Kind: captions
Language: en
the following is a conversation with
ryan hall his second time in the podcast
he's one of the most innovative scholars
of martial arts
in the modern era quick mention of our
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as a side note let me say that i've
gotten a chance to train with ryan
recently
and to both discuss and try out on the
mat his ideas about grappling and
fighting
what struck me is his unapologetic drive
to solve
martial arts it reminds me of the
ambitious vision and effort of google's
deep mind
to solve intelligence in ryan's case
this isn't some out there martial arts
guru talk
this is a style of thinking about the
game of human chess
of seeking to define the rules and to
engineer ways
from first principles of escaping the
constraints of those rules
this style of thinking is rare but is
ultimately the one
that leads to the discovery of new
revolutionary ideas
if you enjoy this podcast subscribe to
it anywhere or connect with me
lex friedman and now here's my
conversation
with ryan hall you're known as
a systems thinker in martial arts but
you
also i think are willing to think
outside the rules of the game outside of
the system
when you're thinking about strategies of
how to you know solve the problem
particular problem of an opponent
whether that's
jiu jitsu or in mixed martial arts
what's your process for doing that
for figuring out that puzzle i would say
i don't know if i have a specific
like a to b to c process for that sort
of thing i try to do my best to uh
appreciate that i think a lot of the
thinking um or
maybe not all the things but a lot of
great thinking on
conflict on battle on war on martial
arts has been done already
um not that we don't have to do any sort
of uh background investigation or
reassessing of these ideas or axioms
that have come down through things like
the book of five rings or the art of war
or you know like von klosterwicz even
anything like that really
but is uh trying to understand
the the lessons of the past that i think
often times we we don't take with us
um problem solving we pay lip service
and like a
uh you know a victorious fighter uh the
great fighter uh you know
he knows victory is there then he then
he seeks battle everyone else is looking
for victory
in battle yeah moving on and that's why
i'm going to double jab and throw my
left hand
and i think a lot of times our actions
don't reflect
our stated belief structure and i think
that oftentimes you can tell
what i believe really or what my
fundamental operating system is
based on my actions whether i'm aware i
have an operating system internally
whether i'm aware of it or not or
certainly whether i'm fully aware of it
so i guess uh when it comes to
strategy i try to think about how things
interact you mentioned
systems thinking and i try to do my best
to understand how systems exist but i
think that
systems have a fundamental strength and
a fundamental weakness
they work how they work and that's great
but they're
readable so if you are aware if i am
operating on a system
of which you're you're not really read
into then i think oftentimes i can seem
like
shockingly effective particularly if my
system preys on certain weaknesses
uh that that maybe you are uh you're
given to
but what happens when you've read the
same books that i have
i think that a lot of times that makes
me deeply predictable i think about
systems in jiu jitsu
you know and uh a lot of times people
think that they're doing jiu jitsu when
in reality they are doing an expression
of it let's say i'll use there's the
marcelo garcia system
there is the uh henzo gracie current
henzo race system there's the old gracie
baja one there's a
you know the gracie academy classic
crazy jiu jitsu there's the
art of jiu jitsu um you know kind of
otto's approach and you know there's
some crossover between a lot of these
but uh oftentimes i think um you know
when it comes to
understanding how i'm making decisions
and how my opponent is making decisions
i have to appreciate whether or not
i'm an end user of something and i'll
use my my phone as an example
i was thinking of this the other day and
as an end user of my phone i can't
i have no idea what it does you know
like edward snowden comes up and goes
hey guys you realize your phones are
listening to you from like
really what yeah all right i believe you
and then of course that that comes out
but uh to what extent
i have no idea um what is my phone
capable of i have no idea i can mess
with the font though i really like blue
screens not purple screens
so like as an end user i can change some
of the bells and whistles that have
nothing to do with the underlying source
code of it all or how it functions the
same way my car
i'm an end-user of my car if i do this
with the steering wheel it goes if i
push on the gas
it goes um if i yeah i know how to fix
it when it's out of gas i know how to
fix it when it's out of oil
and i know how to fix it you know when
uh when a flat tire comes but
short of that or actually beyond that i
have nothing so i think that oftentimes
um you know i've been around in jiu
jitsu long enough to encounter like a
new wave of like good grapplers
and it's very very interesting sometimes
how they're running systems they don't
realize they're running
like i'm like oh yeah i trained at
marcelo garcia's academy for a long time
you know and a big fan of marcellus was
a student there uh
encountered a lot of the the otto style
jiu jitsu a number of years ago
uh been you know a very very you know
deep into foot locking and leg attacks
and whatnot for a long long time i
understand your system better than you
do or i may
and let's say you understand my system
better than i do that would be a huge
issue that was something that i
encountered a long time ago
trying to come up in jiu jitsu where i
was trying to utilize
systems that were
created by let's say hoffman mendes or
someone else and i'm basically trying to
do what you're doing i'm just not doing
as good of a version of it so not only
am i
not doing it well but i'm entirely
predictable and i think that that can be
a big issue so
to come back i think of systems a lot of
times now in terms of you know
particularly like end user type of
systems like uh
an iphone is a really really fast way
for me to be able to do all sorts of
things
if you were to take it from me i
couldn't recreate any of that so you
want to be
more the nsa unless the end user exactly
exactly that way that way i'm listening
i'm going to be the idol
of combat that's right we're watching
you p but basically
you know it's uh i guess what i would
what i would come back and say is uh
if you understand how things interact on
a fundamental level and what type of
games exist
and what type of interactions is this
then you can transcend a lot of the uh
the systems it's almost like a cook
versus if i can make certain things in
the kitchen i can
but i am not a chef you could give me a
bunch of ingredients and i
could probably cook not well but a
couple of different things
but a master chef you know would be
aware of the implications of all of the
things that they're doing
you know extra time in the oven less
time in the oven putting this you know
flavoring or spice in
you know what you're doing with various
things and also they could make they
could turn all of these ingredients into
chinese food they could turn all these
ingredients into italian food and they
could turn all these italian food
ingredients
into chicken parmesan or it could turn
into lasagna but
they're not limited to a specific thing
because they have knowledge of how
food interacts how what it does to
create taste what it does create texture
so to come back let's take rock paper
scissors rock paper scissors is built on
the idea
of a couple different things actually
i'll tell you what can i you might have
may ask you a question
yeah what's your favorite dinosaur on
the same on three we'll go
one two three t-rex t-rex i'll meet soon
man this is we're gonna be best friends
so uh it's
okay uh if so what's the first question
when you say hey let's play rock paper
scissors it's like is it rock paper
scissors or rock paper scissors shoot
and like rock paper scissors shoot
you're like okay because if we go
rock paper scissors shoot i'm like oh
man i got lucky
and i won imagine i won 100 times in a
row yeah
i'd be luck give me luck if i was
honestly doing that
but now let's say for instance i go on
rock paper scissors and you go on shoot
rock paper scissors shoot
here comes the rock right if you lose
whose fault is it
it's yours this is built on a parody
thing where
i don't get to pick second if i get to
pick second
it's like being able to investigate your
background before going to meet you and
then i'm like oh hi
oh i too love the new jersey you know
the new jersey nets which is a statement
that no one in their right mind would
ever make
when i was growing up so anyway you'd
have to have personal knowledge of
somebody
so anyway to come back let's you're if
if you understand
how games are structured
you can start to realize that there's
huge gaps and huge holes in a lot of the
the thinking behind all of it and if you
can create the illusion of choice i'll
play one more if you don't mind it's one
of my favorite ones to do this in class
all the time
uh have you seen this before no okay um
may ask you some questions please sure
okay fantastic
i'm scared oh there's everybody wins
don't worry um all right
so could you could you please i would uh
could you please pick three fingers
and tell me what they are uh your thumb
okay
your uh pinky okay and your middle
finger okay
so could you please pick uh two fingers
your middle finger and your pinky okay
could you please pick one finger
uh i'll go with the middle finger okay
could you please pick one finger
oh pinky okay let's play again can you
pick one finger please
[Laughter]
uh your middle finger okay can you pick
one finger please
your thumb yeah your pinky
okay now pick uh two more fingers please
your uh
middle finger and your uh ring finger
okay
could you please pick one more finger
damn it so
i thought that enhanced the illusion of
choice
it's the illusion of choice if i'm
asking the questions
provided i ask the right questions there
can be no correct answer
it doesn't mean that ultimately if if
that's what you wanted let's say
like i thought i was guiding you to
something i wanted it turns out that was
the outcome you want to
well let's now let's here's now i'm
going to ask the wrong questions i might
not get what i want so
by the way sorry to interrupt uh for
people that might be just listening to
this
that uh no matter what trajectory we
took through that decision tree that
ryan was presenting it was always ending
up with the middle finger ironically
enough
i was surprised so and all of us were
surprised
and we're both winners yeah we all
everyone i
felt like a winner all right so now it
now i'm gonna then i'll ask some
different questions if you don't mind
uh can you please pick two fingers to
put down
uh your middle finger and your pinky
all right oh that's so awkward that's
like the worst finger positions
okay can you please wait a minute that's
oh hold on
yeah well what if you pick two other
fingers to put down
uh you throw me a pinky okay my thumb on
my pinky can you please pick two fingers
to put down
well whatever two you like okay your uh
middle finger and your pointy finger
ah okay can you pick two fingers to put
down what's the name is index finger
index finger that i don't
call it the point it's the point one
that's the one we usually point it's
weird to point with the ring finger
uh uh sorry what dude put two more to
put down please
uh the middle finger and the ring finger
ah man
is it what if you pick my my ring finger
and my index finger
yeah yeah i win yeah so even though i'm
asking the questions it's not impossible
that i arrive at a good outcome for me
but it's it's no longer guaranteed i
went from a situation where i literally
can't lose
yeah it's pretty low probability right
super low probability
and the second you realize what i'm
doing you would never let me win
because the ball is truly in your court
so i guess that that's kind of what i'm
fundamentally trying to put into play
almost all the time
can i ask the right set of questions can
i develop the ability
um skills wise understanding wise and
then discipline wise
and then have the courage and the
constitution and the and the discipline
necessary the patience necessary to
ask the proper questions and wait for
the proper answers
and if i can
all assuming like the perfect world
i win period oh yeah so does that make
sense yes it totally makes sense
so i don't know if you know sort of the
more mathematical discipline of game
theory
there's something called mechanism
design so game theory is this
field where you model some kind of
interaction between human beings
you can model grappling that way you can
uh
model nuclear conflict between nations
that way and
you set up a set of rules and incentives
and then use
math to predict uh what is the likely
outcome
depending over time based on the
interaction given those rules
mechanism design is the design of games
so like the design of systems that
are likely to lead to a certain outcome
and so what you're suggesting is you
want to
create you want to discover systems
whose decision tree all the possible
things that could happen
feel like there's choice being made but
ultimately one of the parties doesn't
have
any choice in what the actual final
outcome is
uh you're making them feel like they're
playing a game too so it's not like
you don't feel trapped it's kind of like
well the best traps
i don't you don't look very threatening
so i'm like oh i'll walk over there
i guess wouldn't that i guess that's
kind of an interesting thing if a lion
when is a lion roar it's an interesting
thing when you watch like lions hunting
don't roar when they hunt they want to
when they want to move you back
they do stuff like that when they
actually want to come and get you
they're pretty slinky it's like
water covered it's like furry water yeah
and and i guess like
when you keep that in mind um it's funny
how
like a frosted hobby actually a
brilliant guy like one of my mma coaches
and head coach at tristar
um he brought this up one time i thought
it was a really salient point he said
let's say we have a million
person bracket impossibly huge like
frank dukes went in the kumite level
huge bracket
he claimed to knock out like 250
consecutive people and you're like that
is
all of hong kong was in that thing and
everyone kept their mouth shut
but anyway that's pretty cool but uh
it's a comeback a little improbable
pretty cool
um so let's say for instance like
there's no cheating going on
no cheating going on and we're flipping
coins right
someone is going to have an unbroken
string of victory
through that bracket which is pretty
insane how many how many consecutive
like
toss-ups this person won and then at the
end of it all
imagine we like aliens show up and we go
hey they want to flip a coin for they're
not earth whether or not earth uh you
know gets to
gets to continue they're like oh i'll do
it
i'm good at this yeah that would be
tempting as a person to to do you're
like well i'm a lucky guy
oh yeah are you sure maybe i mean maybe
effectively you are we could argue they
effectively are incredibly lucky but
basically
is that an actual ability it's like a
perk in a video game or is that just
this thing that happened
so anyway uh how many times are someone
you could go through an entire career
you know particularly in a fights board
well let's say you get 15 knockouts in
15 toss-up scenarios because you see
that happening all the time in the fight
game a toss-up scenario it's not like
you're mounted on me and like and
that's not a toss-up scenario many many
many many many striking centers a lot of
grappling with
tons of striking scenarios are dead toss
toss-ups and uh
somebody wins by knockout they win five
times in a row then they lose a couple
times in a row and we go what happened
you're like what do you mean what
happened they were always flipping the
coin
and then they win five more they go ah
back on track can you imagine that
you're flipping a coin on like heads
heads heads heads tails what
tails those heads again oh man i'm back
on it i'm flipping good now
that's basically what's going on i think
the vast majority of the time and then
humanity's you know tendency to see a
sign in almost anything
you know it starts to present itself and
then we build a narrative in our mind to
imp to convince ourselves that we're in
some sort of control when in reality
i was in a marginal situation at best
the whole time yeah without having much
control without having a deep
understanding of the system the same
story is told the stock market with many
of the human
these distributed human systems we start
telling narratives
and start seeing patterns without
understanding actually
the system that's generating these
patterns so if we can see the system
that's incredibly valuable but then you
go well what system is above all of the
systems i guess
maybe physics maybe it's not like game
theory explains these things but like
i guess what are the what aspects of the
system can i can i put my hands on that
i can touch and understand
and what am i what am i missing what
what's going on in the world all around
me to continue to
lean on on dune that i don't have uh
that i don't you know you talk to a
blind person about
about the world about sight and talk to
someone that doesn't have everyone
who's got coronavirus now so no one can
taste or smell like this is delicious
like
is it so anyway uh you know again
what what senses am i missing or what
understanding am i missing
that's preventing me from seeing the
dots connect
in the world all around me and i think
sometimes if we uh
oftentimes at least personally i've
screwed this up a lot i'm so nose-deep
in the
in the trench of trying to understand
what i'm doing that i can't take a step
back and realize
you know that i'm in a forest not just
head-butting a tree
and i may be doing both maybe both two
things should be true at once
but uh so i would say when it comes to
strategy trying to understand that but
then also
you go well okay well how can that
sounds cool but how can you actually do
that
and then i'd say that's a really good
question because if i imagine i say man
i should fight like stephen thompson i
should fight like wonder boy he's like
good idea go do that i'm like
i'm not thinking about the guy i would
fight like could be even banging made of
if i could
you know it seems to work so anyway uh
you go well what if i could develop what
if i could take my time
developing skills so that when these
strategies become apparent that you are
they are executable to you
you actually have the ability to like
enter to again to be the person in the
arena to be the person required
whereas there's plenty of great ideas
like dunking a basketball is a fantastic
idea
alas for me unless there's a small
trampoline nearby i'm not the guy
but that doesn't make it any less good
of an idea i just don't i haven't
developed the ability
or i lack the ability so anyway i think
a lot of times at least when i watch
people in fighting i'll use an example
um we're so can we're so concerned with
trying to win early on
rather than develop skills that i'm
going like well what's the best way to
fight with my current set of skills
and usually the the path forward is like
the barbarian route like the
you put on the one ring take the damage
you need to take to hit that guy and
that was something i realized very early
on in my mma career was like i'm not
that good at striking at that time
i'm not a world-class striker now but
i'm way better at striking than i'm
giving any credit for because it helps
people sleep at night i think
but um i'm serious but uh um yeah yeah
you're always introduced as like this
message
like master grappler i'm like that's
nice of them to say that maybe i'm not
that good at grappling we haven't even
seen that
and but the funny thing is i'm like just
because if people almost go like well
lex like
see you're really good at this but you
gotta understand like we're equal man
like i'm good at this other thing
maybe you're really good at what you do
and i'm just mediocre that's also
possible
so there's plenty of people that define
themselves as a striker that do that
just because that's for lack of other
options not because they're a really
good striker like i'm a grappler i was a
grappler as a blue belt
not really so anyway i guess to come
back uh if
if i'm constantly going how can i win
with what i've got right now i think
often times i never take the time to
develop the skills that i want to
develop and i also never take the time
to develop the strategies that i want to
develop and that has actually been one
big blessing
of uh fighting someone frequently which
has been really frustrating as a result
of injury
and time away and you know some of those
people being hesitant to get in the game
but uh it gives you so much time to to
be out of the trenches and focus on
developing your abilities so that now
it's almost like developing money
like you mentioned the stock market that
you can now put in as you told me
bitcoin was a great idea
five years ago and i had eight bucks man
if someone told me bitcoin was a great
idea five years ago and i had
you know 50k oh my god i'd be sleeping
in my bed of money that i would then set
on fire later today just to do it
so all the due to all the injuries
you've been mining bitcoin all this time
and now you're a rich man well no
actually someone told me i was trying to
mine for bitcoin actually like in a cave
and then i found out recently that it's
actually mining is like a
figure of speech not like a literal
thing that you do but i mean in my
defensive english
language is difficult it is it really is
next time
russian is more uh is a ritual language
you should learn
you should learn russian i'll help you
out i believe you thank you so can you
do a whirlwind
overview of uh your career
in mma leading up to this point with the
injuries
and the undefeated record and then
what's next
since we're on the topic well i i did my
first fight in a
as a blue belt and i've been training
for about a year and a half i did nine
uh judicial tournaments in ten weekends
or eight maybe eight
tournaments in ten weekends prior to my
first fight in uh
april 2006 um i got punched in the face
a whole bunch i didn't realize it was a
professional fight
and found that out like the day
beforehand that was great
thanks coach uh it was in atlantic city
where another place no one ever goes on
purpose so that wasn't great
i got into three actually three car
accidents
in the preceding 36 hours before the
fight
i had my car totaled um i wasn't driving
for any of them that was great
uh it was 2006. it's 2006. yeah and then
you're a blue boat uh yeah yeah i've
been training for about a year and a
half to blue belt
you're getting i mean if you haven't
lived if you haven't gotten punched in
the face in
atlantic city that's true i mean i so
these are
i would a lot would have loved to have
it happen for different reasons yeah but
uh
yeah well what's funny is you know i i
remember you know getting punched in the
face a bunch trying to do inverted guard
i won one round lost two rounds
definitely lost the fight
you went for inverted sorry to interrupt
you went for inverted guard like can you
tell the story of that fight
yeah sure it was three three minute
rounds which is not a professional fight
length although i don't know if
professional fight length would have
been any better it's more time to get
punched
uh but uh i found out part way through
is like i remember walking back to my
corner in the first round i'm like this
