Elon Musk has dominated the headlines for weeks, as his company begins its commercial space flights and his electric car juggernaut debuts new facilities and products.
But beyond each of those by far has been his recent buy up of 9% of social media platform Twitter.
Musk has bounced between being a passive investor and an active investor, all while teasing his interest in the company, trolling its board and suggesting alternate purposes for its headquarters, platform and mission.
The latest chapter was perhaps the easiest to foretell.
On the morning April 14, Musk offered to buy Twitter in a hostile takeover for $53 billion.
While at least one major Saudi investor immediately rejected the offer a low-ball effort, what Elon might say next was on the minds of anyone following the market, especially when he spoke at a TED interview with Chris Anderson just hours later.
The transcript of his full remarks on stage are below.
Christian Marquardt – Pool/Getty Images
TED Talk Interview
Interviewer:
Thank you. Elon, welcome. So, Elon, a few hours ago you made an offer to buy Twitter. Why?
Elon Musk:
How’d you know?
Interviewer:
Little bird tweeted in my ear or something. I don’t know.
Elon Musk:
By the way, have you seen the movie Ted about the bear?
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Interviewer:
I have. I have.
Elon Musk:
It’s a good movie.
Interviewer:
It’s not here.
Elon Musk:
Yeah. Yeah. So is there a question?
Interviewer:
Why make that offer?
Elon Musk:
Oh, well, I think it’s very important for there to be an inclusive arena for free speech where—
Audience member:
Whoo!
Elon Musk:
So, yeah. Twitter has become kind of the de facto town square. So it’s just really important that people have both the reality and the perception that they are able to speak freely within the bounds of the law. So one of the things that I believe Twitter should do is open source the algorithm and make any changes to people’s tweets, if they’re emphasized or de-emphasized, that action should be made apparent so anyone can see that action’s been taken so there’s no behind the scenes manipulation, either algorithmically or manually.
Interviewer:
But last week when we spoke, Elon, I asked you whether you were thinking of taking up. You said, “No way.” You said, “I do not want to own Twitter. It is a recipe for misery. Everyone will blame me for everything.” What on Earth changed?
Elon Musk:
Yeah, I think everyone will still blame me for everything. Yeah. If I acquire Twitter and something goes wrong, it’s my fault. A hundred percent. I think there will be quite a few hours, yes.
Interviewer:
It will be miserable, but you still want to do it. Why?
Elon Musk:
Well, I mean, I hope it’s not too miserable, but I just think it’s important to the function of democracy. It’s important to the function of the United States as a free country and many other countries and to actually help freedom in the world and more importantly in the US.
Elon Musk:
And so I think the civilizational risk is decreased the more we can increase the trust of Twitter as a public platform. And so I do think this would be somewhat painful. I’m not sure that I will actually be able to acquire it. And I should also say the intent is to retain as many shareholders as is allowed by the law in a private company, which I think is around 2000 or so. It’s definitely not from the standpoint of let me figure out how to monopolize or maximize my ownership of Twitter, but we’ll try to bring along as many shareholders as we’re allowed to.
Interviewer:
You don’t necessarily want to pay out 40, or whatever it is, billion dollars in cash. You’d like them to come with you in the company.
Elon Musk:
I mean, I could technically afford it.
Interviewer:
I’ve heard that. I’ve heard that.
Elon Musk:
But what I’m saying is this is not a way to make money. It’s just that my strong, intuitive sense is that having a public platform that is maximally trusted and broadly inclusive is extremely important to the future of civilization.
Interviewer:
But you’ve described yourself—
Elon Musk:
I don’t care about the economics at all.
Interviewer:
Okay. That’s cool to hear. This is not about the economics, it’s for the moral good that you think it will achieve. You’ve described yourself, Elon, as a free speech absolutist, but does that mean that there’s literally nothing that people can’t say and it’s okay?
Elon Musk:
Well, I think obviously Twitter or any forum is bound by the laws of the country that it operates in. So obviously there are some limitations on free speech in the US, and, of course, Twitter would have to abide by those rules.
