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We're taught know your destination, you know, follow that one path, be better than other people on the same stuff. It's so crazy.
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Like that's the kiss of death.
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You're not thinking for yourself.
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You're just following the flow and it's like nothing brilliant ever gets created that way. Well, hello everybody.
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It's Jim Oonis here with yet another Infinite Loops.
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Today I have a return guest, my friend Todd Rose, author of Collective Illusions, founder of Populus, former [music] Harvard professor.
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Please enjoy my conversation with Todd Rose.
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[music] Well, Todd, I have been looking forward to this forever because while we talked a lot about your books and a lot about uh your thesis on on why we're seeing what we're seeing, we didn't really spend too much time on you and I love origin stories.
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So, if you wouldn't mind tell us a little bit more about your background before we get to this so what of it. >> That's great.
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Yeah, I like happy to be here again. So good to see you.
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I'm always interested in why people end up caring about what they care about and it there's almost always some personal side to it.
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My scientific interests are definitely informed by personal story and it sort of starts at like rock bottom, right?
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So I I grew up in in rural Utah.
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Um had some some pluses to it but uh in a environment that really prized conformity that was not really going to work very well for me >> especially for you. for me.
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Yeah, it's a [laughter] asking why was not a good question.
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Um, got you in more trouble than it was worth, but uh >> they tried to install the correct answer machine in your brain.
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>> One right answer for things for me, you know, and it like school didn't work very well, which is kind of funny.
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Um, >> that's why we get along.
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[laughter] >> It's exactly right.
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It's but it's like uh by not working out well I mean I failed out of high school with a 0.
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9 GPA which I think you actually have to work really hard >> I'm impressed >> to do yeah to do that point I didn't even get socially promoted right [laughter] but it just kind of snowballs right and like it's it's funny um I like to say it was like a mutual decision but in reality they just kicked me out cuz they're like you can't graduate you're starting your senior year you're just messing around you need to you, I leave.
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And a few months later, uh, my girlfriend, who was my wife for 29 years, uh, found out she was pregnant, >> which again is not something one does in rural Utah.
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[laughter] >> So, this is a good way to start.
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>> You were on the three strikes in your surprise, they didn't run you out of town on a rail.
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[laughter] >> No, my father-in-law tried, you know, he was So, for like the first two years, we had another kid.
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So, uh, we stopped there, you know, um, and I had 10 minimum wage jobs in that span. Wow.
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>> You just bounce around from I I sold computers at Circuit City. I I was a 4 a. m.
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shift manager at Einstein's Bagels. I sold cell phones. I, you know, whatever.
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But the stuff you can do with no high school diploma. Turns out not a lot.
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But, um, you know, I I sold fence, which by the way, on a different conversation we'll talk.
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It was actually quite an enjoyable job.
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But um it it culminates with [laughter] the the job that really kicked me in the rear was I was a nurse assistant and I was working at an old folks home, but I moved on um to home health care and my job, no kidding, cuz they paid $1 more an hour was to drive around and give people enemas. That was my actual job.
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Now it's a it's an honest living. Somebody has to do it.
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But this was this is no kidding.
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The um the piece of advice that stuck in my head.
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My my boss um I don't even remember her name, but I remember her advice.
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She said, "You need to invest in longer gloves because the ones they give you for free are not long enough."
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And she [laughter] was spot on.
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So, I'm doing that work and I'm like, "This something has to change, man."
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And my dad, you know, I got a lot of inspiration.
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My dad, he was a mechanic for most of his life.
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Um, when I was in middle school, I remember he came home one day and he told my mom, "I I I think there's something more for me."
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Um, and so he decided to go to school at night at Weber State University, open enrollment school in Ogden, Utah, and he became a mechanical engineer.
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And he just retired as one of the most prolific innovators in airbags that ever exist. He has so many patents.
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He's created all kinds of things that save people's lives.
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But I also watched education transform our lives and life's circumstances.
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We went from poor to solidly middle class.
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Um, and so I was like, well, I got to do something.
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I said, maybe I'll go to college, which is funny cuz they're like, well, first you have to get a GED, [laughter] right? >> Right.
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>> Turns out I aced that test.
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But, um, my family, my my in-laws, they were really frustrated with me, as they probably should have been.
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you know, I I'd taken their daughter and um didn't really look like I was going to be able to give her much security or or anything, but everybody had like my family, their family cobbled together just enough money for me to go for one year.
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And it was not that much.
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It was like $800 a term, but that was all we had.
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And they said, "Okay, if you really care about this, you'll make it work."
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And so I I start at Weber State.
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And I I promise this is it's my long-winded way of getting to stuff I've done, but it was really in trying to figure out how to make that work that I discovered a lot of ideas that would ultimately become part of my scientific work.
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And you know, I show up on campus, I'm going to they only let me go at night to start.
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They wouldn't let me like end of the day.
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But I get this uh my dad tells me he said, "Look, you don't have any study skills."
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So, you should probably pick classes that you're passionate about so you can build that muscle.
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Well, I get I get I go to the uh counselor that's assigned to me because of my last name, right?
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Covers like, you know, whatever.
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[laughter] And uh he says, "Well, you know, you failed algebra three times in high school.
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You should probably take remedial math."
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And I was like, even I knew that was the most taken and failed class in the country, >> right?
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I'm like, why would I that be over, right?
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He's like, you probably should take remedial English.
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Um, and so I didn't do any of that, right?
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I started picking um just classes that would would keep my interest.
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Uh and um I took an economics class cuz, you know, being poor, it was [laughter] nice.
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But um and so I'm doing these things and I I I realized I didn't know what would work, but I knew what I'd done before didn't work, which was there seemed to be one way that people were smart and that they studied and that they achieved. That didn't work for me.
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And so I was just groping trying to figure out of desperation to not go back to giving enemas like what to do.
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>> That is a powerful motivator.
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>> Unbelievable motivator.
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It still [laughter] drives me today.
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But I'm making decisions.
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I start to realize like there are certain kinds of topics.
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Fine, everybody knows that they're interested in some things, not others.
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But I noticed that the type of professor made a difference.
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I also knew that like this was an open enrollment school.
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So I was with people I went to school with, and I knew when I was in that environment, the pool to be like the class clown was powerful.
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So I'd immediately enroll in something else.
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But this really I I you know I saw this as like okay some people are just smart they can make it I have to there's something wrong with me I have to like do it differently but this defining moment for me it completely changed my life I'm sitting in this big lecture
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hall which is not good for me for a history class and I'm sitting next to my buddy Steve and I'm just like this is torture but I there's no other option I got to get through it [snorts] and class is ending and he goes I don't what you're complaining about. This is
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This is nothing compared to what I got myself into in the honors program.
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I have never heard of the honors.
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I thought it was the same, just more work or whatever.
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But I he disabuses me that really quick.
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He says, "No, no, no, no.
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There's no lecture halls.
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There's just like 10 people in a room and you just talk."
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And he's like, "There are no tests. You just write essays."
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Um, he goes, "I don't think there answers. All we do is debate."
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And I'm like, "Wait, wait, hold on.
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This sounds like it's his nightmare."
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>> I was like, "This this is, are you kidding me?
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This this can't be how education is, right?"
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So, I get really excited and race up the top of the hill.
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The honors program's on the second floor of the library. Top of the hill.
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I skip my next class to go cuz I I got to be in the honors program.
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So, I I I go right up there. I go in.
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Uh the secretary, Marilyn Diamond, she'll she'll play an important role in a moment here.
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I said, "Hey, I want to be in the honors program." said, "Great.
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We're really proud of this.
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Let me get you in to see the the director."
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So, let me We I sit down with this guy. He's really nice.
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We're sitting [snorts] about like this across from his desk and uh he said, "Okay, well, just look just formality.
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Let me just get you in the system, my name, [snorts] everything."
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And he said, "Hey, just um you know, what was your uh high school GPA?" And I said, "Um 0. 9."
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[laughter] And this is no kidding. He says, "What 0. 9?"
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Like I'd left off the most important part of the story.
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And it and I said, "Oh, uh, zero. 9."
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And he was so nice about it, but he just looks at me, he goes, "You you can't be in the honors [laughter] program."
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He was really kind, but I I took it as we have standards, right?
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Um, [laughter] and I was like mortified.
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I just rushed into this thing almost impulsively.
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[snorts] Um, and here I am just sitting here just so embarrassed and I'm like, "I'm so sorry."
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Like, "How quickly can I get out of here?"
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So, I'm packing up stuff, like stand up, shake his hand, thanks for your time.
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And I'm bolting out the door.
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As I'm walking out, Marilyn Diamond, the secretary, her desk is right next to the door.
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And I'm [snorts] walking out, really almost holding back tears, being so embarrassed, and she reaches out and grabs my arm and she says, "Hey, I I overheard the conversation.
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don't take no for an answer. And I was like, what? What do you mean? Like what is that?
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I I don't even know what you can do that. Like he said no. And she don't take no.
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She go sit on that couch and don't leave until he lets you in. So I was like, okay. So I sat on the couch.
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He comes out and goes to teach a class.
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He comes back a couple hours later. I'm still there.
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It was felt like an entire day.
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Um and he's like, "What are you doing?"
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I said, "Well, I want to be in the honors program."
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And so he says, "Okay, just come in my office for a minute."
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We sit down and he said, "Look, why do you want to be in the honors program?
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Because on paper it makes no sense."
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So I started explaining what I'd learned about myself um and this idea of a good fit for me.
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And I said, "Look, I know it doesn't look like it, but this seems perfect for me."
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And to his credit, you know, he couldn't let me in straight up.
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Uh but he said, "Look, I'll let you in on a provisional basis and here's what I'm you can choose one class and if you do well, I'll let you choose another class and we'll go from there."
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And he made it really clear.
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He said, "By doing well, I don't mean that you got the best grade in the class."
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>> He said, "I am going to ask that professor at the end of the semester and they should tell me they can't imagine the class without you >> in terms of your contributions." >> Okay.
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So, I picked really really carefully like went through all the options.
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I picked uh plagues of the modern era.
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Scared the living out of me.
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Like I I was like almost a vegan after that.
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[laughter] It was kind of terrifying. Kept my attention.
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But it turned out to be uh exactly right.
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It was such a good fit for my own individuality and I did extremely well and then I did extremely well and flash forward I, you know, came into Weber State with a high school, you know, a GED and a 0.
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9 GPA and I graduated in uh premed and psychology with a 397 and I was the honor student of the year the year I graduated.
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And I I tell that story for for two reasons.
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There's two important takeaways.
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Um, one is this idea of fit.
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And we'll come back to that later because so often we think about you're either talented, you're not, you're smart, you're not, you know, and I had internalized that I just wasn't smart.
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>> Boy, it taught me in a hurry that it's really about knowing yourself and getting yourself in these environments where that individuality is such a good fit.
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And learning got easier, you know, you just it changed how I thought about myself.
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But but the second thing that I'll just never forget is the role of Marilyn Diamond because I worked really hard. I did. I put in the effort.
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I still, you know, had to work during the day, went to school at night for quite a while.
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But none of that was going to matter if she didn't intervene.
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And what I think is so funny about this is, so just a few years ago, I I get asked to come back to Weaver State.
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They want to celebrate me as this, you know, former student of the year, give me this award. And I'm like, fantastic.
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So, I'm there to give this speech in this auditorium.
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It turns out that Marilyn Diamond is retiring that year.
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So, I thought, well, you know what I'll do?
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I'll use this time to tell some version of this story and really celebrate her. So, I I I share it. It's [snorts] great.
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Uh, the university president says, "Well, Marilyn, why don't you come on up and and say a few things?"
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and she's she comes up slowly to the stage and she's quite a bit shorter than I am and she gives me a hug and then gets up there and adjusts the mic and she [clears throat] says, "Oh, thank you, Todd.
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It's it's good to see you, but I have to admit I I don't remember that [laughter] story."
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And I thought she was saying you're lying.
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And but it turned out no, it's that everybody had a Marilyn Diamond story.
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She was just that person. >> Yeah.
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And you know, it really struck me that when we think about the way we support one another in our development, in our ability to accomplish what we want to accomplish, we tend to think it requires some herculean effort. Sometimes it does.
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But here's something where Marilyn intervened, it literally changed my life.
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And it was so inconsequential to her, she didn't even remember it.
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And so I think, you know, so often when we want to think about supporting one another that it's like we think, "Oh, it's going to take so much effort."
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But no, we can be Marilyn Diamond for one another. It it's pretty shocking. >> Yeah.
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And it's funny because I just had on the podcast an author uh named Mike Perry and his most recent book is called Improbable Mentors.
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And he tells a story very similar to your diamond story.
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In other words, the the people that we expect to be the ones to, you know, really change our life or do any of that actually aren't at all.
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They're the Marilyn Diamonds of the world.
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It's it's a short fun little book and it it looks at the world that way. Yeah.
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>> Uh it's basically he had a he had a really backstory not unlike your own.
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He he grew up on a farm in Wisconsin.
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was a farm boy, but uh also the class clown. All of the above.
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And uh he he ended up uh getting a nursing degree, right?
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Because he figured that would be his parachute, >> but he really wanted to be a writer, right?
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And so I won't give the book away.
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It's a It's got a lot of really great But what really struck me as you were telling that story, I just finished the book on the way in and that's her. Wow. That is her.
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>> This is amazing because I could I could basically tell my entire story >> through a series of improbable mentors, right?
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And you know, it's funny.
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So I am uh basically okay now I have this I straight A student, you know, I have this and I'm thinking of going to grad school.
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No one in my family's ever gone to graduate school.
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So I have no idea what I'm doing.
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You know, as luck may have it, I'd applied to a number of things.
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I wanted to work with this renowned scholar named Kurt Fischer. What?
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Because I'd got a book about this new science that was emerging kind of the science of individuality where we were getting away from aggregate data and starting to think about humans as unique individuals and that you could still build a science that gave some universal sort of insights from that.
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That resonated with me quite deeply.
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The book I had gotten said he was at the University of Denver.
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I was like, "That's great.
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This is like right up the road, you know, eight hours."
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But, you know, um it turns out he was at Harvard.
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I didn't even know where Harvard was.
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Like, like the idea of Harvard isn't even in the conversation for people like me.
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That's just not, you know, it's not like, oh, we couldn't.
