Speaker 1: I think the most remarkable thing that we do have
Speaker 1: today is the Internet and access to all the world's
Speaker 1: information from anywhere, So that that's having a supercomputer in
Speaker 1: your pocket is I think something people wouldn't have predicted,
Speaker 1: you know, back to the future, So that that's the
Speaker 1: that's the biggest thing, and probably what they would be
Speaker 1: most surprised at is that we haven't progressed more in space.
Speaker 1: So the people would have expected, i think, to have
Speaker 1: a space hotel impact ots Clark and one, yeah, exactly.
Speaker 1: The twenty ten was really crazy, you know, space advancement,
Speaker 1: so it would like be going to Jupiter and that
Speaker 1: kind of thing. So that that's probably like the most
Speaker 1: surprising thing. Like particularly if you go back even further,
Speaker 1: if you say, in sixty nine when people first landed
Speaker 1: on the Moon, if you'd ask people, if you'd asked
Speaker 1: the public, what what would the situation be in twenty fifteen,
Speaker 1: I think they would imagine that where we would have
Speaker 1: a base on the Moon, a base on Mars, and
Speaker 1: be you know, all over the Solar system by now
Speaker 1: that's probably Vegas.
Speaker 2: What happened?
Speaker 3: I mean, is there any pattern even sense for where
Speaker 3: our dreams are and science fiction, realities drift from reality
Speaker 3: and where they are reality is there is there some
Speaker 3: reason you think, like because we have dreams today of
Speaker 3: where that you know that we're going to have these
Speaker 3: Mars colonies in their future And yeah, well unless something
Speaker 3: jumps to mind, let me let me I have a
Speaker 3: bunch of questions by the way, from the audience as well.
Speaker 2: Here I want to I want to move to something
Speaker 2: a little more current as we move forward in time.
Speaker 3: Twenty years ago when we first met, you were starting
Speaker 3: your first internet company of two, the one before PayPal,
Speaker 3: zip too, And I know that in your youth.
Speaker 2: You envisioned a variety of industries that needed to change.
Speaker 3: When you were pursuing your first one, did you imagine
Speaker 3: you would get to the next one and the next
Speaker 3: one or no?
Speaker 1: I mean to when in college, just thought, well, what
Speaker 1: are the things that I'd most likely to affect the
Speaker 1: future of humanity just in you know, at a macro level,
Speaker 1: And it just seemed like it would be like the
Speaker 1: Internet and sustainable energy making like multiplanetary and then genetics
Speaker 1: and AI and I thought the first three he worked
Speaker 1: on those that were like almost suddenly going to be good,
Speaker 1: and then the last two a little more dodgy.
Speaker 2: In terms of the net benefit. Yeah, and for the double.
Speaker 4: Edged sword, and you're not sure which edge is the worse.
Speaker 3: Interesting, So it would it seems like begging the question,
Speaker 3: are genetics and AI the ones that are ripe for
Speaker 3: students today they be thinking about as they look.
Speaker 4: They are.
Speaker 1: My cousin of your younger cousin who's just finishing up
Speaker 1: sort of physics and computer science degree. Actually Berkeley, we
Speaker 1: know and and he's uh, he says, everyone there is
Speaker 1: in the computer science department is working on AI. So
Speaker 1: I mean, I think we're going to see some crazy
Speaker 1: breakthroughs in the next few years on that front.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I want to come back to that later as we
Speaker 3: look more to your vision of the future, as you
Speaker 3: think back though to your younger self or you know,
Speaker 3: many of the people in the audience are themselves college
Speaker 3: students and either undergrad or grad programs, and are thinking
Speaker 3: about the world they're entering it. I'm curious this maybe
Speaker 3: an odd question, but one that I find fascinating as
Speaker 3: you think here today back to your younger self, is
Speaker 3: there any advice you wish you could have given your
Speaker 3: younger self in with hindsight given what you know now.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean I give like a lot of advice,
Speaker 2: a bunch of things like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I gotcha, But it's just in terms of how
Speaker 3: to think about a life trajectory perhaps, or how to
Speaker 3: pursue your passions.
Speaker 1: I'm reagonally happy with how things turned out, so it's like.
Speaker 4: Not trouble.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good point, though, I.
Speaker 4: Don't think if there's anything, we'll let you.
Speaker 2: If something else to mind, let me know, but let me.
Speaker 1: I mean apart from the obvious, like just telling telling
Speaker 1: my younger self exactly how the future will unfold, which
Speaker 1: is but that that you know, wouldn't be that that's
Speaker 1: not exactly a buy or has.
Speaker 2: Been capsulated into non correctly more being wisdom.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly like wisdom. I mean, I mean there's
Speaker 1: there's there's a lot of things. I mean it's sort
Speaker 1: of I mean certainly, yeah, I mean, you know, listen,
Speaker 1: listen more to critical feedback.
Speaker 4: M Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, like a lot of things I learned in
Speaker 1: college actually were pretty helpful. I mean that, I the
Speaker 1: physics approach to thinking is very good, like the first principles.
Speaker 2: Approach, and you applied that broadly yeah, played.
Speaker 1: Applying the first principles approached to thinking is I think
Speaker 1: a good way to figure out a counterintuitive situations. And yeah,
Speaker 1: I thought that that was that was really a helpful
Speaker 1: thing to learn.
Speaker 2: That's good.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean.
Speaker 3: Yeah, sorry, no, no, I feel free to jump in
Speaker 3: because I don't know how i'd answer that question.
Speaker 4: I mean, yeah, what would you do? What would you
Speaker 4: tell your younger sel.
Speaker 2: It'll be all right, you weren't as darky as you think.
Speaker 2: Advice like that, nothing's really too actionable, don't worry about it.
Speaker 3: What just don't be so insecure about anything you're insecure
Speaker 3: about it. Yeah, I would probably the advice to myself,
Speaker 3: but let's move on. I'm not used to thinking about me,
Speaker 3: so you know, I may be roughly over generalizing here,
Speaker 3: but it seems to me that there's some often a
Speaker 3: trigger problem that generates in your mind a great solution
Speaker 3: for when you come up with a new companies. So,
Speaker 3: for example, when trying to negotiate with the Russians for
Speaker 3: launch capacity, the aha that at least you just build
Speaker 3: a better rocket to solve this problem comes forth, or
Speaker 3: when you deal with the commute on the floor or
Speaker 3: fire or whatever in la, it's like, my god, what
Speaker 3: is wrong with mass transit and perhaps hyperloop?
Speaker 2: And then you know, with.
Speaker 3: A variety of ideas, there seems to be some trigger
Speaker 3: something that's broken in the world that and you have
Speaker 3: the idea of how to fix it.
Speaker 2: And I guess what I'm curious about is not how.
Speaker 3: You've picked the areas of interest in the solutions, but
Speaker 3: how have you decided what not to fix? In other words,
Speaker 3: there's many things that need fixing in the world, and
Speaker 3: students here probably can think of a long list, many
Speaker 3: of which you could probably imagine solutions to using the
Speaker 3: physics first principle approach. But has there been any framework
Speaker 3: or idea if you've used to filter out what you
Speaker 3: don't do, what you don't pursue.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, well if sort of followed what I
Speaker 1: did initially was you know, well, you go back to
Speaker 1: like college times.
