Periscope - May 2020

Hey everybody, how's the audio? It's not going to be great because, well, I'm not in a good recording location, but it is what it is. All right, it'll give people a chance to come in. You can't hear me; you gotta be able to hear me. If you can't hear me, this ain't gonna work.

All right, most of you can hear me. I'm gonna speak softly; carry a big stick and all that. I'm good, circumstances considered. Hope you are all well. I don't really have an agenda; this is just for those of us who are bored on Saturday evening. I've actually been doing a couple of these, but I've been doing them sneakily. I have not been posting them to Twitter, and then I've been deleting the Periscope afterwards. So this one's a little less sneaky; I did post it to Twitter, so we'll just let people keep coming in for a bit. Good evening!

All right, should we wait till we hit 2 thousand? Boy, I'm a little uh, a little disappointed. Scott Adams tends to have so many more people; maybe I'm just not as popular. Not sipping tea. Someone guessed it last time; hold on with the questions, please. We're not going to start just yet; we're going to let the numbers build up. I'd like to get to 2 thousand.

You thought I was a woman? That's first. Yeah, it's either a float tank or a bathtub, or a hot tub, or a sink, or a bucket. All right, we're at the magic 2k; we're gonna get started. Let's just keep it casual and fun, you know? Don't need to get all super serious about every little detail.

So all right, let's get going. Now I'll take a few questions or topics or whatever you guys want to talk about. I have no agenda; I don't care about anything. So I'm all good. Bad times would be a lot more people early. Yeah, who cares about people? Whatever! I see 2K; it's good enough for me. I need a coffee or something like that.

You know, Scott does that as a hypnosis ritual. He kind of Pavlovian trains you, said every time you drink coffee, you think about Scott Adams. It's pretty clever, and even though you know what he's doing, it still works. It's great branding because everyone drinks coffee every day, so now they drink coffee with Scott every day, and every time they think about Scott, they think about coffee. And of course, it's a drug that's got caffeine and sometimes sugar in it. So he's also basically tying into other people's drug addiction. I will say Scott simultaneously sip is one of the most clever mass hypnosis techniques I've ever seen.

Words of wisdom? I don't know, desire, suffering, there's your wisdom. Barry is fine; Barry is doing quite well. I think we're locking down for too long; if anything, Barry's done among the best in the country just because it locked down a little early, but I don't think that was it. I think the main reasons it did well are because the entire tech community was quite paranoid and can very easily work from home and started doing that even weeks before the official lockdown.

What do you think of Buffett's recent annual meeting? I haven't seen it. You know, I would say it's a good question. I didn't pay attention to it. The whole point of being invested beyond Warren Buffett is you don't have to pay attention to what they do day to day, or month to month, or year to year, although I wouldn't be surprised if he was pessimistic. I mean, I love those guys; they're great, but they are getting old, and the world is evolving. I mean, look at how late they were into Apple.

I just read Jed McKenna, and my mind is blown. Yes, Jed McKenna is a mind blower. When do I think the world goes back to normal? Uh, normal-ish, when we have a vaccine or immunity. And you know, at the current rate, we'll probably herd immunity end of the year or early next year after the current winter. But it never quite goes back to fully normal. Maybe we're in a cold war with China; globalization supply chains collapse, and a lot of essential manufacturing gets pulled back in. You know, we have very different views on borders and immigration and universal health care and gun ownership after this.

So I expect it will be a very different world after this. AP just reported shots fired across the DMZ. Thought that would suck. You talking about the North Korean-South Korean DMZ? That'd be, that would not be good news. That is one of the worst borders in the world.

Sorry, I made some background noise; kids are going to bed. What does it feel like to be a billionaire? I wouldn't know; I'm not one. I'm not even close. I don't know why people think that. I was an early investor out of small funding to some hit companies, and I've made good money here and there. I don't have to work anymore. I'm probably neither of my kids, but I'm not a billionaire, nor do I want to be.

You know, there's a point at which you get so much money that other people start insisting they know what to do with it, and you know, they start asking for things or demanding things, and you feel obligated to do things. And I'm at the perfect level; I'm at the level where I don't have to worry but nobody else can really bother me because I can't really materially change lives for huge numbers of other people just using money.

Too many messages. Why would Elon tweet about his stock high? I think he's just being honest; he doesn't want the stock too low or too high because either one causes problems. If people buy too high, then they put too much pressure on him; it's unrealistic. And if they buy, you know, it crashes down low, then his current shareholders are not happy. I think Elon is fantastic. I think he has guts, and I think he's also just incredibly capable. He's just doing a lot for the world.

Elon Musk is the one person who makes me question if I'm, you know, doing anything interesting or if I'm doing things interesting enough with my life. Name a good McKenna book. Uh, Judd McKenna, you obviously start with the same one; it's Spiritual Enlightenment Is the Damnedest Thing, I believe is this first book of the first trilogy. Really, really worthwhile. Peter Zihan? Yeah, really interesting guy. I haven't read the books; I read his blog post about geopolitical shifts. I think most of it makes sense; maybe he overemphasized the Navy a little bit because I think in this day and age of drones and bioweapons, navies just aren't that great anymore.

But what have you learned about yourself in the past year? I've actually become much more of an introvert in the last year, or not become; I've embraced my inner introvertedness. So I'm much less social. I even tweet less, believe it or not. I talk less; I hang out with people less; I see people less. Obviously, COVID accelerated that, but I've just become very comfortable just being, you know, at home. I like it; like, even if there was no pandemic, I'm still...

Let's put it this way: the pandemic really didn't change my life much at all. There were obviously changes around the edges and some paranoia and some having to, you know, control who you see, but my daily routine is still very similar.

One must rant about selling off possessions. What is he up to? Well, Elon's a multi-billionaire. I mean, he's always got unlimited cash in the bank, credit cards, you know, and like people following him around, briefcases full of cash and helicopters and bodyguards and stuff. So it's not like he ever has to worry about getting anything, so he doesn't need possessions. Look, I didn't even own a house until quite recently, so you could almost put me in the same camp. Certainly, if I were like him and, you know, I was kind of had a girlfriend but not like a family that I was living with, then I would probably choose the same lifestyle. But I'm a very happily married family man with a very good life.

Any real threat to this food supply? No, that's just overblown; that's just the media clickbaiting. Oh, all of the comments just vanished. One moment, people; let me figure out how to get the comments going again here. Come on, Periscope, make comments go... Hmm, I can't see any of your comments; that is not good. I'm going to fumble around with this hoping to see your comments, and let's see... No, Periscope, this is not, this is not the best-designed app in the world. I'm going to try something once again. Test! Okay, there we go. Because I said something, now the comments are back, so here they go.

Do I consider myself to be cool? I mean, cool is not a judgment you can make about yourself; other people think you're cool. Cool is, to me, what cool is, is someone who almost breaks the rules or breaks the rules and gets away with it, right? That's the definition of cool.

So what I've been doing during the quarantine? Too much Twitter, and that was bad. A lot more work than I thought I would be doing, working quite a lot because a lot of my companies have been going through various situations, obviously. So too much work but I’ve consistently been doing meditation and exercise and spending time with kids and reading.

