WEBVTT 00:00:00.849 --> 00:00:03.740 Welcome to this curated educational transcript of the Joe Rogan Experience. In this session, we provide a deep-dive examination of the critical perspectives and historical dialogues presented in Episode #1309. Our mission is to offer a high-fidelity, searchable research resource for students of cultural history, emerging technology, and global discourse. This transcript has been specifically optimized for academic reference, linguistic study, and archival preservation regarding Wealth Creation, Mental Models, and Philosophical Algorithms for Happiness. Two, one, boom. All right, we're live. Thank 00:00:03.740 --> 00:00:05.179 you very much for doing this, man. I really appreciate 00:00:05.179 --> 00:00:07.679 it. I've been absorbing your information and 00:00:07.679 --> 00:00:10.019 listening to you talk for quite a while now, 00:00:10.199 --> 00:00:12.679 so it's great to actually meet you. Thanks for 00:00:12.679 --> 00:00:15.060 having me. My pleasure, my pleasure. You are 00:00:15.060 --> 00:00:20.000 one of the rare guys that is, you're a big investor, 00:00:20.399 --> 00:00:24.960 you're deep in the tech world, but yet you seem 00:00:24.960 --> 00:00:27.739 to have a very balanced perspective in terms 00:00:27.739 --> 00:00:30.519 of how to live life, as opposed to not just be... 00:00:31.440 --> 00:00:36.039 entirely focused on success and financial success 00:00:36.039 --> 00:00:41.039 and tech investing, but rather how to live your 00:00:41.039 --> 00:00:46.200 life in a happy way. That's an odd balance. Yeah, 00:00:46.219 --> 00:00:49.679 I think the reason why people like hearing me 00:00:49.679 --> 00:00:52.820 is because it's like if you go to a circus and 00:00:52.820 --> 00:00:54.979 you see a bear. That's kind of interesting, but 00:00:54.979 --> 00:00:57.240 not that much. If you see a unicycle, that's 00:00:57.240 --> 00:00:59.100 interesting. But you see a bear on a unicycle, 00:00:59.100 --> 00:01:01.479 that's really interesting, right? So when you 00:01:01.479 --> 00:01:03.280 combine things you're not supposed to combine, 00:01:03.399 --> 00:01:05.540 people get interested. It's like Bruce Lee, right? 00:01:05.659 --> 00:01:08.480 Striking thoughts, philosophy, plus martial arts. 00:01:09.099 --> 00:01:12.180 And I think it's because at some level, all humans 00:01:12.180 --> 00:01:15.340 are broad. We're all multivariate, but we get... 00:01:15.590 --> 00:01:18.590 summarized in pithy ways in our lives. And at 00:01:18.590 --> 00:01:20.629 some deep level, we know that's not true, right? 00:01:20.709 --> 00:01:23.489 Every human basically is capable of every experience 00:01:23.489 --> 00:01:27.609 and every thought. You're a UFC comedian, commentator, 00:01:27.650 --> 00:01:29.609 podcaster, but you're also more than that. You're 00:01:29.609 --> 00:01:34.709 also a father, lover, thinker, et cetera. So 00:01:34.709 --> 00:01:37.950 I like the model of life that the ancients had, 00:01:38.049 --> 00:01:39.950 the Greeks, the Romans, right? Where you would 00:01:39.950 --> 00:01:42.849 start out and when you're young, you're just 00:01:42.849 --> 00:01:44.870 like going to school. Then you're going to work. 00:01:44.879 --> 00:01:47.459 war, then you're running a business, then you're 00:01:47.459 --> 00:01:49.299 supposed to serve in the Senate or the government, 00:01:49.459 --> 00:01:51.219 then you become a philosopher. There's sort of 00:01:51.219 --> 00:01:54.799 this arc to life where you try your hand at everything. 00:01:55.519 --> 00:01:58.500 And as one of my friends says, specialization 00:01:58.500 --> 00:02:01.900 is for insects. So everyone should just be able 00:02:01.900 --> 00:02:03.920 to do everything. And so I don't believe in this 00:02:03.920 --> 00:02:06.939 model anymore of trying to focus your life down 00:02:06.939 --> 00:02:09.300 on one thing. You've got one life, just do everything 00:02:09.300 --> 00:02:12.300 you're going to do. I couldn't agree more. And 00:02:12.300 --> 00:02:15.659 I think that sometimes people find certain success 00:02:15.659 --> 00:02:18.060 in whatever the endeavor is, and then they think 00:02:18.060 --> 00:02:20.259 that that is their niche, and they stick with 00:02:20.259 --> 00:02:22.780 it, and they never change, and they're almost 00:02:22.780 --> 00:02:26.080 out of fear. Well, it's hard because there's 00:02:26.080 --> 00:02:29.219 an analogy around mountain climbing. Like if 00:02:29.219 --> 00:02:31.599 you find a mountain, and you start climbing, 00:02:31.659 --> 00:02:33.259 and you spend your whole life climbing it, and 00:02:33.259 --> 00:02:35.500 you get, say, two -thirds of the way, and then 00:02:35.500 --> 00:02:37.539 you see the peak is like way up there, but you're 00:02:37.539 --> 00:02:38.900 two -thirds of the way up. You're still really 00:02:38.900 --> 00:02:41.509 high up. But now to go the rest of the way, you're 00:02:41.509 --> 00:02:43.009 going to have to go back down to the bottom and 00:02:43.009 --> 00:02:45.229 look for another path. Nobody wants to do that. 00:02:45.560 --> 00:02:47.680 People don't want to start over. And it's the 00:02:47.680 --> 00:02:49.560 nature of later in life that you just don't have 00:02:49.560 --> 00:02:52.520 the time. So it's very painful to go back down 00:02:52.520 --> 00:02:54.539 and look for a new path, but that may be the 00:02:54.539 --> 00:02:56.539 best thing to do. And that's why when you look 00:02:56.539 --> 00:03:00.180 at the greatest artists and creators, they have 00:03:00.180 --> 00:03:03.240 this ability to start over that nobody else does. 00:03:03.319 --> 00:03:06.139 Like Elon will be called an idiot and start over 00:03:06.139 --> 00:03:08.620 doing something brand new that he supposedly 00:03:08.620 --> 00:03:11.360 is not qualified for. Or when Madonna or Paul 00:03:11.360 --> 00:03:13.860 Simon or U2 come out with a new album, their 00:03:13.860 --> 00:03:16.240 existing fans use hate it because they've adopted 00:03:16.240 --> 00:03:18.439 a completely new style that they've learned somewhere 00:03:18.439 --> 00:03:20.860 else. And a lot of times they'll just miss completely. 00:03:21.340 --> 00:03:24.659 So you have to be willing to be a fool and kind 00:03:24.659 --> 00:03:26.539 of have that beginner's mind and go back to the 00:03:26.539 --> 00:03:27.860 beginning to start over. And if you're not doing 00:03:27.860 --> 00:03:29.800 that, you're just getting older. Yeah, I mean, 00:03:29.819 --> 00:03:31.900 I don't even know if it's willing to be a fool. 00:03:32.139 --> 00:03:35.099 It's just, to me, the most exciting thing is 00:03:35.099 --> 00:03:37.680 to try to get better at something, to learn things. 00:03:38.000 --> 00:03:40.159 I mean, it's really exciting when you just have 00:03:40.159 --> 00:03:42.439 incremental progress in something that you're 00:03:42.439 --> 00:03:45.810 completely new to. I live for the aha moment, 00:03:45.909 --> 00:03:47.990 that moment when you connect two things together 00:03:47.990 --> 00:03:50.330 that you hadn't connected together before and 00:03:50.330 --> 00:03:52.909 it fits nicely and solidly and it kind of helps 00:03:52.909 --> 00:03:55.050 form a steel framework of understanding in your 00:03:55.050 --> 00:03:57.810 mind that you can then hang other ideas off of. 00:03:57.870 --> 00:04:00.939 That's what I live for. Yeah. It's that curiosity 00:04:00.939 --> 00:04:02.639 fulfilled. And it's what little children do, 00:04:02.719 --> 00:04:05.060 too. You know, my little son is always asking, 00:04:05.139 --> 00:04:07.680 why, why, why, why, why? And I always try and 00:04:07.680 --> 00:04:10.060 answer him. And half the times I realize, actually, 00:04:10.099 --> 00:04:12.120 I don't really understand why. I just have a 00:04:12.120 --> 00:04:14.360 memorized answer for you. But that's not really 00:04:14.360 --> 00:04:16.839 understanding. Yeah, those are weird conversations, 00:04:17.079 --> 00:04:19.139 right? When you're talking to your kids and you 00:04:19.139 --> 00:04:21.800 say, look, the reality is I don't know a lot 00:04:21.800 --> 00:04:24.079 of things. Yeah, I've just memorized a lot of 00:04:24.079 --> 00:04:27.079 things. And there's certain things that. You 00:04:27.079 --> 00:04:30.259 just can't know. Yeah, you realize that you have 00:04:30.259 --> 00:04:33.259 answers for a few things that you've thought 00:04:33.259 --> 00:04:35.560 through. then you sort of have cover -ups like 00:04:35.560 --> 00:04:38.060 trap doors, like don't go here. This is just 00:04:38.060 --> 00:04:39.740 a cover -up. I don't really know the answer to 00:04:39.740 --> 00:04:41.819 what the meaning of life is or how we got here. 00:04:42.300 --> 00:04:44.199 And then you've got a whole bunch of memorized 00:04:44.199 --> 00:04:47.720 stuff because a lot of intelligence these days 00:04:47.720 --> 00:04:49.399 is just the external brain pack of civilization. 00:04:49.860 --> 00:04:51.480 I know it's out there. I know the answers are 00:04:51.480 --> 00:04:52.839 out there. I know how to look them up, and I've 00:04:52.839 --> 00:04:55.060 memorized some of them. And I kind of understand 00:04:55.060 --> 00:04:56.779 how money works and the Federal Reserve prints 00:04:56.779 --> 00:04:58.819 it and what this government thing is, but not 00:04:58.819 --> 00:05:01.920 really. Right. Not good enough to teach it in 00:05:01.920 --> 00:05:06.800 university. Yeah. I think people do that with 00:05:06.800 --> 00:05:09.120 almost everything in life these days in terms 00:05:09.120 --> 00:05:12.500 of like have like a one page, a one sheet, like 00:05:12.500 --> 00:05:16.519 a brief summary of what the explanation for what 00:05:16.519 --> 00:05:19.459 this very complex subject might be. TLDR, right? 00:05:19.879 --> 00:05:22.000 Don't give me the lecture. Give me the book. 00:05:22.060 --> 00:05:23.660 Don't give me the book. Give me the blog post. 00:05:23.680 --> 00:05:25.139 Don't give me the blog post. Give me the tweet. 00:05:25.240 --> 00:05:27.060 Don't give me the tweet. I just, I already know. 00:05:27.449 --> 00:05:29.790 Yeah, I got really fascinated by the way you 00:05:29.790 --> 00:05:31.769 read because I thought there was something wrong 00:05:31.769 --> 00:05:35.649 with me by doing that. But you don't really just 00:05:35.649 --> 00:05:38.629 read a book to completion. You read and then 00:05:38.629 --> 00:05:41.230 you pick something else up and you just kind 00:05:41.230 --> 00:05:43.569 of go based on your whims, whatever you're interested 00:05:43.569 --> 00:05:47.870 in. Well, I was raised by a single mom in New 00:05:47.870 --> 00:05:50.170 York, and she used the local library as a daycare 00:05:50.170 --> 00:05:52.089 center because it was a very tough neighborhood. 00:05:52.410 --> 00:05:54.410 And so she would basically say, when you get 00:05:54.410 --> 00:05:55.910 back from school, go straight to the library 00:05:55.910 --> 00:05:58.370 and don't come out until I pick you up late at 00:05:58.370 --> 00:06:00.579 night. So I used to basically live in the library 00:06:00.579 --> 00:06:02.339 and I read everything. I read every magazine. 00:06:02.420 --> 00:06:05.000 I read every pictograph. I read every book. I 00:06:05.000 --> 00:06:06.899 read every map. I just ran out of stuff to read. 00:06:07.019 --> 00:06:08.920 I just read everything. So I got over this idea 00:06:08.920 --> 00:06:12.439 of that reading a large number of books or reading 00:06:12.439 --> 00:06:15.040 a book to completion as a vanity metric. Because 00:06:15.040 --> 00:06:17.360 really, when people are putting up photos on 00:06:17.360 --> 00:06:19.399 Twitter and Instagram of look at my... pile of 00:06:19.399 --> 00:06:21.500 books that I'm reading. It's a show -off thing. 00:06:21.519 --> 00:06:24.180 It's a signaling thing. Yeah, sure. And the reality 00:06:24.180 --> 00:06:26.439 is I would rather read the best hundred books 00:06:26.439 --> 00:06:29.139 over and over again until I absorb them rather 00:06:29.139 --> 00:06:32.430 than read... all the books. Because your brain 00:06:32.430 --> 00:06:35.930 has finite information in a finite space. You 00:06:35.930 --> 00:06:38.990 get enough advice, it all cancels to zero. There's 00:06:38.990 --> 00:06:41.430 a lot of nonsense in books out there too. So 00:06:41.430 --> 00:06:44.930 I don't read any more to complete books. I read 00:06:44.930 --> 00:06:47.709 to satisfy my genuine intellectual curiosity. 00:06:48.149 --> 00:06:49.990 And it can be anything. It could be nonsense. 00:06:50.230 --> 00:06:51.970 It could be history. It could be fiction. It 00:06:51.970 --> 00:06:54.170 could be science. It could be sci -fi. These 00:06:54.170 --> 00:06:56.230 days it's mostly sci -fi, philosophy, science 00:06:56.230 --> 00:06:58.370 because that's just what I'm interested in. But 00:06:58.370 --> 00:07:01.259 I will read for understanding. So a really good 00:07:01.259 --> 00:07:04.199 book, I will flip through. I won't actually read 00:07:04.199 --> 00:07:05.899 it consecutively in order and I won't even just 00:07:05.899 --> 00:07:08.459 even finish it. I'm looking for ideas, things 00:07:08.459 --> 00:07:10.680 that I don't understand. And when I find something 00:07:10.680 --> 00:07:12.899 really interesting, I'll reflect on it. I'll 00:07:12.899 --> 00:07:15.680 research it. And then when I'm bored of it, I'll 00:07:15.680 --> 00:07:18.240 drop it or I'll flip to another book. Thanks 00:07:18.240 --> 00:07:20.879 to electronic books, I've got 50, 70 books open 00:07:20.879 --> 00:07:23.680 at any time in my Kindle or iBooks and I'm just... 00:07:23.879 --> 00:07:27.120 bouncing around between them it's also a little 00:07:27.120 --> 00:07:30.579 bit of a defense mechanism to how in modern society 00:07:30.579 --> 00:07:33.199 we get too much information too quickly and so 00:07:33.199 --> 00:07:36.500 our attention spans are very low so you get twitter 00:07:36.500 --> 00:07:38.560 you get instagram you get facebook you're just 00:07:38.560 --> 00:07:41.240 used to being bombarded with information so you 00:07:41.240 --> 00:07:45.259 can You can view that as a negative and be like, 00:07:45.319 --> 00:07:47.379 I have no attention span, or you could view that 00:07:47.379 --> 00:07:49.459 as a positive. I multitask really well, and I 00:07:49.459 --> 00:07:52.379 can dig really fast. If I find a thread that's 00:07:52.379 --> 00:07:54.220 interesting, I can follow through five social 00:07:54.220 --> 00:07:56.079 networks, through the web, through the libraries, 00:07:56.199 --> 00:07:58.240 through the books, and I can really get to the 00:07:58.240 --> 00:08:00.439 bottom of this thing very quickly. It's like 00:08:00.439 --> 00:08:02.699 the Library of Alexandria that I can research 00:08:02.699 --> 00:08:06.199 at my disposal. So I no longer track books read 00:08:06.199 --> 00:08:08.600 or even care about books read. It's about understanding 00:08:08.600 --> 00:08:11.410 concepts. Yeah, you brought up two awesome points. 00:08:11.470 --> 00:08:14.769 First of all, the social media aspect of books 00:08:14.769 --> 00:08:18.290 and basically anything. It's such a weird way 00:08:18.290 --> 00:08:21.290 to display your life because you're displaying 00:08:21.290 --> 00:08:24.189 the best aspects of your life in some sort of 00:08:24.189 --> 00:08:29.649 a glass case. It's an unrealistic version of 00:08:29.649 --> 00:08:32.289 your life that you cultivate and you curate. 00:08:34.039 --> 00:08:36.059 as guilty of that as anybody. Everybody's guilty 00:08:36.059 --> 00:08:38.379 of it. I'm guilty of it too. Yeah. I mean, I 00:08:38.379 --> 00:08:41.600 pose with my dog every time I run. Yeah. We're 00:08:41.600 --> 00:08:43.879 always signaling. Yeah. It's like rather than. 00:08:44.299 --> 00:08:46.460 really looking at yourself, you're looking at 00:08:46.460 --> 00:08:48.360 how other people look at you. So it's like this 00:08:48.360 --> 00:08:50.779 one removed mental image. And it's kind of a 00:08:50.779 --> 00:08:53.279 disease because social media is making celebrities 00:08:53.279 --> 00:08:55.600 of all of us. And celebrities are the most miserable 00:08:55.600 --> 00:08:57.580 people in the world, right? Because they have 00:08:57.580 --> 00:09:00.200 this strong self -image that gets built up. It 00:09:00.200 --> 00:09:02.559 gets built up by compliments. Every time somebody 00:09:02.559 --> 00:09:04.919 pays you or me a compliment and we're like, oh, 00:09:04.919 --> 00:09:06.519 well, thank you, right? Then that builds up an 00:09:06.519 --> 00:09:09.159 image of who we are. And then one idiot comes 00:09:09.159 --> 00:09:11.559 along, one out of 10, one out of 100, and they 00:09:11.559 --> 00:09:14.080 can easily tear it down. Because it doesn't take 00:09:14.080 --> 00:09:16.120 many insults to cancel out a lot of compliments. 00:09:16.279 --> 00:09:17.860 And now you're carrying around this big, weighty 00:09:17.860 --> 00:09:20.460 self -image, and it's just very easy to be attacked. 00:09:20.700 --> 00:09:23.320 And because you're famous or you're well -known, 00:09:23.379 --> 00:09:26.320 people want to attack you. So being a celebrity 00:09:26.320 --> 00:09:29.539 is no good. It's actually a problem. Like one 00:09:29.539 --> 00:09:31.759 of my tweets is, and these are all reminders 00:09:31.759 --> 00:09:33.860 to myself, is you want to be rich and anonymous, 00:09:33.980 --> 00:09:37.259 not poor and famous. There's benefits to it. 00:09:37.379 --> 00:09:39.840 Of course, of course. But we wouldn't do it. 00:09:39.840 --> 00:09:44.220 It has unusual problems. that you don't get trained 00:09:44.220 --> 00:09:47.580 for and you really will not understand unless 00:09:47.580 --> 00:09:49.379 you experience it. You know, I was having this 00:09:49.379 --> 00:09:51.120 conversation with my wife. We were talking about 00:09:51.120 --> 00:09:54.639 people that just come up to you and they don't 00:09:54.639 --> 00:09:56.860 care what you're doing. They don't care if I'm 00:09:56.860 --> 00:09:59.240 with my daughter, if I'm holding her, if I'm 00:09:59.240 --> 00:10:02.320 feeding her. We're in the middle of an intense 00:10:02.320 --> 00:10:04.460 conversation. She's crying. She could be crying. 00:10:04.600 --> 00:10:08.039 And some bro will come over and just immediately 00:10:08.039 --> 00:10:10.720 have to take a picture, doesn't care. His needs 00:10:10.720 --> 00:10:13.799 supersede the daughter. And my wife was saying 00:10:13.799 --> 00:10:17.919 that before she knew me, she used to think that 00:10:17.919 --> 00:10:20.480 that's just part of the price of being famous, 00:10:20.600 --> 00:10:23.080 that people like you, that's just part of the 00:10:23.080 --> 00:10:25.700 price of being famous. And now when it interrupts 00:10:25.700 --> 00:10:28.700 her life. And it interrupts the children and 00:10:28.700 --> 00:10:32.080 it interrupts friends. And now she's like, this 00:10:32.080 --> 00:10:35.340 is annoying. This is not healthy. This is not 00:10:35.340 --> 00:10:38.200 a smart way to interact with people. And that 00:10:38.200 --> 00:10:40.860 people have this weird challenge, this weird 00:10:40.860 --> 00:10:43.179 thing that if you become famous, there's this 00:10:43.179 --> 00:10:45.419 weird challenge where people just want to come 00:10:45.419 --> 00:10:47.100 to you, especially today. Because if they can 00:10:47.100 --> 00:10:49.559 get a photo of you, then that boosts their social 00:10:49.559 --> 00:10:52.340 media profile. Like, hey, I'm sitting here with 00:10:52.340 --> 00:10:56.120 Naval. Look at that smile. Anonymity is a privilege. 00:10:56.360 --> 00:10:58.379 On the other hand, it's self -inflicted. I mean, 00:10:58.399 --> 00:11:00.159 we brought it on ourselves. I don't think we 00:11:00.159 --> 00:11:02.179 knew what it was, though. We did. But we carry 00:11:02.179 --> 00:11:05.600 on. It tells us we are getting something out 00:11:05.600 --> 00:11:08.279 of it. So, you know, there are times when someone 00:11:08.279 --> 00:11:10.320 will approach me in public and I'm a little resentful. 00:11:10.440 --> 00:11:12.100 And there are other times I'm just like, actually, 00:11:12.200 --> 00:11:13.960 I'm really grateful that, you know, I worked 00:11:13.960 --> 00:11:16.600 for this. I got this. This is the payoff. Just 00:11:16.600 --> 00:11:18.980 embrace it. Smile. Grit and bear it. But you 00:11:18.980 --> 00:11:20.919 have a different sort of celebrity, too, right? 00:11:20.960 --> 00:11:26.360 You're a hero amongst investors. I'm a hero among 00:11:26.360 --> 00:11:30.960 young male geeks. Those are some of my favorite 00:11:30.960 --> 00:11:33.120 people. Right, but that's not the kind of celebrity 00:11:33.120 --> 00:11:35.100 I think most people set out to get, especially 00:11:35.100 --> 00:11:37.519 most guys, right? You want the cute females. 00:11:37.779 --> 00:11:41.200 Yeah, you want chicks. Yeah. I look at my brief 00:11:41.200 --> 00:11:43.759 little YouTube clips. I have a tiny little podcast 00:11:43.759 --> 00:11:47.919 going now, and it's like 95 % male. Oh, I'm sure. 00:11:48.019 --> 00:11:51.779 Yeah, this is very highly. 18 to 35. Yeah, what 00:11:51.779 --> 00:11:55.990 is the number? Yeah, it's in the 90s. Yeah. You 00:11:55.990 --> 00:11:59.929 do that one very small podcast where you just 00:11:59.929 --> 00:12:03.470 have small three or four minute clips. Yeah, 00:12:03.490 --> 00:12:06.149 so what it was, I did a tweet storm called How 00:12:06.149 --> 00:12:08.289 to Get Rich Without Getting Lucky, and it got 00:12:08.289 --> 00:12:11.429 pretty popular on Twitter. And it's really about 00:12:11.429 --> 00:12:13.350 wealth creation. I just used the clickbaity title. 00:12:13.789 --> 00:12:16.070 And it's trying to basically lay out timeless 00:12:16.070 --> 00:12:18.470 principles of wealth creation, that if you absorb 00:12:18.470 --> 00:12:20.490 them, you become the kind of person who can create 00:12:20.490 --> 00:12:24.149 wealth, create business, make money. And my theory 00:12:24.149 --> 00:12:26.690 behind that is, like, there are three things 00:12:26.690 --> 00:12:28.850 everybody wants. There's actually more than three, 00:12:28.870 --> 00:12:30.850 but let's just start with three, the three basics. 00:12:31.190 --> 00:12:33.799 Everybody wants to be wealthy. Everybody wants 00:12:33.799 --> 00:12:36.779 to be happy and everybody wants to be fit. And 00:12:36.779 --> 00:12:38.600 I know there's a lot of virtue signal that goes 00:12:38.600 --> 00:12:41.259 on, like we don't want money and I don't care 00:12:41.259 --> 00:12:43.379 about being happy and happiness is for stupid 00:12:43.379 --> 00:12:45.740 people. But let's face it, you want to be rich 00:12:45.740 --> 00:12:48.620 and happy and healthy. That's the trifecta. Now, 00:12:48.639 --> 00:12:50.279 of course, you also want an internally calm state 00:12:50.279 --> 00:12:52.080 of mind. You want a loving household. So there 00:12:52.080 --> 00:12:53.820 are other things that come into it. But those 00:12:53.820 --> 00:12:57.269 three, I think they can actually be taught. And 00:12:57.269 --> 00:12:58.789 a fitness, I'm not going to teach. There are 00:12:58.789 --> 00:13:00.570 a lot of people who you've had on here, including 00:13:00.570 --> 00:13:02.309 yourself, who know a heck of a lot more about 00:13:02.309 --> 00:13:06.190 fitness and health than I do. But I was born 00:13:06.190 --> 00:13:09.649 poor and miserable. And I'm now pretty well off 00:13:09.649 --> 00:13:13.190 and I'm very happy. And I worked at those. And 00:13:13.190 --> 00:13:14.870 so I've learned a few things. There are some 00:13:14.870 --> 00:13:17.539 principles. And so I try to lay them out, but 00:13:17.539 --> 00:13:20.279 in a timeless manner where you can kind of figure 00:13:20.279 --> 00:13:21.679 it out yourself. Because at the end of the day, 00:13:21.700 --> 00:13:23.580 I can't really teach anything. I can only inspire 00:13:23.580 --> 00:13:25.480 you and maybe give you a few hooks so you can 00:13:25.480 --> 00:13:28.159 remember things when they happen or put a name 00:13:28.159 --> 00:13:31.879 to them. So this podcast actually ended up explaining 00:13:31.879 --> 00:13:34.200 this tweet storm. So the tweet storm was like 00:13:34.200 --> 00:13:37.360 36, 38 tweets, got very famous, got translated 00:13:37.360 --> 00:13:41.200 to dozens of languages. And these were principles 00:13:41.200 --> 00:13:43.720 that I came up with for myself when I was really 00:13:43.720 --> 00:13:47.059 young, around 13, 14. And I've been carrying 00:13:47.059 --> 00:13:50.419 them in my head for 30 years. And I've been sort 00:13:50.419 --> 00:13:53.039 of living them. And over time, I just realized, 00:13:53.159 --> 00:13:56.059 like, sadly or fortunately, the thing that I 00:13:56.059 --> 00:13:57.899 got really good at was looking at businesses 00:13:57.899 --> 00:14:00.379 and figuring out the point of maximum leverage 00:14:00.379 --> 00:14:02.620 to actually create wealth and capture some of 00:14:02.620 --> 00:14:05.190 that. and do it in a very long -term kind of 00:14:05.190 --> 00:14:09.450 way, not the banker, crash the economy, get bailed 00:14:09.450 --> 00:14:12.490 out kind of way, but build businesses and help 00:14:12.490 --> 00:14:15.710 people and provide value kind of way, especially 00:14:15.710 --> 00:14:17.830 when applied to modern technology and leverage 00:14:17.830 --> 00:14:19.990 in this age of infinite leverage that we live 00:14:19.990 --> 00:14:23.350 in. So the podcast is just explaining each tweet. 00:14:23.490 --> 00:14:25.210 So these are little three, four, five -minute 00:14:25.210 --> 00:14:27.690 snippets. I don't like to say the same thing 00:14:27.690 --> 00:14:31.950 twice. I don't like to explain in detail. I feel 00:14:32.909 --> 00:14:34.809 if you have something original and interesting 00:14:34.809 --> 00:14:36.850 to say, you should say it. Otherwise, it's probably 00:14:36.850 --> 00:14:39.710 been said better. So that podcast tries to be 00:14:39.710 --> 00:14:42.429 information dense. It tries to be very concise. 00:14:42.629 --> 00:14:44.850 It tries to be high impact. It tries to be timeless. 00:14:45.549 --> 00:14:48.070 And it has all the information. I think you need 00:14:48.070 --> 00:14:50.070 the principles that if you absorb these and you 00:14:50.070 --> 00:14:52.590 work hard over 10 years, you'll get what you 00:14:52.590 --> 00:14:55.389 want. So I've got the one on wealth creation. 00:14:55.529 --> 00:14:59.159 I'm going to attempt to do one on... Happiness 00:14:59.159 --> 00:15:01.940 is a big word, but happiness and inner peace 00:15:01.940 --> 00:15:04.379 and calm and all that. Because what you want 00:15:04.379 --> 00:15:06.899 is you don't want to be the guy who succeeds 00:15:06.899 --> 00:15:09.379 in life while being high strung, high stress 00:15:09.379 --> 00:15:11.440 and unhappy and leading a trail of emotional 00:15:11.440 --> 00:15:13.440 wreckage with you and your loved ones. Which 00:15:13.440 --> 00:15:16.299 is more common than not. Because you got to focus 00:15:16.299 --> 00:15:18.139 and it's very hard to be great at everything. 00:15:18.379 --> 00:15:21.159 You want to be the guy or the gal who gets there 00:15:21.159 --> 00:15:27.200 calmly, quietly, without struggle. You want to 00:15:27.200 --> 00:15:29.500 be the person who's the, when there's a crisis 00:15:29.500 --> 00:15:31.659 going on, you want to be the calmest, coolest 00:15:31.659 --> 00:15:34.279 cucumber in the room who still also figures out 00:15:34.279 --> 00:15:38.279 the correct answer. If you can be. One of the 00:15:38.279 --> 00:15:39.539 things that you were saying is that you feel 00:15:39.539 --> 00:15:41.480 like happiness is something that you can learn 00:15:41.480 --> 00:15:44.059 and then you can teach yourself to be happy even 00:15:44.059 --> 00:15:47.240 just by adopting the mindset that you are a happy 00:15:47.240 --> 00:15:49.960 person and proclaiming that to your friends. 00:15:50.200 --> 00:15:53.220 And so you've sort of developed a social contract. 00:15:53.340 --> 00:15:55.759 I'm a happy person. And then, well, I have to 00:15:55.759 --> 00:15:59.000 live up to that. Yeah, I've got hundreds of techniques. 00:15:59.559 --> 00:16:03.830 How did you develop that one? There's social 00:16:03.830 --> 00:16:06.990 consistency, right? Humans have a need to be 00:16:06.990 --> 00:16:09.750 highly consistent with their past pronouncements. 00:16:09.929 --> 00:16:12.149 So the way I started my first tech company was 00:16:12.149 --> 00:16:15.210 I was working inside a larger organization, and 00:16:15.210 --> 00:16:16.809 I told everybody that I was going to go start 00:16:16.809 --> 00:16:19.029 a company. I was like, I hate this place. I'm 00:16:19.029 --> 00:16:21.149 going to do my own thing. I'm going to be a successful 00:16:21.149 --> 00:16:23.889 entrepreneur. Six months pass, nine months pass, 00:16:24.110 --> 00:16:26.440 then people start going, you're still here? I 00:16:26.440 --> 00:16:27.559 thought you were going to go start a company. 00:16:28.659 --> 00:16:30.980 Are you lying? Right? That was the implication. 