On sincerity there's no harm in taking what he says at face value. Despite his intelligence I don't think someone as gaffe prone as Elon would be capable of fooling everyone.
After everything Elon has said about funding secured, robotaxis, cave divers, journalists, whistleblowers, specs, FSD, Covid, ... I find it puzzling people take everything he says at face value. Yes, he is an incredibly smart and visionary guy, who also has a track record of saying things he doesn't mean.
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.
If he had only said it once, sure. But Elon has repeatedly, year after year made the same claim only for it to turn out false. So either he's lying knowing full well it won't come to fruition, or he's incapable of accurately assessing progress. I strongly suspect the former, especially given his relationship with the truth on other things, but the latter makes him just as unreliable source of information.
Disagree, Elon has high credibility IMO, certainly higher than an anonymous source with incentives to slander. Not saying he is perfect but given the scrutiny he is under and how much he is “in the arena” pushing the envelope.
Elon is furthermore a software engineer (he wrote ALOT of code at zip2 & paypal) so your argument falls flat in that regard.
My impression of Elon is that he would appreciate this straightforward feedback that is consistent with his no bs persona. I wonder if he has different evidence than what was presented to him ?
It's really not. What Elon says is whatever is currently floating in his head or whatever he thinks will give him a stock boost.
He's not credible with respect to his companies plans. It's happened like dozens of times when he says something well or will not happen, and it turns out he was just lying.
The default stance of reading Elon today has to be, "this is probably a lie. Put no value in it until it is proven true".
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.
Of course not, I would expect him to say nothing in that case.
Honestly, it's pretty ridiculous how people conflate "Elon is a bad guy who stretches the truth all the time" with him sending out a completely unambiguous statement that, if it were a lie, would easily be proven wrong in one day. Point being, people who do stretch the truth/over-promise know how to do it in a way that isn't falsifiable in 24 hours.
Elon has publicly stated many things that were outright lies, and many more things that were extraordinarily optimistic timelines (FSD next year, hyperloop, starship earth to earth, extremely cheap tunnels, Covid respirators, etc). His public statements mean less than nothing overall.
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