Best book by Krishnamurti? I started with Think on These Things. I think it's an interesting read; it can be very confusing; none of his stuff is simple. Unfortunately, I think The Book of Life is probably his simplest read, but even that one, it doesn't really grab people.

In the vault 2024? No, I'd have to be insane to run for office. They just shred you; they destroy your life. I've read any fiction lately? I try, but I find most fiction boring. I'll do sci-fi; I was rereading some Borges recently. I was rereading Ted Chiang’s second book.

Favorite book is hard because a book is a conversation between the reader and the author. Giving somebody a book recommendation; you really need to know where they're in their life and what they value and what they're ready for. The same book, 10 years earlier, 10 years later might make no sense or be life-changing, so book recommendations are hard. I don't like to give book recommendations because they're really just a snapshot of where I am in my life, and I don't know if it's necessarily appropriate for you.

That said, people drag them out every once in a while. Also keep in mind that the absolute best books, the books you want to be reading, and the blogs you want to be reading are socially and politically so incorrect that no one will ever recommend them to you. You have to hunt them down in the dark corners of the internet without falling into conspiracy theories because those are a thing too; you can land in, you know, Pizzagate and satanic rituals and all that conspiracy theory, so you should be very careful when you go researching on your own.

But what I look for is I look for people who are scientific and logical but yet we're talking about topics that are normally not talked about, and they're crossing lines of expertise. And they tend to be these broad natural philosophers, and they'll talk about anything, and you can find them on the web. That's been hiding these days. There used to be a lot more out there, or they used to be much more visible before the web went so mainstream.

What I said, someone picks on me for being political? Yeah, it's just a tribe member, and they're infected with a virus they want to infect me with; that's all it is. They're poor thinkers, so I don't have to say anything to them because I don't value their opinion. And if I don't value their opinion, why do I have to say anything to them? They're just like barking dogs.

Who do I admire? I admire Elon Musk. I think he's admirable. Admirable is a big word. I don't know if I admire... Everyone's flawed, is the problem. Nobody's perfect; there's nobody I've met who I would rather be. So in that sense, I don't look up to anyone. There's no one for me that I'm just like, "Oh, I wish I was that person." I don't think I've had that feeling in the decade ever since I conquered envy; then admiration goes away.

And conquering sounds like a big word; it's not even conquer. I just realized it. I was an envious fool for 35 years, making myself unhappy. But then I just realized that envy doesn't make sense because you'd have to be willing to swap yourself with that entire person's life. You can't just pick and choose the imagined part that you're hallucinating or seeing. You have to realize that what they have and what they are only makes no sense in the context of their entire life.

So when you're envious of someone's money, you say, "Well, would I have his life? Would I have an internal attitude? What would I have... emotions? What were his parents? Would I take his, you know, limp? Would I take his physical body?" If you're willing to do the full-scale swap, then yeah, maybe you have a reason to be envious. But if you don't, then you're just imagining things. You're trying to swap yourself with a false image that doesn't actually exist anywhere in the world.

When I realized that, I realized I'm exactly where I want to be. I'm the best person that I want that I could possibly want to be. I should teach philosophy or religion? Religion is personal; philosophy is personal. I don't think it can be taught. All you can do is inspire people. The problem with teaching philosophy is suppose that I knew what a wiser person than me was, and I know people who are wiser than me, so that's easy for me to imagine. And if I'm your philosophical teacher, then I have to teach you not only what I know, but I teach you what they know because they're wiser. So they know more, but if I'm not as wise as them, that means I don't truly understand that material either. I have to pretend like that material doesn't exist, or I have to just not teach it, or I teach a fake version of it, or I have to attack it.

So it creates all these strangenesses. Really, the single wisest person in the world is the only one who has the right to teach anyone. And if you were that wise, you would realize that everything is fine as it is, and you wouldn't say anything. The wiser you are, the less you speak. If I had enough wisdom, I would just check out completely; I would disappear from public life. Nobody would ever hear from me again. That would be true wisdom. And I know I'm not that wise because I don't do that; I play the silly fame game with all of you. Because of that, I'm not qualified to teach anybody.

How to argue against nihilism? Why argue against it? Examine it to see if it's true. The problem is you're basically saying I have to speak against nihilism, but I can't think of a good argument for that. And why are you against it? Maybe nihilism is true. Follow that to its fully logical conclusion. If you really want to see the truth, then you just go looking for the truth. You don't go over the preconceived notion trying to justify anything.

How do you overcome irrational desire? The answer is right in the question. You overcome irrational desire by seeing that it's irrational. What is the reason for desire? So you can feel better about yourself? Then ask yourself, when I desire, do I feel better about myself or do I feel worse about myself? To ask the questions to answer it.

I don't teach to teach anybody; I don't want to teach; I'm just talking. If you think I'm teaching, then you're hallucinating. Do I believe in living in the now? Yeah, but you can't force your way there. The now is just where you end up when there's nowhere else for your mind to run to. As long as your mind is running to places, the now will just be an idea, and you can pass through it once in a while, but you're either obsessing about the future, or you're reminiscing over the past. And once you get through both of those, then you just spend more time in the now.

Do I see a virus relapse and economies open? Yeah, I do because we didn't squash it to zero, but I don't think we have the ability to. So I think we're going to end up like Sweden, whether we like it or not, where people are voluntarily staying inside and out of trouble, but it's not a government-enforced lockdown.

Irrational belief do I hold? One good question is if I knew they were irrational, why would I hold them? Because they give me something more than I care about reasons. I will admit to having political views, and I'll bet some of them are irrational because politics just goes in tribal bundles. But I don't fall neatly into political camps anyway, so maybe they're not all irrational.

Advice on coping with the loss of a loved one? I'm terribly sorry. It's not a words thing; words aren't going to get you through it. If it helps, the most interesting things I've heard on the topic are, one, is you know, just realize that your grief is a, you know, it's an acknowledgment of your love for them. So it's okay to grieve; just realize you're sending them love; that's what it is. It's just all the love you have for that person is too much for you to hold inside because that person is now gone. That love has to come out, and the more love you have, the more you're gonna grieve, and it's just gonna come right back out. So it's fine to grieve.

On the other hand, I would say it may also help you to really think about your own death—not in an academic way, not in the passing way, but meditate under a contemplate or sit for an hour and just… or go for a walk and think about what's going to happen when you die. I think that may help put things in perspective. So those are two things I've heard or thought about that might be helpful.

Do you have any tips on meditation for beginners? I have a thread up on medications; you have to search around a bit for it, but I've posted it many times. It's very simple, very, very simple. This is the problem now, these days, even when you say the word meditation, everyone picks a tribe, like vipassana versus TM versus breath versus 10 minutes a day versus 30 minutes a day versus an hour a day, and now they're meditation coaches, the meditation school, the meditation instructors. It just turns into this giant show-off contest; you can't even talk about it anymore. I don't even like to refer to what I do as meditation; I need to come up with a new word for it, but it's not meditation; it's a thing that works incredibly well for me, and I've told people about it quite a bit, and now a lot of people are doing it and posting up tweet storms about it. It seems to be getting some traction, and if it's making their lives better, great, but I can't call it meditation. It's just, you sit there for an hour a day, surrender to whatever happens, no resistance. Threaten yourself one hour a day, eyes closed, dark place, no app—60 days in a row; that's it! That's literally it. You could sit on a chair; you could sit on the moon; you could sit in your basement; you could sit in the back of a car; it didn't matter.

