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Language: en
This is how people lose everything. They
mistake feeling right for actually being
right. If you don't have a mental model
for built-in error correction, your life
is going to be a mess, and you won't
even know what's going wrong. When I was
young, I was obsessed with getting rich.
Once I got rich, I become obsessed with
formalizing the approach I use so I
could apply it to every area of my life.
And I realized three things early on.
One, striving to be right is a trap, but
finding the right answer to a problem is
a must. Two, humans are way more likely
to do what feels right versus what
actually works. Three, to succeed, one
must have an error correction model that
overcomes ego and emotion. I named the
process that I came up with for dealing
with these three fundamental laws of
human nature. The physics of progress
work for everything. My businesses, my
marriage, my health, my physique,
everything. But over the years, I've
realized a mental model isn't very
useful if it's only about personal
success. That's why my YouTube channel
has evolved. so much over the years.
Focusing only on personal development,
my channel risks becoming spiritual
entertainment, something that makes
people feel good while they watch, but
ultimately shies away from taking on the
most difficult problems we all face.
When CO hit, I realized that I didn't
understand how the world actually works.
So, I started running the process on the
most important, most complex issues of
our time to see if I could gain an
advantage by understanding things like
finance, the economy, politics, world
affairs, future tech, and the other
topics that I now cover. Plenty of
people told me that I should stay in my
lane and stick to business and mindset.
And I'm sure there are plenty of people
that will tell all of us to just listen
to the experts. People have appointed
themselves experts who are not experts.
But thinking for yourself is the only
way to not be manipulated and led down a
path to hell with or without good
intentions. We are living in arguably
the most transformational time in human
history. We're nuclear armed,
politically divided, able to bring
entire species back from the dead, and
AI is racing towards becoming a god.
Things are changing so fast it's
dizzying. And whether we're talking
about politics, economics, global
conflict, or artificial intelligence, we
are constantly being spun, lied to, and
manipulated. And if you don't have a
model for truth seeeking and error
correction, you will get wrecked. Most
of the time, you won't even realize it's
happening. So, I began to evolve my
thinking and my channel along with me
using a simple algorithm for approaching
the complexities of life at this moment.
The algorithm has five parts. One,
recognize you're trapped in a distorted
frame of reference, and the only way out
is to run experiments and think from
first principles. Two, map out cause and
effect. Three, seek disisconfirming
evidence and take in information from a
wide variety of sources. Four, judge the
correctness of something by the results
it delivers. Five, remember you're
having a biological experience. We all
might be divine creatures, but we are
still an easy to manipulate chemical
processing plant. All right, that's the
framework. It allows me to set aside my
ego and emotions and run the scientific
method recontextualized for life and
business whenever I'm struggling with
something new. It's never going to
guarantee that I'm immediately right
about something, but it stops me from
getting stuck in a fail state because
I'm not focused on being right. I always
have a way to correct my thinking based
on results. Let me walk you through why
I believe your life will be better if
you adopt the same algorithm. The
results speak for themselves. I believe
all persistently successful people use
some variant of this algorithm. Early in
life, I was lazy. No one thought I was
going to be successful. Not my mom, not
my best friend, and certainly not my now
father-in-law. And to be honest, they
were right to doubt me. At one point in
my 20s, I was laying in bed four to 5
hours a day, every day. I was terrified
of discovering that I wasn't capable of
winning. I thought success was about
talent. And I was worried that if I
actually tried and failed, I'd have to
accept that failure was my destiny. Then
I hit rock bottom. No money, no
direction, no self-belief. And I was
ashamed that I wasn't becoming the man I
promised my fiance I would become. But
then I had a single thought that changed
my life. Maybe I'm not permanently
stuck. Maybe I'm temporarily stuck
because I'm wrong about how humans work.
The idea that I latched on to was brain
plasticity that people can learn and get
better at any age. That's when I stopped
worrying about whether I was talented or
already right. And I focused on getting
better just a little bit every day. The
compounding effects of that decision
improve my life across every metric a
thousandfold. It's also how I limit my
susceptibility to spin and manipulation.
