Latest / Art of the Question / The Philosophy of Funmaxxing - Christian Gonzalez-Capizzi - #14
Transcript
- speaker-0: When did you become first interested in philosophy and why? speaker-1: Yeah, so that goes back all the way to high school. So I went to Catholic school, grew up in a very Catholic family. And one of the required classes at that Catholic high school was ethics, but it wasn't necessarily like religious. And I remember like the first day of class, the professor was going into basically Aristotle's teleological argument for what defines goodness. You know, talks about good as, you know, a good arrow is one which hits its mark. Right. And so a good action is one which hits its target. So what is what do all of our actions aim at? Well, they all kind of converge on this kind of terminal point that he would call, you eudaimonia, flourishing happiness, well-being, etc. And immediately I recognized from that argument just the power of like having a well-informed opinion in moral philosophy or like just normativity, broadly speaking, is because if you can understand what goodness is, what rightness is, The downstream effects of that and every other, you know, argument or debate or worldview is it was immediately obvious to me. And so I just kept pulling that thread, kept pulling that thread, got into, had a bit of a utilitarian phase, pulled that thread more, got into like effective altruism for a little bit. And then eventually ended up on this philosopher who I spent quite a while studying, his name was Derek Parfit, who basically argued that the big three moral philosoph- theories of moral philosophy, like contractualism, Kantian deontology, and ⁓ consequentialism actually converge on this unified theory. And I was also interested in physics at the time. was one of my, it was my other major in college. And I got pulled in because I love the idea of convergence. I the idea of like, you know, there's a grand unified theory endeavor in physics, trying to unify quantum mechanics with general relativity. And I viewed this similarly as the equivalent project on ⁓ the moral philosophy side. And so that's been basically a North Star of mine for quite a while is like answering the first question I think all answers and all actions assume an answer to which is what should I do? And so I've been pulling that thread for years. speaker-0: Super interesting. I recognize that convergence in your work, you make a lot of comparisons to people who were in completely different ages of completely different belief systems, a philosopher with, I believe it was Nietzsche, with Buddhism ⁓ and yeah, some, physics stuff as well. So I definitely like to get into that as well. ⁓ And I saw that you call yourself a philosophical architect. What does that mean? speaker-1: Yeah. So how do put this? Traditionally, there's two styles of philosophy. There's continental philosophy, which is from the continent of Europe. And it's, it's a lot more, uh, it's a lot more flowery. It's pretty hard to understand, but I think the reason for that is because they're trying to like reach up into like the zeitgeist and concretize certain, you know, I guess attract their states and like worldview space that that are possible and potentially coherent. The problem is we just don't have all the vocabulary to express this super clearly versus analytic philosophy is very, it's much more mathematical. It's much more like, you know, deductive. Here are the premises, here are our definitions. We're gonna be very clear. And I think both serve their purposes. One's more strategic and one's more tactical, big picture or small picture. What I like to do is go somewhere in between. I like to, you know, you ever see the overt? it's always sunny in Philadelphia, mean with like, you know, the bulletin board and the lines connecting. feel like I'm more of a dot connector, right? Where, because I've always been very sensitive to convergence, whether it's more philosophy or, you know, back in time physics. whenever I see the same thing kind of expressed in different lights, that to me is a sign that there's a deeper underlying truth. And so what I like to do is to try and draw lines between various potentially or what you might initially think are like disparate philosophies and go, no, no, no, they're actually pointing at the same thing. And the fact that these different people from different vantage points are pointing at and describing the same thing means that there's probably something there. speaker-0: Yeah, no, I agree and it might go against your ⁓ preference for convergence or your interest in convergence rather, but do you have ⁓ a favorite philosopher or a philosopher that you resonate most with? speaker-1: ⁓ I can't pick one. I can give four though. ⁓ So I'll go in order of like order of time. So the first two are pretty, actually the first three are pretty uncontroversial. I would say first is Plato. Plato, if you're trying to start with philosophy, I don't think you should start with Plato, even though he was first. First. There's obviously the pre-Socratics. He doesn't make very good arguments, admittedly. They're not like the most, some of them are, you the youth road dilemmas, an interesting one if you know how to like reapply that to moral philosophy. But he's more, it's more so that he's kind of pointing at something that if you can map that onto your experience or then like get, you know, reach that conclusion via argument, you'll realize he's actually pointing at something pretty deep. And I think the Neoplatonists, the guys who came after him, basically take his metaphysics, this idea of like the one and emanation and you know, returning back to the source and they kind of make it a little bit more, Hey, it's not about propositional truth. not about like making true statements about things out there in the world. These are stages that your, your consciousness can kind of develop into. ⁓ so there's idea like spiritual sense or development and that's very platonic. ⁓ and the other thing, and this kind of goes into one of the videos that I put out that blew up a little bit, which was flow maxing is one of the convergent lines of, of One of the things that a lot of people point at from different angles throughout history is this idea of like reducing inner conflict such that it matches external, ⁓ the external structure of reality. So like as within, so without, this is very hermetic, it's very neoplatonic. And this idea of like, if you kind of clear the blockages and clear the pipes in your system and things can flow more naturally, you'll find your place in the superorganism, you'll find your place in the culture, you'll find your purpose in life, you'll find what you're more uniquely suited to. Give to the world think everybody do does have a gift to give to the world. And so this this structure of like There's like a fractal self similarity between the inside and the outside is something that I would trace back to Plato And in that sense, he's he's really important after that Aristotle. He's what got me in to play to got me into philosophy His arguments are just better. Frankly, ⁓ it's not the full picture, but his arguments are a little bit stronger ⁓ and I think it's a great place to start. would start with like Nick and Keane ethics if you want to get into philosophy or moral philosophy specifically. And then jumping way far forward, I would say Kant just it's I've been close. So I think in every field, there's like a, there's like a, a goat, like an OG goat and then like a new, like a young kid goat. And so I would say, you know, in physics, it was Newton and Einstein, right? And then philosophy, it's like Plato or Aristotle. And then the latter would be. ⁓ would be Kant and Kant was just this Copernican revolution. He makes arguments that, you you read philosophy and you'll periodically run into guys who gave arguments. You're like, ⁓ I kind of, I've thought about that before. He said it way better, granted, but like I did kind of, I could see, you know, myself developing a view like that if I had enough time. With