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there are some musicians like ACDC come up with something new at one point once long ago and then they're thoroughly happy to just do that one thing until they die and then there's some of us have a desire to constantly push
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ourselves into new territory if you want to be just dreadfully bored for the rest of your life that's what you'll do if you're not dissatisfied with the way things are you see no reason to change if you want to be continuously delighted
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you've got to try different things questioning what you're really about questioning what your real purpose is one of my favorite Thrills in life is to change my mind there is no cure for curiosity Picasso got to a style of painting in his teens 20s and
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then in his 30s he decided to try to push beyond that like wait a second there's got to be another way what everyone thought of as reality out there was in fact not reality out there it was created in here in in our minds the only
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thing that's true is there my hands are clapping right now that's true physical observable things are true everything else is just a perspective that you can choose to take well hello everyone it's Jim oy with yet another infinite Luke and I
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cannot tell you how excited I am about my guest today I had him booked for earlier in the year and I had a huge conflict and had to cancel and I was so bummed out because he's a hard guy to get but then he thought of me when he
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had a cancellation and the universe put us together my guest today is Derek cbers uh who I I mean you almost go beyond description Derek and I actually thought of this line from Walt Witman that I'm going to read because it reminded me of you and the line is this
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the past and present Wilt I have filled them emptied them and proceed to fill my next fold of future do I contradict myself fine I contradict myself I am large I contain multitudes Derek welcome Jim coming from you that means a lot
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that is uh such a wonderful quote I think of it often so thanks for associating that with me absolutely and I gotta tell you you just are absolutely Beyond intriguing to me because you've been a musician a circus
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performer an entrepreneur an author you accidentally started CD Baby to help your friends sell music turned into this huge on online uh uh company where you sold uh you you had 150 musicians that you know thousand musicians that you were selling
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you had 100 million in sales you sold it for 22 million and then you gave the money away to charity which like wow but like all I have to do is mention you people so I mentioned you to my head of infinite media uh who whose online
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handle is Liberty is real name is Michael Graham and immediately got an email back from him and he goes I remember the email I got from him and then he he he typed it out from memory and and so he said the meem the your your email your confirmation email to
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him was your CD has gently been taken by CD Baby off the shelves with sterilized contamination free gloves we have lovingly put it on a satin pillow a team of 50 polished it and then our packing specialist from Japan lit a candle and did a ceremony
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and we all put it in a gold line box the entire company at a c celebratory March to the post office and all of Portland waved goodbye and your photo has been place on our best customer wall of the here I mean like dude tell me about
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this were you all were you always like this were when you were a kid was was this the way you were Enlighten okay wait I'm gonna go I'm gonna rewind a minute first and then answer the question so I I suspect that you and I kind of recognize this in each
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other cuz I uh didn't get the chance to say yet that I am so excited to talk with you I so admire what you're doing and I think that you and I have this drive of continuous expansion and Improvement that I think of the musical metaphor of
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ACDC versus say Miles Davis or David Bowie that there are some musicians like ACDC that they come up with something new at one point once long ago and then they're thoroughly happy to just do that one thing until they die and no desire
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to to grow beyond that they're like no this is my thing this is what I do that's that and then there are some of us and I'll call this the uh the Miles Davis or David Bowie model have a desire to constantly push ourselves into new
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territory and I I'm definitely that way uh maybe to a fault and I sense that you are too that you also are not resting on your laurels so I think uh you and I kind of recognize that that kindered thing in us um agreed you think totally
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agreed and the uh miles and uh David Bowie I loved uh ACDC fine but miles miles and Bowie you know uh resonate with me far to a much greater extent there are some people that I assumed because they're so bright that of course they would keep developing and
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growing and it's been really weird and surprising a little let's say confounding to me that some people don't that no matter how um let's say bright uh brightly they they shown in their early days some just stay at that level of brightness and
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don't have the desire to go beyond that which is fine I guess for them it's just a it's hard for me to understand that some people would be content to go from uh say zero to 100 and then just stay at 100 and not push for a thousand or
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anyway silly metaphor okay so your next question um or your first question is was I always like this I think not I think somewhere along the way in my 20s I started questioning the things people do and ask like why are they doing it that way does
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it have to be that way what's the real goal here is there a better way to get to that goal kind of disregarding norms and breaking things down to their lower principles and uh finding my own way to get to that goal so in that case the uh the funny
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email yeah at first just when I was building the store cdbaby.com I quickly put together an email of just like okay uh your CD has been shipped uh thank you and that was that and then it just only about a week or two later I thought okay hold on that's really
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boring is that all I really want to do is just provide people with another boring confirmation I was like really the reason I'm doing this is to make people happy isn't there another way to make people happy I think I should give them
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something a little Lively in their inbox uh and so that led to that right but it's not the correct solution for everything it doesn't mean that everybody should now go write an email like that it means questioning what you're really
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about um questioning what your real purpose is so I do this with so many things uh I mean I'm a computer programmer too so so many times there is the default way that people do things they're the current norms and when I'm learning a new
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technology I look at that and then I think wait the whole point is to launch a server and I know that Facebook does it this way or Google does it that way but that's a lot of levels of bureaucracy in between the real point
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which is just to get a server going I think I'm going to skip all of these other layers and just go right to the point um no matter what other people people are doing I don't care if it's not the norm uh it gets the job done so I don't know the it's a
