Podcast

#922 - Naval Ravikant - 44 Harsh Truths About Human Nature

Modern Wisdom

Last highlighted April 2, 2025 Source ↗ ← All highlights

Happiness vs. Success
- Success stems from dissatisfaction, while happiness is being content with what you have.
- Naval Ravikant revisits his earlier statement, questioning the straightforward truth of this idea. Transcript: Naval Ravikant Success worth it then? Oof. I’m not sure that statement is true anymore. Like I made that statement a long time ago. And a lot of these things are just notes to myself and they’re highly contextual. They come in the moment, they leave in the moment. Happiness. Okay. So very complicated topic, but I always liked the Socrates story where he goes into the marketplace and they show him all these luxuries and fineries and he says, how many things there Are in this world that I do not want, right? And that’s a form of freedom. So not wanting something is as good as having it. With Alexander Dionysius, right? Alexander goes out and conquers the world and he meets Dionysius who’s living in a barrel. And Dionysius says, get out of the way, you’re blocking my son. And Alexander says, oh, how I wish I could be like Dionysius in the next life. And Dionysius says, that’s the difference. I don’t wish that I could, sorry, Diogenes, Diogenes. Diogenes says, I don’t wish to be Alexander. So two paths to happiness and one path is to success. You get what you want. You satisfy your material needs. Or like Diogenes, you just don’t want it in the first place. And I’m not sure which one is more valid. And it also depends what you define as success. If the end goal is happiness, then why not cut to the chase and just go straight for it? Does being happy make you less successful? That is a conventional wisdom. That may even be the practical earned experience of your reality. You find that when you’re happy, you don’t want anything, so you don’t get up and do anything. On the other hand, you still got to do something. You’re an animal. You’re here. You’re here to survive. You’re here to replicate. You’re driven. You’re motivated. You’re going to do something. You’re not just going to sit there all day. Unlikely. Some people do. Maybe it’s in their nature. But I think most people still want to act. They want to live in the arena. I found for myself as I’ve become, happier is a big word, but more peaceful, more calm, more present, more satisfied with what I have, I still want to do things. I just want to do bigger things. I want to do things that are more pure, more aligned with what I think needs to be done and what I can uniquely do. So in that sense, I think that being happier can actually make you more successful, but your definition of success will likely change along the way. (Time 0:00:06)
Socrates and Diogenes
- Naval Ravikant recounts the story of Socrates in the marketplace, finding freedom in not wanting material things.
- He contrasts this with Alexander the Great’s encounter with Diogenes, highlighting two paths to happiness. Transcript: Naval Ravikant They come in the moment, they leave in the moment. Happiness. Okay. So very complicated topic, but I always liked the Socrates story where he goes into the marketplace and they show him all these luxuries and fineries and he says, how many things there Are in this world that I do not want, right? And that’s a form of freedom. So not wanting something is as good as having it. With Alexander Dionysius, right? Alexander goes out and conquers the world and he meets Dionysius who’s living in a barrel. And Dionysius says, get out of the way, you’re blocking my son. And Alexander says, oh, how I wish I could be like Dionysius in the next life. And Dionysius says, that’s the difference. I don’t wish that I could, sorry, Diogenes, Diogenes. Diogenes says, I don’t wish to be Alexander. So two paths to happiness and one path is to success. You get what you want. You satisfy your material needs. Or like Diogenes, you just don’t want it in the first place. And I’m not sure which one is more valid. And it also depends what you define as success. If the end goal is happiness, then why not cut to the chase and just go straight for it? (Time 0:00:17)
Suffering and Reward
- Most gains in life come from short-term suffering, leading to long-term rewards.
- Avoid becoming a suffering addict; attach well-being to the outcome, not the pain itself. Transcript: Chris Williamson One of yours most of the gains in life come from suffering in the short term, so you can get paid in the long term. I think that’s classic. Winning the marshmallow test on a daily basis. But there’s an interesting challenge where I think people need to avoid becoming a suffering addict, sort of using suffering as the proxy for progress as opposed to the outcome of the Suffering, right? It’s like I was in pain, not eating the marshmallow. I was in pain doing this work. I have attached well-being and satisfaction to pain, not to what the pain gets me on the other side of it. (Time 0:03:40)
The Price of Fame
- Fame has high costs, like lack of privacy and constant performance pressure.
- Earned fame, achieved through contributions, is more worthwhile than fame for its own sake. Transcript: Naval Ravikant It gets you invited to better parties. It gets you to better restaurants. Fame. So fame is this funny thing where a lot of people know you but you don’t know them and uh it does get you put on the pedestal uh it can get you what you want uh at a at a distance so i wouldn’t say It’s worthless obviously people want it for a reason um it’s high status so it attracts the opposite sex uh especially for men it attracts women that said it is high cost. It means you have no privacy. You do have weirdos and lunatics. You do get hit up a lot for weird things. And you’re on a stage, so you’re forced to perform. So you’re forced to be consistent with your past proclamations and actions, and you’re going to have haters and all that nonsense. But the fact that we do it, the fact that we all seem to want it means that it would be disingenuous to say oh no i’m famous but you don’t want to be famous that said i think fame like anything Else is best produced as a or pursued as a byproduct of something potentially more worthwhile wanting to be famous and craving to be famous and being famous for being famous. These are sort of traps. Fame for fame’s sake. Yeah, exactly. So it’s better that it’s earned fame. So for example, earned respect in the tribe is you do things that are good for the tribe. Who are the most famous people in human history? There are people who sort of transcended the self, the Buddhas and the Jesuses and the Mohammeds of the world. Who else is famous? The artists are famous. You know, art lasts for a long time. The scientists are famous. They discover things. The conquerors are famous, presumably because they conquered for their tribe. There was someone that they were fighting for. So generally, the higher up you rise by doing things for greater and greater groups of people, even though it may be considered tyrannical or negative, like, you know, Genghis Khan Is famous, but to the Mongols, he was doing good, to the rest of them, not so much. The higher level you’re operating at, the more people you’re taking care of, the more you sort of earn respect and fame. And I think those are good reasons to be famous. If fame is empty, if you’re famous just because your name showed up in a lot of places or your face showed up in a lot of places, then that’s a hollow fame. And I think deep down you will know that. And so it’ll be fragile and you’ll always be afraid of losing it. And then you’ll be forced to perform. So the kind of fame that pure actors and celebrities have, I wouldn’t want. (Time 0:08:18)
Wealth vs. Status
- Focus on wealth creation over status games, as status is limited and combative.
