Collection: In the Arena

Welcome back to the Naval podcast. I've

pulled out some tweets from Naval's

Twitter from the last year and we're

just going to go through them. Here's

actually my first question. Uh, you told

me that you got an early copy of the

Elon book from Eric Jorgensson. Anything

surprising in there? I'm only about 20%

of the way through. It's really good.

It's just Elon in his own words. And I

think what's striking is just the sense

of independence, agency, and urgency

that just runs throughout the whole

thing. I don't think you necessarily

learn a step-by-step process by reading

these things. You can't emulate his

process. It's designed for him. It's

designed for SpaceX. He's designed for

Tesla. It's contextual. But it's very

inspiring just to see how he doesn't let

anything stand in his way. How maniacal

he is about questioning everything. and

how he just emphasizes speed and

iteration and nononsense execution. And

so that just makes you want to get up

and run and do the same thing with your

company. And to me, that's what the good

books do. If I listen to a Steve Jobs

speech, it makes me want to be better.

If I read Elon on how he executes, it

makes me want to execute better. And

then I'll figure out my own way. The

details don't necessarily map. But more

importantly, I think just the

inspiration is what drives. Yeah, that's

pretty interesting because I think

people look to you as inspirational,

yes, obviously, but also laying out

principles that people actually do

follow. I keep my principles high level

and incomplete partially because it just

sounds better and it's easier to

remember, but also just because it's

more applicable. One of the problems I

have with the how to get rich content is

people ask me highly specific questions

on Twitter in 140 or 280 characters and

I just don't have enough context to

respond. These things require context.

That's why I liked Air Chat. That's why

I liked Clubhouse. That's why I like

spoken format back when I used to do

Periscopes. When people would ask me a

question, then I could ask a follow-up

question back to them and they could ask

me another question and we could dig

through and try to get to the meat of

what they were asking. And then I could

say, well, given the information that I

have, if I were in your shoes, I would

do the following thing. But most of

these situations are highly contextual,

so it's hard to copy details from other

people. It's the principles that apply.

And so that is why I keep my stuff very

high level. And in fact, I think Eric

Jorgensson, the author, has done a good

job of trying to break out the little

quotable bits and put them in their own

standalone sentences. So he's pulling

tweets out of Elon's work. But I don't

know. I just do my style. Elan does his,

he inspires in his own way. Maybe I

inspire someone in my own way. I get

inspired by him. I get inspired by

others. Inspiration all the way down.

But when it comes to execution, you got

to do it yourself. Life is lived in the

arena. You only learn by doing. And if

you're not doing, then all the learning

you're picking up is too general and too

abstract. Then it truly is hallmark

apherisms. You don't know what applies

where and when. And a lot of this kind

of general principles and advice is not

mathematics. Sometimes you're using the

word rich to mean one thing. Other times

you use it to mean another thing. Same

with the word wealth. Same with the word

love or happiness. These are overloaded

terms. So this is not mathematics. These

are not precise definitions. You can't

form a playbook out of them that you can

just follow like a computer. Instead,

you have to understand what context to

apply them in. So the right way to learn

is to actually go do something. And then

when you're doing it, you figure

something out about how it should be

done. Then you can go and look at

something I tweeted or something you

read in Deutsch or something you read in

Schopenhau or something you saw online

and say, "Oh, that's what that guy

meant. That's a general principle he's

talking about." And I know to apply it

in situations like this, not

mechanically, not 100% of the time, but

as a helpful heristic for when I

encounter this situation. Again, you

start with reasoning and then you build

up your judgment. And then when your

judgment is sufficiently refined, it

just becomes taste or intuition or gut

feel. and that's what you operate on.

But you have to start from the specific.

If you start from the general and stay

at the level of the general, just

reading books of principles and

apherisms and almanacs and so on, you're

going to be like that person that went

to university, overeducated, but they're

lost. They try to apply things in the

wrong places. What Nasim Talb calls the

intellectual yet idiots, IY,

one of the tweets I was going to bring

up is exactly that from June 3rd.

Acquiring knowledge is easy. The hard

part is knowing what to apply and when.

That's why all true learning is on the

job. Life is lived in the arena. I like

that tweet. Actually, I just wanted to

tweet life is lived in the arena and

that was it. I wanted to just drop it

right there, but I felt like I had to

explain just a little bit more because

the man in the arena is a famous quote.

So, I wanted to unpack a little bit from

my direction. Uh, but this is a

realization that I keep having over and

over. I recently started another

company. It's a very difficult project.

In fact, the name of the company is the

Impossible Company. It's called

Impossible, Inc. What's interesting is

that it's driven me into a frenzy of

learning and not necessarily even

motivated in a negative way, but I'm

more inspired to learn than I have been

in a long time. So, I find myself

interrogating Grock and Chat TPT a lot

more. I find myself reading more books.

