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Why is there only one Elon Musk?

130 points by jnp 14y ago

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- deleted 14y ago
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- KHPatel 14y ago
  Think that's irrelevant, to be honest. The point he's making (I think) is that some people involved in the tech world have started and will continue to narrow their focus to tedious detail. Sometimes reminding yourself of the macro view is helpful. Just a thought
simonbarker87 14y ago
I wonder what percentage of the worlds billionaires are over 50? Over that age the ability to assimilate and do "new stuff" drops of considerably I should think, along with drive and determination as well. As the article suggests hopefully some of the Zuckerburgs and co will help remedy this.
- binarymax 14y ago
  This is straight up ageism. When I am 50 I will have 15 more years of knowledge and experience under my belt - and will be just as excited and determined as I am now.
  - k__ 14y ago
    can't say this for most of the +50 I know.
    - dasil003 14y ago
      The only difference between over 50 and under is that young people have more time ahead of them to delude themselves that they will eventually act on their big ideas. In terms of actually doing things, young and old people have very similar moment to moment potential.
      - k__ 14y ago
        I don't say all are like this... but most :\ At the company I work are 2 +50 people I work with. The dev is like "give me any programming language and I will programm with it" The admin is like "I give you the IDE I choose and you use it!"
    - CodeCube 14y ago
      yeah, but most of the +50 crowd grew up in a time where computers (and more specifically, programming computers) wasn't exactly commonplace. My son (9) plays minecraft everyday where he "programs" traps into his buildings with a combination of redstone and switches. There's a whole generation of kids (ie. just about all his friends) that will grow up speaking software as a second language. Of course, they will still be in the minority against the population at large ... but I'm really truly excited to see what they come up with, if I can live long enough to see it ;)
    - VLM 14y ago
      can't say that for most of the -50 I know either. The undiscussed metastory aside from the opinions about good or bad, is probably that neophilia, or STEM fixation, or citizen science, or whatever you want to call it, apparently does not correlate with wealth. Not an amazing cultural observation, I'm sure any starving PHD student would tend to agree, the world's full of ramen eating phd students and $25K/yr nontenured postdocs. Academia/STEM-ish workers have replaced religious orders as the cultural place for vows of poverty, with a couple rare exceptions such as applied science (especially CS). Also lots of managers, who work at STEM companies, and perhaps may have even started as STEM people long ago, get confused as currently being STEM people. There is an interesting effect that is also not being discussed which is most of the billionaires are paper net-worth billionaires. Most of them don't have a billion cash equivalent on hand, for example if they sold 50% of their company stock, the stock price would crater enough because of sudden volume to take their net worth down quite a notch. Its quite possible to end up in a situation where you own a billion sized fraction of a multibillion dollar company, but you can only sell a couple million per year without cratering your net worth. Your net worth does not necessarily equal what you can spend today.
      - k__ 14y ago
        Maybe the STEM-fixation isn't because those "newer" academic branches are just "in" but because they get stuff done the "older" ones didn't in hundrets of years. I don't wanna know how much brain power is burned for no good in other academic fields... (Yes there is also burnd much of in the STEM fields, but somehow they still get stuff done)
  - kybernetyk 14y ago
    I don't know man. I'm not sure about me. I'm 30 and I notice that I start to get into the 'old fart' attitude. I'm more skeptical about new tech and in my head this skepticism is logical. Until I step aside and take a look. Most of the time I even don't bother taking a detailed look at the new stuff and just discount it as "stupid hipster crap". I try to combat that behaviour but it gets harder. And I don't know how I will act in 20 years. (God, I'm old.)
- rexreed 14y ago
  Ahem... Ray Kurzweil? Dean Kamen? and one if one stretches way back, Thomas Edison or Nikola Tesla, both who were prolific inventors and creators throughout their lifespan? There's no demonstrable evidence that innovative thinking, inventive proclivity, or capacity to innovate decreases with age.
  - BerislavLopac 14y ago
    In that case, don't forget Da Vinci. ;-)
  - zimpenfish 14y ago
    Edison was more of a prolific thief (of Tesla) and an elephant killer. Also I heard that he liked to touch ferrets.
- jusben1369 14y ago
  Ouch on the ageism! Actually, in the context of this argument I would say most folks under 50 are more self absorbed and most over 50 become more concerned about their legacy and the broader world for their children. Bill Gates would be the poster child for this.
paulovsk 14y ago
Don't worry, I'll come next.
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gubatron 14y ago
Who says there aren't. Not everybody wants to expose what they're doing, specially if they're billionaires looking to build something that could make them even more powerful. If I were a billionaire I'd be building my own fusion reactor and I wouldn't let anybody know about it, fuck you all.
jerf 14y ago
A poorly-known characteristic of bell curves is that despite the bulk of the curve being fairly "normal", the extremes can be very extreme, and at the top end the spacing between #1 and #2 can be surprisingly large. Outliers can really be outliers. But you'll never have very many of them.
- jessriedel 14y ago
  Sure, but the OP's point is that there are over a thousand billionaires in the world. It's not the fact that outliers exist, it's that fact that among people with a billion dollars, most don't seem to care about this type of greatness. That is: it's easy to imagine a world where half of the billionaires are doing outlandish things, and the outliers are (say) the guys who are putting men on Mars at a reasonable price. Why isn't the world like that?
  - Someone 14y ago
    I don't think it is surprising most billionaire do not pursue this kind of greatness. They just aren't different from other guys. There, the few who go and try to climb mount Everest "because it's there" or who try and row the pacific are rare, too. Secondly, if half the billionaires were to do the same outlandish things, we wouldn't call them outlandish. For example, there probably was a time when quite a few billionaires went elephant hunting. Then, that was not outlandish. Now, it would be. Now, I think there are plenty of billionaires doing outlandish things, but just not in a highly visible technical direction. For example, Ted Turner started a world-wide news network, tried to start his own Olympic Games, and has a huge herd of bison. Others buy sports clubs, try to win the America's cup, or try to build a mechanical clock that will run for 10000 years (http://longnow.org/ http://longnow.org/). Yet others see it as their goal to get higher on Forbes' list of billionaires (http://www.forbes.com/fdc/welcome_mjx.shtml http://www.forbes.com/fdc/welcome_mjx.shtml) Another thing I am curious about: who are the one or two billionaires at the other end of that curve?
  - Retric 14y ago
    Considering most billionaires either inherit a significant nest-egg or got there from bushiness / networking or the financial sector I suspect they mostly lack the hard science background to know what's worth perusing. Note: Inherited wealth tends to be further from the top, while 4 of the top 20 inherited it from Walmart the percentage increases when you look in the 1-5 billion range. You also find people like Alfredo Harp Helú (born 1944) is a Mexican businessman of Lebanese origin, and as of 2011, with a net worth of $1.0 billion, is according to Forbes the 1140th richest person in the world. He is also the cousin of Carlos Slim Helú, who as of 2011 is the richest person in the world as ranked by Forbes.
jechen 14y ago
I think it's important to keep in mind that Elon Musk got to where he is today (especially financially) because of a consumer web service he helped found. I'm sure (perhaps on the more optimistic end) that more entrepreneurs would jump on his bandwagon if they had ready/easier access to the amount of capital Musk had at his disposal to invest in his "cool sci-fi shit" ventures.
- kiba 14y ago
  What he was working on is a financial service, not just a consumer web app. He changed the world by making payment and ecommerce easier. It may not be sci-fi or anything like, but what he was doing was of importance.
  - rollo_tommasi 14y ago
    Right, but he didn't jump right into future-tech industries; he had a huge pool of personal capital to draw on, and only himself to answer to in using it. The point the parent is trying to make is that there are probably a lot of people working in less glamorous businesses who would love to jump to working on the cutting-edge, but they don't have access to hundreds of millions in personal funds.
    - kiba 14y ago
      I would argue that paypal was the future tech of its time. It was in 1998 that paypal launched.
- pdubs 14y ago
  Paypal was pretty revolutionary for its time. Not quite "cool sci-fi shit", but close, in perspective.
  - jechen 14y ago
    Its initial concept of beaming money with Palm Pilots certainly was. What it eventually pivoted and grew into was less so, but I do agree that PayPal played an important role in the evolution of web technologies. My point remains that we shouldn't be so quick to judge the altruistic intentions of entrepreneurs based on their first ventures; it may be a means to a more noble end. I'm sure many, if not most, aspire to contribute more to society beyond photo sharing apps. In fact, PayPal was voted one of the worst companies when it debuted, so I'm willing to give everyone the benefit of doubt.
