Being Authentic as F*ck with Sun Yi

25:52He wrote this article trash. I just started getting actually depressed over the reaction and it did affect me for quite some time. Was that the first time that happened or does it, whenever something goes like, gets some negative reviews, like, does it bother you? It does. Like, you would like, I used to think, oh, I'm really good at ignoring the haters, but not really. Like it always affects you a little bit. I mean, you get better at it. So if someone's like really just random and annoying, it'll bother me for half a second, but then I'll figure, okay, this is a random person who's anonymous posting on Twitter.

26:32I have no idea what's going on here. But if this one though, it was a lot of personal attacks, a lot of personal friends or family that just robbed me. And this was the worst because again, this was the most viral of all of them. and I didn't understand what people even disagreed with. Okay, you could disagree with the article, but I said I loved New York City many times in the article and I just didn't have a solution. I think that's what bothered people and without them realizing it, like subconsciously maybe they were expecting me to have a solution at the end somehow. And I think I stopped writing for a while after that.

27:10Like I noticed in my pattern, I continued writing. I've written an article a day probably since 2002. And I stopped shortly after this article, writing an article a day. And it's became a little more difficult for me to write after that. And I think I was depressed. Looking back, do you regret writing it? Like has that, like now that some years have passed, would you still write that and publish it again? Or has it actually helped you in the long run? in any way? I don't know the answer. I don't know if it's helped me. For instance, so I was in the process of publishing a book and my publisher at the time, Harper Collins, I think they got very concerned that so many people were hating me that there's this whole thing, bad news is still good for you.

28:03Bad press is still good. Yeah, bad press is good. Yeah, all press is good. But I don't think it was so in this case. And my publisher was really worried it wouldn't be so in this case. And I don't think it really, maybe it made a few more people aware of me. And certainly outside of New York City, everybody loved the article. But I don't think it necessarily helped me in any way. And just personally, I was surprised at the vitriol. It gave a lot of people who had something against me a chance to participate in this ground swelling of hate. But I don't think I regret writing it because, look, it's an experience.

28:41and it also, the funny thing is I'm friends with Eric Adams, who's the mayor of New York, and we've talked about the problems facing New York many times after that article. And some people even wanted me to run for mayor, and some prominent people wanted me to run for mayor, but I was friends with Eric, who was running for mayor, so I didn't want to, of course I didn't want to do it, and I didn't think I would be qualified anyway. But I don't think I regret it, but it's definitely been mostly negative, the experience of writing that article. Yeah. So for me, I'll tell you from my experience, I actually love that article.

29:14I moved out of New York two years ago. I lived in New York for almost 20 years and I moved out of New York for the same reason that you mentioned in the article. So for me, it actually built some sort of more of a trust with you. And especially because that was an election year. And I think there was like that pandemic that caused like a kind of a divide in the country of like how you're looking at things. And do you think that has something to do with that negative? I think so too. Like everyone suddenly thought I was right wing. And regardless of whatever my political stuff is, like some stuff I'm very left, some stuff I would say on economic stuff, I'm more on the right, like most people.

29:56But suddenly I was like labeled as right wing, even though I didn't mention politics once in the entire article. And New York is a pretty Democrat city. So, okay, all my friends were Democrat Democrat and I had no problem. That was just how I grew up is in New York City. But suddenly people labeled me a certain way or they said I was kicking New York City on the way out. I was still living in New York City then, but afterwards I did move out. And in the article, I said I was in Florida. I wasn't living there. I was just staying there for a while during the pandemic. But then I ended up moving out because my comedy club got vandalized.

30:35One of my employees got got harassed because he was wearing a jacket that said the James Alder show. And I'm like, oh, this is what happened to all these nice liberal people. So it was, I only recently, I would say about two months ago, I visited New York. And for the first time I had a fun experience there as opposed to other times that I've visited. My whole family's there. So I visit there quite a bit, but I guess for me too, it helped me see that, Hey, I can enjoy living in other parts of the country as well. Like I always thought I would live in New York my whole life, but I was essentially kicked out.

31:08So I learned to enjoy other places. I would actually think if I had to take a guess, I think there's probably a lot more people like me who actually didn't hate that article. But I just feel like the negativity is louder. So it almost feels like everyone hates you, but the reality is probably more like 10 % of the people hate you and 90 % actually probably agree with you. Yeah, actually, my experience in general is that somewhere between 1 % and 3 % of anything opinion you have, people are going to really hate enough to be loud about it. And, but this is an article that 30 million people were aware of.

31:47So 2 % is like 600 ,000 people. So suddenly like it was a much larger number of people than usual were being very vocal. And the vocal minority, they're the only ones you hear from. Everyone else is sane and normal. And so if they really like your article, you definitely don't hear from them because they're just sane, normal people. Like, you're a sane, normal person. But the people who are, like, insane or their hate is, like, driven by something else that's personal to them, those are the ones you hear from. And you have to let that not get to you. But it's hard if it's, like, a really large number.

32:20Yeah. And like you mentioned, like, if it's from people that you know, or, like, for example, like, I'm sure you respect Seinfeld as a comedian and things like that. I mean, like, I basically stopped doing comedy after that. So I was a stand-up comedian. for many years. And it's not that, oh, part of it was the pandemic. It was hard to do comedy anyway. But it's just that a lot of people I knew didn't want to piss off Seinfeld. So all the comedians... Now, again, a lot of the comedy club owners reached out to me and said, hey, I hope all is okay. We haven't heard from you in a while. And I was one of them too.

32:53I was a comedy club owner and I was a comedian. And so people were very nice. But I just dropped out of that subculture. I just kind of like disappeared for a while.

33:17So before you said something really interesting, you said, unless you feel you're a little bit scared, you don't hit that publish button. Yeah, because otherwise, if you're not scared, then you're probably not saying something very interesting. Like, let's say I wrote an article, three things I got to do every morning. do a cold plunge, drink kale juice, walk 10 ,000 steps. Okay, that content might be true, but it's not interesting. Like other people have said it. But if I said, and the flip side is, I'm not going to say the opposite of that just to be controversial because then it's not real and it may not be interesting.

33:54People don't realize like when you try to be controversial just for controversy's sake, it actually doesn't work for several reasons. One is, like I said earlier, it's not predictable what's going to go viral or not. Second, if you don't, if you're just saying something to be controversial, probably people sense that. Human beings are like x-ray machines. They know what's authentic and what's not. And, uh, and also you're not going to be passionate about something you don't really believe in. So I'm not going to be able to say, oh no, you shouldn't do cold plunges. You should take hot showers or whatever the opposite is.

34:29And you should eat McDonald's every morning. People are going to be like, okay, that's stupid. What is he saying? So you have to have a sense of where your real values are because that's what you'll be able to speak most authentically about and most persuasively about. But again, in terms of being afraid before you publish, if you're not saying anything new, then everyone's already going to agree with you. If I'm not a little bit afraid, then I'm probably saying something that someone else has said a million times before. Yeah. I also like what you said about like when you're trying to be controversial for the sake of, because like I see a lot of tweets there where people like unpopular opinion or like hot take.

35:11Like a lot of times those like are not even that controversial or it's not. Right, the whole thing like hot take. Donald Trump might have lost that debate last night. Why is that a hot take? Or the flip side is hot take. Those moderators were really mainstream media is biased. Okay, that's what 80 million people say today. So it's not a hot take. People can tell. If you say, like, I wrote an article once, do we really need a president of the United States? And because when you actually look at it, the U.S. Constitution, the most important thing in the U.S. Constitution is Congress. They're the ones who make the laws.

35:52And the president is just basically in charge of the army to enforce the laws, but he doesn't really, there's not that many things in the constitution that the president does. He can make treaties, but that's very rare. He can veto laws, but A, that's rare. And B, Congress can override the veto. He can appoint Supreme Court justices, but the Supreme Court wasn't as powerful back in the 1790s as it is now. They took a lot more power. So really studying the history and sorts of things, it's unclear we really need a president other than as this mild check against the legislative system. And so that is more of an interesting take.

36:35And when I wrote that article, again, a lot of people agreed, a lot of people disagreed. I was on the John Stossel, which was like an ABC show where John Stossel was like this known skeptic. And it was an interesting topic. I still think it's an interesting topic, but that's not what's interesting to people now because everybody's on a team. Like, oh, I'm team this or team that. Yeah, I think you nailed it. Like when some people agree and some people disagree, I think that's like a good sign that you're saying something new rather than if like the majority of people agree or majority of people disagree or something like that.

