General Discussion: 2018 Investor Roundtable

[Starno]

Letting people vote on truth would be horrible. Look what they did in the last general election! (granted the options were terrible, but so far a large portion of the population has been accepting lies for some time as truth)

I think more interesting would be a site that was well researched with information vetted by professionals, with references etc, (something like Snopes but for news) but before you got to see the answer to whether the thing was true / accurate / whatever, you had to vote (anonymously) what you believed... then those who were misled can see just how many others were misled too, that they're not alone, and it's a big problem.

But last general election was actually a result from what's happening with medias. Tons of false information was shared on social networks which contributed to steering the population toward having a certain opinion.

Elon Musk on Twitter

 

[mickificki]

• Disagree. So we’re going to let the east and west coast dictate to the entire country what should be done?

• 
  

• Another thing to add to this dumpster fire of a media fight, media is also like the electoral college system where a select few of us control the voice of the masses. If we truly had a popular vote election, Trump would not have been president. Media has robbed people of their voice, just as the electoral college has robbed people of their choice.

 

[ggr]

• Disagree. So we’re going to let the east and west coast dictate to the entire country what should be done?

The smaller states already have disproportionate representation via having two senators per state. No-one is talking about changing that, at least as far as I can tell.

 

[Waiting4M3]

• Disagree. So we’re going to let the east and west coast dictate to the entire country what should be done?

That's why we have the Constitution governing state rights vs fed. The federal government doesn't dictate everything.

But on any level, compromising between different opinions is the foundation of democracy. If you can't respect that majority of the people voted against you, what's the point of democracy?

 

[SteveG3]

I remember that review and did write an immediate stinging reaction. In that case Musk's best response was just to report what Tesla's records showed documenting all the efforts Broder took to drain the MS battery. In a sense, what the Times did today was similar to what Elon did then, they reported the tweets. In this case their journalistic malfeasance was correcting the spelling of bankwuptcy.

The Broder case, on the other hand, just shows the influence of big oil and big journalism in a conspiracy against Tesla as he was later identified as a specialist covering the energy sector. Hence, early on, Elon exposed the conspiracy he now protests.

To modify a common phrase, "another hoistment by their own petard." And so it goes.

enjoy your posts here Prof, but disagree on this one. NYT did not do what Elon did. Instead, they printed only the few tweets that could be fit into their narrative.

one example, 88% of 600,000 votes agreeing with pursuing an idea like Elon’s doesn’t really fit their narrative/“explanation” that under pressure Elon is picking undeserving bogey man after bogey man, the media being the latest. poll not even mentioned in the “article.”

 

[aubreymcfato]

Sigh.

Source: Freedom of the Press on Twitter

 

[TradingInvest]

enjoy your posts here Prof, but disagree on this one. NYT did not do what Elon did. Instead, they printed only the few tweets that could be fit into their narrative.

one example, 88% of 600,000 votes agreeing with pursuing an idea like Elon’s doesn’t really fit their narrative/“explanation” that under pressure Elon is picking undeserving bogey man after bogey man, the media being the latest. poll not even mentioned in the “article.”

Exactly, that's one subtle way how media twist truth. They only pick the points that fit their narrative, omit the points that don't.

It's loud and clear that the public no longer trust the media. They deserve it.

 

[SteveG3]

Letting people vote on truth would be horrible. Look what they did in the last general election! (granted the options were terrible, but so far a large portion of the population has been accepting lies for some time as truth)

I think more interesting would be a site that was well researched with information vetted by professionals, with references etc, (something like Snopes but for news) but before you got to see the answer to whether the thing was true / accurate / whatever, you had to vote (anonymously) what you believed... then those who were misled can see just how many others were misled too, that they're not alone, and it's a big problem.

Harvard Professor Lawrence Lessig makes quite the compelling case for a systematic reason as to why those choices have not been so appealing from either party (preview: massively concentrated wealth, but, I found his case to be very strong and fresh, and I recommend watching the video).

