How To Create A Life Of Purpose & Achievement - Dr Mike Israetel

1. 0:00 – 1:07

   Intro

   1. MIMike Israetel0:00

      You don't wanna really take pride in your work or try to take pride in your work 'cause your job sucks. So if you took pride in your work, what would happen? When you take pride in your work, do they pay you less? "Like, no, but I had to put up with my boss's bullshit." You have to put up with his bullshit one way or another. Your cynical ass puts up with his bullshit. That's why you're cynical. London is like my spirit place. I think London is the greatest place on Earth. And I love hearing all that Harry Potter bullshit. I fucking can't get enough. Anything in a British accent is just superior. I wish I spoke with a British accent. You sound smarter, cooler, James Bond, sex with random girls, alcoholism. You know, all the James Bond stuff.

   2. CWChris Williamson0:37

      Mike-

   3. MIMike Israetel0:37

      Um...

   4. CWChris Williamson0:37

      ...my culture is not your costume, okay?

   5. MIMike Israetel0:40

      (laughs)

   6. CWChris Williamson0:41

      So I suggest that you stop putting it on and LARPing as mine, 'cause that is, uh, heavily appropriating, and it's not yours to wear.

   7. MIMike Israetel0:50

      Yeah, and actually, I was born in Russia, so I actually wholly appropriated a language of your birth nation.

   8. CWChris Williamson0:56

      Get off it.

   9. MIMike Israetel0:56

      Which is really offensive.

   10. CWChris Williamson0:57

       Right. Let's get started. Mike Israetel, welcome to the show.

   11. MIMike Israetel1:01

       Thanks f- for having me, Chris. I'm, I'm super pumped to be here, man.

   12. CWChris Williamson1:04

       What is the pessimistic fallacy?

2. 1:07 – 3:48

   So Many People Are Pessimists

   1. CWChris Williamson1:08

   2. MIMike Israetel1:09

      The pessimistic fallacy is a cognitive bias that the average person shares, uh, is very, very prevalent. Not everyone has it. Most people have it to some degree. And that cognitive bias is to take any scenario, any given presentation of data, any sort of prediction of the future, uh, specifically predictions of, you know, we have this situation, how is it going to unfold? Is the situation going to stay roughly the same? Poverty, for example. Uh, how is poverty? It... How bad is it now? How has it been going? Has poverty been decreasing over time? Has it been increasing over time? Has it been roughly stable? In 10, 20, 30 years, how do you predict poverty will go? Will it get much better? Will it improve? Will it stay roughly the same? And there has been a profound amount of research done on this. Uh, Hans Rosling's book, Factfulness, is probably a really good place to go for it, a great sort of high-level summary. But, uh, without putting too fine a point on it, uh, almost everyone is insanely wrong about understanding how the world works, and that wrongness isn't, um... it's not normally distributed. It's not. Just some people overestimate, some people underestimate. Most people, not all, but most, are you would think inexplicably pessimistic. They think that things used to be better in the past, where in fact it's almost, uh, almost always not the case. They think alm- on almost any global scenario that things y- are, are very bad today. Uh, uh, to put it more technically, worse today than they really are if we examine the empirical evidence. And their predictions for the future, again, tend to be i- very pessimistically inclined, such that, uh, i- they not only think this, but, uh, uh, a sort of in-baked m- m- maybe a sort of subsidier of the fallacy is if you try to point it out to people, uh, it's an iterative loop if they apply their pessimistic fallacy to argue back to you. So they go, "Well, you're just a Pollyanna. Like, you just think it's all hunky-dory." And they just apply another layer of pessimism to your attempt to correct them. And it's tough because you end up, uh... It's very easy to caricature self when you're a pessimist as a realist, or at least you're hedging your understanding. You're like, "Look, look, if things turn out better, hey, amazing, but I think they're gonna be worse. And if, i- worst case scenario, they turn out better. Uh, uh, best case scenario, I'm right." Which other... Which either one of those worst cases, it's kind of like a hedging their bets situation. That's a common retort. So that tends to be how the pessimistic fallacy is expressed.

   3. CWChris Williamson3:47

      Yeah. What was that thing

3. 3:48 – 14:10

   Are We Really Worse Off Than Our Grandparents?

   1. CWChris Williamson3:48

      about, um, the myth of wage stagnation? I thought that was a really good example of this.

   2. MIMike Israetel3:54

      Yes. It's a very common citation that people, uh, trot out on social media. And by citation, I just mean claim, or what, uh, the economist and philosopher Thomas Sowell would call notion. It's something people just say or think. It's not even caricatured as a hypothesis because it's not falsifiable or testable. And that idea is that, like, "Well, wages haven't gone up." Uh, typically they'll say, you know, "In the United States since..." and then they'll insert a year. And depending on what literature they think they've read, uh, typically the comparator year is 1970 or the '70s. Sometimes it's the '80s. And if you look into this with like more than like five minutes of Googling, it just falls apart right in front of you. I can get a little technical as to how it falls apart and, and why, if that's okay. So if you look at, um, uh, wages for certain kinds of jobs, then you actually can conclude that there has been a significant amount of wage stagnation. What that typically doesn't integrate is a few things. First of all, that is not looking at flesh and blood human beings over time. The people that had a given job in the 1970s, in '75, '80, '85, '90, typically their remuneration has skyrocketed. You're like, "Well, they have seniority. They're older, so that doesn't count." Okay. So we're not actually talking about real people that go to work and w- and have the same wage year in, year out. And if you push people on this, like, okay. But th- that's not what I mean. What about new people coming in? And then you start comparing, well, is it really the same job? And then that sort of floats away. Look, it's not really the same job. It turns out that we're actually comparing much easier jobs, so they used to pay really good wages for brutal, like, central Indiana factory work with no air conditioning. Your chance of death was like decent. And nowadays, you just press a button and the machine dumps the steel into the cooling chamber, and you're drunk the entire time, and you're a union member. You can't get fired. No big deal, so it's com- totally, uh, non-comparable work. And another big one is, a lot of times they don't compare... They compare wages, and wages in some sectors have gone up a little bit or actually stagnated, but they don't compare total compensation. So in the 1970s, you got your wage, middle finger, see you tomorrow, and your, you know, shift number one. Nowadays, and over time since the '70s until today, you're getting an insanely richer, uh, offering of health benefits, daycare, time off, bonus structure.... a bunch of different other ways of compensation. So if you are— And I, I don't wanna say intellectually honest, because that says the opposing side is intellectually dishonest. Usually, they're not. It's just people hear stuff and, uh, pessimistic fallacy rounds in and they're like, "Duh." And if you are trying to find intellectually the best comparison, what you're gonna do is look for a better comparison, more, a more valid comparison. And something like median income is a good idea. Mean average income, like GDP per capita, it's a little tainted because, like, if you have a trillion billionaires and everyone else is dirt poor, more billionaires, they just drag up that average. But the median doesn't drag up the average. Uh, so the richer, super rich people and super poor people don't drag it up, so you really are looking at, like, what does the average person make? And if you look at median income in total compensation, that has just been going like that for every modern Western country for as long as you can measure it. And that, that is the reality of what people are saying, because when they say things like wages, and you go, well, like, uh, most, um, uh, many people aren't even paid in what you would call a wage. Uh, some people get salary, some people get bonus structures, some people get various other compensation. And so, uh, I, I remember to- uh, uh, Thomas Sowell had a famous line where he said, you know, "If someone's talking about household income, they're for sure just trying to use that metric because they're trying to paint it in a bad light." Uh, why household? Like, w- what... Because household sizes have changed. Households are much smaller now, so if household income hasn't increased, the per capita income actually has gone up a ton, because now households are two people, they used to be six. So if people are saying, "Wages have stagnated," and he's using the term "wages," they're trying to make things seem bad. An honest assessment would look at total com- total median compensation per industry, per field, per IQ, per whatever. And any logical assessment of that sorta, like, 97% of the time, the honest assessment is, uh, uh, actually, things have gotten phenomenally better for almost everyone. There absolutely are exceptions to that.

