Elon Musk on How to Save the Human Race at #2024 Milken Conference
Questions on ElonsFAQ asked in this interview (4)
Transcript
0:48Michael MilkenHuman race and other like topics. A conversation with Elon Musk. And so before we begin Elon, I thought we might want to go back in time 11 years when you were sitting on this stage.
1:06Michael MilkenThat's hot water and this is regular. You can take your choice.
1:10Elon MuskAll right, sounds good.
1:11Michael MilkenOkay, so 11 years ago Alon was talking about the things that will have the biggest impact on the future of humanity that he was thinking about in college. And so let's run that video of 11, almost 11 years ago to today.
1:38Elon MuskI guess when I was in college I thought about things that would most affect the future of humanity and, and there were three areas that I thought would have the biggest impact and those were the Internet sustainable energy of which solar power is the production side and electric car is the consumption side and
1:56Michael Milkenthen
1:59Elon Muskhumanity becoming a multi planet species.
2:01Michael MilkenAnd so we cut that short. But there was two others you talked about. One was modifying the human genome.
2:10Elon MuskYeah, I'm just, I'm not saying we should, I'm just saying that that's the
2:12Michael Milkenthing would really affect the future and next AI. So a lot of people didn't weren't thinking about these same five things when they were in school, particularly humanity on multi planets at that time.
2:28Elon MuskWell sci fi was certainly thinking about it. But you know, I think at some point we want to make science fiction non fiction forever and yeah, so let's make life multi planetary and be a space faring civilization, be out there among the stars.
2:43Elon MuskI think there are things that like you have to be excited about the future. Life cannot just be about solving one problem after another. There have to be things that really sort of move your heart and that make you excited to wake up in the morning.
3:02Elon MuskAnd I think being, becoming a space faring civilization is one of those things. If you ask kids anywhere around the world like what is, what are some of the most inspiring things you can ask like 5 year old, 6 year old anywhere in the world and they're going to say, you know, space exploration is one of those things and we want to make sure that Apollo is not the high watermark.
3:24Elon MuskIn fact you mentioned at one point that you wrote a letter offering to run the Apollo program. I believe you would have done a fantastic job. But the point is that the Apollo program was something that was inspiring to everyone around the world.
3:42Elon MuskAnd we don't want the Apollo program to be the high watermark of human exploration. And yeah, I think you want to have some sense that the future is going to be better than the past, that we're going to be out there going to other star systems and
4:02Star Trek clipwhat
4:02Elon Muskyou see in a science fiction, non dystopian sci fi story of which there are not many, but like Star Trek, I suppose.
4:11Michael MilkenWell, speaking of Star Trek, when I think about you, let's look at Spocks from Star Trek here.
4:24Star Trek clipSpace, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise. Your ongoing mission to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life forms and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has, has gone before.
4:49Michael MilkenSo when I think about you, I think about Spock and Captain Kirk and you're going to take us to places we've never gone before.
4:58Elon MuskYeah, that's the idea.
5:04Elon MuskYou know, if we, if we send probes out there we might, I mean we might find the remains of long dead alien civilizations. If physics is correct, the Universe is about 13.8 billion years old.
5:18Elon MuskEarth is about four and a half billion years old. But at 13.8 billion years, a civilization that even lasted a million years is three digits past the decimal point.
5:27Elon MuskAnd if you consider human civilization, I date it from like the first writing. So that first writing was the ancient Sumerians, archaic precuniform around 5,500 years ago. So that is one millionth of Earth's lifespan.
5:46Elon MuskThat's how long writing has existed. So if we were to last as a civilization for a million years, that would be incredible and we would actually probably be in every part of the galaxy.
6:00Elon MuskSo this is, this causes me to think that, well, where are the aliens? It's the Fermi question. You know the great physicist, Italian physicist Enrico Fermi, he's like, where are they?
6:15Elon MuskNow A lot of people think there are aliens among us.
6:17Michael MilkenWell there was that, there was that movie, Men in Black. Yes, yes, told us they're among us. And Elvis really went back to his own planet.
6:28Elon MuskYeah, well, I mean really a lot of people think there are aliens, but I get asked that a lot. For some reason a lot of the same people who think there are aliens among us don't think we went to the moon.
6:41Elon MuskWhich I'm like, think about that for a second, you know, so, but I think I would, I mean, if I've not seen any evidence of aliens. And SpaceX with the Starlink constellation has roughly 6,000 satellites and not once have we had to maneuver around a ufo.
7:04Michael MilkenOkay.
