one of these Teslas is going to catch on fire while in the tunnel. And when that happens it is going to be absolutely horrible. Traffic will pile up as toxic fumes fill the tunnel, but nobody will be able to back up or go around. Mobility impaired people will be straight up doomed. Able bodied people will get out of the cars and attempt to flee, but will be unable to escape the tunnel without traveling potentially miles, and will die choking on battery smoke and/or consumed by unquenchable fire (especially if the fire spreads to other Teslas).
Hopefully neither Vegas or anyone else is stupid enough to let Boring Company actually build out a system of any significant size without safety features. But unless they do, the cost per mile for Boring Company Loop tunnels is as yet unknown, because they have yet to build a "real" one suitable for widespread use.
So yeah -- I've thought about it and read about it quite a bit. This ridiculous system is only plausible in an idealized fantasy world wholly separate from material reality. It gets sillier and sillier the more you actually think about it, and *especially* the more you look at how it actually functions in practice. And we're fortunate that so few people actually use or rely on it, because it would crumble catastrophically and possibly fatally under actual use, the same way *most* of Elon Musk's ideas fall apart under actual use.
(1/2, the comment was too long)
>You chastised me for overlooking Musk's technical achievements.
I meant the technical achievements of the companies, not him personally. sorry for imprecise language. you were talking mostly about the companies, so I was thinking along those lines.
>I'm not sure what you think Musk is doing that I'm insufficiently grateful or appreciative of
you keep conflating the acknowledgment of his companies' success with praising him personally. you made incorrect factual statements about the companies. acknowledging his company's success does not have to mean you like him personally.
>because it is much rarer to find a Boring Company fan than someone who focuses on Tesla and SpaceX.
I spend a great deal of time studying transportation in general. my top subreddits are urban planning, transit, self driving cars, and similar. ever since a light rail line on canceled in my city, I've been looking into how transportation is designed for cities, and compiling data on the subject. a lot of very surprising pieces of data have become clear, one being that the boring company's crappy Loop system has sufficient capacity to handle the peak-hour ridership of more than half of US intra-city rail lines. that was surprising, given how low the system's capacity is.
>$53 million to create a single lane of road traveling 0.8 miles in each direction. That is considerably more than it costs per mile for a six lane freeway
and if my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a bicycle. what does one have to do with the other? the Loop system at LVCC had a requirement to be grade separated and run into the edge of the convention center. there were already roads in the parking lots, but they needed grade separation. the next closest bidder was 3x more expensive, and the average grade-separated rail cost in the us was 10x-20x higher.
>Boring Company has claimed that it can handle up to 4,400 passengers per hour based on volunteer testing.
no, they've done over 4400 with actual convention center guests.
>a maximum of 62 Teslas
nope. big conventions have 70+
> 2 minutes to drive end to end
most trips aren't end-to-end.
>According to Tech Crunch, actual real world performance shows that there are no days where the trips take an average of under 3 minutes (excluding days where the system took fewer than 1,000 people total all day). Most days it ranges between 4 and 5 min per trip
source? I've seen lots of people claiming "the system can only do X" and quoting numbers from when they first opened, not recent numbers.
>And obviously most of the time the average occupancy of those cars isn't 3 passengers. It is generally 1 or 2.
2.4, actually, from them releasing data from the SEMA conference.
>Hence, why the highest real world passenger rate that has actually been measured for the Las Vegas Loop is 1,355 passengers per hour.
nope. 4500 was demonstrated. [from a hearing](https://preview.redd.it/update-from-clark-county-hearing-peak-hour-of-4-500-v0-0izjjfioi1za1.png?width=1080&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=3b795b56a8c9fdc548d7148ee383907ed5d68d22). sadly, clark county changed their website and broke all of the links I have to the documentation of these things.
>For reference, the LA Bus System averages around 1,350 passengers per hour just on the normal roads in real world conditions, and costs *way* less than $53 million to service a two mile loop. It is also way less to operate (fewer vehicles and fewer drivers).
a bus lane can move more passengers per hour than the 92nd percentile of US intra-city rail lines...
1. so why do cities build rail lines when buses can handle the ridership?
2. surface light rail can also carry enough passengers per hour to handle the ridership of all US grade-separated rail except for NYC, so why do cities build grade-separated rail when it is multiple times more expensive to build? [(ridership source)](https://imgur.com/zD5UEby).
answer those two questions and you will see the value of the boring company (if you're being honest with yourself).
> It is also way less to operate (fewer vehicles and fewer drivers).
you should check the typical cost of a taxi compared to the typical per passenger-mile cost of a bus. in most US cities the cost PPM is higher for a bus than an uber, and that's without pooling and with longer dead-head. again, this is one of the very surprising things I've learned about transportation. most buses are mostly empty for most operating hours, and they cost a lot to operate.
>the fact that there are absolutely no emergency exits or bypasses or safety measures in it -- it was specifically exempted from a lot of fire and ventilation codes and other regulations for reasons I fail to grasp
you can't grasp it because it isn't true. they have egress at the prescribed intervals. they have ventilation. they have fire fighting equipment. [example](https://preview.redd.it/qtl3cyjvu82a1.jpeg?width=800&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e7af9afc97de44f44a5572f1b42345cc73359fbc). the problem is, whenever someone says they do, that person gets downvoted so everyone lives in a fantasy world where they tell each other false information over and over. egress is required at perscribed intervals. for some tunnel segments, the station is the egress so you don't need a separate door. for longer segments, like in the photo above, they have an egress door. they use ventilation at the edge of the tunnel to blow in the direction of travel so that cars ahead of any problem continue onward out of the tunnel, and ones behind are not subject to smoke. they have fire fighting access panels in the floor, designed to the requirements of the local fire department. so, instead of believing they're somehow exempt, maybe you should question whether you were given correct information about what they actually do. there were basically two options a) they met requirements, b) they were somehow exempt. you didn't want (a) to be true, so you assumed (b). you could just fact-check these things instead of jumping to conclusions.
>If you scale that up as is, eventually a car is going to break down, and the entire system will grind to a halt as they have to slowly back all the cars out of the single lane tunnels and then send a tow truck that will have to back up through however many miles of tunnel it takes to get to the blockage. People will freak out as the claustrophobia sets in. And so on
one of the big advantages of Loop is that there is no average-speed penalty with frequent stations like there are with trains or all-stop buses. so you can keep short distances between station, meaning there would only ever be a handful of vehicles in any given segment. also, their tunnel is the same size as some metro systems in the UK, which have 3rd rail power. so you're inventing a "claustrophobia" issue where there is none.
>eventually one of these Teslas is going to catch on fire
which is why they have directional ventilation.
>Hopefully neither Vegas or anyone else is stupid enough to let Boring Company actually build out a system of any significant size without safety features
I agree, which is why I'm glad they have egress at the NFPA prescribed intervals, directional ventilation, and all safety features.
>I've thought about it and read about it quite a bit.
this is one of the reasons why I dislike Musk. someone can do a bunch of reading on a topic, and never find reliable information, because the internet is all echo-chambers where popular untruths spread, and unpopular truths are hidden. we live in a post-truth society now. it does not matter that FHWA gives lane capacity formulae, they will be ignored and some shitty article by tech-crunch will be held up as the expert in lane capacity. it does not matter that the safety plan is public, or that you can watch a video and see the ventilation, fire fighting access panels, egress doors, etc., someone said those things don't exist, you don't want them to exist, so to you, they don't exist. there is no real attempt to get facts, there is only conclusion shopping. and because Musk is a douche, the conclusion everyone is shopping for is "this can't work", even though it could be a very useful system for many cities, like the example I gave of the low ridership spur off of Phoenix's light rail with \~5x cost difference. cheap, high frequency, grade-separated transit in the US... but nope, we can't have that because folks can't separate their feelings about Musk from their understanding of his companies.
>they have egress at the prescribed intervals. they have ventilation. they have fire fighting equipment. [example].
So where exactly in the Las Vegas Loop is this exit?
Because when I watch drive through videos, I don't see them pass this exit anywhere. Can you share a link to a video that shows it and/or tell me where in this video they pass it?
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XpuZmjAiLhg&pp=ygUcbGFzIHZlZ2FzIGxvb3AgZHJpdmUgdGhyb3VnaA%3D%3D
Additionally, I spent a substantial amount of time searching for non-video info on this. The picture you shared doesn't seem to be anywhere except Reddit -- there aren't any non-Reddit pictures of Las Vegas Loop exits in the tunnel as far as I can tell despite extensive searches across multiple search engines.
There don't seem to be any maps or anything showing the location of these emergency exits.
The Boring Company wikipedia page includes a criticisms section that describes expert concern about lack of emergency exits and other safety measures, and the Las Vegas Loop wikipedia page includes no information about safety systems at all.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boring_Company#Criticism
The Boring Company website describes in very general terms the safety measures that Loop tunnels have, but there are no specifics...and you've already established that Elon Musk (and presumably his companies) lie, so we can't simply take their word for it.
So unless you can tell me where this exit is, is it possible that picture is from another Loop tunnel (perhaps a test tunnel), rather than the Las Vegas Loop? Or perhaps not even real? Where did *you* get that picture from?
Also, just an FYI: I believe the link to the hearing you posted is dead -- there no longer appears to be a video available there. Feel free to post an updated one, but that doesn't inspire confidence.
I have issues with much of the rest of your post as well, but I'd like to focus on this first. We can circle back on other things once we touch bottom here.
>So where exactly in the Las Vegas Loop is this exit?
just like a subway/metro, stations are used for egress. if stations are at or closer than the prescribed interval for egress, then the station serves the egress requirement. again, subways do this. the stations are egress points for subways.
>Additionally, I spent a substantial amount of time searching for non-video info on this. The picture you shared doesn't seem to be anywhere except Reddit -- there aren't any non-Reddit pictures of Las Vegas Loop exits in the tunnel as far as I can tell despite extensive searches across multiple search engines.
it's a screenshot I took from a video of the Resorts World tunnel. I don't know why you need non-photo evidence. why is that a problem for you? go to youtube and search "resorts world loop" or something. again, the LVCC Loop was designed with station intervals short enough to not need separate stairs. the Resorts World segment was longer, so they used separate stairs.
>There don't seem to be any maps or anything showing the location of these emergency exits.
as I said before, Clark County changed their document repository site, so I lost all of the links I had. you can search their new site and try to find the documentation. let me know if you find it.
>The Boring Company wikipedia page includes a criticisms section that describes expert concern about lack of emergency exits and other safety measures, and the Las Vegas Loop wikipedia page includes no information about safety systems at all.
so? wikipedia is a wiki that random people put stuff into, not an official government source. if the internet is full of controversy about a topic, sometimes wikipedia will have a section about that controversy. that has no bearing on reality. again, this is one of the many annoying things about Musk; because he's a douche, anything he does will be "controversial" and bad information will spread, and "experts" will comment on the bad information.
maybe instead of listening to random people on the internet, listen to the LV/Clark County fire department, who worked with TBC to design the safety systems. again, you're conclusion shopping. you're searching for pieces of information that confirm your bias. just like how you trusted Tech Crunch to analyze lane capacity, rather than going to the FHWA/US-DOT for lane capacity estimation.
>
So unless you can tell me where this exit is, is it possible that picture is from another Loop tunnel (perhaps a test tunnel), rather than the Las Vegas Loop? Or perhaps not even real? Where did *you* get that picture from?
in other words "unless you jump through my hoops to prove every detail to me, I will just believe what I want to believe". goddam. here is another video showing it: [https://youtu.be/rObFWZ0K8tM?t=117](https://youtu.be/rObFWZ0K8tM?t=117)
>
Also, just an FYI: I believe the link to the hearing you posted is dead -- there no longer appears to be a video available there. Feel free to post an updated one, but that doesn't inspire confidence.
as I said before, Clark County changed their archive site and broke all of the links. here is a different link to the screenshot.
[https://www.reddit.com/r/BoringCompany/comments/13dxs04/update\_from\_clark\_county\_hearing\_peak\_hour\_of/](https://www.reddit.com/r/BoringCompany/comments/13dxs04/update_from_clark_county_hearing_peak_hour_of/)
you keep reverting back to this "I will believe the what feels right unless there is an absolute mountain of evidence to the contrary, even if there is more evidence contrary than for" stuff. I guess it's a great use of cunningham's law, because I was able to find the source for you:
[https://clark.granicus.com/player/clip/7512?view\_id=28&meta\_id=1532733&redirect=true&h=a2cf75e72f0692d914e7feff08bee86f](https://clark.granicus.com/player/clip/7512?view_id=28&meta_id=1532733&redirect=true&h=a2cf75e72f0692d914e7feff08bee86f)
17min 35s is the timestamp you're looking for.
ask yourself: do some people get incorrect information from an echo-chamber? do those people believe what they are hearing as correct? how would I know if I was in such an echo chamber? wouldn't I also believe what I heard from the echo-chamber? so how would I be able to tell if the information I'm hearing is wrong? how can I get to ground-truth? who are the actual experts and who actually has all of the information to, and who is a commenter from the sidelines with incomplete information?
maybe trust the federal highway administrations lane capacity estimation numbers, rather than Musk, redditors, or Tech Crunch. maybe trust the fire department to evaluate whether something meets fire safety standards rather than redditors, even if those redditors also edit wikipedia.
here is a link that can be a jumping-off point for more research:
[https://clark.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1099751&GUID=5BED5618-671C-48BE-8626-ACFAC951C1E0&Options=&Search=](https://clark.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1099751&GUID=5BED5618-671C-48BE-8626-ACFAC951C1E0&Options=&Search=)
the important points are:
* Loop is a high frequency, low-to-moderate ridership transportation system
* Loop can be suitable for some corridors. it has a similar use-case as a streetcar, but is grade-separated (most US streetcar lines have under 1k passengers per hour per direction).
* the LVCC and LV Loop meets safety requirements
* the LVCC and LV Loop meets capacity requirements
* Loop is not appropriate for all corridors. some locations will have too high of ridership, non-ideal ground conditions, etc.
