Earlier quoted context omitted.
I find it odd to completely disavow someone because you don’t agree 100% with their politics. I mean Werner Von Braun was a Nazi party member and knowingly used slave labor. Doesn’t make his rocketry advancements any less impressive. Or Charles Darwin’s views of superior races. Or Gandhi’s gray area views of pedophilia. I mean if you’re going to discounted every person with a view you find distasteful your list of pe…
Purity tests are extremely common in left wing politics in the USA.
The Walls Are Closing in on Tesla
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Re: The Walls Are Closing in on Tesla
#72I used to really like and admire Musk. You could say I was a fanboy. I am still asking myself what the fuck happened? Was he faking his true character all this time and managed to dupe me? Did he suffer some brain damage which changed him this drastically? Was it too much social media, was it covid-related, was he poisoned? Did too much money and power get to him? I would seriously like to know. By know, knowing abou…
I find it odd to completely disavow someone because you don’t agree 100% with their politics. I mean Werner Von Braun was a Nazi party member and knowingly used slave labor. Doesn’t make his rocketry advancements any less impressive. Or Charles Darwin’s views of superior races. Or Gandhi’s gray area views of pedophilia. I mean if you’re going to discounted every person with a view you find distasteful your list of pe…
This doesn't mean I can't admire NASA, that I have to dismiss the Hoover Dam, that I think every act by Obama or Bush was heinous.
Likewise, I can look at Falcon 9/Heavy, at the progress with Starship, and applaud.
But.
His "Paint is Black" video, and what he claimed about it, was a lie. He himself is pretty awful, and already fits amongst the others you list given the revealed preferences shown by Grok, and by his reactions to criticism of Grok's behaviour.
The bonus-target market-cap of 8 trillion only makes sense with a very optimistic view of the AI Tesla's developing for both FSD and Optimus, and by "very optimistic" I mean "FSD turns them into a monopoly supplier of cars worldwide; or both FSD and Optimus together displace a significant fraction of the US low-skill jobs market while also getting a monopoly on industrial robots and a monopoly on cars in just the USA". It's the kind of thing I expect we'll be putting into history lessons next to Enron and Dutch Tulips, with laws passed to prevent whatever investigators find out to be the key mechanism behind it.
Even with SpaceX, it's impressive, but not because it actually hits Musk's goals, rather because everyone else in space is "over optimistic" about their schedules even harder than Telsa is.
Re: The Walls Are Closing in on Tesla
#73I used to really like and admire Musk. You could say I was a fanboy. I am still asking myself what the fuck happened? Was he faking his true character all this time and managed to dupe me? Did he suffer some brain damage which changed him this drastically? Was it too much social media, was it covid-related, was he poisoned? Did too much money and power get to him? I would seriously like to know. By know, knowing abou…
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Re: The Walls Are Closing in on Tesla
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Important point here: the discussion is about his character, but you’ve made it about his intellect. I don’t think anyone can doubt that Musk is super smart. I’ve heard silly things like - he doesn’t do anything, it’s all his employees or board or assistant - but reading the history that’s obviously false. It does seem some people can’t cope with the idea that someone is often an asshat is also brilliant. And I’m afr…
> I don’t think anyone can doubt that Musk is super smart I doubt it. He was born into money and was lucky enough to make some excellent purchasing decisions. His various talks and arguments on the internet show him to be fairly stupid in my opinion. I've heard tell that his successful businesses are mainly successful when the staff learn how to manage Musk and prevent his dumbest ideas.
Basically: he's extremely rich
Working hard and being very good at negotiating compensation packages and picking the right companies/products to be involved with (and a bit of luck) are all sufficient for exorbitant wealth though.
E.g. there are plenty of people just as smart as Bezos who didn't hitch their wagon to the "sell something easy on the web" idea at the right time
Re: The Walls Are Closing in on Tesla
#75Closing in? Try all but irrelevant outside the US. It's not going to be a make you give much thought when considering an EV purchase. Vastly different situation five years ago.
Wasn't Tesla Model Y globally the most sold car in 2023 and 2024. And second most sold car in 2025 (Toyota RAV4 was the most sold model). Given that, objectively speaking I could not call Tesla irrelevant.
0 - https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/02/tesla-tsla-q4-2025-vehicle-d...
1 - https://www.reuters.com/sustainability/climate-energy/global...
Re: The Walls Are Closing in on Tesla
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I don’t think anyone can doubt that Musk is super smart I doubt it. He was born into money and was lucky enough to make some excellent purchasing decisions. His various talks and arguments on the internet show him to be fairly stupid in my opinion. I've heard tell that his successful businesses are mainly successful when the staff learn how to manage Musk and prevent his dumbest ideas.
What objective evidence do we have that Musk is smart? Basically: he's extremely rich Working hard and being very good at negotiating compensation packages and picking the right companies/products to be involved with (and a bit of luck) are all sufficient for exorbitant wealth though. E.g. there are plenty of people just as smart as Bezos who didn't hitch their wagon to the "sell something easy on the web" idea at th…
Re: The Walls Are Closing in on Tesla
#77Man I miss the times when Musk was known as a pioneer in EVs and reusable rockertry, and not for his Twitter hot takes. I remember he made some disparaging comments about other tech billionaires that while they were focused on ad revenue and social media engagement, he was out there working on the important stuff...
Re: The Walls Are Closing in on Tesla
#78>Back in 2016, Musk personally pushed for almost all vehicle functions, including the door handles, to be controlled by electric buttons or touchscreens. His own engineers and executives warned that this is a huge safety risk... They argued for traditional, fully mechanical door handles, but Musk vetoed them for purely aesthetic reasons. He even pushed for the mechanical override, meant to be used in such emergencies…
As soon as they forgot this, their downfall began.
Re: The Walls Are Closing in on Tesla
#79I used to really like and admire Musk. You could say I was a fanboy. I am still asking myself what the fuck happened? Was he faking his true character all this time and managed to dupe me? Did he suffer some brain damage which changed him this drastically? Was it too much social media, was it covid-related, was he poisoned? Did too much money and power get to him? I would seriously like to know. By know, knowing abou…
I have a hypothesis that the Hedonic Treadmill[1] can cause actual harm to the human brain; I suspect that over time, in certain brains, extreme wealth erodes the reward centers such that some rich people can't help but be miserable, flailing for ever-elusive life satisfaction. It seems like a fairly serious bug in human software.
Re: The Walls Are Closing in on Tesla
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
The "you're a sheep" rhetoric. Great! Pre-2018 he had already made some substantial lies, (cf. https://elonmusk.today/ )
>The "you're a sheep" rhetoric. Great! you mean the same rhetoric I observe whenever the wrong entity wins an election anywhere in the West? have we not accepted for a fact that most people are so uncritical of the media they consume that a thousand Russian Internet Defense Force operatives can topple a Western democracy over Xitter and TikTok? >Pre-2018 he had already made some substantial lies, (cf. https://elonmus…