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Ryan Hall: Solving Martial Arts from First Principles | Lex Fridman Podcast #169


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The following is a conversation with Ryan Hall,
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his second time in the podcast.
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He's one of the most innovative scholars
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of martial arts in the modern era.
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Quick mention of our sponsors.
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As a side note, let me say that I've gotten a chance
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to train with Ryan recently and to both discuss
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and try out on the mat his ideas about grappling and fighting.
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What struck me is his unapologetic drive
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to solve martial arts.
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It reminds me of the ambitious vision and effort
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of Google's DeepMind to solve intelligence.
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In Ryan's case, this isn't some out there
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martial arts guru talk.
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This is a style of thinking about the game of human chess,
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of seeking to define the rules and to engineer ways
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from first principles of escaping the constraints
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of those rules.
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This style of thinking is rare,
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but is ultimately the one that leads to the discovery
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of new revolutionary ideas.
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If you enjoy this podcast, subscribe to it anywhere
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or connect with me at Lex Friedman.
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And now here's my conversation with Ryan Hall.
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You're known as a systems thinker in martial arts,
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but you also, I think, are willing to think
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outside the rules of the game, outside of the system.
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When you're thinking about strategies
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of how to solve the particular problem of an opponent,
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whether that's jiu jitsu or in mixed martial arts,
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what's your process for doing that,
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for figuring out that puzzle?
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I would say, I don't know if I have a specific
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like A to B to C process for that sort of thing.
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I try to do my best to appreciate that.
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I think a lot of the thinking,
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or maybe not all the thinking,
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but a lot of great thinking on conflict,
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on battle, on war, on martial arts has been done already.
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Not that we don't have to do any sort of
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background investigation or reassessing of these ideas
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or axioms that have come down through things
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like the book of five rings or the art of war,
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or like von Clausewitz, even anything like that really,
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but is trying to understand the lessons of the past
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that I think oftentimes we don't take with us problem solving.
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We pay lip service.
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I'm like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
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You know, a victorious fighter, the great fighter,
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you know, he knows victory is there,
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then he seeks battle.
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Everyone else is looking for victory in battle.
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Yeah, moving on.
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And that's why I'm gonna double jab and throw my left hand.
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And I think a lot of times our actions
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don't reflect our stated belief structure.
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And I think that oftentimes you can tell
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what I believe really,
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or what my fundamental operating system is
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based on my actions, whether I'm aware,
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I have an operating system internally,
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whether I'm aware of it or not,
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or certainly whether I'm fully aware of it.
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So I guess when it comes to strategy,
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I try to think about how things interact.
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You mentioned systems thinking,
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and I try to do my best to understand how systems exist,
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but I think that systems have a fundamental strength
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and a fundamental weakness.
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They work how they work, and that's great,
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but they're readable.
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So if you are aware, if I am operating on a system
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of which you're not really read into,
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then I think oftentimes I can seem shockingly effective,
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particularly if my system preys on certain weaknesses
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that maybe you're given to.
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But what happens when you've read the same books that I have?
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I think that a lot of times
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that makes me deeply predictable.
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I think about systems in jiu jitsu,
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and a lot of times people think that they're doing jiu jitsu
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when in reality they are doing an expression of it.
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Let's say I'll use, there's the Marcelo Garcia system.
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There is the current Henzo Gracie system.
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There's the old Gracie Baja one.
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There's the Gracie Academy, classic Gracie jiu jitsu.
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There's the art of jiu jitsu, kind of autos approach.
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And there's some crossover between a lot of these,
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but oftentimes I think when it comes to understanding
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how I'm making decisions
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and how my opponent is making decisions,
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I have to appreciate whether or not I'm an end user
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of something, and I'll use my phone as an example.
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I was thinking of this the other day,
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and as an end user of my phone, I can't,
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I have no idea what it does.
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Like Edward Snowden comes up and goes,
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''Hey guys, you realize your phones are listening to you.''
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I'm like, ''Really, what?
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All right, I believe you.''
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And then of course that comes out,
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but to what extent?
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I have no idea.
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What is my phone capable of?
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I have no idea.
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I can mess with the font though.
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I really like blue screens, not purple screens.
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So as an end user, I can change some of the bells
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and whistles that have nothing to do
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with the underlying source code of it all
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or how it functions.
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The same way in my car, I'm an end user of my car.
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If I do this with the steering wheel, it goes.
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If I push on the gas, it goes.
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I know how to fix it when it's out of gas.
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I know how to fix it when it's out of oil.
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And I know how to fix it when a flat tire comes.
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But short of that, or actually beyond that, I have nothing.
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So I think that oftentimes,
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I've been around in jiu jitsu long enough
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to encounter a new wave of good grapplers.
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And it's very, very interesting sometimes
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how they're running systems
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they don't realize they're running.
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Like, I'm like, oh yeah,
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I trained at Marcelo Garcia's Academy for a long time.
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And a big fan of Marcelo's was a student there.
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Encountered a lot of the auto style jiu jitsu
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a number of years ago.
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Been very, very deep into foot locking and leg attacks
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and whatnot for a long, long time.
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I understand your system better than you do, or I may.
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And let's say you understand my system better than I do.
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That would be a huge issue.
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That was something that I encountered a long time ago,
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trying to come up in jiu jitsu
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where I was trying to utilize systems
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that were created by, let's say Hoffa Mendez
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or someone else.
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And I'm basically trying to do what you're doing.
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I'm just not doing as good of a version of it.
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So not only am I not doing it well,
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but I'm entirely predictable.
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And I think that that can be a big issue.
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So to come back, I think of systems a lot of times now
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in terms of, particularly like end user type of systems,
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like an iPhone is a really, really fast way
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for me to be able to do all sorts of things.
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If you were to take it from me,
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I couldn't recreate any of that.
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So you want to be more the NSA and less the end user.
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Exactly, exactly.
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That way I'm listening to you.
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You want to be the NSA of combat.
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That's right, we're watching UP.
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But basically, I guess what I would come back and say
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is if you understand how things interact
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on a fundamental level and what type of games exist
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and what type of interactions exist,
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then you can transcend a lot of the systems.
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It's almost like a cook versus if I can make certain things
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in the kitchen, but I am not a chef.
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You could give me a bunch of ingredients
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and I could probably cook not well,
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but a couple of different things.
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But a master chef would be aware of the implications
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of all of the things that they're doing,
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extra time in the oven, less time in the oven,
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putting this flavoring or spice in,
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what you're doing with various things.
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And also they could turn all of these ingredients
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into Chinese food.
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They could turn all these ingredients into Italian food
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and they could turn all these Italian food ingredients
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into chicken Parmesan or it could turn into lasagna.
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But they're not limited to a specific thing
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because they have knowledge of how food interacts,
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what it does to create taste,
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what it does to create texture.
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So to come back, let's take rock, paper, scissors.
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Rock, paper, scissors is built on the idea
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of a couple of different things.
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Or actually, I'll tell you what,
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can I ask you a question?
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What's your favorite dinosaur?
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On the same, on three, we'll go.
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One, two, three.
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T. Rex.
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So me too, man, we're gonna be best friends.
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So it's, okay, so what's the first question
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when you say, hey, let's play rock, paper, scissors?
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It's like, hey, is it rock, paper, scissors
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or rock, paper, scissors, shoot?
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And you're like, rock, paper, scissors, shoot.
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You're like, okay.
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Because if we go rock, paper, scissors, shoot,
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and I'm like, oh man, I got lucky and I won.
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Imagine I won 100 times in a row.
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Yeah.
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It'd be luck, it'd be luck if I was honestly doing that.
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But now let's say, for instance,
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I go on rock, paper, scissors and you go on shoot.
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Rock, paper, scissors, shoot.
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Here comes the rock, right?
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If you lose, whose fault is it?
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It's yours.
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This is built on a parody thing
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where I don't get to pick second.
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If I get to pick second,
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it's like being able to investigate your background
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before going to meet you.
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And then I'm like, oh, hi.
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Oh, I too love the New Jersey, you know,
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the New Jersey Nets, which is a statement
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that no one in their right mind would ever make
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when I was growing up.
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So anyway, you'd have to have personal knowledge
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of somebody.
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So anyway, to come back,
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if you understand how games are structured,
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you can start to realize that there's huge gaps
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and huge holes in a lot of the thinking behind all of it.
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And if you can create the illusion of choice,
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I'll play one more if you don't mind.
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This is one of my favorite ones.
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I do this in class all the time.
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Have you seen this before?
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No.
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Okay, may I ask you some questions please?
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Sure.
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Okay, fantastic.
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I'm scared.
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Oh, there's, everybody wins.
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Don't worry.
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All right.
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So could you please?
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I win.
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Could you please pick three fingers
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and tell me what they are?
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Your thumb.
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Okay.
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Your pinky.
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Okay.
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And your middle finger.
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Okay.
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So could you please pick two fingers?
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Your middle finger and your pinky.
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Okay, could you please pick one finger?
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I'll go with the middle finger.
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Woo hoo.
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Okay, could you please pick one finger?
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Pinky.
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Okay, let's play again.
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Can you pick one finger, please?
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Your middle finger.
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Okay, can you pick one finger, please?
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Your thumb.
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Yeah, your pinky.
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Okay, now pick two more fingers, please.
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Your middle finger and your ring finger.
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Okay.
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Could you please pick one more finger?
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Damn it.
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So.
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I thought that enhanced the illusion of choice.
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It's the illusion of choice.
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If I'm asking the questions,
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provided I ask the right questions,
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there can be no correct answer.
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Doesn't mean that, I mean, ultimately,
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if that's what you wanted, let's say,
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like I thought I was guiding you to something I wanted,
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it turns out that was the outcome you wanted.
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Now I'm gonna ask the wrong questions.
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I might not get what I wanted, so.
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Oh, by the way, sorry to interrupt.
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For people that might be just listening to this,
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that no matter what trajectory we took
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through that decision tree that Ryan was presenting,
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it was always ending up with a middle finger,
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ironically enough.
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I was surprised.
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So, and.
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All of us were surprised, and we're both winners.
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Yeah, we all, everyone was.
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I felt like a winner.
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All right, so now I'm gonna,
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now I'll ask some different questions, if you don't mind.
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Can you please pick two fingers to put down?
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Your middle finger and your pinky.
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All right, sorry.
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Oh, that's so awkward.
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That's like the worst finger positions.
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Okay, can you please pick, wait a minute.
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That's, oh, hold on.
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Yeah.
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Well, what if you picked two other fingers to put down?
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Your thumb and your pinky.
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Okay, my thumb and my pinky.
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Can you please pick two fingers to put down?
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Well.
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Whatever two you like.
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Okay, your middle finger and your pointy finger.
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Ah, okay, can you pick two fingers to put down?
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What's the name?
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It's index finger.
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Index finger.
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Why did I call it the pointy finger?
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Pointy, it's the pointy one.
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That's the one we usually point.
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It's weird to point with the ring finger.
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Sorry, what?
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Two more to put down, please.
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The middle finger and the ring finger.
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Ah, man.
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What if you pick my ring finger and my index finger?
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Yeah.
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Aha, woohoo, I win.
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So even though I'm asking the questions,
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it's not impossible that I arrive at a good outcome for me,
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but it's no longer guaranteed.
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I went from a situation where I literally can't lose.
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Yeah, it's pretty low probability.
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Right, super low probability.
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And the second you realize what I'm doing,
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you would never let me win
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because the ball's truly in your court.
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So I guess that's kind of what I'm fundamentally trying
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to put into play almost all the time.
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Can I ask the right set of questions?
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Can I develop the ability skills wise, understanding wise,
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and then discipline wise,
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and then have the courage and the constitution
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and the discipline necessary,
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the patience necessary to ask the proper questions
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and wait for the proper answers?
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And if I can,
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assuming the perfect world, I win, period.
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Yeah, so does that make sense?
link |
00:12:30.920
Yeah, that totally makes sense.
link |
00:12:32.080
So I don't know if you know
link |
00:12:33.760
sort of the more mathematical discipline of game theory.
link |
00:12:36.800
There's something called mechanism design.
link |
00:12:39.160
So game theory is this field where you model
link |
00:12:43.860
some kind of interaction between human beings.
link |
00:12:46.240
You could model grappling that way.
link |
00:12:48.160
You can model nuclear conflict between nations that way.
link |
00:12:52.080
And you set up a set of rules and incentives
link |
00:12:56.080
and then use math to predict
link |
00:13:00.160
what is likely outcome depending over time
link |
00:13:03.840
based on the interaction given those rules.
link |
00:13:06.240
Mechanism design is the design of games.
link |
00:13:11.640
So like the design of systems
link |
00:13:14.020
that are likely to lead to a certain outcome.
link |
00:13:18.540
And so what you're suggesting is
link |
00:13:21.060
you want to discover systems whose decision tree,
link |
00:13:27.640
all the possible things that could happen,
link |
00:13:29.620
feel like there's choice being made,
link |
00:13:32.540
but ultimately one of the parties
link |
00:13:36.040
doesn't have any choice
link |
00:13:37.880
in what the actual final outcome is.
link |
00:13:40.840
You're making them feel like they're playing a game too.
link |
00:13:43.700
So it's not like you don't feel trapped.
link |
00:13:46.660
It's kind of like.
link |
00:13:47.500
Well, the best traps, you don't look very threatening.
link |
00:13:50.880
So I'm like, oh, I'll walk over there.
link |
00:13:52.840
I guess wouldn't that,
link |
00:13:55.000
I guess that's kind of an interesting thing.
link |
00:13:56.400
If a lion, when does a lion roar?
link |
00:13:58.800
It's an interesting thing when you watch like lions hunting.
link |
00:14:01.600
Don't roar when they hunt.
link |
00:14:03.680
They want to, when they want to move you back,
link |
00:14:05.280
they do stuff like that.
link |
00:14:06.200
When they actually want to come and get you,
link |
00:14:08.320
they're pretty slinky.
link |
00:14:09.320
It's like water covered.
link |
00:14:10.520
It's like furry water.
link |
00:14:12.280
And I guess like when you keep that in mind,
link |
00:14:16.440
it's funny how, like for us a hobby actually,
link |
00:14:18.960
a brilliant guy, like one of my MMA coaches
link |
00:14:21.040
and the head coach at TriStar,
link |
00:14:22.880
he brought this up one time.
link |
00:14:23.800
I thought it was a really salient point.
link |
00:14:25.040
Said, let's say we have a million person bracket.
link |
00:14:27.800
Impossibly huge.
link |
00:14:28.880
Like Frank Dukes went in the Kumite level huge bracket.
link |
00:14:31.840
He claimed to knock out like 250 consecutive people.
link |
00:14:34.920
And you're like, that is all of Hong Kong
link |
00:14:38.120
was in that thing.
link |
00:14:38.960
And everyone kept their mouth shut.
link |
00:14:40.360
But anyway, that's pretty cool.
link |
00:14:41.680
But to come back a little improbable, pretty cool.
link |
00:14:45.360
So let's say for instance, like there's no cheating going on,
link |
00:14:48.000
no cheating going on and we're flipping coins, right?
link |
00:14:51.040
Someone is gonna have an unbroken string of victory
link |
00:14:54.520
through that bracket, which is pretty insane.
link |
00:14:57.960
How many consecutive like toss ups this person won.
link |
00:15:01.280
And then at the end of it all,
link |
00:15:04.040
imagine like aliens show up and we go,
link |
00:15:07.480
hey, they wanna flip a coin for whether or not Earth,
link |
00:15:09.880
whether or not Earth gets to continue.
link |
00:15:12.640
They'd be like, oh, I'll do it.
link |
00:15:15.040
I'm good at this.
link |
00:15:17.160
That would be tempting as a person to do.
link |
00:15:19.160
You're like, I'm a lucky guy.
link |
00:15:20.960
Are you sure?
link |
00:15:22.280
Maybe, I mean, maybe effectively you are.
link |
00:15:23.680
We could argue that effectively you're incredibly lucky.
link |
00:15:25.400
But basically is that an actual ability?
link |
00:15:27.320
Is that like a perk in a video game
link |
00:15:28.600
or is that just this thing that happened?
link |
00:15:30.120
So anyway, how many times are someone,
link |
00:15:33.720
you could go through an entire career,
link |
00:15:35.760
particularly in a fight sport.
link |
00:15:37.840
Well, let's say you get 15 knockouts
link |
00:15:39.400
and 15 toss up scenarios.
link |
00:15:41.040
Cause you see that happening all the time
link |
00:15:42.360
in the fight game, a toss up scenario.
link |
00:15:43.720
It's not like you're mounted on me
link |
00:15:45.200
and that's not a toss up scenario.
link |
00:15:47.480
Many, many, many, many, many striking scenarios.
link |
00:15:49.400
A lot of grappling ones,
link |
00:15:50.240
but tons of striking scenarios are dead toss ups.
link |
00:15:53.120
And somebody wins by knockout.
link |
00:15:55.680
They win five times in a row.
link |
00:15:56.520
Then they lose a couple of times in a row.
link |
00:15:58.000
We go, what happened?
link |
00:15:58.840
You're like, what do you mean what happened?
link |
00:15:59.760
They were always flipping the coin.
link |
00:16:00.960
And then they win five more and they go, ah, back on track.
link |
00:16:03.680
Can you imagine that?
link |
00:16:04.520
You're flipping a coin.
link |
00:16:05.360
I'm like heads, heads, heads, heads, tails.
link |
00:16:06.760
What?
link |
00:16:07.600
Tails, tails, heads again.
link |
00:16:09.000
Oh man, I'm back on it.
link |
00:16:09.840
I'm flipping good now.
link |
00:16:11.040
That's basically what's going on.
link |
00:16:12.840
I think the vast majority of the time
link |
00:16:14.440
and then humanity's tendency to see a sign
link |
00:16:17.440
in almost anything, it starts to present itself.
link |
00:16:20.920
And then we build a narrative in our mind
link |
00:16:22.600
to convince ourselves that we're in some sort of control.
link |
00:16:25.480
When in reality, I was in a marginal situation
link |
00:16:27.880
at best the whole time.
link |
00:16:30.080
Yeah, without having much control,
link |
00:16:31.320
without having a deep understanding of the system.
link |
00:16:33.200
The same story is told in the stock market.
link |
00:16:35.120
With many of these distributed human systems,
link |
00:16:38.200
we start telling narratives and start seeing patterns
link |
00:16:40.960
without understanding actually the system
link |
00:16:43.440
that's generating these patterns.
link |
00:16:44.680
So if we can see the system, that's incredibly valuable,
link |
00:16:47.120
but then you go, well,
link |
00:16:47.960
what system is above all of the systems?
link |
00:16:49.920
And I guess maybe physics, maybe something like game theory
link |
00:16:52.320
explains these things with like, I guess what are the,
link |
00:16:54.520
what aspects of the system can I put my hands on
link |
00:16:57.000
that I can touch and understand?
link |
00:16:58.440
And what am I missing?
link |
00:17:00.120
What's going on in the world all around me
link |
00:17:02.160
to continue to lean on Dune that I don't have,
link |
00:17:06.080
you talk to a blind person about the world,
link |
00:17:09.320
about the site and talk to someone that doesn't have everyone
link |
00:17:12.160
who's got coronavirus now, so no one can taste or smell.
link |
00:17:14.520
They're like, this is delicious, like, is it?
link |
00:17:17.680
So anyway, you know, again, what senses am I missing
link |
00:17:21.960
or what understanding am I missing
link |
00:17:23.400
that's preventing me from seeing the dots connect
link |
00:17:27.000
in the world all around me?
link |
00:17:28.640
And I think sometimes if we are oftentimes
link |
00:17:31.360
at least personally, I've screwed this up a lot.
link |
00:17:33.400
I'm so nose deep in the trench of trying to understand
link |
00:17:36.280
what I'm doing that I can't take a step back
link |
00:17:37.880
and realize, you know, that I'm in a forest,
link |
00:17:40.240
not just headbutting a tree.
link |
00:17:42.360
And I may be doing both, maybe both,
link |
00:17:43.960
two things should be true at once.
link |
00:17:45.360
But so I would say when it comes to strategy,
link |
00:17:48.000
trying to understand that, but then also you go,
link |
00:17:50.280
well, okay, well, how can, that sounds cool,
link |
00:17:52.760
but how can you actually do that?
link |
00:17:54.400
And then I'd say, that's a really good question
link |
00:17:56.240
because if I imagine I say, man,
link |
00:17:57.480
I should fight like Steven Thompson,
link |
00:17:58.880
I should fight like Wonderboy,
link |
00:18:00.000
it's like, good idea, go do that.
link |
00:18:01.400
I'm like, not the guy.
link |
00:18:05.200
I would fight like Khabib Nurmagomedov if I could.
link |
00:18:07.320
You know, it seems to work.
link |
00:18:08.560
So anyway, you go, well, what if I could develop,
link |
00:18:11.640
what if I could take my time developing skills
link |
00:18:14.000
so that when these strategies become apparent,
link |
00:18:16.960
they are executable to you.
link |
00:18:19.280
You actually have the ability to like,
link |
00:18:21.840
in or to again, to be the person in the arena,
link |
00:18:24.000
to be the person required,
link |
00:18:25.480
whereas there's plenty of great ideas
link |
00:18:26.840
like dunking a basketball is a fantastic idea.
link |
00:18:29.400
Alas, for me, unless there's a small trampoline nearby,
link |
00:18:31.960
I'm not the guy.
link |
00:18:33.120
But that doesn't make it any less good of an idea.
link |
00:18:35.240
I just haven't developed the ability or I lack the ability.
link |
00:18:38.720
So anyway, I think a lot of times,
link |
00:18:40.560
at least when I watch people in fighting,
link |
00:18:42.080
I'll use an example.
link |
00:18:43.720
We're so concerned with trying to win early on
link |
00:18:46.440
rather than develop skills that I'm going like,
link |
00:18:48.800
well, what's the best way to fight
link |
00:18:50.320
with my current set of skills?
link |
00:18:51.800
And usually the path forward is like the barbarian route,
link |
00:18:54.560
like you put on the one ring,
link |
00:18:57.160
take the damage you need to take to hit that guy.
link |
00:18:59.160
And that was something I realized very early on
link |
00:19:00.520
in my MMA career was like,
link |
00:19:01.440
I'm not that good at striking at that time,
link |
00:19:03.600
not a world class striker now,
link |
00:19:05.520
but I'm way better at striking
link |
00:19:07.080
than I'm given any credit for
link |
00:19:08.120
because it helps people sleep at night, I think.
