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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: 0.483s | 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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1. CodeMage ◴[16 Sep 16 00:10 UTC] No.12510967[source]▶
Believe it or not, there are different motivations people have for choosing their careers. Some become footballers because they want to rake in as much money as Beckham, others because they enjoy football so much that they decide that's what they want to do all the time. I'm pretty sure most people don't have just one overriding motivation for what they do, but an amalgam of different factors. Your statement about maximizing profit as a primary motivator is less of a factual statement and more of a revelation about your own motivations.
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2. Paul_S ◴[16 Sep 16 00:32 UTC] No.12511082[source]▶
Most of the world population doesn't have the kind of opportunities you do. You are probably at the top 5% of the 7 billion population. Chances are you can choose between a 100k job and a 120k job that you find unsavory and maybe you choose the lower paid one. Most of the population has different choices to make. You are the one projecting your privelaged position onto the rest of the world.