37:09By the way, it feels really good when everyone does agree. Like you get this enormous dopamine. Like I remember one time I tweeted something positive. And this is 2020. I tweeted something positive about Andrew Yang. and the Yang gang is very much on social media. So suddenly I had this flood of people loving me. Like even the rap group Cypress Hill was like reposting all my posts about like Andrew Yang. But then later I had, after one of the debates, I was disappointed in how Andrew Yang did. So I said, this is how Andrew Yang disappointed me in that debate. Here's why and here's what I think he should have done.

37:44And then suddenly like, boo, like everyone hated me. so I had was that one of those was that one of the posts that you were afraid to hit publish yeah because I had experienced like such great love from this one community I was a little nervous they'd be disappointed in me but and look and Andrew Yang's been on my podcast and I even told him what disappointed me in the debate yeah he was asked about college education actually and no Bernie Sanders was asked about what he would do about college education. And I knew Andrew Yang had the answer because he wrote about this in one of his books, which I had read both his books.

38:24And I knew this was a layup for Andrew Yang. And I said that to him, why didn't you answer? And he's like, come on, man, it was Bernie Sanders. He was like my idol. And I'm like, look, if you can't stand up to Bernie Sanders in a debate, how are you going to stand up against Putin? Like, what's going on? That's actually such a perfect example of how, like he he actually censored himself or didn't say something because he was afraid of repercussion or something like that yeah whereas in you're saying that even when you are afraid of it you know like you actually wanted to say it or publish when you are afraid of it yeah like i'm trying to say things that i think just because like i was talking to someone a few months ago and look, I'm pro-choice.

39:11My friend was pro-choice, but his wife is a doctor and she was writing a research paper that in some cases where a child has a genetic illness, I forgot what the name of it was, and they're more than likely going to be born dead, it actually turns out that statistically now it's more possible they're going to be born alive. And my friend was like, maybe you said to his wife, maybe you shouldn't write that because it sounds like you're pro-life then. Like, no, let her write it because it's the truth and then people can make decisions. And you can't have an agenda about the truth. Something is either true or not.

39:46And so, I mean, yes, there's a gray area, but... Have you always been like that where you didn't like, or speaking your truth outweighs that fear? Or is that something you had to develop over time? I think it's something I developed over time, to be honest. I think what happened was, so, first, so I always wanted, back in college, I wanted to write the great American novel. I actually got kicked out of graduate school because I was writing every day instead of doing graduate school stuff. And I wrote a bunch of novels actually, and then couldn't get any of them published. But at least it gave me my 10 ,000 hours of writing every day in the 90s.

40:24But then when I started really writing professionally, initially I was writing about financial topics like stocks and the economy. And I was writing for the Financial Times. I wrote a bunch of books about finance. And at some point, I, my view, I was very optimistic person. So in 2008, 2009, when the, we were having this great recession, the worst recession since the depression, I was like, no, everybody, this is the time to be optimistic. Like this, these companies are good. I would outline the reasons why to be optimistic. And suddenly nobody wanted to, all the traditional finance places that I was always writing for 10 years, they didn't want to publish me anymore because I was just too optimistic.

41:05I turned out to be correct, but it's to the point earlier. It's not like they then asked me back. I had to carve my own platform if I wanted to write about those things. Because I realized if I was waiting for CNBC to call me to show up at their studios, maybe some days or months they wouldn't call me. And so I had to create my own, as you would call it, a personal brand in order for people to listen to me. And it was then that I decided, not decided, but I just started saying, okay, well, then I don't have to write about finance. Thank God, because I was getting sick of that topic. I wanted to write about, hey, I've struggled.

41:40I've gone broke. I've been depressed. I've been suicidal. I've had all these problems. I've had all these issues and opinions. And so I started writing about it. I 10xed the audience. I had built up over 10 years writing about finance. My audience became 10 times bigger and much more varied. and I developed my own platform anyway, so I didn't need, I was getting more readers every day than CNBC was getting listeners. So I didn't need that anymore. And I felt good writing authentic stuff. Like the true writer is writing authentically. Like, and I was very interested in the craft of writing above all, not just writing my opinions, but as you say, you're into teaching people how to do storytelling.

42:22It was very important for me. Every post had to be a story and it had to be well written. That was my most important qualification for something I put out. So in some sense, I think actually it did help you in the long run, like in that you made that switch. Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, incredibly. Like the business opportunities I've had as a result, not that I've sought them out, but as a result of writing in this way has helped me considerably. terribly and I mean beyond belief and and again what was really a pleasure was that I was writing like with what I will call a capital W like I had studied writing for a long time and that's why like on my podcast I've had on some of the greatest writers ever because they appreciate that I could talk about real writing with them and not just like everybody everybody became a writer once you could like have your blog on LinkedIn.

43:23But not that many people write where they've really studied the craft. I can tell because I'm a huge fan of Chuck Palahniuk and I've listened to every podcast that he's been on and yours was like by far the most interesting one because I feel like you asked every question that I wanted to ask him that nobody else was asking. Chuck's great because he's even written books about the craft of writing as well. So he's the author of Fight Club for people who don't know him and many other great books. But he's really into the craft of writing. So we're able to go really deep about the same authors, sometimes obscure authors, but authors that we've both read and studied.

44:04And he's been on three times. And he even wrote me, after the New York City is Dead thing, he even wrote me a nice letter like, hey, keep your chin up and F the haters and so on. Yeah, he probably knows a thing or two about controversy. because of... Yeah. I really like his nonfiction. He wrote a collection of essays, Stranger Than Fiction, which is really a really beautiful book. I would say like he's one of my favorite authors. So that's why I listen to all the interviews and like I think I listened to that episode with you and him twice. Okay, good. Yeah, no, I... I do with the long one too.

44:40Yeah. Yeah, no, I love my episodes with Chuck. He's really good. You're also an entrepreneur. So how do you balance like, Like, for example, when I look at your podcast, right, for example, I'm sure people have told you this. If you just niche down into one topic, you'll probably grow a lot faster. But you kind of like have, you have guests from all different areas of expertise. And like, sometimes you talk about politics, but sometimes business or Bitcoin or whatever it is, right? Yeah. So I'm sure that has to get in the way of growth. Yeah. So how do you balance those two things as an entrepreneur?

45:12who, because as an entrepreneur, a lot of it is like you're not fully showing all your hand or not fully being authentic and just really crafting that message or something like that versus when you're just being authentic, it can actually hurt your business. So how do you balance that? Like let's say for, like an example you just provided with Chuck, let's say you're a writer and you see, oh, this guy James Alger did a podcast. Oh, this is a great podcast. I'm going to listen to his next podcast. and the next podcast is with Mark Randolph, the co-founder of Netflix. They're like, oh, wait a second.

45:46I thought he was talking to writers. I don't care about this guy who was a co-founder of Netflix. I want to listen to more writer stuff. So I don't really get any one audience. And there's an audience of people who trust me now over the years. So they're like, okay, let's see how James takes this interview and what he does with it. But other people who are in different subcultures don't always like, okay, you look, you're into race car driving. Oh, here's Danica Patrick. Oh, and then the next episodes with Gary Kasparov, the world, former world chess champion, that has nothing to do with race car driving.

46:23So I would say, yeah, because I haven't niched down when I was really into standup comedy, I had a lot of comedians on. I think I lost a large audience then because all the business people were like, oh, we don't want to hear about from another comedian and all the people are interested in whatever. We don't want to hear about that. But so I really don't have an answer. Like I don't really know what, it's not that I don't necessarily advise other podcasters to do what I did. I'm fortunate in that I've been doing podcasting for 10 years. So I have a built-in audience over time. But it wasn't necessarily the best path if you want to grow a huge podcast.

46:56I have a fairly big podcast. Yeah, I see what you mean. Not like the guys who are, I think Joe Rogan has successfully had a podcast with many varied guests on. But it's very hard to pull that off. Actually, that's not really entrepreneurship either. It's more marketing. So you're not really focused on the marketing aspect of growing your podcast or something like that. I might brand myself. If someone says, what's your podcast about? I might say, well, I bring on peak performers, which is true. That's like the umbrella of everybody I bring on. But it's not always true. But also, I don't necessarily talk about peak performers with them either.

