You can break down the world into the 99% that "know" that it's impossible. They'll never invent that world-changing thing.
That leaves 1% that "don't know" that it's impossible. Of that 1%, 99% will try and fail.
The remaining 1% of the 1% succeed, like George Dantzig (who came late to a Stats class at UC Berkeley, thought some problems on the board were homework, and a few days later handed the professor solutions to some famous open problems in statistics), and Jack Kilby (who, seeing computer performance limited by the number of wires soldered by hand, demonstrated -- against the protests of his "we-know-better" co-workers -- that you could get rid of the wires, resulting in the integrated circuit).
It's important to remember the 99% of the 1%. There are probably people on HN who have tried and failed. But rather than simply saying that it is impossible, we should encourage people to share share how and why the problem is difficult, so that hopefully the next person to try won't waste their time retracing the failures of the previous generation.
Those people get flack -- they really do. Despite the inundation of aphorisms all over Facebook and LinkedIn belaboring the concept of radical thinking, when it happens in this, the real world, it's still met with rolled eyes and often anger.
We know we can create lifts that do underground and then connect entry points and exit points by tunnel networks. We already have very miniature things like this.
What the video shows is a vast network of underground tunnels with a tram system for personal vehicles and some public transit connecting different points in the city or connecting other cities. I can kinda see why you might do this and it sounds like a fun ride.
But even a layman can see this is going to be incredibly expensive and you have to wonder why would build this ahead of other types of mass transit. I'd like to see a business plan. Until then, I'm a sceptic.
The problems of zoning alone make this a massive undertaking. Much of the counter-criticism in this thread is misdirected. Very few people are doubting Musk's technical ability to pull this off, they are suggesting it worn't work for practical reasons. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand those, just have to have lived in a city, or simply lived.
The only way to justify a good idea is to have people argue that it is a bad idea. It's up to the person behind the good idea to prove the arguers are wrong.
The 1% of the 1% succeed because they are driven to find success, because they are relentlessly applying logic to the problems they face, because of determination - because they don't give up. I think the term thrown around these days is grit.
So yes, share what happened before, but more than likely those with 'grit' are going to figure out what has been tried before on their own and sometimes they'll reapply what failed in the past and make it work.
The Boring Company however, yeah, he messed this one up.
HN is full of Elon fanboys. I'm one myself. The die hard, willing to say "the world is flat" fanboys are out here defending him. Look, I like Elon. But the sane fanboys are trying to save Elon a lot of headache by not pursuing this venture.
Why would you use this instead of a system where you take a neighborhood bus to the local transit station & shopping center where you can pick up a light rail to the closest subway station, where you take the express train downtown to the high-speed rail station, where you take that to visit the next state for the day? No cars, and you can sit and read a book or take a nap or enjoy the view if you wanted to.
The only scalable transit solution is mass public transit. The world can't afford to pave a private luxury road for everyone to go wherever they want to go. They need to learn to sit next to random strangers on the subway or the bus. If people can't sit next to random strangers on the subway or on the bus, they should be seen as dysfunctional and sociopathic.
This really is one of the worst things I've seen. It may possibly be worse than his Hyperloop, another truly awful idea.
Elon Musk strikes me as one of those guys that defunds mass transit, and then wonders why mass transit is so bad. "It's always breaking down and never on time hurr durr.. So, therefore, buy one of my shiny new cars!"
He really hates mass transit for some reason. Maybe he just can't stand the general public? Is that why he's so into Mars, because he hates everyone here?
We need less pampered and coddled people like Musk, and more people with grit that has the ability to interact with the general public.
I'll take that one.
Because I love my car - not the car itself, although I really do think it's beautiful - but the freedom that it gives me. I can get in it right now, without any planning or waiting and drive almost anywhere using exactly the route I choose. While sitting behind the wheel, I'm forced to not be able to do anything else than driving. That is a very nice time to think and just be. Some of the most beautiful scenery I've ever seen was in places where the nearest public transport option was a hour's drive away.
I can leave stuff in the trunk if I buy it one day and then need it the next day. I also do grocery shopping weekly - carrying 5 bags of food by hand gets old really fast.
The car is also where my younger kid's car seat is. I'm pretty sure nobody else would put their kid in there, the shape of the chocolate and cookie crumb mountain is exactly the shape he fits in you know.