Am I investing in the stocks right now? I always run fully invested for better or for worse. That hurts me in crashes, helps me in booms, but overall, I'm a bull on humanity, and I'm a bearer of my ability to figure out in the short term when to buy and when to sell. So I just always run fully invested; I keep very little cash. Cash is the thing that the Federal Reserve is setting on fire, you know, to try and force you to go out and do things; they'll destroy it eventually. So why be in cash when that happens? There will come a day when cash will go to near zero.

Long Twitter. I'm long Twitter, the product there, but their censorship is actually getting really annoying; it's not going to hurt their stock, but it really makes me want to look for an alternative, and I'm sure other people are thinking the same way. I just don't want to build invest a lot into a platform that can just disappear or make me disappear, I should say.

Thoughts on precious metals? They don't do anything; they just sit there. They're not a great asset class; they don't earn anything. They're only good for when cash goes to zero, and in those cases, you can also use other things like crypto or real estate to cover that eventuality.

So I thought some Bitcoin in the current Fed environment? Well, the Fed is printing a lot of money, which normally would be amazing for Bitcoin, but right now the problem is that we're going to a heavily deflationary environment; that's why oil is sold low. So the Fed is trying to compensate for missing demand in the economy. The question is if they'll overshoot or not—probably not. We could see CPI, consumer price inflation for scarce goods like toilet paper and cleaning supplies and those kinds of things, and 95 masks we've obviously seen huge inflation there, but longer term, no, I don't see the inflation because I think we're heading to a deflationary environment. We might get inflation along into the curve eventually as we try to pay back all this debt, but within the next two years, it's very deflationary. After that, it could be inflationary.

Which world leader can guide us to peace? No world leader can guide their populist to peace as long as their populist itself is warlike. So the only way to be peaceful—to have a peaceful country or peaceful world—is to be peaceful yourself. And don't forget that the urge to change the world is a fundamentally violent urge because you would change the world and improve it as you think, even over the objections of others. If you have to pass a law they don't agree with, it's the same as threatening to throw them in jail.

So unfortunately, until we're all peaceful, the world won't be peaceful. And we're not peaceful. If everyone is short cash, does that mean it's priced in? I don't even buy short cash. Short cash should be long assets other than cash, and it doesn't make sense to be in cash except for liquidity needs. Cash is purely there to be a means of exchange; otherwise, there's no sense in holding cash. If you could perfectly allocate money, let's assume you had access to every kind of asset, and if you were a perfectly omniscient being and you were asked to allocate a portfolio, you would literally only put in cash what you needed for the next week or the next few days because everything else you would have set up in assets that would be earning but would be hedged against each other and account for all possible situations and also just be automatically liquidated as you needed them.

So even if one thing went up, another thing would go down, and everything would balance out, but you'd be earning assets to be catching the maximum compounding available. When you go to cash, what that reflects is uncertainty. That reflects lack of knowledge. When we run to cash, it's because we don't know what's going to happen next. We're scared and want to keep our optionality open; we want to be able to go in either direction. But the better hedge portfolio you have, the better constructed portfolio you have, the less you need to panic.

I didn't have that great constructed portfolio going in; I took some losses, but I reconfigured it, so now my portfolio is really optimized for peace of mind. I'm very market neutral that way; I'm just trying to capture kind of the fair risk-adjusted gain while remaining roughly market neutral. I just want to capture the productivity growth of American business and the American populace.

How do we make sure we speak clearly and simply? Well, don't try and show off to people. I would say if you're speaking for other people, then you're more likely to embellish. If you're speaking for your own understanding, then you're more likely to speak it not only truly but in a closer to honest way. If you want to realize the truth for yourself, just speak to yourself; don't speak for others.

Most difficult aspect of being a father? You just care about them so much, so you worry about them. And I don't want to worry about someone else; I don't want to worry about more people. But there's nothing bad about it; it's great.

How do you live a life without regret? Well, you should never have regret anyway. I mean, you didn't plan any of this; you didn't pick this life, this body, what happened to you. You didn't even know why you're here, who you are, how you got here, what the point is. Since none of that is true, how can you possibly have any regret? Suppose I was born a 17th century and I was born in Japan, and the whole time I fantasized about being a 13th century Persian poet. Well, of course, I can't get that life; I didn't pick it. That sounds like an extreme analogy, but that applies to everything. You didn't pick any of this; how can you regret over something that implies that you had some choice in the first place, that you have some understanding of what it is that you were supposed to do, that there was a right answer? There's no right answer.

The only right answer is utilitarian—it's you figure out what you want out of your life. You're playing that game with yourself; there's no objective "you should have done x." It just boils down to self-awareness. If you know yourself well, then you know that you're doing whatever you want at all times. That's exactly what you're doing, exactly what you want at all times, so there's no need to have any regret whatsoever.

Regret over how you act in a situation, messing up a date with someone you like? No, there's no regret; there's only learning. You know you messed up in a certain way, but there's so many ways to see that. Are you sure you messed up because you were just being you? And if you being you wasn't good enough, then you're saying, "I should have faked who I was." But if you faked who you were, you could end up in a bad relationship where that person is dating some illusion of you, which you can't hold together all the time. When that illusion falls apart, you start fighting, so all you would have done is block yourself from what you were meant to do.

I wouldn't have any regrets over that situation; plus, that's such a minor inconsequential thing in your life. If you were regretting, "Oh, I ran over my kid by accident," or "I made that really stupid investment; I lost all my money," or "I smoked too much and I caught cancer," like okay, those are things that we can talk about; those are difficult. But messed up a date? Who the hell cares, dude? Life is long; a lot of optionality out there; keep moving.

Nondualism? Uh, it's great, but you have to actually feel it, not just read it or think about it. If you don't feel it, then it's not real. If it's not real, then how much is it going to change your life anyway? People who speak in overly complicated ways, they use overly complex language; they're just scared; they're just trying to show off. They're trying to establish authority; they're trying to say, "Look, I deserve to be up here." The reason they're doing that is because they care what you all think about them. If you don't give enough of a damn what anybody thinks, then you can speak very simply because you're not there to impress them.

My goal is to make you laugh. If I made you laugh, if I told you the truth, then I consider myself a pretty good comedian. Pretty good comedy, like George Carlin; he was great that way.

Coding boot camp or CS degree? Oh, a CS degree is sure. Is true artificial intelligence even possible? Yes, I don't see why not. Everything that is not forbidden by the laws of physics is possible; it's just a lack of knowledge that prevents us from putting together the machinery and the energy to do that. AI is possible now.

There are elements within AI that may not be possible, like this whole concept of an AI that self-improves at ridiculous speeds. Yeah, it could improve faster than us, but it would have to hack its physical environment also, which would limit its own improvement. Even the initial data set that is scarfed up from us, it would have to go get more data, which means we have to do scientific experiments. So I do think there are limits on how fast an AI can grow itself.

