Ella the traditional Publishers only translate big books not tweet storms or blogs what I validate or though. She might mean violate the copyright by translating the Vols tweets to Chinese readers. There is demand based on what I previously yeah first before we dive into this very awkward
setup with a Q&A with some
random dude on the internet. Let me just say hello. Welcome. Thank you for joining. I'm not sure what I'm doing here either. So if you aren't that makes
at least two of us after the question that was suddenly plopped Into The Ether. I think she's asking for permission to translate something that I once did in the Chinese by all means translating to whatever languages you want.
Go ahead. And you know what Neva? You're totally right? So I guess I should have introduced to the little bit of thank you everyone for joining. So a couple weeks ago and of all was very generous and was willing to do a Q&A with us. Just like, you know, just generic questions about things that people were going through and challenges they had and just questions that they would really like your support and insight on and so we pulled a bunch of people on Twitter and we collect it.
Other questions based on themes and we group them based on the direction. We're heading in some cases. I'll read the specific questions just as I dropped in right now, but another question other cases, I'll kind of put together what the overall theme of the question was. So people re can really think for themselves and decide for themselves and kind of use
how novel would potentially think through the situation so that they can provide a little bit more clarity on their end. So that wasn't awesome first answer on that one. And so the most like question and I was probably not surprising was asking asking you for investment advice. And so you've been really clear that that's not something you offer, but there's something very interesting about if
Weren't asking you what to do with they could possibly be asking you how to think about it. And so the question the question that is up specifically about Tedder and I'll read I'll read the question verbatim and then we can kind of talk about viewer them like how we would how you how you might think through it. So, what are your thoughts and Qatar and as a systemic risk to crypto currency Market, I'm interested in investing but a seems Tedder is unbanked and its demise could be a Black Swan event. I see the upside.
Of crypto, but I just can't bring myself to invest. Yeah. So the broader question is just about how to be a good investor. And you know, it's the extent that
you're asking for specific
investment advice. Nobody who's any good gifts actual investment advice online because they know that's not how investing works. If someone tells you what to buy they're not going to tell you what when the cell and without any underlying explanation of why you should be buying or selling something you're essentially just listening to an astrologer and there's no there's no reason for them to tell
You what to do unless they're sort of pumping their own Holdings. So you should always be very suspect when someone gives you a Buy Signal now, there are by signals that people can send that don't actually move the market like I could say buy Bitcoin, but even then it's sort of irresponsible to put somebody into an asset where they don't understand the thing. So, I think the problem here is that the questioners are pursuing wealth creation without understanding this is not possible wealth is a byproduct of understanding it is
Not a substitute for understanding. It is not something you do instead of understanding. Yes. There's always the occasional person who gets lucky and sure enough when they get lucky you hear about it, but for every one of them who gets unlucky there's a there's many that don't and you don't hear from those people winners are very loud losers tend to be very quiet. So the same person can be telling you about the incredible trades in made all year. And then when they go bankrupt all of a sudden because they were trading on margin or they didn't really know what they were doing. You're not going to hear about it, or you're not going to hear from them. So I just give up
Whole idea of trying to find investment advice from other people. You just have to sort of figure it out yourself. And that's also where you get paid you get paid not for being right when everybody else is right because then it's already priced in and you don't get paid for being wrong because then you're just wrong you lose money. So you only get paid for being right when others are wrong and that's not going to happen because of all my investment advice that's going to happen because you generally understood the situation better than most people around you and so the specific question that was posed in this context is
about tether which is a stable coin that is backed by a company and people don't necessarily always trust this company as they're saying is this a systemic risk of Black Swan risk to bitcoin. If you're kind of asking that the tells me you don't really understand Bitcoin Bitcoin exist independent of tether, whether tether turns to be a scam or a photo or not, which I think is incredibly unlikely, by the way, the tether fight about tether has been going on for as long as I can remember being in crypto and it's just turned out not to be true at least so far. It's not to say can't happen.
We're not inductive assists, you know, Black Swan events do happen. But if black if they're going to be no black swans between here and you know the end game for crypto then Bitcoin rorty be at a million dollars a coin or higher. So there are still large risks out there, but I don't think there is easy to predict as reading someone's tweet storm and Tyler that fight is as old as the hills. But anyway, you need to learn enough about Bitcoin that you can then decide for yourself whether that is going to be true or not. And there's there's no education. I can give you here and like a minute. There are a
Lots of people have written lots of good work on both sides of it. But if you don't understand it yourself, then you have no business investing in it.
From me personally that makes a ton of sense. This is in a similar breath and I actually have Enrique here. So I'm going to pull him up for a second invite to speak. So Enrique was asking kind of in the same vein, but more like big picture. He's thinking his question was based on Warren Buffett be fearful when others are greedy and greedy when others are fearful in the current crypto world. What do you think would be an indicator to be fearful and what would be an
Cater to be greedy.
Yes, I don't I don't invest like Warren Buffett investor Warren Buffett is a very different class of investor. I'm more of a venture investor. He's a value investor the thing that value investor in Venture investors have in common is that they tend to both hold for the very long term very patient very long term games, but then they diverge a value investors looking at the price and they're looking for a good price and the looking at timing went to get in and when to get out based on the price, and hopefully you'll get into a business at a
Price since a good business I compounds for decades. You don't have to get out. That's the ideal situation for a value investor Venture investors, very different. We invest regularly when it's just a hope and a prayer when it's so cheap that like the details of the price don't matter. It's still if it works can be orders of magnitude less than it will be worth and if it doesn't work, it's going to be worth zero and we build a broad portfolio which is a value investor build an era portfolio. So I can't interpret Buffett quote for you in the concept of crypto. I don't think it actually applies I think basically
If you believe in the Bitcoin and etherium and so on Technologies and stories and if you understand them really well, then you're likely to either not agree with them in which case you wouldn't buy them or you would agree with them in which case you'd think they're ludicrously under price compared to where they will eventually end up once they pass or all their Black Swan tests. So I don't think the Warren Buffett strategy applies. I don't think you want to time your entrance or exit into an asset class that was either going to go 10x or 20 x from here or go to zero. That's not how you
Think about it. It's a binary bet so you just have to decide whether you have the conviction in the fortitude or not. And if you do then maybe you average it over some time period so as to not be exposed to the sudden price swings and movements and then you just kind of put it away and you hold for a long haul it would be Bitcoin Hodel or even chill.
