Ryan Hall: Solving Martial Arts from First Principles | Lex Fridman Podcast #169

The following is a conversation with Ryan hall, his second time in the podcast. He's one of the most innovative scholars of martial arts in the modern era. Quick mention of our sponsors, indeed hiring Website Audible Audiobooks, ExpressVPN and Element Electrolyte Drink. Click the sponsor links to get a discount and to support this podcast. As a side note, let me say that I've gotten a chance to train with Ryan recently and to both discuss and try out on the mat his ideas about grappling and fighting. What struck me is his unapologetic drive to solve martial arts. It reminds me of the ambitious vision and effort of Google's deep mind to solve intelligence. In Ryan's case, this isn't some out there martial arts guru talk. This is a style of thinking about the game of human chess, of seeking to define the rules and to engineer ways to from first principles of escaping the constraints of those rules. This style of thinking is rare, but is ultimately the one that leads to the discovery of new revolutionary ideas. If you enjoy this podcast, subscribe to it anywhere or connect with me at Lex Friedman. And now here's my conversation with Ryan Hall.

You're known as a systems thinker in martial arts, but you are also, I think, are willing to think outside the rules of the game, outside of the system. When you're thinking about strategies of how to, you know, solve the problem, particular problem of an opponent, whether that's jiu jitsu or in mixed martial arts. What's your process for doing that, for figuring out that puzzle?

I would say I don't know if I have a specific like A to B to C process for that sort of thing. I try to do my best to appreciate that. I think a lot of the thinking, or maybe not all the thing, but a lot of great thinking on conflict, on battle, on war, on martial arts has been done already. Not that we don't have to do any sort of background investigation or reassessing of these ideas or axioms that have come down through things like the Book of Five Rings or the Art of War or you know, like von Clausewitz even anything like that really, but is trying to understand the lessons of the past that I think oftentimes we don't take with us problem solving. We pay lip service. And like, you know, a victorious fighter, the great fighter, you know, he knows victory is there, then he, then he, then he seeks battle. Everyone else is looking for victory in battle. Yeah, moving on. And that's why I'm going to double jab and throw my left hand and I think a lot of times our actions don't reflect our stated belief structure. And I think that oftentimes you can tell what I believe really, or what my fundamental operating system is based on my actions, whether I'm aware I have an operating system internally, whether I'm aware of it or not, or certainly whether I'm fully aware of it. So I guess when it comes to strategy, I try to think about how things interact. You mentioned systems thinking. And I try to do my best to understand how systems exist, but I think that systems have a fundamental strength and a fundamental weakness. They work how they work, and that's great, but they're readable. So if you are aware, if I am operating on a system of which you're not really read into, then I think oftentimes I can seem like shockingly effective, particularly if my system preys on certain weaknesses that. That maybe you are. You're given to. But what happens when you've read the same books that I have? I think that a lot of times that makes me deeply predictable. I think about systems in Jiu jitsu, you know, and a lot of times people think that they're doing Jiu jitsu, when in reality they are doing an expression of it. Let's say I'll use. There's the Marcelo Garcia system. There is the current Henzo Grace system. There's the old Gracie Baja one. There is, you know, the Gracie Academy Classic Gracie Jiu Jitsu. There's the Art of Jiu Jitsu, you know, kind of ATOS approach. And, you know, there's some crossover between a lot of these. But oftentimes, I think, you know, when it comes to understanding how I'm making decisions and how my opponent is making decisions, I have to appreciate whether or not I'm an end user of something. And I'll use my. My phone as an example. I was thinking of this the other day, and as an end user of my phone, I can't. I have no idea what it does. You know, like, Edward Snowden comes up and goes, hey, guys, you realize your phones are listening to you? I'm like, really?

What?

Yeah, all right, I believe you. And then, of course, that. That comes out. But to what extent I have no idea. What is my phone capable of? I have no idea. I can mess with the font, though. I really like blue screens, not purple screens. So, like, as an end user, I can change some of the bells and whistles that have nothing to do with the underlying source code of it all or how it functions the same way in my car, I'm an end user of my car. If I do this with the steering wheel, it goes. If I push on the gas, it goes. If I. I know how to fix it when it's out of gas. I know how to fix it when it's out of oil, and I know how to fix it, you know, when. When a flat tire comes. But short of that or actually beyond that, I have nothing. So I think that oftentimes, you know, I've been around in jiu jitsu long enough to encounter, like, a new wave of, like, good grapplers. And it's very, very interesting sometimes how they're running systems they don't realize they're running. Like, I'm like, oh, yeah. I trained at Marcelo Garcia's academy for a long time, you know, and a big fan of Marcelo's student there. Encountered a lot of the. The Otto style jiu jitsu a number of years ago. Been, you know, a very, very, you know, deep into foot locking and leg attacks and whatnot for a long, long. I understand your system better than you do, or I may, and let's say you understand my system better than I do. That would be a huge issue. That was something that I encountered a long time ago trying to come up in jiu jitsu, where I was trying to utilize systems that were created by, let's say, Hoffa Mendez or someone else. And I'm basically trying to do what you're doing. I'm just not doing as good of a version of it. So not only am I not doing it well, but I'm entirely predictable. And I think that that can be a big issue. So there's to come back. I think of systems a lot of times now in terms of, you know, particularly like end user type of systems, like an iPhone is a really, really fast way for me to be able to do all sorts of things. If you were to take it from me, I couldn't recreate any of that.

So you want to be more the NSA and less the end user.

Exactly, exactly. That way. That way.

I'm listening to the NSA of combat.

That's right. We're watching you pee. But basically, you know, it's. I guess what I would come back and say is if you understand how things interact on a fundamental level and what type of games exist and what type of interactions exist, then you can transcend a lot of the systems. It's almost like a cook versus. If I can make certain things in the kitchen, but I am not a chef, you could give me A bunch of ingredients. And I could probably cook not well, but a couple of different things. But a master chef would be aware of the implications of all of the things that they're doing. Extra time in the oven, less time in the oven, putting this, you know, flavoring or spice in, you know, what you're doing with various things. And also they could make. They could turn all of these ingredients into Chinese food. They could turn all these ingredients into Italian food, and they could turn all these Italian food ingredients into chicken parmesan, or it could turn into lasagna. But they're not limited to a specific thing because they have knowledge of how food interacts, what it does to create taste, what it does create texture. So to come back, let's take rock, paper, scissors. Rock paper Scissors is built on the idea of a couple of different things, actually. I'll tell you what. Can I. You might. May I ask you a question?

Yeah.

What's your favorite dinosaur? On the same, on three, we'll go 1, 2, 3.

