Silicon Valley Techno-Utopianism

Elon Musk said "The hardware is ready, but the feasibility of mass self-driving car use is still decades away. It's a good step forward, though."

when and where did he say that?

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/oct/20/elon-musk-says-fully-self-driving-tesla-cars-already-being-built

He said it in an alternate universe where he actually had a shred of respect for other people's intelligence.

Self-driving cars are a terrible idea anyway, imo, it adds nothing good while adding more bad, based on a false premise that cars, and the environments where they're needed, aren't deeply unsustainable. If Musk were really worthy of respect for me he'd be a champion of mass transportation and better-designed cities and towns. Can't make a gazillion dollars off that, though.

Nothing good? Come on.

And, Tesla is working on trucks (for transporting stuff) and buses.

Maybe someday he'll deserve your respect.

lol maybe

There's definitely some potential for safety and traffic improvement. Obviously I prefer public transit but there are many existing urban areas that have neither good public transit nor adequate density nor the political will for public transit from scratch, and in places like that, self-driving electric cars that pool users MIGHT be preferable to the current system.

like it or not, cars and the massive infrastructure already built up to support them are here for the foreseeable future. of all the possible visions of how that might play out, energy-wise, the mass adoption of self-driving cars is one of the most optimistic scenarios. electric self-driving cars could drive themselves to recharge at the local solar station while you're at work or sleeping, for example.

oh yeah, and also ~30,000 fewer people would die every year in the u.s. alone, but that's nothing good.

i'm all for shifting resources toward public transport as well, of course, and urban planning that prioritizes low-energy commutes for residents (and tele-working, for that matter). but it's not a zero-sum game. rich dudes like elon musk can focus on their plan to create a giant electric car pooling system at the same time that city planners try to re-orient neighborhoods in a more sustainable direction. i don't understand why you'd root against one of those options when both can be pursued at the same time.

These purported benefits are based on a technology that doesn't even exist yet, let alone hasn't even been implemented successfully in the conditions/environment/situations where these beneficial scenarios are apparently going to exist. It's nothing based on nothing based on ideal scenarios immune to change or fluctuations, yet ... it's real?

All I'm saying is, it's self-interested hype coming from people who have poor track records of credibility and having the public interest at heart.

To take the other side of this, I have concerns about the fact that we are creating massive moneyed interests that might have incentive to lobby against further public transit development. I mean, maybe no more so than the current fossil fuel and auto industries (and much smaller by comparison), but still, we've already seen Uber meddle in municipal politics a lot.

Poor record of credibility?! Musk and Tesla pretty much single-handedly resurrected the electric car (and gave away much of the technology). His whole raison d'etre seems to be trying to keep the human race from going extinct.

Also, he builds self-landing rocketships. Seems credible to me.

His whole raison d'etre seems to be trying to keep the human race from going extinct.

C'mon. Do you actually believe this? Even if this were his goal, like he's got a Jesus complex or something, the way he's pursuing it is so fucking stupid that he should be relieved of his duties.

So cynical. Yeah, I believe him. So far, he seems to be working toward that goal.

Musk: "Lower consumption levels to help stem climate change? Nah, that'd cut into my businesses. How about we GO TO MARS!!! YEAH!"

Smart person: "Wouldn't that actually just add to the conditions causing climate change?"

Musk: "Get 'em, boys!" ('em here are Elon Musk's entourage of cultists)

Like wtf is that? How could you possibly believe a) this guy is really this great humanitarian; b) if he is, that he isn't totally incompetent and downright bizarre about it?

you're drawing some weird connections here - how is going to Mars increasing emissions

You're right, we use spice melange now to transport spacecraft

do you even know what rocket fuel is made of

why am I bothering

xpost wait a second. do you think that al gore is a hypocrite when he flies to conferences?

fwiw, exhaust from space ship engines does contribute a few kilotons of GHGs to the atmosphere every year - a small fraction of the hundreds of kilotons that commercial airplanes emit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ozone_depletion_by_rocket_launches

did you read the entire wikipedia article

also the depletion of the ozone layer and climate change are completely different things

On a global scale today, rockets have a negligible impact on destruction of the ozone layer.

fwiw the majority of rocket launches are to put satellites in orbit

To me, Musk seems like he's doing as much as he can do within the current system (we don't live in some command economy utopia where we can just force everyone to ride the bus to work) to try and help. Yes, he's using technology, but that's his area of expertise! I'd love to hear what you think Musk should be doing.

