Notes from Lex Fridman’s 2.5 hour interview of Elon Musk

Crew Dragon
Elon couldn’t sleep the night before the first Crew Dragon launch; “it was a great relief”
highest orbit in 30-40 years
would be tragic if Apollo was highest mark for humanity
**next goal is moonbase, then get people to Mars
he’s chief engineer of SpaceX, signed off on all design decisions

SpaceX Starship
“really hard problem”
If you could magically solve one engineering problem with it? “Engine production”
**prototypes are easy, production is hard
most advanced rocket engine ever designed (the Raptor)
why so hard to manufacture at scale?
“complexity + unique materials”
**holy grail is fully reusable orbital rocket – reduces cost by 100x, imagine if you had to buy a new car every time you drove it
in theory get down to $1-2M cost per launch, put 100 tons in orbit
like karate kid catching fly w/ chopsticks, but much bigger
“we’ll get Starship to work” – the physics pencil out
it’s important to get done, we should keep doing it or die trying, “fuck that we’re gonna get it done”
**physics is a law but everything else is a recommendation

First principles can be applied to any walk of life
example: cost of raw materials, versus cost of the finished product, how to reduce that delta
manufacturing is an underrated problem – easier to design, harder at scale
what’s theoretical perfect product look like? what tools / methods / materials to get there

Mars
“least inhospitable planet”
**timeline for human on Mars – best case 5 years, worst case 10 years
obstacles: cost per time to orbit and cost per time to surface of Mars
right now it costs $1T, we need to get that way down ($1B per ton, need to improve by 1000x – a self sustaining city needs a million tons)
need to be multi planetary species, eventually sun will get too hot (500M years)
earth 4.5B years, first time in its life we have possibility of expanding life beyond earth, maybe window of opportunity could be short, we should act quickly
**“life insurance for life itself”
great filter is Mars city can survive even if Earth spaceships stop coming (eg, if you lack vitamin C)
not sure if it’ll happen in his lifetime, but at least give it momentum
Lex: imagining a civilization on Mars gives people hope

Rules / regs / society on Mars
**would prefer direct democracy instead of representative
laws should be short enough that people can understand them
Hasn’t been world wars recently, operates as a cleansing function (garbage collection) to rules and regulations, because they’re immortal (humans die but rules don’t)
If they accumulate every year, eventually you can’t do anything
Special interests depend on them
Lex: self-dying laws (like C v Java)
Rules & regs are like software for operating a civilization, becomes bloatware
usually biz deals are over lawyered, over complex

Wormholes / space travel
**you can’t move faster than speed of light, but if you can make space itself move… (eg, Big Bang, space expanded faster than speed of light)
energy required to warp space is way too high

Internet cookies
**Always trepidation when you click “accept cookies” – small chance of opening “portal to hell”

Crypto / doge
“Doesn’t understand this whole smart contract thing”
Mars will need its own currency, can’t accurately synchronize with Earth (4 to 20 light minutes away)
Crypto is interesting approach to error that is the database of money
Money literally is heterogeneous mainframes running old Cobol in batch mode
Gov has editing privileges on editing database, can use whenever they want to make more money
**Money should be viewed as info theory – bandwidth, latency, packet drop, etc
Crypto is attempt to reduce error in that information
**“Money is database for resource allocation across time and space”
If running economy, need efficient value ratios between goods & services – ratio of exchange, and shift obligations across time (eg, debt)
**Dogecoin’s merits – higher transaction vol capability than bitcoin, cost per transaction is very low
Bitcoin’s throughput made sense when created 10 years ago, but now is comically low
If anyone, Satoshi is Nick Szabo given his role in the evolution of bitcoin’s core ideas, but “what is a name anyway?”

