The Babylon Bee Interview
Questions on ElonsFAQ asked in this interview (4)
Transcript
0:38Babylon Bee HostSo these are the guys that run the show. This is Kyle, our editor in chief. This is creative director, Ethan Nicole.
0:45Elon MuskOkay, so, I mean, well,
0:50Seth DillonI guess
0:50Elon Muskbefore we get started, like, maybe you guys could tell me, like, what's the, you know, how did the V get started? And. And, yeah, what's your deal? And why are you in California?
1:04Babylon Bee HostThat's way easier. Actually.
1:06Seth DillonI'm much better at being interviewed, so. No problem. Yeah, the Bee was just this little Christian humor site that we launched in 2016. And it was just like we spent 50 bucks on the domain name, started writing jokes, throwing them out there, and it started to go big in conservative circles a couple years ago.
1:22Seth DillonAnd that's just kind of where we got to where we are. Seth is our CEO. He bought the site a few years ago from the original founder. And.
1:28Elon MuskYeah, he was original.
1:30Seth DillonHis name is Adam Ford.
1:31Elon MuskHe's in love with the company anymore.
1:33Seth DillonHe owns a piece of it.
1:34Babylon Bee HostHe does.
1:34Seth DillonNot the Bee. Now, if you've seen that, you know the. Yeah.
1:37Elon MuskWhich is unaffiliated.
1:38Seth DillonNo, they're affiliated. They're kind of affiliated. Yeah.
1:42Elon MuskYou retweet them? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay.
1:44Seth DillonSo they do like real news, but crazy real news.
1:47Babylon Bee HostIt's like the backup plan. It's like when satire is impossible because the world's too absurd, then we just report on the absurdity over on not the Beast. So, you know, plan B.
1:55Babylon Bee HostYeah, yeah.
1:56Elon MuskReality is we're weirder than fiction. Yeah, exactly. Often is. So how many people at the Bee now?
2:02Seth DillonYeah, we've got probably a dozen full timers now. It's grown pretty fast. A year ago it was three of us.
2:09Babylon Bee HostWe have like 25 people involved. It's not all full time staff, so you'd be surprised. Like with satire, you don't have to have a writing staff, like filling a room, churning out articles all day long.
2:19Babylon Bee HostYou can only handle so much satire every day. You don't need to publish an article every three minutes like Fox News or Daily Wire or something like that. So we have a lot of part time.
2:27Babylon Bee HostOne of our writers here, Frank Fleming, is one of our writers years and he's got a full time job. He just writes for us on the side.
2:32Seth DillonOkay.
2:33Babylon Bee HostWe'd love to have him full time.
2:34Elon MuskI'm the local guy.
2:35Babylon Bee HostYeah, he lives in Austin.
2:36Elon MuskOh, you live in Austin.
2:37Babylon Bee HostOkay. Yeah. And I'm a Florida guy. I have my head. The headquarters are technically in south Florida. I'm in southeast Florida.
2:44Seth DillonYeah.
2:44Babylon Bee HostFlorida. Man, I'd love to get these guys to Florida. But it's hard to get people out of California. It really is.
2:51Seth DillonYeah.
2:52Babylon Bee HostMore challenging than you think.
2:53Elon MuskDespite like, California is the state of California doing everything it can to encourage people to leave.
2:58Seth DillonYes. Yeah.
3:00Elon MuskI think you had one article about how Gavin Newsom is your whole salesman of the year.
3:04Seth DillonYeah. Yeah.
3:06Elon MuskActually true. Actually true.
3:13Babylon Bee HostSo you don't miss it then?
3:15Elon MuskNo, I mean, there's certainly many aspects of California that I do like. Most of my friends are still in California. Some of my best friends are California. So, yeah, I do miss many aspects of California, especially my friends.
3:26Elon MuskAnd it's beautiful and lots of cool things, but increasingly difficult to get things done. And California used to be the land of opportunity, and now it is the. Has become.
3:37Elon MuskAnd it's becoming more so the land of over regulation, over litigation, over taxation. Poop on the sidewalk and scorn.
3:53Elon MuskIt's not like, thanks for the Texas. It's like, thanks for the text and hacksaw. Kick you in the teeth.
4:05Seth DillonSucks.
4:06Elon MuskExactly. Exactly. You get a thank you note.
4:08Seth DillonYeah.
4:10Babylon Bee HostOkay. Let me flip the question though. So that's kind of the story. The Be the Beast started out as this little blog. It took off. It's kind of blown up into something.
4:16Babylon Bee HostLike now we have a following, including you. Like, how do we get on your radar? People sharing our articles. And you just saw them coming across your feed?
4:24Elon MuskYeah. I'm not sure. I saw you on Twitter at one point. I thought some of the articles were quite funny.
4:31Babylon Bee HostI wrote those.
4:32Elon MuskOkay.
4:35Seth DillonYeah.
4:35Elon MuskI mean, I used to be a much bigger fan of the Onion, but then the Onion just seems to have rotten. Really Politically. Politically correct, you know, it's sort of gone a bit, but in the SNL direction.
4:48Elon MuskSomewhat leftist, as you know, it's. It's basically. It will. It will not really make fun of anything on the left, but. And it used to be much more even handed than the Onion and.
4:58Elon MuskAnd then they just. They just got the woke mind virus. Yeah. So to the point where the annual just was. It used to be very funny and then it was not that funny.
5:10Elon MuskSnl. I used to be a huge fan of snl, but I still think they have some occasional good stuff, but it's just become. I think you've written some articles about this.
5:23Elon MuskMany, if not most of the SNL episodes are kind of a moral lecture on why we're bad human beings instead of comedy. And again, won't make fun of anything on the left, really.
5:37Elon MuskLike, you know, they'll beat up on Ted Cruz 17,000 times. You're like, okay, we get it.
5:45Babylon Bee HostAnd often, because he's made fun of someone on the left, he'll make fun of someone on the left, and then they jump on him for that. It's like a defensive thing.
5:51Elon MuskYeah, yeah, exactly. So it's just. There are just a lot of no fly zones with a lot of comedy. And then you realize it's like, wait a second. Is the comedy getting at an essential truth, or is there a propaganda element, or is it trying to push you in a particular direction or getting to an essential truth that is humorous?
6:19Elon MuskAnd when it stops trying to get to an essential truth that is humorous, then it's just not that funny. Right.
6:27Babylon Bee HostSee, that's exactly the criticism we get from the left. The criticism from the left is that that's what we're doing with our humor is that we're trying to push a narrative, neglecting the truth.
6:35Seth DillonWell, it's literally what the New York Times says that we are far right. Misinformation disguised as satire.
6:41Babylon Bee HostRight, right.
6:42Seth DillonSo there's a. It's almost where you're standing. Yeah, it's almost based on where you're standing. That how you see.
6:47Babylon Bee HostIt's based on where you're standing.
6:48Seth DillonYeah.
6:49Elon MuskI mean, I'd say the B is probably. It's moderately right, but it's not certainly not far right. My impression is not that. I would say that the B is not probably.
6:59Elon MuskIt wouldn't be accurate to say the B is fully centrist, but it is certainly not far right. If 1 is fully left and 10 is fully right, the B seems to be about 6.6.5 towards right.
7:14Elon MuskThat ish.
7:15Seth DillonBut Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Babylon, Bee Hitler, on that scale.
7:23Elon MuskYeah, it's not. But, you know, it's a. I mean, the B is, I think, less right than, say, the onion is left, for example, you know, so the onion, I think, would be more left than the B is.
7:37Elon MuskRightist. Whatever.
7:40Seth DillonRightist.
7:41Babylon Bee HostWe'll have to put that on our Wikipedia page.
7:44Elon MuskRightist propaganda.
7:45Seth DillonYou know, you talk about the Wilk mind virus, and I was wondering if you could decipher this tweet of yours for me, because I'm not a programmer. You wrote Traceroute wokemindvirus.
7:57Seth DillonWhat does that mean?
7:59Elon MuskOkay, so traceroute is a networking command to. So if you want to figure out a path to a particular server or domain, you'd say traceroute, or in Windows, tracert.
8:16Elon MuskThat would show you the path to a particular source server, either an IP address or domain name, and it would show you basically all the Hops that goes through and the latency between each hop.
8:34Seth DillonI know some of those words.
8:36Elon MuskYeah. So traceroute would be like, where did it come from? Where did the virus come from? What is its origin?
8:46Seth DillonSo did this work? Did this command work?
8:48Elon MuskDid you find the comments? Read the comments and see. It is a prevalent mind virus and arguably one of the biggest threats to monetization.
9:00Babylon Bee HostAlso not having enough kids.
9:02Seth DillonRight? Yeah.
9:04Elon MuskI think most people, if you just simply look at the birth rate statistics, you can tell what the future is going to be like because you can see how many children were born last year.
9:15Elon MuskAnd then you could say, is the birth rate trending down or up? And it's been trending down basically almost everywhere. If you look at the birth rate last year, you know how many adults there will be in 20 years because that's how many babies were born.
9:30Elon MuskThe trend is like, you don't have to be some master statistician or something like that. You could just look at case born last year trending too well below replacement rate.
9:42Elon MuskAnd a lot of countries have been well below replacement rate for a long time.
9:45Babylon Bee HostWell, the concern is that if you have kids and they'll contribute to climate change and then they'll kill the Earth.
9:49Seth DillonRight.
9:50Babylon Bee HostThat's the leftist concern, is that we're overpopulating the Earth and that we're going to kill it. Are you trying to overpopulate the Earth so that we can go to Mars and take over Mars?
9:59Elon MuskThe Earth is far from overpopulated.
10:00Babylon Bee HostIs this a deliberate strategy?
10:02Elon MuskThe Earth is far from overpopulated. Far, far from overpopulated.
10:09Babylon Bee HostSo
10:12Elon Muskthe thing that's necessary to minimize the chemical change to the atmosphere and oceans is to move to sustainable energy generation and consumption. So the three elements of a sustainable energy future are sustainably energy generation, primarily through solar, wind, some geothermal, hydro and nuclear.
10:35Elon MuskAlthough they're shutting down all the nuclear power stations. So you sort of cross that one with a list which they shouldn't be doing. They should just keep, they should keep moving.
10:43Elon MuskUnless a nuclear power plant is in a region of major natural disasters, instability or something. Yeah, you don't want to be like, you know, subject to massive natural disasters because obviously that could be a problem.
10:55Elon MuskBut if you're, you know, like say Germany or France or whatever, they don't have those. So the nuclear power is very safe. But anyway, the long term, the heavy lifting on energy generation will be solar followed by wind.