00:16:31.500 --> 00:16:33.960 So we kind of know this, right? Social contracts 00:16:33.960 --> 00:16:36.019 are very powerful. Like if you want to give up 00:16:36.019 --> 00:16:38.259 drinking, right, and you're not serious about 00:16:38.259 --> 00:16:39.860 it, you'll say, I'm going to cut back. I'm going 00:16:39.860 --> 00:16:41.720 to have only one drink a night. I'm going to 00:16:41.720 --> 00:16:44.700 only drink on weekends. You tell yourself. But 00:16:44.700 --> 00:16:46.879 if you're serious, you'll announce it on Facebook. 00:16:47.419 --> 00:16:48.799 You'll tell all your friends. You'll tell your 00:16:48.799 --> 00:16:50.720 wife. You'll say, I'm done drinking. I'm throwing 00:16:50.720 --> 00:16:52.000 everything out of the house. You'll never see 00:16:52.000 --> 00:16:54.299 me drink again. When you say that, you know you're 00:16:54.299 --> 00:16:57.259 serious. So I think a lot of these are choices 00:16:57.259 --> 00:16:59.799 that we make. And happiness is just one of those 00:16:59.799 --> 00:17:02.299 choices. And this is unpopular to say because 00:17:02.299 --> 00:17:03.759 there are people who are actually depressed, 00:17:04.019 --> 00:17:05.779 you know, chemically or what have you. And there 00:17:05.779 --> 00:17:08.059 are people who don't believe that it's possible 00:17:08.059 --> 00:17:10.559 because then it creates a responsibility on them. 00:17:10.660 --> 00:17:13.079 It says, oh, now you're saying if I'm not happy, 00:17:13.119 --> 00:17:15.569 that's my fault. I'm not saying that, but I'm 00:17:15.569 --> 00:17:18.269 saying that just like fitness can be a choice, 00:17:18.450 --> 00:17:20.869 health can be a choice, nutrition can be a choice, 00:17:21.029 --> 00:17:23.430 working hard and making money can be a choice, 00:17:23.529 --> 00:17:26.930 happiness is also a choice. If you're so smart, 00:17:27.029 --> 00:17:29.329 how come you aren't happy? How come you haven't 00:17:29.329 --> 00:17:31.529 figured that out? That's my challenge to all 00:17:31.529 --> 00:17:33.410 the people who think they're so smart and so 00:17:33.410 --> 00:17:36.089 capable. If you're so smart and capable, why 00:17:36.089 --> 00:17:38.970 can't you change this? There are a bunch of people, 00:17:39.009 --> 00:17:41.190 though, that actually take pleasure in being 00:17:41.190 --> 00:17:45.700 miserable. There's something about the pursuit 00:17:45.700 --> 00:17:50.160 of excellence and of success that supersedes 00:17:50.160 --> 00:17:55.480 all other pursuits. In their eyes, it is the 00:17:55.480 --> 00:17:58.720 peak, the pinnacle, the most important thing. 00:17:59.039 --> 00:18:02.599 It's not a tradeoff. I would argue that – now, 00:18:02.619 --> 00:18:04.799 when I say happy, happy is one of those words 00:18:04.799 --> 00:18:06.720 that means a zillion different things. It's like 00:18:06.720 --> 00:18:09.039 love, right? What does that mean? I love cheese. 00:18:09.220 --> 00:18:10.900 Yeah. I'm going to define it a little bit more 00:18:10.900 --> 00:18:16.640 tightly. Right. So let's go back to desire. Right. 00:18:16.680 --> 00:18:18.680 This is old, old Buddhist wisdom. I'm not saying 00:18:18.680 --> 00:18:21.759 anything original. But desire to me is a contract 00:18:21.759 --> 00:18:24.460 that you make with yourself to be unhappy until 00:18:24.460 --> 00:18:28.079 you get what you want. And I keep that in front 00:18:28.079 --> 00:18:30.059 of mind. So when I'm unhappy about something, 00:18:30.220 --> 00:18:32.559 I look for what is the underlying desire that 00:18:32.559 --> 00:18:34.769 I have that's not being fulfilled. It's okay 00:18:34.769 --> 00:18:36.769 to have desires. You're a biological creature. 00:18:36.930 --> 00:18:38.750 You're put on this earth. You have to do something. 00:18:39.170 --> 00:18:40.849 You have to have desires. You have a mission. 00:18:41.269 --> 00:18:44.049 But don't have too many. Don't pick them up unconsciously. 00:18:44.049 --> 00:18:45.950 Don't pick them up randomly. Don't have thousands 00:18:45.950 --> 00:18:48.049 of them. My coffee is too cold. It doesn't taste 00:18:48.049 --> 00:18:50.410 quite right. I'm not sitting perfectly. Oh, I 00:18:50.410 --> 00:18:53.410 wish it were warmer. You know, my dog, you know, 00:18:53.410 --> 00:18:55.170 pooped in the lawn. I didn't like that. Whatever 00:18:55.170 --> 00:18:58.640 it is. Pick your one overwhelming desire. It's 00:18:58.640 --> 00:19:00.759 okay to suffer over that one. But on all the 00:19:00.759 --> 00:19:02.619 others, you want to let them go so you can be 00:19:02.619 --> 00:19:05.099 calm and peaceful and relaxed. And then you'll 00:19:05.099 --> 00:19:07.960 perform a better job. Most people, when you're 00:19:07.960 --> 00:19:10.960 unhappy, like a depressed person. it's not that 00:19:10.960 --> 00:19:13.059 they have a very clear, calm mind. They're too 00:19:13.059 --> 00:19:15.220 busy in their mind. Their sense of self is too 00:19:15.220 --> 00:19:17.079 strong. They're sitting indoors all the time. 00:19:17.099 --> 00:19:18.680 Their mind's working, working, working. They're 00:19:18.680 --> 00:19:21.220 thinking too much. Well, if you want to be a 00:19:21.220 --> 00:19:23.220 high -performance athlete, how good of an athlete 00:19:23.220 --> 00:19:25.380 are you going to be if you're always having epileptic 00:19:25.380 --> 00:19:27.799 seizures, if you're always twitching and running 00:19:27.799 --> 00:19:30.619 around and jumping and your limbs are flailing 00:19:30.619 --> 00:19:33.019 out of control? The same way, if you want to 00:19:33.019 --> 00:19:35.720 be effective in business, you need a clear, calm, 00:19:35.859 --> 00:19:38.779 cool, collected mind. Warren Buffett plays bridge 00:19:38.779 --> 00:19:40.740 all day long. and goes for walks in the sun. 00:19:40.799 --> 00:19:43.019 He doesn't sit around like constantly loading 00:19:43.019 --> 00:19:46.119 his brain with nonstop information and getting 00:19:46.119 --> 00:19:49.619 worked up about every little thing. We live in 00:19:49.619 --> 00:19:52.500 an age of infinite leverage. What I mean by that 00:19:52.500 --> 00:19:54.920 is that your actions can be multiplied a thousandfold, 00:19:55.019 --> 00:19:57.720 either by broadcasting at a podcast or by investing 00:19:57.720 --> 00:20:00.019 capital or by having people work for you or by 00:20:00.019 --> 00:20:03.039 writing code. So because of that, the impacts 00:20:03.039 --> 00:20:05.579 of good decision -making are much higher than 00:20:05.579 --> 00:20:07.900 they used to be. Because now you can influence 00:20:07.900 --> 00:20:09.740 thousands or millions of people through your 00:20:09.740 --> 00:20:14.380 decisions or your code. So a clear mind leads 00:20:14.380 --> 00:20:16.380 to better judgment, leads to better outcome. 00:20:16.779 --> 00:20:21.119 So a happy, calm, peaceful person will make better 00:20:21.119 --> 00:20:23.839 decisions and have better outcomes. So if you 00:20:23.839 --> 00:20:25.980 want to operate at peak performance, you have 00:20:25.980 --> 00:20:28.539 to learn how to tame your mind, just like you 00:20:28.539 --> 00:20:31.250 have to learn how to tame your body. I love what 00:20:31.250 --> 00:20:33.250 you're saying. Warren Buffett might not be the 00:20:33.250 --> 00:20:34.869 best example because he drinks like, I think, 00:20:34.869 --> 00:20:38.049 six Coca -Colas a day and he eats mostly McDonald's. 00:20:38.089 --> 00:20:40.109 And he's still alive somehow. That shows you 00:20:40.109 --> 00:20:42.210 that low stress is more important. Yeah, but 00:20:42.210 --> 00:20:45.269 he looks like shit. Like, how old is he? I mean, 00:20:45.289 --> 00:20:47.549 he's a fairly old man. Charlie Munger is, I think, 00:20:47.549 --> 00:20:49.569 in his 90s, right? Yeah. He's made it really 00:20:49.569 --> 00:20:53.450 far. I wonder what Warren's doing. I mean, he's 00:20:53.450 --> 00:20:55.450 got to know that's bad for him. It's terrible. 00:20:55.490 --> 00:20:56.910 But he doesn't care. He doesn't care. I think 00:20:56.910 --> 00:20:59.029 he's just low stress. Stress is the big killer. 00:20:59.029 --> 00:21:02.430 Right. So he just enjoys that Coca -Cola. Maybe 00:21:02.430 --> 00:21:05.349 there is a trade -off, right? Maybe him enjoying 00:21:05.349 --> 00:21:08.369 that junk food and that Coke, just, ah, that 00:21:08.369 --> 00:21:11.829 pleasing of the mind is maybe better than him 00:21:11.829 --> 00:21:15.400 just eating. wheatgrass shots and kale salads 00:21:15.400 --> 00:21:19.200 and just being, yeah, just super worked up about 00:21:19.200 --> 00:21:20.839 everything. It's like if you need your glass 00:21:20.839 --> 00:21:22.799 of red wine to de -stress and calm down, that's 00:21:22.799 --> 00:21:24.420 probably better than you flying off the rails. 00:21:24.559 --> 00:21:26.940 Right, right. And I think that that's applicable 00:21:26.940 --> 00:21:29.900 not just in business, but in probably any pursuit. 00:21:30.099 --> 00:21:32.380 And I like what you're saying about allow that 00:21:32.380 --> 00:21:36.480 one thing to be your obsession. But everything 00:21:36.480 --> 00:21:39.319 else, just, you know, learn how to let things 00:21:39.319 --> 00:21:43.630 go. Pick your battles. We like to think that 00:21:43.630 --> 00:21:46.890 we like to view the world as linear, which is 00:21:46.890 --> 00:21:49.329 I'm going to put in eight hours of work. I'm 00:21:49.329 --> 00:21:51.289 going to get back eight hours of output, right? 00:21:51.430 --> 00:21:53.849 It doesn't work that way. Guy running the corner 00:21:53.849 --> 00:21:55.869 grocery store is working just as hard or harder 00:21:55.869 --> 00:21:58.049 than you and me. How much output is he getting? 00:21:58.309 --> 00:22:01.269 What you do, who you do it with, how you do it, 00:22:01.289 --> 00:22:03.509 way more important than how hard you work, right? 00:22:03.769 --> 00:22:06.730 Outputs are... nonlinear based on the quality 00:22:06.730 --> 00:22:08.950 of the work that you put in. The right way to 00:22:08.950 --> 00:22:11.730 work is like a lion. You and I are not like cows. 00:22:11.829 --> 00:22:14.049 We're not meant to graze all day, right? We're 00:22:14.049 --> 00:22:16.589 meant to hunt like lions. We're closer to carnivores 00:22:16.589 --> 00:22:18.509 in our omnivorous development than we are to 00:22:18.509 --> 00:22:21.589 herbivores. Don't tell vegans that. Yeah, sorry. 00:22:22.170 --> 00:22:24.710 Look, I wish all that stuff worked. I don't want 00:22:24.710 --> 00:22:27.230 to eat meat. Future generation will look back 00:22:27.230 --> 00:22:30.130 at us as worse than slavers because of the Holocaust 00:22:30.130 --> 00:22:31.609 we're committing with the animals. But they'll 00:22:31.609 --> 00:22:34.390 have artificial meats that taste healthier, better 00:22:34.390 --> 00:22:38.269 than the real thing. Allegedly. Allegedly. So 00:22:38.269 --> 00:22:42.910 as a modern knowledge worker athlete, as an intellectual 00:22:42.910 --> 00:22:45.750 athlete, you want to function like an athlete, 00:22:45.890 --> 00:22:48.650 which means you train hard, then you sprint, 00:22:48.930 --> 00:22:52.150 then you rest, then you reassess, you get your 00:22:52.150 --> 00:22:54.640 feedback loop, then you train some more. Then 00:22:54.640 --> 00:22:57.640 you sprint again. Then you rest. Then you reassess. 00:22:57.720 --> 00:22:59.859 This idea that you're going to have linear output 00:22:59.859 --> 00:23:02.039 just by cranking every day at the same amount 00:23:02.039 --> 00:23:06.099 of time. That's machines. Machines should be 00:23:06.099 --> 00:23:08.039 working nine to five. Humans are not meant to 00:23:08.039 --> 00:23:11.759 work nine to five. No, I agree wholeheartedly. 00:23:11.859 --> 00:23:15.660 But for people that are working for someone, 00:23:16.000 --> 00:23:19.099 there's not really that option. So that's unfortunately 00:23:19.099 --> 00:23:22.400 the rub, right? That's kind of where my tweet 00:23:22.400 --> 00:23:25.680 storm starts, which is, first of all, the first 00:23:25.680 --> 00:23:27.640 thing if you're going to make money is that you're 00:23:27.640 --> 00:23:29.299 not going to get rich renting out your time. 00:23:29.619 --> 00:23:31.900 Even lawyers and doctors who are charging $300, 00:23:32.019 --> 00:23:33.799 $400, $500 an hour, they're not getting rich 00:23:33.799 --> 00:23:35.619 because their lifestyle is slowly ramping up 00:23:35.619 --> 00:23:37.720 along with their income and they're not saving 00:23:37.720 --> 00:23:40.740 enough. They just don't have that ability to 00:23:40.740 --> 00:23:43.460 retire. So the first thing you have to do is 00:23:43.460 --> 00:23:45.440 you have to own a piece of a business. You need 00:23:45.440 --> 00:23:47.799 to have equity, either as an owner, an investor, 00:23:48.099 --> 00:23:50.660 shareholder, or a brand that you're building 00:23:50.660 --> 00:23:52.940 that accrues to you to gain your financial freedom. 00:23:53.859 --> 00:23:56.900 Yeah, and I was really fascinated by another 00:23:56.900 --> 00:23:59.640 thing that you were bringing up about working 00:23:59.640 --> 00:24:02.359 for yourself, that you feel that in the future, 00:24:02.420 --> 00:24:04.599 whether it's 50 or 100 years from now, virtually 00:24:04.599 --> 00:24:06.339 everyone is going to be working for themselves. 00:24:06.559 --> 00:24:09.420 And I believe the way you put it is that The 00:24:09.420 --> 00:24:12.460 information age is going to reverse the industrial 00:24:12.460 --> 00:24:14.900 age. Yeah. If you go back to hunter -gatherer 00:24:14.900 --> 00:24:17.299 times, how we evolved, we basically worked for 00:24:17.299 --> 00:24:19.640 ourselves. We communicated and cooperated within 00:24:19.640 --> 00:24:22.160 tribes, but each hunter, each gatherer stood 00:24:22.160 --> 00:24:24.200 on their own and then combined their resources 00:24:24.200 --> 00:24:26.859 with the family unit. But there was no boss hierarchy, 00:24:27.079 --> 00:24:28.740 hierarchy, hierarchy, where you're like the third 00:24:28.740 --> 00:24:32.509 middle manager down. In the farming age, we became 00:24:32.509 --> 00:24:35.390 a little bit more hierarchical as we had to run 00:24:35.390 --> 00:24:37.650 farms, but even those were still mostly family 00:24:37.650 --> 00:24:41.130 farms. It's industrial work with factories that 00:24:41.130 --> 00:24:43.730 sort of created this model of thousands of people 00:24:43.730 --> 00:24:46.670 working together on one thing and having bosses 00:24:46.670 --> 00:24:49.470 and schedules and times to show up. The reality 00:24:49.470 --> 00:24:51.890 is if you have to go, I don't care how rich you 00:24:51.890 --> 00:24:53.569 are, I don't care whether you're like a top Wall 00:24:53.569 --> 00:24:56.430 Street banker, if you have to go, if somebody 00:24:56.430 --> 00:24:59.829 can tell you when to be at work, and what to 00:24:59.829 --> 00:25:02.750 wear, and how to behave, you're not a free person. 00:25:02.849 --> 00:25:05.349 You're not actually rich. So we're in this model 00:25:05.349 --> 00:25:07.349 now where we think it's all about employment 00:25:07.349 --> 00:25:10.609 and jobs. And intrinsic in that is that I have 00:25:10.609 --> 00:25:12.970 to work for somebody else. But the information 00:25:12.970 --> 00:25:16.150 age is breaking that down. So Ronald Coase is 00:25:16.150 --> 00:25:18.690 an economist who has this Coase theorem, a very 00:25:18.690 --> 00:25:20.849 famous theorem, but it basically just talks about... 00:25:21.339 --> 00:25:24.099 why is a company the size that it is? Why is 00:25:24.099 --> 00:25:26.440 a company one person instead of 10 people, instead 00:25:26.440 --> 00:25:29.240 of 100, instead of 1 ,000? And it has to do with 00:25:29.240 --> 00:25:32.160 the internal transaction costs versus the external 00:25:32.160 --> 00:25:34.859 transaction costs. Let's say I want to do something, 00:25:35.039 --> 00:25:37.680 let's say I'm building a house and I need someone 00:25:37.680 --> 00:25:39.920 to come in and provide the lumber. I'm a developer, 00:25:40.099 --> 00:25:42.460 right? Do I want that to be part of my company? 00:25:42.920 --> 00:25:44.420 Or do I want that to be an external provider? 00:25:44.839 --> 00:25:47.059 A lot of it just depends on how hard it is to 00:25:47.059 --> 00:25:49.420 do that transaction with someone externally versus 00:25:49.420 --> 00:25:51.519 internally. If it's too hard to keep doing the 00:25:51.519 --> 00:25:53.519 contract every time externally, I'll bring that 00:25:53.519 --> 00:25:56.240 in -house. If it's easy to do externally and 00:25:56.240 --> 00:25:57.920 it's a one -off kind of thing, I'd rather keep 00:25:57.920 --> 00:26:00.539 it out of the house. Well, information technology 00:26:00.539 --> 00:26:03.420 is making it easier and easier to do these transactions 00:26:03.420 --> 00:26:06.259 externally. It's becoming much easier to communicate 00:26:06.259 --> 00:26:08.579 with people. Gig economy, I can send you small 00:26:08.579 --> 00:26:10.579 amounts of money. I can hire you through an app. 00:26:10.700 --> 00:26:13.859 I can rate you afterwards. So we're seeing an 00:26:13.859 --> 00:26:16.420 atomization of the firm. We're seeing the optimal 00:26:16.420 --> 00:26:19.880 size of the firm shrinking. Obvious in Silicon 00:26:19.880 --> 00:26:22.059 Valley, tons and tons of startups constantly 00:26:22.059 --> 00:26:25.059 coming up and shaving off little pieces of businesses 00:26:25.059 --> 00:26:26.960 from large companies and turning them into huge 00:26:26.960 --> 00:26:29.759 markets. So what looked like the small little 00:26:29.759 --> 00:26:33.039 vacation rental market on Craigslist is now suddenly 00:26:33.039 --> 00:26:36.960 blown up into Airbnb. One example. That's a great 00:26:36.960 --> 00:26:38.940 example. But what I think we're going to see 00:26:38.940 --> 00:26:42.700 is. whether it's 10, 20, 50, 100 years from now, 00:26:42.839 --> 00:26:45.619 high quality work will be available. We're not 00:26:45.619 --> 00:26:47.220 talking about driving an Uber. We're talking 00:26:47.220 --> 00:26:49.039 about super high quality work will be available 00:26:49.039 --> 00:26:51.500 in a gig fashion where you'll wake up in the 00:26:51.500 --> 00:26:53.660 morning, your phone will buzz, and you'll have 00:26:53.660 --> 00:26:55.619 five different jobs from people who have worked 00:26:55.619 --> 00:26:57.180 with you in the past or have been referred to. 00:26:57.220 --> 00:26:58.859 It's kind of like how Hollywood already works 00:26:58.859 --> 00:27:00.599 a little bit with how they organize for a project. 00:27:00.980 --> 00:27:02.859 You decide whether to take the project or not. 00:27:03.000 --> 00:27:05.039 The contract is right there on the spot. You 00:27:05.039 --> 00:27:07.079 get paid a certain amount. You get rated every 00:27:07.079 --> 00:27:09.339 day or every week. You get the money delivered. 00:27:09.640 --> 00:27:10.980 And then when you're done working, you turn it 00:27:10.980 --> 00:27:12.640 off and you go to Tahiti or wherever you want 00:27:12.640 --> 00:27:14.740 to spend the next three months. And I think the 00:27:14.740 --> 00:27:16.940 smart people have already started figuring out 00:27:16.940 --> 00:27:19.240 that the Internet enables this. And they're starting 00:27:19.240 --> 00:27:21.859 to work more and more remotely on their own schedule, 00:27:22.039 --> 00:27:24.200 on their own time, on their own place, with their 00:27:24.200 --> 00:27:26.619 own friends, in their own way. And that's actually 00:27:26.619 --> 00:27:29.380 how we are the most productive. So the information 00:27:29.380 --> 00:27:31.720 revolution, by making it easier to communicate, 00:27:31.859 --> 00:27:34.559 connect, and cooperate, is allowing us to go 00:27:34.559 --> 00:27:37.440 back to working for ourselves. And that is my 00:27:37.440 --> 00:27:40.019 ultimate dream. even when I run a company and 00:27:40.019 --> 00:27:42.430 I have employees. I always tell those people, 00:27:42.569 --> 00:27:44.009 hey, I'm going to help you start your company 00:27:44.009 --> 00:27:46.049 when you're ready because I think that's the 00:27:46.049 --> 00:27:48.049 highest calling. Maybe not everybody will get 00:27:48.049 --> 00:27:51.269 there, but it would be fine if we were even working 00:27:51.269 --> 00:27:53.390 a 10 -person company or a 20 -person company 00:27:53.390 --> 00:27:56.009 is way better than working in a 1 ,000 -person 00:27:56.009 --> 00:27:58.349 company or a 10 ,000 -person company. So this 00:27:58.349 --> 00:28:00.690 idea that we're all factory -like cogs in a machine 00:28:00.690 --> 00:28:04.250 who are specialized and have to do things by 00:28:04.250 --> 00:28:06.390 rote memorization or instruction is going to 00:28:06.390 --> 00:28:08.589 go away and we're going to go back to being small 00:28:08.589 --> 00:28:10.869 groups of creative bands of individuals. setting 00:28:10.869 --> 00:28:13.210 out to do missions. And when those missions are 00:28:13.210 --> 00:28:15.509 done, we collect our money, we get rated, and 00:28:15.509 --> 00:28:18.609 then we rest and reassess until we're ready for 00:28:18.609 --> 00:28:20.529 the next sprint. Has there ever been a study 00:28:20.529 --> 00:28:23.930 done on happiness as it regards to the size of 00:28:23.930 --> 00:28:26.490 companies? Not that I'm aware, but to me it's 00:28:26.490 --> 00:28:29.380 obvious. It's just obvious. The smaller the company, 00:28:29.400 --> 00:28:30.759 the happier you're going to be, the more human 00:28:30.759 --> 00:28:32.740 your relations are, the less you have rules to 00:28:32.740 --> 00:28:34.880 operate under, the more flexible, the more creative, 00:28:35.019 --> 00:28:37.240 the more you'll be treated like a human just 00:28:37.240 --> 00:28:39.339 because you're able to do multiple things. Yeah. 00:28:40.400 --> 00:28:44.579 This brings me to what is a subject that keeps 00:28:44.579 --> 00:28:47.720 getting brought up. nowadays is universal basic 00:28:47.720 --> 00:28:51.980 income with the oncoming apocalypse of automation 00:28:51.980 --> 00:28:54.680 this is how it's being portrayed by andrew yang 00:28:54.680 --> 00:28:56.660 who's running for president i sat down and talked 00:28:56.660 --> 00:28:58.880 with him about it's very compelling and he's 00:28:58.880 --> 00:29:00.859 a very smart guy and he's an entrepreneur himself 00:29:00.859 --> 00:29:03.400 and when he starts talking about automation and 00:29:03.400 --> 00:29:06.000 how it's going to just eliminate massive amounts 00:29:06.000 --> 00:29:09.900 of jobs and leave people stranded. I know you're 00:29:09.900 --> 00:29:11.980 a guy who thinks about the future. I'm going 00:29:11.980 --> 00:29:13.839 to take the unpopular point of view on this. 00:29:13.980 --> 00:29:16.539 I think it's a non -solution to a non -problem. 00:29:18.019 --> 00:29:19.980 And I mean that in the sense that automation 00:29:19.980 --> 00:29:22.480 has been happening since the dawn of time. Man, 00:29:22.480 --> 00:29:24.160 when electricity came along, that put a lot of 00:29:24.160 --> 00:29:26.380 people out of work. Did it? Right? A lot of people 00:29:26.380 --> 00:29:28.839 carrying buckets of water and lighting lamps 00:29:28.839 --> 00:29:30.920 and all those kinds of things. And this was the 00:29:30.920 --> 00:29:32.440 concern with factories as well, right? Yeah, 00:29:32.440 --> 00:29:34.480 apps, everything. Literally every single thing 00:29:34.480 --> 00:29:36.079 that comes along. Even the printing press, right? 00:29:36.079 --> 00:29:38.200 Absolutely. And what it does is it frees people 00:29:38.200 --> 00:29:40.119 up for new creative work. So the question is 00:29:40.119 --> 00:29:43.000 not, is automation going to eliminate jobs? There 00:29:43.000 --> 00:29:45.720 is no finite number of jobs. We're not like sitting 00:29:45.720 --> 00:29:47.960 around. up the same jobs that were around since 00:29:47.960 --> 00:29:50.599 the Stone Age. So obviously new jobs are being 00:29:50.599 --> 00:29:52.579 created, and they're usually better jobs, more 00:29:52.579 --> 00:29:55.240 creative jobs. So the question is, how quickly 00:29:55.240 --> 00:29:57.440 is this transition going to happen, and what 00:29:57.440 --> 00:29:59.799 kinds of jobs will be eliminated, and what kinds 00:29:59.799 --> 00:30:02.359 of jobs will be created? It's impossible looking 00:30:02.359 --> 00:30:04.599 forward to predict what kinds of jobs will be 00:30:04.599 --> 00:30:07.599 created. If I told you 10 years ago that podcaster 00:30:07.599 --> 00:30:10.700 was going to be a job, or that playing video 00:30:10.700 --> 00:30:12.579 games is going to be a job, or commentating on 00:30:12.579 --> 00:30:14.519 video games is going to be a job, you would have 00:30:14.519 --> 00:30:16.119 laughed me out of the room. Those are nonsense 00:30:16.119 --> 00:30:19.559 jobs, but yet here we are. So society will always 00:30:19.559 --> 00:30:21.940 create new jobs. Civilization creates new jobs, 00:30:22.000 --> 00:30:23.740 but it's impossible to predict what those jobs 00:30:23.740 --> 00:30:26.359 are. So the question is, how quickly is that 00:30:26.359 --> 00:30:29.480 transition happening? Well, the reality is, even 00:30:29.480 --> 00:30:31.880 though everybody keeps talking about this automation 00:30:31.880 --> 00:30:34.279 apocalypse, we're at a record low unemployment. 00:30:35.059 --> 00:30:37.539 Explain that. Where's the transition? Donald 00:30:37.539 --> 00:30:42.180 Trump. All I'm saying is I don't see it in the 00:30:42.180 --> 00:30:44.220 numbers. I don't see it actually happening. The 00:30:44.220 --> 00:30:46.440 question is how quickly can you retrain people? 00:30:46.740 --> 00:30:49.420 So it's an education problem. The problem in 00:30:49.420 --> 00:30:50.900 the UBI, there's a couple of problems in the 00:30:50.900 --> 00:30:55.940 UBI. One is you're creating a slippery slide 00:30:55.940 --> 00:30:59.640 transfer straight into socialism. The moment 00:30:59.640 --> 00:31:02.000 people can start voting themselves money combined 00:31:02.000 --> 00:31:04.079 with a democracy, it's just a matter of time 00:31:04.079 --> 00:31:06.119 before the bottom 51 votes. themselves are everything 00:31:06.119 --> 00:31:10.500 in the top 49. And by the way, slippery slope 00:31:10.500 --> 00:31:12.420 fallacy is not a fallacy. I know people like 00:31:12.420 --> 00:31:13.720 saying that, but they haven't thought it through. 00:31:14.680 --> 00:31:17.700 But the moment you start having a direct transfer 00:31:17.700 --> 00:31:20.000 mechanism like that in a democracy, you're basically 00:31:20.000 --> 00:31:21.759 doing it with capitalism, which is the engine 00:31:21.759 --> 00:31:24.380 of economic growth. You're also forcing the entrepreneurs 00:31:24.380 --> 00:31:27.279 out or telling them not to come here. The estimate 00:31:27.279 --> 00:31:31.039 I saw for 15K a year basic income for everybody 00:31:31.039 --> 00:31:33.259 would be three quarters of current GDP. And of 00:31:33.259 --> 00:31:35.160 course, GDP would shrink in response as all the 00:31:35.160 --> 00:31:37.740 entrepreneurs fled. So you would essentially... 00:31:37.900 --> 00:31:40.599 bankrupt the country. Another issue with UBI 00:31:40.599 --> 00:31:43.480 is that people who are down in their luck, they're 00:31:43.480 --> 00:31:46.880 not looking for handouts. It's not just about 00:31:46.880 --> 00:31:49.319 money. It's also about status. It's about meaning. 00:31:49.500 --> 00:31:51.839 And the moment I start giving money to you and 00:31:51.839 --> 00:31:53.660 put you on the dole, I've lowered your status. 00:31:53.819 --> 00:31:56.460 I've made you a second class citizen. So I have 00:31:56.460 --> 00:31:58.200 to give you meaning. And meaning comes through 00:31:58.200 --> 00:32:00.640 education and capability. You have to teach a 00:32:00.640 --> 00:32:03.180 man to fish, not to basically throw your rotting 00:32:03.180 --> 00:32:05.039 leftover carcasses at him and say, here, eat 00:32:05.039 --> 00:32:07.160 the scraps. So it doesn't solve the meaning. 00:32:07.180 --> 00:32:10.140 problem. And lastly, it's nonsense to hand 15k 00:32:10.140 --> 00:32:12.579 out to everybody. You want to means test people, 00:32:12.720 --> 00:32:14.920 there's no reason to give it to you and me. So 00:32:14.920 --> 00:32:17.420 you end up back towards the welfare system where 00:32:17.420 --> 00:32:19.279 you do have to figure out who needs it and who 00:32:19.279 --> 00:32:22.019 doesn't. So I think the better route is that 00:32:22.019 --> 00:32:24.500 we actually establish a set of basic substance 00:32:24.500 --> 00:32:27.579 services that you have to have. And we provide 00:32:27.579 --> 00:32:30.220 those in abundance to technology based automation. 00:32:30.279 --> 00:32:33.240 So get basic housing, get basic food, get basic 00:32:33.240 --> 00:32:35.960 transportation, get high speed internet access, 00:32:36.059 --> 00:32:38.220 get phone in your pocket. Those are the kinds 00:32:38.220 --> 00:32:42.200 of things you want to give people. And finally, 00:32:42.259 --> 00:32:44.240 in terms of the rate of automation, I think we 00:32:44.240 --> 00:32:47.259 can educate people very quickly. One of the myths 00:32:47.259 --> 00:32:50.039 that we have today is that adults can't be re 00:32:50.039 --> 00:32:52.450 -educated. We view education as this thing where 00:32:52.450 --> 00:32:54.250 you go to school, you come out when you're out 00:32:54.250 --> 00:32:55.890 of college and you're done. No more education. 