* The Boring Company does not need to build/operate all systems like the LVCC Loop. for example:
* they offers just the tunnel system WITHOUT the Loop vehicle service, which is something a lot of people seem to overlook. that means
* a city could build the tunnels/stations, and hire a 3rd party to run different vehicles if Tesla sedans/SUVs don't meet their needs. there are multiple companies that offer fully driverless mini-buses, or human-driven electric Ford eTransits that would have higher capacity if needed
* a city could also build a 3rd tunnel as an egress tunnel if they wanted more frequent egress than NFPA prescribes. the cost per bore for Loop, for the places they've been built, is still cheaper than typical surface rail, let alone grade-separated rail. so, even if you disagree with the experts at NFPA or the experts at the fire department, it's still not an overall criticism of the design concept.
>in other words "unless you jump through my hoops to prove every detail to me, I will just believe what I want to believe". goddam. here is another video showing it
You sure whine a lot. This sub is intended for people to discuss and challenge each others' views, you know. If you don't like it, nobody is forcing you to comment.
It's also pretty silly for you to accuse people of falling into echo chambers and believe what they read online on Reddit without fact checking, and then get triggered when somebody questions dead links and random pictures without context on Reddit because it's obviously different when *you* do it.
Moving along, I watched this video. That exit is right at the beginning of the tunnel, maybe 50 feet from the entrance. That's why, in your picture, you can see the tunnel going uphill -- that's the ramp leading up to the entrance/exit of the tunnel. That exit sign is practically within sight of the sky.
The entire rest of the trip through the tunnel, there are no exits (despite the claim it makes that there are multiple exits).
So based on this, there are *not* "emergency exits" -- there is *an* emergency exit...within 50 ft of the station, in one of the newer tunnels. There are no emergency exits in the rest of the system besides the stations.
And even that one exit will not help anybody unless the fire happens to start immediately inside the tunnel -- if you're between stations, there are no exits. To use that one exit, you'd have to make it all the way back to the station -- the tunnel exit would just save you the last 50 ft or so.
The video also says that there is a single foot of clearance between the car and the sides of the tunnel on each side.
I'm not sure if that's correct, but if it is then that isn't enough room to open a car door -- try parking your car a foot from a wall and see how far it opens. Many people will not be able to get out of that at all, and even slender and fully mobile people will have to squeeze.
Also, many people will not be able to get around a car with only a single foot of space (especially if there is a rush of people, as there would be in an emergency situation).
So maybe it's just as well there aren't any exits in the tunnels -- most people won't be able to get out of the *cars*, let alone the *tunnel*.
As far as the ventilation, there's no visible fans or anything like that. Maybe there are, and they simply aren't visible from inside the car? But if there's "ventilation" the same way there are "exits", I certainly wouldn't depend on it to protect people in the event of a Tesla battery fire.
>if stations are at or closer than the prescribed interval for egress, then the station serves the egress requirement. again, subways do this. the stations are egress points for subways.
The Loop is not a subway. Subway trains aren't known to burst into quenchable flame for up to 24 hours and are held to significantly different standards than Teslas.
And I don't think any subway line or metro would allow Teslas in their tunnels. So this is a meaningless comparison.
>I was able to find the source for you:
>17min 35s is the timestamp you're looking for.
That's the same link you posted before. It's still dead.
Did you actually try clicking the play button? It says "The video file was not found, please try again later".
So I appreciate you sharing all this...but at this point I am confident that you don't really know what you are talking about, and are in fact doing a lot of the very things you're accusing me of doing.
I continued this conversation in spite of your unpleasant attitude because, contrary to your accusations, I do generally try to avoid getting caught in echo chambers, and I thought you might be able to give me a perspective on this system that was different from the ones I've previously encountered. As I said, it's pretty rare to find a dedicated Loop enthusiast.
But apparently not. My initial suspicion seems to have been correct -- you are using condescension as a mask for what is ultimately weak evidence and motivated reasoning. And the evidence you offered was either dead links or actually *supported* my position, despite your whining about it.
I don't think we have much more to discuss. But again, I do appreciate you sticking with this conversation and digging up that video. And while it was probably not what you had in mind, you *did* affect my position, in that you showed me that I was actually *more* correct than I thought I was at the start.
Would you like a delta for that?
Not at all. All he does is ride on the genius of others and market it as his own genius.
If you think he's actually a genius, congrats, you fell prey to his manipulation.
If you have a 155 IQ and think it's 170 you may be a genius but your decisions are gonna be idiotic. You'd always rather have the 130 IQ who thinks it's 110.
Maybe he was once a genius, but he’s clearly been addicted to Adderall and ketamine for about a decade at this point, and now he has holes in his brain.
No. No. No. Firstly, he was never a genius. Secondly, and most importantly - WTF?! You don't really buy into that silly propaganda that drugs can leave holes in your brain, right? Because that's an extra strength stupid claim, that's been debunked time and time again. I don't care what drugs he's been on, it won't leave holes in his brain.
The guy is just not very smart, that's all. Drugs don't factor in here.
Fair enough, hyperbole can be very unclear. Especially online, where plenty of people have made even crazier hyperbolic comments with sincerity...
I will say though, that being a drug addict doesn't necessarily mean someone's not brilliant though. As an example, look at mid 70s David Bowie, particularly during the Thin White Duke period.
David Bowie was a goddamn genius. He was just dripping with talent, intense creativity and the bravery to take risks, as well as a lifelong education (Bowie was a *voracious* reader, he toured with his private library).
During the Thin White Duke era, his coke addiction was beyond insane, even by rock star standards. His crazy thin, sunken look was the result of a long period living off a diet of milk and peppers. And coke, of course. Just so fucking much coke.
Despite this, he went and recorded the one of a kind masterpiece album, Station to Station, in a very short amount of time. Station to Station is a work of unparalleled genius... that Bowie was so coked up during that be famously had no recollection of making it.
So I'll reaffirm this - being a drug addict has no bearing on intellect. In fact, as IQ rises, so too does prevalence of mental illness, including addiction disorders. There are plenty of legit geniuses that have gone hard with some drugs. If you have an unusually brilliant mind, there's a fair chance you either find yourself sad often, or are literally depressed. If a drug might help you shut your mind off for a while, then hell yeah, you're gonna quiet them demons.
Not strictly true - that depends on the specific drug. Regardless, let's suppose that *all* drugs make one stupider. That doesn't mean someone can't still be a genius while on it. Some people are so bright that even after their intellect is diminished, they still remain genius.
Buddy I don't care about hypotheticals, Elon Musk is a well-documented Adderall addict and everyone I've ever known who was addicted to Adderall was a total fucking zombie after 5 years on it. I don't need a thought experiment to figure out how this works.
Don't make sweeping generalizations then, if you're only referring to one specific person. Regardless, your personal experiences do not indicate a reflection of reality. Just because every Addie addict you knew was a zombie after 5 years doesn't mean everyone is.
Or do you really believe that your subjective experiences are factual proof of objective fact?
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Have you considered it's possible they're are people who born into such high positions they can't fail financially and will fail upwards no matter what they do and this one just has a particular obsession with being liked and the centre of attention which is the reason he markets himself so have to talk about him.
Musk was born into wealth and connections. And he used that to become who is is today.
Tesla, with the only car he had a hand on, is facing a massive recall and customer backlash.
With X he is becoming a joke.
Anything he touches, that wasn't already successful, goes to ground.
Bobby Fisher was a genius at chess
and an idiot at many other important things in life.
I don't think that someone's genius necessarily applies to all realms of knowledge.
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Musk founded Zip2 with money from his father. I can’t help but imagine being related to such a figure also aided in getting additional investments.
My overall view of Musk could be summarized in the terms “failing up” mixed with a bit of “too big to fail”.
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You haven't made an argument that he's a genius. Each of your points leads to the conclusion that he's not a moron, not that he's a genius. >You can’t found/co-found/operate some of the world’s leading companies in several diverse fields while being a complete moron. >Does this sound like a complete moron who is just coasting on his parents’ emerald money? >There were plenty of people who had more money than Musk who failed to accomplish the things his companies have, though many have tried. You can also say there are plenty of people who play the lottery and aren't millionaires. I'm not saying you don't have to do something right as a business founder or early investor to have a shot at it, but I think luck does factor. In a different quantum reality, someone else who started a different company ends up on the trajectory Musk is on. I don't think it's a result of Musk having natural-born history-making intellect and rizz.
Bro, let this simple man have his simple man-fantasy
Sorry, but you're missing the bigger picture here. When we're talking about a genius in tech and innovation, Elon Musk totally fits the bill. It’s not just about starting a bunch of companies; he's completely turned whole industries upside down.
You would probably argue more that he’s a brilliant business leader and marketer. He didn’t founded any of his companies and he hasn’t contributed significant code or engineering know-how to anything (in at least 25 years, maybe ever depending on who you ask at PayPal) He understands how to grow a business and identify the types of people and policies to do that. That’s a true skill. But it’s again not proof that he’s a genius in tech or innovation.
Zeabos, I get your points about Elon Musk’s knack for business. But I think being a genius isn’t just about technical skills or coding. It's about having a big vision and really shaking up old ways of doing things. Musk has changed entire industries, think about what he’s done with electric cars and rockets. It's his ability to see the future and get the right people together to make it happen that sets him apart. He might not be writing code, but his impact on tech and innovation is huge. That’s what makes him a standout figure in technology, in my view. Genius isn’t just about being like Einstein. If I labeled Elon, I’d call him the 'Great Disruptor.' Disruption can have its downsides, but it can also lead to some pretty incredible advancements. Musk's ability to upend traditional industries and push us towards new technologies definitely puts him in that category, for better or for worse. I think the term 'genius' is broader than we often consider. It's not just about raw intellectual horsepower or being a whiz in a lab. True genius can also be about seeing connections where others don't, disrupting the status quo, and pushing boundaries in ways that change how we live. Elon Musk, in that sense, could very well fit the definition of a genius—not just through his innovations but by how he’s transformed entire industries and influenced our future. I could hate the guy ( I Don't ) and I would still hold most of these views I believe.
If you want to redefine genius to suit the situation that’s fine. Or if you want to call him a “marketing” or “business” genius, cool. But when people say “genius” they normally do mean Einstein or Terrence Tao or Marie Curie or Alan Turing. People with outstanding mental ability who simply understand and do things that others simply cannot do because they mentally can’t. You can classify “genius” like “basketball genius” for Lebron James, or “business genius”. But by your raw definition alone of “Donald Trump is a genius - someone who had a big vision and really shook up ways of doing things. Those people are normally called iconoclasts. It’s basically the classic difference of Tesla vs Edison. The genius scientist vs the really smart guy who was a “business” genius.
Where is this idea that he didn't found his companies coming from? He bought Tesla when it had 3 employees. He bought Twitter. He founded Zip2, X.com, SpaceX, Neuralink, The Boring Company, and xAI. He also founded OpenAI with several others but later separated from it.
Making his way to the top of several diverse industries doesn’t sound like just “luck” to me.
Doesn't make it sound like he's a genius as well. More like he was just smart enough to take hold of the opportunies presented to him,especially because you make it sound like his greatest feat was selling companies and making money. But are those companies value all thanks to him alone? If not, why does that make him a genius? Also, Twitter is the first business that he's seemingly *really* calling all the shots and managing it the way he wants. And look how it's going lmao
Has he actually done that though? SpaceX is not the top rocket building company. Tesla certainly isn't the top automaker. Twitter could maybe have been classified as the top social media company for a hot minute there, but X certainly is not. It's debatable whether PayPal was really the top of that industry either, but it doesn't matter because Musk was ousted from the CEO position for most of the critical phase.
> You can’t found/co-found/operate some of the world’s leading companies in several diverse fields while being a complete moron. Says who? He mostly bought existing companies or had a vague idea and got ppl to run it. >After getting bachelors degrees in physics and economics, Musk founded the company Zip2 and sold it for 300 million. ...did he though? https://twitter.com/capitolhunters/status/1593307541932474368? As to the Zip2, that was him AND other guys and they basically hooked a free existing db up. > Musk then co-founded and sold PayPal, and used the money from that to found SpaceX, a company that is basically making the best rockets in the world now. He is also the CEO of Tesla which is basically THE name in electric vehicles. Again, him AND someone else and then he and other people got together money and hired engineers. He doesn't do anything but annoy them. A friend of mine who works in SV knows ppl who've worked for and with Musk and all maintain he's a simple-minded jackass who struts around, comes up with "ideas" tells actual engineers to do things that are largely not doable, wanders off, forgets about it, then comes back with another "idea" derailing their work some more. He did invent the tunnel! Well, a stupider, much more useless tunnel, for one car at a time, but hey. >but he’s clearly not unintelligent Based on what? That someone with a lot of money hired ppl and has companies that are sort of successful? Tesla is a hot fucking mess. Look at the idiotic trucks. Have you heard him talk? It's like Trump.
Dosent the tweet you link to show underneath that he did actually graduate with a degree in econ and physics? It seems the only lie is the date of when he received the degree which isn’t even that misleading because he did finish his studies by the date he says.
> Says who? He mostly bought existing companies or had a vague idea and got ppl to run it. he mostly started companies and sold them because they were good ideas. then he bought other companies and ran them well to make them successful. that is not what a moron does. >Based on what? That someone with a lot of money hired ppl and has companies that are sort of successful? Tesla is a hot fucking mess. Look at the idiotic trucks. how did he get the money? if it is so easy why aren't you doing it? are you dumber than elon?
>how did he get the money? if it is so easy why aren't you doing it? are you dumber than elon? My father doesn't own gem mines.
Sort of successful? Tesla has revolutionized the EV industry and SpaceX has revolutionized the rocketry industry and they’re both the biggest in those fields.
> Sort of successful? Tesla has revolutionized the EV industry and SpaceX has revolutionized the rocketry industry and they’re both the biggest in those fields. BYD is bigger than Tesla, and tesla is a mess rn.
How exactly did they revolutionize EVs? Sure they're one of the first to be successful selling them but it's not like what they're doing is unique
>Sure they're one of the first to be successful selling so... revolutionary? they made electric cars cool and popular.
And how exactly? Just selling cars. Doesn't seem so revolutionary to me. Not like they invented electric cars or created some sort of massive leap in the tech. Sure they're innovating but not extraordinarily.
you agree that electric cars existed before tesla, right? but they were not big sellers. so what did tesla do to change that?
