In early November 2024 it went viral that Elon Musk is also a top-ranked Diablo player. This came as a surprise, as how does he find the time or learn so fast?
Elon Musk runs 6+ companies, raises 12 kids, and still ranks in the Top 20 of the World gamers list for Diablo, where there are only two Americans in the top 20, and Elon is one of them.@elonmusk Is it possible to learn this power? 😂 pic.twitter.com/XpB7rKIAiE
— SMX 🇺🇸 (@iam_smx) November 8, 2024
It’s not just having more time, but being smart also means learning faster and making mental shortcuts to speed-run the mastery process.
People underestimate just how much of a boost high IQ confers when it comes to learning things or finding out how stuff works. It’s not linear. Going from an IQ of 100 to 130 is not 30% faster or better, but exponential. Elon went from knowing nothing about rockets to quickly being an expert. In terms of cognitive demands, being a top-ranked gamer shouldn’t be harder than being a self-taught rocket scientist. He likely has an IQ in the 150s at least. It’s not surprising to me he became so good so fast, as I can attest also having a similar IQ and also making rapid progress at learning stuff and figuring things out.
I did this myself , speed-running math concepts using just PDFs. I’ll read the paper, figure out the concepts, and then find new stuff. It’s not just math…I can look at anything and figure out how it was done. It’s hard to describe in words, but like it comes together in my mind. I’ll see math papers today by professors where the marquee result is something I proved over a decade ago, although my technique is simpler. But I have begun putting much wore work in establishing priority, hence writing the papers, which also doubles as the IQ challenge.
Same as in business. My methods are/were so advanced it takes years before they are rediscovered, if at all, when I discover my competitors also using them. For example, in August 2021, i was the first to make the case that leveraged tech ETFs offer superior returns to crypto. Or the use of leveraged tech funds; I was not the first, but among the earliest, having started in 2016 or so.
For example, AFIK, I was the first person to identify the strategy of shorting Bitcoin when the stock market is open as hedge against leveraged tech. And also the link between Coinbase, the U.S. Treasury, and Silk Road sales. Thanks to this, I actually came out ahead this week on my investments despite the market crashing on the FOMC meeting. I wish I had done this in 2022, but I am prepared now.
On the other hand, some endeavors are not necessarily amenable to the speed-running process, such as writing, in which revising and sitting on the work can make it better, in contrast to the publish or perish mindset of academia or the competitiveness of business.