lubynsky

This timeline comprises the thoughts I want to share with my sons. I want Matt & Dan to read and think about them. One wish I have is that they become better than me, so this timeline will provide them with a reference about me so they can build something better for their lives.

@engineers_feed The cable in the picture is called a "widow maker". People with backup generators or during Christmas (hanging lights) know how tempting these unsafe cords are.

Question!

@nntaleb Indeed. Even though she was caught, being exposed by you for sure is the cherry on top of the cake. That time will come.

She is lucky I didn't take part of the conclave for I would have made it much more unpleasant.

As an engineer, I see him having skin in the game with all his assets (money, reputation, and knowledge), and that is something I respect, regardless of any other good or bad qualities any of us may have. As Virgil wrote: "Audentes Fortuna iuvat", and I believe the Roman goddess Fortuna cherishes him.

Arguing that Elon Musk’s success is due to “narrative control”, luck, or riding others coattails is such an implausible claim that it functions as a useful litmus test for a persons analytical judgment. This isnt about whether you like Elon Musk. I don’t know him, and I am largely agnostic about him as a person. But I do know his record as a CEO, and studying management and business strategy has been a major part of my job for the past 20yrs. From that perspective I can tell you that Musk isn’t just a good CEO. He is one of the most effective CEOs of our generation. When I hear people write off Elon’s achievements bc someone else started these companies, it is a clear tell that they don’t understand business. Ideas are a dime a dozen. They are not what makes a great CEO. Execution is. And part of execution is recognizing a good idea when you see one and understanding how to build something around it that actually works. Tesla was months from bankruptcy when Musk took control. It’s now the company that forced every major automaker on earth to retool their entire product strategy. SpaceX was a startup that serious people in the aerospace industry dismissed as a fantasy. It now conducts more orbital launches than the rest of the world combined and has driven launch costs down by an order of magnitude. Starlink is on track to become one of the most consequential communications infrastructure projects in history. These aren’t narrative achievements. Theyre tangible businesses that work, at scale, in industries where failure is the default condition. And there’s a consistent pattern where Elon has repeatedly looked crazy, and then been right. The people who called reusable rockets a dream watched a booster fly back and land itself. The people who said a mainstream consumer EV company was impossible watched Tesla restructure the global auto industry. This is a person who has repeatedly seen something others cant see yet, absorbs the ridicule, and then builds toward it anyway. The PayPal criticism this author pushes is another perfect ex. Do you know how he became CEO? Elon identified the importance of network effects in the late 90s and realized he could take advantage of cheap capital during the internet bubble to pay users to join his network. He was labeled a lunatic. Losing money upfront to lock customers into your network is well understood now but it wasn’t back then. Confinity was forced to merge bc they couldn’t compete with it…and that’s based on Peter Thiel’s own account in Zero to One. Elon was considered reckless at the time. But he was right. And now we have people criticizing Musk’s Mars goal. But as Ben Thompson explained, Mars is the strategic North Star that forces you to radically confront the cost structure required to achieve it. Which leads you down the only path that actually scales, without settling for easier short-term solutions. If you’re serious about putting a city on Mars, full reusability is non-negotiable. And that engineering logic turns out to be what dramatically lowers launch costs. Which unlocks Starlink at scale. And Starlink creates the revenue flywheel that funds everything else. An Arianespace executive called reusability a dream in 2013 and said it was impossible. But the dream isnt the destination. It’s the constraint that forces you down the only engineering path that actually works. And it’s why SpaceX is a trillion company today. You can write off one company as luck. You can write off two as fortunate timing. But at some point the sheer weight of success across different industries and challenges stops looking like coincidence and starts looking like a big flashing signal. When someone executes repeatedly in industries where lack of execution destroys almost everyone else, the correct analytical move is to update your model. If you can’t see that Elon is a great CEO, then you’re just revealing the limits of your own analytical process.

@RampCapitalLLC That was the correct date in the 1.21 Gigawatts DeLorean.

Simulation theory confirmed

Great point. Just thinking that a per day, per hour and a hybrid model would be interesting to try. For sure I will pay an hourly rate from 10 am to 4 pm and then the nightly rate as usual. (After a 14 hour fly from SYD to LA arriving at 7 am in LA my body demands some comfort that I will be more than happy to pay without "hotel crawl")

The price by the night model is probably outdated. You should be able to book hotel rooms "by the hour" for non sexual purposes. Provided people were prepared to commit to an arrival and departure time in advance, it could work.

