The following is a conversation with Ryan Hall, his second time in the podcast.
He's one of the most innovative scholars of martial arts in the modern era.
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As a side note, let me say that I've gotten a chance to train with Ryan
recently and to both discuss and try out on the mat his ideas about grappling and fighting.
What struck me is his unapologetic drive to solve martial arts.
It reminds me of the ambitious vision and effort of Google's deep mind to solve intelligence.
In Ryan's case, this isn't some out there martial arts guru talk.
This is a style of thinking about the game of human chess of seeking to define
the rules and to engineer ways from first principles of escaping the constraints of those rules.
This style of thinking is rare, but is ultimately the one that leads to the discovery
of new revolutionary ideas.
If you enjoy this podcast, subscribe to it anywhere or connect with me at Lex Friedman.
And now here's my conversation with Ryan Hall.
You're known as a systems thinker in martial arts, but you also I think are willing to
think outside the rules of the game, outside of the system.
When you're thinking about strategies of how to, you know, solve the problem,
particular problem of an opponent, whether that's Jitsu or mixed martial arts.
What's your process for doing that, for figuring out that puzzle?
I would say I don't know if I have a specific like A to B to C process for that sort of thing.
I try to do my best to appreciate that I think a lot of the thinking, or maybe not all the
thing, but a lot of great thinking on conflict, on battle, on war, on martial arts has been
done already, not that we don't have to do any sort of background investigation or reassessing
of these ideas or axioms that have come down through things like the Book of Five Rings
or the Art of War, or, you know, like Closetwitz, even anything like that, really, but is trying
to understand the lessons of the past that I think oftentimes we don't take with us problems on.
We pay lip service and like, hey, you know, a victorious fighter, the great fighter, you know,
he knows victory is there, then he seeks battle.
Everyone else is looking for victory in battle.
He had moving on and that's why I'm going to double jab and throw my left hand.
And I think a lot of times our actions don't reflect our stated belief structure and I think
that oftentimes you can tell what I believe really or what my fundamental operating system is
based on my actions, whether I'm aware, I have an operating system internally, whether I'm aware
of it or not, or certainly whether I'm fully aware of it.
So I guess when it comes to strategy, I try to think about how things interact.
You mentioned systems thinking and I try to do my best to understand how systems exist,
but I think that systems have a fundamental strength and a fundamental weakness.
They work how they work and that's great, but they're readable.
So if you are aware, if I am operating on a system of which you're not really read into,
then I think oftentimes I can seem like shockingly effective, particularly if my system
preys on certain weaknesses that maybe you're given to.
But what happens when you've read the same books that I have?
I think that a lot of times that makes me deeply predictable.
I think about systems in jujitsu and a lot of times people think that they're doing jujitsu
when in reality they are doing an expression of it.
Let's say I'll use, there's the Marcello Garcia system, there is the Hensel Gracie current
Hensel Gracie system, there's the old Gracie Baja one, there's the Gracie Academy, classic
Gracie jujitsu, there's the art of jujitsu, kind of Otto's approach.
And there's some crossover between a lot of these, but oftentimes I think when it comes
to understanding how I'm making decisions and how my opponent is making decisions,
I have to appreciate whether or not I'm an end user of something and I'll use my phone
as an example.
I was thinking of this the other day and as an end user of my phone, I have no idea
what it does.
Like Edward Snowden comes up and goes, hey guys, you realize your phones are listening
to you from like, really?
What?
Yeah.
All right.
So of course that comes out, but to what extent?
I have no idea.
What is my phone capable of?
I have no idea.
I can mess with the font though.
I really like blue screens, not purple screens.
So like as an end user, I can change some of the bells and whistles that have nothing
to do with the underlying source code of it all or how it functions.
The same way in my car, I'm an end user of my car.
If I do this with the steering wheel, it goes, if I push on the gas, it goes.
If I, yeah, I know how to fix it when it's out of gas, I know how to fix it when it's
out of oil and I know how to fix it when a flat tire comes, but shorter that or actually
beyond that, I have nothing.
So I think that oftentimes, I've been around in Jiu Jitsu long enough to encounter like
a new wave of good grapplers and it's very, very interesting sometimes how their running
systems, they don't realize they're running.
Like I'm like, oh yeah, I trained at Marcello Garcia's Academy for a long time and a big
fan of Marcello's was a student there, encountered a lot of the Otto style Jiu Jitsu a number
of years ago, been a very, very deep into footlocking and leg attacks and whatnot for
a long, long time.
I understand your system better than you do or I may and let's say you understand my system
better than I do.
That would be a huge issue.
That was something that I encountered a long time ago trying to come up in Jiu Jitsu where
I was trying to utilize systems that were created by let's say Hafa Mendes or someone
else and I'm basically trying to do what you're doing.
I'm just not doing as good of a version of it.
So not only am I not doing it well, but I'm entirely predictable and I think that that
can be a big issue.
So to come back, I think of systems a lot of times now in terms of particularly end
user type of systems like an iPhone is a really, really fast way for me to be able to do all
sorts of things.
If you were to take it from me, I couldn't recreate any of that.
So you want to be more the NSA unless the end user?
Exactly.
Exactly.
That way I'm listening to you.
Going to be the NSA of combat.
That's right.
We're watching UP.
I guess what I would come back and say is if you understand how things interact on a
fundamental level and what type of games exist and what type of interactions exist, then
you can transcend a lot of the systems.
It's almost like a cook versus if I can make certain things in the kitchen, but I am not
a chef, you could give me a bunch of ingredients and I could probably cook not well, but a
couple of different things.
But a master chef would be aware of the implications of all of the things that they're doing, extra
time in the oven, less time in the oven, putting this flavoring or spice in, what you're doing
with various things, and also they could turn all of these ingredients into Chinese food
or they could turn all these ingredients into Italian food and they could turn all these
Italian food ingredients into chicken parmesan or it could turn into lasagna, but they're
not limited to a specific thing because they have knowledge of how food interacts, what
it does to create taste, what it does to create texture.
So to come back, let's take rock, paper, scissors.
Rock, paper, scissors is built on the idea of a couple of different things.
Actually, I'll tell you what, can I, may I ask you a question?
What's your favorite dinosaur?
On the same, on three we'll go.
One, two, three.
T-Rex.
T-Rex.
Oh, me too.
Man, we're going to be best friends.
So it's, okay.
So what's the first question when you say, hey, let's play rock, paper, scissors?
It's like, hey, is it rock, paper, scissors or rock, paper, scissors, shoot?
And you're like, rock, paper, scissors, shoot.
And you're like, okay, because if we go rock, paper, scissors, shoot and I'm like, oh man,
I got lucky and I won.
Imagine I won a hundred times in a row.
I'd be luck.
I'd be luck if I was honestly doing that.
But now let's say for instance, I go on rock, paper, scissors and you go on shoot.
Rock, paper, scissors, shoot.
Here comes the rock, right?
If you lose, whose fault is it?
It's yours.
This is built on a parody thing where I don't get to pick second.
If I get to pick second, it's like being able to investigate your background before going
to meet you.
And then I'm like, oh, hi.
Oh, I too love the New Jersey, you know, the New Jersey Nets, which is a statement that
no one in their right mind would ever make when I was growing up.
So anyway, you'd have to have personal knowledge of somebody.
So anyway, to come back, let's, if you understand how games are structured, you can start to
realize that there's huge gaps and huge holes in a lot of the thinking behind all of it.
And if you can create the illusion of choice, I'll play one more.
If you don't mind, this is one of my favorite ones to do this in class all the time.
Have you seen this before?
No.
Okay.
May I ask you some questions, please?
Sure.
Okay, fantastic.
I'm scared.
Everybody wins.
Don't worry.
All right.
So could you, could you please?
I would.
Could you please pick three fingers and tell me what they are?
Your thumb.
Okay.
Your pinky.
Okay.
And your middle finger.
Okay.
So could you please pick two fingers?
Your middle finger and your pinky.
Okay.
Could you please pick one finger?
I'll go with the middle finger.
Woohoo.
Okay.
Could you please pick one finger?
No, pinky.
Okay.
Let's play again.
Can you pick one finger, please?
Your middle finger.
Okay.
Can you pick one finger, please?
Your thumb.
Okay.
Yeah.
Your pinky.
Okay.
Now pick two more fingers, please?
Your middle finger and your ring finger.
Okay.
Could you please pick one more finger?
Damn it.
So.
I thought that enhanced the illusion of choice.
It's the illusion of choice.
If I'm asking the questions provided I asked the right questions, there can be no correct
answer.
It doesn't mean that ultimately, if that's what you wanted, let's say like I thought
I was guiding you to something I wanted, it turns out that was the outcome you wanted.
Now, let's, here's, now I'm going to ask the wrong question.
I might not get what I wanted.
Oh, by the way, sorry to interrupt.
For people that might be just listening to this, that no matter what trajectory we took
through that decision tree that Ryan was presenting, it was always ending up with a middle finger,
ironically enough.
I was surprised.
So and.
All of us were surprised.
And we're both winners.
Yeah.
We all, everyone was.
I felt like a winner.
All right.
So now, now I'm going to, now I'll ask some different questions if you don't mind.
Can you please pick two fingers to put down?
Your middle finger and your pinky.
Or it's.
Oh, that's so awkward.
That's like the worst finger positions.
Okay.
Can you please pick?
Wait a minute.
That's, oh, hold on.
Yeah.
Well, what if you picked two other fingers to put down?
You're throwing your pinky.
Okay.
My thumb on my pinky.
Can you please pick two fingers to put down?
Well, whatever to you like.
Okay.
Your middle finger and your pointy finger.
Ah, okay.
Can you pick two fingers to put down?
What's the name?
It's index finger.
Index finger.
Pointy.
Pointy.
Pointy.
Pointy.
Pointy.
Pointy.
Pointy.
Pointy.
Pointy.
Pointy.
Pointy.
Pointy.
Pointy.
Pointy.
Pointy.
Pointy.
Pointy.
Pointy.
Pointy.
Pointy.
Pointy.
Pointy.
Pointy.
Pointy.
Pointy.
Pointy.
Pointy.
Pointy.
Around your thumb.
Pointy.
Pointy.
Pointy.
Pointy.
Pointy.
Pointy.
Pointy.
Pointy.
Pointy.
Pointy.
Pointy.
Pointy.
Pointy.
Pointy.
Pointy.
Pointy.
Pointy.
understanding wise and then discipline wise and then have the courage and the
constitution and the discipline necessary the patients necessary to ask the
proper questions and wait for the proper answers and if I can all assuming like
the perfect world I win period yes it makes sense yeah it totally makes sense
so I don't know if you know sort of the more mathematical discipline of game
theory there's something called mechanism design so game theory is this
field where you model some kind of interaction between human beings you
can model grappling that way you can model nuclear conflict between nations
that way and you set up a set of rules and incentives and then use math to
predict what is the likely outcome depending over time based on the
interaction given those rules mechanism design is the design of games so like the
design of systems that are likely to lead to a certain outcome and so what
you're suggesting is you want to create what you want to discover systems whose
decision tree all the possible things that could happen feel like there's
choice being made but ultimately one of the parties doesn't have any choice in
what the actual final outcome is you're making them feel like they're playing a
game too so it's not like you don't feel trapped it's kind of well the best traps
I don't you don't look very threatening so I'm like I'll walk over there I guess
wouldn't that I guess that's kind of an interesting thing if a lion's when is a
lion roar it's an interesting thing when you watch like lions hunting don't roar
when they hunt they want to when they want to move you back they do stuff
like that when they actually want to come and get you they're pretty slinky it's
like water cover it's like furry water and and I guess like when you keep that
in mind it's funny how like a frost hobby actually you know brilliant guy like
one of my MMA coaches and head coach your tri star he brought this up one
time thought it was really salient point so let's say we have a million person
bracket was impossibly huge like Frank Dukes went in the kumite level huge
bracket and he claimed to knock out like 250 consecutive people and you're like
that is all of Hong Kong was in that thing and everyone kept their mouth shut
but anyway that's pretty cool but it's a cut to come back a little improbable
pretty cool so let's say for instance like there's no cheating going on no
cheating going on and we're flipping coins right someone is gonna have an
unbroken string of victory through that bracket which is pretty insane how many
how many consecutive like toss-ups this person won and then at the end of it all
imagine we know like aliens show up and we go hey they want to flip a coin for
the not earth whether or not earth you know gets to gets to continue they've
been oh I'll do it I'm good at this that will be tempting as a person to do you
like I'm a lucky guy are you sure maybe I mean maybe effectively you are we could
argue the effectively you're incredibly lucky but basically is that an actual
ability is like a perk in a video game or is that just this thing that happened
so anyway how many times are someone you could go through an entire career you
know particularly in a fights board well let's say you get 15 knockouts in 15
toss-up scenarios because you see that happening all the time in the fight game
a toss-up scenario it's not like you're mounted on me and like and and that's not
a toss-up scenario many many many many many many striking scenarios a lot of
grappling was with tons of striking scenarios are dead toss-ups and somebody
wins by knockout they win five times in a row then they lose a couple times in a
row we go what happened you're like what I mean what happened they were always
flipping the coin and then they win five more and they go back on track can you
imagine that you're flipping a coin I'm like heads heads heads heads tails what
tails tails heads again oh man I'm back on it I'm flipping good now that's
basically what's going on I think the vast majority of the time and then you
imagine these you know tendency to see a sign and almost anything you know it
starts to present itself and then we build a narrative in our mind to convince
ourselves that we're in some sort of control when in reality I was in a
marginal situation at best the whole time yeah without having much control
without having a deep understanding of the system the same stories told the
stock market with many of the human these distributed human systems we start
telling narratives and start seeing patterns without understanding actually
the system that's generating these patterns so if we can see the system
that's incredibly valuable but then you go well what system is above all of the
systems I can see maybe physics maybe something like a game theory explains
these things but like I guess what are the what aspects of the system can I can
I put my hands on that I can touch and understand and what am I what am I missing
what what's going on in the world all around me to continue to lean on on the
dune that I don't have that I don't you know you talk to a blind person about
about the world about sight and talk to someone that doesn't have everyone who's
got coronavirus now so no one can taste or smell like this is delicious like is
it so anyway you know again what what senses am I missing or what understanding
am I missing that's preventing me from seeing the dots connect in the world
all around me and I think sometimes if we are oftentimes at least personally I've
screwed this up a lot I'm so nose deep in the in the trench of trying to
understand what I'm doing that I can't take a step back and realize you know
that I'm in a forest not just headed head butting a tree and I may be doing
both maybe both two things should be true at once but so I would say when it
comes to strategy trying to understand that but then also you go well okay well
how can that sounds cool but how can you actually do that and then I'd say that's
a really good question because if I imagine I say man I should fight like
Steven Thompson I should fight like Wonder Boys like good idea go do that I'm
like I'm not thinking about the guy I would like to be even a bag of Madoff if
I could you know it seems to work so anyway you go well what if I could
develop what if I could take my time developing skills so that when these
strategies become apparent that you are they are executable to you you actually
have the ability to like in or to again to be the person the arena that be the
person required where there's plenty of great ideas like dunking a basketball is
a fantastic idea alas for me unless there's a small trampoline nearby I'm
not the guy but that doesn't make it any less good of an idea I just don't have
and develop the ability or I lack the ability so anyway I think a lot of times
at least when I watch people in fighting I'll use an example we're so concerned
we're so concerned with trying to win early on rather than develop skills that
I'm going like well what's the best way to fight with my current set of skills
and usually the the path forward is like the barbarian route like the you put on
the one ring take the damage you need to take to hit that guy and that was
something I realized very early on in my MMA career was like I'm not that good at
striking at that time not a world-class striker now but I'm way better at
striking than I'm given any credit for because it helps people sleep at night
I think but I'm serious but yeah yeah you're always introduced as like this
master master grappler I'm like this nice to them to say that maybe I'm not
that good at grappling we haven't even seen that and but the funny thing is I'm
like just because if people almost go like well Lex like so you're really good
at this but you got to say I'm like we're equal man like I'm good at this
other thing maybe you're really good at what you do and I'm just mediocre do
that's also possible so there's plenty of people that define themselves as a
striker that do that just because that's for lack of other options not because
they're really good striker I'm a grappler I was a grappler as a blue
belt not really so anyway I guess to come back if I'm constantly going how
can I win with what I've got right now I think oftentimes I never take the time
to develop the skills that I want to develop and I also never take the time
to develop the strategies that I want to develop and that has actually been a one
big blessing of fighting someone frequently which has been really
frustrating as a result of injuries and time away and you know some of those
people being hesitant to get in the game but it gives you so much time to to be
out of the trenches and focus on developing your abilities so that now
it's almost like developing money like you mentioned the stock market that you
can now put in imagine you told me Bitcoin was a great idea five years ago
and I had eight bucks man if someone told me Bitcoin was a great idea five
years ago and I had you know 50k I'm like oh my god I'd be sleeping in my bed of
money that I would then set on fire later so they just to do it so all the
due to all the injuries you've been mining Bitcoin all this time and now
you're a rich man well no actually someone told me I was trying to mine for
Bitcoin actually like in a cave and then I found out recently that it's actually
mining is like a figure of speech not like a literal thing that you do but I
mean in my defense English language is difficult it is it really is next time
talking about explain and Russian is more is is a rich language you should
learn you should learn Russian I'll help you up believe you thank you can you do
a whirlwind overview of your career in MMA leading up to this point with the
injuries and the undefeated record and then what's next on the topic I did my
first fight in a as a blue belt and I've been training for about a year and a
half I did nine jujitsu tournaments in ten weekends or maybe eight jujitsu
tournaments in ten weekends prior to my first fight in April 2006 I got punched
in the face a whole bunch I didn't realize it was professional fight and
found that out like the day beforehand that was great thanks coach it was an
Atlantic City where another place no one ever goes on purpose so that wasn't
great I got into three actually three car accidents in the preceding 36 hours
before the fight I had my car totaled I wasn't driving for any of them that was
great it was 2006 2006 yeah and then I your blue belt yeah yeah I've been
training for about a year and a half to blue belt you're getting I mean if you
haven't lived if you haven't gotten punched in the face in Atlantic City
that's true I mean I so these are I would a lot I would have loved to have it
happen for different reasons yeah but uh yeah and well what's funny is that you
know I remember you know getting punched in the face a bunch trying to do
inverted guard I won one round lost two rounds definitely lost the fight so you
went for inverted sorry to interrupt you went for inverted guard like can you tell the story of that fight yeah sure it was
three three-minute rounds which is not a professional fight length although I
