The following is a conversation with Ryan Hall, his second time in the podcast.

He's one of the most innovative scholars of martial arts in the modern era.

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As a side note, let me say that I've gotten a chance to train with Ryan

recently and to both discuss and try out on the mat his ideas about grappling and fighting.

What struck me is his unapologetic drive to solve martial arts.

It reminds me of the ambitious vision and effort of Google's deep mind to solve intelligence.

In Ryan's case, this isn't some out there martial arts guru talk.

This is a style of thinking about the game of human chess of seeking to define

the rules and to engineer ways from first principles of escaping the constraints of those rules.

This style of thinking is rare, but is ultimately the one that leads to the discovery

of new revolutionary ideas.

If you enjoy this podcast, subscribe to it anywhere or connect with me at Lex Friedman.

And now here's my conversation with Ryan Hall.

You're known as a systems thinker in martial arts, but you also, I think, are willing to

think outside the rules of the game, outside of the system.

When you're thinking about strategies of how to solve the problem,

particular problem of an opponent, whether that's Jiu Jitsu or mixed martial arts.

What's your process for doing that, for figuring out that puzzle?

I would say, I don't know if I have a specific A to B to C process for that sort of thing.

I try to do my best to appreciate that I think a lot of the thinking, or maybe not all the

thing, but a lot of great thinking on conflict, on battle, on war, on martial arts has been

done already.

Not that we don't have to do any sort of background investigation or reassessing of these

ideas or axioms that have come down through things like the book of Five Rings or the

Art of War, or like Claustroids, even anything like that, really, but is trying to understand

the lessons of the past that I think oftentimes we don't take with us problems on.

We pay lip service and like, a victorious fighter, the great fighter, he knows victory is

there, then he seeks battle.

Everyone else is looking for victory in battle.

He had moving on and that's why I'm going to double jab and throw my left hand.

I think a lot of times our actions don't reflect our stated belief structure and I think that

oftentimes you can tell what I believe really or what my fundamental operating system is

based on my actions, whether I'm aware, I have an operating system internally, whether

I'm aware of it or not, or certainly whether I'm fully aware of it.

I guess when it comes to strategy, I try to think about how things interact.

You mentioned systems thinking and I try to do my best to understand how systems exist,

but I think that systems have a fundamental strength and a fundamental weakness.

They work how they work and that's great, but they're readable.

So if you are aware, if I am operating on a system of which you're not really read into,

then I think oftentimes I can seem like shockingly effective, particularly if my system

preys on certain weaknesses that maybe you're given to.

But what happens when you've read the same books that I have?

I think that a lot of times that makes me deeply predictable.

I think about systems in jujitsu and a lot of times people think that they're doing jujitsu

when in reality they are doing an expression of it.

Let's say I'll use, there's the Marcello Garcia system, there is the Hensel Gracie current

Hensel Gracie system, there's the old Gracie Baja one, there's the Gracie Academy,

classic Gracie jujitsu, there's the art of jujitsu, kind of Otto's approach.

There's some crossover between a lot of these, but oftentimes I think when it comes to

understanding how I'm making decisions and how my opponent is making decisions,

I have to appreciate whether or not I'm an end user of something and I'll use my phone as an

example. I was thinking of this the other day and as an end user of my phone, I have no idea what

it does. Like Edward Snowden comes up and goes, hey guys, you realize your phones are listening

to you from like, really? What? All right, I believe you. And then of course that comes out,

but to what extent? I have no idea. What is my phone capable of? I have no idea.

I can mess with the font though. I really like blue screens, not purple screens.

So like as an end user, I can change some of the bells and whistles that have nothing to do with

the underlying source code of it all or how it functions the same way in my car. I'm an end user

of my car. If I do this with the steering wheel, it goes. If I push on the gas, it goes.

If I, yeah, I know how to fix it when it's out of gas. I know how to fix it when it's

out of oil. And I know how to fix it when a flat tire comes. But short of that,

or actually beyond that, I have nothing. So I think that oftentimes, I've been around in Jitsu

long enough to encounter like a new wave of good grapplers. And it's very, very interesting sometimes

how they're running systems. They don't realize they're running. I'm like, oh yeah, I trained at

Marcello Garcia's Academy for a long time. And a big fan of Marcello's was a student there. Encountered

a lot of the Otto style Jiu Jitsu a number of years ago, been a very, very deep into

footlocking and leg attacks and whatnot for a long, long time. I understand your system better

than you do or I may. And let's say you understand my system better than I do. That would be a huge

issue. That was something that I encountered a long time ago, trying to come up in Jiu Jitsu where

I was trying to utilize systems that were created by let's say Hafa Mendes or someone else. And I'm

basically trying to do what you're doing. I'm just not doing as good of a version of it. So not only

am I not doing it well, but I'm entirely predictable. And I think that that can be a big issue. So to

come back, I think of systems a lot of times now in terms of particularly like end user type of

systems like an iPhone is a really, really fast way for me to be able to do all sorts of things.

If you were to take it from me, I couldn't recreate any of that.

So you want to be more the NSA unless the end user.

Exactly. Exactly. That way, that way I'm listening to you.

I'm going to be the NSA of combat.

That's right. We're watching UP. But basically, I guess what I would come back and say is,

if you understand how things interact on a fundamental level and what type of games exist and

what type of interactions exist, then you can transcend a lot of the systems. It's almost

like a cook versus if I can make certain things in the kitchen, but I am not a chef,

you could give me a bunch of ingredients and I could probably cook not well, but a couple of

different things. But a master chef would be aware of the implications of all of the things that

they're doing extra time in the oven, less time in the oven, putting this flavoring or spice in,

what you're doing with various things. And also, they could make, they could turn all of these

ingredients into Chinese food. They could turn all these ingredients into Italian food and they

could turn all these Italian food ingredients into chicken parmesan or it could turn into lasagna.

But they're not limited to a specific thing because they have knowledge of how food interacts,

how, what it does to create taste, what it does to create texture. So to come back,

let's take rock, paper, scissors. Rock, paper, scissors is built on the idea of a couple of

different things. Actually, I'll tell you what, can I, may I ask you a question?

Yeah.

What's your favorite dinosaur? On the same, on three we'll go. One, two, three.

T.Rex.

T.Rex. So me too. Man, this is, we're going to be best friends. So it's, okay. So what's the

first question when you say, hey, let's play rock, paper, scissors. It's like, hey, is it

rock, paper, scissors or rock, paper, scissors shoot? And you're like, rock, paper, scissors,

shoot. And you're like, okay, because if we go rock, paper, scissors, shoot. And I'm like, oh,

man, I got lucky and I won. Imagine I won a hundred times in a row. I'd be luck. I'd be luck

if I was honestly doing that. But now let's say, for instance, I go on rock, paper, scissors and

you go on shoot. Rock, paper, scissors, shoot. Here comes the rock, right? If you lose,

whose fault is it? It's yours. This is built on a parody thing where I don't get to pick second.

If I get to pick second, it's like being able to investigate your background before going to

meet you. And then I'm like, oh, hi. Oh, I too love the New Jersey, you know, the New Jersey Nets,

which is a statement that no one in their right mind would ever make when I was growing up.

So anyway, you'd have to have personal knowledge of somebody. So anyway, to come back, if you

understand how games are structured, you can start to realize that there's huge gaps and

huge holes in a lot of the thinking behind all of it. And if you can create the illusion of choice,

I'll play one more. If you don't mind, this is one of my favorite ones to do this in class all the

time. Have you seen this before? No. Okay. May I ask you some questions, please? Sure. Okay,

fantastic. I'm scared. There's everybody wins. Don't worry. All right. So could you, could you

please? I would. Could you please pick three fingers and tell me what they are? Your thumb.

Okay. Your pinky. Okay. And your middle finger. Okay. So could you please pick two fingers?

Your middle finger and your pinky. Okay. Could you please pick one finger?

I'll go with middle finger. Okay. Could you please pick one finger?

Pinky. Okay. Let's play again. Can you pick one finger, please?

Your middle finger. Okay. Can you pick one finger, please? Your thumb. Yeah. Your pinky.

Okay. Now pick two more fingers, please. Your middle finger and your ring finger.

Okay. Could you please pick one more finger? Damn it. So I thought that enhanced the illusion

of choice. It's the illusion of choice. If I'm asking the questions provided I asked the right

questions, there can be no correct answer. It doesn't mean that ultimately, if that's what

you wanted, let's say like I thought I was guiding you to something I wanted that turns out that was

the outcome you wanted. Now let's, here's, now I'm going to ask the wrong questions. I might not

get what I want. Oh, by the way, sorry to interrupt. For people that might be just listening to this,

that no matter what trajectory we took through that decision tree that Ryan was presenting,

it was, it was ending up with a middle finger, ironically enough. I was surprised. So, and...

All of us were surprised. And we're both winners. Yeah. We all, everyone was. I felt like a winner.

All right. So now, now I'm going to, now I'll ask some different questions if you don't mind.

Can you please pick two fingers to put down?

Your middle finger and your pinky.

Oh, that's so awkward. That's like the worst finger positions. Okay. Can you please pick,

wait a minute. That's, oh, hold on. Yeah. Well, what if you pick two other fingers to put down?

You're thumbing your pinky. Okay. My thumb on my pinky. Can you please pick two fingers to put down?

Well, whatever it is you like. Okay. Your middle finger and your pointy finger.

Okay. Can you pick two fingers to put down? What's the name? It's index finger. Index finger.

That's the one we usually point. It's weird to point with your ring finger.

Sorry. What do... Two more to put down, please.

The middle finger and the ring finger. Ah, man. Is it, what if you pick my ring finger

and my index finger? Yeah. Aha. Woohoo. I win. Yeah. So even though I'm asking the questions,

it's not impossible that I arrive at a good outcome for me, but it's no longer guaranteed.

I went from a situation where I literally can't lose. Yeah. It's pretty low probability.

Right. Super low probability. And the second you realize what I'm doing, you would never

let me win because the ball's truly in your court. So I guess that's kind of what I'm

fundamentally trying to put into play almost all the time. Can I ask the right set of questions?

Can I develop the ability skills wise, understanding wise, and then discipline wise,

and then have the courage and the constitution and the discipline necessary, the patience,

necessary to ask the proper questions and wait for the proper answers? And if I can,

all assuming like the perfect world, I win period.

Yeah. So does that make sense? Yeah. It totally makes sense. So I don't know if you know

sort of the more mathematical discipline of game theory. There's something called mechanism design.

So game theory is this field where you model some kind of interaction between human beings.

You can model grappling that way. You can model nuclear conflict between nations that way. And

you set up a set of rules and incentives, and then use math to predict what is likely outcome,

depending over time, based on the interaction given those rules. Mechanism design is the design of

games. So like the design of systems that are likely to lead to a certain outcome. And so what

you're suggesting is you want to create, you want to discover systems whose decision tree,

all the possible things that could happen, feel like there's choice being made. But ultimately,

one of the parties doesn't have any choice in what the actual final outcome is.

You're making them feel like they're playing a game too. So it's not like you don't feel trapped.

It's kind of like... Well, the best traps, you don't look very threatening. So I'm like,

I'll walk over there. I guess that's kind of an interesting thing. If alliance...

When does a lion roar? It's an interesting thing when you watch lions hunting. They don't roar

when they hunt. When they want to move you back, they do stuff like that. When they actually want

to come and get you, they're pretty slinky. It's like water covered. It's like furry water.

And I guess when you keep that in mind, it's funny how... For us, the hobby actually,

you know, brilliant guy, one of my MMA coaches and head coach at TriStar,

he brought this up one time, thought it was a really salient point. So let's say we have a

million person bracket. It was impossibly huge. Like Frank Dukes went in the kumite level huge

bracket. He claimed to knock out like 250 consecutive people. And you're like, that is

all of Hong Kong was in that thing and everyone kept their mouth shut. But anyway, that's pretty

cool. But to come back, a little improbable, pretty cool. So let's say, for instance,

like there's no cheating going on. No cheating going on and we're flipping coins, right?

And someone is going to have an unbroken string of victory through that bracket,

which is pretty insane. How many consecutive like toss ups this person won. And then at the end of

it all, imagine we like aliens show up and we go, hey, they want to flip a coin for whether or

not Earth gets to continue. They'll be like, oh, I'll do it. I'm good at this.

That would be tempting as a person to do you like, I'm a lucky guy. Are you sure? Maybe,

I mean, maybe effectively or we could argue that effectively, you're incredibly lucky.

But basically, is that an actual ability as like a perk in a video game? Or is that just

this thing that happened? So anyway, how many times are someone, you could go through an entire

career, you know, particularly in a fight sport. Well, let's say you get 15 knockouts and 15 toss

up scenarios, because you see that happening all the time in the fight game, a toss up scenario.

It's not like you're mounted on me and like, and that's not a toss up scenario. Many, many,

many, many striking scenarios. A lot of grappling ones, but tons of striking scenarios are dead

toss ups. And somebody wins by knockout, they win five times in a row, then they lose a couple

times in a row, we go, what happened? You're like, what do you mean what happened? They were always

flipping the coin. And then they win five more and they go, ah, back on track. Can you imagine

that you're flipping a coin, I'm like, heads, heads, heads, heads, tails, tails, tails, heads again.

Oh man, I'm back on it. I'm flipping good now. That's basically what's going on. I think the

vast majority of the time, and then humanity's tendency to see a sign in almost anything starts

to present itself. And then we build a narrative in our mind to convince ourselves that we're in

some sort of control. And in reality, I was in a marginal situation at best the whole time.

Yeah, without having much control, without having a deep understanding of the system,

the same stories told the stock market with many of these distributed human systems.

