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's spouse, kids, friends, etc. say about the person?
"I admit that mathematical science is a good thing. But excessive devotion to it is a bad thing.
If we evolved a race of Isaac Newtons, that would not be progress. For the price Newton had to pay for being a supreme intellect was that he was incapable of friendship, love, fatherhood, and many other desirable things. As a man he was a failure; as a monster he was superb." -- Aldus Huxley
In Mark Manson's new book[0] he talks about how humans can excel at very few things, often barely one, and that "being a good person" for lack of a better phrase counts as one. It seems obvious in hindsight, but struck me because I hadn't thought of it that way before.
(The book is incredible, by the way. I've already read it twice, just like Derek Sivers. Recommend it highly.)
I haven't read the book, but this doesn't seem to fit with what's known about general intelligence, nor the examples of polymaths from the renaissance period.
I suspect the causes are societal, from the constraints placed on our time and freedom to explore and become well rounded.
I don't like the implication that you have to choose between excellence/"supreme intellect" and niceness. It excuses all sorts of assholes who believe that about themselves. What's wrong with being someone like Terry Tao?
Counterpoint from the philosopher George Bernard Shaw:
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
While I understand and agree with the point you're making, I think it's also important to acknowledge we're all different, we're all good at different things and we all eventually fulfill some purpose.
Some of us are great at spending time with our wives and taking the kids to soccer practice. We fill our lives with family and friends, and get immense joy from that. We're so busy, likely, we'll never do anything "noteworthy" or wind up in the Guinness Book of Records. (Note: I'm not in any way implying that's a bad thing, I'm simply stating it as likely true)
Others in this world maybe are not so good socially, or maybe do spend "too much" time at work, and do burn out those around them. They do, however, achieve greatness that genuinely moves the entire human race forward.
It just so happens that second kind of person is around one in a few hundred million, so there really aren't so many around.
I believe the humanity moves on its way naturally anyway, those trying desperately to move mountains are simply wasting their lives here on Earth. A balanced way is a key to everything.
Humanity moves on its way naturally because it is made up of individuals. If none of those individuals did anything useful or never "moved mountains", humanity would never move forward or progress.
Why is that question so important to you? A lot of people are drains on everyone around them and they don't move mountains. If the quest is valuable enough to society, it far outweighs the costs to a single man's relationships.
As a rationalization for why you yourself would not want to live that way, that's fair enough. Neither would I.
Precisely, I won't name names but there are a few "drains" on family that I know that didn't start spaceX or tesla, yet they are not utilitarian positive contributors, I'd say.
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 make you feel better about yourself?
People share in an effort to communicate to the world something about themselves. The feel better part will come from their friends and family knowing about what makes them tick and strangers the might be able to recognize a kindred spirit and in turn extend their network of people they enjoy hanging out with.
let me know if you need me to break down other basic human instincts for you :-)
People talk about Elon because he has interesting ideas, does interesting things, and inspires a lot of other people. If many young people (or even old people), watch this interview, it seriously has the potential to make the world a slightly better place, if at least some of them try to put his ideas into practice.
Does it make you feel better about yourself to shit on someone who's excited about electric cars and space travel even if they're not particularly technical?
That's for their spouse, kids, friends, etc to say. I'll judge business people by their businesses, musicians by their music, and so on and so forth. If I meet them personally, then I might make personal judgments, but I've no interest in the tabloid side of tech news.
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.
Elon Musk is worth $12B. He's a businessman. He lives in a giant mansion. Ghandi owned like 5 things. I'm not knocking Musk, but this is a strange interpretation of a very successful capitalist.
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.
There are any number of people who are far more toxic to those around them without having accomplished any significant progress in the process, so Elon Musk is a poor choice of target for that criticism.
I don't understand why you would be concerned and not elated by his effect on society. Tech has been stuck for 40 years in most major industries, and in a time when it seems impossible to overcome the entrenched incumbents of those industries, here comes a person who shows us that it is in fact possible. Now people have hope that our future will be decided not by frail, unmoving conglomerates, but instead by nimble and innovative start ups. There are going to be more science ventures thanks to that.
I want to respond to you, because you seem to view Musk as obviously great. And you know, how could someone not like him? I can tell you there's something about him that rubs me the wrong way. Maybe it's because his only big success is Paypal, which you can argue was him being in the right place at the right time. All his other ventures, while more grandiose, have not yet been super successful. So I don't feel like he deserves a lot of the hero-worship he gets. And certain things, rockets exploding and his Tesla autopilot causing fatalities, make it seem like his companies are cutting corners and not actually great companies.
Elon definitely is not a fluke like you imply. He is not the best eng but it is his relentless work ethic (read: no other timesink in his life at all) that puts him above the others. Have you ever worked more than 100hrs a week? I don't even think I've managed it once but Elon does it every week. To admire elon, you must first understand what that means.
