Joe Rogan Experience #1309 - Naval Ravikant

1. 0:00 – 2:10

   Why Naval stands out: balancing tech success with a philosophy of life

   1. JRJoe Rogan0:00

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

   2. NRNaval Ravikant0:05

      Oh.

   3. JRJoe Rogan0:05

      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.

   4. NRNaval Ravikant0:12

      Thanks for having me.

   5. JRJoe Rogan0:13

      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.

   6. NRNaval Ravikant0:46

      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?

   7. JRJoe Rogan1:01

      (laughs)

   8. NRNaval Ravikant1:01

      So when you combine things you're not supposed to combine-

   9. JRJoe Rogan1:03

      Right.

   10. NRNaval Ravikant1:03

       ... people get interested. It's like Bruce Lee, right? Striking Thoughts Philosophy Plus Martial Arts.

   11. JRJoe Rogan1:08

       Mm.

   12. NRNaval Ravikant1:09

       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?

   13. JRJoe Rogan1:20

       Yeah.

   14. NRNaval Ravikant1:20

       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?

   15. JRJoe Rogan2:00

       Mm.

   16. NRNaval Ravikant2:00

       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.

2. 2:10 – 4:00

   Starting over, beginner’s mind, and the joy of learning

   1. JRJoe Rogan2:10

      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-

   2. NRNaval Ravikant2:19

      Yeah.

   3. JRJoe Rogan2:19

      ... and they stick with it, and they never change, and they, they ... uh, almost of- out of fear.

   4. NRNaval Ravikant2:24

      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.

   5. JRJoe Rogan2:46

      Hm. Yeah.

   6. NRNaval Ravikant2:47

      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-

   7. JRJoe Rogan3:04

      Mm-hmm.

   8. NRNaval Ravikant3:04

      ... 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.

   9. JRJoe Rogan3:19

      Yeah.

   10. NRNaval Ravikant3:19

       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.

   11. JRJoe Rogan3:29

       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.

   12. NRNaval Ravikant3:44

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

   13. JRJoe Rogan3:50

       Hm.

   14. NRNaval Ravikant3:50

       ... 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-

   15. JRJoe Rogan4:00

       Yeah.

3. 4:00 – 5:27

   Memorization vs understanding: the modern “TL;DR” trap

   1. NRNaval Ravikant4:00

      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-

   2. JRJoe Rogan4:13

      Hm.

   3. NRNaval Ravikant4:13

      ... but that's not really understanding.

   4. JRJoe Rogan4:15

      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)

   5. NRNaval Ravikant4:22

      Yes. "I've just memorized a lot of things," yeah.

   6. JRJoe Rogan4:25

      (laughs) Just, and there's certain things that you just can't know.

   7. NRNaval Ravikant4:28

      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-

   8. JRJoe Rogan4:35

      Mm-hmm.

   9. NRNaval Ravikant4:36

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

   10. JRJoe Rogan4:40

       Right.

   11. NRNaval Ravikant4:40

       "... of life is or how we got here."

   12. JRJoe Rogan4:42

       Yes.

   13. NRNaval Ravikant4:42

       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.

   14. JRJoe Rogan4:59

       Right.

   15. NRNaval Ravikant5:00

       Um, so-

   16. JRJoe Rogan5:00

       Not good enough to teach it in university.

   17. NRNaval Ravikant5:03

       Exactly. Yeah.

   18. JRJoe Rogan5:03

       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-

   19. NRNaval Ravikant5:14

       Right.

   20. JRJoe Rogan5:14

       ... of what an, uh, th- uh, the explanation for what this very complex subject might be.

   21. NRNaval Ravikant5:18

       TLDR, right?

   22. JRJoe Rogan5:19

       Yes. (laughs)

   23. NRNaval Ravikant5:20

       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.

   24. JRJoe Rogan5:23

       Yeah.

   25. NRNaval Ravikant5:23

       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)

4. 5:27 – 8:09

   Naval’s reading method: curiosity-driven, non-linear, and signal over volume

   1. JRJoe Rogan5:27

      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.

   2. NRNaval Ravikant5:44

      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-

   3. JRJoe Rogan6:16

      Hm.

   4. NRNaval Ravikant6:16

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

   5. JRJoe Rogan6:20

      (laughs)

   6. NRNaval Ravikant6:20

      It's, it's a show-off thing, it's a signaling thing, right?

