I agree. His drug use has been a tremendous detriment to whatever cognitive talents he may have once had. I don’t think he was ever a genius, but wherever he was is clearly in decline. I imagine the pressure under which he finds himself to perform is extreme. I always wonder whether these people that are filled with delusion (Musk, Trump, et al.) have moments of clarity where they know it is all an illusion and fear it all collapsing and being exposed as less than what they are perceived to be. I know in academia “imposter syndrome” is some commonplace it would be more unusual for one not to have bouts of it. But I’m not sure if the narcissists ever feel it.
One could say that in a way, Musk is trapped in an upward spiral. It’s a problem reserved for the very wealthy.
Once he got to a certain critical mass of dispensable income, he became surrounded by people who saw an opportunity to get a piece of it. They ensured he would succeed because it would in turn make them a lot of money. A parasite is a predator who wants you to stay alive.
I don’t think Trump’s situation is a direct analogy to Musk, but it demonstrates that you can get rich without being smart.
This point is made over and over again in the thread and it is a logical fallacy to believe that makes Elon Musk stupid. Yes you can be an stupid and become rich but that doesn’t mean Elon Musk is stupid. According to this thread every rich person is an idiot because it’s possible they may be. It’s nonsense.
Stupid is as stupid does. He wasted tens of billions overpaying for Twitter and his personal touch running the business is transparently stupid. He personally designed the cybertruck which looks like a child drew it on a placemat.
We are watching the things he has been doing publicly for the last few years and making judgements based on that. He may have done very smart things secretly in the past, but right now he’s loudly and proudly advertising some of the dumbest things I’ve ever seen a business person do.
Smartness and stupidity don’t lie on a linear spectrum. There’s a complex interplay between the two. There are some advanced forms of stupidity only extremely smart people can pull off. You will have to come up with examples from your own life because smart-stupid people and stupid-smart people are both people you kind of have to experience to get.
No, according to this thread, giving a rich person consideration for talent or intelligence on the basis of “well, if you’re so smart, why aren’t you rich?” is ridiculous.
A rich person may or may not be an idiot but that should be judged on the basis of their actions, not merely on the basis of having wealth.
People have repeatedly pointed out that Musk’s decisions and actions, especially over the last decade or so have, rather than painting a picture of a genius or even highly talented individual, pointed rather to the notion his wealth has allowed him to cover for many of his deficiencies.
There are surely talented, smart rich people. But guess what? We don’t really see them trying to draw attention to themselves all the damned time or make important decisions (or even social media posts) while drunk or high.
That is not the point being made. The point is that wealth does not mean he’s smart. You have to look at behavior.
I actually think he’s pretty intelligent in the general sense. But he’s made some colossally stupid decisions and exhibits the kind of close-mindedness that I generally do not associate with intelligence. I attribute that to some combination of narcissism and wealth (and drugs, it sounds like.) Wealth doesn’t cause narcissism, but it allows for narcissism without limits. The X debacle is a classic case of hubris.
He does stupid things. Have you never wasted money on a bad decision? Does that make you a stupid person, or someone who like everyone else had done a stupid thing at some point in your life?
Calling his Twitter fiasco stupid makes sense, but I’ve seen incredibly smart and rich people called stupid for any variety of reasons, and it’s rarely a realistic evaluation of their intelligence or business acumen. Whether he was born to a family comparatively wealthy to me doesn’t explain how he got to be the richest person in the world. People don’t ‘fall up to the top’ that way. It doesn’t make him the smartest person in the world, it doesn’t mean he originated all the ideas he’s cashed in on, but it does mean he had the business acumen to let it ride into the world’s largest personal fortune. It’s not a sign of stupidity.
Not when I had an army of lawyers and business analysts at my disposal to help me make a good decision.
One of the wealthiest families in the world recently purchased my employer, in a transaction a fraction of the size of the Twitter purchase. Those MFers were UP OUR ASSES in terms of wanting financial data, our history, our prospects and our plans. Thousands of documents about everything we have going, in an industry where they already have decades of experience. Now that they own us, they are implementing an actual business plan for their new asset. That is business acumen. Overpaying for Twitter, then making dozens of haphazard changes isn’t business acumen.
His previous gambles were wild successes, and his more recent gambles look more like failures. It also appears to me that the more hands on he is, the worse the outcomes are. The question becomes, were those early successes due to him, or in spite of him.
IMO all that has been brought up adds up to that it is not quite accurate to describe him as “someone with no business acumen” but I sure see someone on whose business acumen I would not risk money I would miss, and which is currently in a bad streak even for that.
I don’t think anyone has claimed that his wealth is a sign of stupidity. In fact, i believe that there is a modest positive correlation between wealth and intelligence. But “he’s the richest man on earth” is not evidence of genius.
This
was not a good argument. That’s all I’m saying.
That’s all I intended from that, just a further example that Wealth =/= Talent, Intelligence, etc. There are numerous examples, of course, but Trump is perhaps the most obvious.
I agree in general, but it’s perfectly good in the face of the counter-arguments “because I think he’s stupid”, which is the common reasoning offered in this thread.
Even your response that being the richest man in the world doesn’t make him a genius does nothing to establish that he is stupid.
That’s an interesting hill to choose to die on but ok
I don’t think he’s stupid. I think he knows a good thing when he sees it, but is not so good at actually running a business.
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Recognizing that electric cars are the future and moving aggressively on that, faster than any of the big players are capable of: Visionary.
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Buying a company because you want to give Trump his account back, and then losing half of your advertising revenue: Lack of business acumen.
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Not knowing the difference between being good at something and just having a shitload of money burning a hole in your pocket: Hubris.
Those are very reasonable statements.
I never claimed he is stupid. I think he’s made some really dumb mistakes in handling Twitter, but it’s possible he’s rich enough that he doesn’t mind throwing it away.
I do suspect that his drug habit has addled his brain, though. But that would be somewhat recent.
Similarly, I don’t think I’ve claimed he is stupid beyond rhetorically, e.g. “What an idiot!” My claims about Musk have been pretty straightfoward:
- He is not a genius.
- He is certainly not as brilliant as his fans seem to think he is.
- He does not actually have a history of accomplishment. His so-called accomplishments are either hefty doses of luck or being bailed out.
- The more involved he seems to be with something the worse it does. The ideas he has that seem to be (or are) more or less strictly his, tend to be really bad.
- He is definitely a colossal asshole and not to be admired.
- His great wealth is not an indicator of talent, which sadly far too many people use a scorecard for greatness. This is a societal problem in general, and not specific to Musk, although it certainly applied to him often, with people saying “But look at all his money, he must be talented!”
I have often asked his supporters to give the me evidence of his genius, and while a former poster managed to find a video of him talking about rocket engines at a basic knowledgeable level, I’ve never seen any evidence that Musk is brilliant or particularly talented. They usually fall back to “But he’s rich!” -or- other people, who have reason to praise him, praise his genius.