CharonY

From one of the links regarding his upcoming biography: It seems that there is really no evidence of an actual test.

Occam's razor, if there is no evidence of genius, why assume it? There are currently dozens of lawsuits exactly trying to stop it. Going through courts is a slow process. A big issue is that he is being used as a wrecking ball by the GOP and a disposable at that. If things go wrong (which they likely will, given the lack of competence), they can always say that he was just an outside advisor and try to wash the stench off him. If for some reasons his actions prove to be liked by the public, they can wear the success, too.

There is still no evidence of scientific acumen. Also, he is not working as a scientist. You got jerk and wrecking things right, though. In other words you merely use the shaky moniker of genius to justify his bad sides, including being a Nazi.

Fair enough and expanding perspectives is certainly not a bad thing.

! Moderator Note As noted, please provide a summary of some other basis for discussion, instead of pointing towards a pdf. As major elements do not seem to follow mainstream physics I have moved it to speculations. Please take a moment to read some of the guidelines for posting and discussing speculations.

I think my perspective is a bit different from yours and the author's. I am less worried about decisions and quality of individual politicians (which, I must add, is certainly worrisome in itself), but I focus more on the overall system and the population. I think one assumption that quite a few moderate politicians have is that once the folks like Trump and Musk are gone there will be reckoning and subsequent to a status quo before they came into power. A kind of of normalcy, if you will. However, I do think we are in a new normal situation. I have ranted on modern information systems quite a bit a few times, so I will spare you that, but I will say that the current system and the prevalent misinformation is fuel for especially radical right wing ideologies which have gained tremendous power over the last decade. I.e., I think it goes way beyond Trump his cronies and a bunch of scared, self-serving sycophants. First, we will have folks that support it out of fear, then, we will have folks do the same thing, but with conviction. Some of these elements we have seen played out with the tea party, and I think the trend has accelerated (and again, is broader than just the North American continent). If we do not deal with it on a systemic level, I fear that there will be no reversal of these agenas.

I think I have seen it, and read excerpts but it looked all very handwavy to me. I.e. it didn't really inspire me to invest into it. There was little science that I could recall. I found it mostly trying to justify his perspective, which would be fine, but lacking scientific rigor to actually bring something new to the table. It seems to be heavy with regard to wondering about stuff, which is fine, really. But it is light on the actual intellectual work, which is a red flag to me, especially if someone in any way claims to revolutionize something.

Yeah, no wonder that he is against pronouns. He likely just doesn't understand the concept of language.

I think the idea is for male white straight and loyal guys. We gotta keep the talent pool as shallow as the intellect.

I wished that was true, but in my gut I feel that we have gone down a road that is not only difficult to reverse, but it is also no longer linked to just one person anymore. I think of it more like digitally distributed cult, which is way worse.

Exactly. I think that calling it a pathology is severely misleading. It gives a false sense of security that only folks with this condition will do horrible things. Rather, it is something that most of us are capable of doing when in similar positions of unchecked power. Conversely, this means rather than focusing on individuals, it is more important to create a system that is resilient against corruption. And I think anyone with a shred of honesty knows the answer to that question. As others have mentioned, it depends on how one defines genius or brilliance. He is good in getting money, suggesting some level of people's skill. However, when we talk about intellect, at least in public there is little evidence of that. The main evidence is that he has tons of money and that is being praised by folks who, incidentally are dependent on him. While he might not be a total moron, there is overall little evidence that I have seen that suggests any sort of genius level of intellect. Incidentally there is an upcoming biography scrutinizing his intellect: https://www.thewrap.com/elon-musk-biographer-says-no-evidence-billionaire-has-intellectual-achievements/

Also scrapping oversight (from the NYT). Some of which has already happened. Especially as they have repeatedly shown to just blatantly lie https://www.cnn.com/2025/02/19/politics/doge-canceled-contracts-8-billion-invs/index.html. If they had any good intentions, honesty would be just the barest minimum. And they cannot even pass that threshold. Also one important thing to understand, DOGE was set up as a pure advisory committee, which has certain requirements and limitations. A proper community with operational functions would be under more stringent oversight. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Advisory_Committee_Act As we can see that in practice DOGE, pretty much doesn't act like an advisory committee by asserting a range of powers, including firing folks.

