Comment by rbanffy
2 years ago
> but he _would_ listen to the advice from those around them.
At this point, I'm assuming he is surrounded by people too eager to please him.
> Being smart also means understanding what you don't know and not surround yourself with sycophants.
The inescapable conclusion is that Elon is not as smart as he thinks. Whether he can learn is open to debate and will become evident shortly.
> At this point, I'm assuming he is surrounded by people too eager to please him.
He definitely is. Or at least people pretending to.
I think this is one of the biggest risks of being too successful, too rich: it becomes too easy to surround yourself with people who will only agree with everything you say, and you end up believing in yourself too much, any criticism is jealousy, any contradiction is sabotage, and obviously you must really be so smart you can do anything, because look at all the people telling you so.
(Unrelated, but I think that's also what hurt the Star Wars prequels; Lucas was the legend. He either didn't get or didn't accept the constructive criticism that made the originals great.)
I have no inside info of Twitter besides being an interested bystander, but it seems like he's flat out ignored advice (and later fired the advice givers) at multiple points since taking over. I'm sure anyone left is only still around by being a yesman.