thomseddon 14y ago
I'll take your one Elon Musk and raise you one Richard Branson: http://www.virgingalactic.com/ http://www.virgingalactic.com/ http://www.virginearth.com/ http://www.virginearth.com/ http://www.virgingreenfund.com/ http://www.virgingreenfund.com/ + Massive, continued, success in countless other markets (+ set a few personal world records)
- keepitkosher 14y ago
  From my unresearched perspective, the difference is that Musk (admittedly) is pursuing crazy ventures because he's passionate about them -- and oftentimes for no other reason. He apparently originally expected that SpaceX would be broke by the time he had managed to get to Mars. Branson seems to be deeply rooted in a business-first approach to creative innovation. "Yeah, we'll do it, but if the market accepts it."
  - potatolicious 14y ago
    So... brash, impulsive, and often luck-based ambition vs. careful, calculating ambition. I'm not sure if we really need to value one over the other. The fact that Musk threw caution to the wind I do not believe is really a virtue - it just weaves a more interesting tale after the fact.
  - thomseddon 14y ago
    Yes and no. (Mainly no) It is unquestionable that Rb has pursued many different avenues despite there being little to no obvious commercial benefit. I do concede that you could argue it is just in the name of building his own profile, but for example did you know he started a charity aged 17, the Student advisory centre where he used to personally give advice over the phone (apparently still running) and that he started mates condoms[1] (UK based). He is also the one behind the eldars[2] (http://www.theelders.org/ http://www.theelders.org/) and countless other projects including helping african communities establish sustainable business (to name just one). 1: http://www.mates.co.uk/mates-expert/history/ http://www.mates.co.uk/mates-expert/history/ 2: http://www.theelders.org/about http://www.theelders.org/about
- 14y ago
snowwrestler 14y ago
A few others who come quickly to mind: - John Carmack - id software and Armadillo Aerospace - Jeff Bezos - AWS, Kindle, Blue Origin, and the Long Now Clock - Larry and Sergei - Google, Android, Google Glass, self-driving cars, etc. I'm sure we can think of others.
- deleted 14y ago
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- unreal37 14y ago
  Richard Branson with Virgin Galactic which predates SpaceX in the space race.
  - kenkam 14y ago
    James Cameron and ocean diving
olympus 14y ago
There are plenty of people/organizations that are researching cool new technologies that don't have the publicity of Elon Musk, either from them actively avoiding the spotlight or the media has just decided that they aren't "cool" enough to be covered. DARPA is doing some cool stuff even though they are a government organization, Mars One has set the lofty goal of sending people to Mars, James Cameron has a pretty sweet submarine, and the list goes on and on. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that the author has overlooked a lot of cool stuff to make his point. While I agree that there needs to be more billionaires doing cool s#!t, don't overlook the people and organizations that are already doing it. edit: In the time it took me to write this comment, a whole bunch of other examples popped up in the comments, further reinforcing my point that there are already a lot of people doing cool s#!t.
manaskarekar 14y ago
James Gosling: Liquid Robotics http://www.liquidr.com/news_events/press/2011/2011-08-30-gosling.html http://www.liquidr.com/news_events/press/2011/2011-08-30-gos... John D. Carmack: Armadillo Aerospace http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/Home http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/Home I'm tempted to throw in Google's Sergey Brin (Larry Page too?) for Google Glass. And I'm sure there are a few others. Elon Musk just shows up more in the news due to his success. Also, not all billionaires are technically inclined geeks.
- CodeCube 14y ago
  Jeff Bezos: http://www.blueorigin.com/ http://www.blueorigin.com/ In addition to glass, the google guys get credit for http://www.planetaryresources.com/ http://www.planetaryresources.com/ and the driverless cars ;)
  - rayiner 14y ago
    What did the Google guys do for Glass or driverless cars other than bankroll them?
    - dbrian 14y ago
      Isn't that kind of the point?
      - CodeCube 14y ago
        So what? what did Elon musk do for spacex and tesla other than bankroll them? edit: meant as reply to GP :)
        rayiner 14y ago
        Quit his day job to run them?
      - albemuth 14y ago
        No, Tony Stark builds and code everything himself. From scratch.
unreal37 14y ago
The author is making a decent point, that out of the 1,000+ billionaires, almost none of them are trying to change the world in a majorly significant way. The vast majority are busy running the businesses that made them billionaires. Take Mark Cuban. After he sold broadcast.com to Yahoo for $5 billion, why didn't HE start a space company? Instead he started another TV channel - we already have a bunch of those. I think Richard Branson is the counter point. There are actually two Tony Starks - Branson and Musk. I think the problem is legacy. People like that are trying to create the businesses that will define their legacy after they are gone. If you've worked 30-40 years to build a company from scratch and become a billionaire off that (like Walmart or Fedex), that is your legacy. You work til your dying breath trying to make Walmart successful. You don't go try starting robotic or advanced tech businesses.
- Anechoic 14y ago
  The vast majority are busy running the businesses that made them billionaires. Perhaps we just need to look more closely at the list of billionaires "running the businesses that made them billionaires"? Making a spaceship certainly sounds (and is) sexy, but those spaceships are built on top of other technologies like material science, energy storage, communications, etc (and those in turn are built on other technologies like extraction and manufacturing). I'd bet a number of those "businesses that made them billionaires" are working on that kind of tech, but those technologies don't generate the kind of headlines in mainstream media outlets like self-driving cars. It's the difference between developing packet-switching technologies and Google fiber. You can't have one without the other, but only one sounds exciting.
mikecane 14y ago
One Elon Musk? There are probably more of them than we can count. They just can't rise to the top due to one thing or another. Where would Jobs have been without Wozniak? There are many factors. And I see some people have cited some names. Well there are probably many Musks outside the U.S. who we have never heard of because they don't do something as world-changing as his publicly-stated aspirations. Plus, not everyone wants a spotlight on them.
edw519 14y ago
This post reminds me of that old joke: Husband: I am the head of the household! I determine our family's position on all of the major economic, political, and social issues of the day! Wife: I decide the little things, like where we'll live, what we'll eat, and where the kids go to school. As much as I admire the dreams and accomplishments of Elon Musk, I have trouble getting past the idea that he failed to maintain his marriage (the biggest promise of them all) and rarely sees his own children. Maybe the answer to OP's question is, "Because many who could dream and do like Elon Musk would rather focus on the "little things" like life, love, and family.
- unreal37 14y ago
  Having not been able to maintain my own marriage, I think its more complicated than that. But the quality Musk has that almost no one in his position has is the willingness to risk it all for the dream. Musk himself almost went broke on SpaceX and Tesla. Most billionaires are into preservation of capital in a big way.
  - JoeAltmaier 14y ago
    That. Why do so few people win 7 in a row in craps? Becausethe odds are against you. Most don't get rich by risking it all. Of those that do, 1 in a million 'make it work' i.e. get lucky.
  - jessriedel 14y ago
    > Most billionaires are into preservation of capital in a big way. This is surprising to me from a behavioral economics stand point. Seems like billionaires would know they've very nearly maxed out their utility function in terms of material stuff. I'd think it would be very worth it to them to risk a billion dollars (which, remember, is something like the cumulative life's work of a thousand human beings) on mere personal glory or hubris. Are you speaking from personal experience, or is there some conventional wisdom or data I should know about?
    - danielweber 14y ago
aashaykumar92 14y ago
