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{{no transcript blurb}} | {{no transcript blurb}} | ||
=== | === Human-edited Transcript === | ||
Eric Weinstein 0:06 | Eric Weinstein 0:06 | ||
Hello, this is Eric with a few initial thoughts before this week's episode. First, I want to briefly discuss a pair of mistakes and omissions on my part. To begin with, we released a Portal special episode recently about a speculative theory of physics called Geometric Unity, which was partially recorded on April 1. We did this so as to make use of the opportunity to attempt to repurpose the tired and increasingly irritating April Fool's tradition, of which many of us have grown bored. I had intended to single out and call particular attention to a man who is very important to the Geometric Unity Theory, as well as the portal project itself. This is a man I think of as my uncle, and who means the world to my family, Michael W. Brown, a former farmer and commercial fishermen who became the CFO of Microsoft and then the head of the NASDAQ. | |||
In any event, we, that is, | Years ago, during the financial crisis, Mike invited me and my family to take over his two small islands in the Puget Sound Archipelago, and lead a renegade research-oriented science camp. We did this every summer there for many years, and these islands, now under new ownership, are in fact the origin of the so-called "Double Island Rules" that we discuss from time to time, which allowed us to get past issues of ego and miscommunication between intellectual and domain specific silos. | ||
In any event, we, that is I, rushed to get the episode out for April 1, and in my haste I forgot to include the segment of special thanks due to Mike for a level of generosity, wisdom, selflessness, risk taking, leadership, and brilliance that honestly I'd previously only seen in movies. I will try to have Mike on The Portal at some point. But I wanted to say that his unwavering support of scientists attempting to work outside of and around traditional channels in physics, biology, economics, and other subjects, has been nothing short of inspirational to me. So Mike, if you're listening out there, please come through The Portal. These are dark times, indeed, and we still need great leaders like you to remind us all of how it's done. | |||
Additionally, as someone who probably does not listen to a broad enough smattering of podcasts, I think I inferred from listening to Sam Harris's episodes that it is typical to begin a podcast with a section entitled "housekeeping". I now realize that that may be an iconic aspect of Sam's podcast, just like Dave Rubin's "Direct Message" is iconic to the Rubin Report. If so, I apologize and we'll call this first segment something else. Color me chagrinned for engaging in the sincerest form of flattery here without knowing any better. | Additionally, as someone who probably does not listen to a broad enough smattering of podcasts, I think I inferred from listening to Sam Harris's episodes that it is typical to begin a podcast with a section entitled "housekeeping". I now realize that that may be an iconic aspect of Sam's podcast, just like Dave Rubin's "Direct Message" is iconic to the Rubin Report. If so, I apologize and we'll call this first segment something else. Color me chagrinned for engaging in the sincerest form of flattery here without knowing any better. | ||
As for what is on my mind this week, it is this: the virus and its curious relationship to the future. For the last month, I've spent nearly all of my time at home with my family, and many of the better thoughts I've been exploring during this time are due to my collaborator and wife, Pia Malaney. Pia is the economist who currently runs SIGS, the Silicon Valley Center for Innovation, Growth and Society, which she cofounded with INET, the Institute for New Economic Thinking. Very early on, I was fumbling to try to understand the most likely effects of the virus, and she said something clarifying, which I wish I had repeated to you all when it was fresh. She said, "I think, in a way, the virus can be thought of as representing the future." I don't know, maybe I'm dense, but I didn't catch it the first time, so I asked her to clarify. She was surprised that this wasn't obvious to me, so she | As for what is on my mind this week, it is this: the virus and its curious relationship to the future. For the last month, I've spent nearly all of my time at home with my family, and many of the better thoughts I've been exploring during this time are due to my collaborator and wife, Pia Malaney. Pia is the economist who currently runs SIGS, the Silicon Valley Center for Innovation, Growth and Society, which she cofounded with INET, the Institute for New Economic Thinking. Very early on, I was fumbling to try to understand the most likely effects of the virus, and she said something clarifying, which I wish I had repeated to you all when it was fresh. She said, "I think, in a way, the virus can be thought of as representing the future." I don't know, maybe I'm dense, but I didn't catch it the first time, so I asked her to clarify. She was surprised that this wasn't obvious to me, so she spelled her position out. | ||
"Think about it this way: take all of the seemingly varied issues we | "Think about it this way: take all of the seemingly varied issues we discuss constantly over the dinner table and at conferences." | ||
"All of them?" I replied, with a slightly teasing | "All of them?" I replied, with a slightly teasing voice, as I assumed she was speaking with hyperbole. | ||
"Why, yes, pretty much all of them," she said brightly | "Why, yes, pretty much all of them," she said brightly and without an ounce of self doubt, in a voice that I have learned to fear over many years of collaboration. She continued, "Let's start with surveillance, monopolies, automation, telecommuting, next generation warfare, UBI, future of work, the retail apocalypse, online dating, antivaxxers, the student debt crisis, supply-chain vulnerability, green tech and climate change, urban homelessness, college equivalency certificates, biohacking, the retreat from globalization, collapse of mainstream journalism, Chinese ascendance, social engineering, Saudi monetization and the move away from fossil fuels in the kingdom, inclusive stakeholding, political realignment and the problem of gerontocracy and the end of naive capitalism underpinned by U Chicago-style economics,-in fact, pretty much all the things we've used the center to explore." | ||
"Okayyyy | "Okayyyy,’ said nervously. | ||