00:32:56.230 --> 00:32:58.609 Well, that's wrong. You have all these great 00:32:58.609 --> 00:33:01.309 online boot camps and coding schools coming up. 00:33:01.410 --> 00:33:02.869 There are ones that will even pay you to go there 00:33:02.869 --> 00:33:06.210 now. You can educate people en masse and you 00:33:06.210 --> 00:33:08.569 can educate them into creative professions. People 00:33:08.569 --> 00:33:11.029 who are talking about AI, automating, programming 00:33:11.029 --> 00:33:14.569 have never really written serious code. Coding 00:33:14.569 --> 00:33:17.109 is thinking. It's automatic structured thinking. 00:33:17.329 --> 00:33:21.019 An AI that can program. as well or better than 00:33:21.019 --> 00:33:23.119 humans is an AI that just took over the world. 00:33:23.259 --> 00:33:25.559 That's endgame. That's the end of the human species. 00:33:26.119 --> 00:33:27.940 And I can give you arguments why I don't think 00:33:27.940 --> 00:33:31.220 that's coming either. People who are thinking, 00:33:31.259 --> 00:33:33.400 and I know I take the opposite side from some 00:33:33.400 --> 00:33:35.700 very famous people in this debate, but we're 00:33:35.700 --> 00:33:38.039 nowhere near close to general AI. Not in our 00:33:38.039 --> 00:33:39.539 lifetimes. You don't have to worry about it. 00:33:39.579 --> 00:33:42.740 Even in our lifetimes? Really? It's so overblown. 00:33:43.039 --> 00:33:46.640 It's another... It's a combination of Cassandra 00:33:46.640 --> 00:33:48.680 complex. You know, it's fun to talk about the 00:33:48.680 --> 00:33:51.839 end of the world combined with a God complex, 00:33:51.940 --> 00:33:53.980 like people who have lost religion. So they're 00:33:53.980 --> 00:33:55.940 looking for meaning in some kind of end of history. 00:33:56.440 --> 00:33:59.700 The reason why I don't think AI is coming anytime 00:33:59.700 --> 00:34:02.500 soon is because a lot of. The advances in so 00:34:02.500 --> 00:34:04.960 -called AI today are what we call narrow AI. 00:34:05.180 --> 00:34:07.700 They're really pattern recognition, machine learning 00:34:07.700 --> 00:34:09.760 to figure out, like, what is that object on the 00:34:09.760 --> 00:34:12.380 screen? Or how do you find this signal in all 00:34:12.380 --> 00:34:14.699 of that noise? There is nothing approaching what 00:34:14.699 --> 00:34:18.019 we call creative thinking. To actually model 00:34:18.019 --> 00:34:19.880 general intelligence, you run into all kinds 00:34:19.880 --> 00:34:22.059 of problems. First, we don't know how the brain 00:34:22.059 --> 00:34:24.679 works at all. Number two, we've never even modeled 00:34:24.679 --> 00:34:26.880 a paramecium or an amoeba, let alone a human 00:34:26.880 --> 00:34:29.159 brain. Number three, there's this assumption 00:34:29.159 --> 00:34:32.460 that all of the computation is going at the cellular 00:34:32.460 --> 00:34:35.239 level, at the neuron level, whereas nature is 00:34:35.239 --> 00:34:37.599 very parsimonious. It uses everything at its 00:34:37.599 --> 00:34:40.300 disposal. There's a lot of machinery inside the 00:34:40.300 --> 00:34:42.659 cell that is doing calculations that is intelligent, 00:34:42.840 --> 00:34:45.320 that isn't accounted for. And the best estimates 00:34:45.320 --> 00:34:47.179 are it would take 50 years of Moore's law before 00:34:47.179 --> 00:34:49.159 we can simulate what's going on inside a cell 00:34:49.159 --> 00:34:51.699 near perfectly, and probably 100 years before 00:34:51.699 --> 00:34:53.519 we can build a brain that can simulate inside 00:34:53.519 --> 00:34:56.159 the cells. So putting it at saying that I'm just 00:34:56.159 --> 00:34:58.639 going to model neuron as on or off and then use 00:34:58.639 --> 00:35:00.440 that to build a human brain is overly simplistic. 00:35:01.159 --> 00:35:03.179 Furthermore, I would posit there's no such thing 00:35:03.179 --> 00:35:05.739 as general intelligence. Every intelligence is 00:35:05.739 --> 00:35:07.659 contextual within the context of the environment 00:35:07.659 --> 00:35:09.239 that it's in. So you have to evolve an environment 00:35:09.239 --> 00:35:11.539 around it. So I think a lot of people who are 00:35:11.539 --> 00:35:13.619 peddling general AI, the burden of proof is on 00:35:13.619 --> 00:35:15.639 them. I haven't seen anything that would lead 00:35:15.639 --> 00:35:17.219 me to indicate we're approaching general AI. 00:35:17.659 --> 00:35:19.980 Instead, we're solving deterministic, closed 00:35:19.980 --> 00:35:22.590 set, finite problems. using large amounts of 00:35:22.590 --> 00:35:25.489 data. But it's not sexy to talk about that. If 00:35:25.489 --> 00:35:29.170 you're talking about mirroring the actual abilities 00:35:29.170 --> 00:35:32.789 of cells, or are you talking about recreating 00:35:32.789 --> 00:35:37.630 the actual mechanism? Like what is going on inside 00:35:37.630 --> 00:35:41.230 cells and biological organisms? Yeah, we just 00:35:41.230 --> 00:35:43.550 don't know how intelligence works. Right. We 00:35:43.550 --> 00:35:44.289 don't know what consciousness is. We literally 00:35:44.289 --> 00:35:47.969 have no idea. So most of the AI approaches basically 00:35:47.969 --> 00:35:50.929 say we're going to try and model how the brain 00:35:50.929 --> 00:35:53.389 works, but they model at the neuron level, which 00:35:53.389 --> 00:35:55.329 is saying this neuron's on, that neuron's off. 00:35:55.349 --> 00:35:57.730 They're combining their signal. But I'm saying... 00:35:57.920 --> 00:36:00.539 The neuron is a cell inside the cell. There's 00:36:00.539 --> 00:36:02.880 all this machinery going on that's operating 00:36:02.880 --> 00:36:04.940 the neuron that is also part of the intelligence 00:36:04.940 --> 00:36:07.199 apparatus. You can't just ignore that and abstract 00:36:07.199 --> 00:36:10.300 that out. You have to model it down to the inside 00:36:10.300 --> 00:36:12.760 the cell level. It's also a part of the biological 00:36:12.760 --> 00:36:15.320 organism itself. Exactly. And it has all these 00:36:15.320 --> 00:36:18.360 needs that, you know, the biological organism 00:36:18.360 --> 00:36:21.360 has to have food and rest. Exactly. And there's 00:36:21.360 --> 00:36:23.360 a balance going on. But when you eliminate all 00:36:23.360 --> 00:36:25.320 that, when there is none of that, and it's just 00:36:25.320 --> 00:36:28.780 calculations. And we get to a point where it's 00:36:28.780 --> 00:36:32.000 just this thing that we've created, whether you 00:36:32.000 --> 00:36:33.400 call it a computer, whether it doesn't have to 00:36:33.400 --> 00:36:36.739 be a moving thing even, but a thing that you've 00:36:36.739 --> 00:36:40.340 created that stores virtually all the information 00:36:40.340 --> 00:36:42.980 that's available in the world, stores all the 00:36:42.980 --> 00:36:46.449 patterns of all the thinking. of all the great 00:36:46.449 --> 00:36:48.510 people that have ever lived, all the writers, 00:36:48.969 --> 00:36:50.690 all the people that have ever published anything, 00:36:50.949 --> 00:36:52.590 all the people that have ever spoken any words, 00:36:52.730 --> 00:36:57.070 stores all of their points, all of their counterpoints, 00:36:57.130 --> 00:37:01.670 all their contradictions, applies logic and reason 00:37:01.670 --> 00:37:07.789 and some sort of sense of the future and starts 00:37:07.789 --> 00:37:11.800 improving upon these patterns. and then starts 00:37:11.800 --> 00:37:14.739 acting on its own based on the information that 00:37:14.739 --> 00:37:17.119 it's been provided with. Well, first you would 00:37:17.119 --> 00:37:19.940 have to actually simulate a structure of the 00:37:19.940 --> 00:37:22.119 human brain that can hold all that information. 00:37:22.340 --> 00:37:23.679 You're basically talking about tens of thousands 00:37:23.679 --> 00:37:25.840 of brains worth of information. We can't even 00:37:25.840 --> 00:37:27.760 build one brain in the next decade or two or 00:37:27.760 --> 00:37:30.440 three. Well, in terms of an actual physical brain, 00:37:30.639 --> 00:37:33.300 yes. But what about something that recreates 00:37:33.300 --> 00:37:36.309 the abilities of a brain? Like I said, nature 00:37:36.309 --> 00:37:38.969 is parsimonious. So we've got this three -pound 00:37:38.969 --> 00:37:42.070 wetware object that can hold all this data. Nature 00:37:42.070 --> 00:37:44.590 has been very efficient in evolving kind of how 00:37:44.590 --> 00:37:47.889 we get there. I just don't think computers are 00:37:47.889 --> 00:37:50.210 anywhere close to that, like they can hold that 00:37:50.210 --> 00:37:52.630 amount of data with that complexity, with like 00:37:52.630 --> 00:37:54.329 the holographic structure of the brain where 00:37:54.329 --> 00:37:57.409 it can recall in many, many different ways. And 00:37:57.409 --> 00:38:00.030 then I don't think you can evolve a creature. 00:38:00.750 --> 00:38:03.349 to be intelligent outside of the boundaries of 00:38:03.349 --> 00:38:05.530 feedback in a real medium. Like if you evolved, 00:38:05.730 --> 00:38:07.929 if you raised a human being in a concrete cell 00:38:07.929 --> 00:38:10.889 with no input from the outside, they wouldn't 00:38:10.889 --> 00:38:13.170 have any feedback from the real world. They wouldn't 00:38:13.170 --> 00:38:15.929 evolve properly. So I think just dumping information. 00:38:16.780 --> 00:38:19.320 into into a thing isn't enough it has to have 00:38:19.320 --> 00:38:21.519 an environment to operate in to get feedback 00:38:21.519 --> 00:38:23.900 from it needs to have context but isn't that 00:38:23.900 --> 00:38:26.519 biological i mean what if you if you have just 00:38:26.519 --> 00:38:29.239 the all the information that people have accumulated 00:38:29.239 --> 00:38:31.659 and the lessons that people have learned and 00:38:31.659 --> 00:38:34.599 you program that into the computer Like if we 00:38:34.599 --> 00:38:36.659 can take a computer that can beat someone at 00:38:36.659 --> 00:38:38.960 chess, the real question was, well, can we make 00:38:38.960 --> 00:38:40.719 some sort of an artificial intelligence that 00:38:40.719 --> 00:38:42.940 can beat someone at Go, which is far more complex 00:38:42.940 --> 00:38:44.940 than chess? They figured out how to do that too. 00:38:45.079 --> 00:38:48.000 And that was a giant shock, right? These are 00:38:48.000 --> 00:38:52.179 still man -made, very closed, bounded games. 00:38:52.519 --> 00:38:56.300 They're not on the road to the unbounded game 00:38:56.300 --> 00:38:59.739 of life. They are completely artificial. But 00:38:59.739 --> 00:39:03.019 didn't Go, didn't that give you like a little 00:39:03.019 --> 00:39:06.219 bit of a pause? A little bit. Go is not, Go or 00:39:06.219 --> 00:39:08.139 League of Legends or Fortnite, they're not completely 00:39:08.139 --> 00:39:11.380 deterministic. Right. But they're still very 00:39:11.380 --> 00:39:14.019 artificial, very bounded games. Being good at 00:39:14.019 --> 00:39:16.079 Go doesn't mean that you can then suddenly figure 00:39:16.079 --> 00:39:18.639 out how to write great poetry. Right. The creativity 00:39:18.639 --> 00:39:20.940 for sure is something that's great. Creativity 00:39:20.940 --> 00:39:23.619 is the last frontier. So I do believe that automation 00:39:23.619 --> 00:39:25.739 over a long enough period of time will replace 00:39:25.739 --> 00:39:28.940 every non -creative job. or every non -creative 00:39:28.940 --> 00:39:32.019 work. But that's great news. That means that 00:39:32.019 --> 00:39:34.219 all of our basic needs are taken care of and 00:39:34.219 --> 00:39:36.559 what remains for us is to be creative, which 00:39:36.559 --> 00:39:39.420 is really what every human wants. Yeah. What 00:39:39.420 --> 00:39:41.380 are you doing right now? This is a creative job. 00:39:41.579 --> 00:39:45.719 Sure. That brings us back to the idea of meaning 00:39:45.719 --> 00:39:49.260 and universal basic income. I think the idea 00:39:49.260 --> 00:39:54.719 of giving someone $15 ,000 a year doesn't necessarily 00:39:56.429 --> 00:39:59.389 cause what everyone would worry about is people 00:39:59.389 --> 00:40:01.630 being on the dole. You would have a bunch of 00:40:01.630 --> 00:40:03.510 listless people out there with no meaning in 00:40:03.510 --> 00:40:06.489 life. But the idea is that $15 ,000 a year, and 00:40:06.489 --> 00:40:08.190 I'm not necessarily sure I agree with this. I'm 00:40:08.190 --> 00:40:10.730 not even endorsing this. But that $15 ,000 a 00:40:10.730 --> 00:40:12.570 year would just provide you with the necessities 00:40:12.570 --> 00:40:15.090 to get by in life. It would give you food. It 00:40:15.090 --> 00:40:16.630 would give you shelter. Well, it's not going 00:40:16.630 --> 00:40:18.849 to stop at $15 ,000 because the moment people 00:40:18.849 --> 00:40:20.650 are like, I mean, $15 ,000. Then people will 00:40:20.650 --> 00:40:22.889 demand more. Bernie Sanders will be like, I want 00:40:22.889 --> 00:40:26.389 $16 ,000, $17 ,000, $18 ,000 a year. These companies 00:40:26.389 --> 00:40:28.650 are too big. Yeah, that could happen. It doesn't 00:40:28.650 --> 00:40:31.090 stop. It just goes all the way to bankruptcy. 00:40:31.710 --> 00:40:34.949 The concern is the slide to socialism. It's obvious. 00:40:35.230 --> 00:40:38.650 I mean, heck, if I was not working and I was 00:40:38.650 --> 00:40:40.530 getting my 15 a year, I would happily vote for 00:40:40.530 --> 00:40:42.289 the guy who would give me 20 or 25. It's just 00:40:42.289 --> 00:40:44.730 common sense. What do you say to the people that 00:40:44.730 --> 00:40:46.929 don't believe that there is such a thing as ethical 00:40:46.929 --> 00:40:50.670 or compassionate capitalism? There's many people 00:40:50.670 --> 00:40:53.150 today that are espousing Marxism and they're 00:40:53.150 --> 00:40:56.670 espousing some sort of a socialist society where... 00:40:57.130 --> 00:40:59.170 They believe that capitalism has screwed people 00:40:59.170 --> 00:41:03.630 over and eliminated the middle class. There are 00:41:03.630 --> 00:41:05.550 absolutely problems with capitalism. I think 00:41:05.550 --> 00:41:08.550 monopolies are a problem. I think that crony 00:41:08.550 --> 00:41:10.230 capitalism is a problem with the government, 00:41:10.389 --> 00:41:12.230 you know, kind of gets in bed with them and sort 00:41:12.230 --> 00:41:15.030 of forces things. I think the bankers have really, 00:41:15.070 --> 00:41:17.489 you know, raped society and the rest of us are 00:41:17.489 --> 00:41:19.989 suffering for it. Yeah, they've essentially taken 00:41:19.989 --> 00:41:23.489 huge risks. where they privatize the gains and 00:41:23.489 --> 00:41:25.829 they socialize the losses. So when it fails, 00:41:25.849 --> 00:41:27.690 they basically get bailed out and bankrupt everybody 00:41:27.690 --> 00:41:32.250 else. So capitalism has gotten a really bad name. 00:41:32.349 --> 00:41:34.289 Let's talk about its free exchange, free markets. 00:41:35.099 --> 00:41:36.780 Free markets and free exchange are intrinsic 00:41:36.780 --> 00:41:38.800 to humans. From when the first person started 00:41:38.800 --> 00:41:41.039 a fire and somebody came along with a deer and 00:41:41.039 --> 00:41:43.300 said, hey, if I cook my deer on your fire, I'll 00:41:43.300 --> 00:41:45.480 share some of it with you, right? So specialization 00:41:45.480 --> 00:41:48.179 of labor, we trade. That's built into the human 00:41:48.179 --> 00:41:50.800 species. Basic math comes from accounting, keeping 00:41:50.800 --> 00:41:53.880 track of debts and credits and so on. We need 00:41:53.880 --> 00:41:56.920 to be able to engage in free trade. The correct 00:41:56.920 --> 00:41:59.619 criticism of capitalism is when it does not provide 00:41:59.619 --> 00:42:01.980 equal opportunity. And so we should always strive 00:42:01.980 --> 00:42:04.900 to provide equal opportunity. But people confuse 00:42:04.900 --> 00:42:07.380 that with equal outcome. When you have equal 00:42:07.380 --> 00:42:10.079 outcome, that can only be enforced through violence 00:42:10.079 --> 00:42:12.579 because different people, free people make different 00:42:12.579 --> 00:42:14.480 choices. And when they make different choices, 00:42:14.559 --> 00:42:16.320 they have different outcomes. And if you don't 00:42:16.320 --> 00:42:19.139 let them suffer the consequences of bad choices 00:42:19.139 --> 00:42:21.900 or reap the rewards from good choices, then you 00:42:21.900 --> 00:42:24.320 are forcibly redistributing through violence. 00:42:24.639 --> 00:42:28.179 It's interesting that there are no... socialist 00:42:28.179 --> 00:42:30.519 working socialist examples that exist without 00:42:30.519 --> 00:42:32.360 violence you basically need someone to show up 00:42:32.360 --> 00:42:34.239 with a gun and say okay you're not allowed to 00:42:34.239 --> 00:42:36.760 do that you hand this over to that person so 00:42:36.760 --> 00:42:38.599 one of the reasons why I do this podcast is because 00:42:38.599 --> 00:42:41.519 I believe everybody can be wealthy Everybody. 00:42:41.519 --> 00:42:43.860 It's not a zero -sum game. It is a positive -sum 00:42:43.860 --> 00:42:46.340 game. You create something brand new. You exchange 00:42:46.340 --> 00:42:48.219 it with me for something brand new. I've created 00:42:48.219 --> 00:42:50.760 this higher utility for both of us. The sum of 00:42:50.760 --> 00:42:53.400 the value created is positive. It's not like 00:42:53.400 --> 00:42:55.739 status where it's like you're higher up, I'm 00:42:55.739 --> 00:42:57.579 lower down. You're president, so I must be vice 00:42:57.579 --> 00:42:59.900 president. You're a plus one, I'm a minus one. 00:42:59.920 --> 00:43:03.139 It has to cancel the zero. We should be all for 00:43:03.139 --> 00:43:06.820 playing positive -sum ethical games. The problem 00:43:06.820 --> 00:43:08.960 is because of these looters. who have ruined 00:43:08.960 --> 00:43:11.420 capitalism's name, that then you get socialists 00:43:11.420 --> 00:43:13.500 coming in and saying, burn the whole system down. 00:43:13.599 --> 00:43:15.900 You burn the whole system down, we end up like 00:43:15.900 --> 00:43:19.000 Venezuela or the former Soviet Union. You don't 00:43:19.000 --> 00:43:21.099 want to be a failed socialist state with emaciated 00:43:21.099 --> 00:43:24.099 teens hunting cats in the streets to eat. That's 00:43:24.099 --> 00:43:25.719 literally what happens in some of these places. 00:43:26.719 --> 00:43:29.199 So I think it's very important not to destroy 00:43:29.199 --> 00:43:31.119 the engine of progress that brought us here. 00:43:31.420 --> 00:43:33.739 Yeah, the idea that socialism just hasn't worked 00:43:33.739 --> 00:43:37.059 yet. That it needs to, we just need to do it 00:43:37.059 --> 00:43:39.000 right. If we do it right, we can, have you ever 00:43:39.000 --> 00:43:42.320 had a debate? 100 million dead. Yeah. Let's keep 00:43:42.320 --> 00:43:44.940 trying. All over the world, yeah. And every single 00:43:44.940 --> 00:43:47.539 time it's been implemented. Have you ever had 00:43:47.539 --> 00:43:49.219 a conversation with someone who's a socialist? 00:43:49.860 --> 00:43:52.460 Many times. Some of my better friends are socialists. 00:43:52.480 --> 00:43:54.380 Really? We really get into it, yeah. And what 00:43:54.380 --> 00:43:56.380 is their, I mean, does anyone have a compelling 00:43:56.380 --> 00:44:01.400 perspective at all? I think really socialism 00:44:01.400 --> 00:44:04.679 comes from the heart. Right. We all want to be 00:44:04.679 --> 00:44:08.519 socialist. Capitalism comes from the head because 00:44:08.519 --> 00:44:10.659 they're always cheaters in any system. Yes. And 00:44:10.659 --> 00:44:13.619 there's incentives in any system. So when you're 00:44:13.619 --> 00:44:16.099 young, if you're not a socialist, you have no 00:44:16.099 --> 00:44:17.760 heart. When you're older, if you're not a capitalist, 00:44:17.920 --> 00:44:19.380 you have no head. Right. You haven't thought 00:44:19.380 --> 00:44:21.719 it through. So I understand where it comes from. 00:44:21.820 --> 00:44:24.019 I always like Nassim Taleb's framing on this, 00:44:24.099 --> 00:44:27.019 where he said, with my family, I'm a communist. 00:44:27.530 --> 00:44:30.550 With my close friends, I'm a socialist. You know, 00:44:30.550 --> 00:44:33.309 at my state level politics, I'm a Democrat. At, 00:44:33.409 --> 00:44:35.730 you know, higher levels, I'm a Republican. And 00:44:35.730 --> 00:44:37.929 at the federal level, I'm a libertarian. Right. 00:44:37.989 --> 00:44:40.210 So basically, the larger the group of people 00:44:40.210 --> 00:44:42.010 you have massed together. who have different 00:44:42.010 --> 00:44:44.690 interests, the less trust there is, the more 00:44:44.690 --> 00:44:46.429 cheating there is, the better the incentives 00:44:46.429 --> 00:44:48.369 have to be aligned, the better the system has 00:44:48.369 --> 00:44:50.469 to work, the more you go towards capitalism. 00:44:50.849 --> 00:44:52.849 The smaller the group you're in, you're in a 00:44:52.849 --> 00:44:54.429 kibbutz, you're in your commune, you're in your 00:44:54.429 --> 00:44:56.590 house, you're in your tribe, by all means be 00:44:56.590 --> 00:44:59.050 a socialist. With my aunts, with my brother, 00:44:59.150 --> 00:45:01.510 with my cousins, with my uncles, with my mom, 00:45:01.570 --> 00:45:04.030 with my family, I'm a socialist. That's the right 00:45:04.030 --> 00:45:07.239 way to live a loving, happy... integrated life 00:45:07.239 --> 00:45:09.599 yes but when you're dealing with strangers i 00:45:09.599 --> 00:45:11.500 mean you want to be a real socialist great open 00:45:11.500 --> 00:45:13.559 all your doors and windows tomorrow please everybody 00:45:13.559 --> 00:45:15.420 come take what you want see how that works out 00:45:15.420 --> 00:45:19.940 yeah um this idea of income inequality that always 00:45:19.940 --> 00:45:24.619 strikes me as a very it's a deceptive term income 00:45:24.619 --> 00:45:27.239 inequality well let's flip it around it comes 00:45:27.239 --> 00:45:31.340 from outcome And the outcome inequality is there 00:45:31.340 --> 00:45:33.780 because you made different choices. Now, again, 00:45:33.820 --> 00:45:35.380 going back, if it was because you didn't have 00:45:35.380 --> 00:45:37.679 the same opportunities, that's a problem. So 00:45:37.679 --> 00:45:40.679 society should always try to give people equal 00:45:40.679 --> 00:45:43.119 opportunities. So, for example, instead of basic 00:45:43.119 --> 00:45:47.019 income, what if we had a retraining program built 00:45:47.019 --> 00:45:49.880 into our basic social fabric, which said that 00:45:49.880 --> 00:45:52.980 every four years or every six years or whatever 00:45:52.980 --> 00:45:55.420 it is, maybe it's every 10, you can take one 00:45:55.420 --> 00:45:58.559 year out. And we'll pay for you to go retrain 00:45:58.559 --> 00:46:00.960 completely. And you can go into any profession 00:46:00.960 --> 00:46:03.280 you like that has some earning power and output, 00:46:03.539 --> 00:46:06.440 hopefully a creative long -term profession, and 00:46:06.440 --> 00:46:09.420 you can re -educate yourself. That would be much 00:46:09.420 --> 00:46:11.440 better for society on all levels than basically 00:46:11.440 --> 00:46:12.860 just saying, now you're going to be the dole 00:46:12.860 --> 00:46:16.019 for the rest of your life. Yeah, you'd have to 00:46:16.019 --> 00:46:19.019 lead that horse to water and then make him drink. 00:46:19.280 --> 00:46:21.659 It requires people to put in some effort. We 00:46:21.659 --> 00:46:25.059 can't all just sit around. Well, that's my perspective 00:46:25.059 --> 00:46:27.559 on income inequality. There's always effort inequality 00:46:27.559 --> 00:46:30.840 and thought inequality. There's just some people 00:46:30.840 --> 00:46:32.539 that are obsessed, and if those people become 00:46:32.539 --> 00:46:34.739 successful, it doesn't mean they stole from you. 00:46:35.309 --> 00:46:36.949 It just means that they put in the amount of 00:46:36.949 --> 00:46:39.389 energy and effort that's required to reach where 00:46:39.389 --> 00:46:41.250 they're at. And there's a lot of virtue signaling 00:46:41.250 --> 00:46:42.809 that goes on now where people say, well, it's 00:46:42.809 --> 00:46:44.650 because you're privileged. It's like, well, you 00:46:44.650 --> 00:46:46.269 know what the greatest privilege is? You're alive. 00:46:46.570 --> 00:46:49.710 85 % of humanity is dead. So how privileged are 00:46:49.710 --> 00:46:51.489 you? Then you're living in the first world. Then 00:46:51.489 --> 00:46:53.849 you have four limbs, et cetera. So you can take 00:46:53.849 --> 00:46:55.349 that argument all the way. It's kind of a nonsense 00:46:55.349 --> 00:46:57.190 discussion. Well, it's a very weird progressive 00:46:57.190 --> 00:47:00.530 argument. And as it pertains to race, it's always 00:47:00.530 --> 00:47:02.969 a weird one, right? Because white privilege to 00:47:02.969 --> 00:47:06.130 me, although... You could look at what they're 00:47:06.130 --> 00:47:09.969 saying on paper like, yes, yeah, I'm sure there's 00:47:09.969 --> 00:47:12.630 more black people that are harassed by the police. 00:47:12.710 --> 00:47:15.730 I'm sure there is more black people who are treated 00:47:15.730 --> 00:47:19.030 suspiciously by shop owners and the like. But 00:47:19.030 --> 00:47:21.909 the problem isn't the people who aren't treated 00:47:21.909 --> 00:47:25.070 poorly. The problem is the people who treat the 00:47:25.070 --> 00:47:29.010 people poorly. The problem is racism. The problem 00:47:29.010 --> 00:47:32.199 is not. people that didn't ask to be born white 00:47:32.199 --> 00:47:35.179 or whatever they are, and they don't get harassed. 00:47:35.179 --> 00:47:38.980 So this idea of white privilege or male privilege 00:47:38.980 --> 00:47:42.480 or whatever it is, that's not the problem. You're 00:47:42.480 --> 00:47:45.760 just looking at someone who's not a victim of 00:47:45.760 --> 00:47:48.139 this particular problem that you're highlighting. 00:47:48.969 --> 00:47:50.650 But you're not looking at the perpetrators of 00:47:50.650 --> 00:47:53.170 the problem. You're making people perpetrators 00:47:53.170 --> 00:47:56.969 by simply existing and having less melanin in 00:47:56.969 --> 00:47:58.929 their skin or having their ancestors come from 00:47:58.929 --> 00:48:01.909 a geographical location. It's a sneaky way of 00:48:01.909 --> 00:48:04.130 being racist. Yeah, and then they say you can't 00:48:04.130 --> 00:48:06.349 be racist. It's not racist because you're white. 00:48:06.750 --> 00:48:09.909 That is hilarious if you can't be racist against 00:48:09.909 --> 00:48:13.150 white people. That's a variation of the hold 00:48:13.150 --> 00:48:15.730 still while I hit you argument. Stop struggling 00:48:15.730 --> 00:48:17.550 while I'm hitting you. But it's just so silly. 00:48:18.250 --> 00:48:20.170 completely change what racism means. But what's 00:48:20.170 --> 00:48:22.150 hilarious is that mostly the people who are yelling 00:48:22.150 --> 00:48:24.409 racist are not the minorities. When I look on 00:48:24.409 --> 00:48:26.889 my Twitter or my social media or on my news, 00:48:26.989 --> 00:48:29.150 it's white on white violence. Virtue signaling. 00:48:29.210 --> 00:48:31.510 Yeah, it's white on white violence. What's mostly 00:48:31.510 --> 00:48:34.519 going on... is it's elitist whites, blue state 00:48:34.519 --> 00:48:37.119 whites, college educated whites, beating up on 00:48:37.119 --> 00:48:39.019 high school educated whites, blue collar. It's 00:48:39.019 --> 00:48:40.840 a white collar versus blue collar war that's 00:48:40.840 --> 00:48:42.679 going on. And the rest of us are just kind of 00:48:42.679 --> 00:48:44.000 watching like, oh, that's kind of interesting. 00:48:44.179 --> 00:48:46.639 Well, it's also a side effect of the ability 00:48:46.639 --> 00:48:49.920 to broadcast, right? Like everyone with a Twitter 00:48:49.920 --> 00:48:52.000 handle has the ability to broadcast. Everyone 00:48:52.000 --> 00:48:54.639 with a Facebook page has the ability to pontificate 00:48:54.639 --> 00:49:00.250 and have these long rambling. these huge statements 00:49:00.250 --> 00:49:02.750 that people put out when you, you read them. 00:49:02.789 --> 00:49:04.510 It's like, how much time did you put in this? 00:49:04.530 --> 00:49:06.190 And what the, do you put that much time in your 00:49:06.190 --> 00:49:09.530 kids or your job or your life or your future 00:49:09.530 --> 00:49:11.809 or planning for your, you know, how much do you 00:49:11.809 --> 00:49:14.650 work out a day? I mean, you just, these some, 00:49:14.730 --> 00:49:16.949 I've read some people's Facebook posts. I'm like, 00:49:16.969 --> 00:49:19.489 this is a preposterous amount of effort that 00:49:19.489 --> 00:49:21.769 you put into saying virtually nothing. Let's 00:49:21.769 --> 00:49:23.510 see. Humans are being creative. Yeah. Let's see 00:49:23.510 --> 00:49:26.030 an AI do that. Well, that's true. It is creative. 00:49:26.090 --> 00:49:29.590 It's, it's creative in, a very odd way, right? 