Elon Musk Opens Up In Interview, and Leaves Audience Speechless (Just Recorded)

Elon Musk Opens Up In Interview,

Leaves Audience Speechless (Just Recorded)

By Matt Pocius on Tesla Stock & Money

Transcription

Let's make life multiplanetary and be a space bearing civilization be out there Among the Stars um you know I think

0:06

there are things that uh like you have to be excited about the future um you

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life life cannot just be about solving one problem after another um they have to be things that that that really sort

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of move your heart and that make you excited to wake up in the morning um and

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I think being a becoming a space bearing civilization is one of those things if you ask kids anywhere around the world

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like what is what are some of the most inspiring things you you can ask a like 5-year-old six-year-old anywhere in the

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world and they're going to say you know space exploration is one of those things and um and we want to make sure that we

0:43

we're we're you know that Apollo is not the high water Mark um in fact you mentioned at one point at that you wrote

0:48

a letter uh offering to run the Apollo program I believe yeah long but but and

0:55

I would you would have done a fantastic job but the the point is that the Apollo program was something was inspiring uh

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to everyone um around the world and uh we we don't want the Apollo program to

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be the high Watermark of of human exploration and um yeah we want I think

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you want to have some some sense that the future is going to be better than the past that we're

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going to be out there going to other star systems and

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uh you know what what you see in a science science fiction non- dystopian

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sci-fi story of of which there are not many um but like Star Trek I suppose well speaking of Star Trek a lot youon

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when I think about you let's look at Spock from Star Trek

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here space the final

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frontier These Are the Voyages of the Starship Enterprise her ongoing mission to

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explore strange new worlds to seek out new life forms and new

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civilizations to boldly go where no one has gone

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before so when I think about you I think about Spock and Captain Kirk and you're

2:16

going to take us to places we've never gone before yeah that's the

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[Applause] idea you know if we if we send probes

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out there we might I mean we we might find the remains of long dead alien civilizations um if physics is correct

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the the universe is about 13.8 billion years old uh Earth is about 4 a half

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billion years old so but at 13.8 billion years a civilization that even lasted a million years is three digits past the

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decimal point and if you consider human civilization I dated from like the first

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writing so that first writing was the ancient samarians uh archaic pre prec

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uniform around 5,500 years ago so that is 1 millionth of Earth's

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lifespan that's how long writing has existed so uh if we were to last if as a

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civilization for a million years that would be incredible um and we would actually probably be in every part of the

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Galaxy so this is this causes me to to think that well where are the aliens

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it's the firmy question you know the the great physicist Italian physicist enrio

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FY he he was like where are they now a lot of people think there are aliens

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Among Us um well there was that there was that movie uh Men In Black you know

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yes yes told is there among us and Elvis really went back to his own Planet yeah

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um well I mean really a lot of people think that are aliens but uh I get asked that a lot and for some reason the a lot

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of the same people who think there are aliens Among Us didn't think we don't think we went to the moon um which I'm

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like think about that for a [Laughter] second um you know so but I I I I think

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I would I mean if I've not seen any evidence of aliens and Spa SpaceX with

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the Starling constellation has uh roughly 6,000 satellites and and not once have we had to maneuver around a

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UFO okay so we were like like hey what's

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that is that an alien has occurred never um so so I'm like okay I don't see any

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evidence of aliens and um I look at it if somebody has evidence of aliens in in

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a you know that's not just a fuzzy blob um then I'd love to see it love to hear

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about it um and uh but I don't think there is so which is actually reasonable concern

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because you could if if any civilization in the Milky Way in our galaxy were to

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last for a million years uh even with uh a speed of travel that's far below the

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speed of light you know like a few percent of speed of light they could easily uh have explored and colonized

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the whole galaxy so so they haven't so why not um I think the the the answer

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might be or perhaps probably is that that civilization is precarious and

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rare um and that we you should really think of human civilization as being

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like a tiny candle in a vast darkness and we should do everything possible to ensure that that candle does

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not go [Applause]

