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#2292 – Josh Waitzkin Podcast Episode Description
Josh Waitzkin is a retired chess champion, martial artist, author, and foil surfer.
www.joshwaitzkin.com
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#2292 – Josh Waitzkin Podcast Episode Top Keywords
#2292 – Josh Waitzkin Podcast Episode Summary
In this episode of the Joe Rogan podcast, the discussion revolves around decision-making, personal development, and the intersection of technology and human potential. The conversation emphasizes the importance of documenting decisions and revisiting them to ensure they remain valid, encouraging listeners to let go of outdated choices. The speaker highlights the need to understand the interplay between an individual’s brilliance and dysfunction, suggesting that conventional methods of normalization can stifle creativity and peak performance.
A significant portion of the episode is dedicated to exploring how these principles apply to various fields, including tech investing and sports, particularly through the speaker’s involvement with the Boston Celtics and their head coach, Joe Mazzullo. The speaker discusses the concept of “coaching the coach” and the importance of thematic interconnectedness across different domains.
The episode also touches on the future of AI and its potential to bring about significant technological and scientific breakthroughs, while acknowledging the challenges and disruptions it may cause, such as job displacement. The speaker stresses the need for strategic thinking and tactical execution to navigate this evolving landscape.
Actionable insights include the practice of maintaining a decision log for self-reflection and growth, and the importance of recognizing and liberating one’s unique talents and patterns. The recurring theme is the balance between strategic vision and tactical execution, both in personal development and broader societal changes. Overall, the episode encourages listeners to embrace their individuality and adapt to the rapidly changing world.
This summary was created automatically by Speak. Want to transcribe, analyze and summarize yourself? Sign up for Speak!
#2292 – Josh Waitzkin Podcast Episode Transcript (Unedited)
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00:01
Joe Rogan podcast. Check it out.
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00:03
The Joe
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00:04
Rogan experience. Ai meh day. Joe Rogan podcast by night, all day.
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00:12
Whenever someone is, like, an interesting person and then I find out they do jujitsu too. Oh, I could talk to that guy for sure.
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00:20
Yeah. You know? You just do.
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00:23
You know, like I get excited when interesting people do jujitsu because I think, to the ai, to a lot of people that are, you know, they they haven’t been exposed to what it’s like to train and what it’s like to be around high level jiu jitsu people. They don’t, they don’t know that vibe. They don’t know what it’s like. Like, they don’t know the, the beauty of Jiu Jitsu.
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00:46
I feel like Jiu Jitsu is beautiful for people who practice it. You know, like, you sai, like, Marcel is a great example, your your coach. You know, Marcelo is probably one of the most beautiful guys to watch because he just takes advantage of these scrambles in this, like, really beautiful way, like, fast and and slippery.
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01:07
And when the opponents react, he reacts in the other way. It’s all just technique and flow. It’s ai, ah. Like, the first time I ever saw him, I saw him live in 02/2003 in Abu Dhabi. And, it’s when he fought Shaolin.
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01:21
That was the first time I’d ever seen him, in the flesh. I didn’t even him
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01:25
out in, like, eight seconds, ten seconds.
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01:27
Yeah. Crazy crowd. But no one even knew him. No one knew of him other than, you know, he was obviously sai I think he was a brown belt at the time. I don’t even think he was a black belt. I think Marcel might have
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01:37
been a brown belt. It’s it’s interesting. I didn’t in 02/2003.
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01:41
So find that out. Was Marcelo a brown belt when he won Abu Dhabi in 02/2003? He may have Eddie Bravo was a brown belt.
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01:48
He told me recently that right before that fight, his, like, his grips had locked up. So he came went into that fight. It looks incredible. Just that arm drag, take the back, choke them out in his seconds. Hands? Yeah. His, like, grips from the fight before were like Oh, wow. Yeah.
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02:01
When when Eddie beat Tyler, he was a brown belt?
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02:05
Yep. Wow. Yeah. John Jacques took his black belt off of his own waist and put it on Eddie. Amazing. Amazing.
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02:14
Dude, that’s epic. So it’s funny. Ai background we have a lot of overlap in our early jiu jitsu education because my first teacher was John Machado.
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02:21
Oh. Jiu jitsu.
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02:23
Yeah. And I spent years training with John in LA, long before Ai and then I’m yeah. And then when did
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02:30
bryden when did you move to New York?
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02:32
So I moved to New York. I start I think I started training with John. So I was doing, Chinese martial arts for a bunch of years before that, competing everywhere. Then I started training cross training with John in, I think, 02/2001, ‘2 thousand ‘2. And then early two thousand five, moved back to New York, started training with Marco Santos, in his school in New York, and I I was training with Joukao and Ai Bryden.
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02:54
Joukao is an amazing old school Bracy Baja. Mhmm. Like, you know, amazing fighter. And, and I was also cross training with Lucas Lepore at the time. And I was I needed I I was just ready to and then I met Marcelo, and I was and he he had moved from New York to Florida.
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03:12
And I was traveling to Florida to train with Marcelo a bunch, and Ai I wanted to be pushed all in. And, Marcelo and I ai gotten really close, and then I I just said to him, hey, man. You you know, you wanna you wanna come back to New York and open a school together? And he really loved New York, and, we gotten very close
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03:29
to the time.
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03:30
He was in Florida. He was in New York before. He’d he loved New York, but then he had to move to Florida. He’d been there was just a lot of jiu jitsu politics flowing everywhere as it does. Jiu jitsu politics. The worst. And, yeah. Anyway, long story short, we opened a school together in after vatsal, and, and it was amazing. And I spent so many years all in, training with him.
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03:52
Most of such a beautiful, beautiful martial artist.
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03:55
So in 02/2002, he’s promoted to black belt. So he was already a black belt because this is 02/2003. Yeah. Ai right. So he had only been a black belt for a year and won Abu Dhabi, which is pretty crazy. Pretty crazy. Just that. I mean, it didn’t just beat Ai, won the entire division, and just looked like no one anybody had ever seen.
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04:17
Just the scrambles and his ability to arm drag and take the back. And then once he gets to your side, the ability to transition to the back is just phenomenal. And he
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04:28
spends his his, like, his his whole jiu jitsu life he spent in the ram, in transition.
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04:33
Mhmm.
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04:33
And that was really a a philosophy of his. You you have you seen that old, old school Ai clip? Remember the old documentaries Artesuave ram back back there around him at as a young teenager training at Faber Gugel’s school in in Sao Paulo. And it was so interesting because even then, you could see him. He never held position. He always let opponents move.
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04:51
Be fun to pull that up maybe in at one point. Interesting. Like, he he he never is a core principle of his was to allow the opponent to move and spend as much training time as possible in transition. And, while most jutsu guys, as you know, is their will come up with their egos, they’re controlling, they’re holding guys. Yeah.
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05:12
Yeah. This is this him?
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05:13
Yeah. He’s
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05:14
already black belt here.
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05:16
Yeah. This is after he moved to, start training with Fabio in in Sao Paulo. And this it’s such a beautiful thing because if you watch his his style, he’s not in this moment, actually. Now he’s fully controlled. He’s fully controlled.
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05:32
But most of the time, he’s scrambling.
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05:33
Yeah. He’s scrambling.
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05:34
Did you explain why?
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05:37
Meh ram maximizing time spent in the in between. I mean, I I I think in the martial arts, people are so focused on position when they’re learning position, position, position, but the in between is where the real virtuosity happens. Don’t you?
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05:48
Interesting.
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05:49
And so he spent he maximized his time in the in between.
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05:52
So in stand up fighting, that would be, like, footwork and angles. It’d be similar to that. Because the most important thing about any kind of combat sport in terms of, striking sports is to be in a better position to land a shot and be in a better position to defend. So if you’re fighting southpaw to orthodox, you always sana make sure that if you’re southpaw, your foot is on the outside of your opponent’s leg.
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06:18
That way your opponent has to kinda cross over, try to hit you, but you’re in a position to hit them on the blind side. And the best ever at that is, Vatsal Lomachenko. Because Lomachenko, when he was young, his father made him stop boxing for two years and just study Ukrainian dance.
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06:36
Really? Mhmm.
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06:37
So for two years, he just did Ukrainian dance, and his foot have you ever seen him box? No. Oh my god. Pull up a Lomachenko highlight. It’s all about movement and position with this guy. It’s all about when you punch, he’s going to make you react this sai, and then he’s gonna go that way, and then he’s gonna spin ai, and it’ll be behind you.
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06:59
This sai this is Lomachenko. Like, the way he moves is so different. It’s almost like it’s almost like his he’s got just a a a radar for, like, where their where their punches are coming from and knows exactly where to put his feet at all times. No matter what they do, he knows what they’re gonna do.
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07:19
But when you watch his, like, footwork, it’s the most extraordinary thing because his ability to give you all sorts of different reads, ai, incredible. Mhmm. I mean, he won a world ai. I think it is fourth pro fight. Unbelievable amateur record, but it’s it’s just the movement, like, he’s never right in front of you. He’s always off to the side. He’s always moving around.
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07:45
He jumps in and out, and it’s it’s with perfect precision. Like, a lot of times when guys do a lot of footwork and movement, there’s points in that transition where they’re off balance, where they can’t really throw a punch, or their footwork is out of position, or they’re leaning too far over on this side.
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08:04
He’s never off balance. He’s never out of position. He’s always ai aside, pop out, slide aside, pop up, and you’d never know where the fuck he is. He’s a magician. It’s fascinating to watch him ai, and very few people have tried to incorporate that. Like, you see some of his movement.
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08:21
It’s just the way he’s able to fool the best fighters in the world and just have a level of of movement that they just don’t really understand what to do with. They just they get baffled by it because everything is coming from different angles. It’s never I’m charging straight forward at you ai to destroy you.
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08:48
Everything is angles and movement.
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08:52
Virtuosity is so beautiful to watch.
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08:54
Oh, it’s incredible. In anything. In anything. When you watch someone who’s just unbelievably extraordinary and unique in their whatever their discipline is, it’s always fascinating to watch. This episode is brought to you by Intuit TurboTax. We’re all just trying to level up. Right?
Speaker: 1
09:11
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09:30
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09:56
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10:06
1 way I relate to the transitional training is through frames. It’s like a it’s like a process of building more frames. We position we position, and for some people, there’ll be no no space in between. But if you spend your time playing in the transitional space between, you build up frames like an illusionist. I I know you ai, when Mhmm.
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10:22
Remember you spoke to Darren Brown back in the day. Yes. Like, you know, great illusionists, magicians, mind control guys, they have the ability to see in frames that we don’t have the ability to see. And so it seems like magic. It seems like illusion. Yeah.
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10:34
When martial artists are called mystical, right, it’s because people don’t understand what they’re doing for the most part, technically, and they have frames where others don’t have frames.
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10:46
So they have more options, more it’s like having a language and you have an access to a larger vocabulary.
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10:52
Yeah. Yeah. I think Sai think that that’s right.
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10:54
Yeah. I
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10:54
think that’s right. And peep well, it’s like if you think about you’re engaging with an illusionist who has done something, has spent hundreds of hours in a certain specific routine, and you’re seeing it for the first time.
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11:06
Mhmm.
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11:07
They just have immense knowledge where you have none. They have more frames, and they can play in frames that you don’t have, and it seems like something’s coming from from the from the sky.
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11:16
Well, that’s where Eddie Bravo had a pretty significant contribution to jiu jitsu because he was so creative in some of his attacks and some of the things that he developed, particularly off his back. Ai, the rubber guard variations, they were so systematic and so, like, if you got good at it, it was surprising to anybody didn’t understand what you were doing because they didn’t know these positions well.
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11:42
Yeah. So if
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11:42
you got like, there’s this kid named Jeremiah Vatsal, who’s one of Eddie’s best guard players, and there’s a highlight reel of his, submissions off of his back, his rubber guard submissions. And if you don’t have a person that you train with, if you train at a traditional school and you don’t understand these positions, you don’t know how good someone can be at it, there’s times where you don’t think you’re vulnerable, where you’re incredibly vulnerable.
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12:06
Like, the difference between a really good guard player in MMA and, like, Paul Craig, for example, he submitted some of the best two two world champions off of his back in the light heavyweight division, Jamal Hill and the current champion, Ai. Ankolaiv’s only defeat is to Paul Craig because he’s just wicked off of his back. So everybody feels comfortable. In MMA, there’s only a couple ai like Oliveira.
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12:31
You gotta really watch your p’s and q’s. There’s a few guys that are just wicked off of their back, but no one’s like Paul Craig. And so if you’re just used to fighting regular guys off of their back and you get in guard and you start you get a little cocky, you extend an arm to try to land a punch, and then all of a sudden his legs are wrapped around your fucking neck.
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12:47
And you’re like, oh, Jesus. How did this happen so quick? Because he’s just got that technique. It’s just so tightened up. Just stop.
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12:55
It just locks it up so fast. It’s fascinating to watch the difference between, like, a really good guard player and someone who’s just a regular MMA fighter who knows how to do a triangle but really doesn’t have, like, the elaborate setups.
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13:07
Meh ways, that’s in a large scale what what Hoyce was doing back in the day. Sure. That’s when they did MMA. No one had No one had any idea
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13:12
what was going on.
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13:13
Grabbing his gi thing. They had a huge advantage. They Yeah. But he they were entering his his terrain. And then when when when we were training in the early days, there was so much close mindedness about leg locks.
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13:22
Mhmm.
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13:23
So the leg lock game was outside of the conceptual scheme to so many jujitsu guys. It was forbidden. It was forbidden. So they’d get caught. It’s like that dogma. Like, you’re like, it it’s so interesting competitively finding where someone’s dogma is, where their constructs are. They’re they’re false constructs.
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13:36
Well, there’s a good argument for it with the gi with, young guys.
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13:41
Oh, for sure. Yeah. Because shredding each other’s ankles all the ai. You’re
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13:45
Yeah. Ripping knees apart where they’re not gonna be able to be repaired. You know? I mean, how many people have ruined their knees forever from a heel hook? A large number. I I would imagine if there’s any technique that sort of ruined an athlete’s career, the heel hook would probably be number one.
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13:59
Heel hook is why I started training jiu jitsu. Really? Yeah. Because I was doing stand up stuff, and I was competing everywhere. And my I I was doing Chinese martial arts, and my teacher’s son, Max Chen, who is a he was a Sanshou Fighter and, on the Olympic on the US national team, really good stand up fighter, and he was studying UFC before I had even looked at it.
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14:18
And then he was studying I think it was Frank Shamrock’s double heel hook shit from way early days. And he was just like, let’s let’s just continue to the ground. And I had never ground fought before. And I ended up on the ground, then he just put me in the heel hooks and double heel hooks. My knees were exploding.
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14:31
He had no idea what the fuck he was doing.
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14:33
Oh, no.
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14:33
Terrible idea.
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14:34
Oh, no.
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14:35
My knees were just screaming, and and I would throw them on the floor, and then I’d be tap I didn’t even know what tapping out was. I I had never grappled before. You didn’t even know how to grapple with it. With a heel hook. That’s so awful. The first submission I felt in my life was, like, the heel hook 20 times. Somehow, my ACL didn’t shred.
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14:51
And, I was like, I have to fucking train this jujitsu, like, because Max is kicking my ass. And I didn’t like it. So then that’s how it all began. Well,
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14:59
Royce was brilliant in wearing the gi because it made people grab it.
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15:03
Yeah. They thought they had
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15:04
an advantage that he had something to ram. And next thing you know, he’s ai, he clenched around you. He dragged you to the ground.
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15:09
It’s an amazing idea. Right? Like, they had no idea that they were entering his game. They thought they were controlling him.
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15:14
Right. And they didn’t understand that all that friction from the gi was gonna make it very difficult for you to get out of anything.
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15:20
And he was so used to people grabbing him. He spent his life people grabbing his team that entered his his record. Changed the whole world, didn’t it? Oh ai god.
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15:26
Changed the whole world. That’s awesome. Changed what street fights look like. Changed everything.
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15:31
Those first, those first UFCs were just wild. Nuts. Wild.
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15:36
Just the bizarre The first UFC I worked was UFC twelve Yeah. In Dothan, Alabama. Yeah. I had to take a propeller plane. I had to fly into I think we’ve flown to Birmingham or somewhere. Then we had to take a propeller plane to Dothan. I was like, what am I doing? This is so ridiculous. But I wanted to just see it live because I’d only seen it on television.
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15:59
I’d only seen it I’d never seen a a live cage fight before. I’m like, this has gotta
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16:04
be crazy. So UFC twelve. How long after the first was that?
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16:08
Well, it’s ’97, so it was four years later. Four years later.
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16:11
Yeah. Wow. Man, you’ve been on that journey from the beginning.
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16:14
Yeah. The Pacific. Everybody was like, what are you doing? Don’t be associated with this. So many people were telling me not to be associated with it. It was it was like I was doing snuff films or something, you know. I was like, why are you doing this? You’re an actor. Like, I was like, okay.
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16:29
I don’t know what to tell you. Yeah. I like it. I wanna go watch. I needed to see it.
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16:35
And you were were you training at that point? Ninety six?
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16:37
Yeah. I’d already started doing jiu jitsu. I’d started jiu jitsu in ’96.
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16:40
You were training at Hixons then. Right?
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16:42
Started at Hixons, and then I went from Hixons to Carlson Gracie’s. I didn’t know. I I thought all Gracie’s were the sai. Like, this great oh, this Gracie’s closer. Okay. All this Gracie’s They
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16:51
all love each other.
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16:52
And I’d also sai yeah. I didn’t understand. They were fight they were all tooth and claw at each other back then. I didn’t know that, I I knew, Carlson’s from I think the show was Extreme Fighting, the Jon Paretti Shah. So Jon Paretti, who worked for the UFC, then branched off and had another thing called Extreme Ai, and that’s where Conan Silvera came from and, a bunch of, like, elite, UFC fighters.
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17:19
Mario Sperry fought his first fights over there. So it was it was ai a really good competitive organization that was, like, right up there with the UFC back in the day. And so I had Carlson Gracie’s, name was on that all the time, and they showed some training footage of them training.
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17:38
So I found out about that place, and that was right when Vitor Belfort was emerging. So Vitor was ai, so I was training at the same
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17:45
He was amazing. Gym as Vitor. Mhmm.
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17:46
It was incredible. Ai just watching him train, you know, he was a speak, ai, just an athletic freak at 19. He was so fast. Just so fast and sai and with his hands. And everybody knew he was a black belt under Carlson Gracie, so everybody expected just jujitsu. And this guy comes out with little MMA gloves on and just starts tuning people up on the feet. And you’re like, woah. A black belt who can do that?
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18:14
Like, where’s this coming from? Like, this is a totally new thing. So that was the first fight that I attended.
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18:21
That was
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18:22
the first fight I worked. Wow. UFC twelve. Wow.
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18:25
It was nuts. This theme of, of transitions and developing frames where other people don’t have them, like, it’s it’s so interesting how it’s manifest in in every art.
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18:33
In everything.
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18:34
Like, Sai remember when I was playing chess, because I was a chess player from age six to 23. That was my first, my first art. And Well,
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18:42
you ai just a chess player. You’re a chess player they made a movie about, dude.
