31: Ryan Holiday - Conspiracy, Manipulation & other Pastimes: Difference between revisions

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Hello, you found the portal. I'm your host, Eric Weinstein and I am here today with Ryan Holliday, author of conspiracy and other books and a great all around thinker and voice analyzing what's going on in our society. Ryan, welcome.  

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 site Geist with any kind of intellectual wrapping that helps us better understand what the forces are that are most changing our lives at the moment.  

I've actually been thinking about that a little bit. You've probably led to live in LA so maybe you ever watch the show the hills?  

Okay, so the hills is this sort of fake reality show that came out in about originally it started in Laguna Beach, it was a reality show and then they all move to LA but it's this sort of, like, mid early aughts like reality show about young people moving to LA and it created all these sort of big brands and and sort of personalities that dominated the tablets for a really long time. And then this year, they came out with like the 10 year anniversary of like the show, it ended, they all went on, some of them are successful, some are not successful. This was a show about them in their early 20s. And now they're in the early 30s and they like revisited it and my wife and I were watching it and I loved it like it wouldn't it would not think I would like it but I loved it. What I found over and over again This is what I think the sort of Zeitgeist is, is these characters who basically are fake people, but sometimes have real emotions. They the word they kept talking about over and over again was like how anxious they were and how tired they were. And and these are obviously all sort of tail and millennials right and and it would be peak Millennials are at peak millennials. Yes. And and it struck me that there was probably something illustrated there about the sort of millennial mind of for the millennials that what their 20s was, from the teens to the end of their 20s was like 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 but but starting to get serious about life but without the comfort or security That would suit some of those anxiety. So I thought it was, to me one of the feelings of the age is kind of an anxiety or an unease about things like

together with exhaustion  

With exhaustion. Yes. Because we're, you know, we're on our phones all the time, we're consuming more information than ever. We have more information about what other people are. I think the exhaustion is from social media in the sense of like, it's keeping up with the Joneses times like 1000, you know, because  

I don't even want to call it, "We are on our phones". We have merged Yes, 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 suddenly go into some in, like, right now, I don't know whether you and I are being attacked on social media.  

Sure, we probably we probably are just a percent what percentage of it is attack and what percentage of it is complimentary?  

Right? Yeah, but but the point that is that there is this parallel world taking place at all times. And then we have now merged with it so that we there isn't a way that is  

Ryan Holiday  22:44

informations. I was actually just like my I have a three year old So I was thinking like, what's the what's the like, when I was you know, when I was a kid, like, what's the what's the technology story that I will tell them that will like blow their mind. And I was thinking about this last night because I got to my friend's truck. It An older truck. And we had an older version of that when I was growing up. But 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 like on the way to school to see if we were late, or you know what time it was, we'd have to turn it to, like ksdk. I grew up in Northern California turning to KPK, because every 15 minutes, they said, you're listening to KPK. It's 945 and traffic like, so we'd have to turn on the radio and hope we were close to, but would know that in a minimum of, you know, 14 minutes and 32 seconds, we would be getting the time. Right. And so it was it was it's weird, because yes, things were more synchronized. But also, you could exist in a bubble detached from time also, because not everyone was trying you were you were genuinel

unreachable. It was g

orious. Yeah. It's strange. Not that not that long. I mean, this is I'm telling you probably l

ke 95 or six. So I'm interested in in sort of these old stories, but I also just Am I right that probably we will find that our brain structure was altered by

ur phone use? 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 like, like, let's say, I got here early, and there's no one here. And I was w

iting because the  

ost was late. No, no, I'm just saying, let's say you get to something early. Yeah, you would have had to wait with your own thoughts, right. 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 too, is sometimes if you have your laptop and you shut it and it's just You'd go into sleep mode, but you'd come back and something had happened. And it's been on for 11 hours. And it's like almost like 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 social media actually creates the phone, create some version of that, where the you're never getting the downtime between moments, right? Always, alwa

s the moment. In what ways Am I diminished? What parts of my capacity if I forgotten for that? Well, what I'm really trying to get at Yeah, 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, people. Like there are no 400 hitters in baseball. Yeah, we've accepted that that was a different errands. Now that can't be sure, but it seems like we could accomplish all sorts of things recently. Li 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'

