Gript 专访马斯克：谈爱尔兰仇恨言论法案

0:00Well, welcome everybody. We are here with Mr Elon Musk of SpaceX and Tesla fame.

0:06And today he's going to be speaking with us about the Irish hate speech bill and related free speech issues.

0:13And it's very good to have you here, Elon, because I know you and I have been speaking about doing this interview for a little while now,

0:20because free speech is obviously an issue you've spoken quite a bit about in the past.

0:25So thank you so much for taking the time to discuss it.

0:28You're welcome. Yeah, I think it's pretty obvious that free speech is the bedrock of democracy.

0:34And if you lack free speech, it's impossible to have a proper democratic process because people

0:41are not aware of the fact. So well, they may be misled. So you'll have to be able to speak

0:48in mind within the context of the law. And without that, you don't have a real democracy.

0:55Yeah, so specifically then regarding the Irish context, what was it that made you sit up and

1:04take an interest in the Irish hate speech bill specifically?

1:08Because of course, you've focused on issues of censorship at a big international level

1:14when it comes to big tech and things in superpowers like America.

1:20seems unusual, but welcome that somebody of your stature, shall we say, would focus on

1:28a bill in a country like Ireland.

1:31Yeah.

1:32Well, generally, you want to be concerned about anything that, you know, any terminology

1:39that could fit in a Georgia or well novel.

1:43And they're not going to, these bills will generally be named in ways that sound innocuous

1:49and sound like, sure, why wouldn't anyone support that.

1:53But when you look at the details,

1:56it's often the opposite of what the title of the bull is.

2:00So if the government is given broad powers

2:11to define what hate speech is, they

2:15can easily define things that support the ruling party, define hate speech as anything

2:22that doesn't support the ruling party effectively. So it is a way for whoever is in charge to

2:30cement their power.

2:32Well, I think on that, there's probably many people from abroad who aren't aware of the

2:38situation here at Ireland, but for those who might not know, the government here is currently

2:44trying to pass a piece of legislation which would criminalize incitement to hatred or

2:52expressions that could incite hatred.

2:55But you're talking about a piece of legislation that doesn't even define the word hatred.

2:59When you look at the text of the bill, it says that hatred means hatred on the basis

3:05of X, Y, and Z characteristic, which is obviously a circular definition.

3:10So it's incredibly vague and ambiguous to the point where it could potentially be applied

3:17to almost any view that somebody could express.

3:21And this is what many critics of the bill have been saying for some time that it opens

3:27the whole of discourse up to legal scrutiny potentially where you could be prosecuted for

3:33expressing almost anything hypothetically.

3:35Yeah.

3:36I mean, I'm not.

3:37I mean, why is that?

3:38I mean, it's so extreme that you could be put in prison for having the wrong meme on

3:44your phone.

3:46And that's insane.

3:48Well, on that, when you first started tweeting about this legislation a few months ago,

3:56you seem to indicate that your company ex might challenge the billing court.

4:01And in response, our T-Shock, which is like the Irish Prime Minister, Leo Veradkar, he

4:06He dismissed your suggestion and he said that you need to have legal standing to do that.

4:11And he said, and I quote, I suspect he doesn't know what he means and is just showboating.

4:16So now that I have you here, is the Irish teacher correct?

4:19Were you just showboating or do you intend to challenge this bill if it becomes law?

4:26Well, our default approach is to challenge any legislation that infringes upon the people's

4:35ability to say what they want to say. So at Rio of C.F. standings, it's our European

4:42headquarters are in Ireland. So we have a big office in Ireland, a major president in

4:48Ireland. So we obviously have standing. And we will also fund the legal fees of the

5:00of Irish citizens that want to challenge the bull as well. So we'll make sure that if there's

5:07an attempt to suppress the voice of the Irish people that we do are absolutely best to defend

5:12the people of Ireland and their ability to speak on mind.

5:17So on that you obviously mentioned that X's headquarters in Europe is based in Ireland.

5:24And so that naturally raises the question of a kind of a,

5:29I mean, previously it would have been the Twitter files.

5:31Now it's supposed to be the X files.

5:34The potential of delving into some of the correspondence

5:38that Twitter would have had with European

5:43and Irish government officials throughout periods

5:46like the COVID pandemic, for example,

5:48because there's been many,

5:49there's been a lot of suggestion that things like

5:53so-called misinformation and disinformation labeling systems

5:57might not have always been used to the standard that one would

6:01uh... hope they would be used to buy authorities in terms of uh... how they

6:05choose to label certain pieces of information

6:08uh... and and so many people have uh...

6:10speculated that

6:12there's a lot of

6:13uh... potentially shocking material in there that's just waiting to be found

6:18would you be open to doing an x-files type project that here here in arland

6:22specifically in Europe more broadly?

