Elon Musk vs. Short sellers

[jesselivenomore]

I think you have to be a supporting member of TMC (red level) to be able to edit your original post indefinitely. Happy to contribute money to allow you to upgrade. Just lemme know your PayPal/Zelle/Venmo address.

https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/account/upgrades

Thanks for the offer! But its ok, I'll get it. Editing now.

 

[TheTalkingMule]

I imagine the feelings of 30 years old truck driver reading about self driving semi...

It hurts my feelings whent 20 year-olds reference 30 year-olds in such a fashion.

The TSLA short position in certainly a manifestation of all the forces opposed to change. This is quite a comforting thought when you realize we're almost over the hump.

 

[AWDtsla]

I work for a long only fund so I’m not short the stock like many suggest just because I said Solarcity was a crappy business. You’re so confused about Solarcity it’s laughable. The VIEs didn’t produce enough cash flow to fund future projects which is why they had to tap the debt markets. $2.6B for an insolvent company was a terrible deal and is the reason Tesla is now such a big target for shorts. Solarcity hasn’t produced any free cash flow since the acquisition and installations have dropped considerably. Get your facts straight.

I don't think you understand what their business model was. If you ceased all new deployment, existing leases and loans provide pure profit.

 

[ggr]

Thanks for the offer! But its ok, I'll get it. Editing now.

Thanks... I was doing it earlier but fat-fingered and lost it, then by the time I got back you'd done it. Excellent work.

 

[pz1975]

Thanks for the offer! But its ok, I'll get it. Editing now.

Thanks - very helpful for all of us.

 

[Afraniy]

It hurts my feelings whent 20 year-olds reference 30 year-olds in such a fashion.

The TSLA short position in certainly a manifestation of all the forces opposed to change. This is quite a comforting thought when you realize we're almost over the hump.

I am 40 . My point was: starting from certain age it is a scary thought that you might loose your job without any chance to be hired again. That you would have to learn new profession and begin again from bottom. That is going to be a reality for lots of people, and many of them will blaim Tesla.
And my second point was that this whole business with shorts is a small hump compared to what is coming. Until now Tesla was a nuance. Lots of publicity, but a small percentage in terms of market share. I expect things to really heat up, when Tesla will begin actually conquer the markets.

 

[Electroman]

Is it wise to start a campaign similar to GoFundMe for Tesla at this juncture. I am willing to contribute $1000 now and possibly more in the future.

Do you guys think, this will have legs? Or am I crazy?

 

[Boomer19]

Is it wise to start a campaign similar to GoFundMe for Tesla at this juncture. I am willing to contribute $1000 now and possibly more in the future.

Do you guys think, this will have legs? Or am I crazy?

what would we do with the funds? buy tsla shares and donate them to charity?

 

[CarlK]

Is it wise to start a campaign similar to GoFundMe for Tesla at this juncture. I am willing to contribute $1000 now and possibly more in the future.

Do you guys think, this will have legs? Or am I crazy?

I pledge $1000 and additional $250 every time Chanos gets on a show.

what would we do with the funds? buy tsla shares and donate them to charity?

I'd suggest to buy advertisements to counter those FUD spreaders. Certainly can loan to Tesla for whatever use if there are more than needed for that.

 

[Reality]

Is it wise to start a campaign similar to GoFundMe for Tesla at this juncture. I am willing to contribute $1000 now and possibly more in the future.

Do you guys think, this will have legs? Or am I crazy?

set the goal as buying a second tent!

 

[D-egg-O]

I echo everyone’s comment. Thank you @jesselivenomore so much for your posts!
https://m.imgur.com/Taa1LNv

 

[Paracelsus]

I have signed up to the forum just to write this. I think that there is more to the story behind the unusually high amount of capital betting against Tesla and all the negative publicity. A group of emotionally invested immoral short-sellers is not enough to explain this. There is genuine desire of large amount of people for Tesla to fail.
Elon is disrupting several major well established industries at once: oil, transportation, internet, grid etc. The wave of change that Elon has created and pushes forward will bankrupt hundreds of thousands and will leave millions without job within next decade. I imagine the feelings of 30 years old truck driver reading about self driving semi; or auto-mechanic learning about Teslas that don't break; or a coal plant operator; or the installer of cellular antennas and so on. I imagine they would want to hear that Elon is a fraud and Tesla will bankrupt soon and their future is safe.
What Elon is trying to achieve makes whole industries obsolete. They will not go away without fight. When legal methods will fail, some of them will try illegal ones. Tesla might win this round against short sellers, but there will be other players, using other methods to try and bring Tesla down.

