[HN Gopher] Narratives
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Narratives
Author : simonpure
Score : 57 points
Date : 2022-11-14 14:57 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (stratechery.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (stratechery.com)
| andsoitis wrote:
| > Musk's Twitter experience -- thought to be an asset, including
| by yours truly -- isn't really relevant to the actual day-to-day
| reality of the site as experience by Twitter's actual users.
|
| You can never build a product that's perfect for everyone.
|
| If you don't use it yourself, there could be many obvious
| deficiencies that you never prioritize fixing/improving.
|
| On the other hand, if you think your personal use cases are
| representative of most users, you risk building something that
| doesn't reach its potential of being useful to most.
| pavlov wrote:
| The weird thing about Musk's plans for Twitter is that he's
| focusing on things where his own experience is at a maximum
| distance from an ordinary user's experience.
|
| He thinks reply spam bots are the #1 problem, but that's
| because he has millions of followers and a cryptocurrency cult
| attracted to his name. He wants to add payments, but he's
| literally the richest man in the world -- he doesn't even need
| to pay for anything himself.
|
| At Tesla he followed the Steve Jobs model of building something
| he himself wants to use, then selling the same product to
| everyone else with minimum variations. This works for a car
| where the ideal experience is fundamentally the same to
| everyone (and a phone and a tablet, in Jobs's case). But the
| billionaire's Twitter experience is nothing like mine, which is
| nothing like that of a 13-year-old girl, and so on. This kind
| of product development needs empathy, not just a vision of what
| you'd want to use yourself.
| tiffanyh wrote:
| Off topic: I stopped a long time ago paying for Ben Thompson
| newsletter.
|
| He writes _a lot_ of words that sound smart but ultimately don't
| impart much actual content or information.
|
| This post is a stereotypical example. I don't understand why so
| many folks praise his "analysis" on topics.
| 1123581321 wrote:
| Who or what do you read instead for coverage on the same
| topics?
| chipotle_coyote wrote:
| While I've just started reading it, Casey Newton's
| "Platformer" newsletter seems like genuinely informed
| coverage of the tech industry. Stratechery is focused more on
| the business side, so they're not identical, but I do think
| Thompson can be a little more blinded by his own biases--his
| analyses are often of the "clearly, [thing X] happened
| because of [theme I keep returning to]," and as entertaining
| as his articles are, they're starting to feel a bit like cork
| boards covered with index cards and colored twine, where all
| the links are to things he's written previously.
|
| (Disclosure: I'm a Stratechery subscriber over the last few
| years considering dropping down to a membership only for the
| twice-weekly Dithering podcast.)
| jjtheblunt wrote:
| I think ft.com (The Financial Times) is more concise.
| hammock wrote:
| His analysis is hit or miss. Hard to avoid that outcome when
| you are under pressure to produce a prolific amount of content
| in a regular basis
| googlryas wrote:
| That's something I also don't get. I've read most of his posts
| which appear on HN, but I don't quite get the point of it, or
| these kind of post hoc analyses in general.
|
| Some events happen with with parties A,B, and C. Party X later
| writes a story about why A-C did those things. These narratives
| may give us the illusion of comprehension, but how do we
| determine the truth of them, versus just a plausible but
| incorrect story.
|
| Not to sound like a pragmatist, because I do believe there is a
| benefit to non practical arts, but do these blogs help us
| predict future events? If they don't, are they just providing
| an illusion of order on a disorderly, mind bogglingly complex
| world?
| DenisM wrote:
| Perhaps they help us compress complex memories into compact
| narratives?
| ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
| Agreed. He is like the Jordan Peterson of the business world. I
| think a lot of people subscribe to him to feel a certain
| "intelligent by association".
| nocoiner wrote:
| This is a concise articulation of something that's been nagging
| me for a while. I have his free articles in my RSS feed, but
| for a while I've been noticing that the gems of analysis are
| few and far between, and increasingly outweighed by the need to
| parse through many, many other words that don't seem to convey
| very much.
| yawnxyz wrote:
| I read the blog from time to time. I really liked his posts on
| Aggregation Theory (https://stratechery.com/2022/spotify-
| netflix-and-aggregation...).
|
| As someone who's always been making stuff in a bootstrapped
| way, it gives me a different perspective on how to think about
| what I'm making, and how I could position what I'm doing to
| others (customers, friends; not necessarily investors).
|
| I'm in the academia / biotech / clinical tech space, and Ben's
| level of "academicking" is refreshingly to the point compared
| to how other people in this space write and publish.
| throwaway98797 wrote:
| i'm with you
|
| folks want someone to be their oracle
|
| scott galloway is another one whose in the business of writing
| _credible_ narratives that might as well be fiction
|
| the only thing i read now are _facts_ and even those i stick to
| top line numbers like revenue
|
| ultimately if i'm not investing no way i can know what's going
| on and even if i have the facts there's no chance i can predict
|
| it follows that i don't really believe anyone else can either
|
| all we can do is focus on the problems in front of us, talk is
| cheap.
