Transcript for:
Lecture on Technology, Neuralink, and Reflections from Elon Musk

welcome back here we go again great to see you and congratulations thank you um you will never forget what is going on in the world when you think about when your child is born you will know for the rest of this child's life you were born during a weird time that's for sure that is for sure they're probably the weirdest that i can remember uh yeah yeah um and he was born on uh may the fourth and yeah that's hilarious too yeah may the fourth be with him yeah exactly it has to be hopefully i sure hope so perfect yes i mean that was the perfect day for you and how do you say the name well uh is it a placeholder first of all my partner is the one that actually mostly came up with the name congratulations to her yeah yeah she's great at names um so i mean it's just x the letter x um and then the ae is like pronounced ash yeah and then a12 a12 is my contribution oh why a12 uh archangel 12 the precursor to the sr-71 coolest plane ever that's true i i agree with you i don't know i'm not familiar with it i know what the sr-71 is yeah yeah yeah i know what that is so the sr71 came from a cia program uh called archangel oh it's the archangel project and then archangel 12. oh wow what a dope-looking plane yeah oh okay i got it yeah well as a person who's uh very much into uh aerial travel as you are that's uh perfect that's pretty great yeah pretty great um so is it does it feel strange to have a child while this craziness is going does it feel like you've had children before is this any weirder uh it's actually i think it's better uh being older and having a kid i appreciate it more um yeah babies are awesome they are pretty awesome they're awesome yeah when i didn't have my any of my own i would see other people's kids and i didn't not like them sure but i wasn't drawn to them sure but now when i see little people's kids i'm like oh i think of them like these little love packages yeah little love bugs yeah it's just you you think of them differently when you see them come out and then grow and then eventually start talking to you like your whole idea what a baby is is very different yeah so now as you you know get older and get to appreciate it as a mature fully formed adult it must be really pretty wonderful yeah wonderful it's great but babies are awesome yeah yeah that's uh that's great um yeah um i mean also i've i've spent a lot of time on ai and neural nets and so you can sort of see the kind of the brain develop which is you know what an ai neural net is trying to simulate what a brain does basically um and you can sort of see the it learning very quickly you know it's just wow see things fire so you're talking about the neural net you're not talking about an actual baby i don't know about actually an actual baby but both of them yes but the word neural net comes from the the brain it's like a net of neurons so you know it's like the yeah humans are the you know original gangster the neural net that's a great way to put it yeah so when you're programming artificial intelligence where you're working with artificial intelligence art are they specifically trying to mimic the developmental process of a human brain in a lot of ways there's some ways that are different um you know an analogy that's often used is like you know we we don't make a submarine swim like a fish but we take the principles of of how you know what of hydrodynamics and apply them to a submarine i've always wondered as a lay person do you try to achieve the same results as a human brain but through different methods or do you try to copy the way a human brain achieves results i mean the essential elements of an ai neural net are really very very similar to a human brain neural net yeah it's having the multiple layers of neurons and you know back propagation these all these things are what your brain does you know it's sort of yeah um you have a layer of neurons that goes through a series of intermediate steps to ultimately cognition and that and then it'll reverse those steps and go back and forth and go all over the place um it's um yeah it's it's interesting very interesting yeah i would imagine like the thought of programming something that is eventually going to be smarter than us that one day it's going to be like why did you do it that way like when artificial intelligence becomes sentient they're like oh you tried to mimic yourself like this so much better process cut out all this nonsense but like there are elements that are the same but just almost like like an aircraft does not fly like a bird right yeah it doesn't flap its wings but the wings the way the wings work and generate lift is the same as bird now you're in the middle of this uh this strange time where you're selling your houses you say you don't want any material possessions and i've been seeing all that and i've been really excited to talk to you about this yeah because it's an interesting thing to come from a guy like yourself like why are you doing that i'm slightly sad about it actually but if you're sad about it why are you doing it i think i think possessions kind of weigh you down then they're kind of an attack vector you know people say hey billionaire you got all this stuff like well and now i don't have stuff now what are you gonna do attack vector meaning like people target it yeah um interesting yeah but you're obviously gonna so you're gonna rent a place yeah okay and get rid of everything except clothes no i said like almost everything so it's like keep a couple teslas yeah sure yeah kind of have to test product and stuff um yeah those things that have sentimental value for sure are keeping those here um yeah so do you feel like what's worse that could happen right you're fine yeah you could always buy more stuff if you don't like it especially yeah i mean from the money that you sell all your stuff you could buy new stuff but do you you feel like people define you by the fact that you're you're wealthy and that they define you in a pejorative way for sure i mean not everyone but right you know there's uh for sure in recent like years billionaire has become a per jar like it's in a projective so like it's like that's a bad thing um which i mean i think doesn't make a lot of sense in most cases if you've if you're done if you basically uh organized a company like see like how do how does this wealth arise it's if you organize people in a in a better way to produce products and services that are better than what existed before and you have some ownership in that company then that that essentially gives you the right to allocate more capital so it's there's a conflation of consumption and capital allocation so let me say warren buffett for example and to get totally frank i'm not his biggest fan but uh you know he does a lot of capital allocation um and he reads a lot of a lot of sort of annual reports of companies and all the accounting and it's pretty boring really um and he's trying to figure out is does coke or pepsi deserve more capital i mean that's i mean it's kind of a boring job if you ask me um but uh you know it's still a thing that's important to figure out like which is a company deserving of more or less capital should that company grow or expand is it making products and services that are better than others or worse and you know should you know if a company is making compelling products and services it should get more capital and if it's not it should get less we'll go out of business well there's a big difference too between someone who's making an incredible amount of money designing and engineering fantastic products versus someone who's making an incredible amount of money by investing in companies or moving money around in the stock market or doing things along those lines it's it's a different thing and to put them all in the same category seems it's it's very simple and as you pointed out it's an attack vector yeah for sure yeah i mean i think it's it's really i i do think they're in the in the united states especially there's an over allocation of talent uh in finance and law uh basically too many smart people go into finance and law so you know this is both a compliment and a criticism we should have of i think fewer people doing law and fewer people doing finance and more people making stuff yeah yeah well that would certainly be better for all involved if they made better stuff yeah yeah absolutely um and and you know manufacturing used to be highly valued in the united states and these days it's not it's it's often looked down upon which i think is wrong yeah well i think that people are kind of learning that particularly because of this whole pandemic and this relationship that we have with china that it there's a lot of value into making things into making things here yes somebody's got to do the the real work yeah you know and um you know like making a car it's an honest days that's not honest day is living that's for sure you know or making anything really or providing valuable service um like providing you know greater entertainment good information but these are all valuable things to do um you know so yeah there should be more more of it did you have a moment where is this something that this idea of getting rid of your material possessions is something that built up over time or did you have a moment of realization where you realize that yeah i've been thinking about it for a while um you know part of it is like i like have a bunch of houses but i don't spend a lot of time in most of them and that doesn't seem like a good use of assets like somebody could probably be enjoying those houses and get better use of them than me so don't you have gene wilder's house i do that's amazing that's awesome wow exactly what you'd expect did you request that the buyer not [ __ ] it up yeah that's a requirement oh a requirement that's that's a good requirement yeah not in that case in that house yeah it'll probably sell for last but still i don't care uh he's a legend yeah he would want his soul he'd want his essence yeah in the building it's and it's there that's a real quirky quirky house yeah what what makes you say it's there like what do you get out of it um i mean all the all the cabinets are like handmade and they're like odd shapes and there's like doors to nowhere and strange like car doors and tunnels and really odd odd paintings on the wall and um yeah did you ever live in it it's very quirky i did live in it briefly yeah but why do you buy houses like if you own all these houses do you just get bored and go i think i'd like to have that well i you know had one house and then the junior wilder house right across the road from me from from my main house and it was going to get it was going to get sold and then torn down and turned into you know be a big construction zone for three years and i was like well i think i'll i'll buy it and preserve the spurt of gene water and not have a giant construction zone and then the you know this i started having like some privacy issues where like people would like less people just like come to my house and you know start climbing over the walls and stuff i feel like man um so then i saw like what a house some of the houses around my house and then i thought at one point well you know it'd be cool to to build a house so then i acquired some properties at the top of samara road uh and which is got a great view and it's like okay well these some bunch of sort of small older houses they're going to get torn down anyway i was like well you know if i collect these like little little houses then i can build something you know i don't know artistic like a you know dream house type of thing what's a dream house for elon musk like some tony stark type [ __ ] yeah definitely yeah you gotta have the the dome that opens up with the stealth helicopter and that kind of thing you know yeah for sure [ __ ] yeah yeah um but but then i was like man do i really want does it really make sense for me to spend time designing and building a house and i'd be real you know get out like ocd on the little details and the design and or should i be allocating that time to getting us to mars i should probably do the latter so you know like what's more important mars or a house i like mars okay is that really how you think like that it'd be better off planning on a trip to mars or getting people to mars yeah yeah definitely i mean you can only do so many things right right so how you can i don't know how you do what you do anyway i don't i don't understand how you can run bull with a boring company tesla spacex all these different things you're doing constantly i just i don't understand i mean you explained last time you were here how you sort of allocate your time and and how hectic it is and insane i still don't the the productivity is uh baffling just doesn't make sense how you can get so much