this post was submitted on 22 Feb 2025
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Attorney, journalist, and Elon Musk biographer Seth Abramson eviscerated both Elon Musk and his “fanboys” who have attempted to use the billionaire’s IQ as an indication of his intellectual prowess in a series of messages shared on X Thursday evening and into Friday.

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[–] yournamehere@lemm.ee 4 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

like kim dotcom. same guy to me.

[–] umbraroze@lemmy.world 5 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

There's this website that listed bunch of stuff about Kim Dotcom and his ventures. (the list barely scratches the surface. But the important thing is that people thought he was hack decades ago.)

When I visited the site last time, I was like "ohhhhh, they've found a picture of Kim wearing an SS helmet. I really didn't know what else I was expecting."

[–] drmoose@lemmy.world 64 points 17 hours ago (3 children)

I feel like Musk was a symptom of Americans really wanting a genius billionaire to be a real thing as it reinforces this American dream everyone's dreaming about.

Reading the CPAC transcript clearly shows that he's currently below average intelligence if anything.

[–] Thteven@lemmy.world 3 points 31 minutes ago

They wanted Iron Man and got Justin Fuckin Hammer.

[–] faythofdragons@slrpnk.net 19 points 16 hours ago (2 children)

Well yeah, that's the American Dream right? That if you're smart and work hard, you'll be rich?

[–] ArchmageAzor@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

And like most dreams, it just won't happen in real life.

[–] drmoose@lemmy.world 24 points 15 hours ago

Yeah and you need to be asleep to believe it

[–] JaymesRS 18 points 17 hours ago (4 children)

My feelings are that Steve Jobs was the quintessential cultural personality CEO and his early death sent a lot of people desperately looking for the next one, who ended up being Elon.

The difference was that Jobs actually had taste and a good vision for the future. He could build a smart team and let them drive progress then motivate to go further without making things up like Elon. So the media papered over Elon's wild confabulation, instead of showing him in a true light.

[–] NoIdiots@lemmy.cafe 5 points 2 hours ago

Steve Jobs tried to cure his cancer with essential oil. If that doesn't scream dumbass I don't know what is

[–] halowpeano@lemmy.world 35 points 16 hours ago (3 children)

Most of that's false though. He couldn't build a good smart team, Wozniak could. He was very good at screwing others out of ownership in the company they helped build though. He was also very good at one thing, envisioning a computer in every home, and a computer in every pocket. That was his one true talent.

But he was not "smart". He died to cancer detected early enough to heal with modern medicine, but chose quack treatments instead. There really isn't any such thing as general intelligence. Everyone's got very specialized knowledge in some topic, and are idiots in everything else.

[–] merari42@lemmy.world 3 points 2 hours ago

Na, that is just historically inaccurate. The original Macintosh team collected their stories/memoires at folklore.org, which give you a pretty good overview of his talents. He was really mercurial and Woz was the better engineer, but played a really important role in the vision/design of computers as we know them today. In the original Mac team others did the engineering and Jobs never claimed to be and engineering type of person, but he had a good feel on the importance of design, clear visual metaphors and good interaction design and pushed the team relentlessly into that direction.

[–] AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 4 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

He was quite good at marketing. He wasn't a technical guy and apparently wasn't terribly good at driving technical people either. But he was great at selling whatever the tech people came up with.

[–] NoIdiots@lemmy.cafe 1 points 2 hours ago

His only smart trick was to sell things super expensive to flatter the ego of the buyer. It's not rocket science.

[–] aeternum@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

some, like me, are idiots in everything ~~else~~

[–] CarbonBasedNPU@lemm.ee 4 points 14 hours ago

I doubt that.

[–] yarr@feddit.nl 32 points 17 hours ago (2 children)

Time has been kind to Mr. Jobs. Read about his early years at Apple... he was famous for skewering anyone that disagreed with him. He also had lovely habits like parking his sports car in handicapped spots so he didn't have to walk as far. You can't disagree with his talent for running a company that did an awful lot of innovation, but he wasn't a nice guy. He named one of his first products, the Lisa after his daughter, but didn't treat the actual daughter that well.

[–] throwback3090@lemmy.nz 2 points 8 hours ago

He also told the daughter it wasn't named after her for most of her life.

I may be misremembering but I think she wasn't a child anymore by the time he acknowledged that he was her dad.

[–] jj4211@lemmy.world 13 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

For a "smart" person, his death was quite possibly a very unintelligent way to go. He basically decided to give all kinds of "holistic" crap a chance to treat his cancer and avoided medical intervention for almost a year. If he had gone with the medical path from the onset, he might still be alive today.

