Transcript
00:00:00 The following is a conversation with Ryan Hall,
00:00:02 his second time in the podcast.
00:00:04 He’s one of the most innovative scholars
00:00:06 of martial arts in the modern era.
00:00:09 Quick mention of our sponsors.
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00:00:18 Click the sponsor links to get a discount
00:00:20 and to support this podcast.
00:00:22 As a side note, let me say that I’ve gotten a chance
00:00:24 to train with Ryan recently and to both discuss
00:00:28 and try out on the mat his ideas about grappling and fighting.
00:00:32 What struck me is his unapologetic drive
00:00:35 to solve martial arts.
00:00:37 It reminds me of the ambitious vision and effort
00:00:40 of Google’s DeepMind to solve intelligence.
00:00:43 In Ryan’s case, this isn’t some out there
00:00:46 martial arts guru talk.
00:00:48 This is a style of thinking about the game of human chess,
00:00:51 of seeking to define the rules and to engineer ways
00:00:55 from first principles of escaping the constraints
00:00:58 of those rules.
00:00:59 This style of thinking is rare,
00:01:01 but is ultimately the one that leads to the discovery
00:01:04 of new revolutionary ideas.
00:01:07 If you enjoy this podcast, subscribe to it anywhere
00:01:10 or connect with me at Lex Friedman.
00:01:13 And now here’s my conversation with Ryan Hall.
00:01:17 You’re known as a systems thinker in martial arts,
00:01:21 but you also, I think, are willing to think
00:01:25 outside the rules of the game, outside of the system.
00:01:29 When you’re thinking about strategies
00:01:31 of how to solve the particular problem of an opponent,
00:01:37 whether that’s jiu jitsu or in mixed martial arts,
00:01:40 what’s your process for doing that,
00:01:41 for figuring out that puzzle?
00:01:43 I would say, I don’t know if I have a specific
00:01:45 like A to B to C process for that sort of thing.
00:01:48 I try to do my best to appreciate that.
00:01:52 I think a lot of the thinking,
00:01:54 or maybe not all the thinking,
00:01:55 but a lot of great thinking on conflict,
00:01:58 on battle, on war, on martial arts has been done already.
00:02:03 Not that we don’t have to do any sort of
00:02:05 background investigation or reassessing of these ideas
00:02:08 or axioms that have come down through things
00:02:10 like the book of five rings or the art of war,
00:02:13 or like von Clausewitz, even anything like that really,
00:02:16 but is trying to understand the lessons of the past
00:02:21 that I think oftentimes we don’t take with us problem solving.
00:02:26 We pay lip service.
00:02:26 I’m like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:02:28 You know, a victorious fighter, the great fighter,
00:02:31 you know, he knows victory is there,
00:02:32 then he seeks battle.
00:02:34 Everyone else is looking for victory in battle.
00:02:36 Yeah, moving on.
00:02:37 And that’s why I’m gonna double jab and throw my left hand.
00:02:39 And I think a lot of times our actions
00:02:42 don’t reflect our stated belief structure.
00:02:45 And I think that oftentimes you can tell
00:02:47 what I believe really,
00:02:48 or what my fundamental operating system is
00:02:50 based on my actions, whether I’m aware,
00:02:52 I have an operating system internally,
00:02:53 whether I’m aware of it or not,
00:02:55 or certainly whether I’m fully aware of it.
00:02:57 So I guess when it comes to strategy,
00:03:00 I try to think about how things interact.
00:03:02 You mentioned systems thinking,
00:03:04 and I try to do my best to understand how systems exist,
00:03:07 but I think that systems have a fundamental strength
00:03:09 and a fundamental weakness.
00:03:11 They work how they work, and that’s great,
00:03:14 but they’re readable.
00:03:15 So if you are aware, if I am operating on a system
00:03:19 of which you’re not really read into,
00:03:21 then I think oftentimes I can seem shockingly effective,
00:03:26 particularly if my system preys on certain weaknesses
00:03:30 that maybe you’re given to.
00:03:33 But what happens when you’ve read the same books that I have?
00:03:36 I think that a lot of times
00:03:38 that makes me deeply predictable.
00:03:39 I think about systems in jiu jitsu,
00:03:41 and a lot of times people think that they’re doing jiu jitsu
00:03:46 when in reality they are doing an expression of it.
00:03:48 Let’s say I’ll use, there’s the Marcelo Garcia system.
00:03:51 There is the current Henzo Gracie system.
00:03:54 There’s the old Gracie Baja one.
00:03:56 There’s the Gracie Academy, classic Gracie jiu jitsu.
00:04:00 There’s the art of jiu jitsu, kind of autos approach.
00:04:05 And there’s some crossover between a lot of these,
00:04:07 but oftentimes I think when it comes to understanding
00:04:12 how I’m making decisions
00:04:14 and how my opponent is making decisions,
00:04:16 I have to appreciate whether or not I’m an end user
00:04:19 of something, and I’ll use my phone as an example.
00:04:21 I was thinking of this the other day,
00:04:22 and as an end user of my phone, I can’t,
00:04:25 I have no idea what it does.
00:04:27 Like Edward Snowden comes up and goes,
00:04:28 ‘‘Hey guys, you realize your phones are listening to you.’’
00:04:30 I’m like, ‘‘Really, what?
00:04:33 All right, I believe you.’’
00:04:34 And then of course that comes out,
00:04:35 but to what extent?
00:04:37 I have no idea.
00:04:39 What is my phone capable of?
00:04:40 I have no idea.
00:04:41 I can mess with the font though.
00:04:43 I really like blue screens, not purple screens.
00:04:45 So as an end user, I can change some of the bells
00:04:47 and whistles that have nothing to do
00:04:49 with the underlying source code of it all
00:04:50 or how it functions.
00:04:51 The same way in my car, I’m an end user of my car.
00:04:53 If I do this with the steering wheel, it goes.
00:04:55 If I push on the gas, it goes.
00:04:58 I know how to fix it when it’s out of gas.
00:04:59 I know how to fix it when it’s out of oil.
00:05:01 And I know how to fix it when a flat tire comes.
00:05:04 But short of that, or actually beyond that, I have nothing.
00:05:07 So I think that oftentimes,
00:05:09 I’ve been around in jiu jitsu long enough
00:05:11 to encounter a new wave of good grapplers.
00:05:14 And it’s very, very interesting sometimes
00:05:16 how they’re running systems
00:05:17 they don’t realize they’re running.
00:05:19 Like, I’m like, oh yeah,
00:05:20 I trained at Marcelo Garcia’s Academy for a long time.
00:05:23 And a big fan of Marcelo’s was a student there.
00:05:26 Encountered a lot of the auto style jiu jitsu
00:05:29 a number of years ago.
00:05:31 Been very, very deep into foot locking and leg attacks
00:05:35 and whatnot for a long, long time.
00:05:38 I understand your system better than you do, or I may.
00:05:40 And let’s say you understand my system better than I do.
00:05:42 That would be a huge issue.
00:05:43 That was something that I encountered a long time ago,
00:05:45 trying to come up in jiu jitsu
00:05:47 where I was trying to utilize systems
00:05:50 that were created by, let’s say Hoffa Mendez
00:05:54 or someone else.
00:05:55 And I’m basically trying to do what you’re doing.
00:05:56 I’m just not doing as good of a version of it.
00:05:58 So not only am I not doing it well,
00:06:00 but I’m entirely predictable.
00:06:02 And I think that that can be a big issue.
00:06:03 So to come back, I think of systems a lot of times now
00:06:06 in terms of, particularly like end user type of systems,
00:06:09 like an iPhone is a really, really fast way
00:06:11 for me to be able to do all sorts of things.
00:06:14 If you were to take it from me,
00:06:15 I couldn’t recreate any of that.
00:06:17 So you want to be more the NSA and less the end user.
00:06:20 Exactly, exactly.
00:06:21 That way I’m listening to you.
00:06:22 You want to be the NSA of combat.
00:06:23 That’s right, we’re watching UP.
00:06:25 But basically, I guess what I would come back and say
00:06:29 is if you understand how things interact
00:06:32 on a fundamental level and what type of games exist
00:06:35 and what type of interactions exist,
00:06:36 then you can transcend a lot of the systems.
00:06:40 It’s almost like a cook versus if I can make certain things
00:06:42 in the kitchen, but I am not a chef.
00:06:45 You could give me a bunch of ingredients
00:06:47 and I could probably cook not well,
00:06:49 but a couple of different things.
00:06:51 But a master chef would be aware of the implications
00:06:55 of all of the things that they’re doing,
00:06:57 extra time in the oven, less time in the oven,
00:07:00 putting this flavoring or spice in,
00:07:03 what you’re doing with various things.
00:07:04 And also they could turn all of these ingredients
00:07:06 into Chinese food.
00:07:07 They could turn all these ingredients into Italian food
00:07:09 and they could turn all these Italian food ingredients
00:07:10 into chicken Parmesan or it could turn into lasagna.
00:07:13 But they’re not limited to a specific thing
00:07:16 because they have knowledge of how food interacts,
00:07:18 what it does to create taste,
00:07:20 what it does to create texture.
00:07:21 So to come back, let’s take rock, paper, scissors.
00:07:24 Rock, paper, scissors is built on the idea
00:07:26 of a couple of different things.
00:07:28 Or actually, I’ll tell you what,
00:07:28 can I ask you a question?
00:07:31 What’s your favorite dinosaur?
00:07:32 On the same, on three, we’ll go.
00:07:34 One, two, three.
00:07:37 T. Rex.
00:07:37 So me too, man, we’re gonna be best friends.
00:07:40 So it’s, okay, so what’s the first question
00:07:45 when you say, hey, let’s play rock, paper, scissors?
00:07:46 It’s like, hey, is it rock, paper, scissors
00:07:47 or rock, paper, scissors, shoot?
00:07:49 And you’re like, rock, paper, scissors, shoot.
00:07:50 You’re like, okay.
00:07:51 Because if we go rock, paper, scissors, shoot,
00:07:55 and I’m like, oh man, I got lucky and I won.
00:07:58 Imagine I won 100 times in a row.
00:08:00 Yeah.
00:08:01 It’d be luck, it’d be luck if I was honestly doing that.
00:08:04 But now let’s say, for instance,
00:08:05 I go on rock, paper, scissors and you go on shoot.
00:08:08 Rock, paper, scissors, shoot.
00:08:11 Here comes the rock, right?
00:08:12 If you lose, whose fault is it?
00:08:15 It’s yours.
00:08:17 This is built on a parody thing
00:08:18 where I don’t get to pick second.
00:08:22 If I get to pick second,
00:08:24 it’s like being able to investigate your background
00:08:26 before going to meet you.
00:08:27 And then I’m like, oh, hi.
00:08:28 Oh, I too love the New Jersey, you know,
00:08:30 the New Jersey Nets, which is a statement
00:08:32 that no one in their right mind would ever make
00:08:34 when I was growing up.
00:08:35 So anyway, you’d have to have personal knowledge
00:08:37 of somebody.
00:08:38 So anyway, to come back,
00:08:40 if you understand how games are structured,
00:08:45 you can start to realize that there’s huge gaps
00:08:48 and huge holes in a lot of the thinking behind all of it.
00:08:51 And if you can create the illusion of choice,
00:08:54 I’ll play one more if you don’t mind.
00:08:55 This is one of my favorite ones.
00:08:56 I do this in class all the time.
00:08:57 Have you seen this before?
00:08:58 No.
00:08:59 Okay, may I ask you some questions please?
00:09:01 Sure.
00:09:02 Okay, fantastic.
00:09:03 I’m scared.
00:09:03 Oh, there’s, everybody wins.
00:09:04 Don’t worry.
00:09:05 All right.
00:09:06 So could you please?
00:09:07 I win.
00:09:08 Could you please pick three fingers
00:09:11 and tell me what they are?
00:09:12 Your thumb.
00:09:13 Okay.
00:09:14 Your pinky.
00:09:15 Okay.
00:09:16 And your middle finger.
00:09:17 Okay.
00:09:18 So could you please pick two fingers?
00:09:21 Your middle finger and your pinky.
00:09:24 Okay, could you please pick one finger?
00:09:27 I’ll go with the middle finger.
00:09:28 Woo hoo.
00:09:29 Okay, could you please pick one finger?
00:09:31 Pinky.
00:09:32 Okay, let’s play again.
00:09:34 Can you pick one finger, please?
00:09:40 Your middle finger.
00:09:41 Okay, can you pick one finger, please?
00:09:43 Your thumb.
00:09:45 Yeah, your pinky.
00:09:47 Okay, now pick two more fingers, please.
00:09:50 Your middle finger and your ring finger.
00:09:53 Okay.
00:09:54 Could you please pick one more finger?
00:09:56 Damn it.
00:09:57 So.
00:09:57 I thought that enhanced the illusion of choice.
00:10:00 It’s the illusion of choice.
00:10:02 If I’m asking the questions,
00:10:04 provided I ask the right questions,
00:10:07 there can be no correct answer.
00:10:09 Doesn’t mean that, I mean, ultimately,
00:10:11 if that’s what you wanted, let’s say,
00:10:13 like I thought I was guiding you to something I wanted,
00:10:15 it turns out that was the outcome you wanted.
00:10:17 Now I’m gonna ask the wrong questions.
00:10:19 I might not get what I wanted, so.
00:10:20 Oh, by the way, sorry to interrupt.
00:10:22 For people that might be just listening to this,
00:10:25 that no matter what trajectory we took
00:10:28 through that decision tree that Ryan was presenting,
00:10:30 it was always ending up with a middle finger,
00:10:32 ironically enough.
00:10:34 I was surprised.
00:10:35 So, and.
00:10:37 All of us were surprised, and we’re both winners.
00:10:39 Yeah, we all, everyone was.
00:10:41 I felt like a winner.
00:10:42 All right, so now I’m gonna,
00:10:44 now I’ll ask some different questions, if you don’t mind.
00:10:47 Can you please pick two fingers to put down?
00:10:51 Your middle finger and your pinky.
00:10:54 All right, sorry.
00:10:54 Oh, that’s so awkward.
00:10:55 That’s like the worst finger positions.
00:10:57 Okay, can you please pick, wait a minute.
00:10:59 That’s, oh, hold on.
00:11:00 Yeah.
00:11:01 Well, what if you picked two other fingers to put down?
00:11:05 Your thumb and your pinky.
00:11:06 Okay, my thumb and my pinky.
00:11:07 Can you please pick two fingers to put down?
00:11:11 Well.
00:11:12 Whatever two you like.
00:11:14 Okay, your middle finger and your pointy finger.
00:11:16 Ah, okay, can you pick two fingers to put down?
00:11:19 What’s the name?
00:11:20 It’s index finger.
00:11:21 Index finger.
00:11:22 Why did I call it the pointy finger?
00:11:23 Pointy, it’s the pointy one.
00:11:24 That’s the one we usually point.
00:11:24 It’s weird to point with the ring finger.
00:11:27 Sorry, what?
00:11:28 Two more to put down, please.
00:11:30 The middle finger and the ring finger.
00:11:32 Ah, man.
00:11:34 What if you pick my ring finger and my index finger?
00:11:38 Yeah.
00:11:38 Aha, woohoo, I win.
00:11:40 So even though I’m asking the questions,
00:11:42 it’s not impossible that I arrive at a good outcome for me,
00:11:45 but it’s no longer guaranteed.
00:11:47 I went from a situation where I literally can’t lose.
00:11:49 Yeah, it’s pretty low probability.
00:11:51 Right, super low probability.
00:11:53 And the second you realize what I’m doing,
00:11:54 you would never let me win
00:11:56 because the ball’s truly in your court.
00:11:58 So I guess that’s kind of what I’m fundamentally trying
00:12:01 to put into play almost all the time.
00:12:03 Can I ask the right set of questions?
00:12:05 Can I develop the ability skills wise, understanding wise,
00:12:10 and then discipline wise,
00:12:11 and then have the courage and the constitution
00:12:14 and the discipline necessary,
00:12:16 the patience necessary to ask the proper questions
00:12:20 and wait for the proper answers?
00:12:22 And if I can,
00:12:24 assuming the perfect world, I win, period.
00:12:29 Yeah, so does that make sense?
00:12:30 Yeah, that totally makes sense.
00:12:32 So I don’t know if you know
00:12:33 sort of the more mathematical discipline of game theory.
00:12:36 There’s something called mechanism design.
00:12:39 So game theory is this field where you model
00:12:43 some kind of interaction between human beings.
00:12:46 You could model grappling that way.
00:12:48 You can model nuclear conflict between nations that way.
00:12:52 And you set up a set of rules and incentives
00:12:56 and then use math to predict
00:13:00 what is likely outcome depending over time
00:13:03 based on the interaction given those rules.
00:13:06 Mechanism design is the design of games.
00:13:11 So like the design of systems
00:13:14 that are likely to lead to a certain outcome.
00:13:18 And so what you’re suggesting is
00:13:21 you want to discover systems whose decision tree,
00:13:27 all the possible things that could happen,
00:13:29 feel like there’s choice being made,
00:13:32 but ultimately one of the parties
00:13:36 doesn’t have any choice
00:13:37 in what the actual final outcome is.
00:13:40 You’re making them feel like they’re playing a game too.
00:13:43 So it’s not like you don’t feel trapped.
00:13:46 It’s kind of like.
00:13:47 Well, the best traps, you don’t look very threatening.
00:13:50 So I’m like, oh, I’ll walk over there.
00:13:52 I guess wouldn’t that,
00:13:55 I guess that’s kind of an interesting thing.
00:13:56 If a lion, when does a lion roar?
00:13:58 It’s an interesting thing when you watch like lions hunting.
00:14:01 Don’t roar when they hunt.
00:14:03 They want to, when they want to move you back,
00:14:05 they do stuff like that.
00:14:06 When they actually want to come and get you,
00:14:08 they’re pretty slinky.
00:14:09 It’s like water covered.
00:14:10 It’s like furry water.
00:14:12 And I guess like when you keep that in mind,
00:14:16 it’s funny how, like for us a hobby actually,
00:14:18 a brilliant guy, like one of my MMA coaches
00:14:21 and the head coach at TriStar,
00:14:22 he brought this up one time.
00:14:23 I thought it was a really salient point.
00:14:25 Said, let’s say we have a million person bracket.
00:14:27 Impossibly huge.
00:14:28 Like Frank Dukes went in the Kumite level huge bracket.
00:14:31 He claimed to knock out like 250 consecutive people.
00:14:34 And you’re like, that is all of Hong Kong
00:14:38 was in that thing.
00:14:38 And everyone kept their mouth shut.
00:14:40 But anyway, that’s pretty cool.
00:14:41 But to come back a little improbable, pretty cool.
00:14:45 So let’s say for instance, like there’s no cheating going on,
00:14:48 no cheating going on and we’re flipping coins, right?
00:14:51 Someone is gonna have an unbroken string of victory
00:14:54 through that bracket, which is pretty insane.
00:14:57 How many consecutive like toss ups this person won.
00:15:01 And then at the end of it all,
00:15:04 imagine like aliens show up and we go,
00:15:07 hey, they wanna flip a coin for whether or not Earth,
00:15:09 whether or not Earth gets to continue.
00:15:12 They’d be like, oh, I’ll do it.
00:15:15 I’m good at this.
00:15:17 That would be tempting as a person to do.
00:15:19 You’re like, I’m a lucky guy.
00:15:20 Are you sure?
00:15:22 Maybe, I mean, maybe effectively you are.
00:15:23 We could argue that effectively you’re incredibly lucky.
00:15:25 But basically is that an actual ability?
00:15:27 Is that like a perk in a video game
00:15:28 or is that just this thing that happened?
00:15:30 So anyway, how many times are someone,
00:15:33 you could go through an entire career,
00:15:35 particularly in a fight sport.
00:15:37 Well, let’s say you get 15 knockouts
00:15:39 and 15 toss up scenarios.
00:15:41 Cause you see that happening all the time
00:15:42 in the fight game, a toss up scenario.
00:15:43 It’s not like you’re mounted on me
00:15:45 and that’s not a toss up scenario.
00:15:47 Many, many, many, many, many striking scenarios.
00:15:49 A lot of grappling ones,
00:15:50 but tons of striking scenarios are dead toss ups.
00:15:53 And somebody wins by knockout.
00:15:55 They win five times in a row.
00:15:56 Then they lose a couple of times in a row.
00:15:58 We go, what happened?
00:15:58 You’re like, what do you mean what happened?
00:15:59 They were always flipping the coin.
00:16:00 And then they win five more and they go, ah, back on track.
00:16:03 Can you imagine that?
00:16:04 You’re flipping a coin.
00:16:05 I’m like heads, heads, heads, heads, tails.
00:16:06 What?
00:16:07 Tails, tails, heads again.
00:16:09 Oh man, I’m back on it.
00:16:09 I’m flipping good now.
00:16:11 That’s basically what’s going on.
00:16:12 I think the vast majority of the time
00:16:14 and then humanity’s tendency to see a sign
00:16:17 in almost anything, it starts to present itself.
00:16:20 And then we build a narrative in our mind
00:16:22 to convince ourselves that we’re in some sort of control.
00:16:25 When in reality, I was in a marginal situation
00:16:27 at best the whole time.
00:16:30 Yeah, without having much control,
00:16:31 without having a deep understanding of the system.
00:16:33 The same story is told in the stock market.
00:16:35 With many of these distributed human systems,
00:16:38 we start telling narratives and start seeing patterns
00:16:40 without understanding actually the system
00:16:43 that’s generating these patterns.
00:16:44 So if we can see the system, that’s incredibly valuable,
00:16:47 but then you go, well,
00:16:47 what system is above all of the systems?
00:16:49 And I guess maybe physics, maybe something like game theory
00:16:52 explains these things with like, I guess what are the,
00:16:54 what aspects of the system can I put my hands on
00:16:57 that I can touch and understand?
00:16:58 And what am I missing?
00:17:00 What’s going on in the world all around me
00:17:02 to continue to lean on Dune that I don’t have,
00:17:06 you talk to a blind person about the world,
00:17:09 about the site and talk to someone that doesn’t have everyone
00:17:12 who’s got coronavirus now, so no one can taste or smell.
00:17:14 They’re like, this is delicious, like, is it?
00:17:17 So anyway, you know, again, what senses am I missing
00:17:21 or what understanding am I missing
00:17:23 that’s preventing me from seeing the dots connect
00:17:27 in the world all around me?
00:17:28 And I think sometimes if we are oftentimes
00:17:31 at least personally, I’ve screwed this up a lot.
00:17:33 I’m so nose deep in the trench of trying to understand
00:17:36 what I’m doing that I can’t take a step back
00:17:37 and realize, you know, that I’m in a forest,
00:17:40 not just headbutting a tree.
00:17:42 And I may be doing both, maybe both,
00:17:43 two things should be true at once.
00:17:45 But so I would say when it comes to strategy,
00:17:48 trying to understand that, but then also you go,
00:17:50 well, okay, well, how can, that sounds cool,
00:17:52 but how can you actually do that?
00:17:54 And then I’d say, that’s a really good question
00:17:56 because if I imagine I say, man,
00:17:57 I should fight like Steven Thompson,
00:17:58 I should fight like Wonderboy,
00:18:00 it’s like, good idea, go do that.
00:18:01 I’m like, not the guy.
00:18:05 I would fight like Khabib Nurmagomedov if I could.
00:18:07 You know, it seems to work.
00:18:08 So anyway, you go, well, what if I could develop,
00:18:11 what if I could take my time developing skills
00:18:14 so that when these strategies become apparent,
00:18:16 they are executable to you.
00:18:19 You actually have the ability to like,
00:18:21 in or to again, to be the person in the arena,
00:18:24 to be the person required,
00:18:25 whereas there’s plenty of great ideas
00:18:26 like dunking a basketball is a fantastic idea.
00:18:29 Alas, for me, unless there’s a small trampoline nearby,
00:18:31 I’m not the guy.
00:18:33 But that doesn’t make it any less good of an idea.
00:18:35 I just haven’t developed the ability or I lack the ability.
00:18:38 So anyway, I think a lot of times,
00:18:40 at least when I watch people in fighting,
00:18:42 I’ll use an example.
00:18:43 We’re so concerned with trying to win early on
00:18:46 rather than develop skills that I’m going like,
00:18:48 well, what’s the best way to fight
00:18:50 with my current set of skills?
00:18:51 And usually the path forward is like the barbarian route,
00:18:54 like you put on the one ring,
00:18:57 take the damage you need to take to hit that guy.
00:18:59 And that was something I realized very early on
00:19:00 in my MMA career was like,
00:19:01 I’m not that good at striking at that time,
00:19:03 not a world class striker now,
00:19:05 but I’m way better at striking
00:19:07 than I’m given any credit for
00:19:08 because it helps people sleep at night, I think.
00:19:09 But I’m serious.
00:19:11 But…
00:19:12 Yeah, yeah, you’re always introduced
00:19:13 as like this master grappler.
00:19:17 I’m like, that’s nice of them to say that.
00:19:18 Maybe I’m not that good at grappling.
00:19:19 We haven’t even seen that.
00:19:21 But the funny thing is where I’m like,
00:19:22 just because people almost go like,
00:19:23 well, Lex, see, you’re really good at this,
00:19:25 but you gotta understand, we’re equal, man.
00:19:27 I’m good at this other thing.
00:19:28 Maybe you’re really good at what you do
00:19:29 and I’m just mediocre at what I do.
00:19:31 That’s also possible.
00:19:32 So there’s plenty of people that define themselves
00:19:33 as a striker that do that
00:19:35 just because that’s for lack of other options.
00:19:36 It’s not because they’re really good striker.
00:19:38 I’m a grappler.
00:19:38 I was a grappler as a blue belt.
00:19:40 Not really.
00:19:41 So anyway, I guess to come back,
00:19:43 if I’m constantly going,
00:19:45 how can I win with what I’ve got right now?
00:19:47 I think oftentimes I never take the time
00:19:48 to develop the skills that I wanna develop
00:19:50 and I also never take the time
00:19:51 to develop the strategies that I wanna develop.
00:19:53 And that has actually been a one big blessing
00:19:55 of fighting someone frequently,
00:19:57 which has been really frustrating
00:19:58 as a result of injuries and time away
00:20:00 and some of those people being hesitant to get in the game.
00:20:03 But it gives you so much time to be out of the trenches
00:20:06 and focus on developing your abilities
00:20:08 so that now it’s almost like developing money
00:20:10 like you mentioned the stock market
00:20:11 that you can now put in.
00:20:13 Imagine you told me Bitcoin was a great idea five years ago
00:20:16 and I had eight bucks.
00:20:17 Man, if someone told me Bitcoin was a great idea
00:20:18 five years ago and I had 50K,
00:20:20 I’d be like, oh my God, I’d be sleeping in my bed of money
00:20:23 that I would then set on fire later
00:20:24 so they had just to do it.
00:20:26 So due to all the injuries,
00:20:27 you’ve been mining Bitcoin all this time
00:20:29 and now you’re a rich man.
00:20:31 Well, no, actually someone told me
00:20:32 I was trying to mine for Bitcoin,
00:20:33 actually like in a cave.
00:20:35 And then I found out recently that it’s actually,
00:20:37 mining is like a figure of speech.
00:20:39 You misunderstood. Not like a literal thing that you do.
00:20:41 But I mean, in my defense, I only know what I know.
00:20:42 English language is difficult.
00:20:43 It is, it really is.
00:20:45 Next time talk to me, I’ll explain.
00:20:47 Russian is more, is a rich language.
00:20:50 You should learn, you should learn Russian.
00:20:52 I’ll help you out.
00:20:53 I believe you, thank you.
00:20:54 Can you do a whirlwind overview of your career
00:20:59 in MMA leading up to this point
00:21:03 with the injuries and the undefeated record?
00:21:06 And then what’s next since we’re on the topic?
00:21:09 I did my first fight as a blue belt
00:21:12 and I’ve been training for about a year and a half.
00:21:13 I did nine Jiu Jitsu tournaments in 10 weekends
00:21:16 or maybe eight Jiu Jitsu tournaments in 10 weekends
00:21:18 prior to my first fight in April 2006.
00:21:22 I got punched in the face a whole bunch.
00:21:23 I didn’t realize it was a professional fight
00:21:25 and found that out like the day beforehand.
00:21:27 That was great.
