There are several myths floating in the ether these days. One of them is the notion that the amount of wealth one accumulates is a reliable measure of intelligence. Elon Musk puts the lie to that notion. Greg Sargeant writes:
Over the weekend, Elon Musk called for the prosecution of Anthony S. Fauci, the leading infectious-disease expert in the Biden administration. “My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci,” Musk tweeted, mocking transgender people for good measure. Musk then endorsed a complicated right-wing conspiracy theory about Fauci’s role in the covid-19 pandemic.
This sort of info-warring, at bottom, is what characterizes Musk’s transformation into the world’s richest right-wing troll. Tons of pixels have been wasted on efforts to pin down Musk’s true beliefs, but whatever they are, we can say right now that he’s consciously exploiting fundamental features of the right-wing information ecosystem.
In his attack, Musk flatly validated a big right-wing obsession: The idea that Fauci was involved in U.S. government funding of controversial early research into covid, and lied to Congress about it. As The Post’s Glenn Kessler demonstrated, this is a highly complex dispute, but there are zero grounds for concluding anything remotely like that happened. Musk’s claim is at best profoundly irresponsible and at worst straight-up disinformation.
Forty years ago, Harvard psychologist Howard Gardner advanced the idea that there are eight different types of intelligence -- spatial intelligence, bodily-kinesthetic intelligence, musical intelligence, linguistic intelligence, logical-mathematical intelligence, interpersonal intelligence, intrapersonal intelligence, and naturalistic intelligence.
Clearly, Musk possesses significant mathematical and spatial skills. However, in several other categories, he's a mental midget.
Image: Angela Weiss and Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images
10 comments:
Musk is a narcissist using Twitter to promote himself in the same way that Trump did. The media lap it up as easy click-bait copy that distracts people from considering the tax policy failure of allowing billionaires in the first place.
Cap
Musk is the personification of what forty years of government tax policy hath wrought, Cap.
Stable genius 2.0. It's all about basic shock value meant to get a rise out of those who are affected. Boring banter to the enth degree. This the guy who mused about pizza take out on Mars.What a visionary.
Despite the buzz, he's not the brightest of bulbs, zoombats.
Maybe Musk should learn to keep his mouth shut and keep off of social media. The nonsense has consequences.
"Elon Musk no longer world's richest man"
https://ca.news.yahoo.com/elon-musk-no-longer-worlds-165046171.html
His purchase of Twitter reveals that he's not that good of a businessman, Toby.
“Wealth, even in the most improbable of cases, manages to convey the aspect of intelligence” - John Kenneth Galbraith.
By opening his mouth, Musk cancels that notion. DJF
Precisely, DJF.
Mental Midget. Remember that phrase and its appropriate. Musk maybe considered brilliant, but not so much. The purchase of T. for $44B was not a smart move. His firing of people who make the company "run" wasn't a smart move. He may have wanted to prove he was tough, but all it did was convince more people how stupid he was. You don't fire engineers and such in a company which runs with computers. Once he took over the company, the number of racial slurs, etc. increased immensley and Musk seems to be o.k. with that. His suggestion of prosecuting Facci, may grab head lines and distract, but really, what exactly did Facci do which broke the law? It certainly rouses the base though. Its most likely what Musk wanted, he may see himself as a replacement for Trump and the far rights leader. He bought T. simply to advance his political ideas. He could just be another Hitler wanna be.
He's certainly someone with a puffed-up sense of his own worth, e.a.f.
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