Back in 2014, Elon Musk Interview!!!

Latest interview of Elon Musk talking about the DOGE. Here's the episode.

What was your first thought on how DOGE was going to proceed?

Well, I guess I couldn't believe I was there for the most part.

It's like.

It's all seemed extremely surreal at the time. You know, DOGE was a made up name that had been made up I don't know, two or three months before and based on internet suggestions. And I was going to call it the Government Efficiency Commission, and then someone on the Internet said no, it should be the Department of Governed Efficiency d OG. Like that sounds great. So we just kind of made up an apartment.

Do you think you were successful.

We're a little bit successful.

We were somewhat successful. I mean we stopped a lot of funding for that that really just made no sense, that was just entirely wasteful. Where it was like, for example, there was like probably one hundred maybe two hundred million dollars with the zombie payments per year, which simply by enforcing that there'd be a payment code and an explanation for the payment, that the payment would not go out. So we've made that change to the main Treasury computer

Would you ever do doge again?

Do you mean would I repeat history?

Or would I Two ways to think about it.

One is if you could go back and start from scratch, like it's January twentieth all again, would you go back and do it differently and knowing what you know now? Do you think there's ever a place to restart.

You?

Not saying others in your.

Stead you go back and restart doing dosh?

I mean no, I don't think so. I think probably I don't know.

Would you do doge again? Knowing what you know now?

I mean the thing is like I think instead of doing doorge, I would have basically built, you know, worked in my companies essentially so and not and the cars they wouldn't have been burning the cars.

You gave up a lot to do.

Do. Yeah.

Yeah, Like if you if you if you stop money going to uh going going for political corruption, they will they will lash out big time. So they really want the money to keep blowing. So if you stop it from flowing, there's like a very strong reaction to to stopping the money.

Flowing for a while.

Did you become disillusioned with how it operates?

But I wouldn't say I was super illusioned to begin with. I mean, I guess it's just like you really want the least amount done by government possible, the least amount. I guess maybe maybe, Like the biggest thing is that I guess the biggest single thing is is that there are massive transfer payments going to legal immigrants, like massive.

If if if you if you create.

A gigantic money magnet two, as you say, if anyone comes here from anywhere else, we're gonna pay you tons of money, give you lots of free stuff. Come come, come to America and get paid to do so, Like you're going to get a lot of people taking up

Basically, you've said in the future that no one's going to need to worry about money or work because AI is going to take care of the rest AI and robotics.

What do you mean that people won't have to work in the future.

Assuming the current trend of artificial intelligence and robotics continues, which seems likely, the AI and robots will be able to do anything that that humans want to want them to do. Essentially, so hopefully not than that. But AI and robotics will be able to provide us provide all the goods and services that anyone could possibly want, So.

You wouldn't need to work. What would you do with your free time?

People will be able to whatever they want with their free time. Work will be optional. I'm just want to separate out from like what I wish would happen versus what I predict will happen, because people get confused about that. They think that what I predict will happen is what I want it to happen. What I want what I predict to happen is not the same as what I want to happen. If I could, I would, I would

Like it or not.

Is AI what keeps you up at night?

It used to be at this point, I don't know.

I wouldn't say there's there's nothing particularly keeping me up at night right now except that, But do you say, what?

What? Why do I wake up in nightmares? Oh?

Yeah, yeah, I actually I've had a lot of AI nightmares. I had AI nightmares many days in a row. What am I supposed to do about it?

What's your biggest irrational fear?

I try not to have irrational fears.

None.

If I find an irrational fear, I squell shit. I don't believe fear is fear is the mind killer. So I'm about somebody who feels fear strongly on average?

How many hours do you sleep the night?

Six?

You can tell, but based on my exposts, yes you can. People have actually map them. It's very clear when I'm sleeping around'm on. I tried having less than six hours sleep, but although I'm awake more hours per day, my cognitive function is reduced, so my natural sleep and actually timed it with the phone.

