Elon Musk

[Ulmo]

In fact, unlike Bonnie, right away it very, very much did indeed remind me precisely of Howard Hughes (and given her background, I rather wouldn't be surprised if Queen B won't agree with me...but am sure we'll shortly hear).
The reason is because the Hughes empire began not with movies or aviation or casinos and hotels, but with a magnificent innovation in drilling - the rotary bit:
View attachment 213445
A modern-day industry you might have heard of - oil production - is so dependent upon this invention that it's hard to come up with what ranks as second-most important.

Now, what I did not know but found out only upon creating this post is that it was not HHJr who created this, but his father. HHJr inherited the company lock, stock and oil barrel at the age of 19 (75% and then he bought out his relatives' shares).

So - there is an unexpected connection between Messrs Hughes and Musk. I'm not concerned that the latter will follow the former's path to paranoia and isolation, unless we consider Mars to be isolated. There is that matter of glamorous ladies, though....

What I learned from that ad is that my manner of speak that most people call "crazy sounding" was common back when my parents and grandparents were young; I'm not crazy sounding -- I just sound more like older people.

Reality check: there is no Second & Girard Streets in Houston, Texas now.

Apparently, I've never worked in drilling, because I've never seen those bits in action. I had fun watching a bunch of drilling youtubes right now.

 

[FlatSix911]

This looks like a logical sister company to partner with Hyperloop on tunneling.

Elon Musk teases Boring Company hat...so you know it's legit

Elon Musk unveils Boring Company hats
Commentary: The company that Musk promised would alleviate traffic congestion by drilling beneath the earth takes one more step toward reality

Wear one and be cool. Donald Trump has taught the world that your cause won't be taken seriously unless you have a hat. So it is that Elon Musk, who's been teasing for some weeks now that he's creating a company to drill holes beneath Los Angeles, has created a hat for his so-called Boring Company. He took to Twitter on Sunday to display the hat. It's black with a gold "The Boring Company" logo. Cleverly, the "O" in "Boring" has been filled in to look like a tunnel.

Should you have been unaccountably submerged for the last couple of months, the purpose of this company is to alleviate traffic congestion, which the Tesla CEO finds stifling in the extreme. Musk promised to start digging in February. He even teased images of tunnels being bored only a few weeks ago. With the release of this hat, it makes the concept of drilling being the next feather in Musk's, um, headgear, even more tantalizing. On Twitter, the excitement was palpable. Not necessarily for the company, you understand, but for the hat.

Simona Chitu, for example, was concerned that Musk hadn't tweeted a picture of himself wearing it. So she tweeted: "Elon, why do you never take selfies?" To which Musk replied: "Self-hatred." I contacted Musk to wonder whether there wasn't enough beige in the hat to make it truly boring. He didn't immediately reply. Still, the mere idea that he could make boring great again -- or even for the first time -- will make many salivate. You will wonder how you can get one. I cannot be sure. However, when a twitterer called Zedd told Musk: "need one," the Boring boss replied: "Will send one."

 

[IirisSeveri]

Elon Musk is trying to redefine transportation on earth and in space. Through Tesla Motors he is aiming to bring fully-electric vehicles to the mass market; at SpaceX he launches satellites and is working to send humans to other planets.

 

[replicant]

Elon Musk’s Billion-Dollar Crusade to Stop the A.I. Apocalypse

 

[Ulmo]

Candid moment before he knew he was live on camera:

This is in contrast to his very stoic presentation right then, and then again in the post-mission press briefing, where he attempted to remain serious looking, but in both of which he was happily beaming anyway.

 

[AudubonB]

A little help, please -

I have not been able to locate - not in the waitbutwhy series, not with a Google search, and I don't know where in Vance's biography to look -


where it is and exactly how Mr Musk worded his thoughts regarding how he thinks it vital for humanity that the more intelligent fraction keep having children, in order that the species not be flooded out by others on the spectrum.