00:21:28 Thanks, coach.
00:21:30 It was in Atlantic City where another place
00:21:32 no one ever goes on purpose.
00:21:34 So that wasn’t great.
00:21:35 I got into three, actually three car accidents
00:21:38 in the preceding 36 hours before the fight.
00:21:42 I had my car totaled.
00:21:44 I wasn’t driving for any of them.
00:21:45 That was great.
00:21:47 It was 2006?
00:21:47 It was 2006, yeah.
00:21:49 You were a blue belt?
00:21:50 Yeah, yeah, I’ve been training for about a year and a half.
00:21:51 So you’re a blue belt.
00:21:53 You’re getting, I mean, if you haven’t lived,
00:21:55 if you haven’t gotten punched in the face in Atlantic City.
00:21:57 That’s true.
00:21:58 I mean, I would have loved to have it happen
00:22:01 for different reasons.
00:22:03 But yeah, well, what’s funny is I remember
00:22:06 getting punched in the face a bunch,
00:22:07 trying to do inverted guard.
00:22:08 I won one round, lost two rounds,
00:22:10 definitely lost the fight.
00:22:12 So you went for inverted, sorry to interrupt.
00:22:13 You went for inverted guard.
00:22:14 Can you tell the story of that fight real quick?
00:22:16 Yeah, sure.
00:22:17 It was three three minute rounds,
00:22:18 which is not a professional fight length,
00:22:19 although I don’t know if professional fight length
00:22:21 would have been any better.
00:22:22 It’s just more time to get punched.
00:22:24 But I found out partway through,
00:22:26 I was like, I remember walking back to my corner
00:22:27 in the first round, I’m like, yeah, this guy can’t hurt me.
00:22:29 And he’s like, yeah, my corner was my friend, Tom,
00:22:31 and then someone else.
00:22:32 And then he’s like, yeah, I would still encourage you
00:22:34 to stop blocking so many punches with your face.
00:22:36 I’m like, that’s a good idea, Tom, I appreciate that.
00:22:37 I’m gonna try that.
00:22:39 Anyway, I remember I was not allowed to up kick.
00:22:43 So I’m like, great.
00:22:43 I had no martial arts skills, really at all.
00:22:46 But if I had anything at all, it was jiu jitsu.
00:22:48 It was very, very little jiu jitsu.
00:22:50 But definitely no wrestling, definitely no striking.
00:22:53 I was basically a magnet for punches.
00:22:55 So that was your time, roughnecking out in Atlantic City
00:22:59 as we all do once in a while.
00:23:01 Can we fast forward to when you’re actually
00:23:02 dominating the world as a black belt?
00:23:04 Well, actually, it’s funny,
00:23:05 because I took a little bit of money that they’re like,
00:23:07 hey, we’re paying you.
00:23:08 I’m like, really?
00:23:08 It’s like Bukowski stories with Ryan Hall.
00:23:11 Well, then I went to the casino.
00:23:13 I went to whatever, like the Tropicana
00:23:14 that was right there, the casino,
00:23:16 because that was a boardwalk hall.
00:23:17 I’m like, you know what, man?
00:23:18 This has been a not great evening.
00:23:20 I’m gonna win it back.
00:23:22 This will be great.
00:23:23 15 minutes later, they had all the money
00:23:25 that I had from the fight was gone.
00:23:27 I just remember walking out of the casino super pissed.
00:23:30 And I don’t know what I was thinking.
00:23:32 I’m not good at gambling.
00:23:33 This was not gonna make my night better.
00:23:35 I just thought that there was gonna be
00:23:36 some sort of cosmic balancing,
00:23:37 and maybe it was the cosmic balancing all at once
00:23:39 for things I’d done in the past.
00:23:40 Longer term, though, the balancing.
00:23:43 We’ll see.
00:23:44 I hope so.
00:23:45 We’re all dead in the end, though.
00:23:46 That is true.
00:23:47 Time will get us all, yeah.
00:23:50 Well, so that was the first one,
00:23:51 and that was when I realized I’m terrible at MMA,
00:23:54 but I like it.
00:23:55 I should just stop this until I one day
00:23:57 learn how to actually grapple,
00:23:58 much less learn how to fight.
00:23:59 But I remember there was this guy named Dave Kaplan,
00:24:01 who’s the reason my ears are all messed up,
00:24:03 who was on the Ultimate Fighter and got punched in the face
00:24:05 and knocked out by Tom Lawler,
00:24:06 who I’ll always appreciate for doing that.
00:24:09 But anyway.
00:24:10 Dave or Tom?
00:24:11 I appreciate Tom.
00:24:12 I appreciate Dave, too.
00:24:13 Dave was great.
00:24:14 Dave was just a huge bully,
00:24:15 and used to, not completely unmercifully,
00:24:17 but relatively unmercifully beat the crap out of me.
00:24:19 And anyway.
00:24:21 Well, the ears look good, so.
00:24:22 I appreciate that.
00:24:23 I tell people it’s a tumor that I got,
00:24:25 and if they want in on a class action lawsuit with AT&T,
00:24:27 they should send me an email.
00:24:31 But anyway.
00:24:32 Well, you’re very financially savvy.
00:24:33 Very good.
00:24:34 No, I just give the impression.
00:24:36 Dave basically said, hey, don’t worry, man.
00:24:37 You’re never gonna be good at MMA.
00:24:39 And you’re never gonna be good at grappling, either,
00:24:41 but even if you are good at grappling,
00:24:42 which, in my opinion, you will never be,
00:24:45 you will never be good at fighting.
00:24:46 And I said, Dave, if I do nothing else in my life,
00:24:50 I’m gonna keep training until I can make you pay for that.
00:24:52 And now that I can make him pay for that really easily,
00:24:54 he doesn’t train anymore.
00:24:55 But I love Dave.
00:24:56 Dave’s awesome.
00:24:57 He actually won the singing beat.
00:24:58 What an interesting dude.
00:24:59 Super interesting guy.
00:25:00 But anyway.
00:25:00 Virginia, like, speaks a couple languages.
00:25:03 Super interesting guy.
00:25:04 Like, shockingly good at Jeopardy, too.
00:25:07 Not that I’m any good, but still shockingly good at Jeopardy.
00:25:09 So anyway, years later, met Faraz Zahabi.
00:25:11 Actually, John Danaher, I met John Danaher,
00:25:13 and he put me in touch with Faraz Zahabi.
00:25:15 I started training at TriStar.
00:25:16 I immediately loved working with Faraz
00:25:18 and learning under Faraz.
00:25:19 Started training at TriStar.
00:25:20 And I did my first real professional MMA fight
00:25:24 as someone that actually does,
00:25:25 had practiced a little bit prior in, I think, August, 2012.
00:25:31 And that was against a guy, he was four and five at the time.
00:25:34 So, you know, had some experience,
00:25:36 good kind of like first go for me, honestly.
00:25:38 And I won that fight by TKO.
00:25:40 And then it was a little bit of a time off.
00:25:42 And then I did another fight against a tough guy
00:25:44 named Magid Hamo.
00:25:45 He was five and two at the time.
00:25:47 I think he was three and I was amateur.
00:25:48 So, you know, a good little bit of fighting experience.
00:25:50 Won that one in the first round of Iron Rear Naked Choke.
00:25:53 And then started to experience difficulty
00:25:56 getting fights at that point.
00:25:59 You know, I…
00:25:59 Were you continuously introduced
00:26:00 as like the master of grappling, the submission?
00:26:04 At least that was my thing.
00:26:05 I don’t know if I was…
00:26:06 Is that was the source of the fear for people?
00:26:08 I think so, because, I mean,
00:26:10 I definitely wasn’t much at striking at that point.
00:26:12 You know, I definitely am a lot,
00:26:14 I like to think I’m pretty hard to hurt,
00:26:15 although I try not to lean on that.
00:26:17 And I played baseball for like 16 years,
00:26:19 so I can hit things pretty hard.
00:26:20 I just wasn’t able to, I recognized pretty early on
00:26:23 that I had no idea how to actually hit things hard
00:26:26 without becoming hitable myself.
00:26:28 So I think that’s kind of the big thing is a lot of times,
00:26:31 like we almost were mentioning before,
00:26:33 if you try to go and get people too early,
00:26:36 you can hit them if they’re not that good,
00:26:38 but you’re going to get hit yourself.
00:26:40 So you’re making, you’re basically making a wager.
00:26:42 You’re making a trade of your own life
00:26:44 for the ability to hit them.
00:26:45 When you watch guys like Israel Adesanya,
00:26:47 Floyd Mayweather, Steven Thompson,
00:26:49 Conor McGregor, when he’s fighting really well,
00:26:51 it’s not a trade.
00:26:53 They’re not, you’re hitting them and they’re hitting you.
00:26:55 It’s, they’re hitting you,
00:26:56 but it takes years and years and years and years
00:26:59 to be able to learn how to do that.
00:27:00 Ton Lee is another great example of that.
00:27:01 You know, my closest training partner,
00:27:02 one of my best friends,
00:27:04 and currently now one champion,
00:27:06 one championship in Asia,
00:27:08 the champion of the featherweight,
00:27:10 or I guess lightweight featherweight, 155 over there now.
00:27:14 And he recently defeated Martin Wynn
00:27:16 in a really great fight.
00:27:17 And Ton knocked him out, long time champion.
00:27:19 And Ton doesn’t let you hit him.
00:27:21 He doesn’t let you touch him.
00:27:22 I feel so fortunate to have met guys like Steven and Ton
00:27:25 to go early on in career and go, holy moly,
00:27:28 I can’t even, it’s not even like,
00:27:30 oh, you’ll let me walk over and find you.
00:27:32 It’s like fighting a ghost that periodically shows up
00:27:34 with a hammer and smokes you in the melon
00:27:36 and then disappears into the ether again.
00:27:38 So the way they approach the fighting game is thinking,
00:27:40 how can I attack without being hit?
00:27:42 So every strategy, every idea you have
00:27:45 about what you’re going to do
00:27:46 has to do with like that minimizing the returns.
00:27:52 Absolutely.
00:27:53 I mean, that’s what all good fighting is done.
00:27:54 All poor fighting, you know,
00:27:55 throughout the course of history, most generals,
00:27:57 whether they’re, so I read,
00:27:58 or, you know, they did battles by attrition.
00:28:01 You know, it’s like, yeah, man, I’ve got 150 guys.
00:28:03 You’ve got 50.
00:28:04 You’re like, yeah, if 60 of my guys die killing your 50,
00:28:06 like, that’s great for me.
00:28:08 But that’s not so great for the 60 guys that died.
00:28:10 You know, I hope it’s worth it.
00:28:11 So when you realize that not only,
00:28:13 you’re not just Kobe Bryant and you’re Phil Jackson too,
00:28:16 you got to do everything.
00:28:17 You know, if you’ve got to run across the beach in Normandy,
00:28:21 so be it.
00:28:21 But that better be, you should have,
00:28:23 we make sure we thought this through and there’s like,
00:28:24 hey, there’s no way we can like, you know,
00:28:26 walk around the side, huh?
00:28:27 Because oftentimes there is,
00:28:30 and I think a lot of times there’s a lot of incentives
00:28:32 in professional fighting too,
00:28:33 for people to want to do that.
00:28:34 And we come up with all sorts of,
00:28:36 well, I’m trying to be exciting.
00:28:38 Are you?
00:28:39 Is that really what you came here to do?
00:28:40 Cause I came here to win.
00:28:41 And I think that anyone that’s really successful
00:28:44 came there to win.
00:28:44 And if it ends up being exciting, well, that’s fantastic.
00:28:46 I hope that people enjoy watching something and that’s great,
00:28:48 but that’s a qualitative assessment anyway.
00:28:51 You know, you want to also be able to, you know,
00:28:54 live the rest of your life.
00:28:55 I think it’s easy, you know, I’ll use Meldrick Taylor.
00:28:57 I’m a big boxing fan.
00:28:58 Meldrick Taylor was an excellent fighter,
00:29:00 came this close to a world title and was stopped with like,
00:29:05 he was in a fight that he was winning with seconds remaining,
00:29:07 literally seconds remaining.
00:29:08 And they probably could have just let it go
00:29:10 and he would have been world champion.
00:29:11 And it was brutal.
00:29:12 If you ever watched legendary nights like a HBO boxing show,
00:29:15 it’s great, but it’s heartbreaking.
00:29:17 It’s absolutely heartbreaking.
00:29:18 And also like the beating that he absorbed in that fight
00:29:21 changed him for the rest of his life.
00:29:22 And also, you know, don’t think he’d never been hit before,
00:29:25 but it was one of those where you go,
00:29:26 it’s all fun and games until you can’t remember your name
00:29:30 at age 44 years old.
00:29:31 And I didn’t come here, what did Patton saying?
00:29:35 Nobody wins a war by dying for his country.
00:29:37 You make the other poor bastard die for his.
00:29:39 And I think that that’s kind of what we’re shooting for.
00:29:42 And, you know, the lionization of absorbing damage
00:29:46 and that not being a big deal,
00:29:48 like you hear that all the time.
00:29:49 So and so can take shots
00:29:50 that would put a lesser fighter down.
00:29:53 What does that even mean?
00:29:54 You know, like, so let me get this straight.
00:29:56 Your ability to absorb damage is a part of you.
00:29:59 I mean, I guess that, don’t get me wrong,
00:30:00 that is an attribute that’s nice to have if you need it.
00:30:03 But there’s plenty of people
00:30:04 that actually have really porous defense
00:30:06 that are just very, very difficult to hurt
00:30:08 for whatever reason.
00:30:10 That’s a fascinating fighter’s perspective on the thing.
00:30:12 I mean, the story that is inspiring
00:30:18 and I know it goes against the artistry of fighting
00:30:22 is when you have taken the damage to still rise up
00:30:27 and be able to defeat the opponent.
00:30:29 So it’s, but that’s a flip side of a basically
00:30:35 you failing to defend yourself properly, right?
00:30:38 I agree.
00:30:39 But let’s say for, I think it’s a triumph,
00:30:40 that’s a triumph of humanity.
00:30:42 That’s a triumph, that’s amazing.
00:30:44 To witness such a thing is unbelievable.
00:30:46 But you still go, this is, there is a cost here.
00:30:50 It’s like, I’ve been fortunate enough
00:30:52 to spend some time working with the military
00:30:54 and I’ve been like around and read
00:30:56 Medal of Honor citations, they’re unbelievable.
00:30:57 Like you read the story and you’re like, it’ll floor you.
00:31:00 But it’s still a cost
00:31:01 and you don’t wanna be paying that cost a long time.
00:31:03 And most of the time the cost was everything.
00:31:06 And then sometimes you go, hey, yeah,
00:31:07 the value here, it’s worth everything.
00:31:10 It’s like, I defend your family,
00:31:12 defend your country under certain circumstances.
00:31:14 And if that point is extension of your family,
00:31:16 you’re like, hey, this is worth it.
00:31:17 To casually throw your life away or throw your health away,
00:31:20 it’s foolish.
00:31:21 There’s nothing great about that.
00:31:22 And like you said, it’s still an amazing thing to see, but.
00:31:26 But it’s also amazing to see you not take damage
00:31:29 as the Floyd Mayweather,
00:31:30 it’s the artistry of like not being hit.
00:31:32 And I wonder if maybe that’s why people
00:31:33 don’t resonate with Floyd as much,
00:31:35 is obviously Muhammad Ali was such a time and place,
00:31:37 a great man for so many different reasons.
00:31:38 Although it was funny to remember
00:31:40 like there were times when he wasn’t very popular.
00:31:42 We love him now because of time of context,
00:31:44 time to move away from some of the nonsense
00:31:46 he had to deal with.
00:31:47 But we got to see him struggle.
00:31:49 And also he had unbelievable sacrifice,
00:31:52 both in and out of the ring,
00:31:54 that we all got to witness.
00:31:55 We’ve never really seen Floyd struggle like that.
00:31:58 And granted, obviously Floyd isn’t like a civil rights
00:32:00 figure like Muhammad Ali was,
00:32:01 it’s different time, different place,
00:32:02 and he’s a different man.
00:32:03 But basically, I wonder if part of the thing
00:32:06 that made everyone think of Muhammad Ali as the greatest,
00:32:09 in addition to, of course, the unbelievable things
00:32:11 that he did out in the world and the stands that he made,
00:32:15 we saw him struggle in the ring.
00:32:17 It’s almost, it’s humanizing.
00:32:19 You know, it’s weird when people respect Khabib,
00:32:22 but again, we saw GSP lose and GSP came back stronger.
00:32:26 Khabib is amazing.
00:32:28 But I wonder how people feel about him longterm.
00:32:31 Not like they won’t think of him as amazing and great.
00:32:33 And he’s been a respectable person and champion.
00:32:35 But the time, he hasn’t had to fall, if that makes sense.
00:32:41 And also coupled with Ali had a way of being poetic
00:32:47 about sort of the way he was in the ring,
00:32:49 sort of being able to explain the artistry that he,
00:32:52 I mean, there’s like joking as being playful,
00:32:54 but really he was able to describe the flow,
00:32:58 like a butterfly sting like a bee.
00:32:59 Like he was able to actually talk about his strategy
00:33:03 without talking, without crossing that line
00:33:06 into the Floyd Mayweather,
00:33:07 when you’re just talking about money and just talking shit.
00:33:11 That’s true.
00:33:12 Actually Conor McGregor, when he’s not talking shit,
00:33:14 it’s pretty good at like talking about the art
00:33:16 of the martial, like the first mug guy.
00:33:19 And I wish Khabib did the same.
00:33:22 Actually from like the Setia brothers,
00:33:27 there’s a few, there’s a culture of like being poetic
00:33:30 about like being scholars and also bards or whatever,
00:33:36 the poets of the game.
00:33:37 And Khabib was more like just simple
00:33:41 and he lets his actions speak, which is great too.
00:33:44 It’s a cool thing in its own way.
00:33:45 Yeah, it’s great.
00:33:46 But it’s nice when you can tell stories
00:33:48 and that’s probably why Ali was the great.
00:33:53 Catch me up to, you went to three fights,
00:33:56 I think undefeated, BJ Penn,
00:34:00 we talked about last time you defeated BJ Penn.
00:34:02 That’s an incredible accomplishment,
00:34:06 but you fought a lot of really tough guys.
00:34:10 When was your last fight?
00:34:12 And then catch me up with the injuries.
00:34:14 A lot of people kept more and more and more
00:34:17 were unwilling to fight you.
00:34:20 Yeah, that’s been, that was why I was out for two years
00:34:22 following the Gray Maynard fight between the fighting Gray
00:34:26 and BJ and the Gray Maynard fight
00:34:28 was actually one I’m really proud of
00:34:29 because Gray was very tough.
00:34:31 He’s very big, very strong, very experienced.
00:34:33 I had only five fights at the time
00:34:36 and I didn’t have a lot of skills.
00:34:38 I don’t get to fight Gray with what I have today.
00:34:40 I had to fight Gray with what I had in December, 2016.
00:34:43 And that, it really took a lot of discipline,
00:34:46 a lot of focus, a lot of challenge,
00:34:48 to stay the course, to do what I needed to do in that fight
00:34:50 and to win in ultimately dominating fashion,
00:34:52 just not in the dominating, obvious sense
00:34:54 that you see when someone runs across
00:34:56 and just does that to somebody,
00:34:58 but that wasn’t on the list for me at that time.
00:35:01 So that was an interesting one,
00:35:03 but the time away again was very frustrating.
00:35:05 That was incredibly difficult.
00:35:07 Before that fight?
00:35:08 After that fight, well,
00:35:09 because I beat Artem Lobov
00:35:12 in the final of the Ultimate Fighter
00:35:13 and Artem is another guy that’s tough,
00:35:15 a lot of experience and he’s a funny guy
00:35:19 and he said some things on the internet,
00:35:20 so he gets a lot of heat for that.
00:35:22 But he just knocked out three of my teammates.
00:35:24 I’m like, he put a couple of people
00:35:27 in a pretty rough shape at the end of that.
00:35:28 So he was doing well and that was a tough fight.
00:35:29 Again, if I got to go back and fight that fight now,
00:35:32 it would be not competitive at all.
00:35:34 I mean, it wasn’t competitive at that time,
00:35:35 but it was a compelling phase.
00:35:36 It wasn’t close, but it was competitive.
00:35:38 So you were improving and growing fast.
00:35:40 Yeah, and it was nice to have time away.
00:35:42 I wish I’d had more time in the ring,
00:35:43 but again, I’d only been doing MMA
00:35:45 for three years at that time.
00:35:46 So the improvement from doing what,
00:35:49 the Bitcoin mining was overriding the ring rust.
00:35:55 I think so.
00:35:55 I don’t really believe in ring rust, if I’m honest.
00:35:57 I can understand why people could feel a certain way,
00:36:01 but if anything, it’s almost like
00:36:02 you just kind of forget what competition’s like
00:36:04 and you realize like, oh, you feel butterflies
00:36:07 or something like that and you go,
00:36:07 oh my God, this is different versus no,
00:36:08 that’s just your body getting ready to perform.
00:36:10 It’s okay, it’s normal.
00:36:11 How do you not have ring rust?
00:36:13 I think I try to practice performing no matter what,
00:36:17 whether it’s singing karaoke and I’m very good,
00:36:19 but like anything, you name it, talking in front of people.
00:36:21 You embrace the butterflies.
00:36:23 Yeah, it’s almost like, I remember my last fight,
00:36:26 I’m just staring at the wall and I’m like, huh,
00:36:29 I guess I’m gonna fight in a couple of minutes.
00:36:33 I mean, of course we all heard the phrase,
00:36:34 like you can never walk in the same river twice
00:36:36 because even if the river’s the same,
00:36:38 you’re a different man.
00:36:39 That’s, I think it’s a really important thing to understand
00:36:42 because at various points in my martial arts career,
00:36:44 I’ve thought, oh man, how should I feel?
00:36:47 I remember when I used to do well in competition,
00:36:49 I would feel, I would think these thoughts,
00:36:50 listen to this song, think about this.
00:36:53 I would feel a certain way.
00:36:54 And then if you don’t feel that way,
00:36:55 I would start to become stressed
00:36:57 because I was self inflicted versus going,
00:37:00 you’ll feel how you feel.
00:37:01 Your job is to show up with what you have on the day,
00:37:04 do your absolute best.
00:37:05 It’s like, I will never quit.
00:37:06 I can be sure of that.
00:37:07 I didn’t say I can’t be beat.
00:37:08 I can definitely be beat.
00:37:09 I could have lost every single fight that I’ve ever had,
00:37:11 but I control my effort and I control my attitude.
00:37:14 And that’s, I will do my very best,
00:37:17 execute my game plan and the event’s not working.
00:37:19 If I have to, I’ll put my hands up and walk dead forward.
00:37:21 If I need to, it’s somebody,
00:37:22 we hope that that’s not where it goes,
00:37:24 but like again, that humanizing moment
00:37:27 where you’re shooting for like just the inner,
00:37:28 like the inner, you sacrifice the outer
00:37:31 and all you have left is will,
00:37:33 and you hope it doesn’t happen.
00:37:34 But if it does, you’ll be there.
00:37:36 But I guess to come back,
00:37:37 like the extra periods of time in between fights,
00:37:40 I think was valuable because it was deeply challenging.
00:37:43 It was incredibly, it was heartbreaking sometimes
00:37:46 if I’m honest, man.
00:37:47 It’s like, I didn’t want to.
00:37:48 It’s just waiting.
00:37:49 Oh my God, dude.
00:37:50 Is there politics involved?
00:37:52 There’s a.
00:37:52 Sometimes, you know, like I,
00:37:56 you know, it’s every single time you step into the ring,
00:37:59 nothing’s guaranteed.
00:38:01 It’s, you could be hurt.
00:38:03 You could hurt somebody.
00:38:04 You could win.
00:38:04 You could lose, you know, throwing away,
00:38:07 just like I said, throwing away your healthier life cheaply
00:38:10 makes no sense for anyone.
00:38:12 And, you know, having demonstrating some degree of temperance
00:38:16 is not cowardly either.
00:38:17 I mean, but again, if you wait too long, you have nothing.
00:38:20 So I guess like I was trying and always being,
00:38:25 I’m always open to fighting the absolute best people possible.
00:38:27 I’m never turning down fights ever.
00:38:30 You know, if some random jabroni decides
00:38:32 that he wants to fight, I’m like, go away.
00:38:33 If I wanted to just fight randoms,
00:38:35 I would just start standing on the table at Denny’s
00:38:37 and start yelling.
00:38:38 And I’m sure it would have, you know,
00:38:39 some people would be willing to indulge me.
00:38:41 But, you know, you want to fight, you know,
00:38:44 meaningful opponents, challenging opponents,
00:38:46 and I know who and where they are.
00:38:48 And sometimes they’re so well.
00:38:49 You did fight in Atlantic City.
00:38:50 I did.
00:38:51 So the Denny’s, but you put the Denny’s behind you.
00:38:52 I did.
00:38:53 And, you know, I’ll be honest,
00:38:55 if I’d have stood up after that fight,
00:38:56 I don’t know if I was in great shape
00:38:58 to expect to win in the other fights that evening,
00:39:00 but I could have tried it.
00:39:01 I’m sure there were some takers in the crowd,
00:39:02 particularly after they watched me fight,
00:39:04 they’re like, yeah, I’ll fight that guy.
00:39:05 So, okay, so when was the last fight that you had?
00:39:07 That was Darren Elkins.
00:39:08 That was six months or seven months after the BJ fight,
00:39:11 which is great because it’s, you know,
00:39:12 I love maybe five really tough, very tough opponent,
00:39:14 very tough guy, super tough dude.
00:39:16 And that was in July, 2019.
00:39:19 And then right when I was about to fight.
00:39:22 So you were ready to fight regularly after that.
00:39:24 Yeah.
00:39:25 You were trying to find a fight.
00:39:26 Yeah.
00:39:27 And we got Ricardo Llamas, so no one else, none of the,
00:39:29 I was ranked in the top 15 at that point.
00:39:31 And then people didn’t want to fight.
00:39:34 We were struggling to find an opponent.
00:39:35 Then Ricardo Llamas, a great, you know,
00:39:37 former title challenger, you know, MMA, you know,
00:39:39 really great history in MMA, recently retired,
00:39:41 but we were supposed to fight in,
00:39:44 I think May, March, March, May of 2020.
00:39:47 And then coronavirus happened.
00:39:49 And so that scrapped the whole show, you know, training.
00:39:52 We were just scrambling to try to keep the gym alive
00:39:55 and take care, you know, I have five or six full, five, six,
00:39:57 I think five full time employees that I, you know,
00:40:00 they’re my responsibility.
00:40:01 I have to, their livelihood is in my hands and it’s,
00:40:04 they’d be irresponsible of me to not take that seriously.
00:40:07 So anyway, we were able to navigate through that time.
00:40:10 And then we were able to reschedule the Llamas fight.
00:40:13 And that was in August of last year.
00:40:15 And I got a, a medical like flag, like, oh, hey, you like,
00:40:20 you, you, you have like a medical condition that we need
00:40:22 to look into when I got pulled from the fight.
00:40:25 And I immediately was concerned because of course,
00:40:27 any serious medical condition you want to go, oh man,
00:40:30 well, I guess I would like to look at that.
00:40:31 Yeah, it turns out it was a giant false positive.
00:40:34 And, you know, we find that out, you know,
00:40:36 all of five weeks later and you go, you gotta be kidding me.
00:40:39 That’s frustrating.
00:40:40 And then we’re still waiting for a fight,
00:40:42 waiting for a fight, waiting for a fight,
00:40:43 waiting for a fight.
00:40:44 People won’t sign up.
00:40:46 Asked for a number of different opponents, basically said,
00:40:48 Hey, I’m willing to fight anybody that’s,
00:40:50 that’s tough and moving forward.
00:40:53 Finally got a, you know, a great opponent in Denny Gay
00:40:57 for, I guess it would have been this, this March.
00:41:01 And then I was training in January,
00:41:04 working on working on some stuff.
00:41:05 I was out training with Raymond Daniels in,
00:41:08 in California, Raymond’s amazing, unbelievable,
00:41:11 you know, kickboxing, karate style kickboxer,
00:41:13 fantastic martial artist, great teacher,
00:41:15 great training partner and good friend.
