Faith, Failure, and Finance | Jason Buck — searchlore

Faith, Failure, and Finance | Jason Buck

Published May 28, 2026

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And I thought I was a genius, right?

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Like, you know, you you become a multi-millionaire in your mid20s.

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Like, you could do wrong.

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This is just a just a dot plot on the radar my way to a billion by 32.

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But then 2007, 2008 came in.

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I lost money shorting the housing lenders that went bankrupt.

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Any savings I had left over, I was trying to short the markets to make up for and lost that money as well.

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A few months ago, I'm worth like $5 million or more, right? And it's all gone.

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Every Ranger that drove by with my sister, I was like, "You're one bad decision away."

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like, you know, it's like it's it's coming for you, too.

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My guest today is my good friend Jason Buck, founder and CIO Mutiny Funds.

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I absolutely adore talking to Jason.

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Uh his life is just one incredible experience after another.

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Please enjoy my conversation with Jason Buck.

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So Jason, welcome to Infinite Loops.

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Uh, I love you for a variety of reasons, but like when I look at your CV, it's like why are you're a young guy and yet your CV I would peg you at 87.

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>> Well, one I I I appreciate you saying young guy because I'm 47.

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So I I don't quite feel as young anymore.

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>> From 65 that looks young.

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>> I know it does, but like you always talk about being old, right?

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Like if we ask any of these guys in their 20s, you know, I'm a boomer too or whatever. Like I'm almost dead.

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So, uh I appreciate that.

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But I do have a a chaotic or shuda CV in the sense that maybe what I didn't realize is maybe as I was I was always applying to work for OSV, right?

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Like I knew only it was it was for an audience of one that this has been in planning for 20 plus years.

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>> I admire your patience and your ability to succeed at all of these various things.

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>> Well, success may be that may be overshot, right?

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I think it's probably a lot of failure and just stubbling from one failure to the next.

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>> So, I guess the first question that I wanted to ask was how did all of the former things that you did, I mean, you you were a great athlete, uh you did real estate, you did religious studies.

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I want to talk about that because I think there's a lot of correlation between people's investment beliefs take on an almost lurggical ring to them. >> 100%.

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Uh, but what did you learn from the earlier stuff that helped you with the mutiny fund and the cockroach portfolio?

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>> So, I think like it's really easy to connect those dots in hindsight, right?

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Like that's what's always hard for us, you know, to with that foresight.

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Um, the way I think about it is you and I suffered from a similar affliction of insatiable curiosity.

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So, ever since I was a a teenager, I was fascinated by religion.

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Um, and just why people act the way they do and and obviously religion is a huge part of that.

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And my mother came from an Irish Catholic family and my father was a Zen Buddhist, but this was in rural Michigan in the 80s. So that was very rare.

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So like we started meditating at a young age due to my dad and everything.

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He was also a triathlete and endurance racer.

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So maybe that was part of it as well.

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So I was able to my parents said we're never going to give you a religion.

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We'll let you kind of choose your own.

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So starting at 12, 13, I started going with friends to churches, synagogues.

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I would just want to explore like what what is this?

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Why are they all so enamored or obsessed by this?

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And then part is as you know with with religion, it incorporates everything.

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So when I ended up going to university, I actually originally started in international business.

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Um that was really easy because I came from a family of entrepreneurs.

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So I just always had the gift for business.

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I guess like I always go like people say they're entrepreneurs.

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I'm like what were you selling in middle school? Right. Right.

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I was like I was selling like bracelets my sister and I made I would make mixtapes and sell them at school.

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Like you know you have that in you. >> Hall passes for me.

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>> Yo you can do you found a pad you stole from like the teacher? >> Of course. >> So perfect.

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This so it reminds me I I was the worst kid in sense that I would I would skip school but I would leave during first period and I'd go to the library and I'd spend all day in the library like how that's not a good truency effect like no I should have like gone to like you know smoke cigarettes behind like the the

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local convenience store but no I went to the library so what I found through eventually switching to comparative religions it incorporated everything because I was fascinated by like history philosophy art you know uh sociology ology and it really that is the foundation of all of those things that

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come out of that is the way I think thought about it is like so it was a never- ending quest for that insatiable curiosity I also found interesting while I was studying comparative religions and I played D1 soccer at college of Charleston eventually I also had to get a job and I got jobs in restaurants and

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eventually I leaned towards the somier wine side because once again it was insatiable curiosity so you could learn about every varietal of wine in the world but every year a new vintage comes out and you basically have to reset that knowledge So once again, it was ins never- ending rabbit hole that I knew I could never quite satisfy. Um so then

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Um so then after like coming out of of school and studying comparative religions and everything, I end up I you know I spent time living with um a Buddhist Rimpo.

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One of my mentors was a Hopi Indian shaman.

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I moved to uh Istanul, Turkey.

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And everybody's kind of maybe heard the story where I saw Turkish rugs on the streets of Istanul.

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So that Hello my friend, would you like a cup of tea? That was me.

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And so, and this is in the like late '9s, the first time I went, I went there twice.

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Um, and it was always interesting to me is because all these Americans coming off of cruise ships or whatever, they would, you know, if they saw a blonde midwestern white kid, they immediately trusted me versus like a local, which they shouldn't have. I mean, they did.

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I mean, I always took care of them, but like you'd sell them a Turkish rug or they'd be like, "I want like a leather jacket." It's like, "Great.

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I know a Russian guy that makes leather jackets.

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I need a good restaurant." I go, "Great."

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Take him to a restaurant.

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You circle around the block.

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You come back and the restaurant owner gives you a little vig.

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like it just I like the way that economy worked. I'll put it that way.

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But what I was really doing when I was in Istanbul is I was actually also living with um the Mev Levies.

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So the Mev Levies are a sect of um of Islam that comes out of the what cloy known as the whirling dervishes.

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So they trace their lineage back to Roomie, but once again it's the the esoteric version of of of Islam.

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And so I was studying um with with some of the shakes there and that's why I was living in Istanbul.

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And eventually, you know, we talked about this before when I was at your house, is like eventually you get to the point where no matter if it's Buddhism, whether it's the Mav Levies, whether it's any sort of shamanic tradition, you know, they think they have secret knowledge.

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>> And so it got to the point always where I was like, show and tell time.

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Put it on the table, you know, what do you have?

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And and of course, they never had anything, right?

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It was always in the future.

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It was always pushing pushing those goalposts away, right? >> Always.

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>> And so eventually, I just kind of gave up on that part of my life.

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And I was like, you know, mid in my mid20s, like, you know, I got to make some money and and those sorts of things.

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So then I got into my family has a past like in in kind of a little bit of real estate development on the residential side.

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So I fell in love with commercial real estate development.

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And so I did a lot of development projects in in Charleston, South Carolina.

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So I stayed there, developed a lot of that King Street corridor.

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But then 2007208 came as we were just talking about this beautiful apartment.

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And that crash was so painful that it changed my life pretty dramatically.

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Um, like every young man, I thought I was a genius, right?

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Like, you know, you you become a multi-millionaire in your mid20s.

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Like, who could do wrong?

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This is just a just a dot plot on the radar.

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My way to a billion by 32, right?

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Like, who who's going to stop me?

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I'm clearly smarter than everybody else.

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And you found out a rising tide lifts all boats and it shut it all down.

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And um so the pain of that was so acute that I spent the next few years just trying to figure out like how do you hedge global macro risk?

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Um, so that way as an entrepreneur you can go as hard as you possibly can into your idiosyncratic business.

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So that's kind of what led me into this whole investing space and long volatility terrorisk options and thinking about defensive strategies for entrepreneurs.

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>> And you know it's a similar story with a different path for me.

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Um, I just from a teenage uh like I was 17 or 16 and my uncle and dad would be arguing about stocks and I just got the bug.

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It's like neither one of these guys know what the [ __ ] they're talking about because they're talking about, you know, this CEO and this, you know, and it was all surface stuff.

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And I'm kind of like, don't you think you should look at how much you're paying for every dollar of earnings or all that?

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And and so, but what I loved about it was it is the perfect spot for somebody who is insatiably curious and loves to go down rabbit holes.

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Like we were talking about religion, you were just recounting all of your various experiences.

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I I I think that religion and religious attitudes uh inform more than religion, right?

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I think that, you know, you think of bogal heads, you think of the various uh you know, no, I'm a diehard fill in the blank.

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Um, and what's interesting about religion compared to the scientific method is that you can be consistently wrong with all of your predictions in religion and gain adherence.

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Yeah, >> I think of the 7th Day Adventist, not to pick on them because I'm sure that they're lovely people, but that was a guy back in the 1800s who started a mathematically proven through the Bible that the the world is going to end, I can't remember, 1846, right?

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And so, literally, he got a 100,000 people to sell everything, wear white robes waiting for the rapture, and nothing happened.

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and he was like, "Oh, I'm I got something wrong."

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And he went back and he ran the numbers again and he came up with a new date, of course, wrong.

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And yet there are now 18 million members of this particular sect that descends from him.

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And it's not just him, right?

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It's like every major religion makes all of these. It's coming soon.

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I always joke the world's oldest profession is not prostitution.

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It is predicting the end of the world.

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>> That's that's very fair.

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What's the um I'm always terrible at pronouncing this word millionarianism. Yes. Yes.

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The end of the world type.

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Like that's what most religions are at the end of the day.

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But what you hinted at that I find so fascinating that I'm working on is I do take my background in comparative religions and now I'm applying it to investing in portfolio construction cuz like you said is like I always like to mess around with my valuebased brethren.

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I mean it inherently you got to love value based in general but now they worship the Buddha like Buffett right and whatever he says from on high like those that's gospel and you can't tell them but like as any faith-based religion it's the pain in the interim right like going the past decade without

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value like no if we just hold the course if we just stay strong right we're all going to be lifted together in this rapturous moment and value like everybody's going to get their comments in the afterlife right and you know that's another big part of it right you see it in market behavior behavior all the time. The people like we had value

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The people like we had value strategies, we had momentum strategies, we had a variety of strategies because the evidence suggests that on balance they work more often and with better with better predictability if you want to call it that um than other strategies.

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So like I in in the beginning like I like everyone else read all of Graham's books and you know found it compelling but I also was like wow this Mandelro fellow is a very interesting guy because I'm sure you've read of >> course >> like that chapter in which he just dissects and just doesn't leave anything living from efficient market theory right But isn't that an edge?

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Isn't it an edge for an investor who's very happy to fade those consensuses and go their own way? >> Yes and no.

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We're getting into a different topic that I always get uh if I find fascinating is like edge or alpha.

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I'm not sure any of it really exists.

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There are um edges or alpha in arbitrage hunting, right?

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But you had to persistently arbitrage hunt because they appear and disappear so quickly and it'll be in a different marketplace. That's a true edge.

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But those are extremely rare.

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And so you go back to like kind of efficient markets.

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But like you're saying, what mine came from too is like you said, people I find when they're young, they either start with like Buffett and then that just locks in from a young age, right? That's part of it.

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Or like I did, they start with market wizards.

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I kind of start both at the same time.

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But I loved market wizards because you find from reading the market wizards books is like there's a million ways to make money in the markets.

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You got to find one that works with your personality.

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So you'll stick with which is really Buffett's secret.

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Who else has done the same thing for 80 years and compounded as we know all the wealth came later in life, right?

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So that's that's a unique part of it.

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But what I found even reading market wizards is a lot of times you had these CTAs or trend followers and it was like trend following plus nothing.

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They just thought that was the cat's pajamas, right?

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Like there's nothing better than that.

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But then you run the numbers and you're like, well, if I pair that with like long only equity beta, I end up with a better portfolio due to the uncorrelated nature.

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and because they were faith-based in trend following, then they wouldn't apply that.

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But now you're starting to see that last few years, you're seeing a lot of mutual funds and ETFs come online.

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They're they're pairing those two together.

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So, it comes down, like you're saying, is this portfolio construction of all these different strategies that work at different times and all these asset class that work at different times, whether inflation, deflation, growth, or recession.

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If you pair them together, they all kind of muddle along in a symbiotic relationship and your timing mechanism can just be rebalancing.

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And so to your point, that's maybe where you're harnessing a bit of edge or alpha from the behavioral aspects of people because you kind of just watch money chase all of these asset classes around the world.

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What's the hottest these days, right?

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But then the hard part is if you have true portfolio diversification, there's always a part of your portfolio that you hate.

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The news media is telling you to hate it.

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You're an idiot for owning it.

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It makes you want to throw up.

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But if everything's going up together, you you're not diversified.

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So that's the hard part is I think it's like Brian Porto is like always having to say you're sorry. >> Yeah.

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>> Yeah. I've said often that the last sustainable edge if there is edge at all is to arbitrage human behavior right because literally human behavior has moved very little at least over the recorded history I've been able to uh

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study whereas markets right people confuse the climate with the weather I think weather is obviously very changeable it's a beautiful day here and now it was raining yesterday climate is very different it's a lot more sticky and sticks around. Um, and I I too

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Um, and I I too looked at the world in much the same way you're describing right now.

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It's kind of like you'd never know when you're going to be right and how much pain it's going to cause.

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I actually use that as kind of an indicator.

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>> Like if everyone was telling me, "You've got to drop this. This strategy is awful.

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We're getting fired in this strategy. Everyone hates us. They're yelling at us.

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I would put money into it just because it just seemed like a sensible thing to do.

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>> Let's Tomorrow I'm going to be in I'm going to London tomorrow and I'll see uh Jerry Hayworth from 36 out there.

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And he's one of the the OGs of kind of like long volatility terrorist space.

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And he told me once that like the only way he can predict when the next market crash is coming is when he has the highest amount of redemptions.

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He just knows it's around the corner, right?

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So once again, arbitrageing human behavior.

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And then the event happens and then everybody rushes to invest because they want like a time machine, right?

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You know, >> it's like Glattus, when did Noah built the ark? Before the flood.

