Kind: captions
Language: en
the following is a conversation with
ryan hall one of the most insightful
minds and systems thinkers in the
martial arts world
he's a black belt in jiu jitsu
accomplished competitor
an mma fighter undefeated in the ufc
and truly a philosopher who seeks to
understand the underlying principles
of the martial arts jiu jitsu is such an
important part of who i am
and i was hoping to share that with
folks who might know me only as a
researcher
i think there's no better person to do
that with than ryan who somehow
remarkably i can say is a friend and
also
a modern day warrior philosopher of the
miyamoto masashi line
of especially dangerous and brilliant
humans
also his amazing wife jen hall
was there as well so if you hear a kind
of voice of wisdom coming from above
you know who it is quick summary of the
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and now here's my conversation with ryan
hall who in your view is the greatest
warrior in history
ancient or modern that's a tough
question and
again i'm no historian by any measure so
i'll probably do the worst
like what are your best bands ever i'm
like metallica and you know so i'll pick
the
material could just come out with a new
album by the way entire
orchestra that's that's kind of cool
yeah them metallica will
will always be one of the greatest yeah
i agree with that example
if they were a well-known yet awesome
band let me say it's like a nickelback
or something like that
but i feel that feels cheap because
everyone makes fun of nickelback yeah i
don't know i guess
it depends on how you want to define
warrior something to think about
when it comes to trying to evaluate
various
people or situations or things that i've
read about or heard about are
with the circumstances that they were
involved in because i think a lot of
times it's easy to look at the outcomes
and obviously outcome we live in an
outcome-driven world and you know
outcomes do matter but at the same time
like uh
you know you look at let's say what
cuba's been able to pull off
you know from a combat sports
perspective it's it's staggering you
know like the amount of
successful olympic level competitors
they have in wrestling boxing judo
um i mean they're a tiny little island
with no money and no people it's
that's shocking you know when you come
you think about the olympics in the
united states doing well of course we
should do well i mean
russia should do well china should do
well india should do
better than they do honestly obviously
it means like they're not into it as
much or at least certain sports
because they have the resources
people-wise um so talent's not going to
be an issue
so there's something to like where the
starting point is like that's the
argument with like uh
what people say maradona i don't know if
you're into it oh yeah big soccer okay
they say mardon is better than messi
because
he basically carried the team and and
won the world cup with the team that
wouldn't otherwise win the world cup
and then messi was only successful in
barcelona because uh
he has like superstars he's playing with
other superstars
right yeah that's fair to say i mean
like like united there's a lot of
factors that go into let's say winning a
winning a soccer game and you know
obviously barcelona you know
particularly for various points in time
had a
ridiculous all-star squad of world-class
players but
um and i you know let's say for instance
maybe they didn't have the creative
players in argentina they needed to get
the ball up to messi
you know they didn't have like the nes
the and you know the
you know the again the backing there in
the midfield but um
because obviously argentina's always had
ridiculous attacking players like even
alongside messi but they're like the
three killers up front and then
a little less behind so it's interesting
you say
that it depends how you define warrior
because you can probably take like
some of the civil rights leaders you can
go into that direction like leaders in
general
but if we just look at like the greatest
martial artist in history in
that direction do you have somebody in
mind i would say at least three
three that pop into my head and um would
be
uh hannibal um alexander the great and
then
maybe miyamoto musashi um you know the
two commanders and then one
you know guy but uh so it's it's
interesting and then
again you mentioned warriors being able
to make a lot out of a little
uh you know musashi's famous for winning
duels you know that were
oftentimes one there were one-on-one you
know the alexander
and hannibal were you know military
commanders and one of them faced rome
and that was an interesting thing
oftentimes you know coming up with novel
tactics
different strategies sometimes under
resourced
doing having to do novel and crazy
things there's skin in the game
that's an interesting thing too i think
a lot of times you know it's uh
if you're playing a video game i don't
think you can be a warrior because
there's
there's no skin in the game you get hurt
you lose and it's a bummer it stings a
little bit maybe it makes you feel
slightly disappointed but uh
you know musashi loses he loses um
hannibal loses he loses alexander loses
he loses and they
lose i guess the people around them lose
so that's almost like uh
you could use even from a combat sports
perspective a muhammad ali i mean you
consider
also their quality of opposition musashi
was fighting high quality opposition
obviously hannibal and al alexander
particularly hannibal were fighting
