Lex FridmanThe following is a conversation with Elon Musk – his third time on this, the “Lex Fridman Podcast”. (to Elon) Yeah, make yourself comfortable.以下是与 Elon Musk 的对话——这是他第三次来到《Lex Fridman Podcast》。（对 Elon 说）好，随便坐。
Elon MuskBoo.嘘！
Lex FridmanOh, wow, okay.哇，好吧。
Elon MuskYou don’t do the headphone thing?你不戴耳机？
Lex FridmanNo.不戴。
Elon MuskOkay. I mean, how close do I need to get this thing?好吧。那我需要凑多近？
Lex FridmanThe closer you are, the sexier you sound.越近，你听起来越性感。
Elon MuskHey babe, (singing) can’t get enough of your love, baby… (Elon & Lex both laughing)嘿宝贝，（唱歌）怎么也受不够你的爱，宝贝……（Elon 和 Lex 同时大笑）
Lex FridmanI’m gonna clip that out, and any time somebody messages me on my phone, I’ll just respond with that.我要把这段剪出来，以后每次有人给我发消息，我就用这段回复他们。
Elon Musk(singing) If you want my body – and you think I’m sexy – come right out and tell me so – do do do do do… (laughing)（唱歌）如果你想要我的身体——如果你觉得我性感——大方说出来——嗒嗒嗒嗒嗒……（大笑）
Lex FridmanSo good. Okay, serious mode activate. Alright.太棒了。好，切换严肃模式。行了。
Elon Musk(laughing) Serious mode. Come on, you’re Russian, you can be serious.（大笑）严肃模式。得了吧，你是俄罗斯人，应该很擅长严肃的。
Lex FridmanYeah, I know.是啊，我知道。
Elon MuskEveryone’s serious all the time in Russia. (laughing)在俄罗斯，大家随时都是严肃的。（大笑）
Lex FridmanYeah. We’ll get there, we’ll get there. Allow me to say that the SpaceX launch of human beings to orbit on May 30 th , 2020, was seen by many as the first step in a new era of human space exploration. These human spaceflight missions were a beacon of hope to me and to millions over the past two years, as our world has been going through one of the most difficult periods in recent human history. We see the rise of division, fear, cynicism, and the loss of common humanity, right when it is needed most. So, first, Elon, let me say thank you for giving the world hope and reason to be excited about the future.嗯。我们会聊到那里的，慢慢来。容我先说，SpaceX 于 2020 年 5 月 30 日将人类送入轨道，在许多人眼中，这是人类太空探索新纪元的第一步。过去两年，我们的世界正经历近代史上最艰难的时期之一，这些载人航天任务对我和数百万人而言是希望的灯塔。我们看到分裂、恐惧、犬儒主义的兴起，以及人类共同情感的消失——而这恰恰是最需要它的时刻。所以，Elon，首先让我向你致谢，感谢你给这个世界带来希望，让人们有理由对未来感到兴奋。
Elon MuskOh, it’s kind of you to say that. I do want to do that. Humanity has, obviously, a lot of issues, and people at times do bad things. But despite all that, I love humanity, and I think we should make sure we do everything we can to have a good future and an exciting future, and one that maximizes the happiness of the people.你能这么说，真的很好。我确实想做到这一点。人类显然有很多问题，人们有时会做坏事。但尽管如此，我热爱人类，我认为我们应该竭尽所能，确保我们有一个美好的、令人兴奋的未来，一个能最大化人们幸福感的未来。
Lex FridmanLet me ask about Crew Dragon Demo-2. So, that first flight with humans on board, how did you feel leading up to that launch? Were you scared? Were you excited? What was going through your mind? So much was at stake.让我问问 Crew Dragon Demo-2 的事。那是第一次载人飞行，发射前你是什么感受？你害怕吗？兴奋吗？脑子里在想什么？那一刻关系重大。
Elon MuskYeah, no, that was extremely stressful. No question. We obviously could not let them down in any way. So extremely stressful, I’d say, to say the least. I was confident that, at the time that we launched, that no one could think of anything at all to do that would improve the probability of success. And we racked our brains to think of any possible way to improve the probability of success. We could not think of anything more, and nor could NASA. And so, that’s just the best that we could do. So then we went ahead and launched. Now, I’m not a religious person, but I nonetheless got on my knees and prayed for that mission.是的，那压力极大，毫无疑问。我们显然不能以任何方式让他们失望。所以压力极大，这么说都是轻描淡写。发射时，我有把握地认为，没有任何人能再想出任何方法来提高成功概率了。我们绞尽脑汁，想找任何可能提高成功概率的方式，什么都想不出来，NASA 也一样。所以，那已经是我们能做到的最好了。于是我们就发射了。说起来，我不是一个有宗教信仰的人，但我还是跪下来，为那次任务祈祷了。
Lex FridmanWere you able to sleep?你能睡得着觉吗？
Elon MuskNo.不能。
Lex FridmanHow did it feel when it was a success? First, when the launch was a success and when they returned back home, or back to Earth?成功之后，你是什么感受？先是发射成功，然后他们安全返回——返回地球的时候？
Elon MuskThere was a great relief. Yeah. For high-stress situations, I find it’s not so much elation as relief. I think as we got more comfortable and proved out the systems because we really… you got to make sure everything works. It was definitely a lot more enjoyable with the subsequent astronaut missions. And I thought the Inspiration Mission was actually very inspiring – the “Inspiration4” mission. I’d encourage people to watch the Inspiration documentary on Netflix; it’s actually really good. And it really isn’t… I was actually inspired by that. So that one I felt, I was kind of able to enjoy the actual mission and not just be super stressed all the time.有一种巨大的解脱感。是的。对于高压的情况，我发现与其说是欣喜，不如说是解脱。随着我们越来越有把握、系统也得到验证，后来的宇航员任务就轻松多了，我能真正享受其中。我觉得 Inspiration Mission 真的很鼓舞人心——就是"Inspiration4"那次任务。我推荐大家去 Netflix 看那部纪录片，真的非常好。我自己看完也真的被打动了。那一次，我能够真正享受任务本身，而不是一直处于超高压力之下。
Lex FridmanSo, for people that somehow don’t know, it’s the all civilian, first time all civilian out to space, out to orbit.给不知情的人说明一下，那是史上第一次全部由平民组成的轨道飞行。
Elon MuskYeah, it was, I think, the highest orbit that in like, I don’t know, 30 or 40 years or something. The only one that was higher was this one shuttle, sorry, a Hubble servicing mission. And then, before that, it would have been Apollo in 72. It’s pretty wild. So it’s cool. It’s good. I think as a species, we want to be continuing to do better and reach higher ground. I think it would be tragic, extremely tragic, if Apollo was the high watermark for humanity, and that’s as far as we ever got. It’s concerning that here we are 49 years after the last mission to the Moon – so almost half a century. And we’ve not been back. That’s worrying; it’s like, does that mean we’ve peaked as a civilization or what?是的，我想，那大概是三四十年来最高的轨道高度。唯一比它高的是某次航天飞机任务，准确说是哈勃望远镜的维修任务。再往前，就要追溯到 1972 年的 Apollo 了。挺疯狂的。很酷，很好。我认为作为一个物种，我们应该不断进步，不断攀登更高的高度。如果 Apollo 成了人类的最高水位线，就此打住，那将是极其悲剧的事。令人担忧的是，距离最后一次登月任务已经过去 49 年了——将近半个世纪——我们再也没有回去过。这让人不安：难道我们作为一个文明已经到达顶峰了吗？
Elon MuskSo I think we got to get back to the Moon and build a base there, a science base. I think we could learn a lot about the nature of the universe if we have a proper science base on the Moon. We have a science base in Antarctica and many other parts of the world. So that’s what I think the next big thing we’ve got to have like a serious Moonbase. And then get people to Mars and get out there and be a spacefaring civilization.所以我认为我们必须重返月球，在那里建立一个基地——一个科学基地。如果我们在月球上有一个像样的科学基地，就能大大了解宇宙的本质。我们在南极洲和世界各地都有科学基地。所以，我认为下一件大事是要有一个认真的月球基地。然后把人送上火星，走出去，成为一个星际文明。
Lex FridmanI’ll ask you about some of those details. But, since you’re so busy with the hard engineering challenges of everything that’s involved, are you still able to marvel at the magic of it all, of space travel, of every time the rocket goes up, especially when it’s a crewed mission? Or are you just so overwhelmed with all the challenges that you have to solve?我想问你关于这些细节的问题。但是，鉴于你在所有这些涉及到的艰难工程挑战中都如此忙碌，你还能对这一切的神奇感到惊叹吗——对太空旅行，对每一次火箭升空，尤其是载人任务？还是说你已经被所有需要解决的挑战压得喘不过气来了？
Lex FridmanAnd actually, sort of to add to that, the reason I want to ask this question of May 30 th – it’s been some time, so you can look back and think about the impact already. At the time, it was an engineering problem maybe, now it’s becoming a historic moment. Like, it’s a moment that – how many moments will be remembered about the 21st century? To me, that or something like that, maybe Inspiration4, one of those, will be remembered as the early steps of a new age of space exploration.另外，我问这个问题还有一层原因——5 月 30 日那件事已经过去一段时间了，你可以回望它，思考它已经产生的影响。当时它也许只是一个工程问题，而现在它正在成为一个历史性时刻。比如，21 世纪会被人们记住多少个时刻？对我来说，那件事，或者类似 Inspiration4 的某件事，将会被铭记为太空探索新时代的早期步伐。
Elon MuskYeah, I mean, during the launches itself,… I think maybe some people will know, but a lot of people don’t know, like, I’m actually the chief engineer of SpaceX. So I’ve signed off on pretty much all the design decisions. So if there’s something that goes wrong with that vehicle, it’s fundamentally my fault. So I’m really just thinking about all the things that… When I see the rocket, I see all the things that could go wrong, and the things that could be better, and the same with the Dragon spacecraft. Other people say, “Oh, this is a spacecraft or a rocket.” and “That looks really cool.” I’m like, I’ve like a readout of these are the risks, these are the problems. That’s what I see. It’s not what other people see when they see the product.是的，在发射过程中……也许有些人知道，但很多人不知道——我实际上是 SpaceX 的首席工程师。几乎所有的设计决策都由我签字。所以如果那艘飞行器出了什么问题，根本上是我的责任。所以我脑子里想的全是……当我看到火箭的时候，我看到的是所有可能出错的地方，以及可以更好的地方，Dragon 飞船也一样。别人会说"哦，这是飞船或者火箭，看起来真酷"，而我看到的是：这些是风险，这些是问题。这才是我看到产品时所看到的东西，和其他人看到的完全不同。
Lex FridmanSo let me ask you then to analyze Starship in that same way. I know you’ll talk a bit in more detail about Starship in the near future. Perhaps you had that… I don’t know…那么让我请你用同样的方式来分析一下 Starship。我知道你近期会更详细地谈到 Starship。也许你已经……我不知道……
Elon MuskWe can talk about it now if you want.如果你想，我们现在就可以聊。
Lex FridmanBut just in that same way, like you said, you see… when you see a rocket, you see a sort of a list of risks. In that same way, you said that Starship is a really hard problem. So, there’re many ways I can ask this, but if you magically could solve one problem perfectly, one engineering problem perfectly, which one would it be?就用你刚才说的那种方式——你说你看到火箭时，看到的是一张风险清单。用同样的方式，你说 Starship 是一个非常难的问题。有很多方式我可以问这个，但如果你能神奇地完美解决一个问题——一个工程问题——你会选哪个？
Elon MuskOn Starship?Starship 上面的？
Lex FridmanSorry, on Starship. So is it maybe related to the efficiency, the engine, the weight of the different components, the complexity of various things, maybe the controls of the crazy thing it has to do to land?对不起，Starship 上面的。比如效率问题、发动机、各个组件的重量、各种东西的复杂性，或者那疯狂着陆动作的控制问题？
Elon MuskNo, it’s actually, by far the biggest thing absorbing my time is engine production. Not the design of the engine. I have often said prototypes are easy, production is hard. So we have the most advanced rocket engine that’s ever been designed. I say currently the best rocket engine ever is probably the RD-180 or RD-170. That’s the dual Russian engine, basically. And still, I think an engine should only count if it has gotten something to orbit. So our engine has not gotten anything to orbit yet. But it is the first engine that’s actually better than the Russian RD engines, which were amazing design.不，实际上，目前占据我最多时间的——毫无疑问——是发动机的量产，而不是发动机的设计。我常说：原型容易，量产难。我们现在有史上设计最先进的火箭发动机。我认为目前有史以来最好的火箭发动机大概是 RD-180 或 RD-170，也就是俄罗斯的双室发动机。不过，我觉得一款发动机只有在将东西送入轨道之后才算数。我们的发动机还没有将任何东西送入轨道。但它确实是第一款真正超越俄罗斯 RD 发动机的发动机——而那些 RD 发动机的设计非常了不起。
Lex FridmanSo you’re talking about Raptor engine. What makes it amazing? What are the different aspects of it that make it like… what are you the most excited about if the whole thing works, in terms of efficiency, all those kinds of things?你说的是 Raptor 发动机。是什么让它如此出色？它有哪些方面让你最兴奋——如果整套东西都能运转起来，从效率等角度来说？
Elon MuskWell, the Raptor is a full flow staged combustion engine, and it’s operating at a very high chamber pressure. So one of the key figures of merit, perhaps the key figure of merit is what is the chamber pressure at which the rocket engine operate. That’s the combustion chamber pressure. Raptor is designed to operate at 300 bar, possibly, maybe higher, that’s 300 atmospheres. So the record right now for operational engine is the RD-engine that I mentioned, the Russian RD, which is, I believe, around 267 bar.Raptor 是一款全流量分级燃烧发动机，运行在非常高的燃烧室压力下。火箭发动机最关键的性能指标之一，也许是最关键的，就是燃烧室压力。Raptor 的设计工作压力是 300 bar，甚至可能更高，也就是 300 个大气压。目前在役发动机的纪录保持者是我提到的俄罗斯 RD 发动机，我记得大约是 267 bar。
Elon MuskAnd the difficulty of the chamber pressure is it increases on a nonlinear basis. 10% more pressure is more like 50% more difficult. But that chamber pressure is… that is what allows you to get a very high power density for the engine, enabling a very high thrust to weight ratio, and a very high specific impulse. Specific impulse is like a measure of the efficiency of a rocket engine. It’s really the effect of exhaust velocity of the gas coming out of the engine. With a very high chamber pressure, you can have a compact engine that nonetheless has a high expansion ratio, which is the ratio between the exit nozzle and the throat. Rocket engines got like sort of an hourglass shape. It’s like a chamber, and then it necks down, and there’s a nozzle. And the ratio of the exit diameter to the throat is expansion ratio.燃烧室压力的难点在于，它的困难程度以非线性方式增加——压力提升 10%，难度大概增加 50%。但正是这个燃烧室压力，让发动机能够获得极高的功率密度，从而实现极高的推重比和极高的比冲。比冲是衡量火箭发动机效率的指标，本质上反映的是排气速度。在极高燃烧室压力下，你可以做出一台体积紧凑、但膨胀比却很高的发动机——膨胀比就是出口喷嘴面积与喉道面积之比。火箭发动机的形状有点像沙漏：有个燃烧室，然后收窄，再是喷嘴。出口直径与喉道直径之比，就是膨胀比。
Lex FridmanSo why is this such a hard engine to manufacture? At scale?那为什么这款发动机量产起来这么难？
Elon MuskIt’s very complex.它非常复杂。
Lex FridmanWhat does complexity mean? Here’s a lot of components involved?复杂是什么意思？零件特别多？
Elon MuskThere’s a lot of components and a lot of unique materials. We had to invent several alloys that don’t exist in order to make this engine work.零件很多，而且用到了很多特殊材料。为了让这台发动机运行，我们不得不自己发明几种根本不存在的合金。
Lex FridmanSo it’s a materials problem, too?所以也是材料问题？
Elon MuskIt’s materials problem, and in a staged combustion, that full flow staged combustion, there are many feedback loops in the system. So basically, you’ve got propellants and hot gas flowing simultaneously to so many different places on the engine. And they all have a recursive effect on each other. So you change one thing here has a recursive effect here that changes something over there. It’s quite hard to control. There’s a reason why no one’s made this before. The reason we’re doing a stage combustion full flow is because it has the highest theoretical possible efficiency.是材料问题，而且在分级燃烧——全流量分级燃烧中——系统里有非常多的反馈回路。基本上，推进剂和高温气体同时流向发动机上那么多不同的地方，而它们相互之间都有递归影响。改变这里的一个东西，会递归地影响到另一个地方，进而改变那边的某个东西。这非常难以控制。以前没有人做过这个，是有原因的。我们之所以要做全流量分级燃烧，是因为它的理论效率是最高的。
Elon MuskSo in order to make a fully reusable rocket – that’s really the holy grail of orbital rocketry – everything’s got to be the best. It’s got to be the best engine, the best airframe, the best heat shield, extremely light avionics, very clever control mechanisms. You’ve got to shed mass in any possible way that you can. For example, instead of putting landing legs on the booster and ship, we are going to catch them with a tower to save the weight of the landing legs. I mean, we’re talking about catching the largest flying object ever made on a giant tower with chopstick arms. It’s like “Karate Kid” with the fly, but much bigger. This probably won’t work the first time. So anyway, this is bananas, this is banana stuff.要实现完全可复用的火箭——这才是轨道火箭的圣杯——一切都必须做到最好：最好的发动机、最好的机体、最好的热防护、极轻的航电设备、非常聪明的控制机构。你得想尽一切办法减重。比如，为了省掉着陆腿的重量，我们打算用一座塔来接住助推器和飞船，而不是给它们装着陆腿。想想看，我们要用一座巨塔的"筷子"臂来接住有史以来最大的飞行器。这就像《功夫小子》里用筷子夹苍蝇，但大了不知多少倍。这可能第一次不会成功。总之，这是疯狂的，这是疯狂的事情。
Lex FridmanSo, you mentioned that you doubt… well, not you doubt, but there’s days or moments when you doubt that this is even possible. It’s so difficult.你提到，你有——不是说你怀疑——但有时你会觉得，这件事是否真的可能。太难了。
Elon MuskWell, at this point, I think we will get Starship to work. There’s a question of timing. How long will it take us to do this? How long will it take us to actually achieve full and rapid reusability? Because it will take probably many launches before we’re able to have full and rapid reusability. But I can say that the physics pencils out. At this point, I’d say I’m very confident success is in the set of all possible outcomes. For a while, I was not convinced that success was in the set of possible outcomes. Which is very important, actually.嗯，在这个阶段，我认为我们会让 Starship 成功的。问题在于时间。这需要多长时间？我们实现完全快速复用要多长时间？因为大概需要很多次发射，才能真正实现完全快速复用。但我可以说，物理上是站得住脚的。在这个阶段，我非常有信心，成功是所有可能结果集合中的一个。有一段时间，我并不确信成功是所有可能结果之一——这其实非常重要。
Lex FridmanYou’re saying there’s a chance.你是说还有机会。
Elon MuskI’m saying there’s a chance Exactly. Just not sure how long it will take. But we have a very talented team. They’re working night and day to make it happen. Like I said, the critical thing to achieve for the revolution in spaceflight and for humanity to be a spacefaring civilization is to have a fully and rapidly reusable rocket, orbital rocket. There’s not even been any orbital rocket that’s been fully reusable ever. And this has always been the holy grail of rocketry. And many smart people, very smart people, have tried to do this before and they’ve not succeeded because it’s such a hard problem.我是说还有机会。没错。只是不确定需要多长时间。但我们有一支非常有才华的团队，他们夜以继日地让它成真。就像我说的，要实现太空飞行的革命、让人类成为星际文明，关键就在于拥有一枚完全快速可复用的轨道火箭。历史上，从未有过任何一枚完全可复用的轨道火箭。这一直是火箭领域的圣杯。很多聪明人、非常聪明的人之前都尝试过，都没有成功，因为这是如此艰难的问题。
Lex FridmanWhat’s your source of belief in situations like this? When the engineering problem is so difficult? There’s a lot of experts, many of whom you admire, who have failed in the past.在这种情况下，你的信念来自哪里？当工程问题如此艰难，很多你所钦佩的专家在之前都失败了。
Elon MuskYes.是的。
Lex FridmanAnd a lot of people, you know, a lot of experts, maybe journalists, the public in general, have a lot of doubts about whether it’s possible. And you yourself know that even if it’s a non-null set, non-empty set of success, it’s still unlikely or very difficult. Where do you go to, both personally, intellectually as an engineer, as a team, for source of strength needed to sort of persevere through this and to keep going with the project, take it to completion?很多人——很多专家、也许是记者、也许是公众——都对此是否可行存在很多疑问。你自己也知道，即使成功在可能结果的集合里，这件事仍然不太可能，或者极其困难。在个人层面、作为工程师、作为团队，你从哪里汲取力量，来坚持下去、继续推进这个项目直到完成？
Elon MuskA source of strength, hmm… it’s just really not how I think about things. I mean, for me, it’s simply this is something that is important to get done. And we should just keep doing it. Or die trying. I don’t need a source of strength.力量来源……嗯……这根本不是我思考事情的方式。对我来说，就是这么简单：这件事很重要，必须完成。所以我们就一直做下去。不成功便成仁。我不需要什么力量来源。
Lex FridmanSo, quitting is not even like…所以，放弃根本不是一个选项……
Elon MuskThat’s not in my nature. And I don’t care about optimism or pessimism. Fuck that, we’re going to get it done.那不是我的本性。我不在乎乐观还是悲观。管他的，我们就是要把它搞定。
Lex FridmanGonna get it done. Can you then zoom back into specific problems with Starship or any engineering problems you work on? Can you try to introspect your particular biological neural network, your thinking process and describe how you think through problems, the different engineering and design problems? Is there like a systematic process? You’ve spoken about first principles thinking, but is there a kind of process to it?搞定它。那么，你能回到 Starship 或你所做的任何工程问题的具体细节，尝试审视一下你这个特定的生物神经网络——你的思维过程——描述你是怎么思考问题的、那些不同的工程和设计问题？有什么系统性的方法吗？你曾谈过第一性原理思维，但这里面有什么具体流程吗？
Elon MuskWell, you know, I like saying, physics is law, and everything else is a recommendation. I’ve met a lot of people that can break the law, but I have never met anyone who could break physics. So first, for any kind of technology problem, you have sort of just make sure you’re not violating physics.嗯，你知道，我喜欢说：物理是法律，其他一切都是建议。我见过很多可以违法的人，但我从未见过谁能违背物理。所以，对于任何技术问题，首先你得确保自己没有违背物理。
Elon MuskFirst-principles analysis, I think, is something that can be applied to really any walk of life, anything really. It’s really just saying let’s boil something down to the most fundamental principles, the things that we are most confident are true at a foundational level, and that sets your axiomatic base, and then you reason up from there. And then you cross-check your conclusion against the axiomatic truth. Some basics in physics would be like, are you violating conservation of energy or momentum or something like that? Then it’s not going to work. That’s just to establish, is it possible? Another good physics tool is thinking about things in the limit. If you take a particular thing, and you scale it to a very large number or to a very small number, how does things change?第一性原理分析，我认为可以应用于生活的任何领域，任何事情。它的核心其实就是：把一件事拆解到最基本的原则，拆解到我们在基础层面最确信为真的东西，这就构成了你的公理基础，然后从这里向上推理。然后把你的结论对照公理真相进行交叉验证。物理中一些基本东西，比如你是否违反了能量守恒或动量守恒之类的——如果违反了，那就行不通，就这么简单，这一步是用来确认它是否可能。另一个好用的物理工具是极限思维：把某件事缩放到极大或极小时，情况会如何变化？