Speaker 4: I was working on.
Speaker 1: Energy storage technologies for electric vehicles, and that's what I
Speaker 1: was going to pursue at Stafford actually was work on
Speaker 1: like advanced capacitors and batteries to improve the energy density
Speaker 1: for electric vehicles. And then the Internet was kind of happening.
Speaker 1: It was clear like the Internet was happening like back
Speaker 1: in like ninety four ninety five, and I wasn't sure
Speaker 1: if what I worked on in the PhD would actually
Speaker 1: be useful.
Speaker 2: So I was like, I was really concerned that if
Speaker 2: ice why timing or what was your intuition?
Speaker 1: Meaning I think like it could be academically useful, but
Speaker 1: not practically useful, Like I think it could result in
Speaker 1: a PhD and adding some leaf to the tree of knowledge,
Speaker 1: but then then discovering that, well, it's not really going
Speaker 1: to going to matter, Like that's you know, is it
Speaker 1: is it going to be a good enough thing to
Speaker 1: actually be used in electric vehicle?
Speaker 4: I wasn't sure.
Speaker 1: I mean, so it was like I was uncertain as
Speaker 1: to whether success was one of the possible outcomes, right,
Speaker 1: Like I thought maybe it was, but it wasn't sure.
Speaker 1: And and then I thought, well, if I watched the
Speaker 1: Internet get built while I'm doing this, that that that
Speaker 1: would be really frustrating.
Speaker 3: There's a sense of that eminent timing that like that
Speaker 3: was the time for the Internet, and maybe yeah, the
Speaker 3: other stuff could wait or be on the back.
Speaker 2: That's what we want to be your mind? Was it
Speaker 2: always there is like one day I'll get back to
Speaker 2: that or was it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I thought probably i'd get back to it, and
Speaker 1: it did end up doing that. But yeah, I thought
Speaker 1: sort of the the Internet was happening, it like really
Speaker 1: taking off all the most people weren't aware of it
Speaker 1: in ninety five, and and so I figured, like electric
Speaker 1: vehicle technology, energy, story of technology will there'll be some
Speaker 1: sort of natural progression in that, and I could come
Speaker 1: back to it later. But the Internet, you know, it
Speaker 1: was it was really that was the moment to really
Speaker 1: do something. Although in ninety five it wasn't obvious that
Speaker 1: you could actually make any money on the Internet. This
Speaker 1: was like nobody until Netscape went public. I think at
Speaker 1: the end of ninety five, nobody even thought there was
Speaker 1: like you could make a valuable company on the Internet.
Speaker 2: It wasn't as obvious as it seems now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like now it seems really obvious, but back then
Speaker 1: it was not at all. So it was really from
Speaker 1: the perspective of it wasn't like, oh, I want to
Speaker 1: make a bunch of money. It was actually from it's
Speaker 1: like I want to just be a part of fooling
Speaker 1: this thing that I thought was like like a nervous system.
Speaker 1: It was like previously people had communicated effectively by osmosis,
Speaker 1: and you know, you'd have like basically physically, you know,
Speaker 1: connect with somebody to really communicate. You're like a letter,
Speaker 1: like you said, letters like that on paper. And with
Speaker 1: the Internet, anyone who had a connection anywhere in the
Speaker 1: world would have access to all the world's information, just
Speaker 1: like sort of a nervous system in a like. So
Speaker 1: humanity was effectively becoming a super organism and qualitatively different
Speaker 1: than what it had been before, and so I wanted
Speaker 1: to be part of that. And yeah, so but but
Speaker 1: initially the goal was just to make enough money to
Speaker 1: pay the rent. It wasn't, you know, to do anything
Speaker 1: beyond that.
Speaker 3: And then it's many you know that much of that
Speaker 3: capital then got ploid back into your next businesses.
Speaker 1: Right right exactly exactly, so then they and then the Internet.
Speaker 1: It's also helpful because it's anything to do with software
Speaker 1: is a low capital endeavor. So I didn't have any
Speaker 1: money and just had a bunch of student dad, and
Speaker 1: so there's but software you can just write like by yourself,
Speaker 1: and you don't need a lot of atoms, like you
Speaker 1: don't need a lot of tooling and equipment, and so
Speaker 1: it's not capital intensive. So the ability to start a
Speaker 1: company if it's software related and it's the first company,
Speaker 1: is much much easier.
Speaker 3: Right, And it seems obvious now that of course the
Speaker 3: easier place to start, and then as you gained more
Speaker 3: of a personal reputation and had more personal capitalis some marmy.
Speaker 3: And I know SpaceX was almost what was entirely funded
Speaker 3: by Elon for its first period, partially from you know,
Speaker 3: and in an era when others probably wouldn't have funded
Speaker 3: it in those arrives to days.
Speaker 1: Well, actually, I mean with the precursor to to SpaceX
Speaker 1: was not the idea wasn't really to create a company.
Speaker 1: It was it was to try to figure out why
Speaker 1: we hadn't gone sent people to Mars. So so we
Speaker 1: went from sept to to PayPal and then and then
Speaker 1: going from paypals. So the next thing, I was sort
Speaker 1: of thinking, well, it is some way to reignite the
Speaker 1: dream of Apollo. And I thought, well, it was maybe
Speaker 1: a question of like we'd lost the will to explore it.
Speaker 1: But I actually think that that that my original premise
Speaker 1: was wrong. We had not lost the will to explore,
Speaker 1: but people did not think there was a way, and
Speaker 1: people don't think there's away. Then they just they won't
Speaker 1: bash their head against the wall continuously. They'll you know,
Speaker 1: they'll sort of give up. So but in the beginning,
Speaker 1: I thought it was a question of will, so that
Speaker 1: if we can send a small greenhouse to the surface
Speaker 1: of Mars, and you could, and you have seeds and
Speaker 1: nutrients l and you hydrated upon landing, and then you'd
Speaker 1: have this little greenhouse on the surface of Mars. And
Speaker 1: people tend to respond to precedence and superlatives. Nless will
Speaker 1: be the first life on Mars as far as we knew,
Speaker 1: whetherst that life's ever traveled. You have this great shot
Speaker 1: of green plants on a red background, and I thought,
Speaker 1: well that maybe that would get people excited about sending
Speaker 1: people to Mars.
Speaker 3: So the headlines were clear in your mind. Once you
Speaker 3: had success on what that would lead to catalyzed action.
Speaker 1: And actually the goal was to get the public excited
Speaker 1: about that and get NASA's budget increased, so that that
Speaker 1: was actually the original goal. And so I went to
Speaker 1: Russia to try to buy some ICBMs in two thousand one.
Speaker 1: It's an interesting experience.
Speaker 2: A lot of vodg, Yeah, a lot of vodka yeah.
Speaker 1: It's crazy, and I couldn't afford the regular rockets like
Speaker 1: the Boeing and luckhead rockets are too expensive and still are, yes,
Speaker 1: very expensive.
