Why Most Smart People Become Stupid - Ryan Holiday

How did the live shows go? The last time we were talking, oh, >> we were discussing upcoming live shows. >> Yeah, I think it was I was doing two in Australia and you gave me this advice. You were like, well, you told me that you done it with no notes. And uh usually like when you do talks at events like they they don't want you to just go up and give a speech. They want like a presentation, but these were this was different. So yeah, I had to figure out how to do it with no no notes, which was um it was like it I it's good to pick arbitrary challenges and take something that you're good at that you've done a lot of times and just figure out a way to do it the hard way. >> Yeah. What's new? >> Yeah. And so I had to sort of reinvent it from scratch. It was challenging but good. It's it's actually funny in Mark's relitations. He talks about practicing holding the res with your non-dominant hand. Mhm. >> And so just like what what's the way that you're comfortable doing it? What's the way you normally do it? And then how do you force yourself to do it not the way that you like to do it? >> And to force yourself to do it in front of the way you're not comfortable doing it in front of 2,000 people audience >> is a is a you know, it's a whole thing. >> Difficulty plus. Yeah. >> Yeah. I've always thought about doing a a podcast episode with a guest that somebody had organized for me. Yes. >> And sat down opposite me and I didn't know who it was. Yes. And I had to try and do an episode without breaking the fourth wall that I didn't know who they were and see if I could excavate what the [ __ ] is going on here. Who is this psychologist, athlete, coach, trainer, like what the [ __ ] are I? And uh and do it without like destroying the episode. I always thought that would be like a fun challenge. >> Well, and and the reason you challenge yourself artificially is that life doesn't really care about your plans. >> Doesn't play by your rules. So, I I had a talk I was supposed to do in Kentucky like a couple weeks ago. And so, I was supposed to fly in uh I had all day and then I would do the talk at night. And then, you know, I get to the airport at 9:00 and it's like 30 minutes delayed, 30 minutes delayed, 30 minutes. It's starting to get crazy and some incredibly complicated, very expensive travel adjustments later. I land and I'm in the car. Like, it I'm already late. So, they've pushed it. They've they've been stalling. Everyone's there. everyone's there and I'm the last speaker and uh I'm I'm you know I'm texting them and and I go okay like I just landed uh I'm I'm 12 minutes away I will be there uh I will run up and go and and they they go okay that's awesome we're waiting for you where are your slides and I go what do you mean like I I know for a fact they came in yesterday um so you should definitely have them but I'm like here they are again I'm like texting here here's the link to the here's the dropout links to the slides And they're like, "Okay, awesome." And then uh so, you know, they I get there. >> 7 minutes to go. >> Yeah. Seven. They I open the door, the car, and I'm, you know, running upstairs. I'm carrying my suitcase up up to the thing. I'm getting there and and then as they're ming me up, they go, "And you don't have slides, right?" It's like, "Is no one talking to each other?" But like like now I know for a fact that you've had the slides for at least seven minutes, you know? Uh so so uh and and there's like a band on stage performing uh uh that's stalling because it's like a loop and the guy goes okay so um >> uh the band's going to play the first 20 seconds of 2 Minutes to Midnight by Iron Maiden and then you're up and I go >> okay so we got that like we had a live band performing uh like a song that I like but no slides and then the guy's like I'll try to figure out the slides and I go in the next 20 seconds. What are you talking about? I was like this is, you know, this is done, man. Uh I I was like, I'll just, you know, but I walk and so I start to talk and I'm, you know, now I've got, you know, 45 minutes of time to fill with no slides >> and you can't just do the talk you were going to give without slides because it's you can't be like normally there'd be a slide >> every other minute. >> Yeah. Exactly. And so I'm like, what am I going to talk about for 45 minutes? I'm starting and then the guy's like trying to talk to me via the screen, you know? He's like slides comfort. He's like slides slides incoming should be about 10 minutes, you know, and it's like this this is too late, man. Um but but uh you know, I was able to just give some version of the talk that I've now given several times. >> But maybe some new [ __ ] came out. >> Yeah, of course. But but but the interesting thing is like you think to me the lesson in these things is always like you think you need it to go a certain way. you think you want it to go a certain way and then when you were forced to do it the way that you didn't want to do it, not only do you find something out about yourself, but but you you actually find that the thing you were preparing not to for it not to happen actually isn't that bad and it might be better in some ways. So, you know, but like you >> technical difficulties are a part of any industry in life. And so if you if you if you if you need it to go a certain way, you're very vulnerable. If you're good with it going effectively anyway, >> Mhm. >> then you'll be all right. >> Yeah. What happened with that naval academy >> speech? There's a slightly different technical difficulties. So, you know, normally you send your like, so for the last four years, I've been speaking every year to the incoming class of the Naval Academy. It's called Pleb Summer. Um, so these are like the brightest kids in the country, future naval officers. So, they're going to run submarines and fly F-16s and command aircraft carriers. I mean, uh, future presidents, future admirals, future heads of the CIA, >> top gunship. These are the these are the best you know most promising people in the world actually because the naval academy sometimes has like students from other countries on these sort of guest programs. So uh every season every year for the last four years I've been doing this series of lectures on the cardinal virtues courage discipline justice wisdom. So I've done courage done discipline I've done justice and then I was supposed to do wisdom this year. And um so you send your slides in before not for approval but for technical reasons like you don't you don't show up with your computer >> because you know they don't have the plug. You send them in advance. Uh so I sent them in you know the night before um as I had for every subsequent talk and have had previously received zero notes because that's not what we were doing. And then I get a call, you know, I get up, I go for a run, I'm walking through the talk and I get a call from someone at the academy and they go, "Hey, so there's this thing in the talk that we would like you not to talk about." And of course, I knew exactly what they were referring to because I had spent a lot of time thinking about what I was going to talk about. Um, and one of the things I felt sort of duty bound to address was they had just removed several hundred titles from the Naval Academy library. Um, as part of this order from the president that was supposedly about addressing, you know, DEI and wokeness or whatever, they had removed books that talked about those themes from the library. Okay? So, you could say you have a problem with the policies, right? and the president is allowed to decide, you know, how the academy is going to be run. >> But you can't remove books from an elite university because you don't like what's in the books. That's a very different thing. >> Well, there's an interesting point there. Was it uh Megan Phelps Roper that did the witch trials of JK Rowling? So, this was the inverse of that situation that was uh one book or one series of books, Harry Potter. Yeah. uh originally in the 90s and 2000s by right-wing fundamentalist Christians. They campaigned to have them banned from schools because they were worried that it was rich witchcraft. And then two decades later, >> the left-wing progressive people are trying to get it banned because they think that JK Rowling is a transphobe. And what you're talking about here is this is the other way round. This is rightwing in the modern world trying to get rid of books that they don't like. Well, and and and this is why we don't ban books because it's stupid and uh it it it's incredibly inconsistent, right? Like the Bible is a very banned book. Uh so so they're they're removing it um because these books have these objectionable themes, but of course mine comp is still in the pres is still in the uh academy library. And you know, so here you are removing a book that's talking about like minorities that died in the Holocaust or minorities that served in the troop. Like when when you when you have J chat GPT pull up a list of books that it thinks might be objectionable and then you just rip them out of a library, you're in very dangerous territory. And so I was going to speak about this in in uh because it pertains to something I've been writing and talking about there which is that um Admiral James Stockdale is one of the most famous graduates of the academy, one of the most famous modern practitioners of Stoke philosophy. After he graduates from the academy, the Navy sends him to Stanford where he gets a a postgrad degree and he studies quite a bit of philosophy there. and his favorite course while he's at Stanford, this is in ' 62 or ' 63, is he takes a course on Marxist thought and they only read the primary Marxist texts. So, not like commentary on Marx, not neo-Marxism, but like Marx himself and Lenon and they read and they they spend an entire semester talking about what the Marx Marxists thought. And you might go, what does a Navy fighter pilot need to learn about Marx? Well, when he ends up in a Marxist prison camp in North Vietnam, is subjected to years of brainwashing and torture and propaganda. It actually comes in extremely handy. And he would talk about how he was able to go back and forth with his captures and that in many cases he knew Marxism better than they did and that this was a defense mechanism, right? And it's actually funny as the Stoics talk about this too, which of course I was going to talk about in the talk. The Stoics Senica talks about reading like a spy in the enemy's camp. The idea is you want to stop. >> Oh, no. No. I just heard the song. Good. Good. Um, so the the idea is that you you want to know what your opponents think. And in this case, we're not even talking about opponents because we're talking about, you know, the memoirs of Maya Angelou that are getting removed from the the the library of a again a university on par with Harvard or Yale or West Point. So I was going to talk about why this is this is why we can't be afraid of ideas and in fact we have to engage with ideas that we disagree with and dislike. Um well you can imagine the people that are removing well once the leadership of the academy had put themselves in the position of not challenging the order and you know sort of removing the books without protest. They're now in a tricky situation of like can we allow criticism of this decision? Right? This is what happens when you and of course Stockdale talks about this too. He talks about when you start to make compromises with extortionists. You have to make more and more compromises and then pretty soon you're not just removing one or two books because it's controversial, but then you're revoking invitations to speak from people who are criticizing that idea. Um, and it escalates. So, so they they um they asked me to remove it. And it's like I can't I I felt and I don't know if I could have made this decision early on in my life, but uh I talked to these kids who are going to again in the future be entrusted with nuclear weapons and immensely powerful bits of machinery and budgets of the billions and billions of dollars >> that I can't give them a lecture about courage. I can't give them a lecture about discipline. I can't give them a lecture about ethics and doing the right thing. And then when someone says, "Hey, if you want to keep talking here, we'd like you not to speak about the things that we're trying to sweep under the rug." And so I said, you know, I can't do that. And so, of course, the invitation was revoked and then so was the subsequent invitation. Um, the interesting thing about it to me was I I said, you know, I think you think this will avoid controversy, but it's only going to do the opposite. Not only is it going to do the opposite because like this is a public event like not this is a a a publicized event that is now ended you know 10 minutes before it's supposed to go on but you know part of the like I was speaking the I was speaking at was brought there by this center on campus called the Stockdale Center for Ethical Leadership. So the irony of like let's remove books that we find to be objectionable and then let's not talk about it