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It's like, I don't even know what it is. Right.
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So, I thought, well, >> okay, but >> if I don't apply, you know, you'll never know, right?
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You just got to >> can't tell till you ask. >> Yeah.
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And it's funny when you're I applied to like 13 schools because it's like I don't know I don't know how qualified I am.
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Um and we're like eating ramen noodles to try to afford these applications, right?
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So I I get into Harvard and we pack up everything we have into a minivan and a little U-Haul, which to my dad's everlasting shame as an engineer, um I don't know how to load.
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Um so I frontloaded it, jammed it full of everything.
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We can't go more than 42 miles an hour or fishtails.
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So, I'm rather than just like maybe we should unpack. I'm like, what's wrong?
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I don't know what's the matter.
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So, we're just driving on the freeway in the righth hand lane all across the country.
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But that wasn't the worst part.
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We had cash in in envelopes like this is how much money it's going to take to get to Cambridge.
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We get to Chicago and they start charging you to drive on roads.
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[laughter] I've never heard of tall roads in my life.
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And I'm like, what is this? So, I'm like, okay.
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So, I'm paying we start realizing we're not going to make it.
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get about to like up into New York.
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I'm like, "We don't have money for gas or these."
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So, [laughter] so we get to the to I still remember this.
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I pull up and I'm like, "Um, do you guys take checks?"
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Guys, [laughter] like no one's ever asked me that.
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He's like, "I guess we do."
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I wrote a bunch of checks that bounced like all the way through.
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So, we we get to Cambridge and um it's only a you know, not that long before school starts.
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We go driving out uh to see where we're gonna my kids going to school because in Cambridge they you just didn't go to the the public school right next to you.
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They kind of move you around.
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As we're leaving the school and we're at an intersection, this person ran a red light, totaled our minivan.
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>> And my three-year-old son, it broke his femur in half. >> Oh no.
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>> So we end up at Children's Hospital in Boston. I don't know a soul.
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We've only been there for 6 days.
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And we're like, what is going on?
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and we get the first trunch of student loans because that's how I'm gonna live, right?
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Um I debt financed my way through school.
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But um [laughter] that's as much as I know about finance. How's that?
19:17
So we have to pay for some of the surgery.
19:19
So we're already in the hole right off the bat.
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So it's not going very well.
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I am like uh >> other than that, Mrs.
19:28
[laughter] Well, it's so funny.
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I'm like I don't have enough money.
19:30
Student orientation starting and I am like I don't have enough money to get a haircut but I need a haircut.
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So I'm like I how hard could it be, right?
19:39
Turns out way harder than you think.
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[laughter] Okay, way harder or at least for me. So I keep cutting it.
19:45
It doesn't work and I'm trying to get it even out.
19:47
So I finally have to shave it.
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So I show up for my class photo with like I look like a skin head [laughter] like like a wannabe skin head.
19:55
Not like a cool skin head, right?
19:57
And that's the photo I get for like my entire [laughter] So it's not going very well.
20:00
I I have my first class that I'm taking is Howard Gardner which he of multiple intelligence theory.
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You would imagine would be like practice what you preach.
20:15
He was he's a brilliant man. He's a mentor now.
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That is not how his classes played out.
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This was on uh cognitive and symbolic development at 8 a. m. Like okay.
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So I'm like, listen, this isn't going very well, but I know I'm good at school.
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I know I can do well here.
20:28
Well, [snorts] I write uh my first paper. I get back.
20:36
>> What was the topic >> on?
20:37
I you know, I don't even remember.
20:37
I have literally trauma buried that thing. I I I actually have it.
20:41
I [laughter] will I'll send it to you.
20:46
>> We'll we'll put it in the show notes.
20:47
>> Yes, in the show notes.
20:47
We'll I'll do a little like PDF version.
20:49
Everyone can see what you'll see when you when you get this paper.
20:53
Howard Gardner went out of his way to write something to me as he failed me.
20:57
He said, "Judging by your work in on this paper, I do not believe you have the writing skills to succeed in graduate school." >> Wow. I was like, "What?"
21:07
Like, at Weber State, I was a really good writer and I was like, so like, are you kidding me? Is like the last straw.
21:16
Like, here's the thing I thought I was good at and even this I'm a fraud.
21:21
[snorts] So, I go walking back to our student housing.
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I'm just I I just left school. I'm in tears.
21:27
I'm like I ship my family all the way out to Cambridge, Massachusetts, all for my pride and ego.
21:32
Um my son's in a full body cast.
21:36
This is just not working well. It's funny.
21:39
I I I got back to the housing.
21:41
Uh Comcast was on strike, so we didn't have a phone yet.
21:45
So, I went to a pay phone to call my mom and she didn't answer.
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And later she told me she's glad she didn't answer because she would have told me to come home.
21:55
>> And so I sat down and I was just pity party like nobody's business.
21:58
And then I got mad, right?
22:00
This is how it usually goes for me.
22:02
I'm I can pity party with the best of them.
22:03
And then I just got really really mad.
22:04
And and I was like, "How dare he?" You know?
22:07
So So I started reading it again and not only did he say that, but there was a lot of suggestions and I was like, "He's not wrong."
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That was the hardest part. He's not wrong. >> Right?
22:18
And so I was like, "Okay, I need some writing help.
22:21
I don't want to go to grad student writing because those are my peers and that reputation that'd be kind of tough."
22:28
So I go to to Lamont Library for undergrad writing support.
22:34
They're kind of waiting in the background and there's this young woman.
22:38
She looks like she's 13, [snorts] okay?
22:40
and she's the writing tutor and she's like I wait and wait and wait and I kind of come up to her toward the end of the thing and I said hey where do I sign up for writing help and she's like you look a little old to be an undergrad and I was like well you're right I'm not she's like I I I only get
22:57
paid to support undergrad people and I was like okay and she was like look I'll tell you what if you come back here on Thursdays at a certain time and I go I'll tutor you for free >> and she and she really helped me get up to speed on what it meant to write at that level and I ended up getting an A in Howard's class on that same thing. You know, it
23:18
You know, it just so this idea of like working hard but in the end like these what do you call them improbable mentors, right?
23:30
Would not have thought that would be and so while I'm at Harvard and then we'll kind of get to like some of the meat of professional work.
23:38
>> [snorts] >> So, I got to work with Kurt Fischer, who is this pioneer in this science of individuality.
23:42
And what was remarkable is so many of the things that I internalized as something wrong with me or it just didn't fit in, but it must work for everyone else, we're starting to see from this new science is just not true.
23:57
It's a product of how we've designed our standardized systems that ignores individuality, right?
24:02
And you know, I'll never forget at a professional level when it really changed for me and I knew this was what I'd want to start my professional career around is I was at Mass General Hospital working in doing fMRI research uh when a colleague of mine and and I wrote about this in the end of average he he's studying brain scans on something very basic which is how how your brain codes memories things like that.
24:27
And he's putting and this is how we do it. This is no kidding.
24:31
um would bring you in, put you in a scanner, give you a task, scan your brain while you're doing it, and then weirdly reflexively we average all of the brain scans.
24:43
We had time series data on you.
24:45
You didn't have to, but it's so built into our assumption that that you do this.
24:49
We just and then we'd get the average response.
24:51
We'd publish it and that was it.
24:54
But the assumption was that average while not perfect must apply to a lot of people or else it would be kind of useless.
25:00
Well, here's my colleagues like,"Well, I happen to be in there when we were scanning these brains and I was looking at the individual brains and like none of them look like the average that came from these people."
25:12
And so he's like, "Well, I'm um maybe I'm just wrong."
25:18
So he puts it away in the filing cabinet and it just nags at him, nags him.
25:21
So he does it again, finds the same result.
25:22
there's literally just no average brain.
25:24
So he publishes this and it just shook neuroscience. Like what are we doing?
25:31
And it turns out that insight that there's no average brain is true about everything to do with humans.
25:36
It's and so I think it's like one New York Times expose away from being like a massive embarrassment that we've funded all this like aggregate level science.
25:45
And it's fine if you're a sociologist where the aggregate is the point, but in psychology and neuroscience and medicine, the individual has always been the focus.
25:56
So I got to be at Harvard when this sort of revolution in the science happened and got to contribute participate in developing methods around this individuality modeling as we're [snorts] working on this stuff.
26:08
And I I graduated um in 2007 and I went and did a posttock at the uh Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. It was a lot of fun. >> Not bad for. 9.
26:21
What was [laughter] crazy is there I really learned how to be a scientist. There's no BS, right? Uh it was great.
26:26
I also learned a lot about We all have our strengths and weaknesses because the guy in the office next door was the guy that discovered background radiation in the [laughter] universe, right?
26:36
And he was he sucked at statistics.
26:38
It [laughter] was awesome.
26:41
And I was like, "You're a genius."
26:43
And he was like, "Can you help me with this multiple regression model?" And I was like, "Really? [laughter] Yes, I can." Right?
26:48
So I do that and then I come back to Harvard as a as a professor and I'm doing work in this science of individuality and the people that are coming to me and are interested are all the people that run these big systems, right?
27:03
run these big systems, right? where they rightly you think about like Amazon which has so many dimensions of you as a consumer it's not even funny right and they start to realize hey this this matters for how we think about consumers great but it [snorts] kind of terrified me to be honest because I felt like in
27:21
an age of standardization [clears throat] you could feel the sort of oppressive weight of that right trying to force you into a mold that doesn't fit that brute force of it all but you could imagine pretty quickly as we learn to really get to know you at a level you don't even know yourself that this could become manipulation and you wouldn't even know it. You'd probably thank them for
27:41
You'd probably thank them for personalizing it.
27:45
>> And so, you know, I saw the potential of that, but I felt like if we didn't have this conversation with the public that these assumptions we've made about ourselves are just incorrect, that that's where it might lead.
27:55
And so, I I wrote uh my first like commercially successful book called The End of Average, which kind of lays this out.
28:03
>> Great book, by the way. >> Thank you. Thank you.
28:04
Yeah, I'm really proud of it.
28:05
Uh, so I'm doing this and it and it becomes a bestseller, which I did not I really did not expect, right? Um, and so it takes off.
28:10
You we get a lot of interest in folks being like, well, what do you want to do?
28:16
And partner and I, we we had thought about we were working at Harvard, right?
28:19
Um, and we had thought about leaving because it just seemed like all the interesting problems were outside of academia, which I think is 100% true.
28:28
Um, >> I agree completely.
28:30
So, we were going to leave, but they were doing a capital campaign, and they had really bet the farm on this individuality and personalization, and we were the only people doing it really.
28:40
Um, and so we made a deal with the dean that if we stayed for a few more years, they would basically give back any claims to intellectual property.
28:49
Not that we really had anything valuable, but you know, it's still nice in the interim.
28:54
And this is how we'll get to the second piece.
28:55
So, we're in the space of understanding individuality.
28:56
And I just want to say before we jump to the next one, when I say there's no average person, I I am not kidding.
29:02
Like it is it is one of those relics of the past that is holding us back in profound ways.
29:09
I'm going to give you a really concrete example.
29:10
You know, diabetes kind of runs in my extended family and I was just like, hey, always try to be thoughtful about this.
29:17
I went to see a nutritionist as a young adult and she was like, "Listen, grapefruit, pink grapefruit is like magical with respect."
29:28
And it turns out on average, it's true.
29:29
It actually does quite help.
29:32
So, I am literally having a half a grapefruit every morning for most of my adult life.
29:39
So my colleagues in Israel use this new science, these methods that would help develop to ask a pretty simple question.
29:48
You think about the glycemic index, right?
29:49
This is what this food does to your blood sugar.
29:52
That's all average based.
29:54
So they were like, how many people around the world actually respond the way the glycemic index says they should?
30:01
Hundreds of thousands of people later, zero. Zero.
30:07
and and and for some they're a little off.
30:09
For some they're literally spectacularly off.
30:11
So they they they actually took that science.
30:13
Now you start thinking, "Wait a minute, hold on.
30:17
If we're all so unique, isn't that chaos?"
30:18
No, it it turns out that's just the way we were wrong about that and we just think it's chaotic because what they did was they used some basic machine learning techniques.
30:27
They realized they could scale up prediction using technology.
30:31
They have a company called Day2.
30:33
I actually bought the kit because I was like, "This is amazing."
30:38
Even I was a little skeptical.
30:38
I'm like, "You could really with like gut biome, some blood work, you could truly predict for me."
30:46
Turns out uh spectacularly, right?
30:46
Like the glycemic index was only true 40% of the time for me, the single worst thing that spikes my blood sugar is grapefruit. [laughter] No kidding.
30:58
More than chocolate cake. >> Wow.
31:03
which I took as you should have more chocolate. Okay. Yes.
31:04
Um [laughter] as a good scientist that's >> you think about that insight and this is true for everyone, right?
31:10
My my son who did it didn't that was different for him.
31:15
Funny enough, I couldn't even get the kit in Massachusetts.
31:16
They're like, "No, you have to go through a a nutritionist."
31:19
So, I had it shipped to Utah, smuggled across the border, you know.
31:24
[laughter] Um what's fascinating with that is by understanding someone's uniqueness, it doesn't devolve into chaos.
31:31
It allows us to even scale population level health. Yeah. >> Right. One person at a time.
31:39
>> So this is what I say like and this has been true for how we think about cancer research and treatment. It's true in nutrition.
31:43
It's true in brain science.
31:45
It's true in education for how kids learn. So here I am.
31:47
It's like this is amazing.
31:50
It's so fun to contribute to this field.
31:51
Um and this core idea of individuality.
31:55
Well my dean's like okay you can't leave. So we're back to that.
31:59
And he's like, "And we're also raising money and we need you to be doing something.
32:03
So you can't just run out the three years and then leave."
32:04
So he's like, "I'm gonna give you some money.
32:08
Just do whatever you want to do, but I need you to be doing something."
32:09
Some research >> and it better be sexy.
32:13
>> And [laughter] it was sexy. That's the thing. It better be sexy. It really is. It better be sexy.
32:15
We got to sell this stuff.
32:17
In End of Average, I had been able to go and meet with founders of companies that I thought had done a pretty great job dealing with individuality.
32:24
So everything from like Zoho in India, um, Morning Star, Tomato, which is ridiculous story.
32:30
And what I kept doing is I kept meeting all these really cool people that were in these kind of unique jobs.
