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.

  • Dr. Moose@lemmy.world
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    9 hours ago

    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.

    • JaymesRS@literature.cafe
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      9 hours ago

      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.

      • halowpeano@lemmy.world
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        8 hours ago

        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.

      • burgerpocalyse@lemmy.world
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        6 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
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    12 hours ago

    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
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      8 hours ago

      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…

    • mstrk@lemmy.world
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      8 hours ago

      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.

    • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world
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      10 hours ago

      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.

  • Rhoeri@lemmy.world
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    9 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.

  • mavu@discuss.tchncs.de
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    13 hours ago

    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.

  • demizerone@lemmy.world
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    16 hours ago

    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.

    • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
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      11 hours ago

      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.

      • JcbAzPx@lemmy.world
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        11 hours ago

        Personally, I don’t blame anyone being fooled. He has an army of social media cultists obfuscating reality for him without him even asking. It’s hard to see the truth when it’s drowned out by religious doctrine.

        • CarbonBasedNPU@lemm.ee
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          6 hours ago

          also his PR team was really good for a long time. If he hadn’t called that one diver a pedo I think it would have taken much longer for his facade to break.

  • Nightwingdragon@lemmy.world
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    18 hours ago

    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
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      15 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.

  • RandAlThor@lemmy.ca
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    20 hours ago

    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.”

  • ThrowawayOnLemmy@lemmy.world
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    21 hours ago

    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.

    • Ledericas@lemm.ee
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      6 hours ago

      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".

    • The Quuuuuill@slrpnk.net
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      21 hours ago

      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.

      • ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.world
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        21 hours ago

        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.

    • Seleni@lemmy.world
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      17 hours ago

      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….

  • PrincessLeiasCat@sh.itjust.works
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    16 hours ago

    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.

  • HexadecimalSky@lemmy.world
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    21 hours ago

    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.

      • The Quuuuuill@slrpnk.net
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        21 hours ago

        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.

  • the_q@lemm.ee
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    18 hours ago

    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.

    • jj4211@lemmy.world
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      8 hours ago

      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.

      • DancingBear
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        5 hours ago

        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…

    • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
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      13 hours ago

      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.

      • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
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        11 hours ago

        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.

        • ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world
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          10 hours ago

          To benefit from information, you have to be able to filter out the nonsense. Most people have no baseline to work with and are taken in by anything presented confidently and repeatedly.

        • vaultdweller013@sh.itjust.works
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          11 hours ago

          The ability to improve oneself consciously requires the acknowledgment and will to do so those are both just as important. Thats not even getting into the mental health crises which adds its own problems and even more roadblocks. Imagine if you will a 30 year old man working a shitty job in a loading dock in rural Idaho the pay is shit the work is hard and when that dude finally gets home after 12 hours of work do you really think he will want to watch PBS eons or do you think he will watch Rust videos and pass out?

          I may find that relaxing but even ill admit it that there is an appeal to mindless entertainment. Now consider the fact that this by itself has been going on for at least fourty years and thats not even getting into religious and political indoctrination. If theres one way to describe Americans as a whole its that we are broken.

          I suspect that plenty of folks are hoping everything collapses simply because then theyd be able to get a fucking break even if it is only in death.