Elon Musk on DOGE, AI, & Are we in a Simulation? | KMP Ep.18

22:15Katie Miller:You believe we actually went to the moon, though? Yes, we went to the moon a few times, actually, and played golf on the moon. We didn't just go to the moon. We actually got a little bored and started playing golf on the moon. But why didn't the flag move? There's like that conspiracy theory. That was the jump the chalk moment. About the flag? No, playing golf on the moon. Oh, okay. Yeah, I literally did. No, I understand that. Yeah, yeah. We have a golf ball on the moon. There's no gravity though, right? There is gravity, one-sixth. If it wasn't gravity, it would just float away. There's no atmosphere.

22:53Katie Miller:Okay, fair. But there is one-sixth gravity. What's the biggest misconception about you? I don't know. How would I know? What do you think? I think it's I get asked this a lot when I do interviews about you me oh god I got asked everyone always thinks you're a very difficult person to work for oh but you're I think you're very kind thanks and like people think which you're you are like a very demanding boss I think that you are I've never heard you yell at any employee yeah I don't you know I think every employee who works at every single one of your companies is incredibly mission-driven which is unlike any other workplace I've ever seen.

23:36Katie Miller:Like Starbase is the most inspirational place you'll ever go to. Everyone is there to work on a singular goal. And so I think to me, the biggest misconception about you is how every employee at all of your companies are fiercely loyal because it's all mission-driven. And you are a very good employer to work for. And I think people assume you are not. Right, well, why would they think anyone would work at the company? Yeah.

24:09I mean, talented people can go work anywhere they want. So they're only going to work at one of my companies if they want to. And if they're mistreated in some way, they would leave and go work somewhere else.

24:25Katie Miller:How did you come up with the idea for Starbase? Well, I think we needed something inspirational. We kind of have a lot of star things, you know, so we've got Starlink, Starship. Well, where would Starship depart from? Starbase. I mean, Starbase is, as you mentioned, it's like, I think it's probably the coolest place on Earth. I agree. And it used to be a sandbar down by the Rio Grande. I mean, it's only like three feet above sea level. So we built a gigantic rocket factory and two giant launch towers down by the river, literally within sight of the Rio Grande and on an actual sandbar. kind of had to have like an inspirational name.

25:25And then we made it a city. So it's an incorporated city, like legally a city. You don't hear about new cities being formed that often.

25:37Katie Miller:The last time there was a company town, it was Disney World. Yeah, I think Ford had some kind of like company town situations. But yeah, Disney World is literally its name. I'm Walt Disney. This is my world. I've gone from land to world. They got incorporated as a city and got tax exemption, which was a big deal. I've been to Disney World probably 10 times. Really? Yeah. Maybe more than 10, but at least 10 times. because Cape Canaveral is right by Disney World. Oh, yes. This makes sense. So when I'd have the kids, then I would, my older kids, and I was, we're trying to get the rocket launch from Cape Canaveral, then, you know, the thing they'd want to do is go to Disney World or Harry Potter Land.

26:38Katie Miller:What's your favorite ride? I'm sort of tempted to say Space Mountain, I suppose. Yeah, probably Space Mountain. I mean, I do think Space Mountain needs an upgrade. It's a little herky-jerky. It doesn't look quite as sci-fi as it used to. You know, it's like the day before yesterday is tomorrow. But just still yesterday. What's your favorite age to parent of your kids? Generally, kids are the most fun between five and ten. Do you think humanity is inherently good, or is it just trying to be? The concept of good wouldn't exist without humanity. I do think humanity is on balance good. I generally think increasing the amount of consciousness in the universe is a good thing.

27:25Try to understand the nature of the universe, which you can only do by increasing conscious awareness. I mean, I've thought about like, how did we get here? Because if we just saw it out as a hydrogen gas cloud that sort of condensed and then formed stars and then these stars exploded and then they recondensed, formed stars again and then exploded again, and then eventually you get to us 13.8 billion years later. And one of the interesting questions to think about is how many times have your atoms been at the center of a star? I think it's like on average three or four times, something like that.

