this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2024
630 points (94.7% liked)

Lemmy Shitpost

26948 readers
4653 users here now

Welcome to Lemmy Shitpost. Here you can shitpost to your hearts content.

Anything and everything goes. Memes, Jokes, Vents and Banter. Though we still have to comply with lemmy.world instance rules. So behave!


Rules:

1. Be Respectful


Refrain from using harmful language pertaining to a protected characteristic: e.g. race, gender, sexuality, disability or religion.

Refrain from being argumentative when responding or commenting to posts/replies. Personal attacks are not welcome here.

...


2. No Illegal Content


Content that violates the law. Any post/comment found to be in breach of common law will be removed and given to the authorities if required.

That means:

-No promoting violence/threats against any individuals

-No CSA content or Revenge Porn

-No sharing private/personal information (Doxxing)

...


3. No Spam


Posting the same post, no matter the intent is against the rules.

-If you have posted content, please refrain from re-posting said content within this community.

-Do not spam posts with intent to harass, annoy, bully, advertise, scam or harm this community.

-No posting Scams/Advertisements/Phishing Links/IP Grabbers

-No Bots, Bots will be banned from the community.

...


4. No Porn/ExplicitContent


-Do not post explicit content. Lemmy.World is not the instance for NSFW content.

-Do not post Gore or Shock Content.

...


5. No Enciting Harassment,Brigading, Doxxing or Witch Hunts


-Do not Brigade other Communities

-No calls to action against other communities/users within Lemmy or outside of Lemmy.

-No Witch Hunts against users/communities.

-No content that harasses members within or outside of the community.

...


6. NSFW should be behind NSFW tags.


-Content that is NSFW should be behind NSFW tags.

-Content that might be distressing should be kept behind NSFW tags.

...

If you see content that is a breach of the rules, please flag and report the comment and a moderator will take action where they can.


Also check out:

Partnered Communities:

1.Memes

2.Lemmy Review

3.Mildly Infuriating

4.Lemmy Be Wholesome

5.No Stupid Questions

6.You Should Know

7.Comedy Heaven

8.Credible Defense

9.Ten Forward

10.LinuxMemes (Linux themed memes)


Reach out to

All communities included on the sidebar are to be made in compliance with the instance rules. Striker

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] LarmyOfLone@lemm.ee 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

No he's not. But he's also far from dumb.

‘On Stupidity’ (1937). At its heart was the idea that stupidity was not mere ‘dumbness’, not a brute lack of processing power. Dumbness, for Musil, was ‘straightforward’, indeed almost ‘honourable’. Stupidity was something very different and much more dangerous: dangerous precisely because some of the smartest people, the least dumb, were often the most stupid.

Musk is far from genius level but above average intelligence. He does have knowledge about rockets on a non-engineering level which you can see e.g. in this video talking about his starfactory (EDIT: Yes watching him in his element is kinda painful, knowing he's a fascist)

But he and others like him focus their thinking narrow mindedly on the pursuit of profit. Every decision is based on gaining wealth. THAT is by far the bigger problem.

Besides the focus of all education towards profit seeking, technical nerds also seem to "want to" see other fields like sociology or politics or history in a simple and easy to explain way. So they seek principles or the most simplistic social theories that don't explain anything real. Musk certainly falls into that.

Except now where he seems to go completely off the rails. Possibly a symptom of narcissism ever since he became unpopular, he's doubling down to find new validation for his fragile ego. So yeah in that sense he is not the best example.

My point was not just about Musk but about the idea of "finding the smartest people to rule". Because to anybody who is above intelligence that sounds smart except - stupidity can be more dangerous in intelligent people.

[–] UnderpantsWeevil@lemmy.world 6 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

but above average intelligence

Maybe once. But that much Ketamine, plus his advanced age and excessive social media exposure, has degraded his ability to process information substantively.

He does have knowledge about rockets on a non-engineering level

He has prepared statements to read to a friendly interviewer. That's PR, not intelligence.

Besides the focus of all education towards profit seeking, technical nerds also seem to “want to” see other fields like sociology or politics or history in a simple and easy to explain way.

Musk isn't technical, he's a finance bro. And while I agree there's a strong "Education should be about making money" propaganda wave, I've noticed a lot of backtracking on this any time some group of labor activists starts passing around the financial reports of the publicly traded company to their coworkers. Then, all of a sudden, the finance bros become obsessed with sociology, politics, and history, at least in so far as they keep shouting and pointing to Venezuela any time someone at the firm mentions the company health care policy.

My point was not just about Musk but about the idea of “finding the smartest people to rule”. Because to anybody who is above intelligence that sounds smart except - stupidity can be more dangerous in intelligent people.

The fixation on "intelligence" as a discrete and quantifiable measure is what bothers me more than anything. I like to look at track records more than hypothetical quantifiers. Even if Elon were a "genius", I won't particularly appreciate the pro-eugenics track that brain power has sent him.

But I find it particularly galling when people conflate intelligence and success. So much of the modern economic system is about who you know rather than what you know. Elon Musk had access to enormous amounts of cheap credit, which he used to take a series of highly profitable gambles. He then leveraged his winnings to pull on more cheap credit.

Even setting aside whether that's "smart" or "stupid", I would say its a reflection of statistical probability. There are thousands of guys like Elon. Some make it, others don't. But what defines Elon in the end is simply luck. Recognizing him as exceptionally fortunate, rather than exceptionally smart or savvy, means pealing off the layers of PR and revealing the human underneath.