Modern Wisdom - #069 - George MacGill - Mental Models 101 - How To Make Better Decisions

Episode Date: May 6, 2019

I'm joined by long time friend of the show and all round interesting individual George MacGill to break down how we can make better decisions in all areas of our lives by using Mental Models. If you imagine that your mind is an operating system, Mental Models are the apps you install into it which improve your ability to effectively make decisions. Today we are upgrading our minds by thinking about thinking, as we delve into some of mine & George's favourite mental models along with a mass of our best examples and resources. Huge thank you to Social Chain for letting me record in their beautiful studio and Video Guy Ollie from SC HQ for filming everything. Extra Stuff: Follow George on Twitter - https://twitter.com/george__mack Farnam Street Blog - https://fs.blog/ Farnam Street's 109 Mental Models - https://fs.blog/mental-models/ The Great Mental Models Book by Shane Parrish - https://amzn.to/2VijWDE Shane Parrish on Art Of Manliness - https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/mental-models-decision-making/ The Psychology Of Human Misjudgement by Charlie Munger (full speech) - https://youtu.be/pqzcCfUglws Why Not To Start A Startup by Paul Graham - http://www.paulgraham.com/notnot.html Check out everything I recommend from books to products and help support the podcast at no extra cost to you by shopping through this link - https://www.amazon.co.uk/shop/modernwisdom - Get in touch. Join the discussion with me and other like minded listeners in the episode comments on the MW YouTube Channel or message me... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/ModernWisdomPodcast Email: https://www.chriswillx.com/contact Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What is happening friends? Welcome to the Modern Wisdom podcast and today's guest is someone I've been looking forward to sitting down with for quite a while. This actually marks the beginning of a series of three episodes I recorded at Social Chains Headquarters in Manchester. You will notice a fantastic uplift in audio and video quality if you head to the YouTube channel. I had serious podcast studio envy. So that may be where the next investment goes after seeing how beautiful there's was. But onto today's episode with George McGill, we're talking all things mental models. This is a branch of learning which has emerged from the back of Charlie Munger, Warren

Buffett's business partner, and been popularised by guys like Shane Parrish from FS.Blog. And as Humbley is, George has a fantastic understanding of this entire subject area. They are general thinking concepts. So a lattice work of approaches, which you can layer on top of each other, which help you to think. No one teaches us how to think, we just presume that it emerges naturally, but you can take the best principles and insights from different industries and actually create models of how to think from them. So yeah, I absolutely love this episode. I found it super useful for me and I'm certain that you will as well. Please welcome George McGill. I'm not so bad, how are you? Very good, thank you. George Mack, honestly. Twitter, no, no, no. Twitter, still not transferred across on Instagram. No, no, no, no, I need to. I like it. So, what we're talking about today, George? I guess we're more like a female.

I'm not a female. I'm not a female. I'm not a female. I'm not a female. I'm not a female. I'm not a female. I'm not a female. I'm not a female.

I'm not a female. I'm not a female. I'm not a female. I'm not a female. I'm not a female. I'm not a female. I'm not a female. I'm not a female. I'm not, no, no, I like it. So what we're talking about today, George. So I guess we're more like a theme

of what we've been chatting about for the last six to nine months, right? Which is like, mental models. And how you sort of interpret that is up to you. I particularly got it from Charlie Munger, like Navarre-Ravacan, a few other thinkers about like, almost like recipes for like regular decision making. If you can imagine like your consciousness is like a,

like the OS, like mental models are just various sort of apps that you like pull again for like various decisions or situations that you find yourself in. And it's almost like this, I think Charlie Munger calls it like a lattice work, like And it's almost like this, I think Charlie Moor would cause it like a lattice work, from all the big like disciplines, whether that's like physics, whether that's business, whether that's microeconomics.

Because what a lot of people do will just specialize and go, okay, I learn biology. And then that's all I do. And they just go deep on that subject. Whereas the whole like Tim Ferris strategy of taking the 10% that covers 90% of it like from biology, whether it's evolution, whether it's homeostasis,

and then going into microeconomics and looking at game theory, race to the bottom, taking all these strategies and then almost trying to apply them instead of having to deal with the overwhelm of everyday life. That's how I interpret it, but now it's much looser and just anything where it's like an analogy that helps me like explain things

is really, really useful. Totally. So you introduced me to mental models when I first came in here actually to do a podcast with the guys from social minds. And to be sat down and you took me through it. And it was the first time I'd heard of it. Charlie Munger appears to be kind of like patient zero for it. Yeah, it's a Charlie, he's less a known, but he is Warren Buffett's business partner, who obviously the guy who runs the Spectre have a way. Fourth richest man in the world. Yeah, fourth official richest man in the world, there's a lot of like unofficial people out there.

So Marco, that's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, he's Warren Buffett's business partner and he's sort of been obsessed right his career of taking these ideas from the big disciplines. That's where I originally like got it from. So like one, my favorite one from like Charlie was like just inversion, which was like this is like quite a nice introduction. This is probably like the most simple one. You can sample that.

A polite regular, yeah, an example of a modern right. So inversion is almost comes from mathematics when you try and reverse a problem on its head. So for example, the best example I always use, because it's so woolly trying to figure out, it's inversion is particularly useful for those woolly conversations or those woolly questions. So like happiness, right? What is, how do I become happy? People spend their whole lives exploring that question, what's this purpose I've got to find? Like, do what have to go to a spiritual retreat in India and sit in the meditator for two years?

But instead, Munga would just say, you just flip it on its head and go, how would I make a happy person depressed? And it's like quite easy the answer's there then, right? So first thing you'd do is mess with their, mess with their sleep schedule. Like completely flip it on the head, have them sleep in lay, have them sleeping like awful, have blue light coming in. So you do that. Second one you do is mess with their nutrition.

Like you'd have them eating awful food. You'd immediately isolate them from their friends. You'd put them in a shit job and you'd just take away any form of meaning or hobbies from their life. So you look at those five things there. If you avoid all of those five, you've basically achieved happiness, right? You're 95% of the way that.

So instead of like Munga basically looks at it as instead of trying to seek excellence, just focus on avoiding stupidity. He says that's the success of his career. Like he's never gone out to seek like excellence him and Warren. It's just always avoiding stupidity. So myself and my business partner, Darren, say something similar about Club Promote that were not fantastically talented Club Promoteers,

we've just made 10 years of mistakes that we've only ever made once. Okay. Because it is really technically on your mistake as far as I'm concerned, if you make it twice. Like if it's a strategic learning experience That you choose not to learn from It's kind of your fault the first time that it happens. You're like well if you didn't know it

You didn't know it you can't know what you don't know so let's use let's you look at like club promo is a good example Right, so let's say I was starting my own night out It's often very good to think about what would make a successful night out So you'd be like thinking about a DJ in, getting XYZ in. But instead, you should start from what would make this go absolutely awfully, whether it's how you want to get your health and safety stuff in order, right? So focus on the short. So on the short. So on the short. So on the short. So on the short. So on the short. So on the short. So on the short. Two expensive drinks, poor service, bad smell, bad DJ. Yeah. She's that whole quote like show me

where I'm going to die, so I'll never go there. Yeah. That's the key. And I was using this, like, this is one of the things I love about mental models, that you actually whole quote, like, show me where I'm gonna die. So I'll never go there. And that's the key. And I was using this, like, this is one of the things I love about mental models, that you actually have like real world, like applicability. So I was thinking like, as I did on like a Sunday evening, just like reviewing stuff, because I'm 25 next month. So I'm like, almost 50% the way through my 20s.

I'm like, what do I want the rest of my 20s to look like? And that was just one of those overwhelming questions. Like, I couldn't answer. So I was like, huh, what do I definitely not want to go to? So I'll look, so I wrote this down my phone and they get it up. So I was thinking like, what mistakes do I see people make in their 20s? And what like, could I actively go out and avoid?

