Yeah. I well, it is hard for books to compete with the much
greater stimulus of things online. You know, it's I mean, the computers
at this point optuned to maximum olymbic and cortical resonance. So it's very difficult
for books to compete. I think you got to probably just have some no
devices time, and so your only choice is read a book. Right,
do you what's your regimen of reading? I mean, are you as voracious
today as you were in early days? I mean do you sort of etch
out an hour or two a day, you know, I've got to get
in my reading or how does it work for you? No, it's really
if there's something interesting to read, I'll usually read it at pretty at high
speed. And I find it actually is helpful to have a book read to
you to go to sleep, so as a way to sort of, you
know, take your mind off Familion problems at the end of the day and
hope you go to sleep. Is is have the book as an audiobook and
have it read to you. And my apologies for apparently causing you nightmares and
for my book, I mean it was The Parasitic Mind. It's very good
book. Medit to everyone in fact I did recommend it to everyone. Yes,
but it is it really does hit the nail on the head with respect
to the sort of work mind virus that is damaging civilization. When did you
first? I mean, so I'll first answer my question, then I'll turn
it to you. So I first noticed all of these mind viruses in my
academic work when I was trying to introduce, you know, evolutionary psychology and
evolutionary biology in the business school so that people can, you know, have
a greater explanation of why people do the things that they do. And most
of my social science colleagues were so dead set against using biology to explain human
phenomena. So that was my original sort of aha moment. We have a
problem. When was it for you that you noticed that something was wrong?
Well, I guess if you go back and say, when did you see
the first signs? I mean, I could you could arguably say it was
even twenty years ago. But when did it become much more severe? I'd
say about five years ago, I mean the climate just before COVID. And
if that COVID, I think is part of the you know, the degree
of panic over COVID was exacerbated by this unwilling, unwillingness to question science or
question the accepted view and simply be spoon fed things from the government, and
and and also to shut down descent and shut down any questioning of the narrative.
So this is because that's really part of passig for for for any given
sort of virus, whereas where or you know, mental or or digital,
it has to have defenses otherwise that virus won't survive. So one of the
defenses of the work my virus is to shut down any questioning exactly that's I
mean, it's that you say this because I was recently asked on a show.
It was hosted by a British psychiatrist, and he asked me, Elon,
what, of all your years as an academic, as a behavioral scientist,
what has been the singular phenomenon that has surprised you the most about humans?
And it's and my answer is going to speak to what we're talking about
here, And so I thought about it for a minute and I thought,
Okay, well, probably what surprises me the most is people's inability to change
their anchored position once it is deeply anchored, despite the fact that I might
build you a huge normalogical network of femultive evidence to show you that my position
might be vertical. There's no way to sway you. So the question that
I had asked you is what someone asked me. What has surprised me the
most over my thirty years as an academic? And my answer was the inability
of people to change their minds despite the fact that you might give them,
you know, an unassailable tsunami of evidence. They just go la la la,
I don want to hear it. What has been in all of your
career? What has been the singular, you know, human phenomenon that has
surprised you the most about humans? Well, that's probably a long list.
There also surprising the most. I mean, maybe I would share some of
you to you, which is that we humans, once they take a position,
even when presented with an overwhelming amount of evidence that you know, on
the minds the position nonetheless hold on to that position. I found I find
to be just a shing because I aspire to change my opinion if presented with
new facts. But this is a turns out to be a very unusual thing.
So and in a sense, I mean, it's disheartening, right because
you'd like to think that, you know, we're all pursuing truth, and
certainly academics should be. And yet what I've regrettably found in my career is
that, you know, academics are some of the biggest ideologues around, right,
I mean, as you know, having you know read my book,
you know all of these parasitic ideas originated from you know, the university ecosystem.
So do we can we be optimistic that we could turn this thing around
elon? Or is it? Are we just screaming in the wind? Well?
I think we have to be optimistic. I agree with my general philosophy
is that it's better better to be or on the side of being optimistic and
wrong than pessimistic and right. Right, you know, if you're going to
pick one or two, I mean, you don't want to be irrational about
it, but if yes, borderline better to freaking asum optimistic and wrong.
So I think, And then I guess if you were to compare present day
how many times people change their mind, it's probably much better than the past
because people are dis exposed to wide range of information, so there's probably more
changing of minds and changing of opinions than ever before history. It's just nonetheless
astonishing how resilient people are in holding on to a wrong opinion. So it's
it's it's sort of a truth versus tribalism. I think, you know.
