Or maybe push it forward, as cheaper AND better brands fill the vacuum?
(Trying to see the other side of the coin again…)
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I’ve known a couple of really brilliant people; one was a linguistics prof. and the other a colleague. They both had a couple of things in common; they both seemed a bit dithery, but when you got them in focus and they looked you in the eye, there was an unmistakable laser like focus. They were also both very sweet.
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The kind of man Mosk (like Tramp) admires, calling him out as the “rat bastard” he is.
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I keep reading headlines that go something like “Tesla sales drop by 50% in [region of world], while EV sales increase by 30%.” So Tesla may be significantly, increasingly unpopular and their sales going down the toilet but EV sales overall are still going up, with other brands easily filling the gap. I think at this point Tesla could disappear and it won’t negatively impact adoption of EV - it was always something of a luxury brand, and they had already surrendered the affordable car segment of the market to other companies.
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I’m crossing my fingers.
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Five weeks in, there’s an emerging pattern in how the administration moves to target federal employees, and it looks something like this:
- Elon Musk, the billionaire adviser to Trump, brings in tactics he’s employed at his private-sector businesses.
- A directive is sent out through the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) that immediately raises the question: Can they do that?
- Federal agencies scramble to provide guidance to employees, resulting in multiple emails often in conflict with one another.
- Facing pushback, OPM then issues further guidance, telling agencies to carry out the directive themselves.
Fuck Musk…
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Goddamn that was great.
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I have had a few IQ tests. (A version of IQ test is used in autism testing, if nothing else: a reversion to its original idea of looking for cognitive patterns rather than reducing a complex multivariate statistically-calibrated set of tests down to a single number)
For reference, the distribution of scores is a bell curve, and 100IQ is defined as the 50th percentile point bang in the middle. Someone with a 100IQ is smarter than roughly half the population, and not as smart as half the population. A standard deviation is about 15 IQ points, and at mean±σ = 100±15 = 85–115 you’ll find more than two thirds of everyone. In the range mean±2σ = 100±30 = 70–130 you’ll find fully 98% of the population.
I got into Mensa. Which just requires you to be on the high side of the 98th percentile point.
You know what I remember the main topic of conversation to usually come back around to in Mensa conversations?
“If we’re all so smart, why aren’t we all rich?”
And there’s an impression of classism and racism about it all, and most certainly it’s been used to advance such things (The Bell Curve is still quoted by some people.) But once you correct for biased tests and biased testing regimes, and biased education systems depriving resources from certain sectors of the population (psychological population metrology is really hard), then you’ll find all points of the IQ spectrum at all points of humanity, class, race, wealth irrespective.
A high innate intelligence is neither necessary nor sufficient for success or wealth.A sense of resilience and perseverance is going to get you through problems that innate intelligence won’t. But what really helps are money, connections, and luck. For every middle class genius who manages to make a difference in the world, how many poor marginalised geniuses are there in minimum wage jobs just living day to day? More the point, for every intellectually disabled person struggling to survive, how many rich idiots are there who can just pay people to think for them?
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From the quality of the comments every day on this site, I’m sure the majority of users here have IQs well over 110.
I had my IQ tested as a kid, and I don’t remember what it was, but I’m pretty sure it was more than 110.
OTOH, I’m still working on my first billion.
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Yes well, don’t be too hard on yourself. I think it’s been well established by now round these here parts that “stupid billionaire” is not an oxymoron. (That’s the farmer down the road who bought way too many oxen.)
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Trump and Musk are the jokers in the deck. Trump has his nose way up Musk’s ass, and the oil industry bribed Trump with almost half a billion dollars last year–ostensibly all going to the running of the campaign.
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My parents felt much the same as you and I inherited it. I’m glad I did, and I’ve kept it quite fondly.
I was tested as a child. I was very dreamy and distracted, but calm. At the time, it wasn’t widely understood that ADHD could be like that. The school was going to put me into a special ed class, with very low expectations. My parents were teachers and knew the system and said “Test him first, then we’ll talk”. I got pushed into more academic streams after the tests.
I’ve no idea how I scored, and my parents never told me. They understood that intelligence isn’t a number. I also think they were also trying to avoid raising an insufferable prick who thought a number made him special.
I shudder to think of how many kids got sidelined or ignored over a number.
So much this.
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Luigi’s little brother?
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My IQ is 110 also, but in binary
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" I shudder to think of how many kids got sidelined or ignored over a number."
I seem to recall being tested when I was in a tailspin after my parents divorced, and being told that maybe I should switch to the non-academic stream. I explained that I was going through a hard time, and they re-tested me, and were a bit red-faced when the results didn’t match.
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A friend of mine works at a mainstream public school as an assistant for disabled students. (Here in Australia.)
She was telling me recently of a child with autism and mutism (the child can hear, but is non-verbal). My friend was saying that she was trying to lead the child through something, and in the process signed “F”. The child replied by signing “G”. That’s not something that just happens randomly. My friend knows some sign, but is not fluent, and is now trying to get a sign interpreter in to help the kid learn to communicate more fluently.
That child is also diagnosed as having intellectual disability. But that’s possibly because they were tested with the regular IQ test regime, not the deaf/non-verbal one. So my friend is also trying to get the kid re-assessed with a new IQ test, because who knows what the results will be if they’re able to actually communicate the answers.
But none of that has anything to do with Elon. He doesn’t have an intellectual disability, any more than he’s a genius. He’s just a grandstanding liar with delusions of competence. And a probable ketamine problem.
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Look at Helen Keller; that was the classic case of the extrapolation of physical disabilities masking normal or gifted intelligence.
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