Ryan Hall: Solving Martial Arts from First Principles

00:00:00.000 | The following is a conversation with Ryan Hall,

00:00:02.500 | his second time in the podcast.

00:00:04.400 | He's one of the most innovative scholars of martial arts

00:00:07.800 | in the modern era.

00:00:09.760 | Quick mention of our sponsors.

00:00:11.780 | Indeed hiring website, Audible Audiobooks, ExpressVPN,

00:00:16.280 | and Element Electrolyte Drink.

00:00:18.780 | Click the sponsor links to get a discount

00:00:20.840 | and to support this podcast.

00:00:22.920 | As a side note, let me say that I've gotten a chance

00:00:24.960 | to train with Ryan recently and to both discuss

00:00:28.180 | and try out on the mat his ideas

00:00:30.560 | about grappling and fighting.

00:00:32.480 | What struck me is his unapologetic drive

00:00:35.120 | to solve martial arts.

00:00:37.560 | It reminds me of the ambitious vision

00:00:39.640 | and effort of Google's DeepMind to solve intelligence.

00:00:43.720 | In Ryan's case, this isn't some out there

00:00:46.320 | martial arts guru talk.

00:00:48.040 | This is a style of thinking about the game of human chess,

00:00:51.480 | of seeking to define the rules and to engineer ways

00:00:55.080 | from first principles of escaping the constraints

00:00:58.120 | of those rules.

00:00:59.560 | This style of thinking is rare,

00:01:01.480 | but it's ultimately the one that leads to the discovery

00:01:04.560 | of new revolutionary ideas.

00:01:07.880 | If you enjoy this podcast, subscribe to it anywhere

00:01:10.560 | or connect with me at Lex Friedman.

00:01:13.440 | And now here's my conversation with Ryan Hall.

00:01:16.880 | You're known as a systems thinker in martial arts,

00:01:21.160 | but you also, I think, are willing to think

00:01:25.520 | outside the rules of the game, outside of the system.

00:01:28.200 | When you're thinking about strategies of how to,

00:01:33.360 | you know, solve the problem, particular problem

00:01:36.200 | of an opponent, whether that's jiu-jitsu

00:01:38.440 | or in mixed martial arts, what's your process

00:01:41.200 | for doing that, for figuring out that puzzle?

00:01:43.720 | - I would say, I don't know if I have a specific,

00:01:45.740 | like A to B to C process for that sort of thing.

00:01:48.560 | I try to do my best to appreciate that.

00:01:52.280 | I think a lot of the thinking,

00:01:54.240 | or maybe not all the thinking,

00:01:56.000 | but a lot of great thinking on conflict,

00:01:58.840 | on battle, on war, on martial arts has been done already.

00:02:03.720 | Not that we don't have to do any sort

00:02:05.520 | of a background investigation or reassessing

00:02:07.880 | of these ideas or axioms that have come down

00:02:10.180 | through things like the Book of Five Rings

00:02:11.920 | or the Art of War, or, you know, like von Clausewitz,

00:02:15.120 | even anything like that, really.

00:02:16.920 | But is, we're trying to understand the lessons

00:02:21.000 | of the past that I think oftentimes

00:02:22.800 | we don't take with us, problems on, we pay lip service.

00:02:26.840 | And like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know,

00:02:28.640 | a victorious fighter, the great fighter, you know,

00:02:31.840 | he knows victory is there, then he seeks battle.

00:02:34.560 | Everyone else is looking for victory in battle.

00:02:36.480 | Yeah, moving on, and that's why I'm gonna double jab

00:02:38.120 | and throw my left hand.

00:02:39.360 | And I think a lot of times our actions don't reflect

00:02:42.640 | our stated belief structure.

00:02:45.000 | And I think that oftentimes you can tell what I believe

00:02:48.000 | really, or what my fundamental operating system is,

00:02:50.560 | based on my actions, whether I'm aware,

00:02:52.360 | I have an operating system internally,

00:02:53.880 | whether I'm aware of it or not,

00:02:55.280 | or certainly whether I'm fully aware of it.

00:02:57.120 | So I guess when it comes to strategy,

00:03:00.280 | I try to think about how things interact.

00:03:02.560 | You mentioned systems thinking,

00:03:03.920 | and I try to do my best to understand how systems exist,

00:03:07.400 | but I think that systems have a fundamental strength

00:03:09.720 | and a fundamental weakness.

00:03:11.200 | They work how they work, and that's great,

00:03:14.040 | but they're readable.

00:03:15.520 | So if you are aware, if I am operating on a system

00:03:19.080 | of which you're not really read into,

00:03:21.840 | then I think oftentimes I can seem shockingly effective,

00:03:26.680 | particularly if my system preys on certain weaknesses

00:03:30.080 | that maybe you're given to.

00:03:33.080 | But what happens when you've read the same books

00:03:35.440 | that I have?

00:03:36.520 | I think that a lot of times

00:03:37.960 | that makes me deeply predictable.

00:03:39.360 | I think about systems in jujitsu,

00:03:41.520 | and a lot of times people think that they're doing jujitsu

00:03:46.440 | when in reality they are doing an expression of it.

00:03:48.560 | Let's say I'll use, there's the Marcelo Garcia system.

00:03:51.480 | There is the Henzo Gracie, current Henzo Gracie system.

00:03:54.920 | There's the old Gracie Baha one.

00:03:56.480 | There's the Gracie Academy, classic Gracie jujitsu.

00:04:00.600 | There's the art of jujitsu, kind of Atos approach.

00:04:05.160 | And there's some crossover between a lot of these,

00:04:07.760 | but oftentimes I think when it comes

00:04:11.120 | to understanding how I'm making decisions

00:04:14.440 | and how my opponent is making decisions,

00:04:16.200 | I have to appreciate whether or not

00:04:18.120 | I'm an end user of something,

00:04:19.400 | and I'll use my phone as an example.

00:04:21.480 | I was thinking of this the other day,

00:04:22.920 | and as an end user of my phone,

00:04:24.800 | I have no idea what it does.

00:04:26.680 | You know, like Edward Snowden comes up and goes,

00:04:28.360 | "Hey guys, you realize your phones are listening to you?"

00:04:30.440 | I'm like, "Really? What?"

00:04:33.080 | All right, I believe you.

00:04:34.200 | And then of course that comes out,

00:04:35.840 | but to what extent?

00:04:37.600 | I have no idea.

00:04:38.520 | What is my phone capable of?

00:04:40.880 | I have no idea.

00:04:41.920 | I can mess with the font though.

00:04:43.040 | I really like blue screens, not purple screens.

00:04:45.320 | So like as an end user,

00:04:46.440 | I can change some of the bells and whistles

00:04:48.080 | that have nothing to do with the underlying source code

00:04:50.280 | of it all or how it functions.

00:04:51.360 | The same way my car, I'm an end user of my car.

00:04:53.440 | If I do this with the steering wheel, it goes.

00:04:55.320 | If I push on the gas, it goes.

00:04:57.480 | If I, yeah, I know how to fix it when it's out of gas.

00:04:59.600 | I know how to fix it when it's out of oil,

00:05:01.120 | and I know how to fix it when a flat tire comes,

00:05:04.600 | but short of that or actually beyond that, I have nothing.

00:05:07.520 | So I think that oftentimes, you know,

00:05:09.760 | I've been around in jiu-jitsu long enough

00:05:11.440 | to encounter like a new wave of like good grapplers,

00:05:14.640 | and it's very, very interesting sometimes

00:05:16.200 | how they're running systems

00:05:17.720 | they don't realize they're running.

00:05:19.160 | Like I'm like, oh yeah,

00:05:20.000 | I trained at Marcelo Garcia's Academy for a long time,

00:05:22.840 | you know, and a big fan of Marcelo's was a student there.

00:05:25.680 | Encountered a lot of the auto style jiu-jitsu

00:05:29.200 | a number of years ago.

00:05:31.040 | Been, you know, a very, very, you know,

00:05:33.120 | deep into foot locking and leg attacks and whatnot

00:05:35.720 | for a long, long time.

00:05:37.200 | I understand your system better than you do, or I may.

00:05:40.360 | And let's say you understand my system better than I do.

00:05:42.720 | That would be a huge issue.

00:05:43.640 | That was something that I encountered a long time ago

00:05:45.920 | trying to come up in jiu-jitsu

00:05:47.120 | where I was trying to utilize systems

00:05:50.480 | that were created by, let's say,

00:05:53.480 | Hoffman Mendez or someone else.

00:05:54.760 | And I'm basically trying to do what you're doing.

00:05:56.720 | I'm just not doing as good of a version of it.

00:05:58.640 | So not only am I not doing it well,

00:06:00.520 | but I'm entirely predictable.

00:06:02.360 | And I think that that can be a big issue.

00:06:03.920 | So to come back, I think of systems a lot of times now

00:06:06.640 | in terms of, you know,

00:06:07.480 | particularly like end user type of systems,

00:06:09.240 | like an iPhone is a really, really fast way

00:06:11.760 | for me to be able to do all sorts of things.

00:06:14.160 | If you were to take it from me,

00:06:15.240 | I couldn't recreate any of that.

00:06:17.120 | - So you want to be more the NSA and less the end user.

00:06:20.320 | - Exactly, exactly.

00:06:21.280 | That way I'm listening to you.

00:06:22.120 | - You want to be the NSA of combat.

00:06:24.000 | - That's right, we're watching you pee.

00:06:25.440 | But basically, you know,

00:06:27.360 | I guess what I would come back and say is

00:06:30.720 | if you understand how things interact

00:06:32.280 | on a fundamental level and what type of games exist

00:06:35.240 | and what type of interactions exist,

00:06:36.840 | then you can transcend a lot of the systems.

00:06:40.000 | It's almost like a cook versus,

00:06:41.440 | if I can make certain things in the kitchen,

00:06:43.800 | but I am not a chef.

00:06:45.360 | You could give me a bunch of ingredients

00:06:46.960 | and I could probably cook not well,

00:06:49.680 | but a couple of different things.

00:06:51.320 | But a master chef, you know,

00:06:53.800 | would be aware of the implications

00:06:55.640 | of all of the things that they're doing,

00:06:57.200 | you know, extra time in the oven,

00:06:58.800 | less time in the oven,

00:07:00.200 | putting this, you know, flavoring or spice in,

00:07:02.760 | you know, what you're doing with various things.

00:07:04.680 | And also they could make,

00:07:05.760 | they could turn all of these ingredients into Chinese food.

00:07:07.560 | Or they could turn all these ingredients into Italian food

00:07:09.080 | and they could turn all these Italian food ingredients

00:07:10.720 | into chicken Parmesan, or it could turn into lasagna.

00:07:13.520 | But they're not limited to a specific thing

00:07:16.080 | because they have knowledge of how food interacts,

00:07:18.440 | how, what it does to create taste,

00:07:20.040 | what it does to create texture.

00:07:21.400 | So to come back, let's take rock, paper, scissors.

00:07:24.160 | Rock, paper, scissors is built on the idea

00:07:26.720 | of a couple of different things.

00:07:28.000 | Actually, I'll tell you what, can I,

00:07:29.400 | may I ask you a question?

00:07:30.760 | - Yeah.

00:07:31.600 | - What's your favorite dinosaur?

00:07:32.640 | On the same, on three, we'll go.

00:07:34.000 | One, two, three.

00:07:37.080 | - T-Rex. - T-Rex.

00:07:37.920 | Oh, me too.

00:07:38.760 | No, man, this is, we're going to be best friends.

00:07:40.480 | So it's, okay.

00:07:43.580 | If, so what's the first question when you say,

00:07:45.420 | hey, let's play rock, paper, scissors.

00:07:46.500 | It's like, hey, is it rock, paper, scissors

00:07:47.700 | or rock, paper, scissors, shoot?

00:07:49.260 | And you're like, rock, paper, scissors, shoot.

00:07:50.660 | And you're like, okay.

00:07:51.500 | Because if we go rock, paper, scissors, shoot.

00:07:55.460 | And I'm like, oh man, I got lucky and I won.

00:07:58.060 | Imagine I won a hundred times in a row.

00:08:00.420 | - Yeah. - I'd be luck.

00:08:01.420 | It'd be luck if I was honestly doing that.

00:08:04.260 | But now let's say, for instance,

00:08:05.580 | I go on rock, paper, scissors and you go on shoot.

00:08:08.180 | Rock, paper, scissors, shoot.

00:08:11.620 | Here comes the rock, right?

00:08:12.820 | If you lose, whose fault is it?

00:08:15.760 | It's yours.

00:08:17.140 | This is built on a parody thing where

00:08:19.420 | I don't get to pick second.

00:08:22.600 | If I get to pick second,

00:08:24.140 | it's like being able to investigate your background

00:08:26.320 | before going to meet you.

00:08:27.260 | And then I'm like, oh, hi.

00:08:28.340 | Oh, I too love the New Jersey, you know,

00:08:30.420 | the New Jersey Nets, which is a statement

00:08:32.380 | that no one in their right mind would ever make

00:08:34.440 | when I was growing up.

00:08:35.780 | So anyway, you'd have to have personal knowledge of somebody.

00:08:38.820 | So anyway, to come back, let's,

00:08:40.540 | if you understand how games are structured,

00:08:43.900 | you can start to realize that there's huge gaps

00:08:48.100 | and huge holes in a lot of the thinking behind all of it.

00:08:51.700 | And if you can create the illusion of choice,

00:08:54.020 | I'll play one more if you don't mind.

00:08:55.220 | This is one of my favorite ones.

00:08:56.060 | I do this in class all the time.

00:08:57.820 | Have you seen this before?

00:08:58.820 | - No. - Okay.

00:09:00.140 | May I ask you some questions, please?

00:09:01.340 | - Sure. - Okay, fantastic.

00:09:02.780 | - I'm scared.

00:09:03.860 | - There's, everybody wins, don't worry.

00:09:05.700 | All right, so could you please?

00:09:07.580 | - I win.

00:09:08.780 | - Could you please pick three fingers

00:09:11.020 | and tell me what they are?

00:09:12.500 | - Your thumb. - Okay.

00:09:14.260 | - Your pinky. - Okay.

00:09:16.060 | - And your middle finger. - Okay.

00:09:18.260 | So could you please pick two fingers?

00:09:20.180 | - Your middle finger and your pinky.

00:09:24.120 | - Okay, could you please pick one finger?

00:09:26.120 | - I'll go with middle finger.

00:09:28.740 | - Woo-hoo, okay, could you please pick one finger?

00:09:31.660 | - Pinky. - Okay.

00:09:33.380 | Let's play again.

00:09:34.340 | Can you pick one finger, please?

00:09:36.980 | (laughing)

00:09:39.220 | - Your middle finger.

00:09:41.740 | - Okay, can you pick one finger, please?

00:09:43.500 | - Your thumb.

00:09:45.100 | Yeah, your pinky.

00:09:46.420 | - Okay, now pick two more fingers, please.

00:09:50.380 | - Your middle finger and your ring finger.

00:09:53.700 | - Okay, could you please pick one more finger?

00:09:56.180 | - Damn it.

00:09:57.100 | - So-- - I thought,

00:09:59.140 | and hence the illusion of choice.

00:10:00.820 | - It's the illusion of choice.

00:10:02.260 | If I'm asking the questions,

00:10:04.760 | provided I ask the right questions,

00:10:07.060 | there can be no correct answer.

00:10:09.260 | Doesn't mean that, I mean, ultimately,

00:10:11.180 | if that's what you wanted,

00:10:12.620 | let's say, like, I thought I was guiding you

00:10:14.500 | to something I wanted,

00:10:15.340 | and it turns out that was the outcome you wanted.

00:10:17.220 | Well, now I'm gonna ask the wrong questions.

00:10:19.180 | I might not get what I wanted, so--

00:10:20.380 | - Oh, by the way, sorry to interrupt.

00:10:22.580 | For people that might be just listening to this,

00:10:25.340 | that no matter what trajectory we took

00:10:28.460 | through that decision tree that Ryan was presenting,

00:10:30.700 | it was always ending up with the middle finger,

00:10:32.420 | ironically enough.

00:10:34.180 | - I was surprised.

00:10:35.220 | - All of us were surprised.

00:10:38.380 | And we're both winners.

00:10:39.660 | - Yeah, we all, everyone was.

00:10:41.340 | - I felt like a winner.

00:10:42.700 | - All right, so now I'm gonna,

00:10:44.300 | now I'll ask some different questions, if you don't mind.

00:10:47.140 | Can you please pick two fingers to put down?

00:10:49.340 | - Your middle finger and your pinky.

00:10:53.740 | Sorry, sorry.

00:10:54.580 | - Oh, that's so awkward.

00:10:55.740 | That's like the worst finger positions.

00:10:57.640 | Okay, can you please pick, oh, wait a minute.

00:10:59.300 | That's, ow, hold on.

00:11:00.980 | - Yeah.

00:11:01.820 | - Well, what if you pick two other fingers to put down?

00:11:04.620 | - Your thumb and your pinky.

00:11:06.860 | - Okay, my thumb and my pinky.

00:11:07.900 | Can you please pick two fingers to put down?

00:11:10.100 | - Well--

00:11:12.780 | - Whatever two you like.

00:11:14.060 | - Okay, your middle finger and your pointy finger.

00:11:16.980 | - Ah, okay, can you pick two fingers to put down?

00:11:19.980 | - What's the name, is index finger.

00:11:21.060 | - Index finger.

00:11:21.900 | - Why did I call it the pointy finger?

00:11:22.740 | - It's the pointy one, that's the one we usually point.

00:11:24.500 | It's weird to point with your ring finger.

00:11:26.500 | - Sorry, what do--

00:11:28.260 | - Two more to put down, please.

00:11:31.020 | - The middle finger and the ring finger.

00:11:32.860 | - Ah, man.

00:11:34.700 | What if you pick my ring finger and my index finger?

00:11:38.100 | - Yeah, yeah.

00:11:38.940 | - Aha, woo-hoo, I win.

00:11:40.540 | So even though I'm asking the questions,

00:11:42.300 | it's not impossible that I arrive at a good outcome for me,

00:11:45.240 | but it's no longer guaranteed.

00:11:47.060 | I went from a situation where I literally can't lose.

00:11:49.740 | - Yeah, it's pretty low probability.

00:11:51.660 | - Right, super low probability.

00:11:53.260 | And the second you realize what I'm doing,

00:11:55.020 | you would never let me win

00:11:56.340 | because the ball's truly in your court.

00:11:58.180 | So I guess that's kind of what I'm fundamentally trying

00:12:01.700 | to put into play almost all the time.

00:12:03.900 | Can I ask the right set of questions?

00:12:05.860 | Can I develop the ability skills-wise,

00:12:09.580 | understanding-wise, and then discipline-wise,

00:12:11.980 | and then have the courage and the constitution

00:12:14.460 | and the discipline necessary, the patience necessary

00:12:17.640 | to ask the proper questions and wait for the proper answers?

00:12:22.020 | And if I can, assuming the perfect world,

00:12:27.860 | I win, period.

00:12:29.140 | Does that make sense?

00:12:30.940 | - Yeah, that totally makes sense.

00:12:32.060 | So I don't know if you know

00:12:33.740 | sort of the more mathematical discipline of game theory.

00:12:36.780 | There's something called mechanism design.

00:12:39.140 | So game theory is this field where you model

00:12:43.860 | some kind of interaction between human beings.

00:12:46.220 | You can model grappling that way.

00:12:48.140 | You can model nuclear conflict between nations that way.

00:12:52.100 | And you set up a set of rules and incentives

00:12:56.100 | and then use math to predict what is the likely outcome

00:13:01.100 | depending over time based on the interaction

00:13:04.980 | given those rules.

00:13:06.260 | Mechanism design is the design of games.

00:13:11.260 | So like the design of systems that are likely

00:13:15.980 | to lead to a certain outcome.

00:13:18.540 | And so what you're suggesting is you want to create,

00:13:23.660 | you want to discover systems whose decision tree,

00:13:27.660 | all the possible things that could happen,

00:13:29.620 | feel like there's choice being made,

00:13:32.540 | but ultimately one of the parties doesn't have any choice

00:13:37.540 | in what the actual final outcome is.

00:13:39.820 | You're making them feel like they're playing a game too.

00:13:43.700 | So it's not like you don't feel trapped.

00:13:46.660 | It's kind of like-

00:13:47.500 | - Well, the best traps, you don't look very threatening.

00:13:50.860 | So I'm like, oh, I'll walk over there.

00:13:52.820 | I guess that's kind of an interesting thing.

00:13:56.420 | If a lion, when does a lion roar?

00:13:58.820 | It's an interesting thing when you watch like lions hunting,

00:14:01.580 | don't roar when they hunt.

00:14:03.660 | They want to move you back if they do stuff like that.

00:14:06.180 | When they actually want to come and get you,

00:14:08.300 | they're pretty slinky.

00:14:09.320 | It's like water covered, it's like furry water.

00:14:12.260 | And I guess like when you keep that in mind,

00:14:15.100 | it's funny how, like for us, a hobby actually,

00:14:19.060 | a brilliant guy, like one of my MMA coaches

00:14:21.100 | and the head coach at TriStar, he brought this up one time,

00:14:23.860 | I thought it was a really salient point.

00:14:25.140 | Said, let's say we have a million person bracket,

00:14:27.420 | it was impossibly huge.

00:14:28.940 | Like Frank Dukes winning the Kumite level, huge bracket.

00:14:31.900 | And he claimed to knock out like 250 consecutive people.

00:14:35.020 | And you're like, that is all of Hong Kong,

00:14:38.220 | was in that thing and everyone kept their mouth shut.

00:14:40.420 | But anyway, that's pretty cool.

00:14:41.780 | But to come back, a little improbable, but pretty cool.

00:14:45.420 | So let's say for instance, like there's no cheating going on,

00:14:48.060 | no cheating going on and we're flipping coins, right?

00:14:51.100 | Someone is gonna have an unbroken string of victory

00:14:54.620 | through that bracket, which is pretty insane.

00:14:58.020 | How many consecutive like toss ups this person won.

00:15:01.340 | And then at the end of it all,

00:15:04.120 | imagine we like aliens show up and we go,

00:15:07.540 | hey, they wanna flip a coin for whether or not Earth,

00:15:09.940 | whether or not Earth gets to continue.

00:15:12.700 | They'll be like, oh, I'll do it.

00:15:15.120 | I'm good at this.

00:15:16.940 | That will be tempting as a person to do.

00:15:20.180 | You're like, I'm a lucky guy.

00:15:21.940 | Are you sure?

00:15:23.300 | Maybe, I mean, maybe effectively you are,

00:15:24.740 | we could argue that effectively you're incredibly lucky.

00:15:26.380 | But basically, is that an actual ability?

00:15:28.380 | Is that like a perk in a video game?

00:15:29.540 | Or is that just this thing that happened?

00:15:31.100 | So anyway, how many times are someone,

00:15:34.700 | you could go through an entire career,

00:15:36.940 | particularly in a fight sport.

00:15:38.900 | Well, let's say you get 15 knockouts

00:15:40.420 | and 15 toss up scenarios.

00:15:42.100 | 'Cause you see that happening all the time

00:15:43.340 | in the fight game, a toss up scenario.

00:15:44.700 | It's not like you're mounted on me

00:15:45.740 | and like, and that's not a toss up scenario.

00:15:48.300 | Many, many, many, many, many striking scenarios.

00:15:50.260 | A lot of grappling ones,

00:15:51.100 | but tons of striking scenarios are dead toss ups.

00:15:54.020 | And somebody wins by knockout.

00:15:56.500 | They win five times in a row.

00:15:57.500 | Then they lose a couple of times in a row.

00:15:58.780 | We go, what happened?

00:15:59.740 | You're like, what do you mean what happened?

00:16:00.620 | They were always flipping the coin.

00:16:01.780 | And then they win five more and they go, ah, back on track.

00:16:04.460 | Can you imagine that?

00:16:05.300 | You're flipping a coin.

00:16:06.120 | I'm like, heads, heads, heads, heads, tails.

00:16:07.500 | What?

00:16:08.460 | Tails, tails, heads again.

00:16:09.740 | Oh man, I'm back on it.

00:16:10.700 | I'm flipping good now.

00:16:11.820 | That's basically what's going on.

00:16:13.580 | I think the vast majority of the time.

00:16:15.180 | And then humanity's tendency to see a sign

00:16:18.120 | in almost anything, you know, starts to present itself.

00:16:21.620 | And then we build a narrative in our mind

00:16:23.340 | to convince ourselves that we're in some sort of control.

00:16:26.180 | When in reality, I was in a marginal situation

00:16:28.580 | at best the whole time.

00:16:30.780 | - Yeah, without having much control,

00:16:32.020 | without having a deep understanding of the system,

00:16:33.940 | the same story is told in the stock market.

00:16:35.780 | With many of the human, these distributed human systems,

00:16:38.940 | we start telling narratives and start seeing patterns

00:16:41.660 | without understanding actually the system

00:16:44.060 | that's generating these patterns.

00:16:45.420 | - So if we can see the system, that's incredibly valuable.

00:16:47.860 | But then you go, well, what system

00:16:49.200 | is above all of the systems?

00:16:50.660 | I guess maybe physics, maybe,

00:16:52.180 | like game theory explains these things,

00:16:53.680 | but like, I guess what aspects of the system

00:16:56.320 | can I put my hands on that I can touch and understand?

00:16:59.140 | And what am I missing?

00:17:00.760 | What's going on in the world all around me

00:17:02.860 | to continue to lean on Dune that I don't have,

00:17:06.760 | that I don't, you know, you talk to a blind person

00:17:08.800 | about the world, about sight,

00:17:10.620 | and talk to someone that doesn't have everyone,

00:17:12.740 | who's got coronavirus now, so no one can taste or smell.

00:17:15.100 | They're like, this is delicious.

00:17:16.460 | I'm like, is it?

00:17:18.300 | So anyway, you know, again, what senses am I missing

00:17:22.580 | or what understanding am I missing

00:17:24.020 | that's preventing me from seeing the dots connect

00:17:27.620 | in the world all around me?

00:17:29.280 | And I think sometimes if we, oftentimes,

00:17:32.020 | at least personally, I've screwed this up a lot.

00:17:34.020 | I'm so nose deep in the trench

00:17:36.180 | of trying to understand what I'm doing

00:17:37.260 | that I can't take a step back and realize, you know,

00:17:39.860 | that I'm in a forest, not just head-butting a tree.

00:17:42.900 | And I may be doing both.

00:17:44.500 | Two things should be true at once.

00:17:45.920 | But so I would say when it comes to strategy,

00:17:48.540 | trying to understand that, but then also you go,

00:17:50.820 | well, okay, well, how can, that sounds cool,

00:17:53.300 | but how can you actually do that?

00:17:54.940 | And then I'd say that's a really good question

00:17:56.780 | because if I imagine, I say, man,

00:17:58.020 | I should fight like Stephen Thompson.

00:17:59.380 | I should fight like Wonder Boy.

00:18:00.540 | He's like, good idea, go do that.

00:18:01.940 | I'm like, not the guy.

00:18:05.740 | I would fight like Khabib Nurmagomedov if I could.

00:18:07.860 | You know, it seems to work.

00:18:09.140 | So anyway, you go, well, what if I could develop,

00:18:12.200 | what if I could take my time developing skills

00:18:14.580 | so that when these strategies become apparent,

00:18:17.480 | they are executable to you.

00:18:19.720 | You actually have the ability to like,

00:18:22.320 | in or to, again, to be the person in the arena,

00:18:24.600 | be the person required,

00:18:26.000 | whereas there's plenty of great ideas,

00:18:27.400 | like dunking a basketball is a fantastic idea.

00:18:29.920 | Alas, for me, unless there's a small trampoline nearby,

00:18:32.500 | I'm not the guy.

00:18:33.640 | But that doesn't make it any less good of an idea.

00:18:35.800 | I just don't, I haven't developed the ability

00:18:38.040 | or I lack the ability.

00:18:39.300 | So anyway, I think a lot of times,

00:18:41.160 | at least when I watch people in fighting,

00:18:42.700 | I'll use an example, we're so concerned

00:18:45.520 | with trying to win early on rather than develop skills

00:18:48.800 | that I'm going like, well, what's the best way to fight

00:18:50.960 | with my current set of skills?

00:18:52.480 | And usually the path forward is like the barbarian route.

00:18:55.220 | Like the, you put on the one ring,

00:18:57.840 | take the damage you need to take to hit that guy.

00:18:59.800 | And that was something I realized very early on

00:19:01.200 | in my MMA career was like,

00:19:02.120 | I'm not that good at striking at that time.

00:19:04.280 | Not a world-class striker now,

00:19:05.560 | but I'm way better at striking

00:19:07.120 | than I'm given any credit for

00:19:08.160 | because it helps people sleep at night, I think.

00:19:09.920 | But I'm serious.

00:19:11.240 | But-- - Yeah, yeah.

00:19:12.940 | You're always introduced as like this master,

00:19:15.340 | like master grappler.

00:19:17.380 | - And I'm like, that's nice of them to say that.

00:19:18.660 | Maybe I'm not that good at grappling.

00:19:19.940 | We haven't even seen that.

00:19:20.900 | And, but the funny thing is where I'm like,

00:19:22.340 | just 'cause people almost go like, well, Lex,

00:19:23.860 | like, so you're really good at this,

00:19:25.400 | but you gotta understand like, we're equal, man.

00:19:26.980 | Like I'm good at this other thing.

00:19:28.220 | Maybe you're really good at what you do

00:19:29.580 | and I'm just mediocre at what I do.

00:19:31.140 | That's also possible.

00:19:32.380 | So there's plenty of people that define themselves

00:19:33.900 | as a striker that do that just because

00:19:35.500 | that's for lack of other options.

00:19:36.860 | Not 'cause they're a really good striker.

00:19:37.900 | Or like, I'm a grappler.

00:19:38.740 | I was a grappler as a blue belt.

00:19:40.640 | Not really.

00:19:41.480 | So anyway, I guess to come back,

00:19:43.520 | if I'm constantly going,

00:19:45.120 | how can I win with what I've got right now?

00:19:47.160 | I think oftentimes I never take the time

00:19:48.920 | to develop the skills that I wanna develop.

00:19:50.560 | And I also never take the time to develop the strategies

00:19:52.440 | that I wanna develop.

00:19:53.260 | And that has actually been one big blessing

00:19:55.320 | of fighting so infrequently,

00:19:57.340 | which has been really frustrating as a result of injuries

00:19:59.720 | and time away and some of those people

00:20:01.880 | being hesitant to get in the game.

00:20:03.320 | But it gives you so much time to be out of the trenches

00:20:07.000 | and focus on developing your abilities

00:20:08.940 | so that now it's almost like developing money.

00:20:10.740 | Like you mentioned, the stock market that you can now put in.

00:20:13.380 | Imagine you told me Bitcoin was a great idea

00:20:15.420 | five years ago when I had eight bucks.

00:20:17.340 | Man, if someone told me Bitcoin was a great idea

00:20:18.820 | five years ago and I had 50K,

00:20:20.940 | I'd be like, oh my God, I'd be sleeping in my bed of money

00:20:23.460 | that I would then set on fire later today just to do it.

00:20:26.140 | - So due to all the injuries,

00:20:27.980 | you've been mining Bitcoin all this time

00:20:29.940 | and now you're a rich man.

00:20:31.220 | - Well, no, actually, somebody told me

00:20:32.380 | I was trying to mine for Bitcoin, actually, like in a cave.

00:20:35.620 | And then I found out recently that mining

00:20:37.860 | is like a figure of speech,

00:20:39.660 | not like a literal thing that you do.

00:20:41.220 | But I mean, in my defense, I would--

00:20:42.060 | - English language is difficult.

00:20:43.820 | - It is, it really is.

00:20:45.220 | - Next time talk to me, I'll explain.

00:20:47.460 | Russian is a rich language.

00:20:50.460 | You should learn Russian.

00:20:52.660 | I'll help you out.

00:20:53.500 | - I believe you, thank you.

00:20:54.580 | - Can you do a whirlwind overview of your career in MMA

00:20:59.580 | leading up to this point with the injuries

00:21:04.100 | and the undefeated record?

00:21:06.380 | And then what's next?

00:21:07.700 | Since we're on the topic.

00:21:09.180 | - Well, I did my first fight as a blue belt

00:21:12.660 | and I've been training for about a year and a half.

00:21:14.020 | I did nine Jiu-Jitsu tournaments in 10 weekends,

00:21:16.420 | or maybe eight Jiu-Jitsu tournaments in 10 weekends

00:21:18.280 | prior to my first fight in April, 2006.

