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fnordsensei | on: SpaceX bond worth 10% less than issue price – heading for junk bond status
I have a friend who unironically said "Elon Musk is the most important human who has ever lived"
qup | parent
Who's your pick?
fnordsensei | root | parent | next
Whoever came up with the wheel, maybe? Perhaps someone carrying the original homo sapiens mutations?
nemomarx | root | parent | next
Genghis Khan or Napoleon, maybe? Probably you'd want to pick someone further back but before the modern era you lose details.

Musk has made some tech innovations but he hasn't changed the lives of many generations of people yet. I'd only put him at the level of Edison

slowin | root | parent | next
Anyone who's impact is more than just rampant financial fraud. Human's are the product of their environment and mostly just in the right place at the right time, but there's no criteria where you could put Elon Musk in a list of the most important humans of all time.
Auracle | root | parent
I’m not who you replied to but that’s honestly an interesting question. Genghis Khan? Jesus, I suppose?

Elon Musk is probably up there, though. You could say people like Henry Ford are on his level, but Elon is certainly more broad in his scope. I think people like them are probably accelerationists, meaning someone else would have done what they’ve done eventually. That could be a long eventually though. It’s hard to compare them to people who shaped history through their actions that nobody else would have done the same way.

slowin | root | parent | next
> You could say people like Henry Ford are on his level

Since Tesla was started, they've sold ~9.6 million cars. In that same time period, Ford has sold 100 million. Musk is no Henry Ford, it's much more accurate to compare him to P.T. Barnum and Bernie Madoff.

fnordsensei | root | parent
You'd probably want to be more precise regarding "important for what" as well. And the philosophical angle: if the person hadn't existed, would someone else have slotted in to take their place? Is the impact measured in years/decades, because the overall historical forces were heading in a direction anyway?

Is it like trying to say "the most important bacterium in a petri dish"?

Without diminishing the impact that Musk has had, I'm fairly certain that Musk isn't the answer. And either way, the intent of saying that Musk is the most important person in history I'm fairly certain wasn't a very grounded decision. I'm sure it was more an expression of reverence and fealty.