Joe Rogan Experience #1309 - Naval Ravikant

Joe Rogan 0:00 Two, one, boom. All right. We're live. (slaps table) Thank you very much for doing this, man. I really appreciate it.

Naval Ravikant 0:05 Oh.

Joe Rogan 0:05 I've been absorbing your information and listening to you talk for, uh, quite a while now, so it's, uh, it's great to, to actually meet you.

Naval Ravikant 0:12 Thanks for having me.

Joe Rogan 0:13 My pleasure, my pleasure. You are one of the rare guys that is, uh, you're a big investor. You are, um, you're deep in the tech world, but yet you seem to have a very balanced perspective in terms of how to live life, as opposed to not just be entirely focused on success and financial success, and tech investing, but rather, how to live your life in a happy way. That's a, it's a, that's an odd balance.

Naval Ravikant 0:46 Yeah. You know, I, I think the reason why people like, uh, hearing me is because, like, if ... I- it's like if you go to a, a circus and you see a bear, right? That's kind of interesting, but not that much. If you see a unicycle, that's interesting, but you see a bear on a unicycle, that's really interesting, right?

Joe Rogan 1:01 (laughs)

Naval Ravikant 1:01 So when you combine things you're not supposed to combine-

Joe Rogan 1:03 Right.

Naval Ravikant 1:03 ... people get interested. It's like Bruce Lee, right? Striking Thoughts Philosophy Plus Martial Arts.

Joe Rogan 1:08 Mm.

Naval Ravikant 1:09 Uh, and, and I think it's because at some level all humans are broad. We're all multivariate, but we get summarized in pithy ways in our lives, and at some deep level we know that's not true, right?

Joe Rogan 1:20 Yeah.

Naval Ravikant 1:20 Every human basically is capable of every experience and every thought. Uh, you know, you're a UFC comedian, commentator, podcaster, but you're also more than that. You're also a father, uh, lover, you know, uh, thinker, et cetera. So I like the model of life that the ancients had, the Greeks, the Romans, right, where you would start out, and when you're young, you're just like going to school, then you're going to war, then you're running a business, then you're supposed to serve in the Senate or the government, then you become a philosopher. There's sort of this arc to life where you try your hand at everything, and, uh, as one of my friends says, uh, "Specialization is for insects," right?

Joe Rogan 2:00 Mm.

Naval Ravikant 2:00 So everyone should just be able to do everything, and so I don't believe in this model anymore of trying to focus your life down on one thing. You've got one life, just do everything you're gonna do.

Joe Rogan 2:10 Y- I couldn't agree more, and, uh, I, I think that sometimes people find certain success in whatever the endeavor is, and then they think that that is their niche-

Naval Ravikant 2:19 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:19 ... and they stick with it, and they never change, and they, they ... uh, almost of- out of fear.

Naval Ravikant 2:24 Well, it's, it's hard because, uh, there's a, you know, uh, the analogy around mountain climbing, like if you find a mountain and you start climbing it and you spend your whole life climbing it, and you get say two-thirds of the way, and then you see the peak is like way up there, but you're two-thirds of the way up. You're still really high up, but now to go the rest of the way, you're gonna have to go back down to the bottom and look for another path. Nobody wants to do that. People don't wanna start over.

Joe Rogan 2:46 Hm. Yeah.

Naval Ravikant 2:47 And it's the nature of later in life that you just don't have the time. So it's very painful to go back down and look for a new path, but that may be the best thing to do. And that's why when you look at the greatest artists, uh, and, and creators, they have this ability to start over that nobody else does. Like Elon will, you know-

Joe Rogan 3:04 Mm-hmm.

Naval Ravikant 3:04 ... be called an idiot and start over doing something brand new that he supposedly is not qualified for, or when Madonna or Paul Simon or U2 come out with a new album, their existing fans usually hate it because they've adopted a completely new style that they've learned somewhere else.

Joe Rogan 3:19 Yeah.

Naval Ravikant 3:19 And a lot of times, they'll just miss completely, so y- you have to be willing to be a fool and kind of have that beginner's mind and go back to the beginning to start over. If you're not doing that, you're just getting older.

Joe Rogan 3:29 Yeah, I mean, I don't even know if it's willing to be a fool. It's just, to me, that, the most exciting thing is to try to get better at something, to learn, uh, things. I mean, it's r- it's really exciting when you just have incremental progress in something that you're completely new to.

Naval Ravikant 3:44 Yeah, I, I live for the aha moment, that moment when you connect two things together that b- you hadn't connected together before-

Joe Rogan 3:50 Hm.

Naval Ravikant 3:50 ... and it fits nicely and solidly, and it, it kinda helps form a steel framework of understanding in your mind that you can then hang other ideas off of. That's what I live for. It's y-

Joe Rogan 4:00 Yeah.

Naval Ravikant 4:00 It's that curiosity fulfilled, and it's what little children do too. You know, my, my little son is always asking, "Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?" And I always try and answer him, and half the times I realize actually I don't really understand why. I just have a memorized answer for you-

Joe Rogan 4:13 Hm.

Naval Ravikant 4:13 ... but that's not really understanding.

Joe Rogan 4:15 Yeah, those are weird conversations, right? When you're, you're talking to your kids and you say, "Look, uh, the reality is I don't know a lot of things." (laughs)

Naval Ravikant 4:22 Yes. "I've just memorized a lot of things," yeah.

Joe Rogan 4:25 (laughs) Just, and there's certain things that you just can't know.

Naval Ravikant 4:28 Yeah, you realize that, you know, you have i- you have answers for a few things that you've thought through, then you sort of have cover-ups, like-

Joe Rogan 4:35 Mm-hmm.

Naval Ravikant 4:36 ... like trapdoors, like, "Don't go here. This is just a cover-up. I don't really know the answer to what the meaning-"

Joe Rogan 4:40 Right.

Naval Ravikant 4:40 "... of life is or how we got here."

Joe Rogan 4:42 Yes.

Naval Ravikant 4:42 And then you've got a whole bunch of memorized stuff because a lot of your, uh, a lot of intelligence these days is just the external brain power of civilization. I know it's out there. I know the answers are out there, I know how to look them up, and I've memorized some of them, and I, like I kind of understand how money works and the Federal Reserve prints it and what this government thing is, but n- not really.

Joe Rogan 4:59 Right.

Naval Ravikant 5:00 Um, so-

Joe Rogan 5:00 Not good enough to teach it in university.

Naval Ravikant 5:03 Exactly. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 5:03 Yeah. Uh, th- I think people do that with almost everything in life these days in terms of like have a, like a, a one page, a one sheet, like a brief summary-

Naval Ravikant 5:14 Right.

Joe Rogan 5:14 ... of what an, uh, th- uh, the explanation for what this very complex subject might be.

Naval Ravikant 5:18 TLDR, right?

Joe Rogan 5:19 Yes. (laughs)

Naval Ravikant 5:20 Don't, don't give me the, don't give me the lecture, give me the book. Don't give me the book, give me the blog post.

Joe Rogan 5:23 Yeah.

Naval Ravikant 5:23 Don't give me the blog post, give me the tweet. Don't give me the tweet, I just w- I, I already know. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 5:27 Yeah. I, I got really fascinated by the way you read because, uh, I thought there was something wrong with me by doing that. But you, you don't really just read a book to completion. You read, and then you pick something else up, and you just kind of go based on your whims, whatever you're interested in.

Naval Ravikant 5:44 Well, I, I was raised by my m- my ... I was raised by a single mom in New York, and she used the local library as a daycare center 'cause it was a very tough neighborhood. And so she would basically say, "When you get back from school, go straight to the library and don't come out, uh, until I pick you up late at night." So I used to basically live in the library, and I read everything. I read every magazine. I read every pictograph. I read every book. I read every map. I just ran out of stuff to read. I just read everything. So I got over this idea of that reading a large number of books or reading a book to completion as a vanity metric 'cause really-

Joe Rogan 6:16 Hm.

Naval Ravikant 6:16 ... when people are putting up photos on Twitter, Instagram of, "Look at my f-... pile of books that I'm reading.

Joe Rogan 6:20 (laughs)

Naval Ravikant 6:20 It's, it's a show-off thing, it's a signaling thing, right?

Joe Rogan 6:22 Yeah, sure.

Naval Ravikant 6:23 And, and the reality is I would rather read the best hundred books over and over again until I absorb them, rather than read all the books.

Joe Rogan 6:31 Right.

Naval Ravikant 6:31 Yeah, 'cause your, your brain has finite information, uh, in a finite space. Uh, you get enough advice, it all cancels to zero. Um, there's a lot of nonsense in books out there too. So y- I don't read anymore to complete books, I read to satisfy my genuine intellectual curiosity. And it can be anything. It could be nonsense, it could be history, it could be fiction, it could be science, it could be sci-fi. These days, it's mostly sci-fi, philosophy science 'cause that's just what I'm interested in, but I will read for understanding. So a really good book, I will flip through. I won't actually read it consecutive in order, and I won't even necessarily even finish it. I'm looking for ideas, things that I don't understand. And when I find something really interesting, I'll reflect on it, I'll research it, uh, and then when I'm bored of it, I'll drop it or I'll flip to another book. Uh, thanks to electronic books, I've got 50, 70 books open at any time in my Kindle or iBooks, and I'm just bouncing around between them. Uh, it's also a little bit of a defense mechanism to how, in modern society, we get too much information too quickly, and so our attention spans are very low. So y- you get Twitter, you get Instagram, you get Facebook, you're just used to being bombarded with information. So you can take that to... you, you can view that as a negative and be like, "I have no attention span," or you could view that as a positive, "I multitask really well and I can dig really fast. I can, if I find a thread that's interesting, I can follow it through five social networks, through the web, through the libraries, through the books, and I can really get to the bottom of this thing very quickly." It's like the Library of Alexandria that I can research at my disposal. So I, I no longer track books read or even care about books read. It's about understanding concepts.

Joe Rogan 8:09 Yeah. Th- you brought up two awesome points. First of all, the, the social media aspect of, of books and basically anything, it's like, it's such a weird way to display your life 'cause it's-

Naval Ravikant 8:20 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 8:20 ... you know, you're displaying the, the best aspects of your life in some sort of a glass case. You know, just, it's an unrealistic version of your life that you cultivate and you curate.

Naval Ravikant 8:33 And I'm, I'm as guilty of that as anybody doing things on Twitter. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 8:35 Everybody's guilty of it. I'm guilty of it too.

Naval Ravikant 8:37 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 8:37 You know? I mean, I pose with my dog every time I run. (laughs)

Naval Ravikant 8:40 (laughs) Yeah. We're always signaling, right?

Joe Rogan 8:42 Yes.

Naval Ravikant 8:43 It's like rather than really looking at yourself, you're looking at how other people look at you.

Joe Rogan 8:47 Mm-hmm.

Naval Ravikant 8:47 So it's like this one removed mental image. And it's kind of a disease-

Joe Rogan 8:51 Mm-hmm.

