Transcript
00:00:00 The following is a conversation with Ray Dalio.
00:00:03 He’s the founder, co chairman,
00:00:05 and co chief investment officer of Bridgewater Associates,
00:00:08 one of the world’s largest
00:00:09 and most successful investment firms
00:00:11 that is famous for the principles of radical truth
00:00:14 and transparency that underlies culture.
00:00:17 Ray is one of the wealthiest people in the world
00:00:20 with ideas that extend far beyond the specifics
00:00:23 of how he made that wealth.
00:00:24 His ideas that are applicable to everyone
00:00:27 are brilliantly summarized in his book, Principles.
00:00:30 They’re also even further condensed
00:00:32 on several other platforms, including YouTube,
00:00:35 where, for example, the 30 minute video titled
00:00:38 How the Economic Machine Works
00:00:40 is one of the best educational videos
00:00:43 I personally have ever seen on YouTube.
00:00:46 Once again, you may have noticed
00:00:49 that the people I’ve been speaking with
00:00:50 are not just computer scientists,
00:00:52 but philosophers, mathematicians, writers,
00:00:55 psychologists, physicists, economists, investors,
00:00:57 and soon, much more.
00:00:59 To me, AI is much bigger than deep learning,
00:01:03 bigger than computing.
00:01:04 It is our civilization’s journey
00:01:06 into understanding the human mind
00:01:08 and creating echoes of it in the machine.
00:01:10 That journey includes the mechanisms of our economy,
00:01:14 of our politics, and the leaders
00:01:15 that shape the future of both.
00:01:18 This is the Artificial Intelligence Podcast.
00:01:21 If you enjoy it, subscribe on YouTube,
00:01:23 give it five stars on Apple Podcast,
00:01:25 support it on Patreon,
00:01:27 or simply connect with me on Twitter
00:01:29 at Lex Friedman, spelled F R I D M A N.
00:01:33 This show is presented by Cash App,
00:01:35 the number one finance app in the App Store.
00:01:38 I personally use Cash App to send money to friends,
00:01:41 but you can also use it to buy, sell, and deposit Bitcoin.
00:01:44 Most Bitcoin exchanges take days
00:01:46 for a bank transfer to become investable.
00:01:48 Through Cash App, it takes seconds.
00:01:51 Cash App also has a new investing feature.
00:01:54 You can buy fractions of a stock,
00:01:56 which to me is a really interesting concept.
00:01:58 So you can buy $1 worth no matter what the stock price is.
00:02:03 Brokerage services are provided by Cash App Investing,
00:02:06 subsidiary of Square and member SIPC.
00:02:09 I’m excited to be working with Cash App
00:02:11 to support one of my favorite organizations
00:02:14 that many of you may know and have benefited from
00:02:17 called First, best known for their first robotics
00:02:20 and Lego competitions.
00:02:22 They educate and inspire hundreds of thousands of students
00:02:26 in over 110 countries and have a perfect rating
00:02:29 on Charity Navigator, which means the donated money
00:02:32 is used to maximum effectiveness.
00:02:35 When you get Cash App from the App Store or Google Play
00:02:38 and use code LexPodcast, you’ll get $10
00:02:42 and Cash App will also donate $10 to First,
00:02:44 which again is an organization that I’ve personally seen
00:02:47 inspire girls and boys to dream of engineering
00:02:51 a better world.
00:02:52 And now here’s my conversation with Ray Dalio.
00:02:56 Truth or more precisely an accurate understanding
00:02:59 of reality is the essential foundation of any good outcome.
00:03:03 I believe you’ve said that.
00:03:05 Let me ask an absurd sounding question
00:03:08 at the high philosophical level.
00:03:10 So what is truth?
00:03:12 When you’re trying to do something different
00:03:14 than everybody else is doing
00:03:16 and perhaps something that has not been done before,
00:03:19 how do you accurately analyze the situation?
00:03:23 How do you accurately discover the truth,
00:03:25 the nature of things?
00:03:27 Almost the way you’re asking the question implies
00:03:30 that truth and newness have nothing, are almost at odds.
00:03:35 And I just want to say that I don’t think
00:03:37 that that’s true, right?
00:03:39 So what I mean by truth is, you know, what’s the reality?
00:03:43 How does the reality work?
00:03:45 And so if you’re doing something new
00:03:47 that has never been done before,
00:03:49 which is exciting and I like to do,
00:03:51 the way that you would start with that
00:03:54 is experimenting on what are the realities
00:03:57 and the premises that you’re using on that
00:03:59 and how to stress test those types of things.
00:04:01 I think what you’re talking about is instead
00:04:04 the fact of how do you deal with something
00:04:06 that’s never been done before
00:04:08 and deal with the associated probabilities.
00:04:11 And so I think in that,
00:04:13 don’t let something that’s never been done before
00:04:15 stand in the way of you doing that particular thing.
00:04:20 You have, because almost the only way
00:04:22 that you understand what truth is,
00:04:25 is through experimentation.
00:04:27 And so when you go out and experiment,
00:04:29 you’re going to learn a lot more about what truth is.
00:04:32 But the essence of what I’m saying is that
00:04:35 when you take a look at that, use truth,
00:04:38 find out what the realities are as a foundation,
00:04:41 do the independent thinking,
00:04:43 do the experimentation to find out what’s true
00:04:47 and change and keep going after that.
00:04:50 So I think that when you’re thinking about it
00:04:54 the way you’re thinking about it,
00:04:56 that almost implies that you’re letting people
00:05:00 almost say that they’re reliant
00:05:03 on what’s been discovered before to find out what’s true.
00:05:06 And what’s been discovered before is often not true, right?
00:05:11 Conventional view of what is true is very often wrong.
00:05:16 It’ll go in ups and downs and I mean, there are fads
00:05:19 and okay, this thing, it goes this way and that way.
00:05:22 And so definitions of truths that are conventional
00:05:25 are not the thing to go by.
00:05:28 How do you know the thing that has been done before
00:05:32 that it might succeed?
00:05:33 It’s to do whatever homework that you have
00:05:37 in order to try to get a foundation.
00:05:40 And then to go into worlds of not knowing
00:05:43 and you go into the world of not knowing,
00:05:45 but not stupidly, not naively, you know,
00:05:48 you go into that world of not knowing
00:05:51 and then you do experimenting and you learn what truth is
00:05:54 and what’s possible through that process.
00:05:57 I describe it as a five step process.
00:05:59 The first step is you go after your goals.
00:06:02 The second step is you identify the problems
00:06:04 that stand in the way of you getting to your goals.
00:06:07 The third step is you diagnose those
00:06:09 to get at the root cause of those.
00:06:11 Then the fourth step is then now that you know
00:06:13 the exact root cause, you design a way to get around those
00:06:17 and then you follow through and do the designs
00:06:21 you set out to do and it’s the experimentation.
00:06:23 I think that what happens to people mostly
00:06:27 is that they try to decide whether they’re gonna be
00:06:31 successful or not ahead of doing it
00:06:34 and they don’t know how to do the process well
00:06:36 because the nature of your questions are along those lines
00:06:39 like how do you know?
00:06:40 Well, you don’t know, but a practical person
00:06:43 who is also used to making dreams happen
00:06:47 knows how to do that process.
00:06:48 I’ve given personality tests to shapers.
00:06:52 So the person, what I mean by a shaper is a person
00:06:56 who can take something from visualization,
00:07:00 they have an audacious goal and then they go
00:07:02 from visualization to actualization, building it out.
00:07:06 That includes Elon Musk, I gave him the personality test,
00:07:10 I’ve given it to Bill Gates and I’ve given it to many,
00:07:12 many such shapers and they know that process
00:07:17 that I’m talking about, they experience it
00:07:19 which is a process essentially of knowing
00:07:22 how to go from an audacious goal
00:07:24 but not in a ridiculous way, not a dream
00:07:27 and then to do that learning along the way
00:07:31 that allows them in a very practical way
00:07:34 to learn very rapidly as they’re moving toward that goal.
00:07:38 So the call to adventure, the adventure starts
00:07:42 not trying to analyze the probabilities of the situation
00:07:44 but using what, instinct?
00:07:48 How do you dive in?
00:07:49 So let’s talk about.
00:07:50 It is being a, it’s simultaneously being a dreamer
00:07:54 and a realist, it’s to know how to do that well.
00:07:58 The pull comes from a pull to adventure.
00:08:01 For whatever reason, I can’t tell you how much
00:08:05 of it’s genetics and how much is environment
00:08:07 but there’s a early on, it’s exciting.
00:08:11 That notion is exciting, being creative is exciting
00:08:15 and so one feels that, then one gets in the habit
00:08:19 of doing that, okay, how do I know?
00:08:21 How do I learn very well and then how do I imagine
00:08:25 and then how do I experiment to go from that imagination?
00:08:30 So it’s that process that one, and then one,
00:08:34 the more one does it, the better one becomes at it.
00:08:40 You mentioned shapers, Elon Musk, Bill Gates.
00:08:44 What, who are the shapers that you find yourself
00:08:47 thinking about when you’re constructing these ideas?
00:08:51 The ones that define the archetype of a shaper for you.
00:08:54 Well, as I say, a shaper for me is somebody
00:08:57 who comes up with a great visualization,
00:09:02 usually a really unique visualization
00:09:04 and then actually builds it out and makes the world different,
00:09:08 changes the world in that kind of a way.
00:09:10 So when I look at it, Mark Benioff with Salesforce,
00:09:14 Chris Anderson with TED, Mohammed Yunus
00:09:17 with social enterprise and philanthropy,
00:09:20 Jeffrey Canada and Harlem Children’s Zone,
00:09:23 there are, all domains have shapers who have the ability
00:09:28 to visualize and make extraordinary things happen.
00:09:32 What are the commonalities between some of them?
00:09:35 The commonalities are, first of all,
00:09:38 the excitement of something new, that call to adventure,
00:09:43 and then again, that practicality, the capacity to learn.
00:09:47 The capacity then, they’re able to be,
00:09:51 in many ways, full rage.
00:09:53 That means they’re able to go
00:09:55 from the big, big picture down to the detail.
00:09:59 So let’s say, for example, Elon Musk,
00:10:02 he describes, he gets a lot of money
00:10:06 from selling PayPal, his interest in PayPal.
00:10:09 He said, why isn’t anybody going to Mars or outer space?
00:10:14 What are we gonna do if the planet goes to hell?
00:10:16 And how are we gonna get that?
00:10:18 And nobody’s paying attention to that.
00:10:19 He doesn’t know much about it.
00:10:21 He then reads and learns and so on.
00:10:24 Says, I’m gonna take, okay, half of my money,
00:10:27 and I’m gonna put it in there,
00:10:29 and I’m gonna do this thing, and he learns,
00:10:31 and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah,
00:10:32 and he’s got creative, okay.
00:10:33 That’s one dimension.
00:10:35 So he gave me the keys to his car,
00:10:39 but this was just early days in Tesla,
00:10:42 and he then points out the details.
00:10:45 Okay, if you push this button here, it’s this,
00:10:48 the detail that, so he’s simultaneously talking
00:10:53 about the big, the big, big, big picture.