and then let's pressure a person from the center of ethical leadership. You know the the ironyies are stacking up here. But like there is this there is this presumption that people in the military are just like big tough strong you know uh robots that you send in to do but that's that's what gets countries and the world into trouble like the the crown jewel of the American military uh and the western militaries for centuries has been the ability of their leaders to think to uh challenge orders and to question, right? This isn't to say that it's anarchy, but like you need independent thinkers or everyone's thinking the same thing and thus not thinking at all. And so like you are going to want these young men and women at some point when they're entrusted with leadership and power to make difficult unpopular decisions that are, you know, maybe not always in their the interests of their careers and what this leadership is showing them in this moment is uh we might say that but we don't mean it. >> Right? Like like imagine you become a multi-star admiral of the Naval Academy, one of the you know crown and then you're not just a party to removing books from the library but then you are like what I guess this this is a theme of that I've been writing about for these last couple years is like what is the point of power influence success a platform if you don't use it? >> Mhm. And so it was a it was it was a strange surreal experience that's only sort of gotten worse. Like the West Point just revoked an invitation uh and an award they were going to give to Tom to Tom Hanks this week um because of his political views. So we are in this full sway of like the pendulum of cancel culture snowflakeism has gone from like this way to this way. >> Mhm. And it's the same thing that's happening just in the opposite direction. >> Yeah. And it's equally stupid in both directions and it doesn't help anyone. Um, and then you know it was funny because people kept going like well what about this book and what about this book? You know this is a bad and I go I don't know the names of basically any of the books. Like I don't give a [ __ ] what the names of the books are. I'm actually sure most of the books are bad. Like the the library has hundreds of thousands of titles. it would make sense that in fact a large percentage of them are I I would agree that most books that are published are bad and stupid and wrong like uh that's that's how it works but but a free society you know uh requires the free transmission and publication of ideas right and so it's a it's a weird it's a weird moment in time to be sure >> you've been in the war zone it seems >> well no as I maybe maybe an intellectual war zone. The I think what's ironic about it is these are people who are going to at someday be sent into a real war zone >> and we're nervous that they're going to read Maya Angelou or even the most like offensive, stupid, wrong, you know, ass backwards book and just be like >> immediately. Yeah. Their mind melts like actually this is when we would want to find that out, you know. >> H okay. So read these read these stupid books. See if your mind is changed and if so out you go. >> Yes. Exactly. >> You say wisdom is the most elusive of the virtues. >> It's the hardest to define. I think courage is something we know it when we see it. You know, discipline pretty straightforward. I think the thing about wisdom is that um it it's it's not just elusive in terms of its ineffibility. Like it's hard to define. um you know it's it's experience, it's knowledge, it's intelligence, it's creativity, it's insight, uh it's perspective, it's it's all these things, right? But the interesting thing about wisdom is that it's one of those ones that if you think you have it, you almost certainly don't. And the second you think you have it, uh you find that there is more left for you to learn. So there's something elusive about it in the sense that the horizon is elusive, right? Like you approach it and you feel like you're not making progress. You look behind you and you clearly have made a lot of progress. Look at all the things that you've read. Look at all the things that you've learned. Look at how much smarter you are than you were before and look how far away the people who were standing with you when you began are. But but there remains an infinite amount >> still to know. And so there is something >> inherently humbling about it. the the physicist John Wheeler said, you know, as the island of knowledge grows, so does the shoreline of ignorance. I think that's that is the paradox of wisdom that the the more you learn, not just are you humbled, uh, in that most, you know, really smart people are actually quite humble. Um, but but the more you learn, the more you learn about all the things that you still want to learn about. M what do most people get wrong when they think about wisdom where it comes from? >> Well, you know, like there's some, you know, um is it is it is it like book smarts or street smarts? Like is it school or is it life? As if it's this binary thing. And of course, it's a combination of all of the above. It's like you want a base of of knowledge. Ideally, uh you want to learn from all of the experiences, all the the the great ideas that humanity has come up with over thousands of years. And then you have to go out and experience things and then what that does is it informs what you've learned and then the things that you continue to learn inform the experiences you're having. So the subtitle of the book is like learn, apply, repeat. And that's the idea is that is that it's this loop of always be learning, always be exposing yourself to things and then always be going out and applying and trying the ideas. So, you know, if you're just sort of reading up in your your tower, so to speak, uh you might be getting smarter, but I wouldn't say you're getting wiser. Um and then there there is something fundamentally stupid though about trying to learn all these lessons yourself, right? like um you go uh I think I think it was Otto von Bismar you know he said uh any fool can learn by experience I prefer to learn from the experiences of others. So why why would you want to figure something out when someone has been in your exact position before and not just uh learned from it but like written about it and then other people have written about them and and so you think about like this position you're trying this this thing you're going for this uh thing you're attempting like some of the smartest people who have ever lived have have spent years of their life thinking about just that thing and then and then there is the ego in us that goes like well I'll wing it you know or or I I I know better and and so the reason that humility is this key to wisdom is not just like you can't learn that which you think you already know but but it it it it keeps you hungry to learn more and more. >> I have this idea about unteable lessons. Yeah. >> And it's a unique category where no matter how many songs and movies and stories from your grandparents and warnings, >> you cannot expedite the process of understanding this thing through somebody else's story tale. You can only learn these things. Money won't make you happy. Fame won't fill your selfworth. That girl's not lovable. She's just hot and difficult to get. You should see your parents more. You should work less hard. you know, these things that are cliche. And the reason that they're cliche is that they seem to be so reliably groundbreaking to everybody when they arrive there. So, it almost becomes its own. It's like a self-defeating prophecy >> that everybody says it, which means everybody thinks that they know it, which means everybody discounts it as like, oh, that's just like a wives tale. That's not like you shouldn't put your hand on a hot stove. That's these people. They've just accepted it as as part of the source code of reality. But I watch me dance through this minefield and I'll do pirouetses and I'll spin around. The rules won't apply to me. But the funny thing about that is I think one of the reasons those lessons are so cliche and then why uh you talk about them so much is partly because okay so you take something like money won't make you happy or fa fame is empty or you know you're not going to fill that hole in your soul by achieving and doing. Um, that's, you know, a theme in literature and art and and of course social psychology also. And and there's probably some evolutionary reasons why that's a hard lesson to learn, right? This is what propels humanity forward. >> But some of us learn that lesson sooner than others, right? Some people have to go as far as Alexander, like literally to the end of the worlds to learn it. And then other people experience it during their college graduation. >> What was Alexander's realization around that point? >> Well, I'm just saying Alexander gets all the way to the end of the world and and his men are like, "How much longer are we going to do this?" And he says, you know, "Let it be said that you turned around here and, you know, didn't conquer the rest of the world with Alexander." And then he subsequently dies and he dies this brutal painful death where some some of the theories are like he he was like sort of in this like conscious coma where he's like frozen but like he it was a it was a let's say it was an end where he might have had a few moments to contemplate whether it had all been worth it, right? >> And so my my point is you can learn it at the very far end of the extremes or you can hear it at the first inkling of it. Like I I I've said before, like I feel like life is always trying to tell us something and eventually it will tell us in a way that we can hear it and so >> the whispers just get louder. >> Yeah. Do you want to hear it? Do you want to hear it when when life is whispering this to you or do you want life to have to pin you down and scream it in your face? You know, like in sobriety circles they talk about like, you know, hitting rock bottom while you still have two cars in the garage. Like, do you have to hit rock bottom when you've blown up your entire life and lost everything and everyone or can you take this DUI as a sign? Right. >> That's a really a really great point that um yes, these lessons are unteachable, but some people need to be taught more times than others. >> Yes. And and and that was, you know, the Romans talked about, you know, the the fool is not someone who who stubs their toe on a rock. It's the person who stubs their toe on the same rock more than once. And so it's how quick can you learn the lesson? And so part of part of why you you take in especially early on why these classic uh myths and ideas and the western cannon is so important is that they contain from the Bible to the Odyssey uh you know to Marcus Aurelius and Aristotle and and and all the great stories is they contain kind of the sum total of human wisdom >> right and some of them though you don't learn you you hear but you don't understand until you have the experience experience that matches that lesson. >> Oh, that's thing. >> Yes. And and so you need to you need to you you need to have the ideas to match with the experiences that neither is is is sufficient on its own. I love that that blending of the two especially because if you don't have a a good enough framework sort of a robust scaffolding to hold your life's experiences on yeah maybe you will take the right lesson but maybe you'll take the wrong one maybe you get gold medalist syndrome you think ah two yes >> two that's the issue the issue is I need to prove that I wasn't lucky that I was good I don't just sell the one company for $100 million I've got to run it back again in a different industry And then the thing as opposed to no this is habituation. You have learned this before. It's the exact same gremlin just coming at you from a slightly more conniving angle. >> Yes. Um and and and it's to be able to recognize, oh, this is what so and so was doing here. This is so and so at this, you know, critical juncture point like and and and there was a time when we had enough shared story. First off, there were just fewer stories, so everyone could kind of recognize, oh, this is like, you know, Odysius at the sirens or this is Hamlet or this this is this is, you know, George Washington at this moment. You know, you you have these stories that are designed to teach these moral lessons like the greatest biographer of all time is Plutarch. And Plutarch says, you know, there's a difference between biography and lives. And he says, I write lives. And lives are illustrated by a certain anecdote, a little story, a a an utterance of a few words that help you unlock the lesson or the the fatal flaw or the the the brilliant genius of this person. M >> and and so when you read about these historical figures who are often flawed and tragic figures, the idea is you take back from them little lessons that then yeah, when you're winning a gold medal or you just sold a company or you know you're you're about to gamble it all on this thing that you believe is you know the key to unlocking your happiness or your legacy or whatever. you