Elon and the collective

Elon Musk is a polarizing figure. His ideas frequently come about in casual conversations. People are often amused and impressed by his achievements. I must admit, a few years back I thought he is literally the next Steve Jobs, only actually better, since he was onto so many things... I admired SpaceX, thought that Tesla cars had many great solutions in them...

At some point in 2015 or 2016 Elon started talking outrageous stuff in the domain of AI, a domain of my own expertise, which I could tell right away was total bullshit. And then I began looking at all this stuff in detail. Doing some math here and there. Reading various opinions. As a result, my opinion on Musk and many of his ideas has changed somewhat substantially. At this point, I can pretty much say with confidence that 90% of his stuff is utter BS, and the remaining 10% is perhaps impressive but still questionable.

Nevertheless he is quite a character with many fans almost religiously believing everything he says. Any time I meet somebody who is a Musk fan I have to go over these issues so I decided to write this post as a point … Read more...