Elon musk

Which is madder, bitcoin at $41,500 — oops, make that $31,000 on Monday — or Tesla shares at $880 apiece? Don’t get me started on the crypto-mania in which the Financial Conduct Authority has warned gamblers ‘they should be prepared to lose all their money’. But Tesla, relatively speaking, is a real thing: a California-based carmaker which has expanded the frontiers of the electric vehicle market that’s going to become huge in the next decade and could soon make carbon--fuelled road transport extinct. Put that way, it’s not so surprising — in tech stock terms — that investors should value Tesla higher than the rest of the US auto industry combined.

A couple of weeks ago Newsweek ran an article attacking Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, for engaging in a friendly Twitter exchange with me about the coronavirus pandemic. According to the article, I was a ‘eugenics advocate’. How could the apparently respectable industrial designer sully himself in this way? Didn’t he realise I was Britain’s answer to Dr Mengele? The claim that I’m a ‘eugenics advocate’ isn’t true, obviously.

People often tell me I have a strange way of looking at the world. Obviously, it doesn’t seem strange to me. But I do tend to see the world backwards. For instance, most people think the principal obstacles to economic and technological growth are all about supply. To me, it’s all in the demand. I have met one Italian economist, Mario Fabbri, who agrees. But apart from him, me and maybe Matt Ridley, there’s nobody else. Now, how crazy is this idea? What if the biggest constraint to progress really is a question of psychology, not economics? Certainly, if it is true, it should not surprise us that economists and policy--makers are reluctant to believe it. The knowledge and influence they possess would be instantly devalued.

When I first heard Abba’s magnificent 1982 swansong ‘The Day Before You Came’, I’d never come across the Americanised use of the verb ‘make’, meaning ‘reach’. So the line ‘I must have made my desk around a quarter after nine’ baffled me. Given the Swedish obsession with self-assembly furniture, I even wondered whether Björn was using the word conventionally, and Ms Fältskog was in fact kneeling on the floor aligning Tab A with Groove C, while looking for the elusive Allen key with which to attach the castors.

Home Primary schools were allowed to reopen but many did not want to. MPs voted to return to their physical presence in parliament. The government told people they were allowed to meet in gardens or on rooftops, up to the number of six, as long as those from different households remained two metres apart. About 2.5 million vulnerable people in England and Wales, who had been advised to stay at home, were now advised that those living alone might meet another single person out of doors. Rosie Duffield, the Labour MP for Canterbury, resigned as a whip after she was found to have gone for a walk with her current partner at a time that he was still living with his wife. Racing resumed. The Queen rode a fell pony at Windsor Castle.

When Elon Musk took to the stage at the California Academy of Sciences on Tuesday, he gave the world the first insight into his vision for mapping and ultimately controlling the brain. Three years ago, Musk formed Neuralink which was specifically created to respond to the threat that Musk’ believes is posed by the imminent threat of thinking machines powered by AI. Musk believes that phase of the information revolution could mark the end of humanity as robots outpace humans in intelligence and pace of evolution. His answer is to fully understand exactly how the brain works and, in the process, he believes that the new science will find the cure for many of humanity’s most deadly illnesses such as Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s and PTSD.

We are constantly pushing toward the apocalypse. Whether it's Judgment Day, suicidal death cults, or freaking out about how we only have five minutes to reverse climate change, the End of Days looms large in our imaginations. Relatively new to the End Times game are the transhumanists, who hope to defer the end for all time. Transhumanists believe that we can integrate humanity with tech to extend life, or even live forever.Transhumanists want us to evolve into a tech-integrated species. This would allow us to extend human life through deferring and even annulling the physical decay that ends in death. Organ replacement, micro repairs with nanotech, and AI integration would decrease likelihood of death by natural causes.