Kant, just, honestly, in a million years, I wouldn't have pieced together the stuff he pieced together. He just, he hits a target no one was even aiming at in the first place. And for me, that's the true mark of a genius. And then the fourth guy is the guy I alluded to earlier, Derek Parfit, super ambitious, one of the few analytic philosophers who actually wanted to make like a systemic big picture. We're going to tackle morality full on. We're not going to just move, you know, move the field forward one inch at a time. We're going to try and solve the whole thing at once and appreciate the ambition. And, you know, he says some fascinating things about personal identity. What makes you over over time? Very Buddhist. So yeah, would say those are kind of my big four. Hegel's also kind of cool. He's very woo, mystical experience. And there's some other guys, but those are the ones I would flag. speaker-0: Awesome. when we're talking about convergence, you say ⁓ if you see something happening in multiple disciplines, in multiple fields, there's probably something to it. You mentioned the example of flow and removing inner obstacles. Are there any more real world examples where you see such an example happening? cross the board maybe it comes back in mathematics but you see it in philosophy and you'll see it happening over and over again. speaker-1: Yes, I do. And I actually have I have an obsidian ⁓ entry on examples of philosophical convergence I've noticed over time. And it's something I would have always wanted to kind of like piece together and maybe draw out a little bit more. But I would say another example of philosophical convergence would be like this move towards impartiality. I think a lot of the best moral systems, they either have a particular sub theory within their general theory or sub prescription within their general prescriptions or it's the entire theory. And it's just this move towards impartiality. So you see this in, you know, Kant's ethics of wanting to universalize your norms such that like no rational agent could not will it. The contractualist ethics, they make the same claim about what nobody could reasonably reject. Follow principles that nobody can reasonably reject. You have like John Rawls's veil of ignorance, which is, you have to design your principles and design your society such that if you were behind a veil of ignorance and you had no stake involved, you didn't know what kind of a person you'd end up being like in society. What rules would you say are fair? Right. It's this kind of impartial move as well. And also the, you know, in religious traditions, the golden rule. It's all saying the same thing with like some slight variations along edge cases, like act in ways in which you would like to be treated. That's very similar to acting ways in which you wouldn't, you couldn't reasonably reject or act in ways that is not against, does not contradict a rational will of someone legislating for this like, know, perfect kingdom of ends or the kingdom of God. ⁓ A lot of people have argued that a lot of the points of philosophy are to reach reflective equilibrium. So it's not necessarily about true beliefs. It's about just at the very least making sure your beliefs cohere internally. I mean, there's a design. This is a big one. ⁓ my gosh. Dress me nuts. Okay. So there's this idea in moral philosophy between like, ⁓ the central question seems to be like, when do you have a reason to do something? So like, let's say you're trying to deliberate. You want to do A or B and you're trying to figure out what to do. You basically, the process of that, what's involved in that process is weighing up various considerations, right? Okay. Here's one consideration that gives me a reason to do this. use another consideration, gives me a reason to do that. You kind of weigh it up and some considerations cancel out other considerations like, you know, if you were a judge, the fact that your friend is on trial is not actually a valid reason to acquit them. You have to put that aside completely. It doesn't get outweighed by the fact that you're a judge and you should be impartial. It's completely canceled out. So it's kind of a central problem. Now, some people think that the only thing that could possibly give us a reason to act is a desire. If you actually want to do the thing, that seems like a good reason to do the thing. However, one thing that bothers me about this is it blatantly flies in face of the wisdom of like every single religious and spiritual tradition in history. All of them are telling us desires are not it. At least not all desires are created equal. There are some desires, in fact, the majority of desires, desires which kind of contract your awareness in a particular way, desires that lead to a sense of like Graspiness or desires that are pointed like more worldly Desires like like money fame sex things like this status These are not the path these corrupts your quote-unquote your soul. They they corrupt your character These are not the desires to be sought after and this is a convergence from like every single more almost every single more tradition almost every single spiritual tradition almost every single religious tradition and For me, that's a pretty good reason to be like, okay, we probably should not be grounding all of our ethics on what people want because you can be wrong about what's good fundamentally. So there's other examples. ⁓ speaker-0: This is what you mentioned in your article against subjectivism, right? This is exactly what you discuss there, or at least part of what you discuss there, the difference between subjectivism and objectivism and why the latter is superior. speaker-1: Yeah, yeah, that that article against subjectivism, I put on my sub stack. It's a. It's it's a summary, plus I kind of strengthen the argument where it was lacking of Derek Parfit's arguments against subjectivism, which is this idea that, you know, the only time you only considerations which count in favor of doing an action are those which stem from a desire. And the general conclusion is no. It's judgment that precedes desire. it's what actually grounds whether you should do something is whether you judge the thing to be good or not. It doesn't matter if you want it. You can be wrong about what's good or not. You desire things which are bad for you all the time. This is obvious to anyone who's ever lived life and made mistakes of their own. You can want things which are bad for you. That's kind of the general thesis. That particular article was arguing that the more sophisticated versions of subjectivism, which say like, okay, it's not just it's not your desires. It's the desires you would have if you were thinking ⁓ clearly, if you're thinking kind of level headedly, if you had all the relevant information, if you know, you were free of distorting influences. It's basically this idealized subjectivism that the article I wrote is basically saying that's incoherent, because to say that there are certain desires you should have is already begging the question. The only people who can say that there are things you should do or should desire outside of your actual desires are objective. So it's a completely incoherent picture. And so what that subjective camp gets reduced to simpler version, which is just any and all desires count equally, right? There's no idealization constraints. And maybe we have certain desires that, you know, bind our desires in general because we have a desires about what we want to desire. I want to be, you know, a better version of myself. I want to think clearly. The is, in practice, we don't actually have those desires. Like, if you want ice cream, you just want ice cream. The desire to be healthy is not always your strongest desire. So, in practice, what that leads to is you being what's called like a wanton. You're just subject to any and all whims that emerge in the present moment. And then on top of that, a good argument against that reduced version of subjectivism where all desires are valid is to just, you know, lean on the