I’m not saying like only smart people should have kids. I’m just saying that smart people should have kids as well. They should at least maintain – at least be a replacement rate. And the fact of the matter is that I notice that a lot of really smart women have zero or one kid.

I just look at it as ‘What grades do I need to get where I want to go?

Enorme Risiken begleiten fast alles, was Musk tut. Doch wenn es nach ihm geht, wird er bis ganz zum Ende mit diesen Risiken leben und auf vieles verzichten, was anderen Menschen wichtig ist.

Musk, though, approaches everything from a Platonic perspective. As he sees it, all of the design and technology choices should be directed toward the goal of making a car as close to perfect as possible. To the extent that rival automakers haven’t, that’s what Musk is judging. It’s almost a binary experience for him. Either you’re trying to make something spectacular with no compromises or you’re not. And if you’re not, Musk considers you a failure.

He’d started the company to put a dent in the automotive industry and force people to rethink electric cars.

He lost forty-five pounds over the course of the illness and had a closet full of clothes that no longer fit. “I came very close to dying,” Musk said. “That’s my lesson for taking a vacation: vacations will kill you.

Whereas if they change a rule and something good happens, they don’t even get a reward. So, it’s very asymmetric. It’s then very easy to understand why regulators resist changing the rules. It’s because there’s a big punishment on one side and no reward on the other. How would any rational person behave in such a scenario?

SpaceX, by the way, is not alone here. Being late is par for the course in the aerospace industry. It’s not a question of if it’s late, it’s how late will the program be. I don’t think an aerospace program has been completed on time since bloody World War II.

SpaceX is the hip, forward-thinking place that’s brought the perks of Silicon Valley – namely frozen yogurt, stock options, speedy decision making, and a flat corporate structure – to a staid industry.

No one, however, would suggest that his reach extended down as far as Musk’s into overseeing so.