T. Rex.

T. Rex. Oh, me too. No, man, this is. We're going to be best friends, so it's okay if. So what's the first question when you say, hey, let's play rock, paper, scissors is like, is it rock, paper, scissors or rock, paper, scissors, shoot? And you're like, rock, paper, scissors, shoot. You're like, okay, because if we go, rock, paper, scissors, shoot. And I'm like, oh, man, I got lucky and I won. Imagine I won 100 times in a row. Yeah, I'd be luck. It'd be luck if I was honestly doing that. But now, let's say, for instance, I go on rot, paper, scissors. And you go on shoot. Rock, paper, scissors, shoot. Here comes the rock. Right. If you lose, whose fault is it? It's yours. This is built on a parody thing where I don't get to pick second. If I get to pick second, it's like being able to investigate your background before going to meet you. And then I'm like, oh, hi. Oh, I too, love the New Jersey. You know, the New Jersey Nets, which. A statement that no one in their right mind would ever make when I was growing up. So anyway, you'd have to have personal knowledge of somebody. So anyway, to come back, if you understand how games are structured, you can start to realize that there's huge gaps and huge holes in a lot of the thinking behind all of it. And if you can create the illusion of choice, I'll play one more, if you don't mind. This is one of my favorite ones. Do this in class all the time. Have you seen this before? No. Okay, may I ask you some questions, please?

Sure.

Okay, Fantastic.

I'm scared.

Everybody wins. Don't worry. All right, so could you please.

I win.

Could you please pick three fingers and tell me what they are?

Your thumb.

Okay.

Your pinky.

Okay.

And your middle finger.

Okay. So could you please pick two fingers?

Your middle finger and your pinky.

Okay. Could you please pick one finger?

I'll go with the middle finger.

Woohoo. Okay, could you please pick one finger?

Pinky.

Okay, let's play again. Can you pick one finger, please?

Your middle finger.

Okay. Can you pick one finger, please?

Your thumb. Yeah. Your pinky.

Okay. Now pick two more fingers, please.

Your middle finger and your ring finger.

Okay. Could you please pick one more finger?

Damn it.

So I thought that.

And hence the illusion of choice.

It's the illusion of choice if I'm asking the questions. Provided I ask the right questions, there can be no correct answer. Doesn't mean that ultimately, if. If that's what you wanted. Let's say, like, I thought I was guiding you to something I wanted. It turns out that was the outcome you wanted. Let's. Now. Let's. Here's. Now I'm gonna ask the wrong questions. I might not get what I want. Oh, by.

By the way. Sorry to interrupt. For people that might be just listening to this, that no matter what trajectory we took through that decision tree that Ryan was presenting, it was always ending up with a middle finger. Ironically enough, I was surprised.

So.

And all of us were surprised. We're both winners.

Yeah, we all. Everyone.

I felt like a winner.

All right, so now. Now I'm gonna. Now I'll ask some different questions, if you don't mind. Can you please pick two fingers to put down?

Your middle finger and your pinky. Or it's like.

Oh, that's so awkward. That's like the worst finger position. Okay, can you please pick. Wait a minute, That's. Oh, hold on. Yeah, well, what if you pick two other fingers to put down?

You're throwing your pinky.

Okay, my thumb on my pinky. Can you please pick two fingers to put down? Well, whatever two you like.

Okay. Your middle finger and your pointy finger. Ah.

Okay. Can you pick two fingers to put down? What's the name? Is index finger, index finger One. That's the one we usually point. It's weird to point with the ring finger.

Sorry.

What's two more to put down, please?

The middle finger and the ring finger.

Ah, man. Is it. What if you Pick my. My ring finger and my index finger.

Yeah.

I win.

Yeah.

So even though I'm asking the questions, it's not impossible that I arrive at a good outcome for me, but it's no longer guaranteed. I went from a situation where I literally can't lose. Yeah.

It's pretty low probability, right?

Super low probability. And the second you realize what I'm doing, you would never let me win because the ball's truly in your court. So I guess that that's kind of what I'm fundamentally trying to put into play almost all the time. Can I ask the right set of questions? Can I develop the ability, skills wise, understanding wise, and then discipline wise, and then have the courage and the constitution and the. And the discipline necessary. The pat. Necessary to ask the proper questions and wait for the proper answers. And if I can, assuming, like the perfect world, I win, period. Yeah.

So this is.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, that totally makes sense. So I don't know if, you know, sort of the more mathematical discipline of game theory, there's something called mechanism design. So game theory is this field where you model some kind of interaction between human beings. You can model grappling that way, you can model nuclear conflict between nations that way. And you set up a set of rules and incentives and then use math to predict what is the likely outcome, depending over time, based on the interaction given those rules. Mechanism design is the design of games. So like the design of systems that are likely to lead to a certain outcome. And so what you're suggesting is you want to create. You want to discover systems whose decision tree all the possible things that could happen. Feel like there's choice being made, but ultimately one of the parties doesn't have any choice in what the actual final outcome is. You're making them feel like they're playing a game too. So it's not like you don't feel trapped.

It's kind of like, well, the best traps. I don't. You don't look very threatening. So I'm like, oh, I'll walk over there. I guess. Wouldn't that. I guess that's kind of an interesting thing. If a lion. When does a lion roar? It's an interesting thing when you watch like lions hunting. Don't roar when they hunt. They want to. When they want to move you back, they do stuff like that. When they actually want to come and get you. They're pretty slinky. It's like water covered. It's like furry water.

Yeah.

And. And I guess, like, when you keep that in mind, it's funny how like for us, a hobby actually, you know, brilliant guy, like one of my MMA coaches and head coach at tristar, he brought this up one time. I thought it was a really salient point. He said, let's say we have a million person bracket impossibly huge. Like Frank Dukes went in the kumite level huge bracket. He claimed to knock out like 250 consecutive people. And you're like, that is all of Hong Kong was in that thing. And everyone kept their mouth shut. But anyway, that's pretty cool. But to come back, a little improbable. Pretty cool. So let's say, for instance, like, there's no cheating going on. No cheating going on and we're flipping coins, right? Someone is going to have an unbroken string of victory through that bracket, which is pretty insane. How many consecutive toss ups this person won. And then at the end of it all, imagine aliens show up and we go, hey, they want to flip a coin for whether or not Earth gets to continue. They'd be like, oh, I'll do it. I'm good at this. That would be tempting as a person to do. You're like, I'm a lucky guy. Are you sure? Maybe effectively you are. We could argue that effectively you're incredibly lucky. But basically, is that an actual ability? Is that like a perk, a video game? Or is that just this thing that happened? So anyway, how many times are someone. You could go through an entire career, you know, particularly in a fight sport? Well, let's say you get 15 knockouts in 15 toss up scenarios. Because you see that happening all the time in the fight game. A toss up scenario, it's not like you're mounted on me and like, and, and that's not a toss up scenario. Many, many, many, many, many striking scenarios. A lot of grappling ones, but tons of striking scenarios are dead toss ups. And somebody wins my knockout. They win five times in a row, then they lose a couple times in a row. We go, what happened? You're like, what do you mean what happened? They were always flipping the coin. And then they win five more and they go, ah, back on track. Can you imagine that? You're flipping a coin. I'm like, heads, Heads, Heads, heads. Tails. What? Tails, tails, heads again. Oh man, I'm back on it. I'm flipping good now. That's basically what's going on, I think, the vast majority of the time. And then humanity's tendency to see a sign in almost anything starts to present itself. And then we build a narrative in our mind to. To convince ourselves that we're in some sort of control, when in reality, I was in a marginal situation at best the whole time.