00:21:22.300 | I got punched in the face a whole bunch.

00:21:23.720 | I didn't realize it was a professional fight

00:21:25.460 | and found that out like the day beforehand.

00:21:27.540 | That was great.

00:21:28.940 | Thanks, coach.

00:21:29.780 | It was in Atlantic City,

00:21:32.100 | where another place no one ever goes on purpose.

00:21:34.260 | So that wasn't great.

00:21:35.280 | I got into three, actually three car accidents

00:21:39.060 | in the preceding 36 hours before the fight.

00:21:42.140 | I had my car totaled.

00:21:44.220 | I wasn't driving for any of them.

00:21:45.660 | That was great.

00:21:47.180 | - It was 2006?

00:21:48.020 | - It's 2006, yeah.

00:21:49.220 | - You're a blue belt?

00:21:50.300 | - Yeah, yeah, I've been training for about a year and a half.

00:21:52.020 | - So you're a blue belt.

00:21:53.220 | You're getting, I mean, if you haven't lived,

00:21:55.380 | if you haven't gotten punched in the face in Atlantic City.

00:21:57.820 | - That's true.

00:21:58.660 | I mean, I've--

00:21:59.500 | - So these are--

00:22:00.320 | - I would've loved to have it happen for different reasons.

00:22:02.760 | - Yeah.

00:22:03.600 | - But yeah, well, what's funny is,

00:22:05.480 | I remember getting punched in the face a bunch,

00:22:07.560 | trying to do inverted guard.

00:22:09.000 | I won one round, lost two rounds,

00:22:10.880 | definitely lost the fight.

00:22:12.200 | - So you went for inverted, sorry to interrupt,

00:22:13.960 | you went for inverted guard?

00:22:14.800 | Can you tell the story of that fight, just real quick?

00:22:16.680 | - Yeah, sure.

00:22:17.520 | It was three three-minute rounds,

00:22:18.340 | which is not a professional fight length,

00:22:19.980 | although I don't know if professional fight length

00:22:21.720 | would've been any better.

00:22:22.540 | It's just more time to get punched.

00:22:24.360 | But I found out partway through,

00:22:26.320 | I was like, I remember walking back to my corner

00:22:27.680 | in the first round, I'm like, "Yeah, this guy can't hurt me."

00:22:29.240 | And he's like, "Yeah, my corner was my friend Tom,

00:22:31.800 | "and then someone else."

00:22:32.840 | And he's like, "Yeah, I would still encourage you

00:22:34.480 | "to stop blocking so many punches with your face."

00:22:36.400 | I'm like, "That's a good idea, Tom, I appreciate that.

00:22:37.840 | "I'm gonna try that."

00:22:39.240 | Anyway, I remember, I was not allowed to up-kick,

00:22:43.060 | so I'm like, "Great."

00:22:43.900 | I had no martial arts skills, really, at all,

00:22:46.920 | but if I had anything at all, it was jiu-jitsu.

00:22:48.480 | It was very, very little jiu-jitsu,

00:22:50.480 | but definitely no wrestling, definitely no striking.

00:22:53.160 | I was basically a magnet for punches.

00:22:55.200 | - So that was your time, roughnecking out

00:22:58.440 | in Atlantic City, as we all do once in a while.

00:23:01.440 | Can we fast forward to when you're actually

00:23:03.040 | dominating the world as a black belt?

00:23:05.040 | - Well, actually, it's funny,

00:23:05.880 | 'cause I took the little bit of money that they're like,

00:23:07.160 | "Hey, we're paying him."

00:23:08.160 | I'm like, "Really?"

00:23:09.000 | Okay, well, I took that money--

00:23:09.840 | - It's like Bukowski stories with Ryan Hall.

00:23:12.040 | - Well, then I went to the casino,

00:23:13.520 | I went to whatever, like the Tropicana

00:23:14.960 | that was right there, the casino,

00:23:16.400 | 'cause that was a boardwalk hall.

00:23:17.360 | I'm like, "You know what, man?

00:23:18.400 | "This has been a not great evening.

00:23:20.840 | "I'm gonna win it back, this is gonna be great."

00:23:23.400 | 15 minutes later, they had all the money

00:23:26.040 | that I had from the fight was gone.

00:23:27.920 | I just remember walking out of the casino super pissed.

00:23:30.720 | And I don't know what I was thinking.

00:23:32.480 | I'm not good at gambling.

00:23:33.720 | This was not gonna make my night better.

00:23:35.520 | I just thought that there was gonna be

00:23:36.440 | some sort of cosmic balancing,

00:23:37.800 | and maybe it was the cosmic balancing

00:23:39.200 | all at once where things had done in the past.

00:23:40.040 | - Longer term, though, the balancing.

00:23:43.680 | - We'll see, I hope so.

00:23:45.080 | But to come--

00:23:45.920 | - We're all dead in the end, though.

00:23:47.040 | - That is true, time will get us all, yeah.

00:23:49.360 | Well, so that was the first one,

00:23:51.760 | and that was when I realized I'm terrible at MMA,

00:23:54.560 | but I like it, I should just stop this

00:23:56.600 | until I one day learn how to actually grapple,

00:23:58.680 | much less learn how to fight.

00:23:59.760 | But I remember there's this guy named Dave Kaplan,

00:24:01.240 | who's the reason my ears are all messed up,

00:24:03.160 | who was on "The Ultimate Fighter"

00:24:04.560 | and got punched in the face and knocked out by Tom Lawler,

00:24:06.720 | who I'll always appreciate for doing that.

00:24:09.160 | But anyway--

00:24:10.680 | - Dave or Tom.

00:24:11.840 | - I appreciate Tom, I appreciate Dave, too.

00:24:13.360 | Dave was great.

00:24:14.200 | Dave was just a huge bully and used to,

00:24:15.960 | rather not completely unmercifully,

00:24:17.520 | but relatively unmercifully beat the crap out of me.

00:24:19.800 | And anyway--

00:24:21.480 | - The ears look good, so.

00:24:22.680 | - Appreciate that.

00:24:23.520 | I tell people it's a tumor that I got,

00:24:25.200 | and if they want in on a class action lawsuit with AT&T,

00:24:27.880 | they should send me an email.

00:24:31.200 | But anyway--

00:24:32.040 | - You're very financially savvy, very good.

00:24:34.720 | - No, I just give the impression.

00:24:36.120 | Dave basically said, "Hey, don't worry, man,

00:24:37.560 | "you're never gonna be good at MMA,

00:24:39.540 | "and you're never gonna be good at grappling either,

00:24:41.120 | "but even if you are good at grappling,"

00:24:42.580 | which, in my opinion, you will never be,

00:24:45.480 | you will never be good at fighting.

00:24:46.680 | And I said, "Dave, if I do nothing else in my life,

00:24:50.200 | "I'm gonna keep training until I can make you pay for that."

00:24:52.760 | And now that I can make him pay for that really easily,

00:24:54.640 | he doesn't train anymore.

00:24:55.640 | But I love Dave, Dave's awesome.

00:24:56.880 | He actually won the singing beat.

00:24:58.000 | What an interesting dude, super interesting guy.

00:25:00.080 | But anyway--

00:25:00.920 | - Is he a good guy?

00:25:01.760 | - No, no, no, Virginia, speaks a couple languages,

00:25:03.760 | super interesting guy, shockingly good at Jeopardy too.

00:25:06.820 | Not that I'm any good,

00:25:08.680 | but still shockingly good at Jeopardy.

00:25:09.840 | So anyway, years later, met Faraz Zahabi,

00:25:11.640 | actually, John Danaher, I met John Danaher,

00:25:13.800 | and he put me in touch with Faraz Zahabi.

00:25:15.640 | I started training at TriStar,

00:25:17.160 | immediately loved working with Faraz

00:25:18.960 | and learning under Faraz, started training at TriStar,

00:25:20.880 | and I did my first real professional MMA fight

00:25:24.040 | as someone that actually does,

00:25:25.720 | had practiced a little bit prior,

00:25:28.080 | in I think August, 2012.

00:25:30.240 | And that was against a guy, he was four and five at the time,

00:25:34.880 | so had some experience,

00:25:36.760 | good kind of like first go for me, honestly.

00:25:38.800 | And I won that fight by TKO.

00:25:40.960 | And then it was a little bit of a time off,

00:25:42.840 | and then I did another fight

00:25:43.680 | against a tough guy named Magid Hamo.

00:25:45.940 | He was five and two at the time,

00:25:47.080 | I think he was three and I was amateur.

00:25:48.160 | So he had a good little bit of fighting experience.

00:25:50.600 | Won that one in the first round of Iron Weird Naked Choke.

00:25:53.180 | And then started to experience difficulty

00:25:56.400 | getting fights at that point.

00:25:58.540 | - Were you continuously introduced

00:26:00.800 | as like the master of grappling, the submission?

00:26:04.600 | - At least that was my thing.

00:26:05.880 | I don't know if I was--

00:26:06.720 | - Is that was the source of the fear for people?

00:26:08.760 | - I think so, because I mean,

00:26:10.040 | I definitely wasn't much at striking at that point.

00:26:12.760 | I definitely am a lot,

00:26:14.640 | I like to think I'm pretty hard to hurt,

00:26:15.960 | although I try not to lean on that.

00:26:17.200 | And I played baseball for like 16 years,

00:26:19.280 | so I can hit things pretty hard.

00:26:20.280 | I just wasn't able to,

00:26:22.160 | I recognized pretty early on that I had no idea

00:26:24.520 | how to actually hit things hard

00:26:26.140 | without becoming hitable myself.

00:26:28.320 | So I think that's kind of the big thing

00:26:30.200 | is a lot of times,

00:26:31.160 | like we almost were mentioning before,

00:26:33.380 | if you try to go and get people too early,

00:26:36.680 | you can hit them if they're not that good,

00:26:38.740 | but you're going to get hit yourself.

00:26:40.260 | So you're making, you're basically making a wager,

00:26:42.360 | you're making a trade of your own life

00:26:44.240 | for the ability to hit them.

00:26:45.480 | When you watch guys like Israel Adesanya,

00:26:47.280 | Floyd Mayweather, Steven Thompson,

00:26:49.600 | Conor McGregor when he's fighting really well,

00:26:51.800 | it's not a trade.

00:26:53.040 | They're not, you're hitting them and they're hitting you.

00:26:55.440 | It's, they're hitting you,

00:26:56.880 | but it takes years and years and years and years

00:26:59.320 | to be able to learn how to do that.

00:27:00.240 | Tan Lee is another great example of that.

00:27:01.800 | And you know, my closest training partner,

00:27:03.000 | one of my best friends,

00:27:04.160 | and currently now a one champion,

00:27:06.960 | one championship in Asia,

00:27:08.600 | the champion of the featherweight,

00:27:10.120 | or I guess lightweight featherweight,

00:27:12.360 | 155 over there now.

00:27:14.160 | And he recently defeated Martin Wynn

00:27:16.080 | in a really great fight,

00:27:17.280 | and Tan knocked him out, long-time champion.

00:27:19.560 | And Tan doesn't let you hit him.

00:27:21.160 | He doesn't let you touch him.

00:27:22.280 | I feel so fortunate to have met guys like Steven and Tan

00:27:25.200 | to go early on in career and go,

00:27:27.320 | "Holy moly, I can't even,

00:27:30.000 | it's not even like,

00:27:30.840 | oh, you'll let me walk over and find you."

00:27:32.240 | It's like fighting a ghost

00:27:33.280 | that periodically shows up with a hammer

00:27:34.760 | and smokes you in the melon

00:27:36.200 | and then disappears into the ether again.

00:27:38.000 | - So the way they approach the fighting game is thinking,

00:27:40.160 | how can I attack without being hit?

00:27:42.080 | So every, every strategy,

00:27:44.200 | every idea you have about what you're going to do

00:27:46.640 | has to do with like that,

00:27:49.720 | minimizing the return. - The return.

00:27:52.440 | Absolutely.

00:27:53.280 | I mean, that's what all good fighting is done.

00:27:54.600 | All poor fighting,

00:27:55.480 | if throughout the course of history,

00:27:56.800 | most generals, whatever I saw or read,

00:27:58.440 | or they did battles by attrition.

00:28:01.840 | It's like, yeah, man, I've got 150 guys, you've got 50.

00:28:04.680 | Like, yeah, if 60 of my guys die killing your 50,

00:28:06.760 | like, that's great for me.

00:28:08.120 | But that's not so great for the 60 guys that died.

00:28:10.960 | I hope it's worth it.

00:28:12.000 | So when you realize that not only,

00:28:13.480 | you're not just Kobe Bryant and you're Phil Jackson too,

00:28:16.400 | you got to do everything.

00:28:18.920 | If you've got to run across the beach at Normandy,

00:28:21.000 | so be it, but that better be,

00:28:22.720 | you should have, make sure we thought this through.

00:28:24.480 | And there's like, hey, there's no way we can like,

00:28:26.120 | you know, walk around the side, huh?

00:28:27.920 | Because oftentimes there is,

00:28:30.000 | and I think a lot of times there's a lot of incentives

00:28:32.200 | in professional fighting too, for people to want to do that.

00:28:34.800 | And we come up with all sorts of,

00:28:36.240 | well, I'm trying to be exciting.

00:28:38.440 | Are you?

00:28:39.280 | Is that really what you came here to do?

00:28:40.280 | 'Cause I came here to win.

00:28:41.440 | And I think that anyone that's really successful

00:28:44.080 | came there to win.

00:28:44.920 | And if it ends up being exciting, well, that's fantastic.

00:28:46.560 | I hope that people enjoy watching something

00:28:48.240 | and that's great, but that's a qualitative assessment.

00:28:50.440 | Anyway, you know, you want to also be able to,

00:28:53.440 | you know, live the rest of your life.

00:28:55.360 | I think it's easy.

00:28:56.280 | You know, I'll use Meldrick Taylor.

00:28:57.560 | I'm a big boxing fan.

00:28:58.520 | Meldrick Taylor was an excellent fighter,

00:29:00.800 | came this close to a world title and was stopped with like,

00:29:05.040 | he was in a fight that he was winning with seconds remaining,

00:29:07.440 | literally seconds remaining.

00:29:08.640 | And they probably could have just let it go

00:29:10.160 | and he would have been world champion.

00:29:11.320 | And it was brutal.

00:29:12.200 | If you ever watched legendary nights,

00:29:13.640 | like a HBO boxing show, it's great.

00:29:16.120 | But it's heartbreaking.

00:29:17.960 | It's absolutely heartbreaking.

00:29:18.880 | And also like the beating that he absorbed in that fight

00:29:21.240 | changed him for the rest of his life.

00:29:22.960 | And also, you know, don't think he'd never been hit before,

00:29:25.520 | but it was one of those where you go,

00:29:26.800 | it's all fun and games until you can't remember your name

00:29:30.000 | at age 44 years old.

00:29:31.800 | And I didn't come here, what did Patton say?

00:29:35.040 | Nobody wins a war by dying for his country.

00:29:37.200 | You make the other poor bastard die for his.

00:29:39.240 | And I think that that's kind of what we're shooting for.

00:29:42.480 | And, you know, the lionization of absorbing damage

00:29:46.800 | and that not being a big deal.

00:29:48.280 | Like you hear that all the time.

00:29:49.200 | So-and-so can take shots that would put a lesser fighter

00:29:52.000 | down.

00:29:52.840 | What does that even mean?

00:29:54.760 | You know, like, so let me get this straight.

00:29:56.200 | Your ability to absorb damage is a part of you.

00:29:59.040 | I mean, I guess that, don't get me wrong,

00:30:00.240 | that is an attribute that's nice to have if you need it.

00:30:03.120 | But there's plenty of people that actually have really

00:30:04.960 | porous defense that are just very, very difficult to hurt

00:30:08.880 | for whatever reason.

00:30:10.160 | - That's a fascinating fighter's perspective on the thing.

00:30:12.440 | I mean, the story that is inspiring,

00:30:17.440 | and I know it goes against the artistry of fighting,

00:30:22.360 | is when you have taken the damage to still rise up

00:30:27.240 | and be able to defeat the opponent.

00:30:29.160 | So it's, but that's a flip side of a basically you failing

00:30:34.160 | to defend yourself properly, right?

00:30:38.600 | - I agree.

00:30:39.440 | But let's say for, I think it's a triumph,

00:30:40.920 | that's a triumph of humanity.

00:30:42.600 | That's a triumph, that's amazing.

00:30:44.120 | To witness such a thing is unbelievable.

00:30:46.460 | But you still go, this is, there is a cost here.

00:30:50.280 | It's like I've been fortunate enough to spend some time

00:30:53.120 | working with the military, and I've been like around

00:30:55.720 | and read Medal of Honor citations, they're unbelievable.

00:30:57.960 | Like you read the story and you're like, it'll floor you.

00:31:00.920 | - But it's still a cost, and you don't wanna be paying

00:31:02.720 | that cost all along.

00:31:03.840 | - And most of the time, the cost was everything.

00:31:06.320 | And then sometimes you go, hey, yeah, the value here,

00:31:08.960 | it's worth everything.

00:31:10.320 | It's like, I defend your family, defend your country

00:31:13.080 | under certain circumstances, and at that point,

00:31:14.760 | it's extension of your family.

00:31:16.080 | You're like, hey, this is worth it.

00:31:17.500 | To casually throw your life away or throw your health away,

00:31:20.200 | it's foolish, there's nothing great about that.

00:31:22.960 | And like you said, it's still an amazing thing to see, but.

00:31:26.440 | - But it's also amazing to see you not take damages

00:31:29.600 | to Floyd Mayweather, it's the artistry of not being hit.

00:31:32.360 | - And I wonder if maybe that's why people don't resonate

00:31:34.300 | with Floyd as much.

00:31:35.140 | 'Cause obviously Muhammad Ali was such a time and place,

00:31:37.280 | a great man for so many different reasons,

00:31:38.920 | although it was funny to remember,

00:31:40.600 | there were times when he wasn't very popular.

00:31:42.120 | We love him now because of time of context,

00:31:44.280 | time to move away from some of the nonsense

00:31:46.400 | he had to deal with.

00:31:47.380 | But we got to see him struggle.

00:31:50.000 | And also he had unbelievable sacrifice,

00:31:52.040 | both in and out of the ring, that we all got to witness.

00:31:55.920 | We've never really seen Floyd struggle like that.

00:31:58.080 | And granted, obviously, Floyd isn't like a civil rights

00:32:00.040 | figure like Muhammad Ali was, it's a different time,

00:32:02.400 | different place, and he's a different man.

00:32:03.640 | But basically, I wonder if part of the thing that made us,

00:32:07.480 | that made everyone think of Muhammad Ali as the greatest,

00:32:09.760 | in addition to, of course, the unbelievable things

00:32:11.520 | that he did out in the world, and the stands that he made,

00:32:15.120 | we saw him struggle in the ring.

00:32:17.280 | It's almost, it's humanizing.

00:32:19.400 | It's weird when people-- - You connect with the person.

00:32:21.800 | - People respect Khabib, but again, we saw GSP lose,

00:32:25.040 | and GSP came back stronger.

00:32:26.760 | Khabib is amazing, but I wonder how people feel

00:32:30.400 | about him long-term, not like they won't think of him

00:32:32.000 | as amazing and great, and he's been a respectable person

00:32:34.960 | and champion, but the time, he hasn't had to fall,

00:32:39.960 | if that makes sense.

00:32:41.480 | - And also coupled with Ali had a way of being poetic

00:32:46.480 | about sort of the way he was in the ring,

00:32:50.000 | sort of being able to explain the artistry that he,

00:32:52.120 | I mean, there's like joking as being playful,

00:32:54.160 | but really he was able to describe the flow

00:32:58.440 | like a butterfly's thing like a bee.

00:32:59.720 | Like he was able to actually talk about his strategy

00:33:03.120 | without crossing that line into the flow he made,

00:33:07.320 | whether when you're just talking about money

00:33:09.600 | and just talking shit.

00:33:11.280 | - That's true.

00:33:12.100 | - Actually, Conor McGregor, when he's not talking shit,

00:33:14.720 | is pretty good at like talking about the art of the martial.

00:33:17.800 | - Like the first book.

00:33:19.480 | - And I wish Khabib did the same.

00:33:22.360 | Actually, from like the Satya brothers, there's a few,

00:33:27.360 | there's a culture of like being poetic

00:33:30.160 | about like being scholars and also bards or whatever,

00:33:35.160 | the poets of the game.

00:33:37.840 | And Khabib is more like just simple

00:33:41.480 | and he lets his actions speak, which is great too.

00:33:44.640 | - It's poeting in its own way.

00:33:45.760 | - Yeah, it's great, but it's nice when you can tell stories.

00:33:48.880 | And that's probably why Ali was the great.

00:33:53.280 | Catch me up to, you went to three fights, I think,

00:33:57.440 | undefeated, BJ Penn, we talked about last time

00:34:01.680 | you defeated BJ Penn, that's an incredible accomplishment,

00:34:06.680 | but you fought a lot of really tough guys.

00:34:09.120 | When was your last fight?

00:34:12.280 | And then catch me up with the injuries.

00:34:14.920 | A lot of people kept more and more and more

00:34:17.120 | or unwilling to fight you.

00:34:20.320 | - Yeah, that was why I was out for two years

00:34:22.880 | following the Gray Manard fight between,

00:34:25.680 | fighting Gray and BJ.

00:34:27.520 | And the Gray Manard fight was actually

00:34:28.720 | one I'm really proud of because Gray was very tough.

00:34:31.440 | He's very big, very strong, very experienced.

00:34:33.720 | I had only five fights at the time

00:34:35.760 | and I didn't have a lot of skills.

00:34:38.080 | I don't get to fight Gray with what I have today.

00:34:40.580 | I had to fight Gray with what I had in December, 2016.

00:34:43.760 | And it really took a lot of discipline,

00:34:46.120 | a lot of focus, a lot of challenge,

00:34:48.360 | to stay the course, to do what I needed to do

00:34:50.000 | in that fight and to win in ultimately dominating fashion,

00:34:52.800 | just not in the dominating obvious sense

00:34:55.000 | that you see when someone runs across

00:34:56.600 | and just does that to somebody.

00:34:58.600 | But that wasn't on the list for me at that time.

00:35:01.040 | So that was an interesting one,

00:35:03.680 | but the time away, again, was very frustrating.

00:35:05.720 | That was incredibly difficult for me.

00:35:07.320 | - Before that fight.

00:35:08.280 | - After that fight.

00:35:09.120 | Well, 'cause I beat Artem Lobov

00:35:12.080 | in the final of "The Ultimate Fighter."

00:35:13.440 | And Artem is another guy that's tough,

00:35:15.360 | a lot of experience and gets,

00:35:17.640 | he's a funny guy and he said some things on the internet.

00:35:20.980 | So he gets a lot of heat for that.

00:35:22.700 | But he just knocked out three of my teammates.

00:35:24.900 | And he put a couple of people in a pretty rough shape

00:35:27.960 | at the end of that.

00:35:28.800 | So he was doing well, and that was a tough fight.

00:35:30.000 | Again, if I got to go back and fight that fight now,

00:35:32.600 | it would be not competitive at all.

00:35:34.320 | I mean, it wasn't competitive at that time,

00:35:35.720 | but it was, let me rephrase,

00:35:36.960 | it wasn't close, but it was competitive.

00:35:38.920 | - So you were improving and growing fast.

00:35:40.560 | - Yeah, and it was nice to have time away.

00:35:42.380 | I wish I'd had more time in the ring,

00:35:43.840 | but again, I'd only been doing MMA

00:35:45.640 | for three years at that time.

00:35:46.840 | - So the improvement from doing what,

00:35:49.440 | the Bitcoin mining was overriding the ring rust

00:35:55.140 | - I think so.

00:35:55.980 | I don't really believe in ring rust, if I'm honest.

00:35:57.740 | I can understand why people could feel a certain way,

00:36:01.260 | but if anything, it's almost like you just kind of forget

00:36:03.060 | what competition's like.

00:36:04.580 | And you realize, oh, you feel butterflies

00:36:07.140 | or something like that, and you go,

00:36:07.960 | oh my God, this is different versus,

00:36:08.840 | no, that's just your body getting ready to perform.

00:36:10.300 | It's okay, it's normal.

00:36:11.620 | - How do you not have ring rust?

00:36:13.420 | - I think I try to practice performing no matter what,

00:36:17.220 | like whether it's singing karaoke, I'm not very good,

00:36:19.060 | but anything, you name it, talking in front of people.

00:36:21.900 | - You embrace the butterflies?

00:36:23.860 | - Yeah, it's almost like, I remember my last fight,

00:36:26.420 | I'm just staring at the wall and going like,

00:36:28.300 | huh, I guess I'm gonna fight in a couple minutes.

00:36:31.540 | I mean, of course, we all heard the phrase,

00:36:34.700 | like you can never walk in the same river twice

00:36:36.480 | because even if the river's the same, you're a different man.

00:36:39.980 | That's, I think it's a really important thing to understand

00:36:42.160 | 'cause at various points in my martial arts career,

00:36:44.420 | I've thought, oh man, how should I feel?

00:36:47.120 | I remember when I used to do well in competition,

00:36:49.220 | I would feel, I would think these thoughts,

00:36:50.960 | listen to this song, think about this.

00:36:53.240 | I would feel a certain way,

00:36:54.140 | and then if you don't feel that way,

00:36:55.580 | I would start to become stressed

00:36:57.680 | because I was self-inflicted versus going,

00:37:00.540 | you'll feel how you feel.

00:37:01.660 | Your job is to show up with what you have on the day,

00:37:04.560 | do your absolute best.

00:37:05.580 | It's like, I will never quit.

00:37:06.540 | I can be sure of that.

00:37:07.380 | I didn't say I can't be beat.

00:37:08.420 | I can definitely be beat.

00:37:09.720 | I could have lost every single fight that I've ever had,

00:37:11.660 | but I control my effort and I control my attitude,

00:37:14.700 | and that's, I will do my very best to execute my game plan

00:37:18.140 | and the event's not working.

00:37:19.260 | If I have to, I'll put my hands up and walk dead forward.

00:37:21.360 | If I need to, it's somebody,

00:37:22.900 | we hope that that's not where it goes,

00:37:24.260 | but like again, that humanizing moment

00:37:27.140 | where you're shooting for just the inner,

00:37:28.900 | like the inner, you sacrifice the outer

00:37:31.300 | and all you have left is will,

00:37:33.020 | and you hope it doesn't happen,

00:37:34.780 | but if it does, you'll be there,

00:37:36.100 | but I guess to come back,

00:37:37.220 | the extra periods of time in between fights,

00:37:40.300 | I think was valuable because it was deeply challenging.

00:37:43.860 | It was incredibly, it was heartbreaking sometimes,

00:37:46.660 | if I'm honest, man.

00:37:47.500 | It's like, I didn't wanna--

00:37:48.500 | - It's just waiting.

00:37:49.420 | - Oh my God, dude.

00:37:50.260 | - Was there politics involved?

00:37:52.100 | Was there--

00:37:52.940 | - Sometimes, you know, like I,

00:37:54.340 | you know, it's every single time you step into the ring,

00:37:59.060 | nothing's guaranteed.

00:38:00.100 | It's, you could be hurt, you could hurt somebody,

00:38:04.020 | you could win, you could lose, you know,

00:38:06.980 | throwing away, just like I said,

00:38:08.180 | throwing away your health or your life cheaply

00:38:10.060 | makes no sense for anyone,

00:38:12.280 | and you know, having, demonstrating some degree

00:38:14.860 | of temperance is not cowardly either.

00:38:17.740 | I mean, but again, if you wait too long, you have nothing.

00:38:20.780 | So I guess like, I was trying and always being,

00:38:25.180 | I'm always open to fighting

00:38:26.140 | the absolute best people possible.

00:38:27.820 | I'm never turning down fights ever.

00:38:30.420 | You know, if some random jabroni decides

00:38:32.220 | that he wants to fight him, go away.

00:38:33.720 | If I wanted to just fight randoms,

00:38:34.980 | I would just start and stand to the, you know,

00:38:36.580 | on the table at Denny's and start yelling,

00:38:38.380 | and I'm sure I would have, you know,

00:38:39.420 | some people would be willing to indulge me.

00:38:41.180 | But, you know, you wanna fight, you know,

00:38:44.620 | meaningful opponents, challenging opponents,

00:38:46.420 | and I know who and where they are,

00:38:48.140 | and sometimes--

00:38:48.980 | - You did fight in Atlantic City.

00:38:50.260 | - I did.

00:38:51.100 | - So the Denny, but you put the Denny's behind you.

00:38:52.940 | - I did, and you know, I'll be honest,

00:38:55.180 | if there were, if I'd have stood up after that fight,

00:38:56.980 | I don't know if I was in great shape

00:38:58.460 | to expect to win any other fights that evening,

00:39:00.180 | but I could have tried it.

00:39:01.340 | I'm sure there were some takers in the crowd,

00:39:02.820 | particularly after they watched me fight,

00:39:04.100 | they're like, yeah, I'll fight that guy.

00:39:05.300 | - So, okay, so when was the last fight that you had?

00:39:07.580 | - That was Darren Elkins.

00:39:08.760 | That was six months or seven months after the BJ fight,

00:39:11.260 | which was great, 'cause it's, you know,

00:39:12.260 | I love maybe five--

00:39:13.100 | - He's a really tough opponent.

00:39:13.940 | - Very tough opponent, very tough guy, super tough dude,

00:39:16.540 | and that was in July 2019,

00:39:19.500 | and then right when I was about to fight.

00:39:21.580 | - You were ready to fight regularly after that.

00:39:24.460 | - Yeah.

00:39:25.300 | - You were trying to fight.

00:39:26.820 | - Yeah, and we got Ricardo Lamas, so no one else,

00:39:29.100 | none of the, I was ranked in the top 15 at that point,

00:39:31.660 | and then people didn't wanna fight.

00:39:34.260 | We were struggling to find an opponent,

00:39:35.860 | and then Ricardo Lamas, a great, you know,

00:39:37.580 | former title challenger, you know, MMA,

00:39:39.660 | you know, really great history in MMA, recently retired,

00:39:41.900 | but we were supposed to fight in, I think, May, March,

00:39:45.820 | March, May of 2020, and then coronavirus happened,

00:39:49.180 | and so that scrapped the whole show, you know,

00:39:51.740 | training, we were just scrambling

00:39:52.940 | to try to keep the gym alive and take care,

00:39:55.900 | you know, I have five or six full, five, six, I think,

00:39:58.020 | five full-time employees that I, you know,

00:40:00.100 | that are my responsibility, I have to,

00:40:01.740 | their livelihood is in my hands,

00:40:03.260 | and it'd be irresponsible of me to not take that seriously.

00:40:07.580 | So anyway, we were able to navigate through that time,

00:40:10.500 | and then we were able to reschedule the Lamas fight,

00:40:13.540 | and that was in August of last year,

00:40:15.860 | and I got a medical, like, flag, like, oh, hey,

00:40:19.860 | like, you have, like, a medical condition

00:40:21.980 | that we need to look into,

00:40:24.020 | when I got pulled from the fight,

00:40:25.140 | and I immediately was concerned,

00:40:27.100 | because, of course, any serious medical condition,

00:40:28.780 | you wanna go, oh, man, well,

00:40:30.260 | I guess I would like to look at that.

00:40:31.940 | Yeah, it turns out it was a giant false positive,

00:40:34.140 | and, you know, we find that out, you know,

00:40:36.300 | all of five weeks later, and you go,

00:40:38.660 | you gotta be kidding me.

00:40:39.500 | - That's frustrating.

00:40:40.340 | - And then we're still waiting for our fight,

00:40:42.100 | waiting for a fight, waiting for a fight,

00:40:43.460 | waiting for a fight, people won't sign up,

00:40:46.140 | asked for a number of different opponents,

00:40:47.900 | basically said, hey, I'm willing to fight anybody

00:40:50.020 | that's tough and moving forward.

00:40:51.820 | Finally got a, you know, a great opponent in Danny Gay

00:40:56.500 | for, I guess it would have been this March.

00:41:01.780 | And then I was training in January,

00:41:04.180 | working on some stuff.

00:41:05.500 | I was out training with Raymond Daniels in California.

00:41:09.180 | Raymond's amazing, unbelievable, you know,

00:41:11.540 | kickboxing, karate style kickboxer,

00:41:13.460 | fantastic martial artist, great teacher,

00:41:15.460 | great training partner and good friend.