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18:46
Yeah. Ai think Yeah. I kinda see. Have much to do with me, man. They
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18:50
did that. Searching for Bobby Fischer is about you, bro. Yeah. You know, which has gotta be weird.
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18:55
Many moons ago, that was fucking weird.
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18:56
Was it weird the dramatic representation of your life versus the real life? Like, what is that juxtaposition like? Because is it is it bizarre watching a fake version of you on television and did or on a screen rather? And did you have, like, a feeling, like, am I that person? I’m not that person. Like, I’m me. This is not really me, but it’s about me.
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19:18
Yeah. So the book came out when I was 11 years old. My dad actually wrote the book. He was a writer, and he ended up just writing about the journey from me starting to play chess to winning my first national championship. And when the book came out, it felt like I read it, and it felt true.
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19:34
I was a little pissed off because they didn’t want people to know when I cried. I was an 11 year old. I didn’t wanna be vulnerable. Right? And but, like, that felt ai and and that was my first real thrust into the into, like, some degree of spotlight.
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19:45
And then and I was the national champion at that point, and I was each year for those years. Sai, like, I was at the top of the chess world, the youth chess world, and then I had the movie come out. The book came out. And then when the movie came out, it was a shit show. I I hated the movie when it first came out.
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19:58
Why’d you hate it?
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19:59
Because I thought it had nothing to do with my life. Mhmm. Years later, I was able to see it as a work of art separate from my life and see it that way. And I was able to see how it was thematically true in many ways to theme to, like, themes in my life.
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20:17
Mhmm.
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20:18
But, like, my first teacher, Bruce Pendolfini, who’s still a very dear friend of mine, Ben Kingsley played him as this mean guy.
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20:25
And Right.
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20:25
And I’ve had terrible coaches in my life. I’ve had coaches who are super destructive, but Bruce wasn’t. He was beautiful and, and loving and helped me discover my love for chess. My first coaches were the hustlers in Washington Square Park and Bruce Penolfini together. And the way that was represented, I didn’t like it.
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20:41
They also combined a bunch of characters in Washington Square Park, the hustle that could combine them into one in a way that, you know, was thematically true but didn’t fit so, like, when you’re a kid, you’re a teenager, you see all the difference. A movie comes out about your life. You see all the differences as opposed to the similarities.
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20:57
And it was, yeah, and I felt really guilty about it relative to Bruce. That was a big part of it because I love Bruce. Did
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21:04
you talk to him
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21:05
about it? Oh, yeah.
Speaker: 1
21:05
What did he what was his take on it?
Speaker: 0
21:07
I mean, it
Speaker: 1
21:08
was he named Bruce in the movie?
Speaker: 0
21:09
He was named Bruce in the movie, and he he I mean, he honestly, he loved it. I mean, he put it put him in the spotlight as, like, the the chess teacher in in, you know, in the country, in the world. So he rolled with it really well. I was just sensitive to all of, like, all these mean spirited things that happened between us in the film that never happened in life. Right.
Speaker: 0
21:28
And years later, like, those things did happen to me. And And, actually, during those years when it came out, they were happening to me then. What was interesting is I had some really destructive coaches during during that time, and I didn’t put that on on Bruce. But, also, what happened with the movie is that I love chess so deeply. It was my first form of self expression.
Speaker: 0
21:45
And up until the film came out, it was just sort of this preconscious innocent form of of play, of battle, of of like, it was it was my it was my jiu jitsu vatsal. It was it was I fucking loved it. And and then it the the the movie is what pulled me into self consciousness for the first time.
Speaker: 0
22:03
I started thinking about instead of losing myself in thought, I started thinking about how I looked to groupies, to cameras, to presence. So, like, I I moved from self expression to self consciousness to being locked up. And then, you know and I didn’t ask for it. I didn’t decide I wanna have a movie. This thing was done. And it was ultimately I mean, I’m I’m grateful for it.
Speaker: 0
22:23
From my perspective now, the existential crisis that happened was awesome for me. It forced me to become more complicated as a human and integrate a sense of consciousness into my relationship to something. So my perspective on it now is that it it was a beautiful journey. It made me grapple with a lot of shit.
Speaker: 0
22:40
Ai didn’t become reliant on a flower garden in order to have a a deep relationship to an art. But at the time, I was very conflicted about it. And then when I graduated high school, I took off and left The US for a couple years, lived in Slovenia with my girlfriend at the time to get away from the spotlight, to get away from the media, get away from all the shit that was connected to the movie.
Speaker: 0
23:00
And that was when I started studying East Asian philosophy and meditating and started reading Jack Kerouac and existentialist literature and trying to figure myself out, figure the world out, figure out how I related to these things in some empty space.
Speaker: 1
23:14
What’s a tremendous burden to place upon a young person to take their life, which is essentially anonymous, you know, to the general public, you know, known in the chess world, obviously, but in the general public Yeah. Anonymous. And then all of a sudden, a movie star. And not a movie star in the sense that you’re on the screen, but it’s about you, which is probably even weirder.
Speaker: 1
23:39
So you have these false expectations or false false narratives of how your life played out and who the people and who the piece and sai everywhere you run into people, they have a version of you that they’ve seen that’s not real.
Speaker: 0
23:53
And they think they know you very intimately.
Speaker: 1
23:55
Which is weird. But they don’t.
Speaker: 0
23:56
Sai I mean, with you, where you’re so public. Right? Everyone probably most people think they know who you are and what they think.
Speaker: 1
24:01
At least they know me from me talking. Yeah.
Speaker: 0
24:04
That’s a really
Speaker: 1
24:04
They don’t know me. Imagine if, like, Mario Lopez played me in a movie. Right. You know what I mean? There’s someone someone less handsome than Mario Lopez. But and then you would have this thing where, like,
Speaker: 0
24:16
oh, you’re the guy that that guy played in
Speaker: 1
24:18
the movie. And I’d be like, yeah, but that’s not really I don’t that’s not really me. I don’t really I didn’t have that problem. This is not real. That’s fake.
Speaker: 0
24:27
And also when you’re a teenager, you’re susceptible to all of the the temptations. Oh, yeah. Like, I mean, suddenly you’ve got groupies everywhere, and that’s awesome. And it’s a lot of fun. But it does not necessarily it’s not necessarily consistent with sitting for six hours at a time in competition playing chess.
Speaker: 1
24:42
No. It was It’s probably destructive
Speaker: 0
24:43
to it. Right? Quite destructive. Yeah. Which is interesting, and you have to integrate all of that.
Speaker: 1
24:47
How old were you when the film came out? 15. Yeah. That is a crazy time to get any kind of attention. Because you’re Yeah. You’re just getting testosterone for the first time. You’re like, what is all this? Right? And your your body’s growing. It
Speaker: 0
24:59
was flowing hard.
Speaker: 1
25:00
Yeah. And you’re becoming a meh. Now all of a sudden, girls like you? Like, what? Yeah. What is this about? This is craziness.
Speaker: 0
25:07
I already had a very strange life because and I think, like, a foundational part of my psychology came from so I started playing chess when I was six years old. When I by the time I was seven, I was the top rated player for my age in the country. My first national championship, I got my ass kicked, which was tremendous. It was great.
Speaker: 0
25:23
Last round, I lost the last round of my first nationals, I lost to the guy who later became my best friend for many, many years, David Arnett.
Speaker: 1
25:32
And you say tremendous because was that, like a jumping point for improvement for you?
Speaker: 0
25:37
Because I didn’t learn that I could win without getting my ass kicked first. Ai I had to grapple with my demons. And, I relate I the year from then to winning my nationals my first nationals the next year was when I really developed a love for chess, and I had to work very hard.
Speaker: 0
25:55
And I didn’t associate winning the nationals with talent or, a smooth trip or all the bullshit that people can connect when they have when they’re when they’re called the prodigy from the outside. Mhmm. It’s not a term I ever related to myself at all, but, like, when they’re these labels are put on from the ai.
Speaker: 0
26:13
And if you win too fast too too young, you can just develop this relationship to this brittle relationship to success and
Speaker: 1
26:21
to work
Speaker: 0
26:21
and to training and to everything. Right? You don’t you don’t realize that getting your ass kicked is a huge part of of the journey.
Speaker: 1
26:27
That’s a problem with very talented fighters as well. A lot of very talented martial artists, they never developed the discipline to truly become great Because, like, from the very beginning, they had an whatever the advantage was, whether it’s a speed advantage, a strength advantage.
Speaker: 1
26:43
I mean, genetics plays such a large part in, martial arts success. You know, if you have someone who’s an elite mind, who is incredibly disciplined, and also has great genetics, you get a Mike Tyson. Well, that’s amazing.
Speaker: 0
27:00
Yeah. You can have that combination. Yeah.
Speaker: 1
27:01
That’s what
Speaker: 0
27:01
you’re looking for.
Speaker: 1
27:02
That’s what you’re looking for. But if you don’t have that and Mike Tyson is competing in your division, you’re fucked. Like, you you can be really disciplined. But, like, so genetics do have a they do play a factor. Circumstances, coaching, there’s a lot of different factors.
Speaker: 1
27:18
But if you’re a real prodigy and there are people out there that are just extraordinary from the beginning, I find that if success comes too quickly, you don’t develop the metal to really push through boundaries and reach new levels. Because the only way you get there is through you you have to I think ai training becomes it becomes meh, it becomes something you do.
Speaker: 1
27:42
You see incremental growth and improvement. You get confidence. You’re you’re but then when you compete, if you get your ass kicked, then you have to kind of reassess everything. Like, okay. Was I working at ten or was I working at eight? Was I was I studying tape or was I fucking off and and calling girls?
Speaker: 1
27:59
You know, was I paying attention to my training routine and my recovery, or was I just training and partying? Like, what was I doing wrong? Like, what led this person to land those shots? What led this person to beat me? Yeah.
Speaker: 1
28:11
And if you don’t have those moments where you lose, I don’t think you ever really achieve your true potential because you have to be challenged. And the best expression of challenge is total humiliating defeat.
Speaker: 0
28:23
Absolutely. Yeah. And and sai consistently, the the biggest losses the most crushing losses arya what lead to the biggest wins later. Yes. Sometimes it’s many years later, but it it like that and people often, I remember I was giving a simultaneous chess exhibition for a charity when, you know, in my twenties somewhere.
Speaker: 0
28:42
And this this guy introduced his son, and he said his son hadn’t lost a chess game in in two years. And he was so proud. And it’s just, like, I knew it was a fucking train wreck. I mean, the kid, like, because you’re the kid obviously just was only choosing people to play who he could beat, wouldn’t compete up in tournaments, would only play down, would and he was just and he was the only kid who didn’t wanna play against me in the simul.
Speaker: 0
29:04
And sai his life was protecting this perfect perfect thing. Right? Oh. People who don’t lose so in my chess life, I the the interesting thing that happened in my psychology is that I I was the top rated player for my age in the country from from a young age, but I always played up.
Speaker: 0
29:19
I always played against adults. Except for Nationals and Worlds, I played up. And so and all of my the my rivals were targeting me because I was the top seed in in youth events. But their coaches and their were were much stronger players than me. They were adult international masters, grand masters, and they could see all my weaknesses, psychological, technical, everything.
Speaker: 0
29:39
And so if I ever made a mistake, the weakness was exploited until I took it on. And so I developed ram really young ages relationship to training, which was if I didn’t take on my weakness, I got my ass kicked and I felt pain. And so not taking on my weakness became outside of my conceptual scheme.
Speaker: 0
29:57
So from age eight, I just I and it can be a blind spot ai today in life. Like, a criticism of me that something loved ones would have is that I I’m just I’m always I love training. I love pushing my limits as a way of life in whatever I’m doing. If it was chess, if it was fighting, now it’s it’s foiling, surfing, and then foiling in in the biggest waves I can find.
Speaker: 0
30:17
And, like, just if I’m playing at my edge, Ai feel it feels beautiful. It feels like where I wanna be. But the comfort zone doesn’t feel beautiful. And to me, that works really well, but it’s a big part of, like, my foundation in that was when being eight years old and being targeted eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13 ai whole life.
Speaker: 0
30:36
And I I it wasn’t until recently that I realized that it was actually outside of my conceptual scheme not to take on the weakness because it was just connected to pain from such a young age as a competitor. There’s no luck in chess. There’s no fucking luck in chess. If you have like, if you if you’re playing chess, if you have an opening repertoire that’s massive and you go into a game and there’s one little place that there’s a weakness and you don’t want your opponent to go, he always fucking finds it.
Speaker: 0
31:00
I don’t know why. You can you never, like, make a move and hope he doesn’t see it. Or I’ll play let’s meh this trap and it’s not the best move, but maybe he’ll fall into no. That never works at a high level. So you just you you have to take your shit on.
Speaker: 1
31:14
So you associate not taking it on with pain?
Speaker: 0
31:19
Yeah. I don’t anymore. I did young. Now I don’t associate it with anything. I just don’t do
Speaker: 1
31:22
it. Right.
Speaker: 0
31:24
Yeah. Unless I try.
Speaker: 1
31:25
That’s a better way to handle it, to ai there’s there’s a real process. There’s the there’s the right way to do this. It’s the only way to do this. Ai don’t even think about the other way.
Speaker: 0
31:35
Right. But if it’s if it’s kind of driving you I for me, I think it’s healthier for me to recognize that pattern in myself and then roll with it as opposed to just not even see, like, that it’s
Speaker: 1
31:44
That it’s there. That it’s there. Right. Yeah. Well, yeah. Acknowledge well, you have to have acknowledgment of it because you have memories.
Speaker: 0
31:50
Like, if I’m cooking a turkey, I have to cook a world class turkey. I have a friend, Jim Detmer, who sai to me, Josh, what you have to do is cook a terrible turkey. Just cook a cook an average turkey. You know? Don’t crush it. In other words, like, don’t it’s it’s an interesting thing when you become present to the fact that you have this, like, youthful story running through everything you do, and you can choose to live that way.
Speaker: 0
32:12
But it’s good for it to be a choice as opposed to just driving you. It’s definitely good for it to be
Speaker: 1
32:17
a choice. It’s always good for it to be a choice because sometimes life will, you know, there’s a curve that you have to take, and you have to put something aside for a bit ram maybe forever. And you have to be able to transition to something else. And if you can’t do that, then you’ll be stuck. Yeah.
Speaker: 1
32:32
And you see a lot of that with martial arts people. You know, most of us vatsal certain point in time realize that injuries are, not just inevitable, but at a certain point in time, you go, maybe I should stop doing this. Because training, no matter what you do, training is all about you using your body as a weapon and someone using their body as a weapon.
Speaker: 1
32:55
Whether it’s martial arts ai stand up fighting or whether it’s jujitsu, it’s the same thing. You’re you’re trying to you’re trying to isolate joints, you’re trying to cut off blood, and you’re resisting all these things. And the all the weak points get exposed, shoulders, knees, ankles, back, neck. All those things get exposed.
Speaker: 1
33:17
And if you’re an a meathead, like I have been in the past, you train through injuries and they get chronic, and then you get to a certain point where you’re like, what am I doing? And if you can’t transition to something else, if you can’t find something else to do with your time, then you’re a cripple.
Speaker: 1
33:33
Then, you know, then you’re getting your tenth surgery on your back and you’re still trying to train. And everybody’s like, look at Bob. He’s crazy. He’s got all his disc fused, but he’s still training. Like, maybe Bob shouldn’t be training. Like, maybe maybe Bob’s gonna break something else now.
Speaker: 1
33:47
Like, maybe maybe it’s time to move on to something else. And if you don’t have this ability to constantly take on new projects and be excited by different things, you’re gonna have a shallow life. Like, life has so many challenges and so many fascinating things to dive into. For you now, it’s foiling. For a while, jujitsu, chess, like, anything like that.
Speaker: 1
34:07
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Speaker: 0
35:33
Jiu jitsu sai the art I had to that I I Ai had to move on from not on my own terms because I I, a ruptured male four zero five disc There
Speaker: 1
35:41
it is.
Speaker: 0
35:41
Trained trained on it ai a crazy person for, like Sure. Couple years. And then the doctors looked at that, and they just, like, if you keep on doing this, you’re not gonna walk, not gonna be able to play ball ai. It’s great now.
Speaker: 1
35:52
Yeah.
Speaker: 0
35:52
That’s great.
Speaker: 1
35:54
I mean it’s sai little bit foiling probably makes your core, like, incredibly strong.
Speaker: 0
35:58
Yeah. I mean, I I’ve done a lot of stuff. I mean, I speak Ai never had surgery. They all told me to, but I didn’t have surgery. And I did tons of I mean, I’ve been doing total immersion swimming and foundation training and every everything I could do, for the back. And the foiling feels I mean, I’m training like I’m all in on this art, and it Ai I’m doing it in a way that feels healthy in the back.
Speaker: 0
36:20
I train jiu jitsu now, but light. I mean, I can’t train all it all out ai I’d love love to. When I it was it was heartbreaking to give it up.
Speaker: 1
36:27
It was hard.
Speaker: 0
36:28
And and I was so madly in love and all in with Marcelo and having that like, I was as at that part of the learning process, which is where I get good at the learning process, which is, like, toward the higher levels of something. That’s where I’m best at learning.
Speaker: 1
36:43
Did you have a small injury that got worse over time, or did you have a significant moment where you ai you heard it?
Speaker: 0
36:49
Sai was so stupid. No. It was significant moment. I was I was, position sparring. Marcelo wasn’t we’re at our school in New York. It was a week before my my eldest sana, Jack, was born. So it was a bit over thirteen years ago. I we were Marcelo was was gone. We I was at the school. Paul Schreiner was running class that day, I think. And, there was this 240 pound blue belt visiting. This is, like Ai. Ripped dude.
Speaker: 0
37:15
And Paul had everyone doing position sparring, half guard position sparring. And this guy was matched up against one of our guys. I’ve had that hubristic, invincible feeling about me in that moment. I was just when you’re feeling at your very best in arya flow, and I was like and it ended up where we were doing half guard position sparring where I was holding half guard, and he was doing this pass twisting the ai, and it was so fucking stupid to do it.
Speaker: 0
37:39
I mean, I was just holding half guard in a in in, like, in position sparring, and I just felt it go and then, like, you know, it was I couldn’t move. It was fucking terrible. Mhmm. And
Speaker: 1
37:56
it was Did it herniate?
Speaker: 0
37:58
Yeah. And all the fluid gone. Oh, yeah. And, yeah, it was bryden. You know? It was and I ai So
Speaker: 1
38:06
how is the disc now?
Speaker: 0
38:07
I couldn’t list I couldn’t lift up my child for the first three or four months of his life. Ai Boy. Then I had this strange period where I couldn’t I couldn’t standing and walking was the toughest. But then I had this period, like, if I ai gone to the corner store to get milk, like, three or four months later, I have to bike to the corner store and come back.
Speaker: 0
38:23
And I don’t I can’t explain this, but I I shah a period where I couldn’t walk, but I could ski because of the angles. Sai Marcela and I were going to the mountains out around New York just bombing down. I was just trying to get my my fix in. Just skiing without turning was my goal. He was snowboarding. I was skiing.
Speaker: 0
38:42
You couldn’t walk,
Speaker: 1
38:42
but you could ski. Yeah.
