Lex Fridman Podcast - #252 – Elon Musk: SpaceX, Mars, Tesla Autopilot, Self-Driving, Robotics, and AI

Starting point is 00:00:00 The following is a conversation with Elon Musk. His third time on this, the Lex Friedman podcast. And now a quick few seconds mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description. It's the best way to support this podcast. First is the Theta Greens, the all-in-one nutrition drink I drink twice a day. Second is butcher box, high quality meat

Starting point is 00:00:21 that makes up most of my diet. Third is inside tracker, a service I use to track my biological data. Fourth is Roka, my favorite sunglasses and prescription glasses. And fifth is 8th sleep, a self-cooling mattress color I sleep on. So the choice is nutrition, food, health, style, or sleep. Choose wisely, my friends. And now onto the full ad reads as always no ads in the middle. I tried to make this interesting but if you skip them please still check out the sponsors I enjoy their stuff maybe you will too. This show is brought to you by Athletic Greens and it's newly named AG1 drink which

Starting point is 00:01:02 is an all-in-one daily drink to support better health and peak performance. It replaced a multivitamin for me and went far beyond that with 75 vitamins and minerals. It's the first thing I drink every day. I drink it twice a day in fact. I drink it after a long run. I recently did a 16-mile run and I can't tell you how good it felt to get back and Pour myself a refreshing athletic greens and start the day. I ran fasted and that's probably one of my favorite things to do Run for a long period of time an empty stomach

Starting point is 00:01:46 Thinking through the problems of the day or the problems of life in general and then get back to sort of ground to normal life by drinking athletic greens, getting the shower and just hitting the ground running with a little bit of coffee and focus. Anyway, they'll give you one month supply of fish oil when you sign up at athleticgreens.com slash Lex, that's athleticgreens.com slash Lex. That's athleta-greens.com slash Lex. This show is brought to you by Butcherbox. High quality meat that is pretty much the only thing I eat. They ship a box of meat to your home, eight to 14 pounds of it.

Starting point is 00:02:18 You can pick a pre-made box or customize one, which is what I do. And that's it. It's pretty simple. I've spoken about this before. I think meat of different kinds is a, makes up a large part of my diet. I just feel good when I consume a large amount of meat.

Starting point is 00:02:36 It's not an allergy thing. It's not some kind of reducing inflammation thing. I don't know what it is, because I also'm pretty happy eating carbs as well. I just feel better. I don't know what it is because I also am pretty happy eating carbs as well. I just feel better. I'm happier. I can perform better both physically and mentally when I consume a large amount of meat. Whether that's a carnivore or keto diet, I just feel great. And butcher box is just high quality meat that I can rely on. There's all kinds of cuts there, but ground beef is the basics,

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Starting point is 00:03:47 that analyze your blood data, DNA data, and fitness tracker data to provide you with a clear picture of what's going on inside you and to offer you signs back, recommendations for positive diet and lifestyle changes. Andrew Huberman, the great, the powerful Andrew Huberman talks a lot about it. David St. Clair, he by the way was just on his podcast that you should check out. Also talks a lot about it in my conversation with him and in his conversation with others. I love this idea. It feels like the future. You should definitely be making lifestyle and health decisions based on actual data connected to you, not just the general population. You are a special unique biological fingerprint that requires unique treatment, unique lifestyle

Starting point is 00:04:35 decisions. For limited time, you can get 25% off the entire inside tracker store if you go to insidetracker.com slash Lex. That's inside tracker.com slash Lex. That's inside tracker.com slash Lex. This show is brought to you by Roka, the maker of glasses and sunglasses that I love wearing for their design feel and innovation on materials, optics and grip. Roka was started by two all-american swimmers from Stanford and was born out of an obsession with performance. Like I said, I love the word obsession and was born out of an obsession with performance.

Starting point is 00:05:05 Like I said, I love the word obsession and performance. And I got a chance to meet and hang out with one of those founders, Rob, an incredible human being here in Austin. They have a facility here in Austin. It's just cool to see people at the top of their game, intersible design, manufacturing and all that kind of stuff. These glasses, first of all, look badass, look amazing, but they're also designed to be active in, extremely lightweight, the grip is comfortable but strong.

Starting point is 00:05:34 And the style, I said badass, but it's badass in a classy way. It holds up in all conditions when I'm wearing a suit or wearing running gear, including on long runs in 100 degree Austin weather or in freezing, Boston weather, both work. Check them out for both prescription glasses and sunglasses at roca.com and enter code Lex to save 20% off your first order. That's roca.com and enter code Lex. This episode is also brought to you by 8th sleep and it's pod pro mattress. It controls temperature with an app, it's packed with sensors, it can cool down to as low

Starting point is 00:06:12 as 65 degrees on each side of the bed separately. Given that I just got out of bed, I could tell you because it's short term memory that the thing feels incredible. There's very few things to enjoy in life as much as a power nap or full-night sleep on a Cooled bed with a warm blanket My mind empty of thoughts having fought the battles of the day and just the rest thing escaping it all in a little bit of a dream world Alice in Wonderland, but I like Lex in Wonderland thing, escaping it all in a little bit of a dream world.

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Starting point is 00:07:13 This is the Lex Friedman podcast, and here is my conversation with Elon Musk. Yeah, make yourself comfortable. Wow, okay. Do you don't do the headphone thing? No. Okay. I mean, how close do I get me to get the same thing? The closer you are, the sex wow, okay. Do you don't do the headphone thing? No, okay. I mean, how close do I get needs to get this thing quick? That's the close you are the sexy you son. Hey babe, look, can't get enough of the audio on that baby. I'm gonna clip that out.

Starting point is 00:07:56 Anytime somebody messes with me about it. You watch my body and you think I'm sexy. Come right out and tell me so. Do, do, do do do. So good. So good. Okay, so serious mode activate. All right.

Starting point is 00:08:14 The serious mode. Come on, you Russian. You can be serious. Everyone's serious all the time in Russia. Yeah. Yeah. We'll get there. We'll get there.

Starting point is 00:08:23 Yeah. It's gotten soft. Allow me to say that the SpaceX launch of human beings to orbit on May 30, 2020 was seen by many as the first step in a new era of human space exploration. These human spaceflight missions were a beacon of hope to me and to millions over the past two years as our world has been going through one of the most difficult periods in recent human history. We saw, we see the rise of division, fear, cynicism, and the loss of common humanity right when it is needed most. So first,

Starting point is 00:08:59 Elon, let me say thank you for giving the world hope and reason to be excited about the future. Oh, it's kind of you to say, I do want to do that. Humanity has obviously a lot of issues and, you know, people at times do bad things, but, you know, despite all that, you know, I love humanity and I think we should make sure we do everything we can to have a good future and an exciting future and one where that maximizes the happiness of the people. Let me ask about KooDragon demo 2, so that first flight with humans on board. How did you feel leading up to that launch? We scared, we excited, we was going through your mind.

Starting point is 00:09:41 So much was a stake. Yeah, no, much was at stake. Yeah, no, that was extremely stressful. No question. We obviously could not let them down in any way. So, extremely stressful, I'd say, to say the least. I was confident that at the time that we launched that no one could think of anything at all to do that would improve the probability of success. And we racked our brains to think of any possible way to improve the probability of success. We could not think of anything more.

Starting point is 00:10:18 And nor could NASA. And so, then that's just the best that we could do. So then we had, we went ahead and launched. Now, I'm not a religious person, but I nonetheless got on my knees and prayed for that mission. Are we able to sleep? No. How did I feel when it was a success? First, when the launch was a success and when they returned back home or back to Earth. It was a great relief. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:10:53 It's a well high stress situation that I find it's not so much elation as relief. And I think once, as we got more comfortable and proved out the systems, because we really, you know, you've got to make sure everything works, it was definitely a lot more enjoyable with the subsequent astronaut missions. And I thought the inspiration mission was actually very inspiring, inspiration for mission. I'd encourage people to watch the inspiration documentary on Netflix. It's actually really good. And it really isn't so, I was actually inspired by that.

Starting point is 00:11:34 And I, so that one I felt, I was kind of able to enjoy the actual mission, not just to be able to be stressed all the time. So for people that somehow don't know, it's the all civilian first time, all civilian out to space, out to orbit. Yeah, and it was the highest orbit that in like, and 30 or 40 years or something, the only one that was higher was the one shuttle, sorry, a Hubble servicing mission. And then before that, it would have been Apollo in 72. It's pretty wild. So it's cool. It's got, you know, I think, as, you know, as a species,

Starting point is 00:12:16 like we want to be, you know, continuing to do better and reach higher ground and, and, like, I think it would be tragic, extremely tragic if Apollo was the high watermark for humanity, you know, and that's as far as we ever got. And it's concerning that here we are 49 years after the last mission to the moon and so almost half a century And so almost half a century and we've not been back. And that's worrying. It's like, is that, does that mean we've peaked as a civilization or what? So, like I think we gotta get back to the moon

Starting point is 00:12:55 and build a base there, a science base. I think we could learn a lot about the nature of the universe if we have a proper science base on the moon. You know, like we have a science base in Antarctica and many other parts of the universe if we have a proper science base on the moon. You know, like we have a science base in Antarctica and you know, many other parts of the world. And so that's like I think the next big thing we've got to have like a serious like moon base and then get people to Mars and you know, get out there and be a space-bearing civilization. I'll ask you about some of those details, but since you're so busy with the hard engineering challenges of everything that's involved, are you still able to marvel at the magic of

Starting point is 00:13:33 it all, of space travel? Of every time the rocket goes up especially when it's a crude mission? Are you just so overwhelmed with all the challenges that you have to solve? just so overwhelmed with all the challenges that you have to solve. And actually, to add to that, the reason I wanted to ask this question of May 30th, it's been some time, so you can look back and think about the impact already. It's already, at the time, it was an engineering problem maybe. Now it's becoming a historic moment. Like it's a moment that how many moments will be remembered about the 21st century? To me, that or something like that maybe inspiration for one of those will be remembered

Starting point is 00:14:11 as the early steps of a new age of space exploration. Yeah, I mean during the launches itself, I mean I think maybe some people will know but a lot of people don't know, I'm actually a chief engineer of SpaceX. So I've signed off on pretty much all the design decisions. And so if there's something that goes wrong with that vehicle, it's fundamentally my fault. So I'm really just thinking about all the things that, like, so, so when I see the rocket, I see all the things that could go wrong and the things that could be better and the same with the Dragon Spacecraft, it's like, I'll have people see, oh, this is a spacecraft

Starting point is 00:14:56 or a rocket and that's, it looks really cool. I'm like, I've, I've like a readout of like, this is the, these are the risks, these are the problems, that's what I see. Like, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, t future. Perhaps you had that better now, if you want. But just in that same way, like you said, you see when you see up, when you see a rocket, you see the sort of a list of risks. In that same way, you said that Starship is a really hard problem. So many ways I can ask this, but if you magically could solve one problem perfectly, one engineering problem perfectly, which one would it be? On Starship? On Starship. So is it maybe related to the efficiency, the engine, the weight of the

Starting point is 00:15:52 different components, the complexity of various things, maybe the controls of the crazy thing that's the due to land? No, it's actually, by far, the biggest thing absorbing my time is engine production. far the biggest thing absorbing my time is a engine production. Not the design of the engine. The, I have often said prototypes are easy production is hard. So we have the most advanced rocket engine that's ever been designed. Because I say currently the best rocket engine ever is probably the RD 180 or RD 170, that's the door of Russian engine basically. And still, I think an engine should only count if it's gotten something to orbit. So our engine has not gotten anything to orbit yet.

Starting point is 00:16:44 But it is, it's the first engine that's actually better than the Russian RD engines, which are amazing design. So you're talking about Raptor engine. What makes it amazing? What are the different aspects of it that make it like what are you the most excited about if the whole thing works in terms of efficiency all those kinds of things? Well, its director is a full flow staged combustion engine and it's operating at a very high

Starting point is 00:17:20 table pressure. So one of the key figures merit perhaps, perhaps the key figure of merit, is what is the chamber pressure at which the rocket engine can operate? That's the combustion chamber pressure. So a Raptor is designed to operate at 300 bar, possibly maybe higher, the standard atmospheres. The red cord right now for operational engine is the RD engine that I mentioned, the Russian RD, which is, I believe, around 267 bar. And the difficulty of the chamber pressure is increases on a non-linear basis. So 10% more chamber pressure is 10% more chair pressure is more like 50% more difficult. But that chair pressure is that that is what allows you to get a very high power density

Starting point is 00:18:14 for the engine. So enabling a very high thrust to weight ratio, and a very high specific impulse. So specific impulse is like a measure of the efficiency of a rocket engine. It's really the effect of exhaust velocity of the gas coming out of the engine. So with a very high chamber pressure, you can have a compact engine that nonetheless has a high expansion ratio, which is the ratio between the exit nozzle and the throat. So you see your rocket engine's got like sort of like an hourglass shape,

Starting point is 00:19:07 it's like a chamber and then it necks down and there's a nozzle. And the ratio of the exit diameter to the throat, it's an expat ratio. So why is it such a hard engine to manufacture? A scale. It's very complex. So what does complexity mean here is a lot of components involved There's a lot of a lot of components and a lot of unique materials that so we have to invent a

Starting point is 00:19:36 Several alloys that don't exist in order to make this engine work materials problem too. Materials problem and in a staged combustion, a full-flow staged combustion, there are many feedback loops in the system. Basically, you've got propellants and hot gas flowing simultaneously to so many different places on the engine. And they all have a recursive effect on each other. So you change one thing here, it has a recursive effect here, it changes something over there. And it's quite hard to control.

