Are YOU longing to have a discussion about how it’s possible that Elon Musk can both be a very successful entrepreneur and, apparently, a gigantic idiot? Have I got the book for you! Coming June 2025, pre-order now… - ThreadSky

helenlewis.bsky.social • 13 hours ago

Are YOU longing to have a discussion about how it’s possible that Elon Musk can both be a very successful entrepreneur and, apparently, a gigantic idiot? Have I got the book for you!

Coming June 2025, pre-order now…

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Comments

tadaaa.bsky.social•13 hours ago

As the younger brother of a "chess genius"

A several times British chess champion & Grandmaster no less

I have been aware of this for the best part of 60yrs

artist-at-law.bsky.social•5 hours ago

But is he a successful entrepreneur? Does buying companies with your parent’s dirty money count as entrepreneurship? Then tanking them like he tanked Twitter and now Tesla? Am I just unaware of Musk actually doing anything on his own?

jorisluyendijk.bsky.social•4 hours ago

are you covering Mensa and highly giftedness in the book? There's a lot of suffering, especially among kids with IQs over 140. Around half drop out of school or settle for a diploma well below their capabilities. Especially boys.

helenlewis.bsky.social•1 hour ago

Not specifically that, but I’m covering the high IQ societies as a refuge for self-described outsiders.

arewold.bsky.social•13 hours ago

Decent timing 😅

gigatarquin.bsky.social•6 hours ago

📌

tony-silver.bsky.social•10 hours ago

There's a lot of luck and timing involved.

Musk is very likely to simply be as stupid as he seems.

stokeysue.bsky.social•13 hours ago

The rebellious scientist - or the maverick medic who makes the breakthrough the scientists missed - is one of my pet peeves

helenlewis.bsky.social•13 hours ago

Yes, I write about Freeman Dyson’s essay on the “scientist as rebel”, and whether this might be illuminating of his later climate contrarianism.

peternimmo.bsky.social•12 hours ago

Perhaps you get so famous you feel beyond contradiction. CF another climate denier, TV biologist David Bellamy

peternimmo.bsky.social•11 hours ago

And Johnny Ball

peternimmo.bsky.social•11 hours ago

Nigel Lawson had had that sort of vibe latterly

lordbonkers.bsky.social•11 hours ago

And science isn't objective because scientists are purer in their motives than the rest of us. It's objective because a community of flawed individuals criticise each other's work. (It's all in Popper.) 🙂

jukkisahonen.bsky.social•13 hours ago

Are you familiar with The Intelligence Trap? I’m curious if you have the same approach or something very different?

As in: intelligence does not protect from stupidity, and may in some cases actually amplify it.

tadaaa.bsky.social•12 hours ago

If you follow the flatearth debate its pretty clear the flatearthers need a certain level of intelligence to make their case (nonsense that it is) - especially when they go up against actual physicists, which they often do

jukkisahonen.bsky.social•12 hours ago

In my personal network I see that conspiracy theories seem to find fertile ground in the minds of people with a measure of:

1) intelligence
2) creativity
3) idle hands

… in a critical mixture.

helenlewis.bsky.social•13 hours ago

Haven’t read that — and it looks like the Dunning Kruger effect doesn’t replicate, so I’m wary of overstatement. But I do think people end up believing their own hype in a way that does not foster intellectual humility and curiosity.

jukkisahonen.bsky.social•13 hours ago

I personally feel like any assumed intelligence I may have seems to also enable me to come up with very creative rationalizations, even when clearly not to my personal advantage 😄

frank-roesler.bsky.social•4 hours ago

https://bsky.app/profile/daviddunning6.bsky.social
Does it not?

kafkadesk.bsky.social•12 hours ago

This book will make me feel better about my life.

johnmichaelw.bsky.social•5 hours ago

Marvellous, will pre-order! Was saying something on this in the other place not just the other day.

toddlenrant.bsky.social•13 hours ago

'Longing'?! 😉

almagroschool.bsky.social•11 hours ago

Free association rec: https://www.amazon.com/Theodor-W-Adorno-Last-Genius/dp/0674057139

helenlewis.bsky.social•13 hours ago

Final cover coming soon. In the meantime, pre-order here:

Bookshop
https://uk.bookshop.org/p/books/the-genius-myth-helen-lewis/7743859

Amazon
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Genius-Myth-Helen-Lewis/dp/1787333248/

fluoronaut.bsky.social•13 hours ago

I look forward to the cover photo of Elon Musk.

helenlewis.bsky.social•13 hours ago

So many great options to choose from: letting the sink into Twitter, the “Roman salute”, Kekius Maximus…

fluoronaut.bsky.social•13 hours ago

June 2025 may be an optimistic pub date.

kurtstat.bsky.social•13 hours ago

Pre-ordered!

stephiec.bsky.social•10 hours ago

I’ll look forward to reading this. Is the title really The Male Genius Myth? I suspect there’s not many women allowed to be crowned as more special than the rest of us, allowed to be as mediocre and flawed as these male ‘geniuses’. And actual women geniuses are probably dismissed and overlooked.

helenlewis.bsky.social•10 hours ago

Yes, I think we are more reluctant to put women on a pedestal. (Then there’s the thorny interaction between ambition/selfishness, legal discrimination in history and—maybe—greater male variability.)

stephiec.bsky.social•8 hours ago

I suppose I was thinking of the slightly less nuanced patriarchy (and not just the enabling factor of who cooked Elon Musk’s/Steve Jobs’/etc dinner). I find it hard to imagine a woman getting away with Musk’s antics

marstrina.bsky.social•7 hours ago

She'd be sectioned (Britney was), but more to the point she'd be sectioned round about the time of the Grimes marriage, latest - not after being given the opportunity to become the most powerful drug addict on earth.

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