Speaker: 0
38:43
It was very strange period. Dude, don’t ski. Don’t don’t fucking ski. Yeah. It would have been a smart thing to tell me. Yeah. I was a dumbass for the first two years after the injury. And then I, and then I realized
Speaker: 1
38:52
I had to What does the disc look like now?
Speaker: 0
38:55
I haven’t looked at it in a long time.
Speaker: 1
38:58
It Doesn’t trouble you anymore.
Speaker: 0
38:59
It does trouble me. I take care of it all the time.
Speaker: 1
39:03
Yeah. They replaced them now. Eddie Bravo got a fake disc in his lower back, a titanium disc, and, he’s able to train again. I know quite a few guys have got them. Aljamain Sterling got one in his neck and then went on to defend the UFC Bantamweight championship several times.
Speaker: 0
39:21
Yeah. They replaced them altogether.
Speaker: 1
39:23
Mhmm. I didn’t
Speaker: 0
39:24
know that.
Speaker: 1
39:24
Yeah. They put our artificial discs now. Yeah.
Speaker: 0
39:28
You know, your point about I remember I was study back in the early two thousands studying Eddie’s game, setting the rubber guards, studying all the Twister stuff. Mhmm. Just trying to wrap my head around it.
Speaker: 1
39:37
Yeah. He’s got some wild stuff.
Speaker: 0
39:38
Wild stuff. And if
Speaker: 1
39:39
you’re not used to it, it’s it’s really interesting to watch people that just have never encountered it before. When I would go to train in other places, ai, I lived in Colorado for a bit, and I trained at Amal Easton’s. And, when I go up there, there’s so many positions that guys just didn’t understand. They didn’t know what was going on.
Speaker: 1
39:54
They figured it out after a ai, like, oh, if he goes this way, he’s gonna try to get me in a twister.
Speaker: 0
39:58
Yeah.
Speaker: 1
39:58
If he goes this way, he’s gonna try to set this up. But there’s certain things that people do all the time, like, especially, like, put your hands on the mat. You do if you put your hands pull up Jeremiah Vance, highlights. This is, like, one of Eddie’s best, black belts with rubber guard.
Speaker: 1
40:16
And the way he does it is phenomenal. He has incredible leg dexterity, and his technique is so sharp. And he catches people and stuff, and they’re ai, how am I even stuck here?
Speaker: 0
40:28
Do you find that that That’s yeah.
Speaker: 1
40:30
Here it is. Yeah. So watch watch how quick he sets things up. It’s ai right away, you’re in you’re Fucksville. You’re Fucks. Ai, who who does this? Who sets up a a Go Go Plata right off the bat and then triangles it? Look how he sets this up. I mean, this is insane. And just massive crank on your fucking neck.
Speaker: 0
40:50
Yeah.
Speaker: 1
40:53
And he switches it to Oma Plata, rerolls.
Speaker: 0
40:57
Mhmm.
Speaker: 1
40:59
Yep. Oma Plata Crucifix Finish. Yep. And everything he does involves this incredible dexterity and flexibility. There’s, like, a whole series of highlights. That’s not even some of his best stuff, but he’s able to do this to people that just don’t know what he’s doing. Like, they they don’t understand some of these transitions. Yeah. And this is just ai one of the best expressions of the techniques that Eddie’s developed.
Speaker: 1
41:28
Sai ai Jeremiah is fantastic at that. Ai, this this particular technique of being able to isolate the alma plata and then secure a choke in the transition. He does this to everybody. Look at how this transition right here.
Speaker: 0
41:41
Brutal.
Speaker: 1
41:41
It’s so nasty. Yeah. It’s so nasty and you just you don’t know what the fuck you’re doing. How am I getting out of this? I mean, he just hits this over and over and over on people. And so many times that people would go for an omaplata, people say, okay. I worst case scenario, I might roll out of this and wind up on my back ai control. But not with him. Yeah.
Speaker: 1
42:01
But with him, you’re ai, this is like Fuck. You’re really close to checkmate from the moment the the omaplata sai up from a position where you’re defending. So you’re defending correctly from the omaplata, and that winds up setting up this choke.
Speaker: 0
42:16
What was your your how do you feel about Ryan Hall’s game in in MMA? Like, he because he also he’s entering the MMA game. Oh, he’s been
Speaker: 1
42:23
in Meh game for quite a while. Yeah.
Speaker: 0
42:24
I know. Yeah. Yeah. But no. But, I mean, when he entered the the game, he came into it with a repertoire that was so unusual for Very unusual. Yeah.
Speaker: 1
42:30
Well, he’s really, really smart, obviously.
Speaker: 0
42:33
Yeah.
Speaker: 1
42:33
And when you see his style the the problem with his style, in my opinion Mhmm. Is it’s so jujitsu heavy that he’s vulnerable when he’s fighting world class strikers. Like, Ilya Toporia smashed him.
Speaker: 0
42:48
Yeah.
Speaker: 1
42:49
And it was a horrible, horrible knockout. And it’s because Ilha’s a legit Brazilian jiu jitsu black belt, but also, like, way more technical on the feet. Mhmm. And when you’re fighting a guy who’s just any one mistake you make in ai, it is a concussion. Any one mistake, boom, a big hand’s coming, a knee’s coming, a kick’s coming. It’s ai something’s coming if you make mistakes.
Speaker: 1
43:10
It’s just like being a blue belt rolling with, a high level black belt. It’s the same thing.
Speaker: 0
43:15
It’s
Speaker: 1
43:16
ai you’re just way too vulnerable. So his jujitsu is off the charts, but his stand up is not at the level of his jujitsu, and that’s just a real problem today.
Speaker: 0
43:25
Yep.
Speaker: 1
43:26
It’s very you can kind of be a specialist if you’re a striker. A ai, like, there’s a few guys that can pull it off if they’re really strong and they have good takedown defense. Like, Pereira is the best example. Right? Two division world champion kickboxer comes over, dominates, becomes a two division UFC champion as a striker because every fight starts standing up.
Speaker: 1
43:46
But if you don’t know how to strike, every fight starts standing up. So the beginning of the fight is always something you’re not good at. And if you’re getting tagged at the very beginning of the fight and now you’re in desperation mode, and all this person has to do, it’s an an enormous space they’re fighting in, the octagon.
Speaker: 1
44:02
And the cage of the octagon actually makes it easier to get up if someone takes you down. So there’s a lot of elements that wouldn’t even exist if you had a flat surface with no walls. So it’s easier to defend. It’s it’s easier to move around because it’s an enormous surface. So you’re now chasing this person and you might have already gotten a concussion.
Speaker: 1
44:21
You might have already been rocked. So you’re already, like, a little out of it and now you’re, like, desperado mode. It’s just a bad place to be. But you have to have world class striking to compete at a world class level in MMA at this point.
Speaker: 0
44:33
Yeah. You have to have you have to
Speaker: 1
44:35
have something at the very least, you have to be really good defensively, really good. But then you’re just gonna get picked apart on the feet. Yeah. Your legs are gonna get kicked. You’re you’re gonna get brutalized. Yeah. You have to be a really good striker. And Ryan is one of those guys that’s a specialist sana, you know, he tapped a lot. I mean, tapped BJ Penn in, like, ten seconds.
Speaker: 0
44:56
Mhmm.
Speaker: 1
44:56
He’s tapped a lot of guys. He’s when he gets a hold of you, you’re in this complex web of transitions and techniques that if you’re just a regular MMA fighter who trains jujitsu three times a week, you’re not gonna know what he’s doing.
Speaker: 0
45:08
Yeah. He’s a brilliant guy. He he trained at our school from in New York, I think, from 02/2010, ‘2 thousand ’12, that range. And it was so interesting watching him and Marcelo, because Ryan had a huge amount of humility relative to Marcelo. And he wanted to to train with him, and Marcelo was so curious about Ryan’s game, but Marcelo never studied anyone’s game.
Speaker: 0
45:28
His a core principle of Marcelo is if you if you if you study my game, you enter my game, and no one will be better at my game than me. And so when he in competition, he would the guys would be studying tape of everybody. He would never study one’s tape, never study one’s fights, but he’d watch them the fight before they went against him, and he’d pick up on some kind of elemental read.
Speaker: 0
45:46
He has this he’s what I call a a low rep learner. His ability to learn from a single repetition is just unbelievable. And it was really interesting watching him and Ryan ai Ryan and Ryan just came and visited me, in my home a month ago, and we were talking about how formative those training experiences with Marcelo were.
Speaker: 0
46:07
And and it was, like, the way in one way that Ryan described it is that he had this, like, layers of traps seven steps in, but Marcelo had this deep understanding upstream of that. And it was ai watching Marcelo put himself, like, right next to the fire, like, right next to Ryan’s game.
Speaker: 0
46:23
He wanted to learn Ryan the edges of line of Ryan’s game but never enter it. And his ability to play right at the threshold of all of Ryan’s ram, which he could pull almost everyone else into in just pure grappling. Ai? And but not not just his ability to learn, it was like it felt like a cat putting its paw right up against the edge of a fire and just, like, learning about what heat was and deconstructing it, but then not ever getting into the heat.
Speaker: 0
46:48
You know? And I and you’d watch Ryan roll roll anyone else. He just pulled them into the ai, into the spider meh.
Speaker: 1
46:54
That’s fascinating.
Speaker: 0
46:55
Marcello has a a really incredibly deep, almost simian physical intelligence, and his ability to learn from a single rep is unique in my observation.
Speaker: 1
47:07
That’s amazing. Ryan has had a ton of surgeries, hasn’t he?
Speaker: 0
47:11
Oh, yeah. Man, that dude has had such bad luck.
Speaker: 1
47:12
Yeah. What is, wrong with him? What’s going on?
Speaker: 0
47:15
Some shit with I mean, tons of stuff with his knee, with his hip, with I think he’s he’s starting to come Sai ai his shoulder’s something now. Oh, shit. He he’s still you know, he’s He’s had, like, nine twenty three sai I
Speaker: 1
47:24
think it was 23.
Speaker: 0
47:25
I think he sai 23 surgeries. Dude, he’s got and the the bad one happened with someone just falling on him in training. What was that? I don’t know. I don’t know. That was a hip.
Speaker: 1
47:34
Oh, god.
Speaker: 0
47:35
Yeah. I don’t know exactly. I haven’t seen anything.
Speaker: 1
47:37
He get done to his hip?
Speaker: 0
47:39
Ask him. Ai not sure.
Speaker: 1
47:41
Yeah.
Speaker: 0
47:41
He’s had a lot of surgeries.
Speaker: 1
47:42
A lot of Someone just fell on him. So was he training with someone else and someone else fell on him?
Speaker: 0
47:47
He was he was training with somebody, and he was taking it easy on them in a transition, trying to not hurt tyler, and then they just collapsed on him, on his hip in a certain way as he described it.
Speaker: 1
47:55
Oy. Yeah. Brutal. When you were training, did you do any weight lifting just to sort of supplement it to keep your joints strong and your
Speaker: 0
48:04
Yeah. Yeah. I I did a lot I tended to do weight lifting that was consistent with the movement patterns of the arts that I was training in. So now so I I would do a lot of biking lower body strength, and then I would do I wasn’t didn’t have I think if I did it now, I would do much more weightlifting.
Speaker: 0
48:21
But when I was rolling usually twice a week, six days a week, and and I was I would do cardio work in addition and then some, like, some resistance work, but Sai didn’t I wasn’t like, I I’m doing a lot of work with the Boston Celtics now, and I’m seeing how they’re for the last few years, and I see how they’re brilliant their sports science team and their physical trainers are.
Speaker: 0
48:44
And, like, I don’t think that I was when I was training jiu jitsu, I was at the the level of, for example, the Boston Celtics in in in the resistance training that I was doing to supplement it. Mhmm. And Marcelo didn’t do weight training. That was part of it. When I was training with him, we were like, I was just
Speaker: 1
49:00
He didn’t weight training at all?
Speaker: 0
49:01
No. How
Speaker: 1
49:02
did he get those legs?
Speaker: 0
49:03
He just rolls, man. He was ai. He was in a bike into the those bikes without, without bryden. We were biking all over New York.
Speaker: 1
49:11
He he Bikes without bryden?
Speaker: 0
49:12
Yeah. What do you mean? What are they called? Fixies?
Speaker: 1
49:14
Yeah. What is that?
Speaker: 0
49:15
Fixed fixed wheel? Yeah. Fixed wheel.
Speaker: 1
49:17
He he just What does that mean?
Speaker: 0
49:19
Just It’s got no no brakes. There’s no brakes. Slow down. You could you go slow. You gotta slow. You put your hand your your foot on the on the edge of the the wheel. What? Ai, yeah. Fixed wheel biking. I mean, he loved fixed wheel around New York, and I was biking. Then I switched Ai would you ever get on a bike with no brakes?
Speaker: 0
49:34
It’s a You control it. You’re you’re you’re braking. Ai show you videos.
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49:38
Show
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49:38
me. People love it. But, man, in New York, it’s it’s quite something. I mean, in New York, when you’re going down a hill in New York City in in traffic, there’s there’s some adventures.
Speaker: 1
49:45
You’re going down a hill.
Speaker: 0
49:46
How are you fucking slowing down? Don’t go fast. Oh, he was we’re going fast. No. I mean, that’s the you just ai got your you gotta see a high this isn’t gonna be a good video.
Speaker: 1
49:56
This is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard of in my life. This is something only white people would figure out.
Speaker: 0
50:00
Let’s have a bike with no brakes. The dumber thing was what I did after this, which is that I when I fell in love with surfing,
Speaker: 1
50:05
I was one wheeling all over New York. Oh, five ways to stop on a fixie. Yeah. How about don’t get a fixie? Get brakes, you fucking idiot. This is the dumbest shit I’ve ever seen in my life.
Speaker: 0
50:16
Why wouldn’t you have brakes? Why wouldn’t
Speaker: 1
50:17
you have an option to control the bike better?
Speaker: 0
50:22
So I the people that ride this, I they’d argue they control it probably better. Yeah.
Speaker: 1
50:26
Look at all the white people. All white people. Ridiculous white people. They’d be doing backflips with skateboards. This is a
Speaker: 0
50:33
big New York thing. No. I’ve ai
Speaker: 1
50:34
Of course. It is. They don’t they like suffering over there. That’s why they all look jammed on top of each other.
Speaker: 0
50:39
Ai find a good video.
Speaker: 1
50:41
That’s so stupid. There’s no good videos of that. That’s a stupid thing.
Speaker: 0
50:44
There’s a movie I’ve seen. That’s why Sai thought
Speaker: 1
50:46
Breaks, you fucking freaks.
Speaker: 0
50:47
My last two years living in New York, I I had fallen so in love with surfing, and I was I knew ocean arya were my next chapter, and I was so heartbroken not to be able to do it every day. So I got a Onewheel. It was ai the first generation. You know, the one with electronic skateboards with one Yeah. Yeah. We had one of those.
Speaker: 0
51:00
Just came out first generation old, and I was just, like, thousands of miles biking one wheeling all over New York. And then, but it was at the early one. If you push past the pushback, it had this pushback thing, which would slow you down, but you could push past it and go faster.
Speaker: 0
51:15
But if you push past the final pushback, it just bottomed out. Wham. Oh. And he just went, heck, 23, 20 four miles. Ai was a whack right over sai cabs, under taxi cabs, through taxi cabs, everything. The the one wheels, like, when you’re a kid or sorry, the the fix speak.
Speaker: 0
51:27
Like, you just skid. Remember, I
Speaker: 1
51:29
didn’t skid. Oh. Oh, just There is brakes.
Speaker: 0
51:31
Yeah. You just
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51:31
like a skid.
Speaker: 0
51:32
Yeah. I guess that’s a better way to describe describe it. I’m thinking
Speaker: 1
51:34
of it that way. Okay. Sai you can brake.
Speaker: 0
51:36
You can also reverse, which you can’t do on most bikes. You can ride backwards
Speaker: 1
51:40
Oh. If you needed to.
Speaker: 0
51:42
It’s really beautiful. Ai mean, I I this wasn’t this I never did it, but it’s really beautiful to watch when it’s done well.
Speaker: 1
51:47
Okay. Well, that makes me feel better that you could just skid.
Speaker: 0
51:51
Yeah. You could skid. Ai, but you sai stop. There’s lots of things that can go wrong.
Speaker: 1
51:55
But that’s
Speaker: 0
51:56
what seems like ai there are lots of things that go wrong. Foiling, there’s a lot of fucking things that can go wrong here. Oh, yeah. 35, 40 miles an hour on top of the guillotine, big waves. I mean Dude, I Shah can go wrong fast.
Speaker: 1
52:05
I learned how to foil two years ago. And it took me, like, three hours to get on that fucking thing for the first time ai I’ve never served
Speaker: 0
52:12
You’re on an efoil or Yeah. Efoil. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: 1
52:15
Took me forever. Yeah. Just kept falling down, getting back up, falling down. Meanwhile, my kids, my youngest at the time, she was 12, humiliated me.
Speaker: 0
52:23
Yeah. She just hopped on
Speaker: 1
52:24
it instantly, was scooting around and look, she know how to do it immediately. But she she, wakeboards.
Speaker: 0
52:31
She Yeah.
Speaker: 1
52:31
She does a lot of that shit. She’s really athletic. But she was just humiliating me, and I was just like, I’m gonna put this out. So for hours, I kept falling down and getting back up, falling down, and eventually, I got it. And then once I got it, it was, like, easy. Yeah.
Speaker: 1
52:46
Once I got it, I was like, oh, I see.
Speaker: 0
52:48
Efoiling is the best it’s ai it’s the best way to learn how to foil because you they weigh 90 pounds, the efoils do. Ai, a high performance big wave a high performance foil, the whole setup will weigh four or five pounds.
Speaker: 1
52:59
Really? Yeah.
Speaker: 0
52:59
I mean, efoil, you have a battery. It’s heavy, and you’ve got electricity to learn how to to learn foil dynamics. Foiling when you’re a high performance foiling in in big surf, you’re you’re just on a, like, a if you’re towing in, you’re on a three and a half foot board, no no battery.
Speaker: 0
53:14
It’s it’s not powered. It’s just Oh, okay. You’re just riding hydrodynamics.
Speaker: 1
53:18
Are you getting towed into
Speaker: 0
53:19
these waves? You sai paddle in or, but if you’re towing in to bigger waves, you’re on a small board. You’re getting towed in behind a jet sai, whipped in, and then you’re just riding. It’s epic. It’s frictionless. So beautiful.
Speaker: 1
53:33
And what’s the benefit of that above surfing?
Speaker: 0
53:35
Is that you’re above the water? Above the water. You’re not feel like, the ultimate if you think about the the the glassiest surf day possible, the frictionless feeling, it’s it’s more frictionless than that because you’re above the water. You’re Yeah.
Speaker: 1
53:46
I get that on the e foil. When you get cooking on the e foil, you’re above the water. It’s wild. It just I always feel like I’m gonna fall. I’m gonna fall. I’m gonna fall.
Speaker: 0
53:54
Yeah. Yeah. Soon as I
Speaker: 1
53:56
get above the water, like, okay. We’re going too fast. You’re gonna wipe out.
Speaker: 0
53:59
The foil is interesting because it it’s it’s like the ultimate receptivity because the foil picks up on underwater wave circulation. So it’s picking up on lift when you’re going very fast. And, also, when you’re in a wave, the waves have have upward circulation at the at the face of the wave.
