#252 – Elon Musk: SpaceX, Mars, Tesla Autopilot, Self-Driving, Robotics, and AI

People often will think of money as having power in and of itself. It does not. Money is information ... If you are stranded on a tropical island and you have a trillion dollars, it's useless ... If you're stranded on a desert island with no food, all the Bitcoin in the world will not stop you from starving.

Earth's been around 4.5 billion years, and this is the first time in 4.5 billion years that it's been possible to extend life beyond Earth. And that window of opportunity may be open for a long time, and I hope it is, but it also may be open for a short time ... I think it is wise for us to act quickly while the window is open just in case it closes.

Try to be useful ... It's very hard to be useful, very hard. Are you contributing more than you consume? Try to have a positive net contribution to society. I think that's the thing to aim for.

I encourage people to read a lot of books ... Try to ingest as much information as you can. And try to also just develop a good general knowledge so you at least have a rough lay of the land of the knowledge landscape. Try to learn a little bit about a lot of things.

I never under quite understood this whole smart contract thing ... I'm too dumb to understand smart contracts.

The reason I guess I care about us becoming a multi-planet species and a spacefaring civilization is, foundationally, I love humanity ... I wish to see it prosper and do great things and be happy. And if I did not love humanity, I would not care about these things.

Here we are 49 years after the last mission to the moon. So, almost half a century, and we've not been back. And that's worrying. Does that mean we've peaked as a civilization or what? So, I think we've got to get back to the moon and build a base there, a science base. I think we could learn a lot about the nature of the universe if we have a proper science base on the moon.

I love humanity, and I think we should make sure we do everything we can to have a good future, an exciting future, and one that maximizes the happiness of the people.

In order to pass a very important great filter, I think we need to be a multi-planet species.

I think the cryptocurrency thing is an interesting approach to reducing the error in the database that is called money.

I thought the self-driving problem would be hard, but it was harder than I thought. It's not like I thought it'd be easy; I thought it'd be very hard, but it was actually way harder than even that.

I'm in favor of nuclear power ... In a place that is not subject to extreme natural disasters, I think nuclear power is a great way to generate electricity. I don't think we should be shutting down nuclear power stations.