Founders
Episode 11 #11 The Cook & The Chef: Elon Musk’s Secret Sauce
Founders

Episode 11: #11 The Cook & The Chef: Elon Musk’s Secret Sauce

Founders

Episode 11

#11 The Cook & The Chef: Elon Musk’s Secret Sauce

David Senra is the host of Founders, where he studies history's greatest entrepreneurs. This is what he learned from reading The Elon Musk Blog Series: Wait But Why by Tim Urban

What I learned from reading The Elon Musk Blog Series: Wait But Why by Tim Urban

Read The Cook & The Chef: Elon Musk's Secret Sauce on WaitButWhy

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Quotes from this episode: 

Which leaves only two options: create or copy 

Conventional wisdom: If something is both a good idea and possible, it's already been done.

I'm fascinated by those rare people in history who managed to dramatically change the world during their short time here, and I've always liked to study those people and read their biographies. Those people know something the rest of us don't and we can learn something valuable from them. 

Musk calls this reasoning from first principles. One of the most important parts of this podcast. 

Conventional wisdom screamed at the top of its lungs for him to stop. 

Your entire life runs on the software in your head. Why wouldn't you obsess over optimizing it?

We mistake the chef's originality for brilliant ingenuity. 

The reason these outrageously smart people are so humble about what they know is that they are aware that unjustified certainty is the bane of understanding and the death of effective reasoning. 

Conventional wisdom worships the status quo and always assumes that everything is the way it is for a good reason. And history is one long record of status quo dogma being proven wrong again and again, every time some chef comes around and changes things. 

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#11 The Cook & The Chef: Elon Musk’s Secret Sauce

Introduction

The cook works off of some version of what's already out there, a recipe of some kind, a meal she tried and liked, a dish she watched someone else make. On a typical day, a cook and a chef don't operate that differently. Even the chef becomes quickly exhausted by the mental energy required for first principles reasoning and usually doing so isn't worth his time. Both types of people spend an average day with their brain software running on autopilot and their conscious decision-making centers dormant, but then comes a day when something new needs to be figured out. Whatever this new situation is, autopilot won't suffice. This is something new and neither the chef nor the cook software has done this before, which leaves only two options: create or copy. Let's say the cook is thinking of starting a business and wants to know what the possibilities are. Conventional wisdom has him covered. He types the command into the interface, waits a few minutes, and then the system pumps out its answers."

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