00:10:56 Okay, when does humanity going to abandon the planet?
00:10:59 But he will then be able to take it down into the detail
00:11:03 so he can go, let’s call it helicoptering.
00:11:06 He can go up, he can go down,
00:11:07 and see things at those types of perspective.
00:11:09 And then you’ve seen that with the other shapers.
00:11:11 And that’s a common thing that they can do that.
00:11:14 Another important difference that they have in mind
00:11:18 is how they deal with people.
00:11:21 I mean, meaning there’s nothing more important
00:11:24 than achieving the mission.
00:11:25 And so what they have in common is that there’s a test
00:11:30 that I give these personality tests,
00:11:34 because they’re very helpful for understanding people.
00:11:36 And so I gave it to all these shapers.
00:11:38 And one of the things in workplace inventory test
00:11:42 is this test, and it has a category called concern for others.
00:11:45 They’re all having concern for others.
00:11:49 This includes Muhammad Yunus,
00:11:51 who invented microfinance, social enterprise,
00:11:54 impact investing, as Muhammad Yunus received
00:11:57 the Nobel Peace Prize for this,
00:11:59 the Congressional Medal of Honor.
00:12:01 One of the, a fortune determined,
00:12:04 one of the 10 greatest entrepreneurs of our time.
00:12:08 He’s built all sorts of businesses to give back money
00:12:12 in social enterprise, a remarkable man.
00:12:14 He has nobody that I know practically
00:12:17 could have more concern for others.
00:12:20 He lives a life of a saint.
00:12:22 I mean, a very modest lifestyle,
00:12:24 and he puts all his money into trying to help others.
00:12:27 And he tests low on what’s called concern for others,
00:12:30 because what it really, those questions under that
00:12:33 are questions about conflict to get at the mission.
00:12:36 So they all, Jeffrey Canada,
00:12:38 who changed Harlem Children’s Zone
00:12:40 and developed that to take children in Harlem
00:12:42 and get them well taken care of,
00:12:44 not only just in their education, but their whole lives.
00:12:47 Harlem, him also, concern for others.
00:12:49 What they mean is that they can see
00:12:53 whether though individuals are performing at a level
00:12:58 that an extremely high level
00:13:00 that’s necessary to make those dreams happen.
00:13:03 So when you think of, let’s say Steve Jobs was famous
00:13:06 for being difficult with people and so on,
00:13:09 and I didn’t know Steve Jobs,
00:13:11 so I can’t speak personally to that,
00:13:13 but his comments on, do you have A players?
00:13:15 And if you have A players, if you put in B players,
00:13:17 pretty soon you’ll have C players and so on.
00:13:19 That is a common element of them,
00:13:22 holding people to high standards
00:13:24 and not letting anybody stand in the way of the mission.
00:13:28 What do you think about that kind of idea?
00:13:30 Sorry to pause on that for a second,
00:13:31 that the A, B, and C players,
00:13:35 and the importance of, so when you have a mission,
00:13:39 to really only have A players
00:13:41 and be sort of aggressively filtering for that?
00:13:45 Yes, but I think that there are all different ways
00:13:47 of being A players.
00:13:49 And I think, in order to grade a great team,
00:13:53 you have to appreciate all the differences
00:13:55 in ways of being A players, okay?
00:13:59 That’s the first thing.
00:14:00 And then you always have to be super excellent,
00:14:04 in my opinion, you always have to be really excellent
00:14:07 with people to help them understand each other themselves
00:14:11 and get in sync with them about what’s true about them
00:14:15 and their circumstances and how they’re doing,
00:14:18 so that they’re having a fabulous
00:14:19 personal development experience at the same time
00:14:23 as you’re dealing with them.
00:14:24 So when I say that they’re all different ways,
00:14:27 this is one of the then qualities,
00:14:30 you asked me what are the qualities.
00:14:32 So one of the third qualities that I would say
00:14:35 is to know how to deal well with your not knowing
00:14:41 and to be able to get the best expertise
00:14:46 so that you’re a great orchestrator of different ways,
00:14:50 so that the people who are really, really successful,
00:14:53 unlike most people believe that they’re successful
00:14:56 because of what they know,
00:14:58 they’re even more successful
00:15:01 by being able to effectively learn from others
00:15:04 and tap into the skills of people
00:15:06 who see things different from them.
00:15:09 Brilliant, so how do you win that personality
00:15:11 being first of all, open to the fact
00:15:13 that there’s other people see things differently than you,
00:15:18 and at the same time have supreme confidence in your vision?
00:15:22 Is there just the psychology of that?
00:15:24 Do you see a tension there between the confidence
00:15:27 and the open mindedness?
00:15:28 No, it’s funny because I think we grow up thinking
00:15:31 that there’s a tension there, right?
00:15:33 That there’s a confidence
00:15:35 and the more confidence that you have,
00:15:38 there’s a tension with the open mindedness
00:15:40 and not being sure, okay?
00:15:43 Confident and accurate
00:15:45 are almost negatively correlated to many people.
00:15:50 They’re extremely confident and they’re often inaccurate.
00:15:53 And so I think one of the greatest tragedies of people
00:15:57 is not realizing how those things to go together
00:16:00 because instead it’s really that by saying I know a lot
00:16:05 and how do I know I’m still not wrong?
00:16:08 And how do I take that the best thinking available to me
00:16:13 and then raise my probability of learning?
00:16:16 All these people think for themselves, okay?
00:16:19 I mean, meaning they’re smart,
00:16:21 but they take in like vacuum cleaners,
00:16:24 they take in ideas of others,
00:16:26 they stress test their ideas with others,
00:16:28 they assess what comes back to them
00:16:31 in the form of other thinking
00:16:33 and they also know what they’re not good at
00:16:36 and what other people who are good at the things
00:16:38 that they’re not good at,
00:16:39 they know how to get those people
00:16:41 and be successful all around
00:16:43 because nobody has enough knowledge in their heads
00:16:46 and that I think is one of the great differences.
00:16:49 So the reason my company has been successful
00:16:53 in terms of this is because of an idea
00:16:55 meritocratic decision making a process
00:16:58 by which you can get the best ideas.
00:17:00 You know, what’s an idea meritocracy?
00:17:02 An idea meritocracy is to get the best ideas
00:17:05 that are available out there
00:17:07 and to work together with other people in the team
00:17:09 to achieve that.
00:17:10 That’s an incredible process that you describe
00:17:12 in several places to arrive at the truth,
00:17:15 but I apologize if I’m romanticizing the notion,
00:17:18 but let me linger on it.
00:17:20 Just having enough self belief,
00:17:24 you don’t think there’s a self delusion there
00:17:27 that’s necessary, especially in the beginning.
00:17:30 You talk about in the journey,
00:17:31 maybe the trials or the abyss.
00:17:34 Do you think there is value to diluting yourself?
00:17:41 I think what you’re calling delusion
00:17:44 is a bad word for uncertainty, okay?
00:17:48 So in other words,
00:17:50 because we keep coming back to the question,
00:17:52 how would you know and all of those things?
00:17:55 No, I think that delusion is not gonna help you,
00:17:58 that you have to find out truth, okay?
00:18:01 To deal with uncertainty, not saying,
00:18:03 listen, I have this dream
00:18:05 and I don’t know how I’m going to get that dream.
00:18:08 I mentioned in my book principles
00:18:10 and described the process in a more complete way
00:18:12 than we’re gonna be able to go here.
00:18:15 But what happens is I say, you form your dreams first
00:18:19 and you can’t judge
00:18:21 whether you’re going to achieve those dreams
00:18:24 because you haven’t learned
00:18:26 the things that you’re going to learn
00:18:28 on the way toward those dreams, okay?
00:18:31 So that isn’t delusion.
00:18:33 I wouldn’t use delusion.
00:18:35 I think you’re overemphasizing the importance
00:18:38 of knowing whether you’re going to succeed or not.
00:18:41 Get rid of that, okay?
00:18:43 If you can get rid of that and say,
00:18:45 okay, no, I can have that dream,
00:18:48 but I’m so realistic in the notion of finding out.
00:18:52 I’m curious, I’m a great learner, I’m a great experimenter.
00:18:56 Along the way, you’ll do those experiments
00:18:58 which will teach you more truths
00:19:00 and more learning about the reality
00:19:03 so that you can get your dreams.
00:19:04 Because if you still live in that world of delusion, okay?
00:19:08 And you think delusion’s helpful.
00:19:10 No, the delusion isn’t.
00:19:12 Don’t confuse delusion with not knowing.
00:19:14 Yes, but nevertheless, so if we look at the abyss,
00:19:18 we can look at your own that you describe.
00:19:22 It’s difficult psychologically for people.
00:19:24 So many people quit.
00:19:26 Many people choose a path that is more comfortable.
00:19:32 The heartbreak of that breaks people.
00:19:34 So if you have the dream
00:19:36 and there’s this cycle of learning, setting a goal,
00:19:38 and so on, what’s your value for the psychology
00:19:42 of just being broken by these difficult moments?
00:19:45 Well, that’s classically the defining moment.
00:19:48 It’s almost like evolution taking care of,
00:19:51 okay, now you crash, you’re in the abyss.
00:19:55 Oh my God, that’s bad.
00:19:56 And then the question is, what do you do?
00:19:59 And it sorts people, okay?
00:20:01 And some people get off the field
00:20:04 and they say, oh, I don’t like this and so on.
00:20:07 And some people learn and they have a metamorphosis
00:20:12 and it changes their approach to learning.
00:20:16 The number one thing it should give them is uncertainty.
00:20:19 You should take an audacious dreamer,
00:20:23 guy who wants to change the world, crash, okay,
00:20:28 and then come out of that crashing and saying,
00:20:31 okay, I can be audacious
00:20:35 and scared that I’m gonna be wrong at the same time.
00:20:39 And then how do I do that?
00:20:41 Because that’s the key.
00:20:42 When you don’t lose your audaciousness
00:20:44 and you keep going after your big goal,
00:20:46 and at the same time you say,
00:20:48 hey, I’m worried that I’m gonna be wrong,
00:20:50 you gain your radical open mindedness
00:20:53 that allows you to take in the things,
00:20:56 that allows you to go to the next level of being successful.
00:20:59 So your own process, I mean, you’ve talked about it before,
00:21:02 but it would be great if you can describe it
00:21:05 because our darkest moments
00:21:06 are perhaps the most interesting.
00:21:07 So your own with the prediction of another depression.
00:21:13 Economic depression.
00:21:14 Yes, I apologize, economic depression.
00:21:17 Can you talk to what you were feeling, thinking,
00:21:22 planning, strategizing at those moments?
00:21:24 Yeah, that was my biggest moment, okay?
00:21:28 Building my little company.
00:21:30 This is in 1981, 82.
00:21:34 I had calculated that American banks
00:21:36 had given a lot more money to, lent a lot more money
00:21:40 to Latin American countries
00:21:42 than those countries were gonna pay back,
00:21:44 and that they would have a debt crisis,
00:21:46 and that this had sent the economy tumbling,
00:21:49 and that was an extremely controversial point of view.
