Joe Rogan Experience #1309 - Naval Ravikant

two

one boom all right we're live thank you

very much for doing this man i really

appreciate it i've been absorbing your

information and listening to you talk

for uh quite a while now so it's uh it's

great to actually meet you thanks for

having me my pleasure my pleasure you

are one of the rare guys

that is uh you're a big investor

you are um you're deep in the tech world

but yet you seem to have a very balanced

perspective in terms of how to live life

as opposed to not just be

entirely focused on

success and financial success

and

tech investing but rather

how to live your life in a happy way

that's a it's a it's not balance

yeah you know i think the reason why

people like uh hearing me is because

like if it's like if you go to a circus

and you see a bear right that's kind of

interesting but not that much if you see

a unicycle that's interesting but you

see a bear on a unicycle that's really

interesting right

so when you combine things you're not

supposed to combine right people get

interested it's like bruce lee right

striking thoughts philosophy plus

martial arts

and i think it's because at some level

all humans are broad we're all

multivariate but we get summarized in

pithy ways in our lives and at some deep

level we know that's not true right

every human basically is capable of

every experience and every thought uh

you know you're ufc comedian commentator

podcaster but you're also more than that

you're also father

uh lover you know thinker etc

so i like the model of life that the

ancients had the greeks the romans right

where you would start out and when

you're young you're just like going to

school then you're going to war then

you're running a business then you're

supposed to serve in the senate or the

government then you become a philosopher

there's sort of this arc to life

where you try your hand at everything

and as one of my friends says

specialization is for insects right

so everyone should just be able to do

everything and so i don't believe in

this model anymore of trying to focus

your life down on one thing you've got

one life just do everything you're going

to do

i couldn't agree more and i i think that

sometimes people find certain success in

whatever the endeavor is and then they

think that that is their niche and they

stick with it and they never change and

they almost out of fear

well it's hard because there's a you

know the analogy around mountain

climbing like if you find a mountain and

you start climbing you spend your whole

life climbing it and you get say two

thirds of the way and then you see the

peak is like way up there but you're two

thirds of the way up you're still really

high up but now to go the rest of the

way you're going to have to go back down

to the bottom and look for another path

nobody wants to do that people don't

want to start over yeah and it's the

nature of later in life that you just

don't know the time

so it's very painful to go back down and

look for a new path but that may be the

best thing to do and that's why when you

look at the greatest artists uh and and

creators they have this ability to start

over that nobody else does like elon

will you know be called an idiot and

start over doing something brand new

that he supposedly is not qualified for

or when madonna or paul simon or you two

come out with a new album their existing

fans usually hate it because they've

adopted a completely new style that

they've learned somewhere else and a lot

of times they'll just miss completely so

you have to be willing to be a fool

and kind of have that beginner's mind

and go back to the beginning to start

over if you're not doing that you're

just getting older yeah i mean i don't

even know if it's willing to be a fool

it's just to me that the most exciting

thing is to try to get better at

something to learn

things i mean it's really exciting when

you just have incremental progress and

something that you're completely new to

yeah i live for the aha moment that

moment when you connect two things

together that you hadn't connected

together before and it fits nicely and

solidly and it kind of helps form a

steel framework of understanding in your

mind that you can then hang other ideas

off of that's what i live for yeah it's

like curiosity fulfilled and it's what

little children do too you know my

little son is always asking why why why

why why and i always try and answer him

and half the times i realize actually i

don't really understand why i just have

a memorized answer for you but that's

not really understanding

yeah those are weird conversations right

when you're you're talking to your kids

and you say look uh the reality is i

don't know a lot of things yes i've just

memorized a lot of things

and there's certain things that you just

can't know yeah you realize that you

know you have

you have answers for a few things that

you've thought through then you sort of

have cover-ups like like trap doors like

don't go here this is just a cover-up i

don't really know the answer to what the

meaning of life is or how we got here

yes and then you've got a whole bunch of

memorized stuff because a lot of your uh

a lot of intelligence these days just

the external brain pack of civilization

i know it's out there i know the answers

are out there know how to look them up

and i've memorized some of them and i i

kind of understand how money works and

the federal reserve prints it and what

this government thing is but not really

right

so not good enough to teach it in

university yeah yeah

uh

i think people do that with almost

everything in life these days in terms

of like have a like a one page a one

cheat like a brief summary of what and

the explanation for what this very

complex subject might be tldr right

don't give me the don't give me the

lecture give me the book don't give me

the book give me the blog post don't

give me the blog post give me the tweet

don't give me the tweet i just i already

know yeah i got really fascinated by the

way you read because i thought there was

something wrong with me by doing that

but you you don't really just read a

book to completion you read and then you

pick something else up and you just kind

of go based on your whims whatever

you're interested in well i was raised

by my i was raised by a single mom in

new york and she used the local library

as a daycare center because it was a

very tough neighborhood and so she would

basically say when you get back from

school go straight to the library and

don't come out

until i pick you up late at night so i

used to basically live in the library

and i read everything i read every

magazine i read every pictograph or

every book or every map i just ran out

of stuff to read i just read everything

so i got over this idea of

that reading a large number of books or

reading a book to completion as a vanity

metric because really

when people are putting up photos on

twitter instagram of look at my pile of

books that i'm reading it's a show-off

thing it's a signaling thing yeah sure

and the reality is i would rather read

the best hundred books over and over

again until i absorb them rather than

read all the books right yeah because

your your brain has finite information

in a finite space

you get enough advice it all cancels to

zero

there's a lot of nonsense in books out

there too so

i don't read anymore to complete books i

read to satisfy my genuine intellectual

curiosity

and it can be anything it could be

nonsense it could be history could be

fiction it could be science it could be

sci-fi these days it's mostly sci-fi

philosophy science because that's just

what i'm interested in

but i will read for understanding so a

really good book i will flip through i

won't actually read it consecutively in

order and i won't even just even finish

it i'm looking for ideas things that i

don't understand and when i find

something really interesting i'll

reflect on it i'll research it

and then when i'm bored of it i'll drop

it or i'll flip to another book

thanks to electronic books i've got 50

70 books open at any time in my kindle

or ibooks and i'm just bouncing around

between them

it's also a little bit of a defense

mechanism to how in modern society we

get too much information too quickly and

so our attention spans are very low so

you get twitter you get instagram you

get facebook you're just used to being

bombarded with information so you can

take that to you you can view that as a

negative and be like i have no attention

span or you could view that as a

positive i multitask really well and i

can dig really fast i can if i find a

thread that's interesting i can follow

it through five social networks through

the web through the libraries through

the books and i can really get to the

bottom of this thing very quickly it's

like the library of alexandria that i

can research at my disposal so i i no

longer track books read or even care

about books read it's about

understanding concepts yeah you brought

up two awesome points first of all the

the social media aspect of of books and

basically anything it's like

it's such a weird way to display your

life because it's you know you're

displaying the best aspects of your life

and some sort of a glass

case

you know just it's an unrealistic

version of your life that you cultivate

and you curate

and i'm i'm as guilty of that as anybody

everybody's guilty of it i'm guilty of

it too yeah you know i mean i pose with

my dog every time i run

yeah we're always signaling yeah it's

like rather than really looking at

yourself you're looking at how other

people look at you so it's like this one

remove mental image and it's kind of a

disease because social media is making

celebrities of all of us and celebrities

the most miserable people in the world

right because they're this strong

self-image that gets built up it gets

built up by compliments every time

somebody pays you or me a compliment and

we're like oh well thank you right then

that builds up an image of who we are

and then one idiot comes along one out

of ten one out of a hundred and they can

easily tear it down because it doesn't

take many insults to cancel out a lot of

compliments and now you're carrying

around this big weighty self-image and

it's just very easy to be attacked and

because you're you're famous or you're

well known people want to attack you so

being a celebrity is no good it's

actually a problem

like one of my tweets is and these are

all reminders to myself is you want to

be rich and anonymous not poor and

famous

there's benefits to it of course of

course but we wouldn't do it it has

unusual

problems that you don't get trained for

and you really will not understand

unless you experience it you know i was

having this conversation with my wife we

were talking about um people that just

come up to you and they don't care what

you're doing they don't care if i'm with

my daughter if i'm holding her if i'm

feeding her for you know we're in the

middle of an intense conversation she's

crying she could be crying and some bro

will come over and just immediately have

to take a picture doesn't care his needs

supersede the daughter

and my wife was saying i that before she

knew me she used to think that that's

just part of the price of being famous

that people people like you that's just

part of the price being famous and now

when it interrupts her life and you know

it interrupts the children and it

interrupts friends and you know she now

she's like this is annoying like this is

not this is not healthy this is not a

smart way to to interact with people and

that people have this weird challenge

this weird thing that if you're if you

become famous there's this weird

challenge where people just want to come

to you especially today because if they

can get a photo of you then that boosts

their social media profile

like hey i'm sitting here with the vault

look at that smile

anonymity is a privilege on the other

hand it's self-inflicted i mean we

brought it on ourselves yeah we don't

think we knew what it was though we did

but we carry on so yeah

it tells us we are getting something out

of it so i you know there are times when

someone will approach me in public and

i'm a little resentful and there are

other times i'm just like actually i'm

really grateful that you know i worked

for this i got this right this is the

payoff just embrace it smile grit and

bear it but you have a different sort of

celebrity too right you're you're a hero

amongst investors

and amongst i mean you've just i'm a

hero

among young male geeks

which is those are some of my favorite

people right but that's not the kind of

celebrity i think most people set out to

get especially most guys right right

right you want the cute females yeah

yeah i look at my brief little youtube

clips i have a tiny little podcast going

now and it's like 95 mail oh sure yeah

this is very highly 18 to 35. yeah we

what do we what is the numbers

yeah it's in the 90s yeah um you you did

that one you do that one very small

podcast where you just have small like

three or four minute clips

yeah so what it was i i did a tweet

storm uh called how to get rich without

getting lucky and it got pretty popular

in twitter and it's really about wealth

creation i just use the clickbaity title

and it's trying to basically lay out

timeless principles of wealth creation

that if you absorb them you become the

kind of person who can create wealth

create business make money

and my theory behind that is like

there are three things everybody wants

there's actually more than three but

let's just start with three the three

basics everybody wants to be wealthy

everybody wants to be happy and

everybody wants to be fit

and i know there's a lot of virtue

signal that goes on like we don't want

to money and you know i don't care about

being happy and happiness is for stupid

people but let's face it like you want

to be rich and happy and healthy that's

the trifecta now of course you also want

an internally calm state of mind you

want a loving household so there are

other things that come into it but those

three i think

they can actually be taught right and

the fitness i'm not going to teach there

are a lot of people who you've had on

here including yourself who know a heck

of a lot more about fitness and health

than i do

but

i was born poor and miserable and uh i'm

now pretty well off and i'm very happy

and i don't and i worked at those and so

i've learned a few things there are some

principles and so i try to lay them out

but in a timeless manner where you can

kind of figure it out yourself because

at the end of the day i can't really

teach anything i can only inspire you

and maybe give you a few hooks so you

can remember things when they happen or

put a name to them so this podcast

actually ended up explaining this tweet

storm so there's a tweet storm with like

36 38 tweets got very famous got

translated to dozens of languages

and these were principles that i came up

with for myself when i was really young

around 13 14

and i've been carrying them in my head

for 30 years and i've been sort of

living them and over time i just

realized like sadly or fortunately the

thing that i got really good at was

looking at businesses and figuring out

the point of maximum leverage to

actually create wealth and capture some

of that

and do it in a very long-term kind of

way not let the you know banker

crash the economy get filled out kind of

way but you know build businesses and

help people and provide value kind of

way

especially when applied to modern

technology and leverage in this age of

infinite leverage that we live in

so the podcast is just explaining each

tweet so these are little three four

five minute snippets

i don't like to say the same thing twice

i don't like to explain in detail

i just i i feel like if you have

something original and interesting to

say you should say it otherwise it's

probably been said better so that

podcast tries to be information dense it

tries to be very concise it tries to be