"Well | "Well,’ she continued, "you know that tired tech expression, 'The future is already here-it just isn't evenly distributed?’ Well, this virus is accelerating that unifying future that was already headed our way across the board." And, recapitulating that moment where agent Kujan drops the Kobayashi coffee mug in The Usual Suspects film, a forest spontaneously emerged for me from the confusion of the trees I had seen previously. All of these seemingly disparate phenomena were suddenly revealed as closely related. Americans were actually calling for their own surveillance, only they were calling it contact tracing. The Retail Apocalypse, which had been building slowly, suddenly became a matter of a government decree, creating an ever more imposing monopoly for the world's now richest human. He, in turn, owns and controls the only paper to take down a US president, consolidating control over a sensemaking apparatus. Most supposedly essential face-to-face office work was revealed to be illusory, as easily-monitored and recorded telecommuting replaced the high carbon commute. The demand for fossil fuels, in turn, evaporated, pushing oil futures into radical states of contango. Social distancing solved the problem of unwanted "Me Too" toxic male touch, as sexless zoom dating put the hurt on “Netflix and Chill”-ing. Indeed, nearly UBI-like payments were going out to newly unemployed former workers who were expected to sit at home on couches, as universities effectively all but confessed that they could deliver the same value through distance learning by not rebating extortionary tuition. China, through an emasculated World Health Organization, seemingly began inducing our own US institutions, like the CDC and the Surgeon General's Office, to impart deadly magical thinking to Americans about the ineffectiveness of masks for healthy people. This all came as if some kind of twisted revenge for the Boxer Rebellion, where Chinese believed swords and martial arts made them invulnerable to Western high-tech warfare. | ||
Spontaneous protests broke out in cities across the country, as mass protesters fought mysterious rules | Spontaneous protests broke out in cities across the country, as mass protesters fought mysterious rules communicating that one may not peaceably assemble, in contradiction to the First Amendment. We were also not allowed to contradict public health authorities, who were clearly covering for a level of Baby Boomer and Silent Generation incompetence to keep the manufacture and storage of essential goods and services within national boundaries, and out of the hands of strategic rivals, who think nothing of blatantly lying to us in matters of life, death, and statistics. | ||
I reasoned, however, that there were clearly too many different things happening in such a situation for the sudden arrival of the future to lack a single ideology. And so it occurred to me and to Peter Thiel as well, who I called immediately | I reasoned, however, that there were clearly too many different things happening in such a situation for the sudden arrival of the future to lack a single ideology. And so it occurred to me-and to Peter Thiel as well, who I called immediately-that the two older generations of Americans, who were to duke it out in the race for the presidency, shared a single purpose. Their common goal was to stop the future from arriving-at essentially any cost to future generations-so that they could live out their remaining days in as close to the style to which they'd become accustomed (in childhood and young adulthood) as was actually possible. | ||
And what did they use to accomplish this? Well, it was a combination of three ingredients. First of all, it required political control. Second of all, it also needed a seemingly | And what did they use to accomplish this? Well, it was a combination of three ingredients. First of all, it required political control. Second of all, it also needed a seemingly inexplicable indifference to the world of trouble that they would finally leave to their descendants after their demise. Lastly, it partially hinged on a reliance on 75 years of astonishingly good luck, which can partially be explained as a rational universal fear of the future-after two world wars, totalitarian atrocities, the 1918 Pandemic, and the Great Depression. This is related to Francis Fukuyama's theory of the end of history. | ||
To this way of thinking, what was happening was simple. The magic trick of holding back nearly all aspects of our true future required all three elements to be in place simultaneously. Now nothing had changed with respect to the first two. In fact, all that | To this way of thinking, what was happening was simple. The magic trick of holding back nearly all aspects of our true future required all three elements to be in place simultaneously. Now nothing had changed with respect to the first two. In fact, all that had occurred was that their luck had finally run out with the COVID virus. To my generation, and the ones that followed, that past version of the post-war American dream was like a mesmerizing rumor and tale that the older generations had repeatedly and vividly wielded to cast a spell. This intimidated many of us from demanding answers and a say in our own future. If you can't get a second home in your 30s from a paper route, a low-cost education, or a life in public service, then perhaps you should wait your turn and let the elders who made it work lead for a little while longer, until the younger generations can prove that they're ready to assume adult responsibilities. | ||
This was a magical spell indeed, which blinded those of us who | This was a magical spell indeed, which blinded those of us who were forced to repeat "Okay, Boomer" to explain our seeming relative inability to earn and lead in the presence of elders who could out-earn us in their prime. And this was even under the weight of multiple divorce settlements, or three-Martini lunches, and without the extensive training and apprenticeships that we seem to require. | ||
Well, that spell is now broken for me, watching our | Well, that spell is now broken for me, watching our supposed leaders contend with the true pandemic. The Silent and Boomer generations, lacking any kind of precedent, now look like incompetent dolts. I suppose it is theoretically possible that the rest of us former gritty latchkey kids and digital natives would not fare better, but we could scarcely do worse. In fact, our elders are revealed not as go-getters or can-do leaders, but as creatures of The System, who simply held back confronting the inevitable future for decades, because its shape and form are indeed terrifying. And it wasn't really the virus that was accelerating the terrifying future across the board. Any worldwide crisis of sufficient depth would have done it. The world has always been caught up in escalating plagues, wars, depressions and conflicts, and the Coronavirus was ushering in the future, simply because it was the first piece of early-20th-Century-scale bad luck to fall into our new millennium, characterized, as it is, by fragility. | ||