After reading, I'd say your base question/thesis is: "Why on Earth aren’t there more billionaires doing really cool sci-fi sh!#?". You go on to give plenty of examples (FYI--some of these are already being done such as self-driving cars and flexible displays) but all of them, to truly build, would require a solid understanding of mathematics/physics/some type of engineering right? Not every billionaire has that knowledge. Elon Musk does--I believe he has a degree in physics from Penn and dropped out from the PhD program at Stanford. This knowledge simple does not exist among the majority of billionaires. And exactly because of this lack of knowledge, I don't think billionaires CAN actually do 'really cool sci=f sh!#'. When you think of a crazy idea, out of the first few questions that come to your mind, one of them is probably, "Is this idea feasible?" To Musk, the idea of Tesla and SpaceX were both feasible, BECAUSE he had the necessary base knowledge in those areas to realize that with money, these visions could become realities. I like to think many people, other billionaires included, have had the idea of cool battery charged vehicles but without the ability to realize it is possible (aka the base knowledge), they stopped at that. Good or bad, this is most likely the reality of it. All of that being said, I would like to see billionaires do what J.P. Morgan and George Westinghouse did for Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla, respectively--and that is to find and fund geniuses with these revolutionary, futuristic, 'really cool sci-fi sh!#' ideas. If more billionaires sought out to find scientists/engineers working on 'the next big thing', I imagine more would happen and newer, more fascinating, industries would be formed. My plea: If you're a billionaire who appreciates what people like Elon Musk has done/is doing but don't have the skills to do so yourself, go find more people like him (in the sense that they have crazy futuristic ideas) and help them to help the world.
- jessriedel 14y ago
  Another way to say this is that the process of becoming a billionaire selects for intelligence, but it actually seems to select strongly against a great technical training and nerdy dreams. (Maybe I'm wrong about that?) Would be really interesting to know how many billionaires have STEM PhD's after controlling for their general intelligence.
  - rayiner 14y ago
cjoh 14y ago
A lot of those billionares were born that way. I suspect that to understand what to do with that kind of money, you've got to have been without it at some point in your life.
- mjn 14y ago
  The ones who were born with it are often quite interested in wealth-preservation as well, to pass the money on in turn to their own heirs. Rather than spending it on something risky, they're more likely to put it in, say, a generation-skipping trust that makes diversified investments.
sidcool 14y ago
Seriously, I am such a big fan of Musk. He is challenging every status quo. Big oil companies and auto manufacturers have been stalling the progress of electric cars since decades. Musk went ahead in spite of the tall odds. He's a Tony Stark of our age.
JDGM 14y ago
I assume that we're taking Elon Musk's "Tony Stark"-ness in this context to mean electric cars, space travel, and solar power. To the best of my knowledge he is neither an alcoholic nor a superhero, though I did just look up his marital history on Wikipedia and with assistance from Google Images I have to award 8 Tony Starks out of 10 on that one. In all seriousness though, are we sure not one of those other 1,225 billionaires is "pursuing major advances in technology with a childlike wonder about the world’s potential"? When I hear about Elon Musk I tend to draw a different conclusion from the author of this piece: not that he is one of a kind, but that there are many more like him out there. I'm not sure which of us is right, quite possibly the author and not me - sometimes seeing X suggests 'generally ¬X' (http://www.overcomingbias.com/2013/03/when-seeing-x-suggests-generally-¬x.html http://www.overcomingbias.com/2013/03/when-seeing-x-suggests...).
- jessriedel 14y ago
  Could you elaborate on how Katja's idea in the OB post might be used here? To me, it seems like it supports the OP (quite nicely, actually). In particular, Elon Musk shows that Tony-Stark-ness (as you've correctly defined it) is pretty darn visible. If there were more Tony Stark's out there, I'm now more likely to expect expect that I would have heard about them in the same way I've heard about Musk. This increases my confidence that there are not many Tony Starks compared to my pre-Musk assessment. And then, of course, the question is: with so many billionaires out there, why?
  - JDGM 14y ago
    "Could you elaborate on how Katja's idea in the OB post might be used here?" Exactly in the way you describe. I was indeed using it to support the OP and not myself: "I'm not sure which of us is right, quite possibly the author and not me - LINK".
    - jessriedel 14y ago
      Ahh, gotcha. Thanks for clarifying. Do you really think there are a bunch of Elon Musk's out there who, say, just aren't doing as much self-promotion?
film42 14y ago
Because if there was (and I'm sure there are), we would compare him/ her to Elon Musk, or Steve Jobs, etc.
scotty79 14y ago
Lot's of people who made a lot of money are good at exactly that. Making a lot of money. I guess following childlike creativity and aptitude to make a lot of money don't go hand in hand. Fortunately internet happened and a lot of people who would suck at making money in any other circumstances made a lot of money anyways. So we have Elon Musk, Larry Page and hopefully we'll get more of them in the future.
rgbrenner 14y ago
You really have to have a terrible case of tunnel vision to write this post. One Elon Musk? Sure, I only see one guy named Elon Musk on the list of billionaires. What is the requirement here? A space company? There are several of those.. Jeff Bezos (worth 23b) has Blue Orgin. He says "cool sci-fi shit"... What about self-driving cars? Those aren't sci-fi enough for you? How is Tesla's battery powered car MORE sci-fi-ish than a self-driving car?! Look, I wish the best for Musk... but the author needs to take a look around at what other people are doing.
- jessriedel 14y ago
  > A space company? There are several of those.. Jeff Bezos (worth 23b) has Blue Orgin I think most people would agree that Bezos is a runner up, but how many is several? I can think of him and Richard Branson (Virgin Galactic). And neither of them seems to have made it their mission in life rather than just a billionaire's hobby.
  - rgbrenner 14y ago
    SpaceX Blue Orgin Scaled Composites/Virgin Galactic Armadillo Aerospace Bigelow Aerospace Stratolaunch Systems I think that counts as "several"
    - jessriedel 14y ago
      Thanks very much for the info. Bigelow Aerospace and Stratolaunch Systems are excellent examples. Bigelow is especially interesting because from what I've googled he doesn't seem to have any sort of technical background. On the other hand, I don't believe John Carmack is a billionaire, and in any case Armadillo Aerospace has only had a few million invested in it. (Whether or not these guys are billionaires is very important. The question is about rarity, and the pool of people under discussion gets much bigger if we consider people with merely 100 million and who are consequently restricted to more modest goals.) In any case, I think the point may still stand that these people devote much less of their emotional and temporal capital than Musk. I'd love to hear alternative evidence. EDIT (in reply to jlgreco since I can't do it in the normal way): Yep, according to the side bar on Wikipedia his net worth is 2.3 billion as of March.
darkchasma 14y ago
Why is there only one Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Richard Branson, etc... Because people are not made in a factory with a cookie cutter.
distant- 14y ago
Meanwhile, the author of the blog post runs a porn website. I find it amusing that all of these advocates of tackling "big issues, that matter", "building world-changing technology" are very far from walking their talk.
- Wintamute 14y ago
  Top be fair he actually does a fairly good job of intellectualising it in other blog posts. http://blog.paintbottle.com/post/46266111738/how-we-convinced-angels-to-invest-in-porn http://blog.paintbottle.com/post/46266111738/how-we-convince...
- SkyMarshal 14y ago
  Not only does he run a porn site, he posted this to his porn site's blog. The cognitive dissonance is overwhelming.
JoeCortopassi 14y ago
There's always been more than one "...billionaires doing really cool sci-fi sh!#", we just only have enough attention span to collectively idolize one at a time.
sheri 14y ago
We're lamenting the fact that billionaires are not like cartoon characters? This is ridiculous. Bill Gates is creating real impact to people's lives with his money and charity, and the author just dismisses that as being not cool enough. Instead of applauding responsible and charitable behavior, we want them to be playboy types?
DanBC 14y ago
We're only just at the point where doing crazy-fun science fiction stuff is possible. One reason is that people in the past just didn't have that kind of money. The very wealthy today are a lot richer than the very wealthy of the past century. Another reason is legalistic and infrastructure and technical stuff. There are laws governing every aspect of this stuff, and to get involved takes considerable planning and etc. Finally, the tech just wasn't available in the past. It's much easier to build a few schools and pay for opera than it is to set up a rocket company. I guess it's interesting to know what those billionaires are doing with their money. Maybe it's not liquid? Maybe they're happily oppressing a nation. Maybe they're building shape-shifting buildings.
unhe 14y ago
like i always said, you can change the world, and you dont need 10, 100, 1000 or a million people to change it. You just need one person to change the world
simonsarris 14y ago
I sympathize with the author, and I think a lot of the comments here are missing at least part of the point of the post. Maybe its 12 years of catholic school plus a philosophy degree talking, but in times of peace my brain likes to hold everyone guilty of all the good they didn't do. This applies to me, you, congress, billionaires, and so on. The author swaps my "good" for "awesome stuff", but I think the feeling is probably similar. In other words, I think that being a billionaire and doing nothing ambitious with their money is much less impressive than not being a billionaire. I think the author is remarking upon that in a similar way. I think the author is slightly incorrect in thinking Musk is the only one, but that doesn't really detract from his general point. (Of course, billionaires don't "owe" us/society anything, though some might be able to argue that society allowing one person to accumulate such wealth ought to have some kind of obligation, but as it stands they don't, and that's probably a topic for another time)