00:49:29.670 --> 00:49:31.889 Because it's creative and that they're trying 00:49:31.889 --> 00:49:33.909 to elicit a response from people and they're 00:49:33.909 --> 00:49:37.489 trying to raise their social value or raise their 00:49:37.489 --> 00:49:40.010 position on the social totem pole. It's signaling 00:49:40.010 --> 00:49:41.710 and it's easy signaling because it's the kind 00:49:41.710 --> 00:49:43.429 of thing that everybody has to agree with you 00:49:43.429 --> 00:49:45.030 on because nobody wants to be seen as a horrible 00:49:45.030 --> 00:49:47.210 person. Yeah. And it's very hard to make the 00:49:47.210 --> 00:49:49.989 nuanced arguments against than it is to just 00:49:49.989 --> 00:49:52.170 kind of go along. Right. Well, it's also, some 00:49:52.170 --> 00:49:56.960 of it is so cliche that it seems like I know 00:49:56.960 --> 00:50:01.039 one guy who poses as a woman on Twitter, but 00:50:01.039 --> 00:50:05.579 he does it obviously. What is the name? Tatiana 00:50:05.579 --> 00:50:09.599 McGrath. Yes. Hilarious. Used to be Godfrey Elwick. 00:50:09.780 --> 00:50:12.079 Yes. Oh, is that the same guy? I think so, yeah. 00:50:12.239 --> 00:50:15.280 That's hilarious. I did not. They killed his 00:50:15.280 --> 00:50:17.760 account. I think it's the same one. I'm not 100 00:50:17.760 --> 00:50:21.079 % sure. For pretending to be transracial. That's 00:50:21.079 --> 00:50:23.570 right. They didn't. Yeah. He basically says all 00:50:23.570 --> 00:50:25.789 the crazy stuff that people on the left say, 00:50:25.889 --> 00:50:28.750 but he says the craziest version and kind of 00:50:28.750 --> 00:50:31.309 just shows how it's okay. I saw a tweet from 00:50:31.309 --> 00:50:33.130 him recently, he just said, or her, that it's 00:50:33.130 --> 00:50:37.840 not okay to be white. Yes. And then some people 00:50:37.840 --> 00:50:42.659 agree. But it's so close to what they say. It's 00:50:42.659 --> 00:50:45.539 so close that it's like the most artful form 00:50:45.539 --> 00:50:49.039 of subtle parody. Well, if you replace in half 00:50:49.039 --> 00:50:50.539 of these things, if you replace the word white 00:50:50.539 --> 00:50:53.500 with black or Asian, watch the lynch mob descend 00:50:53.500 --> 00:50:57.420 upon you. It's a strange time in that respect. 00:50:57.780 --> 00:51:00.539 There's a famous saying that if you want to see 00:51:00.539 --> 00:51:03.320 who rules over you, see who you're not allowed 00:51:03.320 --> 00:51:08.369 to criticize. Excellent. Yeah, that's so true, 00:51:08.469 --> 00:51:11.929 right? Yeah, that's so true. I wonder where this 00:51:11.929 --> 00:51:15.650 is going. I really do. I wonder because it seems 00:51:15.650 --> 00:51:18.409 like this newfound ability to broadcast that 00:51:18.409 --> 00:51:21.050 we have with whether you have a YouTube page 00:51:21.050 --> 00:51:22.349 or whether you have Twitter or whatever you're 00:51:22.349 --> 00:51:27.150 doing, this newfound ability to spread whatever 00:51:27.150 --> 00:51:30.309 you're trying to say to so many people with very 00:51:30.309 --> 00:51:33.730 little understanding on the most part. I think 00:51:33.730 --> 00:51:35.969 it's actually a great thing overall. Yeah, I 00:51:35.969 --> 00:51:37.550 do as well. Because now it means that any human 00:51:37.550 --> 00:51:39.590 can broadcast to any other human on the planet 00:51:39.590 --> 00:51:42.429 at any time. So, for example, if, you know, a 00:51:42.429 --> 00:51:44.869 totalitarian dictator were to come to power and 00:51:44.869 --> 00:51:46.690 someone was beating up, you know, had fascists 00:51:46.690 --> 00:51:48.570 beating up on old women, like that would get 00:51:48.570 --> 00:51:50.750 broadcast out instantly. There would be an instant 00:51:50.750 --> 00:51:53.070 outrage, hue and cry rallying. So in that sense, 00:51:53.170 --> 00:51:56.150 it helps bring attention to the plight of anybody. 00:51:56.849 --> 00:51:59.550 But right now we're going through the phase where 00:51:59.550 --> 00:52:01.829 we have this newfound power to assemble mobs. 00:52:02.519 --> 00:52:04.760 And people don't know how to deal with that. 00:52:04.860 --> 00:52:08.539 So it becomes very easy to set up a mob and have 00:52:08.539 --> 00:52:10.739 it attack somebody, take all the context out. 00:52:10.840 --> 00:52:12.739 Like even this conversation, I'm sure people 00:52:12.739 --> 00:52:14.659 will take out snippets, put them on social media 00:52:14.659 --> 00:52:16.780 and try and get somebody outraged. Of course. 00:52:16.940 --> 00:52:19.480 And so you have to learn how, first of all, society 00:52:19.480 --> 00:52:21.659 just has to get over this idea of outrage. Like 00:52:21.659 --> 00:52:24.639 to me, like... Outrage people, people who get 00:52:24.639 --> 00:52:26.519 easily outraged are the stupidest people on social 00:52:26.519 --> 00:52:28.280 media. Those are the people I block instantly. 00:52:29.159 --> 00:52:31.199 It's just kind of very low -level thinking, right? 00:52:31.260 --> 00:52:35.119 These are the foot soldiers in a mob. Eventually, 00:52:35.119 --> 00:52:36.900 society just has to get over it. They have to 00:52:36.900 --> 00:52:38.860 understand that these are all snippets being 00:52:38.860 --> 00:52:40.860 taken out of context. These are doctored video 00:52:40.860 --> 00:52:43.380 clips. These are just someone who's trying to 00:52:43.380 --> 00:52:46.219 get outraged over something. Eventually, there 00:52:46.219 --> 00:52:48.860 will also be anti -mob tactics. Like, for example, 00:52:49.000 --> 00:52:52.929 if I go to someone's Twitter feed, and all it 00:52:52.929 --> 00:52:56.570 is is full of political ranting, raving, conspiracy 00:52:56.570 --> 00:52:59.090 theories. Do I want to work with this person? 00:52:59.210 --> 00:53:00.909 Do I want to associate with this person? Do I 00:53:00.909 --> 00:53:02.929 want to be friends with this person? Their mind 00:53:02.929 --> 00:53:05.349 is just cluttered with junk. Now, I don't necessarily 00:53:05.349 --> 00:53:08.409 blame them. I think that the human brain is not 00:53:08.409 --> 00:53:11.469 designed to absorb all of the world's breaking 00:53:11.469 --> 00:53:14.570 news, 24 -7 emergencies injected straight into 00:53:14.570 --> 00:53:17.190 your skull with clickbait headline news. If you 00:53:17.190 --> 00:53:19.780 pay attention to that stuff, even if you're well 00:53:19.780 --> 00:53:22.039 -meaning, even if you're sound of mind and body, 00:53:22.139 --> 00:53:24.760 it will eventually drive you insane. This goes 00:53:24.760 --> 00:53:27.199 back to Clockwork Orange where he has his eyes 00:53:27.199 --> 00:53:28.900 opened up and he's forced to watch the news. 00:53:29.119 --> 00:53:31.219 But I think that's what's happening right now 00:53:31.219 --> 00:53:34.079 because these are addictive, right? Twitter, 00:53:34.320 --> 00:53:36.820 Facebook, Instagram, these are weaponized. You 00:53:36.820 --> 00:53:39.460 have social statisticians and scientists and 00:53:39.460 --> 00:53:41.420 researchers and people in lab coats, literally 00:53:41.420 --> 00:53:44.199 best minds of our generation figuring out how 00:53:44.199 --> 00:53:46.940 to addict you to the news. And if you fall for 00:53:46.940 --> 00:53:49.489 it, if you get addicted, your brain will get 00:53:49.489 --> 00:53:52.289 destroyed. And I think this is the modern struggle. 00:53:52.889 --> 00:53:55.130 The modern struggle. So the ancient struggle 00:53:55.130 --> 00:53:57.389 used to be the tribal struggle. You had your 00:53:57.389 --> 00:53:59.469 tribe of friends and family. You had your religion. 00:53:59.550 --> 00:54:01.409 You had your country. You had your loyalty. You 00:54:01.409 --> 00:54:03.349 had your nationality. At least you had meaning 00:54:03.349 --> 00:54:05.090 and support, but now you would struggle against 00:54:05.090 --> 00:54:08.389 other tribes. Modern life, we're so free, everything's 00:54:08.389 --> 00:54:10.630 become atomized. We stand alone. You live in 00:54:10.630 --> 00:54:12.150 your apartment alone. You live in your house 00:54:12.150 --> 00:54:14.349 alone. Your parents don't live nearby. Your friends 00:54:14.349 --> 00:54:16.969 don't live nearby. You don't have any... tribal 00:54:16.969 --> 00:54:18.650 meaning. You don't believe in religion anymore. 00:54:18.809 --> 00:54:20.610 You don't believe in country anymore. It's fine. 00:54:20.650 --> 00:54:22.789 You got a lot of freedom. It's fantastic. But 00:54:22.789 --> 00:54:27.289 now when they come to attack you, you're alone 00:54:27.289 --> 00:54:29.570 and you can't resist. So how do they attack you? 00:54:29.650 --> 00:54:31.429 It's all well -meaning. I don't fault capitalism. 00:54:31.590 --> 00:54:33.949 I love capitalism, but look at how it happens. 00:54:33.969 --> 00:54:37.519 Social media, they've... They've massaged all 00:54:37.519 --> 00:54:40.400 the mechanisms to addict you like a skinner pigeon 00:54:40.400 --> 00:54:43.019 or a rat who's just going to click, click, click, 00:54:43.099 --> 00:54:45.440 click, click, can't put the phone down. Food, 00:54:45.659 --> 00:54:47.800 they've taken sugar and they've weaponized it. 00:54:47.880 --> 00:54:50.079 They've put it into all these different forms 00:54:50.079 --> 00:54:52.880 and varieties that you can't resist eating. Drugs, 00:54:52.920 --> 00:54:55.400 right? They've taken pharmaceuticals and plants 00:54:55.400 --> 00:54:58.599 and they've synthesized them. They've grown them 00:54:58.599 --> 00:55:00.699 in such a way that you get addicted. You can't 00:55:00.699 --> 00:55:03.059 put them down. Porn, right? If you're a young 00:55:03.059 --> 00:55:05.289 male, you wander on the internet. It'll like 00:55:05.289 --> 00:55:07.230 sap away your libido and you're not going out 00:55:07.230 --> 00:55:09.170 in real life society anymore because you've got 00:55:09.170 --> 00:55:11.849 this incredibly stimulating stuff coming at you. 00:55:11.889 --> 00:55:14.250 Video games, another way to addict people. So 00:55:14.250 --> 00:55:18.730 you have this, you have entire large factories 00:55:18.730 --> 00:55:21.030 of people that are working to addict you to these 00:55:21.030 --> 00:55:24.010 things and you stand alone. So the modern struggle 00:55:24.010 --> 00:55:26.250 as an individual is learning how to resist these 00:55:26.250 --> 00:55:28.409 things in the first place, drawing your own boundaries, 00:55:28.510 --> 00:55:31.309 and there's no one there to help you. That's 00:55:31.309 --> 00:55:35.260 terrifying. I mean, it is. It's a new road that 00:55:35.260 --> 00:55:38.139 needs to be navigated by young people that are 00:55:38.139 --> 00:55:41.960 – there's no map. There's no guidebook on how 00:55:41.960 --> 00:55:44.400 to handle this. Our generation is the transition 00:55:44.400 --> 00:55:47.800 generation. I think our kids will know how to 00:55:47.800 --> 00:55:49.139 handle it better because they'll grow up with 00:55:49.139 --> 00:55:51.639 it. I hope. I hope. I hope too because you're 00:55:51.639 --> 00:55:54.579 seeing some ridiculous behavior from people today 00:55:54.579 --> 00:55:56.840 that's so common. I mean, I don't know if you've 00:55:56.840 --> 00:55:58.380 been paying attention to this, but there was 00:55:58.380 --> 00:56:02.829 a guy who – He made a video. It turns out it 00:56:02.829 --> 00:56:04.590 wasn't even him that made the video. At least 00:56:04.590 --> 00:56:06.530 that's not what he said. But it was a video where 00:56:06.530 --> 00:56:09.750 he sort of doctored Nancy Pelosi talking and 00:56:09.750 --> 00:56:12.730 made it look like she was drunk. And then a bunch 00:56:12.730 --> 00:56:14.670 of people retweeted it. Like, oh, my God, look, 00:56:14.789 --> 00:56:18.590 she's drunk. And so one of the online publications, 00:56:18.789 --> 00:56:25.050 some website, tracked him down and doxed him. 00:56:25.230 --> 00:56:28.340 And it turned out he's just a day laborer. who 00:56:28.340 --> 00:56:31.760 is an African -American Trump fan and thought 00:56:31.760 --> 00:56:34.139 it would be funny to do that. And it turns out 00:56:34.139 --> 00:56:36.219 that he didn't even, at least according to him, 00:56:36.320 --> 00:56:38.440 he actually just put it up on his Facebook page. 00:56:38.780 --> 00:56:41.739 What's even more disturbing is Facebook gave 00:56:41.739 --> 00:56:45.119 up his information to this website. Right. For 00:56:45.119 --> 00:56:47.849 what? Because he made something funny that made 00:56:47.849 --> 00:56:49.889 people seem drunk. There's a million of those 00:56:49.889 --> 00:56:52.769 about me. I mean, you could find them. I think 00:56:52.769 --> 00:56:56.010 Facebook and Twitter and a bunch of these other 00:56:56.010 --> 00:56:58.110 social media platforms are committing slow motion 00:56:58.110 --> 00:57:01.099 suicide. through these kinds of activities. That 00:57:01.099 --> 00:57:02.760 was a stunning one, though, that they would give 00:57:02.760 --> 00:57:05.059 up this guy who's a laborer because he made a 00:57:05.059 --> 00:57:07.440 parody video or he made someone look foolish 00:57:07.440 --> 00:57:09.960 with editing. Well, you now have basically the 00:57:09.960 --> 00:57:12.300 media views it as their job to go after individuals 00:57:12.300 --> 00:57:14.900 they don't like. Yeah, I use media with air quotes 00:57:14.900 --> 00:57:16.340 in that regard because I don't think this is 00:57:16.340 --> 00:57:17.559 something that the New York Times would have 00:57:17.559 --> 00:57:19.860 done or anything responsible. But the media is 00:57:19.860 --> 00:57:21.500 getting more and more desperate, right? Because 00:57:21.500 --> 00:57:23.840 what happened was before the internet, you could 00:57:23.840 --> 00:57:26.219 have two local newspapers in every town and you 00:57:26.219 --> 00:57:29.110 could have two local... news stations, you know, 00:57:29.110 --> 00:57:31.849 TV stations in every town. And then CNN came 00:57:31.849 --> 00:57:34.550 along and started commoditizing the news 24 -7 00:57:34.550 --> 00:57:36.289 broadcasts. And then the internet came along. 00:57:36.309 --> 00:57:38.289 That was the final nail in the coffin. Because 00:57:38.289 --> 00:57:40.230 what the internet did was it said, actually, 00:57:40.269 --> 00:57:43.010 if there's a fact that's news, you can distribute 00:57:43.010 --> 00:57:44.989 that immediately. It can go on Twitter, it can 00:57:44.989 --> 00:57:46.989 go on Facebook, it gets reprinted on Google News 00:57:46.989 --> 00:57:49.090 1000 times. You know, you go on Google News, 00:57:49.150 --> 00:57:50.570 you're like, okay, what's the piece of news, 00:57:50.670 --> 00:57:53.710 which source and 3000 other articles. Too many, 00:57:53.829 --> 00:57:57.170 right? So news has become commoditized. So the 00:57:57.170 --> 00:58:00.289 entire news media has shifted into peddling opinions 00:58:00.289 --> 00:58:03.030 and entertainment. And so now they've become 00:58:03.030 --> 00:58:06.469 a variation between cheerleaders, shock troops, 00:58:06.610 --> 00:58:10.909 enforcers, talking heads. So these are now propaganda 00:58:10.909 --> 00:58:14.429 machines signaling for their tribes. There's 00:58:14.429 --> 00:58:15.789 a right -wing one. There's a left -wing one, 00:58:15.869 --> 00:58:17.250 right? There's the alt -right. There's a control 00:58:17.250 --> 00:58:19.329 left. And the two of them are just fighting it 00:58:19.329 --> 00:58:21.230 out using their various media organs and memes. 00:58:22.550 --> 00:58:24.909 Basically, when you see one of these news organizations 00:58:24.909 --> 00:58:27.809 doxing an individual, that's like a tank running 00:58:27.809 --> 00:58:30.369 over a soldier. That's what's going on. It's 00:58:30.369 --> 00:58:34.010 just war. And so there's no such thing anymore 00:58:34.010 --> 00:58:37.409 as a neutral media commentator. The illusion 00:58:37.409 --> 00:58:41.110 of objectivity that journalism had is lost. There's 00:58:41.110 --> 00:58:43.309 no longer one guy like a Walter Cronkite that 00:58:43.309 --> 00:58:45.289 everyone's going to listen to. It's now all just 00:58:45.289 --> 00:58:47.849 shock troops fighting wars with each other. How 00:58:47.849 --> 00:58:50.519 does this play out? Have you thought about it? 00:58:50.579 --> 00:58:53.539 Yeah, a little bit. So what the internet does, 00:58:53.679 --> 00:58:56.099 a lot of this is internet driven. What the internet 00:58:56.099 --> 00:59:00.380 does is the internet creates one giant aggregator 00:59:00.380 --> 00:59:03.820 or two for everything. One taxi dispatcher, one 00:59:03.820 --> 00:59:08.440 e -commerce store, one search engine, one social 00:59:08.440 --> 00:59:11.500 media site for friends and family, one for business, 00:59:11.639 --> 00:59:14.280 et cetera. So the internet is this giant aggregator 00:59:14.280 --> 00:59:17.519 where it creates one big hegemon for everything. 00:59:18.360 --> 00:59:22.280 And it creates an atomized long tail of millions 00:59:22.280 --> 00:59:24.739 and millions of individuals. What it gets rid 00:59:24.739 --> 00:59:27.920 of is the medium -sized ones in the middle. So, 00:59:27.940 --> 00:59:30.239 for example, you might have had like seven Hollywood 00:59:30.239 --> 00:59:31.780 studios. Well, it's all going to be Netflix. 00:59:32.099 --> 00:59:35.699 You had, you know, like... 10 large e -commerce 00:59:35.699 --> 00:59:39.500 players, commerce players from Walmart to Costco 00:59:39.500 --> 00:59:42.260 to, you know, Kmart and whatever. No, now it's 00:59:42.260 --> 00:59:44.719 just going to be Amazon and a ton of small individual 00:59:44.719 --> 00:59:47.239 brands. So that's the world that we're headed 00:59:47.239 --> 00:59:49.800 towards. One hegemon and millions of individuals. 00:59:50.320 --> 00:59:54.300 So where it ends up long term is media will be 00:59:54.300 --> 00:59:56.719 a few gigantic outlets. You know, it could be 00:59:56.719 --> 00:59:58.559 the New York Times. It could be Facebook, a few 00:59:58.559 --> 01:00:00.420 like that. And there's going to be just a really 01:00:00.420 --> 01:00:02.679 long tail of millions of independent people. 01:00:02.980 --> 01:00:05.280 So this idea, of who's a journalist and who's 01:00:05.280 --> 01:00:07.099 not. You know, is Assange a journalist or not? 01:00:07.460 --> 01:00:09.280 Everyone's a journalist. That's the world that 01:00:09.280 --> 01:00:12.139 we're headed towards. I do think that extreme 01:00:12.139 --> 01:00:14.840 power, the most powerful people in the world 01:00:14.840 --> 01:00:17.889 today. And this is not well known, but the most 01:00:17.889 --> 01:00:20.269 powerful people in the world today are the people 01:00:20.269 --> 01:00:22.090 who are writing the algorithms for Twitter and 01:00:22.090 --> 01:00:24.690 Facebook and Instagram. Because they're controlling 01:00:24.690 --> 01:00:26.469 the spread of information. They're literally 01:00:26.469 --> 01:00:28.929 rewriting people's brains. They're programming 01:00:28.929 --> 01:00:31.409 the culture. And they're doing it very subtly. 01:00:31.489 --> 01:00:34.070 Like Google, I believe that one of their execs 01:00:34.070 --> 01:00:36.449 got up in front of Congress and the congressman 01:00:36.449 --> 01:00:39.789 asked him, do you manipulate search results? 01:00:39.949 --> 01:00:41.550 And he said, no, we do not manipulate search 01:00:41.550 --> 01:00:45.079 results. Really? That's your job. That is literally 01:00:45.079 --> 01:00:47.800 all Google does. Google has one job, which is 01:00:47.800 --> 01:00:50.059 to manipulate search results, to pull them out 01:00:50.059 --> 01:00:52.260 of the noise and rank them properly. And the 01:00:52.260 --> 01:00:55.300 precise algorithms of how they do that is very 01:00:55.300 --> 01:00:58.119 hidden, very complex, but influences the hearts 01:00:58.119 --> 01:01:00.679 and minds of everybody, including all the voters. 01:01:01.019 --> 01:01:03.900 Now, if Google, Facebook, and Twitter had been 01:01:03.900 --> 01:01:06.079 smart about this, they would not have picked 01:01:06.079 --> 01:01:08.519 sides. They would have said, we're publishers. 01:01:08.860 --> 01:01:10.480 Whatever goes through our pipes goes through 01:01:10.480 --> 01:01:12.670 our pipes. If it's illegal, we'll take it down, 01:01:12.730 --> 01:01:14.789 give us a court order. Otherwise, we don't touch 01:01:14.789 --> 01:01:17.010 it. It's like the phone company. If I call you 01:01:17.010 --> 01:01:19.050 up and I say something horrible to you on the 01:01:19.050 --> 01:01:20.630 phone, the phone company doesn't get in trouble. 01:01:20.969 --> 01:01:23.409 But the moment they started taking stuff down 01:01:23.409 --> 01:01:25.610 that wasn't illegal because somebody screamed, 01:01:26.010 --> 01:01:28.510 they basically lost their right to be viewed 01:01:28.510 --> 01:01:31.030 as a carrier. And now all of a sudden, they've 01:01:31.030 --> 01:01:33.369 taken on liability. So they're sliding down the 01:01:33.369 --> 01:01:36.630 slippery slope into ruin, where the left wants 01:01:36.630 --> 01:01:38.050 them to take down the right, the right wants 01:01:38.050 --> 01:01:39.969 them to take down the left. And now they have 01:01:39.969 --> 01:01:42.590 no more friends, they have no allies. Traditionally, 01:01:42.630 --> 01:01:44.630 the libertarian leaning Republicans and Democrats 01:01:44.630 --> 01:01:46.309 would have stood up in principle for the common 01:01:46.309 --> 01:01:48.710 carriers, but now they won't. So my guess is, 01:01:48.809 --> 01:01:51.730 as soon as Congress, and this day is coming, 01:01:51.769 --> 01:01:53.829 if not already here, it might even been here 01:01:53.829 --> 01:01:55.630 today, actually, because I saw something related 01:01:55.630 --> 01:01:59.969 in the news. The day is coming. When the politicians 01:01:59.969 --> 01:02:04.269 realize that these social media platforms are 01:02:04.269 --> 01:02:06.789 picking the next president, the next congressman, 01:02:06.809 --> 01:02:08.889 they're literally picking. And they have the 01:02:08.889 --> 01:02:11.210 power to pick, so they will be controlled by 01:02:11.210 --> 01:02:14.340 the government. In what way? How do you think 01:02:14.340 --> 01:02:15.840 they're going to be controlled? Do you think 01:02:15.840 --> 01:02:17.699 they're going to have to adhere to strict principles 01:02:17.699 --> 01:02:19.559 of freedom of speech? No, no. Unfortunately, 01:02:19.760 --> 01:02:22.739 it's headed in the opposite direction. I wish 01:02:22.739 --> 01:02:25.280 it was freedom of speech. Much more likely they're 01:02:25.280 --> 01:02:27.699 going to be, in the short to medium term, they're 01:02:27.699 --> 01:02:29.920 going to be hauled in for hearings. They're going 01:02:29.920 --> 01:02:31.820 to be pressured massively, do this, don't do 01:02:31.820 --> 01:02:34.739 that. My concern about that is the hearings that 01:02:34.739 --> 01:02:36.539 I saw with Zuckerberg, those people were completely 01:02:36.539 --> 01:02:38.239 incompetent. They didn't seem to understand. 01:02:38.280 --> 01:02:39.789 They don't. They don't. But they're just applying 01:02:39.789 --> 01:02:41.469 pressure. They're just trying to scare him so 01:02:41.469 --> 01:02:43.869 he'll do what they want. What do they want him 01:02:43.869 --> 01:02:46.889 to do? They want him to basically suppress the 01:02:46.889 --> 01:02:49.150 other side. So if you're a right wing, you want 01:02:49.150 --> 01:02:50.630 to suppress the left wing. If you're a left wing, 01:02:50.670 --> 01:02:52.650 you want to suppress the right wing. And if you 01:02:52.650 --> 01:02:54.630 just see where these companies are headquartered 01:02:54.630 --> 01:02:57.449 in Silicon Valley, all the sensors, and that's 01:02:57.449 --> 01:02:59.010 really what they are. There are sensors working 01:02:59.010 --> 01:03:01.929 inside these companies. They're called by different 01:03:01.929 --> 01:03:03.889 names, obviously, right? It's doublespeak. You 01:03:03.889 --> 01:03:05.329 call it the Department of Defense when it's the 01:03:05.329 --> 01:03:07.530 Department of War. So in this case, the Department 01:03:07.530 --> 01:03:09.369 of Safety and Trust when really it's the Department 01:03:09.369 --> 01:03:11.610 of Censorship. The sensors are inside Silicon 01:03:11.610 --> 01:03:13.469 Valley, so it's going to reflect Silicon Valley's 01:03:13.469 --> 01:03:16.090 politics. Which is extremely progressive left 01:03:16.090 --> 01:03:19.079 wing. Yeah. if you're not that, you really have 01:03:19.079 --> 01:03:22.199 no place. That's right. Try being a conservative, 01:03:22.260 --> 01:03:25.059 an open conservative at Google. Good luck. Now 01:03:25.059 --> 01:03:28.900 you get lynched. It's crazy. I mean, I don't 01:03:28.900 --> 01:03:32.880 think that there was ever a thing like that that 01:03:32.880 --> 01:03:37.280 was so influential and so politically, ideologically 01:03:37.280 --> 01:03:40.829 one -sided. Yeah, there's a little saying on 01:03:40.829 --> 01:03:42.389 the internet, I think it's called conquest law, 01:03:42.469 --> 01:03:44.969 that any organization that's not explicitly right 01:03:44.969 --> 01:03:48.929 -wing eventually becomes left -wing. And I don't 01:03:48.929 --> 01:03:50.969 know why that's true, but it does seem to me 01:03:50.969 --> 01:03:53.550 to be true. It's a fascinating battle that's 01:03:53.550 --> 01:03:55.309 going on right now. I mean, it really is. And 01:03:55.309 --> 01:03:58.989 conservatives, as far as social media is concerned, 01:03:59.170 --> 01:04:01.610 they're just getting chopped off at the hams, 01:04:01.610 --> 01:04:04.110 left and right. What will eventually happen is 01:04:04.110 --> 01:04:09.190 that whenever you suppress speech, the organism 01:04:09.190 --> 01:04:11.789 metastasizes. Then it has to start turning towards 01:04:11.789 --> 01:04:14.210 other means. If you're unlucky, it goes towards 01:04:14.210 --> 01:04:17.130 violence. If you're lucky, they find other outlets. 01:04:17.449 --> 01:04:19.449 I think what will happen is we will start creating 01:04:19.449 --> 01:04:22.510 decentralized media that's not owned by any single 01:04:22.510 --> 01:04:24.530 entity that can't be suppressed or shut down 01:04:24.530 --> 01:04:26.289 that will then start spreading these various... 01:04:26.599 --> 01:04:29.119 And that will take the place of Twitter or Facebook 01:04:29.119 --> 01:04:30.280 or whatever. That's right. But it's going to 01:04:30.280 --> 01:04:32.260 take 10 years, 20 years. It's not overnight. 01:04:32.440 --> 01:04:34.579 Well, you know, Twitter took 10 years to get 01:04:34.579 --> 01:04:36.139 to the point where it's at this mess right now. 01:04:36.280 --> 01:04:39.380 But it was so interesting to have Jack Dorsey 01:04:39.380 --> 01:04:42.159 and to talk to him about where it's going, where 01:04:42.159 --> 01:04:44.219 he thinks it's going, and his own principles, 01:04:44.480 --> 01:04:47.119 which he believes that it's a fundamental right. 01:04:47.239 --> 01:04:49.199 And he believes that freedom of speech is something 01:04:49.199 --> 01:04:53.880 that we all should have and that these. platforms 01:04:53.880 --> 01:04:58.199 should essentially be like like utilities like 01:04:58.199 --> 01:05:00.519 the electric company jack is correct and he has 01:05:00.519 --> 01:05:02.619 the right vision it's just he's in an organization 01:05:02.619 --> 01:05:04.539 where the other individuals in the organization 01:05:04.539 --> 01:05:07.340 feel differently very differently so the organization 01:05:07.340 --> 01:05:10.659 itself can get hijacked and his timeline for 01:05:10.659 --> 01:05:15.110 changing things is like it's decades. I mean, 01:05:15.150 --> 01:05:17.309 I, I don't, I shouldn't say decades, but I mean, 01:05:17.309 --> 01:05:19.429 I was like, when do you think that something, 01:05:19.630 --> 01:05:22.090 but there, there was a part, there was one idea 01:05:22.090 --> 01:05:26.050 of having an uncensored Twitter, like one Twitter. 