11:14Elon MuskAnd you really don't need a very large land area to generate enough power to power for Example, the United States. So it's on the order of roughly a little over 100 miles by 100 miles section of land with solar panels with power the entire United States.
11:30Elon MuskSo like a little corner of Utah or Texas, it can power the whole country. So anyway, so it's really not that hard. The solar incidence is a gigawatt per square kilometer for most nuclear plants.
11:45Babylon Bee HostI'm just going to do some calculations.
11:47Elon MuskMost nuclear power plants?
11:49Babylon Bee HostYeah, that's right.
11:51Elon MuskIt's a kilowatt per square per square meter. And there's a million square, you know, million square meters in a square kilometer.
11:59Babylon Bee HostSo
12:01Elon Muskpretty simple math. So then you get like maybe 20% efficiency on that. So call it like net power generation of 200 megawatts per square kilometer. If you take most nuclear power plants, there's usually a pretty clear area around a nuclear power plant, because people don't usually want to live right next to a nuclear power plant.
12:19Elon MuskSo the area of most nuclear power plants that is uninhabited, if covered in solar panels, would generate more power than the nuclear power plant. The second element that's needed are batteries to store solar and wind, because the sun doesn't shine all the time and the wind doesn't blow all the time.
12:40Elon MuskSo the intermittency of solar and wind requires battery storage for continuous power. So that's the second part of the sort of second. The second pillar of sustainable energy and the third is sustainable transport.
12:55Elon MuskSo that means electric cars, boats, planes. And then ironically, the one thing that you can't really make electric is rockets, and I was involved in that. But although you can over time use solar power to generate fuel by pulling CO2 out of the atmosphere, combining it with H2O, creating CH4, which is methane, and O2, oxygen.
13:18Elon MuskAnd rockets are mostly oxygen by mass. So over time you can make everything, basically solar power.
13:24Babylon Bee HostYou're working on some of those problems, but the problem of wokeness specifically you mentioned, that's like a mind virus and it's destructive. And why do you think wokeness is so destructive?
13:33Elon MuskI'm interested in your opinions too. But you know, like, I mean, generally I think we should be aiming for like a positive society and, you know, that it should be okay to, you know, be humorous.
13:54Elon MuskLike, you know, like we should, like, like Wokeness basically wants to make comedy illegal, which is not cool. We've experienced a little bit of that. I mean, Chappelle, like, what flower bed?
14:06Elon MuskI mean, try to shut down Chappelle. Come on, man, that's crazy. So, yeah, so do we want a humorless society that is simply rife with condemnation and hate, basically.
14:24Babylon Bee HostAnd no forgiveness. Right?
14:26Seth DillonYeah.
14:28Elon MuskAt its heart, wokeness is divisive, exclusionary and hateful. It basically gives mean people a reason. It gives them a shield to be. To be mean and cruel, armored in false virtue.
14:52Elon MuskWhat do you think?
14:52Babylon Bee HostI'd agree with that.
14:54Seth DillonYeah. I mean, we've obviously seen that from the left, you know, just ourselves, you know, the left is almost this religion now where they're so serious and they believe what they believe with such intensity that for us to make fun of them, you know, for them it's like you're making fun of God or salvation, you know, so they're almost the new religious right in our view.
15:13Elon MuskYeah, he agreed with me.
15:19Seth DillonWell, you were pretty mean to Senator Warren though, on Twitter recently. You slammed her man. Please don't call the manager on me, Senator Karen.
15:29Elon MuskShe struck first, obviously. She called me a freeloader and a grifter who doesn't pay taxes basically. And I'm literally paying the most tax that any individual in history has ever paid this year, ever.
15:46Elon MuskAnd she doesn't pay taxes basically at all. And her salary is paid for by the taxpayer like me.
15:55Babylon Bee HostCould you even use. Could you use Turbo's irony? Would that even work?
15:59Elon MuskIf you could die by irony, she would be dead. Irony could kill.
16:08Babylon Bee HostWhat would happen if you walked into an H and R block to file your taxes? Like, could they handle your case?
16:14Elon MuskMy taxes are actually not that complicated. I do not have any offshore accounts. I don't have any tax shelters. I have a. I have basically Tesla and SpaceX stock.
16:32Elon MuskAnd Tesla is publicly traded, so all information is public. And SpaceX is, you know, a C corp that is audited has outside orders, so these with that outside investors.
16:47Elon MuskSo everything is extremely transparent. There are no elaborate sort of tax avoidance schemes or anything like that. HR Block could easily do my taxes. I don't need HR Block.
17:03Elon MuskI could do it. I'll probably take me a few hours to do my taxes. It's very basic.
17:08Babylon Bee HostDid you sell that stock in Tesla because of the Twitter poll?
17:12Elon MuskIn part.
17:13Babylon Bee HostHad you made up your mind that you were already going to do that before the Twitter poll?
17:19Elon MuskI have some Tesla options that are expiring next year, so I needed to exercise those options no matter what. And I was like, okay, I'll move forward and exercise those options.
17:35Elon MuskSo that's something would be part of it, no matter what. But then over and above that, I sold incremental stock to try to get up to the 10% level.
17:44Elon MuskSo just the option to exercise alone would not get to 10%. So I sold stock that should roughly make my total Tesla share sale.
17:54Babylon Bee HostRoughly 10% is the most annoying thing in the world. People asking you questions like this about your personal finances. No one ever asked me what stock I'm selling or why I made so much money last year.
18:06Babylon Bee HostI mean, I'm the third richest man on my street, which is, which is pretty good. Pretty good.
18:12Elon MuskI mean, I'm not sure it's all that productive or interesting. You know, essentially all of my net worth is just in SpaceX and Tesla stock. These two companies that I helped create and have run for now almost 20 years, have done a lot of useful things.
18:33Elon MuskSpaceX launches more payload to orbit than the rest of the world combined and has a global Internet system called Starlink and is the primary provider, well, the only US provider of astronaut transport to the space station.
18:52Babylon Bee HostWe publish six to eight satire articles a day.
18:57Seth DillonSome of them are funny. I mean, pretty good.
19:00Elon MuskSo SpaceX, yeah, transports US and as well as non US astronauts to the space station that was previously the US was dependent on Russia, who's doing a good job but charging kind of crazy money per seat.
19:16Elon MuskSo as with SpaceX, the cost per astronaut dropped dramatically and, and the money went to jobs in the US so that's why people think SpaceX is valuable. Tesla.
19:35Babylon Bee HostI mean, the annoyance though of people holding it against you, that you've had success holding it against you, that you have wealth, viewing billionaires as evil and you're not doing enough to give back, like the Elizabeth Warren thing, that you haven't paid your fair share.
19:50Babylon Bee HostI mean, that's, that's got to be kind of aggravating.
19:54Elon MuskYeah, I think it's just important to understand what is this wealth. It's not like I've got some massive cash balance. My cash balances are very, very low. And at least until I sold stock, which is really the first time I've actually sold stock in any meaningful way was this quarter.
20:18Elon MuskI simply had loans against my stock. So if Tesla and SpaceX went bankrupt, I would go bankrupt too, immediately. So
20:28Babylon Bee Hostit's not realized is what you're saying.
20:29Elon MuskYeah, it's like I built these two companies and it was extremely difficult to build them. Like massively painful and difficult. Rewarding too, but also, but massively painful and difficult.
20:50Elon MuskAnd I didn't sell the stock in the companies. You know, my sort of impression was that, you know, you shouldn't take money off the table or you shouldn't take stock off the table and de risk things that a captain should go down, you know, with their ship.
21:11Elon MuskSo it's like, okay, like, you know, I don't want to take money off the table. And then, then if the companies fail, then I will be sort of enriched while investors suffer.
21:24Elon MuskAnd that did not seem right. So anyway, so that's the reason I didn't sell is I could easily have diversified and protected myself financially if SpaceX or Tesla went bankrupt, but I did not.
21:37Elon MuskAnd SpaceX and Tesla came very close to bankruptcy many times. Even when bankruptcy was literally weeks away, I did not sell stock. And then the companies became valuable. Tesla's value is basically.
21:50Elon MuskTesla's value is not up to me, it's up to investors. And they decided it was worth. Tesla was worth a trillion dollars in the public market and I own 20% of the company.
22:02Babylon Bee HostSo you're not apologizing right now? You're not going to look into the camera and say I'm so sorry, look
22:05Seth Dillonin the camera right now.
22:08Elon MuskI would try explain, like, I don't think people necessarily understand.
22:11Babylon Bee HostThey don't.
22:11Elon MuskYeah, yeah. That this is not, you know, some function of sort of hoarding or something. It's simply that, you know, I own 20% of the company that became very valuable as decided by external investors.
22:26Elon MuskAnd so 20% of a trillion dollar valuation is $200 billion. And I've said at various times that I think the stock price is too high, but investors just ignored that.
22:40Elon MuskOkay. I literally said it's too high and they just kept making the price higher.
22:46Babylon Bee HostSo tell them our value is too high.
22:51Elon MuskSo anyway, so just that's. But like I said, this is not like my so called wealth. It's not some deep mystery. It's simply what is my ownership percentage of SpaceX and Tesla.
23:01Elon MuskMultiply that by the valuation, that's my net worth. That's super simple. And my taxes are super simple. And I have no, like I said, no offshore accounts, no sort of clever tax evasion or anything like that.
23:12Elon MuskI don't draw a salary or any cash salary or bonus from the companies at all. So again, I thought that was like morally good to not do that. And so there were like, there's one year, I think 2018 where I didn't pay any tax, but that's because I didn't have any income.
23:32Elon MuskBut I did have a little bit of income, but I had actually overpaid taxes I think in 2017. So I paid too much tax. And so I got like, I basically netted that out in 2018 because I paid too much tax in 2017.
23:46Elon MuskAccidentally. Unless you sell stock, there are no realized gains. So then I was like, well, should I sell? What am I supposed to do? Send shares to the government somehow?
23:58Elon MuskI don't know if you can even do that. So then I was like, well, like, unless I sell shares, there's not. There's no. There's no actual mechanism to pay tax.
24:09Elon MuskSo then I was like, well, should I sell 10%, you know, to. In order to pay tax? And sort of asked Twitter, and they're like, on balance, they said yes.
24:22Elon MuskAnd so I sold enough stock to get to around 10%, plus the option to exercise stuff. And I try to be extremely literal so you don't generally need to read between lines.
24:36Elon MuskYou can just read the lines. So that's it.
24:40Babylon Bee HostAs the fattest guy here, I want to know what's. When are you going to make the candy company? You said on Twitter you're making the candy company, and you're the closest thing to Willy Wonka that this you could be.
24:53Seth DillonWilly Walker.