Tesla autopilot
Lex + Elon first connected over this
“people give me too much credit”
humans drive with optical sensors (eyes) and biological neural nets
full self driving must recreate in digital form – silicon neural nets + cameras – “only way, I don’t think there’s any other way”
Lex: “what’s even an open car door, man?”
control logic isn’t hard part, hard part is “a lot of freaking software”
must convert massive bitstream into vector space
**challenge is building this accurate vector space
after that, control problem is like a video game
your eyes paint color in corners, and in blind spot
brain does crazy post processing on visual signals from eyes
**brain constantly trying to compress and forget as much as possible
Lex: human mind seems to go beyond vector space, into concepts (eg, “this is a school zone”)
full array of neural nets in the cars boggles the mind
wrote own C compiler for max efficiency
lots of bare metal programming
computer can see in dark incredibly well, tiny differences in photon counts
Lex: when solve level 4 FSD?
“looking like next year”
rate of self engagements (switching back to manual driving) is dropping dramatically – probability of accident on FSD < human driving likely to happen 2023 – but should get to 2-3x lower probability

Tesla bot
Lex: does it have role in the home?
yes, possibilities endless
not in Tesla’s primary mission
work will become optional in future
if it’s dangerous or boring, humanoid robots will add most value
pair with some kind of UBI
over 2M tesla cars
Lex: could there be more tesla bots than cars?
haven’t thought that far…code named Optimus subprime
AI in one computer, in real world, much harder than AI in room with many servers
robots – need good real world AI + good at manufacturing
bots could be very good companion
wabi sabi – subtle imperfections
robot that has wabi sabi – map to their human counterpart’s imperfections
focus today is “make it useful” – decent prototype by end of 2022

Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History podcast
Elon thinks greatest podcast ever
should be titled “engineer wars” – engineering plays pivotal role in battle
**in war, what matters is “pace of invention” and access to high quality fuels, raw materials
fuel needs consistent mixture + high octane – germany never had good access to oil, but US had awesome fuel
talked to dan about all this
**most of history is just people “getting on with their lives”
but wars tend to be written about
Stalin book by Montefiore – had to stop reading because too dark / rough
life was really tough for most of history
a good year is not that many people in your village died of eg disease war starvation
now food plentiful and we have obesity problem

Lex wish to interview Putin
Lex: if happened, would Elon join briefly?
“sure i would do that”
Soviets had impressive rocket tech
friendly competition is good
**govts slow, only thing slower is collection of govts
both rec Everyday Astronaut by Tim Dodd

nuclear power / radiation
nuclear power is great way to generate electricity, we shouldn’t shut them down
radiation sounds scary, people can’t calibrate it
ate locally grown veggies on TV in fukushima
impact (of fallout from fukushima disaster) is greatly exaggerated
“everything’s radiating all the time”
**if you wanna know nuclear fire, go outside – sun is gigantic nuclear reactor

**where there’s hunger today, almost always due to war or something – the world has enough food / money to solve hunger

on balance british museum is net good (re: how they took items from our countries through war)
if you judge them, must judge what everyone else was doing at the time too

Lex: would elon do standup?
could try…15 minutes of material

advice to the young
do things that are useful, very hard to be useful
net positive contribution to society
use the mental tools of physics and apply broadly in life – they’re the best tools
read a lot of books
ingest as much info as you can
develop good general knowledge, learn a little about a lot of things
man’s search for meaning
find what you’re good at + like doing
**as kid, he read through encyclopedia – really helpful
lot of respect for honest day’s work, doing useful things
**lot of morally questionable behavior is because they have a zero sum mindset – they may not realize it

what’s role of love
really perplexing question
what is love…baby don’t hurt me
foundationally i love humanity…i wish to see it prosper

what is 42, meaning of life
what author (douglas adams) was saying: universe is the answer, we need to figure out what question to ask – that’s the hard part, framing the question

Latest version of Personal Bible + newly added content

I recently updated my personal bible and wanted to share the new content that was added.

Here’s the PDF download.

—

The Tail End

It turns out that when I graduated from high school, I had already used up 93% of my in-person parent time. I’m now enjoying the last 5% of that time. We’re in the tail end.

In high school, I sat around playing hearts with the same four guys about five days a week. In four years, we probably racked up 700 group hangouts. Now, scattered around the country with totally different lives and schedules, the five of us are in the same room at the same time probably 10 days each decade. The group is in its final 7%.

Living in the same place as the people you love matters. I probably have 10X the time left with the people who live in my city as I do with the people who live somewhere else.

Quality time matters. If you’re in your last 10% of time with someone you love, keep that fact in the front of your mind when you’re with them and treat that time as what it actually is: precious.

The Tail End

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The Paradoxes of Modern Life

The Paradox of Writing: Great writing looks effortless. But because the ideas are so clear, casual readers don’t appreciate how much time it took to refine them.