32:36
And I'm like, okay, I get how it works right now for you, the the fit.
32:41
What I don't understand is how you got here because you've got this really like non-traditional path.
32:46
And so I thought, well, okay, somebody's got to have already studied that. I kept digging in.
32:53
I just couldn't find anything.
32:55
So I'm like, okay, I want to study these dark horses.
32:57
Like is there anything we could learn?
32:59
And a little selfishly, I was like just curious about it and I felt like, well, I have this dark horse journey, right?
33:04
So um and so it was my first time ever.
33:06
I'm a very very strong quant person in terms of my approach to research, but I didn't have any real hypothesis.
33:13
So it was the first time I ever did qualitative research.
33:17
Turns out you can learn a lot by listening to people.
33:18
[laughter] >> Who would have known? Who knew, right?
33:22
Um, I thought the smug superiority of an academic was the way you did it, but no, you just got to listen.
33:27
It's [laughter] incredible.
33:28
Um, >> which academics, at least those in my career, are in a fairly large deficit at their ability to do that.
33:38
>> Yeah, it's amazing, right?
33:38
It's um the uh so I'm thinking I just want to know how these people got good at stuff, right?
33:45
So we we ended up studying hundreds of people from all walks of life and the only criteria to start was that you were like objectively good at what you were doing, right?
33:54
And then we wanted and you had this kind of atypical path.
33:58
>> So we start out and I'm like wanting to ask them about how they mastered things and right off the bat it's not what they wanted to talk about.
34:05
They talked about how they found out what they loved, what motivated them, right?
34:10
And then time after time, some people would talk about like the pursuit of fulfillment.
34:15
Some would say that word directly, others would talk about meaning and purpose, you know, this kind of stuff.
34:21
[snorts] >> And I I was like, yeah, is that like a nice story we tell after you're successful? You know what I mean? It cleans up.
34:28
So, we shifted the the research. Okay.
34:30
You keep saying it's about the pursuit of fulfillment instead of like, I'm going to be excellent at this thing. How did you do that?
34:35
And what was remarkable is it doesn't take very long a pattern emerges where there's just some things that these people know that sort of form a mindset of how they they they think about living their life that makes this sort of darkhorse non-standard path pretty pretty secure, right?
34:54
Um, and it's it's funny like the the big four and we can talk about them because I think it matters for where we're going in society right now where we're so used to following this oneizefits-all path that our our mutual nemesis Frederick Taylor back in the day scientific management did more to destroy.
35:11
Yes, we got we got more stuff through efficiency, but this guy like we all live in the shadow of Frederick Taylor and we don't even realize it. >> No, I know.
35:23
And like you can see you've struck a chord with me. I despise that man.
35:30
And like everybody celebrated him.
35:35
As as you mentioned before we started recording, the only person he wouldn't apply those the scientific management was to himself. Yeah.
35:45
>> And then we went through a list of other people who were very >> bossy.
35:48
It's funny the hypocrisy of this.
35:51
Yeah, Frederick Taylor like what a what a piece of work, right?
35:55
>> Just briefly, I we have a very highly educated audience, but just a few sec sentences on Frederick Taylor.
36:03
>> To give them a fair shake, >> tailorism >> before Taylorism in the early early 20th century, the US had gone through a lot of es and flows and depressions, not just the great depression, you know, and they kind of thought like there just was scarcity. There's just not enough.
36:17
and he starts to think, well, wait a minute.
36:22
You know, he was a deep believer in averages and standardization and that there's always one right answer to everything, which turns out is decidedly not true.
36:29
But okay, >> catastrophic >> catastrophically not true. Yeah.
36:32
Like that's if you come from any complex systems or biology, a singular path is like the weakest way you could design anything.
36:41
It's one point of failure and the whole thing collapses. Makes no sense. But here we are.
36:44
So he decides he's got this genius idea to rearrange not just the workplace but eventually all of society.
36:52
And he says something and he's really really upfront about it in in in his book on scientific management.
36:58
He said in the US in the past people were first.
37:01
In the future the system has to be first.
37:04
He inverted the relationship between the public and our institutions.
37:09
And we live in that shadow.
37:12
We like you think about it. You take education.
37:13
parents have no say unless you just get out of it, right?
37:17
And it's like they don't care. And so he he does that.
37:20
He he invented the idea of a manager.
37:22
So there could be people who are smart enough to figure out what to do.
37:25
Then you just do what you're told as fast as possible.
37:27
And they would do these they'd use a a stopwatch and measure like there's one right way like in every task you do.
37:34
They would measure footsteps and like where to stand and how to do something and just robbed everyone of their autonomy. >> Yep.
37:43
and in some sense their dignity that way on the promise of through efficiency we'll get more stuff. Totally true.
37:48
He wasn't wrong about that.
37:48
I I'd like to believe if I were back in that day um at the Arsenal in Watertown was one of the main one of the major sites early on.
37:57
>> He's there trying to get these workers to do it his way and they're like we've been doing this for a decade.
38:02
We know things the nuances about this.
38:04
He didn't want to listen, right?
38:06
So he's just given this guy an earful.
38:08
Guy turns around and just punches him in the face.
38:12
>> [laughter] >> I'm not I'm not endorsing violence except for that time.
38:14
I felt like that was a good response. >> I don't even know.
38:19
>> So So you know it changes the workplace then it seeps into the scientific management and this cult of efficiency which is funny.
38:26
Efficiency is good but it's never an ultimate goal. It's crazy.
38:31
I mean it's like Hitler was efficient like [laughter] it's what you're trying to achieve should matter more than how efficient you are at doing it. >> Yeah.
38:39
So, so it just seeps into education where we get the factory bells, we get the rotating classes, we get the the sort of one-sizefits-all approaches.
38:48
It even seeped into there were books written for housewives at the time.
38:52
>> How to save an hour a day by being more efficient. Okay, whatever.
38:54
So, we're all living in that world.
38:57
It it really sits on the faulty assumption of averages being a way you could understand individuals.
39:04
So, um back to the darkhor stuff, right?
39:08
So these guys are all trying to get around the the the scientific management you know tailorized society.
39:13
Um and it was remarkable uh the key things that they that kept showing up over and over again.
39:21
The big four and we can come come to these in a minute.
39:22
They knew what we called their micro motives.
39:25
They they they had this unbelievable set of insights about what truly motivated them. It was wild.
39:32
Like wild like stuff that I'm like there's no way.
39:34
Like one guy we studied, he the the the biggest motivator for him was he liked to align physical objects with his hands.
39:42
And when he didn't get to do that, he was not very good at anything. It was just wild.
39:47
I'm like, what do you do with that?
39:48
Well, it turns out back in the day as an engineer, he was working for one of the big telecom companies and he solved a major problem.
39:54
Anyway, it's crazy stuff, right?
39:55
The best insight I ever learned from dark horses is they never hoarded their choices.
40:00
You got to make choices, right?
40:01
And this was the the filter they put on it which I've used ever since.
40:07
In your range of choices, everybody has a choice.
40:09
Some may have more, but you always have a choice.
40:11
You bias to the thing that is the most aligned for your fulfillment.
40:17
And then this is the secondary thing.
40:20
Can you live with the worst case scenario?
40:21
If you can't, like for me, I had two kids I was providing for. Yeah.
40:26
It might be cool if I could go take a bow of poverty and go do something at a startup, but I I can't. Yeah. >> Right.
40:32
So you move on to the next one.
40:33
>> It's called a fitness landscape. >> That's right. Exactly right.
40:35
And so so anyway, they make these choices because they the the third one which was so remarkable is this idea of strategies being so fundamental to achievement which seems obvious but like if you think about it like back for me when I was in school well there's one way to study. There's one way.
40:54
This is how smart kids do it. So I try it. It doesn't work.
40:58
Well I guess I'm not that smart.
40:59
And of course, they give me tests that tell me exactly how not smart I am, right?
41:02
Um, I had this moment on this um this one of know your strategies.
41:06
That was so profound to me.
41:08
So, back to undergrad, I'm now I'm the straight A student.
41:13
I'm the honor student of the year and I'm going to think about graduate school, but I have to take the GRE, which I've never really been good at standardized tests, but I was like, but I'm smart now, right?
41:22
but I'm smart now, right? So, I I I do the the the test prep for, you know, I pay for I go every Saturday you see there's someone who got a perfect score on the JRE so that he's teaching us the class and he keeps telling us how to do these ones and back in the day they changed it now but there were three
41:40
sections for it there was the verbal >> the quant and then they had analytical reasoning the analytical reasoning was like okay farmer John has four rows and he's got corn and peas and carrots and carrots can't be next to peas and d and it's like which one is planted in row two column Korea, [laughter] I don't know. Like, and it I I tried and
41:59
Like, and it I I tried and tried and he had taught us how to do it, which was very much just in your head. >> Yeah.
42:07
>> And I'm just like, I I don't get this.
42:09
So, I I've been at this for like eight weeks, taking practice exams and all this stuff.
42:15
I've managed to get my verbal score up in something that's respectable, my qu score up, it's respectable.
42:20
Up until that point, I had not cracked the 13th percentile on [laughter] analytical reasoning because if you like there's one setup and then there's like five questions off of it. So, right.
42:32
>> So, I'm like, well, I'm screwed. Right. This was silly. What am I doing?
42:34
Well, it's it's about a week and a half before I have to take the actual exam.
42:41
[clears throat] And I'm at my parents house studying cuz we lived in a 400 foot apartment with two kids.
42:44
And I did something which Yeah, it was just a little bit, right?
42:48
when I could lay down and put my arms in all and legs in all the different rooms.
42:52
[laughter] So, I'm sitting there and I got really frustrated as in doing this practice exam and I took my pencil and I whipped it across the room just out of anger as my dad's walking in.
43:03
It just boom right past him.
43:06
[laughter] Now, he does not take kindly to those kind of acts of aggression.
43:09
Um he's like, "What's wrong with you?"
43:11
I said, "I I just don't get it."
43:13
Um now, luckily, he comes walking over and he goes, "What is it?"
43:16
and he's an engineer by training.
43:19
And I'm telling him, he goes, "Oh, this is a degrees of freedom problem."
43:23
And I'm like, "I don't know what this degrees of freedom thing you're talking about is, but like go on."
43:27
And he says, [clears throat] "Well, how you how you solve it?"
43:29
I'm telling him, I'm doing it in my head.
43:31
He goes, "But Todd, you have terrible working memory." Which is true.
43:35
Like I I have to write everything down.
43:37
I I just if if if I told you I was going to do something two hours from now, >> unless I put it write it down, I'm it's never happening. So I'm like, "What?"
43:44
He goes, "Well, look, >> that must work very well with your wife."
43:50
>> Oh, it's fant, you [laughter] know, these kind of things. They're really good.
43:53
It's a great get out of jail free card for everything. >> Yeah.
43:55
Mine was selective underperformance.
43:59
So, essentially, anything I did not want to do that she asked me to do, the first time I did it, I did it so badly that she never asked me to do it again.
44:12
[laughter] She brought me a drill, right?
44:12
And like I'm hopeless in that.
44:15
So I'm looking at this drill and I'm thinking about all the things she's going to want me to drill.
44:23
And [laughter] I'm like, I'm this is not going to work out well, right?
44:26
It could even lead to divorce.
44:28
And so what I did was I took the drill down to our basement workroom and I just drilled random holes in the wall.
44:41
She came down, [laughter] snatched it away from me, and said, "I'm never letting you touch this again."
44:46
I'm like, "I'm so sorry."
44:49
>> But I really want to, [laughter] >> right? >> Like, that's amazing. That's amazing.
44:54
So, my dad's like, "Look, there's a really easy way to do this um visually." And I'm like, "Okay."
45:01
He's like, "Just just graph it out like this."
45:02
And he's doing it and I'm like, "That that there's one problem."
45:06
He does it like without even thinking about it.
45:07
I'm like, "Wait, like leaves one answer.
45:11
it's like very very easy and like that can't be right.
45:12
So I [snorts] I apply that same strategy to the other ones where I have answers in the back of the book >> 100%. Like this can't be true.
45:18
[snorts] So I go to on that Saturday to my teacher and I'm like hey my dad said this is another way to do it.
45:26
He's looking at and he goes I mean yeah I guess that works. Okay hold on.
45:32
[laughter] So only a few days later less than a week later I go and take the test.
45:37
I only missed one question on the entire analytical reasoning section.
45:41
So now I'm this analytical genius, right?
45:45
[laughter] And it's like or maybe just maybe it's super important to align your strategies to your own individuality.
45:53
And this is what we saw with these dark horses is it like they they they need to get good at something.
46:00
They figure out what motivates them, right?
46:01
They they're good at making choices.
46:03
And then there's a time when you just got to get good at something.
46:06
And what was remarkable is without fail, they'd be they'd be just plugging along, plug along, and then they'd get stuck and it would look like they're not making progress, but what they're doing is swapping strategies, just believing that there is a right strategy.
46:20
They just got to cycle through them. >> Amazing, right?
46:22
Uh complete unlock for me there. It was funny.
46:25
We even um uh studied a whole bunch of these psalms right the smile is like for wine which master level is ridiculously hard.
46:34
It's one standardized test.
46:38
Uh there are more people who have gone to outer space than passed that exam but yet you think well obviously it's one test.
46:44
There must be like one right way. Nope.
46:48
>> They all had this unique like crazy different ways that they would do this to get to that same kind of outcome.
46:53
Um, and the last one I'll tell you about is which was I think the most controversial but has been pretty profound is called it ignoring the destination.
47:03
They had goals but they did not talk about 5year 10year plans what I'm going to do when I grow up because it doesn't make any sense.
47:12
What they have is a choice in front of them.
47:13
They know who they are, right?
47:17
They can set a short-term goal but the idea is you're go I'm going to be a lawyer.
47:20
You're 12, [laughter] right? You're 12.
47:22
And with AI, it was probably going to be a bad bet anyway.
47:26
Like, but so it's like make your choices as you go.
47:29
And it was really cool, you know, in in computer science like this this sort of gradient descent, the way you can solve a problem that is mathematically intractable. >> Yep.
47:38
>> Um is exactly how they approach it.
47:38
Take a step, make a decision, right? Then make another.
47:45
>> What's so fascinating is we also do uh early stage venture, right?