go, "Oh, maybe I should ask myself, am I about to do what they did?" And how did it go for them? And and so it's having this broad array of case studies and stories that were, >> you know, not always the most historically accurate, but they were illustrating something about the human experience that we need to remember. Mhm. I was spending time with an impressionist a couple of weeks ago and >> like a comedian. >> Uh yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Or would you mean a painter? >> No. Sorry. Yeah. Good. Good. Good. He does impressions. Whatever that person's called, they both called the same thing. >> I think so. >> Someone should change it. Um anyway, and I was explaining I've got Matthew McConnA coming back on the show. That wouldn't that be exciting? >> And uh he's like, "What was it like to sit down with him the first time?" And I said, >> "All of the thing, he's very charismatic and all the rest of it." And he does a great MCA. Uh, and I said, "He does this thing that you didn't do when you did it, and he doesn't ever have, it seems to me like he doesn't have stuff in his mouth, but he goes like, he's sort of like as if there's a little bit of straw or something that he needs and he does this with his hand." And the dude was like, "That's the unlock." And he explained to me that in >> the art of doing impressions of people, >> uh, there is a uh, an unlock. And the unlock is this one thing, the way that you speak, the pronunciation of the S, the uh moving of the fingers, the hands, the face, whatever. He says that's the thing that people hook on to in the same way as what you're talking about here is that there are these portable stories as Clay Habit calls them, these individual, maybe even a tiny little apher, three-word apherism, whatever. Um, and you go, that's the thing. And both me and you uh quote other people a good bit because >> original thinking is pretty tough and also people way smarter than me and you have already figured stuff out and it's kind of our job to >> essentialize that and and and make it accessible. >> If I could say it better I would. >> Yeah, true. And I've tried. Um, and I think that, you know, in many ways, for me, the reason that I love it is that, um, using small quotes, apherisms, mantras, stuff like that is kind of like a windzip file that condenses down this big thing. My memor is not that good, but it's not bad if I just have to remember this small sequence, and I go, "Ah, yeah. Uh, >> the universe has changed and life is but what we deem it." Oh, well, there's like this big thing that that means that I kind of remember a bit. >> Yes. >> But I can recall this. I can remember the chorus and from that kind of the rest of the album comes along with it, too. >> Yeah. And and I think too many people have confused, you know, history and trivia. exactly what year this happened, exactly how the name is pronounced, you know, exactly, you know, uh where the troops were aligned in this battle or that battle. Um, you know, is is much less important as as to the the why or the characters or the kind of the the fundamental moral lessons uh that that that thing has the opportunity to to teach us. And that's what the classics and the sort of ancient stories have always been. Like Catis, do you know the story of Catis? So Catis is this Roman general who's living in retirement. This story will will sound familiar to you in a second. He's this famous Roman general living in retirement. And the Roman army is in battle in some distant land. And basically the whole of the Roman army is is uh is trapped. And so Rome is uh basically undefended. And so the the Roman elders go to Catis who is plowing on his farm in retirement and say we we need you to save Rome uh and we will make you dictator. And so he's made dictator. He leads a a small uh you know troop of Roman uh Roman auxiliaries uh and you know frees the Roman army, saves Rome uh and is now dictator and he after 17 days resigns uh the dictatorship and returns to his farm. Right? This is the plot of Gladiator, of course. Uh, and it's also the model for George Washington resigning his commission after the Revolutionary War. Um, you know, uh, when King George hears that that Washington is going to return to his farm, he goes, "If he does that, it'll be the greatest man in the world." Both of them understand that this is an illusion to the example of Catis. when when Washington resigns the presidency after two terms, it's again Catus that he's so this is a famous story. Um but Catis almost certainly did not exist. Like that is a story that goes back so far in Roman history that there is almost no factual basis for it that anyone can clearly point to one way or another. But the story has existed for so long that the Romans certainly thought it was true and Washington thought it was true and King George thought it was true. And you know when I tell it to my seven-year-old it may as well be true. And I think some people have taken the role of the historian to prove that it didn't happen to be like here George Washington didn't chop down the cherry tree or you know Cincinnati didn't really exist or this didn't happen or it was more complicated than that. Um, and look, if you're a grad student specializing in that thing, perhaps that is important. But for most people most of the time the the significance of that is the the lesson of sort of restraint and selflessness that that that actually power can be laid down and that you know the truly great and powerful people not only do do that but that's the gift they are giving the future generations this continuing this tradition the peaceful transfer of power and so the the History is supposed to be the sort of sacred hardearned knowledge uh that we pass on from person to person. And so a lot of the famous stories, you know, maybe they're true, maybe they're not. If if you're being literal about them, you're missing the point. Did you read Derek Civ's book, Useful, Not True? No. Okay. So, I had this idea for I swear to God, I came up with it independently, which was uh figuratively true. Literally false. >> Yes. >> Literally true. Figuratively false. Yes. And Derek came up with something that was not too dissimilar, which is usually a good idea. Like it's like, hey, two people pointed at the same thing from different angles. Like might be something here. >> Um, literally true, >> figuratively false. uh you uh determinism might be a way to look at this that uh perhaps there is no free will and the entire way that we move through the world is predetermined by the big bang and the dominoes just falling falling falling. However, functionally what would you do with that? >> It's [ __ ] useless. It makes me nihilistic. It makes me feel like I I I don't have any control of my future. Uh something which is literally false but functionally true. Um, in the, uh, Middle East, in sort of medieval times, pigs are morally dirty creatures. They're no more or less moral than any other other creature. But in a hot climate, their flesh contains more pathogens on average. So, not eating them probably a pretty good idea. Porcupines can throw their quills. No, they can't. They can't [ __ ] throw their quills. But if you treat it like it can, you stay just a little bit further clear and you're less likely to get stung. So this idea that holding modern stories to the standards of objective rationality, where does it appear on the spreadsheet? Please show me how this comes into land. uh I think for a lot it was a good solvent that was supposed to kind of wash away a lot of [ __ ] that existed because there was stuff that was uh literally false functionally false and that actually needed to [ __ ] off. You know, there's an expression that that traditions are often solutions to problems that we've forgotten about. And this idea, there's kind of been this fetishization these days of like thinking from first principles, right? And it this is important >> going to arrive at it myself. >> Yeah. I I think for myself, I'm I'm a first principles thinker. I I >> not one of the sheeple. I'm autonomous. >> Yeah. I don't care about your precedent. And you know, a lot of precedent is hard one, right? and and maybe even why it was hard one or how it was hard one you are blowing past and you are ignoring why it was set up this way in the first place. And so not only is it exhausting uh and unsustainable to to truly think you know from first principles and everything but yeah sometimes um things are incidentally solving one problem and also solving another problem or things are variables are are hopelessly tied up with each other. So you you you go, "Hey, we don't need this. This is stupid." >> And you don't understand because you don't have 20 years or 50 years or a thousand years of experience in this thing that actually this is a subpar solution or inelegant solution to a very complicated or or multifaceted thing. And so there the arrogance I think that again what wisdom is is this humility of having done hard things before and solved hard problems before and you go oh okay it's it's probably not going to be solved like this and this thing that popped into my head that should magically resolve all of this you know uh is is naive like do you know the story of the Gordian knot? >> No. So that there's this uh knot that's tied that is impossible to untie and person after person uh goes to to untie it and if you if you untie it you know you become the king of this land and I think it's Alexander comes and and um you know he he he solves the Gordian knot by chopping it in half with his sword and on yes that's technically a solution but it's also not a solution. You haven't actually untied the knot. Um and and so so there is this again this sort of uh fetishizing of like these uh complete solutions to things that hey the people before were not idiots >> and in fact they had a little more uh humility than you did and understood that there probably was not a solution that that pleased everyone or or checked every box. And so that's why this is where it is and why, by the way, things have remained relatively stable for a long time. I think we're seeing this now in politics, but also life where, okay, if you're a Silicon Valley investor and you invest $50,000 in a company, um, okay, the downside of you being wrong is that you lose $50,000, but the upside is you might make $5 billion. So that's great in this very specific domain that you are in where you get access to lots of early stage companies. You have a large broad base of capital and you can throw you can be wrong a lot to be right one time. Well most of life is not like that right and politics and life geopolitics are not like that. >> You don't get to be wrong that much before there's a catastrophic outcome. >> Yes. Yes. Um and so a lot of the systems that we have set up and a lot of the procedures we have this is not just in America but all over the world talking about the UN or the EU or all these different institutions they are there not to create the easiest most well functioning efficient machine in the world. They're there to make sure World War II doesn't happen. They're there to make sure that a nuclear weapon doesn't explode. they're, you know, they're there to prevent uh an economic meltdown, right? They're protecting against downside, which unlike say investing is not you lose the capital that you put in. The downside is you lose everything for everyone forever. >> And so understanding what environment you're in and the stakes. This is also, I think, something that some really smart people don't have. And in fact, they've learned a lot of bad habits from being the master of one domain. Like some domain expertise is transferable and a lot of it is not. And and the wisdom is knowing what domain expertise is transferable and what isn't. You write fantastic songs, wonderful lyricist, great at melodies. Yeah. don't care what you think about climate change. Don't care what you think about the Ukraine. Don't care like you're that is not an area that your expertise can go to. Now you can outsource that to other people or you can become an expert in your own right. Yeah. >> But just because you're great at this one thing. >> Yes. >> So I I agree but as with most things uh the devil is in the details here. So for instance there are people from outside of an industry. Yes. that get a new perspective because of the fact that they're alien to this thing because they see something with a fresh set of eyes that nobody else would. And the Wright brothers kind of strike me as a pretty canonical example of someone like this. So I think balancing this Chesterton's fence pilled let's be careful with what we get rid of you know which is a much more sort of conservative less innovative let's move fast break things position >> with well you know sometimes we need like a great man or great woman to come and kind of do a thing and uh balancing those two the innovation desire with the iteration desire but but what you find in the best of those people the Wright brothers being a classic example of this is there wasn't this sense that everyone else trying to uh tackle the flight problem and it was a problem