161–170 of 542 posts
He's not the only one playing the game so effectively at that level but to me, he exemplifies rational behavior.
I wish more entrepreneurs like Page or Bezos were in the public eye as much as Musk. I believe those traits are common to achieve your goals.
This was a bunch of fun. Notes: Be useful, that's fine, no need to alter the world drastically. Big Next shifts: AI & Genetic Modification (oh and a faster connection to our minds) High probability of failure, not a problem. Tesla, Space X. Push the ball forward. Democratization of AI is a best possible outcome (direct connection, we are the AI)
More specifically: if you make a minor improvement that affects a lot of people (improve video streaming) it is just as good as a major improvement that drastically affects a few people (curing an extremely rare disease). It's the area under the curve that matters. The best would obviously be a large effect over a large number of people, but minor improvements can be very useful.
Great interview, I'm always really interested in hearing what entrepreneurs like Musk have to say. However, none of the interviews ever seem to delve into the personal aspects of his life. I would love to have Elon go through a typical day and explain how achieves some balance in his life and what that looks like for him. Being a husband, a father and a friend must be quite challenging and I would love to hear more a…
At Tesla his time is spent "almost entirely with the engineering team, working on improving the Falcon 9 and our Dragon spacecraft and developing the Mars Colonial architecture."
At Tesla he is "in the design studio, take up a half a day a week, dealing with aesthetics and look-and-feel things. And then most of the rest of the week is just going through engineering of the car itself as well as engineering of the factory."
He spends "basically half a day at OpenAI most weeks"
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not saying this is the correct amount, but UN [1] says 30 billion/year would be enough to do it. However, I believe that they are taking into account only the financial needs and not the political effort necessary to do it, mainly to prevent people from diverting that money from going into the right place. I wasn't going to get into this subject to prevent a long debate, but I'm always amazed on how these things…
> There was a time that I thought that if someone as powerful and "rich" as Musk ran for president for some big and important country (like the US) they could fix everything. > But for some reason that is unknown to me this will never happen. And when something close to it (in the power and money sense), like Trump running for president, does happen we know that we are not going to get this "magic fix". I don't under…
My point was that if someone with enough pull (pull being money, power or anything else that "drives" the world) wanted to make it good, they could. But it seems that they can't. It's simply not possible.
What matters is the collective and although there are companies with the size of small countries we still can't fix even small countries like we can in a company.
I guess that at the end we are doomed to coexist with poverty, hunger, illnesses and all of the bad things that could be easily destroyed if we really wanted to, but looks like that despite the fact that we all say we want to get rid of these things we really don't want to.
Some HN commenters never cease to amaze with their negativity...
This site is overwhelmingly supportive of Mr. Musk and his enterprises. Does everyone have to be?
It always saddens me when I see a slew of Debbie Downer comments from the HN crowd. "Yes, he ushered in the electric car revolution, but the production carbon footprint is still huge!" "Yes, he's building rockets, but he took a bunch of government money!" "Yes, he's paving the way to Mars, but what has he done for world hunger?" And it not just with Musk, but really with anyone who has been successful. I would have t…
I read something a couple of decades ago that's helped me avoid, occasionally, the mindset that causes me to be a curmudgeon: someone else's success is not my problem. Thats not to say that any particular criticism is unjustified. Just that tearing down someone for its own sake is not good for anyone - rock throwers included.
It always saddens me when I see a slew of Debbie Downer comments from the HN crowd. "Yes, he ushered in the electric car revolution, but the production carbon footprint is still huge!" "Yes, he's building rockets, but he took a bunch of government money!" "Yes, he's paving the way to Mars, but what has he done for world hunger?" And it not just with Musk, but really with anyone who has been successful. I would have t…
I read something a couple of decades ago that's helped me avoid, occasionally, the mindset that causes me to be a curmudgeon: someone else's success is not my problem. Thats not to say that any particular criticism is unjustified. Just that tearing down someone for its own sake is not good for anyone - rock throwers included.
"Do you think people who want to be useful should get a PhD?" "Umm... Mostly not."
"Sometimes it [technology] gets worse... In '69 we were able to go to the moon.. Then the space shuttle could only take people to LEO, then the space shuttle retired... That trends to zero. People think technology automatically gets better every year but it actually doesn't, it gets better if smart people work like crazy to make it better... By itself if people don't work on it technology will decline. We look at Rome and how they were able to build these incredible roadways and aqueducts and indoor plumbing, and they forgot how to do all of those things.
Entropy is not on your side."
"I know a lot of people think I must spend a lot of time doing media and business-y things... But 80% of my time is spent on engineering and design."
"A very long time ago you took me on a tour of SpaceX. And the most impressive thing was that you knew every detail of the rocket and every pieces of engineering that went into it and I don't think many people get that about you."
"What really matters is the machine that builds the machine, the factory. That is at least 2 orders of magnitude harder than the vehicle itself."
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.