47:31So we just talk. So it's just the way I describe it. So yeah, it's something I've been thinking about. And also, when you have a podcast and you interview people, and sometimes I get tired of reading people's books and then interviewing them. And I think I might tell more stories on the podcast. I don't know. I always keep thinking I should do a format change, but I haven't really done it yet.

48:12so on that sense i want to talk a little bit about success and failure because like when i found you actually was through through that time of when you were talking about business and like how you failed over and over i think it was an interview you did for the book choose yourself yeah so what do you think most people so i'm gonna ask in like a myth truth type of way what do you think most people don't understand about success? I think most people, first off, I think there's no real definition of success. And so people might say, oh, money is a definition, but that's not quite right. Like when I first made a lot, when I first sold the company in 1998, I then went broke.

48:56So did I succeed? And then I failed after that, like there's no one definition of success. I think, I think people in general understand that the basic thing, which is that if you work really hard and you'll end up being successful, like if you compound, like for instance, I'm, I'll tell you something I'm really bad at. Like it's horrific how bad I am at returning phone calls. So I might be in the middle of an important business deal and the critical other person just called me at like four o 'clock. So there's still time in the day to call that person back. And I just won't do it because I just won't feel like having a conversation on the phone.

49:40And so it's really hard for me to network sometimes because there's something wrong with me. Like I can't call people back. And yet over years, I have this enormous network because you just compound a little bit at a time. Like, oh, if I call back just a few people a week, then over hundreds and hundreds of weeks, you have a huge network. And then, and if you always try to, I always tried to do things for people that are in my network. And so word of mouth spreads like, oh, you got to call James to get access to this other person or learn about this. What like, like people call me today and ask about, oh, what's the best way to self-publish my book?

50:21Because you mentioned Choose Yourself, a book that came out 11 years ago. I self-published that one. It sold more than a million copies, my most successful book. So I wrote a lot about self-publishing after that and the benefits of it. So people still call me and then those people become my network. And Amazon would call me and say, hey, are you in Seattle? We'd love to show you what we're working on with self-publishing. So I would say, oh, I'm planning on being in Seattle next week. Now, I had no plans to be in Seattle, but I had never been in Seattle in my life. But I bought a ticket. I went to Seattle that next week.

50:53And they all showed me around their self-publishing division and their new products. And they became in my network. Everything has to build up a little bit at a time. Like your network, your ideas, your resilience to failure. But it's just very hard. Success doesn't happen easily. And you could have years where it seems like everything you're doing is losing, but you just keep showing up. It's a cliche to say, but you keep showing up. Like, for instance, I have a business, which is a financial research service. And I would say the past, like in 2021, 2022, even 2023, didn't make any money with it because there was a bear market and people weren't as interested in hearing financial research.

51:42And so we lost money. But you just keep showing up and this year we'll do like 100 million in revenues. And if I had gotten disappointed last year, third year in a row or fourth year in a row of making almost no revenues from it, I would have given up. But I knew that this was a service that people needed and that bad times don't last forever. So I kept at it. Other things you have to quit because it's not a good idea. And you have to recognize what ideas are good and what ideas are bad. Also, I talk about this a lot, but it's very hard to come up with good ideas. People say ideas are a dime a dozen, execution is everything.

52:22But that's not true. Like, good execution, execution ideas are a subset of good ideas. Like, I've seen two people implement the same business idea. One did horrible execution. Horrible. and she failed. And the other person did very clean, good execution. They had very smart ideas about how to test the ideas of the business and had very good execution and was successful. And so you have to build your idea muscle. So I always recommend people write down 10 bad ideas a day. They could be good ideas, but probably they're going to be bad. Yeah, I heard you say that. Yeah, that's something I've talked about quite a bit that you have to really exercise for your whole life.

53:03It never finishes. is you have to exercise your idea muscle every day. So I want to see if I get this right. So are you saying like, so there's like the big idea, I want to start a service like Uber or something like that. And then the execution are like subset, like there's also underlying ideas below that. There's like different ideas on how you can execute that. Yeah. And those are also ideas. Let's say you want to make a product that goes to all your social media for the past 10 years and makes a video about your life. Okay. And oh, this would be this fun video. That's a pretty good idea, actually.

53:46And there's two ways you can do this. Just thinking out loud. Like, I don't know. Maybe it's good. Maybe it's not. But there's two ways to think about this. One is, oh, I'm going to raise$2 million and I'm going to hire a bunch of software engineers that automatically, so give it a name. It automatically goes through all the social media and then builds a video. Or another way to execute is you contact a friend and say, hey, can I make this video for you? And then I would go through, let's say I'm doing the business. I would go through all your social media and I would make a video and then I would show it to you and I would ask you, and they would say, that's great.

54:19And I'd say, okay, do you want to pay me$100 for this? If they say, ah, nah, I don't really need it that badly. And now I know this is not really such a good idea. Maybe I'll test this out with a bunch of friends and it's not a good idea. So I would know then, Or maybe they would pay. And then I would say, okay, it is a good idea. But now maybe I don't have to raise$2 million. First, I'll hire a bunch of people in Malaysia or whatever to do these videos for people. And gradually over time, I'll build the software for it. Like if I had done this idea, let's say, I'm just making this up 10 years ago, the software is very hard.

54:51But now if I do it today, the software, I could use AI probably. So execution is in one case, somebody would have raised$2 million, built a bunch of software, and then found out maybe the product's not a good idea. In the other case, a person could know whether this is a success or failure and be profitable within two or three months. So that's just an example of a random idea and how two different ways to execute on the same idea. So how do you know when something is a bad idea? You mentioned you had that financial research company. First of all, two, three years, the business that's not doing well, that's, I would probably say, imagine 99 % would probably give up at that point, let's say.

55:34But you need to stick around, right? Yeah. And then sometimes you don't. So how do you know? How do you make that decision on, okay, do I keep going? Okay, for instance, a laundromat is almost always a good idea. I mean, location is important. Like if you put a laundromat in the middle of nowhere, it's not going to do well. But if you, a laundromat on a city corner where there's no other laundromats, is going to, some businesses you already know they're good businesses. Car wash is a good business. A financial research service, this is something that's been around for, an industry that's been around for 100 years.

56:09So I knew that's not necessarily a bad idea or a good idea. I knew I have a unique perspective. So, okay, I know this is a good idea, but people know me as an optimist, so some years are not going to be so good for me. And, but let's take an idea I tried. So I talked about how you should write 10 ideas a day. Well, I created a little social network called Notepad, N-O-T-E-P-D.com. I don't even know if it's still around. I think it is. And people could write their 10 ideas a day and you can make it so that it's a social network. So all the other people who have signed up can see your ideas, they can comment on them, they could message each other, they can vote up your ideas.

56:46There's all the attributes of Twitter plus writing 10 ideas a day. And so I made this great website with a lot of help from other people. and I made this big website, which still exists and it had thousands of signups. I just want to see real quickly if it still exists. Oh, wait, I don't want to do it on this screen. That would have logged us out. Oh yeah, it still exists. And here's a list, someone wrote, topics I would be interested to learn. Here's another one. What would you do if you did not get paid? Here's another list, written on Russian. Here's another list, 20-25 calendar challenge for better goal setting.

57:22and it lists the most popular posts of the day. There's challenge of the day. It's a great little website. It's a pretty website as well. But we only got like a few thousand signups and I noticed people weren't really coming back to the site. Like some people are there every day and some people check it out and never come back. And it just wasn't really a success. So I gave up on it. I had the programmers fix it up so that they wouldn't need any maintenance. And now here it is. Nobody is involved in maintaining this site and it's still running. So I lost some money, but not that much. And I could tell there wasn't really excitement around the site.

58:04And so I figured this is, no matter how much I put into this, it's not going to be a successful business. Is that like, for you, is it like, is there like a process where you logically think to that? Or is it more like your instinct, instinctually, you know, okay, this is not working and it's not going to, I can't, there's nothing I can do to make it work or something. Do you know what I mean? Instinct. Because I knew I did lots of things to try to make it work. For instance, I made it so that you can make your idea lists private unless someone pays. So you can imagine someone could create their own financial research service just on this platform.

