General
Elon Musk, in a conversation with People by WTF host Nikhil Kamath, expressed deep concern over falling global fertility rates and their long-term impact on civilisation. He warned that humanity could face a future of decline if current demographic trends continue. “Well, I don’t want humanity to disappear. But a ‘decline’ and ‘disappear’ are completely different things, right?” he said, adding, “Well, if the trend continues, we disappear.”
Musk argued that his broader philosophy is tied to the idea that expanding human consciousness requires more people, not fewer. “If we want to expand consciousness, then fewer humans is worse, because we have less consciousness,” he said. When asked whether consciousness rises simply by increasing population, he replied, “Yes. I mean, just like consciousness increases from a single-celled creature to, you know, a 30 trillion-celled creature. We’re more conscious than a bacteria. At least, it seems that way.”
General Elon Musk asks Nikhil Kamath to have kids
Musk said a larger population offers a better chance at understanding fundamental questions about existence. “A larger human population will have increased consciousness. We’re more likely to understand the answers to the nature of the universe if we have a lot more people than if we have fewer.”
When Kamth mentioned that he had no kids Musk responded saying, “ Well, it’s– Maybe you should.” After laughter, he added, “You won’t regret it.” Asked about the best part of parenthood, Musk said, “I mean, you’ve got this little creature that loves you, and you love this little creature. I don’t know, you kind of see the world through their eyes as they grow up, and their conscious awareness increases… from a baby that has no idea what’s going on… to… they start walking, then talking, and then having interesting thoughts.”
He reiterated the existential stakes, saying, “I think we fundamentally have to… have kids or grow extinct, you know?”
The host asked whether having children carried an element of ego. “Well, yeah, I mean, it’s ’cause apple’s not gonna fall that far from the tree, you know?” He acknowledged that parents often see reflections of themselves in their children. He described the mix of genetic and environmental influence: “Kids are gonna be like half-you genetically, and then… to the degree that they’re growing up around you, there’s gonna be some transfer of… I don’t know, understanding… So then, you know, yeah, obviously kids are just, you know, just gonna be half you from a hardware standpoint… and then, like, I don’t know, some portion of you from a software standpoint.”
On the nature versus nurture debate, Musk called the usual framing misleading. “I think there’s hardware and software, and it’s false dichotomy, essentially,” he said. He described humans in structural and computational terms: “There’s a bone structure, there’s a muscle structure… If you think of a brain as somewhat of a biological computer, there’s a number of circuits question and circuit efficiency from a strength and dexterity standpoint. There’s the speed at which muscles can actuate and the reactions can take place.”
General Musk says current era is better than before
Kamath also asked Musk how he would redesign the world if given the chance, touching on morality, politics and economics. Musk said the present era is far better than most people assume. “Overall, I think the world is pretty great right now. I mean, it’s… Anyone who thinks that, like, today’s world is not that great, I think they’re not gonna be excellent students of history,” he said.He contrasted modern life with the hardships of earlier centuries. “If you read a lot of history, you’re like, ‘Wow, there’s a lot of misery back then,’ you know? I mean, it used to be that people would be dropping dead of the plague all the time… A good year back in the day would be, like, not that many people died of the plague or starvation or being killed by another tribe. It’s like, ‘That was a good year. We only lost 10% of the population.’”
General Life expectancy and historical mortality rates
Musk pointed out that even a century ago life expectancy was far lower. “I think, like, 100 years ago, we lived up until 35 or 40, right? We had very high infant mortality,” he said. Medical care was rudimentary. “If you got, like, some minor infection, they didn’t have antibiotics. So, you just, like, kicked the bucket. Because you… drank some water that had dysentery in it, that was it, curtains… You just die of diarrhoea.”He suggested that historically high child mortality likely drove families to have many children. “Maybe that’s why people had as many kids as they did back then. I mean, if you didn’t, then, you know… half the kids would die.”