Mental Models 103 | George Mack | Modern Wisdom Podcast 178

1. 0:00 – 0:50

   Consensus blinds you to the future: evidence gaps, frontiers, and curiosity

   1. GMGeorge Mack0:00

      ... I also think that you discard the wisdom of the past. So Tale of Use is an example of the absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. And not only do you discard the wisdom of the past, you also discard, and probably even more importantly, the wisdom and the value of the future. Let's say in 2009, somebody was talking to you about cryptocurrency. It was just so against the consensus and if you have such a closed mind of where there's been studies so far, or where Goldman Sachs are putting their money, you're just always gonna get average results because you're following the crowd. But you rarely ever get to see, like, specific knowledge, like the intricacies of, like, frontiers and, and nuance. And that's why I love hanging around with curious people, because they'll tell you, like, the weirdest new thing that's happening.

2. 0:50 – 2:27

   George Mack returns: why the episodes blew up (and the “bot farm” joke)

   1. CWChris Williamson0:50

      George McGill's long awaited return to Modern Wisdom. How are you, brother?

   2. GMGeorge Mack0:56

      I'm good, I'm good. How are you?

   3. CWChris Williamson0:57

      Very, very well. The crowd has been anticipating this one for a long time. You feeling ready?

   4. GMGeorge Mack1:06

      Yeah. A- as ready as you can be, I guess. Let's go.

   5. CWChris Williamson1:08

      (laughs) Yeah, for sure. So my first question, you are currently the title holder of Modern Wisdom's most ever played episode. So just looking at the best played, you're first, then Dr. Eric Feigl-Ding explaining about a global pandemic, two episodes with Morgan Housel, who used to write for The Motley Fool, Ben Greenfield, uh, Brian McKenzie, then another episode with you, Derek Sivers, John Assaraf, and Aubrey Marcus. So that, that comes out the top 10. Why do you think our episode, our first one specifically and then the second one, why do you think that resonated so hard?

   6. GMGeorge Mack1:46

      Bot farms, mainly.

   7. CWChris Williamson1:48

      (laughs)

   8. GMGeorge Mack1:48

      Bo- bot farms everywhere. It took... It's, it was a two to three-month operation, um, involving about, about 10,000 to 20,000 pounds-

   9. CWChris Williamson1:57

      (laughs)

   10. GMGeorge Mack1:57

       ... um, VPNs, different IP addresses, 'cause you need it all to come from, like, individual phones as well, but-

   11. CWChris Williamson2:02

       Got you.

   12. GMGeorge Mack2:02

       ... it was well worth the effort, yeah.

   13. CWChris Williamson2:04

       Yeah, 'cause we also made ... Our episode was the fourth-best podcast of 2019, as voted by Podcast Notes, uh, audience. So the bot farm also useful for that as well.

   14. GMGeorge Mack2:18

       Yeah, yeah, they do. They do all sorts. I'm trying to now, uh, di- diverse into politics as well. We'll (laughs) we'll see how that goes.

   15. CWChris Williamson2:25

       (laughs)

   16. GMGeorge Mack2:25

       (laughs)

3. 2:27 – 3:40

   What mental models are: principles you can apply across contexts

   1. CWChris Williamson2:27

      Okay. So, um, let's say that someone hasn't listened to our first two episodes, which they should totally go back and check out. Let's say that they haven't. What is a mental model? Give us the Twitter bio description of mental models.

   2. GMGeorge Mack2:41

      Uh, I always actually struggle with this one. Um, I guess the way I view it is like metaphors, analogies or, or just ways of taking principles from different disciplines and then almost trying to keep them in your own mental toolkit that you can, that you can apply. I just find it a fun way of trying to put together a world with trillions of different inputs.

   3. CWChris Williamson3:07

      I get it. Yeah. I think the, the analogy you used on the first episode was, if you think of your brain as the operating system, mental models are the different apps that you can install to give you functionality and to improve your decision-making. And that's now, although it's copyrighted George McGill 2019, I've been using that as, like, my, my one-liner too. So let's get started. What have you been thinking about recently? What are you dropping on us today?

   4. GMGeorge Mack3:32

      Yeah. Um, I'm just, just thinking. I've got a few things here. So the one, the one ... I was trying to think what we haven't been through as well, so try and keep things a bit fresh.

   5. CWChris Williamson3:40

      Yes.

4. 3:40 – 8:40

   Leverage: doing more with less (Steve Jobs’ bicycle metaphor + Naval’s framework)

   1. GMGeorge Mack3:40

      Otherwise, it just, it's just a repeat, right? A repeat after a repeat. So the one that I've been thinking about a lot, uh, just in general, because it be- it comes so, it comes so difficult to me as a person, um, and maybe it was, like, a, a certain generation I was brought up upon, of, like, leverage and what that, like, actually means, like the ability. The way I view leverage is, um, similar to the way, uh, I think it was Peter Thiel who talks about technology, which is the ability to do more with less. Um, and that for me, of a, a generation who was brought up on YouTube videos talking about 16-hour workdays and like hustle, hustle, hustle, hustle, is a very hard concept to sort of wrap your head around. And that when it, when it started to begin to click for me, 'cause I was always, I was always one of those people who want to, like, talk about how hard they work and you realize a lot of that's just signaling. It's just bollocks. It's not actually achieving a result. Um, was the... If, I don't know if ... It might still be up there, but there's something called Steve Jobs' Lost Tapes. Have you seen it?

   2. CWChris Williamson4:44

      No.

   3. GMGeorge Mack4:45

      It's fantastic. So it's an interview with Steve Jobs, I think just before he goes back to Apple for the second time, um, in like 1994 maybe. Um, and the interview was lost for years. They only found it in like 2016, 2015, arou- around about then. And there's a bit in it, um, where I think he used this metaphor elsewhere as well, but there's a bit in it where he talks about reading something when he was early on, like a study in Scientific America where they looked at the efficiency of locomotion for all the animals-

   4. CWChris Williamson5:19

      (laughs)

   5. GMGeorge Mack5:19

      ... um, on Earth. Um, and the... I think it was the condor, which is a bird, that won, and the human being, which is the sort of... I don't know. You, we like to think of ourselves as probably the best animal on the planet, right? "Look at all the shit we've done." We was ranked, like, around about third way down the list. But what was interesting, Steve says that somebody had the genius to, like, test a human being on a bicycle, and a human being on a bicycle beat the condor, absolutely destroyed every single animal on there. And you realize that that's what human beings are. We're just tool makers, right?

   6. CWChris Williamson5:51

      Bro, that is so good.

   7. GMGeorge Mack5:53

      And that's-

   8. CWChris Williamson5:53

      So the condor ... What is ... Is condor a type of bird? Is it, like, a big-legged bird or something?

   9. GMGeorge Mack5:57

      It's a bird, yeah.

   10. CWChris Williamson5:58

       Like an ostrich or what?

   11. GMGeorge Mack5:59

       It's, it's like an eagle-looking bird. No, like, like a flying bird.

   12. CWChris Williamson6:02

       Okay.

   13. GMGeorge Mack6:03

       Like the old kind of birds.

   14. CWChris Williamson6:04

       Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's how leverage works.... by implementing tools because it enhances your ability, your natural abilities are then augmented.

   15. GMGeorge Mack6:16

       Mm-hmm. And then bigger, N- Naval has, um, uh, like four forms of leverage that always stick with me. So you have in terms of like modern, like more business side of things, you've got, uh, the traditional ones which are like people leverage, i.e. Chris has a staff of 50 working for him and therefore he can essentially put out the strategy, put out the systems, put out the products in place, and then those 50 people provide a service, um, or build things for him, therefore, his, uh, outputs therefore would then become even greater than his inputs. Um, you have like financial leverage, which is like the Buffett style of things where you invest X and you get a return of Y and you use your money as a form of leverage. So there's the two old school ones, but the two new ones which are fascinating are, uh, code-based leverage, which obviously powering like Skype as we speak right now or any like, like you've got Shopify, you've got Amazon, all these forms of leverage where Jeff Bezos or Tobi who run Shopify aren't working harder than us, but they have code, they have machines, or in my case bots-

   16. CWChris Williamson7:20

       (laughs)

   17. GMGeorge Mack7:20

       ... working 24/7 for them, uh, that works way harder. And then you've got the final one, which I guess is where you specialize in is like media leverage that rather than us just having this conversation and only us being able to hearing it, you have the ability now to be able to distribute it en masse to lots of people without putting in any extra work. There's no extra cost of replication for what you're doing. Um, so there, yeah, those are the four forms of leverage and once you, once you actually look around and an- any like business you go and you go, "Oh shit, there's like people leverage, there's media leverage-"

   18. CWChris Williamson7:50

       (laughs)

   19. GMGeorge Mack7:50

       ... "there's code leverage." And you begin to see it everywhere and it's fascinating.

   20. CWChris Williamson7:55

       That's super cool. Yeah. Uh, you're totally correct. Everybody knows this, right? I guess there must be a network leverage as well. I don't know how that would fall in, but-

   21. GMGeorge Mack8:02

       It's number one.

   22. CWChris Williamson8:03

       ... um, m- someone saying, "I love the Modern Wisdom podcast, that host Chris is handsome and great," and then telling their friend-

   23. GMGeorge Mack8:11

       One of my bots.

   24. CWChris Williamson8:11

       Yeah, w- one of your bots.

   25. GMGeorge Mack8:12

       (laughs)

   26. CWChris Williamson8:13

       One of your bots says that. Um, uh, th- that is not me putting in the work to source that new listener, right? Um, the fact that that episode, that first episode between us, it's not had any paid ads behind it, but for some reason because of the bots, it's done so well and it's gone (laughs) -

   27. GMGeorge Mack8:30

       (laughs)

   28. CWChris Williamson8:30

       ... gone on and done that. Also to the people listening, um, it might be worth playing a game of either Naval bingo or Buffett bingo today. And I'm-

   29. GMGeorge Mack8:39

       Munga bingo, sorry.

