Elon Musk: Neuralink, AI, Autopilot, and the Pale Blue Dot

[0] The following is a conversation with Elon Musk, Part 2, the second time we spoke on the podcast, with parallels, if not in quality, than an outfit to the objectively speaking greatest sequel of all time, Godfather, Part 2.

[1] As many people know, Elon Musk is a leader of Tesla, SpaceX, Neurlink, and the Boring Company.

[2] What may be less known is that he's a world -class engineer and designer, constantly emphasizing first principles thinking and taking on big engineering problems that many before him will consider impossible.

[3] As scientists and engineers, most of us don't question the way things are done, we simply follow the momentum of the crowd.

[4] But revolutionary ideas that change the world on the small and large scales happen when you return to the fundamentals and ask, is there a better way?

[5] This conversation focuses on the increasingly.

[6] incredible engineering and innovation done in brain computer interfaces at Neurilink.

[7] This work promises to help treat neurobiological diseases to help us further understand the connection between the individual neuron to the high -level function of the human brain.

[8] And, finally, to one day expand the capacity of the brain through two -way communication with computational devices, the internet, and artificial intelligence systems.

[9] This is the Artificial Intelligence Podcast.

[10] If you enjoy it, subscribe by YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, support on Patreon, or simply connect with me on Twitter at Lex Friedman, spelled F -R -I -D -M -A -N.

[11] And now, as an anonymous YouTube commenter, referred to our previous conversation as the, quote, historical first video of two robots conversing without supervision, here's the second time, the second conversation with Elon Musk.

[12] Let's start with an easy question about consciousness.

[13] In your view, is consciousness something that's unique to humans, or is it something that permeates all matter, almost like a fundamental force of physics?

[14] I don't think consciousness permeates all matter.

[15] Panpsychists believe that.

[16] Yeah.

[17] There's a philosophical...

[18] How would you tell?

[19] That's true.

[20] That's a good point.

[21] I believe in the scientific method.

[22] I don't blow your mind or anything, but the scientific method is like, if you cannot test the hypothesis, then you cannot reach meaningful conclusion that it is true.

[23] Do you think consciousness, understanding consciousness, is within the reach of science of the scientific method?

[24] We can dramatically improve our understanding of consciousness.

[25] You know, I would be hard -pressed to say that we understand anything with complete accuracy, but can we dramatically improve our understanding of consciousness?

[26] I believe the answer is yes.

[27] Does an AI system in your view have to have, consciousness in order to achieve human level or superhuman level intelligence does they need to have some of these human qualities that consciousness may be a body maybe a fear of mortality capacity to love those kinds of silly human things you know there's this the scientific method which i very much believe in where something is true to the degree that it is testably so and otherwise you're really just talking about, you know, preferences or untestable beliefs or, you know, that kind of thing.

[28] So it ends up being somewhat of a semantic question where we were conflating a lot of things with the word intelligence.

[29] If we parse them out and say, you know, are we headed towards the future where, an AI will be able to outthink us in every way, then the answer is unequivocally yes.

[30] In order for an AI system that needs to outthink us in every way, it also needs to have a capacity to have consciousness, self -awareness, and understanding.

[31] It will be self -aware, yes.

[32] That's different from consciousness.

[33] I mean, to me, in terms of what consciousness feels like, it feels like consciousness is in a different dimension.

[34] but this is this could be just an illusion you know if you damage your brain in some way physically you get you you damage your consciousness which implies that consciousness is a physical phenomenon in my view the thing is that that I think are really quite quite likely is that digital intelligence will be able to outthink us in every way and it will certainly be able to simulate what we consider consciousness so to to a degree that you would not be able to tell the difference.

[35] And from the aspect of the scientific method, it might as well be consciousness if we can simulate it perfectly.

[36] If you can't tell the difference, when this is sort of the Turing test, but think of a more sort of advanced version of the Turing test.

[37] If you're talking to a digital superintelligence and can't tell if that is a computer or a human, like let's say you're just having a conversation over a phone or a video conference, or something where you think you're talking looks like a person makes all of the right inflections and movements and all the small subtleties that constitute a human and talks like human makes mistakes like a human like at that and you literally just can't tell is this are you video conferencing with a person or an AI might as well why as well be human So on a darker topic, you've expressed serious concern about existential threats of AI.

