#142: The Aesthetic Revolution: Why I Dedicated My Life To Bodybuilding | Dr Mike Israetel

28:05Master's jujitsu, it's funny. Master's starts at 30 in jujitsu. Those people are killers. Once you get people into their 60s and 70s, these are like coral belts, like red and black combo and all this other crazy. Like these people have been doing jiu-jitsu for 40, 50 years. And you watch them do it. And sometimes they're super fucking slick. You're like, goddamn, that old man fucked me up. But sometimes you're like slow. They're weak. They can't pull off a lot of moves on each other. Typically, the game theory of jiu-jitsu is such that when two people are very weak and immobile, you get more stalemates than dynamic activity.

28:39And so it's not fun for them as much. There's like, um, not as fun to watch. It's like, if you watch two elephants fight, they just kind of hit each other. If you watch two squirrels fight, there's like matrix gymnastics. It's insane. The gravity doesn't matter. It's like way more entertaining. And so if everyone gets way more jacked from a pill, the entire sport of jujitsu gets way more dynamic and way more fun for everyone. You don't, yeah, it's less diverse in a sense, but now it's just better. Like some kinds of diversity are great. Some kinds of diversity kind of suck. Like you're going to a tournament and like you're jacked and you train a lot.

29:12And your first opponent in the round is like some 50 year old guy who picked it up a little while back. It's just an open tournament. And he's like obese. And your coach is like, don't anything hurt the guy. I just like work some of your shit, use this as a warmup for your next match. Is that fun? Sure. Not fun for that guy. it's not really that fun for you but if everyone's a fucking killer man that's shit that that's why people do jiu-jitsu you get a real war dude i love coming into a jiu-jitsu place i can't do this right now because i'm trying to save my body if you come into a new jiu-jitsu place you're traveling or something you see like a fucking jacked heavyweight you lock eyes you're like we're gonna go he knows you know it's gonna be fucking awesome that guy's your best friend after that and everyone kind of moves aside it's sweet uh and so i think like everyone leveling up is fundamentally a really really good thing yeah i i'm gonna be fascinated to see how it pans out from people's fulfillment and how people value certain things and if it actually does mean that they show up given the fact that it might be easier unless they can generate new problems to like spend their like to give them that fulfillment because like even if i look at this right like say i hire someone that I know and because I know them, maybe I give them a bit more of a head start and I let them like, I let them like, I pay them from the get go or I don't like make them go through like some sort of intern process or compete against someone else.

30:42Do they show up in the best way for the job or if they were compared to someone else or they had like more of a challenge to overcome initially, would they show up more because it meant more on the other side or if they were just handed it? And then maybe even if we take this example that you're explaining about everyone, it's advantageous for everyone to level up. If we were to apply that lens and we use drugs and all these other things that are coming into place to make things take the pill, do you believe that something like the enhanced games is going to replace the Olympic games? because it's going to be more fascinating to watch and more entertaining.

31:20Great. I'll take two of those in sequence. If a person has thought it through, they're going to show up just as voracious to a job you've given them all the advantages for because they've understood what the purpose of work is and how they're being judged. If they haven't thought it through, you're totally right. They could just kind of take it easy. If I'm at a job, I don't give a fuck who my competitors are. I have absolutely no influence over my competitors. Like there's other interns. What am I going to do? Like scribble on their sheet of paper? I'm only trying to do my best because the reason work exists is because there's real problems in the world.

31:57There's no job that you do that's not like solving a problem. Otherwise, it's like maybe it's a government job, but it's just like theft, basically. So because there's real problems in the real world, you come and you bring your best because you want to solve that problem. It's the problem you're fighting against. So like the people at like Anthropic or OpenAI, they're fighting against a lack of artificial super intelligence. That's the real big problem. The machine doesn't do what you want. It's not infinitely intelligent yet. That's why they show up every morning. Like there could be an intern to your left and right that's real fucking sharp, but you guys are all working on the same problem.

32:28It's the problem that humbles you. Yeah, so you tie yourself to what you're trying to solve and you've determined the value of overcoming and getting to that outcome. So you're not even thinking about the competition or whatever you're just showing up in the best way possible for you and to be honest the winners probably don't give a fuck about the competition anyway because like i'm gonna crush you guys anyway yeah i'm gonna win well they're not even looking to their side to see who they're competing against yeah like the reality is most jobs short of the competitive sport where you like physically compete against other people the reality of most jobs is the work you do the work and by the way like if i'm hiring and i have three interns the most competitive intern that cares the most about others i don't want that guy my fucking team he's fucking weird he's some like psychopath person I want the person that gives a shit about the job and does an amazing job.

33:14And if he turns in his work early to me and I'm like a big boss, I'm like, all right, I leaf through the work. It's excellent. I'm never going to be like, so how do you think you compare to the other interns? Like, what? I wasn't thinking about the other interns, man. I was doing the job. You're like, okay, you're hired. Also, you interns, you're great too. You're hired too. I'll take as many interns as I can. Solving the problem is the big fucking challenge. That's a huge thing. on the enhanced games versus Olympics. So the Olympics are already the enhanced games. We're just not supposed to say anything about it.

33:45You saw the enhanced games happened. They broke like one world record. Mostly they didn't break anything. That was because of the fact that the population of athletes was tiny and they didn't attract all the best talent. Talent and pool size are the thing that really determine how well you do. But also I saw like a funny meme. There's that meme of like some cartoon character doing one of these and then one of these. and it was like uh regular olympic athletes when the enhanced games guys fail to break all the rock is like yes we're drug free so like first of all the olympics are already kind of fucked in that regard but i think what the enhanced games does that's really cool is it gives you an alternative version of the olympics not really because there's like three sports in the enhanced games but some version of competition at a high level in which it's permissible to take drugs and eventually like if i was running the world or whatever which would be a disaster I would make the I would split the Olympics in two I'd be like we're going to have one version which is completely drug tested and one version which like as long as you're healthy on the day of competition I'm saying YOLO and we'll see which one the consumers like the best to watch I think it's going to be both because a lot of people like seeing raw fucking talent like I want to know that some of these sprinters aren't taking every drug that they're just like born and then they train and they're just like they do these crazy things like that's beautiful I love it like I'm a huge fan of, I'm not natural.

35:06I'm a huge fan of natural bodybuilding. Cause like watching those guys, like present the physique with no drugs. I'm like, Oh my God, this is astounding. But I'm also a huge fan of drug bodybuilding. Cause like it's in a different way. Astounding. Like imagine watching a bicycle race and being like formula ones better or being like, you know, like the speed bike professionals who ride the crotch rockets are like, that's way better. You're like, we can be, we can be slightly different and you can appreciate Lance Armstrong. And at the same time, hilarious reference. Cause he's on drugs. But compared to someone who has like a thousand CC motorbike, he's not enhanced at all.

35:38And so like, it's not, I think there's a huge welcoming for diversity of different kinds of competition. The problem with the current Olympics is that a giant fraction of the people are drug to the gills because the drug tests can never catch the people that are nefarious. And we have state sponsored programs like China, North Korea, Russia, Iran, et cetera. They're all giving their athletes like pharmaceutically designed drugs. They have state sponsored drug programs. The US, Australia doesn't have that shit. If you're an Aussie and you decide to take drugs in the Olympics, it's you, your dealer, and maybe your coach.

36:09That's three fucking people. It's a sad state of affairs. And I happen to know what the drug market in Australia looks like. It's total shit. So you're like, hey, is this real growth hormone? You're like, I don't know. It costs like a trillion dollars. Fuck this. This sucks. While the Iranians are getting like customized design growth hormone in their fucking prep. So for that reason, we don't really have a drug-free Olympics. I would love it if the drug people got their place to go. and then we could have institution, we can have policies like currently if you get a banned substance, like if you get popped in the Olympics, there's like a range of penalties they can impose.

