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The Boring Company FAQ

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Re: The Boring Company FAQ

#331

Post by baq »

noobermin wrote: post #312
prostoalex wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If America had better trains and subways, it could move massive amounts of people. Train automation is a solved problem, and currently implemented in cities around the world. In most European cities, if you get off at train station, you're in the midst of (or very close to) the city center, office locations, touristy walking sites and plenty of choices for retail or food. In the US once you get off at the train sta…

For many cities, not just NYC and SF, but yes, it is true only for major cities. EDIT: embellishment due to baq, this tends to be true of cities which developed before the car revolution of the 50's and 60's. For example, my city has a pretty poor average walkability score, but for where I live in the city core, it is very walkable since it is the older part of the city.

s/major/old/ which were growing when rail first appeared in them. otherwise it's not reasonable to plan the city to have rail sometime in the future.

Re: The Boring Company FAQ

#333

Post by baq »

dagenleg wrote: post #246
prawn wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've got confidence in them too. I think internet commenters are far too quick to overlook the fact that Musk is not going to push forward a venture like this without loads of research from a team of really smart people. It's not like it's just the one Elon with a fantasy about tunnels. It'd start with a bunch of talented people brainstorming and then, early in the process, they'd surely be speaking with really knowl…

Yes, smart people are magic. Doesn't matter how much sense the idea itself makes, one only needs to ship it off to those 'motivated talented people', they will figure everything out.

machines heavier than air will never fly, obviously.

let's judge the outcome - or lack of it - when they fold or succeed.

Re: The Boring Company FAQ

#334

Post by theoh »

patkai wrote: post #303
josephg wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But then we should ask why don't we do that anyway? Sure. Why didn't we have electric cars before tesla? Why didn't Boeing or Lockheed Martin make reusable rockets? Alan Kay said something[1] recently that has been bouncing around my head for the past few days. He said that many people think darwinian processes (like the economy) optimize. "One my degrees is in molecular biology, and I can tell you, any biologist w…

Alan Kay should remember that evolution includes random mutations that get you out of local extrema, and "interesting" recombinations. The rate of these is maybe low, but there are examples where large organizations renew themselves this way. But I agree with the conclusion that this is slow and unreliable.

There's a paper out there with the title "Cognition is not computation; evolution is not optimization". I haven't read it!

I'm not sure you are accepting the basic principle, which is that evolution is not in any way optimization (not that the evolutionary process is not "optimized").

See something like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisherian_runaway

Also Giuseppe Longo's work on randomness as a cause of organizational complexity in evolution: http://montevil.theobio.org/en/system/files/articlepdf/Longo...

Re: The Boring Company FAQ

#335

Post by ascorbic »

glenneroo wrote: post #327
ascorbic wrote: post #279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Generously assuming that it averages 150mph, and very generously assuming 1.5 people per car and estimating from the video a gap between sleds of 40m gives a capacity of around 9,000 pax/hr per line. The Tube in London has trains with around 900 pax capacity, and they run at around 90 second intervals at peak time, giving 40 trains per hour and 36,000 pax/hr.

One point people seem to be ignoring is that Elon mentions on multiple occasions that he plans to build in 3D, i.e. not just one layer of tunnel in one direction but multiple tunnels at multiple depths in multiple directions i.e. to get your 36k pax/hr will require 4 layers.

Well, of course those tube numbers are per line, per direction too.

Re: The Boring Company FAQ

#336

Post by snarf21 »

josephg wrote: post #148
erentz wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah this is all very odd and everyone is lapping it up. He claims to want to reduce tunneling costs by a factor of 10, but starts by quoting a very high benchmark of $1 billion per mile which is quite easy to beat. Then he reduces diameters to something much smaller than all the expensive mega projects, into the range of something where technology is well established and costs are already 1/10th of his quoted $1 bil…

> But then we should ask why don't we do that anyway? Sure. Why didn't we have electric cars before tesla? Why didn't Boeing or Lockheed Martin make reusable rockets? Alan Kay said something[1] recently that has been bouncing around my head for the past few days. He said that many people think darwinian processes (like the economy) optimize. "One my degrees is in molecular biology, and I can tell you, any biologist w…

You nailed it on the head. "It seems strange to think that companies would leave money on the table, but in older industries I think this is exactly what happens. The money just requires too much organizational churn for their corporate appetite." As companies grow, they get filled with layers of middle management to handle organizational complexity but this is one of the biggest costs centers. Additionally, as time goes by, these are the jobs that are looked at during cuts so everyone in this layer is in self preservation mode. They start hoarding information going up and down to make themselves indispensable and slowly the organization becomes the Titantic and can't get out of their own way.

Re: The Boring Company FAQ

#337

Post by bischofs »

When you make traveling easier for people, more people will do it - induced demand. Why can't anyone grasp this concept? You want to create autonomous cars so that basically 100% of the population can be on the road at any given time and you expect traffic to go away because you built some single lane tubes?

Re: The Boring Company FAQ

#338

Post by Dahoramano »

monk_e_boy wrote: post #329
Angostura wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NO, I'm saying that even individuals are conservative in that they will tend to stay with an existing job, locale or speciality even when an alternative could potentially offer better returns. I don't check the job listings every day.

Risk vs reward. Often the risk is too great, especially for a company that is making a lot of money. Why risk R&D when there's no competitor. Companies are optimised to make money, not progress.

I wouldn't say risk. I'd call it uncertainity. The risk might be capped and managable but the payoff uncertain. Sweeping systemic changes can disrupt the economic order of big players, many of which are controlled by people with interests that could be prejudicated by such a disruption.

in a systemic shift even the company itself and its stable position could be up for grabs, why would a blue chip risk its position?They wouldn't, don't, and won't. It goes against the risk-profile of investors in blue-chip companies.

Re: The Boring Company FAQ

#340

Post by Touche »

noobermin wrote: post #323
Touche wrote: post #320

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean by interest in car ownership?

While this article[0] demonstrates that numbers have improved slightly for actual car ownership as millenials age, it still contains other tidbits and statistics (like the having driver's license by 18 stat at 60% vs. 80% in 1980) that reflect views on car ownership amongst millenials today. Anecdote, I don't have a lot of mileage (pun unintended), but every girl I've ever dated did not have license, and neither do I…

Don't make the mistake of making macro predictions based on a niche segment. I think generally people aren't "interested" in car ownership; they are interested in fulfilling their transportation needs as best as possible. Car ownership just happens to fulfill that the best right now.

There is the possibility of increased urbanization and improvements to self-driving car technology will make it economically feasible for car ownership to be unnecessary for most, but I highly doubt that happens within the millennial generation. Probably the next one.

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