Amazing. So I'm let's move away from investment questions and kind of the another bucket of questions that people were really interested in talking to you about was really kind of asking you about you when you were just when you are starting up and you were building the life that you have now, so I did want to kind of ask you being that this is kind of a unique opportunity to really ask you something for themselves. A lot of people. Just wanted to ask about you I wanted to
I thought that'd be interesting for us to kind of chat about why do you think the focus was so on your history in your past and not really trying to see how not really asking about themselves. There is a tendency to create a hagiography around people over you kind of think that they're somehow special or interesting or maybe their bio will rub off on your ad even though I don't understand the Instinct because I don't even read biographies. I think maybe the last and only biography I can remember reading will Steve Jobs biography and even
That to be honest, I did take away one or two interesting things, but I wouldn't put it even by top hundred books of all time. Maybe not even my top thousand. I just don't find biographies that interesting I could do this and it totals stories and Shirin. I mean some people do not take away from it. You can maybe get inspired from it, but my biography is not relevant or interesting. I think it's if I have ideas they should stand on their own and you should be able to evaluate the Merit of each of those ideas regardless of the biography of the person who says it.
And so moving into a question about ideas then so one of the one of the one of the questions was smart people can still have bad ideas kind of like what you're talking about. Is there a common but I did you see smart people around you embracing if so, what's that idea and kind of what makes it bad. So I think the questions asking for your assessment on how you let as you're observing absorbing information, how how you assess and how you
How you know if you want to keep it or believe it or investigator further most ideas are bad weather made by smart. People are dumb people most ideas, which is bad and it's Error correction. It's iteration. It's criticism. It's facing reality that tells us which of our ideas actually survive and do well and you know, most of us like most of our thoughts if you were to execute and every single one of your thoughts you rather be in jail or dead or just miserable so I don't think that most ideas.
Are good ideas most ideas are pretty bad, but we have to just try with the try and try and try again see what works and if there's a class of bad ideas that people fall into that class of bad idea is this thinking that they only have good ideas or that they have better ideas in other people. And so then they want to constrain other people saying well, you know, these people don't know how to think so, let me think for them. Let me tell them how to behave their poor. So they're stupid or they're you know, they're I went to college I'm educated.
Smarter than them such tell them how to run their life for their saying stupid things. I should control their speech or I should kick these people off this platform. So I think like the urge to censor people your age like condescending towards people the urge to tell other people that something is done or settled they're not allowed to speak about or think about or a challenge. It kind of this intellectual condescension that comes the frustration of like, you know, we are your betters. It's sort of like it's the it's the modern equivalent of White Man's Burden, except I would say it's kind of like academic person's burden or journalist burden you see a
A lot of this with the hyperboloid Intelligentsia from the coasts can try to tell people how to live and run their lives or even like being moralistic orbiters. I think that's probably the major problem going on right now the when when you think that your ideas are really good ideas and should be set in stone and not be challenged in the future. That's the ultimate bad idea. It'll hurt Society for sure, but eventually were also hurt you because you become rigid and you become incapable of finding good ideas because you think you already have them
And I think that leads us into another question about bad ideas. So you've spoken about showing up there and just as you're sharing with us now and making sure like you're showing up and testing things out and iterating. And so that this question is asking what was the last time you realize that you did something wrong and did an entire 180 and what what how did that realization come about? And I think the question probably is perhaps ask
About your emotional state about being wrong and how you deal with that discomfort if you feel the discomfort at all.
Yeah. Yeah, I don't want to get autobiographical again. I don't think it's useful or relevant. Plus it just makes me uncomfortable, but I would say in general.
I have bad ideas all day. I make mistakes all day long and you know, you just kind of noticed them and you correct just don't get too attached to it. Actually it helps if you tell other people about your mistakes, in fact, you know, I made a mistake of financial mistake about two years ago and my wife hears about it to this day, you know, I probably thought every single day or every other day. I got a moan about it. It was a big one and it was an obvious one in hindsight the world even told myself. I'm probably making a mistake, but I just didn't, you know part of me didn't listen to another part of me. So at least if I'm public about
It then I can't hide from it and buff. It does the same thing right? He'll stick it in his annual newsletter when he makes a mistake. In fact fact, I believe Berkshire Hathaway is named after a textile business that he bought early on that. He thought would be a value business. But that's where he learned that it's not about the cost is about the quality of the business and you'd bought a poor quality business at a good price, but it turned out to be a bad price because just a poor quality business and so he named his entire conglomerate Berkshire Hathaway to remind himself that you know, that's the kind of
That he should avoid so I think that's actually pretty smart. So I think being public about your failures and being honest with yourself is kind of the best way to do it and look most most actions in most ideas or failures. Just get over it. It's all error correction. That's how Mother Nature works with Evolution. That's how invention works the trial and error that's how science works with conjecture and criticism. And that's just how our lives work. We are. We are creative idea generating machines. They're always testing those ideas against reality Society is the best
Of such ideas that we have that has withstood the test of time but that is not designed for the individual that is balanced for the needs of society and the individual has to ReDiscover for themselves. What will work best for them and still allow them to function Society while being compatible with their DNA their environment their unique skill sets their education and their experience and so you just kind of have to go through it. You just have lots and lots of ideas and the only mistake is to think that you have the right idea forever. There's no such thing. You just keep correcting and correcting correcting.
