Bryan Johnson on How to Become Aware of Your Blind Spots | Impact Theory

I think as a a species, I think we're teenagers. I think that the decisions we make in the next 20 years, 20, 30 years, are going to have enduring consequences of the sort that previous decisions did not. We need to figure out as a species what we do with ourselves. We need to figure out how to co-evolve with AI. We need to do all this. I currently don't think as a society we have the literacy to do that. Everybody, welcome to Impact Theory. You're here my friends because you believe that human potential is nearly limitless, but you know that having potential is not the same as actually doing something with it. So, our goal with this show and company is to introduce you to the people and ideas that will help you actually execute on your dreams. All right, today's guest is the modern American rags-to-riches story. He started with nothing. His dad battled with drug addiction and the family was so broke that his mother often had to make his clothes, and yet despite that, he would go on to amass nearly a billion dollars in wealth. My question is how? After spending 2 years in Ecuador as a Mormon missionary and seeing just how hard life could get, he returned home with a fresh perspective and a commitment to spending the rest of his life improving the lives of others. To that end, he started his first company and paid his own way through college. That early success, however, was quickly met with some crushing failures, and the harder he worked on his businesses, the deeper he seemed to fall into depression. A depression that would threaten to take his life nearly every day for an entire decade. Always willing to do the hard things, however, he persevered, and in 2007, believing that he saw a way to disrupt the multi-billion dollar payment processing industry, he founded Braintree. As a solo founder and with only the money he could save himself, he grew Braintree into a beast that was twice named to the Inc. 500 list of the fastest growing companies in America and was ultimately sold to PayPal for $800 giving him the resources he needed to make good on his promise to build a better future. Armed with the belief that with the right tools of creation we can author any world we want, he has thrown himself into solving the grandest challenges that we face as a species. He's pledged $200 million of his own money to building the tools required to expand our cognitive capabilities through his company Kernel and through his investment house OS Fund, he has set out to radically extend human life by backing the scientists and inventors that aim to benefit all of humanity by rewriting the very operating system of life. So, please help me in welcoming the man who has climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, climbed out of depression, become a pilot, started a family and written a children's book all while building some of the most audacious companies in the world, Bryan Johnson. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for coming on the show, Bryan. My pleasure. It is so cool to have you here. You were one of the people that was like on our fantasy list um because of your involvement in Xprize and the connection to Peter. I was very aware of what you were working on. I thought it would be amazing to get you on here essentially to ask one question. How do you think? How did you go from where you started to where you are now? It's it's a pretty incredible bridge to cross. I guess the first time I really thought about how to think about uh life was when I was 21 when I returned from uh doing a mission in Ecuador. And it occurred to me I was making very big decisions on what to study in school, what kind of job to get, how to spend my life. Because once you set on that trajectory, it's harder to change. And so, there was one question that mattered to me among all which was how could I create the most value for the species. It was the only question that I cared about. I didn't care about making money. I didn't care about retiring at 65. It was just that single question. And that led me on the path that I went on, but it it wasn't obvious initially to me. So, what I did is I looked around in the world to try to evaluate what I could find. So, I could see you could go to Africa and help people who were in poverty or you could uh work at the United Nations, you know, council for with the students at school. But, I really didn't find anything that spoke to me that was a good fit. And so, I thought I'll become an entrepreneur. I'll make a whole bunch of money by the age of 30. I mean, in my mind it was like, of course I'll do that. Uh it just didn't occur to me that wouldn't be possible. Uh but it happened. I got lucky and I got to the point where I could then ask the question, what do I do? And it's been uh a remarkable experience and I feel tremendously grateful to be in the position I'm in and hopefully something useful turns out from it. So, you've talked a lot about assumption stacks. Well, first, what is an assumption stack? And then, what was your assumption stack pre-Ecuador and post? I think an assumption stack could be revealed for example, if somebody inquires of advice. They say, "Please tell me, give me advice about your life." And I think in those situations, the best advice to is to not give advice. Because in doing so, you convey to another person everything you've learned in your entire life and you also include your biases, your blind spots, things that are particular to you. And so, you actually do someone a disservice, I think, in many ways by giving them advice because you almost bury them in your information and they accept those assumptions, which gives them less of a less of an opportunity to come up with something novel and unique in their own regard. And so, I think in trying to improve how I think over the years, every time I make a given I make a given judgment or I make an or I understand I realize I'm thinking about a given thing, I'll ask myself, why did I arrive at that particular conclusion? And what's behind it? And you can usually roll back why why why like four or five times. And then for for example, I think the best story about this is I told this a lot of Braintree is you have five monkeys in the room and so there's a basket of bananas up this ladder. And when a monkey tries to go up the ladder to get the bananas, they're all sprayed with cold water. And so the monkeys soon learn if they go up the ladder to get the bananas, they all get sprayed with cold water, so they stop the behavior. So they pull out one monkey, put a new monkey in. Then the new monkey's like, "Hey, bananas!" So