This thread merges many of the topics that have been articulated separately over the past couple of weeks under the head.
Is Musk a “genius”? At what? This is a question about how to understand cause, I think. How much Musk, and how much the way current social systems work. Several years ago — maybe 2007 when they were pushing for a raised living wage in Seattle — Nick Hanauer gave a talk at SFI (or somewhere, where I happened to hear it), in which the opening themes were: — I’m not really smarter than a typical capable person — I’m certainly not harder-working than even above-median hard-working peoplle — I do have an uncommonly large tolerance for risk Okay, so is Nick a savant of self-insight? Not sure. His brother is a large wealth-holder too, and Marcus rightly said last week (or so) that having this big cushion of wealth makes the same large move not-even-all-that-risky for a rich guy, which is completely off-limits for anybody else. So it isn’t even clear whether Nick is off-scale for risk tolerance, or just toward the upper side of the distribution and starting with money, which amplifies. Back to Is Musk a genius? Well: let me start by saying I don’t use the word glibly, but I am comfortable saying Murray Gell-Mann was a genius. Combination of really many-sigma cognitive powers in many areas, and seeming ability to take on new things and synthesize, very quickly, in lots of directions. Is Musk like that? I would say no, roughly as Marcus’s “propositions” put it. But then to Glen: are there certain things where Musk does have an unusual skill, which happens to be rewarded (I would argue, excessively) by the current economic structure? So very few people are geniuses, and even for those who are, maybe it isn’t all that big a deal, but many people have aptitudes and many defects, and The World then disposes in ways that are certainly not Calvinist. Somebody commented that Musk does seem to have a good nose for when society is near one or another tipping point, and an ability to use money and take risks to position himself well to harvest rewards from that. Electric cars being the example in that post. The computer industry was rapidly improving the materials science of batteries; climate activism begins to get a little traction, and various other things. So what was easily crushed by the oil companies in the 1970s can break through this time. But then the War and Peace question: how much is it that a person is special in some essence, and how much is it that the society is looking for a piece to slot into that role, and one guy gets there before others? Several factors can come in. In materials science, we have a concept of “active matter”; the oldest example being things like inverted populations in lasers. It seems to me that current capitalist economies almost deserve to be called “hyper-active matter”. Search and comparison are so easy, and distribution so frictionless, that even if there were no fashion effects and decisions were purely about quality, an overwhelming majority of sales in an entire field can be directed into one small sector and from there to a few individuals. (This dominates everything, it seems. National concentrations of outputs in agriculture because oil-powered transport is so cheap; Krugman’s industry-concentration in economic geography, and I am sure I could think of others.) Is everybody in Silicon Valley a “genius”? It doesn’t seem that way to me. It seems that they are a combination of capable engineers, whose ideas happen to be ones that fill a new market niche that avalanches early money to them, and then there are founder effects of having money that allow them to make large moves in other spaces. One doesn’t want to say they aren’t “good at” whatever they did; certainly they deserve credit for all the things (skill, effort, pushing through frustrations and setbacks) that enable somebody to build something. But I do remember, back in the late 1990s, being in the SanFran area talking to some engineers (I don’t even remember what topic, but something material, with very messy and nasty math that you have to be good at to make it work at all), and they commented that all companies doing that kind of work were being priced entirely out of the metropolitan area, as social-network companies got so flooded with capital that they could just displace everything else. I certainly think that, for skill and development, these engineers were way better at something harder, than the programmers of networking apps were at what they were doing. But the engineers were a niche service for which there was a small (though non-substitutable) demand, and that wasn’t going to be enough to keep them solvent. In evolutionary terms, such market dynamics are very powerful at “optimizing” (quite apart from whether the “optimum” continues to seem so over time), which ultimately means homogenizing, but very bad at preserving variation. Of course, this is nothing new; it is the root of various efforts to push back on monopolies or monopsonies through history, even for their fairly-given advantage, power-abuses aside. And then there are pure salience effects, crowd-nucleation, etc. Was Michael Jackson really _so much_ better a musical performer, at the peak of his salience, than all other singers? (Or was he even particularly