astralcodexten.com
Scott Alexander’s review of a 2015 biography of Elon Musk. Elon Musk, to me, is one of the world’s most confusing people. He’s simultaneously both one of the smartest people in the world, creating billions of dollars of value in companies like Tesla and SpaceX, and one of the dumbest, in burning billions on Twitter. Scott’s review I think is a good explanation of what’s up with Musk.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Why do you think it's dumb? I define "dumb" as having a goal, perform an action that is supposed to achieve the goal, but actually does not, in an obvious way, and likely to place one further from the goal than it was before the action, and that result has been easily predictable and pre-destined before the action was taken. Is your definition different? If not, then which goal do you think Musk had and which action was "dumb"?
This is the question.
Make money? Promote "free speech" as principle? Fight "wokeness"? Fight for world peace? Promote his own agenda (whatever it is at the moment)? Probably Elon himself is not entirely sure.
Overestimating himself and underestimating his enemies. This can happen to everyone and especially to genuinely great and accomplished men.
That's awfully vague. You can apply it to almost any person - any person doing something would fail at some aspect of that, and once they did, you could say they are "dumb" for "overestimating themselves". This kind of definition does not seem to have a lot of selective power - if it can happen to anyone, then what's the point of using it, we could just say "anyone".
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link