After a conversation with a family member I jumped on the interwebs and searched for “Elon Musk Path of Exile 2” and it was everything I was told and more. I highly recommend doing the same search if you haven’t already heard about it.
Here’s the background: Path Of Exile 2 is an APG (Action Role Playing Game), and like many such games, to become a top player requires hundreds of hours of grinding (doing not so fun stuff to level up so you can do stuff that’s more fun) and playing time. Mr. EM recently made the claim that he was one the best Path Of Exile players in the world. To prove it, he live-streamed himself playing the game. Indeed Mr. EM had a top level character with all the best stuff in the game — gear that also takes a lot of play time to acquire.
Here’s the gist (which I bet you saw coming): Expert Path Of Exile players who watched the live stream (or the recording of it) almost immediately realized Mr. EM had essentially no idea what he was doing. The consensus was that he had to have paid for the account and character he was using or paid others to level up the account and character.
On one level, I find this somewhat hilarious. It’s not confirmation bias if it’s proof. But it’s also scary that he’s embedding himself in US politics where his thoughts and actions will do harm to real people. What he proved with this stunt is that he does not understand what it means to be an expert, that he lacks intellectual rigor, and basic morals.
The man perpetuated a fraud guaranteed to expose him as a fraud. Come on, people.
It frightens me that he does not understand the nature of expertise. I would not be surprised to learn that he believes he’s so smart that he can grasp everything required for expertise without doing anything to become expert. People go to school for YEARS to become experts, they do a specific job for YEARS, they deep dive, they learn.
Most of us know that experts in something know or can do more than those who are not experts. We understand that without actual expertise, we cannot prove expertise to the experts. Maybe we could fool non-experts, but the actual experts will spot the fraud. And this man outed himself to the experts in the apparent belief that he would fool experts.
He’s a buffoon and he’s going to do real and tragic harm to people and we should all be terrified by that.