I find myself listening to more

technical podcasts. I find myself

brainstorming a lot more. I'm just more

mentally active. I'm even willing to

meet more companies aside investing

because I'm learning from them and just

being active makes me want to naturally

learn more and not in a way that it's

unfun or cause me to burn out. So I

think doing leads to the desire to learn

and therefore to learning and of course

there's the learning from the doing

itself. Whereas I think if you're purely

learning for learning's sake, it gets

empty after a little while. the

motivation isn't the same. We're

biomechanical creatures. My brain works

faster when I'm walking around. And you

would think no energy conservation

should work slower, but it's not the

case. Some of the best brainstorming is

when you're walking and talking, not

just sitting and talking, which is why

for a while I tried to hack the walking

podcast thing cuz I really enjoy walking

and talking. My brain works better. And

so the same way I think doing and

learning go hand in hand. And so if you

want to learn, do like in most

interesting difficult things in life,

the solution is indirect. That was part

of the how to get rich tweet storm,

which is if you want to get rich, you

don't directly just go for the money. I

suppose you could like a bankster. But

if you're building something of value

and you're using leverage and you're

taking accountability and you're

applying your specific knowledge, you're

going to make money as a byproduct and

you're going to create great products or

productize yourself and create money as

a byproduct. The same way if you want to

be happy, you minimize yourself and you

engage in high flow activities or engage

in activities that take you out of your

own self and you end up with happiness.

By the way, this is true in seduction as

well. You don't seduce a woman by

walking up and saying, "I want to sleep

with you." That's not how it works. Same

with status. The overt pursuit of status

signals low status. It's a low status

behavior to chase status because it

reveals you as being lower in the status

hierarchy in the first place. It's not

the fact that everything has to be

pursued indirectly. Many things are best

pursued directly. If I want to drive a

car, I get in, I drive the car. If I

want to write something, then just sit

down and write something. But the things

that are either competitive in nature or

they seem elusive to us. Part of the

reason for that is that those are the

remaining things that are best pursued

indirectly. From April 2nd, when you

truly work for yourself, you won't have

hobbies. You won't have weekends and you

won't have vacations, but you won't have

work either. This is the paradox of

working for yourself, which every

entrepreneur or every self-employed

person is familiar with, which is that

when you start working for yourself, you

basically sacrifice this work life

balance thing. You sacrifice this work

life distinction. Uh there's no more 9

to5, there's no more office, there's no

one who's telling you what to do,

there's no playbook to follow. At the

same time, there's nothing to turn off.

You can't turn it off. You are the

business. You are the product. You are

the work. You are the entity. And you

care if you're doing something that's

truly yours. You care very deeply. So

you can't turn it off. And that's the

curse of the entrepreneur. But the

benefit of the entrepreneur is that if

you're doing it right, if you're doing

it for the right reasons with the right

people in the right way, and if you can

set aside the stress of not hitting your

goals, which is real and hard to set

aside, then it doesn't feel like work.

And that's when you're most productive.

you're basically only measured on your

output and you're only held up to the

bar that you raise for yourself. So it

can be extremely exhilarating and

freeing and this is why I said a long

time ago that a taste of freedom can

make you unemployable. And so this is

exactly that taste of freedom. It makes

you unemployable in the classic sense of

9 to5 and following the playbook and

having a boss. But once you have broken

out of that, once you've walked the

tight rope without a net, without a

boss, without a job, and by the way,

this can even happen in startups in a

small team where you're just very

self-motivated, you get what look like

huge negatives to the average person

that you don't have weekends, you don't

have vacations, and you don't have time

off, you don't have work life balance.

But at the same time, when you are

working, it doesn't feel like work. It's

something that you're highly motivated

to do, and that's the reward. And net

net, I do think this is a one-way door.

I think once people experience working

on something that they care about with

people that they really like in a way

they're self motivated they're

unemployable. They can't go back to a

normal job with a manager and a boss and

a check-ins and 9 to5 and you know show

up this day this week sit in this desk

commute at this time.

>> I think there's a hidden meaning in the

tweet too which I'm guessing is

intentional. It starts off with when you

truly work for yourself,

which I'm guessing most people are going

to take that to mean you're your own

boss. But the other way that I read it

is that you are working for yourself. So

your labor is an expression of who and

what you are. It's self-expression. And

that's not an easy thing to figure out.

I ultimately think that everyone should

be figuring out what it is that they

uniquely do best that aligns with who

they are fundamentally and that gives

them authenticity that brings them

specific knowledge that gives them

competitive advantage that makes them

irreplaceable

and they should just lean into that and

sometimes you don't know what that is

until you do it. So this is life lived

in the arena. You're not going to know

your own specific knowledge until you

act and until you act in a variety of

difficult situations. And then you will

either realize, oh, I managed to

navigate through these things that other

people would have had a hard time with,

or someone else will point at you.