5:50

out so Alan I thought one of the interesting things for the people on X

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viewing this session and the people in the audience here is that maybe I'd give you a few of

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your quotes and you can comment on them okay let's start with this one free

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speech freedom of speech is the Bedrock of democracy without it America

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ends yes it's it's obviously not possible to have Democratic elections if people do not uh have access to the

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information that would allow them to make the right decision on a candidate or a party so if if speech is constrained in a

6:33

fundamental way you you just can't expect people to make the the right

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decision or an informed decision because they are prevented from being informed I

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think it's it's it's uh very a foundational element and you know have to say like why Why is Free Speech free

6:52

of speech the First Amendment because people came from countries where if you spoke freely you would be imprisoned or

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killed that was why they were like you know what we should make sure that we got that one

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um and remember remember that time where they try to try to kill us back at the other country just just for saying we

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didn't like a political candidate well let's let's make sure that's okay in America so um and so actually in a lot

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of parts of the world you know you can't really say most parts of the world you can't really say what you want to say um

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without some bad consequences so and sometimes people forget like why is the

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Constitution there the Constitution there is to protect the the people from the

7:37

government uh so like if if there it's to make it hard to change things um

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that's why the Constitution exists uh yeah don't forget about that don't take

7:49

it for granted let's try the next quote Yeah the fundamental ER of socialism is

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Shifting Capital allocation from highly effective

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entrepreneurs to astonishly ineffective government right I think we'll find

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Hardy agreement in this room [Laughter]

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um so yeah I think that this is this is definitely a stack deck on that front um

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but but yeah the you know there's you you'll hear

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this sort of argument like oh we shouldn't have um some greedy Corporation do it we should have the government do it I'm

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like well actually the government is just a corporation in the limit so if you it it's a government is the

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government is a corporation with a monopoly on violence um so if you're unhappy with a commercial Corporation

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doing it you should be actually very unhappy with the the government doing it since it is simply the a corporation the

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most corporate thing um and uh you know you can actually easily

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uh get get more sway in a in a company than you can the outcome of a company than you can in the government um so I

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mean everyone's experienced this going to the DMV uh you said like do you want the DMV at

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scale probably not okay all right

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let's the government is the DMV at scale let's try another one

9:30

discrimination on the basis of anything other than Merit is

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wrong yeah I think I think we do need to have a merit-based

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system because as soon as you you go down the path of you're going to discriminate on on non-merit based uh

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then then where do you stop um so yeah I think we need to be as rigorous about

9:56

Merit as possible and uh while it is yeah to me that seems like

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it's it's a foundational foundational thing um

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so again I I also think this room is probably uh supportive of of a

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merit-based uh situation um but yeah that's that that is yeah I

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think we should be yeah not not discriminated on

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anything other than Merit I I all right good I'm happy you agree with yourself yeah I

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mean exactly I'm like wait who is this guy he really uh sounds

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great all right so let's uh let's look at the next one regulation and Regulatory

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consistency like guliver tied down by thousands of little strengths we lose

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our freedom one regulation at a time yes

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so this is actually a very important point that um I think is is uh not talked about enough uh that uh laws and

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regulations are Immortal they don't die humans die but but laws and regulations

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uh can last forever so if over if year after year there are more laws and

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regulations passed and more regulatory bodies created eventually everything will be illegal and that's why you see

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the the California highspeed rail um has made a a tiny section of that doesn't

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even have rail on it um and um for I don't know several billion

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dollars uh because everything's at this point California is uh made almost

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everything illegal um so you can't make progress uh now the the historically what has

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cleared away the cobwebs of Regulation has been War um now we prefer not to have a war

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uh so in order to have civilization function without War you have to have a

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uh you have to actively eliminate laws and regulations so you

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have to have basically a garbage collection process for rules and regulations um that is necessary

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otherwise you get hardening of the arteries and uh over time nothing can

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get done the most poignant example I can think of that happened this week was

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this the sad picture of the California highspeed rail um which is yeah it's just billions of dollars spent for