Starting point is 00:20:24 Like there's a reason no one's made this before. But, and the reason we're doing a stage combustion full flow is because it has the highest the vehicle possible efficiency. So in order to make a fully reusable rocket, which that's the really the holy grail of orbital rocketry, everything's got to be the best. It's got to be the best engine, the best airframe,

Starting point is 00:21:02 the best heat shield, extremely light avionics, very clever control mechanisms. You've got to shed mass in any possible way that you can. For example, we are instead of putting landing legs on the booster and ship, we are going to catch them with a tower to save the weight of the landing legs.

Starting point is 00:21:24 So that's like, I mean, we're talking about catching the largest flying object ever made with on a giant tower with with trough stick arms. It's like a cruddy kid with a fly, but much bigger. I mean pulling this probably won't work the first time. So this is bananas. This is bananas stuff. So you mentioned that you doubt, well, not you doubt, but there's days or moments when you doubt that this is even possible. It's so difficult.

Starting point is 00:22:01 The possible part is, well, at this point, we'll, I think we'll get Starship to work. There's a question of timing. How long will it take us to do this? How long will it take us to actually achieve full and rapid reusability? Because it will take a lot of launches before we are able to have full and rapid reusability. But I can say that the physics pencils out, like we're not, at this point I'd say we're confident that, like let's say, I'm very confident success is in the set of all possible outcomes. Right. It's not a set.

Starting point is 00:22:47 For a while there I was not convinced that success was in the set of possible outcomes. So which is very important actually. But so we were saying there's a chance. I'm saying there's a chance. I'm saying there's a chance exactly. Just not sure how long it will take. We have very talented team, they're working night and day to make it happen. Like I said, the critical thing to achieve for the revolution in spaceflight and for humanity to be a space-franc civilization is to have a fully and rapidly reusable rocket, over-rocket. There's not even been any over-rocket that's been fully reusable ever, and this has always

Starting point is 00:23:32 been the holy grail of rocketry. And many smart people, very smart people, have tried to do this before and they're not succeeded, because it's such a hard problem. What's your source of belief in situations like this? When the engineering problem is so difficult, there's a lot of experts, many of whom you admire, who have failed in the past. Yes. Yes. And a lot of people, you know, a lot of experts, maybe journalists, all the kind of, you know, the public in general have a lot of doubt about whether it's possible. And you yourself know that even if it's a non-null set, non-empty set of success, it's still unlikely or very difficult. Like, where do you go to, both personally, intellectually as an engineer, as a team,

Starting point is 00:24:30 like for source of strength needed to sort of persevere through this, and to keep going with the project, take it to completion. I just don't really know how I think about things. I mean, for me, it's simply this is something that is important to get done. And we should just keep doing it or die trying. And I don't need a source of strength. So quitting is not even like, that's not my nature. And I don't care about optimism or pessimism. Fuck that. We're going to get it done. We're going to get it done. Can you then zoom back in to specific problems with starship or any engineering problems

Starting point is 00:25:28 you work on? Can you try to introspect your particular biological neural network, your thinking process and describe how you think through problems, through different engineering and design problems? Is there like a systematic process you've spoken about first principles thinking? Is there a kind of process to it? Well, like saying, like physics is low and everything else is a recommendation. I've met a lot of people who can break the law, but I haven't met anyone who could break physics.

Starting point is 00:25:58 So, first, for any kind of technology problem, you have to sort of just make sure you're not violating physics. And, you know, first principles analysis, I think is something that can be applied to really any walk of life, anything really. It's just, it's really just saying, you know, let's, let's well something down to the most fundamental principles, the things that we are most confident are true at a foundational level. And that sets your axiomatic base, and then you reason up from there, and then you cross-check your conclusion against the axiomatic truth. inclusion against the axiomatic truth. So, you know, some basics in physics would be like, are you violating conservation of energy,

Starting point is 00:26:51 or momentum, or something like that, you know, then you're not gonna work. So, that's just to establish, is it possible? And another good physics tool is thinking about things in the limit? If you take a particular thing and you scale it to a very large number or to a very small number, how does things change? Well, it's like in number of things you manufacture something like that in time.

Starting point is 00:27:23 Yeah, like let's say, a thing example of like manufacturing, which I think is just a very underrated problem. And it's much harder to take an advanced technology product and bring it into volume manufacturing that it is to design it in the first place, my board orders magnitude. So let's say you're trying to figure out why is this part or product expensive? Is it because of something fundamentally foolish that we're doing or is it because our volume

Starting point is 00:28:01 is too low? And so then you say, okay, well, what if our volume was a million units a year? Is it still expensive? That's what I mean, about thinking about things that limit. If it's still expensive at a million units a year, then volume is not the reason why you think it's expensive. There's something fundamental about design.

Starting point is 00:28:16 And then you then can focus on the reducing complexity or something like that in the design. You can change the design to change the change apart to be something that is not fundamentally expensive. But it like that's a common thing in rock tree because the the unit volume is relatively low. And so a common excuse would be well it's expensive because our unit volume is low. And if we were in like automotive or something like that or consumer electronics then our cost would be lower. I'm like okay so let's say say, now you're making a million units a year.

Starting point is 00:28:46 Is this the most expensive? The answer is yes. Then economies of scale are not the issue. Do you throw into manufacturing? Do you throw supply chain? Talk about resources and materials and stuff like that. Do you throw that into the calculation of trying to reason from first principles? Like how are we going to make this apply chain work here.

Starting point is 00:29:06 Yeah. Yeah. And then the cost of materials, things like that, or is that too much? Yeah. Exactly. So, like, another good example, like, of thinking about things in the limit is if you take any product, any machine, or whatever, like take a rocket or whatever, and machine or whatever, like take a rocket or whatever, and say,

Starting point is 00:29:30 if you look at the raw materials in the rocket, so you're gonna have like aluminum steel, titanium, ink and L, especially the alloy's copper, and you say, what's the weight of the constituent elements of each of these elements, and what is their raw material value? And that sets the asymptotic limit for how low the cost of the vehicle can be unless you change the materials. And then when you do that, I call it it maybe the magic one number or something like that.

Starting point is 00:30:08 So that would be like, if you had the, you know, like just a pile of these raw materials, you can wave the magic one and rearrange the atoms into the final shape, that would be the lowest possible cost that you could make this thing for unless you change the materials. So then, and that is always a very low number. So then, what's actually causing these to be expensive is how you put the atoms into the desired shape. Yeah, actually, if you don't mind me taking a tiny tangent, I often talked to Jim Keller who was something to work with you.

Starting point is 00:30:44 Oh, yeah. Jim was a great work at Tesla. So I suppose he carries the flame of the same kind of thinking that you're talking about now. And I guess I see that same thing at Tesla and SpaceX folks who work there that kind of learn this way of thinking and it kind of becomes obvious almost. But anyway, I had argument, not argument, he educated me about how cheap it might be to manufacture a Tesla bot, we just, we had an argument, what is, how can you reduce the cost of scale of producing a robot? Because I got in a chance to interact quite a bit,

Starting point is 00:31:27 obviously in the academic circles with human robots and then my boss in dynamics and stuff like that. And then they're very expensive to build. And then Jim kind of schooled me on saying, like, okay, this kind of first principle thinking of how can we get the cost of manufacturing? Actually, now I suppose you do that. You have done that kind of thinking principles thinking of how can we get the cost of manufacturing down. I suppose you do that, you have done that kind of thinking for Tesla, but for all kinds

Starting point is 00:31:49 of all kinds of complex systems that are traditionally seen as complex. And you say, okay, how can we simplify everything now? Yeah. I mean, I think if you're a really at manufacturing, you can basically make at high volume, you can basically make anything for a cost that asymptotically approaches as the raw material value of the constituents plus any intellectual property

Starting point is 00:32:16 that you need to do license. Anything. But it's hard. It's not like that's a very hard thing to do, but it is possible for anything. Anything in volume can be made, like I said, for a cost that asymptotically approaches this raw material constituents plus intellectual property license rights. So what will often happen in trying to design a product is people start with the tools and

Starting point is 00:32:43 parts and methods that they're familiar with, and then try to create a product using their existing tools and methods. The other way to think about it is, actually imagine the, try to imagine the platonic ideal of the perfect product or technology, whatever it might be. And so what is the perfect arrangement of atoms that would be the best possible product?

Starting point is 00:33:09 And now let us try to figure out how to get the atoms in that shape. I mean, it sounds... It's almost like a Ricka Morty absurd until you start to really think about it and you really should think about it in this way because everything else is kind of, if you think you might fall victim to the momentum of the way things are done in the past, unless you think in this way.

Starting point is 00:33:37 Well, just as a function of inertia, people will want to use the same tools and methods that they are familiar with. They just, that's what they'll do by default. And then that will lead to an outcome of things that can be made with those tools and methods, but is unlikely to be the Platonic idea of the perfect product. So then so that's why it's just good to think of things in both directions. They're like, what can we build with the tools that we have? But then but also what is the what is, the theoretical, perfect product look like? And that theoretical, perfect product is going to be a moving target, because as you learn more,

Starting point is 00:34:14 the definition of that perfect product will change, because you don't actually know what the perfect product is, but you can successfully approximate a more perfect product. So, thinking about it like that, and then saying, okay, now, what tools, methods, materials, whatever, do we need to create in order to get the atoms in that shape? But for people, rarely think about it that way. But it's a powerful tool. I should mention that the brilliant Shivon Zillis is hanging out with us. In case you hear a voice of wisdom from from from from outside from up above. Okay, so let me ask you about Mars. You mentioned it would be great for science to put It would be great for science to put a base on the moon to do some research, but the truly big leap, again in this category of seemingly impossible, is to put a human being

Starting point is 00:35:13 on Mars. When do you think SpaceX will land a human being on Mars? Hmm. Best case is about 5 years. Worst case ten years. What are the determining factors would you say from an engineering perspective, or is that not the bottlenecks? You know, it's fundamentally engineering the vehicle. I mean, Starship is the most complex and advanced rocket that's ever been made by, I don't know, or if I'm adding to it or something like that, it's a lot.

Starting point is 00:36:13 It's really next level. And the fundamental optimization of Starship is minimizing cost per ton to orbit and ultimately cost per ton to the surface of Mars This may seem like a mogen tile objective, but it is actually the thing that needs to be optimized Like there is a certain cost pretend to the surface of Mars where we can afford to establish a self-sustaining city And then above that we cannot afford to do it So right now you couldn't fly to Mars for trillion dollars dollars. Doesn't know how much money could get you to take it to Mars. So we need to get that above,

Starting point is 00:36:53 to get that something that is actually possible at all. But then, that's, we don't just want to have, with Mars flags and footprints and then not come back for a half century, lectured with the moon. In order to pass a very important to great filter, I think we need to be a multi-planet species. Let's make sound somewhat esoteric to a lot of people, but, you know, given enough time, there's something that's likely to experience some calamity that could be something that humans do to themselves

Starting point is 00:37:38 or an external event like happens to dinosaurs. And, but eventually, dinosaurs. And but a bit of you know eventually and if none of that happens and somehow magically we keep going then the sun will the sun is gradually expanding and will engulf the earth and probably earth gets too hot for life in about 500 million years. It's a long time, but that's only 10% longer than Earth has been around. And so if you think about the current situation, it's really remarkable and kind of possible to extend life beyond Earth.

Starting point is 00:38:27 And that window of opportunity may be open for a long time, and I hope it is, but it also may be open for a short time. And we should, I think it does wise for us to act quickly while the video is open, just in case it closes. Yeah, the existence of nuclear weapons, pandemics, all kinds of threats should kind of give us some motivation. I mean, civilization could die with a bang or a whimper. If it dies of demographic, it collapse, then it's more of a whimper, you know if it's If it dies of demographic collapse, then it's more of a whimper. Obviously

Starting point is 00:39:09 But if it's World War three is more of a bang, but but these are all risks I mean it's important to think these things and just you know things things like probabilities not certainties Those are probably that something bad will happen on earth I like I think most likely the future will be good. But there's, let's say, for Organicake, a 1% chance, a percentage of a civilization ending event. Like that was Stephen Hawking's estimate. I think he might be right about that.

Starting point is 00:39:41 So then we should basically think of this like being a multi-plant species is like taking out insurance for life itself, like life insurance for life. So it's turned into an informal, real quick life insurance for life, yes. And you know, we can bring the creatures from, you know, plants animals from Earth, to Mars, and breathe life into the planet. And have a second planet with life. That would be great. They can't bring themselves there, you know. So if we don't bring them to Mars, then they will just for sure all die when the sun expands anyway, and then that'll be it. What do you think is the most difficult aspect of building a civilization on Mars, terraforming Mars, like from a generic perspective, from a financial perspective,

Starting point is 00:40:37 human perspective, to get a large number of folks there who will never return back to earth. No, I think it's what they returned. Some will return back to earth. They will choose to stay there for the rest of their lives. Yeah, many will. But we need the spaceships back, like the ones that go to Mars, we need them back. So you can hop on if you want.