Yeah.

Without having much control, without having a deep understanding of the system. The same story is told the stock market with many of the human, these distributed human systems, we start telling narratives and start seeing patterns without understanding actually the system that's generating these patterns.

So if we can see the system, that's incredibly valuable. But then you go, well, what system is above all of the systems? I guess maybe physics, maybe like game theory explains these things, but like, I guess, what are the. What aspects of the system can I. Can I put my hands on that I can touch and understand? And what am I, what am I missing? What, what. What's going on in the world all around me to continue to lean on, on Dune that I don't have, that I don't. You know, you talk to a blind person about. About the world, about sight, and talk to someone that doesn't have everyone who's got coronavirus now, so no one can taste or smell. They're like, this is delicious. Like, is it? So anyway, again, what senses am I missing or what understanding am I missing that's preventing me from seeing the dots connect in the world all around me? And I think sometimes if we. Oftentimes, at least personally, I've screwed this up a lot. I'm so nose deep in the trench of trying to understand what I'm doing that I can't take a step back and realize that I'm in a forest, not just headbutting a tree. And I may be doing both. Maybe both two things should be true at once. But. So I would say when it comes to strategy, trying to understand that. But then also you go, well, okay, well, how can. That sounds cool, but how can you actually do that? And then I'd say, that's a really good question. Because if I imagine, I say, man, I should fight like Stephen Thompson. I should fight like Wonder Boy. Good idea. Go do that. I'm like, not thinking, not the guy I would fight like Khabib if I could. You know, it seems to work. So anyway, you go, well, what if I could develop. What if I could take my time developing skills so that when these strategies become apparent, they are executable to you. You actually have the ability to like, enter to again, to be the person in the arena, to be the person required. Whereas there's plenty of great ideas. Like dunking a basketball is a fantastic idea. Alas for me, unless there's a small trampoline nearby. I'm not the guy, but that doesn't make it any less good of an idea. I just don't. Haven't developed the ability or I lack the ability. So anyway, I think a lot of times, at least when I watch people in fighting, I'll use an example. We're so concerned with trying to win early on rather than develop skills that I'm going like, well, what's the best way to fight with my current set of skills? And usually the path forward is like the barbarian route, like the you put on the one ring, take the damage you need to take to hit that guy. And that was something I realized very early on in my MMA career, was like, I'm not that good at striking at that time. Not a world class striker now, but I'm way better at striking than I'm giving any credit for because it helps people sleep at night, I think. But I'm serious. But yeah, yeah, you're always introduced as.

Like this master, like master grappler.

And I'm like, that's nice of them to say that maybe I'm not that good at grappling. We haven't even seen that. And, but the funny thing is I'm like. Just because people almost go like, well, Lex, like, see, you're really good at this, but you gotta understand, like, we're equal, man. Like, I'm good at this other thing. Maybe you're really good at what you do. And I'm just mediocre too. That's also possible. So there's plenty of people that define themselves as a striker that do that just because that's for lack of, of other options, not because they're a really good striker or like, I'm a grappler. I was a grappler as a blue belt. Not really. So anyway, I guess to come back if I'm constantly going, how can I win with what I've got right now? I think oftentimes I never take the time to develop the skills that I want to develop and I also never take the time to develop the strategies that I want to develop. And that has actually been one big blessing of fighting so infrequently, which has been really frustrating as a result of injuries and time away and some of those people being hesitant to get in the game. But it gives you so much time to be out of the trenches and focus on developing your abilities so that now it's almost like developing money. Like you mentioned the stock market that you can now put in. Imagine you told me bitcoin was a great idea five years ago, and I had eight bucks, man. If someone told me bitcoin was a great idea five years ago and I had 50K and be like, oh, my God, I'd be sleeping in my bed of money that I would then set on fire later today just to do it.

So due to all the injuries, you've been mining bitcoin all this time and now you're a rich man?

Well, no, actually, someone told me I was trying to mine for bitcoin, actually, like, in a cat cave, and then I found out recently that it's actually. Mining is like a figure of speech, not like a literal thing that you do. But, I mean, in my defense, English language is difficult. It is. It really is.

Next time, talk Russian. Is more. Is. Is a rich language. You should learn. You should learn Russian. I'll help you out.

I believe you. Thank you.

So can you do a whirlwind overview of your career in MMA leading up to this point with the injuries and the undefeated record, and then what's next, since we're on the topic?

Well, I. I did my first fight in as a blue belt, and I've been training for about a year and a half. I did nine Jiu Jitsu tournaments in 10 weekends, or eight, maybe eight Jiu Jitsu tournaments in 10 weekends prior to my first fight in April 2006. I got punched in the face a whole bunch. I didn't realize it was a professional fight and found that out, like, the day beforehand. That was great. Thanks, coach. It was in Atlantic City, where. Another place no one ever goes on purpose, so that wasn't great. I got into three, actually, three car accidents in the preceding 36 hours. Before the fight. I had my car totaled. I wasn't driving for any of them. That was great.

It was 2006.

2006. Yeah. Then I.

You're a blue belt?

Yeah, yeah, I've been training for about a year and a half.

Do you. Blue belt. You're getting. I mean, if you haven't lived, if you haven't gotten punched in the face in Atlantic City.

That's true. I mean, I.

So these are.

I would. I would have loved to have it happen for different reasons.

Yeah.

But. Yeah. Well, what's funny is, you know, I. I remember, you know, getting punched in the face a bunch, trying to do inverted guard. I won one round, lost two rounds, definitely lost the fight.

He went for inverted side to interrupt. You went for inverted guard. Like, can you tell the story of that fight?

