Between the ages of 18-26 or so I was a really big Elon Musk fan. It's hard to deny the exciting technological progress made by Tesla and SpaceX on many fronts and I hugely bought into the idea that this stemmed from him. On some level I still believe it does - he's been running both successfully for a long time so he clearly isn't utterly full of shit.

But watching the autopilot predictions become progressively sillier, over and over - watching the Thai cave diving debacle - watching his pathetic Twitter exchanges where he needlessly belittles people in childish ways when he could have just maintained his silence and ignored them - his idiotic pronouncements on the pandemic - I found along the way I lost nearly all of my respect for him. I stopped taking him seriously and came to believe most of the things he says publicly aren't worth hearing or reading about.

I still view him as a brilliant business leader, but....interestingly, he seems to also be an imbecile. And I guess that isn't really surprising, because people are rarely reducible to one thing, but it wasn't until I reached my late 20s that I started to see it more clearly.