I would say that one thing that helps a lot is as you as you go through this more and more and more as you just get older in life. You realize that it's all about long-term long-term long-term. All the classic virtues are just the classical virtues are really just saying to you whether it's in the Bible or whether it's the Romans whether it's the ancient Greeks or whether it's the stoics or whatever. They're all saying kind of just look focus on the long-term and don't focus on the short term most of the vices most the you know, the so-called acts of the devil are
Italy Temptations of cheap dopamine and if you can avoid those and just focus on long-term rewards and payoffs, you will do better on average than someone who focus on short-term now gluttony is like don't eat too much because even though taste good now you get sick later lust is you know, don't covet your neighbor's wife or husband because you're going to then get in trouble and possibly get killed or ostracize or ruin your marriage Etc. So you can go through every single one of these all of the classical virtues are basically saying optimized for
Ang terms of the short term and if you just want to do less one it he's in your life if you want to have better long-term thinking optimize more to the long-term the same way I think if you broaden the scope of your thinking based on your needs then you're going to have better outcomes in life. For example, if you can if you can or if you can't even take care of yourself physically or financially then obviously you focus on that but once you can take care of yourself physically financially and mentally then you have to start focusing on
If you have to narrow an opportunity aperture and you stay self-obsessed, you can be a miserable human being because your mind will just self-obsessed and nothing will ever be good enough and you just keep feeding the ego until it literally implodes. But if you sort of start broadening your aperture as moment, you have excess resources, then you can start taking care of your family and then maybe your tribe or your people and eventually everyone in the world. I mean, that's the ultimate goal to do something like what Elon Musk is doing which is taking all these excess resources and using it for things that
Ostensibly good for Humanity and everyone may not agree with you and what's good for Humanity. But you know as long as you have your own vision and that will sort of help take you out of your own ego and your own mind and make you just a much happier person overall. It'll be cold a self-fulfilling and you have to do less error correction along the way because your aperture will be both wide in helping a lot of people and will also be long it will also be looking very very far out and the goal I think is to get to sort of a 360-degree infinite view where you're
It's best for all of society would from your own needs from your own base of power and strength. So you are taking care of that doesn't mean you run out. Give away all your money or give away all your time to charity because you still have to function is to have to be happy. But you want to get to a position where you have everything that you want and then your cup automatically runs over and you can just kind of help the people around you again. And the way that is best expressed through your unique DNA and experience and then if you take the longest term view on that your entire
Her life for many lives beyond then you literally have nothing to worry about because there's no one to worry about you yourself for taking care of. It's about the all your all your goals and needs are going to the outside world and then you can't lose if the world doesn't give you what you want at that point. Then it's just kind of cheating itself in a way even had to become the richest man in the world because he was putting everything into giving the world what it needs and so the world kind of has to take care of him because not letting Elon win means that the world loses. So I mean
Getting a little bit of physical, but I just mean that people can sort of sense when you are working a long term time frames and when you're working relatively unselfishly, but we all have to be selfish. If you're not selfish. You don't survive without the self. There is no survival the physical self that is and so you can't act you can't act selfless and the acts of the worst the actors of the worst. They're actually the worst of the lot but if you can truly get to the point where your self needs are taken care of and then you can be selfless just buy just the virtue of excess.
Resources it makes you much better off.
I don't know if I answered your question that I think is ramble for a bit. You know, I think that looks great and I'm not the question asker. But I think that was great and I think it really leads us into kind of our next question for if you're a young adult and you're like going into the world and you're looking to have that long time long term vision and have that long-term goal. There has been a lot of talk about college not really being the thing. So the question here is what life advice for Success. Would you give an 18 year old in the
Old and they specifically are asking would you recommend them going to the university which I know you tweeted about that something interesting to talk about.
Universe is a complicated. I mean right now you sort of probably want to go to them because they're these very strong curators. And so they have a signal they give you a badge that unfortunately is still very useful and large parts of society. But I joke that University degrees of the new taxi medallions in that they're artificially scarce in the required for certain things, but they're going to be obsoleted relatively soon or already are in many disciplines. So you can already see some substitutes emerging for the University degree. For example, if you start a company that
Cease fire if you join y combinator that can be a substitute for University degree. If you win some incredible medical metal or award or you launch a company or build a website or do something interesting when you're very young they can be used the credential you write some great book or what have you that can be used as a substitute but it's a rare person right now can really skip the university that would have to be very autodidactic especially in the technical domains. So I don't think it's kind of doable for everyone. It is a unique small set like the so-called tea
Hello fellows, for example or people who were chosen for that and it just can't be that many of them yet. That's it. I think it'll get easier because the credentialing will become less important out of University. The other thing is I think there's a whole class of University degrees that are pretty worthless. If you're not getting a stem degree or a degree that can help you build or fix things and you don't need a degree for it. You can just read books on it. I mean that's you can teach yourself. So really the classical University degree where you're investing four years of your life and boys in a coincidence takes four years to learn anything regardless of
Whether it's English Lit or physics, you know, I would argue that if you can learn it on your own then you don't need a University degree for it to the extent you need for signaling. There's a fun little hack which is at least in Silicon Valley or the greater Tech ecosystem. It's almost better to get accepted to Stanford and then drop out then to actually finish the degree first you're in a very illustrious Court of people who then went on to be very successful at least that's the perception which is good enough for singling purposes. And secondly, you just save yourself a lot of time you've shown.