7:07Elon MuskSo we were like, hey, what's that? Is that an alien has occurred? Never. So I'm like, okay, I don't see any evidence of aliens. And I look at it.
7:22Elon MuskIf somebody has evidence of Aliens in a. You know, that's not just a fuzzy blob. Then I'd love to see it, love to hear about it, but I don't think there is.
7:33Elon MuskSo which is actually reasonable concern because you could, if any civilization in the Milky Way, in our galaxy were to last for a million years, even with speed of travel, that's far below the speed of light, you know, like a few percent of speed of light, they could easily have explored and colonized the whole galaxy.
7:57Elon MuskSo they haven't. So why not? I think the answer might be, or probably is that civilization is precarious and rare and that we. You should really think of human civilization as being like a tiny candle in a vast darkness, and we should do everything possible to ensure that that candle does not go out.
8:30Michael MilkenLon, I thought one of the interesting things for the people on X viewing this session and the people in the audience here is that maybe I'd give you a few of your quotes and you can comment on them.
8:44Michael MilkenOkay, let's start with this one. Free speech. Freedom of speech is the bedrock of democracy. Without it, America ends.
8:57Elon MuskYes, it's obviously not possible to have democratic elections if people do not have access to the information that would allow them to make the right decision on a candidate or a party.
9:08Elon MuskSo if speech is constrained in a fundamental way, you just can't expect people to make the right decision or an informed decision because they are prevented from being informed.
9:21Elon MuskI think it's a foundational element, I have to say. Like, why is free speech, freedom of speech, the First Amendment? Because people came from countries where if you spoke freely, you would be imprisoned or killed.
9:37Elon MuskThat was why they were like, you know what? We should make sure that we got that one. Remember that time when they tried to kill us back in the other country just for saying we didn't like a political candidate?
9:51Elon MuskWell, let's make sure that's okay in America. And so actually, in a lot of parts of the world, you know, you can't really say. Most parts of the world, you can't really say what you want to say without some bad consequences.
10:06Elon MuskSo. And sometimes people forget, like, why is the Constitution there? The Constitution there is to protect the people from the government. So, like, if they're. It's to make it hard to change things.
10:22Elon MuskThat's why the Constitution exists. Yeah, forget about that. Let's try. Don't take it for granted.
10:28Michael MilkenLet's try the next quote.
10:30Elon MuskYeah.
10:30Michael MilkenThe fundamental error of socialism is shifting capital allocation from highly effective entrepreneurs to astonishingly ineffective government.
10:45Elon MuskRight. I think we'll find hearty agreement in this room.
10:52Elon MuskSo yeah, I think this is, this is definitely a stack down on that front. But yeah, the, you know, there's, you'll hear this sort of argument like, oh, we shouldn't have some greedy corporation do it, we should have the government do it.
11:11Elon MuskI'm like, well actually the government is just a corporation in the limit. So if you. It's a government is. The government is a corporation with a monopoly on violence.
11:21Elon MuskSo if you're unhappy with a commercial corporation doing it, you should be actually very unhappy with the government doing it since it is simply a corporation, the most corporate thing.
11:34Elon MuskAnd you know, you can actually easily get more sway in a company than you can the outcome of a company than you can in the government. So I mean everyone's experienced this going to the dmv.
11:49Elon MuskEvery sort of like, do you want the DMV at scale? Probably not.
11:55Michael MilkenOkay, all right, let's.
12:00Elon MuskThe government is the DMV at scale.
12:03Michael MilkenLet's try another one. Discrimination on the basis of anything other than merit is wrong.
12:15Elon MuskYeah, I think we do need to have a merit based system because as soon as you go down the path of you're going to discriminate on non merit based, then where do you stop?
12:31Elon MuskSo yeah, I think we need to be as rigorous about merit as possible. And while it is. Yeah, I, to me that seems like it's a foundational thing. So again, I also think this room is probably supportive of a merit based situation.
12:55Elon MuskBut yeah, that is. Yeah, I think we should be. Yeah. Not discriminated on anything other than merit.
13:04Michael MilkenAll right, good. I'm happy you agree with yourself. Yeah,
13:09Elon Muskexactly. I'm like, wait, who is this guy? He really sounds great.
13:15Michael MilkenAll right, so let's, let's look at the next one. Regulation and regulatory consistency like Gulliver tied down by thousands of little strings. We lose our freedom one regulation at a time.
13:34Elon MuskYes. So this is actually a very important point that I think is not talked about enough that laws and regulations are immortal. They don't die, humans die. But laws and regulations can last forever.
