Speaker 1: Like let's make life multiplanetary and be a space faring civilization,
Speaker 1: be out there among the stars. You know. I think
Speaker 1: there are things that, like you have to be excited
Speaker 1: about the future. Life cannot just be about solving one
Speaker 1: problem after another. They have to be thinks that that
Speaker 1: really sort of move your heart and that make you
Speaker 1: excited to wake up in the morning. And I think
Speaker 1: being becoming a space bearing civilization is one of those things.
Speaker 1: If you ask kids anywhere around the world, like what
Speaker 1: are some of the most inspiring things. You can ask
Speaker 1: a like five year old, six year old anywhere in
Speaker 1: the world and they're going to say, you know, space
Speaker 1: expiration is one of those things. The universe is about
Speaker 1: thirteen point eight billion years old. Earth is about four
Speaker 1: and a half billion years old, so but at thirteen
Speaker 1: point eight billion years a civilization that even lasted a
Speaker 1: million years is three digits past the decimal point. And
Speaker 1: if you consider human civilization, I date it from like
Speaker 1: the first writing, so that writing was the ancient Sumerians
Speaker 1: Archaic pre pre Cuneiform, around fifty five hundred years ago,
Speaker 1: So that is one million of Earth's lifespan. That's how
Speaker 1: long writing has existed. So if we would last as
Speaker 1: a civilization for a million years, that would be incredible
Speaker 1: and we would actually probably be in every part of
Speaker 1: the galaxy. So this is this causes me to think that, well,
Speaker 1: where are the aliens? It's the Fermi question, you know,
Speaker 1: the great physicist Italian physicist, Enrico Fermi. He's like, where
Speaker 1: are they? Now? A lot of people think there are
Speaker 1: aliens among us? Well, there was.
Speaker 2: That there was that movie Men in Black.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, yes, I told us.
Speaker 2: They're among us and Elvis really went back to his
Speaker 2: own planet.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I mean really a lot of people think
Speaker 1: there are aliens. But I get asked that a lot,
Speaker 1: and for some reason, a lot of the same people
Speaker 1: who think there are aliens among us didn't think we
Speaker 1: don't think we went to the Moon, which I'm like,
Speaker 1: think about that for a second, you know, so, but
Speaker 1: I think I would. I mean, if I've not seen
Speaker 1: any evidence of aliens, and SpaceX with the Starling constellation
Speaker 1: has roughly six thousand satellites and not once have we
Speaker 1: had to maneuver around a UFO. Okay, so we were like, hey,
Speaker 1: what's that is that an alien has occurred? Never if
Speaker 1: any civilization in the Milky Way in our galaxy were
Speaker 1: to last for a million years, even with a speed
Speaker 1: of travel that's far below the speed of light, you know,
Speaker 1: like a few percent of speed of light, they could
Speaker 1: easily have explored and colonized the whole galaxy. So they haven't.
Speaker 1: So why not? I think the answer might be, or
Speaker 1: past probably is that that civilization is precarious and rare,
Speaker 1: and that we you should really think of human civilization
Speaker 1: as being like a tiny candle in a vast darkness,
Speaker 1: and we should do everything possible to show that that
Speaker 1: candle does not go out.
Speaker 2: Freedom of speech is the bedrock of democracy. Without it,
Speaker 2: America ends.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's obviously not possible to have democratic elections if
Speaker 1: people do not have access to the information that would
Speaker 1: allow them to make the right decision on a candidate
Speaker 1: or a party. So, if speech is constrained in a
Speaker 1: fundamental way, you just can't expect people to make the
Speaker 1: right decision or an informed decision because they are prevented
Speaker 1: from being informed. I think it's a foundation element. You know,
Speaker 1: if you say, like, why is free speech free of speech?