it runs up, it gets sprayed. And so soon you have this this scenario where a new monkey's put in and when it tries to run up the ladder, all the monkeys grab the monkey before it goes up to pull it so that they don't get sprayed with cold water. But soon none of the monkeys have been have actually been sprayed with cold water. The learned behavior is if a monkey goes up, grab it before it goes up. So a new monkey comes in and they say, "Oh wise one ye who have been here for years, tell me why do you not go to the basket?" And that one monkey with that question can make the entire assumption stack of that monkey colony collapse by asking a single question. And so many of things like that are true in life. If you just ask these questions, you can just collapse entire systems. Mhm. What are some questions like that that you asked coming back from Ecuador? If you could do one thing in your entire life and to create the most value for the human race, what would you do? That's pretty powerful question. It's interesting. So you and I were talking before the camera started rolling and in some ways we're pointing at the same thing and coming at it from very different angles, I would say, but with some of the same assumptions about belief system, belief system matters. Um the example that you gave with the monkeys is is so incredible. And I think really gets at that issue. I believe that all of the beliefs that we have that govern our world, the way that we look at it and how we proceed, are malleable, changeable. Is that a thesis that you share as well? It is. 100%. So I'm trying to imagine a kid growing up somewhat impoverished. Did that give you a scarcity mindset? Were you thinking like, oh, making money is hard? And then, what was it about that experience that was so transformative that it it shakes everything? I was taught to be a responsible child, a responsible person in society. And so, for example, when uh, my parents split, my mom was a single mother with five kids. We didn't have money, so, you know, you mentioned she made clothes for me to go to school. And uh, when I was at school, I figured out that I could buy a day-old uh, crois- a croissant for 10 cents, uh, if if a post-lunch. And so, what I'd do, I made a deal with the lunch lady where I would clean the tables, then pay 10 cents, and get this croissant. And then, I didn't have to cash my mom's check that she'd written for $25 for my monthly fee to save for the $25 a month. So, I did this for a month or two, and my mom finally found out, and I think she was partly embarrassed, like, you know, my child is not eating lunch at school, and everyone thinks there's something wrong with the family. But, to me, that just made sense that it was my I That's the way I could contribute to my family is save my mom $25 a month in my in my lunch fee at school. And I guess I've always felt that sense of responsibility, which my my parents did a nice job of teaching me that. Some of the things that you're doing with your kids I sound really abnormal, A, let's start with that, but also just really incredible. You said that you've started companies with your kids. And what I'm trying to to get at is don't give advice, right? Cuz you're passing on your blind spots, your assumption stacks, and all of that, and that becomes limiting in its own way. Like, even if you're trying to be as expansive as possible, you are passing on those limitations. And basically, at this point in my life, I essentially give advice for a living. So, it's really interesting to look at this, um, from the potential downside and the problems. And I'm always looking for, okay, how do we improve this to really impact people, especially the people I care most about are people that are antagonistic to change. Yeah. So, what is it about like starting a business with your kids or writing the book with your kids? Like, is that your way of making them think through their own problems? And the the ATV example might hint at some of this. Yeah, that's true. Uh that's a good example. I wanted them to learn how to drive an ATV, and we were up in the canyon, and I gave them 30 seconds of instruction. I said, "Here's the brakes, like the front brake, the back brake. Here's how you accelerate. Uh here are a few things you may not want to do. For example, if you get on a hill and it's too steep, you may roll. That's not desirable. That'll put you in trouble." So, a few general guidelines, but it was 30 seconds of instruction, and I said, "Go. Like, go figure out how to drive an ATV. And then when you return, I want you to tell me your thought processes. How did you assess risk? What did you do and when? How did you solve problems when encountered?" So, they came back and they did that. They walked me through 3 minutes of their thought process, and the brothers were messing with each other. Like, "No, you like drove up the hill faster than you did it before. You ran into that tree, and like they but I actually saw their thought process of how they actually deconstructed their experience and how they could gain knowledge from it. And to me, that was satisfactory is that they felt accountable to me to deconstruct how they thought. As an exercise that has utility in itself, and I didn't say anything to them about their lessons. They just simply know that it is their opportunity to learn how to think. It's interesting. So, I think a lot about the future and how rapidly it's going to come, and so we're despite what I think we look like to the outside world right now, we view ourselves as a creative studio. So, we make content. We're actually making a comic book right now that centers around what happens if AI comes faster than we think, and there's this rush of joblessness, and there's an adverse reaction to that. You know, how do we think through those problems? And so, thinking about your concept of being able to author the world that we want, knowing that the future is coming at us really fast. You even likened it to like a stage five hurricane or something that's going to really hit us hard. How do you think about that? Is that something that you think a lot about? I know that you're um you're really looking towards what new economies are going to look like and things. So, how do you use what you're talking about now of experience experience being our our most profound teacher so that we don't get the assumptions from the previous set of monkeys. Um but with a world that's coming so fast we can't experience it. That's right. I would say that as a society we we acknowledge literacy is a high-value thing. We to learn to be able to collectively read and write empowers everybody because