So the seven that I came up with was like number one to avoid comfort in your 20s. Because if you're comfortable in your 20s, then you're just like absolutely screwed. Two, like hanging around or working with people who I don't admire. Three, doing easy things, and like avoiding building like career modes that you can just compound and iterate off the back off. Four, neglecting or like abusing your health. Five, gaining liabilities, debt. six toxic relationships, seven feedbackless environments. And I realized if I avoid all of those seven, no matter what I do, if I just

keep on focusing on avoiding all those seven, it's almost impossible to fail because by the very nature, these are all the things that's going to lead to failure. So instead of setting some goal where I want to earn X or I want wanna be ABC, I'm just focusing on avoiding those seven because I think it's so easy for people to get caught up in chasing this big, big goal and forgetting the dogs that are at the door that are coming to eat them. So focus on those seven, particularly a great example, is the toxic relationships one,

I thought about this one quite a lot because you've almost got the two categories of toxic relationships, right? You've got the cliche one that you see on the news or an episode of the bill of somebody being like physically abusive, right? But the one that I'd say affects people way more, the much more like passive ones

that people like sleep their way into, sorry not sleep their way into, that's the wrong word there, but maybe that's how you get there as well, right? But that you, every day, it just gets a bit worse. That's 5000 cuts. And you start changing, which gets onto another mental model, right? So you then have like contrast. So you know, Charlie Munger, it's called the psychology

of humanist judgment. We're just talking about the frog in boiling water, you know, the famous, and it don't where you put a frog in boiling water, it jumps out, you put a frog in cold water and slowly heat it up, and it will just sit there till it dies, and he says at the end of it, you guys, I don't know if that's like a true thing about frogs, but it's true of every business person

that he's ever met, and he's dealing with elite business people, so that's power of contrast. Power of contrast. Yeah, so that's almost like another mentor, what a right, so you look at contrast. I would say contrast is probably the most important thing for like human happiness. You can see everywhere like the the hedonic treadmill, like the fact that we live in the best time ever to be alive and people are

still miserable. I find that fascinating. Like why is that? So I spoke to Professor Rick Hanson, New York Times bestseller, writer of Hardwiring Happiness and his most recent book, Resilience. And what I came to about that was I thought that if you take Maslow's hierarchy of needs and you look at Paleolithic man, your grand, great, great, great, great, great, times 100 grand father, 100,000 years ago, 10,000 years ago, the bottom of his pyramid would have been

a lot more poorly serviced, safety, food, shelter, warmth, hydration, all of that sort of stuff. The bottom end would have been a lot more poorly serviced, but because he was doing exactly what he needed, his attention was his to command. The top end of the pyramid was looked after quite well. Whereas I think what's happened now is we flipped out on its head and you have very high

degree of comfort. Most people in the 21st century in the Western world are not super concerned about their warmth, the safety, the food, their comfort. All of that's been looked after, which leads to this existential crisis that's self-referential, because the top has now been service less. Previously, you would have been your job.

It would have been a job for life. Your job might have been a crafter of trade that you could have taken some pride in, flow from me higher, check segment higher, like alludes to that. Deep work from Carl Newport, also alludes to that. There's neurologically, Myelin creates around neurons that are continually firing

neurons that fight together, wire together. So in terms of the neuroscience behind it, it makes sense psychologically. It makes sense because you are able to feel some inherent degree of aptitude and prowess and finesse in doing something difficult that's challenging and worthwhile and overcoming it. And then just generally in terms of what that says about

you socially as well, people think, you are adding value because you have that. Whereas in the modern world now, a lot of knowledge workers have no feedback mechanism. Like you wake up, you had 100 emails, you go to bed, you've done 100 but received 103, I've got 103 emails. You're like, did I do a good job? Did I do a bad job? I have no idea. So I think that in the 21st century, one of the problems is that we don't have

a effective feedback mechanism for when work has been done for a lot of people in a lot of jobs. Like if you're a Smith or a carpenter or a farmer or anyone, you know when the field's been plowed, you know when the wheel's been made, you know when the car's been fixed, and there's an inherent amount of satisfaction that comes with that. And the same thing would have come from, if your total hierarchy of needs began and ended with keeping your family safe and having enough food to eat, once you've achieved that,

there you go. That's your self-actualization has been made because that's how high your hierarchy of needs goes. However, when you have looked after that, you start to look at things that are actually a lot more difficult for you to reach. So that was my hypothesis about why we have that in the modern world. That makes a lot of sense. I think from an element of contrast about how we actually utilize contrast in particular.

So I had a real word, this is where it all came from, I wrote a Twitter thread on this. Like last year was a solid hospital, which is like a couple miles away from where we are now, and had a family member that was ill. So literally four or five, six days of the week, I'd go in after work and go there and it going back to inversion before it's like an inverse Instagram feed, right? So on Instagram, you're scrolling through artificial lives that are meant to make yours look worse. Whereas walking around the hospital, you're looking at real lives who would do anything to change like positions with you. I remember once, I was set up as a guy who was obviously a former soldier who had severe

dementia. So the contrast of going through a hospital ward, because I'd look at my life, so let's say if you have some of my life to 8 out of 10. When I'm on Instagram, I'm looking at 10 out of 10 lives, and I'm contrasting my 8 out of 10 with a 10 out of 10 and feeling the minus two, whereas when you walk around the hospital ward where people are dying, you're contrasting you're eight out of 10,

and you could argue like a zero out of 10 or one out of 10. You told me, I think it was around exactly the same time that you recommended I read the last Highlander by Alistair Herkhardt. Yeah, forgotten Highlander. Forgotten Highlander. Forgotten Highlander. Sure, it's not the last. We'll check afterwards with some current Highlander. Anyway, Alistair Hercart. Yeah. Forgotten Highlander. Forgotten Highlander. Forgotten Highlander. Sure, we'll check afterwards with some kind of Highlander.

Anyway, Alistair Earcart book is fantastic. For anyone who's read Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl, like imagine that and make it extreme. Like this guy was captured by the Japanese, put in numerous prisoner of war camps, helped to build the bridge over the river Quai was strapped in a tin, basically a tin box and left out in the sun for a couple of days, suffered with like every tropical disease under the sun, basically had dysentery constantly for four years. Then got strapped on one of these death ships and didn't have any food or water at over 100 degrees Fahrenheit

for like a week as he traveled across the ocean, then got out, then got put in another death camp, and then got hit by the aftershock of Nagasaki's bond drop. Like literally got blown off his feet by the heat, and then kept quiet about it for 60 years, 50 years, and then basically wrote this as a memoir, which is also a movement to call the Japanese government to count for the atrocities that occurred under that because it was kind of brushed under the rug a little bit, had the Gutenberg trials and things like that but there wasn't really an equivalent. There was a Gutenberg trial, wasn't it?

I'm not sure. The Nazi war crime trials, but you didn't have an equivalent really for the Japanese. So anyway, he did all that and that again, the contrast there that you can apply between that life and your own and the same occurs for a lot of things. So we've moved through, we've had inversion, we've had contrast. The Charlie Munga speech that you mentioned about

is pretty seminal at kind of starting this off, right? The video guide Dean will make the link to the video appear in the top corner. And if you're listening on iTunes, it'll be in the show and I'll tell you below. But it's... On the contrast one, because we've checked this matter four before, just to like finally hit it home.

This is the perfect example of the power of contrast that comes from Charlie Munger's speech. The bucket's hands experiment, right? So I think it comes from Bob Chialdeini's work, where they had three buckets. So on the left hand side, they had a freezing ice cold bucket. On the right hand side, they had a boiling hot bucket. So what they get people to do is put their left hand in,

the freezing one and the right hand in the boiling one and leave it there for a minute or two, right? Then in the middle, they'd have a lukewarm, just neutral water, that they'd move their hands into. And obviously, the one that had just been in the freezing cold water suddenly felt like this water was incredibly pot, whereas the one that had been in the boiling hot water, that water felt incredibly cold.

So objectively, the water is the exact same temperature, but it's just what you're contrasting against. And that is the true power of contrast that I see. Yeah, that's so good. So Charlie Munger's speech was actually delivered, it's like a graduation speech. Stamford, there's one, I think at University South Carolina, I believe, and there's also the one he gave to,

which is the graduation speech, but there's also the one that he gave at Stanford University, called the Psychology of Human Missjudgment, when he breaks down sort of mental model, by mental model that people should look to apply to their lives. There's a short version of that, which will be linked in the show now to below, which has actually been animated.

I sent that to you a little while ago, which is really good. And yeah, I mean, this appears to be that speech seems to form the basis of one of our favorite blogs, which is Phanam Street. Which by the way, many people don't know, Phanam Street is the address of, have a way. Do you know what it used to be before that? No. What it was, the predecessor to that, it was the zip code.