Yeah, sure. It was three three minute rounds, which is not a professional fight length. Although I don't know if professional fight length would have been any better. It's just more time to get punched. But I found out partway through, I was like. I remember walking back to my corner in the first round. I'm like, this guy can't hurt me. He's like, yeah, my corner was my friend Tom and then someone else. And he's like, yeah, I would still encourage you to stop blocking so many punches with your face. I'm like, that's a good idea, Tom. I appreciate that. I'm gonna try that. Anyway. I remember, like, I was not. You're not allowed to up kick. So I'm like, great. I was. I had no martial arts skills, really, at all, but if I had anything at all, it was Jiu jitsu. It was very, very little jiu jitsu, but definitely no wrestling, definitely no striking. Like, I was basically a magnet for punches.

So that was your time, you know, rough necking out in Atlantic City, as we all do once in a while. Can we fast forward to when you're actually dominating?

Oh, sorry.

As a black belt.

Well, actually, it's funny because I took the little bit of money that I. They're like, hey, we're paying him, like, really? Okay.

Stories with Ryan Hall.

Well, then I went to. I went to the casino. I went to whatever, like the Tropicana that was right there, the casino, because that was a boardwalk hall. I'm like, you know what, man? This was. This has been a not great, not great evening. I'm gonna. This is. I'm gonna win it back. It's gonna be great. Fifteen minutes later, they had. All the money that I had from the fight was gone.

Yeah.

I just remember, like, walking out of the casino super pissed and like, I don't know what I was thinking. Like, I'm not good at gambling. Why? This was not gonna make my night better. I just thought that there was gonna be some sort of cosmic balancing. And maybe it was the cosmic balancing all at once with things I'd done.

In the longer term, though.

Yeah, that.

The balancing.

We'll see. I hope so.

But to come so dead in the end, though.

That is true. Time will get us all. Yeah. Well, that was so. That was the first one. And that was when I realized I'm terrible at mma, but I like it. I should just stop this until I one day learn how to actually grapple, much less learn how to fight. But I remember this guy named Dave Kaplan. Who's the reason my ears are all messed up? Who was on the Ultimate Fighter and got punched in the face and knocked out by Tom Lawler, who I'll always appreciate for doing that. But anyway, Dave or Tom. I appreciate Tom. I appreciate Dave too, David. Dave's great. Dave was just a huge bully and used to like really not completely unmercifully, but relatively unmercifully beat the Kumar that I got. And I'm gonna. If they want in on our class action lawsuit with AT&T, they should, you know, grappling either. But even if you are good at grappling, which in my opinion you will never be, you will not can make you pay for that. And now that I can make him pay for that really easily, he doesn't train anymore. But I love Dave. Dave's awesome. He actually won the singing beat. What an interesting dude. Super interesting guy. But anyway, none of the Virginia like speaks a couple languages. Super interesting guy. Like shockingly good at Jeopardy too. Not that I'm any good, but still shockingly good at Jeopardy. So anyway, years later met Farazahabi, actually John Danaher. I met John Danaher and he put me in touch with far as a hobby. I started training at tristar, you know, immediately loved working with Faras and learning under Faraz. Started training at tristar and I did my first real professional MMA fight. As someone that actually does. Had practiced a little bit prior In I think August 2012, and that was against a guy, he was 4 and 5 at the time. So, you know, had some experience. Good kind of like first go for me, honestly. And I won that fight by tko and then it was a little bit of time off and then I did another fight against a tough guy named Magic Hamo. He was five and two at the time. I think he was three and I was amateur. He had a good, good little bit of fighting experience. Won that one in the first round via rear naked choke and then started to experience difficulty getting. Getting fights at that point.

You know, were you continuously introduced as like the. The master of grappling? The submission, at least that was.

That was my thing. If I don't know if I was.

That was the source of the fear for people.

I think so because I mean that definitely wasn't much at striking at that point. You know, I definitely am a lot. I like to think I'm pretty hard to hurt, although I try not to lean on that. And I played baseball for like 16 years, so I can hit things pretty hard. I just wasn't able to. I I recognized pretty early on that I had no idea how to actually hit things hard without becoming hittable myself. So I think that's kind of the big thing is a lot of times, like almost you were mentioning before, if you try to go and get people too early, you can hit them if they're not that good, but you're going to get hit yourself. So you're making, you're basically making a wager. You're making a trade of your own life for the ability to hit them. When you watch guys like Israel Adesanya, Floyd Mayweather, Stephen Thompson, Conor McGregor, when he's fighting really well, it's not a trade. They're not. You're hitting them and they're hitting you. It's. They're hitting you. But it takes years and years and years and years to be able to learn how to do that. Ton Lee is another great example of that. You know, my closest training partner, one of my best friends and currently now one champion, one championship in, in Asia. The champion of the featherweight or I guess lightweight featherweight,155 over there now. And he recently defeated Martin Nguyen in a really great fight. Fight. And Ton knocked him out. Longtime champion. And Ton doesn't let you hit him. He doesn't let you touch him. I feel so fortunate to have met guys like Steven and Ton to go early on in career and go, holy moly. I can't even. It's not even like, oh, you'll let me walk over and find you. It's like fighting a ghost that periodically shows up with a hammer and smokes you in the melon and then disappears into the ether again.

So the way they approach the fighting game is thinking, how can I attack without being hit? So every, every strategy, every idea you have about what you're going to do has to do with like that minimizing the.

The return. Absolutely. I mean, that's what all good fighting is done. All poor fighting. If, you know, throughout the course of history, most generals, whether I saw a read or, you know, they. They did battles by attrition.

Yeah.

You know, it's like, yeah, man, I've got 150 guys. You've got 50. Like, yeah, 60 of my guys die. Killing your 50, like, that's great for me.

Yeah.

But that's not so great for the 60 guys that died, you know, I hope it's worth it. So when you realize that not only you're not just Kobe Bryant and you're Phil Jackson too, you got to do everything, you know, if you got to run across the beach in Normandy, so be it. But that better be. You should have make sure we thought this through. And there's like, hey, there's no way we can, like, you know, walk around the side, huh? Because oftentimes there. There is. And I think a lot of times there's a lot of incentives in professional fighting to. For people to want to do that. And we come up with all sorts of, well, I'm trying to be exciting. Are you? Is that really what you came here to do? Because I came here to win. And I think that anyone that that's really successful came there to win. And if it ends up being exciting, well, that's fantastic. I hope that people enjoy watching something, and that's great. But that's a qualitative assessment anyway. You know, you want to also be able to, you know, live the rest of your life. I think it's easy. You know, I'll use Meldrick Taylor. I'm a big boxing fan. Meljer Taylor is an excellent fighter. Came this close to a world title and was stopped with, like, he was in a fight that he was winning with seconds remaining, Literally seconds remaining. And they probably could have just let it go and he would have been world champion. And it was brutal. If you ever watch Legend Larry Knights like HBO boxing show, it's great, but it's heartbreaking. It's absolutely heartbreaking. And also, like, the beating that he absorbed in that fight changed him for the rest of his life. And also, you know, don't think he'd never been hit before, but it was one of those where you go, it's. It's all fun and games until you can't remember your name at age 44 years old. And I didn't come here. What did Patton say? Nobody, nobody wins the war by dying for his country. You make the other poor bastard die for his. And I think that that's kind of what we're shooting for. And, you know, the lionization of absorbing damage and that not being a big deal, like, you hear that all the time, so. And so can take shots that would put a lesser fighter down. What does that even mean? You know, like, so let me get this straight. Your ability to absorb damage is a part of you. I mean, I guess that. Don't get me wrong, that is an attribute that's nice to have if you. If you need it. But there's plenty of people that actually have really porous defense that are just very, very difficult to hurt for whatever reason.

