Elon Musk is a business magnet, entrepreneur and engineer.

You will never forget what is going on in the world when you think about when your child was born.

You will know for the rest of this child's life you were born during a weird time.

Probably the weirdest that I can remember.

Yeah, yeah, and he was born on May the 4th.

First of all, my partner is the 1 that actually mostly came up with the name.

Archangel-12, the precursor to the SR-71, coolest plane ever.

I agree with you, I don't know, I'm not familiar with it.

So the SR-71 came from a CIA program called Archangel.

Well, as a person who's very much into aerial travel as you are.

So, does it feel strange to have a child while this craziness is going?

Does it feel, you've had children before, is this any weirder?

Actually, I think it's better being older and having a kid.

When I didn't have any of my own I would see other people's kids And I didn't not like them

but now when I see little people's kids I'm like oh, I think of them like these little love packages.

Yeah It's just you you think of them differently when you see them come out and then grow and then eventually start talking to you.

Like your whole idea of what a baby is is very different.

So now as you get older and get to appreciate it as a mature, fully formed adult, it must be really pretty wonderful.

I mean, also, I've spent a lot of time on AI and neural nets And so you can sort of see the kind of the brain develop, which is, you know, an AI neural net is trying to simulate what a brain does, basically.

And you can sort of see it learning very quickly.

See things, so you're talking about the neural net, you're not talking about an actual baby.

Yes, but the word neural net comes from the brain, it's like a net of neurons.

So you know, it's like the, yeah, humans are the, you know, original gangsta, you know that.

So when you're programming artificial intelligence, when you're working with artificial intelligence, Are they specifically trying to mimic the developmental process of a human brain?

An analogy that's often used is like, we don't make a submarine swim like a fish.

But we take the principles of how, you know, of hydrodynamics and apply them to a submarine.

I've always wondered as a layperson, Do you try to achieve the same results as a human brain, but through different methods, or do you try to copy the way a human brain achieves results?

I mean, the essential elements of an AI neural net are really very similar to a human brain neural net.

Having the multiple layers of neurons and back propagation, all these things are what your brain does.

You have a layer of neurons that goes through a series of intermediate steps to ultimately cognition and then it'll reverse those steps and go back and forth and go all over the place.

It's, yeah, it's interesting, very interesting.

I would imagine, like, the thought of programming something that is eventually gonna be smarter than us, that 1 day it's gonna be like, Why did you do it that way?

Like when artificial intelligence becomes sentient, they're like, oh, you tried to mimic yourself.

Like this is so much better process, cut out all this nonsense.

Like I said, there are elements that are the same, but just like an aircraft does not fly like a bird.

But the wings, the way the wings work and generate lift is the same as bird.

Now you're in the middle of this strange time where you're selling your houses, you say you don't want any material possessions, and I've been seeing all that and I've been really excited to talk to you about this.

Because it's an interesting thing to come from a guy like yourself.

If you're sad about it, why are you doing it?

I think I think possessions kind of weigh you down.

You know people say hey billionaire you got all this stuff like well now I don't have stuff.

But you're obviously going to rent a place?

And get rid of everything except clothes?

Yeah, those things that have sentimental value for sure, keeping those, yeah.

Yeah, you could always buy more stuff if you don't like it.

Yeah, I mean, from the money that you sell all your stuff, you could buy new stuff.

But do you feel like people define you by the fact that you're wealthy?

And that they define you in a pejorative way?

I mean, not everyone, but, you know, there's a...

For sure, in recent years, billionaire has become a, like it's a pejorative, it's like that's a bad thing.

Which I think doesn't make a lot of sense in most cases.

If you've done, if you basically organized a company, so how does this wealth arise?

If you organize people in a better way to produce products and services that are better than what existed before, and you have some ownership in that company, then that essentially gives you the right to allocate more capital.

So there's a conflation of consumption and capital allocation.

So, let me say Warren Buffett, for example.

And to be totally frank, I'm not his biggest fan.

And He reads a lot of annual reports of companies and all the accounting, and it's pretty boring, really.

And he's trying to figure out, does Coke or Pepsi deserve more capital?

I mean, that's kind of a boring job, if you ask me.

But it's still a thing that's important to figure out, like which is a company deserving of more or less capital?

Is it making products and services that are better than others or worse?

If a company is making compelling products and services, it should get more capital, and if it's not, it should get less, or go out of business.

Well, there's a big difference, too, between someone who's making an incredible amount of money designing and engineering fantastic products versus someone who's making an incredible amount of money by investing in companies or moving money around the stock market or doing things along those lines.

And to put them all in the same category seems, it's very simple, and as you pointed out, it's an attack vector.

I mean, I think it's really, I do think there, in the United States especially, there's an over allocation of talent in finance and law.

Basically too many smart people go into finance and law.

So, you know, this is both a compliment and a criticism.

We should have, I think, fewer people doing law and fewer people doing finance and more people making stuff.

Well, that would certainly be better for all involved if they made better stuff.

And, you know, manufacturing used to be highly valued in the United States, and these days it's not, it's often looked down upon, which I think is wrong.

Well, I think that people are kind of learning that, particularly because of this whole pandemic and this relationship that we have with China, that there's a lot of value into making things, into making things here.

And, You know, like making a car, it's an honest day's living.

You know, or making anything really, or providing a valuable service.

Like providing, you know, good entertainment, good information, these are all valuable things to do.

You know, so yeah, there should be more of it.

Did you have a moment where, is this something that this idea of getting rid of your material possessions, is this something that built up over time?

Or did you have a moment of realization where you realized that?

Yeah, I've been thinking about it for a while You know part of it is like I like have a bunch of houses but I Don't spend a lot of time in most of them and that doesn't seem like a good use of assets like somebody could probably be enjoying those houses and get better use of them than me.

Did you request that the buyer not fuck it up?

Yeah, it'll probably self-less, but still out of care.

I mean, all the cabinets are handmade and they're odd shapes and there's doors to nowhere All the cabinets are like handmade and they're like odd shapes and there's like doors to nowhere and strange corridors and tunnels and odd paintings on the wall.

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Joe Rogan Experience #1470 - Elon Musk