He has no technical aptitude, he just had the right money at the right time, born in the right place.
this post was submitted on 05 Nov 2024
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Unpopular Opinion
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Money ≠ Intelligence and your entire argument seems to be based on this erroneous assumption.
No-one becomes a multi-billionaire due to a lack of intelligence or common sense.
Not "due to", but people all thoroughout history have amassed great wealth despite a lack of intelligence. Especially when they are born into privilege.
I'm getting tired of the comments that imply not stupid = smart.
I understand that intelligence is on a scale and that is not a black and white issue. I also understand that wealth ≠ intelligence, however in this case I do believe that he has at least average intelligence.
This is the last "Elon Musk is not a genius" type comment that I'm replying too, I've said all I have to say on the matter.
At no point did I say "smart", "genius", or "stupid". I said "intelligence", which was your choice of wording, in my rebuttal.
I also made no claim regarding Musk directly. I just pointed out the flaw in your argument that there is a correlation between a person's wealth and their intelligence.
I read that whole post in Elon's voice. And also this...
People don't call Musk an idiot because he's a blithering imbecile who is incapable of anything. We call him an idiot because he's not particularly smart like others make him out to be. He's an idiot like the average guy.
He's made some good choices and some bad choices. Not especially dumb, not especially smart.
Not a genius.
So... people call him an idiot in an attempt to offset the genius talk.
I see what you're saying and I'll offer an alternative. Elon is a businessman. He is not a genius, he is not technical, he is not an engineer. Him being interested in those subjects does not an expert make. At his core though, he is a businessman, and runs businesses. At the beginning of his career we can agree that with Paypal and Tesla he did well in making those businesses successful.
I do think he has an ulterior motive with Twitter. It just flopped too quickly to be coincidence. Any decent merger/takeover has a strategy, and usually the first several months of that strategy is "Keep things running normally, watch what happens, and then start making adjustments". He came in and turned everything upside down, cutting departments left and right without any cares. Even he knows that torpedoes a company. Even if you do think the departments are redundant, cutting them randomly only sews chaos. I think that chaos was intentional.
I agree. Most of the replies here imply that I must think he's a genius, as if people can only either be stupid or a genius.
I do not think he's a genius, I do think that he knows what he's doing.
Eh, you can't rely on votes made, unfortunately. Too many people use it to disagree for it to be a sign of an opinion being deemed not unpopular, or vice versa.
Fwiw, I agree that this is currently unpopular, though I disagree with it and my vote was up.
My disagreement is in the colloquial usage of idiot vs a stricter usage. Old school, idiot was a term to indicate functional intelligence, or rather the lack thereof. Now, it has come to mean someone either making poor choices via bad thinking, or someone that's ignoring any thought at all
Musk -definitely- fits the looser usage. Not specifically because of twitter, it is reflected in all his business decisions of the last decade. Twitter, he isn't making decisions, he's following someone else's plan, and that's the decision he made.
I don't think his actual iq is relevant tbh. You can be a genius (and he isn't) and still fail to use that. He makes poor use of what brains he does have, which makes him an idiot overall.
I agree that it could just be a poor choice of words and it could just be an insult, if you think he's evil, a cunt or whatever else say that instead though.
If he’s not stupid what do you propose he is?
I'd suggest that he's at least average intelligence.
I think people are struggling to accept that I can dislike someone, or disagree with their choices without thinking they're stupid.
I watched a clip from an interview Jordan Peterson gave Musk. I'm no fan of Peterson, but it was clear from even a short watch that Musk was just not on Peterson's level.
And I'm not sure Twitter is a failure. It's well known that Musk can't make a dollar without a protective and generous government. And we don't know how much Chinese and Russian intelligence are paying for twitter.
I've already said elsewhere in the thread that I'm not claiming that he's some sort of 200 level IQ genius. I'm saying he's not stupid.