That's a fascinating fighter's perspective on the thing. I mean, the, the. The story that is inspiring, and I know it goes against the artistry of fighting is when you have taken the damage to still rise up and be able to defeat the opponent. So it's. But that. That's a flip side of a. Basically you failing to defend yourself properly.

Right, I agree. But let's say for. I think it's a triumph. That's a triumph of humanity. That's triumph. That's amazing. To witness such a thing is unbelievable. But you still go, this is. There is a cost here. It's like, I've been fortunate enough to spend some time working with, with the military, and I've been like, around and read Medal of Honor citations. They're unbelievable. Like, you read the story and you're the. It'll floor you.

But it's a cost, and you don't want to be paying that cost all along.

And most of the time the cost was everything. And then sometimes you go, hey, yeah, the value here, it's worth everything. It's like you defend your family, defend your country under certain circumstances, and at that point, it's extension of your family. You're like, hey, this is worth it to casually throw your life away or throw your health away. It's foolish. There's nothing great about that. And like you said, it's still an amazing thing to see. See, but.

But it's also amazing to see you not take damages. The Floyd Mayweather. It's the artistry of, like, not being hit.

And I wonder if maybe that's why people don't resonate with Floyd as much as obviously Muhammad Ali was such a time and place, a great man for so many different reasons. Although it was funny to remember, like, there were times when he wasn't very popular. We love him now because of time of context and, you know, time to move away from some of the nonsense he had to deal with. But we got to see him struggle, and also he had unbelievable sacrifice both in and out of the ring, you know, that, that we all got to witness. We've never really seen Floyd struggle like that. And granted, obviously, Floyd isn't like a civil rights figure like Muhammad Ali was. Different time, different place, and he's a different man. But basically, you know, I wonder if part of the thing that made us. That made everyone think of Muhammad Ali as the greatest, in addition to, of course, the unbelievable things that he did out in the world and the stands that he made, we saw him struggle in the ring. It's almost. It's humanizing, you Know it's weird when people respect B but again it's. We saw GSP lose and GSP came back stronger. Khabib is amazing, but I wonder how people feel about him long term. Not like they won't think of him as amazing and great and he's been a respectable person and champion but the time he hasn't, he hasn't had to fall, if that makes sense.

And also coupled with Ali had a way of being poetic about sort of the way he was in the ring, sort of being able to explain the artistry that he's. I mean there's like joking as being playful but really he was able to describe the, the float like a butterflies thing, like a B. Like he was able to actually talk about his strategy without talking, without crossing that line into the Floyd Mayweather when you're just talking about money and, and just talking.

That's true. Actually.

Conor McGregor when he's not talking is pretty good at like talking about the art of the Marshall and like the first guy. And I wish Khabib did the same actually from like the Satya brothers. There's a few. There's a culture of like being poetic about like being scholars and also bards or whatever, the poets of the game. And Khabib is more like just simple and he lets his actions speak which.

Is great too coating in his own way.

Yeah, it's great. But it's nice when you can tell stories and you know that that's probably why Ali was the great. Catch me up to you went to three fights, I think undefeated.

Yep. B.J.

Penn, we talked about last time you defeated B.J. penn. That's, that's a, I mean that's an incredible accomplishment. But you fought a lot of really tough guys. When was your last fight? And then catch me up with the injuries. Well, a lot of people kept more and more and more were unwilling to fight you.

Yeah, that's been, that's. That was why I was out for two years following the Gray mannered fight between the fighting Gray and bj and the Grey Manner fight was actually one I'm really proud of because Gray was very tough. He's very big, very strong, very experienced. I had only five fights at the time and I didn't have a lot of skills. I don't get to fight Gray with what I have today. I had to fight Gray with what I had in December 2016 and that I, it really took a lot of discipline, a lot of focus, a lot of challenge, you know, to stay the course, to do what I needed to do in that fight and to win in. In ultimately dominating fashion, just not in the dominating, obvious sense that you see when someone runs across and just does that to somebody. But that wasn't on the list for me at that time, you know, so that was a. That was an interesting one. But the time away, again, was very frustrating. That was incredibly difficult before that fight. After that fight, well, because I. I beat Artem Lobov in the final of the Ultimate Fighter, and Artem is another guy that's tough. A lot of experience, and gets. Gets. You know, he's. He's a funny guy, and he said some things on the Internet, so. And he gets a lot of heat for that. But, you know, he just knocked out three of my teammates. I'm like, he put a couple people in a pretty rough shape at the end of that, so he was doing well. And that was a tough fight. Again, if I got to go back and fight that fight now, it would be not competitive at all. I mean, it wasn't competitive at that time, but it very. It was. It wasn't close, but it was competitive.

So you were improving and growing fast.

Yeah. And it was nice to have time away. I wish I'd have more time in the ring, but again, I'd only been doing MMA for three years at that.

Time, so the improvement from doing what the bitcoin mining was over overriding the ring rust, I think.

So. I don't really believe in ring rust, if I'm honest. You know, I can understand why, you know, people could feel a certain way, but if anything, it's almost like you just kind of forget what competition's like, and you realize, like, oh, you feel butterflies or something like that, and you go, oh, my God, this is different. Versus, no, that's your body getting ready to perform. It's okay. It's normal.

How do you not have ring roast?

