Elon is smart if you buy into the myth that rich people are smart, and the richer you are the smarter you are. The USA has a terrible myth that people are rich because they boot-strap themselves from poverty to great wealth, not because they were born into it.
And I get it. Elno went from $400 Million to $250 Billion through strategic investments and getting out at just the right moment. And taking credit for other people’s inventions and hard work. That takes a certain amount of…
Nevermind.
He’s a mediocre white dude and he knows it, which is why he’s so afraid of DEI and rails against the WMV. His only accomplishment is being born rich and getting richer, which is all but guaranteed at his wealth level.
Does the article make clear whether these were employees of DOGE, or holdovers from it’s former incarnation as the US Digital Service? I’m not sure if there was any overlap between the staff of those departments, but it would make more sense that employees of USDS were reluctant to take part in DOGE.
The staffers who resigned worked for what was once known as the United States Digital Service, an office established during President Barack Obama’s administration.
I don’t know that he’s particular intelligent at all, though. His biographer was on social media recently, responding to the idea that Elon is a genius by saying that he has a “110 IQ at best.” I think Musk is interested in a lot of technical/science fictional subjects that make him seem smart, even though he has only superficial (mis)understandings that he’s gleaned from reading certain (mostly sci-fi) books.
Yeah, that’s obviously a huge part of it - and of course he’s only rich because of intergenerational wealth, forming business networks with other rich white racists with South African connections (e.g. Thiel), some golden parachutes and being very, very lucky. I think everyone trying to rationalize him as a smart/good businessman wildly underestimates the role that sheer, stupid luck played in his career/investments. I used to think he was at least good at self-promotion, but even here stupid luck (and a lot of the press doing the work for him) came into play.
I think Musk makes a lot of promises that even very smart people haven’t been able to accomplish, and so people treat him like he must be a genius even though he never accomplishes any of them.
IQ isn’t the huge thing people think it is. Theoretically, it measures and compares the potential to reason, problem-solve, use logic, etc. But even if you don’t factor in cultural distinctions and other biases which can influence the results, there are so many other kinds of intelligence-- social skills, emotional intelligence, mechanical knowledge-- and all are valuable.
Sure, I’m book-smart, I guess, but that only goes so far. I’m not-so-great socially, and my overthinking means I don’t always see the most practical solutions first. If my car’s acting up, I ask my uncle, who was taking things apart and putting them back together since he was a kid. He also worked as an auto mechanic, and if I can explain the issue clearly enough, he can usually tell me what part of the system’s involved and explain thoroughly how it works (and I’ll maybe understand half of that. ) He and I are smart in different ways, and that’s fine by me. We all have our own ways to contribute to the world, and it’s all valid.
Besides, even if you take IQ seriously, 110 isn’t that far above average (which is somewhere around 100, if what i’m seeing online is accurate.) It’s not that much of a brag to crow about. The only “smarts” I’d acknowledge in Musk is his ability to work systems for his own benefit, and he wouldn’t be able to do half of what he’s done without the family money behind him.
Exactly right. I think of IQ (the popularly understood version) as a horsepower rating on the brain. You may have a Ferrari for a brain, but if you can’t reach the pedals, don’t understand the steering and traction limitations, etc, etc, all that horsepower ain’t getting you to the market. I have kids with Down syndrome and very limited IQ who have such high social, empathic and emotional quotients that they can function in society far better than this asshat can. We all contribute, and anyone who thinks that certain “sorts” just cannot add to the value of our culture are flat wrong and need to shut the fuck up.
So much this. IQ very accurately measures a person’s ability to answer questions on IQ tests.
As you say: that’s one kind, out of many, of smart.
ETA: whenever IQ comes up in conversation, I steer folks towards “The Mismeasure of Man”, by Stephen Jay Gould.
Among other things, Gould points out that Alfred Binet, the inventor of the IQ test, pointed out three things when he published the test.
the test was meant to identify areas where school children were having trouble,
it was to be used to get help where children needed it, not to segregate based on test scores, and
results above 100 were not meant to indicate “higher intelligence”, whatever that was. Results above 100 only meant “you have no issues you particularly need help with”.
A very quick glance at how people talk about IQ tests shows that Alfred Binet should be spinning in his grave.
…yet I can’t help but recall that for a so-called “genius,” 110 wouldn’t get him into MENSA. (Depending on the type of test, that requires a score anywhere from 132 to 140.) If that’s the yardstick he wants to measure himself by… he’s still kinda falling short. (And yeah, I know it’s so wrong of me to point it out, but he started it. )
When Trump ran the first time, there was a very good article that came out about how he got access to the Republican database when he became their candidate and how his operation set up a data farm to tilt the election (Cambridge Analytica) and also to use the database to target his followers with his many scams.
Trump doesn’t seem to be a terribly sophisticated man about computers, so, it makes me wonder who is really in charge of all this malicious digital manipulation in the government. Elon isn’t really smart enough to do it; he’s just a wanker who pretends to know stuff about tech. There’s other people behind this who actually understand government computer systems and how they can be circumvented to thwart Congress’s power over the purse.
I think that was the point of the biographer’s statement:
From upthread:
Here are a few other items of interest from that article:
Musk founded Zip2, described as “a sort of digital Yellowpages” by Belmont Hill School’s The Panel Online, with his brother. The outlet reported that in an attempt to impress investors in the company, Musk “created a large, fake casing around the Zip2 computer to make it seem like an extremely advanced supercomputer”
The code used by the program, which Musk taught himself, “was soon exposed to be so scrambled that a majority of the program had to be rewritten by more advanced programmers.”
“If you assign intelligence to just spending money, you’re in a cult,” he also added. “If you attach intelligence to simply owning a successful company whose work on a day-to-day basis you have nothing to do with and who you are considerably more of a hindrance to than a help to, you’re in a cult.”
“I don’t find IQ to be a valuable measure,” he also clarified. “I introduced the term to this conversation because it’s used by you fans as some sort of supposed proof of Musk’s intelligence—though none of you have any proof whatsoever of any IQ test the man’s ever taken.”
If my car’s acting up, I ask my uncle, who was taking things apart and putting them back together since he was a kid. He also worked as an auto mechanic, and if I can explain the issue clearly enough, he can usually tell me what part of the system’s involved and explain thoroughly how it works (and I’ll maybe understand half of that. 
) He and I are smart in different ways, and that’s fine by me. We all have our own ways to contribute to the world, and it’s all valid.
)
