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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

#481

Post by kragen »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #374
sneak wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, kudos to Scribd for perhaps the maximum LOC codebase for "how to make plain text completely fucking unusable". There's real irony there in it being an article about delivering value to society through making useful technology.

OK, I was able to clean it up into plain text and post it to Pastebin: http://pastebin.com/vcEe9KWP Used the $$ selector in Chrome to find Scribd's .ff0 elements, copied them into SublimeText, did some regex work to clean out the tags (a span element for every line? with absolute positioning? Really Scribd?), and then exploited the fact that paragraphs got jammed together with no whitespace between the last punctuati…

Your work is awesome. Thank you so much. Here, I pasted it into a gist so that it's not in a typewriter font. I thought it would also fix the lines being 25 words long but it didn't, but it's still an improvement: https://gist.github.com/anonymous/3ea317a1f71bbfeca6df5d8469...

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#482

Post by muninn_ »

Applejinx wrote: post #328
muninn_ wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hmm that doesn't seem to make sense. Free markets (which include the vast majority of countries on the planet) enable people to create wealth. Maybe some sort of mix of a planet-wide initiative and the normal free markets we have would make sense. Calling free markets "the problem" doesn't really do anything for anybody.

Free markets are an optimal pachinko machine for distributing capital, that needs no oversight or central direction. It doesn't generate its own pachinko balls, that's utterly orthogonal. Free market capitalism is what you DO with a population that has disposable income. You can't feed the bottom of it into the top, it doesn't even work that way. It's not even optimal for reaching the highest developments of ideas an…

How are you defining wealth?

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#484

Post by tim333 »

marmshallow wrote: post #478
sneak wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, kudos to Scribd for perhaps the maximum LOC codebase for "how to make plain text completely fucking unusable". There's real irony there in it being an article about delivering value to society through making useful technology.

LOC?

lines of code

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#485

Post by jbpetersen »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #374
sneak wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, kudos to Scribd for perhaps the maximum LOC codebase for "how to make plain text completely fucking unusable". There's real irony there in it being an article about delivering value to society through making useful technology.

OK, I was able to clean it up into plain text and post it to Pastebin: http://pastebin.com/vcEe9KWP Used the $$ selector in Chrome to find Scribd's .ff0 elements, copied them into SublimeText, did some regex work to clean out the tags (a span element for every line? with absolute positioning? Really Scribd?), and then exploited the fact that paragraphs got jammed together with no whitespace between the last punctuati…

Some prettiness to go with what you already accomplished: https://cdn.rawgit.com/JeffreyBPetersen/5a3198c940ccca39ff63...

Unfortunately the transcript is missing past a point. I haven't checked to see if that's the case in the original document.

edit - Looks like I should've refreshed the thread first: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12514873

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#486

Post by [deleted] »

jbpetersen wrote: post #485
thaumaturgy wrote: post #374

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OK, I was able to clean it up into plain text and post it to Pastebin: http://pastebin.com/vcEe9KWP Used the $$ selector in Chrome to find Scribd's .ff0 elements, copied them into SublimeText, did some regex work to clean out the tags (a span element for every line? with absolute positioning? Really Scribd?), and then exploited the fact that paragraphs got jammed together with no whitespace between the last punctuati…

Some prettiness to go with what you already accomplished: https://cdn.rawgit.com/JeffreyBPetersen/5a3198c940ccca39ff63... Unfortunately the transcript is missing past a point. I haven't checked to see if that's the case in the original document. edit - Looks like I should've refreshed the thread first: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12514873

[deleted]

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#487

Post by Theodores »

canicode wrote: post #464
WWKong wrote: post #417

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they never realized they were missing something, then nothing was lost. Net happiness = same level.

You could say that for just about anything, including Tesla...