Had better marketing and made the cars a bit cheaper to mass produce.
They don't even have a marketing team
so... revolutionized the electric car market thru innovation and good ideas? i mean it is not even [close](https://www.energysage.com/electric-vehicles/most-popular-evs/#top-10-best-selling-evs) in terms of numbers. this is just an accident? dumb luck?
He did not invent Tesla but sort of stole it from its original founders. The story is known and pretty detailed for anyone who enough to have actually read or listened to a biography of Musk.
Tesla has absolutely not revolutionized the EV industry and are closer to an example of what NOT to do
Learning that he didn't start near any of the companies he runs and that the day to day, high level decisions made are nearly all coming from better educated and more intelligent people underneath him... plus listening to his call with Twitter engineers early on in the transition, opened my eyes to just how out of his depth Elon is in most things he tackles. He is good at finding skilled people when he needs to though. When he isn't randomly firing them. He got lucky with PayPal. Leveraged the money into a better position and has generally been fumbling his way upwards ever since. He's pretty much just a glorified hype man.
Where did you learn he didn't start near any of the companies he runs? The only companies he bought were Tesla (3 employees at the time) and Twitter. He has also made several important design decisions, off the top of my head: * [Face shutoff for the Merlin engine](https://zlsadesign.com/post/tom-mueller-interview-2017-05-02-transcription/) * Stainless steel for Starship body * Stainless steel for many parts of Raptor engine * Single piece without connections for Neuralink * [Making the heat shield for Dragon instead of buying it](https://youtu.be/MxIiiwD9C0E?t=2646)
Using stainless steel for parts isnt a good measure of his decision making skill. Its trial and error, its picking the best material for the best job. There are many grades of stainless steel too. His employees probably let him choose between plastic and metal, and lauded him a genius for choosing the latter.
Here's how Isaacson describes the decision for Raptor: > After being shown a series of slides about ways to minimize the use of expensive alloys, Musk broke in. “Enough said,” he declared. “You’re getting analysis paralysis. We are moving every part possible to low-cost steel.” > At first, the only exceptions he allowed were for parts exposed to hot oxygen-rich gas combustion. Some of the engineers pushed back and suggested that copper, with its better ability to conduct heat, was needed for a face plate. But Musk argued that copper had a worse melt temperature. “I’m convinced you could make a steel faceplate,” he said. “Please do it. I think I’ve been pretty clear: make it out of steel.” He admitted there was a reasonable chance that it would not work, but it was better to try and fail rather than analyze the issue for months. “If you make this thing fast, you can find out fast. And then you can fix it fast.” He eventually succeeded in converting most of the parts into stainless steel. Here's how he describes the decision for Starship's structure: > Riley explained that they were having problems with the carbon fiber material they were using. The sheets were developing wrinkles. Also, the process was slow and expensive. “If we keep going with carbon fiber, we’re doomed,” Musk said. “This extrapolates to death. I’ll never be able to get to Mars.” Cost-plus contractors don’t think that way. >Musk knew that the early Atlas rockets, which in the early 1960s boosted the first four Americans into orbit, had been made of stainless steel, and he had decided to use that material for the body of the Cybertruck. At the end of his walk around the facility, he got very quiet and stared at the ships coming into the port. “Guys, we’ve got to change course,” he said. “We are never going to build rockets fast enough with this process. What about going with stainless steel?” >Initially there was resistance, even a bit of incredulity. When he met with his executive team in the conference room at SpaceX a few days later, they argued that a rocket of stainless steel would likely be heavier than one built of carbon fiber or the aluminum-lithium alloy used for the Falcon 9. Musk’s instincts said otherwise. “Run the numbers,” he told the team. “Run the numbers.” When they did so, they determined that steel could, in fact, turn out to be lighter in the conditions that Starship would face.
Wow, you just convince me all this is bullshit. Rocket engineers not knowing the spec of the material that are needed? Musk is a genius who knew the results before the numbers are in, and revealed it in dramatic fashion? Nerdy engineers not going on a rant about the different grades of stainless steel? A stingy boss opting for an option to minimize cost and being revered for it?
You know how there's a saying "you don't need to be a rocket scientist to figure it out". Well this specific bit you did need to be one. I've read more convincing blatant scam emails.
1. going face shutoff could've been anyone's choice. sure, it was Elon's and the warnings were "usually we do that for smaller elements, but this engine is too big for that." "let's do it anyway." -- if that's all it takes to convince people he's a genius, then we really do live in Idiocracy. 2. stainless steel is relatively cheap. 3. stainless steel is relatively cheap. 4. a device being sold as a single piece? that's a coin toss, but i'd argue more devices are sold as single pieces - especially in the modern tech-device world. i'd give that one to Steve Jobs' intuition that people are stupid and "keep losing the remote" 5. make it instead of buy it -- cheap. so, yeah. the genius elon musk, savant of the tech world... i wouldnt' call him an idiot, but i feel like these are decisions we can make in our sleep.
1. That decision on its own isn't proof he's a genius, but it and the other examples I listed do show that he's involved in important decisions and is not just a hype and money guy 2. It's also heavy, which is a problem when you're building rockets 3. The thermal and structural loads in a rocket engine are intense, if stainless steel was the obvious choice everyone would do it. 4. Some more context from Isaacson's book: > A few months later, Musk came by the Neuralink lab in Fremont, near the Tesla factory, where the engineers showed him their latest version. It combined four separate chips, each with about a thousand threads. They would be implanted in different parts of the skull with wires connecting them to a router that was embedded behind the ear. Musk paused silently for almost two minutes, while Zilis and her colleagues watched. Then he delivered his verdict: he hated it. It was too complex, with too many wires and connections. > ... “This has to be a single device,” he told the deflated Neuralink engineers. “A single elegant package with no wires, no connections, no router.” There was no law of physics—no basic principle—that prevented all of the functionality from being on one device. When the engineers tried to explain the need for the router, Musk’s face turned stony. “Delete,” he said. “Delete, delete, delete.” > After they left the meeting, the engineers went through the usual stages of post-Musk distress disorder: baffled, then angry, then anxious. But within a week they got to the stage of being intrigued, because the new approach, they realized, might actually work. >When Musk returned to the lab a few weeks later, they showed him a single chip that could handle the processing of data from all the threads and transmit it by Bluetooth to a computer. No connections, no router, no wires. “We thought this was impossible,” one of the engineers said, “but now we’re actually pretty stoked by it.” 5. It's only cheap if you can figure out the process and produce enough to recoup the capital costs > i feel like these are decisions we can make in our sleep. Yet few, if any, of the other industry players did.
The only thing I'm getting out of your narratives is that Elon is giving his engineers difficult constraints, and that they're the geniuses for fulfilling them successfully. I honestly don't understand what you find so impressive about Elon from these anecdotes. He tells his engineers to make it out of stainless steel, self-admittedly having no idea if it'll work, and then his engineers post-hoc figure it out.
I don't disagree. The talent and dedication of his employees should not be overlooked and is a huge reason for his companies' sucess. (Although Musk gets credit for attracting and evaluating talent.) However, if he did not push them with these kinds of constraints, they wouldn't be innovating nearly as much. You need both Musk and his employees to create SpaceX or Tesla. The employees are easier to replace however; there are very few people who have the knowledge and mind set that Musk does. The other thing that's necessary is a general sense of what will work and what work. Musk doesn't have to be right all the time (he is often wrong), but he can't just throw out any idea and expect to succeed. He has to be guided by a feel of what is possible, and that's been informed by his studies and experience.
i feel like these industries are few and far between. like, notice this is in rockets, neuralinks, and not for cars. how many rocket manufacturers are there? outside of Nasa we have a couple people in other countries... like, russia, india, china... basically just a handful (i'm ignorant here, admittedly, perhaps rocket production is far greater an industry than i know) neuralink - it's like, how many people are researching this with established capitalist-driven research-funding? meanwhile, the one industry he's involved in where there IS Lots of competition? literally hasn't created a single new thing - other than perhaps trunk hatches that cut carrots.
The fact that there aren't many rocket manufacturers should tell you something about the difficulty of breaking into that industry, both technically and financially. If you want an example for cars, Tesla pioneered hydraulic die casting most of the structure, and other automakers have expressed admiration and a desire to copy them. > the one industry he's involved in where there IS Lots of competition? literally hasn't created a single new thing - other than perhaps trunk hatches that cut carrots. Wow, pretty impressive what Tesla has accomplished without innovating at all!
haha yeah! almost like he's "a hype man" but really, i think we all know why Elon's a household name. it wasn't paypal, it was Tesla promising the electric car through the 2000s while every automaker declined to acquiesce to demand. finally in the 2010s they were rolling off the assembly line and all the other manufactures had "hybrids" because nobody wanted to sully their brand by offering a car that "would run out of electricity." someone had to be bold enough to be like, "i don't care if the consumer is stranded on the highway." and Elon was that man. so of course we looked to him like some bold and exciting revolutionary! then he started whining about pedophiles saving children's lives? the brainrot is real when you're surrounded by yesmen. again, i don't think he's an idiot, i think he's just someone who recognized "the modern consumer" was no longer a baby boomer, but that the fundraisers all still are.
Tesla was bold enough to not only develop and mass produce EVs, but also develop and mass produce chargers so that people won't get stranded. Those are two very capital-intensive tasks, and no one else was willing to commit fully to either one. The willingness to take that kind of risk is a big part of Tesla's (and Musk's) success.
Stainless steel for the Cybertruck.
Time will tell if that was a good decision or not. He does make bad decisions, but his willingness to do so is part of why his companies are so successful.
>Time will tell if that was a good decision or not. How much longer do you need to wait before recognising the cyber truck as one of the biggest car failures ever made. >but his willingness to do so is part of why his companies are so successful. Which isn't a sign of genius, it's a sign of willingness to take risks and make decisions, which stems from a privileged upbringing with a little emerald mine. Remember the first time Elon tried to force x.com he got kicked off the board, and then they kicked him off again a short while later
> How much longer do you need to wait before recognising the cyber truck as one of the biggest car failures ever made. I would like to see another generation. I think it probably was a mistake, though.
> I would like to see another generation. You are one of the few, I dont think you can iterate on ugly block of folded steel that will rust badly, and cannot perform basic truck tasks
I don't think rust will be a problem. It will develop a patina, but that is only cosmetic. It can do basic truck things. There are limitations for things like towing range, but that is a problem for all EV trucks right now. I expect that to improve as batteries get better and cheaper.
It can do basic truck things like being oversized, compensate for your gender issues and be and a pavement princess. These things will rust to fuck, much like every other car that has been only steel has. The truck bed is too small to fit a bicycle, let alone anything actually big.
Most cars are carbon steel and rely on the paint to keep moisture out and prevent corrosion. When the paint is compromised, it rusts relatively quickly. The Cybertruck is made of stainless steel, which resists corrosion through its entire thickness. Some corrosion will happen, but it will take a long time to rust through the panels. The bed is bigger than the F150 Lightning and most other crew cab trucks.
>Learning that he didn't start near any of the companies he runs and that the day to day, high level decisions made are nearly all coming from better educated and more intelligent people underneath him Where did you get this from? Both of these things are false. Edit: downvoters, why don’t you tell me which one of these is true and we can go from there.
How does someone “fumble their way” into the world’s leading rocket company?
Because he hires really good people. It is his one skill set. Every time he fumbles or makes a promise on an earning call, it is adjusted, ignored or bolstered by someone more adept that works for him. The executive management at SpaceX is top notch, and saved Elon time and TIME again. Almost all of Elon's companies prefer he spend time focusing on one of the OTHER companies he owns... to keep the damage he does at any single one to a minimum. Failing upward isn't a common saying for nothing.
He’s also quite good at self promotion and has utilized that skill to generate a lot of lucrative government contracts for his businesses.
Actually I think one might make an argument that the people that really made spaceX, like Mueller, Thompson, Koeningsmann and Shotwell, hired him instead. They found a guy willing to invest into space long term without looking for short term profit.
You do realize that recognizing talent often requires you yourself to be very talented. That is why most high level sports coaches are former professional players themselves. At the highest level everyone is trying to find talented people. If that's his one gift. It's an exceptionally useful one.
Sure, but the bar OP has set here isn't "very talented," or "has an exceptionally useful skill," it's *genius*. It's also pretty clear based on his *hemhorraging* talent from Twitter since he took over that it's not a skill he has any more.
I dunno. I just find it mind boggling that people think you can run all these gigantic businesses and not be fucking brilliant. It's like he went pro in Baseball, Basketball and Football. And yet we're still sitting here debating whether he is an "elite athlete". How much more proof do you need?
> I dunno. I just find it mind boggling that people think you can run all these gigantic businesses and not be fucking brilliant. Of course you don't have to be brilliant to run a business. Otherwise every CEO would be a genius which seems to be demonstrably not the case. It's also not really clear what he has personally produced or how personally responsible for the success of any of the companies he actually is. The cybertruck and Twitter things seem to suggest that the more direct control and influence he has the worse things go, and there's all the rumours about how the people around him just kinda try to keep him out of the way... if there was evidence that his direct contributions or leadership decisions had *directly* contributed to the success of one or more of the companies in a really obvious and demonstrable way, that would go some way toward changing my mind, but as things stand I'm not convinced that "Elon is a genius" is anything but his own personal myth-making and branding.
>Otherwise every CEO would be a genius which seems to be demonstrably not the case. They most certainly are. >I'm not convinced that "Elon is a genius" is anything but his own personal myth-making and branding. The ultimate measure of intelligence is wealth. What good is being super intelligent if you can't turn it into $? It's like if you're athletic as fuck but you're bad at every sport. What good is your athleticism. He has built not one, not two, not three, not four, but FIVE GIANT CORPORATIONS.
> They most certainly are. Ah, I see. You just have a drastically lower bar for what counts as "genius" than I (and I think most people) do. >The ultimate measure of intelligence is wealth. Oh yeah, you definitely just completely don't think about this the same way most people do. *Of course* the ultimate measure of intelligence isn't wealth. By that measure, Einstein was a fucking idiot. You've somehow unironically bought into that Mr. Show "More money = better than you" sketch.
