Physically based rendering from first principles

I think Musk was the first person I noticed to really abuse this phrase.

Not that it's not a useful phrase—of course it is. But it seems like it's an abuse of what should be called "core agreed assumptions" or something.

Yeah he abuses a lot of phrases... He does provide a master class on psuedointellectualism though. Drops enough vernacular that layman think he's smart and even enough that experts might think they're in good company if they don't pay too close attention. But I think the biggest clue that it's fake is how dismissive he is of nuance and detail. It's such a classic defense from psuedointellectuals because they know if they venture into depth then the gig is up. Meanwhile, look at any two nerds arguing. It's always nuanced and over minute things that they'll always insist are very important (because often it is, but only at that level).

Lol apparently reasoning by analogy is first principles to him -- see human drivers using only vision therefore no lidar somehow being "first principles".

  > see human drivers using only vision

Which is such a naive assumption too! Do you not feel the road? Listen to the road? I mean you might not think you do the latter but I bet if you closed your eyes you could get a decent estimate of how fast you are going.

> Meanwhile, look at any two nerds arguing. It's always nuanced and over minute things that they'll always insist are very important (because often it is, but only at that level).

Sorry, but no, nerds are huge bikeshedders, and often miss the forest for the trees. I think this also explains how dismissive you are of experts who have actually worked with Musk and don't seem to share your low opinion of his expertise in certain areas. Often the importance of nuance is overblown, as it typically only has third or fourth order effects that can be ignored in favour of focusing on the first and second order factors that dominate.

> I think this also explains how dismissive you are of experts who have actually worked with Musk and don't seem to share your low opinion of his expertise in certain areas.

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

---

I think there's also something of a "gell-mann amnesia" effect going on here. I could buy him being a manufacturing genius or whatever for a while because I know nothing about car or rocket manufacturing. But as soon as he bought twitter, I realized he was an absolute moron who had never built or successfully software himself in his life (or perhaps his brain had simply severely atrophied since his time at PayPal to the point he should be aware), but wanted to sling buzzwords as if he were a coder.

Maybe I missed it, but I've never seen him claim that using only vision is "first principles" thinking. However, relying only on vision can make sense once you realize that roads and signage and everything is literally designed around vision. Any system that does not prioritize vision cannot deal with unexpected obstacles, like new signage. If your vision is good enough to see obstacles and understand signage, the added usefulness of lidar relative to the cost seems pretty low, and if you don't have vision and have only lidar, then your system will not be flexible enough, and if you have lidar and vision, then your system will be more expensive than a system without lidar.

  > nerds are huge bikeshedders

How can you judge if it is bikeshedding or actual warranted issues if you don't have expertise?

Think about it this way, every big problem can be broken down into a bunch of much smaller problems, right? That's generally how we solve things. So obviously small problems come together to create big problems. The main difference between an expert and a novice is the ability to see how these small things interact. So, how do you, as a non-expert, know if the nuance is unimportant or important?

  > how dismissive you are of experts who have actually worked with Musk and don't seem to share your low opinion of his expertise in certain areas.

Experts currently working with him or experts who used to work with him? I think you're using a really weird bias. People that are paid by him are suckups? Why is that surprising? Especially when he's known for firing people who are critical of him. Did you forget that whole thing when he bought twitter[0]? Not to mention the other founders of Tesla talking about how he was not an actual founder or SpaceX employees saying he doesn't understand rockets, or AI people saying he doesn't understand AI. But of course he doesn't, he's been promising fully autonomous self-driving cars "next year" since like 2014. No sane ML expert will tell you such a thing is possible, even now. Sure, your Reddit Armchair expert will make the claim, but who cares, they don't actually know anything.

[0] https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-twitter-fire-staff...

I think it is more that he fires people who criticize him. That happened when he bought Twitter, so I'm not surprised people are cautious.

Good use of Gell-Mann Amnesia too. I have started using it as a litmus test of sorts. When I encounter a new source I'll go look for something I have domain expertise in. If it seems accurate enough, I'll tend to trust domains I don't have expertise in. If it is inaccurate, I just don't trust them. Actually this is also a strategy I suggest people use with chatbots, as sometimes small details can be critical while other times they are inconsequential. Since the chatbots are not great at nuances this tends to be a good check, but the difficulty is ensuring you prompt as naively as you would in a subject you're less knowledgeable in.

Lidar is cheap now.

But no, roads are not designed with just vision in mind. Designers use tecture not just for grip but to help communicate things to the driver. There's many subtler ones, but the most obvious one is the grooves you often find on the edge of highways that are used to warn you if you're veering off. This vibrates the car and creates a loud noise. That's two more senses that you're constantly using while driving even if you don't recognize it. Sure, I wouldn't rely on smell, but it is also a useful sense for some diagnostics and may help in some edge cases. But my point is that we're not just vision based creatures. You think about vision more, but the others are very important.

Let's get something out of the way, just to make sure we're able to continue. Do you agree that his tweet saying lidar can be inaccurate and mess up results compared to cameras only is idiotic? Do you think Elon really believes that tweet?

If so, do you think he's stupid? Do you think he thinks sensor fusion is a grand unsolved problem his cracked engineers can't implement?

