
Elon Musk AMA - kfinley
https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2rgsan/i_am_elon_musk_ceocto_of_a_rocket_company_ama/
======
lukeqsee
I found his comment regarding learning to be the most insightful. It is a more
developed explanation of what I have found to be an effective strategy for me:

> One bit of advice: it is important to view knowledge as sort of a semantic
> tree -- make sure you understand the fundamental principles, ie the trunk
> and big branches, before you get into the leaves/details or there is nothing
> for them to hang on to.

Without the structure of prior knowledge, I never understand or remember
facts; however, when I've had the time to develop that "first principles"
knowledge, I can usually grasp and understand the significance of minutiae.

How do you of HN learn? Is it similar?

~~~
JeremyMorgan
It seems like common sense, but it's so difficult to do sometimes. I agree
completely.

When I first started learning Linux for example, I didn't just learn the
commands I needed to do certain things, I tackled everything. I spent months
and months learning everything I could about it. I bought a giant Linux book
and went from cover to cover. I learned about things I would never use (and
probably still haven't).

I pushed myself to recompile the kernel even though I didn't need to. Then I
did it probably 50 more times that month. No joke. Crashed my system. Rebuilt
it. Rinse, repeat.

After laying down that foundation in the 90s, I've kept up on it but Linux is
so very "easy" for me. Setting things up and getting work done is extremely
intuitive, far more so than it is in Windows or OSX. So when people ask me why
I prefer it I tell them it's a personal preference because it's so easy for
me, and I even I forget that foundation I laid.

I have taken on other pursuits the same way, such as development but I notice
any technology that I half ass learn just to get stuff done.. is hard.
Sometimes I wish I had enough time in my adult life to build such a strong
foundation in something like.. JavaScript for example. And I bet if I added up
the time I spent struggling in the beginning I would have been able to do just
that.

But yeah, long story short this is absolutely the best way to learn something.
Build that trunk.

~~~
graycat
You may find that, for some popular software _technologies_ now, so far no one
has organized the material into a solid tree with a trunk and a few large
branches that quickly provide good paths to any of the leaves. Instead you may
be looking at a noxious _vine_ or even a patch of jungle with some poisonous
plants and reptiles.

~~~
JeremyMorgan
I have definitely noticed this, which is part of the reason I haven't "dug
deep" with them, and instead learn enough of it to get a job done.

~~~
graycat
It takes good effort to organize a significant body of knowledge into a tree
with a few big, short branches.

------
mason240
The moderators of r/IAMA apparently deleted several of the highest voted
questions.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/2rgzgo/official...](http://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/2rgzgo/official_spacex_teslamotors_solarcity_subreddit/)

~~~
Cogito
Yeah, I've been following r/spacex for a little bit.

When they started trying to work out some good questions a day ago someone
suggested that everyone upvote the resulting questions but the mods there
quickly shut that down. [1]

The reasons given for deleting the comments was specifically what everyone was
trying to avoid, that is voting brigading. As far as I can tell no one was
asking for votes, simply working together to produce some high quality
questions.

[1] [https://i.imgur.com/lBCWvQh.png](https://i.imgur.com/lBCWvQh.png)

~~~
jacquesm
That's the attitude that they say murdered wikipedia. Rules are there to
foster a better community, not to kill off good community initiatives. As soon
as the adherence to the rules becomes more important than the quality of the
product you've basically lost it. The whole trick is to know when _not_ to
apply the rules. AMAs are an exceptional item and a different ruleset for AMAs
would not be all that hard to imagine. Pity.

~~~
jebus989
"Murdered" Wikipedia whose fifth pillar is "ignore all rules"?

~~~
jacquesm
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6612638](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6612638)

[http://www.gwern.net/In%20Defense%20Of%20Inclusionism](http://www.gwern.net/In%20Defense%20Of%20Inclusionism)

And many others like it.

~~~
jebus989
Sure editor numbers are in decline, that doesn't support your point. Ignore
All Rules is one of the fundamental principles the site was founded on.