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Before the flood, but everybody comes in after the flood.

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So that's you're saying like this the arbitrageing of human behavior is odd to me.

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And our mutual friend Me Faber always says too is like when people call him up to talk about one of his ETFs, he's like, "Oh, the one that's down the most." And no, it's never.

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It's the one that's up the most, right?

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Like and it's just it's just inevitable over and over.

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But I I am sympathetic or empathetic to the idea that, you know, human behavior is hard.

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Um I think you've talked about it before is like this is why I also love our business is like the P&L every day is black and white.

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We have a we have a connection with reality that like right you may not get like a narrative religion where you know the end times are down.

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They're tomorrow always tomorrow.

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>> What did you do today? >> Right? What did you do today?

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And your P&L could tell you you suck every day. Right?

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or even worse is like what kind of job can you go to and lose money for months on end, right?

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Like it's only like a job like this obviously like being an ER doctor, ER nurse is much more, you know, much more important than what we do, but it's a it's an interesting feedback mechanism that we get about reality and therefore like yeah, you have to think very carefully about what your portfolio looks over time.

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But like the fairness for the human condition is it's one thing to have the theoretical inputs and the philosophy and the back test and know through time I'm going to be fine over decades, but the lived experience dayto-day, it just plays on your emotions much harder than people could ever imagine.

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Um I always like cuz we we work with a lot of like younger investors that had their first liquidity event and they they sold their business and one of the things that's interesting to me they always tell me is like if the market's down 50% I'm a buyer.

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And I just laugh hysterically every time because it's just like you have no idea, but understandably they don't, right?

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They don't have the experience for it.

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And I think like Jason Zo said it best is like I can draw you a picture of a snake, but if I throw a snake in your lap, you're going to react very differently.

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And so what they don't know is like if the market's down 50%, you're in the fetal position on the floor.

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You're going to ATMs to try to get your cash out.

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You think it's the end of the world.

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The idea that you'd want to buy stocks at that point, you and I have been through this, is like it's anathema.

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Hopefully over time we get enough experience and then we're like Howard Marks and we're like well I have to be buying now or else I'm in an existential crisis either way.

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>> And uh I I wrote uh while I was still in asset management very few pieces that predicted anything because I'm kind of in your camp uh that predictions make them early and often uh and then cherry pick the ones that work.

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Um, but I do write them when I just feel the data shouting at me like, Jim, you you got to share this, right?

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And so I wrote one in February of09 saying a generational buying opportunity.

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And like the hate that of the emails that I got after I published that was it very much like when I wrote The Internet Contrarian in April of 1999.

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That was worse because man like living through that period it was just surreal.

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Like literally everyone had drunk the Kool-Aid.

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All of the priors were correlated.

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And when that happens you go from heterogeneity of opinion to homogeneity of opinion that causes information cascades and it's like a tsunami.

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It's like you're you're watching right and you're like I don't agree. >> Yeah.

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And then you get swept up.

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And just as proof of that point, what did I do?

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I started an internet company.

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So if you think you're impervious to the water in which we swim with our fellow humans, you are wrong.

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And it's very, very difficult.

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very difficult. I got very inspired by John Templeton who put orders in way below where the shares were trading and when asked he was like oh I wouldn't have the courage to do it if they ever got to those prices and so I did kind of train myself with that instinct like meb right like

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>> you take the one if you think the strategy is still sound and you think it's going to work that's that's not a bad move But also, you mentioned earlier rebalancing, Jason, trying to convince a prospective client that you're rebalancing discipline is what is responsible for much of your success. It's like I'm pretty good at coming up

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It's like I'm pretty good at coming up with ways to persuade people.

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I just never came up I mean, they would just literally stare at me like what?

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just rebalancing like >> it's it's a form of timing mechanism too in a way like but non-predictive in a way.

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way. So it's we could also argue if it's an implicitly mean reverting is like a short ball trade or not but like maybe you have long ball components of your portfolio but it's it's it's a it's affecting the the hubris effect right as we both know all too well and my good buddy Cory Hoffstein wrote a book about rebalancing timing luck right and a lot

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of times when we look at the great returns of investors there's a lot of timing luck to it right whether we get into erodicity or sequency risk and so you and I are trying to mitigate that as much as possible and that's the way I look at it is like if I hold all these offense and defense expensive and all these world's asset classes and I'm rebalancing between them. Um, not only

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Um, not only is it helping me scale trade kind of those equity curves as they go down.

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So I I'm forcing myself into the best behavior possible, I'm buying into a draw down and I'm selling into the the upswing and I'm rebalancing to other asset classes that may be doing similar things or are counteryclically or negatively correlated.

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And so to me it's just it inherently breeds that discipline that you would get from a quant effect.

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By having a a timing trunch for the rebalancing effect, it allows me to not override or or oversee those things in a way.

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And then, ironically, you do actually if you have truly uncorrelated, negatively correlated and some volatile assets in there that you actually get a rebalancing premium.

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Like you can make two an extra 2 to 3% a year just on that rebalancing effect.

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But I always think about like how hard it is like you're saying to sell it to clients and everything.

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I think about my own father who's in our funds, right?

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And I've been talking to him about these ideas for 20 years.

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And in 2020, you know, he make, you know, you get you get a bunch of money off Longv.

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Now, you have to rebalance it into stocks at that lower net point because that's how you got compound well.

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And then, as you know, through 2020, stocks rip.

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And he's like, and I'm like, at the end of 2020, he's like, it's rebalancing time again or whatever.

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And he's like, but my stocks are up so much and this long vault is down so much.

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And I'm like, what have we been talking about for 20 years?

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>> It's just like, no man's a hero in his own family either.

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That's also a lesson we all learn as well. >> That's quite true.

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something I live with every day.

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Um, let's go back though.

22:14

Uh, let's talk about the experience, uh, which was obviously painful for you. Yeah.

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And then why it sparked what it sparked that led to the way you managed money.

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Uh, I love the name of your portfolio, the cockroach portfolio.

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It just every time I see it, I chuckle.

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And it's the best kind of form of anti-mimedic uh behavior because you're you're just immediately excluding all the people that were like cockroach.

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>> So in fairness, everybody told me not to call it that and I understand it, but I I was like, "Wait, what do cockroaches do?" Right?

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They said I'm like, "I don't have to say anymore.

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Like you know the philosophy of what we do immediately." >> Totally.

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>> And then and it's visceral so you also remember it cuz if there's like 10,000 hedge funds out there, how do I cut through the noise?

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Ironically though, we just did have uh an investor redeem because he said his wife was getting tired of the disgusting cockroach email.

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So, so this is this is what you deal with.

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So, the experience in that after that 2007208, right, for lack of a better term, probably existential crisis, you know, figuring out what I want to do with my life, you know, like everything I thought I knew and the genius I thought I was crumbles, you know, beneath you and and you and you realize your mortality and probably more the opposite.

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You think you're a complete [ __ ] right?

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because it's one thing as you know to lose your own money but if you lose like friends and family money and everything it's absolutely devastating cuz like these people believed in you and all that stuff and so it's almost like a double layer of existential crisis in a way.

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existential crisis in a way. Um so in fairness it probably took me years to um even come to terms with that and kind of understand what happened and you know take full respon you want to take full responsibility for all that because even though it's a a global liquidity event like you want to tell you you should have saw it for coming like there's

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things you would have hopefully done and and thinking about hindsight which help leads me to create things now but part of that process was I was I was very I've been very very lucky in my life like like I mean started from the ovarian lottery right I was born a white male in America in the upper Midwest like doesn't get any better than Um and then was luckily enough like I had family of athletes. I was a good I was a good athlete.

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My brain works great, you know, like I have a decent memory.

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So, you know, I my whole life I wanted to be a D1 like uh athlete.

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So, I I found I did that.

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I found that to be hollow, right?

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Then I was like, you know, like like everybody, I wanted to be a millionaire and you know, a net worth millionaire on paper.

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We've talked about this before.

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Doesn't buy you a cup of coffee, kids.

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But but I found out what it's like to be a millionaire and how like banks and everybody treat you then.

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And I found that to be hollow as well.

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you know, I I found what I thought was the love of my life, found that to be hollow.

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Like I just all these real life events, I found them to be hollow.

24:44

And by like 30 years old, I'm like, well, I've conquered everything I wanted to do.

24:48

Like kind of what do I want to do now?

24:49

Um, one of the things we talked about before is like, and then I had the hubris still at that time somehow where I was like, well, all these individuals have been enlightened before.

24:59

I'm like, if anybody can do it, then that means I could do it, too, right?

25:03

right? like and so pursued that path to only find out enlightenment doesn't exist which I'm sure you'd love to talk about later but um so all of that it ends up though that insatial curiosity has never left me and one of the things I've always been obsessed with is um generational wealth or investing like what do you do with your money right

25:22

like you have um money comes in you you consume whatever you need to consume if you have anything left over that savings like what do you do with that savings to make sure you're okay so that's idea always obsessed me because I came from a family went from uh shirt sleeve to shirt sleeves in the in the like job shop manufacturing community. So I saw

25:36

So I saw it happen from my great-grandfather started something that my grandfather ran then my dad and then it was like completely out of our family and so I this always obsessed me and so thinking about how do you survive in these environments and then always be an entrepreneur think about other entrepreneurs.

25:52

I got obsessed with defensive asset classes, right?

25:54

Like Nasim Taleb, tail risk hedging.

25:56

Um, another offshoot of that is like the long volatility programs.

25:59

And then you can think about the commodity trend followers.

26:02

They protect against inflation or kind of, you know, differentiated markets or we have breakouts and that are uncorrelated.

26:06

So, it's like how do you combine correlated, uncorrelated, negatively correlated assets together to build this robust portfolio that can kind of mutter along in any of the four economic quadrants like we talked about, inflation, deflation, growth, recession.

26:18

deflation, growth, recession. So it was just that obsession over time that led me down this path of I taught myself how to trade volatility uh especially the basis trade I traded options and then eventually figured out I was probably a better entrepreneur than a trader and

26:32

you know me of my family read Nasim Taleb's books like black swan they're like hey how do I like tail risk hing looks interest to me I'm like well TB's connected with universal and they want you know 100 million plus you know this is an institutional hedge fund and there's nothing for the little guy so I

26:46

thought there had to be a way to construct that portfolio and it took me years to figure figure out what that path would be and as you know the rapper and everything that goes into building a business in finance with all of our oversight but eventually figured out how to do it for my friends and family and

26:58

aggregate them together to get those access to like QP funds and those sorts of things >> and do you find that your client base and this is a horrible way to phrase it do you think that when they give you money they really truly understand what you do >> man you I'm not surprised like a samurai. You want right at the

27:20

You want right at the heart of it, right?

27:21

So, the way I think about it, we'll get down to that part is like I try to fire as many potential clients as possible.

27:29

So, you know, we're out here, we do podcasts, whatever.

27:31

We bring people into that funnel and as they come down the funnel, they eventually get to me.

27:35

I want to make sure they truly understand what they what we do and they need it like water in a desert.

27:40

And ironically, like most of our clients have been engineers that have tried to build what we built and knew the difficulty of it and they're like, "Oh, thank god you built this. please take my money. Right?

27:47

And so they fully understand like we go through that process and they completely understand what we do, right?

27:52

Like if as you know like the harder you have to sell, the hotter that money is, right?

27:56

And so it's a weird thing.

27:58

It's like you have to sell what you're doing to get people in the door, but if you're pitching harder and harder, you get the money in initially, but it's gone quickly.

28:04

So you want to make sure you have the best clients.

28:07

That's why I'm saying I'm trying to fire all the clients and try to say, "Go here, go there.

28:09

There's better options for you."

28:11

But eventually we get down to that client.

28:12

Now, the heart of what you're saying, this is something that I think about way too often is that I know everything that's gone into this portfolio.

28:23

Every decision we've ever made as the thousands of decisions that have gone into that portfolio and knowing every time we try to make the best decision outcome as possible and a lot of time at our own detriment, right?

28:33

But you don't know that unless you've been in that room and been part of those decisions, right?

28:38

And so I have that full faith-based system in what we do because I've been there since the beginning and my team's been there since the beginning.

28:46

So we're all like easy investors in the fund.

28:47

Like you said, people can understand, they think they understand theoretically and and philosophically with what we do.

28:53

But as soon as times get tough, that's where, you know, you really find out if they believe in it or not.

29:00

And unfortunately, it comes right back to to faith-based dynamics and and basically religion. >> Yeah.

29:06

And um I love the way you avoided my question by the way. >> Did I avoid it? I probably did.

29:12

I'm gonna I'm gonna try to be evasive about all your questions, but nail nail me down.

29:17

What was >> I I asked that question because of the many decades I spent >> Yes. >> with clients. >> Very difficult.

29:26

And I found that like you uh when I started out I tried to sort for clients I did not want.

29:35

And so as you know we're empirically based algorithmic quants.

29:40

And so rather than bring in here are here here's the best results of this strategy, I would always bring in the 10 worst draw downs and just watch them.

29:52

Watch their reaction and that seemed very effective until it got overrode.

30:00

You know why they were sitting opposite me, right, Jason?

30:02

They were sitting opposite me because the fund was on fire and me showing them all of the and some of these some of these draw downs were horrific right like 55% draw down and it didn't touch them and I learned to my detriment that when the fund started doing poorly guess who were the first people to fire me and and so it was something that I always really struggled with because I'm a big believer in level playing fields, right?

30:37

I did everything wrong, right?

30:37

Like I had a relationship with Meil Lynch uh use uh providing uh stock selections for their UIT program and I was launching for no load mutual funds and Mel called me and they're like why don't you do load man we we'll put you on the system and you know we could we can move you a lot of product.

30:58

I'm like no >> load funds are dinosaurs. Yeah.

31:05

>> But >> and they're still around to this day.