guy can't hurt me and he's like yeah
my corner was my friend tom and then
someone else and he's like yeah
i would still encourage you to stop
blocking so many punches with your face
i'm like that's a good idea time i
appreciate that i'm gonna try that
um anyway uh i remember like i was not
you're not allowed to upkick so i'm like
great i was
i had no martial arts skills it really
at all but if i had anything at all it
was jujitsu it was very very little jiu
jitsu
uh but definitely no wrestling
definitely no striking like i was
basically a magnet for punches
so that was your time uh that was you
know roughnecking out
in atlantic city as we all do once in a
while can we fast forward to when you're
actually dominating
as a black belt well actually because i
took a little bit of money that they're
like hey we're paying him like
really okay stories with ryan hall
well then i went to i went to the casino
i went to whatever like the traffic
canada that was right there
the casino because that was a boardwalk
call and i'm like you know what man this
was this has been a not great not great
evening i'm gonna
this is i'm gonna win it back it's gonna
be great
15 minutes later they had all the money
that i had from the fight was gone
yeah i remember like walking out of the
casino super pissed
and like i don't know what i was
thinking like i'm not good at gambling
why
this was not going to make my night
better i just thought that there was
going to be some sort of cosmic
balancing and maybe it was the cosmic
balancing all at once for the things
i've done in the longer term though
yeah the the balancing we'll see
i hope so but to come so we're all dead
in the end though that is true time will
get us all
yeah well that was so that was the first
one and that was when i realized
i'm terrible at mma but i like it i
should just stop this until i one day
learn how to actually grapple much less
learn how to fight but i remember this
guy named dave kaplan who's the reason
my ears are all messed up
who was on the ultimate fighter and got
punched in the face and knocked out by
tom lawler who i'll always appreciate
for doing that
um but uh anyway uh david tom uh
i appreciate tom i appreciate dave too
david was great dave was just a huge
bully and used to like
really not completely unmercifully but
relatively unmercifully beat the crap
out of me and
uh anyway uh the ears look good so i
appreciate that i tell people it's a
tumor that i got and i'm gonna if they
want in on our class action lawsuit with
atmc they should you know
send me an email but uh anyway you're
very financially savvy
i'm very good no i just give the
impression like dave basically said hey
don't worry man you're never going to be
good at
mma and you're never going to be good at
grappling either but even if you are
good at grappling which
in my opinion you will never be you will
never be good at fighting and i said
dave if i do nothing else in my life i'm
going to keep training until i can make
you pay for that
and now that i can make him pay for that
really easily he doesn't train anymore
but i love dave dave's awesome he
actually won the singing b what an
interesting dude
super interesting guy but anyway uh none
of the virginia like speaks couple
languages super interesting guys like
shockingly good at jeopardy too um not
that i'm any good but still shockingly
good to jeopardy so anyway years later
met for as a hobby actually john danaher
i met john danaher and he put me in
touch with for as a hobby i started
training at tristar i you know
immediately loved uh working with frost
and learning under for us started
training at tristar and i did my first
real professional mma fight um
as someone that actually does had
practiced a little bit prior
in i think august 2012 um and uh
that was against a guy he was four and
five at the time so you know had some
experience um good kind of like first go
for me honestly and i won that fight by
tko
and then it was a little bit of uh time
off and then i did another fight against
a tough guy named uh magic hammer um he
was five and two at the time i think he
was three and i was an amateur she had a
good good little bit of fighting
experience
um won that one in the first round uh
via rear naked choke and then uh
started to experience difficulty getting
getting fights at that point
um you know what you continuously
introduced as like the
the master of grappling the submission
at least that would that was my thing
i don't know if i was that was the
source of the fear for people i think so
because
i mean that definitely wasn't much at
striking at that point you know i
definitely am a lot i'd like to think
i'm pretty hard to hurt although i try
not to lean on that and i
played baseball for like 16 years so i
can hit things pretty hard i just
wasn't able to uh i i recognized pretty
early on that i had no idea how to
actually hit things
hard without becoming hittable myself so
i think that's kind of the big thing is
a lot of times like we almost were
mentioning
before if you try to go and get people
too early you can hit them if they're
not that good
but you're going to get hit yourself so
you're making you're basically making a
wager you're making a trade of your own
life for the ability to hit them when
you watch guys like israel
sonia floyd mayweather stephen thompson
uh conor mcgregor when he's fighting
really well
it's not a trade they're not you're
hitting them and they're hitting you
it's they're hitting you but it takes
years and years and years and years to
be able to learn how to do that tom lee
is another great example of that and you
know my closest training partner one of
my best friends
and uh currently now uh one champion uh
with one championship
in uh in asia the champion of the uh
featherweight or i guess lightweight
featherweight
um 155 uh over there now and he recently
defeated uh martin nguyen in a really
great fight and
ton knocked him out long time champion
and tan doesn't let you hit him he
doesn't let you touch him i feel so
fortunate to have met guys like stephen
and ton
to go early on in career and go holy
moly i can't even
it's not even like oh you'll let me walk
over and find you it's like fighting a
ghost that periodically shows up with a
hammer and smokes you in the
melon and then disappears into the ether
again so the way to approach the
fighting game is thinking how can i
attack without being hit because every
every strategy every idea you have about
what you're going to do
has to do with uh like that uh
minimizing the the return abs absolutely
i mean that's what all good
fighting has done all poor fighting if
you know throughout the course of
history most generals whether they saw a
read or
you know they they did battles by
attrition yeah you know it's like yeah
man i've got 150 guys you've got 50 like
yeah 60 of my guys die killing your 50
like that's great for me
yeah but uh that's not so great for the
60 guys that died you know i hope it's
worth it so when you realize that not
only you're not just
kobe bryant and you're phil jackson too
you got to do everything
you know if you've got to run across the
beach in normandy so be it but that
better be
you should have we make sure we thought
this through and there's like hey
there's no way we can like
you know walk around the side huh
because oftentimes there
there is and i think a lot of times
there's a lot of incentives in
professional fighting to
for people who want to do that and we
come up with all sorts of well i'm
trying to be exciting
are you is that really what you came
here to do because i came here to win
and i think that anyone that that's
really successful came there to win and
if it ends up being exciting well that's
fantastic i hope that people enjoy
watching something and that's great but
that's a qualitative assessment anyway
you know you want to also be able to
you know live the rest of your life i
think it's easy you know i'll
use meldrick taylor i'm a big boxing fan
alger taylor was an excellent fighter
um came this close uh to a world title
and was stopped with like
he was in a fight that he was winning
with seconds remaining literally seconds
remaining and they probably could have
just let it go and he would have been
world champion and
it was brutal if you ever watch
legendary nights like hbo boxing show
it's it's great
but um it's heartbreaking it's
absolutely heartbreaking and also like
the beating that he absorbed in that
fight changed him for the rest of his
life
and also you know don't think he'd ever
been hit before but it was one of those
where you go
it's it's all fun and games until you
can't remember your name at age 44 years
old
and i didn't come here what are they
what did patton saying nobody nobody
wins the war by dying for his country
make the other poor bastard die for his
and uh i think that
that's kind of what we're shooting for
and you know the
lionization of absorbing damage and
that not being a big deal like you hear
that all the time so and so can take
shots that would put a lesser fighter
down
what does that even mean yeah you know
like let's let me get this straight your
ability to absorb
damage is a part of you i mean i guess
that don't get me wrong that is an
attribute that's nice to have if you if
you need it
but there's plenty of people that
actually have really porous defense
that are just very very difficult to
hurt for whatever reason
that's a fascinating fighter's
perspective on the thing i mean the
the the story that is
inspiring and i know it goes against
the artistry of fighting is when you
have taken the damage
to still rise up and be able to defeat
the opponent
so it's uh but that
that's a flip side of a basically you
failing to defend yourself properly
right
i agree but let's say for i think it's
it's trying that's a triumph of
of humanity that's triumph that's
amazing it's to witness such a thing is
unbelievable
but you still go this is there is a cost
here it's like i i
i've been fortunate enough to spend some
time working with with the military
and i've been like around and read medal
of honor citations they're unbelievable
like you read the story music
it it's it'll floor you but it's all a
cost and you don't want to be paying
that cost
or the long term and most of the time
with the cost was everything and then
sometimes you go hey yeah the value here
it's worth everything it's like i
defend your family you defend your
country under certain circumstances and
if that point is extension of your
family
you're like hey this is worth it to
casually throw your life away or throw a
hufflepuff it's foolish there's nothing
there's nothing
great about that and and like you said
it's still an amazing thing to see
yeah but but it's also amazing to see
you not take damages the floyd
mayweather it's the artistry of like not
being hit
and i wonder if maybe that's why people
don't resonate with floyd as much as
obviously muhammad ali was such a time
and place a great man for so many
different reasons although it was funny
to remember like
there were times when he wasn't very
popular we love him now because of time
of context
you know time to move away from some of
the nonsense he had to deal with
but uh we got to see him struggle and
also he had unbelievable sacrifice both
in and out of the ring you know that
that we all got to witness we've never
really seen floyd struggle like that and
granted obviously floyd isn't like a
civil rights figure like
muhammad ali was it's different time
different place and he's a different man
but basically uh
you know i wonder if part of the thing
that made us made everyone think of
muhammad ali as the greatest in addition
to of course
the unbelievable things that he did out
in the world and the stands that he made
we saw him struggle in the ring it's
it's almost it's humanizing
you know it's it's weird when people the
person yeah people respect b but again
it's
we saw gsp lose and gsp came back
stronger
khabib is amazing but i wonder i wonder
how
people feel about him long term not like
they won't think of him as amazing and
great
and he's been a respectable person and
champion but uh
the time he hasn't he hasn't had to fall
yeah if that makes sense and also
coupled with uh
ali had uh a way of being poetic
about sort of the way he was in the ring
sort of being able to explain the
artistry that he
i mean there's like joking as being
playful but really he was
able to describe the the flow like a
butterfly's thing that could be like he
was able to
actually talk about his strategy without
talking
without crossing that line into the
floyd mayweather when you're just
talking about money and and just talking
shit that's true
actually conor mcgregor when he's not
talking shit is pretty good at like
talking about the art of the marshall
and like first time and uh i wish khabib
did the same
actually uh from uh
like the satya brothers there's a few
there's a culture of like being poetic
about like being scholars
and also uh bards or whatever poets
of the game and khabib is more
like just simple and he lets his actions
speak which
is is great too in his own way yeah it's
great but
it's nice when you can tell stories and
uh
you know that that that's probably why
ali was the great catch me
up to you went to three fights i think
undefeated yep bj penn you we talked
about last time you defeated bj penn
that's a
that's a i mean that's an incredible
accomplishment
but you fought a lot of really tough
guys um
when was your last fight and then catch
me up with the injuries
well a lot of people kept more and more
and more were
unwilling to fight you yeah that's been
that's that was why i was out for two
years following the grey maynard fight
between uh
the fighting gray um and bj and the
great major fight was actually what i'm
really proud of because
um gray was very tough he's very big
very strong very experienced i had
only five fights at the time um and i
didn't have a lot of skills i don't get
to fight gray with what i
have today i had to fight great with
what i had in december 2016.
and that i it really took a lot of
discipline a lot of
focus a lot of challenge you know to
stay the course to do what i need to do
in the fight and to win
in in ultimately dominating fashion just
not in the dominating obvious sense that
you see when someone runs across and
just
does that to somebody but that wasn't on
the list for me at that time
you know so um that was a that was an
interesting one but the time away again
was very frustrating it was incredibly
difficult
before that fight uh after that fight
that well because i uh
i beat artem lobov in the final of the
ultimate fighter in autumn
is another guy that's tough a lot of
experience and uh gets
gets you know he he's a funny guy and he
said some things on the internet so i
think he gets a lot of heat for that
but uh you know he just knocked out
three of my teammates i'm like he
put a couple people in a pretty rough
shape at the end of that so he was doing
well and that was a tough fight again
if i got to go back and fight that fight
now it would be not competitive at all i
mean it wasn't competitive at that time
but it very it was completely phased it
wasn't close but it was competitive
so you were improving and growing fast
yeah and it was nice to have time away i
wish i had more time in the ring but
again i'd only been doing mma for three
years at that time so the
improvement from doing what the bitcoin
mining
was over uh overriding the ring rust
i think so i don't really believe in
ring rust if i'm honest you know i can
understand why
uh you know people could feel a certain
way but if anything it's almost like you
just kind of forget what competition's
like
and you realize like oh you feel
butterflies or something like that you
go oh my god this is different versus no
that's your body getting ready to
perform it's okay it's normal
how do you not have ring rust i think i
try to watch try to practice performing
no matter what
you know like whether it's sing karaoke
i'm not very good but like anything you
name it talking in front of people like
you embrace the butterflies um yeah
it's almost like i remember my last
fight i'm just staring at the wall and
i'm like
huh i guess i guess i'm gonna fight in a
couple minutes
all right hey you give i mean of course
we all heard the phrase like you can
never walk in the same river twice
because even if you're this even if the
river's the same you're a different man
that's uh
i think it's a really important thing to
understand because at various points in
my martial arts career of
thought oh man how should i feel i
remember when i used to do well in
competition i would feel
i would think these thoughts listen to
this song think think about this
i would feel a certain way and then if
you don't feel that way i would start to
become stressed because uh i was
self-inflicted versus going you'll feel
how you feel
your job is to show up with what you
have on the day do your absolute best
like i will never quit i can be sure of
that i didn't say i can't be beat i
can definitely be i could have lost
every single fight that i've ever had
but
i control my effort and i control my
attitude and that's i will
i will do my very best to execute my
game plan and the event's not working
if i have to i'll put my hands up and
walk dead forward if i need to at
somebody
you know we hope that that's not where
it goes but you know like again that
humanizing moment where you're shooting
for like just the inner like the inner
you sacrifice the outer and all you have
left is will and
you hope it doesn't happen but if it
does you'll be there but i guess to come
back like the extra periods of time
um in between fights i think was uh
valuable because
it was it was deeply challenging it was
incredibly it was it's
heartbreaking sometimes i'm honest man
it's like i didn't wanna it's just
waiting
oh my god dude is there politics
involved does it
some sometimes you know like i i i
i you know it's every single time you
step into the ring nothing's guaranteed
um it's uh you could be hurt you could
hurt somebody you could
win you could lose you know throwing
away just like i said throwing away your
healthier life cheaply makes no sense
for anyone um
and you know having demonstrating some
degree of
of temperance is not cowardly either i
mean but again you're
if you wait too long you have nothing so
i guess like uh
i was trying and always being i'm always
open to fighting the absolute best
people possible i'm never turning down
fights
ever um you know some random jabroni
decides that he wants to fight him to go
away if i wanted to just fight randoms i
would just start at stand to the you
know
on the table at denny's and start
yelling and i'm sure would have you know
some people who'd be willing to indulge
me
but uh you know you want to fight um you
know
meaningful opponents challenging
opponents and i know who and where they
are
and so you did fight in atlantic city
you know i did the denny
but you put the denny's behind you i did
and you know and i'll be honest if they
were if i just stood up after that fight
i don't know if i was in
great shape to expect to win in the
other fights that evening but i could i
could have tried it i'm sure there was
some takers in the crowd particularly
after they watched me fight they're like
yeah i'll fight that guy
so okay so when was the last fight that
was uh darren elkins that was
six months or seven months after the bj
fight which was great because that's you
know i love maybe five really tough a
very tough opponent very tough guy
super tough dude and uh that was in uh
july 2019 and then right when i was
about to fight
uh so you're ready to fight regularly
after that yeah
trying to fight and then you're trying
to find a fight yeah incorrect we got
ricardo llamas so no one else none of
the
i was ranked in the top 15 at that point
and then uh
people didn't want to fight we were
struggling to find an opponent and
ricardo llamas a great you know former
title challenger you know
mma you know really great history and
mma recently retired but
we were supposed to fight in uh i think
may
march march may of uh 2020 and then
coronavirus happened
and uh so that scrapped the whole show
you know training we were just
scrambling to try to keep the gym alive
and take care you know i have five or
six four five six i think five full-time
employees that i
you know they're my responsibility i
have to their livelihood is in my hands
and it's
um to be irresponsible of me to to not
take that seriously so anyway uh
we were able to navigate through that
time and then uh we were able to
reschedule the llamas fight and that was
in august
of last year and i got a a
medical like flag like oh hey like you
you have a medical condition that we
need to look into
you when i got pulled from the fight and
i immediately was concerned because of
course any serious medical condition you
want to go oh man
well i guess i would like to look at
that yeah it turns out it was a giant
false positive
and you know we find that out you know
all of five weeks later and you go
you gotta be kidding me that's
frustrating and then we're still waiting
for our fight waiting for a fight
waiting for a fight waiting for a fight
people won't sign up
um asked for a number of different
opponents basically said hey i'm willing
to fight anybody that's that's tough and
moving forward um
finally got a you know a great opponent
in dan ige
um for uh i guess it would have been uh
this uh
this march yeah and then um i was
training in january working on
working on some stuff i was out training
with raymond daniels in uh
in california raymond's amazing um
unbelievable you know kickboxing karate
style kickboxer
fantastic martial artist great teacher
great training partner and good friend
and uh
you know just really bad luck uh you
know kind of a fall in the middle of
in the middle of training and i tore uh
my hip flexor halfway off of my femur
so yeah that wasn't great and you go
like man right at the time where you're
like oh man all right finally moving
forward
you know having the opportunity to fight
dan's a really tough guy you know you
have to fight well if you want to have a
good chance to do well with him if you
don't fight well it's going to be a
rough night i'm like that's exactly what
to sign up for that's what we want bj
that's what we went with
elkins that was gray and then the
universe goes hey man i hear you but
there's also this so anyway uh yeah
unfortunately it's healing up and then
hopefully uh
which we think you yeah i think um may
this year may of this year yeah so it's
been it's been
it's been about five weeks since the
injury you'll be able to heal up you
think
yeah i think it'll be okay by then like
i don't need a big camp at this point
i've had
years of camp um i'm not going to
curtail my drinking or anything like
that obviously you know come on man
life is meant to be live and uh you know
so it's uh you know
i i'm in good shape i always i'm always
training i'm trying to do my best to
train around the injury to the extent
that i can right now without
you know hurting myself long term so is
there a particular opponent's you're
thinking about
yeah anybody anybody forward you know i
mean i tried to i asked uh
i asked this second that i got hurt i
sent a message to dan and i said hey man
like
i just wanted you to be the first person
to know um
i you know i just was pretty reasonably
injured you just got an mri doctor says
like
hey man you're out and you need to take
like three weeks off off don't do
anything or you're gonna immediately
you're gonna tear it the whole way and
this is going to be surgery
and then it's going to be an additional
like eight weeks on top of that to start
to rehab it through pt
and anyway uh you know so i let him know
hey if you can push this thing back i
would love to
keep on the car i would love to keep the