Naval Ravikant 8:51 ... because social media is making celebrities of all of us, and celebrities are the most miserable people in the world, right? Because they have this strong self-image that gets built up, it gets built up by compliments. Every time somebody pays you or me a compliment and we're like, "Oh, well, thank you," right? Then that builds up an image of who we are. And then one idiot comes along, one out of 10, one out of 100, and they can easily tear it down.

Joe Rogan 9:13 Mm.

Naval Ravikant 9:13 Because it doesn't take many insults to cancel out a lot of compliments. And now you're carrying around this big weighty self-image and it's just very easy to be attacked. And because you're, you're famous or you're well-known, people wanna attack you. So, uh, being a celebrity is no good.

Joe Rogan 9:27 (laughs)

Naval Ravikant 9:27 It's actually a problem. (laughs) Like, I, one of my tweets i- is, and these are all reminders to myself, is you wanna be rich and anonymous, not poor and famous.

Joe Rogan 9:35 Mm.

Naval Ravikant 9:36 Right?

Joe Rogan 9:36 There's benefits to it. Um...

Naval Ravikant 9:37 Of course, of course.

Joe Rogan 9:38 But-

Naval Ravikant 9:39 Or we wouldn't do it.

Joe Rogan 9:39 ... it has unusual problems that you don't get trained for and you really will not understand unless you experience it. You know, like I was having this conversation-

Naval Ravikant 9:49 (clears throat)

Joe Rogan 9:49 ... with my wife where we were talking about, um, people that just come up to you and they don't care what you're doing, they don't care if I'm with my daughter, if I've, I'm holding her, if I'm feeding her, if we're, you know, we're in the middle of an intense conversation, she's crying, she could be crying and some bro will come over and just immediately have to take a picture, doesn't care, his needs supersede the daughter. And my wife was saying, I, that before she knew me, she used to think that that's just part of the price of being famous, that people, people like you, that's just part of the price of being famous. And now when it interrupts her life and, you know, it interrupts the children and it interrupts friends and, you know, she, now she's like, "This is annoying. Like this is not, this is not healthy, this is not a smart way to, to interact with people." And that people have this weird challen- this weird thing that if you're, if you become famous, there's this weird challenge where people just want to come to you, especially today.

Naval Ravikant 10:46 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 10:46 'Cause if they can get a photo of you, then that boosts their social media profile. Like, "Hey, I'm sitting here with Naval. Look at that smile. Hey man, I fucking love you."

Naval Ravikant 10:55 Yeah. Anonymity is a privilege. O- on the other hand, it's self-inflicted. I mean, we brought it on ourselves.

Joe Rogan 10:59 Yes. Yeah, we- I don't think we knew what it was though.

Naval Ravikant 11:01 We, we did. But we carry on, so... (laughs)

Joe Rogan 11:04 Yeah. (laughs)

Naval Ravikant 11:04 It tells us-

Joe Rogan 11:04 Yeah.

Naval Ravikant 11:04 ... we are getting something out of it. So I... you know-

Joe Rogan 11:06 Yeah.

Naval Ravikant 11:06 ... there are times when someone will approach me in public and I'm a little resentful, and-

Joe Rogan 11:10 Mm-hmm.

Naval Ravikant 11:10 ... there are other times when I'm just like, "Actually, I'm really grateful that, you know, I worked for this. I got this."

Joe Rogan 11:15 Right.

Naval Ravikant 11:15 "This is the payoff. Just embrace it. Smile, grin and bear it. Meet someone new."

Joe Rogan 11:18 But you have a different sort of celebrity too, right? You're, you're a hero amongst investors and amongst, I mean, you've just been a part of-

Naval Ravikant 11:26 I'm a hero among young male geeks. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 11:29 (laughs)

Naval Ravikant 11:29 Which is-

Joe Rogan 11:30 Those are some of my favorite people.

Naval Ravikant 11:31 Right. But that's not the kind of celebrity I think most people set out to get, especially most guys.

Joe Rogan 11:36 Right, right, right, right.

Naval Ravikant 11:36 You want the cute females, you know? (laughs)

Joe Rogan 11:37 Yeah, you want the chicks.

Naval Ravikant 11:39 Yeah. I, I look at my brief little YouTube clips, I have a tiny little podcast going now, and it's like 95% male. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 11:47 Oh, I'm sure. Yeah.

Naval Ravikant 11:48 I mean the, yeah.

Joe Rogan 11:48 This, this is very highly...

Naval Ravikant 11:50 18 to 35, right?

Joe Rogan 11:51 Yeah. We, what do we, what is the numbers?

Narrator 11:53 Same thing.

Joe Rogan 11:53 It's in, yeah, it's in the 90s.

Naval Ravikant 11:55 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 11:55 Um, you, you did a one, you do that one very small podcast where you just have small, like three or four minute clips.

Naval Ravikant 12:03 Yeah. So what it was, I, I did a tweet storm, uh, called How To Get Rich Without Getting Lucky. And it got pretty popular on Twitter. Uh, and, uh, it's really about wealth creation, I just used a clickbaity title. And it's trying to basically lay out timeless principles of wealth creation that if you absorb them, you become the kind of person who can create wealth, create a business, make money.Uh, and my theory behind that is, like, there are three things everybody wants. There's actually more than three, but let's, let's just start with three, the three basics. Everybody wants to be wealthy, everybody wants to be happy, and everybody wants to be fit. And I know there's a lot of virtue signaling that goes on, like we don't want money and, you know, I don't care about being happy and happiness is for stupid people.

Joe Rogan 12:44 Mm-hmm.

Naval Ravikant 12:44 But let's face it, like, you wanna be rich and happy and healthy.

Joe Rogan 12:46 Yeah.

Naval Ravikant 12:46 Like, that's the trifecta. Now of course you also want an internally calm state of mind, you want a loving household. So there are other things that come into it, but those three, I think they can actually be taught, right? And fitness, I'm not gonna teach. There are a lot of people who you've had on here, including yourself, who know a heck of a lot more about fitness and health than I do. Um, but I was born poor and miserable, and, uh, I'm now pretty well off and I'm very happy. Uh, and I don't... And I worked at those, and so I've learned a few things. There are some principles. And so I try to lay them out, but in a timeless manner, where you can kind of figure it out yourself. 'Cause at the end of the day, I can't really teach anything.

Joe Rogan 13:23 Mm-hmm.

Naval Ravikant 13:23 I can only inspire you and maybe give you a few hooks so you can remember things when they happen or put, put a name to them. So this podcast actually ended up explaining this tweet storm. So it was a tweet storm with like 36, 38 tweets, got very famous, got translated into dozens of languages. Um, and these were principles that I came up with for myself when I was really young, around 13, 14. Uh, and I'd been carrying them in my head for 30 years.

Joe Rogan 13:49 Mm-hmm.

Naval Ravikant 13:49 And I'd been sort of living them, and over time I just realized, like, sadly or fortunately, the thing that I got really good at was looking at businesses and figuring out the point of maximum leverage to actually create wealth and capture some of that, uh, and do it in a very long term kind of way. Not, not the, you know, banker-

Joe Rogan 14:07 Mm-hmm.

Naval Ravikant 14:07 ... crash the economy (laughs) -

Joe Rogan 14:09 Right, right.

Naval Ravikant 14:09 ... get bailed out kind of way. But, you know, build businesses and help people and, uh, provide value kind of way, uh, especially when applied to modern technology and leverage in this age of infinite leverage that we live in. Uh, so the podcast is just explaining each tweet, so these are little three, four, five minute snippets. Uh, I don't like to say the same thing twice. Uh, I don't like to explain in detail. Uh, I just d- I, I feel like if you have something original and interesting to say, you should say it. Otherwise, it's probably been said better. So that podcast tries to be information dense. It tries to be very concise. It tries to be high impact. It tries to be timeless, uh, and it has all the information I think you need, the principles, that if you absorb these and you work hard, over 10 years you'll get what you want. Um, so I've got the one on wealth creation. I'm going to attempt to do one on, happiness is a big word, but, you know, happiness and inner peace and calm and all that. Because what you want is, you don't want to be the guy who succeeds in life while being high strung, high stress, and unhappy-

Joe Rogan 15:10 Mm-hmm.

Naval Ravikant 15:10 ... and leaving a trail of emotional wreckage with you and your loved ones.

Joe Rogan 15:13 Which is more common than not.

Naval Ravikant 15:15 Because you gotta focus-

Joe Rogan 15:16 Yes.

Naval Ravikant 15:16 ... and it's very hard to be great at everything. You wanna be the guy or the gal who gets there calmly, you know, quietly, uh, without struggle.

Joe Rogan 15:26 Mm-hmm.

Naval Ravikant 15:26 Uh, you wanna be the person who's the, when there's a crisis going on, you wanna be the calmest, coolest cucumber in the room, who still also figures out the correct answer.

Joe Rogan 15:35 Mm. If you can be. You were-

Naval Ravikant 15:37 Why not?

Joe Rogan 15:38 You, one of the things that you were saying is that you feel like happiness is something that you can learn, and then you can teach yourself to be happy even just by adopting the mindset that you are a happy person and proclaiming that to your friends. And so you've sort of developed a social contract, "I'm a happy person," and then, "Well, I have to live up to that."

Naval Ravikant 15:57 (laughs) Yeah, the, I've got hundreds of techniques. Uh, but the most-

Joe Rogan 16:00 How did you develop that one?

Naval Ravikant 16:01 Oh, well, there's just a, there's social consistency, right? Humans have a need to be highly consistent with their past pronouncements.

Joe Rogan 16:10 Mm-hmm.

Naval Ravikant 16:10 So the way I started my first tech company was I was in a, in, working inside a larger organization, and I told everybody that I was gonna go start a company. I was like, "I hate this place. I'm gonna do my own thing. I'm gonna be a successful entrepreneur." Six months pass, nine months pass, then people start going, "You're still here? I thought you were gonna go start a company. What's-"

Joe Rogan 16:28 Hmm.

Naval Ravikant 16:29 "... are you, are you lying?"

Joe Rogan 16:30 Yeah, right.

Naval Ravikant 16:30 Right? That was the implication. So we kind of know this, right? Social contracts are very powerful. Like if you wanna give up drinking, right, and you're not serious about it, you'll say, "I'm gonna cut back. I'm gonna have only one drink a night. I'm gonna only drink on weekends," you tell yourself. But if you're serious, you'll announce it on Facebook. You'll tell-

Joe Rogan 16:47 Hmm.

Naval Ravikant 16:47 ... all your friends. You'll tell your wife. You'll say, "I'm done drinking. I'm throwing everything out of the house. You will never see me drink again." When you say that, you know you're serious. So I think a lot of these are choices that we make, and happiness is just one of those choices. Uh, and this is unpopular to say, 'cause there are people who are actually depressed, you know, chemically or what have you, and there are people who don't believe that it's possible because then it creates a responsibility on them. It says, "Oh, now if I'm, you're saying if I'm not happy, that's my fault." I'm not saying that, but I'm saying that just like fitness can be a choice, health can be a choice, nutrition can be a choice, working hard and making money can be a choice, happiness is also a choice. If you're so smart, how come you aren't happy?

Joe Rogan 17:28 Mm-hmm.

