
In defense of Elon Musk - UzhasKakoi
https://www.popularmechanics.com/space/rockets/a23508636/defense-of-elon-musk/
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ChildOfChaos
Eh.. I don't get the sudden hate for Elon, honestly, I don't know what's to
dislike. People these days bother me, they want to pull apart everyone else,
go try do something awesome yourself.

~~~
rohit2412
> I don't know what's to dislike.

The narcissism, the childlike behavior of arguing by insulting, constant
condescension of everyone else, the incessant lying, deception, and misleading
about the company

and

the cult of worship around him.

> People these days bother me, they want to pull apart everyone else, go try
> do something awesome yourself. reply

I do not think people criticizing Elon musk are criticizing him because of his
success. There are thousands of successful people, even in our
age/era/generation that are not criticized as such.

~~~
dpq
Do you really care that much? Everything in this world is about tradeoffs. So
tell me, if you had a magic button that would erase this narcissistic,
childlike, condescending cult leader from history as if he was never born (or
retired to the Bahamas forever after selling PayPal), would you press it? If
you would, then in my opinion you are a spiteful and/or neurotic person with a
distorted sense of scale. If you wouldn't, then all the factors you mentioned
above are really unimportant compared to the results produced by Elon, and
_you_ know it. This is not to say that his behavior shouldn't be improved in
an ideal world (we don't live in one, though). This is to say that Elon is
more than worth the tradeoff. At this rate of crappy behavior observed he's
basically a steal.

~~~
rohit2412
> If you wouldn't, then all the factors you mentioned above are really
> unimportant compared to the results produced by Elon, and you know it.

Actually I don't. I used to, but ever since he started spouting self driving
bullshit in 2016, I have given close thought to what is really revolutionary
and what is not.

Everything about Tesla is non revolutionary. It is just a lot of batteries
with costly motors and shitty barebones interior sold at a loss (net, not
gross). If anybody else was similarly hyped they would achieve the same. The
only thing Elon musk has done in Tesla is formed a cult.

SpaceX has definitely broken new ground, but it is despite musk not because of
it. Even then, they have only reused rockets once, with refurbishments. Their
first double reuse is happening in December. I don't think anybody thought
what they have achieved impossible, it is impressive nonetheless.

I truly think Elon musk is a net negative for both car and space industry.
Commercializing space endeavour would have led to successful space startups,
cheaper batteries by lg and Panasonic would make Bev lucrative anyway, maybe a
few years later. But the damage done by this incessant lying about self
driving would ruin public opinion. And I am not going to be surprised to know
that SpaceX cutting corners led to an accident. I think the worst for Elon
musk is yet to come.

~~~
dpq
Everything you just said is true. So basically in order to help some
technology proliferate, somebody had to create a cult around it. Good. If the
problem was social as opposed to technical, and someone correctly identified
it as such and fixed it, this person does not deserve our ire or contempt for
solving a social problem with social engineering. He did the right thing, in
that case.

As for SpaceX: everybody has accidents, and they'll have their share, too.
Space is hard. Still, since everyone has been saying that SpaceX is going to
fail, and that they won't be able to pull off the next important step, and
every time they did it afterwards, it sounds like the story about the boy who
cried wolf now.

And yet I have no kind words for Tesla's fully self-driving project. I fully
agree with you here.

~~~
rohit2412
> this person does not deserve our ire or contempt for solving a social
> problem with social engineering. He did the right thing, in that case.

One of my issues is them claiming that it was a technical problem and other
manufacturers do not want to manufacture BEV because there is some conspiracy.
No, chevy bolt barely sells because it is not hyped as revolutionary and
futuristic. If you think the solution staring a new cult for GM instead of
addressing such FUD that is actually hurting BEV adoption. If these masses who
worship Musk turned up for Chevy bolt or nissan leaf, we would have a ton more
BEVs.

> everyone has been saying that SpaceX is going to fail, and that they won't
> be able to pull off the next important step, and every time they did it
> afterwards, it sounds like the story about the boy who cried wolf now.

I am not knowledgable about rockets but spacex can only use rockets twice till
now with refurbishments, and nobody else seems to be pushing new rockets.

I can only wonder if Spacex is doing what tesla did to self driving, take
existing technology (like driver assistance/VTVL and costly refurbishment
which people could do), use them irresponsibly (call lane keeping assist
autosteer and let it steer itself/cut costs using dangerous methods), and then
make unsubstantiated claims about the future (self driving taxi networks with
cross country summon/biggest rocket ever with thousand times reusability with
minimal refurbishments).

I would only believe what they have achieved, which is impressive but nobody
seems to have deemed that impossible.

------
Noos
The article is annoying, because of the "why" minisections. Why should we
defend him? Because he tries. Because we want to go to mars. Because he
redefines ambition. Because he is a superhero. Because everyone makes
mistakes. Because he understands. One at least mentions the cars, another the
production line improvement he made. But a lot of why they defend him is
simply wishing for visionaries. Musks actual achievements are far more modest
than what they think he can perform.

------
Nullkey
If someone has unconventional ideas, breaking the mold so to speak. It's not
surprising he would think/say things differently on social media as well.

------
annabellish
>He is under attack. For tweeting the wrong thing, for not making enough cars,
for appearing unstable. Some of the criticisms have merit. Much of it is
myopic and small-brained, from sideline observers gleefully salivating at the
opportunity to take him down a peg. But what have these stock analysts and
pontificators done for humanity?

Yeesh, what an opening paragraph. This, and the rest of the articles, seem to
focus on the idea that Elon Musk isn't just a slightly more philantropic than
average billionaire with a very good PR department, albeit one he's doing his
best to undo the work of.

As one of the articles rightly states, Musk provided some funding for these
projects, but is at best one person among tens of thousands actually
responsible for _any_ of the achievements of "his" companies - scare quotes
intentional, for between the loans and government grants it starts to become
unclear what, other than the cult of personality which evidently no longer
serves the needs of relatively mature and legitimate enterprises, he actually
brings to the table here, beyond being an ideas guy who can afford to throw
money behind getting external funding to try things.

Whether he deserves the shit he gets talked about him is a matter for debate,
but it's very much a reaction against nonsense like one of the articles here
comparing him to Bruce Wayne and Tony Stark, two comic-book superheroes
defined by superhuman brilliance and superhuman finances, while Musk clearly
can have only one of those things.

At the end of the day, though - do we need articles defending a man with a net
worth of twenty billion dollars from the average citizen--who's net worth is
closer to twenty _thousand_ dollars--'s criticisms? No, we don't. Whatever
criticisms might be had, they're clearly not stopping him from doing whatever
he likes.