The Paradox of Originality: Many of history’s greatest artists have found their voice by copying others. We discover who we are by imitating others and watching our uniqueness emerge over time.

The Paradox of Specificity: In the age of the Internet, when everybody has Google search and social media, differentiation is free marketing. The more specific your goal, the more opportunities you’ll create for yourself.

The Paradox of Strategy: The same things that help you achieve outlier success also increase your chances of outlandish failure. For example, investing with leverage increases your chances of risk and reward.

The Paradoxes of Modern Life

—

10 lessons from The Beatles

The first rule of improvisation (and brainstorming) is “yes… and”. When someone suggests an idea, plays a note, says a line, you accept it completely, then build on it. That’s how improvisational comedy or music flows. The moment someone says ‘no’, the flow is broken. As they slog through Don’t Let Me Down, George breaks the spell. Instead of building and accepting he leaps to judgement, saying “I think it’s awful.” Immediately, John and Paul lay down the rules: “Well, have you got anything?” “you’ve gotta come up with something better”.

But at other times, Paul, John and producer Glyn Johns keep at it: pouring out idea after idea. Some of them awful — see ‘Don’t be afraid’ below — but most are just technical ways to reframe the problem: play it faster, play it slower, change the order, change the instruments, add repetition, remove repetition.…They never seem to discuss or argue over these changes, they just play it to see if it works. They don’t judge the idea, they judge execution.

View at Medium.com

21 random learnings for a very random 2021

1
there’s mounting evidence that insects can experience a remarkable range of feelings. They can be literally buzzing with delight at pleasant surprises, or sink into depression when bad things happen that are out of their control. They can be optimistic, cynical, or frightened, and respond to pain just like any mammal would
[source]

2
The right brain is in charge of present-moment awareness, and this is the part of the brain that meditation takes to the gym. Essentially, the longer we meditate, the more we’re able to balance the right and left hemispheres of the brain. The result of this is more attention, awareness, and computing power for the task at hand.
[source]

3
When the new individual was of the same gender […], the subjects sniffed their own shaking hand twice as much as before. In contrast, after handshakes across different genders, subjects more than doubled the amount of sniffing they did of their own nonshaking hand
[source]

4
The life of every individual, viewed as a whole and in general, and when only its most significant features are emphasized, is really a tragedy; but gone through in detail it has the character of a comedy. – Arthur Schopenhauer

5
We settled things with our only two neighbors – Canada and Mexico – well before our first centennial and immediately got down to the more serious business of arguing amongst ourselves. More Americans died in the Civil War than in all our military conflicts with all our adversaries throughout all our history, combined
[source]

6
When you ask a stranger a personal question, you make that person happy. Your question relieves the stress of awkward silence and gets the conversation moving. Best of all, it signals that you have interest in the stranger, which most people interpret as friendliness and social confidence…
[source]

7
That is [the critic’s] real evil. Not that we believe them, but that we believe the Resistance in our own minds, for which critics serve as unconscious spokespersons. The professional learns to recognize envy-driven criticism and to take it for what it is: the supreme compliment. The critic hates most that which he would have done himself if he had had the guts.
The War of Art, Steven Pressfield

8
In lake of some reptiles, when they overpopulate it and there is a surplus of refuse, there is trigger in nature: a monster is born to them. A lizard many times the size of a normal one is born, who deals out destruction and culls the lake.
[source]

9
Ask a wage slave what he’d like to accomplish (when he retires early or wins the lottery).
Chances are the response will be something like “I’d start every day at the gym and work out for two hours until I was as buff as Brad Pitt. Then I’d practice the piano for three hours. I’d become fluent in Mandarin so that I could be prepared to understand the largest transformation of our time. I’d really learn how to handle a polo pony. I’d learn to fly a helicopter. I’d finish the screenplay that I’ve been writing and direct a production of it in HDTV.”
[source]

10
Our conventional sense of self is an illusion; positive emotions, such as compassion and patience, are teachable skills; and the way we think directly influences our experience of the world.
[source]

11
The trials of twenty-two former Auschwitz officers had revealed a common personality type: ordinary, conservative, sexually inhibited, and preoccupied with bourgeois morality. “I do think that in a society that was more free about sexuality, Auschwitz could not have happened”
[source]

