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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 e

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
  A disproportionate share of billionaires are engineers. Of course part of that is because the petro-chemical industry mints a lot of billionaires. E.g. Charles and David Koch both have bachelors and masters degrees (mechanical and chemical engineering) from MIT.
  - jessriedel 14y ago
    > A disproportionate share of billionaires are engineers. Thanks, do you have a cite for this? My intuition is still that a much higher fraction of billionaires are business/management types than the general population of people at their intelligence level.
    - potatolicious 14y ago
      > "My intuition is still that a much higher fraction of billionaires are business/management types" It's both. Nobody becomes a billionaire doing engineering all day, but a great many become billionaires by doing business with an engineering background. If you look at the major industrialists of our era (and before), many of them come from technical backgrounds, and have done their time in the trenches. When Ford hired the first all-management CEO (i.e., did not rise through the ranks in the auto industry) it was a Big Deal.
      - rayiner 14y ago
        Same with Intel, when they hired their first CEO who didn't rise through the ranks as a process engineer.
    - rayiner 14y ago
      > My intuition is still that a much higher fraction of billionaires are business/management types than the general population of people at their intelligence level. It can be true that business types and engineers are over-represented among billionaires. It also depends on how you define "engineer." Nobody makes billions as a line engineer (but nobody makes billions as a line "manager" either). But in my experience once you get a degree in engineering, that totally shapes your world view and how you approach problems even if you go on and do other things. So I think those people should count too. Using a relatively narrow definition, out of the Forbes 25 you might count Charles and David Koch (BS/MS in ChemE/MechE), Jeff Bezos (BS EECS), Larry Page and Sergey Brin (BS CS), and Mukesh Ambani (BS ChemE). These guys all made their fortune at companies related to their engineering discipline. Broadening the definition, you can also throw in there Larry Ellison (no degree, but worked at Amdahl and Ampex as a programmer on databases), and Bill Gates. Finally, you could throw in Michael Bloomberg (BS EE--went straight into finance) and Bernard Arnault (BS CivE, worked as a civil engineer but made his fortune elsewhere). That's disproportionate, considering that only 1-3% of the population is engineers.

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
A disproportionate share of billionaires are engineers. Of course part of that is because the petro-chemical industry mints a lot of billionaires. E.g. Charles and David Koch both have bachelors and masters degrees (mechanical and chemical engineering) from MIT.
- jessriedel 14y ago
  > A disproportionate share of billionaires are engineers. Thanks, do you have a cite for this? My intuition is still that a much higher fraction of billionaires are business/management types than the general population of people at their intelligence level.
  - potatolicious 14y ago
    > "My intuition is still that a much higher fraction of billionaires are business/management types" It's both. Nobody becomes a billionaire doing engineering all day, but a great many become billionaires by doing business with an engineering background. If you look at the major industrialists of our era (and before), many of them come from technical backgrounds, and have done their time in the trenches. When Ford hired the first all-management CEO (i.e., did not rise through the ranks in the auto industry) it was a Big Deal.
    - rayiner 14y ago
      Same with Intel, when they hired their first CEO who didn't rise through the ranks as a process engineer.
  - rayiner 14y ago
    > My intuition is still that a much higher fraction of billionaires are business/management types than the general population of people at their intelligence level. It can be true that business types and engineers are over-represented among billionaires. It also depends on how you define "engineer." Nobody makes billions as a line engineer (but nobody makes billions as a line "manager" either). But in my experience once you get a degree in engineering, that totally shapes your world view and how you approach problems even if you go on and do other things. So I think those people should count too. Using a relatively narrow definition, out of the Forbes 25 you might count Charles and David Koch (BS/MS in ChemE/MechE), Jeff Bezos (BS EECS), Larry Page and Sergey Brin (BS CS), and Mukesh Ambani (BS ChemE). These guys all made their fortune at companies related to their engineering discipline. Broadening the definition, you can also throw in there Larry Ellison (no degree, but worked at Amdahl and Ampex as a programmer on databases), and Bill Gates. Finally, you could throw in Michael Bloomberg (BS EE--went straight into finance) and Bernard Arnault (BS CivE, worked as a civil engineer but made his fortune elsewhere). That's disproportionate, considering that only 1-3% of the population is engineers.