high impact it tries to be timeless

and it has all the information i think

you need the principles that if you

absorb these and you work hard over 10

years you get what you want

so i've got the one on wealth creation

i'm going to attempt to do one on

happiness is a big word but you know

happiness and inner peace and calm and

all that because what you want is you

don't want to be the guy who succeeds in

life while being high strung high stress

and unhappy and leading the trail of

emotional wreckage with you and your

loved ones which is more common than not

yeah because you got to focus and it's

very hard to be great at everything you

want to be the guy or the gal who gets

there calmly

you know quietly

without struggle

uh you want to be the person who's the

when there's a crisis going on you want

to be the calmest coolest cucumber in

the room who still also figures out the

correct answer um if you can be you were

one of the things that you were saying

is that you feel like happiness is

something that you can learn and then

you can teach yourself to be happy even

just by adopting the mindset that you

are a happy person and proclaiming that

to your friends and so you've sort of

developed a social contract i'm a happy

person and i have to live up to that

yeah i've got hundreds of techniques but

then how did you develop that one

well

there's just a there's social

consistency right humans have a need to

be highly consistent with their past

pronouncements so the way i started my

first tech company was i was in working

inside a larger organization and i told

everybody that i was going to go start a

company i was like i hate this place i'm

going to do my own thing i'm going to be

successful entrepreneur six months past

nine months pass then people start

you're still here i thought you were

going to go start a company

are you lying right that was the

implication so we kind of know this

right social contracts are very powerful

like if you want to give up drinking

right and you're not serious about it

you'll say i'm going to cut back i'm

going to have only one drink a night i'm

going to only drink on weekends you tell

yourself but if you're serious you'll

announce it on facebook you'll tell all

your friends you'll tell your wife

you'll say i'm done drinking i'm

throwing everything out of the house

you'll never see me drink again when you

say that you know you're serious

so i think a lot of these are choices

that we make and happiness is just one

of those choices

and this is unpopular to say because

there are people who are actually

depressed you know chemically or what

have you and there are people who don't

believe that it's possible because then

it creates a responsibility on them it

says oh now if i'm you're saying if i'm

not happy that's my fault

i'm not saying that but i'm saying that

just like fitness can be a choice health

can be a choice nutrition can be a

choice working hard and making money can

be a choice happiness is also a choice

if you're so smart how come you aren't

happy how come you haven't figured that

out that's my challenge to all the

people who think they're so smart and so

capable if you're so smart and capable

why can't you change this

there are a bunch of people though that

actually take pleasure in being

miserable

there's something about the

pursuit of excellence

and of success that supersedes all other

pursuits

that in in their eyes it is

it is that the peak

the pinnacle the most important thing

it's not a trade-off

i would argue that if now when i say

happy happy is one of those words that

means a zillion different things right

it's like love right what does that mean

right i love cheese yeah i'm going to

define it a little bit more tightly

right

so

let's go back to desire right this is

old old buddhist wisdom i'm not saying

anything original but

desire to me is a contract that you make

with yourself to be unhappy until you

get what you want

okay and i keep that in front of mine so

when i'm unhappy about something i look

for what is the underlying desire that i

have that's not being fulfilled it's

okay to have desires you're a biological

creature you're put on this earth you

have to do something you have to have

desires you have a mission but don't

have too many don't pick them up

unconsciously don't pick them up

randomly don't have thousands of them my

coffee is too cold doesn't taste quite

right i'm not sitting perfectly oh i

wish it was warmer uh you know my dog

you know pooped in the lawn i didn't

like that whatever it is pick your one

overwhelming desire it's okay to suffer

over that one but on all the others you

want to let them go so you can be calm

and peaceful and relaxed and then you'll

perform a better job

most people when you're unhappy like a

depressed person

it's not that they have very clear calm

mind they're too busy in their mind

their sense of self is too strong

they're sitting indoors all the time

their minds working working working

they're thinking too much well if you

want to be a high performance athlete

how good of an athlete are you going to

be if you're always having epileptic

seizures if you're always like twitching

and running around and like jumping and

your your limbs are flailing out of

control the same way if you want to be

effective in business you need a clear

calm cool collected mind warren buffett

plays bridge all day long and goes for

walks in the sun he doesn't sit around

like constantly loading his brain with

non-stop information and and getting

worked up about every little thing

we live in an age of infinite leverage

what i mean by that is that your actions

can be multiplied a thousand fold either

by broadcasting at a podcast or by

investing capital or by having people

work for you or by writing code so

because of that the impacts of good

decision making are much higher than

they used to be because now you can

influence thousands or millions of

people through your decisions or your

code

so

a clear mind leads to better judgment

leads to a better outcome so a happy

calm peaceful person will make better

decisions and have better outcomes so if

you want to operate at peak performance

you have to learn how to tame your mind

just like you have to learn how to tame

your body

i love what you're saying warren buffett

might not be the best example because he

drinks like i think six coca-colas a day

and he eats mostly mcdonald's and he's

still alive somehow so that shows you

that low stress is more nobody looks

like [ __ ] like how old is he

i mean he's he's a fairly old man

charlie mungers i think in his 90s right

yeah he's made it really far i wonder

what warren's doing you know i mean just

he's got to know that's bad for him but

it's terrible he doesn't care he doesn't

care i think he's just a little stressed

yeah stresses right so he just enjoys

that coca-cola and that's probably

maybe there is a trade-off right like

maybe him enjoying that junk food and

that coke just ah

that that pleasing of the mind is maybe

better than him just eating

wheatgrass shots and yeah and

salads and just being yeah just super

worked up about everything it's like if

you need your glass of red wine to

de-stress and calm down that's probably

better than you flying off the rails

right right and i think that that's

applicable not just in business but in

probably any pursuit and i like what

you're saying about allow that one thing

to be your obsession

but everything else just you know learn

how to learn how to let things go pick

your battles

and

we like to think that we we like to view

the world as linear which is

i'm going to put in eight hours of work

i'm going to get back eight hours of

output right it doesn't work that way

guy running the corner grocery store is

working just as hard or harder than you

and me how much output is he getting

what you do who you do with how you do

it way more important than how hard you

work right outputs are

non-linear based on the quality of the

work that you put in the right way to

work is like a lion you don't you and i

are not like cows we're not meant to

graze all day right we're meant to hunt

like lions we're closer to carnivores in

our omnivorous development than we are

to herbivores um we don't tell vegans

that yeah sorry

look i wish all that stuff worked i

don't want to eat meat this future

generation will look back at us as worse

than slavers you know because the

holocaust we're committing with the

animals but they'll have artificial

meats that taste and are healthier is uh

better than the real thing so allegedly

allegedly but so as a modern

knowledge worker athlete as an

intellectual athlete you want to

function like an athlete which means you

train hard then you sprint

then you rest then you reassess you get

your feedback loop then you train some

more

then you sprint again then you rest then

you reassess this idea that you're going

to have linear output just by cranking

every day at the same amount of time

same that's

that's machines you know machines should

be working nine to five humans are not

meant work nine of are not meant to work

nine to five no i agree wholeheartedly

but that's it

for people that are

working for someone there's not really

that option

so that's unfortunately the the rub

right that's kind of where my tweet

storm starts which is

first of all the first thing if you're

going to make money is that you're not

going to get rich renting at your time

even lawyers and doctors who are

charging three four 500 an hour they're

not getting rich because their lifestyle

is slowly ramping up along with their

income and they're not saving enough uh

they just don't have that ability to

retire

so the first thing you have to do is you

have to own a piece of a business you

need to have equity either as an owner

an investor shareholder

or a brand that you're building that

accrues to you to gain your financial

freedom

yeah and

i was really fascinated by another thing

that you were bringing up about

working for yourself that you feel in

the future whether it's 50 or 100 years

from now virtually everyone is going to

be working for themselves and i believe

the way you put it is that

the information age is going to reverse

the industrial age yeah if you go back

to hunter-gatherer times how we evolved

we basically work for ourselves we

communicated and cooperated within

tribes but each hunter each gatherer

stood on their own and then combined

their resources with the family unit but

there was no boss hierarchy hierarchy

hierarchy or you're like the third

middle manager down

in the farming age we became a little

bit more hierarchical as we had to run

farms but even those were still mostly

family farms it's industrial work with

factories that sort of created this

model of thousands of people working

together on one thing and having bosses

and schedules and times to show up the

reality is if you have to go i don't

care how rich you are i don't care

whether you're like a top wall street

banker if you have to go if somebody has

to tell you if somebody can tell you

when to be at work and what to wear

and how to behave you're not a free

person you're not actually rich so we're

in this model now where we think it's

all about employment and jobs and

intrinsic in that is that i have to work

for somebody else

but the information age is breaking that

down so ronald kos is an economist who

has this coase theorem a very famous

theorem but it basically just talks

about

why is a company the size that it is why

is a company one person instead of 10

people instead of 100 instead of a

thousand and it has to do with the

internal transaction costs versus the

external transaction costs

let's say i want to do something let's

say i'm building a house and i need

someone to come in and provide the

lumber i'm a developer right do i want

that to be part of my company or do i

want that to be an external provider a

lot of it just depends on how hard it is

to do that transaction with someone

externally versus internally if it's too

hard to keep doing the contract every

time externally i'll bring that in-house

if it's easy to do externally and it's a

one-off kind of thing i'd rather keep it

out of the house

well information technology is making it

easier and easier to do these

transactions externally it's becoming

much easier to communicate with people

gig economy i can send you small amounts

of money i can hire you through an app i

can rate you afterwards so we're seeing

an atomization of the firm we're seeing

the optimal size of the firm shrinking

it's most obvious in silicon valley tons

and tons of startups constantly coming

up and shaving off little pieces of

businesses from large companies and

turning them into huge markets so what

looked like the small little vacation

rental market on craigslist is now

suddenly blown up into airbnb

one example

that's a great example but what i think

we're going to see

is

whether it's 10 20 50 100 years from now

high quality work will be available

we're not talking about driving an uber

we're talking about super high quality

work will be available in a gig fashion

where you'll wake up in the morning your

phone will buzz and you'll have five

different jobs from people who have

worked with you in the past or have been

referred to it's kind of like how

hollywood already works a little bit

with how they're organized for a project

you decide whether to take the project

or not the contract is right there on

the spot you get paid a certain amount

you get rated every day or every week

you get the money delivered and then

when you're done working you turn it off

and you go to tahiti or wherever you

want to spend the next three months and

i think the smart people have already

started figuring out that the internet

enables this and they're starting to

work more and more remotely on their own

schedule on their own time on their own

place with their own friends in their

own way and that's actually how we are

the most productive

so the information revolution by making

it easier to communicate connect and

cooperate is allowing us to go back to

working for ourselves and that is my

ultimate dream even when i run a company

and i have employees i always tell those

people hey i'm going to help you start

your company when you're ready because i

think that's the highest calling maybe

not everybody will get there but

it would be fine if we were even working

a ten person company or twenty person

company is way better than working in a

thousand person company a ten thousand

person company so this idea that we're

all factory like cogs in a machine who

are specialized and have to do things by

rote memorization or instruction it's

going to go away and we're going to go

back to being small groups of creative

bands of individuals setting out to do

missions and when those missions are

done we collect our money we get rated

and then we rest

and reassess until we're ready for the

next sprint has there ever been a study

done on happiness and as it regards the

size of companies

not that i'm aware but to me it's

obvious it's just obvious the smaller

the company the happier you're going to

be the more human your relations are the

less you have rules to operate under the

more flexible the more creative

the more you betray like a human just

because you're able to do multiple

things yeah

um this brings me to

what

is a subject that keeps getting brought

up nowadays is universal basic income

with the oncoming

apocalypse of automation this is how

it's being portrayed by andrew yang

who's running for president i sat down

and talked to him about is very

compelling

and he's a very smart guy and he's an

entrepreneur himself and when he starts

talking about automation and how it's

going to just eliminate massive amounts

of jobs and leave people stranded what

do you when i know you're a guy who

thinks about the future and i'm going to

take this popular point of view on this

i don't i think it's a non-solution to a

non-problem

[Music]

