13: Nabeel S. Qureshi - The Will to Care

40:57Like, what is a shape? And then what is what? What is volume? Right. And everyone else would be like, well, volume is defined in this way. And he'd be like, no, like, what is, this doesn't make sense. And eventually he invents a whole new field of geometry and mathematics. But I always think of him in this way because he also went completely insane. like he fully went crazy and ended up writing all these like kind of schizophrenic religious tracts in a forest and eventually he kind of died like knowing no one and destitute uh so i think this trait is very double-edged it does mean that you're not necessarily the favorite child in school yes uh and you could end up in like very strange places but it's sort of high variance there's an amazing book called when we cease to understand the world that he's featured in amongst, but it's that pattern over and over again with people kind of on the edge.

41:44Yes. One of my favorite things you talk about in the context of education is why video games are really relevant as both a practical way to learn and also a template for learning. I think it's also ironic given that what we were just talking about is sort of the player playing the game on the field as it is laid out in the school context. As someone who did that, I was a very good 90.000 student, which is ironic in that it's a bad game and video games might be better you talk about simulation and video games and particularly this like idea of feel there's different ways you talk about it one another one is like lines of force and the way you give the example of a chessboard the way that a really skilled player who's sort of felt it in their body almost can see the pressure or feel the pressure that pieces are putting on another phrase you use is a high dimensional grasp of what's going on reality has a surprising amount of detail a lot of these ideas kind of revolving around each other and then you also i think just succinctly talk about video games as being this amazing pairing of simulation plus really fast feedback loops like the the best way to learn pokemon is to play you're not you're not you don't you're not required to like learn all the the pokemon's names before you before you start i think it's maybe from david deutsch or maybe you even this final phrase of like bone level understanding.

43:02There's one other idea, which is, I think, Tyler Cowen, motivation is that which is scarce. And so I was thinking about a lot of this in the context of learning and video games and these challenges. I know I'm packing a bunch in here, but you've also written about puzzles and like the idea that puzzles maybe improve our will to think in part because we know that there's an answer to get to. And so I was wondering about what it might be about high feedback loops that generate this feel, this bone level understanding. And if maybe they not only help us improve, but they actually help us be more motivated.

43:40Oh, wow. Yeah, that's really fascinating. Also, you are amazing at connecting ideas, by the way. Maybe a few different. There's probably some overload, but I'll give, I try to think about it as just like, I'm going to throw you a bunch of things that you can feel free to discard some of them. Yeah, well, so Dwayne likes to talk a lot about explicit versus implicit knowledge, right? And I think what he would say is like, the textbook can give you the explicit knowledge, but the implicit knowledge is always created by you. And I think this is clear in entrepreneurship, actually, right? Like one thing I'd say to people who, you know, want to say you're a student, you want to start a company one day is like, you know, maybe if you have the idea already, and you're really keen on it, then go do it.

44:19But a next best thing is to just go and find a really good founder and follow them around and help them and just work with them for six months. I did this when I was just graduated. I joined this company in the UK called GoCardless, which ended up spawning a bunch of further billion dollar companies as well. And all three of the founders there were absolute monsters. They were incredibly good. And I just learned so much from that experience about what a what a good founder is, like what the actual bar for it is. in a very visceral way that I would not have got from, like, I read every PG essay.

44:52I read every, like, what is a great founder essay. And, like, just watching, you know, Matt operate for a day taught me way more than any of that, right? Yes, and also probably literally being next to him. Yes, yes. In a bodily sense, the lines of whatever that, yeah. Sensing that aura and also just the things that surprise you, right? It's not always what you think. Like, you know, one example is, like, I think in your head, you imagine, oh, a great founder. know like he's probably going to some conference here and then giving a cool talk there and like getting drinks with Marc Andreessen after that and it's like no like he's hunched over his laptop and he has his to-do list app on his on his Apple notes and he's just like checking things off like a demon and he's typing these emails then he's like getting annoyed at the ops person because there's no drinks in the fridge like it's all this very banal stuff and um I think it makes you realize like okay succeeding is not glamorous and you know like a good example an example of a good founder is just somebody who does 100 % of their to-do list every single day instead of what usually happens with 99 % of people is they do like, they have 10 items, they do maybe five, and then it's 6pm and you're like, all right, I'll do the other five tomorrow.

45:58And you kind of roll things over into the next day. He would just stay late until he ticked off all 10. And then he just did that consistently every day. And I thought, wow, like, that's all it is. It's just you're very consistent and you're very high output. And I don't think I'd have got that from reading any number of online essays. Yes. So yeah, it's just this reality is just very high dimensional and there's no substitute for just immersing yourself in it um and another like unrelated example is just i get a little annoyed when i see people talking about foreign countries and they've just never been there right like you have strong opinions on whatever conflicts but it's like you haven't talked to a bunch of people from there you haven't like driven around the roads or taken a walk there and i think if you go it's always way more nuanced than anything you read online or anything you read in the paper um so yeah that's another example just like the value of direct experience and the last note i even like obviously classic like map is not the territory but i remember i went to school in la i've been there a little bit before the first time i ever did like a long bike ride around la i had a grasp for what the city was that was three orders of magnitude higher than like staring at the map and it's yeah their amount of things that are like that i think maybe the unique insight maybe not unique but the powerful insight you have is that video games actually could be pretty good at this or maybe that maybe it's not even video games maybe it's just like really thoughtfully designed games broadly i'm sure chess has elements of this too and in fact we end up opting into a lot of games societally in school or otherwise that aren't that don't actually give you that multi-dimensionality or high dimensionality right and i think i think you're starting to see bits of this today like i actually saw a somebody posted a video on x the other day that was like hey i made this math video game for my son using ai and now and it was just a video it's like a five-year-old kid and he's delighted by this right it's like every time he solves the math equation it zaps a monster or whatever and i so that's like this kind of cool it's like i didn't know the ai thing was i mean i was kind of generally excited about ai but i think the essay was written in 2018 right pre-chat gpt uh it feels like ai was the missing link there of like ai will help you generate these interactive environments that you then use to hone your intuition but that essay is really just rooted in the ideas of brett victor right brett victor talks about this a lot and um inventing on principle and his other essays and i i view ai as like the way that his ideas will end up getting closed yeah maybe even more underrated than the understanding part is the motivation part to go back to it like that's what's amazing about video games is that like yeah video games are on ramp for coding kids play minecraft or wherever they learned to code.

48:33But the key idea is that they spent that much time in Minecraft, which is impressive. A few questions quickly on sort of like learning broadly or from a meta level. You talk about abstraction. This obviously ties a little bit into the bodily experience, but you talk about abstraction and Faraday. And I think there's also some Feynman examples too about sort of embodying some of these things. I'm curious how you think about moving down from abstraction on kind of a regular basis or in a day-to-day sense. you even talk about like how can you generate concrete examples when you can't physically do an experiment obviously that's specifically in the science context but as someone who if you wasn't clear already like i i spent a lot of time in abstract layer and there seems to be this like at least really talented smart people especially in science but maybe broadly are good at finding ways to like go down like abstract down into more concrete stuff again even when there isn't a simulation to run or a test to run or experiment to run.

49:31Yeah. One thing I learned from the rationalist movement that I found very useful was this phrase, name three examples. And it basically just post-fetting things, right? Like when you hear anything abstract, like, oh, AI is going to create explosive growth. You're like, all right, name three examples. Right. Okay. Let me think of something I know well. So like clinical drug discovery, how is that going to explode once you get ASI, right? And then you, okay, you think about what's involved in clinical drug discovery. It's like, well, you have to write a bunch of stuff for the FDA and they spend six months approving it or two years approving it or whatever.

50:03How is AI going to accelerate that? And then now you have a much more specific version of the question, which is like, OK, how do we deal with like regulatory? And you can't be as lazy. Yeah, you cannot be. Exactly. Exactly. And so I think this applies to just like every area of life. Like another simple example is like and they teach you this at Palantir and I think a lot of other good companies, too, is just like whenever you're interviewing someone, just ask them for concrete examples and gather data. Right. Gather signals. So just like, what's an example of like a project you're proud of, right?