enjoyable?) Is that the right theory of cause for his mega-centrality? Just very low market friction: that all music listeners can find out instantly that Jackson is better, even if only a little, than every other singer? I pose it this way to make the absurdity of such a position painful to read. I think a better theory of cause is that there is something about teenage girls that makes them need to be in the company of other teenage girls, all looking at the same thing. That need is the hyper-active medium property. Somebody will nucleate it if the person if fairly good and the timing is right. There are loose analogies in tech markets, of course — and many other markets too — whether from interaction effects of devices and applications, or social-leveraging effects (the “secretary strategy” of Microsoft through the 2000s). (All this, of course, is so old and tired from being written about, that I bore myself recounting it here.) But if we want a theory of cause — what aspects would be the same or different, which players are substitutable or singular — in Steve Gould’s “replaying of the tape”, we find ourselves needing to assign effect sizes to these various things, all of which we can argue do exist because we can find cases where any one of them seems to be the dominant factor for that case. One can make parallel arguments about what skills trump does or does not have, in some overlapping and some distinct dimensions of social instability. I have been, with about the predictable frequency, in various communication meetings with university admins and legal and lobbying functionaries, as they explain how they are trying to maneuver and coordinate to keep various parts of the research enterprise alive. The sense of multi-level thought required as I listen to them makes this an interesting problem for me. If we ask about “big-picture” motives that get at the main theory of cause for trump or Musk, most of those would work in about the same way for chimpanzees, and we should understand them at that level. The social base that makes up their supporters too. (Find a primatologist who knows about “cage wars” sometime, and have her explain them to you.) Yes, they operate in a particular social milieu that chimps don’t have, but that is just the state space. People like Kara Swisher seem to have a fairly good ability to compress and make plausible statements about motives, acknowledging the details in which these actors act. If we then ask about the other actors, working in the institutional hierarchies of society, the byzantine intricacy of the constraints, relations, and permissions within which they move is extraordinary. I wouldn’t survive in those jobs for a day. That applies both to those trying to install the dictatorship, and those doing whatever they are doing: imagining they can survive by accommodating it or moving around it, and others who already don’t have so much left to lose, who have crossed over to trying to fight it. Both these levels are active at the same time, and in engagement with one another. Eric > On Feb 14, 2025, at 0:53, Pieter Steenekamp <piet...@randcontrols.co.za> > wrote: > > Elon Musk is a massive jerk. Huge. But let’s be real—he’s also a genius who > actually gets big things done. So, whether you admire him or wish you could > launch him into space, we’re all strapped into this rollercoaster. > > > On Fri, 14 Feb 2025 at 03:13, Pieter Steenekamp <piet...@randcontrols.co.za > <mailto:piet...@randcontrols.co.za>> wrote: >> I want to like Musk >> >> I don’t want to like Musk. On a personal level, he doesn’t seem like someone >> I’d want to like. >> >> But for me, this isn’t about liking or disliking him. I have deep admiration >> for what he has achieved—and continues to achieve—for the world. Too often, >> people let their personal feelings about Musk cloud their judgment of his >> impact. >> >> I’d love to hear from someone who, after a deep dive into Musk’s >> accomplishments, still believes he isn’t one of humanity’s greatest >> achievers. >> >> Take Walter Isaacson, for example. He clearly doesn’t like Musk on a >> personal level, yet he recognizes his extraordinary ability to accomplish >> great things. I challenge anyone to read Isaacson’s biography and still deny >> the significance of Musk’s achievements. >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> >> On Fri, 14 Feb 2025 at 00:22, Marcus Daniels <mar...@snoutfarm.com >> <mailto:mar...@snoutfarm.com>> wrote: >>> Tom Tom (Netherlands) still shows Gulf of Mexico. OpenStreetMap (UK) too. >>> >>> >>> >>> From: Friam <friam-boun...@redfish.com <mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com>> >>> On Behalf Of Stephen Guerin >>> Sent: Thursday, February 13, 2025 1:53 PM >>> To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <friam@redfish.com >>> <mailto:friam@redfish.com>> >>> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] OpenAI and the fight between Elon and Sam >>> >>> >>> >>> On Thu, Feb 13, 2025 at 12:32 PM cody dooderson <d00d3r...@gmail.com >>> <mailto:d00d3r...