[ams6110]

Aren't most of Elon Musks projects examples of blind f faith? Who would have agreed that starting a new auto manufacturer based solely on electric vehicles was a good idea? A new rocket company? Going up against some of the biggest most established companies with probably the "old boy network" working to prevent entry of newcomers. Seems like blind faith to me.

[sah2ed]

There is a saying that approximates to: "your solution is only as good as your understanding of a problem" and this is especially true of Elon Musk.

From your perspective, his projects might look like blind faith. But from Elon Musk's perspective, he felt he had a better understanding of the viability of those projects to undertake them -- he knew or had a vague idea of which levers to pull that hadn't been pulled in a certain way before, or perhaps new levers had appeared that hadn't been noticed by experts in the field.

This is why humans are different -- our life experiences shape our perspectives and our perspectives shape our understanding. Elon's confidence comes from his better grasp of the challenges to make EV a reality which is why he felt emboldened to tackle the problem anew, where others had failed.

Elon felt his understanding of EV and how they would evolve made him uniquely qualified to invest in an EV venture called Tesla when he was pitched by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning in 2003.

And it goes both ways: bankrolling a EV startup at that time was considered crazy.

Elon's personal bankrolling of a rocket company back in 2002 gave off two crucial signals:

1. a money-bag that gets manufacturing (only a handful fit this criteria);

2. a money-bag with the right kind of crazy (an even smaller handful fit this criteria);

that assured Martin and Marc that Elon was the right person they should be speaking to to invest in Tesla, which he did.

Those two signals were necessary for the investor minority at that time to appreciate the value proposition of Tesla. The majority of investors actually laughed off such an investment as what Elon himself characterized as "idiocy squared".

[abhinai]

Being aspirational does not imply lack of homework on Elon Musk's part. In fact I would respect Elon Musk a lot less if he did not do his due diligence before starting to work on all of his companies. Faith is tested deeply during most entrepreneurial journeys, which is all the more reason why one needs to do their homework before starting.

[solipsism]

You seem to be missing everyone's point.

Virtually anyone who would consider Elon Musk's ideas using your approach would immediately throw them out, for many many reasons. So your approach is meaningless unless you can tell everyone exactly what criteria to use when deciding if something "would not work."

If your assertion is just that you have to be so smart that you can analyze all the variables and correctly predict the future, then that's not really useful to anyone is it?

[Retra]

Just because something is aspirational does not mean it is an exercise in blind faith. Plenty of aspirational things have happened in the past.

[davebryand]

From Elon’s perspective, we live in a simulation, so it’s not faith, it’s understanding how the simulation works.