Interviewer:
Right. So you can’t incite people to violence like a direct incitement to violence. You can’t do the equivalent of crying fire in a movie theater, for example.
Elon Musk:
No, that would be a crime.
Interviewer:
Yeah, right.
Elon Musk:
It should be a crime.
Interviewer:
But here’s the challenge, is that it’s such a nuanced difference between different things. So there’s incitement to violence. That’s a no, it’s illegal. There’s hate speech, which some forms of hate speech are fine. I hate spinach.
Elon Musk:
Even if it’s sautéd in a cream sauce?
Interviewer:
But the problem is… So let’s say someone says, okay, here’s one tweet, “I hate politician X.” The next tweet is, “I wish politician X wasn’t alive.” As some of us have said about Putin right now, for example. That’s legitimate speech. Another tweet is, “I wish politician X wasn’t alive,” with a picture of their head with a gun site over it. Or that plus their address. I mean, at some point someone has to make a decision as to which of those is not okay. Can an algorithm do that? Or surely you need human judgment at some point.
Elon Musk:
No, I think, like I said, in my view Twitter should match the laws of the country and really there’s [inaudible 00:06:35] to do that. But going beyond that and having it be unclear who’s making what changes to where, having tweets mysteriously be promoted and demoted with no insight into what’s going on, having a black box algorithm promote some things and not other things, I think this can be quite dangerous.
Interviewer:
So the idea of opening the algorithm is a huge deal. And I think many people would welcome that, of understanding exactly how it’s making the decision.
Elon Musk:
And critique it.
Interviewer:
And critique it.
Elon Musk:
Like what I mean is I think the code should be on GitHub. So then, [inaudible 00:07:18] can look through it, and say, “I see a problem here. I don’t agree with this.” They can highlight issues, suggest changes, in the same way that you update Linux or Signal or something like that.
Interviewer:
But as I understand it, at some point right now what the algorithm would do is it would look at, for example, how many people have flagged a tweet as obnoxious and then at some point a human has to look at it and make a decision as to “Does this cross the line or not?” The algorithm itself can’t, I don’t think yet, tell the difference between legal and okay and definitely obnoxious. And so the question is, which humans make that call? I mean, do you have a picture of that? Right now, Twitter and Facebook and others, they’ve hired thousands of people to try to help make wise decisions and the trouble is that no-one can agree on what is wise. How do you solve that?
Elon Musk:
Well, I think we would want to err on the… if in doubt, let the speech, let it exist. If it’s a gray area, I would say let the tweet exist. But obviously in a case where there’s perhaps a lot of controversy, that you would not want to necessarily promote that tweet. I’m not saying that I have all the answers here. But I do think that we want to be just very reluctant to delete things, just be very cautious with permanent bans. Timeouts I think are better than permanent bans.
Elon Musk:
But just in general, like I said, it won’t be perfect, but I think we want it to really have the perception and reality that speech is as free as reasonably possible. And a good sign as to whether there is free speech is is someone you don’t like allowed to say something you don’t like. And if that is the case, then we have free speech. And it’s damn annoying when someone you don’t like says something you don’t like. That is a sign of a healthy, functioning free speech situation.
Interviewer:
So I think many people would agree with that. And looking at the reaction online, many people are excited by you coming in and the changes you’re proposing. Some of us are absolutely horrified. Here’s how they would see it. They would say, “Wait a sec, we agree that Twitter is an incredibly important town square. It is where the world exchanges opinion about life and death matters. How on earth could it be owned by the world’s richest person? That can’t be right.” So what’s the response there? Is there any way that you can distance yourself from the actual decision making that matters on content in some very clear way that is convincing to people?
Elon Musk:
Well, like I said, I think it’s very important that the algorithm be open sourced and that any manual adjustments be identified. So if somebody did something to a tweet, there’s information attached to it that that action was taken. And I wouldn’t personally be in there editing tweets. But you’ll know if something was done to promote, demote, or otherwise affect a tweet.