They can get a phone app.

To time it. It's like five hours fifty six minutes. That's what the phone said.

What's an average day for you?

Look like?

Well, I have a lot of inbound communication, so it's information trioge. I try to segment the days so that there's not too much context switching, because arguably fear is not the mind and killer. Context switching is. It's hard enough to context switch if you've got an inbox full of stuff, but you can think of, like if you have to context switch every three seconds or every thirty seconds or every three minutes, the context switching cognitive penalty would be very high every three seconds.

And you're talking about switching between say Tesla.

X x AI SpaceX Personal, SpaceX Personal.

But even within Tesla and SpaceX there are many different things and this sort of the stuff on X like random news things, you know, people being bunt alive and stuff like that, and like, what the hell is going on in this country?

Who's the funniest person you know? In real life?

You know, President Trump is very funny. He's got a great sense of humor.

President Trump is very funny.

They're very funny. It's like naturally funny, but it's somewhat effortless. I mean, you know when he has had at mcdanie in the office and they asked him if he still thought the president was fascist, and the President said, just say yes, it's easier that way, don't worry about it.

He's like, you, guys, what a how silly?

Who do you look up to the most?

The Creator?

What's your current position on God?

God is the Creator?

You don't believe in God though, do you?

Well?

I believe there was this universe came for something. People have different labels.

When's the last time you did something extremely ordinary like go to Target or CBS.

I can't go to Thanks with as the general public because.

I you meet there, there's an immediate can I have a selfie line?

That forms in these.

Days, particularly in light of Charlie Cook's motor there are serious security issues.

It's not that I don't want to, I simply can't.

Has Charlie's murder changed how you do things? Or were you already locked down pretty fall before that?

It certainly reinforced the severity of the situation where life is on hardcore mode. You make one mistake in your dad, it only takes one mistake.

What's one moment in your life that you could live again just to feel it well?

I mean, I see when my kids are born, or the first time SpaceX got to orbit, or tells the made electric car work.

You've had a big lot of them.

It's a lot of things. There's luck coming down the pike, like what starship.

They agree to.

Which a starship is a revolutionary technology is not well understood in the world. It's the first time that there's been any rocket design where full and rapid reausability as possible or full reasonbility at all as possible. This is the first design where a reusable rocket. It's one of the possible archives. Whay success is in a set of possible orcoms?

Are you talking about in V three or B two?

Well, we could have made V two.

Reusable, but the but there were a lot of performance improvements for V three, so it made sense to go to V three. They're just there's like ten thousand different changes between B two and B three, maybe more than ten thousand really so, but starship, if there are historians in the future of we'll look back and a starship and say it was one of the most profound things that ever happened. Now you can think of historic events as where would they fit on the in the evolutionary

You've got like a power plant in the cell.

You've got you know, differentiation into plants and animals, life going from oceans to land and then also on that scale, probably in the top ten is life becoming multiplanetary. There just aren't very many things that are in the top ten of the evolution of life or where you could basically say you could evaluate any given civilization or any given life form as you know, on that.

On that scale.

So life becoming multiplanetary, it's on the top ten. It needs to be sustainably multip multiplanetary. So I'm not just visiting but actually multiplanetary in the sense that if you have planetary redundancy, so if one of the planets, if they were to be a catastrophe one of the planets, the.

Other planet would spive.

All of your country.

Starship is capable during that for the first time in history, and no AI was used to create it, So I will appreciate that.

Are all of your companies working towards that same goal to help us become multiplanetary? Like does the AI exist to be able to help life on Mars or is that primarily for what is happening here currently?

You know tells us.

Mostly about making sure life on Earth is good as an NXAI is about that too, because multiplanetary means Earth's got to be good and you need another planet. Sometimes people think, because they have you know, legacy templates, mental templates, they think that going to Mars is an escape from Earth and like order that there would be some you know, a place where billionaires would go or something like that.

They would have a much higher risk of death.