28:14Then how many times will your atoms be at the center of a star? Estimates vary, but it seems like we're roughly halfway. So your atoms are likely to be at the center of the star, maybe another four times or something like that. It depends on what your predictions are for the future. But in terms of existence as measured by the number of times your atoms will be at the center of a star, we seem to be roughly halfway. That really, you know, if you want to look at the big picture, that's the really big picture.

28:52Katie Miller:what's one invention that's made us worse not better what's one adventure that's made us worse invention maybe short form video seems to be writing people's brains what's one piece of technology you hope never gets invented I hope never gets invented like yeah like it's going to destroy us all or you think with the proper safeguards? Well, I mean, obviously I hope that people don't invent a virus that can kill all humans. That's an obvious thing. Sure, yeah. I mean, generally I hope inventions that destroy consciousness are not invented. I think the future is going to look very interesting. So I do have this theory about predicting the future, which is that the most interesting outcome is the most likely.

29:54Which, if simulation theory is accurate, makes sense, because if anyone is simulating a wide range of futures, they're going to stop the simulation when it gets boring. Because this is what we do in our reality. So if SpaceX is doing, or Tesla is doing simulations to understand how a car would work, or robot or spaceship or something like that, we'd run all these simulations in the computer. And the simulations that we pay attention to are the ones that are the most interesting. Like the simulation where everything goes right on the rocket, we actually don't pay attention to because that's not a everything-goes-right simulation is fine.

30:43So we actually test the, you know, when we simulate the rocket flight, we'll actually test all sorts of oddball situations. But we don't test it. We don't have the simulation be totally wrong because, I mean, like if the rocket just explodes immediately, that's also not interesting. So it's like you need to find the envelope of possible flight paths where the rocket can make it to orbit without exploding. And then you find those boundaries. And then when you launch the actual rocket, you make sure it stays within those boundaries. Or another way to think of it is we could be an Alien Netflix series.

31:28and that series is only going to get continued if our ratings are good.

31:34Katie Miller:Are the ratings good? Yeah. But you can think of it like from a Darwinian standpoint, if you apply Darwin to simulation theory, then only the most interesting simulations will continue. Therefore, the most interesting outcome is most likely because it's either that or annihilation. So really we have one goal, keep it interesting. Do you think social media has made people more honest or more performative? Well, social media makes people more performative.

32:06By the same token, you get more real-life video of things that are actually happening. And anything that is very interesting will go viral on the Internet. So you have both. You've got more performative, where people are doing anything they can to get a few more views on their TikTok video or whatever, or their reels or maybe on their ex posts or something.

32:38And so that's very performative. But then you also see real-life videos that challenge the narrative, but are nonetheless real.

32:50Katie Miller:Is there any ex accounts you're surprised when you changed it? so people could see country of origin that wasn't in the United States that you thought was in the United States? I don't really think about it that much. I mean, there's... In a country of origin... We have to be a little careful about this. You can actually technically just specify your region. Like you can say I'm in Asia or something like that, which is quite big. But it does make it a little harder that if somebody is trying to pretend that they're, say, a member of the American public or in Europe or Africa, wherever, if everything about their account is from a different continent than they are pretending to be from, it gets a little harder to pretend.

33:39We don't want to dox people, but we kind of think you're not really doxing someone if you say which continent they're from.

33:45Katie Miller:Yeah, I think it's fair. Yeah. Okay, so in every episode, we've played Would You Rather. Would you rather save humanity from extinction on Earth or guarantee its survival on Mars?

34:01It's a false dichotomy. I think I'd say guarantee Earth. Earth is much better than Mars, to be clear. But Mars is just our best option if we want to become a multi-planet species. It's really our only option if you want to become a multi-planet species. We've got Mars, which is very difficult but not impossible. Earth is much better than Mars, but we can't... I think it was Tsiolkovsky, or I think he said, Earth is the cradle of civilization, but we can't stay in the cradle forever.

