There’s a very fine line between genius and insanity and it’s becoming increasingly evident Elon Musk has crossed it.
Nobody would doubt the man is an extraordinary creative and visionary genius. The evidence is overwhelming.
But conversely, his normal outlandish behaviour has now shifted alarmingly.
He has named his child X Æ A-12.
He has suddenly declared his company’s shares are over-valued, having declared them under-valued not so long ago.
In a recent Tweet he said without explanation, “Rage, rage against the dying of the light of consciousness”. Madness or a piss-take?
He’s announced he’s selling his three homes as the first step in quitting all possessions in a quest for total freedom.
There’s another possible explanation namely that he’s an attention-seeking world-class piss-taker who enjoys causing a stir.
Like Trump his medium is Twitter but there the comparisons end.
Trump is spectacularly ignorant, Musk spectacularly clever. Trump is devoid of empathy and is probably a psychopath; Musk cares about creating a better world for everyone.
We’re certainly living in crazy times.
18 Comments
Our young comedian Melanie Bracewell told us we shouldn’t laugh at the baby’s name because there is a beautiful back story. It was named after it’s mother’s wifi password.
Bob, if you think Trump is spectacularly ignorant then how do you think he became President & will be re-elected later this year? Read “The Case for Trump” which details how smart he & his team are.
Trump May be cunning as a rat but he remains stunningly ignorant. A worker class boy from Lower Hutt improved himself through self education. While a boy from Queens inherited $400 million and atrophied. His rise to his current position is through world class manipulation rather than self improvement. Manipulation of his support base whom he does not even dignify with payment for services. The American Dream is dying in the hands of of a small handed and small minded individual. The Republican Party have foregone their ethics in return for power, Never forget, Adolf Hitler was elected.
I think you’ve got your parties muddled up. Devoid of any courage of actually committing to policies (Biden has none) the Democrats have spent the past 4 years indulging in petty vendettas. Trump actually has policies beyond ‘virtue-signalling’ and they were proving to be very successful until C19 struck. So desperate are the Democrats to return to power that many of them are actually willing C19 to be even more devastating to their fellow Americans. And you think it’s the Republican Party that has no ethics?
That’s why we have to watch out for Adern and the leftist Marxist like Hitler they enjoy control and socialism.
The first one to reference Hitler and the Nazis, loses any argument.
Only done when there is no answer that will stand examination.
Mike , Bob is right on the money here.
I think you may be confusing “smart” with scheming , devious , conniving and cunning.
To be honest even that is giving a lot of credit. That would actually require a degree of intelligence.
More along the lines of self absorbed , self serving and a complete lack of empathy.
They say even Hitler was fond of his dogs.
Name one redeeming feature Trump has ?
Liking golf , doesn’t count as he is known to even cheat at that !
Musk promoted some nonsense ideas that got attention (like the vacuum tube train. Absurdly impractical until we can tunnel for cheap). His investment in developing a reusable spacecraft was good though; but seriously, not genius. Ideas like that have been around since year dot. Musk just put his money on it, though good on him for that. Again I think he just believes in creating publicity stunts with ‘fun’ concepts.
He has a bit of a point on money (though it sounds like another stunt). In a funny way money can own you as much as you own it, when you become too consumed by a fear of losing what you have. Personally I hate thinking about money. It’s necessary, yeah, but f*ing tedius.
Well… to some of these points:
His (highly unusual) partner (mostly) named the child.
The house selling is in part because he cops a lot of flak for being a billionaire, so to remove ammunition. Also he mentioned to be removing distraction from his work as he Is thinking more carefully about how he applies his time.
From what I gather the “Rage, rage against the dying light of consciousness” tweet was the tail end example of a quoting rant protesting the American/Californian lockdown/authoritarianism.
The business/stock side of things is potentially more dubious for various reasons, but no doubt he is confident in the long-term future of his companies.
Certainly he enjoys banter and melds with a younger absurdist/meme sense of humour.
