This is not just a problem with Tesla, it's a problem with many, many issues and causes. See the small group of vocal Bernie Sanders "superfans" who would rather vote for Trump than for Biden, and consider Elizabeth Warren somehow a traitor to the progressive cause.
I think this might also be related to the difference between patriotism and nationalism. I've recently seen a bunch of memes about how patriotism is wanting your country to be the best it can possibly be, while nationalism is believing your country is best no matter what. The former is a drive to improve and to fix problems, while the latter means that any constructive criticism is taken as hostility. (I'm aware there are other definitions of these words, but this is the one that works for me in exploring this issue.)
A blind belief in the infallibility of the thing or person you support, will easily turn toxic. It's not a healthy kind of support.
Twitter and social media are a cesspool. Any sort of curation, trending, or recommendations, tend towards what will garner the most "engagement". Playing on people's fears and outrage to keep them glued to the feed and a captive audience for advertisers. Brief messages (tweets) are a sure way to prevent nuance from getting in the way of a black-and-white opinion.
People in positions of fame, notoriety, power, like Musk, have learned that playing the troll is good for them. They can troll with impunity and the result has turned out to be positive in an "Any publicity is good publicity" way. Journalists lap it up because it gives them something to write about and give their publications clicks for the daily outrage. Everyone gets to fuel the flames.
"We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us." -- Marshall McLuhan
> "We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us."
I was having a conversation with a friend last night about how he thinks most people are largely aware of how news outlets are "fake"/"liars" and that is a good thing. And that that is the first step to having independent, accountable media.
While I don't disagree with the sentiment. If the new guard is using the same tools (high-speed internet, TV, video, Twitter) they are destined to reach a similar equilibrium.
Actually, people waking up to the manipulation will inoculate them to the newer medium abuse, at least somewhat. The slang term is "red-pilled", a reference to Neo taking the red pill in the Matrix movie and learning the truth behind the lies that were fed to him all his life.
> See the small group of vocal Bernie Sanders "superfans" who would rather vote for Trump than for Biden,
While I agree with the majority of you comment and take on superfans in general, I think it's important to note that a large amount of those "superfans" for Sanders are actually astroturfing efforts.
I don't have sources handy, so take it with a grain of salt, but it seems pretty clear to me that on Twitter and Reddit those "superfans" are just trying to promote the idea that voters shouldn't vote for Biden as a way to remove their vote in the general.
Again, I agree with what you said here, just want to point out the astroturfing happening.
That's no doubt part of it in the case of Sanders, but I think that also fuels the effect that turns real supporters toxic.
Also because you can see the same thing happen in other areas where people identify extremely strongly with something. In fact, the history of Christianity is filled with moments when Christians acted completely contrary to their teachings due to toxic identification with their brand. Although I guess in that case there were also politically motivated people pushing them in order to take advantage of it.
During the last election, I saw that attitude expressed for real among people I knew. They were almost certainly provoked by astoturfers but they were themselves sincere.
I don't know what they're saying this time around. I removed them from my life. They may have had a change of heart but I am far too angry at them. It's going to take the rest of my life to undo the damage. Possibly longer.
Many of them see through the facade of false choice, and the fact that their is only one political party in this country when it comes to a large % of issues. I don't blame them, you shouldn't either.
That used to be the case perhaps, but right now there are two very different parties.
I can totally understand voting third party when the Republican Party is putting forward someone like Romney or McCain. They're not going to rock the boat. Trump is trying sink it, and what remains of the Republican Party is eager to go down with him.
I'm pretty much as much of a 'superfan' and you can get in regards to all of the Musk ventures. Elon's handling of the COVID19 thing, for me, has been a bridge too far. While prediction models for the pandemic have been all over the map, Elon's COVID-truther stance has been pretty incredible to watch. His Twitter posts on the subject have not been well thought out and many have been outright conspiratorial.
I agree with you here. I watched the recent Joe Rogan podcast with Musk, and was largely disgusted with the misinformation he pushed regarding COVID-19.
I don't like conspirancy teories, let alone spread them. But it's getting clear that the reaction from WHO was retarded thanks to the Chinese Government pressure.
Let alone the fact that China has beeing hidding a lot of valuable information from the world since the start.
My two cents based on the info available, this virus was a leak from Wuhan Institute of Virology due to some security failure that China its trying to hide. It's a standard move from communist regimes trying to cover up their mistakes like this, remember Chernobyl?
That being said, I got more sympathy when I learned how absolutely absurd Gavin Newsom's reopening conditions were - halt reopening of a county until "No more than one new COVID-19 case per 10,000 residents in the past 14 days" and "No COVID-19 deaths in the past 14 days".