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practically nothing um but it'll it'll only get worse year after year so we must have a regulatory uh sort of

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Clearing House garbage collection process um this is essential um or civilization

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comes grinding to a Hal well we used to have Sunset that that regulation was

12:59

Sunset unfortunately it's rare today yes all right let's talk about

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education the more you can gamify the process of learning the better you do

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not need to tell your kid to play video games no they will play video games on

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autopilot all day so if you make it interactive and engaging then you can

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make education far more compelling and far easier to do

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yeah so the yeah so the way Education Works

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today is really much like like it's like bville um you know before there was

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radio and TV and movies you had bville where every town would have their their

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Town play the town troop the sort of acting troop um and that would be kind of the the uh that would be the

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entertainment so uh you know some you know in a big city you'd have uh you

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know much better players than say in a small city um but then Along Came movies and uh TV

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and and and then you say like in video games where you take the the smartest

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best people in any Arena like whether they're acting writing directing special

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effects uh you spend uh you you know tens of millions

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sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars creating a great movie or a great video game and and you make it as

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compelling as possible now that crushes fordville crushes like imagine you're not a New

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York imagine you're in Bakersfield okay then you and you got instead of Batman being like you know the Nolan

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Brothers um it's Batman The Bakers field sort of acting Troop

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it wouldn't be as good that's how teaching works

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today so what you actually want to have is an Interactive Learning Experience uh

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that is as compelling as possible and you do not want to you do not actually want a teacher in front of a board doing

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a board Ville act you want an you want it to be engaged realtime

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feedback um so that's and and then you you a few

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other principles in in in teaching um you you have to establish relevance uh otherwise your mind will

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will want to forget things so our our our our mind is constantly trying to

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forget as much as possible so you'll only remember things if if your mind can

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establish relevance or there is a strong emotional element to it um otherwise

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you're going to basically going to forget forget everything um memory is is very expensive from an evolutionary

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stand point so it's trying to forget as much as possible so so when teaching a course you you have to explain to kids

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why it's important um and then you want to teach to the to the problem instead of

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teaching the tools so what I mean by that is if you said um here's a car

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engine we're we're we're going to try to understand how to how this car engine

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works we're going to take it apart um so what do we need to do to take it apart well we need a wrench we need some screwdrivers we need a hoist and a

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pulley um and uh we're going to take it apart and we're going to see how it all works um that's engaging and along the

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way you learn about wrenches and screwdrivers and you know all the tools

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that are needed that's that actually is engaging and compelling but the way teaching more typically works is we're

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going to teach you a course on screwdrivers and a course on wrenches you're like why do I have a course on

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wrenches it's not obvious that would be like say a course on calculus without explaining what calculus calculus is

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used for then you you sort of forget it yeah

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well we have a lot of work to do in that area let's talk about a

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non-conformal issue immigration here is Elon on

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immigration I'm very much in favor of increased and expedited legal

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immigration for anyone who is talented hardworking and

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honest yeah bizarrely it's difficult and agonizing

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slow to immigrate to the us legally but it's trivial and fast to enter

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illegally this obviously makes no sense right I mean once again I agree

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with that guy uh so um

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yeah I mean if anyone here has been through the legal immigration process I I mean I've been been through it it's only gotten worse uh since 911 uh and

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with co uh it's uh it's an it's it's a sort of K

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Kafkaesque uh very long bizarre process

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to be uh immigrate legally to the US I mean I have friends of mine who you know

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they they can't get their their wife to have a green card it's like insane um

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so uh on the other hand it's uh you you can hop across the border in the South

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TR it's just like very easy I went to the Border myself just to see like what's going on is this real or like is

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this propaganda or real and so I went there and I'm like oh it is real okay uh

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this is crazy uh you know we've got situations where people are pouring across the the Border like it's World

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War Z I'm like uh this doesn't seem healthy um so I'm like

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are we checking anyone here or like what's going on and um you know we don't

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it does not say that I mean I'm a big believer in Immigration but to have unvetted immigration at Large Scale is a