You passed the filter, but then you recover the next three years now. I think a lot of the Stanford students were ambitious also get around this by starting companies while they're at Stanford, but they used something like Stanford you could say, you know, 1/3 curation / signaling which is done the moment you get in and then 1/3 sort of Alumni network and networking into with other smart people that you may want to start a company or do something with and then maybe the third of it that's actually the education.
So I would say if you're the kind of person that needs to question whether or not you should go to university at least today in 2021. Yes, then go to the university on the other hand. There are small set of people who can't stand the idea of wasting three or four years of their life and the university when they could be doing something and those people should not go to universities, but you will know it is one of those things where if you are going to err on the side of going to a university now, I would
a go to the best university possibly can because the signal / curation function is the most important and then secondly, once you're in study something worthwhile that you absolutely cannot learn on your own whether it's you know, biology or law or medicine or my favorites are you know physics math computer science, there's the hard skills because once you're good at mathematics and you don't fear any book, then you can learn anything on your own later, but I would say the soft squishy skills those the ones where I think would be suspect but if you're going to go to a
Middling school and graduate with like a social sciences degree. I don't know if you're going to pay back your student loans.
So on the other end people who perhaps going to University isn't really even an option for them. There is a question about if with leverage that we're seeing with like technology and you've talked extensively about self self learning for coding and other ways to essentially create Financial Freedom on the internet. There's been there's a few questions asking if you believe or you think that the trend towards moving to English-speaking countries are important and
Your your kind of your thoughts on that that question was asked a few times in a few different ways. Yeah English is the lingua Franca of the internet, ironically enough. And so the internet took English from being a plurality of speakers to I think it's gonna take it to a majority of all my speakers and because a lot of technical stuff is written in English, you know, the various websites work best in English apps work best in English. If you want to be a first-class citizen on the internet, it really helps to be fluent with English, you know, the reason I'm out.
Up here and not in the audience like the rest of you is because I happen to be more articulate than the average person with English because I read a lot of books when I was a kid. And so I just happen to be good at expressing myself in the English language. And that's a that's a big deal. You know that eloquence turns the one to a speaker as opposed to a listener. So there's there's huge value in being a good native English speaker. So I think places like India are Advantage by the trend towards remote work and zoom in clubhouse and so on because it gives more of them an opportunity to compete.
In a relatively Level Playing Field the you know, one of the things that people going to learn with the remote work is remote work is not really about letting the Facebook engineer work from Ohio instead of from Silicon Valley. I mean that may be true in the short term but in the long term, it's really about you know, I met from India have been able to work for Facebook in Silicon Valley, but while he's and you know some rural town in India, so, you know, that's that's going to disrupt and change lives and Global Supply Chain. Some people be better off some will be worse off.
Yeah, but that's true globalization happening. So yeah English is a superpower, you know, if I had to pick subjects for my kids to learn I'd really really drill down on logic math computer science and English and then I think everything else they can follow their natural intellectual curiosity. So if they want to learn music, they can learn music but you know, you don't like force them to go learn the violin just because you have some idea that every kid should be a musician the rest of it. They can follow the natural aptitude, but English is
Foundational it's the classic Reading Writing arithmetic, right the classic stuff that I would add code and science which are like slight variations on those, you know, science being called language of Applied Mathematics into nature and and computers being Applied Mathematics into machines, but I think those are very foundational skills. Everything else. You can kind of learn on your own.
So another question kind of along the lines of thinking about children. There's some parents on Twitter who wanted to ask what are your thoughts or general perhaps advice for them on how they can pick for themselves if they want to home school their kids that they should take their kids to private school and regardless, like what type of social skills. Do you think they should be focused on helping their kids develop and also you actually already answered it, but they wanted to know
What how what you would like to educate your kids on. So I think that the missing a spectator is Social Development was like home school or private school.
Yeah, I reject this whole Social Development thing. I know it's gotten very popular. But I think humans are social machines and these days were over socialized not under socialized. We have Instagram Snapchat Tick-Tock Clubhouse Twitter Facebook. We have unlimited ways to socialize virtually lots of kids. I see are socializing in real life, you know, if they're not socializing virtually, I would argue that socialization creates for more problems than it solves and that the modern individuals over socialized exceptional people are built in solitude. That's not possible.
Here but it's true. It's the lone time that you spent when you were a kid that made you good at whatever you are. It wasn't the group time to good time spent having too much fun. Most likely there are a few exceptions but not many. So I would say in general of socialization is actually the problem that you're trying to avoid is opposed to the asset that you're trying to bring into it. And I think it's kind of pathetic how quickly we fall into single schools for socialization G. What about socialization with abdicate in this idea? That is the best way to educate your child because clearly it's not true. It's a combination of
of one-size-fits-all Education compliance Training Day Care and socially and I would argue socialization and the worst kinds of socialization socialization false little Lord of the Flies type worlds where people are very hierarchical. Who's the prom queen. Who's the who's the football player? Who's the jockey who's popular? Who's cool who's doing drugs? Who's not all that stuff is nonsense. I mean the further you get in life before they're more of an adult. You become the more you get away from that and we all remember that shocked when we shifted from
All the real world what a tremendous difference it was and we just been in a little bubble for our inner lives up until that point. So I would argue and I don't have any I don't care about you know, sure people may ask me for citations, but there is plenty of evidence that homeschool kids do a lot better than than even private school kids or public school kids. There's even evidence that unschooled kids kids who were basically just left alone with no education tend to be at worst one grade behind.