other people like people have been interested in it for thousands of years but you know like all the armies of the world were also rushing to try to figure this out at the same time you know there wasn't this sense that everyone else is a [ __ ] and we're geniuses what the Wright brothers had was this curiosity this sort of openness to how am I work? You know, they spend hours and hours just studying how birds uh, you know, fly. They had a scrainess to them. They were outsiders. They were independent. But, you know, the first thing the Wright brothers do is write to the Smithsonian for like every book ever published on flight. It wasn't a like burn it all down, everyone's a [ __ ] And in fact, they would have loved to collaborate with the powers that be and would have loved to be brought in uh as part of it. So I there's this tendency to celebrate the sort of brash, you know, doineering uh outsider who comes in and tears everything apart. But I I think you tend to find that the the most effective reformers have a profound understanding of why things are the way that they are. So, so that is that's actually you know the negative capability to go like here's what I know and here's what I think is true and here's what I understand as an outsider and then here I've done a profound deep dive as to why it is this way like one of the most uh profound like I'll give you two sort of related reformers you have Abraham Lincoln and then you have uh Thomas Clarkson the two basically forerunners of of the the abolitionist movement Thomas Clarkson in the UK uh leads to the the the eradication of the slave trade and then slavery in England and then then uh Abraham Lincoln ends it in the United States. Both of them start their campaigns against slavery. They had this as as outsiders or as just human beings this immediate impulse that slavery is wrong that that it doesn't matter that we've been doing it for thousands of years. It doesn't matter that you know billions of dollars are riding on it. Doesn't matter that all the religious teachers say it's okay. None of that matters. They understood it was wrong. That's your classic sort of outsider view seeing the world from a new perspective. But then what they both do is they go, I got to figure this out. Like Abraham Lincoln goes to the state house library in Illinois and then the library of congress when he's a congressman and he goes and he actually reads like what the founders said about slavery and he realizes that the sort of dominant view at this time that the founders were out to preserve and protect slavery actually wasn't true. Thomas Clarkson his genius is >> he realizes that slavery is actually just like bad as a business. It's like he studies the insurance claims that slave uh uh traders are making on the the human cargo that they are transporting. He's looking at the fact that like 20% of the sailors are dying on each voyage. He he's actually going and looking at what a slave ship looks like and then he draws this famous draw diagram that like illustrates the vividness of of what was an abstract problem before. So the point is um it's not that you have to absorb the the dominant view or the status quo but you have to understand the logic of why it is that way. This is where justice and wisdom are are interrelated virtues. Like it's not just oh I have this opinion. I'm morally correct so therefore the world should agree. You have to have this curiosity to go well well these people probably aren't wrong on purpose. So why do they think this? what are the underlying conditions or incentives that are making them think this way? You know, Lincoln, a lot of people have tried to go, well, you know, Lincoln is equivocating on slavery because, you know, he was so understanding of the South. But, no, that's what empathy is. He says, you know, like we are just what they would be. We are just they are just what we would be in their in if we were in their condition. Meaning, he's like, if you were raised in the South and this is what you were taught from day one, you would think about it this way. And so what what you have to have the negative capability to understand and for people who don't know that's a thing that Keats talked about the ability to have mutually exclusive ideas in your head at the same time or contradictory ideas. You have to be able to go here's what they think and here's why they think it. That's not going to change what I know to be true or that's not going to change the fact that that's still fundamentally incorrect. But I have the ability to understand why it is that way. And that is usually a prerequisite to doing anything about it or doing anything about it effectively. Like Elon Musk is right. The federal government is very inefficient. uh and and he has a lot of domain expertise in his specific areas, but most people predicted Doge would fail because it would run up into these sort of longstanding uh obstacles and difficulties that I think he thought he could overwhelm with sheer force. Do you know uh Sam Caucus from Levels? You know Levels, it's like a a glucose monitor thing. >> Oh yeah, Levels. >> So he was the founder of Levels. He is now the CIO of the Treasury Department. Yeah, I'm interviewing him on Thursday. We got an episode with him on Thursday. It's the first long form conversation anybody from Doge has been permitted to have and it's been like it's okay to happen. And this is one of the kind of the fundamental questions which is how tied up in bureaucratic red tape [ __ ] is the inside of the government when it comes to trying to make things more efficient and how much can you take the Silicon Valley mindset of notion templates and Slack and and if this then that Zappia [ __ ] integrations. How much can you Zapier integrate your way through like vibe code? How much can you vibe code? >> Yeah. the government into efficiency. Yeah. And how much of it is this oified walnutshelved mahogany leather [ __ ] Chesterfield sofa [ __ ] that's getting in the way? And I think that's going to be >> and then and and then how much of it is there because that is the uh best solution to an imperfect situation? And do you have the humility and the openness uh and the the uh empathy to understand that that's uh why it is that way? >> Does that suggest that along with wisdom comes a um humble compartment sort of gets brought in for the ride as well that an amount of humility uh grows with the more that you are wise. >> I think so. I think so. Um you know uh Epictitus said one of the signs that you're making progress in the path to wisdom is that you get in fewer arguments >> and and I don't think that means that you you know just roll over all the time uh or that you you know you have no core values. It's just you understand well this is why they think what they think. You know, as I get older, I have I I certainly do have fewer opinions about [ __ ] that I don't think actually matters, right? I have I have fewer opinions as I get older about other people's opinions, right? Because uh they're right. They like that, you know, and I'm spending a lot of my energy trying to explain why they shouldn't like that as if it changes or means anything. M >> and so uh part part the stoicism was this idea of getting to a smooth flow of life. Right now you can get to a smooth flow of life by uh removing yourself from most of the contentious and complicated parts of life. Right? Uh you can have a smooth flow of life if you live on an island in the middle of the Pacific and you don't work, right? Like you never have to worry about money. You're not trying to do anything. You're not trying to accomplish anything. You don't care about anything. It's pretty easy to live on vibes. Can you get to a smooth flow of life in the arena, right, as you're trying to accomplish and do and contribute? >> That's the same as you can do your live talk with a fully scripted out comfort monitor in front of you and slides behind you. >> Can you do it when there's no presentation and you've just got off a plane 12 minutes ago? >> Well, you can have it. If if it always goes that way, you'll be fine. But it's not always going to go that the kind of fragility of >> that. Yes. And so resilience, adaptability, you know, being able to function and contribute and perform is the ability to to work in less than ideal environments with less than ideal people. >> Um and and that's a I think a skill you cultivate and develop over time. Given that we've got modern culture of shortcuts, life hacks, how do you convince people that uh wisdom is worth a long uncomfortable path? The thing is at at some point in your life, you're going to need it, right? You're going to come to some vexing decision, some challenging moment. You're going to go through something. You're going to be in the middle of something. And in that moment, uh, you're going to want to have wisdom to draw on, right? Wisdom that needed to be accumulated a long time ago. It will be too late in that moment for you to do the crash course to figure out all the things that you need to do to develop the meta skills you need to solve this problem in front of you. Um, and so are you doing the work now? To me, that's the question. I I think one of the things we can all agree about wisdom on about wisdom is that it's not something you're born with. There are certainly people who are wiser than others, >> but I don't think any of them came out of the womb that way, >> which is what distinguishes it from something like raw intelligence. Yes. Compute power. >> Yeah. Wisdom is something you accumulate over time. And so if you're going to want to draw on it in the future, what are the deposits you're making now? So that that's the investment that you make in wisdom. There's a story Senica tells us and I think it goes to this very idea of hacks and shortcuts and the the fetishizing of of of like gurus and teachers who can just tell you everything you need to know. Watch this video and you know it'll tell you everything you need to know or you know come to this seminar. Um he talks about this this Roman who wanted to be seen as smart. And so you know the Roman could have gone to classes, the Roman could have read hundreds of books. The Roman could have experienced things and instead this guy uh acquires a a number of wealthy slaves or sorry this wealthy Roman acquires a number of very literate slaves. Each one like an expert on a different topic. And at dinner parties, they would, you know, whisper in his ear the things that he needs to know. And so, everyone kind of thinks he's very smart. And the guy thinks he's getting away with it. He thinks he's figured out this shortcut until one of the men comes up to him and says, you know, "Hey, this is a great party. You're very, you know, love this reparte." He says, "Have you ever thought of of taking up wrestling, competing in a wrestling competition?" He goes, "Wrestling? I'm like an old man. Why would I do that?" And he says, "But look at how young your slaves are." The point is like they can't do that for you also. And and I think we we are under the impression for instance that like uh artificial intelligence is this magical transformative thing because it contains all this knowledge. >> Um but but you still have to know what questions to ask it. You still have to be able to separate the good answers from the hallucinated nonsensical answers, right? It can tell you, you know, oh yeah, that quote you're talking about, it's in this book, but you have to know what that quote is, right? You have to know some vaguely know what it is. And and you can really only do that from the work. It can help you solve some problems, but if you can't recognize a good solution from a bad solution or [ __ ] from from from a real insight, it's not going to do much for you. And I I I think people think that people are always looking for some magical thing that will exempt them from having to do this really hard thing >> and it almost never works. >> Do you know that story about chauffeur knowledge? Is this Richard Fineman maybe or somebody else's famous physicist in the 1900s and he was going around giving the same lecture and over and over again and his chauffeur uh was there at every single lecture that he gave. Yeah. And after a while, the chauffeur basically knew the lecture off by heart. And he said, "Hey, wouldn't it be funny if one day we swapped and you went up and I'll dress as the chauffeur and you'll come in?" And this guy goes up and he gives the lecture and it's perfect. The exact same way that the guy that was supposed to do it and somebody at the end asks a question and says, "Excuse me, I I just need to ask you." He says, "That is a question that's far too difficult for me. You're going to have to ask my chauffeur." And turns to the chauffeur that's the real guy. >> Yeah. To know by heart is not to know. Well, Naval Naval came on the show at the start of the year and >> just this lovely idea which is there's a big difference between appearing wise and being wise and the temptation to wrote memorize things that give the allure the illusion of wisdom like this looks like being wise because it is an insight that someone far smarter than