Naval Ravikant 17:28 How come you haven't figured that out? That's my challenge to all the people who think they're so smart and so capable. If you're so smart and capable, why can't you change this?

Joe Rogan 17:37 Mm. There are a bunch of people though that actually take pleasure in being miserable. There, there's something about the pursuit of excellence and of success that supersedes all other pursuits, that in, in their eyes it, it is, it is the, the peak, the pinnacle, the most important thing.

Naval Ravikant 17:59 It's not a trade-off.

Joe Rogan 18:00 Hmm.

Naval Ravikant 18:01 I would argue that if... Now when I say happy, uh, happy is one of those words that means a zillion different things.

Joe Rogan 18:06 Right.

Naval Ravikant 18:06 It's like love, right? What does that mean?

Joe Rogan 18:08 Mm-hmm. Right, I love cheese. Yeah.

Naval Ravikant 18:09 And, and... Yeah, I'm gonna define it a little bit more tightly. Right? So, uh, let's go back to desire. Right? This is old, old Buddhist wisdom. I'm not saying anything original. But desire to me is a contract that you make with yourself to be unhappy until you get what you want.

Narrator 18:26 Mm.

Naval Ravikant 18:26 Okay? And I keep that in front of mind, so when I'm unhappy about something, I look for, "What is the underlying desire that I have that's not being fulfilled?" It's okay to have desires. You're a biological creature. You're put on this Earth, you have to do something, you have to have desires, you have a mission. But don't have too many. Don't pick them up unconsciously. Don't pick them up randomly. Don't have thousands of them. "My coffee is too cold." "Doesn't taste quite right." "I'm not sitting perfectly. Oh, I wish it were warmer." Uh, you know, uh, "My dog," you know, "pooped in the lawn. I didn't like that." Whatever it is, pick your one overwhelming desire, and it's okay to suffer over that one. But on all the others, you wanna let them go so you can be calm and peaceful and relaxed. And then you'll perform a better job.

Narrator 19:06 Mm.

Naval Ravikant 19:07 Most people, when you're unhappy, like a depressed person, it's not that they have a very clear, calm mind, they're too busy in their mind. Their sense of self is too strong. They're sitting indoors all the time, their mind's working, working, working. They're thinking too much. Well, if you wanna be a high-performance athlete, how good of an athlete are you gonna be if you're always having epileptic seizures? If you're always, like, twitching and running around and, like, jumping, and your, your, your limbs are flailing out of control? The same way, if you wanna be effective in business, you need a clear, calm, cool, collected mind. Warren Buffett plays bridge all day long and goes for walks in the sun. He doesn't sit around, like, constantly loading his brain with nonstop information and, and, and getting worked up about every little thing. We live in an age of infinite leverage. What I mean by that is that your actions can be multiplied a thousandfold either by broadcasting a podcast or by investing capital or by having people work for you or by writing code. So because of that, the impacts of good decision-making are much higher than they used to be, because now you can influence thousands or millions of people through your decisions or your code. So, a clear mind leads to better judgment, leads to better outcome. So a happy, calm, peaceful person will make better decisions and have better outcomes. So if you want to operate at peak performance, you have to learn how to tame your mind, just like you have to learn how to tame your body.

Narrator 20:30 I love what you're saying. Um, Warren Buffett might not be the best example 'cause he drinks, like, I think six Coca-Colas a day, and he eats mostly McDonald's.

Naval Ravikant 20:38 And he's still alive somehow-

Narrator 20:39 It's amazing.

Naval Ravikant 20:39 ... so that shows you that low stress is more important than much-

Narrator 20:41 Yeah, but he looks like shit. Like, how old is he?

Naval Ravikant 20:45 (laughs)

Narrator 20:45 I mean, he's, he's a fairly old man, right?

Naval Ravikant 20:46 Well, Charlie Munger's, I think, in his 90s, right?

Narrator 20:48 Yeah.

Naval Ravikant 20:49 He's made it really far.

Narrator 20:50 I wonder what Warren's doing, you know? I mean, uh, just, he's gotta know that's bad for him, but he-

Naval Ravikant 20:55 It's terrible.

Narrator 20:55 ... he doesn't care.

Naval Ravikant 20:56 He doesn't care. I think he's just low-stress.

Narrator 20:58 Yeah.

Naval Ravikant 20:58 Stress is the big killer.

Narrator 20:59 Right, so he just enjoys that Coca-Cola.

Naval Ravikant 21:01 Yeah.

Narrator 21:01 And that's pro- m- maybe there is a trade-off, right? Like, maybe him enjoying that junk food and that Coke just, "Ah."

Naval Ravikant 21:08 Ah.

Narrator 21:08 Like, that, that pleasing of the mind is maybe better than him just eating wheatgrass shots and-

Naval Ravikant 21:14 Yeah, and being miserable.

Narrator 21:15 ... kale salads and-

Naval Ravikant 21:16 Yeah. ... just being, uh, yeah, just super-

Narrator 21:18 I-

Naval Ravikant 21:18 ... worked up about everything.

Narrator 21:19 It's like, if you need your glass of red wine to de-stress and calm down, that's probably better than you flying off the rails.

Naval Ravikant 21:24 Right, right. And I think that that's applicable not just in business, but in probably any pursuit. And I like what you're saying about, allow that one thing to be your obsession, but everything else just, you know, learn how to-

Narrator 21:38 Yeah.

Naval Ravikant 21:38 ... learn how to let things go. Pick your battles.

Narrator 21:40 An- and, we like to think that (clears throat) , we, we like to view the world as linear, which is (clears throat) "I'm gonna put in eight hours of work. I'm gonna get back eight hours of output," right?

Naval Ravikant 21:51 Mm-hmm.

Narrator 21:52 Doesn't work that way. The guy running the corner grocery store is working just as hard or harder than you and me. How much output is he getting? What you do, who you do it with, how you do it, way more important than how hard you work, right?

Naval Ravikant 22:03 Mm.

Narrator 22:03 Outputs are non-linear based on the quality of the work that you put in. The right way to work is like a lion. You don't, you and I are not like cows, we're not meant to graze all day, right?

Naval Ravikant 22:14 Mm-hmm.

Narrator 22:14 We're meant to hunt like lions. We're closer to carnivores in our omnivorous development than we are to herbivores. Um, we c-

Naval Ravikant 22:20 Don't tell vegans that.

Narrator 22:21 Yeah, sorry (laughs) . Look, look, I wish all that stuff worked. I don't wanna eat meat. Future generation will look back at us as worse than slavers, you know, because of the holocausts we're committing with the animals, but they all have artificial meats that- Mm.

Naval Ravikant 22:32 ... taste even more healthier as, uh, better than the real thing, so-

Narrator 22:36 Allegedly.

Naval Ravikant 22:37 Allegedly. But, so as a, as a modern knowledge worker athlete, as an intellectual athlete, you want to function like an athlete, which means you train hard, then you sprint, then you rest, then you reassess, you get your feedback loop, then you train some more, then you sprint again, then you rest, then you reassess. This idea that you're gonna have linear output just by cranking every day at the same amount of time, sa- the- that's, that's machines, you know?

Narrator 23:05 Mm-hmm.

Naval Ravikant 23:05 Machines should be working 9:00 to 5:00. Humans sh- are not meant to work 9:00 to f- are not meant to work 9:00 to 5:00.

Narrator 23:10 No, I agree wholeheartedly, but it's see, it, it, for people that are working for someone, there's not really that option.

Naval Ravikant 23:18 So that's unfortunately the, the rub, right? That-

Narrator 23:20 Yeah.

Naval Ravikant 23:20 ... that's kind of where my tweet storm starts, which is, first of all, the first thing if you're gonna make money is that you're not gonna get rich renting out your time. Even lawyers and doctors who are charging $300, $400, or $500 an hour, they're not getting rich 'cause their lifestyle's slowly ramping up along-

Narrator 23:35 Yes.

Naval Ravikant 23:35 ... with their income, and they're not saving enough, uh, they, they just don't have that ability to retire.

Narrator 23:41 Mm-hmm.

Naval Ravikant 23:41 So the first thing you have to do is you have to own a piece of a business. You need to have equity, either as an owner, an investor, shareholder, uh, or a brand that you're building that accrues to you to gain your financial freedom.

Narrator 23:54 Yeah, and, uh, I was really fascinated by another thing that you were bringing up about working for yourself, that you feel that, in the future, whether it's 50 or 100 years from now, virtually everyone is going to be working for themselves. And I believe the way you put it is that...

Joe Rogan 24:09 ... the information age is gonna reverse the industrial age.

Naval Ravikant 24:13 Yeah. If you go back to hunter-gatherer times, how we evolved, we basically worked for ourselves. We communicated and cooperated within tribes, but each hunter, each gatherer stood on their own and then combined their resources with the family unit. But there was no boss hierarchy, hierarchy, hierarchy-

Joe Rogan 24:27 Hmm. Yeah.

Naval Ravikant 24:27 ... where you're like the third middle manager down. Uh, in the farming age, we became a little bit more hierarchical as we had to run farms, but even those were still mostly family farms. It's industrial work with factories that sort of created this model of thousands of people working together on one thing and having bosses and schedules and times to show up. The reality is if you have to go... I don't care how rich you are, I don't care whether you're like a top Wall Street banker, if you have to go... if somebody has to tell you- if somebody can tell you when to be at work and what to wear and how to behave, you're not a free person.

Joe Rogan 25:03 Hmm.

Naval Ravikant 25:03 You're not actually rich. So we're in this model now where we think it's all about employment and jobs, and intrinsic in that is that I have to work for somebody else. But the information age is breaking that down. So Ronald Coase is an economist who has this Coase theorem, a very famous theorem, but it basically just talks about why is a company the size that it is. Why is a company one person instead of 10 people instead of 100 instead of 1,000? And it has to do with the internal transaction costs versus the external transaction costs. Let's say I wanna do something. Uh, let's say I'm building a house and I need someone to come in and provide the lumber from a developer, right? Do I want that to be part of my company or do I want that to be an external provider? A lot of it just depends on how hard it is to do that transaction with someone externally versus internally. If it's too hard to keep doing the contract every time externally, I'll bring that in-house. If it's easy to do externally and it's a one-off kind of thing, I'd rather keep it out of the house. Well, information technology is making it easier and easier to do these transactions externally. It's becoming much easier to communicate with people, gig economy. I can send you small amounts of money. I can hire you through an app. I can rate you afterwards. So we are seeing an atomization of the firm. We're seeing the optimal size of the firm shrinking. It's most obvious in Silicon Valley, tons and tons of startups constantly coming up and shaving off little pieces of businesses from large companies and turning them into huge markets. So what looked like the small little vacation rental market on Craigslist is now suddenly blown up into Airbnb.

Joe Rogan 26:34 Hmm.

Naval Ravikant 26:35 It's just one example. But-

Joe Rogan 26:36 That's a great example.