After a few words from our sponsors. I'll be back to introduce today's guest, author Ryan Holiday. | After a few words from our sponsors. I'll be back to introduce today's guest, author Ryan Holiday. | ||
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Returning sponsor Four Sigmatic is that crazy and plucky Finnish company that smuggles the mushrooms with the greatest potential health benefits into the beverages that we all love. And this is the key point-it’s true even for those of us who hate mushrooms. But just where could such a crazy idea come from? Well, Finland, obviously. You see, Finland was once invaded by the mighty Soviet Army in late November of 1939. And yet, they prevailed as the tiny David against the Soviet Goliath; but just how could they do it? Well, some say it was because the Soviets forgot to wear white fatigues to blend in with the snow (Nice going, Vladimir). Others said it was because the extroverted Finns were able to use their dominance of slapstick stand-up comedy to keep their morale up. But in fact, I believe it was the Lion’s Mane Mushrooms that the Finns put into their coffee which allowed them to clear their minds and out-think the shivering Russians, when even they couldn't take the Finnish cold; so if,like me, you feel about mornings the way Finns feel about unwanted invaders, go to Foursigmatic.com/Portal and you'll get 15% off your order of coffee with 100% organic Arabica beans mixed with Lion's Mane Mushrooms; it doesn't taste like mushrooms! You'll find it delicious and I think it'll clear your head. Foursigmatic.com/portal. | |||
Two | In this episode, I get to sit down with author and social analyst Ryan Holiday. I wouldn't say that I know Ryan enough to consider him a close friend, but I have enjoyed every conversation I've had with him for the unique metacognitive perspective that he brings to all things on which he thinks, speaks or writes. There are two things in particular that Ryan does that make him one of the most incisive analysts and best conversationalists in the public eye working today. In many ways, the overarching lens that I feel is missing from today's hyper-partisan world is that of expecting conflicting truths to lie in superpositions. After all, why would anyone imagine that the simplified childlike positions of activists would be appropriate for those who eschew hyper-partisanship in favor of nuance? Well, I can't pretend to answer that question. I can say that Ryan's ability to fully consider the validity of two or more evident truths that are at least nominally in conflict, is all too rare in today's world of public intellectuals. Well, that itself is reason enough for me to tune in to Ryan's perspective. There's something deeper that draws me towards his voice and way of thinking. All too often in my experience, the minority of social analysts who,in the internet era, can still properly entertain the dialectic in public without bending to the activist mob, tend to stop there prematurely at a point of detachment. They frequently appear to be disinterested in reframing natural tensions for others, so as to facilitate progress through synthesis and reconciliation. Instead, they often prefer the entertainment value of a continuing battle to a satisfying conclusion without victor or vanquished. In particular, I've increasingly noticed a move towards studied indifference in the projection of personal apathy on the part of several metacognitive pundits, in what seems to be a mechanism of self-protection. I find that Ryan, by contrast, is fairly open in sharing that he cares about the future deeply-but always in a thoughtful and measured way, informed in an interesting fashion by his relationship to Stoicism. That combination of caring without sanctimony makes him one of my favorite conversationalists in private, and I am glad that we got a chance to try [and] translate this into a public forum. | ||
14:27 | |||
Two [comments] on the setting of this conversation. To begin with, it took place in 2020, before the stay-at-home orders were in place. So it feels in some sense like a message in a bottle from another earlier world. And it oddly filled me with a sense of what feels like a genuine longing for our recent past upon listening to it. With so much rapid change, it feels like full-on early 2020 nostalgia is actually now a thing, even though it is only April. Secondly, we discuss Ryan's book on Gawker and Peter Thiel. This is one of the first places that I've ever shared my thoughts about the episode, and it may surprise people to hear my inner conflicts about Gawker journalism and Nick Denton. To this end, I will just point out that I was later to 15:00 find out about the story from Peter than many may have imagined, and that Peter actually encouraged me always to act as an independent voice of moral concern, as you may discern from the conversation. I'll let the conversation speak for itself, however. | |||
I do hope you will enjoy our uninterrupted conversation with author Ryan Holiday when we return after some brief messages from our sponsors. | I do hope you will enjoy our uninterrupted conversation with author Ryan Holiday when we return after some brief messages from our sponsors. | ||
Okay, so tell me if this is familiar | Okay, so tell me if this is familiar: You’re hunkered down. You're trying to get some exercise. And in fact, you're feeling some stress and some aches and pains from this crazy situation. But maybe you have a regular massage therapist and you can't go visit that person. What are you going to do? Well, that's where returning sponsor Theragun can can really come in handy. They make an incredibly professionally-made progressive therapy device. Its rapidly vibrating but extremely soft head can be directed at any muscle group that you like. You can use it on yourself, you could use it on a partner, and it manages to get deep tissue relief to the sore and aching muscles that you may have either from working out or from sitting in one place; rather akin to what you would get from a high quality massage therapist. So feel better naturally. Treat your pain and get back to your life. Try Theragun risk-free for 30 days or your money back, by going to Theragun.com/Portal. For a limited time, our listeners to this podcast get up to $150 off of your device. That's Theragun.com/Portal: T H E R A G U N .com/PORTAL. | ||
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Hello, you found the portal. I'm your host, Eric Weinstein and I am here today with Ryan | Hello, you found the portal. I'm your host, Eric Weinstein, and I am here today with Ryan Holiday, author of Conspiracy and other books, and a great all-around thinker and voice analyzing what's going on in our society. Ryan, welcome. | ||
Ryan Holiday 17:36 | Ryan Holiday 17:36 | ||
Line 89: | Line 96: | ||
Eric Weinstein 17:38 | Eric Weinstein 17:38 | ||
