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Why is there only one Elon Musk?

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Re: Why is there only one Elon Musk?

#131

Post by ErrantX »

zimpenfish wrote: post #104
ErrantX wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the UK, yes, they operate a couple of rail franchises. Personally I've always found them far and away the best company - but they have the misfortune of running "cross country" routes, which go through every bottleneck in our rail system :D

WCML is an abomination of a service. Toilets frequently out of order. Carriages with toilets reeking of urine. Reservations downloaded to the train maybe one time in 5. Empty first class carriages while standard contains double the number of people. Attempting to stop people with open walk-on tickets from getting on valid trains. etc. etc. Maybe it's just my (and everyone I know's) bad luck that these things happen e…

No, fair cop, I've only ever used Virgin Cross Country, never the WCML. So obviously I've only seen one half of things.

Re: Why is there only one Elon Musk?

#132

Post by sigzero »

coob wrote: post #106
untog wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your sentiment but I'm actually kind of conflicted. Inspecting into his marriage feels dirty and indeed, tabloid. But if we want to get the full picture of entrepreneurial life, we can't ignore personal life. If you want to be the next Elon Musk it is probably worth noting that his marriage failed- if nothing else, just to remind you that even when you're a billionaire it is very difficult to have it all…

Why stop at his personal life? Would you like to look at his medical records too?

Didn't people really really want to do that with Jobs?

Re: Why is there only one Elon Musk?

#133

Post by sriramnrn »

edw519 wrote: post #30

This post reminds me of that old joke: Husband: I am the head of the household! I determine our family's position on all of the major economic, political, and social issues of the day! Wife: I decide the little things, like where we'll live, what we'll eat, and where the kids go to school. As much as I admire the dreams and accomplishments of Elon Musk, I have trouble getting past the idea that he failed to maintain…

I see Elon Musk as a person who believes that the Sky is not the limit, and has the drive, money and intelligence to establish this.

He may not have the skills/patience to lead a family life, and is not alone in this regard.

Re: Why is there only one Elon Musk?

#134

Post by sigzero »

lutusp wrote: post #128
untog wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your sentiment but I'm actually kind of conflicted. Inspecting into his marriage feels dirty and indeed, tabloid. But if we want to get the full picture of entrepreneurial life, we can't ignore personal life. If you want to be the next Elon Musk it is probably worth noting that his marriage failed- if nothing else, just to remind you that even when you're a billionaire it is very difficult to have it all…

> Inspecting into his marriage feels dirty and indeed, tabloid. But if we want to get the full picture of entrepreneurial life, we can't ignore personal life. On the contrary, you can, and you should. The era when a man or a woman is defined by his relationships and family is over, and good riddance. People shouldn't be pressured into a family lifestyle if they don't feel a motivation in that direction. Can you tell…

> he era when a man or a woman is defined by his relationships and family is over, and good riddance.

No it's not. Those things help to define a person. I don't think you entirely got the nuance that the OP was getting at.

Re: Why is there only one Elon Musk?

#135

Post by enraged_camel »

edw519 wrote: post #30

This post reminds me of that old joke: Husband: I am the head of the household! I determine our family's position on all of the major economic, political, and social issues of the day! Wife: I decide the little things, like where we'll live, what we'll eat, and where the kids go to school. As much as I admire the dreams and accomplishments of Elon Musk, I have trouble getting past the idea that he failed to maintain…

You know, we have a word for it. It's called "sacrifice." I'm a family man myself, and I'm very close to my parents and sister. That said, I have a lot of respect for people who forego the traditional family lifestyle to work on big, important problems[1]. Elon Musk is one such man. Therefore it is unfair to judge him for his failed marriage.

As for his children, think of it this way: if SpaceX manages to pave the way to a "Space Age," then billions and billions of children in the Earth's future will benefit from it in more ways than imaginable.

[1]The caveat here is that the problems have to be both difficult and important to solve for humanity as a whole. Space travel, global warming, cure for cancer, etc. The big problems of our day.

Re: Why is there only one Elon Musk?

#136

Post by SkyMarshal »

distant- wrote: post #66

Meanwhile, the author of the blog post runs a porn website. I find it amusing that all of these advocates of tackling "big issues, that matter", "building world-changing technology" are very far from walking their talk.