don't know if professional fight length would have been any better just more
time to get punched but I found out part way through I was like I remember
walking back to my corner in the first round I'm like this guy can't hurt me
and he's like yeah my corner was my friend Tom and then someone else and
he's like yeah I would still encourage you to stop blocking somebody punches
with your face I'm like that's good I appreciate that I'm gonna try that anyway
I remember like I was not you're not allowed to up kick so I'm like great I
was I had no martial arts skills it really at all but if I had anything at
all it was jiu-jitsu it was very very little jiu-jitsu but definitely no
wrestling definitely no striking like I was basically a magnet for punches so
that was your time you know rough-necking out in Atlantic City as we all do
once in a while can we fast forward to when you're actually dominating the
world as a black belt well actually I took the little bit of money that I
they're like hey we can we're paying him like really okay I like the stories with
Ryan Hall well then I went to the casino I went to whatever like the
Tropicana that was right there the casino because that was a bore wall call I'm
like you know what man this was this has been a not great not great evening I'm
gonna this is I'm gonna win it back it's gonna be great 15 minutes later they had
all the money that I had from the fight was gone yeah I remember like walking
out of the casino super pissed and I like I don't know what I was thinking like
I'm not good at gambling why this was not gonna make my night better I just
thought that there was gonna be some sort of cosmic balancing and maybe it was
the cosmic balancing all at once with things I've done in the long term though
yeah the balancing we'll see I hope so but to come that in the end though that
is true time will get us all yeah so well that was so that was the first one
and that was when I realized I'm terrible at MMA but I like it I should just stop
this until I one day learn how to actually grapple much less learn how to
fight but I remember this guy named Dave Kaplan who's the reason my ears are all
messed up who was on the ultimate fighter and got punched in the face and knocked
out by Tom Lawler who I'll always appreciate for doing that but anyway
David Tom I appreciate Tom I appreciate Dave too Dave it was great Dave was just
a huge bully and used to like really not completely unmercifully but relatively
unmercifully beat the crap out of me and anyway the ears look good so appreciate
that I tell people it's a tumor that I got and I'm gonna if they want in on a
class action lawsuit with AT&T they should you know send me an email but
anyway you're very financially savvy very good and now I just give the
impression Dave basically said hey don't worry man you're never gonna be good at
MMA and you're never gonna be good at grappling either but even if you are good
at grappling which in my opinion you will never be you will never be good at
fighting and I said Dave if I do nothing else in my life I'm gonna keep
training until I can make you pay for that and now that I can make him pay for
that really easily he doesn't train anymore but I love Dave Dave's awesome
he actually won the singing be what an interesting dude super interesting guy
but anyway none of the Virginia like speaks a couple languages super
interesting guy like shockingly good at Jeopardy too not that I'm any good but
still shockingly good at Jeopardy so anyway years later met for us a hobby
actually John Dana her I met John Dana her and he put me in touch with for us a
hobby I started training at TriStar you know immediately loved working with
for us and learning under for us started training at TriStar and I did my first
real professional MMA fight as someone that actually does had practiced a
little bit higher and I think August 2012 and that was against a guy he was
four and five at the time so you know had some experience good kind of like
first go for me honestly and I won that fight by TKO and then it was a little
bit of a time off and then I did another fight against a tough guy named
Magic Hamo he was five and two at the time if he was three and I was a
good little bit of fighting experience one that one in the first round of
iron we're naked choke and then started to experience difficulty getting
getting fights at that point you know you continue to introduce as like the
the master of grappling the submission at least that would that was my thing if
I don't know if I was that was the source of the fear for people I think so
because I mean I definitely wasn't much at striking at that point you know I
definitely a lot I'd like to think I'm pretty hard to hurt although I try not
to lean on that and I played baseball for like 16 years so I can hit things
pretty hard I just wasn't able to I I recognized pretty early on that I had no
idea how to actually hit things hard without becoming hittable myself so I
think that's kind of the big thing is a lot of times like we almost were
mentioning before if you try to go and get people too early you can hit them if
they're not that good but you're going to get hit yourself so you're making
you're basically making a wager you're making a trade of your own life for the
ability to hit them when you watch guys like Israel Adesanya Floyd Mayweather
Steven Thompson Conor McGregor when he's fighting really well it's not a trade
they're not you're hitting them and they're hitting you it's they're hitting
you but it takes years and years and years and years to be able to learn how
to do that. Ton Lee is another great example of that you know my closest
training partner one of my best friends and currently now one champion one
championship in Asia the champion of the featherweight or I guess lightweight
featherweight 155 over there now and he recently defeated a Martin Wynn in a
really great fight and Ton knocked him out long-time champion and Ton doesn't
let you hit him he doesn't let you touch him I feel so fortunate to have met
guys like Steven and Ton to go early on in career and go holy moly I can't even
it's not even like oh you'll let me walk over and find you it's like fighting a
ghost that periodically shows up with a hammer and smokes you in the melon and
then disappears into the ether again. So the way they approach the fighting game
is thinking how can I attack without being hit so every every strategy every
idea you have about what you're going to do has to do with like that minimizing
the the return. Absolutely I mean that's what all good fighting is done all poor
fighting if you know throughout the course history most generals whether I
saw I read or you know they they did battles by attrition you know it's like
yeah man I've got 150 guys you've got 50 like yeah 60 my guys die killing your
50 like that's great for me yeah but it's not so great for the 60 guys that
died you know I hope it's worth it so when you realize that not only you're
not just Kobe Bryant and you're Phil Jackson too you got to do everything you
know if you've got to run across the beach at Normandy so be it but that
better be you should have we make sure we thought this through and there's like
hey there's no way we can like you know walk around the side huh because
oftentimes there there is and I think a lot of times there's a lot of incentives
in professional fighting too for people to want to do that and we come up with
all sorts of well I'm trying to be exciting are ya is that really what you
came here to do because I came here to win and I think that anyone that that's
really successful came there to win and if it ends up being exciting well
that's fantastic I hope that people enjoy watching something and that's great
but that's a qualitative assessment anyway you know you want to also be able
to you know live the rest of your life I think it's easy you know I'll use
Meldrick Taylor I'm a big boxing fan Meldrick Taylor's excellent fighter came
this close to a world title and was stopped with like he was in a fight that
he was winning with seconds remaining literally seconds remaining and they
probably could have just let it go and he would have been world champion and it
was brutal if you ever watched legendary nights like HBO boxing show it's
it's great but it's heartbreaking it's absolutely heartbreaking and also like
the beating that he absorbed in that fight changed him for the rest of his
life and also you know don't think he'd never been hit before but it was one of
those we go it's it's all fun and games until you can't remember your name at age
44 years old and I didn't come here what are they what did Patton saying nobody
nobody wins the war by dying for his country make the other poor bastard die
for his and I think that that's kind of what we're shooting for and you know the
lionization of absorbing damage and that not being a big deal like you hear
that all the time so-and-so can take shots that would put a lesser fighter
down what does that even mean you know like so make it this straight your
ability to absorb damage is a part of you I mean I guess that don't get me
wrong that is an attribute that's nice to have if you if you need it but there's
plenty of people that actually have really porous defense that are just very
very difficult to hurt for whatever reason that's a fascinating fighters
perspective on the thing I mean the the the story that is inspiring and I know
it goes against the artistry of fighting is when you have taken the damage to
still rise up and be able to defeat the opponent so it's a but that that's a
flipside of a basically you failing to defend yourself properly right I agree
but let's say for I think is it's a tribe that's a triumph of humanity that's
trying that's amazing it's to witness such a thing is unbelievable but you
still go this is there is a cost here it's like I I've been fortunate enough
to spend some time working with with the military and I've been like around in
red metal of honor citations they're unbelievable like you read the story
music it's it'll floor you but it's a cost you don't be paying that cost or
a long and all most of the time with the cost was everything and then sometimes
you go hey yeah the value here it's worth everything it's like I defend your
family defend your country under certain circumstances and if that points
extension of your family you're like hey this is worth it to casually throw your
life away or throw your health it's foolish there's nothing there's nothing
great about that and and like you said it's still an amazing thing to see but
but it's also amazing to see you not take damages the Floyd Mayweather it's
the artistry of like not being hit and I wonder if maybe that's why people don't
resonate with Floyd as much as obviously Muhammad Ali was such a time in
place a great man for so many different reasons although it was funny to
remember like there were times when he wasn't very popular we love him now
because of time of context you know time to move away from some of the
nonsense he had to deal with but we got to see him struggle and also he had
unbelievable sacrifice both in and out of the ring you know that that we all
got to witness we've never really seen Floyd struggle like that and granted
obviously Floyd isn't like a civil rights figure like Muhammad Ali was is
different time different place and he's a different man but basically you know I
wonder if part of the thing that made us and made everyone think of Muhammad Ali
is the greatest in addition to of course the unbelievable things that he did out
in the world and the stands that he made we saw him struggle in the ring it's
it's almost it's humanizing you know it's it's weird when people people respect
Khabib but again it's we saw GSP lose and GSP came back stronger Khabib is
amazing but I wonder I wonder how people feel about him long-term not like
they won't think of him as amazing and great and he's been a respectable
person and champion but the time we he hasn't we he hasn't had to fall if that
makes sense and also coupled with Ali had a way of being poetic about sort of
the way he was in the ring sort of being able to explain the artistry that he's
I mean there's like joking as being playful but really he was able to
describe the flow like a butterfly thing like it be like he was able to actually
talk about his strategy without talking without crossing that line into the
flow he made whether when you're just talking about money and just talking
shit that's true actually Conor McGregor when he's not talking shit it's pretty
good at like talking about the art of the martial like the first dog and I wish
Khabib did the same actually from like the set you have brothers there's a few
there's a culture of like being poetic about like being scholars and also bards
or whatever the poets of the game and Khabib is more like just simple and he
lets his actions speak which is great to putting in this own way yeah it's great
but it's nice when you can tell stories and you know that that's probably why
Ali was the great catch me up to you went to three fights I think undefeated
yep BJ Penn you would talk about last time you defeated BJ Penn that's a that's
a I mean that's an incredible accomplishment but you fought a lot of
really tough guys when was your last fight and then catch me up with the
injuries well a lot of people kept more and more and more or unwilling to fight
you yeah that's been that's that was why I was out for two years following the
gray-mannered fight between the fighting gray and BJ and the gray-mannered
fight was actually what I'm really proud of because gray was very tough he's very
big very strong very experienced I had only five fights at the time and I
didn't have a lot of skills I don't get to fight gray with what I have today I
had to fight gray with what I had in December 2016 and that I it really took
a lot of discipline a lot of focus a lot of challenge you know to stay the
course to do what I needed to do in that fight and to win in ultimately
dominating fashion just not in the dominating obvious sense that you see
when someone runs across and just does that to somebody but that wasn't on the
list for me at that time you know so that was a that was an interesting one
but the time away again was very frustrating that was incredibly
difficult before that fight after that fight the well because I mean I beat
Artem Lobov in the final of the ultimate fighter and Artem is another guy that's
tough a lot of experience and gets gets you know he's a funny guy and he said
some things on the internet so and he gets a lot of heat for that but you know
he just knocked out three of my teammates I'm like he put a couple people in a
pretty rough shape at the end of that so he was doing well and that was a tough
fight again if I got to go back and fight that fight now it would be not
competitive at all I mean it wasn't competitive at that time but it very it
was come learn phase it wasn't close but it was competitive so you were
improving and growing fast yeah and it was nice to have time away I wish I'd
have more time in the ring but again I'd only been doing MMA for three years at
that time so the improvement from doing what the Bitcoin mining was over
overriding the ring rust I think so I don't really believe in ring rust if I'm
honest you know I can understand why you know people could feel a certain way
but if anything it's almost like you just kind of forget what competitions like
and you realize like oh you feel butterflies or something like that and
you go oh my god this is different versus no that's not your body getting ready
to perform it's okay it's normal how do you not have ring rust I think I try to
I want to try to practice performing no matter what you know like whether it's
saying karaoke and remember a good but like anything you name it talking in
front of people like you embrace the butterflies um yeah it's almost like
I remember my last fight I'm just staring at the wall and I'm like huh I
guess I guess I'm gonna fight in a couple minutes
I mean of course we all heard the phrase like you can never walk in the
same river twice because even if you were this even if the river is the same
you're a different man that's a I think it's a really important thing to
understand because at various points in my martial arts career have thought oh
man how should I feel I remember when I used to do well in competition I would
feel I would think these thoughts listen to this song think think about this I
would feel a certain way and then if you don't feel that way I would start to
become stressed because I was self-inflicted versus going you'll
feel how you feel your job is to show up with what you have on the day do your
absolute best like I will never quit I can be sure of that I didn't say I can't
be beat I can definitely beat I could have lost every single fight that I've
ever had but I control my effort and I control my attitude and that's I will
you know I will do my very best actually my game plan and the event's not working
if I have to I'll put my hands up and walk dead forward if I need to at
somebody you know we hope that that's not where it goes but you know you like
again that humanizing moment where you're shooting for like just the inner
like the inner you sacrifice the outer and all you have left is will and you
hope it doesn't happen but if it does you'll be there but I guess to come back
like the extra periods of time in between fights I think was valuable
because it was it was deeply challenging it was incredibly it is
heartbreaking sometimes for Moniz man it's like I didn't want to it's just
waiting oh my god it's just their politics involved there's some sometimes
you know like I you know it's every single time you step into the ring
nothing's guaranteed it's you could be hurt you could hurt somebody you could
win you could lose you know throwing away just like I said throwing away your
healthier life cheaply makes no sense for anyone and you know having
demonstrating some degree of temperance is not cowardly either I mean but again
you're if you wait too long you have nothing so I guess like I was trying and
always being I'm always open to fighting the absolute best people possible I'm
never turning down fights ever you know some random jabroni decides that he
wants to fight him that go away if I wanted to just fight randoms I would
just start at stand at the you know on the table at Denny's and start yelling
and I'm sure it would have you know some people who'd be willing to indulge me but
you know you want to fight you know meaningful opponents challenging
opponents and I know who and where they are and sometimes you did fight in
Atlantic City I did the Denny but you put the Denny's behind you I did and you
know and I'll be honest if there were a fighter stood up after that fight I don't
know if I was in a in great shape to expect to win in the other fights that
evening but I could it could have tried it I'm sure there were some takers in
the crowd particularly after they watched me fight they're like yeah I'll fight
that guy so okay so when was the last fight that was Darren Elkins that was
six months or seven months after the BJ fight which is great cuz it's you know I
love maybe five really tough a very tough opponent very tough guy super tough
dude and that was in July 2019 and then right when I was about to fight you were
ready to fight regularly after that yeah trying to and then you were trying to
fight and fight yeah and we got Ricardo Lamas so no one else none of the I
was ranked in the top 15 at that point and then people didn't want to fight we
were struggling to find an opponent then Ricardo Lamas a great you know former
title challenger you know MMA you know really great history and MMA recently
retired but we were supposed to fight in I think May March March May of 2020 and
then coronavirus happened and so that scrapped the whole show you know
training we were just scrambling to try to keep the gym alive and take care you
know I have five or six full five six I think five full-time employees that I you
know they're my responsibility I have to their livelihood is in my hands and
it's to be irresponsible of me to not take that seriously so anyway we were
able to navigate through that time and then we were able to reschedule the
Lamas fight and that was in August of last year and I got a a medical like
flag like oh hey you like you you you have like a medical condition that we
need to look into you when I got pulled from the fight and this immediately was
concerned because of course any serious medical condition you want to go oh man
well I guess I would like to look at that yeah it turns out it was a giant
false positive and you know we find that out you know all of five weeks later and
you go you gotta be kidding me that's frustrating and then we're still waiting
for a fight waiting for a fight waiting for a fight waiting for a fight people
won't sign up asked for a number of different opponents basically said hey
I'm willing to fight anybody that's that's tough and moving forward finally
got a you know a great opponent in Danny gay for I guess it would have been this
this March yeah and then I was training in January working on working on some
stuff I was out training with Raymond Daniels in in California Raymond's
amazing unbelievable you know kickboxing karate style kickboxer fantastic
martial artist great teacher great training partner and good friend and you
know just really bad luck you know kind of a fall in the middle of in the middle
of training and I tore my hip flexor halfway off of my femur so yeah that
wasn't great and you go like man right at the time where you're like oh man all
right finally moving forward you know having the opportunity to fight Dan's
really tough guy you know you have to fight well if you want to have a good
chance to do well with him if you don't fight well it's gonna be a rough night
and like that's exactly what I signed up for that's we want BJ that's we want with
the Elkins that was gray and then the universe goes hey man I hear you but
there's also this so anyway yeah fortunately it's healing up and then
hopefully when do you think you look for may I think made this year may of this
year yeah so it's been it's been it's been about five weeks since the injury
you'd be able to heal up you think yeah I think it'll be okay by then like I
don't need a big camp at this point I've had years of camp not gonna curtail my
drinking or anything like that obviously you know come on man this life is meant
to be lived and you know so it's you know I'm in good shape I always I'm always
training I'm trying to do my best to train around the injury to the extent
that I can right now without you know hurting myself long term so is there a