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recipe for disaster um so I'm in favor of greatly

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Expediting um legal immigration but but having a secure Southern border uh so

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there's there's some betting of who comes into the United States I think this is just s

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all right let's let's Now link starlink to

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education we're basically building the internet in space why it matters

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starlink is a massive enabler for people in remote locations to learn anything

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yes you can learn almost anything for free on the internet right now

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for example MIT has all of its lessons online that's

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if you have internet if you don't you're limited to

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books it might be the number one technology that improves people's

20:16

standard of living around the world starlink yeah absolutely so once you

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have access to the internet you have access to all the world's information um but if you don't have access to the

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internet or it's too expensive uh or low bandwidth then you you cannot access the MIT lessons you

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can't access all the information um and you can't sell the goods and services that you produce so internet

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connectivity I think is I think it might be certainly a candidate for one of the things that

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would do more to lift people out of poverty out of poverty than anything else uh because they can now sell their

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goods and services they can learn anything um and but without cont it they

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cannot so uh I think I think I think stall link will actually like like move

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the GDP of countries like it's going to be that kind of thing um because what is

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what is g GDP is as a function of a average productivity per person and so if there's a technology that improves

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productivity per per person you would expect to see that actually reflected in the gross domestic product all right

21:25

civilization is fragile I think it is we should always regard

21:31

civilization as fragile yeah there is not an inevitable upward trajectory a

21:37

lot of civilizations have risen and fallen in recent

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years yes I I suspect most people in this room have actually read history but

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if you haven't I strongly recommend it um it sounds obvious but um you know

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there's there's been the so many civilizations that have risen and Fallen

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um many that we just don't have much of a a record of um you know like I mentioned the ancient

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samarians um like their language was forgotten for a long time until it was

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finally decoded only in the last uh I don't know two 300 years like 1800 and

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something or in the 1800s I think um but it's very recent like so for

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several thousand years nobody understood what those tablets meant um and uh

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because they they were the ruins of a long dead civilization and there are many long dead civilizations um at some point our

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civilization will come to an end too we just don't want it to be anytime soon um

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so well you've been quoted a number of times Elon on

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you'd like to die on Mars but not on Landing

23:05

yes yes I was I was asked that in an interview if I wanted to die on Ms but then I considered the corner case of um

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dying on impact and I'm like except for that case uh you know you got to consider the various Corner cases um

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so I mean if I'm going to if you're going to die somewhere might as well be Mars um I'd like to explore for a bit

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before you know dying um but um yeah I think I think we want to be a

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multi-planet civilization and like I

23:37

[Laughter] think I don't know if that's a response

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from the audience let's let's talk about that just for one second now we're going to

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take some questions from the a I mean I could accomplish this actually uh this

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year if I if I was willing to die on impact um

23:59

the fundamental invention that is necessary for Humanity to become a

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multi-planet species is rapidly reusable

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reliable Rockets yeah I was trying to sound like a pirate r r r r r uh but

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yeah rapidly were usable reliable Rockets um so uh space pirates pull the

24:23

win all right here's some questions from the audience Salon which one would you

24:28

like to pick here um well I guess uh let me let me maybe just uh touch upon why I

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think making life multiplanetary is important um because I think it's one of the things that gets us past one of the

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firery uh great filters so in in trying to sort of explain why do we not see

24:48

aliens there are various explanations for why we don't see aliens like what stuff those

24:53

civilizations uh from from expanding beyond their solar system and and and

24:59

and and what were what were the sort of sometimes called like fmy filters um

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well if you don't become a multi-planet civilization then you're then you're simply waiting around until you you die

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from a self-inflicted wound or from something some natural disaster like the dinosaurs you get hit by a big uh

25:19

meteorite or something like that um the eventually something like that's going

25:25

to happen and if you wait a lot around long enough the sun will expand uh to engulf Earth and will be

25:31

incinerated so that that for sure is going to happen now that'll we we we've got a we've got some time before that