00:21:53 Then it started to happen, and it happened,
00:21:55 and Mexico defaulted in August 1982.
00:21:58 I thought that there was gonna be an economic collapse
00:22:02 that was gonna follow
00:22:03 because there was a series of the other countries,
00:22:05 it was just playing out as I had imagined,
00:22:08 and that couldn’t have been more wrong.
00:22:11 That was the exact bottom in the stock market
00:22:14 because central banks eased monetary policy, blah, blah, blah,
00:22:17 and I couldn’t have been more wrong,
00:22:19 and I was very publicly wrong and all of that,
00:22:21 and I lost money for me, and I lost money for my clients,
00:22:24 and I only had a small company then,
00:22:27 but these were close people, I had to let them go.
00:22:32 I was down to me as the last person.
00:22:35 I was so broke I had to borrow $4,000 from my dad
00:22:39 to help to pay for my family bills, very painful,
00:22:43 and at the same time, I would say it definitely
00:22:46 was one of the best things that ever happened to me,
00:22:50 maybe the best thing from happened to me,
00:22:52 because it changed my approach to decision making.
00:22:55 It’s what I’m saying.
00:22:56 In other words, I kept saying, okay,
00:22:58 how do I know whether I’m right?
00:23:01 How do I know I’m not wrong?
00:23:02 It gave me that, and it didn’t give up my audaciousness
00:23:07 because I was in a position, what am I gonna do?
00:23:10 Am I gonna go back, put on a tie,
00:23:13 go to Wall Street and just do those things?
00:23:16 No, I can’t bring myself to do that, so I’m at a juncture.
00:23:19 How do I deal with my risk and how do I deal with that?
00:23:22 And it told me how to deal with my uncertainties,
00:23:25 and that taught me, for example, a number of techniques.
00:23:28 First, to find the smartest people I could find
00:23:31 who disagreed with me and to have quality disagreement.
00:23:35 I learned the art of thoughtful disagreement.
00:23:37 I learned how to produce diversification.
00:23:39 I learned how to do a number of things.
00:23:41 That is what led me to create an idea meritocracy.
00:23:46 In other words, person by person, I hired them,
00:23:48 and I wanted the smartest people
00:23:50 who would be independent thinkers
00:23:51 who would disagree with each other and me well
00:23:55 so that we could be independent thinkers
00:23:57 to go off to produce those audacious dreams
00:24:00 because you have to be an independent thinker to do that,
00:24:02 and to do that independently of the consensus,
00:24:05 independently of each other,
00:24:06 and then work ourselves through that
00:24:08 because who know whether you’re gonna have the right answer?
00:24:11 And by doing that, then that was the key to our success.
00:24:15 And the things that I wanna pass along to people,
00:24:18 the reason I’m doing this podcast with you
00:24:20 is I’m 70 years old,
00:24:23 and that is a magical way of achieving success.
00:24:28 If you can create an idea meritocracy,
00:24:30 it’s so much better in terms of achieving success
00:24:34 and also quality relationships with people,
00:24:36 but that’s what that experience gave me.
00:24:38 So if we can linger on a little bit longer,
00:24:41 the idea of an idea meritocracy, it’s fascinating,
00:24:44 but especially because it seems to be rare,
00:24:48 not just in companies, but in society.
00:24:50 So there is a lot of people on Twitter and public discourse
00:24:54 and politics and so on that are really stuck
00:24:56 in certain sets of ideas, whatever they are.
00:24:59 So when you’re confronted with an idea
00:25:03 that’s different than your own about a particular topic,
00:25:09 what kind of process do you go through mentally?
00:25:12 Are you arguing through the idea with the person,
00:25:16 sort of present is almost like a debate,
00:25:18 or do you sit on it and consider the world
00:25:20 sort of empathetically?
00:25:22 If this is true, then what does that world look like?
00:25:27 Does that world make sense and so on?
00:25:28 So what’s the process of considering
00:25:30 those conflicting ideas for you?
00:25:32 I’m gonna answer that question,
00:25:35 but after saying first, almost implicit in your question
00:25:39 is it’s not common, okay?
00:25:42 What’s common produces only common results, okay?
00:25:47 So don’t judge anything that is good
00:25:50 based on whether it’s common,
00:25:51 because it’s only gonna give you common results.
00:25:53 If you want unique, you have a unique approach, okay?
00:25:57 And so that art of thoughtful disagreement
00:26:00 is the capacity to hold two things in your mind
00:26:05 at the same time.
00:26:06 The, gee, I think this makes sense,
00:26:09 and then saying, I’m not sure it makes sense,
00:26:13 and then try to say, why does it make sense?
00:26:17 And then to triangulate with others.
00:26:20 So if I’m having a discussion like that
00:26:22 and I work myself through and I’m not sure,
00:26:26 then I have to do that in a good way.
00:26:29 So I always give attention, for example,
00:26:32 let’s start off, what does the other person know
00:26:34 relative to what I know?
00:26:36 So if a person has a higher expertise or things,
00:26:39 I’m much more inclined to ask questions.
00:26:42 I’m always asking questions.
00:26:43 If you wanna learn, you’re asking questions,
00:26:46 you’re not arguing, okay?
00:26:48 You’re taking in, you’re assessing when it comes into you.
00:26:51 Does that make sense?
00:26:53 Are you learning something?
00:26:54 Are you getting epiphanies and so on?
00:26:56 And I try to then do that if the conversation,
00:27:00 as we’re trying to decide what is true,
00:27:02 and we’re trying to do that together,
00:27:04 and we see truth different,
00:27:06 then I might even call in another really smart,
00:27:10 capable person and try to say, what is true
00:27:13 and how do we explore that together?
00:27:15 And you go through that same thing.
00:27:17 So I would, I said, I describe it as having open mindedness
00:27:22 and assertiveness at the same time,
00:27:25 that you can simultaneously be open minded
00:27:28 and take in with that curiosity
00:27:30 and then also be assertive and say,
00:27:32 but that doesn’t make sense.
00:27:33 Why would this be the case?
00:27:35 And you do that back and forth.
00:27:39 And when you’re doing that kind of back and forth
00:27:41 on a topic like the economy, which you have,
00:27:44 to me, perhaps I’m naive,
00:27:46 but it seems both incredible and incredibly complex,
00:27:51 the economy, the trading, the transactions,
00:27:54 that these transactions between two individuals
00:27:57 somehow add up to this giant mechanism.
00:28:00 You’ve put out a 30 minute video.
00:28:03 You have a lot of incredible videos online
00:28:06 that people should definitely watch on YouTube,
00:28:10 but you’ve put out this 30 minute video
00:28:11 titled How the Economic Machine Works.
00:28:14 That is probably one of the best, if not the best video
00:28:19 I’ve seen on the internet in terms of educational videos.
00:28:22 So people should definitely watch it,
00:28:24 especially because it’s not that the individual components
00:28:29 of the video are somehow revolutionary,
00:28:31 but the simplicity and the clarity
00:28:33 of the different components just makes you,
00:28:36 there’s a few light bulb moments there
00:28:37 about how the economy works as a machine.
00:28:40 So as you described, there’s three main forces
00:28:43 that drive the economy, productivity growth,
00:28:45 short term debt cycle, long term debt cycle.
00:28:48 The former, productivity growth is how valuable things,
00:28:52 how much value people create,
00:28:56 valuable things people create.
00:28:57 The latter is people borrowing from their future selves
00:29:02 to hopefully create those valuable things faster.
00:29:05 So this is an incredible system to me.
00:29:07 Maybe we can linger on it a little bit,
00:29:09 but you’ve also said what most people think about
00:29:14 as money is actually credit.
00:29:15 Total amount of credit in the US is $50 trillion.
00:29:20 Total amount of money is $3 trillion.
00:29:24 That’s just crazy to me.
00:29:26 Maybe I’m silly, maybe you can educate me,
00:29:28 but that seems crazy.
00:29:30 It gives me just positive human civilization
00:29:33 has been able to create a system that has so much credit.
00:29:37 So that’s a long way to ask,
00:29:40 do you think credit is good or bad for society?
00:29:45 That system of that’s so fundamentally based on credit.
00:29:49 I think credit is great,
00:29:51 even though people often overdo it.
00:29:54 Credit is that somebody has earned money.
00:29:58 And what happens is they lend it to somebody else
00:30:04 who’s got better ideas and they cut a deal.
00:30:07 And then that person with the better ideas
00:30:09 is gonna pay it back.
00:30:10 And if it works well,
00:30:11 it helps resource allocations go well,
00:30:15 providing people like the entrepreneurs
00:30:18 and all of those, they need capital.
00:30:20 They don’t have capital themselves.
00:30:22 And so somebody is gonna give them capital
00:30:24 and they’ll give them credit along those lines.
00:30:26 Then what happens is it’s not managed well
00:30:30 in a variety of ways.
00:30:31 So I did another book on principles,
00:30:34 principles of big debt crises that go into that.
00:30:38 And it’s free, by the way,
00:30:39 I put it free online as a PDF.
00:30:43 So if you go online and you look principles
00:30:47 of a big debt crisis is under my name,
00:30:48 you can download it in a PDF
00:30:50 or you can buy a print book of it.
00:30:52 And it goes through that particular process.
00:30:55 And so you always have it overdone in always the same way.
00:31:01 Everything, by the way,
00:31:03 almost everything happens over and over again
00:31:04 for the same reasons, okay?
00:31:07 So these debt crisis is all happened over and over again
00:31:09 for the same reasons.
00:31:11 They get it overdone.
00:31:12 In the book, it explains how you identify
00:31:14 whether it’s overdone or not.
00:31:16 They get it overdone.
00:31:17 And then you go through the process
00:31:19 of making the adjustments according that
00:31:21 and it explains how they can use the levers and so on.
00:31:25 If you didn’t have credit,
00:31:27 then you would be sort of everybody sort of be stuck.
00:31:30 So credit is a good thing,
00:31:35 but it can easily be overdone.
00:31:37 So now we get into the, what is money?
00:31:39 What is credit?
00:31:41 Okay, you get into money and credit.
00:31:43 So if you’re holding credit and you think that’s worthwhile,
00:31:46 keep in mind that the central bank,
00:31:48 let’s say it can print the money.
00:31:50 What is that problem?
00:31:51 You have an IOU and the IOU says
00:31:55 you’re gonna get a certain number of dollars, let’s say,
00:31:58 or yen or euros.
00:32:00 And that is what the IOU is.
00:32:02 And so the question is, will you get that money
00:32:05 and what will it be worth?
00:32:07 And then also you have a government,
00:32:10 which is a participant in that process
00:32:13 because they are on the hook, they owe money.
00:32:16 And then will they print the money
00:32:18 to make it easy for everybody to pay?
00:32:20 So you have to pay attention to those two.
00:32:23 I would suggest like you recommend to other people,
00:32:26 just take that 30 minutes
00:32:28 and it comes across pretty clearly.
00:32:31 But my conclusion is that of course you want it.