codex 14y ago
While there are few billionaires, which is a big part of the story, I would argue that there are plenty of Elon Musks out there, but only a finite capacity of humans and media to idolize. There is only so much attention to go around. Therefore, there is only one or two Elon Musks at a time. He has filled the role Steve Jobs once had in the eyes of the technorati.
smackfu 14y ago
The funny thing is that someone else will look at Musk and see him as wasting his money on useless space stuff rather than helping out the poor and downtrodden. Cool is in the eye of the beholder.
danso 14y ago
This is one of the more annoyingly shortsighted posts I've read on HN in a long while. It reflects the attitude of someone too spoonfed by blockbuster movie culture: if shit ain't being blown up, then who cares? When Norman Borlaug died a few years back, there were a lot of people who thought, "Who?" And when they learned that this farm-raised Iowan is credited with saving a billion human lives, they said, "Well why wasn't he celebrated more?" And the mindset of the OP, well, there's your answer.
- deleted 14y ago
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- jnp 14y ago
  I wrote the article. In it, I clearly outline that the topic of discussion is -- specifically -- childlike wonder and what happens when it mixes with wealth. Not "that every wealthy person should behave in a particular way."
  - danso 14y ago
    Yes, but you place too great of emphasis on a certain kind of achievement/product as being indicative of this ideal mixing of childlike wonder + wealth. Or else how could you characterize Bill Gates' work as being somehow less creative or less wondrous. Bill Gates is trying to foster a world free of disease and poverty, which requires no less of a cool, sci-fi-brainstorm to accomplish...how is that less of a crazy childlike ambition than building an electric car? In fact, I would argue even that Gates' path is even far more crazy and childlike. In order to do what he has done, he's had to get out of the relatively clean, logical bubble of technology and deal with messy, real world politics to accomplish his goals...and yet he still pushes forth in idealism. Contrast this with Musk, who after a less-than-favorable review in the New York Times, threw a fit. I'm not saying Musk was or wasn't justified, I'm pointing out that real world revolution takes both child-like wonder and an ability to handle out-of-your-realm realities...Gates is farther along in this difficult path than Musk, though I agree, Musk is more likely to have an Iron Man-like movie made about him.
  - potatolicious 14y ago
stephencanon 14y ago
There are almost certainly lots of “Elon Musks”. Very few of them have been lucky enough to become super-rich and attract public attention.
kornifex 14y ago
I think he missed Richard Branson…
pandemicsyn 14y ago
I kinda always assumed Larry Ellison would do more to push the envelope (in a evil overlord sorta way).
frobozz 14y ago
I would hazard that it's partly because the rich don't get rich by throwing their money away. The thing about "cool scifi sh!#" is that it stands a very good chance of not being profitable, and an even greater chance of not being profitable any time soon. The author writes: > As more entrepreneurs become self-made billionaires in the Internet age, I think we’ll see the Tony Stark Rating rise I disagree. I think the only thing that will make that happen is inflation. When the value of a billion is halved, then we'll see it rise. I would be surprised if there weren't plenty more Sub-Billionaire Elon Musks, who have reached a level of wealth that they consider sufficient for future-proof work-free financial independence, and decided to pursue their least profitable or most fanciful of dreams. The author himself points to various cool projects that don't have a single Tony Stark figure at the helm. To become a Billionaire, whilst still being of a mind to do "cool scifi sh!#" requires at least one of these three things: 1) Suddenly becoming very rich (at least a near-billionaire). 2) Some of your "cool scifi sh!#" becoming profitable. 3) Persisting in moneymaking when you could be doing the cool stuff instead. Also, how many billionaires (openly or anonymously) fund chairs or grants at universities? A billionaire of the sort that inherited multiple millions, then made a load more money through speculative finance whilst also working as a corporate barrister is not going to be a Tony Stark; but they may want to see robots with Genuine People Personalities become a reality. It would be far better for someone like that to fund existing university research than to set up their own version of Sirius Cybernetics Corporation.
orochi235 14y ago
Because most parents have much better taste in baby names.
ChuckMcM 14y ago
Fascinating discussion. Restores my faith in HN to have these sorts of threads. #1 To edw519 on Elon's failed marriage, I'm reminded of that economist joke about "is that expensive or is it valuable?" For me, my family is priceless I cherish them with all my heart, but for others I know their work drives them. I don't begrudge them for having different reward structures in their brain, and I would never go so far as to suggest that one set of choices is "better" than another. I share the opinion that making a vow of marriage is a pretty huge promise, but that is because in my context it was a huge promise that I made. As opposed to folks I've known who got married but made a different sort of promise. I attended a wedding where the vows were not "until death do us part" but were "for as long as we both shall love." To which I said, "Seriously? Until you decide you are tired of it?" But my point is that we don't know what promise Elon made when he married. #2 on the "where are they" question, the author (jnp) doesn't take into account that first you have to be a billionaire and then you have to care about "sci-fi stuff". When I sample the general population I find that people who care about science fiction type technologies and making them real is a small fraction of the general population, so I am not surprised that only a small fraction of the billionaires have similar ideas about interesting questions. What I find even more amazing is that none of them have apparently taken any of the 'unconventional' fusion projects under their wing (which is almost thematically Tony Stark). The last bit I'll add is a bit I've added before which is that I have observed that "rich you" is a different person than "not-rich you" for most technologists I've met. (sample size isn't large but I think over the years I've known/observed on the order of 200 people who have gone from "not rich"[1] to "rich"[2] and in most of the cases there was a pretty big shift in what they valued and who they were. Because of that one has to add that someone who is interested in sci-fi stuff now, needs to still be interested in it post-change. And as others have pointed out, Elon has put everything on the line to advance sci-fi stuff a number of times, and that willingness to risk being "not rich" again is perhaps the rarest trait of all. [1] Defining "not rich" as having debts that they would have to forfeit if they lost employment and future obligations that are not yet funded. [2] Defining "rich" as having no debts for which forfeiting them would change their lifestyle, and having a source of income from passive investing that is sufficient under both optimistic and pessimistic economic scenarios.
graeham 14y ago
Part of the issue - only about 200 of those billionaires are under 50. People can be "Tony Stark" after that, but I think its probably more likely that younger people will have the energy and willingness to invest the decades it takes to build large disruptive companies. A non-negligible amount of wealth is inherited. Again, not to say that inherited wealthy aren't going to be making innovative companies - Tony Stark himself inherited Stark Industries. But I think the Elon Musk assumption is for serial ambition in entrepreneurship, which probably more likely comes from self-made people. A lot of wealthy (and innovative) people like doing things behind the scenes. Like Tony Stark, but without the fireworks and cheerleaders. Finally, as others have said, there are other people who have made multiple innovations on the scale of Musk - Edison, Tesla, Ford, Howard Hughes in the past, more recently Gates and Allen, Steve Jobs, Larry and Sergey. Maybe Zuckerberg and Dorsey are the next to join these ranks. And that is just in the computer and internet industries.
shirederby 14y ago
>Whether it’s transparent batteries, flexible displays, nano bots, affordable and effective VR headsets, highly-accurate and highly-portable motion sensors, self-driving cars, doors that unlock when you walk up to them, swallowable computers, affordable genetic testing I think it's worth noting that many of the areas are saddled with burdensome regulation, with the caveat that this is certainly not the only or even the primary hindrance, and that the fact they may be hindrances doesn't in itself mean they aren't warranted.
ScottBurson 14y ago
I'm really surprised that (AFAIK, haven't checked lately) no billionaire is funding Polywell, focus, and/or other fringe fusion research projects. I know, the odds of these panning out are not great, but if you want to become a trillionaire, seems like these are the kind of lottery tickets that could get you there -- and do a massive amount of good for the world in the process. I can tell you, if I had a few hundred million to throw around, I would be all over these things.
kirk21 14y ago
I admire him since he admits failures. Also from an intelectual standpoint (e.g. first principles reasoning), he dares to push the limits. There are not a lot of t-shirts available of Elon so I made one myself: https://www.teepublic.com/show/2278-elon-musk https://www.teepublic.com/show/2278-elon-musk