24:54Babylon Bee HostI didn't say. Did he say that?
24:55Seth DillonHe said, I'm starting a candy company.
24:57Elon MuskIt's going to be Warren Buffett.
25:01Seth DillonBut you did say, I am super, super serious.
25:05Elon MuskI think if you put two supers before serious, that's like, you're probably not serious. Just apply for satire writers out there.
25:15Babylon Bee HostI thought that locked it in, definitely,
25:18Seth Dillonbecause explaining jokes to. To it.
25:19Elon MuskYeah, yeah. Let me tell you how joke works. No, I was just, obviously, I was just, like, making fun of Warren Buffett who's like, really? He's got this, like, candy company and stuff, so.
25:31Elon MuskAnd that was my one question. That's what you got. I did actually experiment with trying to find some compelling candy that would be, like, I don't know, maybe much better than other candy.
25:48Elon MuskWe tried various candy options, but I didn't find any. I couldn't figure out a candy that was, like, just way better than other candy. Like, a little bit better, but not a lot better.
26:03Elon MuskAnd so it's like, unless it's, like, really a great product, then.
26:06Babylon Bee HostYou looked into this.
26:08Elon MuskYeah, yeah, yeah. We tried a whole bunch of different candies, and it was like, there's not anything like, that's obviously just way better. So I don't want to just have, like, a pretty good candy if there's, like, a great candy.
26:27Elon MuskYeah, some aces, some candy that's aces, but we don't need another sort of like, pretty good candy.
26:33Seth DillonYeah, there's plenty of those out there.
26:35Babylon Bee HostWhat does that look like when you suddenly get an idea like, we should make candy, you, like, you just call somebody. Like, how does. What. What are the steps that suddenly take
26:43Elon Muskplace when you're like.
26:44Babylon Bee HostBecause you do so many things. I'm just fascinated by the. What that process looks like rockets. You got a guy you call Jim. I want to make candy. Make it happen.
26:56Elon MuskI think I did ask for, you know, people on Twitter to so many candy that they thought was good. And I was like, whoa, what if some of this candy is like, you know, it's poisonous or something?
27:13Elon MuskBut whatever. Like, you know, candy from strangers on the Internet, it could go wrong. It's not 100% safe. But I did try a whole bunch of candy sent from strangers.
27:27Babylon Bee HostWhat's your favorite candy?
27:29Elon MuskWell, there was like a. A pretty good, like, peanut. Like some pretty good peanut brittle ones or like that peanut brittle with a bunch of other stuff in it and some pretty good chocolates.
27:38Elon MuskBut. But nothing that was like, blew me away, so. And then there were people at SpaceX and Tesla that sent me some candy options, but nothing that was. It's not like I care about starting companies.
27:48Elon MuskLike, there's, like, there are. If there's a very compelling product or service, then that's the thing that is important, not the company. You know, a company is just an assemblage of people to create a compelling product or service.
28:03Elon MuskAnd if a company does not provide great products and services, it should not exist. There's no point in a company for the sake of being a company. That's pointless.
28:12Elon MuskCompanies should only exist to provide great products and services. A company is just literally a group of people.
28:20Babylon Bee HostSo do we have to close or
28:22Elon Muskcan we stay open? I think there's a lot of companies out there that probably should just be disbanded because they don't make compelling products and services. They're spoilers. And those people.
28:32Elon MuskBetter that those people do something else.
28:35Babylon Bee HostI think on that topic, I mean, the question that I just like, really. I feel so unqualified to be interviewing you right now. I think we all do. Why are we here?
28:44Babylon Bee HostLike, what?
28:46Elon MuskYou asked for it. I'm not the one who asked for the podcast. You guys did. Just to be clear, I'm not pushing the podcast on you. You guys came here.
28:59Elon MuskWe just.
28:59Babylon Bee HostWe were like, I will stop by, you know, Texas.
29:03Seth DillonYeah.
29:03Elon MuskJust to be clear, who was asking who.
29:07Seth DillonI'm not.
29:07Elon MuskI'm not like, you know, didn't exactly hold a gun to your head for this podcast.
29:13Seth DillonYou could be on CNN right now.
29:15Babylon Bee HostYeah.
29:15Seth DillonYou know, John Lemming. A real news organization.
29:21Babylon Bee HostYeah, I'm just throwing it out there.
29:23Seth DillonI don't know.
29:24Elon MuskNo, unfortunately, I just, you know, haven't. You know, I guess, you know, what was it you said the requirement for being a CNN job at CNN is?
29:36Seth DillonAre you a pervert?
29:38Elon MuskI'm not perverted enough, I guess.
29:40Seth DillonI don't know.
29:41Babylon Bee HostNot a big pedophile fan.
29:43Seth DillonYou know, Babylon be headlines better than I do,
29:48Babylon Bee HostI think. You know, a lot of us fantasize about if we had lots and lots and lots of money, what we do. And you've done a lot of the things that, like, a lot of us fantasize about.
29:57Babylon Bee HostBuild cool robots, gonna go to Mars, we're gonna fix traffic. But most of us also think we'd become Batman. Have you ever thought about, like, what would that really look like to become?
30:08Babylon Bee HostOr would you go Batman or Iron man route?
30:10Elon MuskWhat kind of bat, A fruit bat or an insect bat?
30:13Babylon Bee HostI like the dragon bat. Big scaring.
30:17Seth DillonYeah.
30:17Elon MuskBecause most bats are either fruit or
30:19Babylon Bee Hostthey carry lighter bugs.
30:21Elon MuskYeah, yeah. They eat fruit. Bugs like fruit Batman, insect, Batman, fruit, Batman.
30:29Seth DillonI need to read that spin off comic.
30:34Elon MuskIt's a strange choice of creature to emulate, you know? Yeah, that is true.
30:38Babylon Bee HostYou pick a different animal. Like maybe monkeys that play pong with their brains.
30:44Seth DillonMan,
30:48Babylon Bee HostMonkey man.
30:49Elon MuskMonkey man, yeah, exactly. Just very agile.
30:52Babylon Bee HostThey're the smartest animal. Right.
30:53Elon MuskIt can just swing. Monkey man. Batman is more. Is more like monkey man, really. You know, because he's swinging around and very agile, climbing up things and.
31:05Babylon Bee HostYeah, throwing a Batarang is more like throwing.
31:07Elon MuskLike, why can't he fly if he's Batman? That's gonna fly.
31:11Babylon Bee HostYeah, he glides very effectively.
31:14Elon MuskYeah, but that's like a. It's more like flying. Squirrel man. Squirrel man. It's less intimidating, I guess.
31:23Seth DillonYeah.
31:23Elon MuskOh, no. Squirrel man. He's got to get us. Not squirrel man again.
31:31Babylon Bee HostHave you ever thought of making the grappling hook? He has that thing. Sweet.
31:34Elon MuskWe need those.
31:35Seth DillonHe'd make. Probably make.
31:36Elon MuskYeah, yeah, sure. You can make a grappling out. I mean, the thing is like. Like when you. It's like they sort of skip the parts where, like, Batman's always on the top of a building.
31:47Elon MuskBut, like, once you get to the ground floor, how do you get back to the top of the building? Yeah, it's like you're kind of hopping and popping, you know?
31:52Seth DillonYeah.
31:53Elon MuskYou know, how do you get the top of a skyscraper even if you got a grappling hook? I mean, how big Is your grappling hook, like, 50 stories? Like, where you should.
32:02Elon MuskHow big is that cable? You know, it's not really feasible. So you just gotta, like, run up the stairs or take the elevator. How do you get back up to the top of the skyscraper In Gotham City, it's always, like, toughest in tall buildings.
32:17Babylon Bee HostSo, Iron man, then you'd be Iron Man. You go, iron Man.
32:19Elon MuskYeah, Iron Man.
32:20Babylon Bee HostWell, because you're good at calculating the cost of things and stuff like that. So would it be cheaper to become Batman or Iron man or just pay every criminal that you encounter a salary to just stop being a criminal?
32:29Seth DillonI think they're trying to.
32:30Elon MuskYou'd have to be. Irony man.
32:32Seth DillonIrony man.
32:33Elon MuskI just defeat villains using the power of irony. It's like, oh, too much irony. I can't stand it. Please, no, stop the irony. I can't handle it anymore. I give up.
32:43Elon MuskI give up. Too much irony. That'd be rough. That would be awesome.
32:49Seth DillonThat'd be totally awesome. Yeah, that would be.
32:52Elon MuskThat'd make me use irony again.
32:56Seth DillonCheaper, too.
32:58Babylon Bee HostWhat are your thoughts on the metaverse, which takes technology to the next level and puts us in a virtual world? Do you see that as being dangerous, Hopeful for humanity?
33:09Babylon Bee HostWhat's your view on that?
33:11Elon MuskMaybe we're in the metaverse right now. It's just metaverses all the way down. I don't know if I necessarily buy into this metaverse stuff, although people talk to me a lot about it.
33:24Elon MuskWeb three, sure. You can put a TV on your nose. Not sure that makes you in the metaverse. It's like, weird. When I grew up, it was like, don't sit too close to tv.
33:39Elon MuskIt's going to ruin your eyesight. And now I got TV is literally right here. I'm like, what? Is that good for you? I mean, have you tried these games?
33:52Babylon Bee HostThe Oculus stuff?
33:54Elon MuskYeah, they're okay, you know, but like, if it gives you motion sickness, if you try to walk around, like, you can do a video game on your sort of computer console or whatever, and you can be in, like a first person game and move rapidly and not get set.
34:11Elon MuskMotion sickness. But if you try to do that in with VR goggles, you get motion sickness. It's like, weird. So they have to, like, teleport around with. It's okay.
34:20Elon MuskSo it doesn't feel like that's the answer necessarily.
34:25Babylon Bee HostDo you have a neural link into the brain so they don't have to have the glasses?
34:29Elon MuskThere you go. Yeah, a neural link. Long term, sophisticated neural link. Could put you fully, fully in a virtual reality thing.
34:40Babylon Bee HostI guess what I'm getting at is.
34:41Elon MuskYeah, exactly what could go wrong?
34:42Babylon Bee HostLike the negative implications, the kind of dystopian implications that some are drawing out. Like, I think it was. I think Jack Dorsey was really critical of the whole metaverse idea.
34:53Babylon Bee HostYou see problems with people living in a virtual world and leaving the physical world for that.
34:59Elon MuskI don't see someone strapping a friggin screen to their face all day and not wanting to ever leave. There seems no way. Does it feel like that to you?
35:11Elon MuskIt doesn't seem like that to me. It gets uncomfortable to have this thing strapped to your head the whole time.
35:16Babylon Bee HostIt definitely needs to be lighter.