Elon Musk:
As for media ownership, I mean, you’ve got Mark Zuckerberg owning Facebook and Instagram and WhatsApp, and with a share ownership structure that will have Mark Zuckerberg the 14th still controlling those entities. Literally.
Interviewer:
Well, certainly—
Elon Musk:
We won’t have that at Twitter.
Interviewer:
If you commit to opening up the algorithm, that definitely gives some level of confidence. Talk about some of the other changes that you’ve proposed. So the edit button, that’s definitely coming if you have your way.
Elon Musk:
Yeah.
Interviewer:
And how do you—
Elon Musk:
I mean, frankly a top priority I would have is eliminating the spam and scam bots and the bot armies that are on Twitter. I think these influence… They make the product much worse. If I had a Dogecoin for every crypto scam I saw, I would have a hundred billion Dogecoin.
Interviewer:
Do you regret sparking the storm of excitement over DOGE and where it’s gone, or?
Elon Musk:
I mean, I think DOGE is fun. And I always said don’t bet the farm on Dogecoin. FYI. But I like dogs and I like memes, and it’s got both of those.
Interviewer:
But just on the edit button, how do you get around the problem of… So someone tweets, “Elon rocks,” and it’s tweeted by 2 million people and then after that they edit it to, “Elon sucks.” And then all those retweets, they’re all embarrassed. How do you avoid that type of changing of meaning? So that retweeters are [inaudible 00:13:25]
Elon Musk:
Well, I think you’d only have the edit capability for a short period of time. And probably the thing to do upon the edit would be to zero out all retweets and favorites.
Interviewer:
Okay.
Elon Musk:
I’m open to ideas, though.
Interviewer:
So in one way the algorithm works kind of well for you right now. I wanted to show you this. So this is a typical tweet of mine. Kind of lame, unworthy, and whatever. And the amazing response it gets is this, Oh my God, 97 likes. And then I tried another one, and 29,000 likes. So the algorithm at least seems to be at the moment, “If Elon Musk, expand to the world immediately.” Not bad, right?
Elon Musk:
Yeah, I guess so. I mean, it was cool.
Interviewer:
So help us understand how it is you’ve built this incredible following on Twitter yourself when some of the people who love you the most look at some of what you tweet and they think it’s somewhere between embarrassing and crazy.
Elon Musk:
I mean, it is a little.
Interviewer:
And some of it’s amazing. But is that actually why it’s worked? Or what? Why has is it worked?
Elon Musk:
I mean, I don’t know. I mean, I’m tweeting more or less stream of consciousness. It’s not like, “Let me think about some grand plan about my Twitter or whatever.” I’m literally on the toilet or something like, “Ha-ha, this is funny.” And then tweet that out. That’s like most of them. That’s oversharing, but.
Interviewer:
But you are obsessed with getting the most out of every minute of your day. And so, wow.
Elon Musk:
I don’t know. I try to tweet out things that are interesting or funny. And then people seem to like it.
Interviewer:
So if you are unsuccessful… Actually, before I ask that, let me ask this. So how can I say? Is funding secured?
Elon Musk:
I have sufficient assets to complete the… It’s not a forward looking statement, blah, blah, blah. But, I mean, I can do it if possible.
Interviewer:
Right.
Elon Musk:
I should say, originally with Tesla back in the day, funding was actually secured. I want to be clear about that. In fact, this may be a good opportunity to clarify that. If funding was indeed secured and, I should say, why do I not have respect for the SEC in that situation? And I don’t mean to blame everyone at the SEC, but certainly the San Francisco office. Because the SEC knew that the funding was secured, but they pursued an active public investigation nonetheless.
Elon Musk:
At the time, Tesla was in a precarious financial situation. And I was told by the banks that if I did not agree to settle with the SEC that they would [inaudible 00:16:54] working capital and we would go bankrupt immediately. So that’s like having a gun to your child’s head. So I was forced to concede to the SEC unlawfully. Those bastards. And now it makes it look like I lied when I did not in fact lie. I was forced to admit that I lied to save Tesla’s life. And that’s the only reason.