read a book. Well, so related to that one, I think it was Daniel Boston, if you read him at all, he wrote this book, the image about sort of the invention of modern media. He's basically talking about what television radio does, is fascinating. I think it was like the Librarian of Congress or something. But he was he was like, the Lincoln the Lincoln Douglas debates. It was like 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 like, another three hours. You're like, now the democratic debates are like, an hour and 20 minutes and there's eight candidates, you know, like, human beings used to be able to consume incredibly long form complex like these were farmers and blacksmiths and People was sitting here 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, have you seen certain losses of capability? I mean, I think the I think the ability to consume very long form content whether it's you know, Robert Caro book, or it's a, you know, 1000 you know, line poem. I think those are one of the one of the only bright spots to me as podcasts that people will listen to a three hour Joe Rogan and long form podcasting and long form television. Yes, yes. Although I find long form television to be very manipulative and not a sign of progress. Oh, say more. This is great. So I think okay, so it like, when I watch, I don't know, bloodlines? What I got the sense of is that like, let's say I watched the first three seasons, which I thought were good and then I realized I just watched 22 hours of television and eight minutes of things have happened. What they did is they like instead of having to create beats inside the show to get you to go from commercial break to commercial break, they, they just know that if they 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, it's taking what what could be a compressed really interesting couple hours of television and and it's like how the YouTube algorithm rewards watch time, right so people just make shit longer than it genuinely needs to be. Like 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 like something has to happen on every The index card. So if you read a Raymond Chandler thing, it's like beat beat beat beat beat. Now you read, you know, some novel that wins the National Book Award. And it's like, weirdly, it is 2000 pages or 1000 pages, but nothing happens. The characters learn nothing, you know, no lessons are taught. So like, it's it's 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 ver

engaged with uh, 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? Yeah, yeah, I mean, I'm sure

'm sure there are like, I found that the sopranos was incredibly drawn out and in general d

dn't waste a lot. So you liked it. I did. And look, I would say that the HBO model is different than the Netflix model. The HBO model is like, this has to be so good. You will wait one week and hold on to the threat and come back to right the Netflix model is Can I Can I steal Tuesday from you guys you know like when you call in sick from work and watch a episodes of gangs con or Narcos or whatever. Okay

well then what's going on with Joe Rogan? This is

singular funnel. Yes,

t is fascinating. Someone was telling me that for like, there's a whole generation of people that don't even know you can listen to Joe Rogan that you like they just watch it on. Like, I mean, I it makes no sense to me that someone could watch a three hour YouTube video like I just don't understand where you would well. They're, they're lightly watching it often. I think so. But but but I think it is a it's a generational, also a lifestyle thing that is somewhat new. But I was just listening to his Malcolm Gladwell interview, and it's like three and a half hours. And I was like, literally entertained for every second. He's looking he's, I think he's a master of it. And I think what he's  

ood at is, is, is being the every man in the sense of like, he's asking the questions that a normal person would ask Malcolm like, like, what would a person who has the opportunity to talk to one of their favorite authors would talk about, as opposed to whatever the subtle political agenda or you know what, like, whatever, somebody in the media would try to use the opportunity of talking to Malcolm Gladwell to

accomplish right. Except that the funny part is that he's so far away from being every man. Sure. The persona and the rapper exactly communicates every man like his vibe. Is what you say yes. 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 that's particularly senior human being is. He He has an enormous body of knowledge so that you're always close to something that he wa

ts to talk about. Yeah, that's true. One of the interesting that sounds noting soom at that interview is there was like 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 like this police shooting and this and and he was like he knew all of it. I think I think what defines Rogan to me and good podcasts and why they so exploded is like, actually an earnest interest. Yeah. As opposed to a vague like you've been profiled by media outlets, right? And very little but but what happens is actually very, very little interesting. But but 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  

ere above up here rendering judgment on the quality wise sometimes they don't c

rent okay threads is the success of Joe Rogan above all 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

egacy sense make. Yeah, like so. So I think it's also just genuinely like, 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, you know, like Recaps of television shows, by outlets that, you know, 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. Right. And, and like, why would anyone consume that information? Like what what is the utility of you telling me that things suck? Like I talked to? When I when I talk to authors, it'll, like, the old media model was like, you could write a book about an idea like just generally like, Hey, this is complicated and people are like, I don't have time for this. Like, tell me if it's Tony. Is it good? You know, or tell me that this is bad. But there's this weird sort of thing in a media where it's just like, it's just kind of this is this is it's like a there's an ambiguity to it. And like, it's almost

ng, nobody cares. Well, and I sensibly that should be the role of the editor, the editor should like, 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 saying, who's asking tough que

tions about that. Is it the The economic is it that the system of selective pressures that is choosing these people to sit in those chairs, yeah, is now imparting such a spin that the world is kind of tuning it out increasingly because, you know, for example, there is a piece I've never heard described like a general platonic abstraction which I call envy porn. Yeah. Where the peace talks about fabulously rich people leading shitty decadent lives and you're supposed to be exactly filled with one part envy