So, yes, you can do what you described. In fact, you can do it already today, but having a car? There's a reason people buy and repair and like them.
That's how a proper public transport network works too. For example in London, when I want to go somewhere, I just whip out an app that plans for me the best combination of busses/subway/train/walking to accomplish that and I'm immediately on the go. The wait times are minimal (under 2-5 minutes) most of the time.
I live in the Netherlands which is a very densely populated country, and anywhere outside the city center or early/late on the day, the busses go every 30 minutes or hourly. At night there are barely any options, esp. between 2 and 6 AM.
This is the idea I was responding to. I think cars are mostly practical in suburbs and rural areas (I live in a city and basically only bike and walk), mass transit isn't the best solution for all personal transit.
When you consider the costs, cars just don't have the appeal they used to, and you can spend money elsewhere that'll make you just as happy if not happier, especially as more services orient themselves to remove cars from the picture, such as Amazon & grocery delivery services.
Besides, do you want a system that forces the rest of the public to buy cars? The congestion alone should be enough to discourage people from cars.
I often don't buy the cheapest food, but the food that I like.
I don't want to force cars on anyone - it should be an individual choice of course. What I'm saying is that there are a lot of reasons people want to own cars.
It's the choice between working with the existing system to make it better versus demanding that everyone adapts to a new system that you claim is better.
Maybe it is, but getting the whole world to change at once to a completely different and in many ways harder system is very un likely to happen.
Ah, and this is where we come to the root of the discussion. Because ultimately the question isn't "Why would ANYONE want to drive cars" (though I confess it was originally presented to you as such), but rather "Why should society and governments INCENTIVIZE continued use of cars."
The Boring Company's proposal here directly benefits people like you (and by the way me - I also love my car), those who can afford that privilege.
But our tax dollars and policies should be going towards systems that benefit the most people, and that will only happen in North America if we fall out of love with the "freedom" promised by our cars and realize that waiting 2-5 minutes at two different transfers, with a total trip length of 15-25% longer (optimistic, but that is realistic in cities with good public transport) is a worthwhile tradeoff for the greater good.
Indeed, which is why we need as a society needs to pay for more rail systems, a tried-and-true mass transit system that's been around a lot longer than the more inefficient cars.
Right now roads are such a wasteful government mess that's completely unprofitable. The personal automotive transport system is a failed experiment that society needs to move on from.
And we need to stop subsidizing the wasteful and destructive suburban lifestyle.
How much more of my money do you want me to pay for your roads so you can have the luxury of riding in comfort?
Is there anything else that you would like me to pay for you?
People go shopping, they don't want to carry on $200 worth of groceries onto public transportation.
Finally people have kids. Kids require a plethora of specialized items including car seats. I dont want to put my kid in a car seat a prior kid just urinated in. Kid's are also messy and require snacks and water bottles.
People who can afford it are going to take cars. I hope The Boring Company is a rousing success.
I am not arguing against the need for mass transport but I see no reason we cant have both.
Your point about rural scenarios is pointless because this video and idea are clearly aimed at the urban transport problem which needs to be solved due to the fact that, around the world, people are increasingly moving to cities rather than the to rural areas.
When it comes to shopping, I don't know about you but I often find myself looking at other peoples trolleys and asking myself "Why would anyone buy 10 2L bottles of coke? Do you really need all those doritos? My word random stranger, do you subsist entirely on junk food?". There are times that one does come away with a large load of shopping but my wife and I have found that when you start planning your meals for the week and optimising what you buy to fit that plan you tend to come away with a lot less shopping than if you just go in an randomly buy stuff. Would would have guessed?
Your point about children is good but ignores the fact that there are huge numbers of people throughout the world with children who somehow manage to make life work despite not owning a 7-seater SUV...
I think it's better to say that people who can afford it might want to use a car now and then but they'd probably also love to have access to viable public transport for all those scenarios where getting into a car is more trouble than its worth.
Light rail and subways are key to effective public transportation and affordable connected cities. Buses are best for last-minute/first-mile transport.
Commoditization of tunnel boring technology around a couple standard sizes for any soil condition would radically reduce subway construction costs around the nation. That same technology could be leveraged for commercial transportation as well.