31:07

>> And they are still around to this day.

31:08

Well, because you realize, you know, a friend of Patrick's has this great uh demarcation.

31:14

Are is someone pre-fall or postfall?

31:18

>> Uh and it's very useful.

31:18

I don't usually like these dichotoies because like they miss so much.

31:24

>> There's two types of people in the world.

31:25

The people that believe there's two types of people in the world and the people that don't. >> That's right.

31:29

But but this dichotomy though I'm I'm curious how you because okay we both have this like very egalitarian ethos right that runs through everything we do but at the same time we're both hardcore observers of human behavior. >> Yes.

31:43

>> And sometimes those are in hard conflict with each other >> sometimes. >> Right.

31:47

Like you said I'm highlighting the draw downs and everything but I know as soon as you have run a good returns this is why everybody's talking to you.

31:54

But you're running a business so you're like do I strike while the iron's hot?

31:57

like I know I should be shouting this from the rooftops but it feels skeby to me right but this is human nature and then when we're in draw down is when they should be allocating to you but they're never going to so it's almost

32:07

like you shut off the marketing efforts during that time I mean we try to just keep it consistent and I just try to build a portfolio that I want and my family wants and hopefully other people like it too but that's what I'm saying

32:16

how do you how do you deal with that like knowing exactly what they're going to do is the exact opposite of what they should be doing but I guess I guess the hope is your product you believe is the best option for them >> even though they may be buying in at a

32:29

high point in NAV instead of buying in at the low point in NAV, but at least you you know what you built and maybe that gives you the comfort of having that discussion or potentially taking their money. What do I mean you know him

32:38

What do I mean you know him better than I would >> you know ultimately you you you've got to believe in your process right like in fact at OSAM we had a rule that the only longonly equity portfolios or stocks people could buy were through one of our investment portfolios.

32:57

Uh we didn't allow trading of individual names.

33:02

We didn't allow speculative stuff and everyone was pretty cool with that.

33:08

We just passionately believe chefs should eat their own cooking.

33:10

And um another thing that we instituted which I I it boggled my mind that I didn't see other managers doing this as aggressively is like the one rule was when we are [ __ ] the bed, we are all on the phone. All of us on the phone.

33:30

And the number of anecdotes I can give you, uh, I mean, I I wish I would have kept hard data on it, but they're anecdotes.

33:37

Uh, where the people would say, you know, you are the only manager who's calling me.

33:42

And he goes, I've been sitting here trying to get my other managers on the phone and they're all too busy or whatever.

33:50

And I just think it it we're back to human nature yet again, aren't we?

33:55

because the the that's just the way we behave.

33:59

And and so while we always did try to qualify the client and make sure that what we were giving them was going to be right for their uh particular situation, we did attempt to get clients to show us their overall allocation.

34:17

And you'd be surprised by how reluctant many people are to do that.

34:23

But it's a matter of course kind of for you, right?

34:26

Are or are they just adding you as a bolt-on, you know, come the meteor hitting earth? >> It depends.

34:35

So our our shrinking cockroach philosophy holds like passively like global stocks, global bonds.

34:40

Uh we do have a long volatility tail risk ensemble long and a commodity trend ensemble and a little bit of gold and cryptocurrencies.

34:45

So it's like all the world's asset classes.

34:47

So it is like a set it and forget it great for you.

34:51

Like the hard part is when people ask me it's like how much should I allocate? like, well, I built it.

34:53

I put 100% of my money, my family's money.

34:56

I think you should put 100% in.

34:57

But, you know, nobody in industry says that, right?

34:58

So, it's like, or if I'm talking to a wealth man, it's like, okay, put 10% in us and then you'll forget about us for 10 years and I'm clipping that coupon, right?

35:08

They're like, you can't say that.

35:08

I'm like, but that's how the industry works, right?

35:11

Is this radical sense of human nature.

35:13

Um, but yeah, so I I mean, that's the way I believe.

35:15

But then also, what if I'm idiosyncratically wrong?

35:18

Like, you should still have some diversification outside of us, right?

35:20

Like, it's not that simple.

35:20

And right now we're just trading kind of the world's liquid asset classes and there's this whole world of ill, you know, illlquid private asset classes that that would be a nice complent to a portfolio like that.

35:30

Um I'm curious though your hardcore like thinking about human behavior as you know when you picked up the phone not only was that important to you in that draw down to pick up the phone but you also knew in the back of your mind that was going to keep clients invested.

35:43

And so this is one another thing I have a real problem with is like like we were saying earlier the P&L is our black and white.

35:49

like there's no faking that, right?

35:50

But then every month or quarter, everybody does their write up about that month or quarter. Now, I hate that part.

35:58

I'm like, the numbers should speak for themselves.

35:59

You can judge us on those.

36:00

But I do know and my partners know that this write up and this narrative is what keeps clients invested.

36:07

>> And I that's another like opposing forces I have a really hard time with.

36:12

>> Yeah, it's a challenge.

36:12

Um, and uh, our default was always to be as, you know, just bluntly honest as we possibly could be.

36:21

And in in our case, what we would do is like if we were really [ __ ] the bed, we would go back and analyze all the other times we were really [ __ ] the bed and try to at least put context into it because we did truly believe that that particular portfolio did belong in that client's portfolio.

36:43

But it's the hyperbolic discounting that is yet another thing that we humans are great at.

36:51

And literally that's by the way cuz I want to get back to the exact experience that happened in 0708 with you.

37:01

Um but during that period we literally had a bunch of our who I viewed as incredibly sophisticated clients literally taking like $250,000 out of the bank and putting it in a safety deposit box.

37:15

And like I would just be like um that's probably not the an optimal strategy for you to do here.

37:27

So but you know we lost a lot of clients.

37:30

Um because when all the correlations go to one, people need liquidity, right?

37:35

I saw so many really great shops and I mean that go out of business because they were a source of liquidity, right?

37:46

And you know, you mentioned private marks.

37:52

We do a lot of private investing now and one of the things that really bothers me is that they are not marked to market on a daily basis.

38:03

>> The VA laundering of it is beautiful.

38:05

It's but it's like borderline like >> it is but it's come on >> as we both know it's incentives all the way down and I don't think people realize like how much the actual allocators are complicit in that >> because like if you're at a mid-level seat at a pension or an endowment and you want to keep that seat and you want to compete with the other Ivy Leagues.

38:25

So that's the other problem is they put all of these endowments on a a leaderboard table right coming out of Swenson.

38:30

So like everything has a opposing force, right?

38:32

It's like Swinson was great with the Yell model, but then it created ideas that we'd have superstars at like at these universities.

38:38

And so now they have a leaderboard they're trying to keep up with.

38:40

And so if I'm sitting in that seat and I know if I allocate over here, we're only going to have positive returns, no negative returns.

38:45

And if anything does happen, it's probably 10 years from now and I've already switched my seat like two or three times, right?

38:51

So why wouldn't I allocate to the like the people that are making up their own marks? >> Yeah.

38:56

>> So it's just like that's what I'm saying.

38:56

It's like turtles all the way down.

38:57

So like it's we're all complicit.

38:59

I feel like in in a lot of that stuff. >> Well, I I agree.

39:01

And actually before we started recording the podcast, the one of the things I wanted to talk about was 0708 because that is where I started like getting pissed off >> because I saw that everyone was complicit.

39:19

everyone, the ratings agencies, the banks, the banks knew that the that they were acking [ __ ] but they were encouraged to do so by the government who always tends to like we didn't have anything to do with it.

39:33

Oh well, know your history a little bit. You actually did.

39:36

And then the thing that offended me the most was nobody went to prison.

39:44

And that talk about existential like uh for the guy who was around for the savings and loan crisis when more than a thousand senior executives of those companies went to jail and real jail, not country club jail.

40:00

And that I really had to think deeply about what that implied.

40:10

Like my thesis was like everyone is complicit here.

40:14

Not not not just this group or that group. It's it's everyone.

40:21

And the government which is supposed to be the referee isn't refereeing.

40:28

And I'm like this could be bad.

40:28

It's moral hazard all the way down.

40:31

But like it's interesting like you said like so as you know like everybody tried to blame like people getting liar loans or ninja loans at the time and everything.

40:39

was like who gave them those lo like you know we just went all the way up the scale and it's a diffusion of responsibility.

40:44

It's the same thing we know if like something happens in the park down there and everybody goes to help instead of pointing at somebody saying you call 911 like it's a diffusion of responsibility effect.

40:54

>> Um and also be clear like I knew that people buying the condos and the developments I was doing.

40:58

I saw the like no income no verification loans they were getting right and I turned a blind eye right because I was trying to sell the project out. >> Sure.

41:07

So I'm complicit in that.

41:07

And then also like you're saying like I think about this way too often is like you said picking up the phone everything.

41:13

I did not handle it well in 2002 2007 2008.

41:17

I was in my mid20s a lot of hubris.

41:19

I probably went more into turtle mode than picking up the phone.

41:21

And so I did a lot of things I'm not proud of that I had to reconcile and deal with from that experience as well.

41:26

And part of it is you I saw the writing on the wall.

41:30

But was interesting too at the time and I think it was like late 2006. It's always interesting.

41:33

Real estate guys say 2007.

41:35

Financial guys say 2008, right?

41:37

But in 2006, I remember I got, you know, I was young, naive, and so I got together some of the best or oldest real estate developers in that whole Charleston era.

41:45

It was like six guys and all of them were over the age of 50 at the time or whatever.

41:49

And I asked them, I said, "Look, I don't have context.

41:52

Like, what do you think is to a man?"

41:54

They said, "This time is different." Right?

41:57

But unfortunately, I learned a hard lesson in life that time that uh commercial real estate developers are the most predaturally optimistic people on the planet, right?

42:03

And as you know, they just declare bankruptcy and start over.

42:07

Like don't think about risk.

42:07

It's all just yolo long 24/7, right? With leverage.

42:12

So I I learned that harsh mistake where I thought I was being smart. I I clearly wasn't.

42:17

I truly didn't understand human behavioral dynamics in my mid20s.

42:21

I I had a different experience in my mid20s and it was our family uh I briefly ran a real estate operation that our family had done a bunch of investments in in primarily residential commercial uh apartment buildings and the Nixon or the Nixon the Reagan uh tax reform went through and I went and called on those same old guys and I'm like this could be disastrous for real estate because they're taking away all the goodies.

42:54

And they were all like, "You're just a kid. You You have no idea.

42:59

They're all going to come back in.

43:00

You don't need to worry about it."

43:03

And I'm like, "Would you guys like to buy our apartment buildings?"

43:08

And they're like, "Hell yes." So, I sold everything.

43:10

And like you, if you know real estate, you know what happened for many, many years after those tax uh reforms went into place.

43:19

So I just chocked it up as I was just dumb luck.

43:26

It's like I didn't have the it was because I'm also a context guy, right?

43:31

Like I if you don't remember anything that happened before you were born, said Cisero, you remain forever a child.

43:36

And but this was an instance where the lack of context really helped me because I'm like that law looks really bad for this type of real estate.

43:52

But I think that the the quality that I really admire in you is you are very open about [ __ ] [ __ ] up and like learning from it and and like that was the great unlock for me.

44:11

The great unlock for me was I am going to screw things up all the time.

44:18

And what I have to do is I have to look at that as a opportunity to learn something to modify my mental model to modify what I do in the world etc. And I see that in you.

44:29

So I mean it's one of the reasons I'm so fond of you.

44:32

>> I guess I'm still surviving with all the scar tissue.

44:34

But like but part of it is like you said it's always fascinates me.

44:37

I I don't have kids but I always think about child rearing because like as we study child child childhood psychology we learn more about philosophy and all those things.

44:44

So I always have been fascinated by it but one of the things we do is right like we want our kids to have a great life and we don't want them to make mistakes that hurt them.

44:50

But yet everything we've learned is by making mistakes.

44:53

It's this weird once again like contradiction that we we we deal with in life.

44:56

And then I've always, you know, I'm a student of history the same way you are and I really started studying my industry and the history so I don't repeat those mistakes.

45:02

But yet every time it's so slightly different that you get caught up in it, right?

45:05

So it's like I'm fooling myself, right?

45:09

That like oh no, I I've knowledge this.

45:11

It's like no, each time it'll be so slightly different that you'll get caught up in the fervor, right?

45:13

And you'll maybe you'll be like, oh, in hindsight you like I was an idiot again.

45:18

And I always hated that quote that was like um like what is it like a genius learns from others mistakes. >> Yeah.

45:24

I'm like, where are these geniuses?

45:27

All I've learned from is my own mistakes.

45:28

And like you said, I'm trying to make as many a day as possible, but I'm trying to suck less every day.

45:33

That's how I look like I'm not getting better or smarter.

45:34

I just hopefully suck a little bit less every day. >> Yeah.

45:38

>> And that's, you know, it's like I think there's there's great Did you ever um what was it?

45:42

Shopsson that was their restaurant tour here in the city. He had a diner.

45:44

Did you like uh I like killing flies was the name of the document.

45:47

One of the greatest of all time.

45:48

And there's this great like line hey as in it's like the key to life I try to teach my children is you're just a piece of [ __ ] right?

45:55

And every day you might do something that makes you a less of a piece of [ __ ] You might like walk an old lady across the street, but you just start from the metric that you're a piece of [ __ ] and occasionally you do something kind.

46:06

So I that's it always resonated with me, I should say.

46:11

>> So again, it's it's uh 07 if you're a real estate guy.

46:17

It's 08 if you're a market guy. What happened?

46:20

Tell I want to hear this story, Jason.

46:23

I want to hear like what happened that would cause you I understand the rabbit holes and I I understand your nature pretty perfectly because I have a very similar nature, but like what was the thing the that ignited the I have to I have to completely reinvent the way I think about this?

46:44

like we were talking about, I think it's pain more than anything else.

46:48

And I thought I had a handle on things, but almost like we were talking about is like each time's different.

