ThePrimeagen: Programming, AI, ADHD, Productivity, Addiction, and God | Lex Fridman Podcast #461

Lex Fridman 0:00 The following is a conversation with Michael Palson, better known online as ThePrimeagen. He is a programmer who has entertained and inspired millions of people to have fun building stuff with software, whether you're a newbie or a seasoned developer who has been battling it out in the software engineering trenches for decades. In short, ThePrimeagen is a legendary programmer and a great human being with an inspiring roller coaster of a life story. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description, and now, dear friends, here's ThePrimeagen.

Lex Fridman 0:42 What do you love most about programming? Uh, what brings you joy when you program?

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 0:46 I can tell you the first time that I ever felt love in programming or felt that joy or that excitement-

Lex Fridman 0:51 Sure.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 0:52 ... which was in college. It was the second class in data structures, and the teacher that was teaching, Ray Babcock, he was talking about linked lists. Now, you, you have to learn Java at Montana State University when I went, and so he's off the kind of explaining this whole linked list thing and all that, and then he shows code. And then the code, it's like abstract class node or whatever it was. I can't remember what it was, and then it had a private member, and that private member was of type node. And I've never seen that before. It is a class that is called node with a member that is of itself. And for the first time ever, I was like, "Oh my gosh. Like, there's no end. There's no way to iterate. This is not like a set of 10 items. This is a set of infinite items." And so, like, my mind kind of, like, exploded in that moment. Like, there's actually... You... Like, the what you can express is huge. I can see what memory looks like. Like, I can see this kind of hopping through space, and I just remember being just so blown away 'cause up until that point everything was just, "All right. I have a list of 10 items. I have a list of 20 items," right? It was very rigid and small, and the things I built were really small and trivial. And all of a sudden, I felt like I could build, like, anything in that one moment, and it was so amazing. I just remember sitting in class for what f- I don't even remember how long those classes were anything, but I just remember being just completely, like, profoundly impacted by this notion. And so I just sat there and I watched it, and I had the exact same experience in, heavens forbid, by a software engineering class when we talked about the decorator pattern, where you can keep on constructing these objects in this recursive way. Not that I think that's actually a good idea to do, but just watching that and realizing, like, there's so many weird and unique ways you can solve problems, and, like, you can just... Anything your mind can think of, you can just create that. And I just remember getting just so excited about the possibility that anything is possible.

Lex Fridman 2:41 Yeah, let's, uh, wax philosophical about a linked list. It is pretty profound for people who don't know a node in a linked list doesn't know anything about the world it's in. It only knows about the thing it's linked to, its neighbor. Maybe that's symbolic, the metaphor, for all of us humans. There's billions of us on this planet, and we only know about our local little network.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 3:04 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 3:05 And it's kind of beautiful, and you realize, like, in that little simple data structure, you can construct arbitrarily large systems and they, they're like roots that go through memory. And then, of course, that's where you get all the programming languages that allow you to, uh, dump junk into memory and have memory leaks and then there- therefore create infinite pain as you try to figure out where that, uh, u- unfreed memory i- is. Uh, for me, yeah, probably... Mm, it's so, so beautiful the way you put that. Li- linked lists are indeed beautiful. Recursion also for me when I finally wrapped my brain around what it means to write a recursive function.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 3:49 What was the, what was the thing? What was the, like, the one that taught you? 'Cause I think we all probably... You probably did factorial where you, like, you know, just do, like, a quick factorial of it, and it just doesn't hit home.

Lex Fridman 3:59 Mm-hmm.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 3:59 What was the thing that kind of made it hit home?

Lex Fridman 4:01 I don't remember the first. (laughs)

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 4:05 I remember mine first. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 4:06 (laughs)

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 4:06 How do you not remember your first? It was magic.

Lex Fridman 4:08 Shh... I've had so many-

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 4:09 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 4:10 ... that (laughs) just, uh, it, it-

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 4:11 But you are a Lisp guy. You're probably pretty used to the recursion.

Lex Fridman 4:14 Yeah, all I remember is just surrounded by a sea of parentheses.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 4:19 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 4:19 (laughs) I mean, that's, that's really probably when I... Uh, in high school, uh, I think it was either Java or C++. Wow, how do I not remember that? It must have been C++. And then college, it was the generic bullshit software engineering classes were, uh, Java, but then the, the renegades, the cool kids were all using Lisp. That's, that's when you're doing the AI, the quote-unquote "AI" at that time. That's, that was Lisp. If you want to write a chess engine, you would use Lisp. And so for me, probably the moment I really fell in love with programming was, was Lisp and writing, like, Othello programs and, uh, chess engines, all kinds of engines that play a game, and then I could play against that thing and that thing would beat me. The joy of being destroyed by the thing you've created... And oh, um, Game of Life, too, with Cellular Automata. That's when I... I built that in all kinds of programming languages. That's less about programming language and more about the system you create, and that just filled me with infinite joy. Uh, having... Now similar to the linked list situation, creating a system where each individual cell only knows about its neighbors and operates in a very simple rules, but when you take that system as a whole and allow it to evolve over time, you can create infinite complexity. So I, I just... Man, th- those are many pothead moments where I'm just, like, looking at the beautiful complexity that, that can be created with Cellular Automata. That, that filled me with just infinite joy for sure. But yeah, the paren- all I remember is parentheses. So my first... Memories of my first are drowned...... in a sea of parentheses.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 6:11 Oh, man. Mine is, uh, I have... Well, first off, mine was in Java. So, my first was a little bit more rigid, kind of a corporate, you know, a corporate experience.

Lex Fridman 6:20 Yeah.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 6:20 But, uh-

Lex Fridman 6:21 Cold, meaningless. (laughs)

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 6:22 Cold, yeah. I was in a lab. Everyone was using Centos at that, or Cent OS or however you say it. I always called it Centos the freshmaker.

Lex Fridman 6:29 Yeah.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 6:30 And so it was just like I'm in this very cold... (laughs)

Lex Fridman 6:32 That's nice.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 6:32 Thank you. Uh-

Lex Fridman 6:33 Yeah.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 6:34 I'm in, like, this cold, rigid environment, uh, with my Microsoft keyboard programming away in Java, and I still, I have just such this memory of despair because I love programming. This was after the linked list, and I cannot figure out recursion. And so I go to, you know, the university store and I buy a book, and it's Ditel & Ditel Learn Java and it has a section on recursion. So I open it up and I start reading it, and it just doesn't hit home. And I'm like, I'm spiraling into this, like, kind of-

Lex Fridman 7:03 Yeah.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 7:03 ... a, a... Maybe I'm not a programmer. Maybe I'm not worthy enough to enter into this circle of people who can figure out what, what the heck recursion means. And so Ditel & Ditel's like, I still remember this, their phrase, their exact phrase was, "Every young budding developer solves this recursion program." And it was the Tower of Hanoi. And guess what? I don't kno- know if I can solve the Tower of Hanoi to this day. It's a, (laughs) it's like a very hard recursive problem. And I just sat there and thought, "Oh my gosh, I'm not gonna make it." And I sat there in the lab for eight hours, 10 hours doing these things, so worried it's the week of recursion, we have to do a lab assignment, I'm not gonna be able to do it, and I just remember being, like, genuinely worried about that. Uh, and then, because I always, my big problem was is, like, okay, do factorial. Why not just use a for loop? Okay, what about Fibonacci sequence? Why not use a for loop, right? Like, I don't underst- what's the purpose of recursion? I don't understand it yet it's so powerful. Why? It looks like a really complicated for loop. And so I just could not understand it, and then lab came that day and it was, "I'm gonna give you a 2D array you have to read from a file. This is what a starting position looks like, this is what an ending position looks like, this is what a wall looks like. I want you to find me a path through the maze." And so I just sat there a- a- and I'm like, "Okay, well, I guess I can just go up and I can create a, like, a visited grid that, so I know not to visit these places anymore," and then all of a sudden it just started clicking. I'm like, "Well, wait a second, I don't know the maze but if I just go up, right, down and left and hop back every time I bend to that square, don't visit it, like, I can just, it'll just go forever." And I realized in that moment, I'm like, "I actually understand recer- I've understood recursion this whole time, I just never had a problem in which it actually made sense to use." And that was, like, my big downfall is that I, I was measuring my understanding with the problems that I had available which were just, you know, list traversal, which is not a good use of recursion. And so I just, I just remember that freeing... Oh man, recursion, it was a great moment in my life.

Lex Fridman 9:01 I mean, it does require, to be fair, a leap of faith, like, b- 'cause people will tell you, those, uh, conformist, dogmatic Java instructors will tell you that this isn't, you know, um, that it's important to understand, uh, recursion. But it takes a leap of faith that this is something, this is a different way of looking at the world, and it's a powerful way of looking at the world. I actually remembered when I think I first... I think I remember my first now.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 9:37 All right. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 9:39 (laughs) Uh, I think it was, uh, dev, first search for one of the games, maybe Othello, something like that. And for that, implementing recursion, understand that you can search trajectories through the, the space of states and do that recursively. That was mind-blowing.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 9:58 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 9:58 Just imagining, like-

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 10:00 You could just see it all.