Naval Ravikant 26:37 But what I think we're going to see is whether it's 10, 20, 50, 100 years from now, high-quality work will be available. We're not talking about now driving an Uber. We're talking about super high-quality work will be available in a gig fashion, where you'll wake up in the morning, your phone will buzz, and you'll have five different jobs from people who have worked with you in the past or have been referred to you. It's kind of like how Hollywood already works a little bit with how they organize for a project. You decide whether to take the project or not. The contract is right there on the spot. You get paid a certain amount. You get rated every day or every week. You get the money delivered. And then when you're done working, you turn it off and you go to Tahiti or wherever you wanna spend the next three months. And I think the smart people have already started figuring out that the internet enables this and they're starting to work more and more remotely on their own schedule, on their own time, on their own place, with their own friends, in their own way. And that's actually how we are the most productive. So the information revolution, by making it easier to communicate, connect, and cooperate, is allowing us to go back to working for ourselves. And that is my ultimate dream. Even when I run a company and I have employees, I always tell those people, "Hey, I'm gonna help you start your company when you're ready," because I think that's the highest calling. Maybe not everybody will get there, but it would be fine if we were... Even working in a 10-person company or 20-person company is way better than working in a 1,000-person company or 10,000-person company. So this idea that we're all factory like cogs in a machine who are specialized and have to do things by rote memorization or instruction is gonna go away, and we're gonna go back to being small groups of creative bands of individuals setting out to do missions. And when those missions are done, we collect our money, we get rated, and then we rest and reassess until we're ready for the next sprint.

Joe Rogan 28:19 Has there ever been a study done on happiness, uh, as it regards to the size of companies?

Naval Ravikant 28:25 Not that I'm aware, but to me it's obvious. It's just obvious.

Joe Rogan 28:28 Hmm.

Naval Ravikant 28:28 The smaller the company, the happier you're gonna be, the more human your relations are-

Joe Rogan 28:31 Yeah.

Naval Ravikant 28:31 ... the less you have rules to operate under, the more flexible, the more creative, uh, the- the more you can be treated like a human just 'cause you're able to do multiple things.

Joe Rogan 28:39 Yeah. Um, this brings me to what, uh, is a, a subject that keeps getting brought up nowadays is universal basic income, uh, with the oncoming-

Naval Ravikant 28:50 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 28:50 ... apocalypse of automation.

Naval Ravikant 28:52 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 28:52 This is how it's being portrayed by Andrew Yang, who's running for president. I sat down and talked with him about it. He's very compelling and he's a very smart guy.

Naval Ravikant 28:59 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 28:59 And he's an entrepreneur himself. And when he starts talking about automation and how it's going to just eliminate massive amounts of jobs and leave people stranded, what do... Do you... When... And I know you're a guy who thinks about the future and pro-

Naval Ravikant 29:11 I'm gonna take the unpopular-

Joe Rogan 29:13 ... prognosticators...

Naval Ravikant 29:13 ... point of view on this.

Joe Rogan 29:14 Okay.

Naval Ravikant 29:14 I don't... I think it's a non-solution to a non-problem.

Joe Rogan 29:17 Hmm.

Naval Ravikant 29:17 Um...

Joe Rogan 29:18 Ooh.

Naval Ravikant 29:18 And I mean that in the sense that automation has been happening since the dawn of time.

Joe Rogan 29:22 Mm-hmm.

Naval Ravikant 29:22 I mean, when electricity came along, that put a lot of people out of work. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 29:25 Did it?

Naval Ravikant 29:25 Right? A lot of people carrying buckets of water and, you know, lighting lamps and all those kinds of things.

Joe Rogan 29:30 And this was the concern with factories as well, right?

Naval Ravikant 29:32 Yeah, abs- everything. Literally every single thing that comes along.

Joe Rogan 29:35 Even the printing press, right?

Naval Ravikant 29:36 Absolutely.

Joe Rogan 29:36 Sure.

Naval Ravikant 29:36 And what it does is it frees people up for new creative work. So the question is not, is automation going to eliminate jobs? There is no finite number of jobs. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 29:44 Mm-hmm. Right.

Naval Ravikant 29:45 We're not, like, sitting around dividing up the same jobs that were around since the Stone Age.

Joe Rogan 29:49 (laughs)

Naval Ravikant 29:49 So obviously new jobs are being created and they're usually better jobs, more creative jobs. So the question is, how quickly is this transition going to happen and what kinds of jobs will be eliminated and what kinds of jobs will be created? It's impossible looking forward to predict what kinds of jobs will be created. If I told you 10 years ago that podcaster was gonna be a job or that, uh, you know, playing video games is gonna be a job or commentating on video games is gonna be a job, you would have laughed me out of the room.

Joe Rogan 30:15 Yeah.

Naval Ravikant 30:15 Those are nonsense jobs. But yet here we are. So society will always create new jobs. Civilization creates new jobs, but it's impossible to predict what those jobs are. So the question is how quickly is that transition happening?Well, the reality is even though everybody keeps talking about this automation apocalypse, we're at a record low unemployment. Explain that. Where's the transition?

Joe Rogan 30:37 Donald Trump, that's how- (laughs)

Naval Ravikant 30:39 All I'm saying is, it's- it's- it's... I don't see it in the numbers, I don't see it actually happening.

Joe Rogan 30:44 Right.

Naval Ravikant 30:44 The question is, how quickly can you retrain people? So it's an education problem. The problem with UBI, there's a couple of problems with UBI. One is, you're creating a straight... uh, you're creating a slippery slide transfer straight into socialism, right?

Joe Rogan 30:59 Mm.

Naval Ravikant 30:59 The moment people can start voting themselves money, combined with a democracy-

Joe Rogan 31:03 Right.

Naval Ravikant 31:03 ... then it's just a matter of time before the bottom 51 votes themselves are everything to the top 49.

Joe Rogan 31:07 Yes.

Naval Ravikant 31:07 And y- it just- it- it... and- and by the way, slippery slope fallacy is not a fallacy. I know- I know people like saying that, but they haven't thought it through. Um, but the moment you start having a direct transfer mechanism like that in a democracy, you're basically doing away with capitalism, which is the engine of economic growth. You're also forcing the entrepreneurs out or telling them not to come here. Uh, the estimate I saw for 15K a year, uh, basic income for everybody would be three quarters of current GDP. And of course, GDP would shrink in response as all the entrepreneurs fled. So you would essentially bankrupt the country. Uh, another issue with UBI is that people who are down on their luck, they're not looking for handouts. It's not just about money, it's also about status, it's about meaning. And the moment I start giving money to you and put you on the dole, I've lowered your status. I've made you a second-class citizen. So I have to give you meaning, and meaning comes from education and capability. I have- you have to teach a man to fish, not to basically throw your rotting leftover carcasses at him and say, "Here, eat the scraps."

Joe Rogan 32:05 Mm.

Naval Ravikant 32:06 So it doesn't solve the meaning problem. And lastly, it's nonsense to hand 15K out to everybody. You wanna means test people, there's no reason to give it to you and me. So you end up back towards the welfare system where you do have to figure out who needs it and who doesn't. So I think the better route is that we actually establish a set of basic substance services that you have to have, and we provide those in abundance through technology-based automation. So get basic housing, get basic food, get basic transportation, get high- high-speed internet access, get a phone in your pocket. Those are the kinds of things you wanna give people. Um, and finally in terms of the rate of automation, I think we can educate people very quickly. One of the myths that we have today is that adults can't be re-educated. We view education as this thing where you go to school, you come out when you're out of college and you're done, no more education. Well, that's wrong. You have all these great online boot camps and coding schools coming up. There are ones that'll even pay you to go there now. Um, you can educate people en masse, and you can

Naval Ravikant 33:06 educate them in the creative professions. People who are talking about AI automating programming have never really written serious code. Uh, coding is thinking, it's automatic structured thinking. An AI that can program as well or better than humans is an AI that just took over the world. That's Endgame, that's the end of the human species. Uh, and I can give you arguments why I don't think that's coming either. Um, people who are think... and- and I know I take the opposite side from some very famous people in this debate, but we're nowhere near close to general AI, not in our lifetimes. You don't have to worry about it.

Joe Rogan 33:39 Even in our lifetimes? Really?

Naval Ravikant 33:41 It's so overblown. Uh, it's- it's another... it's a combination of Cassandra complex, you know, it's fun to talk about the end of the world-

Joe Rogan 33:49 Mm-hmm.

Naval Ravikant 33:49 ... um, combined with a God complex, like people who have lost religion so they're looking for meaning in some kind of end of history.

Joe Rogan 33:56 Right, right.

Naval Ravikant 33:57 Um, the reason why I don't think AI is coming anytime soon is because a lot of the advances in so-called AI today are what we call narrow AI. They're really in pattern recognition, machine learning to figure out, like, what is that object on the screen or how do you find this signal in all of that noise. There's nothing approaching what we call creative thinking. Uh, to actually model general intelligence, you run into all kinds of problems. First, we don't know how the brain works at all. Number two, we've never even modeled a paramecium or an amoeba, let alone a human brain. Number three, there's this assumption that all of the, uh, computation is going on at the cellular level, at the neuron level, whereas nature is very parsimonious, it uses everything at its disposal. There's a lot of machinery inside the cell that is doing calculations that is intelligent that isn't accounted for, and the best estimates are it would take 50 years of Moore's Law before we can simulate what's going on inside a cell near perfectly, and probably 100 years before we can build a brain that can simulate inside the cells. So putting it at saying that I'm just gonna model neuron as on or off and then use that to build a human brain is overly simplistic. Furthermore, I would posit there's no such thing as general intelligence. Every intelligence is contextual within the context of the environment that it's in, so you have to evolve an environment around it. So I think a lot of people who are peddling general AI, the burden of proof is on them. I haven't seen anything that would lead me to indicate we're approaching general AI. Instead we're solving deterministic, closed-set finite problems using large amounts of data, but it's not sexy to talk about that.

Joe Rogan 35:25 If you- you're talking about mirroring the actual abilities of cells or are you talking about recreating the actual mechanism? Like what- what- what is-

Naval Ravikant 35:36 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 35:36 ... going on inside cells and- and biological organisms?

Naval Ravikant 35:40 Yeah, we just don't know how intelligence works.

Joe Rogan 35:43 Right, we don't know what consciousness i-

Naval Ravikant 35:44 We have no idea. So most of the AI approaches basically say we're gonna try and model how the brain works-

Joe Rogan 35:51 Mm-hmm.

Naval Ravikant 35:51 ... but they model at the neuron level, which is saying this neuron's on, that neuron's off-

Joe Rogan 35:55 Right.

Naval Ravikant 35:55 ... they're combining their signal. But I'm saying i- the neuron is a cell. Inside the cell, there's all this machinery going on that's operating the neuron that is also part of the intelligence apparatus. You can't just ignore that and abstract that out. You have to model it down to the in- inside the cell level.

Joe Rogan 36:11 It's also a part of the biological organism itself.