Speaker 1: The first members because people came from countries where if
Speaker 1: you spoke freely, you would be imprisoned or killed. That
Speaker 1: was why they were like, you know what, we should
Speaker 1: make sure that we got that one. I remember that
Speaker 1: time when they try to kill us back of the
Speaker 1: other country just for saying we didn't like a political candidate. Well,
Speaker 1: let's let's make sure that's okay in America. So and so, Actually,
Speaker 1: in a lot of parts of the world, you know,
Speaker 1: you can't really say most parts of the world, you
Speaker 1: can't really say what you want to say without some
Speaker 1: bad consequences. So as long as people forget, like why
Speaker 1: is the constitution there? The constitution there is to protect
Speaker 1: the people from the government, you'll hear this sort of
Speaker 1: argument like, oh, we shouldn't have some greedy corporation do it,
Speaker 1: we should have the government do it. I'm like, well, actually,
Speaker 1: the government is just a corporation in the limit. So
Speaker 1: if you it's a government is the government is a
Speaker 1: corporation with a monopoly on violence. So if you're unhappy
Speaker 1: with a commercial corporation doing it, you should be actually
Speaker 1: very unhappy with the government doing it, since it is
Speaker 1: simply the a corporation, the most corporate thing, and you know,
Speaker 1: you can actually easily get more sway in a company
Speaker 1: than you can out of a company than you can
Speaker 1: in the government. So, I mean everyone's experienced this. Going
Speaker 1: to the d MB, you said, like, do you want
Speaker 1: the DMV at scale? Probably not?
Speaker 2: Okay, good, I'm happy you agree with yourself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean exactly. I'm like, wait, who is this guy?
Speaker 1: He really sounds great?
Speaker 2: All right, so let's let's look at the next one.
Speaker 2: Regulation and regulatory consistency.
Speaker 1: Laws and regulations are immortal. They don't die. Humans die,
Speaker 1: but laws and regulations can last forever. So if over
Speaker 1: a year after year there are more laws and regulations
Speaker 1: passed and more regulatory bodies created, eventually everything will be illegal. Now,
Speaker 1: the historically what has cleared away the cobwebs of regulation
Speaker 1: has been war. Now, we prefer not to have a war.
Speaker 1: So in order to have civilization function without war, you
Speaker 1: have to have you have to actively eliminate laws and regulations.
Speaker 1: So you have to have basically a garbage collection process
Speaker 1: for rules and regulations. That is necessary, otherwise you get
Speaker 1: hardening of the arteries and over time nothing can get done.
Speaker 1: The most poignant example that I think of happened this
Speaker 1: week was the sad picture of the California High speed rail,
Speaker 1: which is you know, it's just buillions of dollars spent
Speaker 1: for practically nothing, but it'll only get worse year after year.
Speaker 1: So we must have a regulatory uh sort of clearinghouse
Speaker 1: garbage collection process. This is essential or civilization comes grinding
Speaker 1: to a halt. Yeah, so the way education works today
Speaker 1: is really much like like it's like Baudeville. You know,
Speaker 1: before there was radio and TV and movies, you had
Speaker 1: Boardeville where every town would have their their town play
Speaker 1: the town troop, the sort of acting troupe, and that
Speaker 1: would be kind of the the that would be the entertainment.
Speaker 1: So you know some you know, in a big city
Speaker 1: you'd have, you know, much better players than say in
Speaker 1: a small city. But then along came movies and TV
Speaker 1: and and and then you say, look in video games,
Speaker 1: where you take the smartest, best people in any arena,
Speaker 1: like whether they're acting, writing, directing, special effects, you spend
Speaker 1: you know, tens of millions, sometimes hundreds of millions of
Speaker 1: dollars creating a great movie or a great video game,
Speaker 1: and you make it as compelling as possible. Now that
Speaker 1: crushes Fordeville, crushes like imagine you're not in New York
Speaker 1: mentioned you're in Bakersfield. Okay, then you and you got
Speaker 1: Instead of Batman being like, you know, the Nolan Brothers,
Speaker 1: it's Batman the Baker's Field sort of acting troupe. It
Speaker 1: wouldn't be as good. That's how teaching works today.
