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Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

ycombinator.com

71–80 of 542 posts

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#71
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why you are being downvoted. You put forward a valid point. Perhaps the fanboys here could understand the desperation most of the world still lives in, even today!!!

He might have a valid point but the point is off-topic. Here the context is technology, not politics or economic policies.

Not really. Many discussions here are about politics and economic policies, which btw are important forces for some enterpreneurs to be aware of.

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#72
post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The delta from "people die" to "people no longer die" is a massive technological problem. By comparison, once we have that technology, making it available to everyone is many orders of magnitude easier, and much easier to get funding for. Do you really believe, given a cure for mortality, that we couldn't get it to the rest of the world in much less time than it took to develop in the first place? And with that in pl…

I don't have the exact numbers but If I'm not mistaken its said that we need less money to end hunger in the world than what we probably spent trying to get out of earth. So, it seems to me that your point is not really valid because we already have the tech/knowledge/means to end hunger and we didn't so it makes a lot of sense to me to focus some more on political reforms.

Ending world hunger would cost a lot more than time spent trying to get out of Earth, because in order to end world hunger, you'd have to reform political systems that are impeding the abolishment of world hunger. For example, there is no way world hunger can be ended without massive regime change in North Korea, and any such change would be monumentally expensive, even if done peacefully.

Solving the first 80% of world hunger was cheap, solving the last 20% is expensive.

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#73
post #7

How would one go about meaningfully contributing to solving problems in genetics without having done the work leading to a MD or PhD (or both)?

You probably couldn't. But if you refer to two things Musk said - a) genetics is important, and b) PhD is not the best way to be useful - I think he didn't mean it to be taken together. He spent some time talking about how being useful means "area under the curve" - do a big thing for small number of people, or do a small thing for a large number of people. Most people can aim for either of the two, and in both cases PhD is probably not the most efficient use of your time.

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#74
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know why you are being downvoted. You put forward a valid point. Perhaps the fanboys here could understand the desperation most of the world still lives in, even today!!!

He might have a valid point but the point is off-topic. Here the context is technology, not politics or economic policies.

Haha, yes, technology has nothing to do with politics or economics, of course.

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon Musk isn't the kind of person I thought he was. > "Politically, Musk has described himself as "half Democrat, half Republican". In his own words: "I'm somewhere in the middle, socially liberal and fiscally conservative."[116] > Musk is a self-described American exceptionalist and nationalist, describing himself as "nauseatingly pro-American". According to Musk, the United States is "[inarguably] the greatest cou…

> I thought he was like John Carmack or something, but at the end of the day he's mostly a sales guy with big dreams. The self-taught rocket engineer stuff is mostly self-promotion. Where do you get that impression? Except maybe from not following anything about him. Unless you think that the following quote from this interview is an outright lie: "I think a lot of people think I must spend a lot of time with media o…

Ask yourself what the real subtext is; what most people are going to think when they read "But actually almost all my time, like 80% of it, is spent on engineering and design".

Is the mental image that of Tony Stark, single-handedly designing rocket components in some kind of advanced cad/cam-ish lab, scoffing at staid business meetings he delegates, or is it of a guy talking to a bunch of engineers, and hearing presentations, picking favorites among a bunch of proposals, signing off on this or that?

You are supposed to think of the former (PR), whereas the latter is closer to the truth.

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#76

I am very happy that there's a transcript. But I just spent two minutes trying to figure out how to cut and paste it into a textfile (Scribd won't let me download it without signing up). My request to YC is to publish transcripts like this as text.

I built this thing if you want to follow along. Unfortunately no video, but at least you can copy the text:

https://jotengine.com/t/elon

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#77
post #5

I am very happy that there's a transcript. But I just spent two minutes trying to figure out how to cut and paste it into a textfile (Scribd won't let me download it without signing up). My request to YC is to publish transcripts like this as text.

Agreed, it's really excessive to take simple text content and trap it within a PDF that's then trapped inside Scribd, which requires a Scribd account and login to download.

Scribd is a YC company. What you're experiencing is called "growth hacking".

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#78

Of course Elon Musk thinks that AI and brain interfaces are the most important things to work on, that's all that is holding back his raging space boner. Meanwhile, a large part of the world is still using Iron Age technology to get by with the bulk of their lives. The most important work of "How to Build the Future" is political work - reforming our property relations, for example, so that we aren't organizing our e…

I suppose it is easy to rage or blame all of mankind's ills on Elon Musk. Perhaps some day, his quest to challenge the status quo or leave Planet Earth and spread humanity throughout the Solar system might benefit us all. Gods Speed Elon.....

IMHO there are plenty of evil corporations and CEOs to abhor. That Musk's drives, priorities, and business practices appear mostly admirable seems to me to be one of the least controversial viewpoints imaginable.

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#79
post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While we're at it, these are great interviews and I'm glad they're being created and published, and I'd appreciate if the series was available as a podcast... I only noticed this new interview because I happened to be on HN right now.

Podcasts are also great because they let you save something now and listen to it later (in the car, doing chores, etc.). I'm really interested in listening to this, but by tomorrow when I'm doing something that is amenable to listening in the background I'll probably have forgotten it exists. If I could add "How to Build the Future" to a listening queue I'd certainly be more likely to get around to it!

You should check out https://narro.co for turning most anything into a personal podcast.

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#80
post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like Elon Musk, but the hero-worship disturbs me. Yeah, he founded one pretty successful company, got in early at a very successful company, and has been using the money to fund cool projects ever since. I think Tesla and SpaceX are both interesting, but still experimental: he hasn't been singlehandedly Tony Starking up the future in a lab, he's just used a lot of money from making some smart/lucky decisions to hir…

>has been using the money to fund cool projects Musk and his companies' investors enjoy most of the financial upside of the government support, while taxpayers shoulder the cost. [1] http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-2015...

Is this meant to imply that this is somehow unusual or particular to Tesla? The government provides incentives and subsidies all over the place. Even Coca-Cola benefits from subsidies.
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