It seems much more logical to base it on the R-number (number of people infected on average by each infected person), like we do here in Norway. The more the R-number goes down, the more things can be reopened.
I do wonder if we will end up with R converging towards 1 in that case. Every time it falls people get gun-ho and start going out, then it rises until we see the figures get alarming again.
I don't know where you're talking about, but at least here in Norway that hasn't happened. It might happen in places where people has been misled into thinking that reopening is a binary option, instead of a slow gradual process constantly re-evalutated based on data.
That's exactly the plan in many countries with the current caseload well within the capacity of the healthcare system (i.e. Germany). Balancing overloading the healthcare system with reopening business.
You can't keep everything shut down until there's a cure. We need to find a way to live with it, and that means reopening those businesses that are the safest and most urgent to reopen, while testing extensively and keeping a close eye on whether it gets out of control again.
I think there's absolutely something to be said for allowing businesses to reopen if they can guarantee healthy working conditions with enough space, time and equipment to avoid infection.
The problem is: merely checking those measures for every business is going to be a lot of work.
Both things are important. The R number tells you which direction you're headed. If you're significantly below 1, you can relatively safely open up a little more and see where that leaves you.
However, new case counts and new deaths matter a lot. Even with, say, R=0.8, with a big outbreak, people will continue to get sick and die. It also means that if you underestimate the effect of opening up and wind up with R>1, you can start running into capacity problems, either contact tracing, testing, or hospital capacity. It's best to get case counts low and declining, and then start opening things up.
The whole "coronavirus is affecting out civil liberties" stance is extremely harmful. The government is not out to get you in a pandemic.
If you want to argue that manufacturing can be open safely fine, and it's also fine to sue the county to force their hand.
But coronavirus restrictions save lives (stuff like mask wearing) and tweeting crap like "FREE AMERICA NOW" is extremely unhelpful. We should be arguing about the exact way in which government intervention can be used to reduce the spread.
> We should be arguing about the exact way in which government intervention can be used to reduce the spread.
This personal opinion is not echoed by many people who feel that the government has overreached. They feel that if a person wants total government control of their safety, that person can move to a country like China.
> The government is not out to get you in a pandemic.
Replace pandemic with war. What's the difference? Governments readily encroach on civil liberties during emergencies. And we know how advocates of the Patriot Act recognized it would be a powerful law, so they said it would be temporary. We all know how that turned out. It doesn't seem like it'll go away now.
I fear we'll play out something similar with lockdown. And what's really somewhat horrifying is that the mere mention of concerns surrounding lockdown is made out to be crazy, dangerous, inhumane, etc.
Terrorism is a permanent low-level threat but pandemics and and floods are acute and have a reasonably well-defined end. The latter justify emergency powers specific to combating the issue at hand.
Imminent invasions also justify emergency powers, but not overseas wars.
My guess is that the pandemic will be completely under control before a year has passed.
The government may not be out to intentionally "get" anyone, but it's still very capable of harming when it intends to help.
That's what's behind a lot of the consternation over government responses. A lot of lives are at stake, and not just those which might be taken by COVID.
From the moment the government decided to declare a state of emergency, multiple surveillance bills with support from both sides have been pushed. Rand Paul did well to point out the people like Lindsay Graham and Dianne Feinstein haven't wasted a second trying to expand government powers instead of helping Americans. The government is clearly out to get people, there is no question about it.
Elon Musk can be admired or despised for many reasons, but the merging of the companies with his persona was always troubling to me. I find it deeply unhealthy.
Running a company itself is deeply unhealthy. To me, his cult of personality around his companies looks like his way of coping with that extremely high stress.
CEOs of other auto manufacturers don't last as long as Musk (he has the longest tenure globally, by far). They also aren't product architect of their company, nor CEO and lead designer of another large manufacturing company either.
This article talks a lot about the superfans corrupting Elons point of view... but Elon is so much like his superfans. Any criticism is met with attacks. Don't want to use his plan to rescue kids in a cave? You're a pedophile.
Elon was like this before the superfans. They reflect his behavior, not the other way around.
Completely agree. There are superfans for everything (Apple, Android, gaming platforms, NASCAR, sports teams). Toxicity like this has to be encouraged to thrive. Elon loves it too much.
Yeah, I think the author is actually a different form of 'superfan' (or cult member), who takes the stance that Dear Leader can largely do no wrong, and any mistake they make is due to the malign influence of corrupt lieutenants.