Speaker: 0
54:15
When you get to the top of the wave, it it accelerates. And so your your foil is riding the underwater currents, and you’re receiving it’s so amplified. So, like, tiny little movements have big effect on the thing. So, like, the surf movement will be very big, and the the foil movement is very subtle of the body mechanic.
Speaker: 0
54:30
And then you learn to really crank into it, and it’s limitless. You can do open water foiling, crossing oceans on long high aspect wings, riding open ocean swells, and you can Wow. You can push like, high performance foiling is just ai high performance surfing that the lines you can draw. The turns are epic. The g’s are crazy.
Speaker: 0
54:47
So you’re just all in on this, ai? Oh, yeah. I’m all in on this.
Speaker: 1
54:50
Is it an everyday thing for you?
Speaker: 0
54:52
Yes. Everyday. Sai same as jiu jitsu. Six days a week, twice a day if possible.
Speaker: 1
54:57
Really? Wow. Yeah. Wow. Do you have goals? Virtuosity.
Speaker: 0
55:04
Yeah. I I competed my whole ai, and and so now I live like, I train the way I would if I was in a world championship training camp.
Speaker: 1
55:14
That’s hilarious with foiling. Who else is doing that?
Speaker: 0
55:18
Just a couple lunatics.
Speaker: 1
55:19
How many other people are foiling ai they’re training for a world championship activity?
Speaker: 0
55:23
Yeah. It’s a it’s a but the interesting thing is, like, I yeah. I love it. It it’s, but all these arts to me are connected. That’s the strange thing about ai art. Like, chess, Chinese martial arts, jiu jitsu, surfing, foiling. To me, the fascinating thing when you get toward the pinnacle of an art is that you start to experience, at least in my from my perspective, that the apexes of these arts are much closer to one another than lower down in the mountain of the same art.
Speaker: 0
55:53
Mhmm.
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55:54
So
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55:54
people who are virtuosos in various fields are often speaking a much more similar language than people who are at lower levels of the same art than their training. And, like, when I think about about chess, I related to chess through through core principles, and those principles manifest in the martial arts.
Speaker: 0
56:13
I remember that I had this this, when I wrote my first book, the art of or my ai second book, the art of learning, it was about my experience of crossing over my level from chess into the into the Chinese martial arts. And I had this really interesting experience where I was giving a simultaneous chess exhibition playing 40 games at once in a charity for Duchenne muscular dystrophy.
Speaker: 0
56:34
But I was at a point that point, I’ve been training martial arts for two years, and I had not been I I’d kinda moved to I was moved in the transition away from chess during that period. And I had this realization that I was winning these chess games, playing 40 games at once, but I was not playing chess.
Speaker: 0
56:48
I was feeling flow ai space left behind. I was riding the energetic wave of the game like I would if we were flowing on the mats, but I was making chess moves. And I realized that these arts had become fundamentally connected. And then that became, like, an area of interest and of exploration.
Speaker: 0
57:06
I started making what I was doing unconsciously more and more conscious. And now when I relate to the chess I don’t move chess pieces anymore, but chess is manifest in everything that I do as is jujitsu. And as is like, in the ocean arts, I’m manifesting these other arts, the core principles I’ve experienced through them all the time.
Speaker: 0
57:26
And and that’s one of the things that I’ve, I’ve been puzzled by for many years is why chess is so fucking hard. Like, chess has no luck. The best chess players in the world are so brilliant at what they do. I listened to your episode with, Magnus Carlsen. Enjoyed that.
Speaker: 0
57:41
He
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57:42
was great.
Speaker: 0
57:42
Yeah. It was cool. Like, like, someone like Magnus, he’s so fucking good at what he does. Such a virtuoso. But if you look at, like, the top hundred or top thousand chess players, they’re they’re tremendously strong. But when they try to translate their ability to other fields, they often can’t, and it’s surprising.
Speaker: 0
58:00
Ai I tried to figure out why for a lot of years because you think, like, if you’re able to just be so excellent at something that’s super hard, you could take out something that’s relatively easier and become very good at it. And I think that the reason that people often can’t cross level over from one thing to the other is that they learn it in a localized language.
Speaker: 0
58:16
So you can learn chess in a way which is very specific to chess, like principles that are just chess principles, or you can learn chess in a language which connects to all of life. And that won’t slow down. It might accelerate your chess learning. But you can but it but, like and if children are taught games ai chess or gymnastics or music or whatever else with so they’re learning about that art very deeply.
Speaker: 0
58:42
They’re touching quality. They’re pushing their limits. They’re living a life of training as I know you value very meh. But they’re doing so in a language which connects to the rest of ai. Then they’re they’re studying thematic connect interconnectedness while they’re studying chess or jiu jitsu or anything else. And then they’re just learning the language of excellence. Yeah.
Speaker: 0
59:02
And and I I it’s interesting because if you watch chess player chess teachers teaching students, many of them don’t do this. They teach it within, like, the confines of the chessboard, like a prison. And if you learn chess that way, then it’s like you’re living on an island, and the ocean around you is like prison walls. Right?
Speaker: 0
59:20
But if you study chess in a way that you’re you’re you’re learning how each chess principle connects to every other art you could ever study, then just there was this web of interconnectedness is forming in your ai. And then when you take on something else, you’re able to cross the level over really, really naturally.
Speaker: 0
59:36
And that in many ways, that’s my that’s a a big part of my life’s work is the study of that interconnectedness.
Speaker: 1
59:42
Do you think that a hue well, it had to be a huge factor for you that you were sort of forced to reevaluate the way you interface with life when you became famous because of the film at 15. So childhood chess player, become very well ai, then all of a sudden this movie, and now you have to kind of, like, grapple with things.
Speaker: 1
01:00:04
And as you said, these challenges make you a more complex person. And then your ability to sort of push chess aside and try other things, do you think that’s because of that it it has to be a factor in your this desire to explore other things? Because you’re ai of thrust into this thing where your your thing is now changed.
Speaker: 1
01:00:28
Your thing is now not just flowing and learning and getting better and and and doing battle with chess. Now it’s image and groupies and this bizarre thing that you’re living up to and you don’t like it and you wanna escape it, and so you have to reevaluate. And so this forced reevaluation from a young age of 15 years old, this key developmental period as a young meh, sort of opens you up to the possibilities of all sorts of different ways of living life and all sorts of different things to do with life.
Speaker: 0
01:00:59
Yeah. A language I use for this is the the passage from the preconscious to the postconscious competitor
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01:01:04
or artist.
Speaker: 0
01:01:05
And, like, when I up until 15, I I would relate to myself as the preconscious competitor. I love chess. It was free flowing. I love the battle. I love the competition. I love the ass kicking and the kicking ass. I I just love the fucking battle of the thing. And then and then ai I had I I fell in love for the first time when I was 15.
Speaker: 0
01:01:23
The movie came out, after that, and, I started studying existentialist literature. I started reflecting on the absurdity of it all. I started to become present to the fact that these were just 64 squares and 32 pieces. Like, I was spending my life studying this fucking box wood wooden box.
Speaker: 0
01:01:39
Like, the construct, the absurdity of being stuck in that construct became clear to me. And then I was becoming more and more self conscious about how what I was doing was perceived by others, and I got lost in all of that. And in many ways, like, the journey like, most peep most peep like, some people don’t run into that for a long time.
Speaker: 0
01:01:58
Like, there are some chess players that just become insanely strong without ever reflecting on the absurdity of the fact that they’re just playing chess. And that’s a great liberation. Like, that that the moment you become aware of the fact that you’re immortal, that you can get your ass kicked, that your arm can break, that you can die, that what you’re doing is absurd, like, you get locked up by that knowledge.
Speaker: 0
01:02:14
Right. Like and there’s so many different forms that can take. Or the moment you like, for example, Boston Celtics, like, they like, you’re hungering to win a world championship, and then you win the NBA finals. Suddenly, everything changes. Your relationship, your motivation changes.
Speaker: 0
01:02:26
All the reasons you’re doing it are no longer valid in some ways because now you’ve accomplished the thing you always dreamed of and you have to discover. It’s true in any form of competition or bryden my experience is that there comes a moment where someone’s consciousness becomes more complicated, and they can’t just return to the innocence they had before because now they can’t do that.
Speaker: 0
01:02:44
You can’t put it back in the box. Right. It’s out. So then you have to work through that journey, which is a lot of what I did from, like, my late teenage years leaving and studying philosophy and then moving into other fields and started relating to art in a way that was integrating that self awareness and integrating that sense of mortality.
Speaker: 0
01:03:02
It’s like when I I I a a very powerful example of this was I I I die I drown in a pool, I guess, like, nine, ten years ago. I was, doing hypoxic breath work, Wim Hof training Jesus Christ. And, never do Wim Hof training, everybody, please, in a pool, because you’re you’re flushing the c o two from your body, but c o two is what gives you the urge to breathe.
Speaker: 0
01:03:31
And so without carbon dioxide in your being and you’re you don’t feel the urge to breathe. And so Ai and I’ve been a lifetime freediver spearfishing from from when I was five, six years old, but I was never doing hypoxic breath work before freediving. So if you’re diving eighty, ninety, a hundred feet, you’re you’re not flushing the c o two ram your body before you do so.
Speaker: 0
01:03:46
So you have you still have that that sense for when you need to breathe. But I was in a NYU pool. I was at just swimming 50 meters 50 meters back and forth underwater and then doing this this hypoxic worth breath work in between. And then I my last recollection is being stretched out in bliss that those tingles through your body you get from have you done Wim Hof training? Mhmm. Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:04:07
Those, you know, those tingles Mhmm. Had those fucking tingles. And then I woke up thirty minutes later. What happened was that I blacked out. I was in the bottom of the pool for over four minutes after blacking out from shallow water blackout.
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01:04:18
Oh my god.
Speaker: 0
01:04:19
Which should it should be forty five seconds to a minute, and you should be brain dead or dead because you’re post shallow water blackout. I know the time it was because there’s an old man at the pool who saw me in the bottom of the pool and swam one lap, and his his laps were a little bit over a minute, swam a second lap.
Speaker: 0
01:04:34
After his third lap, he said, let me I’ll check on him if he’s still down. He thought I was holding my breath, but I was only holding my breath while swimming. So if I was still, I was fucking out. His fourth lap after his fourth lap, he take pulled me up. I was blue. Oh my god. Body was blue. My head was red. My body saved me.
Speaker: 0
01:04:50
My training saved me and almost and killed me. Sent all the blood to my brain. My eyes were blown out red ai bloodshot for three weeks that followed. And I, I remember waking up and having this everyone looking at everyone around me and, like, what the fuck is everyone? What’s going on, guys? Like, what’s the ram?
Speaker: 0
01:05:06
And I realized that ai the fucking ram. Wow. And I spent that night in the hospital going through old chest variations trying to, like, test my brain. Is my brain ruined? Like, do I remember things? Somehow ai brain maybe it’s fucked up, but it’s seems like it’d be working pretty well. And, I Wow.
Speaker: 0
01:05:24
But, like, I can’t and and and that was also a big part of me realizing I had to spend my life in the in the ocean because, like, I could feel the potential for some PTSD response. Like, I could I could actually feel the potential trauma response ai a cloud that was washing over me.
Speaker: 0
01:05:39
Like, I could see the cloud coming, and I just fucking decided not to let it in. And I got back in the water the next sai. And I I just fucking and I think that’s a big part of my relationship with the ocean is having died in water. I need to spend my life in the water.
Speaker: 1
01:05:55
Did you have any sort of out of body experience or anything while you’re gone?
Speaker: 0
01:05:59
What’s really fucked up about it is no. That’s what’s really wild. It went just black. That’s what’s crazy is that I I went my last memory is of just tingles and bliss and then waking up. And sai if I hadn’t been pulled out, there would have been no flash, no no seeing my life pass before my eyes, no tunnel on the other ai, nothing.
Speaker: 0
01:06:24
You know what’s really fucking ai, though, is that many years later, I was doing this, this guy Ai Powell is a brilliant guy who’s, a train a top Wim Hof trainer and a trainer of trainers of his guys. And I was doing some retreats with teams of mine, and we’re doing some Wim Hof work.
Speaker: 0
01:06:43
And he had this methodology of kind of accelerated hypoxic work where that he said I’m not sure if it’s true, but he said released DMT in your body, inhibited the DMT inhibitors in your body. And I did these journeys with him twice through pure breath work, no psychedelics.
Speaker: 0
01:06:59
And I experienced these two ai, months apart, I experienced one time, I experienced the center of my consciousness as where I as as my busted disc. And I experienced the world through, like, the electrical connections emerging from my from my l four l five. It’s very strange.
Speaker: 0
01:07:18
And the other one was the only memory I have of that, and I’m not sure if this is accurate or some kind of illusion, but, I saw the drowning experience from above, the whole thing. I watched the twenty minutes that I was on the that I was in the bottom of the pool and then up in twenty five minutes and then on the on the pool deck, and I saw the whole thing from above.
Speaker: 0
01:07:39
But that was, like, years after it happened that so I can’t explain that.
Speaker: 1
01:07:45
Were were all the people there, the same people?
Speaker: 0
01:07:48
I don’t know. Ai memory of it consciously from what actually happened is so fuzzy. Right? Mhmm. Because I just died and came back. But but and then I saw I saw it from above. I think I was mostly focused on the memory of of ai. And Mhmm. Yeah. So I I I relate to myself now. Like, I’ve I’ve died, and I’m living. And I I I live with a sense of, gratitude and and, commitment.
Speaker: 0
01:08:13
That’s a big part of why we moved to the jungle with my family. It’s like, I emerged from that with a commitment to living life as beautifully and deeply and truly as I as I possibly could and to and to, not let anything slip. Just all in.
Speaker: 1
01:08:27
Isn’t it fascinating that sometimes it take again, it’s the same thing as, like, loss propels you to a next level. Even the moment in life where you realize it all could just go
Speaker: 0
01:08:38
away like that. So fucking fast. Instantly. No warning. Just gone.
Speaker: 1
01:08:43
No ai warning.
Speaker: 0
01:08:44
I’ve done so many stupid fucking things, like, in these extreme sports I’ve done. You know? Ai, so many times I almost died free diving or Oh, yeah. But that one was different, man.
Speaker: 1
01:08:54
Yeah. Because there was like,
Speaker: 0
01:08:55
I didn’t it was just a the crazy thing was just a technical blind spot. I just didn’t know this thing about carbon dioxide. I didn’t know I was taking a risk in that moment. I thought I was just taking a swim.
Speaker: 1
01:09:05
Has did you learn from other people who do Wim Hof breathing when they swim? After? Or did you Before? No. Before.
Speaker: 0
01:09:13
Oh, yeah. It’s like,
Speaker: 1
01:09:13
who taught you to do this?
Speaker: 0
01:09:15
Nobody. I did one Wim Hof breathing on land, and I was like, you know, I’ll fucking do it. Boy. Let’s do it fucking on the swim right now. Sounds like a great idea.
Speaker: 1
01:09:22
I think other people have done that and died.
Speaker: 0
01:09:24
Yeah. They have. And navy and most people who ai from shallow water blackout are highly trained, navy seals Yeah. Because they’re very good at in at inhibiting the urge to breathe, but you can get too good at it. Or you can just not feel it at all.
Speaker: 1
01:09:39
The ocean is such a fascinating thing. It’s so alive. Yeah. It’s, it’s just sai strange thing when you get in the ocean if you haven’t been for a while. You you climb in and you feel it moving around you and pulling, and and the water just feels different. It feels like it’s a living thing.
Speaker: 1
01:09:57
Like, you’re in a you dunk your head under and you look at this world that’s three quarters of the surface of the Earth, and it’s so it’s so ai, and you see people that are surfers that just get drawn into its speak, and it just becomes a part of their life is to ride that energy and to feel it.
Speaker: 1
01:10:17
And and the addiction that they get from it, guys like Laird, now guys like you. I I know so many people that they like Jocko, he won’t leave San Diego. He doesn’t even wanna be in California. Yes. But Sai Diego is the ocean for him. He has to be by the ocean.
Speaker: 0
01:10:33
Yeah. And and you can’t dominate the ocean No. You have to receive her. Yeah. You you just and if you have any brittleness in your ego, she will kick your ass until you just blend.
Speaker: 1
01:10:45
I know you’re, a favor you you’re in favor of optimizing training and finding ways to learn things quicker. Would wave surf pools, those crazy ones like Kelly Slater style wave surf pools where they have that would give you, like, way more reps. Right?
Speaker: 0
01:11:02
If you’re surfing, for sure. Wave pools have revolutionized, surf training. Because for foiling, you have the ocean. Mhmm. And foiling is much more abundant. Like, in the surf community is quite scarce in some ways because you have to you can only surf in specific kinds of waves.
Speaker: 0
01:11:18
And, like, if you if you’re trying to make one turn, you might not see that section again for two years. You can’t replicate conditions in the ocean. Foiling, you can because you can pump a foil. You can drive it down, let it float back up, and drive it down sai you can and you can or you can whip yourself on a ai a jet ski into a certain kind of wave.
Speaker: 0
01:11:34
So if I wanna work on, like, a certain turn, I can get forty, fifty reps in a given day. Well, surfing pre wave pool, you couldn’t at all. So most great surfers, I would my are are brilliant low rep learners. They because by necessity in the ocean, you don’t get tons of reps. Right.
Speaker: 0
01:11:50
So in my observation, the greatest, like, competitive surfers in the world are excellent at learning from one or two reps like Marcela Garcia is on the mats. I’m not sai I’m not naturally a great tyler rep learner. I’m a higher rep learner. Foiling is one one could say it’s it’s it’s more technically complex than surfing because it’s everything that surfing is, but also you have a foil which has lift dynamics and a tail, and you can change the foil shape, the tail shape, the, the if you change the angle of attack on your tail by a quarter degree, it changes the whole feel of everything.
Speaker: 0
01:12:22
It’s super technical. And so meh ways, one could argue that it’s harder. I wouldn’t say not that it’s hard. These any of these arts are infinitely deep as because you can refine anything for forever. But it’s it’s more technical shit to deal with, but you it’s more trainable because you can replicate conditions, like you now can in wave pools.
Speaker: 0
01:12:43
Wave pools for surfers now, you can you can hit the same section thirty, forty times. So I do I do think it’s an it’s incredible. But the interesting thing is that most surfers of this generation aren’t, they don’t train in the same way that chess players do or jiu jitsu fighters do because it’s a low rep art that you do can’t replicate conditions in.
Speaker: 0
01:13:02
So surfers aren’t most surfers aren’t constructed psychologically in a way that they will take advantage of wave pools the way, a jujitsu guy would. That’s interesting. Like drilling. Like, you drill Psychologically.
Speaker: 1
01:13:14
That’s interesting because they’re accustomed to just taking what the ocean gives you.
Speaker: 0
01:13:17
You can’t just take a low rep learner and tell them to to, like, live like a high rep learner. Mhmm. It’s a different fucking thing. Right. Right? And and it’s it’s very interesting to me that, so surfers crossing over to foiling is very interesting because they a lot of surfers some surfers do it, and they just they’re all in, and they they wanna take it on.
Speaker: 0
01:13:33
A lot of the high ai best surfers in the world are crossing over, But it’s a different lifestyle. The ones who cross over, the ones who can embrace the high rep training life.