But he did have his moments. Like how he basically told the music industry to cut out the DRM, because it just made the ecosystem impossible. Or one time when someone was picking at him over abandoning OpenDoc in favor of Java (Java didn't work out either, but his response was on point, without being dismissive of the person).

[–] GladiusB@lemmy.world 1 points 4 hours ago

Cancer sucks. It's hard to judge someone from dying when everyone dies. I do agree with you that treatment would be better. However finding out you are going to die has a grieving process. He took too long. But I kind of get it.

[–] burgerpocalyse@lemmy.world 3 points 13 hours ago

steve didnt take SHOWERS. he stunk up the office and his employees had to beg him to clean himself before meetings with potential investors and customers

[–] LillyPip@lemmy.ca 72 points 20 hours ago (4 children)

And the Understatement of the Year award goes to…

Seriously, when I first heard of this guy, I thought he must be smart. Then he started talking about things in my career field, and thought wow, that’s a stupid thing to say. The more he talked, the more I realised he’s a moron about nearly everything. Now I’m not convinced he can actually get dressed unassisted.

[–] jj4211@lemmy.world 5 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

And yet executives in your career field probably would have nodded sagely, assuming that affinity to Musk would confer an appearance of intelligence to them, because they have no idea about the field either.

After spending some time in that circle, it drives me insane that the biggest idiots in various fields are the ones ostensibly in charge of them. They toss buzz words with confidence each other in a great circle jerk of money while their results are frequently no better than luck.

About the only consistent ability they have is to be complete sociopaths to screw over customers, employees, and shareholders alike. Which admittedly is a pretty powerful ability...

[–] dick_fineman@discuss.online 1 points 26 minutes ago

After spending some time in that circle, it drives me insane that the biggest idiots in various fields are the ones ostensibly in charge of them. They toss buzz words with confidence each other in a great circle jerk of money while their results are frequently no better than luck.

It's the "Peter principle":

The Peter principle is a concept in management developed by Laurence J. Peter which observes that people in a hierarchy tend to rise to "a level of respective incompetence": employees are promoted based on their success in previous jobs until they reach a level at which they are no longer competent, as skills in one job do not necessarily translate to another.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_principle

[–] telllos@lemmy.world 10 points 20 hours ago

He definitely dresses himself !

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[–] TokenBoomer@lemmy.world 5 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

A failson that failed upwards

[–] Rhoeri@lemmy.world 11 points 17 hours ago

I’m pretty sure there’s no evidence that the soup between his ears qualifies as a human brain, but yet- here we are, allowing him and his term of incel lackeys full and unfettered access to all of America’s finances.

I always knew America would somehow end embarrassingly. I just had no idea it would be this shameful.

[–] demizerone@lemmy.world 45 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (4 children)

Elonis a highly productive con man. He fooled me when I bought the FSD option on my Tesla in 2019 for $8k. When I sold it, the market only was willing to pay $1500.

[–] NoIdiots@lemmy.cafe 1 points 2 hours ago

Yeah that bitch still own me 20 bucks when he closed my paypal account. What a cunt

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[–] Nightwingdragon@lemmy.world 86 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Didn't one of Trump's professors call him one of the dumbest students he ever had?

In that light, these two are perfect for each other.

[–] Artyom@lemm.ee 24 points 22 hours ago

I've met a couple people who've met Trump, and let's just say "He's the dumbest person I've ever met" is the default opinion of him.

[–] kibiz0r@midwest.social 54 points 1 day ago (11 children)
[–] drmoose@lemmy.world 8 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

It's giving Oblivion NPC lmao

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[–] mavu@discuss.tchncs.de 19 points 21 hours ago (3 children)

Ahh, i loved reading this. like blam on a sunburn. cold water on a hot day.

I think i discovered i have a kink for people shit-talking about tech CEOs.

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[–] RandAlThor@lemmy.ca 106 points 1 day ago (3 children)

This is such a burn! "Abramson noted, “It is also a particularly American disease to confuse wealth with intelligence and corporations with those who own them."

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[–] newthrowaway20@lemmy.world 145 points 1 day ago (37 children)

Seth Abramson eviscerated both Elon Musk and his “fanboys” who have attempted to use the billionaire’s IQ as an indication of his intellectual prowess

I guarantee his IQ is made up too. Not that an IQ test actually means shit.

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[–] HexadecimalSky@lemmy.world 113 points 1 day ago (9 children)

I don't remember the quote exactly but.

"It's just so dumb" "So dumb it's genius" "No it's just dumb"

perfectly encapsulates musk.

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