unbelievable opposition
muhammad ali fought phenomenal
opposition but he had skin in the game
both in the ring and out
and that actually meshes with as you
mentioned like a civil rights you know
type of situation where
you are under resourced you're pushing
the stone uphill
and that was a neat thing i think about
muhammad ali was
how much you know personal conviction
the man had to have in order to pull off
what he was able to pull off both in
in and outside of the ring and that
reminds me of
of again some of the other great leaders
or great fighters throughout history so
what do you make of
the kind of very difficult idea that
some of these conquerors like alexander
the great
and somebody that uh if you listen to
hardcore history
oh dan carlin uh who apparently elon
musk is also a big
fan of is the genghis khan episode
you know a large
percent of the world is uh
is uh we can call genghis khan an
ancestor
so the difficult truth is about some of
these conquerors is that there's a lot
of murder
and rape and pillage and stealing of
resources and all that kind of stuff
and yet they're often remembered as
quite honorable i mean in the case of
genghis khan there's a lot of people who
argue if you look at the
historically the way it's described in
full context
is he was ultimately like a
given the time he was a liberator he was
uh
he was a progressive i should say uh you
know like in terms of
the the violence and the atrocities he
committed
he at least in the stories has always
provided the option
of not to do that it's only if you
resist do
you basically have the option do you
want to join us or do you want to die
and die horribly and so
that's the progressive sort of uh that's
the bernie sanders of the era
nice so uh what do you make of that that
there's just so much
of these great conquerors there's so
much
murder that to us now would just seem
insane
it's funny you mentioned it i think that
maybe it's a human
nature thing that we want to uh or you
know maybe or
maybe a misunderstanding thing that we
want to cast all of our characters
and ourselves maybe as entirely good or
as entirely negative
when you know i guess i was the phrase
or the saying you know one man's freedom
fighter is another person's terrorist
um is accurate and a lot of times i
think
you can understand as long as you're
able to look from various people's
perspective like if you look at
the tv show the wire um which was
obviously you know widely everybody
loves the wire
um i thought that they were everyone i
mean i'm not saying anything that's
that's not been said before compelling
characters from all
angles whether you like the character
dislike the character you were able to
understand the motivations of people
doing various things even if they did
wrongly they did rightly
you know we want to cast all of the the
demons throughout history as as
completely inhuman when i think that
makes it difficult for us to understand
them and we want to look
back at at the people that we think of
as great um
and entirely great and i think that
we're you know we're experiencing
the problems with this you know even
right now socially and politically as
we're trying to look back and decide the
people we thought were good or not good
or people we thought were bad and now
good
rather than going hey there's there's
good and bad to all things and there are
as you mentioned the genghis khan thing
you don't have to fight back
you do i respect you for it but then
we're gonna have a conflict and then
we'll see what happens and if you lose
you're going to be sorry that you did
because i have to make it that way if i
want to continue utilizing this this
kind of mo
because i need to discourage the next
guy from doing what you're doing right
now
and ultimately though i guess that's an
interesting thing imagine you put every
single person on planet earth in a cage
crime drops you know uh all sorts there
are certain positives to that
and i it's just things are as they are
it's difficult but that is ultimately
more the law of the jungle and i think
that we're able to supersede some of
that
now in modern times and i think we're
fortunate
but as you mentioned we look back and
say oh this is horrible
say no that that just is what it is
that's how life
is at a base level and you know again if
you're a lion and i'm a gazelle i don't
i don't really like it very much but we
don't call the lion the bad guy
we don't sanctify the gazelle or the
other way around so it's just it's
interesting when you pull back some of
the controls that we put on
our behavior and you know in modern life
which i think are generally speaking
positive
you know we get down to how things often
are and
at the same time we could modern life
was built by people like genghis khan
so then you get down to the ends just to
find the means it's a tough question
these aren't things with easy answers at
least if they are i certainly don't have
the
the smarts to figure out the answers to
them but uh
it's it's difficult i would just say
people in the world are complicated and
layered and depending upon which side of
the line you're standing on at various
times
you know um you may like or dislike
someone but i can't remember uh
it's i can't remember who's whose idea
was this is killing me but it's the veil
of ignorance i guess
um the philosophical you know um you
know idea of the veil of ignorance where
i go is
is sticking everyone in the cage the
right thing to do when i say or everyone
but me and i say well
no why well it would make my life easier
