This is a long time coming. I think agency since we've been talking is the topic the thing that we've both been obsessed with the most. So introduce people to it. What's high agency,
High agency, is, in my opinion, the most under discussed. And most important idea in that site the 21st century, it's one of those ideas. That once you see it, you can't quite on, see it? It's it's everywhere. But the problem with it is it's quite hard to Define.
And there's that our Justice Potter Stewart line of around when he's tried to find. Pornography was asked in a government inquiry. Can you define pornography? And he came back with the ultimate reply of? Well, I can't Define it, but I know it when I see it. So, in lieu of the episode today, I know you rent out all these beautiful Studios. I wanted to be the first guest, ever to bring some props, you brought the kind of get people to experience High agency, and then we can Define it with words.
Alright, cool. First off
is high agency in
Okay, so as
you can see here, you have person a and person B, and essentially, for the people that are listening, you have two people trapped on a desert island, identical people. But with two different fundamental frames of reality. One is using the wood to get help. The other is using the wood to kind of escape the island. And you kind of see this idea that two people with exact same fundamental realities, but a completely different like low agency here. Hi.
Agency here. So you see high agency in a meme that then this one was quite difficult to get printed in London without people is high agency agency in a, in a moment. So, again, for the people listening, you have a series of Nazis saluting to Hitler in 1936. And you have this guy in red here, who's believe this debate who it is, but it, he's believed to be a guy called August none.
Sir. What I love about his story was he originally like most people have this idea that when Nazi Germany comes around that they're going to be the one that puts and Frank in their house and stands up but realistically we're way more likely to be these individuals here. And according to the story August was part of the Nazi party kind of went along with the lap because it kind of made sense fell in love with a Jewish woman and very much okay began to hit an agency test with reality and you see
All these knots, it's saluting at once. And he's the one guy with his arms crossed he ends up getting punished for marrying, a German woman ends up in a concentration. Camp she dies in the concentration camp but there's just that beauty of every single person saluting as an artsy then him there with his arms crossed it, beautifully signifies High agency in a moment. Next thing I would like to run through is we have two videos so one which is high Asia.
See in a video and another which is low agency and a video.
Okay? So this is Sasquatch, music Festival, 2009, Guy starts dance party.
So for the people listening at home, there's this absolute nut job on a hill dancing, like a madman and the whole crowd is looking at him, like he's lost his
mind. One guys, joined one guys. Joined he starts dancing with him.
Yes and slowly. But surely
People begin to join the dance party more and more throughout the video.
But before you know it you begin to see the whole
crowd who go to 15 people. Now judging him to joining oh my God two minutes in its 150 people.
And then toward the end is no one sat down. There's only a few people sat down. So yeah,
that's high agency in a video and just to contrast this. Now, the next video in terms of getting people to actually experience, it is low agency in a video from Darren Brown, but they were actually taking part in a compliance test.
The
three people on the left are actors. They've been briefed to stand or
Sit, when they hear this.
Everyone else that's brought in is a genuine shortlisted applicant. They've been given no instructions other than to fill out their forms.
My team and I was secretly watching
from another room.
Socially compliant. A person is the more they're likely
to look to others for signs of how to behave. That's going to be your spot
and the more people the greater the pressure
to join in. In this case whether to stand
Or sit so funny. How the third guys know to take those people that didn't follow the
crowd.
I really was cracked on,
I think up to lose Amy. Sadly.
Oh, so this was the test equipment compliance
once we had a full
Very come before you know it. We got rid of the actors before, you know it they will move the actors you just have 10. People Saint leaving us with a rundown of compile, sound of a bell ending up under and I love that video because yeah, it perfectly encapsulates, low agency were. And it's so easy to fall into of just looking around other people assuming that they know best and then realizing that all the other people were just looking around other people, and it's this giant game of Emperor's New Clothes and then, and then, and then you die and your
Realized it was one giant LARP live action role play the entire time.
Yeah and I suppose the that's that's mimetic sensors got implications that you can be the first mover both to start something which snowballs down or to stop something, which is snowballing right now.
100%. So finally, in terms of the high
agencies, like Show and Tell City brought from
home one, we've discussed a lot of times. So
here we go. This is the high
agency question. So
so for people listening at home, the way to identify the highest agency person in your life is if you woke up here and you have sweat with dirt and dirt with sweat all over your body.
You've not people listening. This is a photo of a
prison cell. Yes, you're not drinking days and you've woken up in a third-world prison cell and you have a phone passed under your door and you can call one person to try and get you out of there.
Who is that? And everybody, weirdly has this kind of idea in the head of who they would call in this scenario. And when you actually begin to grill people about who they would call, it's not the amount that they bench press, it's not the car that they drive. It's not the novels that they've read, it's not the family background there from its maybe sometimes the royal family than maybe. It's it's something else. And that something is
Is high agency. And yeah, I'm looking forward to the chat today because we can go into more of the specifics of it. But the problem once you've actually begin to experience it, you get a more of an understanding and then the real problem that I kind of struggled web is how do you actually it's as unsa qua, like it's difficult to describe in words like what is, what is it? So I kind of
Created this like model here, which I call the high agency
Spectrum, Spectrum, being the operative word.
Yes. So essentially imagine you have two doors behind them, all the people you would call when stuck in a third-world jail. And at the other end of the spectrum is Piccolo, agency is the last people that you would call when stuck in a third wheel gel if you were stuck in like a paper bag.
You wouldn't call them, right? Yes. And what is the fundamental difference between these two groups? Because if you looked at them on paper, you go, there's no gender race age, politics wealth, Korea, title, LinkedIn profile. Like what specifically is it and I was stuck on this idea for years like trying to Chip Away Chip Away. Chip Away chip away and essentially kind of came to the conclusion of like this is actually the most simple way of defining. I agency is
Are they happening to life or his life happening to them? So what you'll ultimately, anybody who you would call to break you out of a third-world jail, you would Define as happening to life the people that you would be least likely to break you out of a third wheel Jail at the ones that life is happening to them. And then, once you begin to see that Spectrum, it's such a more simple, Occam's razor of really understanding I agency and fundamentally, this isn't
It can be like a nice. Okay this is a call like self-help concept but actually agency is bigger than that. Out of the six to seven million species on Earth. Human beings are the only ones capable
Of agency in the known universe.
Of what we know. And by the way, we only know this via agency, we are the only thing that we know of capable of agency. Even today, like, we are sat in a studio in London, and I was listening to David Deutsch, explain this concept of we're in London today, and it's only thanks to agency because it's December right now in London, that me and you aren't dead within two to three hours because it's the clothes that we wear.
Are human agency, it's the heating here. Like the UK itself is a product of agency of human agency because without clothing which we kind of born into an assume is always been a thing. But no it was the result of human agency without Heating and another thing that we just take complete for granted the UK would not be possible so he argues that this idea that we're going to go to Mars and terraformed it and shape it that it's actually a livable habitat. The UK is already there.
Hmm, nobody should feasibly live here but it's just human agency
agency. All the way
down, all the way down and what that's why once you see it, you can't fundamentally unsee it. Because it's the only it's the not. The only thing that makes human beings unique but we are the only species that is fundamentally capable of happening to
life.
Why is it so important to you?
It's an interesting definition. I can see why you happening to life. Not life happening to you, is important. Why do you care? Why is it so crucial? Why is it the most important idea of the 21st
century to you?
I think.
Like growing up in the UK, you naturally potentially have a default low agency setting. I remember when I first heard the idea, it was Eric Weinstein on. Tim Ferriss, has podcast and had to pull over the car and I write this down, as I all, okay, this kind of begins to explain so much of the world and so much of my personal world. And then, as I mentioned, once you begin to see it, you can't unsee it. You see it every single word. I've got some examples on the boards that are come unto, but it's so,
Important to me. Because once you realize, you know, your line of like, skill issue, everything is just skill issue. Everything's a fundament. Everything is basically an agency issue. Like you when you actually one of the fundamental beliefs. I think of around High agency is that all problems are solvable. And once you begin to take that on board as long as it doesn't defy, the laws of physics at this isn't self-help. It's physics. All problems are solvable with enough knowledge.
What it
Some good examples of high agency. Like
okay.
So, using the Spectrum.
I've got two examples that you
like, here we go.
So on the right hand side of the high agency Spectrum, we have space X. So the recent Chopsticks Landing. So SpaceX starts with Elon selling PayPal and deciding. As you do to just get into rocket science and rather than go to university. He decides that that's a painfully slow download process to learn so just
Gets a load of rocket science box and starts like happening to life, create space X. And one Professor SpaceX was this early startup, not the Juggernaut, that it is today, the best rocket scientist. Professor, I believe in America. He he goes, I can't believe it like five of my top ten students are working at this company called space acts because I need to meet the guy that runs that so you want to ranges the interview and this guy has a lot of questions for Eli. What are you doing and immediately? He realizes the reason why he loves taking this meeting is to
Find out who the other five were ha ha and boom. So anyway it keeps obviously goes through all the ups and downs and you end up with a rocket reverse Landing catching with the Chopsticks and reducing the legs that's needed. The amount of repairs that needed as a result of massive lines, mass of the accelerates. The humans ability to happen to life
to be able to escape the planet just under the SpaceX thing. Bill Perkins introduced me to one of the guys that works for Ilan.
And this guy bet his entire career on the belly flop. Maneuver but told you the story. No. So when these Rockets re-enter because the purpose is for them to be reused, they're coming into land, they're not going to land sideways. You're not going to put thrusters on the side of it. You going to land it upright like this. But the problem of bringing it in to land like that, is that this is aerodynamically. The one that has the least drag so they thought, right? Okay, how can we use air friction to reduce the speed of re-entry? Whilst also still Landing the thing up?
Right? So that we get to use the same boosters to slow it down that we use to get it to take off and he created the belly flop maneuver. So if you watch it, when it comes in, its coming in sideways like this then only at the last moment as it rotating.
It stops. So this guy apparently, the first time that it ever happened, like it hadn't worked and he left, I can't remember what. NASA has some huge, you know, illustrious organization, that is entire career, all of his reputation. And at this new company would have been a laughing stock of the entire industry. And okay, look
fucking cool. Wow. All problems are solvable, right? Yeah, well, I say that lets. Now contrast that with do you recognize this on the left.
It's a train in the UK. Yes it's not
just any trained in the UK. Christopher, its northern rails to ha ha. So for people outside the UK, these would be the trains that you have Norman around the Northeast, right? It's not just a Northwest thing. Cool. So I would have got on this coming from the northwest of the UK and just to contrast SpaceX. Obviously at the other end of the hydrogen spectrum, and Northern rail at the other end of the high agency Spectrum. So what I wanted to I did bring it just to read it out.