So very curious about your thoughts as to whether the time that we're in right now has any particular feel and why it's hard to associate what has been going on in terms of a | So, very curious about your thoughts as to whether the time that we're in right now has any particular feel, and why it's hard to associate what has been going on in terms of a zeitgeist with any kind of intellectual wrapping that helps us better understand what the forces are that are most changing our lives at the moment. | ||
Ryan Holiday 18:04 | Ryan Holiday 18:04 | ||
I've actually been thinking about that a little bit. You've probably | I've actually been thinking about that a little bit. You've probably-you live in LA so maybe-you ever watch the show The Hills? | ||
Eric Weinstein 18:10 | Eric Weinstein 18:10 | ||
No. | No. | ||
18:10 | |||
Ryan Holiday 18:10 | Ryan Holiday 18:10 | ||
Okay, so | Okay, so The Hills is this sort of fake reality show that started in Laguna Beach; it was a reality show, and then they all move to LA. It’s this mid-early aughts reality show about young people moving to LA, and it created all these big brands and personalities that dominated the tabloids for a really long time. And then this year, they came out with the 10-year anniversary. The show had ended, they [had all gone] on, some of them are successful, some are not successful. This [had been] a show about them in their early 20s, and now they're in their early 30s, and they revisited it. And my wife and I were watching it, and I loved it; you would not think I would like it, but I loved it. What I found over and over again-this is what I think the Zeitgeist is-these characters, who basically are fake people but sometimes have real emotions-the word they kept talking about over and over again was how anxious they were, and how tired they were. And and these are obviously all peak millennials. And it struck me that there was probably something illustrated there about the millennial mind-that what their 20s was, from the teens to the end of their 20s: the Warner Act, the financial crisis, an economic recovery that they didn't really benefit from, and then walking in now to becoming a parent-you know, becoming an adult maybe. Starting to get serious about life, but without the comfort or security that would soothe some of those anxieties. So, to me one of the feelings of the age is kind of an anxiety or an unease about things- | ||
Eric Weinstein 20:09 | Eric Weinstein 20:09 | ||
together with exhaustion | -together with exhaustion | ||
Ryan Holiday 20:10 | Ryan Holiday 20:10 | ||
-with exhaustion. Yes. Because we're on our phones all the time, we're consuming more information than ever; we have more information about what other people are doing. I think the exhaustion is from social media in the sense of keeping up with the Joneses times 1000, you know, because- | |||
Eric Weinstein 20:28 | Eric Weinstein 20:28 | ||
I don't even want to call it, "We are on our phones". We have merged | I don't even want to call it, "We are on our phones". We have-merged-with our phones. And so if I think about the phone as a portal, the idea is that I turn this slab towards me and then I suddenlygo into some-like, right now, I don't know whether you and I are being attacked on social media. | ||
Ryan Holiday 20:48 | Ryan Holiday 20:48 | ||
Sure, | Sure, we probably are. It’s just-what percentage of it is attack, and what percentage of it is complimentary? | ||
Eric Weinstein 20:56 | Eric Weinstein 20:56 | ||
Right | Right, but the point is that this parallel world is taking place at all times. And then we have now merged with it, so there isn't a “we” that are on our phones. | ||
Ryan Holiday | |||
Yeah, or the idea that it's a separate world is-like, right now, there are people simultaneously watching thousands of hours of video or audio that both of us have produced. So we're having this conversation, which is obviously not live, but other people are watching a very different conversation with us at this moment. And that is strange if you think about it. And yeah, some of those people are hating that conversation, some of those people are loving that conversation. It's one of the weird things I get all the time-we were talking about Tim Ferriss a second ago-people [say] I loved you on the Tim Ferriss podcast or whatever. I did that interview in 2014. But to them, it's new. So that different people are entering the portal at different times. And whereas I think something is old, if you've never seen it before, it’s brand new. | |||
Eric Weinstein | |||
Ryan Holiday 22:44 | I was trying to talk to my son who's 14, about the old days-What was it like?-and I had to explain to him how important the clock was-when you didn't have cell phones in everyone's pocket-you had to be very precise and careful where you were going to meet someone. On what street corner at exactly what time; and that these things that were broadcast live, like the news, synchronized behavior. We were willing to be synced because we didn't have an ability to be independent. And now that we've gotten this ability to do everything on demand, we’re surprised that no one carries our information [inaudible]. | ||
22:44 | |||
Ryan Holiday 22:44 | |||
22:44 | |||
I was actually-I have a three-year-old, so I was thinking, ‘What’s the-[from] when I was a kid, what's the technology story that I will tell them that will blow their mind?’ And I was thinking about this last night because I got in my friend's truck. It was an older truck, and we had an older version of that when I was growing up. We had this Toyota pickup truck when I was a kid, and it didn't have a clock in it. It was a cheap old truck, and I remember that whenever-on the way to school, to see if we were late, or what time it was, we'd have to turn it to, KFBK. I grew up in Northern California turning to KFBK, because every 15 minutes they said, ‘You’re listening to KFBK. It's 9:45, and traffic-“ So, we'd have to turn on the radio and hope we were close, but would know that in a minimum of, you know, 14 minutes and 32 seconds, we would be getting the time. And so it's weird, because yes, things were more synchronized, but also you could exist in a bubble detached from time; also, you were genuinely unreachable. | |||
Eric Weinstein 23:55 | Eric Weinstein 23:55 | ||
It was glorious. | |||
Ryan Holiday | |||
Yeah. It's strange-and not that long [ago]-I mean, this story I'm telling you is probably ‘95 or -6. | |||
Eric Weinstein | |||
So, I’m interested in these old stories, but I’m also just-am I right that, probably, we will find that our brain structure was altered by our phone use? | |||
Ryan Holiday | |||
I mean, I would think so. There's that Louie CK bit about-you used to have to sit with awkwardness or unpleasantness, but now you can instantly relieve yourself of-let's say, I got here early, and there's no one here, and I was waiting | |||