if i just went over and took all of your
stuff as long as you couldn't stop me
i mean of course that's a great idea
that's what everyone does in every video
game but uh in skyrim you steal stuff
when people aren't around
but um ultimately you go well this isn't
the right thing to do because if i were
on the other side of it
i would i would not appreciate it it's
it's inherently not a good thing to do
i'm only doing it because i think i'm
going to win and that's a fine way to be
but you don't have the white hat on i
guess i would say so
i think without those philosophical
underpinnings to reign us in
you know i guess morally speaking it's
very difficult to say what's right or
wrong and
you'd say certain actions have a
reaction almost like a physics sense
if you kill everyone in your way for as
long as you're able to
your life will be easier i mean you're
setting the table for someone doing the
same to you when you're no longer the
tough guy but
it is what it is yeah if you look at
like the instagram channel
nature's metal it hurts my heart to
watch
to remind me a comfortable descendant of
ape how vicious nature is
just unapologetically
uh just i mean there's a there's a
process to it
where the bad guy always wins
the the violence
is the solution to most problems or
the flip side of that running away from
violence is the solution depending on
your skill set
and it's funny to think of us humans
with our extra little
piece of brain that we're somehow trying
to figure out
like you said in the philosophical way
how to supersede that how to like move
past the viciousness the cruelty
the just the cold
exchange of nature but perhaps it's not
so
maybe that is nature maybe that's the
way of life maybe we're trying too hard
to uh we're being too
egotistical and thinking we're somehow
separate from nature we're somehow
distant from that very thing
i couldn't agree with him more in fact i
think actually orson scott card you know
who's the writer of a great book called
anders game
um was this was a statement that the
main character
you know ender uh made in the book his
brother was
brilliant um his brother was like kind
of sociopathic brilliant kid
that was ended up kicked out of the
school that they were all into for
battle commander
dealing with his brother taught him that
ultimately strength courage
the ability to do violence for all the
good and the bad of that is
one of the fundamental most important
things to be able to do in life because
if you can't cause destruction if you
can't cause pain
you will be forever subject to those who
can and i think that you mentioned
egotism i think that that's a disease
that could
obviously strike any of us but it's
something that we're looking at now
we're
you know i think we should be
unbelievably thankful as people that
live
in the world that we do um that we can
walk down the street
without having to worry that i'm like
well don't worry that that six foot six
270 pound person over there
is just gonna leave me alone and i have
a rolex on but whatever
i'll be fine because that person's
deciding to leave me alone because we've
all agreed to live in this relatively
you know sane and or you know
constrained society because it benefits
all of us and we're doing it because of
a philosophical underpinning
not because nature dictates it be that
way because nature dictates it go in a
very very different direction and the
only person the only thing stopping that
person from doing something to me
is either me that person or someone else
that will stand in between us
and if i can't do it and there's no one
there to stand in between us
then the only thing stopping that person
is that person and i have to hope that
they're
either disinterested or disinclined to
do that sort of thing and i think that
uh
you know it's keeping in mind that that
that is the fundamental
nature of the world whether we like it
or not um
is important and i think the the quest
to
fundamentally alter human nature is
going to be ultimately fruitless and
then also it's
it is a little bit egotistical the lion
does what a lion does
you know we we can try to box it in and
we can try to you know
guide this direction that direction but
you know
nature is as it is and as it always will
be unless we want to start to
constrain it significantly but now i'm
starting to get into individual rights
who put me in charge who says that i
should be the one to make the choice is
constraining because many of the most
awful things that have happened
throughout history one group or one
person has decided to constrain others
and we don't like genghis khan doing
that well i'll do that on a little level
are there going to be beneficial
benefits and beneficiaries absolutely
but
there'll be losers in that too so i
guess it's a it's a dangerous game it's
almost like putting on the one ring you
know we remember when frodo offered the
one ring to gandalf
and gandalf said no no i would take it
away i would put it on
i would use it out of the desire to do
good but through me it would wheel the
power so terrible you can't imagine
i think that's that's the big question
for anyone that decides
that's able to have reach and able to
have power
i mean obviously i can't speak to that
but imagine you did have
national level global level power how
would you use it
would you try to change the world would
you be glad that you did down the line
i don't know yeah there's uh i mean
that's the thing we're struggling now as
a society maybe it'd be nice to get your
