> The smartest people are the ones who know the limits of their expertise and say so.
No.
This is the most common mistake the anti-Musk crowd makes. They fail to differentiate between a person being intelligent and having good self-control. They are not the same thing.
Musk failing at Twitter doesn't make him stupid. Musk having poor impulse control does not make him stupid. What you see in the Musk detractors is their own idiocy and or poor impulse control on display, in the way they go after him by proclaiming that he's stupid or the equivalent, it shows off their inability to think deeply and to control their own emotional impulses (to lash out; a failure to think rationally, a failure to be able to dissect a topic dispassionately). It's rather interesting that Musk's poor impulse control lures the same behavior out of his detractors (which is exactly what Trump's wild behavior did to his detractors, they have been wildly rabid for seven years non-stop; Trump acted wild, they reacted wild).
Intelligence is no guarantee of self-control, discipline, focus, integrity, work ethic, et al.
Smart people can be cruel. Smart people can be very lazy. Smart people can be liars. Smart people can be x y z. And in exactly the same way, smart people can have poor impulse control, behavioral disorders of all sorts, or just be lazy and not develop their work/task focus capabilities throughout adulthood.
There is also an interesting difference between smart/intelligent and wise. Musk is very intelligent, he may not be particularly wise. Knowing, understanding and accepting your limits is generally an area of wisdom rather than smartness. Properly acting on your acquired understanding of your limits would be maturity / personal responsibility (integrity is typically a major factor in that mixture). I don't think Musk is a very mature person, and of course his tweets have put that on display for many years now.
>This is the most common mistake the anti-Musk crowd makes. They fail to differentiate between a person being intelligent and having good self-control. They are not the same thing.
"Smart" does not just mean "high intelligence", as you very well know. In common parlance people use "smart" to mean an ill-defined combination of intelligent, knowledgeable, careful, and wise. A smart person is one who can deal with complexity and make good decisions.
Deliberately misinterpreting what someone has said in such a way that it is obvious nonsense, then claiming what they said is obvious nonsense, is not a clever trick. All too often effective, but not clever.
I am not willing to conclude Musk is especially smart, for the record. SpaceX seems pretty competent, but Tesla, Twitter, Neuralink, and several failed projects are technically dreadful in numerous ways. What can be attributed to Musk's intelligence, what can be attributed to his behavior, and what can be attributed to the fact that any fool with a big enough bag of money can hire brilliant people? I do not know.
What I do know is that every time he speaks on a subject I know well his remarks are word salad.
This is a well thought out post, and the blindness rage causes will lead people to continue to underestimate people, and wonder why things don’t turn out the way they expected.
No.
This is the most common mistake the anti-Musk crowd makes. They fail to differentiate between a person being intelligent and having good self-control. They are not the same thing.
Musk failing at Twitter doesn't make him stupid. Musk having poor impulse control does not make him stupid. What you see in the Musk detractors is their own idiocy and or poor impulse control on display, in the way they go after him by proclaiming that he's stupid or the equivalent, it shows off their inability to think deeply and to control their own emotional impulses (to lash out; a failure to think rationally, a failure to be able to dissect a topic dispassionately). It's rather interesting that Musk's poor impulse control lures the same behavior out of his detractors (which is exactly what Trump's wild behavior did to his detractors, they have been wildly rabid for seven years non-stop; Trump acted wild, they reacted wild).
Intelligence is no guarantee of self-control, discipline, focus, integrity, work ethic, et al.
Smart people can be cruel. Smart people can be very lazy. Smart people can be liars. Smart people can be x y z. And in exactly the same way, smart people can have poor impulse control, behavioral disorders of all sorts, or just be lazy and not develop their work/task focus capabilities throughout adulthood.
There is also an interesting difference between smart/intelligent and wise. Musk is very intelligent, he may not be particularly wise. Knowing, understanding and accepting your limits is generally an area of wisdom rather than smartness. Properly acting on your acquired understanding of your limits would be maturity / personal responsibility (integrity is typically a major factor in that mixture). I don't think Musk is a very mature person, and of course his tweets have put that on display for many years now.