fight you know it's like i respect you a
lot as an opponent and also it's been
brutal trying to get anybody to sign on
so if you're into it i'm still there
unfortunately he turned that down i
understand he had other things going on
he and his wife were expecting a child
coming up
so uh he needed to he needed to fight
and anyway uh
yeah i guess we'll see who's coming
forward um is there somebody's like
super tough in the featherweight
division that you
you seem to like enjoy the difficult
puzzles is there somebody especially
difficult that you
would like to fight i would like to
fight i know that i'll need to win
at least one fight before this um and i
look forward to coming back and giving
my best effort to do that
i want to fight to beat uh megaman
sharapov i want to fight yeah rodriguez
i want to fight um uh korean zombie
and b is complicated man yeah that would
be a
guy i would love to see that fight
that's a fascinating fight that would be
fun
um he would be very challenging all
those guys are very challenging
and uh so i look forward to just staying
healthy to the extent that we can coming
back and i'm gonna fight multiple times
this year hell our hot water
hell yes hey by the way uh i completely
forgot because you were talking about
systems
and decision trees and the illusion of
choice
made me think of sam harris and i forgot
to mention it
so he talks about free will quite a bit
huh
and that there's an illusion of free
will
so it's like old claim cotton that the
you know maybe the universe constructed
that little game where
it makes us feel like we have a bunch of
choices but we really don't
we're really always ending up with the
middle finger that should be hilarious
yeah that's it that's that's what you
see before you die
it's just a giant middle finger it's
like oh fuck
i knew it uh i knew it what do you think
do you think there's a free will like we
feel like we're making choices so you're
thinking again we're talking about okay
here's a system of martial arts
that's uh hands of gracie there's
different schools and whatever
and then you're thinking okay how can i
think outside these systems but then
there's
also a system that's our human society
and
we feel like there's a actual
choice being made by us individuals
do you think that choice is real or is
it just an illusion well
okay that's a really good question i'm
not necessarily equipped to answer this
but i'll do my best
um okay i guess i would say to start
with sure would be interesting if it
wasn't real if the choice wasn't real
yeah um would be pretty
interesting if it is real uh first off i
would start with facilitated beliefs
versus
not facilitative beliefs it's almost
like uh i think the world's out to get
me
true not true what next probably not a
facility to believe even if you
if imagine you believe there's no free
will okay now what
does that justify every single impulse
that you're going to
give into or does the belief in free
will just the belief in my ability to
work hard to focus to be disciplined to
improve my position
prove my situation whether it's true or
not although i think that
at least many of us would argue that at
least whether whether there's some sort
of internal driver that
allows for that yeah like we live in a
material world your actions do affect
the world
i can choose to pick that water up or
not and anyway uh
i would say i believe strongly in the
idea of
picking facilitative beliefs um you know
and
going hey i will adjust whether this
belief system is right or wrong on a
cosmic level i'm nowhere near smart
enough to understand
but i can say me deciding that
let's say for instance i'm going to walk
over to have a conversation with someone
in the hotel lobby and they've
never met them and i go over and i start
with oh this is going to be interesting
and i just walk over there
versus in my head i'm like what's this
asshole want
we're about to have two very different
conversations i could be right that this
person is not very polite or
thinks negatively of me right from go
but i think that
that's probably not a facility to
believe people talk about
i'm how is that going to help me
navigate the conversation to a positive
conclusion and i think about that for
uh um you know let's say fighting it's a
good example like
confidence plenty of people believe
plenty of things that aren't real myself
included i'm sure
all the time and uh anyway believing
that you can do something
i'm like hey i think i can win doesn't
guarantee you a positive outcome but i
would say
it most of us would probably most of us
would argue that it helps
and you think about depression what's
depression if not a
a negative unfacilitative belief that is
not
always that oftentimes is not reflected
by reality
but you project it on to reality and
it's understandable if it makes you feel
like oh man this isn't going to work out
i don't think the prospects are going
well
and then if you feel like you can't get
out of that loop that seems
pretty rough and i see a lot of things
out in society right now where you go
whether whether you agree or disagree
with various positions on things you go
is that a facilitated belief even if
that is true
which is arguable anything so what next
man so what where does this end one one
is the positive
what's the happy ending here and if they
go well there is no happiness like okay
so so now what so what do we do here and
i guess uh
so choose the facilitative belief and uh
in your intuition believing that free
will is real
is uh is more productive for a
successful life
absolutely because otherwise how am i
not
how am i first of how can i how can
society function if it's not real
so how can i blame you or anyone else or
hold anyone responsible for anything if
free will isn't real
well no that's exactly the point you but
at the surface level what you're saying
is true but perhaps if we
truly internalize that free will as an
illusion
we'll start to figure out something that
uh
that transforms the way we see society
for example
we are very individual centric so
uh believing that free will is real
puts a lot of responsibility and blame
on people when they
do something bad maybe if we
truly internalize that free will is an
illusion we start to think about the
system of
humans together as um
as like this mechanism for progress as
opposed to where
individual people are responsible for
their actions
uh good or bad so we like remove the
value the weight we assigned to the
accomplishments or
the or the violence the negative stuff
done by individuals and more look at the
progress of society
i don't know what that looks like but
it's almost like as opposed to focusing
on the individual ants of an ant colony
looking at the entirety of the ant
colony
to that i think it makes perfect sense i
would just say that that's a reasonable
thing to suggest
it's a seismic shift right and it's hard
to say whether that would be
you know better or worse but i guess
i'll use this as a this is a convenient
one for me
um so i remember the last time we spoke
i brought up
you know one of the most reviled evil
characters in certainly recent history
probably human history period adolf
hitler well i'm a big fan of making
people live in the world that they want
to believe in
well if free will doesn't exist and it's
just about how things move
forward when are we going to be
high-fiving this guy or what like this
is you know because i remember what i
said
and you know that actually brings me to
something else we discussed you know uh
yeah for people who don't know ryan
brought up
or i brought up there's literally a
giant book about hitler my so i've been
obsessed with
uh hitler world war ii and stalin
recently uh for
recently oh man
this has become like a meme joe rogan
with like dmt and
me with it like i picked something more
positive
like cat in the head or something i
don't know but we you brought up hitler
as an example of something particular of
the the some philosophical discussions
we're having and uh the excellent
eloquent and uh the the full of
integrity
mma journalists uh clipped out something
you've said about
uh about hitler and said that uh
you know i i forget what the headlines
are but there were
the the most ridiculous possible
implementation
basically intentionally misrepresenting
intentionally misunderstanding what i'm
saying
then it's like i get that they're stupid
but i'm stupid too so i know what that's
like so i don't have a lot of
stupid yeah exactly it's it's yeah
exactly i don't i can't give you pass on
that
but basically intentionally
misunderstanding what's going on
but what i find funny is that
hey we got to be careful what we believe
and again back to the cancel culture
thing that we discussed last time as
well
where would i would i like to apologize
i mean no actually something about
cancer culture that we've been seeing
things culturally like
i will be damned if i apologize for
anything that i don't need to apologize
for because i was intentionally
misunderstood in that instance now
you could say that i don't know that i'm
not a historical scholar which i would
agree immediately and
also that i'm that i oftentimes
ineligibly phrase things which i'll
agree that what again
but uh ultimately you know going hey i
want to make you
believe live in the world that you will
that you're suggesting
ought to exist okay so if there's no
free will
is everything how far of a step back are
we willing to take cosmically before we
start going
hey this is good because we're
experiencing a social you know
reckoning in our country at the moment
you know for good and
for other um probably i guess and
basically uh
but hey it all worked out right so that
that's probably not something that would
fly and and i think
that's a fair thing that's interesting
it might not fly from the individual
perspective but if you zoom out
and think of you know appreciate society
as you know just like an ant colony as a
beautifully complex system
like we kind of from from the individual
pro
perspective we value progress
especially progress of the individual
but in whole progress of societies
but if you accept that this is just a
complex system that's not necessarily
headed in you
anywhere that this is almost like that
river
it's just flowing i think that removes
the burden
of always striving of always trying and
always like the struggle and so on
so it's possible that if we have no
control you can like arrive at some kind
of other
zen state does that sound very human
though that's that's
that's that goes against i think
uh our current uh human condition as we
experience it but we've communicated
that to each other like
so we've taught like through these
social forces taught
each other that our lives matter and so
on
maybe if we convince ourselves that
we're just sort of like little things in
a stream
and ultimately none of it matters there
might be some kind of enjoyment to be
discovered through that process i don't
listen
i'm a capitalist but i guess i think you
bring up a really important point like i
guess almost anything like capitalism
i i only get to experience it as i as i
sit here
now and i get to live i was raised in
the united states i've traveled around
the world a little bit i've had the
you know good fortune of meeting many
people from many different places
and um i'm an end user of capitalism i
don't really know how it got here
whether it was
i wasn't there at the start of this idea
i wasn't there for hey how do we come up
with this idea how do we arrive and i'm
nowhere near well read enough to
understand
any of that really uh even second hand
and i guess recognizing that
communism marxism socialism anarchism
anything is uh
these are all perspectives that all have
i guess
various strengths and weaknesses but i
guess uh one thing i'm always
i guess i would say the burden it seems
to me that if you want to make a change
uh the burden of proof
is is on the person implying that there
needs to be a change yeah and
it doesn't mean that there's nothing
there but it's like if you want to
create a small shift a riffle that's
fine but a seismic
ripping shift in how we exist or how we
experience the world as human beings and
you mentioned fighting
why watching someone undergo take abuse
on a level in the ring
that's just shocking and then triumph in
spite of it is like
it's you're like this is unbelievable
this is part of the magic of combat
sports
now it's part of the the magic the other
side of the match that doesn't get
talked about sometimes is that the
the trajectory of that individual's life
later on is not always great
um or there's a little phrase there's a
cost for that but uh
you know if if this if we remember you
mentioned removing the struggle
i don't personally the struggle is what
makes life
is what makes life life and also i guess
you know something for us has brought up
to me on a number of occasions is that
as and it makes sense to me it's
basically uh
humans only understand things uh through
relative comparison i only understand
um you know heat because i've known cold
i only unders it's i guess like it's
like talking to someone that's uh never
experienced any sort of hardship and
then their
their latte isn't right and then they
they pitch a fit
versus someone that's gone through a
great deal of challenge struggle
you know in their life they tend to have
a little bit more of an even perspective
and anyway and of course even as a
relative thing and what i perceive to be
even may not be even maybe i'm
particularly soft or something the other
direction without realizing because i
can only understand what i can
understand
but the idea that that we want to
fundamentally
alter ourselves as a species and as
people
seems like a incredibly incredibly
high bar to prove and also like an
incredibly dangerous idea
because it always comes back to who's
going to be responsible for this who
gets to do the choosing
what's a good idea what's not a good
idea and i guess that actually brings me
kind of to a
something i've been encountering
recently in discussions with friends
i feel like there's only two types of
people that i that i encounter at this
point um people with a more or less
libertarian tilt
to their thinking and people without it
and when i say libertarian i don't mean
that
in the political party sense or even the
belief system basically i'm like hey
you do you buddy it's not my it's not
what you're up to is not my concern
versus what you're up to is my concern
and i guess i've always watched
you know various points in history
people on this side are people on that
side are
more more or less you know i guess
problematic i guess you could say i
don't mean that in the
internet sense you know more of it more
of an issue
but um the world is always full of
people that want to tell you
what you need to be doing as opposed to
more or less do no harm and i guess
that's one of the ones anytime i'm
trying to tell other people what to do
i better hope i'm right and it's bizarre
to me how many people are so confident
that
their side or their position is the one
that's not only right for them but right
enough that they can enforce it on
others and that just seems incredibly
dangerous to me
and i guess that comes back to even
sam's point about oh we want to
if under trying to spread the idea that
free will doesn't exist i'm not saying
it's damaging but it very well may be
and plenty of other things could be as
well i'm not you know it goes way over
my head as to you know the implications
of all of these and i guess all of us
are an evangelist for something
but uh i i guess it's weird that we've
gotten this far
as a species and now we want to take
like sharp
sharp turns well we've been taking a
bunch of sharp turns throughout history
yeah that's so that's what you know
that's that's the way
you know okay humans love power and one
way to attain power is to say
everything that you guys are doing is
wrong and i have the right thing and i'm
going to build up a giant cult of people
and i'm going to overthrow and
indirectly what that results in me is me
gaining power
and that's how you get all the big
revolutions in human history
saying i'm done with the thing that the
powerful are currently doing
so i'm going to overthrow that's that's
where probably
all the identity politics that's
happening now is people that didn't have
power before
are looking to gain power and they're
also
you know that's where jordan peterson
criticizes identity politics is
people with the right with the good
intentions i should say
are in seeking power allow power to
corrupt them
as power always does and so they
lose track of like the
the the devils that they're fighting by
becoming
the same kind of devils the the the same
kind of evil that they're fighting
and so that that's just the progress of
human history but hopefully
as these power greedy people keep
attaining power with the with the
progressive mindset
over time things get better and better
as they can as they have generation
each generation a lot of a lot of
unfairness happens a lot of
hypocrisy happens a lot of people are
trampled along the way
by those who mean well but over time
like lessons are learned or like
human like civilization accumulates
lessons
and in part learns the lessons of
history and gets better and better over
time
even though in the short term there's
people acting not their best selves
and you know
that seems to be the progress of human
history the
idea of internalizing with free will not
being real
i mean you you're actually making me
realize that that ultimately leads to a
kind of um
doesn't that go in a nihilistic
direction yeah it's both nihilistic or
if you want to
make it a political system then it's
more like communist type of
a system where like the the value of the
individual is completely
uh reduced removed or
another perspective is like the freedom
of an individual is not to be valued or
protected and so
from us our current perspective the
systems that seem to have worked the
united states
works pretty damn well uh despite all
the different criticisms
it seems like freedom of the individual
in all its forms
seems to be fundamental to the success
of the united states
and so we should it's uh however the
hell you put it
is like doesn't matter whether free will
is or isn't an illusion
the belief that it's real protects the
individual from the group which is
fundamentally correct me if i'm wrong
that always seems like
the big issue of history hey there's
more of me than there is of you
deal with it you're like yikes yeah and
you want to be yourself you want to be
different you want to have a different
religion you want to be a different skin
color you want to do this all the bad
tribal things happen
when there's more of me than you
recreating from wrong yeah
yeah absolutely but then that's always
the fundamental power imbalance though
right
well the interesting thing about the
libertarian thinking i guess i
i don't know those words are maybe
they're all charged i know what you can
yeah and they're all
i may not scale up but i mean more like
on a philosophical underpinning where
you're like yeah basically
hey you feel free to believe i'm i'm a
fool and
plenty of people do i'm sure but as long
as you don't
chase me down the hall and hit me in the
back of the head with a textbook
what's the big deal yeah so the
libertarian viewpoint
which i probably espouse like that's i'm
very much like uh freedom of the
individual is very valuable
and like leave others the fuck alone
unless they're trying to hurt you
the thing is you also have to i believe
put in the
the work of empathy of understanding
what others how what leaving people the
fuck alone means to others
but isn't that an interesting thing if i
believe in freedom of the individual
and i take that like all of these like
you said you take them past just their
first
why question you ask why why why why or
how how many times
should that not extend to respect for
you respect for your position respect
for your individual lived experience
which could be
grossly different than mine yeah this is
the problem with saying
i'm an individual i'm not going to
bother you you don't bother me
that's just like that's not actionable
because
to be to make it actionable you have to
think the why why
why why you have to do the steps beyond
right you think what does that actually
mean that means
understanding how even my very existence
uh like hurts others because
you have to understand that like i'm not
you're not just sitting alone in a room
you're uh you're using like public
transit you're using the police force
you're using
fire fighters you're using the like
you're using a lot of
resources that are publicly shared and
some of those resources are are unfairly
distributed
like we've agreed that we're going to
pay taxes and
those taxes are going to go towards
building some kind of infrastructure
so that's already towards social that's
so you're not a real
you're you're not a real sort of i
talked to michael malus like anarchists
right saying like basically full
just leave me the fuck alone and i'm
going to collaborate with whoever the
hell i want
we're not that's not the american
society
as it stands currently we've agreed
that there's going to be certain social
institutions
that we pay into yes and uh some of the
sort of discussions about race and all
those kinds of things
is about those institutions being
uh institutionally unfair whether it's
race or gender all those kinds of things
listen i you know i have a bunch of
criticisms of the way that conversation
carries itself out but
the thing is what's valuable is to
actually listen and empathize
and that's not over often talked about
with the leaving the fucking little
mindset
because your um
it doesn't have it doesn't have that
little component which i think
could be fundamental to the function of
a society which is like social
like it's the what is it the obama you
didn't
build it or you didn't build it alone or
whatever
what however that goes but basically we
wouldn't be
we wouldn't be able to accomplish
anything as individuals without the help
of others
and to be able to then start to think
okay so what is
what is what is my duty what is my
responsibility to other human beings
to be respectful to be loving to to help
them
as part of this functioning society that
starts that's actually a lot of work to
start to think about that for sure
because then i have to like think okay
ryan
what's his life like like as a business
owner doing covid
what's that like and then he has uh
there's employees that
run the gym what's that like what's that
stress like right or about the fighting
and the injury and so on what's that
like that empathy takes a lot of like
compute cycles and also a lot of energy
right
but i have to go through that
computation if i want to be
an individual that's like
doesn't hurt you if if i may i guess
like to
to come back to muhammad ali one of the
things he said is service others is
the rent is the rent that you pay for
your you know there's these is the price
you pay for right here on earth
yeah and now i one of the things that i
think that i see as a result of the
internet all the time
is people talking about global giant
problems
social problems that are society-wide
that are
massive like truly massive and frankly
beyond the
beyond the power of any of us to solve
yeah that's certainly on an individual
level
so i've you know i've discussed things
with friends like my father's an
environmental attorney
like uh ian has been for a long time and
has been an engineer for a long time
and uh you know so i'm not i barely know
anything
but i'm reading a little bit of various
things but uh
climate change oh my god i'm so
concerned about climate change
what am i supposed to do about climate
change i'll tell you what i can do is i
can not litter
i can try to conserve energy where i can