[38] It's perhaps one of the greatest challenges our civilization faces, but since I would say we're kind of an optimistic descendants of apes, perhaps we can find several paths of escaping the harm of AI.

[39] So if I can give you three options, maybe you can comment which do you think is the most promising.

[40] So one is scaling up efforts on AI safety and beneficial AI research in hope of finding an algorithmic or maybe a policy solution.

[41] Two, is becoming a multi -planetary species as quickly as possible.

[42] And three is merging with AI and riding the wave of that increasing intelligence as it continuously improves.

[43] What do you think is most promising, most interesting as a civilization that we should invest in.

[44] I think there's a tremendous amount of investment going on in AI.

[45] Where there's a lack of investment is in AI safety, and there should be, in my view, a government agency that oversees anything related to AI to confirm that it does not represent a public safety risk.

[46] Just as there is a regulatory authority for the Food and Drug Administration, There's NETSA for automotive safety.

[47] There's the FAA for aircraft safety.

[48] Where it generally comes to the conclusion that it is important to have a government referee or a referee that is serving the public interest in ensuring that things are safe when there's a potential danger to the public.

[49] I would argue that AI is unequivocally something that has potential to be dangerous to the public and therefore should have a regulatory agency just as other things that are dangerous to the public have a regulatory agency.

[50] But let me tell you, the problem with this is that the government moves very slowly.

[51] And the rate of, the, usually the way a regulatory agency comes into being is that something terrible happens.

[52] There's a huge public outcry.

[53] And years after that, does a regulatory agency or a rule put in place?

[54] It takes something like seatbelts.

[55] It was known for a decade or more that seatbelts would have a massive impact on safety and save so many lives and serious injuries.

[56] And the car industry fought the requirement to put seatbelts in tooth and nail.

[57] That's crazy.

[58] And hundreds of thousands of people probably died because of that.

[59] And they said people wouldn't buy cars if they had seatbelts, which is obviously absurd.

[60] You know, or look at the tobacco industry and how long they fought any thing about smoking.

[61] That's part of why I helped make that movie, Thank You for Smoking.

[62] You can sort of see just how pernicious it can be when you have these companies effectively achieve regulatory capture of government, the bad.

[63] People in the AI community refer to the advent of digital.

[64] superintelligence as a singularity, that is not to say that it is good or bad, but that it is very difficult to predict what will happen after that point.

[65] And that there's some probability it will be bad, some probably it will be good.

[66] We obviously want to affect that probability and have it be more good than bad.

[67] Well, let me, on the merger with AI question and the incredible work that's being done in your link, there's a lot of fascinating innovation.

[68] here across different disciplines going on.

[69] So the flexible wires, the robotic solar machine, the responsive brain movement, everything around ensuring safety and so on.

[70] So we currently understand very little about the human brain.

[71] Do you also hope that the work at Neurrelink will help us understand more about the human mind, about the brain?

[72] Yeah, I think the work in NeuroLink will definitely shut a lot of insight.

[73] into how the brain and the mind works.

[74] Right now, just the data we have regarding how the brain works is very limited.

[75] You know, we've got fMRI, which is, that's kind of like putting a, you know, a stethoscope on the outside of a factory wall and then putting it like all over the factory wall and you can sort of hear the sounds, but you don't know what machines are doing, really.

[76] It's hard.

[77] You can infer a few things, but it's very broad brush stroke.

[78] in order to really know what's going on in the brain you really need you have to have high precision sensors and then you want to have stimulus and response like if you trigger a neuron what how do you feel what do you see how does it change your perception of the world you're speaking to physically just getting close to the brain being able to measure signals from the brain yeah will give us sort of open the door inside the factory yes exactly being able to have high precision sensors that that tell you what individual neurons are doing and then being able to trigger the neuron and see what the response is in the brain so you can see the consequences of if you fire this neuron what happens how do you feel what does change it'll be really profound to have this in people because people can articulate their change like if there's a change in mood or if they've you know if they can tell you if they can see better or hear better, or be able to form sentences better or worse, or their memories are jogged or that kind of thing.

[79] So on the human side, there's this incredible general malleability, plasticity of the human brain.

[80] The human brain adapts, adjusts, and so on.

[81] It's not that plastic, if you tell you, frank.

[82] So there's a firm structure, but nevertheless there's some plasticity in the open question is, so if I could ask a broad question is how much that plastic?

[83] plasticity can be utilized.

