Attorney, journalist, and Elon Musk biographer Seth Abramson eviscerated both Elon Musk and his ā€œfanboysā€ who have attempted to use the billionaireā€™s IQ as an indication of his intellectual prowess in a series of messages shared on X Thursday evening and into Friday.

  • robbinhood@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    youā€™re not getting into UPENN being a complete idiot. Whoever started the company, Musk oversaw periods of the growth in SpaceX, Tesla, Paypal etc.

    Musk is (edit: not) the smartest person in the world like he thinks he is. But itā€™s nearly an objective fact that heā€™s not stupid.

    This is such a dumb hill to die on, and more importantly it benefits Musk.

    edit: and as for failed programs, welcome to the world of business. Google, Amazon, Microsoft Apple, etc. constantly launch ideas that donā€™t pan out. Are their leaders and engineers and everyone else dumb because a project failed?

    • throwback3090@lemmy.nz
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      1 day ago

      You are getting into UPenn if your daddy owns an emerald mine and has pseudoslaves to work in it.

      And yes there are a lot a looooottttt of dumb people at google, amazon, Microsoft, and apple.

      • robbinhood@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        Evidence he bought his way in?

        Sure, there are a lot of dumb people at those companies. But thatā€™s not the point. Failures donā€™t prove that the leadership or specific individuals are dumb. Plenty of smart people have failed.

        But have fun inadvertently supporting Musk!

              • robbinhood@lemmy.world
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                11 hours ago

                Consider the 2016 election and the dangers of writing someone off.

                Initially, the GOP establishment wrote Trump off as a flash in the pan. Heā€™d enjoy an upswing, probably do something really dumb, and either way voters would come to their senses ahead of primary voting.

                By the time the GOP establishment realized how big a threat trump was, it was too late.

                Meanwhile, the Clinton campaign was pushing for Trump as GOP nominee, assuming heā€™d be an easy opponent.

                We know how that turned out.

                Trump is not Musk, itā€™s not a direct parallel, but it illustrates the dangers of underestimating someone.

                Everyone deluding themselves into thinking Musk is an idiot (or 100 IQ) are creating conditions favorable to Musk.

                (I wouldnā€™t be surprised if Musk is of above average intelligence but not a true genius).

                • throwback3090@lemmy.nz
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                  8 hours ago

                  The article literally says ā€œ110ā€ which is indeed above average. Furthermore, I donā€™t think anyone is underestimating Elon at this point: he built a cult of personality over twenty years that last to this day (smaller than it was a decade ago, but still there) and he bought the presidency.

                  He can do all those things and not be generally smart. His skill, like trumpā€™s, is lying in a distracting way. Neither of them is likely to ever invent a new thing or necessarily even be good at anything else. But they donā€™t need to, society values distracting liars above most everything else.

                  • robbinhood@lemmy.world
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                    8 hours ago

                    You cannot reason a man out of a position he did not reason himself into.

                    If youā€™re looking at a guyā€™s resume and it includes graduating from UPENN and getting admitted into Stanford, then launching/guiding/acquiring multiple successful companies and youā€™re then concluding ā€œnah this guy ainā€™t smartā€ or ā€œiā€™m not sure if heā€™s smartā€ itā€™s a position you reached not through logic/reason.

                    The author is taking a shot in the dark on Muskā€™s IQ and what the author wants it to be. 110 is normie. Isaacson, a very respected biographer, claims Muskā€™s SAT was 1400, which would have put him somewhere around ~93 percentile. I want to see proof of that score, but Iā€™d guess Muskā€™ IQ is around 125-130 and around 95-97 percentile.

                    Trying to boil Muskā€™s success down simply to lying is vastly underestimating him and playing in his favor.

    • Seleni@lemmy.world
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      1 day ago

      And everyone there said it was because they had a dedicated team distracting Musk from the real work. He is, in fact, very dumb.