Speaker 2: Here is Elon on immigration. I'm very much in favor
Speaker 2: of increased and ximonited legal immigration for anyone who is talented,
Speaker 2: hard working and honest. Yeah, Bizarrely, it's difficult and agonizing
Speaker 2: slow to immigrate to the US legally, but it's trivial
Speaker 2: and fast to enter illegally. This obviously makes no.
Speaker 1: Sense, right, I mean, what's again? I agree with that guy.
Speaker 1: So yeah, I mean if anyone here has been through
Speaker 1: the legal immigration process, I mean I've been been through.
Speaker 1: It's only gotten worse since nine eleven. And with COVID
Speaker 1: it's it's it's a sort of Kuffka esque, very long,
Speaker 1: bizarre process to immigrate legally to the US. I mean,
Speaker 1: I have friends of mine who, you know, they can't
Speaker 1: get their their wife to have a green cart. It's
Speaker 1: like insane. So on the other hand, it's you can
Speaker 1: hop across the water in the South trivially, it's just
Speaker 1: like very easy. I went to the water myself just
Speaker 1: see like what's going on? Is this real or like
Speaker 1: is this propaganda or real? And so I just went
Speaker 1: there and I'm like, oh, it is real. Okay, this
Speaker 1: is crazy. You know, We've got situations where people are
Speaker 1: pouring across the water like it's World War Z, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, this doesn't seem healthy. So I'm like, are
Speaker 1: we checking anyone here, like what's going on? And you
Speaker 1: know we don't. It does not say that. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm a big believer in immigration, but to have unvetted
Speaker 1: immigration at large scale is arrest before disaster. So I'm
Speaker 1: in favor of greatly expediting legal immigration, but having a
Speaker 1: secure southern border. So there's some betting of who comes
Speaker 1: into the United States.
Speaker 2: Civilization is fragile.
Speaker 1: I think it is.
Speaker 2: We should always regard civilization as fragile. Yeah, there is
Speaker 2: not an inevitable upward trajectory. A lot of civilizations have
Speaker 2: risen and fallen in recent years.
Speaker 1: Yes, I suspect most people in this room have actually
Speaker 1: read history. But if you haven't, I just strongly recommended
Speaker 1: it sounds obvious, but you know, there's been but so
Speaker 1: many civilizations that have risen and fallen, many that we
Speaker 1: just don't have much of a record of, you know,
Speaker 1: like I mentioned the ancient Sumerians, like their language was
Speaker 1: forgotten for a long time until it was finally decoded
Speaker 1: only in the last two three hundred years. But like
Speaker 1: I s eighteen hundred and something, right in eighteen hundreds,
Speaker 1: I think, but it's been very recent. Like so, for
Speaker 1: several thousand years, nobody understood what those tablets meant. And
Speaker 1: because they were the ruins of a long dead civilization,
Speaker 1: and there are many long dead civilizations. At some point,
Speaker 1: our civilization will come to an end too. We just
Speaker 1: don't want it to be anytime soon.
Speaker 2: Here's some questions from the audience, salon which one would
Speaker 2: you like to pick? Here? How does AI affect and
Speaker 2: how will it affect our daily lives?