I strongly suspect "tunnels for cars" is just marketing. Elon is known for doing his research, and the research shows that traffic is reduced by getting people off the road... Traffic is the equilibrium of convenience and discomfort, adding roads just puts more people on the road.
Making mass transportation more convenient and cheap is vital to reducing traffic... the other piece is zoning for high density to support mass transportation.
The video shows an electric rail system, that isn't incompatible with moving larger numbers of people. Look at the high occupancy car at :47.
>If people can't sit next to random strangers on the subway or on the bus, they should be seen as dysfunctional and sociopathic.
Mental illness is probably not going to disappear any time soon. Viewing them hatefully isn't going to get them to like riding the bus. It's just going to make you a hateful person.
Because I don't want to walk four miles in weather that could be 90 degrees or 9 degrees to get my "neighborhood" bus, and then waste hours of the day because I have to change to other buses (sometimes going in the wrong direction) to get somewhat close to my destination. I especially don't want to do that carrying heavy or fragile things, or in the rain or snow.
As long as the US continues to be a sprawl, personal transportation will be important.
> We need less pampered and coddled people like Musk, and more people with grit that has the ability to interact with the general public
Spot on.
Meat-space engineering is hard. I'm an early '90s kid who grew up hearing about how we're going to put people on Mars by 2020.[1] I got a degree in aerospace because of that! Then I realized that physics hates you most of the field is about eking out 1% more fuel economy every decade so United can turn a slight profit. Even Space X is more interesting from a business model point of view than an engineering point of view. It's like someone figured out how to make a $10 iPhone 3g in 2017. Neat, I guess.
[1] Almost everything pop science said would happen was a lie. Moon bases, NYC-London flights, flying cars, etc. Outside of computers and pharma, technology has progressed at a glacial pace over the last 40 years. If you transported someone from 1890 to 1950, planes, international calls, etc. would blow their minds. If you transported someone from 1950 to 2010, I think that they'd frankly be disappointed.
I think that's why people think Global warming is false. There are other people saying that all life is going to disappear, which is funny and clearly alarmism.
Not that it's not a problem - it obviously is - but it's not like the earth is going to be barbecue'd in our lifetime.
The video is clearly made to just hype it up. It serves no purpose other than Science fiction.
And I think there are no causation and correlation between thinking reasons that make it impossible and starting a company.
Not really. It's easy to think of reasons why something won't work. It requires an insanely small amount of effort compared to finding a way to make something work. "Reasons why not" are a dime a dozen.
> And I think there are no causation and correlation between thinking reasons that make it impossible and starting a company.
I certainly think there is. I haven't collected any evidence, but I wouldn't be surprised if those who find success are always looking for reasons why something will work, and those who run into failure are always looking for reasons why something won't work.
Now, to be fair, thinking of reasons "why not" does have its specialized use cases. Safety, for instance. But even then, that requires thinking outside of the box for unusual failure situations.
"Reasons why not" are indeed a dime a dozen, but that doesn't mean they are useless. It may be a bit annoying to have to filter through the feedback that identifies the wrong risks, but we shouldn't use that as an excuse to ignore critical feedback. Some of the best feedback I've ever received that got my mind churning was from people who truly understood the problems and were able to identify "reasons why not" that I hadn't thought of.
On the contrary, it seems more likely that Musk would've not only thought about risks already for more than a couple hours, but that he would've consulted a lot of domain experts about such things before even deciding to take on such a project. Even the most optimistic business person isn't naive enough to take on something they see as a sure bet to fail. Not to suggest that there haven't been entrepreneurs attempting silly businesses before, but rather that one should pause and think about the possibilities of how something might work, before jumping to the conclusion that they already understand everything there is to know about a project, and that it definitely won't work.
As another comment mentioned elsewhere in this thread, a good entrepreneur's main skill is being able to figure out some unique/unorthodox way to make something work, and capitalizing on that. Now, that doesn't mean that everyone opposing these ideas are wrong or don't know what they're talking about, it just goes to show that a lot of people's default state is one of risk-aversion.
Three months ago, after the Bloomberg feature was released, he literally said that they had no idea what they were doing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FPzpugrbwBE&feature=youtu.be...