00:41:16.820 | And, you know, just really bad luck, you know,

00:41:19.540 | kind of a fall in the middle of training.

00:41:21.820 | And I tore my hip flexor halfway off of my femur.

00:41:25.100 | So that wasn't great.

00:41:27.420 | And you go like, man, right at the time where you're like,

00:41:29.340 | oh man, all right, finally moving forward, you know,

00:41:31.540 | having the opportunity to fight.

00:41:32.700 | Dan's a really tough guy.

00:41:33.940 | You know, you have to fight well

00:41:35.020 | if you wanna have a good chance to do well with him.

00:41:36.580 | If you don't fight well, it's gonna be a rough night.

00:41:38.220 | I'm like, that's exactly what I signed up for.

00:41:39.540 | That's what we want with BJ,

00:41:40.380 | that's what we want with Elkins, that was great.

00:41:43.340 | And then the universe goes, hey man, I hear you,

00:41:45.100 | but there's also this.

00:41:46.220 | So anyway, fortunately it's healing up

00:41:48.780 | and then hopefully-

00:41:50.100 | - When do you think you-

00:41:50.940 | - From May, I think.

00:41:52.740 | - May this year?

00:41:54.060 | - May of this year.

00:41:55.460 | Yeah, so it's been about five weeks since the injury.

00:41:58.660 | - You'd be able to heal up, you think?

00:42:00.140 | - Yeah, I think it'll be okay by then.

00:42:01.780 | Like, I don't need a big camp at this point.

00:42:03.220 | I've had years of camp.

00:42:05.060 | Not gonna curtail my drinking or anything like that,

00:42:08.020 | obviously, you know, come on, man.

00:42:09.500 | Life is meant to be lived.

00:42:10.500 | And, you know, so it's, you know, I'm in good shape.

00:42:14.620 | I'm always training.

00:42:15.780 | I'm trying to do my best to train around the injury

00:42:17.740 | to the extent that I can right now

00:42:18.940 | without hurting myself long-term.

00:42:21.500 | - So is there a particular opponents you're thinking about?

00:42:23.900 | - Yeah, anybody forward?

00:42:25.300 | You know, I mean, I tried to, I asked,

00:42:27.420 | I asked the second that I got hurt,

00:42:28.700 | I sent a message to Dan and I said, hey man,

00:42:30.300 | like, I just wanted you to be the first person to know.

00:42:33.060 | You know, I just was pretty reasonably injured.

00:42:36.580 | We just got an MRI.

00:42:37.500 | Doctor says like, hey man, you're out

00:42:39.140 | and you need to take like three weeks off, off.

00:42:41.020 | Don't do anything or you're gonna immediately,

00:42:42.620 | you're gonna tear it the whole way

00:42:43.660 | and this is gonna be surgery.

00:42:45.060 | And then it's gonna be an additional like eight weeks

00:42:46.860 | on top of that to start to rehab it through PT.

00:42:49.540 | And anyway, you know, so I let him know,

00:42:51.660 | hey, if you can push this thing back,

00:42:53.220 | I would love to keep on the car

00:42:55.060 | or love to keep the fight.

00:42:55.980 | You know, it's like I respect you a lot as an opponent.

00:42:57.780 | And also it's been brutal trying to get anybody to sign on.

00:43:00.660 | So if you're into it, I'm still there.

00:43:02.500 | Unfortunately, he turned that down.

00:43:03.900 | I understand he had other things going on

00:43:05.540 | and he and his wife were expecting a child coming up.

00:43:07.780 | So he needed to fight.

00:43:09.780 | And anyway, you know, I guess we'll see what's coming forward.

00:43:13.740 | - Is there somebody who's like super tough

00:43:15.740 | in the featherweight division that you,

00:43:18.660 | you seem to like enjoy the difficult puzzles.

00:43:21.660 | Is there somebody especially difficult

00:43:23.220 | that you would like to fight?

00:43:25.460 | - I would like to fight.

00:43:27.060 | I know that I'll need to win at least one fight before this.

00:43:30.620 | And I look forward to coming back

00:43:32.180 | and giving my best effort to do that.

00:43:34.020 | I wanna fight to beat Magomed Sharapov.

00:43:36.580 | I wanna fight Yair Rodriguez.

00:43:38.140 | I wanna fight a Korean zombie.

00:43:41.500 | And you know, that's amazing. - To be is complicated, man.

00:43:43.540 | - Yeah, that would be fun. - That guy,

00:43:45.300 | I would love to see that fight.

00:43:46.700 | That's a fascinating fight.

00:43:48.140 | - That would be fun.

00:43:49.540 | He would be very challenging.

00:43:50.500 | All those guys are very challenging.

00:43:52.020 | And so I look forward to just staying healthy

00:43:55.020 | to the extent that we can, coming back.

00:43:56.380 | And I'm gonna fight multiple times this year,

00:43:58.100 | hell or high water.

00:43:59.020 | - Hell yes.

00:44:01.380 | Hey, by the way, I completely forgot

00:44:04.020 | 'cause you were talking about the systems

00:44:05.460 | and decision trees and the illusion of choice

00:44:08.900 | made me think of Sam Harris and I forgot to mention it.

00:44:12.380 | So he talks about free will quite a bit.

00:44:14.620 | - Huh.

00:44:15.460 | - And that there's an illusion of free will.

00:44:18.940 | So it's like-- - It's a bold claim, Cotton.

00:44:21.660 | - That, you know, maybe the universe constructed

00:44:24.100 | that little game where it makes us feel

00:44:27.540 | like we have a bunch of choices, but we really don't.

00:44:30.100 | We're really always ending up in the middle finger.

00:44:32.780 | - That would be hilarious.

00:44:33.900 | - Yeah, that's what you see before you die.

00:44:37.020 | It's just a giant middle finger.

00:44:38.900 | It's like, oh, fuck.

00:44:40.300 | - I knew it.

00:44:41.140 | I knew it.

00:44:42.460 | - What do you think?

00:44:43.300 | Do you think there's a free will?

00:44:44.140 | Like we feel like we're making choices.

00:44:45.980 | So you're thinking, again, we're talking about,

00:44:48.660 | okay, here's a system of martial arts

00:44:51.060 | that's Hanzo, Gracie, there's different schools

00:44:54.060 | and whatever, and then you're thinking,

00:44:56.420 | okay, how can I think outside these systems?

00:44:58.420 | But then there's also a system that's our human society.

00:45:03.940 | And we feel like there's an actual choice

00:45:08.380 | being made by us individuals.

00:45:11.020 | Do you think that choice is real?

00:45:12.660 | Or is it just an illusion?

00:45:13.820 | - Well, okay, that's a really good question.

00:45:15.540 | I'm not necessarily equipped to answer this,

00:45:17.380 | but I'll do my best.

00:45:18.820 | Okay, I guess I would say to start with,

00:45:21.020 | sure, it would be interesting if it wasn't real,

00:45:23.220 | if the choice wasn't real.

00:45:25.140 | Would be pretty interesting if it is real.

00:45:27.220 | First off, I would start with facilitated beliefs

00:45:29.540 | versus not facilitated beliefs.

00:45:31.920 | It's almost like, I think the world's out to get me.

00:45:34.520 | True, not true, what next?

00:45:38.340 | Probably not a facilitated belief.

00:45:39.780 | Even if you, imagine you believe there's no free will.

00:45:42.900 | Okay, now what?

00:45:45.460 | Does that justify every single impulse

00:45:48.100 | that you're going to give into?

00:45:50.180 | Or does the belief in free will,

00:45:51.740 | does the belief in my ability to work hard,

00:45:54.140 | to focus, to be disciplined, to improve my position,

00:45:57.220 | prove my situation, whether it's true or not,

00:45:59.980 | although I think that at least many of us

00:46:01.860 | would argue that at least whether there's

00:46:03.940 | some sort of internal driver that allows for that.

00:46:06.700 | Yeah.

00:46:07.540 | Like we live in a material world,

00:46:09.180 | your actions do affect the world.

00:46:11.060 | I can choose to pick that water up or not.

00:46:13.580 | And anyway, I would say I believe strongly

00:46:17.060 | in the idea of picking facilitated beliefs.

00:46:20.280 | And going, hey, I will adjust,

00:46:24.100 | whether this belief system is right or wrong

00:46:25.980 | on a cosmic level, I'm nowhere near smart enough

00:46:28.060 | to understand, but I can say me deciding

00:46:31.640 | that let's say, for instance, I'm going to walk over

00:46:33.900 | to have a conversation with someone in the hotel lobby

00:46:36.060 | and I've never met them.

00:46:37.580 | And I go over and I start with,

00:46:39.660 | oh, this is going to be interesting.

00:46:40.660 | And I just walk over there versus in my head,

00:46:43.120 | I'm like, what's this asshole want?

00:46:45.540 | We're about to have two very different conversations.

00:46:47.860 | I could be right that this person's not very polite

00:46:50.140 | or thinks negatively of me right from go.

00:46:52.900 | But I think that that's probably not a facilitated belief.

00:46:56.220 | People talk about, how is that going to help me

00:47:00.020 | navigate the conversation to a positive conclusion?

00:47:02.440 | And I think about that for,

00:47:03.820 | let's say fighting, it's a good example,

00:47:07.080 | like confidence, plenty of people believe plenty of things

00:47:09.400 | that aren't real, myself included, I'm sure, all the time.

00:47:12.640 | And anyway, believing that you can do something,

00:47:16.320 | I'm like, hey, I think I can win.

00:47:17.540 | Doesn't guarantee you a positive outcome,

00:47:19.080 | but I would say it, most of us would probably,

00:47:22.120 | most of us would argue that it helps.

00:47:23.680 | - And you're thinking believing.

00:47:25.120 | - What's depression if not a negative,

00:47:28.040 | unfacilitated belief that is not always,

00:47:31.500 | that oftentimes is not reflected by reality,

00:47:33.820 | but you project it onto reality,

00:47:35.780 | and it's understandable if it makes you feel like,

00:47:37.660 | oh man, this isn't gonna work out,

00:47:39.020 | I don't think the prospects are going well.

00:47:40.820 | And then if you feel like you can't get out of that loop,

00:47:42.760 | that seems pretty rough.

00:47:44.420 | And I see a lot of things out in society right now

00:47:46.500 | where you go, whether you agree or disagree

00:47:48.520 | with various positions on things,

00:47:49.940 | you go, is that a facilitated belief?

00:47:51.500 | Even if that is true, which is arguable, anything,

00:47:55.500 | so what next, man?

00:47:56.460 | So where does this end?

00:47:57.500 | One is the positive, what's the happy ending here?

00:48:00.360 | And if they go, well, there is no happy ending,

00:48:01.780 | I'm like, okay, so now what?

00:48:04.220 | So what do we do here?

00:48:05.100 | And I guess--

00:48:06.260 | - So choose the facilitated belief.

00:48:08.780 | And in your intuition, believing that free will is real

00:48:12.940 | is more productive for a successful life.

00:48:17.460 | - Absolutely, because otherwise, how am I not,

00:48:19.900 | first off, how can society function if it's not real?

00:48:24.980 | So how can I blame you or anyone else

00:48:27.900 | or hold anyone responsible for anything

00:48:29.700 | if free will isn't real?

00:48:31.620 | - Well, no, that's exactly the point.

00:48:34.260 | But at the surface level, what you're saying is true,

00:48:37.080 | but perhaps if we truly internalize

00:48:40.220 | that free will is an illusion,

00:48:42.280 | we'll start to figure out something

00:48:43.980 | that transforms the way we see society.

00:48:47.620 | For example, we are very individual-centric.

00:48:51.080 | So believing that free will is real

00:48:55.980 | puts a lot of responsibility and blame on people

00:48:58.500 | when they do something bad.

00:49:01.180 | Maybe if we truly internalize that free will is an illusion,

00:49:05.740 | we start to think about the system of humans together

00:49:09.100 | as this mechanism for progress

00:49:14.260 | as opposed to where individual people are responsible

00:49:17.940 | for their actions, good or bad.

00:49:20.300 | So we remove the value, the weight we assign

00:49:24.080 | to the accomplishments or the violence,

00:49:27.840 | the negative stuff done by individuals

00:49:29.860 | and more look at the progress of society.

00:49:32.200 | I don't know what that looks like,

00:49:33.240 | but it's almost like as opposed to focusing

00:49:35.460 | on the individual ants of an ant colony,

00:49:37.680 | looking at the entirety of the ant colony.

00:49:40.140 | - So that, I think it makes perfect sense.

00:49:42.500 | I would just say that that's a reasonable thing to suggest.

00:49:44.760 | It's a seismic shift, right?

00:49:46.420 | And it's hard to say whether that would be better or worse,

00:49:49.240 | but I guess I'll use this as a convenient one for me.

00:49:52.100 | So I remember the last time we spoke,

00:49:54.720 | I brought up one of the most reviled evil characters

00:49:58.200 | in certainly recent history,

00:49:59.320 | but probably human history period, Adolf Hitler.

00:50:01.960 | Well, I'm a big fan of making people live in the world

00:50:04.520 | that they wanna believe in.

00:50:06.420 | Well, if free will doesn't exist

00:50:08.280 | and it's just about how things move forward,

00:50:10.240 | when are we gonna be high-fiving this guy or what?

00:50:12.680 | Like this is, 'cause I remember what I said

00:50:14.840 | and that actually brings me to something else we discussed.

00:50:18.600 | - Yeah, for people who don't know,

00:50:20.480 | Ryan brought up, or I brought up,

00:50:23.160 | there's literally a giant book about Hitler.

00:50:25.560 | So I've been obsessed with Hitler, World War II,

00:50:28.000 | and Stalin recently.

00:50:29.160 | Oh man, this has become like a meme.

00:50:35.160 | Joe Rogan went like DMT and me were like,

00:50:37.880 | can I pick something more positive?

00:50:40.240 | A cat in a hat or something, I don't know.

00:50:42.000 | But you brought up Hitler as an example

00:50:44.400 | of something particular,

00:50:46.280 | some philosophical discussions we're having.

00:50:48.640 | And the excellent, eloquent,

00:50:52.000 | and the full of integrity MMA journalist

00:50:57.000 | clipped out something you've said about Hitler

00:51:01.040 | and said that, I forget what the headlines are,

00:51:05.320 | but they were the most ridiculous possible implementation.

00:51:09.720 | - Basically, nitwits intentionally misrepresent,

00:51:12.120 | intentionally misunderstanding what I'm saying.

00:51:14.080 | And it's like, I get that they're stupid,

00:51:15.880 | but I'm stupid too.

00:51:16.760 | So I know what that's like.

00:51:17.740 | So I don't have a lot of sympathy for you.

00:51:19.520 | Yeah, exactly.

00:51:20.360 | It's, yeah, exactly.

00:51:21.400 | I can't give you a pass on that.

00:51:23.120 | But basically intentionally misunderstanding

00:51:25.040 | what's going on.

00:51:26.000 | But what I find funny is that,

00:51:29.680 | hey, we gotta be careful what we believe.

00:51:32.200 | And again, back to the cancel culture thing

00:51:33.960 | that we discussed last time as well,

00:51:35.600 | where would I like to apologize?

00:51:37.880 | I mean, no, actually something about cancel culture

00:51:39.480 | that we've been seeing things culturally.

00:51:40.840 | I'm like, I will be damned if I apologize for anything

00:51:43.520 | that I don't need to apologize for

00:51:44.840 | because I was intentionally misunderstood in that instance.

00:51:47.160 | Now you could say that I don't necessarily,

00:51:48.800 | that I'm not a historical scholar,

00:51:50.840 | which I would agree immediately.

00:51:51.680 | And also that I oftentimes ineloquently

00:51:54.400 | or inarticulately phrase things,

00:51:55.840 | which I'll agree that what is again,

00:51:57.740 | but ultimately going, hey, I wanna make you believe,

00:52:01.240 | live in the world that you're suggesting ought to exist.

00:52:04.880 | Okay, so if there's no free will,

00:52:07.840 | is everything, how far of a step back

00:52:11.880 | are we willing to take cosmically before we start going,

00:52:14.720 | hey, this is good because we're experiencing a social,

00:52:17.640 | you know, a reckoning in our country at the moment,

00:52:20.480 | you know, for good and for other probably, I guess.

00:52:24.080 | And basically, but hey, it all worked out, right?

00:52:27.280 | So that's probably not something that would fly.

00:52:30.720 | And I think that's a fair thing.

00:52:32.640 | - That's interesting.

00:52:33.900 | It might not fly from the individual perspective,

00:52:35.760 | but if you zoom out and think of, you know,

00:52:38.600 | appreciate society as, you know, just like an ant colony

00:52:43.000 | as a beautifully complex system,

00:52:45.200 | like we kinda from the individual perspective,

00:52:49.360 | we value progress, especially progress of the individual,

00:52:52.800 | but in whole progress of societies.

00:52:55.000 | But if you accept that this is just a complex system,

00:52:57.440 | that's not necessarily headed anywhere,

00:52:59.920 | that this is almost like that river is just flowing.

00:53:03.080 | I think that removes the burden of always striving,

00:53:07.600 | of always trying, of always like the struggle and so on.

00:53:10.720 | So it's possible that if we have no control,

00:53:14.120 | you can like arrive at some kind of other Zen state.

00:53:17.200 | - Does that sound very human though?

00:53:19.000 | - That goes against, I think,

00:53:22.960 | our current human condition as we experience it,

00:53:29.040 | but we've communicated that to each other.

00:53:31.280 | Like, we've taught like through these social forces,

00:53:34.440 | taught each other that our lives matter and so on.

00:53:38.120 | Maybe if we convince ourselves that we're just sort of like

00:53:43.120 | little things in a stream and ultimately none of it matters,

00:53:47.360 | there might be some kind of enjoyment

00:53:48.720 | to be discovered through that process.

00:53:50.120 | I don't, listen, I'm a capitalist, rah, rah, like.

00:53:53.280 | - But I guess I think you're bringing up

00:53:55.120 | a really important point.

00:53:56.080 | Like I guess almost anything like capitalism,

00:53:58.280 | I only get to experience it as I sit here now

00:54:01.720 | and I get to live, I was raised in the United States,

00:54:03.960 | have traveled around the world a little bit,

00:54:05.480 | have had the good fortune of meeting many people

00:54:07.840 | from many different places.

00:54:09.200 | And I'm an end user of capitalism.

00:54:12.800 | I don't really know how it got here,

00:54:14.320 | whether it was, I wasn't there at the start of this idea.

00:54:16.760 | I wasn't there for, hey, how do we come up with this idea?

00:54:19.280 | How do we arrive?

00:54:20.100 | And I'm nowhere near well read enough to understand

00:54:22.360 | any of that really, even secondhand.

00:54:24.920 | And I guess recognizing that communism, Marxism,

00:54:27.880 | socialism, anarchism, anything is,

00:54:30.560 | these are all perspectives that all have,

00:54:33.200 | I guess, various strengths and weaknesses.

00:54:35.560 | But I guess one thing I'm always,

00:54:37.760 | I guess I would say the burden,

00:54:39.100 | it seems to me that if you wanna make a change,

00:54:42.280 | the burden of proof is on the person

00:54:45.880 | implying that there needs to be a change.

00:54:47.720 | And it doesn't mean that there's nothing there,

00:54:49.860 | but it's like, if you wanna create a small shift,

00:54:51.840 | a ripple, that's fine, but a seismic ripping shift

00:54:54.640 | in how we exist or how we experience the world

00:54:56.840 | as human beings.

00:54:57.680 | And you mentioned fighting,

00:54:58.500 | why watching someone undergo,

00:55:01.120 | take abuse on a level in the ring that's just shocking

00:55:05.120 | and then triumph in spite of it is like,

00:55:07.100 | it's you're like, this is unbelievable.

00:55:09.200 | This is part of the magic of combat sports.

00:55:11.660 | Now, it's part of the magic,

00:55:13.080 | the other side of the magic that doesn't get talked about

00:55:14.760 | sometimes is that the trajectory

00:55:16.440 | of that individual's life later on is not always great,

00:55:20.560 | or there's a little phrase, there's a cost for that.

00:55:22.720 | But if this, if we remember,

00:55:26.360 | you mentioned removing the struggle.

00:55:28.120 | I don't, personally, the struggle

00:55:30.160 | is what makes life life.

00:55:33.000 | And also, I guess, something Faraz has brought up to me

00:55:35.440 | on a number of occasions is that,

00:55:37.640 | and it makes sense to me,

00:55:38.600 | it's basically humans only understand things

00:55:42.440 | through relative comparison.

00:55:43.720 | I only understand heat because I've known cold.

00:55:47.640 | I only understand, it's, I guess,

00:55:48.880 | like it's like talking to someone

00:55:50.140 | that's never experienced any sort of hardship

00:55:52.360 | and then their latte isn't right.

00:55:54.400 | And then they pitch a fit

00:55:56.280 | versus someone that's gone through a great deal

00:55:58.260 | of challenge, struggle in their life.

00:56:00.880 | They tend to have a little bit more of an even perspective.

00:56:03.660 | And anyway, and of course, even as a relative thing,

00:56:07.320 | and what I perceive to be even may not be even,

00:56:09.080 | maybe I'm particularly softer

00:56:10.560 | or it's something in the other direction without realizing

00:56:12.640 | 'cause I can only understand what I can understand.

00:56:14.580 | But the idea that we wanna fundamentally alter ourselves

00:56:19.360 | as a species and as people

00:56:21.000 | seems like a incredibly, incredibly high bar to prove.

00:56:25.320 | And also like an incredibly dangerous idea

00:56:27.760 | because it always comes back to,

00:56:29.560 | who's gonna be responsible for this?

00:56:31.040 | Who gets to do the choosing?

00:56:32.580 | What's a good idea?

00:56:33.420 | What's not a good idea?

00:56:34.240 | And I guess that actually brings me kind of to a,

00:56:36.400 | something I've been encountering recently

00:56:38.040 | in discussions with friends.

00:56:40.160 | I feel like there's only two types of people

00:56:42.680 | that I encounter at this point.

00:56:44.560 | People with a more or less libertarian tilt

00:56:48.880 | to their thinking and people without it.

00:56:51.160 | And when I say libertarian,

00:56:52.200 | I don't mean that in the political party sense

00:56:54.080 | or even the belief system.

00:56:55.360 | Basically, I'm like, hey, you do you, buddy.

00:56:57.600 | It's not my, what you're up to is not my concern

00:57:00.280 | versus what you're up to is my concern.

00:57:01.920 | And I guess I've always watched various points in history,

00:57:04.660 | people on this side or people on that side

00:57:06.200 | are more or less, I guess, problematic,

00:57:10.240 | I guess you could say.

00:57:11.080 | I don't mean that in the internet sense.

00:57:13.440 | You know, more of an issue.

00:57:15.120 | But the world is always full of people

00:57:18.480 | that wanna tell you what you need to be doing

00:57:20.880 | as opposed to more or less doing a harm.

00:57:22.720 | And I guess that's one of the ones.

00:57:24.000 | Anytime I'm trying to tell other people what to do,

00:57:26.840 | I better hope I'm right.

00:57:28.000 | And it's bizarre to me how many people are so confident

00:57:30.600 | that their side or their position

00:57:32.560 | is the one that's not only right for them,

00:57:34.280 | but right enough that they can enforce it on others.

00:57:36.420 | And that just seems incredibly dangerous to me.

00:57:38.840 | And I guess that comes back to even Sam's point

00:57:41.380 | about, oh, we want to,

00:57:43.600 | trying to spread the idea that free will doesn't exist,

00:57:46.240 | I'm not saying it's damaging, but it very well may be.

00:57:48.440 | And plenty of other things could be as well.

00:57:50.000 | I'm not, you know, it goes way over my head

00:57:52.000 | as to the implications of all of these.

00:57:53.760 | And I guess all of us are an evangelist for something.

00:57:56.320 | But I guess it's weird that we've gotten this far

00:58:00.880 | as a species, and now we want to take like sharp,

00:58:03.960 | sharp turns.

00:58:05.280 | - Well, we've been taking a bunch of sharp turns

00:58:06.840 | throughout history.

00:58:07.680 | - Yeah.

00:58:08.520 | - That's what, you know, that's the way,

00:58:10.960 | okay, humans love power.

00:58:13.960 | And one way to attain power is to say,

00:58:16.040 | everything that you guys are doing is wrong,

00:58:18.160 | and I have the right thing,

00:58:19.320 | and I'm going to build up a giant cult of people,

00:58:21.880 | and I'm going to overthrow.

00:58:23.520 | And indirectly what that results in

00:58:25.840 | is me gaining power.

00:58:27.240 | And that's how you get all the big revolutions

00:58:30.240 | in human history, saying I'm done with the thing

00:58:32.840 | that the powerful are currently doing,

00:58:35.200 | so I'm going to overthrow.

00:58:36.280 | That's where probably all the identity politics

00:58:39.840 | that's happening now is people that didn't have power before

00:58:43.200 | are looking to gain power.

00:58:45.080 | And they're also, you know, that's where

00:58:47.320 | Jordan Peterson criticizes identity politics

00:58:49.780 | is people with the right, with the good intentions,

00:58:53.960 | I should say, are in seeking power,

00:58:58.000 | allow power to corrupt them, as power always does.

00:59:01.920 | And so they lose track of like the devils

00:59:06.920 | that they're fighting by becoming the same kind of devils,

00:59:11.400 | the same kind of evil that they're fighting.

00:59:13.840 | And so that's just the progress of human history.

00:59:16.000 | But hopefully, as these power greedy people

00:59:20.440 | keep attaining power with a progressive mindset,

00:59:24.760 | over time, things get better and better as they--

00:59:26.800 | - Like each iteration?

00:59:28.000 | - Each iteration.

00:59:29.160 | A lot of unfairness happens, a lot of hypocrisy happens.

00:59:34.160 | A lot of people are trampled along the way

00:59:38.320 | by those who mean well.

00:59:40.520 | But over time, like lessons are learned,

00:59:42.560 | or like human civilization accumulates lessons,

00:59:46.420 | and in part learns lessons of history,

00:59:49.300 | and it gets better and better over time,

00:59:50.800 | even though in the short term,

00:59:52.840 | there's people acting not their best selves.

00:59:55.400 | And you know, that seems to be the progress

00:59:59.840 | of human history.

01:00:01.160 | The idea of internalizing the free will not being real,

01:00:05.480 | you're actually making me realize that

01:00:07.440 | that ultimately leads to a kind of--

01:00:09.240 | - Doesn't that go in a nihilistic direction?

01:00:12.680 | - Yeah, it's both nihilistic,

01:00:14.660 | or if you wanna make it a political system,

01:00:16.840 | then it's more like communist type of a system

01:00:19.800 | where like the value of the individual

01:00:22.560 | is completely reduced, removed.

01:00:25.960 | Or another perspective is like the freedom of an individual

01:00:30.640 | is not to be valued or protected.

01:00:32.400 | And so from our current perspective,

01:00:35.260 | the systems that seem to have worked,

01:00:36.760 | the United States works pretty damn well,

01:00:39.600 | despite all the different criticisms.

01:00:41.240 | It seems like freedom of the individual in all its forms

01:00:45.880 | seems to be fundamental to the success of the United States.

01:00:49.400 | And so we should, it's however the hell you put it,

01:00:53.560 | is like, doesn't matter whether free will

01:00:55.840 | is or isn't an illusion, the belief that it's real--

01:01:00.840 | - Protects the individual from the group,

01:01:02.460 | which is fundamentally, correct me if I'm wrong,

01:01:04.160 | that always seems like the big issue of history.

01:01:06.520 | Hey, there's more of me than there is of you, deal with it.

01:01:09.960 | You're like, yikes.

01:01:11.640 | And you wanna be yourself, you wanna be different,

01:01:13.520 | you wanna have a different religion,

01:01:14.840 | you wanna be a different skin color, you wanna do this.

01:01:16.440 | All the bad tribal things happen

01:01:19.040 | when there's more of me than you.

01:01:20.880 | Correct me if I'm wrong.

01:01:21.720 | - Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

01:01:23.320 | - But then that's always the fundamental

01:01:24.440 | power imbalance though, right?

01:01:26.120 | - Well, the interesting thing about the libertarian thinking

01:01:28.560 | I guess I, I don't know, those words are really--

01:01:30.680 | - Maybe they're all charged, I know what you mean.

01:01:32.160 | - Yeah, they're all charged.

01:01:33.000 | - I may not scale up, but I mean,

01:01:34.680 | we're more like on a philosophical underpinning

01:01:36.360 | where you're like, yeah, basically,

01:01:37.480 | hey, you feel free to believe I'm a fool.

01:01:39.840 | And plenty of people do, I'm sure.

01:01:42.160 | But as long as you don't chase me down the hall

01:01:44.980 | and hit me in the back of the head with a textbook,

01:01:47.280 | what's the big deal?

01:01:48.240 | - Yeah, so the libertarian viewpoint,

01:01:50.800 | which I probably espouse, like that's,

01:01:53.160 | I very much like freedom of the individual

01:01:57.320 | is very valuable and like leave others the fuck alone

01:02:00.720 | unless they're trying to hurt you.

01:02:02.960 | The thing is, you also have to, I believe,

01:02:05.920 | put in the work of empathy of understanding

01:02:09.640 | what others, how, what leaving people the fuck alone

01:02:13.840 | means to others.

01:02:14.920 | - But isn't that an interesting thing?

01:02:16.200 | If I believe in freedom of the individual

01:02:18.660 | and I take that, like all of these, like you said,

01:02:20.360 | you take them past just their first quite why question,

01:02:23.000 | you ask why, why, why, why, or how, how, how, how many times

01:02:26.280 | should that not extend to respect for you,

01:02:28.760 | respect for your position,

01:02:29.880 | respect for your individual lived experience,

01:02:32.160 | which could be grossly different than mine.

01:02:34.600 | - Yeah, this is the problem with saying I'm an individual,

01:02:37.880 | I'm not gonna bother you, you don't bother me.

01:02:40.400 | That's just like, that's not actionable

01:02:43.220 | because to make it actionable, you have to think

01:02:46.400 | the why, why, why, why, why, you have to do the steps beyond.

01:02:49.600 | You think what does that actually mean?

01:02:50.920 | That means understanding how even my very existence

01:02:54.880 | like hurts others because you have to understand

01:02:59.760 | that like you're not just sitting alone in a room.

01:03:02.240 | You're using like public transit,

01:03:04.880 | you're using the police force,

01:03:06.140 | you're using firefighters, you're using the,

01:03:09.120 | like you're using a lot of resources

01:03:11.200 | that are publicly shared and some of those resources

01:03:15.360 | are unfairly distributed.

01:03:18.960 | Like we've agreed that we're gonna pay taxes

01:03:21.880 | and those taxes are gonna go towards building

01:03:24.560 | some kind of infrastructure.

01:03:26.000 | So that's already towards social.

01:03:27.760 | So you're not a real, you're not a real,

01:03:30.880 | sort of like talk to Michael Malice, like anarchist, right?

01:03:33.280 | Saying like basically full, just leave me the fuck alone

01:03:37.820 | and I'm going to collaborate with whoever the hell I want.

01:03:40.900 | We're not, that's not the American society

01:03:43.920 | as it stands currently.

01:03:45.540 | We've agreed that there's going to be

01:03:47.940 | certain social institutions that we pay into

01:03:51.740 | and some of the sort of discussions about race

01:03:55.140 | and all those kinds of things is about those institutions

01:03:59.580 | being institutionally unfair, whether it's race or gender,

01:04:04.580 | all those kinds of things.

01:04:06.000 | Listen, I have a bunch of criticisms

01:04:09.600 | of the way that conversation carries itself out

01:04:12.000 | but the thing is, what's valuable is to actually listen

01:04:15.600 | and empathize and that's not often talked about

01:04:20.520 | with the leave me the fuck alone mindset

01:04:23.440 | because you're, it doesn't have that little component

01:04:29.440 | which I think could be fundamental

01:04:31.580 | to the function of a society which is like social.

01:04:34.200 | Like it's the, what is it, the Obama, you didn't build it?

01:04:38.880 | Or you didn't build it alone or whatever,

01:04:41.200 | however that goes but basically we wouldn't be,

01:04:44.140 | we wouldn't be able to accomplish anything as individuals

01:04:46.320 | without the help of others.

01:04:48.140 | And to be able to then start to think,

01:04:50.440 | okay, so what is my duty, what is my responsibility

01:04:56.100 | to other human beings to be respectful, to be loving,

01:04:59.620 | to help them as part of this functioning society?

