That viral video of a 'deactivated' Tesla Cybertruck is a fake
theverge.comA number of people predicted this in the thread the other day:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44859807
It'll be interesting to see if the situation evolves further.
It if funny to phrase it like that as if you weren't one of the people in that thread arguing against those skeptical people pointing out issues with the accusations.
Anything using Ockham's razor is a statement about what's more likely when you don't know the truth. Those priors were obviously wrong. I also said we'd find out shortly if it was faked, and now we're here.
Do you think I shouldn't update my understanding based on new information?
>Those priors were obviously wrong.
You're doing it again here with the passive voice. You weren't wrong, it was "Ockham's razor" and "those priors" that were wrong.
>Do you think I shouldn't update my understanding based on new information?
Your responses here show that you aren't actually doing that. You aren't taking any responsibility for your prior incorrect assumptions and therefore you are likely to continue making similar wrong assumptions in the future. How can you learn from this experience if you can't admit that you did anything wrong?
I don't know what you want from me.
Yes, my speculation on incomplete information was wrong. That's obvious to anyone who can read. I haven't hidden it, I haven't said I was ever correct, and even in that thread I explicitly said there are two possibilities and here's the one I find more likely.
Yet you're acting like I kicked a puppy and need to apologize for my moral failings. Chill, it's not a big deal. I'll probably be wrong about something else in the future too. All I can do is update my understanding and try not to make the same mistakes going forward.
>I don't know what you want from me.
All I want from you is to...
>update my understanding and try not to make the same mistakes going forward.
The first step in that process is examining your prior mistakes so you know what not to repeat. Your comments have shown an unwillingness to do that work. You're treating this as a mistake that you just happened to fall into through no fault of your own and not a mistake caused by your own actions.
Being wrong and making a mistake are very different things. A weather forecaster, for example, can be wrong about the weather without making a mistake in forecasting it.
Yes, that was the point being made. Immediately believing the authenticity of this video was not just wrong, but also a mistake. Anyone who believed it initially should take this as a lesson to learn to recalibrate their levels of naïveté/skepticism when it comes to random social media posts.
It's the opposite of the point you want to make. This is obvious if you simplify the example to something like flipping a biased coin. If the coin will come up heads 50-eps% of the time, and tails 50+eps% of the time, then the correct prediction is tails. Tails will often be the wrong prediction, but is still the correct prediction to make.
The outcome of this one event simply doesn't imply anything about the correctness of AlotOfReading's model. The model might actually be mistaken, but that's not an argument you've made.
>The outcome of this one event simply doesn't imply anything about the correctness of AlotOfReading's model.
How many times would you have to burn your hand on a hot stove before you can conclude that touching it will result in a burn?
Your analogy contains a category mistake, but no doubt you'll 'examine your prior mistakes so you know what not to repeat'.
>Your analogy contains a category mistake
Yes, that was exactly the point of my question. I was subtly accusing you of the same thing you are now overtly accusing me of doing. I was showing that we shouldn't look at everything through the lens of a probabilistic model.
The authenticity of the video was not a coin flip in which the results would be random within some sort of probabilistic distribution. We were not predicting a future event. We were observing and analyzing a past event. AlotOfReading didn't just come to the wrong conclusion. Their analysis of the evidence was flawed from the start and that is why I disagreed with them in that original thread before either of us knew the truth.
It’s a bit like an LLM or any model output. I’m wrong, so what? It will happen again. Maybe humans aren’t so different after all.
Sorry for piling on here. To be clear, I don't think you've done anything terrible that requires an apology, and I think it's admirable that you are here after the hoax was debunked and willing to admit you were wrong and discuss it openly. It's just interesting (and somewhat rare on HN) to be able to go back and pick apart your comment less than 24 hours later with perfect hindsight.
You comment was:
> What's the alternative here? A rapper went to the effort to publish an MV, then figured out how to display a fake disabled message in the vehicle, then faked a C&D, knowing that these actions would give Tesla a very legitimate claim against them?
> Ockham's razor is not favorable to the alternative.
I think the issue is that you greatly underestimated how far people are willing to go for likes. There are billions of people online, and while most would not bother to do what you said, some of them are indeed willing to go to incredible lengths for views. The YouTuber who intentionally crashed his plane, for example [1]. This stunt with the Cybertruck feels relatively low-effort by comparison.