particular opponents you're thinking about yeah anybody anybody forward you
know I mean I tried to I asked I asked the second that I got hurt I sent a
message to Dan and I said hey man like I just wanted you to be the first person
to know I you know I just was pretty reasonably injured we just got an MRI
doctor says like hey man you're out and you need to take like three weeks off
off don't do anything or you're gonna meet you're gonna tear it the whole way
and this is gonna be surgery and then it's gonna be an additional like eight
weeks on top of that to start to rehab it through PT and anyway yeah so I let
him know hey if you can push this thing back I would love to keep on the car I
would love to keep the fight you know it's like I respect you a lot as an
opponent and also it's been brutal trying to get anybody to sign on so if
you're into it I'm still there unfortunately he turned that down I
understand he had other things going on and he and his wife were expecting a
child coming up so he needed to he needed to fight and anyway you know I
guess what we'll see was coming forward is there somebody's like super tough in
the featherweight division that you you seem to like enjoy the difficult puzzles
is there somebody especially difficult that you would like to fight I would like
to fight I know that I'll need to win at least one fight before this and I look
forward to coming back and giving my best effort to do that I want to fight
to beat Megaman Sharapov I want to fight Jaeger Rodriguez I want to fight Korean
zombie and it'd be complicated man yeah that would be fun I would love to see
that fight that's a fascinating fight that would that would be fun he would be
very challenging all those guys are very challenging and so I look forward to
just staying healthy to the extent that we can coming back and I'm gonna fight
multiple times this year hella hot water hell yes hey by the way I completely
forgot because you were talking about systems and decision trees and the
illusion of choice made me think of Sam Harris and I forgot to mention it so he
talked about free will quite a bit huh and that there's an illusion of free will
so it's like a whole claim cotton that you know maybe the universe constructed
that little game where it makes us feel like we have a bunch of choices but we
really don't we're really always ending up with a middle finger that would be
hilarious yeah that's it that's that's what you see before you die yeah giant
middle finger it's like oh fuck I knew it I knew it's what do you think do you
think there's a free will like we feel like we're making choices so you're
thinking again what we're talking about okay here's a system of martial arts
that's Hendo Gracie there's different schools and whatever and then you're
thinking okay how can I think outside these systems but then there's also a
system that's our human society and we feel like there's a actual choice being
made by us individuals do you think that choice is real or is it just an illusion
well I okay that's a really good question I'm not necessarily equipped to
answer this but I'll do my best okay I guess I would say to start with sure
will be interesting if it wasn't real if the choice wasn't real yeah we'll be
pretty as interesting if it is real first off I would start with a
facilitative beliefs versus not facilitative beliefs it's almost like
I think the world's out to get me true not true what next probably not a
facilitative belief even if you imagine you believe there's no free will okay
now what does that justify every single impulse that you're going to give into
or does the belief in free will does the belief in my ability to work hard to
focus to be disciplined to improve my position prove my situation whether it's
true or not although I think that at least many of us would argue that at
least whether whether there's some sort of internal driver that allows for that
yeah like we live in a material world your actions do affect the world I can
choose to pick that water up or not and anyway I would say a belief strongly in
the idea of picking facilitative beliefs you know and going hey I will adjust
whether this belief system is right or wrong on a cosmic level I'm nowhere
near smart enough to understand but I can say me deciding that let's say for
instance I'm gonna walk over to have a conversation with someone in the hotel
lobby and they've never met them and I go over and I start with this is gonna
be interesting and I just walk over there versus in my head I'm like what's
this asshole want we're about to have two very different conversations I could
be right that this person is not very polite or is or thinks negatively of me
right from go but I think that that's probably not a facility to believe
people talk about now I'm how is that going to help me navigate the
conversation to a positive conclusion and I think about that for you know let's
say fighting it's a good example like confidence people plenty of people
believe plenty of things that aren't real myself included I'm sure all the
time and anyway believing that you can do something I'm like hey I think I can
win doesn't guarantee you a positive outcome but I would say it most of us
would probably help most of us would argue that it helps and you're thinking
for leaving what's depression if not a negative un-facilitated belief that is
not always that oftentimes is not reflected by reality but you project it
onto reality and it's understandable if it makes you feel like oh man this isn't
gonna work out I don't think the prospects are going well and then if you
feel like you can't get out of that loop that seems pretty rough and I see a lot
of things out in society right now where you go whether whether you agree or
disagree with various positions on things you go is that a facilitated
belief even if that is true which is arguable anything so what next man so
what word is this end one one is the positive what's the happy ending here
and if they go well there is no happy ending like okay so so now what so what
do we do here and I guess so choose the facilitated belief and in your
intuition believing that free will is real is is more productive for a
successful life absolutely well because otherwise how am I not how am I first of
how can I how can society function if it's not real so how can I blame you or
anyone else or hold anyone responsible for anything if free will isn't real what
no that's exactly the point you but at the surface level what you're saying is
true but perhaps if we truly internalize that free will is an illusion we'll start
to figure out something that that transforms the way we see society for
example we are very individual centric so believing that free will is real puts a
lot of responsibility and blame on people when they do something bad maybe
if we truly internalize that free will is an illusion we start to think about
the system of humans together as as like this mechanism for progress as
opposed to where individual people are responsible for their actions good or
bad so we like remove the value the weight we assign to the accomplishments or
the or the violence the negative stuff done by individuals or more look at the
progress of society I don't know what that looks like but it's almost like as
opposed to focusing on the individual ants of an ant colony looking at the
entirety of the ant colony that I so that I think it makes perfect sense I
would just say that that's a reasonable thing to suggest it's a seismic shift
right and it's hard to say whether that would be you know better or worse but I
guess I'll use this as a this is a convenient one for me so I remember the
last time we spoke I brought up you know one of the most reviled evil
characters in certainly recent history probably human history period Adolf
Hitler well I'm a big fan of making people live in the world that they
want to believe in well if free will doesn't exist and it's just about how
things move forward when are we gonna be high-fiving this guy or what like this
is you know because I remember what I said and you know that actually brings
me to something else we discussed you know yeah for people who don't know
Ryan brought up or I brought up there's literally a giant book about Hitler
might so I've been obsessed with Hitler World War two installing recently for
recently oh man this has become like a meme Joe Rogan with like DMT and me
with Hitler can that make something more positive like cat in the hat or
something I don't know but we you brought up Hitler as an example of
something particular the some philosophical discussions we're having
and the excellent eloquent and the the full of integrity MMA journalist clipped
out something you've said about about Hitler and said that you know I forget
what the headlines are but they were the most ridiculous possible
implementation was intentionally misrepresent intentionally
misunderstanding what I'm saying then it's like I get that they're stupid but
I'm stupid too so I know what that's like so I don't have a lot of stupid yeah
exactly it's it's anything yeah exactly I don't I can't keep you passing that but
basically intentionally misunderstanding what's going on but what I find
funny is that hey we got to be careful what we believe and again back to the
cancel culture thing that we discussed last time as well where what I would I
like to apologize I mean no actually something about cancel culture that we've
been seeing things culturally I'm like I will be damned if I apologize for
anything that I don't need to apologize for because I was intentionally
misunderstood in that instance now you could say that I don't nest that I'm not
a historical scholar which I would agree immediately and also that I'm that I
oftentimes in eloquently or in articulately phrase things which I'll
agree that what is again but ultimately you know going hey I want to make you
believe live in the world that you will that you're suggesting ought to exist
okay so if there's no free will is everything how far of a step back are
we willing to take cosmically before we start going hey this is good because
we're experiencing a social you know a reckoning in our country at the moment
you know for good and for other I'm probably I guess and basically but hey
it all worked out right so that that's probably not something that would fly
and and I think that's a fair thing that's interesting it might not fly
from the individual perspective but if you zoom out and think that you know
appreciate society as you know just like an ant colony as a beautifully
complex system like we kind of from from the individual perspective we value
progress especially progress of the individual but in whole progress of
societies but if you accept that this is just a complex system that's not
necessarily headed in you anywhere that this is almost like that river is just
flowing I think that removes the burden of always striving of always trying of
always like the struggle and so on so it's possible that if we have no control
you can like arrive at some kind of other Zen state does that sound very human
no that's that's that goes against I think our current human condition as we
experience it but we've communicated that to each other like so we've taught
like through these social forces taught each other that our lives matter and so
on maybe if we convince ourselves that we're just sort of like little things
in a stream and ultimately none of it matters there might be some kind of
enjoyment to be discovered to that process I don't listen I'm a capitalist
rah rah like but I guess I think you're bringing up a really important point I
guess almost anything like capitalism I I only get to experience it as I as I
sit here now and I get to live I was raised in the United States have traveled
around the world a little bit have had the you know good fortune of meeting
many people from many different places and I'm an end user of capitalism I
don't really know how it got here whether it was in I wasn't there at the
start of this idea I wasn't there for hey how do we come up with this idea how
do we arrive and I'm nowhere near well read enough to and to understand any of
that really even secondhand and I guess recognizing that communism Marxism
socialism anarchism anything is these are all the perspectives that all have I
guess various strengths and weaknesses but I guess one thing I'm always I guess
I would say the burden it seems to me that if you want to make a change the
burden of proof is on the person implying that there needs to be a change
yeah and it doesn't mean that there's nothing there but it's like if you want
to create a small shift the riffle that's fine but a seismic ripping shift in
how we exist or how we experience the world as human beings and you mentioned
fighting why watching someone undergo take abuse on a level in the ring that's
just shocking and then triumph in spite of it is like it's you're like this is
unbelievable this is part of the magic of combat sports now it's part of the
magic the other side of the magic it doesn't get talked about sometimes is
that the trajectory of that individuals life later on is not always great or
there's a limit phrase there's a cost for that but you know if if this if we
remember you mentioned removing the struggle I don't personally the
struggle is with what makes life is what makes life life and also I guess you
know something for us has brought up to me on a number of occasions is it as and
it makes sense to me it's basically humans only understand things through
relative comparison I only understand you know heat because I've known cold I
only understand it's I guess like it's like talking to someone that's never
experienced any sort of hardship and then their their latte isn't right and
then they pitch a fit versus someone that's gone through a great deal of
challenge struggle you know in their life they tend to have a little bit more
of an even perspective and anyway and of course even as a relative thing and
what I proceed to be even may not be even maybe I'm particularly softer or
something the other direction without realizing because I can only understand
what I can understand but the idea that that we want to fundamentally alter
ourselves as a species and as people seems like a incredibly incredibly high
bar to prove and also like an incredibly dangerous idea because it always comes
back to well who's going to be responsible for this who gets to do the
choosing what's a good idea what's not a good idea and I guess that actually
brings me kind of to a something I've been encountering recently in
discussions with friends I feel like there's only two types of people that I
that I encounter at this point people with a more or less libertarian tilt to
their thinking and people without it and when I say libertarian I don't mean that
in the political party sense or even the belief system basic where I'm like hey
you do you buddy it's not my it's what you're up to is not my concern versus
what you're up to is my concern and I guess I've always watched you know
with various points in history people on this side or people on that side are
more more or less you know I guess problematic I guess you could say and
don't mean that in the internet sense you know more of more of an issue but the
world is always full of people that want to tell you what you need to be doing as
opposed to more or less doing a harm and I guess that's one of the ones any time
I'm trying to tell other people what to do I better hope I'm right and it's
bizarre to me how many people are so confident that their side or their
position is the one that's not only right for them but right enough that they
can enforce it on others and that just seems incredibly dangerous to me and I
guess that comes back to even Sam's point about oh we want to if I'm trying
to spread the idea that free will doesn't exist I'm not saying it's damaging
but if I will maybe and plenty of other things could be as well I'm not you know
it goes way over my head as to you know the implications of all of these and I
guess all of us are in evangelists for something but I guess it's weird that
we've gotten this far as a species and now we want to take like sharp sharp
turns well we've been taking a bunch of sharp turns throughout history yeah
that's so that's what you know that's that's the way you know okay humans love
power and one way to attain power is to say everything that you guys are doing
is wrong and I have the right thing and I'm gonna build up a giant cult of
people and I'm gonna overthrow and indirectly what that results in me is
me gaining power and that's how you get all the big revolutions in human history
saying I'm done with the thing that the powerful are currently doing so I'm
gonna overthrow that's that's where probably all the identity politics that's
happening now is people that didn't have power before are looking to gain power
and they're also you know that's where Jordan Peterson criticizes identity
politics is people with the right with the good intentions I should say are in
seeking power allow power to corrupt them as power always does and so they lose
track of like the the the devils that they're fighting by becoming the same
kind of devils the same kind of evil that they're fighting and so that that's
just the progress of human history but hopefully as these power greedy people
keep attaining power with the with a progressive mindset over time things
get better and better as they can as they have generation each generation a lot
of a lot of unfairness happens a lot of hypocrisy happens a lot of people are
trampled along the way by those who mean well but over time like lessons are
learned or like human like civilization accumulates lessons and in part learns
lessons of history and it gets better and better over time even though in the
short term there's people acting not their best selves and you know that
seems to be the progress of human history the idea of internalizing with
free will not being real and you're actually making me realize that that
ultimately leads to a kind of doesn't go in a nihilistic direction yes it's both
nihilistic or if you want to make it a political system then it's more like
communist type of a system where like the the value of the individual is
completely reduced removed or another perspective is like the freedom of an
individual is not to be valued or protected and so from our current
perspective the systems that seem to have worked the United States works pretty
damn well despite all the different criticisms it seems like freedom of the
individual in all its forms seems to be fundamental to the success of the United
States and so we should it's however the hell you put it is like doesn't matter
whether free will is or isn't an illusion the belief that it's real protects
the individual from the group which is fundamentally correct me from wrong that
always seems like the big issue of history hey there's more of me than
there is of you deal with it like yikes yeah and you want to be yourself you
want to be different you want to have a different religion you want to be a
different skin color you want to do this all the bad tribal things happen when
there's more of me than you correct me from wrong yeah yeah absolutely but
that's always the fundamental power imbalance though right well the
interesting thing about libertarian thinking I guess I I don't know those
words maybe they're all charged I know yeah I may not scale up but I mean
more like on a philosophical underpinning where you're like yeah I
basically hey you feel free to believe I'm a fool and I'm plenty of people do
I'm sure but as long as you don't chase me down the hall and hit me in the back
of the head with a textbook what's the big deal yeah so the libertarian viewpoint
which I probably espouse like that's I'm very much like freedom of the
individual is very valuable and like leave others the fuck alone unless they
are trying to hurt you the thing is you also have to I believe put in the the
work of empathy of understanding what others how what leaving people the
fuck alone means to others but isn't that an interesting thing if I believe in
freedom of the individual and I take that like all of these like you said you
take them past just their first quit why question you ask why why why why or how
how how how many times should that not extend to respect for you respect for
your position respect for your individual lived experience which could be
grossly different than mine yeah this is the problem with saying I'm an
individual I'm not gonna bother you you don't bother me that's just like that's
not actionable because to be to make it actionable you have to think the why
why why why you have to do the steps beyond right you think what does that
actually mean that means understanding how even my very existence like hurts
others because you have to understand that like I'm not you're not just sitting
alone in a room you're you're using like public transit using the police force
you're using firefighters you're using that like you're using a lot of
resources that are publicly shared and some of those resources are are unfairly
distributed like we've agreed that we're gonna pay taxes and those taxes are
gonna go towards building some kind of infrastructure so that's already towards
social that's so you're not a real you're you're not a real sort of like talk to
Michael ballast like anarchists right saying like basically full just leave me
the fuck alone and I'm going to collaborate with whoever the hell I want
we're not that's not the American society as it stands currently we've
agreed that there's going to be certain social institutions that we pay into
yes and some of the sort of discussions about race and all those kinds of things
is about those institutions being institutionally unfair whether it's
race or gender all those kinds of things listen I you know I have a bunch of
criticisms of the way that conversation carries itself out but the thing is was
valuable is to actually listen and empathize and that's not over and often
talked about with the leave me the fuck alone mindset because you're it doesn't
have it doesn't have that little component which I think could be
fundamental to the function of a society which is like social like it's that
what is it though Obama you didn't build it or you didn't build it alone or
whatever however that goes but basically we wouldn't be we wouldn't be able to
accomplish anything as individuals without the help of others and to be able
to then start to think okay so what is what is what is my duty what is my
responsibility to other human beings to be respectful to be loving to help them
as part of this functioning society that starts that's actually a lot of work
to start to think about that sure because then I have to like think okay