58:39Every day, every week, every Monday morning, I'm going to list 10 stocks and why I like them for this week. And to see this, you got to pay me$10 a month. We set up the whole thing. a subscription service to make your idea list private if you want. And I figured, okay, that will drive a whole industry to this. But zero, zero people that used it. And you create courses on this, zero people used it. So I kept adding more and more features until there was like feature creep. And every one feature I thought was really good. Like again, we re-implemented all of Twitter. Every functionality of Twitter is on here, plus this concept of 10 ideas a day and voting things up and down almost like the ideas are a beauty contest.

59:22And then we added this. And then we added AI. So if you have six ideas, you could say, let AI fill out the rest of the ideas. And we did that. It's all these amazing things. Amazing site. But it wasn't real. Nothing was giving. And I've created social media sites before that had exponential growth. This did not have exponential growth. Yeah, I could feel this was like barely linear growth. It was maybe 20 signups a day. It was never like 20, then 60, then 200, then 1 ,000. It was never that. It was like a consistent 20 signups a day, and then most of those people would never come back. Now, over time, a lot of people use the site every day, but it's just linear growth.

1:00:06It's not exciting. Yeah, I saw that actually having failed in a lot of things. So actually, let's talk about failures for a little bit. So when I first found you and I read Choose Yourself and like listening to your whole life story, like I was asking, I was thinking to myself, I'm like, wow, there's like I thought I had failed many times. And your story was actually inspiring because I'm like, this guy probably really knows about failure. So what do you think most people don't understand about failure? Well, and I think this is really hard to understand when you're in the middle of it. But it's not the end of the world.

1:00:43Like, and I mean that very literally. When you fail to the point of you're going to lose your home and maybe you're going to lose your family and you worked really hard and you made all this money and then you lost it somehow or whatever the version of your failure is, it's not the end of the world. that if you just take a step back or five steps back and be very humble about it and what you learn from this and still be like a good person, you're going to come back and succeed in other ways. And that is universally true unless you die during that process, which is why it's important to stay healthy.

1:01:22Like you have to be ready for success to hit. So you have to stay healthy because if you're sick in bed, you're not gonna have time or energy to be successful. or if you're having fights with your spouse, so you have to be emotionally healthy. If you're having fights all the time, you're not going to have time or energy to be successful. If you don't have ideas, like if your idea muscle's weak, you're not going to have the ideas you need when that wave hits again. The wave always comes back, but you have to be ready for it. And you have to have a sense of humility that it's not always under your control whether you succeed or fail.

1:01:55Like Notepad, everybody told me, oh, that's a great idea. You should do it. and it didn't work. And I've had many businesses, many businesses fail. All every year, ideas fail, businesses fail. And I had, again, a really hard time when that article was coming out and there were people threatening me. There was like darker stuff that was happening during that time too, because people were very upset at me. And you just have to say, you know what? I've survived stuff before, so I know what happens. I know it doesn't seem like it now, but I know I'm going to survive this and be better for it. My life might be different at the end, but I'm going to be better off than I am now.

1:02:35And you just have to really remind yourself that. Is that like a muscle? To fail your muscle? Once you've failed so many times, it gets easier. And it's not like, oh, I'm failing. Okay, and this is what I do now, X, Y, and Z. You feel really bad. It's really hard to remind yourself that things are going to get better. But you just have to remember that things are going to get better if you stay physically healthy, emotionally healthy, you stay creatively healthy, and you have humility about your successes and failures. Like the first time I made money, I didn't have any money in my life. And then suddenly I sold the business and I had a lot of money.

1:03:14And everybody around me thought I was a genius because I'd made all this money out of nothing. Like I had zero and then suddenly millions. And then I lost it all. And I was so ashamed of myself. I was like, oh my God, everyone's gonna think I'm stupid now. and I couldn't afford anything. Like I was losing my home and everything. And people were just, you have lots of friends when you're successful and you lose lots of friends when you're not successful anymore. And so it was just like embarrassing and shameful and I was depressed and I thought I had won the lottery and now I lost everything. And, but I had to just, I didn't really, couldn't really remind myself of prior times because I had never had this happen before.

1:03:54so I had to just, I just had this, over time, I realized which days were good, which days were better than others, and what did I do on those days? Oh, I wrote down a list of ideas on that day, and I felt good at the end of that day, or I made some phone calls, and I had lunch with people, and I networked a little bit. Oh, I felt good on that day. Oh, I walked, I circled the city in a walk. I got, I was healthy. I felt a little better that day than the days when I just lie in a dark room and do nothing. And so over time, you start to realize what behaviors work. Do you think you've learned humility?

1:04:32So when I see you interviewing people and talking to people, so from your story and knowing everything about you, you are a smart person and you must have known that growing up. You went to good school. You were doing computer science and tech stuff. and so just like throughout your life, you must have some idea that you are smart. Or is that, am I assuming? Okay. No, I always knew I was smart, but maybe I was arrogant about it. And being smart in some areas doesn't always translate to as many areas as you think it will. Yeah, so I'm always surprised when you're interviewing people and be like, I'm like, oh.

1:05:13Because sometimes I see you interview people, I'm like, oh, James is smarter than this guy. But you have so much humility when you ask questions and you listen to the answers and even executing on those answers, right? So that can't be an easy thing to do. It's definitely, I would definitely say humility is learned. And it's by being hit down so many times that you eventually say, okay, I'm not so great. And I was having this conversation with my stepson. I was trying to explain something to him about some historical fact or whatever. And then I realized halfway through, my explanation is like, you know what, I actually have no clue.

1:05:57And I realized there's a lot of times I'm trying to explain something and I realize I don't really know what I'm talking about. But I think that happens to people all the time. So I think you have to really be careful to not necessarily stay in your lane because it's good to explore lots of different things. But to make sure you're to realize all the time you're not nobody is as smart as they think they are about any particular topic. I was talking to, OK, you want to know someone who's smart? I was talking to Magnus Carlsen, who's the best chess player in the world by far. Like he is the best chess player in history.

1:06:34And he was telling me, this was like a year ago, we were having dinner and he was saying to me about things he's learned in the past 10 years. And I was thinking, the past 10 years, he was the world champion in 2013. So he was talking about things he's learned about the game of chess since he's been the world champion, since he was the best player in the world. and I said, like what? Give me an example and he listed some things that seem and he even said it almost sounds like a cliche and then he listed some things they've been learning and so you see that okay, here's a guy who's the best in history but he's still humble enough to realize he doesn't know everything and there are things he needs to learn and this is why he consistently stays on top is because he's learning these things when other people might have said oh, I'm the best, so I don't need to learn anymore.

1:07:26I actually feel like that's such, because even the things that I'm an expert in, sometimes the most important lessons that I learned more recent years are the cliche lessons that I ignored when I was younger. I was like, oh, that's... I think maybe there's something to that, that maybe we think, oh, that's so easy. I don't need to learn that part. And it turns out they're cliches for a reason in many cases. and knowing the nuances, like when do you apply this cliche and what are the exceptions? Knowing the nuances are important. So for instance, say you're writing an article and there's a saying, bleed in the first line, like have some impact in the very first line.

1:08:09Okay, that's very useful advice and most articles and writing should do that. By the way, most writers don't do that, but they should. But there are sometimes exceptions and you have to, seeing something at it really learning something at a deep level is pleasurable because then you see suddenly this activity that you love doing. There's all these nuances that are very creative and artistic and you can appreciate it. So I love what you said about when you were talking to your stepson and you're like, you realize I actually don't know. But that's actually like one of the main reasons I love teaching because I feel like the one that's learning the most is me when I teach because it forces me to figure out, okay, I actually don't know anything about this and I have to go look it up.

1:08:52You know what I mean? Yeah, and look, sometimes, like teaching is a very special thing because you have some knowledge that you're trying to convey to somebody else. And so that's pleasurable. But also, what if they don't really learn? That means, is something wrong with you as a teacher? Or maybe you didn't really know something? Or maybe you are missing some skills as a teacher? So you can always learn about yourself. You could learn more about how to explain something. Like, ever since I was a kid, I give chess lessons. So because I'm a chess master for a long time and played in tournaments when I was a kid, playing more recently now after a 30-year break.