Naval Ravikant 36:14 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 36:14 And- and it has all these needs that, you know, the biological organism has to have food and rest and-

Naval Ravikant 36:20 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 36:21 ... there's- there's a balance going on. But when you eliminate all that, when there is none of that-

Naval Ravikant 36:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 36:24 ... and it's just calculations-... and we get to a point where it's just this thing that we've created, whether you call it a computer, whether, it doesn't have to be-

Naval Ravikant 36:33 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 36:34 ... a moving thing, even. But a thing that you've created that stores virtually all the information that's available in the world. Sto- stores all of the patterns of all the thinking of all the great people that have ever lived, all the, the writers, all the people that have ever published anything, all the people that have ever spoken any words. Stores all of their points, all of their counterpoints, all their contradictions.

Naval Ravikant 36:58 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 36:59 Applies logic and reason, and some sort of sense of the future, and starts improving upon these patterns, and then starts acting on its own-

Naval Ravikant 37:13 Right.

Joe Rogan 37:13 ... based on the information that it's been provided with.

Naval Ravikant 37:15 We're s- well, first you would have to actually (clears throat) simulate a structure of the human brain that can hold all that information. You're basically talking about tens of thousands of brains worth of information.

Joe Rogan 37:25 Right.

Naval Ravikant 37:25 We can't even build one brain in the next decade, or two, or three.

Joe Rogan 37:28 Well, in terms of-

Naval Ravikant 37:29 You know?

Joe Rogan 37:29 ... an actual physical brain, yes. But what about something that recreates the abilities of a brain?

Naval Ravikant 37:35 Th- like I said, nature is parsimonious. So we've got this 3-pound wetware object-

Joe Rogan 37:39 Mm-hmm.

Naval Ravikant 37:40 ... that can hold all this data. Nature has been very efficient in evolving kind of how we get there. I, I, I just don't think computers are anywhere close to that, like that it can hold that amount of data with that complexity, with like the holographic structure of the brain where it can recall in many, many different ways.

Joe Rogan 37:56 Mm-hmm.

Naval Ravikant 37:57 Uh, and then I don't think you can evolve a creature to be intelligent outside of the boundaries of, of feedback in a real medium. Like if you evolved, if you raised a human being in a concrete cell with no input from the outside, they wouldn't have any feedback from the real world.

Joe Rogan 38:12 Right.

Naval Ravikant 38:12 They wouldn't evolve properly. So I think just dumping information into, into a thing isn't enough. It has to have an environment to operate in to get feedback from. It needs to have context.

Joe Rogan 38:23 But isn't that biological? I mean, what-

Naval Ravikant 38:25 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 38:25 ... if you, if you have just the, all the information that people have accumulated-

Naval Ravikant 38:30 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 38:30 ... and the lessons that people have learned, and you program that into the computer ... Like if, if we-

Naval Ravikant 38:34 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 38:34 ... can take a computer that can beat someone at chess, the, the real question was, well, can we make some sort of an artificial intelligence that can beat someone at Go, which is far more complex-

Naval Ravikant 38:43 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 38:43 ... than chess. They figured out how to do that too, and that was a giant shock, right? The-

Naval Ravikant 38:47 These are still manmade, very closed, bounded games.

Joe Rogan 38:52 Mm-hmm.

Naval Ravikant 38:52 They're, they're not, they're not on the road to the unbounded game of life. They are completely artificial.

Joe Rogan 38:59 But is, didn't Go ... Didn't that give you like a little bit of a pause?

Naval Ravikant 39:04 A little bit. Go is not ... Go or League of Legends or Fortnite, they're not completely deterministic.

Joe Rogan 39:09 Right.

Naval Ravikant 39:10 But they're still very artificial, very bounded games. Being good at Go doesn't mean that you can then suddenly figure out how to write great poetry.

Joe Rogan 39:17 Right.

Naval Ravikant 39:18 Uh-

Joe Rogan 39:18 The creativity, for sure, is something that's very-

Naval Ravikant 39:20 So creativity is the last frontier.

Joe Rogan 39:22 Hmm.

Naval Ravikant 39:22 So I do believe that automation over a long enough period of time will replace every non-creative job.

Joe Rogan 39:27 Hmm.

Naval Ravikant 39:28 Or every non-creative work. But that's great news. That means that all of our basic needs are taken care of, and what remains for us is to be creative, which is really what every human wants.

Joe Rogan 39:38 Yeah.

Naval Ravikant 39:39 I mean, what are you doing right now?

Joe Rogan 39:40 Yeah.

Naval Ravikant 39:40 This is a creative job.

Joe Rogan 39:41 Sure.

Naval Ravikant 39:42 Right?

Joe Rogan 39:42 Um, that, that brings us back to the idea of meaning and universal basic income. Uh, I think the idea of giving someone $15,000 a year, uh, doesn't necessarily cause what every- what everyone would worry about is people being on the dole. You would have a bunch of listless people out there with no meaning in life. But the idea is that $15,000 a year, and I'm not necessarily sure-

Naval Ravikant 40:07 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 40:07 ... I agree with this, I'm not, I'm not even-

Naval Ravikant 40:08 Yeah, sure.

Joe Rogan 40:08 ... endorsing this, but that $15,000 a year would just provide you with the necessities to get by in life. It would give you food. It would give you shelter.

Naval Ravikant 40:16 Well, it's not gonna stop at 15 because the moment people are like, "I'm getting 15," like w- they got-

Joe Rogan 40:20 Then people would demand more.

Naval Ravikant 40:21 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 40:21 Bernie Sanders would be on there, "I want-"

Naval Ravikant 40:23 16, 17-

Joe Rogan 40:24 "... $45,000 a year."

Naval Ravikant 40:26 ... 18, 19.

Joe Rogan 40:26 "These companies are too big." Yeah, that could happen.

Naval Ravikant 40:28 It doesn't, it doesn't stop.

Joe Rogan 40:29 So-

Naval Ravikant 40:29 It just, it just goes all the way to bankruptcy. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 40:31 The concern is the slide to socialism.

Naval Ravikant 40:34 It's obvious.

Joe Rogan 40:35 Yeah.

Naval Ravikant 40:35 I mean, heck, if I was on ... if I was not working and I was getting my 15 a year, I would happily work for the guy who would give me 20 or 25. It's just common sense. You'd be stupid not to.

Joe Rogan 40:43 What do you say to the people that don't believe that there is such a thing of ethical- as ethical or compassionate capitalism? There, there's many people today that are espousing Marxism and they're espousing some sort of a socialist society where they believe that capitalism has screwed people over and, uh, eliminated-

Naval Ravikant 41:01 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 41:02 ... the middle class and r-

Naval Ravikant 41:03 There, there are absolutely problems with capitalism. I think monopolies are a problem.

Joe Rogan 41:06 Mm-hmm.

Naval Ravikant 41:07 Uh, I think that, uh, crony capitalism is a problem, that the government, you know, kinda gets in bed with them and sort of forces things. Uh, I think the bankers have really, you know, raped society and the rest of us are suffering for it.

Joe Rogan 41:18 Literally.

Naval Ravikant 41:18 Yeah, they, they've essentially taken h- huge risks where they privatize the gains and they socialize the losses. So when it fails, they basically get bailed out and bankrupt everybody else. Uh, so capitalism has gotten a really bad name. Let's talk about its free exchange, free markets. Free markets and free exchange are intrinsic to humans, from when the first person started a fire and somebody came along with a deer and said, "Hey, if I cook my deer on your fire, I'll share some of it with you." Right? So specializational labor, we trade. That's built into the human species. Basic math comes from accounting, keeping track of debts and credits and so on. We need to be able to engage in free trade. The correct criticism of capitalism is when it does not provide equal opportunity. And so we should always strive to provide equal opportunity. But people confuse that with equal outcome.

Joe Rogan 42:06 Mm-hmm.

Naval Ravikant 42:06 When you have equal outcome, that can only be enforced through violence because different people, free people make different choices. And when they make different choices, they have different outcomes. And if you don't let them suffer the consequences of bad choices or reap the rewards from good choices, then you are forcibly redistributing through violence. It's interesting that there isn't ... that there are no-... socialist, working socialist examples that exist without violence.

Joe Rogan 42:31 Hmm.

Naval Ravikant 42:31 You basically need someone to show up with a gun and say, "Okay, you're not allowed to do that. You hand this over to that person." So one of the reasons why I do this podcast is because I believe everybody can be wealthy, everybody. It's not a zero-sum game, it is a positive-sum game. You create something brand new, you exchange it with me for something brand new I've created. There's higher utility for both of us. The sum of the value created is positive. It's not like status, where it's like You're higher up, I'm lower down. You're president, so I must be vice president. You're a plus one, I'm a minus one, it has to cancel to zero. We should all, be all for playing positive-sum ethical games. The problem is because of these looters who have ruined capitalism's name-

Joe Rogan 43:10 Hmm.

Naval Ravikant 43:10 ... that then you get socialists coming in and saying, "Burn the whole system down."

Joe Rogan 43:13 Right.

Naval Ravikant 43:14 You burn the whole system down, we end up like Venezuela or the former Soviet Union. You know, you don't want to be a failed socialist states with emaciated teens hunting cats in the streets to eat, right? That's literally what happens in some of these places. Uh, so I think it's very important not to destroy the engine of progress that brought us here.

Joe Rogan 43:31 Yeah, the idea that socialism just hasn't worked yet, that it needs to, that we just need to do it right. If we do it right, we can net... Have you ever 100...

Naval Ravikant 43:39 Right, 100 million dead and... (laughs)

Joe Rogan 43:41 Yeah, yeah, well-

Naval Ravikant 43:42 Let's keep trying.

Joe Rogan 43:42 ... all over the world, yeah. And, and every single time-

Naval Ravikant 43:45 Every single time, yeah.

Joe Rogan 43:45 ... it's been implemented. Do, have you ever had a conversation with someone who's a socialist, who, where, were you-

Naval Ravikant 43:50 Oh, many times. Some of my better, better friends are socialists.

Joe Rogan 43:52 Really?

Naval Ravikant 43:52 So we, we really get into it, yeah.

Joe Rogan 43:54 And what is their... I mean, does anyone have a compelling p- perspective at all?

Naval Ravikant 43:59 I, I think the, really, socialism comes from the heart, right? You all, we all want to be socialist. Capitalism comes from the head because there are always cheaters in any system-

Joe Rogan 44:10 Yes.

Naval Ravikant 44:10 ... and there's incentives in any system. So when you're young, if you're, if, if you're not a socialist, you have no heart. When you're older, if you're not a capitalist, you have no head, right?

Joe Rogan 44:19 Right.

Naval Ravikant 44:19 You haven't thought it through, so I understand where it comes from. I always liked Nassim Taleb's framing of this, where he said, "With my family, I am a communist. With my close friends, I am a socialist. Uh, you know, at my state level politics, I'm a democrat. At, you know, higher levels, I'm a, I'm a republican, and at the federal level, I'm a libertarian."

Joe Rogan 44:37 Hmm.

Naval Ravikant 44:37 Right? So basically, the larger the group of people you have massed together who have different interests, the less trust there is, the more cheating there is, the better the incentives have to be aligned, the better the system has to work, the more you go towards capitalism. The smaller the group you're in, you're in a kibbutz, you're in your commune, you're in your house, you're in your tribe, by all means be a socialist. With my aunts, with my brother, with my cousins, with my uncles, with my mom-

Joe Rogan 45:01 Yes.

