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Elon Musk's Data Doesn't Back Up His Claims of New York Times Fakery

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Re: Elon Musk's Data Doesn't Back Up His Claims of New York Times Fakery

#201

Post by BiosElement »

InvisibleCities wrote: post #194
adastra wrote: post #24

The "Norwich Charge" data point is all you need to understand what happened here. Notice how vague Broder is in his original account: "After making arrangements to recharge at the Norwich station, I located the proper adapter in the trunk, plugged in and walked to the only warm place nearby, Butch’s Luncheonette and Breakfast Club, an establishment (smoking allowed) where only members can buy a cup of coffee or a pla…

I think you've missed the most important part of that paragraph: >"...Tesla’s experts said that pumping in a little energy would help restore the power lost overnight as a result of the cold weather, and after an hour they cleared me to resume the trip to Milford." Tesla themselves cleared Broder to make the trip. If I was driving a BMW with a BMW engineer in the front seat, and he told me that I would be able to mak…

Because it's nearly impossible to prove a negative.

Re: Elon Musk's Data Doesn't Back Up His Claims of New York Times Fakery

#202

Post by tadfisher »

stcredzero wrote: post #191
RockyMcNuts wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Musk doesn't show any smoking gun, and blows a lot of smoke. Methinks he doth protest too much. Musk comes across more as a Preston Tucker or a John DeLorean than a Henry Ford.

So, you're saying he's not anti-semitic? ("One of these things is not like the other...")

I would think "successful automaker" is the more obvious trait...

Re: Elon Musk's Data Doesn't Back Up His Claims of New York Times Fakery

#203

Post by BiosElement »

brown9-2 wrote: post #185
gfodor wrote: post #21

I guess it's time to muddy the waters. The truth is in the middle! Of course, the entire debacle can be summed up with the following exchange: Q: "How many miles did you have left to drive on the final leg?" Broder: "61" Q: "And how many miles did your car tell you that you could travel before recharging?" Broder: "32" Of course, Broder claims that Tesla told him it was OK to leave. I think this is bullshit, but will…

The goal of "review this car for everyday use" is not the same objective as just "get from A to B sanely". A lot of comments here seem to miss that the reviewer was putting the car through a test, and the test required only abiding by certain parameters (the super charger stations).

Incorrect. He blames the car, not the charger stations. If he wanted to review the stations, he wrong the wrong article.

Re: Elon Musk's Data Doesn't Back Up His Claims of New York Times Fakery

#204

Post by rhizome »

taligent wrote: post #172
rhizome wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pace your sense of the NY Times motivations, I offer Judy Miller: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Miller#New_York_Times_ca...

I am well aware of Judy Miller and the many other occasions where their work has been dreadful. But we are talking about a paper that has been around 150+ years. My point was that they aren't the type of paper who writes flamebait articles just to get more online hits.

The Judy Miller incidents directly refute your assertion that they don't deal in controversies (and arguably gossip). Arguing that they don't do those things at all, except when they do, isn't very convincing, and your conclusion is a non-sequitur at any rate. "Many other occasions!"

Re: Elon Musk's Data Doesn't Back Up His Claims of New York Times Fakery

#205

Post by jblow »

AlexeiSadeski wrote: post #124
aresant wrote: post #121

"Tesla Motors initially expected to sell at least 5,000 units in 2012 and set a sales target of 20,000." (1) As of January 2013's run rate, it takes GM 72 hours to sell that many cars. (2) How about a comparable luxury target? MB did 305,072 vehicles in 2012, so they do Tesla's sales every 2-weeks. (3) Perfect comps? No way, but still . . . To call Tesla an "early adopters" brand where you're going to run into some b…

I hope you're familiar with the costs of battery attrition which accompany owning a pure electric car.

I am, and the answer is: not very much.

I own a Roadster, and after 2.5 years of daily driving, my battery capacity is down by 6%. That's not 0%, but it's also not a big deal.

