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Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

ycombinator.com

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Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#81

Post by idlewords »

emmett wrote: post #46
idlewords wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Much more likely than a hotfix for death is a world where there are very, very expensive treatments that allow wealthy people to extend their lives by some significant amount. That's not going to be a fun world to live in, especially if the treatments requires biological raw materials that the destitute can sell.

Historically, expensive treatments for the rich have become universal treatments for everyone over time. What makes you believe that life extension will be any different? Or, if you disagree that expensive treatments generally stay expensive, what are your examples? I agree we could have a temporary awkward period in the middle, say 20 years, where it's not cheap yet. But on the scale of history that's a short period…

My counterexample is a facelift.

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#82

Post by kstenerud »

bbctol wrote: post #53
RodericDay wrote: post #25

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 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…

"he hasn't been singlehandedly Tony Starking up the future in a lab"

So this is the measure of progress now? How can this sentence sound like anything other than sour grapes?

You use the tools available to you for the betterment of your species in some way.

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#83

Post by soufron »

milkytron wrote: post #21
iMuzz wrote: post #2

Question/Answer I found interesting: Sama> How should someone figure out how they should be useful? Elon> Whatever this thing is you are trying to create.. What would be the utility delta compared to the current state of the art times how many people it would affect?

Certainly very interesting, in fact I wrote this down when I heard it. And if you look at the projects he's working on (Renewable energy, cars able to powered by renewable energy, and preserving life outside of Earth), they all affect a great portion of humanity, and have a very large affect.

Affect like how? As of today they're useless, except for Tesla who's motivating car automakers to go towards autonomous cars - but they had the tech before.

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#84

Post by aetherson »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #64
LordHumungous wrote: post #28

>I think a lot of people think I must spend a lot of time with media or on businessy things. But actually almost all my time, like 80% of it, is spent on engineering and design. Uh... that's not really a CEO's job though.

What exactly does a CEO do? I haven't spent much time in a corporate environment, mostly in a workshop making structural steel, so it's not at all clear to me who the CxO layer does. As another comment suggested their roles seem to be mostly decorative. Do these roles actually make decisions, or just sign off on them?

CEO is a role that will vary noticeably from company to company. But in general, the CEO will sign off on a lot of decisions and make a few ones.

Basically, it's like this:

If your subordinates come to you and are like, "This is absolutely the right thing to do," then you'll 95% of the time sign off on it. If you find that that's not true, it's probably time to fire your subordinates, they apparently aren't doing a good job.

If subordinate A comes to you and says, "We should do X," and subordinate B comes to you and says, "We should do mutually exclusive thing Y," then you may need to decide between them.

CEOs should also ideally have a strategic sense and say things like, "Guys, I want us to look at doing something like thing Z. Research it and tell me your conclusions," when everyone else thought that there was no decision to be made at all -- just keep chugging along.

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#85

Post by johncolanduoni »

kiba wrote: post #16
astazangasta wrote: post #10

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…

A UFAI would be an extinction level event for our species. That involves studying decision theory, which will improve our ability to make the right choices. Cheaper access to space would make lives easier for humans on Earth, give us better internet through the use LEO satellites. We would be able to mine space rocks and bring it back to Earth, reducing some material scarcity on Earth. Same for space manufacturing.

> That involves studying decision theory, which will improve our ability to make the right choices.

I'm circumspect about studying decision theory from an AI perspective will be very helpful in learning how to modulate our own decision processes. Most of it is focused on finding ways to keep AIs from doing weird things that humans already don't do anyway.

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#86

Post by hx87 »

astazangasta wrote: post #10

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…

So how would someone like Elon Musk contribute to a political solution to world problems? It sounds like a suboptimal field for someone with his set of talents to work on, and perhaps better suited to someone who has a less engineering and more politically oriented skillset.

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#89

Post by jtuente »

LordHumungous wrote: post #28

>I think a lot of people think I must spend a lot of time with media or on businessy things. But actually almost all my time, like 80% of it, is spent on engineering and design. Uh... that's not really a CEO's job though.

Why not? If he's got the skills necessary to be more deeply involved in the engineering aspects, what else does he have to do that he cannot assign to another C-level exec?

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#90

Post by TeMPOraL »

ElComradio wrote: post #75
TeMPOraL wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 pres…

Yeah, I imagine the latter is closer to the truth. I doubt Elon is spending all his time in CAD software, but I'm pretty sure he talks to people who do and looks at their work, and can meaningfully comment / advise on it.

I've seen the type before. I've personally met one of the guys running Reaction Engines Limited (the Skylon company); I've been on a talk he had for physicists at Rutherfort Appleton Laboratories. He mostly talked big-picture things during the presentation; then on a Q&A session someone asked him about details about the engine, and the guy went into full physics professor mode, explaining the engineering tradeoffs they made in excruciating details.

That's how I imagine Elon too.

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