I think I try to. I try to practice performing no matter what. You know, like, whether it's singing karaoke, I'm not very good. But like, anything. You name it. Talking in front of people like, you embrace the butterflies. Yeah. It's almost like I remember my last fight. I'm just staring at the wall, and I'm like, huh? I guess. I guess I'm gonna fight in a couple minutes. All right. I mean, of course, we all heard the phrase, like, you can never walk in the same river twice, because even if you're this. Even if the river's the same, you're a different man. I think it's A really important thing to understand because at various points in my martial arts career I've thought, oh man, how should I feel? I remember when I used to do well in competition, I would think these thoughts, listen to this song, think about this. I would feel a certain way. And then if you don't feel that way, I would start to become stressed because I was self inflicted versus going. You'll feel how you feel. Your job is to show up with what you have on the day, do your absolute best. It's like, I will never quit. I can be sure of that. I didn't say I can't be beat. I can definitely be beat. I could have lost every single fight that I've ever had. But I control my effort and I control my attitude and that's. I will, you know, I will do my very best to execute my game plan and the event's not working. If I have to, I'll put my hands up and walk dead forward if I need to at somebody. You know, we hope that that's not where it goes, but you know, like again, that humanizing moment where you're shooting for like just the inner, like the inner you sacrifice the outer and all you have left is will. And you hope it doesn't happen, but if it does, you'll be there. But I guess to come back, like the extra periods of time in between fights I think was valuable because it was, it was deeply challenging. It was incredibly, it was heartbreaking. Sometimes I'm honest, man, it's like I didn't want to, it's just waiting. Oh my God.

It's just there, politics involved.

There's some sometimes, you know, like I, I, you know, it's every single time you step into the ring, nothing's guaranteed. It's, you could be hurt, you could hurt somebody, you could win, you could lose. You know, throwing away, just like I said, throwing away your healthier life cheaply makes no sense for anyone. And you know, having, demonstrating some degree of temperance is not cowardly either. I mean, but again, if you wait too long, you have nothing. So I guess like I was trying and always being, I'm always open to fighting the absolute best people possible. I'm never turning down fights ever. You know, if some random jabroni decides that he wants to fight him, then go away. If I wanted to just fight randoms, I would just start at standard, you know, on the table at Denny's and start yelling. And I'm sure we'd have, you know, some people who'd be willing to Indulge me. But, you know, you want to fight, you know, meaningful opponents, challenging opponents, and I know who and where they are.

And so you did fight in Atlantic City. You know, I did the Denny. But you put the Denny's behind you.

I did. And you know, I'll be honest, if they were, If I'd have stood up after that fight alone, if I was in great shape to explain expect to win any other fights that evening, but I could have, could have tried it. I'm sure there were some takers in the crowd, particularly after they watched me fight. They're like, yeah, I'll fight that guy.

So, okay, so when was the last fight?

That was Darren Elkins. That was six months or seven months after the BJ fight, which was great because it's, you know, I love maybe five really tough, very tough opponent, very tough guy, super tough dude. And that was in July 2019. And then right when I was about to fight.

You ready to fight regularly after that? You're trying to. And then you're trying to find a fight.

Yeah. And we got Ricardo Llama. So no one else, none of the. I was ranked in the top 15 at that point. And then people didn't want to fight. We were struggling to find an opponent then Ricardo Lamas, a great, you know, former title challenger, you know, mma, really great history and MMA recently retired. But we were supposed to fight in, I think, May, March. March, May of 2020. And then Coronavirus happened. And so that scrapped the whole show, you know, training. We were just scrambling to try to keep the gym alive and take care. You know, I have five or six. Four, five, six. I think five full time employees that I, you know, they're my responsibility. I have to. Their livelihood is in my hands and it's. It'd be irresponsible of me to. To not take that seriously. So anyway, we were able to navigate through that time and then we were able to reschedule the Llamas fight. And that was in August of last year. And I got a, A medical, like, flag, like, oh, hey, like you, you. You have like a medical condition that we need to look into. You. When I got pulled from the fight, and I immediately was concerned because of course, any serious medical condition, you want to be like, oh, man, well, I guess I would like to look at that. Yeah. It turns out it was a giant false positive. And, you know, we find that out, you know, all of five weeks later and you go, you gotta be kidding me.

Yeah, it's frustrating.

And then still waiting for a Fight. Waiting for a fight, waiting for a fight, waiting for a fight. People won't sign up. Asked for a number of different opponents, basically said, hey, I'm willing to fight anybody that's. That's tough. And moving forward, finally got a, you know, a great opponent in Danny Gay for. I guess it would have been this. This March.

Yeah.

And then I was training in January, working on. Working on some stuff. I was out training with Raymond Daniels in. In California. Raymond's amazing. Unbelievable. You know, kickboxing, karate style, kickboxer, fantastic martial artist, great teacher, great training partner and good friend. And, you know, just really bad luck, you know, kind of a fall in the middle of. In the middle of training. And I tore my hip flexor halfway off of my femur. So, yeah, that wasn't great. And you go like, man, right at the time where you're like, oh, man, all right, finally moving forward, you know, having the opportunity to fight. Dan's a really tough guy. You know, you have to fight well if you want to have a good chance to do well with him. If you don't fight well, it's going to be a rough night. I'm like, that's exactly what I signed up for. That's what bj. That's what we want with Elkins. That was gray. And then the universe goes, hey, man, I hear you. But there's also this. So, anyway, yeah, unfortunately, it's healing up, and then hopefully.

When do you think you went for?

May? I think May this year. May of this year? Yeah. So it's been. It's been. It's been about five weeks since the injury.

You'll be able to heal up, you think?

Yeah, I think it'll be okay by then. Like, I don't need a big camp at this point. I've had years of camp. Not going to curtail my drinking or anything like that, obviously. You know, come on, man. Life is meant to be lived. And, you know, so it's, you know, I. I've. I'm in good shape. I always. I'm always training. I'm trying to do my best to train around the injury to the extent that I can right now without, you know, hurting myself long term.

So is there a particular opponents you're thinking about?

Yeah, anybody. Anybody forward? You know, I mean, I tried to. I asked. I asked. The second that I got hurt, I sent a message to Dan and I said, hey, man, like, I just wanted you to be the first person to know. I, you know, I just was pretty reasonably injured. We just got an MRI doctor says, like, hey, man, you're out and you need to take like three weeks off. Off. Don't do anything or you're going to. You're going to tear it the whole way. And this is going to be sur. And then it's going to be an additional, like eight weeks on top of that to start to rehab it through pt. And anyway, yeah, so I let him know, hey, if you can push this thing back, I would love to keep on the car. I would love to keep the fight. You know, it's like, I respect you a lot as an opponent. And also it's been brutal trying to get anybody to sign on. So if you're into it, I'm still there. Unfortunately, he turned that down. I understand he had other things going on. He and his wife were expecting a child coming up, so he needed to. He needed to fight. And anyway, you know, I guess we'll see who's coming forward.

Is there somebody, like super tough in the featherweight division that you. You seem to, like, enjoy the difficult puzzles? Is there somebody especially difficult that you would like to fight?