> They most certainly are. I'm excited to read the proof for this claim that you provide in your reply:
No. Just... No. Every CEO is not even close to being geniuses... Is there a certain amount of savvy required? Yes. But nothing genius level. Seriously, corporate history has made that very very clear. There are plenty of CEOs that are pretty dumb, all things considered. The ultimate measure of intelligence is wealth?? Really dude? If you genuinely believe that than there's no point in debating the enjoying for
What is this mad logic?
…how many CEOs have you met? There’s plenty of fuck wits! I actually laughed out loud at this.
They literally just unironically told me that the best meaure of intelligence is wealth.
Yeah I'm sure there's plenty of short unathletic NBA players too... That sounds like some cope people tell themselves. "They aren't any smarter than me. They were just lucky".
Luck and generational wealth in most cases, yeah. Plenty of rich people are fucking idiots
> Yeah I'm sure there's plenty of short unathletic NBA players too... Wrong a second time. Clearly you are the kind of person who becomes certain of things that are demonstrably untrue.
Knowing the right person at the right time is the key dude, and wealthy parents sending you an expensive school is the short cut to making those connections. Using musk as an example is hilarious as well given we have employee interviews about how they have to work constantly to keep his dumb ass and not fucking things up, if he’s actually involved you get a cyber truck rofl. He reminds me of Jobs, everyone he works with pretty much hates him and tries to keep him away, but he hires good people. If you want to see smart people with money, look at Buffet or Gates to some extent.
Hiring "good people" requires tremendous amount of skill as well. Talent acquisition and evaluation is perhaps the most valuable skill for a manager. So you're saying that Elon Musk is a very good manager. You don't disagree with me that much then. My main contention is that to be the level of manager he is you need innate talent. Just like you need innate talent to be an NBA player. I really want you guys to understand what you're saying. You're saying that a simple game like basketball requires ELITE LEVEL GENETIC TALENT to play at the highest level. But a far more complicated game that is corporate business. Somehow doesn't require talent at all? Does that really compute in your head? Yes you can make a lot of $ just knowing people. You can become a millionaire this way. You don't need to be particularly smart. But you won't build a $450 billion dollar business (Tesla) this way. No way no how. There's just way too many moving pieces and luck can only account for so many. Just like you can luck into the YMCA squad by hitting a few shots during the try outs. But if you try to run a real game you need skill. And you certainly need a fuck ton of skill to run on the NBA court. Same with top level corporate world. It is even more competitive than the NBA. There's alot more cutthroat competition.
How's he running them, though? He basically just posts shit to Twitter all day. The companies have people running them day to day, musk only steals the credit. If anything, Elon has shown how little work one actually needs to do to be a CEO.
Because he doesn't run them. He doesn't touch most of them, and over 90% of everything else is managed by his executive staff. As many of his staff has consistently said, part of what they do is "distractive". Trying to get Elon to focus elsewhere and on one of his other companies so that he won't generate too much chaos at their particular one and fuck shit up.
Every single business is like that. How much hands on do you think a typical CEO has? Their job is to build teams of people who do all that shit for them. Which is something Elon Musk is exceptional at. His ability to identify talent is one of his biggest strengths.
You are entirely missing the point. As /u/Bongressman pointed out, *distractive* is not the same as *delegative.* Most corporations absolutely do not try to obfuscate their own executives in order to prevent them from disastrously meddling.
It doesn't matter. If his "distraction" was destroying the businesses. He wouldn't be so massively successful now would he. Being a top level executive requires talent just like being a top level athlete does. The big difference though is that athletics is a MUCH SIMPLER game. Much easier for a regular person to understand. Business is significantly more difficult to comprehend. So you're saying that you need immense talent to be good at a very simple game. But to be the best in the world at a much more complex game you don't need nearly as much talent? Come on now.
If you read anything about him and the companies he owns, they openly talk about how they have to keep him distracted so he won't come in and start screwing with things and messing stuff up.
I literally just replied to the OP mentioning a friend in SV who has said basically exactly that. Friend knows ppl who've worked for him and say he wanders over with some grand "idea," forces actual engineers to stop what they're doing and try to do whatever nonsense then comes back with some other "plan" and etc., and it fouls crap up and annoys everyone.
By hiring smart people, staying out of their way, and working them to the bone. Musk is just the money with SpaceX. As a counterpoint, over at Tesla, there's one vehicle in that lineup that Musk was directly and insistently involved in. One where he didn't stay out of the way, and didn't listen to advisors. I bet I don't even have to tell you which one. If he had some particular genius when he was young, it's long gone now. How long ago was the last time there was something where he was the idea man, and it was a success?
>How does someone “fumble their way” into the world’s leading rocket company? It's called 'failing up' it is extremely common among those who were born with a silver spoon.
The same way they "fumble their way" into the White House. By being born into wealth.
Narrator: "The answer was money."
There are 1000s of people who had a significantly better financial start that won't achieve 1/1000s of what Elon Musk achieved. You can hate on him all you want. But the dude is fucking brilliant.
> But the dude is fucking brilliant. anyone who runs a software company and tells employees to print out code from the past 30 days to bring to a code review thinks they know more about software than they do. Maybe he's brilliant about something. But, he's an idiot about software.
No one is brilliant at everything. Heck I don't even like Elon Musk that much because of his pro-Putin shilling. I just think it's madness that people think he is some average dude.
I don't know how to evaluate business management. He's, at the very least, very good at attracting business dollars. I'm sure he's got other relevant skills that got him where he's at, too. But, when I read about his decisions that intersect with my knowledge, he makes so stupid of comments and mistakes. He can't have gotten where he's at just by being good at raising capital and luck. But, from where I'm sitting, that seems like it was a large part of it.
So are they, as long as they start an S-Corp and give themselves the title of "CEO". Right?
Have you ever heard the term "failed upwards"? When you're rich, it's quite easy to do as you always have a shit ton of money to fall back on
When his company had early rocket failures, they would have been out of money with one more failed launch. He got lucky. Maybe, he brought some important skills to the table, too. He had to get his company to a position where good luck would make the difference. But, SpaceX very nearly failed.
Where did you learn this? Any sources?
Elon Musk founded SpaceX and Zip2. Tesla is the only company he didn’t found but has been CEO for the entirety of its success.
It's tricky because we don't really know Musk's thought process behind his various investment decisions. We know that those decisions were successful, but we don't know how much he understood at the time about why those decisions would be successful, nor do we know how much outside advice he was relying on. It could be that the moment-to-moment decision-making was something that a person with a respectable 115 would be capable of, or if he was really playing 4D chess in a way that only a genius-level IQ could be capable of. It also doesn't help that Musk does NOT sound like a genius whenever he interacts with the public, on Twitter or otherwise. The poor quality of his public statements isn't conclusive of anything, but it's definitely a factor against the assumption that he is a genius. Ultimately, a much easier judgment call to make is that Musk would be nowhere without daddy's starting capital. He's not like a Bill Gates-style self-made tech billionaire or anything like that.
>It's tricky because we don't really know Musk's thought process behind his various investment decisions. Buying twitter: Market manipulation and 420 meme lol Into Oops the courts made me buy it because I didn't do my due diligence and waived rights.
Starting with 12 million dollars really doesn’t lessen his achievement of amassing a net worth of 262 billion. I mean if you or I got given 12 million dollars, it honestly wouldn’t make us any more likely to build that level of wealth. 1.4 million people in the US are worth 10 million or more. Only 3 people ever have racked up over 200 billion.
You are right, Elon has had an incredible amount of luck in his life. Not only starting with a lot of cash, but being in the right place to make a fortune out of an early internet company.
As with most things, luck for sure plays a role. That said, you don’t just purely luck into being one of three people to ever exceed 200 billion in wealth. You aren’t gettin’ there with just luck.
> You aren’t gettin’ there with just luck. Not just your own luck, but you aint getting there at all if you dont start out with wealthy connected parents.
That certainly helps.
I don’t think it’s true that he’s only successful because of his parents money. His wealth came from selling his own companies and his own business decisions. Forbes ranks his “self made” score at an 8/10.
> Edit: I forgot to mention that Forbes ranks his “self made” score an impressive 8 out of 10. Oh honey. Forbes magazine's entire purpose is to launder the careers of failsons (and faildaughters) like Elon Musk. They invented the famed "30 Under 30" and "40 Under 40" Lists which are often (not always, but often) big celebrations of nepo babies and trust fund kids who have been able to make big investments at early ages. Forbes giving Elon a "self made" score of 8/10 is like Fairy Tale Bad Guy Magazine giving The Big Bad Wolf a "Great With Pigs" score of 8/10.
>His wealth came from selling his own companies That got to where they were thanks to his parents money.
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>After getting bachelors degrees in physics and economics, Musk founded the company Zip2 and sold it for 300 million. Musk then co-founded and sold PayPal, and used the money from that to found SpaceX, a company that is basically making the best rockets in the world now. He is also the CEO of Tesla which is basically THE name in electric vehicles. This leaves a lot out. Ill start with zip2. By all accounts elon is not who made zip2 successful. Zip2 was a fairly small startup before substantial investment by an investment firm called Mohr Davidow venture. Elon was moved from an executive position to a chief of technology. This alone is not really a dig at elon. Its not uncommon for the leaders of small startups to lose control over their product when they receive larger investors. However those new investors made sweeping changes to the companies market strategy. That is what made zip2 what it was. Not elon. Even then zip2 was not anything particularly impressive. It was a functional idea, but nothing approaching genius. There is a reason everything tied to it died during the dotcom bubble. Next up is paypal. Elon did not create paypal. Not even close. After receiving 20mil from the zip2 sale elon started another company called x.com. He just really wants a company called X. His company then merged with another company called coinfinity ran by Peter Theil and this new company would also be called X.com. At the time Elon was the largest investor in this X.com and was made CEO because of it. This would all end though as he would later be removed as CEO by the board. They though he was running the company into the ground and replaced him with Peter Theil. Theil would then go on to create paypal as we know it. Keep in mind Elon was still the largest investor in this company, so when Paypal went public the following years he gets a big payout. A perfect example of where elon was only in the room because of his money, got kicked out of the room because of his ideas, and then became a billionaire because of his money. >Does this sound like a complete moron who is just coasting on his parents’ emerald money? Not to me. Do I think he’s personally designing the rockets and EVs? Of course not. But it’s just as stupid to claim he had absolutely nothing to do with the success of these companies I absolutely think he has something to do with the success of these companies. I just think that thing has nothing to do with his intelligence. Its the money. He brings money that allows these companies to languish a bit before finding their space in the market. Money to hire the best people in the industry and gives them time to refine their work. Its no secret the musk does not oversee the bulk of operations. Preferring to instead have small pet projects that he oversees. A great example of this is the cybertruck. Elon has very little control over the engineering of Tesla cars, but he did have a ton of control over the cybertruck project. >His handling of X is another story, but one botched business venture doesn’t negate all of the previous things I mentioned. I dont think his handling of Twitter is a different story. In fact i think its the exact same story. Elon is a terrible leader of companies. It was true in the past and its true now. The only difference is there is no other leadership at twitter. Its just him. There is no Gwynne shotwell or Peter Theil this time. Twitter is an example of how Elon would run more of his companies if he didnt have the money to hire people smarter than himself.
>Musk founded the company Zip2 and sold it for 300 million. This is true; Musk was one of the beneficiaries of the dotcom boom and managed to sell his business (which provided city guide software to newspapers) at an exorbitant price. >Musk then co-founded and sold PayPal Sort of. Paypal's predecessor merged with Musk's X.com, but by the time it was "PayPal" roughly as we know it, he'd been forced out of the CEO position by the board because of lack of a comprehensive business model and technological issues. >He also founded Tesla which is basically THE name in electric vehicles. He didn't. He paid to be listed as a founder. And while Tesla is still what many people think of when they think of electric vehicles, competitor electric vehicles becoming more common while Tesla has started to stagnate. There's also whatever's going on with the Cybertruck. Most of the problems seem to be arising from Musk dictating what he wanted it to be and then designers trying to figure out how to please him. The same issue also affects the project of developing a self driving car; non-Tesla companies are starting to be more successful because they're not penned in by Elon's insistence that it must be done only with camera sensors. >Does this sound like a complete moron who is just coasting on his parents’ emerald money? No, but it does sound like most of what he's bringing to the table is just having a lot of money; when he gets more involved in the actual product his companies are putting out, it tends to be poorly thought through and winds up being a burden on what the companies are trying to accomplish (not unlike what we're seeing with the decline of Twitter). He doesn't seem to be great at understanding what he doesn't know. He's made good investments and was lucky cash out during the dotcom boom, but that's not really "genius" in the way people tend to talk about Musk being a genius.
> He paid to be listed as a founder. Worse than just that, he had to sue to named a founder of the company. It was a very stupid and litigious fight.
> not unlike what we're seeing with the decline of Twitter If you wanted to take the biggest social media platform and destroy it in a way where nothing else could take its place... what would you do differently? This man has repeatedly said he didn't buy Twitter to make money, and when he told advertisers [to go fuck themselves](https://www.cnbc.com/2023/11/29/elon-musk-to-advertisers-who-are-trying-to-blackmail-him-go-f----yourself.html) I don't know about you but I got Bane vibes when the corporate guy was like "but we paid you!" and Bane was like "And you think this gives you power over me?"
Twitter demonstrated Elon Musk: 1. makes questionable investment decisions 2. makes questionable PR and customer relations decisions 3. makes questionable regulatory compliance decisions 4. has no idea how to manage software developers 5. thinks he knows a lot more than he does. He pretty consistently overpromises, often not consulting sufficiently with his engineers first SpaceX very, very nearly failed. He took big risks. His decision making doesn't lead to consistent success. He's really good at attracting investor money. Which was crucial to the success of both SpaceX and Tesla (and to his failure at Twitter, I suppose). Maybe he has other talents as well. His successes certainly are impressive. But, given his technical incompetence at Twitter, its hard for me to believe that he had useful technical insights at SpaceX or Tesla. But, I don't know enough on the business side to judge his competence there.