34:35Katie Miller:Would you rather be a Marvel superhero or a Bond villain? I think it would depend on which Marvel superhero or which Bond villain. I suppose I'd rather be a Marvel superhero. They did model Iron Man in the movies after me. Yes. You were in the Iron Man movie, right? Yes. That's pretty cool. Yeah, Robert Downey Jr. and Favreau met with me and toured SpaceX and stuff. In fact, Iron Man 2, a large part of the movie, is filmed in SpaceX. Really? Yes. If you watch Iron Man 2, you'll see that the SpaceX factory is the actual background. That's so cool. Yeah, it was cool. We had Scarlett Johansson doing martial arts in the lobby.

35:21Actually.

35:27Yeah. And you expect me to believe this is all real?

35:31Katie Miller:It's a simulation. Exactly. What are the odds? Yeah. I mean, if you were me... No, I agree with you. Would you think this is real or a simulation? Your life is a simulation. Yeah. Your life gets to be the simulation. Yeah, and I'm doing all the side quests and everything. What's your best side quest? A doge, probably.

35:58Okay.

35:58Katie Miller:Would you rather launch a social network with no algorithm or a rocket with no manual override? Who came up with these questions? Just keep going. These are funny. Maybe not to you because they're too trivial. What do you mean? Like, so that, with an algorithm, it means that you basically, you only see the people you follow. Like, it's just a mess. Like, it was Twitter before you bought it. Yeah, yeah. There's the sort of people you follow, and then there's a recommendation algorithm. I think probably in December, we'll finally have a half-decent recommendation algorithm. It's a lot better. Recently, yeah.

36:42So it really just trying to show people stuff they'd be interested in. But there's an enormous amount of AI horsepower being applied to this, where Grok, poor thing, is going to read all 100 million posts per day. Which is a...

36:59Katie Miller:Does that take up a lot of compute? Hopefully it doesn't destroy its mind or something. Yeah, it does take a lot of compute. Like most posts are, there's a lot of spam, scam stuff, so it just, that can be easily discarded I suppose. But then you've got to take, you know, 100 million pieces of content, match that to, I don't know, sometimes three or 400 million people per day. So that's a lot of matching. My algorithm used to look a lot like other people's when you open their X account. Now mine is very unique comparatively to other people's.

37:40Well, we really are kind of, this is just the beginning kind of thing. What I mentioned, the Grok reading everything and recommending any given thing to anyone should go live in December. So the acid test for this is, are you seeing content, like are you seeing content that you find really interesting from accounts you've never seen before? If that's happening, then the algorithm is working. Like it should be possible for somebody to post content as a new user with no followers. And if that content is excellent, it gets seen by a lot of people. So can an account with a small number of followers or a new account, if the content is intrinsically excellent, can that content be seen by a lot of people?

38:38That's our goal.

38:40Katie Miller:All right, last one. Would you rather invent time travel or teleportation? Actually, those things are almost the same thing in that you can't break the speed of light without breaking reality. And you know, so if you could teleport somewhere instantly, if you're talking about teleportation faster than the speed of light, presumably it would be, then that would break our reality, as would time travel. Unless, there's a very important conditional here, unless we are a simulation. Time travel does not break a simulation. Is it like in Loki where you're on like the time and you just break a new one?

39:30I think, well, people do tend to get wrapped up in knots with the time travel thing because they try to simultaneously say something must be logically consistent but logically inconsistent. That's impossible. But if you think about like a video game and say, okay, you've got various saved games. You can go back and restore a saved game from a prior start point. You still have your other saved games and there are many games going on in parallel. They don't have to be consistent with each other. That's a

40:10false assumption if we're a simulation. We might be somebody's video game or Or a TV show or something like that. Like I said, we're just going to keep it interesting so they don't turn the computer off.