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KHPatel 14y ago
Think that's irrelevant, to be honest. The point he's making (I think) is that some people involved in the tech world have started and will continue to narrow their focus to tedious detail. Sometimes reminding yourself of the macro view is helpful. Just a thought

simonbarker87 14y ago

I wonder what percentage of the worlds billionaires are over 50? Over that age the ability to assimilate and do "new stuff" drops of considerably I should think, along with drive and determination as well. As the article suggests hopefully some of the Zuckerburgs and co will help remedy this.

binarymax 14y ago
This is straight up ageism. When I am 50 I will have 15 more years of knowledge and experience under my belt - and will be just as excited and determined as I am now.
- k__ 14y ago
  can't say this for most of the +50 I know.
  - dasil003 14y ago
    The only difference between over 50 and under is that young people have more time ahead of them to delude themselves that they will eventually act on their big ideas. In terms of actually doing things, young and old people have very similar moment to moment potential.
    - k__ 14y ago
      I don't say all are like this... but most :\ At the company I work are 2 +50 people I work with. The dev is like "give me any programming language and I will programm with it" The admin is like "I give you the IDE I choose and you use it!"
  - CodeCube 14y ago
    yeah, but most of the +50 crowd grew up in a time where computers (and more specifically, programming computers) wasn't exactly commonplace. My son (9) plays minecraft everyday where he "programs" traps into his buildings with a combination of redstone and switches. There's a whole generation of kids (ie. just about all his friends) that will grow up speaking software as a second language. Of course, they will still be in the minority against the population at large ... but I'm really truly excited to see what they come up with, if I can live long enough to see it ;)
  - VLM 14y ago
    can't say that for most of the -50 I know either. The undiscussed metastory aside from the opinions about good or bad, is probably that neophilia, or STEM fixation, or citizen science, or whatever you want to call it, apparently does not correlate with wealth. Not an amazing cultural observation, I'm sure any starving PHD student would tend to agree, the world's full of ramen eating phd students and $25K/yr nontenured postdocs. Academia/STEM-ish workers have replaced religious orders as the cultural place for vows of poverty, with a couple rare exceptions such as applied science (especially CS). Also lots of managers, who work at STEM companies, and perhaps may have even started as STEM people long ago, get confused as currently being STEM people. There is an interesting effect that is also not being discussed which is most of the billionaires are paper net-worth billionaires. Most of them don't have a billion cash equivalent on hand, for example if they sold 50% of their company stock, the stock price would crater enough because of sudden volume to take their net worth down quite a notch. Its quite possible to end up in a situation where you own a billion sized fraction of a multibillion dollar company, but you can only sell a couple million per year without cratering your net worth. Your net worth does not necessarily equal what you can spend today.
    - k__ 14y ago
      Maybe the STEM-fixation isn't because those "newer" academic branches are just "in" but because they get stuff done the "older" ones didn't in hundrets of years. I don't wanna know how much brain power is burned for no good in other academic fields... (Yes there is also burnd much of in the STEM fields, but somehow they still get stuff done)
- kybernetyk 14y ago
  I don't know man. I'm not sure about me. I'm 30 and I notice that I start to get into the 'old fart' attitude. I'm more skeptical about new tech and in my head this skepticism is logical. Until I step aside and take a look. Most of the time I even don't bother taking a detailed look at the new stuff and just discount it as "stupid hipster crap". I try to combat that behaviour but it gets harder. And I don't know how I will act in 20 years. (God, I'm old.)
rexreed 14y ago
Ahem... Ray Kurzweil? Dean Kamen? and one if one stretches way back, Thomas Edison or Nikola Tesla, both who were prolific inventors and creators throughout their lifespan? There's no demonstrable evidence that innovative thinking, inventive proclivity, or capacity to innovate decreases with age.
- BerislavLopac 14y ago
  In that case, don't forget Da Vinci. ;-)
- zimpenfish 14y ago
  Edison was more of a prolific thief (of Tesla) and an elephant killer. Also I heard that he liked to touch ferrets.
jusben1369 14y ago
Ouch on the ageism! Actually, in the context of this argument I would say most folks under 50 are more self absorbed and most over 50 become more concerned about their legacy and the broader world for their children. Bill Gates would be the poster child for this.

paulovsk 14y ago

Don't worry, I'll come next.

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gubatron 14y ago

Who says there aren't. Not everybody wants to expose what they're doing, specially if they're billionaires looking to build something that could make them even more powerful. If I were a billionaire I'd be building my own fusion reactor and I wouldn't let anybody know about it, fuck you all.

jerf 14y ago

A poorly-known characteristic of bell curves is that despite the bulk of the curve being fairly "normal", the extremes can be very extreme, and at the top end the spacing between #1 and #2 can be surprisingly large. Outliers can really be outliers. But you'll never have very many of them.

jessriedel 14y ago
Sure, but the OP's point is that there are over a thousand billionaires in the world. It's not the fact that outliers exist, it's that fact that among people with a billion dollars, most don't seem to care about this type of greatness. That is: it's easy to imagine a world where half of the billionaires are doing outlandish things, and the outliers are (say) the guys who are putting men on Mars at a reasonable price. Why isn't the world like that?
- Someone 14y ago
  I don't think it is surprising most billionaire do not pursue this kind of greatness. They just aren't different from other guys. There, the few who go and try to climb mount Everest "because it's there" or who try and row the pacific are rare, too. Secondly, if half the billionaires were to do the same outlandish things, we wouldn't call them outlandish. For example, there probably was a time when quite a few billionaires went elephant hunting. Then, that was not outlandish. Now, it would be. Now, I think there are plenty of billionaires doing outlandish things, but just not in a highly visible technical direction. For example, Ted Turner started a world-wide news network, tried to start his own Olympic Games, and has a huge herd of bison. Others buy sports clubs, try to win the America's cup, or try to build a mechanical clock that will run for 10000 years (http://longnow.org/ http://longnow.org/). Yet others see it as their goal to get higher on Forbes' list of billionaires (http://www.forbes.com/fdc/welcome_mjx.shtml http://www.forbes.com/fdc/welcome_mjx.shtml) Another thing I am curious about: who are the one or two billionaires at the other end of that curve?
- Retric 14y ago
  Considering most billionaires either inherit a significant nest-egg or got there from bushiness / networking or the financial sector I suspect they mostly lack the hard science background to know what's worth perusing. Note: Inherited wealth tends to be further from the top, while 4 of the top 20 inherited it from Walmart the percentage increases when you look in the 1-5 billion range. You also find people like Alfredo Harp Helú (born 1944) is a Mexican businessman of Lebanese origin, and as of 2011, with a net worth of $1.0 billion, is according to Forbes the 1140th richest person in the world. He is also the cousin of Carlos Slim Helú, who as of 2011 is the richest person in the world as ranked by Forbes.

jechen 14y ago

I think it's important to keep in mind that Elon Musk got to where he is today (especially financially) because of a consumer web service he helped found. I'm sure (perhaps on the more optimistic end) that more entrepreneurs would jump on his bandwagon if they had ready/easier access to the amount of capital Musk had at his disposal to invest in his "cool sci-fi shit" ventures.

kiba 14y ago
What he was working on is a financial service, not just a consumer web app. He changed the world by making payment and ecommerce easier. It may not be sci-fi or anything like, but what he was doing was of importance.
- rollo_tommasi 14y ago
  Right, but he didn't jump right into future-tech industries; he had a huge pool of personal capital to draw on, and only himself to answer to in using it. The point the parent is trying to make is that there are probably a lot of people working in less glamorous businesses who would love to jump to working on the cutting-edge, but they don't have access to hundreds of millions in personal funds.
  - kiba 14y ago
    I would argue that paypal was the future tech of its time. It was in 1998 that paypal launched.
pdubs 14y ago
Paypal was pretty revolutionary for its time. Not quite "cool sci-fi shit", but close, in perspective.
- jechen 14y ago
  Its initial concept of beaming money with Palm Pilots certainly was. What it eventually pivoted and grew into was less so, but I do agree that PayPal played an important role in the evolution of web technologies. My point remains that we shouldn't be so quick to judge the altruistic intentions of entrepreneurs based on their first ventures; it may be a means to a more noble end. I'm sure many, if not most, aspire to contribute more to society beyond photo sharing apps. In fact, PayPal was voted one of the worst companies when it debuted, so I'm willing to give everyone the benefit of doubt.