   3. CWChris Williamson8:13

      What about inflation? What about the cost of housing? What about the cost of goods? What about cost of living? What about all of that? Doesn't that just-

   4. MIMike Israetel8:21

      Yeah.

   5. CWChris Williamson8:21

      ... erode away all of the gains that have just been made through wages?

   6. MIMike Israetel8:24

      Yeah, yeah, no, it's a really good point. So (sighs) we can take a look at a few of these. Inflation is a decent point, except inflation has been relatively stable over a very long term, and so it's hard to paint a particular era of human history as bad because inflation is kind of a really steady thing that happens all the time, and it's not even true to say that inflation lately, other than the past, well, six months ago and now it's kinda stabilized. Uh, any time inflation... Here's another thing, really quick. Any time inflation uncharacteristically go- uh, uncharacteristically goes up, people spaz the fuck out. "Inflation's killing us." What happens when inflation is, is cr- is, uh, low for a five-year period? Nobody talks about it. You don't even get an article about it. So you're like, yeah, like, you only pay attention when inflation is really bad. So in, if inflation is sort of, uh, anachronistically high, it's absolutely a concern. Usually, that's just not a concern. First point. Second point is the, uh, there is another... As I said, so, like, median, uh, average income, uh, medi- (laughs) higgedeh. Median, uh, income per capita is a good way to think of how much money people make. Another, uh, way to integrate the cost of goods and services, it's what's called time cost or time price, and it's for an hour of typical, typically compensated work, how much stuff can you buy? And that reflects some integration of inflation and everything like that, and time price of almost everything just goes down all the time. That's the most integrated, holistic, honest assessment, and it- it's improving all the time. There are exceptions to that. I'll get to those in just a second. But you can say, "Look, okay, with inflation, the picture isn't as good as without, and so w- uh, wi- uh, with a lower inflation, the picture would be better." Totally true. However, almost no analyses, even in formal economics, integrate the quality of goods, because that is phenomenally difficult to quantify. So for example, say, you know, "I only had to work X, Y, Z number of years to buy a car in 1970." "My uncle worked for a summer in 1976, bought himself a great car. Now we gotta slave away for years." Well, what was the car in the 1970s like? On any given metric, it was a fucking disaster. It's actually illegal to drive most of those cars on the road, because they just, like, the global warming actually comes out of the exhaust pipe. It's not even pollutants. It's just, like, straight up, like, little al gore particles come out. So, and it's, the thing is, like, weighs 30 fucking tons. It uses only leaded gasoline, which, again, just poisons children directly. It's just child poison comes out of that thing. So if you look at it, you're like, "Okay, this is, this is not the same thing." A car is not a car, is not a car, and if you take any attempt to integrate quality into that, you'll go, "Shit's been getting way, way better," or at the very least, cancels out any inflationary effects. However, there are exceptions to that rule, and I'm not aware of any of those exceptions which are not the result of government interference. I know I sound like a crazy libertarian, but it's just true. And in, in most of economics, it's not even controversial. For example, housing. Uh, economist Bryan Caplan, who's amazing, who I, I surmise you should have on your show at one point. He's ultra entertaining. He's the, he's the man. He'll point out that precisely in the places where you have a lot of housing regulation is where you have the least home building. And if you have lower housing regulation, you get way more home building. Home prices per unit of t- time cost fall drastically. And so the cost of living crisis, it is almost always caused, just straight up caused, by excessive government regulation, and if you deregulate, the cost of living gets, like, a trillion times better, and a trillion's a mild exaggeration. Nonetheless, serves the point. So if you look at the industries which are-... uh, not following the trends of, uh, essentially becoming cheaper in time cost over time, which is, by the way, the- the baseline trend. Everything becomes time cost cheaper and higher quality over time. The things that don't follow that are the things that have, without exception, I believe, the most intrusive government regulation. And not just intrusive, because regulation isn't just this demon that's bad. There is absolutely such a thing as intelligent regulation that you need, you must have some regulation in order to set a really good framework, a really good legal parameter system to make sure that things go really well. Absolutely, 100%. So it's not anti-regulation, but there are more and less intelligent ways to regulate. And the least intelligent type of regulation leads to things that just spiral up in cost, usually cap off in quality much more than you would expect. Healthcare is a great example. Education is a great example. Housing is a great example. And those are the industries precisely in which the government has the most, uh, to say. In industries like, uh, technology, where the government has almost nothing to say, thank fucking God for the time being. And every time they try to regulate AI companies, I, like, shudder and have, like, a Jewish panic attack. "Aye!" Um, you know, in those other industries, shit just gets better all the time. It, it's just... And I know that sounds shocking and some people will be like, "Oh, he's off his rocker." It's just not a mystery. It hasn't been a mystery in generations that this is the case. Status quo bias is a motherfucker in this case, because people, you say like, "Hey, let's deregulate housing," and they're like, "What do you mean? That- won't that cause like..." and just insert wild, insane ideas. Uh, your stairwells will start collapsing out of nowhere, and so on and so on and so on. So, uh, the- the reality is, like, a- almost all, all the ones I know of, uh, the elements in the economy that are not getting cheaper and higher quality over time is where you can point distinctly to an insane mismanagement by government regulatory authorities.

4. 14:10 – 21:16

   Why Does the Pessimism Bias Exist?

   1. MIMike Israetel14:10

   2. CWChris Williamson14:10

      Why is it the case that this pessimism bias exists? And this is something that I've noticed on the internet as well, this sort of pervasive cynicism. I guess the internet flavor of it is a little bit different. It's- it's more sardonic and cutting, uh, uh, and kind of backbitey and zero sum, but there is still, you know, just a general pervasive pessimism masquerading as skepticism or non-naivety.

   3. MIMike Israetel14:35

      Yeah.

   4. CWChris Williamson14:35

      Why?

   5. MIMike Israetel14:38

      Uh, a couple of smart folks, maybe more than a couple, have speculated, and I find a few of the hypotheses interesting. I'll- I'll share a few of them with you. One is the whole idea that as a- as a cognitive defense mechanism, it's easier to be skeptical when cynical, because then if you're proven wrong, you're like, "Hey, shit's better. Cool." Like, it's like telling people before you compete in jujitsu or kickboxing, they're like, "Hey, you think you're gonna win this match?" You're like, "Nah, man, this guy's gonna fuck me up." And then you beat him, you're like, "You're the man!" But if he fucked you up, you're like, "Told you." Like, that's kind of a no lose. So it really hedges your bets really well. Another thing is that, uh, people often mistake, and by often I mean maybe almost always, skepticism for cynicism. Uh, I think what most people think is them being skeptical is them being cynical. I think I'm quoting Steven Pinker when, uh, I say, "A sneer is not an argument." Like a lot of the books he's written, people's response on there was just like, "Well," and it's like, what, does it go on? Where is the substance? Like, well, there is really no substance. And it's easy to be thought of as an intellectual if you can render some cynicism on something. Um, and, uh, another one, which is sort of more- more deeply rooted hypothesis, is that our brains and our patterns of behavior did not evolve for the today times. They evolved in the times of our evolution, where most of that evolution was in an objective reality that was pessimistic as fuck. Just bad in almost every way you can imagine. Brutal. Like, how animals live. You know, like, I- I was- I (laughs) I was like, uh, uh, walking around my backyard and I saw, like, a bunny rabbit hopping, and I was like, "Oh, that's so adorable." And then I thought, like, "That bunny is hopping to get food. It's not like he has a refrigerator at home. He is starving to death at all times. He's on the fucking brink. And if my dog comes out and chases him down, he's just gonna die." It's just total war all the time. There's shit hiding in every bush that's gonna fucking kill you, and has. And we, all humans, are the survivors of the people that were at least marginally, uh, pessimistic, uh, so as to control their statistical risk exposure. Like, like, A, uh, o- one of, actually, and I'm just stealing, um, uh, a gentleman who I heard in another progress podcast example, but it's like, if there's rustling in the bushes, right, in- 15,000 years ago, and- and one guy's like, "Oh, that could be dangerous. Let's back the fuck away," yeah, very pessimistic. But the guy who was like, "Ah, it's no big deal. Fucking saber tooth, whatever the fuck jumps out, kills his ass," and you're like, "Oh, that guy's dead." And he straight up either didn't have children, or, just to- to- to put a point on this, he did have children, but he's dead now, and his, uh, wife, or whatever, partner can't get enough food, and she withers away to almost nothing, and his kids just literally starve to death. I mean, this... Insanely commonplace. And it wasn't commonplace, it was default. And so it's not- it- that's the- just to illustrate the brutality of where we came from. So, uh, a lot of nervousness, a lot of anxiety, a lot of apprehension, uh, and very adaptive in- in the- the times of our evolutionary ancestry. Nowadays, fuck, man. Like if you walk out on the streets of Austin, Texas, which by your complexion I can tell you don't, because you exclusively exist on the internet. Oh, there you go. Rep- rep Texas, my man. So (laughs) y- you just adopted Texas. I was born in it (laughs) . I actually wasn't, so... Do you call yourself a Texan, Chris? Is that, uh-