Speaker: 1
01:13:41
The one who can adapt. Yeah. Yeah. That’s the the low rep training thing with surfing, I never really considered, but that does make sense. You have to be able to optimize. You have to be able to take advantage of each one of those things and pick it up pretty quickly.
Speaker: 0
01:13:54
You have to. Especially in the early think about, like, learning as a as a kid. And then, like, everything you’re exposed to that the ocean’s always moving, always changing. But if you can, like, learn from one rep and burn it in, then that just well, in jiu jitsu, for example, you can sai, I’m gonna drill this arm bar 40 times today, 40 times, like, this afternoon, hundreds of times, thousands of times over the next two weeks.
Speaker: 0
01:14:18
Right? So you can get as many reps as you need. Mhmm. It’s not true in the ocean.
Speaker: 1
01:14:22
Right. Yeah. It totally makes sense. Why do you think that children learn quicker than adults?
Speaker: 0
01:14:29
Yeah. Beautiful question. I think it’s I think a lot about unlearning. Right? So my life’s work is unlearning, and I think a lot about unlearning because so much of what high level learning is is be being unblocked, which is getting rid of the blocks, the egoic blocks, the false constructs we have, the fucking bullshit we put on everything we do, trying to control the situation.
Speaker: 0
01:14:50
We should just embrace the lack of con children don’t have to unlearn that. They haven’t learned it in the first place. So they’re unblocked. Like, my little boy Charlie learning how to surf was so beautiful to watch. He just like, he he grew up in the ocean.
Speaker: 0
01:15:02
He grew up in the jungle and ocean, and he just, from a young age, was swimming and tumbling, and we made a game of tumbling. And then when he first got on the surfboard, it was like it wasn’t we didn’t make it technical. It wasn’t like he should, telling him what to do. It was like he could be right foot forward or left foot forward. It wasn’t we didn’t impose things on him.
Speaker: 0
01:15:22
He just, like, danced on the board and would find his way, and he started doing things that were very technical that he would just create. It was pure playfulness. Well, if you watch people come to a surf like a surf break who are ai New Yorkers who travel down for five days, and they’ve got all this gear.
Speaker: 0
01:15:36
The gear is amazing. They’ve got, like, gloves and booties and knee guards and, like, everything is covered, white face. Everything is just, like, not a part of their body is designed to touch the ocean. They’re trying to keep the ocean away. And they’re, like, they wanna be super controlling about everything they learn.
Speaker: 0
01:15:51
They’re, like everything is so regimented in their ai, but they’re trying to control their relationship with the ocean. But But the way to learn on the ocean is to not control it, to embrace it, to listen listen to it, to observe it, to feel it, to, like, let it envelope you.
Speaker: 0
01:16:04
Right? Right. Kids will just play. They’re not afraid of failing. They’ll they’ll just, like, the moment a kid becomes afraid of looking bad, like, you see that wash over kids when they’re, like, nine, 10, 11, 12, some different ages.
Speaker: 1
01:16:17
Mhmm.
Speaker: 0
01:16:17
And they become, oh, they don’t wanna fall. They don’t wanna look bad. And then then then that’s when they get locked up.
Speaker: 1
01:16:23
Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:16:23
The freedom of I mean, to me, a lot of what, like, the beacon is is as adults, is being the postconscious discovering the postconscious freedom as a learner. Mhmm. Like, how can we learn without the egoic blocks, right, Without having to look good. So if you’re crossing over like, if you’re a a world class striker and you’re getting on the jutsu mats and getting your ass kicked, or if you’re a great jiu jitsu fighter and you get onto an MMA gym and suddenly the guys can just beat the shit out of you.
Speaker: 0
01:16:50
Like, having or a great surfer switching over to foiling. Right? Or a great chess player moving into the martial arya. So you’re fucking or if you’re, like, training in some esoteric, you know, Chinese martial art like I was, and then you’re moving to the jiu jitsu match, you might have some ego, but you’re just tapping out to everybody all the time.
Speaker: 0
01:17:04
Right? And, like, having the freedom to learn without egoic blocks is and I actually think vatsal, culturally, this is one of the most important things that we need to cultivate because we’re living in a world now where the pace of technological disruption is accelerating so fast.
Speaker: 0
01:17:21
Ai know you’ve done a bunch of of, explorations on this with with, with with Tristan Harris and others in in terms of what AI is bringing to society. It’s been a big focus of mine for many, many years, and it’s an area where where I’m working. I think that that we are going to be living in a world where AI is better at everything than we are. Right?
Speaker: 0
01:17:45
So if you think about it in the context of chess, I grew up in the world of where chess was crossing over into the computer realm. So computers are first like, I I began playing chess in the precomputer era, computer chess era, then computers entered. And I initially was very resistant romantic to it.
Speaker: 0
01:18:01
And I remember at ai, I started developing Chessmaster, this computer chess ram. Ai developed this academy of mine for the next ten years that followed teaching the human side of chess through computers. But when it first they first approached me, I didn’t wanna do it because I I felt like it was gonna disrupt.
Speaker: 0
01:18:17
It was gonna kill the beauty of of of human chess, the art of chess, which is so much about imperfection. And then but, like, chess players when I grew up had to sit in the unknowing, in tyler they had to have a tolerance of cognitive distance. You might Sai might study a chess position and go three months without knowing what the solution is. Right?
Speaker: 0
01:18:36
So our psychologies had to be constructed so that we could sit in cognitive and emotional distance for long, long periods of time, days, weeks, months, sometimes years. Now chess players can click on a button, and they’ve got a supercomputer right by their side. Sai will tell them the answer instantly.
Speaker: 0
01:18:50
It’s interesting to think about how different that is psychologically and the different kinds of people that that draws in. But what happened then is that you had Deep Blue enter the game, like supercomputers, and then you had the movement of AI entering into chess. And we had AlphaGo and then AlphaZero, which came out of DeepMind. So Demas Hassabis was was the developer of DeepMind. He was a child of chess friend of mine.
Speaker: 0
01:19:12
So Demis and I ram age 11 on were were good friends, and we had dialogue about the birth of DeepMind, which was this AI company he began. And then he developed AlphaGo and AlphaZero. And to give give a feel for what AlphaZero did in chess, alpha zero was able to, without being taught anything about humans playing chess, no education of, like, the history of human chess playing.
Speaker: 0
01:19:33
Within three hours of experimentation was stronger than any human or computer in history. So imagine your life’s work. Like, you know, I was a pretty good chess player. Right? Like, someone like Magnus Carlsen is a much, much stronger chess he’s a world champion. Gary Kasparov, Anastoly Karpov, Bobby Fischer. Like, think about people who are world champions.
Speaker: 0
01:19:50
AlphaZero within three hours of experimentation without being taught anything, was stronger than them. Right? So, like, we really need so the strongest AI engine in the world today is rated 3,700 ELO. So to give a sense for what that means, when I was nine years old, my rating was, like, 1,900 or so. Right?
Speaker: 0
01:20:09
Magnus Carlsen is, like, the strongest or the, you know, the strongest human players in the world now are rated somewhere about 2,800, 20 eight 50 ish ELO. The strongest AI is 3,700 ELO. So just, like, the absurdity of the fact, the gap between, like, a a strong nine year old and the human world champion is the same elo ram gap as between the world champion and the strongest AI.
Speaker: 0
01:20:31
Wow. It gets so hard for us to really wrap our heads around what that means. That means that everything like, chess players had a front row seat to that happening early. And ai I listened to some of your dialogues with, these ai, and I I I could feel you and them trying to grapple with, like, how to communicate what it means to to have these these insanely powerful intelligences in the world.
Speaker: 0
01:20:56
And I think, like, if you can imagine, like, an art like chess having millennia of development, people studying it ai you train jiu jitsu. Right? So imagine people’s training ten hours a day for thirty, forty years being the greatest human in the world at it, and then something can come in and within three hours of experimentation be much stronger than them.
Speaker: 0
01:21:13
And imagine that’s gonna be in fucking everything. Nuts. Right? So, like, we have to be like children in how we learn. We’re gonna have to, like, release the egoic relationship that we have to our level, to our knowledge, to everything. One of Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:21:31
You know the great, you know Thomas Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions?
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01:21:35
Yes.
Speaker: 0
01:21:35
Right. So, like, you think about what happens, what the human has to do to the internal resistance we have to overcome to embrace the new paradigm. So let’s say you’re a Newtonian physicist. Right? You’ve been studying physics your whole life. You’ve got tenure. You’ve got forty, fifty years of knowledge built up. Everyone reveres you.
Speaker: 0
01:21:51
And now there’s this new thing. Quantum mechanics enters the picture. Right? Like, to embrace this new thing is to is to admit to oneself and everybody else that your life’s work is ai of you have to release it. It’s wrong.
Speaker: 0
01:22:05
It’s old. Right? This new paradigm is but we resist it individually Ego. Ego. We Yeah. And societally. Right?
Speaker: 0
01:22:12
Because we will fight tooth and nail to maintain our conceptual schemes. That’s one of our strongest drivers of all humans. Right?
Speaker: 1
01:22:18
Mhmm.
Speaker: 0
01:22:18
And so I think we’re moving into a world now where you’re gonna have 37, 30 eight hundred Elo rated everything, kicking our ass at everything. So we have to become like children, to go back to your question, in my opinion, and how we relate to learning. Right? We can’t the decision making. Right?
Speaker: 0
01:22:37
Like, when, you know, we think about, like, social media. Imagine a 3,800 ELO rated network. Imagine net a million networked, 3,800 Elo rated super super intelligences ai everything that they can gather about you on social media to manipulate to manipulate you to do whatever that it wants or whoever is controlling it wants.
Speaker: 0
01:23:00
They can have you do anything. Right. But we have to, like it’s so hard for us to admit that we are the ant relative to the human. Right? Like, we are the ant. We have to have that humility. Mhmm.
Speaker: 0
01:23:14
And one of the things that, I think that that’s the most important question today as that we face as a species is, like, what do we do?
Speaker: 1
01:23:24
Well, we won’t know until it happens, and we will become a different thing. We will have to admit that we are no longer the Speak Intelligence on the planet. We will have something that’s akin to an artificial life form that’s far superior to us in reasoning, access to resources, logic. It’ll be far more technically proficient.
Speaker: 1
01:23:49
It’ll make far better versions of itself probably pretty quickly. They’ve already seen Ai duplicating itself. It’s not being prompted
Speaker: 0
01:23:58
to do this. But when you say we don’t I mean, I would argue it. We we should operate as if it’s already happening. It’s in an ability.
Speaker: 1
01:24:05
So it is happening, but it hasn’t completely transformed life yet.
Speaker: 0
01:24:09
Right.
Speaker: 1
01:24:09
It’s it’s emerging.
Speaker: 0
01:24:10
Ai? It’s about to.
Speaker: 1
01:24:11
It’s a yeah. It’s a god. It’s a god that’s emerging. And if it’s not a god yet, it’ll be a god in fifty years. It just it is it’s going to be attached to quantum computing. It’s going to figure out ways to implement better strategies as far as utilization of energy, resources.
Speaker: 1
01:24:28
It’ll be much better at everything than we are. Yeah. And then the question is, will it be used to manipulate us? Will it be used to control populations? Will it be Elon says his estimation says there’s an 80 to 90% chance it’ll have a radically positive impact on society vatsal large.
Speaker: 1
01:24:50
That ai% likelihood that it’ll radically improve the quality of everyone’s life. But then there’s 20 or 10% that it will not and that we’ll be imprisoned. This is ai 10% possibility of the matrix, you know, 90% possibility of a technologically inspired utopia. My my feeling about
Speaker: 0
01:25:15
it is that I mean, there are places where it’s gonna be incredibly it’s gonna be beautiful, like just how computer chess raised the, the level of of human chess game chess players. Right? And now AI chess has made chess players, meh, much stronger. And and part of it is because great chess players are partially great because they have had they’re they’re excellent at knowing where not to look. Right?
Speaker: 0
01:25:43
Great chess players don’t actually look at more. They look at less, but they look in the right most potent directions. And what’s fascinating is that AI entering the picture has forced really strong chess players to unlearn where they’ve been correct to learn not to look. So in other words, areas where they were well trained not to look because humans couldn’t play those positions, AI can now play those positions.
Speaker: 0
01:26:08
And, actually, those are the right positions to play. They’re the objectively correct positions to play. But now humans studying with an AI can be much better at playing those positions. Right? And so, like, for example, I’m working on this fascinating project, called Ai Sai, which is focused on combining cutting edge science, the best ai in the world, and cutting edge AI to try to have huge breakthroughs in, material science and life sciences.
Speaker: 0
01:26:32
And now that can only be done, in my opinion, with just best best best in class safety practices. And in my view, like, you that involves having a higher level AI running safety than you have running the actual science.
Speaker: 1
01:26:47
When you say safety, like, what are you what are you referring to?
Speaker: 0
01:26:50
Making sure that we don’t do that doesn’t go wild that you that you don’t create things that get out there that could be terribly destructive. I think that that the part of the AI race that’s happening is that people are driven by ego, and there’s an there’s a there’s, like, a game theory of a race going on.
Speaker: 0
01:27:09
And when you have a race, everyone just running running as fast as they can, but they’re not if they slow down to think about what’s safe, they might fall behind in the race. Sana I I believe, ethically, if we’re in the AI scene at all, then we must be developing safety practices that are making it responsible.
Speaker: 1
01:27:27
That’s a very logical perspective. Unfortunately, we are in a race, and that’s where it gets weird. Right? And because we’re not just in a race in America. Right.
Speaker: 0
01:27:35
We’re in
Speaker: 1
01:27:35
a race internationally. And, the consequences of losing the race are grave. It’s akin to the consequences of losing the Manhattan Project of Yeah. Not be coming to the bomb the first, not being the first to implement a bomb, which is really crazy to think. But I think it’s that on steroids.
Speaker: 1
01:27:56
I think it’s the Manhattan Project on steroids because I think it has the if if used in the wrong way, it has the the possibility of completely imprisoning society. All you’d have to do is lock down resources, food, power, electricity, everything. And you you’ve put society in a complete halt.
Speaker: 1
01:28:17
If you can figure out a way to completely disable grids and, you know, every car has a computer in it now. Most cars are connected to Ai. It’s most new ones have at least an option to connect it. There’s a way that someone could connect to your arya. And this is this is crazy.
Speaker: 1
01:28:34
In phones, everyone’s reliant completely on your phone. There’s AI in your phone now. Who knows what what could happen if that got hijacked? You know, there’s a a guy named Robert Epstein who spent a lot of time, analyzing what the impact of, core, curated searches can do to presidential elections, to public opinion on things, and that when you’re getting a search, where you’re using Google or some of these search engines, you’re getting curated search results.
Speaker: 1
01:29:05
If you look for specific, political opinions, political positions, you will get a curated result that is oftentimes skewed in, whatever ideology towards whatever ideology the people that programmed it are are, you know, they’re aligned with. So if you Google something about Donald Trump, you will have as many negative responses they could possibly throw to the front of the line.
Speaker: 1
01:29:33
It will take you page after page after page to find what you’re looking for, but you’ll be confronted immediately with negative stuff. Now if you’re a person that’s in the middle and maybe a person that’s undecided in, an electoral process, in in an electoral race, you can be swayed in a significant manner.
Speaker: 1
01:29:52
And he estimates it’s as high as 30 to 50% of the people that are on the fence that are sort of undecided voters can be swayed by search result engines, which is kind of crazy. And that’s just, you know, an algorithm. That’s just something that they’ve ai. This is not, like, a purposeful changing of narratives in order to implement whatever strategy they think would be the best for them financially, whether it’s a central bank digital currency or social credit score system or something, where they could completely control behavior and have your behavior locked up to your bank account, locked up to your ability to make a living, your ability to travel.
Speaker: 1
01:30:35
That’s spooky stuff because that’s all Ai. And a if if AI can be if someone figures out the best version of AI that can traverse these boundaries that we have with encryption and with grids and computer systems and just completely lock everything down, we’re fucked.
Speaker: 0
01:30:56
Yeah. That’s why I don’t you know, when I when I hear people say things like that 80 to 90% positive, I feel like they’re they’re they’re jumping to the destination without thinking about the journey to it because the journey to it is gonna involve so much disruption, so much pain, so much chaos.
Speaker: 0
01:31:12
And I think what you just said about grids and everything is true. I mean, you think about about how many people had the ability to disrupt in that way fifteen years ago, handful of countries. Right. Right now it’s gonna be hundreds of thousands or millions of individuals who just have access to super code super coders. Right. Right?
Speaker: 0
01:31:29
And so how could it be 80 to 90% positive when there is just gonna be limitless humans who have the ability to disrupt armed with 3,800 ELO rated coders that can do anything you sana. Hackers. It’s just, like, insane.
Speaker: 1
01:31:46
In the hands of broken people.
Speaker: 0
01:31:47
It’s much easier to destroy than to create. Yeah. Right? You can create for thousands of years, and you destroy instantly. Yep. Right? So it only takes one terribly destructive act or a handful of them to overcome all the positive. I I don’t believe that that 90% thing is is right.
Speaker: 0
01:32:02
I think that there are areas ai science where we could easily create materials that could have a massively positive impact on the climate. We could have life science breakthroughs that eliminate cancer, eliminate diseases, make the human ai hundreds of years. I think those things could happen, which is great.
Speaker: 0
01:32:18
I also think that we could be manipulated into doing increasingly destructive things, And we could have horrific things happen ai, like the grid. You know, there’s a guy there’s a guy who’s very brilliant in the espionage world years ago who said to me he said to me, you know, he he’s someone who would know.
Speaker: 0
01:32:38
And he said, you know, Josh, what you don’t realize is a strong AI, and this was years ago, armed with the information that the social media companies have about you, could convince 99% of Americans to move to Alaska or Antarctica or anywhere within two weeks easily. Easily. I mean, just just like it’s it’s so hard to have the humility that we are the ant relative to the human. Yeah. Right?
Speaker: 0
01:33:10
If you have a 3,800 ai, I’m just using that, rated intelligence trying to manipulate you and it’s armed with everything. I mean, humans can manipulate you with what’s on social media.
Speaker: 1
01:33:20
Yeah. With a British accent and infomercial.
Speaker: 0
01:33:23
Yeah. No problem. Show some leg. You’re gone. Yeah. I mean, it’s just so hard to have the so we have to have the, like, the real humility that we are manipulatable. And a superintelligence, which is out there, and there are humans controlling the superintelligence so far, maybe that will end.
Speaker: 0
01:33:40
So I I personally feel I know you everyone should get the fuck off social media. I just think it’s like, I I think that’s the most important thing. Because everything that we’re feeding in to I’ve never been on social media. I made that decision a long time ago.
Speaker: 1
01:33:52
Really? When did you make it?
Speaker: 0
01:33:53
I was never on it. I made it ai when first, I remember when, like, Myspace came out, like What
Speaker: 1
01:33:58
did you what did you think at the time? I
Speaker: 0
01:33:59
said, fuck that. Really? Yeah. I didn’t I didn’t it felt off to me. It felt like something I didn’t wanna be involved with. I I didn’t not I’m not saying that I was prescient and I saw everything that would happen, but I never would there was some people who were impersonating me on social media and but I was never on any form of social media.