So this is a recent inquiry into Northern rail, so you have the mayor of Manchester sitting down with the head of the trade unions for Northern rail. The people that work quite high up at Northern Rail and throughout the last few years, anybody who's experienced operator. It's too expensive. It does trains getting cancelled constantly. There's delays, Etc. So they're doing an inquiry into what's going on. It starts with the mayor. I've heard you're still using fax machines to do these things.
And that possibly be true. It's very much true chair. How, how on Earth is that the case in 2024? Well, that's a very reasonable question. It's our challenge to get rid of them. We have plans to get rid of them. You could do it tomorrow. We absolutely could. Are you going to do it tomorrow? We're not going to do it tomorrow. Why? Because the tools we use to get information and messages to our crew, William faxes amazingly. We will get there in the end because we're forced to because facts technology in Telecom.
As turns turns off our plan that we're putting forward anyway, it cuts in. It's like how the mayor goes on to say, like, how we poured millions, of millions of privatized money into this. And it's still, we're still using fax machines in 2024, and he goes on and talks about. Yeah, we're going to get around to it when I get around to it and it just ends with. I mean, I personally don't think many people watching this will consider replacing fax machines as an issue as depth of depth and complexity. So just the to contrast here of fax machines on the train.
In the UK and reverse like Landing. A rocket is to complete polar opposite ends of the spectrum. When it comes to travel and Logistics
from our insight into the British National Health Service through Yusuf, we both know that the NHS. Still heavily heavily, relies not only on faxes facts is between departments are not only facts is the whole thing is run on Windows XP when I don't even know how you have access. I don't even know how machines are able to run Windows XP
anymore. There's an
edible Twitter account at the minute, called days of NHS
spending. You'll either see a something that's the other day. What was it? The Palm Jumeirah Beach. Yes, so the Palm Jumeirah Beach in
Dubai. It's a tweet where it talks about. It's the most expensive. I think physical infrastructure, ever built and it equates to 30 days of NHS spending and he just constantly anytime anybody talks about a number that's going to be saved or a crazy amount of
It's just constantly Quantified into the number of days of NHS spending absurd.
We'll get back to talking to George in one minute. But first, I need to tell you about a to sleep. Sleep isn't just about how long you rest but also how well your body stays in its optimal temperature zone throughout the night. And this is where H sleep comes on just add their brand new pod for Ultra to your mattress, like a fitted sheet and it automatically calls down, a warms up each side of your bed, integrated sensors that track your sleep time, sleep phases HRV, snoring and your heart rate with
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What about examples of agency that you both of us have kind of become addicted. I guess to accumulating these stories of people that are high Agency for me. So Adrian Paul, George Lane cut onto our to the unkillable soldier. Certainly Shackleton. That attempted, the first Antarctic Crossing 1914, the Forgotten Highlander Alistair cards, you know, Viktor Frankl, Man's Search for meaning in some ways to add that recent one, that a mocha vanilla.
Guide the dude that took 30 an entire platoons worth of meth and outrun Russians for a month. You've only to stopped his resting. Heart rate was 200 BPM. Anyway, 250 kilos who was some of yours. Well
brings me on to my
next one. Okay. So we
have to contrast here.
One end of the spectrum, we have the US Department of Education, on the low agency end, which it something around 20 to 30 thousand dollars, they spend on students per year and they are ranks with the highest in the world. The u.s. spends on education. Meanwhile, they're ranked between 20th and 35th both literacy and numeracy. So spending so much money getting so little out of there, it's a wild start of something along the lines of
The fifty percent of Americans have lower than six grade literacy. So on the right end is one of the best books I've ever listened to. It's about an hour long and I'll just open up the question first because it's completely reset. This question for me which is what is a ten-year-old capable of
And this book kind of answers that question, so it started to it's called. Don't tell me, I can't, it's written by a 14 year old at the time, called cold summers and essentially, just to contrast it to the Department of Education. It starts with him very early on around about 5 or 6 years old and his dad served in the military and had issue in training that basically left him disabled and with injuries for the rest of his life.
And one day he's getting raised by his dad and he's about to hit the age of going to primary school and they see these kids but misbehaving and saying some my awful shit outside of their house and they decide, you know what, we're going to we're going to home school them and PP opting for that decision because I don't want to hang out with those kids. Unfortunately, he's dead, then ends up needing lots of operations throughout his home, throughout his home schooling. And his he one day is going to sat there his dad's recovering from
All these surgeries. And he says to his dad. How do people get rich? And his dad just replies. I imagined at the time on so much medication and just trying to keep his kid busy. He goes, um, I don't know because we're poor, family does, maybe go and watch some Warren Buffett videos on YouTube. So six-year-old goes and start watching Warren Buffett. Charlie Munger videos on YouTube consumes, everything about Warren Buffett, and Charlie Munger understands like mongers, iron laws of prescription starts.
Learning everything about business and compound interest.
All, but for yourself on YouTube, then at the age of seven, the age of seven just goes, well, I'll just start my first company. Seven-year-old starts his first company selling rabbits to the local restaurants, gets it up to a thousand dollars in monthly, recurring revenue, and that's real Revenue, nautical Shopify, bullshit screenshot, right? $1000 for a seven-year-old at the age of eight, he then learns about Amazon. Not paying tax is how to house hunters are not paying.
So he starts just teaching himself, the tax code on the online, at the age of eight, at the age of nine. He buys his first vehicle like a car,
so do with it, you know, for the, for the
farm. So it's not him but he owns the vehicle. But people are working on it yet and at the age of 10, he buys his first house to ten thousand dollars. What she's YouTube videos learns like flooring how to do the wiring completely flips. The house makes a profit on the house and
Has he got any help? Is anyone assisting him at this
II don't? I don't know the ins and outs of that specifically. I've got a probably do more research on that, but the book is is incredible. And there's a bit in there where he goes to scouts because it still interacting with the kids, but what the crazy thing is, he didn't know that, that wasn't normal, he was just going online and he goes to Scouts and he's talking to the other kids about like what they've been up to that day. And they saying yeah, we just been remembering the planets. And like so we have Earth here and Mars and dadadada.
It's like, when are we ever going to use this? Because what about you, what you've been up to, and he chats them about like payroll tax cut, but actually this nine-year-old Scouts but not that, I think the key astrix on that story is not that everybody should not not every 10 year old should be buying their own house, but it makes you question, the education model that we discussed earlier. And I think it's probably one of the biggest inputs of low agency into people.
And his story in particular, your makes you question. What is a young person capable of
what? I suppose the education system in both America and in the UK I don't know if there's anywhere that it isn't.
Very much life is happening to you. Yes, there is no, you happening, you're not, you know, until once the first time in the UK school system that you get to choose your sort of speciality side 13. It's after your 9, I think remember, you're going to pick your gcses that you're going to focus on and then from there, you pick your ASU pick your A Levels, then you pick your degree. So up until that point up until the age of 12, 13 13, you're just on a set of train tracks. You don't even get to discriminate what you learned, let alone, how you.
Earn in Broad strokes. And then in specific Strokes is like what? This is the sequence. This is how the curriculum is put together. And yeah, what's your thing about the behaviors that you were rewarded for an early life are the ones that you get punished for in later life.
Yes. Like in her in school if you copy people you're punished and given a detention in life. If you copy people, you're labeled a successful franchisee owner. There's like endless amounts of those behaviors where
A lot of adult life is about from my experience. At least seems to be about unlearning behaviors that happened during school. When you actually go down the rabbit hole of the education system like this Prussian model that came over and it was primarily created for integrate industrial Factory workers and it still looks like that to this very day. But you have bells that
ring, they used the same bells in British schools that they were using in the factories. But the most pavlovian early on
Conditionings,
fucking wild. You have you have somebody who's in charge of the classroom, you have.
People moved from cell-to-cell uniform or uniform. And also, you're told when you can eat, you're told when you can go to the bathroom, you have to ask for permission to go to the bathroom, Pete at Eli's, thinking about this the other day. He has this question of what do or what does, what pinion do? You hold that. Few people agree with you on and this idea of trying to get you to become an independent thinking, which is quite difficult question to answer. I certainly struggled with it but the late
Flip of that question, which is what do essentially most people agree upon but nothing's changing and I think it's the education system is definitely not a good thing, it's obviously not necessarily. There's worse options right before before it existed, but I can't think of anything that as many people agree upon that, this things are doesn't prepare you for a real life and a good indicator of a training system as thinking about this, a good indicator of a training system. Is how closely it mimics? The actual thing.
So driving lessons are incredible because you're literally driving and it's painful, but meanwhile Scott how much do you remember from school, essentially,
zero of I was thinking about, you know, who I'd love to meet. Whoever is in charge of foreign languages in the UK at the department level. I've never met anybody who's learned Spanish French from school, apart from like bonjour bonjour. Hola, that's it, but we still keep going dedicated to hours a week for two years to it.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's bizarre. I have an issue with the early on education system. I know that you've got a massive issue with University as well. For me, I think and University to be useful as like a crash course in socialization. But it feels like you've ordered a main course that tasted like dog shit and you're like yeah but the gravy that came along with it or the plate that it was
put on the plate that this dog shit food was served on those early an enjoyable experience. So if I took a lot away from that plane it's very well. Designed is great quality really? I remember it but yeah it does feel like if you're trying to create a highly agentic, populous
School isn't exactly the best preparation.
Have you seen? I need to double verify. These studies are be interested to replicate them. There's a guy called, I think dr. Land who worked for NASA and design. These creative thinking tests to basically gauge how creative somebody is. And the way they would do that is ask, for example, number of solutions, different types of solutions. They come up with how they vary from everybody, else's Solutions, things like that, and 25 your a five-year-old and
Each of the fifteen hundred that they surveyed score, like, 98% on creativity and of follows
up every five years and it
just, it looks like the reverse of Bitcoins price. It's
just down, down, down, down down.
And, you know, we spoke on the previous show of the average person dies, at 25 and it's a buried until 75, but the follow-up of the study, the 25 year olds 2% was the 2% of them scored is like creative thinkers and it kind of makes sense when you're
You put through this model of wrong, right? Answer set curriculum for you. Pavlovian don't think
outside of the box. Don't question the question ever that doesn't go
down? Well, it's course.
Know, why do we need to learn this? What's the point of doing that? Know, you'd be labeled a disruptive kid, you'd be a bad student. You'll be bad student. If you ask questions about the
question about brother tells me this funny story of when he was at school, when he was, probably not the most well-behaved, but it's cool. But one day he was like clicking on the history books and came fascinated by like communism in Russia.
