How to be Elon Musk

In response to the Quora thread “How can I be as great as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk, Richard Branson?” Elon Musk's ex-wife Justine offered this great response.

Extreme success results from an extreme personality and comes at the cost of many other things. Extreme success is different from what I suppose you could just consider 'success', so know that you don't have to be Richard or Elon to be affluent and accomplished and maintain a great lifestyle. Your odds of happiness are better that way. But if you're extreme, you must be what you are, which means that happiness is more or less beside the point. These people tend to be freaks and misfits who were forced to experience the world in an unusually challenging way. They developed strategies to survive, and as they grow older they find ways to apply these strategies to other things, and create for themselves a distinct and powerful advantage. They don't think the way other people think. They see things from angles that unlock new ideas and insights. Other people consider them to be somewhat insane. 
 
Be obsessed.
 
Be obsessed.
 
Be obsessed. 
 
If you're not obsessed, then stop what you're doing and find whatever does obsess you. It helps to have an ego, but you must be in service to something bigger if you are to inspire the people you need to help you  (and make no mistake, you will need them). That 'something bigger' prevents you from going off into the ether when people flock round you and tell you how fabulous you are when you aren't and how great your stuff is when it isn't. Don't pursue something because you "want to be great". Pursue something because it fascinates you, because the pursuit itself engages and compels you. Extreme people combine brilliance and talent with an *insane* work ethic, so if the work itself doesn't drive you, you will burn out or fall by the wayside or your extreme competitors will crush you and make you cry. 
 

The whole thing is great. However, if you're reading this, perhaps you already have no chance.

They are unlikely to be reading stuff like this. (This is *not* to slam or criticize people who do; I love to read this stuff myself.) They are more likely to go straight to a book: perhaps a biography of Alexander the Great or Catherine the Great* or someone else they consider Great. Surfing the 'Net is a deadly timesuck, and given what they know their time is worth -- even back in the day when technically it was not worth that -- they can't afford it.

Game theory of thrones

Peter Antonioni uses game theory to analyze the situation in Westeros to see if he can determine who will end up on the Iron Throne.

Game theory doesn’t look at behaviour so much as it looks at outcomes, assuming that people will choose the highest payoff if they can.

Martin even helps on a couple of occasions by spelling out those payoffs. Advising Joffrey, the fearsome Tywin Lannister gives a great example of what to do in a repeated game:
 
Joffrey, when your enemies defy you, you must serve them steel and fire. When they go to their knees, however, you must help them back to their feet. Elsewise no man will ever bend the knee to you.
 
This is a pretty good distillation of a what game theorists call tit-for-tat. If you start off with equal participants in a repeated game, the best overall strategies combine punishing transgression with forgiveness; there are variants, but all of them get better results than “all or nothing” punishment strategies such as the grim trigger.
 
Tywin’s strategy works in this case because it assumes a capability for punishment. In advising Joffrey, he’s not telling him how to gain the Iron Throne but how to hang on to it. The equilibrium stays stable as long as the Throne can dominate all of the potential competitors, as Aegon I could with his dragons. Then, rebellion is easily put down, and whatever the consequence to the smallfolk of Westeros, at least they don’t get the kind of devastation inflicted on the Riverlands by the War of the Five Kings.
 

The strategic maneuvering and statecraft are the most intriguing aspects of Game of Thrones. I'm less interested in the economics or religion, though I was amused by this proposal for a central bank in Westeros.

Overall, the rulers, religions, and other institutions of the known world all seem to lack the fundamental characteristics necessary to function as a central bank of Westeros. The difficulty of creating long lasting, independent, and benevolent institutions, I would argue, is why the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros use a commodity currency and lack monetary policy. But I don’t think a central bank in Westeros is impossible. In fact, there is one institution in the realm that does have these characteristics and could potentially serve as a central bank: the Night’s Watch.
 
The watch operates independently of the crown, has existed for thousands of years, and is dedicated to the public good. The longevity of the Watch is undebatable, as it was reportedly founded 8,000 years before the time of Game of Thrones.   Their staunch independence is evidenced by the nuetrality they maintained during the rebellion that unseated the Targaryens. The Watch’s military might ensures they can maintain that independence. Their dedication to the public good is seen in the mission of the Watch, which is the protection of the Seven Kingdoms.
 
Members of the watch currently serve in one of three groups: Rangers, Builders, and Stewards. It’s easy to imagine adding Economists as a fourth group, and adding price stability and full employment to oath that all members must swear to. Public acceptance would likely require the crown mandating that Night’s Watch currency be accepted as legal tender. But after that, the Night’s Watch could independently determine the money supply and even conduct monetary policy.
 

Sawmell Tarly, Westeros Fed Reserve Chairman?

Edward Tufte's grand truths about human behavior

Short, good. Some of my favorites:

"It is a principle that shines impartially on the just and the unjust that once you have a point of view all history will back you up." (Van Wyck Brooks)
 
All the world is multivariate.

Much of the world is distributed lognormally. 

In explanations of human activities, both muddling through and incompetence are under-estimated, and both rational optimizing and conspiracy over-estimated.

Nearly all self-assessments claim above-average performance.

"Upon expecting fair play in high places: You'll get it if enough folk are watching." ( J. P. Donleavy's variant of Wendell Phillips' "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.")
 

Related:

Interview with Jon Stewart

A few bits I dug from this good mini-profile of Jon Stewart:

Instead, he describes his decision to quit The Daily Show, the American satirical news programme he has hosted for 16 years, as something closer to the end of a long-term relationship. “It’s not like I thought the show wasn’t working any more, or that I didn’t know how to do it. It was more, ‘Yup, it’s working. But I’m not getting the same satisfaction.’” He slaps his hands on his desk, conclusively. 
 
“These things are cyclical. You have moments of dissatisfaction, and then you come out of it and it’s OK. But the cycles become longer and maybe more entrenched, and that’s when you realise, ‘OK, I’m on the back side of it now.’”
 
...
 
Like every TV celebrity, in person, Stewart is both better-looking than you expect and smaller, with his long torso making up most of his 5ft 7in, giving the illusion of height from behind his studio desk. He is dressed casually, and after years of watching him on TV wearing a suit, seeing him in a T-shirt and casual trousers feels almost like catching my father half-undressed.
 
...
 
Now that he is leaving The Daily Show, is there any circumstance in which he would watch Fox News again? He takes a few seconds to ponder the question. “Umm… All right, let’s say that it’s a nuclear winter, and I have been wandering, and there appears to be a flickering light through what appears to be a radioactive cloud and I think that light might be a food source that could help my family. I might glance at it for a moment until I realise, that’s Fox News, and then I shut it off. That’s the circumstance.”

Poker cheats

Given sufficient eyeballs and data, all cheating is shallow?

A YouTube video compilation of a 2009 poker tournament seems to show signaling between the two players that ended up finishing first and second.

FINAL PPT 2009 COMMENTS: ADAM AND LOUNIS Guillaumme Cescut Jean Jaques Ichai saw nothing, said nothing, as usual ... but that was BEFORE! 2 Guys decided to cheat on Final Table in Poker Finale in France. (2009)

Some background:

French players Jean Paul Pasqualini and Cedric Rossi are being accused of teaming up, by using hand signals to tell each other what cards they held. The eight minutes of damning video was put together by Nordine Bouya, another French poker player, and it shows the two accused time after time relaying their holdings by touching parts of their head and face.
 
Pasqualini and Rossi went on to first and second place in that tournament, respectively. Pasqualini won 1 million euros, while Rossi pocketed over 600k.