5. 8:40 – 11:39

   Practical leverage for normal people: outputs, inputs, and brand gravity

   1. CWChris Williamson8:40

      Munga bingo, yeah, and I'm clocking up, I'm clocking up one for Naval and one for, one for Buffett so far. Um, so how can people perhaps use leverage? You know, I'm not, I'm not Jeff Bezos. People listening ain't Jeff Bezos. Are there any ways that people can apply leverage like just at a small scale or i- in an immediate sort of, uh, example in their life?

   2. GMGeorge Mack9:02

      Um, I, I, obviously it's so case specific to every individual and I think sometimes an issue with ideas like this is that people try and like mass distribute it to everybody and it's, it's so case dependent, but I just think like looking at trying to reduce your inputs whilst also maximizing your outputs. So however that may be, right, whether that's via media and you have a greater audience that way or you hire people who you trust that then obviously work for you and then you can try and increase things that way. Um, I think, yeah, I think it's so subject specific, but I think the two ones that are only seem to be getting greater and greater are, uh, media leverage and code leverage, but I also think like brand leverage. Like I was, uh, I was watching an interview, the Rogan and Elon Musk interview.

   3. CWChris Williamson9:50

      The new one?

   4. GMGeorge Mack9:52

      Um, the new one. The new one. And I caught myself like obviously, uh, uh, I mean, you can, you, you end up on a Twitter game where you can find... I find it quite interesting where you find people who obviously think he's the, the, the smartest man ever and then you have like the trolls or, or maybe rational critics, I don't know, who criticize various different things, but even I caught myself like falling into the brand where I'd listen to the interview and literally anything I, I'd hear him say I was then trying to rationalize it into genius. And don't get me wrong, a lot of it probably is.

   5. CWChris Williamson10:18

      (laughs)

   6. GMGeorge Mack10:18

      But that power of like a brand like he has, Oprah has, or even like the, the most controversial example where Trump has now where people use these brands as a form of leverage and it works for them, and they can say something that if somebody else said, all of us, it can be interpreted as genius or they get a second chance or they have defenders for them just around a, like a brand so to speak. And I think brands is another form of leverage that doesn't get discussed enough 'cause it's, it's hard to pinpoint, it's hard to really explain, but we all like feel it.

   7. CWChris Williamson10:45

      It's the icing on the cake which makes everyone presume that it's going to taste good before they even eat it. I think that's one way to look at it, right? That you, you see this cake and you're like, "Oh my God, not only is this cake coming out of that bakery that I've eaten at before and everyone else eats at this bakery and they all think it's mint, and I've eaten there before and I think it's mint. And this cake looks so good. It's got all the trappings of the previous ones." But obviously as you've hit on there, that can become kind of a little bit of a Trojan horse that delivers something that's got less substance. You hit it with a hammer and you find out it's hollow inside as opposed to filled with delicious jam and cream filling, which is-

   8. GMGeorge Mack11:25

      Mm-hmm.

   9. CWChris Williamson11:25

      ... what we want. Um, you've touched on two things which link into... I haven't got that many points. This is a platform for you to do your thing and to drop some bombs, but I got two things that link into what you've come up with there. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna-

   10. GMGeorge Mack11:39

       Go for it.

6. 11:39 – 14:39

   ‘Multiplied by zero’: weakest links, ruin, and why small risks can erase everything

   1. CWChris Williamson11:39

      ... give a couple of bits. We haven't done multiplied by zero yet. Have you heard of that mental model?

   2. GMGeorge Mack11:45

      Yeah. Yeah. That's, um, it's an inter- it's just, it's like, it's not really a complex one. It's a real simple like everybody like, uh, year three maths I guess knows that-

   3. CWChris Williamson11:56

      (laughs)

   4. GMGeorge Mack11:56

      ... you can have 10 billion times 322 million, uh, add 52 billion, but if you then take that number and multiply it by zero, you end up with zero.

   5. CWChris Williamson12:10

      (laughs)

   6. GMGeorge Mack12:10

      Um, so I guess it's kind of Taleb's thing of like try and avoid absolute ruin, try and avoid, um-... yeah, that, that multiplier by zero, i.e., uh, if you get caught as an athlete doing steroids, that you, you're, you're gone basically. Like it's very hard-

   7. CWChris Williamson12:27

      Regardless of talent-

   8. GMGeorge Mack12:28

      Yeah.

   9. CWChris Williamson12:28

      ... regardless of whatever's going on, yeah, identifies the weakest link in the chain. And no, no system is stronger than its weakest component, right? Um, but the same could be made for, um, you have spent all your life, uh, working on longevity, you've been intermittent fasting, you've not been eating processed foods, you don't drink alcohol, you don't smoke, you don't do drugs, but one day you decide to drive without your seatbelt on and you get into a car crash.

   10. GMGeorge Mack12:54

       (laughs)

   11. CWChris Williamson12:54

       Like, you're very dead. You know, you are, you... It doesn't matter how healthy you are when you're very dead. And the same thing goes for, um, you are working real hard on your finances, on liberating yourself so that you have freedom so that you can pursue the things that you want so that you don't have any financial burdens or any responsibilities or whatever it might be, but upon one drunken night of unprotected sex, either you get pregnant or you get somebody pregnant, and then there is a very big burden that you need to, uh, pursue. You know, you got, you got to look after that. And it's like, okay, that's multiplying by zero. Like doesn't matter all the good stuff, all the good stuff you've done in the past, there is something now which is such a large burden, maybe the, maybe it's not multiplying by zero for the kid, but it's definitely putting a very hard stop, you know, on a lot of the things that you, that you potentially had planned. And the point is that it wasn't something that was planned. Um, so yeah, multiplied by zero is a really important one, I think, for people to just look at where the l- the weakest links in their chain are, right? Like a, a lot of the time we see this with productivity, people say, "Oh mate," I, I posted an image of Alpha Brain the other day, I don't take it that much, um, just a nootropic, and I got tons and tons of messages, "Bro, is this any good?" Like tell me like, you know, what, what are the sort of effects? I might try and get it. And it's expensive as hell, you've got to pay an import charge from on it in the US because they haven't sorted the, like their customs tracking thing either. Um, but if I post something up about, uh, Cal Newport's deep work or doing Pomodoros or like a new productivity strategy, no one cares. And it's like because that is the weakest link in their chain and often it's the one that shows kind of the most, um, the most discomfort is associated with it.

7. 14:39 – 21:35

   Product vs marketing: why ‘hacks’ fail without substance (Fyre Festival, Jobs/Wozniak, Shopify)

   1. GMGeorge Mack14:39

      Yeah. That's, i- i- it's a similar, like a bit of a model I've been thinking about of late as well, which is like product versus marketing. Um, as somebody who's a marketeer or operates in the marketing world, you definitely, I don't know if we, I don't know if Dean can put it in or we can attach it to the notes, but there's a recent like Google Trends of like the word best and the word cheap and best is going like that and cheap over time is just going like that.

   2. CWChris Williamson15:04

      Okay.

   3. GMGeorge Mack15:04

      And I think that's a result of a huge, a huge focus on marketing and these like hacks and without fixing the product. Like the best, I always use the best example of like Fyre Festival for me is one of the, like the most fascinating business cases where as, as deceitful and a- arguably wrong what, uh, well definitely wrong what he did, you cannot deny that guy was a genius marketer and a genius salesperson.

   4. CWChris Williamson15:30

      Yeah.

   5. GMGeorge Mack15:30

      And if you look at like great combos, like if you look at, uh, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, you had Jobs who obviously was a marketing genius and then you had Wozniak who was a product genius. And obviously Jobs was like a product genius as well but that combination of marketing and products is what made those guys so strong. And I find that (laughs) if you have Ja Rule as your business partner, um, and not s- I always wonder if he had a Steve Wozniak, how different would that Fyre Festival have turned out if he had like a key for a boy who can like execute and focus on the operations and made that party happen. Like maybe he would be a billionaire right now, maybe he would be one of the best entrepreneurs of our generation, but the fact that he had Ja Rule, and I always wonder like if Steve Jobs had Ja Rule, how different would it have been?

   6. CWChris Williamson16:12

      (laughs)

   7. GMGeorge Mack16:12

      Um, but like I, I, if I had Ja Rule, God knows what I'd be doing. So I do sometimes wonder like, like the, the product and the marketing 'cause you see it more and more like what's fascinating if you... One of the holes I've been down in quarantine is that Tobi Lutke who's like the Shopify CEO, I think he's such a, uh, honest, humble and like clear thinker. And what's fascinating is as opposed sometimes and I think wrongly by the media, Shopify and Amazon are where Amazon are centralizing, uh, e-commerce and, uh, Shopify are decentralizing it and making it about the merchants. Um, and people see Lutke and Bezos as almost two opposing figures, which I don't think is true. Um, and I think they both admit that. But if you look at their like shareholders letters from like 2015 or even Bezos like 1999, it's always about two things. We don't care about short term revenues, we don't care about all this marketing stuff. All we care about is long term thinking and customer satisfaction. So even like Shopify, one thing in like growth marketing that brands will do, like if, if you was a growth marketer and you came in at Shopify early doors, one of the things you would have said to do is always have powered by Shopify on the store, therefore like Mailchimp do this. So therefore when somebody comes on the store and sees it they'll go, "Oh this is Shopify, I'll then use it." And as a result, Shopify would have a way bigger brand because they basically power like over 100 billion, um, in e-commerce revenue. And there's so many people who don't know what Shopify is, who doesn't exist in this. But you know for a fact they've bought from a Shopify store, but Tobi purposely was so merchant focused, refused to have that powered by Shopify there, um, because he knew that actually providing the merchants with as much value in the short term would provide so much more long term value. So he put the product in that case before the marketing. And I think we're going to see a shift more and more towards that. I do think marketing is still super valuable, but when you are so marketing focused, so hack focused, it only gets you so far. And I think that everybody cares more about the product at the end of the day.