Speaker 2: That's sorry, Wait me jump in here for a second.
Speaker 3: Because the anecdote you brought up of wanting to change
Speaker 3: government policy and inspire the world to have a MARS
Speaker 3: program if you will, whether it's popular uprising or or
Speaker 3: space programs at the government level, I think it's a
Speaker 3: fascinating anecdote because in a sense what you were saying
Speaker 3: is I, as an individual, want to start an entity,
Speaker 3: business or otherwise that will catalyze change even beyond the company.
Speaker 2: Level or the industry level. And I see apparallel in other.
Speaker 3: Initiatives you've taken on in that if you look at
Speaker 3: the goal of Tesla under your leadership, it is to
Speaker 3: share the transition to all vehicles being electric, not just
Speaker 3: the cars that currently are produced by Tesla, and with
Speaker 3: Powerwall and Solar City, arguably the description is one of
Speaker 3: ushering in a wholesale shift to renewable energy. Many of
Speaker 3: the solutions required wouldn't be provided by the companies you're starting,
Speaker 3: and so as I, as I deal in entrepreneurship, as
Speaker 3: a venture capitalist every day we see this incredible scope
Speaker 3: of ambition here that is breathtaking, like change the world
Speaker 3: with Steve Jobs and others talk about it in a company,
Speaker 3: maybe shifting an industry, but we're talking about shifting like
Speaker 3: the entire zeitgeist of the world in a sense, and
Speaker 3: maybe eventually other worlds.
Speaker 2: So my question is do you.
Speaker 3: Start always in your mind with that as a like
Speaker 3: I said, like, where's the starting point?
Speaker 2: Is it? Okay?
Speaker 3: I see this arc of a story like the Mars example,
Speaker 3: or renewable energy, and then do you pull back to
Speaker 3: where's the best product to get it unstuck?
Speaker 2: Like why isn't this happening? And like if I solve
Speaker 2: that problem then it unlocks value. How does that happen
Speaker 2: in your mind?
Speaker 4: Sure?
Speaker 1: So, I mean I should say, like when when we
Speaker 1: started SpaceX and Tesla, I mean I really thought the
Speaker 1: probability of success was very low. I mean it wasn't
Speaker 1: like I think, oh, we'll definitely be successful. I thought
Speaker 1: I thought we'd be like maybe ten percent likely. Well yeah,
Speaker 1: and in the case, we came very close to both
Speaker 1: companies not succeeding. In two thousand and eight, you know,
Speaker 1: we had the we'd had three failures of the SpaceX rocket,
Speaker 1: so we're zero for three. We had the crazy financial recession,
Speaker 1: like the Great Recession, the Tesla financing round of falling
Speaker 1: apart because like pretty hard to raise money for.
Speaker 4: The startup car company.
Speaker 1: If GM and christ are going bankrupt, like it's partly
Speaker 1: for the upside, Yeah, it's that was a tricky one.
Speaker 1: And you know, unfortunately, at the end of two thousand
Speaker 1: and eight, the fourth launch which was that was the
Speaker 1: last launch we had money for worked for SpaceX and
Speaker 1: and then we closed the Tesla finance ground is you know,
Speaker 1: Christmas Eve two thousand and eight, last hour of the
Speaker 1: last day that it was possible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thanks to you for those that don't know, the
Speaker 3: most extraordinary act of entrepreneurial zeal and commitment I've ever
Speaker 3: seen where Elon personally saved Tesla in those hours, like
Speaker 3: when no one else would write a check, he spoke
Speaker 3: for it all and that flipped the mentality from fear
Speaker 3: to greed and everyone joined the bandwagon and everything changed
Speaker 3: from you know, divoting into the ground to success. But
Speaker 3: you were willing to go like net negative personally of
Speaker 3: isn't that your net worth? And it's it's a remarkable story.
Speaker 4: Thanks for supporting. By the way, those much appreciate it.
Speaker 2: We were happy to fall right behind in line. But
Speaker 2: it was all him.
Speaker 3: So I guess on this this idea though the big picture,
Speaker 3: I'm curious in the way I heard you just now
Speaker 3: describe the greenhouse and the headlines is interesting. Do the
Speaker 3: marketing headlines flash through your mind as you introduce new
Speaker 3: products that are a step to a much grander vision.
Speaker 2: I'm curious because it seems like it has two purposes.
Speaker 3: Like getting employees, customers, everyone really gung ho about the vision,
Speaker 3: but it also makes it larger than life in so
Speaker 3: many ways.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, if you're trying to convince the public
Speaker 1: to do something, you have to say, Okay, how's this
Speaker 1: going to read?
Speaker 4: And what message are we going to try to convey?
Speaker 4: What will people respond to?
Speaker 1: What would I respond to if I was, you know,
Speaker 1: sort of an objective member of the public, And so
Speaker 1: that's that's really you know, if if you're trying to
Speaker 1: change people's minds or get people fired up about something,
Speaker 1: then you got to think, Okay, what what's that message?
Speaker 1: What's going to get them really excited?
Speaker 3: And that's really good advice, by the way, for all
Speaker 3: the engineering students here, as I was a one as well.
Speaker 3: I'm curious there's as an adjunct sometimes to these grand
Speaker 3: visions like making humanity a multiplanetary species, or shifting us
Speaker 3: to renewable energy, or making all the equals electric, that
Speaker 3: has a purpose driven element to it. There's a higher
Speaker 3: calling than the quarterly bottom line. In fact, there was
Speaker 3: a Tesla quarterly report I remember famously where the opening,
Speaker 3: the literally opening line was, while profits are not a
Speaker 3: priority common you know, nevertheless.
Speaker 2: Exactly, And I was struck by it at first, and
Speaker 2: it did occur.
Speaker 3: To me that it's not like a miss some sort
Speaker 3: of misdirected fiduciary question. To me, it seems like, how
Speaker 3: could you lead an industry transition if your business model
Speaker 3: was worse than what's already there, Meaning like if you
Speaker 3: weren't more profitable in the long term and a better business,
Speaker 3: why would anyone shift?
Speaker 2: Right? So it almost seems like, look, the right purpose profits.
Speaker 1: Follow, Yeah, well, if if your makeup if the you know,
Speaker 1: if the output is more valuable than the inputs, which
Speaker 1: is really that's that's that's profit, Like the output is
Speaker 1: more valuable in the input that that says you're have
Speaker 1: a useful company. So now in a high growth scenario
Speaker 1: you have a lot more inputs for future outputs, so
Speaker 1: that you have negative cash flow and lack of profitability
Speaker 1: and which we currently have a tesla. But in the
Speaker 1: long term, of course that has to be that that
Speaker 1: has to be fixed, that they can't be negative cashlow
Speaker 1: in long term and that there needs to be a
Speaker 1: net positive output, which is sort of profits in the
Speaker 1: long term. But in the short term when this hyprowth
Speaker 1: that doesn't it isn't the most sensible thing.