Eric Weinstein | |||
-because the host was late? | |||
Ryan Holiday | |||
No, no, I'm just saying-let's say you get to something early-you would have had to wait with your own thoughts. And now you can go into the portal and not have to have thoughts. And so that idea of reflection or downtime, it's like-one of the things I compare writing a book to is-sometimes, if you have your laptop and you shut it, it should go into sleep mode, but you'd come back and something had happened-and it's been on for 11 hours, and it's almost hot to the touch. It doesn't happen anymore, but I remember that happening on my older Mac books. To me that's like what writing a book is like; your brain is not shutting off. And I think the phone [actually] creates some version of that, where you're never getting the downtime between moments; it’s always, always the moment. | |||
Eric Weinstein 26:00 | |||
In what ways am I diminished? What parts of my capacity have I forgotten? What I'm really trying to get at, ultimately, is that a lot of transformations have taken place-that have not been well-documented-that divorce us increasingly from what might be termed our super ancestors. There are no 400 hitters in baseball. We’ve accepted that that was a different era, so somehow that can’t be. But it seems like we could accomplish all sorts of things recently that we can't now. And it's very interesting the extent to which we've lost capacities. And we haven't documented what it was that took them from us. Like-I can't figure out why I can't read a book. | |||
Ryan Holiday 26:45 | |||
Well, so related to that one, I think it was Daniel Boorstin-have you read him at all? He wrote this book The Image, about the invention of modern media. He's basically talking about what television and radio does-it’s fascinating. I think he was the Librarian of Congress or something. [In] the Lincoln Douglas debates, Lincoln talked for three hours; Douglas talked for three hours; then, everyone took a break and went home and came back, and then they each argued for another three hours. Now, the democratic debates are an hour and 20 minutes, and there are eight candidates. Human beings used to be able to consume incredibly long-form complex… these were farmers and blacksmiths. People [were] sitting [there] watching one of the smartest people who ever lived-one of the most eloquent speakers of all time-talk for three hours without break, you know, unamplified. | |||
Eric Weinstein | |||
Have you seen certain losses of capability? | |||
Ryan Holiday | |||
I think the ability to consume very long-form content, whether it's a Robert Caro book, or it's a 1000 line poem. One of the only bright spots for me is podcasts-people will listen to a three-hour Joe Rogan- | |||
Eric Weinstein | |||
Long-form podcasting and long-form television. | |||
Ryan Holiday | |||
Yes, yes. Although I find long-form television to be very manipulative, and not a sign of progress. | |||
Eric Weinstein | |||
Oh, say more. This is great. | |||
Ryan Holiday | |||
So when I watched Bloodlines, I got the sense that-let’s say I watched the first three seasons, which I thought were good-and then I realized I had just watched 22 hours of television, and eight minutes of things have happened. Instead of having to create beats inside the show to get you to go from commercial break to commercial break, they just know that if they keep you going-if at the end, you're vaguely interested, you will let it autoplay to the next thing. So it's taking what could be a compressed, really interesting couple hours of television, and-it's like how the YouTube algorithm rewards watch time, so people just make shit longer than it genuinely needs to be. As a writer, one of the favorite rules, one of the favorite exercises-I heard Raymond Chandler would write on basically index cards and his typewriter, and his rule is something has to happen on every index card. So if you read a Raymond Chandler thing, it's like beat beat beat beat beat. Now, you read some novel that wins the National Book Award, and weirdly, it is 2000 pages or 1000 pages, but nothing happens. The characters learn nothing, no lessons are taught. So even some of the long-form stuff that we consume-it’s mostly just a testament to our ability to veg out, or consume it in the background as we're doing another thing, rather than be very engaged with- | |||
Eric Weinstein 30:00 | |||
Well, then, maybe what I want to do is to break out-is there some long-form television that you think isn’t empty calories? | |||
Ryan Holiday | |||
Yeah, yeah, I'm sure there- | |||
Eric Weinstein | |||
Like, I found that The Sopranos was incredibly drawn out and, in general, didn’t waste a lot. | |||
Ryan Holiday | |||
So you liked it. | |||
Eric Weinstein | |||
I did. | |||
Ryan Holiday | |||
And look, I would say that the HBO model is different than the Netflix model. The HBO model is: This has to be so good [that] you will wait one week and hold on to the thread, and come back; the Netflix model is: Can I steal Tuesday from you, when you call in sick from work and watch 8 episodes of Genghis Khan, or Narcos or whatever. | |||
Eric Weinstein | |||
Okay, well then what's going on with Joe Rogan? This is a singular phenom. | |||
Ryan Holiday | |||
Yes, it is fascinating. Someone was telling me that there's a whole generation of people that don't even know you can listen to Joe Rogan; they just watch it on-it makes no sense to me that someone could watch a three-hour YouTube video. I just don't understand where you would be able to do that. | |||
Eric Weinstein | |||
They're lightly watching it, often. | |||
Ryan Holiday | |||
I think so. But I think it's a generational, also a lifestyle thing, that is somewhat new. I was just listening to his Malcolm Gladwell interview, and it's three and a half hours, and I was literally entertained for every second of it. I think he's a master of it. And I think what he's really good at is being the every man in the sense of asking the questions that a normal person would ask Malcolm; what would a person who has the opportunity to talk to one of their favorite authors talk about, as opposed to whatever the subtle political agenda, or whatever somebody in the media would try to use the opportunity of talking to Malcolm Gladwell to accomplish. | |||
Eric Weinstein | |||
Right. Except that the funny part is that he's so far away from being every man. The persona and the rapper exactly communicates every man-his vibe is what you say. And then if you talk to him, or hang out with him outside of his show, you're just aware of what an incredible storehouse of information this particularly singular human being is. He has an enormous body of knowledge, so that you're always close to something that he wants to talk about. | |||
Ryan Holiday | |||
