The Believer (2009) | Hacker News Reader

The Believer (2009)

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54 pointstodayiamme18 comments

The irony is that Musk's behavior would lead to an Asperger's diagnosis, as it did for Bill Gates and Nicola Tesla, except that psychologists recently realized how much self-inflicted harm they were doing with that diagnosis, so they voted it out of their new diagnosis manual.

Imagine voting out a disease in medicine -- imagine voting cancer out of existence. In medicine, a science, such a thing cannot happen. In psychology, it happens regularly.

EDIT: once again downvoted for being right and backing up every word with evidence.

So you are just going to ignore the vast majority of the history of medicine? Or do you regularly check up on your humor levels?

Medicine, and science in general, is constantly re-evaluating and often finding they were wrong.

> So you are just going to ignore the vast majority of the history of medicine?

No, quite the contrary -- in fact I just defined the difference between medicine and psychology. Medicine identifies new diseases using evidence. Psychology identifies new diseases using votes. All the new "diseases" in DSM-5 were added by a panel voting in secret.

> Medicine, and science in general, is constantly re-evaluating and often finding they were wrong.

Yes, using science and falsifiability (a hallmark of all scientific ideas) to identify the wrong ideas. Psychology, by contrast, identifies wrong ideas by measuring public reactions to their imaginary diseases. Asperger's wasn't voted out because it's fiction -- most psychological diseases are fiction. It was voted out because it produced an epidemic of phony diagnoses and a public relations disaster.

> Or do you regularly check up on your humor levels?

It's not easy to find humor in stories where psychology gets it wrong and kills children.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rebecca_Riley

Quote: "Rebecca Riley ..., the daughter of Michael and Carolyn Riley and resident of Hull, Massachusetts, was found dead in her home after prolonged exposure to various medications, her lungs filled with fluid. The medical examiner's office determined the girl died from "intoxication due to the combined effects" of prescription drugs. ... The Riley parents were unemployed and the family relied on Social Security Benefits. From the age of two, Rebecca was diagnosed with ADHD and bipolar disorder, mainly on the basis of information given by her mother to child psychiatrist Kayoko Kifuji from the Tufts-New England Medical Center. "

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attachment_therapy

Quote: "Since the 1990s there have been a number of prosecutions for deaths or serious maltreatment of children at the hands of "attachment therapists" or parents following their instructions."

I have a ton of respect for Musk, but at this stage the recent coverage seems to treat him as the next messiah (and not just here, but also in the financial space)

Normal CEOs get to their positions by a road paved in bullshit. Someone at the top of several large companies with a focus on real quality and execution—with sense enough to tell the difference—is an extremely rare thing.

It shouldn't be, but it is. I think that's why.

If you bought TSLA stock last year or before, he may very well be your financial messiah.

;)

It's worth noting that this piece was written in early 2009, before the Tesla Model S, and the multi-billion dollar Space X deals.

I think many of us would do the same things and have the same vision as Elon Musk given the chance.

The problem is one of funding, and the fact that acquiring money is not normally correlated with broad vision, and that having money is not normally correlated with executing that vision.

In short, Elon Musk's advantage is that he is an outlier in terms of how he was able to acquire money, and how he is able to control his use of it. Commendable, and the true lesson.

An inspiring notion, but there are lots of people who have as much wealth as Elon Musk. They're not doing anything like what Musk is doing. Apparently most people either 1. retire and buy fancy yachts or 2. continue working on whatever business made them rich in the first place.

That is precisely my point, in noting his control over how he executes on his wealth. Thank you for re-iterating.

> I think many of us would do the same things and have the same vision as Elon Musk given the chance.

It's not as though Musk was born with a silver spoon in his mouth -- he made his own chances. "Chance favors the prepared mind" -- Louis Pasteur.

> Elon Musk's advantage is that he is an outlier in terms of how he was able to acquire money, and how he is able to control his use of it.

I think Musk's real advantage is being able to get very smart people to work with him. The money comes as a result of that. Even as a child he saw this... knowing that he had to get to the US because it attracted the smartest. Launching a rocket into orbit with a company of 150 people is an incredible feat. You don't do that by just getting a lot of funding. Many companies could spend billions and not do that. You have to have this ability to get brilliant people to work together.

It's also something I noticed with Steve Jobs. For all his flaws, he was able to get very smart people to work for him.

yes, from interviews I get the feeling that Musk is not as smart as the people who are working for him. See for example, the interview with Sal Khan of Khan academy. Musk seems to be not as sharp as Sal, even given that he was tired. Not denying he is smart, just not as smart as those working for him, and to compound this misperception, people hardly get to see those working for him anyway.

It's a bit silly that the article presented him as basically godly. But perhaps if we too, like the author, had a chance to sit down and talk to him and really learn about his adventures, we would be in awe as well. All in all, it was still a good read.

Previous discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=458090

PR firm written

(2009)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com