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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    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.