Now, I haven't found it's possible to
completely eliminate the effect of spin
and lies, but learning to think
critically and not be trapped by others
or my own past thinking has been
life-changing. Here's how it works in
five easy parts. Do not skip part four
as that is the most important. All
right, part one. Your frame of reference
is a lie. Like a fish lives in water and
never questions it, you live inside of a
frame of reference and never question
it. Your frame of reference comes from
three things. One, your biology. We're
all different. We have innate
personalities. Some things about us will
truly never change. Two, your beliefs.
Three, your values. Every human being is
born into a specific time and place, and
that alone is going to wildly influence
your frame of reference. This is why
each generation acts differently than
those that came before or after them.
Your frame of reference is not accurate.
Your beliefs aren't accurate. Your
values aren't accurate, but they are
yours, and they distort everything you
see. This is why people can look at the
same thing and walk away with two
completely different sets of facts. Much
of our frame of reference is inherited.
You obviously inherit your biology, but
you also inherit your beliefs and your
values from your parents, from your
school, from the culture around you,
what you watch, play, listen to, your
traumas, the cultural events happening
around you. They all shape how you see
the world in profound ways. And no time
period will ever shape you more than
your childhood. This is just a fact of
how the brain develops. Few people
realize that their frame of reference
isn't the truth. It's just programming.
We never question our frame of reference
because it feels so true. It feels
right. It feels like we're simply
acknowledging objective fact. And as I
stated earlier, it is a law of human
nature that we do what feels right far
faster than we do what works. To quickly
define what I mean by works, I will
simply say works means to do what leads
you towards fulfillment. And fulfillment
is anything that you love doing that
uplifts you and those around you. Now
look, that's simplified, but it should
ensure that you can track what I'm
getting at. If you wanted to change your
frame of reference, you could, but it's
hard and most people will never do it.
That's because changing your frame of
reference requires you to take control
of your biology to the extent that you
can and to edit your beliefs and values.
But given that most people confuse their
frame of reference with truth and
rightness, even if they knew they could
change their frame of reference, they
wouldn't want to. Also, life is
extremely complicated. We need shortcuts
so that we don't have to think through
every problem again every time we come
across it. You've likely developed a
method already for dealing with jerks at
work, getting cut off, filing your taxes
on time, paying your bills, stubbing
your toe. Look, all of those things are
a pain, but you don't hem and haw
endlessly trying to figure out what to
do. Similarly, you've got a take on
whether God exists, if it's a sin to
have sex outside of wedlock, the best
way to spend money, whether dogs or cats
are better, and the perfect place to go
on vacation. Even if I could
scientifically prove that cats are
better than dogs, I know some people
just aren't going to make the switch. I
know I'm not. Cats are a menace. It
doesn't matter what is true. It matters
how it feels and if you've locked in
your answer already or not. So what do
you do? You live out a worldview that
was given to you by people who didn't
design it intentionally and who probably
aren't even winning. At least that's
what most people do. But it is a trap.
And the only way out is thinking from
first principles. You stop asking what
do people say about this? and you start
asking what is actually true from a
cause and effect level. What's
functionally effective in the real
world? That's how I try to think. Let me
show you what this looks like in the
real world. Take Trump's trade war with
China. On the surface, to some it looked
like a bold economic plate. To others,
it looked like mass chaos from a maniac.
But underneath, it was a battle of
assumptions about supply chains,
domestic manufacturing, and geopolitical
leverage. If you assumed that the US
could decouple cleanly from China
without pressure or backlash, you
weren't thinking from first principles.
You were running someone else's
narrative, as we all often do. Or you
could look at Trump's immigration
policy, whether you loved it or hated
it. The deeper question that we should
be focusing on is what problem are we
trying to solve? And what are the
long-term second and third order
consequences of the proposed solution?
If you're reacting based on your tribe,
left or right, you're not solving a
problem. You're going to bad for a team.
You're signaling and signaling isn't
going to get us through the next 20
years of systemic pressure. Let me give
you guys a historical example of what
happens when you don't focus on solving
problems based on what's actually
happening. Napoleon, one of the greatest
military minds of all time, conqueror of
Europe, inventor of modern warfare. But
when he invaded Russia in 1812, he
brought summer uniforms, no winter plan.
He assumed the campaign would be over in
a few weeks, as so many of his previous
campaigns were, but this one wasn't.
Temperatures dropped to -30° F. Horses
froze standing up. The French army
didn't lose to Russia. They lost to bad
assumptions. They lost to tribal
thinking. They lost to not pushing back.