We start telling narratives and start seeing patterns without understanding actually the system

that's generating these patterns. So if we can see the system, that's incredibly valuable,

but then you go, well, what system is above all of the systems? And I can see maybe physics,

maybe something like game theory explains these things, but like, I guess, what are the,

what aspects of the system can I, can I put my hands on that I can touch and understand?

And what am I, what am I missing? What, what, what's going on in the world all around me to

continue to lean on, on Dune that I don't have, that I don't, you know, you talk to a blind person

about, about the world, about sight and talk to someone that doesn't have everyone who's got

coronavirus now so no one can taste or smell. They're like, this is delicious. Like, is it?

So anyway, you know, again, what, what senses am I missing or what understanding am I missing

that's preventing me from seeing the dots connect in the world all around me? And I think sometimes

if we are oftentimes, at least personally, I've screwed this up a lot. I'm so nose deep in the,

in the trench of trying to understand what I'm doing that I can't take a step back and realize,

you know, that I'm in a forest, not just head, head butting a tree. And I may be doing both,

maybe both, two things should be true at once. But so I would say when it comes to strategy,

trying to understand that, but then also you go, well, okay, well, how can that sounds cool,

but how can you actually do that? And then I'd say that's a really good question because if

I imagine I say, man, I should fight like Steven Thompson, I should fight like Wonder Boy. It's

like, good idea. Go do that. I'm like, I'm not thinking about the guy I would fight like

could be even a bag of Madoff if I could, you know, it seems to work. So anyway, you go, well,

what if I could develop, what if I could take my time developing skills so that when these

strategies become apparent that you are, they are executable to you, you actually have the ability

to like, in or to again, to be the person in the arena that be the person required,

where there's plenty of great ideas like dunking a basketball is a fantastic idea.

Alas, for me, unless there's a small trampoline nearby, I'm not the guy,

but that doesn't make it any less good of an idea. I just don't, I haven't developed the ability

or I lack the ability. So anyway, I think a lot of times, at least when I watch people in fighting,

I'll use an example, we're so concerned, we're so concerned with trying to win early on,

rather than develop skills that I'm going like, well, what's the best way to fight with my current

set of skills? And usually the path forward is like the barbarian route, like you put on the one

ring, take the damage you need to take to hit that guy. And that was something I realized very

early on in my MMA career was like, I'm not that good at striking at that time, not a world class

striker now, but I'm way better at striking than I'm given any credit for because it helps people

sleep at night, I think. But I'm serious. But yeah, you're always introduced as like this master

grappler. I'm like, that's nice of them to say that. Maybe I'm not that good at grappling,

we haven't even seen that. And but the funny thing is when I'm like, just because people almost

go like, well, Lex, like, see, you're really good at this, but you got to understand, like,

we're equal, man, like, I'm good at this other thing. Maybe you're really good at what you do,

and I'm just mediocre at what I do. That's also possible. So there's plenty of people that define

themselves as a striker that do that just because that's for lack of other options, not because

they're a really good striker, or like I'm a grappler, I was a grappler as a blue belt.

Not really. So anyway, I guess to come back, if I'm constantly going, how can I win with what

I've got right now? I think oftentimes I never take the time to develop the skills that I want

to develop. And I also never take the time to develop the strategies that I want to develop.

And that has actually been one big blessing of fighting someone frequently, which has been

really frustrating as a result of injuries and time away and, you know, some of those people

being hesitant to get in the game. But it gives you so much time to be out of the trenches and

focus on developing your abilities so that now it's almost like developing money, like you

mentioned the stock market that you can now put in. Imagine you told me Bitcoin was a great idea

five years ago and I had eight bucks. Man, if someone told me Bitcoin was a great idea five

years ago and I had, you know, 50K, I'd be like, oh my God, I'd be sleeping in my bed of money

that I would then set on fire later today just to do it. So all the due to all the injuries

you've been mining Bitcoin all this time and now you're a rich man? Well, no, actually,

someone told me I was trying to mine for Bitcoin actually, like in a cave. And then I found out

recently that it's actually mining is like a figure of speech. Not like a literal thing that

you do. But I mean, in my defense, English language is difficult. It is. It really is.

Next time, talk to me, I'll explain. And Russian is more is a rich language. You should learn.

You should learn Russian. I'll help you out. I believe you. Thank you. Can you do a whirlwind

overview of your career in MMA leading up to this point with the injuries and the undefeated

record? And then what's next? Since we're on the topic, I did my first fight in a, as a

blue belt, and I've been training for about a year and a half. I did nine jujitsu tournaments

in 10 weekends or eight, maybe eight jujitsu tournaments in 10 weekends prior to my first

fight in April 2006. I got punched in the face a whole bunch. I didn't realize it was a professional

fight and found that out like the day beforehand. That was great. Thanks, coach.

I was in Atlantic City, where another place no one ever goes on purpose. So that wasn't great.

I got into three, actually three car accidents in the preceding 36 hours before the fight. I had

my car totaled. I wasn't driving for any of them. That was great. It was 2006. 2006. Yeah.

You were blue belt? Yeah. Yeah. I've been training for about a year and a half.

To blue belt. You're getting, I mean, if you haven't lived, if you haven't gotten punched

in the face in Atlantic City. That's true. I mean, I would have loved to have it happen

for different reasons. Yeah. But yeah. Well, what's funny is that, you know, I remember,

you know, getting punched in the face a bunch, trying to do inverted guard. I won one round,

lost two rounds, definitely lost the fight. So you went for inverted, sorry to interrupt,

you went for inverted guard. Can you tell the story of that fight real quick?

Yeah, sure. It was three, three minute rounds, which is not a professional fight length,

although I don't know if professional fight length would have been any better. It's just

more time to get punched. But I found out part way through, I was like, I remember walking

back to my corner in the first round, I'm like, yeah, this guy can't hurt me. And he's like,

yeah, my corner was my friend, Tom, and then someone else. And then he's like, yeah, I would

still encourage you to stop blocking somebody punches with your face. I'm like, yeah, it's

going to be a thumb. I appreciate that. I'm going to try that. Anyway, I remember, like,

I was not, you're not allowed to up kick. So I'm like, great. I was, I had no martial arts

skills at really at all. But if I had anything at all, it was Jiu Jitsu. It was very, very little

Jiu Jitsu. But definitely no wrestling, definitely no striking. Like I was basically a magnet for

punches. So that was your time, you know, rough neck and out in Atlantic City, as we all do

once in a while. Can we fast forward to when you're actually dominating the world as a black belt?

Well, actually, it's funny, because I took the little bit of money that I, they're like, hey,

we're paying. I'm like, really? It's like Bukowski stories with Ryan Hall.

Well, then I went to the casino, I went to whatever like the Tropicana that was right

there, the casino, because that was a bore wall call. I'm like, you know what, man,

this was, this has been a not great, not great evening. I'm going to, this is, I'm going to win

it back. This is going to be great. 15 minutes later, they had all the money that I had from

the fight was gone. I remember like walking out of the casino, super pissed. And like,

I don't know what I was thinking. Like, I'm not good at gambling. Why? This was not going to make

my night better. I just thought that there was going to be some sort of cosmic balancing. And

maybe it was the cosmic balancing all at once, where things had done in the past.

Longer term though, the balancing.

We'll see. I hope so. But to come.

We're all dead in the end though.

That is true. Time will get us all. Yeah.

Well, that was, so that was the first one. And that was when I realized I'm terrible at MMA,

but I like it. I should just stop this until I one day learn how to actually grapple,

much less learn how to fight. But I remember this guy named Dave Kaplan, who's the reason my

ears are all messed up, who was on the ultimate fighter and got punched in the face and knocked

out by Tom Lawler, who I'll always appreciate for doing that. But anyway,

Dave or Tom, I appreciate Tom, I appreciate Dave too. David was great. Dave was just a huge bully

and used to like, not completely unmercifully, but relatively unmercifully beat the crap out of

me. And anyway, the ears look good. So I appreciate that. I tell people it's a tumor that I got.

And I'm going to, if they want in on a class action lawsuit with AT&T, they should, you know,

send me an email. But anyway, you're very financially savvy. Very good.

And now I just give the impression, Dave basically said, Hey, don't worry, man,

you're never going to be good at MMA. And you're never going to be good at grappling either.

But even if you are good at grappling, which in my opinion, you will never be, you will never be

good at fighting. And I said, Dave, if I do nothing else in my life, I'm going to keep training until

I can make you pay for that. And now that I can make him pay for that really easily, he doesn't

train anymore. But I love Dave. Dave's awesome. He actually won the singing bee. What an interesting

dude. Super interesting guy. But anyway, none of the Virginia, like speaks a couple languages,

super interesting guy, like shockingly good at Jeopardy too. Not that I'm any good,

but still shockingly good at Jeopardy. So anyway, years later, I met Faraz Ahabi,

actually, John Danahar. I met John Danahar and he put me in touch with Faraz Ahabi. I started

training at TriStar, you know, immediately loved working with Faraz and learning under

Faraz, started training at TriStar. And I did my first real professional MMA fight

as someone that actually does, had practiced a little bit higher in, I think, August 2012.

And that was against a guy, he was four and five at the time. So, you know, had some experience,

good kind of like first go for me, honestly, and won that fight by TKO. And then it was a

little bit of a time off and then I did another fight against a tough guy named Majid Hamo.

He was five and two at the time. I think he was three and I was amateur. He had a good little

bit of fighting experience. Won that one in the first round of Iron Rear Naked Choke and then

started to experience difficulty getting, getting fights at that point.

You continue to introduce as like the, the, the master of grappling, the submission.

At least that was, that was my thing. If I don't know if I was.

Is that was the source of the fear for people?

I think so, because I mean, I definitely wasn't much at striking at that point. You know, I

definitely am a lot, I'd like to think I'm pretty hard to hurt, although I try not to lean on that.

And I played baseball for like 16 years so I can hit things pretty hard. I just wasn't able to,

I, I recognized pretty early on that I had no idea how to actually hit things

hard without becoming hittable myself. So I think that's kind of the big thing is a lot of times,

like we almost, we were mentioning before, if you try to go and get people too early,

you can hit them if they're not that good, but you're going to get hit yourself. So you're making,

you're basically making a wager, you're making a trade of your own life for the ability to hit them.

When you watch guys like Israel out of Sonia, Floyd Mayweather, Stephen Thompson,

Conor McGregor, when he's fighting really well, it's not a trade. They're not,

you're hitting them and they're hitting you. It's, they're hitting you, but it takes years and years

and years and years to be able to learn how to do that. Ton Lee is another great example of that.

You know, my closest training partner, one of my best friends, and currently now one champion,

one championship in Asia, the champion of the featherweight, or I guess lightweight featherweight,

155 over there now. And he recently defeated Martin Wynn in a really great fight and Ton

knocked him out, long time champion. And Ton doesn't let you hit him. He doesn't let you

touch him. I feel so fortunate to have met guys like Stephen and Ton to go early on in career and

go, holy moly, I can't even, it's not even like, oh, you'll let me walk over and find you. It's

like fighting a ghost that periodically shows up with a hammer and smokes you in the melon and

then disappears into the ether again. So the way they approach the fighting game is thinking,

how can I attack without being hit? So every, every strategy, every idea you have about what

you're going to do has to do with like that minimizing the return. Absolutely. I mean,

that's what all good fighting is done. All poor fighting, if, you know, throughout the course

history of most generals, whether I saw a read or, you know, they, they did battles by attrition.

You know, it's like, yeah, man, I've got 150 guys, you've got 50, like, yeah,

60 of my guys die killing your 50, like that's great for me. But it's not so great for the

60 guys that died. You know, I hope it's worth it. So when you realize that not only you're not just

Kobe Bryant and you're Phil Jackson too, you got to do everything. You know,

if you've got to run across the beach at Normandy, so be it. But that better be, you should have,

make sure we thought this through. And there's like, Hey, there's no way we can like,

you know, walk around the side, huh? Because oftentimes there, there is. And I think a lot

of times there's a lot of incentives in professional fighting too, for people to want to do that.

And we come up with all sorts of, well, I'm trying to be exciting.

Are you? Is that really what you came here to do? Because I came here to win. And I think that

anyone that that's really successful came there to win. And if it ends up being exciting, well,

that's fantastic. I hope that people enjoy watching something. And that's great. But

that's a qualitative assessment. Anyway, you know, you want to also be able to, you know,

live the rest of your life. I think it's easy. You know, I'll use Meldrick Taylor,

I'm a big boxing fan. Meldrick Taylor is an excellent fighter, came this close

to a world title and was stopped with like, he was in a fight that he was winning with

seconds remaining, literally seconds remaining, and they probably could have just let it go.

And he would have been world champion. And it was brutal. If you ever watch legendary nights,

like HBO boxing show, it's great. But it's heartbreaking. It's absolutely heartbreaking.

And also like the beating that he absorbed in that fight changed him for the rest of his life.

