Elon Musk owns SpaceX, one of the crucial helpful personal firms on this planet, with a valuation of $180 billion. However what does he imagine about life, the universe, and every thing?
The billionaire dropped some hints about his perception construction in an interview with conservative commentator Ben Shapiro posted to X on Wednesday.
Musk has said earlier than that he’s “never been particularly religious,” and Shapiro—noting his personal stance on the significance of “a belief in a higher power”—probed the billionaire about his philosophy.
Musk agreed that “you can’t be, like, a nihilist or something,” to which Shapiro responded, “Exactly, nihilism doesn’t tend toward anything…How do you get out of the nihilist box and find what to do?”
In response, the world’s richest particular person outlined a number of the considering that’s helped gasoline SpaceX’s success, and he hinted at an ambition for humanity that extends far past his personal lifetime.
“Well, my religion, for the lack of a better word, is one of curiosity, where we want to expand the scope and scale of consciousness on Earth and beyond Earth,” he mentioned. “And in order to do that, we need to increase the number of conscious beings, and we need to advance technology, such that we can have a self-sustaining city on Mars, ultimately populate the whole solar system, and then go beyond our solar system to other star systems. And therefore, we need more humans. Pretty simple.”
When Shapiro famous “that’s an amazingly different goal than what we’ve had in the past,” Musk responded, “Yeah, well, I propose this as a new philosophy.”
He then clarified that the philosophy isn’t new a lot as area of interest, however “hopefully getting a bit bigger.”
‘A trillion humans’
Musk has lengthy argued that the Earth and the photo voltaic system must be rather more populated with people, and he’s inspired individuals to have extra youngsters whereas contending that “the biggest problem the world will face in 20 years is population collapse.”
Musk isn’t the one billionaire area entrepreneur calling for an even bigger human inhabitants within the photo voltaic system. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who owns the SpaceX competitor Blue Origin, said on the Lex Fridman Podcast lately that he and Musk are “very like-minded” of their area ambitions, regardless of an intense rivalry.
“I would love to see, you know, a trillion humans living in the solar system,” Bezos mentioned. “If we had a trillion humans, we would have at any given time a thousand Mozarts and a thousand Einsteins…Our solar system would be full of life and intelligence and energy.”
What firms like Blue Origin and SpaceX are doing, Bezos mentioned, is creating the area infrastructure upon which future generations can construct larger issues.
Musk mentioned the aim of his philosophy “is that the more we expand the scope and scale of consciousness, the more we are able to understand the reality that we live in—the nature of the universe.”
A metropolis on Mars?
Consciousness appears to be on Musk’s thoughts rather a lot. On the Full Ship Podcast in 2022, he mentioned, “We’re a pattern of molecules that can talk and think and feel…We should have more kids and expand consciousness and probably have digital consciousness, too. More people, more thinking equals more consciousness.”
Speaking to Shapiro, he mentioned the actual fact there’s no proof of aliens means that “the tiny candle of consciousness that constitutes humanity is all that there is in this vast darkness. And I think we should assume that that is the case until we actually have firm evidence to the contrary.”
He mentioned that SpaceX’s gargantuan Starship—which underwent a few tests final 12 months and will likely be examined extra this 12 months—is designed to allow a metropolis on Mars. However he additionally famous there are not any ensures that humanity will be capable to obtain a self-sustaining presence on one other planet.
“The window of opportunity to make life multiplanetary and secure the future of consciousness may be open for a long time, or it may be open for a short time,” he mentioned. “I think it would be wise to not assume that it will be open for a long time.”