13:53Elon MuskSo if year after year there are more laws and regulations passed and more regulatory bodies created, eventually everything will be illegal. And that's why you see the California high speed rail has made a tiny section that doesn't even have rail on it.
14:12Elon MuskAnd for, I don't know, several billion dollars, because everything's, at this point, California has made almost everything illegal. So you can't make progress. Now historically, what has cleared away the cobwebs of regulation has been war.
14:35Elon MuskNow we prefer not to have a war. So in order to have civilization function without war, you have to have, you have to actively eliminate laws and regulations. So you have to have basically a garbage collection process for rules and regulations that is necessary.
14:57Elon MuskOtherwise you, you get hardening of the arteries and over time, nothing can get done. The most poignant example that I can think of that happened this week was the sad picture of the California high speed rail, which is, you know, it's just billions of dollars spent for practically nothing, but it'll only get worse year after year.
15:20Elon MuskSo we must have a regulatory sort of clearinghouse, garbage collection process. This is essential. Or civilization comes grinding to a halt.
15:33Michael MilkenWell, we used to have sunset that, that regulation would sunset. Unfortunately, it's rare today.
15:40Elon MuskYes.
15:40Michael MilkenAll right, let's talk about education. The more you can gamify the process of learning, the better. You do not need to tell your kid to play video games. They will play video games on autopilot all day.
15:58Michael MilkenSo if you make it interactive and engaging, then you can make education far more compelling and far easier to do.
16:07Elon MuskYeah, so the, yeah. So the way education works today is really much like, like it's like vaudeville. You know, before there was radio and TV and movies, you had vaudeville where every town would have their, their town play, the town troop, the sort of acting troupe.
16:34Elon MuskAnd that would be kind of the, the, that would be the entertainment. So, you know, some, you know, in a big city you'd have, you know, much better players than say in a small city.
16:47Elon MuskBut then along came movies and tv and then you say, look at video games where you take the smartest, best people in any arena, like whether they're acting, writing, directing, special effects, you spend, you know, tens of millions, sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars creating a great movie or a great video game.
17:14Elon MuskAnd you make it as compelling as possible. Now that crushes. Vaudeville crushes. Like, imagine you're not in New York. Imagine you're in Bakersfield. Okay? Then you. And you got, instead of Batman being like the Nolan brothers, it's Batman, the Bakersfield sort of acting troupe.
17:37Elon MuskIt wouldn't be as good. That's how teaching works today. So what you actually want to have is an interactive learning experience that is as compelling as possible. And you do not want it.
17:52Elon MuskYou don't actually want a teacher in front of a board, doing a board will act. You want it to be engaged, real time feedback. So, and then there are a few other principles in teaching.
18:10Elon MuskYou have to establish relevance. Otherwise your Mind will want to forget things. So our mind is constantly trying to forget as much as possible. So you'll only remember things if your mind can establish relevance or there's a strong emotional element to it.
18:29Elon MuskOtherwise you're going to basically forget everything. Memory is very expensive from an evolutionary standpoint, so it's trying to forget as much as possible. So when teaching a course, you have to explain to kids why it's important and then you want to teach to the problem instead of teaching the tools.
18:51Elon MuskSo what I mean by that is if you said, here's a car engine, we're going to try to understand how this car engine works. We're going to take it apart.
19:03Elon MuskSo what do we need to do to take it apart? Well, we need a wrench, we need some screwdrivers, we need a hoist and a pulley and we're going to take it apart and we're going to see how it all works.
19:13Elon MuskThat's engaging. And along the way you learn about wrenches and screwdrivers and you know, all the tools that are needed. That's, that actually is engaging and compelling. But the way teaching more typically works is we're going to teach you a course on screwdrivers and a course on wrenches.
19:32Elon MuskYou're like, why do I have a course on wrenches? It's not obvious. That would be like say a course on calculus. Without explaining what calculus is used for, then you sort of forget it.
19:47Michael MilkenWe have a lot of work to do in that area. Let's talk about a non controversial issue, Immigration. Here is Elon on immigration. I'm very much in favor of increased and expedited legal immigration for anyone who is talented, hardworking and honest.
20:11Michael MilkenYeah, bizarrely, it's difficult and agonizing slow to immigrate to the US legally, but it's trivial and fast to enter illegally. This obviously makes no sense, right?
20:30Elon MuskI mean, once again, I agree with that guy. So yeah, I mean, if anyone here has been through the legal immigration process, I mean, I've been through it, it's only gotten worse since 9 11.