1:09:33But this one guy I teach, he actually was the dean of computer science in my grad school. He officially threw me out of graduate school. Like he officially wrote me the letter throwing me out of graduate school. But then later he became my chess student. This was like in the early 90s. And he's still my chess student. And guess what? He hasn't gotten any better. And so at some point I have to question, like, what am I teaching this guy if he hasn't gotten any better? Can I ask you why? Because I'm going through that right now. I'm like, like some days I'm like, I'm awesome at teaching. And then some days I'm like, I'm terrible at teaching.

1:10:09I feel like teaching is so hard to get somebody to understand the concept that you understand and to get them to do it or something like that. So is there any tips or lessons that you've learned in teaching? Yeah, I think the teaching has to be harder. The lessons and the exercises they do, whatever you're teaching, they need to do things. like doing is better than listening. Like if you're going to teach someone how to surf, you could show them every video about surfing, but they still can't surf until they get on a surfboard and actually do it. And then they start to learn. But, and those exercises that you give them before they're really doing, those lessons need, those exercises need to be as hard as possible, harder than reality.

1:11:04So, for instance, when I was learning stand-up comedy, one of the things I did to improve my skills, stand-up comedy is very hard. Like, a lot of people think, oh, I'm going to go up one day and I'm a funny guy, I'm going to do stand-up comedy. It takes years and years of every night doing it to get even like a little bit good. So, one time I said, okay, well, what can I do? Because it's hard to get on stage as much as you would like in the beginning because you're not funny yet. or you're not stand-up kind of funny. And so I went on the New York City subway system and I did stand-up on the subway at rush hour for a crowd that was not interested in hearing me at all.

1:11:46It was rush hour, everybody was tired. And every stop I got off the car I was on and went on another car and would do stand-up again. And that is brutal. The audience hates you. and you have to do your material very quickly because the next stop is coming up. Everyone gets off. And that was harder than going on stage in a comedy club. And so things like that, like try to think of things that are harder than the reality. And so I don't know, like in the context of what you're teaching, how to do that, because like, for instance, how would I do that with surfing? If I was teaching surfing, I don't really know.

1:12:26I'd have to think about it.

1:12:42that leads me to another question so you somehow realized that you had to do that and i think so that i think it first of all requires some humility to even know that i because like like you said i think a lot of people think comedy is easier than it really is right and then i think writing i feel the same way i feel like everybody thinks they can be an author or but it's like i feel like there are certain things like in life like writing maybe comedy or something like that's actually a lot harder than you think when you actually start doing it yeah and it's weird because there's you need like a certain kind of stupid arrogance to do anything because the only reason anyone ever gets up on stage to do stand-up comedy for the first time is because they already think that they're good at it, which is impossible.

1:13:30Even if you're the funniest person in the world, stand-up comedy is a specific skill and you're not good at it if you've never done it. But everybody thinks at some point or another, oh, I'm funny. I'm going to do stand-up comedy. So you need some kind of stupid arrogance to write an article. Like if you've never written an article before, you're going to be bad at it. Like you might even have interesting things to say, but you just won't know the craft of writing until you've written like a thousand articles and read a thousand books and studied them. But you need a certain arrogance to think, oh, people are going to want to hear what I have to say.

1:14:03But then you need enough self-awareness to then also realize, oh, nobody laughed. I'm really bad at this. It wasn't just a bad night for me. I'm bad at this thing, but I love it enough that I still want to do it. And so you You need like a stupid arrogance, also self-awareness. Yeah, I feel like those things are actually such like the magic formula for success in anything. Like I love how you put a stupid arrogance to start and then to get humiliated. And then to have the humility to from then like actually start from the bottom and build up again. And I think a lot of people have the stupid arrogance, but they don't have the second part.

1:14:45Or some people have the second part, but they don't have the arrogance, so they never start. Do you know what I like? Right, like a lot of people would say, oh, I can't do that. And they don't do it. But everybody can do anything, pretty much. I mean, within reason. But like, oh, I would write these novels. I wrote like four unpublishable novels in the 90s because I was stupid and arrogant. Like I wasted so much time, quote unquote, wasted so much time. I would probably write four or five hours a day for years and years. That's why I was still under graduate school. And I took jobs that were just like a few hours.

1:15:22Was that because you really wanted to write or be a writer? Like what kept you going? Yeah, I really wanted to be a successful writer. And I loved writing and I loved seeing examples of good writing. Like I really loved every aspect of it. and to the point of ruining my life. Like I got thrown out of graduate school. I didn't really, I wasn't really making any money at all the first few years of my career. I had skills. I had a computer scientist. I had a lot of skills that could make money. But I just, I took jobs that only took me a few hours a week so I could spend most of my time doing this activity that made me, got me zero gratification in terms of external support.

1:16:07Like nobody, I wouldn't even get, I would send my novel to like 40 publishers and agents. Nobody would even respond to me. Like, it's not like I was even halfway good. I was horrible. Is that something that you've always wanted to be in your whole life? Like, want to be a writer? Or is that something that, like, did something motivate you or aspire to become a writer? This, in college, this girl I really had a crush on, she fell for this guy who was like a pseudo writer. Like, he looked like a writer. he had that college writerly look and he said he was a writer even though he never wrote anything and he quoted James Joyce and Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon and so he had all these writerly things so she fell for him and I had a really big crush on her and I always half wanted to be a writer like I made attempts even when I was in elementary school but I never did it but this is like okay I could do this and then women like that would like me too and so that got me that kind of lit the spark.

1:17:07It's not the reason I continued, but sometimes you just, you need something to light the spark that really sets the fire. Yeah, I actually think that it is because people always talk about like you have to find your passion like from within. But I do think there is something superficial about passion too that you need too. Because a lot of the things that I became good at, I got into it because of a superficial reason. But once I got into it, like I found the love for it over time or something like that. Yeah, like, well, what's an example? Like, I think I got into web design. My first job was at an agency.

1:17:44So, like, I'm a web designer, and I love branding, design, and all of that. But the reason why I got into it is because at that time, like, 99, 2000, that was, like, the hip thing. Like, all the dot-com people, like, all the cool people are, like... What agency did you work for in 1999? I worked for this agency called Underlight. They went out of business, like, in 2001. But it was like a small AD. The whole industry went out of business. But I never heard of that. What's the name again? It was called Underline. Oh, I don't know them. It was bought by a company called Context, Context Integration.

1:18:17Okay. And I got like fired right after. That was like in 2001. So after.com burst. So like. Yeah. Because most of the clients of web design agencies were VC funded companies that went out of business. Yeah, that's true. And then the other thing that happened in that industry was everybody brought it in house. Like my first business was a web design company. and we would charge like$70 ,000 for a three-page website. But then suddenly our clients realized, you know what, we could just hire people to do a three-page website. We don't need to hire a whole agency. Yeah, I feel like there was something in the air back then that got everyone so excited and like everybody's like started.

1:18:55I remember there was a website called Cosmo.com. Yeah, the shopping. Yeah. It was like food delivery. yeah yeah and they deliver like blockbuster videos and they and broadway at that time was called they call it silicon alley yeah and like all the hip agencies were there like i just feel like there was this kind of energy in the air where everybody wanted to get it and it was cut in 2001 it was yeah like my agency was around from 95 to 2000 roughly and uh you got out at the perfect time. I did. And then I poured it all back into internet stocks and lost everything. But yeah, you're right. There was a certain energy around web design then.

1:19:38And there was a certain excitement. No one knew how the... I thought the web was going to evolve into this great way to create quote-unquote hypertext art. And there was a way to read the actual writing. And there was a lot of creative projects then that sort of... Nobody does that anymore. No one really uses the web in the same artistic way that they did back then. but there was an excitement. Yeah, I heard you talk about how Thomas Edison thought the phonograph would be used to record people's last messages before they die or something like that. Sometimes you don't really know. Yeah, so can we go into that a little bit?

1:20:16Like I do want to talk to you about AI. Maybe we can end on this. I didn't realize we were talking for like an hour and a half. So do you think we're in that stage right now of AI back in 2001? Yes. And I can see it because, for instance, I see a lot of people starting AI companies that to me seem like just features. Like they don't really seem like real companies. And that's like how the Internet was back then, is that a lot of companies were being built. Oh, I'm going to make an online calendar. Well, that's just a feature, really. It's not really a business. And the same thing's happening with AI.

