Hacker News Reader

I challenge anyone who says “Elon not so smart” to name a topic in his wheelhouse that you think you can discuss in more detail than him. Because I’m certain he’d run circles around all but experts, in rocketry, auto tech, power cells, and more.

I mean: dude is smart. Everyone just wants to deny him that because he’s now an anti-immigrationist and they can’t stand the thought of him being both awful and smarter than them.

View on HN

He'd better. It would be a pretty severe embarrassment for a layman to know more than you about your own industry.

The trap he and many other smart idiots fall into is believing that having a high degree of expertise in one area qualifies you to speak authoritatively in unrelated areas. These days maybe you could call it Claude-smart: pairing situational brilliance with unwarranted confidence at other times. The really properly smart people I've met are good at tempering their statements with their degree of certainly based on their own qualifications.

Sure, I agree. My beef here is with people who insist he’s a dummy when it comes even to rocketry, etc. That he only just hired people, but otherwise is not himself any sort of expert. Just lucky (over and over and over, apparently).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com