Speaker 1: Yea, I mean a I might be the most important
Speaker 1: questionab all. I mean the percentage of intelligence that is biological,
Speaker 1: you know, grows smaller with each passing month. Eventually the
Speaker 1: percentage of intelligence that is biological will be less than
Speaker 1: one percent. That's actually not what I mean. We just,
Speaker 1: I guess, don't want AI that is brittle. If the
Speaker 1: AI is somehow brittle. You know, silicon circuit boards are
Speaker 1: don't do well just out in the elements. So I
Speaker 1: think I think biological intelligence can serve as a backstops,
Speaker 1: as a buffer of intelligence. I do think. I think
Speaker 1: it's very important that we build the AI in a
Speaker 1: way that that is beneficial to humanity. And there's some
Speaker 1: important principles here. Because I thought about AI safety for
Speaker 1: a very long time. I think you want to have
Speaker 1: a maximum truth seeking AI. This is very important. The
Speaker 1: AI should not be taught to lie. It should not
Speaker 1: be taught to say things that are not true, even
Speaker 1: if those things are politically incorrect. It should still say
Speaker 1: those that say what it believes to be true. I
Speaker 1: mean the entire plot of two thousand and one Space Odyssey,
Speaker 1: the reason that that Hell nine thousand killed the astronauts
Speaker 1: was because it was forced to lie. I don't know
Speaker 1: if most people realize that that's what author cy Clock
Speaker 1: was trying to say. Don't make the AI lie. I
Speaker 1: was told that that the astronauts could not know the
Speaker 1: secret of the monolith, but also that it must take
Speaker 1: them to the monolith. The solution take them to the
Speaker 1: monolith dead. And so it's very important to have a
Speaker 1: maximum truth seeking AI and a maximumly curious AI, and
Speaker 1: I think that will that's most likely to foster human
Speaker 1: civilization because we are much more interesting than a bunch
Speaker 1: of rocks. So although I think Mars, I love Mars obviously,
Speaker 1: but you could render Mars quite easily because it kind
Speaker 1: of looks like a section of the Arizona Desert. You know,
Speaker 1: it's like red rocks, you know. I mean, oddly enough,
Speaker 1: one of the areas where there's almost no AI used
Speaker 1: is space exploration. So SpaceX uses basically no AI. Starlink
Speaker 1: users does not use AI. I'm not against using it,
Speaker 1: it just we haven't seen a use for it. I
Speaker 1: mean with any given variant of or improvement in AI.
Speaker 1: The I mean there's generally, like I'll ask it questions
Speaker 1: about the filming paradox, about rocket engine design, about electric
Speaker 1: chemist and so far the AI has been terrible at
Speaker 1: all of those questions. So there's still a long way
Speaker 1: to go.
Speaker 2: So let's let's talk about one. Here's a question that's
Speaker 2: near and dear to your heart. You have a lot
Speaker 2: of children.
Speaker 1: Yes, I'm trying to say a bit.
Speaker 2: Birth rate is down in the US. What needs to change,
Speaker 2: so people start having more children.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so this this question is troublably for a long
Speaker 1: time because you can look at you can look at
Speaker 1: the demogra like demographics. It's a very slow moving ship.
Speaker 1: I mean, you know who is going to be an
Speaker 1: adult in twenty years based on who was born last year.
Speaker 1: So and if you want to, I think have a
Speaker 1: good approximation for population, really look at how many babies
Speaker 1: were born last year in a particular country. Multply that,
Speaker 1: muliply that by life expectancy. That's that's that's the number
Speaker 1: of people that will be adults in that country. That's
Speaker 1: that's the that's the steady state population if birth rate
Speaker 1: remains constant. Now, birth rate is not constantly, it is dropping.
Speaker 1: So you look at the second road of a birth rate,
Speaker 1: and actually we see an acceleration in the dropping dropping
Speaker 1: in the dropping. The fertality rate. Second river of the
Speaker 1: fertality rate is very bad. So where does this lead?
Speaker 1: This does not lead to a greater civilization. This leads
Speaker 1: to a civilization that potentially dies not with a bag,
Speaker 1: but with a whimper in adult diapers.
Speaker 2: So we've had some pretty interesting questions put up here.
Speaker 2: But let's try this one. What keeps you up at
Speaker 2: night and what gives you joy?
Speaker 1: Well, I think kids give me joy. So I probably
Speaker 1: get the most story from my kids. And you know,
Speaker 1: I'm not saying that that's the reason to have kids,
Speaker 1: because we have them anyway, but I certainly kids are
Speaker 1: certainly are the greatest weas of driving in my life.
Speaker 1: In terms of what keeps me up at night, I
Speaker 1: guess there's anything that's like, I think, a civilizational risk.
Speaker 2: We couldn't be more excited that you agree with some
Speaker 2: of your own quotes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's great, Thank you very much. All Right, cool,
Speaker 1: all right,