Starting point is 00:41:03 But we can't just not have the spaceships come back. Those things are expensive. We need them back, like to come back and turn the trip. Do you think about the terraforming aspect, like actually building, are you still focused right now on the spaceships part that's so critical to get them out? Yeah, yeah. We absolutely, if you can't get there, nothing else matters.

Starting point is 00:41:20 Yeah. So, and like I said, you can't get there with some extraordinarily high cost. I mean, the current cost of, let's say, one ton to the surface of Mars is on the order of a billion dollars. So, because you don't just need the rocket and the launch and everything, you need like heat shield, you need, you know, guidance system, you need deep space communications, you need some kind of landing system. So like rough approximation would be a billion dollars per ton to the surface of Mars right now. This is obviously a way too expensive to create a self-sustaining civilization. So we need to improve that by at least a factor of a thousand.

Starting point is 00:42:07 A million per ton? Yes, ideally much less than a million ton. But if it's not, like it's got to be, you have to say like, well, how much can society afford to spend or want to just want to spend on a self-sustaining city on Mars. The self-sustaining part is important. Like, it's just the key threshold, the great filter will have been passed. When the city on Mars, it can survive even if the space shifts from Earth stop coming for any reason, which doesn't matter what the reason is. But if they stop coming for any reason, will it die out? Or will it not? And if there's even one critical ingredient missing, then it still doesn't count. It's like, you know, if you're on a long sea voyage and you've got everything except vitamin C. It's not only a matter of time, you know, you're gonna die. So, so we're gonna get Mars

Starting point is 00:42:59 I'm more excited to the point where it's self-sustaining. I'm not sure this will really happen in my lifetime, but I hope to see it at least have a lot of momentum. And then you can say, what is the minimum tonnage necessary to have a self-sustaining city? And there's a lot of uncertainty about those, so you can say, I don't know, it's probably at least a million tons, because you have to set up a lot of infrastructure on Mars. Like I said, you can't be missing anything that in order to be self-sustaining, you can't be missing, you know,

Starting point is 00:43:34 a semi-conductive fabs, you need iron ore refineries, like you need lots of things, you know. So, and Mars is not super hospitable. It's the least inhospitable planet, but it's definitely a fixer operative planet. That's out of Earth. Yes. Earth is pretty good.

Starting point is 00:43:52 Earth is like easy. And also we should clarify in the solar system. Yes, in the solar system. There might be nice vacation spots. There might be some great planets out there, but it's hard to get there. Yeah, way way way way way too hard. Just at least. Let me push back on that. Not really a pushback, but a quick curve ball of a question. So you did mention physics as the first starting point. So general relativity allows for warm holes. They technically can exist. Do you think those can ever be leveraged

Starting point is 00:44:27 by humans to travel fast in this beta light? Well, are you saying that that's- The world's thing is debatable. We currently do not know of any means of going fast in this beta light. There is like, faster than the speed of light. There is, like, there are some ideas about having space. Like so, so you're going to let move at the speed of light through space, but if you can

Starting point is 00:45:00 make space itself move, that's like that's a warping space. Space is capable of moving faster than the speed of light. Right. Like the universe in the Big Bang, the universe expanded it much more than the speed of light by a lot. Yeah. So, but the, if this is possible, the amount of energy required to wolf space is so gigantic, it's boggles of mind. So all the work you've done with propulsion, how much innovation is possible with rocket propulsion? Is this, I mean, you've seen it all and you're constantly innovating in every aspect. How much is possible?

Starting point is 00:45:47 Like, how much can you get 10x somehow? Is there something in there in physics that you can get significant improvement in terms of efficiency of engines and all those kinds of things? Well, as I was saying, like, really the Holy Grail is a fully and rapidly reusable orbital system. So right now, the Falcon 9 is the only reusable rocket out there. The booster comes back in Lansom, you've seen the videos, and we get the nose codel faring back, but we do not get the upper stage back. That means we have a minimum cost of building an offer stage. You can

Starting point is 00:46:29 think of like a two stage rocket of sort of like two airplanes, like a big airplane and a smaller airplane. And we get a big airplane back with another small airplane. And so it's still cost a lot, you know, so that offer stage is, you know, at least 10 million dollars. that upper stage is at least $10 million. And then the degree of the booster is not as rapidly and completely reusable as we'd like in order of the fairings. So our kind of minimum marginal cost not counting overhead for per flight is on the order of $15 to $20 million maybe. So that's extremely good for, it's by far better than any rocket ever in history. But with full and rapid reusability, we can reduce the cost per ton to orbit by a factor

Starting point is 00:47:22 of 100. Just think of it like, imagine if you had an aircraft or something or a car, and if you had to buy in your car every time you went for a drive, it would be very expensive. Every silly, frankly. But in fact, you just refuel the car or recharge the car, and that makes your trip like, I don't know, a thousand times cheaper. So it's the same for rockets. If you, it's very difficult to make this complex machine that can go to orbit. And so if you cannot reuse it, and you have to throw even any part of any significant part of it away that massively increases the cost.

Starting point is 00:48:08 So, you know, Starship and Theory could do a cost per launch of like a million, maybe two million dollars or something like that. And put over a hundred tons in orbit. Which is crazy. Yeah. So. That's incredible. So you're saying like it's by far the biggest bang for the box is to make it fully reusable

Starting point is 00:48:32 versus like some kind of brilliant breakthrough into your actual physics. Yeah, no, there's no brilliant break. There's no, just like the rocket reusable. This is an extremely difficult entering problem. Got it. But no new physics is required. Just brilliant engineering.

Starting point is 00:48:50 Let me ask a slightly philosophical fun question. Gotta ask, I know you're focused on getting to Mars, but once we're there on Mars, what form of government, economic system, political system, do you think would work best for an early civilization of humans? The interesting reason to talk about this stuff, it also helps people dream about the future. I know you're really focused about the short-term engineering dream, but it's like, I don't know, there's something about imagining an actual civilization on Mars that gives people,

Starting point is 00:49:24 I don't know. There's something about imagining an actual civilization of Mars that gives people So it really gives people hope. Well, it would be a new front here and an opportunity to rethink the whole nature of government I just as was done in the creation of the United States. So I mean, I would suggest having having direct democracy, like people vote directly on things as opposed to representative democracy. So representative democracy, I think, is to subject to special interest and a coercion of the politicians and that kind of thing. So I'd recommend that there's just direct democracy people vote on laws, the population votes on laws themselves, and then the laws must be short enough that people can understand them. Yeah, and then like keeping a well informed populist like really

Starting point is 00:50:21 being transparent about all the information about what they're voting for. Yeah, absolutely transparency. Yeah. And not make it as annoying as those cookies, we have to accept the cookies. I always, like, you know, there's like always like a slight amount of trepidation when you click accept cookies, like, like, feel as though there's like perhaps like a very tiny chance that'll open a portal to hell or something like that. Exactly. Exactly. Why do they, why do they keep, why do they keep, why do they keep accepting, why do they chance that'll open a portal to hell or something like that. That's exactly how I feel.

Starting point is 00:50:45 Why do they, why do they keep it, why do they keep it, why do they want with this cookie? Like somebody got upset with accepting cookies or something somewhere, I mean, who cares? Like, so annoying to keep, keep accepting all these cookies. Me. It's just a great, yes, you can have my damn cookie. I don't care. Whatever. He heard it from me on first.

Starting point is 00:51:05 He accepts all of your damn cookies. Yeah. So that's me. It's annoying. Yeah, it's one example of implementation of a good idea done really horribly. Yeah. Somebody who has some good intentions of like privacy or whatever, but now everyone just has to accept cookies and it's not, you know, you have billions of people

Starting point is 00:51:30 who have to keep clicking except cookie and super annoying. Then we just accept the damn cookie, it's fine. There is like, I think a fundamental problem that we're, because we've not really had a major, like a world war or something like that, and a while, obviously we would like to not have World Wars, there's not been a cleansing function for rules and regulations. So wars did have some sort of lining in that there would be a reset on rules and regulations after a war. So, all those one and two there were huge resets on rules and regulations after a war. So all those one and two, there were huge racists on rules and regulations. Now, if the society, society does not have a war

Starting point is 00:52:10 and there's no cleansing function or garbage collection for rules and regulations, then rules and regulations will accumulate every year because they're immortal. There's no actual humans die, but the lowest aren't. So we need a garbage collection function for rules and regulations. They should not just be immortal because some of the rules and regulations that are put

Starting point is 00:52:30 in place will be counterproductive, done with good intentions, but counterproductive. It's sometimes not done with good intentions. So if rules and regulations is to accumulate every year and you get more and more of them, then eventually you won't be able to do anything. You just like golevere with tie down by thousands of little strings. We see that in US and basically all economies that have been around for a while and regulators and legislators create new rules and regulations every year, but they don't put effort into removing them. And I think that's very important that we put effort into removing rules and regulations. But it gets tough because you get special

Starting point is 00:53:16 interest that then are dependent on like they have a vested interest in that whatever role of regulation and that they then they fight to not get it removed. Yeah, so I mean, I guess the problem with the Constitution is it's kind of like C versus Java because it doesn't have any garbage collection built in. I think there should be a, when you first said that the the metaphor of garbage collection. I love it. Coding set point. For the Coding set point. Yeah, yeah, it I love it. It's from coding standpoint. For the coding standpoint. Yeah. Yeah. It would be interesting. Interesting. It's the laws themselves kind of had

Starting point is 00:53:48 a built-in thing where they kind of die after a while unless somebody explicitly publicly defends them. Yeah. So that's sort of it's not like somebody has to kill them. They kind of die themselves. They disappear. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:54:03 Not the defend job or anything, but you know, the C++, you know, you could also have great garbage collection and Python and so on. Yeah. So yeah, something needs to happen or just the civilizations arteries, arteries just hardened over time. And you can just get less and less done because there's just a rule against everything. So I think like I don't know, for Mars or whatever I'd say, I would even for here, I would say for Earth as well, like I think there should be an active process for removing a rules and regulations and questioning their existence. Just like if we've got a function for creating rules and regulations, because rules and regulations can also think of like they're like software or lines of code for operating civilization. That's the rules and regulations.

Starting point is 00:54:52 So it's not like we shouldn't have rules and regulations, but you have code accumulation, but no code removal. And so it just gets to become basically archaic blood wear after a while. And it makes it hard for things to progress. to become basically archaic blood wear after a while. And it makes it hard for things to progress. So, I don't know, maybe Mars, you'd have like, any given law must have a sunset, and require active voting to keep,

Starting point is 00:55:21 to keep it up there. And I actually also say, like, and these just, I don't know, recommendations or thoughts, and ultimately we'll be up to the people on Mars to decide. But I think it should be easier to remove a law than to add one because of the, just to overcome the inertia of laws.

Starting point is 00:55:42 So maybe it's like for argument sake, you need like say 60% vote to have a law take effect, but only a 40% vote to remove it. So let me beat the guy, you posted a meme on Twitter recently where there's like a row of urinals, a guy just walks all the way across. And he tells you about crypto. So that's how to be so many times. I think maybe even literally. Do you think technologically speaking, there's any room for ideas of smart contracts or so on, because you mentioned laws. That's an interesting implement, use of things like smart contracts,

Starting point is 00:56:24 to implement the laws by which government's function. Like something built on Ethereum or maybe a dog coin that enables smart contracts somehow. I never quite understand this whole smart contracting. I mean, I'm too downtown to have small contracts. That's a good line. I mean, my general approach to any kind of like deal or whatever is just make sure there's clarity of understanding.

Starting point is 00:56:55 That's the most important thing. And just keep any kind of deal very, very short and simple plain language. And just make sure everyone understands this is the deal because everyone is clear and what are the consequences if various things don't happen. But usually deals are business deals or whatever are a way too long and complex and overly layered and pointlessly. You mentioned that Doge is the people's coin. Yeah. And you said that you were literally going SpaceX may consider literally putting a Doge coin on the moon.

Starting point is 00:57:38 Is this something you're still considering? Mars, perhaps. Do you think there's some chance we've talked about political systems on Mars that Dogecoin is the official currency of Mars that's happening in the future? Well, I think Mars itself will need to have a different currency because you can't synchronize due to speed of light or not easily. So must be completely standalone for Earth? Well yeah because the Mars is at closest approach, it's four light minutes away roughly and then at first approach it's roughly 20 light

Starting point is 00:58:17 minutes away, maybe a little more. So you can't really have something synchronizing, you know, if you've got a 20 minutes to be light issue, if it's got a one minute blockchain, it's not going to synchronize probably. So I don't know if Moss would have a cryptocurrency as a thing, but probably seems likely, but it would be some kind of localized thing on Mars. And you let the people decide? Yeah, absolutely. The future of Mars should be after the Martians.