link |
00:19:09.880
But I'm serious.
link |
00:19:11.200
But...
link |
00:19:12.400
Yeah, yeah, you're always introduced
link |
00:19:13.920
as like this master grappler.
link |
00:19:17.320
I'm like, that's nice of them to say that.
link |
00:19:18.640
Maybe I'm not that good at grappling.
link |
00:19:19.920
We haven't even seen that.
link |
00:19:21.240
But the funny thing is where I'm like,
link |
00:19:22.280
just because people almost go like,
link |
00:19:23.440
well, Lex, see, you're really good at this,
link |
00:19:25.360
but you gotta understand, we're equal, man.
link |
00:19:27.080
I'm good at this other thing.
link |
00:19:28.200
Maybe you're really good at what you do
link |
00:19:29.560
and I'm just mediocre at what I do.
link |
00:19:31.080
That's also possible.
link |
00:19:32.360
So there's plenty of people that define themselves
link |
00:19:33.880
as a striker that do that
link |
00:19:35.000
just because that's for lack of other options.
link |
00:19:36.800
It's not because they're really good striker.
link |
00:19:38.040
I'm a grappler.
link |
00:19:38.880
I was a grappler as a blue belt.
link |
00:19:40.600
Not really.
link |
00:19:41.440
So anyway, I guess to come back,
link |
00:19:43.480
if I'm constantly going,
link |
00:19:45.080
how can I win with what I've got right now?
link |
00:19:47.120
I think oftentimes I never take the time
link |
00:19:48.880
to develop the skills that I wanna develop
link |
00:19:50.520
and I also never take the time
link |
00:19:51.520
to develop the strategies that I wanna develop.
link |
00:19:53.080
And that has actually been a one big blessing
link |
00:19:55.280
of fighting someone frequently,
link |
00:19:57.320
which has been really frustrating
link |
00:19:58.440
as a result of injuries and time away
link |
00:20:00.800
and some of those people being hesitant to get in the game.
link |
00:20:03.320
But it gives you so much time to be out of the trenches
link |
00:20:06.960
and focus on developing your abilities
link |
00:20:08.920
so that now it's almost like developing money
link |
00:20:10.720
like you mentioned the stock market
link |
00:20:11.800
that you can now put in.
link |
00:20:13.320
Imagine you told me Bitcoin was a great idea five years ago
link |
00:20:16.080
and I had eight bucks.
link |
00:20:17.280
Man, if someone told me Bitcoin was a great idea
link |
00:20:18.800
five years ago and I had 50K,
link |
00:20:20.920
I'd be like, oh my God, I'd be sleeping in my bed of money
link |
00:20:23.440
that I would then set on fire later
link |
00:20:24.880
so they had just to do it.
link |
00:20:26.120
So due to all the injuries,
link |
00:20:27.920
you've been mining Bitcoin all this time
link |
00:20:29.920
and now you're a rich man.
link |
00:20:31.200
Well, no, actually someone told me
link |
00:20:32.320
I was trying to mine for Bitcoin,
link |
00:20:33.880
actually like in a cave.
link |
00:20:35.560
And then I found out recently that it's actually,
link |
00:20:37.480
mining is like a figure of speech.
link |
00:20:39.600
You misunderstood. Not like a literal thing that you do.
link |
00:20:41.200
But I mean, in my defense, I only know what I know.
link |
00:20:42.040
English language is difficult.
link |
00:20:43.800
It is, it really is.
link |
00:20:45.200
Next time talk to me, I'll explain.
link |
00:20:47.440
Russian is more, is a rich language.
link |
00:20:50.440
You should learn, you should learn Russian.
link |
00:20:52.640
I'll help you out.
link |
00:20:53.480
I believe you, thank you.
link |
00:20:54.560
Can you do a whirlwind overview of your career
link |
00:20:59.560
in MMA leading up to this point
link |
00:21:03.120
with the injuries and the undefeated record?
link |
00:21:06.280
And then what's next since we're on the topic?
link |
00:21:09.320
I did my first fight as a blue belt
link |
00:21:12.600
and I've been training for about a year and a half.
link |
00:21:13.960
I did nine Jiu Jitsu tournaments in 10 weekends
link |
00:21:16.360
or maybe eight Jiu Jitsu tournaments in 10 weekends
link |
00:21:18.200
prior to my first fight in April 2006.
link |
00:21:22.240
I got punched in the face a whole bunch.
link |
00:21:23.640
I didn't realize it was a professional fight
link |
00:21:25.360
and found that out like the day beforehand.
link |
00:21:27.480
That was great.
link |
00:21:28.880
Thanks, coach.
link |
00:21:30.880
It was in Atlantic City where another place
link |
00:21:32.880
no one ever goes on purpose.
link |
00:21:34.160
So that wasn't great.
link |
00:21:35.200
I got into three, actually three car accidents
link |
00:21:38.960
in the preceding 36 hours before the fight.
link |
00:21:42.080
I had my car totaled.
link |
00:21:44.120
I wasn't driving for any of them.
link |
00:21:45.560
That was great.
link |
00:21:47.080
It was 2006?
link |
00:21:47.920
It was 2006, yeah.
link |
00:21:49.120
You were a blue belt?
link |
00:21:50.240
Yeah, yeah, I've been training for about a year and a half.
link |
00:21:51.960
So you're a blue belt.
link |
00:21:53.120
You're getting, I mean, if you haven't lived,
link |
00:21:55.240
if you haven't gotten punched in the face in Atlantic City.
link |
00:21:57.720
That's true.
link |
00:21:58.560
I mean, I would have loved to have it happen
link |
00:22:01.760
for different reasons.
link |
00:22:03.000
But yeah, well, what's funny is I remember
link |
00:22:06.160
getting punched in the face a bunch,
link |
00:22:07.520
trying to do inverted guard.
link |
00:22:08.960
I won one round, lost two rounds,
link |
00:22:10.840
definitely lost the fight.
link |
00:22:12.160
So you went for inverted, sorry to interrupt.
link |
00:22:13.920
You went for inverted guard.
link |
00:22:14.760
Can you tell the story of that fight real quick?
link |
00:22:16.600
Yeah, sure.
link |
00:22:17.440
It was three three minute rounds,
link |
00:22:18.280
which is not a professional fight length,
link |
00:22:19.920
although I don't know if professional fight length
link |
00:22:21.680
would have been any better.
link |
00:22:22.520
It's just more time to get punched.
link |
00:22:24.320
But I found out partway through,
link |
00:22:26.280
I was like, I remember walking back to my corner
link |
00:22:27.640
in the first round, I'm like, yeah, this guy can't hurt me.
link |
00:22:29.200
And he's like, yeah, my corner was my friend, Tom,
link |
00:22:31.840
and then someone else.
link |
00:22:32.800
And then he's like, yeah, I would still encourage you
link |
00:22:34.520
to stop blocking so many punches with your face.
link |
00:22:36.360
I'm like, that's a good idea, Tom, I appreciate that.
link |
00:22:37.880
I'm gonna try that.
link |
00:22:39.200
Anyway, I remember I was not allowed to up kick.
link |
00:22:43.000
So I'm like, great.
link |
00:22:43.880
I had no martial arts skills, really at all.
link |
00:22:46.880
But if I had anything at all, it was jiu jitsu.
link |
00:22:48.440
It was very, very little jiu jitsu.
link |
00:22:50.440
But definitely no wrestling, definitely no striking.
link |
00:22:53.120
I was basically a magnet for punches.
link |
00:22:55.160
So that was your time, roughnecking out in Atlantic City
link |
00:22:59.360
as we all do once in a while.
link |
00:23:01.360
Can we fast forward to when you're actually
link |
00:23:02.960
dominating the world as a black belt?
link |
00:23:04.960
Well, actually, it's funny,
link |
00:23:05.800
because I took a little bit of money that they're like,
link |
00:23:07.200
hey, we're paying you.
link |
00:23:08.040
I'm like, really?
link |
00:23:08.880
It's like Bukowski stories with Ryan Hall.
link |
00:23:11.960
Well, then I went to the casino.
link |
00:23:13.440
I went to whatever, like the Tropicana
link |
00:23:14.880
that was right there, the casino,
link |
00:23:16.320
because that was a boardwalk hall.
link |
00:23:17.280
I'm like, you know what, man?
link |
00:23:18.400
This has been a not great evening.
link |
00:23:20.800
I'm gonna win it back.
link |
00:23:22.440
This will be great.
link |
00:23:23.360
15 minutes later, they had all the money
link |
00:23:25.960
that I had from the fight was gone.
link |
00:23:27.840
I just remember walking out of the casino super pissed.
link |
00:23:30.600
And I don't know what I was thinking.
link |
00:23:32.400
I'm not good at gambling.
link |
00:23:33.640
This was not gonna make my night better.
link |
00:23:35.400
I just thought that there was gonna be
link |
00:23:36.320
some sort of cosmic balancing,
link |
00:23:37.720
and maybe it was the cosmic balancing all at once
link |
00:23:39.520
for things I'd done in the past.
link |
00:23:40.360
Longer term, though, the balancing.
link |
00:23:43.600
We'll see.
link |
00:23:44.440
I hope so.
link |
00:23:45.280
We're all dead in the end, though.
link |
00:23:46.960
That is true.
link |
00:23:47.800
Time will get us all, yeah.
link |
00:23:50.320
Well, so that was the first one,
link |
00:23:51.680
and that was when I realized I'm terrible at MMA,
link |
00:23:54.440
but I like it.
link |
00:23:55.520
I should just stop this until I one day
link |
00:23:57.200
learn how to actually grapple,
link |
00:23:58.560
much less learn how to fight.
link |
00:23:59.680
But I remember there was this guy named Dave Kaplan,
link |
00:24:01.200
who's the reason my ears are all messed up,
link |
00:24:03.040
who was on the Ultimate Fighter and got punched in the face
link |
00:24:05.440
and knocked out by Tom Lawler,
link |
00:24:06.640
who I'll always appreciate for doing that.
link |
00:24:09.040
But anyway.
link |
00:24:10.640
Dave or Tom?
link |
00:24:11.720
I appreciate Tom.
link |
00:24:12.560
I appreciate Dave, too.
link |
00:24:13.400
Dave was great.
link |
00:24:14.240
Dave was just a huge bully,
link |
00:24:15.080
and used to, not completely unmercifully,
link |
00:24:17.440
but relatively unmercifully beat the crap out of me.
link |
00:24:19.720
And anyway.
link |
00:24:21.360
Well, the ears look good, so.
link |
00:24:22.400
I appreciate that.
link |
00:24:23.240
I tell people it's a tumor that I got,
link |
00:24:25.160
and if they want in on a class action lawsuit with AT&T,
link |
00:24:27.880
they should send me an email.
link |
00:24:31.160
But anyway.
link |
00:24:32.000
Well, you're very financially savvy.
link |
00:24:33.920
Very good.
link |
00:24:34.760
No, I just give the impression.
link |
00:24:36.080
Dave basically said, hey, don't worry, man.
link |
00:24:37.600
You're never gonna be good at MMA.
link |
00:24:39.600
And you're never gonna be good at grappling, either,
link |
00:24:41.160
but even if you are good at grappling,
link |
00:24:42.560
which, in my opinion, you will never be,
link |
00:24:45.440
you will never be good at fighting.
link |
00:24:46.640
And I said, Dave, if I do nothing else in my life,
link |
00:24:50.240
I'm gonna keep training until I can make you pay for that.
link |
00:24:52.720
And now that I can make him pay for that really easily,
link |
00:24:54.600
he doesn't train anymore.
link |
00:24:55.600
But I love Dave.
link |
00:24:56.440
Dave's awesome.
link |
00:24:57.280
He actually won the singing beat.
link |
00:24:58.120
What an interesting dude.
link |
00:24:59.200
Super interesting guy.
link |
00:25:00.040
But anyway.
link |
00:25:00.880
Virginia, like, speaks a couple languages.
link |
00:25:03.760
Super interesting guy.
link |
00:25:04.600
Like, shockingly good at Jeopardy, too.
link |
00:25:07.800
Not that I'm any good, but still shockingly good at Jeopardy.
link |
00:25:09.800
So anyway, years later, met Faraz Zahabi.
link |
00:25:11.600
Actually, John Danaher, I met John Danaher,
link |
00:25:13.760
and he put me in touch with Faraz Zahabi.
link |
00:25:15.600
I started training at TriStar.
link |
00:25:16.840
I immediately loved working with Faraz
link |
00:25:18.920
and learning under Faraz.
link |
00:25:19.760
Started training at TriStar.
link |
00:25:20.840
And I did my first real professional MMA fight
link |
00:25:24.000
as someone that actually does,
link |
00:25:25.680
had practiced a little bit prior in, I think, August, 2012.
link |
00:25:31.080
And that was against a guy, he was four and five at the time.
link |
00:25:34.840
So, you know, had some experience,
link |
00:25:36.720
good kind of like first go for me, honestly.
link |
00:25:38.760
And I won that fight by TKO.
link |
00:25:40.920
And then it was a little bit of a time off.
link |
00:25:42.760
And then I did another fight against a tough guy
link |
00:25:44.280
named Magid Hamo.
link |
00:25:45.880
He was five and two at the time.
link |
00:25:47.040
I think he was three and I was amateur.
link |
00:25:48.040
So, you know, a good little bit of fighting experience.
link |
00:25:50.280
Won that one in the first round of Iron Rear Naked Choke.
link |
00:25:53.140
And then started to experience difficulty
link |
00:25:56.380
getting fights at that point.
link |
00:25:59.080
You know, I...
link |
00:25:59.920
Were you continuously introduced
link |
00:26:00.760
as like the master of grappling, the submission?
link |
00:26:04.560
At least that was my thing.
link |
00:26:05.880
I don't know if I was...
link |
00:26:06.720
Is that was the source of the fear for people?
link |
00:26:08.800
I think so, because, I mean,
link |
00:26:10.000
I definitely wasn't much at striking at that point.
link |
00:26:12.400
You know, I definitely am a lot,
link |
00:26:14.600
I like to think I'm pretty hard to hurt,
link |
00:26:15.920
although I try not to lean on that.
link |
00:26:17.160
And I played baseball for like 16 years,
link |
00:26:19.240
so I can hit things pretty hard.
link |
00:26:20.240
I just wasn't able to, I recognized pretty early on
link |
00:26:23.640
that I had no idea how to actually hit things hard
link |
00:26:26.080
without becoming hitable myself.
link |
00:26:28.280
So I think that's kind of the big thing is a lot of times,
link |
00:26:31.120
like we almost were mentioning before,
link |
00:26:33.360
if you try to go and get people too early,
link |
00:26:36.640
you can hit them if they're not that good,
link |
00:26:38.700
but you're going to get hit yourself.
link |
00:26:40.240
So you're making, you're basically making a wager.
link |
00:26:42.320
You're making a trade of your own life
link |
00:26:44.200
for the ability to hit them.
link |
00:26:45.440
When you watch guys like Israel Adesanya,
link |
00:26:47.240
Floyd Mayweather, Steven Thompson,
link |
00:26:49.560
Conor McGregor, when he's fighting really well,
link |
00:26:51.780
it's not a trade.
link |
00:26:53.000
They're not, you're hitting them and they're hitting you.
link |
00:26:55.440
It's, they're hitting you,
link |
00:26:56.840
but it takes years and years and years and years
link |
00:26:59.280
to be able to learn how to do that.
link |
00:27:00.200
Ton Lee is another great example of that.
link |
00:27:01.800
You know, my closest training partner,
link |
00:27:02.960
one of my best friends,
link |
00:27:04.120
and currently now one champion,
link |
00:27:06.960
one championship in Asia,
link |
00:27:08.560
the champion of the featherweight,
link |
00:27:10.080
or I guess lightweight featherweight, 155 over there now.
link |
00:27:14.120
And he recently defeated Martin Wynn
link |
00:27:16.080
in a really great fight.
link |
00:27:17.240
And Ton knocked him out, long time champion.
link |
00:27:19.520
And Ton doesn't let you hit him.
link |
00:27:21.120
He doesn't let you touch him.
link |
00:27:22.260
I feel so fortunate to have met guys like Steven and Ton
link |
00:27:25.160
to go early on in career and go, holy moly,
link |
00:27:28.900
I can't even, it's not even like,
link |
00:27:30.540
oh, you'll let me walk over and find you.
link |
00:27:32.240
It's like fighting a ghost that periodically shows up
link |
00:27:34.160
with a hammer and smokes you in the melon
link |
00:27:36.160
and then disappears into the ether again.
link |
00:27:38.000
So the way they approach the fighting game is thinking,
link |
00:27:40.120
how can I attack without being hit?
link |
00:27:42.040
So every strategy, every idea you have
link |
00:27:45.240
about what you're going to do
link |
00:27:46.640
has to do with like that minimizing the returns.
link |
00:27:52.440
Absolutely.
link |
00:27:53.280
I mean, that's what all good fighting is done.
link |
00:27:54.600
All poor fighting, you know,
link |
00:27:55.940
throughout the course of history, most generals,
link |
00:27:57.440
whether they're, so I read,
link |
00:27:58.440
or, you know, they did battles by attrition.
link |
00:28:01.520
You know, it's like, yeah, man, I've got 150 guys.
link |
00:28:03.920
You've got 50.
link |
00:28:04.760
You're like, yeah, if 60 of my guys die killing your 50,
link |
00:28:06.760
like, that's great for me.
link |
00:28:08.080
But that's not so great for the 60 guys that died.
link |
00:28:10.720
You know, I hope it's worth it.
link |
00:28:11.980
So when you realize that not only,
link |
00:28:13.440
you're not just Kobe Bryant and you're Phil Jackson too,
link |
00:28:16.360
you got to do everything.
link |
00:28:17.920
You know, if you've got to run across the beach in Normandy,
link |
00:28:21.000
so be it.
link |
00:28:21.840
But that better be, you should have,
link |
00:28:23.440
we make sure we thought this through and there's like,
link |
00:28:24.820
hey, there's no way we can like, you know,
link |
00:28:26.320
walk around the side, huh?
link |
00:28:27.920
Because oftentimes there is,
link |
00:28:30.000
and I think a lot of times there's a lot of incentives
link |
00:28:32.200
in professional fighting too,
link |
00:28:33.800
for people to want to do that.
link |
00:28:34.820
And we come up with all sorts of,
link |
00:28:36.220
well, I'm trying to be exciting.
link |
00:28:38.420
Are you?
link |
00:28:39.260
Is that really what you came here to do?
link |
00:28:40.280
Cause I came here to win.
link |
00:28:41.440
And I think that anyone that's really successful
link |
00:28:44.120
came there to win.
link |
00:28:44.960
And if it ends up being exciting, well, that's fantastic.
link |
00:28:46.600
I hope that people enjoy watching something and that's great,
link |
00:28:48.800
but that's a qualitative assessment anyway.
link |
00:28:51.320
You know, you want to also be able to, you know,
link |
00:28:54.120
live the rest of your life.
link |
00:28:55.420
I think it's easy, you know, I'll use Meldrick Taylor.
link |
00:28:57.620
I'm a big boxing fan.
link |
00:28:58.580
Meldrick Taylor was an excellent fighter,
link |
00:29:00.880
came this close to a world title and was stopped with like,
link |
00:29:05.120
he was in a fight that he was winning with seconds remaining,
link |
00:29:07.520
literally seconds remaining.
link |
00:29:08.720
And they probably could have just let it go
link |
00:29:10.240
and he would have been world champion.
link |
00:29:11.400
And it was brutal.
link |
00:29:12.240
If you ever watched legendary nights like a HBO boxing show,
link |
00:29:15.200
it's great, but it's heartbreaking.
link |
00:29:17.980
It's absolutely heartbreaking.
link |
00:29:18.860
And also like the beating that he absorbed in that fight
link |
00:29:21.240
changed him for the rest of his life.
link |
00:29:22.940
And also, you know, don't think he'd never been hit before,
link |
00:29:25.540
but it was one of those where you go,
link |
00:29:26.800
it's all fun and games until you can't remember your name
link |
00:29:30.000
at age 44 years old.
link |
00:29:31.800
And I didn't come here, what did Patton saying?
link |
00:29:35.080
Nobody wins a war by dying for his country.
link |
00:29:37.200
You make the other poor bastard die for his.
link |
00:29:39.260
And I think that that's kind of what we're shooting for.
link |
00:29:42.500
And, you know, the lionization of absorbing damage
link |
00:29:46.820
and that not being a big deal,
link |
00:29:48.280
like you hear that all the time.
link |
00:29:49.180
So and so can take shots
link |
00:29:50.640
that would put a lesser fighter down.
link |
00:29:53.600
What does that even mean?
link |
00:29:54.720
You know, like, so let me get this straight.
link |
00:29:56.200
Your ability to absorb damage is a part of you.
link |
00:29:59.040
I mean, I guess that, don't get me wrong,
link |
00:30:00.240
that is an attribute that's nice to have if you need it.
link |
00:30:03.120
But there's plenty of people
link |
00:30:04.080
that actually have really porous defense
link |
00:30:06.260
that are just very, very difficult to hurt
link |
00:30:08.880
for whatever reason.
link |
00:30:10.160
That's a fascinating fighter's perspective on the thing.
link |
00:30:12.440
I mean, the story that is inspiring
link |
00:30:18.320
and I know it goes against the artistry of fighting
link |
00:30:22.360
is when you have taken the damage to still rise up
link |
00:30:27.240
and be able to defeat the opponent.
link |
00:30:29.160
So it's, but that's a flip side of a basically
link |
00:30:35.060
you failing to defend yourself properly, right?
link |
00:30:38.600
I agree.
link |
00:30:39.440
But let's say for, I think it's a triumph,
link |
00:30:40.920
that's a triumph of humanity.
link |
00:30:42.560
That's a triumph, that's amazing.
link |
00:30:44.080
To witness such a thing is unbelievable.
link |
00:30:46.440
But you still go, this is, there is a cost here.
link |
00:30:50.240
It's like, I've been fortunate enough
link |
00:30:52.200
to spend some time working with the military
link |
00:30:54.280
and I've been like around and read
link |
00:30:56.120
Medal of Honor citations, they're unbelievable.
link |
00:30:57.920
Like you read the story and you're like, it'll floor you.
link |
00:31:00.920
But it's still a cost
link |
00:31:01.840
and you don't wanna be paying that cost a long time.