Maybe we're evolving towards that, but I don't think we have any idea how to build an AI. I think it's a qualitative, not a quantitative problem. Throwing more computers at it isn't going to solve it; emulating the neuron doesn't work because the cells that it's composed of are far more complicated to do too much computation to emulate in software for the next 50 years. So the AI revolution is unfortunately overhyped.

How quickly do I change my opinions? I'll change them in the same conversation sometimes just for fun; sometimes because it's easy to see how you can hold either side, and it makes sense. Thoughts on Osho? Osho is really underrated; he keeps getting a bad rap. Country documentary instead of the latest hit job on Osho. But you know what, if a lot of people are saying don't read somebody, but yet they somehow seem to be popular, go read them because when the polite path of society or the polite majority does not want you to read something, you know that this person has said something true that has angered them in some way.

I absolutely recommend reading Osho; I don't recommend joining an ashram or following a guru or giving them all your money, but just read what he wrote and see if it makes sense to you. Bush is brilliant; he is absolutely brilliant, even if all he was doing was running a cult religion. You should read him just for that. He should be like, "Wow, why do they give him all this? What did he say?" It does make you think; you want to know.

So your curiosity should drive you toward it, and if it doesn't, it doesn't; but I feel like Osho had a lot to learn. I am a much better human being for having read Osho, and I know that's not a popular point of view, but you haven't read Osho, so until you have, don't talk.

Thoughts on financial astrology? Astrology is nonsense, so anything plus astrology is still nonsense. Sorry if I burst your bubble on that one, but save you some time, maybe even save you some money. Why isn't there a virtuous counterpart to the brothers? They actually do things that would be considered virtuous, that they're coming from the other side, but they don't get any credit for it, so I don't think people are even-handed about it. It's just like Soros can't do right by the right; the Koch brothers can't do right by the left. Once they've been assigned into tribes and into sides, everything that is evil...

So there's no fairness; that's your political mind spinning. What helped you become so articulate? I read a lot; I didn't have friends growing up; I just read. So reading builds your vocabulary. Also, the things that I talk about, I know them pretty well; I've thought them through repeatedly or read a lot on them. And when I read, I don't just read and memorize; I just read and try to figure out what they're saying and how it works because I'm genuinely curious, because I'm only reading what I want to read. I'm never reading something because it was recommended or because someone forced me to or because I think I should because it'll make me somehow a better or smarter whatever person. I just read because I enjoy it. So, because I enjoy it, if I'm reading, any concept that I understand, I'm going to work through, and I'm going to figure it out. So that helps me become articulate.

How do I prep for my BCG interview? BCG is Boston Consulting Group; it's a management consulting firm, like McKinsey. Do yourself a favor and find something else to do with your life and go to BCG. I mean, nice people, but you're not doing anything useful with your life; it’s a stepping stone. I suppose, and if your heart's set on it, don’t prep; you can't change who you are. Just be who you are; just be honest. If you're not meant to be there, then don't go there. If you're not ready, if you haven't become the kind of person that's ready, then there's no cramming because they're trying to actually figure out who you are, and you're trying to figure out who you are as compatible with who they are.

How do you think someone who has everything? Well, I mean, by showing up and being kind and smart and interesting to talk to. Those are all good things. The only thing that bothers me these days? I may stop tweeting—okay, that's not true. I may stop interacting on Twitter. I just realized that the one remaining source of unhappiness in my life is just dealing with all the nonsense on Twitter, where if I put out any tweet, then I just end up getting attacked by all these idiots who are strawmanning or nitpicking or hating. I can't engage anymore on Twitter; it's impossible to have conversations without just running into too many idiots.

I may just go to broadcast-only mode on Twitter, where I just put a tweet out, and then I just don't respond to anything; I don't read the replies; I don't respond to anything. Yeah, why does it affect me? I mean, it affects me; I'm still human; I'm not enlightened. It affects me a lot less than it used to, but at this point, if I put out a tweet, on average, it gets to 300 replies. This is a lot to go through per tweet, and sometimes I put two, three, four, five tweets in a row; I just can't scroll through all of them and read them intelligently and respond to the ones that need to be responded to.

I started blocking a lot more people, but I can't keep up even then. Twitter with mods would be amazing. Yeah, I can get somebody to mod my Twitter; just don't read comments. The problem with not reading comments is I'm on Twitter for the conversations; that, to me, is more than half the value. It's because I met some really cool people through Twitter; I learn things; I have good conversations. I could ignore them, but then I lose out on the ability to have good conversations, and it's not fair. Ninety percent of my followers are genuinely interesting and interested in what I'm saying. The 10 percent or the 20 percent who are just ruin it.

This came from someone asking what they could do for me. Here's what you can do for me: if someone on Twitter is being a complete troll or a hater, call him out on it because that helps people behave. Because these days, I can't even find all of them to block. So if someone calls them out, like I'll block them, and then the people that I hate the most are the ones who start going into like, "Well if you are blocking people, you're just going to end up with an echo chamber. I'm losing so much respect for you, Neva, because you're blocking people." Like dude, you have like 50 followers; when you have, you know, 800 thousand followers, then we can talk. Right? Then you understand what I'm in.

But the large accounts don't engage with people at all, and that's really sad. And I don't want to be that large account that doesn't engage with anybody who's in my mentions; it's too elitist for me, and it ruins part of the draw of Twitter, if not most of it. So I want to be able to keep engaging, but to do that, I have to be very aggressive about blocking, and then lots of people get triggered.

I may have to move to a private thing like Discord, but Discord's not really designed for this. I just jump in when I feel like it. I don't want to make a commitment to always be active on something. If I want to disappear for a month, I disappear for a month. See, it's interesting; somebody asked earlier about Elon's thing about dropping all his possessions. Of course, he's got a gigantic bank account, so it doesn't really mean anything, but I would say I have dropped most of my mental possessions so I don't have to show up for work, I don't have to show up for a meeting, I don't have to do anything.

I work very hard on lots of things, but my schedule is almost completely optional. If COVID wasn't going around, I could be in Thailand tomorrow for a month by myself or with my family if I wanted to be. I could be doing anything I wanted, anywhere in the world; my world is very free. What I've done is I've dropped a lot of these social bonds and obligations and pressures that require you to be in a specific place at a specific time. That took a lot of work, don't get me wrong; it's not something I recommend for everybody. But if you're there and you can do it, do it. It would have been easy to do when I was younger, but you know, it's still doable when you're older; it just takes more money and more willingness to break social ties.

Because of that, I'm already very free, and I don't want to commit to anything. Oh, I create a Discord server, and if I don't want to show up for a year on a Discord server, then I won't show up for a year on a Discord server. I don't want that obligation; I don't want any obligations; no partners, no employees, no bosses. Just be completely and utterly free.

How do I get there, completely free? Well, I'll be honest with you. One, you need to make enough money that you don't think about it. So if you keep your expenses low, that amount of money is lower. So keep your expenses low, make as much money as you can, read my how to get rich tweet storm, but I'm happy to talk through specifics if something's confusing. Get rich, keep your expenses low, and then don't get socially... I'll just make it incredibly clear to your spouse that that's the lifestyle you want to live, and they have to be okay with you doing that.

