John Carmack visits Starbase

> The big problem is that Carmack is an elite software engineer, and he's not at that same tier in rocketry/aerospace despite being good at it. Elite vs good. Which is to say, he'd have to take a back seat at SpaceX (which is running at full speed; Carmack would have to try to get back up to speed in aerospace just to contribute, difficult by itself). His ability to contribute beyond that of other industry specific talent is very questionable, and there are far better people - at rocketry/aerospace - working there than him.

According to the book 'Liftoff' about the genesis of SpaceX. This does not accurately reflect how they hire. Domain knowledge and skill is part of the equation, especially for the leadership team. But they'll also pick up anyone with a proven ability of solving difficult engineering problems even from completely different disciplines.

SpaceX is doing things that haven't been done before anywhere, thus the domain experience can only take you so far...

> It's the equivalent of Michael Jordan spending the remainder of his athletic career trying to play baseball

Sure, but that could just as easily describe Carmack's current efforts in AGI (and I seem to recall that he even tweeted something to that effect himself, though I can't find it now). Him achieving AGI as a solo researcher seems less likely than him making some big technical contributions to SpaceX, or Tesla AI.

Edit: I think I was recalling this tweet: https://twitter.com/ID_AA_Carmack/status/1411010796285480965

Elon is working on AI too, and Dojo is one of the most exciting things in the field if you ask me. Carmack has always been good at leveraging hardware to do amazing things on the graphics side, and AI hardware is not so dissimilar to graphics hardware.

AGI on classical computers? is this a joke?

Musk isn't an engineer

I just look at where Tesla started, and where it is today. How they revolutionized electric cars during a time when the ICE industry was against them in order to protect the status quo. I wonder how many companies would be "all in" on electric right now had Tesla not existed and forced them to. Would the Mustang "Mach E" exist? Would Ford be changing their most profitable and popular line, the F-150 Truck, if there wasn't a Tesla? Would Porsche be making electric cars if Tesla cars 1/3 the price weren't wiping the floor with them in track races, handily embarrassing them? They accomplished this even as the car industry was able to "swing" politicians to ban "Tesla dealerships" which is a huge impediment. Do you know of any Ford, Chevy, Toyota, Nissan, GMC, or Porsche "dealerships" that don't have physical storefronts? They persevered and basically got around that by building A+ products which sold themselves on reputation and performance alone. I guess you can concentrate on "vaporware" and ignore the actual industry shake-up that they forced upon the "establishment" (existing ICE companies) and have done more concretely than any other company I can think of in terms of taking an existing problem (car pollution) and turning it around.

> vapor ware that Tesla spews from time to time

Elon Musk speaks quite aspirationally and optimistically from time to time, for both Tesla and SpaceX.

> SpaceX has delivered

They sure have! Tesla has also delivered over 1.7 million cars. They're on track to deliver about 750k cars in 2021 alone.

Actually, Commander Keen could be called an indie title by today's standards. The success put them in a position to make DOOM.

At least, I think that's how the history went. I could be wrong.

I did say "well known"

But seriously, is there a better title to give him for that part of his work?

They're very underground, you've probably never heard of them.

Are those not games he developed?

He was years ahead of the curve [0] on mobile-first VR. By that I don't mean "stick a phone in Google Carboad," but truly self-contained and portable VR built on mobile chipsets. The success of the Quest and Quest 2 is proof of that, especially in the context of years of slow PC-only VR user growth.

[0] https://venturebeat.com/2016/10/07/oculus-john-carmack-argue...

Other people don't know all the things you do and vice versa. I would bet that less than half of the monthly active users on HN know who John Carmack is.

> I really thought they had a chance when armadillo won that NASA moonlander prize.

Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge.

I'd really wish John would put fingers to the keyboard and write the history of Armadillo Aerospace. From buying a peroxide engine from Juan Lozano (?) to decision not to continue, even with that grand CNC behemoth as a birthday gift.

The commenter is not questioning the impressiveness of the factory.

> Cheap cost of labor is a distant third benefit of manufacturing in China.

Increasingly distant as labor costs continue to soar in China that their demographic crisis will only exacerbate. China speed now is only possible due to a never ending debt stream that gets eternally refinanced.

To me, "speed and agility" are code words for a culture that tolerates long work weeks and hours:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/996_working_hour_system

With a society that had been dealing with famine, poverty, and labor opportunities consisting of subsistence farming in living memory, working 72 hours a week to receive a steady paycheck and a full belly seems like a pretty decent trade.

When you look at the history of the Industrial Revolution and the Western labor movement, I have to have doubts that this "speed and agility" will last. People who are prosperous start to have higher standards, especially as new generations enter the labor market. There is already significant pushback against the 996 system.

It's not hard to out-produce when the average person is working almost double the Western standard.

I thought the documentary "American Factory" was an interesting window into the lives of Chinese and American factory workers. My own analysis/opinion: the factory workers in China were indeed shown to be working quickly, obediently, and working long hours. The Americans looked lazy at times.

I thought the reasoning for this difference was that American workers used to union protections already had generations of knowledge about why they should not become wage slaves risking their health and safety for their capitalist employers, despite having few other options in a town where most of the factory jobs left.

I personally wonder when the typical Chinese worker will wake up to that same reality: that speed, agility, and fast innovation aren't really worth selling your weekends and joints and tendons away just so that the boss can buy a third vacation home.

That had always been the advantage of communism and dictatorships. When something needs to be done, you can just force people to do it.