This is yet again one of those instances where I guess we’re not supposed to react to what was actually said, but to the most charitable interpretation of it. A skill that Sam (and others) honed during the Trump years. “But what he actually meant was ___ which is quite intelligent you see.”
It’s not a ‘charitable’ interpretation to think that the guy who built SpaceX and is its chief engineer might know the basics of how rockets work, or might understand ion prepulsion that his own company uses. In fact, you have to go WAY out your way to make the assumption that Musk has a childlike understanding of this stuff.
There is plenty of evidence out there of Musk’s deep knowledge of rocketry, including many testimonials of engineers who have worked with him. You can watch the interviews/tours he gave Everyday Astronaut where he goes into great technical detail on a number of issues regarding SpaceX rockets.
Or, you can snark and hate Musk and laugh at anyone who tries to point out that Musk might actually know what he’s talking about - at least to the level that a technical manager needs.
Wasn’t the point here that Musk attempted snark with a hasty narcissistic tweet trying to show how much smarter he is than everyone else? And it backfired, because in context it makes absolutely no sense. It’s not a good look for the CEO of two multi-hundred-billion-dollar corporations, is it? It is, however, consistent with the behavior of a CEO running a once-dominant social media corporation into the ground through incompetence.
He may just have forgotten about ion propulsion while hastily tweeting from his toilet. It happens. His “Newtons third law” part of the tweet makes sense in that context. He probably goofed. That’s all.
You’re acting like he couldn’t possibly have goofed because he’s such a genius. And we’re just pointing out the goof and laughing because we don’t like the shitstain.
Trump goofed all the time too. Sometimes he would own it in a way that was, IMHO, genuinely funny. There’s a part of Trump, especially old Trump, who can do self-deprecating humor well.
More often than not, though, he would double, triple, or quadruple down. And everyone would pretend that, yes, this wasn’t a goof at all! It’s actually very smart for these incredible reasons!
It’s ridiculous, and that’s exactly what you’re doing here.
And, to be fair, Musk can be genuinely funny and self-deprecating sometimes. I recall ? Stephen King with an extensive diatribe pointing out in no uncertain terms how ridiculous it was that he should be asked to pay $30 for generating valuable content for Twitter. And I think Musk responded with just “how about $8”. Ok, that’s more just funny than self-deprecating, but I’m pretty sure I remember self-deprecating humor too.
But, as you say, this wasn’t one of those occasions.
Seems obvious that Musk put out a dumb tweet with no thought - not because he doesn’t understand rocketry, but because he’s a dumbass who tweets without thinking.
Sam - you’ve championed dumbasses who tweet without thinking before. Isn’t it more likely that sometimes they’re just dumbasses who tweet without thinking than that they’re misunderstood geniuses who are constantly thinking on another level?
I cannot take any article seriously that compares Musk to a real-life Iron Man. Give me a break. The guy is so obviously not a genius. He’s not stupider than average, but he is no genius.
Well, I don’t think we can yet exclude the possibility that he may be a genius in certain limited respects. But the sheer stupidity he has demonstrated recently is placing much tighter constraints on the domain of his genius, if it is real at all.
I’ve never seen any evidence of any genius from Musk in any field. Certainly not engineering, which is the one where he is often stated to be a genius. If I were to be generous, then I could say he’s a genius at marketing and self promotion (that second until recently as he is rapidly self destructing his brand). I would be more inclined to say he has a skill for marketing, but not genius level. Mozart was a music genius. Musk is no Mozart of anything.
He’s a genius at manipulating people. That’s a valuable skill that can be morally neutral.
The charitable part is attributing to Elmo personally the successes that are actually the accomplishments of the hundreds of excellent engineers that he hires and that he works like mules. The difference at Twitter is that he appears to be winging it on his own intuition and putative “genius”, and instead of taking advice from experts and long-time employees who actually understand the business, he fires everyone who doesn’t completely agree with him. The result is the utter shambles that is now so publicly visible. If he doesn’t put someone competent in charge soon and let them run the business, he’s just going to drive Twitter right into the ground.
On what basis do you assume that this means that Musk personally is familiar with them? See above. It seems to be the habit of Musk fabois to assume that every piece of technology in every product any of his companies have ever produced is due to Musk’s personal genius. Why does he even bother having a huge staff of engineers?
I listened to his conversation with critics after he suspended a number of journalists from Twitter for allegedly doxxing his location by tracking his jet. His misdirections, outright lies, and lack of focused arguments were not the arguments of a “genius”, but more typical of an insecure moron.
Musk simps gonna simp.
“Musk has said he’s not missing any important Tesla meetings or ignoring important business decisions since taking over at Twitter, and that he “literally can’t think of anything” he could have done to help Tesla’s execution in the last two months of 2022.”
Ooh. Ooh. Ooh. I can think of a couple of somethings!
It was neither funny nor self-deprecating. It was Musk completely failing to see what the issue was and trying to dunk on King by literally changing the price he was going to charge, as if King’s actual issue was that Musk was going to charge $20 dollars and would be flabbergasted by Musk lowering it to the reasonable $8. We know this because Musk shortly thereafter starting selling Twitter blue with the ‘verified tick’ at $8, completely without considering the ramifications, only to have to pull it after a few days.
I don’t think he’s that stupid. I saw the joke as him pretending to interpret it as a negotiating ploy by King to save $20, rather than obviously the principle of the thing.
Of course, he really was planning to go ahead with implementing blue-tick-for-$ at a reduced price, but it wasn’t because he’s too stupid to see that King had a point.
His follow-up tweet:
This verifies what I said - that he was specifically talking about electric propulsion in terms of lifting off from Earth.
I have been following Musk for years, and listened to just about everything he’s said about rocketry. He knows what he’s talking about. No, he’s not a rocket engineer and I’m pretty sure he doesn’t do workaday math and detailed design. But he knows enough, and in enough detail, to oversee teams of engineers and guide the product strategy of a highly technical company, and to make decisions on technical issues his engineers present to him. He has made bets that other rocket engineers said were foolish, and he was correct. People who have worked with him almost universally say he’s incredibly intelligent and does his research.
If you think he is so ignorant that he doesn’t understand the basics of rocketry or what ion propulsion is and does, then you don’t know much about the guy or his knowledge level.
That means he’s heard of ion thrusters, not that he’s closely familiar with them. In fact, although SpaceX can be credited with wide deployment of them because of the sheer number of Starlink satellites, it’s a well-developed technology that can be purchased off the shelf (or at least, routinely outsourced to a third party). SpaceX may have useful operational experience with them, but they haven’t done anything innovative with the technology.
If you’re CEO of a rocket company, you’re obviously going to absorb more knowledge about the technology than the average person. This does not argue for the brilliance of said CEO, nor for the value of their contribution. My supposition is that Elmo is absorbing knowledge from his staff of talented engineers rather than disseminating it or innovating anything, except perhaps at an organizational level. What I do know for a fact is that in conversations he’s had with those who have challenged him, whether in interviews or in Twitter Spaces, he often sounds like an idiot and is often unconvincingly defensive. And the disaster he’s created at Twitter needs no further comment.
And it shows.
How a guy that thinks trucks require bullet-proof windows, that aren’t even rock-proof, but not the ability to actually pull a fully loaded trailer isn’t a child escapes me.