I saw Elon speak at TED in 2017, before his brain had melted entirely from Ketamine and hate. I was curious. His talk was kind of rambling but interesting... until he started claiming the ancient Egyptians had failed because they stopped building pyramids. He went on at LENGTH. My jaw was open 1/2
If it were 2018 he would have been spruiking sarcophagus juice for sure.
I thought he was doing good work until maybe 2015. I was following some six sigma blogs at the time & thinking about going for my black belt. One of them brought up how he undid all of the improvements at the plant in California when Tesla bought it, and the quality issues of car...
2 - coming off the line then. I hadn't really heard much about it. This was the first negative anything I heard about Musk at the time. I dug a little bit and found more stuff buried about how he ignores the SMEs in nearly every endeavor he's a part of, even when...
3 - it was about safety issues because he thinks he knows better than everyone. It completely soured my opinion of him. In my mind he went from Tony Stark to every douchebag manager I'd had who fucked up others good work. Everything about him after that hasn't surprised me.
"When you're rich they think you really know." Stop elevating wealth and elevate intelligence.
Intelligence and wisdom.
Absolutely, intelligence without wisdom is more dangerous than wealth without intelligence.
Not sure about that in our hyper capitalist society. In any case hubris inevitably brings down both.
He likes to shoot from the lip.
I learned early the best way to judge a person’s or organization’s statements is to find one on a subject you are expert. It really underscores that those who speak loudest often know the least on those subjects. I’m not surprised by your experience but it is more data he has shit for brains.
Narcissism breeds delusion and stupidity.
He ignored the art, the shift to tombs in Valley of Kings, temple construction... just a brain rot dump of bad youtuber dog shit. I thought... if he bullshits ancient Egypt, which I know like the back of my hand... what else is he bullshitting? Talk here: m.youtube.com/watch?v=zIwL...
Can't listen to him.
Everything. Everything is the answer to that. See also UK politics.
It is so clear he isn't extremely intelligent nor creative, does not know how or care to properly research, & simply possesses traits that make him good at getting attention and access to power. I despair of how many broadly sensible people seem to think he's unusually interesting or clever.
„Oh-oh yes, I‘m the Great … Prete-hender!“ Greatest, that is. youtu.be/mLRjFWDGs1g?...
He perfected an affectation that dumb people with money were conned into thinking was a sign of techie smarts. He became so wealthy because there are a lot of dumb people with money
That‘s exactly what made Bernie Madoff, the Enron mafia or the crypto „currency“ mobsters rich. Greed makes people blind.
He also repurposed the vision of various SF writers into a persona, almost certainly at the direction of a PR team. Musk at his height cribbed from Iain Banks, Kim Stanley Robinson, Heinlein, and Asimov. That my first “WTF?” with him. He was leaning too much on stuff I had read, and it was odd.
And probably obvious, certainly in hindsight. Now he seems to have completely internalized the PR to the point where he thinks he’s an intuitive genius. No doubt his sycophants have reinforced that
I tried to convince someone very close to me of this, which I ultimately failed to do. They were sure he was a genius, self-made man, thought leader, entrepreneur, etc, and it was really only Musk’s deep dive into the far right that has led their minds to change.
😬
He is — to his core — completely incurious.
I think he does have a kind of curiosity (as every human does), but it is on limited terms (£-focused), anti-intellectual (either he does not do proper research or simply ignores what he finds and doesn't like), and quite unimaginative (electric cars/going to Mars weren't exactly new ideas...).
yep his curiosity is so very narrow - he's clearly got his hyperfixations but his knowledge of anything beyond those is paper thin nor does he seem to care that it is so
I agree with this entire thread, but one trait I believe he possesses is that he gives no shits & just builds. Is he a loudmouth asshole with no morals (least evil thing that is true about him)? YES. Does he get shit done? Also yes. I want more DOERS OF GOOD THINGS to apply the same focus and drive.
I would argue he absolutely does not get things done. He says he does and then he buys stuff to distract you. He buys and buys and buys. How's that hyperloop revolution coming? Have we defeated traffic yet? Have we completed more than just the one? How many cities did he start digging in?
One of the reasons DOERS OF GOOD THINGS take longer to accomplish those things is that they are not promising some bullshit they could never possibly deliver. He just has the finances to throw infinite shit at the wall to see what sticks, but the floor? It's covered in shit now!
Correct. He has rarely ever gotten anything done. Every single one of the projects he has led has been a monumental failure and none have delivered even after many years. Not one. The only successes he has bought from someone else and pretended it was his idea.
I think that somewhere in the middle is the truth (shudder). Let me be clear: He is scum. But he promised millions of EVs and has delivered them. Did he invent them? No. I fear my point is being missed. Don’t wanna fight you. We all need to ignore noise and build. Who cares who thinks what?
You're focusing on one project. But in the meantime he has promised a lot more results. It *is* important that we weigh all of someone's claims against all of the evidence. A TV psychic might be right about one prediction but if they made 1000 predictions, it is meaningless.