and i mean that in the sense that

automation has been happening since the

dawn of time

electricity came along that put a lot of

people out of work did it right a lot of

people carrying buckets of water and you

know lighting lamps and all those kinds

of things and this was the concern with

factories as well apps everything

literally every single thing that comes

even the printing pros absolutely and

what it does is it frees people up for

new creative work so the question is not

is automation going to eliminate jobs

there is no finite number of jobs we're

not like sitting around dividing up the

same jobs that we're around since the

stone age so obviously new jobs are

being created and they're usually better

jobs more creative jobs so the question

is how quickly is this transition going

to happen and what kinds of jobs will be

eliminated and what kinds of jobs will

be created it's impossible looking

forward to predict what kinds of jobs

will be created if i told you 10 years

ago that podcaster was going to be a job

or that you know playing video games is

going to be a job or commentating on

video games is going to be a job you

would have laughed me out of the room

those are nonsense jobs but yet here we

are so society will always create new

jobs civilization creates new jobs but

it's impossible to predict what those

jobs are so the question is how quickly

is that transition happening

well the reality is even though

everybody keeps talking about this

automation apocalypse we're at a record

low unemployment

explain that where's the transition

donald trump that's hard

all i'm saying is it's it's

i don't see it in the numbers i don't

see it actually happening the question

is how quickly can you retrain people so

it's an education problem the problem

with ubi there's a couple of problems

with ubi one is you're creating a

straight

you're creating a slippery slide

transfer

straight into socialism right the moment

people can start voting themselves money

combined with a democracy right it's

just a matter of time before the bottom

51 votes themselves everything in the

top 49. yeah and

it just it and by the way slippery slope

fallacy is not a fallacy and i know

people like saying that but they haven't

thought it through um but

the moment you start having a direct

transfer mechanism like that in a

democracy you're basically doing it with

capitalism which is the engine of

economic growth you're also forcing the

entrepreneurs out or telling them not to

come here

the estimate i saw for 15k a year

basic income for everybody would be

three quarters of current gdp and of

course gdp would shrink in response as

all the entrepreneurs fled so you would

essentially bankrupt the country

another issue at ubi is that people who

are

down in their luck they're not looking

for handouts it's not just about money

it's also about status it's about

meaning and the moment i start giving

money to you and put you on the dole

i've lowered your status i've made you a

second class citizen so i have to give

you meaning and meaning comes through

education and capability i have you have

to teach a man to fish not to basically

throw your rotting leftover carcasses at

him and say here eat the scraps so it

doesn't solve the meaning problem and

lastly it's nonsense to hand 15k out to

everybody you want to means test people

there's no reason to give it to you and

me so you end up back towards the

welfare system where you do have to

figure out who needs it and who doesn't

so i think the better route is that we

actually establish a set of basic

substance services that you have to have

and we provide those in abundance to

technology-based automation so get basic

housing get basic food get basic

transportation get high-speed internet

access get a phone in your pocket those

are the kinds of things you want to give

people

and finally in terms of the rate of

automation i think we can educate people

very quickly one of the myths that we

have today is that adults can't be

re-educated we view education as this

thing where you go to school you come

out when you're out of college and

you're done no more education well

that's wrong you have all these great

online boot camps and coding schools

coming up they're ones that will even

pay you to go there now

you can educate people and mass and you

can educate them into creative

professions people who are talking about

ai automating programming have never

really written serious code

coding is thinking it's automatic

structure thinking an ai that can

program

as well or better than humans is an ai

that just took over the world that's end

game that's the end of the human species

and i can give you arguments why i don't

think that's coming either

people who are thinking and i know i

take the opposite side from some very

famous people in this debate but we're

nowhere near close to general ai not in

our lifetimes you don't have to worry

about it even in our lifetimes

really it's so overblown uh it's it's

another

it's a combination of cassandra complex

you know it's fun to talk about the end

of the world

combined with a god complex like people

who have lost religion so they're

looking for meaning in some kind of end

of history right right um the reason why

i don't think ai is coming anytime soon

is because a lot of the advances in

so-called ai today are what we call

narrow ai they're really pattern

recognition machine learning to figure

out like what is that object on the

screen or how do you find this signal

and all that noise there's nothing

approaching what we call creative

thinking

to actually model general intelligence

you run into all kinds of problems first

we don't know how the brain works at all

number two we've never even modeled a

paramecium or an amiibo let alone a

human brain number three there's this

assumption that all of the computation

is going at the cellular level at the

neuron level whereas nature is very

parsimonious it uses everything at its

disposal there's a lot of machinery

inside the cell that is doing

calculations that is intelligent that

isn't accounted for and the best

estimates are would take 50 years of

moore's law before we can simulate

what's going on inside a cell near

perfectly and probably 100 years before

we can build a brain that can stimulate

inside the cells so putting it at saying

that i'm just going to model neuron is

on or off and then use that to build a

human brain is overly simplistic

furthermore i would posit there's no

such thing as general intelligence every

intelligence is contextual within the

context of the environment that it's in

so you have to evolve an environment

around it so i think a lot of people who

are peddling general ai the burden of

proof is on them i haven't seen anything

that would lead me to indicate we're

approaching general ai instead we're

solving deterministic closed set finite

problems using large amounts of data but

it's not sexy to talk about that if you

you're talking about mirroring the

actual abilities of cells or are you

talking about recreating the actual

mechanism like what what what is going

on inside

cells and and biological organisms yeah

we just don't know how intelligence

works right we don't know we literally

have no idea so most of the

ai approaches basically say we're going

to try and model

how the brain works but the model at the

neuron level which is saying this

neurons on that neurons often combining

their signal but i'm saying in the

neuron is a cell inside the cell there's

all this machinery going on that's

operating the neuron that is also part

of the intelligence apparatus you can't

just ignore that and abstract that out

you have to model it down to the in

inside the cell level it's also a part

of the biological organism itself

exactly and it has all these needs that

you know the biological organism has to

have food and rest and exactly there's a

balance going on but when you eliminate

all that when there is none of that and

it's just calculations

and we get to a point where it's just

this thing that we've created whether

you call it a computer whether it

doesn't have to be a moving thing even

but a thing that you've created that

stores virtually all the information

that's available in the world stores all

the patterns of all the thinking of all

the great people that have ever lived

all the the writers all the people that

have ever published anything all the

people that have ever spoken any words

stores all of their points all their

counterpoints all their contradictions

applies logic

and reason

and

some sort of sense of the future

and starts improving upon these patterns

and then starts acting on its own based

on the information that it's been

provided with

well first you would have to actually

simulate a structure the human brain

that can hold all that information

you're basically talking about tens of

thousands of brains worth of information

right we can't even build one brain the

next decade or two or three well in

terms of an actual physical brain yes

but what about something that recreates

the abilities of a brain

like i said nature is parsimonious so

we've got this three pound wet wear

object that can hold all this data

nature has been very efficient in

evolving kind of how we get there

i i just don't think computers are

anywhere close to that like they can

hold that amount of data with that

complexity with like the holographic

structure of the brain where it can

recall in many many different ways

and then

i don't think you can evolve a creature

to be intelligent outside of the

boundaries of feedback in a real medium

like if you evolved if you raised a

human being a concrete cell with no

input from the outside they wouldn't

have any feedback from the real world

they wouldn't evolve properly so i think

just dumping information

into into a thing isn't enough it has to

have an environment to operate in to get

feedback from it needs to have context

but isn't that biological i mean what if

you if you have just the all the

information that people have accumulated

and the lessons that people have learned

and you program that into the computer

like if if we can take a computer that

can beat someone at chess the the real

question was well can we make some sort

of an artificial intelligence could beat

someone at go which is far more complex

of chess they figured out how to do that

too and that was a giant shock

right these are still

man-made very closed bounded games

they're they're not they're not on the

road to the unbounded game of life

they are completely artificial but this

didn't go

didn't that give you like a little bit

of a pause a little bit go is not go or

league of legends or fortnite they're

not completely deterministic right

but they're still very artificial very

bounded games being good at go doesn't

mean that you can then suddenly figure

out how to write great poetry right the

creativity for sure is something that's

creativity is the last frontier so i do

believe that automation over a long

enough period of time will replace every

non-creative job or every non-creative

work but that's great news

that means that all of our basic needs

are taken care of and what remains for

us is to be creative which is really

what every human wants

yeah what are you doing right now this

is a creative job sure

um that that brings us back to the idea

of meaning and universal basic income uh

i think the idea of giving someone

15 000 a year

doesn't necessarily

cause whatever what everyone would worry

about is people being on the dole you

would have a bunch of listless people

out there with no meaning in life but

the idea is that fifteen thousand

dollars a year and i'm not necessarily

sure i agree with this i'm not even

endorsing this but that fifteen thousand

dollars a year would just provide you

with the necessities to get by in life

it would give you food it would give you

shelter well it's not gonna stop at 15

because the moment people are like i

mean like 15 like then people would

demand more bernie sanders would be on

this 16 7 45 thousand dollars yeah these

companies are too big yeah that could it

doesn't it doesn't stop it's just it

just goes all the way to bankruptcy the

concern is the slide to socialism

it's obvious yeah i mean heck if i was

on if i was not working and i was

getting my 15 a year i would happily

vote for the guy who would give me 20 or

25 it's just common sense what do you

say to the people that don't believe

that there is such a thing of ethical as

ethical or compassionate capitalism and

there's many people today that are

espousing marxism and they're espousing

some sort of a socialist society where

they believe that capitalism has screwed

people over and

eliminated

the middle class and there are absolute

problems with capitalism i think

monopolies are a problem

i think that uh crony capitalism is a

problem with the government you know

kind of gets in bed with them and sort

of forces things uh i think the bankers

have really you know raped society and

the rest of us are suffering for it yeah

they've essentially taken huge risks

where they privatize the gains and they

socialize the losses so when it fails

they basically get billed out and

bankrupt everybody else

so capitalism has gotten a really bad

name let's talk about its free exchange

free markets

free markets and free exchange are

intrinsic to humans from when the first

person started a fire and somebody came

along with a deer and said hey if i cook

my deer on your fire i'll share some of

it with you right so specialization

labor we trade that's built into the

human species basic math comes from

accounting keeping track of debts and

credits and so on we need to be able to

engage in free trade

the correct criticism of capitalism is

when it does not provide equal

opportunity and so we should always

strive to provide equal opportunity

but people confuse that with equal

outcome when you have equal outcome that

can only be enforced through violence

because different people free people

make different choices and when they

make different choices they have

different outcomes if you don't let them

suffer the consequences of bad choices

or reap the rewards from good choices

then you are forcibly redistributing

through violence it's interesting that

there isn't there are no

socialist working socialist examples

that exist without violence you

basically need someone to show up with a

gun and say okay you're not allowed to

do that you hand this over to that

person so one of the reasons why this

podcast is because i believe everybody

can be wealthy everybody it's not a

zero-sum game it is a positive sum game

you create something brand new you

exchange it with me for something brand

new i've created this higher utility for

both of us the sum of the value created

is positive it's not like status where

it's like you're higher up i'm lowered

down your president so must be vice

president you're a plus one i'm a minus

one and has to cancel a zero

we should all be all for playing

positive

some ethical games the problem is

because of these looters who have ruined

capitalism's name that then you get

socialists coming in and saying burn the

whole system down right you burn the

whole system down we end up like

venezuela or the former soviet union you

know you don't want to be a failed

socialist states with emaciated teens

hunting cats in the streets to eat right

that's literally what happens in some of

these places

so i think it's very important not to

destroy the engine of progress that

brought us here yeah the idea that

socialism just hasn't worked yet

that it needs to the we just need to do

it right if we do it right we can if you

ever 100 million dead and yeah yeah well

let's keep trying all over the world

yeah and and every single time it's been

implemented

have you ever had a conversation with

someone who's a socialist who where many

times some of my better friends are

socialists really we really get into it

yeah and what is there i mean does

anyone have a compelling

perspective at all

i i think

really socialism comes from the heart

right you all we all want to be

socialist

capitalism comes from the head because

they're always cheaters in any system

yes and there's incentives in any system

so

when you're young if you're if you're

not a socialist you have no heart when

you're older if you're not a capitalist

you have no head right you haven't

thought it through so i understand where

it comes from i always liked nassim

taleb's framing on this where he said

with my family i'm a communist with my

close friends i'm a socialist uh you

know at my state level politics i'm a

democrat at you know higher levels i'm a

republican and at the federal level i'm

a libertarian right so basically the

larger the group of people you have

massed together who have different

interests the less trust there is the

more cheating there is the better the

incentives have to be aligned the better

the system has to work the more you go

towards capitalism the smaller the group

you're in you're in a kibbutz you're in

your commune you're in your house you're

in your tribe by all means be a

socialist with my aunts with my brother

with my cousins with my uncles with my

mom with your family i'm a socialist

that's the right way to live a loving

happy

integrated life yes but when you're

dealing with strangers i mean you want

to be a real socialist great open all

your doors and windows tomorrow please

everybody come take what you want see

how that works out yeah

this idea of income inequality that

always strikes me as a very

it's a deceptive term

income inequality well let's flip it

around it comes from outcome

inequality yeah and the outcome

inequality is there because you made

different choices now again going back

if it was because you didn't have the

same opportunities that's a problem yes

so society should always try to give

people equal opportunities so for

example instead of basic income what if

we had a retraining program built into

our basic social fabric which said that

every four years or every six years or

whatever it is maybe it's every 10 you

can take one year out

and we'll pay for you to go retrain

completely and you can go into any

profession you like that has some

earning power and output

hopefully a creative long-term

profession and you can re-educate

yourself

that would be much better for society on

all levels than basically just saying

now you're going to be the dole for the

rest of your life

yeah you just you'd have to

lead that horse to water and then make

them drink it requires people to put in

some effort yeah you know we can't all

just sit around it's just not well

that's my my perspective on income

inequality there's always effort in

equality

and and thought inequality there's just

some people that are obsessed and if

those people become successful it

doesn't mean they stole from you it just

means that they put in the amount of

energy and effort that it's required to

reach where they're at and there's a lot

of virtue signaling that goes on now

where people say well it's because

you're privileged

well you know you know what the greatest

privilege is you're alive 85 of humanity

is dead yeah so how privileged are you

then you're living in the first world

and you're you know you have four limbs

etc so you can take that argument all

the way it's kind of a nonsense

discussion what's a very weird

progressive argument and it as it

pertains to uh race is always a weird

one right because white privilege to me

it although

it you could look at what they're saying

on paper like yes yeah i'm sure

there's more black people that are

harassed by the police i'm sure there's

more black people who are treated

suspiciously by shop owners and the like

but the problem isn't the people who

aren't treated poorly the problem is the

people who treat the people poorly the

problem is racism the problem is not

people that didn't ask to be born white

or whatever they are and they don't get

harassed

so this idea of white privilege or male

privilege or whatever it is that's not

the problem you're just looking at

someone who's not a victim of this

particular problem that you're

highlighting but you're not looking at

the perpetrators of the problem you're

making people perpetrators by simply

existing and having less melanin in

their skin or having their ancestors

come from actually

it's a sneaky way of being racist yeah

