@rodhilton Never heard this genius talk until this year, frankly. It’s someone’s narrative.

SpaceX was and is a team of scientists and engineers. Tesla was and is a team of scientists and engineers. They designed and built the rockets and cars.

It’s also a narrative that SpaceX = Tesla = Musk. “His cars.” “His rockets.” It’s one of the stupidest narratives anyone’s ever said, but millions upon countless millions believe it and get all bent out of shape from it and make decisions based on it.

@rodhilton For a guy knowing nothing about software, Paypal was quite a success.

@rodhilton literally the same sensation when you listen to a non-specialist journalist talk about something you have experience in when you remember reading their previous column about something you were dumb about going “man this makes sense this writer is amazing”

@rodhilton he did for rocket scientists what Ben Carson did for brain surgeons (although he actually had been one). It was the chess comment which busted it all open

@rodhilton I don't know anything about electric cars or rockets or software. But I do know what people who know a lot about a thing sound like. And Musk never sounds like he knows what he is talking about. He always sounds like a kid who did a book report after quickly skimming the back of the book plot summary.

@rodhilton @petelambert You can probably include business on that list. Bullying and hostility is what he does well.

@rodhilton Fortunately for the astronauts that depend on SpaceX rockets to carry them to and from the International Space Station, the SpaceX company is run by President and Chief Operating Officer Gwynne Shotwell who leads an excellent team of engineers. The loudmouth CEO has little to do with the day-to-day design and building of the rockets.

@rodhilton: so much about he founding Tesla:

@rodhilton 👇

https://brianklaas.substack.com/p/the-myth-of-the-secret-genius

@rodhilton@mastodon.social oh he's talking about software? I'd like to know what he's saying

@rodhilton TBF he revolutionised the trip to low-earth orbit with his cheap/reusable rockets.

@rodhilton something I've been increasingly convinced of is that he isn't smart.
He manages to cover that by having a decent memory and being able to cold read people.
All the SpaceX stuff I've seen where people say he's smart deals with conversations about generic stuff, or him talking with experts on their opinions.
Things where he can keep up with what he's read, and respond to people like a psychic does.
Also why he's so socially awkward- it needs definitive topics to get cueable reactions

@rodhilton Reminds me of the first time I read an article in Scientific American that was about a subject I actually knew about.

It wasn't actually "stupid" or "shit" but it was unbelievably simplistic, well below level of lies-to-children that I might have expected.

@rodhilton In rockets no necessarily a genius, but he achieved really low-prices for launching. That's something. Of course, he achieved that through labour abuse, so that's something too. 😬

@rodhilton
Exactly, he should've kept it shut and become a little mysterious. Glad he didn't n everyone gets to see the bullshitting, scrooge channelling scumbag for what he is

@rodhilton His main skills are greed and the ability to play the system that developed to reward greed. Unfortunately for him, he started to believe the stories about him being a genius and having the midas touch. The funniest part of what he has done is that most of his businesses depended on people who leaned left. Electric cars, solar city, space travel, even the boring company cater to people who are inherently left leaning.

Then he attacked them.

@rodhilton I felt similarly but on the topic of neuroscience - stay the hell away from his brain implants 🧠 😳🤯

@rodhilton Elon managed to destroy what ever credibility he had, once he purchased the Twitter Bird.

@rodhilton As much as Tesla's seem safe I worry that they have crashed in the past when they did not have radars, so they added radars like the other electric cars and now there is a push to remove the radars again to save money. It is a stupidly driven company, it's not Volvo that's for sure.

@rodhilton Particularly since his cars and rockets rely so heavily on software.

@rodhilton Are you aware of the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Crichton#GellMannAmnesiaEffect

@rodhilton well I know nothing about CO2 emissions except that chemistry and psysics school classes, so when Musk said Tesla Model 3 is gonna reduce CO2 emissions... that was a lie. Most of the electricity in the US is made out of fossils, and then even that's not enough, imagine terawatts more to produce somehow?

@rodhilton I am also in IT and this has also been my experience. He reminds me of a clueless boss I had who would go into meetings and spout nonsense because he knew the other people had no idea.

@rodhilton What does he say about software?

@rodhilton he wants to talk about everything literally making everyone else look stupid in their own profession while he is cherished as a genius.

@rodhilton most batteries degrade in several years, and I know it from using smart phones, but no company would wanna replace a phone that they made one with the battery. Imagine the car with the battery that costs a sizeable portion of a car, and people like Muks never plan to compensate the costs

@rodhilton YES

@rodhilton he's just another man-child who inherited his father's ill-gotten money. #ElonMusk #Oligarch #SpaceX #Tesla #Twitter

@rodhilton bravo!

@rodhilton Well, as someone with you on the first 2, but also knows nothing about software, I will defer to you judgement. 😆
...he seems to be flaking apart a bit, the last several years, though.