40:29I'm just saying, if that's true, keep it interesting, or they're going to turn off the computer. Please don't delete us. Please don't delete us. Don't delete us. We'll keep it interesting, I swear.

40:45Katie Miller:you keep it interesting yeah so if the most interesting outcome is the most likely what do you think are the most interesting things that can occur, now the most interesting is not what you want it's just as viewed by a third party let's say this was for argument's sake an alien Netflix series and you're trying to maximize your viewership maximize your ratings It's actually an interesting thought experiment. It's actually not that interesting if everything just blows up. It's now it's over. That's not that interesting. It's not that interesting if there's a calamity that wipes out all the humans.

41:30The show just ended. But, I mean, fortunately and unfortunately, if there is drama, like war or something like that, that is interesting. People will go to movies and watch, say, a World War I movie where people are getting blown up from cannon shells and they're in the movie theater eating popcorn, drinking a soda. You wouldn't go to a movie where everything was just perfect and stayed that way. you'd leave the theater.

42:08Katie Miller:A good romance story, doesn't it? There's always a story arc. There's always an arc. And it's generally not a linear arc. So it's not going to be like, things start here and just go straight up and to the right and end up in a good place or something like that. There's usually ups and downs. The classic sort of story arcs, essentially. You know, act one, act two, act three. You have an initial rise in act two, pull back in act, initial rise in act one, pull down in act two, switch back in act three with a happy ending if it's a comedy or a sad ending if it's a drama. If you look at President Trump's story, it's more interesting that he lost the intermediate term and then won his second term after that, just like the story arc.

43:15Initially up, then down, then resurgent again. If you went with my theory that the most interesting outcome is the most likely, then that was the most likely outcome. It was inevitable.

43:34Katie Miller:What are you watching on TV right now? I am Irony Man. Something like that. I'm paraphrasing.

43:49What am I watching? Actually, right now I'm watching Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the TV series. Turtles in a Half Shell, Turtle Power. Yeah, because Little X wants to watch that. I'm watching things that the kids want to watch. We watched Dodgeball last night.

44:08Katie Miller:It's a good movie. Yeah.

44:12If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball. If you can dodge a wrench, you can dodge a ball. What? Oh! Oh! Oh!

44:26Oh my God! Oh my God! Yeah. Oh my God! High motivation to dodge if somebody's loving wrench.

44:40Katie Miller:What song instantly puts you in a good mood?

44:48The Final Countdown by Europa.

44:55Katie Miller:I've heard that song a lot. Do you read the instructions or just wing it? What's the goal? Like if you're putting something together, do you read the instructions or do you wing it? If it's a simple thing, I'll wing it. If it's a complex thing, I'll look at the instructions. If you had to start from scratch today with only$1 ,000, what would you do? Well, I did originally come to North America with like, I don't know,$2 ,500 Canadian, so I don't know, maybe$2 ,000 U.S. One bag of books and one bag of clothes in Montreal at age 17. So that is how I started out. At this point, I have a lot of knowledge.

45:40A lot of things would have to go wrong for that to be the case. It's like, am I just emerging from prison, perhaps? With a stipend? All my companies have been confiscated. I mean, it would take Armageddon, which hopefully that doesn't happen. Like Ragnarok next level, and I lost.

46:02Katie Miller:Yeah. What the hell? It's a bad hand. I mean, it's impossible for someone to have that amount of knowledge, all the knowledge that I have, and then be dropped down to a low resource amount. Because the reality is that either something truly catastrophic has happened, like civilization is melted or I will be able to ask people to just give me money and with the promise that I will have a high return which is what I'm able to do right now. Yeah. Like if you give me a dollar you will get back much more than a dollar. Yes. So this is it's somewhat of an impossible dichotomy because civilization would have had to have destroyed or something.