me came up with >> uh the difference between being able to put that out and that's not necessarily a bad thing. Is that right? Okay, I I understand and have retained the concept. That's a very good first start because without understanding it and retaining it, write down, write down, write down, uh you don't know it at all. So, great first step. But what does it mean to be able to explain it three different ways? What does it mean to be able to apply it in your life? What does it mean to see that insight when you're gripped by emotion? >> Yes. Yeah. to even recognize that there was a kernel of insight or truth in the idea is no is not nothing. >> Uh but then yeah to really know it is the next thing and this is where the interplay between reading and study and exposing yourself to ideas and then having experiences is so important. And it's also why it's a loop because there are some things, you know, maybe narrative non-fiction or whatever, um, travel book or something. You read it once and you're like, I get I get the argument. I get I get what I'm supposed to take from this. And then many of the great texts, uh, literature, philosophy, uh, plays, stories, poems, etc., You have to read, have experiences, read again, have experiences because um every vantage point that you look at it from. Uh particularly with the passage of time allows you to unlock something new in it. McConnA says when he's reading a script that he reads it when he's tired, when he's happy, when he's hung over, and each time that he reads it because you don't have the luxury of taking five or 25 years to go back to [ __ ] crime and punishment or whatever. Uh short period. Okay. So, how can I change my state so that that different perspective that I'm coming in from, that different vantage point, I get access to? >> Yeah, that that makes a lot of sense. The there are books that you there are books you know people go oh I read that and it there are books that are designed for you to be reading it's not a thing you have done it is a thing you are doing >> and this was easier to do in the ancient world because there were just fewer texts you know there was fewer you know you you might read the Odyssey 500 times in the course of your life or hear it exposed cuz there's not any other you know major works to draw on. We have this uh you know, we have all of human history. We have thousands of years of extra history and knowledge and art and stories that that some of the ancients didn't have. That's our our blessing and our curse. >> Well, I think that's a a a really interesting challenge that we're facing. A lot of the time, people may have thought they knew who they were and in the modern world have sort of lost themselves. I I I had geographically triangulated who I am and why I'm here at this point. >> And then they go through a period of protracted challenge. Uh they lose a thing, a person, a belief in themselves. And now this sort of paradox of choice, lots of options open in front of me, plus this unmuring from who they thought they were before, >> uh, arrives them at a port that they have no idea where the ships sailed to. So, what do you think a wise stoic would say about somebody who's lost themselves in life? >> Yeah, it's it when you when you lose everything, there's something very freeing about that. when all your assumptions have been challenged or turned over and there's something profoundly destabilizing about it because you don't you don't have anything. So, I think you go maybe one of the things you do is you go back to those things that were formative to you at one point. And I I've been thinking a lot now about like what I'm rereading, what I'm re-watching, what I'm re-examining, because now that I am different, now that I am in different places, what I what I what strikes me about them is so different. Uh, but there is something nostalgic and beautiful about going back to something where you're like, well, I knew who I was when I read The A Great Gatsby for the first time because I was 17 and I know exactly what class I was in and what I thought was important and I can I can look here and see >> what I marked. Like Joan Ddian has this famous essay about journaling and she says, you know, why did I record a thought that I had at a train station in Pennsylvania? Why did I write down this thing that I overheard someone say in a restaurant? Why did I write down this or that? Why did I tell this story? And she'd been journaling since she was 5 years old. Her mother gave her she told her uh she told her mother she was bored one day. And Joan Ddian's mother said, "Well, here's a notebook. Why don't you write a story and then you can have something to read?" And so she'd been taking notes for for her whole life. And in this famous essay on notebook, she says, "Well, why did I why why do I do this? Is it a professional like rolodex? is this like someday I'll find a story to put this quote in. And then she said, "No, that's that's it's got to be more than that." She says, "Um, the purpose of journaling is to keep on nodding terms with who I used to be." She's like, "That's what it is. It's to remember to who it's it's to remember who I used to be." >> And there's something very powerful about journaling. Like I have this journal that I do every day where um it has five lines on it. And you know, so every 5 years I do a new one, but you write like where you were on that day, what you were doing, what you were thinking about 5 years ago or that that day and then you do it the next year and the next year and the next year. And the first year it's kind of cool and the second year it's kind of cool. But by 3, four and five, it's very powerful because you're like, oh, you know, in September of 2022, this is what I was thinking about. And that feels very urgent and important or that feels like silly and weird. And and so her her point was that that what journaling allows us to do is not just write down and record something, but it's almost like um it's like taking a picture on your phone and both cameras are working. Like it's taking the picture of what you're looking at and it's taking the picture of you as you're looking at it. And it it depends on which of those is actually the more important image to capture, right? M >> and I what I think journaling as a practice is very helpful to prevent some of those dark nights of the soul. I don't know who I am. I don't know what any of this means. I don't know what happened because you do know what happened. You've been monitoring it and tracking it incrementally as you go. I wonder whether the meta lesson as well is nothing as is as important as you think it is >> apart from when you're thinking about it like like that moment when you are caught up in the rumination cycle the worry the despair >> the depression the anxiety the concern uh and and although people unfortunately don't tend to journal when this is happening the elation the bravado the overconfidence >> yeah the ephemererality of all of it like uh this is from Buddha Uh but but this the story is you know uh the wisest philosopher in the world was asked to find a phrase that's true in any and every situation and always has been and always will be true >> and what the answer that comes back is and this too shall pass and and you know that can be uh true of grief that can be true of you know an incredible triumph it can be true of despair it can be true of happiness torture, all of it lasts uh longer, lasts longer than you think it does. And eventually it all does end like it ends one way or another. The Stoics say like like you're the Stoics say like when you're feeling like profound pain or like sickness or whatever, you can say confidently to yourself um this is going to end either because it's going to kill you or it's going to go away, right? and and um sometimes it's only zooming out and getting a little perspective on your own life that you realize this is true and then zooming out and looking at things historically that you realize oh this has always been true for every person who has ever lived. I was reading Unbroken about Zampirini and uh I'd never read that. So uh my favorite stories are kind of solo or group people against the odds. Endurance by Alfred Lansing uh Forgotten Highlander by Alistister Urk. Uh and Unbroken, Laura Hillbrand by about Louis Zampirini. And uh I said this to you last time, no one's done a good Stockdale book yet, have they? I'm in the works. >> No way. >> Mhm. >> Let's [ __ ] go, dude. >> I'm uh I'm maybe three chapters in. I I've been >> That's going to be the next one. >> That's uh So, wisdom is this and then that's that's the next one. I I >> so perfect. >> His story is [ __ ] incredible. Like so much better than you would think it is. Like I think people think Can we nerd out about Stockdale? >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Okay. So, for people who don't know, Stockdale shot down over North Vietnam. and he spends basically seven years in what's called the Hanoi Hilton where he's tortured, spends the vast majority of that time in solitary confinement. Um, horrendously tortured. Okay. So, the key to understand like it's not it's it's actually a much more powerful story than even Unbroken because um, Zampirini, I think I'm saying that right, is is your ordinary prisoner of war, right? He is an enemy combatant held against his will. Right? >> So Stockdale is in effectively a re-education prison. Right? Like that the job is to to take these people to break them and to turn them into propaganda assets. Okay. But the thing you need to know about Stockdale is Stockdale is in the air the night of the Gulf of Tonken incident. So Stockdale is there at the beginning of the Vietnam War, which has begun under effectively false pretenses. So when he is shot down uh several months later and he's he's parachuting into this camp and he says to himself, you know, I'm entering the world of Epictitus, he's not just going to be held captive and not seen his family for, you know, however long. He possesses the most terrible secret that you could possibly possess other than perhaps knowing the nuclear codes or the you know like there isn't a secret that his capttors would have been more motivated to know than to know that he was in the air and watched them effectively. He says we were shooting at ghosts that there was nothing there that because the the the North Vietnamese know that they cannot win militarily. They have to win in the court of global public opinion. So imagine they were to come in possession of a pilot who was there who who saw his country do something wrong and imagine they could flip this person. So breaking isn't like, oh, hey, let me tell you like how a US aircraft carrier works or let me tell you like the secret vulnerable spots on the F-16. He possesses the most significant secret of and and um uh you know piece of information. So like he has a very special sort of artillery shell hidden inside of his brain. Yeah. And that can be deployed by people who would really like that specific weapon. or just imagine the moral weight of what he is dealing with. So he's not it's not like he's um you know flying over Nazi Germany and he gets shot down and he's being held by the worst people of all time. Uh he's fighting he is he is he is not uh fighting it's a it's it's it's a morally complicated world. >> He doesn't have he doesn't have pure virtue to stand on top of. >> Yes. And he and so he has to bear the weight of this. It's a flimsy position to hold. >> Yes. And so what is he what is he holding on to? He's holding on to this idea that he is his brother's keeper. And that if he betrays his country, who he's really betraying is the other 200 or so prisoners and then all the other drafties and officers. He's betraying is he's not worried about protecting Lynden Johnson, right? He's worried about the person in the cell next to him. And so the the the the mental gymnastics and the moral injury and weight that this guy has is unfathomable if you think about >> Yeah. Whereas when you look when you look at Alistister Urkart from the Forgotten Highlander, disentry for four years straight, forced march, bridge over the river Quai, etc., etc., locked in a tin box, knocked off his feet by the bomb blast from Nagasaki. Hardcore [ __ ] That's like the equivalent of just climbing Mount Everest, which is just you versus the elements, you versus the the >> battle of attrition that's on this sort of one plane of existence. What you're saying that Stockdale had was this like astral >> Yes. >> karmic challenge that he's also fighting with. >> Yeah. And and so far I've been fascinated by his childhood. And then when he's at the Naval Academy, and this is what I've been nurturing out about. So when he's at the Naval Academy, when he's a senior, the first uh the the man, his name is Wes Brown, who would go on to be the first black graduate of the Naval Academy, is also there. So he's the Jackie Robinson effectively of the Navy. >> And so as Stockdale is this young student who's just trying to get ahead, he's watching this other guy go through this, you know, horrendous ordeal. like they he had to have like basically guards on him