thomseddon 14y ago

I'll take your one Elon Musk and raise you one Richard Branson: http://www.virgingalactic.com/ http://www.virgingalactic.com/ http://www.virginearth.com/ http://www.virginearth.com/ http://www.virgingreenfund.com/ http://www.virgingreenfund.com/ + Massive, continued, success in countless other markets (+ set a few personal world records)

keepitkosher 14y ago
From my unresearched perspective, the difference is that Musk (admittedly) is pursuing crazy ventures because he's passionate about them -- and oftentimes for no other reason. He apparently originally expected that SpaceX would be broke by the time he had managed to get to Mars. Branson seems to be deeply rooted in a business-first approach to creative innovation. "Yeah, we'll do it, but if the market accepts it."
- potatolicious 14y ago
  So... brash, impulsive, and often luck-based ambition vs. careful, calculating ambition. I'm not sure if we really need to value one over the other. The fact that Musk threw caution to the wind I do not believe is really a virtue - it just weaves a more interesting tale after the fact.
- thomseddon 14y ago
  Yes and no. (Mainly no) It is unquestionable that Rb has pursued many different avenues despite there being little to no obvious commercial benefit. I do concede that you could argue it is just in the name of building his own profile, but for example did you know he started a charity aged 17, the Student advisory centre where he used to personally give advice over the phone (apparently still running) and that he started mates condoms[1] (UK based). He is also the one behind the eldars[2] (http://www.theelders.org/ http://www.theelders.org/) and countless other projects including helping african communities establish sustainable business (to name just one). 1: http://www.mates.co.uk/mates-expert/history/ http://www.mates.co.uk/mates-expert/history/ 2: http://www.theelders.org/about http://www.theelders.org/about
14y ago

snowwrestler 14y ago

A few others who come quickly to mind: - John Carmack - id software and Armadillo Aerospace - Jeff Bezos - AWS, Kindle, Blue Origin, and the Long Now Clock - Larry and Sergei - Google, Android, Google Glass, self-driving cars, etc. I'm sure we can think of others.

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unreal37 14y ago
Richard Branson with Virgin Galactic which predates SpaceX in the space race.
- kenkam 14y ago
  James Cameron and ocean diving

olympus 14y ago

There are plenty of people/organizations that are researching cool new technologies that don't have the publicity of Elon Musk, either from them actively avoiding the spotlight or the media has just decided that they aren't "cool" enough to be covered. DARPA is doing some cool stuff even though they are a government organization, Mars One has set the lofty goal of sending people to Mars, James Cameron has a pretty sweet submarine, and the list goes on and on. I guess the point I'm trying to make is that the author has overlooked a lot of cool stuff to make his point. While I agree that there needs to be more billionaires doing cool s#!t, don't overlook the people and organizations that are already doing it. edit: In the time it took me to write this comment, a whole bunch of other examples popped up in the comments, further reinforcing my point that there are already a lot of people doing cool s#!t.

manaskarekar 14y ago

James Gosling: Liquid Robotics http://www.liquidr.com/news_events/press/2011/2011-08-30-gosling.html http://www.liquidr.com/news_events/press/2011/2011-08-30-gos... John D. Carmack: Armadillo Aerospace http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/Home http://www.armadilloaerospace.com/n.x/Armadillo/Home I'm tempted to throw in Google's Sergey Brin (Larry Page too?) for Google Glass. And I'm sure there are a few others. Elon Musk just shows up more in the news due to his success. Also, not all billionaires are technically inclined geeks.

CodeCube 14y ago
Jeff Bezos: http://www.blueorigin.com/ http://www.blueorigin.com/ In addition to glass, the google guys get credit for http://www.planetaryresources.com/ http://www.planetaryresources.com/ and the driverless cars ;)
- rayiner 14y ago
  What did the Google guys do for Glass or driverless cars other than bankroll them?
  - dbrian 14y ago
    Isn't that kind of the point?
    - CodeCube 14y ago
      So what? what did Elon musk do for spacex and tesla other than bankroll them? edit: meant as reply to GP :)
      - rayiner 14y ago
        Quit his day job to run them?
    - albemuth 14y ago
      No, Tony Stark builds and code everything himself. From scratch.

unreal37 14y ago

The author is making a decent point, that out of the 1,000+ billionaires, almost none of them are trying to change the world in a majorly significant way. The vast majority are busy running the businesses that made them billionaires. Take Mark Cuban. After he sold broadcast.com to Yahoo for $5 billion, why didn't HE start a space company? Instead he started another TV channel - we already have a bunch of those. I think Richard Branson is the counter point. There are actually two Tony Starks - Branson and Musk. I think the problem is legacy. People like that are trying to create the businesses that will define their legacy after they are gone. If you've worked 30-40 years to build a company from scratch and become a billionaire off that (like Walmart or Fedex), that is your legacy. You work til your dying breath trying to make Walmart successful. You don't go try starting robotic or advanced tech businesses.

Anechoic 14y ago
The vast majority are busy running the businesses that made them billionaires. Perhaps we just need to look more closely at the list of billionaires "running the businesses that made them billionaires"? Making a spaceship certainly sounds (and is) sexy, but those spaceships are built on top of other technologies like material science, energy storage, communications, etc (and those in turn are built on other technologies like extraction and manufacturing). I'd bet a number of those "businesses that made them billionaires" are working on that kind of tech, but those technologies don't generate the kind of headlines in mainstream media outlets like self-driving cars. It's the difference between developing packet-switching technologies and Google fiber. You can't have one without the other, but only one sounds exciting.

mikecane 14y ago

One Elon Musk? There are probably more of them than we can count. They just can't rise to the top due to one thing or another. Where would Jobs have been without Wozniak? There are many factors. And I see some people have cited some names. Well there are probably many Musks outside the U.S. who we have never heard of because they don't do something as world-changing as his publicly-stated aspirations. Plus, not everyone wants a spotlight on them.

edw519 14y ago

This post reminds me of that old joke: Husband: I am the head of the household! I determine our family's position on all of the major economic, political, and social issues of the day! Wife: I decide the little things, like where we'll live, what we'll eat, and where the kids go to school. As much as I admire the dreams and accomplishments of Elon Musk, I have trouble getting past the idea that he failed to maintain his marriage (the biggest promise of them all) and rarely sees his own children. Maybe the answer to OP's question is, "Because many who could dream and do like Elon Musk would rather focus on the "little things" like life, love, and family.

unreal37 14y ago
Having not been able to maintain my own marriage, I think its more complicated than that. But the quality Musk has that almost no one in his position has is the willingness to risk it all for the dream. Musk himself almost went broke on SpaceX and Tesla. Most billionaires are into preservation of capital in a big way.
- JoeAltmaier 14y ago
  That. Why do so few people win 7 in a row in craps? Becausethe odds are against you. Most don't get rich by risking it all. Of those that do, 1 in a million 'make it work' i.e. get lucky.
- jessriedel 14y ago
  > Most billionaires are into preservation of capital in a big way. This is surprising to me from a behavioral economics stand point. Seems like billionaires would know they've very nearly maxed out their utility function in terms of material stuff. I'd think it would be very worth it to them to risk a billion dollars (which, remember, is something like the cumulative life's work of a thousand human beings) on mere personal glory or hubris. Are you speaking from personal experience, or is there some conventional wisdom or data I should know about?
  - danielweber 14y ago

aashaykumar92 14y ago

After reading, I'd say your base question/thesis is: "Why on Earth aren’t there more billionaires doing really cool sci-fi sh!#?". You go on to give plenty of examples (FYI--some of these are already being done such as self-driving cars and flexible displays) but all of them, to truly build, would require a solid understanding of mathematics/physics/some type of engineering right? Not every billionaire has that knowledge. Elon Musk does--I believe he has a degree in physics from Penn and dropped out from the PhD program at Stanford. This knowledge simple does not exist among the majority of billionaires. And exactly because of this lack of knowledge, I don't think billionaires CAN actually do 'really cool sci=f sh!#'. When you think of a crazy idea, out of the first few questions that come to your mind, one of them is probably, "Is this idea feasible?" To Musk, the idea of Tesla and SpaceX were both feasible, BECAUSE he had the necessary base knowledge in those areas to realize that with money, these visions could become realities. I like to think many people, other billionaires included, have had the idea of cool battery charged vehicles but without the ability to realize it is possible (aka the base knowledge), they stopped at that. Good or bad, this is most likely the reality of it. All of that being said, I would like to see billionaires do what J.P. Morgan and George Westinghouse did for Thomas Edison and Nikola Tesla, respectively--and that is to find and fund geniuses with these revolutionary, futuristic, 'really cool sci-fi sh!#' ideas. If more billionaires sought out to find scientists/engineers working on 'the next big thing', I imagine more would happen and newer, more fascinating, industries would be formed. My plea: If you're a billionaire who appreciates what people like Elon Musk has done/is doing but don't have the skills to do so yourself, go find more people like him (in the sense that they have crazy futuristic ideas) and help them to help the world.

