The Exchanges

Q me a bit about Starlink and how the tech works? Because somebody I was speaking to, uh, I don't know if you know this company called Nita out of San Francisco. Uh, they're trying to replace network engineers, but so he was telling me about how intensely populated areas, Starlink works differently than it might be in a place with not as many people. Can you explain how it works?

A Yeah, so, so I think, um, there's several thousand satellites in low-earth orbit, and they're moving around 25 times the speed of sound, um, in these, you know, they're zipping around the Earth, basically, and, um, they're, uh, they're at an altitude of about 550 kilometers, um, which is generally called low-earth orbit, Um, because they're, they're at lowest orbit, they're, um, the latency is, is low. Like the, the distance, because the distance is, is not that far compared to a geostationary satellite, uh, at 36,000 kilometers. Um, so you've, you've got, um, Thousands of satellites providing, ah, low latency, high speed internet throughout the world, and, um, and they are interconnected as well, so there's, there are laser links between the satellites, so it forms sort of a laser mesh, so that the, if, let's say, ah, let's say if cables are damaged or cut, like fiber cables, the satellites can communicate between each other, um, and provide connectivity Uh, even if, uh, there's, there's, uh, the cables are cut. So, for example, when the Red Sea cables were cut, uh, I think a few months ago, the satellite, the, the Starlink satellite network continued to function without a hitch. So it's, it's particularly helpful for disaster areas. So if, but if an area has been hit with, uh, some kind of natural disaster, floods or fires or, uh, earthquakes, that, that tends to damage the, …

AI assessment note: “there's several thousand satellites in low-earth orbit, and they're moving around 25 times the speed of sound”

Q If I were to buy into that and assume that we are in a simulation, as Neo of the story, what do you know that I don't and I can learn from?

A I think most likely, Outside the simulation would be less interesting than in the simulation, because you're most likely a distillation of what's interesting, because that's what we do in this, that's what we do in our reality. Um, and then, I do also have a theory which is, like, the most interesting outcome is the most likely outcome, as seen by a third party. Um, the god, the gods or god of the simulation. Um, Because when we do simulations, when humans do simulations, we, we stop those simulations that are not interesting. So like if SpaceX is doing simulations of rocket flights, uh, the, You know, the boring ones, we, we, we discard because they're not, they're just not, we don't learn anything from those. Or when, when Tesla's doing, uh, simulations for self-driving, uh, Tesla's actually looking for the most interesting corner cases because the, the normal stuff, we already have plenty of, of, of, uh, data on, you know, driving on a straight road on a sunny day. We don't need more of that. Uh, we, we need, like, heavy weather conditions on a small windy road with two cars that are, you know, uh, coming at each other with an almost head-on collision. We need, like, weird stuff, basically. Uh, interesting stuff. Um, so I think that from a Darwinian perspective, the simulations most likely to survive are going to be the ones that are the most interesting simulations, which t…

AI assessment note: “I do also have a theory which is, like, the most interesting outcome is”

Q Why, why has that narrative changed of late and America seems to have become anti-immigration to a certain extent? Like I was passing immigration and I was worried if they'd stopped me a couple of days ago.

A Um, well, I think there's, there's different schools of thought. It's not like unanimous, but, um, You know, under the, the Biden administration, it was basically a total free for all with like no border controls, which, you know, unless you've got border controls, you're not a country. Um, so, uh, you had massive amounts of illegal immigration under, under Biden. Um, and it, it actually, it, it also had like somewhat of a negative selection effect. Um, so if, uh, if there's a massive financial incentive to come to the, the US illegally and get all these government benefits, Um, then you're, you're, you're, you're, you're gonna necessarily create a diffusion gradient for people to come to the US. It's an incentive structure. Um, And so, uh, so I think that, that, that obviously made no sense. Like you've got to have border controls. It's kind of ridiculous not to. Um, then that's, so the left wants to basically have open, open borders, no holds barred, you know, it doesn't matter if someone, what, what the situation is, it could be a criminal, it doesn't matter. Um, then on the right, you've got, you know, uh, At least a perception that, that, that somehow their jobs are being taken, um, by talented people from other countries. Um, I don't know how real that is. Um, my direct observation is that there's, there's always a scarcity of talented people. So, you know, from my standp…

AI assessment note: “you had massive amounts of illegal immigration under, under Biden.”