Naval Ravikant 45:01 ... with my family, I'm a socialist. That's the right way to live a loving, happy, integrated life.

Joe Rogan 45:07 Yes.

Naval Ravikant 45:07 But when you're dealing with strangers, I mean, you wanna be a real socialist? Great, open all your doors and windows tomorrow.

Joe Rogan 45:13 (laughs) Yeah.

Naval Ravikant 45:13 Please, everybody, come take what you want. See how that works out. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 45:16 (laughs) Yeah. Um, this idea of income inequality, that always strikes me as a very... it's a deceptive term, income inequality.

Naval Ravikant 45:25 Well, flip it around. It comes from outcome in- inequality.

Joe Rogan 45:29 Yes.

Naval Ravikant 45:29 And the outcome inequality is there because you made different choices. Now again, going back, if it was because you didn't have the same opportunities, that's a problem.

Joe Rogan 45:37 Yes.

Naval Ravikant 45:37 So society should always try to give people equal opportunities. So for example, instead of basic income, what if we had a retraining program built into our basic social fabric which said that every four years or every six years, or whatever it is, maybe it's every 10, you can take one year out, and we'll pay for you to go retrain completely. And you can go into any profession you like that has some earning power and output, uh, hopefully a creative long-term profession, and you can reeducate yourself. That would be much better for society on all levels than basically just saying, "Now you're gonna be the dole for the rest of your life."

Joe Rogan 46:13 Hmm. Yeah, just, you'd have to lead that horse to water and then make him drink.

Naval Ravikant 46:19 It requires people-

Joe Rogan 46:20 Yes.

Naval Ravikant 46:20 ... to put in some effort.

Joe Rogan 46:21 Yes.

Naval Ravikant 46:21 But, you know, we can't all just sit around. (laughs) it's just not 100% true.

Joe Rogan 46:24 Well, that's my, my perspective on income inequality. There's always effort inequality and, and thought inequality.

Naval Ravikant 46:30 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 46:30 I mean, there's just some people that are obsessed, and if those people become successful, it doesn't mean they stole from you. It just means that they put in the amount of energy and effort that res- that's required to reach where they're at.

Naval Ravikant 46:40 And there's a lot of virtue signaling that goes on now where people say, "Well, it's 'cause you're privileged."

Joe Rogan 46:43 Yeah, there's a lot of that.

Naval Ravikant 46:43 It's like, "Well, you know, you know what the greatest privilege is? You're alive."

Joe Rogan 46:46 Mm-hmm.

Naval Ravikant 46:46 "85% of humanity is dead."

Joe Rogan 46:48 Yeah.

Naval Ravikant 46:48 "So how privileged are you? Then you're living in the First World, then you're, you know, you have four limbs," et cetera. So you can take that argument all the way. It's kind of a nonsense discussion.

Joe Rogan 46:56 Well, it's a very weird progressive argument, and it, it, as it pertains to, uh, race is always a weird one, right? Because white privilege, to me, it... although it, you could look at what they're saying on paper, like, yes, yeah, I'm sure there's more Black people that are harassed by the police. I'm sure there's more Black people who are treated suspiciously by shop owners and, and the like.

Naval Ravikant 47:19 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 47:19 But the problem isn't the people who aren't treated poorly. The problem is the people who treat the people poorly. The problem is racism.

Naval Ravikant 47:28 Right.

Joe Rogan 47:28 The problem is not people that didn't ask to be born white or whatever they are and they don't get harassed, that, so th- this idea of white privilege or male privilege or whatever it is, that's not the problem. You're, you're just looking at someone who's not a victim of this particular problem that you're highlighting, but you're not looking at the perpetrators of the problem. You're making people perpetrators by simply existing and having less melanin in their skin or having their ancestors come from a geographical location...

Naval Ravikant 47:59 Yeah, it's just racism by another, another way, just sneaky way.

Joe Rogan 48:01 It's a sneaky way-

Naval Ravikant 48:01 It's a sneaky way, yeah.

Joe Rogan 48:02 ... of being racist.

Naval Ravikant 48:03 Yeah, and then they say, "You can't be racist. You... it's not racist 'cause you're white." (laughs)

Joe Rogan 48:07 That's like, that is-

Naval Ravikant 48:07 Right, yeah.

Joe Rogan 48:07 ... that's hilarious-

Naval Ravikant 48:08 Right.

Joe Rogan 48:08 ... if you can't be racist against white people.

Naval Ravikant 48:10 Right, right.

Joe Rogan 48:10 But that one, I follow this-

Naval Ravikant 48:12 That's a, that's a variation of the hold still while I hit you argument (laughs) you know?

Joe Rogan 48:15 It's...

Naval Ravikant 48:15 Stop struggling while I'm hitting you.

Joe Rogan 48:16 Well, it's just so silly.

Naval Ravikant 48:17 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 48:17 You've just completely changed what racism means.

Naval Ravikant 48:19 But what's hilarious is that mostly the people who are yelling "racist" are not the minorities.

Joe Rogan 48:23 Yeah.

Naval Ravikant 48:23 When I look on my Twitter or my social media or on my news, it's white on white violence.

Joe Rogan 48:28 Virtue signaling.

Naval Ravikant 48:29 Yeah, it's white on white violence.

Joe Rogan 48:30 Yes (laughs) .

Naval Ravikant 48:31 And what's, what's mostly going on is it's elitist whites, blue state whites-

Joe Rogan 48:35 Mm-hmm.

Naval Ravikant 48:35 ... college-educated whites beating up on high school-educated whites, blue collar. It's a white collar versus blue collar war that's going on-

Joe Rogan 48:41 Ah, interesting.

Naval Ravikant 48:41 ... and the rest of us are just kind of watching like, "Oh, that's kind of interesting."

Joe Rogan 48:44 Well, it's also a side effect of th- the ability to broadcast, right? Like everyone with a Twitter handle has the ability to broadcast. Everyone-

Naval Ravikant 48:52 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 48:52 ... with a Facebook page has the ability to pontificate and have these long, rambling...... s- p- (laughs) these huge statements that people put out. When you, you read them, it's like, "How much time did you put in this and what the f- Do you put that much time in your kids?"

Naval Ravikant 49:06 (laughs) Or your job or... Yeah.

Joe Rogan 49:07 Yeah. Or your job or your life or your future...

Naval Ravikant 49:09 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 49:09 ... or planning for your... You know, uh, how much do you work out a day? I mean, are you-

Naval Ravikant 49:13 Right.

Joe Rogan 49:13 ... just, these f- Some, uh, I read some people's Facebook posts, I'm like, "This is a preposterous amount of effort that you put into saying virtually nothing."

Naval Ravikant 49:21 But see, humans are being creative.

Joe Rogan 49:23 Yeah.

Naval Ravikant 49:23 Let's see an AI do that. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 49:24 Well, that's true. It is creative. It's, it's creative in a very odd way, right? 'Cause it's creative in that they're trying to elicit a response from people and they're trying to raise their, their social value or raise their, their position on the social totem pole.

Naval Ravikant 49:39 It's, it's signaling and it's easy signaling, because it's the kinda thing that everybody has to agree with you on, 'cause nobody-

Joe Rogan 49:44 Yes.

Naval Ravikant 49:44 ... wants to be seen as a horrible person.

Joe Rogan 49:45 Yeah.

Naval Ravikant 49:46 And it's, uh, very hard to make the nuanced arguments against than it is to just kinda go along.

Joe Rogan 49:51 Right. Well, it's also, it's, some of it is so cliché that it seems like... I, I know one guy who poses as a woman on, on Twitter, but he does it-

Naval Ravikant 50:02 (laughs) Just once.

Joe Rogan 50:02 ... obviously.

Naval Ravikant 50:03 (laughs) Yeah. Okay.

Joe Rogan 50:03 Uh, what is his, the name? Tatiana...

Naval Ravikant 50:06 McGrath.

Joe Rogan 50:07 ... McGrath?

Naval Ravikant 50:07 Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:07 Yeah, hilarious.

Naval Ravikant 50:08 Used to be Godfrey Elwick.

Joe Rogan 50:09 Yes.

Naval Ravikant 50:10 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:10 Oh, is that the same guy?

Naval Ravikant 50:11 I think so. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:12 That's hilarious.

Naval Ravikant 50:13 No.

Joe Rogan 50:14 I did not... They killed his account. They killed, they killed his account for-

Naval Ravikant 50:16 I think it's the same one. I'm not 100% sure, but I think so.

Joe Rogan 50:18 ... for pretending to be transracial.

Naval Ravikant 50:21 That's right.

Joe Rogan 50:21 They didn't like... (laughs)

Naval Ravikant 50:22 Yeah. He basically says all the crazy stuff that the-

Joe Rogan 50:24 Yeah.

Naval Ravikant 50:25 ... people on the left say, but he says the craziest version.

Joe Rogan 50:27 Yes.

Naval Ravikant 50:28 Uh, and kinda, it just shows how it's okay to s- like, uh, th- I th- I saw a tweet from him recently, it just said, or her, that it's not okay to be white. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 50:34 Yes. Yes.

Naval Ravikant 50:35 Just like this is not okay to be... (laughs)

Joe Rogan 50:37 And then some people agree.

Naval Ravikant 50:38 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:38 But it's, it's so close to what they say.

Naval Ravikant 50:42 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:42 It's so close that it's like the most artful form of subtle parody, 'cause it's just...

Naval Ravikant 50:47 Well, if you, if you replace, in half of these things, if you replace the word white with Black or Asian, watch-

Joe Rogan 50:52 Oh, my God.

Naval Ravikant 50:52 ... watch the lynch mob descend upon you.

Joe Rogan 50:54 Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's, it's a strange time in that respect, that there-

Naval Ravikant 50:58 There's a famous old saying-

Joe Rogan 50:59 ... there's so much noise.

Naval Ravikant 50:59 ... that, uh, if you want to see who rules of, over you, see who you're not allowed to criticize.

Joe Rogan 51:04 Mm. Excellent. Yeah. That is, uh, that's so true, right? Yeah. That's so true. I wonder where this is going. I really do. I w- I wonder, because this is, it seems like this newfound ability to broadcast that we have with, whether you have a YouTube page or whether you have Twitter or whatever you're doing, this newfound ability to spread whatever you're trying to say to so many people with very little understanding, on the most part, from what, what it's doing.

Naval Ravikant 51:33 I, I think it's actually a great thing overall.

Joe Rogan 51:35 Yeah, I do as well.

Naval Ravikant 51:36 Because now it means that any human can broadcast to any other human on the planet at any time. So for example, if, you know, a totalitarian dictator were to come to power and someone was beating up, you know, had fascists beating up on old women, like, that would get broadcast out instantly. There would be an instant outrage, hue and cry rallying. So in that sense, it helps bring attention to the plight of anybody. But right now, we're going through the phase where we have this newfound power to assemble mobs and-

Joe Rogan 52:02 Mm.

Naval Ravikant 52:03 ... people don't know how to deal with that. So, it becomes very easy to set up a mob and have it attack somebody. Take out-

Joe Rogan 52:09 Yes.