Speaker 3: And then there's also related things like open sourcing, patents
Speaker 3: and acts that to me relate to the purpose.
Speaker 2: Let's let the whole lot of industry do this.
Speaker 3: And so I'm curious, what do you see from your
Speaker 3: mantage point as the benefits of a purpose DRITN company,
Speaker 3: Meaning when you have this thing that every employee and
Speaker 3: customer knows is the purpose of the company, how do
Speaker 3: you see that flowing through to benefits for the company?
Speaker 4: Well, I think.
Speaker 1: I think having a purpose suddenly is going to attract
Speaker 1: the very best talent in the world, because if people
Speaker 1: can if there's something that's intrinsically enjoyable and the francial
Speaker 1: awards are good. But then also it's something that's going
Speaker 1: to genuinely change the world, then that's I think that's
Speaker 1: a pretty powerful motivator. And but I don't think like
Speaker 1: everything needs to change the world, you know, I mean honestly,
Speaker 1: like there's lots of like useful things that people do,
Speaker 1: and I mean I think really it should be like
Speaker 1: a usefulness optimization, like just say, like, is what I'm
Speaker 1: doing as useful as it could be?
Speaker 2: You're talking about the goal of an organization or in general.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you know, just even if something isn't changing
Speaker 1: the world, if it's making people's lives better, I think
Speaker 1: that's that's great. And you know, if even if something
Speaker 1: is like making only people's lives only slightly better, but
Speaker 1: it's a large number of people, think kind of like
Speaker 1: the area under the curve sure is quite good?
Speaker 3: Is that mathematical first principles appointing utility and number exactly?
Speaker 1: Like I mean, because one can say, is like some
Speaker 1: app really making people's life better, But if it's affecting
Speaker 1: a lot of people, even in a small way, then yeah,
Speaker 1: the sort of area is good.
Speaker 3: Interesting, So let's shift gears a little bit, since it
Speaker 3: is future fest looking to the future, right, we started
Speaker 3: thirty years in the past, but the future keeps accelerating.
Speaker 3: So let's maybe look twenty years in the future for
Speaker 3: an equivalent leap. Arguably five years in the future, it
Speaker 3: might be equivalent to the past thirty but let's say
Speaker 3: twenty So the year twenty thirty five. What does the
Speaker 3: future look like? As far as you can tell, what
Speaker 3: would you yeah, twenty thirty five, Yeah, twenty years.
Speaker 1: It's always really tricky to predict the future. I mean,
Speaker 1: some of it's pretty obvious, like computing power is going
Speaker 1: to be just crazy. The big change is the cost
Speaker 1: of computing power, not so much the sort of circuit density,
Speaker 1: sort of the Moslaw thing. But if you if you
Speaker 1: look at say, what is the actual you know, dollars
Speaker 1: per you know, per instruction and that that is draw
Speaker 1: I mean that that that cost is dropping exponentially if
Speaker 1: you think about it, like like if you're making a computer,
Speaker 1: just you're rearranging silicon and copper, you know, so on
Speaker 1: a on a little chip and once the capital cost
Speaker 1: of the development and the chip plant is paid for,
Speaker 1: the act I mean, the module cost of a chip
Speaker 1: is very very tiny. So I think we'll see massively
Speaker 1: parallel computers and computing power and storage being you know,
Speaker 1: as really as much as you want.
Speaker 3: And it's interesting I to start with that, like if
Speaker 3: I I don't know what else to predict, but as
Speaker 3: a foundation, for sure, this seems like the safest starting
Speaker 3: you know, premise. But then what does that ripple through
Speaker 3: to and fields like genetics in an EE which you
Speaker 3: mentioned tneus driving, space related.
Speaker 1: Topics, I mean just ubiquitous computing everywhere. I think like
Speaker 1: AI is going to be incredibly sophisticated in twenty years.
Speaker 4: The first like, it seems to be accelerating.
Speaker 1: And the tricky thing about predicting things when there's an
Speaker 1: exponential is that an exponential looks like it looks linear
Speaker 1: close up and and but it's actually it's not linear.
Speaker 1: So and AI appears to be accelerating for what I
Speaker 1: can see, and for.
Speaker 3: That you look at autonomus driving and point AI is
Speaker 3: like the series like functionality as your guidepost.
Speaker 1: Well, I had a sort of debate about someone like
Speaker 1: is AI accelerating or not? And the like he was saying, well,
Speaker 1: what's the y axis? You know, if if it's accelerating
Speaker 1: your t on the X axis, But what's what's the
Speaker 1: y axis?
Speaker 4: Is it well thought about that?
Speaker 1: I think you could have a recursive y axis, so
Speaker 1: that if at any point in time your predictions for
Speaker 1: AI are coming sooner or later, that that actually would
Speaker 1: help define whether it's accelerating or not.
Speaker 2: Whatever that access was. So you mentioned cursive access like, so.
Speaker 1: If in any given year, if you find your predictions
Speaker 1: are going further out or coming further or coming closer
Speaker 1: in that that actually, you know, is one way to
Speaker 1: think of acceleration because because otherwise, what's the what's the
Speaker 1: qualitative a qualitative measure of AI?
Speaker 2: I was saying, if giving technology is always twenty years
Speaker 2: in the future, Yeah.
Speaker 4: If if it's always twenty in the future, it's like
Speaker 4: more logarithmic.
Speaker 3: So I seem like it's one of the most fastly
Speaker 3: accelerating things that you're aware of.
Speaker 1: Yes, And I can certainly say that with with autonomous driving,
Speaker 1: where you know, three years ago I thought it was
Speaker 1: ten years away, and that two years ago I thought
Speaker 1: it was five years away. Now I think it's three
Speaker 1: years away or less than three years away.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 3: So when you say away like like like release to
Speaker 3: market available for consumer adoption because as opposed to prototyping.
Speaker 1: No, I mean like the like the technology works, there's
Speaker 1: a sort of second question as to when regulators would
Speaker 1: approve it. Yeah, yeah, but but like a love with
Speaker 1: that the technology works in a technology works as a
Speaker 1: general solution, so like time was driving like based across anywhere, so.
Speaker 2: It could be sooner for point things like highway only.
Speaker 4: Or I mean highway only.
Speaker 1: We're already in public data with this a Tesla, so
Speaker 1: we'll be hopefully in the next several weeks releasing two
Speaker 1: to all of the cars that happen in the autopilot hardware,
Speaker 1: which is all cars built like roughly the last twelve months.
Speaker 2: Wow. Wow.
Speaker 3: And so this seems like one of those things that
Speaker 3: once you've experienced it, the inevitability of it becomes more apparent,
Speaker 3: kind of like first time I sat in the electric vehicle,
Speaker 3: it's just so clear, and same with a ton vehicles.
Speaker 2: Do you think that will help persuade public opinion?
