The Elon Musk Test: A Measure of Society’s Intellectual Collapse

We’ve hit a point where rational thought is now the exception, not the rule.

Common sense? Not so common anymore.
Most recycle the same empty thoughts.

No Real debate. No battle of ideas.
Just PRE-FED NARRATIVES clashing.

Ready-made worldviews delivered before you think, designed so you won’t.

Many of these come “dressed to impress,” wrapped in fancy words, sounding deep.

But strip away the intellectual cosplay, and you’re left with the same basic ingredients:

→ No nuance, only extremes
→ No room for complexity
→ Simplistic good vs evil conclusions

Elon Musk? The perfect example.

A “Rorschach test” for society’s intellectual maturity. How he’s “interpreted” exposes our collapsing capacity for nuance.

For example, it’s terrifying we can’t even agree on his COMPETENCE anymore.

1️⃣ The Absurdity of Denial

I’m no fanboy, but it’s wild how often I’ve had to argue he’s NOT stupid.
Not even “intelligent,” just NOT STUPID.

And I didn’t argue because he’s flawless or beyond criticism, far from it.

But the man:
→ Scaled Tesla to a trillion-dollar company
→ Made SpaceX the backbone of modern spaceflight
→ Disrupted multiple industries

His achievements are undeniable.
YET, we have two equally insane camps:

→ HATERS: Many who’ve built nothing, writing essays on why he’s “actually pretty stupid.”

→ WORSHIPPERS: Who treat every tweet as gospel, blindly defending every move.

2️⃣ The Death of Nuance

Musk is either Messiah or Moron.

No in-between.

BUT, you can be brilliant and deeply flawed at the same time.

Arrogant, chaotic, polarizing – yet undeniably effective.

Respecting competence doesn’t mean ignoring criticism.
It means holding complexity in your mind without collapsing into extremes.

The moment you reduce everything to “good vs evil,” you’ve lost the ability to think.

3️⃣ Outsourced Thinking

This isn’t JUST about Musk. After all, he’s merely a symptom of a broader disease.

We stopped evaluating FACTS and started regurgitating PRE-FED SCRIPTS.

You must be all-in or all-out.

No middle ground.

Why?

→ Tribalism: Your “side” hates? So MUST you
→ Laziness: Dismissing beats wrestling with complexity
→ Jealousy: Deep down, we resent outliers

And we do this with EVERYTHING.
Politics. Science. Business.

Ideas? Overrated.
What matters is signaling allegiance.

The Societal Cost

We’re teaching generations that:

→ Nuance is weakness
→ Complexity is confusion
→ EVERYTHING must fit into neat boxes

But if you can’t recognize excellence and flaws, you can’t truly learn.
Without intelligent criticism, nothing improves.

FANBOYS miss the process.
Think success is magic.

HATERS miss patterns.
Think flaws invalidate everything.

Civilization thrives on nuance.

But we’ve lost the ability to say:
“This person is brilliant at A, average at B, terrible at C”

That’s how ADULTS think.
That’s how progress happens.

But we’re NOT adults anymore.
We’re tribal children with smartphones.

So, I’ll ask:

When did nuance become taboo?
When did “it’s complicated” become unacceptable?

DON’T surrender your mind.
DON’T pick a tribe.

Think. It’s still allowed.

Gaetan Portaels

P.S: Somehow linked to that, check my other articles:

• Where Have Our Brains Gone!?
• Intelligence is The Ability to Find a Path [Quantum Thinking]
• The Death of the Creative Middle
• Before He Fell, Icarus Flew [AI, Business, and Outsourced Thinking]

Original publication date — June 11, 2025 (HERE)