done well i think i do have high productivity but even with that there's still some upgraded cost of time and allocating time to building a house even if it was a really great house it still is not a good use of time relative to developing the rockets necessary to get us to mars and helping sell sustainable energy uh spacex and tesla are by far you know by the the most amount of like brain cycles um you know boring company does not take you know like less than one percent of brain cycles and um and then this neural link which is i don't know maybe it's like five percent and then five percent that's that's a good chunk it's a good chunk yeah yeah we were talking about that last time and you were trying to figure out when it was actually going to go live when it's actually going to be available are you testing on people right now no we're not testing people yet but i i think it won't be too long i think we may be able to implant a neurolink in less than a year in a person i think and when you do this is there any tests that you have to do before you do something like this to to see what percentage of people's bodies are going to reject these things is it put is it there is there a potential for rejection it's a very low potential for rejection i mean you can think of it like people put in you know heart monitors and um you know things for epileptic seizures and deep brain stimulation um obviously like you know artificial hips and right knees and that kind of thing so the probability of i mean like it's so it's well known like what will cause rejection what what will not um it's definitely harder when you've got something that is sort of reading and writing neurons that's that's generating a current pulse and reading current pulses that's that's a little harder um then then say uh passive device but it's still you know very doable and um yeah there there are people who have primitive devices in in their brains right now what kind of devices i like deep brain stimulation is i think for parkinson's is like has really changed people's lives in a big way um which is kind of remarkable because it kind of like zaps your brain um it's like kicking the tv type of thing um and you think like man kicking the tv shouldn't work it does sometimes yeah yeah the old old tvs it did my grandpa used to slap the top for sure yeah it would work sometimes yeah so this deep right simulation uh implanted devices in the brain that uh have changed people's lives for the better like fundamentally well let's talk about what you can talk about to what neurolink is because the last time you were here you really couldn't discuss it and then there was a i guess a press release or something that sort of outlined yeah that that happened quite a bit after the last time you were here so what exactly is it how do you do what what happens if someone ultimately does get a neurolink installed what will take place well for version one of the device it would be it basically implanted in your skull so but it would be flush with your skull so you basically uh take out a chunk of skull replace put the neurologic device in there um you put the the electrode you'd insert the electrode threads very carefully into the the brain and uh and then you you know stitch it up and um and you wouldn't even know that somebody has it and then and and so then it it can interface basically anywhere in any anywhere in your brain um so it could be something that uh you know helps cure say uh eyesight like give you returns your eyesight even if you've like lost your optic nerve type of thing uh really yeah yeah absolutely hearing obviously um i mean pretty much anything that where that it could in principle fix almost anything that is wrong with the brain and it could restore uh limb functionality so if you've got uh interface into the motor cortex and then an implant that's say that's like a microcontroller and near muscle groups uh you you could then create a sort of a neural shunt that restores somebody who's a quadriplegic to full functionality like they can walk around be normal whoa yeah so maybe slightly better slightly better over time yes you mean with future iterations like the you know six million dollar man although these days that would that doesn't matter yeah six billion dollars so the the hole would be small how big would the hole be that you have to drill and then replace with this piece it's only one hole well um yeah the device we're working on right now is about it's about an inch in diameter um and your skull is pretty thick by the way so skulls are mine is for sure it might actually literally um i mean if you're a big if you're a big guy your skull is actually fairly thick um skulls like it's like seven to 14 millimeters um so that's probably a couple inches a half inch you know half inch thick skull ish so um yeah yeah so that's a fair bit of like our we got quite a coconut going on here it's not it's not like some egg shell oh yeah i believe you um so the yeah you basically implant the device uh and so you would be like a one inch square one inch in diameter yeah like so an inch circle like a circular yeah i think like a like a smart watch or something like that okay yeah okay so you take this one-inch diameter like ice fishing right you ever go ice fishing um no but i'd like to it's great yeah it's really fun so you basically take an auger and you you drill through the surface of the ice yeah and you create a small hole and you can dunk your line in there so this is like that you're ice fishing on the top of your skull and then you cork it yeah and you replace that say one inch diameter piece of skull with this neural link device and that has a battery and a and a bluetooth and a inductive charger um and then you and and now then you also got to insert the electrodes uh so the electrode is very carefully inserted uh with our with a robot that we developed uh that's you know very carefully putting in the electrodes and avoiding you know and any veins or arteries uh so it's you know doesn't create trauma so through this one-inch diameter device electrodes be inserted and they will find their way like tiny wires basically tiny wires and they'll find their way to specific areas of the brain to stimulate no you literally put them where they're supposed to go oh okay yeah how long will these wires be uh i mean they usually go in like you know depending on where it is like you know two or three millimeters so they just find the spots yeah wow um and then um yeah then you put the device in and that that gets uh that that replaces the little piece of skull that was taken out uh and then you you stitch up the hole and and um and you just have it look like a little scar and that's it well this would be replaceable or reversible yes like if someone can't take it anymore i'm too smart i can't take it yeah you can totally check it out and what is the besides restoring limb function and eyesight and hearing which are all amazing is there are there any cognitive benefits that you anticipate from something like this uh yeah i mean you could for sure um uh i mean basically it's a generalized um sort of uh thing for for fixing any kind of brain injury in in principle like if you or if you've got like like severe epilepsy or something like that it could it could just it could just sort of stop the epilepsy from occurring like it could detect it in real time and then fire a counter pulse and stop the epilepsy um if um i mean there's a whole range of brain injuries like if somebody gets a stroke they could lose the ability to speak um you know that that'll stack could also be fixed so if you've got like stroke damage or if you lose say you know muscle control over part of your face or something like that i think and then when when you get old you tend to if you get like you know alzheimer's or something like that then you lose memory and this could help you with you know restoring your memory that kind of thing restoring memory and what what is happening that's allowing it to do that like the wires these small wires stimulating these areas of the brain and then is it that the areas of the brain are they're they're losing some sort of electrical force like what it what is happening yeah yeah it's it's like it's like i think it's like a bunch of circuits and there's some like circuits that are broken and we can like uh fix those circuits substitute for those circuit circuits and so a specific frequency will go through this yeah specific in that would is the process figuring out how much or how little has to be how how much these areas of the brain have to be juiced up yeah i mean there's still a lot of work to do so when i say you know we got a shot at probably putting it in in a person in you know a within a year i think that's that's what that's exactly what i mean i think we have a chance of putting input into one and having them having them be healthy and and restoring some functionality that they've lost the fear is that eventually you're gonna have to cut the whole top of someone's head off and put a new top with a whole bunch of wires if you want to get you know the real turbocharged version the p100d of brain stimulation i mean ultimately if you if you want to go with full ai symbiosis you'll probably want to do something like that symbiosis is a scary word when it comes to ai it's optional [Laughter] i would hope so yeah it's just i mean once you enjoy the dr manhattan lifestyle once you once you become a god seems very very unlikely you're going to want to go back to being stupid again i mean you you literally could fundamentally change the way human beings interface with each other yes yes you wouldn't need to talk i'm so scared of that but so excited about it at the same time is that weird yeah i mean the i think this is one of the paths to um you know i think like what like ai is getting better and better um so now let's assume it's sort of like a benign ai scenario even in a benign scenario we're kind of left behind you know we're we're not we're not along for the ride um we're just too dumb right so so how do you go along for the ride um yeah so you can't beat them join them so um and we're already we're already a cyborg to some degree right because you've got your phone you've got your laptop glasses yeah yeah guitar electronic devices and i mean today if you your phone if you if you don't bring your phone along it's like you have missing limb syndrome that's like you know it feels like something's really really missing so we're already partly um part you know partly a cyborg um or an ai symbiote essentially um it's just that the data rate to the electronics is slow so especially output like you're just going with your thumbs i don't know like what's your data rate maybe optimistically 100 bits per second that's being generous um and now the computer can communicate at like you know 100 terabits you know so so certainly you know gigabits are a trivial at this point so this this is like you know basically your computer could do a mil do things a million times faster or at a certain point it's like talk they as like talking to a tree okay it's boring you talk to a tree it's very not very entertaining um so um so if you if you can solve the the data rate issue and your especially output but input two then you can improve the symbiosis that is already occurring between mana machine so you you can improve it in what when you said you won't have to talk to each other anymore we used to joke around about that i i've joked around about that a million times in this podcast that one day in the future there's going to come a time where you can read each other's minds and well you'll be able to interface with each other in some sort of a non-verbal non-physical way where you will transfer data back and forth to each other without having to actually use your mouth and make noises exactly so when you like what happens when you when like let's say you've got some complex idea that you're trying to convey to somebody else and how do you do that well your brain spends a lot of effort compressing a complex concept into words and there's a there's a lot a lot of loss information loss that occurs when compressing a complex concept into words and then you say those words those words are then interpreted then they're decompressed by the person who is listening and they they will at best get a very incomplete understanding of what you're trying to convey it's very difficult to convey a complex concept with precision because you've got compression decompression you may not even have heard all the words correctly and so communication is difficult you know what we have here is a failure to communicate cool and luke yes and there's a great movie yeah there's an interpretation factor too like you can choose to interpret certain series of words in in different ways and they're dependent upon tone dependent upon social cues even