jessriedel 14y ago
Another way to say this is that the process of becoming a billionaire selects for intelligence, but it actually seems to select strongly against a great technical training and nerdy dreams. (Maybe I'm wrong about that?) Would be really interesting to know how many billionaires have STEM PhD's after controlling for their general intelligence.
- rayiner 14y ago

cjoh 14y ago

A lot of those billionares were born that way. I suspect that to understand what to do with that kind of money, you've got to have been without it at some point in your life.

mjn 14y ago
The ones who were born with it are often quite interested in wealth-preservation as well, to pass the money on in turn to their own heirs. Rather than spending it on something risky, they're more likely to put it in, say, a generation-skipping trust that makes diversified investments.

sidcool 14y ago

Seriously, I am such a big fan of Musk. He is challenging every status quo. Big oil companies and auto manufacturers have been stalling the progress of electric cars since decades. Musk went ahead in spite of the tall odds. He's a Tony Stark of our age.

JDGM 14y ago

I assume that we're taking Elon Musk's "Tony Stark"-ness in this context to mean electric cars, space travel, and solar power. To the best of my knowledge he is neither an alcoholic nor a superhero, though I did just look up his marital history on Wikipedia and with assistance from Google Images I have to award 8 Tony Starks out of 10 on that one. In all seriousness though, are we sure not one of those other 1,225 billionaires is "pursuing major advances in technology with a childlike wonder about the world’s potential"? When I hear about Elon Musk I tend to draw a different conclusion from the author of this piece: not that he is one of a kind, but that there are many more like him out there. I'm not sure which of us is right, quite possibly the author and not me - sometimes seeing X suggests 'generally ¬X' (http://www.overcomingbias.com/2013/03/when-seeing-x-suggests-generally-¬x.html http://www.overcomingbias.com/2013/03/when-seeing-x-suggests...).

jessriedel 14y ago
Could you elaborate on how Katja's idea in the OB post might be used here? To me, it seems like it supports the OP (quite nicely, actually). In particular, Elon Musk shows that Tony-Stark-ness (as you've correctly defined it) is pretty darn visible. If there were more Tony Stark's out there, I'm now more likely to expect expect that I would have heard about them in the same way I've heard about Musk. This increases my confidence that there are not many Tony Starks compared to my pre-Musk assessment. And then, of course, the question is: with so many billionaires out there, why?
- JDGM 14y ago
  "Could you elaborate on how Katja's idea in the OB post might be used here?" Exactly in the way you describe. I was indeed using it to support the OP and not myself: "I'm not sure which of us is right, quite possibly the author and not me - LINK".
  - jessriedel 14y ago
    Ahh, gotcha. Thanks for clarifying. Do you really think there are a bunch of Elon Musk's out there who, say, just aren't doing as much self-promotion?

film42 14y ago

Because if there was (and I'm sure there are), we would compare him/ her to Elon Musk, or Steve Jobs, etc.

scotty79 14y ago

Lot's of people who made a lot of money are good at exactly that. Making a lot of money. I guess following childlike creativity and aptitude to make a lot of money don't go hand in hand. Fortunately internet happened and a lot of people who would suck at making money in any other circumstances made a lot of money anyways. So we have Elon Musk, Larry Page and hopefully we'll get more of them in the future.

rgbrenner 14y ago

You really have to have a terrible case of tunnel vision to write this post. One Elon Musk? Sure, I only see one guy named Elon Musk on the list of billionaires. What is the requirement here? A space company? There are several of those.. Jeff Bezos (worth 23b) has Blue Orgin. He says "cool sci-fi shit"... What about self-driving cars? Those aren't sci-fi enough for you? How is Tesla's battery powered car MORE sci-fi-ish than a self-driving car?! Look, I wish the best for Musk... but the author needs to take a look around at what other people are doing.

jessriedel 14y ago
> A space company? There are several of those.. Jeff Bezos (worth 23b) has Blue Orgin I think most people would agree that Bezos is a runner up, but how many is several? I can think of him and Richard Branson (Virgin Galactic). And neither of them seems to have made it their mission in life rather than just a billionaire's hobby.
- rgbrenner 14y ago
  SpaceX Blue Orgin Scaled Composites/Virgin Galactic Armadillo Aerospace Bigelow Aerospace Stratolaunch Systems I think that counts as "several"
  - jessriedel 14y ago
    Thanks very much for the info. Bigelow Aerospace and Stratolaunch Systems are excellent examples. Bigelow is especially interesting because from what I've googled he doesn't seem to have any sort of technical background. On the other hand, I don't believe John Carmack is a billionaire, and in any case Armadillo Aerospace has only had a few million invested in it. (Whether or not these guys are billionaires is very important. The question is about rarity, and the pool of people under discussion gets much bigger if we consider people with merely 100 million and who are consequently restricted to more modest goals.) In any case, I think the point may still stand that these people devote much less of their emotional and temporal capital than Musk. I'd love to hear alternative evidence. EDIT (in reply to jlgreco since I can't do it in the normal way): Yep, according to the side bar on Wikipedia his net worth is 2.3 billion as of March.

darkchasma 14y ago

Why is there only one Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Richard Branson, etc... Because people are not made in a factory with a cookie cutter.

distant- 14y ago

Meanwhile, the author of the blog post runs a porn website. I find it amusing that all of these advocates of tackling "big issues, that matter", "building world-changing technology" are very far from walking their talk.

Wintamute 14y ago
Top be fair he actually does a fairly good job of intellectualising it in other blog posts. http://blog.paintbottle.com/post/46266111738/how-we-convinced-angels-to-invest-in-porn http://blog.paintbottle.com/post/46266111738/how-we-convince...
SkyMarshal 14y ago
Not only does he run a porn site, he posted this to his porn site's blog. The cognitive dissonance is overwhelming.

JoeCortopassi 14y ago

There's always been more than one "...billionaires doing really cool sci-fi sh!#", we just only have enough attention span to collectively idolize one at a time.

sheri 14y ago

We're lamenting the fact that billionaires are not like cartoon characters? This is ridiculous. Bill Gates is creating real impact to people's lives with his money and charity, and the author just dismisses that as being not cool enough. Instead of applauding responsible and charitable behavior, we want them to be playboy types?

DanBC 14y ago

We're only just at the point where doing crazy-fun science fiction stuff is possible. One reason is that people in the past just didn't have that kind of money. The very wealthy today are a lot richer than the very wealthy of the past century. Another reason is legalistic and infrastructure and technical stuff. There are laws governing every aspect of this stuff, and to get involved takes considerable planning and etc. Finally, the tech just wasn't available in the past. It's much easier to build a few schools and pay for opera than it is to set up a rocket company. I guess it's interesting to know what those billionaires are doing with their money. Maybe it's not liquid? Maybe they're happily oppressing a nation. Maybe they're building shape-shifting buildings.

unhe 14y ago

like i always said, you can change the world, and you dont need 10, 100, 1000 or a million people to change it. You just need one person to change the world

simonsarris 14y ago

I sympathize with the author, and I think a lot of the comments here are missing at least part of the point of the post. Maybe its 12 years of catholic school plus a philosophy degree talking, but in times of peace my brain likes to hold everyone guilty of all the good they didn't do. This applies to me, you, congress, billionaires, and so on. The author swaps my "good" for "awesome stuff", but I think the feeling is probably similar. In other words, I think that being a billionaire and doing nothing ambitious with their money is much less impressive than not being a billionaire. I think the author is remarking upon that in a similar way. I think the author is slightly incorrect in thinking Musk is the only one, but that doesn't really detract from his general point. (Of course, billionaires don't "owe" us/society anything, though some might be able to argue that society allowing one person to accumulate such wealth ought to have some kind of obligation, but as it stands they don't, and that's probably a topic for another time)

codex 14y ago

While there are few billionaires, which is a big part of the story, I would argue that there are plenty of Elon Musks out there, but only a finite capacity of humans and media to idolize. There is only so much attention to go around. Therefore, there is only one or two Elon Musks at a time. He has filled the role Steve Jobs once had in the eyes of the technorati.