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um it all depends what you're after I think it's it's very good for us to question our goals whether they are pleasure goals business goals even personal relationship goals uh to look at what you're really after if you really want to be closer with somebody
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maybe you don't need to go to Fiji to get closer to somebody maybe you can just uh turn turn off your phone and have a good conversation on the couch you know Etc totally agree and I get asked a lot and so I'm gonna ask you
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because you're probably gonna have a better answer when you when you had that sator in your 20s what was there something that you remember that that happened that served as a catalyst for you having this do wait a minute maybe I should be doing it
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this way yes it started with my music teacher Kimo Williams uh anyone listen to this listening to this I highly recommend you go to the story I wrote about it already which is uh I posted it at si. RSO spelled Kim o Kemo was a music
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teacher I met randomly when I was 17 just before I was about to go off to college I I was going to Berkeley College of Music and just a month before I went I met a guy in Chicago who said oh you're going to Berkeley huh he said
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I used to teach at Berkeley he said you know what I think I can help you graduate in two years instead of four and I think I can do it in the next few weeks uh come come by my studio at 9:00 a.m. tomorrow so I showed up at 9:00 a.m. eager to go and and he said he
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was surprised apparently he often tells people show up to my studio at 900 a.m. and nobody ever does but I did and uh so he said well all right you're here so he gave me this crash course in music uh Harmony Jazz Harmony and ranging and he
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basically just crammed this information into my brain and sat there with me on the piano bench next to me and was going at this pace instead of the uh typical University pace and where he said basically universities have to adjust
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their courses to uh adapt to the slowest Learner in every class he said but if if you're fast we can do this much more efficiently so sure enough I went to Berkeley College of Music a month later and I tested out of say six semesters of
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classes and I did graduate college in two and a half years instead of four thanks to Kemo Williams so um I think that started me on the path of questioning norms and asking myself what's the real Point here and is there a more efficient or
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direct way to do this that's fascinating and the reason I asked is because I I according to my parents uh who are both uh in the great beyond now uh I I was that way from when I was a little kid and and and and and they used to my mother used to tell me
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that I would always find the easiest way to do anything and I said well what do you mean and she said well just yesterday do you remember how I asked you to get something out of that bottom cup I went yeah and she goes the
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handle's been missing from that cupboard and the handles up at at uh our waist level right and and she goes for for forever when I want something out of that cupboard I bend down and pull the cupboard open with my finger or my hand and she goes when when I
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asked you to do it you were like yeah sure Mom and she said you walked over opened it with your toe and grabbed the thing and she said you just kind of do that naturally and I kind of thought about that and I'm like maybe maybe my
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superpower is being just incredibly lazy but then the more I thought about it the more I think was that that I I think that some of us have a bit of a rebellious streak I guess a a a streak that like I I I don't believe in isms I
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I love uh Robert Anton Wilson you know I don't have any beliefs but I have many suspicions and we're gonna talk we're GNA talk about uh your uh view on beliefs later because I completely agree with you um but but so I one thing that
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I do kind of am animated by is like a natural kind of Suspicion maybe of like that's the way we've always done it and I just think that that is the it's it's your example of the per the ACTC you know we figured it out it's just one
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way now we're just gonna keep doing it that and I just find like if you want to be just dreadfully bored for the rest of your life that's what you'll do if you don't if you want to be continuously delighted you you've got to try different things you've gotta be willing
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to fall in your face you've got to be willing to just make tons of mistakes and that's kind of my next thing that I wanted to ask you about because I completely agree with this and that is I love making hold's let's not change the
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subject you've brought up so many interesting things already okay bring it okay so you just made me realize a um um instead of ACDC and Miles Davis um I wonder about like Michelangelo versus Picasso right like you said Michelangelo
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kind of like perfected a style of painting early on and then just did that for the rest of his career Picasso got to a style of painting in his teens 20s and then in his 30s he decided to try to push beyond that like wait a second
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there's got to be another way okay so uh michaelangel versus Picasso lazy um it's so interesting that language has [Music] connotations that can be different per language so it would be interesting to find the definition of the word lazy in many different
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languages because in French I was surprised to find out that the word um to expect something like I I I'm expecting it to rain today in is the same word as to wait it's it's a tanra I think and expect and wait are the same
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word and I was so confused when I heard that and I was because I was there speaking with a French person I said no no no those are completely different concepts expect means I'm like I'm predicting it will happen and waight is just I'm just
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sitting here and he said no no no these are the same you know when you expect something to happen you you are waiting for it to happen and when you're waiting You're Expecting something because you're waiting no those are so different
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he said no they are the same so I wonder uh lazy in English we we have a very negative connotation for that you lazy bum sloth right one of the the sins um but I've heard it used for both programmers and musicians saying in a positive way I'm very lazy so uh a
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programmer saying I'm very lazy I don't write any lines of code that don't need to be there because I'm lazy and I don't want to type anything that doesn't have to exist and I remember musicians uh saying it's actually I'm thinking in
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particular guitarists saying uh I'm very lazy the less movement I do with my fingers the better I don't sweep my hand around with the pick I just only go to the string to the minimum necessary and that's why some guitarists were so much
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faster or more seemingly more agile than others is because they were lazy so it's using this word it's almost like we need a better word for it or uh you know we're gonna Viva Revolution Will Rebrand lazy as a positive thing uh but it's interesting D
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my boat it's interesting that your mother noticed that and and again you've Rock I really like that you said lazy as a superpower I really think that we should reconsider this word and think of it as positive same as the word selfish I