Interviewer:
Given what’s actually happened to Tesla since then, though, aren’t you glad that you didn’t take it private?
Elon Musk:
Yeah. I mean, it’s difficult to put yourself in the position at the time. Tesla was the most relentless short seller attack in the history of the stock market. There’s something called “short and distort” where the barrage of negativity that Tesla was experiencing from short sellers and Wall Street was beyond all belief. Tesla was the most shorted stock in the history of stock markets. That is saying something. So this was affecting our ability to hire people. It was affecting our ability to sell cars. Yeah, it was terrible. Yeah. They wanted Tesla to die so bad, they could taste it.
Interviewer:
That was a really strong statement. I mean, obviously, a lot of people who [crosstalk 00:00:09] thought would say you have so much to offer the world on the upside, on the vision side. Don’t waste your time getting distracted by these battles that bring out negativity and make people feel that you’re being defensive. People don’t like fights, especially with powerful government authorities. They’d rather buy into your dream. Aren’t you encouraged by people just to edit that temptation out and go with the bigger story?
Elon Musk:
Well, I would say I’m somewhat of a mixed bag.
Interviewer:
You’re a fighter. You don’t like to lose. You are determined that you don’t, basically.
Elon Musk:
Sure, I don’t like to lose. I’m not sure many people do, but truth matters to me a lot, really. Pathologically, it matters to me.
Interviewer:
You don’t like to lose. If in this case, you are not successful and the board does not accept your offer, you said you won’t go higher. Is there a plan B?
Elon Musk:
There is.
Interviewer:
I think we would like to hear a little bit about plan B.
Elon Musk:
For another time, I think, another time.
Interviewer:
All right. That’s a nice tease. All right. I would love to try to understand this brain of yours more, Elon. With your permission, I’d like to just play this. Or actually before we do that, here was one of the thousands of questions that people asked. I thought this was actually quite a good one. If you could go back in time and change one decision you made along the way, do your own edit button, which one would it be, and why?
Elon Musk:
Do you mean a career decision, [inaudible 00:02:19]?
Interviewer:
Any decision over the last few years, like your decision to invest in Twitter in the first place, anything?
Elon Musk:
The worst business decision I ever made was not starting Tesla with just JB Straubel. By far the worst decision I’ve ever made is not just starting Tesla with JB. That’s number one by far.
Interviewer:
All right. JB Straubel was the visionary co-founder who was obsessed with, and knew so much about batteries. Your decision to go with Tesla, the company as it was, meant that you got locked into what you concluded. It was a weird architecture.
Elon Musk:
There’s a lot of confusion. Tesla was a shelf company with no employees, no intellectual property when I invested, but a false narrative has been created by one of the other co-founders, Martin Eberhard. I don’t want to get into the nastiness here, but I didn’t invest in a [inaudible 00:03:27] company. We created a company. And ultimately, the [inaudible 00:03:30] company was done by JB and me. Unfortunately, there’s someone else, another co-founder, who made in his life’s mission to make it sound like he created the company, which is false.
Interviewer:
Wasn’t there another issue right at the heart of the development of the Tesla Model 3, where Tesla almost went bankrupt. I think you have said that part of the reason for that was that you overestimated the extent to which it was possible at that time to automate a factory. Huge amount was spent over automating, and it didn’t work and it nearly took the company down. Is that fair?
Elon Musk:
First of all, it’s important to understand what has Tesla actually accomplished that is most noteworthy. It is not the creation of an electric vehicle or creating electric vehicle prototype or low volume production of a car. There’ve been hundreds of car startups over the years, hundreds. In fact, at one point, Bloomberg counted up the number of electric vehicle startups. I think they got to almost 500.
