Author of Upcoming Elon Musk Biography Says ‘There Is No Evidence’ Billionaire Has Any ‘Intellectual Achievements’
Author of Upcoming Elon Musk Biography Says ‘There Is No Evidence’ Billionaire Has Any ‘Intellectual Achievements’
"It does not take intelligence to throw money around and buy a company or buy a politician," Seth Abramson writes The post Author of Upcoming Elon Musk Biography Says ‘There Is No Evidence’ Billionaire Has Any ‘Intellectual Achievements’ appeared first on TheWrap.
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.
A failson that failed upwards
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.
Well yeah, that's the American Dream right? That if you're smart and work hard, you'll be rich?
Yeah and you need to be asleep to believe it
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
My thoughts exactly! After that it was like a domino effect... I realized that probably everything this guy ever said and done was pure BS. Fake it until you make it.
He definitely dresses himself !
A few years ago I watched a clip of Musk giving a tour of a sort of museum SpaceX has that shows the evolution of their rockets. At one point he was talking about how the more recent rockets had fewer "fiddly bits" on the outside.
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.
Blam!
Blam-o!
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.
Congrats on getting out of the abusive relationship, but may I ask why you believed him in 2019 when it was clear he had been lying and promising FSD for nearly a decade at that point? Were you just not following the news all that closely and took his word at face value? Or was the promise, if it came true, just so tantalizing that you turned a blind eye to the turmoil surrounding Musk? Thanks in advance, I love learning about peoples’ thought processes after they have realized they made a mistake.
That is because everything Elmo says and has said is a lie.
It's giving Oblivion NPC lmao
I know you have but what did I do?
Not trying to be an ass, but do you have a link to that tweet?
Not op, but here you go: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1886318915707375664?mx=2
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.
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.
While I agree with the premise of the book, everyone who has met/worked with/knows Seth Abramson all day what a piece of shit grifter hack he is, so I don’t know how much confidence I have in the book overall.
I do not doubt that evidence to support this assertion exists, but Abramson is always chasing the next big thing and bitches about how no one likes him on bsky like an angsty teenager. He’s just cringe.
I was actually kinda interested in the upcoming book... Can anyone else confirm if his work is garbage? I'm not super familiar with him.
Oh! Haha now I know who you are talking about. Yes he is very.... Intense on Bluesky. I must say I understand. Living in this world is like taking crazy pills and I can understand "just reciting reality out loud for as many people to see" as a coping mechanism.
When is the biography coming out?
Also, when is that HBO documentary on fElon coming out?
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."
For many evangelicals, they also associate wealth with divine blessing.
Also any sort of success.
If you’re chronically ill or have family problems, you must have done something to deserve it, because god will reward the worthy. Makes it really easy to be bigoted.
Those are probably corollaries to Worthington's Law. "He makes more money than you do!"
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.
he abandonded his schooling once he got his visa, and did some shady sht to get his BROTHER one too. hes more or less just a richer version of trump, just slightly"smarter".
IQ tests are combo test of how white and how autistic are you. All tests are biased, and what do you bet when he got his super special smart boy IQ label he was in South Africa and the test administrator was another white dude.
Wouldn't surprise me if the person administering the test was also paid under the table by Musk Snr to make sure Elon's result looked better than it actually was.
IQ tests are not an objective measurement of intelligence! It kinda measures pattern recognition and some other skill! Its a scam to sell preparatory classes for itself!
40-50-ish years ago they quite popular! You were required to take one for uni admissions, for appliying to work… Well before we found out its bs!
Full-scale cognitive batteries (sophisticated IQ tests) are great... for diagnostics. If someone has difficulties identifying the domains where the need extra help, accommodations. I order them all the time and they guide me on how to manage patients. The most telling thing about IQs is that I've never seen it in on a resume, not even mensa memberships.
I agree. Its also super biased. I wouldn't be surprised if it correlated with financial success in certain demographics in certain locations/communities, but like you say, it's not an objective measure of intelligence.
What you want to bet he had someone else take the test for him lol? Judging by how he plays games and all, it seems to be his m.o….
