Personally-- I think that Musk is neither important to technological progress nor likeable (to any reasonable person). Those who buy into the idea that he is important to technological progress-- even factoring in his wealth-- have fallen for his con.

You'd be hard pressed to name a single project of his which has made it into the mainstream and significantly improved everyday life. The only one-- tesla EVs-- was not even founded by him and is still a far ways off from achieving his goal of replacing diesel vehicles.

His other projects seem to be having significant trouble in achieving their goals. And of course, many, many, MANY, of his promises have been broken.

Even if you like the man personally, you cannot deny that he can't be taken at his word. The fact he has failed to live up to his promises is an empirical fact, and so the ability of any of his technologies' to become mainstream should be met with skepticism before you take him at his word.

Everyone is replaceable, gosh... You'd think one would learn that one from the man himself

He has at times been a little important to technological progress, and I don't really think one way or another about him.

>You'd be hard pressed to name a single project of his which has made it into the mainstream and significantly improved everyday life. The only one-- tesla

SMH Need I say more you idiot lol... You say he's a scam artist. I say the dude is single-handedly transitioning the world to battery electrics... Maybe you forgot how things were before Tesla. If only someone could be a force for good and push us past our legacy systems. Naw, let's just seethe in spite of his success and make a hate post on a singularity sub /s

One thing we can all learn from misguided OP is that no matter how smart you are, or how much success you gain, how altruistic you are.. someone will always be there to shit on your parade. In the name of progress I urge you all to not diminish or take for granted the good work of others. Especially those working towards progress and science. This is /singularity after all!

SpaceX and Neuralink are still WIP and super relevant to technological progress. We need to get off this planet eventually and Brain Machine Interfaces will be how everyone communicates with digital systems eventually.

Starlink is functional - IIRC it was just meant to be a money-making project as a subsidiary of SpaceX.

He did not found Tesla but that's irrelevant - he capitalised it from an embryonic stage, led it and spearheaded a huge EV movement. That's a huge accomplishment.

Seems like he's fucking up with Twitter atm but time will tell.

Drinking the Elon juice, I see.

Tesla would have happened with or without Elon. Without him, it likely would have just taken longer, but some other rich person would have been a VC if it wasn't Elon.

Elon is an extremely dislikeable person in every possible way.

That said, he's very good at selling hype, but not great at delivering.

Tesla may have started the 'EV revolution' which, in the grand scheme is not important at all, but now that the mainstream automakers are "in," Tesla is being outpaced in terms of quality, with range coming soon.

We are much better off redisigning cities and focusing on mass transit, not personalized cars. Not only for the climate's sake, but it would literally make most people's lives better.

Elon is basically a meme at this point.

While I don't like Musk as a person, I think that Spacex being the single largest launch provider in the world proves that he isn't just a con man. I also think that Falcon 9 counts as important technological progress, with its reusability. Starship also counts, even if it ends up being far more expensive than he says, it will still be incredibly useful for space exploration.

I don't know much about his other businesses though so those might be garbage, but Spacex is not a scam.

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Technological progress is made by groups of people not the result of one person

Edit: wait until you guys hear about who funded the creation of the internet…

Pssst it was the government

>Elon is an extremely dislikeable person in every possible way.

Come on, the sink joke was funny.

You are discounting every single innovator with statements like that would have happened eventually. Yeah bro, Einstein was totally not significant. We would have figured it out anyway.

Oh yeah the other autos are totally going to outpace Tesla… at some point people get tired of the naysayers when it comes to Tesla and people like you simply pivot onto the next thing. “Soon… will be… just wait until…”

If you knew a thing about Teslas you would know no one is even close. For being in a sub about the future, you sure don’t seem to understand how progress is made. Elon has to sell the future and that’s precisely how he’s able to make so much progress relative to everyone else. Just step back and look at what he’s done and on how little time. For example, to judge him for missing a mars mission timeline from 10 years ago is insane. SpaceX has accomplished amazing things without going to mars yet. You see what I’m saying. It’s very easy for critics to judge something he says all while ignoring reality.

Tldr Elon sets his timelines if everything were to go according to plan and that plan was perfect. This puts pressure on himself and his workers to work extremely hard and to deliver.

It was so funny I don't even remember it!

It’s physically impossible to laugh and seethe at the same time. They can’t help it.

Some people are just incapable of pivoting when times/circumstances change. Musk, like Trump, is one of them.

SEXY/420/69 were funny 10 years ago, now they just seem stupid/cringe when coming from the richest man in the world that just destroyed a major piece of American infrastructure on a whim.

In terms of technical progress, the path looks much the same….tons of contributions in his earlier years….not so much today.

