The author does not seem to understanding survivorship bias. He never approaches the question of whether the things he proposes are the reason for Musk’s success actually work, or whether they happen to work for Musk in a context-dependent way. In other words, if you give this as advice to someone random, will they end up successful or an outcast. I’d guess the latter in most cases. This is in general the problem of evaluating the reasons behind success.
I don’t think it’s as simple as “Successful or outcast” dichotomy.
In general, I’d see it as a tradeoff between the cook as “low risk/low reward” and the chef as “high risk/high reward.” The chef has higher expected value, but the cook has less failure.
I think if you keep doing the chef thing, even in the face of failure, you’ll probably eventually hit upon a success (provided you have the other ingredients he has, like talent and drive) - but you probably won’t be like Musk, who won the lottery by having success after success.
I don’t think it’s as simple as “Successful or outcast” dichotomy.
In general, I’d see it as a tradeoff between the cook as “low risk/low reward” and the chef as “high risk/high reward.” The chef has higher expected value, but the cook has less failure.
I think if you keep doing the chef thing, even in the face of failure, you’ll probably eventually hit upon a success (provided you have the other ingredients he has, like talent and drive) - but you probably won’t be like Musk, who won the lottery by having success after success.