Elon's Antics

  • Thread starter Danoff
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MIE1992
I feel like the IQ test as a concept is a vesitigal meme that may’ve done more harm than good. Honestly, I think a General GRE score would be a comparatively better measure.
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They'll keep pushing this Bell Curve **** as long as their guys come out on top.
 
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Danoff
I've seen super smart grad school level engineers bomb the LSAT, so there's another test to throw into the mix.
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I spent quite a bit of time dealing with engineering students on my FSAE team and many of them struck me as genuinely autistic, and not in a funny. Street smarts and daily life problem-solving skills were weak to say the least. Kind of a miracle they were able to feed themselves. They also loved to get into arguments about trivial things just to establish intellectual dominance which is funny because that's exactly the sort of trait that'll either keep you from getting hired in aviation or failing out of training. I know because I used to have traits like that but my aviation training career forced it out of me.
eran0004
Second, it’s complete nonsense that you need high IQ to fly an airliner. You’re flying the aircraft - not inventing it. What you need is good vision, good teamwork and a good understanding of the systems. The last part is why you go to flight school.
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I have no idea how IQ relates to it, or even what IQ tests are actually measuring, but I assume it comes down to basic problem solving aptitude. I also assume that if you measured this before and after years of training you'd get drastically different results as a person's methods are molded by the process. You're exactly right that this is the purpose of training, in any industry.
UKMikey
Another respondent goes on to compare recent diversity hires with long experienced pilots saying in his experience they're less good at dealing with crises. Well, like duh, as new hires they won't have the flying hours of the grizzled longtimers and old hands he's comparing them with.

I wonder whether an actual pilot like @Keef would have something to add here.
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There are a ton of deep-seeded reasons why black Americans and other minorities might not do as well in aviation but natural ability isn't one of them. There are huge pushes in the US right now for equity in aviation, especially for black Americans and women, because frankly old white men have refused to accept them into the club for hundreds of years and the people running the club have just started to retire literally within the past couple decades. Aviation happens to be one of the most extreme examples of employment inequality and the reasons start before a child even sees their first airplane flying overhead.

There's also the aspect you mention of industry lifers forgetting where they came from or how they got to where they are. The industry has been trying to stamp out this type of thinking for decades now but it's really hard to do with the older generations who mostly came from old-school military flying. Superiority complexes abound and I'm aware of several of my own colleagues who display this when I'm flying with them. I actually tend to be on my toes even more than usual with them because their superiority complexes make them prone to minor mistakes much more often, or refusal to acknowledge minor mistakes, or a disregard for procedural detail, etc. Do they make these mistakes because they're experienced enough to know when they can get away with it, or do I notice these mistakes because I'm inexperienced enough to be afraid to veer from SOP? Two completely different skill levels and cultures clashing.

...

Musk and whoever these other people are who are discussing this are displaying extreme versions of personality traits that you can observe in people in technical fields like pilots and engineers. Various learning disabilities are common especially in younger generations and non-military pilots, although I think the military pilots were also trained to have a secrecy concerning personal issues. Minor cases of autism and ADHD etc, I'm no expert on this stuff, but it's pretty common and can be very annoying on occasion. Musk is exactly the type of person who probably wouldn't make it through training, and if they did they'd eventually make a mistake big enough to get them disciplined. They're extremely gifted students and problem solvers but they're also very bad at taking direction and have awful people skills which is key for Crew Resource Management. The CRM aspect of training is exactly how you take an emotionally undeveloped high school or college kid and turn them into a responsible, confident adult within a few years, and send them off to an airline where they can pair with countless other colleagues every day but still get the job done with minimal drama. It's really no surprise that they're resorting to dumb speculation as if they're God's gift to knowledge. They're not good people and they shouldn't be put in charge of anybody else's wellbeing. Hell, I'm no people person either but at least I know how to be respectful.