25:37

happens there are more near-term risks um but we want to try to get past the

25:43

firy filter of being a single planet Civilization now this is going to this is all this is going to be somewhat

25:50

cereal to many people listening but I mean but like I think this is pretty

25:55

this is actually very important we want to get past the FM filter of a single planet civilization the point is not to

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to move from Earth to another planet uh and let Earth die that's not what I'm saying at all I we want to be a

26:07

multi-planet civilization so that we have planetary redundancy such that no single event can end can be the end of

26:15

our civilization that is the point of making life multiplanetary so let's take a

26:21

couple questions from the audience how does AI affect and how will it affect

26:29

our daily

26:35

lives AI I

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I I mean AI might be the most important question of

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all um the I mean the percentage of intelligence that is

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biological you know grow smaller with each passing month eventually the percentage of

27:06

intelligence that is biological will be less than

27:12

1% the that's actually not what I mean we just I guess don't want AI that is

27:17

brutal um if the AI is uh somehow brutal um you know silicon circuit

27:24

boards are don't do well just out out in the elements so I think I think biological

27:31

intelligence can serve as a a back stop as a as a buffer of

27:36

intelligence uh but almost all in as a percentage almost all intelligence will

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be uh digital um so then it's like

27:48

well what role will there be for us I I don't know

27:56

um I do think I think it's very important that we build the AI in a way that

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um that is beneficial to humanity uh and there's some important principles

28:10

here because I thought about AI safety for a very long time

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um I think you want to have a maximum truth seeking AI uh this is very important the AI

28:22

should not be taught to lie it should not be taught to say things that are not

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true um even if those things are Politically Incorrect it should still say those say

28:32

what it believes to be true um I mean the entire plot of 2001 Space Odyssey

28:38

the reason that that uh HAL 9000 uh killed the astronauts was because it was

28:45

forced to lie I don't know if most people realize that that's what arthury Clark was

28:51

trying to say don't make the AI lie um the AI was told that

28:59

the the that the astronauts could not know the secret of the monolith but also that it must take them to the monolith

29:05

the solution take them to the monolith dead and so um so it's very important to

29:12

have a maximum truth seeking Ai and uh and a maximally curious AI um

29:19

and I think that will that's most likely to Foster human

29:25

civilization because we are much more interesting than a bunch of rocks so although I think Mars I love Mars

29:31

obviously um but but you could render Mars uh quite easily um because it kind

29:37

of looks like a section of the Arizona desert you know it's like Red Rocks you know um but the rendering complexity of

29:46

human civilization is vastly greater by many orders of magnitude so I think an AI would be that that is truth seeking

29:53

maximally curious would Foster human civilization to see where it where it

30:00

goes one of the questions here can AI accelerate your efforts in

30:08

space how do you see it being helping you in what you're trying

30:14

to achieve I mean oddly enough one of the the areas where there's almost no AI

30:21

used is space exploration so SpaceX uses basically no AI stall link uses does not use AI I'm

30:29

not I'm not against using it I just we haven't seen a use for it um I mean with

30:35

any given variant of or Improvement in AI the I mean there's

30:43

generally like I'll ask it questions about the firy

30:48

Paradox um about rocket engine design about electrochemistry and so far the AI has

30:55

been terrible at all of those questions so there still a long way to go so let's

31:03

let's talk about one here's a question that's near and dear to your heart you

31:08

have a lot of children yes I'm trying to say a good the birth rate is down in the US what needs to change so people start

31:16

having more children yeah so this this question is

31:22

troubled me for a long time because you can look at you can look at the uh demog like demographics it's a

31:30

very slow moving ship I mean you know who's going to be an adult in 20 years based on who was born last year

31:38

so um and and I if you want to I think has have a good approximation for

31:44

population really look at how many babies were born last year in a particular country multiply that

31:50

multiply that by life expectancy that's that's that's the number of people that

31:55

will be adults in that country that's that's the that's the steady state population if birth rate remains

32:00

constant now birth rate is not constant it is dropping so you look at the second derivative of birth rate and actually we