Elon Musk:
The hard part is not creating a prototype or going into limited production. The absolutely difficult thing, which has not been accomplished by an American car company in 100 years is reaching volume production without going bankrupt. That is the actual hard thing. The last company, [inaudible 00:05:08] company, to reach volume production without going bankrupt was Chrysler in the ’20s.
Interviewer:
And it nearly happened to Tesla.
Elon Musk:
Yes, but a thought like, “Oh, geez, I guess if we’d just done more manual stuff, things would’ve been fine,” of course not. [inaudible 00:05:27]. We basically messed up almost every aspect of the Model 3 production line, from sales, to packs, to driving [inaudible 00:05:41], motors, body line, the paint shop, final assembly, everything. Everything was messed up. I lived in the Fremont and Nevada factories for three years, fixing that production line, running around like a maniac through every part of that factory, living with the team. I stepped on the floor, so that the team who was going through a hard time could see me on the floor, that they knew that I was not in some ivory tower. Whatever pain they experienced, I had it more.
Interviewer:
Some people who knew you well actually thought you were making [inaudible 00:06:34] mistake, that you were driving yourself tp the edge of sanity almost.
Elon Musk:
Yeah, it’s true.
Interviewer:
And that you were in danger of making bad choices. In fact, I heard you say last week, Elon, because of Tesla’s huge value now and the significance of every minute that you spend, that you are in danger of obsessing over spending all this time to the edge of sanity. That doesn’t sound super wise. Your completely sane and centered, rested time and decision making is more powerful and compelling than that, “I can barely hold my eyes open.” So surely, it should be an absolute strategic priority to look after yourself.
Elon Musk:
There wasn’t any other way to make it work through three years of hell. 2017, ’18, and 19 were three years, was the longest period of excruciating pain in my life. There wasn’t any other way, and we barely made it. We were on the ragged edge of bankruptcy the entire time. It’s not like I want pain. I don’t like it. Those were the so much pain, but it had to be done or Tesla would be dead.
Interviewer:
When you looked around the Gigafactories that we saw images of earlier last week, and just see where the company has come, do you feel that this challenge of figuring out the new way of manufacturing, that you actually have an edge now that it’s different, that you figured out how to do this. And those three years won’t be repeated. You’ve actually figured out a new way of manufacturing.
Elon Musk:
At this point, I think I know more about manufacturing than anyone currently alive on earth.
Interviewer:
[inaudible 00:08:49].
Elon Musk:
I can tell you how every damn part in that car is made, which basically, if you just live in the factory for three years. That was nice. That was poignant note or something.
Interviewer:
Someone wants to compose a symphony to that expression of confidence, something like that. I have no idea what that is.
Elon Musk:
Anyway. Every of a car [inaudible 00:09:14] I know.
Interviewer:
Talk about scale right now. You’re in the middle of writing your new master plan. You’ve said that scale is at the heart of it. Why does scale matter? Why you’re obsessed with it? What are you thinking?
Elon Musk:
Well, see, in order to accelerate the events of sustainable energy, there must be scale, because we’ve got to transition a vast economy that is currently overly dependent on fossil fuels to sustainable energy economy, one where the energy is… We got to do it. The energy has got to be sustainably generated with wind, solar, hydro, geothermal. I’m a believer in nuclear as well, I think, to would talk about.
Elon Musk:
Since solar and wind is intermittent, you have to have stationary storage batteries, and then good transition or transport to electric. If we do those things, we have a sustainable energy future. The faster we do those things, the less risk we put to the environment. Sooner is better. Scale is very important. It’s not about fresh releases. It’s about tonnage. What was the tonnage of batteries produced, and obviously done in a sustainable way. Our estimate is that approximately 300 terawatt hours of battery storage is needed to transition, transport electricity and heating and cooling, from an electric situation.
Speaker 3:
Can you wait for me to do it? Okay. Thank you, sweetie.
Elon Musk:
There may be some different estimates out there, but our estimate is 300 terawatt hours?
Interviewer:
We dug into this a lot in the interview that we recorded last week. People can go in and hear that more. The context is that is I think about 1,000 times the current install battery capacity. The scale up needed is breathtaking, basically.
