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Scott Alexander’s review of a 2015 biography of Elon Musk. Elon Musk, to me, is one of the world’s most confusing people. He’s simultaneously both one of the smartest people in the world, creating billions of dollars of value in companies like Tesla and SpaceX, and one of the dumbest, in burning billions on Twitter. Scott’s review I think is a good explanation of what’s up with Musk.
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yeah but you can teach someone management. but not everyone can learn differential equations well. the difference between going to the moon or not is technical skills.
I disagree. Elite managers like Napoleon or Elon have something else that distinguishes them from normal people. Just like with differential equations, some people are never going to be even mildly charismatic and just aren't leadership material. Surely you've seen them, they don't want to talk, they fumble social things...
Just as there are mathematical and social dunces, there are mathematical prodigies and management prodigies. Elon had this thing where he could quickly judge whether someone was really competent in a few minutes and so he hires the best people and motivates them to give it their all. Napoleon could remember the names of his soldiers even after many years and form really close relationships with them, he had huge charismatic power. A bunch of people wrote about how Hitler would just verbally monster people, bully them into going along with him - he had a special power that entrances and frightens people even long after his death. This stuff can't be learnt at Wharton Business School.
Without really good management, the engineers can't reach peak performance, teams get bogged down with delays and overruns and waste. Otherwise, NASA would easily be able to go back to the Moon, it would be a trivial task! Engineers haven't gotten stupider, technology hasn't deteriorated, it must be management that's the missing link.
Or take the Boeing MCAS system that tried to turn 737's into dive-bombers. Billion-dollar companies like Boeing have access to engineers who can make guidance systems work. It's not that hard. They did it before. But because of their lax management, cost-cutting and parcel-passing, hundreds of people died:
yes becase the math and engineering was already figured out. management is important, as I agree with you there, but engineering is what stands in the way of something being possible or not, even with the best managers the world. if the equations cannot be solved, then it is literally impossible to get to the moon. not impossible in an abstract sense, but literally cannot be done.
That's the difference between necessary and sufficient. Yet sufficient can be way more important than neccessary.
Copper is necessary to make phones. If you have no copper, you can have no Iphone, categorically. But it's in no way even remotely sufficient. The Trojans had copper! >5% of the work is in raw material extraction. 95%+ of the value is in stuff like refining, design, chip manufacturing, software... Iphones need copper but they're not about copper like a spear might be.
Maybe in 1750 it really was about finding an engineer, or better an engineer who knew what he was doing. But today there are loads of engineers who can do pretty straightforward mathematics, the real substance of all our problems is in management, policy, quality-control, supply chains, efficiency...
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