Ask HN: Why is Elon Musk such hero to the tech community?
Yes, he's done some outstanding things but I feel people would make him a saint if they could. Why is the worship so strong?
Things I admire: his scale of vision (replace fossil fuels, expand beyond earth, augment human intelligence); his willingness to go for clean-sheet designs; his persistence, iterating and learning from failures; his personal commitment, both in working on and financing his ideas; his obvious enjoyment of his work.
Thing I dislike: over-hyping things; driving employees too hard; being too thin-skinned; the personal attacks, especially in public; his general appearance of being gleefully unaware of his own privilege.
If he went home to his family and workshop in the relatively modest Musk compound instead of hanging out with stars, private-jetting around the world, and being a jerk on Twitter, I'd be more impressed.
But I think a part of the attraction is that he seems like "one of us": an engineer who (like us, in our dreams) has taken the napkin projects from a long session at the pub, and made them real.
There have been many problems along the way and so far he has overcome them. If he doesn't implode or run out on money he will succeed.
I would love to see humans on Mars in my lifetime and I think he will be a big part of that.
Musk has shown some paranoia, and some bad behavior on Twitter.
That's how a spacecraft landed on the moon way back in 1969. SpaceX was just the first to do it on Earth.
Hmm... actually... the fact that people like Musk are so rare is discouraging. There are quite a few people with say $100M+ net worth and it seems like most of them don't do much. If wealth were a true meritocracy I feel like Elon would not be remarkable.
If indeed we manage to establish a self-sustaining colony elsewhere this is a bigger step in our evolution than moving from water to land.
Trump is to Boomers as Elon Musk is to Millennials.
They are almost the exact same personality wrapped in only slightly different generational belief systems. Where Trump made waves in the 80s by being the "winner" type, Musk made waves by being the "visionary" type.
Both are voracious exaggerators bordering on pathological liars. Both are media whores who appear in movie cameos as themselves. Both are completely despised by former business partners. Both use Twitter as a personal echo chamber.
Only reason Musk hasn't gone bankrupt is because the US government kept all of his businesses afloat with major capital infusions. At least Trump's bankruptcies didn't cost tax dollars.
Musk is worshiped because a lot of people don't want to face the fact he's a bullshit artist so they have to take comfort in the illusion of his persona.
It's a Very fair comparison. We might be seeing president MusK in 20 years.
I don't think Trump did much of anything to accelerate anything.
Musk's personality flaws are well known. I personally suspect him to be bipolar. I don't worship him but I also give him plenty of credit for being willing to work very hard to bring things into reality that are quite important to the human future.
Oh and they both dodged military service.
Wake up, homie. Musk is as much an engineer as Bill Nye is a scientist.