smackfu 14y ago

The funny thing is that someone else will look at Musk and see him as wasting his money on useless space stuff rather than helping out the poor and downtrodden. Cool is in the eye of the beholder.

danso 14y ago

This is one of the more annoyingly shortsighted posts I've read on HN in a long while. It reflects the attitude of someone too spoonfed by blockbuster movie culture: if shit ain't being blown up, then who cares? When Norman Borlaug died a few years back, there were a lot of people who thought, "Who?" And when they learned that this farm-raised Iowan is credited with saving a billion human lives, they said, "Well why wasn't he celebrated more?" And the mindset of the OP, well, there's your answer.

deleted 14y ago
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jnp 14y ago
I wrote the article. In it, I clearly outline that the topic of discussion is -- specifically -- childlike wonder and what happens when it mixes with wealth. Not "that every wealthy person should behave in a particular way."
- danso 14y ago
  Yes, but you place too great of emphasis on a certain kind of achievement/product as being indicative of this ideal mixing of childlike wonder + wealth. Or else how could you characterize Bill Gates' work as being somehow less creative or less wondrous. Bill Gates is trying to foster a world free of disease and poverty, which requires no less of a cool, sci-fi-brainstorm to accomplish...how is that less of a crazy childlike ambition than building an electric car? In fact, I would argue even that Gates' path is even far more crazy and childlike. In order to do what he has done, he's had to get out of the relatively clean, logical bubble of technology and deal with messy, real world politics to accomplish his goals...and yet he still pushes forth in idealism. Contrast this with Musk, who after a less-than-favorable review in the New York Times, threw a fit. I'm not saying Musk was or wasn't justified, I'm pointing out that real world revolution takes both child-like wonder and an ability to handle out-of-your-realm realities...Gates is farther along in this difficult path than Musk, though I agree, Musk is more likely to have an Iron Man-like movie made about him.
- potatolicious 14y ago

stephencanon 14y ago

There are almost certainly lots of “Elon Musks”. Very few of them have been lucky enough to become super-rich and attract public attention.

kornifex 14y ago

I think he missed Richard Branson…

pandemicsyn 14y ago

I kinda always assumed Larry Ellison would do more to push the envelope (in a evil overlord sorta way).

frobozz 14y ago

I would hazard that it's partly because the rich don't get rich by throwing their money away. The thing about "cool scifi sh!#" is that it stands a very good chance of not being profitable, and an even greater chance of not being profitable any time soon. The author writes: > As more entrepreneurs become self-made billionaires in the Internet age, I think we’ll see the Tony Stark Rating rise I disagree. I think the only thing that will make that happen is inflation. When the value of a billion is halved, then we'll see it rise. I would be surprised if there weren't plenty more Sub-Billionaire Elon Musks, who have reached a level of wealth that they consider sufficient for future-proof work-free financial independence, and decided to pursue their least profitable or most fanciful of dreams. The author himself points to various cool projects that don't have a single Tony Stark figure at the helm. To become a Billionaire, whilst still being of a mind to do "cool scifi sh!#" requires at least one of these three things: 1) Suddenly becoming very rich (at least a near-billionaire). 2) Some of your "cool scifi sh!#" becoming profitable. 3) Persisting in moneymaking when you could be doing the cool stuff instead. Also, how many billionaires (openly or anonymously) fund chairs or grants at universities? A billionaire of the sort that inherited multiple millions, then made a load more money through speculative finance whilst also working as a corporate barrister is not going to be a Tony Stark; but they may want to see robots with Genuine People Personalities become a reality. It would be far better for someone like that to fund existing university research than to set up their own version of Sirius Cybernetics Corporation.

orochi235 14y ago

Because most parents have much better taste in baby names.

ChuckMcM 14y ago

Fascinating discussion. Restores my faith in HN to have these sorts of threads. #1 To edw519 on Elon's failed marriage, I'm reminded of that economist joke about "is that expensive or is it valuable?" For me, my family is priceless I cherish them with all my heart, but for others I know their work drives them. I don't begrudge them for having different reward structures in their brain, and I would never go so far as to suggest that one set of choices is "better" than another. I share the opinion that making a vow of marriage is a pretty huge promise, but that is because in my context it was a huge promise that I made. As opposed to folks I've known who got married but made a different sort of promise. I attended a wedding where the vows were not "until death do us part" but were "for as long as we both shall love." To which I said, "Seriously? Until you decide you are tired of it?" But my point is that we don't know what promise Elon made when he married. #2 on the "where are they" question, the author (jnp) doesn't take into account that first you have to be a billionaire and then you have to care about "sci-fi stuff". When I sample the general population I find that people who care about science fiction type technologies and making them real is a small fraction of the general population, so I am not surprised that only a small fraction of the billionaires have similar ideas about interesting questions. What I find even more amazing is that none of them have apparently taken any of the 'unconventional' fusion projects under their wing (which is almost thematically Tony Stark). The last bit I'll add is a bit I've added before which is that I have observed that "rich you" is a different person than "not-rich you" for most technologists I've met. (sample size isn't large but I think over the years I've known/observed on the order of 200 people who have gone from "not rich"[1] to "rich"[2] and in most of the cases there was a pretty big shift in what they valued and who they were. Because of that one has to add that someone who is interested in sci-fi stuff now, needs to still be interested in it post-change. And as others have pointed out, Elon has put everything on the line to advance sci-fi stuff a number of times, and that willingness to risk being "not rich" again is perhaps the rarest trait of all. [1] Defining "not rich" as having debts that they would have to forfeit if they lost employment and future obligations that are not yet funded. [2] Defining "rich" as having no debts for which forfeiting them would change their lifestyle, and having a source of income from passive investing that is sufficient under both optimistic and pessimistic economic scenarios.

graeham 14y ago

Part of the issue - only about 200 of those billionaires are under 50. People can be "Tony Stark" after that, but I think its probably more likely that younger people will have the energy and willingness to invest the decades it takes to build large disruptive companies. A non-negligible amount of wealth is inherited. Again, not to say that inherited wealthy aren't going to be making innovative companies - Tony Stark himself inherited Stark Industries. But I think the Elon Musk assumption is for serial ambition in entrepreneurship, which probably more likely comes from self-made people. A lot of wealthy (and innovative) people like doing things behind the scenes. Like Tony Stark, but without the fireworks and cheerleaders. Finally, as others have said, there are other people who have made multiple innovations on the scale of Musk - Edison, Tesla, Ford, Howard Hughes in the past, more recently Gates and Allen, Steve Jobs, Larry and Sergey. Maybe Zuckerberg and Dorsey are the next to join these ranks. And that is just in the computer and internet industries.

shirederby 14y ago

>Whether it’s transparent batteries, flexible displays, nano bots, affordable and effective VR headsets, highly-accurate and highly-portable motion sensors, self-driving cars, doors that unlock when you walk up to them, swallowable computers, affordable genetic testing I think it's worth noting that many of the areas are saddled with burdensome regulation, with the caveat that this is certainly not the only or even the primary hindrance, and that the fact they may be hindrances doesn't in itself mean they aren't warranted.

ScottBurson 14y ago

I'm really surprised that (AFAIK, haven't checked lately) no billionaire is funding Polywell, focus, and/or other fringe fusion research projects. I know, the odds of these panning out are not great, but if you want to become a trillionaire, seems like these are the kind of lottery tickets that could get you there -- and do a massive amount of good for the world in the process. I can tell you, if I had a few hundred million to throw around, I would be all over these things.

kirk21 14y ago

I admire him since he admits failures. Also from an intelectual standpoint (e.g. first principles reasoning), he dares to push the limits. There are not a lot of t-shirts available of Elon so I made one myself: https://www.teepublic.com/show/2278-elon-musk https://www.teepublic.com/show/2278-elon-musk