link |
00:31:03.800
And most of the time the cost was everything.
link |
00:31:06.300
And then sometimes you go, hey, yeah,
link |
00:31:07.880
the value here, it's worth everything.
link |
00:31:10.320
It's like, I defend your family,
link |
00:31:12.040
defend your country under certain circumstances.
link |
00:31:14.160
And if that point is extension of your family,
link |
00:31:16.080
you're like, hey, this is worth it.
link |
00:31:17.480
To casually throw your life away or throw your health away,
link |
00:31:20.160
it's foolish.
link |
00:31:21.000
There's nothing great about that.
link |
00:31:22.720
And like you said, it's still an amazing thing to see, but.
link |
00:31:26.400
But it's also amazing to see you not take damage
link |
00:31:29.480
as the Floyd Mayweather,
link |
00:31:30.440
it's the artistry of like not being hit.
link |
00:31:32.360
And I wonder if maybe that's why people
link |
00:31:33.600
don't resonate with Floyd as much,
link |
00:31:35.080
is obviously Muhammad Ali was such a time and place,
link |
00:31:37.280
a great man for so many different reasons.
link |
00:31:38.880
Although it was funny to remember
link |
00:31:40.200
like there were times when he wasn't very popular.
link |
00:31:42.080
We love him now because of time of context,
link |
00:31:44.280
time to move away from some of the nonsense
link |
00:31:46.340
he had to deal with.
link |
00:31:47.340
But we got to see him struggle.
link |
00:31:49.980
And also he had unbelievable sacrifice,
link |
00:31:52.000
both in and out of the ring,
link |
00:31:54.040
that we all got to witness.
link |
00:31:55.880
We've never really seen Floyd struggle like that.
link |
00:31:58.040
And granted, obviously Floyd isn't like a civil rights
link |
00:32:00.000
figure like Muhammad Ali was,
link |
00:32:01.660
it's different time, different place,
link |
00:32:02.820
and he's a different man.
link |
00:32:03.660
But basically, I wonder if part of the thing
link |
00:32:06.780
that made everyone think of Muhammad Ali as the greatest,
link |
00:32:09.720
in addition to, of course, the unbelievable things
link |
00:32:11.520
that he did out in the world and the stands that he made,
link |
00:32:15.080
we saw him struggle in the ring.
link |
00:32:17.240
It's almost, it's humanizing.
link |
00:32:19.080
You know, it's weird when people respect Khabib,
link |
00:32:22.600
but again, we saw GSP lose and GSP came back stronger.
link |
00:32:26.720
Khabib is amazing.
link |
00:32:28.360
But I wonder how people feel about him longterm.
link |
00:32:31.080
Not like they won't think of him as amazing and great.
link |
00:32:33.360
And he's been a respectable person and champion.
link |
00:32:35.840
But the time, he hasn't had to fall, if that makes sense.
link |
00:32:41.280
And also coupled with Ali had a way of being poetic
link |
00:32:47.240
about sort of the way he was in the ring,
link |
00:32:49.980
sort of being able to explain the artistry that he,
link |
00:32:52.080
I mean, there's like joking as being playful,
link |
00:32:54.140
but really he was able to describe the flow,
link |
00:32:58.400
like a butterfly sting like a bee.
link |
00:32:59.720
Like he was able to actually talk about his strategy
link |
00:33:03.120
without talking, without crossing that line
link |
00:33:06.480
into the Floyd Mayweather,
link |
00:33:07.560
when you're just talking about money and just talking shit.
link |
00:33:11.240
That's true.
link |
00:33:12.080
Actually Conor McGregor, when he's not talking shit,
link |
00:33:14.680
it's pretty good at like talking about the art
link |
00:33:16.840
of the martial, like the first mug guy.
link |
00:33:19.480
And I wish Khabib did the same.
link |
00:33:22.360
Actually from like the Setia brothers,
link |
00:33:27.640
there's a few, there's a culture of like being poetic
link |
00:33:30.180
about like being scholars and also bards or whatever,
link |
00:33:36.080
the poets of the game.
link |
00:33:37.840
And Khabib was more like just simple
link |
00:33:41.480
and he lets his actions speak, which is great too.
link |
00:33:44.640
It's a cool thing in its own way.
link |
00:33:45.760
Yeah, it's great.
link |
00:33:46.640
But it's nice when you can tell stories
link |
00:33:48.880
and that's probably why Ali was the great.
link |
00:33:53.280
Catch me up to, you went to three fights,
link |
00:33:56.840
I think undefeated, BJ Penn,
link |
00:34:00.640
we talked about last time you defeated BJ Penn.
link |
00:34:02.640
That's an incredible accomplishment,
link |
00:34:06.960
but you fought a lot of really tough guys.
link |
00:34:10.820
When was your last fight?
link |
00:34:12.280
And then catch me up with the injuries.
link |
00:34:14.900
A lot of people kept more and more and more
link |
00:34:17.120
were unwilling to fight you.
link |
00:34:20.320
Yeah, that's been, that was why I was out for two years
link |
00:34:22.860
following the Gray Maynard fight between the fighting Gray
link |
00:34:26.920
and BJ and the Gray Maynard fight
link |
00:34:28.400
was actually one I'm really proud of
link |
00:34:29.400
because Gray was very tough.
link |
00:34:31.400
He's very big, very strong, very experienced.
link |
00:34:33.720
I had only five fights at the time
link |
00:34:36.920
and I didn't have a lot of skills.
link |
00:34:38.060
I don't get to fight Gray with what I have today.
link |
00:34:40.560
I had to fight Gray with what I had in December, 2016.
link |
00:34:43.720
And that, it really took a lot of discipline,
link |
00:34:46.080
a lot of focus, a lot of challenge,
link |
00:34:48.320
to stay the course, to do what I needed to do in that fight
link |
00:34:50.400
and to win in ultimately dominating fashion,
link |
00:34:52.760
just not in the dominating, obvious sense
link |
00:34:54.960
that you see when someone runs across
link |
00:34:56.600
and just does that to somebody,
link |
00:34:58.560
but that wasn't on the list for me at that time.
link |
00:35:01.040
So that was an interesting one,
link |
00:35:03.640
but the time away again was very frustrating.
link |
00:35:05.680
That was incredibly difficult.
link |
00:35:07.280
Before that fight?
link |
00:35:08.220
After that fight, well,
link |
00:35:09.360
because I beat Artem Lobov
link |
00:35:12.040
in the final of the Ultimate Fighter
link |
00:35:13.400
and Artem is another guy that's tough,
link |
00:35:15.320
a lot of experience and he's a funny guy
link |
00:35:19.760
and he said some things on the internet,
link |
00:35:20.940
so he gets a lot of heat for that.
link |
00:35:22.680
But he just knocked out three of my teammates.
link |
00:35:24.860
I'm like, he put a couple of people
link |
00:35:27.020
in a pretty rough shape at the end of that.
link |
00:35:28.460
So he was doing well and that was a tough fight.
link |
00:35:29.960
Again, if I got to go back and fight that fight now,
link |
00:35:32.560
it would be not competitive at all.
link |
00:35:34.280
I mean, it wasn't competitive at that time,
link |
00:35:35.680
but it was a compelling phase.
link |
00:35:36.920
It wasn't close, but it was competitive.
link |
00:35:38.880
So you were improving and growing fast.
link |
00:35:40.520
Yeah, and it was nice to have time away.
link |
00:35:42.360
I wish I'd had more time in the ring,
link |
00:35:43.800
but again, I'd only been doing MMA
link |
00:35:45.600
for three years at that time.
link |
00:35:46.840
So the improvement from doing what,
link |
00:35:49.400
the Bitcoin mining was overriding the ring rust.
link |
00:35:55.120
I think so.
link |
00:35:55.960
I don't really believe in ring rust, if I'm honest.
link |
00:35:57.720
I can understand why people could feel a certain way,
link |
00:36:01.240
but if anything, it's almost like
link |
00:36:02.360
you just kind of forget what competition's like
link |
00:36:04.520
and you realize like, oh, you feel butterflies
link |
00:36:07.120
or something like that and you go,
link |
00:36:07.940
oh my God, this is different versus no,
link |
00:36:08.920
that's just your body getting ready to perform.
link |
00:36:10.280
It's okay, it's normal.
link |
00:36:11.600
How do you not have ring rust?
link |
00:36:13.400
I think I try to practice performing no matter what,
link |
00:36:17.360
whether it's singing karaoke and I'm very good,
link |
00:36:19.020
but like anything, you name it, talking in front of people.
link |
00:36:21.800
You embrace the butterflies.
link |
00:36:23.840
Yeah, it's almost like, I remember my last fight,
link |
00:36:26.400
I'm just staring at the wall and I'm like, huh,
link |
00:36:29.240
I guess I'm gonna fight in a couple of minutes.
link |
00:36:33.520
I mean, of course we all heard the phrase,
link |
00:36:34.640
like you can never walk in the same river twice
link |
00:36:36.440
because even if the river's the same,
link |
00:36:38.900
you're a different man.
link |
00:36:39.940
That's, I think it's a really important thing to understand
link |
00:36:42.120
because at various points in my martial arts career,
link |
00:36:44.360
I've thought, oh man, how should I feel?
link |
00:36:47.080
I remember when I used to do well in competition,
link |
00:36:49.160
I would feel, I would think these thoughts,
link |
00:36:50.920
listen to this song, think about this.
link |
00:36:53.200
I would feel a certain way.
link |
00:36:54.120
And then if you don't feel that way,
link |
00:36:55.560
I would start to become stressed
link |
00:36:57.640
because I was self inflicted versus going,
link |
00:37:00.480
you'll feel how you feel.
link |
00:37:01.640
Your job is to show up with what you have on the day,
link |
00:37:04.520
do your absolute best.
link |
00:37:05.520
It's like, I will never quit.
link |
00:37:06.480
I can be sure of that.
link |
00:37:07.320
I didn't say I can't be beat.
link |
00:37:08.320
I can definitely be beat.
link |
00:37:09.680
I could have lost every single fight that I've ever had,
link |
00:37:11.640
but I control my effort and I control my attitude.
link |
00:37:14.640
And that's, I will do my very best,
link |
00:37:17.240
execute my game plan and the event's not working.
link |
00:37:19.240
If I have to, I'll put my hands up and walk dead forward.
link |
00:37:21.320
If I need to, it's somebody,
link |
00:37:22.880
we hope that that's not where it goes,
link |
00:37:24.240
but like again, that humanizing moment
link |
00:37:27.120
where you're shooting for like just the inner,
link |
00:37:28.880
like the inner, you sacrifice the outer
link |
00:37:31.280
and all you have left is will,
link |
00:37:33.000
and you hope it doesn't happen.
link |
00:37:34.800
But if it does, you'll be there.
link |
00:37:36.080
But I guess to come back,
link |
00:37:37.000
like the extra periods of time in between fights,
link |
00:37:40.280
I think was valuable because it was deeply challenging.
link |
00:37:43.840
It was incredibly, it was heartbreaking sometimes
link |
00:37:46.640
if I'm honest, man.
link |
00:37:47.480
It's like, I didn't want to.
link |
00:37:48.480
It's just waiting.
link |
00:37:49.400
Oh my God, dude.
link |
00:37:50.960
Is there politics involved?
link |
00:37:52.080
There's a.
link |
00:37:52.920
Sometimes, you know, like I,
link |
00:37:56.520
you know, it's every single time you step into the ring,
link |
00:37:59.040
nothing's guaranteed.
link |
00:38:01.320
It's, you could be hurt.
link |
00:38:03.080
You could hurt somebody.
link |
00:38:04.000
You could win.
link |
00:38:04.960
You could lose, you know, throwing away,
link |
00:38:07.600
just like I said, throwing away your healthier life cheaply
link |
00:38:10.040
makes no sense for anyone.
link |
00:38:12.240
And, you know, having demonstrating some degree of temperance
link |
00:38:16.280
is not cowardly either.
link |
00:38:17.720
I mean, but again, if you wait too long, you have nothing.
link |
00:38:20.760
So I guess like I was trying and always being,
link |
00:38:25.160
I'm always open to fighting the absolute best people possible.
link |
00:38:27.800
I'm never turning down fights ever.
link |
00:38:30.400
You know, if some random jabroni decides
link |
00:38:32.200
that he wants to fight, I'm like, go away.
link |
00:38:33.720
If I wanted to just fight randoms,
link |
00:38:35.000
I would just start standing on the table at Denny's
link |
00:38:37.600
and start yelling.
link |
00:38:38.440
And I'm sure it would have, you know,
link |
00:38:39.440
some people would be willing to indulge me.
link |
00:38:41.160
But, you know, you want to fight, you know,
link |
00:38:44.640
meaningful opponents, challenging opponents,
link |
00:38:46.440
and I know who and where they are.
link |
00:38:48.160
And sometimes they're so well.
link |
00:38:49.000
You did fight in Atlantic City.
link |
00:38:50.360
I did.
link |
00:38:51.200
So the Denny's, but you put the Denny's behind you.
link |
00:38:52.920
I did.
link |
00:38:53.760
And, you know, I'll be honest,
link |
00:38:55.160
if I'd have stood up after that fight,
link |
00:38:56.960
I don't know if I was in great shape
link |
00:38:58.400
to expect to win in the other fights that evening,
link |
00:39:00.120
but I could have tried it.
link |
00:39:01.320
I'm sure there were some takers in the crowd,
link |
00:39:02.800
particularly after they watched me fight,
link |
00:39:04.040
they're like, yeah, I'll fight that guy.
link |
00:39:05.240
So, okay, so when was the last fight that you had?
link |
00:39:07.560
That was Darren Elkins.
link |
00:39:08.720
That was six months or seven months after the BJ fight,
link |
00:39:11.240
which is great because it's, you know,
link |
00:39:12.240
I love maybe five really tough, very tough opponent,
link |
00:39:14.760
very tough guy, super tough dude.
link |
00:39:16.520
And that was in July, 2019.
link |
00:39:19.480
And then right when I was about to fight.
link |
00:39:22.360
So you were ready to fight regularly after that.
link |
00:39:24.440
Yeah.
link |
00:39:25.280
You were trying to find a fight.
link |
00:39:26.760
Yeah.
link |
00:39:27.600
And we got Ricardo Llamas, so no one else, none of the,
link |
00:39:29.600
I was ranked in the top 15 at that point.
link |
00:39:31.600
And then people didn't want to fight.
link |
00:39:34.240
We were struggling to find an opponent.
link |
00:39:35.840
Then Ricardo Llamas, a great, you know,
link |
00:39:37.520
former title challenger, you know, MMA, you know,
link |
00:39:39.880
really great history in MMA, recently retired,
link |
00:39:41.880
but we were supposed to fight in,
link |
00:39:44.240
I think May, March, March, May of 2020.
link |
00:39:47.680
And then coronavirus happened.
link |
00:39:49.120
And so that scrapped the whole show, you know, training.
link |
00:39:52.080
We were just scrambling to try to keep the gym alive
link |
00:39:55.040
and take care, you know, I have five or six full, five, six,
link |
00:39:57.760
I think five full time employees that I, you know,
link |
00:40:00.080
they're my responsibility.
link |
00:40:01.200
I have to, their livelihood is in my hands and it's,
link |
00:40:04.480
they'd be irresponsible of me to not take that seriously.
link |
00:40:07.520
So anyway, we were able to navigate through that time.
link |
00:40:10.480
And then we were able to reschedule the Llamas fight.
link |
00:40:13.520
And that was in August of last year.
link |
00:40:15.800
And I got a, a medical like flag, like, oh, hey, you like,
link |
00:40:20.000
you, you, you have like a medical condition that we need
link |
00:40:22.240
to look into when I got pulled from the fight.
link |
00:40:25.120
And I immediately was concerned because of course,
link |
00:40:27.480
any serious medical condition you want to go, oh man,
link |
00:40:30.040
well, I guess I would like to look at that.
link |
00:40:31.920
Yeah, it turns out it was a giant false positive.
link |
00:40:34.080
And, you know, we find that out, you know,
link |
00:40:36.240
all of five weeks later and you go, you gotta be kidding me.
link |
00:40:39.440
That's frustrating.
link |
00:40:40.280
And then we're still waiting for a fight,
link |
00:40:42.080
waiting for a fight, waiting for a fight,
link |
00:40:43.440
waiting for a fight.
link |
00:40:44.280
People won't sign up.
link |
00:40:46.080
Asked for a number of different opponents, basically said,
link |
00:40:48.480
Hey, I'm willing to fight anybody that's,
link |
00:40:50.280
that's tough and moving forward.
link |
00:40:53.200
Finally got a, you know, a great opponent in Denny Gay
link |
00:40:57.560
for, I guess it would have been this, this March.
link |
00:41:01.760
And then I was training in January,
link |
00:41:04.120
working on working on some stuff.
link |
00:41:05.480
I was out training with Raymond Daniels in,
link |
00:41:08.280
in California, Raymond's amazing, unbelievable,
link |
00:41:11.280
you know, kickboxing, karate style kickboxer,
link |
00:41:13.440
fantastic martial artist, great teacher,
link |
00:41:15.440
great training partner and good friend.
link |
00:41:16.800
And, you know, just really bad luck, you know,
link |
00:41:19.480
kind of a fall in the middle of, in the middle of training.
link |
00:41:21.800
And I tore my hip flexor halfway off of my femur.
link |
00:41:25.080
So that wasn't great.
link |
00:41:27.400
And you go like, man, right at the time where you're like,
link |
00:41:29.320
oh man, all right, finally moving forward, you know,
link |
00:41:31.520
having the opportunity to fight.
link |
00:41:32.680
Dan's a really tough guy.
link |
00:41:33.920
You know, you have to fight well
link |
00:41:35.000
if you want to have a good chance to do well with him.
link |
00:41:36.600
If you don't fight well, it's going to be a rough night.
link |
00:41:38.240
And I'm like, that's exactly what I signed up for.
link |
00:41:39.560
That's what we want with BJ,
link |
00:41:40.400
that's what we want with Elkins, that was gray.
link |
00:41:43.360
And then the universe goes, hey man, I hear you,
link |
00:41:45.120
but there's also this.
link |
00:41:46.240
So anyway, unfortunately it's healing up
link |
00:41:48.800
and then hopefully I'm trying to,
link |
00:41:50.440
looking for May, I think.
link |
00:41:52.760
May this year?
link |
00:41:54.080
May of this year.
link |
00:41:55.440
Yeah.
link |
00:41:56.280
So it's been, it's been,
link |
00:41:57.120
it's been about five weeks since the injury.
link |
00:41:58.640
You'll be able to heal up, you think?
link |
00:42:00.120
Yeah, I think it'll be okay by then.
link |
00:42:01.760
Like I don't need a big camp at this point.
link |
00:42:03.200
I've had years of camp.
link |
00:42:06.000
Not going to curtail my drinking or anything like that.
link |
00:42:08.000
Obviously, you know, come on, man.
link |
00:42:09.480
Life is meant to be lived.
link |
00:42:10.480
And you know, so it's, you know, I'm in good shape.
link |
00:42:14.560
I always, I'm always training.
link |
00:42:15.720
I'm trying to do my best to train around the injury
link |
00:42:17.720
to the extent that I can right now without, you know,
link |
00:42:19.840
hurting myself longterm.
link |
00:42:21.480
So is there a particular opponents you're thinking about?
link |
00:42:23.840
Yeah. Anybody, anybody forward?
link |
00:42:25.280
You know, I mean, I tried to, I asked,
link |
00:42:27.360
I asked the second that I got hurt,
link |
00:42:28.640
I sent a message to Dan and I said, hey man,
link |
00:42:30.280
like I just want you to be the first person to know.
link |
00:42:34.040
You know, I just was pretty reasonably injured.
link |
00:42:36.560
We just got an MRI.
link |
00:42:37.440
Doctor says like, hey man, you're out
link |
00:42:39.120
and you need to take like three weeks off, off.
link |
00:42:41.000
Don't do anything.
link |
00:42:41.840
Or you're going to immediately,
link |
00:42:42.680
you're going to tear it the whole way.
link |
00:42:43.640
And this is going to be surgery.
link |
00:42:45.040
And then it's going to be an additional,
link |
00:42:46.280
like eight weeks on top of that
link |
00:42:47.560
to start to rehab it through PT.
link |
00:42:49.520
And anyway, you know, so I let him know,
link |
00:42:51.640
hey, if you can push this thing back,
link |
00:42:53.200
I would love to keep on the car.
link |
00:42:55.040
I would love to keep the fight.
link |
00:42:55.920
You know, it's like, I respect you a lot as an opponent.
link |
00:42:57.720
And also it's been brutal trying
link |
00:42:59.560
to get anybody to sign on.
link |
00:43:00.600
So if you're into it, I'm still there.
link |
00:43:02.440
Unfortunately, he turned that down.
link |
00:43:03.880
I understand he had other things going on
link |
00:43:05.480
and he and his wife were expecting a child coming up.
link |
00:43:07.720
So he needed to, he needed to fight.
link |
00:43:09.760
And anyway, you know, I guess we'll see who's coming forward.
link |
00:43:13.720
Is there somebody like super tough
link |
00:43:15.760
in the featherweight division that you,
link |
00:43:18.640
you seem to like enjoy the difficult puzzles.
link |
00:43:21.680
Is there somebody especially difficult
link |
00:43:23.240
that you would like to fight?
link |
00:43:25.440
I would like to fight.
link |
00:43:27.040
I know that I'll need to win at least one fight before this.
link |
00:43:30.640
And I look forward to coming back
link |
00:43:32.160
and giving my best effort to do that.
link |
00:43:34.000
I want to fight to beat Megumin Sharapov.
link |
00:43:36.600
I want to fight Yair Rodriguez.
link |
00:43:38.120
I want to fight Korean Zombie.
link |
00:43:41.480
And you know, this is complicated, man.
link |
00:43:43.520
Yeah, that would be fun.
link |
00:43:45.320
I would love to see that fight.
link |
00:43:46.680
That's a fascinating fight.
link |
00:43:47.920
That would be fun.
link |
00:43:49.520
He would be very challenging.
link |
00:43:50.520
All those guys are very challenging.
link |
00:43:52.000
And so I look forward to just staying healthy
link |
00:43:55.000
to the extent that we can coming back
link |
00:43:56.400
and I'm going to fight multiple times this year,
link |
00:43:58.080
hell or high water.