Schooled kids and when they get to College, they actually catch up completely because they're interested think about that all the time. You said spent in school K through 12 really amounted to be one year ahead of a kid who didn't go to school at all and then in college that kid caught up by the way because now they were generally interested. So I think the way we do schooling is much more about daycare and it's also preparing kids for the wrong things. I mean eight hours a day 9 hours a day in a little group prison camp where you're sort of you have to raise your hand to go to the bathroom and they tell you how
Thinking how to behave like that. This is it's terrible but I think most parents don't have a choice right most parents are busy working. They we don't live in tribal Societies in the war were grandma and the aunts and uncles can all raise the kids together. So raising kids is really hard. So we abdicate that to the state the state turned into lowest common denominator situation and the kid ends up board and compliant and or having, you know, most of their curiosity Stamped Out of them and just wasting enormous amount of time. Most of the time spent in school is just completely
we wasted and then they use it to build a social life because there's nothing else to do. So, I I just cannot imagine sending my kids to a regular school. Maybe I'll abdicate maybe I'll be forced to so I reserve the right to change my mind, but at least right now, I don't think it's the best way to educate them. Obviously. I have the means and other time to do. Otherwise, if you don't have the means in the time then you know, send your kids to the best school possible or try to form a local homeschooling group where you can share the burden or try to live close to your tribe so you can do you know
Do what you can there that said look I'm a product of mostly Public Schools including thank God magnet schools, which I know are out of fashion now, but so I don't necessarily say that that won't work, but I do get the sense that at least in my time Public Schools used to care a lot more about proper education and Merit and much less about being politically, correct. So I'm not sure where schools are today, but I hope not to find out.
I think that's so interesting just talking about how what we commonly think about socialization like you taken the different.
You're thinking totally makes sense, even though it's like not the common way. We describe it. And so I think talking kind of about socialization and how you know, we interact with each other. Another question is kind of specific to you and likely due to you know, your position in life is when you're going through business ventures and meeting folks. How do you cut through the noise?
and I think this question is really asking like how can you know when you're meeting someone if
If I guess if they're legit, or if you want to do business with them, or you want to you want to get to know them better, I think that's kind of like a soft question about how you feel people.
Yeah, this is experience you spend time on it. You do it enough times and become second nature of the first time. It's weird, you know, the first 50 times as hard, you know, then the, you know, next hundred or 200 times its kind of its work but doable and eventually just develop a good feeling just listen to your gut feel. It's like it's like building expertise anything else. You just do it often enough and then as you get better and better at it, the goal is to have a strong and a filter that you can recover your time. So I reject most meetings. I reject most
Is I still occasionally get sucked into them usually have some regrets afterwards because you know, everyone's human but just value value your time value your free time. You don't have to follow anybody else in the model of taking every meeting or trying for every opportunity. You only have to be right a couple of times in the nonlinear world to do well, so it's much more about keeping your mental and physical bandwidth open for the right opportunity, especially if you have some form of Leverage to code or capital and
striking when the right opportunity presents itself. So if you're an investor, you definitely don't want your de-clutter to the meetings you want to be able to think even if you're in say an engineer or a writer. You don't want to be constantly writing junk or coding up junk. You want to be thinking hard about what you're going to do and then trying to do the right thing and of course, you have to try enough things that eventually you have a sense yourself of what is good. And what is doable and what what's possible but it is a very hard question to answer because so abstract. I mean look, I would just say the honest answer is experience. Yes.
It often enough.
Yeah, and I think with your experience you've talked a lot about the importance of Leverage and what I found also interesting is a lot of questioners wanted to ask you more about leveraging though. You've talked about it quite frequently. So perhaps I was thinking they're confused about what leverage means so in some cases there's a freelance photographer who was unclear about how to create leverage and or how to utilize leverage and someone else also talked about wanting to utilize leverage, but they
The deprioritized being anonymous. So I think in there was a few more questions along these lines just asking how they can look how they can focus on creating leverage for themselves within their domain. That is not necessarily they're not Engineers or not coders. Yeah Leverage is what separates us from the animals, right? It's like a human wielding fire is way more fearsome than almost any animal and their leverage to this tool of the flaming flaming piece of wood that they're holding.
And so Leverage is basically just tools its Force multipliers and you can leverage yourself in many ways. You can leverage Yourself by convincing people to do something with you or for you that's labeled average you can convince that you can you can apply stored up wealth or capital or Machinery that's capital leverage. You can use a tool that doesn't require any one else has permission to create copies of your work to create products and that could be everything from a 3D printer to a computer for coding to even a bicycle which is a mechanical.
Promotion to you know, writing a book to podcast and so on and so forth. There's many many many forms of Leverage in society. It's just that this last set of publishing coding Etc are and podcasting or Club housing. For example, I'm leverage here. I'm sitting in my room and talking to hundreds of thousands of people something that just wouldn't have been possible even a few years ago, and I'm doing it on my terms and wide time at my leisure and the message getting out of Leverage that that's all leverages.
Leverages this is a force multiplier for your actions and the best forms of Leverage employ permissionless, tools tools that don't require anybody else's permission the sort of product ties what you naturally are and do so, you know, you can kind of summarize all that by just saying productize yourself in productized you on work, then you leverage just being you and you've essentially create copies of you through space and time. My podcasts are deliberately designed to not refer to contemporary things and to be timeless content look part of
Reason why I've gotten such a huge Twitter following is I've actually stop tweeting. I don't know if you go back and look at my tweets. I don't think I've done original Tweets in a long time. I just lost interest in tweeting. But at the same time like my mansions and it spread and everything just needs you going up and up and up and up and up. Why because 80% of my tweets and almost all of my podcast content is timeless. So to someone who discovers it just now it's as good as new it doesn't get old. So that stuff just keeps compounding. It's a form of Leverage its productizing myself. So it's
is kind of the timelessness actually allows the compound across time and it can just run some builds up more compound interest than content that someone else is writing that may no longer be relevant, you know a year or a few months later the same way when I learned when I read things I like to read Timeless books while read philosophy and science because I think they're relatively Timeless compared to say from reading the news the news is all timely if you read last week's news. It doesn't it's nonsense. It doesn't make sense anymore. So try to stay away from
On both producing and consuming timely content focus and Timeless content you get free leverage. These are just examples of how to think about how to use leverage but Leverage is is literally it. I mean look at Mark Zuckerberg, for example, he's leveraged with a close to trillion dollar company and with tens of thousands of brilliant people writing code plus hundreds of you know, plus lots of capital so he's got labor. He's got capital and he's got code and he's got media. He's got all in one which makes him one of the
the most leverage human beings on the planet. So you want to get leverage once you get leverage then it just becomes so easy to either make a living or spread your message or do whatever it is that you want to do.