|
| so just do something. build, organize, lead all else is for the
| feel gooders not the doers
|
| be somebody do _something_
| zen21 wrote:
| "That does leave open the question of Musk, and the way he seemed
| to meme Tesla into existence, while building a rocket ship on the
| side..."
|
| Meme Tesla into existence? He bought in to an already existing
| electric car company and then managed it very well in ways that
| had already been demonstrated by Apple. The idea that he 'memed'
| it into existence seems like utter gibberish.
| haakonhr wrote:
| The writer isn't disputing that Tesla didn't exist before, but
| just pointing out the fact that issuing shares actually lead to
| increased valuations. The argument that it has to do with the
| fact that Tesla turned into something more than "just" a car
| company.
| zen21 wrote:
| Sorry, that doesn't explain anything.
|
| Issuing shares often increases valuations, and Tesla is more
| than just a car company because they have invested in
| electric drivetrains, battery technology, and self-driving,
| as well as other product and manufacturing improvements.
|
| "Memed it into existence" is still gibberish.
| haakonhr wrote:
| Do they though? It depends on your definition of often I
| guess and it has definitely been happening more in recent
| years. I'm unable to find data, but in my experience I can
| only remember seeing this in sexy companies like Tesla
| where there are a lot of retail investors. It makes little
| sense that issuing a lot of new stock leads to a
| significantly higher market cap (unless there was
| uncertainty whether a company would be able to raise money
| at all).
|
| I don't think "memed into existence" is gibberish; just
| hyperbole.
| alphabetting wrote:
| _When that narrative was likely wrong -- that crypto is the
| foundation of a new technological revolution, for example -- then
| the output that resulted was wrong_
|
| Refreshing to see writers take accountability like this.
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| Talking about narratives and Elon Musk, I think that the man has
| been given a pass by too many people for too long.
|
| He has been strangely avoiding scrutiny on many of his grandiose
| promises and I believe that Tesla stock (and thus most of his
| fortune) is built on hype.
| programmarchy wrote:
| Getting people hyped on green technology has a ton of value.
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| I think this is a large part of why he is getting a pass.
| browningstreet wrote:
| It's been a while since that was his primary storyline w/r/t
| Tesla.
| programmarchy wrote:
| Was it ever the main storyline?
|
| Clean energy isn't sexy compared to the low rumble of a
| gas-powered V8. Heck, even "safe" cars aren't sexy. "My car
| has the highest NHTSA rating, m'lady!"
|
| But fast cars are sexy, and so are high-tech self-driving
| cars. So of course that's the storyline used to build hype.
| The promise of FSD is an acceptable "noble lie" to drive
| adoption of green tech.
| ZeroGravitas wrote:
| I think he does a lot of stuff wrong, but between home and
| grid batteries, solar roof tiles, superchargers, virtual
| power plants, the cars and the semi, I'd they're doing okay
| on the 'getting people excited about green tech' score.
|
| If anything, I wish he'd spend a bit more of his time and
| energy on that kind of thing.
| kjksf wrote:
| Tesla is the largest maker of EV cars in the world.
|
| Last quarter they were more profitable that GM, Ford and
| Toyota.
|
| They are growing car production and revenues 50%, on average,
| for over a decade. Profits even faster.
|
| On a PEG ratio Tesla stock is undervalue compared to companies
| that are growing profits much less than Tesla's 100% YoY growth
| last quarter (companies like Amazon).
|
| Tell me more about "hype".
| jrm4 wrote:
| Sure.
|
| This is _definitely_ hype.
|
| For all the fancy numbers you've thrown out there, I see
| absolutely nothing that strongly indicates that what's going
| to happen is "Tesla will be a big car manufacturer,
| competitive with the others."
|
| Don't tell me things in terms of money -- we've already
| gotten the lesson that Musk is adept at the "money
| raising/moving game," whether it's stocks or crypto or gov't
| money.
|
| Take all that away. What's the story of "vehicles on the
| road?" What's going on with exploding batteries and
| cybertrucks and adoption. (Maybe it is better than it looks
| from me, someone who doesn't much care) but what I'm seeing
| as Teslas is "a niche product for rich people." Personally, I
| probably won't buy any EV unless it comes from a name I know,
| like Toyota -- they build bulletproof (damn near literally)
| vehicles that JUST WORK ALL THE TIME.
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| If I am not mistaken, Telsa stock is currently worth more
| than all other car manufacturers combined, while selling a
| small fraction of the total vehicles, with no huge margin.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| On the other hand, the world is jumping to conclusions on the
| Twitter purchase. It's supposedly failed already while the
| author continues to use it, and cites a /tweet/ as being the
| first domino to fall on FTX. Don't give Musk a pass, but don't
| write the book on the Twitter purchase after a couple weeks
| either.
|
| The author also thinks twitter can't advertise because of a non
| relaxed posture while tweeting. In my experience twitter ads
| get more interaction because people see an ad and jump to
| comment on it. The typing "posture" in this case can be a
| benefit.
|
| The negative is that some want to criticize the company instead
| of buying anything. Electric cars get comments about how it
| can't tow a boat 600 miles and gas cars get comments about how
| they're ruining the planet.
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