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Mark Zuckerberg

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg on telepathy and Terminator

Jessica Guynn
USA TODAY
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaks at the F8 summit in San Francisco in March.

SAN FRANCISCO — The world has questions. And Mark Zuckerberg has answers.

Zuckerberg held an informal question-and-answer session on his Facebook page on Tuesday, taking more than a dozen questions from Facebook users including several from celebrities such as Arnold Schwarzenegger and Stephen Hawking.

And if you doubt the mass appeal of Facebook's CEO, consider this: The Q&A session proved so popular it suffered technical glitches which Facebook attributed to an "overload of likes."

Schwarzenegger, the bodybuilder, Terminator actor and former governor of California, asked Zuckerberg about his exercise regimen and "will the machines win?"

"I make sure I work out at least three times a week — usually first thing when I wake up. I also try to take my dog running whenever I can, which has the added bonus of being hilarious because that('s) basically like seeing a mop run," Zuckerberg replied. "And no, the machines don't win :)."

Hawking, the world's most famous theoretical physicist and cosmologist, queried Zuckerberg on "which of the big questions in science would you like to know the answer to and why?"

Zuckerberg's considered response: "I'm most interested in questions about people. What will enable us to live forever? How do we cure all diseases? How does the brain work? How does learning work and how we can empower humans to learn a million times more? I'm also curious about whether there is a fundamental mathematical law underlying human social relationships that governs the balance of who and what we all care about. I bet there is."

Observers speculated Zuckerberg may have been tipping his hand about the future of Facebook technology when he touched on telepathy.

"One day, I believe we'll be able to send full rich thoughts to each other directly using technology. You'll just be able to think of something and your friends will immediately be able to experience it too if you'd like. This would be the ultimate communication technology," he remarked.

Zuckerberg also tackled a question on a topic and increasingly controversial subject: Facebook's insistence on real names.

"There is some confusion about what our policy actually is. Real name does not mean your legal name. Your real name is whatever you go by and what your friends call you," Zuckerberg wrote. "If your friends all call you by a nickname and you want to use that name on Facebook, you should be able to do that. In this way, we should be able to support everyone using their own real names, including everyone in the transgender community. We are working on better and more ways for people to show us what their real name is so we can both keep this policy which protects so many people in our community while also serving the transgender community."

Both publisher Arianna Huffington and journalism professor Jeff Jarvis asked Zuckerberg about the future of digital news.

Zuckerberg said Facebook's new instant articles would eventually become the main way people consume news on the social network.

"When news is as fast as everything else on Facebook, people will naturally read a lot more news," Zuckerberg said. "That will be good for helping people be more informed about the world, and it will be good for the news ecosystem because it will deliver more traffic."

Zuckerberg also mused on the nature of happiness.

"To me, happiness is doing something meaningful that helps people and that I believe in with people I love," he said. "I think lots of people confuse happiness with fun. I don't believe it is possible to have fun every day. But I do believe it is possible to do something meaningful that helps people people every day."

Asked why the Facebook founder worth billions collects a salary of $1 a year, Zuckerberg replied: "I've made enough money. At this point, I'm just focused on making sure I do the most possible good with what I have."

As with most Facebook Q&As, the questions that get asked — and the ones that Zuckerberg chooses to answer — are pretty unpredictable.

One Facebook user wanted to know if he could jump over a chair like Bill Gates famously did in a 1994 CBS interview with Connie Chung.

"Great question," Zuckerberg responded. "Maybe, but we're not going to find out today :)"

Zuckerberg was also asked: "Why did you come up with Poking?"

"It seemed like a good idea at the time," he deadpanned.

And if Zuckerberg awoke one morning to find that Facebook did not exist?

"I'd build it :)," he said.

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