I think that's a great clarification on Leverage and just being able to really apply it to like everyone's personal situations. I think thinking about it as a tool like what tool can I have a tool can I use I think will be really helpful because we can find that in like any category in coding. So one of the reasons why don't you really tweet much anymore is because Twitter is just an outrage machine where people excerpt things you said and then they attack you and so what I'm about to say is the kind of thing. That would get me shredded on Twitter. I'll say
Your anyway, even though I'm sure somebody's gonna put out of context and I'm going to Shredder and Twitter for anyway, but you know, that's why I'm not much on Twitter anymore. Basically. Yes, you should learn to code everyone should learn to code a little bit and not so much that you're going to become a professional coder. I'm not saying it will be a coder but just enough that you could understand what it is and how it works in your brain can work logically the same way and then you aren't intimidated by computers and you know what they're capable of what they're not capable of and what this device that uses.
Spend all day long on how it actually functions underneath and well, it's obvious limitations and capabilities are and then you don't get scared, you know with horror stories and fairy tales about a GI or jobs, you know being replaced or computers like doing everything and you understand what they're good and what they're not the computer is the most powerful tool ever invented by Humanity in your pocket. You're carrying the single most powerful thing that all of humanity has ever invented and it is and it has been made very young Terry and is the ultimate Swiss army knife is with stuff in your pockets.
And every little bit you can do to figure out how to use that better than you did before is going to give you enormous leverage. So I I tell people to learn to code the same reason why I'm sure in the 1600 or 1700. It was good advice to tell people to learn to read and to write yes not everyone is going to be a great author. Yes, not everyone is going to be an Avid Reader, but they should all know how to read and write and I think coding is just the new Literacy for the same reason you learn mathematics. So you're not in numerate and for the same.
When you learn to read and write so you're not illiterate. It's important to learn to code so that you are not computer illiterate computer literacy is a basic fundamental skill that will be a requirement of society going forward. In fact, most good schools Now teach computer programming to all children. That's just like a requirement. So we missed it because we grew up a little too early doesn't mean we can't take out the time to do it. You know, like I think a boot camp for six eight twelve weeks you've had time. If not, you know just would do whatever you can but it just gives
Such a leg up against the people who are not ready. The one guy who famously said like in the future either you're telling computer what to do or computers telling you what to do and you don't want to be on the wrong side of that transaction. If you're an Uber driver the computers telling you what to do. You're following orders. Your days are numbered in that job because you're not in a creative job on the other hand. If you're the programmer for Uber then you are the one who is instructing all these drivers around and yeah, you could argue it's not fair, but you can
Close that Gap and you can close that gap for you and your kids by learning to code. So I even though this will get me shredded in Twitter. I think it is still the best advice. I can give to someone who's relatively Young And up-and-coming even if you don't plan on coding for a living learn to cope with it. And if you're saying, oh I'm not going to learn to code because in ten years coding will be automated that is exactly why you should learn to code because no serious code or think that that's true.
And another aspect of like Leverage that you've talked about is if you're not going to code in some cases that like writing is another option or speaking. So another question that was asked was as a writer. I feel like everything has already been said and done there is no original if you have read enough books. So why do we still repeat and right I can't resist the urge to create but what's the point for human the human race? Yeah, that's just completely wrong. And so if you look at science and
Knology, obviously the stuff has not been done yet. So there's always a new frontier. There is infinite new knowledge to be discovered and gained. I direct you to my favorite recent book David Deutsch is the beginning of Infinity for a very good explanation of this but essentially knowledge creation is infinite and humans will always be creating in discovering new knowledge and correcting old errors that we had. So that's number one second you write for yourself you rights that you learn it. So, you know that cold the teacher actually learns more than
Student by explaining it that's why I'm up here because I get to learn things at the same time by being forced to articulate them, you know forced me to check my thinking and then it's a nature of wisdom and wisdom is what kind of directs you in your everyday life and leads to a good quality of life that it cannot be transmitted. It can't be conveyed easily. It has to be rediscovered one individual at a time. So you can write an articulate new ways to Aspire to inspire people. Finally you can you can write this for art you can write fiction. You can write poetry you can write to be creative. So this idea that like,
There's
nothing new to right is the same as saying there's nothing new to do. There's nothing new to discover. This is completely false that the person just sounds depressed to me. I hope that's not a real person.
Sorry just to be so have you do still have anyone? Oh, sorry, I forgot to unmute myself properly fat fingers. So I was thing on the other end kind of, you know, a little bit of the depressed five still is this question is coming from the entrepreneur side is how should I deal with sunk cost fallacy as starting as a starting entrepreneur. I understand I need to push for it and I need to fill many times before I create something great. What questions can I ask myself so I can keep going.
I don't keep going the wrong way for too long.
It's a very tricky question is super abstract. So it's really hard to answer with a degenerating to platitudes are inapplicable situations, but I would just say in general that grit and perseverance tend to be determinant factors most startups succeed because the founder doesn't give up and go through ups and downs that said there's definitely founders of stick it out too long in a failed situation. I would basically say don't stick it out or persevere out of some false sense of perseverance or thinking that well grit will make me successful know.
