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Comment by edanm | Hacker News Reader

I'd hardly call that a logical fallacy. I'm fairly sure there's some correlation between success in business and success in other domains.

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The problem is that a company has nothing to do with a country, the goal isn't to have a positive balance at the end of the excel spreadsheet

I agree.

Still, it's not a logical fallacy to think "someone very successful at X is more likely to be successful at Y", in many cases. Do you think that there is literally zero correlation between massive business success and success at whatever-it-is Musk is trying to do now?

(I agree it's a fallacy if you think is' assured he will succeed, as opposed to this just being a correlation in your mind. I just bumped on the use of "logical fallacy" to describe something that is not a fallacy at all!)

I think you may have captured the point best in the way you phrased this: "whatever-it-is Musk is trying to do now"

That it's not entirely clear makes it impossible to know if it might be something he could have success in.

The way I see it: It often takes him 6+ years to eventually be successful in an endeavor, and he learns by making a whole bunch of mistakes a long the way. That may be ok in a company, but probably not a good way to handle a 4-year federal government term.

Those other domains might be seriously limited in scope and number though!

He's had more failures then successes

Fired from PayPal, Twitter, neurolink, the tunnel thing

He bought his way into Tesla, and SpaceX, though suppsedly he's not actually the one running it (believable I think there's not enough time)

Quantitatively, he's had more success than anyone ever

Most money? Sure. Most success? That depends on what you're quantifying.

Look, if you're trying to argue that Musk isn't a successful person in many ways, my only question is "then who is?". You're talking about literally the richest person in the world, and one that has had several successful companies.

And having failures is not that uncommon, especially for serial entrepreneurs. You've gotta accept some failures to get to successes.

As for the whole "he bought his way into Tesla" thing, this is just making the idea of a "founder" some kind of sacrosanct thing. By most histories I've read, he is the reason the company is the success it is today.

> "then who is?"

The local Bodega down the street has been profitable for 40 years. They seem to be doing just fine and as a bonus they haven't burned billions in subsidies or hijacked public transportation initiatives.

There are plenty of successful people. How do you want to define success? Elon got rich by turning TSLA into a meme stock. Do you think he would be rich or as rich right now if twitter never existed? He got rich on paper once, with TSLA stock, every other attempt at making a business has been a failure. He doesnt have a track record, and the financials for tsla are not inline with how the company is actually doing. Sales now are slipping.

> And having failures is not that uncommon, especially for serial entrepreneurs.

IDK how you can call this anything else but luck. He got forced out of paypal with a ton of money and was able to keep taking risks because of the safety nets he had that most do not.

He also threw a fit and left openai, that was a poor business decision.

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