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Elon Musk's 'Scientific Method' (rollingstone.com)
From a new wide-ranging interview of Elon Musk: An unfortunate fact of human nature is that when people make up their mind about something, they tend not to change it -- even when confronted with facts to the contrary. "It's very unscientific," Musk says. "There's this thing called physics, which is this scientific method that's really quite effective for figuring out the truth." The scientific method is a phrase Musk uses often when asked how he came up with an idea, solved a problem or chose to start a business. Here's how he defines it for his purposes, in mostly his own words:
1. Ask a question.
2. Gather as much evidence as possible about it.
3. Develop axioms based on the evidence, and try to assign a probability of truth to each one.
4. Draw a conclusion based on cogency in order to determine: Are these axioms correct, are they relevant, do they necessarily lead to this conclusion, and with what probability?
5. Attempt to disprove the conclusion. Seek refutation from others to further help break your conclusion.
6. If nobody can invalidate your conclusion, then you're probably right, but you're not certainly right.
1. Ask a question.
2. Gather as much evidence as possible about it.
3. Develop axioms based on the evidence, and try to assign a probability of truth to each one.
4. Draw a conclusion based on cogency in order to determine: Are these axioms correct, are they relevant, do they necessarily lead to this conclusion, and with what probability?
5. Attempt to disprove the conclusion. Seek refutation from others to further help break your conclusion.
6. If nobody can invalidate your conclusion, then you're probably right, but you're not certainly right.
True, but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't try... you just need to be mindful that you may be in an echo chamber and attempt to break out of it.
I have found that anyone I've worked for I have been blunt and not a yes man and it has mostly gone well for me. The two times it really didn't I was saved by being shoved out because not long after I found that said team / company had severe issues and was disbanded / closed up.
Now, there is a difference between being honest and being obstructionist and that's where a lot of people screw up. My old employer had a policy of "Disagree and commit" and it makes for an awesome workplace when management and team embrace it. Management/tech leadership gets feedback, yes's and no's and the reasoning behind them. They take this information and act based on it. If you were a "no" and the decision was to move forward anyway then you commit to seeing it through, even if you don't think it's the best idea... same the other way, if you were a "yes" and it's decided to change directions you drop it and change directions.
When done correctly and with trust it can make for a great team and stupendous levels of output, plus it builds trust even deeper between leadership and team.
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If you were forced to agree, then "disagree and commit" wasn't done correctly. You should only be forced to commit, not to agree. I mean... it's right there in the name.
APK quotes people (including myself) without context and should not be trusted. Just thought you should know.
Non sequitur. The fact that current modes of travel are congested does not prove that people need to get from A to B:
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
I'll no doubt regret agreeing with Spun on anything, but he's right.
Science, and for that matter logic has been condemned as an instrument of the patriarchy for around 30 years now. It's a core tenet of Post-Modernism that logic itself is a tool of oppression to be discarded, and Post-Modernism devoured academic feminism decades ago. I read peer-reviewed papers (in philosophy) to this effect in the early 90s, and it's only become more mainstream in academia.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
At (most likely) the same employer, I was nearly fired for disagreeing with my boss in the first place. "Bring me solutions, not problems." (Did he realize that's a line that only the villains say in movies?) Then nearly fired because things failed in more-or-less the way I expected. But then, that guy would yell at me for disagreeing with him, then yell at me for not raising concerns early enough.
Yeah, "disagree and commit" looks great on paper, but assholes gonna asshole.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
Even tunnels without the vacuum are expensive. Although real estate in our most congested urban areas is equally expensive. Once you get out into open country subways don't make sense anymore. Doesn't matter what the underlying tech is.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
That's because LA's mass transit doesn't connect at all well. I have a job that until recently took TWO HOURS to drive to.
Mass transit, via Metrolink, would have gotten me 80% of the way there in only 1 hour.
The other 20%? a 1.5 hour bus ride followed by a ten minute train ride again.
And, as none of these were coordinated, each step needed at least 20 minutes between.
So my entire transit was something like three plus hours