- Wealth creation is positive-sum and offers concrete returns, unlike the zero-sum nature of status. Transcript: Chris Williamson Whether it’s fame, actual fame, or just the competition comparison trap, it’s always there. There’s a real draw of being swayed by social approval. Naval Ravikant How should people learn to get less distracted by status games in that way? I think it just helps to see that status games don’t matter as much as they used to. In old society, let’s go back hunter-gatherer times, there was no such thing as wealth. You just had what you could carry. There was no stored wealth. So wealth games didn’t really exist to wealth creation games. All that existed was status games. If you were high status, then you got what little was available first. But even back then, you had to earn your status by taking care of the tribe. Now we have wealth creation, where can actually create a product or a service, you can scale that product or service, and you can provide abundance for a lot of people. And that’s not zero sum, that’s a positive sum game, I can be wealthy, you can be wealthy, we can create things together. And clearly, since we are all collectively far, far wealthier than we were in hunter gatherer times, wealth creation is positive, but status is limited, there’s limited status to Go around, it’s a ranking ladder, it’s a hierarchy. And so to rise in status, somebody else has a lower in status. Now, you can have multiple kinds of status. So you can expand some kinds of status, but it’s not like wealth creation where it can go infinitely, where we can all be, you know, living in the stars and moon bases or Mars colonies or What have you. So just realize the status games are inherently limited. They’re always combative. They always require direct combat, whereas wealth creation games can be just you’re creating products. You don’t have to fight anybody else. Yes, in the marketplace, your product has to succeed, but that’s not quite the same as invective against other people or being angry with other people or feeling pushed down or pushed Up or having a beef with somebody. So I would argue that wealth creation games are both more pleasant. They’re positive some, and they actually have concrete material returns. If you have more money, you can buy more. Show me where you can exchange your status at the bank. Exactly. Yeah. It’s vague and it’s fuzzy. Now you see people get rich, they have money, what do they want? They want status. So they go to Hollywood, start starring in movies, they donate to nonprofits, they go to Cannes or Davos or what have you, and they start trying to trade the money for status. So people always want what they don’t have. And we are evolutionarily hardwired for status because as I said, wealth creation didn’t really exist until the agricultural revolution when you could store grain. And then the industrial revolution took it to another level. And now the information age is taking it to yet another level. But there’s never been an easier time to make money. Yes, it’s still hard. But there’s never been an easier time to create wealth because there’s so much leverage out there. There’s so much opportunity. You still have to go find it. It’s not easy. It’s not going to fall on your lap. And you have to learn something and know something and do something interesting. But nevertheless, it’s possible to many more people. A few hundred years ago, you were born a surf, you were going to die a surf. There was almost no way out of that. That’s changed. And so I would argue that you’re better off focusing on wealth games and status games. If you’re trying to build up, for example, you’re following on a social network and get famous and then get rich off of being famous, that’s a much harder path than getting rich first. And then go for your fame afterwards, would be my advice. (Time 0:14:40)
Importance of Self-Esteem
- The worst outcome is lacking self-esteem, as it creates internal struggles and hinders facing the world.
- Build self-esteem by rigorously living up to your own moral code. Transcript: Naval Ravikant Yeah, it’s a tough one. I look at the people, and I don’t want to offend anybody, but I look at the people who don’t like themselves, and that’s the toughest slot, because they’re always wrestling with themselves, And it’s hard enough to face the outside world. And no one’s going to like you more than you like yourself. So if you’re struggling with yourself, then the outside world becomes an insurmountable challenge. And it’s hard to say why people have low self-esteem. It might be genetic, it might just be circumstantial. A lot of times I think it’s because they just weren’t unconditionally loved as a child. And that sort of seeps in at a deep core level. But self-esteem issues can be the most limiting. One interesting thought is that, you know, to some extent, self-esteem is a reputation you have with yourself. You’re watching yourself at all times. You know what you’re doing and you have your own moral code. Everyone has a different moral code. But if you don’t live up to your own moral code, the same code that you hold others to, it will damage your self-esteem. So one way to build up your self-esteem is to live up to your own code, very rigorously have one and then live up to it. My life and you know what are the moments that i’m actually proud of there’s very far and few between and it’s not that often it’s not the things you would expect it’s not the material success It’s not having learned this thing or that it’s when i made a sacrifice for somebody or something that i loved and uh that’s when i’m actually ironically most proud now that’s through An explicit mental exercise but i’ll bet you at some level i’m recording that implicitly so that tells me that even if i am not being loved then the way to create love is to give love, to Express love through sacrifice and through duty. And so I think doing things like that can build up your self-esteem really fast. (Time 0:21:06)
The Cost of Pride
- Pride is the most expensive trait, hindering learning and trapping you in suboptimal positions.
- Embrace starting over and looking like a fool to achieve greatness. Transcript: Chris Williamson Trait is pride. How come? Naval Ravikant Oh, that was a recent one. I tweeted that just because I think that pride is the enemy of learning. So when I look at my friends and colleagues, the ones who are still stuck in the past and have grown the least are the ones who were the proudest because they sort of feel like they already Had the answers. And so they don’t want to correct themselves publicly. And so this goes back to the fame conversation. You get locked into something you said, it made you famous, you’re known for that, and now you want to pivot or change. So pride prevents you from saying I’m wrong. Chris Williamson What’s pride in this context here? Naval Ravikant It could be as simple as you’re trading stocks and then you don’t admit you were wrong. So you hang on to a lousy trade. It could be that you made a decision to marry someone or move somewhere or enter a profession. It doesn’t work out. And then you don’t admit that you were wrong. So you get stuck in it. It’s mostly about getting trapped in local maxima as opposed to going back down and climbing up the mountain again. Chris Williamson And that’s why it’s an expensive trade because you continue to need to repay it in one form or another. (Time 0:29:47)
Unapologetic Self-Prioritization
- Unapologetically prioritize yourself; everyone is selfish, though few are unapologetic.
