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Notes -
Richard Hanania continues his criticism of Musk, as a guest author for UnHerd. (Sidenote: On his own website, he wrote "I never thought I would write an article for Sohrab Ahmari, as we disagree on a lot and I’ve regrettably insulted him a few times, but he reached out after my recent piece on Musk and asked if I would like to write something for UnHerd.") It's a combination of criticism of Musk as an intellectual, criticism of DOGE, and contrasting the intellectual traits adaptive for business and non-business success. The closing paragraphs are interesting:
I don't disagree with anything Hanania wrote, and I do think there's value in publicly stating true things, even if some people in the audience already know them. The general thesis here - that Elon Musk has gotten a lot worse over the last few years, and that lately he seems far too dependent on social media and gullible to conspiracy theories - is, I think, undoubtedly true, and the more people who are aware of it, the better.
However, that said, for a piece titled "How Elon Musk lost the plot", I would have liked more of an attempted explanation as to why this happened. Hanania offers basically three theories:
Musk has optimised his thought process for business, not politics. Certain traits are advantageous in business, like tunnel-vision, innovation, drive, and disregard for limitations imposed by others, but are disadvantageous in politics, or in a serious attempt to comprehend the world. Musk's prior cleverness was non-transferable.
Musk has gotten addicted to social media, trapped himself in a bubble, and this is shaping all his thoughts.
Musk is on drugs.
It is, of course, perfectly plausible that it's a combination of all three - Musk's cleverness didn't transfer, he got himself into an echo chamber of conspiracist lunatics, and drug abuse made everything worse. That seems plausible to me, at least, and a reminder that a combination of factors are likely to exacerbate each other. Brilliance is not a single stable trait, but rather a confluence of factors.
Hanania only discusses the second and third theories offhandedly at the end, though, despite their obvious relevance to the rest of us. I would have been interested to see them integrated a bit more with the central thesis.
I think the problem with this is that they mostly (other than observing his social media posts) require private knowledge of him. Also, the transferability of advantageous business traits to other domains may be under-discussed, so it makes editorial sense to give it more attention.
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