Are in China and all these people going down, this bad ideology, the teacher, I guess. What are you doing is? I'm just absolutely fascinated by this is, that's great, but that's not on the curriculum and just went back to something about Henry, the 8th completely changed curriculum but it is fascinating that I do think we're at this momentous period of time where you now have chat GPT cord. All these AI tools coming in where even the work. Now just completely redundant. Even this model of
Preparing for an exam. Like talk about feedback loops, you don't find out your exam results to even eat. Forget, even judging exams itself, not filling out your exam results for three months. It's such a terrible feedback loop within
itself. Yeah. Rory Sutherland told me this really funny Parable so he said
A copywriter graphic designer and an account executive step onto a plane together and they open up the overhead locker and a genie comes out. He says, guys been left locked in there for so long. Thank you, thank you for coming. I'll give you a one, one wish each. So the designer says, I think I'd like to have DaVinci's life. Hey, I like to have his skills as ability to represent things graphically
It's done the way it goes and then the copyrighted comes over says, I think I think I'd like to live like Hemingway did you know? So the women, the lifestyle writing ability of the writing ability done, the account executive comes over says, what, what would you like? He says, I'd like those two guys back. We've got a meeting in the kunafa
as fuck, you guys. So Rory, well off topic but I have to include it. There's the
The on top of plane experiments, Charlie Munger tells that one of he goes on a plane terrorists hijacked the plane and say right. You got one last dying wish before we blow this sucker up. Think wisely. Then he goes. Can I tell you about the beauty of Costco's businessman? Ha ha ha.
This is an equivalent about aliens. Come down to earth and they say Humanity, we can do whatever you want. You can ask us any question and some idiot that listen to podcast from the back. Shouts, what's your?
Morning routine. Fuck be. Okay good. What about I mentioned some of my sort of real PK agency people. You've accumulated one with this guy that was self-taught, is there anyone else that comes to mind?
Yes, let me, let me skip ahead. So you go ahead. Just before I go on to that one, we have I wanted to show you this case. Just fucking cult is have you. This is the Topography of Tears. Have you seen
this? The Topography of Tears? Yes,
like so yeah, this some photographer. I will come back, and you question, but just quickly, let me blast through this. This photographer took different types of tears and put them under a microscope and here, for example, is tears of
Grief here is tears of joy. They actually look different under a microscope.
Wow. So this is this was
just a way for me to try and get into sjokz. It looks
so cool. But like, the
agency example, here is being a funeral and thinking, fuck I never got in touch for the last few years and now they're gone. Tears of grief at the other end tears of joy of fuck. I'm so glad that we did that holiday.
Together. I'm so glad that I arranged all those trips that I did with them. So I thought that was a, that's fascinating. I wonder
why? That's the case. I want to know what those structures are made of want to know what those lines are. The people that are listening, the tears of grief, much more sparse, whatever the lines. There's some kind of structure. It looks a little bit like halfway between little cells and electrical circuits. And then the other end, the tears of joy, have a lot more activity, a lot.
More structure. And then there's lines everywhere and I wonder what that is we can dig deeper and
come back. Look at, let me go back to your question. I really ignored. So essentially, the I want to come on to the most high agency person but I just want to be dressed like the probably the YouTube comments at this point so
we'll never steal. I wanted to steal my on the other side. So for example life happens to people you piece of shit, hope you get for stage cancer so I can call you up.
And tell you to happen to life, can't wait to tell the orphans. They just need to happen to life and big nose. Twat note is written.
That that was just something from your task awful. I don't know. You do seem to have a very accurate perception of what the comments are going to be, if everyone can comment, small nose twice any and the second glad that we great.
Essentially the most Apex HIgh agency example, is this guy coming up now so actually
let's just lingering questions. Linger on that thing for a
Second. The why do you think it is that conversations around being able to happen to life self authorship agency taking control? Why do you think it is that it triggers that particular immune response from
people?
I think the right I think they're right at the end of the day ice, why I'll come on to in a second but I don't want to miss convey that life doesn't happen. It definitely happens going back to the London example earlier. Like if it wasn't for the heat, if it wasn't for the clothes that we take for granted, we would literally be within 23 hours, hypothermia and death. So I don't think they're wrong and I think it makes sense. But then when this is why I take,
Way from a self-help conversation, when you begin to go. Well,
Does it defy the laws of physics?
In terms of knowledge creation. Yeah but no it doesn't so therefore it is possible. It doesn't mean that awful things aren't going to happen. They're almost guaranteed to happen which is why I tried to basic update, the model based off their feedback, I don't think they're wrong. So essentially it's more of a four dimensional model that the higher agency. Somebody has the more sort of the the more life is happening. Sorry the more agency that they they ultimately have which is why I wanted to come onto.
So life is happening.
Is there is a pressure up against you and there is a pressure of you leaning into it at the same time. Yeah that's interesting. As having this conversation Destiny taught me this I think I gave it some wine key me name of like the the two-step theory of the two-step flow potential, I think I called it to step Theory potential, so Destiny. I thought was kind of an interesting person to put this suit because he's somebody that's from the left, but also has quite a lot of agency. In fact, I'm reading
At the moment. By Martin Seligman that has a quiz and much of the quiz is asking you questions about agency a person, steals something from a shop. What are the reasons for why they stole like, did they have Choice? Could they have done differently at cetera and this is supposed to map you on the Spectrum from left to right? And the destiny, seems at least one asking these questions to be someone who kind of just take charge. It doesn't really sort of outsourced to structure and environment things.
Which are maybe of personal responsibility. And I asked him this question about. Well, how do you marry the fact that people are both at the mercy of the environment around them and the authors of their own life that you don't want to externalize your sense of control. But you also have to understand that there are limits to what you can do and he basically describes it as having a range within which your outcomes in life, your capacities sit and this range is determined by
By your genetics, the environment. You're in the time that you were born, that you could be the best guitar player in history. But if you're born before, the guitar was invented, guess what it's not happening.
So he says, there is a range that you sit within and this is determined by the environment. You're in things are outside of your control, but within that range, everything is exclusively on you. And for some people, it's easier for some people, it's harder. But there is a range that you sit within and I think that that kind of marries things quite nicely. Some people mean, you probably not going to do very well in the NBA, but
Within the range that we do have football freestyle. Perhaps, you can get a bit further.
Mmm, Yeah, I think just to on that specific point. It it's not the problems don't happen. It's the fundamentally all problems are solvable so and it all comes down to agency like cancer as horrific as it is. And it happens to people truly fucking horrific, but it's ultimately a Humanity level. It's an agency problem
or is soluble, get your next, get your next slide out.
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Modern wisdom
the most Apex HIgh agency guy, do you recognize this guy guy called Wilbur now? Great name. So let's just start off with life happening to him. So smart kid Wilbur. He wants to go to Yale University's about to get in. It's playing hockey one day and gets his face smashed in so badly. By a bloke. It's interesting. Studying history. This bloke was clearly.
A Nutter and guess what? They used to do for Nutters. Could prescribe them cocaine? I know if you notice like that. Yeah, mainly in Northern rail over the years. So anyway, gets prescribed cocaine smashes. This guy's face him so much, so he's bedridden for two to three years while. So, you'll universities canceled, whilst he's bedridden, his mum is terminally ill. So it's kind of in bed. I my Majid caring for her while she's in bed back and forth.
So truly life is happening.
Wilbur
this fucking guy, man. This guy sat there in bed, ask the question. Why can birds fly but humans can't? Yeah. What fight? Why is that? So, just sits there in bed getting book after book. And there's not many books back then about aerodynamics and how things can fly. But he's studying birds will
Other teams up with his brother becomes fascinated by the question and
starts to move over on the Spectrum a little bit over here to like happen if you like his surname is
Right. Indeed indeed. So Wilbur and Orville his brother. They reverse from first principles, where is the best place with wind and sand and in America? Because they need to test flight. They need to find somewhere with a soft landing. And with enough wind
I'm telling it to test out,
so they get all the weather bureau consensus data, which back then there's no internet. So they just reaching out to local Council and finding the ship and he sorry, they have all this weather data and the realize it's 700 miles away in Kitty Hawk. And I realized, well, are they can just fly that? As I know, they could be, can't find out, right? So this is the farthest I've ever been from home. They go all the way down to Kitty Hawk and the two of them talk about happening too.
Life, the two of them. And by the way, back, then this is a key thing that people I always forget about history, is that it was a mock. Think flying was seen as everybody, who tried it failed or died, it was poems at the time of how ridiculous it would be. Like to even think you could fly like it was a it was a joke of a time. So the two of them are seen in Kitty Hawk like these my dinner. So you're looking at side your window and there's these two brothers there for hours at the exide. Just like moving their arms like this pretending.
Different types of birds, just mimicking the way Birds move their fucking wings. So there for ages, they then begin to design like a win a wing system. Based off the way buds do the next problem that they have is, they realize that all the measurements around aerodynamics that they've been given up a time from a German fellow will completely incorrect. So, they have to build when they go back home, they build a wind tunnel in their garage like a, the
Go about 27 miles an hour and they're creating little objects and putting it through. And they reverse engineer, do everything that we know about aerodynamics is completely wrong. So they fix that problem and it's problem after problem. It's next building an engine that's light enough, then you end up with a scenario.
Before they create the airplane. They are failure after failure after failure. After failure after failure, Wilbur looks, it's brother one day and says, no man will ever fly for a thousand years. One year later, he's up there in the airplane and flies for the first time ever. And that for me is, I think Wilbur Wright and obviously is brother. Although is the Apex example of high agency and the impact it then has Because unless you study history use go, well bands, always been able to fly and your no, this is
Been since the early 1900's, that would be able to do it. The amount of times, I don't, how many times a week? Do you think about the Wright brothers,
ever since you sent me that photo? I encountered a situation at the toward the start of this year and I explained it to you and you sent me this photo and it must be Wilbur in the plane and Orville on the The Hill in front of him and he's doing this. Yeah. And he's jumping. These guys hands in the air and there's planes off the ground. And yeah, I know that you use this to basically tyrannize your
staff.
I think I think about what I think about it. Well, like once a week like, it's over. So like, I'll be like staring when there's a plane going by. Once, you want to know the story, I'll be staring. Was a plane goes by my girlfriend. Be like you thinking about the right brother? Yeah yeah. Yeah. Because the fact that most people don't know their names, the fact is not statutes, that wasn't a day and that, meanwhile, there's like me getting on an Emirates flight, like stressing at my, it's 20 minutes late, and you're now they're going. What you mean. There's not Diet Cokes on the plane and there's TV entertainment every year, but it's just a, it is just agency that a problem that seemed
Completely insolvable didn't defy the laws of physics. It was possible and now we our whole work me and you being here today, flying into London is purely because of these two factors.