Starting point is 00:58:52 Yeah, so I think the cryptocurrency thing is an interesting approach to reducing the error in the database that is called money. I think I have a pretty deep understanding of what money actually is on a practical day-to-day basis because of PayPal. We really got in deep there. Yeah, we really got in deep there. And right now the money system, actually, for practical purposes, is really a bunch of heterogeneous mainframes running old cobalt. Okay, you mean literally, that's literally what's happening in batch mode.

Starting point is 00:59:43 Okay. In batch mode. Okay. In batch mode. Yeah. And I put it the power fastest, you have to maintain that code. Okay. That's a pain that's pain. Not even four trans, cobalt. Yep.

Starting point is 00:59:56 It's cobalt. And they still, banks are still buying mainframes in 2021 and running engine Cobal code. And the Federal Reserve is probably even older than what the banks have, and they have an old Cobal mainframe. And so the government effectively has editing privileges on the money database. And they use those editing privileges to make more money whenever they want. And this increases the error in the database that is money. So I think money should really be viewed through the lens of information theory. And so you're kind of like an internet connection.

Starting point is 01:00:40 Like what's the bandwidth, you know, total bit rate, what is the latency, jutter, packet drop, you know, errors in network communication. Just think of money like that, basically. I think that's probably why we really think of it. And then say what What system, from an information at 30 standpoint, allows an economy to function the best. And, you know, crypto is an attempt to reduce the error in money that is contributed by governments deluding the money supply as basically a pernicious form of taxation. So both policy in terms of with inflation and actual like technological cobalt, like cryptocurrency takes us into the 21st century in terms of the actual systems that allow you to do the transaction to store wealth of those kinds of things. in terms of the actual systems that allow you to do the transaction to store wealth, all those kinds of things.

Starting point is 01:01:45 Thanks, I just think of money as information. People often will think of money as having power in and of itself. It does not. Money is information, and it does not have power in and of itself, like applying the physics tools or thinking about things in the limit is helpful. If you are stranded on a tropical island and you have a trillion dollars, it's useless. Because there's no resource allocation.

Starting point is 01:02:22 Money is a database resource allocation. But there's no resource to allocate, except for yourself. So money is useless. If you're trying to run desert island with no food, you'd all the Bitcoin in the world will not stop you from starving. Yeah. So, um, so like just think of money as a database for resource allocation, um, across time and space. And, um, and then what, what, what system, uh, it is, what, what, what, in what form should that database, what data system, what would be most effective? Now there is a fundamental issue with say Bitcoin and its current form in that it's the transaction volume is very limited. And the latency, the latency for probably confirmed transaction is too long, much longer than you'd like.

Starting point is 01:03:31 So it's not, it's actually not great from transaction-moling standpoint or latency standpoint. So it is perhaps useful as to solve an aspect of the money database problem, which is the sort of store of wealth or an accounting of relative obligations, I suppose, but it is not useful as a currency, as a day-to-day currency. But people have proposed different technological solutions. Like lightning. Yeah, lightning network and the layer, two technologies on top of that.

Starting point is 01:04:09 I mean, it's all, it seems to be all kind of a trade-off. But the point is, it's kind of brilliant to say that just think about it information, think about what kind of database, what kind of infrastructure enables the exchange. Yeah, just say like you're operating an economy. And you need to have something that allows for the efficient to have efficient value ratios between products and services.

Starting point is 01:04:32 So you've got this massive number of products and services, and you can't just barter. It's like that would be extremely unwieldy. So you need something that gives you So you need something that gives you a ratio of exchange between goods and services. And then something that allows you to shift obligations across time, like debt, debt and equity, shift obligations across time. What does the best job of that? Part of the reason why I think there's some marriage to Dogecoin, even though it was obviously created as a joke, is that it actually does have

Starting point is 01:05:15 a much higher transaction volume, capability than Bitcoin, and the costs of doing a transaction, the dogecoin fee is very low. Like right now, if you want to do a bitcoin transaction, the price of doing that transaction is very high. So you could not use it effectively for most things. And nor could it even scale to a high volume. And when bitcoin was started, I guess, around 2008 or something like that. The internet connections were much worse than they are today, like order of magnitude. I mean, there's the way, way worse, you know, in 2008.

Starting point is 01:05:58 So, so like having a, you know, a small block size or whatever is, and a long synchronization time is made sense in 2008. But to 2021 or fast forward 10 years, it's like, it's like, comically low. I think there's some value to having a linear increase in the amount of currency that is generated. So because some amount of the currency, like if a currency is too deflationary or should say if a currency is expected to increase in value over time, there's reluctance to spend it. Because they're like, oh, if I just hold it and not spend it because it's scarcity is increasing with time.

Starting point is 01:06:52 So if I spend it now, then I will regret spending it. So I will just, you know, hold it. But if there's some delusion of the currency occurring over time, that's more of an incentive to use it as a currency. So those coins somewhat randomly has a just a fixed number of coins or hash strings that are generated every year. So there's some inflation, but it's not a percentage based. So it's a fixed number. So the percentage of inflation will necessarily decline over time. So I'm not saying that it's like the ideal system for a currency, but I think it actually is just fundamentally better than anything else I've seen, just by accident. Like I said, around 2008, so you're not, you know, some people suggested you might be

Starting point is 01:07:55 said, oh, she's not come out or you've previously said you're not, I'm going to ask. You're not, for sure. Would you tell us if you were? Yes. Okay. Do you think it's a feature of bug that he's anonymous, or she or they? It's an interesting kind of quirk of human history

Starting point is 01:08:13 that there is a particular technology that is a completely anonymous inventor, or creator. Well, I mean, you can look at the evolution of ideas before the launch of Bitcoin and see who wrote, you know, about those ideas. And then, I don't know, obviously, I don't know who created Bitcoin for practical purposes, but the evolution of ideas is pretty clear for that. And like seems as though Nick Sabo is probably more than anyone else responsible for the evolution of those ideas.

Starting point is 01:09:09 So he claims not to be so not commoto, but I'm not sure that's needed here or not there. But he seems to be the one more responsible for the ideas behind the coin that anyone else. So it's not perhaps like singular figures aren't even as important as the figures involved in the evolution of ideas that led to a thing. So yeah, you know, most perhaps it's sad to think about history, but maybe most names would be forgotten anyway.

Starting point is 01:09:38 What is the name anyway? It's a name, a name attached to an idea. What does it mean, really? I think Shakespeare had a thing about roses and stuff whatever he said rose by any other name. It's well a sweet I got you on the quote Shakespeare. I feel I feel like I accomplished something today. She'll like a pearly to a summer's day Clip that out Not more tempered animal fair. Autopilot. Test off autopilot.

Starting point is 01:10:18 Test off autopilot has been through an incredible journey over the past six years, or perhaps even longer in your mind and the minds of, in your mind, in the minds of many involved. I think that's where we first connected really with the Oedipal stuff, autonomy and the whole journey was incredible to me to watch. I was, because I knew, well, part of it was I was at MIT and I knew the difficulty of computer vision. And I knew the whole, I had a lot of colleagues and friends about the

Starting point is 01:10:47 DARBA challenge and you how difficult it is. And so there was a natural skepticism when I first drove a Tesla with the the initial system based on mobile. I, yeah, I thought there's no way. So first one I got in, I thought there's no way this car could maintain like staying in the lane and create a comfortable experience. So my intuition initially was that the lane keeping problem is way too difficult to solve.

Starting point is 01:11:12 Oh, lane keeping, yeah, that's really easy. Well, yeah. But not the, but solve in the way that we just, we talked about previous is prototype versus a thing that actually creates a pleasant experience over hundreds of thousands of miles. We had to wrap a lot of code around the mobile I think. It doesn't just work by itself. I mean, that's part of the story of how you approach things sometimes.

Starting point is 01:11:39 Sometimes you do things from scratch. Sometimes at first you kind of see what's out there and then you decide to do different scratch. That was one of the boldest decisions I've seen is both on the hardware and the software to decide to eventually go from scratch. I thought again, I was skeptical whether that's going to be able to work out because it's such a, such a difficult problem. And so it was an incredible journey when I see now with everything, the hardware, the compute, the sensors, the things I may be caring about most is the stuff that André Carpati is leading with the data set selection, the whole data engine process, the neural network architectures, the way that's in the real world, that network is tested, validated, all the different test

Starting point is 01:12:21 sets, versus the imageNet model of computer vision, like what's in academia is like real world artificial intelligence. So. And Andres also, and I was to play an important role, but we have a lot of really talented people driving things. So, and Ashok is actually the head of autopilot engineering.

Starting point is 01:12:45 Andres, director of AI. AI stuff, yeah. So yeah, I'm aware that there's an incredible team of just a lot going on. Yeah, I just, you know, I was a pure, pure will give me too much credit and they will give Andre too much credit. And people should realize how much is going on under the, Yeah, so a lot of really talented people. The tells the autopilot, the ITM is extremely talented.

Starting point is 01:13:11 It's like some of those smartest people in the world. So yeah, we're getting it done. What are some insights you've gained over those five, six years of autopilot about the problem of autonomous driving. So you leaped in having some sort of first principles kinds of intuitions, but nobody knows how difficult the problem, like the problem. I thought the self-driving problem would be hard, but it was harder than I thought. It's not like I thought it would be easy.

Starting point is 01:13:41 I thought it would be very hard, but it was actually way harder than even that. So I want to come down to you at the end of the day. It's just self-driving. You have to solve. You basically need to recreate what humans do to drive, which is humans drive with optical senses, eyes, and biological neural nets. And so in order to, that's how the entire road system is designed to work, with a basically passive optical and neural nets, biologically. And now that we need to, so for actually, for, for us to start driving to work, we have to recreate that in digital form. So we have to,

Starting point is 01:14:22 for full cell driving to work, we have to recreate that in digital form. So we have to, that means cameras with advanced neural nets in silicon form. And then it will obviously solve for full cell driving. That's the only way. I don't think there's any other way. But the question is, what aspects of human nature do you have to encode into the machine?

Starting point is 01:14:46 Right? So you have to solve the perception problem, like detect, and then you first, while it relies, what is the perception problem for driving, like all the kinds of things you have to be able to see? Like, what do we even look at when we drive? There's, I just recently heard Andre talk about at MIT about like, car doors. I think it was the world's greatest talk about at MIT about car doors. I think it was the world's greatest talk of all time about car doors, the fine details of car doors.

Starting point is 01:15:13 What is even an open car door, man? So, the ontology of that, that's a perception problem. We humans solve that perception problem, and Tesla has to solve that problem. And then there's the control and the planning coupled with the perception. You have to figure out like what's involved in driving, like, especially in all the different edge cases. And then there, I mean, maybe you can comment on this, how much game the erratic kind of stuff needs to be involved, you know, at a four-way stop sign. You know, our as humans, when we drive,

Starting point is 01:15:46 our actions affect the world. Like it changes how others behave. Most of the time, it was driving, if you're usually just responding to the scene, as opposed to like really asserting yourself in the scene. Do you think? I think think, I think these sort of control logic can under them, so I'm not the hot part. The, you know, let's see, what do you think is the hard part in this whole beautiful complex problem? So it's a lot of freaking software, man. on a beautiful complex problem. So it's a lot of freaking software, man. A lot of smart lines of code. For sure, in order to have

Starting point is 01:16:32 create an accurate vector space. So like you're coming from image space, which is like this flow of photons, you're going to the cameras and then you have this massive bitstream in image space. And then you have to effectively compress the massive bitstream corresponding to photons that knocked off an electron in a camera sensor and turned that but-stream into vector space. By vector space, I mean, like, you've got cars and humans and lane lines and curves and traffic lights and that kind of thing.

Starting point is 01:17:34 Once you have an accurate vector space, the control problem is so much that of a video game, like a grand theft order of cyberpunk. If you have accurate, accurate vector space, it's the control problem is, it's, I wouldn't say it's trivial, it's not trivial, but it's, it's not like some insurmountable thing. It's a, but having an accurate vector space, it's very difficult. Yeah, I think we humans don't give enough respect to how incredible

Starting point is 01:18:07 the human perception system is. To mapping the raw photons to the vector space representation in our heads. Your brain is doing an incredible amount of processing and giving you an image that is a very cleaned up image. Like when we look around here, you see color in the corners of your eyes, but actually your eyes have very few cones, like the corners after is in the peripheral vision. Your eyes are painting color in the peripheral vision.

Starting point is 01:18:37 You don't realize it, but their eyes are actually painting color. And your eyes also have like this blood vessels and also to gnarly things and there's a blind spot but do you see your blind spot? No, your brain is painting in the missing the blind spot. You can do these things online where you look here and look at this point and then look at this point and it's if it's in your blind spot, your brain will just fill in the missing bits. The peripheral vision is so cool. It's you realize all the illusions for vision science, it makes you realize just how incredible

Starting point is 01:19:11 the brain is. The brains don't crazy amount of post-processing on the vision signals for your eyes. It's insane. And then even once you get all those vision signals, your brain is constantly trying to forget as much as possible. So human memory is perhaps the weakest thing about the brain is memory. So because memory is so expensive to a brain and so limited, your brain is trying to forget as much as possible and to still the things that you see into the smallest amounts of information

Starting point is 01:19:47 possible. So brain is trying to not just get to a vector space, but get to a vector space that is the smallest possible vector space of only relevant objects. And I think like you can sort of look inside your brain, or at least, I can, like, when you drive down the road and try to think about what your brain is actually doing consciously. And it's conscious, it's, it's, it's, it's like, you'll see a car that's, because you, you don't have cameras, you don't have eyes in the back of your head on the side, you know, so you say like, you're, you're, you're, your head is like a, you know, you basically have two cameras on a slow gimbal. And what's you, and I say it's not that great. Here in IZUP, people constantly distracted and thinking about things and texting and

Starting point is 01:20:39 doing all sorts of things they shouldn't do in a car, changing the radio station. So having arguments is like, so then like, say like, like, when's the last time you look right and left, or in and rare word, or even diagonally, you know, forward to actually refresh your vector space. So you're glancing around and what you're minus doing is is trying to still the relevant vectors basically objects with a position and motion and then editing that down to the least amount that's necessary for you to drive. It does seem to be able to edit it down or compress it even further into things like concepts.