we can communicate ideas, have debates, share knowledge. Uh there's another form of literacy I don't think we have and that is future literacy. And so, talking about your mental models and frameworks future literacy is a mental model and it's a way in which we try to understand the future. And it packed in that is knowing that when we think about the future we are crushed by our biases. We have a I have this poster on the wall at work uh which is 188 categorized biases. Like all the things your brain does that makes it run so well. Can you give me some examples? I mean so, for example like confirmation bias Mhm. is one that people know. Or familiarity bias. And there are all sorts. We collapse information uh based upon our priorities or how we're primed. We just uh understanding how cognitively impaired we are as humans is a form of enlightenment. And even when you explain to somebody how these biases work my experience has been the first thing they say is I know I know so many people like that. They're oblivious to the fact that they have these impairments. And then And you start deconstructing them in their thought processes and you actually open up this window and they accept it and say, "Wow, like I could actually not see the world the way it really is. I maybe have these blind spots. Maybe I've got these" That's I think when enlightenment opens up. I mean, Socrates of course famous, he said like, "I'm the most wise person in the world because I acknowledge I know nothing." It's a different way of saying that. And I forget where we were on this question, but I think that the that the first thing is this humility to achieve this higher level of enlightenment, to understand while we are top of the food chain right now, and while we are impressive as a species, it could be the case that we are an extremely primib- primitive form of intelligence, and that we would look back upon ourselves in 20 years from now and be aghast and saying, "How did we deal with the world?" Unbelievable. That's That's That's a bias. We just can't extend our thinking beyond our and our what we're familiar with. Couple things on that. So, one um really intriguing story that you told about your girlfriend who uh was composing music using AI, and you said a human musician will never surprise her the way that an AI can. What did you mean by that? When you and I have this conversation, we we both come from a similar background where we grew up in the United States. Uh like, we're both white. We both have There's There's similar things that we share in common. Therefore, our conversation has a certain bound of surprise. I'm It's unlikely I'm going to say something that's going to just like shock you out of your chair because you're pretty familiar with with my rough structure of intelligence. But, an artificial intelligence is an entirely foreign form of intelligence. And while we try to build our values and our intelligence into that thing, it's not necessarily, if you just let it run, that the output is going to be what we expect. And so, what is interesting is the true value of AI is not that it is a it is a task rabbit. The value of AI, it is in a co-evolutionary partner. That is a different form of intelligence that when we start co-evolving with it, it's going to radically change our intelligence. And that's what I think most people miss in this conversation is the whole AI conversation I think is wrong anyways. It 2017 was a year of Chicken Little. Like we're all so scared about AI and it ran away. Whether we like it or not, AI is essential to our survival. We cannot manage the complexity of the world without it. Number one. Number two is going back to our biases and then the challenge we have is our intelligence. If humanity were a stock, I would short it. I do not think our cognitive abilities are equal to the challenges we face. And only through this co-evolutionary approach, where we can actually amplify our intelligence, do we have a shot? And so going back to my girlfriend's creation of music, when she's playing with this AI and going back and forth in this co-evolutionary process, it can give her beats that she would never get from another human because it's combined all kinds of things that are foreign to us. And so it's that beauty in that co-creative process. But we have to acknowledge that I guess this is a whole different topic, but we have to acknowledge the rate in which artificial intelligence is improving, and no matter what someone believes, whether they think it's an exponential curve, a punctuated equilibrium where you know it's stepping, or whether it's like straight up. It's up into the right. And if you look at native human ability, not we have better tools, we are flatlined. So you have one line going up and the other's like this. And so it doesn't require a ton of analysis to say there may be something worth looking into right here. It's really interesting, dude. So one, you're one of the few people that are talking about the very notion of human intelligence. You're certainly the only person that I've come across um that's talking about the that I would short humanity if it were a stock, uh Uh, which I love. I think that's really fascinating. And the comic book that we're working on is about a guy that is reanimated. So, he's um, cryogenically frozen. Long story, but he's reanimated and the only way they can do that is by um, replacing the parts of his brain that were destroyed to cancer with a chip. And so, he has to like, am I still human? Like, what does it mean? But now he's augmentable. Now he can upgrade his intelligence and what does that mean? What are the effects of that? And so, it's really interesting to me when you marry the concept that you have about future literacy is terrifying for one reason. It is an absolute must and we don't have the ability to really accurately predict the future. And so, looking at where you're putting your money into, especially Colonel, um, it's it's pretty fascinating that on two levels, one that you as a person are willing to allow yourself to face something so difficult and say, "I'm going to take this challenge on." And then two, the if you're right and you're able to do this, that that notion of co-evolution. So, bringing all of that together, what does our future literacy look like? What are the steps that you're trying to take at Colonel that are going to help us get to a positive future? Yeah, if I could, I'd like to ask you a question. Sure. If as humans we love to make plans. We did a plan to do this together. We have plans for social events. We have plans to have kids and to retire. Like, we plan our entire lives out. As a