I remain agnostic, but tend to think we are better off having the Elon’s of the world. A bit of genius/insanity is good.
A visionary ‘shaman’ like figure tends to be crazy 9/10 times and crucially correct the remainder.
His recent forecasting of Neuralink was pretty crazy, even if granting the tendency to overpromise and underestimate timelines/complexity/difficulty of development.
Does look like he’s on track to be the Howard Hughes of his generation (minus the Hollywood angle)
Bob I think you are right in your assertion that Musk is an attention seeker and he enjoys causing a stir but I think his erratic behaviour is more egotistical in that he is starting to believe his own hype.
Elon Musk is a prize prick for bullying Vern Unsworth. Calling him a paedophile.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/15/elon-musk-british-diver-thai-cave-rescue-pedo-twitter
Just your common. Garden-variety. Arsehole.
Totally agree Bob.
Musks attack on Unsworth was beyond the pale.
Unsworth called him out and he reacted like a spoiled child or schoolyard bully.
Everytime I hear that name all I can picture is a men’s deodorant stick. I think maybe I like the babies name better 🙂 . A better world for everyone? Really? If I’m living in the Amazon (no….not a large warehouse) where am I gong to plug my pretentious E vehicle into to recharge it? To the technocrats, Musk is a porn star and they just can’t take their eyes off him. A Better world through advanced technology seems to me to be a world where individuality and personal freedoms are consigned to the scrap heap. Trump on the other hand is on a different path. The most significant thing about his presidency to me is his tight relationship with conservative evangelicals which regularly visit the whitehouse. The mixing of church and state is a no no because the temptation to force morality on people once power has been obtained becomes overwhelming. Come November I’ll be interested to see if that power is solidified or halted. Right now my money is on solidified.
Elon is a genius, and is becoming more eccentric. But the latest bit is his own way of cutting ties with the socialist republic of California. He’s upping sticks to Texas. I think he is bored with the woke, anti-capitalist Coasters. I wouldn’t be surprised if he finances a secession movement as a move to restore liberty. His libertarianism is now overtly antagonistic to the woke ones, defending liberty and opposing stupidity, while defending people’s right to choose to self isolate. So he’ll punish the SRoC by selling all his houses, removing their ability to tax his land holdings, his employees will relocate East and deprive Alemeda of rates/ land taxes, and SRoC of the bulk of his Fremont employees’ taxes.
Texas will be rewarded with a new Giga-factory (?soon to be tera-), making GTFO trucks/utes/sports cars and help his former business partner set up the biggest cryptocurrency farm in USA, powered with Tesla solar solutions, the ultimate rebel expression.
Bob, you are a clever bugger, but respectfully: on Trump you have no clue because you watch the sycophants too much.
Get into Qanon (qmap.pub), then you get to know the news of ‘tomorrow’.
Trump is head of a soft military coup draining the deep state swamp. This will have repercussions for swamps all over the world, incl. NZ.
Maybe what looks like ‘insanity’ is just the effect of not caring *too* much for what others think? And the effect could be “genius” in that a less repressed mind is free to ‘move’ and connect more dots? We do live in a society where people are desperately afraid of what others think, and maybe that’s not particularly normal in itself?
I doubt that Elon Musk is an extraordinary creative and visionary genius. The evidence is overwhelming that he isn’t. I’m smarter than him, because my companies actually make money and are actually innovative.
Elon got his first fortune when Peter Theil, who is a bona fide genius incidentally, brought out Elon’s failing rival to PayPal because Theil understand monopoly like few others on Earth.
Since then Elon had done nothing but burn billions upon billions of shareholder and taxpayers dollars in his universally money losing, tax subsidised schemes.
Additionally he was successfully prosecuted for fraud by the SEC for his “funding secured” tweet, and should have been prosecuted for fraud for his craven purchase of Solar City to bail out his, and his family’s bonds at shareholder existence.
Musk is no genius and no self respecting capitalist who abhors corporate graft on the taxpayers teat or staggeringly inefficient allocation of capital would ever describe him as such.