Attention is part of it I think, and consumerism another. Opiate for the masses, so to speak.

I do wonder though how much of the "savant" part is facilitated by generational wealth.

Mexico was not considered, their skin color has the wrong shade. Canada would likely just become feral and with plans to burn down the White House again.

In contrast to Musk, I am actually a professional scientist and colleagues have commented that I have an interesting approach to the concept of sanity. Not once did I feel the urge to throw out a Hitler salute. Being in a position of power does not equate being a genius. I would like to see you make a good argument that Trump is one. Also, what you say is basically they are good at being con men. Which mostly requires you to have a gullible target group that you can con. While these are all mechanisms helping money to go to the top, it is not even entirely necessary as a proximate mechanism. Rather, it can be an outcome of a change in the relationship between labour and capital and how the resulting outputs are distributed. For example, if investment goods (e.g., machinery, automation, computers) are getting cheaper there might be an incentive to invest more into them then into labor cost, which reduces the share of labor shares. And this can be accelerated if those investments, or e.g. something like software, increases productivity of capital investments. Couple that with capital mobility and resulting loss of labor bargaining power. Even if a company was led ethically, the way the market works simply incentivizes activities that reduce labor income and increase capital income. Cripple that by adding regressive tax models, and the process only accelerates. It is so funny, or sad, when academics are doing that. I mean, if your suit is from Men's wearhouse you are not part of the elite.

Considering he is also still blaming Obama (e.g., recently for the plane crash), one would need a very deep breath indeed.

As part of that, he is constantly lying on twitter as well as amplifying lies by others. And he is also dismantling important government agencies. Due to his inclinations to lie, it is not clear whether the way he does it is based on ineptness (thus causing more cost and damages than are saved) or whether it is is just nefarious callousness (e.g. to benefit his operations, or even something simple as exerting power without accountability). Also, he is a effing Nazi.

It was mentioned that Canada is interesting due to availability of resources. For example, more than half of US imports of crude oil comes from Canada. In addition Canada has some of the largest freshwater reserves.

There is a possibility that the protein is harmful to the cells. Are the proteins membrane proteins and/or is aggregation likely? Is the vector present in cells when not induced? And does it remain if you induce?

You are in the minority then. Things told by Trump are not depreciated, they are just fact-checked. If you cannot comprehend the difference, discussing your opinions is probably not very useful. It does look like you agree with the man who thinks that Ukraine should belong to Russia. Yet he decided not to leave the country when everyone thought that Russia is going to take over Ukraine within days. This is neither her nor there, but Churchill is a bit of a problematic character (as virtually everyone, which is a bit of an issue in itself) but he got lionized because of his resistance to the Nazis.

It all makes sense if you just assume that they are all projecting.

Well, it looks like that the US seeks to "normalize" relationships with Russia and hang Ukraine out to dry. Russia meanwhile is enticing businesses: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/19/world/europe/trump-russia-ukraine-putin-trump.html Blood money.

This is not my field, but there are a various studies looking at OC at extremes and how they might (or might not) contribute to creating potential precursor. A study discussing specifically at heating (as in atmospheric entry) is found below. The relevant part is that organic matter is not lost entirely (as in fully combusted) but sees some re-ordering of the organic components. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2020.116266

It is not a key step in evolution as such, as it predates evolution as we understand a fair bit (there is the concept of molecular vs organismal evolution, but they refer to different aspects. Also, time is not the real issue. The critical biochemical processes do not happen on geologial time scales. Rather, the issue is pinpoint the exact boundary conditions that have co-occured to make the formation of the first biomolecules possible. One fairly simple one is the question if abiogenesis actually happened on Earth. The findings of certain organic molecules on asteroids could indicate that completely different conditions than those on Earth might have given rise to them. On the other hand, it is possible that those are not related to life on Earth or that they had to come in via asteroids or other mechanisms and meet other conditions that were present on Earth.