- Naval Ravikant advocates for ruthlessly prioritizing freedom, deleting his calendar and avoiding unwanted events. Transcript: Chris Williamson It’s like unapologetically self-prioritizing, I guess. Naval Ravikant Yeah, I think everybody is. Maybe unapologetic is the part that’s relatively rare, but I think everybody puts themselves first. That’s just human nature. You’re here because you survive. You’re a separate organism. That’s interesting. Maybe, but- I know we like to virtue signal and pretend we’re doing it for each other. How many times does somebody say, yeah, of course, I’d love to come to the wedding? Chris Williamson They’re like, I don’t want to be at the fucking wedding. How many times does someone say, how are you doing today? And they don’t tell you. I don’t go to weddings but this is my point right so i don’t think you’re necessarily right with that i think that people do i don’t think they put themselves first i sometimes think that They they compromise what it is that they want in order to appease socially what’s in front of them yeah i just view it as you’re waste everyone’s wasting their time on it um don’t do something Naval Ravikant You don’t want to do why are you wasting your time there’s so little time on this earth life goes fast what are the 4 000 weeks that’s your lifespan um and and yes we hear that but we don’t Remember it but uh i guess i’m keenly aware of how little time i have so i’m just not going to waste it how have you got more comfortable at um being the unapologetic self-prioritizer? Yeah, I’ve gotten utterly more and more ruthless on it. Mainly, it’s that I see or hear people’s freedom, and then that liberates me further. So I read a blog post by P. Mark, a.k Mark Andreessen, where he said, don’t keep a schedule. And I took that to heart. So I deleted my calendar, and I don’t keep a schedule. I try to remember it all in my head. If I can’t remember it, I’m not going to add it to my schedule. I’m glad you got here on time. Yeah, exactly. I had to look things up at the last minute. But ironically, I don’t even know if Mark himself follows that, but he made the correct point. I read a little story about Jack Dorsey doing all his business off his iPhone and iPad and not even going into a Mac. And I said, okay, I want to do that. So I’m going to operate through text messaging and I’ll put up my nasty email. Does that feel like more freedom? It does. Yeah. Cause you’re on the go. So I have a nasty email autoresponder that says, I don’t check email and don’t text me either. Right. If you need to find me, you’ll find me. Obviously some of this is a luxury of success, but some of these habits I adopted long before, actually. The hostile email autoresponder started a long time ago. I used to own the domain. I let it go. Don’tdocoffee.com. I don’t do coffee.com. I used to reply from that email just so people would get the point. But I stopped being rude about it. Now I just ghost. I just disappear. My wife knows not to ever book or schedule me for anything uh i’m not expected i’m not expected to go to couples dinners i’m not expected to go to birthdays i’m not expected to go to weddings If somebody tries to rope her into having me show up she says he makes his own decisions you gotta ask him directly what about vice versa are you not killing serendipity in a way dad no no I’m freeing up all my time so my entire life is serendipity i get to interact with whoever i want whenever i want wherever you’ll hear the invite but make the decision because if you’re If there’s fewer things in coming you’re assuming that you know what’s best i don’t commit to anything in the future so i’ll say okay if that thing is interesting i’ll see if i can get in That day when i’m in the mood but there’s nothing worse than something coming up that your past self committed you to, that your present self doesn’t want to do. God damn it, past the ball. Yeah, and then it destroys your entire calendar. It destroys your day because there’s like, oh, there’s a one hour slot which is sitting like a turd on my calendar that I have to like schedule my whole day around. I can’t do anything at 20 minutes before or the 20 minutes afterwards. Even for phone calls, if someone wants to do a phone call, say, okay, just text me when you’re free. I’ll text you when I’m free and we’ll just do it on the fly. It’s a much better way of living than this overly scheduled, you know, cal.com or iCal, whatever. The overscheduled life is not worth living. It’s not. I think it’s a terrible way to live life. That’s not how we evolved. It’s not how we grew up. It’s not how we were as children, hopefully, unless you have a helicopter parent or a tiger mom. (Time 0:35:15)
Perishable Inspiration
- Act on inspiration immediately, as it is perishable.
- Learn and create when genuinely desired, not when forced, maximizing fun and flow. Transcript: Naval Ravikant I’m definitely not free. But also, another thing that I really believe is that inspiration is perishable. Act on it immediately. So when you’re inspired to do something, do that thing. If I’m inspired to write a blog post, I want to do it at that moment. If I’m inspired to send a tweet, I want to do it at that moment. If I’m inspired to solve a problem, I want to do it at that moment. If I’m inspired to read a book, I want to read it right then. If I’m inspired to solve a problem, I’ll solve it right there. If I want to learn something, I do it at the moment of curiosity. The moment the curiosity arrives, I go learn that thing immediately. I download the book. I get on Google. I get on ChatGPT, whatever. I will figure that thing out on the spot. And that’s when the learning happens. It doesn’t happen because I’ve scheduled time, because I’ve set an hour aside, because when that time arrives, I might be in a different mood. I might just want to do something different. So I think that spontaneity is really important. You’re going to learn best when you’re having fun, when you generally are enjoying the process, not when you’re forced to sit there and do it. How much do you remember from school? You were forced to learn geography, history, mathematics on this schedule at this time, according to this person. Didn’t happen. All the stuff that sticks with you is you learned it when you wanted to, when you genuinely had the desire. And that freedom, that ability to act on something the moment you want to is so liberating that most of us go through our lives with very, very little tastes (Time 0:41:27)
Choose Your Problems
- Be choosy about your problems and avoid taking on those you can’t affect.