[84] Sort of on the human side, there's some plasticity in the human brain.

[85] And on the machine side, we have neural networks, machine learning, artificial intelligence.

[86] It's able to adjust and figure out signals.

[87] So there's a mysterious language that we don't perfectly understand that's within the human brain.

[88] And then we're trying to understand that language to communicate both directions.

[89] So the brain is adjusting a little bit.

[90] We don't know how much.

[91] and the machine is adjusting, where do you see, as they try to sort of reach together, almost like with an alien species, try to find a protocol, communication protocol that works?

[92] Where do you see the biggest benefit arriving from on the machine side or the human side?

[93] Do you see both of them working together?

[94] I think the machine side is far more malleable than the biological side, by all a huge amount.

[95] So it will be the machine that adapts to the brain.

[96] That's the only thing that's possible.

[97] The brain can't adapt that well to the machine.

[98] You can't have neurons start to regard an electrode as another neuron.

[99] Because the neuron just, there's like the pulse.

[100] And so something else is pulsing.

[101] So there is that elasticity in the interface, which we believe is something that can happen.

[102] But the vast majority of the maliability will have to be on the machine side.

[103] But it's interesting when you look at that synaptic plasticity, at the interface side, there might be like an emergent plasticity.

[104] Because it's a whole other, it's not like in the brain.

[105] It's a whole other extension of the brain.

[106] You know, we might have to redefine what it means to be malleable for the brain.

[107] So maybe the brain is able to adjust to external interfaces.

[108] There will be some adjustment to the brain because there's going to be something reading and simulating the brain.

[109] And so it will adjust to that thing.

[110] But most, the vast majority of the adjustment will.

[111] will be on the machine side.

[112] This is just, it has to be that, otherwise it will not work.

[113] Ultimately, like, we currently operate on two layers.

[114] We have sort of a limbic, like prime primitive brain layer, which is where all of our kind of impulses are coming from.

[115] It's sort of like we've got, we've got like a monkey brain with a computer stuck on it.

[116] That's the human brain.

[117] And a lot of our impulses and everything are driven by the monkey brain.

[118] And the computer, the cortex, is constantly, constantly trying to make the monkey brain happy.

[119] It's not the cortex that's steering the monkey brains.

[120] The monkey brain is steering the cortex.

[121] But the cortex is the part that tells the story of the whole thing.

[122] So we convince ourselves it's more interesting than just the monkey brain.

[123] Cortex is like what we call like human intelligence.

[124] You know, so it's like that's like the advanced computer relative to other creatures.

[125] Other creatures do not have either, really, they don't have the computer.

[126] or they have a very weak computer relative to humans.

[127] But it's like, it sort of seems like surely the really smart thing should control the dumb thing, but actually the dumb thing controls the smart thing.

[128] So do you think some of the same kind of machine learning methods, whether that's natural language processing applications, are going to be applied for the communication between the machine and the brain, to learn how to do certain things like movement of the body, how to process visual stimuli and so on.

[129] Do you see the value of using machine learning to understand the language of the two -way communication with the brain?

[130] Sure.

[131] Yeah, absolutely.

[132] I mean, we're a neural net, and that, you know, AI is basically neural net.

[133] So it's like digital neural net will interface with biological neural net and hopefully bring us along for the ride, you know but the vast majority of our of our intelligence will be digital does it like so like think of like the difference in intelligence between your cortex and your limbic system is gigantic your living system really has no comprehension of what the hell the cortex is doing um you know it's just literally hungry you know or tired or angry or sexy or something you know and just and then that communicates that that's that impulse to the cortex and tells the cortex to go satisfy that then a lot of a great deal of like a massive amount of thinking like truly stupendous amount of thinking has gone into sex without purpose without procreation without procreation which which is actually quite a silly action in the absence of procreation.

[134] It's a bit silly.

[135] So why are you doing it?

[136] Because it makes the Olympic system happy.

[137] That's why.

[138] That's why.

[139] But it's pretty absurd, really.

[140] Well, the whole of existence is pretty absurd in some kind of sense.

[141] Yeah.

[142] But I mean, this is a lot of computation has gone into, how can I do more of that with the procreation, not even being a factor?

[143] This is, I think, a very important area of research by NSFW.

[144] Any agency that should receive a lot of funding, especially after this conversation.

[145] I propose the formation of a new agency.

[146] Oh, boy.