facial expressions sarcasm there's a lot of variables sarcasm is difficult yes yeah and so one of the things that i i've said is like that there could be potentially a universal language that's created through computers that particularly young kids would pick up very quickly like my kids do tick tock and all this jazz and i don't know what they're doing they just know how to do it and they know how to do it really quickly like they learn really quickly they show me how to edit things and yeah it's if you taught a child from first grade on how to use some new universal language i mean essentially like a rosetta stone and something that's done that interprets your thoughts and you can convey your thoughts with no room for interpretation with clear very clear that where you know what a person's saying and you can tell them what you're saying and there's no need for noises no need for mouth noises no need for these sort of accepted ways that we've uh sort of evolved to make sounds that we all agree we through our cultural dictionary right we agree or certainly we could bypass all that yeah we can still do it for for sentimental reasons right like campfires yeah yeah exactly i don't need campfires i don't need to roast marshmallows kind of fun right um so yeah um yeah i think you would in principle you would be able to communicate very quickly and with far more precision ideas and language would i'm not sure what would happen to language but you could probably within a situation like this that you would be able to just kind of like the matrix you you want to speak a different language in a problem right that's why it just downloaded the program right so at least for the first iterations first few iterations we'll just be able to use like i i know that google has uh their some of their pixel buds have the ability to interpret languages in real time sure yeah you can hear it and they'll it'll play things back to you in whatever language you choose so to be something along those lines yeah for the first few iterations well the first few iterations are i mean what i'm talking about is like in the limit over time you know with a lot of development um the first few iterations really in the first few versions all we're going to be trying to do is solve brain injuries um so so it's like don't don't worry that that's not going to sneak up on you this this will take a while how many years before you don't have to talk if the if the development continues to accelerate then maybe like five years five to ten years that's quick that's really quick that's the best case scenario no talking anymore in five years best case scenario but i'm 10 10 years more like it i've always speculated that aliens could potentially be us in the future because if you look at like the size their heads and the fact that they have very little muscle and then they don't use their mouth anymore they was tiny little i mean the archetypal alien that you see in like closing counters are the third kind they they're like if you went from like uh australopithecus or ancient hominid to us what's the difference less hair less muscle bigger head and then just keep going a thousand a million whatever you or five years whatever whatever happens when neurolink goes on online and then we slowly start to adapt to this new way of being where we don't use our muscles anymore we have this gigantic head we can talk without words you could also save state and save state save state like save your brain state like like a saved game in a video game whoa like like if you want to swap from windows 95 well yeah i think we are windows 95 right now yeah from a future perspective probably um but yeah i mean you you could save state um and restore that state into a biological being if you if you wanted to in the future in principle it's like nothing like from a physics standpoint that prevents us now you'd be a little different but then you're also a little different when you wake up in the morning from yesterday and you're a little different in fact if you say like you five years ago versus you today is quite a big difference yes um so you'd be substantially you i mean you'd be you'd certainly think you're you but the idea of saving yourself and then transforming that into some sort of a biological state like you can hang out with 30 year old you i mean the possibilities are endless that's so weird i mean these things think like how your phone can you can record videos on your phone like there's no way you could remember a video right as accurately as your phone or a camera you know could so uh now if you've got like a you know some some you know version 10 hero link whatever and far in the future you could you could remember you could recall everything but just like it's a movie concluding all the entire sensory experience emotions everything everything everything and play it back and you can enjoy it you should edit it edit it yeah so you can change your past you could change what do you think was your past yeah well so if you had like a tremendous thing right now could be a replayed memory it could be yeah it may be what's the odds of this being a replayed memory if you had a guess it's more than 50 there's no way to assign a probability with accuracy here right but roughly if you just had a just gut instinct well i don't have a neural link in my brain so i say right now zero percent but at the point at which you do have a neural link then it rises above zero percent the idea that we're experiencing some sort of a preserved memory is uh even though it's still the same it's not comforting right for some reason when we people talk about simulation theory they talk about the potential for this currently being a simulation it even though your life might be wonderful you might be in love you might love your career you might have great friends but it's not comforting to know that this experience somehow or another doesn't exist in a material form that you can knock on it feels real doesn't it feels real but but if it's not but the idea that it's not is for some strange reason disconcerting well yeah i'm sure it should be disconcerting because then if this is not real what is right um but but the you know there's that that old sort of um thought experiment of like how do you know you're not a brain in a vet you know i mean now here's the thing you are a brain an event then that fat is your skull yes and everything you see feel here everything all your senses are electrical signals everything everything is an electrical signal to up to a brain in a vat where the vat is called and all your hormones all your neurotransmitters all these things are drugs adrenaline's a drug dopamine's a drug you're a drug factory you're constantly changing your state with love and oxytocin and and beauty sure changes your state great music changes your state absolutely and yet here's another sort of interesting idea which is um because you say like where did consciousness arise well assuming you believe the belief in physics which appears to be true um then you know we the universe started off as basically quarks and leptons and it quickly became hydrogen and of helium lithium like basically elements the periodic table but it was like mostly hydrogen basically and then and then over a long period of time uh you know 13.8 billion years later that hydrogen became sentient but so where along the way that conju where is the consciousness what's the line of consciousness and not consciousness right between hydrogen and here right when do we call it when do we call it consciousness i was watching a video today that we played on a podcast earlier of a monkey riding a motorcycle down the street jumps off the motorcycle and tries to steal a baby yeah i saw that one they went apparel what is that monkey conscious it seems like it is it seems like it had a plan it was riding a [ __ ] motorcycle and then jumped off the motorcycle to try to steal a baby seems pretty the one that just strike baby down the street pretty far yeah yeah seems pretty conscious right there's definitely some degree of consciousness there yeah it's not like it's not a worm it seems to be on another level yeah and it's going to keep going and that that's the real concern when when people think about the potential future versions of human beings especially when you consider symbiotic relationship to artificial intelligence it will be unrecognizable that one day we'll be so far removed from what this is we'll look back on this the way we look back now on you know simple simple organisms that we evolved from and then it won't be that far in the future that we do have this this view back well i hope consciousness propagates into the future and it gets more more sophisticated and complex and and that it understands the questions to ask about the universe do you think that's the case as a human being as yourself you're clearly trying to make conscious decisions to be a better version of you right this is the idea of like getting rid of your possessions and realizing that you're trying to like i don't like this i will try to improve this i will try to do a better version of the way i interface with reality that this is always the way things are if you're if you're moving in a some sort of a direction where you're trying to improve things you're always going to move into this new place where you look back in the old place and go i was doing it wrong back then so this is an accelerated version of that super accelerated version of that i mean you don't always improve but you can aspire to improve you can aspire to be less wrong yeah this is like i think a good the tools of physics are very powerful like just assume you're wrong and you're asking your goals to be less wrong i don't think you're gonna if you succeed every day and being less wrong but you know if you're gonna succeed in being less wrong most of the time you're doing great that's a great way of putting aspire to be less wrong but then when you know people look back at nostalgia about simpler times there's that too it's very romantic and exciting to look back on campfires but you can still have a campfire yes yeah but will you appreciate it when you're a super nerd when you're connected to the grid and you have some uh skull cap in place of the top of your head and it's interfacing with the inter international language that the rest of the universe now enjoys communication with people and we're yeah sure i think so yeah i like empires [Laughter] i'm just worried i mean uh everyone's always scared of change but i'm scared of this monumental change where we won't we won't talk anymore i mean that thing will communicate yes but that's there's something about there's something about the beauty of the crudeness of language where when it's done eloquently it's it's it's satisfying and it it it hits us in some sort of a visceral way like ah that person nailed it i love that they nailed it like that it's so hard to capture a real thought and convey it in a way in this articulate way that makes someone except like you read a quote a great quote by a wise person it makes you excited that their mind figured something out put the words together in a right way that makes your brain pop like oh yes yeah yes it's clever compression of a concept yeah and a feeling but the fact that a human did it too yeah absolutely do you think that it'll be like electronic music like people won't appreciate it like they appreciate a slide guitar i like electronic music i do too yeah well you make it i know you liked it yeah yeah yeah um yeah i mean i hope the future is more fun and interesting and we should try to make that way i hope it's more fun and interesting too yeah i just you know i just hope you don't lose anything along the way yeah we might at least little but hopefully we'll gain more than lose yeah that's the thing right gaining more than we lose like something that makes us interesting is that we're so flawed it's not for sure right yeah i mean you look at civilizations through the ages um most of them uh you know they rose and fell yeah and uh i do think like the globalization uh that that we have at the sort of like the the meme sphere uh is uh there's not enough isolation between countries or regions um it's like if you get up if there's a mind virus that that my virus cannot infect too much of the world uh you know like i actually sort of sympathize with the anti-globalization people because it's it's like man we don't ever want everywhere to be the same for sure and then we we need some kind of like mind viral immunity so that that's it's a bit concerning mind viral immunity meaning that once something like neural link gets established the real concern is something that i mean you said it's bluetooth right or some future version of that that the idea is that something could possibly get into it [ __ ] it up no i'm talking about like uh somebody there's