   6. CWChris Williamson18:00

      I just shaved the mustache off that I'd been carrying for a little while. I've got a huge episode coming out next week, and I figured, do I really want to inculcate for the rest of history this beautiful cinematic production? We're flying to Stuart, Florida and we're filming it on RED Dragon Cameras and it's in 6K and we've got this film crew.

   7. MIMike Israetel18:21

      Ooh.

   8. CWChris Williamson18:21

      And there's gonna be me there.... with this fucking caterpillar on my top lip-

   9. MIMike Israetel18:25

      Yeah.

   10. CWChris Williamson18:25

       ... that for quite a while I enjoyed and I thought was pretty ironic. Uh, it's also... I'm pretty sure that, um, a shit mustache is a counter signal for physical appearance, that the only people that can afford to pull it off are the ones that have got surplus, like, physical appearance credentials to be able to pull it off.

   11. MIMike Israetel18:39

       Alex Hormozi. (laughs)

   12. CWChris Williamson18:40

       Hormozi, Hormozi, the guy-

   13. MIMike Israetel18:41

       My god, what a man, that man.

   14. CWChris Williamson18:43

       The guy, the guy is ruthlessly unfashionable and, uh, very hairy, uh, but rich and jacked out of his mind with a-

   15. MIMike Israetel18:53

       I was jacked.

   16. CWChris Williamson18:53

       ... like, fit wife. So, you know, you... S- say what you want, he can get away with it. Um, point being, no having... I don't call myself Texan.

   17. MIMike Israetel19:01

       (laughs)

   18. CWChris Williamson19:01

       No one's gonna consider me Texan. But these lights... Look, the... You haven't seen this, uh, until the, uh, color preset has been placed. When Dean runs this through our color LUTs-

   19. MIMike Israetel19:11

       (laughs)

   20. CWChris Williamson19:11

       ... and these colors on is flat, you will notice that the hue of my skin really, really comes out, so.

   21. MIMike Israetel19:16

       Y- you actually look quite healthy. I look insanely pasty because I'm currently not very healthy at all. Uh, neither here nor there, when you walk on the streets of Austin, Texas, I mean, jeez, you know, there's a kind of a paucity of saber-toothed tigers and you can spend arguably the vast majority of your life never encountering want in a, in a, in a... what it used to mean, physical danger, uh, lack of food, lack of medicine. So, where we evolved, it was just like, um, a camping trip that never ends, except you have no propane stove and no medicine and no anything, you're just living in the fucking woods. That is like... much more pessimism fits that situation much more. There, pessimism is realism. Uh, in our modern world that's incrementally, actually now quite quickly becoming better and better, pessimism is more and more just simply out of touch with reality. And it, and it... And as a matter of fact, what we used to call, like, kind of insane optimism is progressively more and more realistic.

   22. CWChris Williamson20:11

       Yeah, so that's the implication, right? If life is getting better, this means that realism looks like optimism to the eternal pessimists, but is... Actually, optimism is more realistic because what you're doing is you are projecting out the trajectory of ever-improving quality of life, ever-improving medicine, healthcare, climate control. I mean, this is one thing that people that talk about climate change never bring up, which is that climate-related deaths have decreased by 50 times over the last 100 years, to 98 p-... Like, it- it's hu- it's huge how much it's gone down because of climate mastery, you know-

   23. MIMike Israetel20:47

       Yeah.

   24. CWChris Williamson20:47

       ... that we've got air conditioning to keep us cool when it's hot, and we've got heating to keep us warm when it's cool. Also, interesting point, far more people die from cold than die from heat.

   25. MIMike Israetel20:55

       You're not supposed to say stuff like that. Al Gore is gonna come get you-

   26. CWChris Williamson21:00

       You are such-

   27. MIMike Israetel21:01

       ... and Greta Thunberg.

   28. CWChris Williamson21:01

       ... a boomer to use Al Gore as the go-to-

   29. MIMike Israetel21:05

       (laughs) Who's Al Gore?

   30. CWChris Williamson21:07

       (laughs)
5. 21:16 – 25:47

   Why Realism is More Appropriate than Optimism

   1. CWChris Williamson21:16

      yeah, my point being that you have this, uh, real duality that's going on here, that, um... First off, I don't think that pessimism is an- a personal development, uh, personal deve- deve- developmentally useful approach for giving yourself an advantage either in life, in experience, existentially, psychologically, financially, in terms of business, professionally, personally, any of those things. I don't think that it helps. I don't think that it's an optimal approach, because I think that you are... Your smoke detector principle, which you just highlighted there, is going off when it shouldn't be going off. But on top of that, it's becoming increasingly more and more detached from what the actual world is like. So, I mean, w- what's the answer? Is optimism the answer? Should people just be blindly optimistic now? Like, what do- what are they supposed to do?

   2. MIMike Israetel22:06

      I'm not a big fan of optimism, because it has that same stench of a cognitive, uh, mischaracterization of reality. I, I think anything other than your best attempt at realism is a, is an insane proposition. And I mean insane in the literal sense, like, it's less sane. It's just you... Just realism and your best shot at it, is probably my best bet as to how to do things. But because we live in such an increasingly wonderful world, realism, like we sort of just alluded to, really is kind of optimism. You know, like, optimism's the new realism or whatever, Orange Is the New Black, um, that really is the case. So I'm a huge fan of realism. I... Optimism wigs me out. It gives me that sense of, like, you know-

   3. CWChris Williamson22:55

      When you say optimism, do you mean-

   4. MIMike Israetel22:56

      Mm-hmm.

   5. CWChris Williamson22:56

      ... sort of undue hope for the future without reason?