[147] What is the most exciting or some of the most exciting things that you see in the future impact of NeurLink, both on the science, engineering, and societal broad impact?

[148] So Neurrelink, I think at first we'll solve a lot of brain -related diseases.

[149] So it could be anything from like autism, schizophrenia, memory loss.

[150] Like everyone experiences memory loss at a certain point in age.

[151] Parents can't remember their kids' names and that kind of thing.

[152] So there's a tremendous amount of good that NeurLink can do in solving critical damage to the brain or the spinal cord.

[153] There's a lot that can be done to improve quality of life of individuals.

[154] and those will be steps along the way and then ultimately it's intended to address the existential risk associated with digital superintelligence like we will not feel to be smarter than a digital supercomputer so therefore if you cannot beat him join them and at least we won't have that option so you have hope that your link will be able to be a kind of connection to allow us to merge, to ride the wave of the improving AI systems.

[155] I think the chance is above zero percent.

[156] So it's non -zero.

[157] Yes.

[158] There's a chance.

[159] And that's...

[160] So what I've seen dumb and dumber?

[161] Yes.

[162] So I'm saying there's a chance.

[163] He's saying one in a billion or one in a million, whatever it was, a dumb and dumber.

[164] You know, it went from maybe one a million to improving.

[165] Maybe it'll be one in a thousand, and then one in a hundred, then one in ten.

[166] It depends on the rate of improvement of neuralink and how fast we're able to make progress, you know.

[167] Well, I've talked to a few folks here that are quite brilliant engineers, so I'm excited.

[168] Yeah, I think it's like fundamentally good, you know, giving somebody back full motor control after they've had a spinal cord injury, you know, restoring brain functionality after a stroke, solving, debilitating genetically orange brain diseases, these are all incredibly great, I think.

[169] in order to do these, you have to be able to interface with the neurons at a detail level and you to be able to fire the right neurons, read the right neurons, and then effectively you can create a circuit, replace what's broken with silicon, and essentially fill in the missing functionality.

[170] And then over time, we can develop a tertiary layer.

[171] So if the limbic system is a primary layer, then the cortex is like the second layer.

[172] And I said, obviously, the cortex is vastly more intelligent than the limbic system.

[173] But people generally like the fact that they have an Olympic system and a cortex.

[174] I haven't met anyone who wants to delete either one of them.

[175] They're like, okay, I'll keep them both.

[176] That's cool.

[177] The Olympic system's kind of fun.

[178] That's where the fun is.

[179] Absolutely.

[180] And then people generally don't lose the cortex either.

[181] So they like having the cortex and the Olympic system.

[182] Yeah.

[183] And then there's a tertiary layer.

[184] which will be digital superintelligence.

[185] And I think there's room for optimism, given that the cortex is very intelligent and the limbic system is not, and yet they work together well, perhaps they can be a tertiary layer where digital superintelligence lies, and that will be vastly more intelligent than the cortex, but still coexist peacefully and in a benign manner with the cortex and Olympic system.

[186] That's a super exciting future, both on the low -level engineering that I saw as being done here and the actual possibility in the next few decades.

[187] It's important that neuralinks solve this problem sooner rather than later, because the point of which we have digital superintelligence, that's when we pass singularity, and things become just very uncertain.

[188] It doesn't mean that they're necessarily bad or good, but the point of which we pass singularity, things become extremely unstable.

[189] So we want to have a human brain interface before the singularity, or at least not long after it to minimize existential risk for humanity and consciousness as we know it.

[190] But there's a lot of fascinating actual engineering, low -level problems here at NeurLink that are quite exciting.

[191] The problems that we face NeuroLink are material science, electrical engineering, software, mechanical engineering, micro fabrication.

[192] It's a bunch of engineering disciplines, essentially.

[193] That's what it comes down to.

[194] You have to have a tiny electrode.

[195] It's so small.

[196] It doesn't hurt neurons, but it's got to last for as long as a person.

[197] So it's going to last for decades.

[198] And then you've got to take that signal.

[199] You've got to process that signal locally at low power.

[200] So we need a lot of chip design engineers because we've got to do signal processing and do so in a very, power -efficient way so that we don't heat your brain up, because the brain's very heat -sensitive.

[201] And then we've got to take those signals, I'm going to do something with them, and then we've got to stimulate the back to, you know, so you could, bi -directional communication.

