This is a transcript excerpt from a 2020 AI Podcast clip in which Eric Weinstein discusses Elon Musk and SpaceX with Lex Fridman. Weinstein praises Musk for rekindling public belief in large technical projects and for taking sensible, pragmatic risks (e.g., using narratives like Mars to organize effort), but criticizes him as not taking sufficiently diverse or maximal risks (calling Mars a narrative rather than a true diversification). Weinstein frames the problem of leaving Earth partly as a cultural/cowardice issue rather than purely financial or technical, praises the role of "FU money" enabling bold action, and mentions that his own theoretical work might point toward more fundamental physics solutions though he is unsure of practical applicability.
Chapters
Let me ask a silly question, but.
We'Ll say it with a straight face.
Impossible. So let me mention Elon Musk. What are your thoughts about. He's more. You're more on the physics theory side of things. He's more on the physics engineering side of things. In terms of space, SpaceX efforts, what do you think of his efforts to get off this planet?
Well, I think he's the other guy who's semi serious about getting off this planet. I think there are two of us who are semi serious about getting off the planet.
What do you think about his methodology and yours when you look at them?
I don't want to be against Elon because I was so excited that, like, your top video was Ray Kurzweil. And then I did your podcast and we had some chemistry. So it zoomed up and I thought, okay, I'm going to beat Ray Kurzweil. So just as I'm coming up on Ray Kurzweil, you're like, and now Alex Fridman special Elon Musk. And he blew me out of the water. So I don't want to be petty about it. I want to say that I don't, but I am. Okay, but here's the funny part. He's not taking enough risk. Like, he's trying to get us to Mars. Imagine that. He got us to Mars, the moon, and we'll throw in Titan and nowhere good enough. The diversification level is too low. Now there's a compatibility. First of all, I don't think Elon is serious about Mars. I think Elon is using Mars.
As a narrative, as a story. As a story?
No. To make the moon jealous.
To make the. No.
I think he's using it as a story to organize us, to reacquaint ourselves with our need for space, our need to get off this planet. It's a concrete thing. He's shown that many people think that. He's shown that he's the most brilliant and capable person on the planet. I don't think that's what he showed. I think he showed that the rest of us have forgotten our capabilities. And so he's like, the only guy who has still still kept the faith and is like, what's wrong with you people?
So you think the lesson we should draw from Elon Musk is there's a capable person within a lot of us.
Elon makes sense to me in what way. He's doing what any sensible person should do. He's trying incredible things, and he's partially succeeding, partially failing.
To try to solve the obvious problems before.
Duh, you know. But he comes up with things like, you know, I got it. We'll come up with a battery company, but batteries aren't sexy, so we'll make a car around it. Great. Or any one of a number of things. Elon is behaving like a sane person, and I view everyone else as insane. And my feeling is that we really have to get off this planet. We have to get out of the.
Neighborhood to linger on a little bit. Do you think that's a physics problem or an engineering problem?
I think it's a cowardice problem. I think that we're afraid that we had. 400 hitters of the mind like Einstein and Dirac, and that era is done. And now we're just sort of copy editors.
So is some of it money? Like, if we become brave enough to go outside the solar system, can we afford to financially?
Well, I think that. That's not really the issue. The issue is, look what Elon did. Well, he amassed a lot of money, and then he plowed it back in and he spun the wheel and he made more money, and now he's got FU money. Now, the problem is that a lot of the people who have FU money are not people whose middle finger you ever want to see. I want to see Elon's middle finger. I want to see.
What do you mean by that? Or like, when you say fuck it. I'm going to do the biggest thing.
He's going to do whatever the fuck he wants.
Yeah, right.
Fuck you. Fuck anything that gets in his way that he can afford to push out of his way.
And you're saying he's not actually even doing that enough?
No, I'm.
He's not going.
Please. I'm going to go. Elon's doing fine with his money. I just want him to enjoy himself. Have the most, you know, Dionysian.
No, but you're saying Mars is playing it safe.
He doesn't know how to do anything else. He knows rockets. Yeah. And he might know some physics at a fundamental level.
Yeah, I guess. Okay, just. Let me just go right back to it. How much physics do you really. How much brilliant breakthrough ideas on the physics side do you need to get off this planet?
I don't know. And I don't know whether, like, in my most optimistic dream, I don't know whether my stuff gets us off the planet, but it's hope. It's hope that there's a more fundamental theory that we can access that we don't need whose elegance and beauty will suggest that this is probably the way the universe goes. Like you have to say this weird thing which is this I believe. And this I believe is a very dangerous statement. But this I believe. I believe that my theory points the way. Now Elon might or might not be able to access my theory. I don't know what he knows. But keep in mind, why are we all so focused on Elon? It's really weird. It's kind of creepy too. Why?
He's just the person who's just asking the obvious questions and doing whatever he can.
But he makes sense to me. You see, Craig Venter makes sense to me. Jim Watson makes sense to me.
But we're focusing on Elon because somehow is rare.
Well, that's the weird thing. We've come up with a system that eliminates all Elon from our pipeline and Elon somehow snuck through when they weren't quality adjusting everything, you know.
