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Elon Musk on The Joe Rogan Experience

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Strange. Why do the Japanese sell unreliable cars over here when they know how to produce reliable ones in the US?
Here, they tend to be lower tech, because they don't need to build engines specifically for our market to "meet" (in practice, not really meet at all) unrealistic fuel efficiency standards. Where your Toyotas get a 1.2 turbo, our versions of the same cars get a 1.8 or 2.0 naturally aspirated engine. Where your Nissans get a 1.2 turbo, we get a 1.6 or 1.8 naturally aspirated engine. (Honda, OTOH, is using a 1.5 turbo everywhere.)

Oh, and of course there's unreliable diesel engines with their absurdly maintenance-hungry diesel engines, that the Japanese manufacturers aren't particularly good at (and Toyota's outsourced to BMW for those, not helping their reliability). Of course, now, Toyota seems to have realized that their hybrids are now cheap enough and work well on the European tests. They're still using that 1.2T, but they're starting to see places that they can go to relatively low-tech, larger displacement engines with wide-authority intake VVT instead - the Yaris went from a 1.33 to a 1.5 wide-authority-VVT engine for its volume engine. So, I expect any poor reliability that they do have will improve as they move away from the Europe-specific turbos.

And why is it the exact opposite with the German manufacturers here? By the way, warranty period (if the manufacturer offers one at all) over here tends to only be one or two years anyway, so where's the problem? The only warranty periods worth mentioning are those by the Korean manufacturers, not the Japanese. Then again, if the cars are reliable, who needs a warranty?
I don't think it is the opposite, I think you just ditch your cars before they become huge problems.
 
I don't think it is the opposite, I think you just ditch your cars before they become huge problems.

Right. Almost 15 years of ownership without problems (myself, BMW), almost ten years (my father, Mercedes), again almost ten years (my father in law, Audi), countless friends and colleagues with similar stories. That's ditching cars early for sure. :rolleyes:

How long do you keep your cars? Over here in Germany, the average age of cars, i.e. duration of ownership, has risen for decades. From 3.7 years in 1960, to 6.9 years in 2000, to 9.4 years in 2018 : Fahrzeugalter von Pkw in Deutschland bis 2018 | Statistik.
I would hardly call that us ditching cars early. The only cars that are ditched every three years are leasing vehicles, but leasing is hardly ever done by non-business users here.

And you can call my experiences anecdotal evidence as much as you like, but I have to go by what I notice around me. And from that, I understand why the sales figures are how they are over here. It's got little to do with patriotism - which in itself the Germans in general don't really have any longer, having been indoctrinated for decades that patriotism is bad, whereas in the US, almost everywhere you go you see the Stars and Stripes, even in front of residential houses. If someone in Germany puts a German flag in front of his house, he is called a right-wing member, especially during these times!

So no, patriotism is not the reason when it comes to cars. Perhaps you are right about the different tech being the reason, especially as the trend towards even more downsizing continues. Then again, once long-range BEVs finally become economically viable for a larger part of the population, i.e. new ones can be had for between 15 and 25K Euro, the subject of Diesel manipulation or petrol engine reliability will become moot anyway. That day can't come early enough, but unfortunately it's still some time away. Even the Model 3 will not change that, being out of reach financially for most "ordinary" people.
 
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Austin Powers: Why was my post, with ownership of several VAG vehicles not counted? I mean, I keep buying them so they can't be that bad (we have three currently) but you can't pretend that after significant use and mileage they don't come with some pricey replacement parts issues. Everyone knows the Passats have a penchant for needing new flywheels for instance.

I'm not saying their quality is poor, or even significantly different - I'm just saying that cars break and it's unfair to pretend that they don't.

--

I do agree, though, that the Model 3 is not really normal car pricing for most people. A sub compact is the more likely option that Tesla would successfully sell in the UK. I think that KIA will likely take the market for mass BEV sales here.
 
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Lasairfion: I don't pretend cars don't break, but I give an honest account of my experiences and those of my family and friends where I know about their car ownership experiences. Perhaps we have just been extremely lucky not to have had any intrinsic problems.
I had to replace my 12V battery recently, but after almost 15 years and heavy short range usage in summer as well as winter in recent years, i.e. less than five miles daily, I think that is normal wear and tear, just like brake pads every five or six years, or tyres in the same timeframe.

Between the people I mentioned, none ever had a Passat. Our VW experiences come from Polos, Golfs, Tourans and Tiguans, mostly TDIs, mostly manual transmissions, a few automatics as well.
 
Right. Almost 15 years of ownership without problems (myself, BMW), almost ten years (my father, Mercedes), again almost ten years (my father in law, Audi), countless friends and colleagues with similar stories. That's ditching cars early for sure. :rolleyes:

How long do you keep your cars? Over here in Germany, the average age of cars, i.e. duration of ownership, has risen for decades. From 3.7 years in 1960, to 6.9 years in 2000, to 9.4 years in 2018 : Fahrzeugalter von Pkw in Deutschland bis 2018 | Statistik.
I would hardly call that us ditching cars early. The only cars that are ditched every three years are leasing vehicles, but leasing is hardly ever done by non-business users here.

Is that actual ownerships or the age of the car?
Last time I saw it reported, the average age of a car in the USA was 11 years.

11.6 years:
Drivers are holding on to their cars longer than ever. Here's why that's both good and bad

12.1 years:
Average Vehicle Age in U.S. Reaching Record Levels | 2018-04-12 | Fixed Ops Business

Average miles traveled per vehicle is also relatively high in the USA.
Durability is helped in the drier climates where, but absolutely killed by conditions in colder locations, where the frame falls apart around the engine.

In general, the aging is happening because vehicles have improved. Materials science works.
 