and then they say you can't be racist

it's not racist because you're white

that's right that is this hilarious if

you can't be racist against white people

that one that's what there's a variation

of the whole still while i hit you

argument you know stop struggling while

i'm hitting you but it's just so silly

you've just completely changed what

racism means but what's hilarious is

mostly the people who are yelling

racists are not the minorities when i

look on my twitter my social media or on

my news it's white on white violence

virtue signaling yeah it's white on

white violence yeah what's mostly going

on is its elitist whites blue state

whites college educated whites beating

up on high school educated whites blue

collar it's a white collar versus

blue-collar war that's going on and the

rest of us are just kind of watching

like oh that's kind of interesting well

it's also a side effect of the ability

to broadcast right like everyone with a

twitter handle has the ability to

broadcast everyone with a facebook page

has the ability to pontificate and have

these long rambling

these huge statements that people put

out when you you read them it's like how

much time did you put in this what the f

do you put that much time in your kids

or your job or your job or your life or

your future or planning for your you

know how much do you work out a day i

mean are you just these some i read some

people's facebook posts i'm like this is

a preposterous amount of effort that you

put into saying virtually nothing let's

see humans are being creative yeah and

ai do that well that's true it is

creative it's it's creative in a very

odd way right because it's creative and

that they're trying to elicit a response

from people and they're trying to raise

their their social value or raise their

their position on the social totem pole

it's signaling and it's easy signaling

because the kind of thing that everybody

has to agree with you on because nobody

wants to be seen as a horrible person

yeah and it's very hard to make the

nuanced arguments against than it is to

just kind of go along right well it's

also it's some of it is so

cliche that it seems like

i i know one guy who poses as a woman on

on twitter but he does it just obviously

yeah uh what is this the name tatiana

mcgregor

yes yeah yeah

used to be godfrey elwick yes oh is that

the same guy i think so yeah that's

hilarious

i did not they killed his account they

killed his account for 100 sure for

pretending to be transracial that's

right they did yeah

he basically says all the crazy stuff

that people in the left say but he says

the craziest version yes and kind of

just shows how it's okay like

i saw a tweet from recently just said or

her that it's not okay to be white yes

and then some people agree but it's it's

so close to what they say it's so close

that it's like the most artful form of

subtle parody because it's well if you

if you replace in half of these things

if you replace the word white with black

or asian

lynch

yeah yeah it's

it's a strange time in that respect that

there's a favor saying that if you want

to see who rules over you

see who you're not allowed to criticize

excellent yeah that is a that's so true

right yeah that's so true i wonder where

this is going i really do i wonder

because this is it seems like this

newfound ability to broadcast that we

have with

whether you have a youtube page or

whether you have twitter or whatever

you're doing this newfound ability to

spread whatever you're trying to say to

so many people with very little

understanding on the most part from

i think it's actually a great thing

overall yeah now it means that any human

can broadcast any other human on the

planet at any time so for example if you

know a totalitarian dictator were to

come to power and someone was beating up

you know had fascists beating up on old

women like that would get broadcast out

instantly there would be an instant

outrage hue and cry rallying so in that

sense it helps bring attention to the

plight of anybody

but

right now we're going through the phase

where we have this newfound power to

assemble mobs

and people don't know how to deal with

that so it becomes very easy to set up a

mob and have it attack somebody take all

the context out like even this

conversation i'm sure people will take

out snippets put them on social media

and try and get somebody outraged of

course and so you have to learn how

first of all society just has to get

over this idea of outrage like to me

like

outraged people are just people who get

easily outraged are the stupidest people

on social media those are the people i

block instantly uh it's just kind of

very low level thinking right these are

the foots of the these are the foot

soldiers and the mob

eventually society just has to get over

it they have to understand that these

are all snippets being taken out of

context these are doctored video clips

these are just someone who's trying to

get outraged over something

eventually there'll also be anti-mob

tactics like for example

if if i go to someone's twitter feed and

all it is is full of polit political

ranting raving conspiracy theories do i

want to work with this person do i want

to associate with this person do you

want to be friends with this person

their mind is just cluttered with junk

now i don't necessarily blame them i

think that the human brain is not

designed to

absorb all of the world's breaking news

24 7 emergencies injected straight into

your skull with clickbait headline news

if you pay attention to that stuff even

if you're well-meaning even if your

sound of mind and body it will

eventually drive you insane this goes

back to clockwork orange where he's you

know has his eyes opened up he's forced

to watch the news but i think that's

what's happening right now because these

are addictive right

twitter facebook instagram these are

weaponized you have social statisticians

and scientists and researchers and

people in lab coats literally best minds

of our generation figuring out how to

addict you to the news yes and if you

fall for it if you get addicted your

brain will get destroyed and i think

this is the modern struggle right the

modern struggle so the ancient struggle

used to be the tribal struggle you had

your tribe of friends and family you had

your religion you had your country you

had your loyalty you had your

nationality at least you had meaning and

support but now you would struggle

against other tribes

modern life we're so free everything's

become atomized we stand alone you live

in your apartment alone you live in your

house alone your parents don't live

nearby your friends don't live nearby

you don't have any tribal meaning you

don't believe in religion anymore you

don't believe in country anymore it's

fine you got a lot of freedom it's

fantastic but now when they come to

attack you

you're alone and you can't resist so how

do they attack you it's all well-meaning

i don't fault capitalism i love

capitalism but

look at how it happens social media

they've

massaged all the mechanisms to addict

you like a skinner's pigeon or a rat

who's just gonna click click click click

click can't put the phone down the food

they've taken sugar and they've

weaponized it they've put it into all

these different forms and varieties that

you can't resist eating drugs right

they've taken pharmaceuticals and plants

and they've

synthesized them they've grown them in

such a way that you can't you get

addicted you can't put them down porn

right if you're a young male you wander

on the internet it'll like sap away your

libido and you're not going out in real

life society anymore because you've got

this incredibly stimulating stuff coming

at you video games another way to addict

people so you have this you have entire

large factories of people that are

working to addict you to these things

and you stand alone so the modern

struggle as an individual is learning

how to resist these things in the first

place drawing your own boundaries and

there's no one there to help you

that's terrifying

i mean it is a new road that needs to be

navigated by young people that are

there's no map there's no guidebook on

how to handle this our generation is the

transition generation i think our kids

will know how to handle it better

because they'll grow but i hope i hope i

hope too because you're seeing some

ridiculous behavior from people today

that's so common i mean i don't know if

you've been paying attention to this but

there was a guy who

he made a video it turns out it wasn't

even him that made the video at least

that's not what he said but it was a

video where he sort of doctored nancy

pelosi talking and made it look like she

was drunk

and then a bunch of people retweeted it

like oh my god look she's drunk and and

so one of the online publications uh

some website

tracked him down

and doxed him and turned out he's just a

day laborer who is an african-american

trump fan

and thought it would be funny to do that

and it turns out that he didn't even at

least according to him he actually just

put it up on his facebook page what's

even more disturbing is facebook

gave up his information to this website

right

for what

because he made something funny that

made people seem drunk there's a million

of those about me i mean you could find

them i mean i think facebook and twitter

and a bunch of these other social media

platforms are committing slow-motion

suicide through these kinds of

activities

that was a stunning one though that they

would give up this guy who's a laborer

because he made a parody video or he

made someone look foolish with editing

well you now have basically the media

views it as their job to go after

individuals they don't like yeah i use

media with air quotes in that regard so

i don't think this is something that the

new york times would have done

anything responsible but the media is

getting more and more desperate right

because what happened was before the

internet you could have two local

newspapers in every town and you could

have two local

news stations you know tv stations in

every town

and then cnn came along and started

commoditizing the news 24 7 broadcast

and then the internet came along that

was the final nail in the coffin because

what the internet did was it said

actually if there's a fact

that's news you can distribute that

immediately it can go on twitter it can

go on facebook it gets reprinted on

google news a thousand times you know

you're going google news you're like

okay what's the piece of news which

source and three thousand other articles

too many right yeah so news has become

commoditized so the entire news media

has shifted into peddling opinions and

entertainment yes and so now they've

become

a variation between like cheerleaders

shock troops enforcers

you know talking heads so these are now

tribal these are not propaganda machines

signaling for their tribes it's a

right-wing one this left-wing one right

there's the alt-right there's a control

left and the two of them are just

fighting it out using their various

media organs and memes so

basically when you see one of these news

organizations doxing an individual

that's like a tank running over a

soldier

right that's what's going on it's just

war and so there's no there's no such

thing anymore as a neutral media

commentator

the the illusion of objectivity that

journalism had is lost there's no longer

one guy like a walter cronkite that

everyone's going to listen to it's now

all just shock troops fighting wars with

each other

how does this play out

have you thought about it yeah a little

bit uh so what the internet does a lot

of this is internet driven what the

internet does is the internet creates

one giant aggregator or two for

everything one taxi dispatcher one

e-commerce store one search engine one

uh you know

one social media site for friends and

family one for business etc so the

internet is this giant aggregator where

it creates one big hegemon for

everything

and it creates an atomized long tail of

millions and millions of individuals

what it gets rid of is the medium

medium-sized ones in the middle so for

example you might have had like seven

hollywood studios what's all going to be

netflix you had uh you know like

10 large e-commerce players so commerce

players from walmart to

costco to you know kmart and whatever

now it's just going to be amazon and a

ton of small individual brands so that's

the world that we're headed towards one

hegemon and millions of individuals so

where it ends up long term is media will

be a few gigantic outlets you know it

could be the new york times it could be

facebook a few like that and there's

going to be just a really long tale of

millions of independent people so this

idea of who's a journalist and who's not

you know is assange journalist or not

everyone's a journalist that's the world

that we're headed towards i do think the

extreme power the most powerful people

in the world today

and this is not well known but the most

powerful people in the world today are

the people who are writing the

algorithms for twitter and facebook and

instagram because they're controlling

the spread of information they're

literally rewriting people's brains

they're programming the culture and

they're doing it very subtly like google

i believe that you know one of their

execs got up in front of congress and

the congressman asked him uh you know do

you manipulate search results and he

said no we do not manipulate search

results really

that's your job that is literally all

google does google has one job which is

to manipulate search results to pull

them out of the noise and rank them

properly and the out the precise

algorithms of how they do that is very

hidden very complex but influences the

hearts and minds of everybody including

all the voters now if google facebook

and twitter had been smart about this

they would not have picked sides they

would have said we're publishers

whatever goes through our pipes goes

through our pipes if it's illegal we'll

take it down give us a court order

otherwise we don't touch it it's like

the phone company if i call you up and i

say something horrible to you on the

phone the phone company doesn't get in

trouble but the moment this started

taking stuff down that wasn't illegal

because somebody screamed they basically

lost their right to be viewed as a

carrier and now all of a sudden they've

taken on liability so they're sliding

down the slippery slope into ruin

sloping to ruin where the left wants

them to take down the right the right

wants him to take down the left and now

they have no more friends they have no

allies traditionally the

libertarian-leaning republicans and

democrats would have stood up in

principle for the common carriers but

now they won't so my guess is as soon as

congress this is this day is coming if

not already here it might even been here

today actually because this saw

something related

in the news the day is coming when the

politicians realize

that these social media

platforms are picking the next president

the next congressman they're literally

picking and they have the power to pick

so they will be controlled by the

government

in in what way how do you think they're

going to be controlled you think they're

going to have to adhere to strict

principles of freedom of speech no first

particularly unfortunately it's headed

the opposite direction right absolutely

i wish it was freedom of speech much

more likely they're going to be

in the short to medium term they're

going to be hauled in for hearings uh

they're going to be pressured massively

do this don't do that

my concern about that is the the

hearings that i saw with zuckerberg

those people were completely incompetent

they don't seem to understand

they don't but they're just applying

pressure they're just trying to scare

him so he'll do what they want and what

do they want him to do they want him to

basically suppress the other side so if

you're right wing you want to suppress

the left wing if you're left-wing you

want to suppress the right wing and if

you just see where these companies are

headquartered in silicon valley

all the sensors and that's really what

they are there are sensors working

inside these companies they're just

called they're called by different names

obviously right it's double speak you

call it the department defense when it's

the department of war so in this case

the department of safety and trust when

it releases the department of censorship

the sensors are inside silicon valley so

it's going to reflect silicon valley's

politics which is extremely progressive

left ring yeah and if you're not that

you really have no place there's i mean

right try being a conservative an open

conservative at google good luck now you

get lynched yes

that's crazy i mean i don't

think that there was ever

a thing like that

that was so influential and so

politically ideologically one-sided

yeah there's a there's a little saying

on the internet i think it's called

conquest law that any organization

that's not explicitly right-wing

eventually becomes left-wing

and i don't know why that's true but it

does seem to me to be true well it's a

fascinating battle that's going on right

now i mean it really is and

conservatives in as far as social media

is concerned they're just getting

chopped off at the hams left and right

yeah what'll eventually happen is that

whenever you suppress speech

the organism metastasizes then it has to

start turning towards other means if

you're unlucky goes towards violence

if you're lucky they find other outlets

i think what will happen is we will

start creating decentralized media

that's not owned by any single entity

that can't be suppressed or shut down

that will then start spreading these

various things and that will take the

place of twitter or facebook that's

right but it's going to take 10 years 20

years it's not overnight well you know

twitter took 10 years to get to the

point where it's at this mess right now

but it was so interesting to to have

jack dorsey and to to talk to him about

where it's going where he thinks it's

going in his own principles which he

believes that it's a fundamental right

and he believes that freedom of speech

is something that we all should have and

that these

platforms should essentially be

like

like utilities like the electric company

jack is correct and he has the right

vision it's just he's in an organization

where the other individuals in the

organization feel differently very

differently so the organization itself

can get hijacked and his timeline for

changing things it's like

it's decades

i mean i i don't know i shouldn't say

decades but i mean i was like when do

you think that something well there's a

part there was one idea of

having an uncensored twitter like one

twitter that's the wild west like you

could have regular twitter or you could

try wild west twitter like well that

that already exists there's a network

called gab yes but gab isn't even wild

west twitter they when when people dox

people they remove things like that yeah

i mean i think there's certainly lines

around violence and illegality that you

don't want to cross but yes gab is

closer to free speech platform but it's

still not decentralized it can still get

shut down it can still get taken out

it's also suppressed heavily yes so that

so there and the people on there are

right now are extremely right-wing so

it's not a pleasant place for someone

like me to hang out with all the people

that have been kicked off of something

that's right so that's right try going

over there and being moderate try going

over there

there's no room for you yeah

unfortunately because i don't identify

as any party or any creed you know it

doesn't work for me

is that a problem in silicon valley when

you don't identify as anything do you

get pressure it totally it used to be

okay it's not okay anymore when was it

okay like 10 years ago i would say it

was okay and then you started seeing a

shift yeah and now you have to pick

sides otherwise you're automatically the

enemy really yeah struggle sessions and

all that god struggle sessions i'm

exaggerating for effect but but it

definitely has that oppressive feeling

to it right and you also have to be

politically outspoken right yeah it

can't be something that you just stay

neutral about right it's like when uh