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think the word selfish can be a very positive thing that's uh showing some self-worth or self valuing same thing with smug smug is another one we think of negative but to me I feel smug when I feel like I'm living in alignment with
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my values like I feel really good about myself like hm I just did a good I woke up and I lifted weights first thing in the morning instead of waiting till you do it begrudgingly in the afternoon I ate really healthy today I feel really
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smug but that's a good thing it means I'm living in anyway I think there are a few those are the three I've identified uh lazy selfish and smug I think are all positive I couldn't agree more it reminds me of bertran Russell's uh you
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know the use of language uh I I persevere he is pigheaded uh and you know they just using using the the various uh different definitions and then I also think of the I can't remember Whose Line it is I think it was uh wienstein maybe not but
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the limits of my language are the limits of my world yeah I think that was yeah and so like I'm fascinated by language just like you are because when you read a TR like for example I'm a huge fan of the daing uh which is
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Lau uh and another one of my loves is one of yours stoicism I I kind of put Mash those two together and I think they make a pretty good uh U user guide so to speak um but when you when when you're reading like so I started reading the
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Dow Jing when I was 18 years old then I started to finally understand it when I was in my mid-50s and and the the the way it normally gets translated the da is the way okay or the path and and I was reading a new Trans ation I was
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delighted because this translator chose to use the term the process and I loved that because I always want to live my life like a verb not like a noun and the process to me seemed more like okay this is something that's moving right it you know the path
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can just be a path a single path the way you know that means there aren't other ways right but process me movement means exploration means all of these things that are much more active and so I I love I love the idea around you know
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starting a new language movement you another thing that I think you and I really share and you you as usual will put it better than I do ideas are worthless unless you execute again again them what what what I often say is an idea without action is a
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Daydream and and like sure enjoy your Daydreams sit on your couch have your ideas if they're not put out into the world in my way of looking at the at life you know it's a pleasant dream but it it doesn't like it doesn't nothing really happen and you say something
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they're just multipliers which I really like I like that idea and I'm going to be stealing that from you uh going forward and execution is worth millions talk talk talk about that because I love the I love the way you you talk about
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that well first I should say it was a reaction against somebody that came to me um introduced by a mutual friend saying I really want you to meet this guy you know I I really think that you two to meet he's got something he wants
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to show you and I okay okay so now I'm a little socially obliged so I meet the guy he said okay Derek I've got this idea but I can't tell you the idea until you sign this non disclosure agreement I went and again it's like ordinarily I
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would have said no but it was like a good friend that introduced us so I had this kind of social obligation like all right there all right go ahead tell me your idea and um this is before I had this uh you know idea times multipay Player thing and um he said
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okay here's my idea online dating with music and I said uhhuh and he goes yeah dude online dating with music and I said yeah go ahead he goes that's it that's the idea so I figure that um you know you can uh you're a programmer you can
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make this thing happen I'm the idea guy I give you the idea you go make it happen 5050 and I said wait is there any more to this idea and he goes no dude online dating with music I me okay all right hold on a second I said look that those four
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words are are uh that alone is not worth 50% I said it's it's the make anybody can say online dating with music you know I mean remember the movie There's Something About Mary right six minute abs five minute abs whatever um anybody
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can say that I said the hard part is going to make it happen and I said you can actually have a bad idea and make a great company from it uh or you can have a great idea and just sit there and hold meetings saying online dating with music
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and it's not worth a damn thing I guess I'll pay for this Diet Cokes um so yeah then I I thought later that night about how annoyed I was and I wrote up an article that's at uh si. RS multiply where I kind of put it into a grid I
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said let's say a a great idea is a is a uh no sorry sorry let's say a terrible idea is a negative one an okay idea is a one a good idea is a 10 a great idea is a 100 and an amazing idea is a ,000 I said but terrible execution let's say is a negative
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$1 and uh no execution is zero and uh good execution is a 10 or maybe bad executions of 10 anyway I list these numbers and I say to make a business you need to multiply those two so you can have an oky idea with great execution
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and do well or a great idea with no execution and it's worth nothing so that's the idea it's um it's one of those things I thought of in a few minutes and wrote it up in 20 minutes and I'm glad that it's traveled very far and and it's so funny because it seems
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so simple I I am a journal keeper and I'm I'm in the process of getting them all machine readable so that I can have SIM SIM Jim AI explained myself to me um and and so I was going through one of my old journals for people who are not
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watching but listening I'm holding up one of my old journals here and I found this thing that I wrote when I was a kid TW in my 20s and it was e energy mind times energy action times energy random squared because lots of random [ __ ]
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happens in the world equals result and if you just look at it as a formula if you've got the best idea let's give it a let's give it a of a million it's the best idea in the entire world that's ever anyone has ever come up with and your energy of action equals
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zero zero that's what you get and and it just seems to me to be such a truism and yet we we get people asking you to sign an NDA for online dating with I I I used to joke that the only reason you should either require an NDA if if
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if you're the one asking for one or or sign one is to make absolutely certain that people tell everyone about what they've signed the NDA nice so in what o e how do you think you would help somebody get from this idea that you know they want
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you to sign an NDA for online dating with music to to to moving toward like if you were a coach right and and young and a and a young person came up and they're like Derek I love you are amazing I read all your books this is