- Naval Ravikant encourages focusing on one overarching problem and avoiding unnecessary mental battles. Transcript: Chris Williamson Better than I used to be. Well, lots of people are addicted to solving problems, so much so that sometimes people create problems when we don’t have any simply so that we can solve them. Naval Ravikant We have that going on. And then even worse is we take on problems that we can’t affect. So, you know, another one of my little quips was, you know, a rational person can sort of, a rational person should cultivate indifference to things that are out of their control, right? Or a rational person can find peace by cultivating indifference to things that are out of their control. And I’m as guilty as anybody of doom surfing on X or social media and getting worked up about things that I can’t do anything about, right? Like, do I want to be fighting those battles in my mind when I literally cannot do anything about it? So if you find yourself looping on a problem, like you’re watching the news too much and you’re getting caught up in a problem you can’t do anything about, you have to step away from that. And modern media is a delivery mechanism for mimetic viruses. And what’s happened now is, you know, 100 years ago, 500 years ago, if something wasn’t happening in your immediate vicinity, you wouldn’t hear about it. It wouldn’t be a problem for you. But now every single one of the world’s problems has turned into a mimetic virus, which is going into the battlefield of the news and is trying to infect your mind in real time. Hyperspeak. Yeah, so that you become obsessed with the war in Ukraine, which is really far away, or you get obsessed with climate change, or you get obsessed with AI doom, or you get obsessed with Whatever. And there’s nothing as riveting as the old religion, the world is ending, the world is ending, pay attention, the world is ending. And if you don’t… It’s like Cassandra complex at global scale. Cassandra complex at global scale. And I would argue that large percentages of the population are essentially just infected with these mimetic viruses that have taken over their brain, and are causing them to do incredible Gyration about things that probably aren’t even true or are greatly exaggerated. But even to the extent they are true, they’re things that that person can do nothing about. And they should put their own house in order first. So, you know, another little line I have for myself is your family is broken, but you’re going to fix the world, right? People are running out there to try and fix the world when their own lives are a mess, right? And I think it defies credibility if you can’t fix your own life first. I’m not going to take you seriously if you can’t fix your own life. (Time 0:52:53)
Optimism and Skepticism
- Be optimistic in general but skeptical of specifics, recognizing most opportunities fail.
- Iterate quickly, cut losses fast, and compound into the right thing when found. Transcript: Chris Williamson It. Don’t partner with cynics and pessimists. You mentioned there about the people who’ve got a nightmare going on at home and are trying to fix the world. But a lot of the time that cynicism and pessimism, we find in ourselves. We see the world, whether we want to, whether it’s because we’ve imbibed what the news or the negative people around us have said, or it’s a bit more kind of endogenous than that. It’s just sort of in us. It’s the way that we see the world. How can people avoid cynicism and pessimism within themselves? Naval Ravikant Yeah, cynicism and pessimism is a tough one. We’re naturally hardwired for it. Again, I go back to evolution. I’m sorry to keep harping on evolution, but within biology, there’s very few good explanatory theories. And theory of evolution by natural selection is probably the best one. So if you can’t explain something about life or psychology or human nature through evolution, then you probably don’t have a good theory for it. And I would say that pessimism is another one that comes out of this, which is in the natural environment, you’re hardwired to be pessimistic. Because let’s say that I see something rustling in the woods, and if I move towards it and it turns out to be food and prey, then good, I get to eat one meal. But if it turns out to be a predator, I get eaten. And that’s the end of that. So we are hardwired to avoid ruin and just dying. So we are naturally hardwired to be pessimists. But modern society is very different. Despite whatever problems you may have with modern society, it is far, far safer than living in the jungle and just trying to survive. And the opportunities and the upside are nonlinear. For example, when you’re investing, if you short a stock, the most money you can make is 2x. If the stock goes to zero, you double your money. But if the stock is the next NVIDIA and it goes 100x or 1,000x, you make a lot of money. So upside because of leverage is nearly unlimited. Also in modern society, because there’s so many different people you can interact with, if you go on a date and it fails, there are infinite more people to go on a date with. In a tribal system, there might’ve been 20 people and you can’t even get through all of them. So modern society is far more forgiving of failure. And you just have to sort of neocortically realize and override that. You have to realize that you’re much more running a search function to find the thing that’ll work and then that one thing will pay off in massive compounding once you find your mate for The rest of your life you find your wife or your husband then you can compound in that relationship it’s okay if you had 50 failed dates in between the same way once you find the one business You’re meant to plow into and it’ll compound returns it’s okay if you had 50 small failed ventures, or 50 small failed job interviews. The number of failures doesn’t matter. And so there’s no point in being a pessimist. You want to be an optimist, but I would say you want to be skeptical about specific things. Every specific opportunity is probably a fail, but you want to be optimistic in the general. In the general, you want to be like something in here is going to work out. How do you navigate that tension? I mean, exactly as I said, I’m optimistic in the general that if something fails right now, then this is a little woo-woo, but it wasn’t meant to be. It was a learning experience. It was an iteration. As long as I learned something from it, then it’s a win. If I didn’t learn from it, then it’s a loss. But as long as you’re learning and you keep iterating fast and cutting your losses quickly, then when you find the right thing, you have to be optimistic and compound into it. So you don’t want to jump into the first thing. You don’t want to marry the first person you date necessarily, unless you got very lucky. But you want to investigate and explore very, very quickly until you find the match. And then you have to be willing to go all in. You have to be willing to move your chips at the center of the (Time 1:00:40)
Overthinking and Unhappiness
- Overthinking yourself, ego, and personal narratives is the source of much unhappiness.
- Focus on problem-solving reflection, not self-indulgent rumination, to achieve clarity. Transcript: Chris Williamson Say thinking about yourself is the source of all unhappiness, but presumably you need to work on yourself and your weaknesses as well. So some degree of reflection is important. And if thinking about yourself as a source of unhappiness, is this a price that you need to pay? I need to sort of reflect inward. I’m going to have to diminish this level of happiness for a little while, and then I can use this new level. I’ve got my brown belt on and I can go out into the world as a brown belt. (Time 1:11:21)
Defining Wasted Time
- Wasted time is not about specific activities but about lack of presence and immersion.