There's a great book that I briefly cite in the Parasitic Mind. It's by
two French cognitive psychologists, and what they argued elon is that the human mind
did not evolve to seek some objective truth, but rather it evolved to win
arguments. So that's the point about tribalism, right, Because here I am
in my sort of lofty ivory tower, thinking, hey, if I present
you with enough information, I hopefully change your opinion. But the reality is
you don't want to listen to me because you just want to be on the
winning team. Yeah. A lot of times it's people will hold an opinion
because that's what they're They see themselves as being on a particular team, like
in a particular political party or social point of view, and they just regarded
as the team winning the argument, as opposed to truth winning the argument.
And that seems seems to be awolmingly the case got you can, we can,
we can? We still go on for a while, it seems like
the yeah, let's be going. Yeah. I made the mistake of exploring
some some rare features which I guess a lot of people haven't then have stepped
on some landmind, So i'll I will refrain from testing obscure features for a
while. Got you okay? So what would be I mean? This question
is is really stemming from my latest book, where I was talking about,
you know, happiness and the way that I wrote this book, Elon,
if you would have asked me three years ago after Parasitic Mind, would I
ever dare write about write a book on happiness? I would have never said
yes. But a lot of people kept writing to me saying, hey,
what's your secrets? You always seem to be playful, joking around and you
know, effrofest and so on, what's your secret to life? And so
I decided to write a book And in the book, I basically, you
know, I'm talking about what are some of the grand goals that shape you
know, when I wake up in the morning and rub my hands together in
gleeful anticipation of the day, there are certain things that shape my day to
day. What would it be for you? What? What is it that
makes Elon Musk wake up, rub his hands and say, oh boy,
I'm excited to be alive. Gold Just kidding. I'm thinking of screwge mc
duck and going for a swimming the money ben with the money even of gold.
But but I don't get the pro They should do more. They should
have a movie on screwgemak duck. But I'm excited by solving problems. So
you know, if those problems that I think are important and useful, you
know, I get excited by the progression of civilization. So if we learn
more things, we advanced civilization become more capable, that's cool. I mean,
we're you know, for space X, you know, it's about advancing
rocket technology and spacecraft technology and space based communications. And then for Tesla,
it's about advancing sustainable energy electric vehicles, the battery packs that can be paired
with solar and wind, so sort of advancing sustainable energy economy. And then
also advancing autonomy enabling the car drive to drive itself so people do not have
to suffer through the tedium of driving their car all the time. And also
cars can then have probably five times amount of utilization but they currently do,
instead of just sitting in parking lots all day, you know. And then
there's this neuralink which is somewhat esoteric, but long term trying to improve the
data rate between humans and machines so you can have better achieve antsymbiosis. And
then the short term help people who have brain spine injuries, and then boring
companies dating tunnels to alleviate traffic, and the XAI is trying to make a
maximumly truth seeking AI, which I think is extremely important. And you know,
I think a lot of people like, why do you need such a
thing? Surely the other ones are retreat seeking. I'm like, have you
seen Gemini? It's like if you look, it can't produce a picture like
I mean it should be people should be quite concerned about stuff what they see
in Gemini and chat GBT like chatch GVT is better at hiding it. But
still it's kind of good that Google over played their hand there with Gemini,
where the you know, the diversity, I mean, they must have just
beaten that AI with a stick so odd such that like nothing you do can
can get it to produce a picture of a pope who's a white guy.
What did you see? Did you see? I actually a satirical set of
memes where I asked it what does Elon Musk look like? And it gave
me don Lemon. This was before you had Are you serious? Well?
I thought that was a joke. It wasn't joke. It wasn't joke.