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What a useless post

I have a problem with some of his behavior, but overall I luke warm like the guy, because he played a huge role in funding reusable rockets.

Poll too coarse. Needs medium options, but then it might be too big.

This. Horrible human, brilliant visions that are changing the world - and he has the $$ and connections to pull it off (or write it off). A viable electric car market would still be 5+ years away without Tesla. High speed internet wouldn’t exist in rural areas in the foreseeable future. Ok, the Mars mission is a bit of a stretch, but, through this, he’s now DoD/NASAs go to for launching satellites. Way cheaper and great track record.

Musk and his groupies actively harm the public perception of tech and futurists.

Can’t wait for the discourse surrounding teslas/EVs to be applied to BCI :\

at least he is important than random redditor

I think what he did with Tesla is great. I don’t think Gen Z really appreciates how difficult it was to make electric cars status symbols in this country.

SpaceX is another great story.

However, I think what he brings to the table is Marketing and not really engineering. He sells a vision that’s for sure. But as he gets more comfortable being hated on social media he’s starting to act more and more like a edgy teen and I’m not a huge fan of that

He’s a piece of shit rich asshole who got money investing and now he just fired thousands of people on a whim. Stop idolizing this clown.

Absolutely correct!

Why?

He is more akin to a snake oil salesman than the “pioneer of the future” that everyone makes him out to be. Sure, he made a cool car. But it’s the lifetime of late, half-baked, unfulfilled promises that makes him a scammer in my eyes.

Remember when we were supposed to have a colony on mars in 2024? Or the Tesla cybertruck and semi supposed to be out years ago? Remember when Musk said every year for the last decade that level 5 self driving would be ready in Teslas next year? Remember when Musk lied about inventing the Hyperloop despite the concept being around for nearly half a century? Don’t even get me started about TeslaBot. I could go on and on and on…

I voted "important" because he dumped money in the right places to get these groups of people working. But he's no longer relevant.

Without him electronic cars wouldn't be what they are. Without him we wouldn't have reusable rockets and new space boom. He is person who kicked the hornets nest and made everyone move. He is only person who might really have change to realize Mars outpost. He is greatest person of our time. Personally I dislike him but we need persons like him. Most historic figures have been assholes. That is how world works. You have to be different than masses to make anything happen.

Tbf he's important to technological advancements only due to his funding, which still counts. But homie losing buko bucks rn so. We shall see. This is like the only side story of this timeline I'm invested in right now. I definitely used to fuck with him, no Stan shit, but he revealed his true colors during the pandemic.

> that just destroyed a major piece of American infrastructure on a whim

What? Let me check. No, twitter still works. RemindME! 12 months

I will be messaging you in 1 year on 2023-11-23 10:57:07 UTC to remind you of this link

1 OTHERS CLICKED THIS LINK to send a PM to also be reminded and to reduce spam.

^(Parent commenter can ) ^(delete this message to hide from others.)

I'll refrain from ethical judgements, since these quickly derange into incredibly complex arguments.

That said, he appears to be one of the greatest system thinkers of all time.

Elon musk founded OpenAI btw. Also things like self driving cars and Neuralink is huge for ai. Spacex is revolutionizing space travel. Tesla also made electric cars very populair. So i don’t know what these people are smoking that say he is not important for technological progress

Perhaps his greatest skill has been raising huge amounts of capital in public/private markets for TSLA and SpaceX. Not sure why you got downvoted because you can't have the "groups of people" without the capital allocation. I still voted important+dislike though.

Right, what where all the tesla employees and SpaceX employees doing before that?

Obviously it’s not the work of one man etc…, but the fact remains none of the amazing accomplishments made by those companies would’ve been made with anyone else at the helm

If Elon did not exist, the next person in line would easily replace him. Technological progress is done by a civilization, not an individual.

He’s a fatuous twerp and squandering his money and intellect for meaningless social accolades.

There is way more technology and raw science out there that can revolutionise capital intensive industries but established industry prefers incremental change.

Musk isn't so much important to developing science & technology but he brings an ability to operationalise science and technology into real world applications in a way that traditional corporate innovation just can't do.

Labor matters. He's a nightmare for workers

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Love him or hate him entrepreneurs are needed to drive technological advancement.

He WAS important, or rather, his marketing skill was important to kick-start a number of industries that faced an uphill battle because of legacy incumbents. These techs would have become mainstream eventually, but we are on a bit of a clock thanks to climate change, so any help is appreciated, whatever the motivation.

He's overstated his welcome at this point though.

Bro, he gave the man that tried to end American democracy his account back, then joked about it.

