I wish I could write like Edward Zitron… he fucking nails it.
Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and Sam Altman are not, despite their achievements, remarkable people. They are dull, and while they might be intelligent, they’re far from intellectual, appearing to lack any real interests, hobbies or joys, other than Zuckerberg’s brief dalliance with mixed martial arts. They all read the same shit, they talk the same way, they have the same faux-intellectualism that usually boils down to how they’re “big thinkers” that think about “big things” like “intelligence” and “consciousness,” when what they mostly do is dance around issues without adding anything substantive, because they don’t really believe anything.
At the core of this problem is, in my mind, a distinct unwillingness — perhaps it’s a kind of cognitive dissonance — to believe that somebody could be so rich, powerful, and mediocre. It’s much easier to see Sam Altman as a “genius master-class strategist” than as just another rich guy that’s really good at manipulating other rich guys into doing things for him, or Elon Musk as a “precocious genius” rather than a boorish oaf that’s exceedingly good at leveraging both assets and his personal brand.
It’s far more comfortable to see the world as one where these people have “earned” their position, and that they, at the top of their industries, are special people, because otherwise you’d have to consider that for the most part, they’re all frightfully average.
Dave5 
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