@gmail.com>> wrote: >>> > >>> > I want to like Musk. At one point I did, for the reasons mentioned above. >>> > I am suspicious that his neuro-link is malfunctioning and destroying his >>> > empathy. That being said, I am hopeful that he brings the metric system >>> > to the USA, and somehow doesn't end up in charge of the nuclear weapons >>> > arsenal in the process. >>> >>> And from your lips to Google's (and Bing and Apple maps's) ears, Cody. >>> >>> At least I can switch to metric in Google Maps - 500.0 km from Galveston to >>> Merida :-) >>> I don't have to change region to Mexico or practically anywhere else, to >>> get metric by default (which is how google maps works) >>> >>> I should be able to switch to a different naming system without having to >>> change my whole region. >>> >>> Or make metric the standard for the US too.. >>> >>> Google enforces government naming directives, like renaming the Gulf of >>> Mexico to Gulf of America, without allowing user overrides. However, for >>> measurement units, they allow users to switch between miles and kilometers, >>> despite the U.S. government recognizing metric as the "preferred system" >>> since 1975. This creates an inconsistency where official directives are >>> followed for naming but ignored for measurement standards. If Google >>> applies government policy selectively, they should either enforce metric as >>> the default or allow users to choose place names in their map settings. >>> >>> There is no law or executive action stating The United States Customary >>> System (USCS) is the official system of the U.S.—it is simply entrenched >>> through historical precedent., miles, feet, inches, pounds, gallons, >>> fahrenheit, BTU, HP, ton, and my personal favorite in Action ( ft·lb·s). >>> etc. >>> >>> But there are plenty of federal actions for metric, >>> >>> Cody, here's some ammo you can use in your letter writing, occupy movements >>> and social media campaigns why the mapping companies should avoid hypocrisy >>> and change to metric if they are going to listen to government mandates: >>> >>> Weights and Measures Act of 1866: Legalized metric use in trade. >>> Treaty of the Meter (1875): U.S. joined international metric system. >>> Mendenhall Order (1893): Defined U.S. customary units via metric standards. >>> Metric Conversion Act of 1975: Declared metric as preferred system. >>> Executive Order 12770 (1991): Required federal agencies to use metric. >>> Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act of 1988: Strengthened federal metric >>> adoption. >>> Fair Packaging and Labeling Act (1992 amendment): Required metric on >>> product labels. >>> National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Policy (2008): >>> Encouraged metric in commerce. >>> <image001.png> >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> .- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / >>> ... --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-.. >>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >>> Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom >>> https://bit.ly/virtualfriam >>> <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fbit.ly%2fvirtualfriam&c=E,1,dyz_Jke4xaLzb2eqoG5DN2aVkYwrJy0qHZ0Fch6CW4pPcJvC5-r8GKinN8Js6WDPspH8Zu22zpmHZ7U9wNbmIY34BmVQAJbK6Ft8AlPkjSs,&typo=1> >>> to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >>> <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http%3a%2f%2fredfish.com%2fmailman%2flistinfo%2ffriam_redfish.com&c=E,1,qiOjXWaytglFSpjx8SwF55gqraMQgmH8ZZsYf7QtX34F5JfzFzcMnaLh4NDaaIgGmF6bsMliaGgTBuLsjTiFYqW5HGw7I9c5riILfr_f7gk,&typo=1> >>> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ >>> <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http%3a%2f%2ffriam-comic.blogspot.com%2f&c=E,1,FY4M9u2Nf4LlaGMi7tpog1_iAxqPy3EXx8X0XUnMASNfyVZuD7QPvsKwpxjb_ghcl3uPU-idGopMXi9omLzh9S8JsyGX_QDydyXOwrA9zQdM-ykIr_v6vQ,,&typo=1> >>> archives: 5/2017 thru present >>> https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ >>> <https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fredfish.com%2fpipermail%2ffriam_redfish.com%2f&c=E,1,CfoqIg1ZYRtsFkasasrHeerxXwjFpmlJPX-uamCxKoMVv3EYeFtphYAjc1rZUfLd4myoXFTguy6YFh4upKnIa7ZA0zDI_gWWn1BWnSIg21lHK5w,&typo=1> >>> 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/ > .- .-.. .-.. / ..-. --- --- - . .-. ... / .- .-. . / .-- .-. --- -. --. / ... > --- -- . / .- .-. . / ..- ... . ..-. ..- .-.. > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom > https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fbit.ly%2fvirtualfriam&c=E,1,C77mWRPEvYJC1NzqotgpIAaNOkD30nqzKlI3tb0aV2sdRWzRJqDJgWkdWxldIz6KG1oOKiQlWiTY061eI5Iwn8ABvqm1aMDdEWu08jEh&typo=1 > to (un)subscribe > https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http%3a%2f%2fredfish.com%2fmailman%2flistinfo%2ffriam_redfish.com&c=E,1,Jr_995W1KJqa4mquIJJDLlZSwTEUX8Dsp5CW-O61qEgP23r_Lo4dODbGRWBodomPjAYdfxXIg5W3TWwKyXxXU_tbpJnYKL0JjPwVMBXlXHO4&typo=1 > FRIAM-COMIC > https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=http%3a%2f%2ffriam-comic.blogspot.com%2f&c=E,1,nud81IkN7VCYqR0clK4TeLuHiWTSVvOfutunuwzfd1VMDIffEGHm8Ose-XzG0lE_w6S0wQRU0rG1762q-LcPt40Ryk9GOIZorTw-bH-7U_BHfdgA26k,&typo=1 > archives: 5/2017 thru present > https://linkprotect.cudasvc.com/url?a=https%3a%2f%2fredfish.com%2fpipermail%2ffriam_redfish.com%2f&c=E,1,9WTW4dw4cyFs0v19TGp8LZIJOjZAp6JIPw1D-vGzeBZxkb_Ut2tc188SVSxvWNZoB8H3rjJRpMc8HCZJ13SFjQ6bWJ4j-cVNClXB22o9pgwlOIQ,&typo=1 > 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/
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