tim ferriss i think at some point put

out a tweet about how you can't just say

anything anymore and you know people are

being suppressed and a whole bunch of

people who love them from silicon valley

piled and said what is it that you can't

say what are you afraid to say you can

say whatever you want tim go ahead what

are you afraid of

right they don't like baiting yeah what

was he trying to say wow we have to put

him in that box what is someone who's

thinking about saying something he

shouldn't have said exactly now we know

one great tweet i saw was you know the

left one the culture wars now they're

just driving around shooting the

survivors wow

that's hilarious

yeah i wonder i wonder who as has won

the culture war there's certainly a

battle that's been won in terms of like

control of social media control of

social media is absolutely left well

this is unfortunate

for conservatives but technology is a

force that also pushes left so if you

look all throughout human history like

the left essentially grows and grows and

grows right why is that why is it

inexorably that

as some commentators have said leviathan

slouch is left right leviathan is the

government why does it slouch left and i

think a lot of that has been because of

technology uh technology has made it so

that it makes more like industrial

revolution technology we all band

together we're wards of the state right

contraception is a technology that kind

of helps lean leftward it takes away

from the family unit abortion is a

technology

right it wasn't possible thousands of

years ago

so technology actually empowers the

individual the individual means that you

have the breakdown of family structure

and religion and all that and i'm not

mostly opposed to that but it does mean

that there's a leftward shift to it

now we're getting a small set of

technologies that actually can take you

more rightward encryption is an example

because encryption makes it easier to

have privacy it makes it easier to have

money that is outside of the state

guns 3d printing of guns is an example

of a technology that is more of a

rightward shift

but generally technology leads the world

left

yeah it's it's also

usually highly educated people that are

involved in technology in the first

place and i think

when you look at universities in

particular they tend to lean left in

this country as well

well universities

what happened with the university is

very interesting

universities first when you know became

the arbiters of

data and intellectualism and what's

right and wrong so there's a time period

when it was like should we be doing that

or not well let's look at the university

what do they have to say what are the

smartest people the professors the think

tanks have to say and the universities

got this credibility from the hard

sciences so they got this from uh you

know physics and math and computer

science and chemistry because these

deliver real things the manhattan

project the microprocessor the space

vehicles and so on the electric car

so they gain this mantle of authority

and legitimacy from the hard sciences so

then come the social sciences kind of

sneak in then you get economy

economics and microeconomics is a real

discipline real science real math behind

it logic reason and then you get

macroeconomics which can be politicized

a little bit more voodoo and then you

get social studies and then you get

gender studies and then you get blah

blah blah blah blah blah

and so what happened is that

because we took scientists to be the

high priests

of our new world

science itself has gotten corrupted and

the social sciences and you can tell

they're fake sciences because the word

science tacked on at the end have come

in and hijacked the universities and

become the new think tanks

and so essentially what you see going on

today in the universities is a war

between the social sciences and the

physical sciences and the crossover

point is biology right where you can see

like the whole gender is a social

construct movement is attacking biology

and evolutionary biology

just like in the social sphere they're

coming after the comedians right but you

can see the struggle going on the

universities and i would say the

physical sciences are essentially losing

that war

what can be done

or is it just something that has to play

out is it do we have to realize the

consequences of the foolishness well the

good news is the physical sciences have

a reality on their side

yeah but it's not even i mean

in many ways it's not respected

yeah but you at the end of the day your

aircraft still has to fly

uh you know your microprocessor still

has to compute so there's only so far

they can they can take it uh but i do

see for example in biology a lot of

biologists are facing this difficult

thing where they have to say things that

they know are not true to keep their job

like what well you had brett weinstein

on here

right so that's a that's a clear example

so there's just

the crossover line of what is acceptable

and what's not is entering into biology

and biology will probably suffer the

most

synthetic biology for example

will you know a lot of this will end up

in china

because it won't be

you you won't be able to map facts and

reality

and actions together you won't be able

to get grants you won't be able to get

the adulation of your peers

i don't i don't know enough here so now

i'm in shaky territory but it's just my

sense that that crossover battleground

right now is an evolutionary biology

economics lost well it's certainly in

terms of gender and that that that sort

of that seems to be one of the major

battlegrounds yeah i mean it's also

going to happen for example blank slate

theory you know are we nature are we

nature

um it's kind of uh socially unacceptable

to say that you know a lot of it is

nature and not nurture or vice versa

depending on which side you're on right

those kinds of discussions get corrupted

they do get corrupted and it's really

unfortunate because that's an

unbelievably important thing to

understand like what makes a person a

sociopath what makes a person a super

successful person a winner what what

makes a person a drug addict

what are these factors you can't have a

reasonable conversation about climate

science anymore right it's not a science

it's all politicized you can't even

bring it up everyone's got their minds

made up already well it's what's

uncomfortable to me is people have their

minds made up and they don't even have

the data

well on most of these topics people are

talking past each other anyway they're

talking about different things like when

you get into

uh you know when you when you get into

gun control for example right

one side is talking about the right to

bear arms in case a tyrannical ruler or

king tries to take over the country the

other time the other side is talking

about school shootings and you know

protecting people in their homes right

from crime so they're just talking about

two different things right and it's just

not politically acceptable to even talk

about the same thing or when it gets to

immigration the right is talking about

uh you know

the left is like bundling together

illegal immigration and legal

immigration into one thing yes right

whereas in the on the right sometimes

you've got racist hiding in there so it

doesn't help their cause right they're

talking about two different things yeah

if they were talking about the same

thing which is how many immigrants

should we let into the country and you

know what are the criteria for that that

would be a very different conversation

than no immigrants or everybody comes in

and then also on the left you know you

have this benefit that everybody who's

currently coming in illegally is going

to vote for the left because of where

they're coming from in their

socioeconomic circumstances

to me the test of any good system is you

build a system hand it over to your

enemies to run for the next decade so

for example if you want a censorship on

twitter or facebook you should build

that system and then hand it over to the

other side to run so if you're a

left-winger who's promoting uh

censorship let somebody else running

same with immigration if you want

immigration system build the system then

hand it over to the other side to run it

that's how you know it's a good system

there's no room for nuance when you're

dealing with these political

battlegrounds when when you're dealing

with right versus left and one side has

a clearly established

stance that you're supposed to take

like gun control is a great example of

that right there's no room for

what about mental health what about the

fact that so many of these people are on

psych medications right

why is that not being discussed we're

running one of the greatest uh

mental health experiments in history

when we're doping everybody up and ssris

yeah and you know maybe if you give 30

million people sris maybe like 29.9

million are a lot happier and then you

have a fraction that commits suicide or

detonate yeah you're basically trading

the mean for the variance right you have

blow up risk

yeah there's no room for nuance which is

why i stay out of politics largely do

they drag you in though sometimes they

always try i mean these conversations in

this conversation you get to get dragged

in sure but i'm sure there's going to be

some people here here's the thing about

politics because they're we we have a

first-past-the-post system what that

means is that whoever wins 51 of the

vote in this country gets a lot of the

power right it's not like proportional

representation where the greens have ten

percent and you know libertarians are

three percent or whatever it's just like

you're all democrat in power now we're

all republican because of that to win

you have to pick one of these two sides

right you have you have to choose you

can't just you can't just

you can't just basically say i'm gonna

be

uh you know nuanced about it you you

can't vote for a third party that's

throwing over your vote right i have a

friend who's trying to fix that he's

starting this thing called a good party

where like you kick-start your vote so

you combine all your votes you hold them

in reserve and then when you have enough

to win then you vote that person in

power right you don't you don't throw

away your vote but outside of those

hacks we're never gonna get a third

party elected so because of that all of

your beliefs have to neatly fit into the

democrat bundle or the republican bundle

and so when you get into that tribe uh

if you signal outside of that out of

that bundle you get attacked yeah so

it's literally it's making you into an

unclear thinker it's making you into a

muddled thinker if all of your beliefs

line up into one political party you're

not a clear thinker if all your beliefs

are the same as your neighbors and your

friends you're not a clear thinker

you're literally just your beliefs are

socialized they're taken from other

people so if you want to be a clear

thinker you cannot pay attention to

politics it will destroy your ability to

think

what dread

most of modern life all our diseases are

diseases of abundance not diseases of

scarcity right old times i may have

starved

you know old times if i got sugar that

was a wonderful thing i should have

eaten all the sugar to get my hands on

if i gotten a piece of news or gossip

that was interesting data that would

have helped my life and moved me forward

if i'd gotten some brief amount of

entertainment whether through video

games or magazines or whatever that

would have been good

now it's all disease of abundance we are

overexposed to everything so the way to

survive in modern society is to be an

ascetic it is to retreat from society

there's too much society everywhere you

go society in your phone society in your

pocket society in your ears you're being

socialized right now by listening to

this podcast right we're socializing you

we're programming you everyone's trying

to program everybody the only solution

is turn it off

the only solution is to turn it off and

concentrate on your breathing

meditation yeah yes i mean it works it's

it's been a lifesaver for me oh i do it

and i i do it whenever i get like spare

time i was in the doctor's office this

morning and uh i knew it was going to be

20 minutes so i just sat there with my

eyes closed for 20 minutes and i

meditated you know when i was growing up

there was this statement i think it was

pascal he said you know all of man's

problems arise because he cannot sit by

himself in a room for 30 minutes alone

and it's very true i always needed to be

stimulated and when the iphone came

along boredom was dead i would never be

bored again even if i'm standing in line

i'm on my iphone and i thought it was

great and when i was a kid i used to try

and overclock my brain be like how many

thoughts can i think at once the answer

is only one but i would try to like

think multiple thoughts at once and i

was proud of that i was proud that my

brain was always running this engine was

always moving

and it's a disease it's actually the

road to misery and now that i'm older i

realize like

you actually want to again rest your

mind you want to learn how to settle

into your mind now i look forward to

solitary confinement you leave me alone

for a day it'll be like the happiest day

i've had in a while

and and that is a superpower that i

think everybody can attain

the superpower of learning to be alone

and enjoying it yeah

yeah

well i think it's critical and i and i

do think that this these times where you

just think about things just be alone

and think about things are so rare these

days

and i think

during those rare times is when you

really get to understand what you

actually believe or don't believe

yeah it's it's funny when i first

started meditating it was really hard

right because everybody i think a lot of

people who listen to this broadcast

they've heard of meditation that has a

good rep so everybody tries it they

struggle

they kind of give it up it's one of

those things that everybody says they do

but nobody actually does right it's like

not eating sugar right everyone talks

about how yeah i don't eat sugar but

like yeah then right then the dessert

tray rolls around and everyone's going

for the cookies yeah right

so it's become one of those things and

in fact it's not even become a signaling

thing where it's like oh how much did

you meditate i meditated this much or

you know there are people now wearing

headbands saying with tweety birds a

chirp and then when they're in deep

meditation i don't i don't know how they

make it work but they'll be like i got a

lot of trips today how many trips did

you get oh my god oh your meditation

technique is wrong mine is right but

really all it is is the art of doing

nothing okay and it's important because

i think when we

when we grow up right it's all this

stuff happening to you in your life and

some of it you're processing some of it

you're absorbing and some of it you

should probably think a little bit more

about and work through but you don't you

don't have time so it gets buried in you

and it's all these preferences and

judgments and unresolved situations and

issues and it's like your email inbox

it's just piling up email after email

after email that's not answered going

back 10 20 30 40 years

and then when you sit down to meditate

those emails start coming back at you

hey what about this issue what about

that issue have you solved this did you

think about that your regrets there you

have issues there

and that gets scary people don't want to

do that it's like it's not working i

can't clear my mind i better get up and

not do this but really what's happening

is it's it's self therapy it's just that

instead of paying a therapist to sit

there and listen to you you're listening

to yourself and you just have to sit

there as those emails go through one by

one you work through each of them until

you get to the magical inbox zero and

there comes a day when you sit down you

realize the only things you're thinking

about are things that happened yesterday

because you've processed everything else

not necessarily even resolved it but at

least listen to yourself

and that's when meditation starts and i

think it's a it's a very powerful thing

that everybody should experience and

that's when you arrive upon the art of

doing nothing well i think it's even a

problem that most people are getting

their meditation from an app

i will not use an app it's sneaky i mean

sam harris is a very good meditation app

i should say that but you should be able

to just do it and many people can it is

literally the art of doing nothing yeah

all you need to do for meditation is

just sit down close your eyes

comfortable position whatever happens

happens if you think you think if you

don't think you don't think don't put

effort into it don't put effort against

it it's all you need do you concentrate

on your breath or do you have a specific

technique nothing nothing no you just

sit you just sit i think about my breath

that's all i do i just need to try to

only concentrate on breathing i used to

do that but at some level all the

concentration every meditation technique

is leading you to the same thing which

is just witnessing yes and concentration

is a technique to still your mind enough

that you can then drop the object of

concentration

so you could also just try going

straight to the end game the problem

with what i'm talking about which is not

focusing on your breath is you will have

to listen to your mind for a long time

it's not going to work unless you do at

least an hour a day and preferably at

least 60 days before you kind of work

through a lot of issues so it'll be held

for a while but when you come out the

other side it's great you get rid of the

chatter

or when the chatter comes it's in the

background it's dimmer it's smaller

you've heard it before you see the

patterns

it's more recent it's something you need

to resolve anyway

and you will get moments of actual

silence what is your

what's your ultimate state when you

meditate like is there a state where

you've achieved

rarely if ever

where you just

you you're in bliss or you're in harmony

or you're in enlightenment like what

it's kind of it's kind of indescribable

uh because when you're really meditating

you're not there when there's no

thoughts there's no experience there's

nothing there's just

nothing uh so it's it's hard to describe

but i would say that uh it's like a

you can definitely

every psychedelic state that people

encounter using so-called plant

medicines can be arrived just through

pure meditation and i've definitely hit

some of those states you've hit some

transcendent psychedelic states where

you're vaccinating the whole deal i've

had trippy visuals i've had the kind of

the lights and colors i've had the

so-called downloads i've had the

realizations i've had the bliss i've had

the light i've had the colors but not

every time no it's really and in fact i

would say that that's a that's also like

an experience that you can start craving

which will then actually take you out of

meditation

um where you really and i'm not

enlightened or anything close to it so

not even the ballpark but my own

experience and this is this personal

experience is

the place where i end up the most that

is really the one that i i want to be at

is peace

it's just peace peace happy

yeah peace to me peace is happiness at

rest and happiness is kind of peace and

motion you can convert peace to

happiness anytime you want but peace is

what you want most of the time that's

interesting you can convert peace to

happiness anytime you want yeah if

you're a peaceful person anything you do

will be a happy activity

and by the way being on social media

engaging politics will not bring you

peace there is nothing less peaceful

right and

today's day and age the way we think you

get peace is by resolving all your

external problems but there's unlimited

external problems so the only way to

actually get pieces on the inside by

giving up this idea of problems who

thinks you can get peace by resolving

external problems other than politicians

everybody that's what everybody's

struggling to do right why are you

trying to make money to solve all your

money problems

why are you trying to win a politics

because then you'll be at peace because

your people will have one

it's a daunting task to get your [ __ ]