Naval Ravikant 52:09 ... all the context out. Like, even this conversation, I'm sure people will take out snippets, put them on social media, and try and get somebody outraged.

Joe Rogan 52:16 Of course.

Naval Ravikant 52:17 Uh, and so you have to learn how... First of all, society just has to get over this idea of outrage. Like, to me, like, outraged people are just... People who get easily outraged are the stupidest people in social media. Those are the people I block instantly. Uh, it's just kind of very low-level thinking, right? These are the footsol- f- th- these are the foot soldiers in the mob. Uh, eventually, society just has to get over it. They have to understand that these are all snippets being taken out of context, these are doctored video clips. These are just someone who's trying to get outraged over something. Eventually, there will also be anti-mob tactics.

Joe Rogan 52:48 Mm.

Naval Ravikant 52:48 Like, for example, if, if I go to someone's Twitter feed and all it is is full of poli- political ranting, raving, conspiracy theories, do I wanna work with this person? Do I wanna associate with this person?

Joe Rogan 53:00 Mm.

Naval Ravikant 53:00 Do I wanna be friends with this person? Their mind is just cluttered with junk. Now, I don't necessarily blame them. I think that the human brain is not designed to absorb all of the world's breaking news, 24/7 emergencies injected straight into your skull with clickbait headline news. If you pay attention to that stuff, even if you're well-meaning, even if you're sound of mind and body, it will eventually drive you insane. This is going back to Clockwork Orange, where he's f- you know, has his eyes opened up-

Joe Rogan 53:27 Mm.

Naval Ravikant 53:27 ... and he's forced to watch the news. But I think that's what's happening right now, because these are addictive, right?

Joe Rogan 53:33 Mm-hmm.

Naval Ravikant 53:33 The, the, uh, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, these are weaponized. You have social statisticians and scientists and researchers and people in lab coats, literally best minds of our generation, figuring out how to addict you to the news.

Joe Rogan 53:45 Yes.

Naval Ravikant 53:46 And if you fall for it, if you get addicted, your brain will get destroyed. And I think this is the modern struggle, right? The modern struggle. So the ancient struggle used to be the tribal struggle. You had your tribe of friends and family, you had your religion, you had your country, you had your loyalty, you had your nationality. At least you had meaning and support, but now you would struggle against other tribes. Modern life, we're so free, everything's become atomized. We stand alone. You live in your apartment alone. You live in your house alone. Your parents don't live nearby. Your friends don't live nearby. You don't have any tribal meaning. You don't believe in religion anymore. You don't believe in country anymore. It's fine, you got a lot of freedom, it's fantastic. But now, when they come to attack you, you're alone and you can't resist.

Joe Rogan 54:28 Mm-hmm.

Naval Ravikant 54:28 So how do they attack you? It's all well-meaning. I don't fault capitalism. I love capitalism. But look at how it happens. Social media, they've massaged all the mechanisms to addict you like a Skinner's pigeon or a rat, who's just gonna click, click, click, click, click, can't put the phone down. Food, they've taken sugar and they've weaponized it. They've put it into all these different forms and varieties that you can't resist eating. Drugs, right? They've taken pharmaceuticals and plants and they have synthesized them. They've grown them in such a way that you can't... You get addicted, you can't put 'em down. Porn, right? If you're a young male, you wander around the internet.... it'll, like, sap away your libido and you're not going out in real life society anymore because you've got this incredibly stimulating stuff coming at you. Video games, another way to addict people. So you have this, you have entire large factories of people that are working to addict you to these things, and you stand alone. So the modern struggle as an individual is learning how to resist these things in the first place, drawing your own boundaries. And there's no one there to help you.

Joe Rogan 55:30 Oof. That's terrifying.

Naval Ravikant 55:32 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 55:33 I mean, it is-

Naval Ravikant 55:34 It's a price you're paying.

Joe Rogan 55:34 ... it's a new road that needs to be navigated by young people that are... there's no map. There's no guidebook on how to handle this.

Naval Ravikant 55:42 Our generation is the transition generation.

Joe Rogan 55:45 Mm.

Naval Ravikant 55:45 I think our kids will know how to handle it better because they'll grow up with... I hope, I hope.

Joe Rogan 55:50 I hope too because you're seeing some ridiculous behavior from people today that's so common. I mean, I don't know if you've been paying attention to this, but there was a, a guy who, he made a, a video. It turns out it wasn't even him that made the video, at least that's not what he said, but it was a video where he sort of doctored Nancy Pelosi talking-

Naval Ravikant 56:09 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 56:09 ... and made it look like she was drunk.

Naval Ravikant 56:11 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 56:12 And then a bunch of people retweeted it-

Naval Ravikant 56:13 Mm.

Joe Rogan 56:14 ... and like, "Oh my God, look, she's drunk." And, and so one of the online publications, uh, uh, uh, some website tracked him down and doxed him, and turned out he's just a day laborer who was an African-American Trump fan-

Naval Ravikant 56:30 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 56:31 ... and thought it would be funny to do that.

Naval Ravikant 56:33 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 56:33 And it turns out that he didn't even, at least according to him, he actually just put it up on his Facebook page. What's even more disturbing is Facebook gave up his information to this website.

Naval Ravikant 56:44 Right.

Joe Rogan 56:45 For what? Because he made something funny that made people seem drunk?

Naval Ravikant 56:49 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 56:49 There's a million of those about me.

Naval Ravikant 56:50 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 56:50 I mean, you, you could find them. I mean-

Naval Ravikant 56:52 Well, I think Facebook and Twitter and a bunch of these other social media platforms are committing slow motion suicide through these kinds of activities.

Joe Rogan 57:01 That was a stunning one though-

Naval Ravikant 57:02 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 57:02 ... that they would give up this guy who's a laborer because he made a parody video or he made someone look foolish with editing.

Naval Ravikant 57:08 Well, you now have basically the media views it as their job to go after individuals they don't like.

Joe Rogan 57:13 Yeah, I use media with air quotes in that regard-

Naval Ravikant 57:15 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 57:15 ... because I don't think this is something that The New York Times would have done-

Naval Ravikant 57:18 No, it's, yeah.

Joe Rogan 57:18 ... or anything responsible, but...

Naval Ravikant 57:19 But the media is getting more and more desperate, right? Because what happened was before the internet, you could have two local newspapers in every town, and you could have two local news stations, you know, TV stations in every town. And then CNN came along and started commoditizing the news 24/7 broadcast. And then the internet came along, that was the final nail in the coffin because what the internet did was it said, "Actually, if there's a fact that's news, you can distribute that immediately." It can go on Twitter, it can go on Facebook, it gets reprinted on Google News 1,000 times. You know, you go on Google News, you're like, "Okay, what's the piece of news? Which source?" And 3,000 other articles.

Joe Rogan 57:53 Mm.

Naval Ravikant 57:53 Too many, right?

Joe Rogan 57:54 Yeah.

Naval Ravikant 57:54 So news has become commoditized. So the entire news media has shifted into peddling opinions and entertainment.

Joe Rogan 58:01 Yes.

Naval Ravikant 58:02 And so now they've become a variation between like cheerleaders, shock troops, enforcers, uh, you know, talking heads. So these are now tribal, or these are now propaganda machines-

Joe Rogan 58:13 Mm.

Naval Ravikant 58:13 ... signaling for their tribes. There's a right-wing one, there's a left-wing one, right? There's the alt-right, there's a control left, and the two of them are just fighting it out using their various media organs and memes. So basically when you see one of these news organizations doxing an individual, that's like a tank running over a soldier (laughs) , right?

Joe Rogan 58:29 Mm...

Naval Ravikant 58:29 That's what's going on. It's just war. And so there's no s- there's no such thing anymore as a neutral media commentator. The, the illusion of objectivity that journalism had is lost. There's no longer one guy like a Walter Cronkite that everyone's going to listen to.

Joe Rogan 58:44 Yeah.

Naval Ravikant 58:44 It's now all just shock troops fighting wars with each other.

Joe Rogan 58:47 How does this play out?

Naval Ravikant 58:49 (smacks lips)

Joe Rogan 58:49 Have you thought about it?

Naval Ravikant 58:50 Yeah, a little bit. Uh, so what the internet does, a lot of this is internet-driven. What the internet does is the internet creates one giant aggregator or two for everything, one taxi dispatcher, one e-commerce store, one search engine, one, uh, you know, one social media site for friends and family, one for business, etc. So the internet is this giant aggregator where it creates one big hegemon for everything, and it creates an atomized long tail of millions and millions of individuals. What it gets rid of is the medium, medium-sized ones in the middle. So for example, you might have had like seven Hollywood studios. Well, it's all going to be Netflix. You had, uh, you know like, uh, 10 large e-commerce players, uh, commerce players from Walmart to, uh, Costco to, you know, Kmart and whatever. Nope, now it's just going to be Amazon and a ton of small individual brands. So that's the world that we're headed towards, one hegemon and millions of individuals. So where it ends up long term is media will be a few gigantic outlets. You know, it could be The New York Times, it could be Facebook, a few like that. And there's going to be just a really long tail of millions of independent people. So this idea of who's a journalist and who's not, you know, is Assange a journalist or not? Everyone's a journalist. That's the world that we're headed towards. I do think that extreme power, the most powerful people in the world today, and this is not well-known, but the most powerful people in the world today are the people who are writing the algorithms for Twitter and Facebook and Instagram because they're controlling the spread of information.

Joe Rogan 1:00:26 Mm.

Naval Ravikant 1:00:26 They're literally rewriting people's brains. They're programming the culture, and they're doing it very subtly. Like Google, I believe that, you know, one of their execs got up in front of Congress and the congressman asked him, uh, you know, "Do you manipulate search results?" And he said, "No, we do not manipulate search results." Really? That's your job. That is literally all Google does. Google has one job, which is to manipulate search results, to pull them out of the noise and rank them properly. And the al- the precise algorithms of how they do that is very hidden, very complex, but influences the hearts and minds of everybody, including all the voters. Now, if Google, Facebook, and Twitter had been smart about this, they would not have picked sides. They would have said, "We're publishers. Whatever goes through our pipes goes through our pipes. If it's illegal, we'll take it down, give us a court order. Otherwise, we don't touch it." It's like the phone company. If I call you up-

Joe Rogan 1:01:17 Right.

Naval Ravikant 1:01:17 ... and I say something horrible to you on the phone, the phone company doesn't get in trouble. But the moment they started taking stuff down that wasn't illegal because somebody screamed, they basically lost their right to be viewed as a carrier. And now all of a sudden they're, they've taken on liability. So they're sliding down the slippery slope into ruin...... slope inter- ruin, where the left wants them to take down the right, the right wants them to take down the left, and now they have no more friends, they have no allies. Traditionally, the libertarian-leaning Republicans and Democrats would have stood up in principle for the common carriers, but now they won't. So my guess is as soon as Congress, and this is, this day is coming if not already here, it might even been here today actually 'cause I just saw something related in the news, the day is coming when the politicians realize that these social media p- uh, platforms are picking the next president, the next congressman. They're literally picking, and they have the power to pick, so they will be controlled by the government.

