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
Leon came from Apartheid driven wealth, which paid for his education, and learned how to suck the US taxpayers dry while firing people left and right. Fuck him and DOGE. What about his brother Kimball who hides behind the curtains?
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.
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.
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…
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.
Feel like I see a variant where they were never competent, and promoted based more on willingness to game the system than results.
For example, there was this guy who started about the same time as I did, and he was utterly useless. The team would largely endeavor to keep him away from anything important, but he’d still screw things up and cry for help and after saddling his mistake on someone who was going to stay after hours, he’d just leave and hope it got fixed. If the person sorted out his problem, he’d make a big deal about how hard his problem was and now it is resolved and how awesome it was for him to pull it off in spite of the headwinds.
Some years later, the person was in an executive position and the person that pretty much did all the work he was supposed to do had zero promotions. Most of us had learned our lesson and were content to let him thrash (his work wasn’t really important), but there was one guy that couldn’t stand to see work not happen successfully, and thanks to that he was able to get ahead.
The other thing has been that work never promotes from within, they always get some exterior hire that seems to have the qualifications more like ‘was a cool guy at the golf course’ or ‘son of a friend I owe a favor to’.
He definitely dresses himself !
I believe he chooses his own clothes, just not that he actually puts them on. It’s a bit amazing that he doesn’t wear the same Darth Vader costume every day like some toddlers insist upon doing.
He seems like the sort of idiot who could strangle himself trying to figure out how a shirt works, is what I’m saying.
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.
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.
It’s in that movie but it’s not from it. Did you seriously think it had never been said before that? It’s been used for centuries in different forms, even exactly as said in glass onion.
Same with “it’s so bad it’s good” both with and without “nah, it’s just bad” after. I think one of the most well known things like that is “The Room”, and many reference that movie when something else fits the description but it’s not at all from that movie, it existed long before it.
Who shit in your coffee this morning?
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.
They should make the story of Trump’s life but have Lisa Llampanelli play Trump.
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.
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.
Brietbsrt, info wars, storm front or whatever they call it now, anything zuck, 4chan, damn, fox, etc
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.
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.
Elon doesn’t think the government uses SQL. He’s dumb as fucking rocks.
What does that mean? I don’t understand the reference about SQL.
SQL is a language used to format requests to most relational and nonrelational databases. Databases are extremely commonly used for data persistence and retrieval. It’s like saying the government doesn’t use binary - or the government doesn’t use TCP - or the government doesn’t use paper. It uses all these things in abundance.
Think of it like this:
“This r**ard thinks the government uses PAPER [SQL]” - Elon Musk
It is literally that standard and common and obviously in use in the government.
(SQL is just a computer language for dealing with data and databases)
Sorry. Yes, I understand what SQL is. I just don’t understand the reference - did fElon make some kind of remark about SQL and/or databases?
Also, for the record, I thought there are/were formats and standards for data within mainframes that pre-dated the SQL standard - such as ISAM. This stuff (COBOL and ISAM) pre-dates my entry into the workforce by a long shot, though, so I’m unsure that the use of COBOL means that ISAM is in play, or if those two things (COBOL and the chosen data store) can be independently selected, at least in typical use cases.
(These are probably the kinds of questions that fElon and his dogebags are unlikely to ask, because it might give the correct impression that they have no idea what the fuck they are talking about. Believe me, I’ve worked with their type, and in fact, with a few of this type right now, LOL. Swaggering cases of Dunning-Kruger poster boys that think they know every-fucking-thing there is to know about anything and everything. People that still have not figured out that a bit of curiosity and at least an ounce of humility goes a much longer way in learning.)
I mean, he is using his position to gain wealth and power. Im sure he didnt get there by being stupid. No, hes not some Tony Stark level engineer and his intellectual and engineering achievements are nothing of note. Hes really good at swindling people and getting a large proportion of the population to like him, that takes some talent.
Survivorship bias.
You don’t hear about all the Elons who made a bad bet with the money from their dad’s apartheid emerald mine, and ended up living meager multi-millionaire lives instead.
This. A million times this! For so many things in life. So many persons fail to get this. Entrepreneurs, billionaires, success-stories.
Succeeding doesn’t mean you made the right decision with the information you had; it means you made the right decision now that we know the outcome.
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 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.
But surely you are aware that companies are trying to sell it off as objectively measurement of int, successfully so since most of the population regards them so? This lil part is my issue!
of course. they do it because people are insecure.
Being interested in an objective measurement of your intellect? Silliest fucking thing I have ever heard!
The belief that an commercial IQ test is an “objective measure of your intellect” is a pretty good subjective measure of your intellect.