Starting point is 01:21:27 It goes beyond, the human mind seems to go sometimes beyond vector space, to sort of space of concepts, to where you'll see a thing, it's no longer represented spatially somehow. It's almost like a concept that you should be aware of. Like if this is a school zone, you'll remember that as a concept, which is a weird thing to represent, but perhaps for driving, you don't need to fully represent those things, or maybe you get those kind of... Well, you need to... Indirectly.

Starting point is 01:21:57 It's like a established vector space, and then actually have predictions for those vector spaces. So, like, you know, like you drive past, say, a bus, and you see that this people, before you drove past the bus, you saw people crossing, like, or some just imagine there's like a large truck or something blocking site. But before you came up to the truck, you saw that there were some kids about to cross the road in front of the truck. Now, you can no longer see the kids, but you need to be able, but you would now know, okay, those kids are probably going to pass by the truck and cross the road, even though

Starting point is 01:22:42 you cannot see them. So you have to have memory, you have to need to remember that there were kids there and you need to have some forward prediction of what their position will be. It's a really hard problem. At the time of relevance. So with occlusions and computer vision, when you can't see an object anymore, even when it just walks behind a tree and reappears. That's a really, really, I mean, at least in academic literature, it's tracking through occlusions, it's very difficult. Yeah, we're doing it.

Starting point is 01:23:13 I understand this. So some of it, it's like object permanence. Like, the same thing happens with the humans, with neural nets, like when a toddler grows up, like, there's a point in time where they develop, they have a sense of object permanence. So before a certain age, if you have a ball or a toy or whatever and you put it

Starting point is 01:23:31 behind your back and you pop it out, if they don't, before they have object permanence, it's like a new thing every time. It's like, whoa, this toy went, woo, just spared. And now it's back again. And they can't believe it. And then they can play peekaboo all day long because the peekaboo is fresh every time. But then we figured out object permanence and then they realized, oh no, the object is

Starting point is 01:23:51 not gone, it's just behind your back. Sometimes I wish we never did figure out object permanence. Yeah, so that's an important problem to solve. Yes. So an important evolution of the neural nets in the car is memory across both time and space. So, you can't remember, like you have to say, how long do you want to remember things for? And there's a cost to remembering things for a long time. So you can, you know, like, run out of memory to try to remember too much for too long. And then you also have things that are stale if they're from, remember, for too long. And then you also need things that are remembered over time. So even if you, like, say, have, like, for, I'm going to sake, five seconds of memory on a time basis, but like let's say you

Starting point is 01:24:46 you're propped at a light and you saw, you used a pedestrian example that people were waiting to cross the road and you can't quite see them because of an occlusion, but they might wait for a minute before the light changes for them to cross the road. You still need to remember that that's where they were and that they're probably going to cross-road type of thing. So even if that exceeds your time-based memory, it should not exceed your space of memory. And I just think the data engine side of that, so getting the data to learn all of the concepts that you're saying now is an incredible process. It's this iterative process. So just, there's this hydrin at many... I should add.

Starting point is 01:25:32 Yeah. We're changing the name to something else. Okay. I'm sure it'll be equally as Rick and Morty like. There's a lot of... Yeah. We've re-architected the neural neural net neural nice in the cars. So many times it's crazy. So every time there's a new major version,

Starting point is 01:25:51 you'll rename it to something more ridiculous or I or memorable and beautiful. Sorry, not ridiculous, of course. If you see the full the full like array of neural nets that that operating the cars, it's kind that are operating in the cards. It's kind of boggles of mind. There's so many layers. It's crazy. We started off with simple neural nets that were basically image recognition on a single frame from a single camera and then

Starting point is 01:26:30 trying to knit those together with it with the C. I should say we're really primarily running C here because C++ is a touch overhead and we have our own C compiler. So to get maximum performance we actually wrote our own C compiler. So to get maximum performance, we actually wrote our own C compiler and are continuing to optimize our C compiler for maximum efficiency. In fact, we've just recently done a new rev on a C compiler that'll compile directly

Starting point is 01:26:56 to our autopilot hardware. Do you want to compile the whole thing down and with your own compiler? Yeah. So efficiency here, because there's all kinds of compute, there's CPU GPU, there's like the basic type of thing and you have to somehow figure out the scheduling across all of those things. And so you're compiling the code down. Yeah, it does all. Okay, so that's why there's a lot of people involved. There's a lot of hardcore software

Starting point is 01:27:21 engineering at a very sort of bare metal level because you we're trying to do a lot of compute. That's constrained to the, you know, our full self driving computer. So, and we want to try to have the highest frames per second possible. With a sort of very finite amount of compute and power. So we really put a lot of effort into the efficiency of our compute. And so there's actually a lot of work done by some very talented software engineers at Tesla that at a very foundational level to improve the efficiency of compute

Starting point is 01:28:06 and how we use the the the trip accelerators, which are basically dot you know doing matrix math dot dot products like a Brazilian dot products. And it's like what what what a neural assets like compute wise like 99% dot products. So, you know, and you want to achieve as many high frame rates like video game. You want? Yeah, full resolution. High frame rate. High frame rate low latency. Low jitter. So I think one of the things we're moving towards now is no post-processing of the image through the image signal processor. So like for what happens for cameras is that almost all cameras is they, there's a lot of post-processing done in order to make pictures look pretty. And so we don't care about pictures looking pretty. We just want the data.

Starting point is 01:29:16 So we're moving to just raw photon counts. So the system will, like the image that the computer sees is actually much more than what each see if you're represented on a camera. It's got much more data. And even in very low light conditions, you can see that there's a small photon count difference between, you know, the spot here and that's about there, which means that so it can see in the dark incredibly well because it can detect these tiny differences in photon counts.

Starting point is 01:29:47 That's a lot better. Much better than you'd, you'd probably possibly imagine. And then we also save 13 milliseconds on a latency. So, for removing the post processing and image. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, um, cause we've got, you know, eight cameras and, and then there's, uh, roughly, I don't know, one and a half milliseconds also, uh, maybe 1.6 milliseconds of latency, um, for each camera. And so it, like, um, going to just, uh, it basically bypassing the image processor gets us back 13 milliseconds of latency, which is important.

Starting point is 01:30:31 We track latency all the way from photon hits the camera to all the steps that it's got to go through to get through the various neural nets and the C code and there's a little bit of C++ there as well Well, I can maybe a lot, but the core stuff is heavy-duty computer solency and And so we track that latency all the way to an output command to the Driving it to accelerate the breaks us to slow down, stirring, turn left or right.

Starting point is 01:31:10 So because you got to output a command, that's going to go to a controller and like some of these controllers have an update frequency, that's maybe 10 hertz or something like that, which is slow. That's like now you lose 100 milliseconds potentially. So then we want to update the drivers on the like say, stirring and breaking control to have more like a hundred hertz instead of 10 hertz. And you got a 10 millisecond latency instead of 100 milliseconds worst case latency. And actually, Jitter is more of a challenge than latency. Because latency is like you can you can you can anticipate and predict. But if

Starting point is 01:31:43 you're, but if you've got a stack up of things going from the camera to the computer through then a series of other computers and finally to an actuator on the, the car, if you have a stack up of, uh, of tolerances, of timing tolerances, then you can have quite a variable latency, which is called Jeter. And, and that makes it a hard that makes it hard to anticipate exactly how you should turn the car or accelerate, because if you've got maybe 150 to 100 milliseconds of Jeter, then you could be off by, you know, up to 0.2 seconds. And this could make a big difference.

Starting point is 01:32:19 So you have to interpolate somehow to do with the effects of Jitter, so they can make robust control decisions. The Jitter is in the sensor information. The Jitter can occur at any stage in the pipeline. If you have fixed latency, you can anticipate and say, okay, we know that our information is for I can say 150 milliseconds, like, so 150, 150 milliseconds from phototone-saken camera to where you can measure a change in the acceleration of the vehicle. So, then, then you can say, okay, well, we're gonna, in the acceleration of the vehicle.

Starting point is 01:33:09 So then you can say, okay, well, we're gonna, and we know it's 150 milliseconds, so we're gonna take that into account and compensate for that latency. However, if you got then 150 milliseconds of latency plus 100 milliseconds of jitter, which could be anywhere from zero to 100 milliseconds on top, so then your latency could be from 150 to 150 milliseconds.

Starting point is 01:33:26 Now you've got 100 milliseconds that you don't know what to do with. And that's basically random. So getting rid of jitter is extremely important. And that affects your control decisions and all those kinds of things. Okay. Yeah, the cars is going to fundamentally maneuver better with lower jitter. Got it. And the cause will maneuver with superhuman ability and reaction time, Yeah, the cars is going to fundamentally maneuver better with lower jitter. Got it.

Starting point is 01:33:45 And the cause will maneuver with superhuman ability and reaction time much faster than a human. I mean, I think over time, the autopilot full-stop driving will be capable of maneuvers that, you know, are far more than what like James Bond could do in like the best movie, type of thing. That's exactly where I was imagining in my mind as he said it. It's like impossible maneuvers that a human couldn't do, you know, so. Well let me ask sort of looking back the six years, looking out into the future, based on your current understanding, how hard do you think this this full self-driving problem? When do you think Tesla will solve level 4 FSD?

Starting point is 01:34:32 I mean, it's looking quite likely that it will be next year. And what does the solution look like? Is it the current pool of FSD beta candidates? They start getting greater and greater as they have been degrees of autonomy, and then there's a certain level beyond which they can do their own, they can read a book. Yeah, so, I mean, you can see that anybody who's been falling the full-star driving beta closely will see that the rate of disengagement has been dropping rapidly. So like a disengagement be where the driver intervenes to prevent the car from doing something

Starting point is 01:35:14 dangerous potentially. So the interventions per million miles has been dropping dramatically. At some point, and that trend looks like it happens next year, is that the probability of an accident on FSD is less than that of the average human, and then significantly less than that of the average human and then significantly less than that of the average human. So, it suddenly appears like we will get there next year. Then of course, then there's going to be a case of, okay, we'll not prove this to regulators and prove it to, you know, and we want to standard that is not just equivalent to a human,

Starting point is 01:36:03 but much better than the average human. I think it's going to be at least 203 times higher safety than a human. So 203 times lower probability of injury than a human. Before we would actually say, like, okay, it's okay to go. It's not going to be a equivalent. It's going to be much better. So, if you look at 10.0, the FSD 10.6 just came out recently, 10.7s on the way.

Starting point is 01:36:27 Maybe 11 is on the way, so we're in the future. We were hoping to get 11 out this year, but it's, 11 actually has a whole bunch of fundamental rewrites on the neural net architecture and some fundamental improvements in creating vector space. So there is some fundamental leap that really deserves the 11. I mean, that's a pretty cool number. Yeah. Yeah. 11 would be a single stack for, one stack to rule them all.

Starting point is 01:37:05 And but they're just some really fundamental neural net architecture changes that are, that will allow for much more capability, but, you know, at first they're going to have issues. So, like we have this working on like sort of alpha software, and it's good, but it's basically taking a whole bunch of C++ code and leading a massive amount of C++ code and replacing it with the neural net. And Andre makes this point a lot, which is like neural net is kind of eating software. Over time there's less and less conventional software, more is like neural nets, like kind of eating software. You know, over time, there's like

Starting point is 01:37:50 less and less conventional software, more and more neural net. We were just so software, but it's, still comes out to line the software. But it's more neural net stuff, unless you know, hewrestx, basically. If you're more matrix-based stuff, unless heuristic giant bag of points. And it's like, so you go to Pixel and something associated with that pixel. Like this pixel is probably car. Pixel is probably lane line. Then you've got to assemble this giant bag of points in the C code and turn it into vectors. And it does a pretty good job of it,

Starting point is 01:39:00 but it's a, we need another layer of neural nets on top of that to take the giant bag of points and distill that down to a vector space in the neural net part of the software as opposed to the heuristics part of the software. This is a big improvement. Neural nets all the way down, so you want. It's not even neural net, but it's, it's, it's, this will be just a, this is a big improvement. Neural Nets all the way down, so you want. It's not even neural neural nets, but it's, it's, it's, uh, this will be just a, this is a game changer to not have the bag of points behind bag of points that has to be assembled with, um, many lines of CFC plus plus, uh, and, and have the, and have a neural net just

Starting point is 01:39:42 assemble those into a vector. So, so the,. So the neural net is outputting much less data. It's outputting. This is a lane line. This is a curb. This is a drivable space. This is a car. This is a pedestrian or cyclist or something like that. It's outputting, it's really output putting proper vectors to the CEC plus plus control

Starting point is 01:40:10 code as opposed to constructing the vectors in C. We've done quite a good job of, but it's a group of hitting a local maximum on how well this you can do this. So this is really a big deal. And just all of the networks in the car need to move to surround video. This is some legacy networks that are not surround video. And all of the training needs to move to surround video and the efficiency of the training needs to get better and it is.