Tesla make a lot of people happy but there must be accountants at Jaguar, BMW etc. who have not enjoyed losing sales to the California start up. However there are many happy Tesla customers and only a small handful of motor company accountants. Obviously there are sales staff too plus suits in the oil companies who have been pained by Tesla, but still the balance is a net happy one. Compare with Tony Blair, makes his business cronies happy but inflicts more misery.

Footballers do have a connection with their fans and it is their admiration that is sought far more than money. So they are very much in it to bring happiness to the world, to put on the show. I don't see them working for free though.

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#488

Post by lutorm »

Paul_S wrote: post #335
lutorm wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually don't think that most people make decisions about their careers based on maximizing profit at all. In fact, I think very few people would choose a soul-sucking job running against their values just because it pays more.

The argument isn't about soul-sucking jobs, but about jobs that don't contribute to society. I'm sure there are people out there who enjoy cold-calling and scamming people. But to address your argument: you missed the "opportunity" bit. If you're a well-off, well educated person you can choose to do whatever you feel like and I'm sure some people do without worrying about money (perhaps they have lots already). Most…

Speaking from my own experience, I've known quite a few people working in factories that didn't want "desk jobs" or to be "paper pushers", even if those jobs paid more. And some even had the turned down promotion offers to prove it.

I didn't miss the opportunity bit. It seems your logic there is backwards: It's precisely if I can choose to do whatever I feel like that I have opportunity, and precisely those people you agree may have other goals than maximizing profit.

Sure, if you have no money and have an "opportunity" to flip burgers, most people would take that job even if they were vegans. That's survival, but I don't think that says much about what they would choose to do.

A better example I think is when people decide to go back to school because they've realized they only get shitty jobs without education. In that situation, they could choose to do whatever. Do most people find a list of best-paying jobs and pick the one at the top to decide what they should study? I think they do not.

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#489

Post by aspir »

nichochar wrote: post #275
djcooley wrote: post #228

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'…

This is true throughout history. Publicly selfless heroes (Gandhi, Nelson Mandela, Elon Musk) often have to "sacrifice" (is it conscious?) their private selves, to be able to be the incarnation of what their work is. It bothers a lot of people, personally I am fine with it and would make the same decision. I think it's a personality thing.

Make no mistake, the lifelong servitude of Mandela and Gandhi is so far beyond the work of a businessman, however groundbreaking and amazing Musk is, that it's a societal disgrace to humanity to reference them as equals. I write this as someone who respects and admires Musk as much as anyone in this forum, if not more.

Re: Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

#490

Post by tehchromic »

hx87 wrote: post #91
tehchromic wrote: post #50

What's interesting about a savant is how they can end up defined by what they don't see. I have nothing but respect for Elon, however I think he is working on the wrong problems. That's not his fault and he is most definitely making his best effort. However he's the paragon of a paradigm of a European culture which is as unsustainable as it is powerful.

So what are the right problems to work on, and what paradigms are more sustainable than European culture?

I am not sure that all European cultural paradigms are unsustainable, but I said that the one Elon is working under seems to me to be. I think Elon is doing the best he can working on the problems that are available for him to work on.

To me, one wrong problem is anything that perpetuates the automobile/road system as is. I think the whole thing needs to be completely rebuilt.

To me the enormity of our problems from a sustainability standpoint are so great that anything but a massive mobilization and shift in our way of life is arranging deck chairs on the titanic.

I think that religion was a science of mobilizing public opinion, and I think science has replaced it, and has yet to do as good a job, and has yet to recognize that fact.

I think the right problem is how to manage mass social/cultural change in a very brief period of time.

I'll say again, Elon is doing a fantastic job within the paradigm of our current industrialized cultural norms, which says that we can keep on with business as usual and make some adjustments to our systems ... but I think it's not enough by an order of magnitude, and so that's why I think minds like Elon's should be working on manufacturing a social/cultural reality that prepares us for a huge change in lifestyle.

To me that's a problem of social engineering, same as religion, and same as building a company, and Elon excels at it.

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