Chris Williamson

I very much believe in model traits, not people.

And so my aspiration is to collect the most useful traits of some of the most accomplished people and make them accessible and useful.

What's that?

The idiot index, it's downstream of the first principles thinking.

And so the idiot index applies to a particular part or a particular product.

And it's the difference between the raw material cost and the price.

And so an example, he absolutely roasted an engineer in a meeting who like didn't know what the stupidest parts in his product were in his composite.

Cause that shows you where you're massively overpaying.

So there was a part that was, they were paying $13,000 for, that was like one piece of steel.

And if you just weighed it, the weight of that steel was worth like $200.

And so he's like, you multiply the price of the raw material

Divide that out of the total price and like, I don't know what that is.

A big number.

Like that's fucking stupid.

We're overpaying by like 50x for that thing.

So like how cheaply can you get the steel and then get it into that shape?

And you get those insane idiot indexes, especially in aerospace because you go outsource and then outsource and then outsource.

And so there's like layers of delegation and profit.

There's like five subcontracts before you get like one guy who's like welding a thing together.

And you're like, oh, just bring that guy over here.