because they were worried other midshipman might kill him. Uh and he there was a a sustained campaign to give this guy West Brown Demerit so he'd get kicked out of the academy so they wouldn't have to graduate him and then he wouldn't become a naval officer. There only been like 10 naval officers in history, black officers in history before this happened. So he's watching another person go through effectively what he has to go through 20 years later. A sustained campaign to break you as a person and crush your soul. Right? That's what the the the capttors in the prison are not just trying to go, hey, if we don't give them food and water, >> you know, will they turn on their country? They're trying to break them as human beings. um you know uh they're torturing them, they're playing mind games on and his famous thing Stockdale is uh tortured for days on end. And then they basically in a moment they switch and they go, "Okay, uh it's too much. We we pushed you too far. We're sorry. Why don't you go uh to the bathroom, clean yourself up, you can go back to yourself." And he realizes that they would never give him anything for free. They would never be nice to him for any reason. And so he realizes, oh, there must be a reason they want to clean me up. And he realizes they're about to to parade him in front of the cameras. They want him to give a videotaped statement. Maybe they maybe he's even sensing in this moment that they know what he knows. >> And so at this moment, he walks into the bathroom. He says he knew he had about a minute in there. And he begins to beat his face to a bloody pulp uh with the stool. And then he cuts he shatters the mirror and he he basically scalps himself like he cuts he gives himself what he calls a reverse mohawk. He just takes this jagged head and he cuts it off the back of his head. He basically makes himself um uh >> unspeakable. Yeah. He's bleeding everywhere and and it's like they come in and they think he's trying to kill himself and he hasn't. He's just >> just maimed himself. So he is unfilmable. >> Not pressy. >> Yeah. and and they go, you know, you know, what are we supposed to do? We were supposed to take you downtown. And and he goes, you tell the major that the commander won't be going downtown. And and so he has this, you know, sort of this like this determination and this grit and this in intensity >> that takes on a whole different color when you realize what he's holding and what he's been through. and that that he realizes that yeah it it's about his connection to these other people which I think is interesting what I'm you find these threads you go oh this is something that you believe at 38 or however he's in his late 30s when he's in this camp now he's a commander that he fundamentally didn't believe when he was 20 at the Naval Academy he doesn't participate in the hazing of this of this guy Wes Brown but like famously Jimmy Carter who's like from the deep south is in their class and Jimmy Carter runs cross country with them and Jimmy Carter is famously like this supporter a guy who grows up in like the segregated South is there helping and encouraging this guy and and Stockdale's like sort of too busy doing his own thing >> and so I'm I'm fascinated how does this person go from like selfish in the way that when we're young we're all I'm into me and my thing and what I'm trying to do I don't do you love I don't have time for this other stuff you know like that if not if I am not for me who is >> mh >> and then he becomes by the end if I am only for me who am I and that's the arc of stock that's >> I cannot wait for you to do that >> I I'm loving it >> that's it that's sick and I guess conspiracy tracking a story but it's over like a tighter timeline right but a lot of investigation what's going on but this is like archive [ __ ] this is >> well yeah to to go to what we started with like uh the reason I'm doing the book is because I have never done a book like this and I wanted I love those kind of books. So like the book could come out and sell zero copies. The book could come out and everyone could say that I >> I suck and I failed at it. But I have learned a lot. Like I have I have gotten better at what I actually do in struggling to do this thing which is not what I normally do. I I want to bring up a video of yours that I remember seeing. I want to say, did you video yourself getting the call from your publisher about the New York Times list of the last book or the one before? >> I think I've done it a couple times. I know when the call's coming in, on the camera. >> Yeah, there there's there's this video maybe maybe your kids in the room or maybe not. Anyway, and you're you're there and you're talking to them and they say, "Ryan, just congratulations bestseller. You came in at number whatever the fuck." and uh you say thank you very much that's good and then basically but now I must get back to writing the next book and I remember I remember watching that and you know we've met this is episode like seven first time we come on the show was like [ __ ] six seven years ago or something yeah forever ago like when I was still in >> Oh this is sick I thought you were saying I was on sick I >> um so I've got like a you know good understanding of sort of >> I think where you're at I wanted to ask you about that because >> that at least from the outside looks a little bit like somebody who is struggling to take a moment to celebrate their accomplishments because not and I wouldn't I wouldn't say that it's as uh philosophically shallow as I'm just moving on to the next thing. Yeah, I don't think it's that. But I do wonder whether there is a Puritan work ethic driving you to the point where this thing that happened that's great that by all accounts I probably should put the [ __ ] book down, get some cake and allow my like put the put a couple of banners up. I know they're [ __ ] Like light some candles and and have a little thing, have a little celebration. Is that because I'm I'm very interested. One of the criticisms typically of stoicism is sort of a a a lack of celebration of the good. This sort of um indifference to emotion that is good in times of strife, but kind of like having sex with a condom on in times of, you know, times of good. It's like a prophylactic against everything, unfortunately, including the celebrations. >> Um did you consider taking the condom off at some point? >> I there's a couple things there. I think talking about wisdom, one of the things you'll sometimes uh you can hear from older people is like take the [ __ ] compliment, you know, like like some you're you're being like, "Oh, no, it was nothing or I don't care." And they're like, "No, no, I appreciated it. You should take the compliment." And that I think that's something that that everyone should work on with if someone's saying they like something, if someone's saying good job, be gracious with it because you think you're being self- aacing, but actually you're rejecting. >> It's a middle finger to them. >> Yes. Exactly. And and I I I think that's something I' I've tried to work on. Some people see that they go, "Okay, like so you you hit number one, which I've been lucky enough to do a couple times, and and then you're just like right back to work. Where's the joy? Where's the fun?" Um, and my answer is is that the joy and the fun is not in throwing a party for hitting number one. >> I like doing it. Like I like I like writing books. It's like where I am right now in the book that I am writing is my absolute favorite place to be. Like I I I'm not in the early phases of like what is this? Is this anything? I'm in the the the thick of like every day there's like a challenging uh invigorating uh problem to solve and then I'm making progress on it and it's coming together and I'm learning and I'm growing and I'm I'm doing what I like am meant to do. So, um, one of the hardest parts of the schedule that I am on is that usually my my last project is coming out when I'm in the my favorite part of the next >> which is why you're so fired up about Stockdale when we should be talking about [ __ ] wisdom. >> Yeah. Like I I didn't really do I I maybe got like 45 minutes of writing done today because I had a doctor's appointment and then I'm here and then I pick up my So like I'm actually not doing the thing that I like to do. Um, not that I don't like this. This is amazing. But like I like doing the thing. That's and and I I I think early in my career I like all people I I I was somewhat extrinsically motivated all like I wanted to hit the best bestseller list. I wanted you to say it was amazing. I wanted recognition. I wanted all that. And I I still do like those things and I'm not shrugging them off as nothing. It's just um I just feel like the reward for succeeding should not be taking away from like I'll tell you like my first the first time I hit uh the New York Times best uh Stillness is the K Stillness is the key debuted number one in 2019 and I remember I woke up I was in LA on book tour and um I could I you know my alarm goes off my phone and one of my rules I don't check my phone the first thing that I do when I wake up is I I try to but That's difficult on the road, right? Because >> Yeah, exactly. >> Your phone is the alarm. >> And so, so it's like, you know, you pick up your phone and you're like, "Some stuff has happened, you know, like I can tell some stuff has happened." And and and I remember going um as I was staying at the Los Angeles Athletic Club, which is one of my favorite places to swim. And I I go, "Okay, like this is either good news or it's bad news about the book cuz it's coming from New York, right?" So, I'm on the West Coast. >> Uh you're 3 hours behind. >> Yeah. So, I I woke up and I was like, "I'm going to go for a swim. I'm gonna swim my exercise. I'm gonna do the thing I love to do here. >> And the news is the news. It's like, you know, the cat in the box, right? It's like I'm either a bestseller or I'm I'm not. >> Um I should get to enjoy the swim either way. >> And so I went I had this great swim and then I checked in and I I you know was a call from my agent and my publisher and my wife and it was great. But like even if it had been >> Where the [ __ ] have you been? Uh I was I I I was swimming uh front stroke. >> In a way, the good news is just as much a catastrophe as the bad news, right? Like the the the good news if if I get the good news and then I go swimming, I'm just thinking about that the whole time. Like pre presence is the gift. Just being in the moment, enjoying the thing is what you like. >> I am going to interject that. I abhore open loops. Okay. >> [ __ ] >> I am allergic. >> You couldn't leave that. >> I am allergic. Well, >> I'm working on it and I know I know that it's a I know that it's a a challenge of mine that not knowing what's going on with this thing to me is the sort of [ __ ] that keeps me awake. The sort of [ __ ] that wakes me up at 4 in the morning. It's the sort of thing that causes me to be thinking about that when I should be thinking about whatever else. Um, I would struggle with that. And yet I would say as well, I've seen other videos like random [ __ ] that just pops up from you that there was this video where you complaining about trash. Someone left loads of trash like near the driveway to your ranch or something. There was another one about fence posts that might have even been like 5 years ago. I do remember seeing some of these different way markers and it's not a representative. >> It's what you've recorded and chosen to put online that the algorithm's chosen to give to me that I can remember. There's a lot of filming here, but >> I do get a sense of of like regulation. >> Yeah. >> From from seeing from seeing your stuff. And there is something uh sort of wonderful in the purity and the almost complimentarily the boneheadedness, the stubbornness, some might say, right? the the the the yeah uh single-mindedness of of some of these approaches that >> sure some days I'm only going to get 45 minutes in, but for the most part like this is I am a writer. I am a thinker. I am a musician and this is the main thing and the main thing is for me to keep that the main thing and I do find that you know as a supported from the sidelines of that stuff. It is good to see somebody who I think at least from the outside appears to be trying to find that balance between I want to enjoy my life. I I want to care for my family. I don't want to sacrifice everything in pursuit of the goal. But given that I don't want to sacrifice everything and I want to make a dent in the world, I have to constrain the aperture of [ __ ] that I do down to a really really really small number of things. That's interesting. I Yeah, there's a lot there. I I would say regulation is the key to life, right? Getting emotionally regulated. That's what stoicism is. People think stoicism is the eradication of emotions. It is the regulation of de of emotions. It's not having none. It's I'm feeling anger. I am feeling frustration. I am feeling envy. I am feeling worry. I'm feeling anxiety. And I don't have to impulsively act on that information. Right? And so how do you find how