@rodhilton same

@rodhilton It's staggeringly stupid how many people believe every lie uttered by white men.

And don't even have the capacity to believe women when we tell the truth.

He never invented anything.

@rodhilton … +++ …

@rodhilton Yeah the “bring me your commit history so I can review it” was quite the arrogant statement.

@rodhilton Tesla was the first mover for EV, like apple was for smartphones. The difference is that teslas are pretty crappy and other manufacturers are catching up.
SpaceX is pretty dope, but I read the team hat to work around Elon's stupid ideas all the time to create a good solution.

@rodhilton When I was a teenager I got a gift of a book of essays by some opinion columnist or other. And I was reading them and sort of nodding along, until I got to the one where she was opining on the early internet, and it was immediately obvious to me, early internet person, that she was chatting complete shit. And then I wondered about the rest of it.

Same sort of experience, I guess.

@rodhilton spot on!

@rodhilton Luckily, neither cars nor rockets require software.

@rodhilton in fairness, staying away from rockets is an all-round good policy

@rodhilton he doesn't even run SpaceX . And clearly, he ain't running Tesla either. Gwynne Shotwell runs SpaceX. He just takes credit for everything. He's a moron surrounded by real geniuses.

@rodhilton increasing transparency and shining a light doesn’t always end well for some people - especially senior leaders. Elon is going to be an extreme example of that. I’m sad for the people driving the actual success at Tesla, SpaceX and Starlink. They must be fuming.

@rodhilton

Wise. I happen to know little about rockets and cars. I needed a new car. So I bought a Subaru.

@rodhilton he’s very good at getting funding, I’ll give him that. Scratch off the surface dazzle and what you’ll find is a salesman.

@rodhilton this is my story as well.

@rodhilton @lostintech that’s the thing about smart people, they have limits, the real smart ones know those limits…

@rodhilton I know nothing about software, but I can see from those pictures of him at the World Cup, that he is a deeply troubled man who is way out of his depth in both the company he keeps and the businesses he is allegedly in charge of.

@rodhilton
What's tragic is that the cars are good and the rockets are good. For all his faults (and false claims to genius) he has formed functional teams of engineers who have made good things. The problem is, as this was happening, he was becoming an isolated, vindictive, resentful man. And he bought Twitter as a way to display and deploy his personality. And that may be how he is remembered.

@rodhilton had that moment with hyperloop, was very puzzled by the whole 'he genius' comments
do we need to train better pausibility checking for when we don't understand all of what a person claims?

QT @rodhilton this reminds me of the "Wikipedia expert outrage" phenomenon: The ratio of "interest" to "outrage" one feels reading Wikipedia is directly proportional to the amount of expertise one has in the subject. https://mastodon.social/@rodhilton/109572674700288958

@rodhilton I wouldn't worry. He doesn't make the rockets. SpaceX is doing awesome work - I am just pretty sure it's not due to any genious from Musk.

But the reusable self landing rockets etc ARE awesome. And I LOVE that finally (and in large part thanks to them) we are finally seeing new progress towards the moon (permanent) and Mars again. I like scifi so I just want to see that in my lifetime.

But I don't think I have to thank him personally for it, lol. But the engineers etc at SpaceX.

@rodhilton what about his stupid and highly dangerous experiments on #neuralink I have said for years is a dangerous idea?

@rodhilton My programing skills are average at best but I nailed project management along with system analysis and design when I was at polytech - long story short when I heard the audio recording of Elon Musk talking about the twitter software stack it became abundantly clear that he subscribes to the 'fake it until you make it' which only works if the people you're speaking to aren't able to call you out.

@rodhilton @charles_ex @aloa5

@rodhilton Same, but there have always been indications that his style of leadership is toxic, it just depends on how closely you looked.

@rodhilton Fellow I know works in transportation and says Musk has been a running joke in those circles for years. Otoh, the companies he’s the face of have many capable, even exceptional, employees. As usual, the success of the enterprise is dependent on the workers but an individual gets the lion’s share of the credit. Great Man Theory dominates our culture.

@rodhilton 😂😂😂

@rodhilton it's like reading news about a topic you know something about.

@rodhilton This is an excellent take.

@rodhilton Apparently the management at the car business and the rocket business have highly developed skills in managing Musk.

The software business problem is not having developed similar expertise.

@rodhilton
Wrong conclusion.
Cobbler stick to your last

Verkeerde conclusie.
Schoenmaker, blijf bij je leest

@rodhilton Well said sir. They said Bankman-Fried was a genius too. Mind you those who knew a lot about finance weren’t saying it.

@rodhilton everyone who knows about cars has been pulling their hair out all these years.

@rodhilton Precisely. Elon Musk is just a spoiled rich narcissist.

@rodhilton smart in some ways, dumb in others. That’s the problem with assumptions made from generalizations.

@rodhilton Elon is not a genius. He's a nepotism man-baby.