47:49
I I don't like regular venture. I'm no good at it.
47:54
And you know, it is kind of just kind of bores me. >> I'm I'm not either.
47:58
We have so much in common.
48:00
This [laughter] is >> But I love preede and seed, right? Very different. Yeah.
48:05
>> Much works better with my individual skills.
48:08
Um, and one of the things that we always look for is exactly what you're talking about, agility and the ability to understand that pivoting is a fact of life.
48:22
That's the way everything works.
48:24
The the most spectacular failures we've seen are the people coming in and going right to the end state, right?
48:33
like yes I am going to have the best SAS program in this particular thing and here are all of the steps that I am going to take to achieve it pass >> pass >> it's like you mean contingencies are built into that that like >> you know the environment has a say in
48:50
what happens other people have a say and you're just you have no agility but these guys are just hyper agile and what looks a little chaotic is actually quite deliberate >> um and so they inverted that idea that if you want to excellent. You pursue
49:02
You pursue fulfillment this way.
49:04
Excellence is the byproduct.
49:06
Whereas we're taught know your destination, you know, follow that one path, be better than other people on the same stuff, right?
49:14
Be the same as everyone else only better. >> It's so crazy. >> It it makes no sense.
49:18
It you know, listen, maybe in a early stages of standardization, whatever, I don't know.
49:24
But now, like that's the kiss of death.
49:27
And you know what's interesting is it's a kiss of death everywhere.
49:30
It's not just in academia, in school, in business.
49:36
It's literally everywhere.
49:40
>> And this whole idea of mass um marketing, mass everything.
49:44
Thank God that we now have the technology to to make it right. Right.
49:51
like we did very well by coming up with custom portfolio creation because you're absolutely right.
50:00
the person that you think is going to want, you know, everything's standard, all of that.
50:05
There there is no, you're absolutely right.
50:08
There is no average person.
50:11
And that just that statement alone is such an unlock because if you believe that and I do is yes of course medians are useful, averages are useful, they have a role but >> when you don't I as you were talking I was thinking about a relative of mine who is you know degreed up the yin-yang and he's got an MD, a PhD, an MBA and what he ended up doing was uh helping pharmaceutical companies doing exactly what you were describing.
50:46
They would do spend lots of money on a test on the old way, right?
50:53
And it would come back, yeah, it failed. This just doesn't work.
50:59
And he's like, can I borrow the data?
51:01
[laughter] And he borrows the data and he comes back with, this works.
51:03
The efficacious nature of this drug is off the charts with this cohort.
51:10
Middle-aged women who are slightly overweight and post-menopausal there.
51:17
It's it's clocking in at 99% efficacious.
51:21
And so something that would have been thrown out and all the loss taken is now an incredibly profitable line for >> and by the way, we've seen this over and over again, right?
51:31
That because some things do work on average. most things don't.
51:36
We're holding back innovation.
51:36
I remember um MIT studied uh an approach to that triple negative breast cancer which is like hard and it was like what they found was there were two drugs that individually had no no real effect.
51:49
Could not get approval or anything.
51:49
It turned out together in a the right sequence.
51:56
It was the best uh medicine you could possibly take for this um for >> hiding hiding in plain sight. Right.
52:02
that and and that's been one of my obsessions recently.
52:05
There is so many things that where there's a huge arbitrage available and nobody sees it.
52:17
>> Well, and you're doing because the way they think >> with how you think about AI and how you apply these things, it's like this is where it's all at now.
52:22
like under the hood of this average standardized society, we've created mounds of data in all these areas where we looked at and said this doesn't work and it's there for the taking, >> but the barrier is not technological.
52:37
It's not these resources.
52:37
It's this mindset we keep applying. >> Totally agree.
52:41
>> And these dark horses are just like, well, this is society right now, but I'm not going to play that game. Right.
52:45
And the um I'll tell you probably the most inspiring story in that whole book is a a woman named Susan Rogers.
52:54
It's worth just telling you her story.
52:57
Um you know cuz she taught me that, you know, pursuing fulfillment sometimes means getting out of a hole that you're in.
53:05
In this case, her her story, she starts out in an abusive marriage and she's like, "But I don't have a degree. I don't have anything."
53:16
like what am I supposed to do?
53:17
Um and she loved music and she was at a concert with her friends at the LA Forum back in the day and she was like I loved it.
53:25
And she gets home and her husband kind of, you know, ridicules her, smacks her out of a bit and she just realized, I'm done.
53:30
She literally gets up and she leaves. She has nowhere to go.
53:34
But that's the start of the journey.
53:38
She knew she loved music.
53:38
She was like, "But I can't sing to save my life and I don't want to be on stage. So what do you do?"
53:43
and she remembered uh seeing on the back of one album she loved.
53:46
I think it was a Sunny and Share album that there's something called a sound engineer and she was like, "Wait, hold on. That that's awesome.
53:55
I want to I want to do that, right?"
53:57
Well, she has no high school diploma, no nothing.
53:59
Um and she's like, "Well, how would I begin this journey?"
54:03
Well, most people say that's not the journey.
54:05
Sorry, that journey's passed.
54:07
You don't get to do that.
54:08
She finds out that the the top school to train these sound engineers is right in LA where she's at, but she can't get in.
54:15
So, she goes and she's like, um, I'd like to apply for a job as the secretary.
54:19
It's that's a job that's open.
54:21
And, oh, by the way, all I ask is in my off time, could I just sit in on classes and audit them? I won't say anything. I won't disrupt.
54:29
They're like, yeah, no one's ever asked for that before. Fine.
54:32
So, she's doing that and she's she's learning a lot.
54:35
Um, and then she gets to this point where it's going to be deeply technical and she can't just audit to get this and they won't let her take classes.
54:43
And she realizes that the US Army, for whatever reason, has literally the gold standard on this.
54:50
So, she reaches out to them and she's like, "Could you send me all the manuals?"
54:53
And they were like, "Are you thinking of enrolling?"
54:55
And she to her credit goes, "Well, I'm not not thinking of enrolling." [laughter] Right. >> Maybe. >> Yeah. So, she studies this. She does all this stuff.
55:03
And then she's like, "Okay, well, I don't actually have a degree for this, whatever, but I've got this training."
55:09
So, she starts taking small jobs that she can that no one else wants to do.
55:13
Well, her her dream and her idol was Prince.
55:18
And at that time, Prince had decided he was going to leave LA and he set up shop in Minnesota. >> Yep. My hometown. >> Yeah.
55:26
And so, he's he literally built the studio in his basement. >> Turns out Park. >> Yes.
55:31
And a lot of people didn't really want to leave California >> for Minnesota. >> For Minnesota. I mean, >> not it. >> I would.
55:37
I'll be perfectly honest.
55:39
[laughter] But but she's like, I'm going, right?
55:43
And she gets there and she gets to know Prince and she's a sound engineer.
55:46
She didn't realize there were different kinds of engineers, right?
55:50
And Prince didn't really know either.
55:52
So, she just starts talking to him.
55:54
And so, he he likes her and he starts asking her advice on things.
56:00
Flash forward, she's the sound engineer for Purple Rain. >> Amazing.
56:05
>> And she, it culminates that part of her life.
56:08
Um, she's back in LA on his final tour in the same place where she started her journey where she decided, I'm coming back someday.
56:17
And she's the sound engineer.
56:19
And they end up having this bonding moment as they're sharing their stories.
56:23
But here's what's crazy about it.
56:25
That alone is worthy of having her in the book.
56:29
That was part one for her.
56:32
She achieves something that is like, "Are you kidding me?
56:34
You're the sound engineer for Purple Rain."
56:35
And she's like, "But you know what I'm really interested in is neuroscience and how music affects the brain.
56:43
I'm going to go to school."
56:43
She goes to the University of Minnesota.
56:45
She's like, "I'd like to go to school."
56:46
They're like, "Yeah, that's not how that works, right?"
56:48
[laughter] They're like, "You didn't even write an application."
56:52
She literally sat there in the office and handwrote an application, an essay. They let her in. Uh, here's what's wild. She was in her 40s.
57:00
Flash forward, she is a professor of neuroscience and music to this day. >> Amazing.
57:08
>> So, so what I love about that story is just it's like if you understand what motivates you, if you're not afraid to make those choices, right?
57:16
And in reality, what was the worst case scenario when she became a secretary there? She could handle it. >> Yeah.
57:23
>> So, you make that decision, put the work in, right?
57:25
and she's achieving things that if she would have tried to speculate what the end goal would have been, forget it.
57:31
Never in a million years.
57:34
>> I have an interesting follow-up story about Prince and Purple Rain.
57:38
>> So, I I admire the work of Howard Bloom, who uh I've recommended to you several times.
57:44
You have >> uh he's way ahead of his time and like very much like the story you're telling.
57:50
He has done like everything, right?
57:50
He was a uh PR guy for music.
57:54
He built the biggest company in that.
57:59
He did a lot of work in science.
58:01
He has this quest just for knowing, right?
58:04
And he was writing about his time as a music promoter and he covers Prince.
58:11
And what's interesting is how it fits so well into the story you've been telling thus far.
58:18
When they let Prince make Purple Rain, right?
58:21
None of the music people and none of the movie people wanted that made. Nobody.
58:31
But he was selling so many records that they had to indulge him. Right.
58:34
And so Howard knew that they were going to try to tank his movie.
58:41
Nobody wanted it to happen.
58:44
Again, that top down >> this is this isn't going to fit our average audience.
58:52
>> The the everything's wrong about it.
58:54
This guy's just too wrong.
58:54
He's not right on screen.
58:57
Every possible objection you could think of.
58:59
And Howard is trying to think, how am I going to reverse this because they had essentially the the the buzz about it was all deathly bad, right?
59:12
And so they were going to try to release the movie on the QT essentially.
59:19
They were going to do a premiere in San Diego and Los Angeles. I think >> two theaters. That's it.
59:27
And then they were hoping that they would get the normal response.
59:32
Nobody would say anything.
59:34
They would say, "Ah, the public hated it.
59:36
Bury it and be done with it."
59:39
Howard decides that's not going to happen. This guy is a genius.
59:45
This movie is a genius movie.
59:45
So he went against all the people he was ostensibly working for and invited the top critics from the Rolling Stone from all of the big magazines at the time without telling the bosses.
1:00:06
They all they didn't know they were there.
1:00:08
They come away blown away by the movie, write incredibly positive things, and that's how Purple Rain actually made it. Wow, that's incredible. Yes. Isn't it funny?
1:00:21
It's like, you know, you think about everybody's like, "Oh, we know best practices or we know the right Bullshit."
1:00:28
[laughter] >> Like, this is just you're not thinking for yourself.
1:00:32
>> You're just following the flow.
1:00:32
And it's like nothing brilliant ever gets created that way. >> Yeah.
1:00:36
Well, monoculture, right?
1:00:36
Any a if you're trying to install a monoculture, you're dead. >> Dead, >> right? Why?
1:00:42
Why did the United States make all of these incredible advances when we were industrializing?
1:00:48
I was thinking about this as you were talking about our mutual [laughter] nemesis.
1:00:52
The the idea was I'm reading a book on on the the Gilded Age and some of the tycoons of that period and I was completely unaware how threatened particularly the British were by what was happening in the United States.
1:01:10
And it's the same argument you're making.
1:01:16
>> In Britain, they had been making guns and machines and all that for hundreds of years and they had fallen into the rut.
1:01:24
It isn't done that way here.
1:01:27
Meanwhile, over in America, >> we're just like, >> we're just like, well, we got we got to figure this out.
1:01:33
>> And so, literally, Americans followed the path you're advocating. >> Is exactly right. Right.
1:01:38
Have you ever seen um there was a a little radio show called engines of our ingenuity? >> Yes. Yeah. >> So great, right?
1:01:45
Telling you stories of like and I remember the similarly like uh invention of the double bidded axe >> which is right highly unstable.
1:01:55
>> You have to learn a new skill to make it work or you cut your foot off, >> right?
1:01:58
>> But boy, if you learn you can clear a lot of stuff, right?
1:02:00
Well, it gets invented here >> because we're not we're not we don't have the baggage of the past of like it's not the way it's done.
1:02:06
Like we have a job to do.
1:02:08
And we don't have all that the prior assumptions >> and we don't have Taylor yet, >> right? Not yet.
1:02:14
>> Because like literally what I found so fascinating about this era it it was all pivoting.
1:02:21
It was all well I have no idea but I'm going to figure it out.
1:02:26
>> It's true like hustle entrepreneurial culture. Totally >> right.
1:02:29
And and now now entrepreneurs are this segment of the population that we think do specific things when in reality Americans have always been entrepreneurs. Totally. Always.
1:02:37
until Taylor robbed us of that.
1:02:39
We get >> turned us all into robots. >> Yes.
1:02:43
It's a paternalistic society that we've lived in for about a hundred years.
1:02:46
And it's it's devastating as you shake free of this standardized path.
1:02:52
And you start to to embrace this idea of like if I can know my own individuality and my what motivates me, if I can make choices, pick good strategies, ignore the destination, it is a reliable path, right?
1:03:04
Uh people would have asked me like, "Well, you're a dark horse."
1:03:05
I'm like, "Yeah, I guess."
1:03:06
First of all, I thought all dark horses would be people who screwed up like I did and then aren't screw-ups, right?
1:03:12
>> About half of them, it wasn't.
1:03:12
They were unbelievably great at one thing. >> Yeah.
1:03:17
>> And then they wake up one day and be like, "I'm not happy."
1:03:18
And they pivot into things that on paper look like they have nothing to do with each other.
1:03:24
But if you get under the hood and you start to know them, you're like, "Oh, that makes perfect sense." Right?
1:03:29
Well, just to say like how scary it is to let go of, you know, it it's wrong, but the devil, you know, kind of thing.
1:03:37
So, I'm on this was in um 2018.
1:03:40
I'm on uh a media tour for Darkhorse and it's doing well and I get this text from my youngest son who was in college.
1:03:48
We were like, "When you get home, we need to talk." I was like, "Uhoh." Who's pregnant, right?
1:03:55
That that's my default reaction.
1:03:56
Like, [laughter] we can handle this. It's okay.
1:03:58
Um, I get home and he's got Darkhorse dogeared marked up like this.
1:04:06
And he's like, I think I need to make a change.