I kind of like that. I'd love to dig a bit deeper into his story and do a little bit more research around the fact that he said that man won't fly for a thousand years but didn't stop. And then going there a year later, I've been really, really spending a lot of time thinking about
Not believing that you're worthy of achieving a thing and yet still managing to attain It Anyway. This sort of
Make it until you fake it. Basically that you do a lot of the time we believe that we need to have faith in a thing before we can go and do the thing but it's a necessary precursor. It may make the process more enjoyable. It may make you have more confidence in making more efficient, in the things that you do, make me more effective at getting the outcomes that you need, but it's largely an unnecessary step. If we assume that what you're optimizing for is outcomes, not inputs. If you can do the outcomes, regardless of how you got that, whether you believe that you're going to do it or not, what you thought, it'd be a thousand years already.
Thought it'd be six months. If you do, someone could have been Wilbur alternate, universe slightly different personality and being like we're going to get it done in three weeks and it would have taken a year. Hmm. If he'd done the same things, what it's not going to do the Cuban man won't fly for a thousand years and it's going to happen in a year so just you know mean you talk about, we obsessed about this a lot, your birthday, the summer. But the more and more that I think about it. Optimizing for outcomes, not for inputs is just sides.
Everything and ugly is quite a high agency way to to do this because the true or another element of high agency would be accepting that you live in an irrational world. And that your psychology is one that is not built to be able to accurately identify how outcomes are going to come from inputs. So stop believing that, you know, how this is going to work and just okay. This thing seems to be happening in whatever way both mean you were on ridiculousness.
Diets come. Do you know why it works are? Kind of I can probably prosigns Cobble something together, some doctor probably could too, but I bet that there's maybe even more explanations for why it shouldn't work or doesn't or whatever is ridiculous and like a butt.
I feel better when I'm on it. I'm optimizing for outcomes. I'm not bothered about the mechanism. I'm not bothered by the inputs. Yes.
Because fundamentally it was possible. That's the big thing. And this is a try and say this in the least offensive way, but I think there's some truth to it. That a lot of high Achievers or high agency, people are often described as being on the Asperger's or Autism Spectrum spectrum. And I think the reason behind that is that all their bottlenecks are just
It's an operations, he's just like, just you look at someone like a lawn or soccer somebody like that Bezos and a lot of it is just Logistics operations bottlenecks. Whereas for maybe people who like myself that go through the education system and really struggled to then break out of that way of thinking on like it's creativity bottleneck it's a emotional. Bottleneck is a big one as like what will people think if I do this? Yep. But there's so many different bottlenecks that aren't Logistics and operations. But for people
Who who have a little touch of that? Is
it is Amor the Asperger's. What's the opposite of how your agency?
It would be, it would be low agency. It would be Outsourcing your worldview to other people who are just Outsourcing their worldview to you and you just have this kind of reflexive mirror. What's your one around the? Is it the PHA Bolin Paradox so that one
but Abilene Parabola in Paradox, Abilene Paradox. Yeah. That somebody invites you to their wedding thinking that you want to go. You say yes despite not wanting to be there because you think that you want they want you there.
It describes how in a system, especially a social system. People can arrive at a sub optimal scenario for everybody because everybody presumes that everybody else wanted it. It's not too dissimilar to the chiemsee and beauty contest that you spoke about previously, which is where you make a judgment in a beauty contest. Not who you think is the most beautiful, but who you think other people will think is the most beautiful and then you can continue to scale this back Riley just an infinite regress of prediction all the way back so are we talking about low agency? You know both
Me and you, since we've, you first came on the show six years ago inversion is one of those really powerful tools. So half maybe a third of what people should try to do is become High agency, but probably two-thirds of what they should do is try to avoid being low agency. So talk to me about how you come to think about that. Side of the
equation in the essay around High agency that I've written, which we can link to essentially what I call them low agency traps, that are just easy
And I've documented maybe nine or ten, but I think there's infinite amount of agency traps just part of being a human being. So there's a few, which are I can read now. So I one is called the Midwest trap and the way I think in, what's a fun way of actually explaining this about boring people and it's an SMS message. So imagine you're in a third-world jail, and you've got someone who's in the midwest trap and you text them. Hey, any updates on breaking me out of this jail.
This is how the Midwest, traveled thing. Yeah, yeah. Lots of updates from me, I'm on day, 30 of my juice
cleanse.
I've thinking of doing a degree in criminology to specialize in, how jails work, so I can get you out. Um, and I've also watched 30, TED talks on the topic. So the Midwest trap. I've got a PhD in the midwest, trap. Is this idea of trying to be
Smarter than you are and overcomplicating things. So for the Midwest trap, where it comes from, is the mid with meme. So you have the guy in the left, the guy on the right, the guy in the middle to opposite ends of the IQ bell curve and the guy on the left and the guy on the right often come to the same simple conclusion, the guy on the left can't overthink things. So he just goes for the simple answer. The guy on the right is so intelligent that he's old, he's demystified everything and come back to the simple shirt. And the guy in the middle is the one who's managed to overcomplicate.
Things and overthink things. So like one meme that I made is guy on the left, make something people, one guy on the right, make something people want when it comes to business. Then in the center, it's, I'm gonna do this five-year consultancy program, and then I'm going to watch all these TED talks, and then once I've done these surveys, that I'm ultimately going to find the thing. So the guy in the midwest, trap, would never even get moving with the any agency towards breaking up a federal jail because he's constantly overthinking and trying to intellectualize things too
much. Yeah.
I think specificity as well as something else. That mean, you talk about a lot avoiding vagueness and it's necessary, but not sufficient to be in.
To become High agency or to avoid low agency is to have intentionality, right? To choose what it is that you're going to do if if High agency is winning at the game, intentionality is choosing which game you going to play hmm?
When I was thinking about high agency originally
I had four things that underpin it. So if you imagine how you agencies like this table here and then you have the four legs, the four things that I think underpinner are clear thinking.
Resourcefulness.
Bias to action and disagree ability. So if you even go back to the Wright brothers story there, the amount of clear thinking that they needed to do throughout of our K Over the aerodynamics. Let's actually take these to First principles and Tester the amount of resource fulness of and I'd probably think resourcefulness interesting at your opinion on this, it's like creativity and persistence combined ability to create new novel. Creative Solutions bias to action is just like moving, moving moving, Napoleon Style,
And disagree ability is the guy earlier when Darren Brown rings the bell who sits there in those? Well, maybe there is maybe I don't have to follow everybody else and perfect example, being the Wright brothers rather than just carrying on their bike shop and trying to build that into Enterprise disagreed with the whole consensus based on the laws of physics that people could fly. So you have those four things and I think going back to your point their intention out. Intentional ism, is is like a sister of like clear thinking. Yes, it's like a clear thinking leads to
To intention is
Mmm. Yeah, doing what you meant to do? Yes, because yeah, there's
definitely a difference between High agency that you could. You could fund it. Feel erratically, be high agency and unintentional that we've spoken about before.
There's really no absolute psychopath a few. A few people like that. Yeah, but it results in you being
Very original and action oriented in service of something, that's a total fucking waste of
time. Mmm. And I
mean that, that would be kind of like a version of hell because you had all of the difficult raw materials. You had all of the skills, you had all of the networking. Had all of the capacity to actually bring to bear something on this fucking very hard to Wrangle planet, and you are pointing in totally the wrong direction was the, it's the George Soros thing, right? It's George Soros. Um,
Whoo, I'm sure we're going to get flagged immediately on YouTube for
Mentor cirrhosis or RCA
but becoming one of the most successful hedge fund managers ever. And if rumors are to be true, I believe to be true. He wanted to be a philosopher. Hmm. And he spent his whole life bike, just crashing the pound it, and trailed our way. Jeremy but just kept going up. Bill Perkins, has that business book about that mate of his who said, stop me when I get to 20 million and just keeps going
in at 50 million in, he's now at like multiple billions and still going because he's addicted to it. So yeah, it's for you could have resourcefulness
Clear, thinking bias to action disagree ability but without intentional ism is a, your friend, dangerous one, you're
fully fucked at, what are some of the other low agency traps?
Um, another one kind of related to what you mentioned. There is the is the rumination trap. So hey any updates on breaking me out of this jail. Sorry for the slow reply. I've been thinking about it. I know I've spent the last
Here thinking about it. I think I just need more time to think. I'm trying to think about my overthinking problem, if I can solve that, I think I can start. So the rumination trap is one. I began to learn a lot more from doing cognitive behavioral therapy and it's just this endless loop. I mean, we were talking about this the other day of, if you could analyze the 50 to 60,000 volts per day and really see them
the problem with the human brain is you have these 50 to 60,000 thoughts, but because the constant in short-term memory, you don't fully if you could see the
graph, you'll have a dashboard. Yeah, if you can see, the definitely
have thought about. I've worried about that conversation with somebody 20% of the week for the last three years and it's just ruminating around. But when it's their fresh and Consciousness, you don't you have seen the dashboard, you don't see that. So you just bought this new thing is going
on there, there's the fact that you're in a new place, a new time of life and you can
I always have an old thought in a slightly New Way. Gives it a sense of novelty. So you kind of a kid into believing that it's something new. And the other part is that we're creatures of habit and old thoughts, even ones that are quite uncomfortable, a familiar to us, and that familiarity gives a sense of comfort and comfort gives us a sense of sort of habituation, you know you might not.
Obviously, not with this show because it's fantastic, but many people will watch or listen to YouTube channels. That they kind of, don't really enjoy anymore, but they just know where they're gonna go. Mmm. It's very predict, it's like putting on an old comfortable leather pair of shoes, like slide my feet into these, I know what his opinion is going to be. This is
sweet and the algorithm just keeps you in this of them, the static local, of
course, it does. So yeah, rumination traps and rumination trap. I'm going to guess is diametrically opposed to bias for Action? Yes.
The it's the opposite of
that. So I put a personal rumination story that I had was and the problem with rumination is you try and forecast into the future constantly. That's the big thing from cognitive behavioral therapy is your they call it the crystal ball or you're trying to forecast in the future ahead, unless you can get a perfect outcome, you just kick. The can down the road. And then ultimately, you end up with not much Road left and just a lot of cans. Yes. So one that came to mind.