Speaker 3: And like, like, the regulatory question is an interesting one
Speaker 3: because a technology continues to accelerate, human nature doesn't, and
Speaker 3: acceptance of change. I'm just not sure if there's like
Speaker 3: as we look out in the future, should we assume
Speaker 3: that no matter how fast something like more as Long accelerates,
Speaker 3: there's always the counterbalancing force of human nature and habit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's yeah. I think, yeah, there's always
Speaker 1: going to be the sort of there's always going to
Speaker 1: be human nature, and it's difficult to predict. And I think,
Speaker 1: what what what that will how that will affect things?
Speaker 1: But I mean, I'm not sure if I fully answer
Speaker 1: your question. So in terms of what I think, twenty
Speaker 1: so for sure, EU Biker's computing AI that's beyond anything
Speaker 1: like the public appreciates today.
Speaker 4: I think we'll have.
Speaker 1: Most of the new vehicles being produced being electric, and
Speaker 1: we'll be probably have the super majority of energy being
Speaker 1: produced being.
Speaker 4: Sustainable.
Speaker 2: So I think I think we're on headed solar primarily
Speaker 2: in your mirimarily solar.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so I think those I think that those
Speaker 1: are sort of some good things. Like I think we'll
Speaker 1: be hopefully in a good path for sustainable energy. Sooner
Speaker 1: is always better, But I think by twenty thirty five,
Speaker 1: I think we'll be substantially like most of transport, most
Speaker 1: of new energy being produced will be sustainable. Broadband everywhere,
Speaker 1: broadband everywhere. Yeah, Mars colony and hopefully hopefully a small
Speaker 1: base on Mars, a small city on Mars in twenty years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: well okay by in town, village, hamlets.
Speaker 2: I mean that's exciting. I mean that could get people
Speaker 2: fired up about the future.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I do. I agree exactly. I think that.
Speaker 1: The idea of being Mullifana species and getting out there
Speaker 1: and exploring the stars is one of those really inspiring
Speaker 1: exciting things. I mean, just as Apollo was incredibly inspiring
Speaker 1: to everyone around the world, and even those I mean
Speaker 1: only a very tiny number of people went there, but
Speaker 1: I mean vicariously, we all went there. And I think
Speaker 1: that's true of if we have a Mars space as well.
Speaker 1: And it's very important that we have things that are
Speaker 1: exciting and inspiring in the future, because otherwise wipe it
Speaker 1: up in the morning, you know, it was just about
Speaker 1: one sort of sad problem after another.
Speaker 4: It's like life, Life's not worth living.
Speaker 3: Are there any other things that excites you a lot
Speaker 3: about the future beyond the multiplanetary species? Perhaps, AI hope
Speaker 3: that may scare you as well as excite you. The
Speaker 3: autonomous vehicles. Are there any other planks that you think
Speaker 3: looking forward twenty years, like this is what I really
Speaker 3: get excited that.
Speaker 4: Well.
Speaker 1: I mean so for sure, for sure Mars and sustainable transport,
Speaker 1: like those items I think that are really any sustainable energy,
Speaker 1: Those are I think really cool things. And I mean
Speaker 1: in terms of getting excited about it, I mean it's
Speaker 1: I think we'll probably start seeing like more like truly
Speaker 1: Cybork activity like human brain inter like like with brain
Speaker 1: for viewer interfaces.
Speaker 4: Like that.
Speaker 3: There's a longside the ais that are purely Yeah, I
Speaker 3: think so it's the only way we can relate to
Speaker 3: I think, you know, and they have a conversation.
Speaker 1: I mean, there are amazing things happen like happening these
Speaker 1: days like this. They've been able to figure out how
Speaker 1: to do an artificial hippocampus in rats and monkeys and
Speaker 1: and now they're looking at doing that.
Speaker 4: To solve severe epilepsy.
Speaker 1: About half of severe epilepsy cases originate in the hippocampus,
Speaker 1: and by having sort of an artificially augmented hippocampus, they
Speaker 1: can actually solve I believe, the severe epilepsy cases. So
Speaker 1: it's like like wow, and you can you can read
Speaker 1: and write information back to the chip from your brain
Speaker 1: at the individual neuron level, like today, pretty exciting.
Speaker 3: The whole field of biology and things inspired by biology
Speaker 3: and the information systems biology fascinate me personally as a
Speaker 3: as a computer science oriented person.
Speaker 2: Before I go to the student questions, which I'm about
Speaker 2: to do, there was.
Speaker 3: One last story I wanted to share that we experienced
Speaker 3: together and ask your thoughts about it.
Speaker 2: We were in Hawthorne, Texas when the grasshopper vehicle occur.
Speaker 3: Happened to me, Yeah, spectacular explosion right in front of.
Speaker 1: Us and right, and I like, I brought the SpaceX
Speaker 1: board out to take a look at one of our
Speaker 1: political takeover and lighting tests, and of course that's the
Speaker 1: one that blows up.
Speaker 2: Whoa, I mean the repercussions and walking.
Speaker 4: Out a rud It's a rapid on schedule disassembly, that's.
Speaker 3: Right, right, Yes, rapid unscheduled to the same when anyone
Speaker 3: in the rockets are like a hobbyist or professionally knows
Speaker 3: what that one is. Every component part is just sprewn
Speaker 3: strewn across. And as we walked, one of the other
Speaker 3: board members asked, and maybe they cheering up kind of
Speaker 3: method with some quoting Bill Gates or somebody that said,
Speaker 3: you know, if you haven't failed, then you're not learning,
Speaker 3: or some paraphrase of the quote. And I remember your
Speaker 3: reply and I have it written as a quote because
Speaker 3: I want to put it on a placard.
Speaker 2: Given the options, I prefer to learn from success, which
Speaker 2: I think is a great comeback.
Speaker 3: And so I guess I was curious, in general, what
Speaker 3: do you think of the Silicon Valley mantra fail fast,
Speaker 3: fail often, or as Esterradison says, always make new mistakes,
Speaker 3: as if failure is the crucible of learning. Curious if
Speaker 3: you had any further thoughts on that, and that maybe
Speaker 3: off the tough comment you made out there.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, there are there are many that sort
Speaker 1: of I mean, I think it's sort of there's like
Speaker 1: some entropic basis for this, like there are many more
Speaker 1: ways to fail than just exceed.
Speaker 4: So you, I mean you have to explore.
Speaker 1: I mean, particularly for a rocket, there's like a thousand
Speaker 1: ways that think can fail and like one way it
Speaker 1: can work, so you could you could have a lot
Speaker 1: of rocket failures to explore all the ways in which
Speaker 1: you could fail. So but I do think that one
Speaker 1: great thing about Silicon Valley is that failure is not
Speaker 1: a not a big stigma. So it's like if you
Speaker 1: if you try hard and it doesn't work out, that's okay,
Speaker 1: Like you can learn from that and you do another
Speaker 1: company and it's not a big deal. And I think
Speaker 1: that's that's really one of the great things about Silicon Valley.
Speaker 3: Interesting do you also I'm curious to either on the well,
Speaker 3: it seems to me that on the system design side,
Speaker 3: you can accommodate a likely failure of subcomponents and and
Speaker 3: so much of the elegance of let's say a Falcon
Speaker 3: nine or a fucking nine heavy as an ultimate incarnation
Speaker 3: of this vision of how the rocket should be built
Speaker 3: to say, hey, parts will fail thing, but here's how
Speaker 3: the system can succeed.