in one part pity. Yeah, where some version of that piece is like, I'm gonna write about this person whose life seems very glamorous, but I'm I'm a subtly going to show how they're actually a vapid idiot. Yeah, you know, and and I think what it is is like, okay, so economic like economically and Opera, as far as opportunities, but it's literally never been Easier to reach a mass audience to monetize your work to, to control your own destiny as a creative person, right? So like imagine, imagine looking at the like the the vast opportunity of podcasts out there, the opportunity to write books or to create YouTube videos are to do any of these things and go, my, I don't want to do that. What I would like to do is make $42,000 a year without health benefits and be have a full time job at Business Insider, right? You know what I mean? Like you are either you're insane, or you're fundamentally somebody, or you're fundamentally lacking the talent to cut it in the real world eat what you kill, like, sell stuff dire

tly to the audio. 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 Have to test yourself based on whether or not people are dying

Yeah, it's like, Okay, if you live in some small town, you might think, Oh, this person is a certified financial advisor. They they're, they know more about money than me. Yeah. Which might be true. But like, they would not be if they were really good at managing money, they would not be running at Charles Schwab office in, you know, Toledo or something, right. And so it's like, you just, oh, the people who are writing for this outlet or that outlet are in it, unless, I mean, there's obviously exceptions, like Malcolm Gladwell writes for The New Yorker, but has is also an entrepreneurial creator in other ways. But, you know, you just realize, Oh, you're it's sort of like the survivorship bias. Like all the good people have been all the fundamentally talented people have been siphoned off

and work for them so that I really, I don't know that I hold exactly that take on. There's 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. But 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? Like I will see things happen on the Joe Rogan program? Yeah. And unless there's an angle to take somebody down, it doesn't filter back into what is this thing I call the gated institutional narrative, because it's mostly an idea that certain organs only talk to each other and themselves. Right. And that the power of that conversation to stay focused on it could be completely irrelevant and wrong things or misleading things are terrible things, but it still has a measure of coherence that the world Wild West LAX, and I'm questioning what happens when the interesting stuff is incoherent. And the other stuff has a coherence, even if

it's meaningless. Yeah, George trout wrote this book called within the context of no context. And he started talking about he was a New Yorker writer. He wrote this like 30 years ago, but sort of talking about exactly we're talking about is that, like, sort of the job of these old institutions was to provide context to imprimatur a stamp of approval. But now there's these new media outlets this new wild west where that's gone. Yeah, it is interesting. It's like the Elan musk episode of Rogan is newsworthy, but the other episodes of treach still millions more people than, you know, an episode of Lena Dunham's girls, one is covered and the other isn't right. But these empty shells are are really he calls them empty shells that like these outlets are empty shells that that there is this significance and meaning equity in them that was built over hundreds of years. In some cases, the Atlantic is, you know, dates before the Civil War. So even if the business model is changing the credibility might have been reduced, still mean something to people because it's been around for so long. Like a great example of this is like Forbes, is this economic business model is the exact same outlet as the Huffington Post, right? Like it's run by contributors, most of whom are not paid, most of whom are not edited. And yet, you see something written by for like, you see an article from Forbes calm, it feels like it's from the media brand Forbes, which states the early 1900s, right. But it's actually written by some random person who may be, you know, conflicted or not qualified or wet. So these empty shelves matter a great deal. And we because so much advertising has been put behind them and exposure. One of the examples I like to use is like, okay, you you're driving through la you See a billboard for you know, a new movie. It'll have the laurel leaves, you know, around the award that it's one. Well, you know, there used to be like a handful of film festivals and now there's a million film festivals. And so you're driving and you see the Laura leaves and you go, Oh, this is an award winning movie. But that might have been, you know, the Sacramento Film Festival or a non exist

nt Film Festival. You know, you've already got the Charles Schwab Office of Toledo, Ohi

really angry. Is that ever gonna give us I'm from Sacrament

, okay, or I feel like you just plugged in a sec. There's no such t

ing as bad press. Yeah, but but you know what I mean? So like, like, our mind is looking for these symbols. Yeah, tell us like this is the important narrative. This has been vetted. And in fact, most of that has fallen away. And, and so we're, I think we have trouble integrating what's even  

eal and not real. So if all of our minds are now Really the product of random, not randomly, but eclectically chosen inputs, and we can't count on a cannon 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 sh

red that? I mean, like, what is the art we're creating now th

t matters? are we are we unreachable by art? effectively? Because w

're too atomized. Interesting. Yeah. I mean, is there a Is there a painting that could come out that would, Jen that would genuinely pierce the cultural  

onsciousness like remember when Gangnam Style came down? Yeah, that was so weird. Yeah,

