The Laurel and Hardy de nos jours
When all else fails there’s still the hilarity of Musk v Everyone.
Elon Musk has called for Nigel Farage to be replaced as leader of Reform UK, just weeks after reports the multi-billionaire was in talks to donate to the party.
In a post on his social media site X, Musk said Farage “doesn’t have what it takes” to lead the party – but did not explain his reasoning.
Farage suggested this was due to a disagreement over Musk’s support for far-right activist Tommy Robinson.
No you’re the sellout no you are no you are
The comment from the tech entrepreneur comes hours after Farage described Musk as a “friend” in an interview on the BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg programme.
Of course it does. That’s Musk’s sense of humor, as well as his sense of entitlement and his sense of spite and his sense of Musk First. “Call me a friend will you??! Like hell I am!”
In the interview broadcast earlier on Sunday, Farage told the BBC that the fact that Musk “supports me politically and supports Reform doesn’t mean I have to agree with every single statement he makes on X”.
So Musk hastened to provide him with statements on X to not agree with. Everyone wins!
Really Ophelia, we should all be much more obsequiously appreciative of Elon’s omnicompetence. I’m sure that in short order, once all of his suggestions on everything are put into immediate practice, the world will be in perfect working order! All hail Musk, our Prophet and Saviour!
It’s a Greek farce, isn’t it? No tragedy – although it may seem so to Farridge. Or something like the myth of the Rat Kings: clusters of rats, their tails tangled together and unable to wholly break free of one another, that were found, it is said, during the Black Death, particularly in Germany There is a splendid one on view in a museum in Strasburg – just Google: File:Strasbourg, Rat King (2).jpg.
I wonder how many other rats will now desert that holed ship, the Nigel Farridge, whom they’ve groomed so lovingly for so long (we’ve seen it recently here), in order to cuddle up to the great Musk and frantically groom him all the more. I am reminded of Stalin’s show-trials, or Saddam Hussein’s tactics, when people scuttled hurriedly away from those who had hitherto been friends and allies, but who, out of the blue, had had accusations, in virtually every case false, brought against them.
Oh, and another recent tweet from our King Rat:
“There are certainly other factors at play, but heavy use of c-sections allows for a larger brain, as brain size has historically been limited by birth canal diameter.”
That’ll get all our wannabe eugenicists and believers in IQ as the only important thing in life (since it leads to lots of lovely wealth and power) slavering. C-sections for you all, ladies (if you are so fortunate as to be deigned a connexion with us), since we want to pass our good genes on!
“Your body, my choice!”
There is no solid evidence to support the contention that brain size is correlated with intelligence. So let the ladies alone, you brainless twit! (Not you, Tim Harris!)
Oh, you can’t expect the Great Musk to worry about piddling details like that! Like Donald Trump with his crowds and his hands and the genitalia of Arnold Palmer, the Great Musk thinks BIG – and the biglier the better.
He’s doing eugenics wrong… C-sections for bigger brains? That’s 19th century garbage.
Well, of course he’s doing it wrong. The more he prattles away on X, the more ignorant, foolish, unpleasant & ketaminised he shows himself to be.
I see that those who like sneering at Musk are once again sneering. And yet, he’s right, his Tweet is correct.
First, there is indeed a correlation between brain size and intelligence, within humans today, and over evolutionary time from our ancestors, and between species.
Humans have evolved to be big-brained, high-intelligence mammals. But the constraints of birthing — how to get a large-brained baby through the female birth canal — have produced huge tensions. It means that birth in humans is generally way more difficult than in other mammals, it has forced big compromises in female anatomy (one of the reasons women are generally less good at sport is that the female pelvis has been forced to accommodate large-brained babies, whereas the male pelvis is optimised for running), and it has forced human babies to essentially be born premature, before their brains get too big to be born at all (many other mammals can walk minutes after birth).
From the evolutionary perspective, there has obviously been large selection pressure towards larger-brained babies, but that has been countered and limited by the baby and/or the mother dying in childbirth if the brain was too big.
And, equally obviously, c-sections allow larger-brained babies to survive, and, yes, if this is a large fraction of births and if it is continued over generations, then yes it will have consequences. That’s how evolution works! Musk’s Tweet is correct.
All this is rather basic biology. And too few people think from the perspective of evolutionary biology (as Musk was doing), since that pespective is necessary for understanding ourselves.
Let’s review the Tweet:
“There are certainly other factors at play, …”
Correct.
“… but heavy use of c-sections allows for a larger brain, …”
Correct, it does. Obviously.
“… as brain size has historically been limited by birth canal diameter.”
Correct, it has been. Obviously.
The sneering non-entities just belittle themselves.
I suggest that Coel, instead of trotting out his usual simplistic cant about evolution (cant which is invariably connected with his obsession with other people’s IQs – has he ever inspected his own?), should look into the short-term & long-term consequences of c-sections for the mother’s health and fertility.
Perhaps Coel could also tell us his opinion of Stephen Christopher Yaxley-Lennon, otherwise known as ‘Tommy Robinson’, of whom the hero before whom he so shamelessly grovels appears to be fond. I don’t whether Yaxley-Lennon was born by means of a c-section or not, but perhaps our fan-boy has the goods on this, too. Perhaps he even knows what Yaxley-Lennon’s IQ is.
