This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
That’s the thing. I don’t think it’s a reasonable opinion at all. The guy has founded three different companies with huge market values. SpaceX trades hands at over $200 billion in private markets, Tesla has a public market value of over $200 billion, OpenAI has a weird market structure as a nonprofit but if was a normal corporate probably would have trades happening at over $200 billion market cap. Now I don’t necessarily need to agree with the valuations specifically, but I do believe in some form of the efficient market. Trying to say he’s a loser when there is fairly obvious signs that he’s very well accomplished. I can see the market being irrational short term but 2 of these firms have been trading >$100 billion for over 3 years.
That’s the only position that I see that feels similar to me.
I would add in he helped PayPal though obviously was pushed out.
But still a guy involved in that many massive companies isn’t luck alone.
More options
Context Copy link
For the record @FCfromSSC is 100% right about my motivation. The difference between me and Holocaust deniers is that I hope I'm wrong. Like I said my pride is a small price to pay for getting to see Earth from orbit, before I die.
Since you brought it up, I'll also ping @Belisarius - this is why my arguments sounded like they're about financial analysis.
Look, my entire point is that the value of his companies is propped up by promises of crazy technologies he's not going to deliver on. When that becomes apparent to the public, it's over, they're crashing. OpenAI is probably exempted, but does he have any actual control over it? I thought it was all Sam Altman.
Elon was long ago pushed out of OpenAI. But this is not important for the exceptional influence he had on the course of multiple industries. That he funded/cofounded OpenAI in the first place is crazy. Most industry leaders have one career, a few gifted talents hit multiple homeruns (Jobs with Apple, NextStep and Pixar, then Apple again), but Musk makes it seem like he plays a videogame for which he has cheat codes.
For the same reason all his endeavors can now crash and burn and it wouldn’t matter:
Tesla kickstarted the electric car revolution, but it is not on their shoulders to finish it. That Elon memed other car companies kicking & screaming into a future where e-cars are not anymore a mere novelty, but instead seen as inevitable, and we now have the technology and infrastructure in place (superchargers and more and more battery factories) to transition away from fossil fuels, this is the real legacy.
Similar SpaceX could be run into the ground and Elon still would have changed with it the space industry forever. Here is a quote from a recent Washington Post article (which complains that SpaceX is too successful):
You tried to argue that Blue Origin (or others) could leapfrog SpaceX, but in the (unlikely) case this happens this would not discredit Musk, instead this would be a triumph as his competitors would either not exist or wouldn’t be as good as without him.
On a technological level SpaceX did absolutely bonker things: Landing rockets? Landing rockets on a drone ship far away in the ocean? Using Methan as propellant? Using cheap steel? Proofing that the failed Soviet N1 concept is viable with modern tech (many inexpensive small engines instead of few big expensive engines), eliminating landing legs and instead trying to catch Starship?
Other rocket companies, Europe and China will have to copy them.
Ok, but don't bring up OpenAI as an argument for Elon's greatness, only fallback to other industries when I ask what he had to do with it.
But why though? Overhearing a bunch of nerds planning on doing nerdy things at some cocktail party, and deciding to back them, is not crazy at all. Unless he did more. Did he?
That would be the "Elon already deserves a trophy" argument I mentioned earlier. Fine, I hereby officially award Elon with Greatest Entrepreneur in the World Trophy! But I think it does matter if his companies crash, and I think they will.
They're not inevetible. Some people seem to like them, but others have to be forced to switch by using government force to enshittify ICEs, if not outright banning them, like they're talking about in the EU. I'm pretty sure they'll end up doing squat for global warming, and battery disposal will turn out to be an environmental disaster of some sort, making the whole reason for their existence moot.
I'm fine with the claim "Musk is great because he inspired a billionaire space race", though that depends on how the whole thing pans out. It's not out of the question that the whole "private-sector space" idea crashes with SpaceX.
Why is that bonkers?
Can we please limit our praise to things he accomplished, and not involve things he promised to do?
You mean copy their actual tech, their paradigm, or the general ideas of reusability?
American Rocketry was very traditional (risk averse) and RP-1 was the save standard propellant everyone had experience with. Here is a paper from 2009, awfully recent, which states that methane was always considered in theory a great propellant, but in praxis no one did serious development work with methane:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0094576509000630
This changed in 2012 when SpaceX announced that Raptor would be methane-based. This gave other companies permission to research it too. BlueOrigin announced their methane-based BE-4 in 2014 (and actually they and the Chinese beat SpaceX to orbit with their methane-based engines). Bonkers was the wrong word for it, but it was always an exciting almost-sci-fi idea
There is currently an interesting bit about reusability on x. The context is a NYT article how difficult it is to compete with SpaceX.
Dan Piemont from the aerospace startup ABL wrote that he disagrees with the thrust of the article, he welcomes SpaceX success, but their cheap ride sharing on Falcon 9 does indeed make it difficult for his company. He shared as an outlook:
Elon Musk replied:
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1796031244846645493
So to circle back, yes, we shouldn't assume that Starship is already a success. (Actually this is a nice example how Elon is not only hype, but also shares freely if something is not working or unexpectedly challenging.)
Edit:
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/05/ars-live-caleb-henry-joins-us-to-discuss-the-profitability-of-starlink/
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
I’ve personally thought Tesla was overvalued for a while.
But even if you just use reasonable valuations like 2x sales or a 10 pe and give little value to breakthrough tech then Tesla is still a $150-200 billion company. He has $95 billion in trailing sales. That is still a huge accomplishment and something no one else has done in physical tech. This is why I feel like your arguments are like holocaust deniers. Maybe 6 million Jews didn’t die in the Holocaust but 1-2 million is still a lot. Same thing with SpaceX maybe he doesn’t put us on Mars, but as others have said it’s verifiable he’s lowered the price of putting a kg in space by 10x after essentially no improvement in decades. It just has the same feel of maybe this detail is a lie, but if you take away all the exaggerations the verifiable bottom in accomplishments is still extreme.
If the hype is all fake then it’s like he’s only Ken Griffin level accomplishment. Not a messiah but easily in the top 10 innovators of my lifetime. He wouldn’t be Tom Brady only Ben Roethlisberger.
For the record I’ve never owned a Musks investment. I have been short Musks before.
Big Ben is very underrated. Really great in comebacks. Basically when Tomlin had to let Ben ball, Ben played at an extremely high level reaches by only a few. Tomlin though believes in attrition.
Also the TD throw to Holmes to win the SB and the game winning pass to Mike Wallace against GB from about thirty yards out with no time on the clock are two of the greatest throws ever made
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link