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Comment by kamaal | Hacker News Reader

Well not sure what you mean by 'Conman'. Wildly successful people do aim high a lot, a lot. They don't meet 80% of their goals, that is perfectly ok. Even as low as 20% success on a lot of these moonshot things sets you ahead of the masses who aim very low and get there 100% of the times.

This whole idea that some one has to comply to your idea of how one must set goals, and get there is something other people have no obligations to measure up to. Also that's the deal about his lies? He can say whatever he wants, and not get there. He is not exactly holding an oath to you or any one that he is at an error for not measuring up.

Musk might not get to Mars, he might end up mining asteroids or something. That is ok. That doesn't make him a conman.

tl;dr. Any one can say, work and fail at anything they want. And they don't owe anybody an explanation for a darn thing.

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It's not aiming high when anyone competent and informed can tell him there's no way, and he pays many competent and informed people to tell him.

He can set all the goals he wants. Setting a goal is not the same as telling people the company that you are dictator of is going to do something.

He's not setting goals, he is marketing, and he does it very well.

As far as how he's a conman https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40462194 although you already know that full well so you'll continue thinking he's some sort of hero.

> It's not aiming high when anyone competent and informed can tell him there's no way, and he pays many competent and informed people to tell him.

You know that this is exactly how SpaceX won big? There were many a competent, credentialed people telling Musk that reusable rockets are a pipe dream, all the way to the first Falcon 9 landing and reflight. Some of them even continued giving such "competent and informed" advice for many months afterwards.

> Setting a goal is not the same as telling people the company that you are dictator of is going to do something.

That's literally what it means, though.

> You know that this is exactly how SpaceX won big? There were many a competent, credentialed people telling Musk that reusable rockets are a pipe dream, all the way to the first Falcon 9 landing and reflight. Some of them even continued giving such "competent and informed" advice for many months afterwards.

And there were also people saying it could be done. Where were those people for self-driving? (Oh right they were in the Facebook comment section with no relevant knowledge.)

> That's literally what it means, though.

No, it's not at all.

A goal is personal, or perhaps organizational. You need not announce something on Twitter in order to set a goal for yourself or for your company.

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