35:17Elon MuskYeah, if it was super light, it'd still be like, I don't know, it's not like you want to be there all day. So I think we're far from disappearing into the metaverse.
35:30Elon MuskThis sounds just kind of buzzwordy and you know, I don't know if like, like, hey, is this, you know, have I just gotten too old and like, am I like one of those people who was like dismissing the Internet, whatever, 95 as being like some fad or something that's never going to amount to anything?
35:49Elon MuskAlthough I didn't. I was like saying like 95 was literally, the Internet is going to be transform humanity and it's going to be like, you know, prior information basically just went by osmosis.
35:59Elon MuskLike unless a person called another person or carried a letter physically to another person. Like how did you get information around? The vast majority of information was literally person to person.
36:09Elon MuskThen they had like the fax machine and stuff. But it's just like the way the
36:13Babylon Bee Hostmetaverse is being sold right now is so underwhelming. It's like you're going to be in, it's like zoom meetings, but there's an avatar for the person next to you.
36:20Babylon Bee HostYou know, maybe you get to design your avatar.
36:23Elon MuskLike I said, I don't know if you like, you know, some old codger sort of dismissing the Internet in 95 is not amounting to anything. So there's some danger with that.
36:31Elon MuskThat's the case. But I currently am unable to see a compelling metaverse situation or web3 sounds like more marketing than reality. I don't get it, you know, and maybe I will, but I don't get it yet.
36:50Elon MuskLet me put it that way.
36:51Seth DillonIt's definitely not monkeys playing pong. Let's just put it that way.
36:55Elon MuskI just like to advertise for white
36:57Seth Dillonclove
37:01Elon Muskyeah, White cloth. Real men drink white clove.
37:08Seth DillonCan we get our guys on the phone with White Claw sponsor after the fact? Do you want us to.
37:15Elon MuskThen you won't pay us.
37:17Seth DillonWell, this is, you know, this is
37:18Elon Muskthe first White Claw.
37:19Seth DillonThe first White Claw ever drunk on the Babylon V podcast.
37:23Elon MuskSo that's great.
37:24Babylon Bee HostYou hit a point in your life where you made plenty of money and you could do whatever. What drives you to just keep.
37:31Elon MuskYeah, it could be slipping mai tais on a tropical island, a robot service or something. You know, windsurfing with naked models. Some people do that.
37:41Babylon Bee HostWhat drives you to. Obviously, you work.
37:43Elon MuskWait a second. Why am I not. What? Why? I just realized everything. I've been wrong all this time. Why am I working 90 hours a week? This is crazy.
37:53Babylon Bee HostBecause I'm always fascinated by the idea of, like, I've made it. People always want to say, be able to say, I've made it.
37:57Seth DillonI've arrived.
37:58Babylon Bee HostYeah. And, like, how do you hit those little islands in your life? And you actually have to break yourself of that mindset? And what are ways that you break yourself of that mindset and keep on going?
38:08Elon MuskI didn't put all this effort into bullying SpaceX and Tesla because they thought they were easy ways to make money. Anyone who starts a car company thinking it's the easy way to make money is a fool.
38:22Elon MuskThere are only two car companies that have not gone bankrupt in the history of the United States, and that's Ford and Tesla. And Tesla came within inches of going bankrupt multiple times, as did SpaceX.
38:34Elon MuskSo who starts the rocket company? Think it's going to be successful? I started. I mean, both those companies, I thought, had less than a 10% chance of success. And I thought it was overwhelmingly likely that I would lose the money that I made from PayPal.
38:50Elon MuskYou know, I came to North America when I was 17 just by myself, and I had a few thousand dollars in traveler's checks back when travelers checks were a thing, you know, in Canadian dollars.
39:05Elon MuskI landed in Montreal. I have some family in Canada, and my mom's uncle lived in Montreal, but, like, we didn't know his phone number. So I land in Montreal and my mom says, I just got a letter back from my uncle.
39:19Elon MuskHe's in Minnesota or something. So I'm like, okay, I don't know what to do now. So I just stayed in a youth hostel and bought a bus ticket across Canada.
39:27Elon MuskI worked in various odd jobs and stuff. Worked on my mom's cousin's wheat farm in Saskatchewan for six weeks. That's where I had my 18th birthday, actually. Worked in a lumber mill, chainsawed logs, did various odd jobs, and then went to college in Canada for a couple years.
39:47Elon MuskI paid my own way through college, by the way, but in Canada, it's, like, easier because the college is more subsidized. And I was a Canadian citizen through my mom, so.
39:57Elon MuskAnd I got some scholarships and loans and stuff, and then I applied to the University of Pennsylvania and didn't think I'd be able to go because tuition is really high, but they gave me a scholarship and loans and stuff, so I was able to go there.
40:14Elon MuskI graduated with about $100,000 in student debt and was going to do grad studies at Stanford and decided to put that on hold to try starting an Internet company.
40:29Elon MuskActually, I tried to get a job at Netscape, but they didn't. I'd send my resume and I'd get a response. So I was like, okay, I guess I can't get a job at.
40:42Elon MuskThere are only a few Internet companies and couldn't get a job at any of them. So I was like, I guess I want to do something on the Internet.
40:46Elon MuskGot to start my own company. But I ended up writing the first maps and directions on the Internet. I wrote it personally. Maps, directions, yellow pages, white pages, on a puny computer, like, with hardly any.
41:00Elon MuskSo you had to be, like, the code had to be super tight. I even have some patents on, like, maps and directions and yellow pages and white pages and stuff from ages ago.
41:12Elon MuskThey're lapsed now. But that company ended up getting borked by Compaq for about $300 million. I owned 7% of the company, so I got like, $20 million from that.
41:20Elon MuskPut most of it into X.com which merged with Confinity to create PayPal. And then I got about $180 million from that. And I put all of that into SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity.
41:36Elon MuskI just basically kept all the chips on the table just black. Let's play another round. And most people take their chips off the table, or at least some of their chips, and then SpaceX and Tesla ended up being valuable, and that's where I am.
41:49Elon MuskBut the reason for SpaceX and Tesla is Tesla, like you said. How would you assess the historical good of Tesla? I'd say it's the degree to which Tesla accelerated sustainable energy.
42:02Elon MuskAnd I've been interested in electric cars for a long time, since maybe high school or certainly early college. My original interest in electric vehicles was not so much due to environmental concerns, but Rather from the concern that we'd run out of oil eventually and or become extremely scarce and expensive and then civilization would collapse because we couldn't drive cars or run power plants and stuff.
42:30Elon MuskSo we need some form of sustainable energy generation and consumption or civilization is going to collapse. So that was my original interest in electric vehicles and solar energy. And then I do think there's some risk of negatively affecting the climate.
42:53Elon MuskAs you increase the CO2 concentration in the oceans and atmosphere, you increase the risk of something going wrong. I'm not like in the camp of the super alarmist global warming.
43:13Elon MuskI don't think we're screwed because of the current possible of CO2 in the ocean's atmosphere. I think this is actually not a terrible level. However, there's so much inertia in the direction of mining and burning hydrocarbons that the world is still overwhelmingly dependent on mining and burning hydrocarbons.
43:45Elon MuskSo if this continues and you start really driving up the, the CO2 in the ocean's atmosphere, then there's increased risk of accelerating climate change, basically warming up the oceans and raising the sea level.
44:08Elon MuskSo I think that's like, I think that's probably just not a wise risk to take since we will in any case have to transition to sustainable energy long term because we will eventually run out of oil and coal to mine and burn.
44:23Elon MuskThen why run the experiment to see if something bad will happen? With a high CO2 concentration in the oceans atmosphere, it's a pointless experiment. We know we have to get to some sustainable energy economy.
44:41Elon MuskIt's total logical. So I think we should try to get there sooner so as not to run the risk of climate change. It would not. Change would not be catastrophic to settle for civilization, but it would be very disruptive.
44:55Elon MuskHumans love living right on the ocean. So it's like we're almost like a, like a thermometer. It's like, it's like if we're living right on the beach. Okay, so this is like.
45:07Elon MuskSo even small changes in the sea level, in sea level will put a lot of houses underwater. Little, little changes don't have to be big. We just, we've just inherently created civilization as highly sensitive to changes in temperature.
45:19Babylon Bee HostA lot of politicians who are alarmist about this stuff buy homes right on the water though, don't they?
45:26Elon MuskYeah, I mean, I'm not sort of into like vilifying the oil and gas industry because I think, I think the, the reality is like if, if we don't have oil and gas right now, civilization would collapse and everyone would be starving.
45:42Elon MuskSo we obviously need oil and gas right now. It would be absurd to just stop it. It's not feasible. But I do think we should be trying to accelerate progress towards a sustainable energy future, not slow it down.
45:58Elon MuskI think it's just a sensible thing to do to try to move faster to a sustainable energy economy rather than slower because that reduces the risk of the climate experiment.
46:12Elon MuskAnd like I said, since we know we have to get to a sustainable energy economy anyway, why run this experiment? It's just not smart anyway. So the fundamental good of Tesla I think is by, you know, should be measured by how many years did Tesla accelerate the transition to a sustainable energy economy?
46:33Elon Musk10 years, 20 years? That's like the fundamental gutter of the company.
46:37Babylon Bee HostBut to Ethan's point, he's asking why not? Is that your answer for why you keep going? Is because these things make a difference? They make a difference ultimately for the flourishing of humanity, for the longevity of humanity.
46:50Babylon Bee HostIs that why you're not on a beach somewhere sipping Mai Tais or white claws?
46:54Seth DillonYeah,
46:56Elon MuskI don't actually drink a lot of white cloth. This is not about like trying to enrich myself. I do not live a life of conspicuous consumption. I work, you know, very long hours.
47:16Elon MuskBut I think, I think what Chelsea is doing is important to the future and that's why I keep doing it. And I think, you know, it's something that I think is Tesla increases the probability that the future will be good for humanity and then for SpaceX, I think it's important that we take the actions like that.
47:40Elon MuskWe become a space faring civilization and a multi planet species. This is an exciting, inspiring future. You need to have things that when you wake up in the morning, you're excited about the future.
47:52Elon MuskWhy live? If it's all about solving problems of being miserable, why live? So there got to be things that are inspiring that get you in the heart. And I think space is one of those things.
48:06Elon MuskSo look at the Apollo program and sending people to the moon in 69 and wasn't that a great thing for all of humanity? Great thing. And if you ask people like what are some of the greatest things that humanity has ever done?
48:23Elon MuskThat would be one of them. I think around the world people would agree with that.
48:28Babylon Bee HostIf you believe it really happened.