Lex Fridman 10:00 ... the possibilities.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 10:02 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 10:02 Yeah, just like numbers flying, it was uh, like The Beautiful Mind. And then, um, and that's when I also, uh, discovered conspiracy theories.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 10:09 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 10:09 That was... (laughs) And I just saw, I saw the truth. Uh, okay, yeah. So what

Lex Fridman 10:15 were we talking about? Oh, what was the most painful aspect of programming for you? Uh, like what, what memories do you have of, uh, deep profound suffering in terms of programming in the early days?

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 10:27 Uh, I would say the biggest one that I can really hold onto had to be one of two experiences. The first experience was when I was at a place called Schedulicity and... Am I not allowed to say the place that I'm

Lex Fridman 10:42 Oh, you're allowed, it's just-

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 10:43 ... putting on glass?

Lex Fridman 10:43 There's... (laughs)

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 10:44 I'm not sure if they're even operating still at this point, but they're in Bozo-

Lex Fridman 10:47 There's just something funny about the name, I'm sorry.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 10:48 Oh, Schedulicity? Yeah, i- they actually, the name was so bad that when you looked at their, like, paid for s- Google Ad terms that they would make sure that they're at the top of the list, the spellings were just insane 'cause no one knew how to spell the word Schedulicity. (laughs) And so it was just like this, the Google optimizing for that is just hilarious. Uh, but okay, go back to the thing. In the... The thing that kills me the most about programming, what I actually considered the worst aspect of programming is when you know everything. And so when I was at this job, it's just every single day I'd come in, there were no surprises, there was no questions that... I didn't understand the code base. Sure, that's, that's fair. I did not understand all the things about the code base, but I knew I was gonna go in, I was gonna generate some sort of object from the database. I was gonna take that object from the database and I was just gonna map it over and just display it on a web page. There's no creativity, there's noth- there's nothing to it. It's very, like, almost factory line kind of work. And that was a very kind of difficult moment for me, which is... I didn't enjoy programming because, like, I knew everything about it. I already knew exactly what I was gonna do that day. I knew all the hurdles I was gonna have to go over. There was no unknown unknowns, if you will. It was just knowns (laughs) at all times, and it's just, that is, for me, that is the worst part about programming is when you already know the solution and it's just a matter of how fast you can type and get it out from your head to your hands.

Lex Fridman 12:10 So the absence of uncertainty, the absence of challenge was the pain.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 12:14 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 12:15 That's pretty profound, Prime.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 12:17 ... I'm more than just good looks. I want you to know that.

Lex Fridman 12:20 (laughs)

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 12:21 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 12:21 It's a low bar.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 12:23 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 12:23 What do you identify as? I'm enjoying asking the general question.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 12:27 (laughs) 38, male.

Lex Fridman 12:28 Uh, male.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 12:29 Husband, a beautiful wife.

Lex Fridman 12:30 Okay.

Lex Fridman 12:31 You stream about all kinds of programming, uh, but what kind of programmer are you? Are you a full-stack developer? Web programming? Uh, and maybe can you lay out all the different kinds of programming and place yourself in that, in terms of your identity, sexual identity as well?

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 12:49 Yeah, I can get it. We can put it all in there.

Lex Fridman 12:51 Okay.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 12:51 Uh, uh, plus, I mean, obviously those two are very-

Lex Fridman 12:53 (laughs) Connect-

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 12:54 ... very tightly coupled.

Lex Fridman 12:55 I have seen you, like, on the border of s- sexually aroused by certain languages. I think you got real excited about OCaml or... (laughs)

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 13:04 OCaml. Let's go. (laughs) Thank you, Dylan Mulroy -

Lex Fridman 13:07 Okay. Wow.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 13:09 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 13:09 Did not expect that. That escalated quickly. Anyway, what do you identify as?

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 13:13 Okay, so let, first you, uh, let's, let's do the previous, or the in between question first, which is the different kind of archetypes. I think that's a really interesting kind of question because if you go on Twitter or you're new, your thoughts are probably that there is just web programming. And maybe there's some other stuff, yeah, like game programming, but you do, like, game programming in JavaScript and on the web. You know, like, there's this very, kind of, very myopic view of the programming world, and I bet if you ask a lot of people these days, like, "What is the most popular form of programming?" They'd probably say, "Web." If you said, "What contains the most amount of repos? How many percentage of repos on GitHub are web based?" They'd probably say, "90%" or some huge number. But the reality is that there's an entire embedded robotics world, you know, you're familiar with the ML side of things. There's networking, there's gonna be just, like, performance operating systems, compilers. There's just huge amounts of variation of all these different type of programming verticals that you can be. And so we often talk about programming in perspective of web, or something that's pretty narrow, and I think that's just a social construct of Twitter more than anything else that it's actually... I don't believe it's that representative of, of the entire kind of programming world out there. And I think a lot of programming's really, really fun. There's some really great stuff. Building a c- your own language is just a very fun experience to do. Every programmer should just do that once, just to have a completely different, you know, perspective on how things work in life. But as far as what do I do, uh, I've always looked at myself as a tools engineer, so when, uh, at my time at my o- all, my jobs typically, I would start off on the UI, and then they'd be like, "Okay, well, hey, we need a library for this thing." So then I'd be the one writing, like, the library. So in 2012, 2013, I was writing a UI library for the web that can behave just like an iPad, so you can pinch and zoom on it, but it's still a webpage, 'cause we didn't have any of that stuff back then. It was a canvas, had to do all the, like, matrixy operations and all that stuff to kind of-

Lex Fridman 15:05 Nice.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 15:05 ... you know, it felt like you're on an iPad, but it actually wasn't on an iPad. And this was iPad 2, by the way, so this is a long time ago. And so every single time I got into a job, it's like, "Okay, hey, we need to do a library." "Hey, can you work on a build system?" So back then, there was no Grunt, there was no Gulp, there was no any of those things, so I had to hand-roll my own JavaScript build system. And so I always fell into these positions of building tools for developers to be successful, and I've always really enjoyed that region, so as I went, uh, on to, say, Netflix, uh, spent 10 years there, I'd say the majority of my 10 years were building things for developers to use that they could be successful at their job. And so I just... I've always really enjoyed that aspect because your share- your stakeholders and the people that use your program understand programming, and they're gonna say, like, "Hey, I need this." And typically the thing that they need, they actually want. Whereas with people, people want stuff, but what they actually need versus what they actually want often are kind of like this weird separation. People, you know, that's like the old Henry Ford quote, "I just want a faster horse," and he's like, "No, what you actually want is a car." And so it's like this, like, you have to play this game of trying to really figure it out, whereas developers, it's like, "I know you know what I'm doing. I know what you want. Let's figure it out together."

Lex Fridman 16:20 That's actually, that gives you a really nice big-picture view of programming in general, so I, I love the idea of just kind of starting at the interface, like you need to pinch and all that kind of stuff, and then figure out the entire thing that requires-

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 16:33 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 16:33 ... to make that happen, inclu- including maybe the side quest tooling, how to make it more productive and efficient, all that kind of stuff, so the entirety-

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 16:41 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 16:41 ... the entirety of the thing. That's really cool. Okay, so that mean that would be full-stack, by the general definition of full-stack, meaning, like-

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 16:49 Perhaps, yeah.

Lex Fridman 16:50 ... versus, like, systems engine- like, starting at the bottom and trying to optimize a certain kind of specific thing without seeing the big picture of, like, what the end- the resulting interface-

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 17:00 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 17:00 ... would, would look like. And a lot of people, you know, in web programming, they never go beyond the front end of how the thing looks. They kind of always assume there'll be somebody-

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 17:10 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 17:10 ... some, some, uh, grunt in the shadows, in the darkness of the basement that will implement the backend.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 17:16 Some Gilfoyle out there will be doing the backend.

Lex Fridman 17:19 (laughs) Gilfoyle.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 17:19 Yeah, like, I like to call myself a generalist, um, just to kind of give some ideas is, you know, at w- at one point at Netflix, I built the WebSocket connection, so for TVs, how WebSocket works is code I just wrote.

Lex Fridman 17:31 Mm-hmm.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 17:31 And so I, you know, built the framing thing, and before that, I was doing stuff with memory, and before that, I built a UI for a tool, right? It's just like I can just do the thing. You just tell me the thing to do, and I'll just go do the thing. I don't worry too... I don't try to get super good at one specific activity. Like, I don't want to be a Kubernetes engineer who's the world's greatest deployer.

Lex Fridman 17:50 Mm-hmm.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 17:50 But if I had to go learn Kubernetes, I'd go learn it and learn how to deploy some things and then hopefully move on to, like, the next thing, if that makes sense.

Lex Fridman 17:58 Uh, I posted about the fact that I'm talking to you on Reddit, and there's, uh, a lot of wonderful questions. Uh, somebody mentioned that I should ask you about DevOps. Can you explain what DevOps is? Is it a kind of special ops of programmers? Is it SEAL Team Six of developers? What's DevOps? Can you define what... Are you a DevOps engineer?

