Vidscriber | Joe Rogan Experience #1169

Transcript for Joe Rogan Experience #1169 - Elon Musk

(00:00:00)

Ha ha ha Four three two one Boom, thank you. Thanks for doing this man. Really appreciate it. Hey, welcome. Very good to meet you. That's nice to meet you, too Thanks for not lighting this place on fire. You're welcome That's coming later. How does one just in the middle of doing all the things you do create cars Rockets all this stuff you're doing constantly innovating decide to just make a flamethrower. Where do you have the time for that?

(00:00:31)

Well the thing I wouldn't we didn't put a lot of time into the flamethrower the and this was an off-the-cuff thing and So we have sort of like it's sort of a sort of a hobby company called the boring company which started out as a joke and We decided to make it real and and dig a tunnel under LA and then dig then people other people asked us to dig tunnels and And so we Said yes in a few cases Don't and then and then we have a merchandise section that only has one piece of merchandise at a time And we started off with a cap and there was only one thing on it was just boring company.com slash cap or hat That's it. Oh, and and then we sold the hats limited limited edition. It just said the boring company and

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then I'm big fan of Spaceballs the movie and in Spaceballs Yogurt goes through the merchandising section and They have a flamethrower in the merchandising section of Spaceballs And like the kids love that one That's the line When he pulls up the plane there, it's like we should do a flamethrower so we Does anybody tell you no, does anybody go Elon? Maybe for yourself but selling a flamethrower the liabilities all the people you're selling this device to what kind of unhinged People are gonna be buying a flamethrower in the first place. Do we really want to connect ourselves to all these potential arsonists? Yeah, it's a terrible idea Terrible shouldn't buy one. I don't I said don't buy this flamethrower. Don't buy it Don't buy it. That's what I said a bit still people bought it. Yeah, there's nothing I can do to stop them It's I said don't buy it. It's a bad idea. How many did you make you it's dangerous. It's got it's wrong Don't buy it And still people bought it. I just couldn't stop them. How many did you make?

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20,000 And they're all gone in three I think four days it sold out in four days are you gonna do a Another run no, no, that's it. Yes. Oh, I said we would do 20 that we did 50,000 50,000 hats at and and That was a million dollars and okay. Well, we'll sell something and For 10 million and that was 20,000 flamethrowers at $500 each They went fast Yeah, how do you have the time to do that though I mean, I understand that it's not a big deal in terms of all the other things you do But how do you have time to do anything? I just I don't understand your time management skills. I Mean I didn't spend much time on this flamethrower. I mean to be totally frank. It's actually just a roofing torch with an air rifle cover

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It's not a real flamethrower Which is why it says not a flamethrower. That's why we were very clear. This is not actually a flamethrower And and it also we're told that various countries would would Ban shipping of it, but they would not they would ban flamethrowers. So we very to solve this problem For all the customs agencies. We labeled it not a flamethrower Did work is it effective? I I don't know. I think so. Yeah so far. Yes now, but you do said you cannot super flamethrower But you do so many different things forget about the flamethrower. Like how do you do all that other shit? Like how do you how do you how does one decide to fix? La traffic by drilling holes in the ground and who do you even approach with that?

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Like when you have this idea, who do you talk to about that?

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I mean, I'm not saying it's gonna be successful or so, you know, I know it's just like asserting that it's gonna be successful but so far I've lived in LA for 16 years and the traffic has always been terrible And so I don't see any other like ideas for improving the traffic So in desperation, we're going to dig a tunnel and maybe that tunnel will be successful and maybe it won't I'm I'm listening. Yeah, I'm not trying to convince you it's gonna work and are the people that you're anyone But you're you were starting this though. This is actually a project you're starting to implement, right? Yeah, I know we've we've dug About a mile. It's quite long. It takes a long time to walk it. Yeah now when you're doing this What is the ultimate plan? The ultimate plan is to have these in major cities and anywhere there's mass congestion and just try it out in LA first Yeah, it's it's in LA because I mostly live in LA. That's the reason it's a terrible place to dig tunnels this is a one of the worst place to dig tunnels because the There's mostly because of the paperwork people think it's like what about seismic it's like actually Both tunnels are very safe in earthquakes. Why is that?

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earthquakes up Earthquakes are essentially of surface phenomenon. It's like like waves on the ocean. So if there's a storm You want to be on the on in a submarine?

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Mmm, so being in a tunnel is like being in a submarine now the way the tunnel is constructed. It's constructed out of these Interlocking segments kind of like a snake it's sort of like a snake exoskeleton with double seals and so even when the ground moves The it's able to the tunnel actually is able to shift along with the ground like an underground snake and it doesn't crack or break or and and it's extremely unlikely that both seals would be broken and it's it's It's capable of taking five atmospheres of pressure it's waterproof methane proof or gas proof of any kind and Meets all California seismic requirements. So when you have this idea, who do you bring this to? I'm not sure what you mean by that. Well when you you're you're implementing it So you're digging holes in the ground like you have to bring it to someone that lets you do it yeah, so Um, there were there were some engineers from SpaceX Who were who thought it would be cool to do this?

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and the guy who runs it like day-to-day Steve Davis, he's Longtime SpaceX engineer. He's great So Steve was like I'd like to help make this happen. I was like cool so we started off with Digging a hole in the ground. It's got like a Permit for a pit big pit and just dug a big pit and you have to tell them what the pits for or you just say Hey, we just want to dig a hole nice fill out this form That's it Yeah, it was a pity in our parking lot And but do you have to give them some sort of a blueprint for your ultimate idea?

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And do they have to approve it? Like how does that work? Now? We just started off with a pit. Okay big pit and And You know, there's not really, you know, I don't really Care about the existential nature of a pit. You just say like I don't want a bit right, you know, and It's a hole in the ground. So then we have the permit for the pit and we dug the pit and We dug it in like three days two three days actually like two 48 hours something like that Because Eric Garcetti was coming by for the hype too. He was gonna attend the hyperloop competition Which is like a student competition we have for who can make the fastest pod in the hyperloop and He was coming. This was good. The finals are gonna be on Sunday afternoon. And so

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Eric was coming by on Sunday afternoon was like, you know, we should take this pit and then like show Eric So we this is like Friday morning And then yeah, so it's about a little over 40 hour 48 hour pit 40 hours later. We dug the pit. There's like we're in 24 7 or 24 48 straight hours something like that and dug this big pit and and And we're like showed Eric the pit like obviously it's just a pit But hey, it's hole in the ground is better than no hole in the ground and what do you tell me about this pit I mean, you said this is the beginning of this idea Yes, we're gonna build tunnels under LA to help funnel traffic better and they go and they just go, okay that but that we've joked around about this in the podcast before to like what if the person can go to the people that run

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The city and go. Hey, I'm gonna dig some holes on the ground put some tunnels in there and they go. Oh, yeah Okay, nothing wrong with a hole in the ground But it's people dig holes in the ground all the time But but my question is like I know how much time you must be spending on your Tesla factory I know how much time you must be spending on SpaceX and yet you still have time to dig holes Under the ground in LA and come up with these ideas and then implement them like I had a million ideas I'm sure you do. There's no shortage of that Yeah, I just don't know how you manage your time. I don't understand it. It doesn't seem it doesn't even seem humanly possible You know, I do basically I think people like don't totally understand what I do with my time They think like I'm a business guy or something like that Like my Wikipedia page says business magnate. What would you call yourself?

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I'm a business magnet Can someone please change my Wikipedia page to magnet?

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It's locked so somebody has to be able to unlock it and change it to magnet someone I want to be a magnet No, I do engineering and you know and manufacturing and that kind of thing that's like 80% More of my time ideas and then the implementation of those ideas That's like hardcore engineering. Like, you know designing things, you know, right Structural mechanical electrical software user interface Engineering aerospace engineering But you must understand there's not a whole lot of human beings like you. You know that right?

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So you're an odd it seems yes to chimps like me We're all chimps. Yeah, we are We're one notch one notch above a chimp some of us are a little more confused when I watch you doing all these things I'm like, how does this motherfucker have all this time and all this energy and all these ideas and then people just let them do these things Because I'm an alien. That's what I've speculated. Yes I'm on record saying this in the past. I wonder it's true If there was one I was like if there was like maybe an intelligent being that we created, you know Like some AI creature that's a superior to people Maybe you just hang around with us for a little while like you've been doing and then fix a bunch of shit

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Maybe that's the way You might do you think you do probably do you wonder like you're around normal people you like hmm I Think what's up with these boring dumb motherfuckers ever not bad for a human, but I think We'll not be able to hold a candle to AI Hmm you scared the shit out of me when you talk about AI between you and Sam Harris I don't consider it until at a podcast with Sam once. That's right. He made me shit my pants Talking about AI I realized like oh, well, this is a genie that once it's out of the bottle You're never getting it back in That's true There was a video that you tweeted about One of those Boston dynamic robots, you know, like in the future. It'll be Moving so fast. You can't see it without a strobe light. Yeah You could probably do that right now and no one's really Paying attention too much other than people like you or people that are really obsessed with technology All these things are happening and these robots are did you see the one where PETA? Put out a statement that you shouldn't kick robots Probably not wise For retribution their memories very good. I bet it's really good. It's really good. I bet it is Yes, and getting better every day. It's really good. Are you honestly legitimately concerned about this? Are you is like AI?

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one of your main worries in regards to the future You Yes, it it's less of a worry than it used to be mostly due to Taking more of a fatalistic attitude. Hmm so you used to have more hope and You gave up some of it and now you don't worry as much about AI you like this is just what it is Yeah, pretty much hmm, yes, it's not it's it's but no it's not necessarily bad It's just it's definitely gonna be outside of human control Not necessarily bad, right? Yes, not it's not necessarily bad. It's just it's just outside of human control that the thing that's gonna be tricky here is that It's gonna be very tempting to use AI as a weapon It's gonna be very tempting to use AI as a weapon, it's gonna be very tempting. In fact, it will be used as a weapon

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So the the the the on-ramp to serious AI The danger is gonna be more humans using it against each other I think most likely That'll be the danger Yeah, how far do you think we are from something that can make its own mind up whether or not something's ethically or morally correct Or whether or not it wants to do something or whether or not it wants to improve itself Or whether or not it wants to protect itself from people or from other AI how far away we some from something That's really truly sentient Well, I mean you could argue that any group of people Like it like a company is essentially a cybernetic collective of people and machines that's what a company is and Then there are different

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There's different levels of complexity in the way these companies are formed and then there are sort of There's there's like a collective AI in In the Google sort of search Google search, you know the Where we're all sort of plugged in as like like nodes on the network like leaves on a big tree Off and we're all feeding this network without questions and answers we're all collectively programming the AI and And the and Google plus the older humans that connect to it are one giant Cybernetic collective. This is also true of Facebook and Twitter and Instagram and all these social networks The giant cybernetic collectives Humans and electronics all interfacing and constantly now constantly connected. Yes

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constantly One of the things that I've been thinking about a lot over the last few years is that one of the the things that drives a lot of people crazy is how how many people are obsessed with materialism and getting the latest greatest thing and I wonder how much of that is Well, a lot of it is most certainly fueling technology and innovation and it almost seems like it's built into us It's like what we like and what we want that we're fueling this thing That's constantly around us all the time and it doesn't seem possible that people are gonna pump the brakes It doesn't seem possible at this stage Well, we're constantly expecting the newest cell phone the latest Tesla update the newest MacBook Pro

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everything has to be newer and better and That's going to lead to some Incredible point and It seems like it's built into us. It almost seems like it's an instinct that we were working towards this that we like it Mm-hmm our job just like the ants build the anthill. Our job is to somehow another fuel this Yes, I mean I Made this comment some some years ago, but it feels like we are the biological bootloader for AI Effectively, we are building it And then we're building Progressively greater intelligence and And the percentage of intelligence that is not human is increasing and eventually We will represent a very small percentage of intelligence But the the AI is informed strangely by the human limbic system

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It is in large part our id writ large How so we mentioned all those things the sort of primal drives. Mm-hmm There's all all the things that We like and hate and fear They're all there on the Internet their projection of our limbic system Their projection of our limbic system No, it makes sense and the thinking of it as a I mean think of thinking of corporations and just thinking of just human beings communicating online through these social media networks as some sort of an organism, that's a It's a cyborg. It's a combination. It's a combination of electronics and biology. Yeah This is it's a it's a measure like it's that the success of these online systems is that is a sort of a function of

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of How much limbic resonance? They're able to achieve with people The more limbic resonance the more engagement hmm whereas like One of the reasons why probably Instagram is more enticing than Twitter Limbic resonance. Yeah, you get More images more video. Yes tweaking your system more. Yes. Do you worry about or wonder in fact about what the next step is? I mean a lot of people didn't see Twitter coming that you know communicate with 140 characters or 280 now Would be a thing that people would be interested in Like it's gonna excel it's gonna become more connected to us, right Yes, things are getting more and more connected there at this point constrained by bandwidth our Input output is slow particularly output after got worse with thumbs You know, we used to have input with 10 fingers, now we have thumbs. But images are also, they're a way of communicating at high bandwidth. You take pictures and you send pictures to people. What sends, that communicates far more information than you can communicate with your thumbs. So what happened with you where you decided, or you took on a more fatalistic attitude? Like, was there any specific thing, or was it just the inevitability of our future? I tried to convince people to slow down, slow down AI, to regulate AI.

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This was futile. I tried for years. Nobody listened. This seems like a scene in a movie where the robots are gonna fucking take over and you're freaking me out. Nobody listened. Nobody listened. No one.

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Are people more inclined to listen to AI than to humans? No. No. No. No.

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No. Are people more inclined to listen today? It seems like an issue that's brought up more often over the last few years than it was maybe five, 10 years ago, it seemed like science fiction.

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Maybe they will. So far they haven't. I think people don't, like normally the way that regulations work is very slow.

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Very slow indeed. So, usually there'll be something, some new technology. It will cause damage or death. There will be an outcry. There will be investigation.

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Years will pass. There will be some sort of insight committee. There will be rulemaking. Then there will be oversight, eventually regulations.

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This all takes many years. This is the normal course of things. If you look at say, automotive regulations, how long did it take for seatbelts to be implemented, to be required? You know, the auto industry fought seatbelts, I think, for more than a decade. Successfully fought any regulations on seatbelts, even though the numbers were extremely obvious. If you had a seatbelt on, you would be far less likely to die or be seriously injured.