together it's easier to change yourself

than to change the world

that's true yeah and the best way to

change the world is to change yourself

exactly it's all yeah it's

all these people who are shouting on

social media the best way is just to

actually live the life that you want

other people to live

like i went down to new zealand and

there's this guy

that i met with and

you know everyone's on social media

shouting about environmentalism and

conservative and sustain and i go to

this guy's house and he was doing a

very quietly very gently he was doing a

two week long

zero waste experiment

where he was throwing out nothing so

every package that he opened he would

keep and he would like clean it up so he

would keep his amazon boxes it would

keep the little containers even a tea

bag if you open the tea bag he has to

figure out how to compost the tea inside

how to make the tea itself useful how to

make the tea bag like a little storage

item so there was no trash he was

literally living with zero

trash waste and he was doing it and it

was really inspirational meeting people

like him made me far more

environmentally conscious than you know

any amount of people yelling at me on

social media ever will how long did he

do that for i think it was two weeks it

was hard

what the [ __ ] are you gonna do with tea

bags

he had quite the collection

he was filling them with little things

he sounds like a crazy this hoarder like

a hoarder person with stacks of tea bags

in his house a very impressive guy yeah

that's a strange way to go about things

i i appreciate that i mean

look it is entirely possible to somehow

or another engineer all of our cups and

all of our things and all our about to

be biodegradable

you know the struggle with the modern

environmental movement is that they

identify the correct problem which is

finite earth spaceship earth this is all

they got don't ruin it but they don't

have the solution so what they say is no

growth no growth no growth well the

problem is you got three billion indian

and chinese who aren't going to stay in

poverty they're going to grow whether

you like it or not so you can yell at

them you can scream at them you can yell

at us and scream at us but that's not

going to happen so the only way out

unfortunately is again through

technology which is you have to build

green technology and i give musk a lot

of credit you know for being one of the

few people who's out there trying to do

that so you build things that are

biodegradable and good for you and

healthier and everybody wants to be

healthier chinese want to be healthier

indians want to be healthier they want

to be cleaner if you say i can clean up

your rivers i can clean up your forests

i can have your children not get sick

with cholera and diphtheria and typhoid

i can cure your diseases i can help make

your immune system stronger i can give

you clean drinking water like that is

what causes people to become

environmentalists not shouting and

screaming at them that they shouldn't

grow and they should stop pumping things

into the sky and you know they have no

concept of that they're just trying to

get out of poverty so i think the modern

environmental movement

identifies the correct problem but then

doesn't come up with the right set of

solutions that are appealing to people

people are not going to give up economic

growth they're going to have to get rich

first hmm that's yeah that's a very good

point but how do you do how do you do

both

you lower the price of clean

technologies massively so you basically

make clean technologies cost competitive

through subsidy technologies

innovation

ideally you can subsidize in the short

to medium term until the innovation

curve is is crossed i mean like tesla

doesn't have any patents right right or

they they freely give away their patents

that's the example of how you can do it

um so you know someone in if you want to

get rid of plastic such straws

yeah you can do it here and there you

can get san francisco to ban plastic

straws but china's not going to blend

ban plastic straws not until you build a

paper straw that is you know same cost

good durability and then you in and then

you educate the chinese like hey this is

petroleum you know this plastic that

you're doing is petroleum this is bad

for you here's the chemical composition

here's the things that are going in your

bloodstream and they want healthy happy

kids also so they're going to have their

kids use paper straws maybe straws

aren't the best example but you can you

know this is true with fossil fuels for

example that's that's probably the best

one or replacing a lot of plastics with

glass and paper and so on

yeah there's a new technology that was

just rhonda patrick had it on her

twitter today about

they're able to convert

plastic uh waste into fuel

and that there's companies that are

actively trying to do that now so then

in that way plastic waste will become

valuable right and it'll become a

commodity it'll become something that

people are resource now there's certain

problems this doesn't solve this doesn't

solve carbon this doesn't solve

deforestation uh you know so there you

kind of have to step in with other means

so for example you look at the amazon

right everyone's complaining about the

amazon being deforested well you're not

the poor brazilian farmer right so

you're you're sitting here in your

comfortable chair like social media

hammering away at you know the evil

brazilians for deforesting the amazon

but the amazon has incredible resources

if we really care about it we should

turn it into an incredible tourist park

and put your money where your mouth is

start doing ecotourism in the amazon

start paying for it and then maybe take

the future rights for all the

pharmaceuticals that are going to come

out of all the incredible plants there

and start selling those off so that

people so that maybe give the

pharmaceutical companies an incentive to

preserve the biodiversity of the amazon

say hey if you buy this patch of the

amazon you conserve it and you can serve

it whatever plant medicines that come

out of there that you can then license

you get the patent for 20 years or 30

years or whatever

so i think there are solutions where we

as the first worlders who have money can

put our

money where where our mouth is and go

and rescue these kinds of properties

that's a very interesting solution but i

could see immediate pushback from people

that don't think the pharmaceutical

company should have the rights to this

natural plan okay or the or the

government does it and then the

government gets the patents and the

government will auction off the patents

later or they'll worse or they'll

license them or whatever it is right

well that's often like just this

the often the problem is there is no

really good solution there's a bunch of

solutions that also have drawbacks

that's life yeah right that's the

trade-off so it's being human very messy

yeah it's a constrained environment

obviously i skew more towards a private

property capitalist type solutions

because even though they're not perfect

they have been proven to actually work

right once something is your property

you take care of it right you're not

gonna you're not gonna crap all over

your own house

um but it should probably be temporary

property not permanent property you see

a lot of countries around the world not

doing this no foreign ownership of land

thing for example or mexico has no

private ownership of beaches right so

you can draw the line at certain points

yeah do you enjoy doing this kind of

thing where you break things down and

give your perspective on things and try

to illuminate certain complex subjects

i'm not trying to illuminate so much as

you know talking to you i learn as much

as i

say and i learn it for myself because

i'm being forced to articulate it right

i can sit around and think my thoughts

all day long but it's a lot of it's

going to be nonsense it's not i'm going

to because there are gaps in thinking

where you make leaps

because you're kind to yourself that you

don't realize you're making but when

you're forced to write it down and this

is why i tweet or when you have to talk

to somebody you have to complete those

gaps and make it a proper logical chain

and the mistake that i made when i was

young was you know i always wanted to

seem like the smartest kid in the room

uh you know like just like you probably

want to seem like the funniest kid in

the room or the toughest kid in the room

right we're all losers starting out we

want to be winners so we pick the thing

we're good at and we double down on it

so i always want to be the smartest kid

in the room so what did i do i read a

lot of books i memorized a lot of things

and then whatever i hadn't memorized is

pre-google i made it up so it sounded

good okay

pre-google after google fact checking

started and i had to get better right so

google improved me that way a lot of

people exactly so

now what i realize is that the biggest

mistake with memorization

right because when you're actually

trying to live your life in congress

with reality

you

you want to have a deep understanding of

what you do and why you do it and so

it's much more important to know the

basics really well then is to know the

advanced knowing calculus wouldn't help

you today it doesn't help you in

business doesn't help you in most things

but knowing arithmetic really will help

you really

whether it's at the corner grocery store

counting change to figuring out the

value of your podcast business to

figuring out how to do the probability

math on you know some action that you

want to take so understanding basic

mathematics cold is way more important

than memorizing calculus concepts and

the problem is and this is true of i

think all reasoning it's much better to

know the basics from the ground up solid

foundation of understanding a steel

frame of understanding than it is to

just have a scaffolding we're just

memorizing advanced concepts this is why

there are a lot of people i'm sure that

you listen to who are really smart they

use a lot of jargon and you can't quite

follow their reasoning you don't know

how they're putting things together and

you this deep down suspicion they don't

even really understand right

so if you look at the the most powerful

thinkers especially the ones where money

or life is on the line

they have to understand the basics

really really well richard feynman the

physicist was able to

he had this piece in one of his lectures

where he takes you from counting numbers

on your hand all the way to calculus in

four pages of text orally but written

down is four pages of text and it's a

complete unbroken logical chain that

takes you through geometry trigonometry

precalculus analytic geometry graphs

everything all the way to calculus he

understood numbers at a core level he

didn't have to memorize anything when

you're memorizing it's an indication

that you don't understand

you should be able to rederive anything

on the spot

and if you can't you don't know it

so do you apply that to

things other than mathematics everything

everything you don't even make attempt

to memorize things just make an attempt

to understand them you can't help but

memorize things but if you can't and

this is where twitter is great for me is

i try to understand something and then i

try to write it down in such a way that

i can remember it just the basic hook

that'll point towards the deeper

understanding and i'm forced to explain

it to people and that's how i know i

understand something so this is what i

meant originally we talked about reading

a good book i'll read one page in a

night and then i spend the rest of night

thinking about it or i'm chasing down

references on wikipedia or weird blog

posts trying to understand it

you know so for example

there was a

i was dealing with this is a few months

back i was dealing with a question of

stupid topic but the meaning of life

right what's the meaning how could that

be stupid though well it's just trite

it's right you're not supposed to think

about it it's something you ask your

parents when you're young they tell you

don't worry about it or they'll get a

job yeah exactly good job you freaking

hippy or here's god god is the meaning

of life right and so i was just trying

to resolve for myself like

what could the answer be right not what

is the answer but what could the answer

be

and so at a core level i was forced to

kind of hunt down all these weird little

things and really understand for myself

and it's got to be personal right but i

have to establish for myself what it

could and could not be

and that gave me some level of peace

so now i have to keep asking that

question what is the meaning of life

i mean you you sh i think the question

is more interesting than the answer

everyone should explore this on their

own but let me just explore a few parts

with you right

so first is if i gave you an answer if i

said the meaning of life has to please

god well which god okay judeo-christian

god well okay why that one why this

thing the problem is it's a why question

you can keep asking why forever right

any answer i give you you'll just ask

why again why again

that's right and you end up in a place

called agrippa's trilemma okay this is a

philosophical exercise but i i kind of

thought it through then googled around

and there's a thing called agrippa's

trilemma

and agrippa's trauma says that any

questioning like this

y will always end in one of three places

okay first is infinite regress

right why because of this why that what

and just keep going forever the second

is circular reasoning well a why a

because of b or why b because of a right

you get trapped in that or the third is

an axiom and the most popular axiom is

god but it could be anything because of

math because of science because the big

bang because the simulation right these

are all axioms these are all just

stopping points

saying simulation we're in a simulation

or saying it's the big bang is just

another way of saying god it's just

god's a dirty word so we don't use it as

much anymore but same thing so you end

up in one of these three dead ends

essentially right so there is no answer

uh the real answer is because

right what is the meaning of life yeah

you get to make up your own answers the

beauty if there was a single answer we

would not be free we would be trapped

because then we would all have to live

to that answer then we'd be bored like

robots each one competing with each

other to fulfill that single meaning

more than the others back to signaling

like i'm better at it than you are but

luckily there is no answer so you just

do whatever you want

the meaning of life

it's funny that

that what that's the basis of all

existential angst that you don't

you don't know why you're here and you

have this feeling that it could be

meaningless

it is i mean if you

when you start pondering the

the multiverse the universe the galaxies

the solar system the planet the organism

the cells inside the organism the

bacteria the parasites right the

symbiotic relationship we have to our

environment and you start going jesus

christ what am i just a little piece of

this thing it's like well the answers to

all the great questions or paradoxes

yeah so for example you're asking like

do i matter that's like really the

question you asked right well how do i

matter in this infinite universe well

you know on the one hand you're separate

no two points are the same every point

is every two points are infinitely

different you're completely separated no

one will have your thoughts your

emotions your feelings your experience

so your life is a single player game

you're trapped inside your head and

you're just aware of a bunch of things

going on and that's it

on the other hand

i cannot say the word joe rogan without

invoking the entire universe joe alien

comes along says what's that joe rogan

what's joe rogan's a human what's a

human bipedal ape what's an ape on the

earth what's the earth planet what's a

planet solar system where was the carbon

made inside stars right instead i have

to create the entire universe

to just say the words joe rogan so in

that sense you're connected to

everything it's inseparable so

the answer to that question of do i

matter is i am nothing and i am

everything and you'll find this with all

the great questions the answers are all

paradoxes which is why at some level

it's sort of pointless to pursue them to

find a trite answer like i'm giving but

the act of pursuing them is actually

really useful because then it gives you

certain intrinsic understanding in your

life that brings a level of peace

i feel like there's with many people

this

stress of this question is also

accentuated by unhappy lives it's

actually accentuated by unhappy choices

by being trapped there's a big

difference between not knowing what the

meaning of life is and

god i gotta get the [ __ ] out of this job

i have to i can't live my life this way

what's the meaning of life if this is my

life which is why i always start with

let's get you rich first

right that's why i'm very practical

about it because look the you know

