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Friday, September 7, 2018

Elon Musk gets high on Joe Rogan and Tesla's stock drops – "Wouldn't hurt to have more love in the world."

Neal E. Boudette and Ceylan Yeginsu, "Tesla Shares Shaken by Accounting Chief’s Exit and Musk’s Pot Smoke", New York Times, 7 Sept. 2018. The opening paragrhas:
Tesla shares dropped sharply on Friday after the electric-car company disclosed that its chief of accounting was leaving the company only weeks after coming aboard.

The upheaval in the executive ranks emerged hours after the company’s chief executive, Elon Musk, appeared live on YouTube taking a deep drag on what appeared to be a marijuana cigarette during an interview with the comedian Joe Rogan, an advocate for legalizing marijuana.
Near the end of the article, quoting from the Rogan interview:
He appeared at ease, sipping whiskey, and spoke, at one point, about artificial intelligence and how it could not be controlled.

“You kind of have to be optimistic about the future,” said Mr. Musk, the head of the private rocket company SpaceX as well as Tesla. “There’s no point in being pessimistic. I’d rather be optimistic and wrong than pessimistic and right.”

Mr. Musk explained what it was like to be inside his head, calling it “a mutation” that leads to a constant flow of ideas that makes him invent things.

“At first I thought I was insane,” he said.
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I've watched the entire interview, though I didn't give it my full attention–I zoned in and out. It was far-ranging and, yes, Musk took a few drags from a blunt, saying that he rarely smoked marijuana. Some snippets:
Elon Musk, Concerning the interaction of humans and machines via the internet: "the more limbic resonance, the more engagement".

Concerning future AI: "It's less of a worry than it used to be, mostly due to taking more of a fatalistic attitude...It's going to be very tempting to use AI as a weapon...The danger is more humans using it against each other, I think...It could be terrible, it could be great. One thing for sure, you can't control it."

At one point Musk emphasized the importance of fun: "The Tesla is the most fun thing ever...a thing to maximize enjoyment."

On flying cars: "too noisy, too much air flow"

All we need is love: "That's what we're trying to do, make things somebody loves...Wouldn't hurt to have more love in the world."



FWIW, they smoke the blunt starting at about 2:10:02.

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