Society has given Kaparty et al a lot of latitude to take liberties with other peoples lives. In my view this creates an obligation to do the best job humanly possible.

That's all well and good for his job, and even that assertion is debatable. He's a human after all.

But this is a personal project. Something that is unrelated to his job. So it doesn't really matter what "bar" it is because he's doing it for his own benefit, not Tesla's or "humanity's".

Unless you're implying he can't have personal hobbies anymore. Which was the exact point of my previous comment.

His job affects peoples lives. He certainly is human. I'm not criticising his project. I'm not saying he can't have personal hobbies. And I'm not the one that decides the bar.

I'm saying that there is a bar and it's higher when lives depend on it.

There is a long list of activities that people could do in their personal time that would be considered inappropriate. What is done outside of work is relevant. It can form part of a character assessment which can have political and legal ramifications.

If Tesla ends up with a dangerous product then it becomes very relevant.

There is no bar on personal projects. Period. That's the whole point of it being a personal project.

At least you've made it perfectly clear that you don't think people should have lives outside of work. Hope you also subscribe to the same ideology yourself and don't have any personal projects or hobbies (why are you on HN anyway, shouldn't you be working right now?) or else you'd easily be considered a hypocrite.

There is a bar on personal projects. Period. Period.

Either you're misunderstanding logic, law or society. If Karparthy fails he runs a real risk of having his life very closely examined. The rules are different for different people.

I do machine learning medical work for the coronavirus. I work at near optimal as humanly possible. Occasional hackernews is one of my few indulgences.

Agree to disagree. My company has no control over the work I do in my personal time, and neither does some random person on the other side of the world. This applies to me, you, and everyone else. Nobody is special because "they do important work".

By your logic, you should have no indulgences, so you should probably stop posting.

Did you consider that taking time off is doing the best job possible?

That certainly depends on how much time off and what was done in that time.

Ok, leave it up to him to make that call.