Sometimes powerful people just do dumb shit, because they're still a human being like all of us.
It's easy to look at Musk and say, he's done some dumb shit when his dumb shit makes news. But very few of us have the same type of scrutiny that powerful people have. He's done dumb shit, but he's done a lot of pretty good shit across his lifetime.
Regular people do dumb shit and embarrass themselves at a barbecue. Powerful people do dumb shit and move markets, wreck products, distort public discourse, and still get a choir singing about their ‘pretty good shit across his lifetime.’ At some point it stops being nuance and starts being unpaid PR.
All due respect I don't really care much about Musk, but my point is that a powerful person can have a done a good thing and a dumb thing over the course of their career. The dumb thing doesn't nullify the fact they did a good thing.
As the article presents, Napoleon is considered one of the great military commanders in history. But he also did some pretty dumb shit leading the many deaths.
Nullification doesn't work when you're mixing up competence with character. Good versus evil is one axis. Smart versus dumb is another.
Someone can be smart and still be rotten. Someone can make money and still be a fraud morally.
But here, the myth of him as some singular genius falls apart the moment you look at how much of his reputation is built on other people’s work, lucky timing, and high-stakes gambling dressed up as vision.
The dumb stuff he does, but mostly the dumb stuff he says, does a good job of nullifying the 'smart' stuff.
So you’re romanticising a rich exploitative gambler who wouldn’t hesitate to sneer at 'ordinary' people, like us, as sheep.
people's character also changes over time, and everyone's work is built on other people's (of course usually people try to make sure those people are credited correctly)
he is more of an extremely driven and singularly lucky workaholic asshole with sufficient capacity to cram a lot of technical details (or drugs) into his head, which impressed and motivated technical staff (and investors), who then morphed into this Nazi creep as he got more populare he simply began to ignore negative feedback more and more (and obviously got addicted to the far-right echochamber)
>The dumb thing doesn't nullify the fact they did a good thing.
I mean, surely it depends on the exact nature of the two things. Also, contrasting good with dumb strikes me as odd. Something can be good and dumb, or bad and smart.
I mean, I've never financed or platformed violent far-right politicians, nor caused thousands to die by callously "taking a chainsaw" to government institutions. But yeah, other than that, I guess we're pretty similar.
Oh yeah, I also don't run a breeding cult. Or beg notorious sex criminals to party on their private island.
Mismanaging your household finances can ruin your livelihood and you might end up on the street.
Mismanaging a company which you didn’t build won’t ruin your livelihood. It might of the employees. It may weight heavy on your conscience but we’ve heard enough of those “I take full responsibility” phrases that we know how heavy is that.
It's easy to look at Musk and say, he's done some dumb shit when his dumb shit makes news. But very few of us have the same type of scrutiny that powerful people have. He's done dumb shit, but he's done a lot of pretty good shit across his lifetime.
Nobody is infallible.