46:50

So, it's like those Minsky moments, right?

46:53

Stability breeds instability, but we don't know what's the the aggregate tipping point, right? That's the hard part.

46:58

So, I was already worried about those things and like I just thought I had I thought I had life nailed down. I really did.

47:04

It was one of those things where to me wealth is like going out to eat and not looking the price on the menu.

47:09

Like that's one of the forms of wealth.

47:11

Obviously, your health is more important than that, but I remember like that time I was like, "Oh, I'm not like pinching pennies to like buy a burrito or something like I was like, "Oh god, I got life nailed. It's super sweet.

47:18

It's just all upside from here."

47:20

And so I think it was that that jarring juxiposition of the crash.

47:24

And to make matters so much worse, is like the hard part and this is what led to kind of the tail risk catching is like no matter like in real estate you're developing projects that might have one, two, and fiveyear timelines.

47:36

And so you're doing all of these and so it gets into this idea of erodicity and time horizon and sequencing is like if you then have a liquidity crash in the middle of it, there goes all of your model.

47:45

There's your DCF, you know, the [ __ ] DCF like it didn't have 2008 or COVID in my DCF, so to speak.

47:53

And so that crash felt so bad.

47:56

But what was even worse is because I had clients that were getting all these loans to buy the buildings I was uh renovating or or restructuring is I could see who the worst and most complicit lenders were like the wash muse of the the countrywides all of those right so I knew cuz it hit 2007

48:14

first I'm like this is going to cascade into 2008 the financial markets gets even better so I'm like oh I know how to trade options I'm going to start buying put options on all these home lenders that I know are complete garbage I lost money shorting the housing lenders that went bankrupt. You know how You know how this works.

48:31

Like and so the pain of that is I had to teach myself what are the true options Greeks the first order second order because I thought I was just making a bet on going down.

48:39

I didn't realize it was the price I was paying for the implied volatility and going very short-term time horizon as well.

48:46

I was trying to just nail that move.

48:48

And so it's like not only did I go through the pain of that crash, any savings I had left over, I was trying to short the markets to make up for it and lost that money as well.

48:55

I mean, you don't hit rock bottom till you hit rock bottom. >> No, you don't.

49:00

>> And so, yeah, I I'm trying to think what the hard part is, as you know, um, was it Adam Smith talked about like the vivacity of impressions, right?

49:07

And so at the time that was like like I I literally fetal position on the floor.

49:14

But now that we're talking about it what like almost 20 years later it's a story that happened to somebody else.

49:18

So I'm trying to put myself there to answer your question and like really walk through it.

49:23

But as we know like we're not we don't have the detail.

49:25

We don't have the all all of the little things that happen because it's just it's become only a chapter in the book anymore and it's and our memories suck as we both know.

49:34

And so like I I don't know if I'm answering the question is like that. >> Yeah. No, you actually are.

49:38

And and it also leads to some interesting jumping off points because >> I also to be fair also had to move in with my mother too.

49:45

So that's this is probably what you're getting at too is like I went Okay, there's Yeah, there's some see it comes up when you ask, right?

49:52

>> I think I think we might have uncovered something here.

49:55

>> So part of it was so you go through riding high and the crash and everything and then I at first I went and went live with my sister in Chicago because she was doing her medical degree at the University of Chicago. >> Wow.

50:06

and but she's a few months out from graduating the medical degree.

50:08

So, she has no money, right?

50:10

Of course, it's all like loans and everything, right?

50:12

So, she would get jobs at like um Whole Foods and Trader Joe's handing out samples or like on street corners like twirling signs.

50:20

And so, I moved over to Chicago.

50:22

She's like, "You can come do this with me."

50:23

And I'm like, "All right."

50:24

So, we're handing out, as you know, Chicago's like food festival.

50:28

We're handing out free packets of like chili salsa and stuff like that during like during the great food festival.

50:34

We're having like signs like come come visit this on a street corner and I'm doing that with my sister so it's making me laugh because she's about to graduate from Chicago Medical School.

50:41

A few months ago I'm worth like $5 million or more, right?

50:45

And it's all gone, right?

50:47

And then I used to drive like a new Range Rover and everything back then.

50:50

And every Range Rover that drove by with my sister, I was like, "You're one bad decision away."

50:54

Like, you know, it's like it's it's coming for you, too.

50:55

Like so I was probably like one advertising but then also like just this doom apocalypse creature on the corner.

51:01

So and then eventually my sister graduates and she's got to go on with her life and everything.

51:07

So I end up moving in with my mother in California.

51:08

And I was just lucky at that time that um she was had an extra room and was willing to provide housing and food, you know, so I lived very very cheaply for years and years and years.

51:20

And part of that was it comes out to then what am I actually going to do?

51:24

And with our satual curiosity and and I know this is what you we were kind of getting at earlier about portfolios is like it's extremely personal to us. It's practice, right?

51:32

This is my entire life philosophy that I'm putting into this business and this portfolio for you. So it's deeply personal.

51:38

And so to me it was more of that alignment where maybe in my younger years I'm maybe living under what's important to others or some sort of you know Gerardian mimisis where it got to the point of like this aligns with my values and who I am at this point and this is deep practice for me.

51:55

So this is all I want to do. If it works it works.

51:56

If it doesn't it doesn't but this is what I want to do.

51:59

I always uh I joke with our mutual friend Senra about there's that quote was like what would you do if you knew you couldn't fail?

52:05

And I'm like [ __ ] that quote.

52:06

It's like to me it's like what would you do if you knew you would fail, >> right?

52:10

That's what we're compelled to do.

52:13

>> That's a much better question.

52:14

>> Just run head first into walls every single day >> knowing failure is probably imminent. >> Yes.

52:20

>> And if we do get lucky, great.

52:20

But like otherwise like that's what it's not like anybody would do any Yeah.

52:24

What would you do if you couldn't fail?

52:26

Like anything that fly out this window, >> right? Exactly.

52:30

>> But no, it's we're compelled to do things and this fact where you know you and I disagree about free will.

52:33

It's like I'm compelled to do this thing where it's high likelihood of failure, but I don't know anything else better to do because it's just everything of who I am and this amalgamation of detritus I've collected from others throughout these years because I don't even have any thoughts I can call my own.

52:46

They're really other people.

52:48

I guess they've been uniquely put together into this body and brain.

52:51

But that's all I'm doing is using those to the fullest extent of my abilities.

52:55

I'm just giving my all into this.

52:57

And if it works, it works.

52:57

If it doesn't, it doesn't.

52:58

Because we can't help ourselves.

52:59

So, I I don't know that we disagree on free will.

53:02

I think that we have different shading on free will.

53:09

I I think that um I'm not going to be so arrogant to determine that this tiny little human brain of mine is going to be able to conclude with 100% certainty and no ability to falsify that free will does not exist. Right?

53:28

And so I make a choice and my choice is I'm going to act like as if I have free will. >> Yes.

53:39

>> Uh because again I'm huge into evidence, right?

53:42

And like we were talking about it with the religions that the end is nigh. The end is nigh. And no no end. No end.

53:51

And yet we still get more members.

53:53

>> Put the Nikes back on. Mix up the Kool-Aid.

53:55

Yeah, you let T, what were they?

53:59

Tea and Dough or I can't remember their names.

54:01

One of my guys, one of my principal salesman had that guy's picture, that cult member's, I can't remember his name.

54:07

Uh, this was the Hailbop Common one and he had the guy's picture on his on his board next to his and I'm like, Chris, why do why do you have that?

54:18

He goes, that is the world's greatest salesman. Yeah, exactly.

54:20

we pale in comparison to that.

54:24

That's our aspirational qualities.

54:26

But but so on on free will uh I have like I'm not smart enough to be able to determine whether that ultimately but I also share many of your ideas about like this cloud of ideas like Rupert Sheldrake I don't know if you're familiar with Rupert's work but like I'm fascinated by it because he posits that you know there is a a for lack of a better term to define it a cloud of human knowledge that we all can interface with.

54:59

Very brilliant guys like Tesla, Nicola Tesla believed this.

55:02

Have you if you have you ever read his really really short uh autobiography? I'll give you a copy.

55:11

I think you'd really enjoy it because like he's very straightforward.

55:15

These aren't my ideas that I get them.

55:17

They they they appear in my mind and I'm basically just a a copy guy copying them down.

55:22

copy guy copying them down. And that got me into a mode which I'm in now and I've been in since I discovered this was very helpful which is I am at best a co-creator >> at best right to say like no this is mine I did this no one else could have

55:45

done this you're just feeding your own ego and that leads to bad stuff when you realize no no no co-creator it actually guess what happens you get a lot more creative because all of those ideas that well those aren't mine not invented here I can't think

56:03

that way you let them in and you're like huh this actually is a really great idea what if I tried it this way that way um you feel like you don't have writer's block then right because like you're not so stressed out about like being the progynator of these like to your point

56:18

I'm not sure if we're the receptor or the progeniator and and clarify I think we are very closely aligned on is like we can know with pretty high probabilities that maybe free will doesn't exist from everything we experience. But then at the same time,

56:27

But then at the same time, like you said, is like for me to be able to put on clothes and and use a toilet like I have to believe in free will, right?

56:33

But that's the rub I always think about it.

56:34

That's the paradox and the contradiction that we're always going to live in, right?

56:37

And that's why when either you have a materialist or an idealist, it's like yes and it's both.

56:42

Like or the new mysterians are like I think that like our subconscious or our our thinking apparatus is not the thing we need to actually discover the unconscious or any sort of cognition, right?

56:52

So, like we're always at this paradox of like we're screwed.

56:53

Like you're never ever going to figure this out.

56:57

And that's what you're saying.

56:57

The people that are super confident in it that that's make me even weirder religion or a faith-based thing.

57:02

But I'm curious what I'm I'm really interested in like I think I've heard you say you're agnostic before, right? That's fair.

57:09

Um I always like the um logical positivists for their definition even though they got a lot of things wrong.

57:15

But like what they talked about agnostic, right?

57:17

agnostic, right? Like it's like until you can say anything a coherent sentence about God then there's nothing to talk about which is kind of right like if God is everywhere and everything we don't have any separation to understand right I get it but as soon as you were use the word atheist or agnostic or agnostic you're defining yourself by God and I

57:33

find that very interesting right like you're anti- these things or on the fence about these things >> but but but are you defining yourself by God or by society >> that's fair >> I think I think that because religion Like when you study history, you go back to Jericho, like vengeful gods show up when populations grow above a certain amount, right? And that isn't a vengeful

57:55

And that isn't a vengeful god showing up.

57:58

That's society saying, "God damn it, we've got all these problems over here.

58:03

Wouldn't it be great if there was like some vengeful allseeing deity who could tell them?"

58:11

That's, by the way, that's another re religion is like the best marketing ever.

58:16

Of course, like it's amazing.

58:18

>> I'm trying to build a cult. Like, I'm a cult leader. Right. Exactly.

58:20

I'm trying to get people to drink mine Kool-Aid. >> Exactly.

58:23

Because like the beauty of it is you can be wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, and it doesn't matter because it's still going to happen someday.

58:31

And let's throw in, but wait, there's more.

58:36

you get to be one of the people who gets raptured if you believe.

58:41

>> If you don't believe, you're going to the other place.

58:46

>> And so I'm I'm fascinated by religion and and more importantly the effects that it has had on every human society since the beginning of time.

58:57

We talked about this when at my house like the like how Babylonia took over Mesopotamia is so brilliant to me.

59:06

They were like, "Hey, we're the coolest city state.

59:08

We should rule all of Mesopotamia, but we got a problem. Our god is puny. Murdoch is like this.

59:18

He's like a afterthought in the pantheon of the gods."

59:21

And the priests are like, "No problem. We'll do a rewrite."

59:26

And so they literally rewrote the myth of their god to make the god the greatest god of all time.

59:31

He fought this mythical creature and tore it in half and threw half of it up which created the stars and heavens and threw the other half down creating the earth.

59:43

And suddenly and he absorbed 50 other gods. Right.

59:45

And suddenly everyone was like we like that god.

59:52

>> That's a badass Marvel universe god. I want that one. >> Yeah I want that one. But like it it works.

1:00:00

>> It works unbelievably well.

1:00:00

And that's what I was getting at.

1:00:01

What I find really interesting.

1:00:02

I assume you're raised Catholic, right? >> Uh Catholic light. >> Catholic light. Yeah.

1:00:07

Which I think that's most Catholics, right?

1:00:10

>> Uh not if you talk to my wife. >> Well, yeah.

1:00:11

My I should say my uh my grandparents on one side said they went to Latin mass as you remember back in the day.

1:00:16

So they I guess they weren't light, but my mom was Catholic light.

1:00:19

>> I I I I was on that edge.

1:00:19

I wasn't around for the Latin masses because of Vatican 2. Yeah.

1:00:26

>> Uh, but I did know I was an alter boy and I did know all the smartass me a cowboy me a cowboy me a Mexican cowboy for me a kulpa.

1:00:33

Mia kulpa me maxima kulpa. >> Oh my god.

1:00:38

I've never heard that one before. That is so good.

1:00:39

And then there's another one.

1:00:41

Kerry christi ker christristi.

1:00:43

That changes to kera kicarda k credit card. >> Oh my god.

1:00:52

But also you reminded me actually it popped in my head.

1:00:54

couldn't remember for a second that Pascal's wager, right?

1:00:55

The the problem with Pascal's Wager is like witch god, right?

1:00:58

Like so you know that one, but also uh and then what also threw me off me and Maximal Culp, but did you see that documentary about the the priest at the dev school?

1:01:05

I think it was in Minnesota, so it's like your former neck of the woods. It's horrible. It's horrific.

1:01:10

I haven't seen but basically they the priests were um molesting kids that parents didn't speak sign language.

1:01:18

>> So they picked those kids, right?