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.
From glass onion lol. Great movie, btw.
Janelle Monae crushes it in her role. I mean absolutely crushes it. In it she is acting in the role of a character acting in a role, which is actually really hard to do in a really satisfying way, and she absolutely pulls it off. What's more is that she lets the veil slip just enough, as an actress, for the character playing the role to be believable as an actress. Like her music and visual artistry as an R&B performer is incredible, but there's still a part of me that feels like the world lost something from her not going into acting. But if she had, she'd probably have put out an album that would make me lament she hadn't focused on R&B.
Nah, I thought that quote from the film summarized it quite well…
Man this book will probably be banned before it comes out
Imagine being as stupid as this clown is and his vice president and still... STILL somehow being smarter than the average voter. The bar is on the ground, folks.
The thing is they might be passable as random folks. The problem is their power and aspirations far exceed random folks, and so, compared to what you'd want to see in those positions, they are very dumb, but exude so much confidence that people have a tendency to assume that confidence must be somehow justified.
I work a dangerous job. When I see super confident people I refuse to work with them (edit: I am super skeptical, there are folks who know what they are doing but I wouldn’t call that exuding confidence). I have learned over the years that confidence is fake as fuck, and usually correlates with incompetence and ignorance (when you don’t know what the heck you are doing you can be unaware of the risk involved)…
There are people who know what they know and know what they don’t know, but it doesn’t come across in the same way as someone who exudes confidence.
I despise confidence lol…
If it makes it any better id argue that the average voter at least has the excuse of being propagandized and under educated with minimal ability to improve. These fucks have more than enough money to inprove themselves nearly infinitely but would rather wallow in their egos and call it wisdom.
I feel like if ya sat down with Cletus the Appalachian hillbilly and told him the tale of his names origin he would probably find it interesting at the very least.
with minimal ability to improve.
This is the part I’m still trying to wrap my head around. In the US, almost everyone with a pulse has internet access, and websites like Wikipedia are not blocked or filtered. Obviously you’re right because there are a lot of misinformed people, I just don’t understand how people let that happen to themselves.
yes. and it doesn't matter. donald trump is a moron, but he's evil, and has failed upward to be president of the united states twice, first time a million americans died due to a purposefully inept covid response, this second time, he's going to beat that number by ordinates. everyone so fixated on how smart or accomplished these nazis are, it does not matter. This is a way for everyone to feel better that they're smarter, or know sooooo many people that are smarter. If we were smarter, they wouldn't keep fucking beating, and killing us. IQ means nothing, it's what you can leverage with what you have individually or within or at the forefront of a group that does. And these Nazi fucks know how to do that.
Yes, they have a particular narrow cleverness about how to abuse people and systems for their own gain. Since fascists only care about power, pointing out that they are dumb, hypocritical or inconsistent doesn't achieve anything. All they see is that you're keeping yourself busy talking while they load their guns and prepare the camps. The only way to fight fascism is to actually fight it.
If we were smarter, they wouldn’t keep fucking beating
Well, the problem is that there are a whole lot of stupid people that are easily convinced to vote for people like this, even if our side believes in putting smart, experienced, educated people into power.
So, even if we are smarter, we are outvoted by a lot of very stupid people (in some instances - in other instances, it's because of extreme gerrymandering and "gifts" like the Electoral College, so even if we get a majority of people to make the sane choice, we still end up losing ).
Lastly, the weasel apparatchiks on their side have found ways to peel off voters with things like Gaza and the fact that Democrats have not given them a pretty pony, too.
Did he even get a real degree?
I'm not convinced he even knows how to code, if we are being honest.
People who know how to code are in agreement that he has no clue.
I know how to code and during my career, I've worked with people that could only barely do it, mostly relied on others to carry their weight, and often would fail upwards into management track stuff, usually done as a defensive strategy to get them away from doing damage hands-on. Of course, some of them effectively did MORE damage later by doing incredibly bone-headed things because some of them suffered from extreme arrogance and Dunning-Kruger.