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Rogan/Musk interview still getting about 4K views per hour after > 2 weeks online.

I finally got a chance to watch it myself. I imagine lots of people like myself have been meaning to watch it, but rarely have 2.5 hours to spend.

My take away is I wish they would have spent more time talking about the Neural link, and about Tesla/Autopilot than about the threat of AI.

I also wish the Rogan would have known more about the topics versus just fluffing Musk. He constantly did the hero worship thing without realizing the work/effort that so many other people at Tesla/SpaceX do.

Like here is an awesome Arstechnica article on the early days at SpaceX, and I enjoyed this article immensely.
Inside the eight desperate weeks that saved SpaceX from ruin

Now I did enjoy the interview, and I'm going to watch more of the Rogen interviews. Overall I think he did a pretty good job at playing the every man. With Musk I'm going to look for an interview from someone who challenges him a bit more versus hero worshipping.

As to the pot smoking that whole thing was blown out of proportion by the media, and they misrepresented it. I definitely disagreed with the decision to do so just like his friends did. I loved the part where his friends were txting him about it. :) Good friends.
 
A beautiful summary of Elon at the Joe Rogan show.
You only hear Elon speak.
It starts off as some scary intro of a science fiction movie.


That's a great summary, but I wish he would have gone into how he see's AI being regulated. It's one thing to say it should be regulated, but an entirely different thing to implement that without impeding technical progress.

At first one has to define what element within the AI umbrella needs to be regulated.

Right now we have Adversarial networks that are rapidly improving to the point where you might not be able to tell a real image versus a constructed image. This is disturbing because you can create entirely fake videos of people doing things, and saying things they never did.

There is also the question of whether it's appropriate for me to "borrow" Scarlett Johansson's voice for my robotic rover. That's a bit creepy, but there isn't anything to stop me as it's a hobby project. Now I probably won't do that, and instead I'll have some composite artificial person voice.

The thing about AI as it exist today is it's essentially tools in a toolbox where all the papers/models/test data is available online for public study/consumption.

A large percentage of these are from Chinese researchers. So if we try to regulate the research there is a good chance we're going to be overtaken by the Chinese. It's hard to regulate something when you're really not the one in control over it.

The AI community as a whole does seem to be really against using for warfare. Like Google employees signed a petition to try to prevent the Military from using their technology.

Google employees quit over the company’s military AI project

I have to wonder if that's part of why Lockeed Martin is doing an innovation challenge where they're going to give away $2 million USD to top performers for auto-pilot drone races.

AlphaPilot - Lockheed Martin Innovation Challenge - JetsonHacks

The biggest impact I see AI having is it makes it easier for a single individual to do great harm. This could be said for technical innovation in general, but it's particularly true for AI.
 
Then you aren't understanding the potential risks of an advanced AI, which is what Elon is warning about.

From the interview it seems like he used to be concerned with Advanced AI as in losing control over AI. Like the robot deciding the human is completely unnecessary, and eliminating us.

But, now he's more concerned about how humans will yield AI against each other. At least that's my takeaway.

The later one I'm a lot more on-board with as the former is often over hyped.

I generally have two fears with technology/AI.

The first one is how much power it gives a single individual or small group to do damage.

The second one is humans losing the ability to survive by becoming overly reliant on technology. The perfect example of this one is navigation where people are increasingly incapable of fairly simple navigation tasks without the aid of a GPS. I would definitely say Wall-E is a more realistic interpretation of our future instead of Terminator.

I didn't mention the second one simply because even without AI we seem to be doing great job it.
 
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I agree that human controlled AI used for evil is the larger short term worry but the general AI with no concern for any of humanity is the greater longer term issue. Elon is "less" concerned now because he seems to think there is nothing to be done about it other than possibly merging with it in some manner, not because it's less of a risk.
 
I agree that human controlled AI used for evil is the larger short term worry but the general AI with no concern for any of humanity is the greater longer term issue. Elon is "less" concerned now because he seems to think there is nothing to be done about it other than possibly merging with it in some manner, not because it's less of a risk.

Personally I don't think humanity can survive without AI in the long term over thousands of years. Organic life form is simply too vulnerable. AI can spread human life over vast distances.

I like the idea of merging with it not because I'm concerned about AI exceeding our own level of intelligence, but it's ultimately the only way to improve human productivity. That isn't so we can compete with AI, but that we can take advantage of what it can do better while retaining what wer'e good at.

So I'm pretty stoked for the neural link stuff even if I think it's more about the near term bandwidth issues that Elon talked about than robots somehow being alive like Johnny #5.
 
Personally I don't think humanity can survive without AI in the long term over thousands of years. Organic life form is simply too vulnerable. AI can spread human life over vast distances.

I like the idea of merging with it not because I'm concerned about AI exceeding our own level of intelligence, but it's ultimately the only way to improve human productivity. That isn't so we can compete with AI, but that we can take advantage of what it can do better while retaining what wer'e good at.

So I'm pretty stoked for the neural link stuff even if I think it's more about the near term bandwidth issues that Elon talked about than robots somehow being alive like Johnny #5.
So says the obvious AI bot...
 
I really enjoyed watching the video of this interview originally and a huge chunk of the amusement came from watching Elon's responses (and long pauses as he mulled over difficult or inane questions). And 'reading Joe'...…

Recently my wife listened to the podcast with me (I'd recommended it). Hearing it 'cold' a second time made me realise how far out of his depth Joe was most of the time; how poorly researched he'd been; and how he reverted to being a 'teenage prankster/shock-jockey' once he did not know how to control the narrative. That interview did not age well.

At lease Elon came across well (despite - or because of? - his injudicious puff...) but it put us off any further Rogan interviews if that is typical!