Speaker 2: And I'm curious if.
Speaker 3: There's any other thoughts along that how to how to
Speaker 3: accommodate anticipated failure. And then also maybe inn like managerially,
Speaker 3: is there ways that you motivate the team either in
Speaker 3: advance of failure to coach them on how this is
Speaker 3: going to happen, or in the aftermath of failure to
Speaker 3: get them fired up to solve it and move forward
Speaker 3: when it might be dark times, and like for them
Speaker 3: when you notions like failure to launch, uh, you know,
Speaker 3: exploding on the path. You know, there's all these it's
Speaker 3: a very visual, it's public spectacle when you have a
Speaker 3: setback in the rocket industry, and I'm curious how you
Speaker 3: manage a round failure.
Speaker 1: I mean it's I think it's it's quite quite painful
Speaker 1: and difficult, honestly, and that it feels terrible. But yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, the the company is sort of looking to
Speaker 1: you know, me too, you know, rally them, and so
Speaker 1: I do. But I honestly feel super bad.
Speaker 2: It's like a punch in the gut. Yeah, yeah, I remember.
Speaker 2: It's almost like a time like the stages of grief.
Speaker 3: I remember in Texas is kind of like sort of
Speaker 3: denial and then this alally hits us at dinners.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, what's just happened?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's just I mean, it's particularly with rockets,
Speaker 1: it's it's just a really like rockets are rockets. Space
Speaker 1: is hard, and rockets tend to fail, unfortunately, and even
Speaker 1: when you've got like a lot of really smart people
Speaker 1: working super hard to minimize the pobolity of failure, it's
Speaker 1: still still there and it's and it's you know, it's
Speaker 1: it's quite significant, and you know, people have asked me like, well,
Speaker 1: why why are rockets, you know, especially hard? And and
Speaker 1: the you know part of it is like everything has
Speaker 1: to work the first time, Like there's there's no you
Speaker 1: can't do a recall, you can't patch it, it's got
Speaker 1: it's like nine minutes to orbit or it's over.
Speaker 4: And and then the.
Speaker 1: You know, you can't you can never test the rocket
Speaker 1: completely in the environment that it's actually going to experience.
Speaker 1: You can't fully recreate something that's moving super fast in
Speaker 1: a vacuum on of Earth, like you can only really
Speaker 1: recreate that in space.
Speaker 2: So the limit of the simulation tools. Is that a
Speaker 2: limit of the simulation tools today? Or is yeah?
Speaker 4: Absolutely?
Speaker 1: If there's any error between the simulation and reality, and
Speaker 1: there's always some amount of error, then that.
Speaker 4: That can result in the failure. So it's a really
Speaker 4: really tricky one. It's like.
Speaker 1: In the software analogy, it would be like if you
Speaker 1: had to write a whole bunch of software modules and
Speaker 1: you can never run them together, and you can run
Speaker 1: them on the target computer, like like when you're testing them,
Speaker 1: you don't have to test them individually and not in
Speaker 1: the actual computer that they're going to run on. Then
Speaker 1: you put them, put all the modules together, run it
Speaker 1: for the first time in a completely different or very
Speaker 1: different computer, and it has to run with no bugs.
Speaker 4: That is difficult.
Speaker 3: The software analogies to rocket design are deep, the modular reuse.
Speaker 3: I mean there's many of these, Like there's a little
Speaker 3: soren' pamire. It's not like this is an aerospace engineer
Speaker 3: by traditional training coming, but.
Speaker 2: He is in fact radically changing the industry.
Speaker 3: I think applying a CS perspective to industry after industry,
Speaker 3: I'm like, how would how would you know computer scientist
Speaker 3: or a physicist approach the problem, which oftentimes the solutions
Speaker 3: very unlike the industry incumbents. There's there's a certain elegance
Speaker 3: to it, at least from the outside. After I observer
Speaker 3: like myself.
Speaker 2: Let me switch, if I may, to some student questions
Speaker 2: which will be completely in a different direction.
Speaker 3: The first one comes from Nick zoo in an architectural
Speaker 3: design coach or so to be switching more to the
Speaker 3: other side of our brain for a moment, what do
Speaker 3: you look for in design?
Speaker 4: And related?
Speaker 2: If you'd like, what do you look for in art? Design?
Speaker 2: Might be more immediately elevent that's where he's coming from.
Speaker 1: Sure, I mean I think there's I mean, you want
Speaker 1: to make something beautiful. I mean that you want to
Speaker 1: trigger what whatever fundamental aesthetic algorithms or like like in
Speaker 1: your brain. There's you have I think some intrinsic uh,
Speaker 1: elements that that represent beauty and and that that trigger
Speaker 1: the the emotion of appreciation of beauty in you in
Speaker 1: your in your mind. And I think that these are
Speaker 1: these are actually relatively consistent among people. I mean not
Speaker 1: not completely some people, like not everyone likes the same thing,
Speaker 1: but there are there's a lot of commonality and and
Speaker 1: and and they're yeah, and they're they're but but I
Speaker 1: think it is important to combine aesthetic design with functionality.
Speaker 1: Like the thing that's like, if you say, like what
Speaker 1: was really hard about say the Model S or the
Speaker 1: Model X was to combine aesthetics and utility, so to
Speaker 1: to balance the two. You can make a car look
Speaker 1: very good by giving it sort of certain proportions, like
Speaker 1: making it sort of low and slim and and and uh.
Speaker 1: But but if you if you do that, the utility
Speaker 1: is significantly affected. So the big challenge with the say
Speaker 1: the Model S, was trying to figure out how do
Speaker 1: we get five adults plus two kids, because I want
Speaker 1: to have through sevens here.
Speaker 3: It seems like the Dragon and every teslazed room for
Speaker 3: seven seven five children.
Speaker 2: I can see. Yeah, it might be in important to
Speaker 2: sign for.
Speaker 1: I definitely don't think we should take the whole family
Speaker 1: on the spacecraft. But but but that like the big
Speaker 1: challenge with the like with with the S was having
Speaker 1: a car that had a high utility and look good.
Speaker 4: And the same with the X.
Speaker 1: So like it's like with the to make a sports
Speaker 1: car look it is relatively easy, but to make a
Speaker 1: sedan look good or uns you look good is quite difficult.
Speaker 1: And and I think another principle is you want to
Speaker 1: have it feel bigger on the inside then it looks
Speaker 1: on the outside, and that's also a really hard thing
Speaker 1: to do. And then really pay attention to the little details,
Speaker 1: the nuances of design and shape and form function, and
Speaker 1: that you know, just the way it looks in different
Speaker 1: lights and.
Speaker 2: When something is off the little thing, how do you
Speaker 2: experience that?