01:05:03.020 | That starts, that's actually a lot of work

01:05:04.860 | to start to think about that.

01:05:05.700 | - For sure. - 'Cause then I have to like,

01:05:07.140 | think, okay, Ryan, what's his life like?

01:05:09.540 | Like as a business owner during COVID, what's that like?

01:05:12.980 | And then he has, there's employees that run the gym,

01:05:16.340 | what's that like?

01:05:17.220 | What's that stress like?

01:05:18.620 | Or about the fighting and the injury and so on,

01:05:20.340 | what's that like?

01:05:21.180 | That empathy takes a lot of like compute cycles.

01:05:24.900 | - That's fair, that's a lot of energy, right?

01:05:26.740 | - But I have to go through that computation

01:05:29.220 | if I want to be an individual that's like, doesn't hurt you.

01:05:34.220 | - If I may, I guess like to come back to Muhammad Ali,

01:05:38.740 | one of the things he said is service to others

01:05:40.460 | is the rent that you pay for your,

01:05:43.020 | you know, is the price you pay for your rent here on earth.

01:05:45.180 | - Yeah. - And now,

01:05:47.140 | one of the things that I think that I see

01:05:48.660 | as a result of the internet all the time

01:05:50.100 | is people talking about global giant problems,

01:05:53.780 | social problems that are society-wide that are massive,

01:05:57.860 | like truly massive and frankly,

01:05:59.820 | beyond the power of any of us to solve.

01:06:03.940 | - Yeah. - And certainly

01:06:04.780 | on an individual level.

01:06:06.060 | So I've discussed things with friends,

01:06:08.420 | like my father's an environmental attorney,

01:06:10.180 | like, you know, has been for a long time

01:06:12.300 | and has been an engineer for a long time.

01:06:14.180 | And, you know, so I'm not, I barely know anything,

01:06:17.300 | but I'm reading a little bit of various things.

01:06:19.420 | But climate change, oh my God,

01:06:21.940 | I'm so concerned about climate change.

01:06:23.380 | I'm like, what am I supposed to do about climate change?

01:06:25.380 | I'll tell you what I can do is I can not litter,

01:06:27.540 | I can try to conserve energy where I can,

01:06:30.220 | I can do whatever I want.

01:06:31.340 | What can I personally do about some giant social problem

01:06:36.340 | that I didn't start and is out of my control?

01:06:40.260 | I'm like, well, I can be decent to the people around me.

01:06:42.780 | I can mention, I can demonstrate empathy

01:06:44.620 | and I can demonstrate consideration

01:06:46.180 | for the people in my circle.

01:06:47.780 | And to the extent that I can, the people outside of my circle

01:06:50.380 | but yelling at the trees over things that,

01:06:52.740 | over problems that are borderline cosmic

01:06:55.860 | doesn't seem very productive.

01:06:57.220 | It just makes me feel like I'm cool and important

01:06:59.420 | because I'm talking about something,

01:07:00.740 | well, hundreds of years from now, the water will rise.

01:07:02.700 | Maybe it will, maybe it won't.

01:07:03.580 | I can't, it's completely off my head.

01:07:05.100 | I know nothing.

01:07:06.140 | But focusing on the problems that we can actually solve,

01:07:09.380 | it comes back to the same thing.

01:07:10.500 | I want to win a fight.

01:07:11.460 | I would love to win a fight.

01:07:13.340 | I can't control that.

01:07:14.220 | What I can do is I can control each individual step

01:07:16.340 | that I take around the ring

01:07:17.300 | and try to make the next correct move.

01:07:19.220 | I can't look, no, it gets people's,

01:07:21.820 | they get all excited.

01:07:24.540 | I'm trying to keep my language in check,

01:07:25.900 | but they get all excited thinking about problems that are,

01:07:29.860 | Superman couldn't solve these problems.

01:07:32.620 | You could be that powerful

01:07:34.180 | and you can't make all of the bad things go away,

01:07:36.540 | but you can absolutely change yourself.

01:07:38.420 | And I think a lot of the lessons that,

01:07:40.820 | the good lessons from religion that happened,

01:07:42.900 | the good lessons from the great men and women

01:07:44.660 | throughout history that we're inspired by

01:07:47.380 | that talk about change starting with within.

01:07:50.060 | And again, treating the people around you decently

01:07:52.660 | and treating the people around you decently

01:07:54.020 | doesn't even necessarily mean the golden rule,

01:07:55.980 | do unto others as you would like them to do to you.

01:07:57.980 | I go, well, maybe what I would like

01:08:00.260 | and what this person would like, aren't the same thing.

01:08:02.100 | Well, how am I going to get to the bottom of that?

01:08:03.460 | 'Cause I could be attempting to be decent to this person.

01:08:05.820 | And by my standard, I am being decent,

01:08:07.340 | but maybe I'm missing the mark by theirs.

01:08:09.860 | Well, I can't possibly, if I just interacted with you,

01:08:13.180 | like it's like someone talking about

01:08:14.220 | some nonsense microaggression.

01:08:15.580 | You're like, so let me get this straight.

01:08:16.660 | I've never met you before, you never met me before.

01:08:18.740 | And you're interpreting some minor comment

01:08:20.740 | that I've made in the least charitable way possible.

01:08:24.300 | I'm not saying that you couldn't be annoyed,

01:08:26.020 | but your expectation for that level of consideration

01:08:29.180 | is you're gonna be disappointed a lot.

01:08:32.000 | Now, if you're someone that's in your life

01:08:34.580 | on a consistent basis and they're like,

01:08:36.020 | hey, I really don't appreciate what you're saying

01:08:37.340 | or what you're doing here.

01:08:38.180 | Do you realize that this is how I'm perceiving it?

01:08:40.940 | And you go, oh man, I'm so sorry.

01:08:42.740 | Of course I would hear what you have to say.

01:08:44.220 | But I guess trying to recognize that,

01:08:47.620 | I guess my job is to treat others with dignity in general,

01:08:52.540 | but that level of specificity that that requires

01:08:56.460 | increases as it gets closer to you.

01:08:58.380 | And I have, as a person, I have a very finite amount

01:09:01.100 | of resources financially, intellectually,

01:09:03.660 | emotionally, physically.

01:09:05.740 | If I chuck 0.001% of it

01:09:08.500 | in every single different direction, what am I doing?

01:09:11.360 | It's like when people are like,

01:09:12.200 | oh, I care deeply about Tibet.

01:09:13.860 | I'm like, why aren't you over there?

01:09:15.220 | Go build a house, man.

01:09:16.500 | Get on a plane, go build a house.

01:09:18.620 | Oh, you don't wanna do that.

01:09:19.560 | So really what you wanna do is post on Facebook

01:09:21.540 | and accept high fives for how much of a good guy you are.

01:09:24.700 | I got an idea.

01:09:25.700 | Go help somebody in your neighborhood.

01:09:27.220 | Go play with some kids.

01:09:29.460 | Go be a friend to someone that doesn't have a friend.

01:09:31.780 | Read a book, try to educate yourself.

01:09:33.740 | And so I guess to come back,

01:09:35.980 | all of these problems aren't solvable on a grand scale,

01:09:38.920 | but it's almost like by attempting to address them

01:09:41.760 | in our personal lives, we do better.

01:09:43.700 | But rather than a giant airing of the grievances

01:09:46.420 | on a consistent basis,

01:09:48.260 | not that that isn't sometimes necessary and valuable,

01:09:51.260 | but after you air your grievances,

01:09:53.420 | you go, hey, how about we sort this out?

01:09:55.340 | What's the next step?

01:09:56.700 | And I guess, again, when we're trying to address it

01:09:59.820 | on a giant social level, it just seems unmanageable to me,

01:10:02.380 | even if you have the best of intentions.

01:10:04.560 | - Yeah, I mean, but nevertheless,

01:10:06.060 | there's a lot you can do on social networks.

01:10:09.300 | I mean, I enjoy tweeting and consuming Twitter.

01:10:12.940 | It's just I apply the exact same principle

01:10:15.220 | that you just said, which is free will and discussion,

01:10:19.340 | which is like I approach it in a way

01:10:23.460 | that I don't get stuck in this loop

01:10:25.880 | that's counterproductive.

01:10:27.460 | I try to do things that are productive.

01:10:30.620 | And it's just like you said,

01:10:32.520 | that's like what kind of things can I do in this world,

01:10:36.380 | whether that's tweeting or building things,

01:10:38.580 | those are low effort tweeting,

01:10:41.020 | or actually building businesses or building ideas out,

01:10:44.340 | that's high effort.

01:10:45.660 | What can I do that will actually solve problems?

01:10:47.780 | And that's the way I approach it.

01:10:49.740 | And I do wonder if it's possible to, at scale,

01:10:53.000 | encourage each other to approach like social media

01:10:56.500 | and communication with fellow humans in that way.

01:10:58.960 | I don't know.

01:10:59.800 | - How do you think that will be done?

01:11:00.940 | I guess like to improve the quality of discourse maybe.

01:11:03.860 | Like, or even like you said,

01:11:04.800 | the empathy or the decency of discourse.

01:11:07.100 | - I think people should be incentivized

01:11:10.900 | and encouraged to do that.

01:11:12.100 | I think most of what we see happening on Twitter

01:11:16.620 | and Facebook and so on has to do with very small,

01:11:20.700 | but very powerful implementation details.

01:11:25.020 | It goes down to like,

01:11:26.500 | what is the source of the dopamine rush,

01:11:28.660 | the like button, the sharing mechanisms.

01:11:32.460 | Just even small tweaks in those can fix a lot.

01:11:35.420 | - Really?

01:11:36.260 | - I believe so.

01:11:37.100 | So like a lot of the stuff we see now

01:11:39.260 | is the result of just initial implementations

01:11:41.900 | of these systems that we didn't anticipate.

01:11:44.660 | So the modernization comes from engagement

01:11:49.180 | and the tools we have is clicking like and sharing.

01:11:54.020 | It was not always obvious.

01:11:55.740 | It was not obvious from the beginning.

01:11:57.180 | It wasn't obvious while Twitter and Facebook grew

01:12:00.160 | that there's a big dopamine rush

01:12:01.860 | from getting more followers and likes and shares.

01:12:05.180 | So we've gotten addicted to this feeling

01:12:06.980 | like how many people are commenting,

01:12:08.300 | how many people are saying like,

01:12:10.620 | clicking like and so on.

01:12:12.100 | So that's that dopamine rush.

01:12:13.400 | So we want to say the thing that will get the most likes

01:12:16.300 | and like unmask in society.

01:12:19.900 | And then the other thing that was expected

01:12:22.140 | is the controversial, the divisive will get the most likes.

01:12:25.780 | So it had to do with the initial mechanisms

01:12:28.760 | of likes and shares resulting in an outcome

01:12:32.020 | that was unpredicted,

01:12:33.120 | which is huge amounts of division,

01:12:35.740 | irrespective of like any of the basics of human connection

01:12:40.740 | that we've actually all come to understand

01:12:43.380 | that society is valuable at the individual level,

01:12:46.500 | like we're saying, but unmask what results

01:12:49.900 | is like you throw all that out

01:12:51.460 | and it's all just divisive at scale discourse.

01:12:55.340 | I think it could be fixed by incentivizing personal growth,

01:13:02.100 | like incentivizing you to challenge yourself,

01:13:05.380 | to grow as an individual,

01:13:07.860 | and most importantly, to be happy at the end of the day.

01:13:11.460 | So feed, like incentivize you feeling good

01:13:16.460 | as in a way that's long lasting, long-term.

01:13:21.820 | I think what makes people actually feel good

01:13:24.260 | is being kind to others long-term.

01:13:27.540 | In the short term, what feels good

01:13:29.260 | is getting a lot of likes.

01:13:31.260 | And I think those are just different incentives

01:13:34.660 | that if implemented correctly,

01:13:36.540 | you could just build social networks

01:13:37.980 | that would do much better.

01:13:38.900 | - So do you think it comes from a structural perspective?

01:13:41.060 | I guess at what point does you mentioned free will,

01:13:43.620 | and also you mentioned feeling good,

01:13:45.660 | and again, working hard.

01:13:46.940 | I know that you have, I guess, was it a race or?

01:13:51.700 | - No, it's the Goggins thing.

01:13:54.420 | It's four by four by 48 challenge

01:13:57.460 | where you run four miles every four hours for two days.

01:14:00.620 | - That's awesome.

01:14:01.460 | - And it's a bunch of, the challenge of it

01:14:05.740 | isn't just the running.

01:14:06.860 | The running is very tough,

01:14:07.780 | but it's mostly the sleep deprivation

01:14:09.900 | 'cause you're just training every four hours.

01:14:11.780 | - But it's a struggle, right?

01:14:13.340 | But the struggle gives meaning.

01:14:14.820 | And ultimately, I guess, so how can we,

01:14:17.500 | 'cause you mentioned, like you said,

01:14:18.580 | adjusting things on like a, I guess,

01:14:21.060 | like a programming level, almost, a base programming level

01:14:23.780 | so that the interface is different for the user.

01:14:25.740 | But at what point does the user have a responsibility

01:14:28.580 | to, as a man or a woman or a person,

01:14:31.340 | to just behave more decently?

01:14:34.260 | How can we, I guess, utilize, what can we do?

01:14:37.380 | It seems like our society is so grossly missing

01:14:40.900 | like a Martin Luther King right now,

01:14:42.340 | like the great inspiring characters

01:14:44.500 | throughout American history, throughout world history.

01:14:46.900 | Where are the great leaders?

01:14:48.500 | - So leadership is part of it,

01:14:49.940 | but that's definitely, where are the great leaders

01:14:52.740 | is a very good question.

01:14:53.700 | That's more of a question of our political systems,

01:14:56.740 | why they're not pushing forward the great leaders.

01:14:58.900 | But there's also just, okay,

01:15:02.740 | there's some just basic engineering shit,

01:15:05.420 | which is when you and I, when you, Ryan,

01:15:09.540 | and I are in a room alone and we're talking,

01:15:13.100 | even if we're strangers,

01:15:14.540 | the incentives are for us to get along.

01:15:17.780 | Like just when we're together in person,

01:15:20.420 | that's what I'm saying.

01:15:21.260 | I'm not even saying some kind of profound--

01:15:22.660 | - But when you remove that.

01:15:23.780 | - When we remove that, the implementation

01:15:26.700 | of social networks as they stand right now

01:15:30.540 | in the digital space,

01:15:31.820 | a very different set of incentives.

01:15:33.940 | It's more fond to destroy others, to be shitty to others.

01:15:38.140 | And it becomes this endless loop,

01:15:42.860 | like you were saying,

01:15:43.700 | that's ultimately destructive and not productive.

01:15:45.740 | And I think it has to do with just the interfaces

01:15:49.540 | of making it feel good to be nice to others.

01:15:54.420 | 'Cause currently it doesn't feel nearly as good

01:15:58.220 | to be nice to others on the internet.

01:16:01.060 | And it doesn't feel nearly as bad

01:16:04.860 | as it does in real life to be shitty to others on the internet.

01:16:07.540 | So the incentives are just wrong.

01:16:09.380 | I think there is a technology solution to this,

01:16:13.300 | or at least a solution to improve

01:16:15.820 | this communication mechanism.

01:16:17.820 | It's not obvious how.

01:16:19.020 | I have a bunch of sort of more detailed ideas,

01:16:20.780 | but this is fascinating

01:16:22.560 | because I've gotten a chance to talk

01:16:24.820 | to Jack Dorsey quite a bit.

01:16:26.260 | This is the CEO of Twitter.

01:16:27.820 | And he is legitimately has,

01:16:31.940 | in this conversation, he would agree with everything.

01:16:35.780 | And he's a good human being.

01:16:38.660 | And he has a lot of really good ideas how to improve things.

01:16:41.140 | The question when you're a captain of a ship,

01:16:44.260 | whether even it's a question

01:16:45.940 | whether a CEO is even a captain,

01:16:48.020 | how much can he actually steer that ship

01:16:49.980 | once it's gotten large enough?

01:16:51.400 | There's so much momentum.

01:16:52.400 | There's so many users.

01:16:53.460 | There's so many people who are marketing and PR and lawyers.

01:16:57.140 | It's very difficult to change things.

01:16:59.220 | - Is it difficult because of the fallout

01:17:01.740 | or is it difficult because it's actually

01:17:03.200 | like literally out of his power?

01:17:04.840 | - So power is weird when you have a large organization.

01:17:09.280 | This is why the great leaders,

01:17:11.340 | this is what great leaders do,

01:17:12.780 | whether it's presidents or leaders of companies.

01:17:15.500 | Steve Jobs, I would argue Musk is that way,

01:17:18.420 | is to walk into a room full of people

01:17:20.740 | who don't want you to create drama.

01:17:23.220 | It's weird, man.

01:17:24.980 | When people just kind of want to be nice,

01:17:27.420 | the niceness creates momentum and nobody wants to,

01:17:32.140 | it's the systems thing.

01:17:33.260 | Everybody just behaves in the way

01:17:34.660 | they were previously behaving

01:17:36.580 | in the way they're supposed to behave.

01:17:38.860 | And nobody wants to raise a fuss.

01:17:40.780 | It takes a great man or woman leader to step in and say,

01:17:45.300 | what we've been doing is bullshit.

01:17:48.380 | Okay, you're fired, you're cool.

01:17:50.780 | What is it?

01:17:51.600 | - Right, I'm out.

01:17:53.140 | - I think you have to create constant revolutions

01:17:56.940 | within a company.

01:17:57.780 | That's very, very difficult to do.

01:17:59.780 | Structurally and psychologically,

01:18:01.820 | it's very difficult to do to be able to sort of,

01:18:05.580 | yeah, to constantly challenge the way things

01:18:07.980 | have been done in the past.

01:18:09.300 | Which is why another way it's often done

01:18:13.300 | is a startup, like a small company,

01:18:15.380 | basically a small company becomes really successful

01:18:18.300 | and then no longer can turn the ship.

01:18:20.660 | So a new startup comes along, a new competitor

01:18:23.580 | that then challenges the big ship.

01:18:25.500 | And then that starts out the winner.

01:18:27.180 | That's like Google came to be,

01:18:29.020 | it's how Twitter came to be and Facebook and so on.

01:18:31.940 | And Apple has, that was the dream of Steve Jobs

01:18:36.820 | is it would succeed for many decades, for like centuries.

01:18:40.860 | That was the idea that you would keep creating revolutions.

01:18:44.500 | Now under Steve Jobs, Apple successfully pivoted

01:18:48.660 | a bunch of times.

01:18:49.900 | Just like reinvented themselves,

01:18:51.660 | which is very difficult to do.

01:18:53.340 | - Because I mean, I've heard,

01:18:54.260 | at least I don't know if this is accurate

01:18:55.540 | 'cause I wouldn't know anything,

01:18:56.380 | but I've heard plenty of people complain about Steve Jobs.

01:18:59.220 | But in reality, the reason that all of these amazing things

01:19:03.100 | were done was because this person was willing to,

01:19:05.180 | well, obviously brilliant, and then also willing

01:19:06.660 | to rattle everyone's cage periodically and say,

01:19:10.060 | hey, what's going on is not what we need to be doing.

01:19:13.140 | - That's a really interesting thing.

01:19:14.380 | So he would rattle the cage, but he would also,

01:19:17.740 | I don't know if those are intricately connected

01:19:20.980 | or always have to be connected,

01:19:22.300 | but he would just be a dick.

01:19:23.740 | So-- - Well, maybe by my,

01:19:25.780 | maybe by his standard, I am lazy and worthless.

01:19:28.420 | - Well, that's, he would say that to you.

01:19:29.900 | - Is he being a dick though, if by his standard,

01:19:32.060 | I mean, like, again, it's like everyone's stupid

01:19:33.660 | compared to somebody, you know, I guess.

01:19:36.200 | - But so you apparently are able to take that kind of thing.

01:19:41.460 | Sometimes you just, you, there's ways to cross the line.

01:19:46.460 | And I mean, this is, okay, the fascinating thing

01:19:49.820 | about being a leader, especially a leader of companies,

01:19:53.580 | is it's a people problem.

01:19:55.500 | So each individual in a room, so as a leader,

01:19:59.140 | you're only really interacting with a small number of people

01:20:01.780 | 'cause there are leaders of other smaller groups and so on.

01:20:04.420 | But each of those individuals in the room

01:20:07.220 | have their own different psychology.

01:20:09.580 | Some like to be pushed to the limit.

01:20:11.260 | Some like to be screamed at.

01:20:14.580 | Some are very soft-spoken and almost afraid to speak,

01:20:18.900 | and they have to be, you have to hear them out.

01:20:23.900 | Like, there's a, and those could be all superstars.

01:20:27.380 | We're not talking about like the C students.

01:20:29.460 | We're talking about the A plus students.

01:20:31.100 | - Well, it's funny that, yeah, but the thing to,

01:20:32.980 | the skill to manage all of those people

01:20:34.700 | is completely separate from the skill to innovate something.

01:20:37.900 | I mean, not that they're not connected,

01:20:39.160 | but it's funny how it's, it's almost like,

01:20:41.380 | why do we have shitty representatives?

01:20:44.180 | - Yeah. - Well, I mean,

01:20:45.140 | the thing that you do to get elected

01:20:46.700 | has nothing to do with governance.

01:20:48.100 | - Yes. - You know, so.

01:20:49.180 | - Well, that's exactly it,

01:20:50.020 | but the great leaders have to have both skills.

01:20:52.660 | So like, you have to have the boldness of,

01:20:55.140 | if you look at the great presidents through history,

01:20:59.500 | usually it's in a time of crisis is when they step up,

01:21:03.100 | but they basically say, okay,

01:21:05.240 | stop this old way that Congress works of this bickering,

01:21:10.240 | of this like compromise bullshit.

01:21:12.400 | Here's a huge plan that costs billions of dollars

01:21:15.240 | in today's age, trillions of dollars,

01:21:18.100 | no extra pork, no extra additions,

01:21:20.280 | just like here's a clear plan.

01:21:22.800 | We're going to build the best road network

01:21:26.240 | the world has ever seen.

01:21:27.640 | We're going to build some huge infrastructure project.

01:21:30.000 | We're going to revolutionize internet,

01:21:32.200 | or we're going to, for coronavirus,

01:21:34.560 | we're going to build the largest like testing facility

01:21:36.880 | the world has ever seen in terms of the,

01:21:38.760 | we're going to get everybody tested several times a day,

01:21:42.120 | all those kinds of things, huge projects,

01:21:43.880 | and say, fuck all this,

01:21:47.080 | the details that everybody's bickering about.

01:21:48.940 | We're going to give everybody $2,000.

01:21:51.360 | We're going to give everybody $3,000, like huge projects.

01:21:54.800 | And at the same time, so that's the boldness

01:21:56.680 | and the leadership of saying,

01:21:57.960 | throw out all the bullshit of the past.

01:22:01.120 | And at the same time, be able to get in the room

01:22:04.800 | with the leaders of both parties

01:22:06.280 | or with the powerful individuals

01:22:08.280 | and smooth talk the shit out of them

01:22:10.360 | in the way they need to be smooth talked to.

01:22:12.520 | So like both of those skills,

01:22:14.440 | it seems to be when they're combined in one person,

01:22:16.400 | that creates great leaders.

01:22:19.000 | Musk appears to have that, Elon.

01:22:21.020 | I don't know if Steve Jobs.

01:22:23.520 | It's interesting, so the criticism of Steve

01:22:27.000 | and a little bit on Elon is he misses

01:22:28.840 | some of the human part,

01:22:31.560 | but maybe it's impossible to have a really,

01:22:35.160 | you have like Saliha Nadal, who's the CEO of Microsoft.

01:22:37.920 | You have, who's really good on the human side,

01:22:41.560 | really, really good on the human side.

01:22:43.000 | Like everybody loves him.

01:22:44.840 | The CEO of Google and Alphabet is also the same way.

01:22:49.220 | So like, I don't know if it's possible to have both.

01:22:51.880 | - You only get so many stat points.

01:22:54.800 | - Yeah, you only get in this RPG of life, yeah.

01:22:58.440 | - You got very good at Jiu-Jitsu very fast.

01:23:02.420 | So you went, I mean, you told the story of Blue Belt

01:23:05.520 | and so on, but you went to Black Belt really quickly

01:23:09.120 | and not just in terms of ranks,

01:23:10.720 | but in terms of just skill level.

01:23:12.720 | I mean, you didn't go to Black Belt nearly as fast

01:23:15.760 | as your skill set developed.

01:23:17.920 | You were like doing extremely well

01:23:19.660 | at a high level of competition.

01:23:21.520 | So you're a good person to ask,

01:23:24.240 | how does one get good at Jiu-Jitsu?

01:23:26.720 | We talked about solving problems at the elite level,

01:23:29.200 | but when you're a beginner at the martial arts,

01:23:33.360 | how do you get good?

01:23:34.760 | How much training should you do?

01:23:36.440 | The very basic stuff, like how much training,

01:23:38.480 | how much drilling, and then the mental stuff,

01:23:41.000 | like where should your mind be?

01:23:45.000 | How should you approach it from a mental perspective too?

01:23:48.240 | - I'll just tell you my perspective on this one.

01:23:49.880 | I guess I would say, I feel, step one,

01:23:52.400 | I feel lucky to have found a good training situation,

01:23:56.440 | particularly for the time, in where I was at.

01:24:01.360 | And I drilled a ton.

01:24:04.080 | I drilled and drilled and drilled and drilled and drilled.

01:24:06.680 | And one thing that's really important to understand though,

01:24:10.460 | is that I was able to,

01:24:13.520 | in a relatively brief period of years,

01:24:15.840 | go from zero to reasonably good.

01:24:18.180 | But I think I probably crammed more hours

01:24:21.760 | in those small years than most people did

01:24:25.560 | training, let's say, in two or three times the length.

01:24:28.560 | So it may masquerade as something else

01:24:31.720 | other than it is, I could say.

01:24:33.200 | - So you have to put in the hours.

01:24:34.560 | - Yeah. - There's no way around that.

01:24:35.880 | - I think so.

01:24:36.720 | - But what did you put in those hours?

01:24:38.040 | So when you said drilling,

01:24:39.640 | can you break that apart a little bit?

01:24:41.120 | What does drilling look like?

01:24:42.760 | Is there any recommendations you can make?

01:24:44.040 | - Absolutely, step one, I would say your choices matter.

01:24:47.320 | I think one of the really important things

01:24:49.080 | that I think we should consider about jujitsu

01:24:50.920 | is that there's a lot of junk in the system right now.

01:24:52.720 | It's like jujitsu has exploded in terms of

01:24:56.200 | the number of positions, techniques, strategies,

01:24:58.320 | this, that, rule sets.

01:24:59.980 | That's really cool on the one hand.

01:25:01.520 | On the other hand, there's probably a just metric shit ton

01:25:05.860 | of suboptimal things that are out there

01:25:08.600 | that are being taught.

01:25:09.720 | Myself included, I've taught things

01:25:12.520 | that are looking back five years, three years,

01:25:14.040 | two years, one year, where I'm like,

01:25:15.120 | oh, I would not do it like that anymore.

01:25:16.920 | Straight up, sometimes I wouldn't do it like that.

01:25:18.480 | Other times I would literally never do

01:25:20.460 | even that particular movement.

01:25:22.800 | I don't think the shrimp is a real move.

01:25:24.760 | It's a giant spiel and it's easier to show in person,

01:25:28.880 | but long story, there's a lot of things

01:25:30.300 | that we think of as fundamental

01:25:32.080 | that I think that are really pretty negative.

01:25:35.360 | And also--

01:25:36.760 | - That's heresy in jujitsu, isn't it?

01:25:38.400 | The shrimp is like the holy, we all worship the shrimp.

01:25:42.560 | - We love the shrimp, we love the shrimp.

01:25:44.680 | - Now, for people who don't do jujitsu,

01:25:46.600 | and you should, the shrimp is, you scoot your butt.

01:25:52.040 | - Away from your opponent.

01:25:53.960 | - Yeah, and it's really--

01:25:54.800 | - How would you describe that?

01:25:55.640 | - It's like a really athletic looking position

01:25:57.720 | where you look like someone that's trying

01:25:59.320 | to stick their butt out on Instagram,

01:26:01.000 | and then you push your hands away and you expose your face,

01:26:04.200 | and then you lay on your side

01:26:06.000 | because someone told you to do that.

01:26:08.460 | - And you look like a, I guess you look like a shrimp.

01:26:12.760 | - Yeah, it's like that time that someone really credible

01:26:15.640 | told me to drink unleaded gasoline,

01:26:17.120 | and I did it for a while.

01:26:18.280 | And then it got to the point in my life

01:26:20.440 | where the next best, the thing that I needed to do

01:26:22.640 | to really improve my life

01:26:23.800 | was stop drinking unleaded gasoline.

01:26:26.520 | And I would say that there's a lot of stuff

01:26:29.040 | that's in there that step one is like,

01:26:31.340 | it's junk, it's actual junk.

01:26:34.160 | And it's, not only will it waste your time,

01:26:37.640 | it will straight up, it will be like an albatross

01:26:41.080 | hanging on you because it affects

01:26:43.040 | how you think about things going forward.

01:26:44.660 | So although, it's funny, the operating assumptions

01:26:49.200 | that we work under have a huge, huge, huge influence.

01:26:53.600 | You mentioned like growing up in the United States

01:26:55.280 | or this being a capitalist society, like, woohoo, all right.

01:26:58.160 | Now, of course, I think that.

01:26:59.160 | I don't really know any different otherwise.

01:27:00.880 | And I think that a lot of times people go,

01:27:02.320 | oh, communism is better.

01:27:03.600 | I'm like, haven't seen it.

01:27:05.000 | Haven't read any books about it being better,

01:27:06.800 | but it's possible.

01:27:08.080 | I mean, I haven't experienced it much myself either.

01:27:10.700 | So I can't dismiss it outright.

01:27:12.560 | But I guess I would say it's a fundamentally

01:27:14.360 | differing operating system underpinning

01:27:17.180 | and all of my choices, all of,

01:27:18.980 | if I honestly believed in that thing,

01:27:21.360 | many of my choices on a moment by moment,

01:27:23.780 | on a day by day, and certainly on a lifetime basis,

01:27:26.160 | would be very different.

01:27:27.160 | So I would say that it's tough when you're young

01:27:31.060 | in the martial arts.

01:27:32.040 | And I mean, all of us are always trying

01:27:33.160 | to do our best to learn.

01:27:34.040 | But when you're young in the martial arts,

01:27:35.280 | you always go, if you're a reasonable guy,

01:27:37.060 | what do they call it?

01:27:37.900 | Like Dunning-Kruger amnesia.

01:27:38.800 | I can't remember if this is the right one.

01:27:39.640 | But basically you go like, oh, I know what I'm doing here.

01:27:42.820 | So I can say that's not right.

01:27:44.120 | But then I read a news story about baseball,

01:27:46.360 | I don't know anything about baseball, sounds credible.

01:27:48.120 | And it's bullshit.

01:27:49.980 | But I can't call bullshit.

01:27:50.980 | If you're a reasonable person,

01:27:51.820 | you can't call bullshit on things that you don't understand.

01:27:53.480 | Even if you suspect it's not right,

01:27:54.840 | you're like, well, I've got to reserve judgment.

01:27:57.000 | You never, ever, ever set aside your need

01:28:01.320 | and also obligation to understand

01:28:03.440 | why you were doing what you're doing.

01:28:04.640 | And don't ask why once, ask why over and over and over

01:28:07.880 | and over about the same thing.

01:28:09.360 | Oh, well, I want a shrimp.

01:28:10.520 | Why?

01:28:11.340 | To make space.

01:28:12.180 | Why do I want to make space?

01:28:13.000 | To get away from the guy.

01:28:13.840 | Well, why do I want to get away from him?

01:28:15.120 | Well, because he's dangerous.

01:28:16.080 | Well, why is he dangerous?

01:28:17.040 | And you can oftentimes get down to,

01:28:18.400 | wait a minute, I didn't even need to move.

01:28:20.080 | Three quarters of the time,

01:28:20.920 | you're actually acting in the other person's self-interest.

01:28:23.080 | And I guess a lot of times I can't,

01:28:24.320 | this kind of goes beyond what we can demonstrate here.