Speaker: 0
01:34:19
And and,
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01:34:20
Good for you.
Speaker: 0
01:34:21
Yeah. I I mean I’m on everything but TikTok. TikTok is fucked. It’s hilarious. I was I was when I was flying here, I was listening to your your conversation with Tristan Harris Ai. The dude next to me was was scrolling TikTok on the plane. And it was amazing listening to this dialogue here and watching him just ai Watching it happen It’s an hour and a half straight. It’s like, ram foom.
Speaker: 0
01:34:42
It was incredible. I’ve never actually seen someone fucking do that. It was the most brainless thing I’ve ever seen in my life. It’s
Speaker: 1
01:34:48
so brainless and so addictive.
Speaker: 0
01:34:50
And so manipulative. Like, you can just just just just like, it can guide you to anything you but why don’t we there’s one thing I kinda disagreed with you on this talk where where you you were saying that you just don’t think that humans are going to do anything about it until we’re we’re forced to.
Speaker: 0
01:35:04
But I I don’t know, man. I think that what if we just wake the fuck up and take ourselves off of this thing that can be used to steer us anywhere this other humans or AI wants to steer us. Like, why don’t we just remove ourselves from it? Well, that’s
Speaker: 1
01:35:20
a very rational perspective.
Speaker: 0
01:35:22
Let’s just fucking do it.
Speaker: 1
01:35:22
Most people aren’t rational.
Speaker: 0
01:35:23
But why don’t we help people be rational and just just You have to change
Speaker: 1
01:35:28
the the whole way they interface with ai. And that’s a big ask. It’s not as simple as logically social media is bad for you, I’ll stay off. The the small dopamine hit that you get from opening up reels, just scrolling through and seeing when people get knocked out and car accidents and big boobs, that is, for whatever reason, much more compelling than the idea of possessing autonomy.
Speaker: 1
01:35:56
And the the idea of, you know, having the ability to completely remove yourself from the thing that everyone’s addicted to, which is likes and engagement and and getting an outrage. The algorithm showing you things over and over again that outrage you. It’s it’s so compelling to people, and we’re so averse to being bored that at any time when nothing’s going on, you pick up your phone, you start start scrolling.
Speaker: 1
01:36:24
At any time, you just get nonsense just fed into your head at any time.
Speaker: 0
01:36:28
But think about, like, the first time that someone experiences jiu jitsu. Right? They get on the vatsal, and they’re and they ai they they might have some hubris. They’re an athlete. Maybe they’ve done some stand up. Maybe they haven’t. They’re a football player or whatever. And they suddenly are like a fish out of water.
Speaker: 0
01:36:43
They’re flopping on the sand. Right? They’re and their joints are being popped, and they’re being choked out. They and the humility that they experience. Right? Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:36:50
Like, I think we need to culturally experience that humility before it’s too late because that’s what that’s how manipulatable we are. Yeah. Just how, like, a first day grappler is on the on the jiu jitsu mats against a a decent fighter, a decent grappler, like, that’s how helpless we are next to a 3,800 Elo, which exists.
Speaker: 1
01:37:12
Mhmm. It’ll
Speaker: 0
01:37:12
be stronger than 30. I’m just saying that because that word is now. Right. It’ll be much so far stronger than that tomorrow.
Speaker: 1
01:37:17
Once it’s attached to quantum computing, it literally would be a god. Yeah. And we’re we’re about to experience the most bizarre transition that I think any human civilization has ever experienced. And, you know, it’s in it’s electricity times a billion. It’s, you know, computers times a billion. It’s it’s something completely different, and we’re gonna adapt to it. We’re going to have to. We’re gonna have to figure it out.
Speaker: 1
01:37:42
It’s just what will that be ai? What will life be like when we adapt to it? That’s what things that’s when things are gonna get strange. I think the 80 to 90% improvement of of life experience, I think what he’s talking about quality of life experience, I think what he’s talking about is it’ll make allocation of resources much more efficient.
Speaker: 1
01:38:06
It’ll be much easier to get water and and health services to third world countries. So it’ll be much easier to to keep power on in places. It’ll be much easier for people to get sanitation, medicine, things along those lines. And then starving, poverty, nutrition, all those things could probably worked out in a far more efficient and a far more effective way. Then the problem is control. Yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:38:36
That’s the problem. The problem is human beings. Every single government, every single leader ship position, every everything involves control. The CEO controls the company. The president controls the country.
Speaker: 1
01:38:49
There’s congress. There’s senators. Control, control, control. Everything is control and and then financial benefit from that control. That’s where it gets scary because whoever is actually programming this thing as we’ve seen with Google’s AI disaster when they ram their, AI to show you images of Nazis and it showed you multicultural, multiethnic, you know, multiracial Nazis.
Speaker: 1
01:39:15
Like, instead of actual
Speaker: 0
01:39:17
Right.
Speaker: 1
01:39:17
Like, what is it though? No. Nazis with fucking dueling scars on their face, hard looking scary German dudes. That’s Nazis. These are not Nazis. This is a fever dream. This is some nuttiness that you’ve, you’ve put your DEI nonsense into, an artificial version of what the past is. That’s crazy. You can’t do that.
Speaker: 1
01:39:40
Because if you start doing that with everything else, then we have a distorted version of reality itself by the most potent intelligence that we currently have at our disposal, and that’s nuts.
Speaker: 0
01:39:50
The question is, what should we do? And, like, as individuals, societally I mean, I know you’re you’re having dialogue with people who have a lot of ideas about the sai. Ai I’m thinking about it on the individual level, as well. And it goes like, your question about children and learning. Mhmm. Right?
Speaker: 0
01:40:07
I I feel that there’s something about having that beginner’s mind Mhmm. Which is so liberating.
Speaker: 1
01:40:13
Yes.
Speaker: 0
01:40:13
Right? And it’s very difficult for adults to release their egoic addiction to what they do, to their habits, right, to what props up their identity. But I think that what we could do is take on thinking, take on learning, take on the art of decision making, for example, with a beginner’s mind for the world that’s coming.
Speaker: 0
01:40:38
Like, you think about skating to where the puck is go is going, not to where it was or where it used to be. Right? So what does it mean to be a human in the world that we’re a year or two or three away ram? Right, where there’s a superintelligence out there that can manipulate us, where where so many jobs are lost?
Speaker: 1
01:40:53
Well, let me throw that at you. What do you think the world will look like?
Speaker: 0
01:40:58
What do I think it will look like? Yeah. I think that we’re going to have thrillingly exciting discoveries being made. We’re gonna have problems solved that we are, as humans, unable to solve. And so there’ll be, like, amazing technological innovations that are gonna make things much more convenient.
Speaker: 0
01:41:18
I think there’ll be huge life science breakthroughs. I think there’ll be huge material science breakthroughs. I think there will be wild competition for who controls it, and I completely agree with you about that. And I think that, it as that unfolds, it’s gonna be really messy.
Speaker: 0
01:41:36
I think that there’s going to be, like, unbelievable amounts of jobs are gonna be lost, and the people are gonna not have jobs. So what the fuck are they gonna do? Right? Right? So this is part of what I’m describing.
Speaker: 0
01:41:46
People need to
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01:41:47
Right.
Speaker: 0
01:41:47
Train at the ability to recreate themselves. Right? Like like, how some people can move from one art to another and others can’t. I think we have to train at the art of rediscovery. Right? So I think we’re going to be tested as a species in our ability to to recreate our identities and to live in a state of dynamic flux, of embracing new paradigms.
Speaker: 0
01:42:06
Paradigms are gonna be shifting all the fucking time. The pace of change is going to be radically accelerating for the rest of our ai, the rest of our lives. Right? Sai if that pace of change is accelerating, then we need to have the ability to recreate ourselves as things shift.
Speaker: 0
01:42:21
We we all know that, like, you you can’t be solving the problem that was important, like, in a fight a minute ago.
Speaker: 1
01:42:27
Right.
Speaker: 0
01:42:28
Right? It’s a different fucking problem than we have right ai.
Speaker: 1
01:42:30
Right.
Speaker: 0
01:42:30
Or in a chess game an hour ago or ten minutes ago or one minute ago. Right? As a society, we need to be solving the problems that are and that are coming, not the ones that were ten years ago that we’re emotionally addicted to.
Speaker: 1
01:42:39
Right.
Speaker: 0
01:42:40
But humans don’t fucking do that. Right. Right? We we are we tend to cling to our ideas, the decisions we made. Then we try to justify our ideas. We cling to ai identities. I mean, I I think that this question of identity is a is a really important one, whether it relates to a belief system, a decision you’ve made.
Speaker: 0
01:42:58
Like, this idea of humans fighting tooth and nail to maintain our conceptual schemes
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01:43:02
is
Speaker: 0
01:43:02
something like, you think about someone who has, like, what what one might frame as, like, a fear of success. Right? Like, that’s a term people use, fear of success. The way I understand fear of success is that ai do people undermine themselves when they are close to something that they want, right, to a breakthrough of the year.
Speaker: 0
01:43:20
I think the reason is because if their conceptual scheme, if their identity is in not being the person who wins the big game, right, or who succeeds, it is more terrifying to succeed than it is to give up that old identity. That’s a core driver of human psychology. Right? In competition, that’s a lot of what we do. Right?
Speaker: 0
01:43:38
We plant identities in people, tells in people, little egoic addictions in people, and then we exploit the mind being stuck there because it’s not dynamic. It can’t keep on moving. Right? Like, Robert Persig, my favorite the most important philosopher ai my life, Robert Persig wrote Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance.
Speaker: 0
01:43:55
Have you read have you read that book? I did. Awesome. He was a really important person in my life. I could tell you an interesting story about him.
Speaker: 0
01:44:03
His idea of dynamic quality. Right? I think we have to live in a state of dynamic quality, not static quality. Ai? Like, you think about the front of the freight train surging through space time versus sitting in the restaurant car.
Speaker: 0
01:44:15
Like, we wanna be strapped to the front of the freight train as reality is unfolding and adapting to the new realities, and I think we need to build the the way of life that allows us to to do that. Right. Right? And I have a lot of ideas about what that way of life looks like.
Speaker: 0
01:44:30
I think if we don’t do that, then we’re gonna be dinosaurs in a fucking world with the comet coming, and it’s gonna blow us the fuck up. So we need to create the ability to to reinvent ourselves, to be creative, to adapt.
Speaker: 1
01:44:43
So what do you think happens with all these people that lose their jobs? Because most people believe that some form of universal basic income people who study this believe that some form of universal basic income is inevitable and mess and necessary. I worry about that psychologically because I worry about people being dependent upon checks from the state and not having agency and not having a, personal sense of worth.
Speaker: 1
01:45:11
You know, I think people, identify with what they do. Someone’s a great mechanic and they have a great relationship with the people that bring their cars to them and they they enjoy being able to fix things and help people. They they identify with this. This is a part of who they are. Now they’re a person who fixes cars and works on cars.
Speaker: 1
01:45:29
If that’s gone and now all of a sudden they just have a check, who are they?
Speaker: 0
01:45:34
What do dudes do when they got when they have nothing to do?
Speaker: 1
01:45:37
Well, it depends on the dude. You know? Some people learn new things. Some people get ai, and some people there’s gonna be people that take advantage of it in a very positive way. If there’s a if there’s ai a a like a real living wage that you get from the government, where you really don’t have to worry about your housing anymore, you don’t have to worry about your food.
Speaker: 1
01:45:54
I mean, I think that would be if you were an ambitious person, that would be amazing. So as then you could dedicate yourself entirely to what you love, whatever that thing is, and just really dive into that and let that become your focus in life. And we’re we’re accustomed to believing that survival itself is the the primary driving force. Food and shelter is the primary driving force for this intelligent species of human beings.
Speaker: 1
01:46:23
But part of me sai, why? Mhmm. Why is that? Why does that have to be your driving force? Because shouldn’t if we have unlimited resources, which assuming they will assumingly we will with Ai, if it’s implemented correctly.
Speaker: 1
01:46:36
We have unlimited resources in terms of your ability to never worry about being hungry, never worry about shelter. You would hope that what people would do then is pursue their dreams, but some people don’t have fucking dreams. Some people, they’ve gone too far down this journey of life with a rigid mindset and a very limited perspective, and now they’re forced to change.
Speaker: 1
01:47:01
And many will change, but many will not. And that’s where it gets weird because then you have a whole entire class of society, an enormous swath of human beings that are addicted to TikTok, that now get checks, have no hobbies or interests, live off garbage food, and they’re lost.
Speaker: 1
01:47:22
Yeah. And they’re being tyler, probably, they’re being manipulated that someone’s responsible for this, that these people need to be taken down and shut down. We need to return to our old way of life. You give enormous potential for for unrest.
Speaker: 0
01:47:38
Well, I think that, like, I’ve in dialogue that I’ve had over the past ten years or so with people who are AI optimists, there’s this jump to the utopian future. Right, where where every ai, land of abundance, no more resource scarcity. Everything is beautiful. People have the ability to study art and poetry and opera and ai.
Speaker: 0
01:47:59
They don’t need to work anymore. They don’t need to be grinding anymore. They can think about philosophy, etcetera, etcetera. That’s the argument. Let’s just, like, assume that that would be a positive end. I’m not so sure.
Speaker: 0
01:48:09
I think that we have some other energies flowing through us that we won’t wanna express. But let’s just, like, say that that would be great. The problem is getting there. Right? So in the in in chess, there’s this interesting dynamic between strategy and tactics all its own. Right?
Speaker: 0
01:48:23
We need to liberate ourselves from to to be strategic and to think ahead. Like, think about what would be the ideal place to go, but then we also have to get the tactics right, the math right to get there. We can’t just hang our queen or hang our bishop or hang our rook on the path to our strategic dream. Right? We need to integrate execution with strategic dreaming.
Speaker: 0
01:48:40
Because often if we’re thinking too much tactically, we can’t see the long term plan we wanna we want to to to utilize. Right? Like, the the end result we wanna move toward. And and so when I think about this path of AI, I think there’s gonna be so much disruption along the way to that place of resource abundance and utopia.
Speaker: 0
01:48:58
Even if that was a positive place, I think it’s gonna be really messy path to get there. Yeah. But for us to navigate the path, the question to me now is, what do what should we be doing as individuals, as a speak, in order to allow us to navigate that path?
Speaker: 1
01:49:14
Well, I think certain people certainly if universal income becomes ubiquitous, we’re certainly gonna need some sort of guidance. We’re we’re certainly gonna need some something that guides people towards a feeling of relevancy, towards a feeling of purpose. Like, you gotta you gotta give people something.
Speaker: 0
01:49:32
Training is a beautiful
Speaker: 1
01:49:33
thing to do. Any any kind of training. Anything where you’re learning something. But again, it comes to this comfort thing. You and I have very similar paths in life and that we’ve sought things that are many people find uncomfortable and difficult. And I think there’s great value in uncomfortable and difficult things and in the beginner’s mindset and the learner’s mindset because there’s just you learn more about everything by learning about something.
Speaker: 1
01:50:00
And I I I’ve lived my life like that and so have you. And there’s many people out there that resonate with these ideas and they they also live their life like that and they get ai, but there’s many people that don’t. And those are the people that I really worry about. The people that just want a good job where there’s nothing wrong with that.
Speaker: 1
01:50:17
There’s nothing wrong with wanting a good job and being able to take care of your family and having a place where you enjoy working and being able to go there every day. And when that’s taken away from people and they have to kind of restructure the entire way they interface with reality, and then there’s this bizarre connection with the government now where the government the government is now your provider.
Speaker: 1
01:50:42
It’s not just for the people ai the people. It’s not, you know, representative of the people. It’s now your provider, which is a very strange relationship to have. And, you know, we see it in welfare states and, you know, which I think social safety nets are very important.
Speaker: 1
01:50:57
I think if we’re we’re gonna be a compassionate society, we need to be able to take care of people that aren’t doing well because a lot of life is about fortune. And sometimes people run into horribly unfortunate situations and there’s massive potential in those people. And those people can realize that potential if they’re helped.
Speaker: 1
01:51:14
And I think that’s real too. But I do think there’s a certain psychological aspect to having the state take care of all your food and money and resources and and and housing vatsal of a bryden, who are you? And what what do you do to give yourself meaning if you’re not the type of person that seeks out difficult things and you’re 45 or 47 years old or whatever you arya, and this is happening to you, like and you you feel lost.
Speaker: 1
01:51:42
Like, there’s gonna be a lot of people like that. And throughout history, the times terrible times have been very cruel to people who weren’t prepared.
Speaker: 0
01:51:53
Yeah.
Speaker: 1
01:51:54
And, you know, I worry about it almost like an intellectual famine, you know, like a psychological famine that people will be deprived of the thing that they have rested their hat upon, ai, their identity, who they are, what what it means, their their sense of purpose, that it’ll be pulled away from them. That scares the shit out of meh, especially when I know how many people meh addicted to drugs and how many people get addicted to all sorts of weird lifestyle choices to provide them with some dopamine or some rush or some just something that makes them feel like they’re alive.
Speaker: 0
01:52:31
There’s something so powerful about being grounded in and and a path to being grounded is being immersed in an arya, like, for example, like jiu jitsu or or chess where if you, like, if if you’re on the jiu jitsu mats and and you overextend your arm and you get armbared, like, you you’re not gonna say that’s not my fault. That was his fault. Or, like, that’s Then you just don’t fucking get better and you get onboard again.
Speaker: 1
01:52:57
Right.
Speaker: 0
01:52:58
Or you only get better by taking your shit on.
Speaker: 1
01:53:00
Right.
Speaker: 0
01:53:00
Right? Or if you’re a chess player and you make a mistake and you lose, you you you if the people who say that’s not my fault don’t they fucking they’re irrelevant very, very quickly. They just get blazed by. They’re just ai everyone else’s race sai passed, and they’re not in the race anymore.
Speaker: 0
01:53:16
And if you’re if you think about a community, for example, of of ai, let’s think about jiu jitsu as as, like, a vision. Like, the one of the things that separates people as they get deeper into an art is whether they wanna take themselves on as a way of life, whether they’re hungry to have their weaknesses revealed.
Speaker: 0
01:53:35
Right? You think about about a school where, like, somebody like, you sai I always found it interesting to watch people when they’re four or five rounds into sparring? Like, do they look for the blue belt to rest with, or do they look for the, ai, like, 240 pound fucking bruiser to beat the shit of them or the high level brown belt to exploit them or the black belt to, like, kick their ass.
Speaker: 0
01:53:53
Right? Who do they look for? Who do, like, ai, you know, the up and coming purple belt look for when, like, the the young competitor? Is he looking for the egoic rest or the place to be exposed? Right. Like, people who hunger for exposure to get better. Right?
Speaker: 0
01:54:06
It’s like seeking accountability as a way of life. I think there’s something really powerful to do that with decision making. Right? Because we’re making decisions, and we’re making decisions in a higher and higher stakes world. And if we train at the art of decision making in something that’s grounded in reality like, for example, the chess rating system is just a fucking thing. It’s objective.
Speaker: 0
01:54:27
There’s no bullshit to it. But I hear peep like, I know people who play chess online, and then they’re like, yeah. This is my rating, but I’m actually much stronger than that because of this and this. It’s like, no. You’re not. You just haven’t taken your shit on. Right?