00:41:16 And, you know, just really bad luck, you know,
00:41:19 kind of a fall in the middle of, in the middle of training.
00:41:21 And I tore my hip flexor halfway off of my femur.
00:41:25 So that wasn’t great.
00:41:27 And you go like, man, right at the time where you’re like,
00:41:29 oh man, all right, finally moving forward, you know,
00:41:31 having the opportunity to fight.
00:41:32 Dan’s a really tough guy.
00:41:33 You know, you have to fight well
00:41:35 if you want to have a good chance to do well with him.
00:41:36 If you don’t fight well, it’s going to be a rough night.
00:41:38 And I’m like, that’s exactly what I signed up for.
00:41:39 That’s what we want with BJ,
00:41:40 that’s what we want with Elkins, that was gray.
00:41:43 And then the universe goes, hey man, I hear you,
00:41:45 but there’s also this.
00:41:46 So anyway, unfortunately it’s healing up
00:41:48 and then hopefully I’m trying to,
00:41:50 looking for May, I think.
00:41:52 May this year?
00:41:54 May of this year.
00:41:55 Yeah.
00:41:56 So it’s been, it’s been,
00:41:57 it’s been about five weeks since the injury.
00:41:58 You’ll be able to heal up, you think?
00:42:00 Yeah, I think it’ll be okay by then.
00:42:01 Like I don’t need a big camp at this point.
00:42:03 I’ve had years of camp.
00:42:06 Not going to curtail my drinking or anything like that.
00:42:08 Obviously, you know, come on, man.
00:42:09 Life is meant to be lived.
00:42:10 And you know, so it’s, you know, I’m in good shape.
00:42:14 I always, I’m always training.
00:42:15 I’m trying to do my best to train around the injury
00:42:17 to the extent that I can right now without, you know,
00:42:19 hurting myself longterm.
00:42:21 So is there a particular opponents you’re thinking about?
00:42:23 Yeah. Anybody, anybody forward?
00:42:25 You know, I mean, I tried to, I asked,
00:42:27 I asked the second that I got hurt,
00:42:28 I sent a message to Dan and I said, hey man,
00:42:30 like I just want you to be the first person to know.
00:42:34 You know, I just was pretty reasonably injured.
00:42:36 We just got an MRI.
00:42:37 Doctor says like, hey man, you’re out
00:42:39 and you need to take like three weeks off, off.
00:42:41 Don’t do anything.
00:42:41 Or you’re going to immediately,
00:42:42 you’re going to tear it the whole way.
00:42:43 And this is going to be surgery.
00:42:45 And then it’s going to be an additional,
00:42:46 like eight weeks on top of that
00:42:47 to start to rehab it through PT.
00:42:49 And anyway, you know, so I let him know,
00:42:51 hey, if you can push this thing back,
00:42:53 I would love to keep on the car.
00:42:55 I would love to keep the fight.
00:42:55 You know, it’s like, I respect you a lot as an opponent.
00:42:57 And also it’s been brutal trying
00:42:59 to get anybody to sign on.
00:43:00 So if you’re into it, I’m still there.
00:43:02 Unfortunately, he turned that down.
00:43:03 I understand he had other things going on
00:43:05 and he and his wife were expecting a child coming up.
00:43:07 So he needed to, he needed to fight.
00:43:09 And anyway, you know, I guess we’ll see who’s coming forward.
00:43:13 Is there somebody like super tough
00:43:15 in the featherweight division that you,
00:43:18 you seem to like enjoy the difficult puzzles.
00:43:21 Is there somebody especially difficult
00:43:23 that you would like to fight?
00:43:25 I would like to fight.
00:43:27 I know that I’ll need to win at least one fight before this.
00:43:30 And I look forward to coming back
00:43:32 and giving my best effort to do that.
00:43:34 I want to fight to beat Megumin Sharapov.
00:43:36 I want to fight Yair Rodriguez.
00:43:38 I want to fight Korean Zombie.
00:43:41 And you know, this is complicated, man.
00:43:43 Yeah, that would be fun.
00:43:45 I would love to see that fight.
00:43:46 That’s a fascinating fight.
00:43:47 That would be fun.
00:43:49 He would be very challenging.
00:43:50 All those guys are very challenging.
00:43:52 And so I look forward to just staying healthy
00:43:55 to the extent that we can coming back
00:43:56 and I’m going to fight multiple times this year,
00:43:58 hell or high water.
00:44:00 Hell yes.
00:44:01 Hey, by the way, I completely forgot
00:44:04 because you were talking about the systems
00:44:05 and decision trees and the illusion of choice
00:44:08 made me think of Sam Harris and I forgot to mention it.
00:44:12 So he talks about free will quite a bit
00:44:14 and that there’s an illusion of free will.
00:44:18 So it’s like the.
00:44:19 Bold claim, Cotton.
00:44:20 That the, you know, maybe the universe
00:44:23 constructed that little game where it makes us feel
00:44:27 like we have a bunch of choices, but we really don’t.
00:44:30 We’re really always ending up with a middle finger.
00:44:32 That would be hilarious.
00:44:33 Yeah, that’s it.
00:44:35 That’s what you see before you die.
00:44:37 It’s just a giant middle finger.
00:44:38 It’s like, oh, fuck.
00:44:40 I knew it.
00:44:41 I knew it.
00:44:42 What do you think?
00:44:43 Do you think there’s a free will?
00:44:44 Like we feel like we’re making choices.
00:44:45 So you’re thinking, again, what we’re talking about,
00:44:48 okay, here’s a system of martial arts
00:44:51 that’s Hanzo Gracie, there’s different schools
00:44:54 and whatever, and then you’re thinking,
00:44:56 okay, how can I think outside these systems?
00:44:58 But then there’s also a system that’s our human society
00:45:03 and we feel like there’s an actual choice
00:45:08 being made by us individuals.
00:45:11 Do you think that choice is real?
00:45:12 Or is it just an illusion?
00:45:13 Well, okay, that’s a really good question.
00:45:15 I’m not necessarily equipped to answer this,
00:45:17 but I’ll do my best.
00:45:18 Okay, I guess I would say to start with,
00:45:21 sure would be interesting if it wasn’t real,
00:45:23 if the choice wasn’t real,
00:45:25 would be pretty interesting if it is real.
00:45:27 First off, I would start with facilitative beliefs
00:45:29 versus not facilitative beliefs.
00:45:31 It’s almost like, I think the world’s out to get me.
00:45:35 True, not true, what next?
00:45:38 Probably not a facilitative belief.
00:45:39 Even if you, imagine you believe there’s no free will.
00:45:43 Okay, now what?
00:45:45 Does that justify every single impulse
00:45:48 that you’re going to give into?
00:45:50 Or does the belief in free will,
00:45:51 does the belief in my ability to work hard, to focus,
00:45:55 to be disciplined, to improve my position,
00:45:57 improve my situation, whether it’s true or not,
00:46:00 although I think that at least many of us would argue
00:46:02 that at least whether there’s some sort of internal driver
00:46:05 that allows for that.
00:46:08 We live in a material world.
00:46:09 Your actions do affect the world.
00:46:11 I can choose to pick that water up or not.
00:46:13 And anyway, I would say a belief strongly
00:46:17 in the idea of picking facilitative beliefs,
00:46:21 and going, hey, I will adjust,
00:46:24 whether this belief system is right or wrong
00:46:26 on a cosmic level, I’m nowhere near smart enough
00:46:28 to understand, but I can say me deciding that,
00:46:32 let’s say, for instance, I’m gonna walk over
00:46:33 to have a conversation with someone in a hotel lobby,
00:46:36 and I’ve never met them, and I go over,
00:46:38 and I start with, oh, this is gonna be interesting,
00:46:40 and I just walk over there,
00:46:42 versus in my head, I’m like, what’s this asshole want?
00:46:45 We’re about to have two very different conversations.
00:46:47 I could be right that this person’s not very polite
00:46:50 or thinks negatively of me right from go,
00:46:52 but I think that that’s probably not a facilitative belief.
00:46:56 People talk about, how is that gonna help me
00:47:00 navigate the conversation to a positive conclusion?
00:47:02 And I think about that for,
00:47:05 let’s say, fighting, it’s a good example,
00:47:07 like confidence, plenty of people believe
00:47:08 plenty of things that aren’t real,
00:47:10 myself included, I’m sure, all the time.
00:47:12 And anyway, believing that you can do something,
00:47:16 I’m like, hey, I think I can win,
00:47:17 doesn’t guarantee you a positive outcome,
00:47:19 but I would say most of us would probably,
00:47:22 most of us would argue that it helps.
00:47:23 Think about depression.
00:47:25 What’s depression if not a negative,
00:47:28 unfacilitative belief that is not always,
00:47:31 that oftentimes is not reflected by reality,
00:47:33 but you project it onto reality,
00:47:35 and it’s understandable if it makes you feel like,
00:47:37 oh, man, this isn’t gonna work out,
00:47:39 I don’t think the prospects are going well.
00:47:40 And then if you feel like you can’t get out of that loop,
00:47:42 that seems pretty rough.
00:47:44 And I see a lot of things out in society right now
00:47:46 where you go, whether you agree or disagree
00:47:48 with various positions on things, you go,
00:47:50 is that a facilitative belief?
00:47:51 Even if that is true, which is arguable, anything.
00:47:55 So what next, man?
00:47:56 So where does this end?
00:47:57 When is the positive, what’s the happy ending here?
00:48:00 And if they go, well, there is no happy ending,
00:48:01 I’m like, okay, so now what?
00:48:04 So what do we do here?
00:48:05 And I guess.
00:48:06 So choose the facilitative belief, and in your intuition,
00:48:10 believing that free will is real
00:48:13 is more productive for a successful life.
00:48:17 Absolutely, because otherwise, how am I not,
00:48:21 first off, how can society function if it’s not real?
00:48:24 So how can I blame you or anyone else
00:48:27 or hold anyone responsible for anything
00:48:29 if free will isn’t real?
00:48:31 Well, no, that’s exactly the point.
00:48:33 But at the surface level, what you’re saying is true,
00:48:37 but perhaps if we truly internalize
00:48:40 that free will is an illusion,
00:48:42 we’ll start to figure out something
00:48:43 that transforms the way we see society.
00:48:47 For example, we are very individual centric,
00:48:51 so believing that free will is real
00:48:56 puts a lot of responsibility and blame on people
00:48:58 when they do something bad.
00:49:01 Maybe if we truly internalize that free will is an illusion,
00:49:05 we start to think about the system of humans together
00:49:09 as this mechanism for progress,
00:49:14 as opposed to where individual people
00:49:17 are responsible for their actions, good or bad.
00:49:20 So we remove the value, the weight we assign
00:49:24 to the accomplishments or the violence,
00:49:27 the negative stuff done by individuals,
00:49:29 or more look at the progress of society.
00:49:32 I don’t know what that looks like,
00:49:33 but it’s almost like as opposed to focusing
00:49:35 on the individual ants of an ant colony,
00:49:37 looking at the entirety of the ant colony.
00:49:41 So that, I think it makes perfect sense.
00:49:42 I would just say that that’s a reasonable thing to suggest.
00:49:44 It’s a seismic shift, right?
00:49:46 And it’s hard to say whether that would be better or worse,
00:49:49 but I guess I’ll use this as a convenient one for me.
00:49:53 So I remember the last time we spoke,
00:49:54 I brought up one of the most reviled evil characters
00:49:58 in certainly recent history,
00:49:59 probably human history period, Adolf Hitler.
00:50:01 Well, I’m a big fan of making people live in the world
00:50:04 that they wanna believe in.
00:50:06 Well, if free will doesn’t exist,
00:50:08 and it’s just about how things move forward,
00:50:10 when are we gonna be high fiving this guy or what?
00:50:13 Because I remember what I said,
00:50:14 and that actually brings me to something else we discussed.
00:50:18 Yeah, for people who don’t know,
00:50:20 Ryan brought up, or I brought up,
00:50:23 there’s literally a giant book about Hitler.
00:50:25 So I’ve been obsessed with Hitler, World War II,
00:50:27 and Stalin recently.
00:50:29 For recently.
00:50:31 Oh man, this has become like a meme.
00:50:35 Joe Rogan with like DMT and me with Hitler.
00:50:37 Can I pick something more positive?
00:50:40 Like cat in the hat or something, I don’t know.
00:50:41 But you brought up Hitler as an example
00:50:44 of something particular,
00:50:46 some philosophical discussions we’re having.
00:50:48 And the excellent, eloquent,
00:50:51 and the full of integrity MMA journalist
00:50:56 clipped out something you’ve said about Hitler
00:51:00 and said that, I forget what the headlines are,
00:51:05 but they were the most ridiculous possible implementation.
00:51:09 Basically, it was intentionally misunderstanding
00:51:13 what I’m saying.
00:51:13 Then it’s like, I get that they’re stupid,
00:51:15 but I’m stupid too.
00:51:16 So I know what that’s like.
00:51:17 So I don’t have a lot of sympathy for you.
00:51:19 Yeah, exactly.
00:51:20 Yeah, exactly, I can’t give you a pass on that.
00:51:22 But basically, intentionally misunderstanding
00:51:24 what’s going on.
00:51:25 But what I find funny is that,
00:51:29 hey, we gotta be careful what we believe.
00:51:32 And again, back to the cancel culture thing
00:51:33 that we discussed last time as well,
00:51:35 where would I like to apologize?
00:51:37 I mean, no, actually something about cancel culture
00:51:39 that we’ve been seeing things culturally,
00:51:40 I’m like, I will be damned if I apologize for anything
00:51:43 that I don’t need to apologize for
00:51:44 because I was intentionally misunderstood in that instance.
00:51:46 Now, you could say that I’m not a historical scholar,
00:51:50 which I would agree immediately.
00:51:51 And also that I oftentimes in eloquently
00:51:54 or inarticulately phrase things, which I’ll agree is again.
00:51:57 But ultimately, going, hey, I wanna make you believe,
00:52:01 live in the world that you’re suggesting ought to exist.
00:52:05 Okay, so if there’s no free will,
00:52:10 how far of a step back are we willing to take cosmically
00:52:13 before we start going, hey, this is good
00:52:15 because we’re experiencing a social reckoning
00:52:18 in our country at the moment,
00:52:20 for good and for other probably, I guess.
00:52:23 And basically, but hey, it all worked out, right?
00:52:27 So that’s probably not something that would fly.
00:52:30 And I think that’s a fair thing.
00:52:32 That’s interesting.
00:52:33 It might not fly from the individual perspective,
00:52:35 but if you zoom out and think,
00:52:38 appreciate society as just like an ant colony
00:52:42 as a beautifully complex system,
00:52:45 like we kinda, from the individual perspective,
00:52:49 we value progress, especially progress of the individual,
00:52:52 but in whole progress of societies.
00:52:54 But if you accept that this is just a complex system
00:52:57 that’s not necessarily headed anywhere,
00:52:59 that this is almost like that river is just flowing,
00:53:02 I think that removes the burden of always striving,
00:53:07 of always trying, of always like the struggle and so on.
00:53:10 So it’s possible that if we have no control,
00:53:13 you can like arrive at some kind of other zen state.
00:53:17 Does that sound very human though?
00:53:18 That goes against, I think,
00:53:24 our current human condition as we experience it,
00:53:29 but we’ve communicated that to each other.
00:53:31 Like we’ve taught, like through these social forces,
00:53:34 taught each other that our lives matter and so on.
00:53:38 Maybe if we convince ourselves
00:53:40 that we’re just sort of like little things in a stream
00:53:45 and ultimately none of it matters,
00:53:47 there might be some kind of enjoyment
00:53:48 to be discovered through that process.
00:53:50 I don’t, listen, I’m a capitalist, rah, rah, like.
00:53:54 But I guess I think you bring up a really important point.
00:53:56 I guess almost anything like capitalism,
00:53:58 I only get to experience it as I sit here now
00:54:01 and I get to live, I was raised in the United States,
00:54:03 have traveled around the world a little bit,
00:54:05 have had the good fortune of meeting many people
00:54:07 from many different places.
00:54:09 And I’m an end user of capitalism.
00:54:12 I don’t really know how it got here,
00:54:14 whether it was, I wasn’t there at the start of this idea.
00:54:16 I wasn’t there for, hey, how did we come up with this idea?
00:54:19 How did we arrive?
00:54:20 And I’m nowhere near well read enough
00:54:20 to understand any of that really even secondhand.
00:54:24 And I guess recognizing that communism,
00:54:27 Marxism, socialism, anarchism, anything is,
00:54:30 these are all perspectives that all have,
00:54:33 I guess, various strengths and weaknesses.
00:54:35 But I guess one thing I’m always,
00:54:37 I guess I would say the burden,
00:54:39 it seems to me that if you wanna make a change,
00:54:42 the burden of proof is on the person
00:54:45 implying that there needs to be a change.
00:54:47 And it doesn’t mean that there’s nothing there,
00:54:49 but it’s like if you wanna create a small shift,
00:54:51 a ripple, that’s fine,
00:54:52 but a seismic ripping shift in how we exist
00:54:55 or how we experience the world as human beings.
00:54:57 And you mentioned fighting,
00:54:58 why watching someone undergo,
00:55:01 take abuse on a level in the ring that’s just shocking
00:55:05 and then triumph in spite of it is like,
00:55:07 this is unbelievable.
00:55:09 This is part of the magic of combat sports.
00:55:11 Now, it’s part of the magic,
00:55:13 the other side of the magic
00:55:13 that doesn’t get talked about sometimes
00:55:15 is that the trajectory of that individual’s life later on
00:55:19 is not always great,
00:55:20 or let me rephrase, there’s a cost for that.
00:55:22 But if we remember, you mentioned removing the struggle.
00:55:28 I don’t personally, the struggle is what makes life life.
00:55:33 And also, I guess, something Faraz has brought up to me
00:55:35 on a number of occasions, and it makes sense to me,
00:55:38 it’s basically humans only understand things
00:55:42 through relative comparison.
00:55:43 I only understand heat because I’ve known cold.
00:55:47 I only understand, it’s like talking to someone
00:55:50 that’s never experienced any sort of hardship
00:55:52 and then their latte isn’t right,
00:55:54 and then they pitch a fit
00:55:56 versus someone that’s gone through
00:55:57 a great deal of challenge, struggle in their life.
00:56:00 They tend to have a little bit more of an even perspective.
00:56:03 And anyway, and of course, even as a relative thing
00:56:07 and what I perceive to be even may not be even,
00:56:09 maybe I’m particularly softer
00:56:10 or something in the other direction without realizing,
00:56:12 because I can only understand what I can understand.
00:56:14 But the idea that we wanna fundamentally alter ourselves
00:56:19 as a species and as people
00:56:21 seems like an incredibly, incredibly high bar to prove,
00:56:25 and also like an incredibly dangerous idea,
00:56:27 because it always comes back to,
00:56:29 well, who’s gonna be responsible for this?
00:56:31 Who gets to do the choosing?
00:56:32 What’s a good idea?
00:56:33 What’s not a good idea?
00:56:34 And I guess that actually brings me kind of to a,
00:56:36 something I’ve been encountering recently
00:56:38 in discussions with friends.
00:56:40 I feel like there’s only two types of people
00:56:42 that I encounter at this point.
00:56:46 People with a more or less libertarian tilt
00:56:48 to their thinking and people without it.
00:56:51 And when I say libertarian,
00:56:52 I don’t mean that in the political party sense
00:56:54 or even the belief system.
00:56:55 Basically, I’m like, hey, you do you buddy.
00:56:57 It’s not my, what you’re up to is not my concern
00:57:00 versus what you’re up to is my concern.
00:57:01 And I guess I’ve always watched,
00:57:03 various points in history, people on this side
00:57:05 or people on that side are more or less,
00:57:08 I guess, problematic, I guess you could say.
00:57:10 And I don’t mean that in the internet sense,
00:57:13 you know, more of an issue,
00:57:15 but the world is always full of people
00:57:18 that wanna tell you what you need to be doing
00:57:20 as opposed to more or less doing no harm.
00:57:22 And I guess that’s one of the ones,
00:57:24 anytime I’m trying to tell other people what to do,
00:57:26 I better hope I’m right.
00:57:28 And it’s bizarre to me how many people are so confident
00:57:30 that their side or their position is the one
00:57:33 that’s not only right for them,
00:57:34 but right enough that they can enforce it on others.
00:57:36 And that just seems incredibly dangerous to me.
00:57:38 And I guess that comes back to even Sam’s point
00:57:41 about, oh, we want to,
00:57:43 trying to spread the idea that free will doesn’t exist.
00:57:46 I’m not saying it’s damaging, but it very well may be.
00:57:48 And plenty of other things could be as well.
00:57:50 I’m not, you know, it goes way over my head
00:57:52 as to the implications of all of these.
00:57:53 And I guess all of us are in evangelist for something,
00:57:56 but I guess it’s weird that we’ve gotten this far
00:58:00 as a species and now we wanna take like sharp, sharp turns.
00:58:05 Well, we’ve been taking a bunch of sharp turns
00:58:06 throughout history.
00:58:07 Yeah.
00:58:08 That’s what, you know, that’s the way,
00:58:11 you know, okay, humans love power.
00:58:13 And one way to attain power is to say,
00:58:16 everything that you guys are doing is wrong
00:58:18 and I have the right thing
00:58:19 and I’m gonna build up a giant cult of people
00:58:21 and I’m gonna overthrow.
00:58:23 And indirectly what that results in me is me gaining power.
00:58:27 And that’s how you get all the big revolutions
00:58:30 in human history, saying I’m done with the thing
00:58:32 that the powerful are currently doing.
00:58:35 So I’m gonna overthrow.
00:58:36 That’s where probably all the identity politics
00:58:39 that’s happening now is people that didn’t have power before
00:58:43 are looking to gain power.
00:58:45 And they’re also, you know,
00:58:46 that’s where Jordan Peterson criticized identity politics
00:58:49 is people with the right, with the good intentions,
00:58:53 I should say, are in seeking power,
00:58:57 allow power to corrupt them as power always does.
00:59:01 And so they lose track of like the devils
00:59:07 that they’re fighting by becoming the same kind of devils,
00:59:11 the same kind of evil that they’re fighting.
00:59:13 And so that’s just the progress of human history.
00:59:15 But hopefully as these power greedy people
00:59:20 keep attaining power with a progressive mindset,
00:59:24 over time things get better and better as they have been.
00:59:27 Like each iteration?
00:59:27 Each iteration.
00:59:29 A lot of unfairness happens.
00:59:31 A lot of hypocrisy happens.
00:59:35 A lot of people are trampled along the way
00:59:38 by those who mean well.
00:59:40 But over time, like lessons are learned
00:59:42 or like human civilization accumulates lessons
00:59:46 and in part learns lessons of history
00:59:49 and it gets better and better over time,
00:59:50 even though in the short term,
00:59:52 there’s people acting not their best selves.
00:59:55 And you know, that seems to be the progress
00:59:59 of human history.
01:00:01 The idea of internalizing the free will not being real.
01:00:05 I mean, you’re actually making me realize
01:00:07 that that ultimately leads to a kind of.
01:00:11 Doesn’t that go in a nihilistic direction?
01:00:12 Yeah, it’s both nihilistic
01:00:14 or if you want to make it a political system,
01:00:16 then it’s more like communist type of a system
01:00:19 where like the value of the individual
01:00:22 is completely reduced, removed.
01:00:25 Or another perspective is like the freedom of an individual
01:00:30 is not to be valued or protected.
01:00:32 And so from our current perspective,
01:00:35 the systems that seem to have worked,
01:00:36 the United States works pretty damn well,
01:00:39 despite all the different criticisms.
01:00:41 It seems like freedom of the individual
01:00:44 in all its forms seems to be fundamental
01:00:47 to the success of the United States.
01:00:49 And so we should, it’s a, however the hell you put it,
01:00:53 is like, it doesn’t matter whether free will
01:00:55 is or isn’t an illusion.
01:00:58 The belief that it’s real.
01:01:00 Protects the individual from the group,
01:01:02 which is fundamentally, correct me if I’m wrong,
01:01:04 that always seems like the big issue of history.
01:01:06 Hey, there’s more of me than there is of you.
01:01:09 Deal with it.
01:01:10 You’re like, yikes.
01:01:11 And you want to be yourself.
01:01:12 You want to be different.
01:01:13 You want to have a different religion.
01:01:14 You want to be a different skin color.
01:01:15 You want to do this.
01:01:16 All the bad tribal things happen
01:01:19 when there’s more of me than you.
01:01:20 Correct me if I’m wrong.
01:01:21 Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
01:01:23 But then that’s always the fundamental
01:01:24 power imbalance though, right?
01:01:26 Well, the interesting thing about the libertarian thinking,
01:01:28 I guess I, I don’t know.
01:01:30 Those words are really.
01:01:30 Maybe they’re all charged, I know actually.
01:01:32 Yeah, they’re all charged.
01:01:33 I may not scale up, but I mean,
01:01:34 more like on a philosophical underpinning
01:01:36 where you’re like, yeah, basically,
01:01:37 hey, you feel free to believe I’m a fool.
01:01:39 And I mean, plenty of people do, I’m sure.
01:01:42 But as long as you don’t chase me down the hall
01:01:44 and hit me in the back of the head with a textbook,
01:01:47 what’s the big deal?
01:01:48 Yeah, so the libertarian viewpoint,
01:01:50 which I probably espouse, like that’s,
01:01:53 I’m very much like freedom of the individual
01:01:57 is very valuable and like leave others the fuck alone
01:02:00 unless they’re trying to hurt you.
01:02:02 The thing is you also have to, I believe,
01:02:05 put in the work of empathy of understanding
01:02:09 what others, how, what leaving people
01:02:13 the fuck alone means to others.
01:02:14 But isn’t that an interesting thing?
01:02:16 If I believe in freedom of the individual
01:02:18 and I take that, like all of these, like you said,
01:02:20 you take them past just their first why question.
01:02:22 You ask why, why, why, why, or how, how, how, how many times.
01:02:26 Should that not extend to respect for you,
01:02:28 respect for your position,
01:02:29 respect for your individual lived experience,
01:02:32 which could be grossly different than mine.
01:02:34 Yeah, this is the problem with saying,
01:02:36 I’m an individual, I’m not gonna bother you,
01:02:38 you don’t bother me.
01:02:40 That’s just like, that’s not actionable.
01:02:43 Because to be, to make it actionable,
01:02:45 you have to think the why, why, why, why, why,
01:02:47 you have to do the steps beyond.
01:02:49 You think, what does that actually mean?
01:02:50 That means understanding how even my very existence
01:02:55 like hurts others.
01:02:57 Because you have to understand that like,
01:03:00 I’m not, you’re not just sitting alone in a room.
01:03:02 You’re using like public transit,
01:03:04 you’re using the police force,
01:03:06 you’re using firefighters, you’re using the,
01:03:09 like you’re using a lot of resources
01:03:11 that are publicly shared.
01:03:12 And some of those resources are unfairly distributed.
01:03:17 Like we’ve agreed that we’re gonna pay taxes
01:03:21 and those taxes are gonna go towards
01:03:24 building some kind of infrastructure.
01:03:25 So that’s already towards social.
01:03:27 So you’re not a real, you’re not a real sort of,
01:03:31 I talked to Michael Malice, like anarchist, right?
01:03:33 Saying like basically, full, just leave me the fuck alone
01:03:37 and I’m going to collaborate with whoever the hell I want.
01:03:40 We’re not, that’s not the American society
01:03:43 as it stands currently.
01:03:45 We’ve agreed that there’s going to be
01:03:47 certain social institutions that we pay into.
01:03:51 And some of the sort of discussions about race
01:03:55 and all those kinds of things
01:03:57 is about those institutions being institutionally unfair,
01:04:03 whether it’s race or gender, all those kinds of things.
01:04:05 Listen, I have a bunch of criticisms
01:04:09 of the way that conversation carries itself out,
01:04:11 but the thing is, what’s valuable is to actually listen
01:04:15 and empathize.
01:04:16 And that’s not often talked about
01:04:20 with the leave me the fuck alone mindset
01:04:23 because you’re, it doesn’t have that little component
01:04:29 which I think could be fundamental
01:04:31 to the function of a society, which is like social.
01:04:34 Like it’s the, what is it, the Obama, you didn’t build it
01:04:38 or you didn’t build it alone or whatever,
01:04:41 however that goes.