   7. JRJoe Rogan6:22

      Yeah, sure.

   8. NRNaval Ravikant6:23

      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.

   9. JRJoe Rogan6:31

      Right.

   10. NRNaval Ravikant6:31

       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.

5. 8:09 – 12:03

   Social media as signaling: self-image, fame, and the cost of celebrity

   1. JRJoe Rogan8:09

      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-

   2. NRNaval Ravikant8:20

      Yeah.

   3. JRJoe Rogan8:20

      ... 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.

   4. NRNaval Ravikant8:33

      And I'm, I'm as guilty of that as anybody doing things on Twitter. Yeah.

   5. JRJoe Rogan8:35

      Everybody's guilty of it. I'm guilty of it too.

   6. NRNaval Ravikant8:37

      Yeah.

   7. JRJoe Rogan8:37

      You know? I mean, I pose with my dog every time I run. (laughs)

   8. NRNaval Ravikant8:40

      (laughs) Yeah. We're always signaling, right?

   9. JRJoe Rogan8:42

      Yes.

   10. NRNaval Ravikant8:43

       It's like rather than really looking at yourself, you're looking at how other people look at you.

   11. JRJoe Rogan8:47

       Mm-hmm.

   12. NRNaval Ravikant8:47

       So it's like this one removed mental image. And it's kind of a disease-

   13. JRJoe Rogan8:51

       Mm-hmm.

   14. NRNaval Ravikant8:51

       ... 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.

   15. JRJoe Rogan9:13

       Mm.

   16. NRNaval Ravikant9:13

       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.

   17. JRJoe Rogan9:27

       (laughs)

   18. NRNaval Ravikant9:27

       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.

   19. JRJoe Rogan9:35

       Mm.

   20. NRNaval Ravikant9:36

       Right?

   21. JRJoe Rogan9:36

       There's benefits to it. Um...

   22. NRNaval Ravikant9:37

       Of course, of course.

   23. JRJoe Rogan9:38

       But-

   24. NRNaval Ravikant9:39

       Or we wouldn't do it.

   25. JRJoe Rogan9:39

       ... 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-

   26. NRNaval Ravikant9:49

       (clears throat)

   27. JRJoe Rogan9:49

       ... 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.

   28. NRNaval Ravikant10:46

       Yeah.

   29. JRJoe Rogan10:46

       '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."

   30. NRNaval Ravikant10:55

       Yeah. Anonymity is a privilege. O- on the other hand, it's self-inflicted. I mean, we brought it on ourselves.
6. 12:03 – 15:38

   The ‘How to Get Rich Without Getting Lucky’ framework: wealth, happiness, health

   1. NRNaval Ravikant12:03

      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.

   2. JRJoe Rogan12:44

      Mm-hmm.

   3. NRNaval Ravikant12:44

      But let's face it, like, you wanna be rich and happy and healthy.

   4. JRJoe Rogan12:46

      Yeah.

   5. NRNaval Ravikant12:46

      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.

   6. JRJoe Rogan13:23

      Mm-hmm.

   7. NRNaval Ravikant13:23

      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.

   8. JRJoe Rogan13:49

      Mm-hmm.

   9. NRNaval Ravikant13:49

      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-

   10. JRJoe Rogan14:07

       Mm-hmm.

   11. NRNaval Ravikant14:07

       ... crash the economy (laughs) -

   12. JRJoe Rogan14:09

       Right, right.

   13. NRNaval Ravikant14:09

       ... 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-

   14. JRJoe Rogan15:10

       Mm-hmm.

   15. NRNaval Ravikant15:10

       ... and leaving a trail of emotional wreckage with you and your loved ones.

   16. JRJoe Rogan15:13

       Which is more common than not.

   17. NRNaval Ravikant15:15

       Because you gotta focus-

   18. JRJoe Rogan15:16

       Yes.

   19. NRNaval Ravikant15:16

       ... 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.

   20. JRJoe Rogan15:26

       Mm-hmm.

   21. NRNaval Ravikant15:26

       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.

   22. JRJoe Rogan15:35

       Mm. If you can be. You were-

   23. NRNaval Ravikant15:37

       Why not?

