Published , by Chris Jarrard
Published , by Chris Jarrard
One thing you can say about Tesla Motors CEO and Founder Elon Musk — he will never shy away from offering juicy quotes. During an extended interview held during CodeCon 2021, Musk spoke openly about Tesla’s stock price, autonomous cars, and even a bit of existentialism. When asked if he believed our existence to be part of a greater simulation, Musk replied, “My heart says no and my brain says yes."
The full interview session is available to watch in the video embed above. The interview covers lots of ground in a little over an hour, which should be no surprise for those who are used to following Musk.
In addition to his thoughts on the possibility of our reality being a simulation, Musk also touched on some recent controversy sparked by an article from ProPublica this summer that accused Musk and other billionaires of skirting tax liability. “There was a bunch of very misleading stuff that was published by ProPublica and really that was some sort of trickery and they’ve done themselves no good service by doing that,” Musk explained. “First of all, with respect to the government contracts that SpaceX wins, our aspiration is to do the most for the least. And if you look at all the contracts we’ve won, we’ve won them because we had the best price. We have a better service at a lower price. They weren’t just handed to us. With respect to my personal taxes, I don’t actually draw a salary or anything. My cash compensation is basically zero.”
Musk also touched on concerns over self-driving automobiles, explaining, “The transition period to new technology is always a little bumpy, but I think — we published the safety stats, like basically miles driven on Autopilot and miles driven manually, and basically — it’s an order of magnitude difference.”
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