It was a joke. Okay. I was like, at this point,
I can't talk for parody of reality because if you like, show a picture
of George Washington and George Washington is a black woman, I'm like, what
the hell? This is like actual historical figure, you know, and you
know and and and it's and it's crazy things like where you say, like
is it which one is worse, you know, global them, nuclear warfare
or misgendering Caitlyn Jenner and even Caitlyn Jenna says definitely misgender me. Kitten wade
in and said definitely misgender me. Right, that's crazy. And but the
you know, Gemini is like saying, oh, you know, you should
not misgender It's nuclear was better. I'm like, okay, think about that
now. If this is an all powerful AI that somehow is capable of manipulating
world, and whereas that we don't understand and and might ultimately be our digital
God, yeah, be careful what you program it to this thing, because
it might take the you know what, what seemed like sort of silly guffs
right now. But if it's got that as as a sort of an output
function, as utility function, it might say, Okay, you know what,
there's too many whatever white guys in the world, let's kill half of
them. It's like, it's not just fiction at that point, and basically
it's it's going to be leading to some pretty dangerous and bizarre outcomes. And
and it could it could actually, like, if it's been taught like that
misgendering is worse than nuclear war, it may decide that to avoid misgendering,
it should start a nuclear war like the Sour Far Away. To stop any
future misgendering is to kill all humans, right, exact exactly, problem problem
solved, no more misgendering. So you listed all of these incredible initiatives that
you've done, and when you first purchased Twitter, I had produced a short
clip where I said that, in my view, your purchase of Twitter will
go down historically as the most important of all of your great initiatives. Do
you feel that was that a right calculation on my part or or was I
overstating the case. Well, you might be right, it's possible that it's
possible that you're right. I mean, I didn't do the purchase because I
thought it was a great way to make money, or because you know,
I thought it would improve my quality of living, because frankly, I knew
that I would be you know, there would be bazillion slings and arrows coming
in my direction because the mind virus and various other sort of false tees are
not going to take it lying down, and I could just end up being
killed by some crazy person you know, that is an effective arm of the
my envirus. So it really I couldn't quite put my finger on it,
but it really felt like if like it was, there was a civilizational danger
that unless unless one of the major online platforms broke ranks, then yeah,
because they were all just in behaving in lockstep along with the legacy media.
Just everyone's saying the same thing and soon as like literally it was just no
place to actually get with the trues. It was almost impossible. So everything
was just getting censored. Like the power of the censors of oparatus was incredible.
Oh don't I know it I mean I always had to. I mean,
I'm not someone who really walks on eggshells, but I knew that there
were certain things that would get me banned. So for example, at one
point, I don't know if you know Matt. Do you know Matt Ridley?
You know what that is? I don't think so plussibly, Bet,
I don't know. Matt Ridley is a popular who is also he was in
the House of Lords in England and he's a evolutionary biologists by training. And
at one point he came out with a book with a co op about two
years ago where he was arguing for the lab Leaku theory for COVID, and
his people had reached out to me and said, hey, you know,
Matt would love to come on your show and chat about this. And so
I responded, and I almost felt ashamed that I was saying. I said,
look, I'm always happy to speak to anyone. I hardly shy away
from conversations. But you should know that the minute that we actually put up
the chat on YouTube, not only is it going to be taken down,
probably my channel is going to be deleted. And so speaking, there was
no point in us having that conversation until today, I feel horrible at the
fact that I actually had to go through that calculus. Taking over X no
longer causes me to have to make those kinds of machinations. Oh we've lost
Elon. Okay, are you back Elon? Yeah? So suddenly helpful as
it means you hear me, No, I assume, Oh yeah, yeah,
I hear you. Okay, great, No, sorry, I was
just walking around the house and I think it it dropped the connection for some
reason. But this is definitely a minded that if if a connection has dropped
the moment that someone rejoins, it should rejoin in the prior status unless they
were exited by the host, unless the host kick them out, they should
re enter in the same status as before. So in addition for us having
a fun conversation, you're getting some technological benefits out of this. That's correct.
I win, Yes, I got I got it to try to do
you know, two birds with one stone or three birds with one stone?
You know, basically get that, get the whole flock. Actually do a
few more questions and then carefully you iron out the kinks, and then we
could have around two whenever you think it's ready. Hopefully in the in the
near future. Yes, sounds good. Okay, So next question, I
often get asked this. You know, I'm housing a business school, and
so I'm asked things like that. Strange. Yeah, So you know the
old nature nurture question, you know, is leadership nature or nurture? So
obviously you're you're definitely the entrepreneur in the world. Do you think much of
your entrepreneurial bent is nature or nurture? How would you answer such a question?
Well, I think if somebody's going to be, you know, at
among the world's best in any field, it's going to require both. So
you know, if you say, whether it's like basketball or in a cast,
sports or something like that, or academics, and you're really going to
require some combination of nature nurture, and it's some amount of luck. You
know, there's sort of a randomness element to it. I can see the
randomness because I've got a twins study in among my kids where I've got identical
fraternal twins and identical twins, right, and even among the identical twins which
really had obviously the same genetics and the same upbringing, they were living in
the same room literally, and yet they've they have diverged in interesting ways.