Q If you were a stock investor, Elon, and you could buy one company which is not your own at the valuations of today to meet a capitalistic end and not an altruistic one which is good for the world, what would you buy?

A Um, I mean, I don't really, I don't really, you know, buy stocks, you know, so it's not like, uh, I'm not, I'm not like an investor in, I don't like look for things to invest in, I just try to build things, um, and then there happens to be stock of the company that I built, um, but I, I don't, I don't think about should I invest in this company or I don't have like a portfolio or anything. Um, so, I, I guess, um, AI and robotics are going to be very important. Um, so I suppose there would be AI and robotics that, that, you know, aren't related to me. Um, I think, you know, Google is going to be pretty valuable in the future. They've, they've laid the groundwork for An immense amount of value creation from an AI standpoint. Um, NVIDIA is obvious at this point. Um, I mean, there's an argument that companies that do AI and robotics, and maybe space flight, are gonna be overwhelming, overwhelmingly all the value, almost all the value. So the output of goods and services from AI and robotics is so high that it will dwarf everything else.

AI assessment note: “I think, you know, Google is going to be pretty valuable in the future.”

Q Even platforms like Instagram. Uh, I mean, they're not exactly like Twitter, but platforms across the board. If one had to rework social media and build something bottom up, what do you think could work for the world of tomorrow?

A Well, I mean, I, I don't think that much about, um, about social media, to be frank. I mean, it's, it's, I can mostly just want to have, have something where there's, um, a, in the case of, of X, kind of a global town square, uh, where, where people can say what they want to say, uh, with words, pictures, video, um, where there's a secure messaging system, We've recently added the ability to, to do audio and video calls. Um, so, you're really trying to bring the, the, the world, the world together into, um, a, a collective consciousness. And, um, That's, I guess, different from just saying, like, what is the most dopamine generating video stream that one could make? Um, which, uh, you know, I think can be a little bit of brain rot, frankly. Um, you know, if, if you're just watching videos that just cause dopamine hits one after another, um, but lack substance, then I think those, those are not great. That's not a great way to spend time. Um, but I do, I do think that's actually what a lot of people are going to want to watch. Um, so if you say like total internet usage, it's going to probably be optimizing for, you know, your neurotransmitter generation. Like it, it, there's somebody getting like a kick out of it. Right. But it's, it's, it's, it, it becomes like a drug type of thing. So, um, but I'm not really after My goal is not to do that. I mean, I guess I could do that if …

AI assessment note: “have something where there's, um, a, in the case of, of X, kind of a global town square”

Q Why do you like the letter X as much as you do?

A Well... I mean, yeah, it's a good question, honestly. Sometimes I wonder what's wrong with me. Um, so, um, I mean, it started off with where I think, so way back in ancient times, in 99, the pre-Cambian era when there were only sponges, um, the, there were only three one-letter domain names, um, And I think it's X, Q and Z. And, uh, and I was like, okay, I want to have, create this place where it's the, um, financial crossroads or like the, the financial exchange, you know, um, um, it's, it's essentially solving Money from an information theory standpoint where the current banking system is, is a large number of, uh, heterogeneous databases with batch processing that, uh, are not secure. Um, and if we could have a, Is sort of a single database that was real-time and secure that would be more efficient from a monetary, from an information theory standpoint than, you know, a large number of heterogeneous databases that batch process very slowly and securely. Um, so, um, so that, that was, that was sort of x.com way back in the day, which kind of, um, became PayPal, um, And then, um, and it was acquired by eBay. And then eBay, someone reached out from eBay and said, hey, do you want to buy the domain name back? And I was like, sure. You know, and so I had the domain name for quite a while. Um, and then, uh, and then, yes. Then I was like, well, maybe this, maybe this acquiring Twi…

AI assessment note: “create this place where it's the, um, financial crossroads or like the, the financial exchange”