They'll say, hey, your superpower seems

to be X. I have a friend who has been an

entrepreneur a bunch of times. And what

I always notice about him is that he may

not necessarily be the most clever or

the most technical and he's very

hardworking. That's why I don't want to

say he's in the hardworking. He's

actually super hardworking. But what I

do notice is he's the most courageous.

So he just does not care what's in the

way. Nothing gets him down. He's always

laughing or smiling. He's always moving

through it. And this is the kind of guy

that a 100 years ago you would have

said, "Oh, he's the most courageous. Go

charge that machine gun nest." He would

have been good for that. But in an

entrepreneurship context, he's the one

who can keep beating his head against

the sales wall and just calling hundreds

of people until finally one person says

yes. So he'll call 400 people and get

399 nos and he's fine with one yes. And

that's enough. then he can start

iterating and learning from there. So

that's his specific knowledge. It is

knowledge. It's a capability that he

knows that he's okay with it. There's an

outcome on the other side that he's

willing to go for and that's a

superpower. Now maybe if he can develop

that a little further or combine it with

something else or maybe even just apply

it where it's needed that makes him

somewhat irreplaceable. And so you find

your specific knowledge through action

by doing. Uh and when you are working

for yourself, you will also naturally

tend to pick things and do things in a

way that aligns with who you are and

what your specific knowledge is. For

example, if you look at marketing,

marketing is an open problem. People try

to solve marketing in different ways.

Some people will create videos. Some

people will write or tweet. Some people

will literally stand outside with a

sandwich board. Some people will go make

a whole bunch of friends and just throw

parties and spread by word of mouth. Now

it may be the case that for your

business one of those is much better

than others but the most important thing

is picking a business that is congruent

with whichever one you like to do. So

for example I have a lot of friends

approach me and say hey let's start a

podcast together and I'm like do you

genuinely enjoy talking a lot because if

you don't you're not going to enjoy the

process of podcasting. You're not going

to be the best at it. They're just

trying to market and so they start a

podcast they do two or three episodes

and then eventually they drop off. they

drop off because firstly they don't

enjoy podcasting. I don't mean like

enjoy a little bit. You have to enjoy it

a lot. If you're going to be the top at

it, you have to be almost psychopathic

at the level at which you enjoy the

thing. And so they'll record a few

episodes and then their readers or their

listeners will pick up on actually this

person just asking a bunch of questions

and doesn't seem to really enjoy it and

is doing the podcast equivalent of

looking at their watch. Whereas someone

like Joe Rogan, he's so immersed. He's

so into talking to all these weird

people that he has on his podcast that

the guy would be doing it even if he had

no audience. And he was doing it when he

had no audience, when he was on Ustream

with just him and live streaming late at

night on one random website. It's no

coincidence he's the top podcaster. So

when you're marketing, you want to lean

into your specific knowledge and into

yourself. If you enjoy talking, then try

podcasting. Maybe you enjoy talking in a

more conversational tone, in which case

you try a live network like a Twitter

spaces. Maybe you enjoy writing. If you

like long form writing, Substack. If you

like short form writing, X. If you like

really long form writing, then maybe a

bunch of blog posts that turn into a

book. If you enjoy making videos, then

maybe you use one of the latest AI

models and you make some video and you

overlay onto it. But you have to do what

is very natural to you. And part of the

trick is picking a business where the

thing that is natural to you lines up

nicely or picking a role within that

business or picking a co-founder in that

business. It is a fit problem. It is a

matching problem. The good news is in

the modern world there are unlimited

opportunities. There are unlimited

people. There are unlimited venues.

There are unlimited forms of media.

There's just an unlimited set of things

to choose from. So how are you going to

find the thing that you're really good

at? You're going to try everything. And

you're going to try everything because

you're going to do you're going to be in

the arena. you're going to be trying to

tackle and solve problems. So, the first

time you do it, you might do a whole

bunch of things you don't enjoy doing

and you may not do them well, but

eventually you'll hone down on the thing

that you really like to do and then

you'll hopefully find that fit. We

talked about in the past how become the

best in the world at what you do. Keep

redefining what you do until this is

true. And Akira made a song out of it.

Akira the dawn, God bless him. And I

think that's absolutely true. You want

to be the best in the world at what you

do, but keep redefining what you do

until that's true. And the only way that

redefining is going to work is through

the process of iteration, through doing.

So you need that carrot, you need that

flag, you need that reward at the end to

pull you forward into doing. And you

need to iterate. And iterate does not

mean repetition. Iterate is not

mechanical. It's not 10,000 hours. It's

10,000 iterations. It's not time spent.

It's learning loops. And what iteration

means is you do something and then you

stop and you pause and you reflect. You

see how well that worked or did not

work. Then you change it. Then you try

something else. Then you pause, reflect,

see how well it did. Then you change it

and you try something else. And that's

the process of iteration. And that's the

process of learning. And all learning

systems work this way. So evolution is

iteration where there's mutation,

there's replication, and then there's

selection. You cut out the stuff that

didn't work. This is true in technology

and invention where you will innovate,

you create a new technology, and then

you try to scale it and either survive

in the marketplace or it'll get cut out.