Speaking of pairing well with others, personality traits are a huge aspect of hiring in aviation, arguably the biggest even above basic skill which is easier to measure. Besides wearing a suit, my company's in-person interview was probably 80% about my character with 20% being an objective skills assessment in a simulator. They literally wanted to know if I'm tolerable to spend time with and have a good attitude about problem solving, safety, CRM, etc. Some companies like Delta actually have personality assessment quizzes early in the hiring process. It has nothing to do with IQ or even aviation knowledge - it's used for classroom and simulator partner pairing. They're trying to pair people in the class who would have the best chance of studying and working together effectively. My company also did this but used personal judgement to make the call, and it resulted in some odd pairings. One pairing in my class was the two most obviously anxiety-ridden students who were always worried if they were doing well enough and honestly asked a lot of annoying questions all throughout training. They did great together and ended up passing everything with flying colors. I wouldn't have been able to stand being paired with either of them for more than a couple hours and if I had to judge somebody based on "IQ" I personally would've ranked them lower than most, and less likely to calmly respond to crises...but that's why I'm not a hiring or training manager, because analyzing a person's behavior and aptitude isn't something I excel at.

Elon probably thinks I don't excel at that because I never finished my bachelor's degree. Here's some news for him: Virtually all airlines and operators in the US have eliminated college degree requirements. For the most part the industry has decided that general college education isn't particularly relevant to aviation, even when it comes to study skills or dedication or discipline or anything like that. That's the biggest difference between civilian and ex-military candidates because all military pilots must have a bachelor's degree before they get selected for flight training. Regardless of how their "IQ" compares with civilian candidates, one common problem I'm aware of is culture shock when a military pilot enters civilian airlines. Believe it or not there is a bit of a learning curve, and they're trying to unlearn deeply engrained habits taught by the military. Large airframe pilots fare the best but fighter pilots tend to be a pain in the ass to retrain by civilian companies, largely because they have some of the personality traits that are highly desirable in one realm but undesirable in the other.

Like Elon, they can be hard-headed assholes who think they're the cream of the crop. But in the civilian world you don't need to be a hyper-competitive survivalist tactician, you just have to be a decent person who can take instruction and not get stressed out. There are plenty of minorities in America who could fit that bill if society didn't make it so difficult for them to find resources and mentorship. Hell, I'm a white kid from the burbs living in an Air Force city and was surrounded by aviation my entire life, and I had zero guidance toward this career until in my early 20s I opened a community college catalog out of pure desperation. Discovering this was an accident and supposedly I had every advantage society could give me, besides aviation running in the family which is probably 50% of connections or more. I'm not sure how an IQ score is relevant to that.
 
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Keef
I spent quite a bit of time dealing with engineering students on my FSAE team and many of them struck me as genuinely autistic, and not in a funny. Street smarts and daily life problem-solving skills were weak to say the least. Kind of a miracle they were able to feed themselves. They also loved to get into arguments about trivial things just to establish intellectual dominance which is funny because that's exactly the sort of trait that'll either keep you from getting hired in aviation or failing out of training. I know because I used to have traits like that but my aviation training career forced it out of me.

I have no idea how IQ relates to it, or even what IQ tests are actually measuring, but I assume it comes down to basic problem solving aptitude. I also assume that if you measured this before and after years of training you'd get drastically different results as a person's methods are molded by the process. You're exactly right that this is the purpose of training, in any industry.

There are a ton of deep-seeded reasons why black Americans and other minorities might not do as well in aviation but natural ability isn't one of them. There are huge pushes in the US right now for equity in aviation, especially for black Americans and women, because frankly old white men have refused to accept them into the club for hundreds of years and the people running the club have just started to retire literally within the past couple decades. Aviation happens to be one of the most extreme examples of employment inequality and the reasons start before a child even sees their first airplane flying overhead.

There's also the aspect you mention of industry lifers forgetting where they came from or how they got to where they are. The industry has been trying to stamp out this type of thinking for decades now but it's really hard to do with the older generations who mostly came from old-school military flying. Superiority complexes abound and I'm aware of several of my own colleagues who display this when I'm flying with them. I actually tend to be on my toes even more than usual with them because their superiority complexes make them prone to minor mistakes much more often, or refusal to acknowledge minor mistakes, or a disregard for procedural detail, etc. Do they make these mistakes because they're experienced enough to know when they can get away with it, or do I notice these mistakes because I'm inexperienced enough to be afraid to veer from SOP? Two completely different skill levels and cultures clashing.

...