And also, you know, don't think he'd never been hit before, but it was one of those we go,

it's, it's all fun and games until you can't remember your name at age 44 years old. And

I didn't come here, what are they, what did Patton say? Nobody, nobody wins the war by dying

for his country, make the other poor bastard die for his. And I think that that's kind of what

we're shooting for. And, you know, the lionization of absorbing damage and that not being a big

deal. Like you hear that all the time, so and so can take shots that would put a lesser fighter

down. What does that even mean? You know, like, so make it this straight, your ability to absorb

damage is a part of you. I mean, I guess that don't get me wrong, that is an attribute that's

nice to have if you, if you need it. But there's plenty of people that actually have really porous

defense that are just very, very difficult to hurt for whatever reason. That's a fascinating

fighter's perspective on the thing. I mean, the, the, the story that is inspiring. And I know

it goes against the artistry of fighting is when you have taken the damage to still rise up

and be able to defeat the opponent. So it's a, but that, that's a flip side of a basically

you failing to defend yourself properly, right? I agree. But let's say for, I think it's a

triumph, that's a triumph of humanity. That's a triumph. That's amazing to witness such a thing

is unbelievable. But you still go, this is, there is a cost here. It's like, I've been fortunate

enough to spend some time working with, with the military. And I've been like around and read

Medal of Honor citations, they're unbelievable. Like you read the story and you're like,

it's, it'll floor you. But it's a little cost and you don't want to be paying that cost

all along. And most of the time with the cost was everything. And then sometimes you go, hey,

yeah, the value here, it's worth everything. It's like, I defend your family, defend your

country under certain circumstances. And if that points extension of your family, you're like,

Hey, this is worth it to casually throw your life away or throw your health. It's foolish.

There's nothing, there's nothing great about that. And, and like you said, it's still an amazing

thing to see. But, but it's also amazing to see you not take damage as the Floyd Mayweather.

It's the artistry of like not being hit. And I wonder if maybe that's why people don't

resonate with Floyd as much as obviously Muhammad Ali was such a time and place a great man for

so many different reasons. Although it was funny to remember like there were times when he wasn't

very popular, we love him now because of time of context, you know, the time to move away from

some of the nonsense he had to deal with. But we got to see him struggle. And also he had

unbelievable sacrifice both in and out of the ring, you know, that, that we all got to witness.

We've never really seen Floyd struggle like that. And granted, obviously Floyd isn't like a

civil rights figure like Muhammad Ali was is different time, different place and he's a

different man. But basically, you know, I wonder if part of the thing that made us it made everyone

think of Muhammad Ali as the greatest in addition to, of course, the unbelievable things that he

did out in the world and the stands that he made, we saw him struggle in the ring. It's,

it's almost it's humanizing, you know, it's, it's weird when people respect Khabib. But again,

it's we saw GSP lose and GSP came back stronger. Khabib is amazing. But I wonder, I wonder how

people feel about him long term, not like they won't think of him as amazing and great. And he's

been a respectable person and champion. But the time he hasn't, he hasn't had to fall, if that

makes sense. And also coupled with Ali had a way of being poetic about sort of the way he was in

the ring, sort of being able to explain the artistry that he's, I mean, there's like joking

as being playful, but really he was able to describe the flow like a butterfly thing like it

could be, like he was able to actually talk about his strategy without talking, without crossing

that line into the flow he made, whether when you're just talking about money and just talking

shit. That's true. Actually, Conor McGregor, when he's not talking shit, is pretty good at like

talking about the art of the martial and like the first one. And I wish Khabib did the same.

Actually, from like the set you have brothers, there's a few, there's a culture of like being

poetic about like being scholars and also bards or whatever, the poets of the game. And Khabib is

more like just simple and he lets his actions speak, which is great too. It's poetic in its own

way. Yeah, it's great, but it's nice when you can tell stories. And you know, that's

probably why Lee was the great catch me up to you went to three fights, I think undefeated. Yep.

BJ Penn, you talked about last time you defeated BJ Penn, that's a, that's a, I mean, that's an

incredible accomplishment. But you fought a lot of really tough guys. When was your last fight and

then catch me up with the injuries? Well, a lot of people kept more and more and more or

were unwilling to fight you. Yeah, that's been, that's, that was why I was out for two years

following the Gray Manor fight between the fighting Gray and BJ. And the Gray Manor fight

was actually one I'm really proud of because Gray was very tough. He's very big, very strong,

very experienced. I had only five fights at the time. And I didn't have a lot of skills. I don't

get to fight Gray with what I have today. I had to fight Gray with what I had in December 2016.

And that I, it really took a lot of discipline, a lot of focus, a lot of challenge, you know,

to stay the course, to do what I needed to do in that fight and to win in, in ultimately

dominating fashion, just not in the dominating obvious sense that you see when someone runs

across and just does that to somebody. But that wasn't on the list for me at that time, you know.

So that was a, that was an interesting one. But the time away, again, was very frustrating.

That was incredibly difficult. Before that fight. After that fight. Well, because I,

I, I beat Artem Lobov in the final of the Ultimate Fighter and Artem is another guy that's tough,

a lot of experience and gets, gets, you know, he's, he's a funny guy and he said some things on

the internet. So he gets a lot of heat for that. But, you know, he just knocked out three of my

teammates. I'm like, he put a couple of people in a pretty rough shape at the end of that. So he

was doing well. And that was a tough fight. Again, if I got to go back and fight that fight now,

it would be not competitive at all. I mean, it wasn't competitive at that time, but it very,

it was competitive. It wasn't close, but it was competitive. So you were improving and growing

fast. Yeah. And it was nice to have time away. I wish I'd had more time in the ring, but again,

I'd only been doing MMA for three years at that time. So the improvement from doing what the

Bitcoin mining was over, overriding the ring rust. I think so. I don't really believe in ring rust,

if I'm honest. You know, I can understand why, you know, people could feel a certain way. But

if anything, it's almost like you just kind of forget what competitions like. And you realize

like, oh, you feel butterflies or something like that. And you go, oh my God, this is different,

versus, no, that's just your body getting ready to perform. It's okay. It's normal.

How do you not have ring rust? I think I try to, I try to practice performing no matter what,

you know, like whether it's singing karaoke and not very good, but like anything, you name it,

talking in front of people. You embrace the butterflies? Yeah. It's almost like, I remember

my last fight, I'm just staring at the wall and I'm like, huh, I guess I'm going to fight in a

couple of minutes. I mean, of course, we all heard the phrase like, you can never walk in

the same river twice because even if you're this, even if the river's the same, you're a different

man. That's, I think it's a really important thing to understand because at various points in my

martial arts career of thought, oh man, how should I feel? I remember when I used to do well in

competition, I would feel, I would think these thoughts, listen to this song, think about this,

I would feel a certain way. And then if you don't feel that way, I would start to become stressed

because I was self inflicted versus going, you'll feel how you feel. Your job is to show up with

what you have on the day, do your absolute best. It's like, I will never quit. I can be sure of

that. I didn't say I can't be beat. I can definitely be beat. I could have lost every

single fight that I've ever had, but I control my effort and I control my attitude and that's,

I will do my very best to actually get my game plan and the event's not working. If I have to,

I'll put my hands up and walk dead forward if I need to at somebody. We hope that that's not

where it goes. But again, that humanizing moment where you're shooting for the inner,

like the inner, you sacrifice the outer and all you have left is will and you hope it doesn't

happen. But if it does, you'll be there. But I guess to come back, the extra periods of time

in between fights, I think was valuable because it was deeply challenging. It was incredibly,

it was heartbreaking sometimes, for Moniz, man. It's like, I didn't want to...

It's just waiting.

Oh my God, dude.

Is there politics involved?

Sometimes, you know, every single time you step into the ring, nothing's guaranteed.

You could be hurt. You could hurt somebody. You could win. You could lose.

Throwing away, just like I said, throwing away your health or your life cheaply makes no sense

for anyone. And having demonstrating some degree of temperance is not cowardly either.

I mean, but again, if you wait too long, you have nothing. So I guess like I was trying and

I'm always open to fighting the absolute best people possible. I'm never turning down fights

ever. You know, if some random jabroni decides that he wants to fight, I'm gonna go away.

If I wanted to just fight randoms, I would just start at stand on the table at Denny's

and start yelling and I'm sure it would have some people who'd be willing to indulge me.

But you want to fight meaningful opponents, challenging opponents, and I know who

and where they are. You did fight in Atlantic City. But you put the Denny's behind you.

I did. And I'll be honest, if there were a fight I stood up after that fight, I don't know if I

was in great shape to expect to win in the other fights that evening, but I could have tried it.

I'm sure there were some takers in the crowd, particularly after they watched me fight,

they're like, yeah, I'll fight that guy. Okay. So when was the last fight?

That was Darren Elkins. That was six months or seven months after the BJ fight, which was great,

because I love maybe fives. He's a really tough opponent.

Very tough opponent, very tough guy, super tough dude. And that was in July, 2019. And then right

when I was about to fight, you were ready to fight regularly after that. You were trying to fight.

You were trying to find a fight. Yeah, we got Ricardo Lomas. So no one else,

none of the, I was ranked in the top 15 at that point. And then people didn't want to fight.

We were struggling to find an opponent. Then Ricardo Lomas, a great, you know,

former title challenger, you know, MMA, you know, really great history and MMA recently

retired, but we were supposed to fight in, I think, May, March, May of 2020. And then coronavirus

happened. And so that scrapped the whole show, you know, training, we were just scrambling to

try to keep the gym alive and take care, you know, I have five or six full, five, six, I think,

five full time employees that I, you know, they're my responsibility. I have to,

their livelihood is in my hands. And it's, they'd be irresponsible of me to,

to not take that seriously. So anyway, we were able to navigate through that time. And then we

were able to reschedule the Lomas fight. And that was in August of last year. And I got a,

a medical like flag, like, Oh, hey, you like, you, you, you have like a medical condition

that we need to look into. You, when I got pulled from the fight, and this immediately was concerned,

because of course, any serious medical condition, you want to go, Oh man, well, I guess I would

like to look at that. Yeah, it turns out it was a giant false positive. And, you know, we find

that out, you know, all of five weeks later, and you go, you gotta be kidding me. That's frustrating.

And then we're still waiting for a fight, waiting for a fight, waiting for a fight,

waiting for a fight, people won't sign up, asked for a number of different opponents,

basically said, Hey, I'm willing to fight anybody that's, that's tough and moving forward.

Finally got a, you know, a great opponent in Danny Gay for, I guess it would have been this,

this March. And then I was training in January, working on, working on some stuff. I was out

training with Raymond Daniels in, in California, Raymond's amazing, unbelievable, you know,

kickboxing karate style kickboxer, fantastic martial artist, great teacher, great training

partner and good friend. And, you know, just really bad luck, you know, kind of a fall in the

middle of, in the middle of training. And I tore my hip flexor halfway off of my femur. So that

wasn't great. And you go like, man, right at the time where you're like, Oh man, all right,

finally moving forward, you know, having the opportunity to fight, Dan's a really tough guy,

you know, you have to fight well, if you want to have a good chance to do well with him, if you

don't fight well, it's going to be a rough night. And like, that's exactly what I signed up for,

that's what we want, BJ, that's what we want with the Elkins, that was gray. And then the universe

goes, Hey, man, I hear you, but there's also this. So anyway, fortunately, it's healing up. And then

hopefully, when do you think you, you know, from May, I think, made this year, May of this year.

Yeah. So it's been, it's been, it's been about five weeks since the injury.

You'd be able to heal up, do you think? Yeah, I think it'll be okay by then. Like,

I don't need a big camp at this point. I've had years of camp, not going to curtail my drinking

or anything like that. Obviously, you know, come on, man, life is meant to be lived. And,

you know, so it's, you know, I've, I've, I'm in good shape. I always, I'm always training. I'm

trying to do my best to train around the injury to the extent that I can right now without,

you know, hurting myself long term. So is there a particular opponents you're thinking about?

Yeah, anybody, anybody forward? You know, I mean, I tried to, I asked, I asked the second

that I got hurt, I sent a message to Dan and I said, Hey, man, like, I just wanted you to be

the first person to know. I, you know, I just was pretty reasonably injured. We just got an MRI,

doctor says like, Hey, man, you're out and you need to take like three weeks off, off, don't do

anything, or you're going to, you're going to tear it the whole way. And this is going to be

surgery. And then it's going to be an additional like eight weeks on top of that to start to rehab

it through PT. And anyway, you know, so I let him know, Hey, if you can push this thing back,

I would love to keep on the car or love to keep the fight. You know, it's like I respect you a

lot as an opponent. And also it's been brutal trying to get anybody to sign on. So if you're

into it, I'm still there. Unfortunately, he turned that down. I understand he had other

things going on and he and his wife are expecting a child coming up. So he needed to, he needed

to fight. And anyway, you know, I guess what we'll see is coming forward. Is there somebody's like

super tough in the featherweight division that you, you seem to like enjoy the difficult puzzles?

Is there somebody especially difficult that you would like to fight?

I would like to fight. I know that I'll need to win at least one fight before this. And I look

forward to coming back and giving my best effort to do that. I want to fight to beat

Megaman Sharapov. I want to fight Yaya Rodriguez. I want to fight Korean zombie. And it's complicated,

man. Yeah, that would be fun. I would love to see that fight. That's a fascinating fight.

That would be fun. He would be very challenging. All those guys are very challenging. And so I

look forward to just staying healthy to the extent that we can coming back. And I'm going to fight

multiple times this year. Heller, hot water. Hell yes. Hey, by the way, I completely forgot

because you were talking about the systems and decision trees and the illusion of choice

made me think of Sam Harris. And I forgot to mention it. So he talks about free will quite a

bit and that there's an illusion of free will. Bull claim cotton.

That maybe the universe constructed that little game where it makes us feel like we have a bunch

of choices, but we really don't. We're really always ending up with a middle finger. That would

be hilarious. Yeah. That's what you see before you die. Just a giant middle finger. It's like,

oh, fuck. I knew it. I knew it. What do you think? Do you think there's a free will? Like, we feel

like we're making choices. So you're thinking, again, what we're talking about, okay, here's a

system of martial arts that's hands of grace. There's different schools and whatever. And then

you're thinking, okay, how can I think outside these systems? But then there's also a system that's

our human society. And we feel like there's an actual choice being made by us individuals.

Do you think that choice is real? Or is it just an illusion?