7. 15:38 – 21:40

   Happiness as a learnable skill: desire, calm mind, and peak performance

   1. JRJoe Rogan15:38

      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."

   2. NRNaval Ravikant15:57

      (laughs) Yeah, the, I've got hundreds of techniques. Uh, but the most-

   3. JRJoe Rogan16:00

      How did you develop that one?

   4. NRNaval Ravikant16:01

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

   5. JRJoe Rogan16:10

      Mm-hmm.

   6. NRNaval Ravikant16:10

      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-"

   7. JRJoe Rogan16:28

      Hmm.

   8. NRNaval Ravikant16:29

      "... are you, are you lying?"

   9. JRJoe Rogan16:30

      Yeah, right.

   10. NRNaval Ravikant16:30

       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-

   11. JRJoe Rogan16:47

       Hmm.

   12. NRNaval Ravikant16:47

       ... 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?

   13. JRJoe Rogan17:28

       Mm-hmm.

   14. NRNaval Ravikant17:28

       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?

   15. JRJoe Rogan17:37

       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.

   16. NRNaval Ravikant17:59

       It's not a trade-off.

   17. JRJoe Rogan18:00

       Hmm.

   18. NRNaval Ravikant18:01

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

   19. JRJoe Rogan18:06

       Right.

   20. NRNaval Ravikant18:06

       It's like love, right? What does that mean?

   21. JRJoe Rogan18:08

       Mm-hmm. Right, I love cheese. Yeah.

   22. NRNaval Ravikant18:09

       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.

   23. NANarrator18:26

       Mm.

   24. NRNaval Ravikant18:26

       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.

   25. NANarrator19:06

       Mm.

   26. NRNaval Ravikant19:07

       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.

   27. NANarrator20:30

       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.

   28. NRNaval Ravikant20:38

       And he's still alive somehow-

   29. NANarrator20:39

       It's amazing.

   30. NRNaval Ravikant20:39

       ... so that shows you that low stress is more important than much-
8. 21:40 – 24:09

   Work and leverage: non-linear outputs, ‘lion’ work, and owning equity

   1. NANarrator21:40

      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?

   2. NRNaval Ravikant21:51

      Mm-hmm.

   3. NANarrator21:52

      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?

   4. NRNaval Ravikant22:03

      Mm.

   5. NANarrator22:03

      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?

   6. NRNaval Ravikant22:14

      Mm-hmm.

   7. NANarrator22:14

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

   8. NRNaval Ravikant22:20

      Don't tell vegans that.

   9. NANarrator22:21

      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.

   10. NRNaval Ravikant22:32

       ... taste even more healthier as, uh, better than the real thing, so-

   11. NANarrator22:36

       Allegedly.

   12. NRNaval Ravikant22:37

       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?

   13. NANarrator23:05

       Mm-hmm.

   14. NRNaval Ravikant23:05

       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.

   15. NANarrator23:10

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

   16. NRNaval Ravikant23:18

       So that's unfortunately the, the rub, right? That-

   17. NANarrator23:20

       Yeah.

   18. NRNaval Ravikant23:20

       ... 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-

   19. NANarrator23:35

       Yes.

   20. NRNaval Ravikant23:35

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

   21. NANarrator23:41

       Mm-hmm.

   22. NRNaval Ravikant23:41

       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.

   23. NANarrator23:54

       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...

9. 24:09 – 28:39

   The information age reverses the industrial age: shrinking firms and gig-like futures

   1. JRJoe Rogan24:09

      ... the information age is gonna reverse the industrial age.

   2. NRNaval Ravikant24:13

      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-

   3. JRJoe Rogan24:27

      Hmm. Yeah.

   4. NRNaval Ravikant24:27

      ... 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.

   5. JRJoe Rogan25:03

      Hmm.

   6. NRNaval Ravikant25:03

      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.

   7. JRJoe Rogan26:34

      Hmm.

   8. NRNaval Ravikant26:35

      It's just one example. But-

   9. JRJoe Rogan26:36

      That's a great example.

   10. NRNaval Ravikant26:37

       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.

   11. JRJoe Rogan28:19

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

   12. NRNaval Ravikant28:25

       Not that I'm aware, but to me it's obvious. It's just obvious.

   13. JRJoe Rogan28:28

       Hmm.