36:41Some of them are just like, oh, you can't compete for the next year. So I'll clean it up and come back. In my world, if the Olympics are drug free for sure and you had an alternative way to compete, you would just be like the first time you got popped in the Olympics for drugs to be like, you can never compete in the Olympics ever again. You got to go to the drug Olympics, but you can, hey, you were on drugs, right, pimp? Well, you got to be with your friends. Use all the drugs you can and see if you're really good in natural bodybuilding and natural powerlifting because both have alternative arms of the federations and or different federations which they can compete on drugs.

37:12Drug cheating is profoundly rare, like an order of magnitude more rare than it is the Olympics, because if you're training for a natural bodybuilding show and you're training with your friends at the gym and you're on drugs, they're going to be like, what the fuck is wrong with you? You bitch, you come compete with the big boys, you know, but I can't win. like oh you want a fucking plastic trophy my man just cheat against these kids so it almost never happens i think that would be a vision of the future for the olympics i would love to see drug olympics enhanced game style and then drug free olympics and it would be best for both yeah having the having the like both of them separate it's like do you do your drugs but don't try and compete with the people that are trying to do it naturally correct it's like if you're a man be in the man be in the man's sport not the woman's sport that's another conversation correct and it's like a large fraction of a team like let's say the iranian team like at one point the weightlifting team got popped and if 13 athletes on the roster 12 got popped for drugs okay so everyone's on drugs like at that point what you could do is be like hey iran for the next 10 years your weight lifting team can't compete at the regular olympics but you guys can do all the drugs you want the regular one that's a huge incentive for states to be like like even if one person on your team gets popped for drugs that's a four-year ban for your whole team like that's a very different group of incentives because then you can like you know the coaches and the staff and the entire industrial complex around sport in those countries this takes a look around talks to each other and goes you know what anyone takes drugs in the drug tested pool you're we're gonna put you into iran jail you're disrespecting the nation no one's gonna fucking do drugs they'd be insane but like but We also have an untested team.

38:49You can join that team anytime you want. You put, you throw down a snatch and you're just like, fuck this. My joints hurt. I'm going to go on the untested team. Sweet. There you go. You're already great. You're going to be great on that team, even better. But it has, the incentive structure has to be like very, very serious punishments. Currently, the only reason they can't be super serious is it's unjust. And there's like false positives and stuff. You're like, you know, an athlete gets popped and it's actually like they didn't get popped or they just made a mistake or their coach put something in the drink, whatever people say.

39:16and then it's like, okay, three-year ban seems reasonable. But man, as soon as you have an alternate version of the Olympics where you just take all the drugs, it's lifetime bans for everybody. It's lifetime bans for teams. Yeah, I wonder if the problem with having these separate, right, and then having a pill that can fix all of our pains, you're basically saying, do you want to go through a bunch of pain and shit or do you want to not? In terms of like, if you've got a pill that can solve all of your injuries but it makes you not enhanced, makes you not natural and you've got the option between a natural competition or a not natural competition i wonder if anyone is going to even do the natural competition because there is an alternative one of my best mates hunter mcintyre have you heard of the sport hyrox the yeah yeah so he's the face he's like the hyrox world champion one of my best mates this is malibu with me and um and he's a natural he's like jacked he's probably like the most jacked you could be as a natural And most of these high rocks guys are really skinny, skinny guys.

40:17And he's, he's big. He's like six, three and 220 pounds or whatever. That's huge. Or 200 pounds at least now. But he's like, he's, he's a big boy. And I could be wrong on those numbers, but don't quote me on it. But he's a big, he's a big boy. But watching him behind the scenes, there's a level of admiration and respect I have for him because of how much he's dedicated his life to it. Now, you look at him on game day when he shows up on the start line and you know that he's going to give it his absolute all. And I go back to when it's 9 p.m. at night and he has a CO2 mask thing on his face because he's trying to like go into altitude in his house in Malibu so that he can like practice and train his body to do that.

41:05And then he's supersetting that with being on the, on the, on the trigger ball. And then he's like getting in the sauna and he's, he's weighing his steak and not eating the whole ribeye because he's tracking his food to make sure he's not sure. And like, you see the dedication outside of the sport to be able to maintain naturally. Cause a big part about him is if you're going to be a natural athlete at that level, a massive part of the sport is actually the rehab and the recovery and, and all the stuff you're doing around the training itself. and I experience the athletes that are trying to win in high rocks, say the Australian ones.

41:39And then I come over here and I spend time with him and I see there's a different level of dedication. And I go, I wonder if you could achieve that a whole lot easier. I wonder how his life would look now. Well, he wouldn't have to spend as much time doing it. So maybe he could actually focus more on having a relationship, focus more on building family. Maybe he could do or focus more on training. He could train double. his number one reason he's not training a lot is because he can't recover from any more training yeah what if we give him the infinity recovery pill he can train he can train 40 hours a week wouldn't that be great yeah i mean just as hard but in a different way yeah yeah i just wonder if there's because what i'm also trying to piece together right now and i've been drawing it back in this conversation a lot to those like categories of peace joy fulfillment in life the things that like i feel at least for me and my limited knowledge of the world that that really matter in my life for me, but peace and joy and fulfillment and having like something there that doesn't mean I need to just constantly be like, I don't know, like just something that allows me to actually like feel the fullness of life.

42:47So I look at him and I go every moment that he's with his mates, that he's been dedicating himself to this thing, and then he can switch off for a moment. he's like the bubbliest most energetic like happy like can like enjoy the most simplest of things but because he's been through like extreme challenge and i just wonder if you take away all of that and everything becomes all about the efficiency and how you can streamline all of the stuff and how you can do it really quickly so then you can do more and more and more i wonder if like more ever ends and i wonder if there's ever like a balance you have in your life or we all just become these like obsessed beings of progress.

43:29And so I guess it's just this interesting piece that I'm trying to seek to understand myself and going, okay, like when we do progress with science and with all the drugs and all the different things that we have access to, what is the actual outcome? Like, what does that result in? Does it result in a better life? And I'm just not sure on that answer. I think most of the reason why people are happy or sad is genetic. There are lots of people that put all the effort they can into sport preparation and they're not remotely bubbly or happy or take anything for like what it is they're just miserable but they're really good at sports and they work all the time and then people say oh that's too much work that's why we're miserable there's that whole other side but i also think that the solution in the next 10 to 15 years more like 10, I think, to the problems of joy and peace and calm and fulfillment is going to be readily available through pharmacology.

44:32Because anytime you feel those feelings of peace, joy, fulfillment, etc., it's actually just a neurochemical state in your brain. If we get you doped up on the proper amount of drugs, you will absolutely feel those feelings, deep and true. That's what heroin feels like, I'm told. And so if we can have drugs in the future that you can take, that make you feel serene 24-7, we've solved that problem completely. And then we have to ask the next question. What do we do in the real world? And that question is much easier to answer. I answered it earlier with reference to starships going out everywhere into the universe, right?

45:24So we already know what to do in the real world. The thing is, is that humans are currently living through an interesting time where our psychology is slightly, maybe somewhat, more than slightly mismatched to our environment. the real stuff that fills you with total joy is getting food when it is scarce getting sex when it is scarce getting fluids when they are scarce and getting security from the elements from wild animals from disease for yourself and for your offspring those are the things that bring the deepest levels of true joy every time they study hunter-gatherer cultures modern ones like they ask them stuff like, what brings you the most happiness?

46:06And they're like finding a fruit with a lot of like sugar in it. And they're like, what? Then I realized like, oh yeah, like why wouldn't that bring happiness? That's exactly what's supposed to bring humans happiness. Now today we don't have to have that journey because we just go to the grocery store. And to your point, like we just pick up the fruit and it costs almost no money. And then we leave and we're like, all right, that was fulfilled. And then our brains are like, huh, we've never been to this place and they just get super adapted to it. So like we need more, like there's got to be something more.

46:35But if you take, if you design proper pharmacology that's long acting to which the systems don't adapt to, for example, like terzapatite is one of the GLP-1 drugs that people are taking. There's no point at which it stops reducing your hunger. It never loses its edge. You take it every week and you can take it for years and it just always has the same anti-hunger effect permanently. Hunger is way, way more fundamental emotion than like higher level serenity and looking around and finding meaning. That shit is like way recent in our evolution compared to hunger. Holy shit, like cells in some sense experience hunger.