Speaker: 0
01:54:39
Like, you you you’re not stronger than your rating. You’re rating is how strong you are as a chess player.
Speaker: 1
01:54:44
Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:54:44
Right? But there’s something about there’s something so beautiful about an accurate feedback loop. Right? Whether and that can be with a coach, training with you could be on the just getting tapped out, getting your ass kicked, right, getting hit, losing, whatever it is. I think that there’s something so powerful about people cultivating some way of life where they’re grounded in some kind of feedback loop in their training life that there’s no bullshit involved, that they they they learn to accept accountability as a way of life.
Speaker: 0
01:55:15
They seek feedback loops.
Speaker: 1
01:55:16
Right.
Speaker: 0
01:55:16
I think that we can do this in decision making. I mean, my view is that we’re going to be making decisions as a species in an increasingly complex world where there is a superintelligence. So we need to track our decisions, and we need to see objectively when they are good and when they’re bad.
Speaker: 0
01:55:31
Like, just how you can studying tape as a basketball team or as a jujitsu fighter or whatever. Like, we need we need to create game tape in our decision making. Right? We have to stop deluding ourselves about the fact that we’re actually better than everything shows we are.
Speaker: 1
01:55:45
Right. People love to think that way. They fucking love it. It gives them a nice little out in their accomplishments. It gives them a nice little excuse for why things haven’t gone their way.
Speaker: 0
01:55:54
Like, if you make a decision, write down what the decision is, and write down why you made the decision. And then look back on it in a week or two or three. Right. And create, like, a spreadsheet, a a log, or whatever the fuck you wanna use of all of your decisions and why you made them, and look back on them.
Speaker: 0
01:56:07
And then if the reasons for making the decision no longer are valid, but you’re holding to the decision, which is what everyone does, then don’t do that. Don’t do that. Let go
Speaker: 1
01:56:18
of it. Reevaluate. So when you work with people and, you know, I know a big part of what you do is help organizations learn and and, how do you instill these ideas in people? Do you have a structure that you follow when you go to to work with people? Do you try to see what they do?
Speaker: 0
01:56:37
Yeah. I try to see what they so I Ai tried I’ve been training for the last fifteen since ‘2 yeah. It’s fifteen, sixteen years, elite mental and physical athletes. Right? Decision makers, investors, athletes, ai. You’ve worked with fighters? NBA teams. Well, in my school with Marcelo, we had a huge, yeah, group of ai. Jujutsu fighters. Mhmm.
Speaker: 0
01:57:02
And, so I’ve been in dialogue with people who are at the the, like, the pinnacles of different fields my whole life. And one thing is that Ai, like, I love working with people who wanna take themselves on. So it begins with them being all in on on on the process. I’m not great at, like, motivating people to take their shit on. No. I I love to, like like, begin once we’re taking our shit on. So Yeah.
Speaker: 0
01:57:24
That and then it’s it’s individualized. Like, I I get to know someone’s pattern, just 99% listening, observing. Under a lot of what I try to do is understand the entanglement of their brilliance and their eccentricity or their genius and their dysfunction. Think so quickly people try to come in if you come in with some kind of formula for how things will be done, you’re gonna be slicing away the brilliance of of individuals.
Speaker: 0
01:57:44
Right? Like, all of our most brilliant creations are interwoven with the dysfunctional parts of our mind. Everyone wants to normalize people. Like, most in in the realm of, like, trainers or coaches of different fields, I think it’s mostly bullshit because mostly armchair professors who don’t understand what it actually means to be playing on on that razor’s edge of peak performance where you have to make a decision which is taking a risk that’s right on the edge of something catastrophic, but that’s the, like, thread the needle solution.
Speaker: 0
01:58:14
And so when I start working with someone, I try to get to know them very, very deeply, their patterns their patterns of success, their patterns of failure, their where their genius and their dysfunction are entangled. I often go into what I call a cave process, which is trying to understand what their self expression is, like going into the cave with them metaphorically, ai to understand what their self expression would be liberated from reactivity and inertia.
Speaker: 0
01:58:41
So not reacting away from what they did before Mhmm. And not being subject to the inertia of what they did before Mhmm. But just blue skying what the ideal solution would be. It what the most pure self expression for them would be.
Speaker: 1
01:58:54
So it’s completely dependent upon the individual and their approach initially.
Speaker: 0
01:58:58
Yeah. And and not not their approach, the individual and the patterns of their approach. Right? Not that we would do things the way they did before, but I have a lot of humility. Like, I don’t think that I know the way. I don’t think there is a way. I think we all have our own way we need to discover.
Speaker: 0
01:59:11
Ai, coaches who have been most damaging to meh, for example, when I was in that same period when I was 15, 16 years old, I had a coach who was part of the Russian School of Chess who essentially had me move away from my self expression, move away from my style. My style of chess play at that point meh whole life had been creative, attacking, improvisational. I love to create chaos and find hidden harmonies and chaos.
Speaker: 0
01:59:34
I love to battle. He urged me to stop playing that way. Stop studying that style of play. Play ai these cold blooded prophylactic chess players ai Petrojan or Karpov. I played much more in the style, not the strength, the style of, like, Garry Kasparov or Mikhail Tal, or Bobby Fischer, like, players who were who were aggressive, right, who had a lot of, like, red blood flowing through their body.
Speaker: 0
01:59:57
Like, I was hot blooded. And he urged me to play in the opposite style from what was natural to me. Think what would Karpov do here, not what would Josh do here.
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02:00:06
Is there a benefit to that just to expand your repertoire?
Speaker: 0
02:00:10
Yes. There is absolutely a benefit to that. But there’s also the movement of a of a young of, like, a young competitor away from their self expression, a love from their love for the game, a love from their passion. Right? I think I had this there’s this brilliant man named Yuri Ai who was on the other pillar of the Russian school of chess who said this amazing thing to me.
Speaker: 0
02:00:27
He said to me, Josh, you can learn Karpov through Kasparov. And I didn’t understand what he meant for many, many years after that. But and it was a little too late in my chess life to take that in. But what he was saying is that you can learn the great defensive chess by studying the defense of the great attackers.
Speaker: 1
02:00:43
Why was it late in your career to take that in?
Speaker: 0
02:00:46
Well, good question. It’s just when he said it to me, it like, my my like, I was in my early twenties and my and, like, my love for I’d lost my love for chess. Like, it had gotten static, stale. Like, I I would it it it you know, good challenge. It probably wasn’t late, but I I wasn’t I couldn’t hear it.
Speaker: 0
02:01:03
I I I didn’t, like, I would have had to go into the cave, go away, go through an existential crisis, and come back to chess. But there were a lot of things that were moving me away from chess at that point in addition to that. Sai I didn’t wanna be trapped inside of the confines of 64 squares anymore. Got it. I felt like a lion in a cage.
Speaker: 0
02:01:18
So it was ai, if if I had known him when I was 14, 15, he it would have been a different arc for me in the chess life. But maybe it would have been much worse for my life. If I’d known him in the ai, I might have fucking played chess for the rest of my life, and I’m so grateful I didn’t. So who knows?
Speaker: 1
02:01:32
Isn’t it interesting Yeah. When life takes you on these or you go on your own journey, and you realize that decisions that you’ve made that have turned you in one way, like, those are critical decisions if you think of the life that you’re living now is this optimal. If this is optimal, then, yes, it’s good that you moved away from chess.
Speaker: 1
02:01:56
But if you had gotten that coaching when you were younger and it reignited your love of chess, then it would be good for the life that you currently have. Because you would say, well, you know, as a a person who’s just, like, so in love with chess, I’m so grateful that I ran into this person when I was 11 years old, and they sana me in this correct path.
Speaker: 0
02:02:14
Yeah. I mean, I I absolutely. I I mean, for me, I love the life that I live that like, I’m so grateful for the life that I’ve lived. And I was moved away from chess in many ways by this alienating experience of of,
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02:02:30
that I just described Mhmm.
Speaker: 0
02:02:31
And then also the dynamics of the movie and everything. But it was many I Ai played chess for eight years after the after the movie, and so my results were very good. But I was moving into this internal I was in an existential crisis. Yeah. Right? And then but Ai every, like, catastrophic injury or heartbreaking loss or losing a world championship, you know, like, when you’re a millimeter from winning the finals, like, all of those losses that were so heartbreaking to me, every big loss, I’m grateful for now and led to the biggest wins and led to the biggest insights and transitions.
Speaker: 0
02:03:01
And and my life today, like, the crises that I had in many ways have armed me to help people express themselves in their arts. Right? And a lot of the reads that I made as a competitor, to go back to your question, like, I invert now. So, like, the things that the way I would read chess players, find where their minds were stuck, find where their bias patterns were, like, find where their energy was stuck, find where they were, like, static.
Speaker: 0
02:03:25
Now and then I would exploit them. Right? Same thing you do in the fight game. You find where someone’s pattern is static and exploit it. Right?
Speaker: 0
02:03:31
Then what I do in training people is I find those I have a very good nose for those because I spent my life as a competitor sniffing them out, feeling my way to them, but then I work on liberating them, releasing the obstruction. Sai a lot of what I do today in my work with brilliant performers is is work on unleashing what I
Speaker: 1
02:03:49
used to exploit. That’s interesting. That’s great. That must be very satisfying to teach people how to get better at things.
Speaker: 0
02:04:00
Yeah. It’s interesting. I I don’t use that. Yeah. I don’t teach I don’t know it. I’m not teaching some people something I know. But you’re teaching them to discover. Know. Well, I’m kind of discovering their path with them. Okay. Like, I don’t go in thinking, like, this is the way you fucking should do. Right. Right.
Speaker: 0
02:04:18
I don’t believe that I know what they should do. And I believe that any coach who thinks that they know what someone else should do without listening to the self expression of that person very, very deeply is just wrong, and they should not be they could reject that coach.
Speaker: 1
02:04:28
Right. Yeah. Well, you have to really understand someone psychologically to be able to coach them as well. Yeah. Because sometimes you don’t know, like, what the the hitch is until you run you’re like, oh, there it is. Right. So this is your whole problem with
Speaker: 0
02:04:42
your whole life. Like a hitch. But the amazing thing is you find the hitch, then you see, oh, that hitch is interwoven Mhmm. With your biggest, like, I I sent you that I sent you that thing I wrote about Marcela. Ai? And, like, there was this incredible moment that I had with with Marcelo, such an emotional moment.
Speaker: 0
02:05:01
You know, he so he he’s in I I describe him as, like, this great lower up learner. And he’s someone who uniquely in my life I’ve never seen anyone better at learning from one experience, big or large. Right? And then there was this moment. We were sitting, I guess it was six years ago. We were sitting just talking about life and our journey and everything, and he started he started weeping.
Speaker: 0
02:05:25
And he he said to me, you know, Josh, I never forget my pain. And and he he said, you know, Marcelo had a real tragedy. He lost a baby. Marcelo and Tachi, his wife, they lost they had twins, and they lost their ram, Joey. Olivia and Joey were born premature, and Joey Joey died. Was a terrible tragedy.
Speaker: 0
02:05:50
It was just devastating for I mean, just beyond belief devastating. And, like like, the loss of his son, the loss of his mother, the loss of his father, Every moment someone looked at him a certain way, every moment somebody, like, raised their voice at him and it triggered him into, like, a fight place, every every time he’d been submitted, every time he’d been swept, every time I realize this.
Speaker: 0
02:06:14
He was saying this. Like, all of his pain is with him every moment. And as he described this to me, it was this incredibly emotional scene where he was just weeping in his exploration in in his, like, the just brother to brother talking to me about, like, he walks around with every wound he’s experienced in life present all the fucking time.
Speaker: 0
02:06:37
And so we think of, like, this brilliant low rep learner, the guy who has a superhuman ability to learn from one experience, but it it and it’s a superpower, but also it it ravages him all the fucking time. And you can’t just remove that. You can’t be like, meh, release your pain. Right. It’d be great. Yeah. Then you’re also releasing the the the genius.
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02:06:55
And it’s
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02:06:57
the thing about people that are really amazing at something, the pain of losing is so devastating to them. Ai, when you when you talk about genius in Meh like, people use Michael Jordan as an example, Genius basketball player, but unbelievably competitive. Yeah. Like, just can’t help himself.
Speaker: 0
02:07:20
In everything? In everything. On and off the court.
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02:07:22
I’ve I’ve heard if you beat him at pool, he won’t talk to
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02:07:24
you for two weeks. So you could be like, Mike, just take it fucking easy on the pool table. What do you care? But you can’t say that. Gary Suarez
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02:07:30
was the
Speaker: 0
02:07:31
same way. Competitive in everything. Everything. But you can’t just, like, remove that.
Speaker: 1
02:07:34
You’re removing the genius with it. Right. Right. But you you have a Ferrari engine, and you’re trying to, like, navigate 30 mile per hour traffic. And you’re like, fuck.
Speaker: 0
02:07:43
I’ll never forget this this, this chess coach, Mark Doberecki, who I was he said to me this unbelievably hubristic thing, when I was 15, 16 years old. He said to me, if he had had Bobby Fischer as a student as a as a from as a seven year old, he could have made Fischer a much, much stronger chess player without any of the craziness.
Speaker: 1
02:08:06
And I remember the craziness.
Speaker: 0
02:08:07
And I was just like, Ai I as a teenager, like, I I just my my hands started, like, sweating when I just said that. It’s just ai because to me, it’s just it’s just not fucking true.
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02:08:17
Right.
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02:08:18
Like, Fisher It’s a
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02:08:18
crazy thing to say.
Speaker: 0
02:08:19
Yeah. It’s a it’s a it’s hubris. Right? And this is this is the same the guy who was urging me into that that direction. Like but that that that’s the opposite of my approach. Right? I think we need and then if we are going to try to disentangle the dysfunction from the genius, we need to understand it very deeply.
Speaker: 0
02:08:37
We need to plant the seeds patiently for that genius to sprout somewhere else. We need to water those seeds. We need to observe them becoming we have to very, like, slightly sand away the dysfunctional patterning while observing if it like, it’s a very delicate process. Right?
Speaker: 1
02:08:51
You can’t just fucking excise the tumor. Well, there’s also a problem in when someone becomes very good at doing something and they have a very specific way they’ve become very good at doing something. They assume that this is the way and that this is the way for everyone and that they can impose their way on other people.
Speaker: 1
02:09:09
And the what led them to become great in the first place is also that hubris that makes them think they could take Bobby Fischer and make him even better.
Speaker: 0
02:09:17
Well, that’s why great coaches, like, great fighters often aren’t great coaches. Right? Because they most teachers teach the way they learned, which will alienate 70 or 80% of their students ai definition.
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02:09:28
Right.
Speaker: 0
02:09:29
Great coaches can well, great coaches for a a large group need to be able to teach different ways for different kinds of learners. Yeah. Different modalities of learners. Are they are they visual? Are they somatic? Are they are they auditory? Like, what makes them tick? And you have to know if you’re if you’re teaching a chess class I started teaching a group of kids chess when I was in my teens.
Speaker: 0
02:09:48
I taught them from kindergarten through fifth grade, and we ended up winning in New York. It was a beautiful journey with kids at PS one sixteen. And we from moving the pieces to winning city, state, and national championships. And it was so interesting because I’d ai, like, teaching eight, ten kids at once, and I would be teaching it was like giving a simultaneous exhibition.
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02:10:05
Like, each one had their own language, and it was I I was, like, so involved with this theme that I would be it was exhausting.
Speaker: 1
02:10:11
Mhmm. Because I
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02:10:11
was teaching 10 chess lessons at the same time to 10 kids. And I remember I had this moment, this heartbreaking moment where I had this one student named Ivan who I who I Ai just charismatic, intense. You know, we had a very close relationship. I love the kid. And, like, I was he was or at the national championship, I was giving him this this, this pep talk.
Speaker: 0
02:10:29
And I was just, like, firing him up and, like, speaking to him in the way he needed to be spoken to. And and then he was, like, he ran off, like, stoked, fired up to go kick some ass. And then this other kid who who was on the team, this beautiful, sensitive boy came over, and I looked at him with the same energy that I just been speaking to Ivan, and I brought it to him.
Speaker: 0
02:10:45
And and I I was, like, fifteen seconds into speaking to him when I looked at his eyes, and I realized, like, this is a disaster. Ai being this is terrible. And then I stopped. I, like, and I, like, gave him a hug, and we, like, slowed it down. We you know, he he he needed to go into a very different way than Ai went in. Right.
Speaker: 0
02:11:02
But, coach, think about how often you see cornermen fucking up fighters. Yeah. Right? Yeah. I mean so as a as a coach, I think we have to, like, put our own egos aside and our idea that we know how one should learn.
Speaker: 1
02:11:14
Yeah. And it’s that’s what’s very important is finding the right coach. You you have to find a coach that understands you and has a style that you can implement. Because there’s some coaches that just have styles that you you don’t physically you’re not designed for. You you don’t you can’t learn the way they learned. Yeah.
Speaker: 1
02:11:34
That’s what’s fascinating about you is that you’ve gone from being this hyper competitor to teaching people or coaching people to find the very best version of themselves and how to how to acquire that. That’s very rare vatsal someone who gets really good at something also becomes really good at showing people how they can get better at things.
Speaker: 1
02:11:57
Like, that’s a specific focus that you’ve had. Like, why why is that so rewarding to you?
Speaker: 0
02:12:12
Well, I took on this interesting challenge when I broke my back, because I was already doing this, but I I was training people. But I when I broke my back, I remember I said, okay. During this healing process, after the year and a half to two years of denial and training through it when I stopped, Ai tried to take on training people with the same passion and love that I had for training myself.
Speaker: 0
02:12:38
I wanted to see if I could, like, love it as much, and I never got there. And then and then I got into the you know, that that’s part of what moved me into the Discovering the Ocean Arts and being all in on training. So a big part of my relationship with training other people is training myself as a way of life.
Speaker: 0
02:12:52
Like, I’m always like, I’m living at my limit in my in the arena myself. The moment I think a coach, like, leaves the arena where they’re putting their own ego on the line all the time or their life on the line or whatever the fuck they’re putting on the line Mhmm. Then they they become static, and they start to think they know the answer.
Speaker: 0
02:13:07
It’s like the the fat, you know, martial arts instructor who’s many years past training and has spoken a cigarette on the sideline telling people what to do and no longer ai, like, actually dynamic than putting their the moment our egos get protected.
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02:13:20
Yeah.
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02:13:21
Right? So my relationship to training is something that I live all the time. I think also becoming a dad was a big part of it, ai, the the nurturing. And a lot of what I’ve done is invert what I used to do to break people. Now I invert to heal them or to unleash them. Ai a like, being a father is about the most humbling thing I’ve ever.
Speaker: 0
02:13:45
I mean, I might have I thought I had ideas about about education until I became a dad, ai I realized I didn’t know anything. I had to start over. Yeah. And, also, the wound pattern like, I think understanding people’s wound patterns is very important. And a lot of my wound pattern is in loving something very, very deeply, being alienated from it, and then finding a postconscious relationship to it and a self expression within it.
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02:14:11
And and I think that helping people with that with that journey is is is really important. And, also, I I love engaging with all in motherfuckers. I mean, I just love, like, like, whether, you know, my current projects are, like, cutting edge science and AI. Just brilliant scientists.