48:31Elon MuskYes, I do get that question. This is, yeah, we went to the moon, not just once, but several times. And I think the Russians would have called us out on that one if it wasn't true, you know, to say the least.
48:51Elon MuskAmong this is like the, yeah, we
48:55Seth Dillonwent to the, the Russians didn't like us at the time.
48:57Elon MuskYeah, so it was not a huge fan of it. They wouldn't have congratulated like they were looking at us through telescopes and like is this real? Or what you know, they would have called bubblegum if it was, that's for sure.
49:09Elon MuskThere's a huge, you know, victory, you know, ideological victory for the United States and Western civilization. So anyway, the point is like we want to have an exciting, inspiring future and one where we are a spacefaring civilization and a multi planet species I think is a much more exciting and inspiring future than one where we are forever confined to Earth and never go back to the moon.
49:32Elon MuskAnd the moon was our high water mark and that's all we ever did. That's depressing. And, and there's also, from a long term basis, if we're a multi planet species, it's like life insurance for life itself, not just for humans, but for, for all the creatures on Earth because we bring them with us and, and they can't build spaceships.
49:50Elon MuskSo you know, we are, we're in effect the steward of life. And you know, we can make a, we can make Mars like a, you know, another planet with life on it.
50:04Elon MuskYou know, it is, you know, it's probably a dangerous analogy to use, but it's a bit like Noah's ark. But you know, we'd bring more than two of every creature because it's a little incestuous, frankly.
50:17Elon MuskI mean like how does this work? You know, second generation and did he hate the dinosaurs? Like what's a, why is it like f you to the dinosaurs? It's like pro incest bad on dinosaurs.
50:37Babylon Bee HostI don't get it.
50:38Elon MuskAnyway, and it would have to be a very big book. So. But there's, you know, it's a metaphor perhaps, I don't know. Yeah, so anyway, so like there's some risk, especially over a long period of time that something calamitous would happen to Earth.
50:53Elon MuskAnd if we're just on one planet, that would be the end of life itself. And certainly the sun is slowly expanding, so the Earth's rough, roughly four and a half billion years old.
51:03Elon MuskSome people might disagree with that, but it appears to be that way. And roughly half a billion years the sun will expand to make Earth probably uninhabitable in a billion years.
51:21Elon MuskDefinitely uninhabitable. So basically, if intelligent life had taken 10% longer to evolve on Earth, then we would never evolve at all because it would be destroyed because the Oceans would boil and we wouldn't be able to exist.
51:39Babylon Bee HostI mean, no matter what. The universe will end in heat death though, right? Eventually. So it's all futile to some extent if you go far enough.
51:48Elon MuskYeah, I mean, I think if heat death is the outcome of the universe, it really is all about the journey. Like, you know, they said like, you know, the journey is half the fun, is the journey or whatever.
52:01Elon MuskWell, if heat death is the end of the universe, the journey is all the fun.
52:05Babylon Bee HostYou know, can we just evolve heat resistance? Become like lava beings? It's not, it cools eventually with entropy.
52:14Elon MuskAnd I'm not a scientist,
52:20Seth DillonCan't we
52:20Elon Muskjust evolve to that? Entropy, Entropy. No escaping that for me.
52:29Elon MuskEntropy, the ultimate enemy. You thought the devil was bad? Try entropy. Okay, try getting away from that. But yeah, I mean the.
52:40Seth DillonYes.
52:40Elon MuskI mean technically being a multi planet species would increase the probable lifespan of civilization and life as we know it. So I mean, humans don't live forever. But just because we don't live forever does not mean that civilization cannot live much longer than we do.
52:59Elon MuskCivilization lives much longer than any individual human. So this is not about like escaping to Mars. This is simply, I mean I, I will die probably long before. Mars is a self sustaining civilization.
53:12Elon MuskIt's just, I think something we should, we should do in order to have a much longer probable lifespan of civilization. And it's interesting and exciting and, and Mars is, is like a, it's like an essential next step to like there, there are these like, you know, filters.
53:34Elon MuskThey're called like the great filters. And because you have to say like, where are the aliens? You know, it's like the Fermi paradox. Where are the aliens? If the universe is 13.8 billion years old, shouldn't they be everywhere by now?
53:50Elon MuskAnd I'm not aware of any evidence for aliens. People ask me about that too. Where are the aliens? I'm like, man, if anyone would know about evidence of aliens, it would be me.
54:00Elon MuskAnd I, I've seen nothing. So I think it may have been Carl Sagan who said, you know, there's like, we're either alone in, in the galaxy or there are a lot of aliens.
54:14Elon MuskAnd, and each answer is arguably equally terrifying. It's like, it's like, hey, we found it. Aliens are on the way. Too bad it's the invasion fleet, you know, So I don't know.
54:34Elon MuskIt's like, where are the aliens? Like, maybe there aren't any in this galaxy. And maybe what we have here is a very, very rare situation. A brief flickering of consciousness in the dark, like a little candle in a vast darkness.
54:50Elon MuskAnd we should not let that little candle go out.
54:53Seth DillonSo my dad's a rocket scientist at Boeing and he had a question.
54:56Elon MuskEngineer.
54:57Seth DillonWell, whatever.
55:00Elon MuskWhen people say rocket scientists, they really mean rocket engineer.
55:03Seth DillonOkay, yeah. So he's a rocket engineer and he says at what mach number does Starship endure? Max Q, maximum dynamic pressure? How much pressure is that? Does that make any sense to you?
55:16Seth DillonYeah.
55:19Elon MuskSo yeah, max Q, max and dynamics pressure is when you're at a combination of speed and atmospheric density such that the wind force on the rocket is the highest.
55:35Elon MuskAnd so as you climb higher and higher, the atmospheric density decays exponentially. And so you hit this point of combination of velocity and air density, which is maximum dynamic pressure or maximum Q.
55:51Elon MuskAnd this is mostly a function of thrust to weight. So if you have a low thrust weight rocket, you will have typically a lower max Q. And if you have a high thrust weight rocket, you will have a higher max Q if you do not throttle down.
56:09Elon MuskAnd so it also kind of depends on what trajectory you're flying. Are you flying a low earth orbit trajectory, single burn insertion, or say geosynchronous transfer or. But with low parigee, then you'll have a higher max Q because you'll spend more time going sort of horizontal instead of vertical.
56:35Elon MuskGetting to orbit is mostly about your. Getting to orbit is about your velocity parallel to the Earth's surface. So around Mach 23 to Mach 25, you're so roughly 23ish times the speed of sound is when you reach orbital velocity roughly 17,000 miles an hour.
56:55Elon MuskAnd that's what it means to go up and stay up. You only need height in order to get out of the high density portion of the atmosphere so that you don't slow down.
57:04Babylon Bee HostNone of that was correct. I disagree. I disagree. I give a totally different answer. I don't have time to get into it. No, it all checks out.
57:14Elon MuskYeah, so I mean, typically a rocket is going to hit max Q somewhere between Mach 1.4 and 1.8. And that Q level is going to be maybe 400 to 800 pounds per square foot.
57:33Elon MuskNow a starship is intended to have a highish thruster weight because with a fully reusable rocket, the cost of propellant starts to become significant. Whereas if you have an expendable rocket or a partially reusable rocket, the cost of propellant is tiny compared to the cost of the rocket.
57:56Elon MuskSo you actually want a higher thrust weight to minimize cost per tantal orbit. With a fully reusable rocket than you would for an expendable. So probably starship will have at least a 1.3, if not closer to a 1.5 thrust to weight, which would, without throttling down, which aspirationally we would not throttle down, would have quite a high Q, maybe as high as 1000 or even 1200 pounds per square foot.
58:31Elon MuskSo that's. And probably at what velocity? I mean, I guess Mach 1.4 to 1.5, something like that.
58:45Seth DillonOkay, well, my dad very much enjoyed
58:47Elon Muskthat answer, I'm sure.
58:48Babylon Bee HostI think as a male feminist though, one thing about the rockets is symbology. What would it take to get some more vaginal shaped rockets?
59:02Elon MuskJust, you know, equality.
59:07Babylon Bee HostCan we make that happen?
59:09Elon MuskAerodynamics and hydrodynamics is going to give you a serious answer. Share similar properties, whether biological or mechanical. Okay, good answer.
59:26Babylon Bee HostThat's all I got. I'm rocket science. Robots.
59:31Seth DillonYeah. Tesla bot. So you're creating robots. Have you ever seen a sci fi
59:37Elon Muskmovie in your life? Never. Okay, I thought maybe not.
59:41Babylon Bee HostYou know, like,
59:44Elon Muskwhat's the worst that could happen?
59:45Seth DillonYeah,
59:52Elon MuskThe robots are not the scary part. The scary part is AGI, or artificial General intelligence. Digital superintelligence that far exceeds human intelligence. And if there's a digital superintelligence that is just vastly smarter than the smartest human, we could lose control of it and then it could do something bad.
1:00:18Elon MuskPotentially these things are just probabilities, they're not certainties. So it's not the robots. Like I said, it's not the robots, it's the digital superintelligence to be concerned about. I think this is definitely one of the issues that we need to be concerned about as an existential risk.
1:00:37Elon MuskI think we should have a regulatory agency that oversees advanced AI because, you know, generally I do think there are important roles for the government and one of those roles is in regulation of industry to make sure that the company is not making shortcuts that endanger the public.
1:01:01Elon MuskSo, you know, the FAA does, has done generally a great job of ensuring that their craft are safe. You know, it's literally safer to fly on an American airline or any sort of airline overseen by the FAA than it is to live in your house just to give people a sense of you're more likely to die.
1:01:24Elon MuskYour probable lifespan is less if you live your entire life in your house than if you lived on a plane. Because in your house you can get murdered by a spouse, get bitten by
1:01:38Babylon Bee Hosta louse,
1:01:42Seth Dillonbut if you live in a plane in Afghanistan, that's not maybe the case.
1:01:46Elon MuskWell, if it's not overseen by a regulator like the faa, then it's not necessarily going to meet the same safety standards.
1:01:59Babylon Bee HostWhat if your spouse is on the plane?
1:02:01Elon MuskWell, I think the planes have, you know, they have means of stuffing. Like, you can't. It's hard to bring a gun on a plane and even a knife or even a bottle of lotion at this point, you know, so your spouse couldn't
1:02:15Seth Dillonbring any of those things.
1:02:17Elon MuskI mean, they have to just punch you with a. Or stab you with a spork in a plastic spork. It's hard to kill someone with a spork. So. And then planes also have, like, flight attendants are trained in first aid.
1:02:33Elon MuskThey've got, like, they can do cpr. They've got defibrillators. If somebody's having medical issues, they'll immediately land the plane and ambulance will meet you at the airport. So. And you're not going to, like, you know, drown the bathtub or get electrocuted by a toaster or have your house burned down or.
