A lie requires the company to believe it is not true and yet say it anyway. Elon is pretty delusional (at least that he often has crazily optimistic ideas about what is and is not feasible); he’s also paranoid about AI becoming self-aware and destroying humanity; it’s reasonable to suggest that Elon believed his own projection, here.
It's hard for some to see this point of view unfortunately, no matter how you try it. Elon has been intentionally skirting and blurring the line between lying and marketing for a while now.
That is a remarkable, some might say delusional, level of generosity of spirit to demonstrate towards a pathological liar.
I suspect the actual problem is that Elon is a sociopath who simply does not care about honesty in any fashion and has become powerful and wealthy enough that he no longer needs to mask.
I'm no fan of Sam Altman, but between the two, Elon lies much more often. He's lied about FSD for years, lied about not selling his Tesla stock, lied about "robotaxies" for years, lied about the roadster for years, lied about "funding secured" for Tesla, lied about his twitter free speech ethos, spreads random lies about people he doesn't like, and so much more. The guy is a compulsive liar.
This is sort of exactly the thing I mean. Even if you don't agree with me that Elon is a serial liar, I don't think you can dispute a more generous characterization of him as having a long history of optimistically interpreting the facts in his favor. Why on earth would you take this claim at face value?
A projection is always a messy mix of what you know at the time combined with your own emotional temperament and wiring. I think the big debate on Elon is if he's a serial liar or a serial optimist who's often wrong.
Man, the really annoying thing is that Elon-haters are so dishonest (refusing to engage when obviously wrong claims are made, repeating things that have been long disproven, repeating hearsay as fact, etc), that it's hard to actually identify any actual lies Elon has made. Meaning, not just exaggerations or failed predictions, but straight up intentional lies.
My favorite is when things are claimed to be impossible, that Elon's lying because the thing is impossible, but then it happens anyway.
Where Elon gets in trouble is he's wildly over-optimistic on a few things, such as AI. He predicted an AGI would take over in 5 years around 2015 or so (so we're 3 years off), and I think he really believed it. That's why he's always claiming things like self-driving, and doing it without sensors or whatever. His paranoia of AGI and his over-confidence on self-driving have exactly the same root cause (believing AI will conquer all). Elon has had so many instances of overcoming status quo expert predictions (whether on solar energy, battery-electric vehicles, reusable launch vehicles, or whathaveyou), that I think it makes him increasingly unable to very effectively listen to experts.
And he's also incredibly gullible and easily taken in by all sorts of scammers, including rightists and just plain sycophants telling him what they think he wants to hear. Which is increasingly what he's left with as everyone else who is sick of his bull has left.
The more Elon just blatantly lies the more I feel like he’s a grifter. I used to have a ton of respect for him after Lee grew Tesla and SpaceX. I still kind of do but since the Twitter acquisition I’m finding myself asking what is this guy’s problem more often than not
Why do you think Elon Musk is obviously different? He's definitely had many events where he has lied about aspects of his business. You could argue that it doesn't matter now that he has built something real, but that's down to a lot of luck, not ethical backbone.
reply