Lex FridmanBoth in number of things you manufacture, something like that, and then in time?包括生产数量这类东西，以及时间维度？
Elon MuskYeah, let’s say, take an example of manufacturing, which I think is just a very underrated problem. And like I said, it’s much harder to take an advanced technology part and bring it into volume manufacturing than it is to design it in the first place. More is magnitude. Let’s say you’re trying to figure out, why is this part or product expensive? Is it because of something fundamentally foolish that we’re doing? Or is it because our volume is too low? And so then you say, okay, well, what if our volume was a million units a year? Is it still expensive? That’s what I mean with thinking about things in the limit. If it’s still expensive at a million units a year, then volume is not the reason why your thing is expensive. There’s something fundamental about the design.是的，举个例子——制造业，我认为这是一个被严重低估的问题。就像我说的，把一个先进的技术零件推向大规模量产，比一开始设计它要难得多，差距是数量级的。比方说，你想弄清楚为什么这个零件或产品很贵——是因为我们在做什么根本性的蠢事，还是因为我们的规模太小？那你就说：好，如果我们的产量是每年 100 万件，它还贵吗？这就是我说的极限思维。如果在每年 100 万件的情况下它还是贵，那规模不是你这东西贵的原因，设计本身有根本性的问题。
Lex FridmanAnd then you can focus on reducing complexity or something like that.然后你就可以专注于降低复杂度之类的。
Elon MuskGot to change the design, change the part, to be something that is not fundamentally expensive. That’s a common thing in rocketry because the unit volume is relatively low. And so a common excuse would be, “Well, it’s expensive because our unit volume is low. And if we were in like automotive or something like that, or consumer electronics, then our costs will be lower.” And I’m like, “Okay, so let’s say, now you’re making a million units a year. Is it still expensive?” If the answer is yes, then economies of scale are not the issue.那就得改设计，换零件，换成本质上不贵的东西。这在火箭领域很常见，因为单位产量相对较低。一个常见的借口是："因为我们的单位产量低，所以贵。如果我们像汽车业或消费电子那样，成本就会低。"我会说："好，那我们假设现在一年产 100 万台，还贵吗？"如果答案是肯定的，那规模经济就不是问题所在。
Lex FridmanDo you throw into manufacturing, do you throw like supply chain… You talked about resources and materials and stuff like that – do you throw that into the calculation of trying to reason from first principles? Like, how we’re going to make the supply chain work here?在制造中，你会把供应链……你谈到了资源和材料之类的东西——你会把这些也放进第一性原理推导里吗？比如，我们怎么让供应链运转？
Elon MuskYeah, yeah.是的，会的。
Lex FridmanAnd then the cost of materials, things like that? Or is that too much…?还有材料成本之类的？还是说这太细了……
Elon MuskYeah. Exactly. A good example of thinking about things in the limit is if you take any product, a machine, or whatever, like take a rocket or whatever, and say, if you look at the raw materials in the rocket; so you’re gonna have like aluminum, steel, titanium, Inconel, specialty alloys, copper, and you say, what’s the weight of the constituent elements of each of these elements, and what is their raw material value. And that sets the asymptotic limit for how low the cost of the vehicle can be unless you change the materials.是的，没错。用极限思维来思考的一个好例子是：拿任何一种产品、机器或者什么，比如火箭，然后看看火箭里的原材料——铝、钢、钛、Inconel、特种合金、铜等等——然后说，这些元素各自的重量是多少，它们的原材料价值是多少。这就设定了这辆飞行器成本的渐近下限，除非你更换材料。
Elon MuskAnd then when you do that – I call it like, maybe the magic wand number or something like that – that would be like, if you had just a pile of these raw materials here and you could wave a magic wand and rearrange the atoms into the final shape, that would be the lowest possible cost that you could make this thing for unless you change the materials. And that is always, usually, almost always a very low number. So then, what’s actually causing things to be expensive is how you put the atoms into the desired shape.当你这么做的时候——我把它叫做"魔法棒数字"之类的——就是说，如果你面前有一堆这些原材料，你可以挥动魔法棒把原子重新排列成最终形状，那就是这东西在不换材料情况下的最低可能成本。而这个数字几乎总是非常低的。所以，真正让事情变贵的，是你如何把原子排列成所需形状的过程。
Lex FridmanYeah, actually, if you don’t mind me taking a tiny tangent. I often talk to Jim Keller, who’s somebody that worked with you as a…是的，如果你不介意我稍微跑个题。我经常和 Jim Keller 聊天，他曾在 Tesla 和你一起工作过……
Elon MuskOh, yeah. Jim did great work at Tesla.哦，是的。Jim 在 Tesla 做得很好。
Lex FridmanSo, I suppose he carries the flame of the same kind of thinking that you’re talking about now. And I guess I see that same thing at Tesla and SpaceX. Folks who worked there, they kind of learned this way of thinking, and it kind of becomes obvious almost. But anyway, I had an argument – not argument; he educated me – about how cheap it might be to manufacture a Tesla bot. We had an argument, how can you reduce the cost at scale of producing a robot?我猜他传承了你现在谈到的这种思维方式。在 Tesla 和 SpaceX，我也看到同样的东西。在那里工作过的人，似乎都学到了这种思维方式，而且几乎变得显而易见。不过，我曾经和他辩论过——不是辩论；是他教育了我——关于制造一台 Tesla Bot 的成本可能是多少。我们讨论了如何在规模化之后降低机器人的制造成本？
Lex FridmanBecause so far I’ve gotten the chance to interact quite a bit, obviously, in the academic circles with humanoid robots, and then Boston Dynamics and stuff like that, and they’re very expensive to build. And then Jim kind of schooled me on saying like, okay, like this kind of first principles thinking of how can we get the cost of manufacturing down. I suppose you have done that kind of thinking for Tesla Bot and for all kinds of complex systems that are traditionally seen as complex. And you say, “Okay, how can we simplify everything down?”到目前为止，我有机会在学术圈里大量接触过人形机器人，还有 Boston Dynamics 那些，都非常贵。然后 Jim 就给我上了一课，说，好，就像你说的这种第一性原理思维——我们怎么把制造成本降下来。我想，你也对 Tesla Bot 和各种传统上被认为复杂的系统做过这类思考，然后说："好，我们怎么把一切都简化？"
Elon MuskYeah, I think if you are really good at manufacturing, at high volume you can basically make anything for a cost that asymptotically approaches the raw material value of the constituents, plus any intellectual property that you need to license. Anything.是的，我认为，如果你真的擅长制造，在高产量下，你基本上可以让任何东西的成本渐近地趋近于原材料价值，再加上你需要授权的任何知识产权。任何东西都可以。
Lex FridmanRight.对。
Elon MuskBut it’s hard. That’s a very hard thing to do. But it is possible for anything. Anything in volume can be made, like I said, for a cost that asymptotically approaches its raw material constituents, plus intellectual property license rights. So what will often happen in trying to design a product is, people will start with the tools and parts and methods that they’re familiar with and try to create a product using their existing tools and methods. The other way to think about it is, actually try to imagine the platonic ideal of the perfect product, or technology, whatever it might be. What is the perfect arrangement of atoms? That would be the best possible product. And now let us try to figure out how to get the atoms in that shape.但这很难。这是非常难的事情。不过对任何东西都是可能的。任何东西在大规模量产下，就像我说的，成本都可以渐近趋近于其原材料成分的价值，再加上知识产权授权费用。在设计产品时，人们通常会从自己熟悉的工具、零件和方法出发，用现有的工具和方法来制造产品。另一种思路是，真正去想象那个完美产品或技术的柏拉图式理想形态——无论它可能是什么。原子的最佳排列方式是什么？那就是最好的产品。然后让我们想办法把原子排成那个形状。
Lex FridmanI mean, it’s almost like “Rick and Morty” absurd until you start to really think about it. And you really should think about it in this way because everything else is kind of… you might fall victim to the momentum of the way things were done in the past unless you think in this way.这听起来几乎像《瑞克和莫蒂》里那种荒诞，直到你真正思考它。而你真的应该这样思考，因为其他方式……你很可能沦为过去做事惯性的受害者，除非你这样思考。
Elon MuskWell, just as a function of inertia, people want to use the same tools and methods that they’re familiar with. That’s what they’ll do by default. And then, that will lead to an outcome of things that can be made with those tools and methods but is unlikely to be the platonic ideal of the perfect product. It’s good to think of things in both directions, like “What can we build with the tools that we have?” but also, “What is the theoretical perfect product look like?”说白了，作为惯性的产物，人们倾向于使用他们熟悉的同一套工具和方法，这是他们的默认做法。而这会导致一个结果——能用这些工具和方法做出来的东西——但这不太可能是完美产品的柏拉图式理想形态。从两个方向来思考是好的：'我们用现有工具能做什么？'同时也问：'理论上的完美产品长什么样？'
Elon MuskAnd that theoretical perfect part is gonna be a moving target because as you learn more, the definition of that perfect product will change. Because you don’t actually know what the perfect product is, but you can successfully approximate a more perfect product. So think about it like that, and then saying, “Okay, now what tools, methods, materials, whatever do we need to create in order to get the atoms in that shape?” But people very rarely think about it that way. But it’s a powerful tool.而那个理论上的完美零件会是一个移动的靶子，因为随着你学到更多，对那个完美产品的定义会改变。因为你其实不知道完美产品是什么，但你可以成功地逼近一个更完美的产品。就这样想，然后说：'好，我们需要创造什么工具、方法、材料，才能把原子排成那个形状？'人们很少这样思考，但这是一个强大的工具。
Lex Fridman(to the audience) I should mention that the brilliant Shivon Zilis is hanging out with us, in case you hear a voice of wisdom from outside, from up above.（对观众）我应该提一下，才华横溢的 Shivon Zilis 和我们在一起，以防大家听到从外面、从上方传来一个智慧的声音。
Lex FridmanOkay, so let me ask you about Mars. You mentioned, it’d be great for science to put a base on the Moon to do some research. But the truly big leap again, in this category of seemingly impossible, is to put a human being on Mars. When do you think SpaceX will land a human being on Mars?好，现在让我问关于火星的问题。你提到，在月球上建立科学基地做研究会很棒。但在这类"看似不可能"的事情中，真正的巨大飞跃是把人类送上火星。你认为 SpaceX 什么时候会把人类送上火星？
Elon MuskBest case is about five years, worst case 10 years.最乐观的情况大约是 5 年，最悲观的情况是 10 年。
Lex FridmanWhat are the determining factors would you say from an engineering perspective? Or is that not the bottlenecks?从工程角度看，你认为决定因素是什么？还是说这不是瓶颈？
Elon MuskNo, it’s fundamentally your engineering the vehicle. I mean, Starship is the most complex and advanced rocket that’s ever been made by, I don’t know, an order of magnitude or something like that. It’s a lot. It’s really next level. And the fundamental optimization of Starship is minimizing cost per ton to orbit and ultimately cost per ton to the surface of Mars. This may seem like a mercantile objective, but it is actually the thing that needs to be optimized. There is a certain cost per tonne to the surface of Mars where we can afford to establish a self-sustaining city. And then, above that, we cannot afford to do it. Right now, you couldn’t fly to Mars for a trillion dollars; no amount of money could get you a ticket to Mars. So we need to get that like something that is actually possible at all. We don’t want to just want to have with Mars flags and footprints and then not come back for a half century like we did with the Moon.不，根本上是在制造这个飞行器。我是说，Starship 是有史以来最复杂、最先进的火箭，领先程度——我不知道——大概是一个数量级还是差不多的。领先太多了。真的是下一个层次。Starship 的根本优化目标是最小化每吨到轨道的成本，以及最终每吨到火星表面的成本。这听起来像是商业目标，但它实际上才是需要优化的东西。每吨到火星表面的成本要低到某个程度，我们才负担得起建立一个自给自足的城市。高于那个成本，就做不到。现在，就算花一万亿美元，你也去不了火星——没有任何金额能给你买一张去火星的票。所以我们需要把它变成切实可行的事。我们不想要又是插一面旗子、留下几个脚印，然后半个世纪不回去——就像我们对月球做的那样。
Elon MuskIn order to pass a very important “great filter”, I think we need to be a multi-planet species. This may sound somewhat esoteric to a lot of people, but eventually, given enough time, there’s something… Earth is likely to experience some calamity. That could be something that humans do to themselves or an external event like what happened to the dinosaurs. And if none of that happens, and somehow magically, we keep going, then the sun will… the sun is gradually expanding and will engulf the Earth. And probably Earth gets too hot for life in about 500 million years. It’s a long time, but that’s only 10% longer than Earth has been around.为了跨越一个非常重要的'大过滤器'，我认为我们需要成为多星球物种。这对很多人来说可能听起来有点玄虚，但归根结底，只要时间足够长，地球就可能经历某种灾难——可能是人类自己造成的，也可能是外部事件，比如恐龙遭遇的那种。如果这些都不发生，某种神奇的力量让我们一直延续下去，那么太阳……太阳正在逐渐膨胀，最终会吞噬地球。大约 5 亿年后，地球大概就会热到不宜生命存在。这是很长的时间，但也只比地球存在的时长多 10%。
Elon MuskThe current situation is really remarkable and kind of hard to believe, but Earth has been around four and a half billion years, and this is the first time in four and a half billion years that it’s been possible to extend life beyond Earth. And that window of opportunity may be open for a long time, and I hope it is, but it also may be open for a short time. And I think it is wise for us to act quickly, while the window is open, just in case it closes.现在的处境其实非常奇特，难以置信——地球已经存在了 45 亿年，而这是 45 亿年来第一次，有可能把生命延伸到地球之外。这扇机会之窗也许会开很久，我希望如此，但它也可能只开很短的时间。我认为我们趁着窗口还开着的时候迅速行动是明智的，以防它关闭。
Lex FridmanYeah, the existence of nuclear weapons, pandemics, all kinds of threats should kind of give us some motivation.是的，核武器的存在、疫情，以及各种威胁，都应该给我们一些动力。
Elon MuskI mean, civilization could die with a bang or a whimper. You know, if it dies of demographic collapse, then it’s more of a whimper, obviously. But if it’s World War III, it’s more of a bang. But these are all risks. I mean, it’s important to think of these things and just think of things like probabilities, not certainties. There’s a certain probability that something bad will happen on Earth. I think most likely the future will be good. But there’s like, let’s say for argument’s sake, a 1% chance per century of a civilization-ending event. That was Stephen Hawking’s estimate. I think he might be right about that. We should basically think of us being a multi-planet species. It’s like taking out insurance for life itself – like life insurance for life. (both laughing)文明可能轰轰烈烈地死去，也可能悄无声息地消亡。如果它死于人口崩溃，那更像是悄然消亡；如果是第三次世界大战，那就更像轰然崩塌。但这些都是风险。重要的是把这些事想清楚，把它们看作概率，而不是确定性。地球上发生坏事有一定概率。我认为未来很可能是美好的。但假设，为了讨论方便，每个世纪有 1% 的概率发生终结文明的事件——这是 Stephen Hawking 的估计，我觉得他可能是对的。我们基本上应该把成为多星球物种看作是……就像给生命本身买保险——给生命买人寿保险。（两人大笑）
Lex FridmanThis turned into an infomercial real quick.这很快就变成广告了。
Elon MuskLife insurance for life, yes. And we can bring the creatures – you know, plants and animals – from Earth to Mars and breathe life into the planet and have a second planet with life. That would be great. They can’t bring themselves there, so if we don’t bring them to Mars, then they will just for sure all die when the sun expands anyway, and then that’ll be it.给生命的人寿保险，是的。我们还可以把地球上的生物——植物和动物——带到火星，给这颗星球注入生命气息，拥有第二颗有生命的星球。那会很棒。它们自己去不了那里，如果我们不把它们带到火星，当太阳膨胀的时候，它们无论如何都会灭绝，那就什么都没了。
Lex FridmanWhat do you think is the most difficult aspect of building a civilization on Mars, terraforming Mars, like from an engineering perspective, from a financial perspective, human perspective, to get a large number of folks there who will never return back to Earth?你认为在火星上建立文明、对火星进行地球化改造，从工程角度、财务角度、人的角度来看，最难的部分是什么——要让大量人前往那里，而且永远不会回到地球？
Elon MuskNo, they could certainly return. Some will return back to Earth.不，他们当然可以回来的。有些人会回地球的。
Lex FridmanThey will choose to stay there for the rest of their lives?他们会选择在那里度过余生？
Elon MuskYeah, many will, but we need the spaceships back, like the ones that go to Mars, we need them back. So you can hop on if you want. We can’t just not have the spaceships come back. Those things are expensive. We need them… I’d like them to come back and do another trip.是的，很多人会，但我们需要飞船回来——去火星的那些，我们需要它们回来。如果你想回来，可以搭便车。我们不能就这样让飞船不回来。那些东西很贵，我希望它们回来再跑一趟。
Lex FridmanDo you think about the terraforming aspect like actually building, or are you still focused right now on the spaceships part that’s so critical to get to Mars?你有没有想过地球化改造这方面，真正建造那个星球，还是说你现在仍然专注于飞船这个去火星的关键部分？
Elon MuskYeah, we absolutely. If you can’t get there, nothing else matters. And like I said, you can’t get there at some extraordinarily high cost. I mean, the current cost of, let’s say, one ton to the surface of Mars is on the order of a billion dollars because you don’t just need the rocket. The launch and everything… you need heat shield, you need guidance system, you need deep-space communications, you need some kind of landing system. So my rough approximation would be a billion dollars per ton to the surface of Mars right now. This is obviously way too expensive to create a self-sustaining civilization. So we need to improve that by at least a factor of 1,000.是的，我们当然考虑过。如果你去不了，其他一切都无意义。就像我说的，你不能以极高的成本去那里。我是说，目前来说，把一吨货物送到火星表面的成本大约是 10 亿美元，因为你不只需要火箭，发射和所有的……你还需要热防护、制导系统、深空通信、某种着陆系统。所以我的粗略估算是，现在每吨到火星表面大约需要 10 亿美元。这显然贵得没法建立自给自足的文明。所以我们需要至少把它降低 1,000 倍。
Lex FridmanA million per ton?每吨 100 万美元？
Elon MuskYes. Ideally, much less than a million a ton. You have to say like, well, how much can society afford to spend or want to spend on a self-sustaining city on Mars? The self-sustaining part is important. It’s just the key threshold. The great filter will have been past when the city on Mars can survive even if the spaceships from Earth stopped coming for any reason. It doesn’t matter what the reason is. But if they stopped coming for any reason, will it die out or will it not? And if there’s even one critical ingredient missing, then it still doesn’t count. It’s like if you’re on a long sea voyage, and you’ve got everything except vitamin C, it’s only a matter of time, you know, you’re gonna die. So, we’re gonna get a Mars city to the point where it’s self-sustaining.是的。理想情况下，远低于每吨 100 万美元。你要说，好，社会能够承受、或者愿意在火星上一个自给自足的城市上花多少钱？自给自足是关键。这是最重要的门槛。当火星城市即使地球的飞船因任何原因停止来往也能存活下去，'大过滤器'才算真正被跨越。不管什么原因停来，都无所谓。但如果停来了，它会消亡吗？还是不会？如果哪怕缺少一种关键要素，就还不算。就像你在进行一次漫长的海上航行，什么都有，就是没有维生素 C，那只是时间问题，你会死的。所以，我们要把火星城市建到自给自足的程度。
Elon MuskI’m not sure this will really happen in my lifetime, but I hope to see it at least have a lot of momentum. And then you could say, “Okay, what is the minimum tonnage necessary to have a self-sustaining city?” And there’s a lot of uncertainty about this. You could say like – I don’t know – it’s probably at least a million tons because you have to set up a lot of infrastructure on Mars. Like I said, you can’t be missing anything that… in order to be self-sustaining, you can’t be missing… like you need semiconductor fabs, you need iron ore refineries – like you need lots of things. And Mars is not super hospitable. It’s the least inhospitable planet, but it’s definitely a fixer-upper of a planet.我不确定这在我有生之年能真正实现，但我希望至少能看到它获得巨大的势头。那么你可以问：建立自给自足的城市所需的最小吨位是多少？这有很大的不确定性。你可以说——我不知道——可能至少需要 100 万吨，因为你必须在火星上建立大量基础设施。就像我说的，要自给自足，就不能缺少任何东西——你需要半导体工厂，你需要铁矿石冶炼厂——需要很多东西。而火星并不是特别宜居。它是最不不宜居的星球，但它绝对是一颗需要大量改造的星球。
Lex FridmanOutside of Earth.在地球之外的情况下。
Elon MuskYes. Earth is easy.是的。地球很轻松。
Lex FridmanEarth is pretty good, and also, we should clarify, in the solar system.地球挺好的，另外我们要澄清一下，是在太阳系里。
Elon MuskYes. In the solar system.是的，在太阳系里。
Lex FridmanThere might be nice like vacation spots.也许有什么不错的度假胜地。
Elon MuskThere might be some great planets out there. But it’s hopeless…也许外面有些很棒的星球。但……没有希望……
Lex Fridman…too hard to get there?……太难去了？
Elon MuskYeah, way, way, way, way, way too hard. To say the least.是的，难太多太多太多太多太多了。这是轻描淡写。
Lex FridmanLet me push back on that – not really push back – but quick a curveball of a question. You did mention physics as the first starting point. General relativity allows for wormholes, they technically can exist. Do you think those can ever be leveraged by humans to travel faster than the speed of light? Or are you saying…让我反驳一下——不算真正的反驳——但提一个有点出人意料的问题。你说物理是起点，广义相对论允许虫洞存在，理论上它们可以存在。你认为人类能否利用虫洞来实现超光速旅行？还是说……
Elon MuskWell, the wormhole thing is debatable. We currently do not know of any means of going faster than the speed of light. There are some ideas about having space… you cannot move at the speed of light through space, but if you can make space itself move, that would be warping space. Space is capable of moving faster than the speed of light. In the Big Bang, the universe expanded at much more than the speed of light, by a lot. If this is possible, the amount of energy required to warp space is so gigantic it boggles the mind.嗯，虫洞这件事还有争议。目前我们不知道任何超光速运动的方法。有一些想法是关于让空间本身移动的——你不能在空间中以光速运动，但如果你能让空间本身移动，那就是在扭曲空间。空间本身是可以超光速移动的。在大爆炸中，宇宙的膨胀速度远超光速，快了许多。如果这是可能的，扭曲空间所需的能量之大，简直令人难以想象。