Ryan what's his life like because a business owner during COVID what's
that like and then he has the employees that run the gym what's that like what's
that stress like right or about the fighting in the injury and so on what's
that like that empathy takes a lot of like compute cycles and also a lot of
energy right but I have to go through that computation if I want to be an
individual that's like doesn't hurt you if I may I guess like to come back to
Muhammad Ali one of the things he said is service others is the rent is the rent
that you pay for your you know there's these is price you pay if you rent here
on earth yeah and now I have one of the things that I think that I see as a
result of the internet all the time is people talking about global giant
problems social problems that are society-wide that are massive like truly
massive and frankly beyond the beyond the power of any of us to solve it's
certainly on an individual level so I have you know I've discussed things with
friends I got my father's an environmental attorney like you know has
been for a long time and has been an engineer for a long time and you know
so I'm not barely know anything but I'm read in a little bit of various things
but a climate change oh my god I'm so concerned about climate change what am
I supposed to do a climate change I'll say what I can do is I cannot litter I
can try to conserve energy where I can I can do whatever I want what can I
personally do about some giant social problem that is that I didn't start and
I was out of my control I'm like well I can be decent to the people around me I
can mention I can demonstrate empathy and I can demonstrate consideration for
the people in my circle and to the extent that I can the people outside of my
circle but yelling at the trees over things that over problems that are
borderline cosmic doesn't seem very productive it just makes me feel like
I'm cool and important because I'm talking about something well hundreds of
years from now the water will rise maybe it will maybe won't I can't it's
completely over my head I know nothing but focusing on the problems that we
can actually solve it comes back to the same thing I want to win a fight I would
love to win a fight I can't control that what I can do is I can control each
individual step that I take around the ring and try to make the next correct
move I can't look no it gets people's you know they get all excited you know I'm
trying to keep my language in check but they get all excited thinking about you
know problems that are like Superman couldn't solve these problems like you
could be that powerful and you can't make all of the bad things go away but
you can absolutely change yourself and I think a lot of the lessons that you know
like the good lessons from religion that happen the good lessons from the great
men and women throughout history that we in that we're inspired by that talk
about change starting with within and you know again treating the people around
you decently and treating the people around you decently doesn't even
necessarily mean the golden rule do unto others as you would like them to do to
you I go well maybe what I would like and what this person would like aren't the
same thing well how am I going to get to the bottom of that because I could be
attempting to be decent to this person and by my standard I am being decent
but maybe I'm maybe I'm missing the mark by theirs well I can't possibly if I
just interacted with you like it's like someone talking about some nonsense
microaggression like so let me get this straight I've never met you before you
never met me before and you're interpreting some minor comment that
that I've made in the least charitable way possible yeah I'm not saying that
that you couldn't be annoyed but your expectation for that level of
consideration is you're gonna be you're gonna be disappointed a lot now if you
if we're someone that's in your life on a consistent basis and they're like hey I
really don't appreciate what you're saying or what you're doing here do you
realize that this is how I'm this is how I'm perceiving you go oh man I'm so
sorry of course I would hear what you have to say but I guess trying to
recognize that you know my I guess my job is to treat others with dignity in
general but that level of the level of specificity that that that requires
increases as it gets closer to you and I have as a person I have a very finite
amount of resources financially intellectually emotionally physically if
I chuck you know point zero zero one percent of it in every single different
direction what am I doing it's like when people go oh I care deeply about to bet
like why aren't you over there go build a house man get on a plane go build a
house oh you don't want to do that so really what you want to do is post on
Facebook and and accept high-fives for how much of a good guy you are I got an
idea go help somebody in your neighborhood go be go play with go play
with some kids go be a friend to someone that doesn't have a friend read a book
try to educate yourself and so I guess to come back it's all of these problems
aren't solvable on a grand scale but it's almost like by attempting to address
them in our personal lives we do better but rather than a giant airing of the
grievances on a on a consistent basis not that that isn't you know sometimes
necessary and valuable but it after you air your grievances you know hey how
about we sort this out what's the next step and and I guess again when we're
trying to address it on a giant social level just seems unmanageable to me
even if you have the best of intentions yeah I mean but nevertheless there's
that there's a lot you can do on social networks I mean I enjoy you know
tweeting and consuming Twitter it's just I apply the exact same principle that
you just said which is free will and discussion which is like I approach it
in a way that I don't get stuck in this loop that's counterproductive I try to
do things that are productive and like it's just like you said that's like like
what kind of things can I do in this world whether that's tweeting or
building things those are low effort tweeting or actually building
businesses or building ideas out that's high effort what can I do that will
actually solve problems and that's that's the way I approach it and I do
wonder if it's possible to at scale encourage each other to approach like
social media and communication with fellow humans in that way I don't know
how do you think that would be done I guess like to improve the improve the
quality of discourse maybe like are they even like you said the empathy or the
the decency of discourse I think people should be you know incentivized
encouraged to do that I think most of what's we see happening on Twitter and
Facebook and so on has to do with very small but very powerful implementation
details it goes down to like what is the source of the dopamine rush the like
button the sharing mechanisms just even small tweaks and those can fix a lot
really I believe so so I got a lot a lot of the stuff we see now is the result of
just initial implementations of these systems that we didn't anticipate so the
modernization comes from engagement and the the tools we have is clicking like
and sharing it was not always obvious it was not obvious from the beginning it
wasn't obvious while the Twitter and Facebook grew that there's a big dopamine
rush from getting more followers and likes and shares so we've gotten addicted
to this feeling like how many people are commenting how many people are saying
like a clicking like and so on so that's that dopamine rush so we want to say the
thing they'll get the most likes and like unmasked in society and then the
other thing that was expected is the controversial the divisive will get the
most likes so we it had to do with the initial mechanisms of likes and shares
resulting in an outcome that was unpredicted which is huge amounts of
division irrespective of like any of the basics of human connection that we've
actually all come in to understand society is valuable at the individual
level like we're saying but en masse what results is like you throw all that out
and it's all just divisive at scale discourse I think it could be fixed by
incentivizing personal growth like incentivizing you to challenge yourself to
grows individual and most importantly to be happy at the end of the day so feed
like incentivize you feeling good as in a way that's long lasting long term I
think what makes people actually feel good is being kind to others long term
in the short term what feels good is getting a lot of likes and I think
those are just different incentives that if implemented correctly you could just
build social networks that would do much better so do you think it comes from a
structural perspective I guess at what point does you mention like you mentioned
free will and also you mentioned you know feeling good like and again working
hard you know do you I know that you have the I guess the was it a race or no
it's all the the Goggins yeah it's four by 40 four by four by 48 challenge where
you run four miles every four hours for two days that's awesome and it's a bunch
of it's a the challenge of it isn't just the running the running is very tough
but it's mostly the sleep deprivation right you're just training every four
hours but it's a struggle right and that's a struggle but the struggle gives
meaning and ultimately I guess so how can we because you mentioned like you said
adjusting things on like a I guess like a programming level almost base
programming level so that the interface is different for the user but at what
point does the user have a responsibility to you know as a as a man or a
woman or a person to just behave more decently how can we I guess utilize what
can we do it seems like you know we're like our society is so grossly missing
like a Martin Luther King right now like the great inspiring characters
throughout American history throughout world history where are the great leaders
I so the leadership is part of it but I you know that's definitely where the
great leaders a very good question that's that's more of a question of our
political systems why they're not pushing forward the great leaders but
there's also just okay there's some just basic engineering shit which is when
you and I when you Ryan and I are in a room alone and we're talking even if
we're strangers the incentives are for us to get along like just when we're
together in person that's what I'm saying I'm not even saying some kind of
but when you when you remove that when we remove that the implementation of
on of the of social networks as they stand right now in the digital space a
very different set of incentives it's more fun to destroy others to be shit
each other's and that and it becomes this loop endless loop like you were
saying that's ultimately destructive and not productive and I think it has to do
with just the interfaces of making it feel good to be nice to others because
currently it doesn't feel nearly as good to be nice to others on the internet
and it's it doesn't feel nearly as bad as it doesn't real life to be shitty to
others on the internet so the incentives are just wrong I think there is a
technology solution to this or at least the solution to improve this this
communication mechanism it's not obvious how a bunch of sort of more detailed
ideas but this is fascinating because I've gotten a chance to talk to Jack
Dorsey quite a bit this is the CEO of Twitter and he is legitimately has you
know in this conversation he would agree with everything and he's a good human
being and he has a lot of really good ideas how to improve things the question
when you're a captain of a ship whether even it's a question whether CEO is
even a captain how much can he actually steer that ship once he's gotten large
enough there's so much momentum there's so many users there's so many people who
are marketing and PR and lawyers it's very difficult to change things is it
difficult because of the fallout or is it difficult because it's actually like
literally out of his power so power is weird when you have a large organization
this is why the great leaders what this what great leaders do whether it's
presidents or leaders of companies Steve Jobs I would argue Musk is that way it's
to walk into a room full of people who don't want you to create drama it's
weird man when people just kind of want to be nice the niceness creates momentum
and nobody wants to it's the systems thing everybody just behaves in the way
they were previously behaving in the way they're supposed to behave and nobody
wants to raise a fuss it takes a great man or woman leader to step in and say
what we've been doing is bullshit okay you're fired you're fought you're cool
what is it that right I'm out yeah I I think you have to create constant
revolutions within a company that's very very difficult to do structurally and
psychologically it's very difficult to do to to be able to sort of yeah to
constantly challenge the way things have been done in the past and which is why
another way it's often done is a startup like a small company basically a small
company because really successful and then no longer can turn the ship so a
new startup comes along right a new competitor that then challenges the
big ship and then that starts out the winner that's like Google came to be
saw Twitter came to be in Facebook and so on and Apple has you know that that
was the dream of Steve Jobs is it would succeed for for many decades for
like centuries that was the idea that you would keep keep creating revolutions
and under Steve Jobs Apple successfully pivoted a bunch of times just they
could reinvent themselves which is funny very difficult to do because I mean
I've heard at least I don't know if this is accurate because I wouldn't know
anything but I've heard plenty people complain about Steve Jobs yeah but in
reality the reason that all of these amazing things were done was because
this person was willing to obviously brilliant and they're also willing to
to rattle the you know rattle everyone's cage periodically and say hey what's
going on is not what we need to be doing that that's a really interesting
thing so he would rattle the cage but he was also I don't know if those are
intricately connected or always have to be connected but he would just be a dick
so maybe by my maybe by his standard I am lazy and worthless well that's he
would say that to you is he being a dick though if by his standard I mean like
again it's like everyone's stupid compared to somebody you know I guess
but it's so you you apparently are able to take that kind of thing it's sometimes
you just you cross there's ways to cross the line and I mean this is okay the
the fascinating thing about being a leader especially leader of companies
is it's a people problem so each individual in a room so as a leader
you're only really interacting with a small number of people because there are
leaders of other smaller groups and so on but each of those individuals in the
room have their own different psychology some like to be pushed to the limit some
some like like to be screamed at some have a very soft spoken and almost
afraid to speak and they have to be you have to you have to hear them out like
there's a and those those could be all superstars we're not we're not talking
about like the C students no about the eight major students well it's funny
that yeah but the thing to man the skill to manage all of those people is
completely separate from the skill to innovate something I mean not that
they're not connected but it's a funny how it's it's almost like you know why
do we have shitty why do we have shitty representatives yeah well I mean the
thing that you do to get elected there's nothing to do with governance yes so
well that's exactly it but the great leaders have to have both skills so
like you have to have the boldness of if you look at the great presidents through
history you know usually it's in a time of crisis is when they step up but they
basically say okay stop this old way that Congress works of this bickering of
this like compromised bullshit here's a huge plan that costs billions of
dollars and today's age trillions of dollars no extra pork no extra additions
just like here's a clear plan we're going to build the best road network the
the world has never seen or going to build some huge infrastructure project
we're going to revolutionize internet or we're going to for coronavirus we're
going to build the largest like testing facility the world has ever seen in
terms of the we're going to get everybody tested several times a day all
those kinds of things huge projects and say fuck all this the details that
everybody's bickering about we're going to give everybody $2,000 we can give
everybody $3,000 like huge projects and at the same time so that's the boldness
and the leadership and saying throw out all the bullshit of the past and at the
same time be able to get in the room with the leaders of both parties or
for the powerful individuals and smooth talk the shit out of them in the way
they need to be smooth talk to so like both of those skills it seems to be when
they're combined in one person that's that creates great leaders Musk appears
to have that Elon I don't know if Steve Jobs it's interesting so the criticism
and Steve and a little bit on Elon is he misses some of the human part but maybe
it may be it's impossible to have a really you have like Sanyam Nadal who's
the CEO of Microsoft you have who's really good on the human side really
really good on the human side like everybody loves him the CEO of Google
and Alphabet is also the same way so like I don't know if it's possible to have
both you only get so many stat points yeah you only in this in this RPG of
life yeah you got very good at jujitsu very fast so you went I mean you told
the story blue belt and so on but you want you went to black belt really
quickly and not just in terms of ranks but in terms of just skill level I mean
you didn't go to black belt nearly as fast as your skills had developed you
were like doing extremely well at a high level competition so your good person
asked how does one get good at jujitsu we talked about solving problems at the
elite level but when you're a beginner at the at the martial arts how do you get
good how much training should you do the very basic stuff like how much training
how much drilling and then the mental stuff like where should your mind be how
should you approach it from a mental perspective too I'll just tell you my
perspective on this one I guess I would say I feel step one I feel lucky to have
found you know a good training situation particularly for the time you know in in
where in where I was at and I drilled a ton I drilled and drilled and drilled
and drilled and drilled and one thing that's really important to understand
though is that it I was able to in a relatively brief period of years go go
from zero to reasonably good but I think I probably crammed more hours in those
small years than most people did training let's say in two or three times the
length so it may not it may masquerade as something else other than it is I could
say you have to put in the hours yeah I think so what did you put in those out
so that we said drilling can you break that apart a little bit like what what
does drilling look like is there any recommendations absolutely step one I
would say your choices matter like there's a I think that one of the really
important things that I think we should consider about jujitsu is that there's a
lot of junk in the system right now it's like jitsu is exploded in terms of the
number of positions techniques strategies this that rule sets that's really
cool on the one hand on the other hand there's probably a just metric shit ton
of suboptimal things that are out there that are being taught my myself
included I've taught things that are looking back five years three years two
years one year I'm like well I would not do it like that anymore straight up
sometimes I wouldn't do it like that other times I would literally never do
even that particular movement I don't think the shrimp is a real move it's
like that's a giant spielin seizure to show in person but long sort of is
there's a lot of things that are we think of as fundamental that I think that
are really pretty negative and also you know that's heresy and jujitsu isn't it
the shrimp exactly is like the holy we all worship the shrimp we love the shrimp
we love the shrimp now for people who don't do jujitsu and you should the
shrimp is you scoot your butt away from your opponent yeah it's really it's
like a really athletic looking position where you look like like someone that's
trying to stick their butt out on Instagram and then you push your hands
away and you expose your face and then you lay on your side because someone
told you to do that and you look like a yeah I guess you look like a shrimp yeah
it's like that time that you know someone really credible told me to drink
unleaded gasoline I did it for a while and then you know got to the point in my
life where you know the next best the thing that I needed to do to really
improve my life was stop drinking unleaded gasoline yes and I would say
that there's like a lot of stuff that's in there that step one is like it's
junk it's actual junk and it's it's not only will it waste your time it's it
will straight up it will it will be like an albatross hanging on you because it
affects how you think about things going forward so although it was it's funny
like the operating assumptions that were that we we work under have a huge huge
huge influence you mentioned like growing up in the United States or this
being a capitalist society like woohoo all right now of course I think that I
don't really know any different otherwise and I think that a lot of times
people go oh communism is better I'm like haven't seen it I haven't read any books
about it being better but it's possible I mean who I haven't experienced it much
myself either so I can't dismiss it outright but I guess I would say it's a
fundamentally differing differing operating system underpinning and all
of my choices all of if I honestly believed in that thing many of my choices
on a moment by moment on a day-by-day and certainly on a lifetime basis would be
very different so I would say that it's tough when you're when you're young in
the martial arts and I mean all of us are always trying to do our best to learn
but when you're young in the martial arts you always go if you're a reasonable
guy what are they what they call it like Dunning Kruger amnesia came out this is
the right one but basically you go like oh I know what I'm doing here and so I
can say that's not right but then I read a new story about baseball and I'm
