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.

  • 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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              8 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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                5 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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                  5 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.