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They laughed at Einstein, they laughed at Galileo, but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown. You don't see the losing outcomes in a game where someone becomes wealthy and famous by taking unlikely risks. Those outcomes lead to ignominy, not celebrity.

Musk reminds me of the guy who came up with the idea of scamming people by dividing them recursively into two groups, each of whose members receives an opposing prediction about some future event with a binary resolution.

By the time he works down from 65536 potential marks to 4 or 8 or so, they think he's a god, a time traveler, or a time-traveling god. They'll give him their life savings without a second thought.



You might be remembering Derren Brown's "The System": https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/derren-brown-the-system/


It’s an old scam that certainly predates Derren Brown. I read about it in a Martin Gardner column.


That's a brilliant quote, but Bozo the Clown didn't build anything, let alone build companies that build electric car factories and rockets. It doesn't apply here.


what did he "build" exactly? Can I see some code produced by him?


Bozo's trick is hard to do / Unless you use a lot of glue

- Possibly misremembered couplet from childhood, that also applies nicely at Tesla


> Bozo the Clown didn't build anything

Following his retirement, Frank Avruch, the first nationally-syndicated Bozo the Clown, launched his own website -- bostonman.com -- which, like the “Man About Town” segments he did for WCVB-TV news, provided information on special events, hotels, restaurants, museums, and theaters in Boston.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Avruch


I stand corrected. He launched a web site.


For all of his companies and ambitions, these days it seems like Musk is mostly preoccupied with launching a website.




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