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fantastic I what you've done what you've achieved my God the the variety of stuff in your life but like what how do I how do I move from like this abstract thought that I'm having to action iteration doing it I mean what what do
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you can you coach that into it can you teach that to a person yeah that's a lot of what life coaches do or personal coaches or business coaches whatever coach's job is to take your blah blah blah and turn it into uh observable action or
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um what do you want to call that deliverable or whatever um Milestones so um the yeah the first thing is if somebody declares some intention uh to say okay well what actions uh would you take to make that happen so in the case of a business idea
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right like online dating with music um i' say okay take action on this right away so action you could think that that would mean like registering the domain name but I'd say no no no no don't do that yet do something that's actually
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useful for this idea say um uh talk to a real person it helps to to do it with real people so you don't stay in the land of abstract for too long no matter how big your idea you can get it going with one person right now so online dating with
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music you can uh pick one person that you know is single and another person that you know is single and ask them what kind of music they like and write it down and then say would you also like somebody if you knew uh was also into Miles Davis whatever
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John col train um and you could just test the idea with a piece of paper no technology no programming uh no domain name no uh you know incorporating an LLC uh just Begin by talking to real people and get the idea going that way and I believe
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that if you just start doing that kind of action immediately and you do that for 90 days for example you will be so much farther ahead in 90 days than somebody else who took action and just started programming a database table or setting up an LLC
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and calling lawyers and uh opening Bank accounts and whatnot If You Begin by talking to real people and test things in the real world with real people you'll get so much farther than anything else could not agree more we we um when
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we were designing something at my old firm that we sold it was an online uh ability gave gave investment advisers the ability to create custom portfolios for their clients and we we thought oh this is cool this is like I tried it way long ago at a company
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called myfolio in 2000 Tech didn't work.com uh but anyway we kept working on it working on it working on it and then we kind of came up with this list and several of my colleagues were like okay so we're GNA prioritize all these
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and then we're going to start building against them I'm like no no no no no we're not and my son my son had talked to me about talking to people and the best advice that he got was don't don't do anything until you get 12 advisors
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actually in a room and ask them do you want this or that do you like this or that AB test AB test and like you could see some of my colleagues like well that's crazy that's a waste of time and of course that's the way we did it and
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Derek everything we would have thought would have been at the top of what they you know wish list guess where it was if it was even on the list it was at the bottom of the list yeah and so this idea of asking real people what what a wild
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concept and and and yet we have this idea that like we should do it the other way and so much of business gets done the other way and it just seems to me to be completely back ass backwards right it's like I the same sort of story when
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we were setting up K the asset management president of my company said you know we got to decide on the trading systems and I looked at him and I went Chris we don't decide on trading systems we don't trade we'll make a horrible decision what we're going to do is push
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it down to other people who actually do the trading and we're going to use the systems that they want to use and and it seems to me that like you know CP snows the two cultures Art and Science have you read that book no yeah it's good
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you'd like it I think because what he talks about is this is this kind of split that happened um and and the it kind of you could even say the left hemisphere and right hemisphere of the brain right they used to be kind of
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co-joined and then we had this split where the analytical was over here and the imagination was over here and they stop doing what you just recommended and it seems to me they they they let you know and we just got pitched on a on somebody who's starting
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a company that's tried to REM merge the the people who do the design in manufacturing it I didn't know this they're split so over here there are the designers and they use computers to design everything but then it has to go into a work order
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which shows the people who's actually building it how they want it done well you can guess what will happen here right is like they they don't speak the same language yeah and and so and so they get it here and they're all like no
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no no no no that doesn't work we actually build these things and you're missing Steps A B C D and E right and so my next question becomes wait actually so apply that to your previous point it's important to ask the right people if you've got a new
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business idea you don't necessarily go to the banker and say what do you think of this online dating with music you talk to single people yes that are looking to not be single um or every now and then somebody pitches me on a new
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music startup saying hey here's a thing musicians could use what do you think and I always have the same answer which is it doesn't matter what I think I'm not a musician looking to promote my music anymore you need to talk to real
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musicians looking to promote their their music cuz I have no idea their needs and they think yeah but I want to get the the VIP opinion but the VIP doesn't the VIP opinion should Trail what the real customers and users feel so yeah I think
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you need to talk to the right people like you say with the builder versus the designer I love that because that's the other thing this this default to Authority and by the way I'm not saying that we that we shouldn't have experts
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we should I I I don't want somebody off the street to come do brain surgery on me okay so I I definitely want the person who knows how to do that but but we the the default to the VIP the default to you know well um you know it's it's the bandwagon effect really
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it's it's kind of like who he's got a good idea let's jump on there and let's ask him and maybe we're asking the we're asking the wrong person entirely right and I love that that observation because you if if you got to if you want to find
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pain points find them with the people who are going to potentially use the product right single people in the case of the online dating engineers in the case of the people building things and it it just seems to me that like that's
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such a a straightforward and simple concept one of the things that you write and talk about is you know the the idea to get going start iterating just do that and just keep doing keep the iteration going and I wonder do you think it's possible to
