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Elon Musk on How to Build the Future

(www.ycombinator.com)
1106 points sama | 4 comments | 15 Sep 16 18:05 UTC | HN request time: 0s | 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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Paul_S ◴[15 Sep 16 22:31 UTC] No.12510398[source]▶
What about all the people working in marketing, software patent lawyers, drug dealers? You want them to quit their jobs?

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Let me make my point in a less obtuse way. Most people make decisions about their careers based on opportunity and maximising profit. No one becomes a footballer to make the world a better place. This would all be fine as long as the capitalist market rewarded choices that make the world a better place. Obviously it does not and it's not the fault of a footballer that we as a civilisation choose to channel our available resources their way and not towards frivolous play like space exploration.

If anyone ever figures out a way to make the free market choose the greater good they will win all the Nobel prizes forever (we won't need Nobel prizes after that).

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rlau26 ◴[15 Sep 16 23:16 UTC] No.12510652[source]▶
It's a team effort, not necessarily an individual effort.

The people in marketing are the ones helping to bring the positive utility-delta stuff to light, so the utility delta actually happens.

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1. Paul_S ◴[15 Sep 16 23:35 UTC] No.12510756[source]▶
That strategy is similar to our current best strategy for bringing peace by killing more people than the enemy. It's proven to work but it is very wasteful on both sides.
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2. maroonblazer ◴[16 Sep 16 03:29 UTC] No.12511637[source]▶
Segmenting a market, analyzing user needs, determining optimal pricing and developing effective messaging (among other things) is wasteful...how?
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3. AstralStorm ◴[16 Sep 16 07:02 UTC] No.12512355[source]▶
Segmenting a market is often suboptimal. See how Intel is "segmenting" their CPU market by hard locking features in "consumer" CPUs. This effectively means they are not available unless you pay big big money.
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4. davidivadavid ◴[16 Sep 16 08:29 UTC] No.12512638{3}[source]▶
Why is that suboptimal? It certainly is suboptimal for consumers in the short run, since it helps Intel increase producer surplus. How that producer surplus is used to create better technology has a pretty important role in determining whether it's optimal in the longer run.