50:31And don't let them stay on the abstract level of like, oh, I owned this project. Just be like, okay, what was your specific role there, right? What did you specifically do? Who else was on it? Tell me about them. And the more like down to that level you get, the better your epistemics are. Maybe related, you're very into Karl Popper and fallibilism, it seems. Maybe not very into them, but good at talking about them and explaining them. are you able to run this sort of like fallibilistic frame in the background the key idea there to me seems to be this like default to just updating your thinking and criticizing your ideas maybe part of this is like being unafraid to look stupid maybe part of this is just like a default skepticism it makes sense in a scientific kind of like there's a rhythm to create and then evaluate create and evaluate in a personal life it's easier for me it's much easier to like be drinking my own kool-aid for a while until i like realize it do you have any methods or thoughts or frames to sort of keep that more top of mind yes i do i think you know one thing i'm really terrified of and always have been is this idea that as people get older they just kind of settle into their grooves and they just get set in ways of thinking and their opinions get set and they don't change their minds and they really stop it and i'm absolutely terrified of like stagnating as i get older right And so one of my favorite examples of somebody who just completely avoids this is Tyler Cowen.

51:54And he's so, so good at just constantly revising his thinking in a very basically Bayesian way. And the way he does it is he just constantly writes about stuff via his blog. But there's a lot he writes that never makes it onto his blog, where he'll just sit down with a Google Doc and be like, I'm just going to write a page on what I think about topic X, right? And he'll just like, yeah. So I think just having these different ways of, I think for me, the very base principle is just you don't actually know a lot. And everything you have is only a provisional and it's only a hypothesis. And you should always be willing to say, oh, this thing I thought for a long time was actually totally wrong.

52:31And I've had several moments of this in my life. And I view this as Papa's call message. It's like, as soon as you think you have the final answer and this is the way it works, bad things happen. both epistemically and you know he took that into politics and he said this is what happens when you have authoritarian governments they think they know the answer and they end up ruining everything so yeah our mutual friend graham duncan has this like frame of the loose grip which i always come back to it's like man i could have a looser grip on almost everything and you want to have a grip you want to that that's the the the challenge of course there's a theme you talked about a little bit i probably ties back to some of the previous things we talked about too but just broadly like going slower is that a meta theme that's and you also don't seem to be someone who's always or usually going that slow but you do read a lot of long form you seem to at least be taking time to think how do you relate to the the slowing down yeah i think anyone who knows me would laugh if you if they heard that i would i like to go slow because i think i'm like notoriously hasty um i think you know it's interesting when you use llms right because there's there's the kind of ones that instantly generate responses and then there's like a one pro or something where it thinks for a while and and they're kind of different models right and i think this this is analogous to um humans but yeah i think it depends what domain you're operating in so for example like in entrepreneurship i think typically going slow is a mistake obviously there are exceptions but usually you want to run very fast at any idea you have yeah because chances are to go back to the prior question like quickly find out everything that's wrong exactly exactly yeah uh i think this is true personally too by the way like if i you know like i'm guilty of this recently like if you have this essay idea or book idea or whatever that you think is so great and you're just chewing on it for weeks and weeks on weeks it's kind of a mistake right it's like what you actually want to do is write the version as fast as possible and like prove to yourself that you have something great and go and make it have contact with reality yeah and and spend all your points just like don't assume that you have a finite supply of stuff in you and if you like spend it too much then you won't have anything left it'll always regenerate so just like sit down and do it i have this recently i have this thing i've been chewing on forever and i just need to sit down and ship it at some point but it's like gained this stature in my mind of like this is my ultimate thing of aesthetics and now i can't sit down and write the damn thing so i'm guilty of it but i think like on the on the flip side though a situation where it's very valuable to go slow is when you are trying to learn something complex and difficult right so a cs concept a math concept even stuff in econ right it is like very important to uh not be like oh yeah okay that i get that it's just like this the world to understand is kind of definitionally a little slow yes yes yes exactly like just test it with loads of examples be like okay is this an example of this it's you know you hear the phrase efficient market hypothesis old all right like that's a good example it's just like okay what does that actually mean just slow down for a second does it mean like there's no ideas no that's not actually what it means at all and then when you zoom in and find out what it actually means it's like a very technical kind of a boring statement which is to the effect of like you cannot predict short-term stock prices like you can't tell me what the value of microsoft stock is going to be next week that's actually what the original thing is saying i think people extrapolate from that to all sorts of other things but like you wouldn't really know that unless you kind of went slow and read the paper, chewed on it for a while.

55:58Right. Right. Yeah. There's this idea from getting things done. Your mind is for having ideas, not holding them. you seem to you're clearly like a crazy infobor you have like a lot of different models running in your head at all times uh yet you also seem pretty good at synthesis and compression and so you've got this like crazy high volume top of funnel and you're in the world you're not just like a a person stuck in theory you're building a company maybe building off that that idea having ideas not holding them like how do you is that a conscious thing you're trying to make sense of like do you have systems that you use for cataloging and and remembering important ideas you've talked a little bit about the ways to kind of go through, maybe you were just getting at it, like go through very complex ideas or complex literature.

56:47But is that something you have methodology around or you just kind of ebb and flow? Yeah, I do think I have this other thing of like lean into what makes you imbalanced, right? And I do think this is one area where I'm pretty imbalanced. I just, I take in a lot of information, like almost, there's a couple of people I know who more than me, right? But it's like pretty high. So I like to lean into that. I think like there were a few things that helped me. One was when I was at university, the degree I was doing just required an insane amount of reading, like an unreasonable amount of reading. And I actually learned to speed read just to like be able to do all the reading.

57:22And I think it was like it was some Tim Ferriss article that taught me. Is this the one with the lines? Yeah. Draw the lines on the page? Yeah. Yeah. I got to seriously try that. I kind of tried it, but not seriously. And I'm a very slow reader, I think. It was very helpful for me. My reading speed increased a lot without losing too much retention. and yeah i mean there's a few tips he gives which are like very concrete so it's like when you read don't sub vocalize as much like don't yeah that's the that's the thing i can't get past i like the hardcore internal monologue right and then the other thing is like don't um backtrack just keep going down the page don't worry if you even don't take in stuff like actually your unconscious is taking it more than you're aware so yeah i had all these tips and then i think what happened was i just got better at that over time and and so on but you know what man like i've tried every note-taking system under the sun i've tried zettel cast and i've tried obsidian i've tried rome research i've i have physical notebooks but uh i i just don't find note taking that compelling i i think that you just have to take in a lot of inputs and then what sticks with you is going to stick with you no matter what you do and that's okay so now i'm just that's where i'm at at the moment and then every now and then what happens is it's almost like something inside me overflows a little bit and i have to write it down in some form and this is actually why i tweet is uh i'm having this happen to me a fair amount and then just to get it out i'm like all right i'm gonna make this a tweet and then i don't have to think about this anymore and and the way my essays come about is i start a tweet and then more tweets come and then more calm and then before i know it it's like this is too unwieldy it's actually an essay and then i have to switch to google docs and then before you know it it's an essay like that is how almost all of them have come about and so for me twitter is this very generative like useful creative tool of just like yeah all my readings coming in stuff just comes out and i don't really care if it's good or not and then some of it just turns into essays and that's how it all works you called tweeting like a candle wick which is an amazing metaphor yeah you you were getting at this idea a little bit of like sort of the things that need to be remembered like it's almost like a lack of intentionality around memory.

59:27You've also praised spaced repetition specifically. Yes. Maybe back to the note-taking, not having a note-taking system. Is that something you're still using a lot? What would you suggest others use it for? Broadly, memory is a deliberate choice. Like, how do you think about that? Because that feels like the extreme, extreme end of, like, hyper-specialized, systematic, deliberate. Yeah. One of my favorite tweets I ever did was just, I asked the question, which was just, why aren't spaced repetition things more mainstream? It's also flashcards just for. Yes, yes, yes. Flashcards, right. Why aren't they more prevalent?