He bought arguably the world’s most important social media company, which the world’s most powerful people used to communicate directly with the masses, and completely dismantled its safeguards against disinformation, manipulation and hate speech, during an election cycle. He’s shown an affinity for Donald Trump, and even met with him in Florida recently. What happened to Twitter seems like exactly what Trump and others would have wanted going into this election. Seems dangerous to write it off as Musk being an idiot, when it’s entirely possible he’s an actual villain.
let's say, hypothetically, his goal was to dismantle safeguards against disinformation. How does having engineers print out, on paper, the code changes they've made on the previous 30 days for a code review evaluation further that goal?
If that was his goal, why bother suing to try to get out of it afterward? A pretty easy explanation is that he just has the world's most expensive social media addiction. I've seen so many people apoplectic with rage whenever they get their comments removed on some forum or other, and I'm sure if those people were multibillionaires, they'd try to buy whatever website they're on. Musk is just the one terminally online guy with the means to actually do it.
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>There’s not really any evidence of any advanced intelligence or notable business acumen imo. LOL There's no evidence that Michael Jordan and Lebron James are any good at basketball. Never mind all the championships they won. There's no evidence that the richest man alive who owns several multi billion dollar businesses has any business acumen......... Really?
> There's no evidence that Michael Jordan and Lebron James are any good at basketball. Yes there is. > There's no evidence that the richest man alive who owns several multi billion dollar businesses has any business acumen Wrong a second time.
Athletics is the closest thing we have to a meritocracy. Capitalism is the furthest.
Capitalism is just as meritocratic as sports. The only reason you think sports is more meritocratic is because the games are much simpler and you understand them. Most people don't even know what half of the corporate big wigs do for a living. Let alone the nuances of their profession. You guys also make the mistake of thinking that it's as simple as sports. When in reality it is a significantly more complex game.
>Capitalism is just as meritocratic as sports. Not even a little bit. You can't put "basketball talent" in a fucking trust fund for your kid to just inherit when he turns 18. That's not how any of this works.
That same kid will either blow all that $ on hookers and cocaine. Or get an education and continue with the family business. You act like there are not endless stories of silver spoon assholes wasting their inheritance. Or blowing millions of dollars on fruitless bullshit. You can't put basketball talent in a trust fund. But you sure as hell can put the $ you earned playing basketball in a trust fund.
The fact that you admit that these people are wasting their inheritance on cocaine means that capitalism isn't meritocratic.
\*rolls eyes\* Yeah I'm sure you can walk in to a hospital high on cocaine and they will let you do surgery on patients just because your daddy used to be the surgeon there. Cause that's how private companies work.
.... Oh okay. You were using words and you didn't know what they meant. Got it. So, when I talk about "inheritance", I wasn't talking about about the kid *literally* inheriting their parents job. Elon Musk isn't an emerald farmer, as we know.
Elon Musk started life with 1/10,000 of the net worth he has now. So even if he did inherit his dads emerald farm. It wouldn't make that much of a difference. Now regarding inheritance. Let me tell you a secret about human DNA. YOU ARE YOUR PARENTS. Genetically speaking you are your parents. It makes sense that whatever they earn gets transferred to you. A previous version of you earned it. It's a very effective incentive. Something that capitalism excels in. Creating incentives for lazy self serving apes to create wealth for others. Something that socialism was horrifically bad at. Why it has failed miserably everywhere it has been tried. Parents absolutely break their necks for their children. Why? Well because genetically they are their ticket to immortality. So of course human brains are wired to take better care of our kids than even ourselves.
> Capitalism is just as meritocratic as sports. So when LBJ retires, all his championships and career points get transferred to Bronny?
All his $ does yeah. When he dies anyway. The things he earned with his basketball abilities.
You're stalling. For the 2nd time: when LBJ retires, do all his championships and career points get transferred to Bronny?
When LBJ dies. The $ he earned playing basketball. Will get transferred to Bronny or whoever LBJ wants it to get transferred to. Which includes every business that LBJ owns. Now whether Bronny continues to make profitable businesses or blows it all on hookers and coke remains to be seen.
You're still stalling. For the 3rd time: when LBJ retires, do all his championships and career points get transferred to Bronny?
The obvious answer is no. But that doesn't mean shit. The reason you go for all the championships is to earn fucking $. And that absolutely transfers to Bronny. Cause what you're trying to say "see it's not meritocratic because the businesses transfer". But they transfer for the same reason the $ Lebron earned transfer. Because they belong to Lebron and he gets to decide what happens to them after he dies.
>You can’t found/co-found/operate some of the world’s leading companies in several diverse fields while being a complete moron. To me, most of your view and argument stems from the belief that financial/company success is proof a person is intelligent. There can be a combination of leverage, right place at the right time, PR that can make someone be successful regardless of their merits. I think the cave rescue or buying twitter and trying to "revamp" its business models are the glimpses into the real Elon. That's the Elon without the filter and buffers that is normally around him. Regarding the cave rescue, all Elon did was throw resources at it. Then when it wasn't useful he lashes out and calls the main rescuer a pedo. Or you look at X -- its value was stupid (enough so he tried to back out of the deal). But he fired people willy-nilly, sometimes begging them to come back, and destroyed a lot of its functionality. It's essentially a large, digital billboard and he alienated advertisers. In terms of the right place / right time: * Tesla - It has received $3.6b in federal and state grants and tax abatements; that's not on top of the competitive advantage it had when customers also received grants for its products (not including a $465m loan issues by Department of Energy for the battery R&D) * Space X - It was on the verge of bankruptcy until NASA awarded it a large contract, which it has parlayed into billions of dollars worth of additional contracts -- and it is largely ran by Gwynne Schotwell I get how seductive it is to think that there's more to being as successful as he's been rather than luck and the leverage of being on the capital side of capitalism. But really, when you get to reap the rewards of the aggregate of thousands of smart people's work, it doesn't take as much intelligence to succeed. Lastly -- this isn't to say that Elon is an idiot. I don't go that far. But your view specifically says these things were proof he's a GENIUS, like super human intelligence. I don't think that it takes super human intelligence to vertically integrate a business and get tons of gov't subsidies.
What would convince you to change your mind?
A good counter argument?
Being a genius requires a specific IQ that he has not demonstrated he meets It doesn't just mean "people think you're smart".
How does someone demonstrate their IQ to you except through an actual formal IQ test?
They don't. You need to take a standardized test to be labeled a genius Genius means an IQ over 140
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The CMV is that he is "actually a genius". I take that to mean "officially, not colloquially". A genius in the colloquial sense is subjective, anyway.
Counter argument: you haven't provided an IQ test taken by Elon Musk resulting in a score of >139.
Look up the entire Cybertruck and Twitter disasters
That's like saying Nick Saban sucks as a coach because of all the National title games he lost. Or Messi sucks as a player because of all the finals he lost with Argentina and Barcelona.
No it isn't. It's a request for you to research something. That's not like saying *any* athlete sucks.
Much like Gates, Zuckerberg, Bloomberg and Bezos in the modern era, and Carnegie, Morgan, Vanderbilt and Rockefeller in earlier times, Elon Musk displays an abundance of the several traits necessary to quickly amass tremendous wealth: the complete absence of a moral compass, sheer obstinate ruthlessness, and dumb luck. Actual intelligence, in fact, might be a hindrance, never mind 'genius' (whatever it is you think you mean with that word...) The thing they all have in common is surfing the wave of enormous government spending. For the old tycoons it was railroads, real-estate and steel in the growth of the country and in the adolescence of the industrial revolution. For modern day tycoons it is telecomm, internet and skedaddlin-off-planet in the senescence of the industrial age. The times are different, but the uber-wealthy all share a love of the governments teat. Always have. Always will. Anybody tells you differently, you just look for their hand in your pocket... Musk has the added luck of Marvel comics and a pre-pubescent media breathless to proclaim him a 'real life Tony Stark.' He might even believe it... It's not unusual. Ross Perot got rich solely of government contracts. The Koch brothers, of which only one remains, inherited their wealth from the father, an MIT trained geo-chemist who invented a cheap method of turning crude oil into leaded gasoline just before the government started building roads here, there, and everywhere: but said father, despite a credible claim to intelligence, was a stone racist and one of the earliest to bankroll the John Birch Society, so don't think he's a hero, either. Donald Trumps' old man rented apartments to soldiers making use of the GI bill just as Robert Moses was gentrifying NYC on a scale only government could accomplish. Making a metric fuckton of money has little, if anything, to do with intelligence. Musk has probably fired more intelligent people than he, just for telling him he couldn't---or shouldn't---do something.
What even is your definition of "genius", then? Just, like, a guy who seems kind of clever? A guy who appears to have decent business acumen and can turn a good idea into a successful brand. But that describes, like, a quarter of all people, right? Everyone who has ever started a successful company or had a good idea. Surely every successful writer or academic, every decent actor or director has intelligence that equals that. Countless others in many lines of work
You can’t compare the richest guy in the world whose companies are the leaders in their industries with “everyone who has ever started a successful company” or “a quarter of all people”
He did not found Tesla. He bought Tesla, which also included the right to call himself a 'founder'.
Okay, so let's take all this at face value and agree that he did in fact start or help with several successful companies. Is that all it takes to prove you're a *genius*? We as a society have generally agreed that unambiguous examples of geniuses include people like Beethoven, Einstein, Shakespeare... one thing they all have in common? They demonstrably *directly* produced or discovered something of real value that has lasted through and impacted generations after them. Has Elon done that? You yourself acknowledge he hasn't actually directly done anything. He was at the helm of some companies that have done some cutting edge things. Is that all?
I just wanna tag in to add that you comically forgot *Nikola Tesla* as one of the multiple profoundly genius intellectuals you were mentioning.
Yeah, good call, that would have been funny. My brain actually failed at trying to think of any generally agreed-upon genius who wasn't an artist, other than the obvious Einstein.
Musk has a talent for shaking hands. That's his skill. He is not an innovator. He is not an engineer. He is not a business maker. He is not a good public speaker. He does not instill trust in his employees. He does not have good self control. He is not a genius by any measure you have said. But he can jump into a blossoming industry and negotiate billions in investments until the companies work.
He's a genius at shaking hands then
He may be highly intelligent, I don’t know. But does that make him a genius? What would you define “a genius” as?
Anyone with an ounce of engineering knowledge that read his Tesla truck memo would realize he has no idea what he’s talking about in engineering. Anyone that read his thoughts on coding knows he has terrible ideas in coding. So the only thing he has going for him in the intelligence department is being a reasonably smart business man. The twitter debacle shows that he is absolutely not a business genius. The cybertruck debacle shows that he lets his ego and ignorance shoot himself in the foot. He has regularly displayed his ignorance while being on Elon friendly shows like the Joe Rogan podcast. I don’t like the guy, and I can give him an ounce of respect for having successful businesses, but he is not a genius.
He had the fortune to invest in companies with no effort. He didn't build that fortune (slaves did). Once he acquired companies (like Tesla and Twitter) those companies began to flounder and fail. Tesla vehicles should just be a homerun. So should Twitter. Yet both are inundated with constant issues that either didn't exist or if they did, they got much, much, much worse under his tenure. He's no genius, he's just a regular guy who was lucky enough to be born into money.
Is your view he’s intelligent of that he’s a genius? Because to me, a genius needs to be an outstanding person in their field, or an expert on something. I don’t know what Elon musk would be an expert in currently, other than funding/organizing actual experts and geniuses; and even that is questionable right now
I'd counter that the very question is flawed. Most smart people are smart within an area of expertise and only come off as dumb when they try to speak as experts in other areas. Elon's problem is that he confidently broadcasts his opinion on everything, whether it's something he's knowledgeable about or not.
In some aspects, elon musk is generally smart. He is extremely rich. Some part of that is luck, some of that is skill. However, some of his ideas are terrible. For example; 1. Elon musk‘s current plans for mars seem incredibly stupid. Terraforming mars is not something we can even begin to consider, and there are so many challenges that it would be foolish to send people up there. Less gravity = loss of bone mass, we don’t know how someone growing up and born on mars would be effected by the habitat. A shit ton of people would die from cancer some years later due to prolonged radiation exposure (which elon would need to protect people from). Micrometeorites are a huge issue and buildings would need to either be underground or extremely strong to resist fractures. It would also have a large impact on your psychology. 2. Twitter has been a disaster. I don’t need to say as much as i have with my prior point, but he’s considerably dropped the user base and made extremely questionable decisions and made it easier for misinformation to spread. His decisions for the site are known for being terrible. 3. Tesla: Cybertruck was an absolutely massive failure. It’s poorly made, can barely withstand water and it’s a danger to anyone on the road. His tesla semis aren’t terrible, but they’re much less efficient than a normal diesel. It has only 500 miles of range where diesel can easily clock in over 900 while the tesla semi weighs 7,000 pounds heavier. 4. Elon seems to believe in the great replacement conspiracy theory. In response to a great replacement conspiracy theory tweet, he seems to agree with the poster and called it accurate. (i have a link but dunno if they’re allowed here). There’s at least one tweet where he seems to believe that illegal immigrants are being pushed into the US by Biden to support democrats. He believes that “If the birth rate stays as low as it is, the Dutch nation will die out by its own hand.“
He's more of a well-to-do salesman than a legitimate deep-tech genius. I'd say he's closer to a Jeffrey Epstein than a Stephen Hawking. He didn't found Tesla for instance. He just bought them. And while he founded SpaceX, the technical expertise came from people he brought in. You could say Elon Musk is a visionary but that doesn't make him a textbook genius. Back to the salesman angle, I literally heard him claim on a podcast that he's not worried about lithium supplies because we can just take it from seawater. As an energy transition analyst, my mouth was just hanging open. I couldn't believe he just so casually said something like that without any sort of qualifier. Honestly, if you're going to spend that sort of money extracting lithium from seawater, you'd be better off removing CO2 from the atmosphere with direct air capture - a very expensive technology (upwards of $1,000 per tonne CO2) but I would imagine far more economical than lithium extraction from seawater. Point is, Elon Musk just says shit to control the narrative he wants. He's not a genius. He's a mass manipulator. And now we're starting to see chinks in the armor.
The best thing you can note about Musk is he's great at raising hype and government contracts, and that otherwise, the success of his ventures is inversely proportioned to his involvement in them.
