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Latest Space Interview of Elon Musk, Calls Out Lying Politicians! · Elon Musk Thinking

• 0:00
  Yeah, So specifically then regarding the Irish context, what was it that made
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  you sit up and take an interest in the Irish hate speech bills specifically because,
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  of course you you've focused on issues of censorship at a big international level
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  when it comes to big tech and you know, things in superpowers like America.
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  It seems unusual but welcome that somebody of of your stature, shall we
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  say it, would focus on a bill in a country like Ireland. Yeah.
• 0:36
  Well, generally you want to be considered about anything that you know,
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  any any terminology that could put in a George Orwell novel, and they're not
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  gonna These bills will generally be named in ways that sound innocuous and sound like
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  sure, why wouldn't anyone support that? But when you look at the details,
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  it's often the opposite of what the title of the bill is, so
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  you know, if or it's just distant genuous. So if the government is
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  given uh broad powers to define what hate speech is, they can easily define
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  things that support the ruling party, you know, define define hate speeches anything
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  that doesn't support the ruling party effectively, So it is a way for whoever's
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  in charge to cement their power well, I think on that. You know,
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  there's probably many people from abroad who aren't aware of the situation here at
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  Ireland. But for those who who might not know, the government here is
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  currently trying to pass a piece of legislation which would that criminalize incitement to hatred
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  or expressions that could incite hatred. But you're talking about a pece of legislation
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  that doesn't even define the word hatred. When you look at the text of
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  the bill, it says that hatred means hatred on the basis of X,
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  Y and Z characteristic, which is obviously a circular definition. So it's incredibly
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  vague and ambiguous to the point where it could potentially be applied to almost any
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  view that somebody could express. And this is what many critics of the bill
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  have been saying for some time, that it kind of opens it opens the
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  whole of discourse up to legal scrutiny, potentially where you could be prosecuted for
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  for expressing almost anything hypothetically. That is that it, I mean, it's
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  so extreme that you could be put in prison for having the wrong meme on
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  your phone and that that that's insane. Well, well, on that,
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  when when you first started tweeting about this legislation a few months ago. You
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  you seem to indicate that your company X might challenge the billing course and in
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  response our t shock, which is like the artist, Prime Minister Leo Radger,
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  he dismissed your suggestion and he said that you need to have legal standing
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  to do that. And he said, and I quote, I suspect he
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  doesn't know what he means and he's just show voting. So now that I
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  have you here is the Irish teacher correct? Where you just show voting or
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  do you intend to challenge this benef it becomes a law. Well, our
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  default approach is to challenge any any legislation that infringes upon the people's ability to
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  say what they want to say. So, and we obviously have standing since
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  our European headquarters are in Ireland, so we have a big office in Ireland,
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  a major presidence in Ireland, so we obviously have standing and uh,
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  you know, and and we will also you know, fund the legal fees
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  of the Irish citizens that want to challenge the bill as well, so we'll
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  make sure that if there's an attempt to suppress the voice of the Irish people
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  that we do our absolute best to defend the people of Ireland and their ability
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  to speak onir mind. So on that, you obviously mentioned that X's headquarters
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  in Europe is based in Ireland, and so that naturally raises the question of
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  a kind of I mean, previously it would have been the Twitter files,
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  now is supposed to be the ex files, the potential of delving into some
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  of the correspondents that Twitter would have had with European and Irish government officials throughout
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  periods like the COVID pandemic, for example, Because there's been many there's been
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  a lot of suggestion that things like so called misinformation and disinformation labeling systems might
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  not have always been used to the standard that one would hope they would be
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  used to by authorities in terms of how how they choose to label certain pieces
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  of information, and so many people have speculated that there's a lot of potentially
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  shocking material in there that's just waiting to be found. Would you be open
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  to doing an X files type project here here in Ireland, specifically in Europe
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  more broadly, Yeah, sure, But it's it's a pretty safe bet that
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  whatever we found in the in the US files will be the same in Europe,
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  so there was there was massive government interference in the US. Now,
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  the US actually has a constitutional amendment that prohibits the government from attacking free speech.
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  It's literally the first amendment is the Free Speech Amendment to the Constitution.