Than if then if they stayed on Earth, and things would be cramped and uncomfortable. So that's that's the sales pitch for Mars. It's going to be uncomfortable, the food won't be as good as Earth. You might die, it's going to be a massive amount of hard work, and it may not succeed.

That's the sales pitch. Do you want to go?

Same when people came to America.

Yeah, you didn't want to be in Jamestown.

People went anyway.

Yeah.

Maybe if they've been social media back then, they would have saying we're all dying. Here's videos of us dying. Would have probably put a damp around future voyages. But yeah, there's a whole bunch of people just dispear. You don't know what happened to them.

You talk a lot about X about wardrobe and how you wish current wardrobe would be differently.

I just think like from a fashion standpoint, we should evolve. It's like my son Saxon said at one point, why does everything look like it's twenty fifteen. I was like, damn things do everything does look like it's twenty fifteen. It's like if you took a picture from twenty fifteen and send twenty twenty five, it looks exactly the same. There were Stylistically, things are the same as twenty fifteen. We have not We have not moved the needle in a decade.

So what should it look like?

Something new?

You know, like the sixties had a definitive style, the seventies had a definitive style, the eighties had a definitive style, and then the nineties also had a different style.

But then you start looking at.

The two thousands and the twenty tens, and it's like less and less every year. I think we should before of our style. And if you'll get some of the older paintings, you know past cabinet secretaries, some of them like they look cool, Like their jackets are cooler than what we have right now.

You know, they have sort of like a high collar.

And like a sort of I don't know what some sort of what do you cool those things? Ascot or something like that. This looks cool, like so we don't. Everything's like a very normal looking suit at this point, but like literally the same as twenty fifteen. I'm being generous because augilbly the same as twenty ten. So in fifteen years and I'm like, from a fashion standpoint, I don't think.

We've moved since two thousand. In twenty five years.

If you showed someone a picture of this is a bunch of there's a bunch of dudes in twenty two thousand, there's a bunch of dudes in twenty twenty five.

Which year is which? So I think we should I don't know, spice it up a little.

What's a conspiracy theory?

If you like this episode, just like share and follow this podcast. Thank you. Back to the show.

Can you believe in?

I mean, which conspiracy theories haven't come true at this point? If we're not out of conspiracy theories, that because it will come true as far as I can tell. I mean, I don't know if any aliens. People always asked me if there are aliens. I have seen no evidence of aliens. No one on the SpaceX Senior team has any evidence of aliens, because I've asked him, like, guys, am I missing something? Has anyone on the team? Has anyone seen any evidence of aliens?

Does that include UFOs?

That's just an unidentified blank object.

So so UFOs like it could be like some new weapons program or whatever that's you know, some hypersonic missile or something.

Like that, that that.

Will be technically a UFO, but it's it's just it's just basically some weapons prototype.

It's not. It's not like aliens.

So although Neil Armstrong Neil A spelled backwards as alien.

Coincidence, you believe we actually went to the moon?

Yes, went to the moon a few times actually and played golf on the moon. Yeah, we didn't just go to the moon. We actually got a little board and started playing golf on the moon.

But why didn't the flag move? There's like that constuct I was to jump the talk moment about the flag.

No, the playing golf on the moon Okay, yeah, I literally did no.

I understand that.

Yeah, wead golf. Well on the moon is there?

There's no gravity though, right.

So there is gravity one six If it wasn't gravity, you just float away. There's no atmosphere, fair, but there is one sixth gravity.

What's the biggest misconception about you?

I don't know, how would I know?

What?

What do you think?

I think it's I get asked this a lot when I do interviews about you. Me, Oh, I got everyone always thinks you're a very difficult person to work for.

Oh, but you're I think you're very kind.

Thanks Like people think which you're you are like a very demanding boss.

I think that you are. I've never heard you yell at any employee.

Yeah.

