Post: #176

^^

You're all forgetting that the i8 has scissor doors.

They've been around a while but they turn heads everywhere. As a cheap alternative to a true exotic I don't know what's not to like really?

Post: #177

Also, the i8 is a hybrid. The engine note, even when synthesised, is actually quite nice.

I've driven one extensively and own an Italian supercar. I don't think there's much between them really. Not £150k, in reality, for sure.

Post: #178

I haven't really followed this Musk thing, but I tend to think that when someone is being hounded by the media, then they're probably a threat in some way.

I don't know what goes on behind the scenes, but I fail to see the reason for the hate on Elon Musk.

Post: #179

Yeah, some of the sports hybrid stuff coming out is pretty cool. I remember the head Koenigsegg guy talking about the gearless hybrid Regera. Bloody hilarious. "It's veally quite zimple. Vee just (10 minutes of what the fuck is he saying) and zats all zair iz too it!"

Post: #180

Listened to his interview with Rogan for half an hour. He doesn't strike me as particularly intelligent. But I guess his actions over the past decade speak for themselves.

Post: #181

(09-08-2018 08:48 AM)asdfk Wrote:  Listened to his interview with Rogan for half an hour. He doesn't strike me as particularly intelligent. But I guess his actions over the past decade speak for themselves.

You have to be joking?

Post: #182

Musk has always striked me as a classic case of an educated idiot. I mean his whole fortune is built on public subsidies.

I did find his acid-derived belief that we're already living in a simulation on point though.

My twist on it is we're actually immortals that got bored with never ending life. So to makes things interesting, we placed ourselves in a simulation where we all have fragile bodies and short lifespans. When you die, the game just starts over again. And that's how notions like reincarnation came about. Our immortal subconscious leaks facts about our true reality.

Post: #183

(09-08-2018 08:48 AM)asdfk Wrote:  He doesn't strike me as particularly intelligent.

(09-08-2018 09:51 AM)Trumpian Wrote:  Musk has always striked me as a classic case of an educated idiot. I mean his whole fortune is built on public subsidies.

World population: 7 500 000 000 people
Number of billionaires: ~3000 people
Elon Musk: Billionaire

What are the odds that he's an idiot?

Post: #184

I listened to the Rogan podcast with Musk and I disagree with the guys here that he doesn't seem particularly intelligent on the interview.

To me, he comes across as a brilliant visionary and a deep and incisive thinker. Some of his views on the future of technology, cars, AI and even how traffic will be managed are impressive, if not ambitious.

I do disagree with Musk on a minority of issues such as global warming and his apocalyptic view of it.

Although a visionary, I would compare him, but not put him on the same level as Steve Jobs. If you want to hear a true genius interviewed, just pull up any of the 5+ minute interviews of Jobs on Youtube and you'll hear one and get a gist of how a brilliant person engages others, thinks and speaks.

I think the thing that maybe throwing off some of the ones here who listened to Musk is that he comes across as a little autistic, or at the very least, he exhibits mild autistic characteristics.

These kinds of tendencies aren't rare for very smart people (even geniuses) who excel and are hyper-focused in one area (technology for example on Musk) What he possesses in abundance in academic and scientific IQ he seems to lack in social and perhaps emotional intelligence.

If nothing else, he's a very motivated, highly-success minded individual who pushes himself and all those around him to and even past the limits everyone thought they were capable of. There's something to be learned there.

Post: #185

It's gotta be pretty tough for this guy to converse with thots like Amber Heard. I can see that making him pretty depressed. Talking about his passion projects and getting blank stares in response.

I think he's a fascinating person, but would do better to stay out of the corporate drudgery and just invent shit. Come up with cool ideas and let other people figure out how to make them profitable or sustainable businesses.

Elon, hit me up, let's do some acid.

Post: #186

(09-08-2018 12:51 PM)captain_shane Wrote:  It's gotta be pretty tough for this guy to converse with thots like Amber Heard. I can see that making him pretty depressed. Talking about his passion projects and getting blank stares in response.

Yep. A real life Penny and Leonard ala The Big Bang Theory.

Post: #187

I agree. Elon has some great ideas but he should find someone better qualified to manage Tesla. The car industry is extremely competitive and to succeed, you need a manager who knows how to wage war on a large scale. Elon, for all his inventive genius, doesn't have that.

He should learn to know his limits and delegate the tasks he's not very good at to better able people.

Post: #188

(09-08-2018 10:25 AM)Belgrano Wrote:  What are the odds that he's an idiot?

I heard stories his IQ score was 180 at age 12 or so. Could be a myth created to deify him...

In any case, he was was admitted in a STEM PhD program at Stanford.