   6. MIMike Israetel22:59

      Right. Exactly. That's... I beli-... I- I don't... I think that's probably the best definition of optimism I've ever heard, which, if you reverse the terms, it's the best definition of pessimism I've ever heard. Uh, so un- undue foreboding of the future, you know, without any reason. So, um, I don't... I'm not a big fan of optimism. You know, I've been... You know, I help run Renaissance Periodization, which is like, you know, get- getting to make a lot of money and getting all big and stuff, and rocking the gear. But, um, you know, I've been in multiple talks with folks in the company and, you know, there's been talks of like 10X-ing and this and that, and I- I love the hope, and I'm working every day to the bone to try to make that happen. But at the same time, I'm like, "Why don't we just try to 1.5X, motherfuckers? And if that works out, we can 2.25." You know, like, just keep the train... Just do a good job to keep the train rolling. The idea of, um, just really hopeful future stuff, I just don't understand it. I don't understand. I- I do understand that cognitively being optimistic can liberate your psychological energies to do your best job. But I think that properly contextualized realism can also do that. And then you never have to second guess, "Am I just being too optimistic?" 'Cause you're not. You can say, "Am I being sufficiently realistic?" And the way to determine if you're sufficiently realistic is examine your premises, examine the logic, examine the data, examine the- the trajectory, and just try to realign. So, we-

   7. CWChris Williamson24:26

      Ah, that sounds-

   8. MIMike Israetel24:26

      ... we-

   9. CWChris Williamson24:26

      ... like a lot of work.... Mike, that sounds like, you know, it's much easier for me to believe that everything is going to go to shit, and that the people that believe that things can get better are genuinely the problem, and couch that-

   10. MIMike Israetel24:39

       (laughs)

   11. CWChris Williamson24:39

       ... couch that as realism, realism, and anybody who has hope is naïve, uh, and they can all go fuck themselves.

   12. MIMike Israetel24:46

       A kind- a standard that if you come standard with, like, um, a western Tennessee rocking chair, where you see technology and you're like, "Nah, nah, we had that in the '50s." And you just, like, you know, chew your straw. Nothing is impressive, everything's going downhill, but the thing is, you always knew it was going to, so you were always right.

   13. CWChris Williamson25:04

       Correct. And you get the opportunity, even though your worldview might be incorrect, you have the opportunity of LARPing as someone that's intellectually insightful, because-

   14. MIMike Israetel25:17

       Oh, yes.

   15. CWChris Williamson25:17

       ... it sounds... Being a skeptic sounds so much more sophisticated than being an optimist. I really want to fucking rebrand. I've called it toxic positivity or rational optimism. I really want to rebrand hope as something that isn't done by idiots.

   16. MIMike Israetel25:31

       (laughs)

   17. CWChris Williamson25:31

       I would actually go as, I would actually go as far as to say that the most stupid people I know are the ones that are the most negative.

   18. MIMike Israetel25:39

       Oh, by a long shot. That's been my experience as well. Yeah.

   19. CWChris Williamson25:43

       Very good. Talking about money, you just brought up, uh, Renaissance Periodization,

6. 25:47 – 36:35

   How Can Money Buy Happiness?

   1. CWChris Williamson25:47

      your company, very cool, doing some good shit with AI as well, uh, which is fascinating.

   2. MIMike Israetel25:53

      Thank you.

   3. CWChris Williamson25:55

      You make money, even if you don't look like it.

   4. MIMike Israetel25:58

      I sure don't. (laughs)

   5. CWChris Williamson26:01

      (laughs) Can money buy happiness, in your view?

   6. MIMike Israetel26:04

      Yes. It's unequivocally yes. And if someone doesn't believe that, you just offer them a million dollars and watch them pass it up. Oh wait, they won't. Right. So, how can money buy happiness? I actually have a whole video on my, uh, progress philosophy channel that folks feel free to check out, um, about how m- money can buy happiness and how it can't, because in some cases, it can't, but in many cases, it can. So, uh, it's like if someone asks like, "Hey, does going to the club with a bunch of your great friends and dancing all night really make you happy?" There are absolutely ways in which it does, and there are absolutely ways in which it doesn't. Does it bring you closer to a deep inner peace and a connectedness with all of rate nature? Fuck no. I'm not exorcising motherfuckers. I can't tell my own hand from my face anymore. Does it make me, like, ecstatically happy and is an amazing memory I'll have forever? Yes. So money is, uh, it can bring happiness in a variety of ways. Uh, I can think of at least two or maybe three. I'll just share three. One is you can buy shit that, like, you like, because everyone likes some kind of shit. This is my work office. I usually don't work in the darkness like it might appear, uh, although maybe I should, uh, so Batman vibe. So, uh, you can buy stuff that's cool, and for everyone, at least some stuff is cool. And if you have enough money, anything you want, you buy. Amazing. And like, it'll make you a little bit happier to have cool stuff. I'm just really not into stuff. I'm probably more the exception than the rule of that, but it's definitely a thing that, that can occur. Another thing that you can do with money is to lavish the people closest to you in your world and/or people far from you, but whom you have a connection to as humans and want to help, with any kind of support that you deem necessary. So if you truly, truly care about the plight of the poorer peoples in Africa that do not have economic stability and they have food insecurity, uh, yeah, I sure wish you were Bill Gates or Elon Musk, so you could have billions of dollars to go give to their governments or give to the people or do microloans so you can make actual people's lives meaningfully better.

   7. CWChris Williamson28:09

      Let me just-

   8. MIMike Israetel28:09

      Money doesn't buy happiness.

   9. CWChris Williamson28:10

      Let me just jump in there.

   10. MIMike Israetel28:12

       Mm-hmm.

   11. CWChris Williamson28:12

       Uh, so effective altruism, which you-

   12. MIMike Israetel28:14

       Yes.

   13. CWChris Williamson28:14

       ... may be familiar with. Yeah, William MacAskill, the guy that, the guy that came up with that. I went for dinner with him a couple of months ago. And one of the, uh, if you take what you've just explained now, which I don't disagree with, if you care about global suffering, your, one of your goals could be to earn as much money as possible so that you can funnel that money towards campaigns and, and agendas that you care about. But if you take this to its philosophical extreme, it can justify people doing things that are unethical in order to earn money to use it in a way which they believe is more ethical than the way that they unethically earned it. And this is how people like Sam Bankman-Fried can be given some degree of a pass from certain elements of the EA community, because although the guy has, by, by your face, potentially stolen some of your crypto, what you do have is someone who is like, "Look, I'm going to damage some people a little in order to help the world a lot."

   14. MIMike Israetel29:07

       Mm-hmm.

   15. CWChris Williamson29:07

       Because where... I- it's actually a very sort of, um, uh, solipsistic view of the world. It's, it's a very sort of bourgeois, "You look the, the, the, the fucking, the common folk, the plebeians down there, they don't really know how to spend the money. And if we had it, we would spend it on more plebeian, more common folk than they are."

   16. MIMike Israetel29:26

       Totally.

   17. CWChris Williamson29:26

       "And we are simply arbitraging the semi-idiots down to the real idiots and I, I, I'm here to lift them out of their sort of squalid, mired, awful lives."

   18. MIMike Israetel29:38

       (laughs) Excellent. I have a few things to say about that. One is I will not stand by while you tarnish the reputation of the great Sam Bankman-Fried.

   19. CWChris Williamson29:46

       (laughs)

   20. MIMike Israetel29:47

       On a, on a few levels. One is he is just a good person, and I don't want to hear it, about this and that, embezzlement, nonsense.

   21. CWChris Williamson29:55

       Mike, if you are going to simply compliment anybody that's got more hair than you, there is a very, very, very long list of people that are going to come.

   22. MIMike Israetel30:04

       Not only does he have... Am I allowed to say really politically incorrect shit on here, or am I just gonna get

   23. CWChris Williamson30:09

       Fire away. Fire away.

   24. MIMike Israetel30:10

       All right, so this is gonna get me fucking canceled for sure. When the Sam Bankman-Fried shit happened, uh, one of the first articles I saw was like, "He's in the Bahamas in a $40 million house and he's, like, um, a bunch of people that work for his company, they're having, like, relations, like sexual malfeasance with each other." And so, like, oh God, I'm going to hell. I, I, I really am joking about this. People are so much more than their appearance. Look at me, I'm fucking hideous. All, it's all jokes. Then I Google around, I see who, where the orgies, who the people were, and I was like, "Oh."Oh, my God. Now, this is the- some of the least attractive people I've ever seen in my life.

