
Sam Altman on Twitter: It's gross seeing so many root against Tesla - AndrewBissell
https://twitter.com/sama/status/1130913917864034304
======
eldavojohn
Criticism against Tesla is not rooting against Tesla. Playing options as a
result of a CEO shooting his mouth off doesn't make you against the
environment or against green technology. In this case, it just makes you a
realist.

I'm an avid environmentalist. Elon Musk has lied so many times that I'm not
rooting against him, I'm just afraid that his house of cards is going to come
tumbling down and he will be another Solyndra where a good concept is ruined
by a conman who has said that within a year you can make $30k/yr letting your
tesla be a robotaxi and that in a year and three months there will be a
million robotaxis on the road[0].

When criticism is valid, it's okay. We've seen Elon Musk lie about production
time and time again. It's okay to distrust him. That's not "rooting against
the environment."

[0] [https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2019/04/23/elon-musk-
say...](https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/2019/04/23/elon-musk-says-tesla-
owners-could-make-30-000-robotaxi-network/3549652002/)

~~~
jaimex2
The tweet was refering to people who make it their life's mission to try and
make Tesla fail like shabooshka, the guy literailly lived at the factory
taking photos. Not people being critical or disagreeing with what they do.

~~~
AndrewBissell
skabooshka observes the factory to document actual Tesla production numbers
and prevent it from lying to the public. He may have also thrown a monkey
wrench in some kind of "full self driving" fake demo by taking photos of the
pilot car they were filming before their investor autonomy day.

If Tesla wasn't lying about its numbers or engaging in some kind of
shenanigans at the factory, then how could skabooshka taking pictures make it
fail? Let's set aside Tesla's claims that he tries to hurt their employees
since the Fremont police report already showed their account on that incident
was very deceptive.

~~~
jaimex2
You can't with any sincerity believe that.

A troll hanging day and night outside a factory parking lot posting absolute
crap on twitter is not in any way useful to anyone.

The guy was a nut case with some Moby dick like obsession. I can't find a
single time where he was even remotely objective.

------
apeace
I'm seeing a trend that opinions must now involve name-calling, picking sides,
and attacks on the reader's self-identity.

Altman doesn't just share an opinion here, he calls those who disagree with
him "gross" and suggest that there are only two types of people ("be the
person... not the person...")

I wish we lived in the kind of world where the Tweet said this:

"I'm disappointed that so many root against Tesla. I support them because it's
good for the climate and I believe in innovation. That's more important than
making money on puts."

Is it necessary to call people gross? Just read the other comments in this
thread, there are plenty of rational reasons to short TSLA which don't make
people gross.

------
Tomte
Be the person on the side of the law and on the side of safety.

Not the person hoping to make money from dishonest marketing and publicity
stunts.

Tesla has achieved way more than I would have expected, had someone told me
about it beforehand. But it doesn't magically absolve them, just because the
tech is cool.

~~~
SEJeff
I guess from Elon's POV, safety is sort of relative.

Their numbers[1] show autopilot as safer than human drivers, even though they
don't have full autonomy yet. A lot of people consider 1 human death from a
computer driving as unacceptable, but hundreds of thousands from human drivers
as totally fine.

[1]
[https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport](https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport)

~~~
Traster
Let's be clear: Their numbers are bollocks, and a serious reason why not only
should we worry about their cars killing people, we should be worried about
their callous indifference to lying about it.

>In the 1st quarter, we registered one accident for every 2.87 million miles
driven in which drivers had Autopilot engaged. For those driving without
Autopilot, we registered one accident for every 1.76 million miles driven. By
comparison, NHTSA’s most recent data shows that in the United States there is
an automobile crash every 436,000 miles.

Take from this 2 things:

1\. Either Tesla drivers are 4x safer than the average driver or their stats
aren't comparable with the industry standard measures (1.76m vs 0.43m) and
they have no problem with misleadingly comparing the two.

2\. Tesla is not interested in supplying a real metric for how likely you are
to crash in a Tesla, but instead provide PR numbers (accident per million
miles when Autopilot is overwhelmingly used only on the safest roads?)

~~~
SEJeff
I said "From Elon's POV", not "From my POV". Don't shoot the messenger :)