Lex FridmanSo, all the work you’ve done with propulsion, how much innovation is possible with rocket propulsion? I mean, you’ve seen it all. And you’re constantly innovating in every aspect. How much is possible? Like, how much… can you get 10x somehow? Is there something in there in physics that you can get significant improvement in terms of efficiency of engines and all those kinds of things?那么，从你在推进领域所做的一切工作来看，火箭推进还有多大的创新空间？我是说，你已经见识过这一切，而且在每个方面都不断创新。还有多少可能？比如，能否以某种方式做到 10 倍的提升？物理上是否存在某种东西，能让发动机效率等方面有显著改善？
Elon MuskWell, as I was saying, really the holy grail is a fully and rapidly reusable orbital system. Right now, the Falcon 9 is the only reusable rocket out there. The booster comes back and lands – you’ve seen the videos – and we get the nose cone or fairing back, but we do not get the upper stage back. That means that we have a minimum cost of building an upper stage. You can think of a two-stage rocket of sort of two airplanes. It’s like a big airplane and a small airplane. And we get the big airplane back but not the small airplane.嗯，就像我说的，真正的圣杯是实现完全快速可复用的轨道系统。现在，Falcon 9 是唯一的可复用火箭——助推器飞回来着陆，你们看过那些视频——我们拿回了整流罩，但没有拿回上面级。这意味着我们有一个建造上面级的最低成本。你可以把两级火箭看作两架飞机，一架大飞机和一架小飞机。我们拿回了大飞机，但没有拿回小飞机。
Elon MuskAnd so it still costs a lot. That upper stage is at least $10 million. And then the booster is not as rapidly and completely reusable as we would like, and so are the fairings. So, our kind of minimum marginal cost, not counting overhead per flight, is on the order of 15 to $20 million, maybe. That’s extremely good for… it’s by far better than any rocket ever in history. But with full and rapid reusability, we can reduce the cost per ton to orbit by a factor of 100.所以它的成本还是很高。那个上面级至少要 1,000 万美元。而且助推器的快速完整复用也没有达到我们希望的水平，整流罩也一样。所以，我们的边际成本最低——不算每次飞行的固定费用——大概在 1,500 到 2,000 万美元。对于……这在有史以来所有火箭中已经好得多了，远远领先。但在完全快速复用的情况下，我们可以把每吨到轨道的成本再降低 100 倍。
Elon MuskJust think of it, like imagine if you had an aircraft or something or a car, and if you had to buy a new car every time you went for a drive, they’ll be very expensive. It’d be silly, frankly. But, in fact, you just refuel the car or recharge the car, and that makes your trip like, I don’t know, 1,000 times cheaper. It’s the same for rockets. It’s very difficult to make this complex machine that can go to orbit. And so, if you cannot reuse it, and if you have to throw even any significant part of it away, that massively increases the cost. Starship, in theory, could do a cost per launch of like, a million, maybe $2 million, or something like that and put over 100 tons in orbit, which is crazy.想象一下，如果你有一架飞机，或者一辆汽车，每次开车都要买一辆新车，那车会非常贵。说实话，这很荒谬。但实际上，你只是给车加油或充电，这让你的旅途便宜了……我不知道，便宜了 1,000 倍。火箭也一样。制造这台能进入轨道的复杂机器非常困难，如果不能复用，即使只是扔掉一部分，也会大幅增加成本。Starship 理论上每次发射的成本可以做到 100 万美元，也许 200 万美元，而且可以向轨道运送超过 100 吨的货物，这太疯狂了。
Lex FridmanYeah, that’s incredible. So you’re saying by far the biggest bang for the buck is to make it fully reusable versus, like, some kind of brilliant breakthrough in theoretical physics?是的，这太难以置信了。所以你是说，到目前为止，最划算的事就是让它完全可复用，而不是什么理论物理方面的惊天突破？
Elon MuskNo, there’s no brilliant… there’s no… just gonna make the rocket reusable. This is an extremely difficult engineering problem. But no new physics is required.不，没有什么突破……没有……就是让火箭可复用。这是一个极其困难的工程问题，但不需要任何新的物理学。
Lex FridmanJust brilliant engineering. Let me ask a slightly philosophical fun question. Gotta ask. I know you’re focused on getting to Mars. But once we’re there on Mars, what form of government, economic system, political system, do you think would work best for an early civilization of humans? I mean, the interesting reason to talk about this stuff it also may help people dream about the future. I know you’re really focused about the short-term engineering dream, but it’s like, I don’t know, there’s something about imagining an actual civilization on Mars. That really gives people hope.只需要卓越的工程。让我问一个略带哲学色彩的有趣问题——必须问。我知道你专注于去火星，但一旦我们到了火星，你认为什么样的政府形式、经济体系、政治体系对早期人类文明最有效？这个话题有趣的原因，它也许能帮助人们憧憬未来。我知道你现在真正专注的是短期工程层面的梦想，但关于火星上真实文明的想象……我不知道，它确实能给人带来希望。
Elon MuskWell, it would be a new frontier and an opportunity to rethink the whole nature of government, just as was done in the creation of the United States. I would suggest having a direct democracy, like people vote directly on things as opposed to representative democracy. Representative democracy, I think, is subject to a special interest and, you know, a coercion of the politicians and that kind of thing. So, I recommend that there’s just direct democracy. People vote on laws, the population votes on laws themselves, and then the laws must be short enough that people can understand them.嗯，那将是一片新边疆，也是重新思考政府本质的机会，就像当年建立美利坚合众国时所做的那样。我建议实行直接民主，即人民直接对事务进行投票，而不是代议制民主。代议制民主，我认为，容易受到特殊利益集团的影响，受到对政客的胁迫之类的。所以我建议直接民主。人民直接投票表决法律，而且法律本身必须足够简短，让人们能够理解。
Lex FridmanYeah, and then, like, keeping a well-informed populace, like really being transparent about all the information, about what they’re voting for.是的，同时保持一个信息充分的民众，真正透明地让大家了解他们投票的内容。
Elon MuskYeah, absolute transparency.是的，绝对透明。
Lex FridmanYeah. And not make it as annoying as those cookies. We have to accept the cookies.是的，别搞得像 cookies 那么烦人，每次都要接受。
Elon MuskThere’s always like a slight amount of trepidation when you click ‘accept cookies’. I feel as though there’s perhaps a very tiny chance that’ll open a portal to hell or something like that. Why do they keep wanting me to accept that? What do they want with this cookie? Like somebody got upset with accepting cookies or something somewhere – I mean, who cares? So annoying to keep accepting all these cookies. Yes, you can have my damn cookie. I don’t care. Whatever.每次点'接受 cookies'都会有一丝轻微的不安。我总觉得，也许这有极小的可能会打开通往地狱的传送门之类的。他们为什么一直要我接受那个？他们想用这个 cookie 干什么？就好像某个地方有人对接受 cookies 感到不满——我是说，谁在乎呢？一直接受这些 cookies 真的太烦了。好，你可以拿走我的 cookie。我不在乎。随便吧。
Lex FridmanYou heard it from Elon first – he accepts all your damn cookies.你们从 Elon 这里最先听到的——他接受你们所有的 cookies。
Elon MuskYeah. And stop asking me. It’s annoying.是的，别再问我了，烦死了。
Lex FridmanYeah, it’s one example of an implementation of a good idea done really horribly.是的，这是一个把好主意执行得极其糟糕的例子。
Elon MuskYeah, there’s some good intentions of like privacy or whatever. But now everyone just has to tick ‘accept cookies’, and it’s now you have billions of people who have to keep clicking ‘accept cookie,’ and it’s super annoying. Just accept the damn cookie, it’s fine. I think a fundamental problem that we’re… because we’ve not really had a major, like a World War or something like that – and obviously, we would like to not have World Wars – there’s not been a cleansing function for rules and regulations. Wars did have some silver lining in that… there would be a reset on rules and regulations after a war.是的，初衷可能是保护隐私之类的。但现在每个人都得一直点'接受 cookies'，数十亿人不得不一遍又一遍地点，超烦的。接受那个 cookie 就行了，没事的。我认为一个根本性的问题是——因为我们还没有真正经历过大规模的战争，比如世界大战——当然我们不希望有世界大战——所以规则法规没有任何清零功能。战争的确有一个好的方面：战后会对规则法规进行重置。
Elon MuskSo, World Wars I and II, there were huge resets on rules and regulations. If society does not have a war, there’s no cleansing function or garbage collection for rules and regulations – then rules and regulations will accumulate every year because they’re immortal. There’s no actual… humans die, but the laws don’t. So, we need a garbage collection function for rules and regulations. They should not just be immortal because some of the rules and regulations that are put in place will be counterproductive – done with good intentions, but counterproductive. Sometimes not done with good intentions. So, if rules and regulations just accumulate every year, and you get more and more of them, then eventually, you won’t be able to do anything. You just like Gulliver with, you know, tied down by 1,000s of little strings.所以，一战和二战之后，规则法规都进行了大规模的重置。如果社会不经历战争，就没有规则法规的清零功能或垃圾回收机制——那么规则法规就会每年不断累积，因为它们是不朽的。实际上……人会死，但法律不会。所以我们需要一个规则法规的垃圾回收机制。它们不应该仅仅是不朽的，因为有些规则法规出于好意却适得其反，有时甚至并非出于好意。如果规则法规每年只增不减，越来越多，最终你什么都做不了——就像格列佛被成千上万根细绳捆住一样。
Elon MuskAnd we see that in US and basically all economies that have been around for a while. And regulators and legislators create new rules and regulations every year, but they don’t put effort into removing them. And I think that’s very important that we put effort into removing rules and regulations. But it gets tough because you have special interests that then are dependent on… if they have a vested interest in that whatever rule or regulation, then they fight to not get it removed.我们在美国以及基本上所有存在了一段时间的经济体中都看到了这种情况。监管机构和立法机构每年都在制定新的规则法规，却不花力气去删除它们。我认为非常重要的是，我们要花力气去删除规则法规。但这很难，因为有些特殊利益集团会依附于……如果它们在某条规则法规上有既得利益，就会竭力阻止它被删除。
Lex FridmanYeah, I guess the problem with the Constitution is it’s kind of like C versus Java because it doesn’t have any garbage collection built in. I think there should be. When you first said the metaphor of garbage collection, I loved it.是的，我想宪法的问题就像 C 语言对比 Java，因为它没有内置垃圾回收机制。我觉得应该有。你刚才说到垃圾回收这个比喻时，我真的很喜欢。
Elon MuskYeah, it’s from a coding standpoint.是的，从编程的角度来说。
Lex FridmanFrom a coding standpoint, yeah. It would be interesting if the laws themselves kind of had a built-in thing where they kind of die after a while unless somebody explicitly publicly defends them. So that’s sort of, it’s not like somebody has to kill them, they kind of die themselves. They disappear. Not to defend Java or anything. With C++, you could also have great garbage collection and Python, and so on.从编程角度来说，是的。如果法律本身内置了某种机制，让它们在一段时间后自动失效，除非有人明确公开地为其辩护，那会很有意思。这样就不需要有人主动去废除它们，它们会自动消失，不攻自破。并不是说要给 Java 背书什么——用 C++ 也可以有很好的垃圾回收，Python 等也一样。
Elon MuskYeah, something needs to happen, or civilization’s arteries just harden over time. And you can just get less and less done because there’s just a rule against everything. So I think, I don’t know, for Mars or whatever, I’d say, or even for here, obviously, for Earth as well, I think there should be an active process for removing rules and regulations and questioning their existence. If we’ve got a function for creating rules and regulations, because rules and regulations can also think of as like… they’re like software or lines of code for operating civilization. That’s the rules and regulations. So it’s not like we shouldn’t have rules and regulations, but you have a code accumulation, but no code removal. And so it just gets to become basically archaic bloatware after a while. It makes it hard for things to progress.是的，得做点什么，否则文明的动脉会随着时间硬化，你能做的事越来越少，因为几乎每件事都有规定反对。所以我认为，不管是对火星还是……显然，这里也一样，对地球也是，我认为应该有一个主动清除规则法规的流程，并质疑它们存在的必要性。如果我们有创建规则法规的功能——因为规则法规也可以看作……它们就像运行文明的软件或代码行。规则法规就是这个。所以并不是说我们不该有规则法规，问题是代码只增不减，最终就变成了基本上过时的臃肿软件，让事情难以推进。
Elon MuskSo, I don’t know, maybe on Mars, you’d have, like, any given law must have a sunset and require active voting to keep it up there. I should also say, like – and these are just, I don’t know, recommendations or thoughts, and ultimately it will be up to the people on Mars to decide – but I think it should be easier to remove a law than to add one, just to overcome the inertia of laws. So maybe it’s like, for argument’s sake, you need like, say, 60% vote to have a law take effect, but only 40% vote to remove it.所以，我不知道，也许在火星上，任何一条法律都必须设定日落条款，并需要积极投票才能继续保留。我还应该说——这只是我的一些想法和建议，最终由火星上的人来决定——但我认为废除一条法律应该比制定一条法律更容易，以此来克服法律的惰性。所以，比方说，让一条法律生效需要 60% 的投票，但废除它只需要 40% 的投票。
Lex FridmanSo let me be the guy… you posted a meme on Twitter recently, where there’s like a row of urinals, and a guy just walks all the way across. And he tells you about crypto.那么让我来当那个……你最近在 Twitter 上发了一个表情包，里面有一排小便池，有个人走了很远的距离，然后跟你聊加密货币。
Elon MuskListen, I mean, that’s how it is so many times, I think, maybe even literally.听着，我是说，很多时候就是这样，我想，甚至可能是真实发生过的。
Lex FridmanDo you think technologically speaking, there’s any room for ideas of smart contracts or so on? Because you mentioned laws. That’s an interesting implement use of things like smart contracts to implement the laws by which governments function. Like something built on Ethereum, or maybe a dog coin that enables smart contracts somehow?从技术上讲，你认为智能合约之类的想法有空间吗？因为你提到了法律，这是一个有趣的应用——用智能合约来实现政府运行的法律。比如建立在 Ethereum 上的东西，或者某种能够支持智能合约的 dog coin？
Elon MuskI don’t quite understand this whole smart-contract thing. I’m too downtown to understand smart contracts. (both laughing)我不太理解智能合约这整个东西。我太过时了，不懂智能合约。（两人大笑）
Lex FridmanThat’s a good line.这句话说得很妙。
Elon MuskMy general approach to any kind of deal or whatever is just make sure there’s clarity of understanding. That’s the most important thing. And just keep any kind of deal very short and simple, plain language, and just make sure everyone understands: “This is the deal. Is it clear? And what are the consequences if various things don’t happen?” But usually, deals are – business deals or whatever – are way too long and complex and overly lawyered. And pointlessly.我对任何类型的交易或合作，基本原则就是确保理解清晰。这是最重要的事。任何交易都应该尽量简短、简单，用通俗语言，确保所有人都明白：'这就是交易内容，清楚吗？如果各种情况没有发生，会有什么后果？'但通常情况下，交易——商业交易之类的——都太长、太复杂，律师介入过度，而且毫无必要地如此。
Lex FridmanYou mentioned that Doge is the people’s coin. And you said that you’re 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 Dogecoin is the official currency of Mars, it’s the coin of the future?你提到 Doge 是人民的货币，你说 SpaceX 可能考虑真的把一枚 Dogecoin 放到月球上。这是你还在考虑的事吗？或许是火星？你认为——我们谈到了火星上的政治体系——有没有可能 Dogecoin 是火星的官方货币，是未来的货币？
Elon MuskWell, I think Mars itself will need to have a different currency because you can’t synchronize due to speed of light. Not easily.嗯，我认为火星本身需要一种不同的货币，因为由于光速的限制，你无法进行同步，至少不容易。
Lex FridmanSo it must be completely standalone from Earth.所以它必须完全独立于地球。
Elon MuskWell, yeah, because Mars’s closest approach is four light minutes away, roughly. And then its furthest 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 going to synchronize properly. I don’t know if Mars will have a cryptocurrency as a thing, but probably, seems likely. But it would be some kind of localized thing on Mars.嗯，是的，因为火星最近的时候距地球大约 4 光分，最远的时候大约 20 光分，可能稍多一些。如果有 20 分钟的光速延迟，就没法同步一个区块链。如果区块链是 1 分钟一个区块，就没办法正常同步了。我不知道火星会不会有加密货币，但大概会，看起来很可能。但应该是某种火星本地的东西。
Lex FridmanAnd you let the people decide.你让人民来决定。
Elon MuskYeah, absolutely. The future of Mars should be up to the Martians. I think the cryptocurrency thing is an interesting approach to reducing the error in the database that is called money. I think I have a pretty deep understanding of what money actually is on a practical day-to-day basis because of PayPal. We really got in deep there. And right now the money system, actually, for practical purposes is really a bunch of heterogeneous mainframes running old COBOL.是的，当然。火星的未来应该由火星人来决定。我认为加密货币是一种有趣的尝试，用来减少货币这个数据库中的错误。我通过 PayPal 对货币到底是什么有了相当深入的实践理解，我们在那里真的钻研得很深。现实中，货币系统在实际运作上，其实就是一堆运行着陈旧 COBOL 代码的异构大型机。
Lex FridmanOkay, you mean literally, that’s literally what’s happening.好，你是说字面意义上的，那是真实发生的情况。
Elon MuskIn batch mode, yeah. I pity the poor bastards who have to maintain that code. That’s pain.以批处理模式运行，是的。我同情那些不得不维护那些代码的可怜人，太痛苦了。
Lex FridmanNot even Fortran – COBOL, yep.连 Fortran 都不是——是 COBOL，是的。
Elon MuskIt’s COBOL. And the banks were still buying mainframes in 2021 and running ancient COBOL code. The Federal Reserve is probably even older than what the banks have, and they have an old COBOL mainframe. The government effectively has editing privileges on the money database, and they use those editing privileges to make more money whenever they want. And this increases the error in the database that is money.就是 COBOL。银行在 2021 年还在购买大型机，运行着古老的 COBOL 代码。美联储的东西可能比银行的还要老，它们有一台陈旧的 COBOL 大型机。政府实际上拥有货币数据库的编辑权限，他们随时用这个权限增发货币，这增加了货币数据库中的错误。
Elon MuskSo I think money should really be viewed through the lens of information theory. It’s kind of an internet connection, like, what’s the bandwidth, total bit rate, what is the latency, jitter, packet drop, you know, errors in network communication? Just think of money like that, basically. I think that’s probably how to think of it. And then say, what system, from an information theory standpoint, allows an economy to function the best. Crypto is an attempt to reduce the error in money that is contributed by governments diluting the money supply as basically a pernicious form of taxation.所以我认为，应该真正从信息论的角度来看待货币。它有点像一个互联网连接——带宽是多少，总比特率是多少，延迟是多少，抖动、丢包率，网络通信中的错误是多少？就这样来想货币。我认为这大概是思考它的方式。然后问，从信息论的角度，什么样的系统能让经济运转最好。加密货币是一种尝试，通过减少政府稀释货币供应这种本质上的隐性税收所带来的货币误差。
Lex FridmanSo both policy in terms of with inflation and actual like technological, COBOL – cryptocurrency takes us into the 21st century in terms of the actual systems that allow you to do the transaction, to store wealth, all those kinds of things.所以无论是通货膨胀方面的政策，还是技术层面——COBOL——加密货币都将我们带入 21 世纪，就实际系统而言，它能让你完成交易、储存财富，诸如此类。
Elon MuskLike I said, just think of money as information. People often will think of money as having power in and of itself. It does not. Money is information, and it does not have power in and of itself. Again, applying the physics tools of thinking about things in the limit is helpful. If you are stranded on a tropical island, and you have a trillion dollars, it’s useless. Because there’s no resource allocation. Money is a databased resource allocation, but there’s no resource to allocate except yourself. So money is useless. If you’re stranded on a desert island with no food, all the Bitcoin in the world will not stop you from starving.就像我说的，把货币当作信息来看。人们往往会认为货币本身具有力量，但它并没有。货币是信息，它本身不具有力量。再次用把事情推到极限来分析的物理工具，会很有帮助。如果你被困在一座热带荒岛上，手里有一万亿美元，那什么用都没有。因为没有资源可以分配，货币是基于数据库的资源分配，但没有可分配的资源——只有你自己。货币就没有用了。如果你被困在荒岛上没有食物，世界上所有的 Bitcoin 都无法阻止你饿死。
Elon MuskSo just think of money as a database for resource allocation across time and space. In what form should that database, that data system… what would be most effective? There is a fundamental issue with… say, Bitcoin in its current form, in that it’s… the transaction volume is very limited. And the latency for properly confirmed transaction is too long, much longer than you’d like. So it’s actually not great from a transaction volume standpoint or latency standpoint. It is perhaps useful to solve an aspect of the money database problem, which is a sort of store of wealth or an accounting of relative obligations, I suppose. But it is not useful as a currency, as a day-to-day currency.所以，把货币看作一个跨越时间和空间进行资源分配的数据库。这个数据库，这个数据系统，应该以什么形式存在……什么形式最有效？Bitcoin 目前形式存在一个根本问题，就是交易量非常有限，而且一笔经过妥善确认的交易的延迟时间太长，远比你希望的要长。所以，从交易量和延迟的角度来说，它实际上并不出色。它也许有助于解决货币数据库问题的某个方面——某种财富储存，或者对相对债务的记账。但它作为一种货币、日常货币来说，并不实用。
Lex FridmanBut people have proposed different technological solutions.但是人们已经提出了不同的技术解决方案。
Elon MuskLike Lightning.比如闪电网络。
Lex FridmanYeah, Lightning Network, and the Layer 2 technologies on top of that. It seems to be all kind of a trade-off. But the point is, it’s kind of brilliant to say that just to think about information, think about what kind of database, what kind of infrastructure enables the exchange of information.是的，Lightning Network，以及在其上的 Layer 2 技术。看起来都是在做权衡。但重点是，从本质上说把它当作信息来思考、思考什么样的数据库、什么样的基础设施能够实现信息的交换，这个思路非常精妙。