- Embrace the present moment, doing what you want with full attention, to avoid wasting time. Transcript: Chris Williamson Longer being here, but they don’t realize that so much of their life is spent not being here in any case. That’s right. And I think people crave being here for it. Naval Ravikant And when you’re here for it, you’re actually not thinking about yourself. You’re more immersed in the thing, the moment, the task at hand. We don’t want peace of mind. We want peace for our mind. That’s right. Yeah, you don’t, peace, the mind is what will eat you alive if you let it. And there’s more to you than the mind how so well i mean it’s very if i don’t want to disassemble the body so to speak right because please go on yeah at the end of the day like everything arises Within your consciousness right you you got nowhere else to experience it sorry you’ve got nowhere else to experience it and that consciousness relatively static in a sense that it’s Been exactly the same from the moment you were born to the moment you die. And everything that you experience from your body, from your mind to the world, to everything is within that consciousness. And that thing, that base layer of being, and this is what the Buddhists will tell you, is the real thing. Everything that comes and goes in the middle, including your mind, including your body, is unreal. And trying to find stability in those transient things is your castle that you’re building on sand that’s going to crumble. Chris Williamson Life is going to play out the way it’s going to play out. There will be some good and some bad. Most of it is actually just up to your interpretation. You’re born, you have a set of sensory experiences, and then you die. How you choose to interpret those experiences is up to you, and different people interpret them in different ways. Yeah, (Time 1:26:50)
Values over Checklists
- Align on values, the non-negotiables, for stronger relationships, not just shared hobbies.
- Values determine difficult choices and reveal true compatibility, exceeding superficial commonalities. Transcript: Chris Williamson More on their values, they would have much more successful relationships. The emotional pain of fearing change. I have this thing, the job, the location, the partner, I’m going to enter or not enter this thing for the most part it’s leaving i think we have this sort of loss aversion right that we really Naval Ravikant Evolve loss aversion it’s just painful separating yourself in front of your friends it’s embarrassing and how how would you advise people to uh get past themselves with that loss aversion That fear of change oh my god am i gonna yeah it’s the hardest thing in the world uh starting over it’s back to the zero to one thing it’s a it’s the mountain climbing thing you’re not going To find your path to the top of the mountain in the first go around sometimes you go up there you get stuck and you come back down and the difference between all the successful people and The ones who are not is the ones who are successful wanted so badly they’re willing to go back and start over again and again whether in their career or in their relationships or in anything Chris Williamson Else. The most seriously you take yourself, the unhappier you’re going to be. You learned how to take yourself less seriously? Naval Ravikant Well, fame doesn’t help on that one because that is one of the traps of fame. People are always talking about you. They have a certain view of you and you start believing that and then you take yourself seriously and then that limits your own actions. You can’t look like a fool anymore. You can’t do new things anymore you know tomorrow i announce i’m a breakdancer right that’s going to be met with a lot of scorn and ridicule but what if i want to be a breakdancer i’d back I’d back you if you want to make that pivot yeah the truth is if i want to be a breakdancer i’d be breakdancing but uh you know like i’m starting a new company zero to one again from scratch Let’s do it, you know, one more time. And not just going and raising a big VC fund or retiring or what have you. But that’s because I want to build the product. I want to see it exist. So I think that you constantly just have to force yourself. You have to remind yourself. Look, deep down, you’re still the same Chris you were when you were nine years old. Deep down, you’re still a kid. You know, you’re still curious about the world. You still have a lot of the same predilections and desires and wants. You’ve got a nice veneer on it. But one of the nice things when you have kids is you realize how much closer they are to you in personality and knowledge and know-how. Like, I look at my son who’s, you know, he’s eight. And I just noticed like, wow, he’s probably has 60 to 80% of my knowledge and development wisdom. And he’s a lot more freedom and he has a lot more spontaneity. In some ways he’s smarter. And there’s not a big gap here left to close. This kid’s going to be, you know, done very soon and caught up to me. And so to the extent that I think I know better or that I’m somewhere or that I’m someone, it’s just an illusion. It’s just a belief. What’s the lineage between that and taking yourself too seriously? I shouldn’t take myself too seriously because there’s nothing here to take that seriously. And if I take myself too seriously, then I’m going to get trapped. I’m going to circumscribe myself again into a limited set of behaviors and outcomes that keep me from being free, keep me from being spontaneous, keep me from being happy. So it just goes back to the, you know, don’t think about yourself too much. Chris Williamson There’s a special type of pain in realizing that the advice that you need to hear right now is something that almost always you learned a long time ago. And that, you know, you’re basically sort of the same person you were as you were nine. And a lot of the time, people ask questions like, what advice do you wish that you would give yourself 10 years ago? People ask themselves that question. Almost invariably, the advice that you would give yourself 10 years ago is still the advice that you need to hear today. Naval Ravikant Absolutely. That’s why I did that exercise of thinking back, you know, 10 years, 20 years, 30 years ago, what advice would I give myself for me is just be less emotional. Don’t take, don’t take everything so seriously, do the same things, but do them without all the emotional turbulence. And so that’s the advice I’m giving myself going forward. Yeah. Chris Williamson Yeah. Yeah. It’s funny how we need that distance to be able to be a little bit more objective, to have a little bit more perspective. And it’s almost a little bit of a trick, right? Because typically when you do that, you say, what would you tell a friend that was going through this? Right. And then you try and turn the advice to the friend around onto yourself. You always think, well, I’m not the friend. Okay. You 10 years ago, there’s enough distance in that. Oh, I actually am still that person. There’s just a single line between that and me. And related to this story is I think understanding is way more important than (Time 1:44:30)
Unteachable Lessons
- Many life lessons are unteachable, requiring personal experience for true understanding.