Speaker 4: It drives me bananas?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's the problem is like, if you
Speaker 1: you can train yourself to pay attention to the tiny details,
Speaker 1: I think almost anyone can, although this is a very
Speaker 1: much double edged sword because then you see all the
Speaker 1: little details and then little things drive you crazy. So
Speaker 1: but like most people don't they don't see they don't
Speaker 1: consciously see the small details, but they they do subconsciously
Speaker 1: see them, like you sort of your mind takes in
Speaker 1: your result of the overall you know, an overall impression,
Speaker 1: and you know if something is appealing or not, even
Speaker 1: though you may not be able to win out exactly why.
Speaker 4: And it's it's the summation of these many small details.
Speaker 3: So most of us experience it as a oh, I
Speaker 3: think that's ugly, or I think that's beautiful, or like wow,
Speaker 3: that's elegant.
Speaker 2: But yeah, you can't break it down. You mentioned something
Speaker 2: in passing like you can train yourself in this though.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you can train yourself.
Speaker 1: I think you can make yourself pay attention to to
Speaker 1: why you're essentially bring the subconscious awareness into conscious awareness.
Speaker 2: I wish I could do that. How do you do that?
Speaker 3: Just Just pay really close attention, almost like a meditation
Speaker 3: on the object, trying to find the details, like why
Speaker 3: do I not like this?
Speaker 1: Is that? What?
Speaker 4: Yeah? Just look look closely and carefully.
Speaker 1: And yeah, for any give an object, it's that it's geometry.
Speaker 4: It's uh.
Speaker 3: I've heard someone with for Steve Jobs, and that thought
Speaker 3: occurred to me as well. I worked briefly with him,
Speaker 3: and I could only experience as a visceral agitation with imperfection,
Speaker 3: and like that's just wrong, like that to be fixed.
Speaker 1: I have to turn it off otherwise that I can't
Speaker 1: go through life. It's just yeah, it's yeah, it's the.
Speaker 2: World around you or even in yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah if you because there's there's always something wrong somewhere
Speaker 1: all the time, and so it's you really have to
Speaker 1: turn it off otherwise, you know, God, you just get
Speaker 1: the like the list of the mental list of things
Speaker 1: that are wrong just drives you crazy.
Speaker 3: I just wish this way you could just like record
Speaker 3: it for everyone else to go fix. Just running tally right.
Speaker 4: Oh my god.
Speaker 3: So let me go to one other question. I found
Speaker 3: that one interesting. I had no idea where that was
Speaker 3: going to go. So I really appreciate that question, Nick,
Speaker 3: Thank you. Let's see what's one of these doing it.
Speaker 2: There's some combination of questions. Let me mention both. You
Speaker 2: can pick which one you like more, because they both
Speaker 2: relate to colonizing Mars.
Speaker 3: One comes from Henning rote Ol, a PhD candidate and
Speaker 3: Civil Environmental Engineering, which just asks elon giving your plan
Speaker 3: to bring a million colonists to Mars, what are the
Speaker 3: pressing future technologies that need to be developed in order
Speaker 3: to support a robust and thriving surface colony, So technology
Speaker 3: for I guess survival, And then maybe related from the
Speaker 3: Stanford Space Initiative students, how do you envision humans governing
Speaker 3: a separate planet?
Speaker 2: Unlessure if you're sure. I had to think about that yet.
Speaker 4: I thought a little bit about those things.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously the first challenge is just getting there
Speaker 1: at all, and like that's you know, so SpaceX is
Speaker 1: working super hard on figure out just how to get
Speaker 1: large numbers of people and cargo to Mars. And I
Speaker 1: think we've got something that I think works at a
Speaker 1: sort of fundamental physics and economics level. So it's a
Speaker 1: question of figuring out the detailed design, which we're working on.
Speaker 1: We're only spending like half an hour a week on
Speaker 1: it because like pressing near term priorities. But I'm kind
Speaker 1: of excited about how it's coming together. So to getting
Speaker 1: just getting that transport thing solved, I think we'll then
Speaker 1: open up a tremendous number of opportunities for people on Mars.
Speaker 1: You know, just like you know, having the Union Pacific
Speaker 1: Railroad to California and the you know, and look at
Speaker 1: what what you know resulted after that.
Speaker 2: Other companies figured it out. It's like, what are you
Speaker 2: going to get there?
Speaker 1: Then you get then that the opportunities for entrepreneurs are
Speaker 1: a tremendous that ranges everything from you know, everything you
Speaker 1: can imagine like starting the you know, like the first
Speaker 1: Italian restaurant or something on Mars. You know, it's like
Speaker 1: somebody you've got to do it, and it'll be kind
Speaker 1: of cool, you know, like a iron an iron refinery,
Speaker 1: you know, like resourceing boundary, you know, the like the
Speaker 1: the entire basic industry, and and then there'll probably be
Speaker 1: things like that are just unique to Mars. But but
Speaker 1: we we gotta we got to get that, you know, effectively,
Speaker 1: that Union Pacific Railroad there in order to get get
Speaker 1: the entrepreneurs there that and and and then create a
Speaker 1: fertile environment for them to create companies. So that that's
Speaker 1: that's m HM. So so once you're there, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's going to be I think a lot of exciting
Speaker 1: things that can be done. And in the beginning, you know,
Speaker 1: people would live in kind of glass domes, but but
Speaker 1: over time it would terrior for Mars and make it
Speaker 1: like Earth. And so so I think it's just been
Speaker 1: a lot of super exciting things that are hard to predict.
Speaker 1: Just like when they're building you in Pacific, they would
Speaker 1: hard Nobody would have predicted Silicon Valley and Hollywood, right,
Speaker 1: you know that that's would have been like an urbanization
Speaker 1: in general. Yeah, you know, well the California would be
Speaker 1: like the most popular state in the country.
Speaker 4: Like they're like that sounds crazy.
Speaker 2: For them.
Speaker 4: Goal is discovered, right yeah, so.
Speaker 1: And so the yeah, I think like it's it's really
Speaker 1: in coming on SpaceX or you know, maybe other organizations
Speaker 1: to figure out how to get there. Well otherwise nothing
Speaker 1: else mats and then once you get there, there's a
Speaker 1: lot of sort of yeah, a lot that can be done.
Speaker 1: From a governance standpoint, I mean, obviously, ultimately the governance
Speaker 1: of Arts will be up to the Martians, but.
Speaker 2: The we have a name from them. We become a
Speaker 2: Martian when each other.
Speaker 1: But but I think if you said, like, how would
Speaker 1: you do adopt a democracy two point zero, you know,
Speaker 1: or like some a new new version. I think we
Speaker 1: would probably have more of a direct democracy than a
Speaker 1: representative democracy. And you know, when the when the United
Speaker 1: States was formed, it was really it was impossible to
Speaker 1: have a direct democracy, like like you're even sending a
Speaker 1: letter two weeks, so there was no way that people
Speaker 1: could like vote directly on issues. You had to have representatives. Interesting,
Speaker 1: so I think I think probably there would be more
Speaker 1: direct democracy.
Speaker 2: And is this thing about the latency of communication from others.
Speaker 1: Latency saying just like communication errors and communication latency when
Speaker 1: you have letters that that take weeks to get anywhere,
Speaker 1: what would have made.
