Elon Musk joined Good Time
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Elon Musk, head of SpaceX and Tesla, appeared in the super-exclusive Clubhouse audio app Sunday night, joining the Good Time Show to talk about all things about Mars, becoming a kind of various planets and memes The app, which allows people to create rooms for conversations, did not do very well. The participant limit is 5,000 – and was quickly overwhelmed when Musk fans shouted to hear the richest man in the world speak.
Still, enterprising YouTubers and Discord servers have emerged, and for those interested in Musk’s waxing and philosophy, some surprising statements have emerged about Mars and the monkeys. In typical Musk style, he made some bold statements about when people could reach the red planet, discussed his meme on Twitter and detailed some of the the progress your Neuralink team has made. It was sinuous and, at times, bizarre, but some interesting details about Musk’s projects were revealed.
Let’s start with Mars. If you’re wondering what Musk’s schedule is for putting humans on Mars, well … you might be surprised.
“Five and a half years,” Musk told presenters Sriram Krishnan and Aarthi Ramamurthy at the beginning of the show.
Musk is known for placed overly ambitious deadlines on their projects, from Tesla to SpaceX, but five and a half years to get Starship take off and transport humans to another planet? This is another level of ambition. But this is not a difficult time. Musk listed a series of caveats – there are a number of technological advances that must be made in the years to come.
“The important thing is to establish Mars as a self-sustaining civilization,” he said.
Monkey brain
After Mars, Musk received applause for his meme skills, which he partially attributed to “meme dealers”, before moving on to something a little more serious: Neuralink, the brain implant startup he founded in 2016.
The last update, that came in August 2020, showed an implant “similar to Fitbit” “working” in pigs, but we haven’t heard much since – and there was no scientific article published in that period. Musk said that new videos showing progress would be released in about a month.
“We have a monkey with a wireless skull implant that can play video games using the mind,” said Musk. Of course, there is no evidence for this and it is the second time that we have heard Musk discuss this. “Can we get the monkeys to play mental Pong with each other?” he meditated.
Another caveat, though – Musk pulled it back and made it clear that these were long-term goals for the brain implant device. Initial research focuses on how it can help those who have suffered spinal and brain injuries.
“I want to be clear.” Musk said, “the first applications will really only be for people who have a severe brain injury, like, where, it’s like the value of the implant is huge.”
Doge went
One of last week’s biggest stories was about the stock market, the big rise of Reddit and GameStop. But it was in Bitcoin that Musk focused his attention. “I’m late for the party, but I’m a supporter of Bitcoin,” he noted before turning his attention to Dogecoin, which had its own increase last week.
This cryptocurrency rose more than 300% and reached its highest level last Thursday, although Musk did not seem particularly attached to this, aside from his comic nature.
“Probably the most fun outcome, the most ironic outcome would be for Dogecoin to become the Earth currency of the future,” he joked. The CoinDesk encryption tracker showed a small drop in the price of Dogecoin immediately after Musk’s comments.
What else?
Towards the end of the discussion, Musk was able to recite some of the things he is currently watching. We play some of the quotes below.
- Cobra Kai: “It’s a sick burn, that show”
- The Expanse: “Maybe I should start watching this.”
- Mythic Quest: “This is good.”
- Principle: “It’s very good. I think if you think about Tenet a lot, it might not make perfect sense, but I liked the movie.”
- Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: “Effectively a philosophy book, disguised as a silly human book.”
Towards the end of the discussion, Vlad Tenev, CEO of Robinhood, joined the interview to talk about the GameStop and Reddit saga and Musk nudged him. “People demand the truth,” said Musk.
“Did something dark happen here?” Musk asked Tenev.
“I would not attribute obscurity or the like on behalf of NSCC (The National Securities Clearing Corporation),” replied Tenev.
It was a typical case of Musk consciousness flow, lasting about 90 minutes. The Clubhouse was unable to keep up with demand and the conversation changed at a fierce and confusing pace, but strangely … was it fun? When Elon speaks, people seem willing to listen and you never know where things are going to end up.