i can do whatever i want what can i
personally do
about some giant social problem
that is that i didn't start and i is out
of my control i'm like well i can be
decent to the people around me i can
mention i can demonstrate empathy and i
can demonstrate consideration
for the people in my circle and to the
extent that i can the people outside of
my circle
but yelling at the trees over things
that over problems that are
borderline cosmic um doesn't seem very
productive it just makes me feel like
i'm cool and important because i'm
talking
about something well hundreds of years
from now the water will rise maybe it
will maybe it won't i can't
it's completely over my head i know
nothing but focusing on the problems
that we can actually solve it comes back
to the same thing i want to win a fight
i would love to win a fight
uh i can't control that what i can do is
i can control each individual step that
i take around the ring and trying to
make the next correct move
i can't look no it it gets people's uh
you know they get all excited you know
i'm trying to keep my language in check
but they get all excited thinking about
uh
you know problems that are like superman
couldn't solve these problems
like you could be that powerful and you
can't make all of the bad things go away
but you can absolutely change yourself
and i think a lot of the lessons that
you know like the good lessons from
religion that happened the good lessons
from the great men and women throughout
history that we and that we're inspired
by
that talk about change starting with
within and
you know again treating the people
around you decently and feeding the
people around too decently doesn't even
necessarily mean the golden rule
do unto others as you would like them to
do to you i go
well maybe what i would like and what
this person would like aren't the same
thing well how am i going to get to the
bottom of that because i could be
attempting to be decent to this person
and by my standard i am being decent but
maybe i'm maybe i'm missing the mark by
theirs
well i can't possibly if i just
interacted with you
like it's like someone talking about
some nonsense microaggression you're
like so let me get this straight i've
never met you before you've never met me
before
and you're interpreting some minor
comment that that i've made
in the least charitable way possible
yeah i'm not saying that that you
couldn't be annoyed but
your expectation for that level of
consideration is
you're going to be you're going to be
disappointed a lot now if you if we're
someone that's in your life on a
consistent basis and they're like hey i
really don't appreciate what you're
saying or what you're doing here do you
realize that
this is how i'm this is how i'm
perceiving you go oh man i'm so sorry
of course i would hear what you have to
say but i guess trying to
recognize that you know my i guess my
job is to treat others with dignity in
general
but that level the level of specificity
that that that requires
increases as it gets closer to you and i
have as a person i have a very finite
amount of
resources financially intellectually
emotionally
physically if i chuck you know point
zero zero one percent of it in every
single different direction
what am i doing it's like when people go
oh i care deeply about tibet
like why aren't you over there go build
a house man get on a plane
go build a house oh you don't want to do
that so really what you want to do is
post on facebook and
and accept high fives for how much of a
good guy you are i got an idea
go help somebody in your neighborhood go
be go play with go play with some kids
go be a friend to someone that doesn't
have a friend
read a book try to educate yourself and
so i guess to come back
it's all of these problems aren't
solvable on a grand scale
but it's almost like by attempting to
address them in our personal lives we do
better
but rather than a giant airing of the
grievances on a
on a consistent basis not that that
isn't you know sometimes necessarily
even valuable
but after you air your grievances you go
hey how about we
sort this out what's the next step and
and i guess again
when we're trying to address it on a
giant social level just seems
unmanageable
to me even if you have the best of
intentions yeah i mean but nevertheless
there's that
there's a lot you can do on social
networks i mean i i enjoy
uh tweeting and consuming twitter it's
just
i apply the exact same principle that
you just said which is a
free will and discussion which is like
i approach it in a way that
i don't get stuck in this loop that's
counterproductive
i try to do things that are productive
and like it's just like you said that's
like uh
like what kind of things can i do in
this world whether that's tweeting or
building things
those are low effort tweeting or
actually building businesses or building
ideas
out as high effort what can i do that
will actually solve problems
and that's that's the way i approach it
and i do wonder if it's possible to at
scale
encourage each other to approach like
social media and communication with
fellow humans in that way
i don't know how do you think that would
be done i guess like to improve the
improve the quality of discourse maybe
like even like you said the empathy or
the the decency of discourse
i think people should be you know
incentivized encouraged to do that i
think
most of what's we see happening on
twitter and facebook and so on
has to do with very small but very
powerful
implementation details it goes down to
like what is the source of the dopamine
rush
the like button uh the sharing
mechanisms
just even small tweaks and those can fix
a lot really
i i believe so so like a lot a lot of
the stuff we see now
is the result of just initial
implementations of these systems
that we didn't anticipate so the
monetization
comes from engagement and the
the tools we have is clicking like and
sharing it was not always obvious it was
not obvious from the beginning it wasn't
obvious while the twitter and facebook
grew
that there's a big dopamine rush from
getting more followers and likes and
shares so we've gotten addicted to this
feeling like how many people are
commenting how many people are saying
like a clicking like and so on so that's
that dopamine right so we want to say
the thing that will get the most likes
on and
like on mass in society and then the
other thing that was
expected is the controversial the
divisive
will get the most likes so we it had to
do with the initial mechanisms of likes
and shares
resulting in an outcome that was
unpredicted which is
huge amounts of division irrespective of
like
any of the basics of human connection
that we've actually all come
to understand society is valuable at the
individual level
like we're saying but on mass what
results is like you throw all that out
and it's all just divisive
at scale uh
discourse uh i think it could be fixed
by
incentivizing personal growth like
incentivizing you to challenge yourself
to grow as individual and most
importantly to
be happy at the end of the day so
uh feed like incentivize
you feeling good as in
in a way that's long-lasting long-term i
think what makes people
actually feel good is being kind to
others
long-term in the short term what feels
good is getting a lot of likes
and i think those are just different
incentives
that if implemented correctly you could
just build social networks that would do
much better
so do you think it comes from a
structural perspective i guess at what
point does you mention like
you mentioned free will and also you
mentioned you know feeling good like and
again
working hard you know you i know that
you have the uh i guess the
was it a race or um no it's oh the the
the goggins thing yeah
uh it's 4x40 4x4 by 48 challenge where
you run four miles every four hours for
two days that's awesome
yeah it's it's a bunch of it's it's uh
the the the challenge of it isn't just
the running the running is very tough
but
it's mostly the sleep deprivation rises
you're just training every four hours
but it's a struggle right
and that's but the struggle gives
meaning and ultimately i guess so how
can we
because you mentioned like you said
adjusting things on like a uh
i guess like a programming level almost
uh based programming levels so that the
interface is different for the user
but at what point does the user have a
responsibility to
you know as a as a man or a woman or a
person to just
behave more decently how can we i guess
utilize
what can we do it seems like you know
like our society is so grossly missing
like a martin luther king right
now like the great inspiring characters
throughout american history throughout
world history
where are the great leaders so
leadership is part of it but i
you know that's definitely word the
great leaders is a very good question
that's that's more of a question of
our political systems why they're not
pushing forward the great leaders but
there's also just uh okay
there's uh some just basic engineering
shit which is
when you and i when you ryan and i are
in a room alone
and we're talking even if we're
strangers the incentives
are for us to get along like just when
we're
together in person that's what i'm
saying i'm not even saying some kind of
but
when you remove that when we remove that
the the the implementation of
of the of social networks as they stand
right now in the digital space
a very different set of incentives it's
more fun to destroy others
to be shitty to others and
that and it becomes this loot endless
loop
uh like you were saying that's
ultimately destructive and not
productive and i think
it has to do with just the interfaces of
uh making it feel good to be nice to
others
because currently it doesn't feel nearly
as good
to be nice to others on the internet and
if it doesn't feel nearly as bad
as it does in real life to be shitty to
others on the internet so the incentives
are just wrong
i i think there is a technology solution
to this
or at least the solution to improve this
uh this communication mechanism it's not
obvious how a bunch of sort of more
detailed ideas but
this is fascinating because uh i've
gotten a chance to talk to jack dorsey
quite a bit
this is the ceo of twitter and he is
legitimately
has you know in this conversation
he would agree with everything and he's
a good human being
and he has a lot of really good ideas
how to improve things the question
when you're a captain of a ship whether
even it's a question whether ceo is even
a captain how much can you actually
steer that ship
once it's gotten large enough there's so
much momentum there's so many users
there's so many people who are marketing
in pr and lawyers
it's very difficult to change things is
it difficult because of the
fallout or is it difficult because it's
actually like literally out of his power
uh so power is weird when you have a
large organization
this is why the great leaders well this
is what great leaders do
whether it's presidents or leaders of
companies steve jobs
i would argue musk is that way is to
walk into a room
full of people who don't want you to
create drama
it's weird man when people just kind of
want to be nice
the niceness creates momentum and nobody
wants to it's the systems thing
everybody just behaves in the way they
were
previously behaving in the way they're
supposed to behave
and nobody wants to raise a fuss it
takes a great
man or woman leader to step in and say
what we've been doing is bullshit
okay you're fired you're fight you're
cool what is it that right
i'm out yeah i i think you have to
create
constant revolutions within a company
that's very very difficult to do
structurally and psychologically it's
very difficult to do
to to be able to sort of yeah to
constantly
challenge the way things have been done
in the past and
which is why another way it's often done
is a startup like a small company
basically a small company becomes really
successful and then no longer can
turn the ship so a new startup comes
along right a new competitor
that then challenges the big ship and
then that starts out the winner that's
like google came to be
saw twitter came to be in facebook and
so on and
uh apple has you know that that was the
dream
of steve jobs as it would succeed for
for many decades for like centuries
that was the idea that you would keep
keep creating revolutions and the under
steve jobs
apple successfully pivoted a bunch of
times right
just like reinvented themselves which is
funny very difficult to do
because i mean i've heard at least i
don't know if this is accurate because i
wouldn't know anything but i've heard
plenty of people
complain about steve jobs yeah but
in reality the reason that all of these
amazing things were done was because
this person was willing to
obviously brilliant and also willing to
to rattle the you know rattle everyone's
cage periodically and say hey what's
going on is
not what we need to be doing that's a
really interesting thing so he would
rattle
the cage but he would also i don't know
if those are
intricately connected or always have to
be connected but he would just be a dick
so maybe by my maybe by his standard i
am lazy and worthless
well this is he being a dick though if
by his standard i mean like again it's
like everyone's stupid compared to
somebody
you know i guess uh but at the point so
you you apparently are able to take that
kind of thing it's
uh sometimes you just
you cross there's there's ways to cross
the line and i mean this is
okay the the fascinating thing about
being a leader
especially leader of companies is it's a
people problem
so each individual in a room so
as a leader you're only really
interacting with a small number of
people because there are leaders of
other smaller groups and so on
but each of those individuals in the
room have their own different psychology
some like to be pushed to the limits
some some like
like to be screamed at some have
are very soft soft-spoken and almost
afraid to speak and they have to be
uh you have to you have to hear them out
like there's a and those those could be
all superstars
we're not we're not talking about like
the c students we're not talking about
the
students well it's funny that yeah but
the thing to me the skill to manage all
of those people is completely separate
from the skill to innovate
something i mean not that they're not
connected but it's funny how it's
it's almost like uh you know why do we
have shitty why do we have shitty
representatives
yeah well i mean the thing that you do
to get elected has nothing to do with
governance
yes yeah also well that's exactly it but
the the great leaders have to have both
skills
so like you have to have the boldness of
maybe if you look at the great
presidents through history
usually in a time of crisis is when they
step up
but they basically say okay stop this
old way that congress works of this
bickering of this like
compromise bullshit here's a huge plan
that cost billions of dollars in
today's age trillions of dollars no
extra pork no extra additions
just like here's a clear plan we're
going to build the best
road network the the world has ever seen
or we're going to build some
huge infrastructure project we're going
to revolutionize internet or we're going
to for
coronavirus we're going to build the
largest like testing facility the world
has ever seen in terms of the
we're going to get everybody tested uh
several times a day
all those kinds of things huge projects
and say uh
fuck all this uh the details that
everybody's bickering about we're gonna
give everybody
uh two thousand dollars and give
everybody three thousand dollars
like huge projects and at the same time
so that's the boldness and the
leadership and saying
throw out all the bullshit of the past
and at the same time be able to get in
the room
with the leaders of both parties over
the powerful individuals
and smooth talk the shit out of them in
the way they need to be smooth talk to
so like both of those skills it seems to
when they're combined in one person
that's
that creates great leaders musk appears
to have that elon
i don't know if steve jobs it's
interesting so the criticism of steve
and a little bit on elon is he misses
some of the human
part um but maybe it's impossible to
have
a really uh you have like signia nadal
who's the ceo of microsoft you have um
who's really good on the human side
really really good on the human side
like everybody loves them
the ceo of uh google and alphabet
is also the same way so like i don't
know if it's possible to have both
uh you only get so many stat points yeah
yo
in this in this rpg of life yeah
you got very good at jiu jitsu very fast
so you want i mean you told the story
blue belt and so on but you
you went to black belt really quickly uh
and not just in terms of ranks but in
terms of just skill level
i mean uh you didn't go to black belt
nearly as fast as
your skill set developed you were like
doing extremely well at high level
competition
so you're a good person to ask how does
one get good at jiu jitsu
we talked about solving problems at the
elite level but when you're a beginner
at the at the martial arts how do you
get good
how much training should you do the very
basic stuff like how much training how
much drilling
okay and then the mental stuff like
where should your mind be how should you
approach it from a mental perspective
too i'll just tell you my perspective on
this one i guess i would say uh i feel
step one i feel lucky to have found uh
you know a good training situation
particularly
for the time um you know in uh in where
in where i was at
and uh i drilled a ton um i
drilled and drilled and drilled and
drilled and drilled and um
one one thing that's really important to
understand though is that
it i was able to in a relatively brief
period of years
you'll go from zero to reasonably good
but
um i think i probably crammed more hours
in those
small years than most people did
training let's say in two or three times
the length so it may not
it may masquerade as something else
other than it is i i could say
you have to put it in the hours yeah
there's no way around that i i think so
what did you put in those out so when
you said drilling can you break that
apart a little bit
like what what does really look like is
there any recommendations
absolutely step one i would say your
choices matter like uh there's a
i think that one of the really important
things that i think we should consider
about jiu jitsu is that there's a lot of
junk in the system right now it's like
jujitsu has
exploded in terms of uh the number of
positions techniques strategies this
that rule sets
that's really cool on the one hand on
the other hand there's probably a
just metric shit ton of sub-optimal
things
that are out there that are being taught
um myself included i've taught things
that are looking back five years three
years two years one year or i'm like oh
i would not do it like that anymore
straight up sometimes i wouldn't do it
like that other times i would literally
never do even that particular movement
um i don't think the shrimp is a real
move
uh it's like it's a giant spell it's
easier to show in person but long sword
of is there's a lot of things that are
we think of as fundamental that i think
that are uh
really pretty negative and also you know
um that's heresy and jiu-jitsu
isn't it the shrimp exactly is like the
holy
we all worship the shrimp we love the
shrimp we love the shrimp
now for people who don't do jiu jitsu
and you should
the shrimp is uh you scoot your butt
away from your opponent yeah in a room
it's like a really athletic looking
position where you look like like
someone that's trying to stick their
butt out on instagram
and then you push your hands away and
you expose your face
and then uh you lay on your side because
someone told you to do
that and you look like uh
yeah i guess you look like a shrimp yeah
it's like that time that uh you know
someone really credible told me to drink
unleaded gasoline and i did it for a
while
and then uh you know it got to the point
in my life where you know the next best
the thing that i needed to do to really
improve my life was stop
drinking unleaded gasoline yes and uh i
would say that there's like a lot of
stuff that's
that's in there that step one is like uh
it's junk it's actual junk and it's it's
not only
will it waste your time it's it will
straight up it will it will be like an
albatross hanging on you
because it affects how you think about
things going forward so although um
i it was it's funny like the operating
assumptions that
we we work under um have a huge huge
huge influence you mentioned like
growing up in the united states or this
being a capitalist society like whoo
all right now of course i think that i
don't really know any different
otherwise and i think that a lot of
times people go oh
communism is better i'm like i haven't
seen it i haven't read any books about
it were being better
but uh it's possible i mean i haven't
experienced it much myself either
so i can't dismiss it out right but i
guess i would say it's a fundamentally
different
differing operating system underpinning
and all of my choices
all of if i honestly believed in that
thing many of my choices
on a moment by moment on a day by day
and certainly on a lifetime basis
would be very different so i would say
that uh it's tough when you're
when you're young in the martial arts
and i mean all of us are always trying
to do our best to learn but when you're
young in the martial arts you always go
if you're a reasonable guy
what are they what they call it like
dunning kruger amnesia i can't even if
this is the right one but basically you
go like oh i know what i'm
doing here so i can say that's not right
but then i read a new story
about baseball only about baseball
sounds incredible um and it's it's
bullshit
yeah but i can't call bullshit if you're
a reasonable person you can't call
bullshit on things that you don't
understand even if you suspect it's not
right you're like well i've got to
reserve judgment
you never ever ever set aside your your
need and also obligation to understand
why you were doing what you're doing and
don't ask why once ask why
over and over and over and over about
the same thing
oh well i want to shrimp why to make
space why do i want to make space to get
away from the guy well why do you want
to get away from him
well because he's dangerous why is he
dangerous and you can oftentimes get
down to wait a minute i didn't even need
to move
three quarters of the time you're
actually acting in the other person's
self-interest and
i guess a lot of times i can't this kind
of goes beyond what we can
you know demonstrate here but i would
just say uh trying to understand
what my base operating assumptions are
and consistently reevaluate them which
can be freaking exhausting frankly and
also consonants confidence destroying
but you mentioned uh that that i did
pretty well relatively quickly i was at
um i started in 2004 and i was at abu
dhabi adcc for the first time as an
alternate in 2007
i won a match there against the
blackpool world champion um
and the fact frankly the fact that i was
able to beat someone like that was neat
but at the same time says a little bit
more about
what jiu jitsu is and some of the issues
with it than it does about how cool
i am was because
that shouldn't really happen when you
think about it you're like okay you're
a champion at ostensibly a very high
level of the sport
you enjoy a three inch four inch height
advantage and a 35 pound weight
advantage and you just got beat
like that should not exist i'm serious
i'm dead serious that should not exist
if that happens you're doing it wrong is
it that i'm doing it right or is it that
you're doing it wrong and there's enough
variance in the way that you're doing it
that you're allowing
me to win and now i did happen to win
that with a 50 50 heel hook which was 50
50.