Well, okay, that's a really good question. I'm not necessarily equipped to answer this,

but I'll do my best. Okay, I guess I would say to start with, sure, we'll be interesting if it

wasn't real. If the choice wasn't real, we'll be pretty interesting if it is real. First off,

I would start with facilitated beliefs versus not facilitated beliefs. It's almost like,

I think the world's out to get me. True, not true. What next? Probably not a

facilitated belief. Imagine you believe there's no free will. Okay, now what? Does that justify

every single impulse that you're going to give into? Or does the belief in free will,

does the belief in my ability to work hard, to focus, to be disciplined, to improve my position,

improve my situation, whether it's true or not, although I think that at least many of us would

argue that at least whether there's some sort of internal driver that allows for that.

We live in a material world. Your actions do affect the world. I can choose to pick that

water up or not. And anyway, I would say a belief strongly in the idea of picking facilitated beliefs

and going, hey, I will adjust. Whether this belief system is right or wrong on a cosmic level,

I'm nowhere near smart enough to understand. But I can say me deciding that, let's say,

for instance, I'm going to walk over to have a conversation with someone in a hotel lobby

and I've never met them and I go over and I start with, this is going to be interesting and I just

walk over there versus in my head, I'm like, what's this asshole want? We're about to have two very

different conversations. I could be right that this person's not very polite or thinks negatively

of me right from go, but I think that that's probably not a facility to believe people talk about.

How is that going to help me navigate the conversation to a positive conclusion? And I

think about that for, let's say fighting, it's a good example, like confidence. Plenty of people

believe plenty of things that aren't real. Myself included, I'm sure, all the time. And anyway,

believing that you can do something, I'm like, hey, I think I can win. Doesn't guarantee you a

positive outcome, but I would say most of us would probably, most of us would argue that it helps.

What's depression if not a negative, unfacilitated belief that oftentimes is not

reflected by reality, but you project it onto reality and it's understandable if it makes

you feel like, oh man, this isn't going to work out. I don't think the prospects are going well.

And then if you feel like you can't get out of that loop, that seems pretty rough. And I see a lot

of things out in society right now where you go, whether you agree or disagree with various positions

on things, you go, is that a facilitator belief? Even if that is true, which is arguable, anything.

So what next, man? So where does this end? One is the positive. What's the happy ending here? And

if they go, well, there is no happy ending, I'm like, okay, so now what? So what do we do here?

So choose the facilitator belief. And in your intuition, believing that free will is real

is more productive for a successful life. Absolutely. Because otherwise, how am I not...

First of, how can society function if it's not real? So how can I blame you or anyone else or

hold anyone responsible for anything if free will isn't real? No, that's exactly the point.

But at the surface level, what you're saying is true. But perhaps if we truly internalize

that free will is an illusion, we'll start to figure out something that

transforms the way we see society. For example, we are very individual centric.

So believing that free will is real puts a lot of responsibility and blame on people when they

do something bad. Maybe if we truly internalize that free will is an illusion, we start to think

about the system of humans together as this mechanism for progress as opposed to where

individual people are responsible for their actions, good or bad. So we remove the value,

the weight we assign to the accomplishments or the violence, the negative stuff done by

individuals and more look at the progress of society. I don't know what that looks like,

but it's almost like as opposed to focusing on the individual ants of an ant colony

looking at the entirety of the ant colony.

So that makes perfect sense. I would just say that that's a reasonable thing to suggest.

It's a seismic shift, right? And it's hard to say whether that would be better or worse,

but I guess I'll use this as a convenient one for me. So I remember the last time we spoke,

I brought up one of the most reviled evil characters in certainly recent history,

probably human history period Adolf Hitler. Well, I'm a big fan of making people live in

the world that they want to believe in. Well, if free will doesn't exist and it's just about

how things move forward, when are we going to be high fiving this guy or what? Because I remember

what I said and that actually brings me to something else we discussed.

Yeah, for people who don't know, Ryan brought up, or I brought up, there's literally a giant book

about Hitler. So I've been obsessed with Hitler World War II installing recently for recently.

Oh man, this has become like a meme. Joe Rogan with like DMT and me with Hitler.

Can that make something more positive? Like Cat in the Hat or something? I don't know.

But you brought up Hitler as an example of something particular,

of some philosophical discussions we're having. And the excellent, eloquent, and the full of

integrity MMA journalist clipped out something you've said about Hitler and said that,

you know, I forget what the headlines are, but they were the most ridiculous possible

implementation. Basically, it's intentionally misunderstanding what I'm saying. Then it's

like, I get that they're stupid, but I'm stupid too. So I know what that's like. So I don't have

a lot of sympathy for you. Yeah, exactly. I can't give you a pass on that. But basically,

intentionally misunderstanding what's going on. But what I find funny is that, hey, we got to

be careful what we believe. And again, back to the cancel culture thing that we discussed last

time as well, where would I like to apologize? I mean, no, actually something about cancel

culture that we've been seeing things culturally. I'm like, I will be damned if I apologize for

anything that I don't need to apologize for, because I was intentionally misunderstood in

that instance. Now, you could say that I'm not a historical scholar, which I would agree immediately.

And also that I oftentimes in eloquently or in articulately phrase things, which I'll agree

that what is again, but ultimately, you know, going, hey, I want to make you believe live in

the world that you're suggesting ought to exist. Okay, so if there's no free will,

is everything, how far of a step back are we willing to take cosmically before we start going,

hey, this is good, because we're experiencing a social, you know, reckoning in our country at the

moment, you know, for good and for other, probably, I guess. And basically, but hey, it all worked

out, right? So that's probably not something that would fly. And I think that's a fair thing.

That's interesting. It might not fly from the individual perspective, but if you zoom out,

but if you zoom out, and think that, you know, appreciate society as, you know, just like an

ant colony as a beautifully complex system, like we kind of, from the individual perspective,

we value progress, especially progress of the individual, but in whole progress of societies.

But if you accept that this is just a complex system that's not necessarily headed anywhere,

that this is almost like that river is just flowing, I think that removes the burden of

always striving, of always trying, of always like the struggle and so on. So it's possible that if

we have no control, you can like arrive at some kind of other Zen state. Does that sound very human,

though? That goes against, I think, our current human condition as we experience it, but we've

communicated that to each other. Like we've taught, like through these social forces taught

each other that our lives matter and so on. Maybe if we convince ourselves that we're just sort of

like little things in a stream and ultimately none of it matters, there might be some kind of

enjoyment to be discovered through that process. I don't, listen, I'm a capitalist, rah rah, like...

But I guess I think you're bringing up a really important point. I guess almost anything like

capitalism, I only get to experience it as I sit here now and I get to live, I was raised in the

United States, have traveled around the world a little bit, have had the, you know, good fortune

of meeting many people from many different places. And I'm an end user of capitalism. I don't really

know how it got here, whether it was... I wasn't there at the start of this idea. I wasn't there

for, hey, how did we come up with this idea? How did we arrive? And I'm nowhere near well read

enough to understand any of that really even secondhand. And I guess recognizing that

communism, Marxism, socialism, anarchism, anything is... These are all perspectives that

all have, I guess, various strengths and weaknesses. But I guess one thing I'm always,

I guess I would say the burden, it seems to me that if you want to make a change,

the burden of proof is on the person implying that there needs to be a change. And it doesn't mean

that there's nothing there, but it's like, if you want to create a small shift, a riffle, that's

fine, but a seismic ripping shift in how we exist or how we experience the world as human beings.

And you mentioned fighting, why watching someone undergo, take abuse on a level in the ring that's

just shocking and then triumph in spite of it. It's like, this is unbelievable. This is part

of the magic of combat sports. Now, it's part of the magic, the other side of the magic that

doesn't get talked about sometimes is that the trajectory of that individual's life later on

is not always great. Or there's, I'm afraid there's a cost for that. But if we remember,

you mentioned removing the struggle. Personally, the struggle is what makes life life. And also,

I guess something Faraz has brought up to me on a number of occasions, and it makes sense to me,

it's basically humans only understand things through relative comparison. I only understand

heat because I've known cold. I only understand, I guess it's like talking to someone that's

never experienced any sort of hardship, and then their latte isn't right, and then they pitch a

fit versus someone that's gone through a great deal of challenge, struggle in their life.

They tend to have a little bit more of an even perspective. And anyway, and of course, even

as a relative thing, and what I proceed to be even may not be even, maybe I'm particularly

softer or something in the other direction without realizing because I can only understand what I

can understand. But the idea that we want to fundamentally alter ourselves as a species and

as people seems like an incredibly, incredibly high bar to prove and also like an incredibly

dangerous idea, because it always comes back to, well, who's going to be responsible for this?

Who gets to do the choosing? What's a good idea? What's not a good idea? And I guess that actually

brings me to something I've been encountering recently in discussions with friends. I feel

like there's only two types of people that I encounter at this point. People with a more or

less libertarian tilt to their thinking and people without it. And when I say libertarian,

I don't mean that in the political party sense or even the belief system basic where I'm like,

hey, you do you buddy. What you're up to is not my concern versus what you're up to is my concern.

And I guess I've always watched various points in history, people on this side or people on that

side or more or less, I guess problematic, I guess you could say, and I don't mean that in the

internet sense, you know, more of an issue. But the world is always full of people that want to

tell you what you need to be doing as opposed to more or less doing a harm. And I guess that's

one of the ones anytime I'm trying to tell other people what to do, I better hope I'm right. And

it's bizarre to me how many people are so confident that their side or their position is the one that's

not only right for them, but right enough that they can enforce it on others. And that just seems

incredibly dangerous to me. And I guess that comes back to even Sam's point about, oh, we want to,

trying to spread the idea that free will doesn't exist. I'm not saying it's damaging,

but if there will maybe, and plenty of other things could be as well, I'm not, you know,

it goes way over my head as to, you know, the implications of all of these. And I guess all

of us are in evangelists for something. But I guess it's weird that we've gotten this far as a

species. And now we want to take like sharp, sharp turns. Well, we've been taking a bunch of sharp

turns throughout history. Yeah, that's, that's what, you know, that's, that's a way, you know,

okay, humans love power. And one way to attain power is to say everything that you guys are

doing is wrong. And I have the right thing. And I'm going to build up a giant cult of people.

And I'm going to overthrow and indirectly what that results in me is me gaining power. And

that's how you get all the big revolutions in human history, saying I'm done with the thing that

the powerful are currently doing. So I'm going to overthrow that's, that's where probably all

the identity politics that's happening now is people that didn't have power before are looking

to gain power. And they're also, you know, that's where Jordan Peterson criticizes identity politics

is people with the right with a good intentions, I should say, are in seeking power, allow power to

corrupt them, as power always does. And so they lose track of like the, the, the devils that

they're fighting by becoming the same kind of devils, the same kind of evil that they're fighting.

And so that that's just the progress of human history. But hopefully, as these power greedy,

people keep attaining power with the, with a progressive mindset, over time, things get

better and better as they, as they have each generation, a lot of, a lot of unfairness happens,

a lot of hypocrisy happens, a lot of people are trampled along the way by those who mean well.

But over time, like lessons are learned or like human, like civilization accumulates lessons.

And in part learns lessons of history, and it gets better and better over time, even though

in the short term, there's people acting not their best selves. And, you know,

that seems to be the progress of human history, the idea of internalizing with free will not

being real. And you're actually making me realize that that ultimately leads to a kind of,

does it go in a nihilistic direction? Yeah, it's both nihilistic, or if you want to make it a

political system, then it's more like communist type of a system where like the value of the

individuals completely reduced, removed, or another perspective is like the freedom

of an individual is not to be valued or protected. And so from our current perspective,

the systems that seem to have worked, the United States works pretty damn well,

despite all the different criticisms, it seems like freedom of the individual in all its forms seems

to be fundamental to the success of the United States. And so we should, it's, however the hell

you put it, is like, doesn't matter whether free will is or isn't an illusion, the belief that

it's real. Protects the individual from the group, which is fundamentally correct me if I'm wrong,

that always seems like the big issue of history. Hey, there's more of me than there is of you.

There is a view, deal with it. You're like, yikes. And you want to be yourself, you want to be

different, you want to have a different religion, you want to be a different skin color, you want

to do this, all the bad tribal things happen when there's more of me than you, correct me if I'm

wrong. Yeah, absolutely. And that's always the fundamental power imbalance though, right?

What's the interesting thing about libertarian thinking, I guess, I don't know, those words

are really... Maybe they're all charged, I know. And I may not scale up, but I mean,

more like on a philosophical underpinning where you're like, yeah, basically, hey,

you feel free to believe I'm a fool and I'm plenty of people do, I'm sure. But as long as you don't

chase me down the hall and hit me in the back of the head with a textbook, what's the big deal?

Yeah. So the libertarian viewpoint, which I probably espouse, I'm very much like

freedom with the individual is very valuable and leave others the fuck alone unless they're

trying to hurt you. The thing is, you also have to, I believe, put in the work of empathy of

understanding what others, what leaving people the fuck alone means to others.

But isn't that an interesting thing? If I believe in freedom of the individual and I take that,

like all of these, like you said, you take them past just their first why question,

you ask why, why, why, why, or how, how, how, how many times should that not extend to respect for

you, respect for your position, respect for your individual lived experience, which could be

grossly different than mine. Yeah. This is the problem with saying, I'm an individual,

I'm not going to bother you, you don't bother me. That's just like, that's not actionable.

