I'm genuinely surprised at the quality of Musk's writing and the presentation of certain ideas. He clearly insisted against copyediting, and that was probably a mistake judging by the output. I suspect that he was attempting to eschew the formality of typical press releases, but this 'Master Plan' (which is itself a somewhat juvenile moniker) feels like something that warranted rigor.
Master Plan, Part Deux
281–290 of 705 posts
Re: Master Plan, Part Deux
#282A digression from the mainstream discussion. I woke up this morning feeling sullen (many factors involved). I didn't feel like going to work. I could hardly get out of bed. I just sat for a few minutes staring in the vacuumn. Something told me to check Hacker News (I am trying to avoid it in morning), and the top link was this. I went through it twice. It instilled hope and enthusiasm in me. I woke up in an instant a…
If you liked that go read Elon's biography or the WaitButWhy series!
A link for the lazy, the first part of the Elon Musk series on Wait But Why:
http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/05/elon-musk-the-worlds-raddest-m...
Re: Master Plan, Part Deux
#283Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you're an American, you're twice as likely to die with a steering wheel in your hands as you are to die at the hands of a murderer. Human-driven vehicle deaths cause grave second-order suffering for families and friends - and hurt the economy. If you're an American you're more likely to die from suicide than you are from motor vehicle related injuries. You're more likely to be poisoned than to die in a motor veh…
There are 30,000 motor vehicle deaths in America each year. In perhaps 30 years, fully autonomous vehicles could cut all of that needless carnage to nearly nothing. And what about the hundreds of thousands of injuries we'll be spared? Worldwide, fully-autonomous vehicles will be a public health victory on the scale of vaccines or antibiotics.
Except for most accidents humans bring it on themselves. SDV are more like sewer pipes to me.
Re: Master Plan, Part Deux
#284Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If you're an American, you're twice as likely to die with a steering wheel in your hands as you are to die at the hands of a murderer. Human-driven vehicle deaths cause grave second-order suffering for families and friends - and hurt the economy. If you're an American you're more likely to die from suicide than you are from motor vehicle related injuries. You're more likely to be poisoned than to die in a motor veh…
There are 30,000 motor vehicle deaths in America each year. In perhaps 30 years, fully autonomous vehicles could cut all of that needless carnage to nearly nothing. And what about the hundreds of thousands of injuries we'll be spared? Worldwide, fully-autonomous vehicles will be a public health victory on the scale of vaccines or antibiotics.
>There are 30,000 motor vehicle deaths in America each year. In perhaps 30 years, fully autonomous vehicles could cut all of that needless carnage to nearly nothing.
There is a huge assumption underlying this: That computer systems would be more intelligent than humans.
I believe the opposite: Computer systems will be much dumber than humans, and increase the number of accidents if ever adopted on large scale.
Re: Master Plan, Part Deux
#285A digression from the mainstream discussion. I woke up this morning feeling sullen (many factors involved). I didn't feel like going to work. I could hardly get out of bed. I just sat for a few minutes staring in the vacuumn. Something told me to check Hacker News (I am trying to avoid it in morning), and the top link was this. I went through it twice. It instilled hope and enthusiasm in me. I woke up in an instant a…
You might want to seek some help. Unless you're just being dramatic here for effect, there are some red flags in your post such as not being able to get out of bed, being filled with self-loathing and despair, etc.
Don't be so dramatic. This is me every day. It's ADHD meets debt, family obligations, and dead-end job. A lot of entrepreneurs/wantrepreneurs and devs have ADHD. Can't do much about it unless I pop pills, which I'm not overly keen on doing. I'd rather find something to do that motivates me to get out of bed at 5am every day.
Re: Master Plan, Part Deux
#286A digression from the mainstream discussion. I woke up this morning feeling sullen (many factors involved). I didn't feel like going to work. I could hardly get out of bed. I just sat for a few minutes staring in the vacuumn. Something told me to check Hacker News (I am trying to avoid it in morning), and the top link was this. I went through it twice. It instilled hope and enthusiasm in me. I woke up in an instant a…
Did you catch the SpaceX Launch on Sunday night? Always does the trick for me... Especially when they stick the landing! But regardless, it's a few min's where I can forget myself and cheer for the future.
Re: Master Plan, Part Deux
#287Earlier quoted context omitted.
You might want to seek some help. Unless you're just being dramatic here for effect, there are some red flags in your post such as not being able to get out of bed, being filled with self-loathing and despair, etc.
I'll second this. Having suffered from chronic depression for decades, those symptoms are very familiar. While there are always ups and downs in life, general disconnection with the world would be good to dig deeper into.
I just realized the other pill beside magnesium complement my doctor prescribed to me was an anti anxiety pill (didn't know the name, thought it was a muscle relaxant). I have to admit that it made my mood smooth, and got out of bed in a way that I didn't since a year. Damn brain.
Re: Master Plan, Part Deux
#288Earlier quoted context omitted.
Say what you will about their "antiquated" business practices, but Ford consistently does one thing that Tesla never does: it turns a profit
If this was the only thing that mattered for businesses, we wouldn't have Amazon as Walmart has consistently produced more net profit over Amazon since the last 22 years. 1 1. http://revenuesandprofits.com/amazon-vs-walmart-revenues-and...
Amazon was never a profit machine. I do think that's part of the core business, re-invest everything and more... and they turned into a giant comparable to Walmart.
Re: Master Plan, Part Deux
#289Earlier quoted context omitted.
1. They'll be able to line the entire trailer with batteries. Elon's pretty good at physics and engineering: if he says this can be done better than existing gas-powered semis, you're not going to be able to prove him wrong with some back-of-the-envelope arithmetic, as if he hadn't considered this. Obviously he has and knows it will work. Tesla didn't get this far on vague conjecture. 2. Maybe so, but it will happen,…
> 1. They'll be able to line the entire trailer with batteries But that's an enormous inversion of expense that falls on the trailer owners. The tractor-trailer model works so well because it concentrates complexity and cost in the tractor. At present trailers are mechanically fairly simple and require only routine servicing with a basic toolkit. They draw power from their tractor. An owner can maintain a fleet of tr…
Maybe I'm wrong! I admit I'm no automotive electric engineer. But they clearly have some design in mind that'll work.
Re: Master Plan, Part Deux
#290Earlier quoted context omitted.
Uber's been likely working on self-driving cars, potentially in partnership with Google. What Tesla has as an advantage though, is an assembly line to produce lots of quality cars. In other words, Tesla will likely be ready for the future of transportation before Uber.
Tesla's other advantage is a global fleet that is actively logging millions of real-world miles a day. I don't think that can be understated at this stage.
A Google Uber partnership could reveal something similar.