site banner
non_radical_centrist  1yr ago (astralcodexten.com)   2453 thread views

Book Review: Elon Musk[Scott Alexander]

astralcodexten.com

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.

8
Top Bottom Old Controversial Comments
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

"Smart" is such a misleading word. There's no linear "smartness" scale, at least not for anything useful. Yes, you can use measures like IQ, but they are mostly useless for anything but very vague correlations. One can routinely win Math Olympiads and behave in most idiotic ways in other regards. A lot of very strong mathematicians dabble in super-weird beliefs, example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_chronology_(Fomenko) A lot of Physics PhD could say and do stupidest things and make stupidest decisions in life and business. One can be universally dumb, but I don't think it's useful to say one is universally smartest about everything. Being smart about business s one thing, and about topology is all another.

Being smart about business s one thing, and about topology is all another.

and the latter correlates with g better. that is what I mean by intelligence.

You are free to do so, but it's by no means an obvious decision. I would say a person managing a huge complex enterprise - successfully - may be considered as intelligent as a topologist, who couldn't manage a lemonade stand. It is true that the nature of their achievement is different, but I see no obvious reason why we should prefer one to another.

companies can go for long periods without CEOs. losing coders would be a disaster for a company like Meta or Google. An outage for example needs someone whose specialty is fixing the problem, which may be very technical in nature, but management can be done by many people and is a more inclusive skill than being capable of coding well. They are both smart, but a top coder wins out in the IQ game compared to a top manager.

companies can go for long periods without CEOs. losing coders would be a disaster for a company like Meta or Google

Losing all coders - sure. Losing one coder - nope. Of course if you compare one Elon Musk to the collective intellectual capacity of all programmers in Meta or Google combined, he's likely lose, as would any single human. But that's hardly a fair comparison.

but management can be done by many people and is a more inclusive skill

Management can be done poorly by many people. Doing it well is a skill not unlike any other skill, and probably less frequent than the ability to write Python scripts.

They are both smart, but a top coder wins out in the IQ game compared to a top manager.

What's "the IQ game" and by which rules is it played?

nice job with the selective quoting. Going by SAT scores, the expected IQ of a computer science major is higher compared to a business major.

Who cares about SAT scores? So, a score designed to predict academic success is correlated with academic success. I guess good job to whoever designed it. But when we get out of the class and into the real life, who cares about SAT scores? I don't think anybody does.

What is this place?

This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.

The weekly Culture War threads host the most controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy; if in doubt, post!

Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts. You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.


Why are you called The Motte?

A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently, it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey", originally identified by philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."

On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.


New post guidelines

If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it. A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).

Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.

If in doubt, please post it!


Rules


Recommended Posts And Communities

Recommended Realtime Chats