Into the Impossible With Brian Keating - James Altucher and Brian Keating: Stop using these 3 Lazy Words! (#176)

Episode Date: August 19, 2021

Do you use these 3 lazy words daily? Do you use these words when you tried to solve problems? Create businesses? Win a game? Well, it's time to change that. James Altucher and Brian Keating talk about these 3 lazy words, and what's the meaning behind these words, and how can we change our mindset, and prevent ourselves from using these words! Support our Sponsors! LinkedIn Jobs! Use this link to post your first job ad for FREE LinkedIn.com/impossible biOptimizers for better sleep https://magbreakthrough.com/impossible Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Professor Brian Keating from UCSD, famous Nobel Prize loser. Brian, do you mind that I keep introducing you like that? No, as long as you add the prefix, handsome and lovable, as well as with a great aroma in front of loser. At least one of those three things are true, so I am perfectly happy to say that. And Brian, I was thinking of you earlier because I was thinking of lazy words. I know you have your book coming out. Think like a Nobel Prize winner.

And it strikes me that people who think with intense focus and solve problems and are creative, there's something not lazy about their thinking. Just as a little bit of an intro, I was thinking of three words that are lazy. Just try and hope. So for instance, I was just trying this one idea. It seems like a lazy way of doing an idea. Like, if you were, I don't know a better way to explain it. And chess is easy to say, like, oh, I was just developing my pieces.

Is a lazy way of not having to think about what piece to move the best? Or, oh, I was just volleying on the tennis court is a lazy way of trying to think, of not just putting away the opponent. Oh, I was just trying these random theorems out to see if they would work. It's maybe a lazy way of not really trying to prove a quantum mechanics proof. I don't know. I'm making that up. And so just as one example, try is another example like, oh, I'm going to try this,

as opposed to really thinking out how you want to solve a problem. You're randomly trying things without thinking about them. And of course, in investing, we know hope is not a strategy. Like hope is a way, is a best shot at thinking of a solution and you're just hoping for the best. You didn't find a solution. You got as close as you could and you hope that the word hope bridges between reality and the solution. And I think it's exactly, you know, in line with my thinking, these are sloppy words. These are words that are kind of like the equivalent of ums and as in writing and speaking, rather,

that you would never tolerate if you were writing a book and put an um. You know, can you imagine you're writing a book and you type in, um, and some nonfiction book? Yeah, of course. So I was always taught actually by my 10th grade English teacher, Mrs. Tompkins, who listens to this show, listens to your show and my show. And she said, never use the word just. Just means justice or, you know, fair and never use the word just to imply, you know, I was just about to do something.

It's actually grammatically incorrect as a, you know, it's just a form of the lexicon. And I was thinking that the word hope, I think Emily Dickinson, said hope is the thing with feathers, which I never really understood. I mean, there are a lot of things with feathers, right? And Woody Allen wrote a book without feathers. That's actually pretty funny. I guess that means he has no hope. So we have to think of something that, you know, that, you know. Wait, well, I don't understand.

What's the connection between feathers and hope? I have no idea. But there's a book, a statement that she said, hope is the thing with feathers. and then Woody Allen, one of his books, is without feathers, implying he has no hope. So what you and I should try to do, try not do, as Yoda says, as Yoda says, rather.

Yoda, by the way, do you know the etymology of the word Yoda in Star Wars, where it comes from? You know, I feel like at one point I did, but I don't know it right now. So in Hebrew, the word Yodea means, I know. So he got it from Hebrew,

and it's someone who's like an all-knowing oracle. And what does he say? He goes, do or not do, there is no try. And so that's two of your words. We have connections to the pop lexicon. And then just, I have a connection through my 10th grade English teacher. So I really couldn't agree with you more. And I feel like these are kind of like verbal crutches. Kind of the way I feel like comedy. Like when you do comedy, I've seen your stand-up many times. I even saw you in person when you give your TEDx talk here in San Diego seven years ago. I can't believe it. But when you

were doing it, you don't use profanity that much. It's not gratuitous. But those three words, just try and hope are basically gratuitous throwaway garbage words. Right. And thinking about comedy, like in comedy, you have to take that extra step to be funny or else you're just like everyone else. If you say yourself, I'm just going to resort to fart jokes and profanity. Profanity. And I'll tell some jokes about Tinder. Again, you're not pushing yourself that extra edge. And the reason why this is all important is you have to notice when you're using the word just or try or hope. So if you say to yourself, oh, What's an example in physics, Brian?