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like build a team that's you know working together closely not separate it like I just said about the the engineer and the the designers over here but do you think it could work if there were like the idea people and they were cheat
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by jaw with the execution people or do you think it has to reside in like one person oo there is a benefit to being a purely idea person because I think the executor of the idea can Trail a bit that I think that an idea person could say
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um I know you usually do it this way but what about that and even if the the executor would say what no that's crazy that's stupid no but after sleeping on it they might go oh actually wait I think you might be on to something nobody else does it this way but that
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could work so in a way I think it can be useful to be a bit naive I agree I think that cognitive diversity is something that people don't pay close enough attention to because people think differently they have different strengths they have different
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weakness NES somebody who's great at ideas is necessarily probably G to think very differently than somebody who's really great at execution right if you're looking at at companies right everyone talks about uh you know you
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want uh like Peter theel you want zero to one right that's that's where all the value resides yes said no one to 100 can build a lot of value as well if that's your goal right yeah and and so one of the things that I think is is important is
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cognitive diversity and if you have that you you necessarily get access to like another brain that doesn't f the way you think and that can lead to really great combinatorial ideas and execution right because because I also believe that the
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execution person can learn from the idea person if in other words about how to better execute right yeah and so the idea person conversely is going to say well that's an interesting idea but let me tell you why that's going to be really hard for us to
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execute and then the idea person like huh okay you know what and so it's kind of like I loved your story about um how John Lennon met Yoko Ono who my nephew works for her and I've met her many time she's a amazing woman and and the story
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for those that don't know it is um John Lenin and I only learned I didn't know this story uh and I learned it from uh researching uh you uh John Lennon went to an art uh Gallery uh and saw this ladder and being John Lennon he climbed
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the ladder and he found a magnifying glass and uh it said yes right was that what it said yeah yes and and then you you told the story about running or uh catching up with an old girlfriend and and and she told you you said that you
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were still single even though she was happily married and her response was so delightful which was just keep climbing the ladder uh so so so you can learn things from a variety of perspectives which kind of leads me into your about beliefs
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the book you you you wrote about beliefs and I'm still writing it right now that's I'm currently working on yeah yeah uh but one of the things that you said that I read was that sometimes you believe something even though it's not
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true and I was reminded of that's that really resonates with me because it I like don't look don't get crazy about looking searching for the ultimate meaning look for use right is this use is this useful to me or not right and
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like George box famously said all models are wrong some are useful and you know tmy um wow tmy was entirely wrong about astronomy almost entirely and yet incredibly useful for the early seat faers who were using his astronomical system to navigate the
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oceans right so I think that one of the things that I took from you when I was reading about it and I'd like you to expand upon is like why is that a controversial why is that a controversial uh idea at all H for one I think when people say I believe dot dot
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dot do dot whatever follows that they believe it's just a fact yeah but I believe that um that anytime you say I believe whatever follows that is not necessarily true that's why you have to say I believe believe um you don't
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say uh I believe this apple is on the counter right now when you're standing there looking at it you just say the Apple's on the counter um you don't say I believe that I'm 53 years old you say no I'm 53 years old so um I believe tends to mean that you
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are uh staking your stance on something that's debatable and I like to reframe anything debatable as not NE necessarily true because if it's not necessarily true and by that I mean inarguably absolutely observably objectively
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repeatedly uh and according to any perspective including uh an ant or an alien only in all of those conditions will I consider something to be absolutely true which means that almost nothing is absolutely true especially not all the social stuff we say every
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day you know like this person is a bad president or uh the World is Flat um no okay that's a bad sorry that's like a physical reality let's let let me not do that one uh I accidentally got mixed in with uh you know the people
43:44
that spout opinions as a fact this country is going to hell uh this government's doing a bad job Etc um they're all spoken as facts and they the person saying it usually thinks it's a fact but if you can poke any hole in it or say that any
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perspective in the universe could be otherwise well then it's not an absolutely necessarily observably objectively repeatedly true fact um so once you define something is not true well then your creative agency can your your ability to
44:28
negotiate life and challenge situations and choose a perspective that empowers you because ultimately most of what we care about is our ability to do something or at least feel happy or tranquil about something right so it's it's mostly about actions
44:58
but sometimes say if something's in the past maybe what you need to do is just come to peace with it so if something has already happened you can choose a perspective or a quote unquote belief that says that was wrong that person
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wronged me what they did was bad and I am mad and that perspective is one that you could choose but it's going to make you upset and you could choose another perspective that says that person was doing the best they could with what they
45:33
had they thought they were doing the right thing and where it gets interesting is even that is not necessarily true that person might have actually done something intentionally ill-willed but you choosing to believe that they were doing the best they could
45:51
and they meant well will make you feel better so since it's something in the past that you can't do anything about anyway but more importantly are the things that we can do something about um where your choice to believe one
46:10
thing versus another can mean the difference between you feeling helpless and resigned and plopping down in bed just feeling angry and stewing typing nasty comments into social media versus feeling empowered feeling powerful um and doing
46:36
something about it and all of this just goes on in your head all of this is just the perspective that you're choosing to take and I think if we let go of this idea of true saying it's just true that this government is bad it's just true that uh
46:56
I would be happier if I lived across the world somewhere if you let go of all of that and say no no no none of that is true the only thing that's true is there my hands are clapping right now that's true um physical observable things are
47:09