01:04:42 But basically we wouldn’t be able to accomplish anything
01:04:45 as individuals without the help of others.
01:04:48 And to be able to then start to think,
01:04:50 okay, so what is my duty?
01:04:54 What is my responsibility to other human beings
01:04:57 to be respectful, to be loving, to help them
01:05:01 as part of this functioning society?
01:05:03 That starts, that’s actually a lot of work
01:05:04 to start to think about that.
01:05:06 Because then I have to like think,
01:05:07 okay, Ryan, what’s his life like?
01:05:09 As a business owner during COVID, what’s that like?
01:05:12 And then he has, there’s employees that run the gym.
01:05:16 What’s that like?
01:05:17 What’s that stress like?
01:05:18 Or about the fighting and the injury and so on.
01:05:20 What’s that like?
01:05:21 That empathy takes a lot of like compute cycles.
01:05:24 And also a lot of energy, right?
01:05:26 But I have to go through that computation
01:05:29 if I want to be an individual that’s like,
01:05:34 doesn’t hurt you.
01:05:35 If I may, I guess like to come back to Muhammad Ali,
01:05:38 one of the things he said is service to others
01:05:40 is the rent that you pay for your,
01:05:43 is the price you pay for your rent here on earth.
01:05:45 And now one of the things that I think that I see
01:05:48 as a result of the internet all the time
01:05:50 is people talking about global giant problems,
01:05:53 social problems that are society wide,
01:05:56 that are massive, truly massive.
01:05:59 And frankly, beyond the power of any of us to solve.
01:06:04 That’s certainly on an individual level.
01:06:06 So I’ve discussed things with friends.
01:06:08 Like my father’s an environmental attorney,
01:06:10 like has been for a long time
01:06:12 and has been an engineer for a long time.
01:06:14 And so I’m not, barely know anything,
01:06:17 but I’m read in a little bit of various things.
01:06:19 But climate change, oh my God,
01:06:21 I’m so concerned about climate change.
01:06:23 What am I supposed to do about climate change?
01:06:25 I’ll tell you what I can do is I can not litter.
01:06:27 I can try to conserve energy where I can.
01:06:30 I can do whatever I want.
01:06:31 What can I personally do about some giant social problem
01:06:36 that I didn’t start and is out of my control?
01:06:40 I’m like, well, I can be decent to the people around me.
01:06:42 I can mention, I can demonstrate empathy
01:06:44 and I can demonstrate consideration
01:06:46 for the people in my circle.
01:06:47 And to the extent that I can the people outside of my circle,
01:06:50 but yelling at the trees over problems
01:06:53 that are borderline cosmic, doesn’t seem very productive.
01:06:57 It just makes me feel like I’m cool and important
01:06:59 because I’m talking about something,
01:07:00 well, hundreds of years from now, the water will rise.
01:07:02 Maybe it will, maybe it won’t.
01:07:04 It’s completely on my head, I know nothing.
01:07:06 But focusing on the problems that we can actually solve,
01:07:09 it comes back to the same thing.
01:07:10 I want to win a fight.
01:07:11 I would love to win a fight.
01:07:13 I can’t control that.
01:07:14 What I can do is I can control each individual step
01:07:16 that I take around the ring
01:07:17 and try to make the next correct move.
01:07:19 I can’t look, no, it gets people’s,
01:07:22 you know, they get all excited.
01:07:24 You know, I’m trying to keep my language in check,
01:07:25 but they get all excited thinking about, you know,
01:07:28 problems that are like Superman
01:07:30 couldn’t solve these problems.
01:07:32 Like you could be that powerful
01:07:34 and you can’t make all of the bad things go away,
01:07:36 but you can absolutely change yourself.
01:07:38 And I think a lot of the lessons that, you know,
01:07:40 like the good lessons from religion that happened,
01:07:42 the good lessons from the great men and women
01:07:44 throughout history that we’re inspired by,
01:07:47 that talk about change starting with within,
01:07:50 and, you know, again,
01:07:50 treating the people around you decently
01:07:52 and treating the people around you decently
01:07:53 doesn’t even necessarily mean the golden rule.
01:07:55 Do unto others as you would like them to do to you.
01:07:57 I go, well, maybe what I would like
01:08:00 and what this person would like aren’t the same thing.
01:08:02 Well, how am I going to get to the bottom of that?
01:08:03 Cause I could be attempting to be decent to this person.
01:08:05 And by my standards, I am being decent,
01:08:07 but maybe I’m missing the mark by theirs.
01:08:09 Well, I can’t possibly, if I just interacted with you,
01:08:13 like it’s like someone talking about
01:08:14 some nonsense microaggression.
01:08:15 You’re like, so let me get this straight.
01:08:16 I’ve never met you before.
01:08:17 You never met me before.
01:08:18 And you’re interpreting some minor comment
01:08:20 that I’ve made in the least charitable way possible.
01:08:24 I’m not saying that you couldn’t be annoyed,
01:08:25 but your expectation for that level of consideration
01:08:29 is you’re going to be disappointed a lot.
01:08:31 Now, if you, if we’re someone that’s in your life
01:08:34 on a consistent basis and they’re like,
01:08:35 hey, I really don’t appreciate what you’re saying
01:08:37 or what you’re doing here.
01:08:38 Do you realize that this is how I’m,
01:08:40 this is how I’m perceiving you go, oh man, I’m so sorry.
01:08:42 Of course I would hear what you have to say,
01:08:44 but I guess trying to recognize that, you know,
01:08:47 I guess my job is to treat others with dignity in general,
01:08:52 but that level of the level of specificity that,
01:08:55 that, that, that requires increases
01:08:56 as it gets closer to you.
01:08:58 And I have, as a person,
01:08:59 I have a very finite amount of resources financially,
01:09:02 intellectually, emotionally, physically.
01:09:05 If I chuck, you know, 0.001% of it
01:09:08 in every single different direction, what am I doing?
01:09:11 It’s like when people are like,
01:09:12 oh, I care deeply about Tibet.
01:09:13 I’m like, why aren’t you over there?
01:09:15 Go build a house, man.
01:09:16 Get on a plane, go build a house.
01:09:18 Oh, you don’t want to do that.
01:09:19 So really what you want to do is post on Facebook
01:09:21 and, and, and accept high fives
01:09:23 for how much of a good guy you are.
01:09:24 I got an idea.
01:09:25 Go help somebody in your neighborhood.
01:09:27 Go be, go play with, go play with some kids.
01:09:29 Go be a friend to someone that doesn’t have a friend.
01:09:31 Read a book, try to educate yourself.
01:09:33 And so I guess to, to come back,
01:09:35 it’s all of these problems aren’t solvable on a grand scale,
01:09:38 but it’s almost like by attempting to address them
01:09:41 in our personal lives, we do better.
01:09:43 But rather than a giant airing of the grievances
01:09:46 on a, on a consistent basis,
01:09:48 not that that isn’t, you know,
01:09:49 sometimes necessary and valuable,
01:09:51 but after you air your grievances, you go,
01:09:53 hey, how about we, we sort this out?
01:09:55 What’s the next step?
01:09:56 And, and I guess, again,
01:09:58 when we’re trying to address it on a giant social level,
01:10:01 it just seems unmanageable to me,
01:10:02 even if you have the best of intentions.
01:10:04 Yeah, I mean, but nevertheless, there’s,
01:10:06 there’s a lot you can do on social networks.
01:10:09 I mean, I enjoy tweeting and consuming Twitter.
01:10:12 It’s just, I apply the exact same principle
01:10:15 that you just said, which is free will and discussion,
01:10:19 which is like, I approach it in a way
01:10:23 that I don’t get stuck in this loop that’s counterproductive.
01:10:27 I try to do things that are productive.
01:10:30 And like, it’s just like you said,
01:10:32 that’s like, like what kind of things can I do in this world?
01:10:36 Whether that’s tweeting or building things,
01:10:38 those are low effort tweeting,
01:10:41 or actually building businesses
01:10:42 or building ideas out as high effort.
01:10:45 What can I do that will actually solve problems?
01:10:47 And that’s, that’s the way I approach it.
01:10:49 And I do wonder if it’s possible to at scale,
01:10:53 encourage each other to approach like social media
01:10:56 and communication with fellow humans in that way.
01:10:58 I don’t know.
01:10:59 How do you think that would be done?
01:11:00 I guess, like to improve the,
01:11:02 improve the quality of discourse, maybe.
01:11:03 Like, or even like you said,
01:11:04 the empathy or the decency of discourse.
01:11:07 I think people should be, you know,
01:11:10 incentivized, encouraged to do that.
01:11:12 I think most of what’s,
01:11:14 we see happening on Twitter and Facebook and so on
01:11:18 has to do with very small,
01:11:20 very powerful implementation details.
01:11:25 It goes down to like, what is the source
01:11:27 of the dopamine rush, the like button,
01:11:30 the sharing mechanisms,
01:11:32 just even small tweaks in those can fix a lot.
01:11:35 Really?
01:11:36 I believe so.
01:11:37 So like a lot, a lot of the stuff we see now
01:11:39 is the result of just initial implementations
01:11:41 of these systems that we didn’t anticipate.
01:11:44 So the modernization comes from engagement
01:11:49 and the tools we have is clicking like and sharing.
01:11:54 It was not always obvious.
01:11:55 It was not obvious from the beginning.
01:11:57 It wasn’t obvious while Twitter and Facebook grew
01:12:00 that there’s a big dopamine rush
01:12:01 from getting more followers and likes and shares.
01:12:05 So we’ve gotten addicted to this feeling
01:12:06 like how many people are commenting,
01:12:08 how many people are saying, like clicking like and so on.
01:12:12 So that’s that dopamine rush.
01:12:13 So we want to say the thing that will get the most likes
01:12:16 and like unmasked in society.
01:12:19 And then the other thing that was expected
01:12:22 is the controversial, the divisive will get the most likes.
01:12:25 So it had to do with the initial mechanisms
01:12:28 of likes and shares resulting in an outcome
01:12:32 that was unpredicted, which is huge amounts of division
01:12:35 irrespective of like any of the basics of human connection
01:12:41 that we’ve actually all come to understand
01:12:43 that society is valuable at the individual level
01:12:46 like we’re saying, but unmasked what results
01:12:49 is like you throw all that out
01:12:51 and it’s all just divisive at scale discourse.
01:12:57 I think it could be fixed by incentivizing personal growth
01:13:02 like incentivizing you to challenge yourself
01:13:05 to grows individual and most importantly
01:13:08 to be happy at the end of the day.
01:13:11 So like incentivize you feeling good
01:13:16 in a way that’s long lasting longterm.
01:13:21 I think what makes people actually feel good
01:13:24 is being kind to others longterm.
01:13:27 In the short term what feels good is getting a lot of likes.
01:13:31 And I think those are just different incentives
01:13:34 that if implemented correctly
01:13:36 you can just build social networks
01:13:37 that would do much better.
01:13:38 So do you think it comes from a structural perspective?
01:13:41 I guess at what point does you mention like
01:13:42 you mentioned free will and also you mentioned
01:13:44 feeling good and again working hard.
01:13:47 I know that you have the, I guess the, was it a race or?
01:13:51 No, it’s the Goggins thing.
01:13:54 It’s four by four by 48 challenge
01:13:57 where you run four miles every four hours for two days.
01:14:00 That’s awesome.
01:14:01 Yeah, it’s a bunch of, the challenge of it
01:14:05 isn’t just the running, the running is very tough
01:14:07 but it’s mostly the sleep deprivation
01:14:09 because you’re just training every four hours.
01:14:11 But it’s a struggle, right?
01:14:13 But the struggle gives meaning.
01:14:14 And ultimately I guess so how can we,
01:14:17 because you mentioned like you said adjusting things
01:14:19 on like a, I guess like a programming level almost,
01:14:22 based programming level so that the interface
01:14:24 is different for the user.
01:14:25 But at what point does the user have a responsibility
01:14:28 to as a man or a woman or a person
01:14:31 to just behave more decently?
01:14:34 How can we I guess utilize, what can we do?
01:14:37 It seems like our society is so grossly missing
01:14:40 like a Martin Luther King right now,
01:14:42 like the great inspiring characters
01:14:44 throughout American history, throughout world history.
01:14:46 Where are the great leaders?
01:14:48 So leadership is part of it, but that’s definitely,
01:14:51 where are the great leaders is a very good question.
01:14:53 That’s more of a question of our political systems
01:14:56 why they’re not pushing forward the great leaders.
01:14:58 But there’s also just, okay,
01:15:02 there’s some just basic engineering shit
01:15:05 which is when you and I, when you Ryan and I
01:15:10 are in a room alone and we’re talking,
01:15:13 even if we’re strangers, the incentives
01:15:15 are for us to get along.
01:15:17 Like just when we’re together in person,
01:15:20 that’s what I’m saying.
01:15:21 I’m not even saying some kind of profound.
01:15:22 But when you remove that.
01:15:23 When we remove that, the implementation
01:15:26 of social networks as they stand right now
01:15:30 in the digital space, a very different set of incentives.
01:15:33 It’s more fun to destroy others, to be shitty to others.
01:15:38 And it becomes this endless loop, like you were saying,
01:15:43 that’s ultimately destructive and not productive.
01:15:45 And I think it has to do with just the interfaces
01:15:49 of making it feel good to be nice to others.
01:15:54 Because currently it doesn’t feel nearly as good
01:15:58 to be nice to others on the internet.
01:16:01 And it doesn’t feel nearly as bad as it does in real life
01:16:05 to be shitty to others on the internet.
01:16:07 So the incentives are just wrong.
01:16:09 I think there is a technology solution to this,
01:16:13 or at least a solution to improve
01:16:15 this communication mechanism.
01:16:17 It’s not obvious how.
01:16:19 I have a bunch of sort of more detailed ideas,
01:16:20 but this is fascinating because I’ve gotten a chance
01:16:24 to talk to Jack Dorsey quite a bit.
01:16:26 He’s the CEO of Twitter.
01:16:27 And he is legitimately has, in this conversation,
01:16:34 he would agree with everything.
01:16:35 And he’s a good human being,
01:16:38 and he has a lot of really good ideas how to improve things.
01:16:41 The question when you’re a captain of a ship,
01:16:44 whether it’s a question whether a CEO is even a captain,
01:16:48 how much can you actually steer that ship
01:16:49 once it’s gotten large enough?
01:16:51 There’s so much momentum, there’s so many users,
01:16:53 there’s so many people who are marketing and PR and lawyers.
01:16:57 It’s very difficult to change things.
01:16:59 Is it difficult because of the fallout,
01:17:01 or is it difficult because it’s actually
01:17:03 like literally out of this power?
01:17:05 So power is weird when you have a large organization.
01:17:09 This is why the great leaders,
01:17:11 this is what great leaders do,
01:17:12 whether it’s presidents or leaders of companies.
01:17:15 Steve Jobs, I would argue Musk is that way,
01:17:18 is to walk into a room full of people
01:17:20 who don’t want you to create drama.
01:17:23 It’s weird, man.
01:17:24 When people just kind of want to be nice,
01:17:28 the niceness creates momentum and nobody wants to,
01:17:32 it’s the systems thing.
01:17:33 Everybody just behaves in the way
01:17:34 they were previously behaving
01:17:36 in the way they’re supposed to behave,
01:17:38 and nobody wants to raise a fuss.
01:17:40 It takes a great man or woman leader to step in and say,
01:17:45 what we’ve been doing is bullshit.
01:17:48 Okay, you’re fired, you’re cool.
01:17:50 What is it that?
01:17:51 I’m out.
01:17:53 I think you have to create constant revolutions
01:17:56 within a company that’s very, very difficult to do.
01:17:59 Structurally and psychologically, it’s very difficult to do,
01:18:03 to be able to sort of, yeah,
01:18:05 to constantly challenge the way things have been done
01:18:08 in the past, which is why another way it’s often done
01:18:13 is a startup, like a small company,
01:18:15 basically a small company becomes really successful
01:18:18 and then no longer can turn the ship,
01:18:20 so a new startup comes along, a new competitor
01:18:23 that then challenges the big ship,
01:18:25 and then that starts out the winner.
01:18:27 That’s like Google came to be,
01:18:28 so Twitter came to be, and Facebook, and so on.
01:18:31 And Apple has, that was the dream of Steve Jobs
01:18:36 is it would succeed for many decades, for like centuries.
01:18:40 That was the idea that you would keep creating revolutions,
01:18:44 and under Steve Jobs, Apple successfully pivoted
01:18:48 a bunch of times, just like reinvented themselves,
01:18:51 which is very difficult to do.
01:18:53 Because I mean, I’ve heard, at least I don’t know
01:18:54 if this is accurate, because I wouldn’t know anything,
01:18:56 but I’ve heard plenty of people complain about Steve Jobs.
01:18:58 Yeah.
01:18:59 But in reality, the reason that all of these amazing things
01:19:03 were done was because this person was willing to,
01:19:05 well obviously brilliant, and then also willing
01:19:06 to rattle everyone’s cage periodically
01:19:09 and say, hey, what’s going on is not what we need
01:19:12 to be doing.
01:19:13 That’s a really interesting thing.
01:19:14 So he would rattle the cage, but he would also,
01:19:17 I don’t know if those are intricately connected
01:19:20 or always have to be connected,
01:19:22 but he would just be a dick.
01:19:24 So maybe by his standard, I am lazy and worthless.
01:19:28 Well, he would say that to you, right?
01:19:29 Is he being a dick though, if by his standard,
01:19:32 I mean, again, it’s like everyone’s stupid
01:19:33 compared to somebody.
01:19:34 You know, I guess.
01:19:36 But, so you apparently are able to take that kind of thing.
01:19:41 Sometimes you just, there’s ways to cross the line.
01:19:46 And I mean, this is, okay, the fascinating thing
01:19:49 about being a leader, especially a leader of companies,
01:19:53 is it’s a people problem.
01:19:55 So each individual in a room, so as a leader,
01:19:59 you’re only really interacting with a small number
01:20:01 of people because there are leaders
01:20:02 of other smaller groups and so on.
01:20:04 But each of those individuals in the room
01:20:07 have their own different psychology.
01:20:09 Some like to be pushed to the limit.
01:20:11 Some like to be screamed at.
01:20:14 Some are very soft spoken and almost afraid to speak.
01:20:18 And they have to be, you have to hear them out.
01:20:23 Like there’s a, and those could be all superstars.
01:20:27 We’re not talking about like the C students.
01:20:29 We’re talking about the A plus students.
01:20:31 Well, it’s funny that, yeah, but the thing to,
01:20:32 the skill to manage all of those people
01:20:34 is completely separate from the skill to innovate something.
01:20:37 I mean, not that they’re not connected,
01:20:39 but it’s funny how it’s, it’s almost like, you know,
01:20:41 why do we have shitty representatives?
01:20:44 Well, I mean, the thing that you do to get elected
01:20:46 has nothing to do with governance.
01:20:48 Yes.
01:20:49 Well, that’s exactly it.
01:20:50 But the great leaders have to have both skills.
01:20:52 So like you have to have the boldness of,
01:20:56 if you look at the great presidents through history,
01:20:59 usually it’s in a time of crisis is when they step up,
01:21:03 but they basically say, okay, stop this old way
01:21:07 that Congress works of this bickering,
01:21:10 of this like compromise bullshit.
01:21:12 Here’s a huge plan that costs billions of dollars
01:21:15 in today’s age, trillions of dollars,
01:21:18 no extra pork, no extra additions,
01:21:20 just like, here’s a clear plan.
01:21:22 We’re going to build the best road network
01:21:26 the world has ever seen.
01:21:27 We’re going to build some huge infrastructure project.
01:21:30 We’re going to revolutionize internet.
01:21:32 Oh, we’re going to, for coronavirus,
01:21:34 we’re going to build the largest like testing facility
01:21:36 the world has ever seen in terms of the,
01:21:38 we’re gonna get everybody tested several times a day,
01:21:42 all those kinds of things, huge projects and say,
01:21:45 fuck all this, the details that everybody’s bickering about,
01:21:48 we’re going to give everybody $2,000,
01:21:51 we can give everybody $3,000, like huge projects.
01:21:54 And at the same time, so that’s the boldness
01:21:56 and the leadership and saying,
01:21:58 throw out all the bullshit of the past.
01:22:01 And at the same time, be able to get in the room
01:22:04 with the leaders of both parties
01:22:06 or for the powerful individuals
01:22:08 and smooth talk the shit out of them
01:22:10 in the way they need to be smooth talked to.
01:22:12 So like both of those skills,
01:22:14 it seems to be when they’re combining one person,
01:22:16 that creates great leaders.
01:22:19 Musk appears to have that, Elon.
01:22:21 I don’t know if Steve Jobs, it’s interesting.
01:22:25 So the criticism of Steve and a little bit on Elon
01:22:28 is he misses some of the human part,
01:22:31 but maybe it’s impossible to have a really,
01:22:35 you have like Sadia Nadal, who’s the CEO of Microsoft,
01:22:37 you have, who’s really good on the human side,
01:22:41 really, really good on the human side,
01:22:43 like everybody loves him.
01:22:44 The CEO of Google and Alphabet is also the same way.
01:22:49 So like, I don’t know if it’s possible to have both.
01:22:53 You only get so many stat points.
01:22:54 Yeah, you only get, in this RPG of life, yeah.
01:22:59 You got very good at jujitsu very fast.
01:23:03 So you went, I mean, you told the story of Blue Belt
01:23:05 and so on, but you went to Black Belt really quickly
01:23:09 and not just in terms of ranks,
01:23:10 but in terms of just skill level.
01:23:12 I mean, you didn’t go to Black Belt nearly as fast
01:23:15 as your skill set developed.
01:23:17 You were like doing extremely well
01:23:19 at a high level of competition.
01:23:21 So you’re a good person to ask,
01:23:24 how does one get good at jujitsu?
01:23:26 We talked about solving problems at the elite level,
01:23:29 but when you’re a beginner at the martial arts,
01:23:33 how do you get good?
01:23:34 How much training should you do?
01:23:36 The very basic stuff, like how much training,
01:23:38 how much drilling, and then the mental stuff,
01:23:40 like where should your mind be?
01:23:44 How should you approach it from a mental perspective too?
01:23:48 I’ll just tell you my perspective on this one.
01:23:49 I guess I would say I feel step one,
01:23:52 I feel lucky to have found a good training situation,
01:23:56 particularly for the time in where I was at.
01:24:01 And I drilled a ton.
01:24:04 I drilled and drilled and drilled and drilled and drilled.
01:24:06 And one thing that’s really important to understand though,
01:24:10 is that I was able to, in a relatively brief period of years,
01:24:15 go from zero to reasonably good.
01:24:18 But I think I probably crammed more hours
01:24:21 in those small years than most people did training,
01:24:26 let’s say in two or three times the length.
01:24:28 So it may masquerade as something else other than it is.
01:24:32 I could say.
01:24:33 So you have to put in the hours.
01:24:34 Yeah.
01:24:35 There’s no way around that.
01:24:36 I think so.
01:24:37 But what did you put in those hours?
01:24:38 So when you say drilling, can you break that apart
01:24:40 a little bit?
01:24:41 Sure.
01:24:42 What does drilling look like?
01:24:43 Is there any recommendations you can put in?
01:24:44 Absolutely.
01:24:44 Step one, I would say your choices matter.
01:24:47 I think one of the really important things
01:24:49 that I think we should consider about jiu jitsu
01:24:50 is that there’s a lot of junk in the system right now.
01:24:52 It’s like jiu jitsu has exploded in terms of
01:24:56 the number of positions, techniques, strategies,
01:24:58 this, that, rule sets.
01:24:59 That’s really cool on the one hand.
01:25:01 On the other hand, there’s probably a just metric shit ton
01:25:05 of suboptimal things that are out there
01:25:08 that are being taught.
01:25:11 Myself included, I’ve taught things that are looking back
01:25:13 five years, three years, two years, one year,
01:25:14 where I’m like, oh, I would not do it like that anymore.
01:25:16 Straight up, sometimes I wouldn’t do it like that.
01:25:18 Other times I would literally never do
01:25:20 even that particular movement.
01:25:22 I don’t think the shrimp is a real move.
01:25:25 It’s a giant spiel and seizure to show in person.
01:25:28 But long story short, there’s a lot of things
01:25:30 that we think of as fundamental
01:25:32 that I think that are really pretty negative.
01:25:35 And also, you know.
01:25:36 That’s heresy in jiu jitsu.
01:25:37 Isn’t it?
01:25:38 The shrimp.
01:25:39 Exactly.
01:25:40 Is like the holy, we all worship the shrimp.
01:25:42 We love the shrimp.
01:25:43 We love the shrimp.
01:25:45 For people who don’t do jiu jitsu, and you should,
01:25:47 the shrimp is you scoot your butt away from your opponent.
01:25:53 Yeah, in a really, it’s like a really athletic
01:25:56 looking position where you look like someone
01:25:58 that’s trying to stick their butt out on Instagram,
01:26:00 and then you push your hands away,
01:26:02 and you expose your face,
01:26:04 and then you lay on your side
01:26:05 because someone told you to do that.
01:26:09 And you look like a, I guess you look like a shrimp.
01:26:12 Yeah, it’s like that time that someone really credible
01:26:15 told me to drink unleaded gasoline,
01:26:17 and I did it for a while.
01:26:18 And then it got to the point in my life
01:26:20 where the next best, the thing that I needed to do
01:26:22 to really improve my life was stop drinking
01:26:24 unleaded gasoline.
01:26:26 And I would say that there’s a lot of stuff
01:26:29 that’s in there that step one is like it’s junk.
01:26:33 It’s actual junk.
01:26:34 And it’s not only will it waste your time,
01:26:37 it will straight up, it will be like an albatross
01:26:41 hanging on you because it affects how you think
01:26:43 about things going forward.
01:26:44 So although it was, it’s funny,
01:26:47 like the operating assumptions that we work under
01:26:51 have a huge, huge, huge influence.
01:26:53 You mentioned like growing up in the United States
01:26:55 or this being a capitalist society, like woo, all right.
01:26:58 Now, of course I think that,
01:26:59 I don’t really know any different otherwise.
01:27:00 And I think that a lot of times people go,
01:27:02 oh, communism is better.
01:27:03 I’m like, haven’t seen it.
01:27:04 I haven’t read any books about it being better,
01:27:06 but it’s possible.
01:27:08 I mean, I haven’t experienced it much myself either.
01:27:10 So I can’t dismiss it outright,
01:27:12 but I guess I would say it’s a fundamentally
01:27:14 different operating system underpinning
01:27:17 and all of my choices, all of,
01:27:18 if I honestly believed in that thing,
01:27:21 many of my choices on a moment by moment,
01:27:23 on a day by day, and certainly on a lifetime basis
01:27:26 would be very different.
01:27:27 So I would say that it’s tough when you’re young
01:27:31 in the martial arts.
01:27:32 And I mean, all of us are always trying to do
01:27:33 our best to learn.
01:27:34 But when you’re young in the martial arts,
01:27:35 you always go, if you’re a reasonable guy,
01:27:37 what do they, what do they call it?
01:27:37 Like Dunning, Kruger, Amnesia.
01:27:38 I can’t remember if this is the right one,
01:27:39 but basically you go like, oh, I know what I’m doing here.
01:27:42 So I can say that’s not right.
01:27:44 But then I read a news story about baseball
01:27:46 and I don’t know anything about baseball, sounds credible.
01:27:48 And it’s bullshit, but I can’t call bullshit.
01:27:50 If you’re a reasonable person,
01:27:51 you can’t call bullshit on things that you don’t understand.
01:27:53 Even if you suspect it’s not right,
01:27:54 you’re like, well, I’ve got to reserve judgment.
01:27:56 You never, ever, ever set aside your need
01:28:01 and also obligation to understand why you were doing
01:28:04 what you’re doing.
01:28:05 And don’t ask why once, ask why over and over and over
01:28:07 and over about the same thing.
01:28:09 Oh, well, I want a shrimp.
01:28:10 Why?
01:28:11 To make space.
01:28:12 Why do I want to make space?
01:28:13 To get away from the guy.
01:28:13 Well, why do I want to get away from him?
01:28:15 Well, because he’s dangerous.
01:28:16 Well, why is he dangerous?
01:28:16 And you can oftentimes get down to, wait a minute,
01:28:18 I didn’t even need to move.
