Comment by rickdeckard
1 day ago
As an engineer myself, watching the Hagerty interview [0] was an ...interesting experience.
Every time Tesla's VP of vehicle engineering [0] explains the Engineering of the product by stating that they are "breaking the laws of physics", everything he says is losing a bit of credibility...
He did clarify more than once that what he means is they’re doing things that are impossible if you rely solely on tire grip, because it’s just not enough.
Obviously they’re not literally breaking the laws of physics, but they’re breaking what has traditionally been possible putting power through tires alone.
You're describing the exact process which causes the loss of credibility.
Let's say I ask a SW engineer to describe the code he wrote, and he repeatedly (!) refers to the addition of an index table as "breaking the laws of computer science".
He can clarify more than once that the achieved result would be impossible with sole event-processing alone, and obviously I know that he didn't break any "laws of computer science" by adding a indexed database.
But every time he explains his work with these words, he will lose a bit of credibility.
To well educated people in the field who are looking for straight facts, not “marketing spin”, you’re 100% right.
For the average laymen, it’s a simple enough explanation that works to get the point across while keeping it “fun”
Who do you think the demo of a flying car - with no details on range or price or weight or battery size or torque or really anything technical - was actually for?
In that context it would be obvious that "breaking the laws of computer science" is hyperbole for "breaking the established assumptions of computer science"