Because to be, to make it actionable, you have to think the why, why, why, why, why,

you have to do the steps beyond. You think, what does that actually mean? That means

understanding how even my very existence hurts others. Because you have to understand that,

you're not just sitting alone in a room, you're using public transit, using the police force,

you're using firefighters, you're using a lot of resources that are publicly shared,

and some of those resources are unfairly distributed. We've agreed that we're going to pay taxes,

and those taxes are going to go towards building some kind of infrastructure. So that's already

towards social, that's, so you're not a real, you're not a real sort of like talk to Michael

Malis, like anarchists, right? Saying like basically full, just leave me the fuck alone,

and I'm going to collaborate with whoever the hell I want. That's not the American society

as it stands currently. We've agreed that there's going to be certain social institutions that we

pay into. And some of the sort of discussions about race and all those kinds of things is about

those institutions being institutionally unfair, whether it's race or gender, all those kinds of

things. Listen, I have a bunch of criticisms of the way that conversation carries itself out,

but the thing is what's valuable is to actually listen and empathize. And that's not often talked

about with the leave me the fuck alone mindset, because it doesn't have that little component,

which I think could be fundamental to the function of a society, which is like social. Like, what

is it though, Obama, you didn't build it, or you didn't build it alone or whatever, however that

goes. But basically, we wouldn't be able to accomplish anything as individuals without the

help of others. And to be able to then start to think, okay, so what is my duty, what is my

responsibility to other human beings to be respectful, to be loving, to help them as part

of this functioning society? That starts, that's actually a lot of work to start to think about

that. Because then I have to like think, okay, Ryan, what's his life like? Like as a business owner

doing COVID, what's that like? And then he has the employees that run the gym. What's that like?

What's that stress like? Or about the fighting and the injury and so on? What's that like?

That empathy takes a lot of like compute cycles. And also a lot of energy, right?

But I have to go through that computation. If I want to be an individual that's like doesn't hurt

you. If I may, I guess like to come back to Muhammad Ali, one of the things he said is service

to others is the rent that you pay for your rent here on earth. And now one of the things that I

think that I see as a result of the internet all the time is people talking about global giant

problems, social problems that are society wide that are massive, truly massive and frankly,

beyond the power of any of us to solve. It's certainly on an individual level.

So I've discussed things with friends, like my father's an environmental attorney,

like has been for a long time and has been an engineer for a long time. And so I'm not

barely know anything, but I'm read in a little bit of various things. But climate change,

oh my god, I'm so concerned about climate change. What am I supposed to do about climate change?

I'll tell you what I can do is I can not litter. I can try to conserve energy where I can. I can

do whatever I want. What can I personally do about some giant social problem that I didn't start and

is out of my control? I'm like, well, I can be decent to the people around me. I can mention,

I can demonstrate empathy and I can demonstrate consideration for the people in my circle.

And to the extent that I can the people outside of my circle, but yelling at the trees over

things that over problems that are borderline cosmic doesn't seem very productive. It just

makes me feel like I'm cool and important because I'm talking about something well hundreds of years

from now the water will rise. Maybe it will, maybe it won't. It's completely over my head.

I know nothing. But focusing on the problems that we can actually solve, it comes back to the same

thing. I want to win a fight. I would love to win a fight. I can't control that. What I can do

is I can control each individual step that I take around the ring and try to make the next

correct move. I can't look. It gets people's, they get all excited. I'm trying to keep my

language in check, but they get all excited thinking about problems that are like Superman

couldn't solve these problems. You could be that powerful and you can't make all of the bad things

go away, but you can absolutely change yourself. And I think a lot of the lessons that the good

lessons from religion that happen, the good lessons from the great men and women throughout

history that we are inspired by that talk about change starting with within and again,

treating the people around you decently and treating the people around you decently doesn't

even necessarily mean the golden rule. Do unto others as you would like them to do to you. I go,

well, maybe what I would like and what this person would like aren't the same thing. Well,

how am I going to get to the bottom of that? Because I could be attempting to be decent to

this person and by my standard, I am being decent, but maybe I'm missing the mark by theirs.

Well, I can't possibly if I just interacted with you, it's like someone talking about some

nonsense microaggression. So let me get this straight. I've never met you before. You never

met me before and you're interpreting some minor comment that I've made in the least charitable

way possible. I'm not saying that you couldn't be annoyed, but your expectation for that level of

consideration is you're going to be disappointed a lot. Now, if you're someone that's in your life

on a consistent basis, and they're like, hey, I really don't appreciate what you're saying

or what you're doing here. Do you realize that this is how I'm perceiving and you go, oh, man,

I'm so sorry. Of course, I would hear what you have to say. But I guess trying to recognize that

I guess my job is to treat others with dignity in general, but that level of specificity that

requires increases as it gets closer to you. And as a person, I have a very finite amount of

resources financially, intellectually, emotionally, physically. If I chuck 0.001% of it in every

single different direction, what am I doing? It's like when people go, oh, I care deeply about

Tibet. Why aren't you over there? Go build a house, man. Get on a plane, go build a house. Oh,

you don't want to do that. So really what you want to do is post on Facebook and accept

high fives for how much of a good guy you are. I got an idea. Go help somebody in your neighborhood.

Go play with some kids. Go be a friend to someone that doesn't have a friend. Read a book. Try to

educate yourself. And so I guess to come back, all of these problems aren't solvable on a grand

scale, but it's almost like by attempting to address them in our personal lives, we do better.

But rather than a giant airing of the grievances on a consistent basis, not that that isn't sometimes

necessary and valuable, but after you air your grievances, you go, hey, how about we sort this

out? What's the next step? And I guess, again, when we're trying to address it on a giant social

level, it just seems unmanageable to me, even if you have the best of intentions.

Yeah. I mean, but nevertheless, there's a lot you can do on social networks. I mean, I enjoy

tweeting and consuming Twitter. I apply the exact same principle that you just said, which is

a free will and discussion, which is like, I approach it in a way that I don't get stuck in

this loop that's counterproductive. I try to do things that are productive. And it's just like

you said, that's like, what kind of things can I do in this world, whether that's tweeting or

building things? Those are low effort tweeting, or actually building businesses or building ideas

out as high effort. What can I do that will actually solve problems? And that's the way I

approach it. And I do wonder if it's possible to at scale, encourage each other to approach

like social media and communication with fellow humans in that way. I don't know.

How do you think that would be done? I guess like to improve the quality of discourse, maybe?

Like, or even like you said, the empathy or the decency of discourse?

I think people should be incentivized and encouraged to do that. I think most of what's

we see happening on Twitter and Facebook and so on has to do with very small, very powerful

implementation details. It goes down to like, what is the source of the dopamine rush,

the like button, the sharing mechanisms, just even small tweaks and those can fix a lot.

Really? I believe so. So like a lot of the stuff we see now is the result of just initial

implementations of these systems that we didn't anticipate. So the monetization comes from

engagement and the tools we have is clicking like and sharing. It was not always obvious.

It was not obvious from the beginning. It wasn't obvious while Twitter and Facebook grew

that there's a big dopamine rush from getting more followers and likes and shares.

So we've gotten addicted to this feeling like how many people are commenting, how many people are

saying like a clicking like and so on. So that's that dopamine rush. So we want to say the thing

that will get the most likes on mass in society. And then the other thing that was expected is

the controversial, the divisive will get the most likes. So it had to do with the initial

mechanisms of likes and shares resulting in an outcome that was unpredicted, which is

huge amounts of division, irrespective of like any of the basics of human connection that we've

actually all come to understand in society is valuable at the individual level, like we're

saying. But on mass, what results is like you throw all that out and it's all just divisive

at scale discourse. I think it could be fixed by incentivizing personal growth, like

incentivizing you to challenge yourself, to grow as an individual, and most importantly,

to be happy at the end of the day. So incentivize you feeling good in a way that's long lasting,

long term. I think what makes people actually feel good is being kind to others long term.

In the short term, what feels good is getting a lot of likes. And I think those are just

different incentives that if implemented correctly, you could just build social networks that would

do much better. So do you think it comes from a structural perspective? I guess at what point

does you mention like you mentioned free will and also you mentioned feeling good and again,

working hard. I know that you have the, I guess the, was it a race or? No, the Goggins thing.

Yeah. It's four by 40, four by four by 48 challenge where you run four miles every four hours for

two days. That's awesome. Yeah, it's a bunch of, it's, the challenge of it isn't just the running,

the running is very tough, but it's mostly the sleep deprivation because you're just

training every four hours. But it's a struggle, right? And that, but the struggle gives meaning.

And ultimately, I guess, so how can we, because you mentioned, like you said, adjusting things on

like a, I guess, like a programming level, almost a base programming level so that the interface

is different for the user. But at what point does the user have a responsibility to, you know,

as a, as a man or a woman or a person to just behave more decently? How can we, I guess, utilize,

what can we do? It seems like, you know, we're like our society is so grossly missing like a

Martin Luther King right now, like the great inspiring characters throughout American history,

throughout world history. Where are the great leaders? So leadership is part of it. But I,

you know, that's definitely where the great leaders is a very good question. That's,

that's more of a question of our political systems, why they're not pushing forward the

great leaders. But there's also just the, okay, there's some just basic engineering shit, which is

when you and I, when you, Ryan, and I are in a room alone, and we're talking, even if we're

strangers, the incentives are for us to get along. Like just when we're together in person,

that's what I'm saying. I'm not even saying some kind of, but when you, but when you remove that,

when we remove that, the, the, the implementation of, of the, of social networks as they stand

right now in the digital space, a very different set of incentives. It's more fun to destroy others,

to be shitty to others. And that, and it becomes this loop, endless loop. Like you were saying,

that's ultimately destructive and not productive. And I think it has to do with just the interfaces

of making it feel good to be nice to others. Because currently it doesn't feel nearly as good

to be nice to others on the internet. And it's, it doesn't feel nearly as bad

as it does in real life to be shitty to others on the internet. So the incentives are just wrong.

I, I think there is a technology solution to this, or at least the solution to improve

this, this communication mechanism. It's not obvious how, or a bunch of sort of more detailed ideas,

but this is fascinating because I've gotten a chance to talk to Jack Dorsey quite a bit.

This is the CEO of Twitter. And he is legitimately has, you know, in this conversation, he would agree

with everything. And he's a good human being. And he has a lot of really good ideas how to

improve things. The question when you're a captain of a ship, whether even it's a question

whether CEO is even a captain, how much can you actually steer that ship once it's gotten large

enough? There's so much momentum. There's so many users. There's so many people who are marketing

and PR and lawyers. It's very difficult to change things. Is it difficult because of the fallout?

Or is it difficult because it's actually like literally out of this power?

So power is weird when you have a larger organization. This is why the great leaders,

what this, what great leaders do, whether it's presidents or leaders of companies, Steve Jobs,

I would argue Musk is that way, is to walk into a room full of people who don't want you to create

drama. It's weird, man. When people just kind of want to be nice, the niceness creates momentum.

And nobody wants to, it's the systems thing. Everybody just behaves in the way they were

previously behaving in the way they're supposed to behave. And nobody wants to raise a fuss.

It takes a great man or woman leader to step in and say, what we've been doing is bullshit.

Okay. You're fired. You're cool. What is it that I'm out? Yeah. I think you have to

create constant revolutions within a company that's very, very difficult to do structurally

and psychologically is very difficult to do, to be able to sort of, yeah, to constantly

challenge the way things have been done in the past. And which is why another way it's often done

is a startup, like a small company, basically a small company because really successful and

then no longer can turn the ship. So a new startup comes along, a new competitor that then

challenges the big ship. And then that starts out the winner. That's like Google came to be,

saw Twitter came to be in Facebook and so on. And Apple has, you know, that was the dream

of Steve Jobs is it would succeed for many decades, for like centuries. That was the idea

that you would keep creating revolutions. And under Steve Jobs, Apple successfully

pivoted a bunch of times just like reinvented themselves, which is very difficult to do.

Because I mean, at least I don't know if this is accurate because I wouldn't know anything,

but I've heard plenty of people complain about Steve Jobs. But in reality, the reason that

all of these amazing things were done was because this person was willing to, well,

obviously brilliant and then also willing to rattle everyone's cage periodically and say,

hey, what's going on is not what we need to be doing. That's a really interesting thing.

So he would rattle the cage, but he was also, I don't know if those are intricately connected

or always have to be connected, but he would just be a dick. So maybe by my, maybe by his

standard, I am lazy and worthless. Well, that's, you see that to you. Is he being a dick though,

if by his standard, I mean, like again, it's like everyone's stupid compared to somebody.

You know, I guess. So you apparently are able to take that kind of thing is

sometimes you just, there's ways to cross the line. And I mean, this is okay.

The fascinating thing about being a leader, especially a leader of companies,

is it's a people problem. So each individual in a room. So as a leader, you're only really

interacting with a small number of people because there are leaders of other smaller groups and so

on. But each of those individuals in the room have their own different psychology. Some like

to be pushed to the limit. Some, some like like to be screamed at. Some have a heart or very soft

spoken and almost afraid to speak. And they have to be, you have to, you have to hear them out.

Like there's a, and those, those could be all superstars. We're not, we're not talking about

like the C students. We're talking about the eight major students. Well, it's funny that,

yeah, but the thing to man, the skill to manage all of those people is completely separate from

the skill to innovate something. I mean, not that they're not connected, but it's funny how it's,

it's almost like, you know, why do we have shitty, why do we have shitty representatives?

Well, I mean, the thing that you do to get elected has nothing to do with governance.

Yes.

You know, so.