Joe Rogan 1:02:12 In, in what way? How do you think they're going to be controlled? Well, do you think they're gonna have to adhere to strict principles of freedom of speech?

Naval Ravikant 1:02:18 No, no.

Joe Rogan 1:02:19 First Amendment.

Naval Ravikant 1:02:20 Unfortunately, it's, unfortunately it's headed the opposite direction, right? (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:02:22 The opposite direction.

Naval Ravikant 1:02:22 I, I, I wish it was freedom of speech. Uh, much more likely they're gonna be, uh, in the short to medium-term, they're going to be hauled in for hearings. Uh, they're going to be pressured massively, "Do this, don't do that." Um-

Joe Rogan 1:02:32 My f- my concern about that is the, the hearings that I saw with Zuckerberg, those people were completely incompetent. They don't-

Naval Ravikant 1:02:37 They are incompetent.

Joe Rogan 1:02:37 ... seem to understand.

Naval Ravikant 1:02:38 They don't. They don't. But they're just applying pressure. They're just trying to scare him so he'll do what they want. And-

Joe Rogan 1:02:43 What do they want him to do?

Naval Ravikant 1:02:44 They want him to basically suppress the other side.

Joe Rogan 1:02:48 Mm-hmm.

Naval Ravikant 1:02:48 So if you're right wing, you want to suppress the left wing. If you're left wing, you want to suppress the right wing. And if you just see where these companies are headquartered in Silicon Valley, um, all the censors, and that's really what they are-

Joe Rogan 1:02:58 Mm-hmm.

Naval Ravikant 1:02:58 ... they're censors working inside these companies that are just called, they're called by different names obviously, right? It's double speak. You call it-

Joe Rogan 1:03:04 Mm-hmm.

Naval Ravikant 1:03:04 ... the Department of Defense when it's the Department of War, so in this case, the Department of Safety and Trust when really it's the Department of Censorship. The censors are inside Silicon Valley, so it's going to reflect Silicon Valley's politics.

Joe Rogan 1:03:14 Which is extremely progressive left wing.

Naval Ravikant 1:03:16 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:03:17 And if you're not that, you really have no place. There's, I mean-

Naval Ravikant 1:03:20 That's right.

Joe Rogan 1:03:20 Try being a conservative, an open conservative at Google. Good lord.

Naval Ravikant 1:03:25 No, you'll get lynched. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:03:26 (laughs) Yeah, it's just, it's crazy.

Naval Ravikant 1:03:27 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:03:28 I mean, I don't think that there was ever a th- a thing like that that was so influential and so politically, ideologically one-sided.

Naval Ravikant 1:03:39 Yeah, there's a, there's a little saying on the internet, I think it's called conquest law, that any organization that's not explicitly left, right wing eventually becomes left wing. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:03:47 (laughs)

Naval Ravikant 1:03:48 And I don't know why that's true, but it, it does seem to me to be true.

Joe Rogan 1:03:51 Well, it's, uh, it's a fascinating battle that's going on right now. I mean, it really is, and conservatives in, in as far as social media is concerned, th- they're just getting chopped off at the hams, left and right.

Naval Ravikant 1:04:02 Yeah. What'll eventually happen is that, uh, whenever you suppress speech, uh, the organism metastasizes. Then it has to start turning towards other means. If you're unlucky, it goes towards violence. Uh, if you're lucky, they find other outlets. Uh, I think what will happen is we will start creating decentralized media that's not owned by any single entity, that can't be suppressed or shut down, that will then start spreading these various things.

Joe Rogan 1:04:27 And that will take the place of Twitter, or Facebook, or what have you, but-

Naval Ravikant 1:04:29 That's right, but it's gonna take 10 years, 20 years. It's not-

Joe Rogan 1:04:32 At least.

Naval Ravikant 1:04:32 ... overnight, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:04:32 Well, uh, you know, Twitter took 10 years to get to the point where it's at this mess right now.

Naval Ravikant 1:04:36 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:04:36 But it was so interesting to, to have Jack Dorsey and to, to talk to him about where it's going, where he thinks it's going, and his own principles, which he believes that it's a fundamental right, and he believes that freedom of speech is something that we all should have, and that these platforms should essentially be like, like utilities, like the electric company or something.

Naval Ravikant 1:04:59 Jack is correct, and he has the right vision. It's just, he's in an organization where the other individuals in the organization feel differently.

Joe Rogan 1:05:05 Very differently, yeah.

Naval Ravikant 1:05:07 So the organization itself can get hijacked.

Joe Rogan 1:05:09 And his timeline for changing things is like, it- it's decades. I mean-

Naval Ravikant 1:05:15 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:05:15 ... I, I don't, I, I shouldn't say decades, but I mean, I was like, when do you think that something-

Naval Ravikant 1:05:20 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:05:20 ... well, there, there was a par, there was one idea of having an uncensored Twitter, like one Twitter that's the Wild West, like you could have regular Twitter-

Naval Ravikant 1:05:28 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:05:28 ... or you could try Wild West Twitter. Like what do you-

Naval Ravikant 1:05:30 Well, that, that already exists. There's a network called Gab, which is like-

Joe Rogan 1:05:33 Yeah.

Naval Ravikant 1:05:33 ... which is like-

Joe Rogan 1:05:33 But Gab isn't even Wild West Twitter. They-

Naval Ravikant 1:05:36 No.

Joe Rogan 1:05:36 When, when people dox people, they-

Naval Ravikant 1:05:38 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:05:38 ... they remove things like that.

Naval Ravikant 1:05:39 Yeah. I mean, I think there's certainly lines around violence-

Joe Rogan 1:05:43 Mm-hmm.

Naval Ravikant 1:05:43 ... and illegality-

Joe Rogan 1:05:44 Threats.

Naval Ravikant 1:05:44 ... that you don't want to cross, but-

Joe Rogan 1:05:45 Yes.

Naval Ravikant 1:05:46 ... Gab is closer to a free speech platform, uh, but it's still not decentralized. It can still get shut down. It can still-

Joe Rogan 1:05:51 Yes.

Naval Ravikant 1:05:51 ... get taken out. So-

Joe Rogan 1:05:52 Well, it's also suppressed heavily.

Naval Ravikant 1:05:54 Yes, so the, so they're ... and the people on there are, right now are extremely right wing, so it's not a pleasant place for someone like me to hang out. Like I don't wanna be on there.

Joe Rogan 1:06:00 Well, some of the people that have been kicked off for something else, so-

Naval Ravikant 1:06:02 That's right. That's right.

Joe Rogan 1:06:03 ... try going over there and being moderate, try going over there.

Naval Ravikant 1:06:06 No.

Joe Rogan 1:06:06 It's n- There's no room for you.

Naval Ravikant 1:06:07 Yeah, unfortunately because I don't identify as any party or any- (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:06:10 Yeah.

Naval Ravikant 1:06:10 ... creed, you know, (laughs) it doesn't work for me.

Joe Rogan 1:06:13 Is that a problem in Silicon Valley when you don't identify as anything? Do, do you get pressure to-

Naval Ravikant 1:06:18 It totally ... it used to be okay. It's not okay anymore.

Joe Rogan 1:06:20 When was it okay, how, up until-

Naval Ravikant 1:06:22 Uh, like 10 years ago I would say it was okay.

Joe Rogan 1:06:24 And then you started seeing a shift?

Naval Ravikant 1:06:25 Yeah, and now you have to pick sides, otherwise you're automatically the enemy.

Joe Rogan 1:06:29 Really?

Naval Ravikant 1:06:29 Yeah, struggle sessions and all that. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:06:31 God. Struggle sessions.

Naval Ravikant 1:06:33 I'm exaggerating for effect but-

Joe Rogan 1:06:35 (laughs)

Naval Ravikant 1:06:35 ... but it definitely has that oppressive feeling to it.

Joe Rogan 1:06:37 Right, and you also have-

Naval Ravikant 1:06:38 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:06:38 ... to be politically outspoken, right?

Naval Ravikant 1:06:40 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:06:40 It can't, it can't be something that you just stay neutral about.

Naval Ravikant 1:06:43 Right, it's like when, uh, Tim Ferriss I think at some point put out a tweet about how you can't just say anything anymore and, you know, people are being suppressed, and a whole bunch of people, a lot of them from Silicon Valley, piled in and said, "What is it that you can't say? What are you afraid to say? You can say whatever you want, Tim. Go ahead. What are you afraid of?" (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:06:58 (laughs) Yeah.

Naval Ravikant 1:06:58 Right? They were like baiting him. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:07:00 Yeah, what was he trying to say? Wow, we have to put him in that box.

Naval Ravikant 1:07:03 Well, he-

Joe Rogan 1:07:03 He was someone who was thinking about saying something he shouldn't have said.

Naval Ravikant 1:07:05 Exactly.

Joe Rogan 1:07:06 Now we know.

Naval Ravikant 1:07:07 One great tweet I saw was, you know, "The left won the culture wars, now they're just driving around shooting the survivors." (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:07:12 Wow. That's hilarious. Yeah, I wonder, uh, I wonder who has, has won the culture war. There's certainly a battle that's been won in terms of like control of social media. Control of social media is absolutely left, but-

Naval Ravikant 1:07:25 Well, this is unfortunate for conservatives, but technology is a force that also pushes left.

Joe Rogan 1:07:31 Mm-hmm.

Naval Ravikant 1:07:32 So if you look all throughout human history, like the left essentially grows, and grows, and grows, right? Why is that? Why is it inexorably that, uh, as some commentators have said, "Leviathan slouches left," right?

Joe Rogan 1:07:42 Mm-hmm.

Naval Ravikant 1:07:42 If leviathan is the government, why does it slouch left?And I think a lot of that has been because of technology. Uh, technology has made it so that it makes more s- like, industrial revolution technology. We all band together, we're wards of the state, right? Contraception is a technology that kind of helps lean leftward, it takes away from the family unit. Abortion is a technology, right? It wasn't possible thousands of years ago. Um, so technology actually empowers the individual, the individual means that you have the breakdown of family structure and religion and all that, and I'm not necessarily opposed to that, but it does mean that there's a leftward shift to it. Now, we are getting a small set of technologies that actually can take you more rightward. Uh, encryption is an example, because encryption makes it easier to have privacy, it makes it easier to have money that is outside of the state. Um, guns, 3D printing of guns is an example of a technology that is more of a rightward shift. Um, but generally, technology leans to more left.

Joe Rogan 1:08:39 Yeah. It's, it's also usually highly educated people that are involved with technology in the first place, and I think when you look at universities in particular, they tend to lean left in this country as well.

Naval Ravikant 1:08:53 Well, universities, uh, y- y- what happened with universities is very interesting. Universities first, when, uh, you know, became the arbiters of, uh, data and intellectualism and what's right and wrong. So at the time period when it was like, "Should we be doing that or not?" Well, let's look at the university. What do they have to say? What are the smartest people, the professors, the think tanks have to say? And the universities got this, this credibility from the hard sciences, so they got this from, uh, you know, physics and math and computer science