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  So it is actually fully illegal for the government to impede the free speech of
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  the people. In the U. S Now, Ireland and very few other
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  countries do not have have such an amendment, so it may not be illegal.
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  Actually what what what was done Island? But what was there Obviously was
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  there an attempt to suppress pre speech during CO but you can pretty much assume
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  that to be one hundred percent likely. So I would seriously doubt that it's
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  any different from the US. So yeah, I mean, I we we
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  do want to sort of move on, you know, I'm not I'm not
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  be constantly dradging up things from old Twitter, you know, if you know,
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  fight the battles of today and tomorrow, not the battles of yesterday.
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  But as as you mentioned that, like the thing we should be concerned about
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  is if the Irish Colament passes a bull that defines a hate speech as whatever
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  they think hate speech is, people should be extremely concerned about that, you're
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  just at the mercy of the ruling party and whatever bureaucrats they put in place,
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  and they can just define something that really is not hate speech as hate
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  speech just because they don't like it. On that. There's been something that
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  has been used similarly as far as vague concepts that can sort of be applied
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  to any context, and that's misinformation and disinformation. We hear about this a
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  lot, and in fact, under the EU Digital Services Act here in Ireland
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  we have a new body, you know, the Media Commission, and we've
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  also got the Electoral Commission, and these bodies, I think many countries now
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  have them in Europe and North America and you know, Australia and so on,
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  where we are developing these bodies that have the legal authority to shut down
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  that information that they deemed to be false at any given moment, at an
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  election time, or whatever I might be. In a fact, we even
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  had one Supreme Court judge who was a member of one of these bodies who
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  said that it's important to balance the right to free speech with the right not
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  to be misinformed. Now I'm not aware, I'm not aware of any such
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  right in the Irish Constitution. But who might contradict a Supreme Court judge?
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  Do you believe that there is a right to not be misinformed? As that
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  judge told us, Well, that may sound nice on the surface, but
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  who is deciding what is miss information and disinformation? The point is to have
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  an open and clear debate and if there if something is missile disinformation, then
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  to provide a or rebuttal that that's that's the best way is open debate.
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  And obviously we've got community notes on the x platform, which I think is
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  very powerful for addressing inaccuracy, inaccuracies or adding context. And of course when
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  somebody posts something, people can reply with you know that it's not true for
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  the following reasons. Whereas say something that a newspaper publishes, there's no there's
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  no community notes, there's no ability to robot the claims in an article in
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  a newspaper. So the newspapers can publish and they do publish all sorts of
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  things that are completely untrue, as well as to avoid subjects that they decide
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  that I wanted to write about. The biggest lie in the media is is
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  the is the choice of narrative, because they can simply ignore anything they don't
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  like, and they can overly focus on things that they do want to talk
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  about. So whereas I think the choice of what to talk about, the
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  choice of narrative is should be up to the people, not up to you
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  know, a handful of editors, how do you respond to critics who say
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  that X has helped to spread misinformation about controversial situations like, for example,
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  the current war and Israeli Palestine, or the Ukraine situation. But because obviously,
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  I mean the old quote is the first casualty of war's truth and propaganda
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  is always omnidirectional on every side, and it's it's almost impossible, it seems,
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  as a as an ordinary person to figure out what's going on. How
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  do you respond to people who would criticize your platform or social media platforms in
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  general on that basis. Well, first, well, I think actually X
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  has the as the most up to date information by far. As I said
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  earlier, you can robt anything that's said on any claims, So if something
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  makes a post, you could reply to that post with a rebuttal instantly.
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  There's community community notes, which is very rigorous and and and the way that
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  community notes works is that people who historically have had different opinions must agree on
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  a note in order for that note to to be shown. That's a very
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  important and I think very powerful principle. If people who have historically disagreed do
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  both all agree that this note that are given community note is correct, that's
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  what's required for it to show up. So that's it. It's I think
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  it's an incredibly powerful force for truth, and I think it's I think it's
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  by far more acurate than any newspaper or traditional media. And if somebody is
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  saying that there's mission disinformation, whenever I ask them for examples, that can
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  never produce any and so that so I would say that there are they're lying
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  when they say that they're either lying, well, they don't know what they're
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  talking about, the fools or liars. Well. It's it's interesting that when
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  you when you actually look at the definition of a word like disinformation, it
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  is synonymous with a lie. So really, when when politicians, when politicians
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  say they want to regulate disinformation, we're talking we're talking about allowing politicians to
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  regulate lying, which is if they were to phrase it that way, I
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  think people would have a very different reaction to it as far as policies go,
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  Yes, do you want liars defining what lying is? Doesn't one line
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  all the time? Everyone knows that, so uh, you know they're they're
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  they're constantly being deceptive, So it'ld be absurd for known liars to define what
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  lying is on on that because you you are somebody who obviously is you're known
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  for I suppose environmentalism in terms of electric cars and this sort of space.