Elon MuskYeah, let’s say, you’re operating an economy, and you need to have some thing that allows for the efficient… to have efficient value ratios between products and services. So you’ve got this massive number of products and services, and need to… you can’t just barter because that would be extremely unwieldy. So you need something that gives you a ratio of exchange between goods and services. And then something that allows you to shift obligations across time, like debt, debt and equity shift obligations across time. Then what does the best job of that?是的，假设你在运营一个经济体，你需要某种东西能够实现……让产品和服务之间有高效的价值比率。你有海量的产品和服务，你需要……不能只是以物易物，那样会极度繁琐。所以你需要某种东西，给你提供商品和服务之间的交换比率。然后还需要某种东西让你能够跨越时间转移债务——比如，债务和股权就是跨时间转移债务的工具。那么，什么能最好地完成这件事呢？
Elon MuskPart of the reason why I think there’s some merit to Dogecoin – even though it was obviously created as a joke – is that it actually does have a much higher transaction volume capability than Bitcoin. And the cost of doing a transaction, the Dogecoin fee, is very low. Like right now, if you want to do a Bitcoin transaction, the price of doing that transaction is very high, so you could not use it effectively for most things. And nor could it even scale to high volume. When Bitcoin was started, I guess around 2008 or something like that, the internet connections were much worse than they are today, like order of magnitude. I mean, they just were way, way worse in 2008. So, like having a small block size or whatever it is, and a long synchronization time made sense in 2008. But 2021 or fast forward 10 years, it’s comically low.我认为 Dogecoin 有一定道理的部分原因——尽管它显然是作为玩笑创造的——是它实际上比 Bitcoin 有高得多的交易量处理能力，而且每笔交易的成本——Dogecoin 的手续费——非常低。现在，如果你想做一笔 Bitcoin 交易，交易费用非常高，所以你根本没法用它来处理大多数事情，规模化也做不到。Bitcoin 诞生时，大概是 2008 年左右，当时的网络连接比现在差得多，差了好几个数量级——2008 年真的差太多了。所以，小区块大小或者什么，以及较长的同步时间，在 2008 年是合理的。但到了 2021 年，或者再过 10 年，这就低得可笑了。
Elon MuskI think there’s some value to having a linear increase in the amount of currency that is generated because some amount of the currency… if a currency is too deflationary, or I should say, if a currency is expected to increase in value over time, there’s reluctance to spend it because you’re like, “Oh, I’ll just hold it and not spend it because its scarcity is increasing with time. If I spend it now, then I will regret spending it. I will just, you know, ‘hodl’ it.” But if there’s some dilution of the currency occurring over time, that’s more of an incentive to use it as a currency.我认为，货币生成量线性增长是有一定价值的，因为货币的一部分……如果一种货币通缩性太强，或者说，如果一种货币预期会随时间升值，人们就不愿意花它，因为你会想：'哦，我就持有它不花，因为它的稀缺性在增加，如果现在花了，我以后会后悔。就'hodl'吧。'但如果货币会随时间有一定程度的通胀，就更有动力把它当作货币来使用。
Elon MuskDogecoin somewhat randomly has just a fixed number of coins or hash strings that are generated every year. So there’s some inflation, but it’s not a percentage at base. It’s a fixed number, so the percentage of inflation will necessarily decline over time. I’m not saying that it’s like the ideal system for a currency, but I think it actually is just fundamentally better than anything else I’ve seen, just by accident.Dogecoin 有点随机地拥有一个固定数量的硬币或哈希字符串每年生成。所以有一定的通胀，但不是按基数的百分比计算，而是一个固定数量，所以通胀率必然会随时间下降。我并不是说它是货币的理想系统，但我认为它实际上在本质上就是比我见过的任何其他东西都要好，而且完全是偶然的。
Lex FridmanI like how you said, around 2008, so you’re not… you know, some people suggest that you might be Satoshi Nakamoto. You’ve previously said you’re not.我喜欢你说的'大概是 2008 年'，所以你不是……你知道，有些人认为你可能就是 Satoshi Nakamoto。你之前也说过你不是。
Elon MuskI’m not.我不是。
Lex FridmanYou’re not, for sure. Would you tell us if you were?你不是，确定吗？如果你是，你会告诉我们吗？
Elon MuskYes.会的。
Lex FridmanOkay. Do you think it’s a feature or a bug that he’s anonymous, or she, or they? It’s an interesting kind of quirk of human history that there’s a particular technology that is a completely anonymous inventor, or creator.好。你认为他——或者她，或者他们——是匿名的，这是一个特性还是一个缺陷？人类历史上有这样一件奇特的事：某种技术的发明者或创造者是完全匿名的。
Elon MuskWell, I mean, you can look at the evolution of ideas before the launch of Bitcoin and see who wrote about those ideas. And then, I don’t know, obviously, I don’t know who created Bitcoin for practical purposes. But the evolution of ideas is pretty clear before that, and it seems as though Nick Szabo is probably more than anyone else responsible for the evolution of those ideas. So, here he claims not to be Nakamoto, but I’m not sure that’s neither here nor there. But he seems to be the one more responsible for the ideas behind Bitcoin than anyone else.嗯，你可以看看 Bitcoin 发布之前相关思想的演化历程，看看谁写过那些思想。然后，我不知道，我显然不知道实际上谁创造了 Bitcoin。但在此之前，思想的演化轨迹相当清晰，而 Nick Szabo 似乎比任何人都更有责任推动了那些思想的演化。他声称自己不是 Nakamoto，但我不确定这是不是无关紧要的。但他似乎是对 Bitcoin 背后那些思想贡献最大的人。
Lex FridmanSo it’s not, perhaps, like singular figures aren’t even as important as the figures involved in the evolution of ideas that led to things.所以，也许并不像看起来那样，是某个单一的重大人物，而是那些推动思想演化并最终促成事物的人更为重要。
Elon MuskYeah.是的。
Lex FridmanPerhaps, it’s sad to think about history, but maybe most names will be forgotten anyway.也许，虽然令人伤感，但历史上大多数名字终究会被遗忘。
Elon MuskWhat is a name anyway? A name attached to an idea, what does it even mean really?一个名字究竟意味着什么？一个附着在某个思想上的名字，它到底有什么意义？
Lex FridmanI think, Shakespeare had a thing about roses and stuff, whatever he said.我想 Shakespeare 有句话是关于玫瑰之类的，不管他说了什么。
Elon Musk“A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.”'玫瑰换个名字，依然芬芳。'
Lex FridmanI got Elon to quote Shakespeare. I feel like I accomplished something today.我让 Elon 引用了 Shakespeare，今天感觉有所成就了。
Elon Musk“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?” (both laughing)'能否将你比作一个夏日？'（两人大笑）
Lex FridmanI’m gonna clip that out instead.我要改剪那段了。
Elon Musk“Thou art more lovely and more temperate.”'你比夏日更可爱、更温和。'
Lex FridmanAutopilot. Tesla Autopilot has been through an incredible journey over the past six years, or perhaps even longer in your mind, in the minds of many involved.自动驾驶。Tesla Autopilot 在过去六年里经历了一段不可思议的旅程，或者在很多人脑海中，包括你的脑海中，时间可能更长。
Elon MuskI think that’s where we first connected, really, was the autopilot stuff, autonomy and…我想我们真正建立联系，就是从 Autopilot 那些事情开始的，自动驾驶和……
Lex FridmanThe whole journey was incredible to me to watch. Part of it is I was at MIT, and I knew the difficulty of computer vision, and I had a lot of colleagues and friends about the DARPA challenge and knew how difficult it is. And so there was a natural skepticism when I first drove a Tesla with the initial system based on Mobileye. Yeah, I thought there’s no way. The first time I got in, I thought there’s no way this car could stay in the lane and create a comfortable experience. So my intuition initially was that the lane keeping problem is way too difficult to solve.整个历程对我来说简直太精彩了。我当时在 MIT，知道计算机视觉有多难，也和很多研究 DARPA 挑战赛的同事和朋友熟识，清楚这有多难。所以当我第一次驾驶基于 Mobileye 初代系统的 Tesla 时，我是有很强的怀疑的。是的，我当时想，这绝对不可能。我第一次坐上去，就想：这车绝对没法保持在车道里并创造舒适的体验。所以我最初的直觉是，车道保持问题的难度根本无法解决。
Elon MuskOh, thank you. Yeah, that’s relatively easy.哦，谢谢。是啊，那个相对容易。
Lex FridmanBut solve in the way that we just – we talked about previous prototype – versus a thing that actually creates a pleasant experience over hundreds of 1000s of miles or millions. I was proven wrong…但要以我们讨论过的那种方式来解决——不只是原型——而是真正在数十万甚至数百万英里里都能创造愉悦体验的东西。我被证明是错的……
Elon MuskWe had to wrap a lot of code around the Mobileye thing; it didn’t just work by itself.我们在 Mobileye 那套东西外面加了很多代码，它不是自己就能运行的。
Lex FridmanI mean, that’s part of the story of how you approach things sometimes. Sometimes you do things from scratch. Sometimes at first, you kind of see what’s out there, and then you decide to do it from scratch. One of the boldest decisions I’ve seen is both on the hardware and the software to decide to eventually go from scratch. I thought again, I was skeptical whether that’s going to be able to work out because it’s such a difficult problem. And so, it was an incredible journey what I see now with everything, the hardware, the compute, the sensors. The things I maybe care and love about most is the stuff that Andrej Karpathy is leading with the dataset selection, the whole data engine process, the neural network architectures, the way that’s in the real world… that network is tested, validated, all the different test sets versus the image net model of computer vision, like what’s in academia is like real-world artificial intelligence.我是说，这也是你有时处理事情的方式——有时你从零开始做，有时先看看市面上有什么，然后决定从零重做。我见过的最大胆的决定之一，就是在硬件和软件上，都决定最终从头开始。我当时又一次持怀疑态度——这真的能搞定吗——因为这是一个如此困难的问题。所以，看到现在所有的一切——硬件、算力、传感器——我最在乎、最喜爱的是 Andrej Karpathy 所主导的那些东西：数据集筛选、整个数据引擎流程、神经网络架构，以及在真实世界中……那个网络被测试、验证的方式，不同的测试集相比 ImageNet 模式的计算机视觉——学术界那一套——就像真实世界的人工智能。
Elon MuskAndrej is awesome and obviously plays an important role. But we have a lot of really talented people driving things. And Ashok is actually the head of autopilot engineering. Andrej is the director of AI.Andrej 非常出色，显然起了重要作用。但我们有很多真正有才华的人在推动事情向前。Ashok 实际上是 Autopilot 工程负责人，Andrej 是 AI 总监。
Lex FridmanAI stuff, yeah. I’m aware that there’s an incredible team of just a lot going on.AI 那块，是的。我知道有一支令人难以置信的团队，里面发生着很多事情。
Elon MuskYeah, people will give me too much credit, and they’ll give Andrej too much credit.是的，人们会过分归功于我，也过分归功于 Andrej。
Lex FridmanAnd people should realize how much is going on under the…人们应该意识到，底下发生着多少事情……
Elon MuskYeah, it’s just a lot of really talented people. The Tesla Autopilot AI team is extremely talented. It’s like some of the smartest people in the world. So yeah, we’re getting it done.是的，就是很多非常有才华的人。Tesla Autopilot AI 团队极其优秀，都是世界上最聪明的人之一。所以，是的，我们在把事情做成。
Lex FridmanWhat are some insights you’ve gained over those five, six years of autopilot about the problem of autonomous driving. So you leaped in having some sort of first principles kinds of intuitions, but nobody knows how difficult the problem…在这五六年的 Autopilot 经历中，你对自动驾驶问题有哪些新的认识？你进入这个领域时有一些第一性原理层面的直觉，但没有人知道这个问题有多难……
Elon MuskI thought the self-driving problem would be hard, but it was harder than I thought. It’s not that I thought it’d be easy, I thought it would be very hard, but it was actually way harder than even that. I mean, what it comes down to at the end of the day is to solve self-driving, you basically need to recreate what humans do to drive, which is humans drive with optical sensors, eyes, and biological neural nets.我认为自动驾驶问题会很难，但实际上比我想的还要难。不是说我觉得它会容易，我觉得它会非常难，但实际上比那还要难得多。我是说，归根结底，要解决自动驾驶，你基本上需要重现人类开车的方式——人类用光学传感器、眼睛和生物神经网络来开车。
Elon MuskThat’s how the entire road system is designed to work: with basically passive optical and neural nets, biologically. So, actually, for full self-driving to work, we have to recreate that in digital form. That means cameras with advanced neural nets in silicon form. And then it will obviously solve for full self-driving. That’s the only way. I don’t think there’s any other way.整个道路系统就是这样设计的：基本上是被动光学加上生物神经网络。所以，要真正实现完全自动驾驶，我们必须用数字化的形式再现这一切。这意味着要有配备先进神经网络的摄像头，用硅来实现。到时候，它就自然能解决完全自动驾驶。这是唯一的方法，我认为没有其他方法。
Lex FridmanBut the question is, what aspects of human nature do you have to encode into the machine, right? So you have to solve the perception problem like detect… and then you first realize, what is the perception problem for driving? Like, all the kinds of things you have to be able to see; like, what do we even look at when we drive? I just recently heard Andrej talked about, at MIT, about car doors. I think it was the world’s greatest talk of all time about car doors – you know, the fine details of car doors, like what is even an open car door, man.但问题是，你需要把人类的哪些特性编码进机器，对吧？你必须解决感知问题——检测……然后你首先要意识到，驾驶的感知问题到底是什么？我们开车时到底在看什么？我最近刚听了 Andrej 在 MIT 关于车门的演讲，我认为那是有史以来最伟大的关于车门的演讲——关于开着的车门的细节，就像，什么才算是一扇打开的车门，伙计。
Lex FridmanThe ontology of that, that’s a perception problem. We humans solve that perception problem, and Tesla has to solve that problem. And then there’s the control and the planning coupled with the perception. You have to figure out what’s involved in driving, especially in all the different edge cases. I mean, maybe you can comment on this, how much game-theoretic kind of stuff needs to be involved at a four-way stop sign? As humans, when we drive, our actions affect the world, like, it changes how others behave. In most autonomous driving, you’re usually just responding to the scene, as opposed to really asserting yourself in the scene. Do you think…这的本体论——那是一个感知问题。我们人类解决了那个感知问题，Tesla 也必须解决。然后是与感知耦合的控制和规划。你必须搞清楚驾驶涉及什么，尤其是在各种边缘案例中。也许你能评论一下，在十字路口停牌前需要多少博弈论的成分？作为人类，我们开车时，我们的行动会影响世界，会改变他人的行为。在大多数自动驾驶系统中，通常只是对场景做出响应，而不是真正在场景中主动出击。你认为……
Elon MuskI think these sort of control logic conundrums are not the hard part. The, you know, let’s see…我认为这类控制逻辑上的两难问题并不是最难的部分。那……让我看看……
Lex FridmanWhat do you think is the hard part of this whole beautiful, complex problem?你认为这整个美丽而复杂的问题，最难的部分是什么？
Elon MuskIt’s a lot of freaking software, man, a lot of smart lines of code. For sure, in order to create an accurate vector space… so like, you’re coming from image space, which is like this flow of photons going to the cameras. And then, since you have this massive bitstream in image space, and then you have to effectively compress a massive bitstream corresponding to photons that knocked off an electron in a camera sensor and turn that bitstream into vector space.是大量的软件，兄弟，大量智慧的代码行。毫无疑问，要创建一个精确的向量空间……你从图像空间出发，就像光子不断流向摄像头。然后，你在图像空间里有这个海量的比特流，你必须有效地将对应着撞击摄像头传感器中电子的光子的海量比特流，压缩转化成向量空间。
Elon MuskBy vector space, I mean, you’ve got cars and humans and lane lines and curves and traffic lights and that kind of thing. Once you have an accurate vector space, the control problem is similar to that of a video game, like Grand Theft Auto or Cyberpunk. If you have accurate vector space. It’s, the control problem is… I wouldn’t say it’s trivial. It’s not trivial. But it’s not like some insurmountable thing. But having accurate vector space is very difficult.我说的向量空间，是指你有汽车、行人、车道线、弯道、红绿灯之类的东西。一旦你有了精确的向量空间，控制问题就类似于视频游戏，就像《侠盗猎车手》或《赛博朋克》。如果你有精确的向量空间，控制问题……我不能说它微不足道，它不简单。但也不是什么不可逾越的东西。而获得精确的向量空间才是非常困难的。
Lex FridmanYeah, I think we humans don’t give enough respect to how incredible the human perception system is – that mapping the raw photons to the vector space representation in our heads.是的，我认为我们人类对人类感知系统有多么惊人没有给予足够的尊重——将原始光子映射到我们脑海中的向量空间表示。
Elon MuskYour brain is doing an incredible amount of processing and giving you an image that is a very cleaned-up image. When we look around here, you see color in the corners of your eyes, but actually, your eyes have very few cones, cone receptors in the peripheral vision. Your eyes are painting color in the peripheral vision. You don’t realize it, but your eyes are actually painting color. And your eyes also have this blood vessels and also all sorts of gnarly things, and there’s a blind spot. But do you see your blind spot? No, your brain is painting in the blind spot. You can do these things online, where you, “Look here, and look at this point, and then look at this point.” And if it’s in your blind spot, your brain will just fill in the missing bits.你的大脑正在进行数量惊人的处理，并给你呈现出一张非常干净的图像。当我们环顾这里，你在眼角看到颜色，但实际上，你的眼睛在周边视觉里几乎没有视锥细胞。你的眼睛是在周边视觉里填充颜色的。你意识不到，但你的眼睛实际上是在画色彩。眼睛里还有血管，还有各种乱七八糟的东西，还有盲点。但你看到你的盲点了吗？没有，你的大脑在填充盲点。你可以在网上做这种测试——'看这里，然后看这个点，再看那个点。'如果那个点在你的盲点上，你的大脑就会把缺失的部分填上。
Lex FridmanThe peripheral vision is so cool. It makes you realize all the illusions, for vision science… it makes you realize just how incredible the brain is.周边视觉真的很神奇。它让你意识到视觉科学中的所有那些错觉……让你意识到大脑有多么不可思议。
Elon MuskThe brain is doing a crazy amount of post-processing on the vision signals for your eyes. It’s insane. And then, even once you get all those vision signals, your brain is constantly trying to forget as much as possible. Perhaps the weakest thing about the brain is memory. So because memory is so expensive to our brain and so limited, your brain is trying to forget as much as possible and distill the things that you see into the smallest amounts of information possible. So your brain is trying to not just get to a vector space, but get to a vector space, that is the smallest possible vector space of only relevant objects.大脑对眼睛传来的视觉信号做着疯狂数量的后处理，简直令人难以置信。而且，即使获取了所有这些视觉信号，大脑也在不断努力地尽可能多地遗忘。也许大脑最薄弱的地方就是记忆。正因为记忆对大脑来说如此昂贵、如此有限，大脑正在尽可能多地遗忘，把你所看到的东西提炼成尽可能少的信息。大脑不只是试图到达向量空间，而是试图到达一个尽可能小的向量空间——只包含相关对象。
Elon MuskYou can sort of look inside your brain, or at least I can, like when you drive down the road and try to think about what your brain is actually doing consciously. And it’s constantly… it’s like, you’ll see a car… because you don’t have cameras, you don’t have eyes in the back of your head or the side, you know, so you say like, your head is like a… you know, you basically have two cameras on a slow gimbal.你可以在某种程度上审视自己的大脑，至少我可以——比如开车时，试着思考你的大脑到底在做什么。它不断地……你看到一辆车……因为你没有摄像头，背后和侧面都没有眼睛，所以……你的头就像……你基本上有两台相机放在一个缓慢转动的云台上。
Elon MuskAnd eyesight’s not that great, okay? And people are constantly distracted and thinking about things and texting and doing all sorts things they shouldn’t do in a car, changing the radio station, having arguments. When’s the last time you looked right and left, and rearward, or even diagonally forward to actually refresh your vector space? You’re glancing around, and what your mind is doing is trying to distill the relevant vectors, basically objects with a position and motion, and then editing that down to the least amount that’s necessary for you to drive.而且视力也不是特别好，好吧？人们总是分心，想着其他事，发短信，做着各种不该在开车时做的事，调收音机频道，争吵。你上次真正环顾左右、向后，甚至斜向前方，来实际刷新你的向量空间是什么时候？你只是扫一眼，你的大脑在做的是提炼出相关的向量——基本上就是有位置和运动的物体——然后把它们精简到驾驶所需的最少量。
Lex FridmanIt does seem to be able to edit it down or compress even further into things like concepts. The human mind seems to go sometimes beyond vector space to sort of space of concepts to where you’ll see a thing. It’s no longer represented spatially somehow; it’s almost like a concept that you should be aware of. Like, if this is a school zone, you’ll remember that as a concept. Which is a weird thing to represent, but perhaps for driving, you don’t need to fully represent those things, or maybe you get those kind of indirectly.它似乎甚至能进一步压缩，提炼成概念之类的东西。人类的大脑有时似乎会超越向量空间，进入某种概念空间——你看到一个东西，它不再以空间方式被表示，而更像是一个你应该留意的概念。比如，如果这是一个学校区域，你会把它作为一个概念记住——这是一种奇特的表示方式，但也许对驾驶来说，你不需要完全表示那些东西，或者也许是间接获得那类信息的。
Elon MuskWell, you need to establish vector space and then actually have predictions for those vector spaces. Like you drive past a bus, and you see that there’s people… before you drove past the bus, you saw people are crossing… or just imagine there’s like a large truck or something blocking sight. But before you came up to the truck, you saw that there were some kids about to cross the road in front of the truck. Now you can no longer see the kids, but you would now know, okay, those kids are probably going to pass by the truck and cross the road, even though you cannot see them. So you have to have memory… you need to remember that there were kids there, and you need to have some forward prediction of what their position will be at the time of relevance.你需要先建立向量空间，然后对这些向量空间做预测。比如你开车经过一辆公共汽车，在此之前你看到有人正在过马路——或者就想象有一辆大卡车挡住了视线。你靠近卡车之前，看到有几个孩子准备在卡车前面穿越马路。现在你已经看不见那些孩子了，但你知道：他们很可能已经从卡车旁边走过，穿越了马路。所以你必须有记忆——你需要记住那里有孩子，并且要对他们在关键时刻的位置做出前瞻性预测。
Lex FridmanIt’s a really hard problem. So with occlusions in computer vision, when you can’t see an object anymore, even when it just walks behind a tree and reappears – that’s a really, really… I mean, at least in academic literature, it’s tracking through occlusions – it’s very difficult.这是个非常难的问题。在计算机视觉里，当一个物体被遮挡、你看不到它时——哪怕只是它走到一棵树后面然后重新出现——至少在学术文献里，这叫做"遮挡中的跟踪"，非常非常难。
Elon MuskYeah, we’re doing it.是的，我们正在做这件事。
Lex FridmanI understand this. So, some of it…我理解这一点。所以，其中有些……
Elon MuskIt’s like object permanence. The same thing happens with the humans with neural nets. Like, when a toddler grows up, there’s a point in time where they have a sense of object permanence. Before a certain age, if you have a ball, or toy or whatever, and you put it behind your back, and you pop it out – before they have object permanence, it’s like a new thing every time. It’s like, “Whoa, this toy went poof, disappeared, and now it’s back again.” And they can’t believe it. They can play peek-a-boo all day long because peek-a-boo is fresh every time. But then we figure out object permanence, then they realize, “Oh, no, the object is not gone. It’s just behind your back.”这就像物体恒存性一样。人类神经网络里也会发生同样的事情。比如一个幼儿在成长过程中，会在某个时间点形成物体恒存性的意识。在某个年龄之前，如果你手里有个球或玩具什么的，然后把它藏到背后，再拿出来——在他们有物体恒存性之前，每次都像是全新的东西。就好像"哇，这个玩具咻一下消失了，现在又回来了。"他们会惊得不敢相信。他们可以整天玩躲猫猫，因为每次躲猫猫对他们来说都是新鲜的。但之后我们弄清楚了物体恒存性，他们就明白了："哦，不，那个东西没有消失，只是藏在你背后。"
Lex FridmanSometimes, I wish we never did figure out object permanence.有时候，我真希望我们从来没弄明白物体恒存性。
Elon MuskYeah, so that’s a…是啊，所以这是个……
Lex FridmanThat’s an important problem to solve.这是个需要解决的重要问题。
Elon MuskYes. An important evolution of the neural nets in the car is memory across both time and space. You have to say like, how long do you want to remember things for and there’s a cost to remembering things for a long time. You can run out of memory if you try to remember too much for too long. And then you also have things that are stale if you remember them for too long. And then you also need things to remember over time.是的。汽车神经网络的一个重要演进方向，就是跨时间和空间的记忆。你需要考虑想让系统记住东西多久，而长时间记忆是有代价的。如果你试图长时间记太多东西，你可能会耗尽内存。而且如果你记得太久，有些东西就会过时。同时你也需要跨时间保持某些记忆。
Elon MuskSo even if you have, for argument’s sake, five seconds of memory on a time basis, but let’s say you’re parked at a light, and you saw – use a pedestrian example – that people were waiting to cross the road, and you can’t quite see them because of an occlusion, but they might wait for a minute before the light changes for them to cross the road, you still need to remember that that’s where they were. And that they’re probably going to cross the road type of thing. So even if that exceeds your time-based memory, it should not exceed your space memory.就算你假设在时间维度上有五秒的记忆，但如果你停在红灯前，而且你之前看到——用行人举例——有人正在等待过马路，你因为遮挡无法完全看到他们，但他们可能要等一分钟等灯变绿才能过马路，你仍然需要记住他们在那里，以及他们很可能要过马路这件事。所以即使这超过了你的时间记忆限制，也不应该超过你的空间记忆限制。
Lex FridmanAnd I just think the data engine side of that, so getting the data to learn all the concepts that you’re saying now, is an incredible process. It’s this iterative process. It’s this HydraNet of many…我觉得数据引擎这一侧——也就是获取数据来学习你刚才说的所有这些概念——是个了不起的过程。这是一个迭代过程，是这个HydraNet包含的众多……
Elon MuskHydraNet – We’re changing the name to something else.HydraNet——我们正在把这个名字改成别的。
Lex FridmanOkay. I’m sure it will be equally as “Rick and Morty” like.好吧，我相信新名字会同样充满"Rick and Morty"的感觉。
Elon MuskWe re-architected the neural nets in the cars so many times, it’s crazy.我们把车里神经网络的架构重新设计了太多次了，简直疯狂。
Lex FridmanOh, so every time there’s a new major version, you’ll rename it to something more ridiculous – or memorable and beautiful? Sorry, not ridiculous, of course.哦，所以每次有重大新版本，你就会把它改成一个更荒诞的名字——或者说更有辨识度、更好听？不好意思，当然不是荒诞。
Elon MuskIf you see the full array of neural nets that are operating the cars, it’s kind of boggles the mind. There’s so many layers, it’s crazy. We started off with simple neural nets that were basically image recognition on a single frame from a single camera and then trying to knit those together with it with C. I should say we’re really primarily running C here because C++ is too much overhead. And we have our own C compiler. So, to get maximum performance, we actually wrote our own C compiler and are continuing to optimize our C compiler for maximum efficiency. In fact, we’ve just recently done a new rev on a C compiler that will compile directly to our autopilot hardware.如果你看到驱动汽车运行的神经网络的完整阵列，会觉得令人叹为观止。层数多得离谱。我们最开始用的是简单的神经网络，基本上就是对单个摄像头的单帧图像做图像识别，然后试图用C把它们拼接在一起。我得说，我们主要用的是C，因为C++的开销太大。我们有自己的C编译器。为了获得最大性能，我们实际上自己写了一个C编译器，并且持续在优化以达到最高效率。事实上，我们最近刚完成了C编译器的一个新版本，它可以直接编译到我们的Autopilot硬件上。
Lex FridmanSo you want to compile the whole thing down with your own compiler…所以你想用自己的编译器把整套东西编译下去……
Elon MuskYeah, absolutely.是的，当然。
Lex Fridman…like sort of efficiency here. Because there’s all kinds of computers, CPU, GPU, there’s like basic types of things. And you have to somehow figure out the scheduling across all of those things. And so you’re compiling the code down, that does all………就是为了效率。因为有各种各样的计算机，CPU、GPU，还有各种基本类型的东西。你必须想办法搞定这些东西之间的调度。所以你把代码编译下去，负责处理所有……
Elon MuskYeah.对。
Lex FridmanOkay. So that’s why there’s a lot of people involved.好的，所以这就是为什么涉及这么多人。
Elon MuskThere’s a lot of hardcore software engineering at a very sort of bare metal level because we’re trying to do a lot of compute that’s constrained to our full self-driving computer. We want to try to have the highest frames per second possible within a sort of very finite amount of compute and power. We really put a lot of effort into the efficiency of our compute. There’s actually a lot of work done by some very talented software engineers at Tesla that, at a very foundational level, to improve the efficiency of compute, and how we use the trip accelerators, which are basically doing matrix math dot products, like a bazillion dot products. It’s like what our neural nets is, like, compute wise, like 99% dot products.在非常接近裸机的层面上，有大量硬核软件工程工作，因为我们试图在受限于全自动驾驶计算机的情况下完成大量计算。我们希望在非常有限的算力和功耗内实现尽可能高的帧率。我们在计算效率上下了大量功夫。Tesla有一些非常有才华的软件工程师做了很多工作，在非常基础的层面上提升计算效率，以及如何使用行程加速器——它们本质上就是在做矩阵数学点积，海量的点积。从计算的角度来说，我们的神经网络大约99%都是点积运算。
Lex FridmanAnd you want to achieve as many high frame rates like a video game? You want full resolution, high frame rate…你想实现像视频游戏一样的高帧率？你想要全分辨率、高帧率……
Elon MuskHigh frame rate, low latency, low jitter. One of the things we’re moving towards now is no post-processing of the image through the image signal processor. What happens for almost all cameras is that there’s a lot of post-processing done in order to make pictures look pretty. We don’t care about pictures looking pretty. We just want the data, so we’re moving just raw photon counts.高帧率、低延迟、低抖动。我们现在正在推进的一件事是：不再通过图像信号处理器对图像进行后处理。几乎所有摄像头都会对图像进行大量后处理，让照片看起来好看。我们不在乎照片好不好看，我们只想要数据，所以我们正在直接使用原始光子计数。
Elon MuskThe image that the computer sees is actually much more than what you would see if you represented it on a camera. It’s got much more data. And even in very low light conditions, you can see that there’s a small photon count difference between the spot here and the spot there, which means that it can see in the dark incredibly well because it can detect these tiny differences in photon counts, like, much better than you would possibly imagine. And then we also save 13 milliseconds on latency.计算机看到的图像实际上比你在摄像头上看到的要丰富得多，数据量大得多。即使在非常低的光线条件下，你也能看到这个位置和那个位置之间有细微的光子数差异，这意味着它在黑暗中的视觉能力极强，因为它能检测到这些极微小的光子数差异，比你想象的要好得多。而且我们还因此节省了13毫秒的延迟。
Lex FridmanFrom removing the post-processing on the image?是通过去掉图像后处理来实现的？
Elon MuskYes, because we’ve got eight cameras, and then there’s roughly one and a half milliseconds or so, maybe 1.6 milliseconds of latency for each camera. Basically, bypassing the image processor gets us back 13 milliseconds of latency, which is important. And we track latency all the way from photon hits the camera to all the steps that it’s got to go through to get… go through the various neural nets and the C code. There’s a little bit of C++ there as well. Maybe a lot, but the core stuff, the heavy-duty compute, is all in C.是的，因为我们有8个摄像头，每个摄像头大约有1.5毫秒左右，可能是1.6毫秒的延迟。绕过图像处理器，我们就能回收13毫秒的延迟，这很重要。我们追踪延迟，从光子打到摄像头一直到经历各个处理步骤——穿过各种神经网络和C代码。当然里面也有一些C++。也许挺多的，但核心的、计算量大的部分全部是C。
Elon MuskSo we track that latency all the way to an output command to the drive unit to accelerate, the brakes just to slow down, the steering turn left or right. Because you got to output a command, that’s got to go to a controller, and some of these controllers have an update frequency that’s maybe 10 Hertz or something like that, which is slow – that’s like, now you lose 100 milliseconds, potentially. Then we want to update the drivers on the steering and braking control to have more like 100 Hertz instead of 10 Hertz, and then you get a 10-millisecond latency instead of 100 milliseconds worst-case latency.我们追踪的延迟一直延伸到向驱动单元输出加速指令、向刹车输出减速指令、向转向输出左转或右转指令。因为你要输出一个指令，这个指令要发送给一个控制器，而某些控制器的更新频率可能只有10 Hertz左右，这很慢——这意味着你可能损失100毫秒。所以我们想把转向和刹车控制的驱动器更新频率从10 Hertz提升到100 Hertz，这样延迟就从最坏情况的100毫秒降到10毫秒。
Elon MuskActually, jitter is more of a challenge than the latency. Latency is like you can anticipate and predict, but if you’ve got a stack-up of things going from the camera to the computer, through then a series of other computers, and finally to an actuator on the car – if you have a stack-up of tolerances, of timing tolerances, then you can have quite a variable latency, which is called jitter. And that makes it hard to anticipate exactly how you should turn the car or accelerate because if you’ve got maybe 150, 200 milliseconds of jitter, then you could be off by about 2.2 seconds. And this could make a big difference.实际上，抖动比延迟更是一个挑战。延迟是可以预判和补偿的，但如果从摄像头到计算机，再经过一系列其他计算机，最终到达汽车执行器，整个链路上的时序容差堆叠在一起，你就会得到相当不稳定的延迟，这就叫做抖动。这让你很难精确预判应该如何转向或加速，因为如果你有150到200毫秒的抖动，就可能有大约2.2秒的偏差，这可能会产生很大的影响。
Lex FridmanSo you have to interpolate somehow to deal with the effects of jitter so that you can make robust control decisions. The jitter is in the sensor information, or the jitter can occur at any stage in the pipeline?所以你必须以某种方式插值，来应对抖动的影响，从而做出鲁棒的控制决策。抖动是在传感器信息里，还是可能在管线的任何阶段发生？
Elon MuskIf you have fixed latency, you can anticipate and say, “Okay, we know that our information is, for argument’s sake, 150 milliseconds stale.” For argument’s sake, a 150 milliseconds from photons taking camera to where you can measure a change in the acceleration of the vehicle. Then you can say, “Okay, well, we know it’s 150 milliseconds, so we’re gonna take that into account and compensate for that latency.如果延迟是固定的，你可以预判，说"好，我们知道我们的信息，假设是150毫秒过时了。"假设从光子到达摄像头到你能测量到车辆加速度变化，有150毫秒。那你就可以说"好，我们知道是150毫秒，所以我们要把这个考虑进去，对延迟进行补偿。"
Elon MuskHowever, if you’ve got then 150 milliseconds of latency plus 100 milliseconds of jitter, which could be anywhere from zero to 100 milliseconds on top, then your latency could be from 150 to 250 milliseconds. Now you got 100 milliseconds that you don’t know what to do with. That’s basically random. So getting rid of jitter is extremely important.但是，如果你有150毫秒的延迟再加上100毫秒的抖动——这个抖动可以是零到100毫秒之间的任意值——那你的总延迟就可能在150毫秒到250毫秒之间。这样你就有了100毫秒不知道该怎么处理的时间，基本上是随机的。所以消除抖动极为重要。
Lex FridmanAnd that affects your control decisions and all those kinds of things. Okay.这会影响你的控制决策以及诸如此类的所有事情。好的。
Elon MuskThe car is just going to fundamentally maneuver better with lower jitter.汽车在抖动更低的情况下，从根本上就会机动得更好。
Lex FridmanGot it.明白了。
Elon MuskThe cars will maneuver with superhuman ability and reaction time, much faster than a human. I mean, I think over time, the autopilot full self-driving will be capable of maneuvers that are far more than what James Bond could do in the best movie type of thing.汽车将以超越人类的能力和反应时间进行机动，比人类快得多。我是说，我认为随着时间推移，Autopilot全自动驾驶将能够执行远超James Bond在最精彩电影里所能做到的那种机动动作。
Lex FridmanThat’s exactly what I was imagining in my mind, as you said it.这正是你说话时我脑海里浮现的画面。
Elon MuskIt’s like impossible maneuvers that a human couldn’t do.就是那种人类不可能做到的机动动作。
Lex FridmanWell, let me ask, sort of looking back the six years, looking out into the future. Based on your current understanding, how hard do you think is this full self-driving problem? When do you think Tesla will solve level 4 FSD?好，让我问一下，回望这六年，再展望未来。根据你目前的理解，你认为全自动驾驶这个问题有多难？你认为Tesla什么时候能实现L4级别的FSD？
Elon MuskI mean, it’s looking quite likely that it will be next year.我是说，看起来很可能会是明年。
Lex FridmanAnd what is the solution look like? Is it the current pool of FSD beta candidates? They start getting greater and greater as there have been degrees of autonomy. And then there’s a certain level beyond which they can do their own, they can read a book.那解决方案是什么样子的？是现有的FSD Beta体验者群体不断扩大，他们越来越高的自主程度？到了某个水平之后他们可以自己搞定，可以看书了？
Elon MuskYeah. I mean, you can see that… anybody who has been following the full self-driving beta closely will see that the rate of disengagements has been dropping rapidly. So like a disengagement be where the driver intervenes to prevent the car from doing something dangerous potentially. The interventions per million miles has been dropping dramatically. And that trend looks like what happens next year is that the probability of an accident on FSD is less than that of the average human, and then significantly less than that of the average human. So it certainly appears like we will get there next year. Then, of course… then there’s going to be a case of… okay, well, we’ll now have to prove this to regulators and prove it… We want a standard that is not just equivalent to a human but much better than the average human. I think it’s got to be at least two or three times higher safety than a human, two or three times lower probability of injury than a human before we would actually say, “Okay, it’s okay to go.” It’s not gonna be equivalent, it’s gonna be much better.是的。我是说，任何一直在密切关注FSD Beta的人都会发现，接管率下降得非常快。接管就是指驾驶员介入，防止车辆可能做出危险动作。每百万英里的人工干预次数正在急剧下降。这一趋势表明，明年发生的事情将是：FSD出事故的概率会低于普通人类驾驶员，然后明显低于普通人类。所以我们确实看起来会在明年实现这一目标。然后，当然……接下来的问题是，好，我们将需要向监管机构证明这一点。我们想要的标准不仅仅是等同于人类，而是比普通人类好得多。我认为安全性必须至少是人类的两到三倍，受伤概率比人类低两到三倍，我们才会真正说"好，可以上路了。"不是等同，而是要好得多。
Lex FridmanSo if you look… FSD 10.6 just came out recently, 10.7 is on the way, maybe 11 is on the way somewhere in the future?所以如果你看……FSD 10.6最近刚发布，10.7即将推出，也许某个时候还会有11版本？
Elon MuskYeah. We were hoping to get 11 out this year, but it’s… 11 actually has a whole bunch of fundamental rewrites on the neural net architecture and some fundamental improvements in creating vector space.是的。我们本希望今年能推出11，但是……11实际上对神经网络架构进行了大量根本性的重写，以及在创建向量空间方面的一些根本性改进。
Lex FridmanSo there is some fundamental leap that really deserves the 11. I mean, it’s a pretty cool number.所以这是某种真正值得用11这个数字来命名的根本性飞跃。我是说，11确实是个挺酷的数字。
Elon MuskYeah. 11 would be a single stack for all… you know, one stack to rule them all. But there are just some really fundamental neural net architecture changes that will allow for much more capability, but at first, they’re going to have issues. We have this working on like sort of alpha software, and it’s good, but it’s basically taking a whole bunch of C/C++ code and deleting a massive amount of C++ code and replacing it with the neural net. Andrej makes this point a lot, which is neural nets are kind of eating software. Over time, there’s less and less conventional software, more and more neural net – which is still software, it still comes down to lines of software. But just more neural net stuff, and less heuristics, basically. More matrix-based stuff and less heuristics-based stuff.是的。11将会是一个单一栈处理所有事情——你懂的，一个栈统治一切。但有一些真正根本性的神经网络架构变化，将带来更强大的能力，不过一开始肯定会有问题。我们在一种内部Alpha软件上运行着这套东西，效果不错，但本质上就是把一大堆C/C++代码拿掉，删掉大量C++代码，用神经网络替代它。Andrej经常说这一点，就是神经网络正在"吞噬"软件。随着时间推移，传统软件越来越少，神经网络越来越多——它仍然是软件，最终还是体现为代码行数。但就是更多神经网络的东西，更少的启发式规则。更多基于矩阵的东西，更少基于启发式的东西。
Elon MuskOne of the big changes will be… right now, the neural nets will deliver a giant bag of points to the C++ or C and C++ code. We call it the ‘giant bag of points’. So you got a pixel and something associated with that pixel – like, this pixel is probably car, that pixel is probably lane line. Then you’ve got to assemble this giant bag of points in C code and turn it into vectors. And it does a pretty good job of it. But we need another layer of neural nets on top of that to take the giant bag of points and distill that down to vector space in the neural net part of the software as opposed to the heuristics part of the software. This is a big improvement.一个重大变化将是……目前，神经网络会输出一个巨大的点的集合给C++或C代码。我们管它叫"巨大的点包"。你得到一个像素以及与该像素关联的信息——比如这个像素很可能是汽车，那个像素很可能是车道线。然后你需要用C代码把这个巨大的点包拼装起来，转化为向量。它做得还不错，但我们需要在这之上再加一层神经网络，把这个巨大的点包提炼成向量空间，在软件的神经网络部分完成，而不是在启发式规则部分完成。这是一个重大改进。
Lex FridmanNeural nets all the way down, so you want.神经网络贯穿始终，这就是你想要的。
Elon MuskIt’s not even all neural nets, but this is a game-changer to not have the bag of points, the giant bag of points, that has to be assembled with many lines of C++, and have a neural net just assemble those into a vector, so that the neural net is outputting much, much less data. It’s outputting, “This this is a lane line, this is a curb, this is drivable space, this is a car, this is a pedestrian or cyclist,” or something like that. It’s really outputting proper vectors to the C/ C++ control code, as opposed to this sort of constructing the vectors in C, which we’ve done, I think, quite a good job of, but it’s kind of hitting a local maximum on how well the C can do this. So this is really a big deal.也不是全部都是神经网络，但这是一个游戏规则改变者：不再有那个需要用大量C++代码来拼装的巨大点包，而是让神经网络直接把这些点组装成向量，这样神经网络输出的数据量就少得多。它输出的是"这是车道线，这是路缘，这是可行驶空间，这是一辆汽车，这是行人或骑行者"之类的东西。它真正输出的是规整的向量给C/C++控制代码，而不是在C里面构建这些向量——我们在C里做这件事我觉得已经做得相当不错了，但基本上已经碰到了C能做到的局部最优上限。所以这真的是个大事。
Elon MuskAnd just all of the networks in the car need to move to surround video. There’s still some legacy networks that are not surround video. All of the training needs to move to surround video. The efficiency of the training needs to get better, and it is. Then we need to move everything to raw photon counts as opposed to processed images, which is quite a big reset on the training because the system is trained on post-processed images. So we need to redo all the training to train against the raw photon counts instead of the post-processed image.还有车里所有的网络都需要迁移到环绕视频。目前还有一些遗留网络不是环绕视频的。所有的训练都需要迁移到环绕视频。训练效率需要提升，而且确实在提升。然后我们需要把一切从处理后的图像切换到原始光子计数，这对训练来说是相当大的重置，因为系统是用后处理图像训练的。所以我们需要重新训练，改成对原始光子计数进行训练，而不是后处理图像。
Lex FridmanSo ultimately, it’s kind of reducing the complexity of the whole thing.所以从根本上说，这是在降低整个系统的复杂度。
Elon MuskLines of code will actually go lower.代码行数实际上会降下来。
Lex Fridman(talking about FSD 11) Yeah, that’s fascinating. So you’re doing fusion of all the sensors, so reducing the complexity of having to deal with these…（谈论FSD 11）是的，这很有趣。所以你是在做所有传感器的融合，从而降低了处理这些……的复杂度——
Elon MuskFusion of the cameras. It’s all cameras, really.摄像头的融合。实际上全是摄像头。
Lex FridmanRight, yes. Same with humans. I guess we got ears, too. Okay.对，是的。和人类一样。我们还有耳朵。好的。
Elon MuskYeah, well, we’ll actually need to incorporate sound as well. Because you need listen for ambulance sirens or fire trucks, or if somebody’s yelling at you or something. It’s just there’s a little bit of audio that needs to be incorporated as well.是的，不过我们其实也需要加入声音。因为你需要听救护车警报声，或者消防车，或者有人在对你大喊什么东西。确实需要加入少量音频。
Lex FridmanDo you need to take a break?你需要休息一下吗？
Elon MuskYeah, sure, let’s take a break.好啊，休息一下吧。
Lex FridmanOkay.好的。
Lex Fridman—————————————-——————————————
Elon MuskHonestly, frankly, the ideas are the easy thing. And the implementation is the hard thing. Like, the idea of going to the Moon is the easy part. But going to the Moon is the hard part. And there’s a lot of hardcore engineering that’s got to get done at the hardware and software level, like I said, optimizing the C compiler and just cutting out latency everywhere. If we don’t do this, the system will not work properly. So, the work of the engineers doing this, they are like the unsung heroes. But they are critical to the success of the situation.说实话，想法本身是容易的部分，落地实现才是难的部分。比如，去月球的想法很容易，但真的去月球才是难的。在硬件和软件层面都需要做大量硬核工程，就像我说的，优化C编译器，到处削减延迟。如果我们不做这些，系统就无法正常运转。所以，做这件事的工程师们是幕后英雄，但他们对成败至关重要。
Lex FridmanI think you made it clear. I mean, at least to me, it’s super exciting everything that’s going on outside of what Andrej is doing. Just the whole infrastructure, the software. I mean, everything is going on with data engine, whatever it’s called. The whole process is just a work of art to me.我觉得你说清楚了。至少对我来说，Andrej在做的事情之外还有如此多令人兴奋的东西——整个基础设施、软件，数据引擎不管叫什么名字，整个过程对我来说就是一件艺术品。
Elon MuskThe sheer scale of it boggles the mind. The training, the amount of work done with, like, we’ve written all this custom software for training and labeling, and to do auto labeling. Auto labeling is essential. Because especially when you got like surround video – to label surround video from scratch is extremely difficult. It takes humans such a long time to even label one video clip, like several hours. Or, to auto label it, we just apply a lot of compute to the video clips to pre-assign and guess what all the things are that are going on in this surround video.这件事的规模之大令人叹为观止。训练、我们在训练标注上做的大量工作，我们为此编写了所有这些定制软件，还有自动标注。自动标注是必不可少的。因为尤其是当你有环绕视频的时候——从头手动标注环绕视频极其困难。人类标注一段视频片段要花非常长的时间，好几个小时。而自动标注，我们只需对视频片段投入大量算力，预先猜测和分配这段环绕视频里发生的所有事情是什么。
Lex FridmanAnd there’s like correcting it…然后还要纠错……
Elon MuskYeah. And then all the human has to do is like tweak, like say, adjust what is incorrect. This increases productivity by a factor 100 or more.是的。然后人类所需要做的就是微调，比如说纠正不对的地方。这把生产效率提高了100倍甚至更多。
Lex FridmanYeah, so you’ve presented the Tesla Bot as primarily useful in the factory. First of all, I think humanoid robots are incredible. From a fan of robotics, I think the elegance of movement that the humanoid robots, that bipedal robots show are just so cool. So it’s really interesting that you’re working on this, and also talking about applying the same kind of all the ideas of some of which you’ve talked about with data engine and all the things that we’re talking about with Tesla Autopilot, just transferring that over to the just yet another robotics problem.是的，你把Tesla Bot主要展示成在工厂里有用的东西。首先，我认为人形机器人太了不起了。作为机器人领域的爱好者，我觉得人形机器人、双足机器人展现出来的动作优雅感特别酷。所以你在研究这个真的很有意思，而且你还在谈把数据引擎的所有这些想法以及我们正在讨论的关于Tesla Autopilot的一切，直接迁移过来，用到这个机器人问题上。
Lex FridmanI have to ask since I care about human-robot interaction, so the human side of that. So you’ve talked about mostly in the factory. Do you see as part of this problem that Tesla Bot has to solve is interacting with humans and potentially having a place like in the home? So, interacting, not just replacing labor but also like, I don’t know, being a friend or an assistant?因为我关心人机交互，所以我必须问一下人的那一面。你大多谈到的是工厂里的应用。你觉得Tesla Bot要解决的问题里，有没有包括与人类互动，并且有可能进入家庭——不只是替代劳动力，也成为一种伴侣或助手？
Elon MuskI think the possibilities are endless. Yeah, I mean, it’s obviously, it’s not quite in Tesla’s primary mission direction of accelerating sustainable energy, but it is an extremely useful thing that we can do for the world, which is to make a useful humanoid robot that is capable of interacting with the world and helping in many different ways. So, in factories… I think if you say like, extrapolate to many years in the future, it’s like, I think, work will become optional.我认为可能性是无穷无尽的。显然，这不完全符合Tesla加速可持续能源的主要使命方向，但这是我们能为世界做的一件极其有用的事——制造一款能与现实世界互动、在许多不同方面提供帮助的实用人形机器人。在工厂里……我觉得如果你把时间线拉到很多年以后，工作将变得可选。
Elon MuskThere’s a lot of jobs that if people weren’t paid to do it, they wouldn’t do it. It’s not fun necessarily if you’re washing dishes all day – it’s like, even if you really like washing dishes, do you really want to do it for eight hours a day, every day? Probably not. And then there’s dangerous work. Basically, if it’s dangerous, boring, has potential for repetitive stress or injury, that kind of thing, then that’s really where humanoid robots would add the most value initially. So, that’s what we’re aiming for is for the humanoid robots to do jobs that people don’t voluntarily want to do. And then that will have to pair obviously with some kind of universal basic income in the future. So, I think.很多工作，如果不付钱，人们就不会去做。如果你整天洗碗，不一定有趣——就算你真的很喜欢洗碗，你真的想每天洗八个小时吗？大概不想。还有危险的工作。基本上，如果一件事既危险、又枯燥、又有重复性劳损或受伤风险，那就是人形机器人最初能创造最大价值的地方。所以我们的目标就是让人形机器人去做人们不愿意主动去做的工作。然后这显然需要配合未来某种形式的全民基本收入。我是这么认为的。
Lex Fridman( 1:39:01) Do you see a world when there’s like hundreds of millions of Tesla Bots performing different tasks throughout the world?你是否设想过这样一个世界：全球有数亿台Tesla Bot在执行各种任务？
Elon MuskYeah, I haven’t really thought about it that far into the future. But I guess that there may be something like that.是的，我其实没有想那么远。但我猜可能会有那样的事情。
Lex FridmanCan I ask a wild question? The number of Tesla cars has been accelerating, has been close to two million produced. Many of them have autopilot.我能问一个天马行空的问题吗？Tesla汽车的产量一直在加速，已经接近两百万辆，其中很多都有Autopilot。
Elon MuskI think we’re over two million now.我觉得我们现在已经超过两百万了。
Lex FridmanDo you think there will ever be a time when there’ll be more Tesla Bots than Tesla cars?你认为会不会有一天Tesla Bot的数量超过Tesla汽车？
Elon MuskActually, it’s funny you ask this question because normally, I do try to think pretty far into the future. But I haven’t really thought that far into the future with the Tesla Bot or its codenamed Optimus. I call it Optimus Sub-Prime because it’s not like a giant transformer robot, but it’s meant to be a general-purpose help robot. Basically, Tesla, I think, has the most advanced real-world AI for interacting with real world which we’ve developed as a function to make self-driving work, and so, along with custom hardware and a lot of hardcore, low-level software to have it run efficiently and be power efficient.这个问题问得有趣，因为通常我会思考很远的未来。但对于Tesla Bot——代号Optimus——我其实没想那么远。我叫它Optimus Sub-Prime，因为它不像是一个巨大的变形金刚机器人，但它是被设计成一款通用辅助机器人的。基本上，我认为Tesla在与现实世界互动方面拥有最先进的现实AI，这是我们为实现自动驾驶所开发的，配合定制硬件以及大量硬核低层软件，让它能高效运行且功耗合理。
Elon MuskBecause, you know, it’s one thing to do neural nets, if you’ve got a gigantic server room with 10,000 computers. But now, you have to now distill that down into one computer that’s running at low power in a humanoid robot or a car. That’s actually very difficult, and a lot of hardcore software work is required for that. So, since we’re kind of solving the ‘navigate the real world with neural nets’ problem for cars, which are kind of robots with four wheels, then it’s kind of a natural extension of that is to put it in a robot with arms and legs and actuators.你知道，做神经网络，如果你有一个装着10,000台电脑的巨大服务器机房，是一回事。但现在你必须把它提炼到一台在人形机器人或汽车里低功耗运行的计算机里。这实际上非常困难，需要大量硬核软件工作。所以，既然我们正在为汽车——某种程度上汽车就是四个轮子的机器人——解决"用神经网络导航现实世界"这个问题，那么自然而然的延伸就是把它放进一个有手臂、腿和执行器的机器人里。
Elon MuskThe two hard things are you basically need to make the… have the robot be intelligent enough to interact in a sensible way with the environment. So you need real-world AI, and you need to be very good at manufacturing, which is a very hard problem. Tesla is very good at manufacturing, and also has the real-world AI. So making the humanoid robot work is… basically it means developing custom motors and sensors that are different from what a car would use. I think we’ve got the best expertise in developing advanced electric motors and power electronics. So it just has to be for humanoid robot application, not a car.有两件硬事：你基本上需要让机器人足够智能，能以合理的方式与环境互动。所以你需要现实AI，还需要非常擅长制造，而制造是一个非常难的问题。Tesla非常擅长制造，同时也拥有现实AI。所以让人形机器人运作起来，基本上意味着需要开发定制的电机和传感器，这与汽车用的不同。我认为我们在开发先进电机和电力电子方面拥有最强的专业能力，只是需要针对人形机器人应用而不是汽车来做。
Lex FridmanStill, you do talk about love sometimes. So let me ask, this isn’t like for like sex robots or something…不过，你有时确实谈到爱。让我问一下，这不是用来做什么情趣机器人的……
Elon MuskLove is the answer.爱是答案。
Lex FridmanYes. There is something compelling to us – not compelling – but we connect with humanoid robots, or even legged robots, like with a dog, in shapes of dogs. It seems, there’s a huge amount of loneliness in this world. All of us seek companionship with other humans, friendship, and all those kinds of things. We have a lot of here in Austin, a lot of people have dogs. There seems to be a huge opportunity to also have robots that decrease the amount of loneliness in the world or help us humans connect with each other so in way that dogs can. Do you think about that with Tesla Bot at all? Or is it really focused on the problem of performing specific tasks? Not connecting with humans?是的。人形机器人，甚至像狗形状的腿足机器人，对我们有某种吸引力——不是"吸引力"，但我们确实能和它们产生连接。这个世界有大量孤独感，我们每个人都渴望与他人的陪伴、友谊以及诸如此类的东西。在Austin这里，很多人养狗。似乎有一个巨大的机会，让机器人减少世界上的孤独感，或者像狗那样帮助我们人类彼此连接。你在设计Tesla Bot时有没有考虑过这一点？还是说它真的专注于执行具体任务，而不是与人类建立连接？
Elon MuskI mean, to be honest, I have not actually thought about it from the companionship standpoint, but I think it actually would end up being… it could be actually a very good companion. And it could develop a personality over time that is unique. It’s not like all the robots are the same. And that personality could evolve to match the owner or the, well, whatever you want to call it – the companion, the human.说实话，我其实没有从陪伴的角度思考过这个问题，但我觉得它最终确实可能成为一个非常好的伴侣。它可以随着时间发展出独特的个性，不是所有机器人都一样。这种个性可以进化，以契合主人——或者，随便你怎么叫它——伴侣、那个人类。
Lex FridmanThe other half, right? In the same way that friends do. I think that’s a huge opportunity.另一半，对吧？就像朋友之间相处的方式一样。我觉得这是一个巨大的机会。
Elon MuskYeah, no, (…). There’s a Japanese phrase I like, the wabi-sabi, you know, the subtle imperfections are what makes something special, and the subtle imperfections of the personality of the robot mapped to the subtle imperfections of the robot’s human friend – I don’t know, owner sounds like maybe the wrong word – could actually make an incredible buddy basically.是啊，没错……有一个我很喜欢的日语词——"侘寂"（wabi-sabi）——微妙的不完美才是让事物变得特别的东西。机器人个性上的微妙不完美，与它的人类朋友——我不知道，"主人"这个词可能不太对——的微妙不完美相互契合，实际上可以成就一种极其美好的伙伴关系。
Lex FridmanAnd in that way, the imperfection…而且以这种方式，不完美……
Elon MuskLike R2-D2 or like a C-3PO sort of thing.就像R2-D2或C-3PO那样的感觉。
Lex FridmanSo, from a machine learning perspective, I think the flaws being a feature is really nice. You could be quite terrible at being a robot for quite a while, in the general home environment or all in the general world. And that’s kind of adorable and that’s like those are your flaws, and you fall in love those flaws. It’s very different than autonomous driving, where it’s a very high-stakes environment; you cannot mess up. It’s more fun to be a robot in the home.所以，从机器学习的角度来看，我觉得把缺陷当作特性这个思路真的很好。在普通家庭环境或整个普通世界里，一台机器人可能在相当长一段时间内都做得很烂，这反而挺可爱的，那就是它的缺点，然后你爱上了那些缺点。这与自动驾驶非常不同，后者是高风险环境，绝对不能出错。当机器人待在家里，反而更有趣。
Elon MuskYeah, in fact, if you think of C-3PO and R2-D2, they actually had a lot of flaws and imperfections and silly things, and they would argue with each other.是啊，事实上如果你想想C-3PO和R2-D2，他们确实有很多缺陷、不完美和可笑的地方，他们还会互相争吵。
Lex FridmanWere they actually good at doing anything? I’m not exactly sure.他们到底有没有哪件事做得好的？我还真不确定。
Elon MuskThey definitely added a lot to the story. But there’s sort of quirky elements, and, you know, that they would make mistakes and do things… it was like, it made them relatable, I don’t know, endearing. So yeah, I think that could be something that probably would happen. But our initial focus is just to make it useful. I’m confident we’ll get it done. I’m not sure what the exact timeframe is, but we’ll probably have a decent prototype towards the end of next year or something like that.他们确实为故事增色不少。但他们身上有一些古怪的元素，他们会犯错，会做出奇怪的事……这让他们变得亲切，我不知道，讨人喜欢。所以是的，我觉得这确实可能会发生。但我们目前的重点只是让它变得有用。我有信心我们能做到，具体时间表我不确定，但我们大概在明年年底前后会有一个像样的原型之类的东西。
Lex FridmanAnd it’s cool that it’s connected to Tesla, the car.而且它跟Tesla的汽车有联系，这很酷。
Elon MuskYeah, it’s using a lot of… it would use the autopilot inference computer and a lot of the training that we’ve done for cars in terms of recognizing real-world things could be applied directly to the robot. But there’s a lot of custom actuators and sensors that need to be developed.是的，它会用到很多……它会使用Autopilot推理计算机，以及我们为汽车做的大量训练——在识别现实世界事物方面——可以直接应用于机器人。但有很多定制的执行器和传感器需要开发。
Lex FridmanAnd an extra module on top of the vector space for love. That’s missing. Okay…还有向量空间顶部那个缺失的爱的模块。好的……
Elon MuskWe could add that to the car, too.我们也可以把这个加到汽车上。
Lex FridmanThat’s true. That could be useful in all environments. Like you said, a lot of people argue in the car, so maybe we can help them out. You’re a student of history, fan of Dan Carlin’s Hardcore History podcast.没错。在各种环境里都有用。就像你说的，很多人在车里吵架，所以也许我们可以帮上忙。你是个历史学习者，也是Dan Carlin的Hardcore History播客的粉丝。
Elon MuskYeah, that’s great.是的，那个播客很棒。
Lex FridmanGreatest podcast ever.史上最伟大的播客。
Elon MuskYeah, I think it is actually.是的，我觉得确实是。
Lex FridmanIt almost doesn’t really count as a podcast.它几乎都不像是播客了。
Elon MuskIt’s more like an audiobook.更像是有声书。
Lex FridmanYeah. So you were on the podcast with Dan; I just had a chat with him about it. He said, you guys went military and all that kind of stuff?是的。所以你上过Dan那期播客；我刚跟他聊过。他说你们聊了军事那些话题？
Elon MuskYeah. It was basically… I think it should be titled ‘engineer wars’. Essentially, when there’s a rapid change in the rate of technology, then engineering plays a pivotal role in victory in battle.是的。基本上……我觉得那期该叫"工程师的战争"。本质上，当技术变革的速度急剧加快时，工程在战争胜负中扮演着关键角色。
Lex FridmanHow far back in history did you go? Did you go World War II?你们追溯到历史上多远？二战？
Elon MuskWell, it was supposed to be a deep dive on fighters and bomber technology in World War II. But that ended up being more wide-ranging than that. Because I just went down the whole rabbit hole of studying all of the fighters and bombers in World War II, and the constant rock, paper, scissors game that one country makes this plane, that would make a plane to beat that, and that try to make a plane to beat that. And really, what matters is the pace of innovation and also access to high-quality fuel and raw materials. Germany had some amazing designs, but they couldn’t make them because they couldn’t get the raw materials. And they had a real problem with oil and fuel, basically. The fuel quality was extremely variable.嗯，最初是打算深入研究二战中的战斗机和轰炸机技术。但后来话题比这宽泛得多，因为我就一路钻进研究二战所有战斗机和轰炸机的兔子洞里，还有那个不断上演的石头剪刀布游戏——这个国家造了这种飞机，那个国家就造飞机来克制它，然后再造飞机来克制那架。真正重要的是创新速度，以及获得高质量燃料和原材料的渠道。德国有一些惊人的设计，但他们做不出来，因为他们拿不到原材料。而且他们在石油和燃料方面有严重问题。燃料质量极其不稳定。
Lex FridmanSo the design wasn’t the bottleneck?所以设计本身不是瓶颈？
Elon MuskYeah, the US had kick-ass fuel that was very consistent. If you make a very high-performance aircraft engine, in order to make high performance, you have to… the fuel, the aviation gas, has to be a consistent mixture, and it has to have a high octane. High octane is the most important thing, but also can’t have like impurities and stuff because you’ll foul up the engine. And the German just never had good access to oil. They tried to get it by invading the Caucuses. But that didn’t work too well.是的，美国有非常给力的燃料，质量非常稳定。如果你要制造高性能航空发动机，要实现高性能，航空汽油必须是成分稳定的混合物，而且必须高辛烷值。高辛烷值是最重要的，同时也不能有杂质之类的东西，否则会污损发动机。德国始终得不到好的石油，他们试图通过入侵高加索来获取，但没有成功。
Lex FridmanThat never works well.那从来都不会成功。
Elon MuskDidn’t work out for them. Germany was always struggling with basically shitty oil, and then they couldn’t count on a on high-quality fuel for their aircraft, so they had to add all these additives and stuff, whereas the US had awesome fuel, and they provided that to Britain as well. That allowed the British and the Americans to design aircraft engines that were super high performance, better than anything else in the world. Germany could design the engines; they just didn’t have the fuel. And then also the quality of the aluminum alloys that they were getting was also not that great.他们没成功。德国始终在为基本上是劣质的石油而挣扎，他们无法指望给飞机提供高质量燃料，所以不得不添加各种添加剂，而美国拥有极棒的燃料，还把这些提供给了英国。这让英国人和美国人能够设计出当时世界上性能最超群的航空发动机。德国能设计出发动机，就是没有燃料。而且他们获得的铝合金质量也不太好。
Lex FridmanYou talked about all this with Dan?这些你都跟Dan聊过？
Elon MuskYep.对。
Lex FridmanAwesome. Broadly looking at history, when you look at Genghis Khan, when you look at Stalin, Hitler, the darkest moments in human history – what do you take away from those moments? Does it help you gain insight about human nature, about human behavior today? Whether it’s the wars or the individuals, or just the behavior of people, any aspects of history.太棒了。从更宏观的历史角度来看，当你审视成吉思汗、斯大林、希特勒，人类历史上那些最黑暗的时刻——你从这些时刻中得到了什么？这些帮助你理解人性、理解当今人类的行为方式了吗？不管是战争本身，还是那些个体，或者人们的行为举止，历史的任何方面。
Elon MuskYeah, I find history fascinating. There’s a lot of incredible things that have been done, good and bad. It helps you understand the nature of civilization and individuals.是的，我觉得历史非常迷人。人类做过无数令人叹为观止的事情，好的坏的都有。历史帮助你理解文明的本质和个体的本质。
Lex FridmanDoes it make you sad that humans do these kinds of things to each other. You look at the 20th century, World War II, the cruelty, the abuse of power, talk about communism, Marxism, and Stalin.人类互相做出这些事，这让你感到悲伤吗？你看20世纪，二战，那些残忍，权力的滥用，谈到共产主义、马克思主义和斯大林。
Elon MuskI mean, some of these things do… I mean, if you… like, there’s a lot of human history, but most of it is actually people just getting on with their lives. It’s not like human history is just nonstop war and disaster – those are actually just… those are intermittent and rare. If they weren’t, then humans would soon cease to exist. But it’s just that wars tend to be written about a lot, whereas something being a normal year where nothing major happened doesn’t get written about much. But that’s, you know, most people just like farming and kind of like living their life, you know, being a villager somewhere. And every now and again, there’s a war.我是说，其中有些事情确实……如果你……人类有很长的历史，但其中大部分其实只是人们在过自己的日子。并不是说人类历史就是一场没有尽头的战争和灾难——那些实际上只是间歇性的、稀少的。如果不是这样，人类早就消亡了。只是战争往往被大量书写，而某个没什么大事发生的平常年份就写得不多。但你知道，大多数人只是在种地，过着自己的日子，当个某个地方的村民。然后偶尔会爆发一场战争。
Elon MuskI have to say that there aren’t very many books that I… where I just had to stop reading because it was just too dark. But the book about “Stalin, The Court of the Red Tsar” I had stopped reading, it was just too dark, rough.我得说，有很少几本书让我……让我不得不停止阅读，因为实在太黑暗了。《斯大林：红色沙皇的宫廷》那本书，我不得不停下来，实在太黑暗、太沉重了。
Lex FridmanYeah. The 30s, there’s a lot of lessons there to me, in particular, that it feels like humans, like all of us have that zeal, Solschenizyn mind that the line between good and evil runs the heart in every man, that all of us are capable of evil, all of us are capable of good. It’s almost like this kind of responsibility that all of us have to tend towards the good. And so, to me, looking at history is almost like an example of, look, you have some charismatic leader that convinces you of things is too easy, based on that story to do evil onto each other, onto your family and to others.是的。那个三十年代，对我来说有很多教训，尤其是，我觉得人类——我们所有人——都有那种索尔仁尼琴式的洞察：善与恶的界线贯穿每个人的心脏，我们所有人都有能力作恶，所有人都有能力向善。这几乎像是一种责任感，我们每个人都有责任趋向善。所以对我来说，回望历史几乎像是在看一个例子：你看，有一个有魅力的领袖来说服你，基于那个故事就会非常容易地对彼此、对家人、对他人做出恶行。
Lex FridmanSo it’s our responsibility to do good. It’s not like now is somehow different from history; that can happen again. All that can happen again. And yes, most of the time, you’re right. I mean, the optimistic view here is mostly people just living life. And as you’ve often memed about, the quality of life was way worse back in the day and keeps improving over time, through innovation to technology. But still, it’s somehow notable that these blimps of atrocities happen.所以我们有责任行善。不是说现在就以某种方式与历史不同了；这一切可以再次发生，那一切都可以再次发生。是的，大多数时候你是对的。我是说，乐观的视角是大多数人只是在生活。正如你常常提到的，过去的生活质量要糟糕得多，通过创新和技术一直在改善。但依然值得注意的是，这些暴行的浪涛依然会发生。
Elon MuskSure. Yeah, I mean, life was really tough for most of history. I mean, probably for most of human history, a good year would be one where not that many people in your village died of the plague, starvation, freezing to death, or being killed by a neighboring village. It’s like, “Well, it wasn’t that bad. You know, it was only like, we lost 5% this year. That was a good year.” That would be par for the course. Just not starving to death would have been the primary goal of most people throughout history. Just making sure we’ll have enough food to last through the winter and not freeze or whatever. Now, food is plentiful. We have an obesity problem.当然。是的，我是说，历史上大多数时候生活确实很艰难。在人类历史的大部分时间里，一个好年头大概就是村里没有太多人死于瘟疫、饥荒、冻死或被邻村人杀死。就好像"嗯，也还行。今年我们只损失了5%，算是好年头了。"这就是常态。不被饿死可能是历史上大多数人的首要目标。就是确保有足够的食物撑过冬天、不被冻死之类的。而现在食物极其充裕，我们有肥胖问题。
Lex FridmanWell, yeah, the lesson there is to be grateful for the way things are now for some of us.是的，其中的教训是对现在这些人的生活状态心存感激。
Lex FridmanWe’ve spoken about this offline. I’d love to get your thought about it here. If I sat down for a long form in person conversation with the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin, would you potentially want to call in for a few minutes to join in on a conversation with him moderated and translated by me?我们线下谈过这个。我很想在这里听听你的想法。如果我和俄罗斯总统弗拉基米尔·普京进行一次长时间的面对面对话，你是否愿意打电话进来几分钟，参与由我主持和翻译的对话？
Elon MuskSure, yeah. Sure. I’d be happy to do that.当然，好啊。我很乐意。
Lex FridmanYou’ve shown interest in the Russian language. Is this grounded in your interest in history of linguistics, culture, general curiosity?你对俄语表现出兴趣。这是基于你对历史、语言学、文化的兴趣，还是纯粹的好奇心？
Elon MuskI think it sounds cool.我觉得它听起来很酷。
Lex FridmanSounds cool, not looks cool.是听起来酷，不是看起来酷。
Elon MuskWell, it takes a moment to read Cyrillic. Once you know what the Cyrillic characters stand for actually, then reading Russian becomes a lot easier because there are a lot of words that are actually the same. Like bank is bank.嗯，读西里尔文字母需要花一点时间。但一旦你知道西里尔字母对应什么，俄语就容易读多了，因为有很多单词其实是一样的。比如bank就是bank。
Lex FridmanSo find the words that are exactly the same, and now you start to understand Cyrillic, yeah.找那些完全相同的词，然后你就开始理解西里尔文字了，对。
Elon MuskIf you can sound it out, then it’s much… there’s at least some commonality of words.如果你能把它拼读出来，那至少词汇上有些共通之处。
Lex FridmanWhat about the culture? You love great engineering, physics. There’s a tradition of the sciences there. When you look at the 20th century, from rocketry… you know, some of the greatest rockets, some of the space exploration has been done in the former Soviet Union. Do you draw inspiration from that history? Just how this culture, that in many ways… I mean, one of the sad things is, because of the language, a lot of it is lost to history. Because it’s not translated, all those kinds of… because it is in some ways an isolated culture, it flourishes within its borders. Do you draw inspiration from those folks from the history of science engineering there?那文化方面呢？你热爱伟大的工程、物理学。那里有科学的传统。你看20世纪，从火箭技术……苏联完成了一些最伟大的火箭成就、一些最重要的太空探索。你从那段历史中汲取灵感吗？这个文化，在很多方面……我是说，悲哀的一件事是，由于语言的原因，很多东西已经在历史中湮没。因为没有翻译，所有这些……因为它在某种程度上是一种孤立的文化，在其边界内蓬勃发展。你从那段科学工程史中汲取灵感吗？
Elon MuskI mean, the Soviet Union, Russia, and Ukraine, as well, have a really strong history in spaceflight. Some of the most advanced impressive things in history were done by the Soviet Union. So one cannot help but admire the impressive rocket technology that was developed. After the sort of fall of Soviet Union there’s much less that happened. Still things are happening, but it’s not quite at the frenetic pace that was happening before the Soviet Union kind of dissolved into separate republics.我是说，苏联、俄罗斯，还有乌克兰，在航天领域有着非常深厚的历史。苏联完成了历史上一些最先进、最令人印象深刻的事情。所以人们不得不钦佩那些开发出来的令人赞叹的火箭技术。苏联解体之后，发生的事情少了很多。虽然还在继续，但节奏已经远没有苏联解体之前那么狂热了。
Lex FridmanYeah, I mean, there’s Roscosmos, the Russian, the agency… I look forward to a time when those countries, with China, working together in the United States, that they are all working together. Maybe a little bit of friendly competition, but…是的，有Roscosmos，俄罗斯的航天机构……我期待有一天那些国家，加上中国，能与美国一起合作。可能有一些友好的竞争，但……
Elon MuskFriendly competition is good. You know, governments are slow, and the only thing slower than one government is a collection of governments. The Olympics would be boring if everyone just crossed the finishing line at the same time. Nobody would watch. And people wouldn’t try hard to run faster. So, I think friendly competition is a good thing.友好竞争是好事。政府行动迟缓，而比一个政府更慢的只有一群政府的集合。如果奥运会所有人都在同一时刻冲过终点线，那就无聊透了，没人会看。而且人们也不会努力跑得更快。所以我认为友好竞争是件好事。
Lex FridmanThis is also a good place to give a shout-out to a video titled “ The Entire Soviet Rocket Engine Family Tree ” by Tim Dodd, aka Everyday Astronaut. It’s like an hour and a half, gives the full history of Soviet rockets. And people should definitely go check out and support him in general. That guy’s super excited about the future, super excited about spaceflight. Every time I see anything by him, I just have a stupid smile on my face because he’s so excited about stuff. I love people like that.这也是个好时机来推荐一个视频，标题叫《The Entire Soviet Rocket Engine Family Tree》，作者是Tim Dodd，也就是Everyday Astronaut。大概一个半小时，讲述了苏联火箭的完整历史。大家一定要去看，也要支持他。那个人对未来、对航天飞行的热情满满，每次我看到他的东西，我脸上都会傻乐，因为他对什么都那么兴奋。我喜欢这样的人。
Elon MuskYeah, Tim Dodd is really great if you’re interested in anything to do with space. In terms of explaining rocket technology to the average person, he’s awesome. The best, I’d say. I should say the whole reason I switched us from… Raptor, at one point, was going to be a hydrogen engine. But hydrogen has a lot of challenges. It’s very low density, it’s a deep cryogen, so it’s only liquid very close to absolute zero, requires a lot of insulation. So it is a lot of challenges there.是的，如果你对任何与太空有关的东西感兴趣，Tim Dodd非常棒。在向普通人解释火箭技术方面，他太厉害了。我敢说是最好的。顺便说一下，整个Raptor改用现在这个方案的原因——Raptor曾经一度计划用氢气发动机。但氢气有很多挑战：密度非常低，是深冷推进剂，只有在非常接近绝对零度时才是液态，需要大量隔热。所以挑战很多。
Elon MuskAnd I was actually reading a bit about Russian rocket engine development. And at least the impression I had was that Soviet Union, Russia and Ukraine, primarily, were actually in the process of switching to methane oxygen. And there are some interesting tests and data for I sp like they were able to get up to a 380 second I sp with the methane oxygen engine, and I was like, wow, okay, that’s actually really impressive. So I think you could actually get a much lower cost… like in optimizing cost per ton to orbit, cost per ton to Mars, I think methane oxygen is the way to go. And I was partly inspired by the Russian work on the test ends with methane oxygen engines.我当时在读一些关于俄罗斯火箭发动机研发的资料。至少我得到的印象是，苏联、俄罗斯和乌克兰实际上正在转向甲烷氧化剂。他们在甲烷氧气发动机上做了一些有趣的测试，有一些比冲数据——他们用甲烷氧气发动机达到了380秒的比冲，我当时想，哇，这真的非常令人印象深刻。所以我认为你实际上可以实现低得多的成本……在优化每吨入轨成本、每吨去火星成本方面，我认为甲烷氧化剂是正确的选择。我部分地受到了俄罗斯甲烷氧气发动机测试工作的启发。
Lex FridmanAnd now for something completely different. Do you mind doing a bit of a meme review in the spirit of the great, the powerful PewDiePie? Let’s say, one to eleven, just go over a few documents printed out?好，现在来点完全不同的。你介意以伟大的PewDiePie的精神做一个meme点评吗？打分从1到11，我们来看几张打印出来的图片？
Elon MuskWe can try.可以试试。
Lex FridmanLet’s try this. I present to you document numero uno.我们来试试。我向你呈上第一号文件。
Elon Musk(laughing) Okay.（笑）好的。
Lex Fridman“Vlad the Impaler discovers marshmallows.”《弗拉德穿刺者发现了棉花糖》。
Elon MuskYeah, that’s not bad.哈，还不错。
Lex FridmanSo, you get it – because he likes impailing things?你明白了吧——因为他喜欢把东西穿刺起来？
Elon MuskYes, I get it. I don’t know, 3, whatever.是的，我明白。我不知道，3分吧，随便。
Lex FridmanOh, that’s not very good.哦，评分不太高。
Lex FridmanThis is grounded in some engineering. Some history.这个有点工程背景，有点历史。
Elon MuskYeah, I give this an 8 out of 10.这个我给8分满分10分。
Lex FridmanWhat do you think about nuclear power?你怎么看核能？
Elon MuskI’m in favor of nuclear power. In a place that is not subject to extreme natural disasters, I think nuclear power is a great way to generate electricity. I don’t think we should be shutting down nuclear power stations.我支持核能。在不受极端自然灾害影响的地方，我认为核能是发电的好方式。我不认为我们应该关闭核电站。
Lex FridmanYeah, but what about Chernobyl?那切尔诺贝利呢？
Elon MuskExactly. I think there’s like a lot of fear of radiation and stuff. And it’s, I guess, probably like a lot of people just don’t… they didn’t study engineering or physics. Just the word ‘radiation’ sounds scary. They can’t calibrate what radiation means. But radiation is much less dangerous than you think. For example, Fukushima – when the Fukushima problem happened due to the tsunami… I got people in California asking me if they should worry about radiation from Fukushima. And I’m like, “Definitely not. Not even slightly, not at all. That is crazy.” And just to show that the danger is so much overplayed compared to what it really is, I actually flew to Fukushima. And actually, I donated a solar power system for a water treatment plant. And I made a point of eating locally grown vegetables on TV in Fukushima. Like, I’m still alive, okay.正是。我觉得很多人对辐射之类的东西存在很多恐惧。大概是因为很多人没学过工程或物理。"辐射"这个词听起来就让人害怕。他们无法判断辐射到底意味着什么。但辐射比你想象的危险性要小得多。举个例子，Fukushima——当Fukushima因为海啸出事的时候……我有加州的人问我，他们是否应该担心Fukushima的辐射。我说："绝对不用。完全不需要，一点儿都不用。那是疯了。"为了证明危险被严重夸大到底有多荒唐，我实际上飞去了Fukushima。我捐了一套太阳能系统给当地一个水处理厂，还在Fukushima当地特地在电视上吃了本地种的蔬菜。你看我还活着，好吧。
Lex FridmanSo it’s not even that the risk of these events is low, but the impact of them is…所以不只是这些事件的风险被低估了，而是它们的影响……
Elon MuskThe impact is greatly exaggerated.影响被严重夸大了。
Lex FridmanIt’s human nature.这是人类的本性。
Elon MuskPeople don’t know what radiation is. I’ve had people ask me, “What about radiation from cellphones causing brain cancer?” I’m like, “When you say radiation, do you mean photons or particles?” They’re like, “I don’t know. What do you mean – photons, particles?” “Do you mean, let’s say photons – what frequency or wavelength?” And they’re like, “No, I have no idea.” “Do you know that everything’s radiating all the time?” They’re like, “What do you mean?” “Everything’s radiating all the time.” Photons are being emitted by all objects all the time, basically. And if you want to know what it means to stand in front of nuclear fire, go outside. The sun is a gigantic thermonuclear reactor that you’re staring right at. Are you still alive? Yes? Okay, amazing.人们不知道辐射是什么。有人问过我，"手机辐射会导致脑癌吗？"我说，"你说辐射的时候，你是指光子还是粒子？"他们说，"我不知道，你说光子、粒子是什么意思？""如果你说光子——频率或波长是多少？"他们说，"不，我完全不知道。""你知道所有东西都在一直辐射吗？"他们说，"什么意思？""所有东西都在一直辐射。"基本上，所有物体都在一直发射光子。如果你想知道站在核火焰前面是什么感觉，就去外面走走。太阳是一个巨大的热核反应堆，你正在直视着它。你还活着吗？活着？好，太棒了。
Lex FridmanYeah, I guess radiation is one of the words that can be used as the tool to fear monger by certain people. That’s it.是的，我猜辐射这个词可以被某些人用作制造恐慌的工具。就是这样。
Elon MuskI think people just don’t understand.我觉得人们只是不了解。
Lex FridmanI mean, that’s the way to fight that fear, I suppose, is to understand, is to learn.我是说，对抗这种恐惧的方式，我想，就是理解，就是学习。
Elon MuskYeah, just say like, “Okay, how many people have actually died from nuclear accidents?” It’s like practically nothing. And say, “How many people have died from coal plants?” And it’s a very big number. So, obviously, we should not be starting up coal plants and shutting down nuclear plants. It just doesn’t make any sense at all. Coal plants like, I don’t know, 100 to 1000 times worse for health than nuclear power plants.是的，就是问一下，"好，核事故实际上死了多少人？"几乎可以忽略不计。再问，"煤电厂死了多少人？"那是个非常大的数字。所以，显然，我们不应该新开煤电厂然后关闭核电站，这根本说不通。煤电厂对健康的危害大概是核电站的100到1000倍。
Lex FridmanYou want to go to the next one? It’s really bad. So, that 90, 180, and 360 degrees, everybody loves the math. Nobody gives a shit about 270.要看下一个吗？这个很糟糕。就是那个90度、180度、360度，大家都爱的数学。没有人在乎270度。
Elon MuskIt’s not super funny. I don’t know, like 2 or 3. This is not a LOL situation.不算特别好笑。我不知道，2分还是3分。这不是LOL那种情况。
Elon Musk(referring to next meme) That’s pretty good.（看下一个meme）这个挺好的。
Lex FridmanUnited States oscillating between establishing and destroying dictatorships. It’s like a metro… is that a metro?美国在建立独裁政权和推翻独裁政权之间不断切换。就像一个节拍器……那是节拍器吗？
Elon MuskYeah, metronome. It’s, I don’t know, a 7 out of 10. It’s kind of true.对，节拍器。我不知道，7分满分10。有几分道理。
Lex FridmanOh, yeah. This is kind of personal for me. Next one.哦，是的。这个对我来说有点切身感受。下一个。
Elon MuskOh, man, is this Laika?哦，老天，这是Laika吗？
Lex FridmanYeah, well, no, this is…嗯，不，这是……
Elon MuskOr is it referring to Laika or something?还是说这是在影射Laika什么的？
Lex FridmanIt’s Laika’s husband. “Hello. Yes, this is dog.” “Your wife was launched into space.” And then the last one is him with his eyes closed and a bottle of vodka.这是Laika的丈夫。"你好。是的，我是狗。""你的妻子被发射进太空了。"然后最后一张是它闭着眼睛，手边放着一瓶伏特加。
Elon MuskYeah, Laika didn’t come back.是的，Laika没有回来。
Lex FridmanNo. They don’t tell you the full story of, you know, what the love…. the impact it had on the loved ones.是的。他们没有告诉你完整的故事——关于爱，以及这件事对亲人产生的影响。
Elon MuskTrue确实。
Lex FridmanThat one gets an 11 from me.这个我给11分。
Elon MuskSure. It’s a good one.当然。这个好。
Lex FridmanIt just keeps going on the Russian theme. First man in space. Nobody cares. First man on the Moon.继续俄罗斯主题。第一个进入太空的人。没有人在乎。第一个登上月球的人。
Elon MuskWell, I think people do care. Yuri Gagarin’s name will be forever in history, I think.我觉得人们在乎。Yuri Gagarin的名字，我认为将永远铭刻在历史上。
Lex FridmanThere is something special about placing, like stepping foot onto another totally foreign land. It’s not the journey, like people that explore the oceans. It’s not as important to explore the oceans as to land on a whole new continent.踏上另一片完全陌生的土地，确实有某种特别的感觉。不是那个旅程本身，就像探索海洋的人——探索海洋不如登上一片全新的大陆那么重要。
Lex FridmanThis is about you. I’d love to get your comment on this. “Elon Musk after sending $6.6 billion to the UN to end world hunger: You have three hours.”这个关于你。我想听你评论一下。"Elon Musk向联合国捐了66亿美元用于消除世界饥饿之后：你有三个小时。"
Elon MuskI mean, obviously, $6 billion is not going to end world hunger. The reality is, at this point, the world is producing far more food than it can really consume. We don’t have caloric constraints at this point. So where there is hunger, it is almost always due to civil war, or strife, or some… it’s not a thing… that is extremely rare for it to be just a matter of lack of money. It’s like some civil war in some country, and one part of the country is literally trying to starve the other part of the country.我是说，显然60亿美元不可能消除世界饥饿。现实是，目前世界生产的食物远多于它实际能消耗的。我们现在没有卡路里限制。所以哪里有饥饿，几乎总是因为内战、冲突，或者某种……仅仅因为缺钱而导致的饥饿是极其罕见的。通常是某个国家爆发了内战，一方在字面意义上试图饿死另一方。
Lex FridmanSo it’s much more complex than something that money could solve. It’s geopolitics. It’s a lot of things. It’s human nature, it’s governments, it’s money, monetary systems, all that kind of stuff.所以这比金钱能解决的要复杂得多。是地缘政治，是很多东西，是人性，是政府，是货币体系，等等诸如此类的。
Elon MuskYeah, food is extremely cheap. These days, the US at this point, among low-income families, obesity is actually now the problem. It’s not hunger, it’s too many calories. It’s not that nobody is hungry anywhere. It’s just, this is not a simple matter of adding money in solving it.是的，食物极其便宜。如今在美国，低收入家庭里，肥胖实际上才是问题，不是饥饿，是卡路里摄入过多。这不是说没有任何地方有人挨饿，只是这并不是简单地加钱就能解决的问题。
Lex FridmanWhat do you think that one gets?你觉得那个meme该得多少分？
Elon Musk2.2分。
Lex FridmanThis is going after empires. “World: Where did you get those artifacts? The British Museum:…” It’s a shout-out to Monty Python… “We found them.”这个是针对帝国的。"世界：你从哪里搞到那些文物？大英博物馆：……"这是在致敬Monty Python……"我们找到的。"
Elon MuskYeah, the British Museum is pretty great. I mean, admittedly Britain did take these historical artifacts from all around the world and put them in London. But you know, it’s not like people can’t go see them. So a convenient place to see these ancient artifacts is London for a large segment of the world. So I think on balance the British Museum is a net good. Well, I’m sure a lot of countries argue about that. It’s like you want to make these historical artifacts accessible to as many people as possible. And the British Museum, I think, does a good job of that.是的，大英博物馆相当不错。我是说，不可否认英国确实从世界各地带走了这些历史文物放到了伦敦。但你知道，人们又不是看不到它们。所以说，伦敦对世界上很大一部分人来说是个方便看到这些古代文物的地方。我认为总体而言，大英博物馆是净积极的。当然，很多国家对此存在争议。关键是你想让这些历史文物让尽可能多的人看到，而大英博物馆在这方面我认为做得不错。
Lex FridmanEven if there’s a darker aspect to the history of empire in general, whatever the empire is, however things were done. It is the history that happened. You can’t sort of erase that history, unfortunately. You could just become better in the future. That’s the point.即使帝国的历史存在黑暗的一面，不管是哪个帝国，不管事情是怎么发生的。那是已经发生的历史，你无法抹去那段历史，遗憾的是。你只能在未来做得更好，这才是重点。
Elon MuskYeah, I mean, it’s like, well, how are we gonna pass moral judgment on these things? If one is gonna judge, say, the British Empire, you got to judge what everyone was doing at the time. And how were the British relative to everyone? And I think that the British would actually get like a relatively good grade – relatively good grade, not an absolute terms – but compared to what everyone else was doing, they were not the worst. Like I said, you got to look at these things in the context of the history at the time and say, “What were the alternatives, and what are you comparing it against?”是的，我是说，我们要如何对这些事情做道德评判呢？如果你要评判，比如说大英帝国，你必须评判当时所有人都在做什么。英国人相对于其他人怎么样？我认为英国人实际上会得到一个相对还可以的成绩——是相对而言，不是绝对意义上的好——但与其他人在做的事情相比，他们不是最坏的。就像我说的，你必须在当时历史的背景下看这些事情，问"当时的替代方案是什么，你在和什么相比？"
Elon MuskAnd I do not think it will be the case that Britain would get a bad grade when looking at history at the time. Now, if you judge history from what is morally acceptable today, you basically are going to give everyone a failing grade. I don’t think anyone would get a passing grade in their morality. Like, you go back 300 years ago – who’s getting a passing grade? Basically, no one.而且我不认为用历史的眼光来看，英国会得到一个很差的成绩。现在，如果你用当今道德标准来评判历史，基本上所有人都会不及格。我不认为任何人的道德能过关。比如300年前——谁能过道德关？基本上没有人。
Lex FridmanAnd we might not get a passing grade from generations that come after us. What does that one get?而我们也可能在后来世代的眼中不及格。这个得多少分？
Elon MuskSure. A 6 or 7.当然，6或7分。
Lex FridmanFor the “Monty Python”, maybe.可能是因为"Monty Python"加了分。
Elon MuskI always loved “Monty Python”. They’re great. The “Life of Brian” and the “Quest for the Holy Grail” are incredible.我一直很喜欢Monty Python，他们太棒了。《布莱恩的一生》和《圣杯》都是不朽之作。
Elon MuskDamn, those are serious eyebrows.天啊，那眉毛真是认真的。
Lex FridmanBrezhnev. How important, do you think, is facial hair to great leadership? You got a new haircut. Is that… how does this affect your leadership?勃列日涅夫。你认为面部毛发对于伟大的领导力有多重要？你剪了新发型，这……对你的领导力有什么影响？
Elon MuskI don’t know. Hopefully not. It doesn’t…(…) There is no one competing with Brezhnev. Those are like epic eyebrows.我不知道，希望没有影响吧。（……）勃列日涅夫是无人能敌的。那真的是史诗级的眉毛。
Elon Musk(Elon & Lex laughing)（Elon和Lex大笑）
Lex FridmanThat’s ridiculous.这也太荒唐了。
Elon MuskGive it a six or seven. I don’t know.给6或7分吧，我不知道。
Lex FridmanI like this, like Shakespeare analysis of memes.我喜欢这种感觉，像是在对meme做莎士比亚式的分析。
Elon MuskBrezhnev, he had a flair for drama as well. Like, you know, showmanship.勃列日涅夫确实有种戏剧感。你知道，那种表演张力。
Lex FridmanYeah. It must come from the eyebrows.是的，肯定来自那双眉毛。
Lex FridmanAlright. Invention, great engineering. “Look what I invented. That’s the best thing since ripped up bread.” Because they invented sliced bread. Am I just explaining memes at this point? (all laughing) This is what my life has become.好的，发明，伟大的工程。"看我发明了什么，这是自切片面包以来最棒的东西。"因为是他们发明了切片面包。我现在只是在解释meme吗？（众人大笑）这就是我的生活。
Shivon ZilisHe’s a meme lord, you’re a meme explainer.他是meme领主，你是meme解说员。
Lex FridmanI’m like a scribe that runs around with the kings and just writes down memes.我就像个跟着国王们到处跑的抄写员，专门把梗记下来。
Elon MuskI mean, when was the cheeseburger invented? That’s an epic invention. Like, wow.芝士汉堡是什么时候发明的？那可是个史诗级发明，真的，哇。
Lex FridmanVersus just like a burger?比起普通汉堡呢？
Elon MuskOr a burger. I guess a burger in general is like, you know…或者普通汉堡。我想总体来说汉堡嘛，就是……
