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And remember, 1/6th the gravity means any dust kicked up into the air is gonna linger.

4866

I mean no idea, obviously I’m an idiot about this, but my assumption would be that on the moon you’re pretty much committed to never leaving the bubble outside of very specialized engineers, so once you beat it the first time, you’ve got it beat. Mars seems like there’s an expectation to try and wring some worth out of the environment so it’s going to be getting in more often.

Gripping hand, Mars has wind, the Moon doesn’t, so at least on the Moon you can plan and predict and mitigate. You make a bubble that works, it will probably work until the end of our species or the next unlucky impactor. Mars, that stuff is going to find your habitat regardless.

4867

They were called the “dusty dozen” for good reason. The 12 Apollo astronauts who walked on the lunar surface between 1969 and 1972 kicked up so much moondust that the powdery sediment got lodged in every nook and cranny of their space suits. Caked in the stuff, the astronauts inadvertently tracked the toxic dust into their spacecraft and even back down to Earth upon landing.
These NASA astronauts complained of a “lunar hay fever” that irritated their eyes, lungs, and nostrils. A doctor who helped the Apollo 11 crew members emerge from their dust-scattered space module following its ocean splashdown experienced allergic reactions of his own. “Dust is probably one of our greatest inhibitors to a nominal operation on the moon,” Apollo 17 astronaut Gene Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon, said during a postflight debriefing. “I think we can overcome other physiological or physical or mechanical problems, except dust.”

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4868

Not a lot of reason to be taking moon walks with a lunar colony. Or, in more detail, what @Houngan said.

4869

I hate moondust even more than sand.

4870

That’s not moondust.

4871

I would think, that if there is an actual large colony on the moon, that they would have a way to clean the spacesuits before they enter. Like a decontamination room in the airlock.

Edit: I bet Elon would have thought of that. After arriving on Mars. And getting complaints from the other people there. And so having everyone there give him plans for a special airlock. That they don’t have the materials to construct it with…

4872

Right, that’s the thought. Mars, it blows in and we assume folks are going in and out to try and figure out stuff. On the moon, I would think you’re either digging deeper or sideways, the surface has nothing to offer beyond solar power.

4873

Well, it does have a great view.

4874

Touche. I need to reread Steel Beach by Varley, thanks for the reminder.

4875

Excellent choice! And so should I.

4876

A person of taste, I see. I’m still waiting for Ultra Tingle.

4877

I think this is a bit misleading

“Talent, in the way that it is often defined within Western society at least, is, like height, normally distributed.”

Anyone who has worked in a field where talent genuinely matters knows that comparing it to height is actively misleading. The implication is that there are relatively small differences in talent, but actually the gulfs in talent are vast.

I’m not sure about the assertion that geniuses aren’t significantly more likely to get super rich - I see at least 4 technical geniuses on a list of the top 25 tech billionaires, which is a lot higher than the proportion of geniuses in tech as a whole. And a good proportion of those 25 are either foreign (so hard for me to assess) or got onto the list on the basis of their business acumen. Sure there are some cases where you start asking questions about merit (Ballmer rode Gates’ coattails, Musk and Zuckerberg and Ellison seem to be more self-promotion or right person/place/time), but the article seems to cherry pick the exceptions and then generalise based on dodgy statistics.

The latter half of the article really rings true with me, but I think it understates the contribution of the iconoclast in the late 90s/early 00s - Jobs, early Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg - in part they succeeded because they were willing to ignore conventional wisdom - and that’s such a selected-against trait that generally only sociopaths will commit fully and motivate people to succeed. Google has less of a cult-of-personality about it but very much has the “google way” where external opinions are heavily discounted - again a pushback against the “conventional way of doing things” was a key part of the corporate culture. However over the years Silicon Valley has grown to prize “disrupters” and “going against conventional wisdom”, and most of the more obvious innovations based on current tech that comes from that way of thinking have been found. Result :- the people most successful in raising VC funding nowadays are those who can psychopathically mimic the disruptors of the late 90s/early 2000s. But the problem is not with the actual functioning parts of the tech industry and more with VCs and the ability of successful founders to amass huge fortunes without ever delivering any real business that could ever make money. Note that none of those people are actually in the very top tier of billionaires - those people all lead a company that was worth something, even if their actual contribution to its success is debateable.

4878

Wow

Isn’t Tesla’s insane stock price what’s been funding Musk’s little empire? When does this become a problem?

4879

Yes, musk lost the majority of his wealth in the past year.

But he’s still got a lot of money.

When does it become a problem? Eh, I think it’s a problem right now.

I feel like this is having some non trivial psychological impact on Musk. I mean, when you lose over a hundred billion dollars, and everyone is saying you are an idiot, that must have some kind of impact.

4880

Another big factor is the ability to communicate, organize, and lead. Individuals can never succeed as big as groups harnessed behind a vision. Many stereotypical tech savants don’t have the broad skill set to lead a huge team and be a CEO let alone a CTO. The talents of Jobs and Woz were both notable and pretty complimentary, but one ended up with a net worth of 400x the other.

4881

Yeah, for narcissistic sociopaths like Musk that manifests itself by blaming everyone else for their downfall.

That’s why he’s trying to destroy “wokeness.” He thinks that’s why he’s failing, because he can’t even conceive that he isn’t as great as he thinks he is.

4882

The value proposition for Tesla car owners is becoming a problem as well. Tesla resale values are significantly down the past 90 days, much more than any other make.

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4883

It’s really too bad. Tesla really pushed EVs forward and I would like to see them succeed. It’s unfortunate the company is run by a total shitbag that I want to see self-immolate.

4884

I think talent is probably normally distributed (more accurately, my null hypothesis would be that talent is normally distributed.)

… But in any given company or organization you only have so many people, and hence only so many outliers. So for any small sample, the gulfs in talent are vast for the tiny number you have on the upper end of the distribution.