Napoleon failed to update his frame of
reference. And
400,000 of his soldiers paid the price.
We are all at risk of similarly
catastrophic blind spots. Biology is
ultimately our bottleneck. Here's
something most people never account for.
You are not a mind floating in a void.
You are a biological organism shaped by
chemicals, hormones, instincts, fear,
and a whole lot more. And that matters.
Your brain didn't evolve to make you
happy. It evolved to keep you alive long
enough to have kids that have kids.
That's it. You crave status because it
kept you in the tribe. You fear change
because unfamiliar things used to kill
us. You take things personally because
it helped you detect threats and stay in
good standing within the group. And this
is why I say we all might be divine, but
we are still chemical processing plants.
You are being steered by systems that we
often don't see or acknowledge. And
that's why AI is such a gamecher.
Artificial intelligence is going to
reshape every aspect of society, job
markets, political campaigns, even war.
But most importantly, AIdriven
algorithms will guide your attention and
your emotions because it certainly
understands your biology. And it's going
to manipulate you with hyper precision
by learning from BOF feedback generated
from your wearables. There will
effectively be no aspect of your life
that isn't influenced by something on
the outside. And if you don't learn now
to think for yourself, to challenge
assumptions, you will be controlled.
Don't get me wrong, AI is a miracle. And
I couldn't be more grateful to be on
this timeline where I get to engage with
AI. But AI will not accidentally lead us
somewhere wonderful. We cannot abdicate
responsibility for our own lives. We
must learn to think for ourselves. Not
by proxy with the elites, not by AI. AI
is a tool. Just as lawyers and
politicians are a tool that can either
make things better or far, far worse.
The key is we have to learn to think for
ourselves with a mental model that has
built-in error correction and sidesteps
both ego and emotion. If you don't
account for that, the tail is always
going to wag the dog. You will always be
a servant to your biology. You will
always be easy to manipulate. Incentives
outrank ideology. People can believe
what they want, but if you show me the
incentives, I will show you the outcome.
Once you accept the biology shapes how
we think, you start to see the world
differently. You stop asking why is that
person doing something so stupid? And
you start asking what incentives are
driving that behavior. One of the most
important things I've ever learned is
this. People don't do what's right. Not
even what they think is right. They do
what they're incentivized to do. That
includes you. It certainly includes me.
You want to understand business, follow
the incentives. You want to understand
politics, follow the incentives. You
want to understand yourself. Of each
thing you do, ask a simple question.
What am I really trying to get from
this? Let's zoom out for a second. Why
is inflation my obsession? And why is it
so hard to solve? It's an incentive
problem. People want things for free.
But until humans will work for free,
nothing nothing will come for free.
Inflation, aka the act of the government
printing money out of thin air, creates
the illusion of getting something for
free. Inflation allows the voter to
demand the government to give them
things for free, like healthcare, and
for the government to reach into your
wallet and take money out without you
noticing. If you don't believe me, watch
my video on money printing and
inflation. Or if you really want to go
deep, read the creature from Jackal
Island. It is about the creation of the
Federal Reserve Bank and it will melt
your entire brain. Humans want today to
be easy, even if it makes tomorrow hard.
Homer Simpson has a great line as he's
being bered about how he's going to
regret his bad choices. And he says,
"That's a problem for future Homer. Man,
I don't envy that guy." And that is the
architecture of the human mind. We will
gladly pay Tuesday for a burger today.
Sorry, it's Popeye reference. I couldn't
help it. But hopefully you guys get the
point. Humans respond to incentives. And
if we're not aware of how we're
motivated, we are very easy to lead
around by the nose. This is why we have
three branches of government. They are
meant to be in healthy tension,
protecting us from the worst of our
impulses. Tyranny arises specifically
when one person is able to do whatever
they think is best. The human mind is so
intrinsically flawed that we need
corrective mechanisms baked in to the
very structure of our thinking. Don't
get me wrong, the human mind is an
absolute marvel. But we are best
understood as emotional creatures and
rarely does what feels good end up being
the most effective path to fulfillment
or even accuracy. Hence the need for
religion, Bibles, self-help books,
technology, a government, and even AI
itself. In 2018 and 2019, two Boeing Max
737 Max airplanes crashed, killing 346
people. Why? Because of a faulty flight
control system. But here's the deeper
truth. The system was faulty because of
faulty incentives. Boeing had a
Northstar, beat Airbus to market. That
single incentive created a cascade of
shortcuts, secrecy, and failure. Nobody
wanted to build a plane that crashed,
but the incentive structure made it
almost inevitable. And that's what
happens when people optimize for the
wrong thing and call it strategy. You
have to judge a tree by the fruit that
it bears and iterate quickly when things
are going wrong. It is the only way to
find out if you're thinking in an
effective way. All right, here's why I
seek disisconfirming evidence. I know I
am prone to thinking in the wrong way.