I wanted to engage in dialog this with a Musk/Tesla fan, but as the topic borders on and can drift into eugenics, I think it important to quote him correctly, if possible.

¿Or is this apocryphal anyway?.....

 

[SarahsDad]

Excellent in-depth article about EM regarding Artificial Intelligence by Maureen Dowd at Vanity Fair. Interesting that he's the one putting the brakes on this technology. Elon Musk’s Billion-Dollar Crusade to Stop the A.I. Apocalypse

 

[ecarfan]

where it is and exactly how Mr Musk worded his thoughts regarding how he thinks it vital for humanity that the more intelligent fraction keep having children, in order that the species not be flooded out by others on the spectrum.
I wanted to engage in dialog this with a Musk/Tesla fan, but as the topic borders on and can drift into eugenics, I think it important to quote him correctly, if possible..

I have read the Vance biography but don't recall Musk saying that. I do recall him saying in an interview somewhere years ago that he (now I am very roughly paraphrasing) does not feel that the increasing human population is a problem and that there are technological solutions to the issues created by the 7 billion plus people now on our planet. This is one of the few issues where I disagree with him.

If you want to discuss this I suggest starting a new thread in this forum Energy, Environment, and Policy and move these posts to it. It's an important and very interesting issue.

 

[ecarfan]

Excellent in-depth article about EM regarding Artificial Intelligence by Maureen Dowd at Vanity Fair. Interesting that he's the one putting the brakes on this technology. Elon Musk’s Billion-Dollar Crusade to Stop the A.I. Apocalypse

I read that article just after it came out. Quite interesting, and a good way to get a handle on the wide ranging points of view about the peril and promise of AI. I am more on the Musk side of the spectrum on that issue: the potential peril is existential and should be taken seriously.

I also recommend reading this The Artificial Intelligence Revolution: Part 1 - Wait But Why

And of course the various Elon related articles on that website are a must read, in my opinion The Elon Musk Post Series - Wait But Why

 

[scaesare]

A little help, please -

I have not been able to locate - not in the waitbutwhy series, not with a Google search, and I don't know where in Vance's biography to look -


where it is and exactly how Mr Musk worded his thoughts regarding how he thinks it vital for humanity that the more intelligent fraction keep having children, in order that the species not be flooded out by others on the spectrum.

I wanted to engage in dialog this with a Musk/Tesla fan, but as the topic borders on and can drift into eugenics, I think it important to quote him correctly, if possible.

¿Or is this apocryphal anyway?.....

I just finished the Vance book... pretty sure it's in there towards the end...

 

[Green46]

I cant find anymore info regarding the school that he created for his kids and his employees' kids.

Does anybody have any more info on that?

 

[abasile]

I cant find anymore info regarding the school that he created for his kids and his employees' kids.

Does anybody have any more info on that?

Nothing especially new, but this is interesting: https://www.quora.com/What-do-we-kn...-can-put-to-work-as-parents-and-educationists

 

[AudubonB]

Found it - with a little help from scaesare -thanks! I'm disinclined to carve this out into a separate thread. First, this one is very active and gets a lot of views, and second, the proliferation of threads throughout TMC is an ongoing problem, and in my opinion creates far more difficulties than it solves.

From pp. 357-358 of Ashlee Vance's 2015 biography, Elon Musk:

Musk has talked about having more kids, and it's on this subject that he delivers some controversial philosophizing... "...smart people, you know, should at least sustain their numbers...if each successive generation of smart people has fewer kids, that's probably bad...wealth, education, and being secular are all indicative of...all correlate with low birth rate. I'm not saying only smart people should have kids. I'm just saying that smart people should have kids as well. They should at least maintain - at least be at replacement rate. And the fact of the matter is that I notice that a lot of really smart women have zero or one kid...Wow - that's probably not good."