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 18:14 Well, people keep telling me DevOps isn't real. There's actually... You want platform engineers, cloud engineers, infra engineers, uh...I just often think, I think the easiest way f- if we're doing, like, just kind of, like, some basic nomenclature, it's just DevOps are the people that make sure that when you launch a service and all of that, it doesn't just disappear. Right? It's all the kind of backbone of being able to operate something at scale. Like, you really don't n- if you think about it, if you're just writing a mom and pa, like, website, people that do PHP that are doing WordPress and all that, they're gonna build something. They're gonna hand it off to, I don't know, Linode, DigitalOcean, some company. They don't really need a really complicated build, deployment, all this. It's just someone with a simple website, so they can sell their goods. And so they don't really need that. And so that's kind of how I think of a DevOps, is when things need to scale, that's kind of the person you hire.

Lex Fridman 19:04 Yeah, those people are actually amazing.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 19:06 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 19:06 I've, uh, the time I spent at Google, it's like, oh, yeah, yeah, there's all these fancy machine learning people. But, th- the, the folks that are running the compute, the infrastructure, basically that make sure the shit doesn't go down, they're like wizards. And they're essential.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 19:23 It's a very incredible, like, vertical of job. And obviously, I'm using a very broad term to describe, I'm sure, like, a bunch. You know, because making sure s- stuff doesn't go down, you could also say that's, like, an SRE, right? Site reliability engineer. Whatever, uh, you know, the ones that wear the, the bomber jackets at Google. And so when we say DevOps, I think people get very particular about terms specifically in this category. They're like, "Well, actually, you're mentioning infrastructure engineer versus, you know, versus site reliability engineer."

Lex Fridman 19:47 Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 19:47 It's just like, okay, yes, I hear you, but generally when someone thinks DevOps, they think somebody that manages the servers and their life cycles and the reliability. There's DevOps. Is it real? I'm not sure.

Lex Fridman 19:58 Okay.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 19:59 Did Vercel kill DevOps?

Lex Fridman 20:02 Question mark? Yeah.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 20:03 Question mark.

Lex Fridman 20:04 Wow, that's, you're almost a journalist. That's a headline.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 20:07 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 20:08 Uh, let's go back to the beginning.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 20:10 All right.

Lex Fridman 20:11 Baby Prime. So you mentioned Netflix. You've, uh-

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 20:15 I worked at Netflix, by the way.

Lex Fridman 20:17 (laughs) For people who don't know, uh, who, uh, the Primogen is, he mentions, uh, the fact that he has, uh, been very successful and has worked at Netflix in basically every other sentence.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 20:29 Correct.

Lex Fridman 20:30 (laughs)

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 20:31 Almost as much as I mention Neovim.

Lex Fridman 20:33 Oh, great. Tell me more about Neovim. No, please don't. So Baby Prime, at the very beginning, you've had one hell of a life and I think it's inspiring to a lot of people. You've, you've gone through a lot of painful low points. And like you mentioned, you've come out of that to become a successful programmer and a person that inspires a huge number of people, um, to get into programming and just to find success in life. So maybe... I would love it if you laid out just your whole life journey from the beginning.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 21:08 So I guess if we're gonna start with this whole journey, I think it's probably best to start when I was about four or five years old. That was the first time I was ever exposed to pornography. Uh, and it's kind of just earwormed me for a large portion of my life. And so I don't think there was a day that didn't go by from when I was a very young lad all the way up until I was 20 some years old where I didn't think about porn on the daily basis. And so it was just, like, every single day, even at that young. And so it's just a very mind-consuming, time-consuming, thought-consuming thing that kind of plagued me from a, uh, starting at a very young age. When I was seven years old, my dad died. Um, that was kind of a really tough period of life. I, I still think about this time that I went over to China and there's kind of some rules that we were given. And one of the rules was just like, "Hey, don't talk about God. And if you do, use the word Da instead." And I was just like, "Okay, Da." And it was, like, the first time I said that word in, like, 17 years or some long time, like, "Da."

Lex Fridman 22:12 (laughs)

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 22:12 It was, like, so weird to say that phrase.

Lex Fridman 22:14 Yeah.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 22:14 And I was just like, oh, that was just the strangest thing I've ever said my entire lifetime.

Lex Fridman 22:19 Yeah.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 22:19 It just felt so weird. So kind of rewind, as I got older obviously, was very good at computers, good at accessing porn, of course. Uh, played, uh, video games on the internet. Fun, fun kind of like side quest story. I think the guy's name is LordTalk on Twitch. I can't quite remember his name, but he built this game called Graal, G-R-A-A-L, and Graal Online and when I was a young lad, that, it was just like Zelda, except for it also had a level editor and it had, like, a C-like language and that's how I discovered how to program, is I looked at these symbols and figured out what they meant and then I was able to make things happen in the game. And that was like a, that's my introduction into programming. So thank you that guy, whatever your Twitch name was. But all right, so keep on going. As I got older, I was super bad socially. I was not a very great social person. I... High school was brutal, got made fun of a lot. Uh, really didn't en- I wouldn't say I had a great time during high school. Uh, definitely felt very out of place or offset or maybe misplaced, if you will. I'm not sure what the right word is. And so of course, at that point, I just always wanted to... I wanted to be accepted, to fit in and all that. I did forget to say one side story. After my dad died, my brother, older brother, he got into and started getting into drugs and along with that, he exposed me to pot. So at eight years old, I was smoking some marijuane, uh, for a while there until, like, maybe 11 or 12 and took a break and then again did a lot of that as I got a little bit older, but so I kind of got a, a lot of these exposures fairly young. 16, 15 through 18, a lot of drinking and all that. When I graduated or as I was graduating high school, it's just like I had such sadness, if you will. I was very sad about how everything went, tried to commit suicide. Um, obviously it was a very poor attempt and I'm still here today. I'm very happy about that aspect. I'm glad that I didn't follow through with anything. Had to go to the hospital and all that and when I was done, I just still remember kind of coming out of the hospital and at, like, that moment, it's kind of like something...... broken you. Have you ever read the book, uh, Wheel of Time? It's 14,000 pages or something like that.

Lex Fridman 24:33 Mm-hmm.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 24:33 But right around page 12,000, Rand has to intentionally kill a girl, the main character, and that's like the moment he breaks and he gets into, like, hard Rand, uh, uh, Quindelar Rand, if you will. For those that know Wheel of Time will appreciate all that. Uh, for those that don't, very confusing and I understand. Not the Amazon movie show. Not that, not that Wheel of Time. So, now that we kinda go back onto it, at that point, it's just like something kinda broke in me, and it's just like I just didn't care anymore. So all the kind of social awkwardness, if you will, all that kind of just died away with me, but also so did everything else. And so I started using a bunch of drugs, well, LSD, mushrooms, meth, did a bunch of meth, did a bunch of that stuff, and then went off to college and continued to do a bunch of stuff. I took too much acid to where for, like, quite a few years I had like little squigglies on the side of my eyes whenever I'd walk by high-contrast objects.

Lex Fridman 25:28 Mm-hmm.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 25:29 And so it was just like that whole period of life was just kind of marked by, um, just poor decisions. And then sometime when I was about 19 years old, somewhere in that range, I just had this one evening where it's just I felt the very dramatic and real presence of God, and it was just like I kinda had this choice, like Frodo, uh, on a razor, where it's like, "If I go either way, I'm gonna fall off, and I need to change my life. You just, you get to make the choice now. Do you want to do that or not?" And so I remember going, "Okay, I do, I do want to change my life." Like, "I don't like this experience. I don't like what I'm living. I am still very sad. I still feel very desperate. I still feel all those things. I'm just, like, pretending to be this other person." And then I just went to sleep that night. Nothing changed in my life. Everything was still the way it was. I woke up the next day, the same person, and I was just like, "Oh, that's just, like, such a strange, weird kind of experience." And I just went about my day. And then I remember, I think that evening, I looked at porn, and all of a sudden, I just had a conscious. I had just, like, this deep, profound, like, shame, and I was like, "I've never felt shame in my life," right? Like, "I- I have no idea what's happening now." And then all of a sudden, when I smoked pot, I just felt deep shame. And when I hurt somebody or did something wrong, all of a sudden, it's just like I got a conscious from that evening. That's what kind of my gift was, if you will. And it's just like at that point, I didn't even have a choice. I had to change my life, 'cause for whatever reason, I've kinda been changed in the moment. And so from there, I started actually trying in school. I always kind of joke around that I got a 2.14 in high school. I had a teacher hand-write me a note saying I was the worst student she's ever had, all that kinda stuff. I was not a really great student. And then in that moment, it's just like, "Okay, now life's changed," and I start trying to learn, and I try to become a good student. And it turns out, it's really hard. Like, I was, I was really bad. I still got Cs. Uh, I went and took pre-calculus and failed pre-calculus, and I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I used to be this smart math guy, and now I'm kind of the idiot failing." And so it's like I'm just questioning myself and all that, and I spend hours upon hours in, in like a studying, uh, math learning center, and then just at some point, years into this journey, I'm like a year and a half into this journey at this point, it's just like something clicks, and I go from being the worst person to just immediately becoming the best. Everything after that is just, I don't know what happened. All of a sudden, I was the best person at math. I started going to my computer science classes. I just really got everything. It's just like everything at s- at just... Years after trying, just all of a sudden became easier. And I'm not sure if it happened over the course of weeks, or when the easier started, but it was just first predicated by just a huge amount of difficulty. And then this is kind of where I started really desiring and loving the process of learning, was when things started getting easier after all those years, 'cause I just was motivated by this desire to do something, not, not thinking it was gonna get any easier. And then all of a sudden, it just started getting easier, and it was great. And that's kind of really where, I guess, I started having the biggest parts of my life change. At that point, I started really, really, really wanting to never look at porn again, 'cause every single time, just such shame, and I really wanted to stop, and that was by far the hardest addiction to quit. Like, smoking cigarettes was also a really hard addiction to quit, shockingly hard addiction to quit, but porn, by far, was just the worst of them all. And then I think about 22, I was finally done with all kind of addictions, if you will, and then for a year, I just, I just worked and all that, and I think right around, maybe it was 21 and three-quarters, somewhere in that range, I'm not really sure where I, I stopped all the addictions part, but, or at least the outwardly addictions. And then at some point, six months later, a year later, met my beautiful wife. Things just started falling more and more into place. I loved more and more work. I loved programming. I started programming like 12 hours a day. I watched the Social Network movie, and after that, I was just like, "I'm doing a startup." And so like that night, I started my first startup, and I was just like so... It was in PHP, by the way.