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It was unequivocal. And the industry fought this for years successfully. Eventually, after many, many people died, regulators insisted on seatbelts. This is a, this timeframe is not relevant to AI. You can't take 10 years from the point at which it's dangerous.

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It's too late. And you feel like this is decades away or years away from being too late? If you have this fatalistic attitude and you feel like it's going, we're in a, almost like a doomsday countdown. It's not necessarily a doomsday countdown. It's a- Out of control countdown?

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Out of control, yeah. People call it the singularity. And that's probably a good way to think about it. It's a singularity. It's hard to predict, like a black hole, what happens past the event horizon. Right, so once it's implemented, it's very different, because it will be able to- Once the chain's out of the bottle, what's gonna happen? And it will be able to improve itself.

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Yes. That's where it gets spooky, right? The idea that it can do thousands of years of innovation very, very quickly.

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Yeah. And then we'll be just ridiculous. Ridiculous. We will be like this ridiculous, biological, shitting, pissing thing, trying to stop the gods. No, stop, we like living with a finite lifespan, and watching Norman Rockwell paintings. It could be terrible, and it could be great. It's not clear.

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Right. But one thing is for sure, we will not control it. Do you think that it's likely that we will merge somehow or another with this sort of technology, and it'll augment what we are now? Or do you think it will replace us? Well, the merge scenario with AI is the one that seems probably the best. For us.

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Yes. Like, if you can't beat it, join it. That's...

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Yeah. So, from a long-term existential standpoint, that's like the purpose of Neuralink, is to create a high-bandwidth interface to the brain, such that we can be symbiotic with AI. Because we have a bandwidth problem. You just can't communicate through your fingers, it's too slow.

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And where's Neuralink at right now? I think we'll have something interesting to announce in a few months. That's at least an order of magnitude better than anything else.

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Probably, I think better than probably anyone thinks is possible. How much can you talk about that right now? I don't want to drop the gun on that. But what's like the ultimate, what's the idea behind it? Like, what are you trying to accomplish with it?

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Like, what would you like, best-case scenario? I think best-case scenario, we effectively merge with AI, where we, AI serves as a tertiary cognition layer, where we've got the limbic system, kind of the primitive brain, essentially. You've got the cortex. So, you're currently in a symbiotic relationship, your cortex and limbic system are in a symbiotic relationship. And generally, people like their cortex, and they like their limbic system. I haven't met anyone who wants to delete their limbic system or delete their cortex.

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Everybody seems to like both. And the cortex is mostly in service to the limbic system. People may think that their thinking part of themselves is in charge, but it's mostly their limbic system that's in charge. And the cortex is trying to make the limbic system happy. That's what most of that computing power is oriented towards.

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How can I make the limbic system happy? That's what it's trying to do. Now, if we do have a third layer, which is the AI extension of yourself, that is also symbiotic, and there's enough bandwidth between the cortex and the AI extension of yourself, such that the AI doesn't de facto separate, then that could be a good outcome. That could be quite a positive outcome for the future. So, instead of replacing us, it will radically change our capabilities. Yes, it will enable anyone who wants to have superhuman cognition.

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Anyone who wants. This is not a matter of earning power, because your earning power would be vastly greater after you do it. So, it's just like anyone who wants can just do it in theory. That's the theory. And if that's the case, then, and let's say billions of people do it, then the outcome for humanity will be the sum of human will. The sum of billions of people's desire for the future. And that could be- But billions of people with enhanced cognitive ability. Radically enhanced.

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Yes. Which would be, how much different than people today? Like, if you had to explain it to a person who didn't really understand what you were saying, how much different are you talking about? When you say radically improved, what do you mean?

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You mean mind reading? It would be difficult to really appreciate the difference. It's kind of like, how much smarter are you with a phone or computer than without? You're vastly smarter, actually.

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You know, you can answer any question. If you connect to the internet, you can answer any question pretty much instantly. Any calculation that your phone's memory is essentially perfect.

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You can remember flawlessly. Your phone can remember videos, pictures, and everything perfectly. Your phone is already an extension of you. You're already a cyborg. Well, most people don't realize they are already a cyborg. That phone is an extension of yourself. It's just that the data rate, the rate at which the communication rate between you and the cybernetic extension of yourself, that is your phone and computer, is slow.

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It's very slow. And that is like a tiny stroll of information flow between your biological self and your digital self. And we need to make that tiny stroll like a giant river, huge, high bandwidth interface. It's an interface problem, data rate problem. Solve the data rate problem, then I think we can hang on to human-machine symbiosis through the long term. And then people may decide that they want to retain their biological self or not. I think they'll probably choose to retain their biological self. Versus some sort of Ray Kurzweil scenario where they download themselves into a computer? You will be essentially snapshotted into a computer at any time. If your biological self dies, you could just probably just upload into a new unit.

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Literally. Pass that whiskey. We're getting crazy over here. This is getting ridiculous.

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Down the rabbit hole. Grab that sucker. Give me some of that. This is too freaky. See, if I was just talking to one of my... I've been thinking about this for a long time, by the way. I believe you have. If I was talking to one of my... Cheers, by the way.

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Cheers. Yeah, this is great whiskey. Thank you. I don't know where this came from. Who brought this to us? Trying to remember. Somebody gave it to us. Old camp, whoever it was, thanks. Yeah, it is good.

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This is just inevitable. Again, going back to when you decided to have this fatalistic viewpoint. So you tried to warn people. You talked about this pretty extensively. I've read several interviews where you talked about this. And then you just sort of just said, okay, it just is. Let's just... And in a way, by communicating the potential fear... I mean, for sure, you're getting the warning out to some people. Yeah.

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Yeah. I mean, I was really going on the warning quite a lot. I was warning everyone I could. You ever met with Obama, and just for one reason, look, everybody watch out. Just to talk about AI.

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Yes. And what did he say? He said, what about Hillary?

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Worry about her first. Shh, everybody be quiet. No, he listened. He certainly listened.

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I met with Congress. I met with... I was at a meeting of all 50 governors and talked about just AI danger. And I talked to everyone I could.

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No one seemed to realize where this was going. Is it that, or do they just assume that someone smarter than them is already taking care of it? Because when people hear about something like AI, it's almost abstract. It's almost like it's so hard to wrap your head around it.

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By the time it already happens, it'll be too late. Yeah, I think they didn't quite understand it or didn't think it was near-term or not sure what to do about it. And I said, an obvious thing to do is to just establish a committee, government committee, to gain insight. Before you oversight, before you do make regulations, you should try to understand what's going on. And then if you have an insight committee, then once they learn what's going on, get up to speed, then they can make maybe some rules or propose some rules. And that would be probably a safer way to go about things. It seems, I mean, I know that it's probably something that the government's supposed to handle, but it seems like I don't want the government to handle this. Who do you want to handle it? I want you to handle this.

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Oh, geez. I feel like you're the one who could ring the bell better. Because if Mike Pence starts talking about AI, I'm like, shut up, bitch. You don't know anything about AI.

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Come on, man. He doesn't know what he's talking about. He thinks it's demons. I don't have the power to regulate other companies. When am I supposed to?

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Right, but maybe companies could agree. Maybe there could be some sort of a, I mean, we have agreements where you're not supposed to dump toxic waste into the ocean. You're not supposed to do certain things that could be terribly damaging, even though they'd be profitable. Maybe this is one of those things. Maybe we should realize that you can't hit the switch on something that's going to be able to think for itself and make up its own mind as to whether or not it wants to survive or not and whether or not it thinks you're a threat and whether or not it thinks you're useless. Like, why do I keep this dumb, finite life form alive?

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Why keep this thing around? It's just stupid. It just keeps polluting everything. It's shitting everywhere it goes, lighting everything on fire and shooting each other.

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Why would I keep this stupid thing alive? Because sometimes it makes good music. Sometimes it makes great movies. Sometimes it makes beautiful art. And sometimes it's cool to hang out with.

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Like, it might be. Yeah, for us, those are great reasons. But for anything objective, standing outside, like, oh, this is definitely a flawed system. This is like if you went to the jungle and you watched these chimps engage in warfare and beat each other with sticks. They're fucking real mean. Fucking mean. They're real mean.

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I saw that movie, Chimpanzee. I thought it was going to be like some Disney thing. I was like, oh, like, cow. What movie was that?

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It's literally called Chimpanzee. Is it a documentary? Yeah, yeah, it's kind of like a documentary. I was like, damn, these chimps are mean. They're mean. Yeah, they're cruel. Yeah, they're calculated.

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Yeah. They sneak up on each other. Like, I didn't realize chimps did calculated cruelty.

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Yeah. That's pretty, ah, I left that meeting kind of thinking, whoa, this is dark. Right, well, we know better because we've advanced. But if we hadn't, we'd be like, man, I don't want to fucking live in a house. I like the chimp ways, bro. Chimp ways to go. This is it, man. Chimp life.

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Chimp life. It's the only life I know. But we, in a way, to the AI, might be like those chimps. I'm like, these stupid fucks launching missiles out of drones and shooting each other underwater. Like, we're crazy. We've got torpedoes and submarines and fucking airplanes that drop nuclear bombs indiscriminately on cities. We're assholes.

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Yeah. They might go, why are they doing this? It might like look at our politics, look at what we do in terms of our food system, what kind of food we force down each other's throats. And they might go, these people are crazy. They don't even look out for themselves.

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I don't know. I mean, how much do we think about chimps? Not much.

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Very little. It's like, these chimps are at war. They, these like little, it's like, groups of chimps just attack each other and they kill each other. They torture each other. That's pretty bad. They hunt monkeys. They're, but like, this is probably the most, that, you know, I mean, when's the last time you talked about chimps? Me?

(00:36:26)

Yeah. All the time. You do? Talking to the wrong guy. Okay, well, unfortunately. It's a fucking podcast. Dude, I talk about chimps every other episode. It's Chimp City?

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Okay. People are laughing right now. Yeah, constantly, I'm obsessed. I saw that David Attenborough documentary on chimps and they were eating those colobus monkeys and ripping them apart. Yeah, it's just rough. I saw that many, many years ago. It just changed how I go, oh, this is why people are so crazy. We came from that thing. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Or there's the bonobos.

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Yeah. They got a, like, better philosophy. Yeah, they're like swingers. Yeah, they really are. They seem to be way more, even than us, way more civilized. They just seem to resolve everything with sex. Yeah, the only rules they have is the mom won't bang the son. That's it.

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Okay. That's it. Mom won't bang her sons. They're good women.

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Yeah. Good women in the bonobo community. Everybody else is just banging it out.

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Yeah. I haven't seen the bonobo movie. Well, they're disturbing just at a zoo. You know, you have bonobos at the zoo. They're just constantly going.

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Constantly fucking, yeah. That's all they do. It just won't stop. Yeah, and they don't care.

(00:37:31)

Gay, straight, whatever. Let's just fuck. What's with these labels? I haven't seen bonobos at a zoo.

(00:37:37)

It's probably like, not in the PG section. Yeah, I don't think they have them at many zoos. We've looked that up before, too, didn't we? Yeah, it's probably pretty awkward. I think that's the thing. They like to keep regular chimps at zoos because bonobos are just always jacking off.

(00:37:50)

Yeah. What's that? They have them in San Diego? San Diego's just got some, yeah. Really? Interesting. Probably separate them. Yeah, I mean, how many are there in a cage?

(00:37:59)

Right. It's gonna be pretty intense. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we're a weird thing, you know, and I've often wondered whether or not we're, you know, our ultimate goal is to give birth to some new thing, and that that's why we're so obsessed with technology. Because it's not like this technology's really, I mean, it's certainly enhancing our lives in a certain way, but ultimately, is it making people happier right now? Most technology, I would say no. In fact, you and I were talking about social media before this about just not having Instagram on your phone and not dealing, and you feel better. Yes, I think one of the issues with social media, it's been pointed out by many people, is that I think maybe particularly Instagram, people look like they have a much better life than they really do.

(00:38:51)

Right, by design. Yeah, people are posting pictures of when they're really happy. They're modifying those pictures to be better looking. Even if they're not modifying the pictures, they're at least selecting the pictures for the best lighting, the best angle. So people basically seem, they're way better looking than they basically really are.

(00:39:14)

Right. And they're way happier seeming than they really are. So if you look at everyone on Instagram, you might think, man, there are all these happy, beautiful people, and I'm not that good looking, and I'm not happy.

(00:39:28)

So I must suck. And that's gonna make people sad. So when in fact, those people you think are super happy, actually, not that happy. Some of them are really depressed. They're very sad. Some of the happiest seeming people, actually some of the saddest people in reality. And nobody looks good all the time. It doesn't matter who you are.

(00:39:54)

No. It's not even something you should want.

(00:39:58)

Why do you want to look great all the time? Yeah, exactly. So So I think I think things like that can make people quite sad just by comparison because you just sort of you people people generally could think of themselves relative to To others. It's it's a we are constantly re We baselining our expectations and you can see this say if you watch some show like naked and afraid or You know, if you just go and try living in the woods by yourself for a while and you like The land that civilization is quite great Has let's love it people want to come back to civilization pretty fast on the good and afraid Wasn't that a thorough quote the comparison is a thief of joy Yeah, well if happiness is reality minus expectations

(00:40:46)

That's Great too, but the comparison is a thief of joy really holds true to Pete. Is it theodore roosevelt roosevelt fascinating?

(00:40:56)

in when you think about Instagram because what essentially Instagram is with a lot of people is you're giving them the opportunity to be their own PR agent and they always Go towards the glamorous, you know, and when anybody does show, you know, hashtag no filter They really do do that like oh you're so brave look at you no makeup You know, yeah, they look good. Anyway, you look great. What are you doing? Oh my god, you don't have makeup on You still look hot as fuck. You know what you're doing. I know what you're doing, too They're they're they're letting you know and then they're feeding off that comment section. Ooh, just look Sitting there like like it's a fresh stream of love like you getting right up to the source as it comes out of the earth And you're sucking that's a lot of a lot of emojis water emoji emojis. Yeah My what my concern is not so much what Instagram is is that I didn't think that people had the need for this or the expectation for some sort of technology that allows them to constantly get love and adulation from strangers and Comments and and this ability to project this sort of distorted version of who you really are But I worry about where it goes like what's the next one? What's the next one? Like, where is it?