01:28:20 Three quarters of the time,
01:28:20 you’re actually acting in the other person’s self interest.
01:28:23 And I guess a lot of times I can’t,
01:28:24 this kind of goes beyond what we can demonstrate here.
01:28:27 But I would just say trying to understand
01:28:29 what my base operating assumptions are
01:28:31 and consistently reevaluate them,
01:28:33 which can be fricking exhausting, frankly,
01:28:35 and also constantly confidence destroying.
01:28:37 But you mentioned that I did pretty well
01:28:39 relatively quickly.
01:28:42 I started in 2004 and I was at Abu Dhabi ADCC
01:28:45 for the first time as an alternate in 2007.
01:28:48 I won a match there against a Black Belt world champion.
01:28:51 And the fact, frankly, the fact that I was able
01:28:53 to beat someone like that was neat,
01:28:55 but at the same time says a little bit more
01:28:56 about what jiu jitsu is and some of the issues with it
01:29:01 than it does about how cool I am or was,
01:29:03 because that shouldn’t really happen
01:29:08 when you think about it.
01:29:09 You’re like, okay, you’re a champion at ostensibly
01:29:12 a very high level of the sport.
01:29:14 You enjoy a three inch, four inch height advantage
01:29:17 and a 35 pound weight advantage, and you just got beat.
01:29:21 Like that should not, I’m dead serious,
01:29:23 that should not exist.
01:29:24 If that happens, you’re doing it wrong.
01:29:26 Is it that I’m doing it right?
01:29:27 Or is it that you’re doing it wrong
01:29:28 and there’s enough variance in the way that you’re doing it
01:29:31 that you’re allowing me to win?
01:29:34 And now I did happen to win that with the 50, 50 heel hook,
01:29:36 which was 50, 50, but basically,
01:29:40 which was one of the early examples of like,
01:29:42 hey guys, by the way, people can try to hurt your legs.
01:29:45 And that was something like, we mentioned John Danaher,
01:29:47 mentioned like, you know, myself, Dean Lister,
01:29:49 a lot of the guys from the Henzo Gracie team
01:29:51 that have had amazing success.
01:29:52 They’ve gone and done great things.
01:29:54 And you know, Craig Jones in the competitive grappling world,
01:29:57 basically taking advantage of being very, very good
01:29:59 in what they’re doing, but also a glaring, glaring,
01:30:02 glaring issue with the operating system of jiu jitsu,
01:30:04 which was, you know, a huge vulnerability in the lower body
01:30:08 and not only not attacking it,
01:30:09 but having no idea how one does attack it,
01:30:12 which means you can’t understand
01:30:13 how someone will assail you.
01:30:15 So anyway, I guess to come back is if in the absence
01:30:20 of knowing what to do, I try to polish what I’ve got.
01:30:22 So if I’ve got a knife and I’m like,
01:30:23 I don’t know how to use them,
01:30:24 I’m like, okay, I’m just gonna sharpen the edge
01:30:25 and polish it and make sure that when I need
01:30:27 to use this dang thing, I’ll be able to do it.
01:30:29 Because trying to put together a system
01:30:31 when you don’t have an idea of what’s going on,
01:30:34 a lot of times you end up making suboptimal choices,
01:30:37 but as long as you’re consistently reevaluating
01:30:39 what you’re doing, and that’s something I’ve tried
01:30:40 to do over time, over and over and over again,
01:30:42 and try to seek out the most, the best,
01:30:47 and also most articulate or insightful instructors
01:30:51 or people of various levels, doesn’t matter if they’re
01:30:53 well known or not, that could say, hey, Ryan,
01:30:55 I think you should do this, I think you should do that.
01:30:57 And I think all I’ve ever done in martial arts
01:30:59 is try to treat people with respect, honestly,
01:31:02 try to demonstrate appreciation for the many,
01:31:05 many people who have helped me over time
01:31:06 and be the type of person that they wanna train with.
01:31:09 Not the type of, because we’ve all trained with people
01:31:10 that make us think about beating the ever loving crap.
01:31:13 I never wanted to be that guy.
01:31:15 And I was basically saying like, if I train
01:31:16 with a black belt when I’m a blue belt
01:31:18 and this person enjoys training with me,
01:31:21 that’s in my interest.
01:31:22 Selfishly, not only do I not want them to beat me up,
01:31:24 but selfishly, I should, you mentioned being decent
01:31:26 to other people, you wanna incentivize being decent
01:31:28 to other people, right, with a structure
01:31:29 of what you’re doing.
01:31:30 Selfishly, I’m incentivized to be a nice guy,
01:31:33 even if I’m internally a scumbag,
01:31:35 which I like to think that I’m not,
01:31:36 but basically going like, hey, this guy’s way more likely
01:31:39 to help me or this person’s way more likely to help me
01:31:41 if I shake their hand, say thank you,
01:31:43 I really appreciate you helping me out.
01:31:44 And that thing that they tap me with four or five times,
01:31:47 I’m gonna ask them about it.
01:31:49 And then they don’t have to tell me,
01:31:50 they’re under no obligation, but I’ll say,
01:31:51 and whether they tell me or don’t tell me,
01:31:52 thank you so much for your time, I really appreciate it.
01:31:54 And that’s it, you know?
01:31:57 Okay, so to summarize, the way you brilliantly described,
01:32:00 I just wanna make sure we’re keeping track of this.
01:32:02 I went all over the place.
01:32:03 No, you didn’t, you’re pretty on point.
01:32:05 But so the first thing is basically, which is difficult,
01:32:09 I wonder if we can break it apart a little bit,
01:32:11 is don’t trust authority, essentially.
01:32:13 Keep asking why.
01:32:14 Be respectful without trusting authority, right?
01:32:16 Right, which is, and then the second thing
01:32:18 is be the kind of person that others like training with
01:32:21 or like being around, sort of being a good friend.
01:32:27 So so many people just enjoy being around.
01:32:28 So one is completely, which is, yeah, you’re right,
01:32:31 it’s attention, which is like completely disrespect
01:32:34 the way that things are done.
01:32:37 So asking why constantly.
01:32:40 One of it is your own flaws and not understanding
01:32:42 the fundamentals of what’s being described.
01:32:44 And then once you get good enough,
01:32:46 not understanding, like going against the fact
01:32:51 that the instructor doesn’t understand.
01:32:53 And my inability to understand what you’re saying, though,
01:32:55 doesn’t invalidate it.
01:32:56 And that’s something like you mentioned,
01:32:58 like me mentioning, keeping in mind our own flaws.
01:33:00 And then also, again, the flaws that any of us have
01:33:02 is the instructor, to your point.
01:33:04 And I guess I can speak to being kind of weird.
01:33:07 I don’t, you know, I like to sit in the corner.
01:33:09 But so everyone’s a little bit different.
01:33:12 Some people, you know, I wasn’t terribly popular
01:33:13 in high school.
01:33:14 You know, like, I didn’t like high school very much.
01:33:18 But anyway, I would, not gonna be rude to people, though.
01:33:21 I was never gonna bully anybody.
01:33:22 If you said hello to me, I’d say hello back.
01:33:24 I would hold the door for you if you walked by.
01:33:26 You know, and I would just say, like simple things like that
01:33:29 go a long, long, long way.
01:33:31 And that actually takes us back to our social discussion
01:33:35 where I’m like, oh man, how do I become great at jiu jitsu?
01:33:37 It’s like, well, I’ll start by not pissing off this person
01:33:40 who can beat the crap out of me
01:33:41 and not disrespecting the person who is probably
01:33:45 the closest thing to a font of knowledge
01:33:47 at that time for me.
01:33:48 So, and then recognizing that I should do that
01:33:52 for its own virtue because it’s the right thing to do
01:33:54 and I should try to treat people decently.
01:33:55 But beyond that, even selfishly,
01:33:57 it’s in my interest to do that.
01:33:59 But see, the thing is, this is interesting,
01:34:02 is there’s a culture in martial arts,
01:34:06 a culture that I like where the instructor,
01:34:08 legitimately so, carries an aura of authority.
01:34:13 And it’s not comfortable to really ask why.
01:34:18 I’m not, it’s a skill to be able to have a discussion
01:34:22 as a white belt or the black belt instructor
01:34:26 of like, why is it done this way?
01:34:29 Like, and saying why again.
01:34:32 Like, I mean, it’s a skill to show that you’re actually
01:34:36 a legitimately curious and passionate and compassionate
01:34:40 student versus like, somebody who’s just being
01:34:42 an annoying dick who saw some stuff on YouTube.
01:34:45 There’s a line between, to walk there.
01:34:47 I just wonder because like, it’s the drilling thing.
01:34:52 And, you know, I, for example, like in my,
01:34:57 when I was coming out, there was so much emphasis
01:35:00 placed on like, close guard, for example.
01:35:03 And you might actually teach me now,
01:35:05 I don’t know, but to me it was like,
01:35:08 why do I need to master the close guard?
01:35:12 Like, why is the close guard on top or the bottom?
01:35:16 But the bottom really, the fundamental basics of jiu jitsu.
01:35:20 Who decided that?
01:35:21 My body is not, my body says this is wrong.
01:35:25 I’m like, this, like I have short legs,
01:35:28 but it doesn’t even matter the length of the legs.
01:35:30 There’s something about me that just,
01:35:31 I don’t understand how leverage here works
01:35:34 for my particular body.
01:35:37 Like, so it’s just, it’s a feel thing too.
01:35:40 Like, it feels like in my basic understanding
01:35:45 of leverage and movement and timing and so on,
01:35:47 it feels like these certain, like butterfly guard,
01:35:50 or even like half, basically every guard except close guard.
01:35:53 I can play, I can dance.
01:35:56 Close guard feels like you’re shutting down
01:36:02 like the play that I.
01:36:03 Is that wrong?
01:36:04 Or is that, make sure that’s what you want
01:36:06 because that’s almost like an innate characteristic
01:36:08 of this guard position, but it’s not sold that way, right?
01:36:11 It’s like, hey, this is a good guard.
01:36:12 It’s like, hey man, here’s a bow and arrow versus,
01:36:16 and you know how to use this thing, right?
01:36:17 Like make sure you’re far away
01:36:19 and like up on a hill or something.
01:36:21 Cause you can take that bow and arrow,
01:36:22 run up on something and try to use it.
01:36:24 But if nobody told you not to do that
01:36:27 and they told you it was foundational,
01:36:28 it’s very foundational, it’s very important.
01:36:29 To everything else too, right?
01:36:31 That’s back to the shrimping thing.
01:36:33 How many things are we taught that even if it’s not,
01:36:35 let’s say itself is not a garbage thing,
01:36:40 might be effectively garbage.
01:36:42 You could give me a Ferrari,
01:36:43 but if I try to make it fly, it’s not going to work.
01:36:46 If you’re like, here’s a plane, here’s another plane,
01:36:48 here’s another plane, here’s another plane, here’s a Ferrari.
01:36:50 I’m like, oh, it must be a different type of plane.
01:36:52 Like you could be forgiven for leap if we’re going there,
01:36:55 you know, like, oh, maybe the wings come out
01:36:56 or you just go fast enough to take a bullet.
01:36:57 You can make these crazy leaps in your mind.
01:36:59 And people are doing that all the time.
01:37:02 So if you don’t provide the context for me,
01:37:05 or worse yet, you provide improper context,
01:37:08 like how much of a problem is that going to be?
01:37:10 Well, I think the skill of the white belt should be,
01:37:14 just be nice.
01:37:15 But in the complicated human space of when your intention,
01:37:20 at least in the big picture view, is good.
01:37:24 The question is, it’s not always when your intention is good,
01:37:28 the actual implementation of it is good.
01:37:32 So you might be just almost,
01:37:34 and that’s much, it’s not the case for you,
01:37:37 it’s much more the case for white belts.
01:37:39 They don’t even know, their intention might be good,
01:37:41 but they don’t know all the lines they’re crossing,
01:37:43 all the, so they’re not actually able to like interpret
01:37:48 all the ways in which they’re being totally insensitive
01:37:51 to the requests of others, like explicit requests of others.
01:37:55 So your job as a beginner is to be a really good listener
01:37:59 of those social cues.
01:38:01 Well, it’s like a visitor in a foreign country, right?
01:38:02 Yeah.
01:38:03 Like you’re a representative of people
01:38:04 that look like you, people that talk like you,
01:38:06 people that have your passport,
01:38:07 and you’re like, man, I’m going to go over here.
01:38:09 Oh, I’ve got my foot up on my knee.
01:38:10 Well, if I was in certain countries in the world,
01:38:12 that’s rude.
01:38:12 I’m like, oh, I’m so sorry.
01:38:14 But can you imagine if someone says,
01:38:15 hey, I really appreciate if you take your foot off,
01:38:17 that’s pretty rude.
01:38:18 And then I want to tell them, well, not where I’m from, man.
01:38:21 I’m in your house.
01:38:22 I better, again, I might go that direction,
01:38:24 but let’s say I could get away with that.
01:38:25 Now I’m a bully.
01:38:27 And if I can’t get away with that,
01:38:28 well, I’m about to maybe be on the wrong side of something.
01:38:30 But I guess, like you said,
01:38:33 if we have positive intention, that’s fine.
01:38:34 But I also have to recognize who I am.
01:38:36 And I think that that’s one thing that I tried to do
01:38:38 and continue to try to do over time.
01:38:40 Like we’re, oh man, hi,
01:38:43 I’m the one that’s asking for a favor here.
01:38:45 If I spar with Raymond Daniels,
01:38:46 Raymond Daniels is doing me a favor.
01:38:48 I ain’t doing him a favor.
01:38:49 Let’s not get it twisted.
01:38:51 So thank you so much for your time.
01:38:53 I really appreciate it.
01:38:54 And this is not like some effected nonsense.
01:38:56 This is serious.
01:38:56 I’m like, thank you.
01:38:57 If I spar with Steven Thompson,
01:38:58 I’m the one being done a favor.
01:39:00 George St. Pierre takes his time to spar with me,
01:39:01 which he has in the past and not even kill me,
01:39:04 which is really, I appreciate that
01:39:05 because that’s why I can sit here.
01:39:07 George is not a prop for me to get my rocks off
01:39:11 or see what’s going on.
01:39:12 And also I’m going to do that
01:39:14 and then expect him to just take it.
01:39:16 And I’ve seen, he’s a gentleman.
01:39:17 I’ve seen people get nuts with George
01:39:19 and have him just be like, he’s a patient of a saint.
01:39:23 I don’t have that level of patience,
01:39:24 but I would just say to come back,
01:39:26 figuring out like, hey, so what role am I here?
01:39:28 And that comes back to like,
01:39:30 at least what I see people on the internet.
01:39:31 Yeah, man, I have a beef with Joe Rogan.
01:39:33 You’re like, no, you don’t, Ryan.
01:39:35 You’re some goof.
01:39:36 I’m like, I’m some random dude.
01:39:37 Joe, like people want to,
01:39:39 they almost want to like elevate
01:39:40 so that we can somehow be level with peers here.
01:39:42 If I go into Feroz Zahabi’s gym,
01:39:44 I am not a peer of Feroz Zahabi.
01:39:45 I am a student of TriStar.
01:39:47 I’m a guest in the academy.
01:39:48 And if Feroz asked me for something short of him,
01:39:51 like telling me to try to do a triple backflip
01:39:53 so I don’t break my neck,
01:39:54 the answer is yes, sir, I can do a free Feroz.
01:39:56 No, man, in no words.
01:39:57 And it’s, and hopefully it should come with,
01:39:59 I guess, a level of graciousness,
01:40:00 but I guess that’s kind of one of the things
01:40:02 that I see nowadays with how accessible people are.
01:40:04 Cause I grew up, you know, being a big,
01:40:06 huge baseball sports fan of all kinds.
01:40:08 I couldn’t send Derek Jeter a message
01:40:10 and much less have a possibility of a reply.
01:40:14 And if I do, it’s like, you know,
01:40:17 I have people send me messages.
01:40:18 It’s very nice that people send me messages.
01:40:20 Some people, again, and everyone,
01:40:21 not everyone is coming from the same place,
01:40:23 but I’ve had plenty of things that are like,
01:40:25 yo, dude, I need you to do this for me.
01:40:26 I’m like, well, I’ll tell you what’s never going to happen.
01:40:29 That I have no idea who you are.
01:40:31 And that was how I was addressed.
01:40:32 And I don’t need, oh man, you’re the greatest one
01:40:34 because that’s weird and too, cause I’m not,
01:40:36 but just, hey Ryan, how are you doing?
01:40:39 Hey, do you think you could do the following
01:40:41 if you get a second?
01:40:41 I’m like, if I get a second, you’re dang right I can.
01:40:43 Why not? It’s easy to ask.
01:40:44 But it started with some level of politeness.
01:40:47 And I guess like that’s maybe being semi Southern,
01:40:50 like I grew up in Virginia.
01:40:51 Yes, sir. Yes, ma’m.
01:40:52 Like that goes a long way.
01:40:54 And there’s all different kinds
01:40:55 of implementations of politeness.
01:40:56 I mean, most of the successful people I’ve met,
01:40:59 it’s been surprising to me how much of,
01:41:03 you mentioned peers, like I could think of Joe Rogan.
01:41:08 You mentioned Joe Rogan, but Elon Musk,
01:41:12 they don’t, like they almost treat me like I’m the superior.
01:41:17 You know what I mean?
01:41:18 Like it’s not even, that’s the politeness.
01:41:21 Like, you know, that’s the approach.
01:41:23 The feeling of it is like, I’m the student,
01:41:25 I’m the beginner, I’m like approaching the situation.
01:41:27 Like it’s almost like a method acting of like,
01:41:33 you’re better than me.
01:41:36 And that’s how I approach a lot of interactions.
01:41:38 Like I have something to learn from this,
01:41:39 even if it’s like a young.
01:41:41 Do you think that they’re ungenuine?
01:41:42 They’re totally genuine.
01:41:44 But isn’t that a funny thing?
01:41:45 Like in spite of who they are,
01:41:46 they’re incredibly genuine because they respect,
01:41:48 correct me if I’m wrong, they respect you obviously
01:41:49 for what you bring to the table.
01:41:50 They also approach.
01:41:51 No, no, they approach everybody like this.
01:41:52 But that’s all right.
01:41:53 No, but I’m sure they respect for what you bring to the table.
01:41:54 Beyond that though, they’re treating you
01:41:56 with dignity as a human being.
01:41:57 Yeah, as a human being, that’s right.
01:41:59 And when they could probably get away
01:42:01 with treating most people
01:42:02 without a whole heck of a lot of dignity.
01:42:03 And I guess what does that always say that like, you know,
01:42:05 again, like you can always tell someone of quality
01:42:08 because they treat the king and the janitor the same way.
01:42:11 But that’s what we’re seeing a lot.
01:42:13 Like, I guess I don’t mean to like to nitpick,
01:42:16 but that’s where it would take issue, I guess a little bit,
01:42:18 or disagree with the next.
01:42:19 Are you gonna criticize with the internet again?
01:42:21 I know.
01:42:22 People on the internet.
01:42:23 Old man yells at clouds.
01:42:25 But anyway, but I guess what I mean is just like
01:42:30 the way that people address each other
01:42:31 because it’s so casual now, you know,
01:42:33 and it’s great on the one hand, it’s nice.
01:42:35 On the other hand, you go, hey, I just, why can’t do,
01:42:39 am I somehow, am I worried about diminishing myself?
01:42:42 It’s like the way that I’m sure that people talk to like,
01:42:44 talk to women sometimes.
01:42:45 And words, what’s up girl?
01:42:48 I mean, she’s a bitch.
01:42:49 You know, versus like, how am I,
01:42:51 that was supposed to get a good response?
01:42:53 What about that was going to elicit a favorable response?
01:42:57 You know, versus being anything, anything other than just,
01:43:01 you know, man, what’s going on?
01:43:02 And I guess that, does that make any sense?
01:43:03 It makes total sense.
01:43:04 And that Southern thing that you’re referring to,
01:43:06 I feel like that’s an important,
01:43:09 that’s an important part of human communication.
01:43:12 Let me ask you this.
01:43:14 Sure.
01:43:14 You’re a new back attacks instructional.
01:43:16 First of all, awesome.
01:43:19 Yeah.
01:43:20 Second of all, you drop a lot of fascinating insights
01:43:25 in there, but you quote Galileo out of all people
01:43:28 in saying that you can’t teach a man anything.
01:43:31 You can only help him find it within himself.
01:43:34 So we talked about how to start in Jiu Jitsu.
01:43:39 What about if we zoom out even more
01:43:41 and how do you learn how to learn?
01:43:46 How do you optimize the learning process?
01:43:49 I don’t know the answer to that,
01:43:51 but I can tell you what I’d like to do.
01:43:52 And I would say like, I can’t step one.
01:43:54 I don’t, I’m not, maybe this is a little bit easier for me
01:43:57 cause you know, I’ve never had a ton of friends, honestly.
01:43:59 I’ve, you know, I’ve got my close friends
01:44:01 and people that I know,
01:44:01 but I’ve never had tons and tons of people.
01:44:04 So I spent a lot of time, you know, thinking.
01:44:06 And anyway, I can’t, I can’t control you.
01:44:10 I can’t control anybody else.
01:44:12 I, you know, I, all I can,
01:44:17 I want to take my, it’s a Marcus Aurelius thing.
01:44:19 It’s like, you know, I guess the trick to life
01:44:21 is figuring out what’s in our control and what’s not
01:44:23 and focusing on things that are in our control, I guess.
01:44:25 And so step one is figuring out both internally
01:44:29 and then also out in the world as it pertains to Jiu Jitsu,
01:44:33 what is actually in my control and what is not.
01:44:35 Like passing someone’s guard is not in your control.
01:44:37 People think it is, it ain’t.
01:44:39 If I can’t just do an activity and be unchecked,
01:44:43 then it ain’t in my control entirely.
01:44:46 I can always breathe.
01:44:47 I can always, you know, be calm.
01:44:51 I can always, no matter whether I’m concerned
01:44:54 or not concerned, have whatever you want to call it,
01:44:56 nerves, you know, I can step forward across the line
01:44:59 and say, I will, I will face the challenge ahead.
01:45:01 That is all entirely, no one can stop me from doing that.
01:45:03 That’s entirely in my control.
01:45:04 And that’s why I know that every single time
01:45:06 that I walk into the ring,
01:45:07 I’ll walk in and out of there with my head held high
01:45:09 because there’s, I will fight with everything that I have.
01:45:13 I can’t promise that I’ll win.
01:45:15 I would say I take that same first principles.
01:45:17 You mentioned last time we talked, you know,
01:45:19 with Elon and the importance of that and going,
01:45:23 what are the first principles?
01:45:24 And I guess to come back a lot of times, in my opinion,
01:45:26 the things that people think are the basics
01:45:28 are not the basics.
01:45:30 You can’t learn.
01:45:31 If you think you’re reasoning for first principles,
01:45:33 but you’re actually like level six,
01:45:35 you’re actually like layers up,
01:45:37 you’re making so many,
01:45:38 there’s so many baked in assumptions to what’s going on
01:45:40 that you’re gonna struggle to understand
01:45:42 why anything is actually happening,
01:45:44 internally, externally, you name it.
01:45:46 So I guess what I would start when it comes to learning
01:45:48 is first principles and trying to understand
01:45:50 what’s going on, but then also simple things first.
01:45:53 I can control my posture.
01:45:56 I can control my breathing.
01:45:58 No one can stop me from doing that.
01:45:59 I can control where I place my frames.
01:46:01 I can control where I place my limbs.
01:46:03 I can move my feet.
01:46:05 I can develop the ability to do these things
01:46:07 better, of course.
01:46:08 And I do that through practice, through drilling,
01:46:09 through watching people.
01:46:10 I’ve been incredibly fortunate in my time in martial arts
01:46:12 to train with many of my heroes,
01:46:14 to train with many of the people that I looked at.
01:46:16 And I was like, that guy is amazing.
01:46:18 I wanna train with this person, like Stephen Thompson,
01:46:21 Kenny Florian, George St. Pierre, Raymond Daniels,
01:46:23 Farah Zahabi, you know, I mean, like Bruno Frazada,
01:46:26 Marcelo Garcia, you know, all of these guys
01:46:28 that are just unbelievable.
01:46:30 And I go, well, they’re moving in a way that’s different.
01:46:33 Well, how do I do that?
01:46:34 Well, sometimes you can ask them
01:46:36 and they can tell you directly.
01:46:37 Other times, people, part of the genius of what they do
01:46:39 is that it’s intuitive.
01:46:41 And maybe they don’t think and understand
01:46:42 and see the world the same way that I do.
01:46:44 That was something that I experienced with Marcelo.
01:46:47 He’s amazing.
01:46:48 But in a different way than his,
01:46:51 it just, we see things fundamentally different.
01:46:54 We experience the world differently.
01:46:55 It seems to me that we do.
01:46:56 And again, that taught me a really important lesson
01:46:59 because I was wanting, when I trained there,
01:47:01 to have someone go, hey, Ryan, do this, this, this,
01:47:03 and this, and that’s how it works.
01:47:04 And I’m like, all right, because that’s how I understood
01:47:06 martial arts at the time.
01:47:08 I wasn’t ready to have someone tell me, like, hey,
01:47:13 it feels a little bit like this, and I just kind of do it,
01:47:16 which is kind of what Marcelo would do at the time.
01:47:19 He was less experienced as a teacher,
01:47:20 but that is what he was doing.
01:47:22 I was completely, I couldn’t separate in my mind
01:47:26 performance and understanding.
01:47:28 I thought that if I understand, I could do it.
01:47:30 And I would also struggle sometimes
01:47:32 to wonder why I couldn’t execute things
01:47:35 that I thought I understood,
01:47:37 and why guys like Marcelo were just so elemental.
01:47:40 I mean, in like the, like lightning, wind,
01:47:42 like that type of thing where like, it’s just so in touch
01:47:44 with what they wanted, with their capabilities.
01:47:47 They could summon their powers at will.
01:47:50 I couldn’t always do that.
01:47:52 And I guess, so recognizing that there was more than one way
01:47:56 to the top of the mountain, and also I had a lot of science,
01:47:58 but I didn’t have a lot of art, or I had some science,
01:48:00 I should say, but I didn’t have a lot of art.
01:48:02 Meeting people like Marcelo taught me,
01:48:04 and then Josh Waitzkin, actually brilliant guy,
01:48:06 chess champion, former owner,
01:48:08 maybe owner of Marcelo’s Academy, really great friend.
01:48:10 I think he has a book on learning.
01:48:11 He does, yeah, The Art of Learning, actually.
01:48:13 But yeah, he knows a thing or two about it,
01:48:15 but a great guy.
01:48:16 And anyway, he sat me down one time,
01:48:18 and was like, look, man, you’re doing this wrong.
01:48:19 You’re missing what the, missing the genius,
01:48:22 the brilliance that’s right in front of you.
01:48:24 And it took me a long time.
01:48:26 What did he mean exactly?
01:48:28 I was frustrated with my inability
01:48:31 to grasp certain things,
01:48:32 and sometimes the teaching style being different.
01:48:34 Not wrong, just it was, it was tough on me at times.
01:48:38 So you were trying to replicate what Marcelo was saying
01:48:41 as opposed to understanding the fundamentals
01:48:44 from which it was coming.
01:48:46 Right, I couldn’t see, I couldn’t see
01:48:47 where it was coming from.
01:48:48 And also, sometimes I’m like, well,
01:48:50 why can’t you explain it in the way
01:48:51 that I would want you to explain it?
01:48:53 And he’s like, well, why can’t I meet him
01:48:54 where he’s coming from?
01:48:55 So anyway, it was a really important time,
01:48:58 unless I’m very, very frustrating if I’m honest,
01:48:59 but it’s not, I’m so thankful for that time.
01:49:03 And anyway, you know, I guess.
01:49:06 So always first principles,
01:49:07 trying to understand the basics,
01:49:08 first starting at the place where you can control things,
01:49:11 the very basic elements of what you can work with.
01:49:15 And then when there’s other mentors and teachers to.
01:49:19 Meet them where they’re coming from.
01:49:20 Meet them where they’re coming from.
01:49:20 To the extent that I can.