Lex Fridman 29:38 Nice.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 29:39 PHP, yeah, 5.2 or something like that.

Lex Fridman 29:41 Mm-hmm.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 29:41 It was great, great times. And I was just so motivated to do that, and I would just program for... Uh, sometimes I'd program for 24, 36 hours straight, and I'd just, like, non-stop, just that's all I wanted to do at all points. I think my wife got a little sick of me. I wouldn't... Uh, she would just be like, "Can you drop me off at school?" And I'd be like, "No, I'm programming." I was not a very nice... You know, I, I didn't-

Lex Fridman 30:00 Yeah.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 30:00 ... think through things that well.

Lex Fridman 30:01 Yeah.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 30:01 And I was just so into it, and I just did it non-stop. And that's kind of, like, how I became me, is that story, if that makes sense.

Lex Fridman 30:10 Let's try to re- reverse engineer some

Lex Fridman 30:12 of the pain and some of the triumph. You made it sound easy at times. Let's try to understand it better. Maybe when you were seven years old, what do you think about the pain you experienced there, losing your dad? What do you think... What kind of impact did it have on you? What kind of memories do you have of that time?

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 30:30 ... the best way I can kind of put it is that I just never knew what a dad was. I was young enough that I could kind of maybe repress or just even have the capability of remembering things long term. Because I know most people don't remember a lot from when they're young, and so I'm not exactly sure. I probably was at one of the best possible ages if I'm going to lose a dad, to lose a dad. You know, uh, if you're gonna lose one, if you're 11 or 12, it's like a terrible age. That's what my brother was, and he fell into drug addiction and never got back out. And so I just kind of have more of like a fuzziness, and just kind of a longing that I, I just wish I had a dad.

Lex Fridman 31:07 What impact did that have on your evolution, on your life, sort of having that longing?

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 31:13 I think that's why I was so bad, uh, socially in the sense that I was looking for approval, right? Like something, I needed approval. I think a lot of people kind of desire that approval or that loving figure, and I just didn't have that. And so I think I just looked for it in everything else, right? Like if I, to say it, psychoanalyze my actions. During the time, it's not like I was actively thinking that, uh, but yeah. I just always wanted something to fill in whatever that was I felt.

Lex Fridman 31:41 I think a lot of people listening to this will, uh, resonate

Lex Fridman 31:44 with your experience in high school. Like being the outsider, being picked on, uh, struggling through a lot of different complexities at home. Uh, what advice would you give to them?

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 31:54 Man, the worst part about high school is that you're surrounded by a bunch of people your age, and it feels eternal.

Lex Fridman 32:02 Yeah.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 32:02 You don't think... Like the people that are around you, you feel like are the people that will be there for the rest of your life. At least that's what I, kind of like I thought. And I didn't really even realize this until many years later, that they are going to be some of the least consequential people in your life.

Lex Fridman 32:18 Yeah.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 32:18 Which is very shocking to kind of think about, especially if you're in it right now.

Lex Fridman 32:23 Yeah.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 32:24 Right? Like right now, they are the, everything that you're experiencing is, your whole reality. And then one day, it all stops, and then real life starts to begin.

Lex Fridman 32:33 Yeah.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 32:33 And it's just, that's such a shocking thing, and if I could just tell myself that, maybe I would have been a bunch of different person.

Lex Fridman 32:39 That's so beautifully put. I mean, it is a, it's like a trial run, you know, like at the beginning of video games there's a little tutorial. That's what that is.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 32:47 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 32:48 And actually, that should be a chance, uh, to try shit out, to take risks, uh, because real life will begin where there is more consequences after that.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 33:00 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 33:00 Here you can, you know, if you like a girl, ask her out. Try. Try shit.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 33:04 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 33:04 If you get picked on, hit that guy back.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 33:07 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 33:07 Try shit out. (laughs)

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 33:08 I'm not gonna condone punching another person, but... (laughs)

Lex Fridman 33:10 I will. Beat the shit out of him. And uh, take some jujitsu and learn how to take him down, and then, and then, and then that girl that rejected you will be like, "Hmm, maybe I'll give that guy a second chance." Be a bad motherfucker.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 33:22 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 33:22 It's a chance to try stuff out. (laughs) This is a very motivational speech for kicking ass.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 33:28 It is true though, I mean, there is something very true about that, that I think especially I, I mean I have no idea what the girls' experience of high school would be like, but as a guy there's definitely a lot of like physical requirements in high school. There's a lot of physical measurement, at least where I grew up. I think that might not be true in all high schools, but if they're filled with boys, it's probably true. And so it's just like, yeah it probably does help to do those things, to go to BJJ, to do any of these activities because even if you don't ever kick someone's ass, just having some level of confidence in yourself is probably a very valuable thing. But just remembering that this is such a short, tiny moment in your life is just like a huge help.

Lex Fridman 34:09 I mean, the way you phrased it is exactly right. That's what it feels like, that this is, these are the people that will be with you for the rest of your life, and this is the whole world. And so that means that there will be just tremendous amount of impact if somebody picks on you or if you fall somebody low, somewhere low in the hierarchy, uh, in the status hierarchy of this high school, that means you'll be low in the status hierarchy of the world and you're fucked for the rest of your life. And that, that carries a tremendous amount of weight, which is why psychologically it's extremely difficult to be...

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 34:42 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 34:42 I, I think it's understated often by parents, by society, how difficult it is to be a high schooler, how difficult psychologically it is, how it actually makes sense that some people would suffer from depression and be on the verge of suicide. It's very, very difficult.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 34:58 Yeah. I think it's even, I, you know, people always say, "Back in my day," you know, blah, blah, blah. I think it's genuinely harder today than it's ever been in the sense that when I was a kid, there was a qualification to people, meaning this is a cool guy, this is not a cool guy. Today there's a quantification of people. You have 32,514 people following you, you have 12.

Lex Fridman 35:18 Yeah.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 35:19 Like there, people can visually, (laughs) they can inspect your exact social value on whatever platform you're on, and that has to be just so much harder. And I can imagine that there's a lot of, of just so much weight put on that, that it's just, it feels probably way worse and way more damning to be uncool because you have an exact number of how uncool you are.

Lex Fridman 35:42 Yeah, the challenge there, and the task, the quest is to remember that just because your social circle on social media and, uh, in high school thinks you're uncool, it actually might mean you are cool.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 36:00 Yeah. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 36:01 And you def- find that cool and grow it and let it flourish so that when real life begins, you can fucking come out of the gate firing on all cylinders, because...

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 36:12 That's a great way to put it.

Lex Fridman 36:13 I, I, I think if anything, high school is really bad at picking out the cool people.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 36:19 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 36:20 That like, uh, the s- whatever the system, the hierarchy that forms, it is so, it's such a basic bitch hierarchy. Like you're good at very generic shit.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 36:29 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 36:29 That's how you rise.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 36:30 Your parents bought you an expensive car. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 36:32 Expensive car, right.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 36:33 Just for

Lex Fridman 36:33 Materialistic shit, yeah exactly.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 36:35 It's a greedy search. See, they didn't have a proper search so they're just hitting that local Optima. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 36:39 But the huris- but I mean, even the objective function, the, uh, for that greedy search is just a really shitty one...