01:28:27.400 | But I would just say,

01:28:28.880 | trying to understand what my base operating assumptions are

01:28:31.920 | and consistently reevaluate them,

01:28:33.560 | which can be fricking exhausting, frankly,

01:28:35.280 | and also comes on as confidence destroying.

01:28:37.400 | But you mentioned that I did pretty well relatively quickly.

01:28:40.680 | I was at, I started in 2004,

01:28:43.640 | and I was at Abu Dhabi ADCC for the first time

01:28:46.240 | as an alternate in 2007.

01:28:48.600 | I won a match there against a Black Belt World Champion.

01:28:51.680 | And the fact, frankly,

01:28:53.000 | the fact that I was able to beat someone like that was neat,

01:28:55.280 | but at the same time says a little bit more

01:28:56.760 | about what Jiu-Jitsu is and some of the issues with it

01:29:01.040 | than it does about how cool I am or was,

01:29:03.620 | because that shouldn't really happen

01:29:08.360 | when you think about it.

01:29:09.200 | You're like, okay, you're a champion

01:29:10.600 | at ostensibly a very high level of the sport.

01:29:14.280 | You enjoy a three inch, four inch height advantage

01:29:17.920 | and a 35 pound weight advantage, and you just got beat.

01:29:21.320 | Like that should not exist.

01:29:22.800 | I'm serious, I'm dead serious that should not exist.

01:29:24.920 | If that happens, you're doing it wrong.

01:29:26.440 | Is it that I'm doing it right

01:29:27.640 | or is it that you're doing it wrong

01:29:28.760 | and there's enough variance in the way that you're doing it

01:29:31.960 | that you're allowing me to win?

01:29:34.280 | And now I did happen to win that with the 50/50 heel hook,

01:29:36.520 | which was, 50/50,

01:29:38.600 | but basically which was one of the early examples of like,

01:29:42.400 | hey guys, by the way, people can try to hurt your legs.

01:29:45.560 | And that was something like we mentioned John Danaher,

01:29:47.560 | mentioned like myself, Dean Lister,

01:29:49.680 | a lot of the guys from the Henzo Gracie team

01:29:51.160 | that have had amazing success.

01:29:52.400 | They've gone and done great things.

01:29:54.680 | Craig Jones in the competitive grappling world,

01:29:57.040 | basically taking advantage of being very, very good

01:29:59.520 | in what they're doing, but also a glaring, glaring,

01:30:02.080 | glaring issue with the operating system of Jiu-Jitsu,

01:30:04.760 | which was a huge vulnerability in the lower body

01:30:08.480 | and not only not attacking it,

01:30:09.960 | but having no idea how one does attack it,

01:30:12.280 | which means you can't understand

01:30:13.520 | how someone will assail you.

01:30:15.000 | So anyway, I guess to come back is if in the absence

01:30:20.000 | of knowing what to do, I try to polish what I've got.

01:30:22.520 | So if I've got a knife and I'm like,

01:30:23.560 | I don't know how to use them,

01:30:24.400 | like, okay, I'm just gonna sharpen the edge and polish it

01:30:26.160 | and make sure that when I need to use this dang thing,

01:30:27.960 | I'll be able to do it.

01:30:29.240 | Because trying to put together a system

01:30:31.720 | when you don't have an idea of what's going on,

01:30:34.280 | a lot of times you end up making suboptimal choices,

01:30:37.240 | but as long as you're consistently re-evaluating

01:30:39.280 | what you're doing, and that's something I've tried to do

01:30:40.800 | over time, over and over and over again,

01:30:42.640 | and try to seek out the most,

01:30:46.240 | the best and also most articulate

01:30:50.040 | or insightful instructors or people of various levels,

01:30:53.240 | doesn't matter if they're well-known or not,

01:30:54.600 | that could say, hey, Ryan, I think you should do this,

01:30:56.400 | I think you should do that.

01:30:57.440 | And I think all I've ever done in martial arts

01:30:59.920 | is try to treat people with respect, honestly,

01:31:02.280 | try to demonstrate appreciation for the many, many people

01:31:05.680 | who have helped me over time and be the type of person

01:31:07.840 | that they wanna train with, not the type of,

01:31:09.760 | 'cause we've all trained with people

01:31:10.840 | that make us think about beating

01:31:12.320 | the ever-loving crap out of them.

01:31:13.960 | I never wanted to be that guy.

01:31:15.240 | And I was basically saying,

01:31:16.080 | like if I train with a black belt when I'm a blue belt

01:31:18.400 | and this person enjoys training with me,

01:31:21.560 | that's in my interest.

01:31:22.480 | Selfishly, not only do I not want them to beat me up,

01:31:24.520 | but selfishly, I should,

01:31:25.440 | you mentioned being decent to other people,

01:31:26.920 | you wanna incentivize being decent to other people, right,

01:31:29.040 | with the structure of what you're doing.

01:31:31.040 | Selfishly, I'm incentivized to be a nice guy,

01:31:33.800 | even if I'm internally a scumbag,

01:31:35.640 | which I like to think that I'm not,

01:31:36.960 | but basically going like,

01:31:38.240 | hey, this guy's way more likely to help me,

01:31:40.120 | or this person's way more likely to help me

01:31:41.480 | if I shake their hand, say thank you,

01:31:43.320 | I really appreciate you helping me out.

01:31:44.640 | And that thing that they tap me with four or five times,

01:31:48.040 | I'm gonna ask them about it.

01:31:49.360 | And then they don't have to tell me,

01:31:50.320 | they're under no obligation,

01:31:51.320 | but I'll say, and whether they tell me or don't,

01:31:53.000 | thank you so much for your time, really appreciate it.

01:31:54.920 | And that's it.

01:31:57.400 | - Okay, so to summarize,

01:31:58.480 | so the way you brilliantly described it,

01:32:01.000 | I just wanna make sure we're keeping track of this.

01:32:01.840 | - Sorry, I went all over the place.

01:32:03.600 | - No, you didn't, you're pretty on point.

01:32:05.880 | But so the first thing is basically,

01:32:08.480 | which is difficult,

01:32:09.440 | I wonder if we can break it apart a little bit,

01:32:11.400 | is don't trust authority, essentially, keep asking why.

01:32:14.800 | - Be respectful without trusting authority, right?

01:32:16.680 | - Right, which is, and then the second thing

01:32:18.320 | is be the kind of person that others like training with,

01:32:21.560 | or like being around, sort of being a good friend.

01:32:26.560 | So many people just enjoy being around.

01:32:28.960 | So one is complete, which is, yeah, you're right,

01:32:31.640 | it's attention, which is like completely disrespect

01:32:34.920 | the way that things are done.

01:32:37.940 | So asking why constantly.

01:32:40.240 | One of it is your own flaws and not understanding

01:32:42.680 | the fundamentals of what's being described.

01:32:44.760 | And then once you get good enough, not understanding,

01:32:47.640 | like going against the fact

01:32:51.320 | that the instructor doesn't understand.

01:32:53.800 | - And my inability to understand what you're saying,

01:32:55.840 | though, doesn't invalidate it.

01:32:56.960 | And that's something like you mentioned,

01:32:58.040 | like keeping in mind our own flaws,

01:33:00.960 | and then also, again, the flaws that any of us have

01:33:03.000 | as the instructor, to your point.

01:33:04.360 | And I guess I can speak to being kind of weird.

01:33:07.040 | I don't, you know, I like to sit in the corner.

01:33:09.600 | But, so everyone's a little bit different.

01:33:12.080 | Some people, you know, I wasn't terribly popular

01:33:14.000 | in high school.

01:33:14.840 | I, you know, I didn't like high school very much.

01:33:18.280 | But anyway, yeah, I would not gonna be rude to people,

01:33:20.960 | though, I was never gonna bully anybody.

01:33:23.040 | If you said hello to me, I'd say hello back.

01:33:25.040 | I would hold the door for you if you walked by, you know?

01:33:27.240 | And I would just say like simple things like that

01:33:29.800 | go a long, long, long way.

01:33:31.720 | And that actually takes us back to our social discussion,

01:33:35.480 | where I'm like, oh man, how do I become great at jujitsu?

01:33:37.720 | It's like, well, I'll start by not pissing off this person

01:33:40.440 | who can beat the crap out of me,

01:33:42.000 | and not disrespecting the person who is probably

01:33:45.400 | the closest thing to a font of knowledge

01:33:47.840 | at that time for me.

01:33:49.040 | So, and then recognizing that I should do that

01:33:52.360 | for its own virtue, because it's the right thing to do,

01:33:54.320 | and I should try to treat people decently.

01:33:55.760 | But beyond that, even selfishly,

01:33:58.040 | it's in my interest to do that.

01:33:59.520 | - But see, the thing is, this is interesting,

01:34:02.520 | is there's a culture in martial arts,

01:34:06.520 | a culture that I like, where the instructor,

01:34:08.920 | legitimately so, carries an aura of authority.

01:34:13.920 | And it's not comfortable to really ask why.

01:34:18.160 | It's a skill to be able to have a discussion

01:34:22.760 | as a white belt, the black belt instructor,

01:34:26.160 | of like, why is it done this way?

01:34:29.400 | Like, and saying why again.

01:34:31.520 | Like, I mean, it's a skill to show

01:34:35.200 | that you're actually legitimately a curious,

01:34:37.720 | and passionate, and compassionate student,

01:34:40.800 | versus like, somebody who's just being an annoying dick

01:34:43.560 | who saw some stuff on YouTube.

01:34:45.200 | There's a line between, to walk there.

01:34:47.880 | I just wonder, because like, it's the drilling thing.

01:34:52.440 | For example, like in my, when I was coming up,

01:34:58.820 | there was so much emphasis placed on like,

01:35:00.860 | close guard, for example.

01:35:02.240 | And you might actually teach me now, I don't know.

01:35:07.540 | But to me, it was like, why do I need to master

01:35:11.900 | the close guard, like, why is the close guard

01:35:15.280 | on top or the bottom, but the bottom really,

01:35:17.720 | this is the fundamental basics of Jiu Jitsu.

01:35:20.280 | - Who decided that?

01:35:21.280 | - My body is not, my body says this is wrong.

01:35:26.920 | Like, I have short legs, but it doesn't even matter

01:35:28.940 | the length of legs.

01:35:30.220 | There's something about me that just,

01:35:31.900 | I don't understand how leverage here works

01:35:34.380 | for my particular body.

01:35:37.820 | So, it's just, it's a feel thing, too.

01:35:40.900 | Like, it feels like, in my basic understanding

01:35:45.100 | of leverage, and movement, and timing, and so on,

01:35:48.020 | it feels like these certain, like, butterfly guard,

01:35:50.260 | or even like, basically every guard except close guard.

01:35:53.180 | I can play, I can dance.

01:35:56.300 | - Close guard feels like you're shutting down,

01:36:00.900 | like, the play that I--

01:36:02.940 | - Is that wrong, or is that, make sure that's what you want,

01:36:06.480 | because that's almost like an innate characteristic

01:36:08.660 | of this guard position, but it's not sold that way, right?

01:36:11.020 | It's like, hey, this is a good guard.

01:36:12.880 | It's like, hey, man, here's a bow and arrow,

01:36:15.700 | versus, and you know how to use this thing, right?

01:36:17.660 | Like, make sure you're far away,

01:36:19.500 | and like, up on a hill or something.

01:36:21.140 | 'Cause you can take that bow and arrow,

01:36:22.060 | run up on something, and try to use it.

01:36:24.580 | But if nobody told you not to do that,

01:36:27.140 | and they told you it was foundational,

01:36:28.420 | it's very foundational, it's very important.

01:36:29.740 | - To everything else, too, right?

01:36:31.620 | - That's back to the shrimping thing.

01:36:33.380 | How many things are we taught that even if it's not,

01:36:35.860 | let's say, itself is not a garbage thing,

01:36:39.140 | might be effectively garbage.

01:36:41.980 | You could give me a Ferrari, but if I try to make it fly,

01:36:45.220 | it's not gonna work.

01:36:46.820 | If you're like, here's a plane, here's another plane,

01:36:48.780 | here's another plane, here's another plane,

01:36:50.140 | here's a Ferrari, I'm like, oh,

01:36:51.060 | it must be a different type of plane.

01:36:52.580 | Like, you could be forgiven for leaping, for going there.

01:36:54.980 | You know, like, oh, maybe the wings come out,

01:36:56.220 | or you just go fast enough, it's like a bullet.

01:36:57.900 | You can make these crazy leaps in your mind,

01:36:59.700 | and people are doing that all the time.

01:37:02.540 | So if you don't provide the context for me,

01:37:05.140 | or worse yet, you provide improper context,

01:37:08.060 | like, how much of a problem is that gonna be?

01:37:10.900 | - Well, I think the skill of the white belt should be,

01:37:14.340 | just be nice.

01:37:15.700 | But in the complicated human space of when your intention,

01:37:20.300 | at least in the big picture view, is good.

01:37:23.940 | The question is, it's not always when your intention is good

01:37:28.740 | the actual implementation of it is good.

01:37:32.780 | So you might be just almost, and that's much,

01:37:36.140 | it's not the case for you,

01:37:37.300 | it's much more the case for white belts.

01:37:39.260 | They don't even know, their intention might be good,

01:37:41.620 | but they don't know all the lines they're crossing,

01:37:43.940 | all the, so they're not actually able to,

01:37:46.420 | and interpret all the ways in which

01:37:50.220 | they're being totally insensitive to the requests of others,

01:37:53.260 | like explicit requests of others.

01:37:55.100 | So your job as a beginner is to be a really good listener

01:37:59.660 | of those social cues.

01:38:01.260 | - It's like a visitor in a foreign country, right?

01:38:02.900 | - Yeah.

01:38:03.740 | - Like you're a representative of people

01:38:04.820 | that look like you, people that talk like you,

01:38:06.660 | people that have your passport,

01:38:07.940 | and you're like, man, I'm gonna go over here,

01:38:09.220 | oh, I've got my foot up on my knee.

01:38:10.800 | Well, if I was in a certain country in the world,

01:38:12.020 | that's rude.

01:38:12.980 | I'm like, oh, I'm so sorry.

01:38:14.620 | But can you imagine if someone says,

01:38:15.740 | hey, I really appreciate if you take your foot off,

01:38:17.740 | that's pretty rude.

01:38:18.580 | And then I wanna tell them, well, not where I'm from, man.

01:38:21.420 | I'm in your house.

01:38:22.400 | I better, again, I might go that direction,

01:38:24.700 | but let's say I could get away with that.

01:38:25.900 | Now I'm a bully.

01:38:27.060 | And if I can't get away with that,

01:38:28.540 | well, I'm about to maybe be on the wrong side of something.

01:38:30.860 | But I guess, like you said,

01:38:33.180 | if we have positive intention, that's fine.

01:38:34.740 | But I also have to recognize who I am.

01:38:36.060 | And I think that that's one thing that I tried to do

01:38:39.020 | and continue to try to do over time.

01:38:40.860 | Like we're, oh man, hi,

01:38:43.340 | I'm the one that's asking for a favor here.

01:38:45.220 | If I spar with Raymond Daniels,

01:38:46.580 | Raymond Daniels is doing me a favor.

01:38:48.460 | I ain't doing him a favor.

01:38:49.780 | Let's not get it twisted.

01:38:51.280 | So thank you so much for your time.

01:38:53.220 | I really appreciate it.

01:38:54.060 | These are not, and this is not like some affected nonsense.

01:38:56.140 | This is serious.

01:38:56.980 | I'm like, thank you.

01:38:57.800 | If I spar with Stephen Thompson,

01:38:58.900 | I'm the one being done a favor.

01:39:00.060 | George St. Pierre takes his time to spar with me,

01:39:01.660 | which he has in the past, and not even kill me,

01:39:04.040 | which is really, I appreciate that

01:39:05.500 | 'cause that's why I can sit here.

01:39:07.840 | George is not a prop for me to get my rocks off

01:39:11.580 | or see what's going on.

01:39:12.600 | And also I'm gonna do that

01:39:14.060 | and then expect him to just take it.

01:39:16.380 | And I've seen, he's a gentleman.

01:39:17.720 | I've seen people get nuts with George

01:39:19.140 | and have him just be like,

01:39:20.500 | he's a patient of a saint.

01:39:23.720 | I don't have that level of patience,

01:39:24.800 | but I would just say to come back,

01:39:26.660 | figuring out like, hey, so what role am I here?

01:39:28.980 | And that comes back to like,

01:39:30.140 | at least what I see people on the internet.

01:39:31.760 | Yeah, man, I have a beef with Joe Rogan.

01:39:33.660 | You're like, no, you don't, Ryan.

01:39:35.100 | You're some goof.

01:39:36.380 | I'm like, I'm some random dude.

01:39:37.660 | Joe, like people want it.

01:39:39.140 | They almost want to like elevate

01:39:40.340 | so that we can somehow be level or peers here.

01:39:42.900 | If I go into Firas Zahabi's gym,

01:39:44.500 | I'm not a peer of Firas Zahabi.

01:39:45.860 | I am a student of TriStar.

01:39:47.300 | I'm a guest in the academy.

01:39:48.780 | And if Firas asked me for something short of him,

01:39:51.180 | like, telling me to try to do a triple backflip

01:39:53.380 | so I break my neck, the answer is yes, sir.

01:39:55.780 | I can do it for you, Firas.

01:39:56.620 | No, man, no worries.

01:39:57.460 | And hopefully it should come with,

01:39:59.100 | I guess, a level of graciousness.

01:40:00.900 | But I guess that's kind of one of the things

01:40:02.300 | that I see nowadays with how accessible people are.

01:40:04.860 | 'Cause I grew up being a big, huge baseball sports fan

01:40:07.380 | of all kinds.

01:40:08.540 | I couldn't send Derek Jeter a message

01:40:10.940 | and much less have a possibility of a reply.

01:40:14.700 | And if I do, it's like,

01:40:16.220 | you know, I have people send me messages.

01:40:18.740 | It's very nice that people send me messages.

01:40:20.100 | Some people, again, not everyone

01:40:21.980 | is coming from the same place.

01:40:23.580 | But I've had plenty of things that are like,

01:40:25.140 | yo, dude, I need you to do this for me.

01:40:26.900 | I'm like, well, I'll tell you what's never gonna happen.

01:40:29.620 | That.

01:40:30.460 | I have no idea who you are.

01:40:31.340 | And that was how I was addressed.

01:40:32.820 | And I don't need, oh man, you're the greatest,

01:40:34.620 | one, because that's weird,

01:40:35.580 | and two, 'cause I'm not.

01:40:36.620 | But just, hey, Ryan, how are you doing?

01:40:39.340 | Hey, do you think you could do the following

01:40:41.060 | if you get a second?

01:40:41.900 | Like, if I get a second, you're dang right, I can.

01:40:43.660 | Why not?

01:40:44.500 | It's easy to ask.

01:40:45.320 | But it started with some level of politeness.

01:40:47.580 | And I guess like that's,

01:40:48.940 | maybe being semi-Southern, like I grew up in Virginia,

01:40:51.460 | yes sir, yes ma'am, like that goes a long way.

01:40:54.300 | - And there's all different kinds of implementations

01:40:56.460 | of politeness.

01:40:57.300 | I mean, most of the successful people I've met,

01:40:59.660 | it's been surprising to me how much of,

01:41:03.740 | you mentioned peers.

01:41:05.580 | Like I could think of Joe Rogan.

01:41:08.500 | You mentioned Joe Rogan.

01:41:09.500 | But Elon Musk, they don't,

01:41:14.500 | like they almost treat me like I'm the superior.

01:41:17.720 | You know what I mean?

01:41:18.560 | Like it's not even, that's the politeness.

01:41:21.220 | Like, that's the approach.

01:41:23.360 | The feeling of it is like I'm the student,

01:41:25.220 | I'm the beginner, I'm like approaching a situation.

01:41:27.780 | It's almost like method acting of like,

01:41:33.780 | you're better than me.

01:41:35.000 | And that's how I approach a lot of interactions.

01:41:38.220 | Like I have something to learn from this,

01:41:39.660 | even if it's like a young--

01:41:41.260 | - Do you think that they're ungenuine?

01:41:42.820 | - They're totally genuine.

01:41:44.380 | - But isn't that a funny thing?

01:41:45.340 | Like in spite of who they are,

01:41:46.420 | they're incredibly genuine because they respect,

01:41:48.100 | correct me if I'm wrong,

01:41:48.940 | they respect you obviously for what you bring to the table.

01:41:50.860 | - No, no, they approach everybody like this.

01:41:52.380 | - But that's what I meant.

01:41:53.220 | No, but I'm sure they respect you for what you bring to the table.

01:41:54.700 | Well, beyond that though,

01:41:55.940 | they're treating you with dignity as a human being.

01:41:57.500 | - Yeah, as a human being, that's right.

01:41:59.380 | - And when they could probably get away

01:42:01.380 | with treating most people

01:42:02.380 | without a whole heck of a lot of dignity.

01:42:03.900 | And I guess what does that always say?

01:42:05.500 | Again, you can always tell someone of quality

01:42:08.260 | because they treat the king and the janitor the same way.

01:42:11.740 | But that's what we're seeing a lot.

01:42:14.380 | I guess I don't mean to nitpick,

01:42:16.020 | but that's where we take issue, I guess a little bit,

01:42:18.220 | or disagree with the--

01:42:19.060 | - Are you gonna criticize the internet again?

01:42:21.380 | - I know.

01:42:22.220 | (imitates buzzer)

01:42:23.660 | - The old man yells at clouds.

01:42:25.260 | But anyway, but I guess what I mean is just like

01:42:30.060 | the way that people address each other,

01:42:31.660 | 'cause it's so casual now.

01:42:33.700 | And it's great on the one hand, it's nice.

01:42:35.620 | On the other hand, you go,

01:42:36.580 | hey, am I worried about diminishing myself?

01:42:41.580 | It's like the way that I'm sure

01:42:43.460 | that people talk to women sometimes.

01:42:45.740 | And where it's, what's up, girl?

01:42:48.500 | Oh man, she's a bitch.

01:42:49.940 | Versus like, that was supposed to get a good response?

01:42:53.620 | What about that was going to elicit a favorable response?

01:42:57.820 | Versus being anything, anything other than just,

01:43:01.100 | yo man, what's going on?

01:43:02.220 | And I guess that, does that make any sense?

01:43:04.020 | - It makes total sense.

01:43:04.860 | And that Southern thing that you're referring to,

01:43:06.460 | I feel like that's an important part of human communication.

01:43:11.460 | Let me ask you this.

01:43:14.060 | - Sure.

01:43:14.900 | - Your new back attacks instructional.

01:43:17.020 | First of all, awesome.

01:43:19.260 | - Yeah.

01:43:20.700 | - Second of all, you drop a lot of fascinating insights

01:43:25.300 | in there, but you quote Galileo out of all people

01:43:28.740 | in saying that you can't teach a man anything,

01:43:31.260 | you can only help him find it within himself.

01:43:34.340 | So we talked about how to start in Jiu Jitsu.

01:43:39.340 | What about if we zoom out even more

01:43:41.780 | and how do you learn how to learn?

01:43:46.620 | How do you optimize the learning process?

01:43:49.580 | - I don't know the answer to that,

01:43:51.620 | but I can tell you what I like to do.

01:43:52.780 | And I would say like, I can't, step one, I don't, I'm not,

01:43:55.860 | maybe this is a little bit easier for me

01:43:57.220 | 'cause I've never had a ton of friends, honestly.

01:43:59.860 | I've got my close friends and people that I know,

01:44:01.860 | but I've never had tons and tons of people.

01:44:04.180 | So I spent a lot of time thinking.

01:44:06.220 | And anyway, I can't control you.

01:44:10.620 | I can't control anybody else.

01:44:12.180 | I, all I can, I wanna take my,

01:44:17.180 | I guess it's a Marcus Aurelius thing.

01:44:20.020 | It's like, I guess the trick to life is figuring out

01:44:22.100 | what's in our control and what's not

01:44:23.540 | and focusing on things that are in our control, I guess.

01:44:25.940 | And so step one is figuring out both internally

01:44:29.860 | and then also out in the world as it pertains to Jiu-Jitsu,

01:44:33.180 | what is actually in my control and what is not.

01:44:35.660 | Like passing someone's guard is not in your control.

01:44:37.740 | People think it is, it ain't.

01:44:39.260 | If I can't just do an activity and be unchecked,

01:44:43.480 | then it ain't in my control entirely.

01:44:46.740 | I can always breathe.

01:44:47.920 | I can always, you know, be calm.

01:44:51.620 | I can always, no matter whether I'm concerned

01:44:54.240 | or not concerned, have whatever you wanna call it, nerves,

01:44:56.660 | you know, I can step forward across the line

01:44:59.300 | and say, I will face the challenge ahead.

01:45:01.540 | That is all entirely, no one can stop me from doing that.

01:45:03.740 | That's entirely me, I control.

01:45:04.780 | And that's why I know that every single time

01:45:06.860 | that I walk into the ring,

01:45:07.820 | I'll walk in and out of there with my head held high

01:45:09.740 | because there's, I will fight with everything that I have.

01:45:13.380 | I can't promise that I'll win.

01:45:15.100 | I would say I'd take that same first principles.

01:45:17.860 | You mentioned last time we talked, you know, with Elon

01:45:20.640 | and the importance of that and going,

01:45:23.100 | what are the first principles?

01:45:24.620 | And I guess to come back, a lot of times, in my opinion,

01:45:26.760 | things that people think are the basics are not the basics.

01:45:30.300 | You can't learn.

01:45:31.500 | If you think you're reasoning for first principles,

01:45:33.380 | but you're actually like level six,

01:45:35.220 | you're actually like layers up,

01:45:37.260 | you're making so many, there's so many baked in assumptions

01:45:39.900 | to what's going on that you're gonna struggle

01:45:41.660 | to understand why anything is actually happening,

01:45:44.340 | internally, externally, you name it.

01:45:46.300 | So I guess what I would start when it comes to learning

01:45:48.800 | is first principles and trying to understand

01:45:50.580 | what's going on, but then also simple things first.

01:45:53.420 | I can control my posture.

01:45:54.780 | I can control my breathing.

01:45:57.580 | No one can stop me from doing that.

01:45:59.900 | I can control where I place my frames.

01:46:01.780 | I can control where I place my limbs.

01:46:03.580 | I can move my feet.

01:46:05.500 | I can develop the ability to do these things better,

01:46:07.540 | of course, and I do that through practice,

01:46:09.060 | through drilling, through watching people.

01:46:10.500 | I've been incredibly fortunate in my time in martial arts

01:46:12.740 | to train with many of my heroes,

01:46:14.260 | to train with many of the people that I looked at

01:46:16.300 | and I was like, that guy is amazing.

01:46:18.500 | I wanna train with this person.

01:46:20.340 | Stephen Thompson, Kenny Florian, George St. Pierre,

01:46:22.980 | Raymond Daniels, Feras Zahabi,

01:46:25.340 | I mean, like Bruno Frizzato, Marcelo Garcia,

01:46:27.740 | all of these guys that are just unbelievable.

01:46:30.700 | And I go, well, they're moving in a way that's different.

01:46:33.980 | Well, how do I do that?

01:46:34.900 | Well, sometimes you can ask them

01:46:36.180 | and they can tell you directly.

01:46:37.180 | Other times people, part of the genius of what they do

01:46:39.620 | is that it's intuitive and maybe they don't think

01:46:42.220 | and understand and see the world the same way that I do.

01:46:44.540 | That was something that I experienced with Marcelo.

01:46:47.020 | He's amazing.

01:46:48.020 | But in a different way than his,

01:46:51.260 | it just, we see things fundamentally different.

01:46:54.180 | We experience the world differently,

01:46:55.380 | it seems to me that we do.

01:46:56.820 | And again, that taught me a really important lesson

01:46:59.820 | 'cause I was wanting when I trained there

01:47:01.220 | to have someone go, hey, Ryan, do this, this, this, and this

01:47:03.580 | and that's how it works.

01:47:04.540 | And I was like, all right,

01:47:05.380 | 'cause that's how I understood martial arts at the time.

01:47:08.780 | I wasn't ready to have someone tell me like,

01:47:10.940 | hey, it feels a little bit like this

01:47:15.180 | and I just kind of do it,

01:47:16.460 | which is kind of what Marcelo would do at the time

01:47:19.000 | as he was less experienced as a teacher.

01:47:20.800 | But that is what he was doing.

01:47:22.900 | I was completely, I couldn't separate in my mind

01:47:26.220 | performance and understanding.

01:47:28.740 | I thought that if I understand, I could do it.

01:47:30.220 | And I would also struggle sometimes

01:47:32.340 | to wonder why I couldn't execute things

01:47:35.420 | that I thought I understood

01:47:37.260 | and why guys like Marcelo were just so elemental.

01:47:40.220 | I mean, in like the lightning wind,

01:47:42.260 | like that type of thing,

01:47:43.100 | where like it's just so in touch

01:47:44.620 | with what they wanted with their capabilities,

01:47:47.620 | they could summon their powers at will.

01:47:49.620 | I couldn't always do that.

01:47:52.220 | And I guess, so recognizing that there was more

01:47:55.900 | than one way to the top of the mountain.

01:47:57.300 | And also I had a lot of science,

01:47:58.720 | but I didn't have a lot of art,

01:47:59.820 | or I had some science, I should say,

01:48:01.000 | but I didn't have a lot of art.

01:48:02.460 | Meeting people like Marcelo taught me

01:48:04.220 | and then Josh Waitzkin, actually,

01:48:05.700 | brilliant guy, chess champion,

01:48:07.780 | former owner, maybe owner of Marcelo's Academy,

01:48:09.780 | really great friend.

01:48:10.620 | - I think he has a book on learning.

01:48:11.780 | - He does, yeah, "The Art of Learning," actually.

01:48:13.860 | But yeah, he knows a thing or two about it,

01:48:15.620 | but a great guy.

01:48:16.460 | And anyway, he sat me down one time,

01:48:18.140 | was like, "Look, man, you're doing this wrong.

01:48:19.900 | "You're missing the genius,

01:48:22.220 | "the brilliance that's right in front of you."

01:48:24.540 | And it took me a long time.

01:48:26.620 | - What did he mean?

01:48:27.900 | - That I was frustrated with my inability

01:48:31.460 | to grasp certain things,

01:48:32.700 | and sometimes the teaching style being different.

01:48:34.900 | Not wrong, just it was tough on me at the time.

01:48:38.700 | - So you were trying to replicate

01:48:39.940 | what Marcelo was saying,

01:48:41.060 | as opposed to understanding the fundamentals

01:48:44.940 | from which it was coming.

01:48:46.100 | - Right, I couldn't see where it was coming from.

01:48:48.860 | And also, sometimes I'm like,

01:48:50.020 | "Well, why can't you explain it

01:48:51.300 | "in the way that I would want you to explain it?"

01:48:53.020 | And he's like, "Well, why can't I meet him

01:48:54.500 | "where he's coming from?"

01:48:55.860 | So anyway, it was a really important time,

01:48:58.340 | unless I'm very, very frustrating for Monis,

01:48:59.860 | but it's not, I'm so thankful for that time.

01:49:03.420 | And anyway, I guess--

01:49:06.100 | - It's always first principles,

01:49:07.180 | trying to understand the basics,

01:49:08.740 | first starting at the place

01:49:09.900 | where you can control things,

01:49:11.820 | the very basic elements of what you can work with,

01:49:14.980 | and then when there's other mentors and teachers to--

01:49:18.940 | - Meet them where they're coming from.

01:49:20.020 | - Meet them where they're coming from.

01:49:20.860 | - To the extent that I can.

01:49:21.740 | Rather than, I'm not, like again,

01:49:23.020 | it's like, "Why are you not talking to me

01:49:24.660 | "the way I want you to talk to me?"

01:49:26.700 | As opposed to, "Hey, where are you coming from?"

01:49:28.380 | Back to your point.

01:49:29.620 | But I don't know that's not entirely specific,

01:49:32.180 | but if you can focus on that,

01:49:34.500 | and back to the whole, you can't teach a man anything.

01:49:37.140 | Marcelo didn't teach me anything,

01:49:38.940 | but he taught me in so doing,

01:49:40.820 | and other people like that, to find it within.

01:49:45.020 | And it's like, I guess something else

01:49:46.580 | that I've heard before is that

01:49:48.140 | all learning is self-discovery,

01:49:49.780 | but all performance is self-expression.

01:49:52.140 | And I always thought that Marcelo was a brilliant master

01:49:54.860 | of letting what's inside out.

01:49:56.140 | He was so consistent in his performances.

