[ExI] I salute Elon Musk, Captain of Spaceship Earth!

spike at rainier66.com spike at rainier66.com
Tue Apr 26 20:27:27 UTC 2022



-----Original Message-----
From: extropy-chat <extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org> On Behalf Of Dan TheBookMan via extropy-chat


>...This isn’t to belittle Musk’s achievements in the area of space technology, cars, and batteries. Hes shaken up those industries. But he’s hardly a John Galt. 

Regards,

Dan


_______________________________________________



Ja, no worries Dan, I agree Musk isn't like Galt in every way.

Musk and Galt share that they are two guys ready to bet it all on a vision.  The rockets landing on their feet notion was based on solid engineering, but no one really knew for sure if it could be done.  Well, it can.  The equations and control models were right.  It demonstrates an important way forward in heavy lift, while leaving plenty of room for small lift using solids, such as Adrian is doing.  The heavy-lift industry had no way forward that I can see other than the landing-feet-first boosters and scaling up.

In the electric car biz, Musk did something I woulda bet against had I the intestinal fortitude to sell short: set up a car manufacturing plant in the Silicon Valley.  I didn't sell short (fortunately) but I didn't buy the stock either (most unfortunately.)  Plenty of my neighbors did, and plenty of my neighbors now drive Teslas and own power walls and solar cells.  Good for them, and good for me indirectly: power rates came down.  Details cheerfully available on request.

Regarding Musk getting into the multimedia business: he has said what he wants to do.  He didn't say he would dismantle the Twitter censorship, only make it public.  Critics are left to argue (clumsily, comically and self-owney) that this is equivalent to dismantling the censors, because... em... they would... they... would not... errrr... they might...uh... be kinda... Oh wait my phone is ringing, pardon me... 

Heh.

I have yet to see an argument from anyone that really convinces me there is a downside to making public the censoring and blocking algorithms of Twitter.  I have seen plenty of reasons to think that Face Book and TikTok and the others should damn well do likewise.  They won't of course, but otherwise... we just hafta wonder what it is they are hiding.  If they refuse to disclose their blocking algorithms, do they not realize that has the appearance of impropriety?  

Dan, in your view, does it have the appearance of impropriety for Twitter to hide that algorithm?  It does to us too.

spike




More information about the extropy-chat mailing list