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 36:45 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 36:45 ... where those people that win the game of high school are very often not gonna be the people that win the much more exciting, beautiful game of life. So, do epic shit and, uh, try stuff out. The weirdos are the ones that are gonna succeed. The weirdos in high school, uh, probably because they also get bullied and they get to be tormented more psychologically and get to explore their own mind and think through what it means to be a human being more. 'Cause if you're winning in high school, you're not being challenged.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 37:17 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 37:18 You're not self-reflecting. You're not trying shit out. So, there is some degree to, like, being tormented as long as it doesn't break you. The porn addiction, that's another

Lex Fridman 37:30 powerful one that I think will probably resonate with a lot of people. And it's interesting that you say that's one of the hardest addictions, um, to, uh, overcome.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 37:40 Let me say it this way. Some addictions have a much bigger societal look.

Lex Fridman 37:45 Yeah.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 37:45 And porn is just not one of them, which makes it super hard. None of your friends are gonna cheer you on. If you go on Twitter and say, "I quit porn," they're gonna be like, "Well that's good for you, but not everybody, you know, not every," you know.

Lex Fridman 37:53 Mm-hmm.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 37:54 No one makes that argument with meth, right? No one's gonna be like, "Well, not everyone has to quit meth, okay? It's actually a fine industry and people who, you know, are the ones producing it, they're good also," right? (laughs) Like, no one's gonna make that kind of argument. Whereas with porn, you're gonna have, like, a whole thing and friends, friends are gonna think you're dumb for doing it or whatever. And so like, you have a, it's a much more difficult one in, in just, like, that. So it feels accepted.

Lex Fridman 38:18 A- and I think it's also an addiction you can practice, participate in privately-

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 38:22 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 38:23 ... and hide it from the world. There are certain addictions that are harder to hide from the world for prolonged periods of time.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 38:27 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 38:28 And porn addiction is probably one you can just have for many years and then it can deepen. That's probably, like, a serious issue. Boy, am I glad I grew up before the internet. (laughs) Because the, it's, porn is so accessible, so, so easy to go deep into that addiction. Uh, what, I mean, what can you speak about what impact it had on your life? Maybe some of the low points, but also how to overcome it.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 38:53 I'd say as far as impact goes, is that you will have such a long and broken look at women. By the very, like, I can... A- again, I'm only speaking from a, a male's perspective that porn in its just, like, most basic thing is that you use another person for your own, uh, desire or your own want. It's not something that is deeply needed. There's no need, there's no, like, need for porn. It's purely a want-based activity or a lust, however you want, whatever word you can fill in there. And it is purely an objectifying activity. Like, someone else is on display for your own enjoyment. And so I think you carry this around. Like, I do think that the women that I dated during high school or the women after high school and college, like, I looked at them as a means to an end. And I think porn greatly kind of shifted that kind of perspective in my head that I did not give the value that was desired to another person. It really devalues, uh, humanity just in general is my perspective of it. And that it makes people into commodities, and I don't think people are commodities. I think everyone has value. And so during that, for me, that's kind of, like, the great effect of porn is that, you know, it's just consumerism gone wild or materialism maybe, you could ask, argue gone wild. And it's extremely hard to quit just like you said, because I can look at porn and then I can go out to lunch.

Lex Fridman 40:17 Mm-hmm.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 40:17 You know, no one's gonna know. No one's gonna have any ideas. Like, it's a very private, it can be very short session. It doesn't have to be something that takes... Like, you know, you can't take acid then go out to lunch, right? You're gonna (laughs) you're gonna, your whole day is gonna be a very different day.

Lex Fridman 40:31 Mm-hmm.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 40:31 And so there's a, it's very quick, easy, accessible. And then obviously there's, like, all the, like, the science and s- you know, statistics, like men make worse decisions for some period of time after looking or being exposed to sexualized images. There's the whole dopamine effect that's just like you constantly need more and more dopamine. That's why people typically don't just watch five minutes of porn and call it a day. There's like, you know, the hundred tab joke that's always made on the internet.

Lex Fridman 40:54 Mm-hmm.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 40:54 It's because you, it's just this, this constant dopamine cycle you're constantly doing. And all that stuff is great to say, and I'm sure statistics and science and all that stuff is really great arguments for some amount of people. But for me, it just comes down to, like, is it really a good thing to do? Like, is it really actually something we want is to value people in such a profane or kind of just, like, disregarding way. Like, I just really think it's just bad for the soul even if all the stats said it was great for you.

Lex Fridman 41:24 (laughs)

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 41:24 I still say it's actually bad.

Lex Fridman 41:26 Yeah. Y- you have to look at the long-term, big picture psychological impact it has on your relationships with human beings in general. That's my more generally than just porn, uh, my problem with the, the quote unquote sort of "manosphere" is I think sleeping with a bunch of women is great, wonderful, but the problem is, is making that the primary objective of your life, similar with porn, is you devalue one of the most awesome things, which is intimacy. That's true for deep friendship. That's true for relationships. And I think porn does that, like, in its purest, darkest form, which is, like, the thing that matters is the sex, not the, like, the deep connection with another human being. And I think a- again, going back to high school and, uh, the, the manosphere, the objective function if it's to get laid, which helps with status and confidence and all, all that is wonderful I think. Again, can be an addiction, but the thing that's even more awesome for a lot of people is a deep friendship or deep intimacy with a, with a romantic partner.... like, that's also fucking awesome.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 42:40 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 42:40 And both of those are great.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 42:42 It's subjectively better to have. Like, m- I would say that there's no universe that exists, or there should be no argument possible that exists, that a guy who has meaningless sex has a better or a more meaningful life than, say, me and my wife who've been together for 15 years.

Lex Fridman 42:55 Yeah.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 42:55 We have a very, like, I can depend on her in all circumstances.

Lex Fridman 42:59 Mm-hmm.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 43:00 Whereas, if you live that other life, it- it- sure, it could be, it could feel great, but it- there's no meaning to it. There's no val- there's no actual real value to it.

Lex Fridman 43:07 That's absolutely correct. I do think that getting laid can have a tremendous positive impact on the confidence of a young man. I think just there's a certain number of sexual partners from which you can collect a lot of data and you can free you about, like, not to be so nervous about the opposite sex, not to be so nervous about human interaction. And that will allow you to see the world more clearly and to actually find that one partner that- with whom you can be deeply intimate with. Sometimes, like, the nervousness around, like, this societally, uh, constructed, like, value in getting laid can cloud your judgment, and if you just release that by getting laid a bunch of times, then like, you could see th- the world clearly, that getting laid is not as nearly as important, as you said, as finding the right human, including I should put in that pile, not just like a romantic partner, but like, friendships, like deep lasting friendships.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 44:11 Well, I mean, I think you're right that our society puts a lot of emphasis on getting laid, and I'm sure that's true among any group of males, uh, throughout any point in history. I'm sure that's a very common joke that's never actually, like, never stopped at any point. So-

Lex Fridman 44:24 Yeah.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 44:24 ... I'm, I'm sure that exists, but- and there's, there's probably some truth to the sense that after you've, you know ... Who was it? Uh, Jim Carrey, "I hope that everyone can get rich so they realize that money solves none of your problems."

Lex Fridman 44:35 Yeah.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 44:35 Like-

Lex Fridman 44:35 Exactly.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 44:35 ... the realization that this thing that society told you is hyper-important is actually not the important part. Like, it is a very important, it's a great sign that your relationship is healthy. Like, if me and my wife were to have no sex at all for months on end, like, something's gone wrong, which means what, you know ... W- we are no longer, like, on the same plane. Some- you know, but it's not also a good identifier. Just because you're having a lot of sex doesn't mean you're having a good relationship. And so it's kind of like a unique kind of, um ... I forget the, the right term here, but it's a unique way at looking at the problems, and our society puts so much emphasis, and maybe that's why porn was so hard to quit, but I- my guess is just all the dopamine effect that it is. Uh, but for me, like the, the most important part and the thing that actually has real reward is having that, uh, having just my wife. I do not look at, I try, I desperately try not to look at any other woman. I'm hopefully not gonna get caught Mark Zuckerberged at the White House like that. Um, you know, like, I don't look at porn. My wife has complete confidence in me that there is not gonna be a situation in which she has to question me in any kind of sense, and that builds a much more deeply, I, I would argue a very deep relationship because the trust is that much bigger. I think the deepness of the relationship is probably proportional to the trust you have in each other.

Lex Fridman 45:53 Mm-hmm.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 45:54 It's very hard to have a deep relationship with no trust.

Lex Fridman 45:56 Yeah, and uh, a probably a prerequisite, maybe a component of trust is vulnerability to where you like take the leap of being vulnerable with ano- another human being, and that vulnerability when re- reciprocated builds this, this really strong trust, and it's a beautiful thing. Yeah. I, I, I personally just given my position, uh, that's even more challenging, you know, being vulnerable with the world, and there's a bunch of people out there that want to hurt you for it, and, um, but I think it's worthwhile anyway to be vulnerable.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 46:33 It's always worth ... The risk is always worth it in, in some sense. Like, obviously everyone has a different kind of life they have to filter through their actions with, right? Because the person that has no, say, social following or anything, their risk/reward profile could just be local impact, which could be just as, you know, damning or harming to them.

