I learned speed cubing from badmefisto when I was in middle school, ~16yr ago (today my ao100 is ~15s).
I never knew it was Karpathy. What an insane knowledge drop. Thanks for sharing!
Have you considered the possibility that someone you regard as extremely intelligent is speaking from real-life experience and direct proximity when they say another person is smart?
Or perhaps your bias toward Musk make that impossible to even consider.
In hindsight, it's easy to assess that Gates was a charming moron, Jobs was an overeager egoist, and that Altman is a sociopathic liar. All of the white knights defending their boy genius narrative are contradicted by their asinine philosophies, and in Elon's case he's simply undermined by all of his broken promises, random accusations and manic paranoia.
He is both, but it’s irrelevant in this context.
From all the interviews and stuff that came out within the past few years, its pretty clear that Musks only contribution to anything is just throwing money at stuff while also scamming suppliers, governments, and so on. The dude has no technical knowledge of his own, he just lies and lies about what actually happens, and takes credit for accomplishments that aren't his.
When you hear someone who is supposedly smart talk about a dumb person like he is smart, it raises questions on whether that person that is doing the talking is actually smart.
edit: typo
But I don't think it's fair to say Elon is stupid / a bad engineer. When John Carmack speaks well of his talent, I take that seriously.