[CamperBob2]

I agree that political sentiment analysis is one area where the high-level players really do have oracular resources that the rest of us lack. Besides Musk, a good example might be how Bezos pivoted instantly from neutral to pro-Trump leading up to the 2024 election. Seems clear that he knew what was about to happen when he killed the Harris endorsement in the Post.

But the question here is more general than that. Musk didn't have a reliable source of ground truth when he accused the Thai cave diver of being a pedophile. If he did, he didn't use it. Ditto, when he woke up one day and decided that Twitter was worth $54.20/share. You could point to countless other examples where highly-positioned, highly-resourceful, "high agency" people simply read the room wrong.