Well, that's exactly it. But the great leaders have to have both skills. So like you have to have

the boldness of, if you look at the great presidents through history, you know,

usually it's in a time of crisis is when they step up, but they basically say, okay, stop this

old way that Congress works of this bickering of this like compromise bullshit. Here's a huge plan

that costs billions of dollars in today's age, trillions of dollars, no extra pork, no extra

additions, just like here's a clear plan. We're going to build the best road network

the world has ever seen or going to build some huge infrastructure project. We're going to

revolutionize internet or we're going to coronavirus. We're going to build the largest

like testing facility the world has ever seen in terms of the, we're going to get everybody tested

several times a day, all those kinds of things, huge projects and say,

fuck all this, the details that everybody's bickering about, we're going to give everybody

$2,000, we can give everybody $3,000, like huge projects. And at the same time, so that's the

boldness and the leadership and saying, throw out all the bullshit of the past. And at the same time,

be able to get in the room with the leaders of both parties or for the powerful individuals

and smooth talk the shit out of them in the way they need to be smooth talk to.

So like both of those skills, it seems to be when they're combined in one person,

that's that creates great leaders. Musk appears to have that Elon. I don't know if Steve Jobs,

it's interesting. So the criticism of Steve and a little bit on Elon is he misses some of the human

part. But maybe it's impossible to have a really, you have like Sanya Nadal, who's a CEO of Microsoft,

you have who's really good on the human side, really, really good on the human side, like

everybody loves them. The CEO of Google and Alphabet is also the same way. So like,

I don't know if it's possible to have both. You only get so many stat points.

Yeah, you only get in this RPG of life. You got very good at jujitsu very fast.

So you went, I mean, you told the story of Bluebelt and so on, but you went to Black Belt

really quickly, and not just in terms of ranks, but in terms of just skill level.

I mean, you didn't go to Black Belt nearly as fast as your skills had developed. You were

like doing extremely well at a high level of competition. So you're a good person to ask,

how does one get good at jujitsu? We talked about solving problems at the elite level, but

when you're a beginner at the martial arts, how do you get good? How much training should you do

at the very basic stuff? Like how much training, how much drilling, and then the mental stuff, like

where should your mind be? How should you approach it from a mental perspective too?

I'll just tell you my perspective on this one. I guess I would say I feel, step one,

I feel lucky to have found a good training situation, particularly for the time in where

I was at. And I drilled a ton. I drilled and drilled and drilled and drilled and drilled.

And one thing that's really important to understand, though, is that I was able to,

in a relatively brief period of years, go from zero to reasonably good. But I think I probably

crammed more hours in those small years than most people did training, let's say, in two or three

times the length. So it may not, it may masquerade as something else other than it is, I could say.

You have to put in the hours. There's no way around that. I think so.

But what did you put in those hours? So when you said drilling, can you break that apart a

little bit? What does drilling look like? Is there any recommendations you can make?

Absolutely. Step one, I would say your choices matter. One of the really important things that I

think we should consider about Jiu Jitsu is that there's a lot of junk in the system right now.

It's like Jiu Jitsu is exploded in terms of the number of positions, techniques, strategies,

this, that, rule sets. That's really cool on the one hand. On the other hand, there's probably a

just metric shit ton of suboptimal things that are out there that are being taught.

Myself included, I've taught things that are looking back five years, three years, two years,

one year, where I'm like, oh, I would not do it like that anymore. Straight up, sometimes I wouldn't

do it like that. Other times, I would literally never do even that particular movement. I don't

think the shrimp is a real move. It's a giant spiel and seizure to show in person. But long

short of it, there's a lot of things that we think of as fundamental that I think that are

really pretty negative. And also, you know... That's heresy in Jiu Jitsu, isn't it? The shrimp.

Exactly. It's like the holy, we all worship the shrimp. We love the shrimp. We love the shrimp.

For people who don't do Jiu Jitsu and you should, the shrimp is you scoot your butt

away from your opponent. How would you describe that?

It's like a really athletic looking position where you look like someone that's trying to stick

their butt out on Instagram. And then you push your hands away and you expose your face. And then

you lay on your side because someone told you to do that.

And you look like a... Yeah, I guess you look like a shrimp.

Yeah. It's like that time that someone really credible told me to drink,

unleaded gasoline. And I did it for a while. And then it got to the point in my life where

the next best... The thing that I needed to do to really improve my life was stop drinking

unleaded gasoline. And I would say that there's a lot of stuff that's in there that step one is like

it's junk. It's actual junk. And not only will it waste your time, it will be like an albatross

hanging on you because it affects how you think about things going forward. So although it's

funny like the operating assumptions that we work under have a huge, huge, huge influence you

mentioned like growing up in the United States or this being a capitalist society. Like, all right.

Now, of course, I think that I don't really know any different otherwise. And I think that a lot

of times people go, oh, communism is better. I'm like, I haven't seen it. I haven't read any books

about it being better. But it's possible. I mean, I haven't experienced it much myself either.

So I can't dismiss it outright. But I guess I would say it's a fundamentally differing operating

system underpinning and all of my choices, all of... If I honestly believed in that thing,

many of my choices on a moment by moment, on a day by day and certainly on a lifetime basis

would be very different. So I would say that it's tough when you're young in the martial arts.

And I mean, all of us are always trying to do our best to learn. But when you're young in the

martial arts, you'd always go if you're a reasonable guy. What do they call it? Like

Dunning Kruger Amnesia. I can't remember if this is the right one. But basically, you go like, oh,

I know what I'm doing here. So I can say that's not right. But then I read a new story about baseball

and I don't know anything about baseball. It sounds credible. And it's bullshit. But I can't

call bullshit. If you're a reasonable person, you can't call bullshit on things that you don't

understand. Even if you suspect it's not right, you're like, well, I've got to reserve judgment.

You never, ever, ever set aside your need and also obligation to understand

why you were doing what you're doing. And don't ask why once, ask why over and over and over

and over about the same thing. Oh, well, I want to shrimp. Why? To make space. Why do I want to

make space to get away from the guy? Well, why do I want to get away from him? Well, because he's

dangerous. Well, why is he dangerous? And you can oftentimes get down to, wait a minute, I didn't

even need to move. Three quarters of the time, you're actually acting in the other person's

self interest. And I guess a lot of times I can't, this kind of goes beyond what we can

demonstrate here. But I would just say, trying to understand what my base operating assumptions

are and consistently reevaluate them, which can be fricking exhausting, frankly, and also

constant confidence destroying. But you mentioned that I did pretty well relatively quickly. I

started in 2004 and I was at Abu Dhabi ADCC for the first time as an alternate in 2007.

I want to match there against the Black Belt World Champion. And frankly, the fact that I was able

to beat someone like that was neat. But at the same time, it says a little bit more about

what Jiu Jitsu is and some of the issues with it than it does about how cool I am or was because

that shouldn't really happen when you think about it. You're like, okay, you're championing at

ostensibly a very high level of the sport. You enjoy a three inch, four inch height advantage

and a 35 pound weight advantage and you just got beat. Like that should not exist. I'm serious

that I'm dead serious that should not exist. If that happens, you're doing it wrong. Is it that

I'm doing it right or is it that you're doing it wrong? And there's enough variance in the way

that you're doing it that you're allowing me to win. And now I did happen to win that with the

50 50 heel hook, which was 50 50. But basically, which was one of the early examples of like,

Hey guys, by the way, people can try to hurt your legs. And that was something like we mentioned,

John Daner mentioned, like, you know, myself, Dean Lister, a lot of the guys from the Hensel

Gracie team that have had amazing success. They've gone and done great things.

And Craig Jones in the competitive grappling world, basically taking advantage of being very,

very good in what they're doing, but also a glaring, glaring, glaring issue with the operating

system of Jiu Jitsu, which was, you know, a huge vulnerability in the lower body and not

only not attacking it, but having no idea how one does attack it, which means you can't understand

how someone will assail you. So anyway, I guess to come back is if in the in the absence of knowing

what to do, I try to polish what I've got. So if I've got a knife and I'm like, I don't know how

to use them, like, okay, I'm just gonna sharpen the edge and polish it and make sure that when I

need to use this dang thing, I'll be able to do it. Because trying to put together a system

when you don't have an idea of what's going on, a lot of times you end up making, you know,

subultimal choices. But as long as you're consistently reevaluating what you're doing,

and that's something I've tried to do over time, over and over and over again, and try to seek out

the most, the best and also most articulate or insightful instructors or people of various

levels, doesn't matter if they're well known or not that could say, hey, Ryan, I think you should

do this, I think you should do that. And I think all I've ever done in martial arts is try to treat

people with respect, honestly, try to demonstrate appreciation for the many, many people who have

helped me over time and be the type of person that they want to train with, not the type of,

because we've all trained with people that make us think about beating the ever loving crap in

the life. I never wanted to be that guy. And I was basically saying, like, if I train with a

black belt when I'm a blue belt, and this person enjoys training with me, that's in my interest.

Selfishly, not only do I not want them to beat me up, but selfishly, you mentioned being decent

to other people, you want to incentivize being decent to other people, right, with the structure

of what you're doing. Selfishly, I'm incentivized to be a nice guy, even if I'm internally a scumbag,

which I like to think that I'm not. But basically, going like, hey, this guy's way more likely to

help me, or this person's way more likely to help me if I shake their hand, say, thank you,

I really appreciate you helping me out. And that thing that they tapped me with four or five times,

I'm going to ask them about it. And then they don't have to tell me, they're under no obligation.

But I'll say, and when they tell me, don't thank you so much for your time, really appreciate it.

And that's it, you know. Okay, so to summarize,

what you really described, I just want to make sure we're keeping track of this.

I went all over the place. No, you didn't. You're pretty on point. But so the first thing is,

basically, which is difficult, I wonder if we can break it apart a little bit,

is don't trust authority, essentially. Keep asking why.

Be respectful without trusting authority, right?

Right. Which is, and then the second thing is be the kind of person that others like training

with, or like being around sort of being a good friend. So many people just enjoy being around.

So one is completely, which is, yeah, you're right, it's attention, which is like completely

disrespect the way that things are done. So asking why constantly. One of it is your own

flaws and not understanding the fundamentals of what's being described. And then once you get

good enough, not understanding, like going against the fact that the instructor doesn't

understand. And my inability to understand what you're saying, though, doesn't invalidate it.

And that's something like you mentioned, like me mentioning, keeping in mind our own flaws.

And then also, again, the flaws that any of us have as the instructor to your point. And I guess,

I can speak to being kind of weird. I don't, you know, I like to sit in the corner.

But so everyone's a little bit different. Some people like, you know, I wasn't terribly popular

in high school. I, you know, like, I didn't like high school very much. But anyway, yeah,

I would not going to be rude to people, though, I was never going to bully anybody. If you said,

hello to me, I'd say hello back. I would hold the door for you if you walked by, you know,

and I would just say like simple things like that go a long, long, long way. And that actually

takes us back to our, to our social discussion where I'm like, oh man, how do I become great at

jujitsu? It's like, well, I'll start by not pissing off this person who can beat the crap out of me

and not disrespecting the person who is probably the clearest, the closest thing to a font of

knowledge at that time for me. So, and then recognizing that I should do that for its own

virtue because it's the right thing to do and I should try to treat people decently. But beyond

that, even selfishly, it's in my interest to do that. But see, the thing is, this is interesting,

is there's a culture in martial arts, the culture that I like where the instructor legitimately so

carries an aura of authority. And it's not comfortable to really ask why. I'm not, it's,

it's a skill to be able to have a discussion as a white belt, the black belt instructor

of like, why is it done this way? Like, and saying why again? Like with, I mean,

it's a skill to show that you're actually a legitimately a curious and passionate and

compassionate student versus like somebody who's just being an annoying dick who saw some stuff

I knew too. There's a line between to walk there. I just wonder because like, it's the drilling thing.

And, you know, I, for example, like in my, when I was coming up, there was so much emphasis

placed on like close guard, for example. And you might, you might actually teach me now.

I don't know. But to me, it was like, why do I need to master the close guard? Like, why is the

closed guard on top or the bottom? But the bottom really is the fundamental basics of jiu jitsu.

Who decided that? My body is not, my body says this is wrong. I'm like, this,

like I have short legs, but doesn't even matter the length of the legs. There's something about

me that just, I don't understand how leverage here works for my particular body. Like, so

just, it's a feel thing too. Like, it feels like in my basic understanding of leverage and movement

and timing and so on, it feels like these certain like butterfly guard or even like half, basically

every guard except close guard. I can play, I can dance. Close guard feels like you're shutting down

like the play that I... Is that wrong? Or is that make sure that's what you want? Because that's

almost like an innate characteristic of this guard position, but it's not sold that way, right?

It's like, hey, this is a good guard. It's like, hey man, here's a bow and arrow versus, and you

know how to use this thing, right? Like make sure you're far away and like up on a hill or something

because you can take that bow and arrow, run up on something and try to use it. But if nobody told

you not to do that and they told you it was foundational, it's very foundational, it's very

important. To everything else too, right? That's back to the shrimping thing. How many things are

we taught that even if it's not, let's say itself is not a garbage thing, might be effectively garbage.

You could give me a Ferrari, but if I try to make it fly, it's not going to work. If you're like,

here's a plane, here's another plane, here's another plane, here's another plane, here's a

Ferrari. I'm like, oh, it must be a different type of plane. You could be forgiven for leap if we're

going there. Like, oh, maybe the wings come out or you just go fast enough to take a bullet. You

can make these crazy leaps in your mind and people are doing that all the time. So if you

don't provide the context for me, or worse yet, you provide improper context, how much of a problem

is that going to be? Well, I think the skill of the white belt should just be nice. But in the

complicated human space of when your intention, at least in the big picture view, is good. The

question is, it's not always when your intention is good, the actual implementation of it is good.

So you might be just almost, and that's much, it's not the case for you, it's much more the case

for white belts. They don't even know, their intention might be good, but they don't know

all the lines they're crossing, all the, so they're not actually able to interpret all the ways in

which they're being totally insensitive to the requests of others, the explicit requests of

others. So your job as a beginner is to be a really good listener of those social cues.