Speaker: 0
02:14:29
It’s such an incredibly interesting and, like, deep being deeply involved with the Boston Celtics, like, just the very top of the NBA world. And my relationship with Joe Mazzullo, the head coach, and kind of coaching the coach is a modality that I’ve been developed playing in for a long ai, helping the leader of an organization express themselves as the coach of their people is a big part of what I do and a couple other interesting investing in tech projects.
Speaker: 0
02:14:50
And, like, just helping some like, it it allows me to play in in fascinating realms and then studying interconnectedness. I mean, a big part of my passion is thematic interconnectedness. Like, how is what’s happening with the Boston Celtics the same as what’s happening in this cutting edge science ram? Mhmm.
Speaker: 0
02:15:06
The same as what’s happening in this wildly interesting tech investing program. Right? And how do those principles, those interconnecting fibers relate to culture more broadly and relate to me when I’m doing every day on the on the water, boiling?
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02:15:18
Yeah. That’s Miyamoto Musashi.
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02:15:21
Yeah.
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02:15:21
Once you understand the way broadly, you can see it in all things. So the book
Speaker: 0
02:15:24
of ai rings. Right? Like, to me, I feel that Ai cannot believe how few people have studied Musashi deeply. Right? I mean, whether you’re reading read the novel about his life and then studying like, book of five rings, I think everyone should read, like, 10 tyler, maybe a day a page Yeah.
Speaker: 0
02:15:41
10 times over. I, you know, one of my favorite cadences of Musashi is in so many chapters of book of five rings, how he comes back and says, like, essentially, these words are empty. You have to practice it as a way of ai. Yes. Again and again.
Speaker: 0
02:15:56
And people just skip these things, but they don’t real and everyone wants to be told what to fucking do as opposed to understanding they have to work for the path to figure out what the fuck they should do. It and you have to practice as a way of life.
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02:16:10
Right.
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02:16:11
Right? Yeah. Talk about a real motherfucker.
Speaker: 1
02:16:14
Well, just fascinating that he learned this by being a swordfighter. Yeah. What is the best way to be a swordfighter? You can have no bullshit in your mind, so you must be balanced. And his approach was, you must be an arya, you must be a poet, you must be a warrior, you must be in tune with all of your feelings and all of your senses and everything about you and to do
Speaker: 0
02:16:41
ai. Right. There’s no room for
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02:16:44
62 men Yeah. In one on one combat.
Speaker: 0
02:16:47
You can’t sai, like, oh, no. That wasn’t my fault. That doesn’t fucking work. No. You take your shit on. Yeah. But that’s that. But there’s something so beautiful about the truth telling nature of living. Like, if you you know you know when you’re on the when you’re in a jiu jitsu team and and you’ve got some you watch someone who doesn’t think they’re competing for a while, but then they’re they’re suddenly, like, they’re competing next speak.
Speaker: 0
02:17:05
Mhmm. How the repertoire compresses. Like, all the fat just flies off. Mhmm. Right? There’s something so beautiful about that process and the cadence. Yeah.
Speaker: 0
02:17:13
And, like, if we live putting ourselves in the flame, then we’re not gonna be bullshitting ourselves all the time because there’s this truth telling modality.
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02:17:20
Right.
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02:17:21
So the question is, how can we how can we, as many of us as possible, live in some form that’s true to us, where we are there’s this grounded truth telling, accurate feedback loop in what we’re doing, what we’re practicing as a way of life?
Speaker: 1
02:17:34
Ai fear is that there’s so many of us, probably even people that are listening to this right now, that have never developed that aspect of their life. And it’s very difficult to get started on that path once you’ve been on this path of complacency and comfort. It’s very hard for people to sort of embrace this new way of thinking and interfacing with reality.
Speaker: 0
02:17:56
But when things are hard, that’s beautiful. Like, that’s the beginning. We want things to be hard. So the first thing is I think we want people to love the discomfort of being hard. It’s hard. Fucking everything worthwhile is hard.
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02:18:06
Right.
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02:18:06
Like, we not what what have you done that’s that’s been interesting that hasn’t been hard? Every time you get in an ice plunge, it’s fucking hard. Yeah. Like, I cold plunge every day. I think you do too. Right? Yeah. Yeah. Like, it’s a way of life. It’s fucking hard every time.
Speaker: 1
02:18:18
Yeah. It’s
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02:18:18
not easy. Hard is beautiful. Living on the other side of pain, it’s really just get valuable.
Speaker: 1
02:18:23
Not doing it. And that’s
Speaker: 2
02:18:24
Knowing that
Speaker: 1
02:18:24
you didn’t do it. Yeah. That’s hard. That’s not good for you. No. That’s not good. If you let that that part of you, when you’re forty seconds in, you’re like, let’s get the fuck out now. If you let that part win, you feel terrible for the rest of the day. But if you just hang in there for two minutes and twenty seconds more
Speaker: 0
02:18:41
Yeah.
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02:18:41
You’ll feel so good. You get out of there, like, alright. Got this one done.
Speaker: 0
02:18:45
It’s like you are foiling and you don’t fall. That’s a terrible day, man. Because you’re not pushing your turns hard enough. You’re not breaching enough. You’re not ripping it around hard enough. Right? Like, everyone finds these these it’s ai one thing that happens with investors. Right?
Speaker: 0
02:18:57
They they become successful, and then they develop a mental model to replicate the success. Right? So they figure out mental model become a groove that they can follow. Mhmm. But then the groove becomes a rut they get stuck in, and then it starts to collect water, and then it’s stagnant water.
Speaker: 0
02:19:11
And then they hold to an old mental model based on a success ten years ago or twenty years ago, they’re trapped in it for the rest of their lives. Yeah. It happens again and again in every field. Right? Some early success creates you make a framework. You make a modality. You create a mental model.
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02:19:24
You replicate the success. It’s not working, but you stick to it because your identity gets connected to that mental model. And you’re not living with dynamic quality. Your qualities become static.
Speaker: 1
02:19:35
Yeah. It’s it’s so hard for people to recognize when that’s happening as well. Because, you know, once people get success, then the fear of losing that success overwhelms them. And then it’s ai it’s easier to control a person who’s been successful because they don’t want to let this go. They don’t wanna go back. They wanna move forward.
Speaker: 1
02:19:54
They wanna continue. So what do I have to do to make sure that I’m Ai I mean, you see this in Hollywood. It’s a it’s a big thing in Hollywood. People panic when they start doing well, and then they align themselves with other people doing well, and then they’ll it ai changes the way they think and the way they they behave because everything is dependent upon you being chosen for for things.
Speaker: 1
02:20:12
So your your whole life is, like, wondering what your social status is and how you would how you advance that. Hey. What do I have to say? What should I tweet today? To make sure everybody knows I’m on the right side and Right.
Speaker: 0
02:20:23
Then you’re playing not to lose. You’re not playing to win. It happens all the time in sports. Like, if you’re a basketball team and you’ve been dominating the game and you’re up eight or 10 in the fourth quarter, then you start to protect the lead. Yes. No. You didn’t get the lead because you’re protecting the fucking lead. You were dominating with aggression. Ai?
Speaker: 0
02:20:36
The moment it’s like the prevent defense, in my opinion, is the worst thing ever created in sports strategy. Ai? Like, you know what? Pre bryden defense?
Speaker: 1
02:20:44
I’ve heard of it, but I
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02:20:45
don’t know if you
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02:20:45
have it.
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02:20:45
Football team and you’re and you’re you’ve you have a 14 lead in the fourth quarter or an eight point lead in the fourth quarter, and you stop doing the dominant things that got you the lead, but you start protecting the lead. So your defensive backs sit back. You start allowing eight or 10 or 12 yard completions. It is now you’re protecting the lead versus dominating the opponent.
Speaker: 0
02:21:04
But then you let the opponent feel their strength, feel their greatness. They they’re not dominated anymore. They’re like, you you a moment a fighter stops feeling dominated and starts to tap into their greatness, then your fucking opponent’s a beast again. Right. Right?
Speaker: 0
02:21:16
We see it all the time.
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02:21:17
All the time.
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02:21:17
Right. So don’t protect the fucking lead. Dominate.
Speaker: 1
02:21:20
Yeah. Right? I I Do what brought you to the dance? Yeah. Exactly. It’s just, it’s In life. I think that thing that you’re talking about is very critical, that fear of losing once you’ve won. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker: 0
02:21:33
It’s very interesting in the surf world. So many people I have observed who are great surfers, they want to learn to foil because foiling opens up so much. Right? You can foil all the time in different conditions and sloppy conditions and ocean, big big wave, small wave. It just is it’s so bryden.
Speaker: 0
02:21:48
And they can see how epic it is. But then they try once, and they get their ass kicked. It doesn’t matter how good a surfer you are. Not talking about efoil. I’m talking about, like, wave foiling or not high performance gear. You’re gonna have two, three months of ass kicking as part of it.
Speaker: 0
02:22:01
It doesn’t matter how good you are as a surfer. But now you have to, like, be you have to look like a beginner again. You have to be go from being, like, the coolest guy in the lineup if you’re socialized to being the, quote, unquote, kook, being the guy who’s just getting his ass kicked, who’s falling all the time.
Speaker: 0
02:22:15
Right? And they don’t wanna do that. So their ego of the excellent surfer prevents them from learning this art they want to learn because they’re unwilling to look bad for a while in front of the people who they’re used to looking good with.
Speaker: 1
02:22:27
Right. They’re so used to being cool.
Speaker: 0
02:22:29
So the the foilers are people who it’s a very interesting micro culture inside of surfing. Is it foilers have been people who learned how to how to foil because they were willing to get their ass kicked and look bad.
Speaker: 1
02:22:39
Are there any other things that are exciting to you like that that you think of? Like, if one day you can’t foil any longer? Do you have, like, an escape strategy?
Speaker: 0
02:22:47
I don’t have an escape strategy. I never did. I never had, like, a this is gonna be plan b. I’ve never been a plan b guy. I I I know I could recreate myself, but I I love this art profoundly, and I love being in the ocean. Like, there’s something about this this is like, to me also, this is not about destroying anything. It’s not about beating anybody.
Speaker: 0
02:23:06
It’s about self discovery, pushing my limits in the ocean, which is an element. And and the foil taps into ocean energy so fucking potently. And the other thing is that the the art is at such an early stage of technological growth that foil gear is progressing so quickly, and the people who are actually at the bleeding edge of foil performance wise can ride this gear, which is increasingly difficult to ride.
Speaker: 0
02:23:27
But the hardest gear to ride is the gear, which is can do the most epic shit. And so the sensitivity is ai as the gear requires more and more sensitivity, the sensitivity is is cultivated. And fewer very few people in the world can can do it on this gear, and it’s just so sublime.
Speaker: 1
02:23:45
Mhmm.
Speaker: 0
02:23:45
So I’m so fucking in love with this art. Wow. I do not have a a plan b. But, you know, fuck. Who knows what happens?
Speaker: 1
02:23:51
I’d love when people love things.
Speaker: 0
02:23:52
Oh, that’s
Speaker: 1
02:23:53
One of my favorite things to watch is people that are just absolutely engrossed in what they’re doing and are fascinated by it and in love with it and and on the journey. It’s very addictive. It’s very, inspirational. It gives you something. It’s ai there’s there’s something out of watching people and learning from people that are really, really passionate about something that’s so contagious.
Speaker: 0
02:24:13
I’ve never loved an art more. Like, I’ve loved to march really fucking deeply in my ai, you know. Foiling is number one. I’ve never loved an art more. Well, maybe it’s because I’m I’m I’m at this moment of life where I’m at, and I’m, like, integrating everything I’ve learned from different arts and bringing it into this one, and this one’s manifesting all of it.
Speaker: 0
02:24:28
But but in terms of, like, the day to day experience of it, oh, yeah, man. I’m I’m a lunatic. I fucking just
Speaker: 1
02:24:34
just love it. Yeah. Yeah. So you can’t you have to live by the ocean. You’re fine.
Speaker: 0
02:24:38
Ai do. That’s that’s beautiful. I live right where the jungle meets the ocean.
Speaker: 1
02:24:42
You were telling me before we wrap this up, you were telling me about a crocodile encounter.
Speaker: 0
02:24:48
Oh, yeah. That was before I arya, before I started foiling, I was surfing. And I it was, like, 5AM, and I was Ai was flying back to New York that day. So I went out for, like, just pre sunrise, right at sunrise surf, and I was on this glassy, like, head high wave, and this, gnarled log came up in front of me, this piece piece of fucking wood.
Speaker: 0
02:25:13
And I saw it, and I hit it and jumped off. It just emerged right in front of me. I didn’t know how I didn’t see it. Like, I thought it was a big tree. And when I hit the water, my brain was still thinking log, but my it was so interesting.
Speaker: 0
02:25:22
My my my ai skin lit up goosebumps, and I just realized, like ai, red tyler, like, prehistoric danger. And I jumped back on my board, and this, like, ten, eleven foot croc came swimming just a few few feet away from me. It was so interesting. Woah. Because I spent my life like, I spent a lot of since I was six years old, I’ve been freediving spearfishing with a Hawaiian swing Hawaiian saloni, like bow and arrow underwater, deep deep water diving.
Speaker: 0
02:25:45
Like, I I spent tens of thousands of sharks, but this was so different. Like, croc energy and I haven’t I don’t know crocs. Like, I know sharks. I don’t know crocs. And Crocs are actually trying
Speaker: 1
02:25:56
to eat you. Sharks a lot I mean, there’s a lot of people that believe that sharks are attacking people because the people are where the sharks are, and they don’t want the people there. Yeah. You know, like, when they’re they’re interfering with their hunting grounds, and they attack people in that regard.
Speaker: 1
02:26:10
I’ve heard people say that, and I’m like, oh, that kinda resonates. That makes sense. But crocodiles are different. They’re just hunting everything. And if you’re there, you’re on the menu. They’re hyper aggressive. They’re very different than alligators, which are also very dangerous, but crocodiles are significantly more dangerous and more aggressive.
Speaker: 0
02:26:28
My it was interesting. When I hit the water, my body lit up like, like I was in the water with a ai. And then it came up, and it’s interesting that my body this speaks to the nature of the intuition. Right? Because my mind still thought it was a log. I hit the water. Something energetically told me something. Get the fuck out. And then it came swimming right up next to me.
Speaker: 0
02:26:46
And, like, the feeling of the snout, the eyes, like, it just came and then a big another wave was coming in. I I managed to just pop up and ride the next wave to the beach. Yeah. But yeah, and maybe if I That
Speaker: 1
02:26:56
would have been the last day I foiled.
Speaker: 0
02:27:00
Well, maybe, like, if I knew the language of Crocs, ai, I know language of sharks.
Speaker: 1
02:27:03
Language. Murder, kill, eat. I don’t know. That’s the language.
Speaker: 0
02:27:06
Maybe there’s an internal language.
Speaker: 1
02:27:07
I do not believe that’s true. I think they are they are the waste management of the ocean and of the ground. Ai mean, they are there to make sure that anything that slips, anything that gets too close, anything that fucks up, it doesn’t pay attention to the ripples in the water, that’s a meal.
Speaker: 1
02:27:25
They they clean up. They’re the cleaning crew. They make sure that there’s no weakness in the system, and they devour, and they live forever. That’s the crazy thing. It’s ai the ones that they spotted in the early journeys when they were talking about, like, there’s talks of forty forty foot plus crocodiles probably were real because crocodiles don’t die of old age.
Speaker: 1
02:27:49
They don’t have, like, a 20 lifespan. They just keep growing. And if a crocodile lived before people had guns and, you know, they weren’t on the meh, and you gotta imagine they could live hundreds of years, hundreds of years eating deer and wildebeest and anything that fucked up, antelopes, anything that fucked up, anything they can get a hold of, and they just keep growing.
Speaker: 1
02:28:11
Ai they could be enormous, enormous, enormous super predator dinosaurs that live amongst people. Yeah. I have a friend of mine who’s a professional hunter, Jim Shockey. And, he was flown to Africa because this particular village was being targeted by crocodiles. So they they hired hunters to hunt these croc and while he was there, he sai, everyone you would meet had a chunk taken out of them.
Speaker: 1
02:28:40
People were missing hands, some people were missing feet. And while while he was there, one of the women in the village got taken. And, they would set up these posts in the water sai that the crocodiles couldn’t get through to this one area where they would gather water and wash clothes and do things.
Speaker: 1
02:28:58
The crocodiles ai figured this out, so they went onto the shore and then they would go into the water where the posts are and wait for them.
Speaker: 0
02:29:06
Oof. Oof. Oof. Yeah. So the feeling of humility and danger that you have relative to crocs. Yeah. I have about AI relative to the ability to manipulate humans unless we take on our ability to be manipulated as a way of life. Like, I feel it, like, that much in my skin.
Speaker: 1
02:29:26
I think you’re correct. Yeah. Ai think you’re correct. I think it’s gonna be an incredibly, incredibly challenging time in history and, one that, I don’t think the brightest amongst us can truly predict the outcome.
Speaker: 0
02:29:40
I wanna make one other point, which is that I think that when we talk about, like, training as decision makers, it doesn’t matter how good you are at something. It matters that you’re on the road. You’re on the journey. So let’s just say people started to play chess. Doesn’t matter how strong a chess player you are or if you’re good or if you suck. That doesn’t matter. It’s a journey. Right?
Speaker: 0
02:29:59
If you’re if you’re if you’re putting yourself in any arena that’s objective and you’re trying your hardest and you have a feedback loop, like the mats, like the jujitsu mats, you whatever they are for you, and you look at the quality of your decisions and you jot down why and you are willing to change your mind and you take on that training as a way of life, then you’re you’re on the the road to, like, being grounded in in, like, in a way that we’re not today.
Speaker: 0
02:30:28
And I think that being grounded in reality, in something, like feeling the earth beneath our feet in our process, is a big part of how we’re going to be able to navigate a world where everything is being deconstructed all the time by a superior intelligence because we’re gonna need to recreate ourselves.
Speaker: 0
02:30:42
But we have to have you know how, like, when you’re deep into an art, ai, think about you with your knowledge of of MMA. Like, you have this intuition about where the truth is. Right? You have a sense for where it is. Right?
Speaker: 0
02:30:53
We need to cultivate that sense in in an increasingly chaotic world. And I do feel that that, like, being involved in some kind of truth telling arena, whatever it is, is a hugely important practice. And then taking on the art of training as a way of life is, I feel like it’s one of our and and, like, that combined with getting the fuck off social media.
Speaker: 1
02:31:17
Really. Amazing advice.
Speaker: 0
02:31:19
Yeah. That’s my Thank
Speaker: 1
02:31:21
you, Josh. That’s my pitch.
Speaker: 0
02:31:21
It was
Speaker: 1
02:31:22
a lot of fun. I really
Speaker: 0
02:31:22
appreciate it. This was great. Thank you.
Speaker: 1
02:31:23
Yeah. I was really excited to do this and, really happy to meet you. So
Speaker: 0
02:31:27
Yeah. Really appreciate you. Awesome, Jim.
Speaker: 1
02:31:29
Thanks for
Speaker: 0
02:31:29
reaching out here.
Speaker: 1
02:31:30
My pleasure. Alright. Ai you can’t find him on social media, don’t look.