buddha was a prince okay he started out

really rich and then he got to go off in

the woods

and in the old days what happened was if

you wanted to be peaceful inside you

would become a monk you would renounce

everything you would become an ascetic

you would give everything up you

renounce women men you'd renounce

children you'd announce money you'd

renounce politics science technology

everything and you would go out in the

woods by yourself you could give

everything up to be free inside

well today we have this wonderful

invention called money where you can

just store stuff up in a bank account

okay and you can basically

save up you can you can work really hard

you can do great things for society and

society will give you money for giving

it things that it wants and it doesn't

know how to get

and then you can save that up and you

can live well below with your means and

you can find a certain freedom in that

and that will give you the time and the

energy to pursue your own internal peace

and happiness

so i believe the solution to making

everybody happy is to give them what

they want let's get them all rich let's

get them all fit and healthy and then

let's get them all happy

is are those things even possible

everyone can be rich everyone can be

rich everyone here's my thought exercise

for you now it seems like we're in an

infomercial

everyone can be writing not selling my

home this is my rolls royce yeah no so

that's a good point so everything that

i've ever created on this topic of how

to make money i will never charge a

dollar for

because that would ruin it that would

show that i'm just another huckster

who's trying to get rich off of you

there are no get-rich-quick schemes

that's just somebody else trying to get

rich off of you right so it's so to me

it's more of a philosophical

contribution where for it to have

meaning and to be legit i can't charge

you anything for it but yes everybody

can be rich and let me give you a

thought exercise okay

imagine if tomorrow we could wave a wand

and everybody was trained

as a scientist or an engineer everybody

even if you weren't very good you had

enough understanding of computers you

could write some code you could build

some hardware and don't tell me people

can't do it because they can that's just

the tyranny of soft expectations that's

just you looking down on somebody else

they can't do it they just have to be

educated now if they're educated all as

hardware software engineers scientists

biologists technicians hard sciences not

the social sciences we would all be done

within five years robots would be doing

everything from cleaning toilets to

cooking food to flying airplanes to

driving ubers and what would we be doing

we would be doing all creative jobs to

entertain each other and researching

science and technology we would have

wonderful lives so it is really just a

question of education nothing else

is this a scale issue though i mean

you're talking about it as if this would

work with 300 million people it'll work

with 10 billion people it'll work with a

spacefaring race with 100 trillion

people just we have the resources we

have

the ability the universe is infinite

resources you build it you know have you

heard of a dyson sphere

you know you pull the dyson sphere on a

star and you gather all its energy like

that there's so much energy out there

one asteroid's got all the minerals that

we need one sun one solar system has got

all the power we will need for a long

long time uh you know we can extract it

out of nuclear fusion you know we're

we're not that far from those kinds of

technologies working

uh it's just a question of guts and uh

you know and interest like we should be

building nuclear fusion test plants on

the moon the moon should be littered

with them it's no downside right

yeah

if you could

how would that work well it doesn't send

a bunch of people up there to work oh

the problem robots the problem with

fission nuclear fission is that you know

nature

creates energy through nuclear energy

right like the sun creates energy

nuclear energy now for transmission we

use photons because photons don't

interact and so photons are great for

information transmission but they're

actually not great for energy

transmission for energy creation

you want nuclear to work and the problem

is because nuclear energy you know we

built it with a bomb we have dirty nukes

all those kinds of problems with

fukushima three-mile island chernobyl

we don't innovate anymore on nukes

imagine if when the first steam engine

blew up we said oh

no more steam engines for a while or

very carefully regulated billion dollars

of regulation you can't innovate that

way when the first airplane crashed we

said no more innovation in airplanes

right

so we need a way to iterate on nuclear

fission and eventually fusion and get

them working safely cleanly passive say

failure etc if we're going to find our

way out of the energy trap and the best

place to do that is someplace like on

the moon or mars

do you think that it's actually a

possibility that they could

get nuclear power to the point where

it's not a detriment because what

everyone's worried about is a meltdown

right yeah and we do have these old

plants that are running that are running

on this this is 50 years old technology

it's crazy because there's no ability to

shut them off right very old technology

they do now have gen 4 nuclear reactors

that are passive fail safe so in other

words when they fail they fail into us

when you pull the plug on them they fail

into a state where there's no leakage

there's no problem right their default

is a positive outcome as opposed to the

current ones the old ones where if you

unplug them like and these even these

gen four are just gen four they're not

gen five they're not gen eighty gen

hundred where we're in microprocessors

right and that should be something that

people are working towards i hope so i

mean in an ideal world we would now the

problem is if you have nuclear energy on

the moon how do you get it home right so

what you actually got to do is you got

to

rev it on the moon and you're using it

there maybe to launch more satellites

more rockets further out into the solar

system and that's the initial use case

um but then eventually the technology

gets so good you can bring it home

now i want to go back to this idea of

getting people rich that somehow or

another that's going to make people

happy how do you stop the the

natural progression that people have of

you know oh you know i have got a nice

chevrolet yeah but i really want a bmw

i've got a nice bmw but now i want a

mercedes i have mercedes i want a

ferrari

how do you stop that material

possession

trap because you can't at some level but

i think most smart people over time

realize that possessions don't make them

happy right it's just you have to go

through that you have to buy your stupid

car to realize that it doesn't attract

attractive girls it actually just

attracts other dudes who are like hey

i like that car man right like like you

have some expensive cars out there some

fancy cars tell me how you know how much

that attracts women versus men well i'm

married those are for me

i just enjoy machines yeah so for me

they're toys that's a particular thing

where you enjoy machines but i think

very as you get older

you just realize that there's no

happiness in material possessions now

lack of material possessions can make

you very unhappy so being poor can make

you unhappy but being rich is not going

to make you happy

and what happens unfortunately a lot of

people struggle through their whole

lives to make money they make some

they're exhausted and then they're like

well now why am i not happy i guess i'm

just not a happy person and smart people

aren't happy that's like a great little

way to people feel better about it they

say well if you're smart you're not

happy right where's i positive the other

way if you're smart you should be able

to figure out how to be happy otherwise

you're not that smart yeah that is an

offensive statement that if you're smart

you're not happy i've heard that before

and i just do not understand the logic

of that other than self-justifying i

understand where it comes from it comes

from if you're smart it's usually

because you thought things through and

you have a very busy mind yeah and so

busy mind can often rob you of peace of

mind

because what

the peace that we seek is not peace of

mind it's peace from mind

right so if you look at all the crazy

activities you do to be happy right

whether it's like trying to get laid and

have an orgasm or you know extreme

sports or looking at something beautiful

or taking a psychedelic you're trying to

get out of your own mind you're trying

to get your monkey mind to stop

chattering at you for a moment you're

trying to get peace from the mind

and there are other better ways to do

that most of the ways we try to get

peace from mind are indirect

whereas if you understand things if you

see things properly you will naturally

slowly develop peace from mind

sorry if i went on a tangent there no

it's a good tangent it's a good tangent

because i think that oftentimes

the pursuit

is

what's thrilling to people and the

possibility that one day they'll be able

to rest and that they'll reach this goal

that's the fundamental delusion that

there is something out there that will

make me happy and fulfill forever yeah

golden years there is it's called death

oh i'll take care of everything that's

the great leveler but when people look

at particularly social media bring it

back to that when you see someone who

you know you see them posed in front of

their mansion with their beautiful car

and they're leaning against it with

their designer clothes on their

expensive watch

you go i want that right that's what i

want

what you really want is freedom you want

freedom from your money problems right

and i think that's okay so people once

someone can solve their money problems

either by lowering their lifestyle or by

making enough money

and you know

essentially what you want to get

everybody to the retirement but not

retirement in the i'm 65 years old

sitting in a nursing home collecting a

check retirement different definition

retirement is when you stop

sacrificing today for some imaginary

tomorrow

okay yes when today is complete in and

of itself you're retired yeah and so how

do you get there well one is you can

have so much money saved up that just

your passive income off of that without

you having to lift a finger covers your

burn rate keep your burn rate low right

a second is you just drive your burn

rate down to zero you become a monk

a third is you're doing something you

love you enjoy it so much it's not about

the money right so there are multiple

ways to that path but the most common is

people just say i need to make more

money and the kind of wealth creation

that i talk about is about creating

timeless principles and adapting

yourselves that making money won't be an

issue and you can do it by doing what

you love right like we get into this

model of i must work for other people

work my way up the ladder

i must like do what that person is doing

to make money but really today in

society you get rewarded for creative

work for creating something brand new

that society didn't even know yet that

it wanted it doesn't know how to get

other than through you so the most

powerful money makers are actually

individual brands people like yourself

or elon or kanye or oprah or trump right

these are individual brands eponymous

name brands who themselves are leveraged

like you're leveraged you have podcast

media going out to everybody that's

leveraged the podcasts work for you when

you sleep they have knowledge that

nobody else has which is your knowledge

is the knowledge of being joe rogan i

mean who else is a ufc fighter and a

commentator and a podcaster and a

comedian and you know interested in all

these things and those all these people

can't replace you

um so we have to pay you what you're

worth and who's i never fought in the

ufc though

oh you didn't okay sorry

um or you know you're whatever you're

you're involved in that whole scene you

just have a unique set of skill sets

um so because of this unique what i call

specific knowledge because of the

accountability that you have with your

name because the leverage that you have

through your media you're a money-making

machine you're

i'm sure at this point i could make you

start over tomorrow wipe out your bank

account you'd be rich again in no time

because you have all the skill sets so

once people have those skill sets and

the beauty is the way you've done it is

you don't have any competition there's

no substitution if joe rogan were to

disappear off the air tomorrow it's not

like random podcaster number 12 would

step in and fill that thing no it's it's

just gone so the way to get out of that

competition trap is actually to be

authentic the way to retire is actually

to find the thing that you know how to

do better than anybody and you know how

to do that better than anybody because

you love to do it no one can compete

with you if you love to do it be

authentic

and then figure out how to map that to

what society actually wants apply some

leverage put your name on it so you take

the risks but you gain the rewards have

ownership and equity in what you do and

then just crank it out i think people

have to be very careful to not get

trapped along the way with

things that you can afford with your

current lifestyle like the way you're

living and the way you're earning but

they're also imprisoning you and the

fact that you are now going to have to

work this 40-hour a week job in order to

get this thing that you can't afford but

now you you're saddled down to this job

you've no you're not saving you're not

you're not putting things in a good

place and you're working for these

things

working for things as rewards is a real

trap that a lot of people fall into it's

the biggest one you know naseem tell

that also says that uh you know under

two great addictions heroin and a

monthly salary

right

and and that's why you can't get rich

writing out your time because even when

you start charging more and more for

your time it's a slow upgrade loop and

then you upgrade your house at the same

time you break your car at the same time

you move in the neighborhood you really

also have to get used to ignoring your

peers

or upgrading or changing the definition

of your peers

a lot of people here who are poor here

but they would be rich if they were

living in thailand and bali and if they

have the luxury of a remotely doable job

they may want to be living there

and saving up money but the ignoring the

peers is an issue because the keeping up

with the joneses is a real phenomenon

yeah envy makes the world go around

right yeah

and then there's a there's another thing

that people have to avoid even allowing

their mind to think when they're hearing

what you're saying and all this

logical fantastic advice

there's these six dirty words that's

easy for you to say yeah that is a

terrible trap i mean look i grew up as a

first generation immigrant uh in jamaica

queens uh with zero money single mom two

kids working day and night going to

school

uh you know i washed dishes uh i was k i

was working catering jobs i was mowing

lawns i was working since the age of 11

on and off here and there um

didn't have two cents to rub together

you know

i had to borrow 400 to go to college

like literally i was short 400 dollars

400. i had to find 400 i didn't have it

um you know got rejected from a job at

dunkin donuts so like okay

it's not to say that it's easy it's not

easy it's actually really freaking hard

it is the hardest thing you will do but

it's also the rewarding thing you know

look at the kids who are born rich no

meaning to their lives you're a terrible

place yeah your real your real resume is

just a cataloguing of all your suffering

right if i were to ask you to describe

your real life to yourself when you look

back on your deathbed you're going to go

back and say what are the interesting

things i've done and it's all going to

be around the sacrifices that you made

and the hard things that you did

anything you're given doesn't matter

you know you you have your four limbs

you have your brain you have your head

you have your skin that's that's all for

granted so you have to do hard things

anyway to create your own meaning in

life

um

making money is a fine one yeah struggle

it is hard i'm not gonna say it's easy

it's a really hard but the tools are all

available it's all there there's also

these these traps that people

sort of establish in their own mind

of

giving themselves excuses or giving

themselves in insurmountable

obstacles insurmountable

paths victorian victim mentality yes

it's somebody else's fault it's my skin

color's fault it's the system's fault

yeah those people are sinking i feel bad

for them i want to shake them out of it

and say actually you can get out of it

you just have to stop thinking it's

everybody you have to alter the

perspective yeah but it's so difficult

for people to do it's one of the most

difficult things for people to do is to