species, what is our plan? Yeah, so the plans you've heard about that you like? Going to Mars. Okay. I think that's value is? That's pretty cool. Um, that value in monetary value or is that a compelling plan for the species? What I find interesting about it is the spirit of adventure. I'm so inspired by people that look at grand challenges that it inspires me to dream bigger, to push harder. But it it is that. It is inspiration more than I think a necessity. Now, other people will tell you it's important that we become a multi-planetary species so that something that wipes us out here can't wipe us out there. I don't put a lot of stock in that, but I get the point. Okay, let's say we succeed and we put some people on Mars. We We We knock it out of the park and we get a million people on Mars. What else? Like what's other plans? Like for the the 7 point or I guess 8 billion of us by that point of us here, what's our plan? Beyond what you're doing, not a lot. Well, extending human life and things like that, but yeah, it's not exactly clear. So I guess the plans I hear the Mars is one that we have that contemplation. Two is minimum basic income. Where it's like you we wave the white flag and we say like, "Yeah, we just can't cope anymore. We need money." And then you have the singularitarians who are like, "We're just going to merge with AI in like roughly 20-30 years and it's going to be awesome." But how we get there, we have no idea. I don't hear practical plans on how we solve the problems in front of us other than we just keep on grinding away at the things we're doing and have these debates. That's what concerns me. And that's why I come back at Future Literacy is I'm not suggesting I have the answers, but what I am suggesting is that if we could develop Future Literacy as a mental model to think about it, we may do things differently. We may be more introspective and we may be able to start contemplating successive steps in advance. So, I know that you've recently written an article about this um which I've had the good fortune of reading and one of the things that I was most struck by is you talking and for people to understand this you're going to have to lay out exactly why privacy matters so much um and that we can actually assign it a financial value which I had never once thought of um and that you believe that privacy should be a fundamental human right. So, how does privacy have a monetary value and and you're talking like serious legislation. Like this actually needs to happen. Why is that so important? The the privacy debate that most people are familiar with is we do things online and with our phones and companies capture that information. And people say, "I hate that because they invade my privacy. It makes me feel uncomfortable." Some people are like, "I don't care because I get better services because I do it." Other people are like, "I have nothing to hide." That's like roughly where we've hovered. But I think it's actually the wrong debate. And I this is the reason why. Is the sci-fi author Fred- Frederick Pohl said that it's the sci-fi author's job to not identify the automobile is to predict the traffic jam. So, where is the traffic jam in the continuation of our existing privacy practices? And there's a few. One is human value. Like we the reason why we you and I have value is for three things. One is our data. That's everything about us. That's the coffee we drink and what we like it with almond or soy or cow milk. It's where we drive. It's our driving data. It's how we metabolize things. It's what we think. It's how we solve problems. It's where we It's everything about us is data. Number two is the predictive value of that data. So, that's what Facebook and Google built their businesses on is they acquire data from you and they build models to then create predictive models of you and advertiser like, "Hey, I'm an advertiser cuz I know what you want." And so, they create this loop where you are giving data and they're giving you nudges and you're doing the nudge and you're basically living in their algorithm matrix style. That's second. And the third is our cognitive abilities. And the marketplace for that would be my employer. So, if I agree to be paid $50,000 a year, that employer values my entire cognitive skill set at $50,000 a year. That includes my physical what I can do physically, mentally, and of the above. Now, the problem is that's our economic value as a human. We are giving most of that away for free. So, you would give it to Facebook, we give it to Google, we give it to everyone around us. And so, if you take the natural progression where what they're doing it today, so Facebook can make if the if the digital advertisers make $250 a year on a per person to advertise, that's peanuts. What they really want to do or I guess the highest potential is to create a digital avatar of you. So, now imagine in as we take this privacy out, I have a neural interface. So, I think about this a lot cuz of course I'm building neural interfaces. And now imagine they can see every thought you have. They can see how you solve problems. They have they see your total thought thought sequence, they know what you know, how you know, when you think and how you think it, and they build it into their model. It wouldn't take it's not a big leap to imagine they take your data, they build a predictive algorithm, and they build an avatar of you that is as good as being you as you are. And then in 30 minutes, they're going to make a better version of you. Now, with this model we have in the US now, what they really want is your salary. So, right now they make a couple bucks per user, but if you're paid $50,000 a year and they create a digital version of you that can do your job, there's nothing stopping them in building these avatars, putting them in virtual worlds, in augmented worlds, selling them out as task rabbits. That's the value of mining the data and building intelligence. All right, so let's get really specific on this. So, are you saying So, and let me back up a little bit. So, your company Kernel right now today, this is one of the notes I took. This technology is here, this is not a future tech. Um you did something with a park He had Parkinson's, right? Deep brain stimulation, had Parkinson's, you have him turn on and off. That's all it was. So, had him turn it on and off and you see him lose control and he like can hardly talk and then he gains control again just by flipping the switch on and off. So, deep brain stimulation, it's real, you guys are doing it. Um Um are you saying that we will act actively be able to build like whole brain AI based on the firing patterns