6:24Yeah, sure.

6:26But it's a pretty safe bet that whatever we found in the U.S. files will be the same in

6:32Europe.

6:33So there was massive government interference in the U.S.

6:36Now, the U.S. actually has a constitutional amendment that prohibits the government from

6:45attacking free speech.

6:46It's literally the first amendment is the free speech amendment to the Constitution.

6:50So it is actually fully illegal for the government to impede the free speech of the

6:57people in the US.

6:58Now Ireland and very few other countries do not have such an amendment.

7:06So it may not be illegal actually, what was done in Ireland, but was there an attempt

7:14to suppress free speech during COVID,

7:17you can pretty much assume that to be 100% likely.

7:22So I seriously doubt that is any differ from the US.

7:25So yeah, I mean, we do want to sort of move on,

7:31you know, and not be constantly dredging up things

7:35from old Twitter, you know, fight the battles of,

7:40just today and tomorrow, not the battles of yesterday.

7:42But as you mentioned, the thing we should be concerned about is if the Irish Parliament

7:52passes a bow that defines hate speech as whatever they think hate speech is, people should be

8:01extremely concerned about that.

8:05just at the mercy of the ruling party and whatever bureaucrats they put in place.

8:12And they can just define something that really is not hate speech as hate speech,

8:17just because they don't like it.

8:21On that, there's been something that has been used similarly as far as vague concepts

8:28that can sort of be applied to any context.

8:30And that's misinformation and disinformation.

8:34We hear about this a lot.

8:35And in fact, under the EU Digital Services Act here at Ireland,

8:39we have a new body, the media commission.

8:44And we've also got the electoral commission.

8:46And these bodies, I think many countries now,

8:49have them in Europe and North America and Australia and so on,

8:54where we're developing these bodies that

8:57have the legal authority to shut down that information

9:01that they deem to be false at any given moment

9:04at election time, whatever it might be.

9:05In fact, we even had one Supreme Court judge

9:08who's a member of one of these bodies

9:10who said that it's important to balance

9:13the right to free speech with the right

9:16not to be misinformed.

9:18Now, I'm not aware of any such right

9:22in the Irish Constitution,

9:23but who am I to contradict a Supreme Court judge,

9:28do you believe that there is a right

9:30to not be misinformed as that judge told us?

9:34Well, that may sound nice on the surface, but who is deciding what is missing information

9:39and disinformation?

9:41The point is to have an open and clear debate, and if something is missing with disinformation,

9:49then to provide a rebuttal, that's the best way is open debate.

9:56And obviously we've got community notes on the X-platform, which I think is very powerful

10:00for addressing inaccuracies or adding context.

10:06And of course, when somebody posts something,

10:08people can reply with that it's not true

10:11for the following reasons.

10:13Whereas say something that a newspaper publishes,

10:16there's no community notes,

10:17there's no ability to robot the claims

10:21in an article in a newspaper.

10:23So the newspapers can publish,

10:25and they do publish all sorts of things

10:27that are completely untrue.

10:30as well as to avoid subjects that they decide they don't want to write about.

10:37The biggest lie in the media is the choice of narrative, because they can simply ignore

10:44anything they don't like, and they can overly focus on things that they do want to talk

10:48about.

10:51Whereas I think that the choice of what to talk about, the choice of narrative, should

10:55be up to the people, not up to a handful of editors?

11:03How do you respond to critics who say that X has helped to spread misinformation about

11:12controversial situations like, for example, the current war in Israel, Palestine, or the

11:18Ukraine situation?

11:20Because obviously, I mean, the old quote is the first casualty of war's truth and propaganda

11:25is always omnidirectional on every side.

11:29And it's almost impossible, it seems, as an ordinary person, to figure out what's going

11:35on.

11:36How do you respond to people who would criticize your platform or social media platforms in

11:42general on that basis?

11:44Well, first of all, I think actually X has the most up-to-date information by far.

11:53As I said earlier, you can rebut anything that's set on any claims.

11:58So if so, it makes a post, you can reply to that post with a rebuttal instantly.

12:04There's community notes, which is very rigorous.

12:08And the way that community notes works is that people who historically have had different

12:13opinions must agree on a note in order for that note to be shown. That's a very important

12:21and I think very powerful principle. If people who have historically disagreed do both or

12:29agree that this note that I given community note is correct, that's what's required for

12:33it to show up. So that's I think it's an incredibly powerful force for truth. And I

12:42I think it's by far more accurate than any newspaper or traditional media.

12:48If somebody is saying that there's much more disinformation, whenever I ask them for examples

12:53that can never produce any.

