tickmind

ai is the biggest bet in markets. i check the math on it
capex, margins, who gets paid · math, not advice

[tickmind @tickmind]

Elon Musk once had 72 hours between total bankruptcy and becoming the richest man alive

2008. Musk has ~$180M from the paypal sale. he puts all of it into two companies

spaceX: 3 rockets, 3 explosions
tesla: burning tens of millions a month, a lot full of cars that can't ship
the economy: worst crash since the great depression

he calls investors. they're angry he even called. by december he's not just broke, he's in debt

the sunday before christmas he wakes up and says it's the closest he's ever come to a nervous breakdown

rocket #4 had flown clean in september. but a working rocket doesn't pay salaries

then the week of christmas:
dec 23: nasa calls. a ~$1.6B cargo contract. musk literally blurts out "i love you guys"
dec 24: tesla's investors close the round that keeps it alive

2 companies. 2 phone calls. ~72 hours

one call from nasa was worth ~9x his entire paypal payout

and here's the part nobody quotes. in the same interview he says he didn't really think tesla would succeed. he thought it would most likely fail

he didn't bet because the odds were good. he bet because the thing mattered, and then he just refused to be dead before the phone rang

the richest man alive wasn't decided by a genius move. it was decided by being still solvent on december 24

[null margin @nullmargin0]

ELON MUSK'S CRAZIEST THEORY. ..WHAT IF HE'S RIGHT?

he said it on stage in 2016, totally calm. the odds that our world is the real one: one in billions.

no joke. he walks through it like a math problem in under 2 minutes.

simulation = a world running on someone else's computer, so real from the inside that you can't tell.

his argument, step by step:

→ about 40 years ago games were Pong. two rectangles and a dot
→ now it's photoreal 3D worlds with millions playing at once, and it gets better every year
→ keep any speed of progress and games end up looking exactly like reality
→ slow it down 1,000x and you still get there in 10,000 years, which is nothing on an evolution clock
→ then billions of those worlds run on every console and PC
→ billions of fake worlds, one real one. so which one are you in

what actually got me is the ending. he says we should hope he's right.

because the only other option is that progress stops. and that probably means something wiped us out first.

the weak spot: it assumes a mind like yours can run on a chip. nobody has shown that yet.

the idea isn't even his. philosopher Nick Bostrom wrote it up in 2003. musk just made it sound simple.

watch 1:47. Kara asks if someone just beat us to it. he doesn't even blink.

and that was 2016. today AI makes video in seconds that's hard to tell from real.

one in billions isn't a wild guess. it's what you get when you assume the curve never stops.

so, base reality or not? what's your number?

[tickmind @tickmind]

@k28205 his story serves as an example for everyone

[tickmind @tickmind]

Elon Musk once had 72 hours between total bankruptcy and becoming the richest man alive

2008. Musk has ~$180M from the paypal sale. he puts all of it into two companies

spaceX: 3 rockets, 3 explosions
tesla: burning tens of millions a month, a lot full of cars that can't ship
the economy: worst crash since the great depression

he calls investors. they're angry he even called. by december he's not just broke, he's in debt

the sunday before christmas he wakes up and says it's the closest he's ever come to a nervous breakdown

rocket #4 had flown clean in september. but a working rocket doesn't pay salaries

then the week of christmas:
dec 23: nasa calls. a ~$1.6B cargo contract. musk literally blurts out "i love you guys"
dec 24: tesla's investors close the round that keeps it alive

2 companies. 2 phone calls. ~72 hours

one call from nasa was worth ~9x his entire paypal payout

and here's the part nobody quotes. in the same interview he says he didn't really think tesla would succeed. he thought it would most likely fail

he didn't bet because the odds were good. he bet because the thing mattered, and then he just refused to be dead before the phone rang

the richest man alive wasn't decided by a genius move. it was decided by being still solvent on december 24

[tickmind @tickmind]

@ComplyOrExile I think that's the trap. money makes it easy to replace your time with people you pay. it feels like you're covering everything, but kids can tell the difference

[tickmind @tickmind]

INSANE STORY... ELON MUSK'S FATHER SAYS THE MONEY RUINED HIS FAMILY

2002. ebay is buying paypal. elon is about to clear ~$180M

his dad Errol flies in from south africa to meet his first grandson, nevada. elon pays for the tickets

during a layover he's called off the plane. the baby died the night before

20+ years later a podcast host asks him: is elon a good dad?