@rodhilton

... because all knowledge areas transfer? One who understands circuitry is sure to understand plumbing on first contact, right? You're an expert in one area, so you're an expert in all areas? That's how it works?

There's probably a reason "jack of all trades, master of none" is a phrase people remember well.

Musk is out of his depth at Twitter. He may be out of his depth elsewhere. But the logic being used here is ... utterly assailable.

@rodhilton - Musk brings money to people with ideas, he does not bring the ideas himself. As we see with Twitter, when ‘he’ has ideas, they are not good.

@rodhilton I knew he wasn't a genius when I red this piece. It's not even a technical thing. His intentions of space mining (and greed) makes him incapable of appreciation for our planet and the cosmos:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/02/mars-is-no-earth/618133/

@rodhilton Awww so well said!

@rodhilton nah, the cars are nice. He didn't start Tesla, either.

@rodhilton If you look at the reliability stats for Tesla, you very quickly end up getting a Hyundai or Kia EV instead (or MG in my case)

@rodhilton

This is perfectly stated! 🤣

#musk #twitter

@rodhilton tesla is dogshit, but they are the only true, big electric cars manufacturer.
spacex is... debatable.
twitter is just gonna implode and i can't wait for that to happen.

@rodhilton to be fair, the markets are very much agreeing with you. This is not the share price graph of a company operated by a genius.
It seems MAGA accounts in Twitter may push the genius narrative but serious money just looks at the strategy, behaviour and the bottom line figures.

@rodhilton
BWAHAHAHA!

@rodhilton ...and you have to wonder how much they are "his" rockets and "his" cars, and how much they are rockets and cars built by engineering companies that have also successfully created a whole structure to manage Melon's antics, and shield the real engineers from him.

https://www.tumblr.com/numberonecatwinner/701567544684855296/elon-wyd

@rodhilton Thanks for putting it perspective.

He talked about electric cars and clearly didn't understand much of what he was saying, but I was already into electric vehicles well before he bought Tesla and pushed its founders out, so that was obvious...

He talked about rockets and that too was an area I understand wel enough to know that none of those 'innovations' was new, nor was he capable of implementing them for not being an engineer himself.

@rodhilton He's a man with money. He knew very little about rockets, NASA spoon fed him so he would be successful. It was his idea to have a reusable rocket, but it was his engineers that made it so. He lies. The workplace environ. is toxic, the work life span of an engineer is ~3-5 yrs, they're burned out, severely overworked, not compensated for the OT and told they're on the 'cutting edge' of development. New graduates believe him & are taken advantage of, women are marginalized at every turn

@rodhilton nailed it.

@rodhilton The real problem is that he is totally at sea when it comes to understanding people.

@rodhilton his real value and appeal is he never gives up 💯

@rodhilton I would never buy a Tesla. And I would never want to be near one in “full self delusion” #fsdbeta mode. #ElonIsPathetic

https://electrek.co/2022/12/14/tesla-full-self-driving-data-awful-challenge-elon-musk-prove-otherwise/

@rodhilton @Mwomack

You may judge Elon Musk regarding rockets by how he keeps hyping SpaceX's Starships, which only recently stopped exploding.

@rodhilton Hell, man; I STILL want to see him develop that custom smartphone he was threatening us with. #Musk #Twitter
http://sinkers.org/stage/?p=3548

@rodhilton @joe You missed the third step. He talked about tunnels & people who knew nothing about transportation figured he was a genuis. People who followed urban transportation figured him out, if they hadn't already from the electric cars.

@rodhilton EM seems more of an opportunistic person not an entrepreneur

@rodhilton My god, this! Exactly this!

@rodhilton Falsus in uno...

@rodhilton Musk is an industrialist and probably one of the great ones in history. They're all dickish people, btw.

It's all production and capital equipment and he's a master of that.

Twitter is none of that. People are the capital and people are the production. No surprise then, that he's floundering.

@rodhilton
It is no surprise that Musk wants to rewrite twitter. Most of those he could have asked to change the code left the company and wont return. I guess no one can understand the entire system from bottom to top with all details, where thousands of people worked on so far.

@rodhilton there is nothing more frightening than getting into an elevator after being exposed to the people in industry that design and implement them.

You and I are of similar mind. Before I felt compelled to learn about him I had also assumed the hype was real.

But man, if there was one person out there just dedicated to proving empirically they are not intelligent, it is him.

@rodhilton
That tracks.

@rodhilton Sometimes people equate genius with someone who can talk with extreme unwavering confidence about a topic, despite what they are saying being complete and utter bullshit.

@rodhilton 😂 😂 😂

@rodhilton Excellent logic. If I ever start looking for an electric car it will be anything but a Tesla. 😀 #ElonMusk #twitter #tesla

@rodhilton That's all he ever really has done is "talk" about these things. He takes, and has unfortunately been given, credit for the work of so many others.