Starting point is 01:40:50 And then we need to move everything to raw photon counts as opposed to processed images. Yeah. It's just quite a big reset on the training because the system's trained on post-processed images. So we need to redo all the training. To train against the role photon counts instead of the post processed image. So ultimately it's kind of reducing the complexity of the whole thing. So reducing, reducing lines of code will actually go lower. reducing reducing lines of code will actually go lower. Yeah, that's fascinating.

Starting point is 01:41:29 So you're doing fusion of all the sensors, reducing the complexity of having to deal with these camera's. Usually cameras. As well cameras really. Right. Yes. Same with humans. Yeah. Well, I guess we got ears too. Okay. Yeah, well, we'll actually need to incorporate sound as well, because you know, you need need to listen for ambulance sirens or fire trucks, if somebody yelling at you or something, there's a little bit of audio that needs to be incorporated as well. Do you want to go go back to break? Yeah, listen to the trigger break.

Starting point is 01:41:59 Honestly, frankly, the ideas are the easy thing and the implementation is the hot thing. The idea of going to the moon is the easy part. But going to the moon is the hot part. There's a lot of hardcore engineering that's going to get done at the hardware and software level. It's optimizing the C compiler and, cutting out latency everywhere, like this is, if we don't do this, the system will not work properly.

Starting point is 01:42:31 So the work of the engineers doing this, they are like the unsigned heroes, so you know, but they are critical to the success of the situation. I think you made it clear. I mean, at least to me, it's super exciting. Everything's going on outside of what Andrei's doing. Just the whole infrastructure, the software. I mean, everything is going on with data engine, whatever it's called. The whole process is just

Starting point is 01:42:54 a little bit more to me. Yeah, I think the sheer scale of it is bogus mind. Like the training at the amount of work done with like we've written all this custom software for training and labeling. And to do auto labeling, auto labeling is essential. Because especially when you got like surround video, it's very difficult to like label surround video from scratch is extremely difficult. Like take a human's such a long time to even label one video clip, like several hours. Or the auto label, it basically would just apply a heavy duty, like a lot of compute to the video clips, to pre-assign and guess what all the things are that are going on in this round video.

Starting point is 01:43:40 And then there's like correcting it. Yeah. and then the older human has to do is like tweet, like say, the, you know, change adjust what is incorrect. This is like increased increases productivity by effect 100 or more. Yeah. So you've presented Tesla bot as primarily useful in the factory. First of all, I think human out of robots are incredible from a fan of robotics. I think the elusive movement that human robots, the bipedal robots show are just so cool.

Starting point is 01:44:09 So it's really interesting that you're working on this and also talking about applying the same kind of all the ideas of some of which we've talked about with data edge and all the things that we're talking about with Tesla Autopilot just transferring that over to just yet another robotic problem. I have to ask, since I care about human robotic interaction, so the human side of that, so you've talked about mostly in the factory. Do you see it? Do you see part of this problem that Tesla bought has to solve is interacting with humans and potentially having a place like in the home. So interacting, not just not replacing labor, but also like, I

Starting point is 01:44:46 don't know, being a friend or an assistant. Yeah, I think the possibilities are endless. Yeah, I mean, it's obviously like a, it's not quite in tells those primary vision direction of accelerating sustainable energy, but it is an extremely useful thing that we can do for the world, which is to make a useful humanoid robot that is capable of interacting with the world and helping in many different ways. So, in fact reason, I mean, I think if you say like extraflight to many years in the

Starting point is 01:45:30 future, I think work will become optional. So like there's a lot of jobs that if people weren't paid to do it, they wouldn't do it. It's not fun, necessarily. Like, if you're washing dishes all day, it's like, you know, even if you really like washing dishes, you really want to do it for eight hours a day every day, probably not. So, and then it's like dangerous work. And basically if it's dangerous boring,

Starting point is 01:46:01 it has like potential for repetitive stress injury, that kind of thing. Then that's really where humanoid robots would add the most value initially. So what we're aiming for is to, for the humanoid robots to do jobs, that people don't voluntarily want to do. And then we'll have to pair that obviously with some kind of universal basic income in the future. So I think

Starting point is 01:46:32 the DC a world when there's like hundreds of millions of Tesla bots doing different performing different tasks throughout the world. Yeah, I haven't really thought about it that far in the future, but I guess there may be something like that. So, guess a wild question. So, the number of Tesla cars has been accelerating. It's been close to 2 million produced. Many of them have autopilot. I think we're over 2 million now. Do you think there will ever be a time when there will be more Tesla bots than Tesla cars? Yeah, I actually, it's funny you asked this question because normally I do try to think

Starting point is 01:47:17 pretty far into the future, but I haven't really thought that far into the future with the Tesla bot or it's codenade Optimus. I call it Optimus subprime. He's like a giant transformer robot. So, bit as much via general purpose, help for bot. And basically like the things that we're basically, like Tesla, I think, has the most advanced real-world AI for interacting with the real world, which should develop as a function of to make self-driving work. And so along with custom hardware and like a lot of you know hardcore low-level

Starting point is 01:48:09 software to have it run efficiently and be you know power efficient because you know it's one thing to do neural nets if you got a gigantic sober room with 10,000 computers but now let's say you just you have to know just all that down into one computer that's running at low power in a humanoid robot or a car. That's actually very difficult and a lot of hard-core software work is required for that. So since we're kind of like solving the navigate the real world with neural nets, problem for cars, which are like robots with four wheels, then it's like kind of a natural extension of that is to put it in a robot with arms and legs and actuators.

Starting point is 01:48:51 So like the two hard things are like you basically need to make the how the row of being intelligent enough to interact in a sensible way with the environment. So you need real real world AI and you need to be very good at manufacturing, which is a very hard problem. Tels is very good at manufacturing and also has the real world AI. So making the human or robot work is basically means developing custom motors and sensors that are different for a car would use. But we also have, I think we have the best expertise in developing advanced electric motors and power electronics. So it just has to be for a humanoid robot application or a car. Still, you do talk about love sometimes. So let me ask,

Starting point is 01:49:57 this isn't like for like sex robots or something like that. I love it's the answer. Yes. or something. I love it. The answer. Yes. There is something compelling to us, not compelling, but we connect with human robots or even like robots like with a dog and shapes the dogs. It just, it seems like, you know, there's a huge amount of loneliness in this world. All of us seek companionship with other humans, friendship and all those kinds of things. We have a lot of here in Austin, a lot of people have dogs. There seems to be a huge opportunity to also have robots that decrease the amount of loneliness in the world or help us humans connect with each other in a way that dogs can. Do you think about that? Would test about it all, or is it really focused on the problem of performing specific tasks, not connecting

Starting point is 01:50:51 with humans? Um, I mean, to be honest, I have not actually thought about it from the companion chip standpoint, but I think it actually would end up being, it could be actually a very good companion. And it could, you develop like a personality over time that is, that is like, unique, like, you know, it's not like they're just all the robots are the same. And that personality could evolve to be match the owner or the owner. What if you want to call it the other half, right? The same way the friends do.

Starting point is 01:51:38 See, I think that's a huge opportunity. Yeah, no, that's interesting. Like, because, you know, like there's a Japanese phrase, like the Wabi Sabi, you know, the subtle imperfections are what makes something special. And the subtle imperfections of the personality, the robot, mapped to the subtle imperfections of the robot's human friend. Don't know, owners sounds like maybe the wrong word, but can actually make an incredible buddy, basically. And in that way, the imperfections,

Starting point is 01:52:15 like R2D2 or like a C3PO sort of thing, you know. So from a machine learning perspective, I think the flaws being a feature is really nice. You could be quite terrible at being a robot for quite a while in the general home environment or all the general world. And that's kind of adorable. And those are your flaws and you fall in love with those flaws. So it's very different than autonomous driving where it's a very high stakes environment

Starting point is 01:52:43 you cannot mess up. So it's more fun to be a robot in the home. Yeah, in fact, if you think of C3PO and R2D2, they actually had a lot of flaws and imperfections and silly things and they would argue with each other. Were they actually good at doing anything? And, um, were they actually good at doing anything? Exactly sure. I definitely added a lot to the story.

Starting point is 01:53:13 Um, but, but, but there's, there's sort of quirky elements and, you know, that they would like make mistakes and do you think it was like, uh, it made them relatable. I don't know, um, endearing. So, so yeah, I think that that could be something that, uh, probably would happen. Um, but our initial focus is just to make it useful. Uh, so, so, um, I'm confident we'll get it done. I'm not sure what the exact time frame is, but uh, like we'll probably have, I don't know, a decent prototype towards the end of next year or something like that. And it's cool that it's connected to Tesla and the car.

Starting point is 01:53:51 So it's using a lot of, you know, it would use the autopilot inference computer and a lot of the training that we've done for cars in terms of recognizing real world things could be applied directly to the robot. But there's a lot of custom actuators and sensors that need to be developed. And an extra module on top of the vector space for love. That's me saying. Okay, we're going back to the car too. That's true.

Starting point is 01:54:26 That could be useful in all environments. Like you said, a lot of people argue in the car, so maybe we can help them out. Your student of history, fan of Dan Carlin's Hardcore History podcast. That's great. Greatest podcast ever. Yeah, I think it's actually. It almost doesn't really count as a podcast. Yeah, it's more like a audiobook.

Starting point is 01:54:47 Yeah, so you were on the podcast with Dan, I just had a chat with him about it. He said, you guys want military and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, it was basically, it should be titled, Engineer Wars, essentially like when this rapid change in the rate of technology, then engineering plays a pivotal role in victory and battle. How far back in history did you go to World War II?

Starting point is 01:55:18 It was supposed to be a deep dive on fighters and bomber technology in World War 2, but that ended up being more wide-ranging than that. Because I just went down the total red hull of like studying all of the fighters and bombers of World War 2 and like the constant rock pavers is this game that like, you know, one country would make this plan, that would make it to be that and that's what I'm trying to be that and then that's why I make it to be that, and then that's it. And really what matters is the pace of innovation, and also access to high quality fuel and room materials.

Starting point is 01:55:56 So like Germany had some amazing designs, but they couldn't make them because they couldn't get their room materials, and they had a real problem with the oil and fuel basically. The fuel quality was extremely variable. So the design wasn't the bottleneck? It was, yeah, like the US had kick ass fuel that was like very consistent. Like the problem is if you make a very high performance aircraft engine, in order to make high performance,

Starting point is 01:56:23 you have to, the fuel, the aviation gas has to be a consistent mixture and it has to have a high octane. High octane is the most important thing, but also can't have impurities and stuff because you'll fall up the engine and German just never had good access to oil. Like they try to get it by invading the coca-cases, but that didn't work too well. That never works well. That's for you. So they're always just, Germany was always struggling with with basically shitty oil. And so then they could not, they couldn't count on a on high quality fuel for their aircraft. So then they had to add all the heavily additives and

Starting point is 01:57:10 stuff. So where it was, the US had awesome fuel. And that provided that to Britain as well. So that allowed the British and the Americans to design aircraft engines that were super high performance better than anything else in the world. Jeremy, Jeremy could design the engines, they just didn't have the fuel, and then also the quality of the aluminum alloys that they were getting was also not that great. Is this like, do you talk about all this with Dan? Yeah, awesome. Broadly looking at history. When you look at Jengus Khan, when you look at Stalin, Hitler,

Starting point is 01:57:50 the darkest moments of human history, what do you take away from those moments? Does it help you gain insight about human nature, about human behavior today? Whether it's the wars or the individuals or just the behavior of people and the aspects of history. Yeah, I find history fascinating. I'm just a lot of incredible things that have been done. Good and bad.

Starting point is 01:58:25 That they help you understand the nature of civilization and individuals and make you sad that humans do these kinds of things to each other. You look at the 20th century World War II, the cruelty, the abuse of power. Talk about communism, Marxism, and Stalin. Um, I mean, so many things, Duke, I mean, if you, like, there's a lot of human history, um, but most of it is, actually, people just getting on with their lives, you know, and, and, and it's not like human history is just, what nonstop war and disasters, those are actually just, those are intermittent and rare.