47:12And so if we have a drug to kibosh something so baseline, surely a pharmaceutical solution that's long-term and lasting to serenity is like probably on the horizon in the next five to 10 years in my view. First of all, that drug will sell like hotcakes. I mean, it'll instantly cure all anxiety and depression. And then you can say the proper retort, the critique to that is, okay, so what, we're just like sitting at home and being serene? Well, yeah, you can kind of already do that. The next question is, okay, so what ultimate purpose do we have then? The ultimate purpose is to increase the survival probability of our civilization.

47:48That is the ultimate purpose of the human. And there is an infinite amount of work to get done in that regard. Yeah. I wonder, it just makes me think on this piece of, like, what does the world look like if that was the case? And the thing that comes to my mind is, like, war and destruction. And the reason I think that is because if there's no cost to, being a bad person, if there's no cost to doing things that are evil, and the reason I say no cost is because if you can just take a pill to numb the guilty emotions that you feel for lying to someone, then you're not going to be as cautious of lying.

48:42Or if you could just numb the pain of trashing your car, would you just speed everywhere and be more reckless? Well, you could die. Yeah. But yeah, so you could die. But I mean, like, okay, so maybe the ones where death is still there, like maybe we don't have a pill that can fix death. Maybe there could be, who knows. But at least if we were to think about all of the basic ones that we've been talking about here, I still look at the discipline required to uphold a lot of things whilst not getting left out of the pack. Because if we argue and we don't get along because I'm just trying to poke and annoy you, but then we can both just take a pill that makes us feel happy and then there's no come down or there's no negativity of it and we can just keep those emotions really high, then I wonder if we'll just end up beating each other up.

49:37Whoa, why? wouldn't that be the opposite do you not think that no well literally in the literal sense we just took a pill that makes us not want to beat up each other and it lasts for forever right last for forever so then that's the piece then so then there's or just like every week you take it and it re-ups you and you feel great for another week and if you stop taking it after four or five weeks you start to be like feel like your regular self again so like but the regular would be comparative to the high which is why people that take heroin can't get off it because the regular is not a very they're too used to the high.

50:10For a while. Right. Then they get normal again. Most people who take heroin, their regular is misery. That's why they take heroin. Regular people don't just start taking heroin. So if we were taking a serenity pill together, the probability of us fighting is way lower than if we were not taking a serenity pill together. And instead of bickering, we could calmly turn our attention to the world's actual problems because we become more cooperative. because the pill would make us more cooperative because we're not pissed all the time. When I'm in a bad mood, I walk around and like I low-key think like, fuck everybody, fuck all these stupid ass people, right?

50:48Everyone kind of does that in a bad mood. When I'm in a great mood, I'm like, the world is so beautiful, we're all cooperating, all the races and ages are great, everyone's great. So like if we can have a pill that just makes me think that way more often than not, it just makes me a better person. Like people who struggle with hunger, who take trisepatide become better people when they're on trisepatide, just better. period people who have like you know let's say in this insane so there's like there's really good research on people who commit sex crimes chemical castration reduces sex crime proclivity by like 98 because like as long as you don't have like testosterone to tell you to hurt and do very unkind things to people sexually you just don't do it and so when we take violent sex offenders repeat sex offenders and chemically castrate them, we're making them safer for the world, straight up.

51:41That's a good thing. We want the pills that make us better. And after the pills, we want genetic engineering to make us better. So here's a big one. Fuck the pill. Forget the pill. What if we could alter your genome such that the real person that you are with no pill is kinder, calmer, more gentle, more thoughtful, more intelligent? What is the argument against taking that enhancement and just being like that person. I mean, like, my God, that's just better. And then we can solve all the world's problems more. And then that demon inside you that tells you that you're not earning your keep, that you're no good to the world unless you win a lot of challenges.

52:25You're no good to the world unless you are fighting against constant difficulty. If that part of you is engineered out, then you'll just feel good and you'll be able to rationally address the problems in your life without having like a real nasty demon in your head pushing you. So, for example, in my case, I have a real nasty complex that makes me feel guilty when I'm resting. I feel like I'm doing a good job when I'm at work. And as soon as I try to take a break, my brain fills me with endless guilt. I thought having accomplished a lot of the things I never thought I would accomplish in life would assuage that it hasn't touched it basically at all At all Maybe it's worse than ever Because my standards have come up at the same time that i've become more successful So I thought surely after I make a bunch of money I won't feel this impetus to feel guilty at recovery and rest and nope that didn't work Certainly after I accumulate whatever credentials this will work.

53:24Nope, that didn't work and so So there's something wrong with me, man. And if I had a pill or genetic engineering to make me be able to relax and really become serene during rest, it would make me better because it would allow me to rest more. It would make me happier in my life. And it would stop me from overworking and pushing myself way further than I can recover because I'm not as much addicted to work, though that's also a thing, is I'm scared, scared, scared of having had an opportunity to do more work, but missed it because I was lounging around. That is not a rational and productive fear.

54:01I want medicine to help me heal that. Psychotherapy works pretty well, not as well as ultra futuristic medicine that could potentially make me better. So would the medicine that you're referencing there be something that would make you feel okay with not working or make you be able to work more? Do you know what I'm saying? Both. Both. Yeah. Because it would make me feel okay with not working. I could get the proper amount of rest that I need and thus work way more because rest is the catalyst for work. If you don't get enough rest, you can't work as hard because you burn out constantly. I see this obviously being a podcast.

54:39I mainly just speak to high achievers, right? And I feel this as well, where we feel guilty when we're not optimizing. So for me, and I've spoken about this a little bit, if I've got a big day of work or I've got a massive to-do list, I'm not putting milk in my coffee because I just find I feel more sharp and alert when I have a black coffee instead of a milk coffee. That is only a problem in a high achiever's mind. There's no way a normal average Joe is thinking about if they're putting milk in their coffee or not. and I think about it and I just go like we're doing everything we can to over optimize and to make sure that we're like being efficient and like I don't want to yawn so like I didn't want to do the dairy and all of this and that's just one example right but but like the same thing that you're just referencing there around like like getting in a state where you feel bad for not working because you've got more things that you could do more things you can do I wonder if that will ever end when we take a pill because it just allows us to do more and more and then it's like the more you learn the less you feel like you know so then you just keep seeing all these things that you can do and then it's just like keep keep going I remember writing a piece I remember I was explaining how like I've been on a goose chase just to find out what was already here and I was like we we chase these external things and it's fun but it's also fleeting it's like you achieve the thing and then you want to go again you want to go again you want to go again and then the thought I was thinking was like the greatest gift a high achiever could achieve is the genuine feeling that enough is enough.

56:13Cause we constantly get to the end of the day and go, Oh, we, we had so much more to do. Like the list never ends. And like the feeling of being able to go, okay, like I conquered today, but like enough is enough is something that I feel a lot of high achievers struggle to feel. And then I go like, if we could achieve that, that would be quite a fruitful feeling because I was like, all goose chases end in the same spot, but the key part there is if they ever end. I feel like we just keep going on this goose chase. Sure. Low achievers tend to be people on average that experience not as much drive as they should, which means they can typically enjoy their leisure time very much.

56:53They don't really enjoy their work time. Ultra high achievers, the most high achievers have a good balance. I'll get to that in a sec. but very high achievers are really good with that at work time. They're driving, but their recovery is total shit because they feel guilty. They can't relax. What about genetic engineering or future pharmacology that you take a pill in the morning when you're ready to go to work and within 15 minutes, it's like super caffeine. Like it's just like a train, like fright train, like you're going. And then at a predetermined cutoff time or whenever you have checked off your known to-do list for that day, you take the relaxation pill and it vibes you out to where you're like, no, I don't even give a shit about work.

