He was way less intelligent than I had assumed he was.
American confuse success (or wealth) for intelligence. It's always made me insane. And now because wealth inequality is so crazy - many people will stop listening if you try to give them a simple example that shows them that billionaires are not sages.
It's clear that Elon Musk uses his "We'll live on Mars" shtick as PR but I think he actually believes it too. Musk is 49. For the sake of convenience - let's say Musk lives another 39 years and dies in 2060. If I tell a redditor that we won't be terraforming on Mars in Musk's lifetime - they get testy. They use an "appeal to wealth" fallacy that Wikipedia insists on calling "argumentum ad crumenam". I can't dance to that beat.
The redditors tell me Musk is a billionaire and because I'm not - I'm wrong. I say - maybe we will have a few hundred people on Mars by 2060. Or maybe I'm wrong by a factor of 10 and it'll be a few thousand. Whatever the number - it will be extraordinarily risky and experimental. A "minor" accident or problem could become serious and overnight the majority of them could die within an Earth day. But it's not as if it's going to be 10s of millions or even millions of people living there in an ordinary earth reality with McDonald's and shit. They're going to be astronauts who have to work 24/7 keeping the place going and do stuff like recycle their own poop and eat it.
The redditors always refuse to give me their guess. Musk (or Bezos, etc) is their prophet and they don't need reason, facts, or logic.
American confuse success (or wealth) for intelligence. It's always made me insane. And now because wealth inequality is so crazy - many people will stop listening if you try to give them a simple example that shows them that billionaires are not sages.
It's clear that Elon Musk uses his "We'll live on Mars" shtick as PR but I think he actually believes it too. Musk is 49. For the sake of convenience - let's say Musk lives another 39 years and dies in 2060. If I tell a redditor that we won't be terraforming on Mars in Musk's lifetime - they get testy. They use an "appeal to wealth" fallacy that Wikipedia insists on calling "argumentum ad crumenam". I can't dance to that beat.
The redditors tell me Musk is a billionaire and because I'm not - I'm wrong. I say - maybe we will have a few hundred people on Mars by 2060. Or maybe I'm wrong by a factor of 10 and it'll be a few thousand. Whatever the number - it will be extraordinarily risky and experimental. A "minor" accident or problem could become serious and overnight the majority of them could die within an Earth day. But it's not as if it's going to be 10s of millions or even millions of people living there in an ordinary earth reality with McDonald's and shit. They're going to be astronauts who have to work 24/7 keeping the place going and do stuff like recycle their own poop and eat it.
The redditors always refuse to give me their guess. Musk (or Bezos, etc) is their prophet and they don't need reason, facts, or logic.
You need to tell them you're going to argumentum deez nutz
:angery: