#43
Are you happy / what drives you?
Interviews
3
Answers
4
X posts
2
Span
2023 to 2024
First asked Nov 2, 2023, most recently Aug 3, 2024. Excerpts below are from machine transcripts with filler words (um, uh, you know) and stutters removed; … marks a cut. They are not checked word for word, so use the link to hear the exact words, or the transcript link for the raw text. Timestamps: 4 cross-checked against YouTube captions, 0 from the archive transcript only. X has no link-to-time option, so X links open at the start.
How the answer evolved · oldest first
Nov 2, 2023 · In Conversation with Rishi Sunak · asked by Rishi Sunak
Q: Where do you get that drive, that motivation, that purpose?
As I was mentioning when we were talking earlier, I have to somewhat engage in deliberate suspension of disbelief because I'm putting so much blood, sweat and tears into a work project and burning the 3am oil. Then I'm like, wait, why am I doing this? I can just wait for the AI to do it. I'm just lashing myself for no reason. Must be a glutton for punishment or something.
Nov 29, 2023 · DealBook Summit · asked by Andrew Ross Sorkin
Q: Is your storm a happy storm?
Like a psychiatrist couch here or something? I think to some degree I was born this way, but. And then it was amplified by a difficult childhood, frankly, so. But I can remember even in happy moments when I was a kid that there's just, it just feels like there's just a rage of forces in my mind constantly. Now this productively manifests itself in technology and building things for the most part. So. And I think on …
Nov 29, 2023 · DealBook Summit · asked by Andrew Ross Sorkin
Q: But, and this is a question I think a lot of people, you know, are always trying to figure out about not just you, but sometimes themselves. Meaning what is driving all of this?
No. If I were to describe my philosophy, it is a philosophy of curiosity. I mean I did have this existential crisis when I was around 12 about what's the meaning of life? Isn't it all pointless? Why not just commit suicide? Why exist? I read the religious texts, I read the philosophy books, that, especially the German philosophy books made me quite depressed frankly. One should not read Schopenhauer and Nietzsche as …
Aug 3, 2024 · Lex Fridman Podcast · asked by Lex Fridman
Q: Is your own happiness part of that equation of success?
It has to be to some degree other than sad. If I'm depressed, I make worse decisions. So I can't have like, if I have zero recreational time, then I make worse decisions. So I don't have a lot, but it's above zero. I mean, my motivation, if I've got a religion of any kind, is a religion of curiosity, of trying to understand it's really the mission of understand the universe. I'm trying to understand the universe or …
In his own posts on X
@elonmusk · Sep 8, 2025
We cannot understand the true nature of the Universe, unless we question deeply. I want to know what is real, even if the answer is total obliteration of my consciousness.
View on X ↗@elonmusk · Feb 9, 2026
Expand consciousness to the stars to understand the universe. The limiting factors for discovering new physics are colliders and telescopes, which move at the speed of a committee of governments. That is why I decided against a career in physics, even though I love physics. What can be learned on Earth is insignificant compared to what can be learned beyond Earth.
View on X ↗
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