32:06

see an an acceleration uh in uh the the

32:11

the drop Dro in in the in the dro in the fertility rate second derivative of the fertility rate is very bad

32:18

so um where does this lead this does not lead to uh a a greater civilization this

32:25

leads to a civilization that potentially dies not with a bag but with a whimper

32:31

in adult diapers that is a sad ending so obviously we have countries

32:38

that like Korea used to have a birth rate of six it's now 3/4 yeah uh here's a here's a light

32:46

question for you come pick me I'll give you a baby says one what do you think are

32:53

the that is one of the things that says on the screen yeah

33:03

I don't know if everyone heard that you want to read it it says Elon come pick me up I'll give you a [Laughter]

33:12

baby thank [Applause] you okay well I mean I certainly

33:17

encourage everyone in this room to have uh at least three children uh like look maybe he's got to come from somewhere um

33:25

you know um and uh I think we just want to have a I don't know I think we want to have like a slightly increasing

33:31

population not a plummeting population um you know and I think this applies to

33:37

all countries and cultures like I don't I don't think we want any country of culture to disappear um we want them to

33:43

ideally flourish um and and not disappear so um in fact one of the

33:49

things that is overlooked by probably most historians is the role

33:55

of low birth rate in the decline of civilization um so

34:01

around I think it was around 50 BC um uh the r Rome passed a bill to give a bonus

34:09

to any Roman citizen that would have a third child so this was a birth rate was a problem in Rome in 50

34:18

BC the Romans weren't making Romans um the same is true of ancient Greece

34:25

um so the the there was a time from about 8800 BC to 300ish BC where the

34:33

Greeks were had a lot of kids um and a lot of surviving kids like the birth

34:39

rate far exceeded the death rate which is why you had Greek cities popping up all over the the Mediterranean um but

34:46

then I think basically it seems to be that

34:52

Prosperity is uh destroys the birth rate

34:57

so if when when a civilization uh feels like it has no ex no meaningful external

35:06

threat and is very prosperous uh that is what causes the

35:12

birth rate to plummet somewhat counterintuitively you think well if You' got more resources surely that

35:17

would lead to more more kids in fact it is the opposite the more the more prosperous a

35:23

civilization and the more civilization feels that it does not need to defend against external threats the lower the

35:30

birth rate right I'd say that you know there's a lot of research on this there's really been three one number one

35:37

Prosperity as you've said number two improvements in health care so in 1900

35:43

half the children died on the planet before the fifth and the third was the

35:49

education of women so we've had some pretty interesting questions put up here

35:54

but let's try this one what keeps you up at night and what gives you

36:01

Joy well I think kids give me joy um so I probably get the most Joy from uh my

36:07

kids um and um you know I'm not saying that that's

36:13

the reason to have kids because we should have them anyway but I I uh I certainly kids are I certainly are the

36:21

greatest source of joy in my life um in terms of what keeps me up at night I guess there anything that's like I think

36:27

a civil ational risk um you know if we're the both ways

36:33

continuing to plummet like I do think about the birth rates plummeting as being a civilizational risk um I think

36:40

anything that undermines the foundations of Democracy in America or elsewhere as a a

36:47

risk um I think uh anything that's leading us away from a merit-based system is a

36:56

risk uh I actually spend um

37:03

like like I I listen to civil I listen to like podcasts about the fall of

37:08

civilizations to go to sleep so peps that's that might be part of the problem here um there's Lally a podcast called

37:15

fall of civilizations which I've listened to a few times um and

37:22

um i' I'd also recommend Hardcore History if you haven't listened to that that's it's a great podcast I I listen

37:27

to Listen to History Podcast basically to go to sleep so that that's probably why I'm ruminating on these things as I

37:32

go to sleep well L I want to thank you for joining us today and we couldn't be

37:39

more excited that you agree with some of your own quotes yeah that's great thank

37:44

you very much to stay updated all things related to ELA musk and Tesla make sure to subscribe right now and hit the like

37:51

button thank you so much and I will see you in the next video

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