00:32:35 And even if you understand it and the cycles well,
00:32:39 you can benefit from those cycles
00:32:42 rather than to be hurt by those cycles.
00:32:45 Because I don’t know the way the cycle works
00:32:48 is somebody gets over indebted,
00:32:50 they have to sell an asset.
00:32:52 Okay, then I don’t know,
00:32:53 that’s when assets become cheaper.
00:32:55 How do you acquire the asset?
00:32:57 It’s a whole process.
00:32:59 So again, maybe another dumb question, but…
00:33:03 There are no such things as dumb questions.
00:33:05 There you go.
00:33:06 But what is money?
00:33:07 So you’ve mentioned credit and money.
00:33:13 Another thing that if I just zoom out
00:33:16 from an alien perspective and look at human civilization,
00:33:19 it’s incredible that we’ve created a thing
00:33:22 that only works because currency,
00:33:27 because we all agree it has value.
00:33:31 So I guess my question is how do you think about money
00:33:36 as this emergent phenomenon?
00:33:38 And what do you think is the future of money?
00:33:41 You’ve commented on Bitcoin, other forms.
00:33:44 What do you think is its history and future?
00:33:48 How do you think about money?
00:33:51 There are two things that money is for.
00:33:55 It’s a medium of exchange and it’s a storehold of wealth.
00:33:59 Yes.
00:34:00 So money, so you could say something’s a medium of exchange,
00:34:06 and then you could say, is it a storehold of wealth?
00:34:11 And money is that vehicle that is those things
00:34:17 and can be used to pay off your debt.
00:34:20 So when you have a debt and you provide it,
00:34:25 it pays off your debt.
00:34:26 So that’s that process.
00:34:28 And it’s, I apologize to interrupt,
00:34:31 but it only can be a medium of exchange or store wealth
00:34:35 when everybody recognizes it to be of value.
00:34:37 That’s right.
00:34:38 And so you see in the history around the world
00:34:41 and you go to places, I was in an island in the Pacific
00:34:48 in which they had as money these big stones.
00:34:53 And literally, they were taking a boat,
00:34:56 this big carved stone,
00:34:59 and they were taking it from one of the islands to the other
00:35:01 and it sank, the piece of this big stone,
00:35:06 piece of money that they had, and it went to the bottom
00:35:10 and they still perceived it as having value
00:35:13 so that it was, even though it was in the bottom
00:35:15 and it’s this big hunk of rock,
00:35:17 the fact that somebody owned it,
00:35:19 they would say, oh, I’ll own it for this and that.
00:35:21 I’ve seen beads in different places,
00:35:25 shells converted to this and mediums of exchange.
00:35:28 And when we look at what we’ve got, you’re exactly right.
00:35:32 It is the notion that if I give it to you,
00:35:35 I can then take it and I can buy something with it.
00:35:37 And that’s, so it’s a matter of perception.
00:35:40 Okay.
00:35:41 And then we go through then the history of money
00:35:44 and the vulnerabilities of money.
00:35:47 And what we have is there’s, through history,
00:35:50 there’s been two types of money.
00:35:52 Those that are claims on something of value,
00:35:58 like the connection to gold or something.
00:36:01 That’s right.
00:36:02 That would be.
00:36:03 Or they just are money without any connection,
00:36:07 and then we have a system now,
00:36:08 which is a fiat monetary system.
00:36:10 So that’s what money is.
00:36:12 Then it will last as long as it’s kept a value
00:36:17 and it works that way.
00:36:19 So let’s say central banks, when they get in the position
00:36:23 of like they owe a lot of money,
00:36:26 like we have in the case, it’s increasingly the case,
00:36:29 and they also in our mind and they have the printing press
00:36:33 to print the money and get out of that.
00:36:36 And you have a lot of people might be in that position.
00:36:39 Then you can print it and then it could be devalued in there.
00:36:43 And so history has shown, forget about today,
00:36:46 history has shown that no currency,
00:36:52 every currency has either ended as being a currency
00:36:56 or devalued as a currency over periods of time,
00:36:59 long periods of time.
00:37:01 So it evolves and it changes,
00:37:03 but everybody needs that medium of exchange
00:37:06 and everybody needs that storehold of wealth.
00:37:08 So it keeps changing what is money over a period of time.
00:37:12 But so much is being digitized today and there’s this ideas
00:37:18 that are based on the blockchain of Bitcoin and so on.
00:37:22 So if all currencies, like all empires come to an end,
00:37:27 what do you think, well, do you think something
00:37:30 like Bitcoin might emerge as a common store of value,
00:37:34 a store of wealth and a medium of exchange?
00:37:37 The problem with Bitcoin is that it’s not
00:37:43 an effective medium of exchange.
00:37:44 Like it’s not easy for me to go in there
00:37:47 and buy things with it.
00:37:49 And then it’s not an effective storehold of value
00:37:52 because it has a volatility that’s based on speculation
00:37:56 and the like, so it’s not a very effective saving.
00:38:00 That’s very different from Facebook’s
00:38:03 of a stable value currency,
00:38:05 which would be effective as both a medium of exchange
00:38:09 and a storehold of wealth.
00:38:11 Because if you were to hold it
00:38:12 and the way it’s linked to number of things
00:38:15 that it’s linked to would mean
00:38:17 that it could be a very effective storehold of wealth.
00:38:20 And then you have a digital currency
00:38:22 that could be a very effective medium exchange
00:38:24 and storehold of wealth.
00:38:26 So in my opinion, some digital currencies
00:38:29 are likely to succeed more or less
00:38:32 based on that ability to do it.
00:38:35 Then the question is what happens?
00:38:37 Okay, what happens is do central banks
00:38:40 allow that to happen?
00:38:42 I really do believe it’s possible
00:38:44 to get a better form of money
00:38:47 that central banks don’t control.
00:38:49 Okay, a better force of money
00:38:51 that the central banks don’t control.
00:38:54 But then that’s not yet happened.
00:38:57 And we also have to,
00:38:59 and so they’ve got to go through that evolutionary process.
00:39:03 In order to go through that evolutionary process,
00:39:05 first of all, governments have got to allow that to happen,
00:39:09 which is to some extent a threat to them
00:39:11 in terms of their power.
00:39:13 And that’s an issue.
00:39:14 And then you have to also build the confidence
00:39:17 in all of the components of it
00:39:20 to say, okay, that’s going to be effective
00:39:23 because I won’t have problems owning it.
00:39:28 So I think that digital currencies
00:39:30 have some element of potential,
00:39:35 but there’s a lot of hurdles
00:39:37 that are going to have to be gotten over.
00:39:39 I think that it’ll be a very long time,
00:39:42 possibly never, but anyway, a very long time
00:39:46 before we have that, let’s say,
00:39:47 get into a position that would be
00:39:51 effective means relative to gold, let’s say,
00:39:55 if you were to think of that.
00:39:56 Because gold has a track record of thousands of years.
00:40:00 All across countries, it has its mobility,
00:40:04 it has the ability to put it down,
00:40:06 it has certain abilities.
00:40:07 It’s got disadvantages relative to digital currencies,
00:40:12 but central banks will hold it.
00:40:14 Like there’s central banks that worry about others,
00:40:18 other countries, central banks might worry
00:40:20 about whether the U.S. dollar is going to print or not.
00:40:23 And so the thing they’re going to go to
00:40:24 is not going to be the digital currency.
00:40:26 The thing they’re going to go to is gold or something else,
00:40:30 some other currency, they got to pick it.
00:40:32 And so I think it’s a long way to go.
00:40:35 Well, you think it’s possible that one day
00:40:37 we don’t even have a central bank
00:40:39 because of a currency that doesn’t,
00:40:42 that cannot be controlled by the central bank
00:40:46 is the primary currency?
00:40:49 Or does that seem very unlikely?
00:40:50 It would be very remote possibility
00:40:57 or very long in the future.
00:41:00 Got it.
00:41:01 Again, maybe a dumb question, but romanticize one.
00:41:04 When you sit back and you look,
00:41:06 you describe these transactions between individuals,
00:41:09 somehow creating short term debt cycles,
00:41:13 long term debt cycles, there’s productivity growth.
00:41:17 Does it amaze you that this whole thing works?
00:41:22 That there’s however many million,
00:41:25 hundreds of millions of people in the United States,
00:41:27 globally over seven billion people,
00:41:30 that this thing between individual transactions,
00:41:34 it just, it works.
00:41:36 Yeah.
00:41:37 It amazes me.
00:41:38 Like I go back and forth between being in it
00:41:43 and then I think, like, how did a credit card,
00:41:48 how is that really possible?
00:41:49 I’m still used, I look up credit card, I put it on,
00:41:52 the guy doesn’t know me.
00:41:53 Yeah.
00:41:54 It’s all strangers. It signs, okay.
00:41:57 We’re making the digital entries.
00:41:58 Is that really secure enough and that kind of thing?
00:42:01 And then it goes back and it goes this and it clears
00:42:04 and it all happens.
00:42:05 And what I marvel at that and those types of things
00:42:09 is because of the capacity of the human mind
00:42:14 to create abstractions that are true.
00:42:19 It’s imagination and then the ability to go from one level
00:42:23 and then if these things are true,
00:42:25 then you go to the next level and if those things are true,
00:42:28 then you go to the next level.
00:42:30 And all those miracles that we almost become common,
00:42:33 it’s like when I’m flying in a plane
00:42:36 or when I’m looking at all of the things that happen.
00:42:39 When I get communications in the middle of,
00:42:42 I don’t know, Africa or Antarctica
00:42:45 and we’re communicating in the ways where I see the face
00:42:48 on my iPad of somebody, my grandkid and someplace else
00:42:52 and I look at this and I say, wow, yes, it all amazes me.
00:42:58 So while being amazing, do you have a sense,
00:43:01 the principles you described,
00:43:02 that the whole thing is stable somehow also?
00:43:06 Or is this, are we just lucky?
00:43:08 So the principles that you described,
00:43:11 are those describing a system that is stable, robust
00:43:16 and will remain so?
00:43:18 Or is it a lucky accident of our early history?
00:43:22 My area of expertise is economics and markets
00:43:26 so I get down to like a real nitty gritty.
00:43:28 I can’t tell you whether the plane
00:43:30 is gonna fall out of the sky
00:43:32 because of its particular fundamentals.
00:43:34 I don’t know enough about that
00:43:36 but it happens over and over again
00:43:37 and so on, it gives me faith, okay?
00:43:39 So without me knowing it.
00:43:41 In the markets and the economy,
00:43:43 I know those things well enough, in a sense,
00:43:47 to say that by and large, that structure is right,
00:43:53 what we’re seeing is right.
00:43:55 Now, whether there are disruptions
00:43:58 and it has effects that can come,
00:44:01 not because that structure is right,
00:44:03 and I believe it’s right,
00:44:04 but whether it can be hurt by let’s say connectivity
00:44:09 or journal entries,
00:44:11 they could take all the money away from you
00:44:13 through your digital entries.