Elon Musk:
Yeah.
Interviewer:
Your vision is to commit Tesla to try to deliver on a meaningful percentage of what is needed, and call on others to do the rest.
Elon Musk:
Yes.
Interviewer:
This is a task for humanity, to massively scale up our response, change the energy grid.
Elon Musk:
Yes. It’s like basically, how fast can we scale and encourage others to scale to get to that 300 terawatt hour in installed base of batteries. And then of course, there’ll be tremendous need to recycle those batteries, and it makes sense to recycle them because the raw materials are high grade ore. People shouldn’t think, “There’ll be this big pile of batteries.” No, they get recycled because even a dead battery pack is worth about $1,000. This is what’s needed for a sustainable energy future. We’re going to try to take a set of actions that accelerate the day of, and bring the day of a sustainable energy future sooner.
Interviewer:
There’s going to be a huge interest in your master plan when you publish that. Meanwhile, I would love to understand more what goes on in this brain of yours, because it is a pretty unique one. I want to play with your permission this very funny opening from SNL, Saturday Night Live. Can we have the volume [inaudible 00:12:50].
Recording:
To be hosting Saturday Night Live. I mean that. Sometimes after I say something, I have to say [inaudible 00:13:00], so people really know that I mean it. That’s because I don’t always have a lot of intonation or variation in how I speak, which I’m told makes for great comedy. I’m actually making history tonight as the first person with Asperger’s to host SNL.”
Interviewer:
I think you followed that up with-
Elon Musk:
At least the first person to admit it.
Interviewer:
The first person to admit it. This was brave thing to say. I would love to understand how you think of Asperger’s, whether you can give us any sense of even you as a boy, what the experience was, or as you now understand with the benefit of hindsight. Can you talk about that a bit?
Elon Musk:
Well, I think everyone’s experience is going to be somewhat different, but I guess for me, the social cues were not intuitive. I was just very bookish and I didn’t understand these. I guess others could intuitively understand what is meant by something. I would just tend to take things very literally, just the words as spoken were exactly what they meant. But then, that turned out to be wrong, because they’re not simply saying exactly what they mean. There’s all sorts of other things that are meant. It took me a while to figure that out. [inaudible 00:14:43] quite a lot.
Elon Musk:
I did not have a happy childhood to be frank. It was quite rough. But I read a lot of books. I read lots and lots of books. Gradually I understood more from the books that I was reading and watched a lot of movies. It took me a while to understand things that most people intuitively understand.
Interviewer:
I’ve wondered whether it’s possible that that was in a strange way, an incredible gift to you and indirectly to many other people, in as much as brings [inaudible 00:15:36] and they go where the action is. If for some reason, the external world and social cues, which so many people spend so much time and energy and mental energy obsessing over, if that is partly cut off, isn’t it possible that that is partly what gave you the ability to understand inwardly the world at a much deeper level than most people do?
Elon Musk:
I suppose that’s certainly possible. I think there’s maybe some value also from a technology standpoint, because I found it rewarding to spend all night programming computers, just by myself. I think most people don’t enjoy typing strange symbols into a computer by themselves all night. They think that’s not fun, but I thought it was. I really liked it. I would just program all night by myself and I found that be quite enjoyable. But I think that is not normal.
Interviewer:
I’ve thought a lot about, it’s a riddle to a lot of people of how you’ve done this, how you’ve repeatedly innovated in these different industries. Every entrepreneur sees possibility in the future and then acts to make that real. It feels to me like you see possibility just more broadly than almost anyone and can connect with a lot. You see scientific possibility based on a deep understanding of physics and knowing what the fundamental equations are, what the technologies are that are based on that science, and where they could go. You see technological possibility.
Interviewer:
And then really unusually, you combine that with economic possibility of what it actually would cost. Is there a system you can imagine where you could affordably make that thing? Sometimes you then get conviction that there is an opportunity here, put those pieces together and you could do something amazing.