Me. So, when I was thinking about clear, thinking, there's the three big decisions, right? There's where you live, who you're with and what you're doing. And one thing I struggled with for ages was, I'm in this location right now, maybe I could go to this other location and what would happen in my head is I would have option, A of me, staying in current location or option, b, going to new location. And when I would think of option A, it would go nightmare mode. So everything that could possibly go wrong, would go wrong and the other
It has worked out perfectly and then I'd flip to the other option and the reverse was true when I had left and gone to that location, everything's gone wrong. And I've never missed out on everything. And as a result, it's this Doom Loop that then begins to occur. And the more you kick, the can down the road, the more, you ruminate, the bigger, this thing becomes. And it's this absolute Doom Loop cycle. And then you, I don't want to think about this, which makes the thing bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger.
Yeah, I mean there's a conversation. I had recently about action being an
Do to anxiety and that the bias for Action just luck. You might think that by worrying and obsessing and ruminating and thought, looping and fearing and gripping your way through this problem, that it reduces down the likelihood of it happening. Somehow that it brings to Bear more control that it almost like impact reality in some sort of a way it makes no difference. Again, what are we focused on? We're focused on outcomes, not inputs and
The people that have that bias for Action, they end up just finding out whether or not this thing is going to work. Yeah, way quicker. The biggest thing that I actually
found with, for people listening, who probably had that Doom loop, I have and still have is in terms of getting a bias to action is rather than calling it a decision. Just moving to experiments. Yep. So just looking at the tubing and okay, I think this one has 60% probability. This one has 40 percent probability, I'm going to go to 60% one and I'm going to fully about the decision and I'll book time six months from now to review. How
One. And then change if not because I realized in the five years, spent ruminating about the two different options. I could have lived in 40 cities, multiple times,
both of us have done things where we've spent more time taking a making a decision than it would have taken to have worked out whether it was going to work or
not. Yes. So much time wasted and the thing I love, the thing I love about that is if you actually just did the thing, the amount of real data that your amygdala can't just sit there creating these doomsday scenarios that the big realization I had when I spoke to the CBT guy.
That I worked with was when you actually look at those nightmare modes that are playing. What's really strange about rumination? Is it skips like two to three years in the future and the worst case scenario? It's always I won't be able to cope. The worst case scenario will happen. I won't be able to cope and people will judge me, is what happens in the Doom, Loop in the rumination cycle, but it always skips two to three years in the future, he made a great point of it's like a horror film. It just starts now and goes to 23 years in the future, because But realize more like a documentary. What's you have agency? What's all the steps that lead you?
Ooh, up
allowed or change or adjust course at any point along that.
Yeah, I think a good way of moving out the rumination cycle.
I kind of called the difference between clear thinking and muddy thinking and ultimately we spoke about this the other day, the kind of a fur is might have, you know, the nature thing. I've never trust a thought that happens indoors never trust a thought that happens in your head is a good rule of thumb and I like that Balaji idea of transformation. So if thought happens in my head, it's not true until I've drawn it out. Written it down, spoken it out loud, to another person, create an equation, put it in a spreadsheet, whatever it is. And
I actually think probably 50% of benefits of therapy is just going through head to the album art,
it's more. It's more than that. You know this is one of the reasons why I'm I'm not on sub stack but I'm an avatar for people having a sub stack or some form of written publicly
consumed.
Form of artistic output or self-reflection specifically for self-reflection. I'm really good at guitar for someone that would not have been able to keep up a writing practice for four and a half years. However, long it to be now since I launched my newsletter and now we're like a quarter of a million words written in whatever four and a half years. Something like that, but it's invariably the best part of my week, my favorite thing, the guided us, the podcast is favorite thing is the hour and a half, that he spent writing every week because
Of that precise reason it synthesizes down. The most Salient thing that I've learned from that one week and I know, you only have whatever 500 words or 1000 words to write the sense I need to be.
Like high in brevity. I need to be pretty precise. I need to triage what it is. I want to talk about. What if I talk about this, I can't talk about that. So which ones are going to be which one is more important to you? Johnny feeling more right now and yeah you know big big fan of people having especially a public-facing version of this. I understand here we go. No gonna will get back to talking to George in one minute. But first, I need to tell you about element for the last three years. Every single day, I have started my morning.
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Modern wisdom. We have a people that journal, it's phenomenal in many ways because you're able to say things that you can't for public consumption, but I get the sense that at least for me, when I write things for public, I'm held such a rigorous standard for precision. It's really, really clarify, my thinking that, I'm sure I miss lots of advantages. The proper journaling would would allow, but it also does other things, which is, I think it's easier for you to create
Structures and Frameworks and ideas that you can, then later refer to, as opposed to like referring to this messy thing that's kind of all over the place that's in a journal so yet, so it's a mixed
bag. One think, one thing on the writing side, I found specifically useful related to that is a photo can't do this video, can't quite do this, but writing actually gives you the ability to go back 10 years. Let's say 10 years in the future now and understand how you think today will be able to nap today. Go back ten years.
Snapshot of your mind that. Yeah, that's how I thought. And because so many of the thoughts just Disappear Completely down the drain. It's so beautiful. In that regard. What about some more traps? Some more traps. So the we mentioned specificity there. So this is the here, the vague trap. So hey any updates on breaking me out of this gel? Yes, I've been working around the clock, amazing. Any specific updates? I
Don't have any time lines yet or deadlines or action items but I'm working on it. And yeah, the vague trap is, I think such an easy one to fall into because you're just trying to avoid
falsifiable criteria. The biggest takeaway I took from mosques biography was it's just it's just like endless anecdote
of we're going to do this by X day this time and then there's a timer around the office to the second counting down to that specific thing and then the gas
The you know the metaphor around if you have a container the gas will just expand all increase based on the size of the container
constantly. It's just a Parkinson's law written all over the yeah, the factory.
There's a great line of General ambition, gives you General ambition, gives you anxiety, specific ambition, give you Direction and eat, I mean specificity everywhere is so important. Even even in writing the all talking, the more specific that you
are.
The more impactful it.
More impactful, it can be. And I actually think the reason why is specificity we avoid it people in the vague trap and bodies myself. The reason why we avoid it is
because there's a failure Point, there's no criteria for success is no criteria for phone. Yeah and if you can just live in that
generality it's it's
impossible to ever have agency. I think so when I played Cricket when I was getting towards 1718, I was on the box to Durham which is a top-flight club.
Team in the UK would be equivalent to whatever Manchester United Academy or something like that. And I remember that on a Monday, the coach would call and ask how I got on. You might have checked the papers, you might not have done this, my performance would have been in the papers in terms of numbers, but he would bring me and he'd ask how I got on. And I remember the weeks where I was really low confidence, which would happen quite a lot, the specific style of cricket that I played was
Kind of like a special match circumstance. So the conditions needed to be very right is the leg spin which is like a complex type of bowling and if the game wasn't at the right format if it was too short he didn't tend to get bold. If the pitch was too wet, if the ground was in gripping. If wickets were tumbling or one tumbling sufficiently quickly the world you were very far down the list. You were very powerful but only to be used in specific break glass in case of specific circumstance and there's something on Cricket called.
A TFC. Thanks for coming and it's when you don't bat, you don't bowl. And all you do is filled. Yes, sir. Thanks for coming. That's what your captain would say to you, then. Thanks for coming mate, as opposed to, well, played, or we can do better next time and I remember I would get these calls and on the weeks when I wasn't confident a lot of the time, I just have a TFC and he would say, how'd you get on up the Weekend - at it, you know, there's like I'd wished I could have really wanted the opportunity to secretly. I didn't a lot of the time I didn't want the opportunity to have done it because by setting the potential for success by
having the opportunity for success to would have then been a criteria for failure. So a lot of it was fear of failure and that was something that largely. Now I've managed to get her. I mean once you've done a live show in front of three and a half thousand people, the potential for failure, as you know, you've looked in face but I think
Good habit, office. Someone I think his disposition would have been low confidence, low self-esteem as a kid and now,
Largely. That's that's not the same sort of problem that I have anymore.
Hmm. And you think a large amount of that is down to specificity or being less
vague suddenly being less vague but largely it's just crushing volumes of testing yourself in the real world because again you can make it until you fake it if you just keep on doing things and stuff goes well there's only so long that impostor syndrome a low confidence. Are low self-esteem or a lack of self belief or whatever can
This'd before it just gets Neutron starred out of existence. You like I have this fucking super dense. Body of work that self-belief is overrated generate evidence that Ryan holiday quote and you just generate so much evidence that it sucks. The living shit out of whatever it is that you will read about. But you need to talk about the vague trap. I was in the gym in London. I told you this story isn't a gym in London last week, the day of the show and it's the Kensington the gym.
Unmanned like it's a, it's a seller, the seller that has a gym in it. It's open 24 hours and there's no staff at all. Looking after it means they go in and a couple of people asked the photos, which is really nice. One of the kids asked for photos young guy, maybe 2122 something like this, and he comes up, take to take the selfie or whatever. And then, as I'm leaving, I'm on my way out and he comes up and he's got a crafting, he was recording, maybe, I did Mike and his hand or something is recording it.
And he said he broke it slightly broken English. Hey, I I know that you're going to be busy, but I just want to ask you a question. I wanted to ask, you know, I really want to become rich and I'm 22 at the moment. I'm working a full-time job, but I really want to have more
Self-discipline and I want to make more money. Can you teach me how to have more self-disciplined and make more money
whoo-hoo? I
remember thinking he's accident are in Max videographers said that and this is kidding. I'm thinking, well, you know, he's asked his, obviously, something that's important to him, he's come up in your ask this person, and he said that he appreciates that I, you know, I've got, I've got places to be and such I don't need to give a flip and answer. Remember thinking, like, that's a shit question. It's a really bad. Like can you teach me how to have more self-control? Make money language. Barrier, etc, etc.
but yeah, I think I told you this and your response would have
been
The question the question shit. Like it's
from the mood of said, the first the first thing I would do is ask about a
question, ask me? That's the first bit of advice you give his ask about a question and I think if if you look at the the big trap and how often it comes up, it's because of just even the question he asked, there is just a lack of, it's a complete lack of clear. Thinking it's just like clear. Like muddy thinking is what I call it is just like they gifts in my head or like jpegs or words that are popping up and it's
Going. What does that mean? Oh writing that down, getting more specific, more specific, more specific like a great example would be how can I be happy? It's probably the vaguest fucking question that's ever existed. And if you just viewed the brain as a questioning answering device that we're constantly asking asking questions and you, basically, it's like asking a computer, just an endless loop that never closes and it just completely expand into Infinity, which then leads to this anxiety. But let's say, for example. Okay, example of general question, how can I be happy?