This is true as David Deutsch talks

about in the search for good

explanations. You make a conjecture,

that conjecture is subject to criticism

and then the stuff that doesn't work is

weeded out. And this is the true

scientific method. It is all about

finding what is natural for yourself and

doing it by living life in the arena

high agency process of iteration until

you figure it out. And then you're the

best of the world at it. And it is just

being yourself. Let's talk about one

more tweet which I liked when I first

saw it or I might have retweeted it. I

think people retweet things when they

see something that they haven't figured

out how to say yet but they knew in

their head but it's just implicit. It

hadn't been made explicit. I think

that's when people are like I need to

retweet this. So this one was January

17. blame yourself for everything and

preserve your agency. From my end, it's

like take responsibility for everything

and in the process of taking

responsibility for something, you create

and preserve the agency to go solve that

problem. If you're not responsible for

the problem, there's no way for you to

fix the problem. Just to address your

point of how it was something you

already knew, but phrased in a way that

you liked, Emerson did this all the

time. He would phrase things in a

beautiful way and you would say, "Oh,

that's exactly what I was thinking and

feeling, but I didn't know how to

articulate it." And the way he put it

was he said, "In every work of genius,

we recognize our own rejected thoughts.

They come back to us with a certain

alienated majesty." And I just love that

line. This what I try to do with

Twitter, which is I try to say something

true, but in an interesting way. And not

only just true and interesting way to

say it, but also it has to be something

that really has emotional heft behind

it. It has to have struck me recently

and been important to me. Otherwise, I'm

just faking it. I don't sit around

trying to think up tweets to write. It's

more that something happens to me,

something affects me emotionally, and

then I synthesize it in a certain way, I

test it. I'm like, is this true? And if

I feel like it's true or mostly true or

true in the context that I care about.

And if I can say it in some way that'll

help me stick in my mind, then I just

send it out there. And it's nothing new

for the people who get it. If it's not

said in an interesting way, then it's a

cliche. Or if they've heard it too much,

it's a cliche. But if it's said in an

interesting way, then it may remind them

of something that was important or it

might convert their specific knowledge

or might be a hook for converting their

specific knowledge into more general

knowledge in their own minds. So I find

that process useful for myself and

hopefully others do too. Now, for the

specific tweet, I just noticed this

tendency where people are very cynical

and they'll say, "All the wealth is

stolen," for example, by banksters and

the like, or crony capitalists or what

have you, or just outright thieves or

oligarchs. You can't rise up in this

world if you're ex. You can't rise up in

this world if you're a poor kid. You

can't rise up in this world if you are

from this race or ethnicity. If you were

born in that country or if you're lame

or crippled or blind or what have you.

And the problem with this is that yes,

there are real hindrances in the world.

It is not a level playing field and fair

is something that only exists in a

child's imagination and cannot be pinned

down in any real way. But the world is

not entirely luck. In fact, you know

that because in your own life, there are

things that you have done that have led

to good outcomes. And you know that if

you had not done that thing, it would

not have led to that good outcome. So,

you can absolutely move the needle. And

it's not all luck. And especially the

longer the time frame you're talking

about, the more intense the activity,

the more iteration you take, and the

more thinking and choice you apply into

it, the less luck matters. It recedes

into the distance. To give you a simple

example, which most people won't love

cuz they're not in Silicon Valley, but

every brilliant person I met in Silicon

Valley 20 years ago, every single one,

the young, brilliant ones, every single

one is successful. Every single one, I

cannot think of an exception. I should

have gone back and just indexed them all

based on their brilliance. By the way,

that's what Y cominator does at scale,

right? What a great mechanism. So, it

works. If people stick at it for 20

years, it works. Now, you might say,

easy for you to say, man, that's for the

people in Silicon Valley. No one was

born here. They all moved here. They

moved here because they wanted to be

where the other smart kids were and

because they wanted to be high agency.

So, agency does work, but if you're

keeping track of the time period, you're

going to be disappointed. You'll give up

too soon. So you need a higher

motivator. That's why Elon goes to Mars

and that's why Sam wants to invent AGI

and that's why Steve Jobs wanted to

build 50 years ago in the 80s he was

talking about building a computer that

would fit in the book. He was talking

about the iPad. So it's these very long

visions that sustain you over the long

periods of time to actually build the

thing you want to build and get to where

you want to get. So a cynical belief is

self-fulfilling. A pessimistic belief is

like you're driving the motorcycle but

you're looking at the brick wall that

you're supposed to turn away from. you

will turn into the brick wall without

even realizing it. So you have to

preserve your agency. You're born with

agency. Children are high agency. They

go get what they want. If they want

something, they see it, they go get it.

You have to preserve your agency. You

have to preserve your belief that you

can change things. You have to take

responsibility for everything bad that

happens to you. And this is a mindset.

