callofshane

.@elonmusk (worth $250B) answers why he’s still working: I think it's a good question you asked, because it goes to, like, at a foundational level, what is my philosophy, and why does it lead to this conclusion? So the reason is that when I was a teenager, I had, like, an existential crisis to try to figure out what's the meaning of life. There doesn't seem to be any meaning. For me, at least the religious texts, and I read all of them that I could get my hands on did not seem convincing. Then I started reading the philosophers. Be careful of reading German philosophers as a teenager. It's definitely not going to help with your depression. So reading Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, as an adult, it's much more manageable. But as a kid, you're like, “Whoa.” So then I was like, “Man, I'm just struggling to find meaning in life here.” And then I read Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. And basically what Douglas Adams was saying is that we don't really know what the right questions are to ask. The question is not, “What's the meaning of life?” In The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Earth it turns out is a big computer, and its goal is to answer the question, “What's the meaning of life?” And Earth comes up with the answer “42”. This is where the 42 number comes from. And 420 is just ten times 42. In that book, which is really sort of a book about, it's an existential philosophy book disguised as humor. They come to the conclusion that, no, the real problem is trying to formulate the question. And to really have the right question, you need a much bigger computer than Earth. And so maybe one way, I think, of characterizing this would be to say, “The universe is the answer. What is the question? Or what are the questions?” The more we can expand the scope and scale of consciousness, the better we can understand what questions to ask about the answer that is the universe. The more we can expand consciousness, become a multi-planet species, ultimately a multistellar species… we have a chance of figuring out what the hell is going on. And so this is why I think we should have more humans and both biological and digital consciousness. And why we should become a multi-planet species and a multistellar species is so that we can understand the nature of the universe. And then in order for that to occur, then we have to make sure that things are good on Earth. We don't want Earth to disappear, so sustainable energy is important.