I don't feel comfortable defending some rich dude, honestly, but your arguments seem like straight-up hating to me.

I'm just saying here, he doesn't seem to be all that great at preventing the human race's extinction when 1) he isn't tackling the actual problems we're facing here on earth, because they cut into his business operations; and 2) his supposedly great ideas are pretty fucking stupid, and not only that, are actually doing more harm than good (the good here being "0" unless you count entertainment and distraction a positive value). Even if his rockets were perfectly clean, including the building and maintenance of the, going to Mars is a dumb shit idea.

Can't believe you guys are so taken in by Musk. It's not hating, I'm just not a big fan of cult of personalities, especially ones that co-opt genuine issues that need to be solved, monopolize the time spent discussing them, and then provide crap solutions for them. Dude's doing more harm than good, and the cult surrounding him gives this stupidity more power and sway than it should have.

I'm all into forcing everyone to ride the bus btw

Xp

Electric cars powered by solar cells with big batteries to support the power grid when the sun isn't out - those are dumb ideas?

Well the best idea is to immediately make cars illegal

I dont like Musk at all but you are making nonsensical arguments

Xp

The home energy cell stuff is pretty good (normal caveats for rare earth metal mining apply, though) and it's making investors hate him, but I think bringing that business into Tesla makes sense.

I don't think his goal is some weird lofty thing like preventing human extinction (?!?) but putting investment into technologies that he believes are genuine goods. Hyperloop seems like a solution that doesn't quite fit with any existing problem but it's something that could be useful long-term. Electric vehicles, technology that harnesses renewable energy and developing better battery storage, making space launch technology that's reusable... all seem pretty good uses of resources.

Sending humans to mars is of questionable utility to me, but it's a goalpost that drives a lot of useful technology that will need to be created in the interim.

That doesn't really do much good for the world, except take power from one industry and locate it in another; who's sitting on the throne of that particular industry you may ask? Well, if it isn't Elon Musk! Wonder why this is such a big issue for him. Solar power, electric cars, they will not do anything to solve climate change or our shitting up the earth. It's a gamble to become the head of a new empire, which seems more suited to Musk's actual personality than Earth Savior.

It's interesting from a business perspective, but the cult around him just grosses me out.

xxp

I have a friend who works at SolarCity but I haven't talked to him for a while and have barely discussed his work, other than that he likes his workplace.

He wrote out his plan, if anyone is interested:

https://www.tesla.com/blog/master-plan-part-deux

Solarcity is a good company fwiw

elon musk wants to be hank scorpio but he's really clive sinclair

the other thing, and i always find myself beating this drum on these threads, but it's not like there is something 'natural' about automobile ubiquity that just responds to innate human needs or demands. okay, we can't force everyone to ride the bus. but we do a ton to force people to take cars! or at least manipulate the conditions that make that choice an appealing nexus that reconciles many needs and opportunities conveniently.

this has all been documented and rehashed a thousand times but the big ones to bear in mind are that highway spending and to a great degree local road-building is treated as a free good with the costs levied on everybody, drivers and non-drivers alike; federally-backed mortgages make living in a detached single-family home (and thus the associated low-density development pattern) unbelievably cheap; enormous sums are devoted to foreign policy and general support for energy companies, which has kept petrochemicals much more readily available than you would expect for something that is unbelievably expensive and slow to locate and exploit; local governments dedicate extensive resources to providing driver's ed and issuing licenses (versus another universe where, say, the operation of a dangerous high-speed one-ton death machine would have been restricted to skilled professionals very early on) .... etc. etc. plus there are the historical circumstances of zoning, how urban disinvestment starting with the depression combined with red-lining and white flight to create additional pressures towards suburbanization - - - and the old business of the auto companies tearing out the streetcar lines, and so on and so on.

