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The Walls Are Closing in on Tesla

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Re: The Walls Are Closing in on Tesla

#71
post #33

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.

I wasn't aware that there is a left wing in USA politics. The view from an outsider is that you have extreme right-wing and a fascist right-wing.

Re: The Walls Are Closing in on Tesla

#72
post #33
post #5

I 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…

As a non-American, even the US Democratic party is waaaay to the right of my Overton Window. While the US is arguing about if the 2nd Amendment should be restricted in cases like "fully automatic weapons" or "people with felony convictions" etc., I'm from a nation where the police aren't routinely armed and don't want to be, not even with pistols.

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

#73
post #5

I 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…

[flagged]

This really makes no sense because you can just listen to the man himself (and there's a lot of material).

Re: The Walls Are Closing in on Tesla

#74

Earlier 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.

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 the right time

Re: The Walls Are Closing in on Tesla

#75
post #14
post #10

Closing 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.

As others have noted, breakdown by model probably isn't accurate since Tesla has so few models. I did some shallow searching and it appears Tesla sales were down 8% in 2025 [0] while global EV sales were up 20% [1]. It's a crude comparison but probably more accurate than models.

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

#76
post #74

Earlier 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…

What is a secular term for prosperity gospel?

Re: The Walls Are Closing in on Tesla

#77

Man 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...

It's childish to want to turn away and bury your head in the sand. He is what he was and looking away doesn't change that.

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…

Tesla was winning because they had insight and balls to make electric cars that actually looked and worked like normal fucking cars. Everyone else who was making EVs failed to resist the temptation to reinvent the definition of the car, throwing out a century of wisdom and natural selection of features of good car design, to the point that it seemed like nobody wanted to succeed.

As soon as they forgot this, their downfall began.

Re: The Walls Are Closing in on Tesla

#79
post #5

I 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 thought Musk was pretty cool when he was just the guy making EVs and reusable rockets happen. I didn't even mind his over-optimistic projections, it's hard to be mad at optimism. But then he started becoming more of a public figure. He called that rescue worker a 'pedo guy' just for turning down a bad idea. He started broadcasting his philosophies, and they were mostly gross. He bought Twitter and made it so everyone had to see his dumb tweets. He revealed himself as a big, moist wad of lies and insecurities.

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.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill

Re: The Walls Are Closing in on Tesla

#80

Earlier 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…

I wish I could be as intelligent and free thinking as you. Sadly I’m a sheep, but it’s so inspiring to see someone like you, to show us sheep what’s possible if you truly free your mind.
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