Like if you're doing an experiment, oh, I'm just going to sharpen up the lens on this microscope. Somehow or other, you're not solving a problem that's really happening in the microscope. Yeah, because just and trying implies random scattershot thinking. It implies that you don't have a systematized approach to things. So, you know, you often think of me as sitting at a telescope all day and scratching my white beard and pondering the mysteries of the universe.

but you know from past conversations that most of my job is not like that. It's planning on what concrete has to get delivered when, what safety precautions do we need to take at 17,000 feet above sea level in the autocomac desert of northern Chile where the Simons Foundation is generously providing me and my 300 collaborators over $100 million

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we're just hoping that that's not going to happen. And we don't plan on the likelihood that it could happen and multiply it by the financial impact of it actually happening and what's called a risk matrix. We're basically fools and losers and even more so than normal in my case because we already are on warning. So there are these things called risk registers that all major projects use. it's kind of the probability of a catastrophic event or even non-catastrophic event times the financial impact of rectifying it now and comparing that to rectifying it later. Like the famous things were, you know, car manufacturers or McDonald's didn't put, you know,

safety, safe enough lids in their coffee. And they figured, oh, some people get burned, but it'll cost us less to pay out lawsuits than if we just hope that we make it okay with the current cup rather than redesigning it. So that failed miserably. Or if someone could have said, let's just use the cheapest solution that seems safe, as opposed to really putting the numbers down and figuring out what was safe or what's the financial impact if we don't do this right. And again, oh, let's try this one lid as opposed to this other lid without really testing it out. And hope, right.

is it's a failure to take a thought, an idea, a plan to the final step. Even if it costs you more time, even if it costs you more money, in the long run, that's how Nobel Prize winners are made. That's how champions are made. That's how physicists and PhDs and entrepreneurs are made. If Elon Musk had said, hey, let's just use solar panels to create energy. that's not good enough as saying, hey, solar panels are growing exponentially. So this is a solution that even if it doesn't work now, it'll work in the end because here's how the math works. Exactly. And I've been thinking about that. There's a famous line by Galileo, Galilee, who's, you know, my biggest hero.

And he said, let us measure what is measurable and make measurable what is not. And the word risk is, as you know, you talk to people on the same sorts of people on your podcast. I've talked to people like Allison Schrager and The Into the Impossible podcast. And the word risk comes from like some Latin word, which means like belief that you're going to fail. So I always joke, you made the comment about Elon Musk, but they say the optimist builds the airplane,

but the pessimist builds the parachute. And I think you need both. You need the kind of wild-eyed optimist to think about what's going to happen if everything goes right. And then you need the guy who thinks, or gal who thinks about the contingency, and the cost. See, the thing is, James, most people just think about their hope that they're

going to succeed and they think that if they just try hard enough, they'll get to the result that they're planning on. It's like a diet. I hope I lose weight by my birthday next month, but if I'm not really trying, it's partially the satisfaction you get from having a plan. They say, fulfill some of the reward of actually achieving the plan. So if I say, I'm hoping to lose 10 pounds in a month, you know, to drop another 10, I drop 10. I drop 10. pounds as I told you during COVID. I dropped it from my double chin to my stomach. But it would have been better off another way. Well, I'm on the COVID diet right now. I highly recommend it. I know.