It's mainly about just disappointing people. If you're not willing to lose a bunch of friends and connections with people who think you love them more than you actually do, people who want you tied into their lives and their obligations, if you're not willing to break social relationships, you will never be free. And in fact, you can take that to the extreme. You have to be willing to break every social relationship if you want to be close to completely free.

Am I married? Yes. Do I ever get lonely? No. I have me! And sorry, that may have come across as too glib, but if I'm bored, all I have to do is open a good book, or if I'm lonely or sit down and meditate. I don't get lonely; lonely doesn't even exist for me—bored, yes, I get bored a lot, so that's why I'm here! I'm on Periscope because I'm bored, honestly. But I don't get lonely. I... Why? Why is that? It's a really good question! What happened?

Well, I've always been an introvert, and I love books. But there was definitely a time when I would get lonely. I think since I really got into yoga and meditation, I have not been lonely. I haven't had that feeling. If you're good at meditating and doing yoga, then your most enjoyable part of the day is the part spent by itself. Going out and socializing is a net negative; it has a cost; it's worse than just sitting at home doing nothing. When sitting at home doing nothing becomes the best thing, then you have complete freedom of it.

What do you think of me moving from Alaska to Colorado? Somebody asks. Well, you picked a warmer place, but perhaps you could have gone all the way. I don't know; I've never been to either Alaska or Colorado; I'm afraid I can't give you anything useful on that.

Is it a good goal to be completely free? Well, if you want to be free, you've got to get over this concept of things being good goals or bad goals. You just do what you want. So if it makes you feel good to be completely free, then sure. Freedom is a great state to be, and if it doesn't make you feel good, then don't do it. But there's no reason to do it other than you want it; it's like anything else.

What do you do to self-check your self-honesty? I try to always be honest with myself. Honesty—somebody asked earlier what my number one value was—it is honesty. I just can't be 100 percent honest all the time in all situations, but damn it, I try. And I don't like situations in which I can't be honest, and I tend to leave those situations because I want to... I get a kick out of understanding things. I like to understand everything, and I don't ever want to be in a position where I'm not able to understand something because I have to tell a lie. And when you tell a lie, then you have two choices: either you believe the lie, in which case it ruins your ability to understand the thing; or you don't believe the lie, in which case you have cognitive dissonance because you're saying one thing and you're thinking another.

So it's taking you out of peace of mind, so I never want to lie. How to be successful and be completely anonymous? There's many ways to ask: Satoshi Nakamoto. Do I ever lie? Probably, but not deliberately. Like it could have happened where I was just running along saying something and then a lie came out of my mouth because that was a part of me that was still broken; you know, not fully examined. So I went into some corner of my psyche where I had not yet accepted or acknowledged or am being secret about something; therefore, I was forced to lie about it. But usually, rather than lie these days, I will just dodge a question.

So there are questions that you guys keep asking all the time where I don't want to lie, but it's not acceptable for me to say the truth, so I don't answer them. So that's what I do. It's also part of the reason why I've stopped appearing on other people's podcasts because I never want to lie, but there are questions that get asked in these podcasts that are basically there for you to signal that you're part of the tribe. You're supposed to only give one answer, and if I don't believe in the politically correct accepted answer, I don't want to say anything, so I just... You know, it's one reason not to go to other people's podcasts.

There are many; another one is like, it's their podcast; they should be adding the value. What, we have to go build their listeners for their ad dollars for their podcasts? They do it; I'm getting over these interview podcasts also; I run out of stuff to say; I'm just repeating myself. What's the point? I'm also not a performing monkey, nor do I want to be. Do I do Joe Rogan again? I don't think so; I don't believe in sequels; I think sequels are low quality. I'll be the next version of myself.

What are the top three companies you admire? I don't really admire companies; companies are profit-making enterprises; they get paid with money; it's fine. So companies are successful for the shareholders and, you know, aren't doing nasty things, that are just illegal, it's fine with me. They're doing well, and they get paid. Like, I loved Apple; I've loved Apple since the late 1980s. I love their computers and their products, and building Apple loyalists, so I'm glad they succeeded.

So as a company, I admired them for the product that they put out that their products were amazing. Thank God for the computer industry for being sentenced to a Microsoft Windows hell, but I admire is a big word. I admire would imply that I look up to somebody, which means I envy somebody, and I just don't. I know it doesn't really apply to companies, but I admire certain people—again, not in an envious way; it's just like there's a part. It's like you would admire a nice flower, right? So I think if you want to admire somebody, admire them like you would admire a flower. You don't want to be the flower, but you can appreciate that there is something about the flower that is expressing itself in a unique way—that there's a certain beauty and aesthetic to it.

I think the people who are really admirable are essentially artists in their domain—like Richard Feynman was an artist in physics; he was an iconoclast; he thought for himself; he came up with brilliant insights; he had a big philosophy of how to stitch them all together. People like that are admirable; the natural philosophers, to me, are the people that I really like. I say that is the fullest expression of a human being; these are people who are, you know, sort of single-person almost industries as scientists where they just create whole new branches of science. They don't limit themselves to one narrow thing or vertical, and they're also very broad philosophical thinkers.

Reincarnation? There's no evidence for reincarnation; that doesn't—it can't be proven, so I don't know. It's in the unknowable category; there are many other things you could believe that are just as likely. So unfortunately, even though it'd be nice to think there's reincarnation, it would be pleasant; it would take some of the pressure off this life. I think it's a lie or it's an unknowable thing, and so if you believe in it, it's a trap because it gives you an out on this life. Believing in reincarnation lets you say, "Hey, I don't need to get everything in this life because I'll just be reborn."

It also creates a second trap when all of a sudden you have to be a so-called good person. You can get reincarnated in the body that you want; it's anti-freedom, so no, I would not go into that reincarnation hole.

Is life all suffering, or if it's good, we made it painful? Life is just life. I think, I think the mistake is not interpreting negativity negatively; the mistake is trying to interpret it at all. What is the purpose of life?

I can give you a couple of different ones, and none of these are going to satisfy you because the important thing is to ask the question and to answer for yourself and not to depend on anybody else's answer because it won't satisfy you. I think there are multiple answers you give that are valid that you could get to. One is you can create your own purpose that is deep meaning for you to choose your own adventure, but you have to have high conviction on that purpose; you can't waver too much; otherwise, you may have regrets later. So figure out who you are and what you want to do and go live just to that purpose and make it authentic to yourself; it will probably be unique to you.

Second, just truth-wise, there is no purpose. The fact that you can make your own tells you that if there was a single overarching purpose, we would all be automatons and slaves—all of us competing in the zero-sum game just trying to get to that one purpose. So if there is a purpose, it's somewhere along the lines of live the most authentic version of your life, which the same answer is number one.

The third is the purpose is to just be part of this amazing machine called the universe. I mean, you have a part in it; you're a very small part of it, but you're a part of it. So, you know, you just play your part in the universe, and so then the purpose of your life is just what you end up doing. Also, liberty—the purpose of life is no purpose; it's literally blank. But one thing that seems very interesting is that the people who seem to be the wisest seem to have seen through the game, so to speak. They no longer seem... They seem to be, you know, as couples say, equanimous. They're very calm; they're very relaxed about life, and so they seem to have figured something out.