Specific question would be, what does my dream week? Look like hour by hour? What does my nightmare week? Look like hour by hour. Where am I right now between the two and then hat? What's the easiest first step to move up that that's so much more specific versus like a general thing. And I think that's probably the biggest sign. I noticed whenever I'll get a DM whether it's a personal thing or a business thing, the easiest questions to answer
All the best people are always that mean the most high agency people. It tends to be super specific. I've tried ABCDE. I saw that, you mentioned F. I've done this specific thing here. This problem happened here. What do you think versus homo? I want to do this at anything question mark, it's so vague and as a result, it's so it's so boundless that you can almost never apply knowledge because it's to is too general.
What are the traps is there? Anything else? Let
me see. Yeah, we have the final one which is the the
Cynic trap. So hey any updates on breaking me out of this jail. Question mark, I posted my idea on Reddit for feedback this user called twat, monkey 72 broke down, why it was a dumb idea and then I spoke to my cynical British friends and they said People Like Us. Don't do big things. I don't think there's any hope. Sorry. And just the reply is you've literally not attempted anything yet. I think the, the cynicism thing is definite, that's one reason I mentioned
The bridge thing in there is definitely a close one. That's close to heart. Just experiencing the difference between Britain and America that we've spoken about countless times.
Yeah, it's there's also a degree I suppose of lack of specificity. It's there's a vagueness to it as well that if you don't try, you don't have to feel the pain of failure. Right? If I tell myself that all women are shit, then I'm never going to seek a relationship with a woman and as a consequence, I never have to feel the pain of rejection. But tell myself that
He's never going to get better. Then I'm Excuse of ever having to try to cope is framing hope as delusion. And optimism is embarrassing and if you know that things are bad and that they're never going to get better, then it's the people acting. Like things can improve that a dumb and delusional on the problem. Yeah. The the the upside of never trying is never having to feel the pain of failure,
the upside and never try reason to feel the feel for ya. I think that's that's partially true.
But I think if you didn't, if you zoom out so that's at the individual level, think that's true. But if you zoom out the kind of arrogance to be cynical when you look at, just from the wheel to the horse and carriage to the car, to the airplane to the rocket, I think I tried to create a word for it. Once you can hate, this gets terrible branding, but um, like this,
Alzheimer's of the Zeitgeist, like I caught his eye sight, sounds fucking offline. Our needs, it shouldn't be on the podcast, but we just have this weird cynicism around new beastly, all the crazy ideas that have occurred. We now just completely take for granted, and then when we look at agency in the future, well, that's just absurd. So we're in this weird middle zone of never appreciating the just the right / of it. You know like bat like back to back. Hi agency people hydrogen, see, people hide and see people. Then I'm sat thereon an Emirates flight getting annoyed.
Diet Cokes flat, never appreciating that. And also not being able to appreciate that. This literally infinite potential knowledge creation and so easy to be cynical
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There's this five
key ones that I identified, so there's there's no unsolvable problem. Unless it defies the laws of physics, there's no adults which book about previous adults? Don't exist. I don't exist. There's no way. There's, there's no guarantee you won't die screaming. She's one of my favorite ones. I tell you, the story behind that one. There's a old
Joe Rogan podcast called with a guy called Kevin Smith and he comes on and fuck man. This is he comes on and he's telling the story of his dad and he talks about how his dad was this great guy. Like was one of the people that never made any mistakes work for the Postal Service, just kind of gave up on his hopes and dreams just to make his family. Happy. It said never met. Never saw him make a mistake once.
And he's out for dinner, one evening with his mom and his dad, and his family. Have this amazing dinner, his dad goes back to the hotel. He gets a call at 3:00 a.m., and his brother says, you need to come down to the hospital now. Like dad's not well at all. He turns up to the hospital and his mom is crying. I hysterically, in a way, he's never seen anybody cry before, and his brother just looks at him and like, gives him the nod. And just said, like, could just tell that he's
Dad's died. And he says, three words that he says sticks with him that still haunts him to this day.
He died screaming.
And as a result of that he said, fuck it like even a good guy like that, he died screaming. It's just an absolutely horrific sight and he kind of Justified that for having agency of his existence is that ultimately if you can do everything, everything everything, correct and you ultimately die screaming. What's the point in? Not like chasing wimzie's or just doing ridiculous, share that you can think of. Because it's such a huge amount of people that die screaming that never gets broken. Because everybody has this idealized fantasy that they're just going to die.
In their sleep. I'll take a little by LSD and seek the hookers and come their way out of it. But realistically, yep, there's no guarantee that you won't die screaming.
What does that justify what? I think. It's the most extreme way of like a stoic way of looking at more tap potential mortality in its in its face and realizing not only am I going to die, I may die screaming. Therefore, you know what? The bells, ringing right now and people are standing up. And why do I, why do I have to stand up? Yeah, I've got this bike shed right now. That's doing really well, but maybe man could fly. Who knows? Right. And I think yeah, that it is just staring at the ticking clock.
Death. I think there's few greater fuels for for agency.
What about there's no way is that there's no particular technique. There's no one specific solution. Yeah. So we spoke about this last time just to recap. It's the story of Federer and Nadal Djokovic and there's a new version which I want to tell you about. So Federer and Nadal Djokovic. Matthew side goes to see them warm up and we have the three greatest of all time competing at the exact same time. First off.
The Dow turns up and he's biceps bulging he's just like David Goggins like in the zone fucking hitting the ball back and forth just pushing himself to the Limit. Next up Djokovic turns up and he's just like a calculated psychopath. No emotion. Just getting the job done. And then finally turning up late giggling, as he's arriving at the court is Roger Federer. Who's doing these like beautiful, dings trick shots just having fun the entire time.
So doesn't it? You have the three greatest of all time and there's no way that they did apart from personalizing it to themselves, which is like I kind of probably a Core theme of high agency. There's a new one I discovered recently, which is it's between Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen who were two of at the period, like, it's like the Drake or Kendrick of their day or two main guys making music. And I think they had a lot of admiration for one another but also like different bits of competition with one another
His son tells the story of Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan sitting down at this Cafe in Paris and they're comparing notes at the end of their career, kind of like Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. At that photo shoot and Dylan ask Owen how long did it take you to make Hallelujah and Cohen lies you egos. It was about two to three years. It's actually seven but he wanted to play it down. He spent seven years.
Making that song when the best songs of all time and Cohen Returns, the question about a specific Dylan song that he admires and loves. How long did it take you to write that 15 minutes? And it goes to show like two of the best songwriters of their day. One took seven years to produce one of the best songs. Dylan took 15 minutes to produce one of the best songs, but this idea, I think in the social media age of you have to do X, or you have to do a, you have to do, be have to do C, or whatever. It is, the fundamental
He is no way apart from the way that
works. Again, that's focusing on outcomes. Not inputs. Mmm. Yeah and you know I'm increasingly fascinated by this. What's the
We've done for. There's no unsolvable problems. There's no way.
There's no guarantee you won't die screaming,
I've missed, what haven't I? Hold on and adults don't exist.
There's no memory of normal. Oh yeah, there's no memory of normal.
So, this is the, the idea that we spoke about before, the ultimately, all normal behavior or all done downloading, the tribes behavior and trying to fit in just, we do it because we want other people to like us and ultimately ends up in the memory bin. Like, the only thing you remember about people is that weird eccentricities and they have agency only the array.
Yeah. Have you have I told you about inverse Charisma? I told you there's no, no, this is fucking fire. So
Both mean you have kind of been interested in the Arc of Charisma tours is like making Charisma charismatic again or sexy again because Charisma sounds like something that I don't know. Some real social Dynamic pickup artist would have taught you in 2010 standing outside of the top shop working on your Kino escalation and then R is is kind of key I do know. It's like it's more cool. It's so
I think a lot of people think that they want to be charismatic and when they say that they mean kind of energizing sort of electric compelling, interesting. They cause people to sort of be in or when they walk into a room and that's true. Like there's certainly people that are kind of magical like that but I thought about the people that I like to spend the most of my time around and sure some of them are charismatic or some of them are charismatic in a little ways, but I think one of the reasons that, you know, I love you as a friend.
it is not because
You walk into a room and are the most charismatic person in there but too often when I'm at dinner with you I feel like the most interesting or charismatic person in the room so I think it's significantly easier to be somebody who makes other people feel amazing and feel interesting and feel charismatic and fill compelling than it is to be that yourself. Also it's way more pro-social, it doesn't trigger this sort of
Jealousy status response because you're not stepping in to try and sort of Takeover in anything you're facilitating. You are helping everybody else. To kind of be the best that they can be. I'm using dinner as an example but you know works at kind of any social situation. So I came up with this idea of inverse Charisma which is most people think that in order to be well-liked, they need to be interesting. But actually the most well-liked, people of the people who make other people feel the most interesting. There's this great story about, I think it's Winston Churchill's wife.
Wife and she goes for dinner with the potential to next presidents of the United States. It's like Harry Truman and and and somebody else. So she leaves the first data and that's a couple of weeks apart, leaves the first dinner and says I left that feeling like he was the most interesting person in the world cause he could run the country and she went for dinner with the second presidential candidate. The one that ended up winning and she said I left that feeling like I was the most interesting person in the world and that's inverse charisma.
Reminds me of the meme. There's a meme where there's a huge queue on one side and then like there's like no queue for the next thing and the On Cue with the loads of people behind it is like how to make money. And then the other one is like, how to provide value to people and it's kind of a similar thing to Charisma, right? Is that ultimately, making money is just value exchange at scale, but we often think of like how do I make my, how do I extract resources from people versus? How do I actually give something to
Turn it into a positive sum game as I've never thought about it like that. That's a really good point.
I fucking adore inverse Charisma, dude. And, you know, embracing that is what the reason that I really, really like it is that it seems much more in reach for most people. Just be interested in other people and they will find you interesting. Who is like a really cool study that was done. They got a guy, the plant whatever they're called in a study to go to a plane they said I need you to sit next to this gentleman on a long-haul flight. You need to give him zero.
Zero information about yourself, the entirety of the flight, this guy gets on it speaks to this Channel. And next time, just ask questions as questions, ask questions, ask questions the whole way and then they get off and they interview. The person that they were sat next to the person who was asking all the questions up. And so we just were just doing a short survey about your experience on flight today. You know, we're making sure that people are placed appropriately and how do you find the fly sail? God was great. I sat next to this guy. He was so interesting. So fascinating like, oh, that's pretty
can you tell us, you tell us his name because
No. Oh I didn't get his name. So what can you tell us anything else about him? Because
No. Actually I I can't. No, I didn't tell me anything at all. The most interesting person was the person that made you feel like the most interesting person
down to two things on that. I'm yes, bruh. I know we've spoken about this before of the how to know a person that book. One of the big takeaways I got from that is yeah, I used to try and like turn up and get our cows in. This Will Smith video when he left on on the interior slaps now, so, yeah. Any like I'm going with a Donald Trump handshake and I'm like, wow, for them and stuff like that.