I lost about 10 pounds in two weeks. Poor guy. And you didn't have as much of wadupois as they say as I do. But the bottom line is, I'm a beer too. Oh, yeah. I can hardly see it there, but it looks good on you. But the point, you know, I think is if you fail the plan, you'll plan to fail. I think that's kind of overwrought as well, but the bottom line is how do you balance, because you only have a finite amount of time, money, resources, how much do you put into the non-hope or the planning and the doing rather than just the hoping? Right, because you can't plan for perfection, right? And that's a path to failure as well. In fact, you mentioned the invention of the airplane,

Samuel Langley, who was given a $2 million budget in 1900 by the U.S. government, he assumed that the plane would have no wind. So he wasn't allowing for any, you know, turbulence, whereas the Wright brothers baked in the fact that there would be turbulence, so they were able to say, they were able to plan for imperfection, and that's how they invented the plane faster than a guy who had $2 million more dollars of them. But the diet example is a great example, too. Somebody says, oh, before my wedding, I'll just fast for two weeks.

just doesn't work. Just as lazy, it's lazy thinking. Anyone who uses the word just, it's lazy thinking. You have to have a plan. And the interesting thing about hope is, if you look at absurdism, the philosophy of absurdism, the idea that life might not have no meaning,

so you have to develop your own meaning, you know, one way to find meaning is through hope and faith, and that's a valid way, but even much better, or perhaps better, is acceptance of the good and the bad around you and develop meaning in your life despite that, as opposed to relying on

something artificial or something like faith or hope. It's interesting in that way. I wanted to ask you about that because I, you know, I've hit a couple milestones lately on the podcast and on the YouTube channel. I'm over like almost 34,000. I finally have more YouTube subscribers than James Alticier, which has been my lifelong goal since I was 10 years old. I have to be, I still have to figure out what to do with my YouTube channel. I cannot make it work, but go ahead. I will help you. And it's mainly from Noah Kagan

and his wonderful producer, Mitchell Cohen. Shout out to Mitchell. But I was thinking like, what's my strategy? Do I want to get to a billion subscribers? No, I don't really care about that. I have a very keen goal, as Alio said,

what you measure, you should measure well and what you can't. You should make measurable. So here we've got a very measurable statistic. You know, number of subscribers. So then what do you optimize beyond? What is your metric? What is your goal?

And I'm trying to think about that in terms of like planning forward because I'm starting to get some of the negative aspects of that. In other words, I'm getting people that are kind of trolling me, baiting me, trying to get me involved in their little squabbles with people that have been on the show, or criticizing me for having on people like Avi Loeb. Yes, there's a perfect example. This, you know, former scientist, and now he's a journalist named Ethan Siegel,

very bright guy. It was a theoretical cosmologist, writes for Forbes magazine. I read it every day. But he's like calling out Avi Loeb because I'm a guy. I, like you, had him on my podcast, except I got breaking news from him. The minute this new Galileo project was announced, I had him on. And he actually had asked me to join their advisory board of oversight, which is not paid. And I said, I volunteered to do it because there's so much hype and hysteria and lack of Galileo's invocation to measure what's measurable.

And so now it's just like cell phone cameras, he talked about in your show. You get this grainy camera. It's not going to help if you have 10 million iPhone cameras all looking at the same event. better technology, better to... This guy, Ethan, was, you know, criticizing Avi as a hype man as a charlatan, as a... Essentially, like, not quite accusing

him of fraud, but saying it's like, you know, people should be aware, and Brian Keating, you should stay away from him. And, you know, I just thought, you know, because he's only in for his own good. And they have a longstanding beef and I actually have refutations for most of what he said.

But I'm like, do I answer this? Or do I just hope it goes away? Like, do I get involved with it? And like, this is like a squabble between this guy, Ethan and Avi, and what do I need to get involved in it? Like, the guy tweeted at me, so I'd get involved, but do I have to take that? No.

No, I think the way to stay with science is to stay on the science and rise above, you know, the guy at Forbes also, every move forward is a move backwards too. So he's making a move forward in his career, he's saying, this guy, Avi Loeb, who we both like, is a charlatan.

That's also a move backwards. He's exposing himself to getting into some sort of Twitter or a social media fight, you need to rise above the downsides of what he's doing. The focus of what Avi's really trying to do, no matter what his agenda is, is that the U.S. government has admitted there are some important things that our pilots have seen that we don't know what they are. So what could possibly be wrong with measuring what matters, as Galileo says. You said this place was steps from the water.