but um but basically which was one of
the early examples of
like hey guys by the way people can try
to hurt your legs and that was something
like
we mentioned john danaher mentioned like
you know myself dean lister a lot of the
guys from the enzo gracie team that have
had amazing success they've gone and
done great things
um craig jones in the competitive
grappling world
basically taking advantage of being very
very good in what they're doing but also
a glaring glaring glaring issue with the
operating system of jiu jitsu
which was you know a huge vulnerability
in the lower body and not only not
attacking it but having no idea how one
does attack it which means you can't
understand how someone will assail you
so anyway um i guess to come back
is if in the in the absence of knowing
what to do i try to polish what i've got
so if i've got a knife and i'm like i
don't know how to use them
okay i'm just going to sharpen the edge
and polish it make sure that when i need
to use this to anything i'll be able to
do it
because trying to put together a system
when you don't
have an idea of what's going on a lot of
times you end up making
you know sub-optimal choices but as long
as you're consistently re-evaluating
what you're doing and that's something
i've tried to do over time
over and over and over again and try to
seek out the uh
the most um the best and also most uh
um articulate or insightful instructors
or people of various love it doesn't
matter if they're well known or not that
could say hey ryan i think you should do
this i think you should do that
and i i think all i've ever done in
martial arts is try to treat people with
respect honestly
try to demonstrate appreciation for the
many many people who have helped me over
time and be the type of person that they
want to train with
not the type of because we've all
trained with people that make us think
about beating the
ever loving crap i never wanted to be
that guy and i was basically saying like
if i train with a black belt when i'm a
blue belt
and and this person enjoys training with
me
that's in my interest selfishly not only
do i not want them to beat me up but
selfishly i should
you mentioned being decent to other
people you want to incentivize being
decent to other people right with the
structure of what you're doing
selfishly i'm incentivized to be a nice
guy even if i'm
internally a scumbag which i like to
think that i'm not but basically uh
going like hey
this guy's way more likely to help me or
this person's way more likely to help me
if i shake their hand
say thank you i really appreciate you
helping me out and uh but that thing
that they tapped me with four or five
times
i'm gonna ask them about it and then
they don't have to tell me they're under
no obligation but i'll say and
will they tell me you don't thank you so
much for your time i really appreciate
it and uh
that that's it you know okay so to
summarize those so
what you brilliantly described i just
want to make sure we're keeping track i
went all over the place
just no you didn't you're you're pretty
on point but uh so
the first thing is basically which is
difficult i wonder if we can break it
apart a little bit
is don't trust authority essentially
keep asking why
be respectful without trusting authority
right right which is and then the second
thing is be
the kind of person that others like
training with or like being around
sort of uh being a good
friend so so many people just enjoy
being around so one is
complete which is yeah you're right it's
attention which is like completely
disrespect the
the way that things are done so asking
why
constantly one of it is your own flaws
and not understanding the fundamentals
of what's being described
and then once you get good enough not
understanding
um like going against the fact that the
instructor doesn't understand
and my inability to understand what
you're saying though doesn't invalidate
it and that's something like you
mentioned like
mentioning keeping in mind our own flaws
and then also again the flaws that any
of us have is the instructor to your
point and i guess
i can speak to being kind of weird i
don't you know i like to
sit in the corner but um so everyone's a
little bit different some people
you know i wasn't terribly popular in
high school i you know like uh
i don't like high school very much but
anyway yeah i would
not gonna be rude to people though i was
never gonna bully anybody
if you said hello to me i'd say hello
back i would hold the door for you if
you walk by
you know and i would just say like
simple things like that
go a long long long way and that
actually takes us back to our uh
um to our social discussion where i'm
like oh man how do i become great at jiu
jitsu it's like well i'll start by
not pissing off this person who can beat
the crap out of me and not disrespecting
the person
who is probably the clearest the closest
thing to a font of knowledge
at that time for me so and then
recognizing that
i should do that for its own virtue
because it's the right thing to do and i
should try to treat people decently but
beyond that even selfishly
it's in my interest to do that but see
the thing is this this is interesting
is there's a culture in martial arts
a culture that i like where the
instructor legitimately so
carries a aura of authority
and it's not comfortable to really ask
why i'm not it's it's a skill to be able
to
have a discussion as a white belt with
the black belt instructor
of like why is it done this way
like and saying why again
like with i mean it's a skill to show
that you're actually
legitimately a curious and passionate
and compassionate
student versus like somebody who's just
being an annoying dick
who saw some stuff on youtube there's a
line between
to walk there i i just wonder because
like
it's the drilling thing and you know i
um
for example like in my and when i was
coming up
there was so much emphasis placed on
like closed guard for example
and you might you might actually teach
me now i i don't know
but to me it was like why do i need to
master
the close like why is the closed guard
on top or the bottom but the bottom
really this is the fundamental basics of
jiu jitsu
who decided that my body is not
my body says this is wrong i'm like
this like i have short legs but it
doesn't even matter the length of legs
there's something about me that just i
don't understand how leverage here
works for my particular body
like so it's just it's a feel thing too
like
it feels like in my basic understanding
of leverage and movement and timing and
so on
it feels like these certain like
butterfly guard or even like half
basically every guard except close guard
i i can play i can dance
closed guard feels like you're
shutting down uh like the play that is
that wrong
or is that make sure that's what you
want because that's almost like an
innate characteristic of this guard
position but it's not sold that way
right it's like hey this is a good guard
it's like hey man here's a bow and arrow
versus
and you know how to use this thing right
like make sure you're you're far away
and like up on a hill or something
because you could take that bone hour
run up on something and try to use it
but if nobody told you not to do that
and they told you it's foundational it's
very foundational it's very important to
everything else too
right that's back to the shrimping thing
how many things are we taught
that even if it's not let's say itself
is not a garbage thing
it might be effectively garbage you
could give me a ferrari
but if i try to make it fly it's not
going to work
if you're like here's a plane here's
another plane here's another plane
here's another plane here's a ferrari
i'm like oh it must be a different type
of plane
like you could be forgiven for leap if
we're going there you know like oh maybe
the wings come out or you just go fast
enough it's like a bullet like you can
make these crazy leaps in your mind and
people are doing that
all the time so if you don't provide the
context for me
or worse yet you provide improper
context like
how how much of a problem is that going
to be well
i think the skill of the white belt
should be just be nice
but so in the complicated human space of
when your intention at least on the in
the big picture view
is good there's the question is it's not
always when your intention is good
the actual implementation of it
is good so you might be just almost
and that's much it's not the case for
you it's much more the case for white
belts
they don't even know their intention
might be good but they don't know
all the lines they're crossing all the
right so they're not actually
able to and like interpret all the ways
in which they're being totally
insensitive to the requests of others
right explicit requests of others
so your job as a beginner is to be
a really good listener of those social
cues
it's like a visit in a foreign country
right yeah like you're a representative
of people that look like you people that
talk like you people that have your
passport and you're like man i'm gonna
go over here oh i've got my foot up on
my knee
well if i was in certain conscious world
that's rude i'm like oh i'm so sorry
but can you imagine if someone says hey
i really appreciate if you take your
foot off that's pretty rude and then i
want to tell them well not where i'm
from man
i'm in your house i better again i may
go that direction but let's say i could
get away with that now i'm a bully
and if i can't get away with that well
i'm about to maybe be on the wrong side
of something but i i guess uh
like you said if we have positive
intention that's fine but i also have to
recognize who i am and i think that
that's one thing that
i tried to do and continue to try to do
over time like we're
oh man uh hi i'm i'm the one that's
asking for a favor here if i spawn with
raymond daniels raymond daniel's doing
me a favor
i ain't doing him a favor let's not get
it twisted so
thank you so much for tom i really
appreciate these are not and this is not
like some affected nonsense this is
serious i'm like thank you if i spawn
with stephen thompson i'm i'm the one
being done a favor george st pierre
takes his time to spar with me which he
has in the past
and and not even kill me which is really
i appreciate that because that's why i
can sit here
george is not a prop for me to to to get
my rocks off or see what's going on and
also
i'm going to do that and then expect him
to just take it and i've seen
he's a gentleman i've seen people get
nuts with george and and have him just
like
he has a he's a patient of a saint i
don't have that level of patience but i
would just say to come back
what figuring out like hey so what what
role am i here and that comes back to
like at least what i see people on the
internet yeah man i have a beef with joe
rogan you're like
no you don't ryan you're some goof yeah
i'm like i'm some random dude joe
like people wanna they almost wanna like
elevate so that we can somehow be
level we're peers here if i go into
ferocious hobbies gym i'm not a peer of
frazza hobby i'm a student of tristar
i'm a guest in the academy and if for us
asked me for something
short of him like you know telling me to
try to do a triple backflip so i break
my neck
the answer is yes sir i can do it free
for us no man the noise and it's and
hopefully it should come with i guess
a level of graciousness but i guess
that's kind of one of the things that i
see nowadays with uh
how accessible people are because i grew
up you know being a big huge
sports fan of all kinds i couldn't send
derek jeter a message
and and much less have a possibility of
reply
and if i do it's like you know i have
people send me messages it's very nice
that people say
some people again and everyone not
everyone is coming from the same place
but i've had plenty of things they're
like yo dude i need you to do this for
me i'm like
well i'll tell you what's never going to
happen that i have no idea who you are
and that was
how i was addressed and i don't need oh
man you're the greatest one because
that's weird and two because i'm not
but just hey ryan uh how are you doing
um hey if you think you could do the
following if you get a second like
if i get a second you're dang right i
can't why not it's easy ask but
it started with some level of politeness
and i guess like that's
maybe being semi-southern like i grew up
in virginia yes sir yes ma'am like
yeah well and there's all different
kinds of implementations of politics i
mean all
most of the successful people i've met
it's been surprising to me
how much of you you mentioned piers
like the like i could think of joe rogan
you mentioned joe rogan but
elon musk they
don't like they almost treat me like i'm
the superior
you know what i mean like it's not even
it's it's that's the politeness
like you know that's the approach the
feeling of it is like i'm the student
i'm the beginner i'm like approaching a
situation like
it's it's uh it's almost like uh
method acting of like you're better than
me
that and that's how i approach a lot of
interactions like i have something to
learn from this even if it's like a
young
do you think that they're ungenuine
they're totally genuine
but it's not a funny thing like in spite
of who they are they're incredibly
genuine because they respect correct me
from wrong they respect you
obviously for what you bring the table
but also they approach it everybody but
that's right
that was they were done but i'm sure
they're respectful which means well
beyond that though
they're treating with dignity as a human
being as a human being which is right
people when they could probably get away
with treating most people without a
whole heck of a lot of dignity and i
guess what does that always say that
like you know again like you can always
tell someone of of
you know of quality because they treat
the king and the and the janitor the
same way
but that's what we're seeing a lot like
like that's i guess i don't mean to like
to nitpick but that's where would
take issue i guess a little bit or
disagree with are you going to criticize
the internet again i know people on the
internet oh man yells it yells at clouds
but uh but um anyway but i guess uh
what what i mean is just like the way
that people address each other because
it's so casual now yes
you know and it's like it's great on the
one hand it's nice on the other hand you
go
hey i just why can't do am i
somehow demand am i worried about
diminishing myself it's like the way
that i'm sure that people talk to like
talk to women sometimes
and words yo what's up girl oh man she's
bitch
you know versus like how am i that was
supposed to get a good response
what about that was going to elicit a a
favorable response
you know versus being anything anything
other than than just
yo man what's going on and i guess that
does that make any sense it makes total
sense and that southern thing that
you're referring to i
i feel like that's an important uh
that's an important part of human
communication
let me ask you this sure your new back
attacks instructional
first of all awesome yeah uh second of
all
you drop you drop a lot of fascinating
insights in there but you quote uh
galileo out of all people
and saying that you can't teach a man
anything you can only help him
find it within himself so
we talked about how to start in jiu
jitsu
what about if we zoom out even more and
how do you learn how to learn
how do you optimize the learning process
i i don't know the answer to that but i
can tell you what i like to do and i
would say
like i can't step one i don't i'm not
maybe this is a little bit easier for me
because you know i've
i've never had a ton of friends honestly
i've you know i've got my close friends
and people that i know but i
never had tons and tons of people so i
spent a lot of time you know thinking
and anyway uh yeah i can't
i can't control you i can't control
anybody else i
you know i uh um
all i can i want to take my i'll get
some marcus aurelius thing it's like you
know i guess the trick to life is
figuring out what's in our control and
what's not and focusing on things that
are in our control i guess
and uh so step one is figuring out both
internally and then also
out in in the world as it pertains to
jitsu what is actually in my control and
what is not like passing someone's guard
is not in your control people think it
is it ain't
if i can't just do an activity and be
unchecked
then it ain't in my control entirely
i can always breathe i can always um
you know be calm i can always no matter
whether i'm concerned or not concerned
whatever you want to call it nerves you
know i can step forward across the line
and say i will
i will face the challenge ahead that is
all entirely no one can stop me from
doing that that's entirely my control
and that's why
i know that every single time that i
walk into the ring i'll walk in and out
of there with my head of high because
there's
i will fight with everything that i have
i can't promise that i'll win
i would say i take that same first
principles you mentioned
the last time we talked you know with
elon and the importance of that
and going what are the first principles
and i guess to come back a lot of times
in my opinion the things that people
think are the basics are not the basics
you can't learn if you think you're
reasoning for first principles but
you're actually like level six
you're actually like layers up you're
making so many there's so many baked in
assumptions to what's going on that
you're going to struggle to understand
why anything is actually happening
internally externally you name it
so i guess what i would start when it
comes to learning is first principles
and trying to understand what's going on
but then also
simple things first i can control my
posture
i can control my breathing no one can
stop me from doing that i can control
where i place my frames i can control
where i place my limbs
i can move my feet i can develop the
ability to do these things better of
course and i do that through practice
through drilling through watching people
i've been incredibly fortunate in my
time in martial arts to train with many
of my heroes
to train with many of the people that i
looked at and i was like that guy
is amazing i want to train with this
person like stephen thompson
kenny florian george st pierre raymond
daniels ferraza hobby
you know i mean like bruno farzada
marcelo garcia you know all of these
guys
that are just unbelievable and i go well
they're moving in a way that's different
well how do i do that well
sometimes you can ask them and they can
tell you directly other times people
part of the
genius of what they do is that it's
intuitive and maybe they don't think
and understand and see the world the
same way that i do that was something
that i experienced with marcelo
he's amazing but in in a different way
then
his it just we see things fundamentally
different
we experience the world differently it
seems to me that we do um and again
that that taught me a really important
lesson because i was wanting when i
trained there to have someone go hey
ryan do this this this and this and
that's how it works and i'm like all
right because that's how i understood
martial arts at the time um i wasn't
ready to have someone tell me like hey
um it feels a little bit like this and i
just kind of do it
which is kind of what marcelo would do
at the time he was less experienced as a
teacher
but that is what he was doing i was
completely
i couldn't separate in my mind
performance
and understanding i thought that if i
understand i could do it and i would
also want to i would also struggle
sometimes to
wonder why i couldn't execute things
that i thought i understood
and why guys like marcelo were just so
elemental i mean in like the like
lightning
wind like that type of thing like it's
just so in touch with
what they wanted with with their
capabilities they could summon their
powers at will
i couldn't always do that and i guess
so recognizing that there was more than
one way to the top of the mountain and
also i had a lot of science but i didn't
have a lot of art or i had some science
i should say but i didn't have a lot of
art
meeting people like marcelo taught me
and then josh waitskin actually
brilliant guy uh chess champion um
former owner maybe owner of martial's
academy really great friend i think he
has a book on learning he does yeah the
art of learning actually
but uh yeah he knows a thing or two
about it but a great guy and anyway
he sat me down one time was like look
man you're you're doing this wrong
you're missing
what the missing the genius the
brilliance that's right in front of you
and it took me once i mean
that i was frustrated with uh with my
inability to grasp certain things and
and sometimes
uh the teaching style being different
i'm wrong just it was
it it was it was tough for me at the
time you were trying to replicate what
marcelo was saying as opposed to
understanding the
the the the fundamentals from which it
was coming
right i couldn't see i couldn't see
where it was coming from and also
sometimes i'm like well why can't you
explain it in the way that i would want
you to explain it and he's like well
why can't i meet him where he's coming
from yeah so anyway it was a really
important
time unless i'm very very frustrating if
i'm honest but it's not um
i'm so thankful for that time and anyway
uh
you know i i just always first
principles trying to understand the
basics
first starting at the place where you
can't control things
the the very basic elements of what you
can work with
and then when there's other mentors and
teachers to
to uh meet them where they're coming
from meet them to the extent that i can
rather i'm not like again it's like why
are you not talking to me the way i want
you to talk to me
as opposed to hey where are you coming
from back to your point yeah but uh and
i know that's not
entirely specific but you know like if
you can focus on that and back to the
whole you can't
teach a man anything marcelo didn't
teach me anything but he taught me
in so doing like and other and other
people like that to uh
you know to find it within and it's like
yeah i guess something else that i've
heard before is that
all learning is self-discovery but all
performance is self-expression
and i always thought that marcelo was a
brilliant master of letting what's
inside out
he would he was so consistent in his
performances and
a lot of times i felt like there was a
block there personally particularly at
the end of jujitsu when i was very very
results oriented and i wasn't
i think i think my focus was was not a