[202] So if somebody's good at material science, software, mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, chip design, microfabrication, that's what, those are the things we need to work on.

[203] we need to go to material science so that we can have tiny electrodes that last a long time and it's a tough thing with the material science problem is a tough one because you're trying to read and simulate electrically in an electrically active area your brain is very electrically active and electrochemically active so how do you have a coding on the electrode that doesn't dissolve over time and and is safe in the brain this is a very hard problem and and then how do you collect those signals in a way that is most efficient because you really just have very tiny mass of power to process those signals you know and then we need to automate the whole thing so it's like Lasic you know so it's it's not if this is done by neurosurgeons there's no way it can scale to a large numbers of people and it needs to large numbers of people because I think ultimately we want the future to be determined by a large number of humans.

[204] Do you think this has a chance to revolutionize surgery period?

[205] So neurosurgery and surgery all across.

[206] Yeah, for sure.

[207] It's got to be like LASIC.

[208] If LASIC had to be hand done, done by hand by a person, that wouldn't be great.

[209] You know, it's done by a robot.

[210] And the often all it just kind of just needs to make sure your heads in right position and then they just press button and go.

[211] So smart summon and soon Autopark takes on the full beautiful mess of parking lots and their human -to -human nonverbal communication.

[212] I think it has actually the potential to have a profound impact in changing how our civilization looks at AI and robotics because this is the first time human beings, people that don't own a Tesla.

[213] I mean, I've never seen a Tesla, heard about a Tesla, get to watch hundreds of thousands of cars without a driver.

[214] Yeah.

[215] Do you see it this way, almost like an education tool for the world about AI?

[216] Do you feel the burden of that, the excitement of that, or do you just think it's a smart parking feature?

[217] I do think you are getting at something important, which is most people have never really seen a robot.

[218] And what is the car that is autonomous?

[219] It's a four -wheeled robot.

[220] Yeah, but it communicates.

[221] a certain sort of message with everything from safety to the possibility of what AI could bring to its current limitations, its current challenges, it's what's possible.

[222] Do you feel the burden of that, almost like a communicator, educator to the world about AI?

[223] We're just really trying to make people's lives easier with autonomy.

[224] But now that you mention it, I think it will be an eye -opener to people about robotics, because they've really never seen, most people never seen a robot, and there are hundreds of thousands of Tesla won't be long before there's a million of them that have autonomous capability and the drive without a person in it.

[225] And you can see the kind of evolution of the car's personality and thinking with each iteration of autopilot.

[226] You can see it's uncertain about this, but now it's more certain, now it's moving in a slightly different way.

[227] I can tell immediately if a car is on Tesla autopilot because it's got just little nuances of movement.

[228] It just moves in a slightly different way.

[229] Cars on Tesla autopilot, for example, on the highway are far more precise about being in the center of the lane than a person.

[230] If you drive down the highway and look at where cars are, the human driven cars are within their lane, they're like bumper cars.

[231] They're like moving all over the place.

[232] The car on autopilot, dead center.

[233] yeah so the incredible work that's going into that neural network is learning fast autonomy is still very very hard we don't actually know how hard it is fully of course you look at the most problems you tackle this one included with an exponential lens but even with an exponential improvement things can take longer than expected sometimes so where does tesla currently stand on its quest for full autonomy.

[234] What's your sense?

[235] When can we see successful deployment of full autonomy?

[236] Well, on the highway already, the probability of intervention is extremely low.

[237] So for highway autonomy, with the latest release, especially, the probability of needing to intervene is really quite low.

[238] In fact, I'd say for stopping to go traffic, it's as far as far as far safer than a person right now.

[239] The probability of an injury or an impact is much, much lower for autopilot than a person.

[240] And then with navigating autopilot, you can change lanes, take highway interchanges, and then we're coming at it from the other direction, which is low speed, full autonomy.

[241] And in a way, this is like, it's like how does a person learn to drive?

[242] You learn to drive in the parking lot.

[243] You know, the first time you learn to drive probably wasn't jumping on Market Street in San Francisco.

[244] That'd be crazy.

[245] You learn driving in the parking lot, get things right.

[246] speed and and then the missing piece that we're working on is traffic lights and stuff streets soft streets stuff streets i would say actually also relatively easy because you know you kind of know know where the stuff street is worst case you geocoded and then use visualization to see where the line is and stop the line to eliminate the GPS error so it's actually i say there's probably complex traffic lights and very windy rows.