59:59And I got a lot of interesting answers back. So I don't actually use it that regularly. Like the only time I use it is when I have to memorize a bunch of boring facts. And so that turns out to be a somewhat specialized thing. I have tried the more expansive version of it. Like go read Michael Nielsen's essay on this. It's very good. I can't do the stuff he does where he's like, I will space repetition a favorite painting just so I get to look at it every now and then. The idea of doing this is very alien to me. Sometimes I will think of it as I'm walking about my day or whatever, but if I'm having to artificially bring it up, it's like something's gone wrong.

1:00:37So I think for me, there's all these domains where the facts you have to learn are very boring. Like the recent one, I was learning about how electronic health records work in medical context, and there's just a lot of very specific arbitrary facts you need to learn. So it's amazing for that. But for anything beyond that, I haven't really gotten it to work. So I do think there is this thing here of just like what is useful to you is what is going to stick in your memory anyway. I think Taleb made this point originally. And I think that's very true. Right. Changing gears pretty dramatically. I want to spend a little time on a category that I would call a mix of sort of government and bureaucracy and politics and power.

1:01:19you spent almost a decade at palantir there's an idea in your palantir essay that i i really found interesting which is these three categories of like areas of work the first you call like morally neutral pretty easy to underwrite like not not political or whatever uh the second is obviously good and the third is gray areas category three you say but it seems to me that ignoring category three entirely and just disengaging with it is also an abdication of responsibility. Institutions in category three need to exist. The USA is defended by people with guns. The police have to enforce crime. In my experience, even people who are morally uncomfortable with some aspects of policing are quick to call the police if their home has been robbed.

1:02:04Oil companies have to provide energy. Health insurers have to make difficult decisions all the time. Yes, there are unsavory aspects to all these things, but do we just disengage from all of these institutions entirely or let them sort themselves out. I read, I think I mentioned when we met Alex Karp, there was this amazing interview with him recently in New York Times, and it was very similar. And it was one of the things that stood out to me is an uncommon moral perspective, which is just like, I'm willing to spend time in category three, maybe a defining aspect of Palantir in some way. Can you talk about this from a moral perspective, maybe even as a form of duty?

1:02:39You're also an immigrant to the U.S. and so I'd be curious how you relate to maybe that piece of it too yeah I have a lot of thoughts there so I don't know if I should tell the story so my first day at Palantir I I was doing onboarding with this one other guy right who was like at least 10 years older than me and I was like wow this guy doesn't look like a normal like tech company employee and so we go we're in the room we're chatting it's like a hotel conference room so I was like oh so what did you do before this? And he kind of just stares me dead in the eye. And he's like, to the agency for 15 years.

1:03:17That's like actually probably exactly what people expect of volunteer. No, I know. It's like so stereotypical. And I was just like this little pipsqueak. I was like, oh, I worked at a fintech company. I felt ridiculous. And yeah, it was a really eye-opening thing for me in general because, you know, I came into it with certain views and certain kind of preconceptions about stuff like the military, intelligence, defense, etc. I was much more on the kind of, not that I'm like pro-war now or whatever, but I was very much on the kind of anti-war, like, you know, don't like the military kind of vibe.

1:03:54And then I had a bunch of colleagues who were ex-military or ex-marine or ex-whatever and just kind of talked to them about stuff and just realized, wow, it's actually really, really, really, the world is way more nuanced than any of these kind of concepts can really capture, right? And if you just think about international relations and foreign relations for a second, a lot of the most, Tyler likes to say the default is war, the default is conflict, the default is death and destruction. One of the most peaceful periods of the entire world was like post-World War II, kind of like, you know, Pax Americana.

1:04:34And the reason Pax Americana existed is because America was this massive behemoth, all the European countries had kind of destroyed themselves. America built up this massive military. And then anytime somebody stepped out of line, they would just go in and kind of essentially smack them, right? And so you kept the peace and you had this crazy period of economic growth throughout the entire world. And so, like, if you actually think really hard about this, then you realize that what is going into it is the threat of violence and the threat of military force. And that's very morally ambiguous, right?

1:05:01You probably don't want to be the person applying the military force that involves doing unpleasant stuff. At the same time, it's like that speech in A Few Good Men, right? It's like, you know, your world is guarded with men with guns and so on. And so I just had to kind of confront that really head on. And then, you know, while I worked there, right, I think it was 2017 that people started protesting outside the office because of all the ICE stuff in the first Trump administration, you just have to very directly confront this thing of like, okay, like where do I stand on this stuff, right? And again, I think immigration is just one of these classic examples where you could have no immigration policy, but it ends up that most people don't like that result.

1:05:47And so as soon as you have any immigration policy, you're like, well, do I enforce it? And then as soon as you have to enforce it, you're suddenly confronted with these moral dilemmas. and there's just nothing you can do like there's no there is really no easy answer right um and so my my point there was just like well you can either completely wash your hands of it and walk away from it as you know i think notoriously you know google walked away from this pentagon ai contract back in the day um because they didn't want to engage with defense and i just think that's a mistake man like you not being there is not going to make things better if you are a good agent and if you're oriented in the right way.

1:06:25And I think Palantir did well to exploit this inefficiency for a while. They were one of the few tech companies who said, no, actually, we believe in a strong America and we think the West is good and we're going to be in the game when other people drop out. That was really unpopular at the time. Now the vibes have changed completely and it's like American dynamism. Everyone's like, rah, rah, right? So great. But I do have a lot of respect for people who were able to kind of make those unpopular calls back then. And I think it's also like, I don't think the critics are wrong either. I just think it's this dialectic, it's this debate and both sides have good points and we just have to work it out as a society.

1:07:02But to me, like disengagement is absolutely the wrong stance to take. How did Palantir internally maintain a culture that was like, in theory, if you're going to engage in category three, you want to be in this constant state of like flux on the line and a lesser, and I don't technically know, my read from the outside is the perspective seems to be that Palantir and Alex do a good job of towing that line versus somebody lesser might just kind of like, oh, we're in gray area, so I guess we'll do everything, which might be the argument Google could have made. I don't think that would have been necessarily a great argument.

1:07:37But broadly, what do you think Palantir culturally does well that allows for that type of, to go back to the other idea, having a loose grip on a bunch of complex ideas and being able to make hard decisions over and over and over again yeah uh i think there's basically the essence of it is they hire they they tested very rigorously for people who they felt were independent thinkers and they did that in all kinds of ways including you know founder interviews and whatnot like they wanted people who were kind of weird and then they wanted people who would it's basically this combo of two rare traits.

1:08:13It's like people who'd speak their minds, but also people who were not douchebags. And I asked, I asked Karp this in my interview with him. I was like, how do you keep the culture as you grow? And he was just like, as soon as somebody's a douchebag, we fire them instantly. What do you mean by douchebag? Yeah, it's, I mean, it's just like somebody who is, you know, behaves unprofessionally. Maybe they shut people down in certain ways or just any kind of bad conduct, any conduct that's like lacking in integrity, right? I mean, a lot of people, I don't think this is right, but I think a lot of people would say that is true about people who speak their mind.

1:08:42Right. That's what I'm saying. It's like such a rare intersection of these two traits. Right. It's like somebody who's very respectful and good, but also like is willing to be like, ah, this is bad. I don't like it. Right. And so I think what happens when you get those people is then one is like they're willing to buck the societal trend of like, oh, we think this is good or bad. And they're willing to say, no, actually, I'm okay with this gray area for these, you know, principled reasons. But then conversely, if you overstep the line, like let's say you go work with a cigarette company they're going to be the people typing in slack like this sucks man I thought we were making the world better like Karp is scamming all of us right and this actually did happen I mean we refused to work with a cigarette company who wanted to work with us it's not like there had to be some outcry I think Karp was just like no we're not doing this and yeah you just need those kind of people and I think it's really the question is just like how do you select for them and that's what they got right we're at a time now where obviously like government bureaucracy is very top of mind there are two brief excerpts from you that i think are interesting in this to contrast here first you say when we were allowed to work within an organization this is from the palantir essay when we were allowed to work within an organization this tended to work very well the obstacles were mostly political every time you see the government give another 110 million dollar contract to deloitte for building a website that doesn't work, or healthcare.gov style debacle, or SFUSD spending 40 million to implement a payroll system that again doesn't work, you are seeing politics beat substance.