some cockeyed concept that um that's happened that happens right right now yeah well i know there's viruses and embedded chips right like people have they've embedded chips and then acquired viruses well when i'm talking about my verse i'm talking about like a a concept that affects people's minds oh okay okay like uh cult thinking or yeah some sort of fundamentalism yeah just wrong-headed idea that yes goes viral in a in an idea sense [Music] well that is that is a problem too right if someone can manipulate that technology to make something appear logical or rational yeah yeah that would that be an issue too with this is a very have versus have not issue right once this thing if if this really does i mean initially it's going to help people with with injuries and but you you said ultimately it could lead to this spectacular cognitive change yes but the people that first get it should have a massive advantage over people that don't have it yet well i mean it's the kind of thing where your productivity would improve i don't know dramatically maybe by a factor of 10 with it so you could definitely just you know uh i don't know take out a loan and do it and earn earn the money back real fast so you're super smart well in a capitalist society you know you could it seems like you could really get so far ahead that before everybody else could afford this thing and link up and get connected as well you'd be so far ahead they could never catch you is that a concern uh well i think the the it's not a super huge concern i mean there are huge differences in cognitive ability and and resources already yeah um i mean you can think of a corporation as like a cybernetic collective uh that's far smarter than an individual like i i can personally build like a whole rocket and and the engines and launch it and everything that's impossible uh but you know we have eight thousand people with spacex and you might you know piecing it out to different people um and using like you know computers and machines and stuff we can make lots of rockets launch and all but stuck with the space station that kind of thing you know um so that already exists where this you know where there's a corporations are vastly more capable than an individual um but the the like we should be i think less concerned about like relative capabilities between people and and more like uh having ai be vastly you know beyond us and decoupled from human will decoupled from human so this is the if you can't beat them join them yeah i mean so you feel like it's inevitable like ai sentient ai is essentially inevitable super sentient ai yeah like beyond a level that's difficult to understand and impossible to understand probably and somehow or another us so it's almost like it's a requirement for survival to achieve some sort of symbiotic existence with ai it's not a requirement it's just um if you if you want to be along for the ride then you need to do some kind of symbiosis so the the way your brain works right now you've got uh kind of like the animal brain reptile brain kind of let's say it's like the limbic system basically and you've got the the cortex um now the brain purists will argue with this definition but essentially you've got the primitive brain and you've got the the sort of smart brain or the brain that's capable of planning and understanding concepts and different difficult you know things that a monkey can't understand um now the your cortex is much much smarter than your olympic system um nonetheless they work together well so i haven't met anyone who wants to delete the olympic system or the cortex that people are quite happy having both um so you can think of the this as being like the computer the ai is like a a third layer a tertiary layer so that is like that could be symbiotic with the cortex it'd be much smarter than the cortex but you'd essentially have three layers and you actually have that right now your phone is capable of things and your computer is capable things that your brain is definitely not you know storing your terabytes of information perfectly um doing incredible calculations that you you know we couldn't even come close to doing you have that with your computer it's just like i said the data rate is slow the connection is weak why is it so disconcerting or why is it why does it not give me comfort to think about like when i think about a symbiotic connection to ai i always think of this cold emotionless sort of thing that we will become is that a bad way to look at it i don't think that's not that's not quite that's not how it would be like i said you you already are yeah symbiotic with ai or computers phones computers laptops yeah and there's there's quite a bit of ai going on you know near so artificial neural nets um increasingly neural nets are sort of taking over from regular programming more and more so you are connected um you know if you use google voice or alexa or one of those things it's using a neural net to decode your speech and try to understand what you're saying um you know if if you're trying to image recognition or improve the quality of photograph it's it's using the neural nets the best way to do that so um you are already uh sort of a sort of a cybernetic symbiote it like said you when that it's just a question of your data rate the the the communication speed between your your phone and your brain is slow when do you think you're gonna do it how long will you wait um like once it starts becoming available yeah if it works i'll do it sure right away i mean let's make sure it works how do we make sure it works we're trying on prisoners like what do you do no no you take rapists no cut holes in your head now like i said if somebody's got a serious brain injury right um and though you know people have like very severe brain injuries um and then and then you can fix those those brain injuries um and you know then you prove out that it works and you expand envelope expand and make more and more brain injuries uh sold more and more um and that you know suddenly at certain age we all are are going to get alzheimer's we're all going to get senile um and then you know moms forget the names of their kids and that kind of thing and so you know it's like you said okay well you know this would allow you to remember your names your kids and and and have a normal a much more normal life where you you you're able to function much later in life um so i think that so essentially that there would almost everyone would find a need at some point if if you get old enough to use your neural link and and and then it's like okay so we can improve the functionality and improve the communications communication speed so then you will not have to use your thumbs to communicate with the computer do you ever sit down extrapolate do you ever like sit down and think about all the different iterations of this and what this eventually leads to um yeah i mean i think sure think about a lot um there's like i said this is not something that's going to sneak up on you you know there's like getting fda approval for this stuff is not like overnight you know um and this there's i mean we probably have to be on like version 10 or something before you know it it would realistically be um you know a human ai symbiote situation so you'll see it coming you know you see it coming but what do you think it's going to be like when you sit when you're alone if you have free time i don't know if you have free time but if you just sit down and think about this iteration the next onward keep going and you you drag it out with improvements along the way and leaps and bounds and technological innovations and where do you see it what are we going to be like when 20 25 years from now what are we going to be well assuming civilization is still around um it's looking fragile right now um i think we i think we could have a in 25 years probably something i think like that could be a whole brain interface a whole brain interface sorry pretty close to that yeah how does how do you define what do you mean by whole brain interface um like almost all the neurons are connected to uh you're the sort of ai extension of yourself if you want ai extension of yourself yeah what does that mean to you like when you say ai extension of yourself well you like i said you already have a computer extension of yourself in your phone you know and computers and stuff so and now online it's like somebody dies there's this like an online ghost that they're they're still their online stuff yeah it's alive that's a good way to put it it is weird when you read someone's tweets after they're dead yeah yeah instagram and their stories and stuff yeah whatever facebook inside you know like that's a great way to put it it's like an online ghost that's very accurate yeah so yeah so there's it would just be that that more of you would be in the cloud i guess than in your body more of it more of you whoa now when you say civilization's fragile do you mean because of this covet 19 [ __ ] that's going on right now what's that i've never heard of it it's this thing yeah no it's like uh some people just get a card other people it gets much worse uh sure yeah well yeah i mean this certainly has taken over the mayan space of the world to a degree that is quite shocking yeah well out of nowhere that's what's crazy it's like you go back to november nothing now here we are december january february march april may six months totally different world so from nothing to everything's locked down there's so much uh conflicting information and conflicting opinions about how to proceed what what has happened you you find things where there was a meat packing plant i believe in missouri where 300 plus people were asymptomatic tested positive or asymptomatic and then in other places it just ravages entire communities and kills people and it's it's so weird it almost appears on the out like if you didn't know any better you'd be like what it seems like there's a bunch of different viruses it doesn't seem like it's the same thing or has a bunch of different reactions to the biological variety of of people yeah um i mean i kind of saw this whole thing play out in china uh before it played out in the us so um it's kind of like watching the same movie again but in english um so yeah um i might i think the the the the mortality rate is much less than what is then what say the world health organization said it was it's very much module assets like probably at least order of magnitude less well it seems to be very deadly to very specific kinds of people and people with specific problems yeah i mean if you're you can look at the mortality statistics you know by age and whether they have comorbid comorbidities like do they have like basically existing conditions and um by age um and uh you know if you're below 60 and and have no serious health issues the probability of death is extremely low it's not zero but it's extremely low they didn't think that this was the case though when they first started to lock down the country do you think that it's a situation where once they've proceeded in a certain way it's very difficult to correct course it's almost like people really wanted a panic that you know quite quite crazy but in some places a panic is deserved right like if you're in the icu in manhattan and people are dying left and right and everyone's on intubators and it's it's it seems like when you see all these people on ventilators and so many of them are dying and you see these nurses are dying and doctors are getting sick in some places that fear is justified but then in other places you're reading these stories about hospitals that are essentially half empty they're they're having to furlough doctors and nurses because there's no work for them most of the hospitals in the united states right now half empty in some cases they're at 30 capacity and is this because they've decided to forego elective procedures and and normal things that people would have to go to the hospital for yes i mean we're not talking about just some of these elective procedures are quite important like it's like you have about a lot of disease yeah sure and you need a you know triple bypass it's like sort of elective but if you don't get it done in time it's you're gonna die yeah it's elective is a weird word yeah elective it's not like hey i i want to it's not like plastic surgery it's more like like my my hip is i'm in extreme pain because my my hips blown out or my knee and i don't want to go to the hospital i can't go to the hospital to you know people in extreme pain people that need a kidney you know like people that have like quite serious issues that are choosing not to go out of fear um so i think it's it's a problem it's not good it seems like the state of public perception is shifting it is like people are taking some deep breaths and relaxing and because of the statistics of i mean