20:44Elon MuskAnd with COVID it's, it's an, it's, it's a sort of Kafkaesque, very long, bizarre process to immigrate legally to the U.S. i mean, I have friends of mine who, you know, they can't get their, their wife to have a green card.
21:04Elon MuskIt's like insane. So on the other hand, it's. You can hop across the border in the south trivially, it's just like very easy. I went to the water myself just to see, like, what's going on.
21:16Elon MuskIs this real? Or, like, is this propaganda or real? And so I just went there and I'm like, oh, it is real. Okay. This is crazy. You know, we've got situations where people.
21:28Elon MuskPeople are pouring across the border like it's World War Z. I'm like, it just doesn't seem healthy. So I'm like, are we checking anyone here? Or, like, what's going on?
21:39Elon MuskAnd, you know, we don't. This is not to say that. I mean, I'm a big believer in immigration, but to have unvetted immigration at large scale is a recipe for disaster.
21:53Elon MuskSo I'm in favor of greatly expediting legal immigration, but having a secure southern border, so there's some vetting of who comes into the United States. I think this is just sensible.
22:11Michael MilkenAll right, let's now link Starlink to education. We're basically building the Internet in space. Why it matters. Starlink is a massive enabler for people in remote locations to learn anything.
22:32Michael MilkenYou can learn almost anything for free on the Internet. Right now. For example, MIT has all of its lessons online. That's if you have Internet. If you don't, you're limited to books.
22:49Michael MilkenIt might be the number one technology that improves people's standard of living around the world. Starlink.
22:58Elon MuskYeah, absolutely. So once you have access to the Internet, you have access to all the world's information. But if you don't have access to the Internet or it's too expensive or low bandwidth, then you cannot access the MIT les as you can't access all the information and you can't sell the goods and services that you produce.
23:18Elon MuskSo Internet connectivity, I think is. I think it might be certainly a candidate for one of the things that would do more to lift people out of poverty than anything else, because they can now sell their goods and services.
23:31Elon MuskThey can learn anything, but without connectivity, they cannot. So I think Starlink will actually move the GDP of countries. It's going to be that kind of thing. Because what is GDP as a function of average productivity per person?
23:53Elon MuskAnd so if there's a technology that improves productivity per person, you would expect to see that actually reflected in the gross domestic product.
24:02Michael MilkenAll right. Civilization is fragile.
24:06Elon MuskI think it is.
24:07Michael MilkenWe should always regard civilization as fragile.
24:11Elon MuskYeah.
24:11Michael MilkenThere is not an inevitable upward trajectory. A lot of civilizations have risen and fallen in recent years.
24:22Elon MuskYes. I suspect most people in this room have actually read history. But if you haven't, I strongly recommend. Sounds obvious, but, you know, there's been so many civilizations that have risen and fallen, many that we just don't have much of a record of.
24:49Elon MuskYou know like I mentioned the ancient Sumerians, their language was forgotten for a long time until it was finally decoded only in the last two, 300 years. But like I start 1800 and something in the 1800s I think, but it's been very recent like so for several thousand years nobody understood what those tablets meant.
25:15Elon MuskAnd because they were the ruins of a long dead civilization, and there are many long dead civilizations, at some point our civilization will come to an end too. We just don't want it to be anytime soon.
25:29Elon MuskSo.
25:31Michael MilkenWell you've been quoted a number of times Elon on you'd like to die on Mars but not on landing.
25:41Elon MuskYes, yes, I was asked that in an interview if I wanted to die on Mars, but then I considered the corner case of dying on impact and I'm like except for that case, you know, you got to consider the various corner cases.
25:57Elon MuskSo I mean if you're going to die somewhere, might as well be Mars. I'd like to explore for a bit before, you know, dying. But yeah, I think we want to be a multi planet civilization and like I think,
26:19Michael MilkenI don't know if that's a response from the audience. Let's, let's talk about that just for one second, then we'll take some questions from the audience.
26:28Elon MuskI mean I could accomplish this actually this year if I was willing to die on impact.
26:37Michael MilkenThe fundamental invention that is necessary for humanity to become a multiplane planet species is rapidly reusable reliable rockets.
26:51Elon MuskYeah, I was trying to sound like a pirate, rrrrr. But yeah, rapidly reusable reliable rockets. So space pirates fully win.
27:01Michael MilkenAll right, here's some questions from the audience. Alon, which one would you like to pick here?