00:44:15 There’s all sorts of things that can happen in various ways
00:44:19 that means that that money is worthless or the system falls
00:44:23 but from what I see in terms of its basic structure
00:44:26 and those complexities that still take my breath away,
00:44:30 I would say knowing enough about the mechanics of them,
00:44:33 that doesn’t worry me.
00:44:34 Have you seen disruptions in your lifetime
00:44:37 that really surprised you?
00:44:38 Major disruptions? Oh, all the time.
00:44:39 This is one of the great lessons of my life
00:44:42 is that many times I’ve seen things
00:44:46 that I was very surprised about
00:44:50 and that I realized almost all of those
00:44:54 I was surprised about because they just,
00:44:57 they were just the first time it happened to me,
00:45:00 they didn’t happen in my lifetime before
00:45:02 but when I researched them,
00:45:04 they happened in other places or other people lifetimes.
00:45:08 So for example, I remember 1971, the dollar,
00:45:13 there was no such thing as a devaluation of a currency,
00:45:16 it didn’t experience it
00:45:18 and the dollar was connected to gold
00:45:21 and I was watching events happen
00:45:23 and then you get on and that definition of money
00:45:26 all of a sudden went out the window
00:45:29 because it was not tied to gold
00:45:31 and then you have this devaluation.
00:45:34 So and then, or the first oil shock or the second oil shock
00:45:38 or so many of these things.
00:45:41 But almost always I realized that they,
00:45:47 when I looked in history, they happened before,
00:45:50 they just happened in other people’s lifetimes
00:45:53 which led me to realize that I needed to study history
00:45:58 and what happened in other people’s lifetimes
00:46:00 and what happened in other countries and places
00:46:04 so that I would have timeless and universal principles
00:46:07 for dealing with that thing.
00:46:09 So I’ve, oh yeah, I’ve been, you know,
00:46:11 the implausible happening
00:46:13 but it’s like a one in a hundred year storm, okay?
00:46:19 Or it’s or.
00:46:20 They’ve happened before.
00:46:22 Yeah, they’ve happened.
00:46:23 Just not to you.
00:46:24 Let me talk about, if we could, about AI a little bit.
00:46:28 So we’ve, Bridgewater Associates manage
00:46:32 about $160 billion in assets
00:46:37 and our artificial intelligence systems algorithms
00:46:41 are pretty good with data.
00:46:43 What role in the future do you see AI play
00:46:48 in analysis and decision making
00:46:50 in this kind of data rich and impactful area of investment?
00:46:55 I’m gonna answer that not only in investment
00:46:57 but I give a more all encompassing rule for AI.
00:47:04 As I think you know, for the last 25 years,
00:47:09 we have taken our thinking and put them in algorithms
00:47:13 and so we make decisions.
00:47:15 The computer takes those criteria, algorithms,
00:47:20 and they put them, they’re in there and it takes data
00:47:22 and they operate as an independent decision maker
00:47:27 in parallel with our decision making.
00:47:29 So for me, it’s like there’s a chess game playing
00:47:33 and I’m a person with my chess game
00:47:36 and I’m saying it made that move and I’m making the move
00:47:38 and how do I compare those two moves?
00:47:40 So we’ve done a lot but let me give you a rule.
00:47:43 If the future can be different from the past
00:47:47 and you don’t have deep understanding,
00:47:53 you should not rely on AI, okay?
00:47:59 Those two things.
00:48:00 Deep understanding of?
00:48:02 The cause of fact relationships that are leading you
00:48:05 to place that bet in anything, okay?
00:48:08 Anything important.
00:48:10 Let’s say if it was do surgeries
00:48:12 and you would say, how do I do surgeries?
00:48:14 I think it’s a good idea to do surgeries
00:48:17 but I think it’s totally fine
00:48:19 to watch all the doctors do the surgeries.
00:48:21 You can put it on, take a digital camera and do that,
00:48:28 convert that into AI algorithms that go to robots
00:48:33 and have them do surgeries and I’d be comfortable with that
00:48:37 because if it’ll do the,
00:48:38 if it keeps doing the same thing over and over again
00:48:41 and you have enough of that, that would be fine
00:48:44 even though you may not understand the algorithms
00:48:47 because if the thing’s happening over and over again
00:48:49 and you’re not asking, the future would be the same.
00:48:52 That appendicitis or whatever it is
00:48:54 will be handled the same way, the surgery, that’s fine.
00:48:57 However, what happens with AI is for the most part
00:49:03 is it takes a lot of data with a high enough sample size
00:49:09 and then it puts together its own algorithms.
00:49:13 Okay, there are two ways you can come up with algorithms.
00:49:16 You can either take your thinking
00:49:18 and express them in algorithms
00:49:20 or you can say, put the data in
00:49:23 and say, what is the algorithm?
00:49:26 That’s machine learning.
00:49:27 And when you have machine learning,
00:49:30 it’ll give you equations
00:49:32 which quite often are not understandable.
00:49:35 If you would try to say,
00:49:36 okay, now describe what it’s telling you,
00:49:38 it’s very difficult to describe
00:49:40 and so they can escape understanding.
00:49:42 And so it’s very good for doing those things
00:49:46 that could be done over and over again
00:49:47 if you’re watching and you’re not taking that.
00:49:49 But if the future is different from the past
00:49:53 and you have that,
00:49:54 then if the future is different from the past
00:49:56 and you don’t have deep understanding,
00:49:59 you’re gonna get in trouble.
00:50:00 And so that’s the main thing.
00:50:03 As far as AI is concerned,
00:50:05 AI and let’s say computer replications of thinking
00:50:09 in very ways, I think it’s particularly good for processing.
00:50:13 But the notion of what you want to do
00:50:18 is better most of the time determined by the human mind.
00:50:23 What are the principles?
00:50:24 Like, okay, how should I raise my children?
00:50:27 It’s gonna be a long time before AI,
00:50:29 you’re going to say,
00:50:31 it has a good enough judgment to do that.
00:50:33 Who should I marry?
00:50:34 All of those things.
00:50:35 Maybe you can get the computer to help you
00:50:37 but if you just took data and do machine learning,
00:50:40 it’s not gonna find it.
00:50:41 If you were to then take one of my criteria
00:50:44 for any of those questions
00:50:47 and then say, put them into an algorithm
00:50:49 and you’d be a lot better off than if you took AI to do it.
00:50:53 But by and large, the mind should be used
00:50:56 for inventing and those creative things.
00:51:00 And then the computer should be used for processing
00:51:04 because it could process a lot more information,
00:51:06 a lot faster, a lot more accurately
00:51:10 and a lot less emotionally.
00:51:12 So any notion of thinking
00:51:15 in the form of processing type thinking
00:51:17 should be done by a computer
00:51:19 and anything that is in the notion
00:51:21 of doing that other type of thinking
00:51:23 should be operating with the brain,
00:51:26 operating in a way where you can say,
00:51:29 ah, that makes sense.
00:51:31 You know, the process of reducing your understanding down
00:51:35 to principles is kind of like the process,
00:51:38 the first one you mentioned,
00:51:41 type of AI algorithm where you’re encoding your expertise,
00:51:45 you’re trying to program, write a program,
00:51:47 the human is trying to write a program.
00:51:50 How do you think that’s attainable?
00:51:53 The process of reducing principles to a computer program
00:51:58 or when you say, when you write about,
00:52:03 when you think about principles,
00:52:05 is there still a human element
00:52:07 that’s not reducible to an algorithm?
00:52:12 My experience has been that almost all things,
00:52:17 including those things that I thought
00:52:19 were pretty much impossible to express,
00:52:23 I’ve been able to express in algorithms,
00:52:27 but that doesn’t constitute all things.
00:52:31 So you can express far more
00:52:36 than you can imagine you’ll be able to express.
00:52:39 So I use the example of,
00:52:41 okay, it’s not, how do you raise your children?
00:52:43 Okay, you will be able to take it one piece by piece.
00:52:48 Okay, at what age, what school?
00:52:51 And the way to do that, in my experience,
00:52:54 is to take that and when you’re in the moment
00:52:59 of making a decision or just past making a decision,
00:53:04 to take the time and to write down your criteria
00:53:09 for making that decision in words.
00:53:11 Okay, that way you’ll get your principles down on paper.
00:53:16 I created an app online call,
00:53:19 it’s right now just on the iPhone, it’ll be on Android.
00:53:23 I tried getting it on Android, come on now.
00:53:25 Let’s get it on Android.
00:53:26 It’ll be, in a few months it’ll be on Android.
00:53:28 Awesome.
00:53:29 But it has an app in there
00:53:31 that helps people write down their own principles.
00:53:35 Because this is very powerful.
00:53:37 So when you’re in that moment
00:53:39 where you’ve just, you’re thinking about it
00:53:41 and you’re thinking your criteria
00:53:43 for choosing the school for your child
00:53:46 or whatever that might be,
00:53:47 and you write down your criteria
00:53:49 or whatever they are, those principles,
00:53:52 you write down and that will at that moment
00:53:57 make you articulate your principles in a very valuable way.
00:54:02 And if you have the way that we operate
00:54:04 that you have easy access,
00:54:06 so then the next time that comes along,
00:54:08 you can go to that,
00:54:09 or you can show those principles to others
00:54:12 to see if they’re the right principles.
00:54:13 You will get a clarity of that principle
00:54:16 that’s really invaluable in words
00:54:19 and that’ll help you a lot.
00:54:21 But then you start to think,
00:54:23 how do I express that in data?
00:54:26 And it’ll shock you about how you can do that.
00:54:29 You’ll form an equation that will show the relationship
00:54:33 between these particular parts
00:54:35 and then essentially the variables
00:54:38 that are going to go into that particular equation
00:54:41 and you will be able to do that.
00:54:43 And you take that little piece
00:54:45 and you put it into the computer.
00:54:48 And then take the next little piece
00:54:49 and you put that into the computer.
00:54:51 And before you know it,
00:54:54 you will have a decision making system
00:54:56 that’s of the sort that I’m describing.
00:54:58 So you’re almost making an argument
00:55:00 against an earlier statement you’ve made.
00:55:03 You’re convincing me.
00:55:04 At first you said,
00:55:05 there’s no way a computer could raise a child essentially.
00:55:10 But now you’ve described making me think of it.
00:55:12 If you have that kind of idea meritocracy,
00:55:16 you have this rigorous approach
00:55:17 that Bridgewater takes with investment
00:55:19 and applied to raising a child.
00:55:21 It feels like through the process you just described,
00:55:24 we could as a society arrive at a set of principles
00:55:29 for raising a child and encode it into computer.
00:55:33 That originality will not come from machine learning.
00:55:39 The first time you do,
00:55:40 so that the original, yes.
00:55:42 That’s what I’m referring to.
00:55:43 But eventually as we together develop it
00:55:45 and then we can automate it.
00:55:47 That’s why I’m saying the processing
00:55:50 can be done by the computer.
00:55:51 So we’re saying the same thing.
00:55:53 We’re not inconsistent.
00:55:54 We’re saying the same thing.
00:55:56 That the processing of that information
00:55:58 and those algorithms can be done by the computer
00:56:01 in a very, very effective way.