of that particular mind? Yeah, so what I'm saying is uh right now if a company like Facebook demonstrated their predictive algorithms about you, about everything they've acquired about you. We already they've already showcased it. They they've showed off and they said, "We know you better than your significant other knows you." Right? They've said that. And so, they've already built a predictive model of you. Now, if they acquire more data, for example, your neural interface, and they can see your thoughts, it's only a matter of time before they can actually replicate you. That's where privacy takes us. That's why human by my privacy needs to be a human right because privacy is the right to own your own value. These ideas are like brand I'm just we're working on them for the past couple weeks. So, they're still not as tight as I'd like them to be, but I'll try to make this concise. Three other ideas. One is the continuation of our current privacy standards could lead to the most extreme forms of inequality we've ever imagined. And the reason why is because once you get someone's ability once you get create the predictive value, um that person uh no longer has value in society. But, the algorithm people who do build enormous values. You basically have two classes of people. You have people who can pay for privacy, they're protected, and you have people who are the predictable, who live in the matrix-style algorithms, who are nudged to wherever they want to go. And so, we think economic inequality is average today, privacy inequality is far worse in dehumanizing uh people in the instability it creates in society, and the abuse that it creates for the potential. Number two is the value of data increases exponentially over time. So, imagine you had a voice recording from somebody from 1988, and you listen to the voice recording just 3 minutes. From that recording, you could probably determine the person's age, their gender, rough approximation of their education, etc., right? Just rough approximations. You take that same data set, and you apply it to an algorithm developed today, not only could it do these things with orders of magnitude more accuracy, but it could also predict your mental health. Whoa. How so? That's So, that's where it's headed now. You can listen to a voice record like uh these These algorithms were run against Reagan's speeches. They could detect his mental illness 2 years before Whoa. they diagnosed it. And so, that's the same data set. So, Reagan spoke then. They That's the same data set. Now, if you take that same data set and apply better algorithms tomorrow, then what's What can they predict then? Can they tell if you were lying? Can they dissect your personality into 116 different classifiers? And so, the the point is that while people may think this is like really far in the future, there's already enough data out there on you already through your videos and your writing that someone could probably create an extremely good avatar of you on how you think, how you talk, how you process information. It's already happening. It's already there. And so, that's why this is urgent that privacy become a human right cuz you have to own your own value. Otherwise, someone else is going to do your job. Yeah, I mean, when all the like all the Russian bots are influencing people and all that first started happening, No, I What are they even talking about? Um but now getting a sense of that they act like real humans, they respond, they create uh tweets that you Once you're in a digital world, you can't tell. Exactly. That's what's really freaky. And like as a as somebody who creates content and engages with my community, I think about that sometimes. Like, what percentage of these are real people? And what percentage like how often am I talking to a bot? It's so interesting. Have you read Matt Ridley's The Rational Optimist? Uh no, I've I've I have I think I've read it. You You'll disagree with it fundamentally cuz that basically the argument that you laid out is exactly his argument, which is hey, we've solved things in the past, you can't look at, you know, whatever 200,000 years of human evolution, always getting better, always brighter future and say, "Oh, but tomorrow is going to be different." Um whereas you guys take the exact reverse approach. The thing that I find interesting and and what I really want to go hard on now is it takes a really particular kind of person thinking in a really particular kind of way to make Moore's Law happen. Now, I'll explain what I mean. So, Moore's Law has been uh technology doubles in power and halves in price every 18 months roughly, and it's been happening for whatever 50, 80 years. So, what no one ever talks about in that, they make it sound like it just happens. Like, oh, if we walked away and everyone went to Mars that Moore's Law would still be going back on Earth, which of course it wouldn't. It's Moore's Law says more about human determination than it says about just some sort of natural law. Like, humans decide they're going to push that hard and it just happens to take roughly that long. The moment humans stop pushing that hard, then it's going to break down. So, to me, you're the reason Matt Ridley is right. And I think that you are going to solve these problems. It's going to be hard as hell, and if you weren't absolutely convinced that it was all going to go to hell in a handbasket unless you stepped in, it really would go to hell in a handbasket. But because there's something in the human psyche where there are some people, and what I'm hoping you can give us is to take what it is that makes you step up to that problem and go, "This is my problem to solve." and make it an infectious idea that will infect the thinking of the people watching this show, because the more people that go, "No one else is going to solve this. This is my problem." Yep. That's when it gets interesting. So, how on Earth did you like literally For a second, I'm going to show you what you look like from the outside. You were an underprivileged kid growing up in nowhere, USA. You had no earthly right to become a successful entrepreneur. You certainly had no right to be the kid that when the guy approached you to sell the phone service went "After 2 days, um actually, I'm going to get people to sell this for me. If this guy can get me to do it for him, why can I get people to do it for me?" And then you take 48 hours, go start your own company, and actually get people to do it, never having done anything like that in the past. So, but you do all of those things, and you do all of those things because you're you understand one one fundamental principle