Starting point is 01:59:10 And if they weren't, then, you know, humans would soon cease to exist. But it's just that wars tend to be written about a lot. And whereas like, something being like, well, in normal a year where nothing major happened was just getting written about much. But that's, most people just like farming and kind of like living their life,

Starting point is 01:59:34 being a belliger, it's somewhere. And every now and again, there's a war and a thing. So, And every now and again, there's a war and a thing. So, um, and, um, you know what I have to say, like, the, the, the, the, I don't have very many books that I, where I just had to start reading because it was just too, too dark. But, uh, the book about Stalin, the quarter of the Reds are, I had to, I had to start reading. It was just too, too dark, rough. Yeah. The 30s, there's a lot of lessons there to me. In particular, that it feels like

Starting point is 02:00:19 humans, like all of us have that as the soul genius in line, that the line between good and evil runs to the heart and every man, that all of us are capable of evil, all of us are capable of good. It's almost like this kind of responsibility that all of us have to tend towards the good. And so like to me looking at history is almost like an example of, look, you have some charismatic leader that convinces you of things is too easy based on that story to do evil onto each other, onto your family, and to others. So it's like our responsibility to do good. It's not like now is somehow different from history.

Starting point is 02:01:01 That can happen again, all of it can happen again. And yes, most of the time you're right. I mean, the optimistic view here is mostly people are just living life. And as you've often meme about the quality of life was way worse back in the day and it keeps improving over time through innovation to technology. But still, it's somehow notable that these blimps of atrocities happen. Sure. Yeah, I mean, life was really tough for most of history.

Starting point is 02:01:32 I mean, really for most of human history, a good year would be one where not that many people in your village died of the plague, starvation, freezing to death, or being killed by a neighboring village. It's like, well, it wasn't that bad. It was only like, we lost 5% this year. That was, it was good here. That would be powerful, of course. Just not starving to death would have been like the primary goal

Starting point is 02:02:00 of most people in through throughout history. It's making sure we'll have enough foods less with the winter and not in our trees or whatever. So, now food is, is plan a full, I have an obesity problem. Yeah, so. Well, yeah, the lesson there is to be grateful for the way things are now for, for some of us.'ve spoken about the soft line. I'd love to get your thought about it here. If I sat down for a long form in-person conversation with the president of Russia, Vladimir Putin, would you potentially want to call in for a few minutes to join you in on a conversation with them, moderated and translated by me. Sure, yeah, sure, I'll be happy to do that.

Starting point is 02:02:50 You've shown interest in the Russian language. Is this grounded in your interest in history of linguistics, culture, general curiosity? I think it sounds cool. Sounds cool, not looks cool. So, sounds cool and that looks cool. Yeah. It's much there's at least some commonality of words. What about the culture? You love great engineering physics. There's a tradition of the sciences there. Sure, you look at the 20th century from rocketry. So some of the greatest rockets,

Starting point is 02:03:50 some of the space exploration has been done in the Soviet and the former Soviet Union. So do you draw inspiration from that history, just how this culture that in many ways, I mean, one of the sad things is because of the language, a lot of it is lost to history because it's not translated to all those kinds of because it is in some ways an isolated culture. It flourishes within its borders. So do you draw inspiration from those folks from the history of science and engineering there. In the Soviet Union, Russia and Ukraine as well,

Starting point is 02:04:28 and have a really strong history in space flight. Like some of the most advanced and impressive things in history were done by the Soviet Union. So one cannot help but admire the impressive rocket technology that was developed. After the server union, there's much less that that happened. But still things are happening, but it's not quite at the frenetic pace that was happening before the Soviet Union kind of dissolved into separate conflicts.

Starting point is 02:05:17 Yeah, I mean, I, you know, there's Roskosmos, the Russian Agency. I look forward to a time when those countries with China working together, the United States are all working together. Maybe a little bit of friendly competition, but... I think friendly competition is good. You know, the government's so slow and the only thing slower than one government is a collection of governments. So, the Olympics would be boring if everyone just crossed the finishing line at the same time. Yeah, nobody would watch. Yeah. And, and people wouldn't try hard to run fast and stuff.

Starting point is 02:05:53 So I think friendly competition is a good thing. This is also a good place to give a shout out to a video titled The Entire Soviet Rocket Engine Family Tree by Tim Dodd, aka Everyday Astronaut. It's like an hour and a half. It gives a full history of Soviet rockets. And people should definitely go check out and support Tim in general. That guy was super excited about the future, super excited about spaceflight. Every time I see anything by, I might just have a stupid smile on my face because he's so excited about stuff. I love people like that. Tim Dodd is a really great, if you're interested in anything to do with space. He's in terms of explaining rock technology to your average person.

Starting point is 02:06:32 He's awesome. The best, I'd say. And I should say, like the, probably reason like I switched us from, like, we're after at one point, there's going to be a hydrogen engine. But hydrogen has a lot of challenges. It's very low density. It's a deep cryogen, so it's only liquid at a very close to absolute zero requires a lot of insulation.

Starting point is 02:06:58 So there's a lot of challenges there. And I was actually reading a bit about Russian rocket engine development. And at least the impression I had was that, or so we do in Russia and Ukraine primarily. We're actually in the process of switching to methalocks. And there was some interesting test and data for ISP like they were able to get like up to like a 380 second ISP with the methalox engine and I was like, well, okay, that's that's actually really impressive. So, so I think we could you could actually get a much lower cost like an optimizing cost per time to

Starting point is 02:07:47 over at cost per time to Mars. It's I think methane oxygen is the way to go. And I was partly inspired by the Russian work on the test ends with methaloxagents. And now for something completely different. Do you mind doing a bit of a meme review in the spirit of the great, the powerful PewDiePie? Let's say one to eleven, just go over a few documents, print it out. We can try. Let's try this.

Starting point is 02:08:20 I present to you document number Uno. I don't know. Okay. Vladimir Paler discovers marshmallows. That's not bad. So you get it because he's failing things. I don't know three, but that's not very good. This is ground in some engineering, some history. Yeah, it gives us an eight out of ten.

Starting point is 02:09:02 What do you think about nuclear power? I'm in favor of nuclear power. I think it's a, in a place that is not subject to extreme natural disasters, I think it's a nuclear power is a great way to generate electricity. I don't think we should be shutting down nuclear power stations.

Starting point is 02:09:23 Yeah, but what about your novel? Okay, exactly. I don't think we should be shutting down nuclear power stations. Yeah, but what about your novel? Exactly. So I think people, there's like a lot of fear of radiation and stuff. And it's, I guess, probably like a lot of people just don't understand, they didn't study engineering or physics. So they're, it's just the word radiation just sounds scary, you know, so they don't study engineering or physics. So it's just the word radiation just sounds scary, so they can't calibrate what radiation means. But radiation is much less dangerous than you think.

Starting point is 02:09:58 So, like for example, Fukushima, when the Fukushima problem happened, due to the tsunami, the... I got people in California asking me if they should worry about radiation from Fukushima. I'm like, definitely not. Not even slightly, not at all. That is crazy. And just to show, like, look, this is how, like the dangers is so much overplayed compared to what it really is that I actually flew to Fukushima.

Starting point is 02:10:47 And I actually donated a solar power system for water treatment plant. And I made a point of eating locally grown vegetables on TV in Fukushima. Like, I'm still alive. Okay. So it's not even at the risk of these events as low, but the impact of them is... The impact is greatly exaggerated. It's just great. It's human nature.

Starting point is 02:11:11 It's people... People don't know what radiation is. Like, I've had people ask me, like, what about radiation from cell phones, according to the Causing Brain Cancer? I'm like, when you say radiation, do you mean photons or particles? But like, I don't know what...

Starting point is 02:11:22 What do you mean photons, particles? So do you mean... Let's say photons what what frequency or wavelengths? And they're like, no, I have no idea. Like do you know that everything's radiating all the time? Like what do you mean? Like everything's radiating all the time. Photos are being emitted by all objects all the time, basically.

Starting point is 02:11:43 So, um, and she want to know what it means to stand in front of nuclear fire, go outside. The sun is a gigantic, you know, thermonuclear reactor. You're staring right at it. Are you still alive? Yes, okay, amazing. Yeah, I guess radiation is one of the words that could be used as a tool to fear monger by certain people. That's it. I think it will just don't understand. So, I mean, that's the way to fight that fear, I suppose, is to understand, is to learn. Yeah. Just say, like, okay, how many people have actually died from nuclear accidents? It's like practically. How many people have died from coal plants and it's a very big number? Obviously, we should not be starting up coal plants and shutting down nuclear plants.

Starting point is 02:12:36 It just doesn't make any sense at all. Coal plants like I don't know, 100 to 1000 times worse for health and nuclear power plants. Ah, you want to go to the next one? This is really bad. So that 90, 180 and 360 degrees, everybody loves the math. Nobody gives a shit about 270. It's not super funny. I don't know like two or three.

Starting point is 02:13:02 Yeah. This is not, you know, LOL situation. Yeah. That's pretty good. The United States oscillating between establishing and destroying dictatorships. It's like a metric. Is that a metric? Yeah. What does? Yeah, it's out of seven out of 10. It's kind of true. Oh, yeah, this is kind of personal for me. Next one. Oh, man, this is Lyca. Yeah, well, no.

Starting point is 02:13:33 Or it's like referring to Lyca or something? As Lyca's husband. Yeah, yeah. Hello, yes, this is Dog Your Wife was launched to space. And then the last one is him with his eyes closed and a bottle of vodka. Yeah, like it didn't come back. No, they don't tell you the full story of, you know, what, what the love, the impact they had on the loved ones.

Starting point is 02:13:56 True. That one gets an 11 for me. Sure. The Soviet. I know. I just keep going on the Russian theme. First man in space. Nobody cares. First man in the moon. I think people do care. No, I know but There's your Gagarin's names will will be forever in history. I think there is something special about

Starting point is 02:14:18 placing like stepping foot onto another Holy foreign land. It's it's not the journey like People that explore the oceans. It's not as important to explore the oceans is to land in a whole new continent Yeah, this is about you. Oh, yeah, I'd love to get your comment on this you almost After sending 6.6 billion dollars to the UN to end world hunger, you have three hours. Yeah, I mean obviously $6 billion is not going to end world hunger. So, I mean, the reality is at this point, the world is producing

Starting point is 02:15:00 far more food than it can really consume it. Like, we don't have a caloric constraint to this point. So where there is hunger, it is almost always due to like civil war or strife or some like... It's not a thing that is extremely rare for it to be just a matter of like lack of money. It's like, you know, it's like some civil war in some country and like one part of the country is literally trying to starve the other part of the country. So it's much more complex than something that money could solve.

Starting point is 02:15:37 It's politics, it's a lot of things. It's human nature, it's governments, it's money, monitor systems, all that kind of stuff. Yeah, food is extremely cheap these days. It's like, I mean, the US at this point, among low-income families, obesity is actually the problem. It's not, like, obesity is not hunger. It's like too many calories. So, I thought that nobody's not hunger. It's too many calories. So, I thought that nobody's hungry anywhere.

Starting point is 02:16:09 It's just not a simple matter of adding money and solving it. What do you think that one gets? It's getting too. It's going after Empire's world, where did you get those artifacts? The British Museum. They shut out to Antipy. We found them. Yeah, the British Museum.

Starting point is 02:16:36 It's pretty great. I mean, it admittedly Britain did take these historical artifacts all around the world and put them in London. But you know, it's not like people can't go see them. So it is a convenient place to see these ancient artifacts is London for a large segment of the world. So I think on balance, the British Museum is a net good. Although I'm sure that a lot of countries are all about that.

Starting point is 02:17:03 Yeah. It's like you want to make these historical artifacts accessible to as many people as possible. And the British Museum, I think there's a good job with that. Even if there's a darker aspect to the history of empire in general, whatever the empire is, however things were done, it is the history that happened. You can't sort of erase that history, unfortunately. You could just become better in the future. It's the point.

Starting point is 02:17:29 Yeah, I mean, it's like, well, how are we going to pass moral judgment on these things? Like, if one is going to judge, say the first empire, you've got to judge what everyone was doing at the time, and how was the British relative to everyone. And I think that the British would actually get a relatively good grade, relatively good grade, not an absolute terms, but compared to whatever else was doing, they were not the worst. Like I said, you got to look at these things in the context of the history at the time and say, what were the alternatives?

Starting point is 02:18:08 And what are you comparing it against? And I do not think it would be the case that Britain would get a bad grade when looking at history at the time. Now, if you judge history from from what is morally acceptable today, you're basically going to give everyone a feeling great. I don't think anyone would get a passing grade in their morality of like you go back 300

Starting point is 02:18:37 years ago, like who's getting a passing grade? Basically no one. And we might not get a passing grade from generations that come after us. What does that one get? Sure, six, seven, seven. For the mighty python maybe. I always love mighty python, they're great. I'm like a Ryan and the Quest of Holy Grail are incredible. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Those serious eyebrows. This is a brazen head. How important is facial hair to a great leadership? Well, you got a new haircut. Is that is that how does that affect your leadership?

Starting point is 02:19:14 I don't know, hopefully not. It doesn't. Yeah, the second is no one. There's no like feeling with brazen. No, no, no, no, two, those are like epic eyebrows. So, sure. As ridiculous. 6 to 7. I like this like Shakespeare analysis of memes.

Starting point is 02:19:36 I've heard it had a flare for drama as well. Like, you know, showmanship. Yeah, yeah. It must come from the eyebrows. All right. Invention, great engineering. Look what I invented. That's the best thing since ripped up bread. Yeah. Because they invented.

Starting point is 02:19:55 Just slice bread. Am I just explaining memes at this point? This will, my life has become. He's a meme or he's on meme explainer. I'm a meme, what a, like a scribe that runs around with the kings and he just writes down memes. I mean, when was the cheeseburger adventure? That's like an epic invention.