~~~
jacquesm
The point is that that fundamental principle seems to be ignored by people
that prefer to bicker over the rules rather than to be otherwise productive:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8596682](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8596682)

And that this in turn is what drives editors away. So it _very much_ supports
my point.

~~~
darkmighty
Wikipedia at this point is one of the primary sources for _everything_ on the
internet. At the early days of wikipedia, you could pick any topic and there
would be major articles unwritten. It was far best to have _some_ article than
a great article. I can't comment exactly on the editor situation of the wiki,
but it's to be expected a shift to more specialized and aggressive "curation"
of articles, specially of more solidified topics. Wikipedia's fantastic
performance contradicts this argument.

~~~
jacquesm
> Wikipedia at this point is one of the primary sources for everything on the
> internet.

That is explicitly what it isn't, anything but that.

> I can't comment exactly on the editor situation of the wiki, but it's to be
> expected a shift to more specialized and aggressive "curation" of articles,
> specially of more solidified topics. Wikipedia's fantastic performance
> contradicts this argument.

Wikipedia would still be a fantastic resource if nobody contributed to it from
today forward. But that does not mean it couldn't be a whole lot better
without the army of lawyer wannabes that are in a tug of war over who gets to
have the most power over others by citing policies until the cows come home.

Lots of long time contributors have left because of this and the exodus is far
from over. I agree that there is an expected shift to curation but the
fantastic performance of wikipedia is not in any way evidence for there not
being a significant negative undercurrent at work.

That's just evidence of how good the concept originally was and how much
momentum it has built up.

Any kind of success will attract two kinds of people: those that wish to
contribute and those that see it as a means to their personal ends, to get a
piece of that success. Since wikipedia is not big on credit for contributions
the only place where people craving for recognition get to achieve their fix
is in becoming 'editors', and unfortunately the motivations of those editors
are not always pure.

See elsewhere in this thread for some of the more bizarre displays of such
behavior.

~~~
threeseed
Google uses it for their semantic searches and Apple/Microsoft use it for
their personal assistants. So this idea that Wikipedia isn't a primary source
of information is nonsense. It is.

Until it stops being the first search result for the majority of "typical"
searches it will remain a primary source of information.

------
sillysaurus3
Does anyone know why Musk believes so strongly that robot overlords are a
serious threat? I don't understand how wasting any time worrying about AI
taking over, Terminator-style, is productive. We're not going to be developing
Strong AI any time soon, so it's simply not a problem worth worrying about.
And if we do, the Strong AI won't be in any position to "take over." It
probably won't even want to take over. That's a very human trait, and Strong
AI wouldn't be human.

I'm wondering whether he was tricked by someone at DeepMind, perhaps the same
way people were tricked hundreds of years ago into thinking a chess-playing
robot was possible.

~~~
akanet
As far as I can tell, you have two main objections to prioritizing worrying
about Strong AI:

1) Strong AI is very far away, so no use worrying about it yet.

2) Strong AI if developed will not be likely to take over.

to which I would counterpoint with:

1) Sure, but when it happens, it will only happen once and thereafter will
likely be out of our hands and control. Thinking about the groundwork that
needs to go into safely developing an AI is cheap relative to the opportunity
cost of getting it wrong. Prevention, cure, etc.

2) If developed, Strong AI will likely have SOME goal. It's not that a Strong
AI will actively seek to rule humans, it will just have aims that will likely
consider us as disposable as ants. To quote Yudkowsky:

"The AI does not hate you, nor does it love you, but you are made out of atoms
which it can use for something else."

\-
[https://intelligence.org/files/AIPosNegFactor.pdf](https://intelligence.org/files/AIPosNegFactor.pdf)
(Artificial Intelligence as a Positive and Negative Factor in Global Risk)

~~~
FooBarWidget
I still don't buy the doom scenario. There is so much more to world domination
than just intelligence... like having the proper weapons. See [https://what-
if.xkcd.com/5/](https://what-if.xkcd.com/5/)

Pigs are also intelligent, but they never dominated humans because they don't
have / cannot use guns.

~~~
simonh
That is true, but if we can make an AI even slightly smarter than a human,
then it will be better at designing AIs than we are. It then designs an AI
even smarter than it, and so on. That is the progresion that leads to the
singularity. How smart could AIs go? There may be no practical upper limit.