true everything else is just a perspective that you can choose to take then the way to judge it if we let go of the word true is whether this is useful to me or not perfect said because the I wrote a pie or did a a
47:32
series of threads on Twitter called The Thinker and the prover and I was borrowing from Robert or who I borrowed from Robert Anton Wilson uh derivative all the way down but I thought it very useful because what uh what it says is basically The Thinker
47:52
can think anything it wants right like the queen and aliceon Wonderland it can believe three impossible or six impossible things before breakfast but the minute The Thinker stops thinking the prover takes over and the prover makes that belief true for you and what
48:11
it does if you want to talk about it scientifically it's like the they call it the reticular activating system and for example if you want to do an experiment this is actually fun uh think of something you don't see very often uh
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in the case when I was doing this experiment on myself I thought to myself you know I don't see green cars very often you know I just I just don't see green cars and so I wrote down I'm gonna look for green cars and then I wrote
48:38
down I think over the next two days that I will see five green cars right you know how many I saw 49 no way wow and the and the reason was because I turned on my reticular activating system and my prover said okay we're gonna find green cars today
48:58
job today and so example the the the example of true that and we're back to language right and and what what words can mean to people true to people means fact means indisputable means only correct answer right that's
49:18
true and generally speaking very little that we say or do or believe is true yeah then if you if you can if you can understand that and that you can understand that it's my opinion that doesn't make it true right then you're open to looking for useful
49:41
beliefs that can get you where you want to go so my next question for you is what beliefs of yours now are you um leaning on uh to make your life a more pleasant or directionally uh Superior experience to before you Embrace those BS wow
50:10
um they're tough to identify because you often don't even realize that you're choosing them um off the top of my head this is going to sound weird but I was on my computer programming up until just a minute before we started this phone call so I'm sorry that's just
50:31
what's on my mind right now that's fine but I take an approach to computer programming that always looks for the absolute minimum lines of code necessary the minimum uh complicated dependencies the minimum number of dependencies necessary so I
50:54
don't want to include 19 JavaScript libraries to do something that I could do with a shell script even if including 19 JavaScript libraries could mean I only need to type 10 lines of code and a shell script means I have to type 50 lines of code well
51:11
technically typing 50 lines of code is the simpler solution because it has less dependencies uh simple and complex are misunderstood words uh the word comp Lex is an adjective describing the verb a complex which means to braid things together
51:32
when things are braided together with other things they they are complected and therefore they are complex and uh simple is a version of Simplex which means unbraided not connected to other things and we mistake those for hard and
51:48
easy because it can be very hard to make something simple that has less dependencies that's not complected with other things and it can be very very easy to make something complex uh especially with computers you can just type uh install
52:08
WordPress and it will install millions of lines of complicated code or you can write your own blog from scratch with no dependencies and it will be harder but objectively it's simpler so anyway a current belief in my programming is that I
52:28
believe for me it's more important to be simple even if that's harder see what I mean that was a trivial one but sorry that's the one on my mind right now no it's not trivial I I it it makes the point nicely and I love the uh
52:46
differentiation between simple and complex because I I think that's another bug in our human OS I think that that that we are we are um uh sort of designed to think the complex is going to be you know the the more correct answer in fact I wrote an entire piece
53:07
about this about a thing it takes too long to tell the entire story but the the punchline is uh the one person was using a very simple way to determine if something was a yes or a no right and the other person and he was getting the
53:23
correct feedback on his guesses so he got he was soon getting like all of them right with his very simple approach uh this person over here was given incorrect feedback it's cor his feedback was based on this guy's guesses and so his methodology when described
53:43
necessarily was very complex he had to weave this great tapestry of sometimes it's this and sometimes it's that and you know and and the thing that was amazing from this study was that the guy was getting them all right with the
53:56
Simple Solutions was in awe of this other guy and felt that his own pedestrian explanations were were were horrible right and so we're kind of trained to to like think that the complex is smarter or more more complete and and yet I find the exact opposite I
54:17
find that your a real superpower is the ability to take something that might be complex and make it simple in terms of use in terms of understanding in terms of all of those things and the um uh I think it was Charles Mingus uh the
54:40
musician his son was an artist and he showed him some of his work and it was abstract and and Mingus slipped at it and and he went go and learn how to draw an apple and his son was what what do you mean this is my art and he goes no no no no
54:57
learn how to do a a drawing of an apple that looks like a [ __ ] apple and then and then you can play Picasso and you can do the bull that Steve Jobs embraced right the first he should you show the Picasso bull that it's just a bull and then you just are
55:15
the lines at the end of picassos that was his journey right and so I think that that's a very empowering belief because you and not only it doesn't apply just to programming it it applies to a lot of things it can apply
55:32
to if you're writing something out if you're writing a story if you're uh doing any of those kinds of things right yeah okay Jim I just realized so your listeners might have a bit of a financial bent because of your past um I was actually just asking myself
55:52
this yesterday when it comes to the infrastructure of my personal finance that I could value Simplicity and say I could just have everything in One bank account and then I started to think about the trade-off between Simplicity and safety going oo
56:15
in a way what I'm defining as simple uh could make me more fragile because if something happened to that one bank or if somebody hacked that one account everything's gone so hm should I separate things into two accounts well
56:32
if I'm doing that maybe separate things into four accounts uh but oh my god I've just made something very complex but hm maybe is that safer I don't know where do you fall on that when it comes to financial things so there's a great quote that is
56:47
uh that there are two schools of investing thought the the first school is don't keep all your eggs in one basket in other words diversify uh make sure that you have a well Diversified portfolio or in your case you have multiple Banks so one fails you have all
57:05
the other ones does Backups and then the other school of thought is no no no keep all of your eggs in one basket but watch that basket very closely right okay and so they're they're they're equally applicable depending on
57:24
the person that is ultimately what it comes down to what type of person are you trying to help if in my case now you may you I put my investment advisory hat on here and which I haven't had on for a while and and so so what I would do is
57:42
ask a series of questions to determine who am I dealing with am am I dealing with somebody who just really values that Simplicity and therefore is going to get this much more simple plan but but then we're going to have to watch it really
57:56
really closely and have to explain to them that okay it's simple but not necessarily easy um or are we GNA say they're the type of person who we're going to give a widely Diversified uh portfolio of different asset classes and and everything and
58:15