and essentially across the board it's being recognized that it's not as fatal as we thought it was still dangerous still worse than the flu but not as bad as we thought or we feared it could be i mean objectively the mortality is is much lower like at least a factor of 10 maybe a factor of 50 lower than initially thought do you think that the current way we're handling this the social distancing the mass the locking down is it does this make sense is it adequate or do you think that we should move back to at least closer to where we used to be well i think proper hygiene is a good thing no matter what you know wash your hands and you know and if you're if you're coughing stay home or wear a mask this is not good you know um like they do that in japan that's like normal if you're if you're ill you you wear a face mask and you don't cough on people i think that that would be a great thing to to adopt in general throughout the world um washing your hands is also good well that's the speculation why men get it more than women because men are disgusting and we don't watch that disgusting it's true it's true yeah we're all my men in this room we're all gross yeah let's go to the restroom you can see us yes we're gross my daughter my nine-year-old daughter yells at me she goes did you wash your hands she makes me go back and wash my hands hmm she's right nine years old if i had a nine-year-old boy do you think he would care i wouldn't give a [ __ ] if i wash my hands true um so yeah i think that there's definitely some silver linings here than in improved uh you know uh hygiene yeah and an awareness of potential yes and i think this has shaken up the the system uh system is like somewhat more bond with la la's layers of bureaucracy and i think that we've cut through some of that bureaucracy uh and if we you know at some point there probably will be a uh pandemic with with a with a high mortality rate uh debate about like what's high but i mean like someone that's killing a lot of 20 year olds let's say like it's yeah if you had like ebola type of mortality spanish flu something that uh tax immune systems of healthy people yeah yeah um yeah but it's a yeah like like killing large numbers of young healthy people that that's you know define that as like uh uh high mortality then that this is at least practice for something like that um and i think there's this you know given it's just a matter of time that there will be eventually some some such pandemic do you think that in a sense the one good thing that we might get out of this is the realization that this is a potential reality that we we got lucky in this sense i mean in people that didn't get lucky and died of course i'm not disrespecting their death and their loss but i'm saying overall as a as a culture as a community as a human race as a community this is not as bad as it could have been this is a good dry run for us to appreciate that we need far more resources dedicated towards the the understanding these diseases what to do in the case of pandemic and much more money that goes to funding treatments and and some preventative measures yeah absolutely um and i think i think there's a good chance it's highly likely i think coming out of this that we will develop uh vaccines that we didn't have before uh for uh quran viruses and other other viruses um and and possibly cures uh for for these and our understanding of uh viruses of this nature has improved dramatically because of the attention that it's received so there's definitely some you know a lot of silver linings here um and potentially if we act correctly yeah yeah yeah there's uh i think there will be some amounts of lighting here no matter what um hopefully it can be more professive lighting than less yeah um so yeah this is this is uh it's like kind of like a practice run for something that had that that had a potential that might in the future have a serious uh like a really high mortality rate that and we kind of got to go through this with without without it being something that kills you know vast numbers of young healthy people yeah when you made a series of tweets recently uh you know uh i don't remember the exact wording but essentially you were saying free america now like let's think about that is it thank you but uh the the you know what was the how much do you pay attention to the response to that stuff and what was the response like did anybody go hey elon what the [ __ ] you doing did anybody pull you aside who does that who gets to do that to you well i mean i certainly get that there's no shortage of negative feedback on twitter you know oh yeah twitter yeah but i don't read that do you read it warzone you do sometimes though right you do read it yeah i mean scroll through the comments like as a meme warzone yeah i mean people knife you're good it's something i i enjoy about that just the there's a something about the the freedom of expression that comes from all these people that do attack you it's like well they if there was no vulnerability whatsoever they wouldn't attack you and it's like there's something about these millions and millions of perspectives that you you have to you have to appreciate even if it comes your way even if the [ __ ] storm hits you in the face sure you gotta appreciate wow how amazing is it that all these people do have the ability to express themselves you don't don't necessarily want to be there when the [ __ ] hits you sure you might want to get out of the way in anticipation of the [ __ ] storm but the fact that so many people have the ability to reach out and i think it's in a lot of ways it's uh i don't wanna say a misused resource but it's like giving monkeys guns they just start they start gunning down things that in front of them without any realization of what they're doing they have a rock they see a window they throw it whoa look at that i got elon madd look at that this guy got mad at me this this i i [ __ ] took this person down on twitter i got this lady fired oh the [ __ ] business is going under because of twitter wars it seems like there's something about it that's this newfound thing that uh i want to say abuse but just i want to say that it's almost like you know you hit the button and things blow up you're like wow this is what else can we blow up sure um i mean i've been in the twitter war zone for for a while here so put your war zone you know take it takes a lot to phase me at this point yeah that's good too right like you develop a thick skin yeah you can't take it personally these people don't like actually know you you know like yeah it's just like you know so it's like if you're if you're fighting a war and there's like some opposing soldier that that shoots shoots at you it's not like they hate you they don't even know you right yeah yeah so just think of it like that like they're firing bullets or whatever um but they don't know you so don't take it personally there's something interesting about it too it's like uh like when you write something in you know 280 characters and they write something into it it's such a crude way it's like you know someone's saying sending opposing smoke signals that refute your smoke signals it's like it's so crude and especially when you're talking about something like neural link he's talking about some future potential where you're going to be able to express pure thoughts that get get conveyed through some sort of a universal language with no ambiguity whatsoever versus you know tweets well there'll always be some ambiguity but yeah tweets are it's hard um like the maybe there should be like a sarcasm flag or something you know right right um or i'm not you know just kidding or whatever you know like don't you know it seems like it would take away some of the fun from people that know it's sarcasm like if everybody knew that the onion wasn't real if you sent people articles yeah is something about someone getting angry at an onion article wow that's amazing you know what i mean where they don't realize what it is there's something fun about that for everybody else uh yeah i know it's pretty great it might be the best news source do you know who titania mcgrath is hilario it's uh andrew boyle he's a uh a british fellow a brilliant guy who's been on the podcast before and he has this uh fictional character this uh pseudonym titania mcgrath who's like this all the ultimate social justice warrior is this like like a female avatar a female avatar that's actually a computer conglomeration of a bunch of faces okay it's not really one person so one person can't be a victim and be angry he's sort of combined these faces to make this one perfect social justice more okay but the thing like i recognized it early on before i met him sure that this was parody this is this was just fun and then i love reading the people that don't recognize that they get angry sure and then they're really really like there's a lot of people that just get really furious sure about some of some fun to that there's some fun to the not picking up on the the the true nature of the signal i find twitter quite engaging how do you have the time um well i mean it's like five minutes every couple hours type of thing it's not like i'm sitting on an old day but even five minutes every couple hours if those are bad five minutes they might be bouncing around your head for the next 30. yeah you have to you know like i said take a certain amount of distance from you read this and you're like okay it's bullets being fired by an opposing army you know don't like it it's not like they they like so it's not like they know you it's like don't take it personally um did you feel the same way when when cnn had that stupid [ __ ] about ventilators with you i i found that both confusing and the the the yeah that was annoying it was annoying but what is also annoying as a person who reads cnn and wants to think of them as a responsible conveyor of the facts i would like to think that yeah i don't think cnn is that i think he used to be he used to be yeah um like what do you think's the the best source of just like information out there that's a good question you know like let's say you're just like average citizen trying to just get the facts you know figure out what's going on like you know how to live your life and you know just looking for what what's going on in the world that it's hard to find something that that isn't you know that's that that's good yeah you know uh that you know not not trying to push some partisan angle not trying to not not sort of doing sloppy reporting and and just aiming for the most number of clicks and trying to maximize ad dollars and that kind of thing yeah you're just trying to figure out what's going on it's like i'm hard pressed where do you go i don't know i don't think there's any pure form my favorite places are the new york times and the la times and i don't trust them 100 percent you know because also there's individuals that are writing these stories exactly and that's seems to be the problems these individual biases and these individual there's purposely distorted perceptions and then there's ignorantly reported facts and there's so many variables and you got to put everything through this filter of where is this person coming from do they have political biases do they have social biases do they are they are they upset because of their own shortcomings and they are they projecting this into the story sure it's so hard yeah i think like maybe just trying to find individual reporters that you think are good and yeah kind of falling down as opposed to the publication i go with whatever matt taibbi says okay i trust him more than anybody all right matt taib he's onto something i just he's as far as investigative reporters in particular the way he reported the savings and loan crisis the way he reports everything i just i just listen to him above most above mo he's my go-to guy all right i'll check it out uh it's rolling stone's articles or his stuff on the savings alone crisis just like what in the [ __ ] and you know and he wasn't you know he's not an economist by any stretch of the imagination so he had to really sort of deeply embed himself in that world to try to understand it and to be able to report on it and was also with a humorous flair for now that's nice yeah um yeah but it's not that many of them there's it's hard and not a location where like we are no [ __ ] that's right you know we are no bullshit.com like the one place where you can say this is what we know this is what we don't know this is what we think not this person's wrong and here's why like oh god damn it you know i can't you you don't know there's a lot of stuff that is open to interpretation yeah this this particular coronavirus issue that we're dealing with right now seems to be a great illuminator of that very fact is that there's so much data and there's this so there's so much that's