If you are reluctantly persevering for 10 years that's not going to lead to success that's going to lead to a prolonged failure. But if you are if you are persevering with conviction because you truly understand and believe that you understand better than others that this is that this thing is important and is going to work then that is a legitimate form of perseverance. So I would say that yes, the successful entrepreneurs persevere, but that doesn't mean that the pursuit of the entrepreneurs who persevere all successful cause and effect because ality is not
it's totally true here. So maybe the best advice I have on this is pick the kind of project where you're going to persevere because you want to see the thing exists you enjoy it for its own sake or you have some determinant for doing it that is outside of just pure monetary success.
Son of all I wanted to check in with you were about approaching an hour. And I know we discussed the original request was for an hour. So I wonder if you wanted to go a few more questions or how are you on time?
The time is not an issue. The format is a little awkward just because I guess I sort of feel you know it by the way, it's not no one's fault. I just I like to experiment with new things. And even now I kind of remember why I stopped doing amas on Twitter because it's just feels too strange. It feels to autobiographical. I just prefer I just like having conversations with people right? I come on clubhouse. I can have conversations smart people and then other people can eavesdrop and you know you a little bit of Fame he got a little bit of your back scratched you get to talk some smart people.
Everybody seems happy. It's kind of a win-win these sorts of, you know chats that we are answering kind of abstract questions. I'm not sure what it's doing for anyone. But yeah, if people get value out of it great and you know, I had time I'm probably going to drop off but I may just kind of hop around Clubhouse and see what else is going on and this on somebody else's Channel now if specific people have questions in the audience, maybe we could pull up one or two people. I don't know. I mean, it's always risky, but it's
Can be fun too. Yeah, I'll be I'll be thank you for doing this and I'll be quick on the mutant drop I learned from Coppola. So let's yeah a couple people in the audience.
Can you hear me?
Yes, hi. It's so nice to have you here. Thank you for this opportunity. The question is the rate at which knowledge is increasing every year how what are ways in which we can keep updated about it without worrying.
Yeah, most knowledge is very temporary and you probably shouldn't try and keep up with it. And when you say whirring you're sort of implying that it's the news that's kind of concerning you. Oh, look the human brain is not designed to process. All of the world's breaking emergencies real time. When you were involving, you know with your ancestors who are your great-grandparents and so on they lived in small villages and they never heard of the news outside their Village unless it was like a war was going on and there was an enemy
Approaching their doorstep that tended not to hear about it. You're just not meant to process the Grievances and the unfortunate atrocities, especially these days when they're filtered through news media that's designed to scare you because that's their business model reading the news will drive you insane. The problem is not that you can't keep up. The problem is that you're you're trying to feel and exert control over the things that are not in your image immediate vicinity. And so now people will say like, oh does this means you're just saying
Should check out a life and have no responsibility actually. Yes. I am. I am saying that and I have to say it that way because I think otherwise you will get sucked back into the news. The only news that should really matter to you as a local news and news that is relevant to exact decisions that you're going to make which is going to significantly alter the quality of your life and irrational person. Can I think achieve peace or Hell or get closer to Peace by cultivating an indifference to things that are out of their control and there are people out there who are new?
Junkies, and they tend to be on Twitter lot for example, and they're going to force you into the news. And again make you feel guilty and bad about not listen to the news. These people are crack addicts, you know even worse they're there they often end up mentally deranged just because they're addicted to the news and they're going to shame you in a salt you if you don't listen to the news doesn't mean you should listen to the news and look sometimes I fall down the news Rabbit Hole to but I view it as the same way as falling down kind of a drug addiction or you know doing things that I know is supposed to be bad, but yet I'm indulging
And a guilty pleasure that I have to pay for later the anxiety from external sources just means that your aperture is spread far wider than you have the ability to control. So you need to narrow your aperture and focus it on the actual problems that are right in front of you as opposed to the abstract problems that people are yelling in your ears using bullhorns from far away trying to get you excited about all the things they're excited about those people are the problem. It's actually the people who are spreading.
And writing the news who are the problem and you have to learn to cut them out of your life.
Yeah, I definitely feel like since I was able to do that for myself. The quality of my life has improved drastically.
Monica go. Now what I wanted to ask you a question about content creation when you started blogging and obviously writing so much. Would your journey have been different if audio was the way to go instead of text?
Yeah audio. I don't I prefer to read and so for the same reason I think out of politeness is kind of better to write that said is definitely easier to create audio content at least for me. And so I'm creating a lot more of it through Clubhouse and podcast or by accident that said when you're first starting out, I think it's better to write and there are a couple of reasons for that one is it can spread through more channels. It will get consumed by more people. It'll probably be more Timeless because it's easier to excerpt and snip it and
Around it's easier for people to quote it. It will hone your thinking better. Your arguments have to be much tighter when they're written down and so you will build sort of better building blocks for your future thought processes and conversations. So I do think that there is something magic about writing that you want cannot substitute purely by speaking.
