It’s a very long article, but thoughtful. As I said yesterday — think how much he’s accomplished in just One Scaramucci.
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Page A2, Nov 14, 2022
Is Musk a genius or idiot? Look at Twitter
He’s taken some dumb steps since buying the social media platform.
At the heart of Elon Musk’s public persona is his image as an engineering and managerial genius.
*Snip*
Musk’s actions since taking over Twitter on Oct. 27 have been so destructive to the platform’s functioning and reputation that the question is raised of whether, rather than being a genius, Musk is in fact an idiot.
Perhaps that’s extreme. But it’s proper to examine how and why someone so unquestionably successful in his business career thus far has gone off the rails now.
*snip*
What Musk doesn’t appear to recognize is that his own behavior is driving away users and advertisers. Since his takeover, he retweeted a crude, crass and fabricated conspiracy theory about the violent assault on Paul Pelosi *snip*
How could someone so reputedly smart do such stupid things? To begin with, it’s not unusual for someone with a distinguished and accomplished career record to veer into crackpotism. Among the best known examples in science and engineering are Nobel laureates William Shockley and James D. Watson.
Shockley received his Nobel in 1956 as a member of the team that invented the transistor at Bell Laboratories. His management skills were so atrocious that he single-handedly destroyed his own company, Shockley Semiconductor.
He subsequently became known for advocating the overtly racist theory that welfare and relief programs prevented natural selection from killing off “the bottom of the population,” giving “inferior strains” such as (in his view) Black people, “increased chances for survival and reproduction.”
Watson, who won his Nobel with Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins for their discovery of the double-helix structure of DNA and later headed the Human Genome Project for the National Institutes of Health, veered into asserting that Black people are intellectually inferior to whites and attributing the difference to genetic factors.
The claims turned him into a scientific “unperson,” in his words, and lost him sinecures at business and scientific institutions.
Both men’s arguments are contradicted by science.
The phenomenon “extends way beyond science — it’s a human condition,” says John P. Moore, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Cornell’s medical school who has written about the career of Peter Duesberg.
*snip*
Moore attributes some of these renegade behaviors to midlife crises suffered by smart individuals whose careers or professional recognition hasn’t lived up to their expectations. Racked by professional jealousy, they seek validation from other communities.
“You become a hero to fringe people, and then they embrace you,” Moore told me. “If you have that psychological need for some kind of affirmation from people you’re interacting with, it must be very seductive.”
*snip*
Those circumstances may not fully fit Musk, though his emergence as a champion of anti-liberal conspiracy theories certainly has made him a darling of the far right. More relevant may be the observations of Oxford psychologist Kevin Dutton in his 2012 book “The Wisdom of Psychopaths.”
Dutton defines psychopaths as not necessarily violent or criminal but as those who are “fearless, confident, charismatic, ruthless and focused” — qualities that can be beneficial for, say, surgeons or pro athletes, and would seem to suit Musk perfectly.
They need to be kept under control. “If you push all of them to max,” Dutton argues, the product will be “no use to anyone.” But if they’re wielded by degree, “you may well have a surgeon who’s a cut above the rest.”
Musk seems to have turned up his qualities of fearlessness, confidence and ruthlessness to the max. One consequence appears to be his resistance to learning anything from business history — or, indeed, from his own business career.
Musk has fallen into the trap of hubris by misreading the success of Tesla and SpaceX as testaments to his personal wisdom. Both companies, however, have relied on unusual, if not unique, advantages.
Tesla has collected enormous government subsidies —
Much more
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