Tesla's miles are someone else's evidence
Tesla's FSD operates on a logic borrowed from Festinger's When Prophecy Fails. When external validation doesn't arrive, increase internal commitment and redefine what counts as evidence.
Tesla needs these miles the way a casino needs gamblers, not because it's fun or fair. Because the revenue model depends on volume.
The buried assumption says that enough miles under FSD will generate enough data to prove FSD works. This sounds like science.
Venture capital has a time horizon, and autonomous vehicles have a different one. When they collide, the venture calendar wins. Deployment accelerates not because the technology is ready but because the funding round requires a defensible narrative. Millions of miles is defensible.
More miles driven becomes both the problem and the proof of solution—a closed loop that rewards expansion regardless of whether expansion should happen.
A company with a financial interest in deployment speed is permitted to define what counts as safety evidence. Then it deploys.