   25. CWChris Williamson30:48

       I would have paid, I would have paid good money-

   26. MIMike Israetel30:50

       To get out.

   27. CWChris Williamson30:50

       I would have paid close to Sam Bankman-Fried's net worth-

   28. MIMike Israetel30:53

       (laughs)

   29. CWChris Williamson30:53

       ... to not be in that holycule.

   30. MIMike Israetel30:55

       Cash me out. (laughs)
7. 36:35 – 44:42

   Where Money, Happiness & Success Meet

   1. CWChris Williamson36:35

      Stephen Davidowitz on the show, and he's a data scientist, so I trust him completely. Uh, and he's Jewish.

   2. MIMike Israetel36:40

      Oh, he's written books.

   3. CWChris Williamson36:40

      And he's Jewish, which is great. So-

   4. MIMike Israetel36:42

      Angely.

   5. CWChris Williamson36:42

      I have to, has- have to trust him.

   6. MIMike Israetel36:43

      With a name like that, my God. (laughs)

   7. CWChris Williamson36:45

      Damn right. Yeah, he's really Jew- he's more Jewish than you. Um-

   8. MIMike Israetel36:48

      Nonsense.

   9. CWChris Williamson36:48

      He's got less... He has less foreskin-

   10. MIMike Israetel36:49

       Look at this.

   11. CWChris Williamson36:50

       ... than you do. He has less foreskin than you do. Okay? Uh, so-... he said-

   12. MIMike Israetel36:54

       I stand corrected.

   13. CWChris Williamson36:54

       (laughs) He said... I hope not. He said that every, uh, increase in happiness that you get takes another doubling of money. So let's say that it's, it's $70,000. Then it would be 140 to-

   14. MIMike Israetel37:09

       Mm.

   15. CWChris Williamson37:09

       ... achieve the same increase. Then it would be 280. Then it would be 560, so on and so forth, in order to achieve the same. So you get this diminishing return.

   16. MIMike Israetel37:16

       Yeah.

   17. CWChris Williamson37:17

       Uh, I don't know which one's true, but it seems like there is a difference between avoiding discomfort... Like, a lack of money can make you miserable, but does lots of money make you happier? Up to some degree, it does. But when it comes to, uh, getting rich, and, and, and, um, how much people value money, and chasing success and stuff like that, I know that you have a thesis that all of this is wildly undervalued, and being in the present moment is wildly overvalued.

   18. MIMike Israetel37:46

       Yeah.

   19. CWChris Williamson37:46

       And you took, uh, great, uh, rejoined at, at pushing back against a thesis that I had around happiness and success and the directness of the, of the route between it. What is your, uh, perspective on being rich?

   20. MIMike Israetel37:59

       Is it okay if I take those quotes out and actually just look at them?

   21. CWChris Williamson38:03

       Hit me. Hit me in the f- hit me in the face with them. Yeah, let's go. Quote me-

   22. MIMike Israetel38:05

       All right.

   23. CWChris Williamson38:05

       Quote me back to myself on my own podcast, like some sort of human centipede of thing.

   24. MIMike Israetel38:09

       Here's where you lied to people.

   25. CWChris Williamson38:12

       (laughs)

   26. MIMike Israetel38:12

       (laughs) So, you know, by implication, of course. So let's see. Aha.

   27. CWChris Williamson38:18

       Get into the DMs.

   28. MIMike Israetel38:18

       And I click on the Instagram, and it shows me the things that I want to see. So, uh, you have... I love your Insta, by the way, because I, um, it shows up on mine, and I... It's excellent quotes and stuff like that that I love to see.

   29. CWChris Williamson38:36

       Thank you.

   30. MIMike Israetel38:37

       So, uh, let's see. "We trade things we want, time, for the thing which is supposed, for the thing which is supposed to get it, money. We give up time to make money so that we can finally have more time when we have enough money. We give up happiness to achieve success so that we can finally enjoy happiness when we achieve enough success." I have a lot of things to say about that, but I'll probably just say a few. If making valuable things to provide to other people so they can exchange value in return for them and make you money and make you successful, and they get happier because they voluntarily pay for your stuff. For example, Mark Zuckerberg made Facebook, and Facebook made me way happier than without Facebook. I've done incredible things. I've made that... Managed to help tons and millions and millions, hundreds of thousands of people through Facebook. So if I'm Mark Zuckerberg and I'm engineering this monster called Facebook, I'm engaged, sure, definitely in the pursuit of money, but in that pursuit, I'm doing two things. I am having a profound effect of, of beneficence on other people, and that's how I'm using my time, versus just, like, being in nature and staring at the fucking animals and shit and being all at peace, which is dope. It's awesome, and I do absolutely have a practice of Vipassana meditation myself, so I can speak about that a ton. But not only do you get that, is the pursuit of success, the pursuit of money can be a meditative practice in and of itself. My happiest that I ever am is when I'm... By the way, I'm in, uh, my, my, uh, home office. It is a completely white, nothing-on-the-walls, windowless basement room.
8. 44:42 – 53:00

   Overcoming Fear of Ridicule from Working Harder

   1. CWChris Williamson44:42

      four or five-

   2. MIMike Israetel44:42

      Definitely not a Jew. (laughs)

   3. CWChris Williamson44:45

      Never. No foreskin, at all. Actually, he's got more foreskin than all of us put together.

   4. MIMike Israetel44:49

      (laughs)

   5. CWChris Williamson44:49

      He said... I was talking to him about the fact that I was a club promoter and sometimes I finish work late at night and I have this existential crisis when I go shopping, so I used to go into the local supermarket that was 24 hours on my way home-

   6. MIMike Israetel45:00

      Tesco's?

   7. CWChris Williamson45:01

      Asda. Asda's the one.

   8. MIMike Israetel45:02

      Oh, my man. Oh, sorry, I stand corrected. Amazing. Yeah, yeah.

   9. CWChris Williamson45:04

      I'm a Walmart. Fuck yeah, yeah.

   10. MIMike Israetel45:05

       Yeah.

   11. CWChris Williamson45:05

       I wasn't middle class enough to go to Waitrose or Marks & Spencer by that point, um, so-

   12. MIMike Israetel45:09

       (laughs) Or M&S.

   13. CWChris Williamson45:10

       (laughs) Or M&S, yeah, yeah. Get the Percy pigs. So, on the way home, I would stop off and I would say to him, a lot of the time when I got in there, it's 2:30 in the morning, I'm sleep deprived, I'm on my way back after just watching a thousand 18-year-olds get drunk and finger each other in a club and, as I was doing my self-checkout, I would have a small existential crisis. Not a big one, wouldn't- wouldn't break down and cry, but it would just loom ambiently in the background. And he said, "Next time that you go in, find somebody that's in there that's stacking shelves and just tell them that you hope they have a really good evening and that, uh... Gi- give them a compliment, do something nice with them or for them. Um, say that you're- you know, you're proud of them or- or whatever. Like any- whatever you can come up with, anything, you know, like the fucking shoes." And what you've suggested here about people that take pride in their work is kind of the reverse of that, that there is just so much meaning that can be imbued in taking things seriously. And I think that this is actually related back to what we were talking about before to do with the sort of skepticism cynicism, which is by being cynical or skeptical, you create a walled off garden around you that doesn't require you to genuinely existentially interact with the world. You don't actually end up being invested because everything's going to go to shit in any case. So I don't need-

   14. MIMike Israetel46:27

       And everyone sucks. Yeah.

   15. CWChris Williamson46:28

       Yeah, I don't need to care. You don't care about the environment. A lot- some people do, that's a lie. Lots of people don't- who are, um, adamant that the world is going to go up in a ball of flame, don't care about the environment, they just believe that the world is going to-

   16. MIMike Israetel46:47

       Yes.