1:10:14See SpaceX versus NASA for another example. And then more recently you said, I'm long USA, but expect significant volatility in 2025 to 2028. We're not used to change happening this fast because it hasn't in our lifetimes. And so a sense you've painted with these two quotes, It's like both a very optimistic case for why something like Doge could be really good. And you basically said like brace for impact. Can you expand a little bit on broadly why? And you don't have to explicitly comment on Doge from a very tactical standpoint, but broadly why something like Doge could be good, what you think the risks are, and how you actually think about bracing for what could be a very volatile next few years.

1:10:57Yeah, for sure. Again, lots of that. Yeah, so I've touched the government sector in some way or another for a long time in my career now, right? And I think it's just this painful contradiction of the people in government are often very well-intentioned. Like the number of civil servants I've met who I admire hugely is very high. And people that are trying to do their best, it's an unglamorous job. You have to work with shitty computers. You're earning less salary than you could in the private sector. And yet you are serving your country at the end of the day. And it just made me mad. dude it's like you can only watch so many times as a contract for a billion dollars goes to some systems integrator and they spend five years and you know for a fact that it's a simple ruby app it's like crazy to me that this happens and it happens again and again like i think just now i was tweeting about um doge just went into the irs and they found some modernization effort and the modernization effort took you know 50 years and it's cost billions and billions of dollars and It's still not finished, right?

1:11:55And so this stuff should be simple. We know how to do it. The cost of good technology has gone down over time. And so, and it's going down further with AI, right? And so you can cut all of these costs now and you can actually implement good systems for the government. Like try using a government computer for a day. It is a horribly painful experience. In the UK, you know, Dominic Cummings gave a great interview to Dworkesh about this, where he said, he tells a story of how they took two years to decide between, I think it was Google Drive in Microsoft Office or something. And eventually he was just like, please, for the love of God, just choose one and do it.

1:12:28Any like normal private company would be out of business if they acted that way. And so I've always been obsessed with this thing of like, well, government's so important and it can be used to do so much. So why does it operate in this very inefficient way? And what would it take to actually change that? And so I was very excited about Doge because I think it's an actual attempt to do this and it has more of a chance of succeeding than any previous attempt. Part of that is, you know, So Elon being a very extraordinary person, right? And part of it is like the mandate he has. That's a very historically unique thing.

1:13:00Cummings tried to do this in the UK. It didn't quite work out for sort of contingent reasons. But basically every state in the world is going to have to do something like this because this isn't a US specific phenomenon. It's not a UK specific phenomenon. Everywhere, this kind of technical debt builds up in time over government and you have to figure out a way to clean that. Otherwise you become sclerotic and like some more dynamic government overtakes you. And so, yeah, like that, that's where the kind of efficiency stuff comes from. But then it's like, in order to do that, it's going to be incredibly volatile, right?

1:13:32You have to, I don't know, like basically the, when I spoke to a lot of people in DC about it when it was announced. So this is kind of, you know, October to December timeframe. And the kind of conventional DC take on Doge was, well, we've seen this movie before. We've seen these government efficiency initiatives. You know, what happens is people say, yeah, we want to be more efficient. And then we stand up a committee and then we, you know, take six months to schedule the meeting. And then before you know it, four years have passed and nothing has got done. And in fact, like that was Curtis Yavin's prediction of what would happen.

1:14:02And so then it's like, okay, well, how do you operate an environment where everybody is constantly putting these blockers in your way? You basically do what they are doing right now, which is just like, yeah, blitzkrieg, right? It's like you go in and you grab control of the HR system and you grab control of the payment system and you force your way into buildings and you say, no, we are terminating this lease and like, yeah, we'll fight you in the courts. And look, I don't agree with every single decision that they've made. I don't think they agree with every decision they've made. But this is something that has to be done.

1:14:31Otherwise, over time, we will just become a less and less dynamic society. And so I think everybody, I think more people, including smart people in my sphere, who I'm friends with, should be more in favor of the goal and like a little bit more understanding about, you know, the volatility and the difficulty of actually doing this. It's a real clock mark. I think it ties in to this. We talked about fallibilism a little bit. You've talked about Popper and politics, and you even brought up Dominic Cummings. You had said the most important criterion for society overall is that it makes progress and creates knowledge at the fastest rate possible on how to make its citizens affluent.

1:15:08In order to do this, citizens must be able to make mistakes and correct them. Thus, the essence of democracy isn't who should rule, but the ability to remove a bad ruler, which is the same as being able to correct a mistake. Put simply, again, you, the most important thing in knowledge creation, including political knowledge, is error correction. This is Popper's Criterion. Why, beyond bureaucracy and a desire for maintaining power, is it so hard to get this? Is it so hard? Why can't we design systems that are better at understanding people's incentives and like allowing for error correction, at least at a government level?

1:15:49Yeah, I mean, it's I think it's a historically rare and unique thing, right? That, you know, somebody loses an election and then they sort of voluntarily relinquish power. Right. If you read history, you're just like, this is crazy, right? there's the king and then he or she the king he fights to the death and against eventually gets murdered and a new king arises and that's how it's always been um i don't know it feels very deeply rooted in human nature to me of this of this like this uh you're going against a lot of very strong and powerful incentives in humans to kind of maximize and like acquire resources uh and so yeah democracy is this very kind of unnatural miracle i think for the same reason The fact that we do have an open political culture and an open ability to criticize is so important about the U.S.

1:16:38I do think that is something that does differentiate us from a place like China, which is otherwise, you know, it's a little scary in some ways, right? They're doing very well in all these dimensions. They're making drugs much better and more cheaply than us. Their electric cars are pretty good. Deep Seek, AI, right? So there is all of that. But I do think in the long run, the more open political culture still should win. And we'll see what happens. Speaking of maybe technology and hanging on to power or acquiring power, you discuss, I think on another podcast with Dan, you discuss the Henriette and Shakespeare and how Hal is sort of like showing up in one context around power and in a totally different context in his private life and how those are really disparate and specifically how you have to be really manipulative to maintain power.

1:17:24I'm curious for your perspective on what seems to me at least to be a growing trend of technologists moving in on power, seemingly prioritizing power above almost everything else, if not everything else. That to me seems to be certainly distinctly notable in the last year and probably quite distinct from what technologists spent their time on 10 years ago. Yes, I agree. I mean, it's a very mixed thing, isn't it? I think for me, the mystery I felt for a long time was technology is so powerful and yet we are not in the world at all in some sense, right? We're not building libraries. We're not building museums.

1:18:07We're not building physical things. We aren't interfering in politics. We really just want to be in a garage in Palo Alto and kind of tinker. And like occasionally we make a social media app and it ends up causing a revolution in Myanmar or something. And I think the classic 2014. Exactly. At least pre-Trump. Like it was, oh, I don't really. Yeah, hands up. Yeah, right. And so there was this huge asymmetry between how important tech actually was and then how much it was playing in fields like this. And I think what happened was like, it's the classic, you know, if you're not interested in politics, eventually politics becomes interested in you, right?

1:18:38Where, you know, Zuckerberg gets hauled before Congress and he's sitting there kind of pale in a suit and he's like, oh, Senator, like we sell ads. You know, I think I think eventually like savvy people in tech realized, OK, we actually have to play this game. Otherwise, the game is going to play us and it's going to be pretty, pretty bad for us. Right. And so, for example, like I think with Elon, what radicalized him was, well, I'm making all these cars in the USA. I am revolutionizing spaceflight, like quite literally with SpaceX. And yet, you know, the previous administration doesn't even want to say my name except in a pejorative context.

