Lex Fridman
5 HN mentions · mentioned in 3 months, 2022
2:31:48 · 11M views · Dec 28, 2021
Lex Fridman's long conversation with Elon Musk covering SpaceX, Mars, Tesla Autopilot and self-driving, robotics and AI.
Mostly cited as a primary source for Musk's statements on self-driving and other topics, often with skepticism about his depth.
5 comments from Hacker News
I'm suspicious of Bitcoin as a store of value. Some seem to think that because there is a fixed amount of Bitcoin it will automatically rise in price as demand confronts scarcity, but that assumes there will continued demand. Elon Musk says Dogecoin is better because it has some inflation built in, encouraging people to spend instead of hoard, but adds "I'm not saying that it's the ideal system for a currency" "Elon Musk - SpaceX, Mars, Tesla Autopilot, Self-Driving, Robotics, and AI", Lex Fridman Podcast #252". Clip from a discussion about money starting minute 48:41 this video Lex: You mentioned that Doge is the people's coin. Elon: Yeah. Lex: And you said that you were literally going, SpaceX may consider literally putting a Dogecoin on the moon. Is this something you're still considering, Mars perhaps, do you think there's some chance, we've talked about political systems on Mars, that a Dogecoin is the official currency of Mars, it's the coin of the future? Elon: Well, I think Mars itself will need to have a different currency because you can't synchronize due to speed of light, or not easily. Lex: So it must be complete standalone from earth? Elon: Mars is, at closest approach, it's four light minutes away roughly, and then add for this approach, it's roughly 20 light minutes away, maybe a little more. So you can't really have something synchronizing if you've got a 20 minute speed of light issue, if it's got a one minute blockchain. It's not gonna synchronize properly. I
That might be the case for rocket mechanics but watching this interview between: this video 1.02.40 and this video 1:34.01 looks more like the case of the manager repeating stuff heard from the engineers discussion. Lex Fridman asked the questions, was the one that clearly layout the challenges, and kindly enough repeated the answer that Elon Musk was not providing. Meaning its not a problem of "vector space". Humans interpret the world and give semantic meaning to the scene in front of them. He repeated it several times as Elon Musk answers completely missed the critical challenges, until he was perceptive enough to pick and regurgitate back the examples Lex Fridman was providing. Like the one where a human would not miss the fact that although some children temporarily disappear from your field a vision as you overtake a school bus for example, they are likely to appear in front of you as they will try to cross from the front of the bus to the other side of the road. The interview is actually concerning, as its basically Lex Fridman explaining to Elon Musk the challenges and points he is supposed to address, and throwing him a soft ball while he was running around as this is simple, easy problem of creating a "vector space". Curiously he does pick up on hints a bit later, but still concludes and reluctantly goes on to declare the problem will be fully solved by middle 2022... At 1:26:48: this video
If you are curious to see if he knows what he is talking about or not, you can hear it directly from him instead of from employees: "Elon Musk: SpaceX, Mars, Tesla Autopilot, Self-Driving, Robotics, and AI | Lex Fridman": this video My take after hearing the interview? Alex Fridman knows what is talking about, Elon Musk no.
I agree the criticism on the basis of philosophy is kind of silly. Elon Musk's recent description of how the thing is going in real life on Lex Fridman Podcast 28 dec 21 was interesting this video
I agree, they're often surprisingly funny and witty. To take a random example, I just looked at the comments of Lex's recent interview with Elon ( this video ) and saw: "This is the best conversation between two robots that I’ve ever witnessed." The other top comments are just friendly and positive.