I write this not to help bury Musk; I’m not nearly famous enough to even hit a nail in his coffin. I write this to point out that, in the US, people will treat any crank seriously if he has enough money or enough prowess in another field. A sufficiently rich person is surrounded by sycophants and stenographers who won’t check his numbers against anything.
http://pedestrianobservations.wordpress.com/2013/08/13/loopy-ideas-are-fine-if-youre-an-entrepreneur/
This is two posts in one. A detailed dissection from an engineering POV of Elon Musk’s Hyperloop proposal – I have no idea whether or not that is right, but it feels convincing. But this is precisely the point of the second post, embedded in the first – that “feels convincing” can only take you so far, but that in entrepreneur culture, that tends to be far enough.
The post is very strong on the halo effect of entrepreneur culture – the assumption that success in one field confers credibility in others. It’s also good on pointing out the kind of industries this thinking favours and the kind it doesn’t: in this case, mature technologies whose engineering problems are very well-established, and where innovation is extremely unlikely to spring from the head of a single genius.
The comments are good too, with plenty of familiar tropes. The “aaah you have biases too” comments, for instance. And the “B-b-but DISRUPTION” comment gets an airing too.
(via blackbeardblog)