@Tim:
Tim, first, in what way is my comment “simplistic cant” (do you ever attempt to argue instead of just sneering? In what way is anything I said simplistic or inaccurate?)?
And what’s the relevance of “consequences of c-sections for the mother’s health and fertility” to what I or Musk said (are you tacitly accepting that Musk’s Tweet was fine by changing the topic somewhat?)?
If you dislike sneering, maybe don’t adopt a sneering tone while expressing your dislike of it…?
Also: I see the person that likes brown nosing Musk is once again brown nosing Musk…
No there isn’t. Within humans: there is only weak correlation and it has not been established to be causal. If it was, then men – who tend to have larger brains, due to having larger skulls, due to being larger in general – would tend to be smarter than women. This has not been established.
And of course outside of humans: you realise we are smarter than a great many creatures with bigger brains than us, right? It is not size but complexity and interconnectedness that gives us the edge.
Some people don’t understand evolutionary biology as well as they think they do, for instance, when their claims become largely teleological. Perhaps that’s the “genius” kicking in, I don’t know.
@Holms:
Fair point, I do tend to respond in kind. If people actually want to discuss the issues then I tend to do that; if people just want to sneer than I have been known to sneer back.
It’s a correlation of about 0.3 to 0.4, after controlling for other factors such as body size. That’s actually a fairly strong correlation, but, yes, it’s not the only factor.
Sure, yes. Elephants and whales have bigger brains than us. That’s because a large part of what the brain is doing is just monitoring and controlling the body, so bigger-bodied mammals tend to have larger brains. That’s accepted, but the above-mentioned correlation of brain size to intelligence is in addition to that effect.
Again, and as you point to, this is down to body size.
While there may well be effects due to complexity and interconnectedness, the mere size does have to matter also. We pay too many penalties for our large brains for this not to be the case. As above, this include: (1) much greater difficulty of childbirth than other mammals, leading to much greater rates of maternal death in childbirth (1 to 2% before modern times) and higher rates of babies being born dead (10% or more; though of course brain size is not the only issue); (2) compromises in female anatomy; (3) babies being born essentially premature and needing vast amounts of care in early years; (4) greatly extended childhood compared to similar-size mammals; (5) the vast energy requirements of the brain, such that in early childhood about 50% of the energy intake of an infant is going to sustaining and growing the brain.
There’s no way that evolution would have gone down this route unless our large brains were then giving equally large advantages in terms of behavioural traits.
@twiliter:
Who has suggested anything teleological?
I did. After reading those unsound conclusions re: means/ends in evolutionary biology.
Just to add, since Musk’s Tweet started this, that Tweet said nothing about intelligence, it was purely about brain size.
He simply stated (quite correctly) that the increased availability of c-section births could have enabled more larger-brained babies to survive birth, and hence might contribute to explaining an increase in the average brain size in recent decades. (Obviously other factors, such as nutrition, could also play a role.)
What’s wrong with that? He is correct! Really, people wanting to disparage Musk need to improve their aim a bit.
He is not correct. There is no reason to believe any of his ill informed prognosticating. Musk’s desire to manipulate the human species is obvious and grotesque. There’s a word for it. It starts with an E.
Aim isn’t necessary, Musk makes it like hitting the broad side of a barn. The sound bite “savant.”
@twiliter:
In what way? What, precsisely, about his tweet is incorrect?
He was not prognosticating, he was commenting on extant data in the tweet that he was replying to. (Namely this one, which correctly summarised a recent study showing that “More recent birth cohorts have greater cranial volumes, more gray matter, and larger hippocampuses”.)
Where has he expressed any desire to manipulate the human species?? Really, the stuff that Musk critics make up is just bizarre. Aren’t there enough tweets that you can sensibly criticise him for?
Asked.
And answered.
If you are accusing me of that, then I would like to state that I rarely think from other standpoints when biology is concerned. I am a biologist. I taught evolutionary biology. I annoy people by thinking from an evolutionary biology perspective.
While it is true that our species has a large brain, and that gives us advantages in the amount of gray matter, etc, individual intelligence in humans has not been demonstrated to be caused by large brain size. In fact, hydrocephalic babies have large brains, but are usually mentally slow. The fellow who actually started the brain measuring was highly intelligent; his brain was not particularly large.
It is easy to pick and choose data on brain size; there have been a lot of poorly done studies, and it is easy to find one that shows what you want it to show. In addition, studies of intelligence/IQ have been so flawed that in many cases we can’t draw any correlation because we can’t determine whether we are measuring intelligence or something else.
As for increased C-sections – anytime you cut someone open, there is increased risk. Abdominal surgeries are risky. The recovery time for women is longer than a standard birth. Anesthesia is risky. C-sections are necessary in some births, but if done solely in the hope of increasing brain size, they are, frankly, exploitation and abuse of women. In addition, for brain size to increase, skull size will need to increase. When that happens, neck size will need to increase. We will also need corresponding changes in the heart, as a larger brain will require more blood.