religious traditions. They're telling us very clearly not all desires are good for you. You can be making mistakes about what you think is right or wrong. So that's all the subjectivist stuff. speaker-0: Yeah, I mean, it's, it's pretty much Adam and Eve and, and, and the forbidden apple. I mean, it's temptation. ⁓ and temptation is, ⁓ yeah, basically a desire as well. speaker-1: 100%. I mean, it's one of the oldest, most Lindy pieces of wisdom we have is that, you know, I guess it's very Gnostic in nature that some desires, specifically desires for like the earthly pleasures are going to lead to your ruin. They're going to lead to the destruction of the soul and they're not something you should be pursuing. The fact that you desire does not make it a good reason to act on those desires. speaker-0: Yeah. And if we're talking about philosophy in general, ⁓ how can reading and learning more about philosophy help someone? And do you think more people should be interested in or at least learn something more about philosophy? speaker-1: Yeah, that's a good question. think philosophy gets a lot of philosophy gets a bad rap often because it seems very, it seems overly abstract. seems like it has no bearing on your actual life. And I will agree with the general sentiment that the whole point was to live well, right? You're not, you should not be studying philosophy, at least solely because you just want to like collect a bunch of beliefs that you've evaluated as true to your best judgment. Like that's not, we're not, we're not collecting beliefs like Pokemon. Right? The point is to, to, to, and this is very Socratic, very Platonic, is to end up in a place where your day-to-day beliefs, the beliefs and the tendencies and dispositions you have that allow you to kind of operate in the real world, that that, those maximally cohere with your more abstract beliefs. The beliefs you have that come up when you're reflecting. the beliefs that come up when you're trying to take a big picture vantage point and decide what to do with your life, right? When you're in those states of reflective consciousness, you are almost forced to think a little bit more abstractly because you're zooming out from the particulars. You're kind of getting more of a geist picture rather than like a particular zoomed in picture. You're seeing the forest for the trees and abstractions come up immediately. So when you're trying to figure out what to do, you know, it does matter. When you're trying to figure out what to do, big picture, it does matter what you think about what goes into the good life. That's a super relevant question when you're in those periods of reflection. So what philosophy does is it kind of, it ideally philosophy properly carried out results in your inner most fundamental, but also most abstract beliefs, co-hearing with your outward, more empirical, more day-to-day beliefs. And I think when those two sets of beliefs maximally cohere you have fewer obstructions in both your thoughts and in your actions and that allows you to kind of flow with realities the platonic it's the it's the you know Daoist model of just like ebbing and flowing with reality if the sense data comes in and you have a bunch in your turmoil it's gonna get the the pipes are gonna get clogged and you're not gonna you're not gonna operate optimally you're not gonna operate you know ⁓ fully in contact with and and and fully taking into account all the various data points that are coming your way. So I think it's a really important project. speaker-0: Yeah. And what I noticed and what I like about philosophy myself is that even though times are changing and the medium is changing, I don't think many young people, maybe perhaps Gen Zers are going to read a thousand page book about philosophy, but I still see a lot of philosophy content doing very well on social media, on YouTube as well. So even though the medium is changing, believe the interest people, humans have to think about life and to think about the big questions is something that just doesn't go away. Even though we have the major tick tockification and shitification of our brain going on. speaker-1: Yeah, do agree with that. I personally think that we are in a renaissance of creativity right now. I think especially short form video is in the period that YouTube was in, in like the early 2010s, where people started realizing it was a real art form. It was a real media medium that people could refine into something truly excellent. And I think we're starting to see that with short form. There are a handful of creators, I wouldn't say it's a ton, but there are a handful of creators putting out genuinely high quality, well researched, well thought out, coherent work that can just genuinely enrich your life if you're paying attention. But the thing is, one of the most important skills nowadays is what I call algorithm bending. It's just like an arbitrary fire bending, bending, but with the algorithm. You can train your algorithm like a snake charmer trains a snake to serve you, right? People freak out about the algorithm all the time, not realizing it's just showing you what you want. The reason people don't like the algorithm, first of all, it's not the algorithm, it's your algorithm. And second of all, it's just showing you what you pay attention to. And if you don't like what you see, it's because you don't like the reflection that the algorithm as a mirror is holding up and showing you. That's what you don't like. So if you're conscious, if you're diligent, if you're intentional with what you interact with, what you spend that extra 0.5 seconds on before you scroll, the algorithm picks up on all of that. And, that's the information that you're giving it to feed you, to show you what you want. So scroll your following tab more often, engage with the stuff you actually like. And like as a general rule of thumb, just try and avoid as much of the negativity ⁓ that gets optimized for on your algorithms. That is just going to suck your soul away from you. You're not going to come out of that a better person. speaker-0: No, definitely, definitely not. But some of the videos you made that really resonated with a lot of people, including myself, was the series you did about fun maxing, shenanigans, maxing, flow maxing. It was so interesting because I was looking at the Olympics and I saw Alyssa Liu. She was all over my feet and she just gave off this I don't give a fuck vibe. She was having fun. She was smiling every single time. She was just radiating and then she won the the Olympic gold medal and I don't know. It just kind of stuck with me and I don't know why I've never had any interest in figure skating whatsoever up until that moment. And then I came across your video ⁓ discussing how well basically the What do the grindset bros have to lie to you? Having fun is actually the path to greatness. I really resonated with that video, maybe we can dive a little bit into that. Do you think the hustle culture is dying and that it's being replaced with fun maxing, if you will? speaker-1: I see a question. So I think there's two questions implicitly there. The one is, is it dying? And second is, should it die? And I could argue yes and no to both questions. So I'll just riff out loud. So is it dying? I would say, ⁓ first of all, it's hard to know because again, the algorithm just shows you kind of what you want or what you want to want potentially. And so I can at least speak from my algorithm. I don't get it as much, but I also find it tacky. Maybe that's kind of the point. Maybe that's where everyone's at now. It's hard for me to say. I suspect dying out a little bit. The reason it might not be dying out is I I think so. Kyla Scanlon talks a lot about this of like the casino economy where for various reasons, maybe it's the money printer, maybe it's how capital is self organizing. People are just finding it hard to get by economically. You know, the classic your boomer uncle or parents or grandparents kind of bought a house with two nickels and you know, we'll hop in their step and work the