   17. CWChris Williamson46:47

       ... explode and they're able to couch their fear of truly feeling and integrating with the world on a- a- a sort of loving, emotional level within this sort of cynical skepticism, uh, proselytizing it as realism. And it means that they never actually end up having to- to connect with things and I think that this is kind of the same... It's the same thing that you're seeing in the manosphere with a lot of the dating, uh, the dating advice that is being given out to men at the moment. It's that if you see women as enemies to be avoided or-

   18. MIMike Israetel47:24

       Mm-hmm.

   19. CWChris Williamson47:25

       ... uh, adversaries to be used and discarded-

   20. MIMike Israetel47:27

       Mm-hmm.

   21. CWChris Williamson47:27

       ... you never actually have to open up. You never have to face the pain of potential, um, injury, uh, emotionally. And I think that this is essentially-

   22. MIMike Israetel47:35

       Yo, what kind of women are you trying to pick up? Injury? Holy shit.

   23. CWChris Williamson47:38

       (laughs)

   24. MIMike Israetel47:38

       Hey, Ronda Rousey. Bam!

   25. CWChris Williamson47:39

       (laughs) Um, but yeah, my point being here that, um, in order for you to genuinely care about the thing that you do, you have to care about the thing that you do, and by caring about the thing that you do, you open yourself up to risk. So, yeah.

   26. MIMike Israetel47:52

       And also, uh, mild to moderate ridicule from other people. If you take pride in your job as a Walmart store, you know, uh, stocker of shelves, you know, there- there are many people in that store with you working that'll- that'll sort of like, uh, render a kind of attitude towards you like, you know, almost like SpongeBob Squarepants, like SpongeBob loves working at, you know, the Krabby Patty s- the shop or whatever, and he's almost seen as kind of Pollyanna-ish, like, "Oh, he's just delusional." And it's like, I'm sorry, what- what part of being happy at work is delusional? And one- one of my passions is to take people's assumptions, notions and- and to try to get them to jump a couple logical steps to see, uh, where they end up and maybe I learn something and maybe they end up just being like, "Oh, I fucking never thought this through, so I was wrong as fuck." Like, okay, so you don't want to really take pride in your work, try to take pride in your work 'cause your job sucks. Okay, word up. So if you took pride in your work, what would happen? Like, "Yeah, but my job sucks." Like, okay, so what if you took pride in it? They're like, "Well, I'm a chump." Like, well, I'm sorry, when you take pride in your work, do they pay you less?... like, "No, but I had to put up with my boss's bullshit." Motherfucker, you have to put up with his bullshit one way or another. Your cynical bitch ass puts up with his bullshit. That's why you're cynical. If he was like, "Hey, I want you to stay later today, so you going on my yacht," you're like, "Fucking asshole. Cool." Rewind. He goes, "Hey, uh, you gotta stay later today, I'm going on my yacht." You're like, "All right, sir, have a good day. I'm just gonna be at work." You're happier now, motherfucker, and you're more productive. You took the time in front of you, the four hours of extra late shift that you were gonna do, and you leaned into the shit. Unless you plan on quitting your fucking job, what is exactly the point of being cynical? What is exactly the point of being detached from your work? "Oh, man, I hate working at McDonald's." By the way, I've worked with a bunch of people, all the way up from people who make nothing to make millions, and I've seen people have positive attitudes at every fucking layer of that shit. And by the way, number one way to get promoted is do a good job. Number two way to get promoted is be a fucking positive person at work, because your boss knows that this motherfucker wants to be here. And by the way, any- any job that remotely has you interacting with other humans, almost all jobs, and especially in customer service, positivity is fucking number one. So by really owning your shit, taking some fucking pride, you start to do a better job, you're happier. Maybe you're not fulfilled in some kind of like, you know, transcendental way. Like, you're still fucking making burgers. Although the deep thinkers and the meditative practitioners would say that if you really make burgers, I mean, really make them with your whole mind, taking care to be efficient and quick and answer orders, that is actually... That- that is nirvana. You can be in a state of great stillness and peace doing a menial job.

   27. CWChris Williamson50:34

       You know, one of- one of-

   28. MIMike Israetel50:35

       You know the whole leaf raking situation?

   29. CWChris Williamson50:37

       Yeah, one of my favorite ones. I can't do it here in America, but in the UK, the house that I have back there, uh, where the kitchen sink is, it looks out over the garden of the house. And some of the best times that I've had of peace have been when I've been washing dishes.

   30. MIMike Israetel50:53

       Yeah. Yeah.
9. 53:00 – 1:03:11

   How Worrying Destroys Happiness

   1. CWChris Williamson53:00

      that you brought up just there, I understand that the money for, um, we trade money for, uh, happiness. That one is more out over my skis. The trading, uh, uh, trying to achieve enough success in order to give ourselves reason to be happy I'm pretty sure is slap bang in the middle, and I stole the original conception from Hormozi. Um, that post is written for people who believe that happiness lies on the other side of their next promotion or on the other side-

   2. MIMike Israetel53:31

      Mm-hmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson53:32

      ... of their next 10,000 followers on social media. Uh, and it's in large part written for myself as well, that I need to remind myself that simplicity and optimizing for simplicity when it comes to what you derive your sense of meaning and happiness from in life, if you start there and then win and fucking capture the entire world, and I'm the god of whatever the fuck industry I care about, that's a fantastic bonus on top. I don't think that this is the same as setting your sights low and being pessimistic. I think it's reminding yourself about where you can genuinely derive happiness from, because although I take an absolutely huge amount of happiness from the success of the show and the impact of the show and all of the people that I speak to, the money is a derivative of that. And yes, sure, it's kind of like being given a trophy. You don't do it for the trophy, you do it for the success. The trophy is a derivative of the success.

   4. MIMike Israetel54:20

      Mm-hmm.

   5. CWChris Williamson54:21

      But it's just a reminder that continuing to believe, "I'm not happy yet, and all that I need is the next piece of success in order to be able to justify my happiness," is a treadmill that for a lot of people never, ever ends, and I do think that it's important for them to be reminded of it.

   6. MIMike Israetel54:40

      Well, absolutely. That, um, "I'll be happy when" situation, it may even be true. You may be happier when better things happen in the future, totally, a- and you probably will be, but-... does that prevent you from being happy right now, at least to the extent that you're capable? And I think a lot of people make another mistake, cognitively, and they say things like, "If I allow myself to be happy now, I'll lose that drive." And to me, I think the best way to architect your drives, if you have any say in the matter, sometimes we're just automatons that are doing our thing, is I don't like the idea of a drive for success that runs away from not-success, that runs away from poverty, that never again kind of thing. I much prefer a drive that is two-factor, when it runs towards more success, and two, it takes a lot of happiness from the run itself. Like, for me, total amount of net worth is a really cool idea, like, if I have a certain amount of money, that's, that's awesome to think about. But income streams are fascinating. And the growth of income streams is fascinating. I make more money this month and more money, like, oh man, that's awesome. And even more fascinating is the productive effort that brings those income streams, th- that instantiates them. So, I think a lot of people, l- like you totally rightfully indicate, s- save their happiness sort of intellectually for, "Well, later I'll let myself be happy, because I don't want to lose any steam."

   7. CWChris Williamson56:17

      Yup.

   8. MIMike Israetel56:18

      You can generate your steam from the positive sum game of doing your best.

   9. CWChris Williamson56:25

      Well, let's do-

   10. MIMike Israetel56:26

       That's where your steam should come from.

   11. CWChris Williamson56:27

       Think about it this way, and Alex taught me this when we were on the episode, that the three most common traits of high performing people, super rich high performers, was, uh, a superiority complex, crippling insecurity, and maniacal focus, right?

   12. MIMike Israetel56:41

       (laughs) So. (laughs) Like how the first two are interesting together.