only about baseball sounds credible and it's bullshit yeah but I can't call
bullshit if you're a reasonable person you can't call bullshit on things that
you don't understand even if you suspect it's not right you're like well I've got
to reserve judgment you never ever ever set aside your your need and also
obligation to understand why you were doing what you're doing and don't ask
why once ask why over and over and over and over about the same thing oh well I
want to shrimp why to make space why do I want to make space to get away from the
guy well why do I want to get away from him well because he's dangerous well why
is he dangerous and you can oftentimes get down to wait a minute I didn't even
need to move three quarters of the time you're actually acting in the other
person's self-interest and I guess a lot of times I can't this kind of goes
beyond what we can you know demonstrate here but I would just say trying to
understand what my base operating assumptions are and consistently
reevaluate them which can be freaking exhausting frankly and also comes on as
confidence destroying but you mentioned that I that I did pretty well
relatively quickly I was it I started in 2004 and I was at Abu Dhabi ADCC for the
first time as an alternate in 2007 I want to match there against the Black
Belt World Champion and the fact frankly the fact that I was able to beat
someone like that was neat but at the same time says a little bit more about
what Jiu Jitsu is and some of the issues with it than it does about how cool I am
or was because that shouldn't really happen when you think about it you're
like okay you're champion at ostensibly the one a very high level of the sport
you enjoy a three inch four inch height advantage and a 35 pound weight advantage
and you just got beat well that should not exist I'm serious that I'm dead
serious that should not exist if that happens you're doing it wrong is it that
I'm doing it right or is it that you're doing it wrong and there's enough
variance in the way that you're doing it that you're allowing me to win and now I
did happen to win that with the 5050 heel hook which was but um but basically
which was one of the early examples of like hey guys by the way people can try
to hurt your legs and that was something like we mentioned John Daner
mentioned like you know myself Dean Lister a lot of the guys from the
Hensel Gracie team that have had amazing success they've gone and done great
things radio Craig Jones in the competitive grappling world basically
taking advantage of being very very good in what they're doing but also a
glaring glaring glaring issue with the operating system of jiu-jitsu which was
you know a huge vulnerability in the lower body and not only not attacking it
but having no idea how one does attack it which means you can't understand how
how someone will assail you so anyway I guess to come back is if in the in the
absence of knowing what to do I try to polish what I've got so if I've got a
knife and I'm like I don't know how to use them okay I'm gonna sharpen the edge
and polish it make sure that when I need to use this dang thing I'll be able to
do it because trying to put together a system when you don't have an idea of
what's going on a lot of times you end up making you know subultimal choices but
as long as you're consistently reevaluating what you're doing and
that's something I've tried to do over time over and over and over again and
try to seek out the the most the best and also most articulate or insightful
instructors or people of various love doesn't matter if they're well known or
not that could say hey Ryan I think you should do this I think you should do that
and I think all I've ever done in martial arts is try to treat people with
respect honestly try to demonstrate appreciation for the many many people who
have helped me over time and be the type of person that they want to train with
not the type because we've all trained with people that make us think about
beating the ever-loving crap in them I never wanted to be that guy and I was
basically saying like if I train with a black belt when I'm a blue belt and and
this person enjoys training with me that's in my interest selfishly not only
do I not want them to beat me up but selfishly I should you mentioned being
decent to the people you want to incentivize being decent to other
people right with a structure of what you're doing selfishly I'm incentivized
to be a nice guy even if I'm internally a scumbag which I like to think that I'm
not but basically going like hey this guy's way more likely to help me or
this person's way more likely to help me if I shake their hand say thank you I
really appreciate you help me out and but that thing that they tap me with four
or five times I'm gonna ask them about it and then they don't have to tell me
they're under no obligation but I'll say and where they tell me don't thank you
so much for your time really appreciate it and that that's it you know okay so
to summarize so the way you do brilliantly described I just want to make
sure we're keeping track of all over the place no you didn't you're you're a
pretty on point but so the first thing is basically which is difficult I want
over to break it apart a little bit is don't trust authority essentially keep
asking why be respectful without trusting authority right right which is and
then the second thing is be the kind of person that others like training with or
like being around sort of being a good friend and so many people just enjoy
being around so one is completely which is yeah you're right it's the tension
which is like completely disrespect the the way that the things are done so
asking why constantly one of it is your own flaws and not understanding the
fundamentals of what's being described and then once you get good enough not
understanding like going against the fact that the instructor doesn't understand
and my inability to understand what you're saying though doesn't invalidate
and that's something like you mentioned like me mentioning keeping in mind our
own flaws and then also again the flaws that any of us have is the instructor to
your point and I guess I can speak to being kind of weird I don't you know I
like to sit in the corner but so everyone's a little bit different some
people like you know I wasn't terribly popular in high school you know like I
didn't like high school very much but anyway yeah I would not gonna be rude
to people though I was never gonna bully anybody if you said hello to me I'd say
hello back I would hold the door for you if you walk by you know and I would just
say like simple things like that go a long long long way and that actually
takes us back to our to our social discussion where I'm like oh man how do
I become great at jujitsu it's like well I'll start by not pissing off this
person who can beat the crap out of me and not disrespecting the person who is
probably that the clearest the closest thing to a font of knowledge at that time
for me so and then recognizing that I should do that for its own virtue
because it's the right thing to do and I should try to treat people decently but
beyond that even selfishly it's in my interest to do that but see the thing is
this is interesting is there's a culture in martial arts a culture that I like
where the instructor legitimately so carries an aura of authority and it's
not comfortable to really ask why I'm not it's it's a skill to be able to have
a discussion as a white belt the black belt instructor of like why is it done
this way like and saying why again like with I mean it's a skill to show that
you're actually a legitimate the a curious and passionate and compassionate
student versus like somebody who's just being an annoying dick who saw some
stuff I knew to there's a line between to walk there I just wonder because like
it's the drilling thing and you know I for example like in my in the one when
I was coming up there was so much emphasis placed on like close guard for
example and you might you might actually teach me now I don't know but to me it
was like why do I need to master the close guard like why is the closed guard
on top or the bottom but the bottom really is the fundamental basics of
jiu-jitsu who decided that my body is not my body says this is wrong I'm like
this like I have short legs but doesn't even matter the length of legs there's
something about me that just I don't understand how leverage here works for
my particular body like so it's just it's a feel thing too like it feels like in
my basic understanding of leverage and movement and timing and so on it feels
like these certain like butterfly guard or even like half basically every guard
except close guard I can play I can dance close guard feels like you're
shutting down like the play that I that wrong or is that make sure that's what
you want because that's almost like an innate characteristic of this guard
position but it's not sold that way right it's okay this is a good guard it's
like hey man here's a bow and arrow versus and you know how to use this thing
right like make sure you're you're far away and like up on a hill or something
because you can take that bow and arrow run up on something and try to use it but
if nobody told you not to do that and they told you was foundational it's very
foundational it's very important to everything else too right that's back
to the shrimping thing how many things are we taught that even if it's not let's
say itself is not a garbage thing might be effectively garbage you could give me
a Ferrari but if I try to make it fly it's not gonna work if you're like I'm
like here's a plane here's another plane here's another plane here's another
plane here's a Ferrari I'm like oh it must be a different type of plane like
you could be forgiven for for leap if we're going there you know like oh maybe
the wings come out or you just go fast enough there's like a bullet like you
can make these crazy leaps in your mind and people are doing that all the time
so if you don't provide the context for me or worse yet you provide improper
context like how how much of a problem is that gonna be well I think the skill
of the white belt should be just be nice but so in the complicated human space
of when your intention at least I know in the big picture view is good this the
question is it's not always when your intention is good the actual implementation
of it is good so you might be just almost and that's much it's not the case
for you it's much more case for white belts they don't even know their
intention might be good but they don't know all the lines they're crossing all
the right so they're not actually able to and like interpret all the ways in
which they're being totally insensitive to the requests of others like
explicit request of others so your job as a beginner is to be a really good
listener of those social cues like a dessert in a foreign country right yeah
like you're a representative of people that look like you people that talk like
you people that have your passport and you're like man I'm gonna go over here
I've got my foot up on my knee well if I was in certain countries or that's rude
I'm like oh I'm so sorry but can you imagine if someone says hey I really
appreciate if you take your foot off that's pretty rude and then I want to
tell him well not where I'm from man I'm in your house I better again I may go
that direction but let's say I could get away with that now I'm a bully and if I
can't get away with that well I'm about to maybe be on the wrong side of
something but I guess like you said if we have positive intention that's fine
but I'll set to recognize who I am and I think that that's one thing that I tried
to do and continue to try to do over time like we're oh man hi I'm the one
that's asking for a favor here if I spar with Raymond Daniels Raymond Daniels
doing me a favor I ain't doing him a favor let's not get it twisted so thank
you so much for time I really appreciate these are not and this is not like
some affected nonsense this is serious I'm like thank you if I spar with Steven
Thompson I'm the one being done a favor George St. Pierre takes his time to
spar with me which he has in the past and and not even kill me which is really I
appreciate that because that's why I can sit here George is not a prop for me to
to get my rocks off or see what's going on and also I'm gonna do that and then
expect him to just take it and I've seen he's a gentleman I've seen people get
nuts with George and and have him just like he has a he's a patient of a
saint I don't have that level of patience but I would just say to come back
what figuring out like hey so what what role am I here and that comes back to
like at least what I see people on the internet yeah man I have a beef with Joe
Rogan you're like no you don't Ryan you're some goof I'm like I'm some random
dude Joe like people want it they almost want to like elevate so that we can
somehow be level where peers here if I go into for us a hobby's gym I'm not a
peer for us a hobby I'm a student of Tristar I'm a guest in the Academy and
if for us asked me for something short of him like you know telling me to try to
do a triple backflip so I break my neck the answer is yes sir I can differ
for us no man and no worries and it's and hopefully it should come with I guess
a level of graciousness but I guess that's kind of one of the things that
I see nowadays with a how accessible people are because I grew up you know
being a big huge base sports fan of all kinds I couldn't send Derek Jeter a
message and eat and much less have a possibility of a reply and if I do it's
like you know I have people send messages it's very nice that people send
messages some people again and everyone not everyone is coming from the same
place but plenty of things are like yo dude I need you to do this for me and
like well I'll tell you what's never gonna happen that I have no idea who you
are and that was how I was addressed and I don't need oh man you're the greatest
one because that's weird and two because I'm not but just hey Ryan how are you
doing hey do you think you could do the following if you get a second like if I
get a second you're dang right again why not it's easy ask but it started with
some level of politeness and I guess like that's maybe being semi-southern
like I grew up in Virginia yes sir yes ma'am like yeah well there's all
different kinds of implementations of politeness I mean all most of the
successful people I've met it's been surprising to me how much of you
mentioned peers like the like I could think of Joe Rogan you mentioned Joe
Rogan but Elon Musk they don't like they almost treat me like I'm the superior
you know what I mean like it's not even it's it's that's the politeness like you
know that's the approach the feeling of it is like I'm the student I'm the
beginner I'm like approaching the situation like it's it's it's it's almost
like method acting of like you're better than me that and that's how I
approach a lot of interactions like I have something to learn from this even
if it's like a young do you think that they're ungenuine they're totally
genuine but it's not a funny thing like in spite of who they are they're
incredibly genuine because they respect correct me from wrong they respect you
obviously for what you bring the table also no they approach everybody like
that's what I might know but they were done but they I'm sure they respect what
you bring the table beyond that though there was they're treating you with
dignity as a human being as a human being which that's right people and when
they could probably get away with treating most people without a whole
heck of a lot of dignity and I guess what does that always say that like you
know again like you can always tell someone of you know of quality because
they treat the king and the and the janitor the same way but that's what
we're seeing a lot like that was I guess I don't mean to like to nitpick but
that's where I would take issue I guess a little bit or disagree with you
criticize with the internet again man yells it yells it clouds but anyway
but I guess what I mean is just like the way that people address each other
because it's so casual now yes you know and it's like it's great on the one
hand it's nice on the other hand you go hey I just why can't do am I somehow
diminished or am I worried about diminishing myself it's like the way
that I'm sure that people talk to like talk to women sometimes and words it
was so girl man she's bitch you know versus like how am I that was supposed
to get a good response what about that was going to elicit a favorable
response you know versus being anything anything other than than just you know
man what's going on and I guess that doesn't make any sense it makes total
sense and that southern thing that you're referring to I feel like that's an
important that's an important part of human communication let me ask you this
sure your new back attacks instructional first of all awesome yeah
second of all you drop you drop a lot of fascinating insights in there but you
quote Galileo out of all people and saying that you can't teach a man
anything you can only help him find it within himself so we talked about how
to start in jujitsu what about if we zoom out even more and how do you learn
how to learn how do you optimize the learning process I I don't know the
answer that but I can tell you what I like to do and I would say like I can't
step one I don't I'm not maybe this is a little bit easier for me because you know
I've never had a ton of friends honestly I've you know I've got my close
friends and people that I know but I've never had tons and tons of people so I
spent a lot of time you know thinking and anyway I can't I can't control you I
can't control anybody else I you know I all I can I want to take my it's a
Marcus Aurelius thing it's like you know I guess the trick to life is figuring out
what's in our control what's not and focusing on things that are in our
control I guess and so step one is figuring out both internally and then
also out in in the world is it as it pertains to jitsu what is actually in my
control and what is not like passing someone's guard is not in your control
people think it is it ain't if I can't just do an activity and be unchecked then
it ain't in my control entirely I can always breathe I can always you know be
calm I can always no matter whether I'm concerned or not concerned have what if
you want to call it nerves you know I can step forward across the line and say
I will I will face the challenge ahead that is all entirely no one can stop me
from doing that that's entirely me I control and that's why I know that every
single time that I walk into the ring I'll walk in and out of there with my
head of high because there's I will fight with everything that I have I can't
promise that I'll win I would say I take that same first principles you
mentioned last time we talked you know with Elon and the importance of that
and going what are the first principles and I guess to come back a lot of times
in my opinion things that people think are the basics are not the basics you
can't learn if you think you're reasoning for first principles which are
actually like level six you're actually like layers up you're making so many
there's so many baked-in assumptions to what's going on that you're going to
struggle to understand why anything is actually happening internally externally
you name it so I guess what I would start when it comes to learning is first
principles and trying to understand what's going on but then also simple
things first I can control my posture I can control my breathing no one can stop
me from doing that I can control where I place my frames I can control where I
place my limbs I can move my feet I can develop the ability to do these things
better of course and I do that through practice through drilling through
watching people I've been incredibly fortunate in my time in martial arts to
train with many of my heroes to train with many of the people that I looked at
and I was like that guy is amazing I want to train with this person like Stephen
Thompson Kenny Florian George St. Pierre Raymond Daniels for us a hobby you know I
mean like Bruno Frasada Marcelo Garcia all you know all of these guys that are
just unbelievable and I go well they're moving in a way that's different how do
I do that well sometimes you can ask him and they can tell you directly other
times people part of the genius of what they do is that it's intuitive and
maybe they don't think and understand and see the world the same way that I do
that was something that I experienced with Marcelo he's amazing but in a
different way than his it just we see things fundamentally different we
experienced the world differently it seems to me that we do and again that
that taught me a really important lesson because I was wanting when I trained
there to have someone go hey Ryan do this this this and this and then that's
how it works and I'm like all right because that's how I understood
martial arts at the time I wasn't ready to have someone tell me like hey it
feels a little bit like this and I just kind of do it which is kind of what
Marcelo would do at the time as he was less experienced as a teacher but that
is what he was doing I was completely I couldn't separate in my mind performance
and understanding I thought that if I understand I could do it and I would
also wonder I would also struggle sometimes to wonder why I couldn't
execute things that I thought I understood and why guys like Marcelo
were just so elemental I mean in like the like lightning wind like that type of
thing like it's just so in touch with what they wanted with with their
capabilities they could summon their powers at will I couldn't always do that
and I guess so recognizing that there was more than one way to the top of the
mountain and also I had a lot of science but I didn't have a lot of art or I
had some science I should say but I didn't have a lot of art meeting people
like Marcelo taught me and then Josh Wade skin actually brilliant guy chess
champion former owner maybe owner of a Marcelo's Academy really great friend
I think he has a book on learning he does yeah the art of learning but yeah he
knows a thing or two about it but a great guy in any way he sat me down one
time was like let me in you're doing this wrong you're missing what they're
missing the genius the brilliance this right in front of you and it took me
to mean that I was frustrated with with my inability to grasp certain things and
sometimes the teaching style being different not wrong just it was it was
it was tough on me at the time you're trying to replicate what Marcelo was
saying as opposed to understanding the the sort the fundamentals from which it