Yeah, that's true. One of the interesting things that I was noticing about that interview is that there was nothing that Malcolm Gladwell mentioned that Rogan wasn't vaguely familiar with-no events in the news, there was no-he was mentioning this video, this police shooting and this-and he knew all of it. I think what defines Rogan to me, and good podcasts and why they’ve so exploded, is actually an earnest interest, as opposed to a vague-you've been profiled by media outlets, right? | |||
Eric Weinstein | |||
Very little; actually, very very little. | |||
Ryan Holiday | |||
Interesting. You get the sense that this person is very nice to you and very friendly; but when you read the article, it is clear that their intention was to let the reader know that they were above-up here-rendering judgment on the quality of- | |||
Eric Weinstein | |||
Which is why sometimes they don't cooperate with these things. Right. In fact, this sort of ties together two different threads. Is the success of Joe Rogan above all others telling us more about what is going on with traditional and legacy media, in that he is offering somehow the best antidote to this kind of seamless, endless interoperable wall of institutional corporate and legacy sensemaking? | |||
Ryan Holiday 34:30 | |||
Yeah. So, I think it's also just genuinely-most people are fans of stuff, right? And Joe Rogan is a fan of stuff. And when you read a New Yorker profile, or a New York Times profile, or an Atlantic piece, or even some of the recaps of television shows, by outlets that-everyone does this now-there's this weird sense that everything sucks; people that make it suck, the world is falling apart, and that the job of the media is to tell us what's wrong with things. And why would anyone consume that information? What is the utility of you telling me that things suck? When I talk to authors, the old media model was like, you could write a book about an idea just generally, like ‘Hey, this is complicated,’ and people are like, ‘I don't have time for this; tell me-is it good?’… or, tell me that this is bad. But there's this weird thing in the media where… there's an ambiguity to it, and it’s almost a film on top of- | |||
Eric Weinstein | |||
There’s this culture; I mean, this word, the “commentary”-who in the hell elected these people? And why do they have a culture? And what is it about their jobs that produces this kind of incestuous-‘Well, she did this think piece about this, and then I came back to that, and so-and-so digested the two”-and you’re just thinking, ‘Nobody cares!’ | |||
36:15 | |||
Ryan Holiday 36:15 | |||
36:15 | |||
Well, and ostensibly that should be the role of the editor; I almost get that there's a commentary of sort of young, opinionated writers who are writing things, but there should be the editor on top who's asking tough questions about the hot take, or the opinion. | |||
Eric Weinstein | |||
Is it that the system of selective pressures that is choosing these people to sit in those chairs is now imparting such a spin, that the world is tuning it out increasingly because-for example, there is a piece I've never heard, described like a general platonic abstraction-which I call envy porn-the piece talks about fabulously rich people leading shitty decadent lives, and you're supposed to be exactly filled with one part envy and one part pity. | |||
Ryan Holiday | |||
Yeah, or some version of that piece is like, I'm going to write about this person whose life seems very glamorous, but I'm subtly going to show how they're actually a vapid idiot. So, economically, and as far as opportunities go, it's literally never been easier to reach a mass audience to monetize your work, to control your own destiny as a creative person, right? So, imagine looking at the vast opportunity of podcasts out there, the opportunity to write books or to create YouTube videos or to do any of these things and [say] “I don't want to do that. What I would like to do is make $42,000 a year without health benefits and have a full-time job at Business Insider, you know what I mean? You are either insane, or you're fundamentally lacking the talent to cut it in the real world-eat what you kill, sell stuff directly to the audience. | |||
Eric Weinstein 38:04 | |||
So it's a variance reduction model; that you know that you're going to have a job if you do your job, but you don't actually have to test yourself based on whether or not people are dying for your content. | |||
, | Ryan Holiday | ||
Yeah, If you live in some small town, you might think, ‘Oh, this person is a certified financial advisor. They know more about money than me.’ Which might be true, but if they were really good at managing money, they would not be running a Charles Schwab office in Toledo or something, right? So, it's like, ‘Oh, the people who are writing for this outlet or that outlet are-‘ There are obviously exceptions; Malcolm Gladwell writes for The New Yorker, but is also an entrepreneurial creator in other ways. But you just realize it's the survivorship bias; all the fundamentally talented people have been siphoned off and work for themselves. | |||
Eric Weinstein | |||
I don't know that I hold exactly that take on it. I understand that there is a selection bias. I think that there's an aspect of people merging with these venerable structures. There is power from an institutional perspective that hasn't been completely lost and frittered; I'm not quite sure whether the millennials still pay attention-well that came from Harper's, that came from the Atlantic, that came from the New Yorker. However, what I'm very curious about is at what point do the super vital people start going back into the institutional structures? I will see things happen on the Joe Rogan program, and unless there's an angle to take somebody down, it doesn't filter back into this thing I call the Gated Institutional Narrative, because it's mostly an idea that certain organs only talk to each other and themselves. And the power of that conversation to stay focused on-it could be completely irrelevant and wrong things, or misleading things or terrible things, but it still has a measure of coherence that the wild west lacks. And I'm questioning what happens when the interesting stuff is incoherent, and the other stuff has a coherence, even if it's meaningless. | |||
Ryan Holiday | |||