1:02:53Elon MuskBecause of the toaster. By the way, toasters cause a lot of houses to burn down. One of the main causes of house burning down are, like, toasters and dryers.
1:03:02Babylon Bee HostThere's also a decent chance there's a doctor on the plane at any given time. Right. That happens all the time. Like a doctor is like treating somebody on a plane in your house, you know.
1:03:10Elon MuskYeah. So planes are very safe. And I mean, generally speaking, the FDA does a good job of overseeing food and drugs. You know, this might be a bit of a conservative bias on, you know, where at times there's an asymmetry with the FDA where something that could help a lot of people is not approved because it might hurt a small number of people.
1:03:35Elon MuskSo there's a sort of like a bit of an asymmetry. So regulators in general can have a bit of an asymmetry where they're punished a lot for something going wrong, but not rewarded enough for something going right.
1:03:53Elon MuskSo that's just a general challenge. With the punishment and reward of regulators, they can be a little conservative, but I think there should be a regulatory agency to oversee anything that is a danger to the public.
1:04:12Elon MuskSo, and I think AGI could be an interest of the public. So therefore should. Should have some oversight. And only great regulatory agencies are very reactive. So, like for seat belts, for example, which lack of seatbelts caused, I don't know, 10 million deaths worldwide, I mean, a massive number.
1:04:31Elon MuskAnd the car industry fought Seatbelts for a very long time. And eventually, after many deaths, the Department of Transport, nhtsa, which oversees as a regulatory body for cars, said all cars have to have seat belts, but you can't just not have a seatbelt.
1:04:52Elon MuskBut that. I don't know, it took 15 years or something or maybe longer, maybe 20 years before seat belts were mandated. And then baby seats. A lot of kids and babies died because they're just like sitting on the, you know, on a seat with nothing.
1:05:09Elon MuskI mean, I kind of grew up sitting on a seat with nothing.
1:05:11Seth DillonWe'd ride in the bed of the truck.
1:05:13Elon MuskYeah, seriously, I wrote in the bed of a pickup truck for hours.
1:05:16Seth DillonSurvivor bias or something. I was fine.
1:05:18Elon MuskYeah, I was fine. But if there was an accident, it was game over, you know.
1:05:24Babylon Bee HostSo you do see some good in government when it comes to regulation and stuff like that, but you don't generally think the government can spend your money more effectively than you can?
1:05:33Elon MuskYeah, I mean, I would say, like, generally I'm like, I think pretty moderate. I'm not like, sort of an extreme libertarian. I think there are roles for the government that makes sense.
1:05:44Elon MuskI don't think we necessarily want, like, a private army or private police force or private. I think there's some things that are probably the right role for the government, but anything done by the government is going to be inefficient because the government is a monopoly.
1:06:05Elon MuskLike, people that don't like corporations should not somehow think that the government is much better because the government is a corporation in the limit. It is the ultimate corporation with a monopoly on violence.
1:06:19Elon MuskSo I think the right role for the government is like to be act in a regulatory capacity, but we should aspire to have the government be a limited actor in the economy.
1:06:38Elon MuskSo you could say what percentage of economic output should be government and maybe a third or something like that. Once you start getting above 50% government, I think that's problematic.
1:06:55Elon MuskSo you can look at countries like east and West Germany, north and South Korea, and there's, you know, there was just essentially an arbitrary line drawn out to divide the countries.
1:07:06Elon MuskAnd East Germany was like kind of 100% government. West Germany was, I don't know, probably at least 40% government. They're like, you know, relatively socialist. And yet the GDP per capita of that, you know, of West Germany was, I think, five times higher than East Germany.
1:07:23Elon MuskSo that just shows you just how big of a difference it is if. If you have like, something that's close to half government versus 100% government, private sector, is probably a factor of 10 more efficient than the government.
1:07:36Elon MuskAnd this, like, this is sort of. This is also true of just, just generally, if you have like a monopolistic private corporation, then the forcing function for serving the customer is weak.
1:07:50Elon MuskBut at least private corporations can go bankrupt and the government cannot go bankrupt unless the people go bankrupt. Like basically unless it exhausts extracting money from the population so.
1:08:02Seth DillonWell, they're trying their best.
1:08:04Elon MuskYeah, it's just, you know, so just want to. Just knowing that the government is inefficient, as any large monopolistic corporation would be, and it is the ultimate large monopolistic corporation.
1:08:18Elon MuskWe should minimize how much the government does, keep it to what is essential and not go beyond that.
1:08:28Seth DillonYeah, I mean, I guess, you know, the conservative concern with that is you start to give them, you know, you give them a foothold and then they're just going to keep, keep going.
1:08:35Seth DillonLike you give them a regulatory capacity over something like AGI and then they're just going to start to overreach more and more. Because that's what we've seen in the past.
1:08:46Seth DillonYou give them an inch and they take a mile.
1:08:48Elon MuskYeah, but I mean, does anyone realistically want to delete the FAA or the fda?
1:08:54Seth DillonProbably somebody.
1:08:58Elon MuskWe've got an anarchist in the corner. I mean, it used to be like if you go to the store, you buy some whatever steak or something from the store and it's like poisonous or we take for granted that the food we buy at the store is not going to kill us because some company cut costs and decided that having E.
1:09:26Elon MuskColi and salmonella is who cares type of thing. So I think we take for granted that the food we buy at stores is not poisonous and that the drugs we buy is extremely unlikely.
1:09:46Elon MuskThe drugs will be consistent and they will do what they say they're going to do. Except for the sort of vitamin supplements industry, which can basically is unregulated. And so they can say things that are not true and people still buy it anyway.
1:10:03Elon MuskSo it's like, I think, do you really want, like, you can think of like the. You want some kind of referee on the field? So like, you know, for,
1:10:13Seth Dillonyou know,
1:10:14Elon Musklike it's like if you're watching say a football game or something like basketball, there's referees. Okay, so would the games be better or worse without a referee? They'd be worse, you know, so I think like, the role of a referee in games is important and so the government's role as a referee, I think is also important.
1:10:36Elon MuskYou just don't want to have the government be kind of on the field. As a player, it would be weird if the referees just suddenly started playing ball, you know, probably not.
1:10:46Elon MuskThe game would not be as good.
1:10:48Seth DillonYeah, well, and other things that make me think you've never seen a sci fi movie before. You have Neuralink, so you can like put things in people's brain or something.
1:11:00Seth DillonWhat's that like?
1:11:02Babylon Bee HostWhat's that like?
1:11:03Seth DillonIs it cool? Do you like it? I'll try it.
1:11:07Elon MuskYou might like it. Okay, no problem. Yeah. With neuralink, neuralink is in part. Well, in fact, the reason I created Neuralink was long term as a risk mitigation for digital superintelligence, in that if we are able to effectively achieve symbiosis with digital intelligence, then the collective human will is better able to steer things in a direction that we'd like.
1:11:48Elon MuskOr even with benign AI, at least go along for the ride. Because even with a benign superintelligence, if it's so much smarter than us that it really can't even communicate effectively because it's so fast.
1:12:04Elon MuskAnd then talking to us is like talking to a tree. Because if you do a stop motion on a tree, a tree is communicating with its environment just very slowly.
1:12:14Elon MuskRight now, it's looking for water, the tree roots are looking for water, the branch is looking for sun, and the tree has movement. It's just very slow. And we are already at this point partially a cyborg, de facto sort of a sidewalk in that our phones and computers and applications are a digital extension of ourselves at this point.
1:12:42Elon MuskLike, if somebody leaves their phone behind, it's like missing limb syndrome, you know, like the phone is almost like a part of you. And. But the issue with that symbiosis is that the data rate is extremely slow.
1:13:00Elon MuskSo, like, how fast can you communicate with your phone using two thumbs, you know, 10 bits per second. It's very low, the data rate. And if computers can, which they can communicate at a billion bits per second or more, and we're communicating with them at 10 bits per second, then that's just an extremely slow communication link.
1:13:26Elon MuskAnd it inhibits symbiosis without sort of tertiary digital layer. So we've got sort of basically like a primal layer, which is like our limbic system. Basically, it's our instincts and love, our emotions, and it's kind of like the reptile brain situation.
1:13:44Elon MuskAnd then you've got the cortex, which is like the thinking part of the brain, planning and whatnot. And so it's like the second layer. And then Our phones and computers are our tertiary layer.
1:13:57Elon MuskBut there's just a bandwidth limitation. Very slow to communicate. So with a neural link, you can increase the communication bandwidth by many orders of magnitude, maybe by 1000 or more.
1:14:13Babylon Bee HostSo you're talking about output from the brain to other devices?
1:14:17Elon MuskYeah, primarily, yeah.
1:14:19Babylon Bee HostNot input to the brain.
1:14:21Elon MuskIt would be both ways. Our input is much less constrained than our output because of vision. So, you know, rough approximation is like. Our input because of vision is like maybe a million times roughly.
1:14:38Elon MuskSome people online are going to argue with us, but it's the input to input is many orders of magnitude higher than output because of vision. A picture says a thousand words and a video says, I don't know, 100,000 words.
1:14:57Elon MuskThis is why a meme can communicate so much more than a few words. Now, this is obviously very esoteric, and I'm not sure this will resonate with a lot of people.
1:15:07Elon MuskLike, oh, we need to increase the, the bandwidth between our cortex and our digital tertiary layer by many orders of magnitude in order to not lose symbiosis with digital intelligence.
1:15:22Elon MuskSo this is quite esoteric, but that's the long term existential risk mitigation of neuralink, which we may or may not achieve. I'm not saying we will achieve this, but it's at least an attempt to solve that.
1:15:37Elon MuskThen along the way, neuralink can solve a lot of brain issues, like if you got. And if you're like a severed spine or something. So, like, one of like the first application we're looking to solve is implanting neuralink in someone who has a quadriplegic or tetraplegic.
1:16:08Elon MuskSo, like, they have no. They can't move their arms and legs or maybe not even really move most of their face. They can like maybe blink or something like that, you know, like Stephen Orking or he didn't have to have severed spine, but like, there are various mechanical and other like, mechanical breakages or diseases that break the link between your brain and body.
1:16:31Elon MuskAnd neuralink can solve that? It can, certainly. We're confident neuralink can enable someone who is a tetraplegic to operate a phone or a computer faster than someone who has hands, working hands.
1:16:51Elon MuskAnd we've shown this, for example, with the monkey being able to play video games. So you can play a bunch of games, not just Pong, but Pong is currently its favorite game.
