Attorney, journalist, and Elon Musk biographer Seth Abramson eviscerated both Elon Musk and his āfanboysā who have attempted to use the billionaireās IQ as an indication of his intellectual prowess in a series of messages shared on X Thursday evening and into Friday.
What the fuck are you talking about?
āwhat the fuckā are you confused about?
The last sentence
Consider the 2016 election and the dangers of writing someone off.
Initially, the GOP establishment wrote Trump off as a flash in the pan. Heād 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 heād be an easy opponent.
We know how that turned out.
Trump is not Musk, itās 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 wouldnāt be surprised if Musk is of above average intelligence but not a true genius).
The article literally says ā110ā which is indeed above average. Furthermore, I donāt 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 trumpās, 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 donāt need to, society values distracting liars above most everything else.
You cannot reason a man out of a position he did not reason himself into.
If youāre looking at a guyās resume and it includes graduating from UPENN and getting admitted into Stanford, then launching/guiding/acquiring multiple successful companies and youāre then concluding ānah this guy aināt smartā or āiām not sure if heās smartā itās a position you reached not through logic/reason.
The author is taking a shot in the dark on Muskās IQ and what the author wants it to be. 110 is normie. Isaacson, a very respected biographer, claims Muskās SAT was 1400, which would have put him somewhere around ~93 percentile. I want to see proof of that score, but Iād guess Muskā IQ is around 125-130 and around 95-97 percentile.
Trying to boil Muskās success down simply to lying is vastly underestimating him and playing in his favor.