With respect, while I of course agree with your concept I do find it curious that you have made such a concerted effort to express such a concept on this brand new board very shortly after @jesselivenomore has provided a rather compelling argument connecting the dots to suggest that a massive amount of FUD-spreading effort may be able to be traced back to just a few individuals. Given the depth and breadth of his argument, it might be helpful for you at this point to go beyond a simple 'hey look over there' Machiavellian answer to help convince others that the net needs to be cast further and wider. Otherwise your efforts could be perceived as simply trying to portray those @jesselivenomore has cited in a better light.

Perhaps instead of generalizations you could share some specific examples with the board? I was routinely asked to do so when I first began posting on TMC in 2013 and at that time was yet unaware of the higher standards of fact finding/information sharing that people here routinely expect. They are a very formidable yet commendable group, and are walking the higher road as a result IMHO. Much appreciated.

 

[commasign]

Thousands lost their jobs when Nummi shut down. That had nothing to do with Elon. Tesla brought automotive jobs back to Fremont.

And I don’t think Elon/Tesla is trying to destroy existing industries. He’s just showing everyone that there’s a better, more sustainable way of doing things. It’s up to the competitors to adapt (or not). We’re seeing a flood of traditional automakers make significant investment in electric vehicles. If they stay on this path, there will still be jobs.

 

[neroden]

You probable should study more of how human brain and neural networks works. NN kind of emulates how our brains work but with AI you can build ever bigger brain/processor which can learn at a much faster speed than our brain can. Elon said AI can go from sub-human to super human in very short time before we even notice it. That point is likely not too far away now and it has surpassed human is certain specific areas already (Google's Alpha Go for example) Think about it our brain power is just an arbitrary point and not something special or a natural limit. That we are the most intelligent being on the planet probably gave some people the wrong impression that is can not be surpassed.

Your mistake is assuming that "brain power" or "intelligence" is one, single-axis thing. If you'd ever met an idiot savant, and I've met *lots* of people who were verging on it, you wouldn't make this mistake.

 

[neroden]

I work for a long only fund so I’m not short the stock like many suggest just because I said Solarcity was a crappy business. You’re so confused about Solarcity it’s laughable. The VIEs didn’t produce enough cash flow to fund future projects which is why they had to tap the debt markets. $2.6B for an insolvent company was a terrible deal and is the reason Tesla is now such a big target for shorts. Solarcity hasn’t produced any free cash flow since the acquisition and installations have dropped considerably. Get your facts straight.

*Sigh* You still don't understand SolarCity, do you? Most people don't.

Do you know the difference between cash flow and profit?

SolarCity was, pre-merger, in the shadow banking business. They've gotten out of it (which is why installation have, quite deliberately, dropped). The banking business consists of taking out short-term loans to finance long-term loans. It's got its own specific risks, particularly high risks of cash flow problems -- bank runs. SolarCity was in trouble for bank-run reasons. It was still extremely valuable to any company which *didn't* have bank run risk, because of the cheap Buffalo factory, products in development, installer network, *and long-term income stream from the solar leases*. The specific, goofy legal structures used for solar panel leasing meant that the cash flow from the leases to Tesla is all on the back end, which wasn't being valued by the market at anywhere near what it was worth. Tesla and SolarCity have sold some of it off for cash now, and kept some of it.

 

[adiggs]

Your mistake is assuming that "brain power" or "intelligence" is one, single-axis thing. If you'd ever met an idiot savant, and I've met *lots*, you wouldn't make this mistake.

I work in the field, but I hardly consider myself an expert. The vector I don't yet see the sort of progress along that would enable a general purpose AI to transition from GO to world domination, is the machinery to translate from the software world in the physical world.

In a highly constrained environment like Go (or Chess, or many other games), with rules and state objectives to be optimized, the neural networks can learn faster than a human can. A LOT faster. Because a system can be built, by humans, that enables the idiot savant (NN playing Go), to play games of Go in fractions of a second. Millions and billions of games if you want to throw the compute at it, and learn from the aggregate view of those games.