01:49:21 Rather than, I’m not, like, again, it’s like,
01:49:23 why are you not talking to me
01:49:24 the way I want you to talk to me?
01:49:26 As opposed to, hey, where are you coming from?
01:49:28 Back to your point.
01:49:29 But I know that’s not entirely specific,
01:49:32 but you know, like, if you can focus on that
01:49:34 and back to the whole, you can’t teach a man anything.
01:49:37 Marcelo didn’t teach me anything,
01:49:38 but he taught me in so doing, like,
01:49:41 and other people like that, to find it within.
01:49:45 And it’s like, yeah, I guess something else
01:49:46 that I’ve heard before is that all learning is self discovery,
01:49:49 but all performance is self expression.
01:49:52 And I always thought that Marcelo was a brilliant master
01:49:54 of letting what’s inside out.
01:49:56 He was so consistent in his performances.
01:49:59 And a lot of times I felt like there was a block there
01:50:01 personally, particularly at the end of Jiu Jitsu
01:50:03 when I was very, very results oriented.
01:50:04 And I wasn’t, I think my focus was not ideal.
01:50:08 It was definitely not in the place
01:50:09 that I would like it to be.
01:50:10 And whether it would have won more or lost more,
01:50:12 hard to say, but I know that I would have performed better
01:50:14 if I’d have adjusted that.
01:50:15 And anyway, that recognizing that, again, Jiu Jitsu,
01:50:19 I think I’ve said it before, Jiu Jitsu studies is a science,
01:50:21 but expressed as an art.
01:50:22 It doesn’t matter if you can articulate
01:50:24 what you know how to do.
01:50:25 What matters is if you can do what you know how to do.
01:50:27 It only matters if you’re, you know,
01:50:28 I guess if you’re teaching in a verbal fashion
01:50:30 is whether or not you can articulate it,
01:50:31 but recognizing the difference between learning
01:50:35 on an intellectual level or conceptual level
01:50:37 and being able to translate that into the physical.
01:50:40 And I guess like that’s been the thing
01:50:41 that I feel like fortunate over time in my own academy
01:50:44 to be able to kind of fiddle around and learn on my own
01:50:46 and practice with my students.
01:50:47 And, you know, sometimes I struggle
01:50:49 to have great training partners.
01:50:50 Like when I say great training partner,
01:50:51 I mean, other world class people to spar, to roll with,
01:50:53 but I’ve gotten a lot more, honestly,
01:50:56 than I ever would have thought
01:50:57 out of being able to practice and learn and fail and try
01:50:59 and succeed on my own without like my own little sandbox,
01:51:03 figuring out how I can take an idea
01:51:06 and then come up with drills and drills to practice it
01:51:10 so that I can actually practice putting it into play.
01:51:12 Because again, knowing an idea and then not drilling,
01:51:15 what’s the point?
01:51:16 I’ll never have it.
01:51:17 It’ll never see the light of day.
01:51:19 So in that DVD, in that instruction DVD, sorry.
01:51:22 It’s an online instructional DVD.
01:51:25 I keep saying DVD though.
01:51:26 Nobody has DVDs anymore.
01:51:27 Do they not? It’s like VHS.
01:51:28 I don’t know.
01:51:29 Who has DVDs?
01:51:30 What, like Blu Ray?
01:51:31 I possess some DVDs.
01:51:33 I mean, like I’ve never watched them.
01:51:34 What do you use them for?
01:51:35 Like a cup, like a thing you put a drink on?
01:51:41 I mean, in a pinch, yeah.
01:51:46 What’s that even called?
01:51:48 Coaster?
01:51:49 Yeah, my matrix coaster.
01:51:52 The matrix coaster, zeros and ones.
01:51:55 Okay, so in that instruction that people should get,
01:52:00 I’ve been watching.
01:52:01 I’m really enjoying.
01:52:03 It’s, I don’t even know when it came out recently, right?
01:52:06 Like December or something like that?
01:52:07 Yeah, it’s part one.
01:52:10 It was actually like ended up being like 18 hours long
01:52:12 and I was like, oh my God, we gotta chop it in half.
01:52:14 And when it comes together, the whole thing,
01:52:16 I think I hope people will like it.
01:52:17 Yeah, well it’s even part one is really good.
01:52:20 Yeah, people on Reddit were really excited
01:52:22 for part two as well.
01:52:23 Really?
01:52:24 And you also have a back.
01:52:25 Oh, the old one.
01:52:26 The old one that I, that was really helpful to me
01:52:29 to understand some very basic aspects of control
01:52:32 for the back.
01:52:33 Really?
01:52:34 Yeah, that was, you know, that clicked with me.
01:52:37 There’s very few instructionals.
01:52:39 There’s very few things I’ve watched
01:52:41 that ever clicked with me and that was definitely it.
01:52:45 It taught me one thing, I don’t know,
01:52:48 it’s you drop a lot of sort of bombs,
01:52:51 you drop a lot of really interesting details
01:52:54 and it’s funny that there’s only specific things
01:52:59 that really click.
01:53:00 Like a lot of it rings true and you kind of take it in
01:53:03 and it’s like, oh, that’s interesting, okay, yeah,
01:53:05 but there’s certain things that really click.
01:53:07 And I remember when that first instruction
01:53:11 will click with me is like the importance.
01:53:14 I don’t remember any more like how you communicated it
01:53:17 because I’ve now integrated, it’s now mine,
01:53:20 you know what I mean?
01:53:21 But it was more about you just describing upper body control
01:53:26 and the importance of the upper body control from the back.
01:53:29 And just like the, there’s certain grip,
01:53:31 like you did describe different details on the grips
01:53:35 and so on and as I started trying it,
01:53:38 I realized how important upper body control is
01:53:42 versus like me maybe as a blue belt or something
01:53:46 was I thought like you have achieved victory
01:53:49 when you got the two hooks in.
01:53:51 And then I realized like at least for me
01:53:53 that the hooks were not even for my body type,
01:53:56 for my style, for the way I approach things,
01:53:59 they were not even important at all.
01:54:01 It’s supplemental for the most part, yeah.
01:54:02 So they were there for the points
01:54:04 but I can establish a huge amount of control.
01:54:08 In fact, the hooks were, you were talking about
01:54:11 like illusion of choice, it almost made people panic
01:54:16 a lot more when you were like fighting for it
01:54:18 or establishing that kind of control.
01:54:20 They were a lot less panicked when the hooks weren’t
01:54:23 involved even though they should be a lot more panicked.
01:54:25 Anyway, I realized a lot of those kinds of things,
01:54:28 especially that had to do with judo because so much
01:54:31 of judo on the ground is centered around aggressive,
01:54:35 efficient, very fast choking, like different kinds
01:54:39 of clock chokes and all that kind of stuff.
01:54:41 What a brilliant thing that is only gonna start
01:54:43 to make its way into jiu jitsu coming up
01:54:44 but like the judo style approach to like clock choking,
01:54:47 triangling from the top of the turtle and stuff,
01:54:49 so powerful.
01:54:50 Yeah, and there’s something about judo that emphasizes
01:54:54 obviously due to the rules, the urgency.
01:54:57 So you only do techniques that go fast.
01:55:00 And then the other thing is, which I guess
01:55:03 jiu jitsu emphasizes too but judo really does,
01:55:06 which is the transition.
01:55:10 So like while the person’s flying in the air
01:55:12 is the easiest time.
01:55:14 I mean, this is like Ryan Hall type of shit,
01:55:15 which is like, why not put in your submissions
01:55:20 or positional control while they’re in the air?
01:55:23 If you could, why would you not, right?
01:55:26 It’s like, oh, well, I don’t throw well.
01:55:27 We’ll learn how to throw and then do it.
01:55:29 And so you should think, I mean, in the transition,
01:55:32 when they’re flying is the easiest time to put in stuff.
01:55:35 And that’s when you think about chokes,
01:55:37 as you’re throwing, you should be thinking about the choke
01:55:40 and then everything becomes a lot easier.
01:55:42 You ever see Flabio Canto?
01:55:46 Man, Brazilian judoka is just so cool.
01:55:48 Like with stuff like that.
01:55:49 Yeah, exactly, but that has to do
01:55:52 with the first starting principle of like,
01:55:54 stop thinking this as a two phase game
01:55:57 of standing and then ground.
01:56:00 Start thinking about like the standing and the,
01:56:03 the standing comes before and the ground comes after,
01:56:05 but everything happens in a transition.
01:56:07 Well, unless you’re attacking, what is the art of war?
01:56:09 Like, we all like, everyone’s like,
01:56:10 oh yeah, the art of war, oh yes, yes, yes.
01:56:12 And then they immediately throw it away
01:56:14 and then fight like a fricking barbarian.
01:56:16 But, I mean like, I’m serious,
01:56:18 but how many people quote stuff and then like,
01:56:22 it’s like the, what is it, the family guy joke
01:56:23 where they’re like, quoting Jesus and Jesus walks in,
01:56:26 he’s like, you’re not listening to my work,
01:56:27 what are you talking about?
01:56:27 And anyway, basically, like the art of war,
01:56:33 one of the things that’s like the only thing
01:56:34 that you can be sure of being successful in attacking
01:56:37 is something that’s undefended.
01:56:39 We’re like, well, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:56:39 But you know, in a fight though, they’re defended.
01:56:42 Well, are they?
01:56:44 There’s moments all the time
01:56:45 where I’m borderline defenseless.
01:56:47 And if you were to attack at that moment,
01:56:49 if you could see it and then seize the moment,
01:56:51 if you were capable of both,
01:56:53 you should not only expect to be successful,
01:56:54 you should be damn sure you’re gonna be successful.
01:56:56 And more important than that, you’ll be successful.
01:56:58 And even if somehow not, you won’t be countered.
01:57:00 And I guess like, that’s the trick
01:57:02 of almost all like conflict, right?
01:57:05 It’s like showing up when the other person’s taking a nap.
01:57:09 And then it’s so funny, like we take like a protracted war.
01:57:11 It’s like, oh, it takes five years.
01:57:13 And there’s lulls and there’s a battle this month,
01:57:15 but then there’s a couple of weeks, another battle.
01:57:17 It’s like, well, if you just shrink that down,
01:57:18 it’s the microcosm, macrocosm idea.
01:57:20 That same thing, that whole war is taking place
01:57:22 in five minutes or 10 minutes or 15 minutes.
01:57:24 And there’s moments of lulls of person effectively
01:57:27 going for a snack, being like in a horror movie,
01:57:30 like, hey guys, I’m gonna go get a beer from around the way.
01:57:33 Like I’m dead for sure.
01:57:34 So anyway.
01:57:35 Is there, on this particular instructional,
01:57:38 if you can convert it to words,
01:57:41 you talk about finishing the submission.
01:57:43 Is there some interesting insights
01:57:47 that you find beautiful or profound
01:57:49 about finishing the rear neck and choke
01:57:51 or just finishing the submissions for the back control?
01:57:54 Is there something like, you know,
01:57:56 you talk about the squeeze and the crush
01:57:58 and all these kinds of principles.
01:58:01 Is there something about control
01:58:03 about the process of finishing
01:58:05 that you find especially profound about this position?
01:58:09 Absolutely.
01:58:10 The opposite of one profound truth
01:58:11 can be another profound truth.
01:58:13 So like, it’s, I do a.
01:58:17 Did Jesus say that?
01:58:18 No, I don’t, I actually was a guy on Tumblr.
01:58:21 But yeah, it was really, really cool.
01:58:24 There was like a tree in the background.
01:58:26 But anyway, but so let’s say like,
01:58:30 I’ll use examples.
01:58:31 Like first off, I saw someone finishing a 50, 50 heel hook
01:58:35 in the UFC one promo.
01:58:36 It was like some chubby dude in karate,
01:58:39 like inside heel hook and another dude.
01:58:41 And you go, huh?
01:58:43 Well, I didn’t know they were doing that back then at least.
01:58:45 And whether they were doing it all,
01:58:46 how many times did someone do something and then that works?
01:58:50 And then we go, okay, cool.
01:58:51 Versus, hey, maybe we should do that all the time.
01:58:53 So anyway, how long were we all taught
01:58:55 to do the seatbelt the way we all do the seatbelt in jiu jitsu?
01:58:58 Like long time, why?
01:58:59 Works.
01:59:00 In fact, it works so well.
01:59:02 And it was so, it was then the people who used it
01:59:05 were so prolific that we went, well, solve that one.
01:59:08 Good to go.
01:59:10 All right, no more thinking.
01:59:11 And then you go, imagine you were to like the Merkel,
01:59:14 the Merkel flip, all those positions that were showing
01:59:16 in the DVD, which is pretty much,
01:59:17 or whatever the heck it is, the digital VD.
01:59:22 No, not VD, don’t want that.
01:59:24 Digital video something.
01:59:26 But basically recognizing that doing it on the wrong side
01:59:31 is at least as effective.
01:59:32 Doesn’t mean that the other side wasn’t good.
01:59:34 There could be something that’s the literal
01:59:36 borderline opposite of that.
01:59:38 And you go, huh, well, that’s something.
01:59:42 Like imagine like, I would say almost all of these things,
01:59:44 all the tactics and all the strategies.
01:59:46 So I guess that was something that we came to
01:59:48 like training in the gym like a year ago, maybe,
01:59:51 and then playing with sense.
01:59:51 And it’s just, it’s huge.
01:59:52 I’m like, oh wait, so let me get this straight.
01:59:54 First off, I can use my strong side seatbelt,
01:59:55 my right arm over the shoulder all the time.
01:59:58 Well, that’s really helpful
01:59:59 because that’s a lot better than my left.
02:00:00 I can do both sides of my left,
02:00:01 but if I had to bet my life on being able to finish it,
02:00:03 I would want my right arm over.
02:00:05 Everything that’s a tactic or a strategy
02:00:07 evolved from an idea.
02:00:08 Like capitalism’s an idea.
02:00:10 Anarchy is an idea, and then it becomes,
02:00:12 well, what does that all mean?
02:00:13 What are the consequences?
02:00:14 What’s the fallout of all this, right?
02:00:16 So what if we start with jujitsu,
02:00:19 the idea of the guard, right?
02:00:20 And we go, well, I mean, why do you use the guard?
02:00:22 No other martial art really has developed the guard
02:00:25 in the same way that jujitsu has.
02:00:26 Well, what is the guard?
02:00:27 A guard’s a defensive idea where you’re kind of
02:00:29 on your back to some extent or another,
02:00:31 and you’re using your legs as a wall between you
02:00:33 and the other person, and the other guy represents danger.
02:00:36 And you’re like, yeah, yeah, that’s a great idea.
02:00:38 Is it?
02:00:39 I mean, it clearly works, at least to a certain extent,
02:00:41 but where do I want to put my legs when I want to get up?
02:00:44 Not on the other dude.
02:00:45 I’m trying to put them on things on the floor.
02:00:47 If I want to generate a ton of power,
02:00:49 what’s the first thing I do with my feet?
02:00:51 I anchor them to the floor.
02:00:52 Drive for a punch, you name it.
02:00:53 Move away, jump, dart, you name it.
02:00:56 So does it mean that that’s a terrible idea
02:00:58 to be on your back?
02:00:59 No, clearly it works.
02:01:00 And clearly it has function.
02:01:03 But what if the function that we’re giving it
02:01:04 and how much focus we’re assigning to it
02:01:08 is disproportionate to its effectiveness?
02:01:11 Maybe, what if it’s not a good idea?
02:01:13 I’m not saying it’s not a good idea, but what if it wasn’t?
02:01:15 That’s a foundational idea of jujitsu.
02:01:16 And then how much, because no one questions that foundation,
02:01:20 how much innovation is built on top of the idea?
02:01:22 Well, of course I want to be,
02:01:24 my being on my back is in okay position.
02:01:25 So now they’re innovating,
02:01:27 but they’re innovating within a closed system
02:01:29 that they think they’re innovating in this open space
02:01:32 of, oh my God, it can be anything,
02:01:33 when in reality it can be anything within this little set.
02:01:36 But you don’t realize that you’re in a set.
02:01:37 You don’t realize that you’re in a box.
02:01:39 There would be answers that would become
02:01:40 so immediately apparent to you
02:01:42 if you were willing to look outside of that,
02:01:44 but you’ll literally never even look over to your left
02:01:47 because you don’t even realize the left exists.
02:01:49 Do you think there’s a lot of places in jujitsu,
02:01:52 whether it’s back control or generally guards
02:01:54 and all the different positions,
02:01:55 where there’s a lot of space,
02:01:58 like a lot to be discovered
02:02:01 by questioning the basic assumptions.
02:02:03 Maybe if you can give examples of like back control,
02:02:06 like, is there something you’ve discovered that’s like?
02:02:08 Merkle versus seatbelt.
02:02:09 What’s Merkle with seatbelt?
02:02:10 Seatbelt is a right arm over the shoulder,
02:02:13 left arm under the arm.
02:02:14 I’m on the same side as my choking arm.
02:02:17 Merkle is just, I do the same thing.
02:02:19 I don’t even adjust my hands.
02:02:20 I walk myself over to the left side.
02:02:22 I’m on the opposite side.
02:02:23 It’s actually a more powerful position.
02:02:24 Yeah, for people listening,
02:02:25 for people who might not know,
02:02:26 jujitsu is a, seatbelt is a control.
02:02:30 We’re talking about when one person
02:02:32 is on the back of another person,
02:02:34 which is a really dominant position in jujitsu,
02:02:36 seatbelt is a, I guess, widely accepted way
02:02:41 of holding your arm.
02:02:42 Like best practices on those kinds of things.
02:02:42 Best practices, yeah, and it’s worked so well.
02:02:45 So it’s a one arm over, one arm under,
02:02:49 and there’s a certain side
02:02:50 you’re supposed to be on when you’re on the back.
02:02:53 Everyone teaches, there’s a choking arm,
02:02:56 that’s the arm that’s over,
02:02:57 and your body’s supposed to be
02:02:58 on a certain side relative to that.
02:03:01 And then Ryan is describing,
02:03:03 questioning these basic assumptions
02:03:06 of which side you’re supposed to be on.
02:03:07 And let’s say that’s even just like a mid level assumption.
02:03:09 It’s not even a first principles assumption,
02:03:11 but it’s pretty close to.
02:03:12 It’s getting there, but let’s just say,
02:03:14 for sake of argument, it goes a lot deeper, maybe.
02:03:18 I think most of the innovation that I see is not innovation.
02:03:21 It’s like basically changing the color of a car
02:03:24 or polishing like the window a little bit,
02:03:27 where you’re like, hey, you made it,
02:03:28 you made it a little bit different,
02:03:29 you made it a little bit better.
02:03:30 It’s like, oh man, what if I did the same guard
02:03:32 and then grab the lapel?
02:03:34 I’m not saying that’s bad,
02:03:35 but you’re not fundamentally changing anything.
02:03:37 I think most of the big seismic shifts
02:03:39 that we see in almost anything come from,
02:03:41 hey, that thing we thought was right was wrong,
02:03:44 rather than not only is it right, it’s even righter.
02:03:48 And you’re like, that’s not wrong, that’s not bad,
02:03:49 but that’s, it’s like, oh man, let’s say, for instance,
02:03:52 I didn’t make the triangle better,
02:03:53 but let’s say I made the triangle a little bit better
02:03:54 than it was, or than it was taught.
02:03:58 I mean, you can call it innovation.
02:04:00 I don’t know, man.
02:04:00 It’s not like the person that said,
02:04:01 hey, have you guys ever heard of a triangle before
02:04:03 and came up with that?
02:04:04 We’re like, that is, you’re like, that’s on the list?
02:04:06 You can do this thing to people?
02:04:07 Are you kidding me?
02:04:08 Can you imagine you invented the straight right hand?
02:04:11 You’ll be like one punch man.
02:04:12 You can walk around and just lay low
02:04:14 every single person you got into a fight with,
02:04:16 because it didn’t even occur to them to hit you
02:04:18 with their back hand.
02:04:19 In a world full of jabbers, you throw your back hand.
02:04:22 You’re gonna kill people.
02:04:23 So basically.
02:04:24 Well, but by the way, I mean, just to pause on that,
02:04:26 first of all, somebody did invent the triangle probably,
02:04:29 right?
02:04:30 For sure.
02:04:31 It’s not a trivial thing once you think.
02:04:32 No.
02:04:33 How many of these giant things that we all go like,
02:04:35 oh yeah, yeah, yeah, we all use that now.
02:04:36 Can you imagine you have triangles and heel hooks
02:04:38 and rear naked chokes and I don’t have those?
02:04:41 You’re on beat, you’re borderline, I mean, like,
02:04:43 that’s why, that’s, we all, every single one of this,
02:04:45 particularly those of us, I mean,
02:04:46 when did you first start training, Lex?
02:04:48 12, 13, well, let’s not count wrestling,
02:04:51 but 13 years ago with Jiu Jitsu.
02:04:53 Right on.
02:04:54 So let’s say about that time where particularly
02:04:55 it was still like kind of, kind of undergroundy,
02:04:58 you know, and you’re like, hey, we all experienced
02:05:00 being like a relative, like a mid level white belt
02:05:03 and being able to easily beat up all our friends
02:05:06 because everyone wrestled other buddies.
02:05:07 And it was one of those ones where like,
02:05:09 they don’t have weapons to end the fight.
02:05:11 You have weapons to end the fight.
02:05:13 That’s so, that’s such a crazy, you know,
02:05:16 asymmetric advantage that if you lose, it’s on you now, man.
02:05:21 Like, like you had the, next time it’s like,
02:05:23 I’ve got this rifle and you have nothing.
02:05:26 And I decided to put it on my back and then run over
02:05:27 and try to karate chop.
02:05:28 You’re like, okay, next time,
02:05:30 just make sure you use the rifle, bud.
02:05:31 I’m like, oh yeah, I should do that.
02:05:33 So.
02:05:34 Yeah, it’s kind of fascinating to,
02:05:35 I mean, everything you’re describing is a,
02:05:38 there’s a fascinating tension between like,
02:05:40 whatever I show people for the first time,
02:05:41 what a triangle is, just like regular people.
02:05:45 It’s like, they’re discovering is like,
02:05:46 oh, okay, that’s interesting.
02:05:47 I mean, MMA has changed that,
02:05:49 but people haven’t watched MMA.
02:05:51 That’s an interesting move.
02:05:52 It doesn’t make sense why that would be a choke.
02:05:54 And they kind of quickly accepted that’s a thing
02:05:59 and they accept the basics without questioning,
02:06:02 wait a minute, what’s actually being choked?
02:06:06 How is it that a shoulder of a person
02:06:10 can do the choking?
02:06:12 Like, I’m not sure I fully question
02:06:15 the fundamentals of all of that.
02:06:16 Like, what exactly is the blood supply
02:06:19 that’s being cut off?
02:06:21 Like, what is the anatomy and the physiology
02:06:24 of all of that?
02:06:24 Why does this work?
02:06:25 And if you understood all that,
02:06:26 what else can we do here?
02:06:27 Yeah, what else can we do here?
02:06:28 That’s the really important thing.
02:06:29 But if we know, if I’m an end user,
02:06:31 which almost everyone is of almost anything,
02:06:33 I’m serious, where I’m like,
02:06:34 I think about stuff in my life,
02:06:35 the only things I really think about
02:06:36 are like martial arts and martial arts strategy
02:06:39 and like, I don’t know, some other couple,
02:06:41 a couple other things, but not much.
02:06:42 And anything else in my life is borderline unexamined.
02:06:46 And I like to think that if I put a lot of effort
02:06:47 in something, I’d like to think that I could figure
02:06:49 at least some things out about it,
02:06:50 but I figured out almost nothing about anything in my life
02:06:53 because I haven’t even looked.
02:06:54 And if you’re an end user, what are you capable of
02:06:57 versus you can literally alter the source code.
02:07:00 You are Neo in the fricking matrix,
02:07:02 if you can alter the code and I can’t.
02:07:04 And it’s like, we think, ah, ah, ah, ah,
02:07:06 but imagine you are a world class anything,
02:07:10 or you’re not even world class, forget it.
02:07:11 Like a purple belt compared to a white belt
02:07:13 or compared to a no belt might as well be John Jones
02:07:16 or Marcelo Garcia, you’re gonna beat them up comparably bad.
02:07:18 So it’s, that actually is a common thing
02:07:21 where people can’t tell the difference between levels.
02:07:23 They’re like, oh man, I’ve trained
02:07:24 with my black belt instructor,
02:07:25 how much better could so and so be?
02:07:26 Like, so much better you’re gonna have a hard time
02:07:29 wrapping your head around it.
02:07:30 I remember when I first trained with Marcelo Garcia in 2007,
02:07:32 I was a decent purple belt.
02:07:34 And of course he mollywopped me very gently.
02:07:36 And then training with him again in 2008,
02:07:39 I was definitely better.
02:07:40 I won the gi and no gi worlds that you’re a purple belt.
02:07:42 So definitely for the record,
02:07:44 I’m definitely not a jujitsu world champion.
02:07:45 I wanted the purple belt,
02:07:46 but like, that’s not the same at winning a black belt
02:07:48 and a tough accomplishment,
02:07:50 but not in the same thing at all.
02:07:51 But anyway, I was definitely better.
02:07:54 He beat me up just the same.
02:07:55 I’m like, okay, 2009, I was a lot better.
02:07:59 Got a medal at ADCC that time, won the trials,
02:08:02 crushed everybody, like no, just submitted everybody
02:08:04 like bop, bop, bop, bop.
02:08:06 Training with Marcelo Garcia, it was worse.
02:08:09 And in 2010, training with Marcelo Garcia, same, same.
02:08:13 So the idea was, I wouldn’t be able to tell you
02:08:17 the difference and the outcome difference
02:08:19 was the same in all of these rounds.
02:08:20 I was significantly more experienced
02:08:22 and more adept each time that this occurred.
02:08:25 But it was like, how many number of times
02:08:27 did this person submit you or pass your guard in the round?
02:08:29 I’m like, I don’t know, probably like,
02:08:30 let’s say five each one,
02:08:31 because it’s gonna be a brief period of time.
02:08:33 And let’s say it was three on one,
02:08:34 six on another, I’m like, whatever, it’s comparable.
02:08:35 It’s six one and a half dozen.
02:08:37 Would I be able to easily tell the difference?
02:08:40 No, I would just say, I know in concept
02:08:42 that he’s way better, so much better.
02:08:44 But there’s plenty of other people
02:08:45 that could have beaten me just as bad as Marcelo did
02:08:47 when I was a purple belt or when I was a brown belt.
02:08:49 Then maybe I would watch Marcelo walk through
02:08:51 like their borderline, not there.
02:08:53 So it’s neat.
02:08:54 Like if you, that’s back to kind of what I was talking about
02:08:57 about certain people beginning to really like peel back
02:08:59 some of what’s really special about the martial arts
02:09:03 or any activity I presume is they get to a level
02:09:06 of understanding in depth that they’re playing
02:09:08 with like the almost the reality of that thing.
02:09:11 And I’m playing by rules that are not rules.
02:09:14 I’m not even one of the, to use a matrix analogy,
02:09:16 I’m not even an agent, which is the best version
02:09:18 of something playing by the rules.
02:09:21 I’m like one of the regular people
02:09:22 or one of the regular people that got out of the matrix.
02:09:25 So I’m like, oh, I’m cool, but when I fight an agent,
02:09:27 I lose because we’re both in the rules,
02:09:29 but they just play them to the bone and I’m just here.
02:09:32 Well, and then the agent encounters Neo
02:09:34 and they can do nothing.
02:09:36 You’re like, why?
02:09:36 Because it’s operating outside of what the rules are,
02:09:38 but not really what the rules are,
02:09:40 what they perceive to be the rules are clearly.
02:09:42 So anyway, I guess that’s kind of my point
02:09:43 about Marcelo or certain other people
02:09:45 that are doing things where you go,
02:09:46 that doesn’t even seem real.
02:09:48 It doesn’t seem real to me
02:09:49 because I don’t understand what’s going on.
02:09:51 And I guess if we can get down to base assumptions,
02:09:53 like if we can constantly strip away, strip away,
02:09:55 strip away, let’s say we always thought
02:09:57 that turning left was right, was correct.
02:09:59 And it turns out that turning right was correct.
02:10:01 Change your life.
02:10:02 Yeah, it’s a, what is it, Socrates said,
02:10:05 the unexamined life is not worth living.