deal it was definitely not
not in the place that i would like it to
be and whether i would have won more
loss more hard to say but i know that i
would perform better if i'd have
adjusted that and anyway uh
that recognizing that again jiu jitsu i
think i've said it before just to study
as a science but expressed as an
art it doesn't matter if you can
articulate what you know how to do what
matters is if you can do what you want
to do it only matters if you're you know
i guess if you're teaching in a verbal
fashions whether or not you can
articulate it but uh
recognizing the difference between
learning on an intellectual level or a
conceptual level and being able
to to translate that into the physical
and i guess like that's been the thing
that i feel like fortunate over time in
my own academy to be able to kind of
fiddle around and learn on my own
and practice my students and you know
sometimes i struggle to have great
training partners like when i say great
training
i mean other world-class people to spar
to roll with but i've gotten a lot
more honestly than i ever would have
thought out of being able to practice
and learn and fail and try and succeed
on my own without
like my own little sandbox um figuring
out how i can take
an idea and then come up with drills and
and
drills to practice it so that i can
actually practice putting it into play
because again
knowing an idea and then not drilling
what's the point i'll never have it it
will never it'll never see the light of
day
so in that dvd in that instruction dvd
sorry
it's an online instructional dvd i keep
saying dvd though nobody has dvds
anymore do they like vhs i don't know
who has dvd with like blu-ray i possess
some dvds
i mean like i've never watched them what
do you use them for like uh
like a couple like a cup like a thing
you put a drink on
who i mean weren't in a pinch yeah
uh what's that even called
uh yeah my uh matrix coaster
the matrix goes to zeros and ones okay
uh so in that instruction that people
should
should get i've been watching i'm really
enjoying um
it's i don't even know when it come out
recently right
like december or something like that
yeah it's uh it's
it's part one you're actually like ended
up being like 18 hours long and i was
like oh my god we gotta chop it in half
and it
it when it comes together the whole
thing i think i hope people will like it
yeah
well it's uh even part one is really
good it's actually yeah yeah
people on reddit were really excited for
part two as well really and you also
have a back
oh the old one the old one that i that
was really helpful to me to understand
some
very basic aspects of control really
back yeah that was uh
you know that clicked with me there's
very few instructionals
there's very few things i've watched
that ever clicked with me and that was
definitely it uh he taught me
one thing i don't know it's uh you drop
a lot of
sort of bombs you drop a lot of really
interesting details
and it's funny that there's only
specific things that really click like a
lot of it rings true and you kind of
take it in it's like oh that's
interesting okay yeah
but there's certain things that really
click and i remember
when that first uh instruction will
click with me
is like the importance i i don't i don't
remember anymore like how you
communicated it because i'm now
integrated it's not mine you know what i
mean uh
but it was more about you just
describing upper body control and
the importance of the upper body control
from the back
and just like the there's certain grip
like
the the you describe different details
on the grips and so on
and as i started trying it i realized
how important
upper body control is versus like me
maybe as a blue belt or something it was
i thought like
you have achieved victory when you got
the two hooks in
and then i realized like at least for me
that the hooks were not
even for my body type for my style for
the way i approached things
they were not even important at all
they're supplemental for the most part
yeah so they were there for the points
but i can establish a huge amount of
control
uh in fact the hooks were
you you were talking about like illusion
of choice it's it's uh
it almost made people panic a lot more
when you were like fighting for
or establishing that kind of control
they were a lot less panicked when the
hooks weren't involved even though they
should be a lot more panicked
anyway i realized a lot of those kinds
of things especially that had to do with
judo because
so much of judo on the ground is
centered around
aggressive efficient very fast choking
like
different kinds of clock chokes and all
that kind of stuff what a brilliant
thing that is only going to start to
make its way into jiu jitsu coming up
but like the judo style approach to like
clock choking triangling from the top of
the turtle and stuff
it's so powerful yeah and the the
there's something about judo that
emphasizes
obviously due to the rules the urgency
so there you only do techniques that go
fast and then the other thing is
which i guess uh jiu-jitsu emphasizes
too but judo
really does which is um the transition
so like while the person's flying in the
air is the easiest time
i mean this is like ryan hall type of
shit which is like
why not put in your submissions or
positional control while they're in the
air and if
well if you could why would you not
right and say oh well i don't throw well
we'll learn how to throw
and then do it and so you should think i
mean in a transition
when they're flying is the easiest time
to put in stuff and that's
when you think about jokes as you're
throwing you should be thinking about
the choke
and then everything becomes a lot easier
you ever see flavio canto
uh man brazilian judoka yeah it's
so cool like with stuff like that yeah
yeah exactly but
but that has to do with the first
starting principle of like
stop thinking this as a two-phase game
of uh
standing and then ground start thinking
about
like the the standing and the the
standing comes before the ground comes
after but everything happens in the
transition
well unless you're attacking what is the
art of war like every we all like
everyone's like oh yeah the art of war
oh yes he says and then they immediately
throw it away and then fight like a
freaking barbarian but uh
yeah i mean like i'm serious but uh you
know how many people quote stuff and
then
like you know it's like what is it the
family guy joke or they're like you know
quoting jesus then jesus walks in he's
like you're not sure about work what are
you talking about and anyway uh
basically um you know like what like the
art of war you know one of the things
that's like
the only thing that you can be sure of
being successful in attacking is
something that's undefended
yeah well like yeah yeah but you know
in a fight though they're defended well
are they there's moments all the time
where i'm
borderline defenseless and if you were
to attack at that moment
if you could see it and then seize the
moment if you were capable of both
you should not only expect to be
successful you should be damn sure
you're gonna be successful and more more
important than that you'll be successful
and even if you're somehow not you won't
be countered
and i guess like uh that's the trick of
almost
all all like conflict right it's like
showing up when the other person's you
know taking a nap
and then it's so funny like we take like
a protracted war it's like oh it takes
five years
and there's you know lulls and there's a
battle this month but then there's a
couple weeks in another battle it's like
well if you just shrink that down it's
the microcosm macrocosm idea
that same thing that whole war is taking
place in five minutes or 10 minutes or
15 minutes
and there's moments of laws of person
effectively going for a snack
you know being like you know in a horror
movie like hey guys i'm gonna go get a
beer from the uh from around the way
like i'm dead for sure
so anyway um is there in this particular
instructional if you can convert into
words
uh you talk about finishing submission
is there some
interesting insights that you find
beautiful or profound
about finishing the rear neck choke or
just finishing the submissions from the
back control
is there some like you know you talk
about the squeeze and the crush and all
these kinds of principles
is there something about control about
the process of finishing
that uh you find especially profound
about this position
absolutely the opposite of one profound
truth can be another profound truth
so like uh it's i i i do uh did jesus
say that
no i don't i actually was a guy on
tumblr um but uh
yeah it was really really cool there's
like a like a tree in the background
but anyway uh uh but so let's say like
i'll use i'll use examples like first
off um i i saw
someone finishing a 50 50 heel hook in
the ufc one promo
that it was like some chubby dude in a
karate key like inside heel hook and
another dude
and you go huh well i didn't know they
were doing that back then at least and
whether they were doing it
how many times did someone do something
and then that works and then we go
okay cool versus hey maybe we should do
that all the time so anyway how long do
we all talk to the seat belt the way we
all do the seat belt in jiu jitsu
like a long time why works in fact it
works so well
and it was so it was then the people who
used it were so prolific
that we went well solved that one good
to go
all right no more thinking and then you
go imagine you were to like the merkel
and merkel flip
all those positions that we're showing
in the uh in the dvd which is pretty
much or the whatever the heck it is i
don't know the digital
vd um no not vd i don't want that
digital digital video something but
basically uh
recognizing that doing it on the wrong
side
is at least as effective doesn't mean
that the other side wasn't good
there could be something that's the
literal borderline opposite of that
and you go huh why is that something
like imagine like i would say almost all
of these things all the tactics and all
the strategies so i guess that was
something that we came to
like training in the gym like a year ago
maybe i've been playing with since and
it's just it's huge i'm like oh wait so
let me get this straight
first if i can use my strong side seat
belt my right arm over the shoulder any
all the time well that's that's really
helpful because that's a lot better than
my left i can do both sides of my left
but if i had to
bet my life on on being able to finish
it i would want my right arm over huh
everything that's a tactic or a strategy
evolved from an idea like capitalism is
an idea
you know anarchy is an idea and then it
becomes what does that all mean what are
they what are the consequences what's
the fallout of all this right
so what if we start with jiu jitsu the
idea of the guard right and we go well
i mean wendy why do you use the guard
nor the martial art really has developed
the guard
in the same way the jiu jitsu has well
what is the guard a guards are not a
defensive idea where you're kind of on
your back
to some extent or another and you're
using your legs as a wall between you
and
the other person and the other guy
represents danger and you're like yeah
that's a great idea
is it i mean it clearly works at least
to a certain extent
but what where do i want to put my legs
when i want to get up
not on the other dude i'm trying to put
them on things on the floor if i want to
generate a ton of power
what's the first thing i do with my feet
i anchor them to the floor drive for a
punch you name it move away
jump dart yeah you name it so does it
mean that that's a terrible idea to be
on your back
no clearly it works and clearly it limit
face has function
but what if the function that we're
giving it and we're and the how much how
much focus we're assigning to it
is disproportionate to its effectiveness
yeah maybe what if it's not a good idea
i'm not saying it's not a good idea but
what if it wasn't that's a foundational
idea of jiu-jitsu and then how much
because no one questions that foundation
how much innovation is built on
top of the idea well of course i want to
be my being on my back is an okay
position so now they're innovating
but they're innovating within a closed
system that they don't they think
they're innovating
in like in this open space of oh my god
it could be anything when in reality
it could be anything within this little
set yeah but you don't realize that
you're in a set you don't realize that
you're in a box
there would be answers that would become
so immediately apparent to you
if you were willing to look outside of
that but you'll
literally never even look over to your
left because you don't even realize the
left
exists do you think there's a lot of
places in jiu jitsu whether it's back
control or generally guards and all the
different positions
where there's a lot of space like
a lot a lot to be discovered by
questioning the basic assumptions maybe
if you can give examples of like back
control like is there something you've
discovered this like
merkel versus seatbelt what's miracle
seatbelt is uh right arm over the
shoulder
left arm under the arm on i'm on the i'm
on the same side as my choking arm
merkel is just i do the same thing i
don't even adjust my hands i walk myself
over to the left side i'm on the
opposite side it's actually a more
powerful position yeah for people
listening or for people who
might not know jiu jitsu is uh seatbelt
is a control we're talking about when
one person is on the back of another
person
which is a really dominant position jiu
jitsu sea belt is a
i guess widely accepted
way of holding best practices almost
best practices yeah and it's worked so
well
so it's a one arm over one arm under
and there's a certain side you're
supposed to be on
when you're on the back you know
everyone teaches there's a choking arm
that's the arm that's over
and your body is supposed to be in a
certain side relative to that
and then ryan is describing questioning
these like
basic assumptions about which side
you're supposed to be on and let's say
that's even just like a mid-level
assumption it's not even a first
principles assumption
but it's pretty supposed to it's getting
there but but let's just say for
sake of argument it goes a lot deeper
maybe um
i think most of the innovation that i
see is not innovation
it's like basically changing the color
of a car
or polishing like the window a little
bit we're like hey you made it you made
it a little bit different you made it a
little bit better
it's like oh man what if i did the same
guard and then grab the lapel
i'm not saying it's bad but you're not
fundamentally changing anything i think
most of the big seismic shifts that we
see in almost anything come from
hey that thing we thought was right was
wrong rather than
not only is it right it's even writer
and you're like that's not wrong it's
not bad but that's
you're in it's like oh man let's say for
instance i didn't make the triangle
better but let's say i made the triangle
a little bit better than it was or
then it was taught um yeah i mean you
call it innovation i don't know man it's
not like the person that said hey have
you guys ever heard of a triangle before
and came up with that we're like that is
i feel like that's that's on the list
you can do this thing to people are you
kidding me can you imagine you invented
the straight right hand you'd be like
one punch man you can walk around and
just
just lay low every single person you got
into a fight with because it didn't even
occur to them to hit you
with their backhand in a world full of
jabbers you throw your back hand
you're gonna kill people so basically
but by the way i mean
just to pause on that that first of all
somebody did invent the triangle
probably right sure
it's not a trivial thing once it's like
no it's how many of these giant
things that we all go like oh yeah we
all use that now can you imagine you
have triangles and heel hooks and rear
naked chokes and i don't have those
you're on b you're borderline i mean
like that's that's why that's we all
experience every single one of this
particularly those of us i mean when did
you first start training likes
uh 12 13 years well let's not count
wrestling but 13 years ago with
jiu-jitsu right on so let's say
let's say about that time where
particularly was still like kind of kind
of underground-y
you know and you're like hey we all
experienced being like a
relative like a mid-level wipeout and
being able to easily beat up all our
friends
because everyone wrestled all their
buddies and it was one of those ones
where like
they don't have weapons to end the fight
you have weapons to end the fight
that's so cool that's such a crazy you
know asymmetric
advantage that if you lose it's on you
now man like you get like you had the
next time it's like i've got this rifle
and you have nothing and i decide to put
it on my back and then run over and try
to karate chop you're like okay
next time just make sure you use the
rifle bud i'm like oh yeah i should do
that
so yeah it's kind of fascinating to i
mean everything you're describing
is a there's a fascinating tension
between like whenever i show people for
the first time what a triangle is just
like regular people
uh it's like they're discovering he's
like oh okay that's interesting i mean
mma has changed that but people have
haven't watched mma
that's an interesting move it doesn't
make sense why that would be a choke
and they kind of quickly accepted that's
a thing and they accept the basics
without questioning
wait a minute what's actually being
choked
how is it that a shoulder of a person
can do the choking like i'm not sure i
fully
question the fundamentals of all of that
like i claim i have either what exactly
is the blood supply that's being cut off
like what what is the anatomy and the
physiology of all of that why does this
work and if you understood all that what
else could we do here yeah what else can
we do here that's the really important
thing but if we know if i'm an end user
which almost everyone is of almost
anything i'm serious where i'm like i
think about stuff in my life the only
things i really think about are like
martial arts and
martial arts strategy and like i don't
know some other couple
couple other things but not much and
anything else in my life is
is borderline unexamined and i like to
think that if i put a lot of effort into
something i'd like to think that i could
figure at least some things out about it
but i figured out almost nothing about
anything in my life because i haven't
even looked
and you know if you're an end user what
are you capable of
versus you can literally alter the
source code you are neo in the freaking
matrix if you can alter the code and i
can't
and it's like we think about haha but
imagine you
are a world class anything or even not
even world class forget it like a purple
belt compared to a white belt or
compared to a no belt might as well be
jon jones or marcelo garcia you're going
to beat them up comparably bed
so it's uh that's that actually is a
common thing where people can't tell the
difference between levels they're like
oh man i'm training with my black belt
instructor how much better could so and
so be like
so much better you're gonna have a hard
time wrapping your head around it i
remember when i first trained with
marcelo garcia in 2007 i was a decent
purple belt
and of course he molly walked me very
gently and then uh training him again in
i was definitely better i won the gui
and nogi worlds that year at purple belt
so definitely for the record i'm
definitely not a jujitsu world champion
i wanted a purple belt but like that's
not the same at winning a black belt
um and uh tough accomplishment but not
in the same thing at all
but anyway um i was definitely better he
beat me up just the same
way okay 2009. i was a lot better got a
medal at adcc that time
won the trials crushed everybody like no
just submitted everybody like
bob train marcelo garcia it was worse
and uh 2010 training marcelo garcia same
same
so the idea was uh i wouldn't be able to
tell you the difference and
that the outcome difference was the same
in all of these rounds i was
significantly more experienced and more
more adept each time each time that this
occurred but it was like
how many number of times did this person
submit you were past your guard in the
round i'm like i don't know probably
like let's say five each one because
it's
a brief period of time and let's say it
was three on one six on another or
whatever
it's comparable it's six one half dozen
would i be able to easily tell the
difference
no i would just say i know in concept
that he's way better
so much better but there's plenty of
other people that could have beaten me
just as bad as marcelo did when i was a
purple belt
or when i was a brown belt then maybe i
would watch marcelo walk through like
their borderline not there
so it's neat like if you that's back to
kind of what i was talking about about
certain people beginning to really
like peel back some of what's really
special about
the martial arts or any activity i
presume um is they get to a level of
understanding and depth
that they're playing with like the
almost the reality of that thing
and i'm i'm playing by rules that are
not rules i'm not
i'm not even wanted to use a matrix
analogy i'm not even an agent which is
the
best version of something playing by the
rules yes
i'm like one of the regular people or
one of the regular people in
that got out of the matrix so i'm like
oh i'm cool but when i fight an agent i
lose
because we're both in the rules but they
just play them to the play them to the
bone and i'm just
here well and then the agent encounters
neo and they
can do nothing you're like why because
operating outside of what the rules are
but not really what the rules are what
they perceive to be the rules are
clearly so anyway i guess that's kind of
my point about marcelo or certain other
people that are doing things where you
go
that doesn't even seem real it doesn't
seem real to me because i don't
understand what's going on
and i guess if we can get down to base
assumptions but like if we can
constantly strip away strip away strip
away
let's say we always thought that turning
left was right it was correct and it
turns out that turning right was correct
it changed your life yeah it's uh what
is the soccer you said the unexamined
life is not worth living
so you just basically have to rigorously
just constantly examine every
assumption over and over and over but
doesn't that give your life meaning to