quick comment on that which is um the
people who have traditionally been
powerless
are now you know seeking a fairer
society a more
equal society and
in in attaining more power
justly there's also
a realization at least from my
perspective that
power corrupts everyone even if you're
even if the flag you wave is that
of of justice right
and so you know not to overuse the term
but it'd be nice
if you have thoughts about the whole
idea of cancer culture and
the internet and and twitter and so on
where there's
on nuance difficult discussions of uh
of race of gender of
fairness equality justice all these
kinds of things
there's a shouting down oftentimes of
nuanced discussion
of kind of trying to
reason through these very difficult
issues through our history through what
our future looks like
do you have thoughts about the internet
discourse that's going on now
is there something positive yeah i mean
we can pull out of this
it's an interesting thing to see i guess
as you mentioned
anytime you're wielding power whomever
you are
doing so carefully is is important and
it's very very easy to look at the
people that have power
and that are using it poorly or have
used it poorly and go hey you're the bad
guy
and then go well of course if i had
power i'll use it properly and i may
intend to use it properly and maybe i
will
but at the same time we see
a lot of times people are people are
people i think that
a lot of the i think if you if you
believe that that
human beings are all one which i do you
know no matter whether you're here
you're there you're you're
you got two arms two legs a heart a
brain if we all live a similar
experience
you know and obviously with variations
on a theme but uh
you know you're no less a human being if
you're a person i've never met from
china than than
some person in virginia it's we're all
we're all people and i guess
ultimately if i believe that human
beings are corruptable and that power
corrupts and that we're all fallible and
we say
and do things that either intentionally
or unintentionally
um that we wish we'd not um
i think that i have to allow for a
space i guess with the word it's almost
a religious term but i guess i would
just say grace
and that's something that i see
disappearing from discourse in the
public or maybe it wasn't there i'm not
sure but it's interesting you know
watching this occur
on the internet because also now no
longer are you and i just having a talk
sitting on a
on a bus stop it's now in writing
everything's in writing the old the old
saying like don't put that in writing
you're like don't put anything in
writing that's how you get in trouble
and basically uh you know with with the
degree to which everything is recorded
but recorded in tiny little bytes it's
very very easy for me to wave
every less little foolish ignorant
incorrect or correct thing
that someone has ever said or done in
their face to support whatever
argument that i'm trying to make about
them or a situation
and i think that you mentioned cancel
culture or
you know as it seems to exist obviously
this is poisonous on its face this is
poisonous
um it's it's the sort of thing that
doesn't incentivize
proper behavior i mean you look at let's
say one of the great monsters
of history adolf hitler obviously who's
done
awful awful things but also for anyone
that's even a minor student of history
did some positive things as well
we don't have to i don't have to
embroider this person's crimes i don't
have to
act as if there was nothing good a
monster has ever done and
nothing bad that that a great person
throughout history has ever done
but imagine the ghost of adolf hitler
were to pop up and go
oh my gosh guys i'm so sorry i i know
what i've done
but i'd like to apologize and start to
make it right well i mean you'd hope
that you
you know if he popped up over here you
go well i don't really like what you've
done
and i don't like you but at the same
time i'm glad to hear that you're
attempting to
make this right and push in a positive
direction even if you can't make it
right because otherwise
what am i doing i'm disincentivizing
change for the better
i'm i'm looking to wield whatever power
i have in a punitive fashion
um which does not encourage people to do
anything other than double down
on on the wrongs that they've made
knowing that at least they're going to
have some
support from the people that support
that and i guess i want to
you you hopefully look at the use of the
internet as a tool that can
educate and i guess i don't like the
word empower but empower people to do
various things extend their reach
but uh but educate and learn rather than
to further solidify
little tribal things that exist which i
think everyone in humanity and
human history is is vulnerable to me
look at the course of human history it's
deeply tribal
and the tribes or the groups that have
been on top at various points in time
have done
a lot of times bad things to the ones
that have not and
you'd hope that we could learn lessons
from the past and rather than
you know committing the crimes that were
you know that were committed
against us recommitting them when we
slide into the top position
um say you know i could do this now but
i'll not you know i understand the urge
to
to seek vengeance is strong of anyone
that says differently i don't i wouldn't
trust
you know but at the same time we go i've
we we have enough experience in history
enough experience in life enough
hopefully wisdom you know time in to go
this isn't the right answer