We just haven't found the steps yet. How much did we save? Enough. Enough to get lost. Or you could book a stay with Hilton. Welcome to your oceanfront room. Just steps from the water. The Hilton sale is on now. Book on Hilton.com or the Hilton app and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected. When you want savings, not surprises.

It matters where you stay. Hilton for the stay. Yeah. What could possibly be wrong with that? Right. And especially if it was the government funding it, but it's not. It's some private Harvard, you know, alumni probably. I actually don't know all the details of it, but it's like $1.7 million enough for three small telescopes, you know, that Avi talked with you about.

What's wrong with that? It's private funding by an eminent scientist. The problem was that Ethan, who has a PhD in physics, very bright man, but he was saying things like, you know, Avi's, you know, he used to be a plasma physicist, and he's only made, you know, he's written a lot of papers, but they're very low quality. And I just felt like, you know, God, this guy's got,

Head to the Department of Astronomy at Harvard. For longer than anybody, as far as I... Yeah. Right. As far as... For longer than any... And that's a thankless job. Nobody gets any gratification from being chairman of a department.

It's like the higher you fly, the more easier you are to shoot down. Now, he has criticized him. There was a conflict with Jill Tarter, who's an eminent scientist herself, and started off this field, and she's featured in Contact the movie. That's basically Ellie Arrowie's character. Jill's a hero of mine. And she endorsed my first... book. And they had a big blow up and it was caught on video and Avi behaved in a way that is

indistinguishable from toxic masculinity. And we talked about that on my podcast. So I'm like, what should I do? Not have him on my podcast? And then I had Lawrence Krause on, which is another guy who's super controversial. And people are like, how dare you have him on? He had all these accusations. And he's pals with Jeffrey Epstein. And I'm just like, you know, look, what people, I have on people I don't agree with all the time, James. I don't agree with you half the time. We come to blow as when we're in person. I don't agree with myself half the time. I mean, come on, James.

You know, like, I don't know what the hell I'm talking about. The thing is, though, you are a scientist. That's what you do for a living. That's what you love since you were a child. That's why you're close to winning the Nobel Prize. You have a code of science. What is science? It's asking questions that could be measured.

It's coming up a way of measuring them through an experiment or a theory that you could prove, and then doing it. And then it's just lazy thinking, I think, to get into the squabbles, to get into the politics, to get into the gossip. Buddha, who was a scientist of his day, I don't believe, nobody, nothing in Buddhism is about faith at all, by the way. Buddha says, right speech. So what is right speech?

It's not engaging in the squabbles and politics. It's saying, are there undidified flying objects and how do we identify them? That is right speech in this sense, in the scientific sense, in the Buddhist sense, in the non-lazy sense. You're not just saying, hey, I'm just going to defend Avi and then go back to the science, or, hey, I'm going to hope that this blows over. You're just going to focus on the science

and finding the truth. Now, if the truth depends on if Avi's going to fall apart because he's getting too much admired in the squabbles, that's another story. But he's not like that. No. And he found the funding.

And look, I'd like to know, as Avi says, you want to know, are these unidentified flying odd? alien nature? Are they Chinese in nature? Either way, it's important to know. Are they weather in nature? It's important to know because our pilots are being affected by it. And I made this point to him. And unfortunately, YouTube has a very, very good algorithm. So I had my super producer, Stuart Wolkow find some images of the Hubble Deepfield. Have you ever seen

this Hubble Deepfield, James, like all these galaxies and no stars? I call it the Cosmic wallpaper. It's literally the cosmic wallpaper. It's the farthest you can see with like actual formation of galactic structure. Beyond that is the cosmic background radiation that I study, and that's literally 13 billion years afterwards in some cases. So anyway, so I had this discussion with Avi, and

I said, Avi, the Hubble Deep Field, that's not data. So all these people are clamoring for data, and I say that is an image. That's a beautiful picture. It's inspiring. Maybe you could say, you could torture it and say, well, if I count up each one of the galaxies and I multiply by how much size that occupies on the

sky, then I multiply by how many patches it would take to occupy the whole sky, I can estimate roughly the number of galaxies in the universe. And that's actually what we do. How we know there's 500 billion plus or minus 400 billion galaxies in the observable universe. So I said that to Avi, and he agreed with me. And he said, oh, that's a great point. And then unfortunately, Stuart, my super producer, used a video from YouTube that has some copyright associated with. So I got a strike and they made me take it out of YouTube. And so it's just kind of cuts from me saying, like, look at the Hubble Deepfield. and then it's like, and now on to other new, you know.

