Founders

Is Elon a “0 to 1” guy or a “1 to 1000” guy

weird internet kid. word rotator. yapping on /okbanger. playing with @wannanaplabs. curating in /cameron | dev + vet + HBS. 
seemore.tv/cameron 🫡

Actually an -infinity to 0 guy. His main talent is a PE type talent on steroids: taking old, ossified industries and rejuvenating them. He is uncanny at exploiting neglected “money on the table” refinements in mature sectors (battery chemistry, welding, cheaper solar) and mature regulatory regimes.

He’s never effectively used truly new 0-1 capabilities in a new-innovations way. Neuralink is very ill-conceived. On AI he’s had to rely far more on pioneering types than he likes and autopilot is the weakest part of Tesla architecture (comma.ai etc do more with less). And twitter destroys his intuitions completely

Delver at contraptions.venkateshrao.com, running summerofprotocols.com, host of /gloom ☀️

The limitation of “first principles thinking” is that FPs tend to be discovered and codified *late* in the evolution of a tech capability.

Truly new tech requires FAFO “associative thinking” capability which he’d actually be good at (evidence: he’s an ok memer) if he weren’t committed to the FP bit.

For example, it’s not Newton’s clumsy 1680s formulation of classical mechanics that’s used in CAD software. It’s a modern 6th Gen formulation called Kane’s equations from 1985 that really nails the first principles of Newtonian mechanics so solidly you can run vast multibody sims with it.

We won’t get to the Kane’s equations of AI or social media for decades. At that point they’d be ripe for an Elon-type talent.

It’s a bit sad. He’s even more talented than we’ve seen I think, but is held back by limiting self-conceptions and weird Trumpy public image insecurities that are beneath him

Definitely not. It’s a whole new capability he sucks at. Even if he weren’t primarily solving for the crushing debt load and didn’t have his dumb political axes to grind, he’d suck at it. To the extent human-digital social systems have first principles they won’t be codified  enough for him to use till 2123

is a text based social media platform also a “money on the table” refinement in this framing?

(genuine question)