do you build the practice of like this is what I'm feeling but this is what I'm going to do right um a exercise a physical practice is a great metaphor a training ground for this because you're able to go like I am feeling tired I am feeling not into it I am feeling cold I am feeling whatever and you're you're saying to yourself but that doesn't [ __ ] matter here's what you're going to do right and so how do you practice deciding who's in charge that's I think really important and and it it's it's something I think I've gotten better at over time and you you you you work on throughout your life. I think I know that what I control is and what I enjoy is the doing of the thing and I try to think less about the things that are not related to the doing of the thing. And so, um writing is what I like. It's what I enjoy. It's what I'm best at. That's what I want to be doing. And then publishing is the stuff that comes out the other side. It's the it's the byproduct of the discipline and whatever. And so um that's that's kind of how I think about it. Your point about these open loops that I I think that's a capacity you like again just it's it's >> it's a capacity you develop and increase like hey I'm deciding I'm not going to think about this until tomorrow or I am going to be here for this school performance. I'm gonna uh I'm gonna sit here for this, you know, however long this plane is delayed. I'm gonna I they told me I'm not gonna get an answer back on this medical test for two weeks. >> I'm not going to waste two weeks feeling shitty. And so, how how do you how do you go I decide what I'm going to think about? And to me that's a very stoic practice like and it I think you you you do it in the in you you develop it intentionally over often insignificant things so that in the significant things you can you can do it. >> That's a good point. I mean the the ability to learn how to get out of quicksand is probably something that both of us could work out in an afternoon and we could practice it. If you're trying to learn that while you're in quicksand, that's going to be significantly more difficult. >> Also, quicksand doesn't exist, but it basically a trope from westerns in the 50s. >> I've been sighed by [ __ ] American TV. >> Well, I mean, it it's one of those things you're like, I got to be aware of quicksand. It's like, have you ever experienc You've been all over the world. Have you ever seen Quicksand? >> I haven't seen Quicksand, but I, you know, I wasn't in America in the 50s, so maybe that's it. I But yes, exactly. Do you think intelligence then is overrated when compared with equinimity? >> Well, I think intelligence poised with equinimity is a very powerful thing. And there's a lot of intelligent people who don't have it >> and it prevents them from being as smart as they can be. You know, Marcus Aurelius's stepfather, the emperor before him, Antonyinus, his last his his final dying word is equinimatas or equinimity. That's what he's trying to pass to his uh to his son. It it's like the most powerful thing that a leader, a parent, a human being can have, right? Is the ability to sort of be even to be regulated. Again, this is easy to do when the world is simple and things are calm and nice, but that's not how it is, right? So it's like like when you have children especially like they can't be regulated if you're not real regulated. You see this if you have a dog, right? You're like the dog is crazy because you're crazy. The dog is responding to your energy. And what is it can it can sometimes be helpful to have something as unbiased as that's why people love ecquin therapy, right? Because you have this creature which is really [ __ ] sensitive. It it gets a little woo. There's some stuff that I went to ecquin therapy. >> Uh the the lady that was there that was really lovely was telling me about how the horse heart has a magneettosphere and it's able and I'm like this I'm we're getting into some astral realm [ __ ] here. But I do not deny prey animal twitchy as [ __ ] If you have bad energy it'll hurt you. You you you go oh okay. And and then you yeah some of these things can seem very woo and then you go okay but I came into this this way and now it's acting this way. There's clearly been some kind of >> litally false functionally true. >> Yes. Yes. >> Or maybe [ __ ] literally true, functionally true. I >> Yes. It it it exists. It doesn't It obviously isn't real, but it's obviously real. >> You know what's another good example of that is like a hot streak. Like statistically, obviously it makes no sense, but there is something about being in in the zone, right? Um but yeah, you you you go, "Oh, okay. It's it's about how well can you how how good are you at going from disregulated to regulated. That's what stoicism is. >> Well, I think a wonderful game for uh couples to play uh is something like when we get out of connection, the game is how quickly can we get back into it. Yes. And like what a wonderful goal for you both cuz it's the dopamine. It's this sort of cohesive we're working together thing. It's a challenge. It's not you against each other. It's you against the problem. >> Yeah. The third thing that is your relationship and how quickly can we both get back into that? Well, I'm going to do the thing that I know brings you back in and you're going to do the thing and I that's something it feels like some [ __ ] that Matthew's probably said. He probably has at some point. >> Have you had Dr. Becky on? >> Dr. Becky? >> Dr. Becky Kennedy? >> No. >> She's I know you don't have kids, but it's the She's like the parenting guru of our time. One of the the [ __ ] greatest. She's like, don't try to be a perfect parent. try to get better at repair because you're going to screw up. You're going to get disregulated. You're going to get it's about how quickly you can come back and fix it. >> [ __ ] director Becky stole my idea. >> So, it's it's it's about that talking about the intelligence equinimity thing. And I I think you know a lot of very intelligent people struggle to be aquinamous. Yes. >> And I I don't know whether a lot of aquinomous people struggle to be intelligent, but I think that one of the things that people who have got sort of deep in a piece at least in my experience sometimes struggle with is that sort of outward drive to make a dent in the world and that's fine because like you are your own unit and who the [ __ ] is anyone to say you're peaceful and largely content >> but have you not considered making yourself feel unworthy so that you can go and you know write bestselling books anyway um I guess another like an interesting question with regards to the wisdom thing is what are the mistakes that otherwise smart people make most often that stops them from becoming wise. Basically, what is the disadvantage that a person who is very clever has of uh achieving wisdom? Are there are there certain hurdles that they need to overcome? >> Well, I think we could say that there's a number of things that really smart people do that make them stupid, right? Uh ego is obviously one of the the things that makes us very dumb, right? because it it it filters everything through the lens of what we want to be true or how we see ourselves, what our identity is and not how things actually are. So, ego obviously makes us uh pretty stupid. Um obviously bad information makes uh uh smart people stupid. Um and of course ego contributes to this. If you if you uh you know crafted information diet that's about confirming what you already think or what you want to be true because you're so fragile and it challenges your ego, you're obviously going to get very stupid. Um, I think we could say that, um, you know, again, they seem to all center around ego, but you know, stop becoming complacent, ceasing to learn if you're a know-it-all, right? You've learned everything that it's possible for you to know, right? Um, >> that line that you've got about you can't learn learn something you think you already know. >> Yes, that's that's Epictitus. Uh but I think another way we get very stupid is uh you you see people acting stupidly um out out of a lack of empathy. Like Elon said, you know, empathy is going to be the death of western civilization. Empathy is like the key to the greatest uh achievements of western civilization and and humanity. The ability to strategically understand what is going on over there. What do they think? thought going back to Socrates. Socrates said, you know, no one is wrong on purpose, right? Going, oh, they've thought themselves into this position. They don't think they're being stupid. They think they're being right. Um, you know, Temple Grandon famously watches this video. She gets called in by these um by these uh cattle ranchers who are trying to vaccinate their cows against these different illnesses. And they they put them through this shoot. The cows are freaking out. They didn't want to go in the shoot. They weren't even being like killed or hurt. They just didn't want to go in the shoot. and they're, you know, forcing them and forcing them and forcing them and she with a black and white camera gets in and takes pictures and the black and white camera approximates how the cow is seeing the world. She realizes that a lot of these things um are seem scary to a cat. Like a hose on the ground looks like a snake in black and white. Or she goes, "When you get down on the cattle shoot, uh, this this chain that's rattling against the gate sounds incredibly loud and then it makes one cow scared, which makes another c and then that energy." So, so the ability to get down and think about why someone else is thinking about what is there's this German word, which means like the world view of someone else. What is it like to be a bat? What's it like, you know, what's it like to be my eight-year-old? Because it's not the same as how I can. So I'm going like do this, you have to do this. But that's from my view of 30, you know, more decades on this planet than than him. And go yeah, what is it actually? How are you thinking about this? What do you not understand? What have you not had time to experience? >> So empathy to me is is the key not just to like being a good person. It's key to the virtue of justice. But like when you look at most of the the enormous blunders of history, you know, Iraq, Vietnam, fundamentally, it's this sense of like, well, here's what we think should happen. Here's how we think it's going to go. And then this um this inability to conceive of the other people in the equation as being rational or reasonable or even uh uh significant actors, right? engraved on the temple of Apollo where the the the oracle of delicat said you know uh one of the one of the epigs famously uh we know one of the famous ones is know thyself but the other one is offer a guarantee and disaster threatens right so you think you know how it's going to be you think you know how it should be this is often exactly what precedes like the biggest blunders of history the lack of empathy to go what do they think what do they want what are they going to do if we do this, right? And so I think there's there's a number of kind of blind spots or um uh impediments to our intelligence or wisdom. And and so really um being wise is the removal of some of those things like Socrates, you know, someone is sent to that same oracle to ask why Socrates is so wise because he doesn't think that he's wise. And it comes back, you know, he's the wisest man in Athens and as Socrates thinks about it, he realizes cuz he doesn't think that he's the wisest person that he is in fact wisdom. So it's like what are the if if we go hey I want to be wiser I want to be smarter it's stepping back and going well where am I being stupid like what are what are the things that are making me stupid that that are impeding my judgment impeding my ability to discern to see what's really here and how do I strip those away that's how we get wiser do you know the idea from mathematics of never multiply by zero >> no >> okay so um take as big of a number as you want uh 2,343,000 times it by 5* by 52 times by 17 million times by 0ero >> you get zero right so you never multiply by zero and it's basically an argument that you can continue playing the game as long as you're not kicked out to the reason that using too much leverage when you're trading is a bad idea that going bankrupt is a bad idea you can spend all of the time that you want looking after your health you eat a grass-fed diet you avoid seed oils and red 40 but one day you decide to not wear your seat belt in the car >> yes sure >> zero yes >> uh you spend Your teenager is working very hard at your education. You make it to university. You're just about to start on this brand new adventure. And you have unprotected sex and get somebody pregnant. >> Not quite zero, but [ __ ] big big change. >> Avoid the the major stupid things. >> Correct. Avoid the major stupid things. And um that idea of okay in the world of business and in the world of sort of objective outward metrics of success I probably should double down on my strengths because my highest point of contribution is where all the gains acrue to the very very top