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Comment by ubernostrum | Hacker News Reader

I really hate this idea of the grand visionary.

Which is amusing in the case of Musk. As I've said over and over, his approach is to find an industry where most or all of the hard, expensive fundamental R&D has already been done (and paid for) by someone else, and then start a company to incrementally improve it and promise vast cost reductions from economies of scale.

That's what SpaceX is. That's what Tesla is. There's not really staggering heart-breaking Copernican-revolution work being done at either company. They're just applying incremental improvement and economies of scale to problems where the hard fundamental work was already done. The idea that it requires some special sort of unbelievable genius to come up with that plan, or that it's impossible to do without this specific (alleged) genius, is baffling to me.

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I think also he's applying many forms of incremental improvement all at once, and also in a field where the other players are stultified.

To some degree, you could say the same criticisms about Linus Torvalds (or, say, Rob Pike).

He does what any good businessman would do. He looks for money on the table. In this case its areas where research has been done but it hasn't been operationalized.

That being said I dont mean to minimize what Musk or the teams he has assembled have done. The first 90% of the work toward a new innovation is 90% of the work, then the last 10% is 90% of the work.

SpaceX basically finished the Delta Clipper project.

A businessman who actually wants to make money wouldn't start a rocket company. The return on rocket companies is nil.

If it's that easy why didn't you do it then? We should have plenty of competitors to SpaceX and Tesla with loads of reusable rockets and amazing self driving cars RIGHT NOW if everything seems so trivial in your opinion. Any dumbass can do it, including you! Time to get dirty and stack up on those millions of $ since things are so easy to pull off.

That's why Elon sleeps under the desk and works 18 hours a day because it's all very very easy.

I almost forgot how easy it was to sit on the sideline and critique someone else's work :) It's cute.

There's a difference between:

"This is not the revolutionary act of genius people portray it as"

and

"This is so trivially easy anyone could do it"

Tesla and SpaceX are trying to do things that have potential utility. Things which will advance the state of their respective arts even if they fail. There is no shame in "merely" doing that! There's also no need to inflate it into something it isn't.

What is baffling to me is the length that some HN commenters will go to to tear down people like Elon and Steve Jobs.

Maybe you don't like him, maybe you don't like how much attention and praise he gets. But to be so dismissive of what those companies have accomplished with him at the helm, to me is just unwarranted bitter negativity.

In your mind, what companies are doing staggering heart-breaking Copernican-revolution work? What bar must be reached to not be "just applying incremental improvement and economies of scale?" Pretty bleak outlook if pushing the bleeding edge of rocket technology forward is humdrum small potatoes.

>Pretty bleak outlook if pushing the bleeding edge of rocket technology forward is humdrum small potatoes.

Yes, the world's outlook is pretty bleak.

Well I genuinely hope you find something that gives you enough joy to change your perspective.

the length that some HN commenters will go to to tear down people like Elon

I suppose if you read literally anything other than absolutely fawning worship of Elon Musk as history's most titanic genius as a "tear down", I could see that.

But... it is absolutely true that his business model is incremental improvements + economies of scale. Tesla and SpaceX aren't in the business of inventing fundamentally new things. They're in the business of making improvements to already-invented things, and mass-producing them to try to bring costs down. This is only a troubling thing to read if you're deeply invested in his cult of personality.

We're clearly talking past each other and we may have to agree to disagree. You didn't address my question at all, just restated your comment and implied that I'm a fanboy if I disagree.

"Absolutely fawning worship" is unnecessary hyperbole, there is a vast amount of middle ground between that and your position. But I suppose if you can't make a reasoned argument, you have to resort to that (and we're off to the ad hominem races!).

"Most titanic genius" is more telling hyperbole, reiterated from your first post apropos of nothing. I didn't say anything about him or his genius, but you continue to mock and, yes, tear down.

When you say "Tesla is just [this]. SpaceX is just [that]," that's a tear down. You're reducing and diminishing companies that have undoubtedly made real impact, but why? Forget about Elon the Magnificent for a second, I would guess that you have similar things to say about Google, Apple, and the rest.

So I ask again, what company is doing things worthy of your respect? You're very good at reducing big things to nothing, but can you prop anything up? Can you support something? Maybe you're afraid to, because you know I can reduce and diminish it. That's easy, anyone can do it. But there's nothing interesting about it, there's no value, all it does is reveal insecurity.

Would you agree that SpaceX and Tesla are not inventing any fundamentally new technology? That they are engaged in evolutionary, rather than revolutionary, work?

One can say "this is not a revolutionary thing" without simultaneously saying "this is utterly worthless". Avoiding the hero worship and the personality cult does not require throwing out any idea of useful things coming from SpaceX or Tesla.

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