If you have a super-genius AI, massively more intelligent than any human, how
do you know you are not being manipulated by it? Tricking us into disabling
it's safety protocols, or gaining multiply indirect controll over capabilities
dangerous to us, might be as easy for it as an adult tricking a 3 year old. We
could never know if we were safe from such a machine.

ed - Don't quite understand the downvotes.

~~~
Retric
"ed - Don't quite understand the downvotes."

With the full power of humanity you design the first AI which is smarter than
a person. It's then able to out do all of humanity and instantly design an
even better AI. _mind the gap._

Further intelegence is not a linear quantity as trading ex: improved poker
skills for _insanity_ is not a net gain. And _insanity_ is a real option which
is likely to plage most early AI attempts.

~~~
simonh
Voting on HN isn't about agreeing or disagreeing. It's about whether a post is
contributing to the debate or not.

Anyway, all of humanity isn't engaged in AI research and AIs are likely to be
duplicable so I think your first point is beside the point. As for Insanity,
yes that's quite possible. Developing high-functioning sentient AIs is likely
to be a long term endeavour. But still, I think it is one that will ultimately
be successful and this debate is about the consequences of that.

+1 for your engaging contribution. (see, that's how voting is supposed to
work)

~~~
ColinWright

      > Voting on HN isn't about agreeing
      > or disagreeing.  It's about whether
      > a post is contributing to the debate
      > or not.
    

That turns out not to be the case. It once was true, but as the community has
grown, so people have not been enculturated with those early ideas and
principles, and now many times people read something, disagree, downvote, and
move on, without ever providing counter-points, or engaging in the discussion.
It's a way to punish people you don't agree with, while avoiding having to
think.

Elsewhere[0] you commented about an item reappearing and having its votes ages
apparently reset. I hazard a guess that it was the mods playing with a
mechanism to prevent "item overload." There were about a dozen submissions of
the SpaceX launch, and each would fall a little way, the next would be
submittted, gain a few votes and comments, then fall away to be replaced by
another. One way of preventing the splitting of conversation might be to pick
a canonical submission, and then prevent it from falling too far, and thus
encouraging conversation only to happen in one place. Pure speculation, but it
would be a mechanism I would consider were I running a site like this.
Certainly there have been fewer instances lately of the "new" page being
overrun by breaking news that everyone wants to submit.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8844078](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8844078)

------
kakakiki
"The best teacher I ever had was my elementary school principal. Our math
teacher quit for some reason and he decided to sub in himself for math and
accelerate the syllabus by a year. We had to work like the house was on fire
for the first half of the lesson and do extra homework, but then we got to
hear stories of when he was a soldier in WWII. If you didn't do the work, you
didn't get to hear the stories. Everybody did the work."

Amazing.

------
whichdan
If you just want to read the questions/responses:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/tabled/comments/2rh6si/table_iama_i_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/tabled/comments/2rh6si/table_iama_i_am_elon_musk_ceocto_of_a_rocket/)

~~~
simple1
I also made a site
([http://www.amatranscripts.com](http://www.amatranscripts.com)) that
transcribes popular AMAs. Elon Musk's is here:
[http://amatranscripts.com/ama/elon_musk_2015-01-05.html](http://amatranscripts.com/ama/elon_musk_2015-01-05.html)

~~~
dmunoz
Nicely done. I've seen a couple of these sites, but I quite like the output of
yours.

Is there any logic as to what order the questions and replies are displayed on
the page? It doesn't seem to be either of reddit's 'top' or 'best' sorting.
Perhaps whatever order they landed in within the JSON?

~~~
simple1
The questions and answers are presented in the order that they were answered,
which I believe gives the best flow to the "interview".

------
reustle
Nice to see his sense of humor here too

[https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2rgsan/i_am_elon_musk...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2rgsan/i_am_elon_musk_ceocto_of_a_rocket_company_ama/cnfq6yo)

------
lotsofmangos
I am still reeling from having just learned that in Wernher Von Braun's book
'The Mars Project', it is proposed that the leader of the Martian government
when it is formed shall be known as the 'Elon'.