   8. CWChris Williamson18:19

      Even from just a non-financial...... viewpoint as well. There's more integrity associated with actually fulfilling the thing that you're saying that you're doing. If your company is there to enable the e-commerce provider, the e-commerce, uh, uh, store, uh, to maximize everything that they do, like put your money where your mouth is, you know? Like if you take your, your thumbnail watermark away and that makes an impact that actually makes the store look better, then really if you're sticking to your values and that is your true values, regardless of what it does to revenue, you should be doing it. You know? And, uh, uh, a- again, in this world of shareholder agreements and, and, uh, yearly annual reports and stuff like that, that is the, it's gonna stand out. Not only does it give you distinctiveness, um, but it genuinely should be more fulfilling to you. The only problem is when you've got shareholders whose desire for the bottom line outweighs that, I guess. You mentioned before as well, Fyre Festival, something I've been thinking about so much since I watched the documentary, which is phenomenal, um, is how seduced we all are by success, right? So that guy, who's the guy that run it, what was his name again?

   9. GMGeorge Mack19:34

      Bi- is it Billy something?

   10. CWChris Williamson19:35

       Billy Far- Billy McFarland, that's it. Um, so Billy McFarland, the only reason that people slated him and that he's a crook and that he's trying to take advantage of people is because he failed. If he'd succeeded, even if he'd partially succeeded and it hadn't been a total nightmare, he would have been hailed as marketing genius, new Steve Jobs, this, that, and the other. There would've been-

   11. GMGeorge Mack19:58

       Is it-

   12. CWChris Williamson19:58

       ... some people that said, "I think this is a, a, a, um, unfair way of doing marketing. I think that he's leveraging the lowest common denominator of influencer marketing and stuff like that." But had he have farted out a semi-successful festival, right, people would have said, "Oh my God, look at what this guy's achieved. Look at how phenomenal the marketing was. Like, next year is gonna be insane." Because we are so seduced by the end product. It's success by any means, right? Everybody just cares about, okay, can, is this person the next hype train? Is this person the next Steve Jobs? Is this person the next whatever it might be? And, um, yeah, I realized that the only reason that people slated him was because the f- festival failed, really not because of his methods in getting there.

   13. GMGeorge Mack20:50

       Mm-hmm.

   14. CWChris Williamson20:51

       Uh-

   15. GMGeorge Mack20:51

       I ki- I know, I kind of g- I kind of get what you mean, but I think that then just goes back to the whole product and marketing thing that if you have the best, um, CBO Facebook campaign where you have ten ad sets structured perfectly and you've used dynamic creative testing to AB test everything and you're getting, uh, eight ROAS on a pair of jeans, but the, the jeans turn up and there's a fucking rip through the crotch part, people are gonna be mad at you, like, and I think rightly so, right? If you've, if you've advertised a product that isn't, um, isn't good enough, like the, w- I think that, I think that's almost a good thing, you know? I think that this focus on the product is, is super important and I think it's the, gonna be even a greater and greater focus in the next 10, 20 years.

8. 21:35 – 31:53

   Language shapes reality: mental fluency, definitions, and ‘time’ as a proxy for ‘life’

   1. CWChris Williamson21:35

      I would, I would agree. Also, there is a, um, uh, model that I got introduced to by Richard Shotton, who, uh ... Have you listened to that episode yet?

   2. GMGeorge Mack21:45

      I listened to the first one, I've not listened to the second one.

   3. CWChris Williamson21:47

      Good, because that means I can tell you this for the first time.

   4. GMGeorge Mack21:50

      Cool.

   5. CWChris Williamson21:50

      Um, so in a study, there was a number of different, uh, aphorisms that were given to people, like these sort of rules, right? And, um, for instance, woes unite foes, right? That's one of them. But in another version of the study, they might have been told woes unite enemies. And what that indicated, and this was run over a number of different aphorisms, a number of different sentences, what it indicated was that people see rhyming sentences as more believable than ones that don't rhyme. And when they were asked in reflection, "So why was it that you chose the, the, this is the most believable one," or whatever, they didn't, no one said like, "Uh, oh, it was because it rhymed." And even a- they asked them, they were like, "Oh, so was it because it rhymed?" "No, no, no, no, it's got nothing to do with that. It's just, you know, I really feel like it connects with me and whatever it might be." But that wasn't the truth. When you control for everything, it wasn't the truth. It's because it rhymed. What that tells us is that mental fluency is associated with truthfulness, and that has h- such huge implications, right? You know, Grant Cardone is someone who's unbelievably fluent, the way he's able to deliver things with power and with conviction and all this sort of stuff, and yet there's entire websites dedicated to calling him out for some of the stuff that he does. Now, it's not to make a, a value call on whatever, whether it's, it's true or false w- uh, how he operates his business, but you can't deny the fact that that is someone who is using mental fluency to augment their truthfulness, right? And I think that that kind of links into what you're saying there with this kind of marketing first approach, um, which again, hit it with a hammer, you find there's nothing inside. It's, it's dangerous.

   6. GMGeorge Mack23:42

      Yeah, I, I agree. It takes on like a, a model I've been thinking about of late, which I kind of call like the linguistic matrix or like the linguistic red pill. And I realized that how much of your reality is just shaped by the words that you have available, um, and your ability to then put like placeholders, uh, on things. So even like, like a word that, like schadenfreude, for example, is a word that's, uh, I think it's German. It's a very English thing of taking pleasure in somebody else's failure or pain. Um, the ability to actually have that chunked into a word, ability give, uh, uh, comple- completely gives you an ability to understand reality slightly differently. But I think if you look right now, like I, one thing I absolutely hate 'cause it's just a team sport is like most modern politics, and...If you reali- if you, if you look at most these, like, uh, 280 character debates on Twitter where there's just all caps and swear words and calling-

   7. CWChris Williamson24:37

      Clap emojis.

   8. GMGeorge Mack24:38

      ... anybody with ist at the end, or ... Yeah. It's just, it's the, both, both teams are exactly the same. And, um, one of the things that is often an issue is that there's a whole, there've al- if you can imagine, they've got this whole, like, Jenga tower that this debate is based on and they're sword-fighting at the top of this Jenga tower, but they still never, ever define the fundamental words that they're using. So, like, sometimes they'll be debating about a specific word without actually defining it. Like, even, like, two, two, like, just, what examples I have that are not political, but let's say the word, like, ego, for example, is an interesting one. Use it for so many different meanings that then two, I can then sometimes try and understand something, but it's, uh, within the word ego, I've got five different meanings, and I think it completely, uh, distorts my, my view of reality. So, like, people will use ego, for example, in the Kanye West sense of, um, like, thinking that I'm the fucking man and, uh, like, nobody can stop me. That style, or like the Michael Jordan on the court style of ego, and then, like, the more, like, Buddhist, Eckhart Tolle perspective of ego is this sense of self, this sense that you're, uh, an individual and you're not completely just an organism connected to all the billions of organisms out there. And I find that we actually should define the, the individual instances within that to even have a clear understanding of reality. Like, one, one of them that's fascinating as well is the word entrepreneur, because the, within the word entrepreneur, there's so many different kinds of entrepreneurs. My favorite example is Joe Rogan. Like, talk about media leverage. He has, uh, maybe, what, like four or five members of staff? Like, him, Jamie, and I'm sure he's got a few other people behind the scenes. Does, like, 100 plus mil revenue from his podcast alone. So-

   9. CWChris Williamson26:17

      You, you know he doesn't even have a personal assistant?

   10. GMGeorge Mack26:20

       Does he not?

   11. CWChris Williamson26:20

       No. He said it on a podcast the other day, says he refuses to have a personal assistant. He's like, "Fuck that. Why do I need someone to just tell me when the ti- the train tickets are booked for, tell me when my flight leaves? It's like, I'll book the flight myself, motherfucker." So funny.

   12. GMGeorge Mack26:33

       That's probably why he's quite well-connected to everything that's going o- on as well. I think that's probably actually an adv- advance- advantage to him. But he, yeah, he has insane media leverage. Um, but, uh, one of the things that y- you wouldn't be able to say about Joe is that he's, like, an entrepreneur. 'Cause, like, when, as soon as you think of entrepreneur, you think of, like, "Okay, I'll give him 10 grand, he'll flip it into 20 grand and he'll do all these sales." That's not Rogan in the slightest. Like, he's not a CEO, he's not that kinda guy. But he has a business worth over $100 million that employs a few members of staff with, what, like, 99% margins? How is that-

   13. CWChris Williamson27:11

       (laughs) With no cost.

   14. GMGeorge Mack27:12

       How is there not controversy there? But there's an issue with that, that we need to then define the words within the words, um, because we end up just keep chunking, chunking further and up and we ... And that's one of the reasons why I love, uh, Eric Weinstein, for example, 'cause he just creates words all the time. And I find that you go through your whole life with, like, these words that have been given to you rather than trying to actually create your own vocabulary based off what you're seeing in reality. You're always trying to outsource people to make words for you. It's really weird.

