241–250 of 542 posts
Having watched a good number of Elon Musk interviews, I wish more interviewers would ask more direct questions. Asking Elon general questions usually results in fairly similar responses to what you have heard before or read in his biography.
I'm curious -- what would you ask him?
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…
My observation over the last few years has been a steady decline in the quality of comments on HN, and a steady increase in the number of Debbie Downer comments.
No matter what someone is doing - there will always, always be a comment about how whatever they are trying to achieve is stupid and they should instead be doing x, y, z.
It's a shame, really.
What amazes me about Elon is the level of self control, discipline, perseverance, resilience, willpower etc. 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.
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There are rational, non-envy-based reasons to object to all the hero-worship. For example, all the things "he" did above were actually done by big teams of people working together, but Elon gets all the credit. He deserves credit, but not all of it. And let's not forget the millions of people who worked to generate wealth that could be transferred via, and taxed by, PayPal, accruing the fortune with which to start al…
> Heck I'm a "visionary" too, just add one billion dollars and tons of free time and see what I come up with! Thread winner. There is little difference between a billionaire and anyone else except a billion dollars.
What amazes me about Elon is the level of self control, discipline, perseverance, resilience, willpower etc. 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.
Plus he is a pretty mediocre public speaker...yet puts himself out there & makes an impact
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Are you sure you're thinking of HN? The top comment on any article about Tesla here is usually someone saying "Whatever this article is about is old news and also a bad idea and also doesn't work, and BTW Tesla is losing money hand-over-fist."
Any company can build an electric car and lose money while doing it. The question isn't whether he can build a cool electric car, he clearly can. I really question the position he has put himself in financially. - He used Tesla stock to secure loans he used to purchase his stake in Solar City, the decision to purchase Solar City is at least in part driven by the fact that Elon Musk IS Tesla, without him at the helm i…
Remind me a great deal of what existed with Steve Jobs. Another example is Jeff Bezos with Amazon. Not saying that in tech circles some of their execs and/or engineers are not well known but certainly not people that your Aunt would have heard about. Also I guess Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook (although Sheryl Sandberg is fairly well known). Another is the "Google Guys" but you don't hear much about them lately probably because the PR has been tamped down. But early on it was every magazine cover and apparently from what I heard later Sergey wasn't even anywhere near as important as Larry was.
This happens also with VC firms. One partner (in a small firm like AVC) is the big cheese, the others you barely hear about.
That said this is not unusual in business or for that matter team sports or even entertainment. For many reason including some people simply want to be behind the scenes.
"But we're extremely bandwidth-constrained in that interface between the cortex and that tertiary digital form of yourself. And helping solve that bandwidth constraint would be, I think, very important in the future as well. Yeah." After working and consulting with labs while building/hacking software/hardware for neural interfaces and seeing where the field is now, I have very little hope. Too much bureaucracy, and…
> apparently an email submission is just not ok despite having co authored in this area and currently designing BCI related hardware and software in the open in my free time I'm not sure of the specifics, but this comes across as very entitled and narcissistic, but I assume that's most likely a case of misinterpretation of your point . That said, if they have a submission process, expect to go through it. It's entire…
That's a fair question. I'd like to ask a question in response: if an applicant has worked under/helped/seen those who could be bothered the jump through the hoops to get on the short of consideration and then funded, walked away because someone threw money at them to work on financial/trading software (thus enabling and "freed" to pursued related research work in more detail in their spare time), why shouldn't they throw money at such candidate despite considering how far throwing more of the same into neuroimaging research has gotten us thus far?
Personally, jumping through arbitrary/superficial hoops is not a game I want to play (plenty of others are good at that, and I wish them all the best, darpa's latest and greatest ways at dealing with signal 2 noise issue is their problem, and anyone should feel free to point that out), I'm having much more fun playing my own game from my fancy apt all the away across the world, while still working with those don't want to waste my time (and mine there's). Luckly for others and folks like me, darpa aren't the only folks interested, and money isn't the only "limited" resource of consideration.
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You see, you've already lost me because nearly everything worthwhile has been funded by public sector money, notably space and the Internet. To my mind, claiming to be 'fiscally conservative' may be a good tactical claim as a CEO of rapidly expanding publically held companies, but in practical terms it's a terrible idea. If Elon is turning public money into technology, I'm enthusiastic about that. I'm sure there are…
Two points for your consideration: #1: We clearly have the resources to publicly invest in innovative technologies like electric cars, AI and space travel. So why must these investments go directly into the hands of a few individuals to make all the final decisions (and who have bad habits of not paying their workers btw)? Why can't we make these investments through democratically accountable teams, perhaps via some…
#2: Got me there with colonizing Mars: that will be rich-only. However, proliferation of electric cars combined with breakthroughs in energy storage combined with local solar power can end up as a VERY big public dividend: effectively, it becomes possible to invest in technology that drastically reduces the self-sustaining costs and carbon footprint of the individual. Combine that with growing your own food and you're your own little generation ship: it's a drastic change from traditional labor/capital society, because you can set up your little 'life capsule' and then spend your days doing whatever, perhaps working on OpenAI :)
And if it's good enough for Elon it's good enough for everybody else: imagine if not just megacorporations but ordinary citizens were subsidized to convert to this battery-pack-based, solar-powered energy consumption model. We could use plain human self-interest to drive widespread adoption of tech that would reduce the catastrophic swerve into a far more chaotic and destructive global climate.
I'd call that a public dividend, worldwide.
I have all the respect in the world for what Mr. Musk has accomplished, but it has come at an amazing cost to the people around him. He is worshiped from afar but reviled by many the closer you get to his inner circle. Go read "Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future." The question I always ask myself with the people who move mountains is what cost did that progress come at? What would someone'…
People that worship another person generally aren't well informed. For example, people look at Elon Musk like he's a pop culture icon -- I see people talking about him on my news feed all the time, yet these people aren't even technical. It's just a way for someone to identify to some type of group. Oh look what Elon's doing, he's so great. My reaction is, why are you sharing press articles about this person? Does it…
Some HN commenters never cease to amaze with their negativity...
When it comes to jealousy people ignore abilities and focus on luck.