I'm trying to explain what he thinks is reality, even if it is detached from
what most of the rest of us think as reality. SpaceX's real goal is to send
Elon back to mars to be with his real family.

~~~
unityByFreedom
> I said "From Elon's POV", not "From my POV"

Elon's POV has access to a lot more data than we do.

He could give more fine grained details about safety. He actively chooses not
to:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqvatzjHGyk&t=47m17s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqvatzjHGyk&t=47m17s)

------
brianpgordon
> Be the person on the side of the climate

Elon Musk is not on the side of the climate, he's on the side of Elon Musk.
His forays into tunneling put the lie to his pro-climate claims awhile ago. He
has a bizarre hatred for public transport, which is the real solution to
reducing transportation emissions in cities. He would rather everyone take a
tunnel (in their Tesla, of course) than countenance the possibility real,
effective public transport, and he's actively seeked to divert public funding
away from public transport to his privately-owned Boring Co. Meanwhile, moving
an entire car around for each person is absurdly inefficient, even if it's
electric. It still has to be charged up, and that electricity is not certain
to be renewable. In fact, in the US, your electric car is not likely to be
significantly more green than a very efficient gasoline vehicle:

[http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/wp-
content/uploads/2013/02/Sh...](http://shrinkthatfootprint.com/wp-
content/uploads/2013/02/Shades-of-Green-Full-Report.pdf)

Of course, that's what the SolarCity acquisition is about, right? Except there
is still no solar roof, and Gigafactory 2 is turning into a major scandal -
that whole acquisition seems now to been disastrously ill-advised in
retrospect, and it's hard not to notice that it was hugely profitable for
Musk.

I am on the side of climate. I do not think this requires mindlessly
recapitalizing Elon Musk's ventures over and over. He's not the only one
working on clean energy. Other people can carry the torch if his hubris and
reckless behavior catch up to him and he goes bankrupt.

------
nrook
There are only two options here— either you can root against Tesla, or you can
be indifferent to the death of Walter Huang. Tesla has been irresponsible with
their rollout of self-driving technology, and someone has died as a result.

There's nothing wrong with rooting for other entrants in the self-driving
technology space, like Waymo, which aren't willing to grease their path to
market dominance with the blood of innocents.

~~~
codyb
Not to be indifferent to Huang’s death, but people die in cars all the time.
I’m more interested in whether or not Tesla’s autopilot is better on total
deaths per X miles than human drivers.

I guess this is one of those derail the train or kill the man questions, is
society willing to kill a man to save thousands of lives in the future?

Of course it’s not quite as clearcut since we’re not certain self driving cars
will ever be safer than human drivers (although my intuition is that they will
be since they won’t get drunk, fall asleep, or text at the wheel).

And of course comparisons are a bit difficult since humans are of course at
level 5 autonomy and statistics are generated from those conditions, and of
course Tesla is not and stats won’t be.

Interesting stuff.

~~~
Fins
People die all the time, but when they get in the car, they generally do not
agree to be beta testers for an FSD system that one day might be as safe as
human driver. Or not.

------
Glyptodon
I'm not "against" Tesla, but they basically epitomize the advent and promotion
of "wealth virtue," where rich people buy a product or lifestyle that the vast
majority could never afford and then act like poor people are ethically
inferior accordingly.

~~~
leesec
Umm what. I own a Tesla and am middle classed and don't think people poorer
than me are ethically inferior. This is a huge stretch.

~~~
Glyptodon
Most of the Tesla owners I've met fall into one of two categories:

a) (this the majority) wealthy virtue signalers

b) (this is the minority) upper-middle class/moderately wealthy tech/gadget
lovers

Buying a luxury car isn't a middle class purchase. Maybe you're some sort of
angelic exception, I don't know.

~~~
taylodl
According to the Pew Research Center the household income of the middle class
ranges between roughly $45K-$135K. If you're middle class and buying a Tesla
then you're definitely on the upper end of that range. The overwhelming
majority of the middle class _cannot_ afford a Tesla.

------
pdimitar
I find it interesting how every Tesla car autopilot crash is widely reported
yet all other car manufacturers' self-driving propositions are not better[0]
compared to Tesla's and almost nobody is talking about that -- at least not in
the news outlets I've been following.

Media seems to really want to see Musk fail. That doesn't look like objective
journalism to me.

(Additionally, did somebody _actually_ investigate Waymo's and Uber's self-
driving car departments inner workings and if they report the accident counts
truthfully?)

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-
driving_car#Incidents](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-
driving_car#Incidents)

~~~
umurkontaci
From the same article:

Uber's system killed a person. They received a huge backlash and their
permission to test self-driving cars have been revoked in the state of
Arizona. They also pulled out from testing California as well.

Waymo had 13 non fatal crashes, of which, 12 of them were other drivers'
fault. One was caused by the software where the car wanted to maneuver around
some sand bags on the road and side swiped a bus. No injuries. Google took the
blame and said it's a learning experience. AFAIK, Waymo cars are not available
to public by default.

Tesla had multiple fatal accidents as a result of "Auto Pilot" which is just a
bunch of driver assistance systems taped together and marketed as a complete
self-driving system. At every single accident, Tesla never admitted the blame,
and just reiterated it's statistically safer to drive with AutoPilot than
without.

Obviously, this pisses people off. The never-take-the-blame attitude gets old
and annoying. It's like a colleague who would throw everyone under the bus to
avoid taking the blame.

Secondly, I've seen the video of the accident with the Apple employee. It's
clearly AP error and I don't care if it's _statistically safer_ to drive with
AP, if a system causes and accident that I could have avoided easily, I don't
trust that system.

