Listening to Elon Musk can be depressing at times. In his view, human civilization is a tiny flickering candle surrounded by a vast expanse of darkness that has not yet even built a colony on Mars. He constantly reflects on the sharp drop in birth rates – he even warned that the likelihood of a Third World War between East and West was increasing. Now we may know why.
In a conversation with Michael Milken on Monday, the SpaceX founder and Tesla CEO detailed humanity’s unique existence in the universe. 13.8 billion years otherwise there is no evidence of life on other worlds.
When asked what keeps him up at night, Musk feared that all would be lost if a cataclysm occurred before humanity could spread to neighboring star systems.
“I listen to podcasts about the fall of civilizations to help me fall asleep, and that might be part of the problem,” the self-proclaimed history buff mused, right after challenging everyone in the audience to go ahead and multiply at least three times.
“At some point we want science fiction to stop being science fiction forever.”
When you’re one of the three richest people in the world, someone who completely reimagined the auto industry, built the largest commercial space business from the ground up, and now owns one of the world’s most influential social networks, few would blame you for think about the future of humanity.
Indeed, Milken’s interview strategy was not to ask whether it was legal to lay off potentially tens of thousands of Tesla employees to save money, only to ask shareholders to then reinstate his canceled pay package of $55 billion—more than the company once had. or received it for them last year. profit.
Rather, the former white collar criminal turned philanthropist. pardoned by Trump just let Elon talk about Elon so everyone present can witness.
With the entrepreneur in his element, the conversation revolved around all his favorite topics, such as the importance of meritocracy and how stifling and repressive California’s government bureaucracy has become (the free speech advocate recently wrote that he was “honored” to meet China’s second-highest official ). high-ranking official on the platform banned in the country).
Underneath this, however, Musk said he was concerned that people didn’t have enough reasons to get up in the morning.
While this may be a religion for many, he will one day die on Mars – and not from a stroke, as he jokes.
“Becoming a spacefaring civilization is one of those things,” he said. “At some point we want to make science fiction not science fiction forever.”
“Just waiting to die”
Many times Musk has referred to the Fermi Paradox, named after the Italian physicist who famously asked the question: does life exist elsewhere in the universe where they exist?
“SpaceX with the Starlink constellation has about 6,000 satellites, and we have never had to maneuver around a UFO,” he said. “Never.”
This idea of a tiny speck of Earth harboring all known life swirling in an inky void seems to fuel his singular obsession with falling birth rates. Only recently, he warned, “America is heading towards extinction” after the US birth rate fell to lowest level since records began in the 1930s.
At one point he talked so much about it that one of the spectators volunteered to become the next bearer of his offspring (he is already doing his bit, as he often says, having given birth to almost a dozen children in mothers with many children).
Musk took the opportunity to urge anyone listening to have at least three children, given that in the larger scheme of the universe, humanity rests dangerously on thin ice. Too often, cultures have died out without leaving any legacy behind because there are no records.
“Unless you become a multi-planetary civilization, then you will simply wait until you die from a self-inflicted wound or some natural disaster,” he continued. There are many long dead civilizations. At some point, our civilization will also come to an end.”