1:19:11Right. I don't get invited to the White House. Whenever Biden talks about electric vehicles, he talks about General Motors, which like nobody cares about anymore. So it's all very confusing. And I think this, he's one of the first to spot like, okay, we actually have to, in some sense, take power or influence power if we're going to actually achieve our goals. And for him, this is at least like the way he says it is like, we have to go to Mars, we have to, you know, be able to produce things in the US and things like that. um and i'm i'm on net like i'm glad like i do think there are distasteful aspects of this right you watch people suddenly flip their political positions and you're like hey what happened to you a year ago you know you you know you watch them saying things that are kind of silly on x right and and kind of doing it in a very partisan way and it's easy to just be like oh this is so gross but i think it's actually existentially important it's like okay what is okay what is really important in the next 20 years.

1:20:07AI. Okay, what does AI need? Chips. Okay, where are all the chips made? The Republic of China, i.e. Taiwan, right? That's the name of Taiwan is the Republic of China. So yeah, all the chips are made at TSMC, which is like all the way on the other side of the world. This seems like a problem. And so I think if tech does not play politics, then ultimately we end up losing these things in a way that's irreversible. And we don't want that world. one instinct or read i might have would be that we we talked about in the palantir culture like how do you have this balance it doesn't seem to me that a number of these technologists classically elon but like mark andreason is another easy example these people maybe seem certainly capable less attuned to like holding that balance and that tension it it seems that it would be very very easy to paint a picture of why absolute power corrupts absolutely in three years is he long to be more focused on mars or less focused on mars i think like to be somewhat critical it seems to me that he's like his game has very much clearly but yet i'm also sympathetic to your point which is that I don't know if he had another choice.

1:21:24I think he probably believed he was going to jail if the Democrats won. And maybe he was, it seems crazy to say, but maybe he was right. But it seems, yeah, it just seems that unless, whereas maybe Peter Thiel, he's obviously a controversial person. Someone like Alex Karp seems to be more used to balancing technology, mission, vision, and also playing the political game. And now we have all these new entrants to the political power game, and they're all very, very eager to play it. But yeah. It's the classic Peter Thiel thing, man. He was like at least five, probably like 10 years early to this game.

1:22:00And then he basically exited it when it became mainstream, right? Like 2016, I remember how shocking it was when he went to the Republican National Convention and he was like... He seems less obsessed with power than your average VC these days, which maybe that's just the public perception thing. but Peter actually seems like a little bit more restrained in the power grab. You could argue he's pulling all the strings but yeah. I don't know. I mean yeah I don't know. But it was interesting. He was very early to realizing this and then he made a very bold play and you know he basically won right.

1:22:35I mean JD Vance I think used to work for him or something. And so yeah I think ultimately there's aspects of it that don't look so great but we basically have to play this game. I do think someone like Elon always has his eye on the ball. He is very serious about getting to Mars. He is very serious about regulation, basically choking us from building anything. He's really serious about onshoring a bunch of production that should not be living in other countries. And I think those themes are what is going on with the tech crowd. Now, what remains to be seen is like, well, will the administration actually execute effectively on those priorities?

1:23:14right or will they get distracted and create a bunch of noise i don't know like politics is a very very messy game it's a very difficult game to play but i do think that's where all those tech people are coming from like what what you know a16z mark and race and whatever what they're doing right now is a direct consequence of what they said a few years ago when they said it's time to build software's eating the world like all of that it's a literal expression of those beliefs and i think they would have liked to make it work with the previous administration too but but the previous administration kind of just wasn't that interested.

1:23:45Yeah. You are building a new company. You haven't talked about it publicly yet, but I'd love to talk a little bit about some of the lessons around the idea maze and the exploration, founding team and people, especially going from working one place for eight years, big place. What did you come into this experience, at least when you decided to go from sabbatical mode, to exploration mode to actually doing something what did you come into that with um holding maybe most precious around what to work on the team the people the problem yeah yeah i learned i learned a lot here um i think you know one one thing tyler likes to say a lot is context is that which is scarce which is just such a rich saying it's so it's so wonderful i think one of the things that I realized was just how true that was right so I think you know when I when I left like I'd spend a lot of time working with you know government and kind of big complex customers like Palantir does and I think my initial urge was like okay I'm gonna go do a pure software thing now like I'm gonna make easy mode dev tools or something I don't want to deal with people anymore and um so you know I explored a bunch of different markets which which we can go into if you want but But I kind of realized, no, like, especially me and then, you know, the co-founder I brought in and the team that I founded this with, all of us have a very specific set of context that was built over many, many years.

1:25:17And ultimately, the opportunities that arose came directly out of that context that we built up and like not out of approaching a new sector from first principles and being like, all right, how should this work? Like I'll give you one example is like I looked pretty hard at education and, you know, again, like I think any sector you can build a good business in. Right. My personal conclusion looking at education was it would be very hard to build the kind of business that I wanted to build like in an idealistic way. Like I very much cared about like, OK, how do I improve learning? How do I, you know, like I want to build the young ladies illustrated primary.

1:25:52I want to build Ender's game. Right. Like, how do I do that with AI? And, you know, when you actually go into the business of education, then you end up with something that's like, oh, like, what if I made a better SAT textbook or whatever? And it's just a little bit depressing when you try and do the calculation of like, okay, what's going to make a lot of money? And so like in terms of like keeping the business running. So, yeah, I iterated through a few versions of this, but then it was just kind of hilarious that the thing I came to was kind of like almost exactly what you would predict if you knew a lot about what I'd done at Palantir and what my co-founders had done.

1:26:23And it's like a very natural extension of that. And some of the stuff that we've been discussing as well. And so, I don't know, like, I think my lesson, my big lesson there was just like, basically, if you want to be an entrepreneur, it's like build very deep context in something. And then like, you will naturally arrive at the edge. And then it's not that hard to arrive at the edge, actually. Like the tough part is getting access to the problem. But once you're at the edge, a bunch of really obvious ideas are going to stand out to you. And that's where really good company ideas come from. It's very hard and very rare for a good company idea to just come from somebody standing back and looking at a sector with a spreadsheet and being like, oh, I think this might make sense.

1:27:04Like, it's possible. It's just like, I didn't find that work. And rarely, oftentimes people aren't actually at the edge, which is why the problems aren't so obvious. I mentioned it super briefly earlier. You talk about scientist brain and founder brain. Maybe I would even add in a third of like artist brain. In an era where the default things are really easy to do or faster to do or only going to get easier to do, and maybe even ties into our conversation around care, like maybe caring about the details is going to matter more incrementally. And so I'd be curious how you think about, you talk really eloquently, but just about how founders need to be incredibly good at being really high contacts on so many different things.

1:27:43And as a result, they definitionally can't go on these rabbit holes or like go way too into the weeds. Do you think part of this is a personal question maybe for you as a leader and maybe this is part of this is a broader question around like what the entrepreneurial founder leader of the future will look like? Do you think there's a world where they actually are going to be more artist like or scientist like in the way that they are deeply, deeply attuned to maybe more specific details of the problem? yeah it's really interesting you know one thing one thing i was thinking about with regards to doge and elon actually was like he one thing that's very unique about him is he has the ability to basically summon up a hundred software engineers on the map and almost nobody else has this ability he can just pull people out of tesla spacex and right you know he can just be like hey stanford grads come follow me and like a bunch of 20 year olds will join him and and actually yeah it's like who can magic up that army very fast right and so i think i think like yeah future future successful entrepreneurs will often look like they have a kind of deep and wide network both let's say in customer relationships they have maybe some unique access they have you know some kind of some kind of brand or something where it's like they can like pull people to them and draw talent to them and that's i think maybe only gonna matter more actually whereas like i think for people in their early 20s or kind of younger, you know, maybe the stereotypical YC founder, I do think there's a bit more like there's a lot of them throwing spaghetti against the wall.

1:29:10And then, you know, the failure rates will be quite high, I think. And so, yeah, I think the returns to like unique or proprietary access or knowledge just get higher and higher because any more like sort of generic idea, basically, becomes more and more doable with AI over time. So, for example, like if you know all these esoteric processes that are mostly captured offline or if you know these esoteric industries like shipping for example like you're probably going to do pretty well because ai can reinvent like the way that anything is done in that industry now right and so yeah i think i think a lot of interesting like the the latest trend that i've kind of heard people talk about a lot is buying services companies that have this deep moat or kind of distribution figured out already and then basically AI-fying them.