Yeah, George Trow wrote this book called Within the Context of No Context; he was a New Yorker writer. He wrote this 30 years ago, talking about exactly what we're talking about: the job of these old institutions was to provide context to imprimatur a stamp of approval. But now there are these new media outlets-this new wild west-where that's gone. Yeah, it is interesting. It's like the Elon Musk episode of Rogan is newsworthy, but the other episodes, which reach still millions more people than an episode of Lena Dunham's ‘Girls’-one is covered and the other isn't. But these-he calls them empty shells-these outlets are empty shells; there is this significance and meaning equity in them that was built over hundreds of years in some cases-the Atlantic dates before the Civil War. So even if the business model has changed, and the credibility might have been reduced, [it] still means something to people because it's been around for so long. A great example of this is Forbes-the business model is the exact same outlet as the Huffington Post, right? It’s run by contributors, most of whom are not paid, most of whom are not edited. And yet, you see an article from Forbes.com, it feels like it's from the media brand Forbes, which dates to the early 1900s, right? But it's actually written by some random person who may be conflicted, or not qualified or-so, these empty shelves matter a great deal, because so much advertising has been put behind them and exposure. One of the examples I like to use is you're driving through LA; you see a billboard for a new movie; it’ll have the laurel leaves around the award that it's won. Well, there used to be a handful of film festivals, and now there's a million film festivals. And so you're driving and you see the laurel leaves and you [say], ‘Oh, this is an award winning movie.’ But that might have been the Sacramento Film Festival, or a nonexistent Film Festival. | |||
Eric Weinstein | |||
You know, you've already got the Charles Schwab Office of Toledo, Ohio really angry, and now it’s Sacramento that’s never going to give us- | |||
Ryan Holiday | |||
I'm from Sacramento, okay? | |||
Eric Weinstein | |||
You’re just plugging Sacramento; there’s no such thing as bad press. | |||
Ryan Holiday | |||
Yeah, but you know what I mean? So our mind is looking for these symbols that tell us this is the important narrative. This has been vetted. And in fact, most of that has fallen away. And so I think we have trouble integrating what's even real and not real. | |||
Eric Weinstein | |||
So if all of our minds are now really the product of eclectically chosen inputs, and we can't count on a canon, so that there is a less-shared context, what would be the art that would be appropriate to this time that we could look back and say, ‘Hey, do you remember how we shared that?’ I mean- | |||
Ryan Holiday | |||
-what is the art we're creating now that matters? | |||
Eric Weinstein | |||
-are we unreachable by art, effectively, because we’re too atomized? | |||
Ryan Holiday | |||
Interesting. Yeah. I mean, is there a painting that could come out that would genuinely pierce the cultural consciousness? | |||
Eric Weinstein | |||
Remember when Gangnam Style came down? That was so weird; it was so unseen. | |||
Ryan Holiday | |||
-and everyone was dancing it at weddings, and- | |||
Eric Weinstein 44:32 | |||
-but the first thing was just your jaw was dropping. What am I watching? It didn't even make sense. It's like some sort of hypnagogic state. So that grabbed the mic and said, “Now hear this.” | |||
Ryan Holiday | |||
Well, what's interesting is, that was the first video to do a billion views. Right? Okay. And now there are videos that have done a billion views that you and I have never heard of, which is very strange to think about. I remember the other day, someone had recommended this book A Man Called Ove, which is this interesting little novel; it was actually really good. But, he [said] ‘Hey, you should check out this book.’ And it had recently come out, and I pulled it up, and it had 18,000 reviews on Amazon-and I'd never heard of it. Not [just that] I hadn't read it, but I'd never heard of it. I'd never seen it written about anywhere. It had won no awards. It had not been made into a movie. And so you realize things can be flat out cultural phenomenons, but have no cultural impact whatsoever because they are filtered out of whatever that dominant media narrative is. | |||
I even see this with with my own books; so, my books have sold millions of copies; have been reviewed [maybe] twice in newspapers. And they were almost all from the [inaudible] book, because that was a media-centric book. So my book that's got the most media connections got the most attention, but actually sold the fewest amount of copies. | |||
Eric Weinstein 46:20 | |||
And for the rest of it, you don't really fully exist? | |||
Ryan Holiday | |||
Yeah. Basically, it exists to the people who get it surfaced to them in the Amazon algorithm. So crazy, but it’s not just the media culture; I could walk into a large number of indie bookstores-it’s not just that they wouldn't have my books; they would not have heard of my books. Even though their businesses literally should be finding books that are selling copies, and putting them in front of people. So, I'm fascinated with the New York Times bestseller list-two things about it. Because to the public, The New York Times list is a reflection of what books are selling best. And to anyone in the industry, this is emphatically not the case. It's heavily edited. The New York Times list, for instance, discounts Amazon, and weighs independent retail as a-their algorithm says independent retail matters more than Amazon, even though Amazon is responsible for roughly 80% of all book sales-only until 2000; it was only in 2012, 2013 that they started counting ebooks. Audible was, in some cases, not included. If you look at the fine print on the New York Times bestseller lists, it says, ‘Explicitly not included are perennial sellers.” Which means that The Great Gatsby should be on the bestseller list most weeks, but The New York Times says, “Oh, that's old. Let's put How To Be Anti-racist on the list.”-even though actually that book is selling a fraction of Seven Habits. | |||
Eric Weinstein | |||
So, this is this complex supporting our human malware, and our malware runs between our ears, so it’s client side. So I have a program that says if I want to know what's hot, I should check the New York Times bestseller list. And the idea is, “Why am I maintaining the malware client side to participate in this crazy drama?” Is it only because other people are using the same list, and so it's a QWERTY phenomena where it's a terrible arrangement of keys on the keyboard that was originally there to get keys not to stick [which] slow down typists? Or, I mean, how do I get rid of my legacy architecture? | |||
Ryan Holiday | |||
Well, it’s probably a little bit that, right? It's the cultural inertia and legacy of, ‘This thing is existing, and so it's a shorthand.’ There's probably a Girardian argument that we want what other people are wanting. And there's also- | |||
Eric Weinstein | |||
But you’re telling me they're not even wanting that. | |||
Ryan Holiday | |||
Right. But we think that's what people are wanting. | |||
Eric Weinstein | |||
I know, but if I want to have a real Girardian moment, I want to actually want what you're wanting, not what somebody else is telling me that you're wanting. | |||