way up from being a janitor to CEO. And that was kind of the American dream worked really well for them, but not everyone else. And a lot of, you know, middle classes is being sops dry ⁓ given the choices we've made. ⁓ And so a lot of people feel like their only way out is like to gamble their way up. And so The casino economy, you know, cryptification, the financialization of everything, the sports betting is kind of a sign of that. And that goes hand in hand with, with hustle culture and grindset culture. That also does stem from, you know, the general American ethos of like, everyone's a temporarily embarrassed millionaire, which I do think is a good ethos to have in your culture, even though it's just obviously not true for everyone. It's still a good or useful lie to have. So is a grindset culture going, I think it's changing. It's not going to be the original, like, I think the Aston Hall character was kind of like a high point there of like rise and grind four 30 in the morning, you know, get after it fucking three workouts in the day, cold shower. It's, it's just not sustainable because it's not a sustainable message. Cause it's not actually a sustainable way to live. And eventually I think the truth catches up with society. Um, now the, second question of is it. Should it be Gong Wei? I think we've probably over-corrected a little too far in the direction of grindset culture. ⁓ Because of what I just said, that it's just not sustainable. You can't actually be, you can't have it all at the same time. You can't have everything locked down at the same time. Like life is very simple, but it's hard. It's simple. You know what you need to do. You know what you need to do. means getting your health in order, getting your health in order means You're doing your strength training. You're doing your zoom to cardio. You're doing your head. You're eating a clean diet. It's high protein. You're not drinking that much alcohol or doing any drugs. You're sleeping eight hours consistently. You know, you're getting your 10,000 steps in, you know, and that's just health. Okay. Nailing that's really fucking hard. And it's something we all should be doing. Like if anything matters, that matters. Doesn't matter what your goals are. You should be healthy. Nailing that's hard. Now add in, you know, friendships and job and fulfillment and creativity. and spiritual development. It's just there's so much that gets involved there. And the grindset culture focuses very narrowly on one and it uses or props up tools that aren't necessarily effective in the first place. You cannot be fighting yourself all the time and getting these long-term goals. need to actually like what you're doing. Because if you don't, there's going be someone who does like what they're doing and they're just going to outcompete you. Because for them, it's fun. For you, you're... You're so flagellating yourself, you're being yourself up, you're tight-fisted, you're fighting against every and all desires that you have. It's just, it's not a sustainable model. So should the grand set culture die down a little bit? I think so. I think Alyssa Lou was a moment. I think people are realizing that, you know, it's that quote, do what for other people feels like work. is really hard to beat someone who likes what they're doing. So to the best of your ability, align yourself around that. Now, caveat, you could like something as super impractical. I know people who love machine learning research. God bless them. you imagine? Could you imagine? You just won the genetic lottery or the life circumstance lottery where you just happen to come out of your formal education obsessed. with the single most profitable enterprise in human history. God bless. Some people are really interested in like toy trains. That sucks. There's probably a way of marketing that and making a life out of it. So, you know, I think there's a little bit of a balance that has to be struck, but in general, you know, remember why you're doing the thing that you're doing. speaker-0: Yeah, I fully agree. it's sometimes it's difficult, right? Because you, set certain goals for yourself and along the way you might sometimes forget why you're even pursuing them. Because in the end, all we want is like you said, to be healthy, to be around good people and not be so strapped for cash that you can never go on holiday or, or are worried about whether you're, you can pay your rent every single month. But if you have all those in order, think you can live a pretty good life. And there's this quote from Dana White, if you can't be about when he was interviewed about when he used to be broke. And he said like, if you can't be happy when you're broke, you won't be happy on a yacht. ⁓ And I really think that's true. Some people they tie, including myself, I did it many times. I told myself as soon as I reach X, then I'll be happy. So then I would wait with being happy until I reach the goal. But as I was nearing this goal, I was already moving the goalpost and then the goal when I eventually succeeded in passing the goal, it didn't even feel good anymore because I had already set new goals for myself and I would just stay in this endless loop of of pursuing new things and it was just never enough. that's why I'm really interested in this topic of just trying to have fun while I'm taking what I do seriously. But it's difficult sometimes, but what's the point to be successful, to earn money? It's to have fun. So you might as well start now. speaker-1: Yeah, 100 % agree. And this is the deeper point when we're talking about desires is the reason desires are, and this is, know, abstract philosophy made hopefully a little more practical. The reason desires don't give you a good reason to do something is because the satisfaction of those desires never actually feel that good. And what you actually care about is like positive valence and consciousness, know, like feeling good enough. Good doesn't have to be something super frivolous, like just a sign pleasure. There's more complex forms of good states of consciousness, meaning for instance. Right. ⁓ And ⁓ the fundamental problem with chasing desires is the alleviation. When you satisfy a desire, you alleviate suffering, but the suffering was only there because you the desire in the first place for most classes of desire. So it's like, why are you just stuck on the wheel? You have a desire that pops up, you satisfy. You have a desire that pops up, you satisfy. And it's like, you're not ever going to get off the hamster wheel if you make that your central focus. Desires are not the point. Desires are useful to motivate you to act in certain ways, but it's better to desire things that you judge prior are good or worth doing. So if you're chasing certain goals, you know, it's important to have goals, you know, in life. I think it's important to make yourself into something of note and something praiseworthy. However, just you have to remember why you're doing it. You have to be enjoying the process. You have to be enjoying the before, you have to be enjoying the after. I talk about this in the fun maxing video. If you want to enjoy the process, you're just doing it for that like that. five minute interval right after you reach a goal or you satisfy a desire where you feel alleviated, you're not going to be happy that way. And what you actually care about isn't the desires, it's happiness, it's flourishing, it's well-being. So along that metric, chasing desires is just going to leave you worse off. The analogy I have that it's not mine but is very useful is satisfying desires are like taking off a pair of shoes that were a couple sizes too short. You put the shoes on and then you're happy that you feel a sense of relief for taking up the shoe that you put on yourself. It's like my brother in Christ, the problem is not the pain. The problem is you putting on the shoe that you shouldn't have put on in the first place. Don't put on the shoe. Don't be chasing these desires that have you in this state of clinging and grasping all the time. Right? You're