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Comment by AmINotARobot | Hacker News Reader

But he did say that [0] and he does intentionally deceive customes. One of the key reasons why it doesn't constitute as fraud is his abundant use of "I'm confident that ____" (and similar) he uses when stating these ludicrous things. It is deceptive and it is amoral but legally it is not fraud since those are opinions and not stated as facts.

[0] Article summarizing keynote (Apr. 2019) - https://www.motortrend.com/news/tesla-autonomous-driving-lev...

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Saying he's confident it would happen is not saying that it will happen for certain. So no he didn't say that.

> I'm confident that

So not a fraudster, just a confidence man… a conman.

I think that's giving Elon Musk too much credit.

I think Elon says things fully expecting them to become true.

Whenever I hear him say "I'm confident that X will happen by Y", I mentally add "provided that every single engineer at [one of his companies] puts in 20 hour days for 2 years and manages to solve a mountain of problems that have never been solved before."

Sometimes it works, which unfortunately encourages the behavior.

> I think Elon says things fully expecting them to become true.

I thought that of him years ago, but it's become really clear to me since then that he just lies.

But, practically speaking, that distinction doesn't matter much. Either way, it means you can't believe anything he says just because he says it.

The best liars believe their own lies.

I fully expect he does too. A bit like Steve Jobs' reality distortion field.

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