Having said that, I have never heard him say anything I would call impressive. I found much more impressive people in grad school, namely, physics grad students. I am tempted to conclude that Musk dumbs down his speech to cater to idiot investors. Since he's not exactly eloquent, it should not be that difficult.

The crux of the matter is that Musk is smart enough to understand that if people perceive him as a brilliant visionary genius, then he will have access to resources to do what a brilliant visionary genius would do. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. If enough people believe in it, it becomes real.

Post: #189

The odds are zero that he’s anything but a genius—he engineered Space X and Tesla.

He is unbalanced though, much like Zuckerberg he might have mild Aspergers.

Post: #190

While all successful people have some luck behind him Zuckerberg feels like the ultimate right place right time kind of guy.

He never strikes me as the same level as Musk / Thiel / Bezos, etc.

Post: #191

I finished the podcast. I thought it was excellent. I really want guys like Musk to succeed, and I liked how they talked about how if there were 100 guys like Tesla around back then, how much more we could achieve.

Like all very smart men, there is a certain amount of loneliness they have. It was actually a bit heartbreaking to hear him say to Rogan, with a bit of surprise in his voice, that anyone would want to be him. "Nobody would want to be me". The way he described thinking he was insane at the age of 5 when he realized that not everyone had a brain that was full of "continuous explosions" was the real sad part. Imagine being the parent of this tormented boy. And imagine having to live with a mind that is in constant 'hyperhype'.

Without much fanfare, I find myself agreeing with a lot of what he says. We do need to change the transportation industry, and today is the day to start as it will take decades to do it.

Moving in a 3D world is much more efficient then in a 2D plane. Tunnels are a way to do this. "Its just a big pit". I love his simplicity at getting big ideas out there.

His approach to AI is interesting as well. Would AI be so willing to kill the host if it needs humans for its own survival? Time will tell, and their technology coming out first is probably a good thing.

Politicians are retards when it comes to understanding the big picture. We are an advanced species relying on tech for almost all of our survival. Yet we are regulated by politicians who know more about hair die then how to boot a computer.

Post: #192

(09-08-2018 04:16 PM)Enoch Wrote:  While all successful people have some luck behind him Zuckerberg feels like the ultimate right place right time kind of guy.

He never strikes me as the same level as Musk / Thiel / Bezos, etc.

He also had balls of steel and strong self belief - he turned $1BN offer for Facebook from Yahoo when it still had only 1million users.

I think Steve Jobs was a better salesman and a great visionary - smartphones changed the world. He never invented much - touchscreen phones and tablet existed before the IPhone and IPad.

I think Elon is a genius - I have studied maths and physics and I have dealt with a lot of engineers. He strikes me as somebody who's so smart he has difficulty getting his ideas out of his mouth efficiently.

I'd rather he get the chance to try to invent things than walk away. Nikola Tesla invented all kinds of shit & had lot of revolutionary ideas and died poor.

Quote:Serbian-American engineer and physicist Nikola Tesla (1856-1943) made dozens of breakthroughs in the production, transmission and application of electric power. He invented the first alternating current (AC) motor and developed AC generation and transmission technology.

Quote:In the 1890s Tesla invented electric oscillators, meters, improved lights and the high-voltage transformer known as the Tesla coil. He also experimented with X-rays, gave short-range demonstrations of radio communication two years before Guglielmo Marconi and piloted a radio-controlled boat around a pool in Madison Square Garden. Together, Tesla and Westinghouse lit the 1891 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago and partnered with General Electric to install AC generators at Niagara Falls, creating the first modern power station.

Post: #193

(09-08-2018 04:53 PM)WalterBlack Wrote:  I'd rather he get the chance to try to invent things than walk away. Nikola Tesla invented all kinds of shit & had lot of revolutionary ideas and died poor.

THIS.

Plus Nikola Tesla blogged his big thoughts before there was such a thing as a blog. Here's one of his essays.

You know when Musk talks about terraforming mars, etc..., it's part of the same way of looking at the world from a "what if we all get together and do X" level rather than the nuts and bolts economics required to actually execute such a plan. You know how in Contact all the countries needed to pool their resources to build and power-up that spaceship? That's the sort of thing Musk likes to think about, and you don't get there through private industry, not without running up ponzi-scheme like debt-loads. You can only do it when you can convince an entire country or group of countries that its an existential necessity.

So that is where all these ideas go to die. It takes a DIFFERENT kind of smarts to make stuff happen and Musk has shown to be...not that good at it. That's why he keeps missing targets and sleeping on the factory floor. He's making mistakes and, at best, moving two steps forward, one step back. His fans think this is to be expected. It's not. It's amateurishness.

Not only that, but Tesla has gone through waves of bringing in seasoned experts. They brought a guy in from Audi to help with the Model 3 ramp. WTF happened? Well, they must have never implemented many of that guy's ideas because...Musk wants to fix what was never broken out of hubris and a need to keep challenging himself.

