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Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

(www.ycombinator.com)
1106 points sama | 2 comments | 15 Sep 16 18:05 UTC | HN request time: 0.594s | source
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iMuzz ◴[15 Sep 16 18:20 UTC] No.12508474[source]▶
Question/Answer I found interesting:

Sama> How should someone figure out how they should be useful?

Elon> Whatever this thing is you are trying to create.. What would be the utility delta compared to the current state of the art times how many people it would affect?

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milkytron ◴[15 Sep 16 18:55 UTC] No.12508769[source]▶
Certainly very interesting, in fact I wrote this down when I heard it. And if you look at the projects he's working on (Renewable energy, cars able to powered by renewable energy, and preserving life outside of Earth), they all affect a great portion of humanity, and have a very large affect.
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soufron ◴[15 Sep 16 19:20 UTC] No.12508992[source]▶
Affect like how? As of today they're useless, except for Tesla who's motivating car automakers to go towards autonomous cars - but they had the tech before.
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1. milkytron ◴[15 Sep 16 19:36 UTC] No.12509127[source]▶
I suppose I should have wrote "will affect". If we end up colonizing Mars, or even getting one person to land on Mars, I think Space X will have been involved in creating competition in the aerospace industry at the least.

My point was that his ideas are ones that have potential for huge amounts of change. Whether or not we will see that change is another matter.

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2. tempestn ◴[15 Sep 16 20:39 UTC] No.12509638[source]▶
SpaceX could also end up having a huge effect on the availability and affordability of high speed internet access.