Mark Zuckerberg told computer scientist podcast host Lex Fridman Saturday that he is “aware” of his own mortality but isn’t terribly scared of it, which led him to explain that, though he hopes the metaverse will be infinite, existence will not be.
The two-hour podcast with Fridman was perhaps the most introspective we’ve ever seen Zuckerberg, and Fridman at times asked him huge, open-ended questions about the human experience that were interesting in part because a popular meme is that Zuckerberg’s public persona is often that of a robotic android.
“We mentioned that you are mortal. Are you afraid of death?” Fridman asked. “Do you think about your mortality? And are you afraid of it?”
“I mean, I’m definitely aware of it,” Zuckerberg answered. “I do a fair amount of like, extreme sport-type stuff, so like, so I’m definitely aware of it.”
“I train hard. So like, if I’m going to go out in like, a 15-foot wave, I’ll make sure we have the right safety gear, and like, make sure that I’m used to that spot, and all that stuff,” he added, presumably referring to his hydrofoiling hobby. “You take some head blows along the way. But definitely aware of it. Definitely would like to stay safe. I have a lot of stuff that I want to build.”
“I train hard. So like, if I’m going to go out in like, a 15-foot wave, I’ll make sure we have the right safety gear, and like, make sure that I’m used to that spot, and all that stuff,” he added, presumably referring to his hydrofoiling hobby. “You take some head blows along the way. But definitely aware of it. Definitely would like to stay safe. I have a lot of stuff that I want to build.”
“Does it freak you out that it’s finite though, that there’s a deadline, when it’s all over, and that there’ll be a time when your daughters are around and you’re gone?” Fridman asked.
“That doesn’t freak me out. I think… constraints are helpful,” he said.
The conversation then turned back to the metaverse, which was a big topic of conversation earlier in the podcast. Dystopian science fiction—specifically Black Mirror—has imagined a future in which we have virtual doubles of ourselves who achieve digital immortality in virtual reality or the metaverse. Perhaps thankfully, Zuckerberg did not pitch a version of this future for his metaverse, though he said he believes that the metaverse should allow for “close to infinite amount of expression and world.”
“But we’ll still only have a finite amount of time” to experience it, Zuckerberg said. “Living longer, I think, is good.”
Later in the podcast, Fridman asked Zuckerberg what question he would ask God when he died (Zuckerberg said he’d ask if his family would be OK) and asked him what he thought the meaning of life is.
“You have a duality between the people around you, who you care the most about, and then there’s like this bigger thing that maybe you’re building. And I think that in my own life, I mean, I sort of think about this tension,” Zuckerberg said. “I mean, look, I started this whole company and my life’s work is around human connection, so I think it’s intellectually, probably the thing that I go to first is that human connection is the meaning.”
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