   15. CWChris Williamson27:38

       I think this probably strikes at why so many people talk past each other online. When you think you've got (clears throat) differing points of view, you have, um, two people that inherently want to disagree, so they're already looking for that disagreement perhaps, then they're all excited and, and anxious and stuff for being online and typing away, smashing the keyboard. And then even the terms that they are using that they are debating aren't agreed on. It's like, bro, you'll never, you might as well be speaking different language. You know, you're never gonna make that work. And this, I, I keep bringing this up, I'm gonna do it again. If you have not read 1984, you have to go and read it, especially if you like the idea of what George is talking about here. I learned more from 1984 about the way that I operate than I have done from a lot of personal development, self-development books, right? And the thing that it taught me was that the ability to articulate words, the ability to put your thoughts into a noise that comes out of your mouth or into words that go down on paper is directly proportional to the quality of your thoughts.

   16. GMGeorge Mack28:43

       Mm.

   17. CWChris Williamson28:43

       Like, if you can't say it, it never takes form. And if it never takes form, it's no longer an actual concept, it's just a notion. You know, it's like the smell of the thing that you think and you're like, "Oh, that's interesting." It's kind of a bit like that. So roll that forwards, the implication is if you want better thoughts, you need a bigger vocabulary. The more words that you have at your disposal, genuinely, the better your, the quality of your thoughts is going to be. And this is why I've got such a love for language, right? Like, I, I, I adore fi- picking up ... Bloviate, I discovered the other day, which I absolutely adore, which is kind of like someone that guffaws and talks a lot about, uh, talks a lot about stuff without actually really saying anything, right? It's a-

   18. GMGeorge Mack29:30

       (laughs)

   19. CWChris Williamson29:30

       ... analogous to a ton of different words. But bloviate, I was like, "That's cool. I now have a word that I can use for when someone is bloviating." But until I have that word, it's just a sense or it's me having to use another word which is analogous to that. It's a proxy for that, right? And, um, yeah, not only does it, does it make life richer, but it genuinely improves the quality of your thoughts. So I'm, I'm 100% on board with that.

   20. GMGeorge Mack29:54

       Yeah, it's almost like rather than having all these, uh, like, detailed lines of code, somebody's just put it into one function and then you can just execute-

   21. CWChris Williamson30:05

       (laughs)

   22. GMGeorge Mack30:05

       ... on that. Like, it's, it's a much smoo- And that, if you look at the way ... I, I'm not the guy to talk about software systems, but if you look at the way that they're making it easier and easier, um, and they're chunking and chunking people's previous work. So yeah, it ma- it makes sense that to be able to actually have a specific word as opposed to, like, a fluffy concept, and then words within those words is a much precise and clearer way of, um, operating. Like, one of the things I was thinking about, and this is a bit, a bit woolly, but ...... I, the word time is itself quite deceptive and a bit of a proxy. Um, I, I think obviously a lot of people in a weird situation right now where they reflect on how they spend their time day-to-day. And you'll talk about, "Oh, well, I, I d- I work full-time or I do X, Y, Z." But time is life, like that's what it is at the end of the day, but it's a proxy for the word life. And when you actually then like think about, uh, so you're doing a full time job that you hate, it's actually a full life job that you hate. You know what I mean? Like it's, it's your life, but I think time is itself like this weird proxy for the word life, and we almost, it's almost a lot more existentialist if you have to use the word life. And I think it's actually quite a useful tool to change those two words. Otherwise, time is like this, this thing that you have, like money, and it's not. It's, it's just this, it's all you've got and it's slowly pouring away and it may end at any second, I guess.

   23. CWChris Williamson31:24

       (laughs) That's the one-

   24. GMGeorge Mack31:25

       As depressing as that sounds.

   25. CWChris Williamson31:26

       Hey man, if people don't wanna be depressed, they should listen to a different podcast. Um-

   26. GMGeorge Mack31:30

       (laughs)

   27. CWChris Williamson31:31

       ... uh, it, it's the one resource that you can't not spend as well, right? Like you can save money, you can save calories, you can choose not to buy that coffee, you can choose not to eat that cake. You can't choose to not exist for the next hour. It's like that time's gonna be spent, so you just better choose that you spend it as well as you can. Um, what have we got next? What's up next?

9. 31:53 – 39:52

   Forcing functions: deadlines, restricted freedom, and why structure beats willpower

   1. GMGeorge Mack31:53

      So one of the ones I've been thinking about, uh, because of everything that's going on, I b- I imagine a lot of people have experienced it, is like forcing functions. So something, it's almost, a- a lot of people talk about the, the wonders of freedom and the, the beauties of liberty, and I completely like agree and love freedom and love liberty, but sometimes without sounding (laughs) like I'm a BDSM kind of guy (laughs) .

   2. CWChris Williamson32:17

      (laughs)

   3. GMGeorge Mack32:17

      There's some, uh, there's some, there's some beauty to having restricted freedom in the sense that, um, I always use the example, I know some lazy fuckers, like some really lazy people, including myself at times, but if they have to be at a job for 9:00 AM, they will get up on time and they will attend. But as soon as that's taken away, they'll be getting up at 1:00 PM, they're getting up at 2:00 PM. And the only thing that's changed is of like a forcing function of what? Um, Daniel Grossi is an example, uh, with, um, two examples. One with like YC Demo Day, like the ability, he says that a lot of Y Combinators', uh, success, not success, but the r- reason, one of the, the beauties behind going through YC is that you have a deadline at the end of it. And as a result, the work just fits to that deadline. If that deadline didn't exist, it, it maybe takes two years, maybe takes three years. So that's like a, a hard forcing function. And he also says like one of the reasons why a lot of amazing technology, particularly in a defense space, comes out of Israel is because they have to, right? Like, you know what I mean? Like in the, in the UK, like there's n- or the US, there's no- there's not as much attack on your like land or-

   4. CWChris Williamson33:26

      No imminent danger, yeah.

   5. GMGeorge Mack33:26

      ... ability to save everyt- yeah. Uh, no imminent danger, shall we say. So that's one of the reasons why like Israel has such a forcing function, but Israel doesn't produce Snapchats of the world, it doesn't really produce Twitters of the world as a result because they don't have... Whereas when you have that more relaxed freedom, they tend to produce that. But when you have a forcing function, um, it can produce some amazing things. Like Peter Attia was ev- like even now, like the amount of companies who would never have in a million years let their employees work from home have now been forced to do it and they're going, "Actually, we don't need an office anymore. We're gonna go full remote." Like it's crazy as a result of this like forcing function that is a, a pandemic, I guess.

   6. CWChris Williamson34:04

      Yeah. Shout out to Chris Sparks, forcingfunction.com. Um, he's a, he's a, a big lover of that. So how would you actually define what a forcing function is?

   7. GMGeorge Mack34:16

      I think it, I, I think it comes from, the actual model itself probably comes from programming of, uh, it's something that you just can't, uh, you can't get past without doing a certain thing. Um, but then the way you obviously chunk that for other areas is almost you're- you're forced to do a certain thing basically, or, or the pain of not doing it, um, is way greater than the, the pain of, of putting it off. Um, s- uh, s- is that even right? The pain of not... No, no, the pain of not doing it is way greater than the pain of, of doing it. So I think that's how I'd describe it, or the pleasure of doing it is way greater than the pleasure of not doing it.

   8. CWChris Williamson34:55

      Mm-hmm.

   9. GMGeorge Mack34:55

      So just real simple pleasure and pain, incentives, which is another model, I guess.

   10. CWChris Williamson34:59

       One of the things that I've been thinking about to do with that kind of forcing function and how it ties in is just Parkinson's law. I can't remember whether we brought this up last time, and I don't even know if it classes as a mental model, but we're free flowing today. We can do what we want. Uh, Parkinson's law, work expands to fill the time given for it. So it's the same reason that you don't do your university, uh, assignment until the night before. It's the same reason that the project that you need in for work e- requires an all-nighter to be pulled and I think, um, using a forcing function like that, when you think about, um, the YC days and, and things, it actually, uh, f- requires you to focus on what the m- the minimum viable product is as well. Like if you know that you've only got six weeks to complete this particular project for YC, you're not going to bother gesticulating for two weeks on whether the l- brand logo should be mostly red or mostly yellow. Like it's going to force you to focus on the things that move the needle. And when those degrees of freedom get expanded out, as you've identified right now, there's no boss telling you why you're not awake at 9:00 AM. What did you call it earlier on uh, a furloughpreneur?

   11. GMGeorge Mack36:11

       (laughs) Furloughpreneur, yeah. It was another one

   12. NANarrator36:13

       Yeah.

   13. CWChris Williamson36:13

       (laughs) ... which is just the best.

   14. NANarrator36:16

       Yeah.

   15. CWChris Williamson36:16

       The absolute best. Um, you, when you don't have that, you don't have anybody who is the disciplinarian, who's, who's telling you to do these things, you realize, oh, hang on, actually all, the only reason I was overcoming my own inertia...... was because of this structure, this buttress, this scaffolding that was layered around my life. And I think that those increased degrees of freedom are causing people a lot of, and rightly so, they're causing people a lot of discomfort. As I've said on a number of different podcasts, I was taking a lot of pleasure, uh, the, in the beginning until I sort of checked myself and said, "Stop being a dick." I was taking a lot of pleasure with other people struggling to, uh, self-discipline. I was watching people suffer with the same challenge that I faced as a, a self-independent entrepreneur for the last 13 years. I was like, "Oh, so hard working from home, isn't it? Can't imagine what that's like." And then I checked myself and I was like, "Hang on a fucking second, mate. Like, you need to ... Let's be a little bit more empathetic here. Like, you shouldn't be taking pleasure at the fact that other people have stepped into your nightmare, you know?" (laughs) Like, don't ... So, but i- it's, it's right, increased degrees of freedom for your forcing functions.