There is actually a lot of research into this. Part of how guys like Elon get seen as successful is that the media rarely follow up on their claims and promises. Genuinely look up the way he destroyed public transit in cities by promising hyperloop solutions to traffic that never materialized.
Agree. I invested a little money in Tesla over a decade ago, watched the delivery numbers, and probably (almost definitely) developed bias. That said, what he is doing right now is just about the scariest thing this country has seen.
But I would argue that he hasn’t delivered them. He sold every single one on a complete lie that he has yet to deliver. He promised the customers things he will never, ever be able to deliver with those vehicles. He literally lied to get those cars sold and continues to do so.
Okay… got it. I am not here to argue.
If he told the truth, he would have a fraction of his current sales.
This goes back to what I said on the illusion of value. Musk is PT Barnum. He is very, very good at lying. He knows there are zero consequences to him saying “my robot can already do XYZ on its own” because the media immediately parrots it.
Then he points to the parrot as “see! It’s true! The journalists won’t lie!” So the general public thinks he actually did the thing. So he never has to actually prove he did the thing.
He is the morons idea of a curious genius, just like t**mp is the cheap man’s idea of a rich and brilliant businessman.
It's a network effect of pro-billionaire media that enforces the false myth of meritocracy; paired with content from syncophantic client propagandists that are rewarded with access, influence or money by being his lickspittles. They create the impression more people buy into him than actually do
Gell-Mann Amnesia is real!
Yes. Quite clear he has absolutely no idea what he's talking about here
As a IT professional I can confidently state he bullshits about tech too
Oh yes! I still remember what he said about AI, be it promoting or warning.
Like every other billionaire he’s a malicious predatory fraud.
No thanks. i no longer believe we need to "understand what went wrong" when we can all collectively agree that it is irredeemably wrong and corrosive.
@iwriteok.bsky.social mentions this exact phenomenon in his BTB episode on Elon. Every time he decides to move to a new industry or talk publicly about a new subject, a whole new group of experts suddenly realize "Oh, this guy is totally full of shit."
There's a whole Elon cascade phenomenon where experts in unrelated-to-tesla/spaceX fields discover that he has no idea what he's talking about. For me, it was the submarine death pod he wanted to build for the trapped kids.
Me too
when I was a hot shot senior in high school I worked part-time in the lab at Glidden powdered metal, with people with actual doctorates. I learned humility day one. dunning-kruger means nothing to me because I'm always on the up slope 😉 ✌️😎🖖
I’m not an expert but that’s where the illusion of his intelligence died for me as well.
I think that was the first big mainstream moment where Musk wasn't met with immediate praise across the media.
His doubling down and slinging insults didn’t do him any favors either. I still can’t fathom how he wasn’t properly sued for libel over what he said.
Same
I remember that too: lots of us had been following—on old Twitter—the crisis as it unfolded. With lots of intelligent discussion of the details of the problems involved: maps, charts, analysis. & the rescue was underway, but necessarily slow. Then Elon butted in with an obviously idiotic suggestion.
I knew he was a blathering fool before then but it was just a gut instinct, I didn’t have proof. That submarine idea and his subsequent treatment of the rescue diver who said it was a stupid idea was the nail in the coffin.
That was the moment he showed what he is. That was it for me too. Like trump, he’s scammed millions. It says more about the gullibility of the millions than anything else.
I was working at an underwater robotics start-up that was very proud of how many of their engineers moved on to SpaceX and Tesla and the transition from Elon is Weird but Great to Holy Mola This Guy Is Incompetent was over night.
It was Elon’s pedo comment that told me, he was not a responsible CEO.
One day when sanity returns to our culture and we finally boot people like Musk to the curb — entire textbooks will be written about techbro and financebro culture that rewards with significant wealth people who outright lie.
It’s not “move fast, break things”. Never ever has been. It’s “move fast and lie until it’s not profitable enough anymore. Then it’s someone else’s mess to cleanup.” They will always be the dudes who eats dinner, leaves the table, knowing their mom will cleanup their plate and do the dishes.”
When all you care about is money and power, the end justifies the means and facts and details don’t matter. He’s the rich kid in your introductory class who wants to pay to cheat off you.
For a good while, the moving fast part had to result in something people wanted. There were plenty of mistake, but value had to be created somewhere. People like Musk are just destroying, with no accountability.
I would argue that the move fast part was creating the illusion of value. That they moved quickly enough (or just got lucky) and were able to patch any hole that officers. Usually through brute force and tossing enormous amounts of money at the thing to pretend the thing never happened.
But that was then. Now it is incredibly more difficult to create the illusion of value. So they just outright lie and scam and hope that so many other people are lying and scamming that they are not the ones the authorities and lawyers pay attention to.
There's a real market for lemons in our society. Why spend any energy researching things or even just five minutes reading a Wikipedia article when you could just be confidently wrong about everything?
Man is a whole-ass lemon party