It's not so hard to see how what Lessig describes in terms of the selection of Presidents parallels the selection of what content ends up on mass media. There is a tremendous amount of the population that is not so impressed with Fox/etc or CNN/etc.

It's not as though we are talking about moving from some default well balanced approach where no one decides what the content of mass media is, to putting it in the imperfect hands of the public at large... that decision is already largely in the imperfect hands of an extremely concentrated subset of the population.

 

[sweter]

Positive news from production line few hours ago and yet nothing in mainstream media. And sadly, Elon did it himself by venting on Twitter yesterday. That's it for controlling the message by Tesla.

(I really really don't envy people who work in Tesla's PR/Marketing depts)

 

[mongo]

Positive news from production line few hours ago and yet nothing in mainstream media. And sadly, Elon did it himself by venting on Twitter yesterday. That's it for controlling the message by Tesla.

(I really really don't envy people who work in Tesla's PR/Marketing depts)

If the media doesn't report relevant news because their feelings got hurt, that proves they are biased...
(If Tesla having trouble is news, Tesla improving is news)

 

[Waiting4M3]

Positive news from production line few hours ago and yet nothing in mainstream media. And sadly, Elon did it himself by venting on Twitter yesterday. That's it for controlling the message by Tesla.

(I really really don't envy people who work in Tesla's PR/Marketing depts)

Are your surprised that they didn't print "Tesla reaches 3500/wk"? Back in April, when their feelings weren't hurt, did the mass media like NYT/CNBC flood their front page with "Tesla reaches 2000/wk"? To sum up the fall-out of Elon's tweet storm, No Love Lost.

 

[SW2Fiddler]

Maybe Ron Howard could action the narrative. I kind of trust Ron Howard.

Solar panels on rooves won’t work at any scale.

I like what we call “Distributed Solar,” which is a big solar farm, providing power that a utility distributes to customers...

FREEZE FRAME

It was, in fact, not what anyone called Distributed Solar

 

[NicoV]

Do you know that "Pravda", while meaning truth in Russian, also was the name of the official newspaper of the Soviet Union, and is currently a Russian news website? Linking truth to Communist/Russian news...that sounds like a splendid idea, Elon.

I’m pretty sure that’s why Elon chose that name, alluding to the state controlled official propaganda newspaper of the Soviet era.
I suddenly feel so old realising that not everybody knows what the Pravda is/was.

 

[Oil4AsphaultOnly]

Exactly, that's one subtle way how media twist truth. They only pick the points that fit their narrative, omit the points that don't.

It's loud and clear that the public no longer trust the media. They deserve it.

Sorry, but the general public still trusts the media, even if we don't.

 

[SPadival]

Sorry for posting too many YouTube videos, but this is “get out of here” amazing from Rich Rebuilds aka @carguru. He jumps starts a flooded Tesla that was immersed completely in flood water.

 

[TradingInvest]

Sorry, but the general public still trusts the media, even if we don't.

The general public still get influenced by the media because it's everywhere, but they don't really trust them.

 

[metier]

Wonder who said this

Historically, we have been able to generate significant media coverage of our company and our vehicles, and we believe we will continue to do so. To date, for vehicle sales, media coverage and word of mouth have been the primary drivers of our sales leads and have helped us achieve sales without traditional advertising and at relatively low marketing costs.

 

[Krugerrand]

I do think my friends are wrong, but they are really the least of Elon's problem. Check what the left/progressive/environmental-friendly are writing about Elon: I know my Twitter/FB feed is quite full of people worried about a rogue ultra-liberist billionaire that wants to write a Pravda website where people will vote what's true and what is not.
That is because Elon's words are read by billions of people, and these people read a tweet like this:
Thought you’d say that. Anytime anyone criticizes the media, the media shrieks “You’re just like Trump!” Why do you think he got elected in the first place? Because no ones believes you any more. You lost your credibility a long time ago.

His second tweet was better and more context-dependent:
Problem is journos are under constant pressure to get max clicks & earn advertising dollars or get fired. Tricky situation, as Tesla doesn’t advertise, but fossil fuel companies & gas/diesel car companies are among world’s biggest advertisers.