was coming right I couldn't see I couldn't see where it was coming from and
also sometimes I'm like maybe well why can't you explain it in the way that I
would want you to explain it these are well why can't I meet him where he's
coming from yeah so anyway it was a really important time unless I'm very
very frustrating if I'm honest but it's not I'm so thankful for that time and
anyway you know I guess always first principles trying to understand the
basics and first starting at the place where you can't control things the very
basic elements of what you can work with and then when there's other mentors and
teachers to to meet them where they're coming from meet them to the extent that
I can rather than I'm not like again it's like why are you not talking to me the
way I want you to talk to me as opposed to hey where you coming from back to your
point yeah but I don't know that's not entirely specific but you know like if
you can focus on that and back to the whole you can't teach a man anything
Marcelo didn't teach me anything but he taught me in so doing like and other
and other people like that to you know to find it within and it's like I guess
something else that I've heard before is that all learning is self-discovery but
all performance is self-expression and I always thought that Marcelo was a
brilliant master of letting what's inside out he would he was so consistent in
his performances and a lot of times I felt like there was a block there
personally particularly at the end of jiu-jitsu and I was very very results
oriented and I wasn't I think I think my focus was was not ideal it was
definitely not not in the place that I would like it to be and whether it would
have one more loss more hard to say but I know that would perform better if I'd
have adjusted that and anyway that recognizing that again jiu-jitsu I think
I've said it before jiu-jitsu study this is science but expressed as an art it
doesn't matter if you can articulate what you know how to do what matters if you
can do what you know how to do it only matters if you're you know I guess if
you're teaching in a verbal fashions where they're not you can articulate it
but recognizing the difference between learning on an intellectual level or
conceptual level and being able to to translate that into the physical and I
guess like that's been the thing that I feel like fortunate over time in my own
academy to be able to kind of fiddle around and learn on my own and practice
my students and you know sometimes I struggle to have great training
partners like when I say great training part I mean other world-class people to
spar to roll with but I've gotten a lot more honestly than I ever would have
thought out of being able to practice and learn and fail and try and succeed in
my own without a like my own little sandbox figuring out how I can take an
idea and then come up with drills and drills to practice it so that I can
actually practice putting it into play because again knowing an idea and then
not drilling what's the point I'll never have it it won't never it'll never see
the light of day so in that DVD in that instruction DVD sorry it's an online
instructional DVD I keep saying DVD though nobody has DVDs anymore do they
not VHS I don't know who has DVD was like blu-ray I possess some DVDs I mean
like I've never watched them what do you use them for like a like a couple like a
cup like a thing you put a drink on who I mean it went in a pinch yeah
what's that even called coaster yeah my matrix coaster the matrix goes to zeros
and ones okay so in that instruction that people should should get I've been
watching I'm really enjoying it's I don't even know when come out recently
right like December something like that yeah it's it's part one you're actually
like ended up being like 18 hours long and I was like oh my god we're gonna chop
in half and it when it comes together the whole thing I think I hope people like
it yeah well it's even part one is really good it's actually had yeah people
on right are really excited for part two as well really and you also have a back
oh the old one the old one that I that was really helpful to me to understand
some very basic aspects of control from the back yeah that was you know that
clicked with me there's very few instructional there's very few things
I've watched that ever clicked with me and that was definitely it it taught me one
thing I don't know it's you have you drop a lot of sort of bombs you drop a lot
of really interesting details and it's funny that there's only specific things
that really click like a lot of it rings true and you kind of take it in it's
like oh that's interesting okay yeah but there's certain things that really click
and I remember that first instruction will click with me is like the
importance I don't I don't remember anymore like how you communicated it
because I've now integrated it's now mine you know what I mean but it was more
about you just describing upper body control and the importance of the upper
body control from the back and just like the there's certain grip like the you
describe different details on the grips and so on and as I started trying it I
realized how important upper body control is versus like me I mean maybe as a
blue belt or something was I thought like you have achieved victory when you
got the two hooks in and then I realized like at least for me that the hooks were
not even for my body type for my style for the way I approached things they
were not even important at all it's supplemental for the most part yeah so
they were there for the points but I can establish a huge amount of control in
fact the hooks were you were talking about like illusion of choice it's it's
it almost made people panic a lot more when you were like fighting for or
establishing that kind of control they weren't a lot less panicked when the
hooks weren't involved even though they should be a lot more panicked anyway I
realized a lot of those kinds of things especially that had to do with judo
because so much of judo on the ground is centered around aggressive efficient
very fast choking different kinds of clock jokes and all that stuff what a
brilliant thing that is only gonna start to make its way into jiu-jitsu coming up
but like the judo style approach to like clock choking, triangle from the top of
the turtle and stuff so powerful yeah and the there's something about judo
that emphasizes obviously due to the rules the urgency so there you only do
techniques that go fast and then the other thing is which I guess jiu-jitsu
emphasizes too but judo really does which is the transition so like while
the person's flying in the air is the easiest time I mean this is like Ryan
Hall type of shit which is like why not putting your submissions or positional
control while they're in the air and they have if you could why would you not
right oh well I don't throw well we'll learn how to throw and then do it and so
you should think I mean in a transition when they're flying is the easiest time
to put in stuff and that's when you think about jokes as you're throwing you
should be thinking about the choke and then everything becomes a lot easier
you ever see flabioconto yeah man Brazilian judoka yeah like with stuff
like that yeah exactly but but that has to do with the first starting principle
like stop thinking this as a two-phase game of standing and then ground start
thinking about like the standing and the the standing comes before the ground
comes after but everything happens in a transition well unless you're attacking
what is the art of war like and we all like everyone's like oh yeah the order
war oh yes yes and then they immediately throw it away and then fight like a
frickin barbarian but yeah I mean like but you know how many people quote stuff
and then like you know it's like the what is it the family guy joke or they're
like you know quoting Jesus and Jesus walks in he's like you're not doing my
work what are you talking about anyway basically you know like what he is like
the order war you know one of the things it's like the only thing that you can be
sure of being successful in attacking is something that's undefended yeah we're
like yeah but you know the other in a fight though they're defended well are
they there's moments all the time where I'm borderline defenseless and if you
were to attack at that moment if you could see it and then seize the moment
if you were capable of both you should not only expect to be successful you
should be damn sure you're gonna be successful and more more important than
that you'll be successful and even if somehow not you won't be countered and I
guess like that that's the trick of almost all all like conflicts right it's
like showing up when the other person's you know taking a nap and then it's so
funny like we take like a protracted war it's like oh it takes five years and
there's you know lulls and there's a battle this month but then there's a
couple weeks another battle it's like well if you just shrink that down it's
the microcosm macrocosm idea that same thing that whole war is taking place in
five minutes or 10 minutes or 15 minutes and there's moments of lulls of person
effectively going for a snack you know being like you know in a horror movie like
hey guys I'm gonna go get a beer from the from around the way like I'm dead for
sure so anyway is there on this particular instructional if you can
convert it to words you talk about finishing the submission is there some
interesting insights that you find beautiful or profound about finishing
the rear-naked choke or just finishing submissions for the back control is
there something like you know you talk about the squeeze and the crush and all
these kinds of principles is there something about control about the
process of finishing that you find especially profound about this position
absolutely the opposite of one profound truth can be another profound truth so
like it's I do Jesus say that no I don't I actually was a guy on Tumblr but
yeah it's really really cool there's like a like a tree in the background but
anyway but so let's say like I'll use I'll use examples like first off I saw
someone finishing a 50-50 heel hook in the UFC one promo it was like some
chubby dude in a karate gi like inside heel hook another dude and you go huh well
I didn't know they were doing that back then at least and whether they were doing
it all how many times does someone do something and then that works and then
we go okay cool versus hey maybe we should do that all the time so anyway how
long did we all talk to do the seat belt the way we all do the seat belt in
jiu-jitsu like long time why works in fact it works so well and it was so it
was then the people who used it were so prolific that we went well solve that
one good to go all right no more thinking and then you go imagine you
were to like the Merkel and Merkel flip all those positions that were showing
in the in the DVD which is pretty much or the whatever the heck it is in a
little digital VD no not VD I don't want that digital digital video something
but basically recognizing that doing it on the wrong side is at least as
effective doesn't mean that the other side wasn't good there could be something
that's the literal borderline opposite of that and you go huh well that's
something like imagine like I would say almost all of these things all the
tactics and all the strategies so I guess that was something that we came to
it like training in the gym like a year ago maybe I've been playing with since
and it's just it's huge I'm like oh wait so let me get this straight first if I
can use my strong side seat belt my right arm over the shoulder and it all
the time well that's that's really helpful because that's a lot better than
my left new both sides of my left but if I had to bet my life on being able to
finish it I would want my right arm over huh everything that's a tactic or a
strategy evolved from an idea like capitalism is an idea you know anarchy
is an idea and then it becomes what does that all mean what are the what are
the consequences what's the fallout of all this right so what if we start with
jiu-jitsu the idea the guard right and we go well I mean Wendy why do you use the
guard no other martial art really has developed the guard in the same way the
jiu-jitsu has well what is the guard a guard's a defensive idea where you're
kind of on your back to some extent or another and you're using your legs as a
wall between you and the other person and the other guy represents danger and
you're like yeah that's a great idea is it I mean it clearly works at least to a
certain extent but what of where do I want to put my legs when I want to get
up not on the other dude I'm trying to put them on things on the floor if I
want to generate a ton of power what's the first thing I do with my feet I
anchor them to the floor drive for a punch you name it move away jump dart
yeah you name it so does it mean that that's a terrible idea to be on your
back no clearly it works and clearly it eliminates has function but what if the
function that we're giving it and we're in the how much how much focus we're
assigning to it is disproportionate to its effectiveness maybe what if it's not
a good idea I'm not saying it's not a good idea but what if it wasn't that's a
foundational idea of jiu-jitsu and then how much because no one questions that
foundation how much innovation is built on top of the idea well of course I want
to be my being on my back is no K position so now they're innovating but
they're innovating within a closed system that they don't even they think
they're innovating in in like in this open space of oh my god it can be
anything when in reality it could be anything within this little set yeah
but you don't realize that you're in a set you don't realize that you're in a
box there would be answers that would become so immediately apparent to you
if you were willing to look outside of that but you're you'll literally never
even look over to your left because you don't even realize the left exists do
you think there's a lot of places in jiu-jitsu whether it's back control or
generally guards and all the different positions where there's a lot of space
like a lot a lot to be discovered by questioning the basic assumptions maybe
if you can give examples of like back control like is there something you've
discovered this like Merkel versus seatbelt what's Merkel with seatbelt
seatbelt is a right arm over the shoulder left arm under the arm on I'm on
the I'm on the same side as my choking arm Merkel is just I do the same thing
I'm even just my hands I walk myself over to the left side I'm on the opposite
side it's actually more powerful position and for people listening or for
people who might not know jiu-jitsu is a seatbelt is a control we're talking
about when one person is on the back of another person which is a really dominant
positioning jiu-jitsu seatbelt is a I guess widely accepted way of holding
this practice is almost practices yet and it's worked so well so it's a one arm
over one arm under and there's a certain side you're supposed to be on when
you're on the back you know everyone teaches there's a choking arm that's the
arm that's over your body is supposed to be in a certain side relative to that
and then Ryan is describing questioning these like basic assumptions of all
which side you're supposed to be on and let's say that's even just like a mid
level assumption it's not even a first principles assumption but it's pretty
close to it's getting there but let's just say for sake of argument it goes a
lot deeper maybe I think most of the innovation that I see is not innovation
it's like basically changing the color of a car or polishing like the window a
little bit we're like hey you made it you made it a little bit different you
made it a little bit better it's like oh man what if I did the same guard and
then grab the lapel I'm not saying this bad but you're not fundamentally
changing anything I think most of the big seismic shifts that we see and almost
anything come from hey that thing we thought was right was wrong rather than
not only is it right it's even writer and you're like it's not wrong it's not
bad but that's you're in it's like oh man let's say for instance I didn't make
the triangle better but let's say I made the triangle a little bit better than it
was or though than it was taught I mean you call it innovation I don't know man
it's not like the person that said hey have you guys ever heard of a triangle
before and came up with that we like that is I feel like that's that's on the
list you can do this thing to people are you kidding me can you imagine you
invented the the straight right hand you'll be like one punch man you can
walk around and just just lay low every single person you got into a fight with
cuz it didn't even occur to them to hit you with their backhand in a world full
of jabbers you throw your backhand you're gonna kill people so basically but by
the way I mean just to pause on that the first of all somebody did invent the
triangle probably right it's not a trivial thing once you think they know
how many of these giant things that we all go like oh yeah we all use that now
can you imagine you have triangles and heel hooks and we're naked chokes and I
don't have those mm-hmm you're on beat your portal I mean like that's that's why
that's we all experience every single one of this particularly those of us I
mean when did you first start training like 12 13 year well right let's not
count wrestling but 13 years ago with jujitsu right on so let's let's say about
that time we're particularly was still like kind of kind of undergroundy you
know and you're like hey we all experienced being like a relative like a
mid-level white belt and being able to easily beat up all our friends yeah
because everyone wrestled other buddies and it was one of those ones were like
they don't have weapons to end the fight you have weapons to end the fight that's
so cool that's such a crazy you know asymmetric advantage that if you lose
it's on you now man like you get like you had the next time it's like I've got
this rifle and you have nothing and I decided to put it on my back and then
run over and try to karate chop you're like okay next time just make sure you
use the rifle bud I'm like oh yeah I should do that so yeah it's kind of
fascinating to I mean everything you're describing as a there's a fight fascinating
tension between like whatever I show people for the first time what a
triangle is just like regular people it's like they're discovering is like oh
okay that's interesting I mean I'm a man has changed that but people have
haven't watched him a man that's an interesting move it doesn't make sense
why that would be a joke and they kind of quickly accept that that's a thing and
they accept the basics without questioning wait a minute what's actually
being choked what how is it that a shoulder of a person can do the choking
like I'm not sure I fully questioned the fundamentals of all of that like I
claim I have either what exactly is the blood supply that's being cut off like
what what is the anatomy and the physiology of all of that is working if
you understood all that what else can we do here yeah what else can we do here
that's the really important thing but if we know if I'm an end user which almost
everyone is of almost anything I'm serious where I'm like I think about
stuff in my life the only things I really think about it like martial arts and
martial arts strategy and like I don't know some other couple couple other
things but not much and anything else in my life is borderline unexamined and I
like to think that if I put a lot of effort in something I'd like to think
that I could figure at least some things out about it but I figured out almost
nothing about anything in my life because I haven't even looked and you know if
you're an end user what are you capable of versus you can literally alter the
source code you are neo in the frickin matrix if you can alter the code and I
can't and it's like we think about ha ha ha but imagine you are a world-class
anything or you're not even world-class forget it like a purple belt compared to
a white belt or compared to a no belt might as well be John Jones or Marcelo
Garcia you don't beat them up comparably bad so it's a that's that actually is a
common thing where people can't tell the difference in levels they're like oh man
I've trained with my black belt instructor how much better could someone so be
like so much better you're gonna have a hard time wrapping your head around it
I remember when I first trained with Marcelo Garcia in 2007 I was a decent
purple belt and of course you Molly Watt me very gently and then training them
again in 2008 I was definitely better I won the G and no G worlds that you're a
purple belt so definitely for the record I'm definitely not a jiu-jitsu world
champion I wanted the purple belt but like that's not the same at winning a
black belt and tough accomplishment but not not in the same thing at all but
anyway I was definitely better he beat me up just the same I'm like okay 2009 I
was a lot better got a medal at ADCC that time won the trials crushed
everybody like no just submitted everybody like bop bop bop bop train more
cello Garcia it was worse and 2010 train more cello Garcia same same so the idea
was I wouldn't be able to tell you the difference and the outcome difference
was the same in all of these rounds I was significantly more experienced and
more and more adept each time each time that this occurred but it was like how
many number of times did this person submit you were past your guard in the
round I'm like I don't know probably like let's say five each one because I'm
gonna brief period of time unless it was three on one six on another whatever
it's it's comparable it's six one half dozen would I be able to easily tell the
difference no I would just say I know in concept that he's way better so much
better but there's plenty of other people that could have beaten me just as
bad as Marcelo did when I was a purple belt or when I was a brown belt then
maybe I would watch more cello walk through like their borderline not there
so it's neat like if you that's back to kind of what I was talking about about
certain people beginning to really like peel back some of what's really special
about the martial arts or any activity I presume is they get to a level of
understanding in depth that they're playing with like the almost the reality
of that thing and I'm playing by rules that are not rules I'm not I'm not even
one of the views of matrix analogy I'm not even an agent which is the best
version of something playing by the rules yes I'm like one of the regular