Also, there's a ton of companies with a ton of knowledge who have done things which failed spectacularly or have refused to do things that would work. Tesla's whole existence is sentiment to that.
Is Musk immune to making such mistakes? The consensus on his Hyperloop idea still seems to be that is infeasible.
I'd enhance that a little and say that it's easy to think of facile reasons it won't work. But let's say you think of a reason why a thing won't work after two minutes. If someone else has been working at the problem for two hours, or two days, or two months, or two years, what's more probable?
- They never made the initial connection to the flaw, and have failed subsequently to notice it or account for it.
- They thought of a solution to the flaw which you haven't.
Hrm. Maybe I just don't have that high of an opinion of my own faculties, but I tend to assume it's the latter. Especially if the person in question is a very intelligent person with a strong track record of outperforming expectations.
That doesn't mean you shouldn't probe, or seek clarification, or ruminate on the flaw. But if you tell someone who's been working on a tunnel boring problem for a whole quarter that "boring through rock is the most expensive way to connect 2 places (sic)" as at least one person in this thread has observed, I'd argue that that's not a useful reaction. My reaction is, "I wonder what he knows that I don't."
If we didn't have critics we'd still have kings with divine right. This seems like an exaggeration, but it's really just to say that we need people to look at things critically.
I haven't collected any evidence, but I wouldn't be surprised if those who find success are always looking for reasons why something will work, and those who run into failure are always looking for reasons why something won't work.
This isn't that far from prosperity gospel preaching. Believing doesn't make things happen, otherwise NeXT would be dominating the industry and not Apple because boy did Jobs believe and give it his all.
Sometimes smart people are wrong, and it doesn't hurt those people anyway if dummies are discussing their work.
That's an extreme straw man that trades a lot on what a "critic" is.
Martin Luther didn't criticize the papacy because he doubted the papacy's capacity to realize its ambitions. He criticized the way the papacy was then operating.
People holding forth on how something can't be done are best described not as critics but doubters (or haters). "I can't imagine a way to do X, therefore X can't be done." How many impossible things does Musk have to do before people take serious Musk's ability to realize his visions?
Hating is so easy. But today's capacity to develop technology is utterly unprecedented.
Lead. Follow. Or get out of the way.
We're talking about strawmen: nobody is saying that. Nobody is saying it can't be done. They are saying...let's wait until it is done, because right now it's just a video. Is that hating or an entirely reasonable stance to take?
The technology Jobs believed in and developed at NeXT really did dominate the industry. It's in the phone I'm typing this on right now.
I think Linux on the desktop would have been a better example though. Millions of hours of dev time have been spent on it and it's no closer to providing any competition to Apple or Microsoft now than it did in the 90s. I think there was a complacency in the Linux desktop world that success was inevitable given enough effort. I don't think Musk has ever been complacent about the success of his businesses. I don't think Jobs was either.
It would be interesting to hear what experts think, though
The latter are also aware of survivorship bias
I think that taking advice from those who failed is as important as from those who might suffer from a "survivorship bias". I am sure most of these failed startups initially followed Musk's (et al.) "impossible is nothing" mantra before venturing out into the market.
While that may be true, it would be interesting to compare the frequencies with which successful founders bring up the topic of survivorship bias vs the rate at which those who never found anything bring it up.
Thinking about tomorrow can be counter-intuitive as to the way things work today, and it is pretty easy to construct negative arguments about tomorrow that are based on what we know right now.
Most of Musk's companies are about kicking the can down the road. I admire that he is mostly burning his own money on this but then skepticism of such ideas is natural. The man should probably stick to one thing and take it completion than starting 10.
His projects are cool.
The incessant "Elon is so smart and will save the world!" from this place is tiring. Everytime he tweets it makes the front page. Some people see there's more to these businesses than Elon being generous to us,and run a bit more skeptical. Perhaps it's you that needs to take a step back and assess what the other side is saying?
Not even close to true.
It's about wasting time and money and talent instead of directing it towards "winning" ideas.
That said, to assume feedback against one project is a testament to lack of entrepreneurial spirit, rings about as true as claiming people who don't like Justin Bieber are deaf.
And not because of socio-economic factors, obviously, no, it has to be that.
The fucking pretentiousness HN can have never ceases to amaze me.