12:56So I would say that they're lying when they say that.

13:00They're either lying or they don't know what they're talking about.

13:02Fools or liars?

13:04Well, it's interesting that when you actually look at the definition of a word like disinformation,

13:11It is synonymous with a lie.

13:15So really when politicians say they want to regulate disinformation, we're talking about

13:23allowing politicians to regulate lying, which is if they were to phrase it that way, I think

13:28people would have a very different reaction to it as far as policies go.

13:34Yes.

13:35Do you want liars defining what lying is?

13:38It doesn't seem like the wise is the approach.

13:42A lot of the time, everyone knows that.

13:44So they're costly being deceptive.

13:48So it would be absurd for known liars

13:52to define what lying is.

13:56On that, because you are somebody who obviously is,

14:01you're known for, I suppose, environmentalism

14:05in terms of electric cars and this sort of space.

14:11So when it comes to Ireland's green policies,

14:14you've criticized the energy policies

14:16of other European countries like Germany previously.

14:20And now Ireland has gone a very similar route

14:24to the point where our national grid operator,

14:26air grid says that we're gonna have electricity shortages

14:30every winter for years into the future.

14:33And this seems like a big deal,

14:34But considering the fact that Ireland is home to so many data centers and tech companies

14:38and so on, you would think that as sort of the Silicon Valley of Europe, you would want

14:43to have a secure energy grid.

14:46So as somebody with a tech company based in Ireland, we yourself and all the European

14:51countries, are you worried about the direction of the Irish energy sector and the European

14:55energy sector more broadly?

14:58Well, I think we've gone, you know, I certainly consider myself an environmentalist and I think

15:05It's hard to say that there's any single person

15:07who's done more to help sustainable energy

15:09and the environment than I have.

15:12So I speak with some authority and an analogy in this area.

15:20There's absolutely no need to do anything to forming.

15:24Changing farming will have no effect on the environment.

15:30It's totally fine.

15:32Stop attacking the farmers.

15:34They can just keep doing what they're doing.

15:37There's only one thing that really matters

15:39with respect to the environment,

15:40and that is how many billions of tons of CO2

15:44do we take out of the ground and put into the atmosphere?

15:47So it's a reason that if you take enough tonnage

15:54of CO2 from hydroclobbins,

15:58that's buried deep underground,

16:00and you take it from deep underground

16:02put it in the atmosphere that eventually you're going to have some change in the atmosphere.

16:10So I do think that we want to move towards a sustainable energy economy where we limit how

16:17much carbon we take from deep underground and move to the atmosphere, but that's the only thing

16:22that matters. Methane doesn't matter. Methane decays to CO2 very quickly, so it all ends up being CO2

16:30anyway. It's fundamentally how much carbon do we take from deep underground and add to

16:37the surface cycle. That's the only thing that matters and you can leave farmers alone.

16:44And the risk in my view for CO2 and global warming is it is meaningful in the long term

16:53if you say 50 years or more. I don't think it is a risk in the short term. But it was

17:00It will take a long time to transition the economy that is still mostly based on hydrocarbons

17:10and transition that to sustainable energy where it's mostly wind, solar, nuclear.

17:15I'm actually a big part of nuclear.

17:16I think nuclear actually, nuclear vision is fine or hydro, geothermal.

17:24These are all sustainable.

17:26That's it, really.

17:27Some were complicated than that is that we should just generally lean in the direction

17:33of a sustainable energy economy.

17:37But for sure, we can leave the farmers learn that these actions that hurt farmers' ability

17:45to do farming, and have a lot of respect for the hard work associated with farming, are

17:50completely unnecessary and will achieve nothing with respect to global warming.

17:54So that would include things like cutting down on the number of livestock we have a

17:58proposal here to cut the number of livestock in the country cows I believe by about 200,000.

18:05You don't think that would have any positive impact on the environment?

18:09Zero.

18:10And okay then.

18:12Like literally you wouldn't even measure it.

18:15And if somebody says they would be able to measure it, I think then I want to hear what

18:18that measurement number is.

18:20I will bet a billion dollars you won't even be able to measure it a billion dollars.

18:25That's a bold.

18:27Unmeasurable.

18:29That's how little the impact is.

18:32On a related note, and I know you don't have much more time, and I really appreciate you

18:35taking the time to do this, on a related note, how would you explain the importance of birth

18:44rates to politicians who aren't even thinking about that as an issue when it comes to demographics

18:50and so on because you've spoken about this many times before and the demographic crisis

18:56that's brewing for humanity.

18:58And when I asked our minister who's responsible for pensions, Heather Humphreys about this

19:04issue and what our government is doing to address it, she not only did she confirm that

19:09they're not doing anything to address it, she almost seemed to act like it was an odd

19:13question.