this is only going to replay the things
the the worst parts of our history not
the best
and i want to encourage positive
behavior and if i just
again further lash out at people
although understandably
done done understandably i'm simply just
going to just perpetuate the cycle
that's gone on to this point
so you hope that even though we're
seeing a lot of a lot of turmoil
societally at the moment and globally at
the moment that uh
i guess our better angels can prevail at
a certain point but it's going to take a
great deal of leadership and i think
that we're
we're sorely missing like a martin
luther king style character at the
moment or a great leader
and i just i'm hoping that one will show
up
for sure and by the way a word i don't
hear often and i think it's a beautiful
one which is grace
that's a really interesting word i'm
gonna have to think about that it is
there is a religious component to it but
it's exactly right
it um you have to somehow walk the line
between you know you mentioned hitler
i've been reading uh the rise and fall
of the third reich
i'm really thinking about the 1930s
and what it's like to have economic
my concern is the economic pain that
people are feeling now
quietly is really a suffering
that's not being heard and there's
echoes of that
in the in the 20s and the 30s with the
great depression
and there's a hunger for a charismatic
leader like you said there's a leader
that
could walk with grace could inspire
could uh
could bring people together with uh with
sort of uh
dreams of a better future that's
positive
but hitler did exactly everything that i
just said except for the word positive
which is he did give a dream to the
german people who were
great people who are great people of um
of a better future it's just that
a certain point that quickly turned into
the better future requires
literally expansion of more land
it started with well if we want to build
a great germany
we need a little bit more land and so we
need to kind of
get austria then we need to kind of get
france mostly because france doesn't
understand that more land is really
useful so we need to get rid of them and
look what they did to us in versailles
anyway
but so the jew the jewish uh
the holocaust is a separate
thing i don't know well i don't know i
don't know what to think about
because uh so me being jewish and having
a lot of
the echoes of the suffering is in my
family
or the people that are lost i don't know
because hitler wrote all about it in
mineconf so i don't know
if the evil he committed was there all
along
i mean and that that's where the
question of forgiveness
i mean hitler's such a difficult person
to talk about but it's the question of
on cancer culture
who is deserving of forgiveness and
who's not
like the holocaust survivors that i've
read about that i've heard the
interviews with
they've often spoken about the fact that
the way for them to let go to overcome
the atrocities that they've experienced
is to forgive like forgiveness
is the way out for them it's interesting
to think about i don't know i don't know
if
i don't know if we're even a society
ready to even contemplate
an idea of forgiveness for hitler it's
it's an interesting idea though
it was it's a good thought exercise at
the very least
to think about like all these people
that are being canceled
for doing bad things of different
degrees
think of like louis ck or somebody like
that for being
not a good person but like what is the
path for forgiveness
so what's a good person what is the good
part if that's a sliding scale
that we could all find ourselves looking
at the
uncomfortable end of a gun on you know
particularly down the line i mean you
hope for the best but
these definitions i guess like you said
are important and who's doing the
canceling who's being canceled i'm not
necessarily as you said
saying that that's entirely unjustified
or certainly not
it's certainly understandable and
particularly you mentioned like a
monster like an adolf hitler but it's
also interesting i couldn't help but
notice like
you mentioned as a society us being able
to apply forgiveness to someone who's
done so much horror
but people who are personal i'm of
course many so many people in person
affected but directly personally
affected someone a survivor of the
holocaust
being able to let go on that i'm nowhere
near big enough a person for that sort
of thing
but i guess that's that's an interesting
thing
you know being the person who was
physically there
potentially able to able to let go
i don't know that's that's unbelievably
powerful it's interesting i guess you
have to wonder sometimes
and this isn't obviously in regards to
that to the holocaust but
why why i'm holding on to various things
am i
what is it doing for me and what is it
doing to me is it facilitative is it not
and i guess that's something else that i
i really enjoy when i was on ultimate
fighter
they uh they don't let you have any
music or any books other than religious
text so i brought a bible and i brought
a quran and i started to read them
side by side and it was it was really
interesting reading the bible's a little
drier
quran's the crown is more interesting at
least written but um
i i think something that that was
consistently brought up uh
was the way the
most merciful people want i don't think
any of us want justice
we think we want justice but i don't
think we want justice justice is a
dangerous dangerous dangerous game
because maybe this person's wronged me
deeply and i i want justice i want to
balance it out because what is justice