> While we obviously don’t endorse this type of language, it then led to a good example of a Tesla superfan feeding misinformation to Elon Musk, corrupting his feedback loop.
This feels like pretty standard cult behaviour. It's never Elon's fault; it's the fault of those other misguided (though ultimately righteous) believers. You get similar stuff with dictatorships and religious cults; Netflix has a rather good documentary on the Rajneeshpuram cult which shows this in action.
I don't follow Musk closely, but his ventures seem pretty interesting. I mean who isn't impressed with those self landing rocket boosters from SpaceX (obviously he has teams of engineers and to make this happen)
Periodically, I remember that Tesla has not be profitable for more than a few quarters. And I end up wondering what is the end goal. I get that you can perpetually raise money as long as you find investors.
This might not be the right place to post this question:
In the long run, what is the plan for making money at Tesla?
The company is driven by the mission to accelerate the world's transition to sustainable energy. Since that transition hasn't happened yet, taking profit slows that mission. So their goal is to eventually look like one of the world's largest energy companies in terms of making money.
EVs are a small step. They are focused on building factories that produce more battery capacity as quickly as possible. Giving away electricity does not help with this.
They don't have to give away electricity. They can charge money for it like the other charging networks do. The main problem is that they refuse to charge any non-Teslas at all.
> In the long run, what is the plan for making money at Tesla?
Their strategy has been to sell increasingly cheaper/higher volume models and it's working. It's just that their production is still very small by car company standards so economies of scale are still limited.
Right now they just need to scale up production which is why Elon pushed so hard to reopen the factory.
Tesla now has the best operating margins of the industry. The net income will explode as the sales of Model Y will increase and exceed those of the 3. They haven't even started making semi and pickup trucks.
Lots of people make the point that there are just toxic people on twitter of all persuasions and whether it's cancelling some movie producer or shouting "TERF" at every female journalist, it's just a small group of bad people that show up everywhere.
I think that misses the point that Elon Musk is one of those bad people. He is the one spreading rumours that someone's a pedofile or that Tesla has a secret deal to go private, or that Coronavirus is nothing to be worried about. People didn't just happen to congregate around him, they're hanging out with their friend.
I've been reading Electrek for many years, Fred Lambert is definitely a huge fan of Tesla no doubt. When Fred wrote,
Obviously, it’s ridiculous for Musk to call someone who is a Tesla investor
and who wrote thousands of articles about Tesla’s positive impact on the world “anti-Tesla”
simply because he didn’t like a few of my articles during a time when the company was making
some very questionable moves. Musk even ended up reversing some of those moves later that year.
It is painful to read that, as I am sure Elon surely knew how that felt, as spoke at CBS 60 minutes about when Elon's own heroes dismissed him.[1]
One should always tolerate different opinions, as Ian Bremmer put it.[2]
68 comments
[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 107 ms ] threadI think this might also be related to the difference between patriotism and nationalism. I've recently seen a bunch of memes about how patriotism is wanting your country to be the best it can possibly be, while nationalism is believing your country is best no matter what. The former is a drive to improve and to fix problems, while the latter means that any constructive criticism is taken as hostility. (I'm aware there are other definitions of these words, but this is the one that works for me in exploring this issue.)
A blind belief in the infallibility of the thing or person you support, will easily turn toxic. It's not a healthy kind of support.
People in positions of fame, notoriety, power, like Musk, have learned that playing the troll is good for them. They can troll with impunity and the result has turned out to be positive in an "Any publicity is good publicity" way. Journalists lap it up because it gives them something to write about and give their publications clicks for the daily outrage. Everyone gets to fuel the flames.
"We become what we behold. We shape our tools and then our tools shape us." -- Marshall McLuhan
I was having a conversation with a friend last night about how he thinks most people are largely aware of how news outlets are "fake"/"liars" and that is a good thing. And that that is the first step to having independent, accountable media.
While I don't disagree with the sentiment. If the new guard is using the same tools (high-speed internet, TV, video, Twitter) they are destined to reach a similar equilibrium.
While I agree with the majority of you comment and take on superfans in general, I think it's important to note that a large amount of those "superfans" for Sanders are actually astroturfing efforts.
I don't have sources handy, so take it with a grain of salt, but it seems pretty clear to me that on Twitter and Reddit those "superfans" are just trying to promote the idea that voters shouldn't vote for Biden as a way to remove their vote in the general.
Again, I agree with what you said here, just want to point out the astroturfing happening.
Also because you can see the same thing happen in other areas where people identify extremely strongly with something. In fact, the history of Christianity is filled with moments when Christians acted completely contrary to their teachings due to toxic identification with their brand. Although I guess in that case there were also politically motivated people pushing them in order to take advantage of it.