[https://i.imgur.com/65YR89H.png](https://i.imgur.com/65YR89H.png)

~~~
throwawaymars
The book says no such thing.
[http://books.google.com.uy/books?id=V16e-xQmyZQC&pg=PR5&sour...](http://books.google.com.uy/books?id=V16e-xQmyZQC&pg=PR5&source=gbs_selected_pages&cad=2#v=onepage&q&f=false)

Edit: There appears is a posthumously published book named Project Mars that
says that. Not sure if I trust it.

~~~
lotsofmangos
I confused things as there are two separate books with very similar titles by
Braun, 'Project Mars' (ISBN - 0973820330) and 'The Mars Project' (ISBN -
0252062272). The first is sci-fi and the second is technical.

Here's a pdf of Project Mars -
[http://www.wlym.com/archive/oakland/docs/MarsProject.pdf](http://www.wlym.com/archive/oakland/docs/MarsProject.pdf)

The reference to the Elon is on page 177.

I hadn't initially noticed the fact it was posthumously published in 2006,
however it would seem like an odd kind of forgery, if it is one.

Equally it does seem odd that Braun would choose Elon as the name of the Mars
leader, so perhaps it might be a real work but with Elon added as a joke by
the translator.

Or perhaps Braun chose the word Elon because he sometimes thought of leaders
as trees, or something, and it is all just a massive bit of luck.

Personally I'm starting to suspect another explanation however. And if I'm
right, there is an entire warehouse full of empty Elon Musk clones on ice,
waiting for the spirit of Wernher Von Braun to animate each one in turn, in
the event of damage occurring to the current corporeal vessel.

------
jacquesm
"When going through hell, keep going".

~~~
ChuckMcM
I saw that, great quote. I also love its corollary, "If you are digging
yourself into a hole, first stop digging."

~~~
ojbyrne
Not sure what the word is, but I don't think its "corollary." Its the anti-
corollary.

~~~
OscarCunningham
Niels Bohr: "Two sorts of truth: profound truths recognized by the fact that
the opposite is also a profound truth, in contrast to trivialities where
opposites are obviously absurd."

~~~
ChuckMcM
Ok, added that one to my quotations file.

------
icpmacdo
I really like this comment

[https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2rgsan/i_am_elon_musk...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/2rgsan/i_am_elon_musk_ceocto_of_a_rocket_company_ama/cnfprcf)

Saying that he has no idea what is going to happen with the launch tomorrow,
its a refreshing honesty.

I was also wondering on an semi unrelated note if HN had ever had AMA's from
interesting people? I am not preposing that they should start happening
though.

~~~
efuquen
Ha, that was one of my favorite answers. When I started reading the question I
kept thinking, you know he must of pulled that number out of his a* * (as Musk
likes to say). Had a huge smile when I read him admitting it.

Edit: If anyone knows how to get a double asterisk in an HN comment would be
grateful for the knowledge, was forced to add the unnecessary space. So far
tried the HTML number code, which didn't work, and the help has no guidance.

~~~
JacobAldridge
Asterisks * * (in Arc? Or just on HN?) is used to start and end _italics_ , so
has a tendency to disappear. I'm surprised to learn you got them with the
space - seems to do that when there's nothing to italicise.

------
axefrog
One thing I'd have liked to ask if I hadn't missed the window of opportunity
would be regarding his desire to go to Mars himself. I have often wondered
about the psychological effects of being effectively stranded on a barren,
lifeless planet potentially for the rest of your life. On Earth, we can "get
away from it all" and go to the country, go camping near a nice stream, listen
to birds sing, go for a swim in the ocean, sit in a nice garden and eat our
lunch, and so forth. How would one cope with the loss of all of that, not to
mention also having to deal with the long-term physiological effects of a
change in gravity?

~~~
grondilu
Throughout history men have probably lived through worse conditions, either
while being prisoners of war, stranded on a desert island and whatnot.

The way to cope with such harsh conditions is, I suppose, always the same :
hope of escaping and returning home.