typically one Rising the other fall that's the correlation between things but you know when you have a financial crisis guess what happens all correlations go to one and and everything it's baby bathwater time so it it it becomes to
58:36
me it we all have unique irises we all have unique fingerprints and and yet that doesn't stop us from saying okay so here are some general guidelines that are good then you got to match it to the the person then you've got to say because
58:55
ultimately Derek what I found in investing is the point of failure is the human remember the Pogo cartoon remember the Pogo cartoon we've met the enemy and it's us right yeah and and that is so true it is just so true and generally
59:14
speaking we are the point of failure and generally speaking it is usually an emotional volatile time where we make a bad choice and again that's human that's human OS that's the way we're designed and and so to try to
59:34
help people you can't it can't all be intellectual my friend Jason Z who writes for the Wall Street Journal he has a great metaphor for this he goes the dist difference between intellectually understanding that your portfolio could go down 50% um and then
59:51
actually experiencing it in real life is the the same as showing a person a picture of a snake and then throwing a snake in their La nice good one I like that [Music] so it's it's so interesting um by the way to get meta for a second I hope that
1:00:12
your listeners find this useful a a a thing that I try to remember to do when I sometimes forget to do is when you ask me a question about me if I'm being a good interviewee I should actually answer it on behalf of the listener in a way like
1:00:33
something that the listener would find useful so in a way I think I kind of failed myself when I talked about this very specific programming thing that probably almost nobody listening can relate to and so I hope that we rescued
1:00:47
it a bit with that Financial one I love that you brought up that um you know one thing but watched that one thing very carefully I had heard that quote but like 10 years ago and I'd forgotten it so thank you for that um and this idea of Simplicity even applied
1:01:04
to relationships again we may think that Simplicity is a good thing but if you're following that to its logical conclusion with relationships that would mean that you only have one relationship or maybe none would be the the ultimate conclusion that and we
1:01:22
don't want that so in some ways in life we we want the complexity of many friends many connections you know the the warm cocoon Embrace of having so many friends and loved ones around but let's admit it that's very complex
1:01:38
that's almost the most complex thing in the world is uh your relationships with other people but yet we like that complexity um it's really interesting to think of simple versus complex as um detaching them from ideas of easy and
1:01:56
hard and good and bad you know it's it's they they're not correlated and and that's a great example there is not a one-size fit all for anything right like we're both into stoicism for example stoicism is really useful because at least for me the core understanding that
1:02:18
I take away from stoicism is it is not the event it is my reaction to the event that determines my state of mind right and and so I also kind of extrapolated to you're either outer oriented or inner oriented and I find I'm inner oriented
1:02:41
in other words I even though I get a 98 on the Big Five on extrav version uh it is I I I've trained myself to understand that no no no no no it's not that person's fa it's mine like if if if I react if I react really badly to you
1:03:01
know let's say you told me to like hey Jim I hate no I'm I hate your podcast I listen to it once it's awful you're dumb you're stupid I don't want to talk to you I could say that Derek is an awful horrible person or I could say huh uh
1:03:22
guess he just doesn't Vibe with the way I do things and that's fine he's different than I am one reaction is gonna have me wallowing right and oh my God I really love Derek and I read all of this stuff and he hates me and now I'm a failure or like yeah he's just not
1:03:39
into me who's controlling that reaction me yeah and and if you get that that's the only way in my opinion where you can act with high agency right and and I know you've written quite a bit about agency and like like I I read all these
1:03:58
people like you know Free Will is a myth uh and you know here's why and I don't spend a minute of time thinking about that why why do I not do that well first off you can't design at least now you can't design an experiment that now
1:04:16
we're getting back to true and false right you can't design an experiment that proves like the Sun is up right that there is no free will or that there is Free Will and so since that you know it's like the Middle Ages where the
1:04:32
theologians would argue how many angels can dance on the head of a pit right like that's a waste of time and so instead of thinking about Free Will versus no free will I choose to believe that I have free will because guess what
1:04:46
my outcomes get a lot better when I have free will yeah yeah and I choose to have agency because guess what all all of my outcomes are much better when I accept the agency now a lot of people don't want to accept agency because they want
1:05:03
blame somebody else and you have a really interesting you've written about this somewhat extensively talk talk to me a bit about that but answer by the way I think I think you were wrong about answering like I should answer on behalf of the uh
1:05:21
uh audience no no no no no they want to hear you they want to hear this this whole thing that the only reason I do this uh podcast is because I wanted it to be a series of interesting conversations with super interesting people like because I always like you've
1:05:37
ever you've been in a restaurant or a bar right when you sit next to the table and and there's a movie even my Dinner with Andre uh which when I finally got convinced to do this podcast I'm like okay but it's got to be my Dinner with
1:05:50
Andre like it's got to be flying on the wall listening to these these guys having a cool conversation okay good comparison okay um okay so agency um yeah you and I have that in common uh when I sold my company to the outside world it looked
1:06:14
like a success but to me it was a personal failure because I wanted to run that company forever and after 10 years I had mismanaged it so bad wait I'm sorry reverse that uh after 10 years those jerks that worked for me were so
1:06:32
evil they were terrible those those [ __ ] tried to kick me out of my own company I was just surrounded by idiots so I had to sell no okay so that's truly how I felt for the first year or two after selling [Music] um after a year or two I realized that
1:06:54
that is a mindset that makes me weaker a mindset that makes me stronger is to admit that I mismanaged things that they were just playing their inevitable role in a situation that I created that I could have done things
1:07:22
better um or let's just say I messed up and that's why they acted the way they did that to me is a way more empowering mindset and in a way actually gives me more Tranquility at the same time because if I think that they were
1:07:44
jerks then I can just stay mad forever if I think that they were just playing their inevitable part in the situation I created I can for forgive myself I can say all right I messed up I I will feel the pain from that mistake and aim to
1:08:01
not do that again um but let's just say for anybody listening that what I've just said is not necessarily the right and true way to think about things this is a way that worked for me there are some people who were raised with or by parents that
1:08:25
filled them with guilt and they have a terrible time feeling that everything is their fault and those people might actually find it more useful to believe that some things are not their fault and that that might be the more
1:08:43
empowering mindset for them so let's just say anytime we're talking about mindsets please always know that there is no right or wrong no matter who's saying this worked for me or even if somebody says this is the right way to think about it what they're really
1:08:58
saying is this this works for me um so yes believing everything is my fault that works for me and for me um and one of the things that I always kind of scout for is uh directionally speaking when I find intriguing people such as yourself
1:09:25
uh they do have some things in common and one of the things that they have in common is a sense of high agency yeah and so I I do appreciate your caveat though because I think you're right um for for for for many things in life for people