I don't know what they're saying this time around. I removed them from my life. They may have had a change of heart but I am far too angry at them. It's going to take the rest of my life to undo the damage. Possibly longer.
I can totally understand voting third party when the Republican Party is putting forward someone like Romney or McCain. They're not going to rock the boat. Trump is trying sink it, and what remains of the Republican Party is eager to go down with him.
Depressing.
Let alone the fact that China has beeing hidding a lot of valuable information from the world since the start.
My two cents based on the info available, this virus was a leak from Wuhan Institute of Virology due to some security failure that China its trying to hide. It's a standard move from communist regimes trying to cover up their mistakes like this, remember Chernobyl?
Elon might be right, just like he was right about his cpap machines instead of full ventilators.
He made some very specific, very incorrect predictions: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1240754657263144960
That being said, I got more sympathy when I learned how absolutely absurd Gavin Newsom's reopening conditions were - halt reopening of a county until "No more than one new COVID-19 case per 10,000 residents in the past 14 days" and "No COVID-19 deaths in the past 14 days".
It seems much more logical to base it on the R-number (number of people infected on average by each infected person), like we do here in Norway. The more the R-number goes down, the more things can be reopened.
The problem with basing it off R number is we can only estimate R0, which is why most reopening criteria are based around deaths and tests per capita.
The problem is: merely checking those measures for every business is going to be a lot of work.
However, new case counts and new deaths matter a lot. Even with, say, R=0.8, with a big outbreak, people will continue to get sick and die. It also means that if you underestimate the effect of opening up and wind up with R>1, you can start running into capacity problems, either contact tracing, testing, or hospital capacity. It's best to get case counts low and declining, and then start opening things up.
If you want to argue that manufacturing can be open safely fine, and it's also fine to sue the county to force their hand.
But coronavirus restrictions save lives (stuff like mask wearing) and tweeting crap like "FREE AMERICA NOW" is extremely unhelpful. We should be arguing about the exact way in which government intervention can be used to reduce the spread.
This personal opinion is not echoed by many people who feel that the government has overreached. They feel that if a person wants total government control of their safety, that person can move to a country like China.
Replace pandemic with war. What's the difference? Governments readily encroach on civil liberties during emergencies. And we know how advocates of the Patriot Act recognized it would be a powerful law, so they said it would be temporary. We all know how that turned out. It doesn't seem like it'll go away now.
I fear we'll play out something similar with lockdown. And what's really somewhat horrifying is that the mere mention of concerns surrounding lockdown is made out to be crazy, dangerous, inhumane, etc.
Imminent invasions also justify emergency powers, but not overseas wars.
My guess is that the pandemic will be completely under control before a year has passed.
That's what's behind a lot of the consternation over government responses. A lot of lives are at stake, and not just those which might be taken by COVID.
Same with Jobs I guess.
Elon was like this before the superfans. They reflect his behavior, not the other way around.
> While we obviously don’t endorse this type of language, it then led to a good example of a Tesla superfan feeding misinformation to Elon Musk, corrupting his feedback loop.
This feels like pretty standard cult behaviour. It's never Elon's fault; it's the fault of those other misguided (though ultimately righteous) believers. You get similar stuff with dictatorships and religious cults; Netflix has a rather good documentary on the Rajneeshpuram cult which shows this in action.
Periodically, I remember that Tesla has not be profitable for more than a few quarters. And I end up wondering what is the end goal. I get that you can perpetually raise money as long as you find investors.
This might not be the right place to post this question: In the long run, what is the plan for making money at Tesla?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_energy_compani...
That's just marketing. If it were genuinely the company's mission then Tesla's chargers would be open to all EVs to use.
Other charging networks open their chargers to all EVs, including Tesla EVs. So why won't Tesla do the same?
Their strategy has been to sell increasingly cheaper/higher volume models and it's working. It's just that their production is still very small by car company standards so economies of scale are still limited.
Right now they just need to scale up production which is why Elon pushed so hard to reopen the factory.
I think that misses the point that Elon Musk is one of those bad people. He is the one spreading rumours that someone's a pedofile or that Tesla has a secret deal to go private, or that Coronavirus is nothing to be worried about. People didn't just happen to congregate around him, they're hanging out with their friend.
One should always tolerate different opinions, as Ian Bremmer put it.[2]
[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyGqMZQAMio
[2]: https://twitter.com/ianbremmer/status/801590659291480068
that's american's mentality, you are doomed to stay a money slut
no revolution for you, only the end of your golden era ;)