Maybe it's a little fake, but it's very

self-serving. And in fact, if you can go

the extra mile and just attribute

everything good that happens to you to

luck, that might be helpful, too. But at

some level, truth is very important. You

don't want to fake it. From what I have

observed, the truth of the matter is

people who work very hard and apply

themselves and don't give up and take

responsibility for the outcomes on a

long enough time scale end up succeeding

in whatever they are focused on. And

every success case knows this. Richard

Feman used to say that he wasn't a

genius. He was just a boy who applied

himself and worked really hard. Yeah, he

was very smart obviously, but that was

necessary but not sufficient. We all

know the trope of the smart lazy guy.

And I like to harass all of my friends,

including Nivei, that one of the

problems I noticed with these guys,

you're just operating way below

potential. Your potential is so much

higher than where you are. You have to

apply some of that into kinetic. And

ironically, that will raise your

potential because we're not static

creatures. We're dynamic creatures. And

you will learn more. You will learn by

doing. So just stop making excuses and

get in the ring.

>> You also like Schopenhau. What have you

learned from Schopenhau or is there

anything surprising in his work?

>> Oh, Schopenhau is not for everybody and

there are many different Schopenhowers

like he wrote quite a bit and you could

read his more obscure philosophical

texts like the world is willing idea

where he was writing for other

philosophers or you could read his more

practical stuff like on the vanity of

existence. He was one of the few people

in history who wrote unflinchingly. He

wrote what he believed to be true. He

wasn't always correct, but he never lied

to you, and that comes across. He

thought about things very deeply. He

didn't care that much what people

thought of him. All he knew was, "What

I'm writing down, I know to be true." He

also didn't put on any errors. He didn't

use fancy language. He didn't try to

impress you. People call him a

pessimist. I don't think that's entirely

fair. I think his worldview could be

interpreters pessimistic. But I just

read him when I want to read a harsh

dose of truth. What Schopenhauard did

uniquely for me is that he gave me

complete permission to be me. He just

did not care at all what the masses

thought and his disdain for common

thinking comes out. Now I don't

necessarily share that. I'm a little bit

more of a egalitarian than he was. But

he really gives you permission to be

yourself. So if you're good at

something, don't be shy about it. Accept

that you're good at something. And that

was hard for me because we all want to

get along. If you want to get along in a

group, you don't want to stand out too

much. You know, it's the old line, the

tall puppy gets cut. But if you're going

to do anything exceptional, you do have

to bet on yourself in some way. And if

you're exceptional at something, that

does require you acknowledging that

you're exceptional at it, or at least

trying to be, and not worrying about

what other people think. Now, you don't

want to be delusional either. Anyone

who's been in the investing business is

constantly hit by people who say, "I'm

so great at something," and they're a

little delusional. No, you don't get to

say you're exceptional at something.

Other people get to say you're

exceptional at something, and your mom

doesn't count. Feedback from other

people is usually fake. Awards are fake.

Critics are fake. Kudos from your

friends and family are fake. They might

try to be genuine, but it's lost in such

a sea of fakeness that you're not going

to get real feedback. Real feedback

comes from free markets in nature.

Physics is harsh. Either your product

worked or it didn't. Free markets are

harsh. Either people buy it or they

don't. But feedback from other people is

fake. You can't get good feedback from

groups because groups are just trying to

get along. Individuals search for truth.

Groups search for consensus. A group

that doesn't get along decoheres. It

falls apart. And the larger the group,

the less good feedback you're going to

get from it. You don't want to

necessarily rely on feedback from your

mom or your friends or your family or

even from award ceremonies and award

systems. If you're optimizing your

company to end up on the cover of a

magazine or to win an industry award,

you're failing. You need customers.

That's your real feedback. You need

feedback from nature. Did your rocket

launch? Did your drone fly? Did your 3D

printer print the object within the

tolerances that it was supposed to in

the time it was supposed to in the cost

budget that was supposed to. It's very

easy to fool yourself. It's very easy to

be fooled by others. It is impossible to

fool mother nature. Unlike Schopenhauer,

you're an industrial philosopher. Like

an industrial designer. Your philosophy

is designed for the masses. Like

everybody else on Twitter, we're

philosophizing for wide adoption. People

suggest you read the great books, read

Aristotle and Litkinstein and all the

supposedly great philosophers. I've read

almost all that stuff. And I've gotten

very little value from it. Where I have

gotten value is the philosophizing of

people on Twitter like you. Anybody who

wants to read philosophy, I would just

tell them to skip it and go read David

Deutsch.

>> You're not wrong. I can't stand any of

the philosophers you talked about. I

don't like Plato either. Every other

piece of philosophy I picked up and put

down relatively quickly because they're

just making very obscure arguments over

minute and trying to come up with

all-encompassing theories of the world.

Even Schopenhauer falls into that trap

when he tries to talk to other

philosophers. He's at his worst. When I

like him is in his shorter essays.

