Antinuclear

Is Elon Musk a halfwit ?

April 19, 2025, https://theaimn.net/is-elon-musk-a-halfwit/

A silly insult! I hear your cry. Yes, as the Oxford Dictionary defines a “halfwit” as a”foolish or stupid person” And I do agree, it is stupid to call Elon Musk “stupid”.

But that’s not what I mean. I guess that I have invented a new interpretation of “halfwit”.

According to my view , one can be brilliantly clever with one kind of thinking, yet lacking in understanding of other important ways of thinking, as though half of one’s brain is sort of not functioning. I was prompted to ponder on this by Gautam Mukunda‘s article in The Business Standard – “Musk and the dangerous myth of “omnigenius“. Mukanda deplores “the Halo Effect” – a cognitive bias in which we revere someone for remarkable success in just one area, and assume that they will be equally great in other areas.

Mukunda gave a chilling example. “Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE )fired hundreds of employees at the National Nuclear Security Administration, the agency responsible for the production and security of nuclear weapons and management of nuclear waste sites” (These cuts were soon reversed under the advice of Arms Control Association Executive Director Daryl Kimball).

Mukunda is exploring the attitude of people in general, towards valuing a high achiever So he’s not actually discussing Musk himself and Musk’s way of thinking.

But it looks as if Elon Musk had no insight into the potential negative consequences of the firing of nuclear safety staff.

This touches on Musk’s apparent lack of interest in some areas of life – employment relationships, social studies – the non-technical areas. We all know that Elon Musk is a genius in science and technology. He’s got all that impressive knowledge. And let’s not forget – his early, and no doubt continuing motivation – to save and benefit humanity. Hence his desire, and technical know-how – aimed at creating a safer home for humanity -on another planet.

And what about Musk’s undoubted knowledge of science? Does it include those “soft” sciences – biology, ecology, cytology, genetics, psychology, neuroscience….

Neuroscience comes up with some clues to human ways of thinking. For one example, the development of the frontal lobe of the brain comes at different ages between males and females. Complex research has also shown for example, the role of testosterone in embryonic development in both sexes. It may account for males having, on the whole, better abilities in spatial understanding, and for female thinking on the whole encompassing more regions of the brain at the one time. Now this is a terrible digression from the immediate topic, but just my attempt to indicate that individual brain function differs between people.

Getting back to Elon Musk, it is just my guess that he, for one reason or another, is really good at STEM thinking (Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths). And unfortunately, even within that STEM, those so-called “soft” sciences don’t seem to count. It would seem that Musk is uninterested both in those other sciences, and of humanities studies.

So – that’s what I’m calling being “half-witted” – terrific at the concrete technical stuff, but sadly lacking in that other half – those other, less well-defined , areas of thinking.

So I think that Gautam Mukunda is onto something, when he warns us “why do we listen to these people? And why should they get positions of power in areas where they have little knowledge or experience?”

April 19, 2025 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | Uncategorized