You say he has only had one successful venture but before Paypal he sold his company Zip2 to Compaq for some 300M. Then he started x.com, which only later merged with Peter and max's company. Elons x.com brought more than 50% of the staff. This means that he was a huge component in Paypals success no way you cut it.
We have established that he is no fluke, now lets examine your criticisms of Tesla and SpaceX and why you should not have them at all. Tesla is not perfect but there is absolutely, 100%, no other way to have sustainable transport than electric cars. Even if Tesla used child labour with huge workplace accident rates, you should still support them, because no matter how you cut it, we will destroy our atmosphere permanently without huge electric car adoption. Nevermind all of the other parts of the power industry that are hugely polluting.
On to SpaceX. They are saving taxpayers millions of dollars every year by allowing governments to cut satellite launch costs by 4x over Boeing or Lockheed.
In short:
Elon is not a fluke and has super human work ethic
Tesla is our one shot at everyone not dying en masse by the time I'm in 40s (head in the sand if it soothes you but thats the case)
SpaceX saves millions of taxpayer dollars every year.
> Even if Tesla used child labour with huge workplace accident rates, you should still support them, because no matter how you cut it, we will destroy our atmosphere permanently without huge electric car adoption. Nevermind all of the other parts of the power industry that are hugely polluting.
You should be advocating for international cooperation and government action, not a company that creates electric sports cars.
That is totally a reasonable thing to suggest, and examining it brings to light the importance of Tesla.
Government is like Thor's hammer. If you can wield it, you wield tremendous power.
Think of mega corps as Thor, wielding the hammer. This is how government works: A mega corp pays for politics to happen in a certain way, and thus change happens at huge scale through taxpayer money.
However, you may not wield the hammer if you are not Thor, because it's too heavy. Analogously, lobbying is too expensive for small players, and to be a politician advocating risky things without a huge payout is career suicide.
Advocating governmental change is a nice thought, but how government actually works is by having enough cash. Be a huge mega-corp and then paying lobbyists that pay people inside of government.
Or, you could simply grow a company and do your best to be completely independent of government while stile abiding by their rules and operating under fair laws. That's what Tesla is doing.
At this point, your baseless bias against Tesla should be clear to yourself. If you can take this revelation with humility, that you have been advocating against the exact thing that humanity truly needs, I declare you in the top 98% of people for emotional self-control. It is not an easy thing to accept that you're wrong, but I've spelt it out.
And we need your help, stranger, because time is running out super fast and there are millions out there making the same misjudgment that you have here, but some of them are a genuine threat to Tesla's fate.
It is a race against the clock to get everyone behind this guy.
Because the message of "only superhumans who work 80 hour weeks can accomplish great things" is not the kind of effect I want on society. We have enough of that as it is. We need less of it, not more.
Does it not concern you that tech has been stuck for 40 years? That space has been stuck for however many years? Despite all this hard work everywhere? I'd rather resolve those problems at the core than address the symptoms or possibly worsen them by betting everything on one person and hope they will bring us salvation.
>"only superhumans who work 80 hour weeks can accomplish great things" is not the kind of effect I want on society. We have enough of that as it is. We need less of it, not more.
I don't think you know what you're talking about here. Let me explain why 80 hours a week is a good thing.
At large, people lead lives of quiet struggle against forces they do not understand. They continue this because they are in a local minimum of daily energy expenditure, and like simulated anealling, you stay stuck unless you keep putting in more energy. Women return to husbands that beat them because that's their local minimum, even though they have the option of returning to the dating pool, moving out, creating a new social circle: These tasks are putting energy into their lives so that they might arrive at a new minimum with a value much lower than the previous minimum. You could say that they are better off for it, thanks to the energy put in.
She puts in more energy, then she ends up closer to the global minimum.
This can be applied to society. If people are relaxed as they are today, they are probably in a local minimum and not the global minimum. But in some form, analogously, the wife beating continues, and we simply rationalize it like you have shown here, and we continue.
I am 22. I assume you're in your 30s/40s. We have no future, my friend, and it's thanks to collective 'shrugging it off' decade after decade since WW2. I won't accept that, and you should not either. You are making up silly excuses to protect yourself from the truth which is 'Wow, America really does need this man, and he truly is doing great things'.
Because Musk is not perfect. What makes him great is also what makes him terrible. And people seem to want to ignore the first part and focus on the second part around here.
Well okay, but there are more constructive ways to put it than the comment I responded to. How about something like, 'while celebrating Musk's achievements, we shouldn't forget that not everything a great man does is worth emulating, e.g. let's not copy the working conditions of SpaceX.'
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's spouse, kids, friends, etc. say about the person?