just stuck on the hamster wheel. You're never going to get off that. It's not a good strategy. speaker-0: That's so good. That's so good. I love that. And I do understand why I myself and why people in general set tangible goals. It's very logical because if we set goals that we can count, for example, I want to earn X amount of money each month, or I want to post ⁓ Y amount of videos, or I need to reach a certain follower amount, whatever it may be. It is. good to set tangible goals I feel like because in the process of reaching that goal you you become a certain person who is able to do those things so for example my goal at this moment is I would love to reach a thousand episodes with the show as soon as I reach a thousand episodes I I'm not going to feel empty or what now no because the underlying goal for me is to become a better communicator and to become a better thinker. And by doing these thousand episodes, goal will be achieved, but it's very difficult to make that tangible. Like what is better? What is a better communicator? How good am I now? Where do I rank now? Where will I rank after doing all these shows? It's more difficult. So that's why people like to put numbers on. things, I guess. speaker-1: I agree so deeply. I have a lot I want to say on this point. I think it's important that you have a direction at all periods of time. There's transition periods and that's fine. need exploration versus exploitation. However, you need to not confuse the necessity of having a direction with saying the direction is the whole point because they're separate. You need to be walking in a direction, but... The direction, the goal is not the point. You don't go on a hike for the final destination. You go on a hike because the scenic route is very pretty and you can enjoy it in the process. That's why you go on a hike. But you still need a direction or else like what are you just wandering? It does not feel like I've been in periods of my life ⁓ specifically between work where I decided, okay, I'm going to leave. I'm going leave a startup I was working on. And I'm just going to be, I'm just not going to work for a little bit. I'm just going to, I have some cushion. I'm going to enjoy kind of not having responsibilities. And it's cool for like two weeks, maybe a month. And then you go, this fucking sucks, man. There is a lot of hours in the day. want to be able to, I don't know what I'm doing. I feel like there's no compounding effects going on. ⁓ My efforts and my day to day aren't necessarily building up into a certain direction. It feels kind of useless. And maybe this is more particular or more specific for men, perhaps for all people as well. But if you don't have a goal in life, you You feel purposeless. You feel like you don't have ⁓ anything that is, you don't have a unifying narrative thread in your life. And that is not a good recipe for having a meaningful existence. The other thing I would say is I really liked the focus on becoming a certain kind of person. You do the thing for the sake of self-transformation. And this is something I like a lot about the type of ethics called virtue ethics. is, know, of the Greeks are really into this. And it's this idea of rather than focusing on trying to do the right individual actions, like, okay, let's find some principle that, you know, can justify whether my action is right or wrong in any given situation. That's what a lot of moral philosophy is about nowadays. The ancients thought that was that I don't know if they even considered that because the whole point was always to be the right kind of person such that the right action naturally flows forward. Right. And so when you're, when you have these goals, when you have these you know, habits that you build and if they're good habits, that is just the definition of what a virtue is. Good habits. become the type of, you become what you do over and over again. So as you start collecting these various virtues and dispositions, you become a different kind of person and then it becomes effortless. The good action naturally flow forward from you. You become more naturally aligned with what, you know, the Tao or what the universe or what God wants. people put you on earth to do. So fundamentally agree with that. And then the last thing I would say is to just tie this in with my own personal experiences. I started posting on Instagram and TikTok basically this year. And my whole goal was I'm just gonna post one video at least once every day and just see what happens. And I've had some decent success so far, but more importantly, I've just learned so much. You learn by doing. This is a classic failure mode for people interested in philosophy, people who are kind of more, more, more heady or cerebral types, is again, to this like chronic over planning phase. And they never actually do the thing because they're so scared of having reality pushed back on them and tell them, hey, that idea you thought was so brilliant actually doesn't work. And to the extent to which you identified with the success of that idea and the validity of that idea, the fact that reality is pushing back on you might... might give you reason to believe that identity or that narrative you've been telling yourself for so long. So fundamentally, the lack of doing things fundamentally comes down to a lack of courage because you're scared. You're scared of the resistance, you're scared of the difficulty, and you're scared of the potential failure. But the people who actually learn the fastest are the people who just do stuff, fail, and iterate. And that was the main lesson I've taken away from working in a startup is to just do, fail, iterate because there's a million tiny things you don't you don't realize you don't know until you do the thing. That's what I learned. They started making videos, tiny details, the caption size, the style, where to position your head, like how to do a hook, all these tiny little details, you're not going to figure out from the armchair. You have to be going out in the world and doing things. speaker-0: Yeah, and doing it daily also forces you to really... I mean, the feedback you're getting on a daily basis, mean, I'm currently... I'm not doing daily shows because it's hard to... Yeah, too hard to speak to seven people every week and I need to prepare as well. ⁓ but I do also notice that because I'm posting clips daily is that you feel less attached to the outcome, which is something I've struggled with a lot because I made YouTube documentaries, started making YouTube documentaries two years ago and some of them had like great success and it was a lot of fun. But so these videos would take me four weeks to make. Right. So I would notice that. All my, all the fun I would have interviewing these people for these videos would vanish as soon as the video flopped, which doesn't make any sense. So my value was, or my experience of making the video was connected to the outcome, which wasn't the purpose of why I started creating and writing in the first place. So ⁓ Yeah, that's something that I learned from starting this new endeavor is ⁓ the volume also makes you more detached in a way. speaker-1: Yes, so true. Yeah, that's so true. I when I had my first videos that went viral, you kind of break. So I've been active on Twitter before and I've been I go viral somewhat frequently there, but you can turn off notifications after after like 50 or 100 likes on notifications. It becomes just kind of annoying. You can't do that on Instagram or TikTok. As far as I know, I don't think you can. And so you're just constantly being bombarded with it. And initially. It kind of messes up your dopamine because you're just like, I mean, it's obviously it's an addicting feeling being validated by so many people. Like the collective watch time on a viral video could be like years, years of human. It's just, it's just, it doesn't make sense. The numbers don't make sense. And so after the first one, what happens is it kind of ruins the experience of posting things afterwards that don't do quite as well because you're