Lex Fridman 46:50 Yeah.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 46:51 And so it's always worth the risk though, in my personal opinion, 'cause like finding my wife has been obviously the most impactful or changing thing in my life. So ... Or second most. I'd argue that one night with God would probably be the most impactful thing that led to everything else, but then the wife would be the next most impactful. I mean, I'm like cleaning up after myself and stuff now. Changed man. I'm a changed man.

Lex Fridman 47:14 Can we try to reverse

Lex Fridman 47:16 engineer that moment of you finding God? What is it, 19? 'Cause it feels like that was a big leap for you to escape, to escape the pain, to escape the addiction or the beginning of that journey. Uh, what do you think, what do you think happened there?

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 47:34 I think it just felt like I just, there was no line that I wasn't willing to cross.

Lex Fridman 47:38 Mm-hmm.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 47:38 Like everything was fine, and just like, it just all sudden just in that moment, it's just like I had a, I guess, some sort of deep fear and understanding like, "I am going down a path. Is this really the path you want to go down?" And I don't know what the result of that path would be or anything like that. I don't tend to speculate on things I, I don't understand. I just know that in that moment, I had the option, and I just chose ... I, I didn't want it anymore, right? It's kind of mixed in this whole thing where it's just like I had no value. I wrapped up all my meaning or value in having sex or getting laid. I had, you know, all that stuff, all the things we just talked about, like that was where all my worth was, and that is just such a, like a terrible place to have your worth. And it was just like kind of all came to a point, and I can't tell you the day of the week. I can't tell you anything other than it was nighttime, and I was in South Hedges (laughs) e- at Montana State University. Go Bobcats. (meows)

Lex Fridman 48:37 Mm-hmm. (laughs)

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 48:38 Um, that's about ... Yeah, that's the sign that we do at football games. Don't worry about it. But like, that's all I can really-... that's all I can really tell you 'cause the night, it, that night was no more or less special than some other night. It's just the specialness was I got at least a chance to make a choice.

Lex Fridman 48:55 'Cause you find in that advice that you can give to others who are probably, there's, there's probably just an endless amount of people there struggling with porn addiction now, young people. What, what advice could you give to them, how to overcome it?

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 49:12 For me to overcome it, I had to realize that I was taking something away from my future wife. Some people would be like, "Oh, well you just, you know, once you get a girlfriend then you can stop." And it's just like, no, because you never stopped the problem. You don't stop a problem by replacing it. And so I didn't have a girlfriend, didn't have all that. I just realized that I was truly taking away from something-

Lex Fridman 49:32 Mm-hmm.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 49:32 ... for my future wife. And I didn't even know my current wife at that time. I didn't... She was not in the picture.

Lex Fridman 49:37 Mm-hmm.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 49:37 I'm not even sure if she was at Montana State University at that point. And so it's just that's, uh, once I made that realization, I think it went from my head to my heart, which they say is the greatest distance in the universe. I finally, like, got it, and that's really where things changed. So if... The, the ability to say, like, what's gonna help you change and all that, I don't know if there's, I don't think there's silver bullets, right? If someone could offer you a drug... I forget who says this phrase, but there's this really interesting phrase that goes something like, um, he was a very depressed man and he was struggling with suicide and he kind of writes about this in this memoir. And he goes to the, these doctors and the doctors effectively say, "Well, here's antidepressants. It's gonna help you." And he says that, "Well, the problem was is that scientists told me that I could just touch my brain and make myself happy, and that's it. Like, they could reach in, they could configure some stuff, and I'll be happy." He's like, "For me, it was a lot like going out into a field and being able to take a drug to see the rain. I could look out, see the rain. It would fall down, it'd be silvery, it'd be beautiful, but all the crop would still die 'cause there's not actually any rain. I had to discover how to be happy myself." And so for me, it's like the reason why I looked at porno is 'cause I was unhappy. I was trying to find meaning, I was trying to find value in something, right? Something that was supposed to finally give me this ultimate satisfaction, and it just does not. No matter how hard and no matter how much you think it will, there is no escapade, there is no pornography that will ever give you that satisfaction you're looking for. That's the reason why it's addicting. That's kind of like my call to why you shouldn't do it. But how to get out of it? I only got out of it by realizing.

Lex Fridman 51:17 I think, uh, that's really brilliantly described. (laughs) You knew that this thing you were doing is preventing you from finding your future wife. W- and future wife could mean more even broadly this path to a, to a, to a flourishing, to a, to a beautiful life. I think there's a lot of choices we make that are just preventing us from opening the door to whatever future that we'll take. I think what's really nice to do is to imagine, just like we said with high school, that there are a bunch of trajectories in life where you'll be truly happy, and you need to construct your life in a way where you have the chance to travel down those paths. And there's a bunch of addictions, there's a bunch of choices that prevent us from traveling down those paths. So just believe that you're gonna have an awesome life, and remove from your life the things that are, uh, preventing you from walking down that, that path, which is essentially what you did. It's a leap of faith that, like, if you let go of porn, that a better life is waiting for you on the other end.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 52:29 Yeah. I definitely can't say how long it will take, a better life, but for me, there's no way in the universe I could have had the relationship that I have without first making those steps 'cause I couldn't value, uh, like, I couldn't value my wife in the way that was proper for who she was. I would have valued her through the index or the lens that I currently was looking through, so.

Lex Fridman 52:55 Gotta ask. So I've never done meth. Uh, I've never done meth. I've never-

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 53:00 That was a great segue, by the way. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 53:04 (laughs) Oh man, I don't know what the fuck I'm doing, honestly, with this interviewing thing. But yeah, meth and LSD, you know, I did ayahuasca. I did shrooms a bunch of times. Oh, and this topic, I should say that, like, uh, there's a lot of, uh, on Twitter and on tech, i- i- in the tech community in general, sort of people speaking negatively about ayahuasca, uh, and some positively. I don't... I think it's- it's such a roll of the dice. Like, uh, I had incredible experiences, but I don't think I wanna recommend it to anyone. It's a risk. It's a serious risks. It really is a roll of the dice, that you could meet your demons and they could destroy you, or you can meet your demons and let go of them, or you, (laughs) you could have experiences like I did, which is, like, never... Apparently, I don't have demons. I'm pretty sure they're somewhere in the basement, but, like, I've never met 'em on drugs. (laughs)

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 53:55 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 53:55 I'm always really happy. (laughs) I'm a happy drunk. I'm a, uh, super happy on ayahuasca, just full of love. I don't understand. I don't understand where the demons are, but that's my biochemistry, whatever that is. And for some others, you know, one trip could be amazing and the next one could just completely destroy you and wreck your life. So, um, I don't know what the recommendation from that is. Maybe avoid it? But then all of us die, and life, you know, I, I tend to lean into adventure. But, but drugs is a f- it's, if you fuck with the biochemistry of your brain, you can really destroy yourself in a way that it's gonna torment you. So I would generally recommend that people avoid drugs altogether, probably. Unless you're a crazy motherfucker. (laughs) ... Hunter S. Thompson.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 54:48 (laughs) What, what an intro to this topic. Uh-

Lex Fridman 54:52 I'm sorry, what's meth like?

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 54:53 La- uh, it's, it's, it's, that's a great intro. I, I, I like, you are very correct in the sense that there is, at least w- when it comes to hallucinogens, there is a wild variance to what you're going to experience, and there is no guarantee. There's no, you know, just because you buy the product doesn't mean you're gonna have a good time. Right?

Lex Fridman 55:10 Mm-hmm.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 55:10 There's a lot of, uh, personally I find that stuff, uh, to be very ... I believe in the spiritual realm, right? Like I believe demons and angels exist, I believe God exists, and that kind of whole realm is like, I don't know what it opens you up to, but it's much, much different experience. Now some people would be like, "Oh, it's just a bunch of chemicals in your brain, they all get mixed up. LSD just takes all of your pathways and they all go all ... you know, they all get kinda scrambled up in your brain." And it's just like, yeah, the experiences are profound. I had some really bizarre, very cool, very awful, I've had all the experiences in them all. I can just tell you that I, like, I personally always say the same thing. It's like, choices that I made, I can never take back. I would never take that away from myself because I don't know if I would be who I am today without all those experiences going up to it. But if you have not had that experience, I'm on your team, or at least partially on your team, maybe more severely. I don't think you need those experiences. I don't think they're gonna ... You don't have to put yourself through that to make your good decisions or to realize that, uh, people have value, right? You can, you, you don't have to do that. So as far as like what is meth like? Meth is like, if you've ever done cocaine, cocaine starts off with like a 15-minute dance party. Just uh, uh, uh, uh.

