Stop us if you’ve heard this one before: a formerly beloved public figure eviscerates their own reputation via a years-long ego-driven crash out, eventually losing their sense of perspective in such spectacular fashion that they end up comparing their work to that of a beloved religious figure.
No, we’re not talking about the musician Kanye West, who kicked up a media fury more than a decade ago by comparing himself to Jesus Christ, the core figure in Christianity. This time it’s his sometimes-buddy Elon Musk, the frenetic and controversial businessman behind ventures including SpaceX and Tesla.
Speaking by video link at an event in Israel this week, as spotted by MarketWatch, Musk complained that his brain-computer interface company Neuralink doesn’t get the credit it deserves.
“Restoring control of people who are tetraplegics and restoring sight I think are pretty big deals,” Musk boasted. “They’re sort of what I might call Jesus-level technologies.”
To be clear, Neuralink offers a brain implant with comparable functionality to many others on the market, allowing users to carry out routine computing tasks like typing and moving a mouse cursor using mental cues.
That’s certainly pretty cool, but the New Testament of the Bible describes Jesus as the literal son of God who performs extraordinary miracles such as healing a paralyzed man, restoring sight to the blind, and even bringing a dead person back to life.
It’s true that Musk has hyped up the possibility of restoring vision to the blind and movement to the paralyzed through future Neuralink tech, but the company has yet to show any evidence of those type of breakthroughs. And we’re not aware of any plans by the billionaire to bring the dead back to life.
The falls into is a long pattern of braggadocio by the world’s wealthiest man, who often makes bombastic claims that elevate his actual accomplishments into outrageous mythmaking — unlike Jesus, by all accounts a humble figure who impressed with actual deeds, rather than swagger and empty claims.
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