So as long as you can constrain the world that tightly, then yeah - the AI can develop outrageously fast.


Meanwhile, the AI algorithms that are driving our cars (or at least my Model X), gets squirrely on country highways with <30mph corners, and on streets with no lane markers (like the suburb I live in). Do we have driving AI that is learning how to drive in those situations? I believe so. I don't believe that I'm in danger of downloading a patch to my Model X this year that will enable it to drive in those still pretty easy, yet still difficult cases.

And even if I expect to get full hands-off, autonomous driving on my Model X this year, at least on-ramp to offramp freeway driving, that is STILL a chasm away from an AI that can manipulate and change the world, and decide to drive for world domination, or to end poverty, or to read the collected works of all humans for all time. Again. And again.

Because one of the other things we still don't have, anywhere I know of, is an AI that can make decisions for itself about what matters, and then decide what the outcome it wants from a decision that matters. What rule(s) does the AI follow, or objectives does it set and optimize for, when nothing is provided?

 

[JRP3]

Because one of the other things we still don't have, anywhere I know of, is an AI that can make decisions for itself about what matters, and then decide what the outcome it wants from a decision that matters.

Not yet. Maybe the discussion is more appropriately continued here https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads/are-you-with-musk-or-hawking-on-ai.30762/

 

[Electroman]

I am surprised this thread has not hit the front page in TMC yet.

 

[RedOctober]

I have signed up to the forum just to write this. I think that there is more to the story behind the unusually high amount of capital betting against Tesla and all the negative publicity. A group of emotionally invested immoral short-sellers is not enough to explain this. There is genuine desire of large amount of people for Tesla to fail.
Elon is disrupting several major well established industries at once: oil, transportation, internet, grid etc. The wave of change that Elon has created and pushes forward will bankrupt hundreds of thousands and will leave millions without job within next decade. I imagine the feelings of 30 years old truck driver reading about self driving semi; or auto-mechanic learning about Teslas that don't break; or a coal plant operator; or the installer of cellular antennas and so on. I imagine they would want to hear that Elon is a fraud and Tesla will bankrupt soon and their future is safe.
What Elon is trying to achieve makes whole industries obsolete. They will not go away without fight. When legal methods will fail, some of them will try illegal ones. Tesla might win this round against short sellers, but there will be other players, using other methods to try and bring Tesla down.

I started a thread a while back about “why do people want to see Tesla fail. There are some pretty good answers in it.
Why do people really want Tesla to fail?

 

[Oil4AsphaultOnly]

I work in the field, but I hardly consider myself an expert. The vector I don't yet see the sort of progress along that would enable a general purpose AI to transition from GO to world domination, is the machinery to translate from the software world in the physical world.

In a highly constrained environment like Go (or Chess, or many other games), with rules and state objectives to be optimized, the neural networks can learn faster than a human can. A LOT faster. Because a system can be built, by humans, that enables the idiot savant (NN playing Go), to play games of Go in fractions of a second. Millions and billions of games if you want to throw the compute at it, and learn from the aggregate view of those games.


So as long as you can constrain the world that tightly, then yeah - the AI can develop outrageously fast.


Meanwhile, the AI algorithms that are driving our cars (or at least my Model X), gets squirrely on country highways with <30mph corners, and on streets with no lane markers (like the suburb I live in). Do we have driving AI that is learning how to drive in those situations? I believe so. I don't believe that I'm in danger of downloading a patch to my Model X this year that will enable it to drive in those still pretty easy, yet still difficult cases.

And even if I expect to get full hands-off, autonomous driving on my Model X this year, at least on-ramp to offramp freeway driving, that is STILL a chasm away from an AI that can manipulate and change the world, and decide to drive for world domination, or to end poverty, or to read the collected works of all humans for all time. Again. And again.

Because one of the other things we still don't have, anywhere I know of, is an AI that can make decisions for itself about what matters, and then decide what the outcome it wants from a decision that matters. What rule(s) does the AI follow, or objectives does it set and optimize for, when nothing is provided?

double-posting here and at JRP3's referenced thread, because it seems we've been blindsided.

AI is now capable of making cognitive decisions on value: https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/18/17477686/ibm-project-debater-ai

I can totally see Watson running for president in ~17 years (minimum age of 35, watson was invented/born in 2010)