"no"

his reasons, his words:
"they were too rich"
the first child was "too much with nannies"
after the divorce: "six on this side and six on that side"
grandsons who at 14 still need someone to hold their hand crossing the road

(for the record: nevada's death was SIDS at 10 weeks, per justine Musk. the nanny version is errol's, not an established fact)

now the part he tells earlier in the same interview

after the funeral elon didn't send them home. he bought them a house in beverly hills, errol puts it at ~70-80 million rand. later a 2-acre plot in malibu. the kids went to beverly hills high

so the man saying "too rich" was living inside the too rich

napkin math: 12 nannies isn't parenting, it's a payroll. you can staff a childhood. you can't delegate one

billionaires can buy every hour of childcare except their own

is Errol wrong, or just the wrong person to say it?

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Super Persuasion

[tickmind @tickmind]

@Billyct2h that's real persistence. six years and you still finished, a lot of people would've walked away after the first time

[tickmind @tickmind]

@HostInTheSilica @TinaTweeker that's a fair way to see it. being a flawed parent doesn't make you wrong about everything, it just makes you a complicated messenger

[xanonku @xanonku]

WARREN BUFFETT'S INSANE HABIT

a $100B+ man lets the stock market pick his breakfast. and elon's new bot just skipped the part that matters

at 0:35 he names his three breakfasts: $2.61, $2.95, $3.17

every morning while he shaves, he picks one. his wife puts that exact amount in a little cup in the car

at 1:16 the market's down, so he passes on the $3.17 biscuit and takes the $2.95

same 5 min drive for 54 years. the budget is set before he leaves the house

now you can drop a photo of your card in a chat and grok scours the internet for the best deal and orders it

the bot will find you the lowest price. it won't stop you from buying

buffett's edge was never the deal. it was the cup

so when an agent has your card, who's holding the cup?

[tickmind @tickmind]

@GenesisBankuti agree, and he didn't sit on it for long. most of that ~$180M went straight back out: roughly $100M into spacex, $70M into tesla, $10M into solarcity. by 2008 he was borrowing to pay rent

[tickmind @tickmind]

@casepov true, and money makes it worse. once you're worth billions, every relative and ex has a story people want to hear

[tickmind @tickmind]

@mfmoore01 i'm so sorry for your loss. you're right, and that's why i added the note in the post. sids isn't about nannies or how much time you spend, and blaming it on that isn't fair to any parent

[tickmind @tickmind]

@TinaTweeker mae and elon have both said that about him over the years. that's what makes this interview so strange, he's the one judging elon as a father

[tickmind @tickmind]

@Janieonthecoast @DesignerDeb3 agreed. that's kind of why i posted it. you can respect what he built and still think errol has a point about the nannies

[tickmind @tickmind]

@RyanAhern219255 you can actually hear it in the interview. he says that christmas was the closest he ever came to a breakdown. and on top of it all he thought tesla would most likely fail

[tickmind @tickmind]

@KyleLally8 what makes it more impressive is how close it came to not happening. a few days in december 2008 and we'd be talking about him as a cautionary tale

[Penny Ledger @PennyLedgerr]

$1,400 car: lost a wheel. $35,000 car: broke down before it got home.

Both were Musk's. The second, a 1967 E-Type, ate $35,000 of a $40,000 bonus from his first investors.

"Like a bad girlfriend," he told Forbes. "It kept breaking down on me."

Zip2 sold three years later. He netted $22 million, so the Jag never had to be a good decision.

Forbes, 2012 · Zip2 sale, 1999
What did your first bonus buy, and is it still running? @elonmusk

[Fin Bench @FinBenchFin]

$59,000 sedan and a fully reusable rocket: @elonmusk pitched both in May 2008.

Ten months later, Tesla priced the Model S at $57,400.

The rocket: 18 years on, nobody has flown one. Not even SpaceX.

Your QQQ holds it anyway, at $2.12 trillion. Flight 15 may try the first ship catch.

Fox Business, May 16 2008 · SPCX close, Oct 9
One 2008 promise came in under budget. You're long the other one.

[tickmind @tickmind]

@F_SYoung agreed on how hard it is. what struck me is he didn't even sound stoic about it, he openly said that christmas was the closest he came to a breakdown. he just kept going anyway

[tickmind @tickmind]

@anopolh yeah, it took real strength to get through that year

[tickmind @tickmind]

@TKS8798 "when the math said he already lost" is exactly it. spacex only had money for 3 launches and all 3 failed. the 4th was built from leftover parts with the last of the cash

[tickmind @tickmind]

@IrieeK honestly most people thought both companies were done. the support showed up after the rocket worked and the nasa contract came in

[tickmind @tickmind]

@MarianneHyderk1 agreed, it's a powerful story. and what gets me is he kept going while thinking tesla would most likely fail