~~~
gfodor
If you remove Elon Musk from the story, does SpaceX exist? Tesla? Do we still
have self-landing, re-usable rockets? Are car companies still rushing to build
electric vehicles in 2018?

~~~
annabellish
The individual companies likely not, but it's not like those are the only
companies doing these things. Human achievements come from standing on the
shoulders of giants, not from individual supermen - we see this through
history time and time again, with so many groundbreaking discoveries being
independantly made at about the same time simply because previous discoveries
had made them possible.

This is not to diminish the minds of those who discovered them, of course, but
it is to _temper_ the hero worship. What SpaceX is doing is not enabled by an
individual superman, as the comparison with Bruce Wayne or Tony Stark would
suggest, but by allocating resources to something made possible by the work of
hundreds of thousands of people.

Remove one man from the picture there and that work still exists. Just as
other companies are doing the same things _now_, because they are possible
_now_, they would be with any individual person removed, regardless of who
that person was. The details would be different - without Musk, it would be
some other company doing this, without the lead designer, the things
themselves would look different, without the lead engineer some components
would make different tradeoffs, et cetera - but without Elon Musk, everyone
working at SpaceX would still exist, everyone working at Tesla would still
exist, and everyone working at other companies doing the exact same things
would still exist. We could be a little behind, for sure, the hero worship
could well have translated into inspiration for some, or even a lot of,
people, but that doesn't make the man himself _necessary_ for any of those
things.

I worry that saying things like this comes across as attacking the man, which
it absolutely isn't. Without Einstein, we would still have made the same
realisations, collectively, eventually. Other people were working on the same
things at the same time. Without Edison, we would still have the electric
lightbulb, entirely likely invented by, hm, who...

Oh right, Tesla. The company itself is named after one of the most blatant
examples of this phenomenon. Musk may even understand - he certainly does,
he's clearly not dumb - that he isn't a unique superman. That doesn't make him
"bad", but it does mean that we really don't need to waste thousands of words
on defending his obviously harmful actions under the theory of "we have to let
him do and say bad things or he might stop doing good things too."

~~~
gfodor
You wrote a lot but I think you answered my question: "we could be a little
behind."

I'd argue that we would likely be a lot behind. Advancements don't just
"happen." Progress can be lost, windows of opportunity can be closed, and risk
can be avoided. I'd argue there's a good chance we'd have never gotten re-
usable rockets if it wasn't for Musk's (at the time, foolish) risk taking with
his personal funds to keep SpaceX solvent. Everyone at the time said it
couldn't be done, if you recall, and in that kind of world, nobody is "doing
the work." It's just considered not worth working on. It's out of mind. People
allocate resources and time elsewhere. It's too risky anyway. We're in a
period of relative peace that may or may not last. So there's a good chance
no, we may have never gotten re-usable rockets, if the odds of a risk-taker
coming along and giving it a shot comes along one or twice every couple of
generations.

Our current space program regressing so far is evidence enough that willpower
and human decision-making, not just waiting for people to "do the work",
constitute a large part of what causes progress to happen.

And if we ever get to Mars, I'll argue it's even more likely that we would
have never gotten to Mars without that risk taking. And who knows what
potential futures unlock for humanity if that ever happens that can be traced
back to Musk's decisions.

Being thankful that people like Musk are out there taking huge personal risks
to advance human progress isn't "hero worship", and it doesn't disparage the
work of the thousands of people who have helped achieve the goals. You are
arguing with strawmen.

