原文好读连结：
https://www.zoncheng.com/2023/09/0488-elon-musk-by-walter-isaacson.html
TESLA/ SPACE X创办人 马斯克 (Elon Musk) 的相关书籍相当的多，而这本书最大的价值
可能是同为Steve Jobs立传的作者Walter Isaacson流畅的舖陈与用心的考究。马斯克的
故事因为还在持续创造，所以未来可能会像Amazon的创办人Jeff Bezos一样，每十年又有
新的传记。(贝佐斯新传：无极限 书摘心得)
综观全书，马斯克就是一个对世界科技进步推广有着极大贡献的伟人，但若与他共事，你
又会发现他根本就像是个极度混蛋，甚至比Steve Jobs还难缠的老板或是合伙人 - 因为
他有Steve Jobs强大的Reality Distortion Field (现实扭曲力场) 的能力，但又肯适时
的事事亲为，这点Steve Jobs是不会办到的；工程师的背景与能力又能让他更进一步的去
直捣问题核心，让他只要有心，工程师根本无所遁形。
以下是我阅读英文版时的书摘与心得，共参
###
“He has this fierce determination that blows your mind and was sometimes
frightening, and still is.”
说明：马斯克弟弟Kimbal Musk对Elon Musk的评价。
###
When Elon went with Nicholson’s daughter, Christie, to a party one evening,
his first question was “Do you ever think about electric cars?” As he later
admitted, it was not the world’s best come-on line.
说明：马斯克年轻时在Party撩妹的开场语… TESLA在十几年后才创立…
###
“So, what can this car do?” Thiel asked.
“Watch this,” Musk replied, pulling into the fast lane and flooring the
accelerator.
The rear axle broke and the car spun around, hit an embankment, and flew in
the air like a flying saucer.
说明：马斯克在与Peter Thiel (PayPal/ Palantir 创办人) 会议完后，马斯克开着一台
老跑车载着Peter Thiel 在公路上打转~飞~高~高~ 没有安全带，不过两个人出意外后也
怎么受伤 - 展现了马斯克“真摰”不要命的一面。
###
X.com, on the contrary, conjured up visions of a seedy site you would not
talk about in polite company.
心得：马斯克一直很喜欢X这个单字，但投资人对x.com的观感并不是太好…
###
“He was surrounded by goonish confidantes. He didn’t have any idea
whatsoever about Silicon Valley, but he and his henchmen were eager to line
their pockets.” They asked for 10 percent of the company, and that was the
end of the meeting. “This guy occupies a different planet,” Musk told
Moritz.
说明：马斯克在找投资人时找过著名的纽约前市长 - 结果发现他们只是一群利欲熏心的
商人…。
###
“I’m really the best spokesperson for the company,” he told Thiel during
a tense meeting in Moritz’s office.
说明：马斯克在生涯早期就很爱当发言人…
###
..., a key-man life insurance policy for $100 million. “If he had died,”
Thiel says, “all of our financial problems were going to be solved.”
说明：马斯克为自己保了高额的保险，所以他出意外时，当时合伙的Peter Thiel 某种程
度上觉得也不一定是件坏事啦…
###
Musk remained in intensive care for ten days, and he did not fully recover
for five months. He took two lessons from his near-death experience: “
Vacations will kill you. Also, South Africa. That place is still trying to
destroy me.”
说明：马斯克回家乡南非时出了意外，他的感想就是 放假/ 南非 都会毁了他…。
###
“One of Elon’s greatest skills is the ability to pass off his vision as a
mandate from heaven.”
“My initial thought was not to create a rocket company, but rather to have
a philanthropic mission that would inspire the public and lead to more NASA
funding.”
说明：与Steve Jobs著名的Reality Distortion Field相较，Elon Musk也有诸多技艺…
###
His first plan was to build a small rocket to send mice to Mars. “But I
became worried that we would end up with a tragicomic video of mice slowly
dying on a tiny spaceship.” That would not be good. “So then it came down
to, ‘Let’s send a little greenhouse to Mars.’ꠠThe greenhouse would
land on Mars and send back photographs of green plants growing on the red
planet.
心得：与Elon Musk学行销！
###
“If you set an aggressive schedule that people think they might be able to
make, they will try to put out extra effort,” he says. “But if you give
them a schedule that’s physically impossible, engineers aren’t stupid. You’
ve demoralized them. It’s Elon’s biggest weakness.”
说明：Elon Musk最大缺点… 但有时候也是他最大的优点…
###
the “idiot index.” That was the ratio of the total cost of a component to
the cost of its raw materials. Something with a high idiot index—say, a
component that cost $1,000 when the aluminum that composed it cost only $100—
was likely to have a design that was too complex or a manufacturing process
that was too inefficient. As Musk put it, “If the ratio is high, you’re an
idiot.”
说明：Idiot Index 完美解析！
###
Do not fear losing. “You will lose,” Musk says. “It will hurt the first
fifty times. When you get used to losing, you will play each game with less
emotion.” You will be more fearless, take more risks.
###
Optimize every turn. In Polytopia, you get only thirty turns, so you need to
optimize each one. “Like in Polytopia, you only get a set number of turns in
life,” Musk says. “If we let a few of them slide, we will never get to Mars.
”
###
I nodded but still had the same question: Why had he shorted the stock?
Gates looked at me as if I had not understood what he just explained and then
replied as if the answer was obvious: he thought that by shorting Tesla he
could make money.
说明：Bill Gates说明为什么他要作空TESLA股票，原因就是如此的单纯…。
###
“If we’re not blowing up engines, we’re not trying hard enough,”
###
“No mirrors, no pedals, no steering wheel. This is me taking responsibility
for this decision.”
说明：Elon Musk和Steve Jobs一样对产品设计都有诸多要求，而且更甚。
###
If he wanted the survivors at Twitter to be hardcore, he was going to have to
show them how hardcore he could be. He had slept on the floor of his first
office at Zip2 in 1995. He had slept on the roof of Tesla’s Nevada battery
factory in 2017. He had slept under his desk at the Fremont assembly plant in
2018. It wasn’t because it was truly necessary. He did it because it was in
his nature to love the drama, the urgency, and the sense that he was a
wartime general who could rally his troops into battle mode. Now it was time
for him to sleep at Twitter headquarters.
说明：Elon Musk睡公司精选
###
Going forward, to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an
increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore. This
will mean working long hours at high intensity….
If you are sure that you want to be part of the new Twitter, please click yes
on the link below. Anyone who has not done so by 5pm ET tomorrow (Thursday)
will receive three months of severance.
James and Ross stayed up all night watching the results come in. They put
down bets. How many would say yes? James thought it would be 2,000 out of the
approximately 3,600 remaining employees. Ross wagered it would be 2,150. Musk
chimed in with a low prediction: 1,800 would choose to stay. In the end,
2,492 said yes, a surprisingly high 69 percent of the workforce. Musk’s
assistant Jehn Balajadia handed out vodka-spiked Red Bulls to celebrate.
说明：Twitter重生挑人法…。
###
The CEO then told him that some of the floors could not handle more than five
hundred pounds of pressure, so rolling a two-thousand-pound server would
cause damage. Musk replied that the servers had four wheels, so the pressure
at any one point was only five hundred pounds. “The dude is not very good at
math,” Musk told the musketeers.
说明：工程背景的优势 - 连搬家都比较会！
###
以上，有兴趣的话，中文版几天前刚上市，800多页有点厚，建议先试阅，不然心动带回
家后很容易变书砖~