01:05:26.090 --> 01:05:27.929 That's the wild West. Like you can have regular 01:05:27.929 --> 01:05:30.690 Twitter or you could try wild West Twitter. Like, 01:05:30.710 --> 01:05:32.030 well, that, that already exists as a network 01:05:32.030 --> 01:05:34.900 called gab. Yes, but Gab isn't even Wild West 01:05:34.900 --> 01:05:38.539 Twitter. When people dox people, they remove 01:05:38.539 --> 01:05:41.440 things like that. Yeah, I mean, I think there's 01:05:41.440 --> 01:05:44.239 certainly lines around violence and illegality 01:05:44.239 --> 01:05:46.940 that you don't want to cross, but Gab is closer 01:05:46.940 --> 01:05:49.039 to a free speech platform, but it's still not 01:05:49.039 --> 01:05:50.960 decentralized. It can still get shut down. It 01:05:50.960 --> 01:05:53.059 can still get taken out. Well, it's also suppressed 01:05:53.059 --> 01:05:56.619 heavily. Yes, and the people on there are right 01:05:56.619 --> 01:05:58.420 now extremely right -wing, so it's not a pleasant 01:05:58.420 --> 01:06:00.039 place for someone like me to hang out. Well, 01:06:00.039 --> 01:06:01.400 it's all the people that have been kicked off 01:06:01.400 --> 01:06:04.320 of something else. So try going over there and 01:06:04.320 --> 01:06:06.579 being moderate. Try going over there. There's 01:06:06.579 --> 01:06:08.320 no room for you. Yeah, unfortunately, because 01:06:08.320 --> 01:06:11.340 I don't identify as any party or any creed. It 01:06:11.340 --> 01:06:14.650 doesn't work for me. Is that a problem in Silicon 01:06:14.650 --> 01:06:17.130 Valley when you don't identify as anything? Do 01:06:17.130 --> 01:06:19.630 you get pressure? Totally. It used to be okay. 01:06:19.670 --> 01:06:22.130 It's not okay anymore. When was it okay? Like 01:06:22.130 --> 01:06:24.269 10 years ago, I would say it was okay. And then 01:06:24.269 --> 01:06:26.230 you started seeing a shift? Yeah, and now you 01:06:26.230 --> 01:06:28.050 have to pick sides. Otherwise, you're automatically 01:06:28.050 --> 01:06:30.349 the enemy. Really? Yeah, struggle sessions and 01:06:30.349 --> 01:06:33.989 all that. God, struggle sessions. I'm exaggerating 01:06:33.989 --> 01:06:36.570 for effect, but it definitely has that oppressive 01:06:36.570 --> 01:06:38.610 feeling to it. Right, and you also have to be 01:06:38.610 --> 01:06:41.170 politically outspoken. It can't be something 01:06:41.170 --> 01:06:43.449 that you just stay neutral. Right. It's like 01:06:43.449 --> 01:06:45.570 when Tim Ferriss, I think at some point, put 01:06:45.570 --> 01:06:47.550 out a tweet about how you can't just say anything 01:06:47.550 --> 01:06:49.809 anymore and people are being suppressed. And 01:06:49.809 --> 01:06:52.070 a whole bunch of people, a lot of them from Silicon 01:06:52.070 --> 01:06:53.789 Valley, piled in and said, what is it that you 01:06:53.789 --> 01:06:55.090 can't say? What are you afraid to say? You can 01:06:55.090 --> 01:06:56.710 say whatever you want, Tim. Go ahead. What are 01:06:56.710 --> 01:07:00.130 you afraid of? They were like baiting him. What 01:07:00.130 --> 01:07:02.269 was he trying to say? Wow, we have to put him 01:07:02.269 --> 01:07:04.090 in that box. He was someone who was thinking 01:07:04.090 --> 01:07:05.710 about saying something he shouldn't have said. 01:07:05.809 --> 01:07:08.250 Exactly. Now we know. One great tweet I saw was, 01:07:08.369 --> 01:07:10.190 you know, the left won the culture wars. Now 01:07:10.190 --> 01:07:11.750 they're just driving around shooting the survivors. 01:07:12.619 --> 01:07:16.579 Wow, that's hilarious. Yeah, I wonder. I wonder 01:07:16.579 --> 01:07:18.900 who has won the culture war. There's certainly 01:07:18.900 --> 01:07:21.800 a battle that's been won in terms of control 01:07:21.800 --> 01:07:24.699 of social media. Control of social media is absolutely 01:07:24.699 --> 01:07:28.320 left. Well, this is unfortunate. for conservatives, 01:07:28.500 --> 01:07:31.380 but technology is a force that also pushes left. 01:07:31.619 --> 01:07:33.500 So if you look all throughout human history, 01:07:33.719 --> 01:07:36.000 like the left essentially grows and grows and 01:07:36.000 --> 01:07:38.579 grows, right? Why is that? Why is it inexorably 01:07:38.579 --> 01:07:41.440 that, as some commentators have said, Leviathan 01:07:41.440 --> 01:07:43.840 slouches left, right? Leviathan is the government. 01:07:43.940 --> 01:07:46.480 Why does it slouch left? And I think a lot of 01:07:46.480 --> 01:07:49.139 that has been because of technology. Technology 01:07:49.139 --> 01:07:51.719 has made it so that it makes more like industrial 01:07:51.719 --> 01:07:53.940 revolution technology. We all band together. 01:07:54.079 --> 01:07:56.619 We're wards of the state, right? Contraception 01:07:56.619 --> 01:07:59.139 is a technology that kind of helps lean leftward. 01:07:59.139 --> 01:08:00.960 It takes away from the family unit. Abortion 01:08:00.960 --> 01:08:04.000 is a technology, right? It wasn't possible thousands 01:08:04.000 --> 01:08:07.320 of years ago. So technology actually empowers 01:08:07.320 --> 01:08:10.099 the individual. The individual means that you 01:08:10.099 --> 01:08:12.039 have the breakdown of family structure and religion 01:08:12.039 --> 01:08:13.500 and all that. And I'm not necessarily opposed 01:08:13.500 --> 01:08:16.399 to that. it does mean that there's a leftward 01:08:16.399 --> 01:08:19.159 shift to it. Now we're getting a small set of 01:08:19.159 --> 01:08:21.039 technologies that actually can take you more 01:08:21.039 --> 01:08:23.979 rightward. Encryption is an example because encryption 01:08:23.979 --> 01:08:26.659 makes it easier to have privacy. It makes it 01:08:26.659 --> 01:08:28.720 easier to have money that is outside of the state. 01:08:29.819 --> 01:08:32.119 Guns, 3D printing of guns is an example of a 01:08:32.119 --> 01:08:34.439 technology that is more of a rightward shift. 01:08:35.239 --> 01:08:37.939 But generally technology leads the world left. 01:08:38.779 --> 01:08:43.159 Yeah, it's also... usually highly educated people 01:08:43.159 --> 01:08:45.399 that are involved in technology in the first 01:08:45.399 --> 01:08:48.739 place. And I think when you look at universities 01:08:48.739 --> 01:08:51.699 in particular, they tend to lean left in this 01:08:51.699 --> 01:08:56.140 country as well. Well, universities, what happened 01:08:56.140 --> 01:08:58.689 with universities is very interesting. So universities 01:08:58.689 --> 01:09:03.989 first became the arbiters of data and intellectualism 01:09:03.989 --> 01:09:05.949 and what's right and wrong. So there's a time 01:09:05.949 --> 01:09:07.630 period when it was like, should we be doing that 01:09:07.630 --> 01:09:09.590 or not? Well, let's look at the university. What 01:09:09.590 --> 01:09:11.350 do they have to say? What are the smartest people, 01:09:11.569 --> 01:09:13.649 the professors, the think tanks have to say? 01:09:13.989 --> 01:09:16.829 And the universities got this credibility from 01:09:16.829 --> 01:09:20.869 the hard sciences. So they got this from physics 01:09:20.869 --> 01:09:24.289 and math and computer science and chemistry because 01:09:24.289 --> 01:09:26.369 these deliver real things, the Manhattan Project, 01:09:26.590 --> 01:09:29.729 the microprocessor, the space vehicles and so 01:09:29.729 --> 01:09:32.930 on, the electric car. So they gained this mantle 01:09:32.930 --> 01:09:35.850 of authority and legitimacy from the hard sciences. 01:09:36.109 --> 01:09:38.590 So then come the social sciences kind of sneak 01:09:38.590 --> 01:09:41.890 in. Then you get economics. And microeconomics 01:09:41.890 --> 01:09:43.850 is a real discipline, real science, real math 01:09:43.850 --> 01:09:47.409 behind it, logic, reason. And then you get macroeconomics. 01:09:47.470 --> 01:09:49.470 which can be politicized a little bit more voodoo. 01:09:49.470 --> 01:09:51.170 And then you get social studies and then you 01:09:51.170 --> 01:09:53.189 get gender studies and then you get blah, blah, 01:09:53.210 --> 01:09:55.170 blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And so what 01:09:55.170 --> 01:09:58.569 happened is that because we took scientists to 01:09:58.569 --> 01:10:01.949 be the high priests. of our new world. Science 01:10:01.949 --> 01:10:04.789 itself has gotten corrupted. And the social sciences, 01:10:04.909 --> 01:10:06.409 and you can tell they're fake sciences because 01:10:06.409 --> 01:10:08.149 they're the word science tacked on at the end, 01:10:08.250 --> 01:10:10.770 have come in and hijacked the universities and 01:10:10.770 --> 01:10:14.250 become the new think tanks. And so essentially 01:10:14.250 --> 01:10:16.550 what you see going on today in the universities 01:10:16.550 --> 01:10:19.109 is a war between the social sciences and the 01:10:19.109 --> 01:10:21.550 physical sciences. And the crossover point is 01:10:21.550 --> 01:10:24.640 biology. Where you can see the whole gender is 01:10:24.640 --> 01:10:27.000 a social construct movement is attacking biology 01:10:27.000 --> 01:10:30.180 and evolutionary biology. Just like in the social 01:10:30.180 --> 01:10:32.140 sphere, they're coming after the comedians. But 01:10:32.140 --> 01:10:34.060 you can see the struggle going on in the universities. 01:10:34.380 --> 01:10:36.939 And I would say the physical sciences are essentially 01:10:36.939 --> 01:10:41.399 losing that war. What can be done? Or is it just 01:10:41.399 --> 01:10:43.260 something that has to play out? Do we have to 01:10:43.260 --> 01:10:45.100 realize the consequences of the foolishness? 01:10:45.300 --> 01:10:47.300 The good news is the physical sciences have a 01:10:47.300 --> 01:10:51.109 reality on their side. Yeah, but it's not even, 01:10:51.250 --> 01:10:55.510 I mean, in many ways it's not respected. Yeah, 01:10:55.590 --> 01:10:57.869 but at the end of the day, your aircraft still 01:10:57.869 --> 01:11:00.930 has to fly. Your microprocessor still has to 01:11:00.930 --> 01:11:03.409 compute. So there's only so far they can take 01:11:03.409 --> 01:11:07.270 it. But I do see, for example, in biology, a 01:11:07.270 --> 01:11:09.210 lot of biologists are facing this difficult thing 01:11:09.210 --> 01:11:11.050 where they have to say things that they know 01:11:11.050 --> 01:11:13.470 are not true to keep their job. Like what? Well, 01:11:13.470 --> 01:11:16.069 you had Brett Weinstein on here, right? So that's 01:11:16.069 --> 01:11:19.229 a clear example. So there's just the crossover 01:11:19.229 --> 01:11:21.350 line of what is acceptable and what's not is 01:11:21.350 --> 01:11:23.810 entering into biology. And biology will probably 01:11:23.810 --> 01:11:27.010 suffer the most. Synthetic biology, for example, 01:11:27.689 --> 01:11:31.489 a lot of this will end up in China because you 01:11:31.489 --> 01:11:36.449 won't be able to map facts and reality and actions 01:11:36.449 --> 01:11:38.289 together. You won't be able to get grants. You 01:11:38.289 --> 01:11:40.590 won't be able to get the adulation of your peers. 01:11:41.369 --> 01:11:43.289 I don't know enough here, so now I'm in shaky 01:11:43.289 --> 01:11:45.949 territory. But it's just my sense that that crossover 01:11:45.949 --> 01:11:48.250 battleground right now is in evolutionary biology. 01:11:49.409 --> 01:11:52.489 Economics lost. Well, certainly in terms of gender. 01:11:54.619 --> 01:11:57.760 That seems to be one of the major battlegrounds. 01:11:57.760 --> 01:12:00.060 Yeah. It's also going to happen, for example, 01:12:00.100 --> 01:12:03.039 blank slate theory. Are we nature or are we nurture? 01:12:04.100 --> 01:12:07.260 It's kind of socially unacceptable to say that 01:12:07.260 --> 01:12:09.800 a lot of it is nature and not nurture or vice 01:12:09.800 --> 01:12:11.699 versa depending on which side you're on. Right. 01:12:11.880 --> 01:12:14.439 Those kinds of discussions get corrupted. They 01:12:14.439 --> 01:12:15.760 do get corrupted and it's really unfortunate 01:12:15.760 --> 01:12:19.140 because that's a – unbelievably important thing 01:12:19.140 --> 01:12:22.319 to understand. Like what makes a person a sociopath? 01:12:22.579 --> 01:12:25.880 What makes a person a super successful person, 01:12:25.960 --> 01:12:29.039 a winner? What makes a person a drug addict? 01:12:29.239 --> 01:12:32.439 What are these factors? You can't have a reasonable 01:12:32.439 --> 01:12:35.279 conversation about climate science anymore. It's 01:12:35.279 --> 01:12:36.899 not a science. It's all politicized. You can't 01:12:36.899 --> 01:12:38.560 even bring it up. Everyone's got their minds 01:12:38.560 --> 01:12:41.579 made up already. Well, what's uncomfortable to 01:12:41.579 --> 01:12:43.539 me is people have their minds made up and they 01:12:43.539 --> 01:12:46.439 don't even have the data. On most of these topics, 01:12:46.520 --> 01:12:48.619 people are talking past each other anyway. They're 01:12:48.619 --> 01:12:50.180 talking about different things. Like when you 01:12:50.180 --> 01:12:56.180 get into gun control, for example, right? One 01:12:56.180 --> 01:12:58.100 side is talking about the right to bear arms 01:12:58.100 --> 01:13:00.479 in case a tyrannical ruler or king tries to take 01:13:00.479 --> 01:13:03.140 over the country. The other side is talking about 01:13:03.140 --> 01:13:05.640 school shootings and protecting people in their 01:13:05.640 --> 01:13:08.140 homes from crime. So they're just talking about 01:13:08.140 --> 01:13:11.239 two different things. And it's just not politically 01:13:11.239 --> 01:13:13.619 acceptable to even talk about the same thing. 01:13:13.720 --> 01:13:16.020 Or when it gets to immigration, the right is 01:13:16.020 --> 01:13:19.729 talking about, you know. or the left is like 01:13:19.729 --> 01:13:22.109 bundling together illegal immigration and legal 01:13:22.109 --> 01:13:24.989 immigration into one thing, right? Whereas on 01:13:24.989 --> 01:13:27.130 the right, sometimes you've got racists hiding 01:13:27.130 --> 01:13:28.869 in there, so it doesn't help their cause, right? 01:13:28.930 --> 01:13:30.670 They're talking about two different things. If 01:13:30.670 --> 01:13:32.090 they were talking about the same thing, which 01:13:32.090 --> 01:13:34.029 is how many immigrants should we let into the 01:13:34.029 --> 01:13:36.270 country? And, you know, what are the criteria 01:13:36.270 --> 01:13:38.670 for that? That would be a very different conversation 01:13:38.670 --> 01:13:41.289 than no immigrants or everybody comes in. And 01:13:41.289 --> 01:13:43.390 then also on the left, you know, you have this. 01:13:43.970 --> 01:13:46.130 that everybody who's currently coming in illegally 01:13:46.130 --> 01:13:47.810 is going to vote for the left because of where 01:13:47.810 --> 01:13:49.829 they're coming from and their socioeconomic circumstances. 01:13:50.989 --> 01:13:54.689 To me, the test of any good system is you build 01:13:54.689 --> 01:13:56.989 a system, hand it over to your enemies to run 01:13:56.989 --> 01:13:59.550 for the next decade. So, for example, if you 01:13:59.550 --> 01:14:02.029 want censorship on Twitter or Facebook, you should 01:14:02.029 --> 01:14:04.050 build that system and then hand it over to the 01:14:04.050 --> 01:14:05.750 other side to run. So if you're a left -winger 01:14:05.750 --> 01:14:09.010 who's promoting censorship... Let somebody else 01:14:09.010 --> 01:14:11.069 run it. Same with immigration. If you want an 01:14:11.069 --> 01:14:13.409 immigration system, build a system, then hand 01:14:13.409 --> 01:14:15.569 it over to the other side to run it. That's how 01:14:15.569 --> 01:14:17.409 you know it's a good system. There's no room 01:14:17.409 --> 01:14:20.130 for nuance when you're dealing with these political 01:14:20.130 --> 01:14:22.510 battlegrounds, when you're dealing with right 01:14:22.510 --> 01:14:26.729 versus left and one side has a clearly established 01:14:26.729 --> 01:14:30.689 stance that you're supposed to take. Like gun 01:14:30.689 --> 01:14:32.510 control is a great example of that, right? There's 01:14:32.510 --> 01:14:36.159 no room for... What about mental health? What 01:14:36.159 --> 01:14:38.640 about the fact that so many of these people are 01:14:38.640 --> 01:14:41.819 on psych medication? Why is that not being discussed? 01:14:41.819 --> 01:14:45.159 We're running one of the greatest mental health 01:14:45.159 --> 01:14:47.319 experiments in history when we're doping everybody 01:14:47.319 --> 01:14:51.359 up in SSRIs. And maybe if you give 30 million 01:14:51.359 --> 01:14:54.640 people SSRIs, maybe like 29 .9 million are a 01:14:54.640 --> 01:14:57.060 lot happier. And then you have a fraction that 01:14:57.060 --> 01:14:59.310 commit suicide or detonate. Yes. You're basically 01:14:59.310 --> 01:15:01.789 trading the mean for the variance. Right. You 01:15:01.789 --> 01:15:04.029 have blow -up risk. Yeah, there's no room for 01:15:04.029 --> 01:15:05.810 nuance, which is why I stay out of politics, 01:15:05.970 --> 01:15:08.430 largely. Do they drag you in, though, sometimes? 01:15:08.569 --> 01:15:10.189 They always try. Well, this conversation is going 01:15:10.189 --> 01:15:12.789 to force you to get dragged in. Sure. I'm sure 01:15:12.789 --> 01:15:14.069 there's going to be some people that— Here's 01:15:14.069 --> 01:15:17.510 the thing about politics. Because we have a first 01:15:17.510 --> 01:15:19.840 -past -the -post system. What that means is whoever 01:15:19.840 --> 01:15:22.500 wins 51 % of the vote in this country gets a 01:15:22.500 --> 01:15:24.960 lot of the power. It's not like proportional 01:15:24.960 --> 01:15:27.380 representation where the Greens have 10 % and 01:15:27.380 --> 01:15:29.579 the Libertarians have 3 % or whatever. It's just 01:15:29.579 --> 01:15:31.100 like you're all Democrat in power, now you're 01:15:31.100 --> 01:15:34.159 all Republican. Because of that, to win, you 01:15:34.159 --> 01:15:37.020 have to pick one of these two sides. You have 01:15:37.020 --> 01:15:41.159 to choose. You can't just basically say, I'm 01:15:41.159 --> 01:15:44.380 going to be... you know, nuanced about it. You 01:15:44.380 --> 01:15:46.060 can't vote for a third party that's throwing 01:15:46.060 --> 01:15:47.579 away your vote, right? I have a friend who's 01:15:47.579 --> 01:15:48.859 trying to fix that. He's starting this thing 01:15:48.859 --> 01:15:50.520 called a good party where like you kickstart 01:15:50.520 --> 01:15:52.500 your vote. So you combine all your votes, you 01:15:52.500 --> 01:15:54.380 hold them in reserve, and then when you have 01:15:54.380 --> 01:15:56.579 enough to win, then you vote that person in power, 01:15:56.760 --> 01:15:58.579 right? So you don't throw away your vote. But 01:15:58.579 --> 01:16:00.520 outside of those hacks, we're never going to 01:16:00.520 --> 01:16:02.800 get a third party elected. So because of that, 01:16:02.840 --> 01:16:05.300 all of your beliefs have to neatly fit into the 01:16:05.300 --> 01:16:07.859 Democrat bundle or the Republican bundle. And 01:16:07.859 --> 01:16:11.239 so when you get into that tribe, if you signal 01:16:11.239 --> 01:16:13.079 outside of that tribe, or out of that bundle, 01:16:13.140 --> 01:16:16.180 you get attacked. So it's literally, it's making 01:16:16.180 --> 01:16:18.840 you into an unclear thinker. It's making you 01:16:18.840 --> 01:16:21.380 into a muddled thinker. If all of your beliefs 01:16:21.380 --> 01:16:24.279 line up into one political party, you're not 01:16:24.279 --> 01:16:26.479 a clear thinker. If all your beliefs are the 01:16:26.479 --> 01:16:28.460 same as your neighbors and your friends, you're 01:16:28.460 --> 01:16:30.279 not a clear thinker. You're literally just, your 01:16:30.279 --> 01:16:32.300 beliefs are socialized. They're taken from other 01:16:32.300 --> 01:16:34.800 people. So if you want to be a clear thinker, 01:16:34.859 --> 01:16:36.819 you cannot pay attention to politics. It will 01:16:36.819 --> 01:16:43.649 destroy your ability to think. What dread. Most 01:16:43.649 --> 01:16:46.250 of modern life, all our diseases are diseases 01:16:46.250 --> 01:16:48.909 of abundance, not diseases of scarcity, right? 01:16:48.970 --> 01:16:52.630 Old times, I may have starved. Old times, if 01:16:52.630 --> 01:16:54.250 I got sugar, that was a wonderful thing. I should 01:16:54.250 --> 01:16:55.729 have eaten all the sugar to get my hands on. 01:16:55.850 --> 01:16:57.850 If I'd gotten a piece of news or gossip, that 01:16:57.850 --> 01:16:59.289 was interesting data. That would have helped 01:16:59.289 --> 01:17:02.149 my life and moved me forward. If I'd gotten some 01:17:02.149 --> 01:17:04.449 brief amount of entertainment, whether through 01:17:04.449 --> 01:17:06.810 video games or magazines or whatever, that would 01:17:06.810 --> 01:17:09.329 have been good. Now it's all diseases of abundance. 01:17:09.590 --> 01:17:12.460 We are overexposed to everything. So the way 01:17:12.460 --> 01:17:15.159 to survive in modern society is to be an ascetic. 01:17:15.300 --> 01:17:17.779 It is to retreat from society. There's too much 01:17:17.779 --> 01:17:20.079 society everywhere you go. Society in your phone, 01:17:20.159 --> 01:17:21.979 society in your pocket, society in your ears. 01:17:22.159 --> 01:17:24.199 You're being socialized right now by listening 01:17:24.199 --> 01:17:26.520 to this podcast. We're socializing you. We're 01:17:26.520 --> 01:17:28.619 programming you. Everyone's trying to program 01:17:28.619 --> 01:17:31.220 everybody. The only solution is to turn it off. 01:17:31.600 --> 01:17:34.100 The only solution is to turn it off and concentrate 01:17:34.100 --> 01:17:37.779 on your breathing. Meditation, yeah. Yes. I mean, 01:17:37.779 --> 01:17:40.699 that's huge. It's been a lifesaver for me. Oh, 01:17:40.699 --> 01:17:43.560 I do it. And I do it whenever I get like spare 01:17:43.560 --> 01:17:45.460 time. I was at the doctor's office this morning 01:17:45.460 --> 01:17:47.800 and I knew it was going to be 20 minutes. So 01:17:47.800 --> 01:17:49.739 I just sat there with my eyes closed for 20 minutes 01:17:49.739 --> 01:17:52.180 and I meditated. You know, when I was growing 01:17:52.180 --> 01:17:53.899 up, there was this statement. I think it was 01:17:53.899 --> 01:17:56.439 Pascal. He said, you know, all of man's problems 01:17:56.439 --> 01:17:59.000 arise because he cannot sit by himself in a room 01:17:59.000 --> 01:18:02.000 for 30 minutes alone. And it's very true. I always 01:18:02.000 --> 01:18:04.659 needed to be stimulated. And when the iPhone 01:18:04.659 --> 01:18:07.199 came along, boredom was dead. I would never be 01:18:07.199 --> 01:18:09.579 bored again. Even if I'm standing in line, I'm 01:18:09.579 --> 01:18:11.779 on my iPhone. And I thought it was great. And 01:18:11.779 --> 01:18:13.699 when I was a kid, I used to try and overclock 01:18:13.699 --> 01:18:15.319 my brain. Be like, how many thoughts can I think 01:18:15.319 --> 01:18:17.039 at once? The answer is only one. But I would 01:18:17.039 --> 01:18:19.100 try to think multiple thoughts at once. And I 01:18:19.100 --> 01:18:21.199 was proud of that. I was proud that my brain 01:18:21.199 --> 01:18:23.279 was always running. This engine was always moving. 01:18:23.819 --> 01:18:25.979 And it's a disease. It's actually the road to 01:18:25.979 --> 01:18:29.159 misery. And now that I'm older, I realize like, 01:18:29.789 --> 01:18:32.510 You actually want to, again, rest your mind. 01:18:32.670 --> 01:18:34.470 You want to learn how to settle into your mind. 01:18:34.510 --> 01:18:36.869 Now, I look forward to solitary confinement. 01:18:37.109 --> 01:18:38.949 You leave me alone for a day, it'll be like the 01:18:38.949 --> 01:18:42.050 happiest day I've had in a while. And that is 01:18:42.050 --> 01:18:44.010 a superpower that I think everybody can attain. 01:18:44.930 --> 01:18:47.649 The superpower of learning to be alone and enjoying 01:18:47.649 --> 01:18:51.109 it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think it's critical. 01:18:51.210 --> 01:18:54.989 And I do think that this... These times where 01:18:54.989 --> 01:18:58.329 you just think about things, just be alone and 01:18:58.329 --> 01:19:01.390 think about things are so rare these days. And 01:19:01.390 --> 01:19:05.369 I think during those rare times is when you really 01:19:05.369 --> 01:19:08.390 get to understand what you actually believe or 01:19:08.390 --> 01:19:11.140 don't believe. Yeah, it's funny. When I first 01:19:11.140 --> 01:19:13.260 started meditating, it was really hard, right? 01:19:13.399 --> 01:19:15.619 Because everybody, I think a lot of people who 01:19:15.619 --> 01:19:17.319 listen to this broadcast, they've heard of meditation 01:19:17.319 --> 01:19:19.699 that has a good rep. So everybody tries it. They 01:19:19.699 --> 01:19:22.180 struggle. They kind of give it up. It's one of 01:19:22.180 --> 01:19:24.020 those things that everybody says they do, but 01:19:24.020 --> 01:19:26.420 nobody actually does, right? It's like not eating 01:19:26.420 --> 01:19:28.560 sugar, right? Everyone talks about how, yeah, 01:19:28.579 --> 01:19:31.020 I don't eat sugar. But like, yeah, then the dessert 01:19:31.020 --> 01:19:32.560 tray rolls around and everyone's going for the 01:19:32.560 --> 01:19:35.699 cookies, right? So it's become one of those things. 01:19:35.779 --> 01:19:37.560 And in fact, it's now even become a signaling 01:19:37.560 --> 01:19:39.359 thing where it's like, oh, how much? Did you 01:19:39.359 --> 01:19:41.699 meditate? I meditated this much. Or, you know, 01:19:41.699 --> 01:19:43.260 there are people now wearing headbands saying, 01:19:43.340 --> 01:19:44.939 with Tweety Bird, a chirp, and then when they're 01:19:44.939 --> 01:19:47.060 in deep meditation, I don't know how they make 01:19:47.060 --> 01:19:48.779 it work, but they'll be like, I got a lot of 01:19:48.779 --> 01:19:50.760 chirps today. How many chirps did you get? Oh, 01:19:50.800 --> 01:19:52.800 God. Oh, your meditation technique is wrong. 01:19:52.880 --> 01:19:55.800 Mine is right. But really, all it is is the art 01:19:55.800 --> 01:19:59.180 of doing nothing, okay? And it's important because 01:19:59.180 --> 01:20:03.260 I think when we grow up, right, it's all the 01:20:03.260 --> 01:20:05.939 stuff happening to you in your life, and some 01:20:05.939 --> 01:20:08.210 of it you're processing. Some of it you're absorbing. 01:20:08.510 --> 01:20:11.090 And some of it you should probably think a little 01:20:11.090 --> 01:20:12.890 bit more about and work through, but you don't. 01:20:12.890 --> 01:20:15.109 You don't have time. So it gets buried in you. 01:20:15.170 --> 01:20:16.729 And it's all these preferences and judgments 01:20:16.729 --> 01:20:19.310 and unresolved situations and issues. And it's 01:20:19.310 --> 01:20:21.649 like your email inbox. It's just piling up email 01:20:21.649 --> 01:20:23.729 after email after email that's not answered going 01:20:23.729 --> 01:20:26.729 back 10, 20, 30, 40 years. And then when you 01:20:26.729 --> 01:20:28.770 sit down to meditate, those emails start coming 01:20:28.770 --> 01:20:30.329 back at you. Hey, what about this issue? What 01:20:30.329 --> 01:20:31.890 about that issue? Have you solved this? Did you 01:20:31.890 --> 01:20:33.569 think about that? You have regrets there. You 01:20:33.569 --> 01:20:36.729 have issues there. That gets scary. People don't 01:20:36.729 --> 01:20:38.470 want to do that. It's like, it's not working. 01:20:38.529 --> 01:20:40.689 I can't clear my mind. I better get up and not 01:20:40.689 --> 01:20:43.270 do this. But really what's happening is it's 01:20:43.270 --> 01:20:45.850 self -therapy. It's just that instead of paying 01:20:45.850 --> 01:20:47.689 a therapist to sit there and listen to you, you're 01:20:47.689 --> 01:20:49.989 listening to yourself. And you just have to sit 01:20:49.989 --> 01:20:51.989 there as those emails go through one by one. 01:20:52.010 --> 01:20:53.710 You work through each of them until you get to 01:20:53.710 --> 01:20:56.550 the magical inbox zero. And there comes a day 01:20:56.550 --> 01:20:58.810 when you sit down, you realize the only things 01:20:58.810 --> 01:21:00.250 you're thinking about are things that happened 01:21:00.250 --> 01:21:03.100 yesterday. processed everything else, not necessarily 01:21:03.100 --> 01:21:05.159 even resolved it, but at least listen to yourself. 01:21:05.800 --> 01:21:08.079 And that's when meditation starts. And I think 01:21:08.079 --> 01:21:10.399 it's a very powerful thing that everybody should 01:21:10.399 --> 01:21:12.560 experience. And that's when you arrive upon the 01:21:12.560 --> 01:21:14.779 art of doing nothing. Well, I think it's even 01:21:14.779 --> 01:21:16.560 a problem that most people are getting their 01:21:16.560 --> 01:21:19.420 meditation from an app. I will not use an app. 01:21:19.560 --> 01:21:21.640 It's sneaky. I mean, Sam Harris is a very good 01:21:21.640 --> 01:21:24.140 meditation app, I should say that. But you should 01:21:24.140 --> 01:21:26.949 be able to just do it. And many people can't. 01:21:26.970 --> 01:21:29.529 It is literally the art of doing nothing. Yes. 01:21:29.569 --> 01:21:31.949 All you need to do for meditation is just sit 01:21:31.949 --> 01:21:34.109 down, close your eyes, comfortable position. 01:21:34.270 --> 01:21:35.970 Whatever happens, happens. If you think, you 01:21:35.970 --> 01:21:37.630 think. If you don't think, you don't think. Don't 01:21:37.630 --> 01:21:39.189 put effort into it. Don't put effort against 01:21:39.189 --> 01:21:41.510 it. It's all you need. Do you concentrate on 01:21:41.510 --> 01:21:43.250 your breath or do you have a specific technique? 01:21:43.470 --> 01:21:46.170 Nothing. Nothing. You just sit. You just sit. 01:21:46.270 --> 01:21:48.430 I think about my breath. That's all I do. You 01:21:48.430 --> 01:21:51.130 can do that. I try to only concentrate on breathing. 