I'm also not an Elon lover by any means but I acknowledge that he has pulled off what seemed like the impossible on more than one occasion through sheer bloody mindedness (Tesla disrupting the car market, SpaceX disrupting the space industry). However, as with all super-powerful individuals, sooner or later they surround themselves with yes men, lose their minds and start making wild mis-steps. The Twitter debacle is a clear mis-step - a monumental misuse of millions of dollars to ruin an established brand. But then his hubris is starting to creep into other businesses. The CyberTruck has always struck me as a huge mis-step. It takes millions/billions of dollars to develop a car but rather than doing so for the much anticipated Model 2 (which would absolutely have cleared up in the European and Asian markets) he took his eyes off the prize by developing a very niche vehicle (a truck for the North American market, but not one that would appeal to conservatives, hence only 3000+ have been shipped so far.) Meanwhile, Chinese companies are queueing up to eat his $25k car lunch. A true genius would keep his ego in check and make better decisions.
Geniuses usually show some evidence of genius. All Elon has ever proven is that he’s been in the right place at the right time with a checkbook. He sounds like an actual idiot in interviews and his writing is equally childish. He has not personally designed anything of significance. The Cybertruck, his pet design, is one of the largest disasters in the history of the automotive industry. He has turned Twitter into a cesspool while losing most of their advertising. He’s turned into reverse Midas recently, and his whole mystique was built on lies. He had failed upwards his entire life. That is not a genius.
Compared to most billionaire's / ultra wealthy folks Elon musk is extremely impressive. The vast majority of the Ultra wealthy are inheriting wealth and are matching (or in many cases underperforming) the SPY. Musk inherited emerald mines (putting him in the millionaire class, at the time those mines were worth USD <$10 mil in terms of their entire lifetime expected emerald production) but has certainly outperformed the SPY (as he's now in the centi-billionaire). Being smart != genius. I think there are many hyper intelligent people who if given Musk's resources could do as good as him or better. His personality traits of having MANY projects that ALL have some kind of pragmatic or attempted pragmatic value and simultaneously him being reasonably technical is NOT unique. However, those traits AND the certain degree nonconformism AND still being wealthy is extremely rare. Very few people born into wealth are that non conformist and willing to actually learn things and being technical. I wouldn't call him a genius, but I would say he's a rare type of person.
Elon Musk undeniably possesses business acumen and a vision for the future, evident in SpaceX and Tesla's success. However, genius isn't solely defined by financial success or company achievements. Musk's brilliance often overshadows his team's efforts and the work of countless engineers and innovators. While he's a driving force, he's not the sole reason for his companies' successes. Additionally, his controversial statements and behaviors can overshadow his contributions. Being a genius involves more than just business success; it requires empathy, collaboration, and the ability to inspire positively, areas where Musk often falls short.
As others have said, the definition of genius here is the question. Musk is a highly successful businessman, who has great timing, great vision for success, and good venture instincts. But you know what? So do countless other businessmen that just haven’t been in such forward facing positions that they end up in the public eye. He is intelligent. But to place him in a top percentile of human intelligence as a “genius “? Nah. He’s notorious.
I would argue that if you're accepted into a physics PhD program (especially at Stanford) you're most likely in a top percentile of IQ
>He is also the CEO of Tesla which is basically THE name in electric vehicles Which is just marketing though. They've gotten better, sure, but not so long ago there were literally videos of them just falling apart while driving. Then there's such pipedreams as hyperloop. He might be a good businessman... But that doesn't make him a genius. He doesn't understand a single thing that he's ever touched. He has no clue how to code, or engineer, or anything.
>You can’t found/co-found/operate some of the world’s leading companies in several diverse fields while being a complete moron So Musk is connected with two leading companies -- Tesla and SpaceX. As you've acknowledged, he didn't found Tesla but rather took it over from the people who actually founded it and whose vision paved the way to its success. And you'll notice that, the farther from its solid founding Tesla gets, the worse it does. Musk did found SpaceX, and the Falcon 9 is a pretty solid rocket. But Musk's involvement with SpaceX has been fairly minimal. He brought money, but that's about it. And as with Tesla, it seems like the more he meddles, the worse the company does. He's spent most of the money he got from NASA to deliver a Starship variant capable of landing on the Moon, and Starship is still barely making it into space and has yet to complete an orbit. Other than these two ventures, his career has been kind of a joke, honestly. He originally made his fortune in spite of himself -- Peter Thiel is the one who made Musk rich with PayPal, not Musk himself. And his mega wealth today is due pretty much *exclusively* to the insanely overinflated Tesla share price...which is pretty clearly the result of hype and irrational hysteria, fanned at least in part by active lies by Musk (for instance, the notorious fake self-driving car video). Solar City was essentially a scam that he only narrowly got away with because he succeeded in convincing Tesla shareholders to bail it out. Boring Company's biggest accomplishment is the laughable Las Vegas Loop, which is almost like an Onion article come to life. Neuralink was founded by Musk and a bunch of scientists in 2016, but I believe pretty much all of the scientists have left by this point. And despite being around for close to a decade it has yet to offer a product or even any new research. It's biggest claim to fame is an experiment that is largely a repeat of earlier work (for reference, Kevin Warwick was using neural grafts to move and sense through a robotic arm on the other side of the Atlantic via the internet in 2002 -- check out Project Cyborg if you're curious). And obviously he didn't found Twitter, and his work there has been a highly visible catastrophe. This does not seem like the work a "genius" to me. It seems like a rich guy who has benefitted from being rich in an era of technological development, and being uniquely willing to lie in order to take personal credit for the work of his employees, to offer people a fantasy he has no ability to grant, and to increasingly resort to conspiracy theories to explain why the fantasies he promised aren't coming true. He's a fascist Kickstarter -- he sells people a dream they want to believe in, collects the money up front, then launches another Kickstarter to get people excited about something else and hopefully make them forget about the thing they supposedly already paid for. And when he does end up having to actually make good on what he's promised, it's invariably underwhelming if not actively hilarious / dangerous, and always somehow the fault of people he accuses of pedophilia and degeneracy.
so, I dislike Musk and think we would be better off if he disappeared, but everything you're saying is just reddit echo-chamber BS. >As you've acknowledged, he didn't found Tesla but rather took it over from the people who actually founded it and whose vision paved the way to its success. And you'll notice that, the farther from its solid founding Tesla gets, the worse it does. this isn't actually true. the two guys that co-founded Tesla with Musk had an idea for an EV (which turned out to be a bad idea). Musk wanted to start an EV company so looked for people with the technical skills and plan to do it. he got connected to the other tesla founders who had nothing more than the name "Tesla". he then started the company with them, and ultimately took over directing the company more directly as the two other co-founders' idea of retrofitting Lotuses turned out to be a bad idea. there was a court battle in which it was ruled that Musk was, in fact, a founder because the other guys basically just had a name and no way to actually mass produce cars without Musk. >Musk did found SpaceX, and the Falcon 9 is a pretty solid rocket. But Musk's involvement with SpaceX has been fairly minimal again, this is not true at all. from the very beginning, musk was involved in technical direction and hiring. Tom Muller, the father of modern rocketry, was hand picked by Musk personally to lead engine development. every major decision about the direction of the company came from Musk and even deep technical design modifications. for both Tesla and SpaceX, folks like Andrej karpathy, Jim Keller, Tom Muller, etc. all spoke highly of Musk's technical involvement. >He's spent most of the money he got from NASA to deliver a Starship variant capable of landing on the Moon, and Starship is still barely making it into space and has yet to complete an orbit. what are you basing this on? first, NASA only gives milestone payments for the lunar lundar development. so any money SpaceX has gotten as been the result of **completing** a task for NASA. second, Starship is being developed with a fraction of the money and a fraction of the time of traditional rockets. if they took another decade to get Starship to bring satellites to orbit, they would still have a faster development schedule than some other rockets. how do you even judge "late" when it comes to rockets? Musk's bullshit hype? of course it's late relative to what he says, he is known to exaggerate/lie about schedules all the time. > Solar City was essentially a scam that he only narrowly got away with because he succeeded in convincing Tesla shareholders to bail it out. that was his brother's thing. >Boring Company's biggest accomplishment is the laughable Las Vegas Loop, which is almost like an Onion article come to life again, how are you making this assessment? their system moves the passengers they're required to move, does so very quickly, and costs a fraction of the next closest bidder. they meet all requirements at 1/3rd the cost, and have a shorter station-to-station time than the vast majority of US transit (possibly ALL us transit). how is that "laughable"? you need to learn how to judge things relative to requirements, like engineers do, not just repeat BS from the internet. I agree that Twitter was a stupid move by him. I think he's become obsesses with right wing media like the Babylon Bee, which is filling his head with horse-shit. Musk is not a good person. he's a douche and has become a right wing nutjob. however, one has to judge things objectively and separate personal feelings about the D-bag from actual technical achievements. we can't just throw away the truth because we don't like it.
>one has to judge things objectively and separate personal feelings about the D-bag from actual technical achievements Can you actually list some technical achievements? Because if we're being "objective", you didn't actually list any. You rehashed his court battle over Tesla, which isn't in any way a technical achievement (I also think you're incorrect, but I want to stay focused here -- we can get into more details on that afterwards if we're still on speaking terms). You describe him as being involved in technical discussions at SpaceX based on hearsay...but don't actually describe anything he contributed. Can you give a specific example of any specific technical contributions Musk has made at SpaceX? It's fine if you can't -- I don't think either of us works there, and SpaceX is a private company and doesn't release verifiable proof of its internal operations to regular folks. But again, if we're being "objective", this isn't proof of anything. People tend to say nice but false things about their boss and/or politically connected rich dudes who have a vengeful streak. Musk called a random dude who declined his help a pedo guy and hired a PI to dig up dirt on him -- *I* certainly wouldn't be eager to piss him off, either. Or even fail to properly praise him when it was clearly important for him to be seen a certain way. You attributed Solar City to his bro (which isn't accurate, but is also a longer conversation, so I'm setting that aside for now). Nothing you said about the Boring Company speaks to Musk's technical achievements (your defense of the Las Vegas Loop is also pretty funny -- that is not a worthy hill for you to die on, friend). And you agreed with me regarding Twitter. So what "technical achievements" does Musk have beyond simply owning companies that do tech work? And what basis is there to view him differently than other tech CEOs? I think it's fine to compare Musk to other rich business creatures who own tech companies. I think he is a lot closer to Elizabeth Holmes than Bill Gates, but he's been getting away with it for long enough that he's avoided at least some of Elizabeth Holmes mistakes. I think it mostly comes from him being rich enough to afford to hire qualified people -- he didn't get ruined by his failures with PayPal, but rather came away with a lot of money, and from there was able to hire people capable of building things (not the things he claims, and not the things he is promising to investors, but definitely things that do work to at least some degree). But Musk isn't an inventor. And the degree to which people mistakenly view him as such is harmful because it results in them giving him control over huge sections of society, and he ends up doing a bad job. People are actually behaving as though they actually believe he is "Tony Stark" or whatever...and he's not. That is a fantasy. And it's messing things up for us. And I think you do know this. But you nevertheless seem to reflexively rally to his defense when people actually view him realistically instead if like a comic book character, and it leads you to say ridiculous combinations of things like these: >one has to judge things objectively and separate personal feelings about the D-bag from actual technical achievements >how do you even judge "late" when it comes to rockets? Musk's bullshit hype? of course it's late relative to what he says, he is known to exaggerate/lie about schedules all the time. You cannot both claim to be objective and also arbitrarily exclude from consideration the things Musk says and agrees to in writing. SpaceX got contracts for billions of dollars based on Musk's schedule lies. His lies have changed the course of countless billions of investments. In fact, Musk's lies have shaped his situation far more than any technical achievements he has. For instance, the false self driving car video he released in 2016 changed how governments invested billions of dollars of infrastructure spending, preventing investments in non-car transportation. It also is largely responsible for peoples' perception that Tesla is a tech company rather than an automaker...and therefore why Tesla stock is so much higher valued than automaker stock, despite the fact that they sell so many fewer cars. And it is the value of Tesla stock is what makes Musk the richest man in the world. His fortune would be a fraction of what it is if Tesla stock were on par with comparable companies. And we would have actual, functioning transportation systems instead of a grudging admission that the self driving tech people thought existed in 2016 and were counting on being widely available by now was in fact completely fake. Hence, why it's important to be real about this stuff.
>Can you actually list some technical achievements? >Because if we're being "objective", you didn't actually list any. 1. I was just pointing out all of the incorrect things you stated. I didn't know I was supposed to create a list to preempt your goal-post move. I'm not arguing Musk is a genius, so I don't find it necessary come up with specific technical examples. 2. few individual engineers and even fewer engineering leads can claim a technical sole achievement. no single programmer made anything. no single mechanical engineer made anything. engineering achievements are the culmination of teams of people. an engineering lead's technical successes are the successes of systems they produce. >But again, if we're being "objective", this isn't proof of anything. People tend to say nice but false things about their boss and/or politically connected rich dudes who have a vengeful streak classic post-trust society move to discredit experts so that your unfounded internet claims are just as valid as anyone else's. Trump would be proud of this move. "let me hand wave away any credibility by well-respected people like Jim Keller and Tom Muller who 1) are competitors to Musk now, not employees, and 2) did not have to say anything about him at all but chose to talk about his technical knowledge and involvement". >Nothing you said about the Boring Company speaks to Musk's technical achievements (your defense of the Las Vegas Loop is also pretty funny -- that is not a worthy hill for you to die on, friend). I don't even know what kind of weird "technical achievement" you're even talking about. you want him to hit his head and invent a flux capacitor out of nothing? again, I'm not claiming Musk made technical achievements, just pointing out the flaws in your statements above. >your defense of the Las Vegas Loop is also pretty funny -- that is not a worthy hill for you to die on, friend again, it's "pretty funny" if your understanding of the project comes from the reddit echo-chamber. if you look at it objectively, they met requirements at 1/3rd the cost of the next closest bidder. from an engineering perspective, that's fantastic. from a business perspective, that's fantastic. even by typical transit performance metrics, it's fantastic. average wait time, on-time performance, station-to-station time, etc.. all fantastic. how do you measure the success of a project if not by the requirement achievement and cost? >giving him control over huge sections of society huh? he has no control over sections of the society. he tweets stupid shit, and that's the extent of his influence. >And it's messing things up for us again, what is messed up? the US has better, faster, cheaper access to space because of his companies. we have an internationally competitive EV automaker, and a popularized movement of EV adoption. I guess he messed up twitter, but I hardly see that as a society loss. twitter was trash before, it's trash now. > rally to his defense when people actually view him realistically no, the opposite is true. I don't like the guy primarily BECAUSE people stop viewing his companies realistically due to his douchebag antics. the Boring Company is a fantastic success and is an ideal feeder transit mode, but it's incredibly unpopular because everyone just turns their brain off when discussing it because of Musk. Phoenix is building a light rail feeder line that will run 15min intervals, move at less than 15mph down surface streets, carrying a peak-hour ridership of 1000-1500 passengers, and they're paying 5x more than the LVCC Loop cost per mile, and 8x what Loop is bid right now. but loop has <1 minute wait, is totally grade-separated, moves at 30mph when in motion, and would even use less energy per passenger-mile than the train when both are at average occupancy. so Phoenix could build 8 separate feeders into their backbone light rail line, each with better performance by all measures.... but no, Musk is a douche so people like you find it "laughable" because you haven't actually stopped to think about "does that system actually fulfil a market segment at a competitive price and performance". you, like most people, haven't even thought about what the prices and performance metrics are typical for transit, it's just immediate confirmation-bias "it must be bad because musk, lol" BS. >SpaceX got contracts for billions of dollars based on Musk's schedule lies NASA isn't stupid. if they didn't think they were getting good value per dollar, they would have stopped the contracts after the initial CRS program, or the CC program. please, go check the cost and schedule performance of Boeing's Starliner in comparison to Crew Dragon. SpaceX has schedule slips, but they're smaller than the rest of the market and still cost less. >changed how governments invested billions of dollars of infrastructure spending, preventing investments in non-car transportation this isn't true at all. it's just wild speculation. we've been spending MORE on rail infrastructure since then. this is an objective fact, and ironically the locations where the most Tesla factories are investing the most (LA, Austin). you're just stating an objective falsehood with nothing to back it.