constantly reminded of how that other video is still doing well. and your current ones are not. And if you're attached to the outcome, that becomes really distressing. After enough reps, you just go, who gives a shit? Like the success is just getting it out. It's almost like, you know, a lot of guys talk about this when it comes to talking to women. They don't even care if they say yes or not, it doesn't matter. Like the fact that I went up and talked to her was like, that's the victory alone. And so I think that shift, like you said, only comes from doing enough volume where you're just like, I'm on track, I'm consistent. And that's the only thing that matters. I'll get there. Over enough time. speaker-0: Yeah, no, completely. And one of the videos that did very well was we've spoken about fun maxing, within the series, ⁓ there's also the one flow maxing. How would you define flow? speaker-1: So I think the big word that comes, the big concept that comes to mind is actually non-doing. So a common question I would get under, you know, the, fun maxing and shenanigans maxing was basically like, what do I do? And the answer is that's the wrong question. You're not supposed to be doing anything, right? If you, if you actually pay close enough attention to your body, you, pretty much always know what you should be doing at any given period of time. Now there's important, it's important to sometimes kind of boot up conceptual thinking and to like think rationally and with words and stuff like that at times. But that's for me more like taking your car to a mechanic when it breaks down. Ideally the car is just running automatically without a problem. But the reason a lot of people can't kind of make decisions or live in the world intuitively is because they've shut off the channels of communication between their body and their mind. are, the two main issues come up. The first is You're identifying with your thoughts way too much. And this is a Buddhist point. They get so caught up in the thoughts that they're thinking. First of all, they think that they're the ones thinking the thoughts. You are not the generator of the thoughts. Thoughts actually get generated automatically. And a good way of testing that is if I say, think of a random number from zero to a hundred and you think of a number, where did that thought come from? That wasn't you. It just pops into your mind. That's all of your thoughts, by the way. This is a very deep insight. All of your thoughts are like that. The problem people make is they think that they're the thoughts and then they get caught up in whatever their mind is generating. If those thoughts are negative, know, God help you, you're going to spiral really quickly with that. And this is where all the manifestation girlies are on about. If you simply or even try to initiate to the extent you can, the generation of certain thoughts or bring about conditions such that those thoughts naturally arise, that are more positive, you're going to get the outcomes you want. Because your thoughts really do eventually trickle out into your actions and your circumstances because they act as a filtering mechanism. They act as a screening for what appears in your conscious. You don't just see reality. This is a contient point. It's obviously filtered through your perception, but it's filtered through your perception in a way that mimics your internal world as within so without. you think you're unlucky, You're only gonna notice instances where you're unlucky and then it self reinforces that own narrative. If you think you're lucky, if you think you are, know, God has you, you are on a divinely inspired mission and nothing can get in your way, you're gonna notice ways around every obstacle that comes in your way because you're looking for it. You're looking for those things in the first place. And this is a predictive processing ⁓ idea as well. We're trying to make sure. The, what your, what your brain does is it tries to minimize the surprise that, that, that occurs in your perception. And there's two ways of doing that. One is changing your circumstances. The other is changing your perception. And so as you focus on cultivating your perception to be more positive, be more fruitful, be more, to, be more in line with a, a state of abundance, you start noticing more abundance. Right. So this is a very deep point. ⁓ the second thing, ⁓ aside from the second obstacle. to being able to act intuitively. The first one being identifying with your thoughts too much is everyone's just way too overstimulated. It's so, it's brutal. Like everyone, no one can read a book anymore. No one can sit with their thoughts that you have to reach your phone every five seconds. And the results of being overstimulated is you never get bored. When you don't get bored, you don't allow your mind the space to generate the thoughts that you need to. naturally reflect on the things that need to be reflected on and also to just feel the rest of your body. Your body is processing stuff too, right? It's not just your head, it's not just your thoughts. But if you're constantly overstimulated, then you don't actually allow yourself to have that space to start reflecting on the big picture things, to start reminiscing on memories and reinforcing certain beliefs that need to be reinforced. Or ⁓ just in general, you are numbing yourself. to what comes your way from external reality. And so what I always suggest for people is ⁓ download app blockers. You need to be limiting your screen time. Other super stimuli, ⁓ know, weed, porn, other drugs, ⁓ music. I love music. I'm a musician as well. But if you're always listening to music, you don't give yourself the space to think. And so... With these two problems of over identifying with your own thoughts and narratives and being way too overstimulated, you cut yourself off from being able to act more intuitively. But if you get to a point where you're really bored and you push through that initial period, which sucks, then you'll be surprised. Ask yourself what you should be doing and you'll get an answer pretty clearly. speaker-0: Yeah, and I really liked what you said there about perception. It's good example of convergence, right? If something ⁓ keeps coming back, there must be something to it. And what you said about if you only see in negative things, that's the only thing you'll see. And I've experienced this so many times in my life. It's a weird example, but when I was a kid, I used to collect these ⁓ rim caps, like back in the day, like crappy cars didn't have actual rims on them, but they had like these plastic hub caps, so to say. And sometimes when they would hit a corner or something, it would fly off and they would just lay on the, on the sidewalk or whatever. And when I was like five years old or something, I thought they were really cool. started collecting them and my mom, like she'd never paid any attention to them. But as soon as I started collecting them, she saw them everywhere. And it was just, there weren't any extras. We just started paying attention to them. it's, later in life when I used to write freestyle BMX, ⁓ at a, well, pretty good level I'd say. And it was. I did a lot of street writing as well. So we would always go to check out street spots, the stairs, a bank, a gap, whatever. And even to this day, like skate mode is still active somewhere in my head. Whenever I see like a good gap set of stairs, think I could probably 360 off the stairs or whatever. it's that perception is still there. And final example is. When I became a journalist and I started writing for this magazine, I had to come up with many topics. So this magazine, they wanted me to pitch all my own topics. ⁓ and I had to pitch like four or five stories every single week. Right. So, and it had to be very specific. And then I started thinking, I put on these like, there's something like switched in my brain and I started seeing. stories everywhere. when I was just having conversations with people, when they were telling me something like, Hey, that might be in there's a story