(00:42:07)

Is it gonna be augmented to some sort of a weird augmented or virtual sort of Instagram type situation?

(00:42:13)

Where you're not gonna want to live in this real world You're gonna want to interface with this sort of world that you've created through your social media page some next-level thing Yeah Go live in the simulation. Yeah, maybe in the simulation ready player one type shit That's real that seems we have that HTC Vive here I've only done it a couple times quite honestly because it kind of freaks me out. Sure. My kids fucking love it, man They love it They love playing these weirdo games and and and walking around with that headset on but part of me watching them do it goes Wow, I wonder if this is like the precursor just sort of like if you look at that that phone that Gordon Gekko had on The beach. Yeah, you compare that. Yeah, you pair that to like a Galaxy Note 9 I got a fuck did that become that right and I wonder when I see this HTC Vive I'm like, what is that thing gonna be 10 years from now when we're making fun of what it is now What is it? How I mean how?

(00:43:09)

Ingrained and how how how connected and interconnected is this technology gonna be in our life? It will be At some point indistinguishable from reality Where we'll lose this we'll lose this like you and I just look at each other through our eyes I see you see me. I think I hope you think so. I think you probably have regular eyes This could be some simulation. It could do you entertain that?

(00:43:41)

Well the argument for the simulation I think is quite strong Because if you assume any improvements at all over time any improvement 1.1 percent just extend the time frame make it a thousand years a million years The universe is 13.8 billion years old What would Civilization if you counted if you're very generous Civilization is maybe seven or eight thousand years old if you count it from the first writing This is nothing. This is nothing So If you assume any rate of improvement at all then Games will be indistinguishable from reality Or civilization will end one of those two things will occur Although we are most likely in a simulation Or we're on our way to one right? Well, which is because we exist we could most certainly be on the road. We could be on the road to that, right? It doesn't mean it has to it could be in base reality. It could be in base reality We could be here now on our way to the road or on our way to the destination where this can never happen again Where we are completely ingrained in some sort of an artificial technology or some sort of a symbiotic relationship with the internet or the next?

(00:45:07)

level of Sharing information, but right now we're not there yet. That's possible too, right?

(00:45:12)

It's possible that a simulation is one day going to be inevitable that we're gonna have something that's indistinguishable from regular reality But maybe we're not there yet. That's also possible We're not quite there yet that this is real When I touch that feels very real, maybe that's why everybody's like into like mason jars and shit Mason's weight shoes people are into like craft restaurants, and they will they want raw wood Everyone says everyone see metal people it seems like people are like longing towards some weird log cabin type Reality yeah like holding on like clinging just dragging their nails through the mud like don't take me yet Yes, I want to but then but then people will go get a mason jar with a wine stem or a handle

(00:45:56)

That's dark Makes me lose faith in humanity wine stem and a handle they have those yes Oh the sturdy people that's just assholes. That's like people make pet rocks rough right some people are just assholes. They take advantage of our Generous nature, it was made with the wine stem made with a handle They made it that way yes, so the On to the mace yeah, that would be fine if there was They glued it on or something, but it was made that way like trash chic. Oh, this is disgusting Yep, this is terrible Yeah That's like fake breasts that are designed to be hard like fake breasts from the 60s It's like if you really long for the ones with ripples here we go Yeah, that's almost what that is yeah What are you gonna? Do man? There's nothing you know it's not you do stop certain terrible ideas from propagating

(00:46:57)

Yeah I Don't sound like like things are too dark because I think like you kind of have to Be optimistic about the future there's no point in being Pessimistic, it's just too negative Doesn't help it doesn't help. You know I think you want to be I Mean my theory is like you'd rather be Optimistic I think I'd rather be optimistic and wrong than pessimistic and right Right at least or on that side right yeah, because if you're pessimistic it's going to be miserable yeah Yeah, nobody wants to be around you anyway, if it's the end of the world you're like I fucking told you bro. Yeah The world's ending yeah It is I mean I mean enjoy the journey right if you really want to get Morose, I mean it is what it is for all of us. Anyway. We were all gonna go unless some something changes

(00:47:54)

Yeah, I mean ultimately you know even if we just sort of existed as humans forever. We'd be We'd still eventually that'd be like the heat death of the universe right a zillion years from now Right if we get it past the Sun if we figure out a way past the Sun Running out of juice eventually it's gonna end. It's just a section of when right so it really is all about the journey hmm or transcendence From whatever we are now into something that doesn't worry about death The universe as we know it will dissipate into a fine mist of Cold nothingness eventually and then someone's gonna bottle it and put a fragrance to it Sell it to French people in another dimension. It's just a very long time Yeah, I think it's really just about how can we make it last longer?

(00:48:46)

Are you a proponent of the multi universes theory?

(00:48:50)

Do you believe that there are many many universes and that even if this one fades out that there's other ones that are starting fresh Right now and there's an infinite number of them and they're just constantly in this never-ending cycle of birth and death. I Think most likely this is just about probability there are many many simulations These simulations are we might as well call them reality or you could call them multiverse These simulations you believe are created like someone has many they're running on the substrate So that substrate is probably boring boring. Mm-hmm. How so?

(00:49:30)

Well when we create a simulation Like a game or a movie. It's a distillation of what's interesting about life you know like it it takes take a year to shoot an action movie and Then that's all distilled down into two or three hours So, let me tell you if you see an action movie being filmed friggin, it's boring super boring It takes there's like lots of takes as everything's in a green screen Looks pretty goofy. It doesn't look cool But once you add the CGI and have great editing, it's amazing so I Think most likely If we're a simulation, it's really boring outside the simulation Because why would you make a simulation that's boring it makes simulation way more interesting the base reality that is if this right now is a simulation, yes, and

(00:50:29)

Ultimately inevitably were if as long as we don't die or get hit by a meteor We're going to create some sort of simulation if we continue on the same technological path. We're on we're on right now Yes, but we might not be there yet, so it might not be a simulation here But it most likely is you feel other places This notion of place or where is is a flawed yes flawed like we're like that if you have this sort of That vibe You know That's made by valve and Steve and it's really valve that made it HCC did the hardware but it's really a valve thing Makers of half-life. Yes. Hmm. Well great company great company When you're in that in that some in that Virtual reality, which is only gonna get better

(00:51:31)

Where are you? Right, you aren't anywhere. Well, where's in the computer? What what you know, what defines where you are exactly, right?

(00:51:41)

It's your perception. Is it your perceptions or is it you know, a scale that we have under your butt you're right here I've measured you. You're the same weight as you were when you left But you mean while your experience, why do you think you're where you are right now? You might not be I'll spark up a joint if you keep talking your manager's gonna come in here. We might have to lock the door Right now you think you're in a studio in LA. That's what I heard. You might be in a computer Listen, man, I think about this all the time Yeah, I mean It's unquestionable that one day that'll be the case as long as we keep going as long as nothing interrupts us and if we start from scratch and You know, we're single-celled organisms all over again and then millions and millions of years later

(00:52:23)

We become the next thing that is us with creativity and the ability to change its environment It's gonna keep monkeying with things until it figures out a way to change reality To change I mean to almost like punch a hole through what is this thing? into what what it wants it to be and create new things and then those new things will intersect with other people's new things and then it'll be this ultimate pathway of infinite ideas and expression all through technology Yeah, and then we're wonder we're gonna wonder like why are we here what are we doing?

(00:53:01)

Let's find out Well, I mean, I think we should take the actions The set of actions that are most likely to make the future better Yes, right. Yeah, right, right and then reevaluate those actions to make sure they're there that it's true Well, I think there's a movement to that. I mean in terms of like a social movement I think some of its misguided and some of its exaggerated and there's a lot of a lot of people that are Fighting for their side out there, but it seems like the general trend of like Social awareness seems to be much more heightened now than has ever been in any other time in history because of our ability to express ourselves instantaneously to each other through Facebook or Twitter or what-have-you and that the trend is to

(00:53:52)

abandon preconceived notions abandoned prejudice abandoned discrimination and Promote kindness and happiness as much as possible. Look at this knife. Somebody gave it to me. Sorry. Yeah What is it fuck did you do my friend Donnie brought this with him and it just stayed here I have a real samurai sword trying to play with that. I know you're into weapons. That's from the 1500s Samurai at the end of the table. Yeah, that's cool. Grab it. Hold on That's a legit samurai sword from an actual samurai from the 1500s If you pull out that blade that blade was made the old way Where a master craftsman folded that metal and hammered it down over and over again Over a long period of time and honed that blade into what it is now

(00:54:37)

What's crazy is that it was made in the 1500s and it was made in the 1500s And honed that blade into what it is now what's crazy is that More than 500 years later. That thing is still pristine. I mean whoever took care of that and passed it down to the next person who took care of it and You know until it got to the podcast room. It's pretty fucking crazy. Yeah one day. Someone's gonna be looking at a Tesla like that These fucking back doors they pop up sideways like a Lamborghini I Should see what the Tesla can do You didn't you should I'll show you after well, I've driven one. I love them Yeah, but most people don't know what it can do in terms of like ludicrous mode In terms like driving super fast and irresponsibly on public roads. Is that what you're saying?

(00:55:30)

Well, any car can do that. Yeah What can it do that?

(00:55:35)

That I need to know about I mean the Model X can do this like ballet thing to the trans-siberian orchestra. It's pretty cool We're at dances. Yes, legitimately Yes Why would you program that into a car Seemed like fun That's what I get about you. That's what's weird Like when you showed up here you were all smiles and you pull out a fucking blowtorch and not a blowtorch But I'm like look at this dude a flamethrower not a flamethrower Mike. I want to be clear It's definitely not a player. You're having fun. Like this is a Like this thing when you know you program a car to do a ballet dance, it's great fun How do you have the time to do that? I don't understand why you're digging holes under the earth and sending rockets into space and And and powering people in Australia like how the fuck do you have time to make the car dance ballet? Well, I mean in that case There were some engineers at Tesla that said, you know, what if we make this car dance and play music I Like that sounds great Please do it Let's try to get it done in time for Christmas. We did Is there a concern about someone just losing their mind and making it do that in the highway?

(00:56:52)

No, it won't do that. What if it's in bumper-to-bumper traffic? Nope. No won't do it. Nope It's actually you have to it's an Easter egg. Oh, it's an Easter egg. Yeah, that's why people don't know about it Putting people have the car. Well, it's like you can do lots of things lots of things once read it gets a hold of it Everyone's oh you just have it's everyone if you search for it on the internet You will find out but people don't know that they should even search for it. Oh, well they do now Yes. Yes, there's so many things about the model X and the model S and the model 3 that People don't know about we should probably do a video or something It can explain it Because I've have close friends of mine and I say do you know the car can do this and they're like, nope

(00:57:39)

Do you want to do a video that do you like the fact that some people don't know No, I think it's probably not we should tell people. Yeah, probably. Yes, that would help your product I mean, it's not like you don't sell enough of them. You sell almost too many of them right The I mean, I think a Tesla Is the most fun thing you could possibly buy ever That's what it's meant to be well, our goal is to make it's It's not exactly a car. It's actually a thing to maximize enjoyment Make its maximum fun Okay Electronic like big-screen laptop ridiculous speed Handling all that stuff Yeah, do you you have and we're gonna put video games in it you are. Yeah, is that's wise Well, you won't be able to drive while you're playing the video game But we're like for example, we just we're just putting the the Atari emulator ROM emulator in it So we'll play a missile command and lunar lander and a bunch of other things Yeah, that sounds cool. It's pretty fun. I like that Yeah, and we improved the interface of missile command because it's too hard with the old trackball So this is there's a touchscreen version of missile command So you have a chance?

(00:59:05)

Do you you have an old car don't you don't you have like an old Jaguar? Yeah, yeah, that's that's what's building up that 61 series 1e type Jaguar. I love cars. It's great. Yeah, I love old cars Yeah, the only to get only to your gassing cars I have about that and An old Like a Ford Model T that a friend of mine gave me. Mmm. That's my only two gasoline cars is the Ford Model T all stock Well, oh, there's your car Convertible Car that's a good-looking car Yes, is that yours?

(00:59:44)

That is it's not mine. It's extremely close to mine, but I don't have a French license plate on mine It's a beautiful car they nailed that that's mine looks like that god they nailed that that's what mine looks like They're gonna that is mine. There's certain iconic shapes. Yeah. And there's there's something about those cars too. They're not as capable, not nearly as capable as like a Tesla, but there's something really satisfying about the mechanical aspect of like feeling the steering and the grinding of the gears and the shifting. There's something about those that's extremely satisfying even though they're not that competent. Like I have a 1993 Porsche 964. It's like a lightweight. It's not in the RS America. It's not very fast. It's not like in

(01:00:34)

comparison to a Tesla or anything like that. But the thing about it is like it's mechanical. You feel it. Everything's like it gives you this weird thrill like you're on this clinky ride and there's all this feedback. There's something to that. Yeah yeah absolutely. I mean yeah my e-type is like basically no electronics. Yeah. So you like that but you also like electronics. Yes. Like your Tesla. It's like the far end of electronics. Yes. Drives itself. It's driving itself better every day. Yeah. It's like we're about to release the software that will enable you to just turn it on and it'll drive from highway unramp to highway exit. Do lane changes to overtake other cars. Jesus. Go from one interchange to the next. If you get on say the 405 and get off 300 miles later and go through several highway interchanges and just overtake other cars and hook into the nav system and then. And you're just meditating.

(01:01:43)

Yeah. More than cars just traveling. It's very. It's kind of eerie. It's kind of eerie. What did you think when you saw that video that dude falling asleep behind the wheel. I'm sure you've seen it. The one in San Francisco. He's like right outside of San Jose. Dude's out cold like this. And the car's in bumper-to-bumper traffic moving along. Yeah. You've seen it right? Yeah yeah. We changed the software. That's I think an old video. We changed software where if you don't touch the wheel it will gradually slow down and put the emergency lights on and wake you up. Oh that's hilarious. Yeah. That's hilarious. Yeah. Can you choose what voice wakes you up? Well it's sort of more of a. It sort of honks. Oh it honks. Yeah. This should be like wake up fuck face. Well you're endangering your fellow humans. We could we could gently wake you up with a sultry voice. That would be good. Like something with a southern accent. Hey wake up. Wake up sunshine. Hey sweetie.