~~~
eru
In this case, the coping strategies of martyrs seem more apt. "You are doing
it for the cause."

~~~
grondilu
That seems to work with Mars One, for instance.

------
sidcool
Elon Musk is a super star on Reddit. I am personally a big big fan. If you see
his responses, they are terse and snappy.

------
fubarred
In the US, up-vote for Challenger Schools (at least circa 1980's). They teach
successful behaviors and are worth every penny. (Reaching and accelerating
kids early is important.)

~~~
umbrae
Was that mentioned anywhere in the AMA? I can't seem to find a thing on that.

~~~
fubarred
Nope, Musk did [http://www.whps.co.za](http://www.whps.co.za) Merely an
observation that early environment shapes attitudes to life, learning, etc.
which can either drive out curiosity and/or ambition or amplify it. (Excluding
crucial social navigation and team dynamics, hitting most all of intelligence,
ambition, curiosity, confidence (and so on) to do well, but not developing one
or more of those tends to become self-limiting factor/s.) Overcoming adversity
(being bullied) also helps.

------
happyscrappy
>3.Our spacesuit design is finally coming together and will also be unveiled
later this year. We are putting a lot of effort into design esthetics, not
just utility. It needs to both look like a 21st century spacesuit and work
well. Really difficult to achieve both.

I don't understand how looks are a legitimate criterion.

------
jonpress
This guy has everything. Why is it that people feel an urge to praise him
right to his face? His ego is going to start leaking out of his eyeballs.

~~~
JesseObrien
Check out this video, he's very humble and down to earth. He's worthy of the
praise he gets.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOpmaLY9XdI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SOpmaLY9XdI)

~~~
jonpress
I didn't mean to say that he has a big ego. What I meant was that he probably
has to put some effort into not letting it 'get to his head'.

------
read
Q: What daily habit do you believe has the largest positive impact on your
life?

A: Showering

Q: Would you ever consider becoming a politician?

A: Unlikely

~~~
read
I'm starting to believe there's an odd property to curiosity. Unique
observations are threatening to people's identity.

Those were two actual questions asked to Elon along with his responses, and
the two that stood out for me the most. Did he mention showering because
that's the time he gets most of his ideas[1]? Did he say no to politics
because it's more likely to change the world through innovation[2]?

Result: 8 downvotes. It'd be enough if the comment was downvoted just once, to
sink in the page. That happens to everyone. But seven other people found it
imperative to make an authoritative statement on the matter. Impressive. Did
that keep their identity safe? Pushing threatening ideas away isn't the best
way to help rearrange the semantic tree in your mind.

Could there be an inverse correlation between being downvoted and having good
ideas? It shouldn't be a surprising discovery on valuable ideas if you
consider the nature of the most valuable startup ideas: look like bad ideas
but are good ideas.

So if you want to know if your ideas are good, it's not enough to see them
gain support. It's also important to see people turn against them.

I know HN guidelines discourage commenting on downvotes, because they make for
boring reading, but I'm starting to think being downvoted is a positive sign
of how dangerous your ideas are.

Are you being downvoted enough?

[1] [http://paulgraham.com/top.html](http://paulgraham.com/top.html)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8801803](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8801803)

edit: revised 80% of this after having a shower

~~~
DanBC
Your first post got downvotes because it is devoid of content. It just quotes,
with no comment or context, two questions and answers.

I'm not sure how you get the idea that you're somehow provoking people with
dangerous ideas.

~~~
read
Quotes are content, or at least a specific aggregation of them. The article's
title is context.

What I found as a dangerous idea was pointing out things you notice when you
are not sure why you notice them. Which is how the subconscious operates. Not
everything that makes you pause should initially have an explanation. The
majority of people's decisions occur without their awareness.

One thing I learned from this exercise was something I hadn't consciously
noticed before. That I feel pressured on HN to comment. I don't like that. I
want to do something about that.

------
singingfish
I live in australia and I have 4kwh of solar panels on my unoccluded WNW
facing roof. My electricity grid connection charge is around $300 AUD per year
(around USD 250 per year at current rates - which is about the same as my
annual electricity bill since I currently feed into the grid at the wholesale
rate). Given a 10 year payback time, how long will it take until a battery
array with say two days headroom and a small generator is cost effective for
me? Say I'm prepared to pay double that in order to mitigate market risk?