1:01:18

But there's also some interesting things that came out of this documentary.

1:01:21

um not necessarily positively, but like one of the things was they had this um therapist that worked with pastors, whether they're drug addicts or or alcoholics or whatever.

1:01:30

And he's like, I can rehab all of them except for the the the pedophiles.

1:01:33

So, he's like, the only solution I can come up with is we need to we have this we on this island in the Caribbean.

1:01:40

Let's build a monastery there and let's put them there instead of transferring them around to different parishes.

1:01:44

And of course, that was the only solution he could come up with.

1:01:45

And at the time they're building it, it came out in the news.

1:01:49

>> Sorry, did Epstein buy this?

1:01:49

Yeah, but it it it came out in the news and they're like, "Wait, they're building a club med for pedophilic priests."

1:01:55

And so it all got shut down, but it was like the only solution they had.

1:02:00

There's so, by the way, there is so much of that.

1:02:05

There is so much of solutions that actually make sense.

1:02:11

>> Let's put them all on an island that's really hard to get to. Call it a monastery.

1:02:15

Keep them all in one place.

1:02:18

you know, we have these other things called FedMax high security prisons, >> right?

1:02:23

>> Nobody gets upset about those.

1:02:26

>> But it's like that's it's actually, you know, uh the monasteries actually came out the Epicurian communes like so like it already was coming along line in that sense.

1:02:33

sense. Then I also because my brain's broken in a way I feel a little bit bad for the pedophilic priests in a way not stay with me is because just because I was luckily born with he h he h he h he h he h he h he h he h he h he h heetonormative beliefs >> and so I can't believe that like if I if my sexual nature was turned on by that and I couldn't control it and that's

1:02:52

actually what therapist was saying these priests were like pretty much like pre please lock me away >> I can't deal with my nature wanting to do this I can't stop myself so please lock me away so they were they went sorry we full circle but I want to come back to Catholicism because I think it's so interesting and I really wanted your take on this. It's like I have found

1:03:06

It's like I have found that anybody that was raised in Catholicism, it's by far the best at getting all of your senses involved, right?

1:03:14

From lead glass windows to beautiful art to music to the incense, it's hitting all of your senses at such a young formative age that I find Catholics even when they say they're agnostic or atheist, they it never truly escapes them because it got so locked in at the formative years of their life. Does that make sense? It makes a ton of sense.

1:03:33

And I have studied the Catholic Church deeply, but for different reasons.

1:03:39

Like the Catholic Church is the world's most successful cult.

1:03:43

And I I I don't mean that as a way to disparrage them.

1:03:50

>> They really knew how to grow a religion, right? So like St.

1:03:54

Paul, Saul falls, hits his head, sees the light.

1:03:58

Uh but if you look at the way he marketed Christianity because it wasn't a Catholic church at that time um it was absolutely brilliant.

1:04:09

I mean like literally he developed a mesh network of synagogues where he would go cuz he knew at that synagogue were the most important people in that town with they were going to be the the connectors with everyone else.

1:04:25

But the genius of it was Judaism remains small because it has so many really really difficult to adhere to rules, right?

1:04:38

Like you got to the eating and the dressing and the like you can't touch anything during this and St.

1:04:43

Paul is like with this religion you don't have to do any of that stuff.

1:04:48

But you think they had to do that because like on Silk Road because they were money changers and lenders.

1:04:52

So like you you had to have that tricked like so you know who you could trust. Yeah.

1:04:56

But then they thought Yeah. Just come in. What? Just come in man.

1:05:01

>> You know what's great about our our faith is there's only one actual god.

1:05:06

Like it doesn't matter what gods you were brought up with back to Mesopotamia.

1:05:10

It doesn't matter what your current faith.

1:05:14

It doesn't matter what color you are, what sex you are.

1:05:17

everyone can be a Christian.

1:05:17

It was the original big tent uh approach to converting people and they made it extra easy to convert and then they added just brilliant things like you're referring to the Catholic experience.

1:05:32

Mine was more suburban, so we didn't get the incense very much.

1:05:38

Um >> you have smelly pilgrims coming into the church that you had to make up for, >> right? Um but you're right.

1:05:43

I mean like I can still recite many of the Catholic prayers just from memory.

1:05:51

As it was in the beginning is now and ever and for will ever forever shall be world without end.

1:05:59

Think about that for a minute.

1:05:59

As it was in the beginning, we have defined the entire past for you.

1:06:06

>> You don't have any more questions about that. >> Is now.

1:06:09

So we're doing it for you now and forever shall be like we got you >> shrink wrapped we got you baby for every part of your life.

1:06:20

And then like the way the ceremonies are life events, baptism, confirmation, marriage, last rights, they've got it all. It's just genius.

1:06:34

It is genius the way they do it.

1:06:37

But the thing that they did better than any other religion, confession, >> 100%.

1:06:43

Like I couldn't agree more with this.

1:06:45

>> The greatest and smartest marketer in the world would never come up with that.

1:06:51

And yet, like, are you kidding me?

1:06:51

I get to lead a horrible and dissolate life.

1:06:58

And and all I got to do is go in, bless me, father, for I have sinned.

1:07:01

It has been, you know, 30 years since my last confession, but I'm feeling really conflicted and bad about these sins. I absolve you. Boom. They revirginize you.

1:07:16

This is probably what actually made me explore religions was watching all of my relatives that were Catholics like sin all week and then on the weekend be like starting over and I was like that this can't be right.

1:07:26

This just can't be right. So >> brilliant. >> Yeah. 100% brilliant.

1:07:29

But do you think like we're talking about as times change in modern times like there's over 30,000 sects of Christianity in America alone.

1:07:37

But I would even argue there's you know over a billion because essentially everybody chooses their own religion right there's pieces and parts to the Bible or to their pastor that they take and don't take and we choose and we pick and choose.

1:07:48

And so like when we're trying to talk about these ideas, this is actually you and I think about this a lot is like by simplifying ideas, we're losing all the nuance and complexity and actually individuals have their own religion and they may when they're in together in a congregation, it might sound like, you know, they want that community, but they're really not Christian or Catholic based on all the doctrines.

1:08:08

It's like >> pick and choose kind of your own religion and your own adventure along the way. >> Yeah. All a cart. >> Yeah.

1:08:13

But we're all individual in that sense. >> Yeah, I agree.

1:08:15

And I should also I I I am not anti- religious people. >> Yeah, you're right.

1:08:23

It's a great community thing.

1:08:24

>> Yeah, it's amazing for community.

1:08:24

I mean, you really do have to take seriously like the Mormons for example. Look at again evidence.

1:08:32

Is there evidence that being a Mormon, not one of the ones in the crazy multi-wife tribes, but just a traditional Mormon, >> leads to really good outcomes for the most part in terms of health, in terms of productivity, in terms of all of those things that are genuinely good for society.

1:08:54

And so it's it's it's just like I'm I I I have no animosity.

1:09:04

uh other than for fundamentalist kind of religions >> um where again certainty I I think one of my greatest things is certainty is absurd and and if if if you are and of course the hitch in our human OS is who are we drawn to to pick for our leaders

1:09:26

the people who seem absolutely the most certain >> confidence >> and and so it's just this endless wheel like a hamster wheel that we're just like, "Well, that other guy didn't work out, but this guy seems even more certain." >> Yeah. Well, you said there's nobody more >> Yeah.

1:09:39

Well, you said there's nobody more annoy annoying than a mil militant atheist. >> Right. Right. >> Oh, right. >> The most annoying.

1:09:46

>> How about the truest of true believers? >> Exactly. It's just like Yeah.

1:09:48

It's like uh when I guess like goth kids think they're different from everybody else.

1:09:53

It's like no, you're just running in the Goth herd next to the herd, but you're running off a cliff like everybody else.

1:09:57

It's the same thing atheists are.

1:09:57

The militant atheist is like, "I'm different." Like, "No, you're not. You're still the same." Right?

1:10:01

But I wonder, like you said, there's beautiful things about community with religion and and beautiful things about tradition, but I also wonder like I don't know if you're like me, when you read about all this stuff about like longevity, community, all of these things.

1:10:12

I just assume we're going to die young because like if we're just like these really insular like just going our own way, like why are we we're fighting these headwinds all the time.

1:10:22

So I assume that's just taking years off our lives or like because everything we read about longevity we do the opposite of.

1:10:30

Well, I got my fingers crossed.

1:10:30

I've got lots of longevity in the genetic heritage. So, so do I.

1:10:35

I got that going for me, which is nice.

1:10:40

>> I think that that's another aspect that I really like about true market afficionados.

1:10:47

>> Like generally, they're a lot like you.

1:10:49

And by that I mean they love to know about like everything >> because like I always thought of Wall Street as kind of the Olympics of business, right?

1:11:01

It we had a family business that my uh family did very very well in my extended family which was the oil business and my uncle kept trying to get me to go and I'm just like uncle John I have zero interest.

1:11:15

I mean, I think you've it's amazing what you've accomplished, but like oil >> and that's it.

1:11:22

Like, and I'm sure I would look ridiculous in one of those big hats. >> All hat, no cattle. >> Exactly. All hat, no cattle.

1:11:27

But I I definitely think there's a personality type that is drawn to do what we what you do and what I did.

1:11:37

Um and it's it's an interesting one that I always try to like find the pattern of because >> def what's pattern mean?

1:11:49

>> Is the kind of the primitive primordial pattern of which other patterns are built? >> Okay.

1:11:55

So it's like the it's like the primitive in if you're doing AI the models they refer to as the the base base model is they call it primitive um of that type of personality because I have a good friend who's very smart.

1:12:13

He's a doctor here in Manhattan and he's like when he was here last time he was like Jim would you shut the [ __ ] up about telling everyone they should think probabilistically?

1:12:22

He goes, "Because that's a prescription for disaster." >> Yeah.

1:12:29

>> Well, as you know, this he's he's a mutual friend of ours.

1:12:31

And he's 100% right cuz like part of it, too, is like almost like we a lot of people in our position want everybody else to be entrepreneurs or think the way we do.

1:12:37

I don't want anybody think the way I do.

1:12:40

And I actually think entrepreneur is a bug, not a feature.

1:12:41

I think it's terrible brain chemistry, right?

1:12:42

The way societyy's set up for bimonthly paychecks, a salary, and then you get a mortgage, and it all makes sense, right? It's bond-like income.

1:12:49

Why do we want this equity VC like income?

1:12:51

there's something wrong with us.

1:12:53

And just I know to you and me like that hypomomaniac side was a really important book to me in my 20s. Yes.

1:12:59

>> It made me understand myself if I have this mild bipolar, >> right?

1:13:03

Cuz part of that bipolar is that you get all the positive effects of like really being able to lock in and focus on things and and build businesses where you're creating an entire world that's very you're you're the feel for that.

1:13:13

But it also commen comes with a commensurate downside as well, right? Like the darkness. >> Yeah.

1:13:16

Well, like everything does, right? >> Right.

1:13:18

It's just not a free lunch. >> No.

1:13:20

And like I managed to get over that like when I was in my 20s, I was just like staring way too long into the abyss.

1:13:27

And as if you know the quote, it stared right back into me.

1:13:31

And I was like, for a while I was just like, why bother? Like nothing matters.

1:13:40

There is no truth with a capital T.

1:13:43

There is no such thing as enlightenment. Yeah.

1:13:45

And and the way I came to kind of like figure that out because that leads to nihilism.

1:13:52

And my thought was, well, okay, let's assume that this is mostly right, even though I think it might be mostly wrong.

1:14:02

Let's just assume it's mostly right.

1:14:05

Well, what can I do about it?

1:14:06

And and I call it walking across the bridge of nihilism.

1:14:10

And when you get to the other side, you're like, "Okay, well, if life has no meaning and like there is no such thing as enlightenment and there is no truth with a capital T, that means that I get to determine meaning.

1:14:26

That means that I get to say what matters in my life."

1:14:29

And so once I like really embraced looking at the world that way, that's when all of the dark abyss staring stuff didn't end, but it was just like, oh, there's the abyss again.

1:14:45

>> But okay, this is why I love talking because it gives us time to talk about pull on strings of nuance.

1:14:48

And so you say like you're saying nihilism and everything, and I've always, you know, like you almost said is everybody thinks of nihilism as a pjorative, right?

1:14:54

of nihilism as a pjorative, right? But I think what got to the point what you said is like the true I guess definition for nihilism is there's no grand meaning to life right but like you just said that means we get to make up our own quotian meanings to life so our family our friends whatever we're into like drinking or eating or whatever and just

1:15:10

like sitting in the park having an espresso that's the meaning >> having conversations like this >> that's the my favorite part of life and so that's what I mean so it's like don't you think that's fair it's like so you can be a nihilist on on a grander meeting but that's totally different from making individual meeting on a on a daily minute-to-minute basis, right? Totally. Totally.

1:15:28

>> So, okay, that's I just like want to clarify that cuz like I always like people like cuz I get accused to being a nihilist all the time and I'm like yes and no.

1:15:34

I mean there's nuance there but also I was thinking about your I forgot I didn't answer your thing on pattern for people like us.

1:15:39

I really wonder how much of it is just like competitiveness in the sense that cuz you come across as not competitive but I know there's a beast of competition inside you and these guys know it too.

1:15:49

Sorry, I I broke the fourth wall, but it's >> Well, I break the you know, we broke we had a a a show that we financed through our Infinite Films. Yeah.

1:15:59

>> Uh on cheese, >> and he was here.

1:16:00

He's he's fabulous and he's this really talk about a charismatic guy.

1:16:06

>> Uh but they came on camera to test the cheese >> and they were like, "Yeah, you didn't mic yourselves, though." >> Yeah.

1:16:15

>> See, he's got to come back now.

1:16:16

>> You You screwed another one up, Danny.

1:16:19

You had another You had a Bourdain moment to bring in this.

1:16:20

It's just show you're magnanimous.