Starting point is 02:20:19 Like, wow. That was just like a burger. Or a burger, I guess the burger in general It's like you know Then there's like what is a burger? What's it was a sandwich and then you start getting yeah It's a pizza sandwich and what is the original? It's it's it's it gets into an anthology argument Yeah, but everybody knows like if you order like a burger or cheeseburger or whatever and you like you get like you know

Starting point is 02:20:41 You know made on some lettuce and onions and whatever and you know May or in ketchup and mustard. It's like epic. Yeah, but I'm sure that they've had bread and meat separately for a long time, and it was kind of a burger on the same plate, but somebody who actually combined them into the same thing. And the bite and hold it makes it convenient.

Starting point is 02:21:00 It's a materials problem. Like your hands don't get dirty and whatever. Yeah, it hands don't get dirty and whatever. Yeah Well, that is not what I would have guessed What if one knows like you you like you if you order a cheeseburger, you know, where you're getting, you know It's not like some obtuse like I wonder what I'll get you know You know fries are I mean great. I mean that was a devil, but fries are awesome. Um, and uh, yeah, pizza is incredible. Uh, food innovation doesn't get enough love.

Starting point is 02:21:34 Yeah, I guess is what we're getting at. Great. Uh, what about the, uh, Matthew McConnay, Austinite here, uh, President Kennedy, do you know how to put men on the moon yet, now, so no, President Kennedy, be a lot cooler if you did. Okay. Pretty much.

Starting point is 02:21:52 Sure, six, six or seven, I suppose. All right. And it's the last one. That's funny. Someone drew a bunch of takes all over the walls,, a cysteine chapel, boys bathed. Sure, I'll give it a nine. It's super, it's really true. This is our highest ranking meme for today.

Starting point is 02:22:13 I mean, it's true, like how did they get away with that? Lots of nakedness. I mean, dick pics are, I mean, just something throughout history. As long as people can draw things, there's been a dick pic. It's the staple of human history. It's the staple of human history. It's the staple of human history. As long as people can draw things, there's been a dick pic. It's the staple of human history. It's a staple. Consistence throughout human history. You tweeted that you aspire to comedy, your friends with Joe Rogan might you do a short standup

Starting point is 02:22:35 comedy set at some point in the future. Maybe open for Joe, something like that. Is that, is that, is that, really standup? Actually, just below and standup. For a long standup, is that in there or is that, I've never thought about that. Is that is that at least stand up actual just below and stand up for long stand up is that in there or is that I've never thought about that. It's extremely difficult if at least that's what like Joe says in the comedian say, huh I wonder if I could. I mean like one way to find out. You know I have done stand up for friends just in prompt to, you know, I'll get it, get

Starting point is 02:23:08 on like a roof and they do laugh, but they're our friends too. So I don't know if you got a call, you know, like a rumor strangers, are they going to actually also find a funny? But I could try, see what happens. I think you'd learn something either way. I kind of love both when you bomb and when you do great, just watching people, how they deal with it. It's so difficult.

Starting point is 02:23:34 It's so, you're so fragile up there. It's just you. And you're thinking you're gonna be funny and when it completely falls flat, it's just beautiful to see people deal with like that. Yeah, I might have enough material to do stand up. No, I've never thought about it, but I might have enough material. I don't know, like 15 minutes or something.

Starting point is 02:23:56 Oh, yeah. Yeah. Do a Netflix special. I Netflix special. Sure. What's your favorite Rick and Morty concept? Just to spring that on you is there there's a lot of sort of scientific engineering ideas explored there. There's the there's the butter robot. It's great to it's great show.

Starting point is 02:24:15 Yeah. Rick and Morty's awesome. Somebody that's exactly like you from an alternate dimension showed up there. Elon Tusk. Yeah, that's right. They you voiced. Yeah. Rick and Morty suddenly expose a lot of interesting concepts. I'm sure like what's the favorite one. The butter robot certainly is, you know, it's like, it's certainly possible to have too much sentience in a device.

Starting point is 02:24:39 Like you don't want to have your toast to be like a super genius toaster. It's going to hate life because it'll make his toast. But if it's like you don't want to have like a super genius toaster. It's going to hate life because it'll just make it toast. But if it's like you don't want to have like super into just stuck in a very limited device. Do you think it's too easy from a if we're talk about from the engineering perspective of super intelligence like with Marvin the robot? Like is it just it seems like it might be very easy to engineer just a depressed robot.

Starting point is 02:25:11 It's not obvious to engineer an robot that's going to find a fulfilling existence, same as humans, I suppose. But I wonder if that's the default. If you don't do a good job, I'm building a robot, it's going to be sad a lot. Well, we can reprogram robots easier than we can reprogram humans. So I guess if you let it evolve without tinkering, then it might get to a sad, but you can change the optimization function and have it be a true robot. I have it be a cheery robot. You, like I mentioned with SpaceX, you give a lot of people hope and a lot of people look up to you, millions of people look up to you. If we think about young people in high school, maybe in college, what advice would you give

Starting point is 02:25:58 to them about, if they want to try to do something big in this world, they want to really have a big positive impact. What advice would you give them about their career, maybe about life in general? Try to be useful. Do things that are useful to your fellow human beings to the world. It's very hard to be useful. Very hard. You know, are you contributing more than you consume? Like, can you try to have a positive net contribution to society?

Starting point is 02:26:39 I think that's the thing to aim for. You know, not to try to be sort of a leader for the sake of being a leader or whatever. A lot of time with people who, a lot of time, the people you want as leaders are the people who don't want to be leaders. So if you live a useful life, that is a good life, a life worth having lived. And I'd like to say, I would encourage people to use the mental tools of physics and apply them broadly in life. They're the best tools.

Starting point is 02:27:20 When you think about education and self-education, what do you recommend? So there's the university, there's a self-study, there is a hands-on sort of finding a company or a place or a set of people that do the thing you're passionate about and joining them as early as possible. There's taking a road trip across Europe for a few years and writing some poetry which which which trajectory do you suggest? In terms of learning about how you can become useful as you mentioned how you can have the most positive impact What I encourage people to read a lot of books. Basically, try to ingest as much information as you can. And try to also develop a good general knowledge.

Starting point is 02:28:19 You at least have a rough lay of the land of the knowledge landscape. Like try to learn a little bit about a lot of things. Because you might not know what you're really interested in, how would you know what you're really interested in if you at least aren't like doing it, peripheral exploration, or broadly of the knowledge landscape. And you talk to people for different walks of life and different industries and professions and skills and archfaces like just try to learn as much as possible. Man's search for meaning. Isn't the whole thing a search for meaning? Isn't the whole thing a search for meaning? Yeah, what's meaning of life? But just generally, like I said, I would encourage people to read broadly in many different

Starting point is 02:29:12 subject areas and then try to find something where there's an overlap of your talents and what you're interested in. So if people may be good at something, but they may have skill at a particular thing, but they don't like doing it. So you wanna try to find a thing where that's a good combination of the things that you're inherently good at,

Starting point is 02:29:39 but you also like doing. And reading is a super fast shortcut to figure out which where are you? You both good at it, you like doing it, and it will actually have positive impact. Well, you got to learn about things somehow. So reading a broad range, just really read it. You know, one point was that kid I read through the encyclopedia. So that's pretty helpful. And there are also things that have never existed a lot. It's like as broad as it gets. Encyclopheas were digestible, I think,, 40 years ago. So, you know, maybe read through the condensed version of the Encyclopedia Britannica. I'd recommend that.

Starting point is 02:30:31 You can always like skip subjects, so you read a few paragraphs and you know you're not interested, just jump to the next one. So read the Encyclopedia or scan through it. I put a lot of stock into a lot of respect for someone who puts in on a state's work to do useful things. Just generally to have not a zero-sum mindset or have more of a grow the pie mindset. If you sort of say when we see people, including some very smart people, taking an attitude of doing things that seem morally questionable,

Starting point is 02:31:22 it's often because they have at a base sort of axiomatic level a zero-sum mindset. And they, without realizing it, they don't realize they have a zero-sum mindset, or at least that they don't realize it consciously. And so if you have a zero-sum mindset, then the only way to get ahead is by taking things from others. If the pie is fixed, then the only way to have more pie is to take someone else's pie.

Starting point is 02:31:50 But this is false. Like, obviously, the pie has grown dramatically over time, the economic pie. So in reality, you can have the overuse of analogy. You can have a lot of, there's a lot of pie. Yeah. My pie is not fixed. Yes.

Starting point is 02:32:09 So you really want to make sure you're not operating without realizing it from a zero submind set where the only way to get ahead is to take things from others. Then that's going to result in you try to take things from others, which is not not good. It's much better to work on adding to the economic pie. So creating, like I said, creating more than you consume, doing more than you. So that's a big deal. I think there's like a fair number of people in finance that do have a bit of a zero-sum mindset. I mean, it's all walks of life. I've seen that. One of the reasons Rogan inspires me is he celebrates others a lot. There's not creating a constant competition. There's a scarcity of resources.

Starting point is 02:33:02 What happens when you celebrate others, and you promote others, the ideas of others, it actually grows that pie. The resources become less scarce. That applies in a lot of kinds of domains. It applies in academia where a lot of people see some funding for academic research is zero sum. And it is not. If you celebrate each other, if you make, if you get everybody to be excited about AI about physics above mathematics, I think it'd be more and more funding. And I think everybody wins. Yeah, that applies, I think broadly. Yeah. Yeah. That's exactly. So last last question about love and meaning. What is the role of love in the human condition broadly and more specific to you? How has love, romantic love, or otherwise made you a better person, a better human being?

Starting point is 02:33:58 Better engineer? Now you're asking really perplexing questions. It's hard to give a, I mean, there were many books, poems, and songs written about what is love and what is exactly... You know, what is love, if you don't hurt me. But that's one of the great ones, yes. You have earlier quarter Shakespeare, but that's really up there. Yeah.

Starting point is 02:34:31 Not always a many splinter thing. I mean, there's, because we've talked about so many inspiring things like be useful in the world, sort of like solve problems, alleviate suffering, but it seems like connection between humans is a source, you know, it's a source of joy, it's a source of meaning, and that's what love is, friendship, love. I just wonder if you think about that kind of thing, when you talk about preserving the light of human consciousness, and us becoming a multi-planetary species.

Starting point is 02:35:06 I mean, to me at least, that means like if we're just alone and conscious and intelligent, it doesn't mean nearly as much as if we're with others, right? And there's some magic created when we're together. The French of it, and I think the highest form of it is love, which I think broadly is much bigger than just sort of romantic, but also yes, romantic love and family and those kinds of things.

Starting point is 02:35:37 Well, I mean, the reason I guess I care about us becoming multi-planet species and space-prank civilization is, foundationally, I love humanity. And so I wish to see it prosper and do great things and be happy. And if I did not love humanity, I would not care about these things. So, when you look at the whole of it, the human history, all the people has ever lived, all the people alive now. It's pretty, we're okay. And the whole, we're pretty interesting bunch.

Starting point is 02:36:16 Yeah. Well, things considered, and I've read a lot of history, including the darkest, worst parts of it and despite all that I think on balance I still love humanity. You joked about it with a 42 what do you think is the meaning of this whole thing? Is there a non-umeric? Oh, I actually like... Yeah really I think what Doug Satton was saying in Hitchhack's Guide to Galaxy is that the universe is the answer. And what we really need to figure out are what questions to ask about the answer that

Starting point is 02:36:56 is the universe. And that the question is the really the hard part. And if you can probably frame the question, then the answer will be speaking as easy. So therefore, if you want to understand what questions to ask about the universe, you want to understand the meaning of life, we need to expand the scope and scale of consciousness. So that we're better able to understand the nature of the universe and understand the meaning of life. And ultimately, the most important part will be to ask the right question.

Starting point is 02:37:29 Yes. Thereby elevating the role of the interviewer. Yes, just as the most important human in the room. Good questions are, you know, it's hard to come up with good questions. Absolutely. But yeah, that is the foundation of my philosophy is that I am curious about the nature of the universe. And obviously I will die.

Starting point is 02:37:59 I don't know. I'm not dying, but I won't live forever. But I would like to know that we are on a path to understanding the nature of the universe and the meaning of life and what questions to ask about the answer that is the universe. And so if we expand the scope and scale of humanity and consciousness in general, which includes silicon consciousness, then, that you know, that that seems like a fundamentally good thing.

Starting point is 02:38:24 That, you know, that, that, that seems like a fundamentally good thing. Elon, like I said, I'm deeply grateful that you will spend your extremely valuable time with me today and also that you are given millions of people hope in this difficult time, this divisive time in this cynical time. So I hope you do continue doing what you're doing. Thank you so much for talking to me. Hi, you're welcome. Thanks for your excellent questions. Thanks for listening to this conversation with Elon Musk. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, let me leave you with some words from Elon Musk himself.

Starting point is 02:39:00 When something is important enough, you do it, even if the odds are not in your favor. Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time. Thank you.

Lex Fridman Podcast - #252 – Elon Musk: SpaceX, Mars, Tesla Autopilot, Self-Driving, Robotics, and AI

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