LogFAQs > #979350991

Colonel_Lingus posted...

I don't think he's a completely mindless buffoon, but he does and says a lot of stupid stuff.

I have met many people over the years who I wouldn't consider "smart" or "intelligent", but most of them still aren't complete idiots in every single category. Rare is the person who is an absolute moron in every single field of life. Hell, I knew one guy who was obviously pretty "slow" (later found out he was actually considered legally disabled by the government because he had an I.Q. below 80), but he could sail a boat better than I ever will.

So I don't necessarily think that "not a mindless buffoon" should be our minimum qualifier to call someone "smart".

Anyways, no, I don't think Elon is smart; I think he had the good sense to surround himself with smart people and take credit for their accomplishments, but like all narcissists he eventually fell for his own propaganda and deluded himself into thinking that it was his genius, rather than his money, that was the reason for where he was. From what I understand, Tesla had multiple people whose full-time job was managing Musk and ensuring that his ridiculous ideas never got to see the light of day (and the absence of those people at Twitter was what caused a lot of the problems following the takeover) - that's not usually something you associate with legitimately intelligent people.

Or, as someone on Twitter succinctly put it after the takeover (not an exact quote, but I don't have the original source on hand), "I heard a lot of people call Musk a genius for his SpaceX stuff; I don't know anything about rocket science, so I thought he must be a genius. Then I heard a lot of people call Musk a genius for his Tesla stuff; I don't know anything about electric cars, so I thought he must be a genius. Then I saw his opinions about computer science; I know a lot about computers and I can safely say the shit he's saying is some of the most moronic stuff I've ever heard anyone say, and now I'm wondering about just how much of a 'genius' he really was in the other two companies."