"the following is a conversation with ryan hall his second time in the podcast he's one of the most innovative scholars of martial arts in the modern era quick mention of our sponsors indeed hiring web..."

"conversation with ryan hall you're known as a systems thinker in martial arts but you also i think are willing to think outside the rules of the game outside of the system when you're thinking about s..."

"strategy i try to think about how things interact you mentioned systems thinking and i try to do my best to understand how systems exist but i think that systems have a fundamental strength and a fund..."

"but uh oftentimes i think um you know when it comes to understanding how i'm making decisions and how my opponent is making decisions i have to appreciate whether or not i'm an end user of something a..."

"created by let's say hoffman mendes or someone else and i'm basically trying to do what you're doing i'm just not doing as good of a version of it so not only am i not doing it well but i'm entirely p..."

"food interacts how what it does to create taste what it does create texture so to come back let's take rock paper scissors rock paper scissors is built on the idea of a couple different things actuall..."

"happened they were always flipping the coin and then they win five more they go ah back on track can you imagine that you're flipping a coin on like heads heads heads heads tails what tails those head..."

"me to continue to lean on on dune that i don't have uh that i don't you know you talk to a blind person about about the world about sight and talk to someone that doesn't have everyone who's got coron..."

"you go well what if i could develop what if i could take my time developing skills so that when these strategies become apparent that you are they are executable to you you actually have the ability t..."

"on in my mma career was like i'm not that good at striking at that time i'm not a world-class striker now but i'm way better at striking than i'm giving any credit for because it helps people sleep at..."

"it's almost like developing money like you mentioned the stock market that you can now put in as you told me bitcoin was a great idea five years ago and i had eight bucks man if someone told me bitcoi..."

"since we're on the topic well i i did my first fight in a as a blue belt and i've been training for about a year and a half i did nine uh judicial tournaments in ten weekends or eight maybe eight tour..."

"you went for inverted sorry to interrupt you went for inverted guard like can you tell the story of that fight yeah sure it was three three minute rounds which is not a professional fight length altho..."

"going to be some sort of cosmic balancing and maybe it was the cosmic balancing all at once for the things i've done in the longer term though yeah the the balancing we'll see i hope so but to come so..."

"actually won the singing b what an interesting dude super interesting guy but anyway uh none of the virginia like speaks couple languages super interesting guys like shockingly good at jeopardy too um..."

"a lot of times like we almost were mentioning before if you try to go and get people too early you can hit them if they're not that good but you're going to get hit yourself so you're making you're ba..."

"attack without being hit because every every strategy every idea you have about what you're going to do has to do with uh like that uh minimizing the the return abs absolutely i mean that's what all g..."

"and uh i think that that's kind of what we're shooting for and you know the lionization of absorbing damage and that not being a big deal like you hear that all the time so and so can take shots that ..."

"here it's like i i i've been fortunate enough to spend some time working with with the military and i've been like around and read medal of honor citations they're unbelievable like you read the story..."

"but basically uh you know i wonder if part of the thing that made us made everyone think of muhammad ali as the greatest in addition to of course the unbelievable things that he did out in the world a..."

"of the game and khabib is more like just simple and he lets his actions speak which is is great too in his own way yeah it's great but it's nice when you can tell stories and uh you know that that tha..."

"but you fought a lot of really tough guys um when was your last fight and then catch me up with the injuries well a lot of people kept more and more and more were unwilling to fight you yeah that's be..."

"you know so um that was a that was an interesting one but the time away again was very frustrating it was incredibly difficult before that fight uh after that fight that well because i uh i beat artem..."

"how do you not have ring rust i think i try to watch try to practice performing no matter what you know like whether it's sing karaoke i'm not very good but like anything you name it talking in front ..."

"if i have to i'll put my hands up and walk dead forward if i need to at somebody you know we hope that that's not where it goes but you know like again that humanizing moment where you're shooting for..."

"um it's uh you could be hurt you could hurt somebody you could win you could lose you know throwing away just like i said throwing away your healthier life cheaply makes no sense for anyone um and you..."

"so okay so when was the last fight that was uh darren elkins that was six months or seven months after the bj fight which was great because that's you know i love maybe five really tough a very tough ..."