1:04:08
And my immediate thought was, no, no, no.
1:04:10
I meant this for other people's kids.
1:04:14
[laughter] Just finish your diploma. You'll be fine, right? We'll figure it out.
1:04:17
You know, that's But I was like, no, no. Okay.
1:04:19
So, we worked through like, turns out he's he was always good at school, but he loves the practicality of like working with his hands.
1:04:25
And he's like, "As I went through," he's a mechanical engineer, but he's like, "I'm I'm I've gone through school.
1:04:32
I'm getting close to the end, I kept waiting it for it to be practical, and it just got more abstract."
1:04:37
And he was like, like, "Oh, I don't I don't even want to go into this field.
1:04:42
Like, what am I going to do?"
1:04:43
So, we worked through a series of helping him understand what really motivates him, do all this.
1:04:47
And like the thing I always tell them is like and I tell parents this all the time.
1:04:52
How do I know when an older kid is actually pursuing a darkhorse path or just lazy?
1:04:56
[laughter] And it's really about taking responsibility, >> right?
1:05:01
>> Like you know dark horses they they didn't follow the traditional path but they never expected someone else to subsidize them, right?
1:05:06
Um there's a lot I'll do if someone else is paying the bills, right?
1:05:10
So So we get him on a path. He It's so great.
1:05:13
He ended up finding this perfect fit in a cryogenic startup.
1:05:19
They're doing amazing things.
1:05:20
But like any good startup, he got to be both the engineer and design the lab. >> Ah, cool.
1:05:26
>> He got to do everything. >> Yeah. >> Right.
1:05:28
And so it's just And now I'm trying to teach him about equity.
1:05:31
>> Definitely want to teach.
1:05:32
>> You got to have that conversation.
1:05:33
[laughter] But [clears throat] the um but it was just great, you know, and he's just crushing it and happy.
1:05:37
And the thing that darkhorse stuff really taught me and I think is sort of relevant to today is yeah, okay, those are people who just they're dark horses.
1:05:47
They came out of nowhere.
1:05:48
But when we think about, you know, in our private opinion research, we kind of talked a little about last time, >> this isn't just about dark horses.
1:05:55
The things that they think about and want are the latent desires of the general population.
1:06:01
The only difference is they pulled the trigger on it. They made the choices.
1:06:06
We're all rest of us are just quiet despair, right?
1:06:09
Of these empty lives and jobs that don't mean anything.
1:06:14
And you know, when we look at the kind of lives people want to live, this desire for authenticity, this desire for meaning and contribution are the highest ranked attributes we find across the board.
1:06:26
And they're not getting it.
1:06:26
And what I see right now is we're so trained in the Frederick Taylor kind of model of we look to other people for permission >> or to tell us how to do it.
1:06:36
And so they they want this but they don't know how to get it.
1:06:41
And I think there are plenty of ways to do that.
1:06:42
I think Darkhorse offers one path.
1:06:44
But for me the the real unlock there is you and I share this deep belief in the future of this country as being positive sum.
1:06:53
What makes it possible at a level of meaning and purpose is this idea of subjective value, right?
1:06:59
Which is obviously a term that anyone in economics knows, but I think the general public doesn't really appreciate that.
1:07:05
They think value is objective.
1:07:07
They think if if I like this glass of water at for a dollar, that's what it's worth.
1:07:11
That's what everybody cares. Not how it works. Not at all.
1:07:14
>> The beauty of our individuality is it's not just our composition. It's in what we value.
1:07:18
So, we either value different things or we'll value the same thing at different rates.
1:07:22
And why that's so critical is it's what makes like mutual benefit possible. You and I can transact.
1:07:29
We can do things where we both come out believing we're better off because of the transaction.
1:07:34
>> And you know what's so funny about that?
1:07:36
I have been looking for ways to get people to understand that while I was still doing my asset management career, that simple notion, and I'm pretty good at explaining things and being persuasive, it it just it it's like it hits this armor that is armoring the brain from people understanding that.
1:07:57
And and like the reason it's so important, it it makes markets possible. >> Yes.
1:08:05
If if markets don't clear, they're not going to work.
1:08:09
>> Imagine if we all value things the exact same way.
1:08:11
There's no someone always has to lose. >> Exactly.
1:08:14
>> And by the way, this is why um some of these really terrible ideas like Marxism don't die.
1:08:20
>> Is it's But they're rooted in zero sum scarcity, right? >> Negative sum. >> Negative sum. It's the exploitation.
1:08:26
It's the oppressor and the oppressed. And there's no between.
1:08:27
If you're a billionaire, it's because you stole it from somebody.
1:08:30
It's like it these ideas are are colossally dumb, >> but they're attractive when people don't understand how things really work. >> Yeah.
1:08:39
>> And it's like once you realize that that your best bet is figure out what you care about and the more unique the better. >> Yes.
1:08:50
>> And and that's true both from your own fulfillment, but it's also true for the best contribution you're going to make to society.
1:08:56
>> What you can do for society. >> Yeah.
1:08:58
Because look, >> look inward first. >> Yes.
1:09:00
Because if you just play the same game, then all I can do is add like marginal value by being faster or better. >> Yeah. Barely. If that >> if that. >> Right.
1:09:11
>> When I can get into my own uniqueness, my contribution becomes qualitatively better. >> Totally.
1:09:17
>> And so again, in a space where we're worried about what happens with AI and it's like, yeah, the jobs are going to go and some of those white collar jobs are going to go, right?
1:09:26
The industrial revolution was just artificial muscle. That's it.
1:09:28
And this is artificial brains.
1:09:32
>> But the the size of the lever is much bigger.
1:09:38
>> It's order of magnitude. It's like forget it.
1:09:40
Like it is going to be but but this is why like for me so you know time ends at Harvard which I will say it was so crazy.
1:09:47
Like everything I've been writing about and doing, you got to kind of eat your own dog food, right?
1:09:51
It is unbelievably attractive to be able to say you're a professor at Harvard.
1:09:59
>> Maybe not these days, but you know, back in the day, but you know, the uh [laughter] talk about ruining a brand, >> one of my favorite Onion headlines was Texan who went to Harvard doesn't know which to mention first.
1:10:10
[laughter] >> That's amazing.
1:10:15
And my daughter went to Yale and uh she she was joking about how Yales go out of their way because of the age bomb to not say that they were at Yale.
1:10:30
And she goes and sometimes it can get really comedic. >> Yeah.
1:10:33
>> Yeah. like why won't you tell me where you know New Haven [laughter] you know what Connecticut where like well New Haven you know it's like >> I once played with a guy uh when I had my company Net Folio which was basically
1:10:47
customization of portfolios was just 20 years too early >> um because the tech wasn't really there and I had an interview with a guy and we're quants right and so this guy I' first off I'd read his CV I knew he went to Harvard, right? [laughter]
1:11:03
[laughter] But I intentionally, just to humor myself, did not ask him where he went to school because like if you're a quant, you want to see Chicago, you don't or MIT, you don't want to see Harvard, right?
1:11:16
Case case studies very interesting for different purposes.
1:11:21
But anyway, so the conversation goes like this. It's 1999.
1:11:26
We have one of those uh phones, you know, the ones with the multiple microphones.
1:11:30
Um, >> by the way, I sold those for a time.
1:11:34
[laughter] Getner communications, little starphone that has the different microphone. Yeah, you're welcome.
1:11:40
>> So, so anyway, he starts out the interview and I'm like, "So, why do you want to work for Netfolio?"
1:11:43
And he's, you know, gives me the standard >> and and tags on, you know, when I was at at school in the Northeast, uh, this is where this passion of mine grew. And I'm like, okay.
1:11:56
What he was hoping for, of course, was me to say, "Oh, where were you at school?" I wouldn't do it.
1:12:00
And so my colleagues were like watching and they're like, "You're >> like, "Did someone say Harvard? >> You're so evil."
1:12:07
And so it progressed and to more and more specificity, right?
1:12:14
When I was in Cambridge and then I refused, refused to refused and then finally he just couldn't take it anymore.
1:12:21
And on my next question, he was like, "When I was at Harvard," and I didn't miss a beat. I'm like, "Harvard?
1:12:31
Why would you want to be a quant? Why would you go there?"
1:12:33
[laughter] He was so mad.
1:12:35
So anyway, when I was at Harvard, um [clears throat] I [laughter] uh on my way out, um it was we we uh you know, this is a kind of a good pivoting story like so we we had we had decided we were going to phase out, you know, time was up.
1:12:52
Um got out right before the pandemic, which was good timing.
1:12:56
was good timing. Um and but we're doing the work earlier and um we are starting to build the foundation would be our new kind of think tank populace which the the the sort of wonky kind of academic side of this is we're backgrounds in social paradigms right like cuz I think what we're facing as a society right now is not on the margins arguing over things we are arguing over fundamental
1:13:19
assumptions about society right now we've been here before in world history >> and you know up until Now I believe like we we got decent at explaining paradigm shifts after they happen you know like um Thomas kind of stuff >> structure of science >> revolution exactly and great right but what what's often forgotten is at the social level when these paradigms change
1:13:45
the utter collapse of what came before and the misery >> until the new thing comes about >> so we kind of condensed that we're like went from here to here it's like no it didn't >> it got really really bad for people we feel like we know what the next paradigm could be which you and I will share like this is that we've proven that you can have abundance uh materially >> y >> like I mean at the end of the day like
1:14:09
you just take basic classical liberalism applied there you add Adam Smith division of labor and you add Ricardo's comparative advantage and you get the ingredients for abundance economically yep amazing >> well we throw in rule of law >> rule of law property rights these things right and They flow and the reality is is like commitment to individual rights flows off of that. Totally like it's
1:14:29
Totally like it's necessary >> to secure that kind of abundance. It's amazing.
1:14:36
>> They were, you know, largely silent about some of these other assumptions with respect to I'll call it like the psychological side, right? What motivates me?
1:14:46
It's the meaning and purpose side.
1:14:47
It wasn't that these early classical liberals were against that.
1:14:51
They just one thing at a time.
1:14:51
Let's take the assumption of dignity and run as far as we can with it.
1:14:57
>> And maybe when you look at the world in which they existed, they just assumed that. >> Yeah.
1:15:03
Well, they didn't feel they needed to spell it out. >> That's right.
1:15:06
I think that's exactly right.
1:15:08
If you look at those the early writings, it they did just assume it.
1:15:11
And I still think first of all from a from a paradigm change, my intellectual heroes, Adam Smith, like it's first of all, he was a moral philosopher as we talked about last time.
1:15:20
Not but but I think of this.
1:15:24
You write a book Wealth of Nations and you lay out the whole idea.
1:15:28
It's like what if it doesn't have to be zero sum and then it just takes off and he had written it well enough that people could act on it. William Pit Jr.
1:15:39
the youngest prime minister reads him and he's like there's something here.
1:15:45
And I think about think how outrageous that risk feels.
1:15:47
The entire history economically besides feudalism was mercantalism. >> Yep.
1:15:55
>> Which is it's zero sum.
1:15:55
If you're trading, you're losing >> and and beyond idiotic. >> Beyond idiotic.
1:16:00
Well, we're about dragged back into it, right?
1:16:02
[laughter] This stuff doesn't ever die.
1:16:05
It's like, hey, this this golden goose, let's kill it. >> Yeah.
1:16:10
I have this thesis that is essentially that.
1:16:12
It's like, oh, I know we're talking about socialism and communism, right?
1:16:17
Like it's like they neuralize everyone, right? So, >> men in black. >> Yeah.
1:16:24
Men in black neuralizing because every example that we have where it has been tried historically leads ultimately to people eating the animals in the zoo because they're so poor. >> Best case scenario. >> Best case scenario.
1:16:37
I I had a academic career not unlike yours. I didn't do that badly.
1:16:43
Uh but um I switched schools a lot and uh only have a degree.
1:16:47
I barely have my BA and that was just to please my mother.
1:16:53
Uh but I remember in this is 1980. Yeah. 1980.
1:16:56
So I had transferred to the University of Minnesota from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown, which I loved, but I loved my wife now of 43 years more.
1:17:09
And so I decided I was going to hang out there so I didn't lose her.
1:17:11
I I was taking a mandatory class in um astronomy. Yeah, astronomy.
1:17:18
And so the the professor comes in and she proceeds to explain how she is going to be teaching us astronomy but through a Marxist perspective. [laughter] >> Astronomy.
1:17:35
>> And and and I'm just in the back like this, right?
1:17:37
And so like literally she made the mistake of calling on me.
1:17:41
Maybe I was a little too young and aggressive.
1:17:46
Um but I made her kind of look dumb.
1:17:48
>> But she made herself look dumb. You just pointed it out.
1:17:50
>> But here's the funny thing and that that I'll skip the rest of it because I keep doing this and at the end of maybe the second week she says, "Mr.
1:17:59
Oshanosy, stay after, please." I'm like, "Oh, good."
1:18:04
Because I love to fight back then.
1:18:06
And and so I go down and she looks at me and she goes, "Look, I hate you.
1:18:13
You hate me, but I'm going to make a deal with you."
1:18:16
I said, "I don't hate you.
1:18:17
I think you're a lovely person.
1:18:17
I think your ideas are horrible."
1:18:20
And she's like, "Let's make a deal."
1:18:22
And I said, "What's the deal?"
1:18:25
And she goes, "If you never set foot in this classroom again, I will give you an A."
1:18:31
And I said, "Spoken like a true Marxist." That's right.
1:18:35
[laughter] But I did take >> according to their >> but this is it's funny like the the the rise of this kind of um the appeal of the the socialism and Marxism we see historically it's always when people are resentful. >> Yes.
1:18:54
>> And it's resentment it gets in at at a neurological level it's like because basically we are a social species and we we dominate the planet because we cooperate. >> Yep.
1:19:05
And you should then have a mechanism to know when you shouldn't cooperate anymore because you're being taken advantage of. >> Exactly.
1:19:11
>> And we have private opinion data on this.
1:19:13
Levels of resentment in the US are higher than they have ever been.
1:19:16
They're higher than during the Great Depression. >> Wow.
1:19:21
>> Which is then look look if I'm getting screwed then burn the thing down. Right.
1:19:26
So we've got to be and it's funny Adam Smith actually saw this early where he said like with with these positive sum economic systems unfairness is not absolute disadvantage.