   16. GMGeorge Mack37:29

       Yeah. It's, I, I just think that one of the things I always find actually, like, great content, um, is whenever you hear somebody say, like, w- when they, when they turn 30 or when they turn 40, when they turn 50, and it's either, like, a letter to their 20-year-old self, 30-year-old self, et cetera, one of the consistent themes seems to be, like, putting the proper things off or putting the things off that they should have done. And I think that for myself, something I probably don't do enough, but I think in, in general, uh, a lot of the consistent themes when people talk about those regrets is that there wasn't enough forcing functions in place to actually get them to do it. It was always this pipe dream in the future. And I think that if we had more sometimes restricted freedom, um, in certain areas that we, we purposely do ourselves, whether that's putting up, like, a, a JustGiving fund because you're gonna run a marathon or whatever it is, it actually works. Even though whilst you're doing it, you kind of hate yourself for actually putting yourself through it-

   17. CWChris Williamson38:23

       Mm-hmm.

   18. GMGeorge Mack38:23

       ... but at the end, you're always like, "Thank fuck I did that."

   19. CWChris Williamson38:25

       Mm-hmm.

   20. GMGeorge Mack38:25

       Um, I think it's, it's a b- it's a beautiful concept, even though it feels horrific at the time.

   21. CWChris Williamson38:30

       That's a really, a really, really clever way of putting it together, man. Yeah, I mean, the, everyone that's listening has, has decided to obsess over the things that don't matter because it's a form of procrastination on getting onto the stuff that actually does. And, you know, for me with this podcast, like, I've, I'm, I still feel like I got it out early. Like, you know, the start of 2018 by no one's estimations is early, but by now, like when you look at how many people are now bringing them out and how much more the podcast network is growing and stuff like that, it feels early, right? But at the time, I'd already messed around for six months. I'd spent six months, I'd gone through tons of different brands, I'd played with different ... And then I came up with Modern Wisdom, like, at 3:00 AM, woke up and was like, had this name. And I was like, "Yes, finally got the name. Right, now, onto the logo." And you're like, "Bro, (laughs) like, it doesn't matter." People want to tune in because of what you say, because of the content that you put out. Um, and in reflection now, I can say pulling the pin on that and just deciding to do it and messing up with the audio and messing up with the video and not having in- support and not doing this correctly and doing all these problems, right? You're like, over time, right now, I am so glad that past me did that, because present me is reaping all of the rewards, and you just iterate over time. Um, what we got next? What else you got on the, on the menu?

10. 39:52 – 44:56

    Global vs local maxima: shipping containers and escaping 1% optimization traps

    1. GMGeorge Mack39:52

       Um, my, one of my favorite ones at the minute, and I love it when you have ... 'Cause the thing about the models as well is that it's sometimes just a bit fluffy until you have, like, real world examples that you can rest it on, so global versus local maximum. Um, again, as I mentioned, I've been going down a, a bit of a, uh, Tobias Lutke hole, the, the Shopify CEO, and he uses, uh, a great example to explain the global versus local maximum, which I'll come on to, but it's basically local maximum. Local maxima is operating ... So let's say, for example, um, it would be focusing on optimizing one specific variable, um, so that may be, uh, the, the focus on getting the best exhaust possible for your car, constantly trying to optimize 1% gains for the exhaust when you realize you've not got a fucking steering wheel.

    2. CWChris Williamson40:42

       (laughs)

    3. GMGeorge Mack40:42

       So you've gotta, you've gotta sometimes ... Whereas that's, that's what the global maximum is of, like, looking, like, almost from an absolute objective perspective at the whole thing and then optimizing for that. So one of the entrepreneurs that doesn't get anywhere near enough, um, attention, because it's not sexy, and you'll realize this, like, everybody knows who Mark Zuckerberg is, but nobody knows who the CEO of, like, Citibank is or Goldman, right? Like, because it's, it's way more B2B, it's not B2C. Um, but Malcolm McLean. Do you know who Malcolm McLean is?

    4. CWChris Williamson41:13

       No.

    5. GMGeorge Mack41:14

       Um, so basically, he was the, it's the, he was the guy that basically came up with the idea of shipping containers, um, he was ... A comment came at it, and this is where I'll often, uh, global maximum will come from. At the time, everybody was focused on getting faster and faster ships so we could, uh, basically create globalization as we know it now where you can get bananas from the other side of the world in January. Um, and they were getting faster and faster ships, and he was as a truck driver. It was one day on, um, I think it was Thanksgiving, was sat there in nine hours with cargo on his back waiting for people to get each individual box off and then back. And he says, "Why don't we just chunk it all together and you just take that off as a container and you can just place it on the ship and then you literally take ... And then once the ship arrives you can just take the one container, stick it onto, um, a train or rail and ship it that way?" And everybody basically laughed at him and thought it was a ridiculous idea because they were optimized on getting each individual box off at the time. And for some context of, like, how, um, how good this idea was, um, at the time, it was $6 a ton doing the previous method where ... And they was focused on the local maximum of trying to, uh, make the, the ships go faster. When he implemented what he did, it went down to 16 cents a ton.

    6. CWChris Williamson42:34

       (laughs) Oh, my God.

    7. GMGeorge Mack42:36

       Um, so, like, it, it goes to show that ... And also instead of, like, a week-... for them to load, uh, a ship, it was then eight hours for them to load a ship. So you think about him as an individual on the global maximum perspective, like the impact that hav- has on the world is insane. Like every trade, everything imaginable. In fact, there's not a day named after him, goes to show that if you're not B2C, it's not sexy-

    8. CWChris Williamson42:59

       Mm-hmm.

    9. GMGeorge Mack43:00

       ... you're rich and anonymous. But, um, like for me-

    10. CWChris Williamson43:03

        Is he still alive?

    11. GMGeorge Mack43:03

        ... that is a perfect example. No, I think, I think he's dead now. I... Because this is like, um, uh, I think it c- yeah, this is like the '50s when it began to come in place. I think he's dead now.

    12. CWChris Williamson43:12

        Okay.

    13. GMGeorge Mack43:12

        But, um, the, but the Shopify CEO, he has a great example where he totally says that, when he gets asked it in the interview, um, I think it's on The Knowledge Project, where he says, "My whole goal as a, as the CEO is to assume right now that where we're at in modern day business, I'm at a six. Maybe the best company in the world is like a six. The key, the goal is to get it to a seven. Um, and that's my life's mission, to get to a seven." So he's basically working on the assumption that he's always wrong, and it's kind of true. Like if you look at sport, for example, if you look at football or soccer or whatever you want to call it, like the gap between the modern athletes and 40 years ago is just huge. And you, but we, we weirdly have this thing at the time where we assume that this is the best thing possible, that the iPhone is like, it's never gonna get better than this, but it always does. And I think the, the, the first thing to do is assume that everything's wrong and your goal is to be, to be less wrong. And I think that then helps with potentially getting, uh, nearer to a global maximum, if that makes sense.

    14. CWChris Williamson44:19

        I love that concept, man. That's the first time that I've heard of it. It's kind of like a, a rate limiting step from chemistry as well, right? Like, which also ties into what we were talking about before, which is the weakest multiplied by zero, like you're only as strong as your weakest link. Um, what did I have in my head there? I had one in my head. Oh, yeah. Um, can you do, uh, why it's important, why it's better to avoid failure than to, um, uh, face success or like why, uh, like not being stupid is better than trying to be clever?

    15. GMGeorge Mack44:53

        I can talk about it, but I can't necessarily do it in action.

    16. CWChris Williamson44:55

        (laughs)

11. 44:56 – 49:43

    Chess lessons: analyze the thinking, not the move (systems mindset + scalable character)

    1. GMGeorge Mack44:56

       That's for sure. Uh... (laughs) Um, yeah, I think, yeah, just I guess looking at, yeah, things that are gonna take you down, um, is something I, I struggle with. But ag- again, it goes back to that multiply by zero. And I think, I think a model that's actually quite useful for identifying that, um, I've been playing, since quarantine been playing a ton of chess. I'm still shit, but I've been playing a ton.

    2. CWChris Williamson45:17

       Mm-hmm.

    3. GMGeorge Mack45:18

       Um, and there's c- there's cool, like, lessons that come from that. Um, one which is that your, like, assumptions will... Assumptions is everything, and there's always the right move that was there, the same way with the shipping container. It wasn't like that idea didn't exist. It was just that people's assumptions was that there was a better way to do it. They was focusing on the, uh, the local maximum rather than the global maximum. Um, but there's a, a Garry Kasparov point which... Garry Kasparov is one like the, the best chess players of all time and I, I think sometimes people extrapolate chess to life and there's loads of lessons you can take, which I do think's partially true, but partially bollocks, but there are a few. Um, and one of the ones that Kasparov has is the way he used to analyze his games. So let's say, for example, he made a mistake where he moved the bishop, um, to E4. Um, most people would come at it from analyzing that move. So they would go, "Okay, I moved bishop to E4 and then I got in a trap and I lost my bishop. Therefore, never do bishop to E4." And instead what Kasparov, the way he analyzed his game and what he said was so different about his approach, was to not just analyze the move, but analyze the thinking behind the move, like, "What did I have for dinner that day? What was I thinking about at the time? What assumptions did I have in my head?" And you have almost this system mindset, which is similar to systems versus goals, but looking at things in a much wider system. So like Safi Bahcarli talks about this where he uses the example of, let's say, you come home and you argue with your wife, um, after like a hard day's, hard day's wor- work, work about the dishes, for example. Like almost thinking about the individual item or the, the pawn to, or the bishop to E4 would be, "Okay, I'm never gonna bring up the dishes again," but instead actually try and think about what, what was the thinking before all that happened and you go, "Oh, actually, the cause of the mistake was me coming home from work tired and angry and I took it out on my wife." And the good thing and the genius thing about this is if you went from the perspective of, okay, let's not just use the, uh, let's never argue about the dishes again and rather instead focus about the let's not come home from work angry, is that you prevent thousands of similar mistakes from happening rather than that just one. Again, that's an idea that is lovely in theory, but even harder to implement and I'm not perfect at it at all.