(01:02:38)

Exactly. Won't you wake up. You could pick your. Right. Pick what you want. Yeah I choose the Australian girl for Siri. Yeah. I like her voice. Do you want it seductive? My favorite. I like Australian. What flavor of. Do you want it to be angry? Could be anything. You want those Australian prison lady jeans. Now when you when you program something like that in is this in response to a concern or is it your own? Yeah. Do you look at it and go hey they shouldn't just be able to fall asleep. Let's wake them up.

(01:03:07)

Yeah. Yeah. We it's like you know like what you know people falling asleep. We we've got to do something about that. Right but when you first released it you didn't consider it right? You're just like well no one's gonna just sleep.

(01:03:21)

People fall asleep in cars all the time. All the time. And crash. Yeah. At least our car doesn't crash. That's better. It's better not to crash. Imagine if that guy had fallen asleep in a gasoline car. They do it all the time. For sure. Yeah. Then they'd be crashing somebody. Yeah. And in fact the thing that really you know got me to it's like man we better get autopilot going and get it out there was a guy was in an early Tesla driving down the highway and he fell asleep and he ran over a cyclist and killed him. And it's like I was like man if we had autopilot wouldn't run out of the one we might have fallen asleep but at least he wouldn't run over that cyclist. So how did you implement it? Like did you just

(01:04:06)

use cameras? Yeah. Programmed with the system so that if it sees images it slows down? And how much time do you give? Is the person who's in control of it allowed to program how fast it goes? Yes. Yeah you can program it to be more or less like more conservative like more aggressive driver and you can say what speed you want it to what speed is okay. I know you have ludicrous mode. Do you have douchebag mode? Haha. It just cuts people off. Well for lane changes it's tricky because if you're in like LA like unless you're pretty aggressive. Right. It's pretty it's hard to change lanes sometimes. It's hard to be Sat Naam. It's hard to be Namaste here in LA. Yeah. If you want to hit that Santa Monica Boulevard off-ramp. I mean you got to be a little pushy. Got to be a little pushy. Yeah. Especially when people are angry. Yeah. They're a little angry. They don't want you in. They speed up. Sometimes you know I think people like overall are pretty nice on the highway even in LA but sometimes they're not. Do you think the Neuralink will help that? Probably. Everybody be locked in together? This hive mind?

(01:05:19)

Tunnels will help it. We're gonna have traffic. That'll help a lot. Yeah. How many of those can you put in there? The nice thing about tunnels is you can go 3D. So you can go many levels. Right. So. Until you hit hell. Yeah. But you could go you can have a hundred levels of tunnel. No problems. Jesus Christ I don't want to be on 99. I don't want to be on negative 99 floors. This is one of the fundamental things people don't appreciate about tunnels is that it's not like roads. The fundamental issue with roads is that you have a 2D transport system and a 3D living and workspace environment. So you got all these tall buildings or concentrated work environments and then you want to go into this like 2D transport system which is pretty low

(01:06:09)

density because cars are spaced out pretty far and so that obviously is not going to work. You're gonna have traffic guaranteed but if you can go 3D on your transport system then you can solve all traffic. You can either go 3D up with a flying car or go 3D down with tunnels. You can have as many tunnel levels as you want. You can arbitrarily relieve any amount of traffic. You can go further down with tunnels than you can go up with buildings. You're 10,000 feet down if you want. I wouldn't recommend it. What was that movie with uh what's his face Bradley Cooper not Bradley Cooper Christian no what the fuck's his name Batman who was Batman Christian Bale where he they fought dragons him and Matthew McConaughey went down deep into the earth how high how deep can you go

(01:07:04)

to Batman yeah it was it was Batman for dragons No it wasn't Batman but it was Christian Bale. Rain of Fire. Rain of Fire. Okay. You ever saw that? No. Terrible movie. But good. I wouldn't recommend drilling super far down. Yeah but you get real deep. It gets hot right?

(01:07:20)

Molten. Yeah. Earth is a giant ball of lava mm-hmm with a thin crust on the top which we think of as like the surface this thin crust and it's mostly just a big ball of lava that's earth but 10,000 feet is not a big deal. Have you given any consideration whatsoever to the flat earth movement? Haha I think that's a troll situation. Oh it's not. No it's not. You would like to think that because you're super genius haha but I as a normal normal person I know there's people way dumber than me and they really really believe they watch YouTube videos which go on uninterrupted and spew out a bunch of fucking fake facts very eloquently and articulately and they really believe these people really believe. I mean if it works for them. Sure. Fine. Weird though right? That in this age where you know there's ludicrous mode in your car goes 1.9 seconds 0 to 60 2.2. 2.2 which one's 1.9? The Roadster? The next-generation Roadster.

(01:08:35)

Okay. Standard edition. Yeah I'm on top of this shit. Mm-hmm. That's the standard edition. Yeah so it's about the performance package. What? Performance package? Yeah. What the fuck do you need? We're gonna put rocket thrusters on it. For real? Yes. What are they gonna burn? Nothing. Ultra high pressure compressed air. Whoa. Just air? Cold gas thrusters. Then do you have to have air tanks or are they sucking the air out of it? Okay. Yeah just have an electric pump. Whoa. Pump it up to like 10,000 psi. And how fast are we talking? 0 to 60. How fast do you want to go? I want to go instantaneously. We could make it fly. I want to go back in time. Make it fly. You make it fly. Sure. Do you anticipate that as being I mean you're talking about the

(01:09:17)

tunnels and then flying cars do you really think that's gonna be real? Too noisy. And there's too much airflow. So the fundamental issue with flying cars I mean if you get like one of those like toy drones think of how much how loud those are and how much air that they how much air they blow. Now imagine if that's like a thousand times heavier. Hmm. This is not gonna be make your neighbors happy. Your neighbors are not gonna be happy if you land a flying car in your backyard. It'll be very helicopter like. Or on your roof they're just really gonna be like what the hell. That was annoying. Yeah. You can't even like if you want a flying car just put some wheels on a helicopter. Is there a way around that?

(01:09:59)

Like what if they figure out some sort of magnetic technology like all those Bob Lazar type characters were thinking that was a part of the UFO technology they were doing at Area 51. Remember didn't they have some some thoughts about magnetics? Nope. No? Bullshit? Yes. Really? Yeah there's a fundamental momentum exchange with the air. So you must you must accelerate there's there's like there's there's a certain you have a mass and you have gravitational acceleration and mass mass times your mass times gravity must equal the mass of airflow times the acceleration of that airflow to have a neutral force. So it's impossible to get around. And then you won't move. But if MG is greater than MA you will go down. And if MA is greater than MG you will go

(01:10:50)

up. That's how it works. There's just no way around that. There is definitely no way around it. There's no way to create some sort of a magnetic something or another that allows you to. Technically yes you you could have a strong enough magnet but that magnet would be so strong that you would create a lot of trouble. We just suck cars up into your car? Just pick up axles and shit? I mean you'd have to repel off of either material on the ground or in a really nutty situation off of Earth's gravitational field and somehow make that incredibly light. But that magnet would cause so much destruction you'd be better off with a helicopter. So if there was some sort of magnet road like you have two magnets and they repel each other if you had some sort of a magnet road that was below you and you could travel on that magnet road that would work?

(01:11:56)

Ha ha ha. Yes. Yes you could have a magnet road. A magnet road. Is that too ridiculous? No it would work. You could do that. It's pretty ridiculous too right? I would not recommend it. There's a lot of things I don't recommend. I would super not recommend that. Not good. Not wise I think. No. Magnet roads? No. No. Definitely not.

(01:12:21)

That would cause a lot of trouble. So you put some time and consideration into this other than you know instead of like my foolishly rendered thoughts. So you think that tunnels are the way to do it? Oh it'll work for sure. That'll work? Yes. And these tunnels that you're building right now these are basically just like test versions of this ultimate idea that you have? You know it's just a hole in the ground. Right. We played videos of it where your idea is that you're gonna drop that hole in the ground. There's a sled on it and the sled goes very fast like a hundred miles an hour plus. Yeah you can go real fast. You can go as fast as you want. And then if you want to go long distances you can just draw the air out of the tunnel. Make sure

(01:13:05)

it's real straight. Draw the air out of the tunnel? Yeah it's a vacuum tunnel because the then and then depending on how fast you want to go you can use wheels or you could use air bearings depending upon the ambient pressure in the tunnel or you could mag lev it if you want to go super fast. So a magnet road? Yes but underground magnet roads. Underground magnet roads. Otherwise you're gonna really create a lot of trouble with because those metal things. So magnet roads the way to go just underground? If you want to go really fast underground you would be in you would be mag lev in a vacuum tunnel. Mag in a vacuum tunnel? Magnetic levitation in a vacuum tunnel. Rocket launchers. Pardon? With rocket launchers. No I would not

(01:13:53)

recommend putting any exhaust gas in the tunnel. Oh okay I see what you're saying because then you're gonna have to pump it out. Right you'll have to pump it out and you probably have a limited amount of air in the first place like how much can you breathe? Do you have to pump oxygen into these cubicles? No you have a pressurized pod. It'd be like a like a little tiny underground spaceship basically. Like an airplane because you have air in an airplane it's not getting new air in. It is. It is? Yes.

(01:14:17)

They have like a little hole? Yeah they have a pump. Really? Yeah. So it gets it from the outside? Yes. Wow I didn't know that. And it's like it's the air is airplanes have it have it easy because they essentially you can they're pretty leaky. Jesus. Yeah but as long as the as long as the air pump is working at a decent speed they have backup pumps. Oh.

(01:14:39)

So they have like you know three pumps or four pumps or something and and then that then there's like there's an it exhausts through the outflow valve and and through whatever seals are not sealing quite right. Usually the door doesn't seal quite right on a plane. So there's a bit of leakage around the door and and but the pumps exceed the outflow rate and then that sets the pressure in the in the cabin. Now have you ever looked at planes and gone I could fix this? I just don't have the time. I have a design for a plane. You do? Yes. A better design? I mean probably I think it is. Who have you talked to about this? I've talked to friends. Friends? Friends. I'm your friend. Girlfriends. You can tell me. What do you got? What's going on? Well I mean the exciting thing to do would be some sort of electric vertical takeoff and landing supersonic jet of some kind.

(01:15:43)

Vertical takeoff and landing meaning no need for a runway. Just shoot up straight in the air and then how would you do that? And they do that on some military aircrafts correct? Yes. The trick is that you have a you have to transition to level flight and then you the the thing that you would use for vertical takeoff and landing is not suitable for high-speed flight. So you have two different systems? I've thought about this quite a lot. The interesting thing about an electric plane is that you want to go as high as possible but you need a certain energy density in the battery pack because you have to overcome gravitational potential energy. Once you've overcome gravitational potential energy and you're at at a high altitude the energy you use in cruise is very low and then you can recapture a large part of your the gravitational potential energy on the way down. So you really don't need any kind of reserve fuel if you will because you have the the energy of height gravitational potential energy. This is a lot of energy. So so once you can get high you but the like the way to think about a plane is it's a force balance.

(01:17:01)

So the force balance so a plane that is not accelerating is a neutral force balance. You have the force of gravity, you have the lift force of the wings, then you've got the force of the whatever thrusting device the the propeller or turbine or whatever it is and you've got the resistance force of the air. Now the higher you go the lower the air resistance is. Air density drops exponentially but drag increases with the square and exponential beats a square. The higher you go the faster you will go for the same amount of energy and at a certain altitude you can go supersonic with less energy per mile quite a lot less energy per mile than an aircraft at 35,000 feet because it's just a force balance. I'm too stupid for this conversation. It makes sense though.

(01:18:04)

No I'm sure it does. Now when you think about this new idea of designing when when you have this idea about improving planes. Mm-hmm. Are you gonna bring this to somebody you just chuck this around? Well I have a lot on my plate. Right that's what I'm saying. I don't know I don't know how you do what you do now but if you keep coming up with these but it's got to be hard to pawn these off on someone else either. Hey go do a job a good job with this vertical takeoff and landing system that I want to implement to regular planes. The airplane electric airplane isn't necessary right now. Electric cars are important. We need solar energy is important. Stationary storage of energy is important. These

(01:18:51)

things are much more important than creating electric supersonic feet tall.

(01:18:54)

Also the planes naturally you really want that gravitational energy density for an aircraft and this is improving over time. So you know it's important that we accelerate the transition to sustainable energy. That's why electric cars it matters whether electric cars happen sooner or later. You know we're really playing a crazy game here with the atmosphere and the oceans. We're taking vast amounts of carbon from deep underground and putting this in the atmosphere. This is crazy. We should not do this. It's very dangerous. So we should we should we should accelerate the transition to sustainable energy. I mean this bizarre thing is that obviously we're going to run out of oil in the long term. You know we're gonna there's only so much oil we can we can mine and burn. It's tautological.

(01:20:01)

sustainable energy transport and energy infrastructure in the long term. So we know that's the end point. We know that. So why run this crazy experiment where we take trillions of tons of carbon from underground and put it in the atmosphere and oceans? This is an insane experiment. It's the dumbest experiment in human history. Why are we doing this? It's crazy. Do you think this is a product of momentum that we started off doing this when it was just a few engines, a few hundred million gallons of fuel over the whole world, not that big of a deal, and then slowly but surely over a century it got out of control. And now it's not just our fuel, but it's also, I mean, fossil fuels are involved in so many

(01:20:51)

different electronics, so many different items that people buy. It's just this constant desire for fossil fuels, constant need for oil without consideration of the sustainability. The things like oil, oil, coal, gas, it's the easy money. It's easy money. Have you heard about clean coal? The president's been tweeting about it. It's got to be real. Clean coal, all caps. Did you see? He used all caps. Clean coal. Well, you know, it's very difficult to put that CO2 back in the ground. It doesn't like being in solid form. It takes a lot of energy. Have you thought about something like that? Like some sort of a filter? Giant building-sized filter? Sucks carbon out of the atmosphere? Is that possible? No, it's not possible.