01:21:51.329 --> 01:21:54.090 I used to do that, but at some level. all the 01:21:54.090 --> 01:21:56.569 concentration. Every meditation technique is 01:21:56.569 --> 01:21:58.069 leading you to the same thing, which is just 01:21:58.069 --> 01:22:01.310 witnessing. And concentration is a technique 01:22:01.310 --> 01:22:03.890 to still your mind enough that you can then drop 01:22:03.890 --> 01:22:06.710 the object of concentration. So you could also 01:22:06.710 --> 01:22:08.869 just try going straight to the end game. The 01:22:08.869 --> 01:22:10.489 problem with what I'm talking about, which is 01:22:10.489 --> 01:22:12.869 not focusing on your breath, is you will have 01:22:12.869 --> 01:22:15.170 to listen to your mind for a long time. It's 01:22:15.170 --> 01:22:16.670 not going to work unless you do at least an hour 01:22:16.670 --> 01:22:19.069 a day, and preferably at least 60 days before 01:22:19.069 --> 01:22:21.329 you kind of work through a lot of issues. So 01:22:21.329 --> 01:22:23.130 it'll be hell for a while. But when you come 01:22:23.130 --> 01:22:24.970 out the other side, it's great. You get rid of 01:22:24.970 --> 01:22:28.390 the chatter. Or when the chatter comes, it's 01:22:28.390 --> 01:22:30.510 in the background. It's dimmer. It's smaller. 01:22:30.689 --> 01:22:32.550 You've heard it before. You see the patterns. 01:22:33.189 --> 01:22:35.170 It's more recent. It's something you need to 01:22:35.170 --> 01:22:39.029 resolve anyway. And you will get moments of actual 01:22:39.029 --> 01:22:43.670 silence. What's your ultimate state when you 01:22:43.670 --> 01:22:46.430 meditate? Is there a state where you've achieved 01:22:46.430 --> 01:22:51.569 rarely, if ever, where you just... you're in 01:22:51.569 --> 01:22:54.890 bliss or you're in harmony or you're in enlightenment. 01:22:55.869 --> 01:22:59.750 It's kind of indescribable because when you're 01:22:59.750 --> 01:23:01.649 really meditating, you're not there. When there's 01:23:01.649 --> 01:23:03.430 no thoughts, there's no experience or there's 01:23:03.430 --> 01:23:07.369 nothing. There's just nothing. So it's hard to 01:23:07.369 --> 01:23:09.970 describe, but I would say that it's like a... 01:23:12.349 --> 01:23:14.529 Every psychedelic state that people encounter 01:23:14.529 --> 01:23:17.369 using so -called plant medicines can be arrived 01:23:17.369 --> 01:23:19.989 at just through pure meditation. And I've definitely 01:23:19.989 --> 01:23:22.930 hit some of those states. You've hit some transcendent 01:23:22.930 --> 01:23:25.170 psychedelic states where you're hallucinating 01:23:25.170 --> 01:23:27.409 the whole deal? I've had trippy visuals. I've 01:23:27.409 --> 01:23:30.270 had the lights and colors. I've had the so -called 01:23:30.270 --> 01:23:32.729 downloads. I've had the realizations. I've had 01:23:32.729 --> 01:23:34.869 the bliss. I've had the light. I've had the colors. 01:23:35.630 --> 01:23:38.109 But not every time. No, it's rarely. And in fact, 01:23:38.149 --> 01:23:41.329 I would say that's also like an experience that 01:23:41.329 --> 01:23:43.090 you can start craving, which will then actually 01:23:43.090 --> 01:23:46.310 take you out of meditation. Where you really, 01:23:46.470 --> 01:23:48.470 and I'm not enlightened or anything close to 01:23:48.470 --> 01:23:51.170 it, so not even the ballpark, but my own experience, 01:23:51.229 --> 01:23:53.869 and this is just personal experience, is the 01:23:53.869 --> 01:23:56.149 place where I end up the most that is really 01:23:56.149 --> 01:24:00.979 the one that I want to be at is peace. It's just 01:24:00.979 --> 01:24:05.039 peace. Peace, happy. Yeah, peace. To me, peace 01:24:05.039 --> 01:24:07.720 is happiness at rest, and happiness is kind of 01:24:07.720 --> 01:24:10.300 peace in motion. You can convert peace to happiness 01:24:10.300 --> 01:24:12.720 anytime you want, but peace is what you want 01:24:12.720 --> 01:24:14.819 most of the time. That's interesting. You can 01:24:14.819 --> 01:24:18.279 convert peace to happiness anytime you want. 01:24:18.500 --> 01:24:20.279 Yeah. If you're a peaceful person, anything you 01:24:20.279 --> 01:24:24.039 do will be a happy activity. And by the way, 01:24:24.060 --> 01:24:25.760 being on social media and engaging in politics 01:24:25.760 --> 01:24:27.960 will not bring you peace. There's nothing less 01:24:27.960 --> 01:24:30.880 peaceful. Right. In today's day and age? The 01:24:30.880 --> 01:24:33.260 way we think you get peace is by resolving all 01:24:33.260 --> 01:24:35.199 your external problems. But there's unlimited 01:24:35.199 --> 01:24:37.520 external problems. So the only way to actually 01:24:37.520 --> 01:24:39.619 get peace is on the inside by giving up this 01:24:39.619 --> 01:24:42.260 idea of problems. Who thinks you can get peace 01:24:42.260 --> 01:24:44.779 by resolving external problems other than politicians? 01:24:45.119 --> 01:24:46.840 Everybody. That's what everybody's struggling 01:24:46.840 --> 01:24:48.539 to do, right? Why are you trying to make money? 01:24:48.579 --> 01:24:51.220 To solve all your money problems. Why are you 01:24:51.220 --> 01:24:52.680 trying to win at politics? Because then you'll 01:24:52.680 --> 01:24:54.539 be at peace because your people will have won. 01:24:57.439 --> 01:25:00.279 It's a daunting task to get your shit together. 01:25:00.819 --> 01:25:03.039 It's easier to change yourself than to change 01:25:03.039 --> 01:25:06.199 the world. That's true. And the best way to change 01:25:06.199 --> 01:25:09.060 the world is to change yourself. Exactly. All 01:25:09.060 --> 01:25:11.819 these people who are shouting on social media. 01:25:12.250 --> 01:25:14.430 The best way is just to actually live the life 01:25:14.430 --> 01:25:17.210 that you want other people to live. Like I went 01:25:17.210 --> 01:25:19.789 to New Zealand and there's this guy that I met 01:25:19.789 --> 01:25:22.170 with and, you know, everyone's on social media 01:25:22.170 --> 01:25:23.930 shouting about environmentalism and conserve 01:25:23.930 --> 01:25:26.029 and sustain. And I go to this guy's house and 01:25:26.029 --> 01:25:29.229 he was doing a very quietly, very gently. He 01:25:29.229 --> 01:25:31.909 was doing a two week long zero waste experiment 01:25:31.909 --> 01:25:35.880 where he was throwing out nothing. So every package 01:25:35.880 --> 01:25:38.380 that he opened, he would keep and he would like 01:25:38.380 --> 01:25:40.359 clean it up. So he would keep his Amazon boxes. 01:25:40.399 --> 01:25:41.880 He would keep the little containers, even a teabag. 01:25:41.920 --> 01:25:44.100 If you open the teabag, he has to figure out 01:25:44.100 --> 01:25:46.260 how to compost the tea inside, how to make the 01:25:46.260 --> 01:25:48.300 tea itself useful, how to make the teabag like 01:25:48.300 --> 01:25:50.420 a little storage item. So there was no trash. 01:25:50.619 --> 01:25:53.630 He was literally living with zero. trash waste. 01:25:53.869 --> 01:25:56.109 And he was doing it. And it was really inspirational. 01:25:56.670 --> 01:25:59.250 Meeting people like him made me far more environmentally 01:25:59.250 --> 01:26:01.449 conscious than, you know, any amount of people 01:26:01.449 --> 01:26:03.550 yelling at me on social media ever will. How 01:26:03.550 --> 01:26:05.750 long did he do that for? I think it was two weeks. 01:26:05.789 --> 01:26:08.289 It was hard. what the fuck are you going to do 01:26:08.289 --> 01:26:11.350 with teabags? He had quite the collection. He 01:26:11.350 --> 01:26:13.350 was filling them with little things. He sounds 01:26:13.350 --> 01:26:16.270 like a crazy hoarder, like a hoarder person with 01:26:16.270 --> 01:26:18.529 stacks of teabags in his house. Very impressive 01:26:18.529 --> 01:26:21.130 guy. Yeah, that's a strange way to go about things. 01:26:21.329 --> 01:26:25.189 I appreciate it. Look, it is entirely possible 01:26:25.189 --> 01:26:28.989 to somehow or another engineer all of our cups 01:26:28.989 --> 01:26:33.229 and all of our things to be biodegradable. The 01:26:33.229 --> 01:26:36.470 struggle with the modern... environmental movement 01:26:36.470 --> 01:26:40.590 is that they identify the correct problem which 01:26:40.590 --> 01:26:43.010 is finite earth spaceship earth this is all we 01:26:43.010 --> 01:26:45.810 got don't ruin it but they don't have the solution 01:26:46.300 --> 01:26:48.220 So what they say is no growth, no growth, no 01:26:48.220 --> 01:26:50.199 growth. Well, the problem is you got 3 billion 01:26:50.199 --> 01:26:52.239 Indian and Chinese who aren't going to stay in 01:26:52.239 --> 01:26:54.039 poverty. They're going to grow whether you like 01:26:54.039 --> 01:26:56.520 it or not. So you can yell at them. You can scream 01:26:56.520 --> 01:26:58.359 at them. You can yell at us and scream at us, 01:26:58.380 --> 01:27:00.720 but that's not going to happen. So the only way 01:27:00.720 --> 01:27:03.220 out, unfortunately, is again through technology, 01:27:03.520 --> 01:27:05.479 which is you have to build green technology. 01:27:05.680 --> 01:27:07.960 And I give Musk a lot of credit for being one 01:27:07.960 --> 01:27:09.760 of the few people who's out there trying to do 01:27:09.760 --> 01:27:12.460 that. So you build things that are biodegradable 01:27:12.460 --> 01:27:14.880 and good for you and healthier. And everybody 01:27:14.880 --> 01:27:16.640 wants to be healthy. healthier. Chinese want 01:27:16.640 --> 01:27:18.220 to be healthier. Indians want to be healthier. 01:27:18.399 --> 01:27:20.920 They want to be cleaner. If you say, I can clean 01:27:20.920 --> 01:27:22.880 up your rivers, I can clean up your forests, 01:27:23.020 --> 01:27:26.220 I can have your children not get sick with cholera 01:27:26.220 --> 01:27:29.380 and diphtheria and typhoid, I can cure your diseases, 01:27:29.500 --> 01:27:31.140 I can help make your immune system stronger, 01:27:31.399 --> 01:27:33.560 I can give you clean drinking water, like that 01:27:33.560 --> 01:27:36.100 is what causes people to become environmentalists, 01:27:36.100 --> 01:27:38.100 not shouting and screaming at them that they 01:27:38.100 --> 01:27:39.920 shouldn't grow and they should stop pumping things 01:27:39.920 --> 01:27:42.300 into the sky. And, you know, they have no concept 01:27:42.300 --> 01:27:46.329 of that. They're So I think the modern environmental 01:27:46.329 --> 01:27:49.750 movement identifies the correct problem but then 01:27:49.750 --> 01:27:51.770 doesn't come up with the right set of solutions 01:27:51.770 --> 01:27:53.829 that are appealing to people. People are not 01:27:53.829 --> 01:27:55.810 going to give up economic growth. They're going 01:27:55.810 --> 01:27:59.970 to have to get rich first. Yeah, that's a very 01:27:59.970 --> 01:28:04.890 good point. But how do you do both? You lower 01:28:04.890 --> 01:28:08.439 the price of clean technologies massively. So 01:28:08.439 --> 01:28:11.000 you basically make clean technologies cost competitive 01:28:11.000 --> 01:28:14.699 with unclean technologies. Innovation, ideally, 01:28:14.760 --> 01:28:16.779 you can subsidize in the short to medium term 01:28:16.779 --> 01:28:19.199 until the innovation curve is crossed. I mean, 01:28:19.239 --> 01:28:21.300 like Tesla doesn't have any patents, right? Right. 01:28:21.359 --> 01:28:23.779 Or they freely give away their patents. That's 01:28:23.779 --> 01:28:26.779 the example of how you can do it. So, you know, 01:28:26.779 --> 01:28:29.279 someone, if you want to get rid of plastic straws. 01:28:29.600 --> 01:28:31.359 Yeah, you can do it here and there. You can get 01:28:31.359 --> 01:28:33.359 San Francisco to ban plastic straws, but China's 01:28:33.359 --> 01:28:36.020 not going to ban plastic straws. Not until you 01:28:36.020 --> 01:28:38.960 build a paper straw that is, you know, same cost, 01:28:39.079 --> 01:28:43.140 good durability. And then you educate the Chinese 01:28:43.140 --> 01:28:45.180 like, hey, this is petroleum. You know, this 01:28:45.180 --> 01:28:46.520 plastic that you're drinking is petroleum. This 01:28:46.520 --> 01:28:48.560 is bad for you. Here's the chemical composition. 01:28:48.800 --> 01:28:50.359 Here's the things that are going in your bloodstream. 01:28:50.359 --> 01:28:53.600 And they want healthy. Happy kids also. So they're 01:28:53.600 --> 01:28:55.739 going to have their kids use paper straws. Maybe 01:28:55.739 --> 01:28:57.300 straws aren't the best example, but you can, 01:28:57.399 --> 01:28:59.340 you know, this is true with fossil fuels, for 01:28:59.340 --> 01:29:02.279 example. That's probably the best one. Or replacing 01:29:02.279 --> 01:29:04.899 a lot of plastics with glass and paper and so 01:29:04.899 --> 01:29:07.819 on. Yeah, there's a new technology that was just, 01:29:08.020 --> 01:29:10.720 Rhonda Patrick had it on her Twitter today, about 01:29:10.720 --> 01:29:15.720 they're able to convert plastic waste into fuel. 01:29:16.079 --> 01:29:18.420 And that there's companies that are actively 01:29:18.420 --> 01:29:22.390 trying to do that now. In that way, plastic waste 01:29:22.390 --> 01:29:24.890 will become valuable. It'll become a commodity. 01:29:25.050 --> 01:29:26.630 It'll become something that people resource. 01:29:27.109 --> 01:29:28.569 Now, there's certain problems this doesn't solve. 01:29:28.649 --> 01:29:30.510 This doesn't solve carbon. This doesn't solve 01:29:30.510 --> 01:29:34.170 deforestation. So there you kind of have to step 01:29:34.170 --> 01:29:35.869 in with other means. So, for example, you look 01:29:35.869 --> 01:29:37.890 at the Amazon, right? Everyone's complaining 01:29:37.890 --> 01:29:40.470 about the Amazon being deforested. Well, you're 01:29:40.470 --> 01:29:43.609 not the poor Brazilian farmer. So you're sitting 01:29:43.609 --> 01:29:46.170 here in your comfortable chair like social media 01:29:46.170 --> 01:29:49.289 hammering away at the evil Brazilians for deforesting 01:29:49.289 --> 01:29:51.960 the Amazon. But the Amazon has incredible resources. 01:29:52.239 --> 01:29:54.220 If we really care about it, we should turn it 01:29:54.220 --> 01:29:56.079 into an incredible tourist park and put your 01:29:56.079 --> 01:29:57.960 money where your mouth is, start doing ecotourism 01:29:57.960 --> 01:30:00.199 in the Amazon, start paying for it, and then 01:30:00.199 --> 01:30:02.939 maybe take the future rights for all the pharmaceuticals 01:30:02.939 --> 01:30:04.180 that are going to come out of all the incredible 01:30:04.180 --> 01:30:06.800 plants there and start selling those off so that 01:30:06.800 --> 01:30:10.119 maybe give the pharmaceutical companies an incentive 01:30:10.119 --> 01:30:12.500 to preserve the biodiversity of the Amazon. Say, 01:30:12.579 --> 01:30:14.840 hey, if you buy this patch of the Amazon, you 01:30:14.840 --> 01:30:17.239 conserve it, and you conserve it, whatever plant 01:30:17.239 --> 01:30:18.899 medicines that come out of there that you... 01:30:18.890 --> 01:30:20.229 You can then license. You get the patent for 01:30:20.229 --> 01:30:22.890 20 years or 30 years or whatever. So I think 01:30:22.890 --> 01:30:25.510 there are solutions where we, as the first worlders 01:30:25.510 --> 01:30:28.909 who have money, can put our money where our mouth 01:30:28.909 --> 01:30:31.369 is and go and rescue these kinds of properties. 01:30:31.649 --> 01:30:33.750 That's a very interesting solution, but I could 01:30:33.750 --> 01:30:35.949 see immediate pushback from people that don't 01:30:35.949 --> 01:30:37.569 think the pharmaceutical companies should have 01:30:37.569 --> 01:30:40.949 the rights to this natural plant. Or the government 01:30:40.949 --> 01:30:42.890 does it, and then the government gets the patents, 01:30:42.970 --> 01:30:44.930 and the government will auction off the patents 01:30:44.930 --> 01:30:47.380 later. That's even worse. Or they'll license 01:30:47.380 --> 01:30:50.319 them or whatever it is, right? Well, often, like 01:30:50.319 --> 01:30:54.060 just this, often the problem is there is no really 01:30:54.060 --> 01:30:57.239 good solution. There's a bunch of solutions that 01:30:57.239 --> 01:31:02.039 also have drawbacks. That's life. That's a trade 01:31:02.039 --> 01:31:04.260 -off. That's being a human. It's very messy. 01:31:04.680 --> 01:31:06.819 Yeah, it's a constrained environment. Obviously, 01:31:06.920 --> 01:31:09.300 I skew more towards a private property capitalist 01:31:09.300 --> 01:31:11.939 type solutions because even though they're not 01:31:11.939 --> 01:31:13.880 perfect, they have been proven to actually work. 01:31:14.119 --> 01:31:16.079 Once something is your property, you take care 01:31:16.079 --> 01:31:18.439 of it. You're not going to crap all over your 01:31:18.439 --> 01:31:21.399 own house. But it should probably be temporary 01:31:21.399 --> 01:31:23.930 property, not permanent property. You see a lot 01:31:23.930 --> 01:31:25.430 of countries around the world now doing this 01:31:25.430 --> 01:31:27.829 no foreign ownership of land thing, for example, 01:31:27.829 --> 01:31:31.130 or Mexico has no private ownership of beaches, 01:31:31.369 --> 01:31:33.350 right? So you can draw the line at certain points. 01:31:34.350 --> 01:31:38.550 Yeah. Do you enjoy doing this kind of thing where 01:31:38.550 --> 01:31:41.270 you break things down and give your perspective 01:31:41.270 --> 01:31:44.750 on things and try to illuminate certain complex 01:31:44.750 --> 01:31:47.409 subjects? I'm not trying to illuminate so much 01:31:47.409 --> 01:31:50.850 as, you know, talking to you, I learn as much 01:31:50.850 --> 01:31:54.770 as I... And I learn it for myself because I'm 01:31:54.770 --> 01:31:57.430 being forced to articulate it. I can sit around 01:31:57.430 --> 01:32:00.090 and think my thoughts all day long, but a lot 01:32:00.090 --> 01:32:02.529 of it's going to be nonsense. Because there are 01:32:02.529 --> 01:32:05.510 gaps in thinking where you make leaps because 01:32:05.510 --> 01:32:07.689 you're kind to yourself that you don't realize 01:32:07.689 --> 01:32:09.670 you're making. But when you're forced to write 01:32:09.670 --> 01:32:12.090 it down, and this is why I tweet, or when you 01:32:12.090 --> 01:32:14.310 have to talk to somebody, you have to complete 01:32:14.310 --> 01:32:16.430 those gaps and make it a proper logical chain. 01:32:17.260 --> 01:32:19.739 And the mistake that I made when I was young 01:32:19.739 --> 01:32:21.300 was, you know, I always wanted to seem like the 01:32:21.300 --> 01:32:23.819 smartest kid in the room. You know, just like 01:32:23.819 --> 01:32:25.500 you probably want to seem like the funniest kid 01:32:25.500 --> 01:32:27.079 in the room or the toughest kid in the room, 01:32:27.140 --> 01:32:28.899 right? We're all losers starting out. We want 01:32:28.899 --> 01:32:31.039 to be winners. So we pick the thing we're good 01:32:31.039 --> 01:32:33.279 at, and we double down on it. So I always wanted 01:32:33.279 --> 01:32:34.880 to be the smartest kid in the room. So what did 01:32:34.880 --> 01:32:37.420 I do? I read a lot of books. I memorized a lot 01:32:37.420 --> 01:32:39.319 of things. And then whatever I hadn't memorized, 01:32:39.479 --> 01:32:41.439 this is pre -Google, I made it up. So it sounded 01:32:41.439 --> 01:32:45.000 good. Okay. Pre -Google. After Google fact -checking 01:32:45.000 --> 01:32:47.100 started and I had to get better, right? So Google 01:32:47.100 --> 01:32:49.399 improved me that way. A lot of people. Exactly. 01:32:49.420 --> 01:32:53.100 So now what I realize is that the biggest mistake 01:32:53.100 --> 01:32:55.880 was memorization, right? Because when you're 01:32:55.880 --> 01:32:58.060 actually trying to live your life in congruence 01:32:58.060 --> 01:33:02.079 with reality, you want to have a deep understanding 01:33:02.079 --> 01:33:04.399 of what you do and why you do it. And so it's 01:33:04.399 --> 01:33:06.260 much more important to know the basics really 01:33:06.260 --> 01:33:08.739 well. That is to know the advanced. Knowing calculus 01:33:08.739 --> 01:33:10.239 wouldn't help you today. It doesn't help you 01:33:10.239 --> 01:33:11.699 in business. It doesn't help you in most things. 01:33:11.800 --> 01:33:13.920 But knowing arithmetic really will help you really, 01:33:14.159 --> 01:33:16.340 whether it's at the corner grocery store counting 01:33:16.340 --> 01:33:18.779 change, to figuring out the value of your podcast 01:33:18.779 --> 01:33:21.140 business, to figuring out how to do the probability 01:33:21.140 --> 01:33:24.239 math on some action that you want to take. So 01:33:24.239 --> 01:33:27.680 understanding basic mathematics cold is way more 01:33:27.680 --> 01:33:29.720 important than memorizing calculus concepts. 01:33:30.159 --> 01:33:32.500 And the problem is, and this is true of, I think, 01:33:32.500 --> 01:33:34.979 all reasoning. It's much better to know the basics 01:33:34.979 --> 01:33:37.779 from the ground up. solid foundation of understanding, 01:33:37.979 --> 01:33:40.420 a steel frame of understanding than it is to 01:33:40.420 --> 01:33:42.260 just have a scaffolding where you're just memorizing 01:33:42.260 --> 01:33:44.319 advanced concepts. This is why there are a lot 01:33:44.319 --> 01:33:46.060 of people I'm sure that you listen to who are 01:33:46.060 --> 01:33:48.960 really smart. They use a lot of jargon and you 01:33:48.960 --> 01:33:50.739 can't quite follow their reasoning. You don't 01:33:50.739 --> 01:33:52.239 know how they're putting things together and 01:33:52.239 --> 01:33:53.960 you have this deep down suspicion they don't 01:33:53.960 --> 01:33:57.159 even really understand. So if you look at the 01:33:57.159 --> 01:33:59.760 most powerful thinkers, especially the ones where 01:33:59.760 --> 01:34:03.369 money or life is on the line. They have to understand 01:34:03.369 --> 01:34:06.189 the basics really, really well. Richard Feynman, 01:34:06.310 --> 01:34:09.229 the famous physicist, was able to... He had this 01:34:09.229 --> 01:34:11.130 piece in one of his lectures where he takes you 01:34:11.130 --> 01:34:13.850 from counting numbers on your hand all the way 01:34:13.850 --> 01:34:16.949 to calculus in four pages of text, orally, but 01:34:16.949 --> 01:34:18.890 written down as four pages of text. And it's 01:34:18.890 --> 01:34:21.109 a complete unbroken logical chain that takes 01:34:21.109 --> 01:34:23.569 you through geometry, trigonometry, pre -calculus, 01:34:23.710 --> 01:34:26.350 analytic geometry, graphs, everything, all the 01:34:26.350 --> 01:34:29.090 way to calculus. He understood numbers at a core 01:34:29.090 --> 01:34:32.470 level. He didn't have to memorize anything. When 01:34:32.470 --> 01:34:34.590 you're memorizing, it's an indication that you 01:34:34.590 --> 01:34:37.640 don't understand. you should be able to re -derive 01:34:37.640 --> 01:34:40.699 anything on the spot. And if you can't, you don't 01:34:40.699 --> 01:34:44.279 know it. So do you apply that to things other 01:34:44.279 --> 01:34:45.520 than mathematics? Everything. You apply that 01:34:45.520 --> 01:34:47.260 to everything. Everything, yeah. You don't even 01:34:47.260 --> 01:34:49.359 make attempt to memorize things. Just make attempt 01:34:49.359 --> 01:34:51.600 to understand them. You can't help but memorize 01:34:51.600 --> 01:34:54.079 things. Right. But if you can't... And this is 01:34:54.079 --> 01:34:56.539 where Twitter is great for me, is I try to understand 01:34:56.539 --> 01:34:58.880 something. And then I try to write it down in 01:34:58.880 --> 01:35:01.739 such a way that I can remember it. Just the basic 01:35:01.739 --> 01:35:04.340 hook that will point towards the deeper understanding. 01:35:04.520 --> 01:35:06.960 And I'm forced to explain it to people. And that's 01:35:06.960 --> 01:35:08.680 how I know I understand something. So this is 01:35:08.680 --> 01:35:10.039 what I meant originally when we talked about 01:35:10.039 --> 01:35:12.850 reading. A good book, I'll read one page in a 01:35:12.850 --> 01:35:14.529 night, and then I spend the rest of the night 01:35:14.529 --> 01:35:16.949 thinking about it, or I'm chasing down references 01:35:16.949 --> 01:35:20.289 on Wikipedia or weird blog posts trying to understand 01:35:20.289 --> 01:35:26.550 it. So, for example, I was dealing with, this 01:35:26.550 --> 01:35:28.310 is a few months back, I was dealing with a question 01:35:28.310 --> 01:35:32.420 of, stupid topic, but the meaning of life. Right? 01:35:32.520 --> 01:35:34.020 What's the meaning? How could that be stupid, 01:35:34.060 --> 01:35:36.680 though? It's trite. It's trite. You're not supposed 01:35:36.680 --> 01:35:38.300 to think about it. It's something you ask your 01:35:38.300 --> 01:35:39.760 parents when you're young. They tell you don't 01:35:39.760 --> 01:35:41.960 worry about it. Go get a job, hippie. Yeah, exactly. 01:35:41.979 --> 01:35:43.539 Go get a job, you freaking hippie. Or here's 01:35:43.539 --> 01:35:45.720 God. God is the meaning of life, right? And so 01:35:45.720 --> 01:35:47.880 I was just trying to resolve for myself, like, 01:35:47.960 --> 01:35:51.180 what could the answer be? Not what is the answer, 01:35:51.239 --> 01:35:53.939 but what could the answer be? And so at a core 01:35:53.939 --> 01:35:56.020 level, I was forced to kind of hunt down all 01:35:56.020 --> 01:35:58.260 these weird little things and really understand. 01:35:59.390 --> 01:36:01.189 And it's got to be personal, right? But I have 01:36:01.189 --> 01:36:03.390 to establish for myself what it could and could 01:36:03.390 --> 01:36:05.989 not be. And that gave me some level of peace. 01:36:06.590 --> 01:36:08.270 So now I don't have to keep asking that question. 01:36:08.329 --> 01:36:14.789 What is the meaning of life? I mean, I think 01:36:14.789 --> 01:36:16.409 the question is more interesting than the answer. 01:36:16.529 --> 01:36:18.270 Everyone should explore this on their own. But 01:36:18.270 --> 01:36:20.590 let me just explore a few parts with you, right? 01:36:20.909 --> 01:36:24.310 So first is, if I gave you an answer, if I said 01:36:24.310 --> 01:36:26.670 the meaning of life is to please God, well, which 01:36:26.670 --> 01:36:28.670 God? Okay, Judeo -Christian God. Well, okay, 01:36:28.750 --> 01:36:31.170 why that one? Why this thing? The problem is 01:36:31.170 --> 01:36:33.409 it's a why question. You can keep asking why 01:36:33.409 --> 01:36:36.189 forever, right? Any answer I give you, you'll 01:36:36.189 --> 01:36:38.310 just ask why again, why again, why again. Like 01:36:38.310 --> 01:36:40.789 a little kid. That's right. And you end up in 01:36:40.789 --> 01:36:43.560 a place called Agrippa's Trilemma. This is a 01:36:43.560 --> 01:36:46.659 philosophical exercise, but I kind of thought 01:36:46.659 --> 01:36:48.060 it through and Googled around, and there's a 01:36:48.060 --> 01:36:50.800 thing called Agrippa's Trilemma. And Agrippa's 01:36:50.800 --> 01:36:53.680 Trilemma says that any questioning like this, 01:36:53.920 --> 01:36:56.699 the why, will always end in one of three places. 01:36:57.359 --> 01:37:01.260 First is infinite regress. Why? Because of this. 01:37:01.340 --> 01:37:04.119 Why that? And just keep going forever. The second 01:37:04.119 --> 01:37:06.739 is circular reasoning. Well, A. Why A? Because 01:37:06.739 --> 01:37:09.359 of B. Well, why B? Because of A. You get trapped 01:37:09.359 --> 01:37:12.329 in that. Or the third is an axiom. And the most 01:37:12.329 --> 01:37:14.729 popular axiom is God, but it could be anything 01:37:14.729 --> 01:37:16.109 because of math, because of science, because 01:37:16.109 --> 01:37:18.149 of the Big Bang, because of simulation. These 01:37:18.149 --> 01:37:20.470 are all axioms. These are all just stopping points. 01:37:21.510 --> 01:37:23.989 Saying we're in a simulation or saying it's the 01:37:23.989 --> 01:37:26.729 Big Bang is just another way of saying God. God's 01:37:26.729 --> 01:37:28.270 a dirty word, so we don't use it as much anymore, 01:37:28.489 --> 01:37:30.909 but same thing. So you end up in one of these 01:37:30.909 --> 01:37:34.789 three dead ends, essentially. So there is no 01:37:34.789 --> 01:37:40.949 answer. The real answer is because. What is the 01:37:40.949 --> 01:37:42.510 meaning of life? Yeah, you get to make up your 01:37:42.510 --> 01:37:45.090 own answers, the beauty. If there was a single 01:37:45.090 --> 01:37:48.010 answer, we would not be free. We would be trapped 01:37:48.010 --> 01:37:50.369 because then we would all have to live to that 01:37:50.369 --> 01:37:52.529 answer. Then we'd be Borg -like robots, each 01:37:52.529 --> 01:37:54.590 one competing with each other to fulfill that 01:37:54.590 --> 01:37:56.750 single meaning more than the others. Back to 01:37:56.750 --> 01:37:58.890 signaling, like I'm better at it than you are. 01:37:59.010 --> 01:38:02.010 But luckily there is no answer. So you just do 01:38:02.010 --> 01:38:05.930 whatever you want. The meaning of life. It's 01:38:05.930 --> 01:38:10.449 funny that... That's the basis of all existential 01:38:10.449 --> 01:38:13.710 angst, that you don't... You don't know why you're 01:38:13.710 --> 01:38:16.329 here. And you have this feeling that it could 01:38:16.329 --> 01:38:21.729 be meaningless. I mean, when you start pondering 01:38:21.729 --> 01:38:25.810 the multiverse, the universe, the galaxies, the 01:38:25.810 --> 01:38:29.199 solar system, the planet... The organism, the 01:38:29.199 --> 01:38:32.720 cells inside the organism, the bacteria, the 01:38:32.720 --> 01:38:36.119 parasites, the symbiotic relationship we have 01:38:36.119 --> 01:38:38.439 to our environment. And you start going, Jesus 01:38:38.439 --> 01:38:41.000 Christ, am I just a little piece of this thing? 