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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   26707 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of November 20, 2023

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Someone being more intelligent doesn't mean you can't see when they are habitually making errors in some area.

I feel like Musk has "doctor's syndrome" where his success and competence in one area (or a couple) leads him to believe he has superior insight into all areas. Only for Musk and other famous people this gets supercharged both by their success and by their fans.

@orthoxerox quoted a story yesterday about a top journalist being outfoxed by a regular police officer during an interrogation, because they played someone else's game on their home terf. Well, Musk is constantly doing this and occasionally making a fool of himself is inevitable.

He is very competent, driven and successful but he isn't god.

Conversely, people are doing the same thing as Musk, they notice how he fumbles about in their area of expertise (or it gets pointed out by others), making overconfident claims and predictions, and therefore assume that he is a fool, or at least not as smart as his success would imply.

I feel like Musk has "doctor's syndrome"

Nobel disease is a sufficiently established term to have a wikipedia page, and I feel is more accurate as Musk's accomplishments are at the level of a Nobel prize winner, than of a mere doctor.

It was not intented as a dig at Musk, I wasn't aware of the term Nobel disease.

Oh no, I didn't think you belittled him, it is just that I remembered there was a Nobel prize who had unorthodox ideas about HIV and thought this was similar to Musk, which led me to discover that the term already existed.

And the circle of life continues, a guy who won the Nobel for discovering HIV believed in homeopathy

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