"and it's um to be irresponsible of me to to not take that seriously so anyway uh we were able to navigate through that time and then uh we were able to reschedule the llamas fight and that was in augu..."

"forgot because you were talking about systems and decision trees and the illusion of choice made me think of sam harris and i forgot to mention it so he talks about free will quite a bit huh and that ..."

"okay that's a really good question i'm not necessarily equipped to answer this but i'll do my best um okay i guess i would say to start with sure would be interesting if it wasn't real if the choice w..."

"let's say for instance i'm going to walk over to have a conversation with someone in the hotel lobby and they've never met them and i go over and i start with oh this is going to be interesting and i ..."

"i guess uh so choose the facilitative belief and uh in your intuition believing that free will is real is uh is more productive for a successful life absolutely because otherwise how am i not how am i..."

"i don't know what that looks like but it's almost like as opposed to focusing on the individual ants of an ant colony looking at the entirety of the ant colony to that i think it makes perfect sense i..."

"said and you know that actually brings me to something else we discussed you know uh yeah for people who don't know ryan brought up or i brought up there's literally a giant book about hitler my so i'..."

"i mean no actually something about cancer culture that we've been seeing things culturally like i will be damned if i apologize for anything that i don't need to apologize for because i was intentiona..."

"headed in you anywhere that this is almost like that river it's just flowing i think that removes the burden of always striving of always trying and always like the struggle and so on so it's possible..."

"don't really know how it got here whether it was i wasn't there at the start of this idea i wasn't there for hey how do we come up with this idea how do we arrive and i'm nowhere near well read enough..."

"makes life is what makes life life and also i guess you know something for us has brought up to me on a number of occasions is that as and it makes sense to me it's basically uh humans only understand..."

"and when i say libertarian i don't mean that in the political party sense or even the belief system basically i'm like hey you do you buddy it's not my it's not what you're up to is not my concern ver..."

"you know okay humans love power and one way to attain power is to say everything that you guys are doing is wrong and i have the right thing and i'm going to build up a giant cult of people and i'm go..."

"i mean you you're actually making me realize that that ultimately leads to a kind of um doesn't that go in a nihilistic direction yeah it's both nihilistic or if you want to make it a political system..."

"individual from the group which is fundamentally correct me if i'm wrong that always seems like the big issue of history hey there's more of me than there is of you deal with it you're like yikes yeah..."

"the thing is you also have to i believe put in the the work of empathy of understanding what others how what leaving people the fuck alone means to others but isn't that an interesting thing if i beli..."

"you're not just sitting alone in a room you're uh you're using like public transit you're using the police force you're using fire fighters you're using the like you're using a lot of resources that a..."

"of others and to be able to then start to think okay so what is what is what is my duty what is my responsibility to other human beings to be respectful to be loving to to help them as part of this fu..."

"yeah that's certainly on an individual level so i've you know i've discussed things with friends like my father's an environmental attorney like uh ian has been for a long time and has been an enginee..."

"but you can absolutely change yourself and i think a lot of the lessons that you know like the good lessons from religion that happened the good lessons from the great men and women throughout history..."

"resources financially intellectually emotionally physically if i chuck you know point zero zero one percent of it in every single different direction what am i doing it's like when people go oh i care..."

"others on the internet so the incentives are just wrong i i think there is a technology solution to this or at least the solution to improve this uh this communication mechanism it's not obvious how a..."

"actually like literally out of his power uh so power is weird when you have a large organization this is why the great leaders well this is what great leaders do whether it's presidents or leaders of ..."

"very difficult to do to to be able to sort of yeah to constantly challenge the way things have been done in the past and which is why another way it's often done is a startup like a small company basi..."

"amazing things were done was because this person was willing to obviously brilliant and also willing to to rattle the you know rattle everyone's cage periodically and say hey what's going on is not wh..."

"other smaller groups and so on but each of those individuals in the room have their own different psychology some like to be pushed to the limits some some like like to be screamed at some have are ve..."

"step up but they basically say okay stop this old way that congress works of this bickering of this like compromise bullshit here's a huge plan that cost billions of dollars in today's age trillions o..."

"the room with the leaders of both parties over the powerful individuals and smooth talk the shit out of them in the way they need to be smooth talk to so like both of those skills it seems to when the..."