One of the things I would do, I try not questions. Then I'd be like, I'd be like, so one where you from? I'm from Manchester. Okay, what's the word? What was the weather like that? Yeah, it's called what town in Manchester and it's just these clothes questions. Close question, close, question versus okay. Where are you from Manchester? So, what's it like that great? And then you just open up for them to be able to speak forever and ever?
Let pseudo, I asked, I went for, I went for shwarma, with Myron, gains in Miami, at the start of this year.
I know what to say. We weren't expecting that one. How much did you pay on
that?
I know we were talking about he went you know he's like a gregarious guy or whatever. He went all over the place and um
I can't remember what we were talking about. I think we may be talking about
something to do with his show, something to do with like the internet or something to do with this history. And I asked him, I said, oh, that's interesting. How'd that make you feel when that was going on? Like, what would, how did you feel about that? And it just
really pattern
interrupted the whole conversation and it was quite a, to be honest, it was quite Charming moment because he took a moment, I was like, huh, I never really thought about that thing before. It made me cry. Like, feel a little bit sad because I can't like, I really like
No, it would be, maybe it would be an indication that more people around. You, asking that kind of question would be, would be something good for you. I don't know here. We often
just how are you? And then it's did it and then default back. How are you? There's a story in that. How to know a person where it's a teacher in front of a classroom and some one of the kids asked you married Miss. And she's like, oh no. And the why go? I'm divorced and know why, and they just keep going that and sheer into minute. She is flooding.
Flooding into it's like think flooding in tears because and it goes back to the education stuff where they're so naive, they're
just yeah. Why. Alan was as it was talking about that too, that there's this sort of innocent spontaneity. This unencumbered transparency that kids have and we have a kind of envy about them, you know, the lack of social mores that have shaved off the interesting parts of their personality and he has so much of life. So much about life is getting back to
Two.
That did more childlike curiosity State, I think. Okay, so people want to become more High agency. Presumably we've said it's important, we've identified what it is, how it works. Some ways that people can fall into traps to stop them from being it, some beliefs that those people have other, give me something. Give me a pair of breasts. Give me something tangible puppies sake,
I'd say so there's if there's a few, right? So the first
One that I've mentioned a few times but I really want to actually get into it which is the, does it defy the laws of physics question? Because okay the going back to the brain is a question answering device. So if you say why what's great about my life, it'll start finding answers. If you say what's awful about my life, it will start finding answers and let's say we go to a venue together and the guy on the front door, says sorry. Not tonight mate.
And then you've got cash to accept that social reality. And it's, what does it fundamentally defy the laws of physics? Does it go against Newton's Laws of Motion Chris getting into Tiger Tiger tonight? No, does it defy Einstein's? Relativity know and that point sounds trite but when you actually begin to understand that will you go well, as long as it doesn't defy the laws of physics. Anything is theoretically possible with human knowledge and again, it sounds trite saying that, but you just look at the last few hundred years since the enlightenment
And when you have this period before it where nothing happened in humanity we would just your great-great-great-great great-great-great-great, granddad's life. Look the same as yours. And meanwhile we have this change and the ability for humans to understand how things work and implement it into reality and happen to life and shape their environment that we just now. Completely take for granted like me getting annoyed at the flat Diet Coke on the Emirates flight is a big thing. The second thing which is
Probably a little less esoteric that. I really, really liked as a metaphor is when you're in the complete low agency and everything is super General and it's like, I don't even know what I don't even know where to begin. I don't even know where to start. One thing I love doing a little experiment. I got was going okay. Let's say have a problem right now of
I had a friend at the minute who he's an extreme by friend. We both know. Actually, he's an extreme workaholic to a point that I've never I've never seen before. And he was talking about how it's a problem. He just doesn't know where to start and I said to him, I go. Okay. Where are you at right now, out of 10 and it suddenly takes this kind of General infinite Universe. Yep. All the way down. Two. Okay. Well, a bit of a binary choice and you can never say seven, right? So he goes um, I'm at a three.
And it's okay. And I go. Why are you at a three, by the way? Like, why aren't you? I do too. Because to be honest with you, because I've actually like not worked and I've come here to see you. Okay, so we're getting some specificity. Hmm. And I got okay, well, what would take it up to a four and he was well,
If I left the office before 8 p.m., oh, I'd give that a for, okay, great. Got a little step that again, what? We take it to a five, or take it to a six. Seven, eight, nine ten ago. Okay, first off let's just do the for immediately and then as soon as you have that you have momentum, one of the things I love and I probably put it in the piece of like, a template that people can use is just what I call the video game, Apple note. So you have let's say, for example, to-do list, in apple, note build a website. The problem with that is that starting the
You'll gain level 56. So what I had this fascinating realization that to sorry, one person that I knew was the laziest person I've ever met. Couldn't I open his mail? I couldn't get out of bed and like make himself some food, but was one of the best video game players at that specific game in the world. I would spend 16 hours a day on this video game and I will do they have an agency problem or is their reality. Just a poorly designed video game. So the video game Apple know is just level one. So yeah.
Whatever it is, whether it's from opening mail to going to Kitty Hawk and taking the planes into the sky because always a level one and that's what video games are. Incredible at that they adapt to where you're at and then just slowly move you up again completely the opposite of school. So level 1 is always just dumped down thoughts on topic and what I love about that is the matter how complex the thing is from curing cancer, to flying planes to open in the mail. You can always jump down thoughts and then you check it off and level 2 is
Great. The next five levels based off the level what and what beautiful is when you check level 1 or a level one, small enough to start but isn't overwhelming. So you have that video game bit of dopamine then you check it off. You're like, fuck that's got broke. I'm on level 2. And then each step is enough to keeping the video game design is it's enough of a step to feel a challenge but without overwhelm. And if you, if it's too big of a step back level, 56 build website, that's too big of a step. You just
A constant in frustration. So you just quit the video game. Yeah. Terribly designed video game but breaking things down into micro steps is such a key thing in video game design and ultimately increasing agency. Yeah I mean this is
the
Productivity 101. You write your epigraph. You work. In, seven-year Seasons. You work in three-year blocks? You work in one year, Sprint's broken down into 90-day trunks, broken down into daily actions. And, you know, minute by minute, you've got your life planned out, and it's kind of trite because it's so obvious. But the fullest the smallest First Step imaginable is how the Wright brothers managed to get that plane to go. It's how you launch your
Getting agency in a different country. It's how this podcast started
s. And yeah, you need to be able to, if you can figure out ways that you can constantly make that first step because 50% of the battle is that first step. So if you have that great tool another tool more related to. So we spoke earlier about the forecast, for tenants of high agency, you have clear, thinking you have bias to action. You have resourcefulness and disagree ability on the disagree ability point, which I think is a huge huge part of it. The question I like to ask,
People is, who's your favorite podcaster? Creator me, think I. So let's say all the people. Listen to it right now who have the Spotify wrapped with you top of the list? Yeah. What do you disagree with Chris on? Because they'll be a percentage. Nothing? Right. All good, baby. They'll be a percentage of the audience. Unfortunately, probably less. So with your audience, but they'll be your percentage of the audience that says Chris says sky is red. Therefore sky is red and
Actually great disagree ability tests was the amount of times I've put gurus on a pedestal and then they'll start, they'll say, lot of wise shit and then I'll just start drifting out over their skis. Yeah. And then I'll start drifting and I'll just go with them. But that ability to say, who do you admire the most? And what do you disagree with them on? Is a great District
little test. That's really lovely. Another one
is who do you dislike? Who do you are? What's that may be the strongest held opinion that you have.
Whether that's politically business-wise theoretically and who's the best person on the other side that you've heard? Yeah. Can you answer those two questions?
Both of us have done, you've got your max content razor, would you consume your own content? If not don't post it, and I think that works the songwriting. Would you listen to your own music? If not, don't write it off your own podcasts, would you listen to your own podcast? If not. What the fuck? Are you doing? Spending hours and hours? So I have never posted to PornHub.
Ha ha ha. I don't watch that.
Have you seen? I've told you about this before, but I've never done it, but I'm still kind of tempted to do. I do it. If you did it as an accountability buddy with a poor numbers up that it's only funds was 100 days of rejection. Yeah. Yeah. You've seen that right? Ask for a free coffee. Ask a stranger in the street to give you 20 pounds like try and get it all of these different things that escalate toward ever.
Increasing levels of social discomfort, and I feel like that from, maybe it's, maybe it's not quite the same, as disagree ability. But disagreeable, T, triggers that, that sort of clamping.
Yes, at that fear of being exiled from the tribe, like, Napoleon is small little island. I think a big thing in that I got from CBT to Loop it back to what we said earlier. Is when you're doing disagree ability, things is to write down the prediction beforehand that your amygdala has given you. So for
example and then you get to stress test between
In what I thought was going to happen, and what actually ends up
happening eggs, and then you begin to slowly, but surely take away the weapons that that monkey mind has and it'll still fire, but you got okay. I mean, it's interesting, you're firing about me, going and asking out this girl or chatting to her. Yeah. But I remember the last time you talked about how if you're going to approach this girl, she's going to throw a drink in your face and blah blah blah is going to happen but we actually got a number of we went on a few dates so just comparing your brains forecasting mechanism which will always be the
The firing the nightmare mode when it's always actually more likely a
documentary who you also don't get to take a snapshot of your mind. Unless you do the writing. Yes, right. And it's captured in the best way through writing. I mean, we've seen this even with the election in America that we had this political fucking superposition this like Quantum World in, which it's going to be close. People could see it either way yet. Ardent support is on one side, Rory Stewart, a lot of
Oppai absolutely to slam dunk. She's going to end. Presumably he said that because he believed it not just to trying to influence the electorate or say something cool or popular whatever. So but in retrospect it couldn't have been any other way because it wasn't, it couldn't have been any other way, because Trump won and the ability. Even I think back to where my mind was before that election happened, I got fucking help. Like, it could be, it could be, it could go either way. I'm pretty sure that a couple of months. I was I
Kamal has got it in the bag and then afterward me trying to think, how did I think before that thing happened? I went I can't not see what the outcome was. It's impossible for me to not see that Trump won. So all that I do. And I look back at my rationalization prior to that is all of the ways in which I would have been, right? Because I could have seen that the outcome that ended up being was the one that I
thought. Yeah. And then you're just constantly you have the benefit of the historians hindsight when
You begin to see. Oh, it was all ABC, but in the time when you was living through it, it was so it's your living through the fog of War, but it's so easy to forget the fog of War
afterward. Fuck me. Speaking of fog of War, we might as well bring this up. I was with you in
Bozeman Montana this summer when Trump got shot. Oh yeah. And that was a really formative experience because 9/11 I was too young. January 6 was covert toes in the house. So what's really? Fascinating is rapidly developing news story with other people at the same time. So the fact that I was with you and Emily and we went for dinner and you know every five or ten minutes were checking Jack perso bitches fucking Twitter or whatever to find out what news.