come back to the struggle to come back
to free will to come back to what if we
could strip all that away
all right cool all right let me just
stick the needle in my in my arm and
that's that
yeah no i mean that that constant
striving
for understanding
yet another lower layer of the
simulation we're living in
is is is something that's actually
deeply fulfilling that
i don't know if it's genetically built
in but there's something about that
striving to understand that seems to be
uh deeply human but it's funny what
makes us human
we don't talk about the soul anymore man
i went to catholic school as a kid
and whether you buy into all that stuff
or not you're like what what about the
soul of a person
the spirit of a people the spirit of a
nation
anywhere the spirit of humanity we don't
we talk about everything like it's this
quantifiable thing when maybe certain
things are maybe everything is
but then what happens if there's things
that just aren't quantifiable that
nothing in our understanding can or will
ever explain it that doesn't mean that
that should be our assumptions through
our assumption that we can explain
everything and let's get to the dang
bottom
appeal but what if there is actually
something that
like that you that we need challenge for
yeah and we could be looking in the
wrong place by going oh wait is it in
the genes maybe it is
again i'm not saying we're looking wrong
places like i wouldn't know anything i
do karate but basically uh
not even well um but uh yeah do karate
mediocre just asked grandma daniels or
stephen thompson but uh
uh i guess the to come back though you
just are you yell about you
or are you man i actually have you ever
seen the seinfeld episode where kramer
fights the kids
yeah i did that at raymond daniels
school under the kids kids wanting class
as in addition to the uh the alleyway
oh yeah yeah
exactly when i was on my last legs but
uh but yeah
i would just maybe it's funny i feel
like there's something
deeply missing from you know from public
understanding anymore that it's almost
like the idea that
we can figure everything out which i
deeply believe in but also the
possibility that there's some things
that we'll never really see and some
things you'll never understand and
there's something
like you said uniquely human about the
human experience that even if i had the
power to change
i don't want to fuck with it man i don't
want to change that thing
oh yeah well wouldn't it be great if we
just immediately knew the outcome of
everything and you just press this
button you're like oh that's kind of
what's the point of living life then
even if you could do it it's it's the
end you've seen drastically i'll leave
you be sorry i know i'm talking about
ian malcolm jurassic park jeff goldblum
right life life
uh finds a way but we were so concerned
with whether or not we could
we didn't stop to think whether or not
we should
maybe i i think there's an ex
i mean it's a deeply human thing but
it's also a really useful thing
to always kind of assume that there's
this giant thing that you don't
understand
so you can forever be striving to
understand
because that process gives you meaning
but also
keeps making you better like thinking
that actually even just thinking that
you can't understand
everything will
lead you to stop too early so like
uh i i think there's something to
whether it's the soul or whether it's
like religious stuff like assuming that
there's this thing
that you cannot possibly understand is a
really good assumption under which to
operate
and underwish to do this first
principles kind of thinking because you
can just keep digging and keep digging
keep digging even when it seems like
you're at the bottom because you don't
fucking know if you're at the bottom or
not
and back to your original back to one of
our i guess our other kind of tangents
was
that comes back to everyone's a human
being the smartest human being in the
history of
humanity is so hilariously
weak like short-lived and not
intelligent
for yourself bro i understand i didn't
say no i'm not saying comparison to me
in comparison to me everyone is awesome
but that's that's why i don't do the
goat thing but basically uh
you know we're it's just on a cosmic
level can you imagine if you were
vampire you're like 900 years old like
how much you would seem you would seem
like a lowercase g
god to people yeah you'd be like how can
you how could you know so much how can
you have such a long view perspective it
would be insane
so i mean that it seems like we're
talking about ai now right we're
creating things that are
infinitely smarter than us effectively
and live all this time and it's probably
going to do what we tell it to do right
no it's probably well i hope it keeps us
around do you by the way think about
ai and the existential threats like
speaking of gods
iu is this whole technological world we
talked about social networks and this
increasing power of technology around us
we ourselves are becoming less human
because we keep becoming
we we keep relying on technology more
and more
so we're becoming kinds of cyborgs but
also there's a future that's
quite possible where the technology
becomes
smarter and more powerful than us humans
and you know starts
having a life of its own in ways that
perhaps we don't imagine as human beings
i don't just mean like
two-legged robots walking around and
being humans but smarter
i mean like an intelligent life that's
that's beyond and
fundamentally different than our human
life is it's infinite
it's uh also creating new species yeah
yeah a new
a new kind of species not even just a
new species
you talk about systems but like it it
lives in the space of information
it lives uh in a different time scale
and a different scale of also a spatial
scale
it uh operate like we speak we spoke
about individuals it doesn't operate in
the sense of a single individual like
embodied it's not embodied so it's not
like a thing that walks around
and it like it looks at stuff it
consumes the world it's able to do
much larger scale sensing of the
environment around it
all that kind of stuff i can't barely
even try to i can barely conceive of
what that would be like are you scared
are you excited
i don't define like scared or excited i
feel like i try and tend to define them
like the same way or i'm like
i guess i i'm kind of like before
karaoke
it's the same well that's actually kind
of my happy place it's not so much
everyone else's
you know it's uh everyone else is
probably you know heading for the door
at that point but you know it's uh while
you're doing it or leading
or leading up to the karaoke well it
depends whether or not uh whether or not
they know it's me
if they know it's me that's before i
start if they if they're like who's that
guy then they're like halfway through
the song they're already you know
what's throwing their beer what category
is a song or a particular song are we
talking about in terms of like your
happy place
oh man are you kidding me i mean
obviously we came in rhapsody i mean
there's no
question because oh yeah because i don't
have to sing it here it's that it's like
you remember can you can i be
oh yeah of course is he here no yeah
then yeah yeah all right if you i like
this here no that i can't i've a torn
i've uh
i've torn feelings about bohemian
rhapsody because i like the beginning
part the sadness i like like the solo
the heartbreak but the second part i
understand it is so much just like
it gets ridiculous it's so ridiculous it
ruins it for me but it's more about
flexing on people i think if you can
actually
hit hit that hit that you know the
falsetto yeah so it's
it's not okay so you appreciate enough
for the musical
uh beauty and complexity of the song you
just like to flex on board because like
for all yeah like what's the purpose of
anything except for just to let everyone
know that you think you're cool
and there's no better way of doing that
than karaoke so i'm not sure why bro
captive audience yeah exactly oh fear
and excitement of artificial
intelligence i mean like you know me i
don't know anything about
i just i basically i don't i don't
understand the implications of
of any of this i would just say that
like radically altering what it means to
be human in such an unbelievably short
period of time just seems like
such a crazy thing and also it's not
like we're i can't remember who said
this to me recently might even be like i
can't remember so this is definitely not
my idea
but uh we're we're not even going hey
would you like to opt in everyone
everyone is being
opted in you know and particularly when
you want to talk about
like large-scale robotics a large-scale
ai like the world is changing people in
senegal are opting in right now without
realizing it it's not even like and
again i don't mean to pick on senegal
it's just whatever country comes up to
mind but it's in the developing world
but basically uh
you know recognizing that this
huge shift is coming we have no idea
this is a decent idea and also something
else i've always been considered
is uh you know you think about most of
the really awful
awful awful things that have done in
history large-scale slavery
hall you name it it didn't people say
that it came from
this motivation or that motivation maybe
it did maybe it didn't fundamentally the
issue at least in my mind
i'm not a historian power differential
if you if you and i can't contest we
don't contend it's not like you we fight
and you might win or we fight even
you'll win comfortably
it's you are so unbelievably powerful
compared to me that there's nothing i
can do to stop you
that seems like a recipe for something
really really not great happening
because
if you think about like uh you know
european countries encountering each
other and i'm just speculating i don't
know anything about history but let's
say countries that can contend with one
another
versus countries that can't
let's say an alien species alien race
shows up you know right now we don't
want that i think stephen hawking said
that that makes for
it makes perfect sense to me we don't
want that if you can come here
we better hope you're nice because what
are we going to do what are we going to
hope that you invade the water planet
like they did in uh you know one of the
uh
side lord of the year where the world so
i guess what i'm trying to get across is
like
shocking levels of power differential
between groups makes that makes the
world
ripe for horrific abuse in the event
that someone decides to do it
it's like like you imagine an adult
hitting a child like hating hitting a
child no one in their right mind would
ever go like
that's a great idea because it's such an
it's so
grossly imbalanced you're like this is
wrong but but it's also on the table
only because of the gross imbalance so i
guess to come back it's like
whether we create ai and it's on some
crazy level of its own or it's
i'm in charge of it or so i just it
seems like we're
we're creating you mentioned like game
theory
and nuclear war what prevented nuclear
war
i mean i presumably mutually assure
destruction i mean hopefully also
humanity
and the humanity and the the reasonable
you know cooler heads prevailing and
going
hey i can i can understand the veil of
ignorance and i uh i don't go oh yeah
let me kill those guys because i can i
go this is wrong period
and in concept this is not an action i
should take
but it's also nice and easy to keep me
honest if i know that i can't get you
without being got myself
yeah but what happens when i can get
anyone
anything and i'm more or less
untouchable like that seems to me to be
like
like various times in colonial history
you know what i mean and
what happened we know what happened but
so the possibility of
really bad things are plentiful the
possibilities
but are the possibilities of really
positive things applying for
like what though i'm not saying wrong i
don't know so i can give a million
examples
one is just the examples of the parent
and the child
uh you said uh there's a power
differential there
and we don't like a parent hitting their
child
about not just hitting like beating like
really yeah great
beating their child how often
percentage-wise do you see that
happening even though that that that
uh power differential first of all other
people's
kids let's just put this on the table i
love kids
but other people's kids can be annoying
sometimes sometimes you got to deal out
some justice i get it
but we don't practice we don't take
advantage of that power differential
so like there is ethics there's
moralities that
emerge that allow the power differential
to be used for good
versus for bad so like you're one of the
assumptions
with stephen hawking or with uh if
russia became much more powerful than
america or america much more
powerful than russia in the cold war
your assumption that immediately
that power differential not your
assumption but it would express itself
right would express itself
in the in the same way that it was
trying to express itself when there was
a more
uh level competition but it's also
possible when the power differential
grows
the incentive the joy whatever the
mechanisms that
uh made sense when it was at the same
level
that the incentives become very
different it's not as fun to destroy the
ant colony
you start becoming more the kind of a
conservationist
like one hopes it's an evolved
perspective though yeah
well i don't know if it's evolved or not
but it's definitely a possibility it's
unclear to me that something that's many
orders of magnitude more powerful than
us will want to destroy us well i mean
what did we
what did i mean how did how did mass
slavery occur how did
you know like just big dogs playing with
not
i think i think slavery and
a lot of the atrocities in history
happened when the power differential was
not as great
as as we're talking about with ai
potentially
is that not somehow worse than it's not
obvious to me
it's not obvious that things that are
way more powerful
that's fair okay so i think i i think
you're i guess how do you restrain it
though
uh there there's a lot of different
discussions of how to
uh i just even restrain each other
because let's say i go and decide to
strike someone's child which i'd like to
think i wouldn't do
yes i will be promptly i will find
myself in front of a judge
and so i feel like there's a lot can you
imagine how many people used to get
murdered
just in the woods yeah i mean i would
just presume it's a lot
you know and i don't think most people
are lunatics like that but i would just
say that's the point
if you're given though if you're given
to that your ability to get away with it
was was greater in the past because a
chance of detection was less
so does it i don't know this is what
that's called an artificial intelligence
ai safety research
called value alignment of ensuring as
you build
the the systems that become smarter and
smarter and more powerful and powerful
make sure that their values are aligned
with the entities
over which they're becoming powerful
with with humans so if you were to talk
to an ai that's becoming smarter first
it's dumber than unit but it's becoming
smarter and smarter
you have to create mechanisms
where you both value the same things i
guess one thing i wonder
so i guess i'm probably not like sharp
enough to grasp this if i'm honest but i
guess like i wonder like uh
i used the chess programs um you know
was deep blue
stock fish and then like alpha zero and
alpha zero teaching itself to beat
stock stockfish without any help in four
hours yeah yeah like
it becomes orders of magnitude more
intelligence than us in effectively
an instantaneous period i guess what i
always wondered like uh
if you were that much smarter than me
i feel like your ability to manipulate
me would be pretty significant or at
least potentially you know
but manipulation
implies that the incentive is to
overpower
everything around you like there's
implied incentives
if your value is to actually
like uh it depends what you want in life
okay what you want in your system like
it's it's not clear
that the goal of an ai system that's
all-powerful is to destroy
all humans no i don't think that i don't
think that it is either i guess we're
going to even enslave all humans
that's fair i guess what i'm trying to
suggest is that something adequately
powerful
these these actions are on the table yes
they're on the table and that's scary
and that's why a lot of people are
really concerned about it and are
working on it i'm just trying to make
the case
for agi because if they're watching this
he's the one to kill uh no actually i
was thinking i was uh
yeah i i watched toilets like
really well no i mean
that that's the main concern for all the
people in the aic to research
people talk about agis it's
uh it's kind of disturbing how little
people
are working on trying to
create mechanisms that keep ai's values
aligned with ours
that's completely unshocking yeah we
we humans seem to do only good when like
you know you even look at like
coronavirus it's like when
like the water has to be leaking from
the ceiling
you have to be there fine fine blood
everywhere fire
just destruction we do we just seem to
ignore
completely and all over the wall
riding all over the wall this is fun
nothing to see here we'll be okay but we
do all right especially in the united
states you figure out
even when this becomes a really serious
problem
taking actions last minute there's
something about the innovative spirit
that results in a solution last minute
right before the deadline it works out
well i mean how i don't know how you did
school
probably a lot better than me but that
was how i did school i couldn't be mo i
was no motivation up until like the last
you feel like we have 22 hours to do the
entire semesters of work
like let's do this yeah and you get like
19 freaking mountain dews and then uh
yeah well that's that's why you and i
are failures in life because i just
talked to i
mentioned cal newport uh with his book
uh deep work and so on he is of the
variety of these creatures that
basically does everything ahead of time
that's shocking because he
this dislikes the he thinks it's
unproductive
uh to experience the stress and anxiety
of the deadline
because you're just you're not going to
be your best performance wise
and you're not going to do the best work
so it doesn't make any it's completely
irrational
to uh to a function based on the
deadline you should have a system a
process that gets stuff a little bit of
stuff done every day
so like you should be and constantly be
systematically honest with yourself if
you say i'm going to get this stuff done
today and this week
at the end of the day at the end of the
week you have to then reflect on what
you did who you planned
and improve that plan update it
constantly update every day every week
every quarter whatever those durations
are uh
as i'm listening to this and reading his
stuff it's like oh
yeah i agree with everything i'm like
yes i'm clapping
but like the reality is and then i'd go
back and just eat cheetos and like
don't do shit until like blasphemy and
cheesy
but actually like again not that it'll
ever matter not that it's ever going to
matter because he's so shockingly
productive and well thought out that
whatever i've decided to think about
trying to monkey wrench in there is uh
is definitely going to be able to deal
with but it's funny that again because
you're a human being
not a god all of your strengths are you
have a corresponding weakness
the less you practice working under the
gun the less comfortable you are working
under the gun the more practice you have
working under the gun the better you get
it the downside is you're always working
on the gun so you're less productive or
it's like your work quality maybe drops
so it's an interesting thing it's like
it's almost like hey i wonder if this i
wonder if
khabib nurmagomedov has a lot of heart
and i'd say the answer is almost
certainly yes
but you go well he hasn't struggled a
bunch maybe he doesn't struggle well and
it just so happens that he can also work
under the gun really well he just
doesn't like to do it
yeah but uh yeah but it's an interesting
thing it's like i guess what is it the
aristotle we are what we repeatedly do
we are all
we're all practicing something all the
time so i guess it's it's funny
i guess that's a question that i have
though i would love to ask him
really neat is uh in certain jobs i mean
obviously you want to have preparation
always always but certain things have
like a degree of like
entropy in the system and you go i need
to practice working under the gun
and i'm not saying that's what i need to
do because fighting it should be for the
most part it's a really sterile
environment the grand scheme of things
like fighting in a cage is very sterile
compared to most other things in life
right
but dangerous but sterile and uh unless
of course like you know
like the other guy the ref decides to
hit you should be hilarious but um
anyway i guess just going like okay so
at what value do you get
out of adding a degree of let's say you
could even be planned by someone else
but junk in the system and you just have
to work under the gun to make it happen
let's say for instance for like
police or something like that the
situation turns left hard
at some random point in time that could
happen to
any number of people so i guess it's
interesting things that allow for
perfect planning or quasi-perfect
planning versus things that are
inherently unstable
and then what are the what's the
psychological fallout of comfort with
that
because i think a lot of people that are
really comfortable under the gun
let it happen a lot for all the good and
the bad of that does that make sense no
that
totally makes sense it was i mean his
answer would be
that you have to be honest with yourself
if it's valuable for the your success
to practice being under the gun and then
you should schedule that john then he's
smart you should plan that
you should systematically and then as
opposed to doing it
half-assedly because it's as opposed to
letting the environment choose
the randomness like control the
randomness to where
like you optimize it i was just it's so
efficient it's shocking just to hear
about it
yeah no he's he's i mean the same way
you are he's annoying in the same way
which is like he he drops
truth bombs it's like yeah yeah that's
so true
yeah we're probably comparably you know
doing that you know
but he's so he his profession requires
that so he's not just like a
motivational speaker or whatever he
uh he's a a computer science theoretical
