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Merged Musk buys Twitter!/ Elon Musk puts Twitter deal on hold....

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I Am The Scum said:
Sir, this is an Elon thread
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As much as you might like him, he's smart. Smart people can do bad things. Smart people can even do stupid things. But there's really no doubt that Musk is smart. I know that makes some people uncomfortable, but it really shouldn't.
 
Ziggurat said:
As much as you might like him, he's smart. Smart people can do bad things. Smart people can even do stupid things. But there's really no doubt that Musk is smart. I know that makes some people uncomfortable, but it really shouldn't.
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Does he have an above average IQ... yeah almost certainly. Is he smarter than the smartest engineer at SpaceX, or Tesla, or even Twitter.... no I think the likelihood of that is extremely slim. In other words, I don't think he got to where he is by being some sort of super genius whith almost prescient knowledge like some of his supporters think. He started out with vastly more capital than most people in their 20's have due to his birth, had a bit of business sense, guessed right a few times on where tech was going, and got extremely lucky.
 
lobosrul5 said:
Does he have an above average IQ... yeah almost certainly. Is he smarter than the smartest engineer at SpaceX, or Tesla, or even Twitter.... no I think the likelihood of that is extremely slim.
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Why is that a relevant comparison?

In other words, I don't think he got to where he is by being some sort of super genius whith almost prescient knowledge like some of his supporters think. He started out with vastly more capital than most people in their 20's have due to his birth, had a bit of business sense, guessed right a few times on where tech was going, and got extremely lucky.
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Lots of kids are born rich. Some of them are going to be lucky. They still don't get Musk's success. There is more to it than just that.
 
Ziggurat said:
These are comforting lies we tell ourselves about people we don't like.
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Are you certain that you don't have that backwards? Musk is heavily invested in Covid denialism, and so those who are also invested in Covid denialism must tell themselves comforting lies that Musk really is smart? Because if the dude is as stupid as his actions demonstrate, then maybe the Covid denialism thing is also stupid? Such a thought certainly would be uncomfortable.
 
wareyin said:
Are you certain that you don't have that backwards? Musk is heavily invested in Covid denialism, and so those who are also invested in Covid denialism must tell themselves comforting lies that Musk really is smart? Because if the dude is as stupid as his actions demonstrate, then maybe the Covid denialism thing is also stupid? Such a thought certainly would be uncomfortable.
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"Never get to know your heroes"


I get strong Ron Paul vibes from this whole Musk showing his ass all over the place and people trying really hard not to see it...
 
Ziggurat said:
These are comforting lies we tell ourselves about people we don't like.
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Again this peculiar idea that any criticism must imply dislike. I expect none of us have met Musk and so.we don't know whether we would like him or not.

But either way it would be completely irrelevant to the question of whether his behaviour should be criticised or not, or to the question of whether or not he is an idiot.

Very frequently in this forum people say that believers in God are idiots and I 've never seen this challenged.

And yet we know that religious believers run businesses successfully, are professors of particle physics, astrophysics. There are even believers in God who have made important life saving advances in genetics.

So we are surely completely comfortable here with the idea that people can be smart and idiots at the same time, these things being compartmentalised in their brains.

So we can't rule out that Musk is an idiot. Personally I think that it is mental illness rather than being an idiot.

And, before you jump in, that has nothing to do with like or dislike either. I am mentally ill myself as are some close family members.
 
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Ziggurat said:
As much as you might like him, he's smart. Smart people can do bad things. Smart people can even do stupid things. But there's really no doubt that Musk is smart. I know that makes some people uncomfortable, but it really shouldn't.
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Sorry, but anyone who so easily falls for (and spreads) baseless conspiracy theories the way he does can in no ways be referred to as "smart" in a general sense. Just imagine the vacuum of skepticism required for someone in as public a position as him spreading lies about Paul Pelosi getting attacked without a moment of, "Hmm... maybe I should wait up and get all the facts on this. Maybe I could hire a private investigator to look into it, only this time it won't be some rando who DMs me and doesn't actually have any experience in the field."

When people think through their problems like he does, then it strikes me as the exact opposite of intelligence, so what do you mean when you say he's smart?
 
Robin said:
Again this peculiar idea that any criticism must imply dislike.
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I'm saying nothing of the sort. I'm addressing a very specific criticism against Musk, namely that he's stupid. There's plenty of criticism of him that's valid. I'll even give some that I agree with. He ********s about timelines, he over-promises things he often can't deliver, the way he's implemented and marketed the Tesla "auto pilot" is frankly dangerous and has probably killed people. I suspect (but do not know) that he's a hard person to be friends with. I'm sure there's more.

But he's not stupid. It's comforting to think that people we don't like are stupid. But it's rarely a safe assumption, especially when the reason we don't like them is politically charged.

But either way it would be completely irrelevant to the question of whether his behaviour should be criticised
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I never said it shouldn't be. But "he's stupid" isn't actually a criticism of behavior.
 
Checkmite said:
I missed this back when you posted it - but I'm revisiting it because I think it's important to understand that the reason certain kinds of "conspiracy theorists" are able to make contradictory arguments and act as if they support each other, is because they don't strictly believe both, or even necessarily either, are actually true.

The only point is the performance of support for the group or personality - Elon Musk, in this case. It's okay to profess mutually-exclusive claims because the arguments don't have to support each other, they just have to individually support Musk.
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George Orwell called that "Doublethink",
 
Ziggurat said:
But he's not stupid. It's comforting to think that people we don't like are stupid. But it's rarely a safe assumption, especially when the reason we don't like them is politically charged.
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And, again, you appear to be projecting your feelings onto others. If you only like Musk because he is furthering your political/conspiracy theory beliefs, it's understandable that you might be incapable of seeing how other people are assessing his actions without filtering them through your personal 'does this guy affirm my tribe' lens.
 
Darat said:
The idea that liking Musk or not is ‘politically charged’ is I think a very American tell.
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There's even conspiracy theories out there that Musk has deliberately moved to the right (politically) as a calculated move to get the types of Americans who would never even consider buying an EV, since they associate that with liberalism etc, to maybe consider it... I don't think its true. And if it is then holy **** did he ever miscalculate.

What I do think, is he was forced to close his factories in Cali for a little while due to COVID, he took this as a personal affront that the left was attacking him, or singling him out for being wealthy and successful. And due to personality flaws he's essentially "declared war". Its already very clearly backfiring.

I'm not sure it can be understated just how politically charged things are in the USA at the moment.
 
tyr_13 said:
All of Ukraine's phone codes have been removed from Twitter. It isn't even a drop-down option any more. Anyone there with two factor will not be able to get on and it won't be an option to reco er accounts.
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W.T.F. Do you have a source for that? Concerning if true.
 
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