Lex Fridman 56:20 Yeah.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 56:20 Like it's just so intense, it's like-

Lex Fridman 56:21 Mm-hmm.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 56:21 ... so great, and then it's just followed up by like a, like a five-hour like just feeling wiggly, right? I don't know how else to describe it. Uh, meth is like that, except for I didn't get as much dance party or any dance party, but instead I just got that part-

Lex Fridman 56:35 The full time.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 56:35 ... for like-

Lex Fridman 56:35 Yeah.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 56:36 ... 12 hours.

Lex Fridman 56:37 Yeah.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 56:38 So did a lot of skateboarding. Did a lot of, you know, running around, staying up all night.

Lex Fridman 56:43 Would you say it's a pleasant feeling or is it more like an escape from the loneliness of life? Well, well how, is it pleasant or negative? In the actual moment, not the consequences, but in the moment.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 56:58 So there, I mean, this is, this is just like a very interesting kind of area which is that not if, universally you can't say that. Um, often you'll find that there's kind of these two, um, groups of drug addicts. There's those that like the, the opioids, and those that like the uppers.

Lex Fridman 57:15 Mm-hmm.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 57:16 They typically don't, like there's, there's very few people in the drug world that do both. They're really just kind of like find their side and they go for it. So will ... is meth a, a thing that everybody's gonna enjoy? Well, categorically as you can see and just like how people experience drug addiction, no. Uh, but for me, it's just like I had a really, it kind of like feeds into like the ADHD nature of like this like, 'cause you know when you're kind of high energy, you're kind of like always in the moment, so it's just like you're in the moment but it's just like, oh, I'm in the moment. You know?

Lex Fridman 57:43 Yeah. (laughs)

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 57:43 And it's like s- everything's just so intense, you know, like you just want to like-

Lex Fridman 57:46 Yeah.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 57:46 ... really be in the moment. Uh, and so it's just experiencing that constantly. And so was that great? Well, some people, you know, my wife always tells me this, like being like nervous or I forget, the, the an- anxiety of a situation can also be the same thing as like thrill. I forget the exact way. She- she's probably super disappointed that I messed this up. But it's like you could perceive those two experiences in very different lights. Some people ex- you know, get in front of a crowd and it's like thrilling. Some people get in front of it and it's just like the worst experience of their lifetime. They would actually literally rather die, which is a crazy thing to think about, than stand up and speak. And so for me, meth was that kind of thrilling side, but at the same time, is, it didn't, it still didn't like quite give me that thing I wanted, whatever I was looking for. I'd use it to help try to get that thing I want, but it was never giving me that thing I wanted.

Lex Fridman 58:40 Yeah. Uh, for me, I've had all really wonderful experiences. Do not recommend them, but like what was shroom-

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 58:46 Is that like a YouTube policy, by the way, that you have to say, "By the way, do, whatever you do, do not do illegal activities."

Lex Fridman 58:51 I-

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 58:51 "But I had great experience but don't, whatever you do, don't do it." (laughs)

Lex Fridman 58:54 Mr. The Primogen. I have no master. I don't, YouTube or whatever, I'll say whatever the fuck I want. I'm just, uh-

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 59:03 But seriously, YouTube.

Lex Fridman 59:04 ... kind of (laughs) no.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 59:05 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 59:06 I don't gi- no.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 59:07 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 59:07 I don't give a shit about YouTube or anybody, honestly. I'm just kind of careful about the words I say because just because I had positive experiences, I don't want young people listening to this to think they should try the experience. I think the much more powerful message is that life is awesome even without that. That's something I definitely experiment with, uh, on the alcohol side. So f- for me, you know, I'm an introvert, I'm afraid of the world, social interaction fills me with, with anxiety. Alcohol is definitely a thing that helps with that sometimes, but I think honestly, like it's not even the alcohol, it's like having to do something while a person is talking to me. I could just like drink a liquid. (laughs) If they, yeah, mm-hmm. The, there's like a social thing with a beer. It's like, "Yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah, we're having fun." And I think it's, it work, for me, it works the same as if the, if the liquid actually looks like alcohol, it does the same purpose often because like alcohol from, like if you have a w- a, a whiskey or a, a beer looking thing, it kinda sends a signal that we should be having fun. So we're socializing, right? We're fucking getting crazy, and then that mean you don't actually need the alcohol. You can get fucking crazy without the alcohol substance.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 1:00:27 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:00:27 But there is some kind of, uh, like, uh, social signaling that happens when you have a drink in your hand. So I've been to get-togethers where I'm not drinking, but just doing like a fake drink situation, and I can also have fun. So I've been, uh, but that said, you know, traveling across the world, there are times when you get to be able to down a bottle of vodka. That's very essential for the, for my line of work. But it, but that's, that's sort of, that's almost like a cultural experience versus like a necessary component of a successful, uh, social interaction and one that brings you happiness. So, uh, not drinking, I think you can have fun and not drink too. So all of this, man, I'm so careful saying drugs have had a, uh-... a good effect on my life, because I think for most people, I think, no, for a majority of people, they will in the long ta- long term have a negative effect.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 1:01:24 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:01:24 So I think if you were to choose one or the other, just no drugs, uh, and no drinking means one day you could be the president of the United States, kids.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 1:01:35 (laughs) Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:01:37 And I should say, oh man, that means-

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 1:01:39 That is his funniest line.

Lex Fridman 1:01:40 ... Diet Coke, Diet Coke- (laughs) Diet Coke is great.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 1:01:42 That's his funniest line which is, "You would hate me if I drank."

Lex Fridman 1:01:45 Yeah.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 1:01:45 Which I just, like, to me that tickles me, like, to no end. Just, like, oh my gosh, that is such a funny line.

Lex Fridman 1:01:49 Self-awareness and humor is wonderful there. But yeah.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 1:01:52 But I- I'm on your team, like, all of the reasons why I used drugs and all that was a form- at some level of ex- escapism. I'm sure, that's like would be the archetype or the box I'd put that into. Or the pursuit of trying to feel something that cannot come from them. It's like trying to find meaning in your job. You can find satisfaction in what you do, like that is a very good thing. You can find satisfaction and be happy with what you've created. You can be, you know, thrilled by the experience, but you cannot find... I doubt you can find purpose. You know, maybe some people in specific jobs, you know, like, this is obviously a very broad strokes I'm painting with. Like, if you're an EMT and you save someone's life, maybe it's, you know... There can be purpose in that whole experience, right? So I'm not saying all things, but, like, as programming goes, most programmers, you cannot just simply find your purpose. And same with drugs, like, you cannot find that thing you're looking for, but they are a very great distraction.

Lex Fridman 1:02:42 Mm-hmm.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 1:02:43 And then at some point that distraction comes with a heavy cost. I think Dr. Faust would probably know the best about the heavy costs, but it's just you're making one trade for another, and at some point the- the bill comes due, and that bill can be very, very large.

Lex Fridman 1:02:57 The other moment you mentioned that

Lex Fridman 1:02:59 I think is really inspiring is that, you know, you failed pre-calculus, you really struggled in school. Like, you realize that school is really hard, and then eventually you're able to sort of persevere and, uh, I don't know, break through that wall of struggle. Can you by way of advice figure out what happened and what kind of advice you can give to people who are struggling?

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 1:03:22 Yeah. I'll- I'll paint it in kind of more clear picture, a very fast speed run of it, is that I took pre-calculus, failed. I took pre-calculus again, failed. Took pre-calculus again and got a C. So I took it three times. Uh, then I took calc over the summer, so Calc One. In that one, at the end, the final, the final was a two-hour final, I finished it in 30 minutes and that was the highest score in all of the school.

Lex Fridman 1:03:47 Mm-hmm.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 1:03:47 And I proceeded to be the highest scorer in all calculus and Diffy-Q. I was the only person out of 400 people to finish the Diffy-Q final, uh, and I got the highest grade. And so I was like, I got really good, so I somehow went from really bad to really good. And so my only... The thing that I did is that I had to win. It was not a option, it was not like, "Oh, you know, this would be really great." It's like, "I will not graduate, I will not finish my stuff if I cannot do this." And so every single day, I got up, I went to my, how- however many hour class it was. Right after that, I went straight to the math learning center, did those problems. When I got home, I just got the book and it had the odd answers in the back, and I would try to walk through the problems over and over and over and over again until I absolutely got it. And it just became this thing where I was just, I- it just, simple rote memory took over, and the ability to just effectively have the times table but for calculus all stuck in my head, inverse trig substitution, trig substitution, doing Taylor, Maclaurin series. Like, all those things kind of just over and over and over and over again. Eventually, they became easy. They became very easy. It's just that I had to cram it in there. And some people, you know, you hear these stories where they like, they barely show up to class and they get As. I've never been that person. I've always been the person that has to sit down, read through everything, and I'm bad at abstract concepts. I like the concrete into the abstract, not the abstract into the concrete. Very bad at talking about things theoretically then trying to apply them, but if I can do it once literally, then it's really easy for me to go into the abstract.

Lex Fridman 1:05:17 Mm-hmm.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 1:05:17 And so it's just like for me, it just, I had... There's no substitute for the hours.