which you've already given to dear viewer, which is assumption stacks. Ask the question why until they all fall away, and you realize you can do what you want to do. But, how do we get more people to pick up the assumption stack falls? How do we get them to pick up, start their own company, or whatever? Doesn't need to be that. But, that they take ownership of these big problems. Like, how are you going to do it with your kids? I explain these ideas to my kids, and they get them before I finish the sentence. That's astonishing. They do, and I spoke to my my son's high school last week, and walked through all bit like roughly the same things we're talking about now, about the future, and I guess two things happened. One is the number of comments I got from the group of like "Wait, what? Like, that exists in the world, and there are people who think like that, and these are ideas that can be considered?" It I received, I don't know, 25 emails and people are like, "I've changed the way I think about the world based upon this conversation." And then, number two is that the system they're in for schooling them is not even close to being equipped to prepare them for the future. It there's such a massive disconnect between how we prepare people for the future and what they actually do. And so when people are saying what do I do with my life? Like I'm not surprised that they're on the end of this system that they've learned how to think that way. And it's a very big problem. I guess I um I'm sufficiently self-aware to realize that I may seem out there to a lot of people. I mean or maybe I should say it stronger that I'm out there and people make that observation about me. And I look at the world and I think the world is insane. I often times feel like I don't understand why they think the way they think. And to me the only thing that matters is the differentiation between finite games and infinite games. And this is an idea by James Carse where a finite game is a game where you have a beginning and an ending. So basketball, right? And the only purpose of that game is to win. So you do whatever you have to do to score more points to be winner. An infinite game is a game where all you care about is to keep on playing. We don't care who wins. You just want to keep on playing the game. And to me when you ask yourself a question, what do I do in life? The only output that's sensible to me is anything that contributes to infinite games. I love life. I love playing the game of life. I don't want that to stop. So if I see something that's going to potentially stop my game play, I identify like, "Hey, that thing needs to be solved." I don't know how we could be oriented any other way. What's interesting is you went through a decade of depression where you were oriented an entirely different way. How did you find your way out of that? I was 24. I remember the day my brain broke. I remember the day I I started depression and I would lay in my bed and just want to die. I just didn't want to exist. I wanted an anesthesiologist to come and give me a shot so like my soul would just And um at the time I was in a belief system where there was an afterlife. And so that wasn't possible. You couldn't get you couldn't be gone. You were around forever. No matter what you did. And in fact, if you took your life, you would you're not behaving in a way that this belief system and you know, reward you. And so I was trapped in existence. And it was the worst feeling in the entire world cuz I had no out. But not only that, I had kids. So I had to you know, like I felt responsible for being a father. And so I was building Brain Tree and uh you know, I had challenges at home with my significant other. And I had kids who weren't sleeping. I wasn't sleeping myself, working 24/7, having companies break, and like all the pressure. And it just drove me into the ground to a point I just I was just delirious. I mean, I was I was broke. And um so um I climbed in Mount Kilimanjaro at the tail end of the situation. And um I got sick. I got a the stomach virus. And like three or four days in, I had the virus for a couple days, plus I was out I was sick with altitude sickness. And I just felt terrible, like the worst I've ever felt. And we got to base camp and they were 15,000 something and I had to make a decision where I was going to climb to the top the next morning. And I thought, let's do it. Like uh I'm not going to back down from this. And so I did it and um the that 4 hours to summit changed my life. Where um the mountain became my problem. And it became a representation of my life and um I started listening to uh Eminem, my favorite artist and um his um his defiance against the problems. Anyways, I um made it to the top and I just broke down and cried. And it was like uh it was the mountain was my depression. It was my marriage. Um It was my belief system. And um I went home and I was changed. Um I sold I I sold my company shortly after Braintree. I got a divorce. I left my religion. And I was back at my 21-year-old age and I said, "Who am I? Like what how do I rewrite myself from scratch? What I care about? What matters? What exists? What's true? What's not true? All of it." How did you rebuild yourself? Like what is that process of answering those questions? Everything I'm doing now is the answer. So, the uh Mormonism, you know, it it still is the best story I've ever heard anyone tell. It's like if you obey these rules, you get an unbelievably awesome afterlife. It's just like the anything you It's the best you could ever imagine and more. In fact, you can't even imagine it's so awesome, is what we're told. And all you have to do is obey the rules. It's like super clean. I get that. And when that was taken away from me, it's like, "Well, okay. So, if there's not an afterlife, or is there an afterlife? I don't know. What do I do?" And that's why infinite games is the only thing that makes sense to me is I grew up with this idea that I could continue to play games forever. I I to play games forever. And how do you define play? Right now. This is fun. It's meaningful. It like I feel it deeply, right? You're enjoyable to talk to. Being on set with your team is fun. This is play. You know, when I was researching you and you kept bringing that notion up of playing games, of finding something that you enjoy and I just thought that's like that's my mission in life, quite frankly, is to help people find that thing that gives them more energy than it takes, that they can enjoy. And And I always tell people that I live in the friction between I really want to live forever and thanks to people like you, I actually think I've got a