link |
00:44:00.280
Hell yes.
link |
00:44:01.400
Hey, by the way, I completely forgot
link |
00:44:04.000
because you were talking about the systems
link |
00:44:05.440
and decision trees and the illusion of choice
link |
00:44:08.920
made me think of Sam Harris and I forgot to mention it.
link |
00:44:12.400
So he talks about free will quite a bit
link |
00:44:14.560
and that there's an illusion of free will.
link |
00:44:18.960
So it's like the.
link |
00:44:19.780
Bold claim, Cotton.
link |
00:44:20.620
That the, you know, maybe the universe
link |
00:44:23.600
constructed that little game where it makes us feel
link |
00:44:27.560
like we have a bunch of choices, but we really don't.
link |
00:44:30.120
We're really always ending up with a middle finger.
link |
00:44:32.760
That would be hilarious.
link |
00:44:33.920
Yeah, that's it.
link |
00:44:35.120
That's what you see before you die.
link |
00:44:37.000
It's just a giant middle finger.
link |
00:44:38.880
It's like, oh, fuck.
link |
00:44:40.280
I knew it.
link |
00:44:41.120
I knew it.
link |
00:44:42.440
What do you think?
link |
00:44:43.260
Do you think there's a free will?
link |
00:44:44.100
Like we feel like we're making choices.
link |
00:44:45.960
So you're thinking, again, what we're talking about,
link |
00:44:48.640
okay, here's a system of martial arts
link |
00:44:51.080
that's Hanzo Gracie, there's different schools
link |
00:44:54.040
and whatever, and then you're thinking,
link |
00:44:56.400
okay, how can I think outside these systems?
link |
00:44:58.400
But then there's also a system that's our human society
link |
00:45:03.920
and we feel like there's an actual choice
link |
00:45:08.400
being made by us individuals.
link |
00:45:11.000
Do you think that choice is real?
link |
00:45:12.640
Or is it just an illusion?
link |
00:45:13.840
Well, okay, that's a really good question.
link |
00:45:15.540
I'm not necessarily equipped to answer this,
link |
00:45:17.380
but I'll do my best.
link |
00:45:18.800
Okay, I guess I would say to start with,
link |
00:45:21.020
sure would be interesting if it wasn't real,
link |
00:45:23.240
if the choice wasn't real,
link |
00:45:25.160
would be pretty interesting if it is real.
link |
00:45:27.220
First off, I would start with facilitative beliefs
link |
00:45:29.540
versus not facilitative beliefs.
link |
00:45:31.920
It's almost like, I think the world's out to get me.
link |
00:45:35.540
True, not true, what next?
link |
00:45:38.440
Probably not a facilitative belief.
link |
00:45:39.760
Even if you, imagine you believe there's no free will.
link |
00:45:43.920
Okay, now what?
link |
00:45:45.480
Does that justify every single impulse
link |
00:45:48.120
that you're going to give into?
link |
00:45:50.160
Or does the belief in free will,
link |
00:45:51.720
does the belief in my ability to work hard, to focus,
link |
00:45:55.120
to be disciplined, to improve my position,
link |
00:45:57.240
improve my situation, whether it's true or not,
link |
00:46:00.000
although I think that at least many of us would argue
link |
00:46:02.320
that at least whether there's some sort of internal driver
link |
00:46:05.060
that allows for that.
link |
00:46:08.040
We live in a material world.
link |
00:46:09.160
Your actions do affect the world.
link |
00:46:11.040
I can choose to pick that water up or not.
link |
00:46:13.600
And anyway, I would say a belief strongly
link |
00:46:17.080
in the idea of picking facilitative beliefs,
link |
00:46:21.640
and going, hey, I will adjust,
link |
00:46:24.120
whether this belief system is right or wrong
link |
00:46:26.000
on a cosmic level, I'm nowhere near smart enough
link |
00:46:28.080
to understand, but I can say me deciding that,
link |
00:46:32.600
let's say, for instance, I'm gonna walk over
link |
00:46:33.960
to have a conversation with someone in a hotel lobby,
link |
00:46:36.080
and I've never met them, and I go over,
link |
00:46:38.480
and I start with, oh, this is gonna be interesting,
link |
00:46:40.700
and I just walk over there,
link |
00:46:42.180
versus in my head, I'm like, what's this asshole want?
link |
00:46:45.560
We're about to have two very different conversations.
link |
00:46:47.880
I could be right that this person's not very polite
link |
00:46:50.160
or thinks negatively of me right from go,
link |
00:46:52.920
but I think that that's probably not a facilitative belief.
link |
00:46:56.200
People talk about, how is that gonna help me
link |
00:47:00.000
navigate the conversation to a positive conclusion?
link |
00:47:02.440
And I think about that for,
link |
00:47:05.900
let's say, fighting, it's a good example,
link |
00:47:07.100
like confidence, plenty of people believe
link |
00:47:08.940
plenty of things that aren't real,
link |
00:47:10.440
myself included, I'm sure, all the time.
link |
00:47:12.640
And anyway, believing that you can do something,
link |
00:47:16.320
I'm like, hey, I think I can win,
link |
00:47:17.560
doesn't guarantee you a positive outcome,
link |
00:47:19.120
but I would say most of us would probably,
link |
00:47:22.160
most of us would argue that it helps.
link |
00:47:23.960
Think about depression.
link |
00:47:25.160
What's depression if not a negative,
link |
00:47:28.040
unfacilitative belief that is not always,
link |
00:47:31.480
that oftentimes is not reflected by reality,
link |
00:47:33.760
but you project it onto reality,
link |
00:47:35.760
and it's understandable if it makes you feel like,
link |
00:47:37.640
oh, man, this isn't gonna work out,
link |
00:47:39.000
I don't think the prospects are going well.
link |
00:47:40.800
And then if you feel like you can't get out of that loop,
link |
00:47:42.720
that seems pretty rough.
link |
00:47:44.360
And I see a lot of things out in society right now
link |
00:47:46.480
where you go, whether you agree or disagree
link |
00:47:48.480
with various positions on things, you go,
link |
00:47:50.240
is that a facilitative belief?
link |
00:47:51.480
Even if that is true, which is arguable, anything.
link |
00:47:55.480
So what next, man?
link |
00:47:56.400
So where does this end?
link |
00:47:57.440
When is the positive, what's the happy ending here?
link |
00:48:00.340
And if they go, well, there is no happy ending,
link |
00:48:01.760
I'm like, okay, so now what?
link |
00:48:04.160
So what do we do here?
link |
00:48:05.080
And I guess.
link |
00:48:06.240
So choose the facilitative belief, and in your intuition,
link |
00:48:10.760
believing that free will is real
link |
00:48:13.480
is more productive for a successful life.
link |
00:48:17.440
Absolutely, because otherwise, how am I not,
link |
00:48:21.520
first off, how can society function if it's not real?
link |
00:48:24.960
So how can I blame you or anyone else
link |
00:48:27.840
or hold anyone responsible for anything
link |
00:48:29.680
if free will isn't real?
link |
00:48:31.600
Well, no, that's exactly the point.
link |
00:48:33.360
But at the surface level, what you're saying is true,
link |
00:48:37.080
but perhaps if we truly internalize
link |
00:48:40.200
that free will is an illusion,
link |
00:48:42.280
we'll start to figure out something
link |
00:48:43.720
that transforms the way we see society.
link |
00:48:47.640
For example, we are very individual centric,
link |
00:48:51.080
so believing that free will is real
link |
00:48:56.080
puts a lot of responsibility and blame on people
link |
00:48:58.520
when they do something bad.
link |
00:49:01.240
Maybe if we truly internalize that free will is an illusion,
link |
00:49:05.720
we start to think about the system of humans together
link |
00:49:09.480
as this mechanism for progress,
link |
00:49:14.240
as opposed to where individual people
link |
00:49:17.080
are responsible for their actions, good or bad.
link |
00:49:20.280
So we remove the value, the weight we assign
link |
00:49:24.040
to the accomplishments or the violence,
link |
00:49:27.800
the negative stuff done by individuals,
link |
00:49:29.800
or more look at the progress of society.
link |
00:49:32.160
I don't know what that looks like,
link |
00:49:33.200
but it's almost like as opposed to focusing
link |
00:49:35.400
on the individual ants of an ant colony,
link |
00:49:37.640
looking at the entirety of the ant colony.
link |
00:49:41.080
So that, I think it makes perfect sense.
link |
00:49:42.440
I would just say that that's a reasonable thing to suggest.
link |
00:49:44.720
It's a seismic shift, right?
link |
00:49:46.360
And it's hard to say whether that would be better or worse,
link |
00:49:49.200
but I guess I'll use this as a convenient one for me.
link |
00:49:53.280
So I remember the last time we spoke,
link |
00:49:54.680
I brought up one of the most reviled evil characters
link |
00:49:58.160
in certainly recent history,
link |
00:49:59.280
probably human history period, Adolf Hitler.
link |
00:50:01.880
Well, I'm a big fan of making people live in the world
link |
00:50:04.440
that they wanna believe in.
link |
00:50:06.320
Well, if free will doesn't exist,
link |
00:50:08.200
and it's just about how things move forward,
link |
00:50:10.160
when are we gonna be high fiving this guy or what?
link |
00:50:13.480
Because I remember what I said,
link |
00:50:14.760
and that actually brings me to something else we discussed.
link |
00:50:18.520
Yeah, for people who don't know,
link |
00:50:20.400
Ryan brought up, or I brought up,
link |
00:50:23.080
there's literally a giant book about Hitler.
link |
00:50:25.480
So I've been obsessed with Hitler, World War II,
link |
00:50:27.920
and Stalin recently.
link |
00:50:29.480
For recently.
link |
00:50:31.040
Oh man, this has become like a meme.
link |
00:50:35.080
Joe Rogan with like DMT and me with Hitler.
link |
00:50:37.720
Can I pick something more positive?
link |
00:50:40.160
Like cat in the hat or something, I don't know.
link |
00:50:41.920
But you brought up Hitler as an example
link |
00:50:44.320
of something particular,
link |
00:50:46.200
some philosophical discussions we're having.
link |
00:50:48.600
And the excellent, eloquent,
link |
00:50:51.960
and the full of integrity MMA journalist
link |
00:50:56.960
clipped out something you've said about Hitler
link |
00:51:00.800
and said that, I forget what the headlines are,
link |
00:51:05.160
but they were the most ridiculous possible implementation.
link |
00:51:09.520
Basically, it was intentionally misunderstanding
link |
00:51:13.080
what I'm saying.
link |
00:51:13.920
Then it's like, I get that they're stupid,
link |
00:51:15.680
but I'm stupid too.
link |
00:51:16.600
So I know what that's like.
link |
00:51:17.560
So I don't have a lot of sympathy for you.
link |
00:51:19.360
Yeah, exactly.
link |
00:51:20.200
Yeah, exactly, I can't give you a pass on that.
link |
00:51:22.920
But basically, intentionally misunderstanding
link |
00:51:24.840
what's going on.
link |
00:51:25.800
But what I find funny is that,
link |
00:51:29.520
hey, we gotta be careful what we believe.
link |
00:51:32.000
And again, back to the cancel culture thing
link |
00:51:33.760
that we discussed last time as well,
link |
00:51:35.440
where would I like to apologize?
link |
00:51:37.680
I mean, no, actually something about cancel culture
link |
00:51:39.280
that we've been seeing things culturally,
link |
00:51:40.640
I'm like, I will be damned if I apologize for anything
link |
00:51:43.360
that I don't need to apologize for
link |
00:51:44.640
because I was intentionally misunderstood in that instance.
link |
00:51:46.960
Now, you could say that I'm not a historical scholar,
link |
00:51:50.600
which I would agree immediately.
link |
00:51:51.480
And also that I oftentimes in eloquently
link |
00:51:54.200
or inarticulately phrase things, which I'll agree is again.
link |
00:51:57.520
But ultimately, going, hey, I wanna make you believe,
link |
00:52:01.040
live in the world that you're suggesting ought to exist.
link |
00:52:05.800
Okay, so if there's no free will,
link |
00:52:10.400
how far of a step back are we willing to take cosmically
link |
00:52:13.120
before we start going, hey, this is good
link |
00:52:15.280
because we're experiencing a social reckoning
link |
00:52:18.840
in our country at the moment,
link |
00:52:20.600
for good and for other probably, I guess.
link |
00:52:23.880
And basically, but hey, it all worked out, right?
link |
00:52:27.120
So that's probably not something that would fly.
link |
00:52:30.520
And I think that's a fair thing.
link |
00:52:32.440
That's interesting.
link |
00:52:33.720
It might not fly from the individual perspective,
link |
00:52:35.560
but if you zoom out and think,
link |
00:52:38.400
appreciate society as just like an ant colony
link |
00:52:42.840
as a beautifully complex system,
link |
00:52:45.040
like we kinda, from the individual perspective,
link |
00:52:49.200
we value progress, especially progress of the individual,
link |
00:52:52.640
but in whole progress of societies.
link |
00:52:54.840
But if you accept that this is just a complex system
link |
00:52:57.280
that's not necessarily headed anywhere,
link |
00:52:59.760
that this is almost like that river is just flowing,
link |
00:53:02.920
I think that removes the burden of always striving,
link |
00:53:07.440
of always trying, of always like the struggle and so on.
link |
00:53:10.560
So it's possible that if we have no control,
link |
00:53:13.960
you can like arrive at some kind of other zen state.
link |
00:53:17.040
Does that sound very human though?
link |
00:53:18.640
That goes against, I think,
link |
00:53:24.440
our current human condition as we experience it,
link |
00:53:29.560
but we've communicated that to each other.
link |
00:53:31.280
Like we've taught, like through these social forces,
link |
00:53:34.440
taught each other that our lives matter and so on.
link |
00:53:38.120
Maybe if we convince ourselves
link |
00:53:40.520
that we're just sort of like little things in a stream
link |
00:53:45.560
and ultimately none of it matters,
link |
00:53:47.360
there might be some kind of enjoyment
link |
00:53:48.720
to be discovered through that process.
link |
00:53:50.120
I don't, listen, I'm a capitalist, rah, rah, like.
link |
00:53:54.160
But I guess I think you bring up a really important point.
link |
00:53:56.120
I guess almost anything like capitalism,
link |
00:53:58.280
I only get to experience it as I sit here now
link |
00:54:01.720
and I get to live, I was raised in the United States,
link |
00:54:03.960
have traveled around the world a little bit,
link |
00:54:05.480
have had the good fortune of meeting many people
link |
00:54:07.840
from many different places.
link |
00:54:09.200
And I'm an end user of capitalism.
link |
00:54:12.840
I don't really know how it got here,
link |
00:54:14.320
whether it was, I wasn't there at the start of this idea.
link |
00:54:16.760
I wasn't there for, hey, how did we come up with this idea?
link |
00:54:19.280
How did we arrive?
link |
00:54:20.120
And I'm nowhere near well read enough
link |
00:54:20.960
to understand any of that really even secondhand.
link |
00:54:24.920
And I guess recognizing that communism,
link |
00:54:27.360
Marxism, socialism, anarchism, anything is,
link |
00:54:30.580
these are all perspectives that all have,
link |
00:54:33.200
I guess, various strengths and weaknesses.
link |
00:54:35.580
But I guess one thing I'm always,
link |
00:54:37.760
I guess I would say the burden,
link |
00:54:39.080
it seems to me that if you wanna make a change,
link |
00:54:42.280
the burden of proof is on the person
link |
00:54:45.880
implying that there needs to be a change.
link |
00:54:47.720
And it doesn't mean that there's nothing there,
link |
00:54:49.860
but it's like if you wanna create a small shift,
link |
00:54:51.840
a ripple, that's fine,
link |
00:54:52.680
but a seismic ripping shift in how we exist
link |
00:54:55.680
or how we experience the world as human beings.
link |
00:54:57.360
And you mentioned fighting,
link |
00:54:58.460
why watching someone undergo,
link |
00:55:01.120
take abuse on a level in the ring that's just shocking
link |
00:55:05.120
and then triumph in spite of it is like,
link |
00:55:07.800
this is unbelievable.
link |
00:55:09.200
This is part of the magic of combat sports.
link |
00:55:11.660
Now, it's part of the magic,
link |
00:55:13.080
the other side of the magic
link |
00:55:13.920
that doesn't get talked about sometimes
link |
00:55:15.120
is that the trajectory of that individual's life later on
link |
00:55:19.000
is not always great,
link |
00:55:20.600
or let me rephrase, there's a cost for that.
link |
00:55:22.760
But if we remember, you mentioned removing the struggle.
link |
00:55:28.160
I don't personally, the struggle is what makes life life.
link |
00:55:33.040
And also, I guess, something Faraz has brought up to me
link |
00:55:35.480
on a number of occasions, and it makes sense to me,
link |
00:55:38.640
it's basically humans only understand things
link |
00:55:42.480
through relative comparison.
link |
00:55:43.760
I only understand heat because I've known cold.
link |
00:55:47.680
I only understand, it's like talking to someone
link |
00:55:50.180
that's never experienced any sort of hardship
link |
00:55:52.400
and then their latte isn't right,
link |
00:55:54.440
and then they pitch a fit
link |
00:55:56.320
versus someone that's gone through
link |
00:55:57.720
a great deal of challenge, struggle in their life.
link |
00:56:00.940
They tend to have a little bit more of an even perspective.
link |
00:56:03.680
And anyway, and of course, even as a relative thing
link |
00:56:07.360
and what I perceive to be even may not be even,
link |
00:56:09.120
maybe I'm particularly softer
link |
00:56:10.600
or something in the other direction without realizing,
link |
00:56:12.680
because I can only understand what I can understand.
link |
00:56:14.640
But the idea that we wanna fundamentally alter ourselves
link |
00:56:19.400
as a species and as people
link |
00:56:21.040
seems like an incredibly, incredibly high bar to prove,
link |
00:56:25.360
and also like an incredibly dangerous idea,
link |
00:56:27.800
because it always comes back to,
link |
00:56:29.200
well, who's gonna be responsible for this?
link |
00:56:31.080
Who gets to do the choosing?
link |
00:56:32.600
What's a good idea?
link |
00:56:33.440
What's not a good idea?
link |
00:56:34.280
And I guess that actually brings me kind of to a,
link |
00:56:36.440
something I've been encountering recently
link |
00:56:38.080
in discussions with friends.
link |
00:56:40.200
I feel like there's only two types of people
link |
00:56:42.720
that I encounter at this point.
link |
00:56:46.120
People with a more or less libertarian tilt
link |
00:56:48.920
to their thinking and people without it.
link |
00:56:51.200
And when I say libertarian,
link |
00:56:52.240
I don't mean that in the political party sense
link |
00:56:54.120
or even the belief system.
link |
00:56:55.400
Basically, I'm like, hey, you do you buddy.
link |
00:56:57.880
It's not my, what you're up to is not my concern
link |
00:57:00.320
versus what you're up to is my concern.
link |
00:57:01.960
And I guess I've always watched,
link |
00:57:03.720
various points in history, people on this side
link |
00:57:05.480
or people on that side are more or less,
link |
00:57:08.800
I guess, problematic, I guess you could say.
link |
00:57:10.920
And I don't mean that in the internet sense,
link |
00:57:13.480
you know, more of an issue,
link |
00:57:15.160
but the world is always full of people
link |
00:57:18.520
that wanna tell you what you need to be doing
link |
00:57:20.920
as opposed to more or less doing no harm.
link |
00:57:22.760
And I guess that's one of the ones,
link |
00:57:24.040
anytime I'm trying to tell other people what to do,
link |
00:57:26.880
I better hope I'm right.
link |
00:57:28.040
And it's bizarre to me how many people are so confident
link |
00:57:30.640
that their side or their position is the one
link |
00:57:33.080
that's not only right for them,
link |
00:57:34.320
but right enough that they can enforce it on others.
link |
00:57:36.440
And that just seems incredibly dangerous to me.
link |
00:57:38.840
And I guess that comes back to even Sam's point
link |
00:57:41.400
about, oh, we want to,
link |
00:57:43.600
trying to spread the idea that free will doesn't exist.
link |
00:57:46.240
I'm not saying it's damaging, but it very well may be.
link |
00:57:48.440
And plenty of other things could be as well.
link |
00:57:50.000
I'm not, you know, it goes way over my head
link |
00:57:52.000
as to the implications of all of these.
link |
00:57:53.760
And I guess all of us are in evangelist for something,
link |
00:57:56.320
but I guess it's weird that we've gotten this far
link |
00:58:00.880
as a species and now we wanna take like sharp, sharp turns.
link |
00:58:05.280
Well, we've been taking a bunch of sharp turns
link |
00:58:06.840
throughout history.
link |
00:58:07.680
Yeah.
link |
00:58:08.520
That's what, you know, that's the way,
link |
00:58:11.680
you know, okay, humans love power.
link |
00:58:13.960
And one way to attain power is to say,
link |
00:58:16.060
everything that you guys are doing is wrong
link |
00:58:18.160
and I have the right thing
link |
00:58:19.320
and I'm gonna build up a giant cult of people
link |
00:58:21.880
and I'm gonna overthrow.
link |
00:58:23.520
And indirectly what that results in me is me gaining power.
link |
00:58:27.240
And that's how you get all the big revolutions
link |
00:58:30.200
in human history, saying I'm done with the thing
link |
00:58:32.800
that the powerful are currently doing.
link |
00:58:35.160
So I'm gonna overthrow.
link |
00:58:36.240
That's where probably all the identity politics
link |
00:58:39.800
that's happening now is people that didn't have power before
link |
00:58:43.180
are looking to gain power.
link |
00:58:45.040
And they're also, you know,
link |
00:58:46.580
that's where Jordan Peterson criticized identity politics
link |
00:58:49.740
is people with the right, with the good intentions,
link |
00:58:53.920
I should say, are in seeking power,
link |
00:58:57.960
allow power to corrupt them as power always does.
link |
00:59:01.840
And so they lose track of like the devils
link |
00:59:07.280
that they're fighting by becoming the same kind of devils,
link |
00:59:11.360
the same kind of evil that they're fighting.
link |
00:59:13.800
And so that's just the progress of human history.
link |
00:59:15.960
But hopefully as these power greedy people
link |
00:59:20.400
keep attaining power with a progressive mindset,
link |
00:59:24.720
over time things get better and better as they have been.
link |
00:59:27.080
Like each iteration?