It's like a visitor in a foreign country, right? Yeah. Like you're a representative of people

that look like you, people that talk like you, people that have your passport, and you're like,

man, I'm going to go over here. I've got my foot up on my knee. Well, if I was in a certain country

in the world, that's rude. I'm like, oh, I'm so sorry. But can you imagine if someone says,

hey, I really appreciate if you take your foot off, that's pretty rude. And then I want to

tell them, well, not where I'm from, man, I'm in your house. I better, again, I may go that

direction, but let's say I could get away with that. Now I'm a bully. And if I can't get away

with that, I'm about to maybe be on the wrong side of something. But I guess, like you said,

if we have positive intention, that's fine. But I also have to recognize who I am. And I think

that that's one thing that I tried to do and continue to try to do over time. Like we're,

oh man, hi, I'm the one that's asking for a favor here. If I spar with Raymond Daniels,

Raymond Daniels is doing me a favor. I ain't doing him a favor. Let's not get it twisted.

So thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate these are not, and this is not like

some affected nonsense. This is serious. I'm like, thank you. If I spar with Steven Thompson,

I'm the one being done a favor. George St. Pierre takes his time to spar with me,

which he has in the past, and not even kill me, which is really, I appreciate that because that's

why I can sit here. George is not a prop for me to get my rocks off or see what's going on. And

also, I'm going to do that and then expect him to just take it. And I've seen, he's a gentleman.

I've seen people get nuts with George and have him just be like, he's a patient of a saint.

I don't have that level of patience. But I would just say to come back,

figuring out like, hey, so what role am I here? And that comes back to at least what I see people

on the internet. Yeah, man, I have a beef with Joe Rogan. You're like, no, you don't, Ryan. You're

some goof. I'm like, I'm some random dude. People want to, they almost want to elevate

so that we can somehow be level or peers here. If I go into Faraz Zahabi's gym, I'm not a peer

of Faraz Zahabi. I'm a student of Tristar. I'm a guest in the academy. And if Faraz asked me for

something short of him telling me to try to do a triple backflip so I'm going to break my neck,

the answer is, yes, sir, I can do it for you Faraz. No, man. And hopefully it should come with,

I guess, a level of graciousness. But I guess that's kind of one of the things that I see nowadays

with how accessible people are. Because I grew up being a big, huge base sports fan of all kinds.

I couldn't send Derek Jeter a message and much less have a possibility of a reply. And if I do,

it's like, you know, I have people sending messages. It's very nice that people send messages.

Some people, again, not everyone is coming from the same place. But plenty of things are like,

yo, dude, I need you to do this for me. And I'm like, well, I'll tell you what's never going to

happen. That I have no idea who you are. And that was how I was addressed. And I don't need,

oh, man, you're the greatest one, because that's weird and two, because I'm not. But just, hey,

Ryan, how are you doing? Hey, do you think you could do the following if you get a second? Like,

if I get a second, you're dang right, Ken, why not? It's easy to ask. But it started with some

level of politeness. And I guess that's maybe being semi Southern, like I grew up in Virginia.

Yes, sir. Yes, ma'm. Yeah, well, there's all different kinds of implementations of politeness.

I mean, most of the successful people I've met, it's been surprising to me how much of,

you mentioned peers. Like I could think of Joe Rogan, you mentioned Joe Rogan. But you know,

Musk, they don't, like they almost treat me like I'm the superior. You know what I mean? Like,

it's not even, it's that's the politeness. Like, you know, that's the approach, the feeling of it

is like, I'm the student, I'm the beginner, I'm like approaching the situation. Like, it's, it's,

it's almost like method acting of like, you're better than me. And that's how I approach a

lot of interactions. Like I have something to learn from this, even if it's like a young...

Do you think that they're ungenuine?

They're totally genuine.

But it's not a funny thing. Like in spite of who they are, they're incredibly genuine because

they respect, correct me if I'm wrong, they respect you obviously for what you bring to the

table. No, no, they approach everybody like this.

But that's what I might know. But they, I'm sure they respect what you bring to the table.

Beyond that, though, they're treating you with dignity as a human being.

As a human being.

Which that's right.

When they could probably get away with treating most people without a whole heck of a lot of

dignity. And I guess, what does that always say that, like, you know, again, like you can always

tell someone of quality because they treat the king and the janitor the same way.

But that's what we're seeing a lot. Like, I guess, I don't mean to nitpick, but that's where

take issue, I guess, a little bit or disagree with...

Are you going to criticize the internet again?

No.

Man yells at clouds. But anyway, but I guess what I mean is just like the way that people address

each other because it's so casual now. And it's great on the one hand, it's nice.

On the other hand, you go, hey, just why can't... Am I somehow...

Am I worried about diminishing myself?

It's like the way that I'm sure that people talk to like talk to women sometimes.

And words, you know, so girl, man, she's a bitch.

You know, versus like, well, that was supposed to get a good response.

What about that was going to elicit a favorable response?

You know, versus being anything, anything other than just, you know, man, what's going on?

And I guess that doesn't make any sense.

No, it makes total sense. And that Southern thing that you're referring to,

I feel like that's an important, that's an important part of human communication.

Let me ask you this.

Sure.

Your new back attacks instructional, first of all, awesome.

Yeah.

Second of all, you drop a lot of fascinating insights in there, but you quote Galileo out of

all people in saying that you can't teach a man anything.

You can only help him find it within himself.

So we talked about how to start in Jiu Jitsu.

What about if we zoom out even more and how do you learn how to learn?

How do you optimize the learning process?

I don't know the answer to that, but I can tell you what I like to do.

And I would say like, I can't step one.

I don't, I'm not, maybe this is a little bit easier for me because, you know,

I've never had a ton of friends, honestly, you know, I've got my close friends and people

that I know, but I've never had tons and tons of people.

So I spent a lot of time, you know, thinking.

And anyway, I can't, I can't control you.

I can't control anybody else.

I, you know, I, all I can, I want to take my, I'll get to the Marcus Aurelius thing.

It's like, you know, I guess the trick to life is figuring out what's in our control

and what's not and focusing on things that are in our control, I guess.

And so step one is figuring out both internally and then also out in, in the world as it pertains

to Jitsu, what is actually in my control and what is not.

Like passing someone's guard is not in your control.

People think it is, it ain't.

If I can't just do an activity and be unchecked, then it ain't in my control entirely.

I can always breathe.

I can always, you know, be calm.

I can always, no matter whether I'm concerned or not concerned,

have whatever you want to call it nerves, you know, I, I can step forward across the line

and say, I will, I will face the challenge ahead.

That is all entirely, no one can stop me from doing that.

That's entirely me I control.

And that's why I know that every single time that I walk into the ring, I'll walk in and

out of there with my head a little high because there's, I will fight with everything that I have.

I can't promise that I'll win.

I would say I take that same first principles you mentioned last time we talked, you know,

with Elon and the importance of that and going, what are the first principles?

And I guess to come back a lot of times in my opinion, the things that people think are the

basics are not the basics.

You can't learn.

If you think you're reasoning for first principles, but you're actually like level six,

you're actually like layers up, you're making so many, there's so many baked in assumptions

to what's going on that you're going to struggle to understand why anything is actually happening

internally, externally, you name it.

So I guess what I would start when it comes to learning is first principles and trying

to understand what's going on, but then also simple things first.

I can control my posture.

I can control my breathing.

No one can stop me from doing that.

I can control where I place my frames.

I can control where I place my limbs.

I can move my feet.

I can develop the ability to do these things better, of course.

And I do that through practice, through drilling, through watching people.

I've been incredibly fortunate in my time in martial arts to train with many of my heroes,

to train with many of the people that I looked at.

And I was like, that guy is amazing.

I want to train with this person.

Like Stephen Thompson, Kenny Florian, George St. Pierre, Raymond Daniels, Faraz Ahabi,

you know, I mean, like Bruno Frasado, Marcelo Garcia, all of these guys that are just unbelievable.

And I go, well, they're moving in a way that's different.

Well, how do I do that?

Well, sometimes you can ask them and they can tell you directly.

Other times people, part of the genius of what they do is that it's intuitive.

And maybe they don't think and understand and see the world the same way that I do.

That was something that I experienced with Marcelo.

He's amazing.

But in a different way than his, it just, we see things fundamentally different.

We experience the world differently.

It seems to me that we do.

And again, that taught me a really important lesson because I was wanting when I trained

there to have someone go, hey, Ryan, do this, this, this, and this, and then that's how it works.

And I was like, all right, because that's how I understood martial arts at the time.

I wasn't ready to have someone tell me like, hey, it feels a little bit like this.

And I just kind of do it, which is kind of what Marcelo would do at the time as he was

less experienced as a teacher.

But that is what he was doing.

I was completely, I couldn't separate in my mind performance and understanding.

I thought that if I understand, I could do it.

And I would also struggle sometimes to wonder why I couldn't execute things that I thought

I understood and why guys like Marcelo were just so elemental.

I mean, in like the lightning wind, like that type of thing, it's just so in touch with

what they wanted, with their capabilities.

They could summon their powers at will.

I couldn't always do that.

And I guess, so recognizing that there was more than one way to the top of the mountain.

And also, I had a lot of science, but I didn't have a lot of art.

Or I had some science, I should say, but I didn't have a lot of art.

Meeting people like Marcelo taught me.

And then Josh Waitskin, actually, brilliant guy, chess champion, former owner,

maybe owner of Marcelo's Academy, really great friend.

I think he has a book on learning.

He does.

Yeah, the art of learning, actually.

The art of learning, yeah.

But yeah, he knows a thing or two about it.

But a great guy.

And anyway, he sat me down one time and was like,

Litman, you're doing this wrong.

You're missing what?

They're missing the genius, the brilliance, this right in front of you.

And it took me a long time.

What did he mean?

That I was frustrated with my inability to grasp certain things and sometimes the

teaching style being different.

Not wrong, it was tough for me at the time.

So you were trying to replicate what Marcelo was saying as opposed to

understanding the fundamentals from which he was coming?

Right, I couldn't see where it was coming from.

And also, sometimes I'm like, well, why can't you explain it in the way that

I would want you to explain it?

And he's like, well, why can't I meet him where he's coming from?

So anyway, it was a really important time, unless I'm very, very frustrating,

if I'm honest.

But it's not, I'm so thankful for that time.

And anyway, I guess...

It's always the first principles, trying to understand the basics, first starting at

the place where you can control things, the very basic elements of what you can work with.

And then when there's other mentors and teachers to...

Meet them where they're coming from.

Meet them.

To the extent that I can.

Rather than I'm not, again, it's like, why are you not talking to me the way I want

you to talk to me, as opposed to, hey, where are you coming from?

Back to your point.

Yeah.

But I don't know that's not entirely specific.

But if you can focus on that, and back to the whole, you can't teach a man anything.

Marcelo didn't teach me anything.

But he taught me in so doing, and other people like that, to find it within.

And it's like, yeah, I guess something else that I've heard before is that all learning

is self discovery, but all performance is self expression.

And I always thought that Marcelo was a brilliant master of letting what's inside out.

He was so consistent in his performances.

And a lot of times I felt like there was a block there personally, particularly at the

end of Jiu Jitsu when I was very, very results oriented.

And I wasn't...

I think my focus was not ideal.

It was definitely not in the place that I would like it to be.

And whether it would have won more or lost more hard to say, but I know that I would have

performed better if I'd have adjusted that.

And anyway, recognizing that, again, Jiu Jitsu, I think I've said it before,

Jiu Jitsu studies as a science, but expressed as an art.

It doesn't matter if you can articulate what you know how to do.

What matters is if you can do what you know how to do.

It only matters if you're teaching in a verbal fashion, whether or not you can articulate it.

But recognizing the difference between learning on an intellectual level or conceptual level

and being able to translate that into the physical.

And I guess that's been the thing that I feel fortunate over time in my own academy

to be able to kind of fiddle around and learn on my own and practice my students.

And sometimes I struggle to have great training partners.

Like when I say great training partners, I mean other world class people to spar or to roll with.

But I've gotten a lot more honestly than I ever would have thought out of being able to practice

and learn and fail and try and succeed in my own without like my own little sandbox.

Figuring out how I can take an idea and then come up with drills and drills to practice it

so that I can actually practice putting it into play.

Because again, knowing an idea and then not drilling,

what's the point? I'll never have it. It'll never see the light of day.

So in that DVD, in that instruction DVD, sorry. It's an online instructional DVD.

That's a DVD. I keep saying DVD though.

Nobody has DVDs anymore. Do they not?

It's like VHS. I don't know. Who has DVDs? Well, like Blu Ray.

I possess some DVDs. I mean, I've never watched them.

What do you use them for? Like a cup, like a cup, like a thing you put a drink on?

I mean, it went in a pinch, yeah.

Yeah. What's that even called?

Coaster? Yeah, my Matrix Coaster.

The Matrix Coaster, zeros and ones. Okay.

So in that instruction that people should get, I've been watching. I'm really enjoying.

It's, I don't even know when it came out recently, right?

Like December or something like that?

Yeah. It's part one. It's actually like ended up being like 18 hours long.

And I was like, oh my God, we're going to chop in half.

And when it comes together, the whole thing, I think I hope people will like it.

Yeah. Well, it's even part one is really good.

It's actually, yeah, people on Reddit were really excited for part two as well.

Really? And you also have a back.

Oh, the old one?

The old one that I, that was really helpful to me to understand some very basic aspects of control

from the back. Yeah. That was, you know, that clicked with me. There's very few instructional

models. There's very few things I've watched that ever clicked with me. And that was definitely it.

It taught me one thing. I don't know. It's, you have, you drop a lot of sort of bombs.