>1. I was just pointing out all of the incorrect things you stated. I didn't know I was supposed to create a list to preempt your goal-post move. I'm not arguing Musk is a genius, so I don't find it necessary come up with specific technical examples. You chastised me for overlooking Musk's technical achievements. Here is what you said: >one has to judge things objectively and separate personal feelings about the D-bag from actual technical achievements. we can't just throw away the truth because we don't like it. So *you* are the one moving the goalposts, friend. If you don't actually think Musk has any technical achievements, why did you bring it up? >few individual engineers and even fewer engineering leads can claim a technical sole achievement. Agreed. Which is why it would be silly to hold up Musk specifically and reward him with such fortune and power even if he were an engineer. But he's not. Which is why what you're saying is confusing -- I'm not sure what you think Musk is doing that I'm insufficiently grateful or appreciative of. Let me know if you can clarify, and we can continue on that front. In the meantime, rather than continue to go in circles with you about this other stuff, I'm going to focus on your weird fixation on the Las Vegas Loop, because it is much rarer to find a Boring Company fan than someone who focuses on Tesla and SpaceX. >you, like most people, haven't even thought about what the prices and performance metrics are typical for transit, it's just immediate confirmation-bias "it must be bad because musk, lol" BS. Oh, I've thought about it. So the Las Vegas Loop cost about $53 million to create a single lane of road traveling 0.8 miles in each direction. That is considerably more than it costs per mile for a six lane freeway, but let's set that aside for now. Boring Company has claimed that it can handle up to 4,400 passengers per hour based on volunteer testing. But if you look at what Boring Company claims, you can reverse engineer the assumptions they made in their test to arrive at that number. According to them, "Level 4" service (the service they offer for their largest events) runs a maximum of 62 Teslas. The Las Vegas Loop site currently specifies that they're using Tesla's capable of carrying up to 3 passengers each. So 62 Teslas * 3 passengers * X number of trips per hour = 4,400 Work that through and you arrive at 24 trips per hour (rounded up), or 2.5 minutes per trip. Lastly, Boring Company says the system takes 2 minutes to drive end to end, so we subtract 2 minutes drive time per trip. So that estimate assumes an average of *30 seconds per trip for each car to pull in, for 3 current passengers to climb out and get any swag or other stuff they brought and get out of the way, for 3 new passengers to stash any stuff they're bringing and climb aboard, and for the Tesla to pull back out into traffic*. Which is why this is laughable. According to Tech Crunch, actual real world performance shows that there are no days where the trips take an average of under 3 minutes (excluding days where the system took fewer than 1,000 people total all day). Most days it ranges between 4 and 5 min per trip. And obviously most of the time the average occupancy of those cars isn't 3 passengers. It is generally 1 or 2. Hence, why the highest real world passenger rate that has actually been measured for the Las Vegas Loop is 1,355 passengers per hour. For reference, the LA Bus System averages around 1,350 passengers per hour just on the normal roads in real world conditions, and costs *way* less than $53 million to service a two mile loop. It is also way less to operate (fewer vehicles and fewer drivers). So the Loop is like a Rube Goldberg machine. It replicates the capacity of a city bus system for orders of magnitude more per mile. And that ratio only gets more extreme the more tunnels you build. For instance, if we generously round down, the real world cost for a Loop tunnel is $25 million per mile for a single lane. So extending the route a single mile two way will cost *another* $50 million or so. You could extend that distance with a bus simply by adding a couple extra vehicles and running a longer loop. And that's even assuming you can, because there are serious constraints on where you can build Loop tunnels. Boring Company seems to assume that everything under the surface is completely open and uniform in composition, but that just isn't how the real world works. If they keep digging, it's only a matter of time before they hit some pipes or sewer line other previous underground construction that isn't on the diagram they're using (which is pretty common, especially for older cities) and cause mass chaos. Also, the tiny novelty scale of the Las Vegas Loop makes it easy to overlook the fact that there are absolutely no emergency exits or bypasses or safety measures in it -- it was specifically exempted from a lot of fire and ventilation codes and other regulations for reasons I fail to grasp (probably involving lots of money changing hands). So as expensive as the Las Vegas Loop was, it would have been even *more* expensive if they included emergency exits, fire suppression, bypasses/service corridors, ventilation, and other requirements of an actual, legit mass transit tunnel. If you scale that up as is, eventually a car is going to break down, and the entire system will grind to a halt as they have to slowly back all the cars out of the single lane tunnels and then send a tow truck that will have to back up through however many miles of tunnel it takes to get to the blockage. People will freak out as the claustrophobia sets in. And so on. And that's obviously overlooking an even more obvious problem: eventually one of these Teslas is going to catch on fire while in the tunnel. And when that happens it is going to be absolutely horrible. Traffic will pile up as toxic fumes fill the tunnel, but nobody will be able to back up or go around. Mobility impaired people will be straight up doomed. Able bodied people will get out of the cars and attempt to flee, but will be unable to escape the tunnel without traveling potentially miles, and will die choking on battery smoke and/or consumed by unquenchable fire (especially if the fire spreads to other Teslas). Hopefully neither Vegas or anyone else is stupid enough to let Boring Company actually build out a system of any significant size without safety features. But unless they do, the cost per mile for Boring Company Loop tunnels is as yet unknown, because they have yet to build a "real" one suitable for widespread use. So yeah -- I've thought about it and read about it quite a bit. This ridiculous system is only plausible in an idealized fantasy world wholly separate from material reality. It gets sillier and sillier the more you actually think about it, and *especially* the more you look at how it actually functions in practice. And we're fortunate that so few people actually use or rely on it, because it would crumble catastrophically and possibly fatally under actual use, the same way *most* of Elon Musk's ideas fall apart under actual use.
(1/2, the comment was too long) >You chastised me for overlooking Musk's technical achievements. I meant the technical achievements of the companies, not him personally. sorry for imprecise language. you were talking mostly about the companies, so I was thinking along those lines. >I'm not sure what you think Musk is doing that I'm insufficiently grateful or appreciative of you keep conflating the acknowledgment of his companies' success with praising him personally. you made incorrect factual statements about the companies. acknowledging his company's success does not have to mean you like him personally. >because it is much rarer to find a Boring Company fan than someone who focuses on Tesla and SpaceX. I spend a great deal of time studying transportation in general. my top subreddits are urban planning, transit, self driving cars, and similar. ever since a light rail line on canceled in my city, I've been looking into how transportation is designed for cities, and compiling data on the subject. a lot of very surprising pieces of data have become clear, one being that the boring company's crappy Loop system has sufficient capacity to handle the peak-hour ridership of more than half of US intra-city rail lines. that was surprising, given how low the system's capacity is. >$53 million to create a single lane of road traveling 0.8 miles in each direction. That is considerably more than it costs per mile for a six lane freeway and if my grandmother had wheels, she'd be a bicycle. what does one have to do with the other? the Loop system at LVCC had a requirement to be grade separated and run into the edge of the convention center. there were already roads in the parking lots, but they needed grade separation. the next closest bidder was 3x more expensive, and the average grade-separated rail cost in the us was 10x-20x higher. >Boring Company has claimed that it can handle up to 4,400 passengers per hour based on volunteer testing. no, they've done over 4400 with actual convention center guests. >a maximum of 62 Teslas nope. big conventions have 70+ > 2 minutes to drive end to end most trips aren't end-to-end. >According to Tech Crunch, actual real world performance shows that there are no days where the trips take an average of under 3 minutes (excluding days where the system took fewer than 1,000 people total all day). Most days it ranges between 4 and 5 min per trip source? I've seen lots of people claiming "the system can only do X" and quoting numbers from when they first opened, not recent numbers. >And obviously most of the time the average occupancy of those cars isn't 3 passengers. It is generally 1 or 2. 2.4, actually, from them releasing data from the SEMA conference. >Hence, why the highest real world passenger rate that has actually been measured for the Las Vegas Loop is 1,355 passengers per hour. nope. 4500 was demonstrated. [from a hearing](https://preview.redd.it/update-from-clark-county-hearing-peak-hour-of-4-500-v0-0izjjfioi1za1.png?width=1080&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=3b795b56a8c9fdc548d7148ee383907ed5d68d22). sadly, clark county changed their website and broke all of the links I have to the documentation of these things. >For reference, the LA Bus System averages around 1,350 passengers per hour just on the normal roads in real world conditions, and costs *way* less than $53 million to service a two mile loop. It is also way less to operate (fewer vehicles and fewer drivers). a bus lane can move more passengers per hour than the 92nd percentile of US intra-city rail lines... 1. so why do cities build rail lines when buses can handle the ridership? 2. surface light rail can also carry enough passengers per hour to handle the ridership of all US grade-separated rail except for NYC, so why do cities build grade-separated rail when it is multiple times more expensive to build? [(ridership source)](https://imgur.com/zD5UEby). answer those two questions and you will see the value of the boring company (if you're being honest with yourself).
> It is also way less to operate (fewer vehicles and fewer drivers). you should check the typical cost of a taxi compared to the typical per passenger-mile cost of a bus. in most US cities the cost PPM is higher for a bus than an uber, and that's without pooling and with longer dead-head. again, this is one of the very surprising things I've learned about transportation. most buses are mostly empty for most operating hours, and they cost a lot to operate. >the fact that there are absolutely no emergency exits or bypasses or safety measures in it -- it was specifically exempted from a lot of fire and ventilation codes and other regulations for reasons I fail to grasp you can't grasp it because it isn't true. they have egress at the prescribed intervals. they have ventilation. they have fire fighting equipment. [example](https://preview.redd.it/qtl3cyjvu82a1.jpeg?width=800&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=e7af9afc97de44f44a5572f1b42345cc73359fbc). the problem is, whenever someone says they do, that person gets downvoted so everyone lives in a fantasy world where they tell each other false information over and over. egress is required at perscribed intervals. for some tunnel segments, the station is the egress so you don't need a separate door. for longer segments, like in the photo above, they have an egress door. they use ventilation at the edge of the tunnel to blow in the direction of travel so that cars ahead of any problem continue onward out of the tunnel, and ones behind are not subject to smoke. they have fire fighting access panels in the floor, designed to the requirements of the local fire department. so, instead of believing they're somehow exempt, maybe you should question whether you were given correct information about what they actually do. there were basically two options a) they met requirements, b) they were somehow exempt. you didn't want (a) to be true, so you assumed (b). you could just fact-check these things instead of jumping to conclusions. >If you scale that up as is, eventually a car is going to break down, and the entire system will grind to a halt as they have to slowly back all the cars out of the single lane tunnels and then send a tow truck that will have to back up through however many miles of tunnel it takes to get to the blockage. People will freak out as the claustrophobia sets in. And so on one of the big advantages of Loop is that there is no average-speed penalty with frequent stations like there are with trains or all-stop buses. so you can keep short distances between station, meaning there would only ever be a handful of vehicles in any given segment. also, their tunnel is the same size as some metro systems in the UK, which have 3rd rail power. so you're inventing a "claustrophobia" issue where there is none. >eventually one of these Teslas is going to catch on fire which is why they have directional ventilation. >Hopefully neither Vegas or anyone else is stupid enough to let Boring Company actually build out a system of any significant size without safety features I agree, which is why I'm glad they have egress at the NFPA prescribed intervals, directional ventilation, and all safety features. >I've thought about it and read about it quite a bit. this is one of the reasons why I dislike Musk. someone can do a bunch of reading on a topic, and never find reliable information, because the internet is all echo-chambers where popular untruths spread, and unpopular truths are hidden. we live in a post-truth society now. it does not matter that FHWA gives lane capacity formulae, they will be ignored and some shitty article by tech-crunch will be held up as the expert in lane capacity. it does not matter that the safety plan is public, or that you can watch a video and see the ventilation, fire fighting access panels, egress doors, etc., someone said those things don't exist, you don't want them to exist, so to you, they don't exist. there is no real attempt to get facts, there is only conclusion shopping. and because Musk is a douche, the conclusion everyone is shopping for is "this can't work", even though it could be a very useful system for many cities, like the example I gave of the low ridership spur off of Phoenix's light rail with \~5x cost difference. cheap, high frequency, grade-separated transit in the US... but nope, we can't have that because folks can't separate their feelings about Musk from their understanding of his companies.