But the point being, James, is that it's not just taking, it's a strong, who would you call, you know, would you, we talked about this a month ago when I was on your show, you know, is a pilot and expert, you know, is he an expert or she an expert? Yeah, and I've talked to some of it. They're experts in certain things. But astronomers are also experts. We're experts at looking up and surveying the night sky with a cadence and providing tons and tons of actual data, data meaning not just pretty pictures, spectra, calibration, flash,

field, dark field, all the information that goes into an astronaut astronomer's observation of a galaxy, we should apply that same toolkit to looking for this very important subject. The problem is it gets associated with, you know, prosthetic forehead creatures and it becomes a laughing stock. But, and I think there is something to say about, you know, Avi promoting a lot of what he does. You know, even my friends that like him are like, wow, he's really still selling his book. And I'm like, no, he's got a new book. It's 850 pages.

And it's about astrobiology. So I give him a lot of credit, and he's surely energetic. But look, James, this is a privately funded search for something that is one-fifth or 120th of the budget spent by the government, which we don't even think is sufficient, because they can't identify a Chinese ICBM, I don't know, a drone or something. Who knows what the hell? Anyway, it's something is interesting. I'm not saying it's probative, but I made the point.

Who would be most interested of all? James Altutcher, owner of stand-up New York and the proprietor of the James Altutcher show, or an astrophysicist who has a stick. in understanding the ultimate laws of nature. You have a stake. I have that same stake plus and and. There's the good reason, as you always say, and the real reason. And with that, James, I've got to go on a telecon,

which is where I'd rather be. I'd rather be on a telescope. No, no, and I appreciate it. I think to summarize, if you catch yourself thinking the words, oh, I just did it because of this, or I'm going to try this, we'll see what happens, or I hope this happens. these are lazy words.

Notice them in yourselves. I notice them in myself. I notice them in the selves of students or listeners or whatever. And it's examples of lazy thinking. And I know you have a hard stop, Brian, so I appreciate it. This is an important topic, and I hope people listen and take it into account in their own thinking. And James, I hope you feel better. Just try to take care of yourself, my brother.

You know what? There is no try. And here's the thing. I will say this about Yoda, is that doing something is better than trying something. Doing is the best marketing. If you start a business and sell it, that is good marketing for your next business. If you do a successful experiment as opposed to try a successful experiment, I don't know if you tried hard enough, but if you did it, I'm willing to trust you on your next experiment. Doing is the best marketing. It's like a sideshow Bob says in The Simpsons. He says, what is this with attempted murder?

Do they give you a Nobel Prize in attempted chemistry? See you guys. I love it. Wait, Brian, I'm going to hold you one more minute. Yeah, yeah. Because you brought up the etymology of the word just. Yes. Just, of course, means fair, but also originally just meant exact.

Yes. Like this block fit just in the structure. But then etymology became lazy, and the word just means almost fits now. Yes. It just fits. Which is the opposite. Right. So just itself has become a lazy word about itself.

So always, this is a dangerous word, the word just. So, Brian, you will win the Nobel Prize if you do not use the word just. That is my final advice for you. Goodbye. Bye, guys. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Please support the show by rating, commenting, sharing, and leaving reviews. We appreciate hearing from you, and it really helps keep our universe expanding.

Watch our YouTube channel at Dr. Brian Keating. That's DR. Brian Keating and join our premieres Tuesdays at 8 a.m. Pacific Time. Follow Brian on Twitter and Medium and support us on Patreon at Dr. Brian Keating. For exclusive content, visit Brian Keating's website and sign up for his informative newsletter at brian keating.com. Into the Impossible is produced with the Arthur C. Clark Center for Human Imagination in the Division of Physical Sciences at the University of California, San Diego. Produced by Stuart Volko and Brian Keating.

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