there. There's a story there. So, ⁓ and finally it's why formula one drivers are told not to look at the curb because they'll stare into it. Right. speaker-1: I didn't know that. That's funny. speaker-0: Yeah, no. So, I, ⁓ I definitely, ⁓ agree with you there, but it's difficult resetting, resetting your, ⁓ your dopamine in a, in a real that's so, ⁓ yeah, grabbing that tries to grab your attention every single day. it, is it other than just, ⁓ installing phone lockers and the, any, anything people can do not use their phone for first few hours of the day or put it in black and white or something. speaker-1: Yeah, there's bunch of small tricks. The ones you just said are helpful. You can set in black and white, can set a schedule so it automatically goes black and white, you know, over the night and then like an hour before bed and like a couple hours after waking up. ⁓ So app lockers, I will say one caveat is if you're really determined, you can kind of break the app lockers. Obviously won't say how, but because that's an info hazard. But if you're kind of, you know, sneaky, you can figure it out. There is a nuclear option. for anyone on an iPhone. And the nuclear option is the screen time app. You can set app blocks, time limits. ⁓ And then what you can do is you can require a pin code to get around the block. So you hit your hour long limit of whatever app, you can say like, continue anyways. There's an option in screen time where you flip it and it requires a pin code. And so the trick is to have someone else make the pin code. And it has to be someone so it can be someone you live with like your significant other, a roommate that or a parent doesn't work. Has to be someone you see like once a week, once every couple of weeks. So that way they have it, it's over there and you can't get it easily accessible because then you'll just like keep asking them. Or if it is someone in your house, like there's obviously a lot of shame if you do need to get around it for whatever reason behind that. Just take that out of your hands, outsource it to someone else and just treat yourself like a child. Because realistically, it's just it's not a fair fight. It's you and your monkey brain versus a team of the world's best psychologists and data scientists in Silicon Valley. It's not a fair fight. Like it's totally fine to put your thumb on the scale and to use systems and to build systems and to leverage apps and certain ⁓ techniques to make this not a power of willpower. Excuse me, to make this not a battle of willpower because then, you you're just not going to win long-term. It's not a sustainable strategy. So that's another option. And other one, it's not really, I feel like a lot of my advice is always super just common sense, but a lot of people benefit from hearing it. Go on walks, like without music, go on walks, just get the body, get the blood flowing a little bit and just like allow your thoughts to come in to conscious awareness, kind of unprompted, rather than always just trying to like be purposeful. Walk meander, right? Don't try and go somewhere and just allow thoughts to arise, get in contact with reality again. Don't always be staring at like a rectangle that's like three inches from your face. Yeah, other than that, ⁓ you know, take care of your health. It's hard to kind of be unhappy when you just got back from the gym, you know. speaker-0: Yeah, no, for sure. when did you move back to the US and ⁓ where did you live in Europe? And what are some of the difference you notice between ⁓ European philosophy, if you will, American philosophy mindset? ⁓ And yeah, what are some interesting ⁓ differences there? speaker-1: So I lived in Europe for total of four years. So when I was in college, I was studying physics and philosophy. And then I took a year off. I was a little burnt out. And so I went to Europe for, I went to Spain in the North, Pamplona, which is like where they do the running of the bulls. And I studied there for a year. like, studied a little bit of like the humanities while I was there, but it was like not really related to my degree at the time. But I fell in love with the country at that time. You know, my Spanish. I had a passport because have my family's of Spanish descent. I spoke the language and I just fell in love with the country after traveling. So when I graduated, started working, eventually got a remote job, I was like, I'm to go back to Europe. And so I went back and I tried Madrid for six months, which I love. Madrid's amazing. One of the best cities in world to live in, maybe not tourism. I would probably recommend the south of Spain over over Madrid for tourism. And then I tried Barcelona for six months and I liked Barcelona a little bit more because it was a little more international. ⁓ There was more English, which was at the time something I liked, but eventually I wanted more of the Spanish, which is funny. ⁓ It's kind of how you're describing South Africa. You got beaches, you got the mountains, you got like beautiful urban environment with like gaudy architecture and modernism and all these wonderful things. The weather is great, the food is great, people are great. And so I was there for three years. And I was in Barcelona for three years and I loved it. Barcelona was amazing. I am probably going to be going back there multiple times every year for maybe the rest of my life. It's just, left a special mark on my heart. However, it no longer served me for what I wanted out of life. The cultural differences between Americans and Europeans are both deeper than people think and a little bit less deep than people think, but focusing on the differences. Europeans are far more interested in, especially the Mediterranean, far more interested in lifestyle. And so, you know, it's like, hey, why are you thinking so much about Dallas? grab a beer and go to the beach and forget about it. Like that's the mentality and it's lovely. know, I have Italian family, I have Spanish family. It's a stuff of life. Like it's really beautiful. However, I do think there's something of value to, you know, building something, to leaving your mark on the world, to being around people trying to do the same, being around ambitious people, being around people pushing the boundaries. And there are exceptions to this and I know several of them throughout my time in Europe. But generally those people are in the States. If you're trying to build something, if you're trying to push the frontiers forward in a certain domain, generally speaking, those people are in America and typically they're going to be in New York or they're be in San Francisco. And so I found myself wanting after a few years of being in Europe, the lifestyle was great, but if you make your life decisions based off around lifestyle maxing, you end up surrounded by other people who are lifestyle maxing. And that usually comes at the expense of doing something really at the frontier. Like I met a lot of people in the digital and the med space who had, you know, successful online businesses, know, digital marketing or, you know, some people were content creators or some people were, you know, coaches or something like that. And it's really admirable that they were able to like build this life for them that allows them to unplug from the matrix and just like have a great lifestyle. I like that. But I got to a point where I wanted to be around people who were like, who are actually the guys building the AIs that it was freaking out over? I wanna hang out with these people, I wanna talk to them. Who are the people who are actually building the new culture or pushing the artistic scene forward? Or people who are writing the new modern age philosophies? Where are these conversations being had? They're being had in these tier one cities, typically in the US. And so I crave that, I crave those conversations. So I came back to the US for that. But I will always be heading back to Europe probably for rest of my life. speaker-0: Yeah, it's so, so interesting because I completely agree that, I, yeah, you mentioned Mediterranean and