19:14She didn't seem to understand the significance of it and how it might impact on things like

19:19social services going into the future and a whole range of other issues. So if you were

19:24speaking to lawmakers like her in the West, how would you explain why that issue is so

19:30critical?

19:31Well, first of all, I think most people are still under the wrong impression that the world

19:39population is growing rapidly. It is in fact not growing rapidly. In most countries, it

19:45is plummeting. So, and with each passing year, I should say the birth rate is plummeting.

19:52And the only reason the population isn't plummeting is because people are living longer. That's

19:57it. But it's very easy to predict with demographics what the future of the world will look like

20:02because you can say how many babies were born next year and then you immediately know how

20:07many will be adults in 20 years. So, one doesn't need to be some expert in statistics to understand

20:14what the world population will be like in 20 years.

20:18You can just look at the number of babies born,

20:21multiply that by life expectancy,

20:23and that's gonna be the population over time.

20:26And what we're seeing in basically almost every country,

20:31in fact, I think almost every country

20:33with an advanced economy,

20:36which is most countries basically,

20:38is that the birth rate is below replacement rate.

20:41So, and in some cases, it's half replacement rate.

20:45So, if somebody's half replacement rate,

20:48that just means that there will be half

20:50as many people who are generation,

20:54with each successor generation will be in half.

20:57And it's bleaker than that,

20:59because the people that remain will be very old.

21:02And so, essentially, a country will just turn into

21:04an old age home.

21:06And a good ratio to look at,

21:10for any given country is the ratio of adult diapers to baby diapers.

21:19Okay, this is a, that's the key turning point.

21:22You know, in Japan, there were more adult diapers sold than baby diapers,

21:27I think over 10 years ago, and their birth rate has gotten worse since then.

21:32And, and civilization, you know, there was a longstanding debate of,

21:37Well, civilization die with a bang or a whimper.

21:41Well, right now it's threatening to die with a whimper in adult diapers.

21:45And that is an incredibly bleak scenario.

21:48Now, how sad?

21:50I'd rather die with a bang.

21:52Yeah.

21:53At least a bang would be cool.

21:56With a whimper in adult diapers.

21:58Yeah, at least a bang would be cool.

22:00You know, big explosion or something.

22:02You can walk away from it and look like an action hero as you go out.

22:07I just think of dying with Alzheimer's and C-Rile and adult diet because that's miserable.

22:18So the birthright really matters.

22:25And I'm not saying we should just expand massively, but I think we should at least keep the numbers

22:33where there are an aim for a slight amount

22:36of population growth, but that seems like a reasonable objective

22:39as opposed to doing a population free fall,

22:42which is most countries.

22:44Well, I know you after Ron,

22:46and I don't want to take up any more of your time.

22:48I really appreciate all the time you've taken here.

22:53I wanted to end on a question about the Iliad

22:58because I know you're a big fan of Homer's Iliad.

23:01recently called it the best story ever. What about that story specifically? Do you like

23:08so much? Because I remember studying at school and it's a beautiful tale, but I'm wondering

23:14what about it? Did you find so intriguing?

23:22Well, I think it's basically an action story, an action movie, and it's got all the elements

23:33that you want to see in a movie, which is, you know, like, you know, the Spartan Queen,

23:44falls in love, falls in love and leaves, and then all of, you know, Sparta and Greece goes to

23:51get her back. There are many heroic battles. It illustrates, I mean, there's so many things

24:01that we see in Ruby City really come from the Allead.

24:05You know, there's Achilles, who's this incredible warrior, but he's got a vulnerability with

24:16Classic Achilles heel.

24:20And he's prone to letting his emotions get the best of him.

24:27There's this incredible scene where the father comes to get his son's body back and begs

24:45bigs Achilles to get his son's body back.

24:52It's a great story.

24:53And I've recommended, I recommend the Penguin audio version

25:00because it's actually meant to be spoken not read.

25:05And Penguin's audio version of the Iliad is excellent.

25:10Well, I would strongly recommend to you,

25:12if you like the Iliad, any of the Irish epics

25:15like the Catal rate of Cooley,

25:17it's a similar genre and they're excellent.

25:22If you like the Greek myths, you'll certainly like that as well.

25:24So that's a recommendation I can make to you.

25:27But anyway, I want to be conscious of your time.

25:29And I know you say you have to run around half five.

25:32So I don't want to keep you any longer.

25:34But thank you so much, Mr. Mosk for your time

25:36and for all of your thought provoking contributions.

25:40All right.

25:40Welcome.

25:41Thank you.

25:42Thanks so much.

25:42Talk soon.