That's where he almost writes like he's

on Twitter. He would have dominated

Twitter. He has high density of ideas,

very well thought through, good minimal

examples and analogies. You can pick it

up, read one paragraph, and you're

thinking for the next hour. I think of a

better writer, a better thinker, and a

better judge of people and character

thanks to what I read from him. Now,

he's writing from the early part of the

19th century. Whenever he wanders into

topics that are scientific or medical or

political, he's obviously off base. that

stuff doesn't apply anymore. But when

he's writing about human nature, that is

timeless. When it comes to anything

about human nature, I say go read the

Lindy books, the older books, the ones

that have survived the test of time. But

if you want to develop specific

knowledge, get paid for it, do something

useful, then you want to stay on the

bleeding edge. That knowledge is going

to be more timely and obsolete more

quickly. Those two make sense. What

doesn't make sense to me is just reading

stuff that's not Lindy or that's not

about human nature, but is old. I also

shy away from stuff that's low density

in the learnings like history books. I

like the lessons of history by well

Duron because it's a summarization of

the story of civilization which was his

large 12 volume series but I'm not going

to go read the 12 volume series. I've

read plenty of history. I know he's

referring to these kinds of things. So

I'm not just taking his word for it on

high level concept but at the same time

at this point in my life I want to read

high density works. You can call it the

Tik Tok disease or the Twitter

generation, but it's also just being

respectful of our time. We already have

a lot of data. We have some knowledge.

Now, we want wisdom. Now, we want the

generalized principles that we can

attach to all of the other information

we already have in our minds. We do want

to read highdensity work. But I would

argue that Schopenhau is very high

density work. All my favorite authors

are very high density. Deutsch is

extremely high density. Bourhees is very

high density. Ted Chiang is very high

density. The old Neil Stevenson was very

high density. Then he just got high

volume, high density, high everything.

But the best authors respect the reader

time and Schopenhau is very much in that

vein. For the state-ofthe-art on the

philosophy of knowledge, which people

call epistemology, you can basically

skip everything and jump straight to

David Deutsch.

>> I think that's right. If you just want

to know epistemology, read David Deutsch

full stop. That said, for some people it

helps to know the history, the

counterarguments, where he's coming

from, the existing theories of

knowledge, like the justified true

belief theory or the inductive theory of

knowledge. These are so deeply embedded

into us both by school learning, but

also by everyday experience. Induction

seems like it should work. You watch the

sun rise every day, the sun is going to

rise tomorrow. That just seems like

common sense. So many people believe in

that that if you just read Deutsch, you

would see him shooting down these

things, but you yourself would not have

those things in solid footing. So you

might imagine some counter example

exists. When I first read Deutsch a long

time ago, I didn't quite get it. I

treated it just like any other book that

any other physicist had written. So I

would read Paul Davies and I would read

Carlo Relli and I would read Deutsch and

I would treat them the same level of

contemplation, time and respect. It

turned out I was wrong. It turned out

that Deutsch was actually operating at a

much deeper level. He had a lot of

different theories that coherently hung

together and they created world

philosophy where all the pieces

reinforce each other. It might help to

read others and not just skip to

Deutsch. But I would definitely start

with Deutsch. Then if you're not sure

about it, I would read some of the

others and then I'll come back to

Deutsch and try again and then you'll

see how he addresses those issues.

Deutsch himself would refer you to

Popper. He would say, "Oh, I'm just

repeating Popper." Not quite true. I

find Popper much less approachable, much

harder to read, much less clear of a

writer. Although I think here both

Deutsch and Brett Hall would disagree

with me. They find Popper very lucid. I

find him very difficult to read for

whatever reason. I find Deutsch easier

to read. Maybe because Popper spent a

lot more time elucidating core points.

Popper was writing for philosophers.

Deutsch is not writing for philosophers.

Deutsch is not even writing for

scientists. Deutsch is not writing for

you. I get the feeling Deutsch is

writing for himself. He's just

elucidating his own thoughts and how

they all connect together. I also don't

think you're going to get maximal value

out of Deutsch just reading the

epistemology. Although that is

absolutely where everybody should start

as the first three chapters is beginning

of infinity. Ironically, in the

beginning of infinity, the first few

chapters and the last few chapters are

the easiest and the most accessible. The

middle is a slog because that goes into

quantum computation, quantum physics,

evolution, etc. That's where I think

people struggle because it does require

not necessarily a mathematical or

scientific background, but at least a

comfort level with scientific concepts

and principles. And he's making a strong

argument for the multiverse, which most

people don't have a dog in that fight.

They haven't thought that far ahead.