- Context matters, and broad maxims need personal interpretation and modernization. Transcript: Chris Williamson It’s also a very contentious list of points to say on the internet. If you interview a billionaire who says that all of his money didn’t make him happy or a movie star who said that her fame felt like a prison, the internet will tear them apart for being Ungrateful and out of touch. So not only do we refuse to learn these lessons, we even refuse to hear the message from those warning us about them. And even more than that, I think for every one of these, if I consider a bit deeper, I can recall a time, including right now, where I convinced myself that I am the exception to the rule, That my particular mental makeup or life situation or historical wounds or dreams for the future render me immune to these lessons being applicable. No, no, no. My inner landscape would be solved by skirting around the most well-known wisdom of the ages. No, no, no. I can thread this needle properly. Watch me dance through the minefield and avoid all of the tripwires that everyone else kicks. And then you kick one. And you share a knowing look the kind that can only occur between two people who’ve been hurt in the exact same way and a voice in the back of your mind will say i told you so that’s unteachable Naval Ravikant It’s a good essay i think one of the reasons why these lessons are unteachable is because uh they’re too broad they have to be applied in context a number of the ones that you let out contradict Each other, like spend more time with your parents and don’t work so hard. But at the same time, you do want to be successful, right? I think a lot of these lessons come from down on high, from, as you said, like the famous movie star or the billionaire saying, oh, you don’t need money to be happy. It’s like, well, okay, then give it up, bitch. So in reality, I think many of these contradict each other. And it’s like, if you went to school and you just studied philosophy for four years, you would not know how to live life because you wouldn’t know which philosophical doctrine to apply In which circumstance. You have to actually live life, go through all of the issues to figure out what it is that you want, what’s the context in which some of these things apply and some of them don’t. Yes, you want to visit your parents more often, but you don’t want to live with your parents and you don’t want to necessarily see them every day or every weekend, depending on the parent. You might not get along with one of them. So I think it is highly contextual. That said, I would argue that once you figure it out for yourself, you can kind of carve these variations on these maxims that apply to you. And then you’ll have a specific experience that helps you remember it and actually execute on it. And you can also phrase it in a way where it’s not trite anymore. It’s personal. Yeah. So a lot of my maxims and notes to self are carved in a way that they’re modernized. They’re saying something true, which might be trite if I didn’t say it in a new way or in an interesting way that is more relevant to me today. There was a Nobel Prize (Time 1:54:25)
Memorization vs. Understanding
- Memorization masks lack of understanding; true knowledge allows re-derivation from first principles.
- Fluency doesn’t equal insight; value understanding, judgment, and taste developed through problem-solving. Transcript: Naval Ravikant Is not giving a shit. Chris Williamson You know, a lot of the best things in life come out of that does this mean you’re just sort of talking about that rote memorization masquerading as wisdom and insight thing which i think Perhaps almost certainly uh podcasts like this will have contributed to you know you hear a Alain de Botton who’s, you know, like a painter with words, very simple, very sort of unpretentious. But if you’re intellectually curious, you see, you only see the production of his thoughts. You don’t necessarily see the work that’s gone into the thoughts behind. So you confuse the presentation of them for the insight. Does that make sense? Of course. Yeah. A lot of my stuff is more polished. Like one of the funny things. Yeah. Naval Ravikant One of the funny things that right before this podcast was, I thought, maybe I should go back and read my old tweets to sort of remember what I said and I can articulate it well. Then I realized that’s just performance. I would just be memorizing my whole stuff to perform. Chris Williamson Oh, well, that’s an extra special level of exactly hell that you’ve descended exactly and i wrote memorizing me to be more me bingo and to live up to some expectation or some uh famous Naval Ravikant Personality that i now have to become some straight jacket that i have to put on yeah i’m having to live up to in private the things that i that’s right so of course pretty quickly i saw through Chris Williamson That you know it’s nonsense and it also constrains my time and it’s just work. I think that’s, you know, your meditation practice at work there, that mindfulness gap to be like, huh? Yeah. There’s that thing again. Naval Ravikant Exactly. Exactly. So it’s not about changing your thoughts. It’s not about fixing your thoughts, not about changing yourself. It’s just about being observant of yourself so that you can then, it’ll automatically change. Whatever change needs to happen will happen you trying to change yourself is very circular um the mind trying to change the mind the mind doesn’t let wrestling with itself i don’t i don’t Chris Williamson Think it gets you anywhere you’ve spent a lot of time either creating wealth thinking about how to create wealth what have you learned are the best places to spend wealth to spend wealth Yeah yeah how you spend this time creating this wealth yeah accumulating how does what are the best ways for you to put it back out i actually think elon had this one figured out which is Naval Ravikant He plowed his own money back into his own businesses to go and do bigger and better things for humanity. So what I would like to, you know, you could give it to nonprofits, but a lot of nonprofits are grifty or it’s people who didn’t earn it trying to spend it, or they don’t have tight feedback Loops on having a good effect. So one of the things I want to do as an aside is I want to create a little school for young physicists, but that’s my nonprofit. The young physicists? Yeah, that’s my nonprofit-y thing. And I’ve actually underwritten media and some physics stuff. I don’t like to talk about it. So I don’t talk about my whatever so-called philanthropy because I think that makes it less real. That makes it more status-oriented. It makes it less philanthropic. Yeah, exactly. Look at how charitable my charity is. And then people also come hunting for money. So there’s all that disease. I don’t believe in giving to schools. They have enough money. Ivy Leagues have enough money and they don’t know how to spend it. So I think the best use of money is I think a good business creates a product for people that they voluntarily buy and they get value out of. So in that sense, I think Steve Jobs and Elon and entrepreneurs like that have created a lot of value for the world so one of the things i can do is i can take my own money and i can invest it In myself to go and build the next great thing that i think needs to exist and that’s basically what i’m doing right now i’m doing a new business i’m self-funding it i’m applying a lot of Money into it i’m going to build something that i think is beautiful that i want to see exist i really want to see it exist you’ve spoken about this yet or is it still dark mode? It’s so early. Maybe I’ll show it to you in a few months. Hopefully six months. And I’m excited about it. And that’s a good use of money. What about the worst places to spend wealth? What is the old line? If it flies, floats or fornicates. Chris Williamson Very nice way to change the final F. Very impressive. That’s the way I heard it. I can’t take credit for it. I’m pretty sure it’s Fox, but yeah. Yeah, yeah. Naval Ravikant I think that was, maybe it was Felix Dennis who had that quote. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he said, if it flies, floats, or fornicates, rent it. I think the last one was a little too. It’s wrong that he didn’t have a family, didn’t have kids. So, you know, he missed the big one. But yeah, there are lots of bad ways to spend money. I believe in investment. You know, I don’t believe in consumption. Yes, you’re born with a short housing position. You close that out. You got yourself a nice house. Get yourself some help to free up your time so you’re not doing things that other people can do better treat people well you know always overpay and expect the best pay them like they’re The best and then expect the best but overall i think a good use of money is to take risks and build things and do things that other people can’t do align it with your own unique talents so You can keep delivering to the world. I’m not going to sit idle. I’m not going to retire. That’s a waste of whatever time I have left on this earth. And if I’m doing something I enjoy, then I’m already in perpetual retirement. Because work is just a set of things you want to do that you have to do that you don’t want to do. So if you want to do it, it’s not work. So there are things that I want to do don’t feel like work. I can put money behind them and I can use that to instantiate them into reality. And I don’t want to say make the world a better place because that’s too trite, but it’s more just create a product that I’m proud of that wouldn’t exist otherwise that other people will Get tremendous value. And it’s been enabled through wealth because you’re able to take a level of risk that you wouldn’t have been able to. Exactly. Yeah. Wealth gives you freedom. It gives you freedom to explore more options. And in my case, it gives me freedom to start businesses without having to ask other people for permission or to warp my vision based on their desires to make a return or how they think money Should be made. Chris Williamson Is there anything that you’d add to the how to get rich thread? Is there anything where you thought, fuck, like just one, if I could go in and edit and add one more in or… Naval Ravikant Oh, there’s like 10,000 things. I could talk about that topic forever, to be honest. Like that thread was so short and it was so limited and it was so like, you know, crafted in a sense, although I wrote it very spontaneously. It left so much on the cutting room floor that I could just talk about that topic for days. But it’s all contextual, right? Business is very, very, very contextual. You have to look at the particular business and understand what’s being done and why it’s being done and how it’s being done. And then you can tear it apart and then reassemble it properly. And I like to think that that is actually where I have specific knowledge and expertise. My specific knowledge and expertise is not in happiness, not in philosophy. Yes, my life is very hacked to be very unique, but I don’t think that’s where my specific knowledge is. My specific knowledge is in being able to analyze a business, especially a technology business, and take it apart (Time 2:07:40)
Investing Wealth Wisely
- Invest wealth in high-risk ventures aligned with your talents, creating valuable products.