57:35You're like, I don't work right now. The next four hours I do, fuck all. Those two pills put together are way better than not having those two pills. Utopia. Utopia. So you have the best of both worlds. Here's the thing, I'm here to tell you that it is completely possible. I'm also here to tell you that it is very likely that such pill combo is going to be developed in the next five years. That is crazy. Wouldn't that be great? Because we sort of do that already. Let me tell you the ghetto version of that ghetto version. Ready? You wake up and it's coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee. And then after work, alcohol.

58:10But that's what alcohol is for, right? Is to not give a shit. And so people wake up at seven in the morning. They do coffee the entire time. And then they finish their coffee stint and they go to the bar. What's that called? Happy hour. And they drink themselves stupid. And then they go to sleep. And so that's a very ghetto version of that pill combo already. But the problem is like caffeine is fine, but it loses its effects over time. It screws up your sleep. It gives you a lot of jitters and nerves. So we can like engineer those things out and have super caffeine that does none of that. And it's just like full focus the entire time and excitement and motivation.

58:48Caffeine also kind of narrows your focus. It'd be great to have a pill that massively enhances your focus, but doesn't narrow it a ton. So you can be super creative while being insanely productive. So we have that pill and then you know alcohol man alcohol is so bad for you, bro It's bad for your physique. It's bad for your health. It's bad for longevity It completely fucks up your sleep makes you dumb and say stupid shit and get in trouble at work with sexual endeavors and things like that so like if we can have a pill that's like Super crazy version of thc or something that just vibes you like crazy It doesn't turn you into a total dummy It just lets you totally relax and then sets you up for a night of sleep that's incredibly restful and even more restful.

59:26By the way, there is an incoming pill that not all the testing has been done yet, but it seems to be able to cram your deep sleep into like half of the interval that it normally is. So like you may be able to, in the next year or two, sleep for like four hours and get the sleep equivalent of eight. I'm not sure that all the systems heal, but like a lot of them seem to. And so this just might be like a total fix for that. So you combine those three pills, right? You got work pill, chill pill, sleep pill. And all of a sudden people will be like, why are you taking all these pills? You know, because it makes me better at everything I want to be.

59:57And like, well, what if you don't have the pill? Like, then I'll just go back to being normal. Like, well, you're relying on the pill. Like, yeah, no shit. You rely on a chair to sit, motherfucker. Anytime people get that bullshit where they're like, yeah, but isn't it a crutch? Like, yeah. Take a person with broken legs who's watching on a crutch, walk in a crutch, kick their crutch out. Be like, you got to fucking harden up. Like, I can't fucking walk, you asshole. So like, I'd say like the crutch is the greatest thing in the world. Use as many crutches as you can because society is going to continue to the pharmaceutical pharmaceutical factory still pumps out those pills and you still have money, use them to your biggest advantage.

1:00:28So to me, enhancement is the big thing. You want to look around and say, how can I, for whatever I want to do, what can I take? What can I buy? What can I leverage? What can I learn in order to be the best at that, that I can. And so enhancement to me is a totally natural thing. And here's the thing. At some point you might get tired of taking three pills a day, even though it seems like not much to us. You know, you're traveling, you go to Singapore and they're like, oh, you have the pill. You go to jail for forever. You get executed. You're like, holy shit. Wait, like, hold on, it's not that kind of pill.

1:00:52What about genetic engineering that makes you just like flip the switch in your head? Like within like 30 seconds of really getting to work, you tunnel vision. And then you're like, you know what? I'm going to chill. And with 30 seconds of kind of just chilling out, you're like, ah, you just stay in that state. And if someone's like, hey, like get back to the office, like Bob called the worksheets are all wrong. Get back in that zone and you're instantly on that zone again. And then anytime you want to go to sleep, as soon as your pillow hits, you know, do you have any friends that their pillow, uh, their head hits the pillow and they're like, just gone.

1:01:22And you're like, what the fuck? How do you do that? Some other people, like their head hits the pillow and they're like, uh, thinking about like, oh man, middle school, I should have never asked that girl out. That was embarrassing. And so like, if you're genetically more like those people, they can just instantly pass out. All of a sudden, you don't even need to take pills anymore. You're just like, I don't want to say flawless, but just better at doing all of your shit. Combine that with the pills or genetic engineering, give you an amazing body longevity. They reverse your age back to a biological 22 so that you're in your prime of life for forever.

1:01:49And also why not throw in genetic engineering to make you way smarter and calmer throughout that entire thing. Those like five or six things that we do, and that's just five or six things, five or six vectors of attack for genetic engineering, that every person that takes that is just a way better version of themselves. And what we think of as like who we are and how good we are at stuff is like dope for whatever standard we have today in modern society, but compared to the future peoples, we're gonna like look really unimpressive. You're like in the medieval times, almost everyone was way dumber, way more violent, way more short-sighted.

1:02:20Prejudice doesn't even begin to describe how people fought back in the day. You know, the vast majority of the world didn't even think there was anything wrong with slavery up until literally 150 years ago when like some people in the modern West were like, those are humans too. They're like, well, yeah, sure. And like, shouldn't we be freeing them? And most people are like, no, what are you crazy? And so today we struggle with all these big problems in tomorrow's world, which because of tech exponentials might occur maybe 10 or 15 years from now, maybe less. We're just going to be like, Like, whoa, I can't believe we lived life accepting the ravages of aging, accepting dog shit supplements like caffeine and alcohol to manage our psychological conditions.

1:02:55Because of genetic engineering and pharmacology, we're just like so much better now. And there's no way I'm going back to that world. You ever like, you know, like back in the old days, you had cameras that like sucked and you took all the pictures on vacation, but they all exposed wrong. So you lost your vacation. Because anyone really want to go back to that world of like, oh, the iPhone's stupid. Like the iPhone's not stupid. It's the greatest invention of all time, more or less. and like the version of the iPhone for genetic engineering, biotech, et cetera, that's in root. I'm here to say like that's, it's better than what we have now.

1:03:23It's better. We want it. Yeah, it sounds like a utopia. I'm fascinated to observe and maybe even like unpack this. I'm more on like, I don't know, I don't know, like what type of expert, like who's the best person to speak to? I mean, maybe, maybe, you know, the science behind it all, but I'm fascinated to understand like, okay, like how does that actually work? And how can you create such highs and then be able to not have the lows? Like how are you supposed to have these pills that just like change your state and then you can really feel them? I don't know anything about the science and the body and I don't know how it works.

1:04:06I'm super fascinated. But the thing is, is I look at it and I go, okay, like if you can achieve it, it does sound like a utopia. I wonder how it like pans out and to the point where like, like I wonder how, like how people's awareness is and how like in tune they are with their body. And I wonder what, I just wonder how the world looks in that. I literally can't even contribute because I don't even know, but it sounds exciting. Like the optimization sounds exciting. I guess the piece that I just like draw on is I look at like maybe olden times and I look at certain things that we're doing now.

1:04:39Like for example, yes, cameras have come a long way. Why is the biggest trend right now film and like having things that like look like they used to and using old cameras that don't take a clear photo and have a blur. Like why are we resorting back to that? Is that a trend? Like what is it? And so then I guess I just. Art people being artsy. Art people being artsy. Yeah. Okay, I just look at the thing and I wonder what life looks like. It sounds like utopia, and I'm just fascinated to see what that actually looks like when it pans out, because I don't really know. I have a reference frame. You compare life hundreds of years ago to life today, and today's life is relatively utopic compared to life hundreds of years ago.

1:05:26Modern surface paradise compared to 1850s London. It's unrecognizable. The crime rate is like one hundredth. people don't even we have cures for diseases they didn't even know were diseases people just died and they were like i guess the vapors got him or some shit like that the amount of ill will from your fellow man in the street is like a hundredth because australians are really nice and people in 1850s london were not so nice at all classism you know classism is like discrimination based on class social class like rich people in 1850s wouldn't even talk to the poor because they were considered like subhuman.

1:06:08If you do that to someone in the Gold Coast, other people be like, what the fuck is wrong with you? And the amount of living space that a person in the Gold Coast can afford, the variety of food they can afford. Like imagine taking an 1850s London like middle class person and taking into the supermarket in the Gold Coast. And they're like, okay, so this is for kings. You're like, it's for everybody. Like, what do you mean everyone? Like, yes, everyone can afford food except our poorest people are actually the fattest. So they eat the most of this food. It would make no sense to them. And then they would be like, this is paradise.