00:56:03 You don’t need to sit there and process
00:56:05 and try to weigh all those things in your equation
00:56:07 and all those things.
00:56:09 But that notion of,
00:56:10 okay, how do I get at that principle?
00:56:13 And you’re saying you’d be surprised.
00:56:15 How much you can express.
00:56:18 That’s right.
00:56:19 You can do that.
00:56:22 So this is where I think you’re going to see the future.
00:56:25 And right now we go to our devices
00:56:30 and we get information to a large extent.
00:56:35 And then we get some guidance.
00:56:37 We have our GPS and the like.
00:56:39 In my opinion, principles.
00:56:42 Principles, principles, principles.
00:56:43 I wanna emphasize that.
00:56:44 You write them down.
00:56:46 You’ve got those principles.
00:56:48 They will be converted into algorithms for decision making.
00:56:52 And they’re gonna also have the benefit
00:56:55 of collective decision making.
00:56:57 Because right now,
00:56:58 individuals based on what’s stuck in their heads
00:57:01 are making their decisions in very ignorant ways.
00:57:05 They’re not the best decision makers.
00:57:06 They’re not the best criteria.
00:57:08 And they’re operating.
00:57:10 When those principles are written down
00:57:12 and converted into algorithms,
00:57:14 it’s almost like you’ll look at that
00:57:16 and follow the instructions
00:57:18 and it’ll give you better results.
00:57:20 Medicine will be much more like this.
00:57:23 You can go to your local doctor
00:57:25 and you could ask his point of view and whatever.
00:57:27 And he’s rushed and he may not be the best doctor around.
00:57:31 And you’re gonna go to this thing
00:57:33 and give that same information
00:57:35 or just automatically have it input in that.
00:57:37 And it’s gonna tell you, okay, here’s what you should go do.
00:57:41 And it’s gonna be much better than your local doctor.
00:57:44 And that, the converting of information into intelligence,
00:57:50 okay, intelligence is the thing.
00:57:52 We’re coming out with, again, I’m 70
00:57:55 and I wanna pass all these things along.
00:57:57 So all these tools that I’ve found need to develop
00:58:03 all over these periods of time,
00:58:04 all those things I wanna make available.
00:58:07 And what’s gonna happen as they’re going to see this,
00:58:10 they’re going to see these tools
00:58:13 operating much more that way.
00:58:15 The idea of converting data into intelligence.
00:58:20 Intelligence, for example, on what they are like.
00:58:23 Or what are your strengths and weaknesses?
00:58:25 Intelligence on who do I work well with
00:58:28 under what circumstances?
00:58:29 The personalized.
00:58:30 Intelligence.
00:58:31 We’re gonna go from what are called systems of record,
00:58:35 which are a lot of, okay, information organized
00:58:38 in the right way, to intelligence.
00:58:41 And that’ll be the next big move, in my opinion.
00:58:46 And so you will get intelligence back.
00:58:49 And that intelligence comes from reducing things
00:58:52 down to principles into.
00:58:54 That’s how it happens.
00:58:55 So what’s your intuition if we look at future societies?
00:58:58 Do you think we’ll be able to reduce a lot of the details
00:59:06 of our lives down to principles
00:59:08 that would be further and further automated?
00:59:10 I think the real question hinges
00:59:12 on people’s emotions and irrational behaviors.
00:59:20 I think that there’s subliminal things that we want, okay?
00:59:25 And then there’s cerebral, conscious logic.
00:59:30 And the two often are at odds.
00:59:32 So there’s almost like two you’s in you, right?
00:59:36 And so let’s say, what do you want?
00:59:39 And your mind will answer one thing,
00:59:42 your emotions will answer something else.
00:59:44 So when I think about it, I think emotions are,
00:59:47 I want inspiration, I want love is a good thing,
00:59:52 being able to have a good impact,
00:59:54 but it is in the reconciliation of your subliminal wants
01:00:00 and your intellectual wants
01:00:02 so that you really say they’re aligned.
01:00:05 And so to do that in a way to get what you want.
01:00:08 So irrationality is a bad thing
01:00:13 if it means that it doesn’t make sense
01:00:16 in getting you what you want,
01:00:18 but you better decide which you you’re satisfying.
01:00:20 Is it the lower level you, emotional, subliminal one,
01:00:23 or is it the other?
01:00:24 But if you can align them.
01:00:26 So what I find is that by going from my,
01:00:30 you experience the decision, do this thing subliminally.
01:00:34 And that’s the thing I want.
01:00:36 It comes to the surface.
01:00:37 I find that if I can align that
01:00:40 with what my logical me wants
01:00:42 and do the double check between them
01:00:45 and I get the same sort of thing,
01:00:47 that that helps me a lot.
01:00:49 I find, for example, meditation is one of the things
01:00:53 that helps to achieve that alignment.
01:00:55 It’s fantastic for achieving that alignment.
01:00:58 And often then I also want to not just do it in my head.
01:01:02 I want to say, does that make sense?
01:01:03 Help you.
01:01:04 And so I do it with other people and I say, okay,
01:01:07 well, let’s say I want this thing and whatever.
01:01:09 Does that make sense?
01:01:10 And when you do that kind of triangulation,
01:01:13 your two you’s, and you do that with also the other way,
01:01:17 then you certainly want to be rational, right?
01:01:21 But rationality has to be defined by those things.
01:01:26 And then you discover sort of new ideas
01:01:28 that drive your future.
01:01:30 So it’s always, you’re always at the edge
01:01:32 of the set of principles you’ve developed.
01:01:34 You’re doing new things always.
01:01:36 That’s where the intellect is needed.
01:01:38 Well, and the inspiration.
01:01:40 The inspiration is needed to do that, right?
01:01:43 Like what are you doing it for?
01:01:45 It’s the excitement.
01:01:46 What is that thing?
01:01:47 The adventure, the curiosity, the hunger.
01:01:49 What’s, if you can be Freud for a second,
01:01:52 what’s in that subconscious?
01:01:55 What’s the thing that drives us?
01:01:57 I think you can’t generalize of us.
01:02:00 I think different people are driven by different things.
01:02:02 There’s not a common one, right?
01:02:04 So like if you would take the shapers,
01:02:07 I think it is a combination of, subliminally,
01:02:13 it’s a combination of excitement, curiosity.
01:02:18 Is there a dark element there?
01:02:20 Is there demons?
01:02:21 Is there fears?
01:02:22 Is there, in your sense, something dark that drives them?
01:02:25 Most of the ones that I’m dealing with,
01:02:27 I have not seen that.
01:02:29 I see the, what I really see is,
01:02:33 ooh, if I can do that, that would be the most dream.
01:02:37 And then the act of creativity.
01:02:40 And you say, ooh.
01:02:41 So excitement is one of the things.
01:02:44 Curiosity is a big pull, okay?
01:02:47 And then tenacity, you know, okay, to do those things.
01:02:51 But definitely emotions are entering into it.
01:02:55 Then there’s an intellectual component of it too, okay?
01:02:58 It may be empathy.
01:03:01 Can I have an impact?
01:03:02 Can I have an impact?
01:03:04 The desire to have an impact.
01:03:06 That’s an emotional thrill, but it also has empathy.
01:03:10 And then you start to see spirituality.
01:03:12 By spirituality, I mean the connectedness to the whole.
01:03:16 You start to see people operate those things.
01:03:18 Those tend to be the things that you see the most of.
01:03:22 And I think you’re gonna shut down this idea completely,
01:03:25 but there’s a notion that some of these shapers
01:03:29 really walk the line between sort of madness and genius.
01:03:33 Do you think madness has a role in any of this?
01:03:36 Or do you still see Steve Jobs and Elon Musk
01:03:40 as fundamentally rational?
01:03:42 Yeah, there’s a continuum there.
01:03:43 And what comes to my mind is that
01:03:47 genius is often at the edge,
01:03:52 in some cases, imaginary genius,
01:03:56 is at the edge of insanity.
01:04:00 And it’s almost like a radio that I think,
01:04:02 okay, if I can tune it just right, it’s playing right,
01:04:06 but if I go a little bit too far, it goes off, okay?
01:04:11 And so you can see this.
01:04:14 Kay Jamison was studying bipolar.
01:04:17 What it shows is that that’s definitely the case,
01:04:22 because when you’re going out there,
01:04:23 that imagination, whatever, is at the,
01:04:26 can be near the edge sometimes.
01:04:29 Doesn’t have to always be.
01:04:31 So let me ask you about automation.
01:04:33 That’s been a part of public discourse recently.
01:04:38 What’s your view on the impact of automation,
01:04:41 of whether we’re talking about AI
01:04:44 and more basic forms of automation on the economy
01:04:46 in the short term and the long term?
01:04:49 Do you have concerns about it, as some do,
01:04:52 or do you think it’s overblown?
01:04:55 It’s not overblown.
01:04:56 I mean, it’s a giant thing.
01:04:57 It’ll come at us in a very big way in the future.
01:05:01 We’re right at the edge of even really accelerating it.
01:05:04 It’s had a big impact, and it will have a big impact.
01:05:07 And it’s a two edged sword,
01:05:09 because it’ll have tremendous benefits.
01:05:14 And at the same time, it has profound benefits
01:05:18 in employment and distributions of wealth,
01:05:21 because the way I think about it is,
01:05:25 there are certain things human beings can do.
01:05:27 And over time, we’ve evolved to go
01:05:31 to almost higher and higher levels.
01:05:34 And now we’re almost like, we’re at this level.
01:05:36 You know, it used to be your labor,
01:05:39 and you would then do your labor,
01:05:41 and okay, we can get past the labor.
01:05:42 We got tractors and things,
01:05:44 and you go up, up, up, up, up,
01:05:46 and we’re up over here,
01:05:47 and up to the point in our minds,
01:05:50 where okay, anything related to mental processing,
01:05:55 the computer can probably do better,
01:05:57 and we can find that.
01:05:58 And so other than almost inventing,
01:06:01 you’re at a point where the machines
01:06:05 and the automation will probably do it better.
01:06:09 And that’s accelerating, and that’s a force,
01:06:12 and that’s a force for the good.
01:06:15 And at the same time,
01:06:17 what it does is it displaces people
01:06:20 in terms of employment and changes,
01:06:22 and it produces wealth gaps and all of that.
01:06:25 So I think the real issue is that
01:06:28 that has to be viewed as a national emergency.
01:06:32 In other words, I think the wealth gap,
01:06:35 the income gap, the opportunity gap,
01:06:37 all of those things that force
01:06:40 is creating the problems that we’re having today,
01:06:43 a lot of the problems, the great polarity,
01:06:47 the disenfranchised,
01:06:49 not anything approaching equality of education,
01:06:54 all of these problems,
01:06:56 a lot of problems are coming as a result of that.
01:06:59 And so it needs to be viewed really
01:07:02 as an emergency situation
01:07:05 in which there’s a good work,
01:07:08 good plan worked out for how to deal with that effectively,
01:07:13 so that it’s dealt with effectively.
01:07:17 So because it’s good for the average,
01:07:21 it’s good for the impact,
01:07:23 but it’s not good for everyone,
01:07:24 and that creates that polarity.