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  So when it comes to Ireland's green policies, you've criticized the energy policies of
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  other European countries like Germany previously, and now Ireland has gone a very similar
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  route to the point where our national grid operator air Grid says that we're going
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  to have electricity shortages every winter for years into the future. And this seems
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  like a big deal. But considering the fact that Ireland is home to so
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  many data centers and tech companies and so on, you would think that as
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  sort of the Silicon Valley of Europe, you would want to have a secure
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  energy grid. So, as somebody with a tech company based in Ireland,
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  we yourself and other European countries, are you worried about the direction of the
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  Irish energy sector and the European energy sector more broadly, Well, I think
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  we've gone you know, I siddenly consider myself on an environmentalist, and I
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  think it's hard to say that there's any any single person has done more to
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  help sustainable energy and the environment than I have. So I speak with some
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  authority and so and and and knowledgy in this area. There's absolutely no need
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  to do anything to farming. Changing farming will have no effect on the environment.
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  It's it's totally fine, stop stop attacking the farmersts. They can just
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  keep doing that. They can keep doing what they're doing. That there is
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  only one thing that really matters with respect to the environment, and that is
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  how many billions of tons of CO two do we take out of the ground
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  and put into the atmosphere. So it's says the reason that if you take
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  enough tonnage of CO two from from hydrochon Robbins that's that's very deep underground,
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  and you take it from deep underground and put it in the atmosphere, that
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  eventually you're going to have some change in the atmosphere. That now, so
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  I do think that we want to move towards a sustainable energy economy where we
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  limit how much carbon we take from deep underground and move to the atmosphere.
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  But that's the only thing that matters. Methane doesn't matter. Methane decays to
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  CEO two very quickly, so it all ends up being CO two anyway.
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  It really just it's fundamentally how much carbon do we take from deep underground and
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  add to the surface cycle. That's the only thing that matters, and your
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  can leave farmers alone, and that the risk in my in my view for
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  CO two and global warming is it is meaningful in the long term, if
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  you say sort of fifty years type of thing or more. I don't think
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  it is a in the short term, but it will take a lot of
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  time to transition the uh an economy that is still mostly based on hydrocarbons and
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  transition that to sustainable energy where it's mostly wind, solar, nuclear. I'm
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  actually a big part of nuclear. I think nuclear is actually nuclear, fision
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  is fine, or a hydro or geothermal, these are all these are all
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  sustainable, and that's it. Really. It's a more complicated than that,
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  is that we should just generally generally lean in the direction of a sustainable energy
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  economy. But but for sure we can leave the farmers alone. That these
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  actions that farmer's ability to do farming and a lot of a lot of respect
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  for the hard work associated with farming are clearly unnecessary and will achieve nothing with
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  respect to global warming. So that would include things like cutting down on the
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  number of livestock. We have a proposal here to quote the number of livestock
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  in the country cows. I believe by about two hundred thousand. You don't
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  think that would have any positive impact on the environment? Zero? Okay,
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  Literally, you wouldn't even be able to measure it. And if somebody says
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  they would be able to measure it, then I want to hear what that
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  measurement number is. But I will bet a billion dollars you won't even be
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  able to measure it. A billion dollars. That's a battle unmeasurable. That's
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  how little the impact is. On a related note, and I know you
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  don't have much more time, and I really appreciate you taking the time to
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  do this. On a related note, how would you explain the importance of
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  birth rates to politicians who aren't even thinking about that is an issue when it
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  comes to demographics and so on, because you've spoken about this many times before,
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  and the demographic crisis that's brewing for humanity. And when I asked our
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  ad minister who's responsible for pensions, had her home freeze about this issue what
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  our government is doing to address it? She not only did she confront that
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  they're not doing anything to address it, she almost seemed to act like it