people or one of the people regular people in that got out of the matrix so
I'm like oh I'm cool but when I fight an agent I lose it's because we're both in
the rules but they just play them to the play them to the bone and I'm just here
one then the agent encounters Neo and they can do nothing you're like why
because operating outside of what the rules are but not really what the rules
are what they perceive to be the rules are clearly so anyway I guess that's kind
of my point about Marcelo or certain other people that are doing things we
go that doesn't even seem real it doesn't seem real to me because I don't
understand what's going on and I guess if we can get down to base assumptions
but like if we can constantly strip away strip away strip away let's say we
always thought that turning left was right it was correct and it turns out
that turning right was correct change your life yeah it's a what is the
soccer you said the unexamined life is not worth living so you just basically
have to rigorously just constantly examine every assumption over and over
and over but doesn't that give your life meaning to come back to the struggle to
come back to free will to come back to what if we could strip all that away
all right cool all right let me just stick the needle in my arm and that's
that yeah no I mean that that constant striving for understanding yet another
lower layer of the simulation we're living in is is it is something that's
actually deeply fulfilling that I don't know if it's genetically built in but
there's something about that striving to understand that seems to be deeply
human which is funny what makes a human we don't talk about the soul anymore man
I went to Catholic school as a kid and whether you buy into all that stuff or
not you're like what what about the soul of a person the spirit of a people the
spirit of a nation anywhere the spirit of humanity we don't really we talk about
everything like it's this quantifiable thing when maybe certain things are
maybe everything is but then what happens if there's things that just aren't
quantifiable that nothing in our understanding can or will ever explain
and that doesn't mean that that should be our assumptions for your assumption
we can explain everything and let's get to the dang bottom peel peel peel peel
but what if there is actually something that like that you know that we need
challenge for yeah and we could be looking in the wrong place by going oh
is it in the jeans maybe it is I again I'm not saying we're looking wrong place
like I wouldn't know anything I do karate but basically not even well but
uh yeah we do karate mediocre just ask Raymond Daniels or Steven Thompson but
uh I guess to come back though you're just are you a yo about you or are you
man I actually have as you ever see the yeah Seinfeld episode where Kramer fights
the kids yeah I did that at Raymond Daniels school under the kids kids one in
class as in addition to the the alleyway yeah but yeah exactly when I was on my
last legs but uh but yeah I would just maybe it's funny I feel like there's
something deeply missing from you know from public understanding anymore that
it's almost like the idea that we can figure everything out which I deeply
believe in but also the possibility that there's some things that will never
really see and some things will never understand and there's something like
you said uniquely human about the human experience that even if I had the power
to change I don't want to fuck with it man I don't want to change that thing oh
yeah well I wouldn't it be great if we just immediately knew the outcome of
everything and you just press this button you know I got that's gonna what's
the point of living life then even if you could do it it's it's the end you're
seeing dress it'll I'll leave you be sorry I don't talk about Ian Malcolm
Jurassic Park Jeff Goldblum right life life uh finds a way but we were so
concerned with whether or not we could we didn't stop to think whether or not
we should maybe I think there's I mean it's a deeply human thing but it's also
a really useful thing to always kind of assume that there's this giant thing
that you don't understand so you can forever be striving to understand because
that process gives you meaning but also keeps making you better like thinking
that actually even just thinking that you can't understand everything will lead
you to stop too early so like I think there's something to whether it's the
soul or whether it's like religious stuff like assuming that there's this
thing that you cannot possibly understand is a really good assumption
under which to operate and under wish to do this first principles kind of
thinking because you can just keep digging and keep digging keep digging
even when it seems like you're at the bottom because you don't fucking know
if you're at the bottom or not and back to your original back to one of our I
guess our other kind of tangents was that comes back to everyone's a human
being the smartest human being in the history of humanity is so hilariously
weak like short-lived and not intelligent yourself bro I understand I
didn't say no I'm not saying comparison to me comparison to me everyone is
awesome but that's why don't do the goat thing but basically you know we're
it's just from a cosmic level can you imagine if you were vampire you're
like 900 years old like how much you would seem you would seem like a lower
case G god to people yeah you'd be like how can you have how could you know so
much how can you have such a long view perspective it would be insane so I mean
that it seems like we're talking about AI now right we're creating things that
are infinitely smarter than us effectively and live all this time and
it's probably gonna do what we tell us to do right no it's probably well I hope
it keeps us around do you by the way think about AI and the existential
threats like speaking of gods are you is this whole technological world we talked
about social networks and this increasing power of technology around us we
ourselves are becoming less human because we keep becoming we we keep
relying on technology more and more so we're becoming kinds of cyborgs but
also there's a future that's quite possible where the technology becomes
smarter and more powerful than us humans and you know starts having a life of
its own in ways that perhaps we don't imagine as human beings I don't just
mean like two-legged robots walking around and being humans but smarter I
mean like an intelligent life that's that's beyond and fundamentally different
than our human life it's infinite it's a new species yeah yeah and you and you
kind of species not even just a new species you're talking about systems but
like it lives in the space of information it lives in a different timescale and a
different scale of all sorts spatial scale it operate like we speak we spoke
about individuals it doesn't operate in the sense of a single individual like a
embody it's not embodied so it's not like a thing that walks around and it like
it looks at stuff it consumes the world it's able to do much larger scale
sensing of the environment around it all that kind of stuff I can barely even
try to I can barely even conceive of what that would be like you scared or
you excited I don't define it scared or excited I feel like I try and tend to
define them like the same way I'm like I guess I kind of like before karaoke
the same well that's actually kind of my happy place it's not so much everyone
else's you know it's everyone else is probably you know heading for the door
at that point but you know it's a while you're doing it or leading or leading up
to the karaoke well it depends whether or not a whether or not they know it's me
if they know it's me that's before I start if they have they're like who's
that guy then they're like halfway through the song they're already thrown
their beer what category is a song or a particular song we're talking about in
terms of like your happy place oh man are you kidding me I mean obviously we
hate me in rhapsody I mean there's no question because oh yeah because I don't
have to sing it here it's that it's like you remember can you can I beat to be
yeah of course is he here no yeah then yeah yeah all right if you're like is
you're know that I have a torn I've I've torn feelings about the human
rhapsody because I like the beginning part the sadness I like the solo heart
break the second part I understand it so it gets it gets ridiculous it's so
ridiculous it ruins it for me but it's more about flexing on people I think if
you can actually hit that hit that you're the falsetto yeah so it's not
okay so you appreciate not for the musical beauty and complexity the song
you just like to flex on because like for all yeah like what's the purpose of
anything except for just to let everyone know that you think you're cool and
there's no better way of doing that than karaoke so I'm not sure why about
karaoke cast of audience yeah exactly oh you're an excitement of artificial
intelligence I mean like you know me I don't know anything about I just basic
I don't I don't understand the implications of any of this I would just
say that like radically altering what it means to be human in such an
unbelievably short period of time just seems like such a crazy thing and also
it's not like we're I can't remember who said this to me recently I can't
remember so this is definitely not my idea but we're we're not even going hey
would you like to opt in everyone everyone is being opted in you know and
particularly when you want to talk about like large scale robotics a large scale
AI like the world is changing people in Senegal are opting in right now without
realizing it it's not even like in the end I don't mean to pick on Senegal it's
just whatever country comes up to mind but that's in the developing world but
basically you know recognizing that this huge shift is coming we have no idea
this is a decent idea and also something else have always been considered is you
know you think about most of the really awful awful awful things that have done
in history large-scale slavery holly you name it it didn't if people say that it
came from this motivation or that motivation maybe it did maybe it didn't
fundamentally the issue at least in my mind and I'm not a historian power
differential if you if you and I can't contest we don't contend it's not like
you we fight and you might win or we fight even you'll win comfortably it's you
are so unbelievably powerful compared to me that there's nothing I can do to stop
you that seems like a recipe for something really really not great
happening because if you think about like you know European countries
encountering each other and I'm just speculating I don't know anything about
history but let's say countries that can contend with one another versus
countries that can't let's say an alien species alien race shows up you know
right now we don't want that I think Stephen Hawking said that makes
perfect sense me we don't want that if you can come here we better hope you're
nice what are we gonna do what are we gonna hope that you invade the water
planet like they did in you know one of the side lord of the world so I guess
what I'm trying to get across is like shocking levels of power differential
between groups he makes the next world ripe for horrific abuse in the event
that someone decides to do it it's like why like you imagine an adult hating a
child like hitting hitting a child no one in their right mind would ever go
like that's a great idea because it's such an it's so grossly imbalanced you
like this is wrong but but it's also on the table only because of the gross
imbalance so I guess to come back it's like whether we create AI and it's on a
some crazy level of its own or it's I'm in charge of it or I just it seems like
we're creating you mentioned like game theory and nuclear war what prevented
nuclear war I mean I presumably mutually assured destruction I mean
hopefully also humanity and the humanity and the reasonable you know cooler
heads prevailing going hey I can I can understand the veil of ignorance and I
I don't go oh yeah let me kill those guys because I can't ago this is wrong
period and in concept this is not an action I should take but it's also nice
and easy to keep me honest if I know that I can't get you without being got
myself yeah but what happens when I can get anyone anything and I'm more or less
untouchable like that seems to me to be like at like various times in colonial
history you know what I mean and what happened we know what happened but so the
possibility of really bad things are plentiful the possibilities but are the
possibilities of really positive things are plentiful like what though I'm not
saying wrong so I can give a million examples we one is just the examples of
the parent and the child you said there's a power differential there and we
don't like a parent hitting their child what about not just hitting like beating
like we're like great beating their child how often percentage wise do you see
that happening even though that that power differential first of all other
people's kids let's just put this on the table I love kids but others people's
kids can be annoying sometimes sometimes you got to deal out some justice I get
it but we don't practice we don't take advantage of that power differential no
so like there is ethics there's moralities that emerge that allow the power
differential to be used for good versus for bad so like you're one of the
assumptions with Stephen Hawking or with if Russia became much more powerful
than America or America much more powerful than Russia in the Cold War your
assumption that immediately that power differential not your assumption but
would express itself right would express itself in the in the same way that it
was trying to express itself when there was a more level competition but it's
also possible when the power differential grows the incentive the joy
whatever the mechanisms that made sense when it was at the same level that the
incentives become very different it's not as fun to destroy the ant colony you
start becoming more the kind of a conservationist like one hopes what
that's an evolved perspective though yeah well I don't know if it's evolved or
not but it's definitely a possibility it's unclear to me that's something that's
many orders of magnitude more powerful than us will want to destroy us well I
mean what did we what did I mean how did how did mass slavery occur how did you
know like just big dogs playing with not I think I think slavery and a lot of the
atrocities in history happened when the power differential was not as great as
as we're talking about with AI potentially is that not somehow worse
than it would it's not obvious to me it's not obvious that things that are
way more powerful they sure okay so I think I think you're I guess how do you
restrain it though there there's a lot of different discussions of how to I
guess even restrain each other cuz let's say I go and decide to strike someone's
child which I'd like to think I wouldn't do yes I will be promptly I will find
myself in front of a judge and so I feel like there's a lot if you imagine how
many people used to get murdered just in the woods yeah I mean I would just
presume it's a lot you know and I don't think most people are lunatics like that
but I would just say that's the point if you're given though if you're given to
that your ability to get away with it was was greater in the past because of
chance of detection was less so does it not allow yeah reasonable this is what
that's called an artificial intelligence AI safety research called value
alignment of ensuring as you build the the systems that become smarter and
smarter more powerful and powerful make sure that their values are aligned with
the entities over which they're becoming powerful with humans so if you were
to talk to an AI that's becoming smarter versus dumber than you that but it's
becoming smarter and smarter you have to create mechanisms where you both value
the same things I guess one thing I wonder so I guess I'm probably not like
sharp enough to grasp this if I'm honest but I guess like I wonder like I use
the chess programs yeah you know was deep blue stock fish and then like alpha
zero and alpha zero teaching itself to beat stock fish without any help in four
hours yeah like it becomes orders of magnitude more intelligence than us
ineffectively in instantaneous period I guess what I always wondered like if you
were that much smarter than me yeah I feel like your ability to manipulate me
would be pretty significant or at least potentially no but but manipulation
implies that the incentive is to overpower everything around you like
there's implied incentives and if your value is to actually like it depends
what you want in life okay what you want in your system like it's not clear
that the goal of an AI system that's all powerful is to destroy all humans no
I don't think that I don't think that it is either I guess what I'm or even
enslave all humans I that's fair I guess what I'm trying to suggest is that
something adequately powerful these these actions are on the table yes they're
on the table and that's scary and that's why a lot of people are really
concerned about it and are working on it like I'm just trying to make the case
for AGI because if they're watching this he's the one to kill no actually I was
thinking I was yeah I watched toilets like really well no I mean that that's
the main concern for all the people in the AI state to research people talk
about AGI's it's it's kind of disturbing how little people are working on trying
to create mechanisms that keep AI's values aligned with ours that's completely
unshocking yeah we we humans seem to do only good when like you know even look
at like coronavirus it's like when yeah like the water has to be leaking from the
ceiling you have to be there has fine blood everywhere fire just destruction
we do we just seem to ignore completely writing all over the wall writing all
over the wall this is sure nothing to see here will be okay but we do all right
especially in the United States you figure out even when this becomes a
really serious problem taking actions last minute there's something about the
innovative spirit that results in a solution last minute right before the
deadline well I mean how did I don't know how you did school probably a lot
better than me that's exactly how I did school I couldn't be more I was no
motivation up until like the last if you're like we have 22 hours to do the
entire semesters of work like let's do this yeah like 19 frickin Mountain Dews
and then yeah well that's that's why you and I are failures in life because I
just talked to I mentioned Cal Newport with his books Deep Work and so on he is
of the variety of these creatures that basically does everything ahead of time
that's shocking because he this dislikes the he thinks it's unproductive to
experience the stress and anxiety of the deadline because you're just you're not
going to be your best performance wise and you're not going to do the best work
so it doesn't make any it's completely irrational to a function based on the
deadline you should have a system a process that gets stuff a little bit of
stuff done every day so like you should be and constantly be systematically
honest with yourself if you say I'm going to get this stuff done today in this
week at the end of the day at the end of the week you have to then reflect on
what you did we planned and improve that plan updated constantly updated every
day every week every quarter whatever those durations are as I'm listening to
this and reading his stuff it's like oh yeah I grew with everything I'm like yes
I'm just laughing but like the reality is and then I go back and just eat
Cheetos and like don't do shit until like last night and she's easy
I don't eat Cheetos but yes but actually I like again not that it'll ever
matter not that it's ever gonna matter because he's so shockingly productive
and well thought out that whatever I've decided to think about trying to monkey
wrench in there is a is definitely gonna be able to deal with but it's funny that
again because you're a human being not a god all of your strengths are you have a
corresponding weakness the less you practice working under the gun the less
comfortable you are working under the gun the more practice you have working
under the gun the better you get it at the downside is you're always working
under the gun so you're less productive or it's like your work quality maybe
drops so it's an interesting thing it's like it's almost like hey I wonder if
this I wonder if can be even a magma made of has a lot of heart and I try to
say the answer is almost certainly yes but you go well he hasn't struggled a
bunch maybe he doesn't struggle well and it just so happens that he can also
work under the gun really well he just doesn't like to do it yeah but yeah but
it's an interesting thing it's like I guess what is it the Aristotle we are
we repeatedly do we are all we're all practicing something all the time so I
guess it's it's funny I guess that's a question I have though I would love to
ask him it would be really neat is a certain jobs I mean obviously you want
to have preparation always always but certain things have like a degree of
like entropy in the system and you go I need to practice working under the gun
and I'm not saying that's what I need to do because the fighting it should be for
the most part it's a really sterile environment in the grand scheme of
things like fighting in a cage is very sterile compared to most other things in
life right but dangerous but sterile and unless of course like you know like
the other guy the ref decides to hit you hilarious but anyway I guess just going
like okay so at what value do you get out of adding a degree of let's say you
could even be planned by someone else but junk in the system and you just have
to work under the gun to make it happen let's say for instance like police or
something like that the situation turns left hard at some random point in time
that could happen to any number of people so I guess it's interesting things
that allow for perfect planning or quasi perfect planning versus things that are
inherently unstable and then what are the what's the psychological fallout of
comfort with that because I think a lot of people that are really comfortable
under the gun let it happen a lot for all the good and the bad of that does that
make sense no that totally makes sense it was I mean his answer would be that
you have to be honest with yourself and if it's valuable for the your success to
practice being under the gun and then you should schedule that he's more you
should plan that you should systematically and then as opposed to doing it