And whether what they really imbibed is that there's no purpose or that the purpose is to find the truth, and that truth might be that there is no purpose, but imbibe to such a deep level that it alters who you are and is visible in not just visible but is congruent with every interaction that you have, every action that you take. When even the thought of purposelessness does not arise in your mind, or maybe even when no thought arrives in your mind, then you have found your purpose. So for me, my purpose is understanding things. I like to put things together; that is my biggest purpose. I just like to understand, and it's very selfish, and it's fine; it's what I like to do.

I like to figure things out for myself. I want to figure everything out for myself, and if I don't figure it out for myself, then I don't have fun, and it's not valid, and I can't live my life as part of something I don't understand. And I just don't like to not understand, so that is the purpose of my life. The purpose of your life will be up to you.

Okay, I answered that question; now I'll take new questions. I have not been looking at the screen for a while. Thank you, our bigly. What causes some people to suffer and others not? Well, that's a big one; that's an existential question. I could answer that; I could try to answer that; I don't actually have a great answer to that. I don't fully understand it myself.

So there's two levels of suffering, right, which is one is in your mind—you're suffering over something that's not actually that big of a deal, and there I would say it's just, you know, lack of wisdom that cause you to suffer. But the moment it gets to your physical health or the physical health of someone that you love or care about, or it gets to, like, say, you know, losing all your money so you can be out on the street, being homeless or destitute or sick or, you know, attacked or those kind of situations, then the purpose of that suffering is tougher, right? That's where Christian theology and Judaic Islamic theology all had to come up with this answer that, well, it's because you sinned; it's because you're a sinner, and so it's original sin, and you're suffering from that. And you know, you have to prove you're worthy so you can go to heaven, and the people who get to suffer go to heaven and the people who don't suffer are probably going to hell, so that's one set of answers.

I don't find those very satisfying. There's a non-dual meditative answer, which is, you know, it's all one thing, or it's just nothing; there's no purpose to it; it's pointless. That's the Zen negative side. Be negative or be a positive—the positive side would be it's all one thing; it's Brahman. You know, it's all consciousness, and this is all just a dream, so there's no point to it. You're just doing it for entertainment value.

Then people get into more melodramatic like, "Oh, you know, the purpose of suffering is to realize your true self, to work your way up, you know, to accomplish your dharma." They get fancy; those are all meaningless too. So what is the purpose of suffering? I don't know. I don't know; I think it may have been entertainment gone too far, right? If you believe in the single god entertaining himself or herself philosophy, then we're all broken-off pieces of that single god that are living a finite simulation, so we don't know what we are, so we can feel finiteness. This is, you know, the also the Alan Watts hypothesis.

Then we have suffering because it's what makes the game interesting. But there's too much suffering; at least, the game that I would design for myself would have less suffering for others and even for myself compared to what I had in the past. But I'm grateful for it now, but at the time it felt really unpleasant. But I haven't had true physical suffering. You know, that's the one thing I think it's just so overrated. Why give people cancer if there's a god? You know, why give people cancer? That just sucks.

Wow, so many good questions; I don't even know where to start. Can you please tell all what the benefits are after 60 days of meditation?

The problem is if I give you benefits that you're going to go seeking them, and if you go seeking them it's going to ruin your meditation because the point of meditation is nothing. You're meant to sit there and just follow along and see what happens, and just accept—not even accept; that's a verb—but just observe whatever's happening in the moment and not observe as a verb but observe as just a fact, like it's a byproduct of what happened in the meditation. That's the whole point of meditation, and if I give you another point, you're going to get trapped in some phantom metaphysical falsehood, something you're chasing. You'll be chasing something. If you're chasing some pleasure in a meditation, you're no longer meditating because now you're trying to do something; you're no longer content with just sitting and observing.

So I cannot give you a go to meditation; there is no goal to meditation, and if there were, you could not meditate; you would not be meditating. Phantasmagorical is a word. The word phantasm, P-H-A-N-T, asm with an A, phantasmagorical, G-O-R-I-C-A-L, I believe that is a word; that's the word that I was trying to use. Sorry, I wasn't trying to be complicated, but I was trying to pull up an exact visual.

If you have ever meditated a lot, or if you've even laid out daydreaming under the sun with your eyes closed, or if you've gotten too drunk or done drugs, sometimes you close your eyes and see these crazy visuals, like it's an iTunes screensaver going or a music visualizer playing—that's that appearance; it's like a phantasm running around your head; that's the word that I was evoking. And during meditation, yes, you can get that but not if you want it, which is why I hesitate to tell you that you may find it in meditation.

No, I don't care about impressing you, random—who are you, MekongMan62? Well, MekongMan62 says, "Haha, fancy vocabulary; trying to impress us!" Actually, MekongMan62, I have no need to impress you. I will never see you; I don't care about you. But you know, if it makes you feel better thinking that I want to impress you, then by all means feel free to think that. I know you were just kidding. I'm just fooling around with you; sorry, MekongMan62. This is a dictatorship, pal; you can chop your head off here; that's why I like it.

How do you influence people? Well, influence by Robert Cialdini talks about this a lot; it's a really good book—highly recommended. He has six techniques: consistency, liking, scarcity, social proof, and reciprocity, of the six. And then later he adds a seventh one, which is basically around anchoring in his pre-suasion book, and then Scott Adams has a couple as well.

So there's a bunch of persuasion techniques out there if you want to manipulate people. But I think the best way to persuade people is to just be congruent in your own life. If you know what it is that you want and you're living that life, then you only want to persuade people with things that are congruent with your life. And it's very easy to persuade somebody of something when you truly believe in it. When people know that you're going to follow through with something that's authentic to who you are, when they know that, and they just want to go along with you, they want to believe you; they trust you because you are trustworthy because you're authentic.

And I think people can single out authenticity; authentic is so rare in this world, so rare, that I think people know it when they see it; they crave it. That's what the world is really craving in its leaders, and when they see authenticity, they will get behind that person because they know that person is only going to do things that are authentic to that person. They're not trying to bring you along because they want something out of you; they're bringing you along because they believe in that thing. So it builds a certain form of credibility.

I think persuasion, if it's done right, will be a byproduct of your authentic behavior; your authentic behavior will persuade others just by being you. Now if you have to persuade them beyond that, it'll actually detract from your authenticity. I guess you can manipulate some of the people some of the time, but you can't do all the time.

Give you a clear example: who is the most authentic human being in recorded history? It's probably either Jesus or Buddha, and they were incredibly persuasive because they started religions. There are people to this day, 2000 years later, who get up every morning and read everything that Jesus ever said or try to read something that Jesus said because he was that authentic; he was that believable. And he demonstrated his authenticity by dying for a bunch of random ungrateful people. I mean, who does that? Who are unrelated to him?

Buddha was authentic because he truly didn't want anything, and so people knew, "Oh, he doesn't want anything." And I'm not saying, by the way, I'm not before I said I don't want anything, but I mean a different way. I'm saying I'm happy with what I have. If those things were to disappear, I would not be happy, so therefore I am not the Buddha or a Buddha, but the Buddha genuinely didn't want anything; the purpose was, so because of that, he had a level of authenticity that created a religion.