Room is being going on and yeah, it is.
even in retrospect, one of the things that isn't fully captured as how chaotic news is, and I think the same thing probably occurs for ourselves that
In retrospect we can look back and say, well, that was the way it. That was the outcome that occurred in any case. Morgan, housel is got this gorgeous story talks about how when his wife first got together before they were married. I think there were 23 24 living in New York, they had no kids, no dependents. He looks back. And he said to his wife, a, that really was living. Wasn't it? That really was the golden years? Yeah, he's so amazing. You know, he used to lie in on a Sunday and we could go for lunch and do all the rest of it. His wife said, you were miserable,
you hated it. You hated
all of those.
Things and Morgan's realization was in hindsight, you're able to see that the fears that captured you at the time were not worth having. But at the time you have no certainty that those aren't Salient. So what you see in retrospect is how you should have felt had you know what was going to
occur the golden years? Seem to never happen in the present. It only seems to exist in hindsight. One of the high agency techniques is what I call viewing the present.
With a historians frame. So both at the personal level and then at the wider kind of societal level as well. So, trying to at the personal level, okay going. I see these old photos of me on Facebook. I might I used to wear that I used to have to post this shit. I'd like I'm slick cringing at myself and then you go. Hold on. You can hear that voice Whispering. It owe me five years later it's going to be cringing what I'm doing right now and then but trying to ask that question now and deal with it probably
speeds up the cycle little bit because each time there's that story of like the Zen master where he goes one year ago. I thought I had I'm sorry after one year of studying Zen, I thought I had all the answers and then I realized I was wrong. Now I have the answers to and then after two years, I realized I was wrong again. But now I have all the answers after four years, I was wrong again. But now I have all the answers and it ends up with him going to, like, all the way to his grave and saying the exact same thing again. Now, I realize I have all the answers and just realizing
And it's constantly wrong. But even then if you zoom out and you go right, okay? That's at the personal level but then at the societal level, the ability to view the present moment. Now with a historians perspective trying to detach from the fog of War. There's a beautiful line in the sovereign individual where he talks about the Roman Empire falling and he said that for example it's an easy question right now which is when did the Roman Empire fall and people can just give the specific date that it felt when did the
Society would recognize that the Roman Empire fell for the most, the majority of people it was not on that day. Some day is, for some people. It was weeks after it was months after some people at the centuries. After that, they fully realize that the Roman Empire had fallen. And he makes this great line, which was if CNN existed as the Roman Empire was falling. They would not be on the news saying, hey guys, the Empire has fallen did be denying it. They would be, by the time, the News catches up, basically if you wait for the news, you will be wrong or you.
Be
late. That's your thing about social networks, right? If you read it on Facebook, you're probably laid. If you read it on Reddit, you're probably early,
yes, good, good, good. Rule
of thumb. That's fire. I love that. What about the patels or favorite Hotel? Yeah, this is
fucking Pete, Chi agency, man. So this side got from the my first million podcast and tells the story of the patels who left, India to go to Uganda and the Patel's are
Essentially Star as these kind of slaves or work people that are very low down in the society and that kind of Indian work ethic just work their way up to the top of Ugandan society and own like huge businesses throughout. Uganda idiom mean comes in and says no, no, no. Africa is for Africans. Not for the patels. So we are going to take everything off you and nationalize this, and give it back.
To the Africans. So not only, we going to take everything from you. We're going to give you 30 days. Notice like my rent contract, like at least, like, 90 days notice, right? So I'm gonna take everything from you and your families, and we're going to kick you out. So the patels, some of them went back to India. But India, but time, I think had a Bangladesh problem, whether it was basically, the be basically argue that the patels have been gone for so long that you're almost no longer India now. So they almost have no home. A lot of them went to the UK. So you have a lot of details in the UK and
a significant amount or a small amount sorry, went to the US. So they arrive gone from high up in Ugandan Society to Immigrant in the US with nothing. And the patels. What they do? They begin to start motels
And they realized that well a the whole family's going to work on this. So we've got free labor so we can kind of undercut people there. We're all vegetarians. So the food's going to be quite cheap to keep us going and we can just live in the motel so that gives us a Competitive Edge there because we don't have any cost for rent. So, like the cost of our business is so low, and we could just start creating Motel business, has some start with a few motels more Patel's arrived, and they constantly helping out their brothers, their
Instead uncle's a second cousin the center advantage, or yet like that and just constantly. Okay. Well if we can get 5x Revenue, sorry, if you get a loan that's 5x revenue on this, we can buy more and we constantly just use a bit of debt by motels nobody can compete with us because we have this. So the patels kicked out of Uganda arrived in America as nothing. Keep compounding compounding compounding and it's an absurd stat. Now of something around 70 to 75% of motels,
In America owned by a Patel.
Which is talk about Peak agency like life happening to them and meanwhile, managed to complete the
70 to 75% of motels in America owned by Patel. So, to the people that haven't driven through America, there are a lot of motels tons when we were doing a road trip. This summer mean, you nodding at most of them and going Patel Patel has a gun. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I didn't know man. I think it's such this, the approach that you have to this, the fact that you've been able to break it down and spend so much time, writing this piece which again,
people can go and read. What are you hoping to achieve by sort of breaking this down? You looking to try and
Create more agency in your life. It seems like you're kind of swimming in enough
already know. I think, honestly, you can as a writer sometimes go. I think this is a really important idea. I needed to get out in the world. It was more, it was psychosis that was like eating my brain. And I just wanted to explore the topic because basically the goal of the essay was the thing I would have liked to read at 13 rather than had written at 30 and just exploring that concept. Because like I said and I sound like a broken heart.
Once you begin to understand that, like everything's essentially just an agency problem,
the agency issue, like the yeah, it's
endless, Endless Possibilities from fixing climate to fixing cancer, it's just all agency.
We're in a country that may be lacking, especially for young people agency. Both of us managed to reach escape velocity to get out of that. What would you what do you wish?
British George knew about agency or how to maybe Embrace a little bit more of it. So
the way I always joke being outside the UK for two to three years and then coming back, I learned more in the two to three years outside of the UK about being British. Then the 25 years being inside it and funny, bit is when we did Fourth of July this year and we're in Nashville were may have taken.
Bit of mushrooms. And I mean, funny story is Chris like, everyone's like taking photos of the fireworks. I'm looking seeing all these
people taking photos of fireworks, photos of fireworks, like
soaking in the moment and there's just Chris on Apple notes, like writing down a quote from Nietzsche or something like that. And I just said spot the artist to ever be around us. Anyway, it was quite a strange feeling being in that environment where it's people going, USA, USA, and I've kind of realized at that moment, a few things. So one
One I've never met an American. That doesn't celebrate the Fourth of July. I've never met a Brit that knows their national day. I'm called George st. George's day and I realized Actually I don't even know the day and I realized no Britt. Even knows the day. I think it's April 23rd.
And I then reflected both in the UK and the way I view the u.k. right now it's like an icon that has an autoimmune condition on paper. It's this like incredible historical figure but he's just kind of eating itself alive and they even think that like people like myself and yourself. But one thing that I noticed that maybe people who have a lot of optimism for the UK, then complain about people moaning and don't realize that. Then starting this, do you can moan so much. So I kind of
Come at things like one of the early thinkers. That's definitely affected how I think has been Rory Sutherland. I've got, I do think the UK has a bit of a marketing pot, I don't think you necessarily need crazy technology or things like that to fix this. So one of the Absurd ideas that I have is essentially looking at st. George's day and comparing it to the Fourth of July and going. Well, what's happening here at? Why is nobody celebrates st. George's day? And why is everybody regardless of their politics celebrating Fourth of July? Again, comes back to clear thinking
I think, fourth of July, what it has is a recent enemy which was unfortunately, I was trying to conquer that beautiful land, which we never should have let go. And there's a clear story. That unites everybody George killed some Dragon. I don't know, I don't know the story, Nobody Knows the story. And now it's just associated with racists and bigots. So my idea would be fix the UK's advertising scrap st. George's.
And announce don't cook today. First off, good meme. Sounds good, good, branding. And essentially, I think it's a better story than Fourth of July, because no matter where you stand in terms of your politics, in terms of creating an enemy, you could have every problem with the British Empire and the UK and Britain in the state of
it done, co-workers and extraction. Not a an act of War.
Yes. And against the Apex, awful, human being of Adolf Hitler.
Who stand? It's still fresh. In our minds is still recent enough to some extent and you could argue if Dunkirk didn't happen, does Western Civilization even exist. Now, certainly the UK, we probably have an exact same conversation but sprechen sie, Deutsche welle. Yeah. And both of us aren't August landmaster and we're just going along with it like low agency little little bitches. So, first off, you don't cup day and I'd argue make it quite unique. So first off we have to make it British so from
Midnight to 12 p.m. on the day, everyone can mode. Everyone can complain. It's not to cringe like the American style, you would like to moan about the mistakes. The UK has made in its past currently making and
he's gonna see you've taken something from April Fool's Day.
Yes, have, it'll have a until 12 p.m. you can like criticize the country, drink tea, blah, blah, come twelve, PM R allowed very rarely as breads to remember, just how fucking awesome historically. This country's been so Dunkirk being obviously a key. A key. Pivotal moment there.
Just imagine this in the u.k. right. You've got William Shakespeare.
Alan Turing.
John Lennon the Gallagher brothers, right? You've got Pankhurst and the suffragette whichever way you want to go, like we've got it all the tourist demand I think you could bring in for Dunkirk day, even from the Harry Potter. I mean, even Creek of Watson and Crick who created DNA of discovered DNA. One of them was pretty sure it was done in Cambridge University, I'm sorry America, but you can't compete with that like the historic the history that this country has and the ability to turn that into a
Day that maybe unites people at least for an afternoon and potentially brings in billions of tourist Revenue by just a little bit of marketing. I think is completely untapped potential.
I love it, George Mack, ladies and gentlemen where should people go? They want to read this essay of yours, which they should. And they also want to keep up to date with everything else. You're doing where should they go? You want to go to
High agency.com and the whole essay, that
means
agency.com. That me and Chris spoke about today will be on there. You can read
The whole thing and anything else. Just George Mack on Twitter. My DMs are open, dude, I love you. Thank you. Love you too, man, thank you.
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