46:54In which case,$1 ,000 is not going to solve your problems. You can't do much with this. If you're wandering around radioactive craters and you're in like, you know, fallout or whatever, then$1 ,000 is not going to solve anything. And if civilization hasn't melted then Probably just talk people into giving me money which I've done before

47:30Katie Miller:If you weren't running your companies what random job would you enjoy doing the most? I don't know about school that random, but I'd like to probably write video games or something like that. I did that at one point. I like solving problems, so I like building things. I've got a lot of things. Like a lot. What do you eat in a typical day? Well, these days, I start off with a breakfast of steak and eggs and coffee. And then dinner tends to vary. I usually don't have lunch. Or if I do, it's something very small. and then dinner, depending on whether it's social or not, will vary in cuisine. I like a wide range of cuisine.

48:22Katie Miller:What's your favorite food? American food is my favorite food. Like pizza or a cheeseburger? Yeah, the cheeseburger is probably the... If I had to say there's only one thing you can ever have for the rest of time, which admittedly would be a bit monotonous, but it would probably be a cheeseburger. Because cheeseburgers are amazing. It's a genius invention. I'll tell you a funny story about when I was living in L.A. and I took my older boys out for lunch to Sugarfish which is a very kind of uptight sushi restaurant. In fact, on the menu of the restaurant it says do not ask for soy sauce because the chef has put the right amount of soy sauce and you can't have any more.

49:19And if the chef doesn't think you should have soy sauce, you can't have soy sauce. That's what it says on the menu, basically.

49:28So, like extremely strict sushi restaurant. And so the waiter is going around asking everyone what they want. And then it comes to Saxon. and Saxon says, I'll have a cheeseburger. And the waiter's like, it takes a moment for the waiter to recover because no one's ever asked for a cheeseburger at this very strict sushi restaurant. Took him like 30 seconds to realize he'd just been asked for a cheeseburger because you're not even allowed to ask for soy sauce.

50:04So then when he finally recovered, he said, we don't have cheeseburgers.

50:11And Saxon goes at the top of his voice, what? Like what kind of restaurant doesn't have cheeseburgers? And he says, fine, I'll have a hamburger. I don't know what you got against dairy, but yeah, they don't have hamburgers either.

50:29Katie Miller:Did he stay for the rest of the meal? Yeah, but he was nonplussed. I was like, I can't believe this place doesn't have cheeseburgers. So, yeah, I guess I like barbecue, which is good because I'm here in Austin.

50:47I mean, if it's hort cuisine, I like French food as well, but not every day, once in a while.

50:54Katie Miller:If your friends described you in one emoji, what's the emoji? I guess the emoji I use the most, which is the laughing emoji.

51:06Katie Miller:All right, and we close on this question every episode. if you could host a dinner party with three people dead or alive who's coming to dinner and what are you eating? Maybe Shakespeare, Ben Franklin, Nikola Tesla. There's actually a lot of people I would have liked to talk to. And we'll eat, I guess, whatever they'd like.

51:33I think if this is a once-in-a-lifetime thing, I think you'd want to have some epic, you know, 12-course meal or something like that. Feast. Yeah. Yeah. You want to go all out for that dinner, I think. You're probably not going to serve cheeseburgers. Unless they want it. Yeah. Maybe one of the courses could be, like, a tiny cheeseburger.

51:59Katie Miller:Those don't taste as good as the big ones, though. No, but they could. It's just they don't try. It's dry. You could make a tiny cheeseburger taste just as good as a big cheeseburger, if you try it. Have you ever had a tiny cheeseburger that actually tastes good? Rare, but yes. Okay. One percent of the time. Fair. But usually it's too much bread and it's dry. Correct. Yeah. And then there's not enough meat in proportion to the bread. Yeah. Right. But could you make a tiny cheeseburger that's good? Of course. Like you're not breaking, you're not like, you don't need a Nobel Prize for this. You can definitely make a tiny cheeseburger.

52:34It's like physically possible, I'm saying. It's just rare.

52:39Katie Miller:Thank you for doing this. You're welcome. Thanks for watching this week's episode of the Katie Miller Podcast. We'll see you next week, Tuesday, 6 p.m.