link |
00:59:27.960
Each iteration.
link |
00:59:29.080
A lot of unfairness happens.
link |
00:59:31.600
A lot of hypocrisy happens.
link |
00:59:35.160
A lot of people are trampled along the way
link |
00:59:38.280
by those who mean well.
link |
00:59:40.480
But over time, like lessons are learned
link |
00:59:42.520
or like human civilization accumulates lessons
link |
00:59:46.360
and in part learns lessons of history
link |
00:59:49.240
and it gets better and better over time,
link |
00:59:50.800
even though in the short term,
link |
00:59:52.840
there's people acting not their best selves.
link |
00:59:55.380
And you know, that seems to be the progress
link |
00:59:59.840
of human history.
link |
01:00:01.160
The idea of internalizing the free will not being real.
link |
01:00:05.480
I mean, you're actually making me realize
link |
01:00:07.320
that that ultimately leads to a kind of.
link |
01:00:11.080
Doesn't that go in a nihilistic direction?
link |
01:00:12.680
Yeah, it's both nihilistic
link |
01:00:14.660
or if you want to make it a political system,
link |
01:00:16.840
then it's more like communist type of a system
link |
01:00:19.820
where like the value of the individual
link |
01:00:22.560
is completely reduced, removed.
link |
01:00:25.960
Or another perspective is like the freedom of an individual
link |
01:00:30.640
is not to be valued or protected.
link |
01:00:32.400
And so from our current perspective,
link |
01:00:35.240
the systems that seem to have worked,
link |
01:00:36.760
the United States works pretty damn well,
link |
01:00:39.560
despite all the different criticisms.
link |
01:00:41.240
It seems like freedom of the individual
link |
01:00:44.040
in all its forms seems to be fundamental
link |
01:00:47.240
to the success of the United States.
link |
01:00:49.400
And so we should, it's a, however the hell you put it,
link |
01:00:53.560
is like, it doesn't matter whether free will
link |
01:00:55.840
is or isn't an illusion.
link |
01:00:58.040
The belief that it's real.
link |
01:01:00.920
Protects the individual from the group,
link |
01:01:02.480
which is fundamentally, correct me if I'm wrong,
link |
01:01:04.160
that always seems like the big issue of history.
link |
01:01:06.520
Hey, there's more of me than there is of you.
link |
01:01:09.380
Deal with it.
link |
01:01:10.220
You're like, yikes.
link |
01:01:11.640
And you want to be yourself.
link |
01:01:12.800
You want to be different.
link |
01:01:13.640
You want to have a different religion.
link |
01:01:14.840
You want to be a different skin color.
link |
01:01:15.960
You want to do this.
link |
01:01:16.800
All the bad tribal things happen
link |
01:01:19.040
when there's more of me than you.
link |
01:01:20.880
Correct me if I'm wrong.
link |
01:01:21.720
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
link |
01:01:23.320
But then that's always the fundamental
link |
01:01:24.440
power imbalance though, right?
link |
01:01:26.120
Well, the interesting thing about the libertarian thinking,
link |
01:01:28.520
I guess I, I don't know.
link |
01:01:30.000
Those words are really.
link |
01:01:30.840
Maybe they're all charged, I know actually.
link |
01:01:32.080
Yeah, they're all charged.
link |
01:01:33.000
I may not scale up, but I mean,
link |
01:01:34.760
more like on a philosophical underpinning
link |
01:01:36.320
where you're like, yeah, basically,
link |
01:01:37.480
hey, you feel free to believe I'm a fool.
link |
01:01:39.800
And I mean, plenty of people do, I'm sure.
link |
01:01:42.120
But as long as you don't chase me down the hall
link |
01:01:44.940
and hit me in the back of the head with a textbook,
link |
01:01:47.240
what's the big deal?
link |
01:01:48.200
Yeah, so the libertarian viewpoint,
link |
01:01:50.760
which I probably espouse, like that's,
link |
01:01:53.120
I'm very much like freedom of the individual
link |
01:01:57.320
is very valuable and like leave others the fuck alone
link |
01:02:00.720
unless they're trying to hurt you.
link |
01:02:02.960
The thing is you also have to, I believe,
link |
01:02:05.920
put in the work of empathy of understanding
link |
01:02:09.640
what others, how, what leaving people
link |
01:02:13.040
the fuck alone means to others.
link |
01:02:14.880
But isn't that an interesting thing?
link |
01:02:16.160
If I believe in freedom of the individual
link |
01:02:18.640
and I take that, like all of these, like you said,
link |
01:02:20.300
you take them past just their first why question.
link |
01:02:22.960
You ask why, why, why, why, or how, how, how, how many times.
link |
01:02:26.240
Should that not extend to respect for you,
link |
01:02:28.720
respect for your position,
link |
01:02:29.860
respect for your individual lived experience,
link |
01:02:32.120
which could be grossly different than mine.
link |
01:02:34.560
Yeah, this is the problem with saying,
link |
01:02:36.520
I'm an individual, I'm not gonna bother you,
link |
01:02:38.840
you don't bother me.
link |
01:02:40.360
That's just like, that's not actionable.
link |
01:02:43.180
Because to be, to make it actionable,
link |
01:02:45.680
you have to think the why, why, why, why, why,
link |
01:02:47.680
you have to do the steps beyond.
link |
01:02:49.560
You think, what does that actually mean?
link |
01:02:50.880
That means understanding how even my very existence
link |
01:02:55.920
like hurts others.
link |
01:02:57.320
Because you have to understand that like,
link |
01:03:00.120
I'm not, you're not just sitting alone in a room.
link |
01:03:02.220
You're using like public transit,
link |
01:03:04.880
you're using the police force,
link |
01:03:06.120
you're using firefighters, you're using the,
link |
01:03:09.080
like you're using a lot of resources
link |
01:03:11.160
that are publicly shared.
link |
01:03:12.900
And some of those resources are unfairly distributed.
link |
01:03:17.900
Like we've agreed that we're gonna pay taxes
link |
01:03:21.820
and those taxes are gonna go towards
link |
01:03:24.180
building some kind of infrastructure.
link |
01:03:25.980
So that's already towards social.
link |
01:03:27.740
So you're not a real, you're not a real sort of,
link |
01:03:31.140
I talked to Michael Malice, like anarchist, right?
link |
01:03:33.220
Saying like basically, full, just leave me the fuck alone
link |
01:03:37.780
and I'm going to collaborate with whoever the hell I want.
link |
01:03:40.860
We're not, that's not the American society
link |
01:03:43.900
as it stands currently.
link |
01:03:45.500
We've agreed that there's going to be
link |
01:03:47.900
certain social institutions that we pay into.
link |
01:03:51.700
And some of the sort of discussions about race
link |
01:03:55.100
and all those kinds of things
link |
01:03:57.780
is about those institutions being institutionally unfair,
link |
01:04:03.860
whether it's race or gender, all those kinds of things.
link |
01:04:05.980
Listen, I have a bunch of criticisms
link |
01:04:09.580
of the way that conversation carries itself out,
link |
01:04:11.980
but the thing is, what's valuable is to actually listen
link |
01:04:15.580
and empathize.
link |
01:04:16.860
And that's not often talked about
link |
01:04:20.500
with the leave me the fuck alone mindset
link |
01:04:23.340
because you're, it doesn't have that little component
link |
01:04:29.420
which I think could be fundamental
link |
01:04:31.580
to the function of a society, which is like social.
link |
01:04:34.220
Like it's the, what is it, the Obama, you didn't build it
link |
01:04:38.900
or you didn't build it alone or whatever,
link |
01:04:41.220
however that goes.
link |
01:04:42.060
But basically we wouldn't be able to accomplish anything
link |
01:04:45.580
as individuals without the help of others.
link |
01:04:48.140
And to be able to then start to think,
link |
01:04:50.460
okay, so what is my duty?
link |
01:04:54.940
What is my responsibility to other human beings
link |
01:04:57.580
to be respectful, to be loving, to help them
link |
01:05:01.140
as part of this functioning society?
link |
01:05:03.020
That starts, that's actually a lot of work
link |
01:05:04.860
to start to think about that.
link |
01:05:06.300
Because then I have to like think,
link |
01:05:07.460
okay, Ryan, what's his life like?
link |
01:05:09.580
As a business owner during COVID, what's that like?
link |
01:05:12.980
And then he has, there's employees that run the gym.
link |
01:05:16.340
What's that like?
link |
01:05:17.220
What's that stress like?
link |
01:05:18.620
Or about the fighting and the injury and so on.
link |
01:05:20.340
What's that like?
link |
01:05:21.180
That empathy takes a lot of like compute cycles.
link |
01:05:24.380
And also a lot of energy, right?
link |
01:05:26.740
But I have to go through that computation
link |
01:05:29.220
if I want to be an individual that's like,
link |
01:05:34.060
doesn't hurt you.
link |
01:05:35.860
If I may, I guess like to come back to Muhammad Ali,
link |
01:05:38.740
one of the things he said is service to others
link |
01:05:40.420
is the rent that you pay for your,
link |
01:05:43.620
is the price you pay for your rent here on earth.
link |
01:05:45.500
And now one of the things that I think that I see
link |
01:05:48.620
as a result of the internet all the time
link |
01:05:50.060
is people talking about global giant problems,
link |
01:05:53.740
social problems that are society wide,
link |
01:05:56.540
that are massive, truly massive.
link |
01:05:59.060
And frankly, beyond the power of any of us to solve.
link |
01:06:04.220
That's certainly on an individual level.
link |
01:06:06.060
So I've discussed things with friends.
link |
01:06:08.420
Like my father's an environmental attorney,
link |
01:06:10.260
like has been for a long time
link |
01:06:12.340
and has been an engineer for a long time.
link |
01:06:14.220
And so I'm not, barely know anything,
link |
01:06:17.340
but I'm read in a little bit of various things.
link |
01:06:19.460
But climate change, oh my God,
link |
01:06:21.980
I'm so concerned about climate change.
link |
01:06:23.820
What am I supposed to do about climate change?
link |
01:06:25.420
I'll tell you what I can do is I can not litter.
link |
01:06:27.540
I can try to conserve energy where I can.
link |
01:06:30.260
I can do whatever I want.
link |
01:06:31.340
What can I personally do about some giant social problem
link |
01:06:36.340
that I didn't start and is out of my control?
link |
01:06:40.260
I'm like, well, I can be decent to the people around me.
link |
01:06:42.780
I can mention, I can demonstrate empathy
link |
01:06:44.620
and I can demonstrate consideration
link |
01:06:46.180
for the people in my circle.
link |
01:06:47.780
And to the extent that I can the people outside of my circle,
link |
01:06:50.400
but yelling at the trees over problems
link |
01:06:53.440
that are borderline cosmic, doesn't seem very productive.
link |
01:06:57.220
It just makes me feel like I'm cool and important
link |
01:06:59.420
because I'm talking about something,
link |
01:07:00.740
well, hundreds of years from now, the water will rise.
link |
01:07:02.700
Maybe it will, maybe it won't.
link |
01:07:04.060
It's completely on my head, I know nothing.
link |
01:07:06.180
But focusing on the problems that we can actually solve,
link |
01:07:09.340
it comes back to the same thing.
link |
01:07:10.480
I want to win a fight.
link |
01:07:11.420
I would love to win a fight.
link |
01:07:13.300
I can't control that.
link |
01:07:14.180
What I can do is I can control each individual step
link |
01:07:16.320
that I take around the ring
link |
01:07:17.260
and try to make the next correct move.
link |
01:07:19.200
I can't look, no, it gets people's,
link |
01:07:22.420
you know, they get all excited.
link |
01:07:24.220
You know, I'm trying to keep my language in check,
link |
01:07:25.900
but they get all excited thinking about, you know,
link |
01:07:28.140
problems that are like Superman
link |
01:07:30.460
couldn't solve these problems.
link |
01:07:32.340
Like you could be that powerful
link |
01:07:34.140
and you can't make all of the bad things go away,
link |
01:07:36.500
but you can absolutely change yourself.
link |
01:07:38.380
And I think a lot of the lessons that, you know,
link |
01:07:40.540
like the good lessons from religion that happened,
link |
01:07:42.860
the good lessons from the great men and women
link |
01:07:44.620
throughout history that we're inspired by,
link |
01:07:47.340
that talk about change starting with within,
link |
01:07:50.020
and, you know, again,
link |
01:07:50.980
treating the people around you decently
link |
01:07:52.620
and treating the people around you decently
link |
01:07:53.980
doesn't even necessarily mean the golden rule.
link |
01:07:55.920
Do unto others as you would like them to do to you.
link |
01:07:57.940
I go, well, maybe what I would like
link |
01:08:00.220
and what this person would like aren't the same thing.
link |
01:08:02.060
Well, how am I going to get to the bottom of that?
link |
01:08:03.420
Cause I could be attempting to be decent to this person.
link |
01:08:05.780
And by my standards, I am being decent,
link |
01:08:07.300
but maybe I'm missing the mark by theirs.
link |
01:08:09.820
Well, I can't possibly, if I just interacted with you,
link |
01:08:13.140
like it's like someone talking about
link |
01:08:14.180
some nonsense microaggression.
link |
01:08:15.540
You're like, so let me get this straight.
link |
01:08:16.600
I've never met you before.
link |
01:08:17.440
You never met me before.
link |
01:08:18.700
And you're interpreting some minor comment
link |
01:08:20.720
that I've made in the least charitable way possible.
link |
01:08:24.240
I'm not saying that you couldn't be annoyed,
link |
01:08:25.980
but your expectation for that level of consideration
link |
01:08:29.140
is you're going to be disappointed a lot.
link |
01:08:31.960
Now, if you, if we're someone that's in your life
link |
01:08:34.540
on a consistent basis and they're like,
link |
01:08:35.980
hey, I really don't appreciate what you're saying
link |
01:08:37.300
or what you're doing here.
link |
01:08:38.140
Do you realize that this is how I'm,
link |
01:08:40.020
this is how I'm perceiving you go, oh man, I'm so sorry.
link |
01:08:42.340
Of course I would hear what you have to say,
link |
01:08:44.200
but I guess trying to recognize that, you know,
link |
01:08:47.580
I guess my job is to treat others with dignity in general,
link |
01:08:52.480
but that level of the level of specificity that,
link |
01:08:55.060
that, that, that requires increases
link |
01:08:56.940
as it gets closer to you.
link |
01:08:58.340
And I have, as a person,
link |
01:08:59.860
I have a very finite amount of resources financially,
link |
01:09:02.820
intellectually, emotionally, physically.
link |
01:09:05.680
If I chuck, you know, 0.001% of it
link |
01:09:08.480
in every single different direction, what am I doing?
link |
01:09:11.320
It's like when people are like,
link |
01:09:12.160
oh, I care deeply about Tibet.
link |
01:09:13.820
I'm like, why aren't you over there?
link |
01:09:15.180
Go build a house, man.
link |
01:09:16.460
Get on a plane, go build a house.
link |
01:09:18.580
Oh, you don't want to do that.
link |
01:09:19.520
So really what you want to do is post on Facebook
link |
01:09:21.500
and, and, and accept high fives
link |
01:09:23.160
for how much of a good guy you are.
link |
01:09:24.680
I got an idea.
link |
01:09:25.660
Go help somebody in your neighborhood.
link |
01:09:27.180
Go be, go play with, go play with some kids.
link |
01:09:29.420
Go be a friend to someone that doesn't have a friend.
link |
01:09:31.780
Read a book, try to educate yourself.
link |
01:09:33.740
And so I guess to, to come back,
link |
01:09:35.460
it's all of these problems aren't solvable on a grand scale,
link |
01:09:38.920
but it's almost like by attempting to address them
link |
01:09:41.740
in our personal lives, we do better.
link |
01:09:43.700
But rather than a giant airing of the grievances
link |
01:09:46.440
on a, on a consistent basis,
link |
01:09:48.300
not that that isn't, you know,
link |
01:09:49.340
sometimes necessary and valuable,
link |
01:09:51.300
but after you air your grievances, you go,
link |
01:09:53.740
hey, how about we, we sort this out?
link |
01:09:55.380
What's the next step?
link |
01:09:56.720
And, and I guess, again,
link |
01:09:58.220
when we're trying to address it on a giant social level,
link |
01:10:01.220
it just seems unmanageable to me,
link |
01:10:02.420
even if you have the best of intentions.
link |
01:10:04.580
Yeah, I mean, but nevertheless, there's,
link |
01:10:06.740
there's a lot you can do on social networks.
link |
01:10:09.340
I mean, I enjoy tweeting and consuming Twitter.
link |
01:10:12.980
It's just, I apply the exact same principle
link |
01:10:15.260
that you just said, which is free will and discussion,
link |
01:10:19.380
which is like, I approach it in a way
link |
01:10:23.500
that I don't get stuck in this loop that's counterproductive.
link |
01:10:27.480
I try to do things that are productive.
link |
01:10:30.660
And like, it's just like you said,
link |
01:10:32.540
that's like, like what kind of things can I do in this world?
link |
01:10:36.420
Whether that's tweeting or building things,
link |
01:10:38.620
those are low effort tweeting,
link |
01:10:41.040
or actually building businesses
link |
01:10:42.540
or building ideas out as high effort.
link |
01:10:45.700
What can I do that will actually solve problems?
link |
01:10:47.780
And that's, that's the way I approach it.
link |
01:10:49.780
And I do wonder if it's possible to at scale,
link |
01:10:53.020
encourage each other to approach like social media
link |
01:10:56.540
and communication with fellow humans in that way.
link |
01:10:58.980
I don't know.
link |
01:10:59.820
How do you think that would be done?
link |
01:11:00.940
I guess, like to improve the,
link |
01:11:02.140
improve the quality of discourse, maybe.
link |
01:11:03.860
Like, or even like you said,
link |
01:11:04.820
the empathy or the decency of discourse.
link |
01:11:07.100
I think people should be, you know,
link |
01:11:10.060
incentivized, encouraged to do that.
link |
01:11:12.100
I think most of what's,
link |
01:11:14.900
we see happening on Twitter and Facebook and so on
link |
01:11:18.260
has to do with very small,
link |
01:11:20.740
very powerful implementation details.
link |
01:11:25.060
It goes down to like, what is the source
link |
01:11:27.420
of the dopamine rush, the like button,
link |
01:11:30.500
the sharing mechanisms,
link |
01:11:32.500
just even small tweaks in those can fix a lot.
link |
01:11:35.460
Really?
link |
01:11:36.300
I believe so.
link |
01:11:37.140
So like a lot, a lot of the stuff we see now
link |
01:11:39.300
is the result of just initial implementations
link |
01:11:41.940
of these systems that we didn't anticipate.
link |
01:11:44.700
So the modernization comes from engagement
link |
01:11:49.220
and the tools we have is clicking like and sharing.
link |
01:11:54.060
It was not always obvious.
link |
01:11:55.740
It was not obvious from the beginning.
link |
01:11:57.180
It wasn't obvious while Twitter and Facebook grew
link |
01:12:00.180
that there's a big dopamine rush
link |
01:12:01.860
from getting more followers and likes and shares.
link |
01:12:05.180
So we've gotten addicted to this feeling
link |
01:12:06.980
like how many people are commenting,
link |
01:12:08.300
how many people are saying, like clicking like and so on.
link |
01:12:12.100
So that's that dopamine rush.
link |
01:12:13.420
So we want to say the thing that will get the most likes
link |
01:12:16.340
and like unmasked in society.
link |
01:12:19.900
And then the other thing that was expected
link |
01:12:22.140
is the controversial, the divisive will get the most likes.
link |
01:12:25.780
So it had to do with the initial mechanisms
link |
01:12:28.780
of likes and shares resulting in an outcome
link |
01:12:32.020
that was unpredicted, which is huge amounts of division
link |
01:12:35.740
irrespective of like any of the basics of human connection
link |
01:12:41.380
that we've actually all come to understand
link |
01:12:43.380
that society is valuable at the individual level
link |
01:12:46.500
like we're saying, but unmasked what results
link |
01:12:49.900
is like you throw all that out
link |
01:12:51.460
and it's all just divisive at scale discourse.
link |
01:12:57.820
I think it could be fixed by incentivizing personal growth
link |
01:13:02.100
like incentivizing you to challenge yourself
link |
01:13:05.380
to grows individual and most importantly
link |
01:13:08.780
to be happy at the end of the day.
link |
01:13:11.460
So like incentivize you feeling good
link |
01:13:16.460
in a way that's long lasting longterm.
link |
01:13:21.820
I think what makes people actually feel good
link |
01:13:24.260
is being kind to others longterm.
link |
01:13:27.540
In the short term what feels good is getting a lot of likes.
link |
01:13:31.260
And I think those are just different incentives
link |
01:13:34.660
that if implemented correctly
link |
01:13:36.540
you can just build social networks
link |
01:13:37.960
that would do much better.
link |
01:13:38.900
So do you think it comes from a structural perspective?
link |
01:13:41.060
I guess at what point does you mention like
link |
01:13:42.820
you mentioned free will and also you mentioned
link |
01:13:44.820
feeling good and again working hard.
link |
01:13:47.460
I know that you have the, I guess the, was it a race or?
link |
01:13:51.700
No, it's the Goggins thing.
link |
01:13:54.420
It's four by four by 48 challenge
link |
01:13:57.460
where you run four miles every four hours for two days.
link |
01:14:00.620
That's awesome.
link |
01:14:01.460
Yeah, it's a bunch of, the challenge of it
link |
01:14:05.740
isn't just the running, the running is very tough
link |
01:14:07.780
but it's mostly the sleep deprivation
link |
01:14:09.860
because you're just training every four hours.
link |
01:14:11.780
But it's a struggle, right?
link |
01:14:13.340
But the struggle gives meaning.
link |
01:14:14.860
And ultimately I guess so how can we,
link |
01:14:17.540
because you mentioned like you said adjusting things
link |
01:14:19.260
on like a, I guess like a programming level almost,
link |
01:14:22.940
based programming level so that the interface
link |
01:14:24.620
is different for the user.
link |
01:14:25.740
But at what point does the user have a responsibility
link |
01:14:28.620
to as a man or a woman or a person
link |
01:14:31.400
to just behave more decently?
link |
01:14:34.300
How can we I guess utilize, what can we do?
link |
01:14:37.420
It seems like our society is so grossly missing
link |
01:14:40.960
like a Martin Luther King right now,
link |
01:14:42.360
like the great inspiring characters
link |
01:14:44.540
throughout American history, throughout world history.