Or as my favorite response to your comment summed it up:
> "You really think someone would do that? Just go on the internet and tell lies?"
I don't typically like sarcasm in a thoughtful discussion, but in this case it felt warranted.
You also failed to apply Occam's razor to the other side, and consider the legal and reputational risks that Tesla would face by remotely disabling someone's car while they were driving on the expressway. Yes, Musk has done brash things before, which certainly increases the believability of this hoax. But this would be new ground even for Musk. And you have to weigh Musk's capacity for doing brash things against the entire internet's capacity for generating fake news and hoaxes.
You probably should have known better than try and apply Occam's razor to determine the likelihood that an instagram post is a hoax. There are just too many irrational people out there (and rational people acting in bad faith) for Occam's razor to be applicable. And the fact that you were able to overlook the overwhelming number of counterexamples to your application of Occam's razor suggests to me that there may have been some confirmation bias at play.
And at least 222 people believed it to be true (or else those are some illogical upvotes).
An upvote does not mean the user believes the story is true.
I read the thread when it had something like 50 comments, and most of them were treating it as either confirmed or at least potentially true, and using it as an opportunity to rail against corporate abuse in full generality, just like every HN thread about a negative story about a tech company. It was only later that the skeptical comments started to rise to the top.
> I read the thread when it had something like 50 comments, and most of them were treating it as either confirmed or at least potentially true (...)
I think you're trying to fabricate an alternative version of reality while being aware that the facts (i.e., the actual posts in the thread) are not on your side.
You are correct that my math was a little off; by the time it hit 50 comments the skeptics were starting to prevail. That said, at 30 comments I think the comments section as a whole was still credulous. Here's my attempt at recreating what it was like then: https://ameliaquining.neocities.org/tesla-hn-comments
Note that I put all the comments in reverse chronological order because historical vote data isn't available, so which comments are at the top here isn't necessarily reflective of which ones were at the top at the time.
You can judge for yourself whether my summary was misleading.
Agree that while the skeptics eventually won out, the thread was very credulous for a while. I recall that at the time I made my skeptical comment, there was almost no skepticism in the thread at all.
> You are correct that my math was a little off; by the time it hit 50 comments the skeptics were starting to prevail.
I think you didn't even bothered to read your own citation.
The first comment literally leads with "This isn't real".
The bulk of replies are questioning the questionable claims, and asking for their sources.
There are indeed a few comments from gullible people, but to frame this as gullible people being prevalent in the thread is outright wrong, as your own source shows.
"First comment" here merely means the most recent comment, not the one that was at the top at the time, because, again, that data isn't available.
By my count, five comments expressed some kind of overt skepticism, and another four included a "if this is true" disclaimer without indicating any particular grounds to disbelieve it. The other 21 all either explicitly accepted the story as true, or implicitly didn't care whether it was true or not (e.g., piling onto criticism of Tesla without mentioning the specific controversy).
The best part is that if the alleged reality is true it's an even bigger condemnation of the community.
"no, they didn't believe it, they were engaging in strategic trolling and vote gaming" as if that doesn't imply a way more malicious frame of mind than some hapless idiot looking at the message and going "yup, seems legit, upvote we go".
(disclaimer: I wasn't in those comments, IDK who's reality is true here)
>(disclaimer: I wasn't in those comments, IDK who's reality is true here)
As someone who did see that thread evolve, let me help you out.
HN (being largely comprised of redditors) were more than happy to amplify pure misinformation because it was politically expedient. The evidence that it was fake was given fairly early on; a lot of people ignored it.
It's certainly a condemnation of the userbase on this forum.
Many of the people who suspected the story to be a fake were... not very well received in that thread, at least at first.
Since HN is manually unflagging political posts, and not enforcing the 'uses HN for political advocacy' guideline the site is generally more combatative and there's a lot more hoaxes and conspiracy theories on the front page.
I've noticed this as well. It feels more and more like Reddit everyday.
The problem with having a site-wide rule against complaining that the site is becoming Reddit is that when it actually becomes true you're prohibited from telling the truth.
There is no site-wide prohibition - which is obvious since these comments would be prohibited.