1:19:35
It's relative deprivation.
1:19:37
And so when the pie is growing there will always be people at any given time who get access to certain things that will take longer before everybody else gets. >> Yeah.
1:19:47
>> But I can look at that and say wait a minute why you and not me? Why?
1:19:48
You know, >> and the resentment thing, let's be very clear, >> they have good reason to be filled with resentment. And I hate this idea.
1:19:58
Like people are such label thinkers, right?
1:20:04
Like why do I believe in free markets?
1:20:06
Well, because historically no other system has provided as much material um benefit as free markets.
1:20:13
like all of the things that all of the major religions promised, free markets delivered on in a couple hundred years.
1:20:24
But that does not mean that they are perfect.
1:20:27
It does not mean that you should adhere to a zero someum game because for markets to work really efficiently, cooperation is a must. You've got to have it.
1:20:39
And then you make the transition to it being a positive some outcome which is what you and I are working fervently in favor of because the this eitheror everything is not a dichotomy.
1:20:54
The world is not zero or 100.
1:20:58
It is not black or white. It is decidingly gray. >> You're exactly right.
1:21:02
>> You're exactly right. So the this the the work we're doing right now at populist the think tank we founded is the next big project we have is getting under the hood of the resentment to understand exactly why we think this is unfair to find the places where we can
1:21:15
start making progress and I I would argue that we're in this place because as you said the resentment is real >> y >> you know there might be some illusions around that but like there is a core where people feel like the social contract is not being met >> um >> but if you don't know exactly what's going on like what can we do? Like I
1:21:32
Like I feel like we people that that believe in classical liberalism let things into the system crony capitalism, racism, sexism.
1:21:41
And at some point without us being the watcher on the wall, like it got to the point where now it's like, okay, this guy, he's promised me free everything.
1:21:52
And you're like, okay, you know, and it's like you can't just like tell them they're dumb.
1:21:57
That's not how that works, right?
1:21:57
We've got to have better better solutions.
1:21:59
So, was one of the things that we got excited about, my my co-founder and I um was like, we want to be in the world doing something.
1:22:07
So, we started this think tank called Populist.
1:22:09
I don't know what else to call it, right?
1:22:11
Um it turns out you can raise more money if you call it a think tank, but you know, >> [laughter] >> um the uh I mean it's just funny how like the category matters quite a bit.
1:22:20
>> Oh, it's it's it's our love of labels.
1:22:22
>> It's the love of labels.
1:22:22
And so it's like pretty much every other think tank.
1:22:26
We really don't like politics and we're not very good at policy because we also believe those are all downstream from culture. >> Exactly.
1:22:33
>> And culture is downstream from mindset. >> Yeah.
1:22:35
Everything is downstream of culture ultimately, but your correction is the right correction.
1:22:41
It's completely downstream of mindset and that's where you want.
1:22:48
>> And so especially when you're thinking about paradigm shifts.
1:22:49
So we're we're arrogant enough to believe we've developed the most comprehensive model of how social paradigms change so you can actually do something about it because it would be such a shame for this American experiment to end like essentially end because of its success.
1:23:04
Chumper actually said this in socialism creative destruction. >> Yeah.
1:23:08
He said look >> capitalism and free markets are going to lose if they if they don't really tend to to the unfairness of things because they won't lose cuz they fail.
1:23:18
they'll lose because they're so good at what they do. Right.
1:23:21
And every it's like there'll be no one left to defend it.
1:23:24
Everyone's cuz no system is perfect as you said, right?
1:23:26
Just like, you know, I it's funny when people say like, "Yeah, inequality."
1:23:30
I'm like, "Yeah, no, it's not that we like inequality.
1:23:32
It's just under the right circumstances, it is a downside that we're willing to bear for all the benefits that are actually created. That's fine.
1:23:40
It doesn't mean we worship it, right?
1:23:42
Like we don't want it to happen."
1:23:44
But the the the challenge there of course is that historically all of the evidence shows that either a communist system or a socialist system don't work right there.
1:23:58
I there are no nirvanas that are socialist. None.
1:24:04
>> And yet the reason they are still around is the point you're making.
1:24:07
people like I always get amused by the people I'm going to debate that Marxist and I'm gonna explain to him or her why she or he is wrong. It's a religion.
1:24:18
It has very little to do with argument or debate or any of those things.
1:24:25
But the in that those of us who are in favor of free markets, nuanced and all, allow is all of those attacks.
1:24:34
They're what they are doing is they are pushing the right button.
1:24:40
Yes, of course inequality exists.
1:24:42
Inequality is not inherently good [laughter] but some of it is going to be necessary because you can't equalize everyone's outcome and we shouldn't.
1:24:55
This is the thing is when you think about core fairness historically Americans have seen it as equal treatment, right?
1:25:01
very classical liberal and then this kind of moving into more of a like equal opportunity space. Right?
1:25:07
It's not just that I'm treated equally for the law.
1:25:11
It's like I believe I have a fair shot at earning my own success. >> That's right.
1:25:14
>> That's been the core of the American dream. That's been our view.
1:25:15
That's what we're seeing in the data already.
1:25:18
Marxism has a a core belief system of equal outcomes as being the definition of fair.
1:25:23
The logic doesn't really matter because you're arguing over assumptions, right?
1:25:27
>> Which makes it more like a religion, right? Totally. >> No amount of data.
1:25:30
If you're like, I'm Catholic, like I'm Buddhist, you're like, well, let me tell you all the ways you're wrong.
1:25:35
That's not how that works, right?
1:25:37
Religious conversion isn't a fact-based enterprise, >> not at all.
1:25:41
>> It it's it's that feeling.
1:25:41
It's it's connected to something I care about or or a painoint you're solving.
1:25:45
Um, and so we have to be more sympathetic to the experience that people are having.
1:25:50
And we have to show them that our paradigm made truly good actually solves those those those felt pain points better than anything else.
1:26:01
>> So walk us through a paradigm shift that you see coming.
1:26:06
>> So we are barely scratching the surface of what free societies can deliver and we did the materialism like nobody else.
1:26:13
Now that's great but materialism was never the end goal. It's to what end? >> Right?
1:26:17
And this gets us in that space of what I would see as a very humanistic view, which is the purpose, the meaning.
1:26:25
Like Victor Frankle's correction to everybody else that said this is about will to power. It's will to meaning. >> Yeah.
1:26:33
>> You need meaning and purpose in your life.
1:26:35
>> One of my foundational books that I reread uh every other year for sure.
1:26:40
Frankle, >> it's I me too because it it's always such a reminder of what he did, which is The best takeaway from that book, I've probably read it 12 times.
1:26:49
It's just >> it is that meaning isn't this big macro thing.
1:26:55
No, >> it's in the everyday small things.
1:26:56
It's in, you know, he talked about it can be in in sacrifice, but beyond that, it's, you know, being part of something bigger than yourself >> and losing yourself in service of another human being.
1:27:07
And when you start realizing it, like so much becomes life becomes richer and fuller in ways that is what we meant by the American dream.
1:27:17
It's what we meant by this promise we made.
1:27:18
And people just see us accumulating stuff.
1:27:23
They want the meaning and purpose.
1:27:23
We know that from our private opinion research.
1:27:25
They don't know how to get it.
1:27:27
And so you fall back on the well, but then why do you have more stuff than I do?
1:27:30
>> You know, I mean, but you don't want the stuff, >> but it doesn't matter.
1:27:32
And so we think that it's very, very simple with a few tweaks to the assumptions of classical liberalism to get to a society of not just material abundance, but psychological and spiritual abundance as well.
1:27:45
And for us those those core things.
1:27:47
So now it'll kind of make sense why we've written the books we've written and things like that.
1:27:51
If you don't have a deep belief in human individuality not as selfishness but as distinctiveness. >> Yeah.
1:27:58
>> Then it doesn't work right.
1:27:58
If you don't understand subjective value and that like you converting your individuality into what do you want to be?
1:28:07
How do you want to contribute that gives you fulfillment and again contribution?
1:28:11
You you make a difference.
1:28:12
um then we're cooked, right?
1:28:15
And and like paternalism only ever has a leg to stand on if value is objective.
1:28:21
If you know my [snorts] senator Elizabeth Warren can be like, I have a plan for your life.
1:28:25
Like I don't want you to have a plan for my life.
1:28:28
Like I don't I want you to help me with my plan for my life.
1:28:30
Once you realize, wait a minute, we can all pursue our things.
1:28:34
We care about we can support one another. We're not Yes.
1:28:36
Even Even when there will be zero sum games we play sometimes, right?
1:28:40
Like I just went to the Patriots Atlanta Falcons game which we you know >> another podcast we'll talk about at football. Yeah.
1:28:47
That game is a zero sum game. That one game. >> Yes.
1:28:50
>> But the NFL is not a zero- sum game.
1:28:50
No, >> that pie grows and every single person involved in that is way better off.
1:28:56
>> And so understanding how that works is really important.
1:28:59
The other core uh assumption that we're betting on is human dignity, which sounds obvious, but that was the the backbone of classical liberalism.
1:29:08
That leads to human rights.
1:29:11
It leads to all the things we care about.
1:29:12
In our data, we've seen it being eroded.
1:29:15
It's pretty shocking because because dignity from a contean perspective is that unearned because you're a human being, right?
1:29:22
>> You're never a a means to someone else's end.
1:29:25
You know, Taylor would have disagreed, right?
1:29:27
Um, and you have that moral equality.
1:29:30
It doesn't mean we're equal in capabilities or anything like that, but it does it is the core foundation for all things that matter.
1:29:38
>> You know what's really interesting?
1:29:38
Uh, one of my earliest guests on the podcast was an author named Chris Arnady.
1:29:42
And he wrote a book, I think the title is dignity.
1:29:50
And what he did, he gave up his very um lucrative career on Wall Street.
1:29:57
He's a photographer and he loves to walk.
1:30:00
>> And what he would do is walk around the poorest neighbors, first of neighborhoods, first of New York, but then state uh countrywide and then worldwide.
1:30:13
And the one thing he found was when he interviewed these people who were really down on their luck, etc.
1:30:18
, and he would try to throw up everything they should do.
1:30:22
Well, why don't you go and get food stamps?
1:30:24
why don't you go and do this?
1:30:27
And the reason that was common among them all is I have dignity and they treat me like I'm a slave.
1:30:34
If I don't do it their way, I don't get anything. They're all power mad.
1:30:40
They just want to run my life and I'd rather starve.
1:30:43
I had this this strikes a a chord with me because back in the day in the 10 minimum wage jobs I had, we ended up on welfare.
1:30:53
We literally were stealing toilet paper from rest stops. This is how bad it got.
1:30:56
I didn't want to go on welfare for all the reasons you're talking about.
1:31:00
My dad um pulled me aside and he said, "Listen, it depends on how you think about it going in, right?
1:31:09
You were you were owed nothing.
1:31:09
Nobody owes you anything.
1:31:12
But if you see this as a government program, it's easy to start that dissonance that kicks in.
1:31:17
He's like, "Well, I'm owed this. Somebody owes me."
1:31:18
He said, "You can't get there."
1:31:20
He's like, you have to see this as your neighbors >> are willing to give up a little portion of their hardearned money so that they can invest in you so you can have another shot.
1:31:32
If you keep see it as an investment, you have a responsibility to make that investment pay off. Never forgot that.
1:31:37
Um and you know, it leads you to a certain place.
1:31:40
But I had this experience where um you go and buy food with food stamps.
1:31:44
Um and it was back in the day.
1:31:46
It was like, you know, it wasn't as here's a card that you can secretly put in like it's a debit card.
1:31:51
No, this was like here you go. Yeah.
1:31:54
>> It was always humiliating.
1:31:54
Um, and I'll never forget this.
1:31:56
Like we were at a Walmart in the evening, the Walmart superto kind of things.
1:32:00
And um, and I my youngest son loved uh chunky peanut butter. Okay. So, I'm getting stuff.
1:32:10
We're really trying to be responsible.
1:32:12
We're not buying beer or whatever, you know, whatever candy.
1:32:16
And I'm on that, you know, you just always want to kind of get in and get out and hope no one notices.
1:32:18
There's a long line behind me.
1:32:21
Woman's scanning stuff and all she goes beep beep and she looks at she goes, "Sir, you can't buy chunky peanut butter on food stamps."
1:32:30
>> And I was just like, you just >> see it's designed, the system is designed to humiliate.
1:32:38
>> And and like I just was like, we have enough to ensure people when people are in deficiency, they are zero sum. They have to be.
1:32:45
So, it's in our best interest to allow people to be in a state of deficiency.
1:32:49
>> And then there's a way you can do it that either enables more choice and dignity or robs that from them in the name of control.
1:32:56
>> And it's funny, it's like they're like, well, if we did more trust based stuff, well, maybe some single mom would make a bad decision.
1:33:03
I'm like, yeah, that'll happen.
1:33:05
As opposed to what's going on right now, right?
1:33:07
>> We we spend the the overhead percentage on food stamps is ridiculous. It's close to like 30%.
1:33:13
And it's because the people running that system want it to be that way because they want power over those people.
1:33:24
>> And think how how funny this is.
1:33:24
We're willing to spend billions of dollars a year to pay six figure bureaucrats. >> It's insane.
1:33:32
>> To make sure that a single mom doesn't buy the wrong thing for her kids.
1:33:36
Whereas, if we took that money and put it on a credit card and sent it to everyone who needed it, not only would we save money, literally 30%.
1:33:48
>> But we would also allow that single mom or you and when you were in those circumstances to have to not be robbed of the dignity that they have.
1:33:58
>> And and I think that we we miss that, right?
1:34:00
The aspect of dignity and and giving people choice. It's huge.
1:34:04
>> And there's a couple things.
1:34:04
Number one, in a free market, I want their preferences factored in.
1:34:08
>> Yeah, >> they they might be down on the look.
1:34:10
Now, that won't always be true.
1:34:10
Markets work best with those kind of clean signals back and forth.
1:34:13
And if if it's only like Well, it's funny.
1:34:15
Um you remember in the Great Depression, um there was a in in Utah had the only bank that hadn't foreclosed on anybody.
1:34:22
FDR is like, "What is going on here?"
1:34:24
And you can't get Republicans to kind of go out like a lot of stuff they shouldn't have gone along with. That's fine.