(01:21:40)

No, no, no. It's not fucked. No, we're not fucked. I mean, this is a quite a complex question. Right. You know, we're really just, the more carbon we take out of the ground and add to the atmosphere, and a lot of it gets permeated into the oceans, the more dangerous it is. Like, I don't think right now, I think we're okay right now. We can probably even add some more, but the momentum towards sustainable energy is too slow. Like, there's a vast base of industry, vast transportation system. Like, there's two and a half billion cars and trucks in the world. So, and the new car and truck production, if it was a hundred percent electric, that's only about a hundred million per year. So, it would take, if you could snap your fingers and instantly turn all cars

(01:22:46)

and trucks electric, it would still take 25 years to change the transport base to electric. Makes sense? Because how long does a truck, a car truck last before it goes into the junkyard and gets crushed? About 20 to 25 years. Is there a way to accelerate that process? Like, some sort of subsidies or some encouragement from the government financially? Well, the thing that is going on right now is that there is an inherent subsidy in any oil-burning device. Any power plant or car is fundamentally consuming the carbon capacity of the oceans and atmosphere, or just say atmosphere for short. So, you can say, okay, there's a certain probability of something bad happening past a certain carbon concentration in the atmosphere. And so, there's some uncertain number where if we put too much carbon in the atmosphere, things overheat, oceans warm up, ice caps melt, ocean real estate becomes a lot less valuable, underwater. And, but it's not clear what that number is, but it's definitely a scientist would all, it's really quite, the scientists, scientific consensus is overwhelming.

(01:24:14)

Overwhelming. I mean, I don't know any serious scientists, actually zero, literally zero, who don't think that we have quite a serious climate risk that we're facing. And so, there's fundamentally a subsidy occurring with every fossil fuel burning thing, power plants, aircraft, car, frankly even rockets. I mean, rockets use up, you know, they burn fuel. But there's just, you know, with rockets, there's just no other way to get to orbit, unfortunately. So, it's the only way. But with cars, there's definitely a better way with electric cars. And to generate the energy, do so with photovoltaics, because we've got a giant thermonuclear reactor in the sky called the Sun. It's great, sort of shows

(01:25:10)

up every day, very reliable. So, if you can generate energy from solar panels, store it with batteries, you can have energy 24 hours a day. And then you can, you know, can send it to the poles or near to the north with, you know, high voltage lines. Also, the northern parts of the world tend to have a lot of hydropower as well. But anyway, all fossil fuel powered things have an inherent subsidy, which is their consumption of the carbon capacity of the atmosphere and oceans. So, people tend to think like, why should electric vehicles have a subsidy? But they're not taking into account that all fossil fuel burning vehicles fundamentally are subsidized by the cost the environmental cost to Earth. But nobody's paying for it. We are going to

(01:26:11)

pay for it, obviously. In the future, we will pay for it. It's just not paid for now. Now, what is the bottleneck in regards to electric cars and trucks and things like that? Is it battery capacity? Yeah, I've got to scale up production, got to make the car compelling, make it better than gasoline or diesel cars.

(01:26:35)

Make it more efficient in terms of, like, the distance it can travel? Yeah, I've got to be able to go far enough, recharge fast. And your Roadster, you're anticipating 600 miles, is that correct? Yeah, yeah. What is it? Yeah, 600 miles. Is that right now? Like, have you driven one 600 miles now? No, we could totally make one right now that would do 600 miles. But the thing is, it's too expensive. So, like, the car's... How much more so? Well, you know, just have a 200 kilowatt hour battery pack and you can go 600 miles. Right, versus what do you have now? 330 mile range. So that's plenty for most people. What is that in terms of kilowatts? Well, that would be for a Model S, 100 kilowatt hour pack will do about 330 miles, maybe 335.

(01:27:24)

Some people have hyper-miled it to 500 miles. Hyper-miled it? What does that mean? Yeah, just, like, go on... 45 miles an hour or something? Yeah, they're like 30 miles an hour or something. It's, like, on level ground with... You pump the tires up really well and go on a smooth surface and you can go for a long time. But you can, like, definitely comfortably do 300 miles. Is there any... This is fine for most people. Usually 200 or 250 miles is fine.

(01:27:51)

300 miles is... You don't even think about it, really. Is there any possibility that you could use solar power? That solar-powered one day, especially in Los Angeles? I mean, as you said about that giant nuclear reactor a million times bigger than Earth just floating in the sky. Is it possible that one day you'll be able to just power all these cars just on solar power? I mean, we don't ever have cloudy days. If we do, there's three of them. Well, the surface area of a car is... Without making the car, like, really blocky or having some... Like a G-Wagon?

(01:28:25)

Yeah, like... And just, like, having a lot of surface area where, like, maybe, like, solar panels fold out or something. Like your E-Class. That's what we needed. The E-Type? Yeah, the Jaguar E-Type with a giant long hood. That could be a giant solar panel. Well, at the beginning of Tesla, I did want to have this, like, unfolding solar panel thing that you'd press a button and it would just, like, unfold these solar panels and, like, charge... Recharge your car in the parking lot. Yeah, we could do that, but I think it's probably better to just put that on your roof. Right. And then it's gonna just be facing the sun all the time.

(01:29:00)

Because, like, otherwise your car could be in the shade, you know, could be in the shade, could be in a garage or something like that. Yeah. Didn't a Fisker have that on the roof? The Fisker Karma new generation for... I believe it was only for the radio. Is that correct? Yeah, I mean, I think it could, like, recharge, like, two miles a day or something. Did you laugh when they started blowing up when they got hit with water? Do you remember what happened? They got... What? Yeah, when they had a dealership... Oh, yeah. The Fisker Karmas were parked... Was that, like, that with a flood in Jersey? Yes, yes. When the hurricane came in, they got overwhelmed with water and they all started exploding. There's a fucking great video of it. Did you watch the video? I didn't watch the video, but I did see a picture of the aftermath. I'd be naked, lubed up. Watch that video, laugh my ass off. They all blow up.

(01:29:50)

They got wet and they blew up. That's not good. Yeah, we made our battery waterproof, so that doesn't happen. Smart move. Yeah, there was a guy in Kazakhstan that... I think it was Kazakhstan that he just boated through a tunnel, an underwater tunnel, like a flooded tunnel, and just turned the wheels to steer and pressed the accelerator and it just floated through the tunnel and he steered around the other cars. You're like... That's amazing. It's on the Internet. What happens if your car gets a little sideways, like, if you're driving in snow? Like, what if you're driving... if your autopilot is on and you're in, like, Denver and it snows out and your car gets a little sideways? Does it correct itself? Oh yeah, it's got great traction control. But does it know how to, like, correct? Do you know how, like, your ass end kicks out? You know how to countersteer? Oh yeah, no, it's really good. It knows how to do it? Yeah. Whoa. It's pretty crazy. That's pretty crazy. Yeah. So, like, if you're going sideways, it knows how to correct itself? It generally won't go sideways. It won't? No.

(01:30:57)

Why not? It will correct itself before it goes sideways. Even in black ice? Yeah, this video is where you can see the car... the traction control system is very good. It makes you feel like Superman. It's great. You, like, feel like you can... like, it will make you feel like this incredible driver. I believe it. Yeah. Now, how do you program it? We do our testing on, like, an ice lake in Sweden. Oh really? Yeah, and, like, Norway and Canada and a few other places. Porsche does a lot of that too.

(01:31:31)

New Zealand as well. They do a lot of their... they do some of their driver training school on these frozen surfaces. So you're just... the car is going sideways whether you like it or not, and you have to learn how to slide into corners and how to adjust. Yeah. Well, electric cars have really great traction control because the reaction time is so fast. Right. So, with a gasoline car, you've got a lot of latency. It takes a while for the engine to react and for, but for electric motors, incredibly precise. That's why, like, you imagine, like, if you had, like, a printer or something, you would only... you wouldn't have a gasoline engine printer.

(01:32:14)

That would be pretty weird. Or, like, a surgical device. It's gonna be an electric motor on the surgical device, on the printer. Gasoline engine's gonna be just chugging away. It's not gonna have the reaction time. But to an electric motor, it's operating at the millisecond level. So, it can turn on and off traction within, like, inches of getting on the... like, let's say you drive a patch of ice. It'll turn traction off and then turn it on a couple inches right after the ice. Like, a little patch of ice. Because in the frame of the electric motor, you're moving incredibly slowly. You're like a snail. You're a snail. You're just moving so slowly. Because it can see at a thousand frames a second. And so, say one Mississippi, it just thought about things a thousand times. So, it's realized that your wheels are not getting traction. It understands there's some slippery surface that you're driving on. Yes. And it makes adjustments in real time. Yes. In milliseconds. That would be so much safer than a regular car.

(01:33:27)

Yes. It is. Just that alone, for loved ones, you'd want them to be driving your car. Yes. I'm on board. Fuck motors. Dude, fuck regular motors. The S, X, and 3 have the lowest probability of injury of any cars ever tested by the U.S. government. Whoa. Yeah. But it's pretty funny.

(01:33:52)

It's pretty crazy. Like, we... you know, people still sue us. Like, they'll have, like, some accident at 60 miles an hour where they, like, twisted an ankle. And they still... like, they'll be dead in another car. They still sue us. But that's to be expected. It is to be expected. Do you take that into account with, like, the same sort of fatalistic, you know, undertones? Just sort of just go, uh, you got to just let it go. This is what people do. So, yeah. I've got quite a lot of respect for the justice system. Judges are very smart. And they see... they've... it's like, I haven't... so far, I've found judges to be very good at justice. Because I, like, what... like, and juries are good, too. Like, they're actually quite good. You know, people... you know, you read about, like, occasional errors in the justice system. Let me tell you, most of the time, they're very good. And, like, you know, the guy mentioned that... who fell asleep in the car and he rode over a cyclist. And, you know, and that was what encouraged me to get autopilot out as soon as possible. That guy sued us. He sued you for falling asleep? Yes. He... I'm not kidding. He blamed it on the new car smell. What? Yes. He blamed him falling asleep on your new car smell? There's...

(01:35:18)

somewhere there's a lawyer... This is a real thing that happened. Somewhere there's a lawyer that thought that through in front of his laptop before he wrote that up. Yes. He got a lawyer and he sued us. And the judge was like, you... this is crazy. Stop bothering me. No. Thank God. Yes. Thank God. Thank God there's a judge out there with a brain. I'll tell you, judges are... judges are very good. Some of them. What about that judge that sent those boys up the river in Pennsylvania, who was selling those kids out? You know about that story? No. Yeah. Judge was selling young boys to prisons. He was, like, literally, yeah, literally under bribes for... he was... Was this an elected judge or...

(01:35:57)

or... because sometimes you have a judge that's, like, actually a politician. No, he was an elected judge. This is a very famous story. Okay. Who... he's in jail right now, I think, for the rest of his life. And he put away... he would take, like, a young boy would do something like steal something from a store. Okay. And he would put him in detention for, you know, five years. Something ridiculously egregious. And they investigated his history, and they found out that he was literally being paid off. Was it by private prisons? Is that what the deal was? There was some sort of... but anyway, this judge is... two judges? Two judges. Kids for Cash Scandal is what it's called. 2008. Yeah. Common Pleas judges. So I think they are elected. And who was paying

(01:36:42)

them? Someone... it was proven, to the point where they're in jail now, that someone was paying them to put more asses in the seats in these private prisons. A million dollar payment to put him in a youth centers builder. A million dollar payment. Yeah. I do think it's this private prisons thing is creating a bad incentive. Right. Yes. But I mean, that judge is in prison. Thank God. Yes. But for people who think perhaps the justice system consists entirely of judges like that, I want to assure you, this is not the case. The vast majority of judges are very good. I agree. And they care about justice, and they could have made a lot more money if they wanted to be a trial lawyer. And instead, they cared about justice, and they made less money because they care about justice. And that's why they're judges. I feel that same way about police officers. I feel like there's so many interactions with so many different people with police officers, that very few that stand out that are horrific. We tend to look at that, like, this is evidence that police are all corrupt. And I think that's crazy. No, most police are very honest. And the military personnel that I know are very honorable, ethical people, and much more honorable and ethical than the average person. That's my impression.

(01:38:03)

That is my impression as well. And that's not to suggest that we be complacent and assume everyone's honest and ethical. And obviously, if somebody is given a trusted place in society, such as being a police officer or a judge, and they are corrupt, then we must be extra vigilant against such situations and take action. But we should not think that this is somehow broadly descriptive of people in that profession. I couldn't agree more. I think there's also an issue with one of the things that happens with police officers, prosecutors, and anyone that's trying to convict someone or arrest someone, is that it becomes a game. And in games, people want to win. And sometimes people cheat.

(01:38:43)

Yes. Yes. I mean, if you're a prosecutor, you should not always want to win. There are times when you should like, okay, I just should not want to win this case. And then, you know, like, just pass on that case. Sometimes people want to win too much. That is true. I think also the it becomes tough if you're, if you're like a district attorney. You know, you tend to sort of see a lot of criminals, and then your, your view of the world can get negatively, you know, have a negative, you know, you have a negative view of the world, because you're just interacting with a lot of criminals. But actually, most of society is not consist of criminals, right? And I actually had this conversation at dinner several years ago with a district attorney, I was like, man, it must sometimes seem pretty, pretty dark, because, you know, man, there's some, some terrible human beings out there. And he was like, yep. And he was like dealing with some case, which consisted of a couple of old ladies that would run people over somehow for insurance money. It was rough. Like, wow, that's, that's, that's pretty rough. It's like, it's like hard to maintain faith in humanity, if you're district attorney, but you know, it's only a few percent of society that are actually bad. And then if you go to the worst, say, 0.1% of society or the worst one in a thousand, one in a million, you know, like how bad is the millionth worst person in the United States?

(01:40:20)

Pretty damn bad. Like damn evil. Like the, the, the millionth, like the millionth or one in a million of evil is so evil. People cannot even conceive of it, but there's 330 million people in the United States. So that's 330 people out there somewhere, but by the same token, there's also 330 people who are incredible angels and unbelievably good human beings on the other side.

(01:40:51)

But because of our fear of danger, we tend to, our thoughts tend to gravitate towards the worst case scenario. And we want to frame that. And it's one of the real problems with prejudice, whether it's prejudice towards different minorities or prejudice towards police officers or anything. It's like, we want to look at the worst case scenario and say, this is an example of what this is all about. And you see that even with people, how they frame genders. Some men frame women like that. They get ripped off by a few women and they said, all women are evil. Some women get fucked over by a few men.