shot. But I know I could have an aneurysm right now, in the middle of this episode. I could be diagnosed with cancer tomorrow. Like I I fully understand the realities that I may not. But I don't understand when you say that you think people are crazy. When I hear people say it, like they actively want to die at some point, I literally sounds crazy to me. I don't understand. That just tells me that you don't enjoy your today. But why their answer would be to die instead of change their today, I will never understand. It reveals human cognition. The idea that if someone says they want to be immortal or they want to live forever, and I don't say that. Specifically, I don't say that because it triggers people. I want to play. And so the the frame I work with is if if you say to somebody, "Do you want to live forever?" it basically crushes the human mind. If you're like "No, man. I would get bored." Because all they can do is imagine the future like it is today. And one, I think that's totally false. I think that we are the most primitive form of intelligence we can imagine and that the moment we begin opening up our cognitive expanse, there's an existence that if we knew we could get to, we would do anything in the entire world to get to. So, that's one. Number two is I don't have to think about like a thousand years now. All I can think about is I care about being around tomorrow cuz I got stuff to do, and I'm excited about it, and I have great relationships, and I have fun things planned for the weekend. That's all it is. And so, what point in time are you going to say like if someone says they don't want to live forever, it's like, "Okay, well, do you want to live tomorrow?" Well, yeah, I got stuff to do. What about next Monday? Yeah. What about in 20 years? Yeah. Like if you march if you walk it out like if you go day by day, at what point in time is someone going to just be like, "I'm good." If their health is good and they feel and they're you know, they're they're all taken care of in life. At what point in time do you get that to 9:00 at night you're like, "All right, man. Let's sign off. I'm good." I think it goes back to to what that moment is. I think it goes back to a deeper underlying issue of something that you've talked more you've used the right words to reach my soul, I will say. And that is that with the right tools and we're living through the moment where these are really real, we can author any world we want. And I know that you have painted um at your company uh Harry Potter and Gandalf the wizard with their wands to the sky and it just says dream. Yeah. And tell us about that and what is world creation and what does all that mean? I did that for my children. They were their images that they identify. The point is the authors of those two epic stories, The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, started with a blank slate and they created entire worlds that we inhabited. Yeah, my thinking is people that think there's some point in the future where they want to tap out, they don't believe they can author their own life. They don't believe that they can create anything. They don't hit the problem that you hit uh which is looking at So, to give people context, you held those what, 12 dinners over a year, 2 years, and had the brightest minds you could think of come in and and identify like what the biggest problems were that that we face, and none of them said the brain. Yeah, that's right. And that like that moment for you was a moment of action. It was a moment of, "Okay, well, if no one is thinking about it and I know it to be the right answer, then I have to do it." Most people don't. Even if they had the realization that nobody's looking at the problems that I really believe need to be solved, they feel powerless. Yeah. Is there anything so when you go Your kids are in public school, right? Yeah. Which I found very surprising. But so, your kids are in public school, you go encounter them, the breadth of parenting going on behind the scenes I'm sure is diverse to say the least. So, when you see the ones that struggle with a limiting belief system that their parents have handed to you, I remember growing up and um well, my parents didn't say this, a lot of my friends' parents said it, "Life's a [ __ ] and you know, every day is just another day" or "Life's a [ __ ] sandwich and every day is another bite." And that you just heard that over and over and over and they thought that was so funny. And I remember thinking, "Wow, that's a really dumb thing to like repeat and repeat and repeat." Mhm. So, do you have a way to help kids that are in a mentality like that get out? I think that the best thing is just to ask them questions. Help them discover. They think that way for a certain reason. Let's go back to the the ATV thing. What do you Do you think that people, parents especially, think you're a little bit crazy to let your kids ride off on an ATV? And like how do you judge like So, your question to them was what was your thinking, how do you judge, you know, risk and reward? How are you judging that as a parent who I'm sure would be beyond crestfallen if your kid got hurt. Yeah, I'm uh so that my children have their friends over to the house and we regularly do a lot of things and I'm always apprehensive because I don't know what their parents think about the situation, but the basically the normal boundaries we have in society bore me to death. And if I'm stuck in that system, I just can't deal with it. And because I find joy everywhere, not in a box. And that's the same with my children and the example I think about is my daughter was playing at a park and there's that there the merry-go-round is going around this big metal thing and she was going to run up to it and grab one of these things and it's very obvious if she grabs it, it's going to like slam her into the ground because the force far exceeds her weight. And she was with another child and they both marched forward and I saw it happening. I thought this is great. She's going to learn a really important lesson about moving objects. And there was a a mom adjacent to me and her child ran there and she ran and grabbed her child and pulled her away. And my daughter went up and started like touching the things and like feeling it out. I was really impressed that you you got it. Like you understand how to like roll your way into capture momentum of of motion. And that mother probably thought I was extremely irresponsible. Which maybe I was. Uh but to me it's that seemed sensible that she had the opportunity to learn that lesson. I know that lesson, you know that lesson. We learned it somehow and it's