1:34:29
They have this whole thing of like, okay, we're going to foreclose.
1:34:31
we're going to do, you know, like, "Oh, you didn't pay your your bills, right?"
1:34:34
So, he's like, "Can you come talk to other Republicans? Like, we need help." So, he testifies.
1:34:42
Congress is like, "Okay, this is amazing.
1:34:43
There must be something about Utah. What's going on?
1:34:45
Why have you not foreclosed?
1:34:47
Is it just not hitting you?" He said, "No."
1:34:48
And one one senator asked him, "Well, wait, hold on.
1:34:51
So, do you have people that can't pay their bills?"
1:34:55
He's like, "Yeah, I have farmers that couldn't make, what do you do?"
1:34:56
He's like, "I gave him another loan."
1:34:58
He said, "Look, for capitalism to work, for free markets to work, you need a middle class with expendable income. It it just doesn't work.
1:35:08
The machine gets gummed up when when you've got a halves and have nots." Yep. >> Right.
1:35:12
And so it's like the Jimmy Stewart character and It's a Wonderful Life. >> Yeah. It's exactly right.
1:35:17
The only institution that old man Potter [laughter] couldn't take over was the savings and loan because that's the way not only Jimmy Stewart's father but Jimmy Stewart himself ran it and they never had to close down because everyone was there and there and he's literally talking to them as individual.
1:35:37
I mean it's your thesis is it?
1:35:40
>> It's like how much do you really need >> and everyone was different. >> Yep. everyone.
1:35:45
Well, I can get by on $12 and you know, and they didn't close. Everyone else did. >> That's right. It's funny.
1:35:53
When we started Populus, we had same ideas.
1:35:54
We want to we want to get into the game of paradigms.
1:35:58
First of all, you can't tell people that cuz they like what are you doing?
1:36:01
[laughter] Like you got to earn some credibility for a while.
1:36:02
It's like we finally started whispering to donors like this is what we're actually about. Oh, okay.
1:36:08
You know, but um by going after like these things, okay, individuality, dignity, not as just moral worth, but self-determination, which is what Kant actually meant. >> Yep.
1:36:18
>> We have the cognitive ability to envision a future of our own and the ability to order our own behavior in order to accomplish it.
1:36:24
>> You've just outlined humanism. >> Exactly. >> Right.
1:36:26
Like uh one of the greatest paintings, unfortunately, looted by the Nazis was Raphael's portrait of a young man.
1:36:35
And it got this reputation that it was almost this schnelling point or lighthouse because for the first time people looking at it would say, "Hey, maybe I can figure things out on my own.
1:36:52
Maybe I really don't need the Pope or the Archbishop of Canterbury or God that guy who's the king to tell me what I need to do.
1:37:01
Maybe, just maybe, I can come up with these ideas that are better than the ones they're telling me. >> That's exactly right.
1:37:08
And it's like as Americans, that's our heritage, right?
1:37:13
Like, you know, you think about even uh the founding of the country, >> you know, this idea that we would share power with other white landowning males is as radically inclusive at the time as it is radically exclusive today.
1:37:24
It's only viewed radically as exclusive because of its success.
1:37:29
Well, and you know, Cicero said, I think it was Cicero, um, said that to be ignorant of what happened before you were born is to remain forever a child.
1:37:41
>> Carl Pauper said, you cannot criticize an idea if you don't understand the problem they were trying to solve at the time, right?
1:37:46
You remove that from that and you think this is silly.
1:37:48
It's very easy to turn that into a caricature.
1:37:49
But it's like our history is one of progress of expanding the Wii of we the people.
1:37:57
and something happened recently where it's I I do think we've been so used to the top down paternalism that we've lost that muscle that can do spirit.
1:38:04
It's why for me we're a part of a a like hundreds of organizations around the 250th trying to understand American identity, >> right?
1:38:15
>> And it's like we've got to get back to that like I matter. I can solve problems.
1:38:19
We can solve problems together from the bottom up.
1:38:21
You know, we don't need nothing not everything is a federal issue.
1:38:25
Not everything requires a politician to save us. They rarely do.
1:38:29
>> Um, and we can get back to that attitude.
1:38:31
And it's funny at at at Populist.
1:38:33
So, we're all about getting to this positive some society that blends classical liberalism and humanism.
1:38:38
We've got these core assumptions of dignity as self-determination, which means like I want choice environments.
1:38:45
Choice is not just this far right weird like no like it matters to human beings that they're able to make their own decisions.
1:38:52
Economists have a thing called procedural util procedural utility which they're terrible at naming things awful which is good for us.
1:38:58
We can just rebrand and take [laughter] credit for it.
1:39:00
But it's just people will take a a worse outcome if they're the one that gets to make the decision.
1:39:06
>> Consistently there is there is value in in the choice itself.
1:39:09
And for me that means I want choice not reserved for people who have I want it for everybody. Yep. >> Right.
1:39:16
And they and so the for us it's about how we start to socialize.
1:39:20
You know the dignity as as self-determination.
1:39:23
What's scary in our data is there it splits now in private.
1:39:29
A third of people still believe everyone has dignity. That's just it. Full stop.
1:39:33
A third don't believe that people are born with inherent dignity anymore >> and a third believe you are.
1:39:38
But you can lose it if you have the right the wrong views. >> Wow.
1:39:43
>> That's terrifying to me.
1:39:43
That is >> this is literally the the foundational was it it's the AWS East one [laughter] the thing that's sitting underneath the whole system. Yep.
1:39:54
>> And you let that slide and the whole thing comes down.
1:39:57
>> I I also sense that we are in the beginning innings of a a fight about this.
1:40:05
Um and and I kind of view um it through Star Wars, right?
1:40:09
So, so the old way is, you know, Darth Vader and the Death Star.
1:40:17
That's the classic tailorism.
1:40:20
That's the classic top down.
1:40:23
We know better than you what's right for you. It's very school marish.
1:40:26
I hate people like that, right?
1:40:28
And but people, you know, and I hate this word, but everyone uses it.
1:40:34
Oh, well, the elites this and the elites that.
1:40:36
What the are you talking about? Right?
1:40:39
But if there are those two groups, like there's that one group that and AI has been one of the things that I think set this off because a lot of people who are very elite in their status, they are the most terrified by AI.
1:40:56
Chat GPT said it was going to henceforth no longer give legal or health advice.
1:41:03
What is everyone using chatpt for?
1:41:06
for the most part legal and health advice and uh I'm sure that they will reverse that because their subscriptions will plunge >> andor one of the other big >> just covering their ass.
1:41:20
>> That's all they're doing. Let's put it this way.
1:41:22
You and I are on the side of the rebel alliance.
1:41:23
But you you can't just say we're on the side of the rebel alliance.
1:41:29
You actually have to do things for people to say, "Oh, wow."
1:41:32
Like that is a much better way. >> Yep.
1:41:38
You basically have to look at the end of the day there's like three things that have to happen.
1:41:43
>> One is we have to instill mindset like a a private belief.
1:41:46
I have to believe something.
1:41:48
>> But from a cultural perspective, I have to believe that we believe it. Yes.
1:41:50
Cuz that's what drives the norms and the expectations.
1:41:53
And then you at the end of the day, you need the exemplars.
1:41:55
You have to show them that it works a better way. Right. Right?
1:41:58
It doesn't have to be perfect yet.
1:42:00
It just has to be possible.
1:42:02
So we work across that full spectrum.
1:42:04
Socializing core ideas, the dignity, the individuality.
1:42:06
The third one which I think is going to be the biggest barrier if we don't get over it is the way we think about human potential.
1:42:12
We see it as a bell curve.
1:42:13
We see it as a one-dimensional thing.
1:42:15
We think it's, you know, the talented tenth.
1:42:17
We think, you know, whatever.
1:42:18
And we think we can use these tests to divine worth. It's so nonsensical.
1:42:23
We're going to look back on this.
1:42:25
You know, we look back and go, why did you let people's blood put leeches on them?
1:42:29
It's [laughter] like, why did you give them this stupid test that was literally developed, IQ tests were developed, the guy that invented them was like, they're just cultural artifacts that are meant to know whether we put kids in special ed to help them or not. That was it.
1:42:42
And the eugenicists in the US were like, we have a test that can say who's better inherently than others.
1:42:49
>> The thing is, the eugenicists were everywhere. It wasn't just the US. No.
1:42:53
>> But but of course Hitler did cite the US as a good example. But yeah.
1:42:55
[laughter] >> Well, he also maybe maybe the one decent thing he did was put that to death. Right. Right. Right.
1:43:05
The whole eugenetics movement was huge.
1:43:09
>> It was I mean the New York Times ran it front page saying it was this great new science that would >> Absolutely.
1:43:13
And and your alma mater Harvard had one of the biggest departments.
1:43:18
In fact, all of the IVs competed with each other to see who could have a better eugenetics department.
1:43:26
>> And the only time biology becomes deterministic is when you artificially constrain the environment. >> Yes.
1:43:31
>> When you let that be dynamic, too, there's no deterministic biology. >> Right.
1:43:36
>> And so we, what's funny is Frederick Taylor standardizes our environment, which then does make variation in biology predictive. >> Yep.
1:43:44
>> And then we're like, look how smart we are.
1:43:45
You're like, come on, guys.
1:43:45
Like, and so it's not that there aren't tests that we can't use, but like here's the thing.
1:43:51
I would tell you that over the last 60 to 70 years, the research on human potential comes to two conclusions.
1:43:58
One, every single human being has something meaningful to contribute.
1:44:02
Okay, that's the first thing.
1:44:03
So, this idea that now look, not everyone can be excellent at everything.
1:44:08
That's that's not how that works.
1:44:08
Our individuality guarantees it, right? There's trade-offs.
1:44:11
But this is the key that we have to get over.
1:44:13
The second piece is you cannot know in advance what any one person person's capable of. You can't. You can pretend, right?
1:44:20
The biggest study on IQ ever was a 40-year longitudinal study that turned out, oh, look how good we'll predict society.
1:44:27
You predicted middle management. That [laughter] was it.
1:44:30
that you predicted people who could fit into this one-sizefits-all system, follow the rules, and you like that study literally missed every genius in those 40 years, including the top statistician of the time whose methods they were using to analyze their data. >> I love it.
1:44:47
And the irony was lost on them.
1:44:49
And and you know, it's also though part of that system, right?
1:44:52
Because like G, general intelligence, if you look at it as a single factor, it does correlate very highly with a lot of outcomes both positive and negative >> on average.
1:45:06
>> On average, which is the missing piece this is why I was have been so intrigued by you and your work.
1:45:13
>> Glycemic index predicts nutrition on average. >> On average, right?
1:45:16
And there ain't no average.
1:45:19
>> And the thing is is you don't care about that.
1:45:21
you just like if someone tells me like here's how I always tell people like you're you're beyond average already.
1:45:26
God forbid you get cancer and I give you two choices.
1:45:29
Gold standard averagebased treatment or molecular fingerprinting and precision medicine to treat it.
1:45:35
>> You know which one I'm picking?
1:45:37
>> Everybody everybody chooses it cuz you know deep down there's something distinctive about you that matters.
1:45:40
And it turns out that's true.
1:45:42
When you apply that to human potential, we've got this artificially constrained cap like we're it's just right here for the taking.
1:45:51
people can contribute so much more and it doesn't again it doesn't mean everybody's Einstein but it doesn't mean everybody can be excellent at something yes >> and our job becomes our institutions change say education is no longer a selection institution anymore it has to be about cultivation it's a very
1:46:06
different thing so so bringing these mindsets to bear and then we put it in this era right now where I mean and you're the expert on this but you as we talked about like AI makes all these stuff that came before like child's play in terms of what it's about to do to society. >> Oh yeah. >> Oh yeah.
1:46:22
>> And you and I talked about this earlier, but um you know, for me, I think about historically when major technologies have come into society and transformed them, >> you know, we always think about the upside and then we get smacked with the downside.
1:46:35
And it usually requires the acquisition of a new mindset or skill to make the trade-off worth it.
1:46:40
So for example, [clears throat] when we went from oral tradition to the the written word, right?
1:46:47
Socrates, if you believe Plato was like, "This is going to be awful.
1:46:51
Memory, >> worst thing ever.
1:46:52
Memory is going to get destroyed."
1:46:54
Now, if by memory you mean reciting Homer, this is definitely true, right?
1:46:59
But you, we all kind of thought, well, yeah, look, hold on. There's something too.
1:47:02
If you could write all the knowledge down, right?
1:47:03
So, first of all, >> it's time binding your knowledge so that it goes forward into the future.
1:47:09
And that's how it accumulates. >> Exactly.
1:47:13
And you know what's funny is I think a lot of people forget that off of that technology we invented a whole new type of logic.
1:47:20
Aristotle was the first sort of written word native.
1:47:22
And it's not until you can write all these things down and start to compare that you can come up with a whole new way of thinking that we take for granted as sort of western logic. >> Totally agree. But here's the thing.
1:47:31
For the general public, it was a really terrible trade early because the oral tradition I just had to be around. I have ears. I can hear.
1:47:41
We can pass on knowledge.
1:47:44
>> For the written word to be generally valuable, you had to learn a incredibly artificial skill called literacy.
1:47:49
Y >> that literally you have to be taught. You can't learn it.
1:47:52
It just it's not like language.
1:47:54
You just pick it up, >> right?
1:47:56
>> And that skill was hoarded arguably till the reformation. >> Yep.
1:47:59
it an act of God to democratize access and then you get the full benefit.
1:48:04
>> The part that is so nefarious, it was held intentionally >> intentionally by by these people the power.
1:48:12
>> The priesthood never wants the leoty to understand the incantations.
1:48:16
>> What a great gig to be like, listen, you you want to talk to God, you got to go through me. >> Got to go through me. Classic middle man.
1:48:23
>> Give me the the it's as though power corrupts. Yeah.
1:48:26
And absolute power must corrupt absolutely.
1:48:32
>> But so the [clears throat] the when we think about the time we're in right now is >> all the news is about the technology itself with AI.
1:48:40
>> But history would tell us that the way you get the upside and and mitigate the downside is realizing it's actually never just about the technology.
1:48:48
>> It's always about our values.
1:48:48
And if we're not clear about our values, we're in trouble.