[247] are the two things that need to get solved.

[248] What's harder, perception or control for these problems?

[249] So being able to perfectly perceive everything or figuring out a plan once you perceive everything, how to interact with all the agents in the environment, in your sense, from a learning perspective, is perception or action harder in that giant, beautiful, multitask learning neural network?

[250] The hottest thing is having accurate representation of the physical objects in vector space.

[251] So taking the visual input, primarily visual input, some sonar and radar, and then creating an accurate vector space representation of the objects around you.

[252] Once you have an accurate back to space representation, the plan and control is relatively easier.

[253] That is relatively easy.

[254] Basically, once you have accurate back to space representation, then you're kind of like a video game.

[255] like cars in like grand theft order or something like they work pretty well they drive down the road they don't crash you know pretty much unless you crash into them that's because they've they've got an accurate vector space representation of where the cars are and they're just and then they're rendering that as the as the output do you have a sense high level that Tesla is on track on being able to achieve full autonomy so on the highway yeah absolutely and still no driver state the driver's sensing.

[256] And we have driver sensing with torque on the wheel.

[257] That's right.

[258] Yeah.

[259] By the way, just a quick comment on karaoke, most people think it's fun, but I also think it is a driving feature.

[260] I've been saying for a long time, singing in the car is really good for attention management and vigilance management.

[261] That's great.

[262] Tesla karaoke is great.

[263] It's one of the most fun features of the car.

[264] Do you think of a connection between fun and safety sometimes?

[265] Yeah, you can do both at the same time.

[266] That's great.

[267] I just met with them.

[268] Andrew and wife of Carl Sagan.

[269] Oh, yeah.

[270] Directed Cosmos.

[271] I'm generally a big fan of Paul Sagan.

[272] He's super cool.

[273] And they had a great way of putting things.

[274] All about consciousness, all civilization, everything we've ever known and done is on this tiny blue dots.

[275] People also get, they get two trapped in there.

[276] It's like squabbles amongst humans.

[277] And they don't think of the big picture.

[278] They take civilization and not continued existence for granted.

[279] I shouldn't do that.

[280] Look at the history of civilizations.

[281] They rise and they fall.

[282] And now civilization is all, it's globalized.

[283] And so civilization, I think, now rises and falls together.

[284] There's not geographic isolation.

[285] This is a big risk.

[286] Things don't always go up.

[287] That should be, that's an important lesson of history.

[288] In 1990, at the request of Carl Sagan, the Voyager 1 spacecraft, which is a spacecraft that's reaching out farther than anything human made into space, turn around to take a picture of Earth from 3 .7 billion miles away.

[289] And as you're talking about the pale blue dot, that picture, the Earth takes up less than a single pixel in that image.

[290] Appearing is a tiny blue dot, as pale blue dot, as Carl Sagan called it.

[291] So he spoke about this dot of ours in 1994.

[292] And if you could humor me, I was wondering if in the last two minutes you could read the words that he wrote describing this by a doubt.

[293] Sure.

[294] Yeah, so it's funny, the universe appears to be 13 .8 billion years old.

[295] Earth is like 4 .5 billion years old.

[296] In another half billion years or so, the sun will expand and probably evaporate the oceans and make life impossible on Earth, which means that.

[297] if it had taken consciousness 10 % longer to evolve, it would never have bolted at all.

[298] It's a 10 % longer.

[299] And I wonder how many dead one -planet civilizations there are out there in the cosmos that never made it to the other planet and ultimately extinguished themselves or were destroyed by external factors?

[300] Probably a few.

[301] It's only just possible to travel to Mars, just barely.

[302] If G was 10 % more, wouldn't work really if m g was 10 % lower it would be easy like you can go a single stage from the surface of mars all the way the surface of the earth because mars is 37 % earth's gravity they're about we need a giant boost to get off of earth channeling calls again look again at that dot that's here that's home that's us on it everyone you love everyone you know everyone you've ever heard of every human being whoever was lived out of their lives.

[303] The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and farger, every hero and carrot, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor, and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there on a mode of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

[304] Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark.

[305] In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

[306] the earth is the only world known so far to harbor life there is nowhere else at least in the near future to which our species could migrate this is not true this is false mars and i think carl sagan would agree with that he couldn't even imagine it at that time so thank you for making the world dream and thank you for talking today i really appreciate it thank you