Lex Fridman 1:05:22 Mm-hmm.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 1:05:23 So if you've, if I were to give advice, it's just that you have to have time in the saddle. Hour after hour will make you slowly better, and at first it's crushing, it's defeating, and it's not fun, because you are bad at it. But then at some point, it, you're just not bad at it, if you can just do it long enough, and you'll start getting okay at it. And then at some point you might even get good at it, and when you get good at something, it feels amazing. There's like an exploratory thing, like if you're, if you've ever played a musical instrument, you stop having to think about all the little teeny things you have to do to be able to play something correctly, and you start thinking about how you can explore that space. It's like it, you have, it's completely different problem. And same with programming, programming has an identical kind of feel to it. It's just like, you'll cross that barrier and it becomes magical, as opposed to a chore.

Lex Fridman 1:06:12 Yeah, once you cross that barrier, somehow other things become easier. (inhales) But if you want to have a truly successful life, then you find the next barrier.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 1:06:20 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:06:20 The next barrier. Yeah, I've always been the same. It's everything's come really hard.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 1:06:24 Yeah. I do not, I had, I've had no free lunches. Everything's just been a lot of, a lot of pain and struggle.

Lex Fridman 1:06:31 (inhales) Uh, I think somebody said that the, on this topic, that you think "work smarter not harder" is a phrase that you dislike.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 1:06:43 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:06:43 Somebody on Reddit told me this.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 1:06:44 Yeah, I don't just dislike it, I hate that phrase.

Lex Fridman 1:06:46 Okay. Tell me, uh, tell me, tell me about your hatred. How- how do you feel?

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 1:06:52 The reason why I dislike that is that there is a kind of a- an- a hidden suggestion there, which is that you already know what smarter is, so just do that. That actually things should be easy. You should just not have to, like, try that hard, you should just do the quick, easy, obvious path, and boom, it's done. It's like, I've never experienced that in anything I've done.... everything is actually really hard, and most of the time, I don't even know what I'm doing. So therefore, I don't even know what smart looks like. And so for me, the only way I can learn how to work smart is by working very, very hard and knowing that there's no shortcuts. And then when I finally figure out what smart is, when I do work smart and work hard, it is that much better.

Lex Fridman 1:07:36 I think there's a deep, profound truth to that.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 1:07:39 There's a lot of these phrases that just drive me nuts in our society.

Lex Fridman 1:07:42 B- but that one is, uh, s- sorry, that one is really accepted. Let's, if we can just linger on it 'cause-

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 1:07:46 Okay.

Lex Fridman 1:07:46 ... it really bothers me as well. So one, which is a really nice thing you said, the presumption there is things should be easy. And you're a failure if you don't see the easy path.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 1:07:58 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:07:58 That's kind of the important thing.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 1:07:59 Just work smart, dawg. Why?

Lex Fridman 1:08:00 Yeah.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 1:08:00 Why are you putting in-

Lex Fridman 1:08:00 Yeah.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 1:08:00 ... all those hours? (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:08:02 And so it makes a lot of people that struggle feel like they're a failure.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 1:08:05 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:08:05 'Cause, like, I don't see it. And then the choice they have, well, I'll just go with the, uh, with the la- I'll just be lazy, and then maybe the profound truth will come to me somehow. And, and yeah. I think, I don't think I've ever, and I don't think I've met great engineers, uh, that find the smart way without the extremely hard work. The annoying thing about those great engineers is then looking back, they forget the hard work 'cause they remember all the joy they n- they now are experiencing from all the efficient smart work they figured out how to do. They forget. So when they give advice, they give the stupid fucking advice of, "Well, just do it, like, the, you know, the easy way."

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 1:08:50 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:08:50 And, "Here's the easy way." But no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You have to put in the hours. Like, you know, a musical instrument is a beautiful example of guitar and piano. I've put in I don't know how many thousands of hours. And now when I'm explaining stuff, jujitsu as well, I'm, um, I sound like, I sound like one of those people, like, just, you know, "Just relax." You know, in jujitsu. By the way, just relax is a really wonderful thing for physical endeavors like piano and so on. But to learn how to relax your hand, how to relax your mind, your body, and, uh, use the, the, whatever, the biomechanics of your body to apply the correct kind of leverage and the timing and all that, that takes thousands of hours of learning. Just to learn how to relax takes a lot of really hard work. In jujitsu, that takes many months of getting your ass beat over and over (laughs) until you, like, uh, you know, ride the bus home crying. Your, your ego completely shattered and destroyed. And then s- like a little element i- is figured out late that night or next morning! And from the depression, there's this, uh, little plant that grows, this flower of, uh, insight. And you use that insight to then get your ass kicked again all next fucking month and, uh, year. And then you grow and grow and grow. And from that, you discover how beautifully simple jujitsu is, or judo is, f- just speaking for myself, or piano or guitar. And then yes, the, the profound truth or the mastery of a skill feels simple when you finally arrive to it. But f- the path is for most people, is, uh, is going to be a hard one.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 1:10:42 Can, can I, I think I should make an addendum to the phrase.

Lex Fridman 1:10:45 Yeah.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 1:10:45 I think the phrase should be, "Work hard, get smart."

Lex Fridman 1:10:47 (laughs) Nice.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 1:10:48 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:10:48 That's a T-shirt.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 1:10:50 That's what it should be.

Lex Fridman 1:10:51 Yeah, agreed. Okay, that was a tangent of, of a tangent.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 1:10:54 Can I say one more phrase, cultural phrase that I absolutely hate?

Lex Fridman 1:10:56 Yes.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 1:10:57 Uh, the journey is better than the destination, right? Everyone's heard this, right?

Lex Fridman 1:11:03 Mm-hmm.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 1:11:03 Just take one second to apply what that means. That means forever, starting from now, you are only going towards a place that's worse.

Lex Fridman 1:11:12 (laughs)

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 1:11:13 Right? Like, that, that literally is what it means, right?

Lex Fridman 1:11:16 (laughs) Yeah.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 1:11:17 Enjoy the journey.

Lex Fridman 1:11:17 Yeah.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 1:11:18 Celebrate the d- destination. That's like, that should be what it would be.

Lex Fridman 1:11:21 Mm-hmm.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 1:11:21 But no. People say these phrases. They're everywhere. There's, uh, these very shallow phrases that have no logical bounds to them.

Lex Fridman 1:11:27 Mm-hmm.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 1:11:27 You're just like, "What does that... Why would the journey ever be better than the destination?" 'Cause you're always... This is, I think this has, might even be a C.S. Lewis, uh, quote is that C.S. Lewis was like-

Lex Fridman 1:11:36 Yeah.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 1:11:36 ... "No, this is terrible." Though the journey is not in fact better than the destination.

Lex Fridman 1:11:40 I love the demotivational posters. Uh, "Progress, moving forward is better than moving backwards even if you're still going nowhere."

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 1:11:50 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:11:50 There's a lot, there's a l-

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 1:11:51 I feel that one so, (laughs) so much being in California for a few years. That is, (laughs) that is painful.

Lex Fridman 1:11:57 "Positivity. If it doesn't break you today, don't worry, it will try again tomorrow."

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 1:12:01 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:12:03 Just a lot of really great posters.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 1:12:04 I didn't even know this was a thing.

Lex Fridman 1:12:06 This is a thing.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 1:12:07 Oh my gosh. I want that.

Lex Fridman 1:12:08 Yeah.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 1:12:09 Hey. Hi. This is theprimogen. You know, one thing that I forgot to mention in this podcast, uh, which feels just so foolish to me for forgetting is just what a big role my mom played in my life. She had to work 18 hours a day after my dad died. She really made our house be able to survive. I always looked up to her and I always thought her amazing. And she really was the reason why when I decided to get my butt kicked back in gear, she's just someone who I looked to as, like, an internal kind of inspiration for me to continuing to keep on going 'cause I really wanted to make her proud. And all those years of just high energy effort, I really wanted to make sure that she knew that I was just so dang appreciative for it. So hey, I just wanted to say thank you. Love you, Mom.

Lex Fridman 1:12:52 For people who don't know, you worked at Netflix

Lex Fridman 1:12:55 (laughs)

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 1:12:56 By the way.

Lex Fridman 1:12:57 By the way. No, how did you go from there, from the hardship that we mentioned, from the struggle, from the addictions and so on to a place where you were working at this i- this incredible engineering company and, uh, building cool shit there? So tell the Netflix story.Mm-hmm.

Michael Paulson (ThePrimeagen) 1:13:18 Yeah, so, you know, I kind of alluded to it earlier that I wanted to do my own startup. So for, I forget how long it was, one or two years, or two and a half years, built a startup, PHP, jQuery, everyone's favorite languages all put together. Uh, you can solve math stuff with jQuery. So I just was like totally into just non-stop doing that. This is like the height of StackOverflow. I was asking really dumb questions on sa- StackOverflow, like, "What is more Pythonic?" And then you get a bunch of up votes and try to steal a bunch of karma away. Like, all the fun stuff to do. Good times, and I was just like so into it, breathing and... I'd just breathe it in, breathe it out, and that's what I do all