I would like to fight. I know that I'll need to win at least one fight before this, and I look forward to coming back and giving my best effort to do that. I want to fight to beat Mega Man Sharapov. I want to fight Yair Rodriguez. I want to fight Korean Zombie.

And the beat is complicated, man.

Yeah, that would be that guy. Fun.

I would love to see that fight. That's a fascinating fight.

That would be fun. He would be very challenging. All those guys are very challenging. And so I look forward to just staying healthy to the extent that we can coming back. And I'm gonna fight multiple times this year. Hell or high water?

Hell, yes. Hey, by the way, I completely forgot because you were talking about the systems and decision trees and the illusion of choice made me think of Sam Harris and I forgot to mention it. So he talks about free will quite a bit and that there's an illusion of free will.

So it's like claim cotton that, you.

Know, maybe the universe constructed that little game where it makes us feel like we have a bunch of choices, but we really don't. We're really always ending up with a middle finger.

That would be hilarious.

Yeah, that's what you see before you die. Giant middle finger. It's like, oh, fuck.

I knew it. I knew it.

What do you think? Do you think there's a free will? Like we feel like we're making choices. So you're thinking again we're talking about, okay, here's a system of martial arts. That's hands of Gracie. There's different schools and whatever. And then you're thinking, okay, how can I think outside these systems? But then there's also a system that's our human society. And we feel like there's an actual choice being made by us individuals. Do you think that choice is real or is it just an illusion?

Well, okay, that's a really good question. I'm not necessarily equipped to answer this, but I'll do my best. Okay. I guess I would say to start with, sure would be interesting if it wasn't real. If the choice wasn't real, would be pretty interesting if it is real. First off, I would start with facilitative beliefs versus not facilitative beliefs. It's almost like I think the world's out to get me. True, not true. What next? Probably not a facilitative belief. Imagine you believe there's no free will. Okay, now what? Does that justify every single impulse that you're going to give into? Or does the belief in free will, does the belief in my ability to work hard, to focus, to be disciplined, to improve my position, improve my situation, whether it's true or not. Although I think that at least many of us would argue that, at least whether there's some sort of internal driver that allows for that. We live in a material world. Your actions do affect the world. I can choose to pick that water up or not. And anyway, I would say I believe strongly in the idea of picking facilitative beliefs and going, hey, I will adjust whether this belief system is right or wrong on a cosmic level. I'm nowhere near smart enough to understand. But I can say me deciding that, let's say, for instance, I'm going to walk over to have a conversation with someone in a hotel lobby and they've. I've never met them. And I go over and I start with, this is going to be interesting. And I just walk over there. Versus in my head, I'm like, what's this asshole want? We're about to have two very different conversations. I could be right that this person's not very polite or thinks negatively of me right from go. But I think that that's probably not a facilitative belief. People talk about I'm, how is that going to help me navigate the conversation to a positive conclusion? And I think about that for.

You.

Know, let's say fighting. It's a good example, like confidence. Plenty of people believe plenty of things that aren't real, myself included, I'm sure, all the time. And anyway, believing that you can do something, I'm like, hey, I think I can win, doesn't guarantee you a positive outcome. But I would say it. Most of us would probably, most of us would argue that it helps. And you think about depression. What's depression if not a negative, unfacilitative belief that is not always, that oftentimes is not reflected by reality, but you project it onto reality and it's understandable if it makes you feel like, oh man, this isn't going to work out. I don't think the prospects are going well. And then if you feel like you can't get out of that loop, that seems pretty rough. And I see a lot of things out in society right now where you go, whether you agree or disagree with various positions on things, you go, is that a facilitative belief? Even if that is true, which is arguable, anything. So what next, man? So where does this end? One is the positive, what's the happy ending here? And if they go, well, there is no happy ending, I'm like, okay, so now what? So what do we do here? And I guess so choose the facilitative.

Belief and in your intuition, believing that free will is real is more productive for a successful life.

Absolutely. Because otherwise, how am I not? How am I? First of, how can I. How can society function if it's not real? So how can I blame you or anyone else or hold anyone responsible for anything if free will isn't real?

Well, no, that's exactly the point. But at the surface level, what you're saying is true. But perhaps if we truly internalize that free will is an illusion, we'll start to figure out something that, that transforms the way we see society. For example, we are very individual centric, so believing that free will is real puts a lot of responsibility and blame on people when they do something bad. Maybe if we truly internalize that free will is an illusion, we start to think about the system of humans together as, as like this mechanism for progress as opposed to where individual people are responsible for their actions, good or bad. So we like remove the value, the weight we assign to the accomplishments or the, or the violence, the negative stuff done by individuals and more. Look at the progress of society. I don't know what that looks like, but it's almost like as opposed to focusing on the individual ants of an ant colony, looking at the entirety of.

The ant colony, I think it makes perfect sense. I would just say that that's a reasonable thing to suggest. It's a seismic shift. Right. And it's hard to say whether that would, you know, better or worse. But I guess I'll use this as a. This is a convenient one for me. So I remember the last time we spoke, I brought up, you know, one of the most reviled evil characters in certainly recent history, probably human history, period. Adolf Hitler. Well, I'm a big fan of making people live in the world that they want to believe in. Well, if free will doesn't exist and it's just about how things move forward, when are we going to be high fiving this guy or what? Like, this is. You know, because I remember what I said and, you know, that actually brings me to something else we just discussed, you know.

Yeah. For people who don't know Ryan brought up or I brought up, there's literally a giant book about Hitler. My. So I've been obsessed with Hitler, World War II, and Stalin recently. For recently. Oh, man, this has become like a meme. Joe Rogan with, like dmt and me with Hitler. Can I pick something more positive like Cat in the Hat or something? I don't know. But we. You brought up Hitler as an example of something particular. Some philosophical discussions we're having and the excellent, eloquent, and the full of integrity MMA journalists clipped out something you've said about Hitler and said that I forget what the headlines are, but they were the most ridiculous possible implementation.

Basically, Nitwit's intentionally misrepresent, Intentionally misunderstanding what I'm saying. Then it's like, I get that they're stupid, but I'm stupid too, so I know what that's like. So I don't have a lot of stupid. Yeah, exactly. It's. It's. Yeah, exactly. I don't. I don't. I can't give you a pass on that. But basically, intentionally misunderstanding what's going on. But what I find funny is that, hey, we got to be careful what we believe. And again, back to the cancel culture thing that we discussed last time as well. Where would I. Would I like to apologize? I mean. No, actually something about cancel culture that we've been seeing things culturally, like, I will be damned if I apologize for anything that I don't need to apologize for because I was intentionally misunderstood in that instance. Now, you could say that I'm not a historical scholar, which I would agree immediately. And also that I oftentimes ineloquently or inarticulately phrase things, which I'll agree again, but Ultimately going, hey, I want to make you believe, live in the world that you're suggesting ought to exist. Okay, so if there's no free will is everything, how, how far of a step back are we willing to take cosmically before we start going, hey, this is good because we're experiencing a social, you know, reckoning in our country at the moment, you know, for good and for other probably, I guess, and basically. But hey, it all worked out, right? So that that's probably not something that would fly. And, and I think that's a fair thing.