1:06:38And you'd be like, nah, not quite. And they'd be like, why? Like some of us still struggle with deeper meaning and psychiatric problems. So then they would be like, what's a psychiatric problem? Like, right. Holy shit. Okay. So we actually solved all the real problems. So now it's just like all in our head. And they'd be like, what the fuck? I want to live in that world where I only have my head problems. Cause back in 1850s London, they had all the problems in their head. Plus like I had to survive and I'm going to fucking coal factory that maybe just makes coal fumes and nothing else. Output is coal fumes, input coal and dead slave labor children.

1:07:09That was our standard of living. That was like how in London was a great place to live compared to out in the country where like your pig got sick and that's it. You're fucking starving to death. So we already live in many places in the world and fucking damn near paradise. So it's going to be that kind of jump again. But it does, to your point, take a little bit of creativity to imagine like, okay, so here's a situation we haven't fixed in the Gold Coast. Grandpa's at the hospital. grandpa's got incurable cancer grandpa's gonna die you have all these beautiful memories of grandpa and you with him they're all gonna be gone grandpa's croaking and the way hollywood makes death look in movies is sometimes like really cool like everyone's gathered around and grandpa is like seems like serene he's very with it he's remembering he's holding your hand and he's talking about how great and just i'm gonna go to heaven and just don't worry about me and you guys are so beautiful the you've been around real death before man that shit doesn't work like that at all, man.

1:08:01Grandpa is on a ventilator and he's gargling for air. He's already unconscious. And you're just like left there to watch him like, and the medical professionals are like, well, we can keep him alive indefinitely like this, uh, or we can unplug him. What do you want? And you're like, oh, great. I'm going to be killing grandpa. Like when my grandma died, it will like, I never forget the gargling sounds that the ventilator was making for her. It was ridiculous. And I was like, oh, hell, we haven't solved all the problems. Cause if we solved all the problem is we would have just give grandma an injection and she would have like woken up and breathed free and been like, Oh, I guess I'm not going to die.

1:08:35And they give her another injection. And over the course of the next three months, she age reverses back to age 22. She's in the prime of her life. Grandma with all the same memories you've had of her growing up with you as beautiful person. She never has to die. Like, so the future is mortality goes from like a real thing. Everyone deals with to a thing that like more and more contextual and nuanced. And it's like death's going to become more tragic. That's like one of my most confident predictions about the future is individual human death is going to become way more tragic because it's going to become concomitantly more rare.

1:09:04Like if today in modern Australia, a person who lives in the suburbs loses an eight year old child, like, I don't know, crocodile kills them or a drop bear gets them typical Australian deaths. They get eaten and dragged away by spiders into the woods. And then the snakes actually eat the spiders and the child. That is a thing that if that happens, is like, you know, like, oh, you know, you're not like, oh, Sally's kid died. You should say something nice to her. Like Sally's never going to be the same again. It's a generational trauma. Whereas back like 150 years ago, you know, like half your kids would die before age eight or some shit like that.

1:09:37Of course it was fucking brutal, but you just like carried on because that's how life was. And so as people stop dying of aging and they stop dying of most disease and then all disease, and they stop getting hit by buses because all the buses are autonomous, there's going to be like less and less chance of death, which means way fewer people are going to be dying, which is great. But then we're going to have this massive tragedy of why is anyone dying at all? And we're going to have to fix death altogether. There are ways of doing that that we'll eventually get to. But that's, I think, to me, at least a preview of how paradise looks.

1:10:05But I think it's many people, when they live in that kind of world, there's also going to be an increasing amount of guilt that all the other human peoples do not live in such a world. Because like you're living great in Australia, and in 10 years, Australia is going to be serenity. but like, what about the Sudan? How are those people doing? The Sudanese people are humans, just like me and you. And they're like stepping on landmines and getting kidnapped by like other villages and shit. We're going to have to go over there and like help them ascend to like a modern standard of life. You just will be too guilt ridden sitting in your home in Sydney.

1:10:36So I'm not doing anything for the rest of the world. You're going to watch it on, you know, how like your Twitter algorithm shows you all the fucked up shit from all over the world. I think that's a really terrible thing because it causes a lot of distress for humans. I think it's also a great thing because it brings attention to like the world's still fucked up. Get off your ass. You fixed all of your life's problems. Time to go help other people fix theirs. Helping other people live a higher standard of life for most people fills their soul to an extent that most other things just can't. Like if you're helping others, it makes you go to sleep at night in a way that like helping yourself become the best version of you doesn't even hold a candle to.

1:11:12I think we're just not doing nearly enough of that today. I think our future of paradise looks more like we got paradise, but now we look around the world and we're like, okay, time to make the world have more paradise. And then once we've cleaned up our planet, there's no more pollution. All the animals are getting along great. There's no more mass extinctions. Everyone has a high standard of living and they're all genetically engineered and flawless looking. Then we can like look toward the stars and colonize Mars, get on the moon base, go to Neptune, go on their moons. We have to think of like, okay, now what's our next step?

1:11:43And the next step is like, once we fixed our own shit, and these will happen at kind of the same time, is to go out and make sure that this wonderful new paradisical standard of living that we have is going to be something that survives in perpetuity because we're not like risking it all on one blue ball in the middle of nowhere. Yeah. And I guess if you think about it, right, most of the billionaires that I see online, or most of the super wealthy people turn into philanthropists because all of their needs have been fulfilled and all of the desires have been exhausted and they need to search for something that gives them more fulfillment than all of the material things that they were chasing for themselves.

1:12:26And the only logical step from that is to then to serve and unlock a better life for other people around you. So maybe if we could remove all of those needs a lot easier for people, we would get over ourselves easier and be able to serve others potentially. It could be a reality, which is an exciting reality because I think when we become more, less self-centered, I think the world becomes a better place. The ego removes a bit more and we can start to serve as opposed to just like fulfill ourself. Yeah, which is true because people think of like, they're really scared of like AI caused unemployment, for example.

1:13:08But like, if you work at a widget factory, which nice people need widgets, but now a robot takes your job and you can be freed up to do other shit because there's nobody doing the other shit. That's the thing I'm constantly trying to bring people's attention to. The amount of total jobs we have in the world today is limited to the entire size of the human workforce, which is like 4 billion people. There are not 4 billion things we need to be improving. There are like quadrillions of things we need to be improving. And most of them, we're just not working on. Do you know who's working on a planetary defense system to knock asteroids out of the sky?

1:13:39No one. Do you know who's working on curing most diseases? Nobody. Do you know who's got a working group to figure out how to take sub-Saharan Africa and raise them to the standard of living of the Netherlands? That's not a problem anyone's working on. And so please, God, where are the robots to do all the other shit so that we can go get to doing all these problems without even paying attention? I wonder if people actually start solving those problems, though. because like all of the other ones of making enough money to keep a roof over your head, these are all like Maslow's hierarchy of needs, survival.

1:14:06We need these things. So if we tick all of those, will it be just a mental balance, a mental challenge that we need to face, not a physical one anymore. And it'll actually be an internal battle of like, okay, what can we do to actually, because now that we're going to have maybe a universal income, maybe we don't need to have like, we don't need to strive to keep a roof over our head and have food on our plate. So now we actually have like a deeper problem that we need to solve internally before we can even try and serve others and try and do all this stuff because there might just be no motivation there.

1:14:41They'll be like, okay, we don't need to work. We don't need to worry about what we eat because we can just be fit and healthy anyway. Our physical appearance can be perfect. Like we don't need to do any of this. So then like, I wonder if that, okay, maybe we just don't take the work pill at all. Let's just take the chill pill. and sit on the beach in the Bahamas and drink coconuts. Like maybe we just keep doing that and then maybe we don't actually end up solving the problems. I wonder if it's like the only people that are going to solve the problems are the ones that are doing it now, not the ones that we're going to free up because of all the robots.