Not only does he run a porn site, he posted this to his porn site's blog. The cognitive dissonance is overwhelming.

Re: Why is there only one Elon Musk?

#138

Post by Someone »

jessriedel wrote: post #80
jerf wrote: post #11

A poorly-known characteristic of bell curves is that despite the bulk of the curve being fairly "normal", the extremes can be very extreme, and at the top end the spacing between #1 and #2 can be surprisingly large. Outliers can really be outliers. But you'll never have very many of them.

Sure, but the OP's point is that there are over a thousand billionaires in the world. It's not the fact that outliers exist, it's that fact that among people with a billion dollars, most don't seem to care about this type of greatness. That is: it's easy to imagine a world where half of the billionaires are doing outlandish things, and the outliers are (say) the guys who are putting men on Mars at a reasonable price.…

I don't think it is surprising most billionaire do not pursue this kind of greatness. They just aren't different from other guys. There, the few who go and try to climb mount Everest "because it's there" or who try and row the pacific are rare, too.

Secondly, if half the billionaires were to do the same outlandish things, we wouldn't call them outlandish.

For example, there probably was a time when quite a few billionaires went elephant hunting. Then, that was not outlandish. Now, it would be.

Now, I think there are plenty of billionaires doing outlandish things, but just not in a highly visible technical direction. For example, Ted Turner started a world-wide news network, tried to start his own Olympic Games, and has a huge herd of bison. Others buy sports clubs, try to win the America's cup, or try to build a mechanical clock that will run for 10000 years (http://longnow.org/). Yet others see it as their goal to get higher on Forbes' list of billionaires (http://www.forbes.com/fdc/welcome_mjx.shtml)

Another thing I am curious about: who are the one or two billionaires at the other end of that curve?

Re: Why is there only one Elon Musk?

#139

Post by frobozz »

I would hazard that it's partly because the rich don't get rich by throwing their money away.

The thing about "cool scifi sh!#" is that it stands a very good chance of not being profitable, and an even greater chance of not being profitable any time soon.

The author writes:

> As more entrepreneurs become self-made billionaires in the Internet age, I think we’ll see the Tony Stark Rating rise

I disagree. I think the only thing that will make that happen is inflation. When the value of a billion is halved, then we'll see it rise.

I would be surprised if there weren't plenty more Sub-Billionaire Elon Musks, who have reached a level of wealth that they consider sufficient for future-proof work-free financial independence, and decided to pursue their least profitable or most fanciful of dreams. The author himself points to various cool projects that don't have a single Tony Stark figure at the helm.

To become a Billionaire, whilst still being of a mind to do "cool scifi sh!#" requires at least one of these three things:

1) Suddenly becoming very rich (at least a near-billionaire).

2) Some of your "cool scifi sh!#" becoming profitable.

3) Persisting in moneymaking when you could be doing the cool stuff instead.

Also, how many billionaires (openly or anonymously) fund chairs or grants at universities? A billionaire of the sort that inherited multiple millions, then made a load more money through speculative finance whilst also working as a corporate barrister is not going to be a Tony Stark; but they may want to see robots with Genuine People Personalities become a reality. It would be far better for someone like that to fund existing university research than to set up their own version of Sirius Cybernetics Corporation.

Re: Why is there only one Elon Musk?

#140

Post by potatolicious »

jessriedel wrote: post #112
rayiner wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A disproportionate share of billionaires are engineers. Of course part of that is because the petro-chemical industry mints a lot of billionaires. E.g. Charles and David Koch both have bachelors and masters degrees (mechanical and chemical engineering) from MIT.

> A disproportionate share of billionaires are engineers. Thanks, do you have a cite for this? My intuition is still that a much higher fraction of billionaires are business/management types than the general population of people at their intelligence level.

> "My intuition is still that a much higher fraction of billionaires are business/management types"

It's both. Nobody becomes a billionaire doing engineering all day, but a great many become billionaires by doing business with an engineering background.

If you look at the major industrialists of our era (and before), many of them come from technical backgrounds, and have done their time in the trenches. When Ford hired the first all-management CEO (i.e., did not rise through the ranks in the auto industry) it was a Big Deal.

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