That's interesting. It might not fly from the individual perspective, but if you zoom out and think of, you know, appreciate society as, you know, just like an ant colony, as a beautifully complex system, like we kind of, from, from the individual perspective, we value progress, especially progress of the individual, but in whole progress of societies. But if you accept that this is just a complex system that's not necessarily headed any, anywhere, that this is almost like that river is just flowing, I think that removes the burden of always striving, of always trying, of always like the struggle and so on. So it's possible that if we have no control, you can arrive at some kind of other Zen state.

Does that sound very human, though?

That goes against, I think, our current human condition as we experience it. But we've communicated that to each other. We've taught through these social forces, taught each other that our lives matter and so on. Maybe if we convince ourselves that we're just sort of like little things in a stream and ultimately none of it matters, there might be some kind of enjoyment to be discovered through that process. I don't listen, I'm a capitalist, rah rah, like.

But I guess I think you're bringing up a really important point, like I guess almost anything like capitalism. I, I only get to experience it as I, as I sit here now, and I get to live. I was raised in the United States, have traveled around the world a little bit, have had the, you know, fortune of meeting many people from many different places, and I'm an end user of capitalism. I don't really know how it got here, whether it was. I wasn't there at the start of this idea. I wasn't there for, hey, how did we come up with this idea? How do we arrive? And I'm nowhere near well read enough to understand any of that really, even secondhand. And I guess recognizing that Communism, Marxism, socialism, anarchism, anything, these are all perspectives that, that all have, I guess, various strengths and weaknesses. But I guess one Thing I'm always, I guess I would say the burden. It seems to me that if you want to make a change, the burden of proof is on the person implying that there needs to be a change. And it doesn't mean that there's nothing there. But it's like if you want to create a small shift, a ripple, that's fine, but a seismic ripping shift in how we exist or how we experience the world as human beings. And you mentioned fighting. Why watching someone undergo take abuse on a level in the ring, that's just shocking and then triumph in spite of it is like. It's. You're like, this is unbelievable. This is part of the magic of combat sports now. It's part of the magic. The other side of the magic that doesn't get talked about sometimes is that the trajectory of that individual's life later on is not always great or there's a cost for that. But if, if we remember you mentioned removing the struggle. Personally, the struggle is what makes life life. And also, I guess something Faraz has brought up to me on a number of occasions. And it makes sense to me. It's basically humans only understand things through relative comparison. I only understand heat because I've known cold. I guess it's like talking to someone that's never experienced any sort of hardship and then they're. Their latte isn't right. And then they pitch a fit versus someone that's gone through a great deal of challenge struggle in their life. They tend to have a little bit more of an even perspective. And anyway, and of course, even is a relative thing. And what I proceed to be even may not be even. Maybe I'm particularly softer or something in the other direction without realizing, because I can only understand what I can understand. But the idea that we want to fundamentally alter ourselves as a species and as people seems like a incredibly, incredibly high bar to prove and also like an incredibly dangerous idea because it always comes back to, well, who's going to be responsible for this? Who gets to do the choosing what's a good idea, what's not a good idea. And I guess that actually brings me kind of to a. Something I've been encountering recently in discussions with friends. I feel like there's only two types of people that I. That I encounter at this point. People with a more or less libertarian tilt to their thinking and people without it. And when I say libertarian, I don't mean that in the political party sense or even the belief system basically, where I'm like, hey, you, do you, buddy it's not my. It's not. What you're up to is not my concern versus what you're up to is my concern. And I guess I've always watched, you know, at various points in history, people on this side or people on that side are more. More or less, you know, I guess, problematic, I guess you could say. And I don't mean that in the Internet sense, you know, more of. More of an issue. But the world is always full of people that want to tell you what you need to be doing as opposed to more or less do no harm. And I guess that's one of the ones. Anytime I'm trying to tell other people what to do, I better hope I'm right. And it's bizarre to me how many people are so confident that their side or their position is the one that's not only right for them, but right enough that they can enforce it on others. And that just seems incredibly dangerous to me. And I guess that comes back to even Sam's point about, oh, we want to. If under. Trying to spread the idea that free will doesn't exist. I'm not saying it's damaging, but it very well may be. And plenty of other things could be as well. I'm not, you know, it goes way over my head as to, you know, the implications of all of these. And I guess all of us are an evangelist for something. But I. I guess it's weird that we've gotten this far as a species and now we want to take, like, sharp, sharp turns.

Well, we've been taking a bunch of sharp turns throughout history.

Yeah, that's.

So that's what, you know, that's. That's the way, okay. Humans love power. And one way to attain power is to say, everything that you guys are doing is wrong and I have the right thing and I'm going to build up a giant cult of people and I'm going to overthrow. And indirectly what that results in me is me gaining power. And that's how you get all the big revolutions in human history saying, I'm done with the thing that the powerful are currently doing, so I'm going to overthrow. That's where probably all the identity politics that's happening now is. People that didn't have power before are looking to gain power. And they're also, you know, that's where Jordan Peterson criticizes identity politics is people with the right, with the good intentions, I should say, are in seeking power, allow power to corrupt them, as power always does. And so they lose track of, like, the, the, the devils that they're fighting by becoming the same kind of devils, the, the same kind of evil that they're fighting. And so that, that's just the progress of human history. But hopefully as these power greedy people keep attaining power with, with a progressive mindset, over time things get better and better as they can as they have each iteration. A lot of, a lot of unfairness happens, a lot of hypocrisy happens. A lot of people are trampled along the way by those who mean well. But over time, like lessons are learned, like human, like civilization accumulates lessons and in part learns the lessons of history. And it gets better and better over time. Even though in the short term there's people acting not their best selves. And you know, that seems to be the progress of human history. The idea of internalizing free will not being real. You're actually making me realize that that ultimately leads to a kind of.

Doesn't that go in a nihilistic direction?

Yeah, it's both nihilistic or if you want to make it a political system, then it's more like communist type of system where like the, the value of the individual is completely reduced, removed. Or another perspective is like the freedom of an individual is not to be valued or protected. And so from our current perspective.