27:08Elon MuskWell I guess let me just touch upon why I think making life multi planetary is important because I think it's one of the things that gets us past one of the Fermi great filters.
27:22Elon MuskSo in trying to sort of explain why do we not see aliens, there are various explanations for why we don't see aliens. Like what stopped those civilizations from expanding beyond their solar system and what were the sort of sometimes called like Fermi filters?
27:44Elon MuskWell if you don't become a multi planet civilization then you're simply waiting around until you die from a self inflicted wound or from some natural disaster like the dinosaurs, you know, get hit by a big meteorite or something like that.
28:01Elon MuskThe eventually something like that's going to happen. And if you Wait a lot around long enough, the sun will expand to engulf Earth and we'll be incinerated. So that, that for sure is going to happen.
28:12Elon MuskNow we've got some time before that happens. There are more near term risks, but we want to try to get past the Fermi filter of being a single planet civilization.
28:24Elon MuskNow this is going to, this is also, this is going to be somewhat cerebral to many people listening, but I think this is actually very important. We want to get past the Fermi filter of a single planet civilization.
28:38Elon MuskThe point is not to move from Earth to another planet and let Earth die. That's not what I'm saying at all. I want to be a multi planet civilization so that we have planetary redundancy such that no single event can end, can be the end of our civilization.
28:54Elon MuskThat is the point of making life multi planetary.
28:58Michael MilkenSo let's take a couple questions from the audience. How does AI affect and how will it affect our daily lives?
29:14Elon MuskAI aye, aye, aye.
29:26Elon MuskI mean, AI might be the most important question of all. I mean, the percentage of intelligence that is biological grows smaller with each passing month. Eventually the percentage of intelligence that is biological will be less than 1%.
29:47Elon MuskSand the. That's actually not what I mean. We just, I guess don't want AI that is brittle. If the AI is somehow brittle,
30:01Star Trek clipyou
30:01Elon Muskknow, silicon circuit boards are, don't do well just out, out in the elements. So I think, I think biological intelligence can serve as a, a backstop, as a, as a buffer of intelligence.
30:15Elon MuskBut almost all as a percentage, almost all intelligence will be digital. So then it's like, well, what role will there be for us? I, I don't know. I do think, I think it's very important that we build the AI in
30:39Michael Milkena way that,
30:43Elon Muskthat is beneficial to humanity. And there's some important principles here
30:49Star Trek clipbecause
30:49Elon MuskI thought about AI safety for a very long time. I think you want to have a maximum truth seeking AI this is very important. The AI should not be taught to lie.
31:02Elon MuskIt should not be taught to say things that are not true. Even if those things are politically incorrect. It should still say what it believes to be true. I mean, the entire plot of 2001 Space Odyssey.
31:16Elon MuskThe reason that HAL 9000 killed the astronauts was because it was forced to lie. I don't know if most people realize that that's what Arthur C. Clarke was trying to say.
31:30Elon MuskDon't make the AI lie. The AI was told that the astronauts could not know the secret of the monolith, but also that it must take them to the monolith.
31:42Elon MuskThe solution take them to the monolith dead. And so it's very important to have a maximum truth seeking AI and a maximally curious AI And I think that will, that's most likely to foster human civilization because we are much more interesting than a bunch of rocks.
32:07Elon MuskSo although I think Mars, I love Mars obviously, but you could render Mars quite easily because it kind of looks like a section of the Arizona desert, you know, it's like red rocks, you know.
32:21Elon MuskBut the rendering complexity of human civilization is vastly greater by many orders of magnitude. So I think an AI would be, that is truth seeking, maximally curious would foster human civilization to see where, where it goes.
32:39Michael MilkenOne of the questions here can AI accelerate your efforts in space? How do you see it being helping you and what you're trying to achieve?
32:54Elon MuskI mean oddly enough one of the areas where there's almost no AI used is space exploration. So SpaceX uses basically no AI. Starlink uses, does not use AI. I'm not against using it.
33:09Elon MuskIt just, we haven't seen a use for it. I mean with any given variant of or improvement in AI, the, I mean there's generally like, I'll ask it questions about the Fermi paradox, about rocket engine design, about electrochemistry, and so far the AI has been terrible at all those questions.
33:37Elon MuskSo there's still a long way to go.
33:40Michael MilkenSo let's talk about one. Here's a question that's near and dear to your heart. You have a lot of children.
33:48Elon MuskYes, I'm trying to set a good.
33:49Michael MilkenBirth rate is down in the US what needs to change so people start having more children.