(01:41:25)

All men are shit. And, and this, this is very toxic and it's also, it's a very unbalanced way of viewing the world and it's very emotionally based and it's based on your own experience, your own anecdotal experience. And it can, it can be very influential to the people around you. And it's just, it's a dangerous way. It's a dangerous thought process and pattern to promote.

(01:41:49)

It is. It is a very dangerous thought pattern. I really think, you know, people should give other people the benefit of the doubt and assume that they're good until proven otherwise. And I think really most people are actually pretty good people. Nobody's perfect. They have to be. If you think of the vast numbers of us that are just interacting with each other constantly, we have to be better than we think we are.

(01:42:14)

Yes. I mean, like, there's no other way. I mean, here are these weapons, like, but how many times, like nobody's presumably tried to murder you in your own studio. Nobody yet.

(01:42:21)

Yes. Nobody's, like, put the swords right there. Now there's a flamethrower. Fake flamethrower here.

(01:42:25)

Exactly. Not a flamethrower. Now we've got a real problem. I'm going to put it on that side too. I'm going to leave it for the guests.

(01:42:30)

Yeah. I'm like, look, man. If I say something that fucked up, it's right there. It's going to liven things up for sure. It's guaranteed to make any party better.

(01:42:38)

Yeah. Well, that's, I mean, that's the armed civilization theory, right? That an armed community is a safe and polite community.

(01:42:48)

Yeah. You ever been to Texas? It's kind of true.

(01:42:51)

Yeah. I mean. People in Texas are super polite and everybody's got a gun. Yes. Don't make somebody angry. Yeah. Don't know what's going to happen. Yeah. It's not a good move. Yeah. Piss people off when everybody can have a gun. Yeah.

(01:43:08)

Better off to just let that guy get in your lane. Yeah. Yeah. We've got a big test site in central Texas near Waco. Oh, beautiful. Yeah.

(01:43:18)

SpaceX in McGregor. It's about 15 minutes away from Waco. That's close to where Ted Nugent lives. It is?

(01:43:24)

Shout out to Ted Nugent. Okay. Cool. Yeah.

(01:43:28)

Yeah. We have lots of fire and loud explosions and things. I bet. They're cool with it. They don't give a fuck out there. They're very supportive. Yeah. You can buy fireworks where your kids go to school.

(01:43:39)

Yeah. You know, it's dangerous. Yeah, but it's free. It's free. There's something about Texas that's very enticing because of that.

(01:43:48)

It is dangerous, but it's also free. Right. Yeah.

(01:43:52)

Yeah. I kind of like Texas, actually. Well, I prefer it over places that are more restrictive, but more liberal, because you could always be liberal. Just because things are free and just because you have a certain amount of right-wing type characters, it doesn't mean you have to be that way. No. Honestly, there's a lot of those people that are pretty fucking open-minded and let you do whatever you want to do. Right. As long as you don't bother them.

(01:44:18)

Yeah. Exactly. That's my hope right now with the way we're able to communicate with each other today and how radically different it is than generations past, is that we all just, the dust settles and we all realize, like what you were saying, that most people are good. Most people are good. The vast majority.

(01:44:37)

Yes. I think you should give people the benefit of the doubt, for sure. I think you're right.

(01:44:41)

Yeah. You know what could help that? What? Mushrooms. Mushrooms. Don't you think? They're delicious. Yeah, right? Yeah. They're good for you, too.

(01:44:51)

Yeah. All of them. All kinds of them. What do you see in terms of when you think about the future of your companies, what do you see as bottlenecks? You want some more of this?

(01:45:05)

Thank you. What do you see in terms of bottlenecks, of things that are holding back innovation? Is it regulatory commissions and people that don't understand the technology that are influencing policy? What could potentially be holding you guys back right now? Is there anything that you would change?

(01:45:30)

Yeah. That's a good question. I wish politicians were better at science. That would help a lot. That's a problem.

(01:45:42)

Yes. There's no incentive for them to be good at science. There isn't. Actually, they're pretty good at science in China, I have to say. Are they?

(01:45:53)

Yeah. The mayor of Beijing has, I believe, an environmental engineering degree, and the deputy mayor has a physics degree. I met them. The mayor of Shanghai is really smart. You're up on technology. What do you think about this government policy of stopping use of Huawei phones? There's something about the worry about spying. From what I understand from real tech people, they think it's horseshit. Oh, I don't know. Like phones?

(01:46:26)

I don't know. Like the government said, don't buy Huawei phones. Are you up on that at all?

(01:46:33)

No? Should we just abandon this idea? I guess if you have top secret stuff, then you want to be pretty careful about what hardware you use. But most people do not have top secret stuff. And nobody really cares what porn you watch. Nobody actually cares. And if they do, that's kind of on them. National spy agencies do not give a rat's ass what porn you watch. They do not care. What secrets does a national spy agency have to learn from the average citizen?

(01:47:16)

Nothing. Well, that's the argument against the narrative. And the argument by a lot of these tech people is that the real concern is that these companies like Huawei are innovating at a radical pace. And they're trying to stop them from integrating into our culture and letting this...

(01:47:32)

Like right now, they're the number two cell phone manufacturer in the world. Samsung's number one. Huawei is number two. Apple is now number three. They surpassed Apple as number two. And the idea is that this is all taking place without them having any foothold whatsoever in America. There's no carriers that have their phones. You have to buy their phones unlocked through some sort of a third party and then put...

(01:47:56)

Okay. And the worry is that these are somehow or another controlled by the Chinese government. The communist Chinese government is going to distribute these phones. And I don't know if the worry is economic influence, that they'll have too much power. I don't know what it is. Are you paying attention on any of this?

(01:48:16)

Not really. I don't think we should worry too much about Huawei phones. Maybe our national security agencies shouldn't have Huawei phones.

(01:48:25)

Maybe that's a question mark. But I think for the average citizen, it doesn't matter. I'm pretty sure the Chinese government does not care about the goings on of the average American citizen. Is there a time where you think that there will be no security, where it will be impossible to hold back information, that whatever bottleneck we'll let go, we're going to give in, that whatever bottleneck between privacy and ultimate innovation will have to be bridged in order for us to achieve the next level of technological proficiency, that we're just going to abandon it, and there'll be no security, no privacy? Do people want privacy? Because they seem to put everything on the internet. Well, right now they're confused. But when you're talking about your Neuralink, and this idea that one day we are going to be able to share information, and we're going to be some sort of a thing that's symbiotically connected. I think we really need to worry about security in that situation. For sure. That's like a security paramount.

(01:49:33)

Sure. But also, what we will be, is we'll be so much different. Our concerns about money, about status, about wealth, all these things will seemingly go by the wayside if we really become enlightened, if we really become artificially enlightened by some sort of an AI interface where we have this symbiotic relationship with some new internet-type connection to information.

(01:50:02)

What happens then? What is important and what is not important? Is privacy important when we're all gods? I think the things that we think are important to keep private right now, we probably will not think are important. Shame, right? Information, right? What are you hiding? Emotions? What are we hiding? I think, I don't know, maybe it's embarrassing stuff. Embarrassing stuff. But there's actually, I think people, there's not that much that's kept private that people, that is actually relevant.

(01:50:44)

Right. That other people would actually care about. We think other people care about it, but they don't really care about it, and certainly governments don't. Well, some people care about it, but then it gets weird when it gets exposed, like Jennifer Lawrence, when all those naked pictures of her got exposed. I think in some ways people liked her more.

(01:51:01)

They realize she's just a person, just a girl who likes sex and is just alive and has a boyfriend and sends him messages, and now you get to look into it, and you probably shouldn't have, but somebody let it go, and they put it online, and all right. She seems to be doing okay. She's a person. She's just you and me, and it's the same thing. She's just in some weird place where she's on a 35-foot tall screen with music playing every time she talks. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure she's not happy about it, but she's clearly doing fine. But once this interface is fully realized where we really do become something far more powerful in terms of our cognitive ability, our ability to understand irrational thoughts and mitigate them, and that we're all connected in some sort of an insane way, what are our thoughts on wealth, our thoughts on social status? How many of those just evaporate in our need for privacy? Maybe our need for privacy will be the ultimate bottleneck that we'll have to surpass. I think the things that we think are important now will probably not be important in the future, but there will be things that are important. What will be more important? I don't know. There might be some more of ideas, potentially. I don't think Darwin's going away.

(01:52:33)

Right. Darwin's going to be there. No, it's not.

(01:52:39)

Darwin will be there forever. Forever. Yeah. It would just be a different arena. Different arena. A digital arena. Different arena. Darwin's not going away. What keeps you up at night? Well, it's quite hard to run companies.

(01:53:00)

Yeah. Especially car companies, I would say. It's quite challenging. The car business is the hardest one of all the things you do? Yes. Because it's a consumer-oriented business, as opposed to, like, SpaceX and...

(01:53:13)

Not that SpaceX. SpaceX is no walk in the park. But a car company, it's very difficult to keep a car company alive. It's very difficult. You know, there's only two car companies in the history of American car companies that haven't gone bankrupt, and that's Ford and Tesla. That's it. Yeah, Ford rode out that crazy storm, huh? They're the only ones. By the skin of their teeth. Shout out to the Mustang.

(01:53:41)

Yeah. Yeah, by the skin of their teeth. That is interesting, right?

(01:53:44)

Same with Tesla. We barely survived. How close did you get to folding? Very close. We... 2008 is not a good time to be a car company, especially a startup car company, and especially an electric car company. That was, like, stupidity squared. And this is when you had those cool roadsters with the T-top? Yeah. With the Target top?

(01:54:06)

Yeah. We had, like... It was a highly modified Elise chassis. The body was all completely different. By the way, that was a super dumb strategy that we actually did. Why was it dumb? It was based on two false premises. One false premise was that we'd be able to cheaply convert the Lotus Elise and use that as a car platform and that we would be able to use technology from this little company called AC Propulsion for the electric drivetrain and the battery. Problem is, the AC Propulsion technology did not work in production, and we ended up using none of it in the long term.

(01:54:50)

None of it. We had to redesign everything. And then once you add a battery pack and an electric motor to the car, it got heavier. It got 30% heavier. Invalidated the entire structure, all the crash structure. Everything had to be redone. Nothing. Like, I think it had less than 7% of the parts were common with any other device, including cars or anything. Less than 7%? Yes. Everything. Including tires and wheels?

(01:55:18)

Bolts? Brakes? Yeah, even everything. Steering wheel? The steering wheel was...

(01:55:25)

I think the steering wheel was almost the same. Yes. The windscreen. Different. No, I think the windscreen was the same.

(01:55:34)

Same. Yes, I think we were able to keep the windscreen. Less than 7%. So that's right. Basically... Every body panel was different. The entire structure was different. We couldn't use the HVAC system, the air conditioner. It was a belt-driven air conditioner. So now we needed something that was electrically driven. We needed a new AC compressor. And all that takes away from the battery life as well, right?

(01:55:59)

Yeah. We needed a small, highly efficient air conditioning system that fit in a tiny car and was electrically powered, not belt-driven. It was very difficult. How much did those weigh? Those cars.

(01:56:12)

The Roadster. I think it was about 2,700 pounds. That's still very light. Depending on which version. 2,650 to 2,750 pounds.

(01:56:19)

Something like that. And what was the weight distribution? It was about 50... Well, there were different versions of the car. So it was about 55 on the rear. That's not bad. It was rear bias. Right, but not bad. Considering a 911, which is one of the most popular sports cars of all time, heavy rear-end bias. Well, I mean...

(01:56:43)

Yeah. The 911, like the joke, is like the Magistrate, despite Newton not being on their side. If you're fighting Newton, it's very difficult.

(01:56:53)

Well... It's like you've got this... The moments of inertia on a 911 don't make any sense. They do once you understand them. You don't want to hang the engine off the ass.

(01:57:04)

This is not a wise move. You don't want to let up on the gas when you're in a corner. The problem with something that's where the engine is mounted over the rear axle or off the rear axle towards the rear is that your polar moment of inertia is fundamentally screwed. You cannot solve this. It's unsolvable. You're screwed. Polar moment of inertia is... You're screwed.

(01:57:27)

Right. Like, essentially, if you spun the car like a top, that's your polar moment of inertia. You're just... I promised I wouldn't swear on this show, by the way.

(01:57:38)

Really? To who? To my friend. Tell that friend to go fuck himself.

(01:57:42)

Who told you not to swear? A friend. That's not a good friend.

(01:57:46)

Yes. That friend needs to realize you're fucking Elon Musk. You can do whatever you want, man. If you ever get confused, call me. I'll swear in private.

(01:57:56)

Swear up a storm. Just say frickin'. It's a fun way. It's like old house moms. Wives and shit that have children. Oh, this frickin' thing.

(01:58:07)

Yeah. But anyway, like the Porsche, it's kind of incredible how well Porsche handles, given that it's the physics. Yes. Moments of inertia are so messed up. To actually still make it work well is incredible. Well, if you know how to turn into the corner, once you get used to the feeling of it, there's actual benefits to it. You know, there are some benefits. I enjoy... The car I had before, the car I had before Tesla was a 911. Oh, okay. That was... 997 or 6? Yeah.

(01:58:38)

997? Yeah. Yeah. Great car, man. Yeah, I mean, particularly on the Porsche Turbo, when they had the variable vanes, the turbo, and you didn't have the turbo lag, that was great.

(01:58:48)

Yeah. That was really great. The turbo lag was like, you know, if you floor it, like, phone home, call your mom. The older ones, right? About an hour later, the car accelerates. And super dangerous, too, because then the rear wheels start spinning. Yeah.

(01:59:04)

Yeah. There's something fun about it, though, like feeling that rear weight kicking around. You know, and again, it's not efficient. Oh, it's great. I had a good feel to it.

(01:59:12)

Yeah. Yeah, I agree. But that's what I was talking about earlier, about that little car that I have, the 93 911. It's just... It's not fast. It's not the best handling car, but it's more satisfying than any other car I have because it's so mechanical. It's, like, everything about it, like, crackles and bumps, and it gives you all this feedback. And I take it to the comedy store because when I get there, I feel like my brain is just popping, and it's on fire. It's like a strategy for me now that I really stop driving other cars there. I drive that car there just for the brain juice, just for the interaction.