Musk and whoever these other people are who are discussing this are displaying extreme versions of personality traits that you can observe in people in technical fields like pilots and engineers. Various learning disabilities are common especially in younger generations and non-military pilots, although I think the military pilots were also trained to have a secrecy concerning personal issues. Minor cases of autism and ADHD etc, I'm no expert on this stuff, but it's pretty common and can be very annoying on occasion. Musk is exactly the type of person who probably wouldn't make it through training, and if they did they'd eventually make a mistake big enough to get them disciplined. They're extremely gifted students and problem solvers but they're also very bad at taking direction and have awful people skills which is key for Crew Resource Management. The CRM aspect of training is exactly how you take an emotionally undeveloped high school or college kid and turn them into a responsible, confident adult within a few years, and send them off to an airline where they can pair with countless other colleagues every day but still get the job done with minimal drama. It's really no surprise that they're resorting to dumb speculation as if they're God's gift to knowledge. They're not good people and they shouldn't be put in charge of anybody else's wellbeing. Hell, I'm no people person either but at least I know how to be respectful.

Speaking of pairing well with others, personality traits are a huge aspect of hiring in aviation, arguably the biggest even above basic skill which is easier to measure. Besides wearing a suit, my company's in-person interview was probably 80% about my character with 20% being an objective skills assessment in a simulator. They literally wanted to know if I'm tolerable to spend time with and have a good attitude about problem solving, safety, CRM, etc. Some companies like Delta actually have personality assessment quizzes early in the hiring process. It has nothing to do with IQ or even aviation knowledge - it's used for classroom and simulator partner pairing. They're trying to pair people in the class who would have the best chance of studying and working together effectively. My company also did this but used personal judgement to make the call, and it resulted in some odd pairings. One pairing in my class was the two most obviously anxiety-ridden students who were always worried if they were doing well enough and honestly asked a lot of annoying questions all throughout training. They did great together and ended up passing everything with flying colors. I wouldn't have been able to stand being paired with either of them for more than a couple hours and if I had to judge somebody based on "IQ" I personally would've ranked them lower than most, and less likely to calmly respond to crises...but that's why I'm not a hiring or training manager, because analyzing a person's behavior and aptitude isn't something I excel at.

Elon probably thinks I don't excel at that because I never finished my bachelor's degree. Here's some news for him: Virtually all airlines and operators in the US have eliminated college degree requirements. For the most part the industry has decided that general college education isn't particularly relevant to aviation, even when it comes to study skills or dedication or discipline or anything like that. That's the biggest difference between civilian and ex-military candidates because all military pilots must have a bachelor's degree before they get selected for flight training. Regardless of how their "IQ" compares with civilian candidates, one common problem I'm aware of is culture shock when a military pilot enters civilian airlines. Believe it or not there is a bit of a learning curve, and they're trying to unlearn deeply engrained habits taught by the military. Large airframe pilots fare the best but fighter pilots tend to be a pain in the ass to retrain by civilian companies, largely because they have some of the personality traits that are highly desirable in one realm but undesirable in the other.

Like Elon, they can be hard-headed assholes who think they're the cream of the crop. But in the civilian world you don't need to be a hyper-competitive survivalist tactician, you just have to be a decent person who can take instruction and not get stressed out. There are plenty of minorities in America who could fit that bill if society didn't make it so difficult for them to find resources and mentorship. Hell, I'm a white kid from the burbs living in an Air Force city and was surrounded by aviation my entire life, and I had zero guidance toward this career until in my early 20s I opened a community college catalog out of pure desperation. Discovering this was an accident and supposedly I had every advantage society could give me, besides aviation running in the family which is probably 50% of connections or more. I'm not sure how an IQ score is relevant to that.
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A lot of that applies to a lot of jobs in a lot of fields. Being a good team member goes a very long way.
 
Danoff
A lot of that applies to a lot of jobs in a lot of fields. Being a good team member goes a very long way.
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Oh absolutely. I think technical fields like piloting tend to attract people who actually need help being a good team member moreso than others which is why such a focus is put on that during training. I'd say an unusually high proportion of pilots have odd personality traits to say the least. I'm one of them.

Less so than engineers though, they're a bunch of nerds.
 
FB_IMG_1705133894948.jpg
 
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It may very well have been posted here already, but I think the Ding Dlong has already once tweeted out how the National Labor Relations Board is bad & unnecessary (& probably woke).

