Oh, meant this to be a reply.

I more or less subscribe to Scott Alexander's view of him - he's pretty smart, but not a one in a million genius. He is, however, incredibly intense and dedicated. This lets him get a lot more mileage out of his intelligence than most, especially in the realm of technical engineering. Not so much for social skills and political savviness.
I used to think he just took credit for other people's work, but after reading the ACX Elon Musk biography book review and the subsequent highlights from the comments, my view of him is more nuanced. He still is a really baffling mix of stupidity and intelligence, though.

Not so much for social skills and political savviness.

@MingCat I didn't vote, because I am too fuzzy on what 'genius' means, but political savviness is absolutely something he excels at as demonstrated by the fact that he insinuated himself into the highest levels of power. I remember at the start of Biden's term liberals were laughing that he may be building rockets & cars, but it is Gates and Bezos who are mingling among the world's leaders. If the way Musk turned the tables is not genius, I don't know what is.

@skibidist You're right that it's more nuanced than my words would imply. He evidently was smart enough to make it to where he is, but he is also a very impulsive person and has caused his fair share of PR nightmares. It's like he can be savvy in certain ways when he tries, but he's prone to not thinking carefully.

He started with high luck, mid intelligence, high charisma, now he has high luck, low intelligence, low charisma

@TheAllMemeingEye HAHAHAHAHA do the MAGAs even like Elon anymore?

he gained corruption status effect though

@copiumarc probably got +1 one handed combat from that salute

Elon Musk has other people do work then takes personal credit. This is true whether it is engineering, coding, memes on twitter, or moving up video game leaderboards. He is not a genius at these things.

His actual skill has been in selecting companies to invest in and positioning himself to use government funding. On this there’s a mix of probabilities, savvy, and continued motivation after reaching higher and higher levels to have such obvious success which is harder to tease out. Double lottery winners are inevitable given enough draws and enough players. Many of his direct competitors at that level turn their attention to philanthropy, longevity, cultural control, their families, etc. after reaching extreme financial success. He appeared to be genuinely good at marketing and building a personality cult in the broad public a few years ago but now either his scope has narrowed for building that core or he’s guessing (probably correctly) that doing more direct regulatory capture will pay off more than the popularity hit and damage to his myth building will hurt him.

@LiamZ Oh, he's always been garbage at building a personality cult - he just looks like sh*t now because he fired his PR manager.

@Gameknight Elons been seething since his daughter. Imagine you buy the government to fight the culture war then get ratioed by twitter nazis

@Gameknight I disagree, I think there was a cultural moment maybe a decade ago where people in the general public were genuinely bought into the idea that he was the mythic superhuman figure he was LARPing as (“real life Tony Stark”). That ended up just being marketing but it was very effective in some corners.

@LiamZ yeah but we have data update of him burning it to the ground

like genuinely a random person who just says nothing swap in for elon would keep that reputation

though ig he did buy a donald trump, that was smart ig

@copiumarc cozying up to the famously easily manipulated leader of the richest nation on Earth may actually pay off for him and his government subsidy maximization strategy more than anything else has paid off for any one ever. Our national budget is massive. While he is burning his old image to the ground, it’s possible this move and the larger strategic move of attempting to move mainstream social media right with Twitter will pay off far more than the brand damage to Tesla or money pit of Twitter as an actual website will hurt him.

@LiamZ honestly evidence of elon competence or kakistocracy though

like all the arguments that apply to elon could also work for orban or putin, which is prob why this dude likes elon so much. he wants king musk

@copiumarc anti-democratic boot lickers like the strength projected by forcing better human beings to bow to an absolute horse’s ass.

His actual skill has been in selecting companies to invest in and positioning himself to use government funding.

@LiamZ This is a liberal talking point I don't get. Isn't SpaceX vs Blue Origin basically a controlled experiment measuring the 'Musk factor'?

@skibidist Its also just a really dumb liberal argument. This is a prediction market site; you'd think people would value being the best predictor the world has seen in a hundred, maybe more years pretty highly

@stardust no bible verses or holy blessings upon me? Come on jester, you can dance better than this.

You don't have to like the guy -- he's damn smart.

@stardust maybe smart but no genius

@strutheo If you considered the actual market like a prediction market, Elon would only be the most successful predictor in the world.

@stardust we dont do that for obvious reasons lol. also then the richest man at any given point in time is a genius? weird definition

@strutheo Unless you're one of the people who actually was born with a few billion dollars, being able to amass a hundred billion dollars without use of military force is pretty strong evidence for genius. Indicates being a visionary on a vast array of topics. PayPal, SpaceX, OpenAI, Tesla, and even X/Twitter -- Elon was early to the game by 5+ years.

Hate people like Bill Gates. But I'd be lying if I said he isn't a genius

@stardust being early doesnt make you a genius but it has other positive qualities

@strutheo You don't think consistently being able to predict the future exceedingly better than the general population makes you a genius?

Well, then I guess Musk would only have the qualities of a genius (advancing human progress by years to a decade, compared to a counterfactual where he didn't exist) without being one proper. We could call this category genius+ or something, it seems like it makes a lot more sense to use it than just "genius" then. And if the original word's kinda useless we can just shorten genius+ to genius honestly

@stardust if you redefine genius idk. maybe you can say hes a 'marketing genius' or something

@stardust I do not think the angle of assessing musk's genius by way of how successful he is at predictions is a suitable one for his specific position though.

For example, I believe for Einstein (the one person most can agree on to be a genius) the use of prediction success as a metric for genius is useful. Due to his theory of general-relativity resulting in a century of correct prediction about the world, results that could not be influenced by Einstein himself.

So when Elon, has so much of his success Attributed to his cult of personality, and direct investment into the Trump campaign, the measure of prediction success becomes less accurate.

Though I must admit that this does not apply to his earlier investments (such as paypal).