It was just this weird collection of letters. So anyone who is a big, big fan of Shane Parish from Phanam Street, he did a podcast on Brett McKay's Art of Manliness podcast. And that is fantastic. It can tell you an awful lot about just how Phanam Street came to be. And that's where I found out about the beginning. Charlie Munger's Psychology of Human Missed Judgment was basically what triggered, appears to be what triggered Shane Parish to start this blog, FS. blog, which is one of the best

resources on the internet. The fact that it's free blows my mind. Just for learning about these mental models, he has a list of 109, which will also be linked in the show and on to below. And you should definitely check out. You can clip the entire page with Evan O'Clipper and send it to your Kindle. So you can read it or you can put it in pocket or whatever you're using to read. But that appears to be kind of the patient zero for the start of this. And then we're going to move through a few more for the rest of the day. So what I'm thinking, so we can go into one that, people hear a lot about now, many could have been popularized by Elon Musk, which is

like first principles, which comes from physics. So this is the basic, the art form of deconstructing something. So you can, in order to reconstruct it. So like a great example of that is where Elon talks about, I believe it's like the batteries for, see the test are a SpaceX. And people would say, it was particularly SpaceX. And it was like, let's say for example, it was 1200 pounds of batteries.

No one was like, reasons from analogy. So just reasoned from the way it's been before, and just copy and paste that thinking, like really muddy thinking. So they have a particular mode of looking at the world, which is called reasoning for monology. Yeah, what's that? So reasoning for monology, so this is the example, right? So let's say with the batteries, an example of reasoning for monology would be, it's always cost £1200 to create this battery.

There's no way you could do it on a, like an affordable way to do it. So just breaking down from first principles would be to go, okay, let's deconstruct what this question actually is. So what is the battery made up of? So like lithium and you go, you go break down all the ingredients that are part of the batteries and he goes

Okay, how much would this cost to buy off the London Metal exchange and it comes down to like a tenth of the price and he goes okay So then all we need to do is find a cost effective way of putting these ingredients back together to create the batteries So that's literally like first principles Thinking like fully breaking it down to its core components. Paul Graham has like an unbelievable essay called like Why Not To Start A Start Up? And he basically like if you ask that people like for his that you'll have mates you want to start businesses right. And there's this like conversation going on in

their head. And often whether it's like breaking up with someone or starting a new chapter in the life, there's like all this stuff going on in their head and often whether it's like breaking up with someone or starting a new chapter and they're like, there's like all this stuff going on in their head. There's like 12 different reasons all into one that are all into twining. So what Paul Gray and basically recommends doing is, how can you even assess a situation until you've gone through every single reason, written them down, and then look, is that valid or what's the truth about that and break down the reality of each situation that's stopping you from doing something. But first principles is a fascinating one. I remember we chatted about this before, but where to actually apply it to, maybe we

could try it now, which is one thing I'm obsessed with is how can we completely destroy the modern education system because I despise it with a passion. So let's just look at education from a first principal's perspective. So a great example, instead of talking about what subjects, let's just break it down to what time should school start. That's a huge part of it, right? The time they arrive and the time that they leave. Daniel Gross, who has some amazing mental modules talks about this, he goes, why does school start at 9 a.m.?

It's so that parents can drop the kids off before they go to work. Right. But all the research suggests that kids start, remember, right, when you're a teenager, you wake up, you want to wake up at 12. So you have a whole nation of kids who are under slaps and sleep deprived. no wonder they fucking hate school. Well, that's why they changed the start time of high school in America in a particular state that I can't remember. This is cited in Joe Rogan's Matthew Walker podcast number 1109. And what he says is they moved the start time for school back by I think an hour or an hour and a half.

And they reduced the number of road traffic accidents down by 25% in people under the age of 21, because the sleep deprivation that was being suffered was out of the times that school was starting, was out of alignment with the natural circadian rhythm of people of that age, and by avoiding that, they downstream from that, didn't need to change anything to do with crossings, didn't need to change anything to do with education, just needed to give the people behind the wheel a bit more sleep. So going back to, yeah, a completely great.

So going back to the first principle perspective, right? So let's look at what time should school start. Then it's almost, how do we teach? So one thing I find fascinating is, if I was learning a subject now, I wouldn't learn 10, 15 subjects at once. So why are we doing this for kids? Would it be better to have a year where they go deep in biology or they go deep in a specific subject that they've chosen? Why is it you do like an hour of history and

then an hour of psychology, then an hour of this and as a result you'd chase 10 rabbits and get none. Maybe a bit of that is due to low attention. Like if all I had to do was like maths for a year or even a week, probably get pretty bored. I think there's probably a refreshing. The point that you're making though is that you can look at as opposed to accepting the old guard and reasoning from analogy, which is copy and paste, you can actually just start scratch and look at as opposed to accepting the old guard and reasoning from analogy, which is copy and paste, you can actually just start scratch and look at it. So I think we do this with the relationship

series. We look at, okay, so exactly what is supposed to be a relationship and why are we accepting of certain things? What are the best practices that you can move through? What are the component parts, the distilled down to its core elements? What are the actual individual parts of what a relationship should be and how you should interact with someone? So yeah, first principles anyone who's watched Elon Musk and Joe Rogan will have heard him talk about this a lot, and he's a big proponent of it, right? 100%. And like, I was thinking about, I was way in Gran Canaria recently and it was like saying. So one of those holidays where you just go to like Amsterdam, a Budapest with friends and you'll be drinking and going out and you come away from that needing a holiday,

whereas this, you was just isolated in the sun just thinking about stuff. And I was trying to break down like, what's the first principles of my life? Like what are the things that really matter? And I was thinking all that I sort of want and I want to optimize is time and energy. So time is in how much like time I have in the day, what am I doing with my time and then obviously energy as well because let's say I have 24 hours in a day to do whatever I want but I'm really sick. Like that's a pointless life, right? So if you every decision now, I'm just trying to filter through, will this give me more time?

Will this give me more energy? How do I want to spend my time? How do I want to spend my energy? Whereas beforehand you have so many analogies just rolling through your head of how you should be living. Like should I be doing this because this person thinks that or should I be here at 25, should I be doing this? Like, what should I care about how many followers I've got here? Like, where's now? I'm just thinking about time and energy. And you realize that's all you've got and that's all you should ultimately optimize for. When you break it down to

its core components, what's more important than time and energy? So Cal Newport talks about work doing equals time times intensity. That's the formula that he comes with as part of deep work. And you are correct. I can't help but think as you're saying that, that if anyone ever needed one sentence justification for why you should go sober, that you've just deployed it there. Like because it saps both of the two most precious resources

that you have as first principles in your life. So what have we got next? What are we moving on to? So what we got next, I'll tell you what, just to finish off the first principles, I'll use the perfect metaphor, similar to the book it's one, right? Yeah. If you look when the wheel was invented, it was invented in like 2000, God knows how many years ago, right? But bags have been around for ages. And for ages, people would just reason by analogy and would just make a prettier looking bag. And then around about

the 70s or 80s, one guy realized, why the fuck can't we put the wheels on these things? He puts wheels on it. And now you could, could you imagine suitcases without, without wheels now? Rory Sutherland is a mezzanet on the podcast I did with Rory. He said, I can't believe we put a man on a moon before we put wheels on a suitcase. Yeah, it's crazy. Part of that, he says, is likely due to the fact that in-line skates and skateboarding costs and casters and things like that became cheaper as a byproduct of the proliferation of those minus sports, but the fact that you could have definitely put at the very least little roller or something on the bottom of it. Yeah, you completely correct.

So next one, this one's like, I've not recently fleshed out as much elsewhere, but it's one I've been thinking about ages. I want to write to a friend on it at some point, because that's what I do. I'll have an idea running around in my head for weeks, and then I'll go, okay, I've got a friend now. So, like, double think, which comes from George Orwell's, the whole two contradictory beliefs in your head at the same time. We was chatting about this. And you see these mental models before, right, which is the whole two contradictory beliefs in your head at the same time. We was chatting about this, like, and you see these

mental models elsewhere, right? So, Nassitalib has the barbell strategy, where it's all the way to either ends of the spectrum. So, the way I was thinking about this on the drive down today, which is people say you don't want to think in black and white. I think you want, sorry, black or white thinking. You want black and white thinking.

It's the shades of gray is where you go to die, so anything like in between. So we'll give like the perfect example of this. Like the ability to do intense, focused, deep work with intense serendipity and socialization and all that stuff in the middle is where you go to die. Like, black and white thinking is so underrated. And the perfect example, because I know Nick Sazbo I heard a podcast with him in Navajo, he calls it like Quantum Four, where he's sort of holding two opinions at the same time and he's running through, running them through his head.

