LogFAQs > #975425766

UT1999 posted...

So most of you guys don't believe that Elon musk is as intelligent as he seems to think he is? Do you think he's more intelligent than trump?

Here's the thing. While I do enjoy calling Trump and Musk absolute morons for things they do and say, I don't truly believe that either one of them are "stupid"

Like anyone else, they each have their strengths and deficiencies in terms of how they utilize their intelligence.

Trump is incredibly charismatic. He has a sense of humor, he can be affable. He can schmooze with the best of them. That is a certain type of intelligence, and I daresay he's brilliant in that regard. But I think a good deal of his business dealings are generated from his ego and thinking "Hey, I can make money doing this" while blindly shooting cash from the hip while his deep pockets cushion his poor decision-making.

Musk I think is a bit savvier in where he puts his money. I think he's smart enough to know what to buy into, and his pet projects even seem to be decent ventures. But he didn't invent PayPal. He didn't build Tesla from the ground up. He bought into them. Which he never would've been able to do had he not been born into wealth. Twitter appears to be his first big public stumbling block. And he was forced to purchase Twitter. Had he had his way, he would've backed out, at least at the price he bought it for. And that whole Twitter debacle stems from Musk shooting his mouth off on social media. That's where he's dumb. He lacks self-awareness and humility.

Both of them have benefited greatly from celebrity, as their status helps to elevate them in the eyes of the average media consumer.

If one starts to do a little digging, we can quickly discover that a lot of their "achievements" come from having great wealth, and hitching their cashwagon to various business business ventures, with the successes enabling them to continue being absurdly wealthy and affording them enough "fuck you" money to absorb the occasional failure.

In that sense, I feel Musk is smarter than Trump. A bit savvier than Trump. Not as reckless with his money, though that might boil down to the age gap. Time will tell if Musk can rack up as many failures as Trump has in his time.