The lack of good mass transit is a political problem: why European mass transit is in general so good and why American mass transit is problematic? It's not a problem of technology. It's Politics, stupid. :)
Post-war London tried something similar, a futuristic vision of pedestrian walkways ("pedways") to separate people from the traffic. This failed, for various practical reasons, and you can see the remnants of the experiment throughout parts of London to this day.
This scheme would come at an unimaginable cost, surely changing planning laws to create less car-centric cities is a more realistic approach to the problem?
Freaking solar roadways got 2 Million and more. A City payed them 500k to install that stuff. It is not hard to calculate the stupidity of this. Especially of a couple who is doing this in a garage. There is a reason why big companies are not doing it. It has to make sense and money.
This video above looks nice but if you think just a step back, it is probably 1000x cheaper and a much better solution to make the existing streets automaticly drivable instead. How much does it cost to build this? How much does it cost to build automatic driving into every car who wanna use a highway which is only accessible to automatic driving?
It doesn't take to long is still much cheaper.
In munich you have a autobahn/cityring in the city. It takes perhaps 20 Minutes in city traffic to get onto the autobahn / highway.
There is a reason why we have only underground trains and why it takes years to build a new tunnel for them.
Also having the city traffic more autonomous would increase the traffic flow.
With Musk's established track record I think it's pretty arrogant for anyone to call his ideas foolish. He has achieved things that people thought were impossible or bound to fail. You can say: “I can see this potential problem”, or “I wonder how he's going to deal with this physical limitation” or similar sorts of statements. That's feedback and analysis given with respect. Simple dismissive negativity against ideas put forward by a person who would already rank in the top 10 in the world today for technological and engineering achievement is arrogance and narrow-mindedness.
I dislike this sort of miscasting of what I just said. I'm a very strong proponent of free speech and the right of anyone to say anything. But with my support for free speech comes a commitment to try to be considered and careful in what I personally say and I'm encouraging others to do the same in this particular context. You can take it or leave it and of course you can go on calling him foolish if you like. Musk doesn't probably care a whole lot and in the end, I would say that the negativity simply reflects back on you.
Reminds me of the "Are we the Baddies?" sketch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hn1VxaMEjRU (I'm not calling anyone nazis)
He didn't launch the Hyperloop, though. He explicitly said he wasn't personally going to pursue it, he was just putting the idea out there. You can't put the fact that it hasn't yet been implemented (even though there are people working on it) on him. I've seen no evidence that the concept is infeasible, or poorly thought out.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RNFesa01llk
Maybe it will pivot into something not-as-originally-hyped by the same name.
Did you miss the bit where he never at all claimed it was 'impossible', only that it was bullshit that it would be doable within two orders of magnitude of the claimed price, with the claimed speed advantages, or with any acceptable amount of safety?
What a terrible misrepresentation of the video.
The fact that people think they can spend two seconds evaluating and dismissing an engineering idea from someone who literally sends things into space is hilarious.
> If you live by hype at some point you gotta start delivering.
If putting cars on the road and rockets on the launchpad doesn't count as "delivering", I don't know what does.
He and his companies have delivered the Falcon, Model S, Modex X, and a concept Model 3 set to be delivered soon, along with a Falcon Heavy.
If any person were able to deliver even one of those products, they'd be deserving of attention. And that's not even everything he's delivered.
If delivering three groundbreaking products (as in you can go out and use them right now) is hype, then I think maybe you need to revise your definition of "hype".
The Tesla stuff is over-hyped by people who think that it's currently the global leader in everything they do, be it manufacturing or self-driving tech. In reality, the EV space is competitive as all get out and Tesla is a pretty small player.
The boring stuff? I have no idea.
He's delivering to the freakin' International Space Station. What have you delivered lately?
In your book, Musk hasn't delivered enough yet? But why am I arguing with a Ph.D student. I wish you that your life is as fullfilled as Musk's.
I'm confused as to who exactly you're referencing here seeing as Musk has no stake in any of the hyperloop companies currently operating.
I'm starting to believe the only difference between those who start their own companies and those who don't is that the latter convinces themselves that it is impossible, never builds anything, and from their own lack of having ever produced anything, concludes that their original supposition was indeed correct.