Ask A Genius 1237: Tripartite Religion of the H-1B
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/01/08
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Do you think Twitter has been devolving since Musk took it over?
Rick Rosner: It has. Twitter went downhill after Musk bought it. What, three years ago? It used to be where I followed hundreds of comedians and saw hundreds of jokes daily. It was fun and less political.
When Musk came in, he invited back a bunch of trolls and disinformation merchants. Twitter’s increased toxicity chased away about 90% of the good people and 98% of the good content. There are still a few good people left, but most aren’t posting fun jokes anymore. Even the comedians on Twitter aren’t doing much comedy anymore, and neither am I.
Now, it’s mostly pointing out the nonsense we’re all dealing with. It’s a slog. Twitter has deteriorated.
When there’s a car wreck and liability needs to be assigned, lawyers go to court to determine percentages of culpability. Similarly, if you’re assigning blame for Trump’s re-election, you’d have to give a few percentage points to Twitter.
Musk himself might bear 15–20% of the blame, and you could assign a third to Twitter. It’s a mess.
Jacobsen: Elon Musk or Trump, who is more full of it?
Rosner: Trump. Musk has demonstrated effectiveness in many of his enterprises. Now, there’s certainly some “full of shit-liveness,” or whatever you want to call it, in what Musk does. For example, he’ll buy a company with potential and make it a condition of the deal that he’s included as one of the founders. He’s done this with SpaceX, Tesla, and maybe other companies. So, he’s not always the actual founder of these companies but misrepresents himself as such.
That said, SpaceX is a very effective company. They’re innovative and have successfully launched numerous projects into space. Neuralink is another example. While it’s not successful, they’re progressing toward developing brain implant technologies to improve communication or other neural functions. It’s not operational, but they’ve advanced the field.
So yeah, Musk gets things done. Trump, on the other hand, is almost exclusively a con man and a purveyor of nonsense. He may get things done, but those things are often harmful or of dubious value. His most successful enterprise was licensing his name before his presidency revealed how much of a fraud he was.
At one point, he had 17 buildings in New York City with his name on them, but he only owned three. The rest were licensing deals with developers who thought the Trump name would make their buildings seem prestigious. It sounds absurd now, but it worked for a long time.
Trump lies about everything, including his net worth. So, yeah, Trump is far more full of it than Musk. Musk has a technical education. Although there’s some debate about the accuracy of his academic credentials, he does understand technology. Trump’s understanding of most things is superficial at best. Rotten tomatoes.
Jacobsen: Where is Elon Musk most full of shit?
Rosner: I don’t know as much about Musk as I do about Trump. The whole “founders” thing is a big example of Musk’s nonsense. It’s not insignificant—it has helped him cultivate an image as the “Thomas Edison of our time” or some similar hyperbole. That image has undoubtedly facilitated further deals and opportunities.
However, it’s not in the same league as Trump and his family being among America’s biggest deadbeats, having stiffed creditors out of $1.5 billion over their careers. It’s not comparable to Trump politicizing COVID, which led to the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands of Americans and likely many more globally.
Musk’s embrace of Trump is problematic, given how full of nonsense Trump is. Still, Musk and Ramaswamy are now positioning themselves to help Trump address the budget deficit, attempting to cut trillions of dollars. We’re 19 days away from Trump taking office again, and Musk and Ramaswamy claim they can identify significant savings.
I’m skeptical. While there is room for government efficiency, it’s a tall order to make cuts that aren’t stupid or harmful. If Musk genuinely applies AI to a Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), they could identify areas to streamline costs, like reducing redundancies. But we’ll see if Musk is posturing.
As for Ramaswamy, he seems worse than Musk. He made his $2 billion with what appears to be a pump-and-dump scheme. From what I’ve read, he acquired a candidate drug for Alzheimer’s that had underperformed in early clinical trials. He hyped it up, then sold it before it failed yet another trial. That drug has never come to market because it doesn’t work.
Ramaswamy’s wealth is built on vapour. He seems more full of it than Musk—just another charlatan.
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