I was a huge SpaceX fan from the early days so watched a lot of Musks presentations and interviews and noticed a lot of repetition and always felt he was strongly working from talking points combined with a reasonably good high level understanding of the topic.
He didn’t work as well off script and seemed to have stunted emotional development, not unlike a lot of internet age manboys raised on memes, video games and porn. It is difficult to reconcile his behaviour with an adult, father and manager of people and money. I suspect he has some seriously competent peiple around him like Shotwell who cover for his fuck ups.
IMO he probably is the kind of guy who can soak up stuff around him, turn it into a set of talking points and repeat it with the appearance of expertise. I think he may have had some cognitive decline due to age and lifestyle but I think he was a pretty competent bullshit artist in the past.
I am not an expert at anything but like many IT people discovered long ago that I can pick up most things in my general field with a bit of research. It is a dangerous mindset sometimes. There really is the feeling that with some basic undergrad math and comp sci and a weekend of googling you can understand quantum field theory and it’s totally delusional of course.
Unfortunately the fake it to you make it culture seems to have won. It doesn’t matter how crap you are, if you put yourself out there with confidence you will outcompete the quiet competent types. And when you get caught out there never seem to be consequences.
However, if you start looking in what he has promised and what he really has done, a new pattern emerges: it’s all bullshit. He continuously makes fantastic claims that will be ready by tomorrow. It’ll all be done by tomorrow, really!
Tesla’s full self driving, is already here, claimed for 10 years and still isn’t even close. Tesla hasn’t made any new models in the past 10 years begpnd the cyber truck which is a horrendous laughably stupid thing, yet Tesla is still valued more than any other car company that make 10-100 times the amounts of cars that Tesla does.
SpaceX? We’ll be on Mars in 2020, 2021, 2022, etc… SpaceX still can’t get itself beyond low earth orbit and only managed to explode a banana over the Indian ocean. They’re literally 1% done of what they got billions of tax payer funding from. Meanwhile they cheer every time a rocket blows up because…fun? Ohh, how about the tickets sending people to the other side of the world in 39 minutes? Of course any high schooler could tell you 20 reasons why that’s bullshit but Elon fans lap it up.
Boring company? Would make tunnels 100 times cheaper than others, really, truly! Of course anyone can do that too if you don’t put in rails, emergency exits, space to escape in case of emergency, stations, etc.
Okay, how about star link? You know, those thousands of satellites that do the job of single satellites, and totally won’t cause the Kessler syndrome? Yeah, use thousands of satellites in orbits so low that you’ll have to replace them every 5 years costing billions. What does it get you? A slightly lower ping. This seems the most actual successful project to date that comes from him and it’s still a shit show
Hyperloop? The absolute bullshit show what got tens of Billions of investment and went nowhere ever because the idea is fundamentally flawed? Even universities jumped in because reasons, it stopped high speed rail development in the US because this would be so much better, and yeah… China has tens of thousands of kilometres of high speed rail now, and the US has… Nothing.
The robots? The spandex guy, FFS… Any “real” demo of his robots has been 20 years behind on Boston dynamics and even then they had to fake most of if with humans controlling those sad machines
Did I forget anything? Ooohh yeah, the solar roofs, where he cheated too. Lots of court cases about that one
Each of his companies has to have a layer of management that’s simply about directing his attention somewhere that won’t hurt the company. SpaceX seems to do this best, Tesla is OK to bad, and Xhitter is by far the worst.
I was a huge SpaceX fan from the early days so watched a lot of Musks presentations and interviews and noticed a lot of repetition and always felt he was strongly working from talking points combined with a reasonably good high level understanding of the topic.
He didn’t work as well off script and seemed to have stunted emotional development, not unlike a lot of internet age manboys raised on memes, video games and porn. It is difficult to reconcile his behaviour with an adult, father and manager of people and money. I suspect he has some seriously competent peiple around him like Shotwell who cover for his fuck ups.
IMO he probably is the kind of guy who can soak up stuff around him, turn it into a set of talking points and repeat it with the appearance of expertise. I think he may have had some cognitive decline due to age and lifestyle but I think he was a pretty competent bullshit artist in the past.
I am not an expert at anything but like many IT people discovered long ago that I can pick up most things in my general field with a bit of research. It is a dangerous mindset sometimes. There really is the feeling that with some basic undergrad math and comp sci and a weekend of googling you can understand quantum field theory and it’s totally delusional of course.
Unfortunately the fake it to you make it culture seems to have won. It doesn’t matter how crap you are, if you put yourself out there with confidence you will outcompete the quiet competent types. And when you get caught out there never seem to be consequences.
Nah, he is just a scammer with a lot of luck.
Je was fired for incompetence, for one.
However, if you start looking in what he has promised and what he really has done, a new pattern emerges: it’s all bullshit. He continuously makes fantastic claims that will be ready by tomorrow. It’ll all be done by tomorrow, really!
Tesla’s full self driving, is already here, claimed for 10 years and still isn’t even close. Tesla hasn’t made any new models in the past 10 years begpnd the cyber truck which is a horrendous laughably stupid thing, yet Tesla is still valued more than any other car company that make 10-100 times the amounts of cars that Tesla does.
SpaceX? We’ll be on Mars in 2020, 2021, 2022, etc… SpaceX still can’t get itself beyond low earth orbit and only managed to explode a banana over the Indian ocean. They’re literally 1% done of what they got billions of tax payer funding from. Meanwhile they cheer every time a rocket blows up because…fun? Ohh, how about the tickets sending people to the other side of the world in 39 minutes? Of course any high schooler could tell you 20 reasons why that’s bullshit but Elon fans lap it up.
Boring company? Would make tunnels 100 times cheaper than others, really, truly! Of course anyone can do that too if you don’t put in rails, emergency exits, space to escape in case of emergency, stations, etc.
Okay, how about star link? You know, those thousands of satellites that do the job of single satellites, and totally won’t cause the Kessler syndrome? Yeah, use thousands of satellites in orbits so low that you’ll have to replace them every 5 years costing billions. What does it get you? A slightly lower ping. This seems the most actual successful project to date that comes from him and it’s still a shit show
Hyperloop? The absolute bullshit show what got tens of Billions of investment and went nowhere ever because the idea is fundamentally flawed? Even universities jumped in because reasons, it stopped high speed rail development in the US because this would be so much better, and yeah… China has tens of thousands of kilometres of high speed rail now, and the US has… Nothing.
The robots? The spandex guy, FFS… Any “real” demo of his robots has been 20 years behind on Boston dynamics and even then they had to fake most of if with humans controlling those sad machines
Did I forget anything? Ooohh yeah, the solar roofs, where he cheated too. Lots of court cases about that one
Elon Musk is a scammer, that’s it
Each of his companies has to have a layer of management that’s simply about directing his attention somewhere that won’t hurt the company. SpaceX seems to do this best, Tesla is OK to bad, and Xhitter is by far the worst.
But yeah. Point taken.