- Avoid excessive consumption; focus on creating things you’re proud of that benefit others. Transcript: Chris Williamson I don’t think it gets you anywhere you’ve spent a lot of time either creating wealth thinking about how to create wealth what have you learned are the best places to spend wealth to spend Wealth yeah yeah how you spend this time creating this wealth yeah accumulating how does what are the best ways for you to put it back out i actually think elon had this one figured out Naval Ravikant Which is he plowed his own money back into his own businesses to go and do bigger and better things for humanity. So what I would like to, you know, you could give it to nonprofits, but a lot of nonprofits are grifty or it’s people who didn’t earn it trying to spend it, or they don’t have tight feedback Loops on having a good effect. So one of the things I want to do as an aside is I want to create a little school for young physicists, but that’s my nonprofit. The young physicists? Yeah, that’s my nonprofit-y thing. And I’ve actually underwritten media and some physics stuff. I don’t like to talk about it. So I don’t talk about my whatever so-called philanthropy because I think that makes it less real. That makes it more status-oriented. It makes it less philanthropic. Yeah, exactly. Look at how charitable my charity is. And then people also come hunting for money. So there’s all that disease. I don’t believe in giving to schools. They have enough money. Ivy Leagues have enough money and they don’t know how to spend it. So I think the best use of money is I think a good business creates a product for people that they voluntarily buy and they get value out of. So in that sense, I think Steve Jobs and Elon and entrepreneurs like that have created a lot of value for the world so one of the things i can do is i can take my own money and i can invest it In myself to go and build the next great thing that i think needs to exist and that’s basically what i’m doing right now i’m doing a new business i’m self-funding it i’m applying a lot of Money into it i’m going to build something that i think is beautiful that i want to see exist i really want to see it exist you’ve spoken about this yet or is it still dark mode? It’s so early. Maybe I’ll show it to you in a few months. Hopefully six months. And I’m excited about it. And that’s a good use of money. What about the worst places to spend wealth? What is the old line? If it flies, floats or fornicates. Chris Williamson Very nice way to change the final F. Very impressive. That’s the way I heard it. I can’t take credit for it. I’m pretty sure it’s Fox, but yeah. Yeah, yeah. Naval Ravikant I think that was, maybe it was Felix Dennis who had that quote. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he said, if it flies, floats, or fornicates, rent it. I think the last one was a little too. It’s wrong that he didn’t have a family, didn’t have kids. So, you know, he missed the big one. But yeah, there are lots of bad ways to spend money. I believe in investment. You know, I don’t believe in consumption. Yes, you’re born with a short housing position. You close that out. You got yourself a nice house. Get yourself some help to free up your time so you’re not doing things that other people can do better treat people well you know always overpay and expect the best pay them like they’re The best and then expect the best but overall i think a good use of money is to take risks and build things and do things that other people can’t do align it with your own unique talents so You can keep delivering to the world. I’m not going to sit idle. I’m not going to retire. That’s a waste of whatever time I have left on this earth. And if I’m doing something I enjoy, then I’m already in perpetual retirement. (Time 2:09:30)
Trust Your Parenting Instincts
- Trust your instincts with your child; avoid intellectually yet idiot (IYI) science.
- Co-sleeping and natural feeding are historically normal, contrary to some modern advice. Transcript: Naval Ravikant Have to be skeptical you have to look very carefully at you know does it apply in the right context or not does it come from good sources did they run enough high-powered studies are widely Accepted? And there are a whole bunch of things you’re just not supposed to talk about. You’re not supposed to say, like you don’t say, like you can’t say anything negative about a vaccine because God forbid, what if they don’t get the polio vaccine, right? And that’s part of the reason why the recent vaccine debate, because we’ve taken our worship for vaccines too far because we don’t want people to not take non-essential vaccines. So it gets overdone. Same way there’s this whole SIDS thing, sudden infant death syndrome, right? I was like, no, there’s kids don’t suddenly, mysteriously die. Like more likely there was neglect or there was a problem. And then whoever was a caretaker doesn’t want to admit to the problem or didn’t recognize the problem, but kids don’t just spontaneously die in the crib, right? So they talk about swaddling babies. (Time 2:40:33)
Future Predictions
- Modern medicine has limitations, and biology lacks sufficient explanatory theories.