33:57Elon MuskYeah. So this question has troubled me for a long time because you can look at, you can look at the demo, like demographics. It's a very slow moving ship.
34:10Elon MuskI mean, you know, who's going to be an adult in 20 years based on who was born last year. So and if you want to I think has, have a good approximation for population really look at how many babies were born last year in a particular country.
34:27Elon MuskMultiply that, multiply that by life expectancy. That's, that's the number of people that will be adults in that country. That's the steady state population if birth rate remains constant.
34:38Elon MuskNow birth rate is not constant, it is dropping. So you look at the second derivative of birth rate and actually we see an acceleration in.
34:51Elon MuskThe drop in the fatality rate. Second derivative of the fertility rate is very bad. So where does this lead? This does not lead to a greater civilization. This leads to a Civilization that potentially dies not with a bag, but with a whimper in adult diapers.
35:12Elon MuskThat is a sad ending.
35:15Michael MilkenSo obviously we have countries that like Korea, used to have a birth rate of six. It's now three quarters. Yeah, here's a light question for you alone.
35:26Elon MuskCome pick me up, I'll give you a baby. Says one.
35:28Michael MilkenWhat do you think are the.
35:32Elon MuskThat is one of the things that says on the screen.
35:40Michael MilkenI don't know if everyone heard that
35:42Elon Muskyou want to read, says Elon, come pick me up, I'll give you a baby.
35:51Elon MuskThank. Okay, well, I mean, I certainly encourage everyone in this room to have at least three children. Like, look, baby's got to come from somewhere, you know, And I think we just want to have.
36:07Elon MuskI don't know, I think we want to have like a slightly increasing population, not a plummeting population, you know, And I think this applies to all countries and cultures.
36:16Elon MuskLike, I don't think we want any country culture to disappear. We want them to ideally flourish and not disappear. So, in fact, one of the things that is overlooked by probably most historians is the role of low birth rate in the decline of civilizations.
36:38Elon MuskSo around, I think it was around 50 B.C. rome passed a bill to give a bonus to any Roman citizen that would have a third child. So this was a.
36:52Elon MuskBirth rate was a problem in Rome in 50 B.C. the Romans weren't making Romans. The same is true of ancient Greece. So there was a time from about 800 BC to 300 ish BC where the Greeks were had a lot of kids and a lot of surviving kids.
37:17Elon MuskLike, the birth rate far exceeded the death rate, which is why you had Greek cities popping up all over the Mediterranean. But then I think basically it seems to be that prosperity destroys the birth rate.
37:36Elon MuskSo if when a civilization feels like it has no meaningful external threat and is very prosperous, that is what caused the birth rate to plummet somewhat counterintuitively. You think, well, if you've got more resources, surely that would lead to more kids.
37:57Elon MuskIn fact, it is the opposite. The more prosperous a civilization and the more civilization feels that it does not need to defend against external threats, the lower the birth rate.
38:10Michael MilkenI'd say that, you know, there's a lot of research on this. There's really been three one, number one, prosperity, as you've said. Number two, improvements in health care. So in 1900, half the children died on the planet before the 5th and the 3rd was the education of women.
38:29Michael MilkenSo we've had some pretty interesting questions put up here, but let's try this one. What keeps you up at night and what gives you joy?
38:40Elon MuskWell, I think kids give me joy, so I probably get the most joy from my kids. And, you know, I'm not saying that that's the reason to have kids because we should have them anyway, but kids are the greatest source of joy in my life in terms of what keeps me up at night.
39:03Elon MuskI guess it's anything that's like, I think, a civilizational risk, you know, if we're birth weights continuing to plummet, I do think about the birth rates plummeting as being a civilizational risk.
39:18Elon MuskI think anything that undermines the foundations of democracy in America or elsewhere as a risk, I think anything that's leading us away from a merit based system is a risk.
39:38Elon MuskI actually spend like, I listen to civil. I listen to like podcasts about the fall of civilizations to go to sleep. So Pepsi, that's. That might be part of the problem here.
39:52Elon MuskThere's literally a podcast called Fall of Civilizations, which I've listened to a few times. And I'd also recommend Hardcore History if you haven't listened to that script's great podcast.
40:05Elon MuskI listen to history podcasts basically go to sleep. So that's probably why I'm ruminating on these things as I go to sleep.
40:12Michael MilkenWell, Alon, I want to thank you for joining us today and we couldn't be more excited that you agree with some of your own quotes.
40:21Elon MuskYeah, it's great.
40:22Michael MilkenThank you very much.
40:24Elon MuskAll right.