Like Connor McGregor's coach, John Kavanaugh, he talks about how during training he wants his fighters to be completely egoless and think they're basically losers and just constantly obsessive improving and he wants them to get tapped by everyone and learn what they're doing wrong. But as soon as fight week comes, he wants them to think they're completely invincible. So it's this weird like paradox that exists of like two polar end of the spectrums that you have to exist between. And Matthew Sired has a similar concept with like golfers. So let's say for example, a golfer's about to take a swing. Before he

takes that swing, he has to have extreme self-doubt where he's going, okay, what club should have I use in here? What's the perfect swing? But as soon as he's gone through all that self-doubt and gone through of it all, he then needs to switch to a state of complete and total confidence. So it's that double think, two ends of the spectrum that you have to exist between, whereas if you sort of a midway between it,

where you're a little bit confident, but a little bit of self-doubt, those shades of grace, just where you go to die. I totally get that, man. Matthew, siad, if you are listening, please reply to me, if you will. I would love. I totally get that, man. Matthew, siad, if you are listening, please reply to me email. I would love to have you on the podcast, but you're pying me harder than some girls do.

So, it's pretty hard. Yeah, I do get that. I like the idea of black and white thinking. I think what a lot of people will tend to do is allow cognitive biases to come in and they will do white and white thinking or black and black thinking. Yeah, of course. Which is another, we were discussing last night of a dinner about how steel manning another

person's argument can be a fantastic way to get around this. So Charlie Munga has, he calls it his I am prescription, in that he refuses to have or state publicly an opinion on something, unless he can state the opposing opinion better than the other side can. So like the best, like one of the best political experiments I've ever seen was on the Jimmy Kimmel show.

So what he did during the Trump and Hillary election would he basically, would go out in the street and interview a load of like Hillary supporters, and I think they did the same for Trump supporters as well, but they would list like a load of policies that Hillary Clinton was planning on implementing and they'd be going, yeah, that's a great idea. That's absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.

Great immigration policies, great economic policies, but at the end, it basically revealed to them that it was Trump's policies and you'd see like the cognitive dissonance where the MPC computers were just about to explode, right? And that goes back to another mental model, which is like identity. And Charlie talks about this about when you go around shouting publicly, as you do with these students now, like I believe X, I believe Y, I believe Z, you think you're drilling it to the outside world, but you're actually drilling it into yourself. And as soon as you identify as something, that's it. It can even be a superpower or the death of you. Like if you were, for example, identified as like a non-smoker, which James Cleyer talks about,

it's a way of kicking smoking, right? But if you, like, I know Robert Childini, he got to the stage where he wouldn't want to sign a petition, but something that he believed in because he then began to identify with that cause and would find it very difficult to think clearly. Identities are really, really weird. It is a difficult one. Can we do signal versus noise? Go for it. So signal versus noise is like, this is one of my favorites.

Yeah, like, how you go about particularly in the 21st century, like establishing what's true and what's going to be gone tomorrow. And you can almost find another mental model there, which is like the Linde effect. So the Linde effect, I believe it was a load of comedians sat around in a cafe and they realized that a comedian's lifespan was almost there. Well, let's say for example, they've been around for two years. You can assume they're going to be around for two years more. It's a minimum's lifespan was almost there. Well, let's say for example, they've been around for two years. You can assume they're gonna be around for two years more. It's a minimum future lifespan.

Exactly. So, let's say a book's been around like the origin of species by Charles Darwin, it's been around for a couple hundred years. You can assume it's gonna be around for a couple hundred years more. At least. But the fucking blog post you've just read on BuzzFeed, that if it's been around for a day, it's probably not gonna be around there tomorrow.

Yeah, and Dave, you'll hear if you look on Twitter and you see the circles that George moves within. By the way, George is followed by some of the biggest dicks on Twitter and by big dicks, I mean like honking huge Throbbing really impressive people in the Valrava Khan Rory Sussanlin's just recently done you as well, hasn't he? There's a number of others. But yay, he has. It's done you. And the circles that these guys move within, you'll see them talk a lot about, reader Lindy Book.

Yeah. And what they mean by that is read something which has been around for a significant period of time. So to invest that on the head, David Perrell has a great point, has a great podcast, the North Star one. I think he was trying to keep a boy maybe about this. And if 99% of people, all the content they consume was made in the last 24 hours. Yeah.

And this is what makes me. And he saw that and then that ties into another moment and what do you see how these are all links, right? Which is like evolution. Which by the fact it's only been around for a day, you consume it's half span, it's the life spans only me a number day more. Like that is awful content, whereas if something survived for 200 years, you know there's something like foundational to that material that you should look to seek out. So you can see all these

all tied together. That's why the classic books are the classics, right? Yeah. That's why Warren Peace, or 1984, is a good read. So you're one of the best fucking examples of this in one's book, that I'm a, I made this mistake, and like I know for a fact that we loads of other people, particularly that entrepreneurship and business. So the amount of people, and I love Gary Vee, I like Tyler Lopez, I think they're probably

doing a lot of good for the world grand cardone, all these modern, new true entrepreneurs, which A aren't even the richest dudes like people in the world, they've probably got about a seven, eight-figured network. But let's leave that aside. And like I said, I'm not criticizing these guys, but the amount of people I know who are similar to me, who only listen to their content, but have no clue who John Rockefeller is,

who have no clue who Benjamin Franklin is, no clue who JP Morgan is. Like the actual people throughout history who've changed society, like John Rockefeller was the first billionaire, at his net worth at one point, I believe, as like 3% of the USG GDP. So he shits all on Jeff Bezos, like shits on Jeff Bezos.

So if you actually go back through history and see what survived, you're gonna get like so many gems from studying like Rockefeller, I'll give you some examples, I was watching, I listened to that and I was going, that's so applies to me, so I thought, shit, I need to talk to some documentaries on this guy.

Well, you get seduced. People get seduced by newer is better, which is just a bias. Licency bias. Get another one on one. Licency bias. Licency bias. And on top of the licency bias, there'll be what's the one like, closeness bias, like where it's just the fact that it's more visible or visibility bias as well.

That it's the brand new self-help book which just came out one month ago. You're like, that's got all the latest research in. It's got this and you're like, well yeah, but look at Lindy. Like, it's not a Lindy book. Like, it's been around for a month, so presume it's probably going to be around for a month, maybe more. But you don't know. That's why when you hear Rory Sutherland, he cites Bob Caldini all the time. Like that art of persuasion is like, yeah. So it was crazy about Bob Chaudy. I just thought of topics briefly. So his book, persuasion, I believe it's true that Charlie and Warren love that book so much. You probably made a, you saw millions of copies, so he's probably done well from that. But Charlie and Warren love that book so much. I believe they gave him series eight shares in

Berkshire Havaway. I don't know what that means. So as in like, Berkshire Havaway, their business, they gave him like high-end shares within Berkshire Havaway because they love the book so much. Just because he contributes. Yeah, fuck. Apparently, Bob Chuldin was behind, because then you're trying to like, Scott Adams can go for a mental couple of mental models from him, because I know Scott's a big fan of his, but he was behind a lot of a barmer's presidency,

like a campaign, which goes to show like, that's one of the best campaigns that's like ever existed. Apparently when Clinton was beginning to turn it around, because you look at like Trump and Clinton's persuasion techniques, Trump just completely shat all over Hillary, right? But when Hillary hired Childini and brought him in, it has began to improve, like considerably,

but whilst we're on the topic of SCARDEMS, he has some great men on models, which is like SCARDEMS is the creator of Dilbert, like the one the most controversial, slash interesting Twitter feeds. If you ever want to learn how to write, you can learn within two minutes. The essay is called like the best.

So in what's it called? It's called the day you became a better writer. And within, it's about 10 sentences and he covers everything you can know about, like learning how to write, completely changed the way I write. First, first point. And it's just pure simplicity.

But he has like goals versus systems as a way of like navigating the career space, right, or what you want to do with your life. So a goal, for example, would be, let's use obviously your insane when it comes to the health stuff. So a goal would be like, I want to bench 200 kg a day or I want to get to 10% body fat. And I mean, first off, you know it, but then anyone, 90% of people never even reached their goals. Whereas a system, similar to James Cleare covers this a little bit with atomic habits, a

system is something that you do every single day. And let's say you look at those two realities, like two identical versions of George, one that does goals, one that does systems. So the systems is actually what the work requires to get the goals. You're more likely to get there, but also through doing systems thinking, because you're like hitting it every day. You're happy every day. And like as you mentioned,

you can tell the car analogy that you told me yesterday. Rather than a goal, you're literally miserable until you hit it. And then when you hit it, the day next day, you're like, okay, what's the next thing? So systems thinking, but tell the, what was the car analogy that you told me last night? So there's a couple of things.