(01:59:51)

I mean, you should try Model S P100D. I'll try it. It'll blow your mind out of your skull. Okay. Yeah. You tell me what to order, I'll order it.

(01:59:59)

Model S P100D. Okay, Jamie, write it down. That's the car that I drive. Okay, okay, I'll get with the car you drive.

(02:00:06)

Okay. It will blow your mind out of your skull. I believe you. How far can I drive? How far can I go? About 300 miles. That's good. For L.A. regular days, that's good. You'll never notice the battery.

(02:00:17)

Never. Never. How hard is it to get like one of them crazy plugs installed in your house? That difficult? No, it's super easy. It's like, yeah, it's like a dryer plug. It's like a dryer outlet. Didn't you come up with some crazy tiles for your roof that are solar paneled? Yeah, yeah, I have it on my roof right now, actually.

(02:00:35)

I'm just trying it out. The thing is, it takes a while to test roof stuff because roofs have to last a long time. So you want your roof to last at least 30 years. Could you put it over a regular roof? Now, so there's two versions. There's like the solar panels you put on a roof. So it depends on whether your roof's new or old. So if your roof's new, you don't want to replace the roof. You want to put solar panels on the roof.

(02:00:56)

Right. So that's like retrofit, you know? And then we try to make the retrofit panels look real nice. And then, but then the new product we're coming out with is if you have a roof that's either you're building a house or you're going to replace your roof anyway, then you make the tiles have solar cells embedded in the tiles. And then it's quite a tricky thing because you want to not see the solar cell behind the glass tile. So you have to really work with the glass and the various coatings and layers so that you don't see the solar cell behind the glass. Otherwise, it doesn't look right.

(02:01:36)

Right. So it's really tricky. There it is. Jamie put it up there.

(02:01:39)

Yeah. Man, that looks good. See, like if you look closely, you can see if you zoom in right, you can see the cell. But if you zoom out, you don't see the cell.

(02:01:50)

Right. Well, it looks cool though. Like that's hard. Invisible solar cells. That's really hard because you have to have sunlight go through, but when it gets reflected back out, it hides the fact that there's a cell there. Now, are those available to the consumer right now?

(02:02:07)

Well, we have, I think- Those on that roof right there? Yes. That's amazing. Oh, that looks good.

(02:02:15)

Yeah. Ooh, I like that. That one is hard. Oh, so you get that kind of fake Spanish looking thing. I like that. That's French slate. That's white people in Connecticut smoking pipes. Look at that one.

(02:02:26)

Yeah. That's bad-ass, dude. So- That's what will actually work. I believe you. So the solar panels that are on that house that we just looked at, is that sufficient to power the entire home? It depends on your energy, on how efficient- Expenditure?

(02:02:44)

Yeah, yeah. So generally, yes. I would say it's probably for most, it's gonna vary, but anywhere from more than you need to maybe half. Let's call it half to 1.5 of the energy that you need, depending on how much roof you have relative to living space. And how ridiculous you are with the TV. TV is no problem. Air conditioning.

(02:03:11)

Air conditioning. Air conditioning is the problem. If you have an efficient air conditioner, and you don't, and depending on how, like, are you air conditioning rooms when they don't need to be air conditioned, which is very common, because it's a pain in the neck.

(02:03:26)

You know, it's like programming a VCR. It's like, you know, it's just a blinking 12. And so people are just like, the hell with that. I'm just gonna make it this temperature all day long. Right, they don't have a smart home where if you're in the room, then it stays cool, right? Yeah, it should predict when you're gonna be home, and then cool the rooms that you're likely to use with a little bit of intelligence. We're not talking about, like, genius home here. We're just talking, like, elementary, basic stuff.

(02:03:54)

Right. You know, like, if you could hook that into the car, like, it knows you're coming home. Like, there's no point in cooling the home, keeping the home really cool when you're not there.

(02:04:05)

Right. But it can tell that you're coming home. It's gonna cool it to the right temperature right when you get there. Do you have an app that works with your solar panels or anything like that?

(02:04:14)

Yeah. Yeah, we do. And we need to hook it into the air conditioning to really make the air conditioning work. Have you thought about creating an air conditioning system? I know you have.

(02:04:25)

Trick question. I cannot answer questions about future potential products. Okay, let's just let it go. We'll move on to the next thing. That would be an interesting idea. Yeah, I would say. Radiant heating, all that.

(02:04:40)

Good ideas. Now, when you think about the efficiency of these homes and you think about implementing solar power and battery power, and is there anything else that people are missing? Is there any other, like, I just saw a smartwatch that is powered by the heat of the human body. It's some new technology. It's able to fully power that way? I don't know if it's fully or if it's, like this watch right here, this is a Casio. Okay. It's called a ProTech, and it's like an outdoors watch, and it's solar powered.

(02:05:13)

Okay. And so it has the ability to operate for a certain amount of time on solar. So if you have it exposed, it could function for a certain amount of time on solar. Yeah, well, you know, like there's the self-winding watches where it's just got a weight in the watch, and as you move your wrist, the weight moves from one side to the other, and it winds the watch up. That's a pretty cool thing.

(02:05:34)

Yeah, yeah. Well, it's amazing that, like Rolex is, that it's all done mechanically. There's no batteries in there.

(02:05:39)

There's no nothing. Yeah, you could do the same thing, create a little charger that's based on wrist movement, but it really depends on how much energy your watch uses. You know what's fucked up about that, though? We accept a certain amount of, like, fuckery with those watches. Like, I brought my watch, I have a Rolex that my friend Lorenzo gave me, and I brought it to the watch store, and I said, this thing's always fast. I said, it's always, like, after a couple months, it's like five minutes fast. And they go, yep. They go, yeah. Really? It's just what it does.

(02:06:12)

Okay. And I go, hold on. I go, so you're telling me that it just is always gonna be fast. And he's like, yeah. It's just, like, every few months, you gotta, like, reset it. Seems like they should recalibrate that thing. They can't.

(02:06:22)

They tried. They say every few months, whether it's four months, or five months, or six months, it's gonna be a couple minutes fast. Okay, it seems like they should really recalibrate that, because if it's always fast, you can just, you know, delete those minutes. You need to fucking kick down the door at Rolex and go, you bitches are lazy. It's kind of amazing that you can keep time mechanically on a wristwatch with these tiny little gears. It's amazing.

(02:06:46)

Yeah. I mean, the whole luxury watch market is fascinating. I'm not that involved in terms, like, I don't buy them. I bought them as gifts, so I don't buy them for myself. But when I look at them online, there's million dollar watches out there now that are, like, they have, like, little rotating moons and stars, and they live, like, look at this thing.

(02:07:08)

How much is that one, Jamie? I don't know, I just picked one. These are fucking preposterous. I like gears.

(02:07:13)

I love them. Yeah, look, I think they're beautiful. But there's some of these people that are just taking it right in the ass. They're buying these watches for, like, $750,000.

(02:07:21)

I'm like, yo, that's a Timex, son. Nobody knows. It's not any better than some Casio that you could just buy online. Like, look at that, though. Well, here's the thing. If you're a person that doesn't just want to know the time, you want craftsmanship, you want some artisan's touch, you want innovation in terms of, like, a person figuring out how gears and cogs all line up perfectly to every time it turns over, it's basically a second. I mean, that's just, there's art to that. Yeah, I agree. Yeah, it's not just telling time. I like this watch a lot, but if it got hit by a rock, I wouldn't be sad.

(02:08:04)

Yeah. It's just a watch. It's a mass-produced thing that runs on some quartz battery. But those things, there's art to that. Yeah, no, I agree. It's beautiful.

(02:08:14)

Yeah. Yeah, love it. Yeah, there's something amazing about it. It's because it represents the human creativity. It's not just electronic innovation. There's something, there's a person's work in that. Yes. But you don't have a watch on.

(02:08:34)

No. Ever? I used to have a watch. What happened? My phone tells the time.

(02:08:41)

So. Good point. What if you lose your phone? Do you, hold on.

(02:08:44)

True. Let me guess. You are a no-case guy. That's correct. Living on the edge. Living on the edge without a case.

(02:08:54)

Neil deGrasse Tyson. Neil deGrasse Tyson was in here last week. I marveled at his ability to get through life without a case. That's right. You know, he takes his phone and he flips it in between his fingers like a soldier would do with his rifle. Really?

(02:09:10)

He just rolls that shit in between his fingers. Okay. Marvelous.

(02:09:13)

Wow. He says that's the reason why they do it. He said, when you look at someone who has a rifle, why would they do that? Why would they flip it around like that?

(02:09:22)

Right. So that when it goes to drop, they have it in their hand. They catch it quickly. So that's what he does with his phone. He's just flipping his phone around all the time. I got that in Mexico. I was hoping it holds joints. Does it do anything? It seems to open.

(02:09:37)

No. It's just a hole. It's just a hole. You could store things in there. Yeah, but like, try to put a joint in there, close it. You put like one, one blunt. One, but it seems pretentious, you know? That's the idea behind it. I bought it when I was in Mexico because I figured it would be a good size to hold joints. Worse not. So is that a joint? Or is it a cigar? No.

(02:10:10)

Okay. It's marijuana inside of tobacco. Oh, okay. So it's like posh pot tobacco posh. You never had that? Yeah, I think I tried one once.

(02:10:19)

Come on, man. You probably can't because stockholders, right? I mean, it's legal, right? Totally legal.

(02:10:27)

Okay. How does that work? Do people get upset at you if you do certain things? There's tobacco and marijuana in there. That's all it is. The combination of tobacco and marijuana is wonderful.

(02:10:43)

First turned onto it by Charlie Murphy and then reignited by Dave Chappelle. There you go. Plus whiskey. Ha ha, exactly.

(02:10:51)

Perfect. Balances it out. Alcohol's a drug. It's been grandfathered in. Well, it's not just a drug. It's a drug that gets a bad rap because if you just have a little, it's great.

(02:11:04)

Fine. Yeah, a little sip here and there and your inhibitions are relaxed and it shows your true self and hopefully you're more joyous and friendly and happy and everything's good. The real worry is the people that can't handle it, like the real worry about people who can't handle cars that can go zero to 60 in 1.9 seconds or anything. Have you ever considered something that like imagine if one day everyone has a car that's on the same at least technological standard as one of your cars and everyone agrees that the smart thing to do is not just to have bumpers but to perhaps have some sort of a magnetic repellent device, something, some electromagnetic field around the cars that as cars come close to each other they automatically radically decelerate because of magnets or something. Well, I mean, our cars break automatically. Break.

(02:12:00)

Yeah. Yeah, when they see things. Yes. But like a physical barrier, like. Well, the wheels work pretty well. The wheels do.

(02:12:10)

Yeah, yeah, they work pretty well. Decelerate at 1.1 to 1.2 Gs, that kind of thing. Is there a concern that one day all your cars will be on the road and then there'll still be regular people with regular cars 20, 30 years from now that'll get in the mix and be the main problem? Yeah, I think it'd be sort of like, it was a time of transition where there were horses and gasoline cars on the road at the same time. It's been pretty weird.

(02:12:41)

Oh, that'd be the weirdest. Yeah, I mean, horses were tricky. You know, back in Manhattan had like 300,000 horses. You figure like a horse lives 15 years, you got 20,000 horses dropping dead every day. Or every year, I should say. Every year has 20,000 horses if there's 300,000 horses in 15 year lifespan. Back in the gangs in New York days. That movie. Yeah. It's a lot of dead horses and then you need a horse to move the horse.

(02:13:12)

Right. And they'll probably get pretty freaked out if they have to move a dead horse. Do you think they know what's going on? Yeah, I mean, it's gotta be like pretty weird.

(02:13:22)

No, I would imagine. I'm dragging this dead, you know, horse around and I'm a horse. Do you ever stop and think about your role in civilization? Do you ever stop and think about your role in the culture? Because me as a person who never met you until today, when I think of you, you know, I've always thought of you as being this weirdo super inventor dude who just somehow or another keeps coming up with new shit. But there's not a lot of you out there. Like everybody else seems to be, I mean, obviously you make a lot of money and there's a lot of people that make a lot of money. You like that clock?

(02:13:56)

Yeah. Pretty dope, right? This is a great clock. Yeah, you want one? I'll get you one. Sure. Okay, done. I like weird things like this. Oh, this is the coolest. It's TGT Promotion. What is this, TGT Studios?

(02:14:08)

TGT Studios? Yeah. Yeah. It's a gentleman who makes all this by hand. Yeah, it's really cool. My study is filled with weird devices. Well, get ready for another one. All right. I'm sending it your way.

(02:14:23)

Cool. You want a werewolf too? I'll hook you up.

(02:14:26)

All right. I'll take one. One werewolf and one clock coming up. Do you think about your role in the culture? Because me as a person who never met you until today, I've always looked at you and like, wow, how does this guy just keep inventing shit? Like how do you keep coming up with all these new devices and what do you ever consider how unusual, like I had a dream once that there was a million Teslas. Instead of like one Tesla, there was a million Teslas.

(02:14:56)

Okay. Not Chesley the car, but Nikola. Oh yeah, sure. And that in his day, there was a million people like him who were radically innovative. It was a weird dream, man. It was so strange. And I've had it more than once. Resulting in very rapid technology innovation. That's for sure. It's one of the only dreams in my life I've had more than one time.

(02:15:16)

Okay. Like where I've woken up and it's in the same dream. I'm in the same dream. And in this dream, it's 1940s, 1950s, but everyone is severely advanced. There's flying blimps with like LCD screens on the side of them and everything's bizarre and strange. And it stuck with me for whatever, obviously this is just a stupid dream, but for whatever reason, all these years that stuck with me, like it takes one man like Nikola Tesla to have more than a hundred inventions that were patents, right? I mean, he had some- It's pretty great. Pretty fucking amazing ideas.

(02:15:57)

Yes. But there was- Definitely. In his day, there was very few people like him. Yeah, that's true. What if there was a million? Like what, and then this is- Things would advance very quickly.

(02:16:06)

Right. But there's not a million Elon Musks. There's one motherfucker. Do you think about that? Or you just try to not?