there are of course exceptions, but I think that a couple hundred years ago, Europe used to be a very ambitious continent. mean, there were some darker days in the history granted, but, we did do shit, you know, we, we, we did try to make shit happen. And you know what they say now, like ⁓ America, the U S innovates, China imitates and Europe regulates. And that's basically all that's coming out of Europe right now is, is rules and regulation. And I just think it's such a shame. And I think what I really love about Americans and, the, even though it's not true for everyone, probably in practice, but about the concept of the American dream is that when you drive a nice car in the U S people will stop you and tell you nice car, dude, nice. What do you do? That's awesome. And in Europe, people will scratch your fucking car, dude. They'll, they'll, they'll, did you pay, did you pay enough taxes? Did you pay taxes? Did you pay your fair share? That's what you get. They did. Nobody will tell you good job, dude. Good for you. You've earned this. And, and that's like, I hate that. speaker-1: I ⁓ could rant about this for hours, honestly. I don't want to beat up too much on Europe. I love Europe and my heart is in Europe and I'm rooting for Europe to get its act together. And I think eventually they will, but it's going to be quite a while before maybe, if the US pulls out a NATO and the EU federalizes and realize they have to... you know, be more self-sufficient than a lot of like the luxury decadent beliefs that they had before when they had a military umbrella from the U.S. is no longer going to hold water. So I think there is a path forward in which Europe gets its act together eventually. It's. But right now, it's not looking super great. Every continent has their major issues right now, and that's definitely Europe's. That said, Europeans have a general mentality of like finger wagging and wanting to pull you down and being very pessimistic. being very negative versus Americans. If you tell someone you're trying something, they're like, fuck yeah, dude, like go for it, man. You're going to crush it. I think you're going to do your new awesome versus in Europe. They're like, well, why would you, like, why would you do that? You know, like I had people, you know, telling me European friends looking me in the eyes, like when I was talking about wanting to, you know, get into podcasting and making videos and stuff like that, they're like, dude, you're not going to make it. Why are you doing that? Just right. You know what mean? versus Americans like, ⁓ fuck yeah, I think you're born for it. think you got this. You're to crush it, man. And it's just this general, like, why would you versus go for it mentality that is run so deep in Europe? And I suspect, I suspect part of the reason for this is ⁓ there's several reasons that are, I think, major contributing factors. One is all the high agency people. a lot of, or most of the high agency people have just left Europe. There's just been like a self-selection effect. Then they just go to, cause that's where the opportunities were. Large part because the war just absolutely, you know, brought the European continent to its, World War II brought the European continent to its knees. And the result of that is first of all, massive intergenerational trauma. You imagine millions of your men being wiped out, seeing the Holocaust. China had their major atrocities as well. Imagine you're in the Soviet Union going through Leningrad. What the fuck? None of it makes sense. None of it makes sense. And you can see this very clearly. If you go to Berlin, you can see the trauma on their face and they still carry it to this day. This is your grandparents. Your grandparents treated your parents the way that they were going to be treated given how they grew up. And then that gets passed on. You can see it. It's reinforced in the culture. It's reinforced in their teaching of history. The other thing is, I think the Marshall Plan is to blame, even though it was probably net good on balance. it's because, you know, European countries after the war, they still had a tradition of very strong institutions. So it was easy to build back with some, just a cash injection from the U.S. And so Europeans grew up in this environment where the state was doing a lot of good for people. They rebuilt a continent, a rich continent after just atrocities that that boggle the the human mind. They did a pretty pretty decent job. But then what happened was Europeans got used to this government equals problem solver ⁓ mentality. And the result of that is they just have this deep trust of the government and traditional institutions. They don't see how the ways in which concentrating power into a centralized entity can go wrong. So it's like this lack of agency. It's this trust in institutions. that I think is holding them back. I'd like to think there's they've reached a little bit of a tipping point and a lot of Europeans are talking about deregulating. Who was it? I think it was former European Central Bank chief, I think it was Draghi was talking about this. He gave a report to the European Commission being like, we have like way, way too many regulations. Wait, we're not competitive. It's, know, lot of Europeans are trying to move. their corporations to European based technology and they're fine. The tracks just suck because they're not good at it. Europeans aren't building the way that they used to be. Europe's a smart continent. You've got a lot of culture. ⁓ think, you know, medium term, maybe they get their act together, but ⁓ the mentality, it goes back generations at this point. It's going to be hard to undo that. speaker-0: Yeah. And I think mentality is the biggest problem in Europe and it's so recognizable what you're, what you say. I recognize it too. Why would you, I used to, worked for the Dutch news and then I quit my job to make YouTube videos. Right. And we were like, why would you do that? Aren't you happy? What, isn't it good enough for you? Do you know how hard it is? Do you know how many people tried and failed? And when I'm talking to my American friends, they're like, fuck yeah, dude, you should call my nephew because he has a successful YouTube channel and he can tell you all about it. And ⁓ my uncle, he has a good story. You can maybe do a video about his and everyone is like thinking alongside you. yeah, I mean, they want you to Yes. speaker-1: You win because it reinforces the narrative, right? There's a lot of people who'd be very cynical about the American dream just being not actually achievable for everyone. And it's true, like you can't have everyone win. Then there would be no losers and the concept of winning and losing wouldn't make sense. It's a contradiction. But if you see people around you winning, it reinforces the belief that no, you can win. And I think on net, that's a better mythological, quote unquote lie to tell to people because it instills a little bit of ambition and instills this. this disposition to believe in the population. think everyone's better off as a result of it. speaker-0: 100%. I think if you believe that you are high, if you, if you believe in high agency, that you can actually change shit, do shit, you'll achieve more. It's, it's, it's very, very simple. ⁓ but yeah, Christian, this has been awesome. Is there anything you would like to emphasize or anything, ⁓ you would like to mention still before we wrap it up today? speaker-1: Not really, I think this is a great interview. If anyone is interested, we'll plug, I do have a YouTube channel where I put out podcasts as well. And I have my Instagram where I post videos and a sub stack where I write. Other than that, not really. Do your thing, enjoy your life. Remember why you're doing the things you wanna do in the first place and just like try and have fun with it. speaker-0: I'll make sure to put them in the show notes, Christian. Thanks a lot. This was awesome. You're awesome. I'll make sure to keep reading your sub stack and following your Instagram and your podcast as well.