But the 1st got retweeted more than 3X the 2nd... And his poll actually is what everyone is now talking about, because he's trolling and fueling the discussion about that.

I just wished he was more careful with his words and talking just about EV mis-disinformation, being paid or not. But he feels very well (he just said that in a tweet) and when he feels well he feels invincible, with an ego the size of Mars.

I love the guy (why do you think I'm here everyday reading everything every day from 2015?) but he's not an omniscient god, and I worry this thing will backfire.

That is the limit of Twitter; no ability to write an essay to give full context. It’s also no surprise that the first got retweeted more than the second - human nature; complain, stir the pot, rile the troops et al is way more fun for those types of people than be thankful, kind and positive.

No one every said he was an omniscient god, and even if his ego is the size of Mars (which I disagree with - read some John Peterson some time...), he has every right to protect his companies and himself from those who do all they can to try and thwart him. It’s not like he’s building diesel vehicles and cheating on emissions.

And if he bites off more than he can chew; life lesson that’ll serve him well in the future. In fact making mistakes, which he often readily admits, shows he’s not an omniscient god and therefore we should all be expecting him to make mistakes as he goes about his master plan. Criticizing him for those mistakes and pointing out his faults and judging him gives the impression that people do think he’s an omniscient god.

 

[aubreymcfato]

That is the limit of Twitter; no ability to write an essay to give full context. It’s also no surprise that the first got retweeted more than the second - human nature; complain, stir the pot, rile the troops et al is way more fun for those types of people than be thankful, kind and positive.

No one every said he was an omniscient god, and even if his ego is the size of Mars (which I disagree with - read some John Peterson some time...), he has every right to protect his companies and himself from those who do all they can to try and thwart him. It’s not like he’s building diesel vehicles and cheating on emissions.

And if he bites off more than he can chew; life lesson that’ll serve him well in the future. In fact making mistakes, which he often readily admits, shows he’s not an omniscient god and therefore we should all be expecting him to make mistakes as he goes about his master plan. Criticizing him for those mistakes and pointing out his faults and judging him gives the impression that people do think he’s an omniscient god.

Maybe some of what I wrote got lost in (my) translation, or maybe we simply disagree:
I just think that he could have avoided speaking about media "in general" and joking and trolling in the subsequent tweets. He rallied his troops like the others did (that poll), and joked about Pravda (which was even funny, but in the flame the irony got a bit lost too...).
I'm all for Musk defending Tesla and real progress in sustainable energy;
I'm personally less for Musk creating unnecessary adversaries in NGO and indipendent investigative agencies who actually do a good job in speaking truth to power, uncovering war/financial/politica crimes, etc. See for ex. the FoP tweet I poste before.
I just think it's unnecessary and hurtful for Tesla, and I think that people who will benefit from it are the real enemies of Tesla. And given that he's not an omniscient god (you said it yourself), I don't see why I'm not entitled to argue that he made a mistake ;-)
This is the only place where I can criticize him among people who know his work and why he's pissed off about the media, and the perfect place to have a rational discussion about this.

 

[Krugerrand]

I'm actually surprised by how many people here are upset over Musk's media comments. I would guess that most of you are older and wealthier than me. Have you not traveled outside of the USA? It's been obvious to me for 12 years that the media in the USA, as a whole, is terrible. It does more harm than good. I'm fully in agreement with Musk's assessment of US media.

I also think many people still don't "get" why Trump is President. It wasn't that half of this country thought he would be a good President. It's that half of this country is completely tired of media manipulation, corruption, and didn't want to vote for the poster-child of political corruption. Many votes weren't "for" Trump. They were a vote against the establishment.

If more people would stop watching TV news, stop reading garbage from CNN, Fox News, the Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, etc, I think we'd see more rational thinking.

This reminds me: the local news stations have local and world news segments. Local news contains exactly what you’d expect, news items about the city the station is situated in as well the surrounding cities. The world news segment contains news items from further away in the state and sometimes other states. When in any other country, world news coverage actually is news outside of the country one lives in. Often times news from across the ocean. Strange that.