You have dropped a lot of really interesting details. And it's funny that there's only specific

things that really click. Like a lot of it rings true and you kind of take it in and it's like,

oh, that's interesting. Okay. Yeah. But there's certain things that really click. And I remember

that first instruction will click with me is like the importance. I don't, I don't remember

anymore like how you communicated it because I'm now integrated. It's now mine. You know what I mean?

But it was more about you just describing upper body control and the importance of the upper body

control from the back. And just like the, there's certain, like you describe different details on

the grips and so on. And as I started trying it, I realized how important upper body control is

versus like me, I mean, maybe as a blue belt or something was, I thought like you have achieved

victory when you got the two hooks in. And then I realized like, at least for me, that the hooks

were not even for my body type, for my style, for the way I approach things, they were not even

important at all. Supplemental for the most part. Yeah. So they were there for the points,

but I can establish a huge amount of control. In fact, the hooks were, you were talking about

like illusion of choice. It's, it's a, it almost made people panic a lot more when you were like

fighting for or establishing that kind of control. They weren't a lot less panicked when the hooks

weren't involved. Even though they should be a lot more panicked. Anyway, I realized a lot

of those kinds of things, especially they had to do with judo because so much of judo on the ground

is centered around aggressive, efficient, very fast choking, like different kinds of clock

chokes and all that kind of stuff. What a brilliant thing that is only going to start

to make its way into jitsu coming up. But like the judo style approach to like clock choking,

triangleing from the top of the turtle and stuff is so powerful. Yeah. And the, there's something

about judo that emphasizes obviously due to the rules, the urgency. So there are only two

techniques that go fast. And then the other thing is, which I guess jiu jitsu emphasizes too,

but judo really does, which is the transition. So like while the person's flying in the air is

the easiest time. I mean, this is like Ryan Hall type of shit, which is like, why not putting

your submissions or positional control while they're in the air? And if you could, why would you

not? Right? Oh, I don't throw well, we'll learn how to throw and then do it. And so you should think,

I mean, in a transition, when they're flying is the easiest time to put in stuff. And that's

when you think about chokes, as you're throwing, you should be thinking about the choke. And then

everything becomes a lot easier. You ever see Flavio Kanto? Man, Brazilian judoka is just so

cool. Like with stuff like that. Yeah, exactly. But that has to do with the first starting principle

of like, stop thinking this as a two phase game of standing and then ground. Start thinking about

like the standing and the standing comes before and the ground comes after, but everything happens

in a transition. Well, unless you're attacking, what is the art of war? Like we all like everyone's

like, oh, yeah, the art of war. Yes, yes. And then they immediately throw it away and then fight

like a freaking barbarian. But how many people quote stuff? And then like, it's like, what is

it? The family guy joke or they're like, quoting Jesus and Jesus walks in and he's like, you're

not doing my work. What are you talking about? And anyway, basically, the art of war, one of the

things is like the only thing that you can be sure of being successful in attacking is something

that's undefended. We're like, yeah, but you know, in a fight though, they're defended. Well,

are they? There's moments all the time where I'm borderline defenseless. And if you were to attack

at that moment, if you could see it and then seize the moment, if you were capable of both,

you should not only expect to be successful, you should be damn sure you're gonna be successful.

And more important than that, you'll be successful. And even if you're somehow not,

you won't be countered. And I guess like, that's the trick of almost all like conflict, right?

It's like showing up when the other person's taking a nap. And then it's so funny, we take

like a protracted war. It's like, oh, it takes five years. And there's lulls and there's a battle

this month, but then there's a couple of weeks and another battle. It's like, well, if you just

shrink that down, it's the microcosm, macrocosm idea. That same thing, that whole war is taking

place in five minutes or 10 minutes or 15 minutes. And there's moments of lulls of person

effectively going for a snack, being like in a horror movie like, hey, guys, I'm gonna go get a

beer from the, from around the way, like I'm dead for sure. So anyway, is there on this particular

instructional, if you can convert it to words, you talk about finishing the submission. Is there

some interesting insights that you find beautiful or profound about finishing the rear necki choke

or just finishing submissions from the back control? Is there something like,

you know, you talk about the squeeze and the crush and all these kinds of principles?

Is there something about control about the process of finishing that you find especially

profound about this position? Absolutely. The opposite of one profound truth can be another

profound truth. So like, it's, I do. Did Jesus say that? No, I don't, I actually was a guy on

Tumblr. But yeah, it was really, really cool. There was like a tree in the background. But anyway,

but so let's say like, I'll use, I'll use examples like first off, I saw someone finishing a 5050

heel hook in the UFC one promo. It was like some chubby dude in the karate, like inside heel hook

and another dude. And you go, huh, well, I didn't know they were doing that back then, at least,

and whether they were doing it all, how many times does someone do something? And then that

works. And then we go, okay, cool versus, hey, maybe we should do that all the time. So anyway,

how long did we all talk through the seat belt, the way we all do the seat belt in Jiu Jitsu?

Like long time. Why? Works. In fact, it works so well. And it was so, it was then the people who

used it were so prolific that we went, well, solve that one. Good to go. All right, no more thinking.

And then you go, imagine you were to like the Merkel and Merkel flip all those positions that

we're showing in the, in the DVD, which is pretty much sort of the whatever the heck it is, and

like the digital VD. No, not VD. I don't want that digital, digital video or something. But

basically recognizing that doing it on the wrong side is at least as effective. It doesn't mean

that the other side wasn't good. There could be something that's the literal borderline opposite

of that. And you go, huh, well, that's something like imagine like, I would say almost all of

these things, all the tactics and all the strategies. So I guess that was something that we came to

like training in the gym like a year ago, maybe I've been playing with since and it's just,

it's huge. I'm like, oh wait, so let me get this straight. First, if I can use my strong side seat

belt, my right arm over the shoulder and it all the time. Well, that's, that's really helpful

because that's a lot better than my left. I can do both sides of my left. But if I had to bet my

life on, on being able to finish it, I would want my right arm over. Huh. Everything that's a tactic

or a strategy evolved from an idea like capitalism is an idea, you know, anarchy is an idea. And

then it becomes, well, what does that all mean? What are the, what are the consequences? What's

the fallout of all this, right? So what if we start with Jiu Jitsu, the idea of the guard,

right? And we go, well, I mean, when do you, why do you use the guard? No other martial art really

has developed the guard in the same way that Jiu Jitsu has. Well, what is the guard? A guard's

a defensive idea where you're kind of on your back to some extent or another and you're using

your legs as a wall between you and the other person and the other guy represents danger.

And you're like, yeah, yeah, that's a great idea. Is it? I mean, it clearly works at least to a

certain extent, but where do I want to put my legs when I want to get up? Not on the other

dude. I'm trying to put them on things on the floor. If I want to generate a ton of power,

what's the first thing I do with my feet? I anchor them to the floor, drive for a punch,

you name it, move away, jump, dart, you name it. So does it mean that that's a terrible idea to be

on your back? No, clearly it works. And clearly it has function. But what if the function that

we're giving it and we're, and the, how much, how much focus we're assigning to it is disproportionate

to its effectiveness. Maybe what if it's not a good idea? I'm not saying it's not a good idea,

but what if it wasn't? That's a foundational idea of jujitsu. And then how much, because no one

questions that foundation, how much innovation is built on top of the idea? Well, of course,

I want to be, my being on my back is an okay position. So now they're innovating,

but they're innovating within a closed system that they don't, they think they're innovating in,

in like, in this open space of, oh my God, it can be anything when in reality,

it can be anything within this little set. But you don't realize that you're in a set,

you don't realize that you're in a box. There would be answers that would become so immediately

apparent to you if you were willing to look outside of that. But you'll literally never

even look over to your left because you don't even realize the left exists.

Do you think there's a lot of places in jujitsu where there's back control or generally guards

in all the different positions where there's a lot of space, like a lot, a lot to be discovered

by questioning the basic assumptions. Maybe if you can give examples of like back control,

like is there something you've discovered that's like...

Merkle versus seatbelt.

What's Merkle with seatbelt?

Seatbelt is a right arm over the shoulder, left arm under the arm. I'm on the,

I'm on the same side as my choking arm. Merkle is just, I do the same thing. I'm even just my hands.

I walk myself over to the left side. I'm on the opposite side. It's actually a more powerful

position. Yeah. For people listening or for people who might not know, jujitsu is a seatbelt

is a control. We're talking about when one person is on the back of another person,

which is a really dominant position in jujitsu. Seatbelt is a, I guess, widely accepted

way of holding your arm. Best practices almost.

Best practices. Yeah. And it's worked so well. So it's a one arm over, one arm under,

and there's a certain side you're supposed to be on when you're on the back. You know,

everyone teaches. There's a choking arm. That's the arm that's over and your body's supposed to be

in a certain side relative to that. And then Ryan is describing questioning these like basic

assumptions of which side you're supposed to be on. And let's say that's even just like a

mid level assumption. It's not even a first principles assumption, but it's pretty close

to, it's getting there. But let's just say for sake of argument, it goes a lot deeper, maybe.

I think most of the innovation that I see is not innovation. It's like basically changing the

color of a car or polishing like the window a little bit. We're like, hey, you made it a little

bit different. You made it a little bit better. It's like, oh man, what if I did the same guard

and then grab the lapel? I'm not saying that's bad, but you're not fundamentally changing anything.

I think most of the big seismic shifts that we see in almost anything come from, hey,

that thing we thought was right was wrong rather than not only is it right, it's even righter.

And you're like, that's not wrong. That's not bad. But that's, it's like, oh man,

let's say, for instance, I didn't make the triangle better, but let's say I made the

triangle a little bit better than it was or than it was taught. I mean, you can call it

innovation. I don't know, man. It's not like the person that said, hey, have you guys ever heard

of a triangle before and came up with that? We're like, that's on the list. You can do this thing

to people? Are you kidding me? Can you imagine you invented the straight right hand? You'll be

like one punch, man. You can walk around and just lay low every single person you got into a fight

with because it didn't even occur to them to hit you with their backhand. In a world full of

jabbers, you throw your backhand. You're going to kill people. So basically...

Well, by the way, I mean, just to pause on that, first of all, somebody did invent the triangle

probably, right? For sure. It's not a trivial thing once you think...

No. How many of these giant things that we all go like, oh yeah, we all use that now.

Can you imagine you have triangles and heel hooks and we're naked chokes and I don't have those?

You're on beat, you're borderline. I mean, like, that's why we all experience,

every single one of this, particularly those of us, I mean, when did you first start training

Alex? 12, 13 years. Well, let's not count wrestling, but 13 years ago with Jiu Jitsu.

Right on. So let's say about that time where particularly it was still like kind of undergroundy.

You're like, hey, we all experience being like a relative, like a mid level white belt

and being able to easily beat up all our friends because everyone wrestled other buddies. And it

was one of those ones where they don't have weapons to end the fight. You have weapons to end the

fight. That's such a crazy, you know, asymmetric advantage that if you lose, it's on you now,

man. Like you had the next time it's like, I've got this rifle and you have nothing. And I decide

to put it on my back and then run over and try to karate chop. You're like, okay, next time,

just make sure you use the rifle, bud. I'm like, oh yeah, I should do that.

Yeah, it's kind of fascinating. I mean, everything you're describing,

there's a fascinating tension between like whatever I show people for the first time,

what a triangle is, just like regular people. It's like they're discovering is like, oh, okay,

that's interesting. I mean, MMA has changed that, but people haven't watched MMA.

That's an interesting move. It doesn't make sense why that would be a joke. And they kind of quickly

accept that that's a thing. And they accept the basics without questioning, wait a minute,

what's actually being choked? How is it that a shoulder of a person can do the choking?

Like I'm not sure I fully question the fundamentals of all of that.

Like what exactly is the blood supply that's being cut off? Like what is the anatomy and the

physiology of all of that? Why does this work? And if you understood all that, what else can we do

here? Yeah, what else can we do here? That's the really important thing. But if I'm an end user,

which almost everyone is of almost anything, I'm serious, where I'm like, I think about

stuff in my life, the only things I really think about are like martial arts and martial arts

strategy and like, I don't know, some other couple of things, but not much. And anything else in my

life is borderline unexamined. And I like to think that if I put a lot of effort in something,

I'd like to think that I could figure at least some things out about it. But I figured out almost

nothing about anything in my life because I haven't even looked. And, you know, if you're an end user,

what are you capable of versus you can literally alter the source code? You are Neo in the freaking

matrix. If you could alter the code and I can't. And it's like, we think, ah, but imagine you are

a world class, anything, or you're not even world class, forget it, like a purple belt compared

to a white belt or compared to a no belt might as well be John Jones or Marcelo Garcia, you're

gonna beat them up comparably bad. So it's a that's that actually is a common thing where people

can't tell the difference in levels. They're like, Oh man, I've trained with my black belt

instructor, how much better could someone so be like, so much better, you're gonna have a hard

time wrapping your head around it. I remember when I first trained with Marcelo Garcia in 2007,

I was a decent purple belt. And of course, you mollywap me very gently. And then training them

again in 2008, I was definitely better. I won the G and no G worlds that you're purple belt.

So definitely for the record, I'm definitely not a jujitsu world champion. I wanted the purple

belt, but like, that's not the same at winning a black belt. And tough accomplishment, but not

in the same thing at all. But anyway, I was definitely better. He beat me up just the same.

Okay, 2009, I was a lot better, got a medal at ADCC that time, won the trials, crushed everybody,

like no, just submitted everybody like that. But but but but train more cellar Garcia,

it was worse. And 2010 train more cellar Garcia, same same. So the idea was, I wouldn't be able

to tell you the difference and the outcome difference was the same in all of these rounds. I

was significantly more experienced and more more adept each time, each time that this occurred.