 

[Fallenone]

Found it - with a little help from scaesare -thanks! I'm disinclined to carve this out into a separate thread. First, this one is very active and gets a lot of views, and second, the proliferation of threads throughout TMC is an ongoing problem, and in my opinion creates far more difficulties than it solves.

From pp. 357-358 of Ashlee Vance's 2015 biography, Elon Musk:

Musk has talked about having more kids, and it's on this subject that he delivers some controversial philosophizing... "...smart people, you know, should at least sustain their numbers...if each successive generation of smart people has fewer kids, that's probably bad...wealth, education, and being secular are all indicative of...all correlate with low birth rate. I'm not saying only smart people should have kids. I'm just saying that smart people should have kids as well. They should at least maintain - at least be at replacement rate. And the fact of the matter is that I notice that a lot of really smart women have zero or one kid...Wow - that's probably not good."

Reminds of the movie Idiocracy

 

[Zaxxon]

The Secrets to Elon Musk's Success (Vox.com interview with Ashlee Vance).

 

[ecarfan]

From pp. 357-358 of Ashlee Vance's 2015 biography, Elon Musk:

Musk has talked about having more kids, and it's on this subject that he delivers some controversial philosophizing... "...smart people, you know, should at least sustain their numbers...if each successive generation of smart people has fewer kids, that's probably bad...wealth, education, and being secular are all indicative of...all correlate with low birth rate. I'm not saying only smart people should have kids. I'm just saying that smart people should have kids as well. They should at least maintain - at least be at replacement rate. And the fact of the matter is that I notice that a lot of really smart women have zero or one kid...Wow - that's probably not good."

I'm not as concerned as Musk is about this issue. In general, as countries grow wealthier and women gain better access to education and contraception, fertility rates decline. So in my opinion the "solution" is not to encourage the current number of "smart" (as Elon defines it) women to have lots of kids, the solution is to take actions that increase education for all women, equal employment opportunity for all women, better access to contraception for all women, so that over time fertility rates decline around the world. And that is something that has been happening -- with many exceptions of course -- over the past 60 years and I expect will continue to happen. It is an ongoing struggle against the forces of misogyny and ignorance that are present in every country, including the US.

 

[AudubonB]

One of my strongest concerns is that your implicit premise is that countries are growing wealthier. As someone who has followed the lesser-developed nations of the world for many decades, I have am now viewing with ever-growing alarm the societal melt-down of almost the entire African continent, turning that immense mass into a morass of failed countries beset with Malthusian catastrophes. The swath of near-East through south Asia, with the notable exception of much but NOT all India, also is an area that definitely neither is growing wealthier nor providing women opportunities superior to what they had in the 18th, 17th, 16th....---> centuries.

 

[ecarfan]

Audie I do not dispute your critique of my position. But I didn't say that the trends I described were global, only that there has been noticeable gains in per capital wealth over my lifetime and not just in the "First World". Look at China.

What is global are the forces of misogyny and ignorance.

 

[abasile]

It appears that Musk isn't greatly worried about overpopulation in developed nations because he is optimistic that technology will continue to improve quickly enough to keep up with growth in the world's population, at least for the foreseeable future. If so, that seems like a very reasonable position.

For instance, there is tremendous potential for further efficiency gains in agriculture. Indoor farming techniques, for example, could greatly reduce the land and resource requirements to grow crops, while enabling year-round production in all climates (see Indoor Farms Could Revolutionize Agriculture - IEEE - The Institute).

As far as living space is concerned, Earth has plenty of available, habitable land, particularly if some land ends up no longer needed for agriculture. We just have to make sure to set aside plenty of national parks, wildlife reserves, etc. And maybe build a lot more tunnels.

All of that said, world disparities in development and education create tremendous challenges. There is a huge need to make the benefits of education and technology available to the world's poorest.

 

[Super_Popular]

Glad Elon is taking some down time.

Amber Heard & Elon Musk Go Ziplining Down Under WITH His Kids (PHOTO GALLERY)