Speaker 4: Governance almost impossible?
Speaker 1: I think if if it hadn't been a representative of democracy,
Speaker 1: you had a lot of people that couldn't even read.
Speaker 4: Or or right, you know.
Speaker 2: So that's fascinating.
Speaker 3: I was just wondering if if you were to start
Speaker 3: over with a clean sheet of paper on governance is
Speaker 3: did you think a framework that could be envisioned that
Speaker 3: encompasses other scenting beings to come, meaning the AIS and
Speaker 3: others who might clamor for their rights on one side.
Speaker 1: Right, Yes, it's a difficult predict but I can say
Speaker 1: I think probably we would would aim for a more
Speaker 1: direct democracy. And then in talking to Larry Page about this,
Speaker 1: and he had like a good suggestion, like we should
Speaker 1: limit the number of words in the law because like
Speaker 1: we have these like thousand page laws like a pasts
Speaker 1: and like nobody's read them.
Speaker 2: Twitter equivalent of personal money.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like I don't know a thousand word letter count
Speaker 1: or something like that. Like if you can't, if you
Speaker 1: can't write the law in a thousand words, then probably
Speaker 1: it shouldn't be there. And you know, just which we
Speaker 1: shouldn't have, you know, a single law passed that's like
Speaker 1: the size of Lord of the Rings, that's right, and
Speaker 1: like literally not a single person in Congress has read.
Speaker 4: The whole thing.
Speaker 2: It's like the tax good, it's unscrewtable.
Speaker 4: It's exactly so that. So there's that. And then I think.
Speaker 1: Laws also have an infinite lifespan unless they're given some
Speaker 1: sort of you know, sunset periods are probably biggerd to
Speaker 1: default laws to have a sunset period, like and if
Speaker 1: it's not i it's not good enough to be renewed,
Speaker 1: then it goes away. And maybe some hysteresis in that
Speaker 1: in making it easier to remove a law than to
Speaker 1: put one in place. It can just imagine because like
Speaker 1: over time, like the body of law just gets bigger
Speaker 1: and bigger and bigger.
Speaker 4: So like you like, how do you avoid that?
Speaker 1: And you have in inertia associated with the laws, and
Speaker 1: so maybe you know it would take sixty percent to
Speaker 1: create a law, but only forty percent to remove a law.
Speaker 2: Oh interesting, fascinating, Yeah, something like that.
Speaker 3: Those are, like the rules of a constitutional democracy have
Speaker 3: such a profound impact and to have a new playground
Speaker 3: would be fantastic.
Speaker 2: There's something better than what you.
Speaker 3: Said a moment ago on a highlight, on a transition
Speaker 3: to perhaps a closing question heard in passing. You know,
Speaker 3: I think about some of these things about a half
Speaker 3: hour a week, if I heard you right. And this
Speaker 3: is I think a profound thing to dwell on is
Speaker 3: that you know, He's changed in the world, and so
Speaker 3: many areas and many entrepreneurs I see get and myself included,
Speaker 3: enamored with all of the possibilities of a future Mars base,
Speaker 3: of the terrorforming, of the every aspect of it that
Speaker 3: might need to come into being. And I find myself
Speaker 3: often distracted by those future questions that are a little
Speaker 3: less relevant today. What you just heard was we got
Speaker 3: to solve the railway first, Like, let me put ninety percent,
Speaker 3: ninety five percent on my effort into that and not
Speaker 3: get distracted by all the other interesting questions.
Speaker 2: That need to come later.
Speaker 3: And I remember a few years ago, maybe three or
Speaker 3: four years ago, trying to get you to brainstorm with
Speaker 3: Craig Venter about you know, doing a sample return from
Speaker 3: Mars and sending a genetic sequencer there to help understand
Speaker 3: life there that might exist, et cetera. And I remember
Speaker 3: profoundly the response was, that is a really interesting topic,
Speaker 3: but I got to get these rockets to work first
Speaker 3: before that's going to be relevant to me. And let
Speaker 3: me hunker down on what's important here and that ability
Speaker 3: to prioritize it on the stepping stones to a huge vision.
Speaker 2: It's it's this interesting.
Speaker 3: Dichotomy, like not just pure visionary scattered across many things alone,
Speaker 3: clear sense of where we're heading, chaining back to the
Speaker 3: present and making sure we're taking the right steps in
Speaker 3: a fumbled future, if you will, I think I wish
Speaker 3: we could all do that in the way we try
Speaker 3: to implement change.
Speaker 2: So let me move. If I made a one last question,
Speaker 2: which could be broad or not, which is there's a lot.
Speaker 3: Of people here from all kinds of parts of the world,
Speaker 3: and I think everyone who hears your story, you know,
Speaker 3: an immigrant from South Africa through Canada to the US
Speaker 3: taking on four or five different industries with great a
Speaker 3: plumb and success is inspiring. But it's not just that
Speaker 3: you've had business success or technology success. It's that you
Speaker 3: really are changing the world for the better in these areas.
Speaker 3: And so I guess maybe if as a closing question, again,
Speaker 3: looking from the present to the future, what do you
Speaker 3: see as the sort of the biggest pressing problems that
Speaker 3: need to be addressed?
Speaker 2: So this may in fact require to pull that filter
Speaker 2: off for a moment on the things of the world
Speaker 2: that are broken.
Speaker 3: And if everyone here in the audience could be a
Speaker 3: change agent themselves in their area of passion, what would
Speaker 3: you hope to catalyze today? If you say, high school,
Speaker 3: solve this big, heavy problem and figure out why it's broken.
Speaker 1: You know, I don't think everyone needs to go, you know,
Speaker 1: try to solve like some big, big world changing problem.
Speaker 1: I mean I think that like, if I really think
Speaker 1: like we should just think like always doing something that's useful.
Speaker 4: To the world. Like, if you're doing something useful, that's great.
Speaker 2: Imagine it. I really think some things are more useful, sure, sure,
Speaker 2: but but maybe personal.
Speaker 1: Like I just think that like you sort of a
Speaker 1: usefulness optimization is like that's like a really good thing.
Speaker 1: You know, if you if you've done something that's useful
Speaker 1: to your feeling human beings, that's you've done a really
Speaker 1: good thing, and people should feel proud of doing that.
Speaker 4: You know.
Speaker 1: It doesn't doesn't always have to be something that's going
Speaker 1: to change the world. I mean, sometimes the world just
Speaker 1: keep going in a particular direction. The world, yeah, it
Speaker 1: might be might be going in the right direction. And
Speaker 1: I mean in a lot of ways that the wealth
Speaker 1: is and we are in great shape in that if
Speaker 1: you look at say, violent crimes per capita in the world,
Speaker 1: it's at ant like old time low. We're actually quite
Speaker 1: prosperous and you know, compared to his history, and you know,
Speaker 1: I think there's a lot of things to feel good
Speaker 1: about in terms of how the world is today. Access
Speaker 1: to information is incredible. I mean, uh, yeah, anyone with
Speaker 1: you like a one hundred device could has access to
Speaker 1: basically all the world's information, which is an incredible thing.