open to interpret there's so many thing because it's all happening in real time right and like particularly right now in california we're in stage two tomorrow or friday two days from now stage two retail stores opening up things are changing like when no one knows the correct process that needs to take place to save the most amount of lives but yet ensure that our our culture and that our our our economy survives it's a lot of speculation and guessing but if you go to certain places they'll tell you we know why and we know this and we know uh it's hard yeah i mean i in general i think that's like we should be concerned about um anything that's a massive infringement on our civil civil liberties yes you know so it's like you got to put a lot of weight on that um you know people a lot of people died to you know win independence with the country and and fight for the democracy that we have and uh you know we should treasure that and not and not give up our liberties too easily i think we've we i mean i think we probably did that actually well i like what you said when you said that it should be a choice and that to require people to stay home require people to not go to work require and to to arrest people for trying to make a living this all seems wrong and i think it's a wrong approach it's a it's uh you're you're it's an infantilization of the society that daddy's going to tell you what to do fundamentally a violation of the constitution yeah freedom of assembly and you know it's just i mean i don't think these things stand up in court really they're arresting people for protesting yeah yeah because they're protesting and violating social distancing and these mandates that tell people that they have to stay home yeah these these are these would definitely not stand up uh you know if the supreme court here i mean it's obviously a complete violation right yeah yeah and again this is not in any way um disrespecting the people who have died from this disease that's certainly a real thing to think of yeah i mean it it it just should be if if you're if you're at risk you should not be compelled to leave your house right um or leave a place of safety but you should also not be uh if you're not at risk or if you are at risk and you wish to take a risk with your life you should have the right to do that and it seems like at this point in time particularly our resources would be best served protecting the people that are at risk versus penalizing the people that are not at high risk for living their life the way they did particularly having a career and and making a living and feeding your family paying your bills keeping your store open keeping your restaurant open yes i mean there's there's a strong a strong downside to this yeah so yeah i just believe like you know if this is a free country you should be you know a lot allowed to do you know what you want as long as it does not endanger others but that's the thing right people this is the argument they will bring up like you are endangering others you should stay home for the people that that you even if you're fine even if you know you're gonna be okay there's certain people that will not be okay because of your actions they might get exposed to this thing that we don't have a vaccine for we don't have universally accepted treatment for and then we need to ca this is there's two arguments right the one argument is we need to keep going protect the weak protect the sick but let's open up the economy the other argument is stop placing money over human lives and let's shelter in place until we come up with some sort of a decision and let's figure out some way to develop some sort of universal income universal basic income plan or something like that to feed people during the during this time when we make this transition i think there's a yeah um as i said right yeah my opinion is if if somebody wants to stay home they should stay home and say something doesn't want to stay home they should not be compelled to stay home that's my opinion do you think if somebody doesn't like that well that's my opinion um so the now yeah um the the this notion though that uh you know you can just sort of send checks out everybody and and things will be fine it's not true obviously um the there's some people have this absurd like a view that the economy is like some magic horn of plenty like it it just makes stuff stuff you know whatever it just there's a magic quarter plenty and the goods and services they just come from this magic corner plenty and then if um like if somebody has more stuff than somebody else's because they took more from this magic corner plenty now let me uh just break it to uh the fools out there if you don't make stuff there's no stuff yeah so if you don't make the food if you don't process the food you know transport the food and what the whether you know medical treatment getting getting your teeth fixed there's no stuff i become detached from reality you can't just legislate money and solve these things if you don't make stuff there is no stuff obviously we'll run out of the stores run out of the you know it's the whole the machine just grinds to a halt but the the initial thought on this virus the real fear was that this was going to kill hundreds of thousands if not millions of people instantaneously in this country it was going to do it very quickly if we didn't hunker down if we didn't shelter in place if we didn't quarantine ourselves or lock down do you think that the initial thought was a good idea based on the perception that this was going to be far more deadly than it turned out to be maybe i think briefly briefly briefly but uh i think if you know any any kind of like sensible examination of what happened in china would lead to the conclusion that that is obviously not going to occur uh this this virus originated in wuhan there's like i don't know hundred thousand people a day leaving on uh so it that that it it uh it went everywhere very fast through throughout china throughout the rest of the world um and the fatality rate was was low don't you think though it's difficult to appreciate it's it's it's difficult to filter what the information is coming out of china to accurately really get a real true representation of what happened the the propaganda machine is very strong sure what the world health organization appears to have been complicit with a lot of their propaganda the thing is that american companies have massive supply chains in china like tesla for example we have hundreds of suppliers like tier one two three four suppliers throughout throughout china so we know if they are able to make stuff or not we know if they if they have issues or not then they they're china is back back at full steam um and until many uh pretty much every u.s company has some significant number of flies in china so you know you know if they're able to you know provide things or not or if there's you know high mortality rate tesla has seven thousand people in china so zero people died um zero okay so that that's a real statistic that's coming from yeah yeah you know those people yeah we literally we're in payroll do you think there's a danger of this same folks are there yeah do you think there's a danger of politicizing this whereas becomes like opening up the country's uh donald trump's it's his goal it's his and then anything he does is sort of uh there's there's people that are going to oppose it and come up with some reasons why he's wrong particularly in this climate whereas as we're leading up november and you know the the 2020 elections do you think that this is a real danger in terms of uh public's perception that trump wants to open it up so they knee-jerk oppose it because they oppose trump i i think there has been some politician this has been politicized you know in both directions really so it's um which is not great yeah but like i said separate apart from that i think there's the question of like you know where do several civil liberties fit in this picture you know yeah and uh what what what can the government make you do what can they make you not do and what you know what's what's okay right um and uh yeah i think we went too far do you think it's one of those things where once we've gone in a certain direction it's very difficult to make a correction make a an adjustment to to realize like okay we thought it was one thing it's not it's not good but it's not what we thought it was going to be it's not what we feared so let's let's back up and reconsider let's do this publicly and say we were acting based on the information that we had initially that information appears to be faulty and uh here's how we move forward while protecting civil liberties while protecting what essentially this country was founded on which is a very agreed upon amount of freedom yeah that we respect and appreciate absolutely well i think we're we're rapidly moving towards opening up the country um it's going to happen extremely fast over the next few weeks so yeah something that would be helpful just add from an informational level is um when reporting uh sort of covet cases to separate out diagnosed with covert versus uh had covert like symptoms yes because the list of symptoms that could be covered at this point is like a mile long so it's like a hard to if you're ill at all it's like it could be covered so just just to give people better information definitely diagnosed with covert or had covered like symptoms we're conflating those two so that one that it looks bigger than it is then uh if somebody dies is was covert a a primary cause of the death or not uh i mean if i mean if somebody has kova gets eaten by a shark we find their arm their arm has covered it's gonna get recorded as a cover death is that real basically not that bad but heart attacks strokes you get hit by a bug cancer if you if you get hit by a bus go to the go to the hospital and die and then find that you have covered you will be recorded as a cover death why would they do that though well right now the so you know the road is hell is the rotel is paid with good intentions i mean he's mostly paid with bad intentions but there's you know some good intentions saving stones in there too um and the the the stimulus bill that was intended to help uh with the hospitals that were being overrun with with with code patients uh created an incentive to record something as covet that is difficult to say no to especially if your hospital is going bankrupt for lack of other patients so the hospitals are in a bind right now there's a bunch of hospitals are they're following doctors as you were mentioning they're you know they're your is half full you're it's hard hard to make ends meet so now you've got like you know if i just check this box i get eight thousand dollars put on a ventilator for five minutes i get thirty nine thousand dollars back or or i to fire some doctors so what's the what's this this is a tough moral quandary it's like what you can do that's the situation we have no what what's the way out of this what do you think is like if if you had the president's ear or if people wanted to just listen to you openly what do you think is the way out of this so let's let's clear up the data clear up the data so like i said uh something should be required as code but only if it is uh somebody has been tested uh has received a positive positive cover test not if they simply have symptoms one of like 100 symptoms and then if if it is a cover death it must be separated or was this was coveted a primary primary reason for death or did they also have stage three cancer heart disease emphysema and got hit by a bus and had covered yeah i've read all this stuff about that about them uh diagnosing people as a covet death despite other variables this is not a this is not a this is not a a question this is what is occurring and where are you reading this from where are you getting this from the public health health officials have literally said this this is not this is not a question mark right but this is never this is unprecedented right like if someone had the flu but also had a heart attack they would assume that that person died of a heart attack yes yeah so this is unprecedented is this because this is such a a popular i don't i don't want to use that word the wrong way but that's what i mean a popular subject and financial incentives yes and like so this is not some sort of it a moral indictment of of sort of hospital administrators it's just they're in it they're they're in a in a tough in a tough spot here um they actually don't have enough patience to to pay everyone for it to with without following following doctors and and firing staff and yeah they're running potentially going bankrupt so so then they're like okay well the stimulus bill says if you know we get all this you know money if we say if if they if it's a cover death i'm like okay they coughed