change the way they approach approach

reality itself

at the end of the day i i do think even

despite what i said earlier life is

really a single player game it's all

going on in your head you know whatever

you think you believe

will very much shape your reality both

from what risks you take and what

actions you perform but also just your

everyday experience of reality if you're

walking down the street and you're

judging everyone you're like i don't

like that person because their skin

color i don't like that oh she's she's

not attractive that guy's fat this

person's a loser oh who put this in my

way uh you know the more you judge the

more you're gonna separate yourself and

you'll feel good for an instant because

you'll feel good about yourself i'm

better than that but then you're gonna

feel lonely and then you're just gonna

see negativity everywhere the world just

reflects your own feelings back at you

reality is neutral

reality has no judgments to a tree

there's no concept of right or wrong or

good or bad right you're born you have a

whole set of sensory experiences and

stimulations and lights and colors and

sounds and then you die yeah and how you

choose to interpret that is up to you

you do have that choice so this is what

i meant that happiness is a choice if

you believe it's the choice then you can

start working on it and i can't tell you

how to find it because

it's your own conditionings that are

making you unhappy so you have to

uncondition yourself it's just like i

can't fix your eating habits for you can

give you some general guidelines but you

gotta go through the hard habit forming

of how to eat right but you have to

believe it's possible and it is

absolutely possible i was miserable i'm

happy as a clam it's not just the money

i got there before the money you got

happy before the money mostly yeah how

did you get happy before the money i

started getting older you know i just

realized like life is short i'm going to

die

again trite right try it in 20 ways yeah

well confucius had a great saying that

uh you know every man has two lives and

the second starts when he realizes he

has just one

wow

and i read that it was one of those book

dropping lines you know it's like mic

drop confucius had a lot of mic drops

fuchsias was a bad [ __ ] he was

that's a crazy one that was a great one

um or another one is next time you get

sick you know because everybody gets

sick every now and then it's like a

happy person

wants 10 000 things a sick person just

wants one thing

right so it's your it's your unlimited

desires that are clouding your peace

your happiness

have desires your biological creature

stands up and says i can do something i

i move i resist i live

but

just be very careful of your desires

this is the oldest most trite wisdom

desire is suffering that's what it means

right every desire you have is an access

where you will suffer so just don't

focus on more than one desire at a time

the universe is rigged in such a way

that if you just want one thing and you

focus on that you'll get it but

everything else you gotta let go

did you make a gradual shift to

happiness or was it a radical change

it's ongoing it's gradual every day so

you're happier today than you were a

month ago yeah allegedly yeah

yeah i'm i'm very happy these days

deliriously so it's actually hard for me

to hang out with normal people really

yeah so you you've made a significant

shift

over the period of like how many years

about eight years eight years yeah

wow and

is this something that you've pursued

through certain books or is it just like

you you've made an understanding or

gained an understanding in your own mind

and then started pursuing it based on

that understanding yeah it's very very

personal uh it's basically you have to

decide it's a priority and then i tried

every hack i possibly could i used to

you know i tried all the i tried

meditation i tried witnessing uh you

know i even tried an ssri just to see

what it would feel like how did it feel

uh it was it turned me from a pessimist

to an optimist but i didn't like the

physical side effects nor did i want to

be on a drug for a sustained basis

so i dropped it and i did turn you into

an optimist yes at the time i used to be

a pessimist yeah

um i started doing things like i would

start looking at the you know in every

moment and everything that happens you

can look on the bright side of something

right and so i used to do that forcibly

and then i trained it until it became

second nature so for example like a

friend of my wife's was over and she

when we were dating and she took all

these photos she took like hundreds of

photos and then she sends them all to us

and my immediate reaction was like why

are you dumping hundreds of photos of my

phone i don't need hundreds of photos

have some judgment that's my immediate

reaction and then i could say actually

how nice of her she sent me hundreds of

photos i can pick the one that i like

right there are two ways of seeing

almost everything there are a few things

that are like high suffering so you

can't do that other than just saying

well this is a teacher right but i

slowly worked through every negative

judgment that i had until i saw the

positive end now it's second nature to

me i also realized that like what you

want is you want to clear minds you want

to let go of thoughts

happy thoughts disappear out ahead

automatically very easy to let go of

them negative thoughts linger so if you

interpret then the positive and

everything very quickly you let it go

right you let it go much faster

simple hacks get more sunlight right

learn to smile more learn to hug more

these things actually release serotonin

in reverse they aren't just outward

signals of being happy they're actually

feedback loops to being happy

spend more time in nature you know these

are obvious watch your mind watch your

mind all day long watch what it does not

judge it not try to control it but you

can meditate 24 7. meditation is not a

sit down close your eyes activity

meditation is just basically watching

your own thoughts like you would watch

anything else in the outside world and

say why am i having that thought does

that serve me anymore is that

conditioning from when i was 10 years

old like for example

getting ready for this podcast you got

ready i didn't but good i did but i did

but i did i couldn't help it and what

happened was the few days leading up to

this my mind was just running and

normally my mind is pretty calm and it

was just running and running and running

and every thought i would have i would

imagine me saying it to you my brain

couldn't help but rehearse

what what it's doing it's just

rehearsing all the time to talk to you

and then i was even rehearsing rehearse

telling you about the rehearsal right so

it was all playing all these meta games

and i was just like shut up stop it what

is going on and it took me a while to

figure out oh yeah you know what it is

when i was a kid in queens and i had no

money and i had nothing and i needed to

save myself the way i got out was by

sounding smart not being smart sounding

smart that was the skill i perfected so

i am hardwired to always rehearse things

so i will sound smart it's a disease it

keeps me from being happy so but when

you see that when you realize that when

you understand something then it

naturally calms you down so after that i

stopped rehearsing as much

wow but it's still a train habit

that is a really interesting point that

you

want to sound smart

that that many people do that and

especially young people when you you see

someone who is smart or someone who

appears smart they say smart things oh

god i want to sound smart i want people

to think about me the same way i think

about that person that that is my

disease that is my feeling it is what

clutters my mind i the the thing i have

to ask myself now is

if i can

would i still be interested in learning

this thing if i couldn't ever tell

anybody about it

that's how i know it's real that's how i

know it's something i actually want to

know that's a common thing though i know

i suffered from that when i was young

the desire to sound smart

that's it's very

it's very common well all of us start

out

you know

every everything you're a winner now in

your life you were to lose because you

were a loser at some point right if if

you had gotten all the girls if you had

all the money if you had everything you

want you were good looking and in junior

high or high school uh you wouldn't have

done anything with your life

and you would have peaked early it's

like the bruce springsteen glory days

song right you would have married your

high school sweetheart you'd be living

in your hometown you know you'd be a

manager at the local mcdonald's whatever

the first dream job you had thank god we

didn't all get what we wanted when we

were young right or we would be trapped

in that so you have to be able to break

out of where you came from i don't know

where i was going that is interesting

too about people who peak too early yeah

or maybe those people that peak too

early can do the elon musk thing and

just abandon it and start something new

and then learn the the the joys of

sucking at something yeah and actually

though

in our professions especially when

you're high visibility the problem with

peaking is that you then get drowned in

death of a thousand cuts people have

expectations of you hey joe can you come

to my event hey joe can you look at my

business plan hey joe can give me advice

on this can you you know talk to my

friend can you come in this podcast

you're just being assaulted all the time

with inbound opportunities so you have

no time to start over with anything so

you have to ruthlessly ruthlessly

disappoint everybody eliminate and clear

your schedule drop all the meetings not

even respond to the emails the only way

you're gonna be able to start over with

anything

yeah and i we talked about this that i'd

love your approach to meetings

if they're not meeting life or death i'm

the same way

i avoided a good one recently and this

was someone that was just

tracking me down as a high-profile

person in a big organization and i'm

like can we just talk on the phone and

then we talk on the phone there was

nothing to say it was just they wanted

to get me in the office and yeah and the

meetings should really be phone calls

phone calls should be emails and emails

should just be text

right

many of them right with meetings i i

mean i i despise meetings i used to own

the domain i don't do coffee.com i

eventually let go but i used to respond

from the wallet i don't do coffee you

know oh that's hilarious but it was a

little bit of a jerk move but really

where it comes from is when i was young

one of my principles was i knew i had to

make money it was my overwhelming desire

and

one of the things i did was i said okay

i'm never going to be worth more than

what i think i'm worth okay no one's

going to pay me more than what i think

i'm worth so what am i worth so i i

picked an hourly rate for myself that i

was worth and i said i'm never going to

squander my time for less than this so

if

originally there's 500 bucks an hour

then i upgrade to 5000 bucks an hour and

it's ludicrous but

pick an aspirational hourly rate

aspirational it has to be a little

ludicrous and then what i would do is if

i have to return something i'm standing

in line to return something and it's

below my hourly rate i'll throw it away

if i have to if i or give it away if i

have to do some tasks and i can hire

somebody to do it for less than my

hourly rate i would hire them and so i

just became extremely jealous of my time

which doesn't mean you can't have fun

rest leisure spending time with your

friends and family that's all great

don't count that but if you're doing

anything you don't want to do which is

the definition of work it's a set of

things that you have to do that you

don't want to do if you're working it

better be for your hourly rate otherwise

don't do the work and so

once it came out of that then i just

realized the cost of meetings the cost

of meetings is so high especially given

all the people who are in there right

one person is talking seven people

listening you're literally just dying an

hour at a time

so you have to just

drop non-urgent meetings or figure out

how to be more efficient with them if

you're gonna do anything great

the extreme example is business travel

getting on a plane to fly halfway around

the world for one meeting which never

amounts to anything

and then like wasting your whole little

life there and then flying back so about

five years ago i resolved i am never

going to travel for business

wow and i haven't tried for business

since i only travel

if the travel experience will be so

entertaining and joyous because i have

friends or it's a place i want to see or

whatever that it will be complete in and

of itself because i know that whatever

the business meeting i came from is

never worth it

wow

and actually that principle applies

larger than just travel it applies to

life in general the this one of the

secrets to happiness is to really

embrace what you're doing in that moment

that's trite but where that where that

comes from is saying i only want to do

actions that are complete in and of

themselves right if i'm looking for some

ulterior motive down the line

it's not going to materialize

and and if you think it is maybe even if

it does it'll be very short-lived

anything you wanted in your life whether

it was a car or whether it was a girl or

there was money

when you got it a year later you were

back to zero your brain had hedonically

adapted to it and you were looking for

the next thing

that's a great statement hedonically

adapted

that's that is what happens to people

you get accustomed to whatever it is i

realized that when i first got a new

apartment it was a nice apartment after

a while i got used to it i was like oh

okay this is just an apartment it's just

where i live i'm used to it's nice but

i'm used to it yeah we all go through

this learning it's it's you know it's

riding the ferris wheel of life it's

like you get at the bottom like i want

to get the top this is so exciting you

ride it up you get a little dopamine

rush and get a little serotonin then you

ride it back down as that wears off then

you need another high then you ride it

back up and write it back down in fact

the more highs you get the harder it

gets to go around the wheel and the more

board you get it the harder it goes to

go back up

so what lights your fire now like what

what gets you motivated to do things and

to act art art this is art oh okay art

is just creativity it's just anything

that's done for its own sake

so what are the things that are done for

their own sake there's nothing beyond

loving somebody

uh creating something

playing

art to me creating business is play i

create businesses early stage because

it's fun because i i'm into the product

even when i invest it's because i like

the people i like hanging out with them

i learn from them and i think the

product is really cool

so these days i will pass on all kinds

of great investments because i'm like i

just the product's not interesting it's

boring i'm not gonna learn anything

that's a beautiful luxury it is a luxury

art and learning yeah it is a luxury

these are not 100 or zero things right

you can in your life start moving more

and more towards that right but that's a

goal it's a goal when i was younger i

used to be so desperate to make money

that i would have done anything right if

you'd shown up and said hey i got a

sewage trucking business and you're

going to go into that i said great let's

do it i'm going to make money

thank god no one gave me that

opportunity

i'm glad that it went down the road of

technology and science which i genuinely

enjoy

and so i got to like combine my vocation

and my advocation i mean what are you

doing you're playing you're having fun

you're doing art you're not you're not

working no that's what i always say when

people say i work hard i'm like sorta

not really i'm always working but it

looks like work to them but it feels

like play to me and that's how i know no

one can compete with me on it

because i'm just playing 16 hours a day

and if they want to compete with me and

they're going to work they're going to

lose because they're not going to do it

16 hours a day seven days a week

well listen man there are some gems of

wisdom in this conversation and i hope

people pull things out of this and apply

them to their own life and i'm certainly

going to listen to you again and and and

try to apply some of this to my own life

stuff that i'm not already applying but

i really appreciate your time and i

really appreciate you coming in here

thanks for having me and um please tell

people you those small little podcast

it's just the naval podcast right yeah

best way to find me is on twitter

actually okay just at naval then i have

a website at nav.al i have a youtube

channel neval and i have a podcast in

the world that's it well thank you very

much thank you really appreciate it

thank you

bye everybody

[Music]

[Applause]

[Music]

[Music]

i