Recommend your level of freedom without having the same level of detachment or the same thing? Detachment is not a bad thing, my friend; detachment is wonderful. Detachment doesn't feel like the attachment feels great because your default state is happiness; it's just covered up with all this junk. So when you're actually detached, when you know—and I'm not fully detached; I'm not. I'm like, I'm detached compared to the average person, you know, but I'm not the most detached person that even I know. I know people more detached than me, a few of them, and they're incredibly happy people. They're the only people that, you know, if I envied people that I would envy.

I don't envy them for reasons I explained earlier, but there's only a few people that I'm like, "Oh yeah, these people, they really have it figured out." They're even more detached than me, and they're incredibly happy people. Peace, happiness, what are you going to call it? Real happiness comes from peace; they're all, they're synonymous. So I know you don't think that, but when you've encountered and appreciated and when you've basked and bathed in real peace for a while, then you will understand that detachment is playing life on easy mode, not hard mode.

Somebody just asks, "Isn't detachment playing your life on..." No, it's on easy mode. Happiness is temporary, isn't it? Should we aim for joy or peace? Yeah, I mean peace. But peace blossoms into happiness a lot enough that you're not craving happiness anymore.

What's your diet? Do you eat carbs? Yeah, I, my diet's not perfect; I try to be paleo-ish. I'm— I like to say I'm in the failure diet, where I try to be paleo but I fail constantly, and I do a little bit of intermittent fasting here and there; sometimes more than others, depending on how hungry I am. Obviously, and I try to do high-intensity workouts. I try for seven days a week, which means I really get four days a week of real workouts and then two to three days a week of yoga, and I do meditation every day. If I miss meditation, that was a big—that was, I mean, I don't want to say it bad, but that was a mistake on my part.

Do I like JRE? Joe Rogan is brilliant. I mean, that guy was talking to me for two hours straight; I hadn't prepped him at all, so I didn't know what he was going to say. He didn't ask me for anything; he was incredibly well-informed. And it's funny because I am one of the most present people I know, not by effort but as a consequence of just being here. And Joe was incredibly present; there was one moment in the podcast when I lost my train of thought, and Joe never lost his train of thought. He was always completely engaged and knew what I was saying, and he knew what he was saying. He was so on; I have never met such a switched-on person in my life.

Maybe he was on some hard drugs; ha-ha, unlikely, but you know, possible. But he certainly had that level of intensity and energy that I did not think was achievable sober; I'm not at that level of intensity, and I'm a pretty intense person. So Joe Rogan is the real deal! That said, do I watch the Joe Rogan Experience? I watched the Scott Adams one and I watched the Elon Musk one because I think they're incredible, the interesting people, and I think that's it.

I don't think I've seen any of the JREs; it's not to say they're good or bad; I just don't—I don't like to spend my time. Nope, that's bad. Just because I find it boring to listen to things that I already know or to listen to things where I'm not going to learn something. So I'll write up to a podcast where I know I'm going to learn something interesting and important and timeless, something that's going to be with me for a long time that will, you know, sort of help build the structure of knowledge that I'd like to have in my head.

Microdosing helps. I think somebody is suggesting microdosing psychedelics; I would advise against that, actually. I think psychedelics are fine if you want to do them, but I think microdosing is—you are altering your brain on a very, very regular basis, and that is going to change your brain chemistry permanently. And I think psychedelics are probably too intense. A lot of people in psychedelics get hooked on them—not physically, not physically dependent, but meant psychologically dependent.

And they view those as a crutch to clean up their inner systems, to clean up their minds, and it's better just to meditate because then your mind is clear all the time on its own. It's not clear because you took a drug, and it's not this artificial clear where it's like pushed in one direction or there's a pressure on it in some weird way. People I know who have done a lot of microdosing or those kinds of things, they tend to become unhinged over time in subtle ways they don't realize. You know, it starts with believing in astrology and psychics and UFOs, and now I guess UFOs are mainstream but...

And then they very quickly drift towards, like, even stranger things, so I don't recommend microdosing. Don't do anything regularly that can alter your physiology that much. I think it's okay to, you know, do something as a boost to, you know, go through some particular trauma, like SSRIs are a good example. Like, if you've gone through a terrible trauma and SSRIs can help you, great! Take them! But once you're through the trauma, as quickly as you get through it, get off that stuff as soon as you can. You don't want to be taking anything except maybe vitamins all the time. And even vitamins, maybe, you're just putting an expensive urine load on your kidneys.

I listen to podcasts in 2x speed? No, because the only people are listening to podcasts from are people that are really interesting, so I don't want to 2x them. In fact, I skip back a lot to hear again what they said.

Do I recommend transcendental meditation? It didn't work for me; I found it to be a little scary how they sell you a mantra. I get it; they have to make a living. They're bringing you into meditation, so they deserve it. But I wish they'd just charge you without having to charge you for the mantra when "Om" works just fine. That said, I found transcendental meditation to be training wheels for me. It's basically, it helps you drown out the noise in your mind, but it takes so much effort that you can't sustain it.

So I prefer the no-effort method that I do, which is a non-method. You just close your eyes and you surrender to yourself; whatever you're thinking is fine; whatever you're doing in your mind is fine. You just—not even accept as a verb; you just happen to observe what goes by in your mind, and it's just, it's your mind—that's it; your mind being your mind flower; just watch it; that's all. Not even actively watch it—just let it go; just let your mind go, see what happens.

Nootropics? I think about nootropics exactly the same way as microdosing. Do not take, you know, a drug regularly that's designed to change your mind because the problem with that is, like, okay, let's say I'm taking a drug to change my body, right? Let's say I'm trying; every day I'm taking testosterone or something like that, and I find, oh, like I'm getting stronger and my libido's up, but then I notice I'm getting these strange rashes, or maybe it's like my digestion is off.

I can see something is going wrong; I'm aware of it. The problem with taking a drug that hacks your mind is how would you know? What if along the way you lose your own capacity to judge what you're thinking? Your own meta-programmer gets broken, and that's what I think—and I don't think that's unusual; I think that's what happens with a lot of drug addicts, including on just microdosing and nootropics. People lose track of themselves, and they start changing in ways that are very unnatural and disconnected from reality, and so they basically start going a little crazy around the edges, but they will never know.

You can't catch yourself and bring yourself back, so then your friend has to basically tell you, "Hey, man, you're getting weird," and a lot of friends won't do that or they won't even know. So I think taking anything that alters your mind on a regular basis is a really, really bad idea.

How does one become wise? It's just... If you care about honesty and truth and understanding how the world works and you're willing to go think for yourself, and this is the most important thing—that single most important thing in life is thinking for yourself. That's literally it, like full stop. If I had three words to give to give you as I want to give advice, so advice—this is meta advice; this advice is saying ignore all advice, including this advice—because it's a paradox. If I say think for yourself, you're like, "Well, I got that from Naval; I'm going to think for myself just like Naval told me to."