before they died in fact they're not even diagnosed with cover they simply if you had weakness a cough uh shortness of breath but frankly i'm not sure how you die without those things yeah you yeah but there's so many different things that you could attribute to covet too there's so many symptoms there's diarrhea headaches dehydration yeah cough yes but to be clear you you don't even need to have gotten a cover diagram you simply need to have had one of many symptoms and then have died for some reason and it's covered so then it makes the death count look very high and then we're then stuck in a bind because it looks like the death count's super high and not going down like it should be and now so then we we should keep whatever you know keep you know the shelter in place stuff there and and keep people in their home you know confined people to homes so we need to break out of this this we're stuck in a loop yeah and i think the way to break out of this loop is to have clarity of information clarity of information will certainly help but altering perceptions public perception from people that are basically in a panic there's a lot of essentially well at least a month ago we're clearly in a panic i mean right where you know when you look around april 5th april 6th people were really freaking out but here we are may and may people are relaxing a little bit yes they're realizing like hey um i actually know a couple of people that got it it was just a cough and i know some people that got it where nothing happened i know a lot of people have got it i know zero people who died that i mean about no yeah a lot of people got it yeah it's it's not what we feared we feared something much worse yeah that's correct so the adjustment's difficult to make so you said first of all we need real data we need just just parse out the data don't don't lump it all together no and then if if you give if you get people just parse out the data better clear clearer information um about uh like i said was this an actual code of a diagnosis or was it a or did they get the test and the test came back positive or do they just have some symptoms just parse those two out um and then parse out just uh if somebody died did they die did they did they even have a covet test or or did they just have one of many symptoms like like like how do you die without weakness i don't know right it's impossible basically yeah it's a good point if you're gonna die you're gonna have shortness of breath weakness and you might cough a little um so so was it quantified what was it yeah that person did they actually have a covert test and and the tests come back positive and then um if if they died did they uh die where where covert was um it didn't have to be the main course but it was a significant contributor to their death or was it not a significant contributor to the death right it's not as simple as just because you had covet covet killed you definitely not right yeah yeah i mean people die all the time and they have like flu and yes you know other colds and well we don't say that they died of those flu and other colds well that's what's so weird absolutely it's so popular and i use that word in a weird way but it's so popular that we've kind of forgotten people die pneumonia every day yeah people die of the flu didn't take a break oh kovitz got this i'm gonna sit this one out i'm gonna be on the bench i'm gonna wait until kovitz done before i jump back into the game of killing people no the flu is still here killing people i mean ev every year in the world several hundred thousand people die directly of the flu yeah not not tangentially right not every 61 000 in this country last year yeah and we're only five percent of the world and then there's cigarettes so oh man cigarettes not cigarettes will really kill you that's a weird one right we're terrified of this disease that were projected it could potentially kill 100 if not 200 000 americans this year with cigarettes kill 500 000 and you don't hear a peep out of any politician there's no one running for congress is trying to ban cigarettes there's no one running for senate that wants to put some education plan in place it's going to stop cigarettes in their tracks yeah i mean a long time like several years ago i mean along with 10 10 years ago i helped make a movie cold thank you for smoking oh i saw that yeah um it it yeah um yeah it's crazy uh smoking barbecuing alongside just bad news it's not not good you know you're turning your lungs into smoke smoked beef and not great um so um yeah tylenol by the way also kills a lot of people yeah what is the number for tylenol over here um i'm not sure the exact number but i believe it until the opioid crisis i believe tylenol was the number one killer of all drugs um because wow basically it's uh if you have if you get drunk and take a lot of tylenol um acetaminophen essentially it causes liver failure so sevilla would like get get wasted and then like have a headache and then pop a tonic tylenol gardens whoa yeah curtains is a funny word yeah you know so but nobody's like you know raging against tylenol yeah it's weird except acceptable deaths are weird and that's the real the slippery slope about this uh people shaming people for wanting to go back to work you know other people are gonna die well if you drive do you drive oh well you should stop driving because people die from driving so you know you definitely should fill up all the swimming pools because like 50 people die every day in this country from swimming so let's not swim anymore yeah what is the really dangerous we need to chop down all the coconuts coconuts kill 150 people every year yes cut down all the coconut trees we need those people yes it's at a certain point in time it's like we yeah we're vulnerable and we're also we we're also we have a finite existence no matter what we do nobody lives forever right um i mean the the the i mean i think you want to look at say deaths as like the but for this uh disease whatever they would have lived x number of years yeah you know so um you know if somebody dies when they're they're they're 20 and could live till 80 they they lost 60 years but if somebody dies when they're 80 and they might live until 81 they last one year yes so it's it's like how many life years were lost uh is is a probably you know the right metric to use i don't uh read my own comments but i do read other people's comments and i was reading this one little twitter beef that was going on where someone was saying that kovid takes an average of 10 years off people's lives and we should appreciate those 10 years and then someone else said that's not true i'm sure it's not true yeah definitely it's the twitter but someone else said the average age of people who die from covid is older than the average age people die it's very let's say just say it's like it's it's about the same that's a beautiful way of looking at it i mean it's it's unfortunate it sucks but it sucks if grandpa dies of alzheimer's or emphysema or leukemia it sucks sure it sucks when someone you love dies yes but i i'm i mean actually if if this uh i think a lesson to be taken here that i think is quite important is that if um if you have you know your great grandparents and their their age and grandparents really be careful with uh with with uh you know any kind of flu or cold or something that that wouldn't is not dangerous to kids or young adults but is dangerous too to help the elderly is um if basically if your kids got a runny nose they should stay away from their grandparents no matter what it is it's it's uh the things that are where a young immune system is has no problem and an older one has has a problem yeah and um in fact a lot of the a lot of the deaths are just are literally it's tragic but they're they're intra family um it's the the the little little kid had it had a you know called or flew and give it to grandpa yeah yeah they have the family gathering and they don't know that this is a big deal but it's it's just important to remember when you get older your immune system is just not that strong and uh and and so just be be careful with your with with your you know loved ones or elderly and i think there is some true objective um understanding of the immune system and the ways to boost that immune system and i really think that that that information should be that should be distributed in a way a non-judgmental way but like look this is this is a way that we can all like this is a scientifically proven way that we can boost our immune system and it might save your life and it might save the life of your loved ones and maybe we could teach this to our grandparents and our parents and and people that are vulnerable you know vitamin c heat shock proteins all these different variables that we know contribute to a stronger immune system yeah um actually just um a thing that that is is is tough uh if like when you as you get older it's it's hard to be you pretend to put on weight you know i certainly that's happening with me you know like as the older i get i'm like damn it's harder to stay lean uh that's for sure um and and so actually being being overweight is is a big deal yeah just uh it's a fact uh well yeah the new york hospital said it was the number one factor for severe uh kovid symptoms was obesity that was number one factor it is that that's yes exactly but it's also we live in a world where people want to be sensitive to other people's feelings so yeah absolutely we don't want to bring up the fact that being fat's bad for you it's a judgment on your food's great yeah i do love food yeah and i mean i mean to be totally frank i mean speaking for myself i'd i'd rather eat tasty food and live a shorter life yeah you know yeah those moments of enjoying a great meal yeah and then even talking about they're valuable they're worth something yeah it's not we don't want to eat soylent green and live to be 160. tasty if it was great one of the best things about life it really is yeah it's an art form as well it's like fine food it's a it's a it's a it's a delicious sand castle it's temporary it doesn't last very long but there's something about it that's very pleasing yeah yeah um yeah i mean i i don't know what what advice to give like um maybe smaller have tasty food with smaller amounts of it yeah and i think regulated feeding windows really the way to go some sort of an intermittent fasting approach sure when i started doing that i i i i found myself to be quite a bit healthier when i've deviated from that i've gained weight so how what's what's uh 16 hours well 16 hours yeah so like at night or yeah yeah yeah so i get to a certain point and then i count out i usually uh hit the stopwatch on my phone and then i look at uh 15 hours and i'm like okay got an hour before i can eat yeah and so anything in between that is just water or coffee actually you know like um this may be a useful bit of advice for for people but uh eating before you go to bed is a real bad idea and actually negatively affects your sleep yeah um and it can actually cause uh it heartburn that you don't even know is happening and and that subtle heartburn uh affects your sleep because you're you're horizontal and your body's digesting so if you want to improve the quality of your sleep um and and um you know uh you know be healthier uh it's it's do not eat right before we go to sleep yeah it's like one of the worst things you could do i had some of the biggest mistakes i've ever met i've i've done that uh particularly after comedy shows i'm starving i'll come home and i'll eat and then i go to bed and i just feel like [ __ ] and i wake up in the middle of the night it's gonna it's gonna crush your sleep and it's gonna it's gonna damage your uh pilot your pyloric sphincter and your esophagus and it's it's it's so in fact drinking and then going to sleep is that's one of the worst things you could yes um so uh just try to avoid drinking and and you know um small amounts of alcohol that evidence suggests it's not it doesn't have a negative effect i put in the same category as delicious food it kind of makes things a little more fun yeah yeah i like it i mean some of the people some of the people who have left the longest you know um there's a woman in france who i think maybe has the record or close to it and she had a glass of wine every day every day you know yeah small small amounts is fine um but um yeah this is like a i i learned this like quite late in life it's like just avoid having alcohol and avoid eating at least two or three hours before going to sleep and your quality of life will your quality of sleep will improve and your general health will improve a lot for sure this is a it's a big deal and i think not widely not widely known do you have time to exercise um a little bit um do you train or anything um i do although i haven't seen for a while but um yeah especially