   14. NRNaval Ravikant28:28

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

   15. JRJoe Rogan28:31

       Yeah.

   16. NRNaval Ravikant28:31

       ... 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.

10. 28:39 – 33:06

    UBI, automation, and education: ‘non-solution to a non-problem’

    1. JRJoe Rogan28:39

       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-

    2. NRNaval Ravikant28:50

       Yeah.

    3. JRJoe Rogan28:50

       ... apocalypse of automation.

    4. NRNaval Ravikant28:52

       Yeah.

    5. JRJoe Rogan28:52

       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.

    6. NRNaval Ravikant28:59

       Yeah.

    7. JRJoe Rogan28:59

       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-

    8. NRNaval Ravikant29:11

       I'm gonna take the unpopular-

    9. JRJoe Rogan29:13

       ... prognosticators...

    10. NRNaval Ravikant29:13

        ... point of view on this.

    11. JRJoe Rogan29:14

        Okay.

    12. NRNaval Ravikant29:14

        I don't... I think it's a non-solution to a non-problem.

    13. JRJoe Rogan29:17

        Hmm.

    14. NRNaval Ravikant29:17

        Um...

    15. JRJoe Rogan29:18

        Ooh.

    16. NRNaval Ravikant29:18

        And I mean that in the sense that automation has been happening since the dawn of time.

    17. JRJoe Rogan29:22

        Mm-hmm.

    18. NRNaval Ravikant29:22

        I mean, when electricity came along, that put a lot of people out of work. (laughs)

    19. JRJoe Rogan29:25

        Did it?

    20. NRNaval Ravikant29:25

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

    21. JRJoe Rogan29:30

        And this was the concern with factories as well, right?

    22. NRNaval Ravikant29:32

        Yeah, abs- everything. Literally every single thing that comes along.

    23. JRJoe Rogan29:35

        Even the printing press, right?

    24. NRNaval Ravikant29:36

        Absolutely.

    25. JRJoe Rogan29:36

        Sure.

    26. NRNaval Ravikant29:36

        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)

    27. JRJoe Rogan29:44

        Mm-hmm. Right.

    28. NRNaval Ravikant29:45

        We're not, like, sitting around dividing up the same jobs that were around since the Stone Age.

    29. JRJoe Rogan29:49

        (laughs)

    30. NRNaval Ravikant29:49

        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.
11. 33:06 – 51:04

    AI realism: narrow vs general intelligence and why creativity matters

    1. NRNaval Ravikant33:06

       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.

    2. JRJoe Rogan33:39

       Even in our lifetimes? Really?

    3. NRNaval Ravikant33:41

       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-

    4. JRJoe Rogan33:49

       Mm-hmm.

    5. NRNaval Ravikant33:49

       ... 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.

    6. JRJoe Rogan33:56

       Right, right.

    7. NRNaval Ravikant33:57

       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.

    8. JRJoe Rogan35:25

       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-

    9. NRNaval Ravikant35:36

       Yeah.

    10. JRJoe Rogan35:36

        ... going on inside cells and- and biological organisms?

    11. NRNaval Ravikant35:40

        Yeah, we just don't know how intelligence works.

    12. JRJoe Rogan35:43

        Right, we don't know what consciousness i-

    13. NRNaval Ravikant35:44

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

    14. JRJoe Rogan35:51

        Mm-hmm.

    15. NRNaval Ravikant35:51

        ... but they model at the neuron level, which is saying this neuron's on, that neuron's off-

    16. JRJoe Rogan35:55

        Right.

    17. NRNaval Ravikant35:55

        ... 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.

    18. JRJoe Rogan36:11

        It's also a part of the biological organism itself.

    19. NRNaval Ravikant36:14

        Exactly.

    20. JRJoe Rogan36:14

        And- and it has all these needs that, you know, the biological organism has to have food and rest and-

    21. NRNaval Ravikant36:20

        Exactly.

    22. JRJoe Rogan36:21

        ... there's- there's a balance going on. But when you eliminate all that, when there is none of that-

    23. NRNaval Ravikant36:24

        Yeah.

    24. JRJoe Rogan36:24

        ... 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-

    25. NRNaval Ravikant36:33

        Yeah.

    26. JRJoe Rogan36:34

        ... 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.

    27. NRNaval Ravikant36:58

        Mm-hmm.

