“… and claimed that there was ‘zero evidence in his biography for anything higher.’ The economics commentator Noah Smith estimated Musk’s IQ at more than 130, a number gleaned from his reported SAT score. A circulating screenshot shows Fox News has pegged the number at 155, citing Sociosite, a junk website. The pollster Nate Silver guessed that Musk is ‘probably even a “genius,”‘ and theorized that he may not always appear that way because… ‘high IQs serve as a force multiplier for both positive and negative traits.’… To some of our most powerful people, IQ has come to stand in as the totalizing measure of a person — and a justification for the power that they claim. Trump has spent much of his second term sorting humans into ‘low IQ individuals’ (Kamala Harris, Representative Al Green) and ‘high IQ individuals’ (cryptocurrency boosters, Musk, Musk’s 4-year-old son)… Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is seeking ‘super high-IQ’ applicants…. This whole elite intelligence-measuring contest sets the stage for the ‘high IQ’ tech leader to seize ownership over the concept of intelligence itself — and to ultimately bring all people under its control. As Musk recently posted on X, the platform that he owns: ‘It increasingly appears that humanity is a biological bootloader for digital superintelligence.'”
Writes Amanda Hess, in “What Is Elon Musk’s IQ? The questionable measure of intelligence has now been uncoupled from any test and loosed into the discourse to justify Silicon Valley’s power” (NYT).
I didn’t know the term “bootloader.” Reminds me of “bootlicker.” And I’m distracted by the (irrelevant) image of a boot… but “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face—forever.”