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  was an odd question. She didn't seem to understand the significance of it and
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  how it might impact on things like social services going into the future and a
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  whole arrange of other issues. So if you're speaking to lawmakers like her in
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  the West, how would you explain why that issue is so critical? Well,
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  first of all, most people are still under the wrong impression that the
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  world population is growing rapidly. It is in fact not growing rapidly, and
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  in fact, in most countries it is plummeting. So and with each passing
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  year, I should say, the birth ray is plummeting. But and the
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  only reason the population isn't plummetting is because people are living long. That's what
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  that's it. But it's very easy to predict with demographics what the future of
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  the world will look like because you can say how many how many babies were
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  born next year, and then you immediately know how many will be adults in
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  twenty years. So when doesn't it need to be some expert in statistics to
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  understand what the world population will be like in twenty years. You can just
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  look at the number of babies born, multiply that by life expectancy, and
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  that's going to be the population over time. And what we're seeing in basically
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  almost every country, in fact, I think maybe every almost every country with
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  an avast economy, which is of most countries, basically is that the birth
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  rate is below replacement rate, so and in some cases it's half replacement rate,
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  which and if somebody's half replacement rate, that just means that there will
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  be half as many people per generation with each you know, each successor generation
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  will be in half. It's bleaker than that because the people that remain will
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  be very old, and so you're essentially a country will just turn into an
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  old age hoone. And like, a good ratio to look at for any
• 20:12
  given country is the ratio of adult diapers to baby diapers. Okay, this
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  is a that's the that's the key turning point. You know, in Japan
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  that there were more adult diapers sold than baby diapers, I think, over
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  ten years ago, and the birth rate has gotten worse since then. And
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  and civilization, you know, there's there was this long standing debate of will
• 20:40
  civilization die with a bang or a whimper? Well, right now it's treateding
• 20:44
  to die with the whimper in adult diapers, and that is an incredibly bleak
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  scenario. How sad. I'd rather die with a bang, yeah, than
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  with the whimper in adult dip Yeah, at least at least the buying will
• 21:02
  be cool, you know, big explosion or something. You can walk away
• 21:06
  from it and look like an action hero as you go out. Yeah.
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  I just well, like just dying dying with Alzheimer's and set al and and
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  your cant and and and adult die though, that's miserable, so you know,
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  yeah, so so really matters. And I'm not saying we should just
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  you know, expand massively, but but I think we should at least keep
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  the numbers, you know, where they are, and and aim for a
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  slight amount of population growth. That seems like a reasonable objective as opposed to
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  being a population free for which is most counties. Well, I know you
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  you have to run, and I don't want to take a more good time,
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  but I really, I really appreciate all the time you've taken here.
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  I wanted to end on a question about the the Iliad because I know you're
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  you're a big fan of Homer's Iliad. You recently called it the best story
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  ever. What what about that story specifically do you like so much? Because
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  I remember studying it at school and you know, it's it's a beautiful tale.
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  But I'm wondering, what about it did you find so intriguing. Well,
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  I think it's a I mean it's basically an action story, an action
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  movie, you know, and it's got all the elements that you want to
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  see in a movie, which is you know, like you know, you
• 22:42
  know, the the the the Spartan queen Ye falls and loves, falls in
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  love and leaves, and then all of you know, Spartan Greece cools to
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  get back. The many heroic battles. Uh. It illustrates. I mean,
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  it's it's so many of the things that that that we see in movies
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  today really come from the Aliad. You know, there's there's Achilles, who's
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  this, who's this incredible warrior, but he's got a vulnerability, the classic
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  Achilles heel, and you know he's prone to letting his emotions get the best
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  of been this is. That's an incredible scene where you know, the father
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  comes to to get get his son's head, gets to get his son's body
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  back, and begs BIG's Achilles h to get to get his son's body back.
• 23:53
  Uh. It's a great it's a great story and I recommended I recommend
• 23:56
  the Penguin audio vision because it's it's actually meant to be spoken, not read.
• 24:04
  Mm hmmm. And Penguins Audio version of