12
Once you take this far enough, you enter a cycle of accelerated returns in which the practice becomes easier and more interesting, leading to the ability to practice for longer hours, which increases your skill level, which in turn makes practice even more interesting. Reaching this cycle is the goal you must set for yourself
-Mastery by Robert Greene

13
We’ve had three big ideas at Amazon that we’ve stuck with for 18 years, and they’re the reason we’re successful: Put the customer first. Invent. And be patient. – Jeff Bezos

14
Bitcoin, the asset, is likely crossing into the early majority while Bitcoin, the network, is on the cusp of moving from innovators to early adopters. So, overlapping the two, Bitcoin, overall, is still early in its adoption curve, likely somewhere in the early adopter phase
[source]

15
Both versions of tea come from China. How they spread around the world offers a clear picture of how globalization worked before “globalization” was a term anybody used. The words that sound like “cha” spread across land, along the Silk Road. The “tea”-like phrasings spread over water, by Dutch traders bringing the novel leaves back to Europe.
[source]

16
Pixar storytelling guide
Trying for theme is important, but you won’t see what the story is actually about til you’re at the end of it. Now rewrite.
Simplify. Focus. Combine characters. Hop over detours. You’ll feel like you’re losing valuable stuff but it sets you free.
Why must you tell THIS story? What’s the belief burning within you that your story feeds off of? That’s the heart of it.
No work is ever wasted. If it’s not working, let go and move on – it’ll come back around to be useful later.
[source]

17
If we’re all the average of the five people we spend the most time with, then the only way to remain a true believer in a seemingly impossible goal is to spend all of your time with other true believers
[source]

18
But what the world has shown in the last year is the opposite […] We’re willing to permanently give up our livelihoods, friends, and freedom, slowly and passively falling into the “new normal”, without really much of a second thought.
[source]

19
Rather, he finds it was the 13th-Century response of Benedictine monks to the devotion: Never become idle. Sure enough, the clock proved the perfect machine to keep us busy. And if not achievement enough, Benedictines had a correspondingly swell idea that would come to dominate our planet–connecting a daily schedule of activity to the clock.
[source]

20
History weighs heavily on Mr Xi, who keeps mentioning the Soviet collapse. He is waging a campaign against what he calls “historical nihilism”—that is, any grumbling about communism’s past. One Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, is held up as the archetypal nihilist for denouncing Stalin’s brutality in 1956. That event haunts Mr Xi. Party literature says it led to the Soviet Union’s demise. Much of Mr Xi’s energy is focused on making sure the party learns the Soviet lesson. Mao must remain a saint.
[source]

21
By one estimate, in a given ant colony, three percent of the ants are workaholics and never stop, about a third seem to do absolutely no work at all, and the rest work some and slack some
[source]

Notes and quotes from Joyce Carol Oates’ Masterclass on “Art of the Short Story”

Hello world!

I recently finished Joyce Carol Oates’ Masterclass on short story writing. It is a short course and there’s a cool workshop segment at the end where she critiques the short stories of two students.

Here’s a collection of my notes from the lessons, much of it paraphrased

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NOTES

It’s about translating instinct into craft
So that instinct… if you feel like you’re a writer, you probably are

Everyone has a fantastic story to tell – and it’s often a mystery story

Writer as photographer, you have a magic camera, and with lens you can see the subject, and the camera is your writing

Characters generate the plot

Why is this character there? If you can’t explain them, then you should get rid of them

If it’s just a few characters, then it’s a short story. But if it’s a theme / larger world / political or sociological, then a novel is better

Short story is meant to be read in one sitting

“Burn through the first draft”

Orwell believed prose should be like a window, very clean
Faulkner, Hemingway were more interested in the language of a story, the “how” of the telling

“Your worst enemy will have the most beloved face” – whether a child, a dog or cat – someone you can’t say no to (the constant distractions)

She started writing around 14, and working with others at 19

Doesn’t recommend writing a novel if you’re a beginner – it’s important to learn how to finish your work
If you write a novel and take 20 years, your whole life will have a cloud over it
Need the psychological uplift from finishing something