yeah from out like uh you know say we're working on starship or something in south texas and i'm just living in my i got a little little house there in bukuchika village um and i don't have much to do so we're like i'm working and i was like dude just lift some weights or something you know um maybe uh i i i like i don't some people love running i don't love running um but what do you like to do exercise wise um too totally frank i wouldn't exercise at all if i could but if if i i'd prefer not to exercise but if i'm going to exercise and you know lift some weights and um and then kind of run on the treadmill and maybe watch a show that you know if there's a compelling show that like pulls you in right right right yeah that's a good thing to do yeah watch a good movie or yeah yeah episode of black mirror or something like that that's great man don't watch black mirror before going to bed either well don't watch black mirror today it's too [ __ ] accurate yeah exactly it's like wait this already happened in real life yeah they're too close it's too close well even didn't jamie did you say that the the guy who makes black mirror mics off uh yeah yeah he said he it's not a good time to start season six yeah he wants to hold off because reality he's nailed it is black mirror oh man it's like he's gonna have to like re reassess and and attack it from a different angle yeah you should try something that's fun to do that's not just like like learn a martial art or something like that i did martial arts when i was kid like did you would you um i did taekwondo i did karate uh kaika shrinkai all right cool and um judo um also you you really branched out yeah um so um and did brazilian jiu jitsu briefly did you yeah where i made in palo alto really yeah oh no [ __ ] i was gonna suggest that that's a great thing for people like that's a thing about jiu jitsu if you look at it from the outside you think oh a bunch of meat heads strangling each other sure but they're some of the smartest people i know or jiu jitsu fiends because they they get they first of all they get introduced to it because usually either they want to exercise or learn some self-defense but then they realize that it's essentially like a language with your body like you're having an argument with someone with some sort of a physical language and it's really complex and the more access to vocabulary and the sharper your words are sure the the more you'll succeed in these ventures that's really also an accurate analogy of what jiu jitsu is yeah i mean i kind of i mean probably like a lot of people uh for the the way uh early day uh the first mma fights and joyce gracie and he was like incredible and it was like just like technique yeah yeah it was like you know winning against people way bigger and that kind of thing it's just like oh this is cool it was what martial arts were supposed to be when we were as we were kids yeah when you saw bruce lee [ __ ] up all these big giant guys like wow martial arts allow you to beat someone far bigger and stronger than you right most of the time that's not real especially if they know martial arts too it's like oh no yes but in the ufc when hoist gracie off of his back was strangling dan severin with his legs he was like holy [ __ ] yeah this guy's being pinned by this big giant wrestler and he wraps his legs around his neck and chokes him to the point the guy has to surrender yeah amazing yeah it was amazing i mean horse got beaten up pretty bad in some of those he did well he definitely had some rough fights but he won he won yeah he's a legend and but what it showed in i mean i'm a huge lover of jiu jitsu what it showed is that there is a method for uh for diffusing these situations with technique and and knowledge yeah and i think it's also a great way to exercise too because it's almost like the exercise is secondary to the learning of the thing the the exercises like you want like and you want to develop strength and conditioning just so that you could be better at doing the thing and the analogy that i use is like if you imagine if you had a race car and you could actually give the race car better handling and more horsepower just from your own focus and effort sure that's really what it's like yeah totally yeah when am i going to have my my kids i should say i sent my kids to uh jiu jitsu uh since they were like i don't know six oh really yeah oh that's awesome yeah it's it's a great thing to learn it really is seems like a good yes yeah maybe something like i mean even if you just have someone who hits that holds the pads for you like you get a workout in and to be fun um when am i going to be able to buy one of them roadsters when's that happening well i can't you know say exactly when but uh we got to get you know those this cover thing's kind of throwing us for a loop i'm sure um so um not to blame everything in the code but um it's you know certainly set us back on on progress for you know some number of months um the i mean things we've got to get get done uh ahead of roadster are um you know ramping up model y production um that'll be a great great car it is a great car getting the berlin gigafactory built and and also building y getting expanding the shanghai factory which is going great and um get the you know there's a cyber truck semi truck roadster um roaster is kind of like dessert so like we we gotta get the you know eating potatoes and greens and stuff you know like but roaster comes before cyber truck i mean i think we should do cyber truck first before before road before started interesting i'm not mad at that some other things for roadster uh they're they're you know the tri-motor uh plaid powertrain we're gonna have that in model s uh so that's like part one of the ingredients that's needed for for roadsters the the plaid powertrain the more advanced bat you know battery vacuum kind of thing i wanted to ask you about this before i forgot what there's a company that's called apex is taking your teslas and they're giving it a wider base and wider tires and a little bit more advanced suspension sure how do you feel about that are you guys do you work with them are you cool with those people yeah i mean just i'm off yeah go ahead they're jazzing stuff up with carbon fiber and doing a bunch of interior choices you're cool with you can't [ __ ] with that you don't have time so is it good that someone comes along and has a sort of specialty operation yeah i got no problem that's what it's called right it's like jmg is it called apex yeah i gotta unplug performance as apex that's right unplug performance yeah yeah you could for sure um you know lighten the car up and uh improve to tire traction and have you seen that company's stuff what they do i don't know specifically but there's it's pretty dope yeah they make a pretty dope looking they take model s and they they widen it and give it a bunch of carbon fiber that's it right there that looks pretty nice yeah it does now the the plaid version of the model s you are you going to widen the track and doing a bunch do a bunch of different i know you guys are testing at the nurburgring can you not talk about that well i think we got to leave that for you know proper sort of product unveil i understand yeah i understand um last time you were here you convinced me to buy a tesla i bought it and it's [ __ ] insane oh great glad you like it um i don't it's not just pretty fun it's like i the way i've described it is it makes other cars seem stupid they just seem dumb like i love dumb things i love dumb cars like i love campfires yeah i love campfires i have a 1993 porsche that's air-cooled sure it's like re it's not that fast it's really slow compared to the tesla yeah really so it's really quite slow yeah but there's something engaging about the mechanical this is like the the gears and it's very it's very analog but it's so stupid in comparison to the tesla like when i want to go somewhere in the model s i hit the gas and just goes yeah it just it like violates time yeah yeah um yeah you've tried it like ludicrous plus and stuff yeah yeah cool oh yeah we did just did a software update where it'll do it like a cheetah stance so uh yeah so it's it because it's got a dynamic air suspension so it lowers the back oh jesus yeah just like uh like a sprinter basically right like what do you do if you're a sprinter you're going to hunker down and then uh so i shaved like a 10th of a second off zero six i mean like you know it is pretty fun it's so i've taken so many people and i'm like i take them for the holy [ __ ] moment i'm like you ready like hang on there and then a stomp on the gas i've never felt anything like it it's confusing yeah it really is the the instant torque the instant torque and just the sheer acceleration is baffling it's baffling it's baffling they've never felt it no it's faster than falling it's crazy it's so fast it's a roller coaster yeah and my family yells at me when i stomp the gas like um i tell my kids i'm like you want to feel it you want to feel it like do it do it do it my wife's like don't do it yeah and even if i just do it on the highway for a couple of seconds that's pretty exciting yeah it's very it's like having a roller coaster on tap you know it really is like a roller coaster on top yeah without the loopty loops but it's the the pinning to your seat it seems like you're not supposed to be able to experience that from some sort of a can you know a consumer vehicle that you can just a regular person could buy if you have the money it seems too too crazy and then the idea of this roadster is a half of a second faster than that yeah that's madness well if that roads with a roadster we're going to do some things that are kind of unfair so we're going to take some things from like you know from uh kind of like rock rocket world and put them on the car so oh i read about that explain that like what do you do well like i said we can't oh the product unveiled right here but but it's gonna do some things that aren't fair and then the the when we do the unveil of the roadster let me just say that anyone who's been waiting they won't be sorry it's they won't be sorry oh i'm sure well anything that goes zero to sixty what is it one point nine is that the zero 0-60 that's the base model that's good what's the top of the food chain model okay okay faster than that let's just say faster yeah that seems so crazy to me now what was it like when the dude threw the steel balls at the window and they were supposed to not break and it broke well yeah i mean i know any circumstances are you know you know that our demos are authentic [Laughter] so i was not expecting that and i and then i think i muttered under my breath you didn't get mad though no you didn't steve jobs it um no i i i definitely swore uh but you know i didn't think the mic would pick it up but it did um and uh but so like we practiced this you know behind the scenes yeah i would like it tesla we don't do we don't do like tons of practice for for our demos because we we work we're working on the cars like we you know we're building new technologies and and improving the the fundamental products so we're not spending it like doing like hundreds of you know practice things or anything like that we don't have time for that um but the the just hours before the demo um both franz uh you know uh is a head of design and and i were in the studio throwing steel balls at the window and it's bouncing right off um and like okay this seems pretty good seems like we got it okay um and then we think what happened was that um when we when when franz hit the the the door with the sledgehammer you know sure like like this is this is like yeah yeah yeah exoskeleton you know high strength hardened steel you can literally take wind up with a sledgehammer you know full double-handed sledgehammer and hit the door and there's not even a dent it's cool but we think that that cracked the corner of the glass at the bottom and then once you crack the corner of the glass that you just came over so uh then when you threw the bowl that that's what cracked the glass so it didn't go through though it didn't go through that's true that's true it didn't shatter the whole thing like a regular window would either which would just dissolve yeah right so in hindsight the ball should have been first sledgehammer second yeah yeah you live you learn yeah exactly listen man uh we've taken up a lot of your time you had a child yeah recently it's amazing that you had the time to come down here and i really appreciate that i appreciate everything you do man i i'm i'm glad you're out there and uh i really appreciate you coming down here and sharing your perspective well i think you got a great show thanks for having me on thank you my pleasure my pleasure elon musk ladies and gentlemen good night all right that should get a little i should get a little play that was great