I think every employee who works at every single one of your companies is incredibly mission driven, which is unlike any other workplace I've ever seen. Like Starbase is the most inspirational place you'll ever go to. Right, everyone is there to work on a singular goal. And so I think, to me, the biggest misconception about you is how every employee at all of your companies are fiercely loyal because

All right.

Well, why would they think anyone would work at the companies? Yeah, I mean talent. I mean talented people can go work anywhere they want. So they're only going to work at one of my companies if if they want to, and if they're mistreated in some.

Way, they would they would leave and go work somewhere else.

How'd you come up with the idea for starbas.

Well, I think we needed a something inspirational.

I can't wait.

We kind of have a lot of star things, you know, so we get Starlink Starship. Well, where would starship depart from star Base? I mean a star base is as you mentioned, it's it's like I think it's probably the coolest place on Earth. I agree. And it used to it used to be a sand bar down by the Rio Grande. I mean it's only like three feet above sea level. So we built a gigantic rocket factory and two giant launch towers down by the river, literally within

So it's an incorporated city, like legally a city. You don't you don't hear about new cities being formed that often.

The last time there was a company town it was disney World.

Yeah.

I think Ford had some kind of like company town situations, but but yeah, just disney World is it's literally its name.

Yeah, I'm Walt Disney. This is my world. I've gone from land to World.

They got like incorporated as a city and got tax exemption, which was like a whole It was a was a big deal. I've been disney World probably ten times, really yeah, maybe more than maybe ten, but at least ten times because Cape Canaveral is right by disney World.

This makes sense.

So when I'd have the kids, then I would uh my older kids, and I was we're trying to get the rocket launched from Kpnavil. Then you know, the thing they'd want to do is go to disney World or Harry Potterland.

What's your favorite ride?

I sort of attempted to say Space Mountain. I suppose, yeah, play Space Mountain. I mean, I do think Space Mountain needs an upgrade.

It's a little hardey jerkey.

The it doesn't look quite as sci fi as it used to. You know, it's like it's like the day before yesterday's tomorrow.

Protistal yesterday.

What's your favorite age to parent of your kids?

Generally kids are the most fun between five and ten.

Do you think humanity is inherently good or is it just trying to be?

The concept of good wouldn't exist without humanity. I think I do think humanity is on balance good, you know. I generally think like increasing the amount of consciousness in the universe is a good thing. Try to understand the nature of the universe, which you can only do by increasing the increasing conscious awareness. I mean, I've thought about, like,

What's one invention that's made us worse, not better.

It's one adventure that's made us worse. Invention maybe short form video. It seems to be writing people's brains.

What's one piece of technology you hope never gets invented.

I hope and I hope never gets invented, Like.

Yeah, like it's gonna destroy us all or you think with the proper safeguards.

Well, I mean, obviously, I hope, like the people don't invent a.

Virus that can kill all humans, Like that's an obvious thing.

Yeah, I mean.

Yeah, generally, I hope mentions that destroy consciousness are not invented.

I think the future is going to look very interesting.

So it's I do have this theory about the predicting the future, which is that the most interesting outcome is the most likely, which if simulation theory is accurate, makes sense because if anyone is simulating a wide range of futures, they're going to stop the simulation when it gets boring, because this is what we do in our reality. So if SpaceX is doing hotels are doing simulations to understand how a car would work, or robot or space or

So it's like you need to.

Find the envelope of possible flight paths where the rocket can make it to orbit and without exploding, and then you find those boundaries, and then when you launch the actual you try to make sure it stays within those boundaries. Or another way to think of it is like we could be an alien Netflix series and that that series is only going to get continued if our ratings are good.

Are the ratings good?

Yeah?

But you can think of it like from Darwinian sandpoint applied. If you apply it Darwin to simulation theory, then the only the most interesting simulations will continue. Therefore, the most interesting outcome is most likely because it's either that or annihilation.

So really we have one goal, keep it interesting.

Do you think social media has made people more honest or more performative?