computer scientist and
he needs the long hours in the day of
doing
like serious math so it's mostly math
proofs and
for that you have to sit and think
really deeply it's like really hard work
compared to like uh what most people do
like
even when i i mean what i do like
programming is way easier than
rigorous math proofs because you have to
basically have this machine
and you have to uh your brain to churn
out
logic in a focused way while visualizing
a bunch of things and holding that in
your brain
and holding that for 10 minutes 20
minutes hopefully several hours
and you're not just like doing homework
you're doing totally novel stuff so like
stuff that nobody's ever done before
so you keep running up against the wall
of like fuck this is a dead
end oh no wait is this a dead end and
like that whole frustration
that's serious mental work that's like
incredibly difficult mental work so he
knows what he's talking about that's
something
that's amazing but like you said he's
like this seems like the standard for
the quality of work that he needs is so
high so
almost anything less than this level of
systematization and organization would
preclude it right so he can't
afford the kind of bullshit that i don't
know about you but that certainly i do
which is like last
deadline kind of stuff because you can't
do that kind of work
uh uh last minute on kind of stuff so
my question for him in general is like
and for you and i
is like well here's these negative
patterns that we do
of like doing shit last minute and so on
is this just who we are now or are there
some
i don't think i'm really big into a free
will you know i was thinking that it's
mostly predestination
at least in this regard it's the same
with like communism like as long as it
fits my
uh whatever is the lazy thing to do i'll
i'll just not believe in freedom yeah
i'm not a congressman opportunist or uh
yeah that's when
that was i'm an opportunistic communist
and capitalist i just do whatever
whatever is cool at the time
exactly uh let me ask you um
to examine some fundamental principles
of a particular thing that joe rogan
brought up to me several times online
and offline okay
which is that he thinks that
the tie that i wear okay is
something that makes me uh vulnerable
to attack that you sh should be the
reason he doesn't wear a tie is because
he can get choked
very easily with a tie it's a big
concern
okay my contention
and by the way he wore a suit last time
too uh he didn't wear it on the podcast
he wore it for dinner later
yeah i wore a suit the other day and i i
had uh no socks on i didn't realize
yeah you're supposed to wear socks yeah
that's that's my understanding why'd you
wear a suit did you go to court
no no and i didn't know no
yeah i don't know i just wanted to play
i wanted to pretend i was an adult for a
day
okay cool yeah so uh so
my contention is like the jacket
everything is more dangerous than a tie
that's kind of where i was going with
that that's kind of where it was my
first thought too like if
once the tie becomes an issue like yeah
like everything else is already
it's already an issue yeah because the
tie to me now without like messing with
it now is
is to me has some of the
similar problems that a belt does so
like for example i don't know about you
maybe you can correct me
but i'm not sure you can use the belt as
tied
you know i know there's some kind of
guards you can probably utilize the belt
with but
the belt sorry when it's tight around
the waist and we're talking about a belt
belt or a keyboard it's a g belt okay
sorry
but importantly it's it's not that great
of a thing to use
in most cases i would say because it
slides
it doesn't you can probably invent a few
interesting
ways to use it as leverage as control
and so on
but there's just so many more things
around that are better built better
better yeah and so for me the time when
people don't realize
i suppose are we trying to sell a dvd
here and have some some widgets and
bells and whistles because in that case
the belt is really important part of
what we do and i would really encourage
you guys to look into it yeah
uh if we're trying to actually like
learn something and say
like you said we're surrounded by better
options well that's the thing i mean
it's not obvious to me
that the belt maybe there's actually
undiscovered things about using the belt
you know i think people have used like
like putting a foot inside the belt
somehow
inside inside the keyboard there's some
this is a no punches ski grappling
situation yes
okay yeah i guess so it's already fairly
contrived right but with punches too
like is there
okay let's let's talk about a street
fight with a belt that's like a jeans
belt like a belt clothing belt okay so i
get to take it off and whip them in the
face of the buckle
how serious is this street fight are we
talking about like they're nice no
beat up or are we talking like no like
death like one of you has to die
oh yikes whoa okay oh you you ever
like i i'm in this situation all the
time
and there's a reason i'm still here i
had something
i saw we tried to fight with the
starbucks we were talking about power
differentials yeah
hey beat up kids all the time just pick
the easy w you got to get the ecws you
want the hardware
i'm undefeated come around the
playground watch what happens no like to
the
to the death what is their clothing
that's useful
you know they're from my perspective for
your use or their use
uh both am i used to their use no like
i like how you want to take the belt off
and use the buckle to hit them with but
first of all how you're gonna take off
the
like the belt well there's a lot of
effort involved in
unclothing well what i was figuring was
when they started to see me take my
pants off in the fight they were like
what they're going to pause and rethink
the situation for a second
yes and i'm making dead eye contact
obviously yeah exactly
nodding and then you know by the time
they realized you took a belt off until
you could whip them with it yeah you
actually you're already
one possibly two steps ahead okay so
fine let's not talk about your own
clothing let's talk about their clothes
okay i'll take off their belt and hit
them with it
no but that's that's much harder no
question but if you can do it oh i'm
maintaining i got no
i just shit how did it come to this
there's alt but the point is there's
alternatives that are
perhaps more effective yeah in my
perspective this might be clueless
there's almost no clothing that's more
effective than
almost assuming the situation is no gee
grappling
like i feel like clothing particularly
when you start to add hitting
like every single time i start grabbing
your clothes if you start you start
hitting it's not like nothing could work
but
most of the time you're like why am i
not using my arms for something better
than what i'm doing them right now
right yeah it's very difficult for me to
i don't know in terms of just distance i
can't imagine a case of different
distances even like situations where
let's not talk about like like a
situation where you haven't both yet
agreed that a fight is happening
solid clothing's nice if they have it on
then i mean solid clothing oh yeah like
something like a good jacket because you
can
snatch somebody on their face yeah you
know it's like if you if you took my
like you know like he snapped down in
judo like how easy it is to snap down a
beginner
yeah it's like so i agree with you
actually a tie in that sense might be a
really effective way to snap down so the
snapdown is really powerful to change
the
like disorient the situation and give
you a lot of different opportunities
for you know taking their back taking
them down
doing hilarious stuff like snapping them
down with their tie into your knee
and then when they come back up doing
this and you're already so yeah
in that sense i agree but not as a
choking mechanism because the effect
of joe had is a choke i think you would
probably choke me with your tie more
easily than i could choke you with your
tongue probably i'm serious because like
if you get you can get like you get my
back and you can
put it around somebody's neck you know
like uh like like you ever see a die
hard
yeah yeah you remember when the super uh
swedish looking blonde dude or whatever
was was trying to choke bruce willis
with the uh
with the chain and then he ended up
getting choked himself with the chain if
i recall this properly
but anyway yeah like like that but uh
yeah i don't feel like i feel like if i
start grabbing your tie
you have too many other great options i
mean i do like the snap down that you
actually made me realize no i think
you're
good there what's that i think you're on
the right path with it with a snapdragon
yeah particularly if you start with like
one of these like you know like
like you like you poke your finger in my
chest and then snap down real quick
oh yeah because it it also socially
speaking
it's not a threatening thing to just you
know to
to reach for the tide it's not
particularly like a business setting you
know i mean
they'll never see it coming yeah because
i was thinking choke
but it's not it's a really good leverage
point because like grabbing a jacket the
jacket will slide if you try to snap
down
you really have to get a whole like a
really good hold well that's a good
point because around the back and the
neck what if it's a clip on
how much of a jackass would you look
like you feel like and then they just
yeah
they stick you one would you ever see
the uh japanese politician or i think it
was japan
yeah it was that guy is so he was so
calm and cool had
like it was ever it was beautiful
technique
the level of uh of actually the throw
was even gentle yeah but uh yeah it was
perfect it's amazing well executed yeah
more of our politicians you just toss
the shit out of it yeah we need more
teddy roosevelt
exactly i like our politicians like
talking about fighting when it's clear
that none of them even
it would ever have been in a fight ever
yeah somebody was saying teddy roosevelt
is interesting
i didn't realize this as he's one of the
greatest presidents this country's had
and he was one of the greatest
presidents even though he faced
no crisis whatsoever he literally willed
himself
like nothing happened during his
presidency he's just a bad motherfucker
who made really great speeches yeah so
you like you know
uh this made me realize i was just
talking to a historian that like
most of the people who we think are
great need also a good crisis that
they've
that reveal their greatness but muhammad
ali right this muhammad ali i mean in
sports
but but you know what i mean like the
circumstances what is greatness you know
i mean it's like you have to
it's not just your capacity it's what
you what you face right it's a quality
of opposition circumstance what you
overcome
so i guess what you're saying is joe
rogan is wrong about the thai thing
you know i don't want to go so far as
saying is wrong you know the man is not
here to defend himself maybe he has some
things that i'm not understanding i'm
willing
he has not deeply thought that this is
my main criticism of joe he's not deeply
thought to this
and the mma journalist would be like
ryan hall says joe rogan is wrong and
hates ties
and has ties they'll integrate hitler
back in there
somehow nice what's uh you talking about
greatness
and greatness requiring a difficult
moment
in time can you like reflect back and
think
what are some of the hardest if not the
hardest thing you've ever had to do in
your life
well you know i think i've had a bunch
of things you know i've had a lot of
things not going my way
um you know i've been incredibly
fortunate i've had a lot of things go my
way also
um but uh leaving leaving teamwork urban
in 2008
which i firmly believe was the right
thing to do
um is one of the uh
that was very difficult at the time not
like not a difficult choice but it was
uh because of
why i was leaving but um psychologically
first of all
lost in general leaving yeah team a
family of all kinds doesn't matter what
the circumstances i didn't lose any
friends but i lost a lot of people i
thought were my friends
and i uh i lost training i lost i had
also had like a really serious my wrist
only does that
so like uh at a really serious uh
wrist surgery like that i didn't know if
i was gonna be able to compete anymore
after that i just got my brown belt that
was uh
it was a tough time like uh
psychologically physically everything
but i was very very motivated to do my
best and to push through it and to uh
just to carry on in a positive direction
no matter what in a different direction
and uh we lonely this is the thing about
family even if it's an abusive family
leaving
it's tough people are complicated and
even people that i that i don't think
very well of that i think on the whole
i don't think very well of it's it's
unfair to paint them with one brush
um you know obviously there's greater
and lesser examples of that like the
person we discussed last time who's
an infinitely you know beyond almost
anyone that we could ever imagine
meeting in our own personal lives
yeah yeah bloody elbow
yeah in terms of forgiveness and hate i
mean do you
do you have hate in your heart for for
people in your past
i don't know for that process no i mean
there were definitely times where i've
been
negatively motivated to prove people
wrong or to
accomplish things in spite and i think
that some of that is valuable if i'd be
lying if i felt differently
i think particularly uh i do really well
in conflict
um i'm useless without the usual
deadline thing i'm used to yeah i'm
using
chaos i'm using i do i'm used to that an
antagonist i like fighting
i like competition i like being pushed i
like feeling like if i don't play well
i'm going to get hurt
i mean i have no choice but to play well
i'd play with everything i got at the
very least and i guess i would say
though
is uh you know as i've gotten uh you
know more time
and you know lived a little bit longer
you see
you know various situations for uh
you know you know with increased uh
increased color i guess i would say
increased clarity and
uh you know there are a lot of
lessons to be learned even from from
times in history or bad experience that
we have and the question is can we take
those lessons and move forward
and that's again what i think we're
seeing and sometimes socially right now
we're forgetting important lessons of
the past and that's not good
not saying hey i don't get why we why we
could be going in this direction or that
i understand entirely but
hey let's not forget the lesson so we
don't have to learn them again
because that doesn't really serve
anybody and anyway i guess i would say
i'm thankful for all of the
experiences difficult and otherwise
mostly difficult honestly most of the
times i remember i'm thankful for every
loss i've ever had
particularly the tough ones i'm thankful
for uh
you know for all the relationships many
people have taught me many things and
continue to teach them anything some of
them are still some of my closest
friends some of whom are people i really
don't get along with at all and some of
whom are people
i think really poorly of oh there's not
many of that last group
what i guess i would say is uh there's
there's been a lot of
things and opportunities to learn and uh
you know
throughout that and also it's not as if
i've never done made any mistakes myself
now again
they're magnitude differences i like to
think and i can definitely say that none
of the mistakes that i've ever made have
been mistakes of intention
you know i've screwed up a lot of things
in my life but i can confidently and and
easily say that i've never
had ill intent towards people as i've
done it so you sit there like man this
is the right thing it's the right thing
and sometimes i've been wrong
but uh you know you never sit out with
malicious intent and i think that
when i find that i think people do
things differently when i do think that
there's malicious intent i have a
difficult time forgiving that
how does love win over hate ryan hall
in this world we talk about social media
we talk about
forgiveness of uh some of the more
complicated people in your past
uh if we scale that to the entire world
before the ai destroys us and although
the human race is lost
to history how do you think love wins
over hate
well i'd like to preface this by saying
i tried to make pancakes the other day
yes it didn't work
but i'm happy to comment on this so uh
basically uh
wow i i think like i think most of the
times
that that i can think of that i've
struggled
you know it's uh and can and the times
that i've read about is
being unable to see the humanity in
other people and also
even in sometimes our enemies and the
people that have done awful things and
you go
what would allow people to do this that
or the other and that doesn't forgive
what they've done depending upon you
know some things are forgivable some
things are less so
but you want to understand why it's like
to our knowledge demons don't populate
our world
neither do like literal angels walking
around being actually perfect
a lot of times the things that it's i
find it deeply amusing
watching you know people hoisted by
their own batard on twitter even though
it's gross and it's really unproductive
it's actually like equal parts amusing
and like awful because you're not you're
not happy that someone's being raked
over the coals particularly
unjustifiably
but it is funny when it's the exact same
thing they were raking others over the
coals for not like a week or two prior
and that's happened
repeatedly and will continue to happen
and i guess i would say
as you mentioned you know a uh prior you
know like a recognition of the humanity
of others of that
all of us make mistakes that it's
difficult to understand intention i've
had arguments with close friends of mine
over text message
where both of us ended up super pissed
because we were completely
misreading what the tone the intention
of what the other person was doing and
even if i was reading it correctly
which i wasn't it's so easy to uh
ascribe the most
negative possible you know the least
charitable
assessment of what they're doing and i
think that that's such a dangerous way
to live your life and it's also just a
fruitless way to live your life
you know it's one thing to go hey why
did you do that i was pissed
did you what did you do you just you did
that to make yourself feel better like
you damn right i did
and have i done that plenty of times my
life yeah i would lie if i said that i
didn't
you know uh why did why did you punch
that guy in the face he was going crazy
at me and hit me and i asked
him to stop and then i gave a warning
and i'd put him on his ass i'm like no
i'm not sorry
but then looking back now with years to
sit on him like
do i understand why i did what i did
absolutely
would i like to respond differently now
yeah i would you know it and it doesn't
mean that
i think plenty of things that people do
are understandable
doesn't mean understandable doesn't mean
correct understandable doesn't mean that
you go oh yeah that's great you go i
could i could see someone doing such a
thing
but i guess just wrecking trying to
understand and see the humanity in
others
because if i can't see the humanity in
others how can i see it in myself
and also you know how am i meant to
interact with everyone as you said
whether
you know even if we're a society of
individuals for at least for the time
being hopefully
you know in perpetuity we still come
together as a whole
and watching it's weird like you said
it's if i only ask why once i start with
stay out of my way and i'll stay out of
yours leave me the fuck alone you're
like okay
that's fine ryan but that's easy for you
to say living in a society that doesn't
actually function like that
so it's a little bit cheap but if i
recognize that that's step one is i
don't hurt you and you don't hurt me but
then we go well but how can i help you
that's step two and then it goes way
beyond that and a lot further than i've
thought about it but i guess what i
would just say is again recognition of
the humanity and others
and that we all have different strengths
we all have different weaknesses and
it's you can never really be sure where
the other person is coming from but if
we approach things
charitably as charitably as we would
hope others would approach us
i think we'll do a lot better and i
guess one thing that i read that i liked
that i thought was accurate and
unfortunately disappointing was everyone
is a great
uh you know jury or their i'm sorry a
great lawyer for themselves and a judge
for others
and i think that's a terrible way to
live life even if it's an understandable
one
yeah i don't know what's happening and
then probably flipping that is the right
way to live
being uh being constantly judgmental of
yourself
and a defender of others and that
results ultimately in
interaction that de-escalates versus
escalates
right yeah and you can you can we can
all live in a world like that and
sometimes you're like hey man people
that deserve punishment won't get it
like okay hey what do they say better to
have you know 10 guilty people go free
then one innocent person you know
burn and ultimately that is i think that
is a better world than the other way
around
and if all else fails uh
join the team that builds the ai that
kills all humans yeah obviously i mean
if you have to be on a team pick the
winning team what
that's been the uh that's that's my
hiring pitch actually it's a good hiring
pitch
you're still taking resumes you want to
be on the team that doesn't die
during the great apocalypse not
immediately you want to be on the one
that that's
uh you know eventually long suffering
and stepped on right
yeah life is suffering ryan hall this
was an amazing conversation
i really enjoyed talking i could
probably talk to you for many more hours
i hope i do
as well ryan i love you buddy this is a
great conversation thanks for talking
today thank you so much for having me i
really appreciate it
thanks for listening to this
conversation with ryan hall and thank
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and now let me leave you with some words
from frank herbert
in dune i must not fear
fear is the mind killer fear is the
little death that brings total
obliteration
i will face my fear i will permit it to
pass over me
and through me and when it has gone past
i will turn the inner eye to see its
path
where the fear has gone there will be
nothing
only i will remain thank you for
listening and hope to see you
next time
you