half-assily because it's as opposed to letting the environment choose the
randomness like control the randomness to where like you optimize it I was so
efficient it's shocking just to hear about it yeah no he's he's I mean the
same way you are he's annoying in the same way which is like he he drops truth
bombs it's like yeah yeah that's so true yeah we're probably comparably yeah
doing that you know he does but he's so he his profession requires that so he's
not just like a motivational speaker whatever he he's a computer science
theoretical computer scientist and he needs the long hours in the day of doing
like serious math so it's mostly math proofs and for that you have to sit and
think really deeply it's like really hard work compared to like what most
people do like even what I I mean what I do like programming is way easier than
rigorous math proofs because you have to basically have this machine and you have
to your brain to churn out logic in a focused way while visualizing a bunch of
things and holding that in your brain and holding that for 10 minutes 20 minutes
hopefully several hours and you're not just like doing homework you're doing
totally novel stuff so like stuff that nobody's ever done before so you keep
running up against the wall of like fuck this is a dead end oh no wait is this a
dead end and like that whole frustration that's serious mental work that's like
incredibly difficult mental work so he knows what he's talking about some it's
amazing but like he said he's like this seems like the standard for the quality
of work that he needs is so high so that almost anything less than this level of
systematization an organization would preclude it right so he can't afford the
kind of bullshit that I don't know about you but that the certainly I do which is
like last deadline kind of stuff because you can't do that kind of work last
minute on the line kind of stuff so my question for him in general is like and
for you and I is like well here's these negative patterns that we do of like
doing shit last minute and so on is this just who we are now or are there some I
don't think I'm really big into a free will you know I was thinking that it's
mostly predestination that's at least in this regard it's the same with like
communism like as long as it fits my whatever is the lazy thing to do I'll
just not believe it yeah I'm not a commencement opportunist or that's
when that was I'm enough opportunistic communist and capitalist I just do
whatever whatever is cool at the time exactly let me ask you to examine some
fundamental principles of a particular thing that Joe Rogan brought up to me
several times online offline okay which is that he thinks that the tie that I
wear okay is something that makes me vulnerable to attack that you should be
the reason he doesn't wear a tie is because he can get choked very easily
with the tie it's a big concern okay my contention and by the way he wore a
suit last time too he didn't wear it on the podcast he wore it for dinner later
yeah I wore a suit the other day and I had a no socks on I didn't realize yeah
you're supposed to wear a sock yeah that's that's my understanding why'd you
wear a suit you go to court no no and I didn't know no I don't know I just wanted
to play I wanted to pretend I was an adult for a day okay cool yeah so so my
contention is like the jacket everything is more dangerous than a tie that's
kind of where I was going with that that's kind of where yeah it was my first
thought too like if the once the tie becomes an issue like yeah everything
else is already an issue it's already an issue yeah because the tie to me now
without like messing with it now is is to me has some of the similar problems
that a belt does so like for example I don't know about you maybe you can
correct me but I'm not sure you can use the belt as tied you know I know there's
some kind of guards you can probably utilize the belt with but the belt sorry
when it's tied around the waist then we're talking about a belt belt or a
G-belt sorry G-belt okay sorry G-belt importantly G-belt is it's not that
great of a thing to use in most cases I would say because it slides yeah it
doesn't you can probably invent a few interesting ways to use it as leverage
is control and so on but there's just so many more things around better better
better yeah and so for me the tie what people don't realize I suppose are we
trying to sell a DVD here and have some some widgets and bells and whistles
because in that case the belt is really important part of what we do and I would
really encourage you guys to look into it yeah if we're trying to actually like
learn something and say like you said we're surrounded by better options well
that's the thing I mean it's not obvious to me that the belt maybe there's
actually undiscovered things about using the belt you know I think people have
used like like putting a foot inside the belt somehow inside the G-belt there's
some this is a no punches G grappling situation yes okay I guess so it's
already fairly contrived right but with punches too like is there okay let's
let's talk about a street fights with a belt that's like a jeans belt like a
belt clothing belt okay so I get to take it off and whipped them in the face of
the buckle how serious is this street fighter we talking like they're not
serious or are we talking like no like death like one of you has to die oh yeah
whoa okay oh you ever like I'm in this situation all the time and there's a
reason I'm still here I had something I thought we should have fight me to
start with the kids we're talking about power differential yeah I beat up kids
all the time just pick the easy W's gotta get the easy W's you want the
horrible I'm undefeated come around the playground watch what happens no like to
the death what is their clothing that's useful you know from my perspective
for your use or their use both my use their use no like I like how you want
to take the belt off and use the buckle to hit them with but first of all how
you're gonna take off the like the belt well there's a lot of effort involved
in unclothing well what I was figuring was when they started to see me take my
pants off in the fight they were like what they're gonna pause and rethink the
situation for a second yes I'm making dead eye contact obviously so yeah
exactly nodding and then you know by the time they realized you took a belt off
until you could whip them with it yeah you actually you're already won possibly
two steps ahead okay so fine let's not talk about your own clothing it's not
about their clothing okay I'll take off their belt and hit them with it no but
that's that's much harder no question but if you can do it oh I'm
maintaining I got no but the point is there's alternatives that are perhaps
more effective yeah in my perspective this might be clueless there's almost no
clothing that's more effective than almost assuming the situation is no
ghee grappling like I feel like clothing particularly when you start to add
hating like every time I start grabbing your clothes if you start you start
hating and selling nothing could work but most of the time you're like why am I
not using my arms for something better than what I'm doing them right now right
yeah it's very difficult for me to I don't know in terms of just distance the
I can't imagine a case of different distances even like situations where
let's not talk about like like a situation where you haven't both yet
agree that a fight is happening solid clothing is nice if they have it on
then I mean solid clothing oh yeah like something like a good jacket because you
can snatch somebody on their face now right now that you know it is like if
you if you took my like you know like me snap down in judo like how easy it is to
snap down a beginner yeah so I agree with you actually a tie in that sense
might be a really effective way to snap down so like this now that was really
powerful to change the like disorient the situation and give you a lot of
different opportunities for you know taking their back taking the down doing
hilarious stuff like snapping them down with a tie into your knee and then when
they come back up doing this and you're already so yeah in that sense I agree but
not as a choking mechanism because the certain Joe had a choke I think you
probably choke me with your time more easily than I could choke you with your
time I'm serious because like if you get you can get like you get my back and
you can put it around somebody's neck you know like like like you ever see a
diehard yeah yeah you remember when it when the super Swedish looking blonde dude
or whatever was it was trying to choke Bruce Willis with the with the chain
and then he ended up getting choked himself with the chain if I recall this
properly but anyway yeah like like that but I don't feel like I feel like if I
start grabbing your tie you have too many other great options I mean I do like
the snap down that you actually made me realize no I think you ever get there
what's that I think you're on the right path with it with a snap down yeah
particularly if you start with like one of these like you know like you like you
like you poach your finger my chest and then snap down real quick oh yeah because
it also socially speaking it's not a threatening thing to you know to reach
for the tide it's not particularly like a business setting you know I mean I'll
never say coming yeah because I was thinking choke but it's not it's a
really good leverage point because like grabbing a jacket the jacket will slide
if you try to snap down you really have to get a hole like a really good hold
that's good point because it's around the back of the neck but what if it's a clip
on how much of a jackass would you look like you feel like and then they just
yeah a sticky one but you ever see the Japanese politician or I think it was
Japan yeah it was the guy so he was so calm and cool had like it was every it
was beautiful technique the level of actually the throw was even gentle yeah
but yeah it's perfect it's amazing well executed yeah more of our politicians
he's just toss the shit out of yeah we need more Teddy Roosevelt exactly I like
our politicians like talking about fighting when it's clear that none of
them even it would ever been in a fight ever yeah somebody was saying Teddy
Roosevelt is interesting I didn't realize this if he's one of the greatest
presidents this country's had and he was one of the greatest presidents even
though he faced no crisis whatsoever he literally willed himself like nothing
happened during his presidency he's just a bad motherfucker who made really great
speeches yeah like you know this made me realize I was just talking to my
story and that like most of the people who we think are great need also a good
crisis that they've that reveal their greatness but Muhammad Ali right this
Muhammad Ali I mean in sports but but you know I mean like the circumstances
what is greatness you know I mean it's like you have to it's not just your
capacity it's what you what you face right so quality of opposition
circumstance what you overcome so I guess what you're saying is Joe Rogan is
wrong about the Thai thing you know I don't want to go so far as saying he's
wrong I you know the man's not here to defend himself maybe he has some things
that I'm not understanding I'm well he has not deeply thought that this is my
main criticism of Joe he's not deeply thought to this and the MMA journalist
will be like Ryan Hall says Joe Rogan is wrong and hates ties and hates ties
they'll integrate hit their back in there somehow nice nice what's you're
talking about greatness and greatness requiring a difficult moment in time can
you like reflect back and think what are some of the hardest if not the hardest
thing you've ever had to do in your life well you know I think I've had a had a
bunch of things you know I've had a lot of things not go my way you know I've
been incredibly fortunate I've had a lot of things go my way also but leaving
leaving Team Lord Urban in 2008 which I firmly believe was the right thing to do
is one of the that was very difficult at the time not like not a difficult choice
but it was because of why I was leaving but psychologically first of all loss in
general leaving yeah a family of all kinds doesn't matter what the circumstances
I didn't lose any friends what I lost a lot of people I thought are my friends
and I I lost training I lost that I had also had like a really serious my wrist
only does that so like I had a really serious wrist surgery like that I
didn't know if I was gonna be able to compete anymore after that I just got
my brown belt that was a it was a tough time like psychologically physically
everything but I was very very motivated to do my best and to push
through it and to just to carry on in a positive direction no matter what in a
different direction and we lonely that this is the thing about family even if
it's an abusive family leaving it's tough people are complicated and even
people that I that I don't think very well of that I think on the whole I
don't think very well of it's it's unfair to paint them with one brush you
know obviously there's greater and lesser examples of that like the person we
discussed last time who's an infinitely you know beyond almost anyone that we
could ever imagine meeting in our own personal lives yeah yeah bloody elbow it
yeah in terms of forgiveness and hate I mean do you do you have hate in your
heart for for people in your past no for that process no I mean there were
definitely times when I've been no negatively motivated to prove people
wrong or do accomplishing despite and I think that some of that is valuable if
I be lying if I felt differently I think particularly I do really well in
conflict I'm useless without the usual deadline thing I'm useless yeah I'm
useless chaos I'm you see I do I'm useless not an antagonist I like fighting I
like competition I like being pushed I like feeling like if I don't play well
I'm gonna get hurt I have no choice but to play well or play with everything I
got at the very least and I guess I would say though is a you know as I've
gotten you know more time and you know lived a little bit longer you see you
know various situations for you know you know with increased increased color
I guess I would say increased clarity and you know there are a lot of lessons
to be learned even from from times in history or bad experience that we have
and the question is can we take those lessons and move forward and that's
again what I think we're seeing in sometimes socially right now we're
forgetting important lessons of the past and that's not good not saying hey I
don't get why we why we could be going in this direction or that I understand
entirely but hey let's not forget the lesson so we don't have to learn them
again because that doesn't really serve anybody and anyway I guess I would say
I'm thankful for all of the experiences difficult and otherwise mostly difficult
honestly most of the times I remember I'm thankful for every loss I've ever had
particularly the tough ones I'm thankful for you know for all the
relationship I've been many people have taught me many things and continue to
teach me many things some of whom are still some of my closest friends some of
whom are people I really don't get along with at all and some of whom are people
I think really poorly of oh there's not many of that last group what I guess I
would say is there's there's been a lot of things and opportunities to learn and
you know throughout that and also it's not as if I've never done made any
mistakes myself now again they're their magnitude differences I like to think and
I can definitely say that none of the mistakes that I've ever made have been
mistakes of intention you know I've screwed up a lot of things in my life
but I can confidently and easily say that I've never had ill intent towards
people as I've done it you sit there and like man it's just the right thing it's
the right thing and sometimes have been wrong but you know you never sit out
with malicious intent and I think that when I find that I think people do
things differently when I do think that there is malicious intent I have a
difficult time forgiving that. How does love win over hate Ryan Hall in this
world we talked about social media we talked about forgiveness of some of the
more complicated people in your past if we scale that to the entire world before
the AI destroys us and though the human race is lost to history how do you
think love wins over hate? Well I'd like to preface this by saying I try to make
pancakes the other day yes didn't work but I'm happy to comment on this so
basically I think like I think most of the times that that I can think of that
I've struggled you know it's and can and the times that I've read about is being
unable to see the humanity in other people and also even in sometimes our
enemies and the people that have done awful things and you go what would allow
people to do this that or the other and that doesn't forgive what they've done
depending upon you know some things are forgivable some things are less so but
you want to understand why it's like to our knowledge demons don't populate our
world neither do like you get literal angels walking around being actually
perfect a lot of times the things that it's I find it deeply amusing watching
you know people hoisted by their own batard on Twitter even though it's gross
and it's really unproductive it's actually like equal parts amusing and
like awful because you're not you're not happy that someone's being raked over
the coals particularly unjustifiably but it is funny when it's the exact same
thing they were raking others over the coals for not like a week or two prior
and that's happened repeatedly and will continue to happen and I guess I would
say as you mentioned you know a prior you know like a recognition of the
humanity of others of that all of us make mistakes that it's difficult to
understand intention I've had arguments of close friends of mine over text
message were both of us ended up super pissed because we were completely
misreading what the tone the intention of what the other person was doing and
even if I was reading it correctly which I wasn't it's so easy to ascribe the
most negative possible you know I the least charitable assessment of what
they're doing and I think that that's such a dangerous way to live your life
and it's also just a fruitless way to live your life you know it's one thing
to go hey why did you do that I was pissed did you what did you do you just you
did that to make yourself feel better like your damn right I did and have I
done that plenty of times my life yeah I would lie if I said that I didn't you
know why did you why did you punch that guy in the face he was going crazy at me
and hit me and I asked him to stop and then I get warning and I'd put him on
his ass I'm like no I'm not sorry but then looking back now with years to sit
on them like do I understand why I did what I did absolutely would I like to
respond differently now yeah I would you know and it doesn't mean that I think
plenty of things that people do are understandable doesn't mean understandable
doesn't mean correct understandable doesn't mean that you go oh yeah that's
great you go I could I could see someone doing such a thing but I guess just
wrecking trying to understand and see the humanity and others because if I can't
see the humanity and others how can I see it in myself and also you know how am
I meant to interact with everyone as he said whether you know even if we're a
society of individuals for at least for the time being hopefully you know in
perpetuity we still come together as a whole and watching it's weird like you
said it's it's if I only ask why once I start with stay out of my way I'll stay
out of yours leave me the fuck alone you're like okay that's fine Ryan but
that's easy for you to say living in a society that doesn't actually function
like that so it's a little bit cheap but if I recognize that that's step one is
I don't hurt you and you don't hurt me but then we go well but how can I help
you that's step two and then it goes way beyond that and a lot further than I've
thought about it but I guess what I would just say is again recognition of the
humanity and others and that we all have different strengths we all have
different weaknesses and it's he can never really be sure where the other
person's coming from but if we approach things charitably as charitably was as we
would hope others would approach us I think we'll do a lot better and I guess
one thing that I read that I liked that I thought was accurate and
unfortunately disappointing was everyone is a great you know jury are there I'm
sorry great lawyer for themselves and a judge for others and I think that's a
terrible way to live life even if it's an understandable one yeah I don't know
probably flipping that is the right way to live yeah being being constantly
judgmental of yourself and defender of others and that results ultimately in
interaction that de-escalates versus escalates right yeah and you can you
can we can all live in a world like that and sometimes you're like hey man people
that deserve punishment won't get it like okay hey what do they say better to
have you know 10 guilty people go free than one innocent person you know burn
and ultimately that is I think that is a better world than the other way around
and if all else fails join the team that builds the AI that kills all humans
yeah obviously I mean if you have to be on a team pick the winning team whether
that's been the that's that's my hiring pitch actually it's a good hiring pitch
you still taking resumes you want to be on the team that doesn't die during the
great apocalypse not immediately you want to be on the one that that's a you
know eventually long suffering and stepped on right yeah life is suffering
Ryan Hall this was an amazing conversation I really enjoyed talking I
could probably talk to you for many more hours I hope I do as well Ryan I love
you buddy this was a great conversation thanks for talking to me thank you so
much for having me I really appreciate it thanks for listening to this
conversation with Ryan Hall and thank you to our sponsors indeed hiring
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sponsor links to get a discount and to support this podcast and now let me leave
you with some words from Frank Herbert in dune I must not fear fear is the
mind killer fear is the little death that brings total obliteration I will
face my fear I will permit it to pass over me through me and when it has gone
past I will turn the inner eye to see its path where the fear has gone there
will be nothing only I will remain thank you for listening and hope to see you
next time