link |
01:14:46.940
Where are the great leaders?
link |
01:14:48.540
So leadership is part of it, but that's definitely,
link |
01:14:51.800
where are the great leaders is a very good question.
link |
01:14:53.740
That's more of a question of our political systems
link |
01:14:56.780
why they're not pushing forward the great leaders.
link |
01:14:58.940
But there's also just, okay,
link |
01:15:02.780
there's some just basic engineering shit
link |
01:15:05.460
which is when you and I, when you Ryan and I
link |
01:15:10.020
are in a room alone and we're talking,
link |
01:15:13.100
even if we're strangers, the incentives
link |
01:15:15.660
are for us to get along.
link |
01:15:17.780
Like just when we're together in person,
link |
01:15:20.420
that's what I'm saying.
link |
01:15:21.260
I'm not even saying some kind of profound.
link |
01:15:22.700
But when you remove that.
link |
01:15:23.780
When we remove that, the implementation
link |
01:15:26.700
of social networks as they stand right now
link |
01:15:30.500
in the digital space, a very different set of incentives.
link |
01:15:33.920
It's more fun to destroy others, to be shitty to others.
link |
01:15:38.100
And it becomes this endless loop, like you were saying,
link |
01:15:43.620
that's ultimately destructive and not productive.
link |
01:15:45.720
And I think it has to do with just the interfaces
link |
01:15:49.480
of making it feel good to be nice to others.
link |
01:15:54.420
Because currently it doesn't feel nearly as good
link |
01:15:58.220
to be nice to others on the internet.
link |
01:16:01.060
And it doesn't feel nearly as bad as it does in real life
link |
01:16:05.800
to be shitty to others on the internet.
link |
01:16:07.520
So the incentives are just wrong.
link |
01:16:09.380
I think there is a technology solution to this,
link |
01:16:13.300
or at least a solution to improve
link |
01:16:15.820
this communication mechanism.
link |
01:16:17.820
It's not obvious how.
link |
01:16:19.020
I have a bunch of sort of more detailed ideas,
link |
01:16:20.780
but this is fascinating because I've gotten a chance
link |
01:16:24.540
to talk to Jack Dorsey quite a bit.
link |
01:16:26.260
He's the CEO of Twitter.
link |
01:16:27.820
And he is legitimately has, in this conversation,
link |
01:16:34.340
he would agree with everything.
link |
01:16:35.780
And he's a good human being,
link |
01:16:38.620
and he has a lot of really good ideas how to improve things.
link |
01:16:41.140
The question when you're a captain of a ship,
link |
01:16:44.220
whether it's a question whether a CEO is even a captain,
link |
01:16:48.020
how much can you actually steer that ship
link |
01:16:49.960
once it's gotten large enough?
link |
01:16:51.380
There's so much momentum, there's so many users,
link |
01:16:53.440
there's so many people who are marketing and PR and lawyers.
link |
01:16:57.140
It's very difficult to change things.
link |
01:16:59.220
Is it difficult because of the fallout,
link |
01:17:01.740
or is it difficult because it's actually
link |
01:17:03.220
like literally out of this power?
link |
01:17:05.860
So power is weird when you have a large organization.
link |
01:17:09.260
This is why the great leaders,
link |
01:17:11.340
this is what great leaders do,
link |
01:17:12.780
whether it's presidents or leaders of companies.
link |
01:17:15.500
Steve Jobs, I would argue Musk is that way,
link |
01:17:18.420
is to walk into a room full of people
link |
01:17:20.740
who don't want you to create drama.
link |
01:17:23.220
It's weird, man.
link |
01:17:24.980
When people just kind of want to be nice,
link |
01:17:28.460
the niceness creates momentum and nobody wants to,
link |
01:17:32.140
it's the systems thing.
link |
01:17:33.260
Everybody just behaves in the way
link |
01:17:34.660
they were previously behaving
link |
01:17:36.600
in the way they're supposed to behave,
link |
01:17:38.660
and nobody wants to raise a fuss.
link |
01:17:40.760
It takes a great man or woman leader to step in and say,
link |
01:17:45.300
what we've been doing is bullshit.
link |
01:17:48.380
Okay, you're fired, you're cool.
link |
01:17:50.780
What is it that?
link |
01:17:51.820
I'm out.
link |
01:17:53.140
I think you have to create constant revolutions
link |
01:17:56.920
within a company that's very, very difficult to do.
link |
01:17:59.780
Structurally and psychologically, it's very difficult to do,
link |
01:18:03.020
to be able to sort of, yeah,
link |
01:18:05.860
to constantly challenge the way things have been done
link |
01:18:08.420
in the past, which is why another way it's often done
link |
01:18:13.300
is a startup, like a small company,
link |
01:18:15.380
basically a small company becomes really successful
link |
01:18:18.300
and then no longer can turn the ship,
link |
01:18:20.660
so a new startup comes along, a new competitor
link |
01:18:23.540
that then challenges the big ship,
link |
01:18:25.460
and then that starts out the winner.
link |
01:18:27.180
That's like Google came to be,
link |
01:18:28.980
so Twitter came to be, and Facebook, and so on.
link |
01:18:31.920
And Apple has, that was the dream of Steve Jobs
link |
01:18:36.780
is it would succeed for many decades, for like centuries.
link |
01:18:40.820
That was the idea that you would keep creating revolutions,
link |
01:18:44.460
and under Steve Jobs, Apple successfully pivoted
link |
01:18:48.660
a bunch of times, just like reinvented themselves,
link |
01:18:51.640
which is very difficult to do.
link |
01:18:53.340
Because I mean, I've heard, at least I don't know
link |
01:18:54.780
if this is accurate, because I wouldn't know anything,
link |
01:18:56.320
but I've heard plenty of people complain about Steve Jobs.
link |
01:18:58.900
Yeah.
link |
01:18:59.740
But in reality, the reason that all of these amazing things
link |
01:19:03.100
were done was because this person was willing to,
link |
01:19:05.220
well obviously brilliant, and then also willing
link |
01:19:06.640
to rattle everyone's cage periodically
link |
01:19:09.840
and say, hey, what's going on is not what we need
link |
01:19:12.140
to be doing.
link |
01:19:13.140
That's a really interesting thing.
link |
01:19:14.380
So he would rattle the cage, but he would also,
link |
01:19:17.740
I don't know if those are intricately connected
link |
01:19:20.980
or always have to be connected,
link |
01:19:22.300
but he would just be a dick.
link |
01:19:24.580
So maybe by his standard, I am lazy and worthless.
link |
01:19:28.420
Well, he would say that to you, right?
link |
01:19:29.860
Is he being a dick though, if by his standard,
link |
01:19:32.060
I mean, again, it's like everyone's stupid
link |
01:19:33.680
compared to somebody.
link |
01:19:34.960
You know, I guess.
link |
01:19:36.220
But, so you apparently are able to take that kind of thing.
link |
01:19:41.460
Sometimes you just, there's ways to cross the line.
link |
01:19:46.620
And I mean, this is, okay, the fascinating thing
link |
01:19:49.820
about being a leader, especially a leader of companies,
link |
01:19:53.580
is it's a people problem.
link |
01:19:55.520
So each individual in a room, so as a leader,
link |
01:19:59.140
you're only really interacting with a small number
link |
01:20:01.380
of people because there are leaders
link |
01:20:02.540
of other smaller groups and so on.
link |
01:20:04.400
But each of those individuals in the room
link |
01:20:07.220
have their own different psychology.
link |
01:20:09.580
Some like to be pushed to the limit.
link |
01:20:11.260
Some like to be screamed at.
link |
01:20:14.580
Some are very soft spoken and almost afraid to speak.
link |
01:20:18.900
And they have to be, you have to hear them out.
link |
01:20:23.900
Like there's a, and those could be all superstars.
link |
01:20:27.380
We're not talking about like the C students.
link |
01:20:29.460
We're talking about the A plus students.
link |
01:20:31.080
Well, it's funny that, yeah, but the thing to,
link |
01:20:32.980
the skill to manage all of those people
link |
01:20:34.700
is completely separate from the skill to innovate something.
link |
01:20:37.900
I mean, not that they're not connected,
link |
01:20:39.160
but it's funny how it's, it's almost like, you know,
link |
01:20:41.380
why do we have shitty representatives?
link |
01:20:44.340
Well, I mean, the thing that you do to get elected
link |
01:20:46.700
has nothing to do with governance.
link |
01:20:48.100
Yes.
link |
01:20:49.180
Well, that's exactly it.
link |
01:20:50.020
But the great leaders have to have both skills.
link |
01:20:52.740
So like you have to have the boldness of,
link |
01:20:56.260
if you look at the great presidents through history,
link |
01:20:59.540
usually it's in a time of crisis is when they step up,
link |
01:21:03.140
but they basically say, okay, stop this old way
link |
01:21:07.500
that Congress works of this bickering,
link |
01:21:10.340
of this like compromise bullshit.
link |
01:21:12.420
Here's a huge plan that costs billions of dollars
link |
01:21:15.260
in today's age, trillions of dollars,
link |
01:21:18.140
no extra pork, no extra additions,
link |
01:21:20.320
just like, here's a clear plan.
link |
01:21:22.820
We're going to build the best road network
link |
01:21:26.280
the world has ever seen.
link |
01:21:27.660
We're going to build some huge infrastructure project.
link |
01:21:30.040
We're going to revolutionize internet.
link |
01:21:32.240
Oh, we're going to, for coronavirus,
link |
01:21:34.600
we're going to build the largest like testing facility
link |
01:21:36.940
the world has ever seen in terms of the,
link |
01:21:38.820
we're gonna get everybody tested several times a day,
link |
01:21:42.160
all those kinds of things, huge projects and say,
link |
01:21:45.300
fuck all this, the details that everybody's bickering about,
link |
01:21:48.980
we're going to give everybody $2,000,
link |
01:21:51.460
we can give everybody $3,000, like huge projects.
link |
01:21:54.740
And at the same time, so that's the boldness
link |
01:21:56.740
and the leadership and saying,
link |
01:21:58.020
throw out all the bullshit of the past.
link |
01:22:01.180
And at the same time, be able to get in the room
link |
01:22:04.880
with the leaders of both parties
link |
01:22:06.360
or for the powerful individuals
link |
01:22:08.380
and smooth talk the shit out of them
link |
01:22:10.420
in the way they need to be smooth talked to.
link |
01:22:12.580
So like both of those skills,
link |
01:22:14.500
it seems to be when they're combining one person,
link |
01:22:16.460
that creates great leaders.
link |
01:22:19.060
Musk appears to have that, Elon.
link |
01:22:21.940
I don't know if Steve Jobs, it's interesting.
link |
01:22:25.420
So the criticism of Steve and a little bit on Elon
link |
01:22:28.180
is he misses some of the human part,
link |
01:22:31.620
but maybe it's impossible to have a really,
link |
01:22:35.200
you have like Sadia Nadal, who's the CEO of Microsoft,
link |
01:22:37.980
you have, who's really good on the human side,
link |
01:22:41.580
really, really good on the human side,
link |
01:22:43.020
like everybody loves him.
link |
01:22:44.860
The CEO of Google and Alphabet is also the same way.
link |
01:22:49.260
So like, I don't know if it's possible to have both.
link |
01:22:53.340
You only get so many stat points.
link |
01:22:54.860
Yeah, you only get, in this RPG of life, yeah.
link |
01:22:59.340
You got very good at jujitsu very fast.
link |
01:23:03.320
So you went, I mean, you told the story of Blue Belt
link |
01:23:05.540
and so on, but you went to Black Belt really quickly
link |
01:23:09.180
and not just in terms of ranks,
link |
01:23:10.740
but in terms of just skill level.
link |
01:23:12.760
I mean, you didn't go to Black Belt nearly as fast
link |
01:23:15.740
as your skill set developed.
link |
01:23:17.900
You were like doing extremely well
link |
01:23:19.660
at a high level of competition.
link |
01:23:21.520
So you're a good person to ask,
link |
01:23:24.220
how does one get good at jujitsu?
link |
01:23:26.700
We talked about solving problems at the elite level,
link |
01:23:29.160
but when you're a beginner at the martial arts,
link |
01:23:33.300
how do you get good?
link |
01:23:34.740
How much training should you do?
link |
01:23:36.420
The very basic stuff, like how much training,
link |
01:23:38.460
how much drilling, and then the mental stuff,
link |
01:23:40.980
like where should your mind be?
link |
01:23:44.980
How should you approach it from a mental perspective too?
link |
01:23:48.220
I'll just tell you my perspective on this one.
link |
01:23:49.820
I guess I would say I feel step one,
link |
01:23:52.340
I feel lucky to have found a good training situation,
link |
01:23:56.400
particularly for the time in where I was at.
link |
01:24:01.320
And I drilled a ton.
link |
01:24:04.060
I drilled and drilled and drilled and drilled and drilled.
link |
01:24:06.660
And one thing that's really important to understand though,
link |
01:24:10.420
is that I was able to, in a relatively brief period of years,
link |
01:24:15.820
go from zero to reasonably good.
link |
01:24:18.140
But I think I probably crammed more hours
link |
01:24:21.740
in those small years than most people did training,
link |
01:24:26.620
let's say in two or three times the length.
link |
01:24:28.560
So it may masquerade as something else other than it is.
link |
01:24:32.540
I could say.
link |
01:24:33.380
So you have to put in the hours.
link |
01:24:34.540
Yeah.
link |
01:24:35.380
There's no way around that.
link |
01:24:36.200
I think so.
link |
01:24:37.040
But what did you put in those hours?
link |
01:24:38.020
So when you say drilling, can you break that apart
link |
01:24:40.500
a little bit?
link |
01:24:41.340
Sure.
link |
01:24:42.160
What does drilling look like?
link |
01:24:43.000
Is there any recommendations you can put in?
link |
01:24:44.040
Absolutely.
link |
01:24:44.880
Step one, I would say your choices matter.
link |
01:24:47.300
I think one of the really important things
link |
01:24:49.080
that I think we should consider about jiu jitsu
link |
01:24:50.900
is that there's a lot of junk in the system right now.
link |
01:24:52.740
It's like jiu jitsu has exploded in terms of
link |
01:24:56.180
the number of positions, techniques, strategies,
link |
01:24:58.320
this, that, rule sets.
link |
01:24:59.980
That's really cool on the one hand.
link |
01:25:01.500
On the other hand, there's probably a just metric shit ton
link |
01:25:05.860
of suboptimal things that are out there
link |
01:25:08.620
that are being taught.
link |
01:25:11.060
Myself included, I've taught things that are looking back
link |
01:25:13.260
five years, three years, two years, one year,
link |
01:25:14.780
where I'm like, oh, I would not do it like that anymore.
link |
01:25:16.900
Straight up, sometimes I wouldn't do it like that.
link |
01:25:18.460
Other times I would literally never do
link |
01:25:20.460
even that particular movement.
link |
01:25:22.760
I don't think the shrimp is a real move.
link |
01:25:25.460
It's a giant spiel and seizure to show in person.
link |
01:25:28.820
But long story short, there's a lot of things
link |
01:25:30.260
that we think of as fundamental
link |
01:25:32.020
that I think that are really pretty negative.
link |
01:25:35.320
And also, you know.
link |
01:25:36.700
That's heresy in jiu jitsu.
link |
01:25:37.980
Isn't it?
link |
01:25:38.820
The shrimp.
link |
01:25:39.640
Exactly.
link |
01:25:40.480
Is like the holy, we all worship the shrimp.
link |
01:25:42.500
We love the shrimp.
link |
01:25:43.540
We love the shrimp.
link |
01:25:45.020
For people who don't do jiu jitsu, and you should,
link |
01:25:47.900
the shrimp is you scoot your butt away from your opponent.
link |
01:25:53.940
Yeah, in a really, it's like a really athletic
link |
01:25:56.780
looking position where you look like someone
link |
01:25:58.980
that's trying to stick their butt out on Instagram,
link |
01:26:00.980
and then you push your hands away,
link |
01:26:02.380
and you expose your face,
link |
01:26:04.180
and then you lay on your side
link |
01:26:05.980
because someone told you to do that.
link |
01:26:09.380
And you look like a, I guess you look like a shrimp.
link |
01:26:12.720
Yeah, it's like that time that someone really credible
link |
01:26:15.600
told me to drink unleaded gasoline,
link |
01:26:17.100
and I did it for a while.
link |
01:26:18.260
And then it got to the point in my life
link |
01:26:20.420
where the next best, the thing that I needed to do
link |
01:26:22.620
to really improve my life was stop drinking
link |
01:26:24.740
unleaded gasoline.
link |
01:26:26.500
And I would say that there's a lot of stuff
link |
01:26:29.000
that's in there that step one is like it's junk.
link |
01:26:33.060
It's actual junk.
link |
01:26:34.140
And it's not only will it waste your time,
link |
01:26:37.600
it will straight up, it will be like an albatross
link |
01:26:41.020
hanging on you because it affects how you think
link |
01:26:43.580
about things going forward.
link |
01:26:44.620
So although it was, it's funny,
link |
01:26:47.900
like the operating assumptions that we work under
link |
01:26:51.820
have a huge, huge, huge influence.
link |
01:26:53.580
You mentioned like growing up in the United States
link |
01:26:55.240
or this being a capitalist society, like woo, all right.
link |
01:26:58.140
Now, of course I think that,
link |
01:26:59.140
I don't really know any different otherwise.
link |
01:27:00.860
And I think that a lot of times people go,
link |
01:27:02.300
oh, communism is better.
link |
01:27:03.560
I'm like, haven't seen it.
link |
01:27:04.940
I haven't read any books about it being better,
link |
01:27:06.780
but it's possible.
link |
01:27:08.020
I mean, I haven't experienced it much myself either.
link |
01:27:10.660
So I can't dismiss it outright,
link |
01:27:12.500
but I guess I would say it's a fundamentally
link |
01:27:14.300
different operating system underpinning
link |
01:27:17.140
and all of my choices, all of,
link |
01:27:18.940
if I honestly believed in that thing,
link |
01:27:21.320
many of my choices on a moment by moment,
link |
01:27:23.740
on a day by day, and certainly on a lifetime basis
link |
01:27:26.100
would be very different.
link |
01:27:27.100
So I would say that it's tough when you're young
link |
01:27:31.020
in the martial arts.
link |
01:27:32.020
And I mean, all of us are always trying to do
link |
01:27:33.300
our best to learn.
link |
01:27:34.140
But when you're young in the martial arts,
link |
01:27:35.260
you always go, if you're a reasonable guy,
link |
01:27:37.020
what do they, what do they call it?
link |
01:27:37.860
Like Dunning, Kruger, Amnesia.
link |
01:27:38.740
I can't remember if this is the right one,
link |
01:27:39.620
but basically you go like, oh, I know what I'm doing here.
link |
01:27:42.820
So I can say that's not right.
link |
01:27:44.080
But then I read a news story about baseball
link |
01:27:46.340
and I don't know anything about baseball, sounds credible.
link |
01:27:48.120
And it's bullshit, but I can't call bullshit.
link |
01:27:50.980
If you're a reasonable person,
link |
01:27:51.820
you can't call bullshit on things that you don't understand.
link |
01:27:53.460
Even if you suspect it's not right,
link |
01:27:54.840
you're like, well, I've got to reserve judgment.
link |
01:27:56.980
You never, ever, ever set aside your need
link |
01:28:01.340
and also obligation to understand why you were doing
link |
01:28:04.220
what you're doing.
link |
01:28:05.060
And don't ask why once, ask why over and over and over
link |
01:28:07.900
and over about the same thing.
link |
01:28:09.380
Oh, well, I want a shrimp.
link |
01:28:10.500
Why?
link |
01:28:11.340
To make space.
link |
01:28:12.160
Why do I want to make space?
link |
01:28:13.000
To get away from the guy.
link |
01:28:13.840
Well, why do I want to get away from him?
link |
01:28:15.100
Well, because he's dangerous.
link |
01:28:16.060
Well, why is he dangerous?
link |
01:28:16.980
And you can oftentimes get down to, wait a minute,
link |
01:28:18.740
I didn't even need to move.
link |
01:28:20.060
Three quarters of the time,
link |
01:28:20.880
you're actually acting in the other person's self interest.
link |
01:28:23.060
And I guess a lot of times I can't,
link |
01:28:24.300
this kind of goes beyond what we can demonstrate here.
link |
01:28:27.380
But I would just say trying to understand
link |
01:28:29.940
what my base operating assumptions are
link |
01:28:31.860
and consistently reevaluate them,
link |
01:28:33.520
which can be fricking exhausting, frankly,
link |
01:28:35.260
and also constantly confidence destroying.
link |
01:28:37.340
But you mentioned that I did pretty well
link |
01:28:39.740
relatively quickly.
link |
01:28:42.140
I started in 2004 and I was at Abu Dhabi ADCC
link |
01:28:45.500
for the first time as an alternate in 2007.
link |
01:28:48.580
I won a match there against a Black Belt world champion.
link |
01:28:51.660
And the fact, frankly, the fact that I was able
link |
01:28:53.760
to beat someone like that was neat,
link |
01:28:55.260
but at the same time says a little bit more
link |
01:28:56.740
about what jiu jitsu is and some of the issues with it
link |
01:29:01.040
than it does about how cool I am or was,
link |
01:29:03.620
because that shouldn't really happen
link |
01:29:08.340
when you think about it.
link |
01:29:09.180
You're like, okay, you're a champion at ostensibly
link |
01:29:12.100
a very high level of the sport.
link |
01:29:14.240
You enjoy a three inch, four inch height advantage
link |
01:29:17.880
and a 35 pound weight advantage, and you just got beat.
link |
01:29:21.300
Like that should not, I'm dead serious,
link |
01:29:23.980
that should not exist.
link |
01:29:24.900
If that happens, you're doing it wrong.
link |
01:29:26.400
Is it that I'm doing it right?
link |
01:29:27.580
Or is it that you're doing it wrong
link |
01:29:28.740
and there's enough variance in the way that you're doing it
link |
01:29:31.940
that you're allowing me to win?
link |
01:29:34.220
And now I did happen to win that with the 50, 50 heel hook,
link |
01:29:36.460
which was 50, 50, but basically,
link |
01:29:40.340
which was one of the early examples of like,
link |
01:29:42.380
hey guys, by the way, people can try to hurt your legs.