    4. CWChris Williamson47:45

       (laughs)

    5. GMGeorge Mack47:45

       I'm awful.

    6. CWChris Williamson47:45

       Well, it's much more scalable, right? And we were talking about this before we started, where I was saying about, uh, strategies versus character. And the fact that a lot of strategies supplement for poor character traits. You know? Like a strategy of only ever having three beers so that you never cheat on your wife is a strategy to ensure that you never cheat on your wife.

    7. GMGeorge Mack48:07

       (laughs)

    8. CWChris Williamson48:07

       But the character trait of being faithful to your wife is much more scalable, you know, regardless of how much alcohol you have. Now, that's not to say that you should still increase risk by having a bunch of booze when you're in a strip club or whatever it might be. Um, but the principle is the same and I think it's kind of like this malignant side effect of the 21st century. And w- I... We contribute to this. I'm contributing to this, and we're doing it right now, that we give people these piecemeal solutions to what is a very global problem. It's like, if you work on your character, if you work on your values and your virtues, what is it that matters to you? What is the reason that you are here on this planet for? Like genuinely as an existen- as terrible of an existential crisis inducing question as that is, like what is the reason for that? Because that, those values, those virtues, those, um-... non, non, uh, compromisable reasons for your existence are much more scalable than having a strategy about, uh, like, the best way ... I once read a book about how it's the best to bring kids up, therefore I'm going to follow this strategy. It's like well, yeah, but where do you think that strategy came from? That strategy probably came from people who loved their kids and did the things that were right for their kids. So there's again, like, that marketing versus product thing. There is a, a combination between the deployment of a strategy and what is the essence of the reason that the strategy exists, and can you combine the two? Can you deploy something which is effective and also have something to, to back it up?

12. 49:43 – 55:32

    ‘Dirt and clouds’: vision + execution (and why the middle is often wasted motion)

    1. GMGeorge Mack49:43

       It's, um, yeah, it's, it's, it's much easier in theory, um, than harder in practice. There's that quote, uh, I don't know if it's Taleb, oh, no, it might be Yogi Bear, and Taleb uses it, of, um, in theory there's no difference between theory and practice, but in practice there is. Um, and I think this ties me onto another thing I've been thinking about of there ... This is, um, a model that comes from a d- I'm, I'm a fan of him. I even, I think he steps sometimes, uh, sometimes I don't always like his content, but I think on the whole there, I think he's actually fantastic and does a lot of good for the world, which is Gary V. Um, uh, and he has a concept called dirt and clouds, uh, which I think I actually like probably his best video and his best piece of content, um, which is the way he thinks about things is purely from a dirt and clouds perspective. So, the way he defines that for himself is the cloud is, like, the high end vision of, and the high end principles and the high end character stuff that we're talking about. So for him, I think it's buying, like, the New York Jets and providing, like, unreal value to the world and his funeral, I think Gary talks about this, he wants more people at his funeral than any other funeral.

    2. CWChris Williamson50:51

       Mm-hmm.

    3. GMGeorge Mack50:51

       That's how he defines every action by. And then the dirt for him is, like, the specific tactical things of, so for him it will be knowing that TikTok was a platform to get on before anybody else and he was investing a load of time on that. Or the reason why he predicted Snapchat because he's got hands on. Similar to the way Rogan doesn't have a personal assistant that if you do have, like, a PA or with Gary, he outsources it to everybody, like, the junior employees. He's no longer in the dirt. He's no longer relevant and he loses touch with things. But the dirt and the clouds, so, like, the high end top level theory and then the pure execution, the pure action, and then he basically says everything else in the middle, which is where you can so easily spend your time, is just absolute garbage. Um, and it's much easier said than done to obviously only focus on the dirt and the clouds-

    4. CWChris Williamson51:39

       Mm-hmm.

    5. GMGeorge Mack51:40

       ... but the politics, the, the, the, the ac- the nonsense, just spending time, like, doing passive things that you don't even enjoy is, uh, is, is just, just pointless. But the actual dirt and the clouds are the two, the two most important things.

    6. CWChris Williamson51:54

       Throw back to the first episode, gray area thinking, barbell strategy.

    7. GMGeorge Mack51:58

       Yeah.

    8. CWChris Williamson51:59

       Um, yeah, so you mentioned there, you, you couldn't work out whether it was Taleb or whether it was Yogi Bear, or whatever it was, and I mentioned to you on the phone I was gonna, I was gonna red pill you on this. Churchillian drift, have you heard of it?

    9. GMGeorge Mack52:12

       Oh, yeah. No.

    10. CWChris Williamson52:13

        Okay.

    11. GMGeorge Mack52:14

        I've been waiting.

    12. CWChris Williamson52:15

        Churchillian drift is the term coined by British write- writer Nigel Rees which describes the widespread misattribution of quotes by obscure figures to more famous figures, usually of their time period. The term, uh, connotes the particular agrariousness of misattributions to British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. And this is just so funny that it always slides up, right? It's never, like, John that has the ice cream van that came up with this thing. It's always, like, Taleb or Naval or ... there we go, another one for bingo. Um, i- i- it's always that, and, uh, I find myself doing it as well. There's that quote that keeps on being attributed to Aristotle which is, um, "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit." Um, and that's supposedly Aristotle, but then if you actually dig into the etymology of that particular quote, you find that there's quite a lot of criticism a- and, and sort of skepticism around who came up with it. And Richard Shotton told me, I can't remember the website, I'll have to try and find it, that there's basically an equivalent of, like, ancestry.com but for quotes, and you can go back through the tree of where it first appeared, and then you'll see it slide. The, the Churchillian drift will occur over time as it gets attributed to, like, more-

    13. GMGeorge Mack53:43

        Wow.

    14. CWChris Williamson53:43

        ... more and more famous people. But I think, again, with that, that's probably, a- a- again, another kind of malignant side effect of the 21st century that we presume that people who are in positions of authority and in positions of power are the only ones that can deploy wisdom. You know?

    15. GMGeorge Mack53:58

        On that, uh, on that note, there's a bit in Zero to One. This is a, this is a exact quote, 'cause I know he says this.

    16. CWChris Williamson54:05

        (laughs)

    17. GMGeorge Mack54:05

        It's Peter Thiel says that, he uses that example where I think they talk about the quote is it, uh, where it's apparently that Einstein said compound interest is the-

    18. CWChris Williamson54:15

        Eighth great wonder of the world or whatever.

    19. GMGeorge Mack54:17

        Yeah, eighth great wonder of the world. Um, and obviously Thiel goes on, uh, on that point and he says that actually, uh, it probably wasn't Einstein who said that, but he goes to say that, that Einstein's brain was so good, like, comp- it's actually quite ironic that it obviously compounds after he dies that people are still misattributing quotes to him, so he goes to actually show that compound interest-

    20. CWChris Williamson54:37

        (laughs)

    21. GMGeorge Mack54:38

        ... is the eighth wonder of the world. Um, but it's weird. But on that note, though, like, there is some weird, like, contagion that goes on where I find that I'll have ideas in my head about ways to behave or things that are true, but I wanna actually try and back- trace the source. I may have, like, overheard it on a podcast or I might also say, "Oh, um, you know that, uh, X, Y, Z was created by this person," and then I just wouldn't really think anything of it, but he acted really certain. And then I'll catch myself going, "Oh, no, it was X, Y, Z who created that," you know?

    22. CWChris Williamson55:07

        (laughs)

    23. GMGeorge Mack55:07

        And then I, and then sometimes I go ... I've caught myself, like, sometimes making points and I go, "That might not be true actually." And as you, you sometimes have to call yourself out because you can easily...... if somebody says stuff with enough confidence, you just pass it on and then before you know it, it becomes, it becomes gospel. It's really weird.

    24. CWChris Williamson55:23

        Mental fluency is associated with truthfulness, man. Say something with enough conviction and some m- m- minority of people will believe.

13. 55:32 – 56:40

    Churchillian drift: quote misattribution, idea contagion, and confidence as a truth signal

    1. GMGeorge Mack55:32

       If you want a- g- the best example of that is Frank Abagnale, um-

    2. CWChris Williamson55:37

       Yeah.

    3. GMGeorge Mack55:37

       ... Catch Me If You Can. So obviously-

    4. CWChris Williamson55:39

       Yeah.

    5. GMGeorge Mack55:39

       ... Leonardo DiCaprio did a film on him, but there's a talk at Google, Frank Abagnale, um, where he basically tells his whole story. It's actually quite emotional. He talks about his lack of a dad, he's obviously turned his life around now where he works for the FBI. And if you wanna talk about, like, the ebi- you understand why he was the greatest con artist ever just because of how well he, he speaks with absolutely no self-doubt when he tells stories. It's crazy. I think he says, like, "uh" twice within the whole speech. It's inc- it's incredible, it just-

    6. CWChris Williamson56:09

       Yeah.

    7. GMGeorge Mack56:09

       ... it's just (mouth whooshing sound) This guy was pretending to be a pilot at the age of 16 or whatever, right?

    8. CWChris Williamson56:14

       (laughs)

    9. GMGeorge Mack56:14

       Like, you can see why.

    10. CWChris Williamson56:16

        So ballsy, man. Right.

    11. GMGeorge Mack56:18

        The thing about, the thing about that ... Sorry, I always had this, uh, interesting one which is that the, the best con men, uh, everybody does these documentaries on, like, who the best con men ever were. Realistically, they, there's probably ... the best con men can't be in a documentary because still nobody knows who they are. (laughs) There's this weird, like, survivorship bias, right?

    12. CWChris Williamson56:33

        That is-

    13. GMGeorge Mack56:33

        It's like the inverse.