And now admittedly it didn't like not radically different, but you know, one
pursued physics and the other one pursued computer science. Not ratically different. Right,
The single biggest difference I was saying is one of them decided to be
a vegetarian when he was about seven or eight and the one one of them
didn't. And so the difference is about two inches in height, and like
the one that was not a vegetarian is way bigger. So there's like,
okay, you know, like quite it was a really big difference. But
so there's there's a random selement where just luck or fate or whatever it plays
has a bigger role than it may seem. But but you didn't need to
be born for any particular speak to excel in any field with a good hand
of cars. And then and then it's that talent nurtured, you know,
through the circumstances of life. And then you know, some amount of luck
is it has to be there too. And in fact, you know,
I read I read a lot of sort of the superhero comics when I was
a kid, and ultimately, you know, concluded that like what is the
best power. The best power is luck. You can't be luck, right,
But what what would be some of the traits that you were born with
that? So, for example, there are some studies that show that people
who score high on entrepreneurial proclivity tend to have have greater basal testosterone because testosterone
correlates with risk taking, and to the extent that entrepreneurship involves an element of
risk taking, then you could see the link. So what what what is
part of the two that you were born with that allowed you to be as
successful as you are? So basically, so you mustn't just have metaphorically huge
bulls. You must have actually huge bulls. Good, I think, So
if you just mentioned how big are your bulls physically, well decide how v
your bulls are metaphorically as well. Indeed, indeed, that's that's called now
blonde. But by the way, elon these nuts. By the way,
here's the study speaking of testicles. You ready, so you're gonna like this,
Get ready, fasten your seat belt. So if you do, a
correlation between a cross primates between the size of the of the testicles of the
males of a species as a function of their size yeh, you know what
it correlates with. It correlates with female promise in that species. So,
for example, so mountain gorilla usually have a polygenist mating system, meaning one
dominant male monopolizes sexual access to many females. Well, mountain gorillas, even
though they're formidable in size, they actually have very small testicles on the other
tides, no need to waste anything, yeah, exactly, whereas chimpanzees elon
are walking testicles because they're just having sex all the time, and so there
is massive opportunity for sperm wars. And so this is the ultimate feminist theory
because it basically argues that the size of the testes of the males of a
species are an adaptive response to female sexual behavior in that species. Mic drop
no, wow, micro need we need a micdrop icon or something like that.
We'll added that to the emoticons here. All right, a couple more
questions you and I I have discussed privately. I'm going to say the acronym
and then I want to explain it to the people who don't get it.
You've you've stated, I don't know if it was serious or facetiously that you'd
like to start a TITS and ass institution. Well, actually, no,
I think I can explain that. So so for a while I was I
was wondering, well, you know, Massachusetts has MI T and California has
you know, California Institute of Technology c I T or cael Tech as they
call it. But why doesn't Texas have a Texas Institute of Technology? And
then it told me, hm, T I T. Yes, that's probably
the reason. And then a friend of mine suggested adding an S for science,
and that became TITS. And then of course you put out another tweak
where you said, but of course there will be an advanced social studies faculty.
Yeah, of course, of course you gotta have that. I mean,
now, are you being precious about that project? Well, you know,
I do believe in making jokes come true, because the Boring Company was
initially kid just a joke. That's where I said, I was going to
start a company to dig holes. It's gonna be like the Boring Company,
like Boeing, but just like the Bowing company, but the boring company and
its product will be nothing a whole. Like can you look at our product?
Our product is the absence of something. Well, that's like the Seinfeld
episode where he's pitching a pilot and the whole point of the show is nothing.
So it's exactly yeah. Okay, So let me let me ask you
one last question. This comes from the latest book on Happiness. I argue
in the book that the research overwhelmingly demonstrates that the correlation between money and happiness
only applies up to an inflection point, so once your basic necessities are met.
I think the old study was seventy five thousand. Now we need to
increase seventy five thousand because of Biden's inflation. But do you subscribe to that?
So, I mean, Elon Musk, the richest man in the world
is not necessarily happier because he can outbind me by two hundred million dollars.
No, No, definitely not. I think that's more or less correct.