~~~
pdimitar
I don't disagree. But in the end, looking at statistics, it's still safer to
drive with AP indeed.

Self-driving cares are done for the first time (I mean, almost fully
autonomous ones). Accidents will happen still. We are very far away from a
good generic AI that can adapt to different tasks so it's gonna be a bumpy
road, pun intended.

~~~
cjhopman
> But in the end, looking at statistics, it's still safer to drive with AP
> indeed.

There's no publicly shared statistics that show that. You may have been
confused by Tesla's PR.

------
Traster
I think it's pretty toxic to disingenuously suggest that anyone who has a
problem with Tesla is just shorting the stock. It's like coming out and "It's
gross seeing so many root against Uber" back when Uber was the subject of a
new sexual harassment expose every other week. Sometimes companies with
interesting tech behave unethically.

------
cjhopman
I agree. It's also why I can't understand people who root against Theranos. I,
for one, am on the side of health.

~~~
pwinnski
You have perfectly and beautiful illustrated why the linked tweet is nonsense.

That said, even as a Tesla skeptic, I don't think Tesla is a fraud on the
level of Theranos. That won't hinder my up-voting!

------
superfrank
The vast majority of people I see who are "rooting against Tesla" aren't
against innovation, electric cars, or helping the planet. I feel like most
people who are bullish on Tesla are really just bullish on Elon Musk.

I don't see many people claiming electric cars are stupid (anymore) or that
Tesla's aren't good products. Most of the criticism is that Elon is reckless
as a CEO and has over promised what he can deliver at an affordable price
which has put Tesla in a tough place financially.

------
RivieraKid
I root for innovation, technology and electric vehicles.

But I find the CEO repulsive because he's narcissistic, dishonest and can be
downright cruel to other people. This is not apparent, I came to this
realization slowly, I initially felt mildly positive about him.

Also, I don't like the general cultishness and stupidity of some Tesla fans.

------
ThJ
Cool tech. Not so cool CEO.

------
Gaussian
Being 'against' Tesla isn't being against the environment and innovation. The
vector of personal transportation is pointed in the right direction here with
or without Tesla. They have moved things forward, no doubt. But Tesla and
these larger issues can and should be separated.

------
hairytrog
Musk is a lot like Trump. Boisterous, tends to exaggerate, accidentally lies a
lot. It's their manner. They don't focus on technical accuracy etc. They're
focused on the feeling - the vision - the faith. That's what it takes to do
the most difficult things. Realism tends to crush really difficult projects.

------
mimixco
I think more people are concerned with his poor performance (in several
companies), and poor human relations than just with shorting the stock.

------
ElijahLynn
Truth.

------
KorematsuFred
It is little surprising Sam Altman say this. The whole notion of startups is
that the entire world is rooting against you. The reason why Uber or Pinterest
went to VCs and not the banks for loans is because Banks do not give loans to
such risk businesses. That aversion to risk is essentially what makes startup
success spectacular. It is not just Tesla that people are rooting against.
People rooted against Ford Model 3, Google and Internet itself if you simply
bother to look at news of those times. Paul Krugman, the patron saint of left
liberals predicted that Internet would simply disappear.

Also what you say is irrelevant. What matters is your portfolio. Are you
making money off Puts or Calls ?

~~~
BEEdwards
TBF about the Paul and his prediction of the internet, there are some who
would argue it hasn't actually produced or improved anything.

~~~
leesec
Hackernews never fails to blow me away.

I can't be the only one who thinks it is insane to say the Internet hasn't
produced or improved anything.

~~~
ggm
Gross or net? Gross, huge upsides. Truly. Net? Not so clear. The socialised
downsides now include hollowing out and killing mainstreet, the end of
privacy, rampant porn and pornification of normal life, spam, and hacked
elections.

~~~
KorematsuFred
BS !

~~~
ggm
Such compelling argument!

~~~
KorematsuFred
Actually calling out BS when it is BS is actually the best response. Honestly
FU is a better response than a logical argument for thickos.

------
resters
I agree with Sam. It's just stupid that people are rooting for the failure of
one of the most brilliant and ballsy entrepreneurs we've seen in many years.

Those rooting against him deserve to stay in the dark ages.

~~~
thrill
Stock valuation has nothing to do with whether you want a company to succeed
or not.

------
AndrewBissell
Maybe a mod can explain why a direct link (with no attached commentary) to a
Sam Altman twitter post about a prominent Silicon Valley company is flagged?

~~~
whamlastxmas
Because everyone here hates on Elon endlessly and hate anything supporting him

~~~
AndrewBissell
The results for searches like "Tesla" and "Elon Musk" cast a lot of doubt on
your claim. The top-ranked HN link for "Autopilot" is still the NHTSA study
which purported to demonstrate a 40% reduction in driving incidents and has
since been thoroughly debunked.

