ELON MUSK BETRAYED BY TOO MUCH DATA IN HIS MIND

Why Musk Does Not Know Answers to Certain Questions about Life

I like Elon Musk. I don’t like everything he says or does, nor do I like all of his philosophies. But as a man, I like him. I like his frankness. I like his independence. I like the fact that he is willing to speak his mind and not backtrack when criticized unless he genuinely believes he was wrong. I like his ability to admit he has said some dumb things, some wrong things.

Recently, I listened to an interview Elon Musk did with journalist Andrew Sorkin. I came away saddened at one point. It was when Musk talked about questions he had about life. He was wondering aloud about some things, such as aliens and the mystery of life itself.

Musk Wants to Know Everthing There is to Know

Musk is a man with a brilliant mind who has been betrayed by his own mind. He has a mind that consumed knowledge like a dry sponge and hasn’t stopped. He has a desire to know everything. His curiosity is endless.

I can understand that. All my life, I’ve been curious about just about everything. If I had a dozen lives to live, I’d immerse myself in a dozen disciplines. Elon Musk is trying to do that in one life. But as a result, he’s become a victim of his own curiosity. His victimization is akin to what has happened with the advent of the internet.

We are deluged with data. We have access to so much knowledge that it has overwhelmed us to the point that the only way we can use it is to categorize it and distill it down to chunks that will make sense. AI is going to be extremely valuable at assisting us in that chore. But, even doing that has problems. It’s the same problem that has afflicted Elon Musk.

Who Has the Truth? Which Guru is Right?

Mr. Musk said that in his early years he read volumes of books on philosophies, religion and ideas about life. In short, he stuffed that brilliant mind with a massive array of data. And, therein lies the problem. After he stuffed the mind with ideas and facts and knowledge and philosophies, he had the task of determining what the truth was about it all. How does one distill that much knowledge?

You can’t. Elon Musk can’t. Nobody can. Not even a sentient AI.

Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash

Are there Aliens? Who or What is God? Life on Other Worlds?

So, how do you determine what the truth is about God? About aliens? About life on other worlds? About moral truth? About religious truth?

I faced this quandry in a different fashion at the young age of nineteen. I wanted to know the truth about what branch of Christianity had the truth. Unlike Elon Musk, I was ignorant. Totally! However, I was not stuffed with competing ideas and philosophies and “truths.” But, I knew enough to know that I could not ask someone to show me the truth since I had no way of knowing they were the repository of truth.

You could have lined up 20 of the world Christian leaders of different denominations and the like and I’d not have had a clue as to who to believe. I had no benchmarks. I did have the Bible and I was reading it. But, when it came to choosing who, amongst the myriad of branches of Christianity, there was no way for me to know who had the truth.

Elon Musk is a Walking Encyclopedia of Information

Musk has accumulated an enormous amount of data over his lifetime. It is impossible for him to determine which of the conflicting opinions is actually true without getting the right help. What is the right help?

Someone who has the truth, who knows the truth.

But, even that has its problems because how is he to know that person has truth? Because they say so? How would Musk know that this someone who told him “this is the truth about these things” that in fact, that person was telling him the truth? It’s the same dilemma I faced.

As a lawyer, over the years I’ve had to search for answers. I’ve looked for the truth in a matter. It’s not always been easy and I haven’t always found the answers I wanted. And, I’ve learned that sometimes, finding the answers is not looking into a book. Sometimes, someone can give you the answers and you just know, it’s the truth.

I once had a client tell me something I did not know and I knew immediately she was telling the truth. I used it and we were able to settle the case based on a truth she knew that I did not know.

A Neuro-Link by Musk Will Not Help

If Musk one day neuro-links to AI, it will not help. It will merely reiterate the millions of answers it has in its vaster repository of knowledge. He’d have the same problem he has now—overload, but to a much higher level.

I.’d love to discuss those questions with Musk. It will never happen, of course, but I’d love to be able to tell him how to find the truth about all those questions. I once had those same questions. And, I got the answers. Some of those answers surprised me, frankly. I’d never thought of them nor heard them from anyone. It was an “Ah-h-h-h Sooooo moment.”

So, it saddened me to hear him raising those questions aloud in a somewhat lamentive tone. I found myself wishing I could take him aside and say, “Hey man, let’s talk about it. Let me tell you what I know.”

But then, how would he know I was telling him the truth?

Sometimes, as I did with my client, you just know a thing is true. But, in these matters, I don’t know that this would work. Perhaps. But, the only way I know is for him to recognize the truth about those matters is the same way I came to know the answer to questions I had about who had the truth early in my life and later, with respect to the questions I posed at the beginning of this post about the existence of aliens and God and the purpose of life.

Well, here I am again, an old man musing out loud, expressing thoughts. Sometimes I get to thinking and if I’m at my computer, the words kinda flow thru to the fingertips and onto the computer screen and suddenly, I’ve got a post. Not well done post and not too “thought out,” but pretty much off the top. Still, I’m fulfilling my promise to myself to “be productive” and to “write" something every week or so.”

Okay. Done. I’ve fulfilled my promise!