- Let me ask a silly question, but-- - We'll say it with a straight face. - Impossible. So let me mention Elon Musk. What are your thoughts about, he's more, you're more on the physics theory side of things. He's more on the physics engineering side of things in terms of SpaceX efforts.

What do you think of his efforts to get off this planet? - Well, I think he's the other guy who's semi-serious about getting off this planet. I think there are two of us who are semi-serious about getting off the planet. - What do you think about his methodology and yours?

When you look at them-- - Don't, I don't wanna be against Elon, because I was so excited that your top video was Ray Kurzweil, and then I did your podcast, and we had some chemistry, so it zoomed up. And I thought, okay, I'm gonna beat Ray Kurzweil. So just as I'm coming up on Ray Kurzweil, you're like, and now, Alex Fridman special Elon Musk, and he blew me out of the water.

So I don't wanna be petty about it. I wanna say that I don't, but I am. Okay, but here's the funny part. He's not taking enough risk. Like, he's trying to get us to Mars. Imagine that he got us to Mars, the moon, and will throw in Titan. And nowhere good enough.

The diversification level is too low. Now, there's a compatibility. First of all, I don't think Elon is serious about Mars. I think Elon is using Mars. - As a narrative, as a story, as a dream? - To make the moon jealous. - To make the, no. (laughing) - I think he's using it as a story to organize us, to reacquaint ourselves with our need for space, our need to get off this planet.

It's a concrete thing. He's shown that, many people think that he's shown that he's the most brilliant and capable person on the planet. I don't think that's what he showed. I think he showed that the rest of us have forgotten our capabilities. And so he's like the only guy who has still kept the faith, and is like, what's wrong with you people?

- So you think the lesson we should draw from Elon Musk is there's a capable person within a lot of us. - Elon makes sense to me. - In what way? - He's doing what any sensible person should do. He's trying incredible things, and he's partially succeeding, partially failing.

- To try to solve the obvious problems before. - Duh. (laughing) But he comes up with things like, I got it. We'll come up with a battery company, but batteries aren't sexy, so we'll make a car around it. Like, great. (laughing) Or any one of a number of things.

Elon is behaving like a sane person, and I view everyone else as insane. And my feeling is that we really have to get off this planet. We have to get out of this, we have to get out of the neighborhood. - Dilingual a little bit, do you think that's a physics problem or an engineering problem?

- I think it's a cowardice problem. I think that we're afraid that we had 400 hitters of the mind, like Einstein and Dirac, and that era is done, and now we're just sort of copy editors. - So is some of it money? Like, if we become brave enough to go outside the solar system, can we afford to, financially?

- Well, I think that that's not really the issue. The issue is, look what Elon did well. He amassed a lot of money. And then he plowed it back in, and he spun the wheel, and he made more money, and now he's got FU money. Now the problem is, is that a lot of the people who have FU money are not people whose middle finger you ever want to see.

I want to see Elon's middle finger. I want to see what he's-- - What do you mean by that? Or like, when you say, fuck it, I'm gonna do the biggest possible-- - He's gonna do whatever the fuck he wants. - Yeah. - Right? Fuck you, fuck anything that gets in his way that he can afford to push out of his way.

- And you're saying he's not actually even doing that enough. - No, I'm-- - He's not going-- - Please, I'm gonna go, Elon's doing fine with his money. I just want him to enjoy himself, have the most Dionysian-- - Well, no, but you're saying Mars is playing it safe.

- He doesn't know how to do anything else. He knows rockets. - Yeah. - And he might know some physics at a fundamental level. - Yeah, I guess, okay, just let me just go right back to it. How much physics do you really, how much brilliant breakthrough ideas on the physics side do you need to get off this planet?

- I don't know, and I don't know whether, like in my most optimistic dream, I don't know whether my stuff gets us off the planet, but it's hope. It's hope that there's a more fundamental theory that we can access, that we don't need, whose elegance and beauty will suggest that this is probably the way the universe goes.

Like you have to say this weird thing, which is this I believe, and this I believe is a very dangerous statement, but this I believe, I believe that my theory points the way. Now, Elon might or might not be able to access my theory. I don't know what he knows, but keep in mind, why are we all so focused on Elon?

It's really weird. It's kind of creepy too. - Why? - He's just the person who's just asking the obvious questions and doing whatever he can. - But he makes sense to me. You see, Craig Venter makes sense to me. Jim Watson makes sense to me. - But we're focusing on Elon because he somehow is rare.

- Well, that's the weird thing. Like we've come up with a system that eliminates all Elon from our pipeline, and Elon somehow snuck through when they weren't quality adjusting everything, you know? - Yeah, yeah. - And he's just like, "I'm not gonna do this." - Yeah, yeah. - And he's just like, "I'm not gonna do this." - Yeah.

- And he's just like, "I'm not gonna do this." - Yeah. - And he's just like, "I'm not gonna do this." - Yeah. - And he's just like, "I'm not gonna do this." - Yeah. - And he's just like, "I'm not gonna do this." - Yeah. - And he's just like, "I'm not gonna do this." - Yeah.

- And he's just like, "I'm not gonna do this." - Yeah. - And he's just like, "I'm not gonna do this." - Yeah. Thanks for watching.