1:29:58And that, I think, will actually become much more of a thing. You and Jeremy Giffen were just going back and forth about secrets being incrementally better today than they used to be. I think that's inside that too. Yeah. If you have a secret, just shut up about it. Don't tell anybody. Well, we are not announcing the company today. Speaking of secrets, changing back gears, and some of this will probably tie into part of the beginning of the conversation but i want to talk a bit about art first you criticized tolstoy specifically later in life saying essentially he had this sort of like incorrect theory that art is about communicating moral purpose and teaching what is right and good i you you have maybe one answer i found but before i talk about that i'd be curious for you to think about what what you think art is for yeah this is one of my favorite topics um also it's hilarious to come to this right after talking about entrepreneurship there was no super obvious transitions or just like yeah we're confusing to listen to um no okay yeah this is this is really fascinating right so basically Tolstoy writes some of the greatest books of all time he writes War and Peace he writes Anna Karenina and then later in his life he writes this kind of notorious essay called it was something like Leo Tolstoy and the Fool but whatever I'll look it up but it's about Shakespeare it's this huge rant about how Shakespeare is actually bad and he's just like you know Shakespeare everyone looks up at shakespeare he's the best author ever and i think he's just bad and his basic critique of shakespeare is like shakespeare has no moral vision he just depicts a bunch of people you know getting killed for random reasons right or or just killing each other or having problems but he doesn't there's no message that his plays are promoting um it's just kind of chaos right and so he he articulates this this vision of art as actually the job of art is to show you goodness and moral goodness.

1:31:43And therefore, the best kind of art is almost like parables, like didactic parables. So then he spends the rest of his life after that writing these parables that honestly nobody ever reads. And they're like really just like homely Christian parables about how somebody like, you know, gets robbed and then he gives the thief his coat and whatever, like all this kind of stuff. And nobody reads that. They read Anna Karenina. And what I find really interesting about this is like, you can actually see this tension in, I don't know if you've read Anna Karenina. I haven't. It's amazing. It's like my favorite novel.

1:32:11Our friend Ava has been trying to get me to read it. Yeah, this year will have to happen. Make it your summer project, seriously. But you can see this division in Anna Karenina. It's a deeply religious book. Like the epigraph to it is from the Bible. It goes, vengeance is mine, I will repay. I think it's from the Hebrew Bible. And, you know, basically like the, one of the main characters, Levin, has this moral journey, which kind of culminates in his converting to Christianity, like in his heart. And then there's Anna, who's the subject of the novel. And she's almost this like devil figure, right?

1:32:41She's seductive, she's charming, she's beautiful, and basically she commits adultery with somebody, and that's kind of the other plot line in the novel. So you have this parallel plot. So you have Anna, and then you have Levin. Levin finds his way to moral goodness, and Anna, I won't spoil the book, but what's interesting is Tolstoy is clearly in love with Anna too. He is so charmed by Anna. He describes her charm so compellingly, how seductive she is. He clearly enjoys writing the scenes about Anna more than, you know, he enjoys writing some of the other scenes, let's say, where he's promoting his moral ideas.

1:33:15And so I feel like this conflict was deep in him. And there's a very similar phenomenon of literature, which is in the Poet in Paradise Lost by John Milton, right, which is about the fall of man and Christianity. It's a very common thing to say by critics that the most compelling scenes Milton writes in that are all about the devil. like it's actually very boring when he's just depicting Adam and Eve frolicking in the Garden of Eden but when he's writing about the devil it's kind of sexy and cool and interesting and so yeah like I think Tolstoy ends up proving himself wrong because the art that he writes that he thinks exemplifies morality is actually very boring and nobody reads it but like people read stuff like Anna Karenina which is much more kind of in the in the world that we all live in right and so you know I think there's a bunch of things to take away from that but yeah that's kind of my take on Tolstoy you've Another maybe answer to this question, which is that art is good at defamiliarization and particularly how it sort of like gets us past the defaults or even like allows us to experience ordinary life in a new way or at a new rhythm or a new pace.

1:34:19Do you find that to consistently be true or at least be true in any specific mediums? Yeah, right. I think it's back to what we're talking about at the beginning around original seeing, right? So actually Tolstoy uses technique all the time is he will take a familiar phenomenon and then he'll describe it as though an alien is seeing it in like very unfamiliar terms. And then you'll be like, oh, he's describing somebody like whipping a horse to make it go faster. But he'll describe it in the most unnatural way. Right, right. And in a way that makes you horrified. Like you almost see it afresh where you're just like, oh, shit, this is actually bad.

1:34:54Whereas when you see it, maybe you're just like, whatever, it's a routine thing. So, yeah, I think it's like, you know. You know what it makes me think of is Remember the Lobster by David Foster Wallace. Consider the Lobster, yeah. Consider the Lobster, yeah. Yes, yes, I fully agree. And Wallace was also amazing at this, right? Yeah, so I think it does apply to every medium. And I think to me, it's just a flip side of the idea that strangeness is a characteristic of art. I think everything really good is kind of jarring in some way. Like as a simple example, like Frank Ocean album, Blonde. Like the first time I listened to that, I was like, I don't know if I like this.

1:35:31Right. This is not Channel Orange. It's not at all Channel Orange. And then you listen to it a second time. You're like, this might be good. Then the third time you're like, this might be the greatest album I've ever listened to. Right. But initially you're like, why is he using autotune in this bizarre way? Like, why is the voice so high randomly? Yes. Like, why does the... I had that experience with Yeezus. Same thing. Yeezus. I think probably Kanye's best album. But the first time I was like... First time I heard it, I hated it. This hurts my ears. Yes. Yeah. Like on site, right? Yeah. Yeah.

1:35:59Yeah. Yeah. You said movies are like waking dreams. I know you love film. Why is film special? I think with film, well, you know, there's a bunch of different reasons, right? But basically, you're watching it in this physical setting, and it's fully dark. And it's almost like you're going to sleep and then the dream appears on the screen in front of you, right? And so that's why I think going to the theater and watching it in the theater is so important. It's also interesting because it uses so many different media in one, right? So you have music and film, you have visuals and film, you have film scripts, right?

1:36:33So there's like writing, there's visual, there's all these different things and different films I think will emphasize kind of different aspects of that. So I think that's interesting too. I think it's just like, it's one of those things that it's as visceral as music in some ways because it's taking place in time and it's taking place on this big screen in front of you, right? but because it has so many kind of degrees of freedom it can be more morally complex maybe like I think a really good film can really put you through an experience that can simulate an experience that you'll have and you can come out of it like very different yeah I saw you read I'm using ourselves to death I think last year I recently actually just read it you read a ton of long form and and seem to really appreciate it i think my question is like do you have a either a plea or a form of encouragement for people listening who maybe want have experienced it or want to experience it more but like aren't aren't getting there maybe back to the very beginning of the conversation of like our trend towards slop and our our even trend to no longer appreciating things that are deeply cared beyond maybe we talked about reading speed but anything else you might say on on a society who seems to be moving further and further away from this sort of like textual society yeah i i think people will work their way to this like i'm optimistic right i mean like everyone everyone has something that they do really care about in this way so people will be into you know anime or manga or they'll be they'll be making these long playlists on Spotify right and when they listen to those they kind of retreat you know like a place inside of themselves right and so I think it's it's basically just go further out of your comfort zone and and consume things in lots of different media and things that might be hard or natural for you um like go go to go to weird out of the way art galleries or you know read that random old poem that like you never quite got and just kind of stick with it for a while i think the thing that was really helpful for me was in when i realized like okay art isn't just something that is saying stuff but in a way more complicated way it's actually okay if you don't understand it at all like it's okay to read a poem and not completely that really unlocked it for me because then i was like not feeling bad when i read some vaguely obscure poem and i was just like what am so it's a takeaway from can you so when you say that um did you still are you just saying like oh that wasn't for me are you saying i enjoyed it despite not fully getting it i it's both right so and and it's like some things you read will still activate some kind of inner response um and and some things you read will just leave you completely flat right this is the robert irwin thing a little bit though too which is just like you don't necessarily know how it's going to work on you there's this book i read a year and a half ago or so called the overstory about trees and like I liked it reading it but like I think about that book all the time still a year later it's like it's working so yeah yeah like there's there's a four-line poem by Ezra Pound which I love and I think about it almost every day right and but I think it's quite mysterious too I'll recite it if you don't mind it goes um and the days are not long enough and the nights are not long enough and life slips by like a field mouse not shaking the grass