So, I always assume I'm wrong. I seek
out disisconfirming evidence because if
I don't, I'll build my life on broken
assumptions. And the higher I climb, the
harder I'm going to fall. Here's how I
actually live this. I run experiments
constantly. I try things. I measure the
results. I don't lie to myself about
whether I'm making progress. And I make
adjustments along the way. I expect to
be surprised. I expect to be wrong
often. And I don't need to be right. I
just need to improve. That's why I'm not
partisan. I do not want to be on a team.
This is why I don't debate for sport.
This is why I care more about frameworks
than ideologies. I am absolutely
terrified of dogmatic thinking because
dogma leads to crystallization. You stop
being nimble. This is why people say
genius is a young man's game. This is
why they say science does not move
forward one insight at a time. It moves
forward one funeral at a time. People
get so trapped in their thinking.
they're unable to make progress because
they want to be right and they don't
seek the things that show that they're
wrong. The whole reason that this
channel exists, the reason that I cover
the wide range of topics that I do is
because this is such a pivotal moment.
Because finding the right answer
actually pays off massively because
we're being manipulated. And I'm chasing
what works. Because I want to understand
why the West is in decline. because I
want to know why there are so many
conflicts around the world and why we're
drifting toward a US China cold war. And
I want to know if we can stop it from
going hot. Because I want to understand
how money actually works and why we're
being lied to about it and how those
lies are keeping billions of people
trapped in a cycle of poverty. Because I
want to know how to position myself and
help you do the same. Not just to
survive the next decade, but to avoid
being bamboozled and to win. If you want
to understand this channel, you need to
understand my desire to make forward
progress by mapping cause and effect.
It's not about being right. It's about
finding the right answer. It's not about
fitting in or saying what people want to
hear. It's about building something that
lasts. It's no longer about building an
audience. It's about engaging with a
community. And it's not about pretending
that I know everything I don't. It's
about constantly updating my model of
reality. That mode has served me
incredibly well so far in my life. And
my hope is that the ideas we explore
here together will help serve you as
well. And if what I do does serve you,
the channel will grow. And if it
doesn't, the channel will die a rightful
death. Either way, I'm grateful for your
attention, and I look forward to
building something useful together.
Until then, my friends, be legendary.
Take care. All right, guys. We do lives
every week, Wednesday and Friday, 6:00
a.m. Pacific time. Here is the brutal
truth about scaling. Most entrepreneurs
don't outright fail, they plateau. And
if you're stuck right now, you know how
true that is. It could be that your
revenue flatlines every time you step
away. Or maybe you're trapped in a
commodity market that's racing to the
bottom. Or maybe you're one of the lucky
people who is navigating a very complex
partner dynamic that turns every
decision into a battle. These problems
and a whole lot more can seem impossible
until you break them all down into first
principles. My partners and I used this
thinking to grow Quest Nutrition by
57,000% in our first three years alone
and scaled to a billion-dollar exit. And
now I'm teaching this framework to a
select group of entrepreneurs who are
ready to scale. Now, I want to be clear,
this is not for everybody because I'm
looking to work with serious
entrepreneurs that already have an
established business and a proven track
record of execution. If that's you and
you want to learn how to break through
your biggest business bottlenecks using
first principles thinking, be sure to
apply now. Just go to impact
theory.com/scale or click the link in
the show notes. Again, that's impact
theory.com/scale. If you like this
conversation, check out this episode to
learn more. You've done everything
right. You went to college. You got a
good job. You've worked hard and gotten
promoted, but you're still living
paycheck to paycheck. And the same is
true for most of your friends. And all
of you want to know why in the hell it
seems to be impossible to get ahead.