1:15:15That's a really good point. People tend to behave relatively similarly with a UBI than without a UBI. The people that are very industrious and productive, if you give them a ton of free money, they're like, cool, okay, now time to go. point my industriousness somewhere. The people that are not very industrious, not very productive, when you give them a universal basic income, they sort of stop working much and they don't do a whole lot. That is a problem that we can as a society start trying to solve through pharmacology, through therapy, through community programs, through eventually genetic engineering.

1:15:49Because if you have people that we obviously, we know one thing is true. We have a crap load of problems to solve in the world. We need as many people working on them as possible. That's just base reality. And if a lot of people get universal basic income and they do fuck all for like years and years, that is definitely like, okay, that's another problem. Now it's not nearly as big of a problem as everyone has to claw and fight for survival. So that's cool. But now there's just like maybe a problem, like a fifth or a 10th of the size where like 20 or 10 % of our populace just like throws up two middle fingers.

1:16:18They just don't want to work. They don't want to do anything anymore. Making sure that those folks are properly motivated to do something is another problem. It's smaller problem. So now we can like have a lot of people go help the rest of the world, but some people need to stay behind to turn to those people who aren't doing shit anymore and like help them work on re-architecting their mental states in order to do shit. Definitely a concern. But to your point, I got a bunch of people, you know, it's, I don't want to sound like as soon as everyone takes the pill that, or everyone gets UBI and takes the chill pill that they're going to be like, ah, time to go build the universe out.

1:16:53Like a bunch of people aren't going to do that, but the potential for people to do that is going to be much higher. I think that's going to take way more engineering and the social sense and engineering in the pharmacological sense. and of course, in the genetic sense, because the fundamental reason why people are driven to work or not is genetic to begin with. Yeah, this topic is so interesting. I feel like we've only just scratched the surface, but obviously we're talking a lot about enhancement and the progression in the world. A big focus for you is enhancing people's looks. And you've even got a lot more new work coming out that is focused around optimizing for vanity.

1:17:32Can you talk to me a bit more about the power of optimizing the way you look and vanity? I have a book coming out and depending on when this releases, could already be out, called The Aesthetic Revolution. It's where everywhere books are sold, you can get it. And it basically talks about a few things. It's like people don't all care about their look, but a lot of people care about how they look. That's like a reality in this world that I'm willing to accept. And to those people who care about how they look, how they look can massively affect their state of well-being or state of not well-being.

1:18:18What I also say is that the software that we have to appraise human beauty in our brains is 99.9 % identical between humans. And so if you happen to look a certain way that your natural software doesn't think is that great, take someone who has a giant gut, someone who's balding, someone who has bad skin, shitty posture, not much muscle mass, plenty of fat mass. The fraction of people in the world whose brain software appraises that as attractive is not zero, but is very small. One of my big contentions in the book is when you're that person, you can hear all the great things from all of your friends about how awesome you really are and how great you look.

1:19:07But when you look at yourself in the mirror, you have the same software everyone else does. And you're probably not going to love it. And so deep self-acceptance, working with therapists, having humans around you that are not pieces of shit, like in the fat acceptance movement, for example, body positivity movement, those people are great. that's not in many cases going to be enough to make you feel great about how you look. And if you don't care about how you look, sweet problem solved. But if you do care about how you look and most people do, the mirror has to match what your own brain is telling you looks good.

1:19:41And we know roughly what looks good. It is the opposite of everything I said, six pack, plenty of muscle, not so much fat, nice upright posture, good skin, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so my big contention in the book is for many people, though not all actually becoming physically better looking to their own standard is going to make them feel way better than not. And in the book, I describe all of the ways in which you can already do this huge, huge part of the book is about how to diet, how to train to look your best. The modern drugs, like weight loss drugs that are coming in that are really helping people with that.

1:20:15And then the rest of the book is dedicated to the futurism of like, well, what kind of drugs are we going to see in the next five years, muscle building drugs, drugs for better skin, drugs for hair loss. And then after that, what's coming down the pike is age reversal, which is already in human trials in partial age reversal, which means I think like by the mid 2030s, it is very possible, very likely in fact, that we'll start reversing people's age back to like basically 22 years old biologically, prime of life for everyone. And then genetic engineering is downstream of that or happens roughly the same time, which means that you'll be able to change everything about how you look because genetic engineering is the ultimate unlock to like just, you want to be 6 '3", you just fiddle with some genes and all of a sudden you start growing again and you want to have like a full head of hair.

1:21:04I basically just talked about myself at this point. I'd want to be 4 '10", because I want to be noticed less. And 4 '11", currently, you know, I'm well on my way. But on a serious note, genetic engineering is kind of the final solution to all the final solution. Leave it to a Jewish guest to say that by accident. That's going to be a thing that makes, I think, in the next 15 years, everyone's going to look exactly like what they want or very close to that. But I think on our way there, the purpose of the book is to bring people attention to two things. One, it's okay to be vain and work on your appearance.

1:21:35And two, here are all the tools that you have now and coming up to be aware of, including surgery, that can make you look better and will make you happier if you happen to value your appearance a lot. and your mind is open to once you become more beautiful in your own regard to adjusting your self-image. And one of the things I talk about, especially in the last chapter of the book, is that people who have experienced, let's say you were just really bad looking your whole life, like, you know, like all little kids are great, but sometimes you see a little kid and you're like, that kid's going to have a tough, I don't know, however long he's looked like that for.

1:22:12And then in middle school, we remember middle school, like age, you know, 11 to 14. If you look a certain way, that's not great. You have a rough time in middle school because kids are brutal and they'll tell you all sorts of things that are terrible constantly. They'll bully you for it. And there's also other subtle things there. Like maybe you never get bullied, but like if you're a girl and all the girls are crushing on all the boys and you have a boy crush and all the girls tell their boy crushes, they like them and they go on dates. but you tell your boy crush and he's like oh yeah i'm actually totally good and then you're like oh that is terrible and you cry about it a lot all of that psychological gunk builds up and so if finally at age 28 you go through this radical transformation you start lifting weights you start paying attention to your diet maybe it's the year you know 2031 by that point you age reverse back to 22 even though it's a moot point and there's some genetic engineering some pharmaceuticals some surgery and then you look like a straight up 10 you might not feel like that in your head still because you have like 18 or 28 years of just total shit in your head.

1:23:14And so a big part of the book is to try to get people to be aware of the fact that once they do get on this journey and start looking better, they need to be super kind to themselves in their own head and their own self-appraisal, not compare themselves to other people, not compare themselves to perfection and really kind of drink the waters of everyone thinking you're awesome and you thinking you're awesome. And these are the waters that have been drunk by people who are good looking as like a matter of just like birthright. Like imagine a girl that was like super cute little kid, super cute teenager, super cute at 20, 30 year old.

1:23:47She's just had like mostly very amazing experiences from people telling her she's awesome all the time. And mostly her experience with the mirror was like, oh, my stupid pimple, but the rest of me looks great. You need years of that mental energy. I need to be accepting it in order for you to heal such that you don't feel super self-conscious anymore, super bad about your appearance. So it's a combo of do the things that make you look better, which most people say you're not supposed to tell people and, and also do the inner work. So. Yeah. So the inner work here is so key because if I think about, if I think about it, right, the one thing that rang home in that whole piece you said there is your external needs to match what you see when you look in the mirror.

1:24:29And so meaning like how you are viewing yourself internally. Now, I wonder if you fix that internal piece, how much of a drive do you have to change the external piece because if you can look in the mirror at the rate you're at now and be happy with how you look then i wonder what the motive is to change there's no motive to change and then you shouldn't because it's a giant waste of time yeah and so it's easier said than done exactly right and so and so but then i then i wonder right like the the the change externally and the pharmaceuticals or whatever you can take to change the externally, I wonder how much of it is fueled by an insecurity that you aren't okay with who you are now, not just the fact that you're not good looking.