I'm gonna invite someone out because she's in the follow group. So
it's see this hi. This is gentle to the first question. But I was wondering what you think how you think the media should involve to become more Timeless and nourishing while still informing people or do you believe the solution is to kind of disregard it allowed it to just kind of died out and focus more on books and more Timeless pieces of
99% of people are going to still listen to media and no one's gonna listen to me singing nor the media. I don't even listen to myself and I say, you know the media so most most people most of the time we're going to remain hooked on the media. So there's no danger of it going away or I should say there's no there's no beneficial chance of it going away. And obviously we need journalism and Reporting. Although I'm not sure that's what we get anymore that may have just gone extinct and fortunately, although there do seem to be some really good new journalists and writers emerging on platforms except stack and you
Hell that's where they're they are because the classic media is attacking them and hitting on them. So literally every time they carry out a hit job and some new sub stack author. I'm like, oh, let me go subscribe to that person to support them just like on these industries are all unbundling and as they unbundled the best journalists are doing independent just like the best investors are going independent. They're not asleep staying at the brand of a firm anymore. The starting their own funds. The best writers are running their own sub Stacks or their own newsletters or their own Twitter accounts the best
You know musicians, you know are going are starting to go more direct to the audience, you know artist with NF T. So this is kind of the age of the individual over a sort of the mid-size institution. Although there are a few Mega platforms that do tend to dominate everything which is unfortunate, but I don't think that the existing media is going to suddenly reform and somehow get better and it's a heterogeneous ecosystem. So to the extent that it's doing something that I think is not necessarily great.
It's because a structural incentives or that way. It's not because of some conspiracy. It's just because easier for them to converge on that point that selling point that's just how they're designed. So I think they're going to be replaced by individual citizen media citizen journalism sub stack Twitter, whatever the next Clubhouse what are the next few things are I'm not holding my breath waiting for them to reform.
Vash I continue to bring a few more people up sure. Let's do one or two more.
Sounds good.
And if anyone else in the audience that you think might be interesting to have a conversation with I'd be happy to just kill the QA and we can just jump into listening to a conversation as well that all my friends in the audience right now are boring I'm kidding and this forever. I'm I'm trolling them.
Hey, thanks guys at this angers. I'm new to clubhouse and this is my first question ever. So you don't love this opportunity to connect peer-to-peer. My question is about the march of science. I believe the nature is infinitely intelligent and all we do in decades and centuries and science is to uncover it bit by bit.
What do you think about this novel?
Yeah, I mean obviously there's a lot more compute power out there in nature than exist within humans. We barely comprehend the reality that exists. I agree. I mean, I think that's why science is so interesting because it's the process of the discovery in the unfolding of the deepest laws of nature, you know, David Deutsch talks about the four fundamental theories that have very deep explanations that allows to know all the things that could be understood today.
That aren't just memorizing facts and that is the theory of evolution epistemology quantum mechanics and the theory of computation. So I and we're going to add more and more to that but those are very for very fundamental theories that as he says help us Define the fabric of reality and I think we'll just keep uncovering more and more of it and there's and we're always going to have mistakes but we always keep making progress as long as we keep an open mind about
Knowing that we can make mistakes and we do make mistakes. The only real mistake is to think that we figured it all out and it's time to stop looking at stop thinking of new things and stop correcting the errors. We've already made.
Hi Conrad.
Thanks a lot for the spacer. Try to keep my question as short as possible. Do you have any Min do you think they exist any practical advice for being patient? So of course, I really agree with long-term being the optimal way the optimal meant like attitudes, but I guess sometimes in in daily daily life.
Every day can be it can be it can be difficult to maintain it. So I don't know if there exists any any practical tips that you could
ship. Yeah. I lost you for a bit you last year for the first half of the question. I think you're asking about the Practical tips to maintain a long-term Outlook, but is it specific to some domain like investing or is it for everything
I think for investing that's a it's a good example, and I feel that it could it could extend to to life in.
General but yeah for Investing For example, just like a basic example, like in in Bitcoin where the the best strategy seems to be under 10 20-year Horizon. How do you maintain that patients during
that time? Yeah, basically my rule on this which I don't even always follow myself, but I try to remind myself is that I buy something when I have conviction and I sell it when I lose a conviction.
That's kind of it. I try not to pay attention to all the variations in between as long as you have conviction something you sleep. Well at night you don't need to worry about it the mistake or the problem happens when you buy something, we don't have conviction and now you're constantly just revisiting it. And first of all, let's mentally exhausting second. You're probably not going to get it right because you just didn't, you know, you didn't spend the time to figure it out to the extent that it could be figured out and thirdly you're not going to put enough Capital into it because again, you don't have
Fiction so conviction is the foundation of investing and if you don't have the conviction you should sell and not look back but do whatever it takes to either develop the conviction or to not have the conviction and like Warren Buffett does many of the things that he faces go in the pile of too hard like I don't understand so it's a pass Venture is a little different because especially early stage Venture investing you're basically buying cheap out of money lottery tickets out of my call options. And so sometimes you will invest in things where you don't
We have the full conviction and you kind of wait to see how it plays out and it's sort of a feature of venture capital or private investing. Is that your illiquid for a long time? So you can't even Panic sell when you want to and that the liquidity forces you to hold on for a long time, which sort of feeds back also into having conviction because if you hold an investment for 10 years and be interacting with the founder, it would be really good if you pick well in the beginning so you're not dealing with someone or situation that you don't actually like
So anyway, I think that's it for me for tonight. So just thanks for setting this up. You're very patient to the long time. No driving. No worries it all and thank you for doing it. I'm glad you were able to make this happen. I know personally I can't wait to listen back on this and learn from it. I know it was a little bit awkward. I'm sorry, but that is not a wonderful a great job. It's always a little strange getting up in front of an audience and not knowing what the heck you're really doing.
That said as long as I don't have to cancel for telling everyone to learn to code tomorrow. This has been fun. One of the things I do like about clubhouses that because in context you can just be more honest than you can on Twitter where every word has to be carefully crafted because the lowest IQ person the room is going to attack you. So but the unfortunate part would clubhouses you can't communicate with the audience easily. There's no there's no tight feedback loop nor is it easy to have a lot of people up here having a conversation?
Relation, so thanks for bearing through this and I'll see you all around Clubhouse or maybe even Twitter.
Have a good night, or have a