01:38:41.220 --> 01:38:43.399 Well, the answers to all the great questions 01:38:43.399 --> 01:38:46.239 are paradoxes. So, for example, you're asking, 01:38:46.340 --> 01:38:48.619 like, do I matter? That's like really the question 01:38:48.619 --> 01:38:50.420 you asked, right? Well, how do I matter in this 01:38:50.420 --> 01:38:52.939 infinite universe? Well, you know, on the one 01:38:52.939 --> 01:38:55.779 hand, you're separate. No two points are the 01:38:55.779 --> 01:38:58.800 same. Every two points are infinitely different. 01:38:59.000 --> 01:39:01.039 You're completely separated. No one will have 01:39:01.039 --> 01:39:02.680 your thoughts, your emotions, your feelings, 01:39:02.720 --> 01:39:04.460 your experience. So your life is a single -player 01:39:04.460 --> 01:39:06.119 game. You're trapped inside your head, and you're 01:39:06.119 --> 01:39:07.760 just aware of a bunch of things going on, and 01:39:07.760 --> 01:39:11.739 that's it. On the other hand, I cannot say the 01:39:11.739 --> 01:39:14.539 words Joe Rogan without invoking the entire universe. 01:39:15.149 --> 01:39:17.130 Joe Rogan, Alien comes along and says, what's 01:39:17.130 --> 01:39:18.930 that? Joe Rogan. What's Joe Rogan? It's a human. 01:39:19.010 --> 01:39:21.409 What's a human? Bipedal ape. What's an ape on 01:39:21.409 --> 01:39:23.250 the earth? What's the earth planet? What's a 01:39:23.250 --> 01:39:25.510 planet? Solar system. Where was the carbon made? 01:39:25.609 --> 01:39:28.770 Inside stars, right? I have to create the entire 01:39:28.770 --> 01:39:32.109 universe to just say the words Joe Rogan. So 01:39:32.109 --> 01:39:33.529 in that sense, you're connected to everything. 01:39:33.710 --> 01:39:37.399 It's inseparable. The answer to that question 01:39:37.399 --> 01:39:40.300 of do I matter is I am nothing and I am everything. 01:39:40.500 --> 01:39:42.560 And you'll find this with all the great questions. 01:39:42.600 --> 01:39:44.539 The answers are all paradoxes, which is why at 01:39:44.539 --> 01:39:46.960 some level it's sort of pointless to pursue them, 01:39:47.020 --> 01:39:50.279 to find a trite answer like I'm giving. But the 01:39:50.279 --> 01:39:53.020 act of pursuing them is actually really useful 01:39:53.020 --> 01:39:56.939 because then it gives you certain intrinsic understanding 01:39:56.939 --> 01:40:00.069 in your life that brings a level of peace. I 01:40:00.069 --> 01:40:02.970 feel like there's, with many people, this stress 01:40:02.970 --> 01:40:06.869 of this question is also accentuated by unhappy 01:40:06.869 --> 01:40:10.810 lives. It's accentuated by unhappy choices, by 01:40:10.810 --> 01:40:12.729 being trapped. There's a big difference between 01:40:12.729 --> 01:40:15.409 not knowing what the meaning of life is and, 01:40:15.569 --> 01:40:18.430 God, I got to get the fuck out of this job. I 01:40:18.430 --> 01:40:20.909 can't live my life this way. What's the meaning 01:40:20.909 --> 01:40:23.949 of life if this is my life? Which is why I always 01:40:23.949 --> 01:40:27.489 start with, let's get you rich first. That's 01:40:27.489 --> 01:40:28.989 why I'm very practical about it. Because look, 01:40:29.130 --> 01:40:32.829 Buddha was a prince. He started out really rich 01:40:32.829 --> 01:40:35.189 and then he got to go off in the woods. And in 01:40:35.189 --> 01:40:37.170 the old days, what happened was if you wanted 01:40:37.170 --> 01:40:39.970 to be peaceful inside, you would become a monk. 01:40:40.109 --> 01:40:41.890 You would renounce everything. You would become 01:40:41.890 --> 01:40:43.750 an ascetic. You would give everything up. You'd 01:40:43.750 --> 01:40:46.430 renounce women, men. You'd renounce children. 01:40:46.630 --> 01:40:48.409 You'd renounce money. You'd renounce politics, 01:40:48.609 --> 01:40:50.409 science, technology, everything. And you would 01:40:50.409 --> 01:40:51.909 go out in the woods by yourself. You had to give 01:40:51.909 --> 01:40:54.920 everything up to be free inside. Well, today 01:40:54.920 --> 01:40:56.779 we have this wonderful invention called money 01:40:56.779 --> 01:40:58.819 where you can just store stuff up in a bank account. 01:40:59.359 --> 01:41:03.319 And you can basically save up. You can work really 01:41:03.319 --> 01:41:05.600 hard. You can do great things for society, and 01:41:05.600 --> 01:41:07.960 society will give you money for giving it things 01:41:07.960 --> 01:41:09.439 that it wants and it doesn't know how to get. 01:41:10.000 --> 01:41:12.239 And then you can save that up, and you can live 01:41:12.239 --> 01:41:14.140 well below with your means, and you can find 01:41:14.140 --> 01:41:15.779 a certain freedom in that, and that will give 01:41:15.779 --> 01:41:18.020 you the time and the energy to pursue your own 01:41:18.020 --> 01:41:21.000 internal peace and happiness. So I believe the 01:41:21.000 --> 01:41:22.960 solution to making everybody happy is to give 01:41:22.960 --> 01:41:25.119 them what they want. Let's get them all rich. 01:41:25.520 --> 01:41:28.220 Let's get them all fit and healthy. And then 01:41:28.220 --> 01:41:31.319 let's get them all happy. Are those things even 01:41:31.319 --> 01:41:34.300 possible? Absolutely. Everyone can be rich? Everyone 01:41:34.300 --> 01:41:36.060 can be rich. Everyone. Here's my thought exercise 01:41:36.060 --> 01:41:38.039 for you. Now it seems like we're in an infomercial. 01:41:38.760 --> 01:41:41.380 Everyone can be rich. Look at my home. This is 01:41:41.380 --> 01:41:43.840 my Rolls Royce. Yeah. So that's a good point. 01:41:43.880 --> 01:41:45.939 So everything that I've ever created on this 01:41:45.939 --> 01:41:47.939 topic of how to make money, I will never charge 01:41:47.939 --> 01:41:50.880 a dollar for. because that would ruin it. That 01:41:50.880 --> 01:41:52.819 would show that I'm just another huckster who's 01:41:52.819 --> 01:41:54.640 trying to get rich off of you. There are no get 01:41:54.640 --> 01:41:56.560 rich quick schemes. That's just somebody else 01:41:56.560 --> 01:42:00.479 trying to get rich off of you, right? So to me, 01:42:00.520 --> 01:42:02.939 it's more of a philosophical contribution where 01:42:02.939 --> 01:42:06.260 for it to have meaning and to be legit, I can't 01:42:06.260 --> 01:42:08.300 charge you anything for it. But yes, everybody 01:42:08.300 --> 01:42:10.220 can be rich. And let me give you a thought exercise, 01:42:10.479 --> 01:42:13.939 okay? Imagine if tomorrow we could wave a wand. 01:42:15.090 --> 01:42:18.569 And everybody was trained as a scientist or an 01:42:18.569 --> 01:42:21.430 engineer. Everybody. Even if you weren't very 01:42:21.430 --> 01:42:23.550 good, you had enough understanding of computers, 01:42:23.750 --> 01:42:25.489 you could write some code, you could build some 01:42:25.489 --> 01:42:27.489 hardware. And don't tell me people can't do it 01:42:27.489 --> 01:42:29.529 because they can. That's just a tyranny of soft 01:42:29.529 --> 01:42:31.829 expectations. That's just you looking down on 01:42:31.829 --> 01:42:33.590 somebody else. They can't do it. They just have 01:42:33.590 --> 01:42:35.949 to be educated. Now, if they're educated, all 01:42:35.949 --> 01:42:38.010 this hardware, software, engineers, scientists, 01:42:38.270 --> 01:42:40.289 biologists, technicians, hard sciences, not the 01:42:40.289 --> 01:42:43.100 social sciences. We would all be done within 01:42:43.100 --> 01:42:45.039 five years. Robots would be doing everything 01:42:45.039 --> 01:42:47.220 from cleaning toilets to cooking food to flying 01:42:47.220 --> 01:42:49.420 airplanes to driving Ubers. And what would we 01:42:49.420 --> 01:42:51.420 be doing? We would be doing all creative jobs 01:42:51.420 --> 01:42:53.239 to entertain each other and researching science 01:42:53.239 --> 01:42:55.579 and technology. We would have wonderful lives. 01:42:55.739 --> 01:42:57.680 So it is really just a question of education, 01:42:57.979 --> 01:43:01.000 nothing else. Is this a scale issue, though? 01:43:01.060 --> 01:43:03.539 I mean, you're talking about it as if this would 01:43:03.539 --> 01:43:06.539 work with 300 million people. It'll work with 01:43:06.539 --> 01:43:08.840 10 billion people. It'll work with a spacefaring 01:43:08.840 --> 01:43:11.800 race with 100 trillion people. We have the resources. 01:43:12.180 --> 01:43:15.130 We have... The ability. The universe is infinite 01:43:15.130 --> 01:43:17.810 resources. Have you heard of a Dyson sphere? 01:43:18.149 --> 01:43:20.550 You pull the Dyson sphere on a star and you gather 01:43:20.550 --> 01:43:23.329 all its energy. There's so much energy out there. 01:43:23.350 --> 01:43:25.529 One asteroid's got all the minerals that we need. 01:43:25.890 --> 01:43:28.470 One sun, one solar system has got all the power 01:43:28.470 --> 01:43:32.510 we will need for a long, long time. We can extract 01:43:32.510 --> 01:43:35.170 it out of nuclear fusion. We're not that far 01:43:35.170 --> 01:43:38.130 from those kinds of technologies working. It's 01:43:38.130 --> 01:43:41.829 just a question of guts and interest. We should 01:43:41.829 --> 01:43:44.470 be building. nuclear fusion test plants on the 01:43:44.470 --> 01:43:45.869 moon. The moon should be littered with them. 01:43:45.949 --> 01:43:51.310 There's no downside. Right. Yeah. How would that 01:43:51.310 --> 01:43:54.029 work? Send a bunch of people up there to work? 01:43:54.989 --> 01:43:58.090 Robots. The problem with nuclear fission is that 01:43:58.090 --> 01:44:02.159 nature... creates energy through nuclear energy, 01:44:02.380 --> 01:44:04.939 right? Like the sun creates energy, nuclear energy. 01:44:05.020 --> 01:44:06.880 Now for transmission, we use photons because 01:44:06.880 --> 01:44:09.479 photons don't interact. And so photons are great 01:44:09.479 --> 01:44:11.159 for information transmission, but they're actually 01:44:11.159 --> 01:44:13.460 not great for energy transmission. For energy 01:44:13.460 --> 01:44:17.220 creation, you want nuclear to work. And the problem 01:44:17.220 --> 01:44:19.800 is because nuclear energy, you know, we built 01:44:19.800 --> 01:44:22.300 it with a bomb, we have dirty... nukes, all those 01:44:22.300 --> 01:44:24.119 kinds of problems with Fukushima, Three Mile 01:44:24.119 --> 01:44:26.539 Island, Chernobyl. We don't innovate anymore 01:44:26.539 --> 01:44:28.699 on nukes. Imagine if when the first steam engine 01:44:28.699 --> 01:44:31.520 blew up, we said, oh, no more steam engines for 01:44:31.520 --> 01:44:33.680 a while, or very carefully regulated, billion 01:44:33.680 --> 01:44:36.300 dollars of regulation. You can't innovate that 01:44:36.300 --> 01:44:38.579 way. When the first airplane crashed, we said, 01:44:38.619 --> 01:44:42.100 no more innovation in airplanes, right? So we 01:44:42.100 --> 01:44:44.800 need a way to iterate on nuclear fission and 01:44:44.800 --> 01:44:47.079 eventually fusion and get them working safely, 01:44:47.239 --> 01:44:50.380 cleanly, passive failure, et cetera, if we're 01:44:50.380 --> 01:44:51.800 going to find our way out of the energy trap. 01:44:52.119 --> 01:44:54.119 And the best place to do that is someplace like 01:44:54.119 --> 01:44:57.060 on the moon or Mars. Do you think that it's actually 01:44:57.060 --> 01:45:00.909 a possibility that they could? get nuclear power 01:45:00.909 --> 01:45:03.210 to the point where it's not a detriment? Because 01:45:03.210 --> 01:45:05.449 what everyone's worried about is a meltdown, 01:45:05.590 --> 01:45:08.869 right? And we do have these old plants that are 01:45:08.869 --> 01:45:12.170 running on this. This is 50 -year -old technology. 01:45:12.529 --> 01:45:14.729 It's crazy because there's no ability to shut 01:45:14.729 --> 01:45:17.069 them off. Right, very old technology. They do 01:45:17.069 --> 01:45:19.489 now have Gen 4 nuclear reactors that are passive 01:45:19.489 --> 01:45:21.449 fail -safe. So in other words, when they fail, 01:45:21.510 --> 01:45:24.090 they fail into a, when you pull the plug on them, 01:45:24.189 --> 01:45:25.949 they fail into a state where there's no leakage, 01:45:26.050 --> 01:45:29.529 there's no problem. They're default. is a positive 01:45:29.529 --> 01:45:31.829 outcome, as opposed to the current ones, the 01:45:31.829 --> 01:45:33.609 old ones, where if you unplug them, they melt 01:45:33.609 --> 01:45:36.810 down. And even these Gen 4 are just Gen 4. They're 01:45:36.810 --> 01:45:39.010 not Gen 5, Gen 6. They're not Gen 80, Gen 100, 01:45:39.130 --> 01:45:40.930 where we have microprocessors, right? And that 01:45:40.930 --> 01:45:43.550 should be something that people are working towards. 01:45:43.829 --> 01:45:46.810 I hope so. I mean, in an ideal world, the problem 01:45:46.810 --> 01:45:48.569 is if you have nuclear energy on the moon, how 01:45:48.569 --> 01:45:50.369 do you get it home, right? So what you actually 01:45:50.369 --> 01:45:53.260 got to do is you got to... rev it on the moon 01:45:53.260 --> 01:45:55.359 and you're using it there maybe to launch more 01:45:55.359 --> 01:45:57.279 satellites, more rockets further out into the 01:45:57.279 --> 01:45:59.539 solar system. And that's the initial use case. 01:46:00.260 --> 01:46:02.659 But then eventually the technology gets so good 01:46:02.659 --> 01:46:05.460 you can bring it home. Now, I want to go back 01:46:05.460 --> 01:46:08.220 to this idea of getting people rich, that somehow 01:46:08.220 --> 01:46:09.680 or another that's going to make people happy. 01:46:09.800 --> 01:46:13.100 How do you stop that? The natural progression 01:46:13.100 --> 01:46:18.520 that people have of, oh, I have got a nice Chevrolet, 01:46:18.520 --> 01:46:21.180 but I really want a BMW. I've got a nice BMW, 01:46:21.539 --> 01:46:23.380 but now I want a Mercedes. I have a Mercedes. 01:46:23.380 --> 01:46:26.899 I want a Ferrari. How do you stop that material 01:46:26.899 --> 01:46:32.300 possession trap? You can't at some level, but 01:46:32.300 --> 01:46:34.699 I think most smart people over time realize that 01:46:34.699 --> 01:46:37.689 possessions don't make them happy. You have to 01:46:37.689 --> 01:46:39.189 go through that. You have to buy your stupid 01:46:39.189 --> 01:46:41.550 car to realize that it doesn't attract attractive 01:46:41.550 --> 01:46:43.329 girls. It actually just attracts other dudes 01:46:43.329 --> 01:46:47.510 who are like, hey, I like that car, man. Like 01:46:47.510 --> 01:46:49.869 you have some expensive cars out there, some 01:46:49.869 --> 01:46:52.949 fancy cars. Tell me how much that attracts women 01:46:52.949 --> 01:46:55.029 versus men. Well, I'm married. Those are for 01:46:55.029 --> 01:46:59.630 me. I just enjoy machines. For me, they're toys. 01:46:59.829 --> 01:47:01.550 That's a particular thing where you enjoy machines. 01:47:01.810 --> 01:47:04.750 But I think as you get older, you just realize 01:47:04.750 --> 01:47:06.630 that there's no happiness. and material possessions. 01:47:06.789 --> 01:47:09.470 Now, lack of material possessions can make you 01:47:09.470 --> 01:47:11.850 very unhappy. So being poor can make you unhappy, 01:47:12.130 --> 01:47:13.750 but being rich is not going to make you happy. 01:47:14.149 --> 01:47:15.930 And what happens, unfortunately, a lot of people 01:47:15.930 --> 01:47:17.810 struggle through their whole lives to make money. 01:47:18.010 --> 01:47:20.449 They make some, they're exhausted. And then they're 01:47:20.449 --> 01:47:22.789 like, well, now why am I not happy? I guess I'm 01:47:22.789 --> 01:47:24.909 just not a happy person. And smart people aren't 01:47:24.909 --> 01:47:27.609 happy. That's like a great little way to people 01:47:27.609 --> 01:47:29.449 feel better about it. They say, well, if you're 01:47:29.449 --> 01:47:31.789 smart, you're not happy, right? Whereas I posit 01:47:31.789 --> 01:47:34.180 the other way. If you're smart. you should be 01:47:34.180 --> 01:47:35.899 able to figure out how to be happy otherwise 01:47:35.899 --> 01:47:38.720 you're not that smart. Yeah, that is an offensive 01:47:38.720 --> 01:47:41.140 statement that if you're smart you're not happy. 01:47:41.220 --> 01:47:43.619 I've heard that before and I just do not understand 01:47:43.619 --> 01:47:46.039 the logic of that other than self -justifying. 01:47:46.220 --> 01:47:48.279 I understand where it comes from. It comes from, 01:47:48.300 --> 01:47:50.060 if you're smart, it's usually because you thought 01:47:50.060 --> 01:47:51.779 things through and you have a very busy mind. 01:47:52.060 --> 01:47:54.500 And so a busy mind can often rob you of peace 01:47:54.500 --> 01:47:57.800 of mind. Because the peace that we seek is not 01:47:57.800 --> 01:48:01.100 peace of mind, it's peace from mind. So if you 01:48:01.100 --> 01:48:03.300 look at all the crazy activities you do to be 01:48:03.300 --> 01:48:05.800 happy, whether it's trying to get laid and have 01:48:05.800 --> 01:48:09.960 an orgasm or extreme sports or looking at something 01:48:09.960 --> 01:48:12.300 beautiful or taking a psychedelic, you're trying 01:48:12.300 --> 01:48:15.079 to get out of your own mind. get your monkey 01:48:15.079 --> 01:48:17.199 mind to stop chattering at you for a moment. 01:48:17.479 --> 01:48:20.720 You're trying to get peace from the mind. And 01:48:20.720 --> 01:48:23.460 there are other better ways to do that. Most 01:48:23.460 --> 01:48:25.699 of the ways we try to get peace from mind are 01:48:25.699 --> 01:48:30.000 indirect. Whereas if you understand things, if 01:48:30.000 --> 01:48:32.539 you see things properly, you will naturally slowly 01:48:32.539 --> 01:48:36.619 develop peace from mind. Sorry if I went on a 01:48:36.619 --> 01:48:39.300 tangent there. No, it's a good tangent. It's 01:48:39.300 --> 01:48:41.060 a good tangent because I think that oftentimes 01:48:41.060 --> 01:48:46.109 the pursuit is what's thrilling to people and 01:48:46.109 --> 01:48:48.149 the possibility that one day they'll be able 01:48:48.149 --> 01:48:51.310 to rest and that they'll reach this goal. That's 01:48:51.310 --> 01:48:53.409 the fundamental delusion, that there is something 01:48:53.409 --> 01:48:55.270 out there that will make me happy and fulfilled 01:48:55.270 --> 01:48:57.869 forever. The golden years. There is. It's called 01:48:57.869 --> 01:49:01.170 death. Oh. I'll take care of everything. That's 01:49:01.170 --> 01:49:03.670 the great leveler. But when people look at particularly 01:49:03.670 --> 01:49:05.590 social media, let's bring it back to that, when 01:49:05.590 --> 01:49:07.550 you see someone who, you know, you see them. 01:49:07.899 --> 01:49:10.800 posed in front of their mansion with their beautiful 01:49:10.800 --> 01:49:13.079 car and they're leaning against it with their 01:49:13.079 --> 01:49:16.899 designer clothes on, their expensive watch. You 01:49:16.899 --> 01:49:20.720 go, ah, I want that. That's what I want. What 01:49:20.720 --> 01:49:22.739 you really want is freedom. You want freedom 01:49:22.739 --> 01:49:24.920 from your money problems. Right. And I think 01:49:24.920 --> 01:49:28.000 that's okay. So people, once someone can solve 01:49:28.000 --> 01:49:30.220 their money problems, either by lowering their 01:49:30.220 --> 01:49:34.180 lifestyle or by making enough money, and essentially 01:49:34.180 --> 01:49:36.840 what you want to get everybody to is retirement. 01:49:37.399 --> 01:49:40.500 But not retirement in the I'm 65 years old, sitting 01:49:40.500 --> 01:49:42.680 in a nursing home, collecting a check retirement. 01:49:43.119 --> 01:49:46.039 Different definition. Retirement is when you 01:49:46.039 --> 01:49:49.659 stop sacrificing today for some imaginary tomorrow. 01:49:50.779 --> 01:49:55.079 When today is complete in and of itself, you're 01:49:55.079 --> 01:49:57.659 retired. And so how do you get there? Well, one 01:49:57.659 --> 01:50:00.380 is you can have so much money saved up that just 01:50:00.380 --> 01:50:02.300 your passive income off of that without you having 01:50:02.300 --> 01:50:04.199 to lift a finger covers your burn rate, keep 01:50:04.199 --> 01:50:07.430 your burn rate low. right? A second is you just 01:50:07.430 --> 01:50:09.409 drive your burn rate down to zero. You become 01:50:09.409 --> 01:50:12.550 a monk. A third is you're doing something you 01:50:12.550 --> 01:50:14.750 love. You enjoy it so much. It's not about the 01:50:14.750 --> 01:50:17.270 money. So there are multiple ways to that path. 01:50:17.409 --> 01:50:19.149 But the most common is people just say, I need 01:50:19.149 --> 01:50:21.529 to make more money. And the kind of wealth creation 01:50:21.529 --> 01:50:24.010 that I talk about is about creating timeless 01:50:24.010 --> 01:50:26.430 principles and adapting yourselves that making 01:50:26.430 --> 01:50:28.989 money won't be an issue. And you can do it by 01:50:28.989 --> 01:50:31.630 doing what you love. Like we get into this model 01:50:31.630 --> 01:50:34.250 of I must work for other people, work my way 01:50:34.250 --> 01:50:37.550 up the ladder. I must like do what that person 01:50:37.550 --> 01:50:40.350 is doing to make money. But really today in society, 01:50:40.529 --> 01:50:42.710 you get rewarded for creative work, for creating 01:50:42.710 --> 01:50:44.960 something brand new. that society didn't even 01:50:44.960 --> 01:50:46.619 know yet that it wanted, that doesn't know how 01:50:46.619 --> 01:50:49.319 to get other than through you. So the most powerful 01:50:49.319 --> 01:50:51.859 moneymakers are actually individual brands, people 01:50:51.859 --> 01:50:56.039 like yourself or Elon or Kanye or Oprah or Trump, 01:50:56.140 --> 01:50:58.039 right? These are individual brands, eponymous 01:50:58.039 --> 01:51:01.060 name brands who themselves are leveraged, like 01:51:01.060 --> 01:51:03.640 you're leveraged. You have podcast media going 01:51:03.640 --> 01:51:05.359 out to everybody. That's leveraged. The podcasts 01:51:05.359 --> 01:51:07.699 work for you when you sleep. They have knowledge 01:51:07.699 --> 01:51:09.600 that nobody else has, which is your knowledge 01:51:09.600 --> 01:51:11.500 is the knowledge of being Joe Rogan. I mean, 01:51:11.520 --> 01:51:14.300 who else is a UFC fighter? and a commentator 01:51:14.300 --> 01:51:17.460 and a podcaster and a comedian and interested 01:51:17.460 --> 01:51:19.020 in all these things and knows all these people. 01:51:19.140 --> 01:51:21.739 Can't replace you. So we have to pay you what 01:51:21.739 --> 01:51:24.100 you're worth. I never fought in the UFC though. 01:51:24.699 --> 01:51:28.600 Oh, you didn't? Okay, sorry. Or whatever, you're 01:51:28.600 --> 01:51:30.619 involved in that whole scene. You just have a 01:51:30.619 --> 01:51:33.560 unique set of skill sets. So because of this 01:51:33.560 --> 01:51:36.039 unique, what I call specific knowledge, because 01:51:36.039 --> 01:51:37.500 of the accountability that you have with your 01:51:37.500 --> 01:51:39.439 name, because of the leverage that you have through 01:51:39.439 --> 01:51:42.899 your media, you're a money -making machine. I'm 01:51:42.899 --> 01:51:44.399 sure at this point I could make you start over 01:51:44.399 --> 01:51:46.079 tomorrow, wipe out your bank account, you'd be 01:51:46.079 --> 01:51:48.619 rich again in no time because you have all the 01:51:48.619 --> 01:51:51.359 skill sets. So once people have those skill sets 01:51:51.359 --> 01:51:54.180 and the beauty is the way you've done it is you 01:51:54.180 --> 01:51:56.289 don't have any competition. There's no substitution. 01:51:56.510 --> 01:51:58.310 If Joe Rogan were to disappear off the air tomorrow, 01:51:58.550 --> 01:52:00.970 it's not like random podcaster number 12 would 01:52:00.970 --> 01:52:03.409 step in and fill that thing. No, it's just gone. 01:52:03.850 --> 01:52:06.369 So the way to get out of that competition trap 01:52:06.369 --> 01:52:09.029 is actually to be authentic. The way to retire 01:52:09.029 --> 01:52:12.529 is actually to find the thing that you know how 01:52:12.529 --> 01:52:14.390 to do better than anybody. And you know how to 01:52:14.390 --> 01:52:15.329 do that better than anybody because you love 01:52:15.329 --> 01:52:17.510 to do it. No one can compete with you if you 01:52:17.510 --> 01:52:20.380 love to do it. Be authentic. And then figure 01:52:20.380 --> 01:52:22.180 out how to map that to what society actually 01:52:22.180 --> 01:52:24.600 wants. Apply some leverage. Put your name on 01:52:24.600 --> 01:52:26.640 it so you take the risks but you gain the rewards. 01:52:26.920 --> 01:52:29.060 Have ownership and equity in what you do and 01:52:29.060 --> 01:52:31.060 then just crank it out. I think people have to 01:52:31.060 --> 01:52:33.579 be very careful to not get trapped along the 01:52:33.579 --> 01:52:37.920 way with things that you can afford with your 01:52:37.920 --> 01:52:40.260 current lifestyle, like the way you're living 01:52:40.260 --> 01:52:43.800 and the way you're earning. They're also imprisoning 01:52:43.800 --> 01:52:45.520 you in the fact that you are now going to have 01:52:45.520 --> 01:52:48.500 to work this 40 hour a week job in order to get 01:52:48.500 --> 01:52:51.489 this thing that you can't afford. But now you're 01:52:51.489 --> 01:52:53.930 saddled down to this job. You're not saving. 01:52:54.250 --> 01:52:56.949 You're not putting things in a good place. And 01:52:56.949 --> 01:52:59.869 you're working for these things. Working for 01:52:59.869 --> 01:53:03.369 things as rewards is a real trap that a lot of 01:53:03.369 --> 01:53:05.970 people fall into. It's the biggest one. Nassim 01:53:05.970 --> 01:53:08.729 Taleb also says that there are two great addictions, 01:53:08.829 --> 01:53:13.550 heroin and a monthly salary. And that's why you 01:53:13.550 --> 01:53:16.010 can't get rich renting out your time. Because 01:53:16.010 --> 01:53:17.569 even when you start charging more and more for 01:53:17.569 --> 01:53:19.829 your time, it's a slow upgrade loop. And then 01:53:19.829 --> 01:53:21.710 you upgrade your house at the same time. You 01:53:21.710 --> 01:53:23.430 upgrade your car at the same time. You move in 01:53:23.430 --> 01:53:25.449 the neighborhood. You really also have to get 01:53:25.449 --> 01:53:28.670 used to ignoring your peers or upgrading or changing 01:53:28.670 --> 01:53:31.010 the definition of your peers. There are a lot 01:53:31.010 --> 01:53:33.229 of people here who are poor here, but they would 01:53:33.229 --> 01:53:35.029 be rich if they were living in Thailand and Bali. 01:53:35.250 --> 01:53:37.010 And if they have the luxury of a remotely doable 01:53:37.010 --> 01:53:40.010 job, they may want to be living there. And saving 01:53:40.010 --> 01:53:42.630 up money. But ignoring the peers is an issue 01:53:42.630 --> 01:53:44.789 because the keeping up with the Joneses is a 01:53:44.789 --> 01:53:47.350 real phenomenon. Yeah, envy makes the world go 01:53:47.350 --> 01:53:50.770 round. Yeah. And then there's another thing that 01:53:50.770 --> 01:53:54.109 people have to avoid, even allowing their mind 01:53:54.109 --> 01:53:56.489 to think. When they're hearing what you're saying 01:53:56.489 --> 01:54:01.180 and all this logical, fantastic advice. There's 01:54:01.180 --> 01:54:05.460 these six dirty words that's easy for you to 01:54:05.460 --> 01:54:09.520 say. Yeah. That is a terrible trap. I mean, look, 01:54:09.539 --> 01:54:12.060 I grew up as a first -generation immigrant in 01:54:12.060 --> 01:54:15.600 Jamaica, Queens, with zero money, single mom, 01:54:15.779 --> 01:54:18.439 two kids, working day and night, going to school. 01:54:19.279 --> 01:54:23.119 You know, I washed dishes. I was working catering 01:54:23.119 --> 01:54:25.180 jobs. I was mowing lawns. I was working since 01:54:25.180 --> 01:54:29.520 the age of 11, on and off, here and there. Didn't 01:54:29.520 --> 01:54:32.819 have two cents to rub together. I had to borrow 01:54:32.819 --> 01:54:37.779 $400 to go to college. I was short $400. I had 01:54:37.779 --> 01:54:41.039 to find $400. I didn't have it. Got rejected 01:54:41.039 --> 01:54:45.399 from a job at Dunkin' Donuts. It's not to say 01:54:45.399 --> 01:54:47.979 that it's easy. It's not easy. It's actually 01:54:47.979 --> 01:54:50.600 really freaking hard. It is the hardest thing 01:54:50.600 --> 01:54:53.060 you will do, but it's also the rewarding thing. 01:54:53.399 --> 01:54:55.699 Look at the kids who are born rich, no meaning 01:54:55.699 --> 01:54:59.020 to their lives. It's a terrible place. Your real 01:54:59.020 --> 01:55:02.140 resume is just a cataloging of all your suffering. 01:55:03.020 --> 01:55:05.739 If I were to ask you to describe your real life 01:55:05.739 --> 01:55:07.899 to yourself, when you look back on your deathbed, 01:55:08.020 --> 01:55:09.680 you're going to go back and say, what are the 01:55:09.680 --> 01:55:11.760 interesting things I've done? And it's all going 01:55:11.760 --> 01:55:13.619 to be around the sacrifices that you made and 01:55:13.619 --> 01:55:15.159 the hard things that you did. Anything you're 01:55:15.159 --> 01:55:18.279 given doesn't matter. You have your four limbs, 01:55:18.399 --> 01:55:20.000 you have your brain, you have your head, you 01:55:20.000 --> 01:55:22.890 have your skin. That's all for granted. You have 01:55:22.890 --> 01:55:25.270 to do hard things anyway to create your own meaning 01:55:25.270 --> 01:55:29.369 in life. Making money is a fine one. Yeah, struggle. 