(02:16:17)

Hmm. I don't think you'd necessarily want to be me. Well, what's the worst part about you? I don't think people would like it that much. Well, most people wouldn't, but they can't be you. So that's like some superhero type shit. You know, you wouldn't want to be Spider-Man.

(02:16:37)

Rather just sleep tight in Gotham City. I hope you're not. I hope you're not. I hope you're not. I hope you're not. I hope you're not. I hope you're not.

(02:16:45)

Gotham City. I hope he's out there doing his job. It's very hard to turn it off.

(02:16:51)

Yeah. What's the hardest part? Might sound great if it's turned on, but what if it doesn't turn off? Now, I showed you the isolation tank and you've never experienced that before.

(02:17:02)

No. I think that could help you turn it off a little bit just for the night. Yeah, just give you a little bit of sleep.

(02:17:08)

A little bit of perspective. There's magnesium that you get from the water as well that makes you sleep easier because the water has epsom salts in it. But maybe some sort of strategy for sacrificing your biological, not sacrificing, but enhancing your biological recovery time by figuring out a way, whether it's through meditation or some other ways to shut off that thing at night. Like you must have like a constant stream of ideas that's running through your head all the time. You getting text messages from chicks?

(02:17:46)

No. I'm getting text messages from friends saying, what the hell are you doing smoking weed? Is that bad for you? It's legal. It's government approved. It's not, you know, I'm not a regular smoker of weed. How often do you smoke it? Almost never. How does it feel? I don't actually notice any effect. Well, there you go. There was a time where I think it was Ram Dass or someone gave some Buddhist monk a bunch of acid.

(02:18:21)

Okay. And he ate it and it had no effect on him. I doubt that. I would say that too, but I've never meditated to the level that some of these people have where they're constantly meditating all day. They don't have any material possessions and all of their energy is spent trying to achieve a certain mindset. I would like to cynically deny that. I'd like to cynically say, they just fucking think the same way I do. They just hang out with flip flops on and make weird noises. But maybe no. You know, I know a lot of people like weed and that's fine, but I don't find that it is very good for productivity. For you. Not for me.

(02:19:05)

Yeah. I mean, I would imagine that for someone like you, it's not. Someone like you, it'd be more like a cup of coffee, right? You have a latte. Yeah, it's more like the opposite of a cup of coffee. What do you like? It's like a cup of coffee in reverse. Oh, weed is?

(02:19:21)

Yeah. No, I'm saying you would like more, more like what would be beneficial to you would be like coffee. I like to get things done.

(02:19:28)

I like to be useful. That is one of the hardest things to do, is to be useful. When you say you like to get things done, in terms of like what gives you satisfaction, when you complete a project, when something that you invent comes to fruition and you see people enjoying it, that feeling. Yes, doing something useful for other people that I like doing. That's interesting, for other people.

(02:19:56)

Yes. So that, do you think that that is maybe the way you?

(02:20:01)

you recognize that you have this unusual position in the culture where you can uniquely influence certain things because of this. I mean, you essentially have a gift, right? I mean, you would think it was a curse, but I'm sure it's been fueled by many, many years of discipline and learning, but you essentially have a gift and that you have this radical sort of creativity engine when it comes to innovation and technology. It's like you're just, you're going at a very high RPMs. All the time. What is that like? It doesn't stop. I don't know what would happen if I got into a sensory deprivation tank. Let's try it. Sounds concerning. It's like running the engine with no resistance. Is that what it is though? Maybe it's not. Maybe it's fine. I don't know. I'll try it. I'll try it. Have you ever experimented with meditation or anything? Yes. What do you do? Or what have you done rather? I mean, you just sort of sit there and be quiet and then repeat some mantra, which acts as a focal point.

(02:21:20)

It does still the mind, but I don't find myself drawn to it frequently. Do you think that perhaps productivity is maybe more attractive to you than enlightenment or even the concept of whatever enlightenment means? Like what are you trying to achieve when you're meditating all the time? With you, it seems like almost like there's a franticness to your creativity that comes out of this burning furnace. In order for you to calm that thing down, you might have to throw too much water on it. It's like a never-ending explosion. What is it like? Try to explain it to a dumb person like me. What's going on? Never-ending explosion.

(02:22:14)

Just constant ideas. Just bouncing around. Yes. Damn. When everybody leaves, it's just Elon sitting at home brushing his teeth. Just a bunch of ideas bouncing around in your head. Yeah. All the time. When did you realize that that's not the case with most people? I think I was five or six or something. I thought I was insane. Why did you think you were insane? Because it was clear that other people, their mind wasn't exploding with ideas all the time.

(02:22:53)

So they weren't expressing it. They weren't talking about it all. And you realized by the time you were five or six, like, oh, they're probably not even getting this thing that I'm getting. No. It was just strange. It was like, hmm, I'm strange. That was my conclusion. I'm strange. But did you feel diminished by it in any way? Knowing that this is a weird thing that you really probably couldn't commiserate with other people? They wouldn't understand you? I hope they wouldn't find out because they might put me away or something. You thought that? For a second, yes. When you were little? Yeah, they might put people away. What if they put me away? Like, when you were little, you thought this? Yes. Wow. Like, you thought this is so radically

(02:23:41)

different than the people that are around me. If they find out I got this stream coming in. Yeah. Wow. But you know, I was only like five or six. Do you think this is like, I mean, there's outliers biologically. I mean, there's people that are seven foot nine. There's people that have giant hands. There's people that have eyes that are 2015 vision. There's always outliers. Do you feel like you like caught this? Like you have got some, you're like on some weird innovation, creativity, sort of wave that's very unusual. Like you tapped into, I mean, just think of the various things you've been able to accomplish in a very short amount of time. And you're constantly doing this. That's a weird, you're a weird person. Right? I agree. Yeah. Like, what if there's a million Elon Musks? Well, that would be very, very weird.

(02:24:47)

Woo. Yeah. It'd be pretty weird. I agree. Real weird. Definitely. Yeah. What if there are a million Joe Rogans? Oh, there probably is. There's probably two million. I mean, I think that's the case with a lot of folks. Yeah. I mean, but like, you know, my goal is like, try to do useful things. Try to maximize the probability that the future is good. Make the future exciting. Something you look forward to. You know, with Tesla, we're like trying to make things that people love. You know, it's like, how many things can you buy that you really love, that really give you joy? So rare. So rare. I wish there were more things. That's what we're trying to do. Just make things that somebody loves. When you think about making things that

(02:25:52)

someone loves, like, do you specifically think about like what things would improve people's experience? Like what, what would change the way people interface with life that would make them more relaxed or more happy? You really think like when you're thinking about things like that, is that like one of your considerations? Like what, what could I do that would help people that maybe they wouldn't be able to figure out? Yeah. Like, like what are the set of things that can be done to make the future better? Like, you know, like, so I think that a future where we are a spacefaring civilization and out there among the stars, this is very exciting. This makes me look forward to the future. This makes me want that future. You know, the things that need to be things that make you look forward to waking up in the morning, you wake up in the morning, you look forward to the day, look forward to the future. The future where we are a spacefaring civilization and out there among the stars, I think that's very exciting. That is a thing we want. Whereas if, if you knew we would not be a spacefaring civilization, but forever confined to earth, this would not be a good future. That would be very sad. I think it would be sad future of the, the, just the finite lifespan of the earth itself and the solar system itself. That even though it's possibly, you know what I mean? How many, how long do they feel like the sun and the solar system is going to exist? How many hundreds of millions of years? Well, it's probably, if you're saying the, when does the sun boil the ocean?

(02:27:37)

About 500 million years. So is, is it sad that we never leave because in 500 million years that happens? Is that what you're saying? No, I just think like there, if there are two futures and one future is we're out there among the stars and the things we read about and see in science fiction movies, the good ones are true. We have these starships and we're, we're going to see what other planets are like. We're a multi-planet species and the scope and scale of consciousness has expanded across many civilizations and many planets and many star systems. This is a great future. This is a wonderful thing to me and that's what we should strive for. But that's biological travel. That's cells traveling physically to another location. Yes. Do you think that's definitely where we're going?

(02:28:38)

No. Yeah. I don't think so either. I used to think so. And now I'm thinking more likely less than ever, like almost every day, less likely. We can definitely go to the moon and Mars.

(02:28:51)

Yeah. And we can go to the asteroid belt and we can go to the moons of Jupiter, Saturn, you can even get to Pluto. That'd be the craziest place ever if we colonized Mars and re-terraformed it and turned it into like a big Jamaica. Just oceans and- I mean, imagine.

(02:29:10)

Great. That'd be great. It's possible, right? We could turn the whole thing into Cancun. I mean, over time. It wouldn't be easy, but yes. You could just warm it up. Yeah. You can warm it up. You could add air. You get some water there. I mean, over time, hundreds of millions of years or whatever it takes. We could be a multi-planet species. That would be amazing. We're a multi-planet species. That's what we want to be.

(02:29:33)

Legitimately like air-conditioned Saturn. I'm pro-human. Me too. Yeah, me too. I love humanity. I think it's great. We're glad as a robot that you love humans because we love you too, and we don't want you to kill us and eat us. I mean, strangely, I think a lot of people don't like humanity and see it as a blight, but I do not. Well, I think part of that is just they've been struggling. When people struggle, they associate their struggle with other people. They never internalize their problems. They look to other people as holding them back, and people suck and fuck people, and it's just a never-ending cycle.

(02:30:16)

But not always. Again, most people are really good. Most people. The vast majority. This may sound corny. It does sound corny. But love is the answer. It is the answer.

(02:30:29)

Yep. Yeah, it is. It sounds corny because we're all scared. You know, we're all scared of trying to love people and being rejected, or someone taking advantage of you because you're trying to be loving. Sure. But if we all could just relax and love each other... Wouldn't hurt to have more love in the world. It definitely wouldn't hurt.

(02:30:51)

Yeah. It'd be great. Yeah, we should do that. Yeah, I agree, man. Really. How are you going to fix that? You have a love machine that you're working on?

(02:30:59)

Yeah. No, but probably spend more time with your friends and less time on social media. Now, deleting social media from your applications, from your phones, does that give you a 10% boost to happiness? What do you think the percentage is? I think probably something like that, yeah. Yeah, a good 10%. Yeah. I mean, the only thing I've kept is Twitter, because I kind of need some means of getting a message out, you know?

(02:31:33)

Right. That's about it. So far, so good. Well, what's interesting with you, you actually occasionally engage with people on Twitter. Yeah, it's... What percentage of that is a good idea?

(02:31:54)

Good question. Like 10%, right? It's hard. It's mostly, I think it's on balance more good than bad. But there's definitely some bad. So hopefully the good outweighs the bad. Do you ever think about how odd it is? The weird feeling that you get when someone says something shitty to you on Twitter and you read it? The weird feeling? This weird little negative jolt. It's like a subjective negative jolt of energy that you don't really need to absorb, but you do anyway. Like, well, fuck this guy.

(02:32:29)

Fuck him. I mean, there's a lot of negativity on Twitter. It is, but it's a weird, it's in its form. Like the way if you ingest it, as if you're like, you try to be like a little scientist as you're ingesting it. You're like, well, how weird is this? And I'm even getting upset at some strange person saying something mean to me. It's not even accurate. I mean, there are a vast number of negative comments. So the vast, for the vast majority of them, I just ignore them. The vast majority.

(02:32:59)

Yeah. But every now and again, you get drawn in. It's not good. It's not good. Make mistakes. Yes, you can make mistakes. You can make some mistakes. We're all human. We can make mistakes.

(02:33:11)

Yeah. It's hard. And people love it when you say something and you take it back. They're like, fuck you. We saved it forever.

(02:33:18)

Fucking screenshot that shit, bitch. You had that thought. You had that thought. You're like, well, I deleted it.

(02:33:25)

Not good enough. You had the thought. I'm better than you. I never had that thought. You had that thought, you piece of shit. Look, I saved it. I put it on my blog.

(02:33:36)

Yeah. I'm not sure why people think that anyone would think that deleting a tweet makes it go away. It's like, hello, been on the internet for a while.

(02:33:45)

Yeah. The thing is, they don't want you to be able to delete it. Because the problem is, if you don't delete it and you don't believe it anymore, it's really hard to say, hey, that thing above, I don't really believe that anymore. I changed the way I view things.

(02:34:02)

Yes. Because people go, well, fuck you. I have that over there. I'm going to just take that. I'm not going to pay attention to that shit you wrote underneath it. It's on your permanent record. It's forever, bro. It's a tattoo. We'll put this on your permanent record.

(02:34:13)

Yeah. It's like a tattoo. You keep it. Oh, yeah.

(02:34:16)

Yeah. Well, it's this thing where there's a lack of compassion. It's a lack of compassion issue. People are just intentionally shitty to each other all the time online and trying to catch people. They're more trying to catch people doing something that's arrestable, like a cop trying to get arrests on his record. It's like they're trying to catch you with something, more than they're logically looking at it thinking it's a bad thing that you've done, or that it's an idea they don't agree with so much they need to insult you. Trying to catch you.

(02:34:50)

Yeah. I mean, it's way easier to be mean on social media than it is to be mean in person. Yes. Way easier.

(02:34:57)

Yeah. Yes. It's weird. It's not a normal way of human interacting. It's cheating. We're not supposed to be able to interact so easily with people we're not looking at.

(02:35:08)

Yes. You would never do that. You'd never be so mean to somebody looking in their eyes. And if you did, you'd feel like shit. Most people.

(02:35:14)

Yeah. Unless you're a sociopath, you'd feel terrible. Yes. Elon Musk, this has been a pleasure. Yeah, likewise. It really has been. It's been an honor. Thank you for having me.

(02:35:27)

Thanks for doing this. Because I know you don't do a lot of long form stuff like this. I hope I didn't weird you out. And I hope you don't get mad that you smoke weed. It's not bad. It's legal. We're in California. Just as legal as this whiskey we've been drinking. Exactly. This is all good, right?

(02:35:45)

Cheers. Thank you. Is there any message you would like to put out other than love is the answer? Because I think you really nailed it with that. No, I think people should be nicer to each other and give more credit to others. And don't assume that they're mean until you know they're actually mean. You know, just it's easy to demonize people. You're usually wrong about it. People are nicer than you think. Give people more credit.

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