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The Boring Company [video]

boringcompany.com

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Re: The Boring Company [video]

#781

Post by laughfactory »

terryf wrote: post #611
mozumder wrote: post #604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you are now more dependent on private cars for transport. Why would you use this instead of a system where you take a neighborhood bus to the local transit station & shopping center where you can pick up a light rail to the closest subway station, where you take the express train downtown to the high-speed rail station, where you take that to visit the next state for the day? No cars, and you can sit and read…

> Why would you use this instead of a system where you take a neighborhood bus to the local transit station & shopping center where you can pick up a light rail to the closest subway station, where you take the express train downtown to the high-speed rail station, where you take that to visit the next state for the day? No cars, and you can sit and read a book or take a nap or enjoy the view if you wanted to. I'll t…

Your beautiful automobile is also a multi-ton death machine. Worldwide around 1.3 MILLION people are killed by them every year. At that rate they should be banned, or, at a minimum, have much stricter licensing and renewal requirements (every year a challenging written and driving test, much easier to lose license and have car impounded).

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#782

Post by glenneroo »

robocat wrote: post #631
hk__2 wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because that’s hugely inefficient compared to a subway network. I live in Paris, France. 100% of its inhabitants have at least one of the 300+ subway stations under 1 km (0.6 miles) of their home. The subway system transports 5M people every single day. That’s twice the city population. That’s also 1.9B per year. During the peak hours you can have up to one train every 90 seconds for a capacity of 700 people each.

Paris isn't on top of the San Andreas faultline!

Elon already responded to this concern: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/824300186834898945

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#783

Post by darawk »

jodrellblank wrote: post #728
mdekkers wrote: post #690

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a terrible video. "I can't imagine anybody can make this work, so it is absolutely impossible"

Did you miss the bit where he says the idea of travelling fast in a vacuum is fundamentally sound and workable? Did you miss the bit where he never at all claimed it was 'impossible', only that it was bullshit that it would be doable within two orders of magnitude of the claimed price, with the claimed speed advantages, or with any acceptable amount of safety? What a terrible misrepresentation of the video.

Ya, but he doesn't actually justify his position. And to the extent that he does, his calculations are inaccurate. The only legitimate criticism he makes is the one about depressurization (all the others are trivial and can be solved trivially in ways that have already been addressed in the whitepaper). And fotunately for the hyperloop, his calculations on that one issue are off by six orders of magnitude, per the videos that respond to his video.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#784

Post by Robotbeat »

cma wrote: post #774
ceejayoz wrote: post #688

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and they frequently need repair and maintenance. Now imagine having tens of thousands of subway cars instead of a couple hundred.

There are tens of thousands of teslas out there already with automatic doors.

And (most?) new minivans nowadays. And most cars have power windows as well. And most supermarkets have sliding doors as well. And probably most garages in the suburbs have automatic doors. This is actually run of the mill technology.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#785

Post by linkregister »

EmployedRussian wrote: post #497
linkregister wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the ability to remove people from their homes for the greater good with little repercussion I think you underestimate how poorly compensated the relocated people are. Unless it's an outcome of "Weird China" reporting, which is very possible, I've seen plenty of reports of people being forced out of their houses in exchange for flats with smaller floor space and property in an inferior location. I'm not saying what…

I think you are in violent agreement with the parent post: "ability to remove people ... with little repercussion" literally means: they (authorities) can order people move, and it costs them (authorities) little or nothing at all. It costs the moved people a great deal, but the government doesn't care.

Hah! Thanks for pointing that out. I didn't catch it.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#786

Post by kenko »

19eightyfour wrote: post #764
duskwuff wrote: post #726

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point that tim333 is trying to make is that the source you're citing is wildly unreliable. Take a look at their home page -- just on a first glance, I see: * Several videos about Pizzagate (and I don't mean critical examinations, either) * A number of anti-Semitic images ("Jews control the banks", etc) * A video literally titled "Hitler Survived WWII & Occult Nazi Scientists Developed VRIL Haunebu Foo-Craft (UFO’…

You just did the thing I suggested was insubstantial and said hurts and I didn't like. Please stop. Also it's a logical error to judge a claim by the site it's on, or by the claims surrounding it. I linked to that page and specified NTBM. You could have substantially commented on the Los Alamos patents and their discussion on that page. But you chose to go off that page and to emphasize easy-to-ridicule parts. Please…

> You just did the thing I suggested was insubstantial and said hurts and I didn't like. Please stop. Also it's a logical error to judge a claim by the site it's on, or by the claims surrounding it.

It might be a logical error, but it's not a mistake. If someone tells you lie after lie after lie, and then says something new, whose truth you can't immediately evaluate, the sensible thing to do is to think: this is also probably a lie.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#787

Post by eru »

schoen wrote: post #281
eru wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn't matter too much for the rocks: if a few metre of rock won't absorb the radiation, neither will your body.

That doesn't make too much sense to me, since your body could be harmed by absorbing only a fraction of the energy of a large radiation dose.

Valid point. Though I think given the spectra involved, it probably doesn't apply.

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#788

Post by spiralx »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #746
rayiner wrote: post #551

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Engineers skew rational. They know that most ideas won't work. It's like aspiring actors or singers. Statistically, any given aspiring actors or singers won't become famous. The existence of Tom Cruise or Taylor Swift doesn't change that. Think about the dozen articles you read every day about some promising lab result or prototype that. How many of them do you ever hear about again? Meat-space engineering is hard. I…

Engineers skew likes-to-tell-themselves-they-are-rational, but ironically I find belief in self-rationality interferes with listening and makes you less rational.

Engineers are more likely to be Creationists and/or conspiracy theorists than graduates of other STEM degrees:

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Engineer_woo

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#789

Post by ouid »

cbhl wrote: post #508
Xcelerate wrote: post #377

It's amazing to me the amount of negativity directed toward his projects and the millions of reasons people give for why they "won't work" (not necessarily on HN, but at least on general news websites). I'm starting to believe the only difference between those who start their own companies and those who don't is that the latter convinces themselves that it is impossible, never builds anything, and from their own lack…

I think it's more nuanced than that. You can break down the world into the 99% that "know" that it's impossible. They'll never invent that world-changing thing. That leaves 1% that "don't know" that it's impossible. Of that 1%, 99% will try and fail. The remaining 1% of the 1% succeed, like George Dantzig (who came late to a Stats class at UC Berkeley, thought some problems on the board were homework, and a few days…

The 1% of the 1% had a good idea that no one else has ever had. This is not such an idea. This is a video of "what if subways were much less efficient?".

Re: The Boring Company [video]

#790

Post by ouid »

spiralx wrote: post #788
erikpukinskis wrote: post #746

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Engineers skew likes-to-tell-themselves-they-are-rational, but ironically I find belief in self-rationality interferes with listening and makes you less rational.

Engineers are more likely to be Creationists and/or conspiracy theorists than graduates of other STEM degrees: http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Engineer_woo

I thought it was even worse, at "higher than background".
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