Re: Elon Musk's Data Doesn't Back Up His Claims of New York Times Fakery

#206

Post by rayiner »

lcc_tn wrote: post #193
rayiner wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> In fact, in public discourse often the opposite is true. This isn't just true in public discourse by the way. It's true in proposal/grant writing, legal argumentation, or even just arguing with your parents. You should always lead with your strongest arguments, and think very carefully before including any weak ones. Humans are just bad at doing weighted analysis of persuasive arguments. Say you have an argument, w…

What you say resonates very much with my experiences too. Do you happen to have book recommendations maybe that talk about this at a greater length?

Argument and rhetoric is a whole field of study. Prof. David Zarefsky at Northwestern has a good set of lectures on the subject which are on Amazon. The outline is here: http://thefulldialectician.synthasite.com/resources/ZAREFSKY...

My exposure to the subject has been in the legal context. This is a popular textbook on legal argumentation: Gardner, Legal Argument: The Structure and Language of Effective Advocacy. Someone has an older edition for cheap on EBay: http://www.ebay.com/itm/LEGAL-ARGUMENT-THE-STRUCTURE-AN-/310.... The text is quite general, not all that specific to the legal context.

Re: Elon Musk's Data Doesn't Back Up His Claims of New York Times Fakery

#208

Post by stcredzero »

tadfisher wrote: post #202
stcredzero wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, you're saying he's not anti-semitic? ("One of these things is not like the other...")

I would think "successful automaker" is the more obvious trait...

Then you'd have to split it 50/50.

Re: Elon Musk's Data Doesn't Back Up His Claims of New York Times Fakery

#209

Post by adnrw »

grecy wrote: post #31
davidiach wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the truth is somewhere in the middle. Broder might not have wanted to "be evil". He might be like the guy who doesn't actually want to hurt the company he is working for but still spends all his day playing games at work. Given that his job was to write an accurate review, the fact that he didn't really want to wait until the car is fully charged and was bored driving the car at normal speed and so on, we can…

> Given that his job was to write an accurate review Why do you assume that? His job was to attract readership and hits for the NYT. Nothing does that better than controversy.

From the NYT Company's "Guidelines on Integrity" [1]:

"... it is imperative that The Times and its staff maintain the highest possible standards to insure that we do nothing that might erode readers’ faith and confidence in our news columns. This means that staff members should be vigilant in avoiding any activity that might pose an actual or apparent conflict of interest and thus threaten the newspaper's ethical standing. And it also means that the journalism we practice daily must be beyond reproach."

[1]http://www.nytco.com/company/business_units/integrity.html

Re: Elon Musk's Data Doesn't Back Up His Claims of New York Times Fakery

#210

Post by mirkules »

joe_the_user wrote: post #173
lawdawg wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did you (or 99% of HN) read the NYT article? "When I parked the car, its computer said I had 90 miles of range, twice the 46 miles back to Milford. It was a different story at 8:30 the next morning. The thermometer read 10 degrees and the display showed 25 miles of remaining range" "I called Tesla in California, and the official I woke up said I needed to “condition” the battery pack to restore the lost energy." Look…

Well, if Broder's headline was "Tesla Employee Let My Car Run Down", he'd have been telling the story you can extract out of the text. However, "Stalled Out on Tesla’s Electric Highway" somehow tells a story where blame is a lot more fuzzy. Broder told a complicated story and put a poetically negative spin on it. It is entirely understandable that Musk would want to simplify this down to negative claims he could refu…

"Broder told a complicated story and put a poetically negative spin on it."

I will never forget when my friend and I released an iPhone app, and two years later Apple comes out with a product of the same name. My friend got contacted by a reporter asking these innocuous questions, for instance "do you expect Apple to remove your app from the App Store?". He said he doesn't expect any problems, but that we're willing to talk about it with Apple.

The headline? "Indie developer braces for legal battle over app named ###"

Looking back on it, the questions the reporter asked were absolutely leading questions to suit his own (anti-Apple) agenda. This is why anyone talking to the press needs to be very careful what they say.

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