True, he could be wildly misled but he's been around doing this for a while, so that seems unlikely. He could be truly delusional in either case but it's still kinda necessary to knock down his arguments or logic; and that's the critique or analysis I'm not seeing. Just assertions again and again that the real reason is economics triumphing over safety. I'm beginning to think that the idea that there are genuine trade-offs in life is just ungraspable or offensive to many.
There's a lack of evidence either way, which really should tell you all you need to know. I don't think they're delusional, but they are constrained by their context.
Yes, with ML models, you often can be better off trimming down your sensor data. Usually though, you don't remove entire categories of sensor data. Even when you do, to be confident in such a move, you need to first achieve a working model with whatever data you have, and then through refinement you can prove that whole categories of data are more hinderance than help. They haven't done that.
It seems quite clear that the reality is a full sensor array is just economically non-viable with their business model, and that's framing their whole thought process.
Because they promised FSD back in 2017, they can't acknowledge that going without those sensors means it's going to take them much longer to achieve FSD. Because of safety/regulatory oversight, they also can't acknowledge that going without those sensors means there will be additional safety risk.
So they're stuck making these rationalizations that everyone in the industry knows are at best half-truths. No doubt, at some point we'll figure out how to do self driving with a much more limited sensor package, and when we do, we'll achieve a significant improvement in the cost effectiveness of self-driving.
In the meantime, there's a lot of "rationalization" going on.