Elon Musk:
Yeah. I think one aspect of whatever condition I had was, I was just absolutely obsessed with truth, just obsessed with truth. The obsession with truth is why I studied physics, because physics attempts to understand the truth of the universe. Physics, it’s just what are the provable truths of the universe and truths that have predictive power.
Elon Musk:
For me, physics was a very natural thing to study, [inaudible 00:18:23] study it. It was intrinsically interesting to understand the nature of the universe, and then computer science or information theory also to just understand logic. There’s an argument that information theory is actually operating at a more fundamental level than even physics. Physics and information, really interesting to me.
Speaker 3:
What are we doing here too?
Interviewer:
When you say truth, what you’re talking about is the truth of the universe, the fundamental truth that drives the universe. It’s a deep curiosity about what this universe is, why we’re here, simulation. We don’t have time to go into that. You are just deeply curious about what this is for, what this is, this whole thing.
Elon Musk:
Yes. I think the why of things is very important. Actually, when I was young teens, I got quite depressed about the meaning of life. I was trying to understand the meaning of life, reading religious texts and reading books on philosophy. I got into the German philosophers, which is definitely not wise if you’re a young teenager, I have to say, a bit dark, much better read as an adult.
Elon Musk:
Actually, I ended up reading The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which is actually a book on philosophy, just disguised as a silly humor book. It’s actually a philosophy book. Adams makes the point that [inaudible 00:20:30]. The answer is 42. That number does pop up a lot. [inaudible 00:20:33].
Interviewer:
10 times more significant than 42.
Elon Musk:
You make a triangle with 42 degrees and two 69s. There’s no such thing as a perfect triangle. Or is there?
Interviewer:
But, even more important than the answer is the question. That was the whole theme of that book.
Elon Musk:
Yes.
Interviewer:
Is that basically how you see meaning then, it’s the pursuit of questions?
Elon Musk:
Yeah. I have a proposal for a worldview or a motivating philosophy, which is to understand what questions to ask about the answer that is the universe and to agree that we expand the scope and scale of consciousness, biological and digital, we will be better able to ask these questions, to frame these questions and to understand why we’re here, how we got here, what the heck is going on. That is my driving philosophy, is to expand the scope and scale of consciousness, that we may better understand the nature of the universe.
Interviewer:
One of the things that was most touching last week was seeing you hang out with your kids. Here’s, if I may.
Elon Musk:
It looks fake, like a ventriloquist dummy there. How do you know that’s real?
Interviewer:
That’s X. It was just a delight seeing you hang out with him.
Elon Musk:
Sure.
Interviewer:
What’s his future going to be? I don’t mean him personally, but the world he’s going to grow up in. What future do you believe he will grow up in?
Elon Musk:
Well, a very digital future, a different world than I grew up in, that’s for sure. I think we want to obviously do our absolute best to ensure that the future is good for everyone’s children, and that the future is something that you can look forward to and not feel sad about. You want to get up in the morning and be excited about the future, and we should fight for the things that make us excited about the future.
Elon Musk:
The future cannot just be about one miserable thing after another, solving one sad problem after another. There’s got to be things that get you excited like you want to live. These things are very important and you should have more of it.
Interviewer:
It’s not as if it’s a done deal. It’s all to play for. The future may be horrible. Still, there are scenarios where it is horrible, but you see a pathway to an exciting future, both on Earth and on Mars, and in our minds, through artificial intelligence, and so forth. In your heart of hearts, do you really believe that you are helping deliver that exciting future, for X and for others?
Elon Musk:
I’m trying my hardest to do so. I love humanity and I think that we should fight for a good future for humanity. I think we should be optimistic about the future and fight to make that optimistic future happen.
Interviewer:
I think that’s a perfect place to close this. Thank you so much for spending time, coming here and for the work that you’re doing. Good luck with finding a wise course through, on Twitter and everything else.
Elon Musk:
All right.
Interviewer:
[inaudible 00:24:27].
Elon Musk:
Thank you.
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