Yeah, it's a freaking paradox, but it is actually the only advice worth giving. The only advice worth giving is think for yourself, but all three parts of that phrase are important: think—which means you don't absorb; you don't just take in; you actually think; uh, for, you're doing it just for yourself, not for anybody else, and you're doing it to change your life for the better. You're not doing it because it's good or because it's holy or it's spiritual or it's going to get you into heaven; it's just because you want to improve the quality of your life—it's very practical.

And then yourself—it's selfish; it's just for you. The moment you start to think about other people than that, society—then society is very good at programming you to want to do things for other people. Look, why does society exist? Society is a big cooperation engine, which is fantastic; we need cooperation; we're cooperative monkeys, cooperative species. But it's also there to keep you in check; it's also there to control you, to be a good citizen, a good ant in the ant colony. You know, ants and bees are more social than us; they're more extreme, but we're on that spectrum; we're closer to ants and bees than we are, you know, to...

Let's say like, you know, I don't know; you get what I'm saying? Like even to lizards, right? Lizards are very solitary animals, but even to the extent that they congregate with each other, they're not going to be big cooperators. We're big cooperators, so we're closer to ants and bees. An ant or a bee cannot survive on its own; it needs a hive. In the same way, a human maybe barely could survive on its own but really needs the colony that needs a society. So you need society, but unlike an ant or a bee, you can get much further from the herd; you can get much further from the hive and still survive, and that's both mentally and physically these days.

And if you can do that, I highly recommend it. Yeah, jellyfish out of feeding their colonies; you see them in big groups, mobile coral; it's a good analogy. Everyone made a big change like moving across the country, taking a big risk; have regrets and outcomes? Yeah, I’ve taken lots of big risks, and sometimes I've had really big regrets and mostly good outcomes. It's okay; take risks. The world is a big place; there's a lot of different ways to navigate this planet; you know, but it's up to you. If you want to just stay in your shell and you're happy there, stay in your shell. But if you're ambitious, then yeah, you just take a lot of risks.

I don't know; that wasn't a philosopher... Philosoraptor? I like that! Okay, I'm gonna go with that. Philosoraptor! And there's rap with an R-A-P-T-E-R, but maybe he meant T-O-R; I would believe the dinosaur would be a philosoraptor, but it could be rap as in talk. Am I into journaling? No, not at all. I couldn't do it. But if I think of something really interesting, then sometimes I write a note to myself on the spot. But I don't do the enforced, you know, 15 minutes every morning sit there and journal thing; it's just not in me. It's not—I mean, I'm sure I could do it, but I don't do anything I don't want to do, and I don't want to do it.

So can a person be effective in multiple fields? Yeah, I think so—maybe two. But fields are very specialized these days. That's why I like the natural philosophy route where they're across this disciplinary, but they all tend to be scientists—scientists, philosophers. I don't have a mentor; no mentors, no heroes, no one to admire, no one to look up to, and neither should you.

I guess you could have a mentor; there's nothing wrong with that, but don't hang out in a mentor's shadow forever, and don't think you can never exceed your mentor because if you think you can never exceed your mentor, then that's a trap of sorts. I'm not an early riser; I'm a late sleeper; I'm a night owl.

Say something to make your admirers hate you? I feel like I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and Choo Choo Train would still follow me. That was Choo Choo Train asking that question. Best Osho book for noobs? The Great Challenge; I recommend a book of his called The Great Challenge.

Let's see... Would you speak more about being an idol? What helps you about working at night? Oh, nothing helps me; it's just where I actually tend to because of my own circadian rhythm. I think it's because I like to read a lot, and I only get peace and quiet after everybody else has gone to bed and I have—and no one expects an email answer; there's going to be no inbound phone calls; I don't have to answer a text message, so I can truly check out and just focus on the book, and then I get lost in my books or blogs, and I'm up till late in the morning sometimes reading them.

Sometimes when you get tweets from me, like you see a tweet from me at three in the morning, four in the morning, people would be like, "Oh, you're up early." It's like, "No, I'm just up late." I've been tweeting at five in the morning just two weeks ago, and I had stayed up all night just because I read things that were too interesting, and I was digging them down and following up on them, and so it just kept me up.

I could be an early riser, but the problem is when you're an early riser, here's the problem: there's always something for me to do. There's always someone in my family demanding attention for something. There's always like some business call coming, and there's always some company to look at; there's always some email in my inbox that I need to do; there's always—there's always something to do. So if I wake up when other people are awake, then I will get swept up in doing that something; that just happens to me at that time.

So the only time I truly have to myself is when everybody else is asleep. So either I would have to become such an early riser that I wake up at three in the morning, right, and everybody's asleep, and I've got four or five hours to myself, or I just stay up late, and so I just stay up late. I don't sleep much, though; I probably sleep five hours a night. I know that's not good for me; health-wise, bad, but I just enjoy staying up, and then, you know, in the morning, you can't sleep later than eight or nine just because people make noise, and there are things going on, or ten at the absolute latest. So I usually get up after about five hours.

If you could have one technical skill set that you do not have now, what would it be? I would be much better at mathematics because I think with mathematics, you can tackle anything. Investing versus starting a business? Well, look, if you're young and have no money, you have to start a business. If you're old and you have a lot of money, you can invest instead. If you're old and you like the thrill of starting a company or it gives you purpose and meaning, then go and keep doing that.

Do I have a list of recommended books? I have—I don't like to give book recommendations because I think everyone's in a different place. That said, I'll tell you which authors I get a kick out of. I get a kick out of the natural philosophers, and that would be people like Art DeVany, Aleb, Nick Szabo, even Scott Adams I would put in that list, Richard Feynman, Schopenhauer, Niels Bohr, Jed McKenna—I know he's a natural philosopher, but I enjoy reading him, Osho, so I would much more like read every book or David Deutsch—huge love for David Deutsch right now—so I would rather just read everything these people have written and watch every interview they've given and absorb everything they're trying to say rather than go and just read some random book.

And given that each of which will take, you know, that's a lifetime's worth right there, and occasionally, every year or so there goes my next year; so it's not about how much you absorb; it's about the quality of what you've sort of honed in on, what you consider quality. But now that I've found this very high-quality group of authors, I could spend the rest of my life just reading them. I don't need any other, you know, authors to read.

So I actually put out a tweet recently on this; it was a reply to somebody else; it wasn't like a main tweet because it feels a little arrogant, you know, just to say go read XYZ, especially when those people are live on Twitter; it might be flattering them a little bit too much. But yeah, I would just read a few in-ground with their bibliography, you know, you don't need to ask me that question again.

I feel like people ask me that question because they're hoping for like a single magic book—doesn't work that way. I'm still here, but I don't think you can hear me. Can you hear me? Hello? Hello? Hello? Lost? Oh, it's back; it's back. All right, some people are saying it's back. Okay, but I think it's probably time to call it a night anyway.

Let's do one last discussion—one last thing, one more thing. How come no video? Because it's dark, and honestly, I don't have to care about how I look, and I know I shouldn't care, but I do. All right, you guys can hear me, but am I broadcasting from Antarctica? No such luck. Let's find a good question. Thoughts on marriage? Not bad. Can I tweet my author list? I already did—just check my replies in the last two days; you'll find it in there.

With the current Naval still get nervous approaching hot girls? No, but I'm