Pieter -In response to both your litany of innovations we might attribute directly to Musk and to this question:
I think Musk has managed to set precedents and break new ground in
many areas.
It seems possible, for example, that Tesla's dominance in the EV
market is past... whether it is his political problems (mishandling
the Commons with Twitter/X so egregioiusly or going full-MAGA ++)
that will lead to that or if in fact, the precedent he set with
(ubiquitous) EVs really has catalyzed the entire market and industry
(in spite of his buddy Trump trying to attenuate that in favor of
coal-rolling quad-cab 3 ton diesel pickups in every suburban
driveway) in a way which is now taking off on it's own.
Trump's attempt to make fossil fuels and ICEmobiles "great again"
may actually be the challenge both EVs and renewable sources need to
become viable. A bit like the 16 year old kid whose father
threatens to call the police on him for his pot-stash who then
breaks away and finds his own way in the world (my hackneyed image
of George and Freeman Dyson as gestured at in the chronical of his
early years in "The Starship and the Canoe
<https://www.harvard.com/book/9781680512786>").
Whether Musk actually "invented" or "innovated" any/all of those
things, he definite participated in making them mainstream. Henry
Ford, for example, didn't really innovate precision manufacturing so
much as use Whitney and Taylor's pioneering work at-scale. While
he double wages for workers in his assembly lines, he also was
virulently against unionization (sounds a bit like Musk?) and then
went on to be radically anti Semitic.
/<provided by GPT> In 1919, Ford bought The Dearborn
Independent, a small newspaper, and turned it into a platform
for anti-Semitic propaganda. In 1920, the paper began publishing
a series of articles called The International Jew: The World’s
Foremost Problem, which promoted the fraudulent Protocols of the
Elders of Zion, a widely debunked anti-Semitic text. <GPT quote>
/
And not for nothing, he was awarded the /Grand Cross of the Golden
Eagle/ by the Nazi Party in the 30s.
Is Twitter/X an echo of the Dearborn Independent?
His "innovations" in Orbital Launch may be hinged entirely on the
huge disparity of tolerance on "failures" SpaceX has been allowed
opposite NASA proper and it's major contractors (e.g. Boeing).
This doesn't take away from the progress he/SpaceX have therefore
made, just frames it a little differently? The Russian's higher
tolerance for (public?) risk may be the main/only reason Sputnik
preceded Vanguard by a year or so? That doesn't mean they were
"better" or worse" than we were at innovation in that era/domain?
Re Robotaxis and Self Driving: Elno has been claiming FSD "just
around the corner" for over a decade with no more than incremental
idiosyncratic delivery of features. Yet he has popularized the
idea and created a belief in the possibility and an appetite for it
which is critical to it's realization/manifestation. Even if Waymo
(or Apple iCar or GoogleDrive or BYD or Huawei ???) scoops him, we
should give him credit for popularizing/normalizing it. The
decade+ of instrumenting all of his vehicles to provide a huge and
diverse training set is extremely valuable by many measures. On the
other hand, he may have missed his moment and the first truly
effective FSD may well be based on something less
massive-data/brute-force just as DeepSeek may be demonstrating
opposite the existing LLM behemoths?
As a rapidly aging 'old man' (/get off all my lawns!/) I don't like
all these advances even though it will probably mean I can keep on
being independent well into my "Alzheimer Years" (tacky maybe but I
did walk a Father-in-Law and a Father all the way to their graves
down that alley in the last 15 years). This without being an acute
danger to others (both old men referenced parenthetically had wives
who were able to manipulate them out of driving early enough and
stayed healthy/alert enough themselves to be their
"self-driving/navigating car robot drivers")... Predictive
scheduling/navigation might even prevent me from instructing my
self-driving car to take me places I shouldn't be going otherwise.
My father started letting himself into neighbors' houses in the
middle of the night. I might start showing up in a neighboring
state or on the opposite coast with no particular understanding of
quite where I was or what i was doing. Zombie snowbirds a new thing
for the 2030s? Instead of a med-Alert bracelet with my home phone,
my FSD car will simply "return to home" the way a DJI drone does if
it detects it's going to run out of juice before it can or maybe if
it has attempted to cross into restricted airspace (no longer
apparently)? My loved ones (if my geriatric habits don't leave me
without any) can put soft temporal-geo-fences in my FSD
configuration without me even knowing?
Trump Negotiator:
A few months ago you (Pieter) confronted the list with the idea that
"maybe Trump is a really good negotiator?"... and I have to concede
that he has some bold tricks (like Musk does in taking over and
running tech companies?) which can be highly effective. At best
he's negotiating *for* only 49.9999% of the voting citizenry of the
US against the remainder (49.99998% Dems and allies and .000002
"undecideds"). At worst, he's negotiating for himself, maybe
Barron, a little Ivanka, a little less Melania, even less the other
Trump kids (claimed and unclaimed), and only transactionally the
tech Billionaires and Fossil Fuel and other extremely powerful
wankers. His loyalty to Politicians (including his corrupt Supreme
Court Justices) is entirely transactional.. while they may benefit
from his "negotiating skill", he is definitely NOT negotiating FOR
them (see Hegseth, Gaetz, Patel, etc).
So whether he is an effective /negotiator/ or not, it is worth
asking "who is he negotiating on behalf of? To what end?"
Musk will be as well remembered as Ford or Lindbergh (another rabid
Nazi-ally) are while Trump may or may not rival Hitler/Stalin or
maybe some lesser flash-in-pan dictator wannabe?
Being "effective" is entirely orthogonal to being "good".
- Steve
On 2/12/25 4:32 AM, Pieter Steenekamp wrote:
*/_For robotaxis, I’d bet on Waymo not Tesla. Waymo is very conspicuous and popular in San Francisco. _/*If you want me to place a bet, I need the fine print—short, medium, or long term? US, China, or global rollout? And, of course, the risk-reward profile—are we playing it safe or swinging for the fences?Now, I think some of you might suspect that my knee-jerk reaction might be to bet on Tesla, but if we're for example talking short-term in the US with a conservative risk-reward ratio, I'll also hedge my bet with Waymo too. After all, Waymo is practically a local celebrity in San Francisco, while Tesla’s robotaxi dreams are still stuck in traffic.Also, if the fine print specifies China, BYD would be a good bet. On Tue, 11 Feb 2025 at 19:40, Marcus Daniels <mar...@snoutfarm.com> wrote: I find the OpenAI purchase attempt strange. He must really have an inferiority complex, since xAI has the hardware now to compete.[1] Or maybe they have the money and brawn but not the brains? For robotaxis, I’d bet on Waymo not Tesla. Waymo is very conspicuous and popular in San Francisco. [1] https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/xai-raises-another-6bn-including-from-nvidia-and-amd/ *From: *Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com> on behalf of Jon Zingale <jonzing...@gmail.com> *Date: *Tuesday, February 11, 2025 at 9:13 AM *To: *The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam@redfish.com> *Subject: *Re: [FRIAM] OpenAI and the fight between Elon and Sam "Apparently, Tesla only managed to show profitability last quarter due to unrealized earnings on Bitcoin. Stock is way overvalued." Technically, I would put a short-term (let's say 3 year) fair value around $210 or so, but would likely wait to pay $150-$160. Fundamentally, I would like to see the market cap closer to $300 B. .- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / ... --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-.. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom https://bit.ly/virtualfriam to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: 5/2017 thru present https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/ .- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / ... --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-.. FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoomhttps://bit.ly/virtualfriam to (un)subscribehttp://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM-COMIChttp://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ archives: 5/2017 thru presenthttps://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ 1/2003 thru 6/2021http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
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