James Cleir, but tell the what was the caronigee told me last night? So there's a couple of a couple of things. James clear, one of the main reasons that he doesn't like goals as a route towards direction in life is that you presume the reason if there's two people that have the same goals and one person wins and another person loses, the presumption is because one person's goal was greater than the others, or that someone wanted it more, but when you put the Olympic final of the 100 meters, there's no one on the start line who doesn't have the goal of winning.

The difference between all of them is the system. It's not the goal. And the car analogy that James Cleese is, which is fantastic, is that if you are on the right trajectory but haven't completed the goal that you want to and are complaining about it, it is exactly the same as sitting in a car moving on a motorway and complaining about not being there yet. You're like hang on, you're moving in the right direction at the optimal speed and doing all of the things you need to do, all that's left is to continue. Like, it sounds when you look at that and when you, uh, analogize that, it sounds so juvenile

to go, oh, not there yet. And like, and you know, the thro, you throw the toys out the pram and yet on a daily basis, we all see people going, well, like, I've been dieting for four weeks and I've been hitting the gym every day and look, I'm still not 5% body fat and you're like, look man, you just need to continue to sit on the motorway with your foot pressed down on the accelerator pedal. So let's go back to signal versus noise. Signal versus noise, remind me to come on to the Lollaposer effect because that's the ultimate mental model.

But signal versus noise is then, sorry, we were chatting about this last night, won't we? Me and Chris often have this thing where we have strands of conversations that just end up like absolutely, yeah, we're up. You're bringing back to the main trunk. Chris is good at this stuff. So signal versus noise is detecting like the information that actually matters versus 99% of the noise that's out there that is just absolutely garbage that people can often get confused with. The perfect analogy for this for understanding signal versus noise is that trading one that

I mentioned to you last night. So let's say that you were looking at the daily reports from the market. You'd put a trade on in some stock in the plan was to leave it long-term. If you were to look, and this is a shame, parishes, if you were to look at it at the beginning of year one and at the end of year one, you've probably got 50% of the information, or 50% of the movement is going to be signal and 50% of the movement is going to be noise. So you think, oh, okay, like, you know, 50% of what has happened, I probably need to take heed of. However, as you begin to increase the frequency at which you look at the market movement, let's say that you now look at it every six months, there's more noise and less signal.

Let's say that you look at it every day, there's almost all noise and almost zero signal, because all that you're concerned about is, does this information help me to make an effective decision? And signal versus noise explains or helps you to understand that you have to be able to discern what is important and what you should take heed of versus what is going to be tomorrow's fish and chips wrapper. And Lindy ties into that quite nice. This is it, right? All these mental models, kind of like a lattice work, right? They all fit together.

But the Godfather for me, the ultimate mental model, I don't know, do you know the Lollaposer effect? This comes from Charlie, right? Which is the, every, it's sort of another mental, we've got too many mental models here. But then you have like compound interest

when things all work, like obviously it builds mental on itself. So when you have multiple mental models working together or multiple cognitive biases working together, that's when you have have a holy shit effect. So I'll give you a good example of this, is you know, auctions. So let's say when people go to auctions, you have a few, like Warren and Charlie now refuse to go to auctions because they've got screwed out of them so many times.

So let's say for example, an item's on sale, you've got to look at what cognitive biases you have there. So first off, you have like social proof because you've got everybody looking at you and you're trying to impress them. You've got contrast because it's like the frog in boiling water. So let's say you said 20 pounds to begin with, but now you're at two grand, but because every time you're just going up

a little bit more, a little bit more, so you don't feel it. You've also got consistency bias because you've said, I want this and you've said it to a room full of people. You've got authority bias because you've got the guy on the stage. You've probably got sunk cost fallacy. You've got sunk cost. So when you have, that's a lot of poser effects.

It's when you have like five or six of these things working together and just compounding. And that's when you create like something like real crazy. So mental models are almost, you never see them by themselves. They're all like connected and intricate and within themselves. It's fascinating. Is it direction of a speed or is it speed over velocity that's a shame parish one? Which is I think what he talks about the difference between efficiency and effectiveness. And Johnny talks about this a lot that he

thinks a lot of people and it's the reason that he doesn't use Alfred. The reason he doesn't use Alfred is because he thinks he is making himself faster at going in an in optimal direction, a suboptimal direction, as opposed to he wants to spend all of his time just making sure that whatever direction he is moving in is as effective as possible. And he's like adding speed on top of a poor direction is just sending you further in the wrong way. And that does make a lot of sense. And that obviously ties in with the sunk cost fallacy, which is I have dedicated X amount of my life to whatever this particular direction is so far, I may as well continue going. And you're like, no man, like cut your losses., if you know in your heart of heart that another decision would make you more happy, another direction would make you more happy bounce off and go that way. So what else have

we got? Give me some more, man. This is one that I sort of, not another story, I didn't create it. I got it from, er, at Weinstein, but I wrote an essay on it, which is like, high agency. And I think this is like the most important personality trait. When I look at like friends who I know are going to do shit and friends who I know probably aren't gonna do shit, it's high agency is by far the single biggest factor. So the way Eric Weinstein talks about it is, do you believe the story that's given to you?

Let's say for example, I go, a Chris, you can't set up an events company, you're 20 years old. Okay, low agency people go, oh okay, I'll just go and get a job ex-wise out here. Whereas the high agency person is like, fuck you, I'm going to like figure out a way of doing this. And I, there's some almost like core tendants of high agency when I see people, and I want to get much better at this, I'm not an expert here, but it's almost the ability to have like a real high locus of control. So like Josh Wayskin

has this metaphor where what he's doing to teach his son right now, almost like a locus of control, is whenever the weather's shit, like he goes out and plays in there and goes look how great the weather is, whereas the average person, whenever it's an awful weather day,

it's like, oh, it's rubbish today. So never outsource your locus of control, you control your mental state. The second one is like going back to first principles earlier, so you almost have to reason from first principles and go, okay, everyone's doing this. Is that actually the correct way? Let's break it down. The next one you obviously need like some like insane work ethic and you're going to need some like creativity. And if you're figuring out like how this is how you identify high agency people, it comes from Jeff Bezos. He calls it resourceful

nurse, but it's basically the exact same thing, which is if you was in a third world prison, what friends would you call to break you out? And you can immediately, you'll think now, take 10 seconds, you go, which friends would I call? And then you go, okay, that's a high agency person. Because by their very nature, you can have to be quite smart to do that. You have to reason from first principles. You can have to use all the stuff that you have to have internal locus of control, right? High agent, I'll give you some examples, right? So I need to do that, you have to reason from first principles, you can have to use all the stuff that you have to have internal locus of control, right? High agent, I'll give you some examples, right? So I need to do a thread on this. One of my favorite examples of high agency behavior, and I hope you make a film on this, because you know the whole silk road stuff, right? So silk road, the, I'll give you the biggest drug empire, certainly everyone line on the biggest drug

empire as ever, do you know who took him, took, um, drug-private Roberts down, the guy who was running it all. So by the way, the FBI was after him couldn't do shit. D a was after him couldn't do shit. Um, the person who took, Ross, um, Ross Olbrich down was, um, a IRS tax inspector via Google. For me, that is mental. And then we can go into like a symmetry, right? So the fact that one individual on their Bucking computer of an internet connection can outperform the FBI and You know how you found him so he just decided he started googling went back through to the old forums and found a post on a Bitcoin forum about it

Contacted the forum about the email address that was registered and it was Ross or Brick to Gmail.com And this is how it gets mental so he then presents it to his superiors who didn't believe him for months. And then they, as they finally began to catch up with him, they actually realized he was correct all along. And this is like the power of high agency behavior. You have Mark Zuckerberg and his college dorm room who can take down the entire media industry.

You have Jeff Bezos who's taking down all of commerce. Basically you have Satoshi Nakamoto, he's definitely designing the banking sector. Exactly. You've got Joe Rogan, who's completely taking over media and broadcasting. Pewdiepie gets more views, like four times as many views as CNN.