1:17:01Babylon Bee HostI didn't even know monkeys could play
1:17:02Seth Dillonpong in the first place.
1:17:04Elon MuskYeah, monkeys can play pong with their hand. Very good. Yeah, that's amazing. Monkeys have good Reflexes, and that's how it's off the monkey. We train the monkey to play pong with the joystick and then we look at the signals that the monkey's brain is sending and then we read those signals and then we transfer the signals directly to the game and then we take the joystick away and the monkey's just playing basically telepathic mind pong.
1:17:40Babylon Bee HostThat's wild.
1:17:41Elon MuskYeah. So we recently got what we think is a world record in bits per second from any neural device. Like, we're Starting to approach 10 bits per second, which is not actually not that big, but it's more than anyone else has achieved in a useful way.
1:18:03Elon MuskClose to 10 useful bits per second is where we are, and we'll increase that dramatically over time. So anyway, so we obviously want to make sure the device is extremely safe and.
1:18:19Elon MuskAnd extremely well tested. Our standards go far beyond what is required from a regulatory standpoint. And. But we're hoping to do our first neuralink into a human next year and like I said, enable someone who has almost no movement capability to operate a phone as fast or we think faster over time than someone who has working hands.
1:18:54Elon MuskSo I think that would be quite a significant thing and would help a lot of people. And there are many such applications. And I'm increasingly confident that we can implant a second neuralink device.
1:19:09Elon MuskSo one that accesses the motor cortex, the somatosensory cortex, and then a second one that is past where the injury is. So if you've got a separate. Basically, where are the neurons still functional.
1:19:25Elon MuskAnd implant a second neural link device and have the two devices talk to each other and just transfer the signals across where we're broke. Yeah, because it's like a broken circuit.
1:19:40Elon MuskSo you get a broken circuit, you basically just do a signal transfer between the two. And you don't necessarily even need to know what all those signals are. You just need to transfer the signals.
1:19:53Elon MuskSo just like if you have like an Ethernet cable, you don't need to know what's on the Ethernet cable for the cable to work, or a wireless, for one wireless Ethernet WI FI box to another wireless Ethernet WI FI box, you don't need to know what the contents of the signal are in order to transfer the signal.
1:20:12Elon MuskSo I'm confident that such thing is possible. Not saying we will do it. I don't want set unreasonable expectations, but I would say I'm certain that it is possible and we will try to make it happen, which would then enable people to walk again and use their hands and I think long term, probably restore full body functionality to somebody who has none.
1:20:39Babylon Bee HostDid you know that we created an Elon Musk subscription tier at one point on the beat? Did you ever see that?
1:20:44Seth DillonNo.
1:20:44Babylon Bee HostYou didn't know that we did that.
1:20:46Elon MuskWe were. Because you would pay a lot of money or something.
1:20:48Babylon Bee HostYeah, you had interacted with us a couple of times. And so we were like wooing you as a subscriber. Come subscribe. But we created our own tier feet.
1:20:54Elon MuskWhat was.
1:20:55Babylon Bee HostWas it a fee on the tier? I don't remember what it was.
1:20:57Seth DillonI think it was like. It was the highest. Our payment.
1:20:59Babylon Bee HostIt was like $9,999 a month or something. But people were signing up for it. People were actually signing up for it, though. Every time I would check, I'd be like, is it him?
1:21:07Babylon Bee HostIs it him? It was random people who picked it thinking it was a joke and it was actually charging their credit cards. We had all these angry people who were like, my wife is going to kill me if you don't refund this charge.
1:21:16Babylon Bee HostSo we had to take the Elon Musk tier down. So we took it down, I guess, before you could. Before you could find it. But it was there. We had it there for you, so.
1:21:24Elon MuskWell, thanks, I guess. That's a compliment, I think.
1:21:31Seth DillonAll right.
1:21:32Elon MuskVery eloquently put.
1:21:33Seth DillonWell, shall we land the plane here with the 10 questions?
1:21:39Babylon Bee HostSo we. This podcast started in Kyle's garage.
1:21:44Seth DillonWe ask every guest the same 10 questions at the end of the interview.
1:21:47Babylon Bee HostWe never anticipated we would be asking Elon Musk these two questions.
1:21:51Seth DillonThese are rapid fire, so you can answer them as quick as you want.
1:21:54Elon MuskYeah.
1:21:55Seth DillonOr you can go on forever.
1:21:56Babylon Bee HostYeah.
1:21:56Seth DillonYour call. Have you ever met Christian rap artist Carmen.
1:22:06Babylon Bee HostBam?
1:22:08Elon MuskI mean, the only common musician I'm aware of is common Miranda. You know, she would like, dance with like a. Like a fruit ball on her head.
1:22:19Seth DillonYeah.
1:22:20Elon MuskFruit head, yeah.
1:22:21Seth DillonAnd you never met her?
1:22:22Elon MuskNo, she. She died.
1:22:24Seth DillonOkay.
1:22:24Elon MuskA while ago. All right, cool. Look him up.
1:22:28Babylon Bee HostAre you more of a Calvinist or an Armenian?
1:22:32Elon MuskOr an Armenian.
1:22:33Babylon Bee HostYeah.
1:22:34Seth DillonLike a predestination.
1:22:37Elon MuskOr you could say the tone of Versus. I'm like, that goes to.
1:22:40Babylon Bee HostInteresting
1:22:42Seth Dillondichotomy.
1:22:45Elon MuskAre those the only two choices? The assumption, Calvinist.
1:22:51Babylon Bee HostThe only people that know what an Armenian is are Calvinists.
1:22:54Seth DillonRight.
1:22:56Babylon Bee HostSo free will or predestination. Right. No, determinism.
1:23:00Seth DillonDeterminism.
1:23:01Babylon Bee HostFree will is kind of the more secular version of that.
1:23:05Elon MuskI guess my mind would say determinism in my heart says Briwell. Yeah, I mean, when I grew up, I was. Funnily enough, I went to Anglican Sunday school, Church of England, basically.
1:23:28Elon MuskBut I was also sent to Hebrew preschool, although I'm not Jewish, but nonetheless, I was singing Hava Nagila one day and Jesus Eloh the next. Fine, if you're a kid and Santa Claus and like,
1:23:49Seth DillonYeah, that answers the question. So you get to add one book to the Bible. What is it?
1:24:00Babylon Bee HostYou guys have never updated these questions
1:24:01Seth Dillonto, like, apply more broadly?
1:24:04Babylon Bee HostNo.
1:24:04Seth DillonAt any point, they're unchangeable.
1:24:07Babylon Bee HostThey're like the Ten Commandments at this point.
1:24:11Elon MuskI mean, a little bit lower. Maybe we could have a chapter past Revelations. But, like, is there a happy ending here? Like The Revelations Part 2. The Happy Ending?
1:24:28Seth DillonWell, you know, if there's, like, a really good book you think everyone should read, because it would be in the back of the Bible.
1:24:32Babylon Bee HostEveryone should read this book.
1:24:34Elon MuskHow many people have actually read the Bible?
1:24:38Babylon Bee HostFewer than probably say they have, but.
1:24:39Elon MuskOh, yeah. I mean, do you have. I mean, at one point, you know, when I was a kid, I was like, I had this existential crisis, and I was trying to figure out what the meaning of life.
1:24:48Elon MuskAnd I was like, oh, it all means nothing. It's all. And I read, like, a whole bunch of religious books, including the Bible, and I'm like, there's a bunch of things in there they didn't teach you at Sunday school.
1:24:59Elon MuskSodom and Gomorrah. Dark. Yikes. God sure changes his mind from the Old Testament to the New Testament. I'm like, whoa, that's pretty vengeful in the Old Testament. What was the question?
1:25:16Seth DillonYou get to pick a book to
1:25:18Elon Muskadd to the Bible.
1:25:19Seth DillonA book?
1:25:19Elon MuskThe Hitchhiker, the Galaxy.
1:25:21Seth DillonOkay.
1:25:22Babylon Bee HostYeah, great book.
1:25:23Elon MuskYeah.
1:25:26Babylon Bee HostCigars or pipes?
1:25:30Elon MuskYou know, I'm not sure I've ever really smoked a pipe. My grandfather did. It kind of looks cool. But I have smoked cigars,
1:25:40Seth Dillonand I
1:25:41Elon Muskthink, like, you know, for a celebratory occasion, like, cigars and whiskey is a pretty good combo.
1:25:48Seth DillonYou get to hang out with any three people, living or dead. Who are they?
1:25:54Elon MuskIt's always hard to think of, like, three people.
1:25:57Babylon Bee HostEthan, Kyle, Seth, you got three right here.
1:26:01Elon MuskThat's true.
1:26:03Babylon Bee HostJeff Bezos.
1:26:06Elon MuskNecessarily. Like, I think there's a lot of people that would be interesting to talk to.
1:26:14Babylon Bee HostI don't know, is it living or dead, you said?
1:26:17Elon MuskYeah, living or dead. This is just a stream of consciousness, not like a carefully thought out answer. But it would be like, I don't know, like Shakespeare, Ben Franklin, maybe Newton or Einstein.
1:26:32Seth DillonThat's a good group.
1:26:33Babylon Bee HostBunch of white men.
1:26:38Seth DillonAll drinking white clothes.
1:26:42Babylon Bee HostCleopatra.
1:26:43Elon MuskSounds fun.
1:26:46Babylon Bee HostWhiskey or beer? Or I guess whiskey.
1:26:50Seth DillonHe went right for the whiskey. So nice. All right. What would be the first thing you would do as president?
1:26:55Elon MuskWell, the presidency in the US Is designed to be a weak position or relatively weak position, because, you know, obviously the founders of the country did not want to create a monarch, you know, wanted to avoid, like, a king situation.
1:27:12Elon MuskSo the. So the presidency in the US Is meant to be weak, weaker than, say, in a parliamentary system where the majority. Essentially, the speaker of the House would be the prime minister or president.
1:27:25Elon MuskSo you have to say, like, what can you do as the president in the US There's a lot of limitations. Unless you have the support of Congress, you obviously cannot change the laws.
1:27:40Elon MuskBut I probably aspire to reduce the size of government
1:27:47Babylon Bee Hostand,
1:27:49Elon Muskyou know, and take a look at the regulatory situation and just make sure there's. There's a good garbage collection of regulations. So if there are outdated, as there are many outdated and unnecessary regulations.
1:28:04Elon MuskBut, you know, there's. There's a. There's a strong forcing function for creating new laws and regulations, but a weak forcing function for getting rid of bad laws and regulations.
1:28:18Elon MuskAnd I think this is just generally a problem as civilization ages without war, where there are new laws and regulations created every year. And so there's like, more and more constraints on what you can do, but there's very little effort put to remove laws and regulations.