They're not wedded to the observer

collapse theory of quantum mechanics

because they don't really care about

quantum mechanics. It doesn't impact

their everyday life. What I got out of

reading all of Deutsch was I got to see

how his theory all hangs together. every

piece touches upon and relies upon

another piece. He actually came up with

the theory of quantum computation and

extended the church turning conjecture

into the church turning Deutsch

conjecture when he was trying to come up

with a way to falsify his theory of the

multiverse which was a quantum physics

theory and to do that he had to invent

quantum computation because to invent

the experiment for how to falsify the

multiverse theory he had to in his mind

imagine an AGI and get inside the AGI's

brain and say if that AGI is observing

something does it collapse but now it

needs to be inside the brain Well, how

do I get inside the brain of a quantum

AGI? How do you even create a quantum

AGI? We don't have quantum computers.

Okay, we need quantum computers. So, he

came up with the theory of quantum

computation and that launched the field

of quantum computing. That's an example

of how quantum physics and quantum

computing are inextricably linked. I

think reading Deutsch across all the

different disciplines is very useful.

Even when he talks about memes and meme

theory, that comes from evolution, but

crosses over straight into epistemology

and conjecture and criticism. And it

reaches far beyond his definition of

wealth. The set of physical

transformations that you can affect that

takes into account both capital and

knowledge. And it clearly shows that

knowledge is a bigger component and then

that can be brought into business and

applied into your everyday life. It can

apply to the wealth of nations and it

can apply to the wealth of individuals.

So there are a lot of parts that

interconnect together. Good writers

write with such high density and

interconnectedness that their works are

fractile in nature. You will meet the

knowledge at the level at which you are

ready to receive it. And you don't have

to understand it all. This is the nature

of learning. You read it, you got 20% of

it, then you go back through it, you got

25% of it. You listen to one of Brett

Hall's podcasts alongside. Now you got

28% of it. Now you go to Grock or Chat

GPT, you ask us some questions, you dig

in on some part, now you got 31% of it.

All knowledge is a communication between

the author and the observer or the

reader. And you both have to be at a

certain level to absorb. When you're

ready to receive different pieces, you

will receive different pieces, but

you'll always get something out of it,

no matter what level you're at, as long

as you can even just communicate and

read the language. He says that good

explanations are hard to vary. So when

you look back on a good explanation, you

say, "Well, how could it have been

otherwise? This is the only way this

thing could have worked. All these

different parts fit together and

constrain each other in such a way.

There's now some emergent property or

some complexity or some outcome that you

didn't expect. Some explanation that

neatly explains everything. That doesn't

just apply to good explanations. It

applies to product development. Good

products are hard to vary. Go look at

the iPhone. The smooth, perfect,

beautiful jewel. The form factor hasn't

really changed that much since the

original one. It's all around the single

screen. the multi-touch, embedding the

battery, making it fit into your pocket,

making it smooth and sliding in your

hand, essentially creating the platonic

ideal of the truly personal pocketable

computer. So, that product is hard to

vary. Both Apple and its competitors

have tried to vary it across 16

generations of iPhone and they haven't

been able to materially vary it. They've

been able to improve the components and

improve some of the underlying

capabilities, but materially the form

factor is hard to vary. They designed

the right thing. There's the famous

saying I think from Antoine Deseri where

he says the airplane wing is perfect not

because there's nothing left to add but

because there's nothing left to take

away. That airplane wing is hard to

vary. When we figure out the proper

design of the spacecraft to get to Mars,

I will bet you that both at a high level

and in the details for quite a long time

that thing will be hard to vary until

there's some breakthrough technology.

The basic internal combustion engine

design was hard to vary until we got

batteries good enough and then we

created the electric car and now the

electric car is hard to vary. In fact,

there's a complaint now among some

designers that in modern society

products and objects are starting to

look all the same. Is that because of

Instagram? Why is that? Well, at least

in the car case, they all look like

they've been through a wind tunnel

design because that is the most

efficient design. And the reason they

all look swoopy and streamlined is

because they're all going through a wind

tunnel and they're trying to find the

thing that cuts through the air with

minimal resistance. And so they do all

end up looking the same because that

design is hard to vary without losing

efficiency. We've all seen the pictures

of the Raptor engine for the SpaceX

rockets. And if you look at the various

iterations, they go from easy to vary to

hard to vary cuz the most recent version

just doesn't have that many parts that

you can fool around with. The earlier

versions have a million different parts

where you could change the thickness of

it, the width of it, the material, and

so on. The current version barely has

any parts left for you to do anything

with. There's a theory on complexity

theory that whenever you find a complex

system working in nature, it's usually

the output of a very simple system or

thing that was iterated over and over.

We're seeing this lately in AI research.

You're just taking very simple

algorithms and dumping more and more

data into them. They keep getting

smarter. What doesn't work as well is

the reverse. When you design a very

complex system and then you try to make

a functioning large system out of that,

it just falls apart. There's too much

complexity in it. So, a lot of product

design is iterating on your own designs

until you find the simple thing that

works. And often you've added stuff

around it that you don't need and then

you have to go back and extract the

simplicity back out of the noise. You

can see this in personal computing where

Mac OS is still quite a bit harder to

use than iOS. iOS is closer to the

platonic ideal of an operating system.

