Hey everybody. Welcome back to the Elon Musk
Podcast. This is a show where we discuss
the critical crossroads, the Shape, SpaceX, Tesla X, The
Boring Company, and Neuralink. I'm your host, Will Walden.
Yeah, I mean, if if anyone here has been through the legal
immigration process, I I mean, I've been been through it.
It's only gotten worse since 911.
And with COVID, it's, it's a, it's, it's a sort of Kafka,
Kafka esque, very long, bizarre process to immigrate legally to
the USI mean, I have friends of mine who, you know, they, they
can't get their, their wife to have a green card.
It's like insane. So on the other hand, it's you,
you can hop across the border in the South trivially.
It's just like very easy. I went to the border myself just
to see like what's going on? Is this real or like, is this
propaganda or real? And so I just went there and I'm
like, oh, it is real. OK.
This is crazy. You know, we've got situations
where people are pouring across the the border like it's World
War Z and I'm like, it just doesn't seem healthy.
So I'm like, are we checking anyone here or like, what's
going on? And, you know, we don't.
This is not say that. I mean, I'm a big believer in
immigration, but to have unvetted immigration at large
scale is a recipe for disaster. So I'm in favor of greatly
expediting legal immigration, but but having a secure southern
border. So there's there's some betting
of who comes into the United States.
I think this is just sensible. All right, let's let's now link,
star link to education. We're basically building the
Internet in space. Why it matters?
Starlink is a massive enabler for people in remote locations
to learn anything. You can learn almost anything
for free on the Internet right now.
For example, MIT has all of its lessons online.
That's if you have Internet. If you don't, you're limited to
books. It might be the number one
technology that improves people's standard of living
around the world. Starlink.
Yeah, absolutely. So once you have access to the
Internet, you have access to all the world's information.
But if you don't have access to the Internet or it's too
expensive or low bandwidth, then you you cannot access the MIT
lessons, you can't access all the information and you can't
sell the goods and services that you produce.
So Internet connectivity, I think is I think it might be
certainly a candidate for one of the things that would do more to
lift people out of poverty, out of poverty than anything else.
Because they can now sell their goods and services, they can
learn anything and but without connectivity, they cannot.
So I think, I think, I think Starling will actually like like
move the GDP of countries like it's going to be that kind of
thing because what is what is GDP as a, as a function of
average productivity per person. And so if there's a technology
that improves productivity per person, you would expect to see
that actually reflected in the gross domestic product?
All right, civilization is fragile.
I think it is. We should always regard
civilization as fragile. Yeah, There is not an inevitable
upward trajectory. A lot of civilizations have
risen and fallen in recent years.
Yes, I I suspect most people in this room have actually read
history, but if you haven't, I strongly recommend it.
It sounds obvious, but you know, there's, there's been, but so
many civilizations that have risen and fallen, many that we
just don't have much of a record of, you know, like I mentioned,
the ancient Sumerians, like their language was forgotten for
a long time until it was finally decoded only in the last, I
don't know, 2-3 hundred years, but like it's not 1800 and
something right in the 1800s, I think, but it's been very
recent. Like so for several thousand
years, nobody understood what those tablets meant.
And because there were the ruins of a long dead civilization and
there are many long dead civilizations, at some point our
civilization will come to an end too.
We just don't want it to be anytime soon.
So. Well, you've been quoted a
number of times, Elon, on You'd like to die on Mars, but not on
landing. Yes, yes, I was.
I was asked that in an interview if I wanted to die on Mars, but
then I considered the corner case of dying on impact.
And I'm like, except for that case, you know, you got to
consider the various corner cases.
So I mean, if I'm going to, if you're going to die somewhere,
might as well be Mars. I'd like to explore for a bit
before, you know, dying. But yeah, I think we want to be
a multi planet civilization and like I think.
I don't know if that's the. Response from.
The audience let's let's talk about that just for one second,
then we're going to take some questions from.
The I mean, I could accomplish this actually this year if I if
I was willing to die on impact. The fundamental invention that
is necessary for humanity to become a multi planet species is
rapidly reusable, reliable rockets.
Yeah, I was trying to sound like a pirate RRRRR.
But yeah, rapidly reusable, reliable rockets.
So Space Pirates for the win. All right, here's some questions
from the Audience Salon. Which one would you like to pick
here? Well, I guess let me let me let
me just touch upon why I think making life multiplanetary is
important, because I think it's one of the things that gets us
past one of the Fermi great filters.
So in, in trying to sort of explain why do we not see
aliens, there are various explanations for why we don't
see aliens. Like what stopped those
civilizations from from expanding beyond their solar
system and, and, and, and what were the what were the sort of
sometimes called like Fermi filters?
Well, if you don't become a multi planet civilization, then
you're then you're simply waiting around until you, you
die from a self-inflicted wound or from some natural disaster
like the dinosaurs. You get hit by a big meteorite
or something like that. The eventually something like
that's going to happen if and if you wait a lot around long
enough, the sun will expand to to engulf Earth and will be
incinerated. So that that for sure is going
to happen. Now that'll we've, we've got a
we've got some time before that happens.
There are more near term risks, but we want to try to get past
the Fermi filter of being a single planet civilization.
Now this is going to this is all set.
This is going to be somewhat cerebral to many people
listening. But I mean, if but like, I think
this is pretty, this is actually very important.
We want to get past the Fermi filter of a single planet
civilization. The point is not to to move from
Earth to another planet and let Earth die.
That's not what I'm saying at all.
I want to be a multi planet civilization so that we have
planetary redundancy such that no single event can end can be
the end of our civilization. Hey, thank you so much for
listening today. I really do appreciate your
support. If you could take a second and
hit the subscribe or the follow button on whatever podcast
platform that you're listening on right now, I greatly
appreciate it. It helps out the show
tremendously and you'll never miss an episode.
And each episode is about 10 minutes or less to get you
caught up quickly. And please, if you want to
support the show even more, go to patreon.com/stagezero and
please take care of yourselves and each other and I'll see you
tomorrow.