1:16:23

Like let them eat cake as well. They can try the cheese. Just let me go first.

1:16:27

Uh but I wonder So I think about competitiveness like when I was a soccer player, right?

1:16:33

Like you want to compete at the highest level. Sure.

1:16:36

>> That's the way I always looked at it.

1:16:37

But I was I had some friends that would like go play on weekends with like their friends that weren't as good players and they'd dominate and that would make them feel good about themselves.

1:16:43

And I never understood that.

1:16:44

is like I want to play at the highest level even if I'm losing cuz right I can get better.

1:16:49

>> And so I think that's maybe what it comes down to is Wall Street finance investing is playing the game at the highest level. >> Yes.

1:16:55

>> I mean as a society should we exalt that? Probably not.

1:16:57

But it's the highest remunerated business in the world which means the highest amount of brain power comes into it.

1:17:01

So it's like if you want to compete at something this is the highest level to compete at.

1:17:04

And it's not necessarily about winning but it's about challenging yourself right?

1:17:08

It to me it's about self-growth and that self-challenge.

1:17:12

And so maybe that's I guess the big part of it is like competing at the high level.

1:17:15

And then to you to your point about conversations for both of us are our favorite things.

1:17:21

And I thought this was the world I wanted to be in because I thought hedge fund managers are usually polymaths and have a lot of varied interest and they deep dive because they can't help themselves either.

1:17:29

And so you can have much more interesting conversations a lot of times that way.

1:17:32

So it was like it was for me it was part of both.

1:17:34

It was like the competitiveness and then also trying to just have the best conversations possible. >> Yeah.

1:17:38

And and I think that you also have to realize that you you know what did Fineman his great quote uh don't fool yourself and you are the easiest person to fool.

1:17:49

Like I fell into I it was like the rake man.

1:17:52

You a fan of the Simpsons. >> Yeah.

1:17:56

>> You know where the clown has all the the the rakes and he just steps from one to the other to the I felt like that often.

1:18:04

>> Do you resonate with the fool in tarot?

1:18:06

like we're just stepping off the cliff oblivious like just enjoying our lives like well >> the fool is a positive card to me not that I'm a tarot but I've just I always loved because also the number zero which I thought you might like too for the fool but

1:18:17

>> yes yes um but I I definitely think that it is just a very liberating thing if nothing else I mean we both agree there is no enlightenment we're both have read Jed McKenna and I think the best thing he does is like enlightenment is a booby prize, man. It's just like if you ever

1:18:37

It's just like if you ever get what why do you think Buddha just sat beneath that tree for the rest of his [ __ ] life?

1:18:45

Because it's just like watching a screen with static on it.

1:18:48

And and he posits that the the real prize is what he calls human adulthood, which is being alive in the or being aware, awake in the dream state and realizing how many cool things there are that you can play with and and do whatever with.

1:19:09

>> But you're so you're so much better than I am.

1:19:11

How do you deal with though the the hubris and self agrandisement that comes from that from thinking you're a human adult, right?

1:19:16

Like that's the idea is like you're essentially I guess >> Oh, I don't think I'm a human adult.

1:19:19

>> Oh, I don't think I'm a human adult. I think I'm still in the hurry because because that's my thing was like there is no materialism and spiritualism it's all materialism and all the spirituality all the levels of attainment you get from meditation and everything is just selling trinkets in the marketplace so I'm wondering it's like it's like so

1:19:36

it's like I could be a human adult as opposed to like a childlike adult wait hold on how do I get that now I'm better than everybody else but I get to play with the matrix while they're living in the matrix and that's what I'm always fearful of is like how do you fight against that self agrandisement that you get from any of those like trinkets that you collect along the way. >> Yeah, I think that that's a challenge.

1:19:54

>> Yeah, I think that that's a challenge.

1:19:56

Again, we're back to personality types, right?

1:19:59

>> And um I think what happens is you I was very competitive when I was younger.

1:20:07

Um and I was also a proatizer.

1:20:12

I shall tell you I don't know if you're a TSL Elliott fan, but the love song of Jay Alfred Buffrock, he walks in and he's like, I shall tell you all. I shall tell you all.

1:20:19

And then Elliott has a woman saying turning away with her shawl.

1:20:24

That isn't what I meant at all.

1:20:29

And so like I I was a proitizer cuz I really believed like I spent years figuring this stuff out.

1:20:35

And like guys, there is tons of evidence here that all you need to do is like pay attention to the evidence and then use it and it's like the South Park, you know, uh startup, bro down, sellout, profit.

1:21:00

But like I would and and then I realized that as you said earlier and I subscribed to it 100%.

1:21:10

There are hundreds of paths to success in investing in life. >> Right?

1:21:15

The the key thing is you've got to find the one that is right for you.

1:21:21

And what do I mean by right for you? You can stick with it.

1:21:23

It isn't one where you're going to be like and you know, oh, I'm just going to abandon that whole thing.

1:21:30

Now, I do not by that mean you can't improve it.

1:21:33

Of course, you can improve it.

1:21:35

That's what we spent all of our time doing on models, right?

1:21:39

Just we have a huge graveyard.

1:21:42

Had a huge graveyard at OSAM.

1:21:45

But I think graveyards are important, too, right?

1:21:47

I think again it's another human instinct if you will part of our OS to really shy away from learning things via negativia right like and you can learn so much from what didn't work and just keep that there in mind now does that mean that it will forever not work? No, of course not.

1:22:10

But it's at least on your radar over here.

1:22:14

And just the open again, open-mindedness is another one that is a real high uh on the ocean profile, the big five of people like us and and yeah, weirdo.

1:22:34

>> Have you ever taken the personality test but like take them a day apart or whatever and you end up with a different personality moniker?

1:22:38

I unfortunately have never done that. I've tried it.

1:22:42

>> Interesting cuz like I our skepticism I'm like this is awful [ __ ] like >> Yeah.

1:22:46

Oh >> cuz there's some of those questions where you hem and haw and you're like I go and so maybe on the next day you're you had a different breakfast >> so you go a different way and they're going to kind of like whatever I can't even remember like the INTJ or like you might be like an ENTJ like so it's like I'm an ENTP whatever. Yeah.

1:23:03

>> And I have been and by the way it's kind of astrology. It's astrology, right?

1:23:09

>> And self grandizing because all the good characteristics, you're like, "Oh, that's that's me% me." >> Open-mindedness.

1:23:16

I'm the most open-minded person on the planet.

1:23:18

>> I am absolutely the most open-minded.

1:23:22

How dare you say that I'm not open-minded? >> Yeah.

1:23:28

But I I do think the Big Five is interesting because it does replicate.

1:23:33

it does remain rather stable no matter when in your life you take it.

1:23:39

>> Um, and so we we we have our own installation for AI and like one of the things we're working with is AB testing uh a variety of audiences for because we have a book publisher, we have a movie company and it's been really fun.

1:23:55

>> So you're creating like psychoraphic profiles. >> Yes. >> In AI. Yeah.

1:23:58

So, but like well I'm sure you've seen like Century of Self and like Edward Bernese and stuff.

1:24:02

My favorite part is the hippies came and they're like, "We're all individuals and they they had seven cohorts of hippies.

1:24:09

You're the Subaru hippie.

1:24:09

We're going to sell you Subarus."

1:24:12

>> And so it's like >> Eddie Bernay, man.

1:24:12

That guy was a [ __ ] beyond all imagining.

1:24:17

>> Was it uh Freedom Sticks for the women?

1:24:20

>> I mean, it's brilliant though.

1:24:20

>> I mean, it's brilliant though. and and not only what who I'm talking about for everyone listening is Edward Bernay who was the nephew of Sigman Freud make of that what you will but this is the guy who was like no no no it's not

1:24:36

propaganda it's public relations and people would go to this guy like the cigarette makers 100 years ago right what's so funny is I was literally thinking about this last night and you bring it up because it wasn't it was on one of these avenues, right, is where they had the protest. They got them they

1:24:53

They got them they gave them all free cigarettes, right?

1:24:56

>> So he's like, "Well, we we were mimedic creatures and uh they didn't want women smoking in the 1920s was a no no, right? They didn't do it." So what did he do?

1:25:08

He got the most glamorous uh debutants in their, you know, flapper era dress all smoking at the thing.

1:25:17

And those were the only photographs that any of the photographers took.

1:25:21

They showed up in every newspaper around first New York, but then the world.

1:25:28

And it started the I mean ju just to think about that.

1:25:33

Think of how many deaths he caused from that one thing.

1:25:39

But like his greatest hits goes on and on and on.

1:25:42

like the United Fruit Company was very unhappy with a outcome of a of an election in Guatemala and he's like I got you.

1:25:53

But yeah, the I highly recommend all of his sensory self and they're all available.

1:26:00

Adam Curtis, I think his name is. >> Yeah.

1:26:03

It just shows like we're once again lack of free will or like we're so susceptible to things way more than we realize and we fall into cohorts way especially that's what I find for be like you and we feel we're so individualistic and nobody's like us but then like they can nail you into a cohort pretty quickly.

1:26:17

You're right but you're like but there's less people in this cohort so therefore I'm kind of special.

1:26:23

Uh but you said you were think about that the other night.

1:26:25

I was actually thinking about the train right here.

1:26:27

I have a great question for you.

1:26:28

think is that I was thinking about with like the fellowships and everything you're doing, right?

1:26:31

And I think about like the history of trying to get people together, whether it's uh Tuxedo Park, Bell Labs, Santa Fe Institute.

1:26:36

So my guess was like you're almost trying to create a virtual Santa Fe Institute kind of like what you're doing here a little bit.

1:26:43

Um but I remember what dawned on me though on the train ride here was like I remember a student years ago was telling me he was taking a class on dystopias.

1:26:49

I was like hm I go just popped into my head.

1:26:53

was like, "You know what creates dystopias?" And he's like, "What?" I go, "Utopias." >> Of course. >> Right.

1:26:58

We would never have dystopias without somebody having a utopian ideal. Right. >> Exactly.

1:27:02

>> But when we're trying to create these fellowships and you're trying to create the people around you to keep you, you know, like engaged and everything is like I've always been studying that as well.

1:27:10

It's like how do you create that utopia without it becoming a dystopia?

1:27:13

Like one bad apple, right, can ruin the whole thing.

1:27:15

So I'm sure you've thought about way more than I have.

1:27:16

So that's I was really curious your take on that because like how do you create these great communities where people can really come together with divergent opinions and you you find something better through that but like it's very it's a it's a delicate structure to like maintain. >> It definitely is.

1:27:30

But that kind of gets to mesh networks versus command and control networks, right?

1:27:34

Like a mesh network that that's the Rothschilds.

1:27:36

Why were the Rothschilds rich?

1:27:38

They weren't rich because they had all the gold.

1:27:41

They were rich because they had brothers living in different cities, right?

1:27:46

Very key because different culture in that city, different intelligence, different things that you're going to know about.

1:27:56

And they had a worldclass both spy and and communication network with pigeons, right?

1:28:03

And so if they had a distributed network, which we call a mesh network, right?

1:28:10

And the the Republic of Letters, same thing.

1:28:14

Raphael, his studio was a mesh network.

1:28:17

People don't think about that, but Raphael had one guy who did perfect hands, one guy who did perfect eyes and nose, one guy and and so on down the thing.

1:28:29

And he would like literally let those guys do it, and then he'd come check it out, and he'd like add his touch.

1:28:36

But the the reason mesh networks work so well is because they are decentralized and they are not subject to a central authority. Right?

1:28:48

So the republic of letters is where like for hundreds of years people like Voltater, Frederick the Great, Katherine the Great um in interacted through letters with natural philosophers which became what we call scientists, right?

1:29:04

And and the way it worked was just purely organic.

1:29:07

You got a I got a letter from you and I'm like, "Wow, Jason makes a really great point here."

1:29:15

I annotate it and I put my opinion and then I forward it to another friend and then the value extractors come in and grab that network.

1:29:26

What grabbed the Republic of Letters?

1:29:30

the Royal Society because they were all members of that.

1:29:35

And then the minute you centralize it, what happens?

1:29:37

You start getting orthodoxies.

1:29:39

You start getting dystopias, right?

1:29:42

And I'm not saying that the Royal Society created a dystopia. >> Yeah.

1:29:47

Like we talked about like if Buddha came back and saw Buddhism, what are you guys doing?

1:29:52

>> What is going on here?

1:29:52

But did you think like for example like Bell Labs it wasn't centralizing truly in the fact like it was just centralized funding coming from Bell Labs and they let them kind of do whatever they wanted.

1:30:04

>> We're making a documentary about it uh and we're using uh the book and and working with the author.

1:30:09

The book is called the idea factory and Bell Labs is a perfect example because you're right the funding was coming in but the way they ran it was very decentralized.

1:30:21

I mean you had Claude Shannon like inventing trumpets that spit fire and a chess machine and >> wasn't the the original one was in West Village before it went to New Jersey. Right.

1:30:35

So how much of that is Zeitgeist dependent? Right.

1:30:37

dependent? Right. Because wasn't like Claude Shannon and the others they were staying up late at night to watch jazz in the village and it was just coming online right to have the coffee shops and like the kind of the bohemian lifestyle >> in the same way back to mesh networks that's another great example the way insurance emerged it emerged when coffee shops got popular >> right and everyone's wired on coffee and

1:30:59

suddenly we have an industrial revolution but the reason it worked for ensuring ships was distributed knowledge right if you have uncorrelated priors among people who have some reasonable level of experience in that particular thing, beautiful things can happen and that's how they ended up right that's created Lloyds of London and so I think that to your point like we are we would

1:31:29

never be so prescriptive that we have any kind of utopian agenda andor basically we have a very simple agenda which is we now can find and identify some of the most unconsens out there and we can fund them and so I kind of felt a moral responsibility to do that right like if you look at all of human history a genius could be born live and die and no one including the person knew that they had any special talents at

1:32:07

because we've we've gone from a very I mean think about the fact that your average human to ever live probably didn't wander too much outside of unless you were the earliest humans and hunter gatherer if you got around when we had villages and towns you you you maybe walked five or 10 miles and that was it >> right and so we are I kind of believe that with all of the interconnect connectedness and all that. Yeah, sure

1:32:36

Yeah, sure there are problems, but it also there's an emerging intelligence from that and I think that's hard to deny and you could take advantage of that.