02:10:08 So you just basically have to rigorously
02:10:10 just constantly examine every assumption
02:10:13 over and over and over.
02:10:14 But doesn’t that give your life meaning
02:10:15 to come back to the struggle,
02:10:17 to come back to free will, to come back to,
02:10:18 what if we could strip all that away?
02:10:20 All right, cool.
02:10:20 All right, let me just stick the needle in my arm
02:10:22 and that’s that.
02:10:23 Yeah, no, I mean that constant striving
02:10:27 for understanding yet another lower layer
02:10:32 of the simulation we’re living in
02:10:34 is something that’s actually deeply fulfilling
02:10:38 that I don’t know if it’s genetically built in,
02:10:40 but there’s something about that striving to understand
02:10:43 that seems to be deeply human.
02:10:45 Which is funny, what makes a human,
02:10:47 we don’t talk about the soul anymore, man.
02:10:49 I went to Catholic school as a kid.
02:10:50 Whether you buy into all that stuff or not,
02:10:52 you’re like, what about the soul of a person,
02:10:55 the spirit of a people, the spirit of a nation,
02:10:58 anywhere, the spirit of humanity?
02:11:00 We talk about everything like it’s this quantifiable thing
02:11:04 when maybe certain things are, maybe everything is,
02:11:06 but then what happens if there’s things
02:11:07 that just aren’t quantifiable,
02:11:09 that nothing in our understanding can
02:11:12 or will ever explain it?
02:11:13 That doesn’t mean that that should be our assumption.
02:11:14 It’s for your assumption that we can explain everything
02:11:15 and let’s get to the dang bottom, peel, peel, peel, peel.
02:11:18 But what if there is actually something
02:11:20 that we need challenge for?
02:11:24 And we could be looking in the wrong place
02:11:26 by going, oh, is it in the genes?
02:11:28 Maybe it is.
02:11:28 Again, I’m not saying we’re looking in the wrong place
02:11:29 like I would know anything, I do karate.
02:11:31 But basically, not even well.
02:11:34 But yeah, we do karate, mediocre,
02:11:36 just ask Raymond Daniels or Stephen Thompson.
02:11:38 But I guess to come back, though, you just.
02:11:41 Are you a yellow belt yet, or are you?
02:11:43 Man, I actually, have you ever seen the Seinfeld episode
02:11:45 where Kramer fights the kids?
02:11:47 Yeah, I did that at Raymond Daniels school
02:11:48 and the kids won in class in addition to the alleyway.
02:11:53 Oh, they finished it off afterwards.
02:11:55 Yeah, exactly, when I was on my last legs.
02:11:58 But yeah, I would just, maybe, it’s funny,
02:12:02 I feel like there’s something deeply missing
02:12:04 from public understanding anymore.
02:12:07 It’s almost like the idea that we can figure everything out,
02:12:09 which I deeply believe in, but also the possibility
02:12:12 that there’s some things that we’ll never really see
02:12:14 and some things we’ll never understand.
02:12:15 And there’s something, like you said,
02:12:17 uniquely human about the human experience,
02:12:20 that even if I had the power to change,
02:12:23 I don’t wanna fuck with it, man.
02:12:25 I don’t wanna change that thing.
02:12:27 Oh, yeah, well, wouldn’t it be great
02:12:28 if we just immediately knew the outcome of everything
02:12:31 and you just press this button, you’re like,
02:12:32 oh, that’s gonna, what’s the point of living life then?
02:12:34 Even if you could do it, it’s the,
02:12:35 Ian, you’ve seen Jurassic Park, I’ll leave you to be sorry,
02:12:37 I know what I’m talking about.
02:12:38 Ian Malcolm, Jurassic Park, Jeff Goldblum, right?
02:12:40 Life finds a way.
02:12:43 But we were so concerned with whether or not we could,
02:12:46 we didn’t stop to think whether or not we should.
02:12:49 Maybe?
02:12:50 I think there’s, I mean, it’s a deeply human thing,
02:12:54 but it’s also a really useful thing
02:12:56 to always kind of assume that there’s this giant thing
02:12:59 that you don’t understand.
02:13:01 So you can forever be striving to understand
02:13:04 because that process gives you meaning,
02:13:07 but also keeps making you better.
02:13:10 Like thinking that, actually even just thinking
02:13:12 that you can’t understand everything
02:13:15 will lead you to stop too early.
02:13:19 So like, I think there’s something to,
02:13:23 whether it’s the soul or whether it’s like religious stuff,
02:13:25 like assuming that there’s this thing
02:13:28 that you cannot possibly understand
02:13:30 is a really good assumption under which to operate
02:13:33 and under which to do this first principles kind of thinking
02:13:36 because you can just keep digging and keep digging,
02:13:38 keep digging even when it seems like you’re at the bottom
02:13:40 because you don’t fucking know
02:13:41 if you’re at the bottom or not.
02:13:42 And back to one of our, I guess our other kind of tangents
02:13:46 was that comes back to everyone’s a human being.
02:13:49 The smartest human being in the history of humanity
02:13:52 is so hilariously weak, like short lived and not intelligent.
02:13:57 Do it for yourself, bro.
02:13:58 I understand.
02:13:59 I didn’t say, no, I’m not saying comparison to me.
02:14:00 In comparison to me, everyone is awesome,
02:14:02 but that’s why I don’t do the goat thing.
02:14:04 But basically, it’s just on a cosmic level.
02:14:09 Can you imagine if you were a vampire,
02:14:10 you’re like 900 years old, like how much you would seem,
02:14:12 you would seem like a lowercase G God to people.
02:14:15 You’d be like, how could you know so much?
02:14:18 How can you have such a long view perspective?
02:14:20 It would be insane.
02:14:21 So I mean, it seems like we’re talking about AI now, right?
02:14:24 Where we’re creating things that are infinitely smarter
02:14:26 than us effectively and live all this time
02:14:28 and it’s probably gonna do what we tell it to do, right?
02:14:31 No, it’s probably, well, I hope it keeps us around.
02:14:34 Do you, by the way, think about AI
02:14:37 and the existential threats?
02:14:38 Like speaking of gods, are you, is this whole
02:14:43 technological world, we talked about social networks
02:14:45 and this increasing power of technology around us,
02:14:49 we ourselves are becoming less human
02:14:51 because we keep relying on technology more and more.
02:14:56 So we’re becoming kinds of cyborgs,
02:14:59 but also there’s a future that’s quite possible
02:15:03 where the technology becomes smarter
02:15:06 and more powerful than us humans
02:15:09 and starts having a life of its own
02:15:14 in ways that perhaps we don’t imagine as human beings.
02:15:16 I don’t just mean like two legged robots walking around
02:15:20 and being humans, but smarter.
02:15:22 I mean like an intelligent life that’s beyond
02:15:30 and fundamentally different than our human life.
02:15:34 It’s infinite, it’s a new kind of species,
02:15:41 not even just a new species, we’re talking about systems,
02:15:43 but like it lives in the space of information.
02:15:47 It lives in a different time scale
02:15:50 and a different scale of all sorts, spatial scale.
02:15:53 It operate, like we spoke about individuals,
02:15:57 it doesn’t operate in the sense of a single individual,
02:16:00 like it’s not embodied.
02:16:02 So it’s not like a thing that walks around
02:16:04 and it like, it looks at stuff and it consumes the world.
02:16:08 It’s able to do much larger scale sensing
02:16:11 of the environment around it, all that kind of stuff.
02:16:14 I can barely even try to,
02:16:16 I can barely even conceive of what that would be like.
02:16:18 Are you scared or are you excited?
02:16:20 I don’t define scared or excited.
02:16:23 I feel like I tend to define them like the same way
02:16:26 where I’m like, I guess I’m.
02:16:29 Kind of like when before karaoke, it’s the same.
02:16:32 Well, that’s actually kind of my happy place.
02:16:33 It’s not so much everyone else’s.
02:16:35 You know, it’s a, everyone else is probably, you know,
02:16:37 heading for the door at that point.
02:16:39 But you know, it’s a.
02:16:40 While you’re doing it or leading up to the karaoke session.
02:16:43 Well, it depends whether or not they know it’s me.
02:16:46 If they know it’s me, that’s before I start.
02:16:48 If they’re like, who’s that guy?
02:16:49 Then they’re like halfway through the song,
02:16:50 they’re already throwing their beer.
02:16:52 What categories of song or particular song
02:16:54 are we talking about in terms of like your happy place?
02:16:57 Oh man, are you kidding me?
02:16:58 I mean, obviously, Bohemian Rhapsody.
02:16:59 I mean, there’s no question because, oh yeah,
02:17:01 because I don’t have to sing it here.
02:17:02 It’s that, it’s like, remember, can I beat Khabib?
02:17:03 Oh yeah, of course.
02:17:04 Is he here?
02:17:05 No?
02:17:06 Yeah, then yeah, yeah.
02:17:07 All right, if he’s here, is he here?
02:17:08 No, then I, no.
02:17:08 I have a torn, I have torn feelings about Bohemian Rhapsody
02:17:12 because I like the beginning part, the sadness.
02:17:13 I like the solo, the heartbreak.
02:17:16 But the second part, I understand it, but it’s so ridiculous.
02:17:19 It gets ridiculous.
02:17:20 It’s so ridiculous.
02:17:21 It ruins it for me.
02:17:21 But it’s more about flexing on people.
02:17:23 I think if you can actually hit that,
02:17:25 hit that, you know, the falsetto.
02:17:26 Yeah.
02:17:27 So it’s, it’s not, okay.
02:17:30 So you appreciate not for the musical beauty
02:17:32 and complexity of the song, you just like to flex on people.
02:17:35 Cause like for all, yeah.
02:17:36 Like what’s the purpose of, of anything
02:17:37 except for just to let everyone know
02:17:39 that you think you’re cool.
02:17:43 And there’s no better way of doing that than karaoke.
02:17:45 So I’m not sure why I brought up karaoke.
02:17:47 Captive audience.
02:17:48 Yeah, exactly.
02:17:49 Oh, about fear and excitement of artificial intelligence.
02:17:51 I mean, like, you know me, I don’t know anything about,
02:17:53 I just, basically I don’t,
02:17:55 I don’t understand the implications of any of this.
02:17:58 I would just say that like radically altering
02:18:00 what it means to be human in such an unbelievably short
02:18:03 period of time just seems like such a crazy thing.
02:18:06 And also it’s not like we’re, I can’t remember
02:18:08 who said this to me recently.
02:18:08 It might’ve been me.
02:18:09 I can’t remember.
02:18:10 So this is definitely not my idea, but we’re,
02:18:13 we’re not even going, Hey, would you like to opt in everyone?
02:18:17 Everyone is being opted in, you know?
02:18:20 And particularly when you want to talk about
02:18:21 like large scale robotics or large scale AI,
02:18:24 like the world is changing.
02:18:25 People in Senegal are opting in right now
02:18:28 without realizing it.
02:18:28 It’s not even like, and again,
02:18:29 I don’t mean to pick on Senegal.
02:18:31 It’s just whatever country comes up to mind,
02:18:32 but that’s in the developing world.
02:18:33 But basically, you know,
02:18:36 recognizing that this huge shift is coming,
02:18:40 we have no idea if this is a decent idea.
02:18:42 And also something else I’ve always been considered is,
02:18:45 you know, you think about most of the really awful, awful,
02:18:49 awful things that have done in history,
02:18:51 large scale slavery, holly, you name it.
02:18:54 It didn’t, people say that it came from this motivation
02:18:57 or that motivation.
02:18:58 Maybe it did, maybe it didn’t.
02:18:59 Fundamentally, the issue, at least in my mind,
02:19:01 I’m not a historian, power differential.
02:19:05 If you and I can’t contest, we don’t contend.
02:19:08 It’s not like we fight and you might win or we fight,
02:19:11 even you’ll win comfortably.
02:19:12 It’s you are so unbelievably powerful compared to me
02:19:15 that there’s nothing I can do to stop you.
02:19:18 That seems like a recipe for something
02:19:20 really, really not great happening.
02:19:22 Because if you think about like, you know,
02:19:24 European countries encountering each other,
02:19:26 and I’m just speculating,
02:19:27 I don’t know anything about history,
02:19:28 let’s say countries that can contend with one another
02:19:31 versus countries that can’t.
02:19:34 Let’s say an alien species, an alien race shows up,
02:19:37 you know, right now, we don’t want that.
02:19:38 I think Stephen Hawking said that,
02:19:39 and it makes perfect sense to me.
02:19:41 We don’t want that.
02:19:41 If you can come here, we better hope you’re nice.
02:19:44 Because what are we gonna do?
02:19:46 What are we gonna hope that you invade the water planet
02:19:47 like they did in, you know, what are the,
02:19:50 Lord of the, yeah, War of the Worlds.
02:19:51 So I guess what I’m trying to get across is like,
02:19:53 shocking levels of power differential between groups
02:19:56 that makes the world ripe for horrific abuse
02:19:59 in the event that someone decides to do it.
02:20:01 It’s like, like you imagine an adult hitting a child,
02:20:04 like hitting, hitting a child,
02:20:05 no one in their right mind would ever go like,
02:20:07 oh yeah, that’s a great idea.
02:20:08 Because it’s such an, it’s so grossly imbalanced.
02:20:11 You’re like, this is wrong.
02:20:12 But it’s also on the table
02:20:14 only because of the gross imbalance.
02:20:16 So I guess to come back, it’s like,
02:20:18 whether we create AI and it’s on some crazy level
02:20:21 of its own, or it’s I’m in charge of it,
02:20:24 or I just, it seems like we’re creating,
02:20:27 you mentioned like a game theory and nuclear war,
02:20:31 what prevented nuclear war?
02:20:32 I mean, presumably mutually assured destruction.
02:20:35 I mean, hopefully also humanity and the humanity
02:20:38 and the reasonable, you know, cooler heads prevailing
02:20:40 and going, hey, I can understand the veil of ignorance.
02:20:43 And I don’t go, oh yeah, let me kill those guys
02:20:46 because I can’t, I go, this is wrong, period.
02:20:48 And in concept, this is not an action I should take,
02:20:51 but it’s also nice and easy to keep me honest
02:20:54 if I know that I can’t get you without being got myself.
02:20:56 But what happens when I can get anyone anything
02:21:00 and I’m more or less untouchable?
02:21:02 Like that seems to me to be like various times
02:21:05 in colonial history, you know what I mean?
02:21:07 And what happened, we know what happened.
02:21:09 But so the possibility of really bad things
02:21:14 are plentiful, the possibilities.
02:21:17 But the possibilities of really positive things
02:21:20 are plentiful.
02:21:21 Like what though?
02:21:22 I’m not saying wrong.
02:21:23 I’m just telling you though.
02:21:24 So I can give a million examples.
02:21:25 One is just the examples of the parent and the child.
02:21:30 You said there’s a power differential there
02:21:34 and we don’t like a parent hitting their child.
02:21:39 What about not just hitting, like beating?
02:21:41 Beating, yeah, great.
02:21:43 Beating their child.
02:21:44 How often percentage wise do you see that happening?
02:21:49 Even though that power differential,
02:21:52 first of all, other people’s kids,
02:21:54 let’s just put this on the table.
02:21:56 I love kids, but other people’s kids
02:21:58 can be annoying sometimes.
02:22:00 Sometimes you gotta deal out some justice, I get it.
02:22:03 But we don’t practice, we don’t take advantage
02:22:06 of that power differential.
02:22:07 So like there is ethics, there’s moralities that emerge
02:22:11 that allow the power differential to be used for good
02:22:15 versus for bad.
02:22:16 So like one of the assumptions with Stephen Hawking
02:22:20 or with if Russia became much more powerful than America
02:22:24 or America much more powerful than Russia in the Cold War,
02:22:28 your assumption that immediately that power differential,
02:22:31 not your assumption, but it would express itself
02:22:33 would express itself in the same way
02:22:36 that it was trying to express itself
02:22:38 when there was a more level competition.
02:22:41 But it’s also possible when the power differential grows,
02:22:44 the incentive, the joy, whatever the mechanisms
02:22:47 that made sense when it was at the same level,
02:22:51 the incentives become very different.
02:22:54 It’s not as fun to destroy the ant colony.
02:22:56 You start becoming more the kind of a conservationalist.
02:23:01 One hopes, that’s an evolved perspective though, yeah?
02:23:04 Well, I don’t know if it’s evolved or not,
02:23:06 but it’s definitely a possibility.
02:23:07 It’s unclear to me that something that’s many orders
02:23:10 of magnitude more powerful than us will want to destroy us.
02:23:14 Well, I mean, how did mass slavery occur?
02:23:18 How did, you know, like just big dogs playing with not?
02:23:22 I think slavery and a lot of the atrocities in history
02:23:29 happened when the power differential was not as great
02:23:32 as we’re talking about with AI potentially.
02:23:35 Is that not somehow worse then?
02:23:38 It’s not obvious to me.
02:23:39 It’s not obvious that things that are way more powerful.
02:23:43 That’s fair, okay.
02:23:44 So I think you’re.
02:23:45 I guess, how do you restrain it though?
02:23:47 There’s a lot of different discussions of how to.
02:23:51 I guess even restrain each other.
02:23:52 Cause let’s say I go and decide to strike someone’s child,
02:23:54 which I’d like to think I wouldn’t do.
02:23:55 I will be promptly, I will find myself in front of a judge.
02:23:59 And so I feel like there’s a lot.
02:24:01 Can you imagine how many people used to get murdered
02:24:03 just in the woods?
02:24:04 Yeah.
02:24:05 I mean, I would just presume it’s a lot, you know?
02:24:08 And I don’t think most people are lunatics like that,
02:24:10 but I would just say.
02:24:11 But that’s the point.
02:24:12 Given though, if you’re given to that,
02:24:14 your ability to get away with it was greater in the past
02:24:17 because of chance of detection was less.
02:24:19 So that doesn’t, I don’t know.
02:24:21 Yeah, yeah, yeah.
02:24:22 This is what that’s called in artificial intelligence,
02:24:24 AI safety research called value alignment of ensuring
02:24:29 as you build the systems that become smarter and smarter
02:24:32 and more powerful and powerful,
02:24:33 make sure that their values are aligned with the entities
02:24:38 over which they’re becoming powerful with humans.
02:24:40 So if you were to talk to an AI that’s becoming smarter,
02:24:43 at first it’s dumber than you,
02:24:45 but then it’s becoming smarter and smarter.
02:24:47 You have to create mechanisms
02:24:50 where you both value the same things.
02:24:52 I guess one thing I wonder,
02:24:54 so I guess I’m probably not like sharp enough to grasp this
02:24:57 if I’m honest, but I guess like, I wonder like,
02:25:00 I used to do chess programs.
02:25:01 Yeah.
02:25:02 You know, it was Deep Blue, Stockfish,
02:25:04 and then like AlphaZero and AlphaZero teaching itself
02:25:07 to beat Stockfish without any help in four hours.
02:25:12 Yeah, yeah.
02:25:12 Like it becomes orders of magnitude more intelligence
02:25:15 than us in effectively in instantaneous period.
02:25:19 I guess what I always wondered,
02:25:20 like if you were that much smarter than me,
02:25:24 I feel like your ability to manipulate me
02:25:26 would be pretty significant or at least potentially, no?
02:25:28 But manipulation implies that the incentive is
02:25:34 to overpower everything around you.
02:25:37 Like there’s implied incentives.
02:25:39 If your value is to actually, like,
02:25:45 it depends what you want in life.
02:25:47 Okay.
02:25:48 What you want in your system.
02:25:49 It’s not clear that the goal of an AI system
02:25:53 that’s all powerful is to destroy all humans.
02:25:55 No, I don’t think that it is either.
02:25:57 I guess what I’m…
02:25:58 Or even enslave all humans.
02:26:00 That’s fair.
02:26:01 I guess what I’m trying to suggest
02:26:02 is that something adequately powerful,
02:26:04 these actions are on the table.
02:26:06 Yes, they’re on the table and that’s scary.
02:26:08 And that’s why a lot of people are really concerned about it
02:26:10 and are working on it.
02:26:12 I’m just trying to make the case for AGI
02:26:15 because if they’re watching this, he’s the one to kill.
02:26:19 No, actually I was thinking, I was, yeah.
02:26:23 I wash toilets like really well.
02:26:28 No, I mean, that’s the main concern
02:26:30 for all the people in the AI state to research.
02:26:32 People talk about AGI is,
02:26:34 it’s kind of disturbing how little people are working
02:26:40 on trying to create mechanisms
02:26:44 that keep AI’s values aligned with ours.
02:26:48 That’s completely unshocking.
02:26:50 Yeah, we humans seem to do only good
02:26:53 when like, you know, you even look at like coronavirus.
02:26:57 It’s like when, like the water has to be leaking
02:27:02 from the ceiling.
02:27:03 You have to be, there has to be blood everywhere,
02:27:05 fire, just destruction.
02:27:08 We just seem to ignore completely any trouble.
02:27:12 Writing all over the wall.
02:27:13 Writing all over the wall.
02:27:15 This is fine.
02:27:16 Yeah, I’m sure nothing to see here, we’ll be okay.
02:27:19 But we do all right, especially in the United States.
02:27:21 You figure out even when it becomes a really serious problem,
02:27:25 taking actions last minute,
02:27:27 there’s something about the innovative spirit
02:27:30 that results in a solution last minute,
02:27:34 right before the deadline.
02:27:35 It works out.
02:27:36 Well, I mean, I don’t know how you did school,
02:27:37 probably a lot better than me.
02:27:38 No, that’s exactly how I did school.
02:27:40 I couldn’t be more, I was no motivation up
02:27:42 until like the last, if you’re like,
02:27:43 we have 22 hours to do the entire semesters of work.
02:27:46 Like, let’s do this.
02:27:48 Yeah.
02:27:48 And you get like 19 fricking Mountain Dews and then, yeah.
02:27:51 Well, that’s why you and I are failures in life
02:27:53 because I just talked to, I mentioned Cal Newport
02:27:56 with his book, Deep Work and so on.
02:28:00 He is of the variety of these creatures
02:28:03 that basically does everything ahead of time.
02:28:06 That’s shocking.
02:28:07 Because he dislikes the, he thinks it’s unproductive
02:28:13 to experience the stress and anxiety of the deadline
02:28:17 because you’re not going to be your best performance wise
02:28:21 and you’re not going to do the best work.
02:28:23 So it doesn’t make any, it’s completely irrational
02:28:27 to a function based on the deadline.
02:28:29 You should have a system, a process that gets stuff,
02:28:31 a little bit of stuff done every day.
02:28:33 So like you should be, and constantly be systematically
02:28:37 honest with yourself.
02:28:38 If you say, I’m going to get this stuff done today
02:28:40 and this week, at the end of the day,
02:28:42 at the end of the week, you have to then reflect
02:28:44 on what you did, what you planned and improve that plan,
02:28:48 update it constantly, update every day, every week,
02:28:50 every quarter, whatever those durations are.
02:28:53 As I’m listening to this and reading his stuff,
02:28:55 it’s like, oh, yeah, I agree with everything.
02:28:58 I’m like, yes, I’m clapping.
02:29:00 But like the reality is, and then I go back
02:29:02 and just eat Cheetos and like, don’t do shit
02:29:05 until like the last minute.
02:29:05 It ain’t meant to be cheesy.
02:29:10 Actually, I don’t eat Cheetos, but yes.
02:29:11 But actually, again, not that it’s ever going to matter
02:29:15 because he’s so shockingly productive and well thought out
02:29:17 that whatever I’ve decided to think about
02:29:19 trying to monkey wrench in there
02:29:20 is definitely going to be able to deal with.
02:29:22 But it’s funny that again, because you’re a human being,
02:29:24 not a God, all of your strengths
02:29:26 are you have a corresponding weakness.
02:29:28 The less you practice working under the gun,
02:29:30 the less comfortable you are working under the gun.
02:29:32 The more practice you have working under the gun,
02:29:34 the better you get at it.
02:29:35 The downside is you’re always working under the gun.
02:29:36 So you’re less productive or it’s like your work quality
02:29:39 maybe drops.
02:29:40 So it’s an interesting thing.
02:29:41 It’s like, it’s almost like, hey, I wonder if this,
02:29:43 I wonder if Khabib Nurmagomedov has a lot of heart
02:29:45 and I try to say the answer is almost certainly yes,
02:29:47 but you go, well, he hasn’t struggled a bunch.
02:29:49 Maybe he doesn’t struggle well.
02:29:51 And it just so happens that he can also work under the gun
02:29:53 really well, he just doesn’t like to do it.
02:29:55 But yeah, but it’s an interesting thing.
02:29:56 It’s like, I guess, what is it?
02:29:57 The Aristotle, we are what we repeatedly do.
02:29:59 We are all, we’re all practicing something all the time.
02:30:02 So I guess it’s, it’s funny.
02:30:04 I guess that’s the question that I have though.
02:30:05 I would love to ask him, it’d be really neat
02:30:08 is in certain jobs.
02:30:10 I mean, obviously you want to have preparation always,
02:30:13 always, but certain things have like a degree of like
02:30:16 entropy in the system and you go,
02:30:19 I need to practice working under the gun.
02:30:21 And I’m not saying that’s what I need to do
02:30:22 because the fighting, it should be for the most part,
02:30:24 it’s a really sterile environment.
02:30:26 In the grand scheme of things,
02:30:27 like fighting in a cage is very sterile
02:30:28 compared to most other things in life, right?
02:30:30 But dangerous, but sterile.
02:30:32 And unless of course, like, you know,
02:30:35 like the other guy, the ref decides to hit you,
02:30:37 which would be hilarious.
02:30:38 But anyway, I guess just going like, okay,
02:30:40 so at what value do you get out of adding a degree of,
02:30:45 let’s say you could even be planned by someone else,
02:30:47 but junk in the system.
02:30:49 And you just have to work under the gun to make it happen.
02:30:52 Let’s say for instance, for like police
02:30:53 or something like that, the situation turns left hard
02:30:56 at some random point in time.
02:30:57 And that could happen to any number of people.
02:31:00 So I guess it’s interesting things that allow
02:31:01 for perfect planning or quasi perfect planning
02:31:04 versus things that are inherently unstable.
02:31:06 And then what are the,
02:31:07 what’s the psychological fallout of comfort with that?
02:31:10 Because I think a lot of people that are really comfortable
02:31:12 under the gun, let it happen a lot.
02:31:15 For all the good and the bad of that, does that make sense?
02:31:17 No, that totally makes sense.
02:31:18 And it was, I mean, his answer would be
02:31:20 that you have to be honest with yourself
02:31:23 if it’s valuable for your success
02:31:26 to practice being under the gun.
02:31:29 And then you should schedule that.
02:31:30 Yeah, then he’s smart.
02:31:31 You should plan that, you should systematically.
02:31:34 And then as opposed to doing it half assedly,
02:31:37 because it’s, as opposed to letting the environment
02:31:39 choose the randomness, like control the randomness
02:31:43 to where like you optimize it.
02:31:46 I wish it’s so efficient, it’s shocking
02:31:48 just to hear about it.
02:31:49 Yeah, no, he’s, I mean, the same way you are,
02:31:52 he’s annoying in the same way,
02:31:53 which is like he drops truth bombs.
02:31:56 It’s like, yeah, yeah, that’s so true.
02:31:59 Yeah, we’re probably comparably doing that.
02:32:02 No, he does.
02:32:05 But he’s, so he, his profession requires that.
02:32:07 So he’s not just like a motivational speaker or whatever.
02:32:09 He’s a theoretical computer scientist
02:32:14 and he needs the long hours in the day
02:32:18 of doing like serious math.
02:32:19 So it’s mostly math proofs.
02:32:21 And for that, you have to sit and think really deeply.
02:32:24 It’s like really hard work.
02:32:26 Compared to like what most people do,
02:32:28 like even what I, I mean, what I do,
02:32:31 like programming is way easier than rigorous math proofs.
02:32:34 Cause you have to basically have this machine
02:32:37 and you have to, your brain to churn out logic
02:32:43 in a focused way while visualizing a bunch of things
02:32:46 and holding that in your brain
02:32:47 and holding that for 10 minutes, 20 minutes,
02:32:50 hopefully several hours.
02:32:52 And you’re not just like doing homework.
02:32:55 You’re doing totally novel stuff.
02:32:56 So like stuff that nobody’s ever done before.