1:20:51A lot of companies, oh, I'm going to make a company that helps people write their resume. Well, that's an easy thing to create. There's no remote, there's no real business there. And so I feel like I also see a lot of people are afraid to use AI, just like people are afraid to use the internet. So for instance, I think teachers are afraid the internet will, that AI will replace them as educators. I think doctors are afraid, not all doctors, but some are afraid that AI will replace them as diagnosticians, hearing symptoms and giving a diagnosis. And I think people are still learning what their relationship to AI is.

1:21:28And I tell people, view AI as like the best virtual assistant you could possibly ever have. And then be creative about how you're using this brand new assistant. Like, and AI is not going to always be accurate and not always a solution. It's just one solution among many in your toolkit. But I think the usage of AI is just beginning. We're going to figure out use cases every year that are going to surprise everyone. just like with the internet. No one would have thought the internet would have connected me to, no matter where I am, I can call a car that's no further than three minutes away to take me to wherever I want to go.

1:22:04No one would have thought back in 1996, that's what the internet was going to do, but it did it. Yeah, they thought it was just like an online brochure or something like that. Do you think, so right now, because when people think of AI, they're like, oh, it's something that can write my blog for me, or like create this design for me or something like that. So you don't think that's what AI really is? No, look, and everything is treated differently, but like AI doesn't know how to write. It doesn't have, they could write good summaries. Like for instance, they could take this podcast transcript and write a summary.

1:22:39Here are the 10 points that these guys spoke about. So AI is great at that. It's not great at writing like a novel. It doesn't really know how to like appeal to the emotions that well. Will it get better? Of course. The human brain is particularly good at telling stories. But AI is getting pretty good at producing music. AI is getting very good at making good designs. You still need to have the eye of a designer, but you don't really need to now know Photoshop to make good designs. You can use AI image generators to create good designs. And you still need to have some artistic sensibility and brand sensibility if you're doing professional design.

1:23:14But AI can make the images for you and they'll be beautiful than what you would have made and more beautiful than what you would have made in Photoshop. And I've seen this. A friend of mine was interested in an industry and started making clothes specific for that industry using AI. And she had never used any Photoshop or any design software before, but people loved what she was doing and she started making money at it. So AI is a great assistant for whatever it is you want to do. yeah I agree I actually think from a designer point of view I actually think that AI for using design is actually very similar to using AI for writing because like AI is not going to give you the idea it's still need the idea maybe can proofread it for you make it sound better or whatever it is or but with design I think it's the same thing like you you have to know what you're going to design and why you need to design it that way to communicate a certain idea or message.

1:24:12And then the AI can make it look clean and modern or whatever it is. But I don't think AI can come up with the idea itself. I think that's right. And then look, maybe it can come up with ideas, but the ideas can always be sharpened. So whatever AI gives you, you can always improve it a little bit when it comes to design, writing, music. And again, AI is going to get better and better. But you also have to figure AI is hitting some limits into how good it can be. ChatGPT, which is what we think of as AI, it took a year and a half running on a bunch of supercomputers 24 hours a day, crunching all the data before it came up with ChatGPT.

1:24:51And then another year and a half of what's called supervised learning, where humans interacting with it, like thousands of people interacting with it, taught it. This answer is good. This answer is bad. So then it learned from that. So it took three years to make ChatGPT. With people working on it and computers running on it 24 hours a day, that's pretty intense. It's not like, oh, next year we're going to have an even better version. Yeah, it'll be better, but it's not going to be like a thousand times better. It's going to be like anything else. It's going to improve gradually, and then use cases will get more specific.

1:25:26Like, oh, here's 18 million patient records. Let's learn, given these initial complaints and symptoms, what diagnosis a person has. So there'll be niche use cases of AI that we haven't even begun to explore yet. Oh, yeah, I see what you mean. It's not just going to be like, write me an article about this. It has to get more specific, like giving specific instruction to an AI or something like that, like the patient record thing you were talking about. Yeah, or look, I did an experiment where, okay, let's write a book about neuroscience in a day using Chachi BT. And I was able to write like 100 pages and, oh, here's this neurochemical, BDNF.

1:26:10What foods will increase my BDNF levels? And then give me 10 recipes for these foods. So, and it does everything you ask it and it produces 100 pages, but there's still no personal stories. There's no emotion. And maybe AI will get better at that, but it's always going to need a human. Humans are really good at that. So, now, something like music or design is a little bit more mathematical than writing an article. Like, music has a certain mathematical precision to it, which AI is particularly good at. So, it's why AI can create Mozart sonatas that professionals cannot tell the difference between an AI Mozart sonata and a Mozart sonata.

1:26:52People still, when they hear this, they still prefer the Mozart sonatas because they appreciate that a human did it. But, just like you appreciate it. didn't know what if they didn't know them right like but it's the same thing with like a robot like if you didn't know a robot if you didn't know a human looking robot was a robot and it runs really fast you'll say oh that's the fastest human but then you will learn oh no but Usain Bolt I appreciate more because he actually is a human and he's running that fast but it's so interesting what you said about like like a writing you can tell the difference between like a human and robot, but with music or design.

1:27:28So what do you think it is about writing that's at the core different than, let's say, another creative endeavor like design or music? I think music has, people might disagree with this, but it has fewer parameters. Like, okay, what key is this in? Oh, what's the beat? What's going to be the, like, let's take classical music. What's going to be the initial theme of, like, Beethoven's symphony? and then the rest of the symphony is variations on that theme. But it's structured in a way that, okay, this is how a symphony is structured. There's very particular structures in music and great musicians play with those structures to create something new and creative.

1:28:09But AI is very good at structured tasks. And to create something like Mozart, there's a certain structure to all of his sonatas. And so you can create something that's structured like a Mozart sonata and people won't be able to tell the difference, even experts. So it's a little bit more mathematical how music works. Whereas writing, okay, there's, think about who you are as a human. There's a million, there's a trillion parameters that make who you are as a human. And when you're writing, you're trying to bring human beings to life, not just music to life. I hate, people might not like this, but human beings are more complicated than symphonies.

1:28:52Yeah, like that, as you were saying that, like, I never thought of this, but because it design, I feel like it's like this too, when I design, like the 10 ,000 hour rule, like, when you've been designing for 10 ,000 hours, I'm sure like my sister is a pianist too. And when you do 10 ,000 hours of music, I do feel that you start and I'm sure it's the same in chess. you start to see patterns and it's like your brain is doing that mathematics for you to understand that okay like this note for this length followed by this note gives us give this type of feelings or like when I do design I know that when there's a balance of this font size versus this font size or color combination of this color and this color gives it this so subconsciously I think we are doing the mathematics in our head and we just created I think intuition is like shortcuts you build up through experience.

1:29:45So when you intuitively know, oh, these two colors don't go together for this type of thing, you learn that through thousands of hours of experience and you're able to do that. But the AI knows that by looking at millions of successful designs. And so, but again, a human being, which you try to bring to life in writing, there's too many parameters and there's no definition of what is a good, human being versus a badly described human being. There's no definition of that. Take your sister who's a pianist. If there's an automatic, if there's a player piano that plays just as good as her, no one wants to listen to that.

1:30:23They want to see her perform. So we still like it when humans do things. It's not like, for instance, computers play chess now better than humans. For the past 25 years, for 25 years now, computers have been better than humans at chess. But I don't care about watching two computers play chess. It's not fun. It's not interesting to me.

1:31:00So do you think there's going to be some sort of a, like a nostalgia effect? You know how people love listening to old records or something like that now? Do you think in the future there's going to be like, watching two humans play sports is going to be far more rare because less people do it or something like that? No, because like, look, if I want to see something fast, I can watch a car. But I still want to watch the Olympics running, the runners. So sports, because it's not just that they're running, it's that you know how much work they put in. know how what the human potential is needed and mindset is needed and competitive spirit is needed so that's what i really sports a sporting event is a story it's like two people or two teams that have stories behind them going up against each other and it's these stories competing and and then seeing human creativity at work is much more exciting than seeing oh this computer can nose pie to a million places i'd rather see if a human nose pie to a human places that's a pretty like wow how do they do that like then you're intrigued but a computer it's just it's trivial so it's not that interesting i think that'll be the case with ai look something like chess there is an existential risk because what if we have neural link in our brains and then our brains can use a lot of the functionality of computers for like math events or chess or poker what will existentially happen into these games i don't know hopefully they'll the games will still exist.