    28. JRJoe Rogan36:59

        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-

    29. NRNaval Ravikant37:13

        Right.

    30. JRJoe Rogan37:13

        ... based on the information that it's been provided with.
12. 51:04 – 57:19

    Broadcast culture, outrage mobs, and the attention economy’s ‘weaponized’ addiction

    1. JRJoe Rogan51:04

       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.

    2. NRNaval Ravikant51:33

       I, I think it's actually a great thing overall.

    3. JRJoe Rogan51:35

       Yeah, I do as well.

    4. NRNaval Ravikant51:36

       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-

    5. JRJoe Rogan52:02

       Mm.

    6. NRNaval Ravikant52:03

       ... 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-

    7. JRJoe Rogan52:09

       Yes.

    8. NRNaval Ravikant52:09

       ... 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.

    9. JRJoe Rogan52:16

       Of course.

    10. NRNaval Ravikant52:17

        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.

    11. JRJoe Rogan52:48

        Mm.

    12. NRNaval Ravikant52:48

        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?

    13. JRJoe Rogan53:00

        Mm.

    14. NRNaval Ravikant53:00

        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-

    15. JRJoe Rogan53:27

        Mm.

    16. NRNaval Ravikant53:27

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

    17. JRJoe Rogan53:33

        Mm-hmm.

    18. NRNaval Ravikant53:33

        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.

    19. JRJoe Rogan53:45

        Yes.

    20. NRNaval Ravikant53:46

        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.

    21. JRJoe Rogan54:28

        Mm-hmm.

    22. NRNaval Ravikant54:28

        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.

    23. JRJoe Rogan55:30

        Oof. That's terrifying.

    24. NRNaval Ravikant55:32

        (laughs)

    25. JRJoe Rogan55:33

        I mean, it is-

    26. NRNaval Ravikant55:34

        It's a price you're paying.

    27. JRJoe Rogan55:34

        ... 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.

    28. NRNaval Ravikant55:42

        Our generation is the transition generation.

    29. JRJoe Rogan55:45

        Mm.

    30. NRNaval Ravikant55:45

        I think our kids will know how to handle it better because they'll grow up with... I hope, I hope.
13. 57:19 – 1:15:01

    Media, platforms, and censorship: aggregation, algorithms, and political capture

    1. NRNaval Ravikant57:19

       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.

    2. JRJoe Rogan57:53

       Mm.

    3. NRNaval Ravikant57:53

       Too many, right?

    4. JRJoe Rogan57:54

       Yeah.

    5. NRNaval Ravikant57:54

       So news has become commoditized. So the entire news media has shifted into peddling opinions and entertainment.

    6. JRJoe Rogan58:01

       Yes.

    7. NRNaval Ravikant58:02

       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-

    8. JRJoe Rogan58:13

       Mm.

    9. NRNaval Ravikant58:13

       ... 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?

    10. JRJoe Rogan58:29

        Mm...

    11. NRNaval Ravikant58:29

        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.

    12. JRJoe Rogan58:44

        Yeah.

    13. NRNaval Ravikant58:44

        It's now all just shock troops fighting wars with each other.

    14. JRJoe Rogan58:47

        How does this play out?

    15. NRNaval Ravikant58:49

        (smacks lips)

    16. JRJoe Rogan58:49

        Have you thought about it?

    17. NRNaval Ravikant58:50

        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.

    18. JRJoe Rogan1:00:26

        Mm.

    19. NRNaval Ravikant1:00:26

        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-

    20. JRJoe Rogan1:01:17

        Right.

    21. NRNaval Ravikant1:01:17

        ... 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.

    22. JRJoe Rogan1:02:12

        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?

    23. NRNaval Ravikant1:02:18

        No, no.

    24. JRJoe Rogan1:02:19

        First Amendment.

    25. NRNaval Ravikant1:02:20

        Unfortunately, it's, unfortunately it's headed the opposite direction, right? (laughs)

    26. JRJoe Rogan1:02:22

        The opposite direction.

    27. NRNaval Ravikant1:02:22

        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-

    28. JRJoe Rogan1:02:32

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

    29. NRNaval Ravikant1:02:37

        They are incompetent.

    30. JRJoe Rogan1:02:37

        ... seem to understand.

Episode duration: 2:11:56