1:32:46

And I think that one of the keys there is that it be diverse intelligence, right?

1:32:54

Like >> and again like you said, you you can only learn by screwing things up yourself.

1:33:03

I I learned this by watching it happen.

1:33:06

it happen. Like we have a annual gatherings where all the fellows come and all the OSVers are there and watching the marketing guy talking to the pure science geek and having both of them come to me and say that was the

1:33:21

most amazing conversation I've ever had in my life because the marketing guy got to learn about the all of the things that he thought he knew because he was a you know self-quant type guy uh the quantification of self and I don't interestingly I don't do any of that. Yeah, I have real watches. I don't have

1:33:37

Yeah, I have real watches.

1:33:37

I don't have Apple watches.

1:33:41

>> Um, >> so analog and cool.

1:33:41

You're like like the kids these days.

1:33:43

You're going back to cameras.

1:33:46

>> But the point is each learned from each other because they were just both fascinated on figuring out how do we solve your problem, right?

1:33:55

>> And her problem, the science geek, was that she was thinking about her invention, which is really interesting, in the completely the wrong way.

1:34:02

and her marketing would have failed and nobody would have used it.

1:34:07

And then our brilliant um marketing fellow was like oh no here's the way you got to do that.

1:34:16

So we don't have really grand ambition >> and that's the best part about like Santa Fe Institute was the cross-disiplinary nature like interacting and then the early days of Bell Labs right whether it was um when you cla Shannon interacting with John Kelly or whatever like it just led to much more interesting things that way and it's just like how do you create

1:34:32

those collisions because similar I was thinking about like what was it Hobber has communicative rationalism where it's like through dialogue and that process is where we can get to better ideas like I always I joked with you at your house it's like I always love that writers think that writing is the best part way to think, right? But I like dialogue. But I like dialogue.

1:34:48

Like iron sharpens iron, right?

1:34:48

Like you might be able to sit in your room and write and then spend months editing and then you bestow it upon me.

1:34:54

But I can't really argue against it.

1:34:55

You've been working on this thing for months, right? It's a monologue.

1:34:59

>> But in dialogue, hopefully we can get there in two hours.

1:35:00

That took you two months to get to.

1:35:01

But the hard part that they found out the hard way, let's say at Bridgewwater, for example, is that part of that communicative process is everybody's got to kind of be on equal footing and there's no like dictator.

1:35:14

there's nobody bullying the other people at the table.

1:35:15

And I think given human nature, that's the hardest part, right?

1:35:19

Is to make people feel comfortable in speaking up. And again, touche.

1:35:26

>> I don't know how you do it. That's why I'm asking.

1:35:28

>> I Well, again, that gets to what is the real hierarchy of needs for the human and and I definitely think that prestige and status sit at the top of that.

1:35:38

I think they or bottom I guess they drive so much of everything we do.

1:35:46

>> Oh, does the fellowship already give you that even playing field because you got the prestige and status of the fellowship.

1:35:49

So then maybe that's what lowers everybody's >> everybody's interesting right on the entry point. Yep.

1:35:55

>> If you got in this room, you have prestige and status. So we're all equal. >> Exactly.

1:36:00

>> And and so we're definitely finding that that is something.

1:36:04

And in fact, one thing that we're going to do is we used to distinguish between fellowships and grants. Grants are smaller.

1:36:10

Uh they were fixed at 10,000.

1:36:13

Uh fellowships were rarer and fixed at 100,000 for a year.

1:36:21

Uh, now they're all going to be fellowships and the grants aren't going to be fixed because one of the things that my team convinced me of was, you know, there are some grants that 10,000 really ain't going to move the needle, but they need 25, right?

1:36:34

And so, one of my colleagues who is also here um was polling everyone and he's like, let's just call everything fellowships.

1:36:44

And so, we think that it's going to serve that need even better.

1:36:48

So I I'm very interested to see that you picked up on that immediately.

1:36:52

>> So yeah, it's like uh you're all a MacArthur genius.

1:36:54

You're all a Shaughnessy genius. We're all okay. Exactly. Safe space. >> Yeah.

1:36:58

It's a safe space and you can do and look, I just think Tim Urban wrote the great book on this um that I I wish more people would have read.

1:37:06

And it it's like we get put into these just confirmation bias bubbles and like literally it's gotten to the point where you you could have two people in the same building, right?

1:37:24

And my neighbor lives right next door to me and the way we we actually happen to get along fine.

1:37:35

So this is a bad example, but he and I might have completely different filters, right, on the way we view the world.

1:37:43

I'm a huge believer that the lens you look through determines your experience.

1:37:48

And by that I mean the angry man lives in an angry world, the sad man lives in a sad world, the happy man lives in a happy world.

1:37:56

And and like the that like that people don't understand that kind of freaks me out.

1:38:06

>> But then you're saying I'm doomed to kmagin pessimism, right?

1:38:07

Like this is just my this is my life.

1:38:11

>> There is no hope for you, Jason.

1:38:12

>> At least I find some some humor in it that I guess, right?

1:38:14

It's like gallows humor, but I actually think about the lens is actually right behind you.

1:38:17

Like that beautiful Vic Mun piece.

1:38:19

I assume that's what it is, right?

1:38:20

Like >> he saw food and saw art in poverty.

1:38:22

Like his story is the most incredible. had him on.

1:38:26

He sat right where you are sitting.

1:38:28

>> He's always fascinated because I lived in Brazil for a while and that that he always fascinated me like what he's able to create.

1:38:32

Just when you think like every form of art has been done, they come up with a new one. How is that possible?

1:38:39

>> Those are real creative people. We're fake creative. >> That's right. They're true creatives.

1:38:44

Well, and that's the thing like there's just so much that we I'm a huge fan of David Deutsch because I think he's right.

1:38:51

Like we are literally at the beginning. What did Edison say?

1:38:54

We don't know onetenth of 1% about nothing.

1:38:56

And and we we get this idea that oh we are the modern ones.

1:39:03

We are the ones who know about all right.

1:39:05

They thought the same thing.

1:39:09

>> You bring you bring up samvice all the time. Right.

1:39:11

My sister's a eurog gynecological surgeon.

1:39:13

Got got that out properly. >> Wow.

1:39:16

>> And I always say how do you not know?

1:39:18

She does a lot of like hysterctomies.

1:39:18

I go in the future you might be known as the butcher of Miami.

1:39:21

This is what it's like to have me as a brother.

1:39:23

And she's like, "What are you talking about?"

1:39:26

And like 100 years from now, we might think hysterctomies were the most brutish thing we ever came up with. Totally.

1:39:32

>> But like you said, we we act like we're at the frontiers of knowledge and we've got everything figured out >> and we don't. >> Yeah.

1:39:38

>> And and the more you really internalize that, right, it's like when I'm always riffing on um on deterministic beings living in a probabilistic universe, tragedy or comedy, hilarity result?

1:39:54

hilar hopefully that or at least that's the lens I want to see at the rate >> that and and again that's generally the two results and it just amazes me that we return to our base rate our set rate for like it there's so much evidence that certain ways of doing things really don't work >> this maybe goes back to what we're

1:40:18

talking I'm curious how you think about this is like because I know like your fan are normally like bays and everything like that but like I have My general life philosophy is like uh it's ironic being on infinite loops because my I thought once again you were stealing it from me before I got there is my life philosophy is open loops. So

1:40:30

So everything we know as human beings is a closed loop system right but there's al always permeability around the edges right and we live in this open loop world and the closest some of the closest things I found to that was um there was a statistician called Savage I think it was like Jimmy Savage in the 50s. >> Yeah. Yeah.

1:40:46

>> Yeah. Yeah. Leonard he's known as Jimmy Savage but he talked about small world and big world problems or small world and large world problems and he said small world problems and this is I think it applies to AI interestingly too that I always point out is like if you have chess go Jeopardy those are closed loop

1:41:01

systems they're a known system with known probabilities and statistics to it that's a small world problem and in a small world closed loop problem you can apply uh probability statistics and even basian theory too >> but as soon as you get into large world problem you need rough heristics because you have no idea. I guess TB got close

1:41:19

I guess TB got close with extremist would be large world problems.

1:41:23

So like that's the separation I see.

1:41:25

So in a way like it's a another contradictive dichotomy is like we're trying to solve a problem, right?

1:41:30

We know it's a large world problem that we can never know the answer, but we use small world solutions in narrow fields to try to stack them up to hopefully do our best in a large world problem. Mhm. >> Does that make sense?

1:41:42

The way I just like this is the thing that bothers me every day probably.

1:41:46

>> And and you are absolutely right about the closed looped problem.

1:41:50

>> Um and and trying by transitive property.

1:41:53

Well, >> yeah, >> we can use that for all of these large world problems. Actually, we we can't. >> Right.

1:42:02

>> And and that's why I I I I don't yearn for a theory of everything. >> Oh, neither do I. Yeah.

1:42:08

I I I it's like when I read cuz I and I read these guys, right?

1:42:12

Because I'm interested in what they have to say.

1:42:15

>> That's the height of hubris, right?

1:42:15

Like I'm going to solve everything with one theory. >> How insane is that? >> Crazy. >> Yeah.

1:42:21

>> It's just like, >> yeah, probably not.

1:42:23

You're probably not going to do that.

1:42:26

>> But on the flip side though, don't you think like the mental models of having 30, 50, 100 mental models and all this stuff is like that's actually not helping you either?

1:42:34

Like it's actually because interesting like we all like to have like childlike mind and go back to the beginning but you're going to shortorthhand things through mental models and therefore the map is not the territory and actually mental models can be more of a handicap than a that they can be more a hindrance than a help and >> that's interesting.

1:42:49

So, I just I knew you'd like that because I knew that would get you cuz it's a that you know I knew that >> you just destroyed my 50 I guess I started working on this at about uh 15.

1:43:02

So, my 50 years >> of mental models >> of metal models >> but you know what I'm saying like >> now you just have short hands. I hit the power button. Jim's done.

1:43:13

>> But this was what gives you joy too is like pulling on that thread.

1:43:16

>> If we pull long enough, >> your name is Jason, right?

1:43:20

We hopefully pull in that thread unravels the whole sweater, right? Like that's the point. Yeah.

1:43:24

>> And I know you get See, I knew you get it right away, too.

1:43:26

It's like, oh [ __ ] I shorthand these things into mental models so I don't have to think about them again.

1:43:31

And I automatically put things in these boxes where it may not fit in that box, >> which is the my revolt against labels, right?

1:43:38

Labels do exactly the same thing.

1:43:42

And what do we love to do?

1:43:43

love to do? We love to label everything because putting it in that label box we don't have to think about it anymore or we don't >> right >> whereas we should and so I >> but is that conservation energy principle like do we have the ability to

1:44:00

fight that entropy every day of not putting in those boxes like because we're going through such a complex world >> I I got to like >> that is a great point and and I don't know the answer I have no idea whether

1:44:10

we have the energy to do that I think you're probably right I think that the look George Box famously said all models are wrong some are useful right so again I cling to that evidence right >> your VA model just needs garch to attach

1:44:27

to it you know and then >> and I windsize it a little eventually you'll get there that cherry pick hindsight bias and then I'm you you don't understand I've never made a mistake ever in my entire life. >> Mistakes were made, but not by me.

1:44:48

>> Mistakes were made, but not by me.

1:44:50

>> And you know, I that was one of my most popular pieces that I wrote, uh, which was mistakes were made and yes, by me. >> Nice.

1:44:58

>> Because like that that seems to be another thing.

1:45:01

Another reason I really love talking to you is like I I talk to so many smart and interesting people who just have this aversion to ever saying I was wrong or I don't know.

1:45:20

>> Pomp had me on his podcast when he was still Mr.

1:45:23

still Mr. crypto and he said the thing that he loved best about it was half of my answers he goes we counted them half of my answers were I don't know >> I don't know >> that's what I'm just creatively trying like you we started with like you evaded my question I'm like I'm going to evade

1:45:40

all of them because the whole setup here is for you to ask a question and me to provide an answer when every answer I want to be like I don't know >> right and that's why I always tell you it's my favorite at like all of these finance or macro events Everybody wants to talk about the future and it bas my first question. It's like I don't know

1:45:56

It's like I don't know the answer >> and by the way that's another thing that like I love AI.

1:45:59

I I think it but I think of AI as a tool that leverages my ability to do things much better than I could do them alone.

1:46:11

Um but and so I loved it when it was called machine learning.

1:46:14

I loved it when I wrote at age 22 a like 20page thing in my journal about the computer I wanted.

1:46:23

I called it a supercomputer back then.

1:46:25

Uh but it was literally AI. I reread it.

1:46:28

But I was talking to a guy who is uh one of our uh Oshanos partners uh OSAM partners uh who do research using all of our data and he had he' uh retired very early from one of the big tech companies bored out of his mind and wanted to do some research and he was an expert in machine learning and I'm so I'm like so I think this is amazing but why are people like resist existent.

1:46:57

And he goes, I can tell you exactly why.

1:46:59

He goes, because we don't answer that question.

1:47:04

We don't answer the question why.

1:47:08

>> We can tell you this this pattern is showing up repeatedly.