01:07:25 So it’s gotta be dealt with.
01:07:27 Yeah, and you’ve talked about the American dream,
01:07:30 and that that’s something that all people
01:07:32 should have an opportunity for,
01:07:34 and that we need to reform capitalism
01:07:36 to give that opportunity for everyone.
01:07:39 Let me ask on one of the ideas
01:07:43 in terms of safety nets that support
01:07:46 that kind of opportunity.
01:07:47 There’s been a lot of discussion
01:07:49 of universal basic income amongst people.
01:07:51 So there’s Andrew Yang, who’s running on that.
01:07:55 He’s a political candidate running for president
01:07:57 on the idea of universal basic income.
01:08:00 What do you think about that,
01:08:01 giving $1,000 or some amount of money to everybody
01:08:05 as a way to give them the padding,
01:08:09 the freedom to sort of take leaps,
01:08:12 to take the call for adventure,
01:08:14 to take the crazy pursuits?
01:08:16 Before I get right into my thoughts
01:08:19 on universal basic income,
01:08:20 I wanna start with the notion that opportunity,
01:08:26 education, development, creating equality,
01:08:31 so that people say there’s equal opportunity
01:08:36 and is the most important thing.
01:08:39 And then to find out what is the amount,
01:08:43 how are you going to provide that?
01:08:45 How do you get the money into a public school system?
01:08:50 How do you get the teaching?
01:08:52 The fleshing out that plan to create equal opportunity
01:08:57 in all of its various forms
01:09:00 is the most pressing thing to do.
01:09:03 And so that is that.
01:09:06 The opportunity, the most important one
01:09:08 you’re kind of implying is the earlier, the better.
01:09:11 Sort of like opportunity to education.
01:09:14 So in the early development of a human being
01:09:17 is when you should have the equal opportunities.
01:09:20 That’s the most important.
01:09:21 Right, in the first phase of your life,
01:09:24 which goes from birth until you’re on your own
01:09:27 and you’re an adult and you’re now out there.
01:09:31 And you deal with early childhood development, okay?
01:09:34 And you take the brain and you say, what’s important?
01:09:38 The childcare, okay, it makes a world of difference,
01:09:42 for example, if you have good parents
01:09:44 who are trying to think about instilling the stability
01:09:48 in a non traumatic environment to provide them.
01:09:52 So I would say the good guidance
01:09:53 that normally comes from parents
01:09:55 and the good education that they’re receiving
01:10:01 are the most important things in that person’s development.
01:10:06 The ability to be able to be prepared to go out there
01:10:10 and then to go into a market
01:10:12 that’s an equal opportunity job market,
01:10:15 to be able to then go into that kind of market
01:10:19 is a system that creates not only fairness,
01:10:22 anything else is not fair.
01:10:25 And then in addition to that,
01:10:27 it also is a more effective economic system
01:10:30 because the consequences of not doing that
01:10:33 to a society are devastating.
01:10:35 If you look at what the difference in outcomes
01:10:38 for somebody who completes high school
01:10:40 or doesn’t complete high school,
01:10:42 or does each one of those state changes.
01:10:45 And you look at what that means
01:10:47 in terms of their costs to society, not only themselves,
01:10:52 but their cost and incarceration costs
01:10:54 and crimes and all of those things.
01:10:57 It’s economically better for the society
01:11:00 and it’s fairer if they can get those particular things.
01:11:06 Once they have those things,
01:11:07 then you move on to other things.
01:11:09 But yes, from birth all the way through that process,
01:11:13 anything less than that is bad, is a tragedy and so on.
01:11:18 So that’s what, yeah,
01:11:20 those are the things that I’m estimating.
01:11:22 And so what I would want above all else is to provide that.
01:11:27 So with that in mind,
01:11:28 now we’ll talk about universal basic income.
01:11:30 Start with that, now we can talk about UBI.
01:11:33 Right, because you have to have that.
01:11:34 Now the question is what’s the best way to provide that?
01:11:39 So when I look at UBI,
01:11:41 I really think is what is going to happen
01:11:43 with that $1,000, okay?
01:11:46 And will that $1,000 come from another program?
01:11:50 Does that come from an early childhood developmental program?
01:11:54 Who are you giving the $1,000 to
01:11:57 and what will they do for that $1,000?
01:11:59 I mean, like my reaction would be,
01:12:01 I think it’s a great thing that everybody
01:12:04 should have almost $1,000 in their bank and so on.
01:12:07 But when do they get to make decisions or who’s the parent?
01:12:10 A lot of times you can give $1,000 to somebody
01:12:14 and it could have a negative result.
01:12:15 It can have, they can use that money detrimentally,
01:12:19 not just productively.
01:12:21 And if that money’s coming away
01:12:22 from some of those other things
01:12:24 that are gonna produce the things I want
01:12:26 and you’re shifted to, let’s say,
01:12:28 to come in and give a check,
01:12:30 doesn’t mean its outcomes are going to be good
01:12:32 in providing those things
01:12:33 that I think are so fundamental important.
01:12:36 If it was just everybody can have $1,000 and use it
01:12:39 so when the time comes.
01:12:40 Use it well, right.
01:12:41 And use it well, that would be really, really good
01:12:44 because it’s almost like everybody,
01:12:46 you’d wish everybody could have $1,000
01:12:48 worth of wiggle room in their lives, okay.
01:12:51 And I think that would be great.
01:12:53 I love that.
01:12:55 But I wanna make sure that these other things
01:12:58 that are taken care of.
01:12:59 So if it comes out of that budget
01:13:01 and I don’t want it to come out of that budget
01:13:04 that’s gonna be doing those things.
01:13:06 And so you have to figure it out.
01:13:08 And you have a certain skepticism
01:13:10 that human nature will use,
01:13:13 may not always, in fact frequently,
01:13:16 may not use that $1,000 for the optimal,
01:13:19 to support the optimal trajectory.
01:13:21 Some will and some won’t.
01:13:23 One of the big advantages of universal basic income
01:13:27 is that if you put it in the hands,
01:13:29 let’s say of parents who know how to do the right things
01:13:32 and make the right choices for their children
01:13:34 because they’re responsible
01:13:36 and you say I’m gonna give them $1,000 wiggle room
01:13:38 to use for the benefit of their children.
01:13:41 Wow, that sounds great.
01:13:43 If you put it in the hands of let’s say an alcoholic
01:13:47 or drug addicted parent who is not making those choices
01:13:52 well for their children
01:13:53 and what they do is they take that $1,000
01:13:56 and they don’t use it well,
01:13:58 then that’s gonna produce more harm than good.
01:14:01 Well put.
01:14:02 You’re, if I may say so,
01:14:03 one of the richest people in the world.
01:14:06 So you’re a good person to ask.
01:14:09 Does money buy happiness?
01:14:11 No, it’s been shown that between,
01:14:14 once you get over a basic level of income
01:14:18 so that you can take care of the pain
01:14:21 that you can, health and whatever,
01:14:24 there’s no correlation between the level of happiness
01:14:28 that one has and the level of money that one has.
01:14:32 That thing that has the highest correlation
01:14:35 is quality relationships with others, community.
01:14:39 If you look at surveys of these things
01:14:41 across all surveys and all societies,
01:14:44 it’s a sense of community and interpersonal relationships.
01:14:49 That is not in any way correlated with money.
01:14:52 You can go down to native tribes in very poor places
01:14:57 or you can go in all different communities
01:15:00 and so they have the opportunity to have that.
01:15:03 I’m very lucky in that I started with nothing
01:15:06 so I have the full range.
01:15:08 I can tell you I’m not having money
01:15:12 and then having quite a lot of money
01:15:13 and I did that in the right order.
01:15:16 So you started from nothing in Long Island.
01:15:17 Yeah, and my dad was a jazz musician
01:15:20 but I had all really that I needed
01:15:23 because I had two parents who loved me
01:15:25 and took good care of me and I went to a public school
01:15:28 that was a good public school
01:15:30 and basically you don’t need much more than that
01:15:34 in order to, that’s the equal opportunity part.
01:15:36 Anyway, what I’m saying is I experienced the range
01:15:40 and there are many studies on the answer to your question.
01:15:44 No money does not bring happiness.
01:15:48 Money gives you an ability to make choices.
01:15:52 Does it get in the way in any way
01:15:57 of forming those deep, meaningful relationships?
01:16:00 It can.
01:16:01 There are lots of ways that it makes negative.
01:16:03 That’s one of them.
01:16:04 It could stand in the way of that.
01:16:06 Yes, okay.
01:16:08 But I could almost list the ways that it could stand.
01:16:11 It could be a problem.
01:16:12 Yeah, what does it buy?
01:16:15 So if you can elaborate, you mentioned a bit of freedom.
01:16:19 At the most fundamental level,
01:16:21 it doesn’t take a whole lot but it takes enough
01:16:25 that you can take care of yourself and your family
01:16:30 to be able to learn,
01:16:35 do the basics of, have the relationships,
01:16:40 have healthcare, the basics of those types of things.
01:16:44 You know, you can cover the patients.
01:16:46 And then to have maybe enough security
01:16:50 but maybe not too much security.
01:16:52 That’s right, yeah.
01:16:53 That you essentially are okay.
01:16:57 Okay, that’s really good.
01:17:00 And you don’t, that’s what money will get you.
01:17:04 And everything else could go either way.
01:17:06 Well, no, there’s more.
01:17:08 There’s more.
01:17:08 Okay.
01:17:09 Then beyond that, what it then starts to do,
01:17:13 that’s the most important thing.
01:17:15 But beyond that, what it starts to do
01:17:18 is to help to make your dreams happen in various ways.
01:17:22 Okay, so for example, now I, you know, like in my case,
01:17:29 it’s like those dreams might not be just my own dreams,
01:17:32 they’re impact on others dreams, okay?
01:17:35 So my own dreams might be, I don’t know,
01:17:40 I can pass along these, at my stage in life,
01:17:43 I could pass along these principles to you
01:17:45 and I can give those things or I could do whatever.
01:17:49 I can go on an adventure, I can start a business,
01:17:54 I can do those other things, be productive,
01:17:58 I can self actualize in ways
01:18:00 that might be not possible otherwise.
01:18:05 And so that’s my own belief.
01:18:07 And then I can also help others.
01:18:11 I mean, this is, you know, to the extent when you get older
01:18:13 and with time and whatever, you start to feel connected,
01:18:17 spirituality, that’s what I’m referring to,
01:18:19 you can start to have an effect on others
01:18:21 that’s beneficial and so on, gives you the ability.
01:18:24 I could tell you that people who are very wealthy
01:18:29 who have that feel that they don’t have enough money.
01:18:32 Bill Gates will feel almost broke
01:18:35 because relative to the things he’d like to accomplish
01:18:39 through the Gates Foundation and things like that,
01:18:41 you know, oh my God, he doesn’t have enough money
01:18:44 to accomplish the things he wishes for.
01:18:46 But those things are not, you know,
01:18:49 they’re not the most fundamental things.
01:18:51 So I think that people sometimes think money has value.
