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.
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.