link |
01:29:45.540
And that was something like, we mentioned John Danaher,
link |
01:29:47.540
mentioned like, you know, myself, Dean Lister,
link |
01:29:49.640
a lot of the guys from the Henzo Gracie team
link |
01:29:51.140
that have had amazing success.
link |
01:29:52.380
They've gone and done great things.
link |
01:29:54.380
And you know, Craig Jones in the competitive grappling world,
link |
01:29:57.020
basically taking advantage of being very, very good
link |
01:29:59.540
in what they're doing, but also a glaring, glaring,
link |
01:30:02.080
glaring issue with the operating system of jiu jitsu,
link |
01:30:04.760
which was, you know, a huge vulnerability in the lower body
link |
01:30:08.460
and not only not attacking it,
link |
01:30:09.980
but having no idea how one does attack it,
link |
01:30:12.300
which means you can't understand
link |
01:30:13.300
how someone will assail you.
link |
01:30:15.020
So anyway, I guess to come back is if in the absence
link |
01:30:20.140
of knowing what to do, I try to polish what I've got.
link |
01:30:22.540
So if I've got a knife and I'm like,
link |
01:30:23.580
I don't know how to use them,
link |
01:30:24.420
I'm like, okay, I'm just gonna sharpen the edge
link |
01:30:25.580
and polish it and make sure that when I need
link |
01:30:27.060
to use this dang thing, I'll be able to do it.
link |
01:30:29.240
Because trying to put together a system
link |
01:30:31.740
when you don't have an idea of what's going on,
link |
01:30:34.260
a lot of times you end up making suboptimal choices,
link |
01:30:37.260
but as long as you're consistently reevaluating
link |
01:30:39.300
what you're doing, and that's something I've tried
link |
01:30:40.580
to do over time, over and over and over again,
link |
01:30:42.660
and try to seek out the most, the best,
link |
01:30:47.060
and also most articulate or insightful instructors
link |
01:30:51.900
or people of various levels, doesn't matter if they're
link |
01:30:53.780
well known or not, that could say, hey, Ryan,
link |
01:30:55.640
I think you should do this, I think you should do that.
link |
01:30:57.460
And I think all I've ever done in martial arts
link |
01:30:59.940
is try to treat people with respect, honestly,
link |
01:31:02.280
try to demonstrate appreciation for the many,
link |
01:31:05.180
many people who have helped me over time
link |
01:31:06.860
and be the type of person that they wanna train with.
link |
01:31:09.140
Not the type of, because we've all trained with people
link |
01:31:10.840
that make us think about beating the ever loving crap.
link |
01:31:13.980
I never wanted to be that guy.
link |
01:31:15.220
And I was basically saying like, if I train
link |
01:31:16.900
with a black belt when I'm a blue belt
link |
01:31:18.400
and this person enjoys training with me,
link |
01:31:21.540
that's in my interest.
link |
01:31:22.380
Selfishly, not only do I not want them to beat me up,
link |
01:31:24.420
but selfishly, I should, you mentioned being decent
link |
01:31:26.500
to other people, you wanna incentivize being decent
link |
01:31:28.140
to other people, right, with a structure
link |
01:31:29.540
of what you're doing.
link |
01:31:30.940
Selfishly, I'm incentivized to be a nice guy,
link |
01:31:33.700
even if I'm internally a scumbag,
link |
01:31:35.540
which I like to think that I'm not,
link |
01:31:36.900
but basically going like, hey, this guy's way more likely
link |
01:31:39.580
to help me or this person's way more likely to help me
link |
01:31:41.420
if I shake their hand, say thank you,
link |
01:31:43.220
I really appreciate you helping me out.
link |
01:31:44.560
And that thing that they tap me with four or five times,
link |
01:31:47.960
I'm gonna ask them about it.
link |
01:31:49.260
And then they don't have to tell me,
link |
01:31:50.240
they're under no obligation, but I'll say,
link |
01:31:51.780
and whether they tell me or don't tell me,
link |
01:31:52.940
thank you so much for your time, I really appreciate it.
link |
01:31:54.860
And that's it, you know?
link |
01:31:57.300
Okay, so to summarize, the way you brilliantly described,
link |
01:32:00.860
I just wanna make sure we're keeping track of this.
link |
01:32:02.300
I went all over the place.
link |
01:32:03.540
No, you didn't, you're pretty on point.
link |
01:32:05.860
But so the first thing is basically, which is difficult,
link |
01:32:09.380
I wonder if we can break it apart a little bit,
link |
01:32:11.340
is don't trust authority, essentially.
link |
01:32:13.620
Keep asking why.
link |
01:32:14.780
Be respectful without trusting authority, right?
link |
01:32:16.660
Right, which is, and then the second thing
link |
01:32:18.300
is be the kind of person that others like training with
link |
01:32:21.540
or like being around, sort of being a good friend.
link |
01:32:27.220
So so many people just enjoy being around.
link |
01:32:28.980
So one is completely, which is, yeah, you're right,
link |
01:32:31.660
it's attention, which is like completely disrespect
link |
01:32:34.900
the way that things are done.
link |
01:32:37.940
So asking why constantly.
link |
01:32:40.100
One of it is your own flaws and not understanding
link |
01:32:42.660
the fundamentals of what's being described.
link |
01:32:44.740
And then once you get good enough,
link |
01:32:46.300
not understanding, like going against the fact
link |
01:32:51.320
that the instructor doesn't understand.
link |
01:32:53.820
And my inability to understand what you're saying, though,
link |
01:32:55.980
doesn't invalidate it.
link |
01:32:56.940
And that's something like you mentioned,
link |
01:32:58.020
like me mentioning, keeping in mind our own flaws.
link |
01:33:00.940
And then also, again, the flaws that any of us have
link |
01:33:02.980
is the instructor, to your point.
link |
01:33:04.340
And I guess I can speak to being kind of weird.
link |
01:33:07.020
I don't, you know, I like to sit in the corner.
link |
01:33:09.580
But so everyone's a little bit different.
link |
01:33:12.060
Some people, you know, I wasn't terribly popular
link |
01:33:13.980
in high school.
link |
01:33:14.820
You know, like, I didn't like high school very much.
link |
01:33:18.220
But anyway, I would, not gonna be rude to people, though.
link |
01:33:21.340
I was never gonna bully anybody.
link |
01:33:22.980
If you said hello to me, I'd say hello back.
link |
01:33:24.940
I would hold the door for you if you walked by.
link |
01:33:26.780
You know, and I would just say, like simple things like that
link |
01:33:29.740
go a long, long, long way.
link |
01:33:31.660
And that actually takes us back to our social discussion
link |
01:33:35.420
where I'm like, oh man, how do I become great at jiu jitsu?
link |
01:33:37.660
It's like, well, I'll start by not pissing off this person
link |
01:33:40.380
who can beat the crap out of me
link |
01:33:41.940
and not disrespecting the person who is probably
link |
01:33:45.340
the closest thing to a font of knowledge
link |
01:33:47.780
at that time for me.
link |
01:33:48.980
So, and then recognizing that I should do that
link |
01:33:52.300
for its own virtue because it's the right thing to do
link |
01:33:54.260
and I should try to treat people decently.
link |
01:33:55.700
But beyond that, even selfishly,
link |
01:33:57.980
it's in my interest to do that.
link |
01:33:59.500
But see, the thing is, this is interesting,
link |
01:34:02.460
is there's a culture in martial arts,
link |
01:34:06.500
a culture that I like where the instructor,
link |
01:34:08.860
legitimately so, carries an aura of authority.
link |
01:34:13.980
And it's not comfortable to really ask why.
link |
01:34:18.340
I'm not, it's a skill to be able to have a discussion
link |
01:34:22.740
as a white belt or the black belt instructor
link |
01:34:26.140
of like, why is it done this way?
link |
01:34:29.380
Like, and saying why again.
link |
01:34:32.700
Like, I mean, it's a skill to show that you're actually
link |
01:34:36.220
a legitimately curious and passionate and compassionate
link |
01:34:40.180
student versus like, somebody who's just being
link |
01:34:42.500
an annoying dick who saw some stuff on YouTube.
link |
01:34:45.220
There's a line between, to walk there.
link |
01:34:47.900
I just wonder because like, it's the drilling thing.
link |
01:34:52.420
And, you know, I, for example, like in my,
link |
01:34:57.580
when I was coming out, there was so much emphasis
link |
01:35:00.140
placed on like, close guard, for example.
link |
01:35:03.420
And you might actually teach me now,
link |
01:35:05.780
I don't know, but to me it was like,
link |
01:35:08.620
why do I need to master the close guard?
link |
01:35:12.580
Like, why is the close guard on top or the bottom?
link |
01:35:16.260
But the bottom really, the fundamental basics of jiu jitsu.
link |
01:35:20.260
Who decided that?
link |
01:35:21.300
My body is not, my body says this is wrong.
link |
01:35:25.060
I'm like, this, like I have short legs,
link |
01:35:28.100
but it doesn't even matter the length of the legs.
link |
01:35:30.220
There's something about me that just,
link |
01:35:31.900
I don't understand how leverage here works
link |
01:35:34.360
for my particular body.
link |
01:35:37.420
Like, so it's just, it's a feel thing too.
link |
01:35:40.900
Like, it feels like in my basic understanding
link |
01:35:45.060
of leverage and movement and timing and so on,
link |
01:35:47.980
it feels like these certain, like butterfly guard,
link |
01:35:50.220
or even like half, basically every guard except close guard.
link |
01:35:53.180
I can play, I can dance.
link |
01:35:56.260
Close guard feels like you're shutting down
link |
01:36:02.060
like the play that I.
link |
01:36:03.380
Is that wrong?
link |
01:36:04.380
Or is that, make sure that's what you want
link |
01:36:06.460
because that's almost like an innate characteristic
link |
01:36:08.660
of this guard position, but it's not sold that way, right?
link |
01:36:11.020
It's like, hey, this is a good guard.
link |
01:36:12.860
It's like, hey man, here's a bow and arrow versus,
link |
01:36:16.300
and you know how to use this thing, right?
link |
01:36:17.660
Like make sure you're far away
link |
01:36:19.500
and like up on a hill or something.
link |
01:36:21.140
Cause you can take that bow and arrow,
link |
01:36:22.060
run up on something and try to use it.
link |
01:36:24.660
But if nobody told you not to do that
link |
01:36:27.180
and they told you it was foundational,
link |
01:36:28.460
it's very foundational, it's very important.
link |
01:36:29.780
To everything else too, right?
link |
01:36:31.660
That's back to the shrimping thing.
link |
01:36:33.420
How many things are we taught that even if it's not,
link |
01:36:35.900
let's say itself is not a garbage thing,
link |
01:36:40.500
might be effectively garbage.
link |
01:36:42.020
You could give me a Ferrari,
link |
01:36:43.580
but if I try to make it fly, it's not going to work.
link |
01:36:46.860
If you're like, here's a plane, here's another plane,
link |
01:36:48.820
here's another plane, here's another plane, here's a Ferrari.
link |
01:36:50.780
I'm like, oh, it must be a different type of plane.
link |
01:36:52.620
Like you could be forgiven for leap if we're going there,
link |
01:36:55.020
you know, like, oh, maybe the wings come out
link |
01:36:56.260
or you just go fast enough to take a bullet.
link |
01:36:57.940
You can make these crazy leaps in your mind.
link |
01:36:59.740
And people are doing that all the time.
link |
01:37:02.540
So if you don't provide the context for me,
link |
01:37:05.140
or worse yet, you provide improper context,
link |
01:37:08.060
like how much of a problem is that going to be?
link |
01:37:10.940
Well, I think the skill of the white belt should be,
link |
01:37:14.340
just be nice.
link |
01:37:15.660
But in the complicated human space of when your intention,
link |
01:37:20.300
at least in the big picture view, is good.
link |
01:37:24.980
The question is, it's not always when your intention is good,
link |
01:37:28.740
the actual implementation of it is good.
link |
01:37:32.780
So you might be just almost,
link |
01:37:34.540
and that's much, it's not the case for you,
link |
01:37:37.300
it's much more the case for white belts.
link |
01:37:39.260
They don't even know, their intention might be good,
link |
01:37:41.620
but they don't know all the lines they're crossing,
link |
01:37:43.940
all the, so they're not actually able to like interpret
link |
01:37:48.340
all the ways in which they're being totally insensitive
link |
01:37:51.940
to the requests of others, like explicit requests of others.
link |
01:37:55.100
So your job as a beginner is to be a really good listener
link |
01:37:59.660
of those social cues.
link |
01:38:01.260
Well, it's like a visitor in a foreign country, right?
link |
01:38:02.900
Yeah.
link |
01:38:03.740
Like you're a representative of people
link |
01:38:04.820
that look like you, people that talk like you,
link |
01:38:06.660
people that have your passport,
link |
01:38:07.940
and you're like, man, I'm going to go over here.
link |
01:38:09.220
Oh, I've got my foot up on my knee.
link |
01:38:10.780
Well, if I was in certain countries in the world,
link |
01:38:12.020
that's rude.
link |
01:38:12.980
I'm like, oh, I'm so sorry.
link |
01:38:14.620
But can you imagine if someone says,
link |
01:38:15.740
hey, I really appreciate if you take your foot off,
link |
01:38:17.740
that's pretty rude.
link |
01:38:18.580
And then I want to tell them, well, not where I'm from, man.
link |
01:38:21.380
I'm in your house.
link |
01:38:22.380
I better, again, I might go that direction,
link |
01:38:24.660
but let's say I could get away with that.
link |
01:38:25.860
Now I'm a bully.
link |
01:38:27.020
And if I can't get away with that,
link |
01:38:28.540
well, I'm about to maybe be on the wrong side of something.
link |
01:38:30.820
But I guess, like you said,
link |
01:38:33.140
if we have positive intention, that's fine.
link |
01:38:34.700
But I also have to recognize who I am.
link |
01:38:36.020
And I think that that's one thing that I tried to do
link |
01:38:38.980
and continue to try to do over time.
link |
01:38:40.820
Like we're, oh man, hi,
link |
01:38:43.300
I'm the one that's asking for a favor here.
link |
01:38:45.180
If I spar with Raymond Daniels,
link |
01:38:46.580
Raymond Daniels is doing me a favor.
link |
01:38:48.460
I ain't doing him a favor.
link |
01:38:49.780
Let's not get it twisted.
link |
01:38:51.300
So thank you so much for your time.
link |
01:38:53.260
I really appreciate it.
link |
01:38:54.100
And this is not like some effected nonsense.
link |
01:38:56.140
This is serious.
link |
01:38:56.980
I'm like, thank you.
link |
01:38:57.820
If I spar with Steven Thompson,
link |
01:38:58.940
I'm the one being done a favor.
link |
01:39:00.060
George St. Pierre takes his time to spar with me,
link |
01:39:01.700
which he has in the past and not even kill me,
link |
01:39:04.060
which is really, I appreciate that
link |
01:39:05.540
because that's why I can sit here.
link |
01:39:07.860
George is not a prop for me to get my rocks off
link |
01:39:11.580
or see what's going on.
link |
01:39:12.620
And also I'm going to do that
link |
01:39:14.060
and then expect him to just take it.
link |
01:39:16.380
And I've seen, he's a gentleman.
link |
01:39:17.740
I've seen people get nuts with George
link |
01:39:19.140
and have him just be like, he's a patient of a saint.
link |
01:39:23.740
I don't have that level of patience,
link |
01:39:24.780
but I would just say to come back,
link |
01:39:26.620
figuring out like, hey, so what role am I here?
link |
01:39:28.980
And that comes back to like,
link |
01:39:30.100
at least what I see people on the internet.
link |
01:39:31.740
Yeah, man, I have a beef with Joe Rogan.
link |
01:39:33.660
You're like, no, you don't, Ryan.
link |
01:39:35.100
You're some goof.
link |
01:39:36.380
I'm like, I'm some random dude.
link |
01:39:37.660
Joe, like people want to,
link |
01:39:39.100
they almost want to like elevate
link |
01:39:40.340
so that we can somehow be level with peers here.
link |
01:39:42.900
If I go into Feroz Zahabi's gym,
link |
01:39:44.500
I am not a peer of Feroz Zahabi.
link |
01:39:45.860
I am a student of TriStar.
link |
01:39:47.260
I'm a guest in the academy.
link |
01:39:48.780
And if Feroz asked me for something short of him,
link |
01:39:51.180
like telling me to try to do a triple backflip
link |
01:39:53.380
so I don't break my neck,
link |
01:39:54.660
the answer is yes, sir, I can do a free Feroz.
link |
01:39:56.660
No, man, in no words.
link |
01:39:57.500
And it's, and hopefully it should come with,
link |
01:39:59.140
I guess, a level of graciousness,
link |
01:40:00.940
but I guess that's kind of one of the things
link |
01:40:02.340
that I see nowadays with how accessible people are.
link |
01:40:04.900
Cause I grew up, you know, being a big,
link |
01:40:06.420
huge baseball sports fan of all kinds.
link |
01:40:08.580
I couldn't send Derek Jeter a message
link |
01:40:10.980
and much less have a possibility of a reply.
link |
01:40:14.700
And if I do, it's like, you know,
link |
01:40:17.620
I have people send me messages.
link |
01:40:18.780
It's very nice that people send me messages.
link |
01:40:20.100
Some people, again, and everyone,
link |
01:40:21.540
not everyone is coming from the same place,
link |
01:40:23.580
but I've had plenty of things that are like,
link |
01:40:25.100
yo, dude, I need you to do this for me.
link |
01:40:26.900
I'm like, well, I'll tell you what's never going to happen.
link |
01:40:29.620
That I have no idea who you are.
link |
01:40:31.340
And that was how I was addressed.
link |
01:40:32.820
And I don't need, oh man, you're the greatest one
link |
01:40:34.860
because that's weird and too, cause I'm not,
link |
01:40:36.580
but just, hey Ryan, how are you doing?
link |
01:40:39.340
Hey, do you think you could do the following
link |
01:40:41.060
if you get a second?
link |
01:40:41.900
I'm like, if I get a second, you're dang right I can.
link |
01:40:43.620
Why not? It's easy to ask.
link |
01:40:44.980
But it started with some level of politeness.
link |
01:40:47.540
And I guess like that's maybe being semi Southern,
link |
01:40:50.340
like I grew up in Virginia.
link |
01:40:51.420
Yes, sir. Yes, ma'm.
link |
01:40:52.500
Like that goes a long way.
link |
01:40:54.260
And there's all different kinds
link |
01:40:55.300
of implementations of politeness.
link |
01:40:56.860
I mean, most of the successful people I've met,
link |
01:40:59.620
it's been surprising to me how much of,
link |
01:41:03.700
you mentioned peers, like I could think of Joe Rogan.
link |
01:41:08.500
You mentioned Joe Rogan, but Elon Musk,
link |
01:41:12.300
they don't, like they almost treat me like I'm the superior.
link |
01:41:17.700
You know what I mean?
link |
01:41:18.540
Like it's not even, that's the politeness.
link |
01:41:21.180
Like, you know, that's the approach.
link |
01:41:23.340
The feeling of it is like, I'm the student,
link |
01:41:25.180
I'm the beginner, I'm like approaching the situation.
link |
01:41:27.620
Like it's almost like a method acting of like,
link |
01:41:33.740
you're better than me.
link |
01:41:36.020
And that's how I approach a lot of interactions.
link |
01:41:38.180
Like I have something to learn from this,
link |
01:41:39.620
even if it's like a young.
link |
01:41:41.220
Do you think that they're ungenuine?
link |
01:41:42.800
They're totally genuine.
link |
01:41:44.380
But isn't that a funny thing?
link |
01:41:45.300
Like in spite of who they are,
link |
01:41:46.400
they're incredibly genuine because they respect,
link |
01:41:48.080
correct me if I'm wrong, they respect you obviously
link |
01:41:49.860
for what you bring to the table.
link |
01:41:50.700
They also approach.
link |
01:41:51.540
No, no, they approach everybody like this.
link |
01:41:52.360
But that's all right.
link |
01:41:53.200
No, but I'm sure they respect for what you bring to the table.
link |
01:41:54.820
Beyond that though, they're treating you
link |
01:41:56.300
with dignity as a human being.
link |
01:41:57.340
Yeah, as a human being, that's right.
link |
01:41:59.420
And when they could probably get away
link |
01:42:01.340
with treating most people
link |
01:42:02.340
without a whole heck of a lot of dignity.
link |
01:42:03.860
And I guess what does that always say that like, you know,
link |
01:42:05.500
again, like you can always tell someone of quality
link |
01:42:08.280
because they treat the king and the janitor the same way.
link |
01:42:11.760
But that's what we're seeing a lot.
link |
01:42:13.340
Like, I guess I don't mean to like to nitpick,
link |
01:42:16.020
but that's where it would take issue, I guess a little bit,
link |
01:42:18.220
or disagree with the next.
link |
01:42:19.060
Are you gonna criticize with the internet again?
link |
01:42:21.400
I know.
link |
01:42:22.240
People on the internet.
link |
01:42:23.620
Old man yells at clouds.
link |
01:42:25.260
But anyway, but I guess what I mean is just like
link |
01:42:30.040
the way that people address each other
link |
01:42:31.660
because it's so casual now, you know,
link |
01:42:33.700
and it's great on the one hand, it's nice.
link |
01:42:35.600
On the other hand, you go, hey, I just, why can't do,
link |
01:42:39.460
am I somehow, am I worried about diminishing myself?
link |
01:42:42.600
It's like the way that I'm sure that people talk to like,
link |
01:42:44.220
talk to women sometimes.
link |
01:42:45.720
And words, what's up girl?
link |
01:42:48.700
I mean, she's a bitch.
link |
01:42:49.620
You know, versus like, how am I,
link |
01:42:51.940
that was supposed to get a good response?
link |
01:42:53.860
What about that was going to elicit a favorable response?
link |
01:42:57.420
You know, versus being anything, anything other than just,
link |
01:43:01.060
you know, man, what's going on?
link |
01:43:02.200
And I guess that, does that make any sense?
link |
01:43:03.980
It makes total sense.
link |
01:43:04.820
And that Southern thing that you're referring to,
link |
01:43:06.740
I feel like that's an important,
link |
01:43:09.660
that's an important part of human communication.
link |
01:43:12.840
Let me ask you this.
link |
01:43:14.020
Sure.
link |
01:43:14.860
You're a new back attacks instructional.
link |
01:43:16.980
First of all, awesome.