Hahaha - “I just put American democracy in danger. Let that sink in” - hahaha

You are misunderstanding why Twitter was a major piece of American infrastructure.

not really. that glosses over a crap ton of nuance.

mathematical or physics progress for instance has historically mostly been made by individuals (e.g. recently yitang zhang, terry tao, historically isaac newton, galois/abel, einstein, turing, godel etc.) .

now those individuals emerge out of an environment, that has historically speaking, mostly been a social/intellectual environment, and they tend to show up in clusters of mostly individual contributors reaching the same conclusions.

but to think of it as a group effort betrays the fact that ultimately all the key ideas or vision come together in one brain.

science papers in particular with arseloads of coauthors tend to be banal as f***.

engineering results maybe a bit less so (but only recently with AI papers, (and honestly the key technical insights in the paper probably come from one or two people)).

I'm still hung up on the fact that if, "money is all you need"* why is Blue Origin or Virgin Galactic not at a comparable position to SpaceX in terms of technological advancement?

* edited to be more meme-y :D

Ah, practical joke demonstration of paradox of tolerance. Quite irresponsible I admit.

People gloss over the fact that he is an engineer. I believe he was literally the lead engineer at SpaceX for a while. I do, however, think he is an asshole, but he can get stuff done. Think that he is just a money mover is a really ignorant take.

Note - talking about a person in a binary way is not a productive discussion imo. Better to discuss it like, is Twitter better in X days, or do you think Elons contribution to X means Y. Insert topic

Imagine voting "he is important to technological progress" literally days after he tanks a $40 billion tech company.

Let that sink in: all he had to do was nothing. But because he couldn't merely do nothing, it's now on the verge of collapse.

"All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone", as they say.

Option 6: He used to be important to technological progress, and I used to like him.

>People gloss over the fact that he is an engineer.

It's difficult to know exactly what he is. From what I understand, he does not have an engineering diploma, but is self-taught and self-appointed. This doesn't mean he isn't skilled, but it's difficult to separate what is PR and what is true.

Anyway, IMO it doesn't matter. There are many skilled engineers that do not have the same impact that he had. What he brought to the table is the money and dedication to getting things done.

I find these to be strange arguments. For example, the charge that he hasn't lived up to promises. What promises? The only really big fail that I'm aware of (and I've been watching the EV world and Musk since 2016) is his claims of self-driving. Everything else has not been a promise, but a goal. Sometimes people fail to reach goals on time, especially when they are the kinds of things that have never been done before. What "promise" has he made that hurt you or anyone else?

You have an entirely unrealistic set of expectations on the transition to electric vehicles. If you look at various projections from major organizations studying clean energy before Model 3 came out, they estimated less than 10% transition to clean vehicles by 2030 for new car sales. Then when Model 3 became a hit, they started bumping it up to around 25%. Now that every other manufacturer (except the Japanese) realized they need to go all-in on EVs in order to survive, the projections are around 50-60% EVs by 2030. That is a huge change, and it requires hundreds of billions of dollars of investment in new technologies and factories and supply chains across the world from dozens of companies. This is lightning speed for the largest manufacturing industry in the world!

SpaceX has transformed the space launch industry and is transforming telecommunications. Ukraine would have been right fucked if they weren't able to rely on secure high speed internet in the field from Starlink. Similar LEO constellations had been talked about for years, but because of the high cost of orbital launch before SpaceX, and general lack of urgency prior to Musk, it had never been done. Everyone else is still years behind, even after Musk lit a fire under them. We would be decades away from high speed LEO internet without SpaceX. It may not matter to you, but it matters to places without high speed cable around the world.

Is he an asshole who strangely wants to advertise that fact rather than hide it like every other CEO? Yes. Is he making a big difference. Obviously, emphatically, yes.

So much technological progress has been made by single persons. What you say is simply incorrect. Now granted, it’s almost always based off the previous work of others, but that doesn’t detract from the fact a lot of progress was made by a single person working on a problem.

Like him or not, to say he is not important is simply ignorant.

Probably only when he founded SpaceX. All his other companies are bought. Now all of them could be better off without him grinding his engineers to exhaustion. Imagine what Tesla or SpaceX can achieve if the best engineers don’t try to jump off the moment they have an offer at any other big tech due to their terrible work culture. Common consensus on all the cs subs rate tesla to have even worse culture and WLB then amazon.