01:55:29.630 --> 01:55:31.510 It is hard. I'm not going to say it's easy. It's 01:55:31.510 --> 01:55:33.189 really hard, but the tools are all available. 01:55:33.409 --> 01:55:36.390 It's all there. There's also these traps that 01:55:36.390 --> 01:55:41.660 people sort of establish in their own mind. of 01:55:41.660 --> 01:55:44.619 giving themselves excuses or giving themselves 01:55:44.619 --> 01:55:49.460 insurmountable obstacles, insurmountable paths 01:55:49.460 --> 01:55:51.979 and terrain. Victim mentality. Yeah. It's somebody 01:55:51.979 --> 01:55:54.420 else's fault. It's my skin color's fault. It's 01:55:54.420 --> 01:55:56.460 the system's fault. Yeah, those people are sinking. 01:55:56.699 --> 01:55:58.479 I feel bad for them. I want to shake them out 01:55:58.479 --> 01:56:01.039 of it and say, actually, you can get out of it. 01:56:01.100 --> 01:56:02.699 You just have to stop thinking it's everybody 01:56:02.699 --> 01:56:03.899 else's fault. You have to alter the perspective. 01:56:04.239 --> 01:56:06.319 Yeah. But it's so difficult for people to do. 01:56:06.359 --> 01:56:08.060 It's one of the most difficult things for people 01:56:08.060 --> 01:56:10.700 to do is to change the way they approach. approach 01:56:10.700 --> 01:56:14.500 reality itself. At the end of the day, I do think, 01:56:14.539 --> 01:56:16.359 even despite what I said earlier, life is really 01:56:16.359 --> 01:56:18.300 a single player game. It's all going on in your 01:56:18.300 --> 01:56:21.420 head. You know, whatever you think, you believe. 01:56:22.260 --> 01:56:24.840 will very much shape your reality, both from 01:56:24.840 --> 01:56:26.960 what risks you take and what actions you perform, 01:56:27.100 --> 01:56:29.180 but also just your everyday experience of reality. 01:56:29.600 --> 01:56:31.399 If you're walking down the street and you're 01:56:31.399 --> 01:56:33.539 judging everyone, you're like, I don't like that 01:56:33.539 --> 01:56:35.060 person because their skin color. I don't like 01:56:35.060 --> 01:56:37.880 that. Oh, she's not attractive. That guy's fat. 01:56:38.140 --> 01:56:40.279 This person's a loser. Oh, who put this in my 01:56:40.279 --> 01:56:43.520 way? You know, the more you judge, the more you're 01:56:43.520 --> 01:56:45.319 going to separate yourself and you'll feel good 01:56:45.319 --> 01:56:47.159 for an instant because you'll feel good about 01:56:47.159 --> 01:56:49.180 yourself. I'm better than that. But then you're 01:56:49.180 --> 01:56:51.060 going to feel lonely and then you're just going 01:56:51.060 --> 01:56:53.319 to see negativity everywhere. The world just 01:56:53.319 --> 01:56:55.699 reflects your own feelings back at you. Reality 01:56:55.699 --> 01:56:59.000 is neutral. Reality has no judgments. To a tree, 01:56:59.060 --> 01:57:00.880 there's no concept of right or wrong or good 01:57:00.880 --> 01:57:03.399 or bad, right? You're born. You have a whole 01:57:03.399 --> 01:57:05.420 set of sensory experiences and stimulations and 01:57:05.420 --> 01:57:07.020 lights and colors and sounds, and then you die. 01:57:07.300 --> 01:57:09.399 And how you choose to interpret that is up to 01:57:09.399 --> 01:57:12.020 you. You do have that choice. So this is what 01:57:12.020 --> 01:57:14.659 I meant, that happiness is a choice. If you believe 01:57:14.659 --> 01:57:16.779 it's a choice, then you can start working on 01:57:16.779 --> 01:57:18.819 it. And I can't tell you how to find it because... 01:57:19.310 --> 01:57:21.050 It's your own conditionings that are making you 01:57:21.050 --> 01:57:22.770 unhappy. So you have to uncondition yourself. 01:57:23.149 --> 01:57:24.909 It's just like, I can't fix your eating habits 01:57:24.909 --> 01:57:26.310 for you. I can give you some general guidelines, 01:57:26.369 --> 01:57:28.010 but you got to go through the hard habit forming 01:57:28.010 --> 01:57:30.369 of how to eat right. But you have to believe 01:57:30.369 --> 01:57:32.609 it's possible. And it is absolutely possible. 01:57:32.989 --> 01:57:35.909 I was miserable. I'm happy as a clam. And it's 01:57:35.909 --> 01:57:37.430 not just the money. I got there before the money. 01:57:37.649 --> 01:57:39.729 You got happy before the money? Mostly, yeah. 01:57:39.930 --> 01:57:41.670 How did you get happy before the money? I started 01:57:41.670 --> 01:57:44.510 getting older. I just realized life is short. 01:57:44.569 --> 01:57:48.899 I'm going to die. Again, trite, right? Trite. 01:57:48.899 --> 01:57:51.039 In many ways. Yeah. Well, Confucius had a great 01:57:51.039 --> 01:57:53.260 saying that, you know, every man has two lives. 01:57:53.619 --> 01:57:55.880 And the second starts when he realizes he has 01:57:55.880 --> 01:58:00.460 just one. Wow. And I read that. It was one of 01:58:00.460 --> 01:58:02.680 those book dropping lines. You know, it's like 01:58:02.680 --> 01:58:05.680 mic drop. Confucius had a lot of mic drops. Confucius 01:58:05.680 --> 01:58:07.699 was a bad motherfucker. He was. That's a crazy 01:58:07.699 --> 01:58:10.239 one. That was a great one. Or another one is 01:58:10.239 --> 01:58:12.619 next time you get sick. Because everybody gets 01:58:12.619 --> 01:58:14.739 sick every now and then. It's like a happy person 01:58:14.739 --> 01:58:17.840 wants 10 ,000 things. A sick person just wants 01:58:17.840 --> 01:58:21.899 one thing. So it's your unlimited desires that 01:58:21.899 --> 01:58:24.659 are clouding your peace, your happiness. Have 01:58:24.659 --> 01:58:27.060 desires. You're a biological creature that stands 01:58:27.060 --> 01:58:30.340 up and says, I can do something. I move. I resist. 01:58:30.579 --> 01:58:34.680 I live. Just be very careful of your desires. 01:58:34.939 --> 01:58:37.100 This is the oldest, most trite wisdom. Desire 01:58:37.100 --> 01:58:39.220 is suffering. That's what it means, right? Every 01:58:39.220 --> 01:58:41.899 desire you have is an access where you will suffer. 01:58:42.079 --> 01:58:45.000 So just don't focus on more than one desire at 01:58:45.000 --> 01:58:47.640 a time. The universe is rigged in such a way 01:58:47.640 --> 01:58:49.420 that if you just want one thing and you focus 01:58:49.420 --> 01:58:51.520 on that, you'll get it. But everything else, 01:58:51.579 --> 01:58:54.979 you got to let go. Did you make a gradual shift 01:58:54.979 --> 01:58:58.500 to happiness or was it a radical change? It's 01:58:58.500 --> 01:59:00.949 ongoing. It's gradual. Every day gets better. 01:59:01.010 --> 01:59:02.430 So you're happier today than you were a month 01:59:02.430 --> 01:59:06.829 ago. Yeah. Allegedly. Yeah. Yeah. I'm very happy 01:59:06.829 --> 01:59:09.350 these days. Deliriously so. It's actually hard 01:59:09.350 --> 01:59:11.250 for me to hang out with normal people. Really? 01:59:11.350 --> 01:59:15.470 Yeah. So you've made a significant shift over 01:59:15.470 --> 01:59:18.289 the period of like how many years? About eight 01:59:18.289 --> 01:59:23.409 years. Eight years. Yeah. Wow. And is this something 01:59:23.409 --> 01:59:25.909 that you've pursued through certain books or 01:59:25.909 --> 01:59:28.529 is it just like you've made an understanding 01:59:28.529 --> 01:59:31.310 or gained an understanding in your own mind and 01:59:31.310 --> 01:59:33.229 then started pursuing it based on that understanding? 01:59:33.590 --> 01:59:36.409 Yeah, it's very, very personal. It's basically 01:59:36.409 --> 01:59:38.529 you have to decide it's a priority. And then 01:59:38.529 --> 01:59:40.810 I tried every hack I possibly could. I tried 01:59:40.810 --> 01:59:46.170 meditation. I tried witnessing. I even tried 01:59:46.170 --> 01:59:47.949 an SSRI just to see what it would feel like. 01:59:48.050 --> 01:59:51.460 How did it feel? It turned me from a pessimist 01:59:51.460 --> 01:59:52.960 to an optimist, but I didn't like the physical 01:59:52.960 --> 01:59:54.640 side effects, nor did I want to be on a drug 01:59:54.640 --> 01:59:57.380 -for -sustain basis. So I dropped it. But it 01:59:57.380 --> 01:59:59.739 did turn you into an optimist. Yes. At the time, 01:59:59.739 --> 02:00:02.659 I used to be a pessimist, yeah. I started doing 02:00:02.659 --> 02:00:04.880 things like I would start looking at the, you 02:00:04.880 --> 02:00:07.159 know, in every moment, in everything that happens, 02:00:07.359 --> 02:00:08.720 you can look on the bright side of something, 02:00:08.880 --> 02:00:11.399 right? And so I used to do that forcibly, and 02:00:11.399 --> 02:00:13.380 then I trained it until it became second nature. 02:00:13.819 --> 02:00:16.460 So, for example, like a friend of my wife's was 02:00:16.460 --> 02:00:18.960 over, and she... when we were dating and she 02:00:18.960 --> 02:00:20.960 took all these photos. She took like hundreds 02:00:20.960 --> 02:00:23.500 of photos and then she sends them all to us. 02:00:23.600 --> 02:00:25.000 And my immediate reaction was like, why are you 02:00:25.000 --> 02:00:27.020 dumping hundreds of photos of my phone? I don't 02:00:27.020 --> 02:00:28.659 need hundreds of photos. Have some judgment. 02:00:28.859 --> 02:00:30.859 That was my immediate reaction. And then I could 02:00:30.859 --> 02:00:34.060 say, actually. how nice of her. She sent me hundreds 02:00:34.060 --> 02:00:36.079 of photos. I can pick the one that I like, right? 02:00:36.140 --> 02:00:37.739 There are two ways of seeing almost everything. 02:00:38.180 --> 02:00:40.000 There are a few things that are like high suffering. 02:00:40.060 --> 02:00:41.479 So you can't do that other than just saying, 02:00:41.560 --> 02:00:44.039 well, this is a teacher, right? But I slowly 02:00:44.039 --> 02:00:46.739 work through every negative judgment that I had 02:00:46.739 --> 02:00:48.680 until I saw the positive. And now it's second 02:00:48.680 --> 02:00:52.000 nature to me. I also realized that like, what 02:00:52.000 --> 02:00:53.960 you want is you want to clear minds. You want 02:00:53.960 --> 02:00:56.579 to let go of thoughts. Happy thoughts disappear 02:00:56.579 --> 02:00:58.380 out of your head automatically. Very easy to 02:00:58.380 --> 02:01:00.539 let go of them. Negative thoughts linger. So 02:01:00.539 --> 02:01:02.939 if you interpret the positive in everything very 02:01:02.939 --> 02:01:05.579 quickly, you let it go, right? You let it go 02:01:05.579 --> 02:01:09.039 much faster. Simple hacks get more sunlight. 02:01:09.470 --> 02:01:11.810 Learn to smile more. Learn to hug more. These 02:01:11.810 --> 02:01:13.489 things actually release serotonin in reverse. 02:01:13.810 --> 02:01:16.210 They aren't just outward signals of being happy. 02:01:16.329 --> 02:01:18.289 They're actually feedback loops to being happy. 02:01:19.069 --> 02:01:21.210 Spend more time in nature. These are obvious. 02:01:21.569 --> 02:01:24.529 Watch your mind. Watch your mind all day long. 02:01:24.689 --> 02:01:26.369 Watch what it does. Not judge it, not try to 02:01:26.369 --> 02:01:29.329 control it, but you can meditate 24 -7. Meditation 02:01:29.329 --> 02:01:31.130 is not a sit down, close your eyes activity. 02:01:31.810 --> 02:01:34.409 Meditation is just basically watching your own 02:01:34.409 --> 02:01:36.329 thoughts like you would watch anything else in 02:01:36.329 --> 02:01:38.729 the outside world and say, why am I having that 02:01:38.729 --> 02:01:41.020 thought? Does that serve me anymore? Is that 02:01:41.020 --> 02:01:43.340 conditioning from when I was 10 years old? Like, 02:01:43.359 --> 02:01:46.340 for example, getting ready for this podcast. 02:01:46.800 --> 02:01:50.359 You got ready? I didn't. Oh, good. I did. But 02:01:50.359 --> 02:01:53.180 I did. But I did. I couldn't help it. And what 02:01:53.180 --> 02:01:55.199 happened was the few days leading up to this, 02:01:55.399 --> 02:01:57.819 my mind was just running. And normally my mind 02:01:57.819 --> 02:01:59.680 is pretty calm. And it was just running and running 02:01:59.680 --> 02:02:02.340 and running. And every thought I would have, 02:02:02.399 --> 02:02:04.779 I would imagine me saying it to you. My brain 02:02:04.779 --> 02:02:07.779 couldn't help but rehearse. what it's doing. 02:02:07.859 --> 02:02:10.359 It's just rehearsing all the time to talk to 02:02:10.359 --> 02:02:13.199 you. And then I was even rehearsing, telling 02:02:13.199 --> 02:02:15.680 you about the rehearsal, right? So it was all 02:02:15.680 --> 02:02:17.420 playing all these meta games. And I was just 02:02:17.420 --> 02:02:20.060 like, shut up, stop it. What is going on? And 02:02:20.060 --> 02:02:22.119 it took me a while to figure out, oh yeah, you 02:02:22.119 --> 02:02:25.760 know what it is. When I was a kid in Queens and 02:02:25.760 --> 02:02:27.960 I had no money and I had nothing and I needed 02:02:27.960 --> 02:02:31.380 to save myself, the way I got out was by sounding 02:02:31.380 --> 02:02:34.319 smart, not being smart, sounding smart. That 02:02:34.319 --> 02:02:37.720 was the skill I perfected. So I am hardwired 02:02:37.720 --> 02:02:40.479 to always rehearse things so I will sound smart. 02:02:40.699 --> 02:02:42.840 It's a disease. It keeps me from being happy. 02:02:43.260 --> 02:02:45.760 But when you see that, when you realize that, 02:02:45.880 --> 02:02:48.060 when you understand something, then it naturally 02:02:48.060 --> 02:02:50.420 calms you down. So after that, I stopped rehearsing 02:02:50.420 --> 02:02:53.289 as much. Wow. But it's still a trained habit. 02:02:54.010 --> 02:02:57.329 That is a really interesting point that you want 02:02:57.329 --> 02:03:02.670 to sound smart, that many people do that, and 02:03:02.670 --> 02:03:05.229 especially young people. When you see someone 02:03:05.229 --> 02:03:07.489 who is smart or someone who appears smart, they 02:03:07.489 --> 02:03:09.329 say smart things, you go, God, I want to sound 02:03:09.329 --> 02:03:11.449 smart. I want people to think about me the same 02:03:11.449 --> 02:03:14.189 way I think about that person. That is my disease. 02:03:14.270 --> 02:03:16.289 That is my feeling. It is what clutters my mind. 02:03:16.729 --> 02:03:21.700 The thing I have to ask myself now is, Would 02:03:21.700 --> 02:03:23.520 I still be interested in learning this thing 02:03:23.520 --> 02:03:26.899 if I couldn't ever tell anybody about it? That's 02:03:26.899 --> 02:03:28.619 how I know it's real. That's how I know it's 02:03:28.619 --> 02:03:30.220 something I actually want to know. That's a common 02:03:30.220 --> 02:03:32.479 thing, though. I know I suffered from that when 02:03:32.479 --> 02:03:36.859 I was young, the desire to sound smart. It's 02:03:36.859 --> 02:03:44.930 very common. Well, all of us start out... Everything 02:03:44.930 --> 02:03:48.510 you're a winner now in your life, it's because 02:03:48.510 --> 02:03:51.109 you were a loser at some point. If you had gotten 02:03:51.109 --> 02:03:53.149 all the girls, if you had all the money, if you 02:03:53.149 --> 02:03:54.770 had everything you want, you were good looking 02:03:54.770 --> 02:03:58.270 in junior high or high school, you wouldn't have 02:03:58.270 --> 02:04:00.430 done anything with your life. And you would have 02:04:00.430 --> 02:04:02.069 peaked early. It's like the Bruce Springsteen 02:04:02.069 --> 02:04:03.710 Glory Days song, right? You would have married 02:04:03.710 --> 02:04:05.310 your high school sweetheart. You'd be living 02:04:05.310 --> 02:04:07.949 in your hometown. You'd be a manager at the local 02:04:07.949 --> 02:04:10.029 McDonald's, whatever the first dream job you 02:04:10.029 --> 02:04:12.069 had. Thank God we didn't all get what we wanted. 02:04:12.010 --> 02:04:14.250 wanted when we were young right or we would be 02:04:14.250 --> 02:04:16.850 trapped in that so you have to be able to break 02:04:16.850 --> 02:04:19.670 out of where you came from i don't know where 02:04:19.670 --> 02:04:21.430 i was going that is interesting too about people 02:04:21.430 --> 02:04:25.329 who peak too early yeah or maybe those people 02:04:25.329 --> 02:04:27.329 that peak too early can do the elon musk thing 02:04:27.329 --> 02:04:29.470 and just abandon it and start something new and 02:04:29.470 --> 02:04:32.960 then learn the the the joys of sucking at something. 02:04:33.119 --> 02:04:36.340 Yeah. And actually, in our profession, especially 02:04:36.340 --> 02:04:38.939 when you're high visibility, the problem with 02:04:38.939 --> 02:04:42.619 peaking is that you then get drowned in... death 02:04:42.619 --> 02:04:44.260 of a thousand cuts. People have expectations 02:04:44.260 --> 02:04:46.600 of you. Hey, Joe, can you come to my event? Hey, 02:04:46.619 --> 02:04:48.220 Joe, can you look at my business plan? Hey, Joe, 02:04:48.239 --> 02:04:50.439 can you give me advice on this? Can you talk 02:04:50.439 --> 02:04:52.420 to my friend? Can you come in this podcast? You're 02:04:52.420 --> 02:04:54.800 just being assaulted all the time with inbound 02:04:54.800 --> 02:04:57.800 opportunities. So you have no time to start over 02:04:57.800 --> 02:05:01.079 with anything. So you have to ruthlessly, ruthlessly 02:05:01.079 --> 02:05:03.800 disappoint everybody, eliminate and clear your 02:05:03.800 --> 02:05:06.100 schedule, drop all the meetings, not even respond 02:05:06.100 --> 02:05:07.960 to the emails. It's the only way you're going 02:05:07.960 --> 02:05:10.149 to be able to start over with anything. Yeah, 02:05:10.170 --> 02:05:12.810 and we talked about this, that I love your approach 02:05:12.810 --> 02:05:15.029 to meetings. I hate meetings. If they're not 02:05:15.029 --> 02:05:18.130 life or death, I'm the same way. I avoided a 02:05:18.130 --> 02:05:20.689 good one recently, and this was someone that 02:05:20.689 --> 02:05:23.609 was just tracking me down as a high -profile 02:05:23.609 --> 02:05:26.510 person at a big organization. And I'm like, can 02:05:26.510 --> 02:05:28.210 we just talk on the phone? And then we talked 02:05:28.210 --> 02:05:30.430 on the phone. There was nothing to say. It was 02:05:30.430 --> 02:05:33.130 just they wanted to get me in the office. Yeah, 02:05:33.189 --> 02:05:34.850 and meetings should really be phone calls. Phone 02:05:34.850 --> 02:05:37.189 calls should be emails and emails should just 02:05:37.189 --> 02:05:41.289 be texts, right? Many of them, right? With meetings, 02:05:41.430 --> 02:05:43.550 I mean, I despise meetings. I used to own the 02:05:43.550 --> 02:05:45.949 domain idontdocoffee .com. I eventually let it 02:05:45.949 --> 02:05:48.689 go, but I used to respond from the wallet idontdocoffee, 02:05:48.710 --> 02:05:50.550 you know? Oh, that's hilarious. But it was a 02:05:50.550 --> 02:05:52.670 little bit of a jerk move. But really where it 02:05:52.670 --> 02:05:54.869 comes from is when I was young, one of my principles 02:05:54.869 --> 02:05:57.149 was I knew I had to make money. It was my overwhelming 02:05:57.149 --> 02:05:59.970 desire. And one of the things I did was I said, 02:05:59.989 --> 02:06:01.989 okay, I'm never going to be worth more than what 02:06:01.989 --> 02:06:04.210 I think I'm worth. Okay, no one's going to pay 02:06:04.210 --> 02:06:06.050 me more than what I think I'm worth. So what 02:06:06.050 --> 02:06:09.069 am I worth? So I picked an hourly rate for myself 02:06:09.069 --> 02:06:11.529 that I was worth. And I said, I'm never going 02:06:11.529 --> 02:06:14.029 to squander my time for less than this. So if 02:06:14.029 --> 02:06:16.670 originally it was 500 bucks an hour, then I upgrade 02:06:16.670 --> 02:06:18.430 to 5 ,000 bucks an hour. And, you know, it's 02:06:18.430 --> 02:06:21.550 ludicrous. But pick an aspirational hourly rate. 02:06:21.970 --> 02:06:24.090 It has to be a little ludicrous. And then what 02:06:24.090 --> 02:06:26.649 I would do is if I have to return something, 02:06:26.829 --> 02:06:29.250 I'm standing in line to return something and 02:06:29.250 --> 02:06:30.909 it's below my hourly rate, I'll throw it away. 02:06:31.590 --> 02:06:35.729 Or give it away. If I have to do some task and 02:06:35.729 --> 02:06:37.369 I can hire somebody to do it for less than my 02:06:37.369 --> 02:06:39.850 hourly rate, I would hire them. And so I just 02:06:39.850 --> 02:06:43.250 became extremely jealous of my time, which doesn't 02:06:43.250 --> 02:06:45.750 mean you can't have fun. Rest, leisure, spending 02:06:45.750 --> 02:06:47.550 time with your friends and family, that's all 02:06:47.550 --> 02:06:49.750 great. Don't count that. But if you're doing 02:06:49.750 --> 02:06:52.569 anything you don't want to do, which is the definition 02:06:52.569 --> 02:06:54.550 of work. It's a set of things that you have to 02:06:54.550 --> 02:06:56.590 do that you don't want to do. If you're working, 02:06:56.789 --> 02:06:58.930 it better be for your hourly rate. Otherwise, 02:06:58.970 --> 02:07:02.050 don't do the work. And so once it came out of 02:07:02.050 --> 02:07:03.729 that, then I just realized the cost of meetings. 02:07:03.989 --> 02:07:06.329 The cost of meetings is so high, especially given 02:07:06.329 --> 02:07:08.670 all the people who are in there, right? One person's 02:07:08.670 --> 02:07:10.489 talking, seven people listening. You're literally 02:07:10.489 --> 02:07:13.250 just dying an hour at a time. So you have to 02:07:13.250 --> 02:07:16.329 just drop non -urgent meetings or figure out 02:07:16.329 --> 02:07:17.569 how to be more efficient with them if you're 02:07:17.569 --> 02:07:19.829 going to do anything great. The extreme example 02:07:19.829 --> 02:07:23.130 is business travel. Getting on a plane to fly 02:07:23.130 --> 02:07:25.909 half around the world for one meeting, which 02:07:25.909 --> 02:07:28.569 never amounts to anything. And then like wasting 02:07:28.569 --> 02:07:30.250 your whole little life there and then flying 02:07:30.250 --> 02:07:33.390 back. So about five years ago, I resolved, I 02:07:33.390 --> 02:07:36.250 am never going to travel for business. Wow. And 02:07:36.250 --> 02:07:37.810 I haven't traveled for business since. I only 02:07:37.810 --> 02:07:41.420 travel if the... travel experience will be so 02:07:41.420 --> 02:07:43.560 entertaining and joyous because I have friends 02:07:43.560 --> 02:07:45.880 or it's a place I want to see or whatever that 02:07:45.880 --> 02:07:47.659 it will be complete in and of itself because 02:07:47.659 --> 02:07:49.779 I know that whatever the business meeting I came 02:07:49.779 --> 02:07:53.859 from is never worth it. Wow. And actually that 02:07:53.859 --> 02:07:56.680 principle applies larger than just travel. It 02:07:56.680 --> 02:08:00.399 applies to life in general. One of the secrets 02:08:00.399 --> 02:08:03.800 to happiness is to really... embrace what you're 02:08:03.800 --> 02:08:06.000 doing in that moment. That's trite. But where 02:08:06.000 --> 02:08:08.939 that comes from is saying, I only want to do 02:08:08.939 --> 02:08:11.319 actions that are complete in and of themselves, 02:08:11.619 --> 02:08:13.739 right? If I'm looking for some ulterior motive 02:08:13.739 --> 02:08:16.640 down the line, it's not going to materialize. 02:08:17.100 --> 02:08:19.779 And if you think it is, maybe even if it does, 02:08:19.880 --> 02:08:22.079 it'll be very short -lived. Anything you wanted 02:08:22.079 --> 02:08:23.800 in your life, whether it was a car or whether 02:08:23.800 --> 02:08:26.119 it was a girl or whether it was money, when you 02:08:26.119 --> 02:08:28.359 got it, a year later, you were back to zero. 02:08:28.439 --> 02:08:30.819 Your brain had hedonically adapted to it and 02:08:30.819 --> 02:08:34.119 you were looking for the next thing. That's a 02:08:34.119 --> 02:08:37.420 great statement, hedonically adapted. That is 02:08:37.420 --> 02:08:40.630 what happens to people. You get accustomed to 02:08:40.630 --> 02:08:43.210 whatever it is. I realized that when I first 02:08:43.210 --> 02:08:45.449 got a new apartment. It was a nice apartment. 02:08:45.609 --> 02:08:46.909 After a while, I got used to it. I was like, 02:08:46.970 --> 02:08:49.670 oh, okay. This is just an apartment. It's just 02:08:49.670 --> 02:08:52.109 where I live. It's nice, but I'm used to it. 02:08:52.409 --> 02:08:55.029 We all go through this learning. It's riding 02:08:55.029 --> 02:08:57.329 the Ferris wheel of life. It's like you get at 02:08:57.329 --> 02:08:58.710 the bottom. You're like, oh, I want to get to 02:08:58.710 --> 02:09:00.489 the top. This is so exciting. You ride it up. 02:09:00.789 --> 02:09:02.729 You get a little dopamine rush and get a little 02:09:02.729 --> 02:09:05.350 serotonin. Then you ride it back down as that 02:09:05.350 --> 02:09:07.130 wears off. Then you need another high. Then you 02:09:07.130 --> 02:09:08.829 ride it back up and you ride it back down. In 02:09:08.829 --> 02:09:11.550 fact, the more highs you get, the harder it gets 02:09:11.550 --> 02:09:13.350 to go around the wheel. The more bored you get 02:09:13.350 --> 02:09:15.710 of it, the harder it goes to go back up. So what 02:09:15.710 --> 02:09:18.810 lights your fire now? What gets you motivated 02:09:18.810 --> 02:09:23.000 to do things and to act? Art. Art. This is art. 02:09:23.220 --> 02:09:26.239 Oh, okay. Art is just creativity. It's just anything 02:09:26.239 --> 02:09:28.939 that's done for its own sake. So what are the 02:09:28.939 --> 02:09:30.619 things that are done for their own sake? There's 02:09:30.619 --> 02:09:34.300 nothing beyond loving somebody, creating something, 02:09:34.539 --> 02:09:38.220 playing, art. To me, creating business is play. 02:09:38.720 --> 02:09:40.600 I create businesses early stage because it's 02:09:40.600 --> 02:09:43.439 fun, because I'm into the product. Even when 02:09:43.439 --> 02:09:45.479 I invest, it's because I like the people. I like 02:09:45.479 --> 02:09:47.300 hanging out with them. I learn from them, and 02:09:47.300 --> 02:09:49.859 I think the product is really cool. So these 02:09:49.859 --> 02:09:52.159 days, I will pass on all kinds of great investments 02:09:52.159 --> 02:09:54.659 because I'm like, the product's not interesting. 02:09:54.739 --> 02:09:56.479 It's boring. I'm not going to learn anything. 02:09:56.779 --> 02:09:59.640 That's a beautiful luxury. It is a luxury. Art 02:09:59.640 --> 02:10:03.680 and learning, yeah. It is a luxury. These are 02:10:03.680 --> 02:10:07.289 not 100 % or zero things. You can, in your life, 02:10:07.329 --> 02:10:09.569 start moving more and more towards that. But 02:10:09.569 --> 02:10:11.930 it's a goal. It's a goal. When I was younger, 02:10:12.010 --> 02:10:14.090 I used to be so desperate to make money that 02:10:14.090 --> 02:10:15.949 I would have done anything. If you'd shown up 02:10:15.949 --> 02:10:18.210 and said, hey, I got a sewage trucking business, 02:10:18.449 --> 02:10:19.770 and you're going to go into that, I would have 02:10:19.770 --> 02:10:21.010 said, great, let's do it. I'm going to make money. 02:10:22.210 --> 02:10:25.750 Thank God no one gave me that opportunity. I'm 02:10:25.750 --> 02:10:27.649 glad that it went down the road of technology 02:10:27.649 --> 02:10:30.890 and science, which I genuinely enjoy. And so 02:10:30.890 --> 02:10:33.829 I got to combine my vocation and my avocation. 02:10:34.149 --> 02:10:35.289 I mean, what are you doing? You're playing. You're 02:10:35.289 --> 02:10:37.210 having fun. You're doing art. You're not working. 02:10:37.710 --> 02:10:39.529 No. That's what I always say when people say 02:10:39.529 --> 02:10:42.970 I work hard. I'm like, sort of, not really. I'm 02:10:42.970 --> 02:10:46.350 always working, but it looks like work to them, 02:10:46.369 --> 02:10:48.930 but it feels like play to me. And that's how 02:10:48.930 --> 02:10:52.210 I know no one can compete with me on it. because 02:10:52.210 --> 02:10:54.510 I'm just playing 16 hours a day. And if they 02:10:54.510 --> 02:10:56.029 want to compete with me and they're going to 02:10:56.029 --> 02:10:57.310 work, they're going to lose because they're not 02:10:57.310 --> 02:10:59.069 going to do it 16 hours a day, seven days a week. 02:10:59.680 --> 02:11:02.260 Well, listen, man, there are some gems of wisdom 02:11:02.260 --> 02:11:05.380 in this conversation. And I hope people pull 02:11:05.380 --> 02:11:07.659 things out of this and apply them to their own 02:11:07.659 --> 02:11:09.779 life. And I'm certainly going to listen to you 02:11:09.779 --> 02:11:12.939 again and try to apply some of this to my own 02:11:12.939 --> 02:11:14.939 life, stuff that I'm not already applying. But 02:11:14.939 --> 02:11:16.640 I really appreciate your time, and I really appreciate 02:11:16.640 --> 02:11:18.539 you coming in here. Thanks for having me. And 02:11:18.539 --> 02:11:21.619 please tell people, your small little podcast 02:11:21.619 --> 02:11:23.739 is just the Naval podcast, right? Yeah, best 02:11:23.739 --> 02:11:25.899 way to find me is on Twitter, actually. I'm just 02:11:25.899 --> 02:11:30.550 at Naval. website at nav .al. I have a YouTube 02:11:30.550 --> 02:11:33.050 channel, Naval, and I have a podcast, Naval. 02:11:33.210 --> 02:11:35.069 That's it. Well, thank you very much. Thank you. 02:11:35.069 --> 02:11:37.170 Really appreciate it. Thank you. Bye, everybody. 02:11:37.869 --> 02:11:38.329 Bye -bye.