this post was submitted on 14 Jun 2024
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Very weak article, giving him credit as a free speech absolutist. Is he really, or does he ban people that attack him? Alludes to us having self-driving due to his innovations. Really? Other automakers seem neck and neck with him, with Mercedes having passed a major milestone before him, quite recently.
Does he really have hyperloops to dream up and Mars colonies to plan, or is that just marketing drivel to appeal to certain types?
This is almost fanboying in disguise. If you simply read it through the lens of being pro-racism, it's suddenly a praise piece.
edit: Oh, and it doesn't even try to answer the question it asks in its own headline.
Haha, Lemmy hates Elon so much...
Well Mars is for sure the plan. He absolutely wants to build a city on Mars, and he absolutely has made strides in that direction with the starship. I'm not sure I'd want to live in muskberg though...
Also to his credit, the world has electric cars now. It was Tesla that made that happen, it was not inevitable. The traditional auto makers were resisting electric vehicles really hard, they did not want to build them... They only started building them to not be left behind.
I agree that he seems to have turned into a white hot ball of crazy. But his companies have had a pretty big and quite positive impact. I mean, compare Tesla and Coca-Cola, which is really doing more for the world? Compare SpaceX and Raytheon, both of those companies make rockets, but Raytheon makes them exclusively with warheads... I just look at what musk has built and I don't see the problem that everyone else here seems to.
I'm willing to give him credit where credit is due. I am not willing to simply give him the benefit of any doubts though.
He does deserve credit for speeding innovation in the electric vehicle arena, no question. Battery technology was also pushed forward by this. You cannot say it wasn't inevitable simply because entrenched interests were resisting though. This implies that A: big companies cannot change, and B: no other individuals were ever going to make a play with a new company. This is giving him the benefit of doubt. This positive is also colored by the fact that electric vehicles are a good and important step, but not really a solution to anything. You have to be careful that your electricity generation is clean, otherwise you simply move emissions from the tailpipe to the power plant.
Similarly, I do give him credit for spurring advances in re-useable rocketry. A Mars base, however, is a pretty terrible idea that is still many decades away from even the planning phase. A Moonbase or an orbital base, now that's a better idea. I would go into why, but many, many people have already done this, and it's a long, science-filled discussion.
These things granted, they do not exist in a vacuum. I also weigh them against any negatives Musk creates for the world. His gigafactory in Shanghai, his purchasing of twitter, his support for strongmen, pushing pro-Russian narratives etc.
When this weighing is done with as much neutrality and objectivity as I can, personally I find him wanting. On top of this, having formerly been a very big fan of his, this strikes as a betrayal. He used to be a positive impact on the world, but in the final balance, is no longer. I don't quite hate him, but I am certainly no fan any more.
If you want to see things accurately, try to avoid bias both for, and against. Nobody actually deserves benefit of doubt. Make sure you understand the arguments both sides put forward. Then you can weigh. While we can never be perfectly objective and know all the factors, this will at least get a person closer to actual fairness.
When I personally do all this, I arrive at Elon simply being a major corporation, no different from the rest of them. Mainly resting on a bed of marketing bullshit. I treat him as such.
Tesla doesn't make batteries... Panasonic and other providers do. I wouldn't claim tesla to be any part of this any more than every other industry that requires batteries and buys them from those same providers.
I wouldn't. He's shown virtually 0% success.
Creating the demand still gets you partial credit. He does not need to own a battery factory. Regarding rocketry, if it were that easy we'd have done it long ago. It's an iterative technology, where versions come out that improve on previous models. This is something he actually is leading in, last I knew.
Credit where credit is due, he does deserve some where it is fair to give. All people deserve nuanced acknowledgement of any positives they have helped along, regardless of the balance of their actions.
So why does nobody give Nissan, Toyota, Mitsubishi, or any other EV manufacturer credit? Why does Tesla magically get all the credit from everyone when they didn't really do all that much for quite a long time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_electric_vehicle
Read it carefully... Realize that Tesla didn't start this. As much as I'm not a fan of "china" BYD started literally the same time as Tesla, and BYD is eating Tesla for lunch this whole time.
Tesla's entire "credit" to the industry was marketing their shitty electric car to english markets. Which was literally inevitable. as they we're being out competed for a long time by other manufacturers...
The other credit he deserves is for his raving lunatic filled fan-base.
He's made no progress since what we've done long ago is my point. If you want to credit him with no progress and tons of ecological damage. Then fair game I'll help you along. But to claim he's done anything worthwhile at all here is absurd.
Edit:
And Tesla wasn't even the majority in electric cars on the road until VERY recently. Unlike what most people say.
Sure, if you want to spread the credit around, that's fine. Just don't try to exclude anyone specific just because they're a bad person. Afaik progress has been steady with the re-useable rockets, there's been a steady pace of launch attempts. I don't really follow it closely though.
An even better idea is just terraforming parts of earth to be habitable again if climate change gets out of control. It's orders of magnitude more logistically plausible than moon or Mars colonies imo.
I mainly see space exploration as an end itself as opposed to being "for" anything. It's not so much a place to live and colonize, but something to further explore. No matter how bad the Earth gets, it's going to be nicer than any of the other solar bodies, which are already pretty terrible for human habitation in pretty much every way.
Main advantage of a moonbase or orbital base would be cost and accessibility. It's a lot easier to launch from the moon, if we did some of our construction and industry there. A lot of which could be automated eventually, you wouldn't need a whole population there. More an outpost than a colony.
I'm sure colonies would appear eventually, but not in our lifetimes. But simply trying to put anything substantial up there would drive further advancements in the field.
Buddy, look up some facts on the distance to and conditions of Mars. Then look up how far a real human being has actually gone in space.
Mars colonies are a stupid fucking idea that scientifically literate people who understand basic facts about Mars know wont ever happen. Makes it that much more painful how easily Americans buy into that as a "plan" that a company is realistically pursuing.
Well the person who knows the most about this topic is probably Robert Zubrin. Maybe you should read one of his books.
Is Mars habitation a possible goal? Yes, it's definitely possible. There are certainly more worthy goals in space exploration, but there's nothing about living on Mars that can't be done.
Btw, your attitude is even more obnoxious than your post is valueless.