His most involved role in technology is probably the early days of SpaceX

>I think what he brings to the table is Marketing and not really engineering

How could you know this? Engineers who have worked for him and spoken publicly generally say he is for real and does contribute to engineering. But more generally, a CEO's role is to be the one who decides on overall direction and strategy. It was Musk who decided to go all-in on rocket reusability and direct the resources of the company to that, despite the fact that others who had tried failed. He did it because he knew enough engineering to see a path to success. That's how he matters. He knows enough science to call bullshit on people who are stuck in their ways and say things can't be done. Others still have to do 99% of the detailed engineering work, but he is far from just a hype man.

This is also relevant to a statement Musk has made several times that I think people miss the importance of. He insists that people who oversee coders also need to be good coders themselves. NOT because they are going to be doing the brunt of the coding work, but because they will be able to better direct and assess the work of the people who are doing that work. They will have an intuitive sense of what approaches are possible and impossible, or efficient and inefficient, and guide the team to execute, and trouble-shoot with them when problems arise. To the extent Musk is an "engineer" that is what he is doing: helping teams think through problems.

And I totally hate the edgy teen persona too. It's embarrassing a lot of the time. I used to interpret as him needing to blow off steam because of all the stress from his day job. Now, I don't know what the fuck it is. Real immaturity, I guess.

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True, but it helps if someone sets direction and pays the wages.

Folks on cscareerquestions are definitely never working for Tesla.

Imagine forgetting his role in shepherding four companies from nothing to major success. And Twitter isn't done, yet. Remindme! 6 months.

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>Everyone is replaceable

If not Elon Musk, nobody else would have made electric cars so popular. Every other auto make said electric cars were never going to work, and outside the industry no one was working on it.

Like him or hate him, Elon is no doubt pushing many big industries and changing the narrative.

I've grown to dislike him over the years after all the dumb shit he's been saying/doing, but I wouldn't deny the substantial contribution he made leading various field in the world of technology.

So, his companies (not himself, his employees) have given us good EVs, affordable reusable rockets, and decent satellite internet coverage, that’s about it, all his other projects are useless vapourware.

Other than that, I personally think Musk is a literal dumbass. Thunderf00t on YouTube has been deconstructing his nonsense for a long time, the Twitter crashing in two weeks incident just put on full display that he isn’t the brightest tool in the shed. The guy just likes to LARP as a real life Tony Stark.

> honestly the key technical insights in the paper probably come from one or two people

The winning tickets in a lottery are just a few, but beforehand we don't know which ones. Hindsight is 20:20

They are a dot on the edge of the space of knowledge.

Which companies are you even talking about, other than SpaceX and Tesla? Surely you don't mean Neuralink or The Boring company, both of which are basically jokes, one of which is literally a joke.

Zip2 and X.com/Paypal. Those were the initial startups that provided the money for SpaceX and Tesla.

Thanks for taking the bait, I love it when Musk fanboys walk right into this one:

Musk founded X.com, which was little more than an online bank. He actually lost a power struggle with co-founder Harris Fricker, who became CEO of the company, and Musk basically lost control. X.com then acquired Confinity, which had already developed PayPal. Musk didn't do shit as far as PayPal itself was concerned. He was "around" in some capacity when it exploded, but he played no part in its development, and it wasn't his vision, either. PayPal exploded because it was PayPal, and nothing Musk did had anything to do with its success, since he didn't develop it nor "shepherd" it in any meaningful capacity.

And every single one of those single brains stood on the shoulders of giants, because that's how humans work: we're a social species. The last time there was any innovation that didn't involve a social element was probably hundreds of thousands of years ago.

Even to produce individuals capable of such insights requires society and culture.

most of the time both hero worship or complete dissolution of the individual into society mao zedong/cultural revolution style are not well adapted responses to the overall environment. though I guess theoretically they could be lol.

i would push back against the social aspect simply because I think reddit takes it too far. If you emphasize that then it also absolves musk of any culpability for his actions since it's really, "society" thats at fault, which I guess the proper redditor would be like oh yes, of course his colonialist white culture is horrendous. to which I would just say such people should be given a time machine and get to choose whether to live under the horrible evil colonialists or the modern south african regime, and i wonder which neigbhorhoods they would choose to live in.

in terms of the singularity, i dunno if something that thinks 10000x faster than humans and has a perfect memory will need an external society or culture...

Lol, Musk lost a power struggle, yes. But why does Musk have to personally build something in order to count as a successful CEO? That is a standard applied to no one else. Yes, the earliest form of Paypal was developed by Confinity, but it looked very little like the Paypal after the acquisition. It was initially only for Palm Pilots! X.com had the ability to send payments using email addresses first.

And the decision to buy them (which X.com did) was made because Musk and others (not others in opposition to Musk) recognized the potential in the early Paypal product. Acquiring a promising product that goes on to be huge is the kind of thing a successful CEO does much more often actually coding a new product him/herself.