Evolution is not a simple ‘let’s just improve this thing, okay?’ proposition. Few people understand how evolution actually works, mostly because of simplistic presentations on television and in the movies, and too little attention in biology classes. Musk is promoting a simplistic view of the world that does not map onto biology the way he – and tons of others – imagines it.
This isn’t saying anything all that hypercritical of Musk; he is not a biologist and would not be expected to understand it the way biologists do. The criticism is more for spewing his ignorance when he has such outsized influence. Keep in mind, Neil DeGrasse Tyson, truly a brilliant thinker, was taken to task by evolutionary biologists when he made ignorant tweets about evolution. His response was the same sort of thing Musk usually does and the same thing you are doing here: he doubled down, and accused prominent, respected evolutionary biologists of not understanding evolutionary biology. This stance earned him a well-deserved mocking. That doesn’t change his status as a well respected astrophysicist.
Evolution is complicated; the living world is orders of magnitude more complicated than our economic system, and nearly nobody understands our economic system. And like economics, everyone has a simplistic answer for complicated evolutionary questions.
@iknklast:
Ah right, so at this point I think I see the cause of the kerfuffle. And, ok, I may be rather dim for not having realised this earlier in the thread. You are, are you, interpreting Musk as advocating c-sections in order to increase brain size in order to increase intelligence? Is that so?
Well, ok, if that were his intent then the criticisms being made would indeed be fair enough. But that’s really not what he said! The tweet was not prescriptive, it was descriptive. It was not a tweet from an activist mindset (“I want to change the world for the better”), it was a tweet from a scientific mindset (“how can we understand these findings?”).
This started when one of the people Musk follows on X tweeted about a pre-print “Secular Trends in Head Size and Cerebral Volumes In the Framingham Heart Study for Birth Years 1902-1985” (link).
This study assessed data from MRI scans of 4500 people to show that average human brain size seems to have increased over birth cohorts 1902 to 1985, and, further, that brain size increased to a greater extent than body size.
Musk merely and narrowly commented that, one factor that might be involved here is that the increased use of c-sections over that time might have allowed more larger-brain babies to have survived birth (than would have been the case prior to widespread c-sections) and hence this might budge the average upwards.
That’s all it was! It was a descriptive statement seeking to (partially) explain the data. There was no prescriptive intent there.
Now, if one takes that narrow and straightforward interpretion of the tweet (which is indeed exactly and literally what it says) then can you — as a biologist — find any fault with it?
[My intuition would be along the lines: while there might be an effect like this, I wouldn’t expect it to be that big, and would guess that changes in nutrition are playing a bigger role, but then I haven’t attempted to make any quantitative analysis, so I could be wrong.]
Thanks ikn @20. Extremely well put.
Ooh look at you go, pontificating after reading a wiki page. Meanwhile, people with actual biology studies under their belt? Nah.
…Which leads to brain size. But this weakness in your theory is dismissed. Nice.
Fascinating that this is exactly the connection you defended in #8.
@Holms: #23:
It’s not a weakness in my theory (and it’s not “my theory”, it’s accepted biology). It’s well known that brain size varies primarily with body size, but in addition to that brain size is also related to intelligence (so for mammals of the same body mass, larger brains will correlate with higher intelligence). Sometimes more than one variable can be important!
Correct, I did indeed defend it and do defend it (and it is true). I did so in response to the claim in #4 (“There is no solid evidence to support the contention that brain size is correlated with intelligence”) which is simply wrong.
Again, the fact that brain size correlates with body size doesn’t rebut the fact that it also correlates with intelligence.
I can’t help wondering what the size of Coel’s brain is, and what that correlates with.
I guess those of us who have spent our life studying biology will now have to bow to the superior intellect of the gentleman who read a study…
While larger brains do indicate a higher intellectual capacity between species, there isn’t much support for the idea that larger brain size within species lead to higher intellect. But I will not argue this point, because Coel is not the sort who will listen. He has shown that over and over.
DT (Donald Trump, not Delirium Tremens) has recently reposted this tweet from the Great Musk on Truth Social:
“Had this election not been won by Donald Trump, civilization would have been lost.”
Does ketamine shrink the brain? Or does gorging on a diet of X and the Great Musk’s trolling shrink the earnest consumer’s brain as well as his morals?
From an article by Nick Cohen:
‘Jean-Paul Sartre anticipated Elon Musk just after the defeat of Nazi Germany. In his 1946 essay The Anti Semite and Jew, Sartre captured the perky malice, proud ignorance, and worship of brute power that so characterises Musk’s version of a Silicon Valley libertarianism turned sour.
‘”Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies,” Sartre wrote. “They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
‘Musk has “the right to play” with the minds of millions because he is the world’s second richest man. F. Scott Fitzgerald’s insight that the rich “are different from you and me” is always worth quoting, and that difference does not only lie in the fact that they “have more money,” as Ernest Hemingway retorted. The rich have always thought that wealth should bring them influence far beyond their businesses. Success in one area – the ability to manufacture and market electric cars in Musk’s case – makes the narcissistic among them believe that they can successfully remold the whole of society.’