probably unlikely someone told us, we probably experienced it. So I guess what going back to the high school kids or the other people in life is just asking them questions. Where you at? Why are you there? What's supporting that that assumption stack and where where can we go if we break it all apart? How How you let your kids um deviate from the norm of go to high school, get good grades, graduate, go to college? How far will you let them deviate before you nudge them back in? None. They can do whatever they want. Uh, I've told them so many times that the way in which they spend their time at school is not how I would do it if I was running the system. And that they have options in life. So, I don't want them to be to think that the system they're they're delivered is a foregone conclusion. And the rules are changing extremely fast. And so, whatever they want to do, like I'm just very supportive of people charting their own path. And why send them to public school? It's obviously a choice. You could certainly send them to private. You could build your own university if you wanted to. Is there something to gain in having to figure that out in a potentially sub-optimal system? They've got to make their own way in life. I don't give them a handout. That's interesting. Do you plan to, um, let them inherit your wealth? So, I I've gone through a couple evolutions evolutions on this thought process. When I was building Braintree, I did create a trust for them. And I put some stock in there, and it became worth quite a bit. So, they do have some money in a trust, um, and they know that. But, they also know that we have an agreement on how they deal with money and resources. And so, they will like we went out shopping, and my son this like two Saturdays ago, and he looked at a shirt and he said, "Dad, I really want this shirt, but I think the price point's a bit too high. And I think if I got this, I would be spoiled. So, I'm not going to do this." So, great. Let's go find something else. And they understand that the moment they cross a threshold with me where they feel entitled, or they can somehow do something else, then it stops. And they have self-managed. And of course like they have other kids stuff. But we have a relationship, we never fight, they're never in trouble. Uh we get along remarkably well and uh we just have this open dialogue. They know exactly how much money I have. They they know, they've seen my bank accounts, they know the investments, they know the deals, they know everything. And so I chose a path of transparency and said like here's the game, here's how I'm playing it. Now like you do your thing. But I believe that they need to carve their own way their own life. And if I can be useful to them and work with them and help them think through problems, cool. But I just don't think it's in their best interest for me to soften the blow in life. I love that. All right, before I ask my last question, where can these guys find you online? I wish the answer was a neural interface. Uh Coming soon. Yeah. Um Yeah, I guess on the on the neural interface, I guess the question would be like what how would I communicate how to find my neural interface? Um but yeah, uh Twitter is my most public interface. Just at Brian John Brian_Johnson, yeah. With a Y everybody, with a Y. Yeah, yeah. Awesome. All right, my last question. What is the impact that you want to have on the world? I think as a a species, I think we're teenagers. I think that the decisions we make in the next 20 years, 20 30 years are going to have enduring consequences of the sort that previous decisions did not. We need to figure out as a species what we do with ourselves. We need to figure out how to co-evolve with AI. We need to figure out how the problems that could that could threaten our extinction, want to extinct us. We need to figure out how to avoid an anarchic society, we need to figure out how to avoid it, this topic society. We need to do all this in a span of let's say a couple decades. And I currently don't think as a society we have the literacy to do that. And so what I hope is that more people will sign up to become future literate in all its various forms and that we collectively acknowledge the importance of our time. Because I think if we don't uh we are going to be blindsided. And it's going to be painful and regretful if we lose our chance because we can build an existence that's remarkable beyond anything any of us could imagine. I'm convinced of it. And I hope that enough people will rally behind that in all their different forms and that we have sufficient momentum to do it. So I hope I can be a part of that group. I love that. Awesome. Brian, thank you so much for being on the show. Guys, if you take nothing else away from this interview, I hope you will take the following because it is the single most profound thing you will ever find in this show. It is the most interesting thing that I've ever found in any of the human beings that I ever meet and that is when you reach something that seems impossible, that seems daunting, but it seems important, will you act? And in the face of that, regardless of where he started, you guys know my obsession. It does not matter where you started. It only matters who you want to become and the price you're willing to pay to get there. And this man has not only paid an extraordinary price, not only gone on to do extraordinary things, but with that, he does not retire from the world and backtrack and go away. He makes good on the promise that he said, which is he's going to dedicate his life to helping improve the lives of others. And looking at the grandest challenges that we face as a species and being willing to act in the face of that. That to me is what this infinite game is all about. Are you willing to take action? Are you willing to be the author of your own life? Are you willing to realize that you can create the tools with which we can create the world that we want to build. But you've got to be willing to face the hard things. You've got to be willing to push through the depressions, the hard times, the failures, all of that to get to the other side. And there is precious few people that do that. It is virtually nobody that does that at the scale that this man does it. So, I hope that you guys were as inspired as I was. All right, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Ryan, that was amazing. Hey everybody, thank you so much for watching and being a part of this community. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. You're going to get weekly videos on building a growth mindset, cultivating grit, and unlocking your full potential.