Hard to fault if I missed it here though. Everything the guy posts is either cringe humor or a complete lack of IQ.
 
Seems Tesla not paying shareholders a dividend might have been less about reinvesting profits and more about them not working hard enough for it...

 
MatskiMonk
Seems Tesla not paying shareholders a dividend might have been less about reinvesting profits and more about them not working hard enough for it...

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More on that

arstechnica.com

Elon Musk gives Tesla ultimatum: Another 12% of shares or no AI, robotics

Although 95% of its revenue is automotive, Musk says Tesla is a robotics/AI company.
arstechnica.com arstechnica.com

Someone needs to explain to him how stock works. You sell it, and then if you want it back you purchase it. Nothing is stopping him from having more stock, he just needs to buy it.
 
Danoff
More on that

arstechnica.com

Elon Musk gives Tesla ultimatum: Another 12% of shares or no AI, robotics

Although 95% of its revenue is automotive, Musk says Tesla is a robotics/AI company.
arstechnica.com arstechnica.com

Someone needs to explain to him how stock works. You sell it, and then if you want it back you purchase it. Nothing is stopping him from having more stock, he just needs to buy it.
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He believes as the founder (which he is not) that he can just ask and they give it to him for free. The two options he can use without buying more stock are either have Tesla issue more shares (which will tank the price) or have Tesla not go into robotics (which will classify the company less as a tech company and more as an automobile company, which would tank the price).
 
This is what happens when children are never told "no" and expect everything and everyone to acquiesce to their every beck and call.
 
Liquid
This is what happens when children are never told "no" and expect everything and everyone to acquiesce to their every beck and call.
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Well, I mean, mom divorced when he was 10 and was busy modeling, & dad was too busy raising his current wife.
 
TheCracker
All he needs is a scruffy neck bandana and a weird leather cap and he could pass for the Zefram Cochrane he sees himself as.
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And a tape in the background playing "Magic Carpetbagger Ride".
 
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Danoff
More on that

arstechnica.com

Elon Musk gives Tesla ultimatum: Another 12% of shares or no AI, robotics

Although 95% of its revenue is automotive, Musk says Tesla is a robotics/AI company.
arstechnica.com arstechnica.com

Someone needs to explain to him how stock works. You sell it, and then if you want it back you purchase it. Nothing is stopping him from having more stock, he just needs to buy it.
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Seems like an ideal time for the shareholders to tell him to shove it up his drainpipe, and then when he inevitably does something stupidly retaliatory to get rid of him entirely. The dude is almost pure liability for any company he's involved in at the moment.
 
auschwitz.jpg

Screenshot-20240122-182347-Samsung-Internet.jpg


Look I know this was all the way back in...[squint]...November of 2023...but come on.

artist-eric-musk1.jpg
 
TexRex
auschwitz.jpg

Screenshot-20240122-182347-Samsung-Internet.jpg


Look I know this was all the way back in...[squint]...November of 2023...but come on.

artist-eric-musk1.jpg
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Ah brilliant. Not only does he have ideas that don't work today (X), he now has ideas that wouldn't have worked in his alternate universe (X, with Nazis, somehow preventing the Holocaust by Nazis).
 
Milhouse would have saved Jews from the Holocaust because he would have deplatformed anyone who spoke about it and we'd never have heard about it.

We're getting into Fatherland the Holocaust was successful and did happen but nobody knows about it territory here.
 
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So he's tried to appease those who have (rightly) accused him of an anti semitic bias by visiting Auschwitz. But who is he trying to hoodwink with such a blatant PR stunt? His bias is there for everyone to see every time he likes or retweets that kind of stuff so it's not going to convince them otherwise, and fanboys won't care that he's been, they'll just think he's trying to 'appeasing the libs' with it.
 
TheCracker
So he's tried to appease those who have (rightly) accused him of an anti semitic bias by visiting Auschwitz. But who is he trying to hoodwink with such a blatant PR stunt? His bias is there for everyone to see every time he likes or retweets that kind of stuff so it's not going to convince them otherwise, and fanboys won't care that he's been, they'll just think he's trying to 'appeasing the libs' with it.
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He may have visited it, but it doesn't mean he learned anything.
 

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