Lex FridmanThen there’s like, what is the burger? What is a sandwich? And then you start getting as a pizza sandwich. And what is the original? It gets into an ontology argument.问题来了，汉堡算什么？三明治又算什么？然后你开始觉得披萨也是一种三明治。最原始的那个又是啥？这就变成本体论辩题了。
Elon MuskYeah, but everybody knows if you order a burger or a cheeseburger or whatever, and you get like, you know, tomato, and some lettuce and onions and whatever, mayo and ketchup and mustard, it’s like epic.对，但不管是汉堡、芝士汉堡还是随便什么，你点一份，里面有番茄、生菜、洋葱、蛋黄酱、番茄酱、芥末，那感觉就是史诗级的。
Lex FridmanYeah, but I’m sure they’ve had bread and meat separately for a long time, and it was kind of a burger on the same plate. But somebody who actually combine them into the same thing to bite it and hold it makes it convenient. It’s a materials problem. Your hands don’t get dirty and whatever. Yeah, it’s brilliant.是啊，但我觉得面包和肉分开摆在盘子里的吃法早就有了，算不算某种意义上的汉堡。只是有人真正把它们合在一起，让你能一口咬住、一只手拿着——这才方便了。说到底是个材料学问题，手不会弄脏之类的。确实妙。
Shivon Zilis(inaudible)（听不清）
Lex FridmanThat is not what I would have guessed.这不是我猜到的答案。
Elon MuskBut everyone knows, if you order a cheeseburger, you know what you’re getting. It’s not like some obtuse like, “I wonder what I’ll get?” Fries are, I mean, great. I mean, they’re the devil. But fries are awesome. And yeah, pizza is incredible.但是每个人都知道，你点了芝士汉堡，你就知道你会拿到什么，不会有那种"不知道会上什么"的神秘感。薯条嘛……我是说，很赞。我是说，它们就是魔鬼。但薯条确实太棒了。披萨也是，简直令人叹为观止。
Lex FridmanFood innovation doesn’t get enough love, I guess is what we’re getting at. (laughs)食物领域的创新确实没有得到足够的认可，我想这就是我们在说的意思。（笑）
Elon MuskIt’s great.确实很棒。
Lex FridmanWhat about the Matthew McConaughey, Austinite here? “President Kennedy: Do you know how to put men on the Moon yet? NASA: No. President Kennedy: Be a lot cooler if you did.”那 Matthew McConaughey 和他的奥斯汀派风格怎么样？"肯尼迪总统问：你们知道怎么把人送上月球了吗？NASA：不知道。肯尼迪：如果你们知道就太酷了。"
Elon MuskPretty much, sure. Six. Six or seven, I suppose.差不多，当然。六分，或者说六七分吧。
Lex FridmanThis is the last one.这是最后一个了。
Elon MuskThat’s funny. (laughing)这个有意思。（大笑）
Lex Fridman“Someone drew a bunch of dicks all over the walls. Sistine Chapel. Boys bathroom."有人在墙上画了一堆丁丁。西斯廷教堂。男生厕所。"
Elon MuskSure, I’ll give it nine. It’s really true.好，我给九分。这个太真实了。
Lex FridmanAll right, this is our highest ranking meme for today.好，这是我们今天排名最高的梗。
Elon MuskI mean, it’s true. How do they get away with it?我是说，这是真的啊。他们怎么就能这么做？
Lex FridmanLots of nakedness.大量的裸体嘛。
Elon MuskI mean, dick pics are just something throughout history. As long as people can draw things, there’s been a dick pic.我是说，丁丁图这件事贯穿整个历史。只要人类会画画，就有丁丁图。
Lex FridmanIt’s a staple of human history.这是人类历史上的必备元素。
Elon MuskIt’s a staple. Consistent throughout human history.确实是必备元素。在整个人类历史中始终如一。
Lex FridmanYou tweeted that you aspire to comedy, you’re friends with Joe Rogan. Might you do a short stand-up comedy set at some point in the future? Maybe open for Joe, something like that. Is that…?你发推说你渴望喜剧，你也跟 Joe Rogan 是朋友。未来有没有可能做一个短暂的单口喜剧表演？比如给 Joe 暖场之类的。这有可能吗？
Elon MuskReally stand-up? Actual just full-on stand-up?真的要做单口？真正的、正式的单口？
Lex FridmanFull-on stand-up. Is that in there? Or is that..?正式的单口。你有这个料吗？还是说……？
Elon MuskI’ve never thought about that.我从没想过这个。
Lex FridmanIt’s extremely difficult. At least that’s what like Joe says and the comedians say.这玩意儿极其难。至少 Joe 和那些喜剧演员都这么说。
Elon MuskI wonder if I could.我倒想知道我能不能行。
Lex FridmanOnly one way to find out.只有一个办法能验证。
Elon MuskYou know, I have done stand-up for friends, just impromptu, you know, (…2:15:36). And they do laugh, but they’re all friends, too. So I don’t know if you got like a room of strangers, are they gonna actually also find it funny. But I could try. See what happens.你知道吗，我给朋友们临时即兴表演过单口，就是随性来的（……2:15:36）。他们确实会笑，但那都是我朋友嘛。所以我不知道如果换一屋子陌生人，他们是不是也会觉得好笑。不过我可以试试，看看会怎样。
Lex FridmanI think you’d learn something either way. I kind of love both when you bomb and when you do great. Just watching people how they deal with it. It’s so difficult. You’re so fragile up there. It’s just you. And you think you’re gonna be funny. And when it completely falls flat it’s beautiful to see people deal with that.我觉得不管结果如何你都能学到东西。某种程度上，我既爱看人崩盘的时候，也爱看人大获成功的时候。就是看看人们怎么应对。那种状态太难了，你站在台上特别脆弱，就你一个人。你以为自己能讲得很好笑，结果完全冷场，看人们怎么面对那个瞬间真的很美。
Elon MuskI think I might have enough material to do stand-up. I’ve never thought about but I might have enough material. I don’t know, like 15 minutes or something.我想我应该有足够的素材能撑一个单口。我之前从没想过这件事，但我可能真的够。不知道，大概 15 分钟左右。
Lex FridmanOh, yeah. Do a Netflix special. (both laughing)哦，是的。去做个 Netflix 特别节目。（两人都笑）
Elon MuskNetflix special. Sure.Netflix 特别节目，好啊。
Lex FridmanWhat’s your favorite “Rick and Morty” concept? Just to spring that on you. There’s a lot of sort of scientific engineering ideas explored there. There’s the butter robot…你最喜欢《Rick and Morty》里的哪个概念？就这么突然问你。里面有很多科学工程类的想法，有黄油机器人……
Elon MuskYeah, it’s great show.是的，那是部很棒的剧。
Lex FridmanYou like it?你喜欢？
Elon MuskYeah, “Rick and Morty” is awesome.是的，《Rick and Morty》太棒了。
Lex FridmanSomebody that’s exactly like you from an alternate dimension showed up there. Elon Tusk…节目里出现过一个跟你一模一样的平行宇宙人，叫 Elon Tusk……
Elon MuskYeah, that’s right.对，没错。
Lex Fridman…that you voiced.……还是你自己配的音。
Elon MuskRick and Morty certainly explores a lot of interesting concepts. So like, what’s the favorite one? The butter robot certainly is… you know, it’s certainly possible to have too much sentience in a device. You don’t want to have your toaster to be a super genius toaster. It’s gonna hate life because all it can make is toast. You don’t want to have super intelligence stuck in a very limited device.《Rick and Morty》确实探索了很多有意思的概念。那最喜欢哪个？黄油机器人嘛，确实……一个设备的自我意识太强，肯定会出问题。你不会想让你的烤面包机变成一个天才吧，因为它会恨透自己的生活——它能干的就只有烤面包。你不会希望把超级智能塞进一个功能极其有限的设备里。
Lex FridmanDo you think it’s too easy from a… if we’re talking about from the engineering perspective, super intelligence, like with Marvin, the robot? It seems like it might be very easy to engineer just a depressed robot. It’s not obvious to engineer a robot that’s going to find a fulfilling existence. Same as humans, I suppose. But I wonder if that’s like the default. If you don’t do a good job on building a robot, it’s going to be sad a lot.你觉得从工程角度来说，超级智能这件事会不会太容易滑向抑郁机器人？就像《银河系漫游指南》里的 Marvin 那样。制造一个抑郁机器人似乎很容易，让机器人找到充实存在感却不那么显然。跟人类一样吧，我猜。但我想知道这会不会是默认的结果——如果你在建机器人时没做好，它就会很多时候处于悲伤状态。
Elon MuskWell, we can reprogram robots easier than we can reprogram humans. So I guess if you let it evolve without tinkering, then it might get sad. But you can change the optimization function and have it be a cheery robot.嗯，我们给机器人重新编程比给人类重新编程容易多了。所以我想如果你让它在没有调整的情况下自然演化，它可能会变得悲观。但你可以修改优化函数，让它变成一个开朗的机器人。
Lex FridmanLike I mentioned with SpaceX, you give a lot of people hope, and a lot of people look up to you. Millions of people look up to you. If we think about young people in high school, maybe in college, what advice would you give to them about – if they want to try to do something big in this world, they want to really have a big, positive impact – what advice would you give them about their career, maybe about life in general?就像我提到 SpaceX 一样，你给了很多人希望，很多人仰望你，数以百万计的人。如果我们想想那些高中生、大学生，你会给他们什么建议——如果他们想在这个世界上做些大事，想真正产生巨大积极影响——关于职业规划，或者关于人生，你会给他们什么建议？
Elon MuskTry to be useful. Do things that are useful to your fellow human beings, to the world. It’s very hard to be useful. Very hard. Are you contributing more than you consume? Try to have a positive net contribution to society. I think that’s the thing to aim for. Not to try to be sort of a leader for the sake of being a leader or whatever. The people you want as leaders are the people who don’t want to be leaders. If you live a useful life, that is a good life, a life worth having lived. And like I said, I would encourage people to use the mental tools of physics and apply them broadly in life. They’re the best tools.尽量做个有用的人。做对你的同胞、对这个世界有用的事。要真正做到有用，很难，非常难。你的贡献有没有超过你的消耗？试着对社会做出正向净贡献。我觉得这才是应该追求的目标。不是为了当领导而当领导，或者诸如此类。你真正想要的领导，恰恰是那些自己不想当领导的人。如果你过了一段有价值的人生，那就是一段好的人生，一段值得活过的人生。还有就像我说的，我鼓励大家用物理学的思维工具，并广泛应用到生活各处。这是最好的工具。
Lex FridmanWhen you think about education and self-education. What do you recommend? There’s the university, there’s self-study. There is hands-on, sort of finding a company or a place or set of people that do the thing you’re passionate about and joining them as early as possible. There’s taking a road trip across Europe for a few years and writing some poetry. Which trajectory do you suggest in terms of learning about how you can become useful, as you mentioned? How you can have the most positive impact?说到教育和自学，你有什么建议？有大学这条路，有自学，有实操——就是尽早找到一家公司或一个地方，或者一群在做你热爱之事的人，然后加入他们。还有就是在欧洲公路旅行几年、写些诗之类的。你建议走哪条轨迹，来弄清楚如何变得有用、如何产生最大正向影响？
Elon MuskI encourage people to read a lot of books, basically try to ingest as much information as you can. And try to also just develop a good general knowledge, so you at least have a rough lay of the land of the knowledge landscape. Like, try to learn a little bit about a lot of things. Because you might not know what you’re really interested in. How would you know what you’re really interested in if you at least aren’t like doing it? Peripheral exploration broadly of the knowledge landscape. And talk to people from different walks of life and different industries and professions and skills and occupations. Just try to learn as much as possible. Man search for meaning.我鼓励大家多读书，基本上就是尽量摄取尽可能多的信息。同时也要培养广博的通识基础，让自己至少对知识版图有个大致的了解。试着对很多领域都了解一点点，因为你可能还不知道自己真正感兴趣的是什么。如果你连稍微接触都没有，你怎么知道自己真正喜欢什么？在知识版图上广泛做外围探索。跟来自不同生活背景、不同行业、不同职业、不同技能领域的人交流。就是尽可能多地学习。人在寻找意义。
Lex FridmanIsn’t the whole thing a search for meaning?这整件事不就是在寻找意义吗？
Elon MuskYeah, what’s the meaning of life and all. Yeah, but just generally, like I said, I would encourage people to read broadly in many different subject areas. And then try to find something where there’s an overlap of your talents and what you’re interested in. So people may be good at something, or they may have skill at a particular thing, but they don’t like doing it. So you want to try to find a thing that’s a good combination of the things that you’re inherently good at, but you also like doing.是啊，生命的意义之类的。不过总体而言，就像我说的，我鼓励大家广泛阅读多个领域。然后试着找到一个你的天赋与你的兴趣相交叠的地方。有人可能擅长某件事，或者在某方面有技能，但不喜欢做它。所以你要找的是那种结合了你本来就擅长、同时你也喜欢做的东西。
Lex FridmanAnd reading is a super-fast shortcut to figure out where are you both good at it, you like doing it, and it will actually have positive impact.阅读是个超快的捷径，帮你搞清楚什么是你既擅长、又喜欢、同时真正能产生积极影响的事。
Elon MuskYou got to learn about things somehow. So reading a broad range… just really, read it. More important, as a kid, I read through the encyclopedia. So that’s pretty helpful. And there was all sorts of things I didn’t even know existed – well, a lot, obviously.你得通过某种方式了解这些事。所以广泛阅读……就是，真的读进去。更重要的是，我小时候把百科全书从头读到尾。那很有用。里面有各种各样我根本不知道存在的东西——嗯，很多，这很显然。
Lex FridmanThat’s as broad as it gets.这算是覆盖面最广的了。
Elon MuskEncyclopedias were suggestible, I think, you know, whatever, 40 years ago. So read through the condensed version of the Encyclopedia Britannica. I recommend that. You always can skip subjects, so you read a few paragraphs, and you know you’re not interested, just jump to the next one. So read the encyclopedia or skim through it.我想大概 40 年前百科全书还挺流行的吧。所以读过《大英百科全书》的精简版。我推荐这个。你随时可以跳过不感兴趣的部分，读几段觉得没意思就直接跳下一个。所以读百科全书，或者快速浏览一遍。
Elon MuskI put a lot of stock and certainly have a lot of respect for someone who puts in an honest day’s work to do useful things. And just generally, to have not a zero-sum mindset, or have more of a grow the pie mindset. If you sort of say, like, when I see people, perhaps including some very smart people, kind of taking an attitude of doing things that seem morally questionable, it’s often because they have, at a base sort of axiomatic level, a zero-sum mindset without realizing it. They don’t realize they have a zero-sum mindset, or at least they don’t realize it consciously.我非常尊重那些踏踏实实工作、做有用之事的人。总体而言，要有一种非零和的心态，或者说更多是一种把饼做大的思维。有时候我看到一些人，包括一些很聪明的人，以某种看似道德存疑的方式行事，这往往是因为他们在最基本的公理层面上，有一种零和思维，但他们自己没有意识到。他们意识不到自己有零和思维，或者至少在意识层面上意识不到。
Elon MuskAnd so, if you have a zero-sum mindset, then the only way to get ahead is by taking things from others. If the pie is fixed, then the only way to have more pie is to take someone else’s pie. But this is false. Obviously, the pie has grown dramatically over time – the economic pie. In reality, you can have – overuse this analogy – there’s a lot of pie. Pie is not fixed. So you really want to make sure you’re not operating without realizing it from a zero-sum mindset, where the only way to get ahead is to take things from others, then that’s going to result in you to try to take things from others, which is not good. It’s much better to work on adding to the economic pie, you know, creating more than you consume, doing more than you… Yeah. That’s a big deal. I think there’s a fair number of people in finance that do have a bit of a zero-sum mindset.而如果你有零和思维，那么出人头地的唯一方式就是从别人那里拿。如果饼是固定的，那么想要更多饼，就只能抢别人的。但这是错的。显然，随着时间推移，饼已经大幅增长了——经济这块饼。现实中，你可以——我老用这个比喻——有很多饼。饼不是固定的。所以你真的要确保自己没有在不知不觉中以零和思维运作——觉得出人头地的唯一方式是从别人那里拿，那结果就是你真的去抢别人的，这不好。把精力放在为经济这块饼添砖加瓦上要好得多，创造大于消耗，付出多于……对。这很重要。我觉得金融界相当一部分人确实有一定程度的零和思维。
Lex FridmanI mean, it’s all walks of life. One of the reasons Rogen inspires me is he celebrates others a lot, there’s not creating a constant competition like there’s a scarcity of resources. What happens when you celebrate others, and you promote others, the ideas of others – it actually grows that pie. The resources become less scarce. And that applies in a lot of kinds of domains. That applies in academia, where a lot of people see some funding for academic research as zero-sum. It is not. If you celebrate each other, if you get everybody to be excited about AI, about physics, about mathematics, I think there’ll be more and more funding, and I think everybody wins. Yeah, that applies, I think broadly.我是说，这在各行各业都有。Rogan 之所以激励我，原因之一就是他非常善于赞美他人，不是制造那种资源匮乏式的持续竞争。当你赞美别人、推广别人的想法，实际上是在把饼做大。资源变得不那么稀缺。这适用于很多领域。比如学术界，很多人把学术科研经费视为零和。其实不是。如果大家互相庆贺，让所有人都对 AI、对物理、对数学兴奋起来，我认为会有越来越多的经费，大家都会受益。这个道理我觉得普遍适用。
Elon MuskYeah, exactly.是的，完全正确。
Lex FridmanSo last question about love and meaning. What is the role of love in the human condition broadly and more specific to you? How has love, romantic love or otherwise, made you a better person, a better human being? Better engineer?最后一个关于爱与意义的问题。爱在广义的人类境况中扮演什么角色，具体到你个人又是怎样的？爱——无论是浪漫的爱还是其他形式的爱——如何让你成为一个更好的人、更好的工程师？
Elon MuskNow you’re asking really perplexing questions. It’s hard to give up… I mean, there are many books, poems, and songs written about what is love and what is what exactly. You know, “ what is love – baby, don’t hurt me ”.这个问题真的很让人困惑。很难给出……我是说，关于爱是什么、到底是什么这个问题，已经有无数本书、诗歌和歌曲写过了。"what is love——baby, don't hurt me"（爱是什么——宝贝，别伤害我）。
Lex FridmanThat’s one of the great ones, yes.这确实是经典之一，没错。
Elon MuskYeah.是的。
Lex FridmanYou’ve earlier quoted Shakespeare, but that’s really up there.你之前引用过莎士比亚，但这首真的不逞多让。
Elon Musk“ Love is a many splendored thing .”"爱是一件绚烂多彩的事。"
Lex FridmanIt’s because we’ve talked about so many inspiring things, like be useful in the world, sort of solve problems, alleviate suffering, but it seems like connection between humans is a source of joy, is a source of meaning. And that’s what love is – friendship, love. I just wonder if you think about that kind of thing when you talk about preserving the light of human consciousness and us becoming a multiplanetary species.因为我们聊了那么多鼓舞人心的事——在世界上做有用的人、解决问题、减轻苦难——但人与人之间的连接似乎是快乐的来源，是意义的来源。而这正是爱的本质——友谊，爱。我只是想知道，当你谈到保存人类意识之光、让我们成为多星球物种时，你有没有想过这类事。
Lex FridmanI mean, to me at least, that means, like, if we’re just alone and conscious and intelligent, it doesn’t mean nearly as much as if we’re with others. Right? And there’s some magic created when we’re together – the friendship of it. And I think the highest form of it is love, which I think broadly is much bigger than just sort of romantic. But also, yes, romantic love and family and those kinds of things.对我而言，至少，这意味着：如果我们只是孤独地、有意识地、聪明地活着，那没有太大意义；但如果我们与他人同在，那就完全不同了。当我们在一起时，会产生某种魔力——那种伴侣关系。我认为爱是它最高的形态，而我觉得爱远不止浪漫层面，它广泛得多。当然也包括浪漫的爱、家庭之爱这些。
Elon MuskWell, I mean, the reason, I guess, I care about us becoming a multiplanet species and a spacefaring civilization is foundationally I love humanity. And so, I wish to see it prosper and do great things and be happy. If I did not love humanity, I would not care about these things.嗯，我想，我在乎我们成为多星球物种、成为星际文明的根本原因，是我热爱人类。所以我希望看到人类繁荣发展，做出伟大的事情，获得幸福。如果我不爱人类，我就不会在乎这些事。
Lex Fridman( 2:28:31) So when you look at the whole, the human history, all the people has ever lived, all the people alive now – it’s pretty… we’re okay. On the whole, we’re a pretty interesting bunch.（2:28:31）所以当你回望人类历史的全貌——所有曾经活过的人，以及现在活着的所有人——还挺……总体而言，我们是一群挺有意思的家伙。
Elon MuskYeah. All things considered – and I’ve read a lot of history, including the darkest, worst parts of it – and despite all that, I think, on balance, I still love humanity.是的。综合考量——我读过很多历史，包括其中最黑暗、最糟糕的部分——即便如此，我认为综合起来，我依然热爱人类。
Lex FridmanYou joked about it with the 42. What do you think is the meaning of this whole thing? Is it like, is there a non-numeric?你之前开玩笑说了 42 这个数字。你觉得这一切的意义是什么？有没有一个非数字的答案？
Elon MuskWell, really, I think what Douglas Adams was saying in ‘Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’ is that the universe is the answer. And what we really need to figure out are what questions to ask about the answer that is the universe. And that the question is really the hard part. And if you can properly frame the question, then the answer, relatively speaking, is easy. Therefore, if you want to understand what questions to ask about the universe, you want to understand the meaning of life, we need to expand the scope and scale of consciousness so that we’re better able to understand the nature of the universe and understand the meaning of life.我真正认为 Douglas Adams 在《银河系漫游指南》里想说的是：宇宙本身就是答案。而我们真正需要弄清楚的，是应该向这个叫做宇宙的答案提出什么问题。问题才是真正困难的部分。如果你能正确建构问题，那么答案相对来说就容易了。所以，如果你想理解应该向宇宙提什么问题，想理解生命的意义，我们就需要扩展意识的广度与规模，让我们更有能力理解宇宙的本质，理解生命的意义。
Lex FridmanAnd ultimately, the most important part will be to ask the right question…而最终，最重要的是提出正确的问题……
Elon MuskYes.是的。
Lex Fridman…thereby elevating the role of the interviewer………从而提升了访谈者的地位……
Elon MuskYes, exactly.是的，完全正确。
Lex Fridman…as the most important human in the room.……成为房间里最重要的人。
Elon MuskYou know, it’s hard to come up with good questions. Absolutely. But yeah, the foundation of my philosophy is that I am curious about the nature of the universe. And, obviously, I will die. I don’t know when I’ll die, but I won’t live forever. But I would like to know that we are on a path to understanding the nature of the universe and the meaning of life and what questions to ask about the answer that is the universe. And so, if we expand the scope and scale of humanity and consciousness in general, which include silicon consciousness, that seems like a fundamentally good thing.你知道，想出好问题真的很难，绝对是。但是，我哲学的基础就是我对宇宙本质充满好奇。显然，我终将死去，我不知道什么时候，但我不会永生。不过我希望知道我们走在一条理解宇宙本质、理解生命意义、以及理解应该向宇宙这个答案提出什么问题的道路上。所以，如果我们扩展人类和整体意识——包括硅基意识——的广度与规模，那似乎从根本上是一件好事。
Lex FridmanElon, like I said, I’m deeply grateful that you spend your extremely valuable time with me today and also that you are giving millions of people hope in this difficult time, this divisive time, in this cynical time. So I hope you do continue doing what you’re doing. Thank you so much for talking today.Elon，就像我说的，我非常感激你在今天用你极其宝贵的时间陪伴我，也感激你在这个艰难、分裂、充满怀疑主义的时代给了数以百万计的人希望。所以我希望你继续做你正在做的事。非常感谢你今天跟我聊天。
Elon MuskOh, you’re welcome. Thanks for your excellent questions.哦，不客气。谢谢你精彩的提问。