I absolutely agree vision is very very important, given the roads + signage are designed for humans using their eyes among other factors.

Do I think we should take the abilities of human drivers with eyes as the gold standard for what we can achieve with autonomous vehicles? No, and I doubt he does either, but his ego can't backtrack. In fact, I'm pretty sure he finally accepted radar.

Do I believe that looking at humans driving and saying "they do it just their eyes (they don't) so we should!" is an example of his acclaimed first-principles reasoning ability? No, I think its shallow reasoning by analogy.

Also, I'm not aware of anyone going or championing full lidar. It was only musk who (apparently) believes more than one type of sensor is a negative.

What really gets me is that musk, the man who's proven just how good he is at scaling & supply chain, somehow didn't think lidar wouldn't dramatically come down in cost.

My most charitable interpretation is that he really saw the value in gathering as much data about driving as fast as possible, and the best way to do that was to build a bunch of cars with just cameras.(Smart) Somewhere along the way he got annoyed or jealous of the lidar-incorporating companies that were doing quite well with autonomy. Then some ego thing happened and he got ahead of his skis and said vision-only is the best(dumb) and his ego/brand value won't let him take it back.

I admire the hell out of musk based on his output, so I choose to believe that he can't possibly be stupid enough to not understand sensor fusion.

Oh back to the original subject. If he's never said that vision-only is first principles, I apologize for the misinformation. But you have to admit that the "reasoning" of saying humans can drive with vision only therefore no other sensors is quite firmly outside the realm of first principles, which is his m.o.

> Designers use tecture not just for grip but to help communicate things to the driver. There's many subtler ones, but the most obvious one is the grooves you often find on the edge of highways that are used to warn you if you're veering off.

This is a red herring. None of these feedback mechanisms existed for decades of driving. The core problem of driving is vision and everything else is just gravy. If lidar can't solve all of the vision issues, which it can't, then it makes perfect sense to ask whether vision can cover lidar's purposes and thus whether having both is actually useful. Focusing on lidar is ignoring the core issue.

I don't know what exactly Musk said on the topics you raise, I only know that he did say something like vision being the core problem and that lidar can't solve that problem (nor can any combination of other sensors we currently have). It makes sense to focus on vision and to question the value add of lidar, because if you can solve vision then many other sensors are redundant.

Maybe it can't be solved using current tech, who knows, but saying that fully autonomous driving in our current world isn't achievable without vision is a correct position. I have no opinion on anything else.

  > This is a red herring. None of these feedback mechanisms existed for decades of driving

Sorry, I want to make sure I understand you correctly.

Are you claiming humans didn't have the sense of sound nor the sense of touch until relatively recently?

Or are you claiming that as soon as someone enters a car these senses go away?

Are you arguing you can't hear things while in a car? Windows up? Windows down? In an open car like a convertible, jeep, or a model T?

Are you arguing that you don't feel bumps in the road?

Are you arguing you can't tell the difference between driving on asphalt vs concrete?

I think we're done here because you need to get an EKG as soon as possible.

  > Do I believe that looking at humans driving and saying "they do it just their eyes (they don't) so we should!" is an example of his acclaimed first-principles reasoning ability? No, I think its shallow reasoning by analogy.

And let's make sure we get this right. Humans use more than vision when driving. Touch and sound are essential components to driving. While you could drive without these senses that doesn't mean they aren't important.

Elon's understanding of "first principles" is "the first thought that came into my head". Unfortunately this is a common, and growing, bastardization of the phrase.

> Sorry, I want to make sure I understand you correctly.

My claim was pretty obviously about intentional multisensory feedback design of roads.

> I think we're done here because you need to get an EKG as soon as possible.

You're right, we are done because you seemingly can't understand the incredibly simple point that you can drive if you lack all other senses except sight, but you cannot drive if you have all of your other senses except sight, and that this means something pretty critical about the importance of sight over all other senses.

> How can you judge if it is bikeshedding or actual warranted issues if you don't have expertise?

First and second order effects dominate almost everything. Always insisting on nuance therefore is statistically more likely to be bikeshedding than not.

> Experts currently working with him or experts who used to work with him?

Both, and also experts who haven't worked with him in an official capacity but have had extended conversations with him. I have zero interest in retracing all of the old arguments about Musk's competence, save to say that those who dismiss him seem to exhibit just as much deluded confirmation bias about his competence as his fanboys.

> But as soon as he bought twitter, I realized he was an absolute moron who had never built or successfully software himself in his life

So making one bad investment, whatever his reasons, means he's a moron?

> but wanted to sling buzzwords as if he were a coder.

Yes, he has a habit of trying to build excitement around his endeavours, and part of that is intentionally projecting an image of technical competence because that's his "brand".

I would agree that software is not one of his strong suits, probably because it was never a specific interest of his, unlike electric vehicles and rockets. Is it your opinion that Musk is not aware of his lack of technical competence with software, or are you saying that his lack of technical competence in this domain combined with the fact that he intentionally tried to project competence means he's also not competent in those other domains?

Hell yeah humans use more!

Lol, I would be a little more cynical and say "the first thought that comes to my head that justifies my business decisions (which I can never show any ounce of doubt over)"