Elon Musk and Spiky Intelligence | Hacker News Reader

Elon Musk and Spiky Intelligence

natesilver.net

18 pointsrobinhouston10 comments

Damn. I thought this was an interesting discussion of the multifactorial nature of intelligence, with reference to a topical example; but the comments so far make me think it's going to be challenging for us to have a normal conversation on a topic that involves such a divisive character.

Or at least a discussion about how so divisive, egomanic and sociopathic characters are given far too much airtime and credit. I do wonder whether those 15 minutes of fame should be the upper limit for anyone.

Nate Silver’s only job is election prediction and he just completely whiffed it. Musk has been killing it in EVs and space and does everything else as a side hustle.

Musk seems to have a drug and social media addiction, I'm not sure he is actually well

> killing it in EVs

Have you seen the Cybertruck, the Tesla that Musk had the most direct input in designing?

Have you read of its quality control issues? Have you seen the myriad pictures and videos of Cybertrucks stuck in the snow, in the mud, in the sand? Have you seen the struts that are woefully undersized for a vehicle of such weight, and the snapped off wheels that have resulted from this? The self-cracking windshields, and the windshield wiper's laughable design that breaks frequently? I could go on...

Musk is not necessarily stupid but he does appear to think he's quite a lot smarter than he actually is, and in far more domains than he actually has expertise.

> Musk has been killing it in EVs

This is a good example of Silver’s argument. Tesla’s EV production is the best in the West. Yet sales and values are plunging across it because of his politics [1][2]. (Meanwhile, his distraction in the Cybertruck gave BYD and other Chinese brands the opening they needed outside it, and that’s before round two of the trade war’s predictable effects on Tesla land.)

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-02-26/tesla-sal...

[2] https://www.cargurus.com/research/price-trends/Tesla-m112

“Completely whiffed” seems pretty strong for an unsubstantiated claim. All of the polls were off in 2016 but he was closer than most on predictions and in 2020 and 2024 he was pretty accurate. It would be interesting to know your criteria and who you think does meet that standard.

He didn't completely whiff it? The probabilities that Nate and the current team at 538 have given over the years are empirically very accurate. 538 is quite transparent about this stuff [1]. Their Brier skill score for Presidential elections is 0.8243.

[1]: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/checking-our-work/

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