The net result is I'd guestimate at least a quarter or even half of Tesla's long-term debt is a direct result of avoidable errors on Tesla's part.

So yes, Musk is a genius...but only at certain things. He is not a genius at anything and everything he sets his mind to. And THAT is why he needs to delegate.

The only business angle he's running correctly right now is SpaceX and I am just waiting for a deadly manned Falcon 9 or BFR accident because it won't take more than a couple of those to ground SpaceX forever.

Post: #194

The Rogan podcast is definitely worth the watch. I couldn't help but notice the irony as they finish the conversation and Musk gets very human and speaks about love and not demonizing people - which I'm all in favour of - whilst he was spewing venom earlier about the rescue hero in Thailand. Other than that, top marks.

Post: #195

For the first half of the podcast he seems very robotic and gives one word answers, I almost gave up. I’m glad I listened to the second half because he lightens up a lot and becomes much more relatable and even likable. As an engineer myself I can tell this guy is seriously smart and is full of ideas. I bet he would be much happier if he took the CTO role. The CEO is more of a PR and sales role, he should let someone else do that.

Post: #196

(09-08-2018 02:33 PM)Icarus Wrote:  

(09-08-2018 10:25 AM)Belgrano Wrote:  What are the odds that he's an idiot?

I heard stories his IQ score was 180 at age 12 or so. Could be a myth created to deify him...

In any case, he was was admitted in a STEM PhD program at Stanford.

Having said that, I have never heard him say anything I would call impressive. I found much more impressive people in grad school, namely, physics grad students. I am tempted to conclude that Musk dumbs down his speech to cater to idiot investors. Since he's not exactly eloquent, it should not be that difficult.

The crux of the matter is that Musk is smart enough to understand that if people perceive him as a brilliant visionary genius, then he will have access to resources to do what a brilliant visionary genius would do. It's a self-fulfilling prophecy. If enough people believe in it, it becomes real.

This.

He's an extremely good MARKETER, much more than a good manager or engineer. I have some connections of family who worked at his company and they place a huge emphasis on recruiting good engineering talent. I've heard that the culture was generally one of massive ass-kissing hoping to be noticed by Elon Musk.

Post: #197

I just got called a racist and bigot on Twitter for disagreeing that Musk is the greatest human to have ever existed.
I'm white.
The soyboy denied being a liberal/Dem, but only those types of "people" could unironically twist basic logic so far as that while keeping a straight face. I just didn't know how to respond after "go back to your Trump protest, you fucking idiot", so I let him make his lame leftist comeback and ended it there. Made me seriously considering dropping Twitter altogether, even though I get bombarded with great posts all day from both the redpill-osphere and other anti-MSM personalities.

Post: #198

(09-08-2018 10:57 AM)robreke Wrote:  I listened to the Rogan podcast with Musk and I disagree with the guys here that he doesn't seem particularly intelligent on the interview.

To me, he comes across as a brilliant visionary and a deep and incisive thinker. Some of his views on the future of technology, cars, AI and even how traffic will be managed are impressive, if not ambitious.

I do disagree with Musk on a minority of issues such as global warming and his apocalyptic view of it.

Although a visionary, I would compare him, but not put him on the same level as Steve Jobs. If you want to hear a true genius interviewed, just pull up any of the 5+ minute interviews of Jobs on Youtube and you'll hear one and get a gist of how a brilliant person engages others, thinks and speaks.

I think the thing that maybe throwing off some of the ones here who listened to Musk is that he comes across as a little autistic, or at the very least, he exhibits mild autistic characteristics.

These kinds of tendencies aren't rare for very smart people (even geniuses) who excel and are hyper-focused in one area (technology for example on Musk) What he possesses in abundance in academic and scientific IQ he seems to lack in social and perhaps emotional intelligence.

If nothing else, he's a very motivated, highly-success minded individual who pushes himself and all those around him to and even past the limits everyone thought they were capable of. There's something to be learned there.

He get's paid for pushing the apocalyptic environmental agenda. His company wouldn't exist without government support because of the environmental hysteria.

Post: #199

I'd say Musk's track record indicated more than just a nerdy technical mind. He's able to get people on board with his big ideas. Overall I would put him more in the Steve Jobs salesman/visionary category. Don't forget that Jobs too had a big fall from grace in the 80s and had to come back after being dumped from Apple.

Post: #200

Sure, but Apple almost completely disintegrated after Jobs first left, then started NeXT and co-funded the creation of Pixar. Apple needed him desperately even though he was often extremely abrasive with the top-tier management. I don't get the sense that Musk has the "we NEED this guy to succeed as a business" quality to him.