02:32:59 So you keep running up against the wall
02:33:00 of like, fuck, this is a den.
02:33:02 And oh no, wait, is this a dead end?
02:33:05 And like that whole frustration, that’s serious mental work.
02:33:09 That’s like incredibly difficult mental work.
02:33:11 So he knows what he’s talking about.
02:33:13 It’s amazing.
02:33:14 But like you said, he’s like, this seems like the standard
02:33:16 for the quality of work that he needs is so high
02:33:19 that almost anything less than this level
02:33:21 of systematization and organization would preclude it.
02:33:24 Right?
02:33:25 So he can’t afford the kind of bullshit
02:33:26 that I don’t know about you, but that certainly I do,
02:33:28 which is like last deadline kind of stuff.
02:33:30 Cause you can’t do that kind of work last minute
02:33:34 on deadline kind of stuff.
02:33:35 So my question for him in general is like,
02:33:39 and for you and I is like, well,
02:33:41 here’s these negative patterns that we do
02:33:45 of like doing shit last minute and so on.
02:33:49 Is this just who we are now?
02:33:51 Or are there some?
02:33:52 I don’t think I’m really big into a free will.
02:33:54 You know, I was thinking that it’s mostly predestination,
02:33:57 at least in this regard.
02:33:59 It’s the same with like communism.
02:34:00 Like, as long as it fits my, whatever is the lazy thing
02:34:04 to do, I’ll just not believe in free will.
02:34:06 I’m not a communism opportunist or that’s when that was.
02:34:10 I’m an opportunistic communist and capitalist.
02:34:15 I just do whatever, whatever is cool at the time.
02:34:18 Exactly.
02:34:19 Let me ask you to examine some fundamental principles
02:34:24 of a particular thing that Joe Rogan brought up to me
02:34:27 several times online and offline.
02:34:29 Okay.
02:34:29 Which is that he thinks that the tie that I wear
02:34:35 is something that makes me vulnerable to attack
02:34:40 that you should be, the reason he doesn’t wear a tie
02:34:44 is because he can get choked very easily with a tie.
02:34:47 It’s a big concern.
02:34:48 Okay, my contention, and by the way,
02:34:52 he wore a suit last time too.
02:34:54 He didn’t wear it on the podcast.
02:34:55 He wore it for dinner later.
02:34:57 Yeah, I wore a suit the other day
02:34:58 and I had no socks on.
02:35:00 I didn’t realize, yeah.
02:35:01 You’re supposed to wear socks?
02:35:02 Yeah, that’s my understanding.
02:35:03 Why’d you wear a suit?
02:35:04 Did you go to court?
02:35:05 No, no, not in that, no.
02:35:07 Hey, I don’t know, I just wanted to play.
02:35:11 I wanted to pretend I was an adult for a day.
02:35:13 Okay, cool.
02:35:14 So my contention is like the jacket,
02:35:19 everything is more dangerous than a tie.
02:35:22 That’s kind of where I was going with that.
02:35:24 That’s kind of where, yeah, it was my first thought too.
02:35:25 Like once the tie becomes an issue, like, yeah.
02:35:28 I feel like everything else is already an issue.
02:35:30 It’s already an issue, yeah.
02:35:31 Because the tie to me, now without like messing with it now,
02:35:34 is to me has some of the similar problems
02:35:38 that a belt does.
02:35:40 So like, for example, I don’t know about you,
02:35:42 maybe you can correct me,
02:35:43 but I’m not sure you can use the belt as tied.
02:35:50 I know there’s some kind of guards
02:35:53 you can probably utilize the belt with,
02:35:55 but the belt, sorry, when it’s tied around the waist.
02:35:58 Are you talking about a belt belt or a gi belt?
02:36:00 Sorry, gi belt.
02:36:01 Okay. Sorry.
02:36:02 Gi belt, importantly, gi belt.
02:36:04 It’s not that great of a thing to use in most cases,
02:36:09 I would say, because it slides.
02:36:12 Yep, that’s true.
02:36:13 It doesn’t, you can probably invent a few interesting ways
02:36:18 to use it as leverage, as control and so on,
02:36:21 but there’s just so many more things around the gi belt
02:36:24 that are better.
02:36:26 And so for me, the tie, what people don’t realize.
02:36:28 That’s better.
02:36:29 Are we trying to sell a DVD here
02:36:30 and have some widgets and bells and whistles?
02:36:32 Because in that case,
02:36:33 the belt is really important part of what we do.
02:36:35 And I would really encourage you guys to look into it.
02:36:37 If we’re trying to actually like learn something and say,
02:36:40 like you said, we’re surrounded by better options.
02:36:42 Well, that’s the thing.
02:36:43 I mean, it’s not obvious to me that the belt,
02:36:46 maybe there’s actually undiscovered things
02:36:48 about using the belt.
02:36:49 I think people have used like putting a foot
02:36:52 inside the belt somehow, inside the gi belt.
02:36:55 This is a no punches, gi grappling situation.
02:36:57 Yes.
02:36:58 I guess so.
02:36:59 Sort of fairly contrived, right?
02:37:00 But with punches too, like, is there,
02:37:01 okay, let’s talk about a street fights with a belt
02:37:04 that’s like a jeans belt, like a belt, clothing belt.
02:37:06 Okay, so I get to take it off
02:37:07 and whip them in the face with the buckle?
02:37:10 How serious is this street fight?
02:37:11 Are we talking like that far and open?
02:37:12 No, 100% serious.
02:37:13 Or are we talking like, oh, okay.
02:37:15 No, like death, like one of you has to die.
02:37:17 Oh, yikes, whoa.
02:37:18 Okay.
02:37:19 Oh, you ever, like.
02:37:20 I’m in this situation all the time.
02:37:22 I understand.
02:37:23 And there’s a reason I’m still here.
02:37:26 I had something, I had somebody try to fight me
02:37:28 to Starbucks the other day.
02:37:29 I fight kids, we’re talking about power differential.
02:37:30 Yeah, hey.
02:37:31 I just beat up kids all the time.
02:37:32 Just pick the easy W’s, you gotta get the easy W’s
02:37:34 if you want the hard ones.
02:37:35 I’m undefeated.
02:37:36 Come around the playground, watch what happens.
02:37:37 No, like to the death, what is their clothing
02:37:41 that’s useful, you know?
02:37:43 From my perspective.
02:37:44 You mean like for your use or their use?
02:37:46 Both, my use, their use.
02:37:48 No, like I like how you wanted to take the belt off
02:37:52 and use the buckle to hit them with.
02:37:54 But first of all, how are you gonna take off the belt?
02:37:56 Well, there’s a lot of effort involved in unclothing.
02:38:00 Well, what I was figuring was when they started
02:38:02 to see me take my pants off in the fight,
02:38:04 they were like, what?
02:38:04 They’re gonna pause and rethink the situation for a second?
02:38:07 Yes.
02:38:08 And I’m making dead eye contact, obviously,
02:38:09 this is going on.
02:38:10 Yeah, exactly, nodding.
02:38:12 And then, you know, by the time they realized
02:38:13 you took a belt off until you could whip them with it,
02:38:15 you actually, you’re already one, possibly two steps ahead.
02:38:18 Okay, so fine, let’s not talk about your own clothing,
02:38:21 let’s talk about their clothing.
02:38:22 Okay, I’ll take off their belt and hit them with it.
02:38:23 No, but that’s much harder to do.
02:38:25 No question, but if you can do it.
02:38:26 Oh, I’m maintaining, I can, no, I just said.
02:38:29 Like, how did it come to this?
02:38:31 There’s, but the point is there’s alternatives
02:38:34 that are perhaps more effective.
02:38:36 Yeah.
02:38:37 In my perspective, this might be clueless,
02:38:39 there’s almost no clothing that’s more effective
02:38:43 than almost assuming the situation is no geek grappling.
02:38:46 Like, I feel like clothing.
02:38:49 Particularly when you start to add hitting,
02:38:51 like every single time I start grabbing your clothes,
02:38:52 if you start hitting and it’s not like nothing could work,
02:38:55 but most of the time you’re like,
02:38:56 why am I not using my arms for something better
02:38:58 than what I’m doing them right now?
02:39:00 Right, yeah.
02:39:01 It’s very difficult for me to, I don’t know,
02:39:04 in terms of just distance,
02:39:06 I can’t imagine a case of different distances,
02:39:08 even like situations where, let’s not talk about like,
02:39:13 like a situation where you haven’t both yet agreed
02:39:16 that a fight is happening.
02:39:18 Solid clothing is nice if they have it on then.
02:39:21 I mean. Solid clothing?
02:39:22 Oh yeah, like something like a good jacket
02:39:23 because you can snatch somebody on their face.
02:39:25 Snatch down.
02:39:26 Yeah, you know, it’s like, if you, if you took my,
02:39:27 like, you know, like you snap down and judo,
02:39:29 like how easy it is to snap down a beginner.
02:39:32 Yeah.
02:39:32 It’s like.
02:39:33 So I agree with you.
02:39:34 Actually a tie in that sense
02:39:35 might be a really effective way to snap down.
02:39:37 So like the snap down is really powerful
02:39:39 to change the like disorient the situation
02:39:43 and give you a lot of different opportunities
02:39:45 for, you know, taking their back, taking them down.
02:39:49 Doing hilarious stuff,
02:39:50 like snapping them down with a tie into your knee.
02:39:52 And then when they come back up doing this, you’re already.
02:39:55 So yeah, in that sense, I agree,
02:39:57 but not as a choking mechanism
02:39:58 because the concern Joe had is choke.
02:40:00 I think you would probably choke me with your tie
02:40:02 more easily than I could choke you with your tie.
02:40:03 Probably.
02:40:04 I’m serious.
02:40:05 Cause like, if you get, you can get,
02:40:05 like you get my back
02:40:06 and you can put it around somebody’s neck, you know,
02:40:08 like, like, like, you ever see a diehard?
02:40:11 Yeah.
02:40:12 Yeah, you remember when the super Swedish looking blonde dude
02:40:15 or whatever was,
02:40:16 it was trying to choke Bruce Willis with the,
02:40:18 with the chain and then he ended up getting choked himself
02:40:20 with the chain if I recall this properly.
02:40:22 But anyway, yeah, like, like that.
02:40:23 But I don’t, I don’t feel like,
02:40:25 I feel like if I start grabbing your tie,
02:40:27 you have too many other great options.
02:40:29 I mean, I do like the snap down
02:40:31 that you actually made me realize.
02:40:32 No, I think you have a good there.
02:40:34 What’s that?
02:40:34 I think you’re on the right path with it.
02:40:35 With a snap down?
02:40:36 Yeah, particularly if you start with like one of these,
02:40:38 like, you know, like, like you,
02:40:39 like you poke your finger in my chest
02:40:40 and then snap down real quick.
02:40:42 Oh yeah.
02:40:43 And also, socially speaking,
02:40:45 it’s not a threatening thing to, you know,
02:40:48 to reach for the tie.
02:40:49 It’s not particularly like a business setting.
02:40:51 You know what I mean?
02:40:51 They’ll never see it coming.
02:40:52 Yeah.
02:40:53 Cause I was thinking choke,
02:40:54 but it’s not, it’s a really good leverage point
02:40:56 cause like grabbing a jacket,
02:40:58 the jacket will slide if you try to snap down.
02:41:00 You really have to get a hole,
02:41:02 like a really good hold.
02:41:03 That’s a good point.
02:41:04 Cause it’s around the back of the neck.
02:41:05 But what if it’s a clip on?
02:41:05 How much of a jackass would you look like?
02:41:07 You feel like,
02:41:08 and then they just stick you on.
02:41:10 But you ever see the Japanese politician
02:41:11 or I think it was Japan.
02:41:13 The judo throw?
02:41:13 Yeah, it was, that guy is so,
02:41:15 he was so calm and cool.
02:41:16 Had like, it was every,
02:41:18 it was beautiful technique.
02:41:20 The level of, actually the throw was even gentle.
02:41:23 But yeah, it was perfect.
02:41:24 It was amazing.
02:41:25 Well executed.
02:41:26 Yeah.
02:41:27 More of our politicians just toss the shit out of each other.
02:41:29 Yeah, we need more Teddy Roosevelts.
02:41:31 Exactly.
02:41:32 I like our politicians like talking about fighting
02:41:33 when it’s clear that none of them even,
02:41:35 it would ever have been in a fight ever.
02:41:37 Yeah.
02:41:38 Somebody was saying Teddy Roosevelt was interesting.
02:41:39 I didn’t realize this.
02:41:40 Is he’s one of the greatest presidents this country’s had.
02:41:44 And he was one of the greatest presidents,
02:41:46 even though he faced no crisis whatsoever.
02:41:49 He literally willed himself.
02:41:51 Like nothing happened during his presidency.
02:41:53 He’s just a bad motherfucker who made really great speeches.
02:41:56 Yeah.
02:41:57 So he like, this made me realize,
02:42:00 I was just talking to a historian that like,
02:42:03 most of the people who we think are great
02:42:05 need also a good crisis that they’ve,
02:42:07 that reveal their greatness.
02:42:09 But Muhammad Ali, right?
02:42:10 And there’s Muhammad Ali, I mean, in sports.
02:42:12 But you know what I mean?
02:42:13 Like the circumstances, what is greatness?
02:42:15 You know what I mean?
02:42:16 It’s like, you have to, it’s not just your capacity.
02:42:18 It’s what you face, right?
02:42:19 It’s the quality of opposition, circumstance,
02:42:21 what you overcome.
02:42:22 So I guess what you’re saying is Joe Rogan is wrong
02:42:25 about the tie thing.
02:42:26 You know, I don’t want to go so far as saying he’s wrong.
02:42:28 I, you know, the man’s not here to defend himself.
02:42:30 Maybe he has some things that I’m not understanding.
02:42:32 I’m willing to.
02:42:33 No, he has not deeply thought this.
02:42:34 This is my main criticism of Joe.
02:42:35 He’s not deeply thought to this.
02:42:37 And the MMA journalists will be like,
02:42:39 Ryan Hall says Joe Rogan is wrong.
02:42:41 And hates ties.
02:42:42 And hates ties.
02:42:44 They’ll integrate, hit their back in there somehow.
02:42:47 Nice, nice.
02:42:48 What’s, you’re talking about greatness
02:42:52 and greatness requiring a difficult moment in time.
02:42:56 Can you like reflect back and think
02:42:58 what are some of the hardest, if not the hardest thing
02:43:01 you’ve ever had to do in your life?
02:43:04 Well, you know, I think I’ve had a bunch of things.
02:43:06 You know, I’ve had a lot of things not go my way.
02:43:09 You know, I’ve been incredibly fortunate.
02:43:10 I’ve had a lot of things go my way also.
02:43:13 But leaving, leaving Team Lord Urban in 2008,
02:43:17 which I firmly believe was the right thing to do,
02:43:21 is one of the, that was very difficult at the time.
02:43:25 Not like, not a difficult choice,
02:43:27 but it was because of why I was leaving.
02:43:29 But.
02:43:30 Just psychologically.
02:43:31 First of all, loss in general.
02:43:33 Leaving.
02:43:33 Yeah.
02:43:34 Team, family, all kinds.
02:43:35 Doesn’t matter what the circumstances.
02:43:37 I didn’t lose any friends,
02:43:38 but I lost a lot of people I thought were my friends.
02:43:40 And I, I lost training.
02:43:42 I lost, I’d also had like a really serious,
02:43:44 my wrist only does that.
02:43:46 So like, I had a really serious wrist surgery,
02:43:50 like that I didn’t know if I was going to be able
02:43:52 to compete anymore after that.
02:43:53 I just got my brown belt.
02:43:54 That was, it was a tough time,
02:43:56 like psychologically, physically, everything.
02:43:58 But I was very, very motivated to do my best
02:44:01 and to push through it and to,
02:44:03 it was to carry on in a positive direction,
02:44:04 no matter what.
02:44:05 A different direction.
02:44:06 And.
02:44:07 Were you lonely?
02:44:08 This is the thing about family,
02:44:10 even if it’s an abusive family, leaving is tough.
02:44:13 People are complicated.
02:44:14 And even people that I, that I don’t think very well of,
02:44:17 that I think on the whole, I don’t think very well of,
02:44:19 it’s, it’s unfair to paint them with one brush.
02:44:24 You know, obviously there’s greater and lesser examples
02:44:26 of that, like the person we discussed last time,
02:44:28 who’s an infinitely, you know, beyond almost anyone
02:44:31 that we could ever imagine meeting
02:44:32 in our own personal lives.
02:44:33 Yeah.
02:44:34 Yeah.
02:44:35 Bloody elbow.
02:44:36 Yeah.
02:44:37 In terms of forgiveness and hate, I mean, do you,
02:44:41 do you have hate in your heart for,
02:44:43 for people in your past?
02:44:44 No.
02:44:45 For that process?
02:44:46 No.
02:44:47 I mean, there were definitely times
02:44:48 where I’ve been negatively motivated
02:44:49 to prove people wrong or to accomplish things in spite.
02:44:52 And I think that some of that is valuable,
02:44:55 if I be lying, if I felt differently.
02:44:57 I think particularly, I do really well in conflict.
02:45:01 I’m useless for that.
02:45:02 This is the usual deadline thing.
02:45:03 I’m useless, yeah.
02:45:04 I’m useless.
02:45:05 I like the chaos.
02:45:06 I’m useless, yeah, I do.
02:45:06 I’m useless without an antagonist.
02:45:07 I like fighting.
02:45:08 I like competition.
02:45:10 I like being pushed.
02:45:11 I like feeling like if I don’t play well,
02:45:13 I’m going to get hurt.
02:45:14 I have no choice but to play well
02:45:16 or play with everything I got at the very least.
02:45:18 And I guess I would say though, is, you know,
02:45:21 as I’ve gotten, you know, more time and, you know,
02:45:24 lived a little bit longer, you see, you know,
02:45:27 various situations for, you know, you know,
02:45:31 with increased color, I guess I would say, increased clarity.
02:45:36 And, you know, there are a lot of lessons to be learned,
02:45:40 even from times in history or bad experience that we have.
02:45:43 And the question is,
02:45:44 can we take those lessons and move forward?
02:45:46 And that’s, again, what I think we’re seeing
02:45:48 in sometimes socially right now,
02:45:50 we’re forgetting important lessons of the past.
02:45:52 And that’s not good.
02:45:53 Not saying, hey, I don’t get why we could be going
02:45:56 in this direction or that, I understand entirely,
02:45:58 but hey, let’s not forget the lesson
02:46:00 so we don’t have to learn them again
02:46:02 because that doesn’t really serve anybody.
02:46:05 And anyway, I guess I would say I’m thankful
02:46:07 for all of the experiences, difficult and otherwise,
02:46:10 mostly difficult, honestly, most of the times I remember,
02:46:12 I’m thankful for every loss I’ve ever had,
02:46:14 particularly the tough ones.
02:46:15 I’m thankful for, you know, for all the relationships.
02:46:18 I’ve been, many people have taught me many things.
02:46:20 They continue to teach me many things,
02:46:21 some of whom are still some of my closest friends,
02:46:23 some of whom are people I really don’t get along with at all.
02:46:25 And some of whom are people I think really poorly of.
02:46:29 Oh, there’s not many of that last group.
02:46:30 What I guess I would say is there’s been a lot of things
02:46:34 and opportunities to learn and, you know, throughout that.
02:46:38 And also it’s not as if I’ve never done,
02:46:39 made any mistakes myself.
02:46:40 Now, again, there are magnitude differences I like to think.
02:46:44 And I can definitely say that none of the mistakes
02:46:46 that I’ve ever made have been mistakes of intention.
02:46:48 You know, I’ve screwed up a lot of things in my life,
02:46:50 but I can confidently and easily say
02:46:52 that I’ve never had ill intent towards people
02:46:55 as I’ve done it.
02:46:55 You sit there and you’re like, man,
02:46:56 this is the right thing, this is the right thing.
02:46:57 And sometimes I’ve been wrong.
02:46:59 But, you know, you never sit out with malicious intent.
02:47:02 And I think that when I find
02:47:03 that I think people do things differently,
02:47:06 when I do think that there is malicious intent,
02:47:07 I have a difficult time forgiving that.
02:47:09 How does love win over hate, Ryan Hall, in this world?
02:47:14 We talk about social media,
02:47:16 we talk about forgiveness
02:47:19 of some of the more complicated people in your past.
02:47:24 If we scale that to the entire world
02:47:27 before the AI destroys us,
02:47:30 and the human race is lost to history,
02:47:34 how do you think love wins over hate?
02:47:35 Well, I’d like to preface this by saying
02:47:37 I tried to make pancakes the other day.
02:47:39 Yes.
02:47:41 Didn’t work.
02:47:43 But I’m happy to comment on this.
02:47:44 So basically, I think most of the times
02:47:50 that I can think of that I’ve struggled,
02:47:54 you know, and the times that I’ve read about
02:47:57 is being unable to see the humanity in other people.
02:48:01 And also, even in sometimes our enemies
02:48:03 and the people that have done awful things,
02:48:05 and you go, what would allow people to do this,
02:48:09 that, or the other?
02:48:09 And that doesn’t forgive what they’ve done,
02:48:11 depending upon, you know, some things are forgivable,
02:48:13 some things are less so.
02:48:15 But you wanna understand why.
02:48:16 It’s like, to our knowledge,
02:48:17 demons don’t populate our world.
02:48:19 Neither do like literal angels walking around
02:48:22 being actually perfect.
02:48:24 A lot of times, the things that it’s,
02:48:25 I find it deeply amusing watching, you know,
02:48:27 people hoisted by their own batard on Twitter,
02:48:29 even though it’s gross and it’s really unproductive.
02:48:32 It’s actually like equal parts amusing and like awful,
02:48:35 because you’re not happy that someone’s
02:48:37 being raked over the coals, particularly unjustifiably.
02:48:40 But it is funny when it’s the exact same thing
02:48:43 they were raking others over the coals for,
02:48:44 not like a week or two prior,
02:48:45 and that’s happened repeatedly and will continue to happen.
02:48:48 And I guess I would say, as you mentioned, you know,
02:48:51 a prior, you know, like a recognition
02:48:53 of the humanity of others of that all of us make mistakes,
02:48:56 that it’s difficult to understand intention.
02:48:58 I’ve had arguments with close friends of mine
02:49:00 over text message where both of us ended up super pissed
02:49:03 because we were completely misreading what the tone,
02:49:07 the intention of what the other person was doing.
02:49:08 And even if I was reading it correctly, which I wasn’t,
02:49:11 it’s so easy to ascribe the most negative possible,
02:49:15 you know, the least charitable assessment
02:49:18 of what they’re doing.
02:49:19 And I think that that’s such a dangerous way
02:49:21 to live your life and it’s also just a fruitless way
02:49:23 to live your life.
02:49:24 You know, it’s one thing to go, hey, why did you do that?
02:49:26 I was pissed.
02:49:27 Did you, what did you do?
02:49:28 You just, you did that to make yourself feel better,
02:49:29 like you’re damn right I did.
02:49:31 And have I done that plenty of times in my life?
02:49:34 Yeah, I would lie if I said that I didn’t, you know,
02:49:36 why did you, why did you punch that guy in the face?
02:49:38 He was going crazy at me and hit me and I asked him to stop.
02:49:40 And then I gave warning and I put him on his ass.
02:49:43 I’m like, no, I’m not sorry.
02:49:44 But then looking back now with years to sit on them,
02:49:47 like, do I understand why I did what I did?
02:49:49 Absolutely.
02:49:51 Would I like to respond differently now?
02:49:53 Yeah, I would.
02:49:54 You know, and it doesn’t mean that,
02:49:55 I think plenty of things that people do are understandable.
02:49:59 Doesn’t mean, understandable doesn’t mean correct.
02:50:01 Understandable doesn’t mean that you go,
02:50:03 oh yeah, that’s great.
02:50:04 You go, I could see someone doing such a thing.
02:50:07 But I guess just trying to understand
02:50:09 and see the humanity in others.
02:50:11 Cause if I can’t see the humanity in others,
02:50:12 how can I see it in myself?
02:50:14 And also, you know, how am I meant to interact with everyone?
02:50:17 As you said, whether, you know,
02:50:18 even if we’re a society of individuals
02:50:20 for at least for the time being, hopefully,
02:50:22 you know, in perpetuity,
02:50:23 we still come together as a whole.
02:50:26 And watching, it’s weird.
02:50:28 Like you said, if I only ask why once,
02:50:30 I start with, stay out of my way
02:50:32 and I’ll stay out of yours.
02:50:33 Leave me the fuck alone.
02:50:34 You’re like, okay, that’s fine, Ryan.
02:50:36 But that’s easy for you to say,
02:50:37 living in a society that doesn’t actually function like that.
02:50:40 So it’s a little bit cheap.
02:50:41 But if I recognize that that’s step one is,
02:50:43 I don’t hurt you and you don’t hurt me.
02:50:45 But then we go, well, but how can I help you?
02:50:48 That’s step two.
02:50:49 And then it goes way beyond that
02:50:50 and a lot further than I’ve thought about it.
02:50:51 But I guess what I would just say is,
02:50:52 again, recognition of the humanity in others
02:50:55 and that we all have different strengths,
02:50:57 we all have different weaknesses.
02:50:57 And you can never really be sure
02:50:59 where the other person’s coming from.
02:51:00 But if we approach things charitably,
02:51:02 as charitably as we would hope others would approach us,
02:51:05 I think we’ll do a lot better.
02:51:06 And I guess one thing that I read that I liked
02:51:08 that I thought was accurate and unfortunately disappointing
02:51:10 was everyone is a great, you know, jury,
02:51:13 I read there, I’m sorry, a great lawyer for themselves
02:51:15 and a judge for others.
02:51:16 And I think that’s a terrible way to live life,
02:51:18 even if it’s an understandable one.
02:51:20 I don’t know, I’m sorry.
02:51:21 And then probably flipping that is the right way to live.
02:51:24 Being constantly judgmental of yourself
02:51:28 and a defender of others.
02:51:30 And that results ultimately in an interaction
02:51:32 that deescalates versus escalates.
02:51:35 Right.
02:51:36 And we can all live in a world like that.
02:51:38 And sometimes you’re like, hey man,
02:51:39 people that deserve punishment won’t get it.
02:51:41 Like, okay, hey, but what do they say?
02:51:43 Better to have 10 guilty people go free
02:51:45 than wanting this in person, you know, burn.
02:51:47 And ultimately that is, I think that is a better world
02:51:51 than the other way around.
02:51:53 And if all else fails, join the team that builds the AI
02:51:58 that kills all humans.
02:51:59 Yeah, obviously.
02:52:00 I mean, if you have to be on a team,
02:52:01 pick the winning team.
02:52:02 That’s been the…
02:52:03 That’s my hiring pitch, actually.
02:52:04 That’s a good hiring pitch.
02:52:05 You still taking resumes?
02:52:07 You want to be on the team that doesn’t die
02:52:10 during the great apocalypse.
02:52:12 Not immediately.
02:52:13 You want to be on the one that’s, you know,
02:52:14 eventually long suffering and stepped on, right?
02:52:17 Yeah.
02:52:17 Life is suffering, Ryan Hall.
02:52:19 This was an amazing conversation.
02:52:21 I really enjoyed talking to you.
02:52:22 I could probably talk to you for many more hours.
02:52:24 I hope I do as well.
02:52:26 Ryan, I love you, buddy.
02:52:28 This was a great conversation.
02:52:29 Thanks for talking to me.
02:52:30 Thank you so much for having me.
02:52:31 I really appreciate it.
02:52:33 Thanks for listening to this conversation with Ryan Hall
02:52:35 and thank you to our sponsors.
02:52:37 Indeed hiring website, Audible audio books, ExpressVPN
02:52:41 and Element Electrolyte Drink.
02:52:44 Click the sponsor links to get a discount
02:52:46 and to support this podcast.
02:52:48 And now let me leave you with some words
02:52:50 from Frank Herbert in Dune.
02:52:53 I must not fear.
02:52:55 Fear is the mind killer.
02:52:57 Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration.
02:53:01 I will face my fear.
02:53:02 I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
02:53:05 And when it has gone past,
02:53:07 I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
02:53:10 Where the fear has gone, there will be nothing.
02:53:14 Only I will remain.
02:53:15 Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.