01:49:59.060 | And a lot of times I felt like

01:50:00.700 | there was a block there, personally,

01:50:02.060 | particularly at the end of jiu-jitsu,

01:50:03.140 | when I was very, very results-oriented,

01:50:04.860 | and I wasn't, I think my focus was not ideal.

01:50:08.300 | It was definitely not in the place

01:50:09.620 | that I would like it to be.

01:50:10.900 | And whether I would have won more or lost,

01:50:12.740 | more hard to say,

01:50:13.580 | but I know that I would have performed better

01:50:14.460 | if I'd have adjusted that.

01:50:15.460 | And anyway, that recognizing that, again, jiu-jitsu,

01:50:19.340 | I think I've said it before,

01:50:20.180 | jiu-jitsu is studied as a science, but expressed as an art.

01:50:22.820 | It doesn't matter if you can articulate

01:50:24.500 | what you know how to do.

01:50:25.340 | What matters is if you can do what you know how to do.

01:50:27.300 | It only matters if you're,

01:50:28.300 | I guess if you're teaching in a verbal fashion,

01:50:30.140 | is whether or not you can articulate it.

01:50:31.260 | But recognizing the difference between learning

01:50:35.060 | on an intellectual level or a conceptual level,

01:50:37.460 | and being able to translate that into the physical.

01:50:40.380 | And I guess that's been the thing

01:50:41.660 | that I feel fortunate over time in my own academy,

01:50:44.220 | to be able to kind of fiddle around and learn on my own,

01:50:46.380 | and practice with my students.

01:50:47.540 | And sometimes I struggle to have great training partners.

01:50:50.500 | Like when I say great training partner,

01:50:51.340 | I mean other world-class people to spar, to roll with.

01:50:53.820 | But I've gotten a lot more, honestly,

01:50:56.140 | than I ever would have thought out of being able to practice

01:50:58.380 | and learn and fail and try and succeed on my own

01:51:00.740 | without my own little sandbox.

01:51:02.580 | Figuring out how I can take an idea

01:51:06.380 | and then come up with drills and drills to practice it,

01:51:10.260 | so that I can actually practice putting it into play.

01:51:12.340 | Because again, knowing an idea and then not drilling,

01:51:15.340 | what's the point?

01:51:16.180 | I'll never have it.

01:51:17.020 | It'll never see the light of day.

01:51:19.060 | - So in that DVD, in that instruction DVD, sorry.

01:51:22.700 | - It's an online instructional DVD.

01:51:24.980 | I keep saying DVD though.

01:51:25.980 | - Nobody has DVDs anymore.

01:51:27.540 | - Do they not?

01:51:28.380 | - It's like VHS.

01:51:29.220 | I don't know.

01:51:30.060 | Who has DVD?

01:51:30.880 | What, like Blu-ray?

01:51:31.720 | - I possess some DVDs.

01:51:33.220 | I mean, I've never watched them.

01:51:34.380 | - What do you use them for?

01:51:35.540 | Like a cup, like a thing you put a drink on?

01:51:40.540 | - I mean, when we're in a pinch, yeah.

01:51:42.820 | - What's that even called?

01:51:48.940 | - Coaster?

01:51:49.780 | - Yeah, my matrix coaster.

01:51:52.780 | - The matrix coaster, zeros and ones.

01:51:55.660 | Okay, so in that instruction that people should get,

01:52:00.300 | I've been watching, I'm really enjoying.

01:52:03.180 | It's, I don't even know when it came out recently, right?

01:52:06.500 | - Like December, something like that?

01:52:07.620 | - Yeah.

01:52:08.460 | It's--

01:52:09.660 | - It's part one.

01:52:10.500 | It was actually like, ended up being like 18 hours long

01:52:12.380 | and I was like, oh my God, we're gonna chop it in half.

01:52:14.100 | And when it comes together, the whole thing,

01:52:16.260 | I think, I hope people will like it.

01:52:17.340 | - Yeah, well, it's even part one is really good.

01:52:19.500 | It's actually, yeah, people on Reddit

01:52:21.620 | were really excited for part two as well.

01:52:23.540 | - Really?

01:52:24.380 | - And you also have a back--

01:52:25.820 | - Oh, the old one.

01:52:26.660 | - The old one that I, that was really helpful to me

01:52:29.420 | to understand some very basic aspects of control

01:52:32.700 | and foot back. - Really?

01:52:33.540 | - Yeah, that was, you know, that clicked with me.

01:52:37.380 | There's very few instructionals.

01:52:39.140 | There's very few things I've watched

01:52:41.900 | that ever clicked with me and that was definitely it.

01:52:45.260 | It taught me one thing, I don't know,

01:52:48.380 | it's, you drop a lot of, what's there, bombs?

01:52:51.700 | You drop a lot of really interesting details.

01:52:54.760 | And it's funny that there's only specific things

01:52:59.220 | that really click.

01:53:00.700 | Like a lot of it rings true

01:53:02.140 | and you kind of take it in and it's like,

01:53:03.580 | oh, that's interesting, okay, yeah.

01:53:05.480 | But there's certain things that really click.

01:53:07.100 | And I remember that first instruction

01:53:11.180 | what clicked with me is like the importance.

01:53:14.300 | I don't remember anymore like how you communicated it

01:53:17.580 | because I've now integrated, it's now mine.

01:53:20.220 | You know what I mean?

01:53:21.820 | But it was more about you just describing upper body control

01:53:26.040 | and the importance of the upper body control from the back.

01:53:29.540 | And just like there's certain,

01:53:31.420 | you describe different details on the grips and so on.

01:53:35.900 | And as I started trying it,

01:53:38.060 | I realized how important upper body control is

01:53:42.640 | versus like me, maybe as a blue belt or something,

01:53:46.660 | I thought like you have achieved victory

01:53:49.200 | when you got the two hooks in.

01:53:51.420 | And then I realized like, at least for me,

01:53:53.580 | that the hooks were not even for my body type,

01:53:56.760 | for my style, for the way I approach things,

01:53:59.300 | they were not even important at all.

01:54:01.020 | - They're supplemental for the most part.

01:54:02.340 | - Yeah, so they were there for the points,

01:54:04.340 | but I can establish a huge amount of control.

01:54:07.180 | In fact, the hooks were,

01:54:10.860 | you were talking about like illusion of choice.

01:54:13.220 | It almost made people panic a lot more

01:54:17.440 | when you were like fighting for it

01:54:18.740 | or establishing that kind of control.

01:54:20.140 | They were a lot less panicked when the hooks weren't involved

01:54:24.180 | even though they should be a lot more panicked.

01:54:25.980 | Anyway, I realized a lot of those kinds of things,

01:54:28.820 | especially that had to do with judo

01:54:30.220 | because so much of judo on the ground

01:54:33.620 | is centered around aggressive, efficient,

01:54:36.460 | very fast choking, different kinds of clock chokes

01:54:39.740 | and all that kind of stuff.

01:54:41.260 | - What a brilliant thing that is only gonna start

01:54:43.060 | to make its way into jiu-jitsu coming up,

01:54:44.620 | but like the judo style approach to like clock choking,

01:54:47.100 | triangling from the top of the turtle and stuff,

01:54:49.540 | so powerful.

01:54:50.500 | - Yeah, and there's something about judo

01:54:53.480 | that emphasizes obviously due to the rules, the urgency.

01:54:57.420 | So you only do techniques that go fast.

01:55:00.300 | And then the other thing is,

01:55:02.140 | which I guess jiu-jitsu emphasizes too,

01:55:05.300 | but judo really does, which is the transition.

01:55:10.220 | So like while the person's flying in the air

01:55:12.300 | is the easiest time.

01:55:14.100 | I mean, this is like Ryan Hall type of shit,

01:55:15.980 | which is like, why not put in your submissions

01:55:20.900 | or positional control while they're in the air?

01:55:23.940 | - If you could, why would you not, right?

01:55:26.060 | - Yeah, so you should be-- - Oh, well, I don't throw well.

01:55:27.420 | Well, learn how to throw and then do it.

01:55:29.660 | - And so you should think, I mean, in the transition,

01:55:32.580 | when they're flying is the easiest time to put in stuff.

01:55:35.180 | And that's when you think about chokes,

01:55:37.900 | as you're throwing, you should be thinking about the choke

01:55:40.740 | and then everything becomes a lot easier.

01:55:42.940 | - You ever see Flavio Canto?

01:55:44.340 | Man, Brazilian judoka is so cool.

01:55:48.700 | Like with stuff like that.

01:55:49.660 | - Yeah, exactly.

01:55:51.300 | But that has to do with the first starting principle

01:55:53.580 | of like, stop thinking this as a two phase game

01:55:57.420 | of standing and then ground.

01:56:00.220 | Start thinking about like the standing and the ground.

01:56:03.820 | The standing comes before and the ground comes after,

01:56:05.740 | but everything happens in a transition.

01:56:07.740 | - Well, unless you're attacking, what is the art of war?

01:56:09.700 | Like we all like, everyone's like,

01:56:10.980 | oh yeah, the art of war, oh yes, yes, yes.

01:56:12.540 | And then they immediately throw it away

01:56:14.060 | and then fight like a fricking barbarian.

01:56:16.340 | But I mean like, I'm serious.

01:56:18.580 | But you know, how many people quote stuff

01:56:20.980 | and then like, you know, it's like,

01:56:22.700 | what is it, the family guy joke?

01:56:23.860 | Or they're like, you know, quoting Jesus

01:56:25.300 | and Jesus walks in, he's like,

01:56:26.300 | you're not listening to my work,

01:56:27.140 | what are you talking about?

01:56:27.980 | And anyway, basically, you know, like what do you,

01:56:32.260 | like the art of war, you know, one of the things

01:56:33.700 | it's like the only thing that you can be sure

01:56:35.540 | of being successful in attacking

01:56:37.100 | is something that's undefended.

01:56:39.060 | We're like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:56:39.900 | But you know, in a fight though, they're defended.

01:56:42.500 | Well, are they?

01:56:44.300 | There's moments all the time

01:56:45.660 | where I'm borderline defenseless.

01:56:47.260 | And if you were to attack at that moment,

01:56:49.600 | if you could see it and then seize the moment,

01:56:51.700 | if you were capable of both,

01:56:53.300 | you should not only expect to be successful,

01:56:54.980 | you should be damn sure you're gonna be successful.

01:56:56.260 | And more important than that, you'll be successful.

01:56:58.020 | And even if somehow not, you won't be countered.

01:57:00.140 | And I guess like, that's the trick of almost all,

01:57:04.260 | all like conflict, right?

01:57:05.940 | It's like showing up when the other person's,

01:57:07.700 | you know, taking a nap.

01:57:09.100 | And then it's so funny, like we take like a protracted war.

01:57:11.820 | It's like, oh, it takes five years.

01:57:13.220 | And there's, you know, lulls and there's a battle this month

01:57:15.620 | but then there's a couple of weeks and another battle.

01:57:17.080 | It's like, well, if you just shrink that down,

01:57:18.600 | it's the microcosm, macrocosm idea.

01:57:20.700 | That same thing, that whole war is taking place

01:57:22.700 | in five minutes or 10 minutes or 15 minutes.

01:57:24.700 | And there's moments of lulls of person

01:57:27.100 | effectively going for a snack, you know,

01:57:29.260 | being like, you know, in a horror movie, like,

01:57:30.780 | hey guys, I'm gonna go get a beer from the,

01:57:32.300 | from around the way, like I'm dead for sure.

01:57:34.140 | So anyway.

01:57:35.700 | - Is there, on this particular instructional,

01:57:38.800 | if you can convert it to words,

01:57:40.600 | you talk about finishing the submission.

01:57:43.780 | Is there some interesting insights

01:57:47.040 | that you find beautiful or profound

01:57:49.060 | about finishing the rear naked choke

01:57:51.740 | or just finishing the submissions for the back control?

01:57:54.300 | Is there something like, you know,

01:57:56.120 | you talk about the squeeze and the crush

01:57:58.380 | and all these kinds of principles.

01:58:00.080 | Is there something about control,

01:58:03.340 | about the process of finishing

01:58:05.780 | that you find especially profound about this position?

01:58:09.380 | - Absolutely.

01:58:10.220 | The opposite of one profound truth

01:58:11.860 | can be another profound truth.

01:58:13.460 | So like, it's, I do--

01:58:17.740 | - Did Jesus say that?

01:58:18.580 | - No, I don't, I actually was a guy on Tumblr,

01:58:21.540 | but yeah, it was really, really cool.

01:58:24.340 | There was like a tree in the background,

01:58:26.340 | but anyway, but so let's say like,

01:58:30.060 | I'll use examples like first off,

01:58:32.540 | I saw someone finishing a 50/50 heel hook

01:58:35.120 | in the UFC one promo.

01:58:37.020 | It was like some chubby dude in a karate,

01:58:39.220 | like inside heel hook and another dude.

01:58:41.100 | And you go, huh?

01:58:43.900 | Well, I didn't know they were doing that back then,

01:58:45.460 | at least, and whether they were doing it all.

01:58:46.780 | How many times does someone do something

01:58:49.140 | and then that works and then we go,

01:58:51.140 | okay, cool versus, hey, maybe we should do that all the time.

01:58:53.500 | So anyway, how long were we all taught to do the seatbelt

01:58:56.060 | the way we all do the seatbelt in Jiu-Jitsu?

01:58:58.300 | Like long time, why?

01:58:59.420 | Works, in fact, it works so well.

01:59:02.000 | And it was so, it was then the people who used it

01:59:05.060 | were so prolific that we went,

01:59:07.780 | well, solve that one, good to go.

01:59:10.140 | All right, no more thinking.

01:59:11.940 | And then you go, imagine you were to like the Merkel

01:59:14.180 | and Merkel flip all those positions

01:59:15.780 | that were showing in the DVD,

01:59:17.180 | which is pretty much whatever the heck it is,

01:59:18.940 | and all the digital VD.

01:59:21.760 | No, not VD, I don't want that.

01:59:24.540 | Digital video something.

01:59:26.260 | But basically recognizing that doing it on the wrong side

01:59:31.180 | is at least as effective.

01:59:33.020 | Doesn't mean that the other side wasn't good.

01:59:34.960 | There could be something

01:59:35.800 | that's the literal borderline opposite of that.

01:59:38.500 | And you go, huh, well, that's something.

01:59:42.700 | Like imagine, like I would say almost all of these things,

01:59:45.020 | all the tactics and all the strategies.

01:59:46.500 | So I guess that was something that we came to,

01:59:48.300 | like training in the gym, like a year ago maybe?

01:59:51.180 | I've been playing with since, and it's just, it's huge.

01:59:52.820 | I'm like, oh wait, so let me get this straight.

01:59:54.060 | First off, I can use my strong side seatbelt,

01:59:55.780 | my right arm over the shoulder all the time.

01:59:58.380 | Well, that's really helpful

01:59:59.460 | because that's a lot better than my left.

02:00:00.740 | I can do both sides of my left,

02:00:01.620 | but if I had to bet my life on being able to finish it,

02:00:03.940 | I would want my right arm over.

02:00:05.220 | Huh, everything that's a tactic or a strategy

02:00:07.780 | evolved from an idea.

02:00:08.720 | Like capitalism's an idea.

02:00:10.580 | You know, anarchy is an idea.

02:00:11.860 | And then it becomes, well, what does that all mean?

02:00:13.460 | What are the consequences?

02:00:14.580 | What was the fallout of all this, right?

02:00:16.100 | So what if we start with jujitsu, the idea of the guard,

02:00:19.940 | right, and we go, well, I mean, Wendy, why do you use

02:00:22.100 | the guard?

02:00:22.920 | Northern martial art really has developed the guard

02:00:25.420 | in the same way that jujitsu has.

02:00:26.900 | Well, what is the guard?

02:00:27.740 | A guard's a defensive idea where you're kind of

02:00:29.740 | on your back to some extent or another,

02:00:31.980 | and you're using your legs as a wall between you

02:00:33.820 | and the other person, and the other guy represents danger.

02:00:36.340 | And you're like, yeah, yeah, that's a great idea.

02:00:38.300 | Is it?

02:00:39.460 | I mean, it clearly works, at least to a certain extent,

02:00:41.620 | but where do I want to put my legs when I want to get up?

02:00:44.980 | Not on the other dude.

02:00:45.820 | I'm trying to put them on things on the floor.

02:00:47.580 | If I want to generate a ton of power,

02:00:49.660 | what's the first thing I do with my feet?

02:00:51.100 | I anchor them to the floor.

02:00:52.380 | Drive for a punch, you name it.

02:00:53.740 | Move away, jump, dart, you name it.

02:00:56.280 | So does it mean that that's a terrible idea

02:00:58.680 | to be on your back?

02:00:59.520 | No, clearly it works, and clearly it,

02:01:01.740 | a little phrase, has function.

02:01:03.300 | But what if the function that we're giving it,

02:01:04.980 | and how much focus we're assigning to it

02:01:08.300 | is disproportionate to its effectiveness?

02:01:11.280 | Maybe, what if it's not a good idea?

02:01:13.180 | I'm not saying it's not a good idea, but what if it wasn't?

02:01:15.060 | That's a foundational idea of jujitsu.

02:01:16.940 | And then how much, because no one questions that foundation,

02:01:20.260 | how much innovation is built on top of the idea,

02:01:22.980 | well, of course I want to be,

02:01:24.300 | my being on my back is an okay position.

02:01:25.940 | So now they're innovating,

02:01:27.300 | but they're innovating within a closed system

02:01:29.180 | that they don't even, they think they're innovating

02:01:30.620 | in like, in this open space of,

02:01:32.500 | oh my God, it could be anything,

02:01:33.580 | when in reality, it could be anything within this little set.

02:01:36.420 | But you don't realize that you're in a set.

02:01:37.820 | You don't realize that you're in a box.

02:01:39.460 | There would be answers that would become

02:01:40.880 | so immediately apparent to you

02:01:42.640 | if you were willing to look outside of that,

02:01:44.760 | but you'll literally never even look over to your left

02:01:47.280 | because you don't even realize the left exists.

02:01:49.920 | - Do you think there's a lot of places in jujitsu,

02:01:52.360 | whether it's back control or generally guards

02:01:54.480 | and all the different positions,

02:01:55.960 | where there's a lot of space,

02:01:58.360 | like a lot to be discovered

02:02:01.760 | by questioning the basic assumptions?

02:02:03.840 | Maybe if you can give examples of like back control,

02:02:06.200 | like is there something you've discovered that's like--

02:02:08.160 | - Merkle versus seatbelt.

02:02:09.700 | - What's Merkle, what's seatbelt?

02:02:10.820 | - Seatbelt is a right arm over the shoulder,

02:02:13.140 | left arm under the arm.

02:02:14.900 | I'm on the same side as my choking arm.

02:02:17.620 | Merkle is just, I do the same thing.

02:02:19.300 | I don't even adjust my hands.

02:02:20.620 | I walk myself over to the left side.

02:02:22.100 | I'm on the opposite side.

02:02:23.020 | It's actually a more powerful position.

02:02:24.340 | - Yeah, for people listening

02:02:25.300 | or for people who might not know,

02:02:26.820 | jujitsu is a seatbelt is a control.

02:02:30.260 | We're talking about when one person

02:02:32.380 | is on the back of another person,

02:02:34.100 | which is a really dominant position in jujitsu,

02:02:36.500 | seatbelt is a, I guess, widely accepted way of holding--

02:02:41.500 | - Best practices almost.

02:02:42.680 | - Best practices, yeah, and it's worked so well.

02:02:45.320 | So it's a one arm over, one arm under,

02:02:49.200 | and there's a certain side you're supposed to be on

02:02:52.480 | when you're on the back.

02:02:53.800 | Everyone teaches there's a choking arm

02:02:56.000 | that's the arm that's over,

02:02:57.600 | and your body's supposed to be

02:02:58.760 | on a certain side relative to that.

02:03:01.040 | And then Ryan is describing questioning

02:03:04.040 | these basic assumptions

02:03:06.220 | about which side you're supposed to be on.

02:03:07.660 | - And let's say that's even just a mid-level assumption.

02:03:09.740 | It's not even a first principles assumption,

02:03:11.620 | but it's getting there.

02:03:13.700 | But let's just say for sake of argument,

02:03:15.660 | it goes a lot deeper maybe.

02:03:17.420 | I think most of the innovation that I see is not innovation.

02:03:21.720 | It's basically changing the color of a car

02:03:24.780 | or polishing the window a little bit.

02:03:27.220 | We're like, "Hey, you made it a little bit different.

02:03:29.540 | "You made it a little bit better."

02:03:30.860 | It's like, "Oh man, what if I did the same guard

02:03:32.680 | "and then grab the lapel?"

02:03:34.020 | I'm not saying that's bad,

02:03:35.260 | but you're not fundamentally changing anything.

02:03:37.180 | I think most of the big seismic shifts

02:03:39.100 | that we see in almost anything come from,

02:03:41.100 | "Hey, that thing we thought was right was wrong,"

02:03:44.720 | rather than, "Not only is it right, it's even righter."

02:03:48.060 | And you're like, "It's not wrong, it's not bad."

02:03:49.580 | But it's like, "Oh man, let's say for instance,

02:03:52.360 | "I didn't make the triangle better,

02:03:53.320 | "but let's say I made the triangle a little bit better

02:03:54.820 | "than it was, or than it was taught."

02:03:56.840 | I mean, you can call it innovation.

02:04:00.060 | I don't know, man.

02:04:00.880 | It's not like the person that said,

02:04:01.780 | "Hey, have you guys ever heard of a triangle before

02:04:03.560 | "and came up with that?"

02:04:04.460 | We're like, "That's on the list.

02:04:06.500 | "You can do this thing to people?

02:04:07.580 | "Are you kidding me?"

02:04:08.500 | Can you imagine you invented the straight right hand?

02:04:11.540 | You'd be like one punch man.

02:04:12.580 | You can walk around and just lay low

02:04:14.580 | every single person you got into a fight with,

02:04:16.220 | 'cause it didn't even occur to them

02:04:17.420 | to hit you with their backhand.

02:04:19.500 | In a world full of jabbers, you throw your backhand.

02:04:22.240 | You're gonna kill people.

02:04:23.500 | So basically--

02:04:24.340 | - Well, but by the way, I mean, just to pause on that,

02:04:26.980 | first of all, somebody did invent the triangle probably.

02:04:29.700 | - For sure.

02:04:30.520 | - It's not a trivial thing once you think--

02:04:32.180 | - No.

02:04:33.020 | How many of these giant things that we all go like,

02:04:35.160 | "Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, we all use that now."

02:04:36.540 | Can you imagine you have triangles and heel hooks

02:04:38.800 | and rear naked chokes and I don't have those?

02:04:41.820 | You're unbeatable, you're borderline.

02:04:42.660 | I mean, that's why we all experience,

02:04:44.740 | every single one of us, particularly those of us,

02:04:46.140 | I mean, when did you first start training legs?

02:04:48.820 | - 12, 13 years.

02:04:50.020 | Well, let's not count wrestling,

02:04:51.940 | but 13 years ago with jiu-jitsu.

02:04:53.780 | - Right on.

02:04:54.620 | So let's say about that time where particularly

02:04:55.980 | it was still kind of underground-y,

02:04:58.540 | and you're like, "Hey, we all experienced

02:05:00.300 | "being a relative, like a mid-level white belt

02:05:03.620 | "and being able to easily beat up all our friends."

02:05:06.360 | Because everyone wrestled other buddies.

02:05:07.760 | And it was one of those ones where like,

02:05:09.240 | "They don't have weapons to end the fight.

02:05:11.480 | "You have weapons to end the fight."

02:05:13.880 | That's such a crazy, asymmetric advantage

02:05:18.880 | that if you lose, it's on you now, man.

02:05:22.040 | Next time it's like, "I've got this rifle

02:05:25.180 | "and you have nothing."

02:05:26.100 | And I decide to put it on my back

02:05:27.360 | and then run over and try to karate chop.

02:05:28.640 | You're like, "Okay, next time,

02:05:30.360 | "just make sure you use the rifle, bud."

02:05:31.920 | I'm like, "Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, I should do that."

02:05:33.400 | - Yeah, it's kind of fascinating.

02:05:35.240 | I mean, everything you're describing,

02:05:37.080 | there's a fascinating tension between

02:05:40.200 | whenever I show people for the first time

02:05:41.760 | what a triangle is, just like regular people.

02:05:44.000 | It's like they're discovering,

02:05:46.280 | it's like, "Oh, okay, that's interesting."

02:05:47.960 | I mean, MMA has changed that,

02:05:49.160 | but people haven't watched MMA.

02:05:51.580 | That's an interesting move.

02:05:52.720 | It doesn't make sense why that would be a choke.

02:05:54.880 | And they kind of quickly accept that that's a thing

02:05:59.360 | and they accept the basics without questioning,

02:06:02.640 | wait a minute, what's actually being choked?

02:06:05.460 | How is it that a shoulder of a person can do the choking?

02:06:11.720 | I'm not sure I fully questioned

02:06:15.320 | the fundamentals of all of that.

02:06:16.760 | - I claim I have either.

02:06:17.880 | - What exactly is the blood supply that's being cut off?

02:06:21.560 | What is the anatomy and the physiology of all of that?

02:06:24.640 | How does this work?

02:06:25.460 | And if you understood all that, what else can we do here?

02:06:27.360 | - Yeah, what else can we do here?

02:06:28.720 | That's the really important thing.

02:06:30.000 | - But if I'm an end user,

02:06:31.640 | which almost everyone is of almost anything,

02:06:33.320 | I'm serious, where I'm like,

02:06:34.800 | I think about stuff in my life,

02:06:35.800 | the only things I really think about

02:06:37.000 | are like martial arts and martial arts strategy

02:06:39.240 | and I don't know, some other,

02:06:40.840 | a couple of other things, but not much.

02:06:42.760 | And anything else in my life is borderline unexamined.

02:06:46.160 | And I like to think that if I put a lot of effort

02:06:47.800 | in something, I'd like to think that I could figure

02:06:49.480 | at least some things out about it.

02:06:50.800 | But I figured out almost nothing about anything in my life

02:06:53.160 | because I haven't even looked.

02:06:54.760 | And if you're an end user, what are you capable of

02:06:57.840 | versus you can literally alter the source code.

02:07:00.840 | You are Neo in the fricking matrix.

02:07:02.840 | If you can alter the code and I can't.

02:07:04.920 | And it's like, we think, ah, ha, ha, ha.

02:07:07.000 | But imagine you are a world-class anything

02:07:10.680 | or even not even world-class, forget it.

02:07:11.920 | Like a purple belt compared to a white belt

02:07:13.800 | or compared to a no belt might as well be John Jones

02:07:16.080 | or Marcello Garcia.

02:07:16.920 | You're gonna beat them up comparably bad.

02:07:18.920 | So that actually is a common thing

02:07:21.880 | where people can't tell the difference between levels.

02:07:23.400 | They're like, oh man, I've trained

02:07:24.240 | with my black belt instructor.

02:07:25.120 | How much better could so-and-so be?

02:07:26.360 | And like so much better you're gonna have a hard time

02:07:29.440 | wrapping your head around it.

02:07:30.320 | I remember when I first trained with Marcello Garcia

02:07:32.120 | in 2007, I was a decent purple belt.

02:07:34.360 | And of course he mollywhacked me very gently.

02:07:36.320 | And then training him again in 2008,

02:07:39.360 | I was definitely better.

02:07:40.360 | I won the Gi and No Gi Worlds that year at purple belt.

02:07:43.000 | So definitely for the record,

02:07:44.280 | I'm definitely not a Jiu-Jitsu world champion.

02:07:45.560 | I won the purple belt, but like,

02:07:46.800 | that's not the same as winning a black belt.

02:07:48.520 | And a tough accomplishment,

02:07:50.440 | but not in the same thing at all.

02:07:51.960 | But anyway, I was definitely better.

02:07:54.960 | He beat me up just the same.

02:07:55.960 | I'm like, okay.

02:07:57.640 | 2009, I was a lot better.

02:07:59.720 | Got a medal at ADCC that time.

02:08:01.320 | Won the trials, crushed everybody.

02:08:03.240 | Like submitted everybody, like bop, bop, bop, bop.

02:08:06.720 | Trained with Marcello Garcia.

02:08:08.640 | It was worse.

02:08:09.840 | And 2010, trained with Marcello Garcia, same, same.

02:08:13.440 | So the idea was I wouldn't be able to tell you

02:08:17.200 | the difference, the outcome difference was the same

02:08:20.000 | in all of these rounds.

02:08:20.840 | I was significantly more experienced and more adept

02:08:23.520 | each time that this occurred.

02:08:25.480 | But it was like, how many number of times

02:08:27.240 | did this person submit you or pass your guard in the round?

02:08:29.000 | I'm like, I don't know, probably like,

02:08:30.280 | let's say five each one.

02:08:31.480 | 'Cause it's a brief period of time.

02:08:33.040 | And let's say it was three on one, six on another.

02:08:34.680 | I'm like, whatever, it's comparable.

02:08:35.640 | It's six on one, half dozen.

02:08:37.760 | Would I be able to easily tell the difference?

02:08:40.360 | No, I would just say, I know in concept

02:08:42.320 | that he's way better.

02:08:43.760 | So much better, but there's plenty of other people

02:08:45.760 | that could have beaten me just as bad as Marcello did

02:08:47.840 | when I was a purple belt or when I was a brown belt.

02:08:49.960 | And maybe I would watch Marcello walk through

02:08:51.680 | like their borderline not there.

02:08:53.320 | So it's neat.

02:08:54.360 | Like if you, that's back to kind of what I was talking about

02:08:57.080 | about certain people beginning to really like peel back

02:08:59.920 | some of what's really special about the martial arts

02:09:03.280 | or any activity I presume,

02:09:05.000 | is they get to a level of understanding and depth

02:09:08.000 | that they're playing with like the,

02:09:09.320 | almost the reality of that thing.

02:09:11.600 | And I'm playing by rules that are not rules.

02:09:14.240 | I'm not even one of the, to use a matrix analogy,

02:09:16.680 | I'm not even an agent, which is the best version

02:09:18.920 | of something playing by the rules.

02:09:20.520 | - Yes.

02:09:21.360 | - I'm like one of the regular people

02:09:22.800 | or one of the regular people in that got out of the matrix.

02:09:25.480 | So I'm like, oh, I'm cool.

02:09:26.340 | But when I fight an agent, I lose.

02:09:28.320 | 'Cause we're both in the rules,

02:09:29.880 | but they just play them to the bone and I'm just here.

02:09:32.680 | Well, and then the agent encounters Neo

02:09:34.760 | and they can do nothing.

02:09:36.160 | You're like, why?

02:09:37.000 | Because he's operating outside of what the rules are,

02:09:39.000 | but not really what the rules are,

02:09:40.200 | what they perceive to be the rules are clearly.

02:09:42.320 | So anyway, I guess that's kind of my point

02:09:43.640 | about Marcello or certain other people

02:09:45.120 | that are doing things where you go,

02:09:46.120 | that doesn't even seem real.

02:09:48.360 | It doesn't seem real to me

02:09:49.480 | because I don't understand what's going on.

02:09:51.320 | And I guess if we can get down to base assumptions,

02:09:53.680 | if we can constantly strip away, strip away, strip away,

02:09:56.840 | let's say we always thought that turning left was right,

02:09:59.080 | was correct, and it turns out that turning right

02:10:00.880 | was correct, you change your life.

02:10:03.000 | - Yeah.

02:10:03.900 | It's a, what is it, Socrates said,

02:10:05.840 | the unexamined life is not worth living.

02:10:08.240 | So you just basically have to rigorously

02:10:10.800 | just constantly examine every assumption

02:10:13.480 | over and over and over.

02:10:14.400 | - But doesn't that give your life meaning

02:10:15.960 | to come back to the struggle, to come back to free will,

02:10:18.160 | to come back to what if we could strip all that away?

02:10:20.120 | All right, cool, all right,

02:10:21.240 | let me just stick the needle in my arm and that's that.

02:10:23.480 | - Yeah.

02:10:24.440 | No, I mean, that constant striving for understanding

02:10:29.440 | yet another lower layer of the simulation we're living in

02:10:34.480 | is something that's actually deeply fulfilling

02:10:38.360 | that I don't know if it's genetically built in,

02:10:40.320 | but there's something about that striving to understand

02:10:43.120 | that seems to be deeply human.

02:10:45.880 | - But it's funny, what makes it human?

02:10:47.560 | We don't talk about the soul anymore, man.