There are guidelines and each guideline is mostly loosely encouraged by the community here by downvoting - in effect becoming community standards. However a well written exception can receive upvotes (even though strictly against guidelines) because it is a community and individual judgement mostly gets priority.
Flagging is different because it is a much stronger signal of violation of norms, however it is still mostly a signal from the HN user community.
The moderation balance on HN appears to be quite functional to me (although I'm happy with many guidelines that others fight against).
Just my opinion on the topic.
Exactly - they might have something to gain by convincing others it is true for example.
There are non-nefarious reasons, too. If someone is unsure whether something is real they could upvote it to increase visibility and discussion.
According to HN guidelines, upvotes means something that sparks curiosity.
Then they are illogically boosting a hoax on purpose, or at least with reckless disregard for truth.
Or they want knowledge of the hoax to spread, so as to protect the victim against further lies?
Just because you don't consciously believe something to be true, doesn't mean you don't care about its veracity. The null hypothesis is that people are willing to treat things as true based on their priors — which could be informed by things as simple as "this was posted on a website not known as a den of misinformation, and shared on HN" — while not actually devoting thought to an investigation of the truth.
> "this was posted on a website not known as a den of misinformation, and shared on HN"
I don't know whether you mean Threads or Bluesky but it sounds like you haven't used either.
Yeah I have peeked into both and have never seen such a strident collection of vituperation, misinformation, and hatred. For people who claim to have left Twitter due to supposed toxicity, they definitely seem unacquainted with mirrors.
Or not engaging enough to come to any conclusion - just chuckle - upvote. Useful, but not idiots nor villains
If your goal is to burn down tesla/musk, you logically promote everything remotely damaging.
And there are plenty rational reasons to have that goal.
It’s funny that I just read the thread on rationalism and then come back to this one and someone posted this flawed nonsense.
Well I see it's flagged for now, and I was one of the flaggers.
IMO, at least by the time I saw it, there were more than enough red flags raised to say that having it on HN before more evidence is available is only flamebait.
Evolves further how? What do you expect might happen next?
As I said in that thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44860077), seems like a slam-dunk defamation case for Tesla (assuming they want to pursue it) if the whole thing was fabricated.
Nothing new under the sun. Remember when NBC admitted to rigging a truck to burst into flames in a crash for Dateline, because it wouldn't do it on its own? Or when a jury found that Consumer Reports lied about how easily an Isuzu pickup rolled over on turns?
But hey, the media probably wouldn't lie these days, and Musk bad man.
Just because other people are bad doesn't make Musk suddenly good
I'm the one who posted a similar post that wasn't removed. The actions of the ceo in the past would not make this event unreasonable imho
Given all the fake Tesla news and seemingly inexhaustible supply of Tesla haters, this was my first thought as well.
One of the richest people in the world has a billion dollar short position on Tesla. You can bet there is enormous might trying everything to rank the stock
Tesla's autonomous driving solution is 10 years overdue and the stock's PE ratio is almost 200. If Gates still has a short position, I am sure he is waiting silently.
I'm not sure which is more concerning: how easy it was to fall for it in the first place, or the mental gymnastics some are going through to place the blame outside themselves.
A lie is a lie, it does not matter how plausible it is. "No smoke without fire" is complete bullshit that leaves room only for cascading hatred.
In this case, there's definitive proof of it being a hoax, and news of it seems to be spreading. But how many more subtle falsehoods are being spread, ones that aren't as easily disproven? And how many perfectly plausible lies does it take for a narrative to become self-sustaining?
There is no shortage of real and verifiable things to be outraged about (Tesla-related or otherwise). Don't waste your headspace on anything less.
It really is concerning. I have a friend who went off the rails in the past couple years and is constantly sharing twitter rage bait. When things are proven to be fake news, it doesn't even phase him. It's like reality doesn't even matter, and maximizing outrage is the end goal.
> Tesla tweeted about the video, saying, “This is fake – that’s not our screen. Tesla does NOT disable vehicles remotely.”
I think the “does not” stands out to me more than “can not”. I’d rather keep my dumb car knowing it can’t be disabled remotely at all without something like an emp.
Ramzan Kadyrov got his hands on a Cybertruck, and it was disabled remotely. Asides from the trade embargo with Russia, Kadyrov also trolled Elon by thanking him personally, Telsa found it and turned it off: https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/20/business/chechnya-kadyrov-mus...
