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9 Books That Elon Musk Thinks Everyone Should Read

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RobStark

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Jul 2, 2013
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9 Books That Elon Musk Thinks Everyone Should Read

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Elon Musk is a lifelong reader, and books ranging from "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" to "Benjamin Franklin: An American Life" have shaped his outlook.

When people ask Elon Musk how he learned to build rockets, he has a simple answer.
"I read books," he reportedly likes to say.

Musk — who was smart enough to get into a physics Ph.D. program at Stanford University and then drop out because it didn't seem that relevant to him — has always been hungry for the written word.

In its profile of the Tesla and SpaceX CEO, the New Yorker observed that he was picked on a lot during his South African childhood, and he would retreat into fantasy (J.R.R. Tolkien) and science fiction (Isaac Asimov) to cope.

As we'll see in the following slides, books have always been important to Musk: inspiring him as a child, giving him heroes as a young adult, and helping him to learn rocket science while launching SpaceX.



The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R. Tolkien

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adam

Benjamin Franklin: An American Life by Walter Isaacson

Einstein: His Life and Universe by Walter Isaacson


Structures: Or Why Things Don't Fall Down by J.E. Gordon

Ignition!: An informal history of liquid rocket propellants by John D. Clark

Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies by Nick Bostro

Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel

Howard Hughes: His Life and Madness by Donald L. Barlett and James B. Steele




Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-favorite-books-2014-10?op=1#ixzz3FULeLAqt









 
I read Superintellugence and it's a great read. Probably a good book to revisit in a few years...

Bostrom's paper on the Simulation argument is a consice and interesting read aswell (Elon commented on the Smulation theory recently). Here is a link to that paper:
Are You Living in a Simulation?

Also, seeing the above list I'm think I hope Elon's lufe doesn't end up like Howard Hughes'.
 
I read Superintellugence and it's a great read. Probably a good book to revisit in a few years...

Bostrom's paper on the Simulation argument is a consice and interesting read aswell (Elon commented on the Smulation theory recently). Here is a link to that paper:
Are You Living in a Simulation?

Also, seeing the above list I'm think I hope Elon's lufe doesn't end up like Howard Hughes'.
Agreed, that was quite interesting, thanks for the link.
 
I read Superintellugence and it's a great read. Probably a good book to revisit in a few years...

Bostrom's paper on the Simulation argument is a consice and interesting read aswell (Elon commented on the Smulation theory recently). Here is a link to that paper:
Are You Living in a Simulation?

Thanks for that article, it was quite interesting. I almost want to break this topic off into a new thread because I'm quite fascinated by it. I must say that was hard to follow sometimes, but I think I got the gist of it......it seems to be on the same lines of the book 'The Hidden Reality'.
 
Thanks for that article, it was quite interesting. I almost want to break this topic off into a new thread because I'm quite fascinated by it. I must say that was hard to follow sometimes, but I think I got the gist of it......it seems to be on the same lines of the book 'The Hidden Reality'.

One of the most interesting conclusions to the argument/theory, that I can not find any fault with logically, is that if we (humans) sometime in the future start running "ancestor simulations" then extremely likely we our selves are (in) a simulation. Also the fact there there could be layers upon layers of simulations (simaulations within the simulations) and that it would be virtually impossible to know if you are in "the original" or "real" reality. Sort of like the "Turtles all the way down" paradox. Fascinating indeed.
 
One of the most interesting conclusions to the argument/theory, that I can not find any fault with logically, is that if we (humans) sometime in the future start running "ancestor simulations" then extremely likely we our selves are (in) a simulation. Also the fact there there could be layers upon layers of simulations (simaulations within the simulations) and that it would be virtually impossible to know if you are in "the original" or "real" reality. Sort of like the "Turtles all the way down" paradox. Fascinating indeed.

So I was thinking, would the bots that control the stock market be a sub or mini simulation? We have created technology that now learns on its own and can learn from other bots. If so, we have already created the technology to eventually get to human simulations, therefore it is number 3, and we are in a simulation ourselves.
 
He should add "Asimov: I, Robot" to the list, then he wouldn't be so afraid of AI. That book was written to answer those worries...
Asimov always presumes that AI develops under circumstances where safeguards are in place to prevent it from taking action to harm humans, or where it can be contained when it goes awry. I think it's at least as likely for it to develop without such precautions; it wouldn't surprise me at all for AI to arise by accident and without our awareness, more like Terminator, Mass Effect, or Neuromancer. Either because we weren't trying to develop AI, or because we were trying and it happened faster than we expected.