1:40:10yeah and i think about the poem all the time like why the mouse but it works so well i don't know it creates a mood i think i really appreciate the holding off the temptation that feels dominant in today's society which is like everything has to be processed and understood and completely compressed right now or else yeah thank you for that uh last question on this any patterns across different mediums music books ideas patterns in your taste that you've recognized yeah my it's it's very eclectic i guess right like i was talking to someone about music today and they were just like oh you seem to be into softer i was like yeah but i also into like heavy heavy metal like i love slayer i love death metal you know so it's it's i i think it's just um it's the urge to explore completely new domains and um again like i've mentioned him several times but i think tyler is my model for this because he's just more extreme on this dimension than anybody i know he'll be like into mexican folk art or haitian folk art or indian classical music or he'll be able to talk about Bach right and i i just like i model that trait on him and i force myself every now and then to like i just get bored man i'm just like all right what's new what's good and And then I'll be like, okay, well, I've not explored, you know, 20s American blues music from Louisiana.

1:41:32There are so many things to explore. Yeah. There really are. Yeah. And I think it's just like the only common theme really is this like love of exploring unfamiliar domains and then trying to like crack them and understand how they operate and how they work. And I'm kind of addicted to that feeling of being that initial thing of like, wow, this sounds so odd. Like this really sounds weird. and then kind of getting it and then being able to tell, okay, this feels better, this feels worse. I think just like being able to run that cycle again and again is very rewarding. My first guest on the podcast, Jason Liu, has this line, confidence is the memory of success.

1:42:08And I find that it just keeps applying to new ways. And I think even in something like this, like knowing that you can go into a totally new domain and find something really invigorating or interesting about it, like the more that compounds, the more you do that, the easier it is to like pick the next like random arbitrary thing that feels whereas i think many people sort of like stay in their lane not only professionally or learning or skill wise but maybe even interest wise it's like that i think i can combat in both directions which is cool yeah yeah one thing um i'm friends with nick camarada and he's always talking about how people don't randomize enough they don't explore like basically everyone always under explores right it's like you eat a certain number of foods but like did you try randomizing this aspect yeah yeah and so i think i think that applies to basically every area of life because you know it's hard to experiment and you need a routine and there's just like some cost and habit thing on so it's just like you know go like in travel just like go somewhere you wouldn't go like travel to south dakota or something right and like go drive around there for a while uh yeah all right my as we wrap up i have kind of like a it's not a lightning round you don't have to go lightning speed but miscellaneous let's call it speaking of what does it mean to travel well I think it sounds obvious, but I think truly talking to and hanging out with locals and getting locals to show you around.

1:43:29Yeah, because I think it's just like there's the the city as it appears to be. And then there's the city as it really is. And you cannot access that other thing without somebody taking think like New York. We're both in New York. You know, the first time you visit, you go to Times Square and you go to Midtown. Right. And then you talk to a New Yorker and they're like, no, like, you know, go out to Brighton Beach and have Russian food or something. And every place is like that. It turns to your earlier point about. Yeah. Yes. Yes, exactly. And so for me, like every kind of quote unquote travel hack that I think is important has involved just like ways of doing this.

1:44:02And yeah, like the travel experiences that I remember most, I would say a lot of them are. I had a friend who was from there, maybe like I went to Czech Republic once with a Czech friend of mine and he was just like he took me out drinking with his buddies. And that was so memorable. And I know that if I'd just gone to Czech Republic by myself, I'd have just been like, oh, Czech people are so unfriendly. And I didn't really like the food and like, you know, all this. But like through him, it was a completely different experience. Yeah. So it's like find these entry points into places and then it will be so much more rewarding.

1:44:36Are there any important stories you tell yourself about yourself? Obviously, we all have lots of stories we tell ourselves, I suppose, but any that come to mind? i think um i truly think it's the thing around not being too fixed about any opinions and beliefs and keeping your yeah keeping your identity small right so it's just like um you don't you don't know everything it's also like i think i don't know if it's healthy or not but i i always just tell myself like you've really not achieved anything yet like you just don't I don't know maybe it's like a little messed up but I'm always just like every day is the first day of your life and you need to look forward to your next year and you need to be excited about you know the projects that you're going to do and I think that is just very fundamental to living life in a good way there's a sense I have that I'm sure I'm not lots of people have talked about which is that we may be increasingly told what to do by AI in life and in work.

1:45:43How comfortable are you with this idea both for people generally and for yourself? The version I expect to happen, I think, is that, well, it's always voluntary, right? AI is never forcing you. And so my experience has been that basically there's a bunch of drudge work and then the AI just helps me do it quicker so far, right? It's just been like, oh, I don't really want to write this script, but like, okay, Sonnet. You're the top level decision on everything. Exactly, exactly. And so I think the things that I actually care about and want to kind of sit with for a while, I won't use AI for it.

1:46:20I will just do it myself. Whereas, yeah, if I have to fill out some form, then I will go and ChatGPT will do it. You don't expect to 18 months from now, wake up and ask ChatGPT how you should spend your time. That's an extreme example. I do some version of this. you know like i'll give it i'll give it my to-do list sometimes i'll be like look tell me what to do okay i'm just gonna execute it it's kind of good though i mean it's just like it's like having a really smart friend and it's in the nature of advice like the it can't make you do it right i i mean i've i found i found myself really impressed in the last week or two by gvt 4.0 there's some change they made where it's just way better at the end of whatever you asked for being like by the way do you want me to do x or y or and i found myself just being like yes yes yes It's kind of cool, right?

1:47:07It's like when you're in cursor and you're pressing tab, tab, tab, and you're like, oh, the AI, it's like surfing. It feels very nice. Yes, but it also, in this sense, it makes me feel like it's giving you more agency, which obviously could be an illusion. Yes, yes. I think if you talk to people in the AI world, some of them are kind of doomer-y about this, where they'll say like, well, AI is going to get hyper persuasive, and it's going to basically addict you, and you're going to be obsessed with talking to it. Yeah, and I didn't believe that. I don't know. I'm a bit more optimistic than that.

1:47:38Like my experience has just been that it enhances my agency. And as soon as I feel the opposite of that happening, I will just switch it off. That's the hope. You wrote about negotiation. You say good founders have an instinct for reading rooms, group dynamics, and power. This isn't usually talked about, but it's critical. Founding a successful company is about taking part in negotiation after negotiation after negotiation. and winning on that. Hiring, sales, fundraising are all negotiations at their core. It's hard to be great at negotiating without having these instincts for human behavior. Since you wrote that, as you've started a new company, any updated views or deepened views on negotiation or how to get better at it?

1:48:26Yeah, I think this is one of those things where the core principles are really simple and can be explained very quickly, but then basically you have to live them in a bunch of contexts and you get better at it. And so it's like, you know, BATNA is a really important concept, right? So that's best alternative, right? So if you don't, like, say you're applying for a job, like, what is the thing you're going to do if you don't get that job, right? And so if you want to strengthen your BATNA, you'll get five job offers and then you don't have to, like, get stuck on any one. It's, like, really simple stuff like that, but the art is, I think, applying it to a bunch of different contexts where it can get increasingly hard.

