Elon Musk On How To Be Most Useful

Do you think people that want to be useful today should get PhDs?

Um, mostly not. So what is the best way to be useful? Yes, but mostly not. Um, how should someone figure out how they can be most useful? Whatever the thing is that you're trying to create, what would be the utility delta compared to the current state of the art times how many people it would affect?

So, that's why I think having something that makes a big difference but affects a sort of small to moderate number of people is great, as is something that makes even a small difference but affects a vast number of people. Like the area under the curve.

Yeah, exactly. Area under the curve would actually be roughly similar for those two things. So, it's actually really about trying to be useful and matter when you're trying to estimate probability of success.

So, you say this thing will be really useful, good area under the curve.

I guess to use the example of SpaceX, mhm, when you made the go decision that you were actually going to do that, this was kind of a very crazy thing at the time.

Very crazy.

Very crazy, yeah. I'm not sure about saying that, um, but I kind of agree. I agreed with them that it was quite crazy. Crazy if the objective was to achieve the best risk-adjusted return. Starting a company is insane. But that was not my objective for.