"so you want i mean you told the story blue belt and so on but you you went to black belt really quickly uh and not just in terms of ranks but in terms of just skill level i mean uh you didn't go to bl..."

"in where i was at and uh i drilled a ton um i drilled and drilled and drilled and drilled and drilled and um one one thing that's really important to understand though is that it i was able to in a re..."

"the other hand there's probably a just metric shit ton of sub-optimal things that are out there that are being taught um myself included i've taught things that are looking back five years three years..."

"and then you push your hands away and you expose your face and then uh you lay on your side because someone told you to do that and you look like uh yeah i guess you look like a shrimp yeah it's like ..."

"otherwise and i think that a lot of times people go oh communism is better i'm like i haven't seen it i haven't read any books about it were being better but uh it's possible i mean i haven't experien..."

"need and also obligation to understand why you were doing what you're doing and don't ask why once ask why over and over and over and over about the same thing oh well i want to shrimp why to make spa..."

"with it than it does about how cool i am was because that shouldn't really happen when you think about it you're like okay you're a champion at ostensibly a very high level of the sport you enjoy a th..."

"a glaring glaring glaring issue with the operating system of jiu jitsu which was you know a huge vulnerability in the lower body and not only not attacking it but having no idea how one does attack it..."

"guy even if i'm internally a scumbag which i like to think that i'm not but basically uh going like hey this guy's way more likely to help me or this person's way more likely to help me if i shake the..."

"the first thing is basically which is difficult i wonder if we can break it apart a little bit is don't trust authority essentially keep asking why be respectful without trusting authority right right..."

"and then once you get good enough not understanding um like going against the fact that the instructor doesn't understand and my inability to understand what you're saying though doesn't invalidate it..."

"don't you know i like to sit in the corner but um so everyone's a little bit different some people you know i wasn't terribly popular in high school i you know like uh i don't like high school very mu..."

"i should do that for its own virtue because it's the right thing to do and i should try to treat people decently but beyond that even selfishly it's in my interest to do that but see the thing is this..."

"is there's a culture in martial arts a culture that i like where the instructor legitimately so carries a aura of authority and it's not comfortable to really ask why i'm not it's it's a skill to be a..."

"it's the drilling thing and you know i um for example like in my and when i was coming up there was so much emphasis placed on like closed guard for example and you might you might actually teach me n..."

"don't understand how leverage here works for my particular body like so it's just it's a feel thing too like it feels like in my basic understanding of leverage and movement and timing and so on it fe..."

"position but it's not sold that way right it's like hey this is a good guard it's like hey man here's a bow and arrow versus and you know how to use this thing right like make sure you're you're far a..."

"all the time so if you don't provide the context for me or worse yet you provide improper context like how how much of a problem is that going to be well i think the skill of the white belt should be ..."

"insensitive to the requests of others right explicit requests of others so your job as a beginner is to be a really good listener of those social cues it's like a visit in a foreign country right yeah..."

"oh man uh hi i'm i'm the one that's asking for a favor here if i spawn with raymond daniels raymond daniel's doing me a favor i ain't doing him a favor let's not get it twisted so thank you so much fo..."

"to just take it and i've seen he's a gentleman i've seen people get nuts with george and and have him just like he has a he's a patient of a saint i don't have that level of patience but i would just ..."

"see nowadays with uh how accessible people are because i grew up you know being a big huge sports fan of all kinds i couldn't send derek jeter a message and and much less have a possibility of reply a..."

"and understand and see the world the same way that i do that was something that i experienced with marcelo he's amazing but in in a different way then his it just we see things fundamentally different..."

"art meeting people like marcelo taught me and then josh waitskin actually brilliant guy uh chess champion um former owner maybe owner of martial's academy really great friend i think he has a book on ..."

"entirely specific but you know like if you can focus on that and back to the whole you can't teach a man anything marcelo didn't teach me anything but he taught me in so doing like and other and other..."

"day so in that dvd in that instruction dvd sorry it's an online instructional dvd i keep saying dvd though nobody has dvds anymore do they like vhs i don't know who has dvd with like blu-ray i possess..."

"you know that clicked with me there's very few instructionals there's very few things i've watched that ever clicked with me and that was definitely it uh he taught me one thing i don't know it's uh y..."