   13. CWChris Williamson56:44

       Yeah. Yeah, precisely, right? So, you have, uh, the belief that you can do great things, and that you're better than everybody else. You have a fear of insufficiency that drives you to run away from something that you don't want to become, and you're able to constrain your distractions so that you run in a singular direction without wobbling all over the place.

   14. MIMike Israetel56:59

       Hm.

   15. CWChris Williamson57:00

       One of the things that that made me realize is that most of the people that we admire the most have the least admirable internal states.

   16. MIMike Israetel57:09

       Oh.

   17. CWChris Williamson57:09

       So, what does it mean that the people who command the most respect in terms of status are the ones that you want to be the most externally and be the- w- the least internally? So, this sort of duality is very difficult to deal with, and the point that you're bringing up here, which is, look, you are almost in some regards momentum. You're built up, you've got this degree of inertia to how much personal development and, and skillset and drive it is that you have. I believe truly that for most people, especially the people that are listening to this, you are already on the train tracks to becoming something fucking fantastic. You're listening to content that a rarified strata of the entire human history has ever been able to listen to, like literally the greatest thinkers of your time get to go into your ears as l- as frequently as you want, and then you get...

   18. MIMike Israetel58:01

       Nominal cost.

   19. CWChris Williamson58:02

       Yeah, e-

   20. MIMike Israetel58:02

       No- no cost.

   21. CWChris Williamson58:03

       Yeah, essentially-

   22. MIMike Israetel58:04

       Time, yeah.

   23. CWChris Williamson58:04

       For- f- f- for essentially free, 24 hours a day, and then you get to take that and you get to change your life. Do you understand how fucking insane that is, that you get to be able to do that? Worrying and vacillating about the outcome, I believe, gives you probably an extra five or 10% that all of the concern, all of the fear and the n- neurosis and the sleepless nights, probably derives an extra five or 10% of outcomes, 'cause it will cause you to be a bit more obsessive, which will be useful. However, the other way to look at that is, I could get 90% of the outcomes and discard all of the worry and concern, and it changes it from you believing that you are some sort of driver in a car that needs to frantically look for what direction-

   24. MIMike Israetel58:45

       Hm.

   25. CWChris Williamson58:45

       ... to like, "Ah." This is ease.

   26. MIMike Israetel58:48

       Mm-hmm.

   27. CWChris Williamson58:48

       I'm a competent individual. I am in control. And as opposed to being the driver in a car, desperately looking around for the satnav to see which way I need to turn, you're more like a passenger on a train, and you get to observe the scenery as it goes past. The waitress comes by, you order some English tea, you have a couple of scones with, with jam and cream-

   28. MIMike Israetel59:06

       Of course.

   29. CWChris Williamson59:06

       ... and you go, "Oh, this is a really enjoyable process," and the destination is going to be arrived at in any case. And I truly believe that-

   30. MIMike Israetel59:13

       Yeah.
10. 1:03:11 – 1:09:09

    The Left-Leaning View of Working for Success

    1. CWChris Williamson1:03:11

    2. MIMike Israetel1:03:11

       Okay.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:03:11

       So this is what I've, this is what I've called two-step potential theory. Okay?

    4. MIMike Israetel1:03:16

       All right.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:03:16

       So during an episode-

    6. MIMike Israetel1:03:17

       Don't pin your wacky ideas on me. (laughs) Racist garbage are gonna spill out of your mouth.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:03:21

       Another Jewish conspiracy here. (laughs)

    8. MIMike Israetel1:03:23

       (laughs) You see the globalists, they have this big octopus.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:03:27

       (laughs) Okay, so, um, during this episode with Destiny, who's a, a left-leaning streamer, we were talking about the difference in the world of you, of people from the left who focus on systemic problems and how they hold people back, and people from the right who hope is-

    10. MIMike Israetel1:03:40

        No, they fucking don't. But anyway, sorry, go on.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:03:41

        Who hope to start-

    12. MIMike Israetel1:03:41

        They don't know anything about systems. Sorry.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:03:43

        People from the right who focus on absolute achievement and how it can be gotten there by the individual. And this is what Destiny said. He said, "If I was exclusively left-focused, I'd let my restrictions define me, so I'd never bother to do anything. If I was exclusively right-focused, I'd observe how much further ahead someone else is and I'd also give up shortly after starting." So he summarized his blending of the two world views together by saying, "I'm going to work as hard as I possibly can because I want to be the best version of myself. I recognize that how good I can be as myself might be controlled by some environmental factors. These environmental factors provide the range that I can exist within. But within this range, my personal effort entirely determines where I exist." So I said, "Let's call this two-step potential theory." It's a blending of individual agency with real world limitations because your efforts have tons of control over your outcomes within the range that your world's limitations will allow. And I think I've heard you talk about this too.

    14. MIMike Israetel1:04:39

        Mm-hmm. Uh, I think that's very wise. There's a lot of truth to it. Something that seems missing is, um, what is your actual ability in that regard? How much talent do you have? Because you can achieve quite a bit of success working just a little bit if you're mega talented. And a lot of the reasons why some people do not achieve a lot of success isn't because they're working hard and it's not because of environmental variables, but because they're insufficiently talented to do as well as they wanted to do. So I think talent's a little bit missing from that, but if we interpolate talent into that hard work-

    15. CWChris Williamson1:05:12

        Into the range.

    16. MIMike Israetel1:05:13

        ... is hard work plus talent or whatever, and then you're in an environmental range there, yes. Um, eh just 'cause we're sort of rapping about this, um, I've met a scarce few number of leftists. There's... I- I've met a ton of leftists who have tons of positive qualities, by the way. I can enumerate any time to show that I'm not entirely biased against them.

    17. CWChris Williamson1:05:36

        Bigots are

    18. NANarrator1:05:36

        (laughs)

    19. MIMike Israetel1:05:36

        Um, but I've met a ton of leftists that use the term systemic and sometimes they're sufficiently confused to c- to confuse that term with systematic, which I don't know if they know the difference between those. And leftists are often, uh, they'll- they'll say, "Systemic, systemic, systemic," and it's they're oddly not concerned with two things. One, the deep structures that create systems and how they work, and two, how to augment systems to become better. As they'll say like, "Well, you know, like X, Y, Z social factor keeps people down." Like, "Oh, I got it. Can you explain to me how that works in depth?" And they just quote you some stupid Karl Marx or Noam Chomsky shit that just doesn't add up. And you're, "Oh, clearly you haven't thought this through." They say, "Systemic," and I'm like, "Oh, I see, so you've read how many tomes on economics and social theory?" And they're like, "Uh, I- I got you." So systemic is a placeholder for, "It's not my fault." Got it. Because I think p- a lot of people on the left be straight up allergic to blaming people for their fucking problems, which I don't understand why you would be. Many problems are totally outside the fu- of fucking people's control, and many other problems are totally inside of people's control. So let's blame, put the blame where it lies. Sometimes it lies in the person, sometimes it lies outside the person. And I think a lot of leftists just ch- refuse to do that. The other thing I think is missing a lot of times, not always, but a lot of times from people who are left leaning, is, uh, you take a system that's, as they say, very flawed and racist or whatever, genderous, blah, blah, blah. And you go, "Okay, is, is there a way we can engineer that system so that... Or rejigger it at the, uh, at least at the margins to make it better?" And there's an odd lobby not concerned with that. You know, like the, how many people who are like, uh, claim to be, uh, homelessness, anti-homelessness advocates, or is it pro-homelessness advocates? I don't know which one it is, right? (laughs) Uh, I- I'm pro-homelessness. You're like, "Wait. Are you sure about that?" (laughs) Um-A lot of people who are sort of really passionate about homelessness, uh, they're just, like, entirely bereft of, of potential solutions to it that don't involve restructuring the oppressive capitalist system. And you're likely gonna say, "You're not really thinking about any of this stuff. You just have a lot of feelings." And before, you know, people get triggered, I think a lot of the feelings that leftists have are insanely good natured. My parents, who are quite cynical, uh, they're from the Soviet Union, so it was understandably cynical. They think that most, if not almost all leftists are individual, super selfish, power and money grubbing fucks that are just parroting a leftist line to get ahead 'cause that's all the leftists in the Soviet Union were that. By the time my parents were around, there was no real leftists left over, you were just using the system. I'm of the belief that in most of the, the modern countries of the world, most people on the political left, straight up, are just more compassionate than the rest of us. They just give more of a shit. It hurts their fucking heart more to see poverty and oppression and this and this and that, and that's fucking great. But you gotta connect the dots to, how do we actually improve things? And that requires two things. One, the attitude that improvement can be achieved and it fucking can. It's not up for debate. Improvement happens all the time, so there is a system to it. And two, an understanding of the world in depth such that you can actually impose improvement. Like, if I have an app that works poorly on my phone, I don't fucking know how to code. You're like, "Hey, improve the app." I'm like, (laughs) "I'm sorry, what?" Like, I don't... The C++ , is that something that people use? Fuck if I know. But a lot of people who claim to care about social issues and claim to be intellectual about them, uh, 'cause if you tell the average leftist, "Well, you just have a lot of feelings," th- they take that as an affront. Understandably, it's couched really relatively offensively, but they, they really just do. And if you're a problem solver, you can totally care and do a lot of good, and I think that's what missing. And if you want a hot take about right-wing folks, Jesus, I got all sorts of that.