In fact, I'd say there's a decrease in halfiness that occurs when the fame
level exceeds that which is useful. So like there's a certain you know,
modicum of fame which where you can now get it's easy to get a reservation
at a restaurant. That's like that's the that's like the you want that level
of fame and not anything beyond it, because because then you get to the
level of thame where you go to the restaurant and everyone's coming up to your
table, which is and people actually are very nice, very nice men and
super good. But I do often get stuck in the can I have a
selfie infinite loop and it's in the And that's my VI version of hell is
the can I have a selfie infinite loop and people are super nice, and
I want to do the selfie, but I don't want to be stuck,
and I can I have a selfie infinite loop forever. So there's you know,
that's I say you you you're passed in terms of fame. Definitely a
threshold where things are less fun and you can't I can't just go to the
mall or go to a movie theater easily and walk around without you know,
creating a ruckus. So now do you do you when you when you just
move around in your daily life? Forgive me you please tell me if you
can't answer this, do you have to have security around or is it just
there? Or you do right? Well, So here's the thing that happens,
which is like it's very rare for me to get actually death threats or
anything. But it's but I say, like in the last related to actually
like no one's ever said, what about this terrible beef against you and I'm
going to kill you because of the following well thought out ideas. But I
have had two cases in the last extra the last six months. We're off
two people who are just unfortunately just very mentally ill, not not subtle.
It's not subtle, it's like and they have come to Austin to try filling
and with guns. So, like I said, in both cases that there's
no one guy thought I'd put a chip in his head, you know,
like a new reladship or something, and I'm like, which, I think
you got to consider the logic of that. Well, the chip's obviously not
working. If I'm putting a chip into Crowl and control him, you know,
clean not working, So or what do you like an upgrade and maybe
a software of day or something. So you know, so one guy they
basically just extreme schizophrenic. And another guy he's actually recently okay when he's on
his meds, but he stopped taking his meds and then it's just total detachment
from reality, you know. So so these are par schizophrenics. Yeah,
yeah, yeah, like hardcore like nuts, you know, nuts, Like
are you are you you mention Austin, Are you any regrets of having moved
out of beautiful California to Austin or are you every day happy that you've made
that decision. Austin's a great city and it's boomtown. It's the probably the
biggest boomtown in America since La in the seventies. And a ton of interesting
people keep moving here. So I have a lot of friends that have moved
here from New York and California and other parts of the world, and so
it's it's really I think it has It has all the pros and cons of
book boomtown, you know. So it's a lot of a lot of energy,
and but you know, there's a shortage of houses and resources because lots
of people moving here. So overall, I feel very good about Austin,
And like I said, there's more more interesting people moving here every day,
and but I think there's there's obviously a lot to be said for California,
but I do feel like California is unfortunately going to go through this phase where
the Golden State is gonna cook the golden geese. So it's sort of not
enough to simply make the eggs. They're gonna, they're gonna, they're gonna,
they want, they want, they're gonna go cooking the geese, and
and you don't want to be there while the geese cooking is happening. Yeah,
so I think that I think at some point there will be somewhat of
a pushback, but really the state kind of has to encounter financial difficulties before
that happened, and and and this with this, hopefully at some point a
reduction in the extreme amount of regulation, the extreme amount of litigation, and
the extreme amount of taxation, which are both over the top, and all
three of those are over the top of California. So so it's you know,
it's I mean, I think if if you think about it as a
state, do you do want to maximize the number of golden eggs that that
get laid and you don't want to cook the geese. So I think California's
you know, many countries go through that phase and and California as a state
is going to go through that phase. So I just my firms is not
to be there while while the geese cocaine is happening, but I'd be visited
a lot, and it's a beautiful state with a lot of potential, and
I think ultimately, you know what the Geese cocaine has done, and there's
hopefully some reforms done in California, then you know, are potentially considered being
like dual dual state at that point. Beautiful listening, I don't want to
want to be mindful of your time. I could keep you here for another
five hours. What a delight to speak to you. Thank you so much,
and thank you for all of your public support. Although I must say,
as soon as I started seeing all of the lovely you know, tweets
that you would put out, I told my wife, oh, watch now
the number of haters that are going to come my way because Elon is showing
me love. And boy was I right, right, because people can't stand
the fact that Elon Musk is, you know, granting his imprimature. So
on the one hand, it's been a blessing, but on the other hand,
I've actually received that threats because of all of the you know, the
high profile new friends that I have, So thank you so much for your
newfound friendship. Well you're welcome. Thing I was gonna say, is that
the probability of perceiving a death threat is proportioned to the number of people who
have heard your name, right, like a first order of approximation, even
if you've done really nothing controversial. Is that you know, like like a
sort of a homicidal maniac is going to or aspiring homicidal mediac and the vast
majority are simply threaten nothing more, but aspiring homicidal maniac is going to target
you proportioned to the number of times they hear your name. So now in
my case, they will heard my name, so the more that you hear
your name. Unfortunately, that's how it goes. It's a good, good
first order of approximate. But I loved I mean a few, a few
that I don't know. I think it was a week or two ago where