1:32:29From what you're telling me, it does, like, I'm starting to feel like maybe writing is like the ultimate form of creativity for humans. And because I, so maybe like a computer, just it'll be a while before a computer can write comedy the way humans can or something like that. Yeah. Comedy too is not just a joke. It's like the inflection. It's the voice you use. It's how your body moves. Like, let's just take Chris Rock as an example. Is he just standing there telling jokes? No, he's got that voice and he's prowling the stage. Why he walks back and forth like that around the stage is because he wants people to, he's training the audience that even if you blink, you might miss him doing something.

1:33:14And so it's all of these things together that makes Chris Rock the comedian, like hundreds of thousands of things. So the jokes might not even and be funny, but he's funny. So in many cases, that's true. Or Louis C.K., if you notice when he gets the most laughs, it's usually when he's doing like a funny voice. And that's hard to know when to use a funny voice. That's true. Like somebody else cannot tell those jokes and get the same laugh. Right, absolutely not. Like he knows how to tell those jokes. And he knows it through a lot of experience over 30, 40 years of doing it in a way that humans, that computers can't, because you can't really understand the parameters, so there's no way to train the computer to learn that.

1:33:59Like how Louis C.K. tells us a good joke, there's no vector on parameter. Yeah, what can I put into ChetGPT? Like, I actually noticed that about ChetGPT when it first came out for the first six months. I felt like it improved so drastically to a point where everybody's like, like, oh, ChachiPT is going to be writing better than humans, blah, blah, blah. And then I feel like it leveled off now. It's almost to a point where, like, not as many people are talking about it anymore and not as many people are using it to actually write articles anymore. And by the way, it's almost two years. You could tell.

1:34:33I could tell when an article's been written by ChachiPT. So it's easy to tell. Sort of emotionless. It uses, like, perfect grammar. Or even if you tell it to do imperfect grammar, it does it perfectly imperfectly. Yeah, that's so true. Like, sometimes I will say, hey, can you make it sound like more casual, more like a human? Yeah. And even the part, the thing they come back, I'm like, what? Like, it still looks like, it sounds like a robot. You could tell. And again, because in order for something to be trainable in AI, you have to be able to define a set of parameters about what makes something good.

1:35:11So, for instance, well, like an image that you're designing, okay maybe or like a photograph there's the two-thirds rule where okay the main subject is in one-third of the photograph the other two-thirds is like background i know there's a whole bunch of rules about what makes an interesting photograph and okay creative photographers break those rules well but you could teach there's enough rules that you could say this is a good photograph this is a bad photograph and here's the things to look for here's the 12 things you look for in every single photograph that makes it good and so you can create parameters that you can define a good in general, not always, but in general, a good photograph versus a bad photograph.

1:35:49And, but comedy, what are the parameters? Like, how does someone know, how do you rate if a joke is funny? Is it because of the number of words in it? Or is it because of, oh, these words have K sounds? Or the topics are the first part of the sentence? Yeah, there's too many parameters, yeah. There's too many and it's hard to define them. Yeah, and then that's even for getting the delivery. Like, how do you define good delivery? Oh, he used a funny voice halfway through this joke. Well, that's appropriate for that joke because it was about, let's say, some ethnic group. So he's using the voice of that ethnic group.

1:36:24But other jokes don't. It's not funny. Other jokes would be racist if you do that. So it's hard. And they're like different genres. Because something can be like comedy, but a horror film as well. Yeah. And it can be good. But yeah. When we go from Jordan Peele, Jordan Peele is excellent using the structure of comedy. to make horror movies. So you can't even use that as a parameter, really. Like, this is a good comedy versus this is a good drama or whatever it is. Yeah. So interesting. So I just want to... Okay, this is the last question I'll ask you. Sorry to take up so much of your time. And I never asked this question to any of my guests, but I am curious to hear what you say.

1:37:05So what do you think in the near future, in the next few years or five years or whatever, what are some of your predictions like in terms of let's say AI technology, economics, like in politics, like is your outlook generally positive negative or there's a lot of doomsdayers out there I'm a little more nervous than I ever was before but I don't know maybe that's just a function of being older, like the older you get the more of the status quo you want just because you don't want a lot of change but I think look starting with ai i think there's gonna be amazing and it's gonna be very fast it's not gonna be 10 years it's gonna be like two years ai is moving so fast at discovering new drugs that will cure cancer and new tech techniques to cure to diagnose incredibly hard to diagnose diseases so you can so you know half of the cure is being able to be diagnosed quickly so how else I don't mean to cut you off but I wanted to ask this because I've heard you talk about that before.

1:38:09Do you think before you were saying how like teachers are really afraid of AI and things like that and I sense the same thing with design. Designers are the ones that actually talk the most negatively about what AI can design and same thing I'm sure other areas. Do you think there's going to be some human interference there where like the medical, the people that are in power in the medicine don't want AI to do those. Like even though AI can't cure cancer, maybe, like they're going to stop that from happening because where they're like restricting AI. Do you understand what I mean? Yeah, maybe because look at radiology.

1:38:48It's been the case for many years that AI is better at reading x-rays than humans. Like, because AI could pick up on the smallest of tumors and the smallest of irregularities that a human with their eye cannot really see. But it's the law that you cannot get an interpretation of your x-ray from a computer. It has to come from a human licensed radiologist. That is the law. And so that's a case where AI has been restricted. But maybe there's good reasons too that maybe you need a human with a good bedside manner who knows, look, there's this treatment facility. You have this one particular disease that I've seen other people have that they do get through it, even though the prognosis seems bad.

1:39:30So you need a human touch on some of these things. And AI, even if AI can do it, it would be false because it's just a computer. What about in areas of, let's say, cancer research? Again, I hope that cancer researchers, just like designers, should use AI as an assistant, not as a replacement for designers. Like writing, designers can always improve a design. with their, with a design. Like I've seen quote unquote fake designers use AI to make bad designs. And you still need a designer to get that design sensibility about what the client wants or what you want as an artist. And AI will, is a good assistant for that.

1:40:16Yeah, you don't need to know Photoshop anymore. You don't need to know Canva. You could make great designs without this stuff using AI. But you still need a sensibility about what's good and what's bad and how to communicate to the client and how to listen to the client and so on. But you can be more productive. So you could do 10 record cover designs a week instead of one because you're using AI. So you can be more productive if you're a good designer. And even if you're a good writer or even if you're a podcaster, like you could have asked a ChatGPT before this podcast, what's 10 good questions I can ask James Aldisher?

1:40:52It will answer you since ChatGPT has read all of my books and all 6 ,000 of my articles. and watched every video I've been on. So it knows what to say. That's actually something every podcaster should do, actually. I do it. Now, I don't necessarily use those questions, but it might trigger some ideas and thoughts for me. Like, again, I use it as an assistant. Like, I used to have an intern help me come up with questions. Now, I don't necessarily need an intern because I would always just read the books anyway and come up with my own questions. But, okay, maybe the chat of TBD comes up with one question I didn't really think about.

1:41:27And it leads to different ideas for me. So I'll ask those questions. Like it's a useful thing. It's a useful assistant. But it's very good. When do you think fully automated cars will be like a regular thing? And like, you see everywhere. It's interesting because the same thing is like vertical takeoff and like flying cars. Like technology is there already. Like self-driving cars have been around for a while. The technology's done. Not, let's say, 100 % done because you can always improve, but there's regulations. People are less tolerant of accidents if they're in self-driving cars than if it's in human cars.

1:42:09Like, humans make more driving accidents than self-driving cars right now, but we're not allowing self-driving cars to have any accidents at all. So there's going to be laws and regulations, and it's the same thing with, like, the technology for flying cars is already there, and it's pretty much automated. It's like these mini helicopters. But I don't know, do I want that to be legal in my city? Do I want to drive in a self-driving flying car? I don't think so, even though technology is done. It's there. So I think a lot of it is human fears and the laws and regulations and attitudes towards these things will evolve for better or for worse.

1:42:48And like in the healthcare field in particular, I hope that AI is improving so fast in that area still. That's one where I really hope doctors say, hey, this is more useful. And education too. This is more useful and dangerous. Sorry, I cut you off before, but if you want to finish your thought on how all of this AI will manifest in the real world over the next few years. How do you think it will change the world? I think we're going to see drastic changes in healthcare. That's first and foremost. Like, you're going to suddenly... Yeah, everybody's going to suddenly live a lot longer. Now, will they live healthier lifestyles, which is really the key way to live longer?