If you get rejected, it means that if it was published it may not have been that good – sometimes you’re very lucky if your first novel is rejected (like James Joyce)

recommends writers keep journals because it’s intimate and private, keep in contact with innermost self
she’s kept journal since 18, she adds dialogue, impressions of places and things that happened

try different ways of writing:
-start writing when you only have 40 minutes
-write when you feel very tired
-next morning look at it, might be really worthwhile

she takes tons of notes, for a novel it can be 200 pages (!)
transcribes notes to laptop, adds them into scenes
has checklists of things, if things aren’t used, she can use them for future stories

critics told her she should leave the “social unrest” / “big novels” to Norman Mailer
she was never interested in what’s expected of women writers, the “domestic novel”
she wrote a lot about domestic abuse, wife battering

her father was almost killed because he wanted to try to help a neighbor suffering domestic violence

Oscar Wilde’s Dorian Gray is a novel about taboo, couldn’t express his homosexuality, uses the novel

most powerful writing comes from repressed, each taboo subject has a natural audience who have no outlet
memoirs on such subjects are astonished at the number of readers, eg, about alcoholism, obesity, bulimia
William Styron on depression – had no idea it would be that successful, he just felt a total failure
“secret audiences”

**only rule: “Don’t be boring”

bestsellers move fast, short and declarative sentences

writers want to write their family story, their ancestors, their generation

she memorized alice in wonderland as a kid, deeply imprinted
she thinks about it every day of her life
it’s playful, funny, subversive – inspires her writing

interview your own mother, she was astounded when she did this
found out she was given away at 9 months old to an aunt and uncle

wishes she’d also interviewed her grandmother before she passed

try not to exploit other people, never hurt other people (doesn’t think what philip roth did, writing about women he knew, was the right way)

“an unsolved mystery is a thorn in the heart”

take the earliest memory you have, try to evoke it and write it powerfully

Robert Frost: poetry is melting ice on a hot stove

beginning writers should write mini narratives, a paragraph, the shorter the better

really good acting is also an arc of emotion

theater is monologue, eg, Hamlet

good to be young and write an old person’s perspective, or vice versa, or men writing from woman’s PoV, it gives you more objectivity, and is a growing experience

Where are you going, where have you been? is one of her most popular stories, gets questions daily about it
a cautionary tale
based on true story, man who pretended to be a teenager, one by one he was murdering girls he met at the mall
some teens knew, but they didn’t tell anyone, they protected HIM. why?

take your old writing, take 3rd person and make it 1st person, or make past tense into present tense / historic present – this can completely revitalize prose

read from stratosphere to draw upon your mentors / influences

what you read and what intensity will determine how you write

for example, take a summer to read James Joyce – as the weeks go by, your vocab will improve, your language will elevate, etc

Hemingway’s novels are good, but short stories are where he was a master

readers only care about the characters — even though the writer spends so much time on the formal qualities

Hemingway says literature is an iceberg, all his short stories – what’s under the water is implied
Characters don’t have back story, move very quickly – feeling of modernism

for new writers often the story might be too subtle
workshops are helpful in this way, participants are like editors

writers are cooks – keep unused material in fridge, put it later in the casserole

better to have deadline, and readers, talk and revise
more “aerated” instead of isolated

really likes having a window to look out, a garden, natural world outside the window
“i don’t know what i’m gonna see out the window, and that’s part of writing”

hates only having a wall to stare at

think excitedly about what you’ll be working on – something surprising, novel, shocking will happen before noon – and no one will know about it but you

if you write one brilliant short story a year, that’s great!
if you write one novel at all, that’s great too

Tyler Cowen: Default state through history is confusion about what is money

Tyler Cowen was recently interviewed by Lex Fridman and the conversation was great since Tyler’s usually asking the questions. This time we got to hear all his answers in their full glory and they were glorious. All notes below are paraphrased:

—

What matters more than the type of capitalism is how good is your legal system / rule of law

He expects a global catastrophe in the next 700-800 years, something the scale of a nuclear war, simply a function of probabilities (there will be more Hitlers)

Default state thru history is confusion about what is money / moneyness

Fiat currency already works really well

Bitcoin could be worth $1M as long as people agree. But it’s unlikely to be money. More a collectible / gold. Ethereum has a better but still low chance

WSB (and retail yolo in investing) is a new brand of esports

Diversity talk has become a new mechanism for enforcing conformity