Watching fElon in his takeover of Twitter and turning it into xitter, I was not paying too close of attention, but the level of chaos and performative bullshit seemed to be terrible at both a management/ownership level and on a technical one.
tell us something we don't know
I'd give the little shit 0 gold star stickers too.
I won't buy the book, but I'll make sure to leave the worst rating
Why would you do that? Writing a biography is not necessarily an endorsement. Did you read the article? The author reproaches him quite a bit, accusing him of stealing an idea and having terrible programming skills.
Because you support nazis?
Yeah, like, really. Author seems critical of Musk.
Are you under the impression that this book would make Musk money?
Eh, I despise Musk and believe he is a grave threat.
But this "Musk isn't smart" narrative is a waste of time and underestimating Musk makes him more dangerous.
Tesla was a nothing burger company before he acquired it. SpaceX has been highly successful under his leadership. Musk may not have provided much technical knowledge, but he's accomplished too much for it to be random luck, and steering such companies, even if not on a daily basis, is going to require applied intellectual skill.
Edit: guys you can downvote all you want but underestimating Musk just weakens your position and aids him. You're not going to an Ivy League school with average or below intelligence.
You're also not starting and guiding various companies to high level success if you're dumb. Yes Musk has failed projects. Essentially every company and many if not most entrepreneurs have suffered failures.
Allegedly he also got a relatively high SAT score (1400) according to Isaacson, a respected biographer (I'd want to see hard proof however).
Musk's IQ is probably something like 125, not 160. But it's not going to be 90 or other like that.
But I guess you can go ahead and play into his hand and boost him by underestimating him.
You're really underestimating the contributions of people like the COO (Shotwell, who by all accounts, really reigns Musk in) and the actual engineering talent at SpaceX. Musk is hardly the first to come up with some of the aerospace ideas, but SpaceX is the first to push through the failure to success through a rapid prototype model.
lmao I am underestimating no one. Guys... touch some grass.
Musks's technical knowledge is probably pretty mid. Musk sure as hell isn't designing the rockets.
Acknowledging that Musk isn't an idiot in no way devalues the work of the many, many intelligent people around him. Why you'd think that I'm taking anything away from anyone else is baffling. Literally baffling. How did you come to that conclusion?
Imma quote from the article.
Abramson noted, “It is also a particularly American disease to confuse wealth with intelligence and corporations with those who own them."
Musk's wealth isn't the best indicator of his intelligence. It's more circumstantial evidence at best.
"corporations with those who own them."
This veers towards been an non sequitur. The claim isn't that Musk is the corporation or that he is responsible for every decision. However, he is one of the (and probably THE) prominent voices in his companies and his decisions can massively impact the company's trajectory. One success is luck, multiple successes suggests there's a lot more than luck at play.
SpaceX was the leading private space company before he acquired it - it has actually lost ground to competitors since then but has an extremely passionate team behind it.
Tesla was the first company to seriously take a swing at automated response with an eye to FSD - they've since fallen far behind Waymo and other competitors.
When Musk worked at PayPal Thiel described him as a crazy risk taker and had him ousted as CEO while he was on two weeks of PTO for his honeymoon.
Musk is a huge fucking dumbass with enough money to fail horribly over and over.
you're not getting into UPENN being a complete idiot. Whoever started the company, Musk oversaw periods of the growth in SpaceX, Tesla, Paypal etc.
Musk is (edit: not) the smartest person in the world like he thinks he is. But it's nearly an objective fact that he's not stupid.
This is such a dumb hill to die on, and more importantly it benefits Musk.
edit: and as for failed programs, welcome to the world of business. Google, Amazon, Microsoft Apple, etc. constantly launch ideas that don't pan out. Are their leaders and engineers and everyone else dumb because a project failed?
You can still think he's grossly incompetent without dismissing him as a threat. I don't care about his IQ since he's never done any tests to prove anything; his actions alone tell me that he's a dangerous moron.
He's not playing 4D chess here. His goals are to increase control, enrich himself and punish opposition. He's done this before with Xitter and Tesla. There is literally a pattern.