1:47:15

It it leads to these patterns and these outcomes this percentage of the time and to these very different outcomes this percentage of the time and the first question you're going to have is why and the model's going to go no idea move on >> this goes back to your humans with

1:47:39

probabilistic thinking is like do you remember um Charles Saunders Pur's like abductive reasoning And that abductive reasoning is actually your basian prior >> right and that's what we are doing as humans is making these predictions like we had this entire history of inductive

1:47:56

or deductive reasoning we don't do that we abductive reason quick and dirty probabilities and then see if that worked all right worked pretty good >> um and then we move on >> I didn't die >> yeah and and similarly that's what AI is doing is just predictive token you know

1:48:10

analysis right and then just getting to a probabilistic answer >> and do you think part of it I also wonder Charles Saunders Pur reminds me of like the American pragmatists in like one of the greatest philosophies of all time but never will be respected because it wasn't continental philosophy. I know

1:48:23

I know >> but at the same time as you know the history of philosophy is like it took extreme wealth to have philosophers who had the free time.

1:48:31

>> And so as America is the wealthiest country in the world >> another great marketer of all time Plato. >> Yeah.

1:48:37

>> Plato knew how to market the [ __ ] out of everything he did. his whole academy.

1:48:42

All of his dialogues were written after the with the name of the rich patron that he would go hit up for the money.

1:48:46

I mean, the guy was a brilliant marketer. Aristotle, not so much. >> Yeah.

1:48:54

And all he did was write down a great man's ideas and create an entire system around him. >> Exactly.

1:48:59

>> Who didn't want to write things down. >> Exactly.

1:49:00

And pragmatism, William James, same thing, right?

1:49:03

same thing, right? like America pragmatism is a very robust way of looking at things and you're right like that's so American >> well it's pragmat pragmatic is in the title like we're trying to actually get to a solution here but also I can't

1:49:20

myself wonder if like Charles Pur also he tried to pull away from the pragmatism called it like pragmatisticism like have his own version it's like are we just drawn to the people that are like not only the weirdos of the weirdos I think >> cuz he's my favorite a little. He's one

1:49:32

He's one of my favorites, too, actually. That's really funny.

1:49:36

I didn't know he was one of yours. >> Yeah. Pragnatism.

1:49:38

So, like, yeah, we've talked about like Dioynes the cynic before or like EQ like in Jim Harrison like with the book I get like it's just like are we drawn to like the weirdos of the weirdos? Like I just can't help.

1:49:49

>> I Well, I think just life is so much more interesting in the tales, right?

1:49:53

like and and and that's another reason why I think that you know this interconnectivity is there's gold in them there tails and in the old days right how many companies could you work for we were talking about

1:50:09

that right and like the man in the gray flannel suit was an outcome of the way that society was organized and you know our society because of this awesome ability to connect and and convert like there's lots of little hills that you can power law up. There's not just one

1:50:28

There's not just one or two anymore.

1:50:30

There's thousands, right?

1:50:34

And that's why you see this proliferation of Substacks and of podcasts and of all of these various things because like people have very very different interests and now you can do pretty well.

1:50:46

What who's the guy who does the 10,00 true fans? Yeah. >> Yeah. I love his work. Like he's right.

1:50:54

You you can definitely like you your way of investing with the >> I see a thousand true fans. That's what I'm getting.

1:51:01

>> That's that's what you got.

1:51:01

>> But I got to fire 99,000 to get to a thousand, right?

1:51:03

So I'm still working out those numbers. >> Yeah. We've got like 300.

1:51:06

So like I'm getting there.

1:51:08

>> Well, I also love the fact that the the that you the name mutiny and cockroach.

1:51:15

Like I I I when I first saw that from you, I just laughed out loud. I was like perfection. It is perfection.

1:51:24

>> You love and hate our actual first working titles were either Adoraxia or EPO.

1:51:29

>> And so now you get like no come on.

1:51:29

Like it got to the marketing side of my brain thankfully, but Adorax is like unperturbed by external events.

1:51:34

That's the idea of [ __ ] like but then EPO is one of my favorite from like uh I think it's purely skepticism, but like is I determine nothing.

1:51:42

So that's what you and I are trying to say is like what you try to get to the epo like I determine nothing.

1:51:47

Does that give you adoraxia udeimmonia?

1:51:49

I don't know >> but I can't determine anything with certainty >> right >> cuz I can't help the counterveailing force is like I'm susceptible to that argument too. >> Yeah. >> Right.

1:51:58

And that's where like that justosition always happens.

1:52:01

>> And like I'm as you know writing a my first fictional thriller which is really fun because I'm learning a lot.

1:52:07

Uh, but one of my characters names all of his shell corporations after Douglas Adams uh entities and and one of his uh fellow characters is like, "Do you name all of your shells uh about using Douglas Adams?"

1:52:24

And he goes, "No, no, no.

1:52:24

Just the ones that build worlds because mega whatever is the name of his shell."

1:52:29

Um, and that's another thing like one of the things uh that I found is really cool about AI is I tend to when I'm writing a fictional character, I want to bring them to life as best I can.

1:52:46

And so the character bibles I have for my main characters, some of them go to over a thousand pages because I'll sit there for weeks and think about that character.

1:52:59

And then I'll think, here's the books that they like.

1:53:01

Here are the TV shows they watch.

1:53:03

Here's the music they listen to.

1:53:06

Here are the rabbit holes they dive down.

1:53:08

And like I'm thinking of it for this character, but I can't remember the 20 pages on Douglas Adams.

1:53:17

As much as I love Douglas Adams that I gave to one of my characters, the AI serves as a second brain.

1:53:22

And it's like, yeah, you should name it this because he loves Doug Adams.

1:53:27

And after all, dude, you wrote 20 pages about it. >> Oh, good. He's in here.

1:53:34

I was wondering if you if John Mark was in here because like one of my other theories is like we're complex schizophrenics.

1:53:40

So that's yours like these characters write themselves.

1:53:44

I'm like are do they or is this part of Jim we haven't seen before? >> Right.

1:53:49

It goes back to like the humunulous. Right.

1:53:50

It's like no there's just one person in here but no there's 30 voices screaming at one time and the loudest one comes out.

1:53:57

>> I contain multitudes my friend. I contain multiples. >> I contradict myself.

1:54:00

Therefore I contradict myself.

1:54:03

>> Therefore I contradict myself.

1:54:03

That's one of my favorite lines. It's one of mine, too.

1:54:06

>> It's infuriating to people. >> I know.

1:54:08

But like Jean Mark will say to me when I'm telling him about the villain who's named Reinhardt Falconbach.

1:54:15

Um, and this is an epic, right?

1:54:18

It starts in World War II and ends next year.

1:54:20

Um, and it's uh I won't give it away, but like when I'm in the when I'm in the super villain mode, you Mark will look at me and go, "Um, Jim, you you're making those arguments of Reinhardt very compelling."

1:54:42

So, he actually made me a sign that says, "Never go full Falcon Buck.

1:54:54

So yeah, I contain multitudes.

1:54:54

What can I tell you, dude? >> As do you. >> Yeah.

1:54:59

When you're saying about AI though, I'm curious.

1:55:00

Like you said, like I this is what I love.

1:55:01

You're like, "Okay, we call it AI.

1:55:02

Before that, we called the LLMs.

1:55:04

Before that, we called it machine learning.

1:55:05

Before that, we had Excel sheets.

1:55:06

Before that, we had human computers.

1:55:08

Before that, like we had double entry bookkeeping, right?

1:55:09

Like you've seen it all."

1:55:12

So, um I'm sure you're aware like Schopenhau had this theory that it was like for every generation you live, it's selling tickets to the Conjurer show, selling tickets to the magic show.

1:55:20

And so, you've seen it all before.

1:55:22

Like, so I'm saying like, you know, we were around when Madonna came out.

1:55:25

Oh my god, like look at what Madonna did.

1:55:27

Then it was Britney Spears and then now it's whoever whoever the newest one is.

1:55:30

But it's like for every success generation you live, you've sold tickets to that conjure show. So, you see it.

1:55:35

But what I'm always um jealous or envious of with you is like how do you not how do you maintain your levity and enjoyment when you've seen it all before? >> Well, I haven't. See, that's the thing.

1:55:50

I haven't seen it all before.

1:55:50

I You've never seen my villain, >> right?

1:55:54

>> And you've never seen my good guy.

1:55:54

Um and I think that it's I'm having so much fun remixing.

1:56:02

And believe me, Jason, I know it's a remix, right?

1:56:06

I'm I'm not fooling myself.

1:56:08

I'm not like, I am the greatest storyteller of all time.

1:56:12

I am creating an entirely new universe and no one will have ever come on.

1:56:18

I mean, it is informed by everything I've ever read. I love science fiction. I love Tolken. I love philosophy.

1:56:29

And like, how do I make Nichi fun?

1:56:29

Maybe I do contain multitudes, but so do you, my friend. >> I appreciate that. >> So do you.

1:56:36

This has been even more fun than I thought it was going to be.

1:56:39

Um, I'm definitely Next time you're in New York, uh, you got to come back because this is what this podcast was really meant to be.

1:56:49

Um, just a a very nonformal, nonformatted discussion between people who are interested in stuff.

1:56:58

And man, you are that um why are you going to London?

1:57:06

>> Uh there's a volatility summit uh that 36L puts on in London and then my wife's going to meet me over there.

1:57:11

She's in uh Bordeaux in Barcelona right now. >> Oh.

1:57:15

>> And then we go to Copenhagen after it. So >> Oh, well l. >> Yeah, I'm very fancy.

1:57:20

>> Yeah, you are much fancier than me, man.

1:57:23

Like I'm just slaving away trying to write a fiction uh thriller.

1:57:25

Well, this has been super fun.

1:57:29

As you might or might not know, our final question is the one that we ask everyone.

1:57:34

We're going to wave a wand.

1:57:38

We're going to make you the emperor of the world.

1:57:39

And I knew I was thinking about this on my way here because I'm thinking I I think he might just refuse to answer.

1:57:49

I totally forgot about the question and then you're just asking.

1:57:51

I'm like and I almost went to you.

1:57:52

What do you think I'm going to say? And like you're okay. >> Okay.

1:57:57

So, you're the emperor of the world.

1:57:58

Just for people who haven't seen the show before, >> you can't kill anyone.

1:58:02

You can't put anyone in a re-education camp, but you can.

1:58:06

We're going to give you a magical microphone like these here, and you can say two things into it that are going to incept all 8 billion plus people on the planet.

1:58:17

whenever their morning is, they're going to wake up and they're going to say, you know, unlike all of the other times that I woke up with two great ideas, this time I'm actually going to act on both of these.

1:58:28

I'm going to put both of these into action in my life.

1:58:32

What What are you going to accept?

1:58:34

>> This is the scariest question I've ever heard.

1:58:36

And like you said, I bristled at it tremendously. >> I thought you would.

1:58:40

>> Um, but I do know what you're doing.

1:58:42

this is your feral trickster energy cuz you just want to see how people respond like you know and so I think that inherently there's as you know there's so much soypism in this question right and this is why I always hated like some other questions like what would you put on a billboard for everybody to see

1:58:56

which is kind of similar it's like I don't have ideas I want everybody to see nor do I want people to think like me um so I what would I want people to do so the first thing that actually popped into my head was actually I think Steven Cobar said he was going to write a children's book called [ __ ] it we're all going to Okay. >> It's that my head but that maybe that's

1:59:12

>> It's that my head but that maybe that's not a a thing to inset people with and then >> Yeah, probably not.

1:59:17

>> Yeah, but that one doesn't work.

1:59:18

>> And maybe it goes back to our idea of of nihilism and it's really the quotedian pleasures of the day and I'm thinking about maybe it was over a decade ago maybe on the nerdest podcast.

1:59:26

It was like one of the guys on there was talking about um he had moved to LA to become a comedian and he didn't know anything about LA so he got a place in Long Beach because it was cheap which is pretty far from LA in the comedy scene.

1:59:38

Um, but he was, you know, kind of living, you know, barely getting by and he'd go and do comedy and everything.

1:59:43

But luckily in his neighborhood, there was a Mexican spot that had this great burrito that was very large and very cheap.

1:59:48

And every day, this was the joy of his day was going to eat this burrito.

1:59:52

And it got to the point though where he would get there, he'd order his burrito, he'd start maybe a third of the way into the burrito and he's like, "This is my joy, my day, everything."

2:00:01

And then he'd start thinking about all the shitty things left in the day.

2:00:02

And so through the second twothirds of the burrito, he's thinking about all the bad parts of his day.

2:00:07

So he missed the joy of his day because this is a very human condition, right?

2:00:12

>> So he eventually came up with this moniker, enjoy your burrito and people like tattooed it on like this is a very old thing and to me that's like the the quote enjoy those quotian pleasures like enjoy your burrito.

2:00:23

>> So I don't know if I had a better succinct way of saying that.

2:00:25

Uh but we need two >> we need two.

2:00:30

>> The second one this is very personal and we were just talking about me traveling and having a multi-ity tour.

2:00:34

I want to accept incept Americans and westerners to the joy of the Japanese washlit toilet.

2:00:43

>> I have two in my house.

2:00:44

>> I have them in my house, too.

2:00:44

And it depresses me every time I leave my house and go out in this world of barbaric paper.

2:00:51

>> Like, what are we doing in 2026?

2:00:55

Water is better than paper. >> Amen, brother.

2:00:58

That That one will get you a Hallelujah.

2:01:03

>> I'd build a whole house around that. the total toilet. >> Yes, absolutely. They are the bomb.

2:01:05

And we at the point in our house like anyone who comes to our house of the family where where did so and so go?

2:01:15

They went to the bathroom.

2:01:17

You mean the one at the end of uh Yeah.

2:01:19

Because it's the Japanese toilet.

2:01:22

They really I think that is maybe one of the greatest inceptions I've ever heard.

2:01:28

>> I hope I hope it catches on.

2:01:28

I hope I have superpowers.

2:01:31

>> Jason, this has been super fun.

2:01:31

Thank you for chatting with me. >> Thank you.