Dumb cars are like dumb TVs; you arent going to find any on the consumer market. All modern connected cars can be controlled remotely. Ford has even filed patents for remote shutoff for reposession purposes.
Its just how it is.
It’s easy to be cynical specifically in this case, when Elon has in the past very gleefully amplified AI fakes to drum up social sentiment
I don't get it. Is the implication that Elon/Tesla/X specifically promoted/amplified the post?
I infer that the implication is "that's rich coming from Elon/Tesla" because Elon is not honest and amplifies misinformation often?
(not singling Elon out, he's one of many)
The implication is that Elon is a massive hypocrite for complaining when these dishonest tactics are used against him because he uses them all the time.
During election, Musk promoted a lot of deep fakes about Kamala Harris, including fake images generated using Grok. He's a total asshole.
https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/misinformation/kamala-harris-de...
Here's the video - it was very obviously a parody.
> - it was very obviously a parody.
Not to the stupid.
Here's another one:
https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/03/media/elon-musk-x-kamala-harr...
"couldn't have happened to a nicer guy"
The original post made front page of HN for a good while, whereas this correction post was dropped almost immediately to page 3, and now on page 4. This post is/was more recent, with more upvotes, than almost everything currently on the front page, yet it's hidden all the way down on page 4.
Lengthy comment sections full of flame wars, which controversial topics like fake news against Tesla often result in, tend to make the threads less visible on HN.
Wouldn’t that apply to the original post too?
This is why fake news is such an effective propaganda tool.
There are to this day many people who honestly believe untruths because the media repeated lies and half truths loudly, followed by quiet retractions when they got caught.
“Falsehood flies, and the Truth comes limping after it”
- Jonathan Swift
The fact that this deactivation feels possible is still a telling sign of where we’ve been heading. Update fail. Subscription lapsed payment. All sorts of new failure modes.
"The lie has value because it feels true" is one of the more disturbing trends I have seen gain traction on the internet in recent years. People are now unironically turning themselves in the Stephen Colbert character from The Colbert Report[1].
Yeah. I have noticed a disturbing amount of people believe fake stories, tweets, videos, propaganda etc. because it confirms their worldview or is otherwise fun. For example, the amount of people who thought dumb Republicans were dying from eating horse dewormer was way overblown. Or that Haitian immigrants were eating cats and dogs.
I have adopted an extremely skeptical view of almost all content on the internet now. Fun videos that are staged aren't particularly harmful. Something like "a crazy coincidence or wild prank" made to look real and genuine is not particularly sinister. I personally have briefly put way to much stock in a screenshot of a Tweet from an unattributed anonymous poster alleging X happened. Simply because "it feels true" and confirms my bias. Be careful out there kids!
I think it is troubling to say “the lie has value”, but it is worth thinking why certain stories and hoaxes resonate. It’s similar to how sci-fi and horror can reflect the anxieties of their contemporary society
[flagged]
How about, "10-15 years ago such a scenario was completely implausible/impossible, and I find it disturbing that it is now completely plausible and possible"?
It’s funny you bring up Colbert on this topic. His own narrative of why his show was cancelled is a lie that felt true to his fans.
It felt good to martyr him and say that he was cancelled for saying truth to power against President Trump. The truth is that his show was losing $40 million a year and only had traction with viewers that were outside the target advertising demographics.
This sort of thing has to be illegal, right? Not sure what it’s called, but it’s basically libel against a corporation. Can you just do that and it’s fine? If so I would expect it to happen all the time via competitors hiring agencies to lie in this sort of way, and AFAIK that doesn’t happen broadly, so it seems like something is preventing it, such as it being illegal.
I frankly have very little sympathy for Tesla here. If you're going to "sell" people a computer and not give them root it's impossible for everyone else to tell if you're screwing around with it like that.
You want to be the admin for everyone else? Well you get the responsibility and emotional demands from everyone else too.
I see trending interviews that seem fake now. Really curious to see what the Internet looks like in five years.
This is significantly less interesting than any of the dozens of nonsense conspiracy theories Musk repeatedly posts about. Why so much attention?
Damn that would be funny as hell if it was real
Darn. I really wanted it to be true