Comment by fabian2k
4 hours ago
I think it's fair to put the burden of proof here on Tesla. They should convince people that their Robotaxis are safe. If they redact the details about all incidents so that you cannot figure out who's at fault, that's on Tesla alone.
While I think Tesla should be transparent, this article doesn't really make sure it is comparing apples to apples either.
I think its weird to characterize it as legitimate and the say "Go Tesla convince me ohterwise" as if the same audience would ever be reached by Tesla or people would care to do their due diligence.
It’s not weird. They have a history of over promising to the point that one could say they just straight up lie on a regular basis. The bar is higher for them because they have abused the public’s trust and it has to be earned again.
The results have to speak for Tesla very loudly and very clearly. And so far they don’t.
But this is more your feelings than actually factual.
I mean sure you can say that the timelines did slip a lot but that doesn’t really have anything to with the rest that is insinuated here.
I would argue a timeline slipping doesn’t mean you go about killing people and lie about it next. I would even go so far as to say that the timelines did slip to exactly avoid that.
Tesla (Elon Musk really) has a long history of distorting the stats or outright lying about their self driving capabilities and safety. The fact that folks would be skeptical of any evidence Tesla provided in this case is a self-inflicted problem and well-deserved.
He did promise his electric trucks to be more cost-effective than trains (still nothing in 2026...). And "world's fastest supercar". And full self-driving by "next year" in 2015. None of these are offered in 2026.
There have never been truthful statements from his companies, only hype & fluff for monetary gains.
The burden of proof is on the article writer.
This has nothing to do with burden of proof, it has to do with journalistic accuracy, and this is obviously a hit piece. HN prides itself on being skeptical and then eats up "skeptic slop."
>I think it's fair to put the burden of proof here on Tesla.
That just sounds like a cope. The OP's claim is that the article rests on shaky evidence, and you haven't really refuted that. Instead, you just retreated from the bailey of "Tesla's Robotaxi data confirms crash rate 3x worse ..." to the motte of "the burden of proof here on Tesla".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motte-and-bailey_fallacy
More broadly I think the internet is going to be a better place if comments/articles with bad reasoning are rebuked from both sides, rather than getting a pass from one side because it's directionally correct, eg. "the evidence WMDs in Iraq is flimsy but that doesn't matter because Hussein was still a bad dictator".
The point is this: the article writer did what research they could do given the available public data. It's true that their title would be much more accurate if it said something like "Tesla's Robotaxi data suggests crash rate may be up to 3x worse than human drivers". It's then 100% up to Tesla to come up with cleaner data to help dispel this.
But so far, if all the data we have points in this direction, even if the certainty is low, it's fair to point this out.
I don’t think it’s a motte and Bailey fallacy because the motte is not well established. Tesla clearly does not believe that the burden of proof is on them, and by extension regulators, legislators.
You're not replying to the author of the article.