Well, social media makes people more performative. By the same token, you you get more real life video of things that are actually happening, and anything that is very interesting will spare we'll go viral on the internet.

So you have both.

You've got more performative where people are doing anything they can to get a few more views on their TikTok video or whatever, or their reels or maybe on their ex post or something, and so that's very performative. But then you also see real life videos that are that challenge the narrative, but are nonetheless real.

Is there any X accounts?

You're surprised when you changed it so people could see country of origin that wasn't in the United States that you thought was in.

The United States.

I don't really think about it that much. I mean, there's in a country of origin. We have to be a little careful about this. You can actually technically you're just specify your region, like you can say I'm in Asia or something like that, which is quite big. But it does make it a little harder that if somebody is trying to put ten that they're i say, a member of the American public or in Europe or Africa wherever.

I think it's fair.

Yeah, okay, So in every episode we've played, would you rather, okay, would you rather save humanity from extinction? Extinction on Earth or guarantee its survival on Mars?

It's a false dichonomy.

I think i'd say guarantee Earth that's much better than Mars. To be clear, Mars, but Mars is just our best option if we want to become a multiplanet species.

Is really our only option.

If you want to become a multiplanet species, you've got Mars, which it's very difficult but not impossible.

Earth is much better than Mars. But you know, we can't.

I think it was Silkowski or I think you said, you know, Earth is a cradle of civilization, but we can't.

Stay in the cradle forever.

Would you rather be a Marvel superhero or a Bond villain.

I think it would depend on which Marvel superhero, which Bond villain. I suppose I'd rather be a Marvel superhero. They did model iron Man in the movies after me.

Yes, so you were in the Iron Man movie, right, Yes, that's pretty much.

Yeah, Roverdy Junior and Favre met with me, toured SpaceX and stuff. So in fact, Iron Man two, a large part of the movie is filmed in SpaceX. Really, yes, if you look at if you watch Iron Man too, you'll see that it's the SpaceX factories.

Is the actual background that's so cool. Yeah, it was cool.

We had to Calle Johansson doing marsh in the lobby. Actually, yeah, and you expect me.

To believe this is roll real? It's a simulation exactly? What are the odds?

Yeah? I mean if you and me, no, I agree with.

Would you think this is real or a simulation?

Your life is a simulation? Yeah, your life gets to be the simulation.

Yeah.

And I'm like doing all the side quests and everything.

Yeah, what's your best side quest that do?

Probably?

Okay?

Would you rather launch a social network with no algorithm or a rocket with no manual override?

Who came up with these questions?

Just keep going? These are funny, Maybe not to you because they're too trivial.

What do you mean, like, like you said that with an algorithm means that you basically you only see the people you follow, like it's just.

A mess, like it was Twitter before you bought it.

Yeah.

Yeah, there's the sort of people you follow, and then there's a recommendation algorithm. I think probably in December will finally have a half decent recommendation algorithm.

It's a lot better.

Recently.

Yeah, So it really just trying to show people's stuff that'd be interested in. But there's an enormous amount of AI horsepower being applied to this. Where grock wor thing is reading, it's going to read all one hundred million posts per day, which is does.

That take up a lot of compute?

Hopefully it doesn't destroy its mind or something.

Yeah, just take a lot of compute.

Like most most posts are, there's a lot of spam scam stuff, so it's just that can be easily discarded, I suppose. But then you've got to take you know, hundred million pieces of content match that to I don't know, sometimes three or four hundred million people per day, So.

That's a lot of matching.

My algorithm needs to look a lot like other peoples and you open.

Their X account. Now mine is very unique comparatively to other people's.

Well, we really are kind of the this is just the the beginning kind of thing. The what I mentioned that grog reading everything and recommending any given thing to anyone should go live in December, so that the asked the test with this is are you saying content like are you saying content that you find really interesting from

That's our goal, all right?

Last one, would you rather invent time travel or teleportation?

Actually those things are almost the same thing in.

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