I am sorry, it is silly to think that in intelligence test measures intelligence
So, you know how there’s a button on the top-left of your keyboard for ending sentences? Believe it or not, there’s also one on the bottom right as well! It looks like this: .
Perchance you should demonstrate it in your own sentences?
like this .
If you meant the dot(?) as a demonstrative then you yourself have not ended your sentence! If you meant the empty before the dot(?) as the demonstrative then you make no sense!
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.
It’s a relative measure of performance for narrow and specific set of tasks. It’s not BS, that’s like saying the 100m dash is BS. It’s just that people have wildly overstated the general implications of the measure.
That’s a useful comparison. I like it. There are plenty of popular anecdotes of the world’s best athlete in a particular sport attempting another and being terribly mediocre, so it probably resonates with the average person better than my usual many-types-of-intelligence argument.
The people who have wildly overstated the implications of IQ are the ones who developed and use it. Your analogy would be more correct if the 100m dash was used to measure the freshness of your breath.
That’s the central problem with IQ. Intelligence as a thing that can be measured is much closer to “freshness of breath” than it is to 100 meters. It’s subjective and colloquial. You admit as much yourself that IQ tests measure something, but not intelligence.
I think there is and always has been massive contention in even defining intelligence. Is it the same as wisdom? What about being smart? Are these all the same thing? How does experience inform success in general problem solving? What even IS a “general” problem?
I think it’s still a valuable tool to assess peoples ability to recognize and apply transformations, implications, boolean operators, and arethmetic sequences.
But the idea that it provides some insight into the innate nature of a mind is preposterous. You CAN study for an IQ test: exactly the 4 things I mentioned are things you can study, and once you’ve mastered you’ll be sitting on a 160+ result.
So, the base underlying assumption that these things are not learnable. That is wrong.
But, the idea that mastery of implication, transformation, boolean operators and arethmetic sequences don’t provide a foundational system for certain tasks is also maybe not quite right either…
A 100m dash time probably loosely correlates to some abstract measure of “athleticism”, which may correlate to success likelihood for certain tasks. IQ correlates to some abstract measure of pattern recognition, which may correlate to success in certain tasks.
To your point that the designers intended it to be a measure of the abstract notion of innate intellectual capacity, yeah maybe that was the attempt. Maybe that’s how they pitched it. It isn’t. Tough shit.
But that doesn’t suddenly imply it’s nothing.
Like most things (a degree, years of experience, SAT score, story points, Myers-Briggs etc etc) capitalism has completely fucked them. Business is so fucking lazy they just want to boil down assesment for suitability to enumerable values on a form. Just because metrics are inappropriately used and abused by capitalism doesn’t mean they’re not measuring something.
So, this was a super lengthy reiteration that IQ tests measure something, but it isn’t “innate general intelligence”. But to say it’s as irrelevant as “freshness of breath” is maybe hyperbolic.
Myers-Briggs
Myers-Briggs manages to go way beyond in the levels of bullshit compared to even these other items.
My favorite story about corporations using these kinds of tests is when some engineer I knew was interviewing at a few different major engineering firms. One of their HR people told him after one of of several interviews that the next time would also involve a personality test! He knew he had at least 2 other roles in the bag, he was just finishing up this company. He asked her - “are they also going to read my tea leaves?” - and declined to proceed further with that company. Because the notion that HR were gatekeeping for…checks notes…engineering positions at an engineering firm by using such debunked horseshit was something that instilled zero confidence in how the rest of the place might be getting run, and I absolutely don’t blame him. I never had that as part of anyone’s hiring “process” - it was always something introduced later as part of some “team-building exercise”.
My favorite direct experience was when another co-worker who was awake and fine with asking pointed questions asked one of the people administering some “personality test” if she knew if they had done any tests where they gave the “results” to the wrong person, and see how they reacted (he was basically asking if they tested for the Barnum effect). Answer: no. (Of course)
Anyway, I suggest reading The Cult of Personality Testing: How Personality Tests Are Leading Us to Miseducate Our Children, Mismanage Our Companies, and Misunderstand Ourselves
A 100m dash time probably loosely correlates to some abstract measure of “athleticism”, which may correlate to success likelihood for certain tasks. IQ correlates to some abstract measure of pattern recognition, which may correlate to success in certain tasks.
Hard to argue that careful statement!
Hey thought of how it could be used for good, to support:
valuable tool to assess peoples abilit[ies]
I imagine a school administrator examining the tails of their school‘s distribution and using the knowledge to personalize education. Say, a bright kid isn’t being challenged and achieves straight Cs. (Privacy and fairness implications, I know)
Yeah I think using a renamed version of the test could be a good way to try and find gaps between aspiration and current state of foundational skills, for certain aspirations.