is not a balancing of the scales
and sometimes you can understand it on a
societal level i think it's fine i mean
there's
crime and punishment we can go for the
benefits and the drawbacks of that but
i think what any of us want is mercy
within reason
you know grace as you mentioned because
justice is a very very very dangerous
thing
and it's a valuable and important thing
but who gets to decide what's just
what justice is actually meted out maybe
i get to meet out justice but it's not
i don't get my comeuppance well that
sounds great but what happens when it's
pointed back at me
and uh i guess that comes back to the
veil of ignorance
you know the idea that that one day i
will have to live in the world in which
i've envisioned
the world in which i've created i i
think that a lot of times people love
the idea of uh
they're a judge for your crimes and a
lawyer for theirs and
i heard that the other day i thought it
was great and uh i think that's it
that's a
dangerous thing and hopefully it gives
us all pause before rightly or wrongly
but always understandably you know
wielding wielding
serious power yeah justice is a kind of
drug so if you look at history
also been reading a lot about stalin i
mean all those
folks really i don't know i don't know
what was inside hitler's head actually
that he's a tricky one
because i think he was legitimately
insane stalin was not
and stalin was like he literally thought
he's doing a good
thing he literally thought for the
entirety of the time
that communism is going to bring like
that's the utopia
and he's going to create a happy world
and in his in his mind were ideas of
justice of fairness of happiness of of
uh
yeah human flourishing and that's that's
a drug
and it somehow sadly pollutes the mind
when you start thinking like that what's
good for society
and believing that you have a good sense
of what's good for society
that's intoxicating especially when
others around you are feeling the same
way
and then you start like building up this
movement and you forget
that you are just like a you're you're
like
barely recently evolved from an ape like
you don't know what the hell you're
doing
and then you start like killing witches
or whatever like you start
you start doing they did math let's be
honest though i mean sometimes you got a
witch has to go
yeah we can all agree there which which
has to go if
if it floats or sinks which one i forget
which which
whichever one we need at the time
honestly it's floating it should have
sunk
uh yeah but yeah we can definitely agree
that we just have to go
because you brought it up i uh tweeted
recently but
also just i'm one of the things i'm
really ashamed of in my life is
i haven't really read almost any of the
sci-fi classics
really yeah so like i my whole journey
through reading was through
like the
literary philosophers that would say
like camus jesse dostoevsky
kafka like that place like that's a kind
of sci-fi world
in itself but it's it just
it creates a world in which the
the deepest questions about human nature
can be explored
i didn't realize this but the sci-fi
world is the same it just puts it in a
it like
removes it from any kind of historical
context where you can explore those same
ideas
in like space somewhere elsewhere in a
different time a different place
it allows you almost like more freedom
to like construct these
artificial things where you can just do
crazy
uh crazy kind of human experiments so
i'm now
working through it uh the books on my
list
are the foundation series by isaac
asimov
dune snow crash
by neil stephenson and ender's game like
you mentioned
that's just kind of and then so i posted
that and then of course like
elon musk john uh carmack i don't know
if you know him creator of doom and
quake
oh cool so see they all pitched in these
nerds
these ultra nerds just started like
going like did these
uh do you need to read this that and and
the other so
i've like started working out okay but
it seems like the list i've mentioned
holds up somewhat is there a book is
there
sci-fi books or series or
authors that that you find
are just amazing maybe another way to
ask that is like
what's the greatest sci-fi book of all
time well i'd like to start by
sharing something that i i'm embarrassed
about is that i haven't read anything
other than uh you know orson scott card
j.r tolkien uh frank herbert tolkien
yeah dude
yep yeah yeah i'm aware through
wikipedia
and uh through through surface reading
of things that like a book called the
republic was written once
um yeah there were some other
motherboards
you're uh a prolific reader of wikipedia
articles well
or occasionally
uh whatever else it is that i waste my
time on but but yeah so
i also i should say i posted on reddit
questions
for uh ryan hall and there's like a
million questions
but like uh half of them have to do with
dune no not really but like
people bring up doom i don't understand
why i did you mentioned doom before
well i actually actually have a showy
roll actually made us a ghee a dune
themed ghee one time which i thought was
kind of cool i'll send you i'll give you
one we got extras
but uh actually to your to your point
actually this is a orson scott card
quote actually the writer of bender's
game um fiction because it's not about
somebody who actually lived in the real
world
always has the possibility of being
about oneself
and i think that's a neat thing because
i i have heard you know
other very people whom i respect and
very sharp people
