
Why is there only one Elon Musk? Why is there so much low-hanging fruit? - yarapavan
https://guzey.com/why-is-there-only-one-elon-musk/
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vikramkr
Even with the disclaimer that the variables are all probably correlated, I
think the author is vastly vastly underestimating how strongly correlated
these variables are going to be. Raw mental power and creativity + long-term
planning and vision-making have a _lot_ of overlap. Energy and persistence
could basically be the same thing. Risk and pain tolerance is already captured
by energy, persistence, ambition. These seem to boil down to about 2
variables. Ambition to do big things, capability
(intellectual/physical/creative) to do big things. It's also missing a _huge_
variable (which is part of capability) in resource availability. Doesn't
matter how many of those characteristics you have if you're born in a war torn
region in syria and don't have the opportunity to get out. You could still
successfully pull yourself out of the situation and create a better life for
yourself, which could be more difficult than building a rocket to go to mars,
but the point is you won't be building the rocket, you'll be using your time
figuring out how to escape.

With those 2-3 aspects, I think you'll find that there are a few thousand or
tens of thousands of people at that level, which lines up with what we see.
There's more than one billionaire (and people like Einstein revolutionized
plenty without ending up on Forbes richest list). Throw in a bit of pure luck
for good measure (really helps to have a tech bubble going full speed at the
start of your career to get you the capital you need for later life, and on
the flip side I'm sure SpaceX wasn't any easier to run when the 3rd rocket
launch failed because of a really dumb little error that was nearly enough to
destroy the company).

~~~
guzey
I think the points you make are reasonable and it comes down to our feeling of
how much exactly of overlap there is + what percentile exactly are we talking
about here (what if to build SpaceX + Tesla one needed to be in 99.9%
percentile of one of the variables?) + the number of such traits and how much
they can compensate each other.