02:10:49.240 | I went to Catholic school as a kid.

02:10:50.920 | Whether you buy into all that stuff or not,

02:10:52.840 | you're like, what about the soul of a person,

02:10:55.440 | the spirit of a people, the spirit of a nation,

02:10:58.880 | anywhere, the spirit of humanity?

02:11:00.840 | We don't, we talk about everything

02:11:02.360 | like it's this quantifiable thing

02:11:04.160 | when maybe certain things are, maybe everything is,

02:11:06.440 | but then what happens if there's things

02:11:07.880 | that just aren't quantifiable,

02:11:09.920 | that nothing in our understanding can or will ever explain?

02:11:13.080 | And that doesn't mean that that should be our assumption.

02:11:14.480 | It's for your assumption that we can explain everything

02:11:15.960 | and let's get to the dang bottom, peel, peel, peel, peel.

02:11:18.400 | But what if there is actually something

02:11:20.120 | that we need challenge for?

02:11:24.360 | - Yeah, well- - And we could be looking

02:11:25.440 | in the wrong place by going, oh, is it in the genes?

02:11:28.160 | Maybe it is.

02:11:29.000 | Again, I'm not saying we're looking in the wrong place.

02:11:30.240 | I wouldn't know anything, I do karate.

02:11:31.680 | But basically, not even well, but yeah,

02:11:35.800 | we do karate, mediocre, just ask Raymond Daniels

02:11:37.840 | or Steven Thompson.

02:11:38.680 | But I guess to come back though, you just-

02:11:41.120 | - Are you a yellow belt, yeah, or are you-

02:11:43.160 | - Man, I actually have, did you ever see

02:11:44.320 | the Seinfeld episode where Kramer fights the kids?

02:11:47.360 | Yeah, I did that at Raymond Daniels School

02:11:49.000 | under the kids, kids one in class,

02:11:51.320 | in addition to the alleyway.

02:11:53.200 | - Oh. (laughs)

02:11:54.040 | - Yeah.

02:11:54.880 | - They finished it off afterwards.

02:11:55.880 | - Yeah, exactly, when I was on my last legs.

02:11:58.160 | But yeah, I would just, maybe, it's funny.

02:12:02.240 | I feel like there's something deeply missing

02:12:04.120 | from public understanding and more than,

02:12:07.120 | it's almost like the idea that we can figure everything out,

02:12:09.920 | which I deeply believe in, but also the possibility

02:12:12.560 | that there's some things that we'll never really see

02:12:14.800 | and some things we'll never understand.

02:12:15.920 | And there's something, like you said, uniquely human

02:12:18.720 | about the human experience,

02:12:20.440 | that even if I had the power to change,

02:12:22.720 | I don't wanna fuck with it, man.

02:12:25.400 | I don't wanna change that thing.

02:12:27.160 | Oh yeah, well, wouldn't it be great

02:12:28.680 | if we just immediately knew the outcome of everything

02:12:31.200 | and you just press this button, you're like,

02:12:32.480 | oh, that's gonna, what's the point of living life then?

02:12:34.320 | Even if you could do it, it's the,

02:12:35.920 | and you're seeing Jurassic, well, I'll leave you be,

02:12:37.200 | sorry, I know what I'm talking about.

02:12:38.320 | Ian Malcolm, Jurassic Park, Jeff Goldblum, right?

02:12:40.720 | Life finds a way.

02:12:43.400 | But we were so concerned with whether or not we could,

02:12:46.480 | we didn't stop to think whether or not we should.

02:12:48.920 | Maybe?

02:12:50.880 | - I think there's, I mean, it's a deeply human thing,

02:12:54.520 | but it's also a really useful thing to always kind of assume

02:12:58.520 | that there's this giant thing that you don't understand.

02:13:01.720 | So you can forever be striving to understand,

02:13:04.560 | because that process gives you meaning,

02:13:08.080 | but also keeps making you better.

02:13:10.320 | Like thinking that, actually even just thinking

02:13:12.720 | that you can't understand everything

02:13:15.320 | will lead you to stop too early.

02:13:18.700 | So like, I think there's something to,

02:13:23.160 | whether it's the soul or whether it's like religious stuff,

02:13:25.960 | like assuming that there's this thing

02:13:28.320 | that you cannot possibly understand

02:13:30.360 | is a really good assumption under which to operate

02:13:33.400 | and under which to do this first principles kind of thinking

02:13:36.160 | 'cause you can just keep digging and keep digging,

02:13:38.160 | keep digging, even when it seems like

02:13:40.040 | you're at the bottom 'cause you don't fucking know

02:13:41.720 | if you're at the bottom or not.

02:13:43.000 | - And back to your original, back to one of our,

02:13:44.920 | I guess our other kind of tangents was,

02:13:47.400 | that comes back to everyone's a human being.

02:13:49.360 | The smartest human being in the history of humanity

02:13:52.520 | is so hilariously weak, like short-lived and not intelligent.

02:13:57.520 | - You can be yourself, bro.

02:13:58.720 | - I understand, I didn't say,

02:13:59.760 | no, I'm not saying comparison to me.

02:14:01.040 | In comparison to me, everyone is awesome,

02:14:02.960 | but that's why I don't do the goat thing.

02:14:05.080 | But basically, it's just on a cosmic level.

02:14:09.440 | Can you imagine if you were a vampire,

02:14:10.760 | you're like 900 years old, how much you would seem,

02:14:12.880 | you would seem like a lowercase g god to people.

02:14:15.960 | You'd be like, how could you know so much?

02:14:18.640 | How can you have such a long view perspective?

02:14:20.600 | It would be insane.

02:14:21.920 | So I mean, it seems like we're talking about AI now, right?

02:14:24.440 | We're creating things that are infinitely smarter

02:14:26.640 | than us effectively and live all this time,

02:14:28.560 | and it's probably gonna do what we tell it to do, right?

02:14:31.440 | - No, it's probably, well, I hope it keeps us around.

02:14:34.400 | Do you, by the way, think about AI

02:14:37.320 | and the existential threats?

02:14:39.320 | Speaking of gods, are you,

02:14:42.280 | is this whole technological world,

02:14:44.680 | we talked about social networks

02:14:45.920 | and this increasing power of technology around us,

02:14:49.680 | we ourselves are becoming less human

02:14:51.760 | because we keep relying on technology more and more.

02:14:56.600 | So we're becoming kinds of cyborgs,

02:14:59.080 | but also there's a future that's quite possible

02:15:03.800 | where the technology becomes smarter

02:15:06.840 | and more powerful than us humans

02:15:09.600 | and starts having a life of its own

02:15:14.400 | in ways that perhaps we don't imagine as human beings.

02:15:16.920 | I don't just mean like two-legged robots walking around

02:15:20.280 | and being humans but smarter.

02:15:22.280 | I mean like an intelligent life

02:15:24.560 | that's beyond and fundamentally different

02:15:33.080 | than our human life.

02:15:34.800 | It's infinite, it's--

02:15:37.520 | - Also creating a new species, yeah?

02:15:38.880 | - Yeah, a new kind of species,

02:15:41.400 | not even just a new species.

02:15:42.920 | We're talking about systems,

02:15:43.840 | but it lives in the space of information.

02:15:47.440 | It lives in a different time scale

02:15:50.640 | and a different scale of all sorts, spatial scale.

02:15:53.840 | It operate, like we spoke about individuals,

02:15:57.680 | it doesn't operate in the sense of a single individual.

02:16:00.120 | Like it's not embodied,

02:16:02.440 | so it's not like a thing that walks around

02:16:04.760 | and it looks at stuff and it consumes the world.

02:16:08.040 | It's able to do much larger scale sensing

02:16:11.920 | of the environment around it, all that kind of stuff.

02:16:14.640 | - I can barely even try to,

02:16:16.280 | I can barely even conceive of what that would be like.

02:16:18.040 | - Are you scared or are you excited?

02:16:20.560 | - I don't define scared or excited.

02:16:23.320 | I feel like I tend to define them the same way

02:16:26.080 | where I'm like, I guess I'm--

02:16:29.560 | - Kind of like before karaoke, it's the same--

02:16:32.240 | - Well, that's actually kind of my happy place.

02:16:34.040 | It's not so much everyone else's.

02:16:36.560 | Everyone else is probably heading for the door

02:16:38.720 | at that point, but it's--

02:16:40.120 | - While you're doing it or leading up to the karaoke session?

02:16:43.600 | - Well, it depends whether or not they know it's me.

02:16:46.240 | If they know it's me, that's before I start.

02:16:48.080 | If they're like, who's that guy?

02:16:49.600 | Then they're like halfway through the song,

02:16:50.880 | they're already throwing their beer.

02:16:52.720 | - What category is a song or a particular song

02:16:54.880 | are we talking about in terms of your happy place?

02:16:57.160 | - Oh man, are you kidding me?

02:16:58.160 | I mean, obviously "Bohemian Rhapsody."

02:16:59.640 | I mean, there's no question because--

02:17:00.640 | - Really? - Oh yeah,

02:17:01.480 | so I don't have to sing it here?

02:17:02.320 | It's that, it's like, remember, can I beat Khabib?

02:17:04.000 | Oh yeah, of course, is he here?

02:17:05.000 | No?

02:17:05.840 | Yeah, then yeah, yeah.

02:17:06.720 | All right, if he's here, no, then I--

02:17:08.440 | - I have a torn, I have torn feelings about "Bohemian Rhapsody"

02:17:12.120 | 'cause I like the beginning part, the sadness.

02:17:13.960 | I like the solo, the heartbreak.

02:17:16.760 | But the second part, I understand it,

02:17:18.320 | but it's so ridiculous. - It gets ridiculous.

02:17:20.120 | - It's so ridiculous, it ruins it for me.

02:17:21.920 | - But it's more about flexing on people,

02:17:23.360 | I think, if you can actually hit that near the falsetto.

02:17:26.920 | - Yeah, so it's not, okay,

02:17:30.160 | so you appreciate not for the musical beauty

02:17:33.000 | and complexity of the song, you just like to flex on people.

02:17:35.160 | - Well, 'cause like for all, yeah,

02:17:36.160 | like what's the purpose of anything

02:17:38.000 | except for just to let everyone know

02:17:39.920 | that you think you're cool?

02:17:41.280 | - And there's no better way of doing that than karaoke.

02:17:45.600 | So I'm not sure why I brought up karaoke.

02:17:47.360 | - Captive audience, yeah, exactly.

02:17:48.960 | - Oh, about fear and excitement of artificial intelligence.

02:17:51.600 | - I mean, you know me, I don't know anything about,

02:17:53.600 | I just, basically, I don't understand

02:17:56.640 | the implications of any of this.

02:17:58.280 | I would just say that like radically altering

02:18:00.800 | what it means to be human

02:18:01.920 | in such an unbelievably short period of time

02:18:03.920 | just seems like such a crazy thing.

02:18:06.160 | And also, it's not like we're,

02:18:07.560 | I can't remember who said this to me recently,

02:18:08.960 | might have been you, I can't remember,

02:18:10.120 | so this is definitely not my idea,

02:18:11.600 | but we're not even going,

02:18:14.440 | hey, would you like to opt in, everyone?

02:18:17.920 | Everyone is being opted in, you know?

02:18:20.400 | And particularly when you wanna talk about

02:18:22.000 | like large-scale robotics or large-scale AI,

02:18:24.640 | like the world is changing.

02:18:25.880 | People in Senegal are opting in right now

02:18:28.120 | without realizing it.

02:18:29.040 | It's not even like, and again,

02:18:29.960 | I don't mean to pick on Senegal,

02:18:31.080 | it's just whatever country comes up to mind,

02:18:32.680 | but that's in the developing world.

02:18:33.840 | But basically, you know,

02:18:36.280 | recognizing that this huge shift is coming,

02:18:40.840 | we have no idea that this is a decent idea.

02:18:42.760 | And also, something else I've always been considering

02:18:45.000 | is you think about most of the really awful, awful,

02:18:49.160 | awful things that have done in history,

02:18:51.240 | large-scale slavery, you name it.

02:18:54.280 | It didn't, people say that it came from this motivation

02:18:57.520 | or that motivation.

02:18:58.360 | Maybe it did, maybe it didn't.

02:18:59.480 | Fundamentally, the issue, at least in my mind,

02:19:01.360 | I'm not a historian, power differential.

02:19:04.080 | If you and I can't contest, we don't contend,

02:19:08.820 | it's not like we fight and you might win or we fight,

02:19:11.200 | even you'll win comfortably.

02:19:12.720 | It's you are so unbelievably powerful compared to me

02:19:15.960 | that there's nothing I can do to stop you.

02:19:18.800 | That seems like a recipe for something

02:19:20.360 | really, really not great happening.

02:19:22.040 | Because if you think about like, you know,

02:19:24.800 | European countries encountering each other,

02:19:26.560 | I'm just speculating, I don't know anything about history,

02:19:28.080 | but let's say countries that can contend with one another

02:19:31.080 | versus countries that can't.

02:19:34.280 | Let's say an alien species, alien race shows up right now.

02:19:37.880 | We don't want that.

02:19:38.720 | I think Stephen Hawking said that.

02:19:39.760 | That makes perfect sense to me.

02:19:41.080 | We don't want that.

02:19:41.920 | If you can come here, we better hope you're nice.

02:19:44.880 | Because what are we gonna do?

02:19:46.120 | What are we gonna hope that you invade the water planet

02:19:47.920 | like they did in, you know, one of the,

02:19:50.560 | Lord of the, yeah, War of the Worlds.

02:19:51.760 | So I guess what I'm trying to get across

02:19:53.040 | is like shocking levels of power differential

02:19:55.600 | between groups makes the world ripe for horrific abuse

02:19:59.720 | in the event that someone decides to do it.

02:20:01.840 | It's like, like you imagine an adult hitting a child,

02:20:04.560 | like hitting, hitting a child,

02:20:05.760 | no one in their right mind would ever go like,

02:20:07.160 | oh yeah, that's a great idea.

02:20:08.480 | Because it's such an, it's so grossly imbalanced.

02:20:11.360 | You're like, this is wrong.

02:20:12.960 | But it's also on the table

02:20:14.240 | only because of the gross imbalance.

02:20:16.360 | So I guess to come back, it's like,

02:20:18.120 | whether we create AI and it's on some crazy level

02:20:21.640 | of its own, or it's, I'm in charge of it,

02:20:24.280 | or I just, it seems like we're creating,

02:20:27.600 | you mentioned like a game theory and nuclear war,

02:20:31.360 | what prevented nuclear war?

02:20:32.880 | I mean, presumably mutually assured destruction.

02:20:35.920 | I mean, hopefully also humanity and the humanity

02:20:38.560 | and the reasonable, you know, cooler heads prevailing

02:20:40.960 | and going, hey, I can understand the veil of ignorance.

02:20:43.880 | And I don't go, oh yeah, let me kill those guys

02:20:46.160 | 'cause I can't.

02:20:47.000 | I go, this is wrong, period.

02:20:48.280 | And in concept, this is not an action I should take,

02:20:51.760 | but it's also nice and easy to keep me honest

02:20:54.040 | if I know that I can't get you without being got myself.

02:20:57.000 | But what happens when I can get anyone anything

02:21:01.020 | and I'm more or less untouchable?

02:21:02.560 | Like that seems to me to be like,

02:21:04.400 | like various times in colonial history,

02:21:06.880 | you know what I mean?

02:21:07.720 | And what happened?

02:21:08.760 | We know what happened.

02:21:09.600 | - But, so the possibility of really bad things

02:21:14.600 | are plentiful, the possibilities.

02:21:17.260 | But are the possibilities of really positive things

02:21:20.640 | are plentiful.

02:21:21.480 | - Like what though?

02:21:22.440 | I'm not saying wrong.

02:21:23.280 | - So I can give a million examples.

02:21:25.720 | One is just the examples of the parent and the child.

02:21:29.300 | You said there's a power differential there

02:21:34.640 | and we don't like a parent hitting their child.

02:21:39.320 | - What about not just hitting, like beating?

02:21:41.120 | - Beating, yeah, yeah, yeah, great.

02:21:43.160 | Beating their child.

02:21:44.760 | How often, percentage-wise, do you see that happening?

02:21:49.160 | Even though that power differential,

02:21:52.580 | first of all, other people's kids,

02:21:55.040 | let's just put this on the table, I love kids,

02:21:57.720 | but other people's kids can be annoying sometimes.

02:22:00.560 | - Sometimes you gotta deal out some justice, I get it.

02:22:03.880 | - But we don't practice,

02:22:05.160 | we don't take advantage of that power differential.

02:22:07.760 | So like there is ethics, there's moralities that emerge

02:22:11.640 | that allow the power differential to be used for good

02:22:15.440 | versus for bad.

02:22:16.680 | So like you're, one of the assumptions with Stephen Hawking

02:22:20.720 | or with if Russia became much more powerful than America

02:22:24.900 | or America much more powerful than Russia in the Cold War,

02:22:28.180 | your assumption that immediately that power differential,

02:22:31.180 | not your assumption, but--

02:22:32.020 | - It would express itself, right?

02:22:33.180 | - Would express itself in the same way

02:22:36.940 | that it was trying to express itself

02:22:38.480 | when there was a more level competition.

02:22:41.540 | But it's also possible when the power differential grows,

02:22:44.340 | the incentive, the joy, whatever the mechanisms

02:22:47.620 | that made sense when it was at the same level,

02:22:51.860 | that the incentives become very different.

02:22:54.060 | It's not as fun to destroy the ant colony,

02:22:57.020 | you start becoming more the kind of a conservationist.

02:23:01.460 | - One hopes, that's an evolved perspective though, yeah?

02:23:04.100 | - Well, I don't know if it's evolved or not,

02:23:06.120 | but it's definitely a possibility.

02:23:07.500 | It's unclear to me that something

02:23:09.500 | that's many orders of magnitude more powerful than us

02:23:12.540 | will want to destroy us.

02:23:14.740 | - Well, I mean, how did mass slavery occur?

02:23:18.420 | How did, you know, like,

02:23:19.580 | it was just big dogs playing with not--

02:23:22.380 | - I think slavery and a lot of the atrocities in history

02:23:27.380 | happened when the power differential was not as great

02:23:32.780 | as we're talking about with AI, potentially.

02:23:35.820 | - Is that not somehow worse than--

02:23:38.140 | - It's not obvious to me.

02:23:39.420 | It's not obvious that things that are way more powerful--

02:23:43.220 | - That's fair, okay.

02:23:44.060 | So I think you're--

02:23:45.420 | - I guess, how do you restrain it though?

02:23:47.700 | - There's a lot of different discussions of how to--

02:23:50.300 | - I guess even restrain each other,

02:23:52.340 | 'cause let's say I go and decide to strike someone's child,

02:23:54.220 | which I'd like to think I wouldn't do.

02:23:55.940 | I will be promptly, I will find myself in front of a judge.

02:23:59.420 | And so I feel like there's a lot,

02:24:01.100 | can you imagine how many people used to get murdered

02:24:03.500 | just in the woods?

02:24:04.460 | - Yeah.

02:24:05.300 | - I mean, I would just presume it's a lot, you know?

02:24:08.140 | And I don't think most people are lunatics like that,

02:24:11.040 | but I would just say--

02:24:11.880 | - But that's the point.

02:24:13.140 | If you're given to that,

02:24:14.220 | your ability to get away with it was greater in the past

02:24:17.220 | because of chance of detection was less.

02:24:19.620 | So I don't know, you're gonna be unreasonable.

02:24:22.380 | - This is what's called an artificial intelligence,

02:24:24.460 | AI safety research, called value alignment

02:24:27.880 | of ensuring as you build the systems

02:24:31.260 | that become smarter and smarter,

02:24:32.380 | more powerful and powerful,

02:24:33.940 | make sure that their values are aligned with the entities

02:24:38.260 | over which they're becoming powerful with humans.

02:24:40.580 | So if you were to talk to an AI that's becoming smarter,

02:24:43.900 | first it's dumber than you,

02:24:45.060 | but then it's becoming smarter and smarter,

02:24:47.460 | you have to create mechanisms

02:24:50.540 | where you both value the same things.

02:24:52.620 | - I guess one thing I wonder,

02:24:54.060 | so I guess I'm probably not sharp enough to grasp this

02:24:57.660 | if I'm honest, but I guess I wonder,

02:25:00.220 | I used to do chess programs.

02:25:01.620 | You know, it was deep blue, stockfish,

02:25:04.980 | and then like alpha zero,

02:25:06.340 | and alpha zero teaching itself to beat stockfish

02:25:10.420 | without any help in four hours.

02:25:12.540 | Like it becomes orders of magnitude more intelligent

02:25:15.860 | than us in effectively an instantaneous period.

02:25:19.300 | I guess what I always wondered,

02:25:21.380 | if you were that much smarter than me,

02:25:23.300 | I feel like your ability to manipulate me

02:25:26.220 | would be pretty significant, or at least potentially.

02:25:28.580 | - But manipulation implies that the incentive is

02:25:33.580 | to overpower everything around you.

02:25:37.540 | Like there's implied incentives.

02:25:39.620 | If your value is to actually,

02:25:42.260 | it depends what you want in life,

02:25:47.780 | what you want in your system.

02:25:49.580 | It's not clear that the goal of an AI system

02:25:53.020 | that's all powerful is to destroy all humans.

02:25:55.900 | - No, I don't think that it is either.

02:25:57.660 | I guess what I'm--

02:25:58.500 | - Or even enslave all humans.

02:26:00.420 | - That's fair.

02:26:01.260 | I guess what I'm trying to suggest

02:26:02.300 | is that something adequately powerful,

02:26:04.540 | these actions are on the table.

02:26:06.560 | - Yes, they're on the table and that's scary,

02:26:08.320 | and that's why a lot of people are really concerned about it

02:26:10.460 | and are working on it.

02:26:12.020 | I'm just trying to make the case for AGI

02:26:15.060 | because if they're watching this, he's the one to kill.

02:26:19.960 | - No, actually I was thinking, I was, yeah.

02:26:22.700 | I wash toilets really well.

02:26:26.000 | There's a--

02:26:26.840 | - No, I mean, that's the main concern

02:26:30.300 | for all the people in the AI safety research.

02:26:32.580 | People talk about AGIs.

02:26:36.820 | It's kind of disturbing how little people are working

02:26:40.720 | on trying to create mechanisms

02:26:44.720 | that keep AI's values aligned with ours.

02:26:48.320 | - That's completely unshocking.

02:26:50.640 | - Yeah, we humans seem to do only good when,

02:26:53.880 | you even look at coronavirus, it's like when,

02:26:58.560 | the water has to be leaking from the ceiling.

02:27:03.040 | You have to be, there has to be--

02:27:04.360 | - Fine, fine.

02:27:05.200 | - Blood everywhere, fire, just destruction.

02:27:08.740 | We just seem to ignore completely any trouble.

02:27:12.700 | - Writing all over the wall.

02:27:13.940 | - Writing all over the wall.

02:27:15.660 | This is fine.

02:27:16.500 | - Yeah, I'm sure nothing to see here will be okay.

02:27:19.180 | - But we do all right, especially in the United States.

02:27:21.340 | You figure out, even when it becomes

02:27:23.740 | a really serious problem, taking actions last minute.

02:27:27.980 | There's something about the innovative spirit

02:27:30.900 | that results in a solution last minute,

02:27:34.100 | right before the deadline.

02:27:35.440 | It works out.

02:27:36.280 | - Well, I mean, I don't know how you did school,

02:27:37.880 | probably a lot better than me.

02:27:38.720 | - No, that's exactly how I did school.

02:27:40.440 | - I couldn't be, I was no motivation up until the last,

02:27:43.040 | if you're like, we have 22 hours

02:27:44.520 | to do the entire semesters of work.

02:27:46.800 | Like, let's do this.

02:27:48.120 | - Yeah.

02:27:48.940 | - And you had like 19 frickin' Mountain Dews, and then, yeah.

02:27:51.700 | - Well, that's why you and I are failures in life,

02:27:53.940 | because I just talked to, I mentioned Cal Newport,

02:27:56.820 | with his book, Deep Work, and so on.

02:28:00.800 | He is of the variety of these creatures

02:28:03.360 | that basically does everything ahead of time.

02:28:06.960 | - That's shocking.

02:28:07.820 | - Because he dislikes the, he thinks it's unproductive

02:28:12.760 | to experience the stress and anxiety of the deadline,

02:28:17.780 | because you're just, you're not going

02:28:20.060 | to be your best performance-wise,

02:28:22.000 | and you're not going to do the best work.

02:28:23.880 | So it doesn't make any, it's completely irrational

02:28:27.040 | to function based on the deadline.

02:28:29.280 | You should have a system, a process,

02:28:30.920 | that gets stuff, a little bit of stuff done every day.

02:28:33.920 | Like, you should be, and constantly be,

02:28:36.720 | systematically honest with yourself.

02:28:38.600 | If you say, I'm going to get this stuff done today,

02:28:40.920 | and this week, at the end of the day,

02:28:42.840 | at the end of the week, you have to then reflect

02:28:44.880 | on what you did, what you planned,

02:28:46.520 | and improve that plan, update it constantly.

02:28:49.100 | Update it every day, every week, every quarter,

02:28:51.640 | whatever those durations are.

02:28:53.880 | As I'm listening to this and reading his stuff,

02:28:55.920 | it's like, oh, yeah, I agree with everything.

02:28:58.000 | I'm like, yes, I'm clapping.

02:29:00.040 | But the reality is, and then I go back

02:29:02.120 | and just eat Cheetos and don't do shit

02:29:05.040 | until like last minute. - You didn't have to

02:29:05.880 | be in Cheesy.

02:29:06.720 | - Yeah. - But, uh, uh, yeah.

02:29:08.760 | - Actually, I don't eat Cheetos, but yes.

02:29:11.800 | - But actually, again, not that it'll ever matter,

02:29:14.520 | not that it's ever going to matter,

02:29:15.600 | because he's so shockingly productive

02:29:17.160 | and well thought out that whatever I've decided

02:29:18.840 | to think about trying to monkey wrench in there

02:29:20.760 | is definitely going to be able to deal with.

02:29:22.920 | But it's funny that, again, because you're a human being,

02:29:24.960 | not a god, all of your strengths have

02:29:26.920 | a corresponding weakness.

02:29:28.560 | The less you practice working under the gun,

02:29:30.520 | the less comfortable you are working under the gun.

02:29:32.520 | The more practice you have working under the gun,

02:29:34.200 | the better you get at it.

02:29:35.040 | The downside is you're always working under the gun,

02:29:36.880 | so you're less productive.

02:29:38.080 | Or it's like your work quality maybe drops.

02:29:40.080 | So it's an interesting thing.

02:29:41.120 | It's like, it's almost like, hey, I wonder if this,

02:29:43.160 | I wonder if Khabib Nurmagomedov has a lot of heart.

02:29:45.640 | And I say the answer is almost certainly yes.

02:29:47.760 | But you go, well, he hasn't struggled a bunch.

02:29:49.880 | Maybe he doesn't struggle well.

02:29:51.400 | And it just so happens that he can also work

02:29:52.880 | under the gun really well.

02:29:53.720 | He just doesn't like to do it.

02:29:55.040 | But, uh, yeah, but it's an interesting thing.

02:29:56.680 | It's like, I guess, what is it?

02:29:57.720 | The aristotle, we are what we repeatedly do.

02:29:59.560 | We are all, we're all practicing something all the time.

02:30:02.920 | So I guess it's, it's funny.

02:30:04.080 | I guess that's the question that I have, though.

02:30:05.400 | I would love to ask him.

02:30:06.240 | It'd be really neat.

02:30:08.080 | Is, uh, in certain jobs, I mean, obviously you want

02:30:11.640 | to have preparation, always, always.

02:30:13.640 | But certain things have like a degree of like entropy

02:30:16.920 | in the system.

02:30:18.080 | And you go, I need to practice working under the gun.

02:30:21.720 | And I'm not saying that's what I need to do

02:30:22.920 | because the fighting, it should be, for the most part,

02:30:24.840 | it's a really sterile environment

02:30:26.160 | in the grand scheme of things.

02:30:27.000 | Like fighting in a cage is very sterile compared

02:30:29.040 | to most other things in life, right?

02:30:30.680 | But, um, dangerous, but sterile.

02:30:32.960 | And, uh, unless of course, like, you know,

02:30:35.480 | like the other guy, the ref decides to hit you,

02:30:37.480 | it would be hilarious.

02:30:38.320 | But, um, anyway, I guess just going like, okay,

02:30:40.520 | so at what value do you get out of adding a degree of,

02:30:45.240 | let's say, it could even be planned by someone else,

02:30:47.640 | but junk in the system and you just have to work

02:30:50.800 | under the gun to make it happen.

02:30:52.080 | Let's say for instance, for like police

02:30:53.520 | or something like that, the situation turns left hard

02:30:56.200 | at some random point in time,

02:30:57.880 | and that could happen to any number of people.

02:31:00.040 | So I guess it's interesting, things that allow

02:31:01.960 | for perfect planning or quasi-perfect planning

02:31:04.080 | versus things that are inherently unstable.

02:31:06.480 | And then what are the, what's the psychological fallout

02:31:09.480 | of comfort with that?

02:31:10.800 | 'Cause I think a lot of people

02:31:11.640 | that are really comfortable under the gun

02:31:14.360 | let it happen a lot.

02:31:15.680 | For all the good and the bad of that, does that make sense?

02:31:17.400 | - No, that totally makes sense.

02:31:18.680 | And it was, I mean, his answer would be

02:31:20.960 | that you have to be honest with yourself

02:31:23.760 | if it's valuable for your success

02:31:26.680 | to practice being under the gun,

02:31:29.160 | and then you should schedule that.

02:31:30.920 | - Yeah, I think he's smart.

02:31:32.000 | - You should plan that.

02:31:32.840 | You should systematically, and then,

02:31:35.120 | as opposed to doing it half-assedly,

02:31:37.040 | 'cause it's, as opposed to letting the environment

02:31:39.760 | choose the randomness, like control the randomness

02:31:43.460 | to where, like, optimize it.

02:31:46.080 | - I would say it's so efficient, it's shocking,

02:31:48.120 | just to hear about it.

02:31:49.080 | - Yeah, no, he's, I mean, the same way you are,

02:31:52.640 | he's annoying in the same way,

02:31:53.720 | which is like he drops truth bombs.

02:31:56.460 | It's like, yeah, yeah, that's so true.

02:31:59.520 | - Yeah, we're probably comparably, yeah, doing that.

02:32:02.760 | No, he just.

02:32:03.600 | - But he's, so his profession requires that.

02:32:07.800 | So he's not just like a motivational speaker or whatever.

02:32:09.880 | He's a theoretical computer scientist,

02:32:14.280 | and he needs the long hours in the day

02:32:18.080 | of doing, like, serious math.

02:32:19.800 | So it's mostly math proofs.

02:32:21.560 | And for that, you have to sit and think really deeply.

02:32:24.880 | It's like really hard work.

02:32:26.320 | Compared to, like, what most people do,

02:32:28.560 | like, even what I, I mean, what I do,

02:32:31.280 | like, programming is way easier than rigorous math proofs,

02:32:34.600 | 'cause you have to, basically, you have this machine,

02:32:37.880 | and you have to, your brain to churn out logic

02:32:42.560 | in a focused way while visualizing a bunch of things

02:32:46.320 | and holding that in your brain,

02:32:47.840 | and holding that for 10 minutes, 20 minutes,

02:32:50.720 | hopefully several hours.

02:32:52.680 | And you're not just, like, doing homework.

02:32:55.220 | You're doing totally novel stuff,

02:32:56.920 | so, like, stuff that nobody's ever done before.

02:32:59.060 | So you keep running up against the wall of, like,

02:33:01.720 | fuck, this is a dead end.

02:33:03.720 | Oh, no, wait, is this a dead end?

02:33:05.440 | And, like, that whole frustration,

02:33:07.520 | that's serious mental work.

02:33:09.400 | That's, like, incredibly difficult mental work.

02:33:11.260 | So he knows what he's talking about.

02:33:12.800 | - That's, and it's amazing.

02:33:14.120 | But like you said, he's, like,

02:33:15.400 | this seems like the standard for the quality of work

02:33:17.720 | that he needs is so high.

02:33:19.120 | - So high, I think he has to.

02:33:19.960 | - Anything less than this level of systematization

02:33:22.520 | and organization would preclude it, right?