actually every now and then dig their
heels and go i don't like fiction i only
like non-fiction it's more it's more
instructive and i would go
i completely disagree with that i think
we have a hard enough time figuring out
what happened at 7 11
three hours ago that let me tell you
what happened 600
years bc i'm like hey i'm interested but
don't tell me this isn't a story too
yeah there's a there's there's actu
there's factual components i have no
doubt
but we struggle sometimes to like i
guess what i like about
fiction is that you can tell me a story
it's all about people
i mean every night there's more and less
believable things um and i think dune
would be an unbelievably well written
in my opinion for to run you know what
do i know but i really like doing i'll
say that
uh well-written example of you know
human beings interacting with one
another the
political component to that the
emotional the intellectual
the relationship components all of that
and uh i i think that dune is neat
because it's a sci-fi novel but only in
the
only in the loosest sense it's it's
really a story about
religion about group dynamics about
human potential
about um belief learning
politics governance ecology
it's uh the best stories remind me
of history the same way history
hopefully is not just a a list of facts
that i try to be able to recall
or factoids that i try to recall but a
story
that i can understand and and see how
how the threads of
time kind of came together and created
certain things and a lot of times like
we say i'm like uh how the heck is
what's going on right now or a hundred
years from now or a hundred years in the
past happened
and you can look back far enough if we
had accurate knowledge
if we had that like that hypothetical
perfect pool shot you know
at the beginning of time we would see an
unbroken chain of events that led us to
where we are
and and where we are will potentially
lead us to where we're going which is
again why hindsight's helpful but i
think it's neat like
i guess i really enjoy for instance a
book like dune and they're actually
making a movie out of it which i'm
i'm skeptical of to be honest because
it's it's going to be difficult to bring
that to the screen for a variety of
reasons but
there's at least 100 questions ask ryan
what do you think's about the new dune
movie i am not enough of an authority to
have any sort of decent opinion but i
guess what i would say is so much of it
goes on in the character's mind like how
much of any of our
day is any lived experience as it were
is internal
the majority how many times are people
walking around and you know they can you
could
like hey what do you see right now i'm
like oh well i see this picture i see a
wall hey there's lex
but really what what i was paying
attention to was what was going on
inside of my head for a moment and
almost the rest of the world
tuned out and kind of dimmed and uh
yeah i guess um that i think that's
going to be a struggle to
to any time you want to bring that type
of a written story to
to a visual medium i think it's going to
be more difficult but
it'll it'll be interesting it's
definitely my one of my favorite stories
and it's been
it's honestly helped me become better at
life in my opinion better the martial
arts
and i think the the writer i think frank
herbert was absolutely brilliant whether
those were all his ideas which in
reality none of us or all of our good
ideas aren't ours we're a combination
maybe came up with something you're a
curator of other good ideas and
some things you borrowed from somewhere
without even realizing it but uh
i think the the way the messages and the
themes and the ideas that were conveyed
particularly in the original novel or
just
absolutely brilliant is that the is that
to you
one of the greats and and the flip side
of that like or
another way to ask that is like if
somebody's new to sci-fi is that
something you would recommend
that that is an entry point i'm not well
read enough in this sci-fi world i
haven't written a lot of like isaac
asimov or anything like that but
i just i'll recommend dune i'll be an
obnoxious like evangelist for dune to
anyone who'll listen
okay so i yeah i would strongly
recommend it so the other thing you
mentioned
now i should probably be talking to you
about much more important things but
the other thing you mentioned is skyrim
uh do you play video games what's your
favorite game what's
what would you say is the greatest video
game of all time because i'm a huge fan
of elder scrolls oh
yeah i mean i play a little bit um at
this point
you know a little little less uh finally
moved into a new house so
you're like an adult no no no no i'm
like a better funded 12 year old
yeah that's yeah that's entirely that's
entirely accurate better funded 12 year
old
but um somewhat better funded
12-year-old not as well-funded as i wish
but historically did you play video
games oh yeah i played as a kid i was
you know again i've always liked playing
sports and and liked reading
and i always enjoy video games but my
favorite video game i think i've ever
played was uh
nicely the old republic um it was a star
wars game a huge star wars fan until
it became less so so recently disney
um you don't like the i haven't watched
it yet oh my
my delorean oh dog oh i actually like
mandalorian that was that was actually
pretty good yeah
waving this off yeah yeah i will if i
could cancel
one thing i would cancel disney store
i'm gonna edit that part out okay let's
go to the next
but uh this is where if people are