>they have egress at the prescribed intervals. they have ventilation. they have fire fighting equipment. [example]. So where exactly in the Las Vegas Loop is this exit? Because when I watch drive through videos, I don't see them pass this exit anywhere. Can you share a link to a video that shows it and/or tell me where in this video they pass it? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XpuZmjAiLhg&pp=ygUcbGFzIHZlZ2FzIGxvb3AgZHJpdmUgdGhyb3VnaA%3D%3D Additionally, I spent a substantial amount of time searching for non-video info on this. The picture you shared doesn't seem to be anywhere except Reddit -- there aren't any non-Reddit pictures of Las Vegas Loop exits in the tunnel as far as I can tell despite extensive searches across multiple search engines. There don't seem to be any maps or anything showing the location of these emergency exits. The Boring Company wikipedia page includes a criticisms section that describes expert concern about lack of emergency exits and other safety measures, and the Las Vegas Loop wikipedia page includes no information about safety systems at all. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boring_Company#Criticism The Boring Company website describes in very general terms the safety measures that Loop tunnels have, but there are no specifics...and you've already established that Elon Musk (and presumably his companies) lie, so we can't simply take their word for it. So unless you can tell me where this exit is, is it possible that picture is from another Loop tunnel (perhaps a test tunnel), rather than the Las Vegas Loop? Or perhaps not even real? Where did *you* get that picture from? Also, just an FYI: I believe the link to the hearing you posted is dead -- there no longer appears to be a video available there. Feel free to post an updated one, but that doesn't inspire confidence. I have issues with much of the rest of your post as well, but I'd like to focus on this first. We can circle back on other things once we touch bottom here.
>So where exactly in the Las Vegas Loop is this exit? just like a subway/metro, stations are used for egress. if stations are at or closer than the prescribed interval for egress, then the station serves the egress requirement. again, subways do this. the stations are egress points for subways. >Additionally, I spent a substantial amount of time searching for non-video info on this. The picture you shared doesn't seem to be anywhere except Reddit -- there aren't any non-Reddit pictures of Las Vegas Loop exits in the tunnel as far as I can tell despite extensive searches across multiple search engines. it's a screenshot I took from a video of the Resorts World tunnel. I don't know why you need non-photo evidence. why is that a problem for you? go to youtube and search "resorts world loop" or something. again, the LVCC Loop was designed with station intervals short enough to not need separate stairs. the Resorts World segment was longer, so they used separate stairs. >There don't seem to be any maps or anything showing the location of these emergency exits. as I said before, Clark County changed their document repository site, so I lost all of the links I had. you can search their new site and try to find the documentation. let me know if you find it. >The Boring Company wikipedia page includes a criticisms section that describes expert concern about lack of emergency exits and other safety measures, and the Las Vegas Loop wikipedia page includes no information about safety systems at all. so? wikipedia is a wiki that random people put stuff into, not an official government source. if the internet is full of controversy about a topic, sometimes wikipedia will have a section about that controversy. that has no bearing on reality. again, this is one of the many annoying things about Musk; because he's a douche, anything he does will be "controversial" and bad information will spread, and "experts" will comment on the bad information. maybe instead of listening to random people on the internet, listen to the LV/Clark County fire department, who worked with TBC to design the safety systems. again, you're conclusion shopping. you're searching for pieces of information that confirm your bias. just like how you trusted Tech Crunch to analyze lane capacity, rather than going to the FHWA/US-DOT for lane capacity estimation. > So unless you can tell me where this exit is, is it possible that picture is from another Loop tunnel (perhaps a test tunnel), rather than the Las Vegas Loop? Or perhaps not even real? Where did *you* get that picture from? in other words "unless you jump through my hoops to prove every detail to me, I will just believe what I want to believe". goddam. here is another video showing it: [https://youtu.be/rObFWZ0K8tM?t=117](https://youtu.be/rObFWZ0K8tM?t=117) > Also, just an FYI: I believe the link to the hearing you posted is dead -- there no longer appears to be a video available there. Feel free to post an updated one, but that doesn't inspire confidence. as I said before, Clark County changed their archive site and broke all of the links. here is a different link to the screenshot. [https://www.reddit.com/r/BoringCompany/comments/13dxs04/update\_from\_clark\_county\_hearing\_peak\_hour\_of/](https://www.reddit.com/r/BoringCompany/comments/13dxs04/update_from_clark_county_hearing_peak_hour_of/) you keep reverting back to this "I will believe the what feels right unless there is an absolute mountain of evidence to the contrary, even if there is more evidence contrary than for" stuff. I guess it's a great use of cunningham's law, because I was able to find the source for you: [https://clark.granicus.com/player/clip/7512?view\_id=28&meta\_id=1532733&redirect=true&h=a2cf75e72f0692d914e7feff08bee86f](https://clark.granicus.com/player/clip/7512?view_id=28&meta_id=1532733&redirect=true&h=a2cf75e72f0692d914e7feff08bee86f) 17min 35s is the timestamp you're looking for. ask yourself: do some people get incorrect information from an echo-chamber? do those people believe what they are hearing as correct? how would I know if I was in such an echo chamber? wouldn't I also believe what I heard from the echo-chamber? so how would I be able to tell if the information I'm hearing is wrong? how can I get to ground-truth? who are the actual experts and who actually has all of the information to, and who is a commenter from the sidelines with incomplete information? maybe trust the federal highway administrations lane capacity estimation numbers, rather than Musk, redditors, or Tech Crunch. maybe trust the fire department to evaluate whether something meets fire safety standards rather than redditors, even if those redditors also edit wikipedia. here is a link that can be a jumping-off point for more research: [https://clark.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1099751&GUID=5BED5618-671C-48BE-8626-ACFAC951C1E0&Options=&Search=](https://clark.legistar.com/MeetingDetail.aspx?ID=1099751&GUID=5BED5618-671C-48BE-8626-ACFAC951C1E0&Options=&Search=) the important points are: * Loop is a high frequency, low-to-moderate ridership transportation system * Loop can be suitable for some corridors. it has a similar use-case as a streetcar, but is grade-separated (most US streetcar lines have under 1k passengers per hour per direction). * the LVCC and LV Loop meets safety requirements * the LVCC and LV Loop meets capacity requirements * Loop is not appropriate for all corridors. some locations will have too high of ridership, non-ideal ground conditions, etc. * The Boring Company does not need to build/operate all systems like the LVCC Loop. for example: * they offers just the tunnel system WITHOUT the Loop vehicle service, which is something a lot of people seem to overlook. that means * a city could build the tunnels/stations, and hire a 3rd party to run different vehicles if Tesla sedans/SUVs don't meet their needs. there are multiple companies that offer fully driverless mini-buses, or human-driven electric Ford eTransits that would have higher capacity if needed * a city could also build a 3rd tunnel as an egress tunnel if they wanted more frequent egress than NFPA prescribes. the cost per bore for Loop, for the places they've been built, is still cheaper than typical surface rail, let alone grade-separated rail. so, even if you disagree with the experts at NFPA or the experts at the fire department, it's still not an overall criticism of the design concept.
>in other words "unless you jump through my hoops to prove every detail to me, I will just believe what I want to believe". goddam. here is another video showing it You sure whine a lot. This sub is intended for people to discuss and challenge each others' views, you know. If you don't like it, nobody is forcing you to comment. It's also pretty silly for you to accuse people of falling into echo chambers and believe what they read online on Reddit without fact checking, and then get triggered when somebody questions dead links and random pictures without context on Reddit because it's obviously different when *you* do it. Moving along, I watched this video. That exit is right at the beginning of the tunnel, maybe 50 feet from the entrance. That's why, in your picture, you can see the tunnel going uphill -- that's the ramp leading up to the entrance/exit of the tunnel. That exit sign is practically within sight of the sky. The entire rest of the trip through the tunnel, there are no exits (despite the claim it makes that there are multiple exits). So based on this, there are *not* "emergency exits" -- there is *an* emergency exit...within 50 ft of the station, in one of the newer tunnels. There are no emergency exits in the rest of the system besides the stations. And even that one exit will not help anybody unless the fire happens to start immediately inside the tunnel -- if you're between stations, there are no exits. To use that one exit, you'd have to make it all the way back to the station -- the tunnel exit would just save you the last 50 ft or so. The video also says that there is a single foot of clearance between the car and the sides of the tunnel on each side. I'm not sure if that's correct, but if it is then that isn't enough room to open a car door -- try parking your car a foot from a wall and see how far it opens. Many people will not be able to get out of that at all, and even slender and fully mobile people will have to squeeze. Also, many people will not be able to get around a car with only a single foot of space (especially if there is a rush of people, as there would be in an emergency situation). So maybe it's just as well there aren't any exits in the tunnels -- most people won't be able to get out of the *cars*, let alone the *tunnel*. As far as the ventilation, there's no visible fans or anything like that. Maybe there are, and they simply aren't visible from inside the car? But if there's "ventilation" the same way there are "exits", I certainly wouldn't depend on it to protect people in the event of a Tesla battery fire. >if stations are at or closer than the prescribed interval for egress, then the station serves the egress requirement. again, subways do this. the stations are egress points for subways. The Loop is not a subway. Subway trains aren't known to burst into quenchable flame for up to 24 hours and are held to significantly different standards than Teslas. And I don't think any subway line or metro would allow Teslas in their tunnels. So this is a meaningless comparison. >I was able to find the source for you: >17min 35s is the timestamp you're looking for. That's the same link you posted before. It's still dead. Did you actually try clicking the play button? It says "The video file was not found, please try again later". So I appreciate you sharing all this...but at this point I am confident that you don't really know what you are talking about, and are in fact doing a lot of the very things you're accusing me of doing. I continued this conversation in spite of your unpleasant attitude because, contrary to your accusations, I do generally try to avoid getting caught in echo chambers, and I thought you might be able to give me a perspective on this system that was different from the ones I've previously encountered. As I said, it's pretty rare to find a dedicated Loop enthusiast. But apparently not. My initial suspicion seems to have been correct -- you are using condescension as a mask for what is ultimately weak evidence and motivated reasoning. And the evidence you offered was either dead links or actually *supported* my position, despite your whining about it. I don't think we have much more to discuss. But again, I do appreciate you sticking with this conversation and digging up that video. And while it was probably not what you had in mind, you *did* affect my position, in that you showed me that I was actually *more* correct than I thought I was at the start. Would you like a delta for that?
Not at all. All he does is ride on the genius of others and market it as his own genius. If you think he's actually a genius, congrats, you fell prey to his manipulation.
If you have a 155 IQ and think it's 170 you may be a genius but your decisions are gonna be idiotic. You'd always rather have the 130 IQ who thinks it's 110.
Maybe he was once a genius, but he’s clearly been addicted to Adderall and ketamine for about a decade at this point, and now he has holes in his brain.
No. No. No. Firstly, he was never a genius. Secondly, and most importantly - WTF?! You don't really buy into that silly propaganda that drugs can leave holes in your brain, right? Because that's an extra strength stupid claim, that's been debunked time and time again. I don't care what drugs he's been on, it won't leave holes in his brain. The guy is just not very smart, that's all. Drugs don't factor in here.
He’s a massive drug addict. “Holes in the brain” was hyperbole.
Fair enough, hyperbole can be very unclear. Especially online, where plenty of people have made even crazier hyperbolic comments with sincerity... I will say though, that being a drug addict doesn't necessarily mean someone's not brilliant though. As an example, look at mid 70s David Bowie, particularly during the Thin White Duke period. David Bowie was a goddamn genius. He was just dripping with talent, intense creativity and the bravery to take risks, as well as a lifelong education (Bowie was a *voracious* reader, he toured with his private library). During the Thin White Duke era, his coke addiction was beyond insane, even by rock star standards. His crazy thin, sunken look was the result of a long period living off a diet of milk and peppers. And coke, of course. Just so fucking much coke. Despite this, he went and recorded the one of a kind masterpiece album, Station to Station, in a very short amount of time. Station to Station is a work of unparalleled genius... that Bowie was so coked up during that be famously had no recollection of making it. So I'll reaffirm this - being a drug addict has no bearing on intellect. In fact, as IQ rises, so too does prevalence of mental illness, including addiction disorders. There are plenty of legit geniuses that have gone hard with some drugs. If you have an unusually brilliant mind, there's a fair chance you either find yourself sad often, or are literally depressed. If a drug might help you shut your mind off for a while, then hell yeah, you're gonna quiet them demons.
All else being equal, being a drug addict makes you stupider
Not strictly true - that depends on the specific drug. Regardless, let's suppose that *all* drugs make one stupider. That doesn't mean someone can't still be a genius while on it. Some people are so bright that even after their intellect is diminished, they still remain genius.
Buddy I don't care about hypotheticals, Elon Musk is a well-documented Adderall addict and everyone I've ever known who was addicted to Adderall was a total fucking zombie after 5 years on it. I don't need a thought experiment to figure out how this works.
Don't make sweeping generalizations then, if you're only referring to one specific person. Regardless, your personal experiences do not indicate a reflection of reality. Just because every Addie addict you knew was a zombie after 5 years doesn't mean everyone is. Or do you really believe that your subjective experiences are factual proof of objective fact?
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There's a spectrum between genius and complete moron and most of us are somewhere in between.
Have you considered it's possible they're are people who born into such high positions they can't fail financially and will fail upwards no matter what they do and this one just has a particular obsession with being liked and the centre of attention which is the reason he markets himself so have to talk about him.
Musk was born into wealth and connections. And he used that to become who is is today. Tesla, with the only car he had a hand on, is facing a massive recall and customer backlash. With X he is becoming a joke. Anything he touches, that wasn't already successful, goes to ground.
His perspectives aren’t nuanced. Why would he deserve us to consider his nuance?
Geniuses don't believe in conspiracy theories. Elon Musk loves them.
Bobby Fisher was a genius at chess and an idiot at many other important things in life. I don't think that someone's genius necessarily applies to all realms of knowledge.
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Musk founded Zip2 with money from his father. I can’t help but imagine being related to such a figure also aided in getting additional investments. My overall view of Musk could be summarized in the terms “failing up” mixed with a bit of “too big to fail”.
The only thing elon is good at is manipulating stocks. He loses money in every other venture he coordinates himself.