1:25:13How many times do you see a gorgeous woman get some plastic in her face and make her look worse than what she did before she had all of the plastic? It was actually not the fact of what you looked externally. It was how you viewed yourself internally when you looked in the mirror, which is why things needed to change. because clearly like you look phenomenal. Like you're in the top 0.1 % of what women look like and then you change it. And so then I wonder like how we focus. I see massive value in ascending your looks, like massive value in it. Like I know when I look good physically, the way I show up is a completely different person.

1:25:54I have a spring in my step. I feel confident. It's incredible. But equally, the way I look in the mirror and go, fuck yeah, I love who I see, that is probably the thing that does enable that too. Because I could look so good, but then not feel so good. And then all of a sudden, it doesn't even matter if I look so good. I'm still showing up in a way that's not confident, that's not springing out of bed. So do you think the key focus is, yeah, we're going to have technologies and advancements that make us be able to ascend externally a lot easier, but this is the really important piece or else all of that's pointless?

1:26:35So it depends on what your internal situation is more affected by. It's a spectrum. It's complex. We can at least say something that's very likely to be true. some people are having a bad time because of how they look and it really is because of how they look and if you like so if you if you tell a kid who's just a really upstanding great kid and he's got everything going for him psychologically but he's like eating like hand to mouth because he's that poor if you give that kid enough money or give him a job to get enough money so he's not like dirt poor anymore he's going to be like the most grateful person of all time.

1:27:13It's going to fix this problem. This is a real problem he had. Whereas if you have all kinds of gunk in your head and you also don't look great, you may misattribute your bad experience in your head to being caused by looks. And in part, it could be when you fix your looks altogether, you maybe don't even do the work inner work of accepting now that you look great. Because some people get so used to ragging on their look that as soon as they achieve an amazing look, they just rag on that look. You know, like if you have a regular car, it goes 100 miles an hour. You like piss that it doesn't go 101.

1:27:51You get a Bugatti and it doesn't go 261. It just goes 260. You're just as pissed. That is something absolutely to be aware of and to avoid. People fall for that trap all the time. But if your real problem is the fact that you were super bad looking objectively and subjectively, when you fix that, you're probably going to have a way better time than if you didn't fix that. But that could have been a diversion to your point, and then you won't feel any better. And it turns out like you just needed psychotherapy and psychiatric drugs and a lot of inner work. But I think oftentimes it's a combination.

1:28:24however if you care about your looks however many other psychological problems you have or problems you have in the world those problems don't look nearly as bad if you now look really great yeah and and and this is it's just it's just brutal reality that looks sells like looks gets you in places and this is just this is just the reality of it like we can we can disregard it But the fact of the matter is that like when you have something, when you have like a great appeal and an objective visual, you're pleasing to look at objectively. You just seem to be, it's like people listen to you more, people, you get indoors, especially if you're a woman, you get invited anywhere you want.

1:29:11And so there's an objective ascend that has really, if you can maintain your mental state, it has zero downside. Yeah. That's the healthiest way to go about it. Also, the key there though is you have to keep your mental state in check. Yes. Because if you lose it, it doesn't even matter because you look in the mirror and you'll just keep going to extremes where it probably has negative value. because you think something looks good, but you're probably only doing that because you're picking yourself apart so much. When actually someone looks at you from the outside and objectively goes, you're phenomenal.

1:29:52Like you look great. Yes. You also, you can have a totally different take on how you want to look than other people do. But if moving towards that look incrementally makes you happier, God bless you. The real big problem is when moving towards that look doesn't make you any happier, then you have a big problem. like you, like I used to have love handles. I got them cosmetic surgery out. I got them cut out of my body, happier afterwards. Super glad I did it. Everything's better now that I don't have love handles because everything's about the same, but I don't have love handles. It's like one extra problem removed.

1:30:26Like if you're like fighting someone with a sword and there's like a yippee dog also biting your leg, it might not seem like a big deal in the grand scheme, but if that dog just disappeared, it would be easier to do the sword fight. Your life got better. And so if that's the case, if when you're improving your appearance, the rest of your time on earth gets better, you're definitely working in the right direction. If as you improve your appearance, you can honestly say that you don't perceive any better relationship to your appearance, then it's a problem I do talk about in the book where it's you are not properly, in many cases, not properly experiencing the X, the, the awesomeness as people do this thing and their brains help them along for the ride is they see only problems and they're almost incapable of experiencing gratefulness.

1:31:15I do this all the time and it's terrible. It's ruining my life. They will have this problem of not looking super good. They'll solve it. They'll look amazing. And instead of just like swimming in a sea of wonder and letting that make them happier, think, okay, that's not a problem anymore. They sort of like shove it off the table and I go, okay, the rest of my life. And then they just take their looks for granted for forever. And they never let that make them happier. It's confusing to me because why are you doing all that work if you're not even going to allow yourself to experience happiness?

1:31:51And that's one of the things about why the book is so centered on vanity is we're told like being happy with how you look is vain and that's a sin and that's bad. People would call those people self-absorbed and self-centered. There is a great lie going on there, a massive lie. What we're saying is that people shouldn't be riding high in their good looks. Like a super, super attractive girl checks her look before she goes to the club and it's bad for her to think I look great. what? So she can pretend that she doesn't think that, then she's lying to herself. She can tell her friends she doesn't think that, then she's lying to them.

1:32:32I think we're all supposed to just not care about how we look, but a lot of us do. And so because of that kind of momentum, if you started out as a not so great looking girl, you applied all these technologies, et cetera, and now you look amazing, even to yourself, you feel guilty for feeling amazing because you're not supposed to feel amazing because other people don't look like you and you're like, you know, like privileged or whatever. What I say is fuck every single part of that. That's nonsense. Yes. Like when you, any way you look, you should be happy with your look, but if you're not happy with your look and you want to look better, get that better look.

1:33:06And then you had better be starting to get happy with your look. And if you're not happy with your look, then that really wasn't the problem. No big deal. You learned a cool lesson. Now you're better looking and now you can focus on other problems. But if it really was the look, but you're unwilling to bask in the sun of greatness, then what the fuck? It's like, you'll see this from other people too. Someone will get super ripped. Maybe a girl that was kind of pudgy finally gets like shredded. And now she's wearing a ton of cutoff shirts to show her belly and a little baby abs and whatever the fuck.

1:33:38And other people will be like, now that she's like in shapes, just showing off, shut the fuck up. Good. First of all, everyone wants to see it. It's great. Like there's no problem where there's too many belly shirts. I've never seen that as a fucking demographic analysis. And also why wouldn't that girl who was denied all the benefits of people looking at her, people complimenting her, people befriending her, her looking in the mirror and thinking she vibes her walking around and knowing she's showing off her abs and everyone thinks it's fucking great. She was denied that for years and years and years.

1:34:08And now when she achieves it, you're going to tell her like, uh, like you got to like cover up. Cause like, You're just like showing off no fucking shit show off. That's what a huge part of the book is about, especially towards the end is like, what do they call it? Slay, slay girl, slay. Like, that's a good thing. We want to be supportive of other people looking like they want and showing off their look till the end of time, because that might actually fill them up with enough confidence and enough warm feelings that later they just don't have to show it off as much, which is on them. Yeah. Yeah.

1:34:42I think confidence is the key word there and not ego. And you have to fill your ego before you can become confident. We all start with bullshit. Not all. Many people start with bullshit, fragile egos. The way your ego fills up to not being bullshit or fragile is has to register wins. Net wins. I go out in the street. People compliment my physique. First, it's weird. I don't even believe it. The 500th time, you're really going to start to believe that you're really amazing in your physique. It's going to fill that ego up. It's going to heal all those cracks. And then you could be confident. And then people go, how come you're so confident?

1:35:15You go, cause it's been complimented like a zillion times. Eventually it sinks in. Yeah, this is true. This is true. I just feel that the, the, the ego is more fueled though with like, I need you to tell me how great I am so that I can believe it too. Whereas like the rooted confidence is I know who I am and I'm okay if you don't. And so I feel if you can build up a level of confidence in your life where you genuinely feel okay with who you are and you like getting compliments, you like receiving things, but you're not phased if someone tears you down, like true confidence, then that's a really grounded, rooted place to be.