s | Ryan Holiday | ||
That's true. Yes. Okay, so it's Girardian virtue-signaling, then. | |||
Eric Weinstein | |||
Oh, this is good. | |||
's | Ryan Holiday | ||
And then I think a lot of it is the paradox of choice, right? There's so much choice that we gravitate towards anything. So we go to the most-read list on the side of the New York Times, we go to the top of Amazon, we-“Please reduce choice for me.” I think that's what we're saying. | |||
Eric Weinstein 50:00 | |||
Or-I mean, and-please allow me to plug into a large mimetic complex so that my time isn't wasted with references. For example, I drove here, and I have this Discord server of people who talk about the show and the culture. And I wanted to announce myself as coming in. So I said this line from the HMS Pinafore, “My gallant crew, good morning!” and I was hoping somebody would echo back, “Sir, good morning!” | |||
Ryan Hamilton | |||
Right. You want them to get the reference. | |||
Eric Weinstein | |||
I want them to get the reference, and nobody has the reference, because why is anyone maintaining HMS Pinafore from the 1800s in 2020 on a Discord server? | |||
or | Ryan Hamilton | ||
Well, that is when its- I mostly write about ancient philosophy. So reading Montegna, or Seneca, they'll quote lines from the Odyssey or Virgil or they're quoting poetry in plays and things. And it never occurs to them to attribute the line. It's always in the footnote from the translator. This is a lost line from a Euripides play or whatever, right? But in the ancient world, it was assumed that you'd not only have seen said play, but you would have seen said play so many times that you would recognize it. And you know, I think the problem is there was just so much less stuff, right? **People used to learn Seneca when they were being taught Latin, but now they don't learn Latin. So they're definitely not going to learn Seneca’s epigrams, so there, I think there there's an element of that to it. But also, it's like, Look, there was only a handful of playwrights in Athens. Now we have all those playwrights, and we have Shakespeare, and we have 100 years of movies with the movie canon. | |||
Eric Weinstein | |||
It is the one thing that I really see going in the opposite direction is that we remember these scenes. | |||
Ryan Hamilton | |||
Yeah. Like if I said to you, “You can’t handle the truth. Everyone would know what you’re talking about. Right? | |||
Eric Weinstein | |||
But if I said to you, “Put that coffee down!”-would that be resonant with you? A little bit? | |||
Ryan Hamilton | |||
Glen Gary, Glen Ross-yeah, yeah. Okay. “Coffee is for closers.” Yes. | |||
Those are the-we can do that to some extent. | |||
Well, one of the so what I do because I do this email every morning I write an email called daily stoic and it's one sort of stoic inspired meditation every day, instead of quoting plays because no one gets those. I use song lyrics a lot and I find song lyrics are also something that people have a have a lot o | |||
familiarity with really depends on what era it does. When I found out that my millennial co workers had never heard bridge over troubled waters by Simon and Garfunkel. I | familiarity with really depends on what era it does. When I found out that my millennial co workers had never heard bridge over troubled waters by Simon and Garfunkel. I | ||
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ng is is there is no what what what is what is the actual belief of the point? What is the belief of the Democratic Party, what do they actually stand for? And what are they what are their actual sort of clear policy? objectives like when I think about wealth, wealth transfer? Well, what I think back to the 2016 campaign is in retrospect, and I feel like I missed it, which is embarrassing and somebody writes about media is like, it's very obvious what Trump was campaigning on who's going to build a wall. It's going to kill terrorists. You know, he was going to do away with political correctness. He was going to sock it to the media, you know, he said what he was going to do. And what was Hillary going to do Hillary campaign on. I'm Hillary Clinton's, and people hate Hillary Clinton. And so I think even now, you're watching these five or six, you know, the as the pool windows, they're primarily campaigning on who they are. And they're all fundamentally been charismatic people, rather than as advocates for charismatic | ng is is there is no what what what is what is the actual belief of the point? What is the belief of the Democratic Party, what do they actually stand for? And what are they what are their actual sort of clear policy? objectives like when I think about wealth, wealth transfer? Well, what I think back to the 2016 campaign is in retrospect, and I feel like I missed it, which is embarrassing and somebody writes about media is like, it's very obvious what Trump was campaigning on who's going to build a wall. It's going to kill terrorists. You know, he was going to do away with political correctness. He was going to sock it to the media, you know, he said what he was going to do. And what was Hillary going to do Hillary campaign on. I'm Hillary Clinton's, and people hate Hillary Clinton. And so I think even now, you're watching these five or six, you know, the as the pool windows, they're primarily campaigning on who they are. And they're all fundamentally been charismatic people, rather than as advocates for charismatic | ||
seductive ideas. The big issue is Genie negative policy, what can you if the Gini coefficient measures the extent to which income and asset inequality has increased? Okay, what are you going to do to decrease the Gini coefficient create a more equal society? So my claim is that on the far left, you have things like wealth caps, you know, no More billionaires are wealth taxes, asset taxes, then you have sort of neutralise things like UBI, which were Android loan debt. Right. And then on the right, you have things like renegotiation of | seductive ideas. The big issue is Genie negative policy, what can you if the Gini coefficient measures the extent to which income and asset inequality has increased? Okay, what are you going to do to decrease the Gini coefficient create a more equal society? So my claim is that on the far left, you have things like wealth caps, you know, no More billionaires are wealth taxes, asset taxes, then you have sort of neutralise things like UBI, which were Android loan debt. Right. And then on the right, you have things like renegotiation of trade and immigration. Yeah. And so all of these are intended to be Genie negative programs. Okay. And so that's a common consensus that we should do some Gi | ||
Unknown Speaker 2:11:24 | Unknown Speaker 2:11:24 |
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