- Naval Ravikant predicts drones will dominate warfare, and GLP-1s are revolutionary drugs. Transcript: Chris Williamson Of it. You mentioned historians before. One of my friends has a question. His equivalent of Peter Thiel’s question of what is it that you believe that most people would disagree with. His is, what do you think is currently ignored by the media but will be studied by historians? Naval Ravikant You’re asking me that question right now? What do I think is ignored by the media but will be studied by historians? Well, I mean, the media is only focused on very timely things, right? So it depends if you want to talk about timely or timeless, right? But as a simple example, if I just look at things that maybe the next five or ten years that are going to make a massive difference that people are not focused enough on and i think within Two years this will be obvious so like the i’m making a prediction and predictions are tough but you’re gonna have to eat it in a few years yeah i’m gonna have to eat this in a few years so I’m probably wrong but uh two things that i pay attention to that i don’t think a lot of people do pay attention to well there’s a couple one is i think just how bad modern medicine is i think People just put a lot more faith in modern medicine than is warranted like our best ideas for a lot of things are surgery just cutting things out right uh treating things that are extraneous Like oh you don’t really need a gallbladder you don’t really need appendix so you don’t really need tonsils. Oh, that’s false. Suplist requirement. Human body is very, very efficient. All those things are needed. You know, so I think the state of modern medicine is still pretty bad. We don’t have many good explanatory theories in biology. We have germ theory disease, we have evolution, we have cell theory, we have DNA, genetics, morphogenesis, embryogenesis, and not much else. You know, there’s not much else. Everything else is rules of thumb, memorization, A affects B because it affects C, affects D, but we don’t understand the underlying explanation. It’s all just words pointing to words, pointing to words. So biology is still in a very sorry state. And because we are not allowed to take risk that might kill people um we just don’t experiment enough in biology so a lot of treatments are just outright banned by large regulatory bodies So we just don’t have the innovation so i think we’re still in the stone age when it comes to biology and we got a long ways to go and i think people will look back aghast at this and i think This is brian johnson’s point he’s like you know let’s’s be more extreme. Let’s try to live forever. It must be more experimental. And I’ll start as end of one and start experimenting on myself. But even there, I disagree with Brian on many things, like, you know, taking huge amounts of supplements. I think we just don’t know what supplements outside of the natural context, like just eat liver, man, right? But it’s fine. And I wouldn’t be vegan either. But, you know, I really appreciate that he’s experimenting. He’s good-natured about it. He shares everything. So we need more people like that. So I think the state of biology, people will look back and say, wow, that was in the dark ages. I think another thing that we’ll look back on is I think we still continue to underestimate how important drones are going to be in warfare. The future of all warfare is drones. There will be nothing else on the battlefield. Because I think of the end state of drones as autonomous bullets, not even guided, autonomous, like they’re self-directed. And so if that’s the future we’re headed towards, and that’s a, it is just- Why would you have an armed force? There’s going to be no, there’s going to be no aircraft carriers, there’s going to be no tanks, there’s going to be no infantrymen. There’s just going to be autonomous bullets by autonomous bullets against your autonomous bullets whichever ones win the other side just surrenders because it’s over um i think that’s The second piece of it i think a a third piece that is going to be uh kind of unexpected is the glp ones which i know you and i privately discussed before i think these are the most breakthrough Drugs since antibiotics um they’re probably more important than statins. They’re sort of miracle drugs. They seem to, there are downsides, but the downside and side effects are so minor compared to the upsides beyond just weight loss. They also seem to be addiction breakers. They seem to lower many kinds of cancer. They almost metabolically reverse aging up to a certain point. And I think they’re going to bend the curve on healthcare costs. And the big question people are going to be asking over the next five years is, why are Americans paying thousands of dollars a month for this when people overseas are getting them for Free? Or I can order them from China for free or whatever. And maybe if I were Bernie Sanders, the platform I would be running on is I would say, okay, we’re going to pay hundreds of billions of dollars to Novo and Eli Lilly, and we’re just going To make these free. Or there’s hundreds of analogs of these things that work. These are not going to be limited to just the few that are being used today. Just take one of them or two of them and make them free. And I think it’ll make a big difference. And as you and I were discussing earlier, this does bend a lot of people out of shape who got there the old fashioned way and they want to see obesity as a moral failing on people’s parts. And it lowers their status if they are suddenly no longer the same. The signal is less of a signal. Correct. Yeah. So they’re incented to say, oh, well, you don’t know the downsides. You know, it’s irresponsible to suggest it’s going to cause cancer. Have fun losing bone and muscle mass. By the way, none of that stuff is really true. The cancer stuff is actually beneficial on. I know people who are now taking these things for anti-aging reasons. They’re already fit, but they just want to age better and have a stronger insulin metabolism. And there’s evidence now that these things are, you know, they put off dementia, Alzheimer’s, colon cancer. It’s insane, cardiovascular disease. The list of benefits is insane. (Time 2:59:00)
Cutting the Past Loose
- Process past trauma to get rid of it, not to dwell on it or create a victim identity.
- Cut your past loose like Alexander cutting the Gordian knot when it hinders your present. Transcript: Chris Williamson I think you have as many reasons as many people to sort of feel hard done by challenges that you had earlier on in your life. Is getting past your past a skill, sort of not being owned today by your history, sort of not having that victimhood mentality? Naval Ravikant Yeah, I did have a tough childhood, but I don’t think about it. I think there are a couple of things going on there. One is I did process it quite a bit. I thought about it, but I thought about it to get rid of it. I didn’t think about it, to dwell on it. I wanted to be successful. I wanted more than anything else to rise past that. And so I couldn’t have that as a burden on me. So I had to get rid of it. So to the extent that I dealt with it, it was for the express purpose of getting rid of it, not to create an identity or story or to reflect upon it or to say, look at me, look at what I’ve accomplished And look how great I am and what I’ve done. So I got rid of it. And I think at some point you wrestle with that thing and then you just realize like you’re never gonna untangle the whole thing. It’s a Gordian knot problem. Like Alexander, you know, found that tangled knot in India and it said, oh, the famous conqueror will come and will untie this knot. Nobody else can untie the knot. And he took one look at it, pulled out a sword and just cut it. So at some point you just have to cut your past. If your past is bothering you, you will eventually get tired of trying to untangle that knot and you will just drop it because you will realize life is short. And the more you have, more you want to accomplish in this life, actually, the less time you have to unravel that thing. So I just wanted to actually get things done. So I had no time to deal with it. So I just cut it. It’s like a really bad relationship. But in this case, it’s a bad relationship with your own history. So you just drop it. (Time 3:08:42)