link |
01:43:19.220
Yeah.
link |
01:43:20.660
Second of all, you drop a lot of fascinating insights
link |
01:43:25.260
in there, but you quote Galileo out of all people
link |
01:43:28.700
in saying that you can't teach a man anything.
link |
01:43:31.220
You can only help him find it within himself.
link |
01:43:34.320
So we talked about how to start in Jiu Jitsu.
link |
01:43:39.780
What about if we zoom out even more
link |
01:43:41.740
and how do you learn how to learn?
link |
01:43:46.580
How do you optimize the learning process?
link |
01:43:49.560
I don't know the answer to that,
link |
01:43:51.600
but I can tell you what I'd like to do.
link |
01:43:52.760
And I would say like, I can't step one.
link |
01:43:54.800
I don't, I'm not, maybe this is a little bit easier for me
link |
01:43:57.180
cause you know, I've never had a ton of friends, honestly.
link |
01:43:59.820
I've, you know, I've got my close friends
link |
01:44:01.140
and people that I know,
link |
01:44:01.960
but I've never had tons and tons of people.
link |
01:44:04.120
So I spent a lot of time, you know, thinking.
link |
01:44:06.180
And anyway, I can't, I can't control you.
link |
01:44:10.580
I can't control anybody else.
link |
01:44:12.100
I, you know, I, all I can,
link |
01:44:17.460
I want to take my, it's a Marcus Aurelius thing.
link |
01:44:19.980
It's like, you know, I guess the trick to life
link |
01:44:21.380
is figuring out what's in our control and what's not
link |
01:44:23.500
and focusing on things that are in our control, I guess.
link |
01:44:25.900
And so step one is figuring out both internally
link |
01:44:29.820
and then also out in the world as it pertains to Jiu Jitsu,
link |
01:44:33.140
what is actually in my control and what is not.
link |
01:44:35.640
Like passing someone's guard is not in your control.
link |
01:44:37.700
People think it is, it ain't.
link |
01:44:39.240
If I can't just do an activity and be unchecked,
link |
01:44:43.440
then it ain't in my control entirely.
link |
01:44:46.680
I can always breathe.
link |
01:44:47.900
I can always, you know, be calm.
link |
01:44:51.600
I can always, no matter whether I'm concerned
link |
01:44:54.200
or not concerned, have whatever you want to call it,
link |
01:44:56.300
nerves, you know, I can step forward across the line
link |
01:44:59.280
and say, I will, I will face the challenge ahead.
link |
01:45:01.520
That is all entirely, no one can stop me from doing that.
link |
01:45:03.740
That's entirely in my control.
link |
01:45:04.780
And that's why I know that every single time
link |
01:45:06.840
that I walk into the ring,
link |
01:45:07.820
I'll walk in and out of there with my head held high
link |
01:45:09.700
because there's, I will fight with everything that I have.
link |
01:45:13.360
I can't promise that I'll win.
link |
01:45:15.060
I would say I take that same first principles.
link |
01:45:17.820
You mentioned last time we talked, you know,
link |
01:45:19.700
with Elon and the importance of that and going,
link |
01:45:23.060
what are the first principles?
link |
01:45:24.580
And I guess to come back a lot of times, in my opinion,
link |
01:45:26.700
the things that people think are the basics
link |
01:45:28.340
are not the basics.
link |
01:45:30.260
You can't learn.
link |
01:45:31.460
If you think you're reasoning for first principles,
link |
01:45:33.340
but you're actually like level six,
link |
01:45:35.180
you're actually like layers up,
link |
01:45:37.220
you're making so many,
link |
01:45:38.420
there's so many baked in assumptions to what's going on
link |
01:45:40.740
that you're gonna struggle to understand
link |
01:45:42.260
why anything is actually happening,
link |
01:45:44.300
internally, externally, you name it.
link |
01:45:46.260
So I guess what I would start when it comes to learning
link |
01:45:48.780
is first principles and trying to understand
link |
01:45:50.540
what's going on, but then also simple things first.
link |
01:45:53.420
I can control my posture.
link |
01:45:56.220
I can control my breathing.
link |
01:45:58.580
No one can stop me from doing that.
link |
01:45:59.900
I can control where I place my frames.
link |
01:46:01.780
I can control where I place my limbs.
link |
01:46:03.580
I can move my feet.
link |
01:46:05.500
I can develop the ability to do these things
link |
01:46:07.180
better, of course.
link |
01:46:08.020
And I do that through practice, through drilling,
link |
01:46:09.540
through watching people.
link |
01:46:10.500
I've been incredibly fortunate in my time in martial arts
link |
01:46:12.740
to train with many of my heroes,
link |
01:46:14.260
to train with many of the people that I looked at.
link |
01:46:16.300
And I was like, that guy is amazing.
link |
01:46:18.500
I wanna train with this person, like Stephen Thompson,
link |
01:46:21.380
Kenny Florian, George St. Pierre, Raymond Daniels,
link |
01:46:23.780
Farah Zahabi, you know, I mean, like Bruno Frazada,
link |
01:46:26.420
Marcelo Garcia, you know, all of these guys
link |
01:46:28.860
that are just unbelievable.
link |
01:46:30.660
And I go, well, they're moving in a way that's different.
link |
01:46:33.940
Well, how do I do that?
link |
01:46:34.860
Well, sometimes you can ask them
link |
01:46:36.140
and they can tell you directly.
link |
01:46:37.180
Other times, people, part of the genius of what they do
link |
01:46:39.620
is that it's intuitive.
link |
01:46:41.060
And maybe they don't think and understand
link |
01:46:42.980
and see the world the same way that I do.
link |
01:46:44.540
That was something that I experienced with Marcelo.
link |
01:46:47.020
He's amazing.
link |
01:46:48.020
But in a different way than his,
link |
01:46:51.260
it just, we see things fundamentally different.
link |
01:46:54.180
We experience the world differently.
link |
01:46:55.380
It seems to me that we do.
link |
01:46:56.820
And again, that taught me a really important lesson
link |
01:46:59.820
because I was wanting, when I trained there,
link |
01:47:01.220
to have someone go, hey, Ryan, do this, this, this,
link |
01:47:03.220
and this, and that's how it works.
link |
01:47:04.540
And I'm like, all right, because that's how I understood
link |
01:47:06.380
martial arts at the time.
link |
01:47:08.860
I wasn't ready to have someone tell me, like, hey,
link |
01:47:13.500
it feels a little bit like this, and I just kind of do it,
link |
01:47:16.540
which is kind of what Marcelo would do at the time.
link |
01:47:19.180
He was less experienced as a teacher,
link |
01:47:20.860
but that is what he was doing.
link |
01:47:22.980
I was completely, I couldn't separate in my mind
link |
01:47:26.300
performance and understanding.
link |
01:47:28.820
I thought that if I understand, I could do it.
link |
01:47:30.300
And I would also struggle sometimes
link |
01:47:32.420
to wonder why I couldn't execute things
link |
01:47:35.420
that I thought I understood,
link |
01:47:37.260
and why guys like Marcelo were just so elemental.
link |
01:47:40.220
I mean, in like the, like lightning, wind,
link |
01:47:42.260
like that type of thing where like, it's just so in touch
link |
01:47:44.620
with what they wanted, with their capabilities.
link |
01:47:47.660
They could summon their powers at will.
link |
01:47:50.820
I couldn't always do that.
link |
01:47:52.260
And I guess, so recognizing that there was more than one way
link |
01:47:56.500
to the top of the mountain, and also I had a lot of science,
link |
01:47:58.740
but I didn't have a lot of art, or I had some science,
link |
01:48:00.660
I should say, but I didn't have a lot of art.
link |
01:48:02.500
Meeting people like Marcelo taught me,
link |
01:48:04.260
and then Josh Waitzkin, actually brilliant guy,
link |
01:48:06.540
chess champion, former owner,
link |
01:48:08.380
maybe owner of Marcelo's Academy, really great friend.
link |
01:48:10.620
I think he has a book on learning.
link |
01:48:11.820
He does, yeah, The Art of Learning, actually.
link |
01:48:13.900
But yeah, he knows a thing or two about it,
link |
01:48:15.620
but a great guy.
link |
01:48:16.460
And anyway, he sat me down one time,
link |
01:48:18.140
and was like, look, man, you're doing this wrong.
link |
01:48:19.940
You're missing what the, missing the genius,
link |
01:48:22.300
the brilliance that's right in front of you.
link |
01:48:24.540
And it took me a long time.
link |
01:48:26.860
What did he mean exactly?
link |
01:48:28.140
I was frustrated with my inability
link |
01:48:31.460
to grasp certain things,
link |
01:48:32.700
and sometimes the teaching style being different.
link |
01:48:34.900
Not wrong, just it was, it was tough on me at times.
link |
01:48:38.700
So you were trying to replicate what Marcelo was saying
link |
01:48:41.060
as opposed to understanding the fundamentals
link |
01:48:44.940
from which it was coming.
link |
01:48:46.100
Right, I couldn't see, I couldn't see
link |
01:48:47.780
where it was coming from.
link |
01:48:48.860
And also, sometimes I'm like, well,
link |
01:48:50.340
why can't you explain it in the way
link |
01:48:51.620
that I would want you to explain it?
link |
01:48:53.020
And he's like, well, why can't I meet him
link |
01:48:54.580
where he's coming from?
link |
01:48:55.900
So anyway, it was a really important time,
link |
01:48:58.340
unless I'm very, very frustrating if I'm honest,
link |
01:48:59.900
but it's not, I'm so thankful for that time.
link |
01:49:03.420
And anyway, you know, I guess.
link |
01:49:06.100
So always first principles,
link |
01:49:07.220
trying to understand the basics,
link |
01:49:08.780
first starting at the place where you can control things,
link |
01:49:11.900
the very basic elements of what you can work with.
link |
01:49:15.060
And then when there's other mentors and teachers to.
link |
01:49:19.020
Meet them where they're coming from.
link |
01:49:20.100
Meet them where they're coming from.
link |
01:49:20.940
To the extent that I can.
link |
01:49:21.780
Rather than, I'm not, like, again, it's like,
link |
01:49:23.300
why are you not talking to me
link |
01:49:24.820
the way I want you to talk to me?
link |
01:49:26.740
As opposed to, hey, where are you coming from?
link |
01:49:28.420
Back to your point.
link |
01:49:29.660
But I know that's not entirely specific,
link |
01:49:32.220
but you know, like, if you can focus on that
link |
01:49:34.540
and back to the whole, you can't teach a man anything.
link |
01:49:37.180
Marcelo didn't teach me anything,
link |
01:49:38.980
but he taught me in so doing, like,
link |
01:49:41.140
and other people like that, to find it within.
link |
01:49:45.100
And it's like, yeah, I guess something else
link |
01:49:46.660
that I've heard before is that all learning is self discovery,
link |
01:49:49.860
but all performance is self expression.
link |
01:49:52.220
And I always thought that Marcelo was a brilliant master
link |
01:49:54.900
of letting what's inside out.
link |
01:49:56.180
He was so consistent in his performances.
link |
01:49:59.100
And a lot of times I felt like there was a block there
link |
01:50:01.580
personally, particularly at the end of Jiu Jitsu
link |
01:50:03.180
when I was very, very results oriented.
link |
01:50:04.900
And I wasn't, I think my focus was not ideal.
link |
01:50:08.340
It was definitely not in the place
link |
01:50:09.700
that I would like it to be.
link |
01:50:10.980
And whether it would have won more or lost more,
link |
01:50:12.980
hard to say, but I know that I would have performed better
link |
01:50:14.540
if I'd have adjusted that.
link |
01:50:15.540
And anyway, that recognizing that, again, Jiu Jitsu,
link |
01:50:19.420
I think I've said it before, Jiu Jitsu studies is a science,
link |
01:50:21.300
but expressed as an art.
link |
01:50:22.940
It doesn't matter if you can articulate
link |
01:50:24.580
what you know how to do.
link |
01:50:25.460
What matters is if you can do what you know how to do.
link |
01:50:27.420
It only matters if you're, you know,
link |
01:50:28.420
I guess if you're teaching in a verbal fashion
link |
01:50:30.260
is whether or not you can articulate it,
link |
01:50:31.340
but recognizing the difference between learning
link |
01:50:35.140
on an intellectual level or conceptual level
link |
01:50:37.540
and being able to translate that into the physical.
link |
01:50:40.420
And I guess like that's been the thing
link |
01:50:41.700
that I feel like fortunate over time in my own academy
link |
01:50:44.260
to be able to kind of fiddle around and learn on my own
link |
01:50:46.420
and practice with my students.
link |
01:50:47.580
And, you know, sometimes I struggle
link |
01:50:49.260
to have great training partners.
link |
01:50:50.540
Like when I say great training partner,
link |
01:50:51.380
I mean, other world class people to spar, to roll with,
link |
01:50:53.860
but I've gotten a lot more, honestly,
link |
01:50:56.180
than I ever would have thought
link |
01:50:57.020
out of being able to practice and learn and fail and try
link |
01:50:59.740
and succeed on my own without like my own little sandbox,
link |
01:51:03.580
figuring out how I can take an idea
link |
01:51:06.420
and then come up with drills and drills to practice it
link |
01:51:10.260
so that I can actually practice putting it into play.
link |
01:51:12.340
Because again, knowing an idea and then not drilling,
link |
01:51:15.540
what's the point?
link |
01:51:16.380
I'll never have it.
link |
01:51:17.220
It'll never see the light of day.
link |
01:51:19.060
So in that DVD, in that instruction DVD, sorry.
link |
01:51:22.780
It's an online instructional DVD.
link |
01:51:25.020
I keep saying DVD though.
link |
01:51:26.020
Nobody has DVDs anymore.
link |
01:51:27.580
Do they not? It's like VHS.
link |
01:51:28.500
I don't know.
link |
01:51:29.740
Who has DVDs?
link |
01:51:30.580
What, like Blu Ray?
link |
01:51:31.620
I possess some DVDs.
link |
01:51:33.220
I mean, like I've never watched them.
link |
01:51:34.420
What do you use them for?
link |
01:51:35.580
Like a cup, like a thing you put a drink on?
link |
01:51:41.100
I mean, in a pinch, yeah.
link |
01:51:46.980
What's that even called?
link |
01:51:48.980
Coaster?
link |
01:51:49.820
Yeah, my matrix coaster.
link |
01:51:52.780
The matrix coaster, zeros and ones.
link |
01:51:55.660
Okay, so in that instruction that people should get,
link |
01:52:00.300
I've been watching.
link |
01:52:01.180
I'm really enjoying.
link |
01:52:03.180
It's, I don't even know when it came out recently, right?
link |
01:52:06.500
Like December or something like that?
link |
01:52:07.620
Yeah, it's part one.
link |
01:52:10.180
It was actually like ended up being like 18 hours long
link |
01:52:12.380
and I was like, oh my God, we gotta chop it in half.
link |
01:52:14.100
And when it comes together, the whole thing,
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01:52:16.260
I think I hope people will like it.
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01:52:17.300
Yeah, well it's even part one is really good.
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01:52:20.340
Yeah, people on Reddit were really excited
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01:52:22.540
for part two as well.
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01:52:23.540
Really?
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01:52:24.380
And you also have a back.
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01:52:25.820
Oh, the old one.
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01:52:26.660
The old one that I, that was really helpful to me
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01:52:29.420
to understand some very basic aspects of control
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01:52:32.700
for the back.
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01:52:33.540
Really?
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01:52:34.380
Yeah, that was, you know, that clicked with me.
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01:52:37.380
There's very few instructionals.
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01:52:39.140
There's very few things I've watched
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01:52:41.900
that ever clicked with me and that was definitely it.
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01:52:45.260
It taught me one thing, I don't know,
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01:52:48.380
it's you drop a lot of sort of bombs,
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01:52:51.740
you drop a lot of really interesting details
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01:52:54.780
and it's funny that there's only specific things
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01:52:59.260
that really click.
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01:53:00.740
Like a lot of it rings true and you kind of take it in
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01:53:03.340
and it's like, oh, that's interesting, okay, yeah,
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01:53:05.500
but there's certain things that really click.
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01:53:07.140
And I remember when that first instruction
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01:53:11.180
will click with me is like the importance.
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01:53:14.340
I don't remember any more like how you communicated it
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01:53:17.580
because I've now integrated, it's now mine,
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01:53:20.220
you know what I mean?
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01:53:21.820
But it was more about you just describing upper body control
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01:53:26.020
and the importance of the upper body control from the back.
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01:53:29.540
And just like the, there's certain grip,
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01:53:31.500
like you did describe different details on the grips
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01:53:35.300
and so on and as I started trying it,
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01:53:38.060
I realized how important upper body control is
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01:53:42.620
versus like me maybe as a blue belt or something
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01:53:46.140
was I thought like you have achieved victory
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01:53:49.180
when you got the two hooks in.
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01:53:51.420
And then I realized like at least for me
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01:53:53.580
that the hooks were not even for my body type,
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01:53:56.740
for my style, for the way I approach things,
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01:53:59.300
they were not even important at all.
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01:54:01.020
It's supplemental for the most part, yeah.
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01:54:02.740
So they were there for the points
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01:54:04.340
but I can establish a huge amount of control.
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01:54:08.060
In fact, the hooks were, you were talking about
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01:54:11.900
like illusion of choice, it almost made people panic
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01:54:16.260
a lot more when you were like fighting for it
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01:54:18.740
or establishing that kind of control.
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01:54:20.140
They were a lot less panicked when the hooks weren't
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01:54:23.020
involved even though they should be a lot more panicked.
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01:54:25.980
Anyway, I realized a lot of those kinds of things,
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01:54:28.820
especially that had to do with judo because so much
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01:54:31.860
of judo on the ground is centered around aggressive,
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01:54:35.780
efficient, very fast choking, like different kinds
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01:54:39.180
of clock chokes and all that kind of stuff.
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01:54:41.260
What a brilliant thing that is only gonna start
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01:54:43.060
to make its way into jiu jitsu coming up
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01:54:44.580
but like the judo style approach to like clock choking,
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01:54:47.100
triangling from the top of the turtle and stuff,
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01:54:49.540
so powerful.
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01:54:50.500
Yeah, and there's something about judo that emphasizes
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01:54:54.260
obviously due to the rules, the urgency.
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01:54:57.420
So you only do techniques that go fast.
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01:55:00.260
And then the other thing is, which I guess
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01:55:03.940
jiu jitsu emphasizes too but judo really does,
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01:55:06.820
which is the transition.
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01:55:10.220
So like while the person's flying in the air
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01:55:12.260
is the easiest time.
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01:55:14.060
I mean, this is like Ryan Hall type of shit,
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01:55:15.940
which is like, why not put in your submissions
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01:55:20.860
or positional control while they're in the air?
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01:55:23.900
If you could, why would you not, right?
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01:55:26.020
It's like, oh, well, I don't throw well.
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01:55:27.420
We'll learn how to throw and then do it.
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01:55:29.660
And so you should think, I mean, in the transition,
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01:55:32.580
when they're flying is the easiest time to put in stuff.
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01:55:35.180
And that's when you think about chokes,
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01:55:37.900
as you're throwing, you should be thinking about the choke
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01:55:40.740
and then everything becomes a lot easier.
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01:55:42.940
You ever see Flabio Canto?
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01:55:46.100
Man, Brazilian judoka is just so cool.
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01:55:48.700
Like with stuff like that.
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01:55:49.660
Yeah, exactly, but that has to do
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01:55:52.020
with the first starting principle of like,
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01:55:54.860
stop thinking this as a two phase game
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01:55:57.380
of standing and then ground.
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01:56:00.180
Start thinking about like the standing and the,
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01:56:03.740
the standing comes before and the ground comes after,
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01:56:05.680
but everything happens in a transition.
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01:56:07.700
Well, unless you're attacking, what is the art of war?
link |
01:56:09.660
Like, we all like, everyone's like,
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01:56:10.940
oh yeah, the art of war, oh yes, yes, yes.
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01:56:12.460
And then they immediately throw it away
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01:56:14.020
and then fight like a fricking barbarian.
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01:56:16.300
But, I mean like, I'm serious,
link |
01:56:18.540
but how many people quote stuff and then like,
link |
01:56:22.300
it's like the, what is it, the family guy joke
link |
01:56:23.820
where they're like, quoting Jesus and Jesus walks in,
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01:56:26.100
he's like, you're not listening to my work,
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01:56:27.100
what are you talking about?
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01:56:27.980
And anyway, basically, like the art of war,
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01:56:33.220
one of the things that's like the only thing
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01:56:34.700
that you can be sure of being successful in attacking
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01:56:37.060
is something that's undefended.
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01:56:39.020
We're like, well, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
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01:56:39.860
But you know, in a fight though, they're defended.
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01:56:42.480
Well, are they?
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01:56:44.260
There's moments all the time
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01:56:45.620
where I'm borderline defenseless.
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01:56:47.240
And if you were to attack at that moment,
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01:56:49.560
if you could see it and then seize the moment,
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01:56:51.660
if you were capable of both,
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01:56:53.280
you should not only expect to be successful,
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01:56:54.980
you should be damn sure you're gonna be successful.
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01:56:56.260
And more important than that, you'll be successful.
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01:56:58.020
And even if somehow not, you won't be countered.
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01:57:00.140
And I guess like, that's the trick
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01:57:02.740
of almost all like conflict, right?
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01:57:05.940
It's like showing up when the other person's taking a nap.
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01:57:09.100
And then it's so funny, like we take like a protracted war.
link |
01:57:11.780
It's like, oh, it takes five years.
link |
01:57:13.220
And there's lulls and there's a battle this month,
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01:57:15.620
but then there's a couple of weeks, another battle.
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01:57:17.080
It's like, well, if you just shrink that down,
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01:57:18.600
it's the microcosm, macrocosm idea.
link |
01:57:20.700
That same thing, that whole war is taking place
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01:57:22.700
in five minutes or 10 minutes or 15 minutes.
link |
01:57:24.820
And there's moments of lulls of person effectively
link |
01:57:27.680
going for a snack, being like in a horror movie,
link |
01:57:30.580
like, hey guys, I'm gonna go get a beer from around the way.
link |
01:57:33.000
Like I'm dead for sure.
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01:57:34.180
So anyway.
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01:57:35.700
Is there, on this particular instructional,
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01:57:38.820
if you can convert it to words,
link |
01:57:41.620
you talk about finishing the submission.
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