01:18:56 Money doesn’t have value.
01:18:58 Money is, like you say,
01:18:59 just a medium of exchange at a store all the while.
01:19:02 And so what you have to say is,
01:19:05 what is it that you’re going to buy?
01:19:07 Now, there are other people who get their gratification
01:19:10 in ways that are different from me,
01:19:12 but I think in many cases,
01:19:14 let’s say somebody who used money to have a status symbol,
01:19:18 what would I say?
01:19:20 Or that’s probably unhealthy.
01:19:22 But then, I don’t know, somebody who says,
01:19:25 I love a great, gorgeous painting
01:19:28 and it’s going to cost lots of money.
01:19:29 In my priorities, I can’t get there.
01:19:35 But that doesn’t mean, who am I to judge others
01:19:38 in terms of, let’s say, their element of the freedom
01:19:41 to do those things.
01:19:42 So it’s a little bit complicated.
01:19:43 But by and large, that’s my view on money and wealth.
01:19:48 So let me ask you in terms of the idea of,
01:19:53 so much of your passions in life has been
01:19:56 through something you might be able to call work.
01:19:59 Alan Watts has this quote.
01:20:02 He said that the real key to life, secret to life,
01:20:06 is to be completely engaged with what you’re doing
01:20:08 in the here and now.
01:20:10 And instead of calling it work, realize it is play.
01:20:14 So I’d like to ask, what is the role of work
01:20:17 in your life’s journey, or in a life’s journey?
01:20:21 And what do you think about this modern idea
01:20:24 of kind of separating work and work life balance?
01:20:28 I have a principle that I believe in is,
01:20:31 make your work and your passion the same thing.
01:20:33 Okay. Okay.
01:20:35 So that’s a similar view.
01:20:38 In other words, if you can make your work and your passion,
01:20:40 it’s just gonna work out great.
01:20:41 And then of course, people have different purposes of work.
01:20:45 And I don’t wanna be theoretical about that.
01:20:48 People have to take care of their family.
01:20:51 So money at a certain point is the base,
01:20:54 is an important component of that work.
01:20:57 So you look beyond that, what is the money gonna get you
01:21:00 and what are you trying to achieve?
01:21:02 But the most important thing, I agree,
01:21:04 is meaningful work and meaningful relationships.
01:21:07 Like if you can get into the thing that you’re at,
01:21:10 your mission that you’re on,
01:21:12 and you are excited about that mission that you’re on.
01:21:15 And then you can do that with people
01:21:18 who you have the meaningful relationships with.
01:21:21 You have meaningful work and meaningful relationships.
01:21:25 I mean, that is fabulous for most people.
01:21:30 And it seems that many people struggle to get there,
01:21:34 not out of, not necessarily because they’re constrained
01:21:39 by the fact that they have the financial constraints
01:21:41 of having to provide for their family and so on.
01:21:45 But it’s, I mean, this idea is out there
01:21:50 that there needs to be a work life balance,
01:21:51 which means that most people,
01:21:54 we’re gonna return to the same things,
01:21:56 most doesn’t mean optimal,
01:21:57 but most people seem to not be doing their life’s passion,
01:22:01 not unifying work and passion.
01:22:04 Why do you think that is?
01:22:07 Well, the work life balance,
01:22:08 there’s a life arc that you go through.
01:22:12 Starts at zero and ends somewhere in the vicinity of 80,
01:22:17 and there is a phase.
01:22:19 And you could look at the different degrees of happiness
01:22:22 that happen in those phases.
01:22:23 I can go through that if that was interesting,
01:22:25 but we don’t have time probably for it.
01:22:27 But you get in the part of the life,
01:22:30 that part of the life,
01:22:32 which has the lowest level of happiness is age 45 to 55.
01:22:38 And because as you move into this second phase of your life,
01:22:44 now the first phase of your life
01:22:46 is when you’re learning dependent on others.
01:22:48 Second phase of your life is when you’re working
01:22:51 and others are dependent on you
01:22:53 and you’re trying to be successful.
01:22:55 And in that phase of one’s life,
01:22:58 you encounter the work life balance challenge
01:23:01 because you’re trying to be successful at work
01:23:04 and successful at parenting
01:23:05 and successful and successful in all those things
01:23:08 that take your demand.
01:23:10 And they get into that.
01:23:11 And I understand that problem in the work life balance.
01:23:15 The issue is primarily to know how to approach that, okay?
01:23:20 So I understand it’s stressful, it produces stress
01:23:24 and it produces bad results
01:23:25 and it produces the lowest level of happiness.
01:23:28 In one’s life.
01:23:29 It’s interesting as you get later in life,
01:23:31 the levels of happiness rise
01:23:33 and the highest level of happiness
01:23:35 is between ages 70 and 80,
01:23:37 which is interesting for other reasons.
01:23:39 But in that spot,
01:23:41 and the key to work life balance
01:23:45 is to realize and to learn
01:23:49 how to get more out of an hour of life, okay?
01:23:53 Because an hour of work,
01:23:56 what people are thinking is that they have to make a choice
01:24:00 between one thing and another.
01:24:02 And of course they do.
01:24:04 But they don’t realize that if they develop the skill
01:24:08 to get a lot more out of an hour,
01:24:11 it’s the equivalent of having many more hours in your life.
01:24:14 And so, that’s why in the book principles,
01:24:17 I try to go into, okay, now,
01:24:19 how can you get a lot more out of an hour?
01:24:23 That allows you to get more life into your life
01:24:25 and it reduces the work life balance.
01:24:28 And that’s the primary struggle in that 35 to 45.
01:24:32 If you could linger on that,
01:24:35 so what are the ups and downs of life
01:24:37 in terms of happiness in general
01:24:39 and perhaps in your own life
01:24:42 when you look back at the moments, the peaks?
01:24:47 It’s pretty much the same pattern.
01:24:50 Early in one’s life tends to be a very happy period,
01:24:54 all the way up and 16 is like a really great happy,
01:24:58 I think like myself, you start to get elements of freedom,
01:25:03 you get your driver’s license, whatever, but 16 is there.
01:25:08 Junior year in high school quite often
01:25:10 could be a stressful period
01:25:11 to try to get thinking about the high school.
01:25:13 You go into college,
01:25:15 tends to be very hot happiness, generally speaking.
01:25:18 Freedom.
01:25:19 And then freedom, friendships, all of that.
01:25:22 Freedom is a big thing.
01:25:24 And then 23 is a peak point kind of in happiness,
01:25:30 that freedom.
01:25:31 Then sequentially, one has a great time,
01:25:35 they date, they go out and so on,
01:25:36 you find the love of your life,
01:25:38 you begin to develop a family.
01:25:41 And then with that, as time happens,
01:25:44 you have more of your work life balance challenges
01:25:48 that come in your responsibilities.
01:25:50 And then as you get there in that mid part of your life,
01:25:53 that is the biggest struggle.
01:25:56 Chances are you will crash in that period of time,
01:26:00 you’ll have your series of failures,
01:26:02 that’s when you go into the abyss,
01:26:05 you learn, you hopefully learn from those mistakes,
01:26:09 you have the metamorphosis, you come out, you change,
01:26:12 you hopefully become better
01:26:14 and you take more responsibilities and so on.
01:26:17 And then when you get to the later part,
01:26:20 as you are starting to approach the transition
01:26:24 in that late part of the second phase of your life,
01:26:28 before you go into the third phase of your life,
01:26:31 second phase is you’re working, trying to be successful.
01:26:33 Third phase of your life is you want people
01:26:37 to be successful without you, okay?
01:26:40 You want your kids to be successful without you
01:26:43 because when you’re at that phase,
01:26:46 they’re at making their transition
01:26:48 from the first phase to the second phase
01:26:50 and they’re trying to be successful
01:26:52 and you want them to be successful without you
01:26:53 and your parents are gone and then you have freedom
01:26:58 and then you have freedom again.
01:27:00 And with that freedom and then you have these,
01:27:03 history has shown with this, you have friendships,
01:27:06 you have perspective on life, you have different things
01:27:09 and that’s one of the reasons
01:27:11 that that later part of the life can be real.
01:27:13 On average, actually, it’s the highest.
01:27:16 Very interesting thing, there are surveys
01:27:19 and say, how good do you look and how good do you feel?
01:27:24 And that’s the highest survey.
01:27:28 Now, they’re not looking the best
01:27:30 and they’re not feeling the best, right?
01:27:32 Maybe it’s 35 that they’re actually looking the best
01:27:35 and feeling the best, but they rank the highest
01:27:38 at that point, survey results of being the highest
01:27:41 in that 70 to 80 period of time
01:27:44 because it has to do with an attitude on life.
01:27:47 Then you start to have grandkids,
01:27:48 oh, grandkids are great
01:27:50 and you start to experience that transition well.
01:27:54 So that’s what the arc of life pretty much looks like
01:27:57 and I’m experiencing it.
01:28:00 You’ve lived it.
01:28:02 When you meditate, we’re all human, we’re all mortal.
01:28:05 When you meditate on your own mortality,
01:28:09 having achieved a lot of success on whatever dimension,
01:28:14 what do you think is the meaning of it all?
01:28:17 The meaning of our short existence on earth as human beings?
01:28:22 I think that evolution is the greatest force
01:28:25 of the universe and that we’re all tiny bits
01:28:30 of an evolutionary type of process
01:28:33 where it’s just matter and machines that go through time
01:28:38 and that we all have a deeply embedded inclination
01:28:43 to evolve and contribute to evolution.
01:28:48 So I think it’s to personally evolve
01:28:52 and contribute to evolution.
01:28:54 I could have predicted you would answer that way.
01:28:56 It’s brilliant and exactly right.
01:28:59 And I think we’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again.
01:29:02 You have a lot of incredible videos out there
01:29:05 that people should definitely watch.
01:29:07 I don’t say this often.
01:29:08 I mean, it’s literally the best spend of time
01:29:11 and in terms of reading principles
01:29:14 and reading basically anything you write on LinkedIn
01:29:16 and so on is a really good use of time.
01:29:18 It’s a lot of light bulb moments,
01:29:20 a lot of transformative ideas in there.
01:29:22 So Ray, thank you so much.
01:29:24 It’s been an honor.
01:29:25 I really appreciate it.
01:29:26 It’s been a pleasure for me too.
01:29:28 I’m happy to hear it’s a use to you and others.
01:29:32 Thanks for listening to this conversation with Ray Dalio
01:29:35 and thank you to our presenting sponsor, Cash App.
01:29:38 Download it, use code LexBodcast.
01:29:41 You’ll get $10 and $10 will go to FIRST,
01:29:44 a STEM education nonprofit
01:29:46 that inspires hundreds of thousands of young minds
01:29:49 to learn and to dream of engineering our future.
01:29:52 If you enjoy this podcast, subscribe on YouTube,
01:29:55 get five stars on Apple Podcast, support on Patreon
01:29:59 or connect with me on Twitter.
01:30:00 Finally, closing words of advice from Ray Dalio,
01:30:04 pain plus reflection equals progress.
01:30:08 Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.