1:48:52
And my my best example I told you I had I had to find a place to tell this story and I'll probably butcher it because it's been 10 years since I wanted to tell it.
1:49:00
The mechanical clock arguably one of the most important technologies like everything it's the escapement mechanism that allows for precise keeping of time. >> Exactly.
1:49:10
>> Seconds now down to milliseconds.
1:49:11
Hundreds of milliseconds.
1:49:11
Literally nothing about modern >> seconds. Didn't know that. There [laughter] we go.
1:49:15
I learned something today.
1:49:18
>> Literally nothing about modern society works without it.
1:49:19
pacemakers, going to outer space, your basic phone, your cell, nothing. Yeah. Okay.
1:49:26
>> So, it's pretty interesting to me the power of that precision in time that in Europe, we don't even know who who invented it.
1:49:34
We just know it kind of came onto the scene late 13th century, early 14th century.
1:49:39
We don't we don't know the person cuz it didn't matter.
1:49:43
And what's wild to me is it actually emerges in Europe roughly about the same time as the hourglass.
1:49:50
Talk about a rudimentary technology.
1:49:52
Literally [laughter] an hour, right? Roughly.
1:49:56
>> This is very easy to use. >> Yes.
1:49:57
But may I show you this over here?
1:50:00
And they're all like, "No, I don't want to see that. I want to see that." >> I'm like, "Wait."
1:50:03
So, you're faced, this society in Europe is faced with these two different kinds of technologies around time.
1:50:08
One obviously has massive upside.
1:50:11
The other is really just repeating what you had before. You can just whatever.
1:50:15
And you think, well, obviously you're going to choose this. And they didn't.
1:50:20
The hourglass becomes the dominant way of keeping time within 30 years.
1:50:24
And the mechanical clock is relegated to chiming hours on clock on towers, right?
1:50:29
And it takes like almost 200 years. It's amazing.
1:50:34
Of hourglass, and the reason being is that there was no conception of precise time. Time meant hours. The canonical hours. Yep.
1:50:46
And so that's why we still have the legacy in our language where we say half past the hour, a quarter past, approximate was good enough. Yeah.
1:50:51
And so into that world where it meant hours and time was kind of fuzzy.
1:50:58
>> Actually the hourglass is pretty useful.
1:51:00
>> I can keep that time until I value precision.
1:51:02
I cannot even see the latent potential in that technology.
1:51:05
It took scientists trying to solve problems where the hourglass really doesn't work very well to start to make improvements on the escapement mechanism, you know, the pendulum, things like that.
1:51:15
You solve the longitudinal problem, you solve a bunch of other things, uh, Galileo with falling objects, right?
1:51:21
So, suddenly it becomes quite valuable that spreads into industry and then is a fundamental part of the industrial first industrial revolution, but it took hundreds of years and you had it right there.
1:51:32
So I think about as someone who's not an expert in AI like you, >> but I apply history. >> I'm not an expert.
1:51:38
I'm >> Well, in the land of the blind, right? >> Okay. Yeah.
1:51:41
Definitely a one eye [laughter] and the one eye is not seeing all that.
1:51:46
>> Listen, I'm betting on your expertise here.
1:51:48
I I I believe in [laughter] you.
1:51:50
But it's like look, you think it's about the technology, but it is about what we value.
1:51:55
And I think the bifurcation point is this technology will either advance human freedom and flourishing by actually anchoring in our fundamental principles as Americans that we've kind of lost, right?
1:52:09
And it can lead to like the great empowerment or if I love that phrase because that's what it is.
1:52:17
AI is the biggest lever Archimedes would be beside himself >> because what it is is and it also fits your idea.
1:52:29
>> Todd, you can use it completely differently than I use it.
1:52:31
We're both successful because it is empowering our natural strengths, what we're good at, etc.
1:52:39
And it's giving us a lever that we've never seen the light.
1:52:44
>> It really is Steve Jobs Bicycle for the mind. >> Oh, yeah. Right.
1:52:46
No, it's a rocket ship for the market.
1:52:49
It's just and and or if we carry over these old Yep. the pen.
1:52:55
You carry over the old failed assumptions of Frederick Taylor and the industrialist society.
1:52:59
We treat people as interchangeable parts.
1:53:01
Averages are fine and paternalism.
1:53:03
The smart people need to decide what the goals are and how we do it.
1:53:08
>> And AI will cement that because it is the new operating system for our society. >> Totally.
1:53:14
And so there's a moment here where we have a choice and you don't need to know anything about AI, but you need to we need to be speaking up about what we value and where we want to go as a people. >> Could not agree more.
1:53:24
And one of the reasons why I am so active in AI and in investing in those types of companies is because I have six grandchildren and I do not want them to grow up with the panopticon because that's what everyone in power right now really secretly wants.
1:53:43
And you know what's funny is even when these big players now go to Congress and be like, "Oh, this needs to be regulated. It's very scary."
1:53:48
They're saying, "Put a firewall around me cuz I've already won." Exactly.
1:53:51
And make it impossible for anybody to compete with me. >> Yeah.
1:53:56
And I'm really just here to capture you and but >> everyone's going to die.
1:54:00
It's [laughter] it's the the fear-mongering is hilarious.
1:54:04
Like, you know, when um when in Germany when they uh first did passenger trains, people got like crazy vertigo and the experts were like, "Nope, we have to ban this." Yeah.
1:54:14
Humans were not meant to travel like this.
1:54:16
We're like, "Or just don't look right out the window." Right.
1:54:18
You learned a simple skill of like just look into the distance, right? And we're done.
1:54:23
Like, isn't that kind of part of our human OS?
1:54:26
Because I think of Seml Weiss. I'm I'm sure you know.
1:54:28
So he discovered he was a doctor in Vienna and he was on the women's uh uh maternity ward and he was noticing you know all the women who are attended by male doctors are dying >> the rates were astronomically high [laughter] but they charged it up it's like this is just the risk of giving birth. >> That's right.
1:54:51
>> It was like 45% like serious issues fatality rates were like lower than that but still really high.
1:54:57
And so someone says maybe it's that or it could be I don't know just spitballing here.
1:55:03
But they go from dissecting cadaavvers without washing instrument hands and the same instruments working on the woman.
1:55:11
I wonder if there might be something to that.
1:55:16
>> Well, it's funny cuz when we think about paradigm shifts, the shift from my asthma to to germ theory is such a great example because it's not just scientific.
1:55:24
It affects all of society.
1:55:26
And so what's funny is people intuitively think well yeah so they came up with this new idea it's definitely better the evidence is there somewise everything and so obviously medicine would adopt it hospital nope in fact the best predictor of whether you would
1:55:40
accept germ theory was how far away from medicine you were >> y >> because they have all this built-in motivated reasoning so doctors >> plank uh or progress happens one funeral at a time and so it's like you What you want is it was funny how that actually transformed. There's a couple of things.
1:55:58
There's a couple of things.
1:56:00
One is because again we always like to think well we knew germ theory.
1:56:02
Germ theory's promise was yeah we'll have better public health but actually we can eradicate like you we can vaccinate we can inoculate you from that's a huge promise.
1:56:13
It was over 35 years from when people believed in germ theory till the first vaccine.
1:56:18
So it's not >> that is cultural lag. >> That's right.
1:56:21
And so so how do you transform?
1:56:23
This is what we bet the farm on is you've got to build the cultural expectation that that we believe this to create the expectation on institutions.
1:56:34
Medicine was the last to go.
1:56:34
You think about uh we had a president that died from a bullet wound because they fished around inside him like and and it was like he would have survived the bullet >> but not your dirty instruments.
1:56:45
[laughter] You know what I mean?
1:56:45
And yet it's like so so it's like we look to like right now don't look to the experts in the institutions that are captured by the the old status quo >> because they have too much incentive to protect it. They really do.
1:56:59
And I I in fairness to them I don't know that I wouldn't feel that way too. >> Exactly.
1:57:04
And it's like a perfectly horrible problem because if you or I were sitting in their seat >> Yep.
1:57:12
>> we'd probably be thinking the same.
1:57:12
as the Rebel Alliance, we have to be smarter, right?
1:57:16
Um the the best thing about germ theory that the thing that really drove it in the culture >> had nothing to do with germs.
1:57:23
It was a group called the Rainy Day Club in New York.
1:57:27
And it was these women who didn't like the Victorian era dress norms, >> but you can't break a norm or you look like quite frankly like you're a That's really what you get drumed out of plight society.
1:57:37
So every time it rained, they'd put on their badges, they'd hike up their skirts, and they come out like, "We're doing this for you for germ Theory."
1:57:47
And they turned these old pearl clutchers into merchants of death cuz that's what they were, right?
1:57:53
>> I mean, you'd have like like uh was it Teddy Roosevelt's uh like she was a germaphobe but didn't know that she was aophobe at the time, you know?
1:58:02
>> Like she literally died from it. >> Oh yeah.
1:58:05
>> And so it was like wait a minute.
1:58:05
People are like, "Wait, if rich, if the one of the richest women around >> can't escape this something, you know, so but but you get the the people who have vested interest in the new paradigm succeeding." >> Yep.
1:58:16
>> So, it's like, I don't care that you're not a true believer in germ theory yet. Exactly.
1:58:19
>> The thing you care about more than anything in the world only works if germ theory is true. Yep.
1:58:24
>> And now you're going to create the social proof >> that this is something we could believe in.
1:58:27
>> Yet, of course, you've got to watch out for that, too, because you know, another kid would be Eddie Bernay. >> Yes.
1:58:34
>> Who was the nephew of Freud. >> Yeah.
1:58:36
Thank you for public relations.
1:58:39
[laughter] >> He's like, I don't like this term propaganda.
1:58:42
I think >> has such a bad connotation.
1:58:45
>> Let's rebrand it and call it Oh, I know.
1:58:48
public relations relations. Well, you're right.
1:58:50
So, the thing is is what the difference in mechanism between uh manipulation and persuasion is just intent. >> Exactly.
1:58:56
>> So, social proof can work, you know.
1:58:56
So, you just got to be on the side of angels a little bit here and be transparent and honest about what you're trying to accomplish.
1:59:04
accomplish. that that is actually what I have come to conclude is the techniques work but you have to be brutally transparent and honest that that's what you're doing >> and it turns out um when you're using that and you're brutally honest it's actually more effective unlike paternalistic things like nudges >> right
1:59:22
>> which we could have a whole thing on that drives me nuts [laughter] they they only work if you hide it from people the second you explain I'm doing this for your own good it doesn't work that should tell you something if you're on the side of we have to treat people as idiots and we can't respect their dignity and their ability to make their own choices. Maybe look in the mirror
1:59:37
Maybe look in the mirror cuz I promise you, you don't you wouldn't let anyone treat you that way. >> Yeah.
1:59:43
And what you just said, we should underline if they if these people who so think and are so impressed and are so certain of their superiority, of their intellect, of their better, more enlightened way of thinking could ever ever try to figure out how would I respond if someone else came and did that to me, they would see that they are doing real damage.
2:00:16
Todd, this as always has been super fun.
2:00:19
Uh, and you you you're you're going to be able to really influence the world because I'm going to have you on for the super long one, our filibuster podcast.
2:00:27
It's going to be amazing.
2:00:27
I might even I might even ask you more of these cuz I'm going to only give you two like I did last time.
2:00:32
But we're going to wave a wand.
2:00:34
We're going to make you emperor of the world. You cannot kill anyone. You cannot lecture them. You cannot nudge them.
2:00:40
But what you can do is just say two things that everyone on the planet is going to wake up the next day and think, "Hey, these are two really good ideas. And you know what?
2:00:56
I'm going to act on them just because I want to.
2:00:58
What are you gonna incept?
2:01:00
>> So, last time I remember I talked about trust because it's really critical.
2:01:02
So, I I'm still going to double down on that.
2:01:05
Um, and we we we talked about the the the sort of positive sub mindset.
2:01:10
I'm going to keep the trust one in place because I just I I cannot stress this enough.
2:01:16
Most people are trustworthy and we just have the lowest levels of social trust in the US ever recorded.
2:01:21
Every generation since Frederick Taylor has had lower levels of social trust because our institutions do not trust us.
2:01:28
Why wouldn't I conclude there's a reason for that >> and and the right reason is they want power over us.
2:01:34
We interpret it as we must not be trustworthy.
2:01:36
We [snorts] will not get through this paradigm shift that AI is going to drive.
2:01:42
If we can't get back to trusting one another, not trusting our government.
2:01:47
I don't need to trust the government.
2:01:49
>> It needs to be accountable and transparent. I want like that's it.
2:01:52
Yeah, >> but we do need to trust each other.
2:01:52
The other thing I would say as we enter into this paradigm shift, the biggest motivation for your brain is not reward, it's reducing uncertainty >> because uncertainty kills you and your brain's just trying to survive.
2:02:05
The problem is we experience uncertainty as fear instead of just this like it's just telling you something's changing.
2:02:12
There are really easy ways to reduce uncertainty in our relationships, getting back into community, right?
2:02:19
We don't like right now the powers that be have abstracted that power so far beyond where it should reside.
2:02:27
This is a long road for our future conversation.
2:02:29
I think the most important concept that people don't understand is the Catholic idea of subsidiarity which is the the smallest unit capable of solving a problem should have the power to solve it.
2:02:41
Anything above that is a power grab. >> I love that one.
2:02:44
And so this idea of remembering I I I was brought up Catholic, but I missed that one. >> Yes. [laughter] Yeah.
2:02:52
As an ex Mormon, I guess I have to teach you about your your brief.
2:02:56
>> Well, I'm an ex Catholic. >> Yeah, there we go.
2:02:57
So, [laughter] but but this just I want you to pay attention to that feeling of uncertainty.
2:03:03
It feels like the wheels fell off of society.
2:03:05
It feels like and when we get afraid, we become zero sum. We look for scapegoats.
2:03:10
That always ends in violence. We have to resist that.
2:03:12
We have to remember that people are far more like us than we realize.
2:03:17
We've talked about this last episode in our private opinion. People are trustworthy.
2:03:23
And our country succeeded because we bet on each other from the bottom up.
2:03:27
If we reclaim that, man, the next century is ours for the taking.
2:03:31
And if we don't, we have no one else to blame.
2:03:34
>> Amen to both of those.
2:03:34
Todd, thank you so much for being with me. >> [music]