1:35:56But if it's ruled by ego, egos in the steering wheel, it's like, you need to tell me how great I am so that then I can believe it too. I need you to instill to me how great I am so that then I can show up in a confident way. That's not a very stable sense of confidence, but like being able to be full and grounded, I think is the key. And getting fit and healthy and looking physically attractive will massively, massively enhance your confidence. Hugely. But the moment that you can't solve that internal battle, then you'll need to use your ego to steer the ship so that you can overextend yourself so that people can validate you because you don't actually feel it internally.

1:36:37If you are good looking and you've been good looking for a while and really felt your own swag and had other people say that you're awesome, your cup gets filled to some extent, your ego cup. And then it's nice and full. like why do a lot of i mean there's a huge genetic component to this so some people just have like confidence just like lizzo is just born with confidence the rest of us are like whatever but genetics aside your life experience is huge in determining how much of an inferiority complex you have versus how much confidence you have and if you've experienced a large fraction of your life as the person who was putting on two sweatshirts to cover up their belly or something like that and most of the feedback you got from people about your body was either like they're too polite to say anything or they say mean things, then us expecting you to just be confident all of a sudden when you get in shape is fucking ridiculous, which is why you have some people that just newly got into really great shape and they don't have any confidence, but they look great and they exhibit all the signs of not having confidence.

1:37:36Like they're looking for, um, they're really fragile. If you tell them they look off, um, they're looking for compliments all the time. They're really defensive. Maybe even though they look hot, they're like sort of still trying to hide parts of their body. They don't need to be hiding. and you wonder like, well, you're really hot. Why don't you have confidence? Some of that's genetic. Some of that's for other reasons. But I think a large part of it is like, maybe they just haven't been hot long enough and haven't swam in that sea of compliments long enough to really get it imbibed. Because again, like people that were attractive their whole lives have like 18 to 20 years of just being told they were fucking amazing 99 times out of a hundred.

1:38:08And then every now and again, someone says they look like shit and they cry, but it doesn't affect them that much. Cause like, dude, imagine being like, like a super winning athlete, like a wrestler or something. and you win like 95 out of 100 matches, like, and you know, you losing sucks, but then you show up to like an open mat, like a practice, and people are like, hey, how do you feel about today? You're going to beat everyone up? You're like, yeah, pretty fucking good. Well, because you have like, you know, hundreds of matches on your belt. Like you've won. You know how that feels. That's your baseline expectation.

1:38:37It's the same way as if you haven't been attractive to yourself for very long, you need a lot of time getting compliments from people and hugely, when you look at yourself in the mirror, reinforcing to yourself that you're allowed to feel proud of what you've built. It's massive. This is key. So if we were to summarize this and maybe put it in a progression, you are not objectively attractive, so you don't get the praise externally for the years as you're developing and growing up. So then what that develops inside of you is a nature of, I am not good enough and I am not confident because I don't really have the external praise to support that.

1:39:13What am I supposed to be confident about? Exactly, right? And then after you go that, you go, okay, I'm sick of this. I actually want to change the way I look and I'm going to go get in shape. Now you start getting in shape and the shape is comparatively to what you were and you've seen physical improvements. So you see physical improvements into the point where you go, oh my God, I'm actually proud of how far I've come here. Then what you kind of need is you actually start overextending fueled by ego to then get praise externally. Maybe you take your shirt off a few extra times unnecessarily.

1:39:47Maybe you be a little bit extra loud because you only just realized how you could talk quite well, whatever it is, right? Fueled by ego to then get the praise externally. And by getting enough reps of those, you develop this ego death where you go, I actually don't really need to show up anymore in this overextended way because I actually have been reminded of who I am right now. And I genuinely start, I'm starting to believe it myself. Then you believe it. And then you don't need to have ego in the steering wheel and you can actually be confident, but there's kind of like this bridging period where you've actually had a transformation.

1:40:22You haven't been instilled it for your life. So now you need to like extend and overextend yourself filled by ego to then be reminded of it and to actually believe it. Yeah. And if you don't extend yourself and you don't try to actually believe it five years later, you can have that still same amazing body, but you feel no different. You still feel like shit like you always have. That would be a huge mistake. The other thing is there are sort of two ways to make other people be humble. One is to give them the finger wag and be like, hey, like chill, put your shirt back on. And I'm not so sure how much that works people to make them humble more than it gives them resentment towards you taking away their light.

1:41:00There's another way of making people be more humble or instilling humility, and that is giving them the praise that they obviously want. and just lathering them with the shit. Because praise is dope until you've heard it about a thousand times. When you've heard about a thousand times, that next bit of praise doesn't do much for you because your cup is really full. And so, but that's great. That's what we want. So I think like one of the best ways to feel people, to make people who are feeling less than feel better is to give them praise. And so if that's in the realm of looks or physique, like I love, love, love giving people compliments about how they look.

1:41:35and if I know that someone started from a place they clearly didn't like and they're even halfway to a better place I especially turn up the juice on compliments and they're all real but you don't have to compliment people you could just walk by and say nothing like let's say you know a girl who's training in the gym eight months and she's just made a crazy transformation she's not like proper hot yet but she's well on her way like you know and you know her you know her name you exchange sets every now and again you'd be like Debbie Debbie Debbie do you look great you You can make her entire life with that statement.

1:42:05If you say it right, you can for sure make her weak. And it's not that you make her temporarily more happy, which is awesome. It's a gift to give another human. The bigger one is like you give that to her and then your friends tell her and then her parents tell her and their little kid sister tells her that. And all of a sudden, a couple of weeks, a couple of months later, she's different in permanently in a way that no one is ever going to take away from her because she's fed off that light of compliments. And she's telling herself in the mirror to like, this is a body people like more. I also like this body more.

1:42:35And all of a sudden she can get healing and can present in five years as one of the hot girls. And then people would be like, well, you've always been hot. And like, no, that's not true. Like I was a skinnier, smaller kid growing up or skinny fat, one of those two. And you got a short and I didn't get bullied a ton, but you're not enough to drive the message home. And I like, I was not alpha at all. Like I didn't feel myself confident, present with people. I couldn't do eye contact. and like after getting jacked enough and doing enough public speaking and doing enough brazilian jiu-jitsu like i just like sort of very hazily remember what it's even like to feel the emotion of embarrassment and i can present like i like let like i talk to supermodels uh and they just don't phase me i talk to fitness olympia winners they just don't phase me i used to be phased like crazy by that well what helped what happened well like you know enough people told me i was awesome and I want enough shit that it sunk in.

1:43:31That is what really heals people. And so when people become transformed with their appearance, I think it's on them to really do the self-work of loving how they look and being like, I am good looking, to believe it. And then it's not on anyone else, but it's super kind as a human that when people are making progress to what they clearly give a shit about, which is better looks, it's not so fun to give them pointers about how they look better Sure, in a proper context, that's fine, but a lot of times that's all people have to say is negative shit. I think it's great. We would really benefit more, I don't know if as a society, sure, as a gym culture, we would benefit more of people recognizing that people look awesome and saying kind things because I think we assume a lot and we assume that people who look good or are transforming know they look good or know they're transforming.

1:44:20And like, I don't have to tell you, like inside people's heads, man, they might think the fucking opposite completely. And just one tiny little comment of kindness not ever fake real like to tell them hey you're really starting to try this is fucking awesome like you know i can make jokes to people i'm like dude you keep this up man you're gonna be too hot i might be around you you know i'm saying you're giant distraction that fills people with something that's irreplaceable because it's something everyone else who was hot got their whole fucking lives and they're like oh i've just always been confident yeah no shit because you've been told you were amazing your whole life which is great i'm not saying that's bad that other people need that love too and so working towards a body towards a face towards whatever towards fashion that you think is great, loving yourself as much as you can forward in the mirror and getting as many awesome compliments and kind things told to you is what I think has the best chance of healing you as a human.

1:45:07And then you present a super confident, super awesome and not super insecure. That's great. Dr. Mark Isersdale, thanks for coming on the show. Thanks for having me. Appreciate it.