    14. CWChris Williamson56:34

        ... that is a really, really good-

    15. GMGeorge Mack56:35

        The con men bias. (laughs)

    16. CWChris Williamson56:37

        Yeah, con men bias. Uh, what's next, what's next on the menu? What we got?

14. 56:40 – 1:09:55

    Kayfabe and useful irrationality: placebos, performance, and tradition as forgotten problem-solving

    1. GMGeorge Mack56:40

       Um, so in terms of, uh, what I've got here, um, th- this is a bit of a weird one that I've been thinking about. Um, Weinstein brought it up in the Rogan podcast about this concept of, like, k-fade, which is again one I'm still struggling to wrap my head around, but we're seeing it more and more, um, and it kind of goes on to what we're talking about then about this weird contagion where professional wrestling is something that people know is fake, but people kind of still love it. And you're seeing it, I think you're seeing it at a political level with, with Trump that you seem to have ... Again, I don't wanna go down a politics rabbit hole, so literally if I start chatting about politics more than 30 seconds, just jump in and change the topic.

    2. CWChris Williamson57:20

       Okay.

    3. GMGeorge Mack57:20

       But (laughs) uh, you have him for example where you have some p- obviously you have the re- like, diehard believers, but you also have people who are his fans that know he's playing this weird game and that he's purposely saying things almost, like, from a marketing or a sales perspective. Um, and people almost, this k-fade thing, like, almost applies to yourself. I find actually sometimes being irrational is actually a very rational strategy. Um, so let's say for example this concept of resistance which comes from, like, The War of Art book where Steven Pressfield says, like, procrastination is this external force that's trying to conquer you and defeat you. Of course that's absolute bollocks, but I think interpreting it as true is actually an effective strategy. And there's probably nothing more, if something's effective, you could argue it's, i- maybe it's irrational, but maybe it's the irration- irrational thing to do and then it gets something done. Uh, you see it with professional athletes, like, how many professional athletes are atheists? It's quite rare. And I think whether there's a God or there's not a God or what, probably believing that as you're about to go in an octagon and fight or as you're about to go on a football pitch for a World Cup final that God is on your side, having that placebo in place is actually, um, probably very, very useful.

    4. CWChris Williamson58:29

       So i- is that like a athlete's Pascal's wager? (laughs)

    5. GMGeorge Mack58:33

       Kind of in a way, like s- there's, there's benefits, there's benefits of irrationality and, and we've seen it, we're seeing it more and more, like, this blur between ... You see it with the, the Fyre Festival, this whole, like, fake it till you make it, but sometimes that becomes, and I think there's a, there's a negative strain of it which I think we need to avoid. But sometimes it can be used as a positive side of things of almost believing something irrationally but it actually, actually works as an, uh, an effective measure.

    6. CWChris Williamson58:57

       Y- Well, I mean, it's-

    7. GMGeorge Mack58:58

       Makes me paranoid. (laughs)

    8. CWChris Williamson59:00

       It highlights, it highlights the fact that we are not perfectly rational beings. And the more that I read into evolutionary psychology, um, and this book called Blindsight by, uh, Prince Ghuman and Matt Johnson. Holy shit, man. Like, I had the guys on, they're just a small, j- just a couple of dudes, and, um, it just shows how fallible we are. Our minds are completely just ... they're useless. The, you know, the fact that we don't just get hit by open traffic is a miracle as far as I'm concerned. And, um, the more that you realize that, the more you realize that an irrational system trying to be fixed with rational solutions is probably not always going to work. And that when you add those two things together, you can manipulate the system into rationality by timesing irrationality by irrationality, as long as it's the right, um, uh, levels of each. Right? Um, a quote from Shane Parrish actually, uh, which was put on his, uh, fs.blog newsletter, which kind of re- relates to what you're talking about there. "Tradition is a set of solutions for which we have forgotten the problems. Throw away the solution and you get the problem back. Sometimes the problem has mutated or disappeared, often it is still there, as strong as it ever was." That's Donald Kingsbury.

    9. GMGeorge Mack1:00:26

       That's fascinating.

    10. CWChris Williamson1:00:27

        It's cool, isn't it? I, I, I think-

    11. GMGeorge Mack1:00:29

        Yeah.

    12. CWChris Williamson1:00:29

        ... that kinda relates to a lot of what Jordan Peterson talks about as well, right? You know, he talks about these archetypes and these, these kind of meta themes that have been with us for years or millennia. And, um, when you read anything that's ancient but classic, Marcus Aurelius's Meditations or, you know, whatever it might be, you realize that the pro- (laughs) the problems that you attribute as side effects of the 21st century are just in-built parts of our nature that everyone's been fighting with for forever. Um, and I love-

    13. GMGeorge Mack1:01:01

        Mm-hmm.

    14. CWChris Williamson1:01:01

        I really like that, um ... And that's another Rory Sutherlandism actually, there's one for bingo for Rory Sutherland, um, which is that he says, uh, the opposite ... What is it? About the opposite of a good idea not always being a ... The opposite of a bad idea also being a bad idea, or the opposite of a-I'm gonna butcher this. Give me one second.

    15. GMGeorge Mack1:01:24

        I know where you mean.

    16. CWChris Williamson1:01:25

        This is Rory-

    17. GMGeorge Mack1:01:26

        Except-

    18. CWChris Williamson1:01:26

        ... I'm so sorry, bro. It is me trying to, trying to quote you. "Rory Sutherland opposite of an idea." Let's see if this comes up. Da da da. "The opposite of a good idea can also be a good idea." That's it. Uh, "don't design for average. It doesn't pay to be logical if everyone else is being logical. The nature-"

    19. GMGeorge Mack1:01:43

        Mm-hmm.

    20. CWChris Williamson1:01:43

        "... of our attention affects the nature of our experience." Thanks, Rory.

    21. GMGeorge Mack1:01:48

        Yep, is it... Like, a lot of... Because it depends how you define rationality, but if, if you look at it almost as a... Again, but rationality might be one of those words that has numerous words within it that we chatted about earlier, but some of the, the most rational people I know, um, seem to end up with the most average or boring results. Um, aware as... Because by very definition, they're often, like, following the crowd's logic and everything that may... Looks perfectly logical at the time. So going back to the box, uh, container example earlier. Um, so I think actually being a bit weird... Again, it's a bit of a barbell, it can either go horrifically bad or horrifically right. Um, and I think that the, the, the religion in, uh, in professional sports is a, is a perfect example of that, and I think we need more and more weird people, um, I think it's very... Everybody seems to play this, uh, point scoring game now online, um, and I guess it's driven by, like, getting likes and getting, uh, more and more followers. Thereby, by b- by very definition, you need people who go completely against everything that's currently there to actually get the, the desire. Like, if you look at, like, going back to the shipping containers, it... The reason why that's there is 'cause you had a very, very stubborn man who looked like an absolute idiot to a lot of people, and I think we've seen the depth of that. Um, Wiseman talks about this where we have a focus on excellence now, becoming the best at your craft, whereas we don't have that many rebels of people who actually go, "That whole craft is a load of nonsense. We should be doing it this way instead. We should..." Like the guy, the table tennis player, I think we chatted about this previously, who decided to put, like, foam on the, on the bat, and as a result, he was, like, the worst player on the Japanese team and all of a sudden he was the best, the best of all time. Or you have, like, the Fosbury Flop, um, the way now the high jump is now jumped as a result of him, but he was mocked for a while, um, and obviously now everybody does it that way. And I think that with social media now, it's a bit harder to be a maverick, it's a bit harder to be a weirdo, and I think we often chastise people for thinking differently. Like, even, like, um, Elon Musk what- whatever criticisms or pla- praise you have of him, a lot of people at the minute are going like, "Look how erratic and weird he is." And they go, "Yeah, no shit." Like, do you not think it takes... Imagine him, like, coming up with the idea of building, like, a rocket company. He's clearly a weird individual, clearly, sh- like, ho- doesn't pick up on, like, social cues as much as other people, otherwise he don't get that result. So I do think irrationality obviously has its downsides, but a lot of people don't talk about its, its upsides.

    22. CWChris Williamson1:04:23

        I love it, man. I, I don't know whether it's just the particular sliver of the world that I'm exposed to, but I'm not sure how much I agree with, uh, people kind of, uh, compromising themselves down to the lowest common denominator or, or popularity being kind of the, the first thing that they search for. I see now an increasingly burgeoning underground movement of people who are fully embracing their true nature, um, as long as it's legal, uh, and, uh, coming up with ideas which are contrarian and not being afraid to put them out online. Now obviously there's particular spheres within which this can be a little bit more challenging, politics or, uh, I guess, uh, rights as well, law, stuff like that. Um, but in terms of world views, personal development strategies, things like that, you know, there's, there's a million different iterations and, and sub-cultures of things that you want. Like, if you wanted to spend a year in the desert with a piece of rope and a tarp and a, a bott- like, a couple of bottles of water, there's probably out there a holiday company that would be able to do it for you and would keep supplying you with water or something like that, you know? And, um, as the market starts to reward people who don't just want to do the status quo, I think that increasingly people will feel more and more empowered to be themselves, and this is why, uh, I know you've got a particular soft spot for Eric Weinstein and I'll let you, um, riff on that a little bit if you want to about why you think that he's so good.

    23. GMGeorge Mack1:06:03

        Mm-hmm.

