Rant regarding “critics’” discriminating Musk (that went off the rails a little)

The reason I wanted to have a little rant at the people who super negatively judge Elon Musk for his behaviour was because of him being forced to step down as the chairman of Tesla and reading the comments out of which I’d say half (popular ones) are mean-spirited. He took the step down because it was the fastest way out of it, so he could continue his work — doing engineering 80% of the time. And yet people overreact after all that the man has done, as if his motives aren’t clear enough. If you’re not an employee of his or a shareholder who perhaps has some skin in the game, then better stay out of it because you’re not helping.

Having read Elon’s autobiography twice and watched many of his interviews I definitely consider myself an admirer who if one had to be chosen…I would choose him as an idol over Jobs, Zuckerberg and Bezos. Like, it seems, many millennials who criticise Elon comparatively less than older generations. I would mainly, because in contrast to many who believe that he simply get the credit for the inventions…he could take over nearly any assignment of his employees and get it done faster. The other main differentiator from others from whom I’m not taking anything away… is that as they have taken advantage of an already ongoing trend while Musk has created the trend(s). He did the same at first with Zip2 and PayPal, but the moment he had enough money to keep himself up he put all that he had into creating today’s companies without which there would virtually be no movement toward going to Mars (and beyond), having most cars become solar-powered and perhaps even them being autonomous. The last one would’ve probably happened anyways, but five years later. Tesla’s missions would’ve been stalled for another 20 years until oil becomes so expensive to be explored/pumped that oil companies would have to rethink their strategy for their main source of income. And space travel? We probably would’ve had a chance for reaching beyond the Moon in case of some global catastrophe when we had no other choice, but to look for a way out, like in Interstellar. And even then it would’ve been a small probability if we would get to Mars in time before destruction of our species. Elon knows that by that time it’d be too late so jumpstarted the process now in hopes to literally halve the probability that we would destroy ourselves during this century by creating an interplanetary colonial outpost.

Whether it’d be AI, global warming or nuclear war — threats with decreasing probabilities in my opinion. AI first not so much because of Skynet itself taking control of our weapons systems. Rather a world war starting because of autonomous weapons systems (AWS), which first of all will be inevitably developed. Plan 3.0 : “if any major military power pushes ahead with AI weapon development, a global arms race is virtually inevitable. Unlike nuclear weapons they require no costly or hard-to-obtain raw materials, so they’ll become ubiquitous and cheap for all significant military powers to mass-produce. ..appear on the black market and in the hands of terrorists, dictators wishing to better control their populace, warlords wishing to perpetrate ethnic cleansing. Autonomous weapons are ideal tasks for such as assassinations, destabilising nations, subduing populations and selectively killing a particular ethnic group.” There are also several instances where WW3 was prevented solely thanks to a gut feeling of a military officer. The radar being faulty or human-machine communication (interfaces) being erroneous, which by AI would have been read as an immediate threat while a human being said no to a missile launch as something didn’t feel quite right. Bottom line, Elon is working on preventing the most deadly and probable dangers. He knows that although nuclear war is possible…the reason why they practically haven’t been used to wage war is because they are way too powerful. Having these weapons in our arsenal is high amongst the reason we haven’t had a world war since the Manhattan project. But this is not the case with precision weapons controlled by AI. Which is why he even has skin in that field having created OpenAI.

Now as we have gone through why Elon has devoted his whole life to saving the world having chosen certain project…I hope that I’ve piqued some curiosity about the man. So even if you don’t have the time to read Ashlee Vance’s book go through this article about him… and the rest of WaitButWhy blog as well. ELI5 done well.

I’m willing to give anyone the benefit of the doubt when it comes to criticising the people at high places as they are the ones to lead us into the world after the Singularity, which none of us can imagine for sure, but is highly affected by what we do beforehand aka now. Thus, our very lives depend on their decisions. But before you have the right to criticise someone’s life, talk to the person to learn about the motives or if that’s not possible…do a thorough research on him before you start bashing. Especially in social media as the comments can be seen by thousands and if they agree with the underdeveloped critique then it only reinforces their ignorance. I get if it feels entertaining to talk about celebrities whose success entails that kind of publicity, therefore they knew what they signed up for when they became an actor or a musician. But to judge someone’s tweets who is just trying to let loose a little bit before he goes to sleep on Tesla factory’s couch or relaxes just a little bit at Joe Rogan’s podcast? All the while there’s the supposed leader of the free world threatening his counterpart with WW3 through Twitter? I’d say the standard for some stupidity taking place in social media is pretty damn high. And I’m sure Elon is aware of that, as always.

Also as an “after credits scene”, is it not clear why Elon “wasted” his time to fly a Roadster as a payload for Falcon Heavy? Awesome marketing, perhaps?Getting people talking about both space travel (SpaceX) and Tesla, especially those who usually wouldn’t, is so much more important than the minuscule risk that we crash into that particular space debris. There are hundreds of satellites and thousands of “dead” satellites that are not even tracked, in contrast to the Roadster. I mean if the so called Space Force doesn’t yet have a program for cleaning up the debris moving in orbit 18 000 mph, according to Degrasse-Tyson on Rogan podcast, then it is not yet that pressing of an issue. And Roadster is not even in orbit so the probability of it compromising our future travelling becomes even more non-existent. Damn, this ranting actually gave me an idea for a Superman movie where his opponent is space debris that attracts hostile aliens so he must clean it up in 60 minutes before they find our planet using their debris tracker. Called, Superman:Gone in 60 minutes.