i'm sure most in this thread know all this stuff so forgive me for running through it. and none of it has much to do with elon musk directly. but i think it's a loaded decision to start a conversation about automobiles in america, and what to do about climate change and other related problems, by saying "well basically widespread automobile use is inevitable so all we can really change is what kind of car it is and who builds them." this isn't to speak to the other points about (potentially) (hypothetically) reducing loss of life, maybe reducing the total surface area of roads and parking, and maybe being able to make a more convincing and viable overall package for cars running on renewables. those would all definitely be good things but these things are all entangled with each other.

Solar power, electric cars, they will not do anything to solve climate change or our shitting up the earth.

I just want to say... wrong

(DrC also otm about cars being treated as an inevitability btw)

but i think it's a loaded decision to start a conversation about automobiles in america, and what to do about climate change and other related problems, by saying "well basically widespread automobile use is inevitable so all we can really change is what kind of car it is and who builds them."

i'm not sure if i'm the one you mean - what i said was "like it or not, cars and the massive infrastructure already built up to support them are here for the foreseeable future." but just in case i am, let it be known that i totally agree with you that today's reliance on personal automobiles wasn't inevtable, for all the reasons you cited, and that i don't think it's inevitable for the rest of our lives. i do think it's inevitable for the foreseeable future, by which i just mean the next 20 or so years. there's just too much currently invested in it, and too much psychological attachment, for it to be abandoned before then (although i would love to be wrong on that). since the window for avoiding the worst projections for climate change is rapidly closing (we're likely already past the point of no return for some effects), the things that we do in the next 20 years, working off of existing infrastructure, are very important. carpooling using electric cars strikes me as something that is feasible and something we should be pursuing.

i do think it's inevitable for the foreseeable future, by which i just mean the next 20 or so years.

and just in case anyone is wondering, yes, i can see the future of the next 20 years. it's gonna be crazy, believe me!

yeah, sorry - i did sincerely lose the actual plot of my post in there somewhere. basically what i was going for is more like "if elon musk is an altruist whose dream is solving the climate and automobile fatalities, there is all this other shit to work on, and accepting the automobile technology as a given, whatever its pros and cons, doesn't really make him a visionary."

the electric automatic carpooling thing surely has lots of potential in some form or fashion, mind you. and i agree - there's not going to be an overnight shift away from the world we've built since WWII. infrastructures aren't quite as durable or locked-in/path-dependent as some people think, but they do have some longevity for all kinds of reasons. but there can be lots of mini-transformations going on slowly in the midst of what seems like a stable socio-technical system, til you look around one day and realize, huh, people don't really get from city to city by train anymore, everybody's got cars, when'd that happen? and the other way around. but yeah there is way too much wealth and emotional attachment and ideology sunk into the suburban automobile life right now to think that in a few years that will all be abandoned wilderness tracts.

Well the best idea is to immediately make cars illegal

― slathered in cream and covered with stickers (silby), Thursday, October 20, 2016 3:39 PM (six hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

a man after my own heart

I thought this interview was going to be completely terrible but he makes a couple of good points.

http://www.theverge.com/a/verge-2021/google-x-astro-teller-interview-drones-innovation

filing to read later, I saw that dude speak in like... 2001? and I own his fiction book somewhere around here

https://twitter.com/griph/status/796539192721506304

https://twitter.com/sacca/status/796445435162345472

Theranos: truly horrible.

http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/11/the-personal-bloodbath-behind-theranos-rise-and-fall/

http://www.wsj.com/articles/theranos-whistleblower-shook-the-companyand-his-family-1479335963

I like this one where George Shultz basically stopped speaking to his grandson who blew the whistle.