1:49:01So as a simple example, like, Like, I think, like, one thing I've just realized is, like, exceptionally good founders are very good at creating options, even when none really exist, right? So, like, say you are running out of cash, and the only thing that's going to save you is this one acquisition, right? But you don't want to look mega desperate. Like, there's all these stories about Travis Kalanick doing stuff like this. Like, he will just convince himself in his head, like, no, I don't need these people. These people are dumb. Like, okay, like, the other option is, like, I'll, you know, lay off x percent of my company and i'll just like eat ramen and like i'll do this it's a real option in my mind but it's a real option and so then i can walk into that room and it comes off in my vibe and that's a very non-verbal thing and so yeah like to me like creating options have been a very core concept um i think the other thing is just uh for me like not i don't know like it's easy to get kind of psychologically mugged by people in the room right like especially people who are more experienced than you and the best position to just put yourself in is like not needing anything from them yeah right and then they they can't do too much to you yeah some of this is more emotional than even is strategic or tactical i think in some cases yeah yeah yeah like people will do all kinds of things to you like i don't know for example vcs will make you feel like oh if you don't take this money like you're gonna fail or you're not ambitious enough or whatever it is and i think you just have to you really just have to stay focused on what's important to you and not buy into other people's frames.

1:50:28I think it's in the Palantir post, but you talk about this in different contexts, and you really admire people who are good at language and coining memes and coining language, whether it be Palantir or Tyler. Jeff Bezos is good at this too, this compression of vocabulary. You have this little section in there listing a few of them. Ontology is an old one, but then there is Impl, Artist Colony, Compounding, The 36 Chambers, Dots, Metabolizing Pain, Gamma Radiation. I'm not going to make you explain all those, but are there any of those or otherwise that feel really memorable? Yeah, there are a lot, right?

1:51:03Or even the sort of genius, like what makes, the ones that are most effective, like what makes them so effective? I think, again, they're sort of surprising, right? So like, you know, the artist quality thing, I think it's just things that stick, right? And there's that really good book, I think it's called like Made to Stick or something, and it goes into what what actually makes ideas stick in your head right so often they're quite visual in certain ways um they uh yeah often they're like almost like puns like i think artist colony sounds a bit like ants colony in some weird way uh but yeah like i don't know cop would always have this bit of like everyone we hires like we don't do performance reviews basically because you can't measure people on this like unidimensional axis like everyone we hire is super multi-dimensional and like you know i think he believes it and like i believe it and there is there is like a deep element of truth there but there is also a marketing aspect too right of like you know we're hiring these picassos or whatever uh but yeah it goes pretty deep to the culture you are you are like getting to know a person like fully all around and then like admitting to them admitting them in almost as though they're joining a cult uh so yeah i think that was one where it's kind of interesting the gamma radiation one is like this idea that you have to go through and feel a lot of pain very directly and that pain basically kind of like quote radiates you into becoming a superhero or something like that right so it's like an incredible hulk reference right and but like the thing it translates to that is that you basically want to be with the customer and you want to be doing the same workflows as them and you want to be there like late at night trying to fix them very directly.

1:52:45And if you are not feeling pain, like if you are just in your nice air-conditioned office in Palo Alto and you're having your LaCroix and you're like around a whiteboard designing the optimal workflow, you're probably doing it wrong. And so this phrase gamma radiation just like compresses all of that. Strong imagery too, right? Exactly, exactly. Into a very pity phrase of like, wait, am I doing the wrong thing? Should I be like out there instead? He's come up a bunch in this conversation so maybe you've even answered the question already, but what do you think the rest of us could most learn from Tyler Cowen?

1:53:14well i think tyler you know i mentioned a bunch of his concepts right so i think one thing he says is like cracking cultural codes and that's kind of the same thing as what i was mentioning around taking areas that are unfamiliar to you like the blues music or whatever and like very quickly kind of acting as an anthropologist of them and learning how they work and the fact that only immersing yourself in those contexts is is there's like no substitute for it basically yeah so cracking cultural codes is like a big one i think i think for him like the importance of writing is something i've taken away a lot so just like write out your views on something you'll realize that your opinions are not that thought out and like paul graham says it converts your ideas from vague to bad yeah that's a great great way of putting it yeah so so a big fan of like writing i think maybe what doesn't come out about him so much actually in his writing or whatever is just like he's like a very kind person he's like really kind like he will he it's very hard to get him to say bad stuff about basically anybody and he's very good at like finding the positive about people and like situations and basically anything right he's kind of a natural cheery optimist so i think for me like the the thing i try and take away from him is like this kindness and like optimism and positivity.

1:54:33Very willing to speak his mind and not a douchebag to the other point. So rare. I'm like, how has this guy not been canceled? My final question or topic, I think has come up in a couple of ways already a bit. This is an excerpt from you. You say, a common thing I see in late 20 plus 20 something plus adults. They've tried a few things to make big improvements in their lives and they mostly haven't worked that well, so they give up on trying new things and instead settle into whatever grooves they happen to be in. Keep experimenting. Massive improvements are possible, are possible, but you probably need to 10x the number of experiments you're doing because you're sampling from a heavily tailed distribution.

1:55:15Majority of roles will be zero, but a few will be massive. You talked about an idea I think about constantly life and sort of like defying inertia. maybe this is a blueprint for care what advice do you have for experimentation and eventually finding that groove perhaps it again returns back to this like quality without a name you know when you feel it but do you have any further advice on that yeah i think some things do just kind of lock in and become constants in your life right like for example for me um running uh became a constant and the funny thing is I absolutely hated it. So I played squash in college, which is like a very specific sport.

1:56:00And I played cricket, which is like the most English thing ever, right? But like cricket games are eight hours long. I didn't know that. They're so long, man. And, you know, I had exams. I was a dedicated student. So I was like, okay, I'll just run because I hate it. But it's a very efficient way. Like 30 minutes, I'm exhausted and I've done my exercise. You can do it everywhere. Yeah. Yeah. And it just sort of stuck. And then, you know, without going into too much detail, like there was a bunch of stuff I was dealing with. And I found it actually weirdly therapeutic. Like initially it was literally like masochism.

1:56:28It was like the pain was therapeutic or something, but eventually that kind of transmuted itself into pleasure. And I've run consistently every week, like since then I've been injured. And yeah, so some things it's like, you don't need to try and over-optimize. Like that is just something that feels pretty cool to my being. Same with like, I don't know, journaling. Like I don't journal consistently, but I kind of have always had some notebook going since I was like 13 or something, right? So I think some stuff, it's like, it's good, it's a constant in your life, and then you don't mess with it.

1:56:58I think with other stuff, it's important to just be like, ah, maybe I don't have this dialed in. So, you know, your eating habits is a really simple one, right? I'm on a like really nice routine right now, but I recently just like changed everything basically and just tried a completely different diet. And I found it worked a lot better and it made me feel a lot better. So I think that you have to have this intuition about your life of like what is working well, what is maybe working not so well. And so some things you hold constant, like for me, the exercise thing, I basically hold constant. But other stuff like, you know, I just I said the thing to you earlier about not really believing in note taking.

1:57:30It's not a fixed thing with me. Like I will I think I originally tweeted that when I saw some new note taking thing. And I was like, I want to try that note taking doesn't work. And I was like, no, man, like, you know, if you stop experimenting, like you get stuck in these groups. I think that's when I tweeted that. But yeah, I will always try the new thing. And if it doesn't stick, that's fine. And so, yeah, maybe note taking is an area where I could use some improvement. What I like about that, too, is that stability in certain areas is part of what can maybe allow you to take the risk of the change.

1:58:02One of my one of my previous guests, Stefan, he talked about just in finding a long term life partner, the amount of added freedom because he had like that that net. And I think that probably applies in lots of big and small ways. yeah yeah i remember i took uh it was from tim ferris and it was he he was just like have five things going on in your life and then basically yeah like two of them will suck at any given time but you're sort of hedging the time right so like you know maybe your running is going really well and your company is going really badly i mean you don't want it to be that way but at least the running means you're not in like the deepest depths of depression and so yeah i try and always have these parallel threads nabil that's all i got thank you very much thank you this was a wonderful Wonderful conversation.

1:58:43I think lots to come back to. Thanks again. Thanks, man. Hey, before I leave you, if you enjoyed the episode, please leave a rating and subscribe on Spotify, Apple, or YouTube. You can also find full transcripts on my website at jacksondoll.com slash dialectic. And obviously everything's linked in the description. If you have notes, feedback, or guest ideas, you can email me at pod, P-O-D, at jacksondoll.com. See you next time.