@engineers_feed "The Heart of the Ocean" should be near to the Titanic. And next Atlantis. Then will rescue some Sirens.

If the oceans were drained, what would be the first thing you would go looking for?

@nntaleb The program includes life insurance.

Since he is immortal I suggest paying him $1 a year for a million years.

@nntaleb @tunguz I never had a pleasant conversation with a credentialist. They are so predictable and boring e.g. physicist, husband, ex this, ex that, owner of the soccer team and boyfriend of the cheer captain squad.

This fellow @tunguz provides the best example to explain Wittenstein's ruler (When you measure the table with the ruler you can be also measuring the ruler). If some random person tells you at a bar that Einstein is wrong, you will get information about the guy not Einstein.

@nntaleb Ring of accomplices. Trust so necessary for a healthy civilization is getting weaker and weaker.

There is what I call the "sinister cluster" Those who cover up genocide, slaughter, & (criminal) injustice cover up pedicide, those who cover up pedicide cover up pedophilia, etc.

Today I had one of the most interesting conversations I ever had with Grok. I was discussing a model to handle the thermodynamics accounting in a hypothetical time travel. It was fascinating to work ideas like: funneling excess entropy to a MWI branch (Everettian), the (imp)possible leakage between branches, the value of physical constants (higher Planck values!?), the branch geometry (non-euclidian -> fractalizing caos), black holes Evaporation Anomalies, entropy debt, evidence as cosmic scars or flickering voids in space, etc. Grok even suggested a name: Entropy Exile. I just loved the name. Grok ended with: "The beauty here? In an infinite setup, this doesn't strain resources—it's just partitioning the wavefunction into "useful" (standard physics) and "utility" (debt-absorbing weirdos) sectors. However, quantum backreaction might still limit how often you can force such exotic branches without destabilizing the parent multiverse." Time to rest, tomorrow will resume the conversation with a critical topic: time itself.

@nntaleb This kind of things makes me wonder why nature after 4.8 billion years allows the existence of idiots.

This fucking idiot is trying to do theology with a cherrypicked quote reversing the Pauline message.

@nntaleb Ignorants are comparing apples with bicycles. I declare myself a Christian anti-flat-earthers.

Ignoooooooooooorant. The Christian holy sites were preserved & protected by Muslim rulers for 17 C before the Israeli 1967 invasion --Islam (unlike Judaism) recognizes Jesus as a prophet. Since Saladin the keys to the Holy Sepulcre are in the hands of a Muslim family because of the disagreements betw. numerous Christian factions.

@george__mack A change of variable. Interesting.

Useful rule of thumb for solving problems: Assume the problem is a side problem. The main problem is how you're viewing the problem. If you solve the main problem, the solution for the side problem often reveals itself.

@nntaleb Oh!, The Art of the Deal is missing. Strange. Suspicious. The list is a hoax.

I don’t know what to make of Epstein’s reading my work. The relation is not symmetric --his reading me does not affect me--but still.

@MoZarrinsadaf The increase of entropy requires more information to explain the state of the system. So creativiry and entropy are related?

The creative process is messy. The mess is information.

@drgarymcgowan @nntaleb It seems more like a picture from a bookshelf catalog of an obsessive-compulsive boutique carpenter than a personal library. Anyway, beautiful bookshelf, but really funny to see books sorted by size and color.

I see @nntaleb on the shelf, but he’s going to have a heart attack if he sees this.

@PhysInHistory Gamma-ray bursts.

What’s the scariest thing in the universe? ✍️

@paulg In the 50s, the drills were carried out in case of a psychopath with an atomic bomb, 60 years later in case of a psychopath with a gun. Scales have changed for the worse. Sad.

One day no one will believe this is real. Already people in most other countries would have trouble believing it is.

My dream: get my call answered straight away by a CSR (without pressing a tree of numbers). If the CSR is unable to attend to my request and needs to put me through to a specialist, instead of transferring my call, the CSR should ask the specialist to join the call. Regrettably, CSRs are measured by call center metrics rather than user experience.

I would instantly become the loyal customer of any business whose call centre message said "press 1 for service, 2 for sales" rather than the other way round.

The way to wisdom has many paths; this rule is the fast lane on the highway to wisdom. This is the kind of thing I teach my sons.