"yeah so they were there for the points but i can establish a huge amount of control uh in fact the hooks were you you were talking about like illusion of choice it's it's uh it almost made people pani..."

"see in almost anything come from hey that thing we thought was right was wrong rather than not only is it right it's even writer and you're like that's not wrong it's not bad but that's you're in it's..."

"one punch man you can walk around and just just lay low every single person you got into a fight with because it didn't even occur to them to hit you with their backhand in a world full of jabbers you..."

"being able to easily beat up all our friends because everyone wrestled all their buddies and it was one of those ones where like they don't have weapons to end the fight you have weapons to end the fi..."

"like oh okay that's interesting i mean mma has changed that but people have haven't watched mma that's an interesting move it doesn't make sense why that would be a choke and they kind of quickly acce..."

"which almost everyone is of almost anything i'm serious where i'm like i think about stuff in my life the only things i really think about are like martial arts and martial arts strategy and like i do..."

"imagine you are a world class anything or even not even world class forget it like a purple belt compared to a white belt or compared to a no belt might as well be jon jones or marcelo garcia you're g..."

"definitely not a jujitsu world champion i wanted a purple belt but like that's not the same at winning a black belt um and uh tough accomplishment but not in the same thing at all but anyway um i was ..."

"karaoke it's the same well that's actually kind of my happy place it's not so much everyone else's you know it's uh everyone else is probably you know heading for the door at that point but you know i..."

"than karaoke so i'm not sure why bro captive audience yeah exactly oh fear and excitement of artificial intelligence i mean like you know me i don't know anything about i just i basically i don't i do..."

"because if you think about like uh you know european countries encountering each other and i'm just speculating i don't know anything about history but let's say countries that can contend with one an..."

"yeah but what happens when i can get anyone anything and i'm more or less untouchable like that seems to me to be like like various times in colonial history you know what i mean and what happened we ..."

"versus for bad so like you're one of the assumptions with stephen hawking or with uh if russia became much more powerful than america or america much more powerful than russia in the cold war your ass..."

"way more powerful that's fair okay so i think i i think you're i guess how do you restrain it though uh there there's a lot of different discussions of how to uh i just even restrain each other becaus..."

"all humans no i don't think that i don't think that it is either i guess we're going to even enslave all humans that's fair i guess what i'm trying to suggest is that something adequately powerful the..."

"right before the deadline it works out well i mean how i don't know how you did school probably a lot better than me but that was how i did school i couldn't be mo i was no motivation up until like th..."

"so it's an interesting thing it's like it's almost like hey i wonder if this i wonder if khabib nurmagomedov has a lot of heart and i'd say the answer is almost certainly yes but you go well he hasn't..."

"computer scientist and he needs the long hours in the day of doing like serious math so it's mostly math proofs and for that you have to sit and think really deeply it's like really hard work compared..."

"i'm not a congressman opportunist or uh yeah that's when that was i'm an opportunistic communist and capitalist i just do whatever whatever is cool at the time exactly uh let me ask you um to examine ..."

"first thought too like if once the tie becomes an issue like yeah like everything else is already it's already an issue yeah because the tie to me now without like messing with it now is is to me has ..."

"like is there okay let's let's talk about a street fight with a belt that's like a jeans belt like a belt clothing belt okay so i get to take it off and whip them in the face of the buckle how serious..."

"right yeah it's very difficult for me to i don't know in terms of just distance i can't imagine a case of different distances even like situations where let's not talk about like like a situation wher..."

"yeah particularly if you start with like one of these like you know like like you like you poke your finger in my chest and then snap down real quick oh yeah because it it also socially speaking it's ..."

"moment in time can you like reflect back and think what are some of the hardest if not the hardest thing you've ever had to do in your life well you know i think i've had a bunch of things you know i'..."

"because that doesn't really serve anybody and anyway i guess i would say i'm thankful for all of the experiences difficult and otherwise mostly difficult honestly most of the times i remember i'm than..."

"and also you know how am i meant to interact with everyone as you said whether you know even if we're a society of individuals for at least for the time being hopefully you know in perpetuity we still..."

"winning team what that's been the uh that's that's my hiring pitch actually it's a good hiring pitch you're still taking resumes you want to be on the team that doesn't die during the great apocalypse..."