1:09:47
who are actively trying to get better or be happier I don't care you know fill in the blank what you have to do is you have to investigate as best you can the VAR ways you know you could do something and then and then find the thing that
1:10:07
resonates with you because honestly you're not going to do it if it doesn't resonate with you right you're just you're just you know well uh you know um this expert said that I have to follow this diet and do this specific kind of
1:10:25
exercise and that's what I'm going to do and it's something that you hate and then you just never do it right and and and so you want to continually look until you find that click that click in that is like I could I can do this yeah
1:10:42
this is something that I think that I think I can stick with because honestly persistence is another thing that I think one of the things that as I Was preparing for chatting with you that I love about you is you you do look at things from so many different angles
1:10:59
which is something that I really really admire and Robert Anton Wilson is somebody I love I've read all of his stuff he was 50 years ahead of his time and and he took up the term that I think Tim lirry came up with which was reality
1:11:14
tunnels and and and he makes the point in his work that we all have different reality tunnel are we don't have the same exact nervous systems right and we don't have exactly the same Minds right and and so and he proves it in a variety
1:11:31
of ways like having people 30 people in a class each thought sketch the hallway on your way to the classroom and guess what all 30 sketches are different and and and then when you when you when you really understand this and you try to
1:11:46
put yourself into a different person's reality tunnel things you you're you're you're your aperture opens up so much more widely because you're like oh well of course you know if I actually believed this right and you know it's easiest to
1:12:05
do in either religion or politics and put yourself in the reality tunnel of somebody who is the espousing things that you disagree with right and and by doing it you you can immediately understand a little bit better not only
1:12:21
yourself but that other person as well right and and when you put it in those kinds of terms your advice resonates right because you're right well you and I are very high agency Believers and and acting with that you were probably smart
1:12:43
to say by the way if you were raised to be guilty guilty guilty [ __ ] member game of throat Shame Shame Shame with the Bell um that's not going to work for you but yeah what what what do you think do you think that are these things
1:13:03
teachable o yeah I mean teachable yeah I mean you and I learned them we're sitting here talking about them um yes to somebody who's interested uh again let's let's go all the way back to ACDC AKA uh Michelangelo um
1:13:24
who who does who says I'm good at what I do I'm not looking to be different than what I am I'm happy with who I am I'm not looking to change my perspective versus Picasso Miles Davis who says okay I did that now what's next okay so maybe it's a type of
1:13:45
personality that's open to wanting New Perspectives uh I'm personally obsessed with it and I didn't even realize how much I I'm obsessed with it until just a few days ago when somebody was asking for my recommendation for a book on understanding another's perspective and
1:14:04
I said oh sure yeah you should look at the um the time Paradox which helps you understand people who have different perspective on time I said oh but you should also consider the uh geography of bliss which helps you understand uh or
1:14:19
no sorry the prisoners of geography I think it was called um which helps understand how geography can shape philosophy that that people that grow up in mountainous places or cultures that developed in mountainous places have a very different
1:14:35
culture than uh cultures that that uh developed on the plains versus ones that were you know in the in the cold versus in the the temperate uh equatorial zones and I said but you should also understand the someone with countries I said you you
1:14:52
must read contr figuring out the French I said it's the best book on a a single country's culture I said and watching the English is the second best book on that subject uh and then I named a few more and I said and you should also read
1:15:07
the and suddenly I I listed out I think something like eight more books on the subject and I went back and I looked I went oh my god I've read like almost 20 books on the subject of understanding other people perspective wow no wonder I think this
1:15:28
way um I've spent I spent I mean how many time does it take to read a book right five to 10 hours or something like that oh my god I've probably spent at least 200 hours just reading other people's thoughts on understanding other uh
1:15:44
people's perspective on the world and I was like wow I think I'm really obsessed with this subject so yeah yeah and that's and that's the challenge right because I I I I seek out people who are incredibly insatiably curious right and because to me that's a great
1:16:05
marker for a lot of other things uh people who are like just I I I think of uh Dorothy Parker's line um curiosity is the cure for boredom there is no cure for curiosity there is no cure for curiosity um and then I add in uh step
1:16:25
Wright the comedian's uh curiosity killed the cat but for a while I was a suspect nice but so I do I do find that there are these kind of like there are some markers if you will um whereby you know an intensely insatiably curious person
1:16:48
is going to have other characteristics as well usual um and and it's this this idea of like trying to come up with a way that this could be taught uh because people people people like come to me and they're like how do
1:17:06
you know how do you know all this stuff or why are you interested in that and how can I I do that and I if you got any advice there I would love to hear it you know I just had the idea that maybe this starts with realizing that you are not
1:17:29
right that all of the things you think of as true and right are just one way of looking at things it might start with that if we can help people understand that they are not right I love that because the only way if you look at
1:17:48
Claude Shannon and information Theory right information is that which surprises you so in a pone a pone can be densely information Rich a political speech zero information because you're not surprised right and so when do we learn when we're wrong that's when we
1:18:10
learn and one of my Founders in one of our portfolio companies says I always try to make novel mistakes but Jim you know the I might have to take it back I think the thing I just said about realizing that you're not right has to come after
1:18:29
another step which is people valuing the very idea of learning and growing because let's go back to again to Michelangelo ACDC you might believe that um nope I do not want to learn any new things I see no value in it I am Michelangelo I I
1:18:53
have arriv you know I am the best there ever was and there ever will be I have perfected my style I have no desire to change a lot of people believe that on a uh let's call it a more pedestrian level that like no I'm good this is me this is
1:19:09
who I am this is where I live this is how I like my eggs this is it I'm good and somebody comes along saying hey I've got a way that you could be different or better and they're like uh nope I'm good so think I think it has to start with
1:19:24
that before anything else [Music] um you know what I have a proposal I would love to split this conversation into half uh I have loved this subject so much this I got to tell you if you don't mind me uh praising you on air uh
1:19:43
flattery will get you everywhere I do a lot of actually I do a podcast like this every week I'm a guest on someone's podcast uh every week and um I think this is the most times I've ever wanted to interrupt to write down something the host has said uh you
1:20:02
mentioned so many things that I'm going to beg you for a a copy of this recording as soon as we're done but also there are so many things um that I want to let's keep talking about this uh shall we break this into two parts joh I
1:20:16
let's start it let's start it too and then maybe see if we iterate it might even go beyond to yes All Right audience we will see you again my name is Derek cers nice to meet you go to my website intermission right now because we're coming back for part two soon