Right? High agency behavior is the most like important personality trait out there. Another question that Peter Teal has, is he asks people, like, what's your 10 year goal? And they'll go, okay, so I want to build it. So I said, he goes, how would you do that in six months? And then shit, you start like going fuck, fuck, okay, I've got to figure out how to do this now. Like, high agency behavior is probably

the most important thing to cause for it. And this explains why you have people who've read all these fucking books, and they don't do anything, because by its very, and whereas you have, like, I know you chat about your business partner, Darren, right? Who's not that book smart that I bet you could say is high agency, right? If he was in a field world prison, I bet he'd be one of the people you... He would, he'd be out immediately.

He'd have done their accounts for them and they'd be... They'd have let him free. No, you are completely right. They're doing a example. What's one on YouTube do with that? So this kid from a rough part of London, black kid from London, and he wants to be a success, right?

So most people would like research it online or do XYZ, you know what he did? And the good thing about how agency behavior is, it's very nature, because it's so low barrier, if you go above and beyond everyone else, you stand out like a fucking saw firm. So you know what he did? He found out, he just searched,

where is the richest part of London? Realized it was Kensington, and just started knocking on doors asking for advice. The second house that he knocked on, I believe it was the MD of Black Rock, who just said, you want an internship, yeah, and then you got an internship there. And like, that for me, is like, well, that's some like real high age at sea stuff, yeah. I love that. I want to talk about asymmetries. I know that asymmetry, I don't know if it class is particularly as a mental model, but it's something that you should.

I think you want to be as loose as possible these mental models and however it works for you. So this almost comes from, yeah, of course it is, it comes from mathematics, right? Where it's, like, it's a very asymmetrical relationship, like the inverse of symmetry, right? So a way of looking at it is upside and downside risk, right? So asymmetrical risks are something where the upside is incredibly small and the downside is almost bottomless.

Almost bottomless. Perfect example, texting whilst driving. Drink driving. There's so many out there. Unprotected sex. Unprotected sex, yeah. Because let's say, let's go back to the texting whilst driving one. The benefit that you get is probably responding a lot to a group chat, which you not even remember

that message in a week. It's from now. The risk that you have is being paralyzed for the rest of your life, and then up in prison, killing someone. So that's like asymmetrical risk, but there's a flip side of that right, which is like asymmetric opportunities

and we'll be talking about this all the time. See, you flip it on its head. My one of my favorite ones for like asymmetrical opportunities, and we'll be like this all the time. See, you flip it on its head. And one of my favorite ones for like asymmetrical opportunities is just DMing people. Anyone who you think's doing like something interesting, just go, hey, I love this. And particularly if you have a skill you can offer, just go, oh, you know, you could do XYZ.

And I guess that's how me and you was sitting here right now, that's how I met you, right? And then that took me. So the downside there was 30 seconds of my time. Like, it's saying nothing happened, I've lost 30 seconds. If it goes well, you've met like a new good friend, right? So the asymmetry you can see everywhere. A symmetrical opportunity is an asymmetrical risk.

It's something that I try and map a lot of my life on to as it is at the moment. Perfect example of that is someone tagged me in a tweet from Daniel Sloss saying that he was coming to Newcastle to do a live show. I replied and said, hi, Daniel, before you go and do your live show, do you want to come on a podcast? You've got a lad with a beautiful Northern accent and five million, listen minutes over the last year. Are you up for it? And he replied and said, yeah, downstream from that, me and Daniels speak on WhatsApp probably once a week now. I've got a good mate, I've probably got somewhere to stay when I want to go to Edinburgh. And we hit 50k views in a couple of weeks.

On that, that was asymmetric opportunity. Yeah, it's crazy. Next one I want to go on to a second and third order thinking, or like, oh, just first order, second, third order thinking. So the way this is like a very simple one, but it's on this thing, until you break it down to the first principles, you never really understand it,

which is the first order effects of your actions. So the best analogy I have is the two duality of taking the stairs or taking the elevator. So first order consequences of both. So if you take the stairs, first order consequence, a bit shit, like you feel, you get a bit bit of a stitch, you're out of breath, right So if you take the stairs, first order consequence, a bit shit, like you feel, you get a bit, get a bit of a stitch, you're out of breath, right?

Whereas if you take the elevator, the first order consequences, great, you just, you're there, I just stood there, you'd have to do anything. But then you look at the second order consequences. So the second order consequences are taking the stairs, is that you get like some cardiovascular exercise, and particularly if you do this over like 10 years,

I know Jeff Bezos apparently never takes the lift, it always takes the stairs. So once you do that over 10 years, you get the cardiovascular exercise, and particularly if you do this over like 10 years, I know Jeff Bezos apparently never takes the lift, it always takes his day. So once you do that over 10 years, you get the cardiovascular benefits, and then the second order consequences of being in the lift is that you're getting no cardiovascular benefits. And then the third order consequences, when you go even further than that, like further in the future, which is that you're actually wiring your brain. So whenever you go, okay, I'm presented with a difficult option and easy option, which one do I take? If you take the stairs all the time, you're wiring your brain, I always take the difficult option. Whereas if you take the elevator all the time, the third order consequences are that

you're wiring your brain to take the easy option. So you almost have first order, second order, third order, and often what's what gives you the most return in the first order, fucks you in the second and third order, but what gives you, what screws you in the first order actually fucks you in the second and third order. But what gives you, what screws you in the first order, actually provides so much more benefit in the second and third order. Well, James Cleared talks about this a lot in atomic habits where he says that

the reason that people continually do bad habits is because the felt cost at the time is almost not there. And the reason that people don't do good habits is that the felt discomfort is actually quite palpable, but that the goals are hidden downstream from that and that you need to look at, am I doing something that future me would be happy about? Is me tomorrow going to be happy about what me now is doing? And that's probably a pretty good way to look at it.

I think a good way to look at second second order thinking is predict in however long you're to go and take for this decision to kick in. Whether or not you would think that that will be a good decision because the you right now and the you tomorrow are two very different people when there's a crucial decision in front of you, or even a small decision in front of you. A good way for anyone who's trying to stick to a diet. Like, if you've got a chocolate bar on your hand, you right now wants to eat the chocolate bar. You tomorrow might think, fucking wish I hadn't eaten that chocolate bar.

Like you tomorrow will exist for a lot longer than you right now will, because you right now is transient and you tomorrow is forever. Well, Kahneman has that bit where it's like, where it's much easier to spot those mistakes in other people. Then it is to see them in yourself. Well, that's why I think the Jordan Petersonism of be friends with people who want the best for you and treat yourself like somebody you are responsible for helping. Like if you have those two things, be friends with people who want the best for you and treat yourself like you're someone you are responsible for helping. If you can map that over the top of personal and social for yourself, and we went back to the very, very first mental model that you brought up, which was just not

even aiming for wins simply avoiding losses. Like you have peritoed... No, the vast majority of the perito, yeah, that's another one. You have managed to get the vast majority of the benefit of 100% already though. Like one, this is a more like sort of created, it's more of an activity than a mental model, but again, it all ties together, right? Which I call the Buffet Franklin Superstack, like I do have to work on the naming of it yet,

but I'll explain it. I don't think that that one's gonna catch on. Basically, I mean, wait till you hear it, right? So Warren Buffett has this gray exercise. So you know how people talk about values, right? What are your values? What do you believe in? It's very woolly thinking, again,

going back to the happiness one, right? So the way to looking at it from kind of into perspective where you can see stuff much clearer in other people than you can in yourself. So Buffett gave a speech, I forgot what university it's at, when he told them to look around the classroom at your friends and this is a great exercise to do, and think who would you say you had a budget to invest, who would you invest 10% in over your friends, like which friends, and which friends would

you short. And the great thing about this, you can do it for financial wellbeing, but you could almost look at it, let's say imagine that happiness was a currency, and go, who would you think, who would you invest 10% in, who would you short 10%. So once you've got a list of those names, you go, okay, why would I invest in him, or why would I invest in her? Oh, it's because whenever, whenever an associate interaction, they always go the extra mile for the other person, or they're incredibly honest, or they're incredibly hard working. And you look at the people who are short, and you go, oh, that person's like really

narcissistic. They always make it about themselves. So then you know, okay, those are the buffets says, those are the values I need. So I'm going to start looking at how I can implement them myself. And then those are the values I go to avoid and make sure I never have them in myself. And this is how, so that's Buffet.

And then Franklin kicks in. His Benjamin Franklin used to have a list of 13 virtues that every day when he would get home would go through them and say, did I do that? So I've got it now like, I've got a Google sheet of course. So let's say, high agency earlier, that's one of the ones in there. So I'll go Monday, at the end of the day, I'll go, did I do anything actually, high agency today? No, I didn't.

