I can't wait until he starts wearing a crown and carrying a scepter. Perhaps he'll starting conferring honorary titles upon his employees and members of the general public. All in all he's got a great sense of humour.
Synopsis: Effective as of March 15, 2021, the titles of Elon Musk and Zach Kirkhorn have changed to Technoking of Tesla and Master of Coin, respectively. Elon and Zach will also maintain their respective positions as Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer.
> There was less percentage of covid in his plant than in the state the plant is.
I'm not comparing the plant's infection rate to the state's infection rate. That makes no sense.
I'm comparing the plant's infection rate to 0%, which is the infection rate for a plant that is complying with the law and shut down.
> Teslas are still less dangerous than other cars and im pretty sure tesla drivers also drink less while driving. Its just not more dangerous.
Again, I'm not comparing Tesla safety rate to general safety rate.
In both of these cases, I'm comparing the results to what they would be if Elon Musk didn't do something anti-social and irresponsible.
Testing self-driving technology in the real world using non-professional drivers is incredibly irresponsible. Even a single death caused by that technology is preventable and completely under Musk's control.
Of course if you do nothing and everyone live in a shelter for 5 years the pandemic will be stopped.
But that's not possible so you have to find a middle ground. A LOT of people including myself consider it's an exaggerated middle ground to shut down an entire economy for something that's not more lethal than going in the street for 2/3 of the population. You may disagree but you have to understand that it's largely in the interest of the government to act as the "most scared people" want to, because they are usually the loudest and it's the best way not to be criticized during reelection.
So to me opening a plant an having a similar (and actually less because people actually wear mask at work) infection rate than in the general population is a better middle ground. Maybe an even better middle ground would have been to let the choice to people to come or not... I'm not sure we'll ever agree if you are on the uber-cautious side.
same reasoning goes for the self-driving. basically it's a trade of between risk and reward. it's the same for medicine: there's no drug development without human testing and sometimes... human death.
> But that's not possible so you have to find a middle ground.
How about we set the middle ground as "respecting local regulation" at a specific time point? It's incredibly mindblowing to me that he basically said in public "we're gonna ignore your laws" and the local government was like "lol, whatcha gonna do".
Don't take it too harshly but it's a very naive view of how the world works.
1/ most regulations com from how people behave, not the other way around, which is a good thing.
2/ civil desobedience is a good thing if you think some rules can have really bad social impact (i mean lockdowns are not slavery but there are mental health / economic impacts which have literally never even been considered in the public debate)
3/ in practical terms a rule can only exist if you have some police power to enforce it. which costs money. this also leads up to 1 and 2 which says it's impossible to create regulations which are disconnected of what people want.
At the end of the day I'm pretty sure if you do a referendum in many countries (starting with the US), people will say they don't want a lockdown. You are probably not on the majority side.
> civil desobedience is a good thing if you think some rules can have really bad social impact (i mean lockdowns are not slavery but there are mental health / economic impacts which have literally never even been considered in the public debate)
It is laughable to suggest that Musk did this because it was moral. He did it to make money. His employees were getting paid either way. There is nothing noble or humanitarian about the decision.
> in practical terms a rule can only exist if you have some police power to enforce it. which costs money. this also leads up to 1 and 2 which says it's impossible to create regulations which are disconnected of what people want.
Desegregating the South in the US is a counterpoint. It was not popular (in the South), it was expensive, and it did change people's behavior.
> You are probably not on the majority side.
Why even write this without googling it? Temporary lockdowns have always been popular in the US[1].
The Musk haters will never like him so he might as well feed the trolls.
Today there is a launch for a VW EV. It is very nice but way off what the equivalent Tesla is. But none of the Tesla/Musk haters with their old fashioned cars can admit that the Tesla product is awesome. It is very interesting to see how people twist their views to be absurd. For this reason I am glad Musk triggers them with nonsense like this.
I think you would classify me as one of those haters. I don't actually hate Tesla, I just think the valuation is a bubble and stuff like this reinforces my opinion.
When it comes to investments, I want substance: Don't call it autopilot if it is not an autopilot. Don't invest in stuff without inherent value. If you sell way less, then you should probably worth way less. I am just a very boring person in that way.
Outside of the stock valuation (and maybe the environmental damage, Bitcoin causes), I find all of it very entertaining.
Doesn't mean everyone has to report every joke or opinion a tech CEO makes (it's not just Musk). I don't mind him doing it if he thinks its funny, I mind people acting as if it's notable (which is why I choose the comparison to celebrity news: I'm also not objecting to these people having lives and doing stuff, but to the reporting and framing and it getting spread everywhere)
My friends gave me the tongue-in-cheek nickname of "Technothrasher" many years ago in college, which I now use for my handle on many websites. I often get asked the very same question that you just asked.
"The Martian government was directed by ten men, the leader of whom was elected by universal suffrage for five years and entitled 'Elon.' Two houses of Parliament enacted the laws to be administered by the Elon and his cabinet."
I hope we see more companies introduce non-standard vanity titles. As stupid as it sounds, I may be a bit more interested in climbing a corporate ladder just to have a cool sounding title different from the usual corporate crap.
I worked at a company where they decided to change their titles away from industry standard norms (specific to their industry). They quickly changed back because it made working with their customers really hard. I walk into a meeting and I'm expecting a Clinical Lead and a Data Manager and I'm introduced to a Loremaster and a Sheriff of the Aethertech am I in the right meeting? Are these the right people? Not that they had such flamboyant titles but even a small deviation from the industry norm led to a lot of confusion and I suspect employees also felt it limited their career prospects since it wasn't so easy to communicate their experience. If I am a Data Manager then I want to apply for Senior Data Manager positions. If I'm a "Data Custodian" then I have to work much harder with recruiters who have been told to consider "Data Managers" for the role.
Agree it seems fun, but the usual corporate crap titles are there so that everyone understands what they are. Shared meaning - literally the foundation of language.
The novelty of having to learn each company's made-up titles would wear off quick.
In theory, maybe. In practice, a lot of them mean basically nothing transferable. (See "VP of X", which doesn't tell you if the company has 5 VPs or 500, or the muddle of what constitutes a "Senior Engineer" or "Staff Engineer". "Empress of the Shopping-Cart-Subsystem" communicates more)