1:43:26I don't know. But if you have like a terminal disease, it's much more likely to be cured because of AI in the next few years. And you know something... Do you believe... I don't know if you are familiar with like Ray Kurzweil's like the singularity where... Yeah. He was talking about like, it's going to get to a point where for every day, the life expectancy will go up by two days. so that according to that statistic, people will live forever? Yeah, I mean, I do think something like that will happen. And not just because of AI, but because of other research they're doing on genomics too. But AI will contribute to that.

1:44:04But David Sinclair at his laboratory in Harvard is working on some amazing things to cure people from blindness, for instance, by reversing the chronological clock on your eyes. And there's so many amazing things happening that we don't really hear about because we can't go out and buy them right now. But within one or two years, we might be able to buy them. And the world is just going to drastically change very quickly. Is there any, do you see any negative downside to that? Like how, if, because like everything that you're saying, right? Like, I can't imagine that change, that drastic of a change happening.

1:44:43And like most people, I don't even know how people will adopt to it. right like yeah i don't know either but we will we adopted to the internet the internet's changed all of our lives this is how we're talking right now it's 30 years ago we 10 years ago we couldn't do this because the bandwidth wasn't there so we do you feel like there were some costs to that like for example like do you think like how polarized the world is now like internet has definitely contributed to that or like mental health issues. Yeah, I think, but again, every phase of life has some, like right before the Civil War, I think there were 60 physical fights in the Congress in the year prior to the Civil War.

1:45:30So things were even more polarized then. And then if you go back... I didn't know that. Yeah. And if you go back 3 ,000 years ago, Something like 20 % of all deaths were from violent injuries, like people fighting. And so on the Steven Pinker, in one of his books, I forget the name of the book, he says that if you look at it, per capita, every century has been more peaceful than the century before for the whole period of human history. And so no matter how polarized we are, we're actually not as bad as we were 200 years ago or 300 years ago. Do you think we'll pass this phase? Like at some point it'll die down?

1:46:12It'll cycle. Like I look back fondly at like the Mitt Romney, Barack Obama debates. They were like, as my good friend Mitt Romney says, no, Barack, you said it first. It's all credit to you. Like they were like almost debating for the other side. Like they were so friendly to each other. Or I challenge anyone, Google the Kennedy-Nixon debates in 1960. These were two individuals who hated each other, but you wouldn't know that from the debates. Like they were so congenial and so on. But like things cycle and the debates weren't so congenial maybe a hundred years before that. But now we're back to being polarized.

1:46:50They used to have duels. Yeah, right. With their political oppositions. Like it was 1803, the vice president of the United States shot the former secretary of the treasury and killed him. And then the vice president had to go on the run and try the stage of coup. And it was crazy. Yeah, I just wanted to hear your outlook in the future. Just because everybody's talking about, oh, this is how it's going to be. This is how it's going to be. I'm optimistic only because the presidency is just not that important. Now, it is very important for some things. But AI is going to last forever and change human civilization.

1:47:30Whether Kamala or Trump is going to be good or bad, it doesn't really matter. 10 years from now, the world will sort itself out again and figure it out. If things were pretty bad in the Great Depression, then they got better. If things were bad during World War II, then they got better. In 2008, everyone thought it was the end of capitalism with the mortgage crisis. People would say on TV, it's the end of capitalism. Okay, a year later, the stock market was booming. So very few people would have predicted that. And it's the same thing now. Like, we'll see. Yeah. People always say this time is different.

1:48:06Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting. I've written about this where people always say this is the most important election ever. But like people are saying it right now. But if you go back on newspapers.com, which stores all the newspapers for the past several years, it turns out every single election, everywhere, people say this is the most important election ever. Now, maybe it's true that every election is more important than the prior elections, but it's probably not true. Yeah. Yeah. I can see that because I remember even when I first moved here, when I first moved to America, I think the first election was Bush.

1:48:44It might have been Clinton and Bush. Yeah, it was in 1990, so 1992 was the first election. Oh, yeah. Bush-Clinton. The first Bush and Clinton. Yeah. Even in that, like people used to say, oh, if Clinton gets elected, I'm going to move out of the country. And people are still saying that now. By the way, their policies were almost exactly the same. Like Clinton was a conservative Democrat at the time. Now people think he was like a left-wing Democrat. But at the time, he was head of this Southern Governors Democrat Association. He was a conservative. And Bush was a liberal Republican, which is why Reagan personally disliked Bush.

1:49:21So they were the same. and Bush raised taxes like a Democrat and Clinton cut them like a Republican. So it's... Do you feel like sometimes when I look at politics and I really like think it's cool that you are recently in the last few years, you are talking about politics and stuff like that, which is like new for you as well, right? Because I didn't see those type of content years ago. Do you feel like in politics, I remember watching this one movie called Fever Pitch with Jim F. Allen. And he's like a Red Sox fan and they're all like depressed at a restaurant because they just lost. I remember that.

1:49:59Drew Barrymore is the easiest one. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so they're all depressed and then in the restaurant, like some Red Sox players come in and they're like, they're not depressed, right? They're having a good time. And I almost feel like politics is like that where the Democrats and the Republicans, like the citizens are like hate each other and it's like life and death for them. and then when you actually look at the politician like they actually hate each other a lot less. It's like when the Yankees and Red Sox play the fans hate each other more than the actual players. Yeah. I think that's mostly true in politics.

1:50:34I think lately I do think Trump genuinely hates Biden and I do think they hate Trump but it's never been the case before. Like the first Bush and Bill Clinton became best friends. The second Bush and Barack Obama became best friends. Like, I don't think, I think right now they do legitimately hate each other and their followers hate each other. But I'm hoping that's not always the case. I'm hopeful that won't always be the case. I noticed at the 9-11 memorial that Trump was there. It's the first time he showed up at like an event with former presidents. So Trump, Barack, Kamala, Biden, they were all there.

1:51:12So it was the day after the debate, which is a pretty ugly debate. and yet Trump showed up. So I'm hoping that signifies some kind of healing could happen. We'll see. And also maybe it's, because I don't know if you sense this, but I feel like people are over the whole hating each other thing. Like, do you know what I mean? Like it's not as... I hope so. We'll see after this election. I hope that's right. But I think this election, until the day of the election, is going to be pretty passionate. And I hope whoever wins, it's a landslide. So there isn't like contention. oh really yeah if it's close I think there's going to be a problem okay do you think it's going to be a landslide no I think it's going to be very close yeah I think so too and then I think both sides are going to contest it I think the stock market will fall again it'll be temporary but people will panic and I think people should be ready for that do you believe that there's going to be some sort of a turning point where because right now I feel like everybody's are doubting the future, right?

1:52:18In terms of economy, in terms of like, like violence, like people kind of like the tension and all of that, right? Do you think there will be a turning point in the near future, like in the next few years? Or do you think it's like far out? I think what's going to happen is technology is going to force us to say, hey, things are good. No matter who is president, like AI is going to continue improving. Healthcare is going to continue improving. Even crypto will change our lives in ways we don't quite realize yet. Silicon, which is the basis of all semiconductors, that's going to evolve. They're now experimenting with other materials to make semiconductors faster, like gallium nitride.

1:53:01I think all these things, innovation is going to keep happening as long as there aren't anti-innovation policies. I don't think this gets into the weeds. I don't think people should tax unrealized gains because that stops innovation. But that's a whole other issue. And that would never get passed in Congress anyway. But as long as there's not anti-innovation policies, which I don't think there will be, innovation is going to always progress faster than politics well. Yeah, I agree with you. I think technology is definitely going to be... I actually think that a lot of the financial issue will resolve itself with blockchains and things like that.

1:53:42Which we didn't really get into, but I want to be respectful of your time. Well, next time. Yeah, where do you want people, definitely people check out James Altucher's show, amazing podcast. Where else do you want to send people to? I want to send people to your podcast. This was great. I'm sure if all your other interviews were as good as this one, then you've got the best podcast in the world. Thank you so much. I've got to go back to more episodes. So I really appreciate it. It was very good. and I really appreciate you having me on the show. Thank you so much for your time. I'll put all the links to your podcast and everything you do on the show notes.

1:54:18Have a great. Thank you, everyone. And I'll see you all next week. Cheers.