Okay, so there you go. And I think where could I have done that? Okay, and I'll write that in the sheet. Okay, I could have done that. And as a result, then, you've actually made value, something which you can understand and apply, which I think is like incredibly difficult for people. Yeah. The instantiation daily of the processes or the systems and the feedback mechanism to

ensure that you're continuing to do those, which if you continue to do them, allow you to keep on the trajectory towards the goals that are meaningful to you is, I think it's so important. And the option to use mental models is the steps, it's the individual steps that you can take, or it's the stepping stones that you can use on the river that you're moving over. It's not about getting to the other side, it's just about continuing to step on the correct stones. And once you do that, without putting your foot in the water, you're like, okay, well, if I continue to do this at a high enough pace, I mean, the other side is coming. Like it's just, it's just a case of me getting there.

What else do we got? So this is, again, like, this is more like what mental models can we take from this discipline that we can apply elsewhere? So this was one of fascinated women. I'll open it up to you because I've had a few thoughts about it, right? So you have the music industry, you have the movie industry, and you have the gaming industry. I assumed I wouldn't sure which one would rank highest, but I assume there was a relative

to the same value. The gaming industry is worth more than the music and movie, like entertainment industry combined, which is crazy, right? So I'm immediately thinking that the gaming industry have a greater understanding of human psychology better than anybody on the planet. So what mental models can you take from the way they're designing video games to apply to real life? And I'm thinking I know some people who are unbelievable at video games like like world champion level or like elite level under absolute messes at their own life. And if you go down like, don't abort people,

but if you go down the whole simulation hypothesis, like this is a simulation, we're basically playing a big video game, right? You're just immediately some character with some traits and some stuff and you've got some goals to add to it. It's basically a video game. So why are people succeeding at this video game? but then when it comes to real life of being

like awful at it, like what's the gap there? So what do video games have that most people's lives are missing in your opinion? Scent of escapism, sense of belonging, sense of community, obvious feedback mechanism that shows progression. Um, so what, I agree with loads of points there. One thing that I thought was really like obvious is parameters, which you, if you ever do like basic programming, you need parameters to defy the function, right? So you need like, let's say right now, the parameters of my life, or the everyday person, it could be so wide like, and you check Facebook, and they check Instagram, and they need to research

five, ten different careers, and they need to reach out to these people. There's so much stuff going on that no wonder anxiety in Google Trends, if Dean can pop that up there, right? Anxiety in Google Trends is the highest ever, because it's just unlimited parameters, and people just... paradox of choice. People just melting it, right? Whereas in the video, let's say me and you were playing FIFA or Madden or whatever the

kids play, stays right, about and off of video games. There's a clear parameter, I'm trying to get the ball in your net, you're trying to get the ball in my net, whoever gets the ball in the net, the most wins. So that's the parameter, whereas most people wake up with like 100 different things they have to do that day. So having one or two clear things which are falsifiable against, I think is one thing that video games have. The next thing that they have is levels. So an issue that I've seen this with friends who like start businesses or have goals, right, is that they'll launch something

and the goal was to make £100 online in a day. And they don't make anything. And as a result, they immediately quit. And Daniel Gross that has an unbelievable metaphor for this, which is, let's say, for example, right now I'm at level zero. And if you want to learn anything, like if you do this framework, it's the most powerful learning technique I've found. So let's say level 10 is making 100 pounds online every single day.

I'm at level zero right now. So what a lot of people do, let's say they learn how to do like look alike ads, they learn how to set up an online store, they learn how to research niches, they get to level four, right? You've got not hit level 10, I quit. But whereas in video games, you know there's little levels each way, so you're constantly stepping up the four, right? You go, I'm not at level 10, I quit. But whereas in video games, you know there's little levels each way, so you're constantly stepping up the progress, right? And that's why CrossFit, like Daniel Grossox talks about this,

CrossFit is an unbelievable video game, because as so many of those core components in there where you're always progressing each day, another thing that video games have is, you know what the biggest one is? I think it's identity. So when something goes wrong in my day, like, because I identify as me,

it can ruin my whole day, whereas as a video game, you look at the character as a third person, so if you can almost do that with your own life, you can see things crystal clear. The same way, when you see friends who are going through relationship issues or they're in a job that they hate

and they're not quitting it, you can see it so clearly in somebody else who are going through relationship issues or they're in a job that they hate and they're not quitting it, you can see it so clearly in somebody else because you're completely detached from them, it's like buddies aren't right, you detachments key. In a video game, you have that, you don't, if the character fails, yeah, of course you bit pissed off,

but you're not there three years later talking to a psychologist going, I can't believe I failed, you know what I mean? Treat yourself as if you're someone you're responsible for help, is that it? But look at it from an, like, look at other people, go what mistakes are they making and then go, okay, how am I making those mistakes?

Identity is a huge factor as well as the sense of community. So whoever takes these psychology models from video games and applies them to real, real life, it's going to, it's going to win big. Awesome. Man, what have we got left? Should we do a quick fire round? what have we got left? Should we do a quick fire round? What have we got? We can do. So I have a really, really basic one, which is

input versus outputs. This comes from like computer science. I got this from an episode of Tim Ferris, where there's guy called Sammy, I can't remember his last name. He's like one of the world's leading cyber security experts. And he, if you search MySpaceSami, like he hacked into MySpace back in the day, basically added himself to every one of these. I remember this, he ran a thing which he added himself to 10, and then that person added 10 of their friends to him,

and then 10, and then 10 exponentially. And he got like all of MySpace within like a few days. So, but it was interesting, like Tim Ferris is asking, like, what you learned from programming or like that you've applied to your own life So like I meant on model from programming or computer science, which is inputs and outputs if you want different is that whole Albert Einstein quote right if you want different outputs You have to have different inputs like

Sam Altman who's part of YC has this like quote, which is extreme people get extreme results, and normal people get normal results. I'm fascinated by how many people want to be cool or be normal, yet want completely different results to everyone else. So embracing being weird as a way of life, I think is one of the most powerful things that you can do, because if you're not weird by the very definition you're progressing to the mean you are average. Man, I sing from the same hymn sheet as yourself, why are we afraid to be lonely by the School of Life? I'll end a button on there, which is my most cited video by Miles considering it's four

minutes long. In that, he says that loneliness is a kind of tax that we have to pay to a tone for a certain complexity of mind. If you're a person who has contrarian thoughts or is different to the mean, different to the normal distribution, if you're out on the tails, it's natural for your thoughts to be too subtle, country, or alarming to be acceptable by society at large, given the choice between honesty and acceptability, most of us choose the latter, but to be uncommon amongst uncommon men and to achieve things that other people haven't, you need to presume that you have to do things that other people are not. So this is it, right? So one of my favorite people for this is Yusef, right?

Because he's just, he's the niche guy amongst niche guys. Yeah. There's the uncommon, amongst uncommon men that forward go. And if Yusef's okay with it, could Dean put the video of him doing the snatches in public? Yeah, so... Bing! matches in public. So that video right there, I think could say so much about the way to behave. And I've started embracing this. So my favourite quote is that people think we never even got onto this mental model, the map versus terrain, right? So people think they're going to rise to the occasion, whereas they actually sink to their

level of training. So this is a mental model that comes from like Navy SEALs and Royal Marines, in that they drill everything into your fucking consciousness. So you never make a mistake. Whereas most people think I'll read a book on by Peter Teal, called Zero to One, I'm going to be a billionaire. No, it's about what you drill every single day. Same reason that Neil deGrasse Tyson doesn't have a cover on his phone. Exactly right. So if you want to be, if you want to stand out from the crowd,

you can't wait till that moment comes along when Warren Buffett calls you up and goes, yeah, so I want to invest. What is that? No, you have to practice being fucking weird every single day. So the UCF one there, what's great about it is that he's drilling people looking at him like he's a widow for a positive action. That's the key, right? So I'll do this with service stations now. I just do yoga in public. And I start, you start, you get that monkey mind going, oh, people are looking at you, people think you're weird. But there's people there who aren't like McDonald's.

There's another person smoking there, right? And nobody's judging them. And that's an action that's negative for them. Just more acceptable. But I'm doing one that's yet exactly. So you have to condition yourself to be able to deal with that and drill it into your consciousness. That's high agency again.