wondering if you're watching this on
youtube
and like the dislike amount is like 80
percent it's because of that comment so
good job good job for making the
internet hey nothing now what about
uh baby yoda yeah i guess
like he's little he's got ears and he
uses the force sometimes and he passes
out again
no qualms with baby yoda yeah you don't
have a heart okay
i the let's go to jiu jitsu if it's okay
uh so the audience of this podcast may
not
know much about jiu jitsu or they do
because it's really part of the culture
now but they don't
really know much they see that so many
people have fallen in love with it have
been transformed through it but they
don't know much about like
what is this thing is there a way you
could sort of
try to explain the what is jiu jitsu
what is the essence of this martial art
that's
captured the minds and hearts of so many
people in the world
i think that jiu jitsu is is a
philosophy
that's expressed physically and that
it's
the kind of development of the in mental
capacity and physical capacity working
in
unison to uh
move efficiently and
almost flowingly unresistantly um
with with a given situation with a with
or physically resisting opponent
um learning how to generate force on
your own and how to steal force from the
floor how to steal force from the other
person and move in concert with it as
opposed to clash against which if you
watch
two untrained people fight it's almost
entirely a clash it's a runaway and
clash or run away and clash
um if you watch jiu jitsu done well
it's it looks like water moving around a
solid structure
and and i think that that is expressed
physically and i think that all of the
things
that anyone have really been able to do
very very well in jiu jitsu end up
kind of exemplifying that but i think
that's true of martial arts in general
i think that a lot of times like the
clashing that we see going on
um and working well is just the fact
that you know you get
very very physically powerful people
every now and then they're able to get
away with this but i don't think that
that's and that's that's fantastic
because ultimately it's a results-driven
thing but
i think that the essence of the martial
arts is learning how to make more out of
less and how to move with
and be yielding almost like real life
aikido
and uh so you think of martial arts uh
jiu jitsu
as uh like water
or flowing so aikido so moving around
the the force as opposed to
sort of maybe the wrestling mindset is
finding a leverage where you can apply
an exceptional amount of force
so like it's like maximizing the
application of force i guess maybe
that's a better way to i'd like to marry
the two ideas you know because i think
you flow until the point at which
you are the greater force at which point
in time you can apply
but uh if you look at the best wrestlers
and when i say best i don't necessarily
mean most successful although of course
most successful are always very very
good
um throughout the course of history in
boxing in
wrestling in judo they're magical
they they disappear and reappear it's
like fighting a ghost that that
is like incorporeal when you want to
find it but then when you don't want to
find it
when you don't want to find it it finds
you and i i think that we see that
in the like the bouvie source citatives
of wrestling
um and you know i guess you could look
at uh floyd mayweather or willie pep
or you know pernell whitaker in boxing
um as brilliant examples of
disappearing and reappearing and when
you're strong it's almost like gorilla
warfare
when you're strong i'm nowhere to be
found when you're weak you can't get rid
of me
and i think that's what we're looking
for yeah the tear brothers are
incredible at that they just they
they look like uh skinny starbucks
baristas
and uh they just manhandle
everybody like effort effortlessly they
look like they just kind of woke up
rolled out of bed go fighting for like
the
the gold medal at the olympics and just
effortlessly throw
uh like there's a match against you i
guess yo romero
yeah so like you you know if you look at
like who is the guy
who's like intimidating in this case uh
and the terrifying looking
it's uh it's joe romero just like
a physical specimen and obviously like a
super accomplished wrestler
i think this is for the gold medal yeah
in 2008
2000 yeah sydney and then there this is
the year you all took silver
and what you like just to just show you
like there's a
inside trip effortless gucci and
he does it again
you know it's a really creative kind of
wrestling where
it's organic yeah you're throwing all
these kinds of things this is a mix of
judo a mix of
like weird kind of moves it's not like
as funky as uh ben askren it's
it's just like legitimate basic
well it's not funky for funky's sake and
i'm not poking right then asking
to imply that that's what he's doing but
it's like it's it's funny it's like a
lot of times it's almost like a musashi
talked a lot about that you know that
the only goal of combat is
to win is the the outcome is it's
outcome driven versus like flourishing
you know cool looking movements it's
like unless that had a utilitarian
purpose like what are you wasting your
time with that
both in the fight and also you know in
practice
but but as you mentioned it's almost
like it looks like judo it looks like
wrestling it looks like jiu jitsu it's
almost like i guess
reminds me all of the martial arts is
again deeply tribal as well i
i want to learn lex friedman martial
arts and then i want to learn
another you know i gues