1:28:36Elon MuskAnd so this is, like hardening of the arteries of civilization. And eventually it'll be like Gulliver's Travels, where you're just tied down by thousands of little strings. It's not like any one string is the issue, but there's so many strings that you can't get anything done.
1:28:56Elon MuskThat's a big part of why I moved to Texas. It's just like there's just fewer strings tying you down. So,
1:29:08Seth Dillonyeah,
1:29:11Elon MuskI think the value of someone just being a very competent executive officer is undervalued in a president. Just like, how good are you at running things and getting things done?
1:29:30Elon MuskBecause if you're the president, you're kind of like the CEO of the company country. And so are you good at doing things? Are you effective and productive?
1:29:42Babylon Bee HostYou recently said a CEO is a meaningless title. What does that mean?
1:29:46Elon MuskI'm just curious how that, like, well, CEO is not. Not like a legal title.
1:29:51Babylon Bee HostOkay.
1:29:52Elon MuskI was just saying that. That there. There are all these titles or corporations that are. That are kind of made up. And you can see what is up actually required for a corporation when you fill out the form to create one.
1:30:04Elon MuskAnd so you need a president, a secretary, and a treasurer. Same thing as, like if you're forming a chess club or a glee club or something like that. Same thing.
1:30:15Elon MuskAnd actually, technically, all three can be the same person. So that's what's legally required. If you don't have those three things, you cannot function as a corporation. Everything else, like general counsel, CFOs, CEO, these are all made up.
1:30:27Elon MuskLike, they have no meaningful legal bearing. So you only need those. President, secretary, and treasurer. So there's all these like, CXO titles, which, you know, just are somewhat like resume inflators.
1:30:48Elon MuskI was just making the point that, like, people think CEO is a real title, but it's not. It's not a legally meaningful title. You need someone who is defined as the president.
1:31:02Seth DillonThat's it.
1:31:06Elon MuskBut now you have like, Chief Marketing Officer, Chief Information Officer, Chief Everything Officer. You know, I still think, like, we should have, like that.
1:31:15Seth DillonYou do?
1:31:16Elon MuskReally? A Chief Sorcery Officer. This is our SVP of Sorcery Race title.
1:31:27Babylon Bee HostYeah, yeah.
1:31:32Seth DillonQuestion number eight.
1:31:33Babylon Bee HostThe Master General. Oh, yeah. Have you ever punched anyone or have you ever been punched? You got any cool punching stories? If you don't have an answer for
1:31:42Elon Muskthat, we have a follow up. It's even worse. I don't know about cool punching stories, but I. Where I grew up was extremely violent. I never started a fight except with my brother.
1:31:58Elon MuskActually, one exception. I did beat my brother up, which I'm just. I don't know. That's how it goes. But South Africa when I was growing up was just an inherently very violent place.
1:32:13Elon MuskI got punched in the face many times. I almost got beaten to death once. So many times. And I think if you have not been punched in the face with a fist, you don't know what.
1:32:26Elon MuskYou have no idea what it's like.
1:32:27Babylon Bee HostShocking sensation.
1:32:28Elon MuskShocking sensation.
1:32:30Babylon Bee HostHave you been punched, Ethan?
1:32:32Seth DillonYeah.
1:32:33Babylon Bee HostJust by, like, high school kids.
1:32:34Elon MuskYeah.
1:32:35Seth DillonNot right.
1:32:36Babylon Bee HostStill. It's just like your face never touches anything and then suddenly.
1:32:39Elon MuskYeah, it punches the nose. Like you can't even see straight. So, yeah. It's funny that people think words are. They're so sensitive to words. It's like, man, you've ever been punched in the face, words don't mean nothing.
1:33:04Seth DillonAll right, question number nine. You get to go to one concert. Any band in history. Who do you go see?
1:33:11Elon MuskAny band in history? I don't know.
1:33:14Seth DillonTake your pick.
1:33:15Elon MuskMaybe The Rolling Stones are there. You know, peak Rolling Stones seems like.
1:33:21Seth DillonAnd heyday.
1:33:22Elon MuskYeah, yeah,
1:33:24Seth Dillonnitpick. All right, final question to close our time out here.
1:33:29Babylon Bee HostYeah, I mean, we're here. You know, the Babylon Bee is a Christian organization, you know, and we're a ministry.
1:33:34Elon MuskWell, how come we're doing the show on a Sunday? Why don't you gather? Why aren't you heathens in church? Exactly.
1:33:44Babylon Bee HostSo we have to make it church right now.
1:33:45Elon MuskIt's supposed to be a day of rest. We did Zoom church to justify God said, don't work on Sundays. Okay, Liz, are guys are going straight
1:33:54Babylon Bee Hostto hell for this morning. Get into the whole Jesus rest thing. Okay?
1:33:57Elon MuskStraight hell.
1:33:59Babylon Bee HostThis is true.
1:33:59Elon MuskThis is true.
1:34:00Babylon Bee HostOkay, so to make this church, we have to do. We have to make sure. Just. We're wondering if you could do us a quick solid and accept Jesus as your Lord and savior on the show.
1:34:13Babylon Bee HostPersonal Lord and Savior. It's a quick burn.
1:34:22Elon MuskI mean, let's just say, like, I agree with the principles that Jesus advocated and that the. You know, there are some. There's great wisdom in what. In the teachings of Jesus, and I agree with those teachings and things like tone the other cheek are very important because as opposed to an eye for an eye, an eye for an eye leaves everyone blind.
1:34:53Elon MuskSo forgiveness, you know, is important. And treating people as you would wish to be treated. Love thy neighbor as thyself. Very important.
1:35:07Babylon Bee HostSo it's like a 60, 70%. Yeah.
1:35:10Elon MuskAs Einstein would say, I believe in the goddess Spinoza, so. But, hey, if, you know, if Jesus is saving people, I mean, I wouldn't stand in his way, you know, like, they'll be sure I'll be saved one night.
1:35:32Babylon Bee HostSweet. We did it.
1:35:33Elon MuskYeah.
1:35:33Seth DillonI think he just said yes.
1:35:34Babylon Bee HostAll right, we got him.
1:35:38Seth DillonSounds good.
1:35:39Babylon Bee HostYou want to get baptized or anything?
1:35:41Elon MuskI was baptized.
1:35:42Babylon Bee HostOh.
1:35:43Seth DillonOh, okay. Anglican. Yeah.
1:35:44Babylon Bee HostNo, yeah, he's done.
1:35:46Elon MuskThey got just a baby.
1:35:48Babylon Bee HostCool. Second. Yeah.
1:35:53Elon MuskI even had, like, you know, the whatever. Blood and body of Christ, which is kind of weird, you know, if you're little kids, like, you get to give you some weird tasting, you know, biscuit and wine.
1:36:04Seth DillonYeah.
1:36:05Elon MuskAnd I'm like, what the hell is this? I'm like, isn't this kind of just.
1:36:09Seth DillonCut it off when he said yes.
1:36:13Elon MuskIs this some, like, faking weird metaphor for cannibalism or something? I don't get, like, what. What the hell? I remember thinking that was just crazy when I was a kid like this to, like, whoa, you know, I mean, even as a metaphor it's kind of odd, you know, so it's like, and should it be giving alcohol to minors?
1:36:31Seth DillonI was like, we do grape juice.
1:36:34Elon MuskWe're bad juice. Okay.
1:36:37Babylon Bee HostI think it's unusual to even be thinking about that as a kid. Like, as a kid you just go through the motions and then later on that you think, wait a minute, what does this actually represent?
1:36:44Babylon Bee HostWhat am I doing?
1:36:45Elon MuskWhen I was a kid, I was like, like, is this actually blood and body? What? You know, I don't, I don't know if I want to eat somebody. And then I was like, what?
1:36:55Seth DillonThis is.
1:36:56Elon MuskI mean, I did it anyway. I'm like, this seems like, okay, man. I don't know if this is just pretty odd, you know, I remember thinking that even at age 5.
1:37:04Elon MuskSo I was like, you know, and I was definitely like, you know, Sunday school there, like when they were telling me all the stories and I was like asking questions and like, they really were upset that I was asking questions.
1:37:17Elon MuskAnd I was like, you know, Jesus like fed the crowd with like five loaves of bread and three fish. And I'm like, how big was the crowd? And like, where did the fish and bread come from?
1:37:29Elon MuskDid like from his cloak or something, like, because I was like reading books and I was like, this is like, did it materialize?
1:37:39Seth DillonI don't know.
1:37:40Elon MuskWhere did it come from? You know, like, how did it. Would you like take a bite of the bread and would just. The bread would just come back to being a full bread?
1:37:47Babylon Bee HostYeah. You look away and it's kind of
1:37:48Elon Musklike they left out the details.
1:37:51Babylon Bee HostWhere did the universe come from?
1:37:53Seth DillonYeah,
1:37:56Elon Muskwell, yeah, I'm not saying I know all the answers here. I'm just, you know, it's just. And like, Jesus was obviously very pro alcohol, you know, because one of his mercies was turning water into wine.
1:38:08Elon MuskAnd then it was like they were having a party, they ran out of wine. Okay. And they're like, let's keep this bender going. Who can solve this problem? We're out of white cloth.
1:38:22Elon MuskFriggin stores closed. Jesus was like, I gotcha. Okay, Water now wine. I like, party on. So, you know, accurate pro fighting with alcohol is literally. It was more than a miracle.
1:38:36Babylon Bee HostBible story time.
1:38:39Elon MuskIt's like, you're definitely, you're the savior. You kept the party going with lots of wine. That's great. So,
1:38:51Seth Dillonyeah.
1:38:51Babylon Bee HostWell, thank you. I appreciate you coming here, talking with us very much. It's pleasure to meet you in person. And you know, we'll, we'll continue to throw out the satire that we hope you'll respond to and, you know, keep that going a little bit.
1:39:08Babylon Bee HostOh, we didn't ask Onion or the Bee, but I guess that was kind of answered earlier. Yeah. Yes, we already covered that.
1:39:14Elon MuskYeah. I mean, I think the Onion has done some extremely funny stuff over time.
1:39:19Seth DillonIt's just.
1:39:19Elon MuskIt just seems to have been, you know, in recent years, somewhat infected by the woke my environment. So that just makes everything less funny. Woke mind virus is a world without humor.
1:39:30Babylon Bee HostYeah. I'm hoping neuralink can solve mind viruses.
1:39:36Elon MuskThank you very much.
1:39:37Babylon Bee HostAppreciate it.
1:39:37Seth DillonThank you. This is. Thanks so much.
1:39:39Babylon Bee HostThanks so much.