High agency, right? So then this is, we'll go back to the first principles redesigning education. The first class, and this is one thing I'm going to do with my kids. Every single month we do the Ash conformity test. So they have loads of lines. It's like Derren Brown 101. And they'll go, which lines are longest?

And it's clearly, so nine of the other people in the room are actors, but the individual doesn't know that they're actors and they will say that the line that's this long is is longer than the one that's that long so they all point to the right one even though it's clearly shorter and some people a lot of people will go yeah I agree with everybody else in the room so we have to drill kids to be ash negative like want really into their consciousness one of the problems with doing that though is that you need a workforce which is compliant.

You need to have people that will follow the rules. It doesn't do for McDonald's. I disagree. But well, okay, so this might not be the most effective way to be, but it's the easiest way for the current iteration of capitalism to continue. But if we like drill, create enough, statoche Nakamoto's, enough software engineers

who people thought for themselves, it would all be automated in a couple of years' time, right? Yeah. Okay. Yes. You would also then have a bunch of people who you would have a lot more revolutions, which I think would be quite chaotic, and potentially quite dangerous.

One of the things, before we finish, I want to finish on Matt vs. Terrence. I'll tell you what, it's a lovely one. It's not a whole one. One of the things that you touched on at the very beginning was about avoiding mistakes. And Jordan Peterson talks about this an awful lot. What he says is that there's an experiment where rats are in a tube

and they starve the rats. At the end of the tube, they're waft in the smell of cheese. The rats' tails are attached to a spring. The spring gives the force back. It records the force back to a computer. The rats are running to try and get this cheese in their starving. They haven't been fed for a very long time. You'd think that this rat is running as hard as it can towards something that it wants.

Record the amount of force reset. Another iteration, they put the smell of cheese at the end of the tube, and then they waft the smell of a cat in from behind, and the rats pull harder. And what that shows is not only do you need to run towards something that you want, but you need to run away from something that you fear, and that's why Judd and Peterson's understand myself.com and self-authoring. In the self-authoring suite, one of the things that he asks people to do is to say, where would you be in six months, one year, three years, five years, if you continue to do all of the worst habits that you have? Now, where

would you be if you did all of the best habits that you have? And the difference between that contrast, the difference between those two situations is so stark. You're like, not only am I running towards something that I want, running away from something that I feel. I look, yeah, that exercise is really powerful. The map versus terrain point, which is, if you break it down to its first principles, so maps are, by their very nature, an artificial version of reality, whereas terrain is the actual version of reality, and where possible you want to seek out terrains and avoid maps, and this is probably, if

I had to look back on advice, I'd give it to my 20 year old self and probably I'll give it to myself right now into five years time, that's the biggest one. I use this metaphor, right? What would you rather have live in a world where everybody's passed their theory driving test, and that's all they've done, or everybody's failed their practical test? I would take failed their practical test

every single time, and we live in a world where you think, because you read a book about a subject that you know it, so the closer you can get to reality, the better. So this is my issue with gratitude journals, which I think are nice. But let's say on a true feeling perspective, it's a two out of ten because you're sat there in your warm bedroom and you're picturing like, for example, that you've not got XYZ. But if, for example, you walked around the hospital ward and looked at people who were dying in the eyes, that is terrain, like you're really fucking seeing it.

And until you drill something into your consciousness, you can't truly feel it until you've been in that environment. Like seek out, like what's better having an MBA or actually running a startup? Right, like always go to the terrain. I think people seek out maps because it's easy and you can avoid doing, and I do this because it's easy and you can avoid doing it. And I do this more than anyone, am I?

So you can avoid doing the hard work. Well, you, I remember, Yousif told me that you had said to him, hey man, I've got this new project that I'm considering working on, but I'm not going to talk to you about it until I've done a lot of work on it because I know that I will, my brain

will receive a kick of dopamine and a sense of satisfaction from me talking about it as much as me doing the work and I'm not prepared to give myself that reward because that is me playing with the map as opposed to seeing the terrain. And you're totally right, the map by its very definition is a lower fidelity, lower resolution, simulacrum of what is actually occurring. And this is one of the reasons why people become plan addicts, to why they love New Year's resolutions are such a huge thing. But when people don't put them into practice, again, we go back to systems versus goals.

Like, the system is the daily instantiation of the actions you need to take to achieve the goals that you have determined are meaningful to you by the values that you have already conceived. So I think it gives a perfect note to end on, which is two of them, which is the Green Lumber fallacy, because it's related to direct to Mappin Terrain and Planck knowledge. So the Green Lumber fallacy, it related to a trader who was trading in Green Lumber, and this guy knew everything about fucking Green Lumber, like, it related to a trader who was trading in Green Lumber, and this guy knew everything about fucking Green Lumber. He knew it better than anybody else, but was losing money every single day.

There was one guy who didn't understand why Green Lumber was green. I think he believed it was painted green or something like that. And he did even understand the product, but he understood the terrain and you see it in the social media world, where there's some people who know the like red articles on these platforms. I know someone who doesn't know who Cheryl Sandberg is, doesn't know the COO Facebook is, but can build you a Facebook page better than every single person. And this comes down to plan, have you heard of Plank knowledge?

It's my favorite one, right? So it comes from Charlie Munger's speech. So there's this theoretical physicist Max Plank around about the 1930s, so there's obviously not many images out there. So nobody knows when he looks like they've heard of him. And he would go around giving these speeches across Europe. And he would obviously go deep into theoretical physics. But he had a show for with him. So the show for like a hundred of these and would sit and watch the lecture. And the show for said, can I do this lecture? And so basically

he just recited it word for word. And I absolutely smashed it it and at the end somebody asked the chauffeur who the fault was plank, excuse me Mr. Plank, could I ask a question about ABC and he goes that's such a silly question I'll let my chauffeur answer it and I don't know if they never know whether that's a true tale or what but that's the so monga calls this the difference between chauffeur knowledge and plank knowledge and there's 99% of people out there who like you see it in the social media space I'm sure you see it in every single space where they can all the good stuff, but what's your P&L? What if you actually produce to it? Like, do you actually know when you question, go, why, why, why, when you apply the Feynman technique?

Can you really answer those questions? That is a new one for me, but it's something that I was talking about. With the guy who actually gave me this lovely jumper that I'm wearing, which has saved me from my sweat patches from earlier on, hot under these lights. I was talking to Ricky yesterday about people who are 25 years old giving live coaching. 24, I'm talking about mental models for me. No, but you understand it. I'm saying, hey, process, you're not doing it from, you're not saying I have had these life experiences, you should listen to me. What you're saying is I understand the lattice work of understanding that you should lay this across.

And one of the things that he was talking about was these people just have zero skin in the game. So you know what, Nassim Talib says about life coaches. He says the only thing you can learn from a life coach is how to be a life coach. It's great. Nassim Talib, is... He's such a mother fucker, man.

I feel like, I feel like he, I've asked him to come on and he said that he's towards the end of the year, he might have a little bit of room. Him and God's sad as well, both. It would both be cool. He's one of those guys who for me, it was the same as when I sat down with Jordan Hall.

People who have that degree of understanding sometimes, so I don't really get nervous before doing podcasts anymore, but Jordan Hall I did, and Nassim Talibba did, I probably will do, God said, I would, oddly enough, Peterson, I wouldn't. And one of the reasons is that I think that they, those guys occupy a very different mental space to me. And my, I always know that when I'm doing a podcast, no matter what happens, as long as me and the person that I'm talking to, a kind of on the same wavelength, doesn't really matter how fucking a ride, a conversation goes You can always just bring it back to crack. Yeah. Like, but how the fuck do you have crack with Nassim Talib? Like, the guy is a monster. Like, they say, but Naval, I'd feel like, no,

cool. Like, we'd be on a level. There'd be something that I would be able to find that's common ground. Yeah. Nassim Talib. I've been telling you about,. If you listen to his interviews, it's a bit different. I think it's a bit less, less kind of militant. Yeah, yeah, he's, I think he's really cool. Okay, well, that would be interesting to do. But, George Man, today has been fantastic. Any resources which we've quoted today, I know that we have gone through an awful lot. There's been some name dropping galore. If we were able to tag all of the people

that had been mentioned in this podcast, I think it would be longer than the tweets would allow. At George Mac, M-A-C-K on Twitter. On Twitter, you need to follow this guy. They need to tweet more. You can't tweet more. I don't want to be a map guy. We're just talking about life and you're never actually living it.

So with a zero sum game, we didn't get onto that, but time's limited. I do need to sweep more, but it's been good fun. Man, thank you very much. you