Elon Musk says he debated the 'meaning of life' as a 12-year-old and wondered 'isn't it all pointless?'
Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images for The New York Times
- Elon Musk said on Wednesday that as a child he debated the "meaning of life."
- During an interview at the DealBook Summit, Musk said he also had thoughts of suicide as a kid.
- The billionaire said he had an "existential crisis" at around 12 years old.
Elon Musk on Wednesday said that he debated the "meaning of life" as a child and even had thoughts about suicide.
Musk, during a wide-ranging and sometimes bizarre interview at The New York Times' DealBook Summit in New York, said he had an "existential crisis" at around 12 years old.
The billionaire SpaceX founder, Tesla CEO, and X owner said that as a child, he questioned: "What's the meaning of life? Isn't it all pointless? Why not just commit suicide? Why exist?"
Musk, who has previously talked about his strained relationship with his father, Errol Musk, and being badly bullied during his childhood, said during the interview that he turned to reading religious texts and philosophy books.
The "German philosophy books," Musk said, "made me quite depressed."
"One should not read [Arthur] Schopenhauer and [Friedrich] Nietzsche as a teenager," said Musk.
Then Musk said he stumbled upon Douglas Adams' cult science-fiction comedy book, "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy," in which a supercomputer determines that the answer to the meaning of life is the number 42.
"The point that Adams was making there was that we don't actually know what questions to ask," Musk told interviewer and journalist Andrew Ross Sorkin.
Musk continued, "If we can expand the scope and scale of consciousness, then we are better able to figure out what questions to ask about the answer that is the universe."
During the interview, Musk spoke about his "demons of the mind" and elaborated on how his mind often feels like a "very wild storm." He responded "no" when asked if it was a "happy storm."
"I can remember even in happy moments when I was a kid that it just feels like there's just a rage of forces in my mind constantly," Musk said. "Now this productively manifests itself in technology and building things, for the most part."