right power law. So move yourself up. Oh you're 99.5 get to 99.6 that's really great. It's a huge big change. However when it comes to life like the shortcomings are what's going to kill you. There's a a great idea from Visakhan Verasami and he says he calls it uh the divorce paradox which is uh why do people who are seemingly the best friends in public uh so reliably end up breaking the marriage apart? And it's because we don't realize that the bad times and the way you deal with bad times are a much better predictor >> of long-term marriage success than how much you enjoy the good ones. Nobody I would I would estimate most marriages don't end because of too few peak experiences. >> Sure. Many will from too many and two too much rupture without repair effectively. Like that is what >> pulls you down into negative equity within a relationship and you can reinvest that back in. But really the it's like calories, right? Why is it that you control your diet more than you control your expenditure when it comes to exercise? because it's way easier to eat 400 calories than it is to expend them. And I think marriage as the non-married guy in the room is uh similar to that. That the amount of work you need to do in terms of good things to offset that [ __ ] [ __ ] argument you just had last night is an awful lot. So, hey, control your calories. Like, make sure you get good at at repair after rupture in the same way as ensure that you don't multiply by zero in your personal life. I was just thinking of a couple more things that smart people do that make them stupid. One is like you don't deal with your childhood issues, right? So you you are very smart, you are very successful, you are very powerful, but there is a part of you that's uh an 11year-old. There's a part of you that's an angry teenager and that person is is not who you trust with these high stakes. >> Have you done um much sort of emotional work? Uh what's that look like? Yeah, the the inner child work I think is really key. When you find it when you find that kind of very young, very impulsive, very impetuous, very sensitive part of yourself, that's usually something that you haven't dealt with. That's kind of a state of arrested development inside you. Like that, you know, there's the there's the uh they say there's the adapted child, right? The child that has to the thing the decisions the assumptions you make about the world because your environment was not perfect growing up, right? Those are coping mechanisms that made sense when you were 13 and your parents were splitting apart or you know you were unattractive nerd who was bullied or you know you you you lost a bunch of people that you you you make these you were abused. You went through these things. So you made certain assumptions or adaptations to to survive that. And maybe that's not good now that you're the leader of a company of a thousand people or that you're you know making films in Hollywood. you you can't afford to be that 13-year-old, right? So, I I I think you sometimes you see people, you know, like this is the classic midlife crisis, like you're blowing up your life because there's some part of you that's like trying to get back to some earlier part of you, right? And so, I think you can see people who have sort of very smart, very rational in most aspects of their life, but they're making sort of very impetuous, >> irresponsible decisions because they're they've left something unressed. The other the other thing I think we see people do that makes them stupid is like and this goes to the idea of information uh diets, but I think I I've as I've gotten older, I've just seen more and more smart people that I know just kind of lose it like lose like go crazy, right? Like like your your inputs are very important and also taking care of this vessel >> is important and so you know I think sleep deprivation is cumulative. The drugs you take are cumulative. The stress you put on yourself is cumulative. Your the lonely nights is cumulative, right? The the hours that you work is cumulative. And you know, you you get to a place where something snaps, right? Uh John Stewart Mills, one of the smartest people who ever lived. He has this crazy education and he snaps at like 20 years old. Um you know, you can only wind the rubber band so tight. >> And and I think you see that So people people make really bad decisions and it's it's this it's like this trauma that they're not addressing and then it's producing new trauma in the present moment. >> There's something that sort of fall is especially in someone who's really really smart. It feels extra catastrophic pitiful. Um there's this sense of, oh wow, it happened to them. >> Mhm. >> Therefore, how am I a mere mortal protected from this thing? >> Well, they're actually more vulnerable to it than you are. Because imagine you've gotten really used to trusting your instincts. You've gotten really used to being right. >> You've gotten really used to making contrarian bets. Like a friend of mine said, you know, having a making a contrarian bet that you turn out to be like massively right about can be a brain destroying experience. >> Oh, that's so great because you've just learned that everyone else is an idiot and you're really smart. And that that even though everyone is pointing out this problem and that problem and what about this and what about this, you are you are learning the wrong lesson from that which is like not like oh this is the one in a thousand times. You're like no no no this is every time. And so often that's why people who build like transformative companies or artists who are had this reputation for being transgressive and you know they get themselves into trouble later because >> they drink their own Kool-Aid. They're just playing that same thing again and it's different circumstances. >> I think we all have this sense that our view of the world is the right one, right? We're all biased toward that and if there is a time where your view of the world seems to be uh contrary to most or all other people and you get to stand at top this big pedestal and say, >> "Fuck you all. I was right." >> Yes. Uh the allure to think run it back like we're doing it again. >> Yes. >> Is so strong. >> It's and and this goes to what we're talking about though is like okay so that's a historical fact, right? Like there are so many great historical examples of that same thing happening. So you want to learn you want to see that so you can recognize the pattern in your own life which is almost certainly not going to be as catastrophic or as significant. Right? So when I went to my publisher in 2011 and was or 2012 and I was like hey I'd like to write a you know about stoic philosophy they were like what you know and and that was not a thing they were excited about. Now, I ended up being obviously very right about that, but I try to actively think about why they thought it was a bad idea and in what ways they were right >> and in what ways I was correct, but only accidentally. So, you know what I mean? Like, I wasn't this far-seeing genius who predicted all of this was going to happen. I had an idea for one thing that I wanted to do. >> So, question on that. how and I I I put myself in the camp of someone who uh doesn't have the courage of his convictions as much as I think I should. >> I think uh not fantastic at listening to my instinct, not fantastic at listening to my gut, very sort of top down, not bottom up, very sort of existing above the neck. >> Um for me, I get the sense that it would probably be a good thing for me to maybe go, I think I'm right on this and I I'm going to commit to that. Um what is your what give me the the the contrarian perspective on this? >> What you want to do is go okay I'm having this feel like I'm I'm doing this and I'm getting this push back or people are questioning it for this reason or it seems you know like a impossible task for this reason and then is the part of me that's resisting that uh ego or is it like no I have secret knowledge here. Is it that I've really done the work? I've really thought about this and I have an answer for that. Right? I think about this when I get edits back on my book. I don't like getting edits, right? Is my objection to the idea of am I feeling this as the 15-year-old who doesn't like to be told what to do or and some of those notes that is what's happening and I need to put I need to talk to that kid and go this person is trying to help you. You should listen to them. And then there's the part of me that that knows what I'm trying to do and knows what I'm trying to say and has really thought about this and I have an answer to why that's not a correct bit of feedback. and distinguishing between the impulsive emotional resistance and the sort of rational uh courage of your convictions is a different is these are very different things and I think that's really important and so >> it's probably better that you're not uh you know >> blowing [ __ ] up on a whim >> miss yeah this sort of missionary uh you know profit thing of like that's that's what's going that might serve you well until eventually it blows you up >> higher likelihood of multiplying by zero Yeah, by doing that. >> And so, so I go I try to think about, okay, I wanted to write these books about stoicism, this book about stoicism, and it turned out I was right. What are the good lessons to learn from that? And what are the lessons, the lies that I want to make sure I'm not taking from that? >> And then, you know, like this bookstore that I opened, you know, like it was a stupid idea. It was crazy. It shouldn't have worked. It did work. Now, why did it work? It was because I I thought about why it would work and I minimized the downside and I I >> turned it into a [ __ ] office. >> That's not the lesson. The lesson is not when I feel like doing something, I should just do it. And people, you know, are always trying to hold me back. And and so those are just like a couple minor examples in my life that that I was able to learn and recognize in the moment because I watched, you know, because I've read about, you know, this Nobel Prize winner who thinks they found a magical cure for this. I mean, like Newton got into like alchemy. You watch how smart people learn uh the wrong lesson from their success. And then you want to make sure that when you experience success or you have these analogous moments in your life, you're like, "Okay, this is my opportunity in a low stakes, lowkey way to learn the same lesson as opposed to needing to escalate, escalate, escalate to eventually learn it catastrophically." >> I love that idea of sort of a a dose response um or there's a particular waterline that you need to get past in order to have this unteachable lesson. Well, some people are more and less teachable than others. Yes. Um, so I guess we mentioned there what are some of the impediments of intelligence to wisdom? Another interesting question would be something like what are the prices that a wise person pays that an unwise person doesn't? What are the costs of being wise? >> Yeah. I mean self-consciousness it can be tricky. like there is a you've never done it before, you know, you don't know how hard it's going to be. You don't know what to be wary of. You don't know what to be intimidated by. You can just plow ahead, right? And I do think in art, creativity, business, self-consciousness is sometimes an impediment. It's an it you're overthinking, right? And so wisdom, if wisdom paralyzes you, if wisdom makes you think about everything from every angle, uh, and thus deprivives you of the energy or the enthusiasm to do the thing, that can be a real problem. I think the other the other side effect of wisdom, although it's not really wisdom, but they can be associated with each other, is like a sort a certain cynicism, right? Like uh Fineman talked about how like you shouldn't lose the wonder like you know he says you look in through a microscope he says you know does it make your heart flutter it should still make your heart flutter and there is something where the the the byproduct of the learning and the understanding and the experience the years of it can make you kind of jaded and cynical and that that's sad and tragic and I think you you have to it shouldn't deprive you of hope. It shouldn't deprive you of purpose. It shouldn't deprive you of these really wonderful things. It just means you have to work for them in a new way. >> Mhm. >> Ryan Holiday, ladies and gentlemen. Dude, you're great. I appreciate you. I can't wait for >> the Stockdale book. Uh, where should people go? Keep up to date with the million things that you >> uh Daily Stoic. Daily Stoic on YouTube. I think my name on YouTube. I don't know. Just Google around. They'll figure it [ __ ] yeah, Ryan. I appreciate you. >> Thanks, man. >> Thank you very much for tuning in. If you enjoyed that episode, well, first off, congratulations for making it to the end. You have the staying power and lack of ADHD that you should be very proud of. But there is an episode with Underath all about music, touring, mental health, performance anxiety, and a ton of other stuff right here. So, watch it. Gone.