    20. CWChris Williamson1:09:03

        I was about to say, yeah, yeah, what, what-

    21. MIMike Israetel1:09:04

        Might as well start talking about porn. Hit it. (laughs)

    22. CWChris Williamson1:09:05

        What would you, what would, what would your equivalent be for the right? What's your concerns there

11. 1:09:09 – 1:20:35

    Mike’s Concerns with the Current Right-Wing

    1. CWChris Williamson1:09:09

       at the moment with the modern iteration of that?

    2. MIMike Israetel1:09:12

       Uh, also a lot of feelings. Um, w- almost every take on COVID, for example, uh, from the more hardcore right, most leftist and right-wing folks are just normal, awesome people. They just want to get along and they just have some feelings about stuff. Really right-wing people about COVID, just batshit fucking crazy. Wrong on every count, unscientific, full of conspiracy, just totally out to fucking lunch. Um, there's a lot of right-wing... There are a lot of left-wing beliefs that you can't debate against, um, because it's politically incorrect. Uh, race realism. Like if you believe human groups have actual differences and they express themselves, well, you're not, you're not allowed to say that. If you ask me what I think about race and IQ, I'll just straight up tell you, "I'm not gonna talk about it." I'll tell you right now on this podcast, I won't talk about it. I've said on my own fucking podcast I'm not gonna talk about it 'cause I'll get fucking canceled, it's a end of story. But there's a lot of right-wing shit we're not allowed to talk about. Like P.S., "Hey, guys, a newsflash. God's not real. He's just straight up not real." I'm gonna get so much fucking hate for that. Like, and maybe I don't mean it, maybe I'm exaggerating. Maybe God is real, maybe God is the universe, maybe Jesus Christ had tons of beautiful lessons for us. Maybe he was really the son of God. But I have to walk all these things back now because a fuckload of people are gonna get triggered. Uh, right-wingers also have a, a cacophony of beliefs that are layered in just like, I feel like this is the thing. Like, they'll see a fat person and they'll be like, "That motherfucker-"

    3. CWChris Williamson1:10:30

       Yeah.

    4. MIMike Israetel1:10:30

       ... "has no willpower." Like, I'm sorry, how do you know that? And they're like, "Look at him, fucking pig." And you're like, "Oh no, I gotcha, I gotcha." But how do you know that person doesn't have willpower? Maybe their hunger signaling is just completely out of control. Maybe they have more willpower than you and if your brain was in that fat fucking body, you'd be 900 fucking pounds instead of six. How the fuck do you know anything? And a lot of the time, they just have a lot of feelings about it, but they're quick to judge the fuck out of people. They're like, "Oh, I know things." Technically, leftists commit type two error a lot with their, um, they don't like to put blind points on things and conclude differences. "Oh, well, you know, men and women really aren't that different or whatever. There is no intellectual difference or preference of s- men and women." And right-wingers commit type one error too much. They go like, "Yes, there's definitely differences between everything and everyone." You're like, "You don't fucking know that. You're making it up half the time." So, you know, one of my... (sighs) One of the painful things to witness in es- especially American politics in the last, let's call it, five years, is this is, this is my summary of American politics in the last five years. Social justice warriors were just losing their fucking minds and right-wing fucking troll proto crypto-fascists were like, "Oh, you think you can lose your mind? Hold my beer. Watch this. We got fucking Pizzagate and everyone's a pedophile and all this other shit." The whole pedophilia thing is fucking insane. There's, uh... Here's another thing what right, right-wingers will do, especially with the Donald Trump thing. Um, they think every single left-leaning narrative is total fake news. And the, uh, a lot of them are, a lot of it's just straight up bullshit. Half the stuff outta MSNBC is straight up lies. "But what about the other half?" I'm like, "Nope, it's also lies." I'm like, "Are you willing to parse the lie from the truth?" They're like, "Nope, it's all bullshit." And you're like, "Okay, so you're just an insane conspiracy theorist. I could talk you into anything or nothing at all, flat earth type of shit, and you'll be totally cool with it because you have this, this, this righteousness." And right-wingers bring that. And not all right-wingers, again, just the, the toxic elements, the insane people o- o- of the, of the parties.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:12:17

       Yeah, there's a... Porn. Porn.

    6. MIMike Israetel1:12:21

       Sorry.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:12:22

       We have porn, porn as well. Porn panic, we can talk about that in a second. There's one thing that increasingly I've been reflecting on to do with COVID. I didn't step into the conversation about COVID really at all. I did an episode-

    8. MIMike Israetel1:12:34

       Largely me either.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:12:34

       I, I did an episode with Johnny and Yousef about, uh, (laughs) uh, isolation hacks, which was, uh, how to work from home-

    10. MIMike Israetel1:12:40

        (laughs)

    11. CWChris Williamson1:12:40

        ... basically, uh, for big, uh, as people who were basement dwelling sort of incels for a very long time, we, we had the skills, yeah, you too.

    12. MIMike Israetel1:12:47

        Literally.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:12:47

        Yeah.

    14. MIMike Israetel1:12:47

        Me.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:12:48

        Um, uh, so I was like, oh, I'm gonna help people with that, then outside of that, I just didn't, I didn't step into the conversation. I'm like, look, I'm not prepared to put the work in in order to be able to understand this, uh, situation to the level that I feel would be necessary in order for me to be able to contribute without further muddying the waters with my complete COD psychology opinion, so I didn't. However, one of the things that I've reflected on, do you remember global, uh, health passports?

    16. MIMike Israetel1:13:13

        Yes.

    17. CWChris Williamson1:13:13

        Do you remember how they were going to be completely militarily, uh, imposed on everybody-

    18. MIMike Israetel1:13:18

        Yes.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:13:18

        ... and that you weren't going to be able to travel anywhere and that the WEF was going to have your genomic sequence in a database somewhere and that this was, you know, the first step on the road to a CCP-style surveillance state and all the rest of it? I noticed that there hasn't really seemed to be any real world development toward that, but all of the people that said that this was going to have happened in no time at all, none of them have had to actually mention why that didn't occur. There was one ... Dude, there was this fucking image of one squaddie, so one guy in military garb walking down a street in London, and it had been passed around on WhatsApp.

Episode duration: 1:53:11