it was so unseen. Yeah, there really is dancing

Unknown Speaker  44:01 

ogic state. Yeah, yeah. So that was able to it grabbed the mic and sa

d, Now hear this. Well, what's interesting is that was like 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, you know, like, which is very strange to think about. I remember the other day I, someone had recommended this book, it's a, the book is a man called oath, which is this interesting little novel. There's actually really good, but he's like, Hey, you should check out this book. And it recently come out and I pulled it up and it had 18,000 reviews on Amazon. And I'd never heard of it. So not like I hadn't read it, but like, I'd never heard of it. I've never seen it written about anywhere. It had won no awards. It had not been made into a movie. And, and so you realize, yeah, things can be flat out cultural phenomenons. But having No cultural impact whatsoever because they are filtered out of whatever that dominant media narrative is, right? I, I yeah, I mean, I even see this with with my with my own books, right like I've sold, my books are sold millions of copies have been reviewed, like twice in newspapers really. And they were almost all from the to 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. And for the rest for the rest of it, you don't r

ally fully exist. Yeah, basically, basically, it exists to the people who surface it in the who get it surface to them in the Amazon algorithm. Yeah. So like crazy, but as far as yeah the like, What's also weird is like, yeah to sell millions of books in you I could walk into, I could walk into a good chunk of indie bookstore it, I think people it. It's not just the the the media culture, but I could walk into a large number of indie bookstores. And not that they wouldn't have my books, they would not have heard of my books, right? Even though their businesses literally should be book signing books that are selling copies, right, putting them in front of people. So there is this weird, sort of there's this weird, it's almost the New York Times list that I'm passing with the New York Times bestseller list. So two things about it. So why? Because to the to the public, The New York Times list is a reflection of what books are selling best, right? And to anyone in the industry. You know, this is in fact not the case. It's heavily edited. The New York Times list for instance, discounts Amazon, and ways independent retail as a their algorithms as independent retail matters more than Amazon, even though Amazon is responsible for roughly 80% of all book sales, only until like 2000 it was only in like 2012 2013 that they started counting ebooks. Yeah, 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 our perennial sellers, which means that like The Great Gatsby should be on the bestseller list most weeks, 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 sel

ing a fraction of seven habits. This

s okay, you know, so this is this complex supporting our human malware and our malware runs between our ears. Okay, let's client side. So I, I have a program that says if I want to know what's hot, I should check the New York Times bestseller list. Yes. 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 to slow down. Or, I mean, how do I get rid of my le

acy architecture? Well, as probably a little bit that, right? It's the cultural inertia and legacy of like, this thing is existing. And so it's a shorthand. There's probably a Gerardi an argument that like we want what other p

ople are wanting. And t

ere's also I told me, they're not

ven wanting that. Right. But we think that's what peo

t you're wanting. That's true. Yes. So it's Gerardi in virtue signaling. Then, oh, this is good. And then and then I think a lot of it is the Paradox of Choice, right? There's so much choice that we need. 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, like we, we just it's like, please reduce choice for me. I think that's

what we're saying what or mean, or, and please allow me to plug into a large mimetic complex so that my time isn't wasted with references. Like 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, you know, this line from the HMS pinafore, my gallon crew, good morning, and I was hoping somebody would echo back, sir, go

d morning, right? You want th

m to get the wrap I want them to get the reference and nobody has the reference, right? Because why is anyone maintaining HMS pinafore from the 1800s in 2020 on

a Discord server? Well, that is when it's Zen mostly right about ancient philosophy. So I sort of, you know, reading these books, what I what I love is your reading Montana, or Seneca, there'll be they'll quote lines from, you know, the Odyssey or Virgil or they're quoting poetry in place and things. And it never occurs to them to attribute the line. It's always in the footnote from the translator. This is a last line from a European ease play or whatever, right? But in the ancient world, it was assumed that he was you would not only Yeah, 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 I think the problem is there was just so much le

s stuff right. So was it There's that but there's also this this weird discomfort we have of teaching a Canon for the purpose of keeping inter op

rable referencing well, canon is racist there. That's why we can't have it. So tha

's why we promote

it on the portal. Now, of course, why we stopped teaching the canon. We've certainly like yeah, people used to. 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. Senecas. epigrams, you know, like, 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, you know, 100 years of movies with the movie canon. Is is the one thing that I really see going in the opposite direction is that we remember these scenes. Yeah. Like if I said to you, if you would say you Can't handle the truth. Everyone would know what you

re talking about. Right? But if I said to you put that coffee down, would that be  

esonant with you? A little bit? merrigan Ross Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, like so is that coffee is  

or closers. Yeah. There's those are the thing that that we can do th

t 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