Although an LLM based operating system

might be even closer, speaking in

natural language, eventually you have to

remove things to get them to scale. And

the Raptor engine is an example of that.

As you figure out what works, then you

realize what's unnecessary and you can

remove parts. And this is one of Musk's

great driving principles where he

basically says before you optimize a

system. That's among the last things

that you do before you start trying to

figure out how to make something more

efficient, the first thing you do is you

question the requirements. You're like

why does the requirement even exist? One

of the Elon methods in Jorgensson's new

book is you first go and you track down

the requirement and not which department

came up with the requirement. The

requirement has to come from an

individual. Who's the individual who

said this is what I want? You go back

say do you really need this? You

eliminate the requirement and then once

you've eliminated the requirements that

are unnecessary then you have a smaller

number of requirements. Now you have

parts and you try to get rid of as many

parts as you can to fulfill the

requirements that are absolutely

necessary. And then after that maybe

then you start thinking about

optimization and now you're trying to

figure out how can I manufacture this

part and fit it in in the right place

most efficiently. And then finally, you

might get into cost efficiencies and

economies of scale and those sorts of

things. The most critical person to take

a great product from zero to one is the

single person, usually the founder, who

can hold the entire problem in their

head and make the trade-offs and

understand why each component is where

it is. And they don't necessarily need

to be the person designing each

component, manufacturing or knowing all

the ins and outs, but they do need to be

able to understand why is this piece

here? And if part A gets removed, then

what happens to parts B, C,DE, E and

their requirements and considerations.

It's that holistic view of the whole

product. You'll see this in the Raptor

engine design. The example that Elon

gives that I thought was a good one. He

was trying to get these fiberglass mats

on top of the Tesla batteries produced

more efficiently. So, he went to the

line where it was taking too long, put

his sleeping bag down, and he just

stayed at the line. And they tried to

optimize the robot that was gluing the

fiberglass mats to the batteries. is

they were trying to attach them more

efficiently or speed up that line. And

they did. They managed to improve it a

bit, but it was still frustratingly

slow. And finally, he said, "Why is this

requirement here? Why are we putting

fiberglass mats on top of the

batteries?" The battery guy said, "It's

actually because of noise reduction."

So, we got to go talk to the noise and

vibration team. So, he goes to the noise

and vibration team. He's like, "Why do

we have these mats here? What is a noise

and vibration issue?" And they're like,

"No, no, there's no noise and vibration

issue. They're there because of heat.

The battery catches fire." And then it

goes back to the battery to be like, "Do

we need this?" And they're like, "No,

there's not a fire issue here. It's not

a heat protection issue. That's

obsolete. It's a noise and vibration

issue." They had each been doing things

the way they were trained to do and the

way things had been done. They tested it

for safety and they tested it by putting

microphones on there and tracking the

noise and they decided they didn't need

it and they eliminated the part. This

happens a lot with very complex systems

and complex designs. It's funny,

everybody says I'm a generalist, which

is their way of coping out on being a

specialist, but really what you want to

be is a polymath, which is a generalist

who can pick up every specialty at least

to the 8020 level so they can make smart

trade-offs. The way that I suggest

people gain that polymath capability,

being a generalist that can pick up any

specialty, is if you are going to study

something, if you are going to go to

school, study the theories that have the

most reach. I would summarize that

further and just say study physics. Once

you study physics, you're studying how

reality works. And if you have a great

background in physics, you can pick up

electrical engineering. You can pick up

computer science. You can pick up

material science. You can pick up

statistics and probability. You can pick

up mathematics cuz it's part of it. It's

applied. The best people that I've met

in almost any field have a physics

background. If you don't have a physics

background, don't cry. I have a failed

physics background. You can still get

there the other ways, but physics trains

you to interact with reality and it is

so unforgiving that it beats all the

nice falsities out of you. Whereas if

you're somewhere in social science, you

can have all kinds of cuckoo beliefs.

Even if you pick up some of the obtruse

mathematics they use in social sciences,

you may have 10% real knowledge, but you

may have 90% false knowledge. The good

news about physics is you can learn

pretty basic physics. So you don't have

to go all the way deep into quarks and

quantum physics and so on. You can just

go with basic balls rolling down a slope

and it's actually a good backgrounder.

But I think any of the STEM disciplines

are worth studying. Now if you don't

have the choice of what to study and

you're already past that, just team up

with people. Actually, the best people

don't necessarily even just study

physics. They're tinkerers. They're

builders. They're building things. The

tinkerers are always at the edge of

knowledge because they're always using

the latest tools and the latest parts to

build the cool things. So, it's the guy

building the racing drone before drones

are a military thing, or the guy

building the fighting robots before

robots are a military thing, or the

person putting to the personal computer

because they want the computer in their

home and they're not satisfied going to

school and using the computer there.

These are the people who understand

things the best and they're advancing

knowledge the fastest.