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Comment by fakedang | Hacker News Reader

You underestimate Musk too much.

This was years in the making. He basically made a $200 million bet on the USG, one that translated into hundreds of billions. This was all calculated, and the veneer of government inefficiency was good enough to mask his actual objectives.

I can say this confidently because that's what I would have done too, and I'm not half as smart as him (given that I haven't built a Paypal or a SpaceX myself). That's what anyone in such a privileged position would have done. The upside to doing it that way was just that much massive.

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Smart doesn't work like that. I have little doubt that you are as "smart" as Elon.

Usually what people mean when they say "smart" is actually more like meaning of the word "canny," which helps explain the distinction. A canny decision is one that makes you look smart in retrospect.

To put it another way, I might climb to the top of a hill. Climbing the hill doesn't make me taller, but it does get me the benefits of being able to see everything for miles around.

Perhaps after climbing a hill/Ent I see Saruman's army marching off to war, and realize that even though I may be a halfling, right now I could say a particular thing that would be "as the falling of small stones that starts an avalanche in the mountains." This is a canny moment, and like any canny moment or is filled with surreal possibility. But it isn't because Meriadoc is a tall hobbit and, not because only a tall person could do this thing that involves seeing a great distance.

Musk didn't build PayPal or spacex

What do you mean? SpaceX in particular he still owns

Musk knows nothing about rocket design and has very little to do with SpaceX, which is a big reason it is actually successful. If Musk actually TRIED to design a rocket it would go about as well as the CyberTruck because he would just ignore all advice from anyone who actually know how to design rockets.

He didn’t personally design rockets, but he founded SpaceX, funded it, set the architecture, and has been deeply involved in major technical decisions. That’s not ‘nothing,’ and it’s hard to explain SpaceX’s success without him.

> That's what anyone in such a privileged position would have done.

That’s what anyone who’s self-centered and morally bankrupt enough would do perhaps, but no, not “anyone”. Some people are committed to being good (or at least striving towards it).

Your take strikes me as sociopathic at worst, and misguided at best. Much like musk, to your point.

On the other hand, getting into "such a privileged position" of hundreds of billions has the sociopathy you mention as a prerequisite...

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