Joe Rogan Experience #2506: They are discussing many things that we live with. I do not think they both have the intelligence to fully discuss some of those things, but they both have more ability than most of the people I have had to deal with. In my life, I have met a very few truly genius people. One was a friend of my dad's from work, and he had a thing on his wall in his work room that I saw when he was helping me make a channel changing device for TVs in the late '60s (if you do not understand, what he helping me with was the remote that everyone uses today). The thing on the wall was a device about the size of a full keyboard today, but had only resistors, capacitors, and transistors. I asked him what it was. He said it was a computer he developed for Boeing to solve a problem that they had 100 engineers working on for most of a year. This man, Hue Coe, had many patents through the Boeing Company, and was named a Boeing Fellow for all of his development. He was also (with Francis Reynolds and two other guys) the people who came up with modern remote control electronics. Coe also developed the device (Boeing had no use for it so they let him have the patent on his own) the thing that lets a traffic light know you are waiting there. It is, quite simply, a metal detector you might use on a beach looking for discarded items, planted under the asphalt pointed upward, to detect when a car is there waiting for the light. The second man of such intelligence I knew, but I do remember his name, went home one night and produced a 1000 line compiler that worked the next day, and in 2 years after that we never found a mistake in it. I knew another, who could reduce compiler code to 1 line instead of 7-10 lines simply by working with the compiler rules. I am not sure what ever happened to him, but his reduction of code to minimal processing made many things faster, assuming the compiler he was working with could convert them correctly (in every case I tested it did). These are genius level men in the programming or electronic field. Now for reference, there were four people on the Radio Control development to bring it to the current state. One was Francis Reynolds (aero guy), Coe Wescot (electronics guy), Robert Condon (did you notice the name? Aerodynamics guy, but well over mensa eligible guy) and another fellow who's name escapes me. Francis and Coe were the prime guys on this. They had the "World Championships" between the two of them for years. Francis's sailboats were better sailors (hydrodynamics and aerodynamics are not that much different) but Coe's were the better overall if the wind was light or fluky.
In total, they were all brilliant, and the Crosswind Landing Gear that my father designed for the B-52 is still in use in not only that plane, but in almost every large plane (bigger than a 707) used today. This is not to tell you how smart I am, but how smart my father was. When he was given a certain intelligence test (on a block of wood cut in many ways), he figured the answer while the instructor was describing the test, and finished in ~18 seconds what had never been finished in less than 3:15 seconds before that. So my family was a different scenario from what many grew up in. The low IQ was 135, the high IQ was off the charts. The second highest was 164, but all he did was drugs and booze, and never accomplished anything. The third highest became a state patrolman, did many other things that helped people, but had other problems that caused him to die early. I did not qualify for Mensa when I was younger (although I would not have joined them if I did), but due qualify now because the average intelligence in the US has decrease so that my score is now in the top level. I still won't apply, because I know how much my mind had degraded over the years.

However, all that being said, there is a friend of mine who is quite intelligent. We met the first day of college, and while I read a slide rule to 6 decimal points of accuracy, he used log tables that gave him more accurate results but not quite as fast. So the prof would ask for an answer and I'd give it to him in seconds, and he would just have time to say, "You can't read a slide rule that accurately." before my friend would say, "He is right to the 7th place round off." After doing that in all of our classes in Junior College, we are still good friends after 60+ years. He, his wife, and I rode the STP bike race two years in a row.

So, all this behind us, there are just a few who really change things. I haven't met Elon Musk, but he seems like one of these very people I have known who are beyond the normal intelligence level and do what is needed to get us to the next level. If you look at it, what has Elon done? He has become a Trillionaire, by various means, but to do this he created the working electric car, the rocket that would land itself after it sent a payload into space, the actual functioning robot, and the stuff that will get us into space further.