    24. CWChris Williamson1:06:04

        But having someone like Rogan who is kind of on the surface a very typical everyman alpha bro who has this ridiculous reach, him giving someone like Eric... Or Lex Fridman, right? Like, there's no way that Lex should've been on Rogan's podca- he's been on like five or six times in the last probably 18 months maybe. He's been on a ton. And now Lexu's got his own ridiculously big podcast and he's getting cool people on and all this sort of stuff. And you're like, "Wha-" You know, Lex is definitely on the spectrum. I absolutely adore him. Lex, if you're listening, I'd love you to reply to my email. Um, but he's great, but, like, why him? You know? And then you have someone who i- who permits these sub-cultures to, to rise to the surface, and the more that you have role models like that of people who are unapologetically just doing them, you know, like, "Just do your thing, sister." Like, you get, the more that you've got those people doing that, I think it sets a fantastic example for people moving forward.

    25. GMGeorge Mack1:07:11

        The... Yeah. I, I completely agree. I think that's one of the things that Rogan has done very well in the comedy space, but wider that he is the most probably positive sum man on the planet. Like, he's... I think there are amount of people who owe careers to him, and, like, incredibly talented people and it's that he's done a lot of good for the world in that he's constantly bringing people up, but it's not this negative sum game, 'cause I think he quickly realized that attention is, is everywhere and there's seven billion people on the planet, so providing more and more positive sum I think is better. A slightly nuanced note though is that...... and even you may have this to some extent, that you may try and be, uh, like the, like the most, become the most enlightened version of yourself. But when you're under the name Chris Williamson and you have, you still have your identity to protect, you're still always playing a bit of a, I, at least I, I know I have too, that you end up playing this bit of a weird ego game that you still have an identity prote- to protect and often the, the best, going back to like either end of the spectrum, the best accounts on the internet, I'd say, and the worst accounts on the internet are often anonymous, um, because they're then free to do things about their identity. And you have, uh, let, let's say you look at Satoshi Nakamoto, like if the person who created Bitcoin was known, like he would either be, like I, God knows what would happen. I, I, I, there's a pur- I imagine there's a purpose and reason why he or she did that and I think it's worked out quite well. The same with like Jed McKenna, the writer. I think there's something about anonymity at times that people want to banish from social medias because of the trolling that goes on, but I actually think it's an incredibly important thing in protecting people's identity and you can then be a bit weirder. I, and I think there's, I wouldn't be surprised if there's actually a lot of anonymous accounts out there of people who are very famous and well-known and they actually have sub-anonymous accounts as well, um, so you can put out the weirder ideas.

    26. CWChris Williamson1:08:59

        To allow them to play with different ideas in a sandbox that's safe.

    27. GMGeorge Mack1:09:02

        Going back to that, Eric has this weird thing where when he's doing his like 18-hour map sessions, uh, trying to figure out the geometric patterns of the universe, um, he talks about it of, um, what's the, um, what's the condition where you can just sometimes say the wrong words and swear a lot? Do you know what I mean? Uh-

    28. CWChris Williamson1:09:22

        Tourette's.

    29. GMGeorge Mack1:09:22

        Tourette's, Tourette's, yeah. So he, he calls it like voluntary Tourette's. So he'll sit by a room in himself and he'll just, (laughs) this is the weirdest thing ever, but he's, this is why he's great, he's so

    30. NANarrator1:09:30

        Eric.
15. 1:09:55 – 1:26:43

    Be weird on purpose: anonymity, judo-throwing social pressure, and choosing a supportive tribe

    1. GMGeorge Mack1:09:55

       No, I think, I think, um, one of the points I wanted to go back to, I just have it written down, I was chatting to you is that when we went back to the leverage thing as well, one of the points I didn't make at the end which is what Steve Jobs says, which is, we go back to the whole bicycle, the human on the bicycle being the most effective thing, which is that the, the internet or the computer, I think he says the computer at the time, is the bicycle of the mind. And I think that's one of the most beautiful ways of understanding like leverage, uh, modern leverage. And, um, I think that the in- yeah, the, there's a lot of, uh, with everything that's going on, there's gonna be so many careers that come out of the internet, and I'm just absolutely like fascinated by the space. It's, it's beautiful to see.

    2. CWChris Williamson1:10:39

       Yeah, I agree, man. I think, um, it's gonna be interesting to see what happens after this, you know. Like, it's all well and good having a global pandemic in a society that's in the early 1900s that can adapt a little bit of change, but not tons, and certainly not globally. Um, but when you have a site which is able to move as quickly as ours is now and has technology, can do leverage, can have instant communication, you know, all that sort of stuff, the, uh, the pace of change when change is forced upon it kind of almost bounces back twice as hard, you know what I mean? It's like throwing the tennis ball at the wall and then the wall moving towards you like a tennis racket and whacking you back in the face with it. (laughs) So I think that'll be really interesting. Tell you one thing. So this is only going to be probably for British people. This is just something, it's not even a mental model, but it was something I was thinking about the other day while I was in the ASDA, uh, self-service thing and I've seen tons of people complain, right, about how annoying the ASDA self-service narrator lady is. So you can imagine if you're American and you're listening to this, you're in Costco or wherever it might be, like Target or something and you're going through one of the self-service checkouts and in ASDA, you're going to have to imagine this, so you're scanning your stuff and the lady's voice that says, "Thanks, that's scanned, now put it in the basking, uh, the bagging area," is so quick and it does not stop, right? So you just kinda go like, "Bleep." "Thanks, that's scanned." And you're like, "Fuck, like I don't want to hear it." And you're thinking this is every single time and you might have 40 items in your basket. Uh, for those of us that are AirPod Pros aficionados, it kind of doesn't really matter so much. Turn that, turn that noise canceling on, boy.

    3. NANarrator1:12:19

       (laughs)

    4. GMGeorge Mack1:12:19

       (laughs)

    5. CWChris Williamson1:12:19

       Um, but, um, uh, it's super annoying and what I realized was actually that because you can cut it off if you're super quick, so that could be programmed in to ensure that people scan their stuff, put it in the bagging area as quickly as possible because they don't want to hear that lady's voice. I'm like, "ASDA, you smart, smart little guys."

    6. NANarrator1:12:44

       (laughs)

    7. GMGeorge Mack1:12:44

       (laughs)

    8. CWChris Williamson1:12:44

       So clever.

    9. GMGeorge Mack1:12:46

       Even, even within that, you've got two things. You've got like second, third order consequences that come of like bugs and stuff like that and you have like the psychological versus the, the logical, um, where which is one of my favorite Rory Sutherland things which I guess we briefly mentioned earlier, but how things are... the- you have the like engineering efficiency of like logic of one plus one equals two, um, but then you have this weird psychological irrational world that human beings operate under. I'm not sure if it's still true, but when the whole corona thing happened, there were reports that like the Corona beer sales like plummeted and-

    10. CWChris Williamson1:13:21

        Oh, bro, they're worth, they're worth, um, I think it's like 100 million that they've gone down by and Americans were surveyed and over a third of Americans said that they would not buy a Corona beer for fear of infection.

    11. GMGeorge Mack1:13:36

        But this is one of the things that is purely psychological. Like you can see like psychologic that it even like I think the people who would say they wouldn't drink Corona anymore...... because I reckon you've got two forms of consumers. You got the ones who are, like, consciously, like, almost idiots who are like, "Yeah, I won't drink Corona." And then you've actually got a lot of people who, for whatever reason, they just, they may be less likely to buy it 'cause-

    12. CWChris Williamson1:13:57

        I'm gonna go Sol.

    13. GMGeorge Mack1:13:58

        ... it's, it's, it's-

    14. CWChris Williamson1:13:58

        I'm gonna f- fancy a s- I fancy a Modelo now.

    15. GMGeorge Mack1:14:00

        Exactly, exactly, and I think that's illogic, yeah.

    16. CWChris Williamson1:14:01

        There's no, there's no Modelo virus out there, is there?

    17. GMGeorge Mack1:14:04

        But it's weird, but that's a, that's a thing, isn't it? And that, like, you've seen that there where there's clearly no logic behind it, but in our heads, there is a form of logic, and I think the rational community will often, like, just dismiss that as stupidity and idiocy, but I think it goes to show a lot about the way we think and the way we operate. It's really bizarre.

    18. CWChris Williamson1:14:25

        Well, we're, we're also naturally risk-averse creatures, right? And, uh, and rightly so. When you see or when you learn the multiply by zero mental model that we dropped earlier on, like, it makes sense. It makes sense to have an existential fear of walking out of your door. It makes sense to double check that that condom doesn't have a hole in it. It makes sense to make sure that you're wearing your seatbelt, you know? Like, of course it does. And that, again, it links into the quote from Shane Parrish, "Tradition is a set of solutions for which we have forgotten the problems. Throw away the solution, and you get the problem back." Like, that's why you have these things over time, and I, I, I spent my birthday this year in Athens, um, so I, I, I spent it, uh, cycling around Athens, seeing the Stoa Poikile, which is where Zeno of Citium created Stoicism. So Stoicism, Stoa is like a sort of building veranda type thing, and it's the Stoa, the Stoa Poikile is where Stoicism was created. So I'm walking through the gardens where Seneca, uh, uh, and Plato would have walked, right? And, and Zeno of Citium, which is like modern day Cyprus, would've done as well. And I'm walking through there and I'm looking around and, uh, we went on this amazing tour. Anyone that goes to Athens, the mythology tour is fantastic. And, um, you're looking at these ancient, uh, Stoas, uh, uh, uh, and buildings and you go see the Acropolis, right, and you go up and there's the Temple of Nike and the Parthenon and all that sort of stuff. And, um, you're looking at the stories that are displayed in these huge, uh, sculptures and all the different, all the different elements that are, that are parts of these stories and you realize, you're like, hang on, so much of what they're talking about here are universal, universally applicable laws. The things which then maybe they were symbolic, perhaps they were something that was only believed in a very narrative sense. Everything was personified, right, because it was stories. There wasn't, uh, uh, certified fact checking, you know, there was no, um, what's that fact checking website for when people have rumors? Not Wikipedia, the other one.

Episode duration: 1:28:48