02:33:24.400 | - So he can't afford the kind of bullshit

02:33:26.360 | that, I don't know about you,

02:33:27.200 | but that certainly I do,

02:33:28.760 | which is, like, last deadline kind of stuff,

02:33:30.760 | 'cause you can't do that kind of work

02:33:33.840 | last minute on deadline kind of stuff.

02:33:35.800 | So my question for him in general is, like,

02:33:39.040 | and for you and I is, like,

02:33:41.180 | well, here's these negative patterns that we do

02:33:44.320 | of, like, doing shit last minute and so on.

02:33:49.140 | Is this just who we are now?

02:33:51.120 | Or are there some--

02:33:52.600 | - I don't think I'm really big into free will.

02:33:54.960 | You know, I was thinking that it's mostly predestination.

02:33:57.280 | - Predestination.

02:33:58.120 | - At least in this regard.

02:33:59.160 | - It's the same with, like, communism.

02:34:00.760 | Like, as long as it fits my,

02:34:02.720 | whatever is the lazy thing to do,

02:34:04.360 | I'll just not believe in free will.

02:34:05.840 | - Yeah, I'm not a communist opportunist.

02:34:08.020 | Or that's when that was--

02:34:10.640 | - I'm an opportunistic communist.

02:34:13.040 | And capitalist.

02:34:15.640 | I just do whatever.

02:34:16.560 | Whatever is cool at the time.

02:34:18.080 | - Exactly.

02:34:19.420 | - Let me ask you to examine some fundamental principles

02:34:24.420 | of a particular thing that Joe Rogan brought up to me

02:34:27.180 | several times online and offline.

02:34:29.060 | - Okay.

02:34:29.900 | - Which is that he thinks that the tie that I wear--

02:34:34.900 | - Okay.

02:34:35.940 | - Is something that makes me vulnerable to attack

02:34:40.500 | that you should be,

02:34:42.060 | the reason he doesn't wear a tie

02:34:44.060 | is because he can get choked very easily with a tie.

02:34:47.020 | It's a big concern.

02:34:48.640 | - Okay.

02:34:49.480 | My contention, and by the way,

02:34:52.320 | he wore a suit last time, too.

02:34:54.480 | He didn't wear it on the podcast.

02:34:55.640 | He wore it for dinner later.

02:34:57.200 | - Yeah, I wore a suit the other day,

02:34:58.320 | and I had no socks on.

02:35:00.160 | I didn't realize, yeah.

02:35:01.560 | - You're supposed to wear socks?

02:35:02.680 | - Yeah, that's my understanding.

02:35:03.880 | - Why'd you wear a suit?

02:35:04.800 | Did you go to court?

02:35:05.640 | - No, no, no.

02:35:07.640 | (laughing)

02:35:09.920 | I don't know, I just wanted to play.

02:35:11.200 | I wanted to pretend I was an adult for a day.

02:35:13.120 | - Okay, cool.

02:35:14.040 | So my contention is the jacket,

02:35:18.580 | everything is more dangerous than a tie.

02:35:22.860 | - That's kind of where I was going with that.

02:35:24.100 | That's kind of where, yeah,

02:35:24.940 | this was my first thought, too.

02:35:26.180 | Once the tie becomes an issue,

02:35:27.660 | yeah. - I feel like everything else

02:35:29.580 | is already an issue.

02:35:30.420 | - It's already an issue, yeah.

02:35:31.460 | - Because the tie, to me,

02:35:32.940 | now without messing with it now,

02:35:34.740 | is, to me, has some of the similar problems

02:35:38.900 | that a belt does.

02:35:40.640 | So for example, I don't know about you,

02:35:42.060 | maybe you can correct me,

02:35:43.460 | but I'm not sure you can use the belt as tied.

02:35:47.020 | I know there's some kind of guards

02:35:53.540 | you can probably utilize the belt with,

02:35:55.700 | but the belt, sorry, when it's tied around the waist.

02:35:58.820 | - And you're talking about a belt belt or a gi belt?

02:36:00.700 | - Sorry, gi belt.

02:36:01.540 | - Okay. - Sorry, gi belt.

02:36:02.580 | Importantly, gi belt.

02:36:04.440 | It's not that great of a thing to use

02:36:07.700 | in most cases, I would say,

02:36:10.740 | 'cause it slides.

02:36:12.100 | - Yep, that's true.

02:36:13.140 | - It doesn't, you can probably invent

02:36:16.060 | a few interesting ways to use it as leverage,

02:36:19.540 | as control and so on,

02:36:21.300 | but there's just so many more things around

02:36:24.180 | that are better. - Better, better.

02:36:25.020 | - Better suited. - Better.

02:36:25.860 | - Yeah. - And so for me,

02:36:27.140 | the tie, what people don't realize.

02:36:28.900 | - That's better.

02:36:29.740 | Are we trying to sell a DVD here

02:36:30.820 | and have some widgets and bells and whistles?

02:36:32.820 | 'Cause in that case, the belt is a really important part

02:36:34.740 | of what we do, and I would really encourage you guys

02:36:36.380 | to look into it. - Yeah.

02:36:37.740 | - If we're trying to actually learn something,

02:36:40.020 | I'd say, like you said, we're surrounded by better options.

02:36:42.780 | - Well, that's the thing.

02:36:43.620 | I mean, it's not obvious to me that the belt,

02:36:46.460 | maybe there's actually undiscovered things

02:36:48.300 | about using the belt.

02:36:50.020 | I think people have used putting a foot

02:36:52.380 | inside the belt somehow, inside the gi belt.

02:36:55.620 | - This is a no punches gi grappling situation, yes?

02:36:57.780 | - Right. - Okay.

02:36:58.620 | - Yeah, I guess so.

02:36:59.440 | - Sort of fairly contrived, right?

02:37:00.280 | - But with punches too.

02:37:01.860 | Okay, let's talk about a street fight with a belt

02:37:04.140 | that's like a jeans belt, like a belt, clothing belt.

02:37:06.740 | - Okay, so I get to take it off

02:37:07.860 | and whip them in the face with the buckle?

02:37:10.420 | How serious is this street fight?

02:37:11.580 | Are we talking like that far in Oklahoma?

02:37:12.940 | - No, 100% serious. - One of the kids

02:37:13.780 | get beat up or are we talking like--

02:37:15.140 | - No, like death, like one of you has to die.

02:37:17.380 | - Oh, yikes, whoa.

02:37:18.500 | - Okay.

02:37:19.320 | - Oh, you ever, like--

02:37:21.060 | - I'm in this situation all the time.

02:37:22.420 | - I understand.

02:37:23.260 | (laughing)

02:37:24.380 | - And there's a reason I'm still here.

02:37:26.220 | - I had something, I had somebody try to fight me

02:37:28.460 | in a Starbucks the other day. - I fight kids.

02:37:29.460 | We were talking about power differential.

02:37:30.900 | - Yeah, hey, I-- - I just beat up kids

02:37:32.160 | all the time. - Just pick the easy Ws.

02:37:33.580 | You gotta get the easy Ws.

02:37:34.540 | You don't want the horrible-- - I'm undefeated.

02:37:36.380 | - I come around the playground, watch what happens.

02:37:37.900 | - No, like to the death, what is their clothing

02:37:41.540 | that's useful, you know?

02:37:43.980 | From my perspective-- - You mean like from your use

02:37:45.580 | or their use?

02:37:46.820 | - Both, from my use to their use.

02:37:48.900 | No, like I like how you went to take the belt off

02:37:52.700 | and use the buckle to hit them with,

02:37:54.180 | but first of all, how are you gonna take off the belt?

02:37:56.740 | - Well, that's actually-- - There's a lot of effort

02:37:57.900 | involved in unclothing.

02:38:00.300 | - Well, what I was figuring was when they started

02:38:02.460 | to see me take my pants off in the fight,

02:38:04.100 | they were like, what?

02:38:05.020 | They're gonna pause and rethink the situation for a second?

02:38:07.860 | - Yes. - And I'm making

02:38:08.700 | dead eye contact, obviously.

02:38:09.740 | - So what's going on? - Yeah, exactly.

02:38:11.540 | Nodding, and then by the time they realize

02:38:13.460 | you took a belt off until you could whip 'em with it,

02:38:15.860 | you actually, you're already one, possibly two steps ahead.

02:38:18.820 | - Okay, so fine, let's not talk about your own clothing,

02:38:21.220 | let's talk about their clothing.

02:38:22.060 | - Okay, I'll take off their belt and hit 'em with it.

02:38:23.620 | - No, but that's much harder.

02:38:25.460 | - No question, but if you can do it--

02:38:26.820 | - While maintaining, I got, no, I just said.

02:38:29.060 | (laughing)

02:38:29.900 | - Like, how did it come to this?

02:38:31.820 | - There's, but the point is there's alternatives

02:38:34.820 | that are perhaps more effective.

02:38:37.140 | In my perspective, this might be clueless,

02:38:39.780 | there's almost no clothing that's more effective

02:38:43.260 | than almost assuming the situation is no geek grappling.

02:38:46.980 | Like, I feel like clothing--

02:38:49.740 | - Particularly when you start to add hitting.

02:38:51.280 | Like, every single time I start grabbing your clothes,

02:38:53.020 | if you start hitting, it's not like nothing could work,

02:38:55.180 | but most of the time, you're like,

02:38:56.480 | why am I not using my arms for something better

02:38:59.020 | than what I'm doing them right now?

02:39:00.720 | - Right, yeah.

02:39:01.560 | - It's very difficult for me to,

02:39:03.540 | I don't know, in terms of just distance,

02:39:06.320 | I can't imagine a case of different distances,

02:39:08.740 | even like situations where,

02:39:10.540 | let's not talk about like,

02:39:12.820 | like a situation where you haven't both yet agreed

02:39:16.500 | that a fight is happening.

02:39:17.800 | - Solid clothing's nice if they have it on then.

02:39:21.260 | - Solid clothing?

02:39:22.180 | - Oh yeah, like something like a good jacket,

02:39:23.700 | 'cause you can snatch somebody on their face.

02:39:25.300 | - Snatch, snatch down.

02:39:26.500 | - Yeah, you know, it's like if you took my,

02:39:28.020 | like, you know, like you snap down in judo,

02:39:29.980 | like how easy it is to snap down a beginner.

02:39:32.100 | - Yeah.

02:39:33.340 | So I agree with you, actually,

02:39:34.820 | a tie in that sense might be a really effective way

02:39:37.000 | to snap down.

02:39:37.840 | So like the snap down's really powerful

02:39:39.360 | to change the, like disorient the situation

02:39:43.120 | and give you a lot of different opportunities

02:39:45.680 | for, you know, taking their back, taking them down.

02:39:49.560 | - Doing hilarious stuff like snapping them down

02:39:51.320 | with a tie into your knee,

02:39:52.800 | and then when they come back up doing this,

02:39:54.360 | you're already.

02:39:55.440 | - So yeah, in that sense, I agree,

02:39:57.080 | but not as a choking mechanism,

02:39:58.480 | 'cause the concern Joe had is choke.

02:40:00.560 | - I think you could probably choke me with your tie

02:40:02.120 | more easily than I could choke you with your tie.

02:40:03.520 | - Probably.

02:40:04.360 | - 'Cause like, if you get, you can get,

02:40:05.640 | like you get my back

02:40:06.480 | and you can put it around somebody's neck,

02:40:08.360 | you know, like, like, like you ever see a diehard?

02:40:11.560 | - Yeah.

02:40:12.400 | - Yeah, you remember when the super Swedish looking blonde

02:40:15.040 | dude or whatever was,

02:40:15.880 | was trying to choke Bruce Willis with the, with the chain.

02:40:19.120 | And then he ended up getting choked himself with the chain,

02:40:20.920 | if I recall this properly.

02:40:22.120 | But anyway, yeah, like, like that.

02:40:23.700 | But I don't feel like,

02:40:25.360 | I feel like if I start grabbing your tie,

02:40:27.240 | you have too many other great options.

02:40:30.000 | - I mean, I do like the snap down,

02:40:31.320 | you actually made me realize.

02:40:32.480 | - No, I think you, yeah, good there.

02:40:34.120 | - What's that?

02:40:34.960 | - I think you're on the right path with it.

02:40:35.920 | - With a snap down?

02:40:36.760 | - Yeah, particularly if you start with like one of these,

02:40:38.280 | like, you know, like, like you,

02:40:39.520 | like you poke your finger in my chest

02:40:40.680 | and then snap down real quick.

02:40:42.480 | - Oh yeah, 'cause it, it also, socially speaking,

02:40:45.400 | it's not a threatening thing to, you know,

02:40:48.080 | to, to reach for the tie.

02:40:49.440 | It's not.

02:40:50.280 | - Particularly in like a business setting,

02:40:51.100 | you know what I mean?

02:40:51.940 | They'll never see it coming.

02:40:52.920 | - Yeah, 'cause I was thinking choke,

02:40:54.840 | but it's not, it's a really good leverage point

02:40:56.920 | 'cause like grabbing a jacket,

02:40:58.600 | the jacket will slide if you try to snap down.

02:41:00.680 | You really have to get a hold, like a really good hold.

02:41:03.440 | - That's a good point 'cause it's around the back of the neck

02:41:04.680 | but what if it's a clip on?

02:41:05.720 | How much of a jackass would you look like

02:41:07.040 | if you feel like, and then they just, they stick you on.

02:41:10.080 | But you ever see the Japanese politician,

02:41:11.920 | or I think it was Japan.

02:41:13.000 | - The judo throw?

02:41:13.840 | - Yeah, it was, the guy was so, he was so calm and cool.

02:41:16.720 | Had like, it was, it was beautiful technique.

02:41:20.600 | The level of, actually the throw was even gentle.

02:41:23.840 | But yeah, it was perfect, it was amazing.

02:41:25.160 | - Well executed.

02:41:26.000 | - Yeah.

02:41:26.960 | - More of our politicians

02:41:28.160 | is just toss the shit out of each other.

02:41:29.360 | - Yeah, we need more Teddy Roosevelt.

02:41:31.280 | Exactly, I like, our politicians like talking

02:41:33.080 | about fighting when it's clear that none of them

02:41:34.600 | have even, they would ever have been in a fight, ever.

02:41:37.200 | - Yeah, somebody was saying Teddy Roosevelt is interesting.

02:41:39.440 | I didn't realize this,

02:41:40.960 | is he's one of the greatest presidents this country's had.

02:41:44.160 | And he was one of the greatest presidents

02:41:46.520 | even though he faced no crisis whatsoever.

02:41:49.200 | He literally willed himself,

02:41:51.000 | like nothing happened during his presidency.

02:41:53.040 | He's just a bad motherfucker

02:41:55.080 | who made really great speeches.

02:41:56.800 | - Yeah.

02:41:57.640 | - So he like, you know, this made me realize,

02:42:00.640 | I was just talking to a historian that like,

02:42:03.040 | most of the people who we think are great

02:42:05.200 | need also a good crisis that they've,

02:42:07.440 | that reveal their greatness.

02:42:09.200 | - But Muhammad Ali, right?

02:42:10.360 | - This Muhammad Ali, I mean, in sports.

02:42:12.880 | - But you know what I mean?

02:42:13.800 | Like the circumstances, what is greatness?

02:42:15.360 | You know what I mean?

02:42:16.200 | It's like, you have to, it's not just your capacity,

02:42:18.160 | it's what you face, right?

02:42:19.840 | It's the quality of opposition, circumstance,

02:42:21.800 | what you overcome.

02:42:22.920 | - So I guess what you're saying is Joe Rogan

02:42:24.600 | is wrong about the tie thing.

02:42:27.000 | - You know, I don't wanna go so far as saying he's wrong.

02:42:28.840 | I, you know, the man's not here to defend himself.

02:42:30.600 | Maybe he has some things that I'm not understanding.

02:42:32.440 | - No, he has not deeply thought this.

02:42:34.360 | This is my main criticism of Joe.

02:42:35.840 | He's not deeply thought to this.

02:42:37.320 | And the MMA journalists will be like,

02:42:39.320 | Ryan Hall says Joe Rogan is wrong.

02:42:41.840 | - And hates ties.

02:42:42.840 | - And hates ties.

02:42:43.920 | They'll integrate Hitler back in there somehow.

02:42:47.640 | - Nice, nice.

02:42:48.480 | - What's, you're talking about greatness,

02:42:52.040 | and greatness requiring a difficult moment in time.

02:42:56.600 | Can you like reflect back and think,

02:42:58.800 | what are some of the hardest,

02:43:00.840 | if not the hardest thing you've ever had to do in your life?

02:43:04.440 | - Well, you know, I think I've had a bunch of things.

02:43:07.000 | You know, I've had a lot of things not go my way.

02:43:09.440 | You know, I've been incredibly fortunate.

02:43:10.840 | I've had a lot of things go my way also.

02:43:12.920 | But leaving Team Lord Irvin in 2008,

02:43:17.520 | which I firmly believe was the right thing to do,

02:43:21.240 | is one of the, that was very difficult at the time.

02:43:25.480 | Not like, not a difficult choice,

02:43:27.120 | but it was because of why I was leaving.

02:43:29.640 | But-- - Psychologically.

02:43:31.640 | First of all, loss in general,

02:43:33.040 | leaving a team, a family, all kinds,

02:43:35.680 | doesn't matter what the circumstances.

02:43:37.360 | - I didn't lose any friends,

02:43:38.320 | but I lost a lot of people I thought were my friends.

02:43:40.240 | And I lost training, I lost,

02:43:43.160 | I'd also had like a really serious,

02:43:44.840 | my wrist only does that.

02:43:46.680 | So like, I had a really serious wrist surgery,

02:43:50.720 | like that I didn't know if I was gonna be able

02:43:52.080 | to compete anymore after that.

02:43:53.280 | I just got my brown belt.

02:43:54.360 | That was a, it was a tough time,

02:43:56.520 | like psychologically, physically, everything.

02:43:58.920 | But I was very, very motivated to do my best

02:44:01.040 | and to push through it and to,

02:44:03.160 | you know, just to carry on in a positive direction

02:44:04.880 | no matter what, in a different direction.

02:44:06.800 | And-- - Were you lonely?

02:44:08.680 | This is the thing about family,

02:44:10.040 | even if it's an abusive family, leaving is tough.

02:44:13.440 | - People are complicated.

02:44:14.840 | And even people that I don't think very well of,

02:44:17.720 | that I think on the whole I don't think very well of,

02:44:20.200 | it's unfair to paint them with one brush.

02:44:23.320 | You know, obviously there's greater

02:44:25.240 | and lesser examples of that,

02:44:26.880 | like the person we discussed last time,

02:44:28.400 | who's an infinitely, you know,

02:44:30.280 | beyond almost anyone that we could ever imagine

02:44:32.240 | meeting in our own personal lives.

02:44:33.840 | - Yeah. - Yeah.

02:44:34.680 | - Bloody elbow.

02:44:36.680 | In terms of forgiveness and hate,

02:44:40.040 | I mean, do you have hate in your heart

02:44:42.640 | for people in your past?

02:44:44.720 | - No. - For that process?

02:44:46.040 | - No, I mean, there were definitely times

02:44:47.840 | where I've been negatively motivated

02:44:49.480 | to prove people wrong or to accomplish things in spite.

02:44:52.800 | And I think that some of that is valuable,

02:44:55.480 | if I'd be lying, if I felt differently.

02:44:57.240 | I think particularly, I do really well in conflict.

02:45:00.640 | I'm useless without-

02:45:02.360 | - This is the usual deadline thing.

02:45:03.600 | - I'm useless, yeah, I'm useless-

02:45:04.440 | - You like the chaos?

02:45:05.280 | - I'm useless, yeah, I do.

02:45:06.240 | I'm useless without an antagonist.

02:45:07.760 | I like fighting.

02:45:08.880 | I like competition.

02:45:10.440 | I like being pushed.

02:45:11.480 | I like feeling like if I don't play well,

02:45:13.240 | I'm gonna get hurt.

02:45:14.840 | I have no choice but to play well,

02:45:16.760 | or play with everything I got at the very least.

02:45:18.560 | And I guess I would say, though, is, you know,

02:45:21.000 | as I've gotten, you know, more time

02:45:23.680 | and, you know, lived a little bit longer,

02:45:25.960 | you see, you know, various situations for, you know,

02:45:30.960 | with increased color, I guess I would say, increased clarity.

02:45:36.120 | And, you know, there are a lot of lessons to be learned,

02:45:40.960 | even from times in history or bad experience that we have.

02:45:43.680 | And the question is,

02:45:44.520 | can we take those lessons and move forward?

02:45:46.720 | And that's, again, what I think we're seeing

02:45:48.200 | in sometimes socially right now,

02:45:50.160 | we're forgetting important lessons of the past.

02:45:52.520 | And that's not good.

02:45:53.720 | Not saying, "Hey, I don't get why we,

02:45:55.600 | "why we could be going in this direction or that."

02:45:57.600 | I understand entirely, but,

02:45:59.120 | "Hey, let's not forget the lessons

02:46:00.920 | "so we don't have to learn them again."

02:46:02.440 | Because that doesn't really serve anybody.

02:46:05.080 | And anyway, I guess I would say I'm thankful

02:46:07.120 | for all of the experiences,

02:46:09.200 | difficult and otherwise, mostly difficult, honestly.

02:46:11.320 | Most of the times I remember,

02:46:12.520 | I'm thankful for every loss I've ever had,

02:46:14.280 | particularly the tough ones.

02:46:15.800 | I'm thankful for, you know, for all the relationship.

02:46:18.840 | I've been, many people have taught me many things

02:46:20.280 | and continue to teach me many things,

02:46:21.360 | some of whom are still some of my closest friends,

02:46:23.240 | some of whom are people

02:46:24.080 | I really don't get along with at all.

02:46:25.320 | And some of whom are people I think really poorly of.

02:46:29.200 | Although there's not many of that last group.

02:46:30.840 | What I guess I would say is there's been a lot of things

02:46:34.760 | and opportunities to learn and, you know, throughout that.

02:46:38.160 | And also it's not as if I've never done,

02:46:39.640 | made any mistakes myself.

02:46:40.840 | Now, again, there are magnitude differences,

02:46:43.400 | I like to think.

02:46:44.240 | And I can definitely say that none of the mistakes

02:46:46.120 | that I've ever made have been mistakes of intention.

02:46:48.680 | You know, I've screwed up a lot of things in my life,

02:46:50.200 | but I can confidently and easily say

02:46:52.680 | that I've never had ill intent towards people

02:46:55.040 | as I've done it.

02:46:55.880 | So we sit there and like, man, it's just the right thing,

02:46:57.120 | it's the right thing.

02:46:57.960 | And sometimes I've been wrong.

02:46:59.080 | But, you know, you never sit out with malicious intent.

02:47:02.320 | And I think that when I find that,

02:47:04.120 | I think people do things differently.

02:47:06.080 | When I do think that there is malicious intent,

02:47:07.760 | I have a difficult time forgiving that.

02:47:09.640 | - How does love win over hate, Ryan Hall, in this world?

02:47:14.360 | We talked about social media.

02:47:16.320 | We talk about forgiveness

02:47:18.560 | of some of the more complicated people in your past.

02:47:24.440 | If we scale that to the entire world

02:47:27.480 | before the AI destroys us

02:47:30.080 | and the human race is lost to history,

02:47:34.160 | how do you think love wins over hate?

02:47:35.920 | - Well, I'd like to preface this by saying

02:47:37.840 | I tried to make pancakes the other day.

02:47:39.800 | - Yes.

02:47:40.640 | - Didn't work.

02:47:42.440 | But I'm happy to comment on this.

02:47:44.800 | So basically-- - Wow.

02:47:47.760 | - I think most of the times that I can think of

02:47:52.600 | that I've struggled, you know,

02:47:55.040 | it's, and the times that I've read about

02:47:57.960 | is being unable to see the humanity in other people.

02:48:01.520 | And also, even in sometimes our enemies

02:48:03.880 | and the people that have done awful things.

02:48:05.520 | And you go, what would allow people to do this,

02:48:09.120 | that, or the other?

02:48:09.960 | And that doesn't forgive what they've done,

02:48:11.920 | depending upon, you know, some things are forgivable,

02:48:13.880 | some things are less so.

02:48:15.080 | But you wanna understand why.

02:48:16.480 | It's like, to our knowledge,

02:48:17.600 | demons don't populate our world.

02:48:19.480 | Neither do like literal angels walking around

02:48:22.600 | being actually perfect.

02:48:24.120 | A lot of times, the things that it's,

02:48:25.880 | I find it deeply amusing watching, you know,

02:48:28.000 | people hoisted by their own batard on Twitter,

02:48:29.960 | even though it's gross and it's really unproductive.

02:48:32.360 | It's actually like equal parts amusing and like awful

02:48:35.080 | because you're not happy

02:48:36.520 | that someone's being raked over the coals,

02:48:38.320 | particularly unjustifiably.

02:48:40.760 | But it is funny when it's the exact same thing

02:48:43.040 | they were raking others over the coals for,

02:48:44.560 | not like a week or two prior,

02:48:45.920 | and that's happened repeatedly and will continue to happen.

02:48:48.400 | And I guess I would say, as you mentioned, you know,

02:48:51.160 | a prior, you know, like a recognition of the humanity

02:48:54.080 | of others of that all of us make mistakes,

02:48:56.720 | that it's difficult to understand intention.

02:48:58.840 | I've had arguments with close friends of mine

02:49:00.600 | over text message where both of us ended up super pissed

02:49:03.920 | because we were completely misreading what the tone,

02:49:07.200 | the intention of what the other person was doing.

02:49:08.880 | And even if I was reading it correctly, which I wasn't,

02:49:11.440 | it's so easy to ascribe the most negative possible,

02:49:15.640 | you know, the least charitable assessment

02:49:18.320 | of what they're doing.

02:49:19.160 | And I think that that's such a dangerous way

02:49:21.360 | to live your life.

02:49:22.200 | And it's also just a fruitless way to live your life.

02:49:24.240 | You know, it's one thing to go, hey, why did you do that?

02:49:26.540 | I was pissed.

02:49:27.440 | What did you do?

02:49:28.360 | You just, you did that to make yourself feel better.

02:49:29.960 | I'm like, you're damn right I did.

02:49:31.300 | And have I done that plenty of times in my life?

02:49:34.320 | Yeah, I would lie if I said that I didn't.

02:49:36.000 | You know, why did you punch that guy in the face?

02:49:38.100 | He was going crazy at me and hit me and I asked him to stop.

02:49:41.000 | And then I gave a warning and I put him on his ass.

02:49:43.080 | I'm like, no, I'm not sorry.

02:49:44.440 | But then looking back now with years to sit on them,

02:49:47.720 | like, do I understand why I did what I did?

02:49:50.000 | Absolutely.

02:49:51.480 | Would I like to respond differently now?

02:49:53.200 | Yeah, I would.

02:49:54.120 | You know, and it doesn't mean that,

02:49:56.000 | I think plenty of things that people do are understandable.

02:49:59.320 | Doesn't mean, understandable doesn't mean correct.

02:50:01.960 | Understandable doesn't mean that you go,

02:50:03.560 | oh yeah, that's great.

02:50:04.400 | You go, I could see someone doing such a thing.

02:50:07.940 | But I guess just wrecking,

02:50:08.880 | trying to understand and see the humanity in others.

02:50:11.320 | 'Cause if I can't see the humanity in others,

02:50:12.920 | how can I see it in myself?

02:50:14.520 | And also, you know,

02:50:15.740 | how am I meant to interact with everyone?

02:50:17.320 | As you said, whether, you know,

02:50:18.520 | even if we're a society of individuals,

02:50:20.600 | for at least for the time being,

02:50:21.680 | hopefully, you know, in perpetuity,

02:50:23.840 | we still come together as a whole.

02:50:26.420 | And watching, it's weird, like you said,

02:50:29.100 | it's, if I only ask why once, I start with,

02:50:31.380 | stay out of my way and I'll stay out of yours.

02:50:33.760 | Leave me the fuck alone.

02:50:34.720 | You're like, okay, that's fine, Ryan.

02:50:36.720 | But that's easy for you to say living in a society

02:50:38.480 | that doesn't actually function like that.

02:50:40.400 | So it's a little bit cheap.

02:50:41.940 | But if I recognize that that's step one,

02:50:43.760 | is I don't hurt you and you don't hurt me,

02:50:45.320 | but then we go, but how can I help you?

02:50:47.280 | That's step two.

02:50:49.120 | And then it goes way beyond that

02:50:50.560 | and a lot further than I've thought about it.

02:50:51.740 | But I guess what I would just say is, again,

02:50:53.040 | recognition of the humanity in others,

02:50:55.200 | and that we all have different strengths.

02:50:57.040 | We all have different weaknesses.

02:50:57.880 | And you can never really be sure

02:50:59.240 | where the other person's coming from.

02:51:00.240 | But if we approach things charitably,

02:51:02.040 | as charitably as we would hope others would approach us,

02:51:05.640 | I think we'll do a lot better.

02:51:06.720 | And I guess one thing that I read that I liked

02:51:08.400 | that I thought was accurate and unfortunately disappointing

02:51:10.680 | was everyone is a great jury, or rather, I'm sorry,

02:51:14.240 | a great lawyer for themselves and a judge for others.

02:51:17.400 | And I think that's a terrible way to live life,

02:51:18.920 | even if it's an understandable one.

02:51:20.400 | - Yeah.

02:51:21.240 | - I don't know.

02:51:22.060 | - I think probably flipping that is the right way to live.

02:51:24.640 | Being constantly judgmental of yourself

02:51:28.560 | and a defender of others.

02:51:30.360 | And that results ultimately in interaction

02:51:32.660 | that deescalates versus escalates.

02:51:35.360 | - Right. - Yeah.

02:51:36.360 | - And we can all live in a world like that.

02:51:38.640 | And sometimes you're like, hey man,

02:51:39.760 | people that deserve punishment won't get it.

02:51:41.720 | Like, okay, hey, but what do they say?

02:51:43.160 | Better to have 10 guilty people go free

02:51:45.360 | than one innocent person burn.

02:51:47.700 | And ultimately, I think that is a better world

02:51:51.400 | than the other way around.

02:51:53.440 | - And if all else fails, join the team

02:51:57.280 | that builds the AI that kills all humans.

02:51:59.560 | - Yeah, obviously.

02:52:00.400 | I mean, if you have to be on a team, pick the winning team.

02:52:02.000 | What, that's been the--

02:52:02.840 | - That's my hiring pitch, actually.

02:52:04.760 | - That's a good hiring pitch.

02:52:05.840 | You still taking resumes?

02:52:08.360 | - You wanna be on the team that doesn't die

02:52:10.960 | during the great apocalypse.

02:52:12.240 | - Not immediately.

02:52:13.060 | You wanna be on the one that's eventually long-suffering

02:52:15.960 | and stepped on, right?

02:52:17.080 | - Yeah.

02:52:17.920 | Life is suffering, Ryan Hall.

02:52:19.560 | This was an amazing conversation.

02:52:21.720 | I really enjoyed talking to you.

02:52:22.800 | I could probably talk to you for many more hours.

02:52:24.560 | I hope I do as well.

02:52:26.540 | Ryan, I love you, buddy.

02:52:28.260 | This was a great conversation.

02:52:29.340 | Thanks for talking to me.

02:52:30.400 | - Thank you so much for having me.

02:52:31.240 | I really appreciate it.

02:52:33.000 | - Thanks for listening to this conversation with Ryan Hall.

02:52:35.440 | And thank you to our sponsors,

02:52:37.360 | Indeed Hiring Website, Audible Audiobooks,

02:52:40.480 | ExpressVPN, and Element Electrolyte Drink.

02:52:44.440 | Click the sponsor links to get a discount

02:52:46.480 | and to support this podcast.

02:52:48.400 | And now, let me leave you with some words

02:52:50.580 | from Frank Herbert in Dune.

02:52:53.280 | "I must not fear.

02:52:54.940 | "Fear is the mind killer.

02:52:57.060 | "Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration.

02:53:01.000 | "I will face my fear.

02:53:02.760 | "I will permit it to pass over me and through me.

02:53:05.740 | "And when it has gone past,

02:53:07.380 | "I will turn the inner eye to see its path.

02:53:10.580 | "Where the fear has gone, there will be nothing.

02:53:14.160 | "Only I will remain."

02:53:15.740 | Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.

02:53:19.520 | (upbeat music)

02:53:22.100 | (upbeat music)

02:53:24.680 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Ryan Hall: Solving Martial Arts from First Principles | Lex Fridman Podcast #169

Chapters