If a kid dreams of being a lawyer, but their scores are on the tail end, that’s a perfect opportunity to revisit the foundations of formal logic. Just because some kids have managed to grok those foundational concepts independent of school doesn’t mean others are incapable. Because let’s face it, secondary school isn’t teaching formal logic.
That being said, real tailored mechanisms would be superior to finding gaps. But, in the absence of such mechanisms, an IQ test could be an accessible stand-in.
The 100m dash measures exactly what it says; the ability to dash 100m. Intelligence Quotient does not measure what it says. That’s the issue. It’s isn’t what it claims to be, so is BS.
If the 100 meter dash was called tetranlon it would be bs! If the intelligence test were called pattern recognition test then it wouldn’t be bs!
We had to take a mandatory IQ test at the beginning of military service, my score was in the highest percentile and because of this I ended up in officer training. It wasn’t the Mensa type test, they measured our language, math and pattern recognition skills with a vast battery of questions with a time limit.
Many friends of mine got average IQ scores in the army test but they are the ones who are really smart and extremely succesful.
In university I got a chance to take the Mensa type test and got ~140 points. I just laughed it off since at the same time I was struggling to pass my courses, while my friends who got average scores passed them with ease.
I do not consider myself really “smart” in any way, I just have a very good memory and I’m pretty adept at solving problems. Otherwise I’m just about as average a guy can be.
Uh-huh and everyone stood up to clap buddy?
You know, its a thing to jerk off to yer fantasies but your fantasy is a high IQ score? Really? Was Ariana Grande not in danger in your dreams or something?
Read it again. This post is not a flex.
He edited his comment, look up his edit history
Yes! If you know how to look up edit history, please do so! There has been no editing on my part.
Pffffffffffffffff 😂
You know its so sad that this might even work out for you, after all Trump supporters too refused to read the jan files
But you have yet to answer my one question! Does your miniscular penis feel larger for lying on the internet?
No.
The whole point - which you seem to have missed - was that getting a “good” score in some test can mean very little or nothing in real life.
It just means that you’re good at that sort of mental exercise.
No that meant that you could afford a 2-3-4 week long preparatory course!or were pursuing one of a few very specific fields of mathematics! And you putting good in quotation marks strongly insinuates that you have no idea what a 140 on an IQ test means, which makes it absolutely impossible for you to have received it since it would have been explained to you! And ppl do tend to remember the equivalent of winning the olimpics, you know?
But I am sure that you received military training 40-50 years ago! Say, where and when did you receive it under whose preliminary command?
I’ve never taken any preparatory courses for anything and I’m not really good with mathematics, so no and no again.
And why I put the quotation marks around good is a reflection of my native language, we do that when one wishes to express their personal disbelief or doubt. I am well aware that the ~140 score is considered a good one by the designers of the test.
I served in the late 90’s and there have been several refresher courses but I’m not at the liberty to discuss any specifics of service matters publicly. If you have done military service you know this.
IQ tests went out of fashion mid 80-ties and they were only ever required in the very very top universities! There is no military academy in the world where you would have been asked for one!
140 is not a good a score! 140 is fucking legendary!!! Which would have been again explained to you if you ever achieved that, which again you would remember since its the equivalent of winning an olympic! But you don’t have a singular fucking clue what a 140 means on an IQ test… How very curious…
Ones military service starts at the end of their training, then you will be required to put your oaths down! Your bulshitting couldn’t even be chalked up as a semblance of protecting your anonymity! Graduation lists of military establishments are not public and even if they were there are 70-200-ish cadets in every year!
And soldiers can and do talk constantly about their service (ps thats how you can spot valor stealers on the internet, ppl like you :))! They are not allowed to talk of restricted info and missions! If you were a career secret sevice agent, you would not talk about being a soldier on the internet!
Another thing that makes absolutely no sense are the refresher courses and is a quite stupid attempt of weaseling out of the question! Most manuals were written in the 60-ties and have yet to be updated! And if you received new equipment you would not be sent back to uni! You would be taken to a field to practice with it!
Now tell me! Does your minsicular penis feel larger for lying and pretending to be a big man on the internet?
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.
He was at a private school, it’s just called tuition, and it’s there to make sure powerful people’s kids stay in power. Intelligence has nothing to do with it.
No, they test whether you need remedial education in specific areas. They do not assess intelligence as a whole.
What about his intellectual bankruptcy?
Man this book will probably be banned before it comes out
They need some Friendship:
Camacho would be a much better president
Camacho at least wabted to make things better and hire a smart person
Musk is our “smart person”
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.
like kim dotcom. same guy to me.
Who?
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.”
I’m surprised that the website doesn’t list Felon Muskow as a charlatan.
Wasn’t he German?
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.
