Mental Models 101 - How To Make Better Decisions | George Mack

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 - https://www.amazon.co.uk/shop/modernwisdom - 00:00 Intro 03:00 Using Inversion to Improve 08:52 Contrast & Our Hierarchy of Needs 18:00 Clarifying First Principles 26:20 Implementing Double-Think 30:40 Signal Vs Noise 43:00 Developing a High Agency Trait 47:40 Asymmetrical Opportunities & Risks 56:23 Lessons for Life from Video Games 1:00:50 Different Inputs for Different Outputs 1:07:35 Seek Terrain Over Maps 1:14:40 Where to Find George - Listen to all episodes online. Search "Modern Wisdom" on any Podcast App or click here: iTunes: https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/modern-wisdom - I want to hear from you!! Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Email: [email protected]

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Chris Williamson?

  What is happening friends? Welcome to the Modern Wisdom Podcast and today's guest is someone I've been looking forwards to sitting down with for quite a while. This actually marks the beginning of a series of three episodes I recorded at Social Chain's 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 theirs was. But on to today's episode with George McGill. We're talking all things mental models. This is a branch

• 0:43Chris Williamson?

  of learning which has emerged from the back of Charlie Munger, Warren Buffett's business partner, and been popularized by guys like Shane Parrish from fs.blog. And as humble as he is, George has a fantastic understanding of this entire subject area. They are general thinking concepts. So a latticework 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 loved this episode.

• 1:28Chris Williamson?

  I found it super useful for me and I'm certain that you will as well.

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• 2:33Chris Williamson?

  Please welcome George McGill.

• 2:51Chris Williamson?

  George McGill, a social chain has joined me. How are you?

• 2:54George Mack?

  I'm not too bad. How are you?

• 2:55Chris Williamson?

  Very good, thank you. George Mac on Instagram.

• 2:58George Mack?

  Twitter. No, no, no.

• 2:59Chris Williamson?

  Twitter. Still not transferred across on Instagram.

• 3:03George Mack?

  No, no, no. Need to.

• 3:04Chris Williamson?

  I like it. So what are we talking about today, George?

• 3:06George Mack?

  So I guess it's more like a theme of what we've been chatting about for like the last six to nine months, right? Which is like mental models. And how you sort of interpret that is like up to you. Like I particularly got it from like Charlie Munger, like Naval Ravikant, 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 plug in 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 latticework, like from all the big like disciplines, whether that's like physics, whether that's business, whether

• 3:49George Mack?

  that's microeconomics. Because what a lot of people do will just specialize and go, okay, I learned biology and then that's all I do. And they just go deep on that subject. Whereas that whole like Tim Ferriss strategy of taking the 10% that covers 90% of it, like from biology, like whether it's like evolution, whether it's homeostasis, and then going into like microeconomics and looking at like game theory, like race to the bottom, taking all these strategies and then almost trying to apply them instead of having to deal with like the overwhelm of everyday life. That's how I sort of interpret it. But then I, now it's much looser and just anything where it's like an analogy that helps me like explain things is really, really useful.

• 4:30Chris Williamson?

  Totally. So you introduced me to mental models when I first came in here, actually, to do the podcast with the guys from Social Minds.

• 4:38George Mack?

  Yeah.

• 4:39Chris Williamson?

  And we sat down and you took me through it and it was the first time that I'd heard of it. Charlie Munger appears to be kind of like

• 4:46George Mack?

  Should we say who Charlie is?

• 4:47Chris Williamson?

  Patient zero for it, yes.

• 4:48George Mack?

  Yeah, so Charlie is lesser known, but he is Warren Buffett's business partner, who obviously, the guy who runs Berkshire Hathaway.

• 4:58Chris Williamson?

  Fourth richest man in the world.

• 5:00George Mack?

  Yeah, fourth official richest man in the world. There's a lot of unofficial people out there.

• 5:04Chris Williamson?

  Sanako, that's like one to twenty five.

• 5:08George Mack?

  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.

• 5:24Chris Williamson?

  This is an example of a mental model.

• 5:26George Mack?

  Yeah, example of a mental model, 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, inversion is particularly useful for those woolly conversations or those woolly questions. So like happiness, right? What is, how do I become happy? Like people spend their whole lives like exploring that question, what's this purpose I've got to find? Like, do I have to go to a spiritual retreat in India and sit and meditate for two years? But instead Munger 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 do is mess with their, mess with their sleep's schedule.

• 6:06George Mack?

  Like completely flip it on their head, have them sleeping late, 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 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 ninety five percent the way there. So instead of like Munger 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. He's just always avoiding stupidity.

• 6:46Chris Williamson?

  So myself and my business partner Darren say something similar about club promo, that we're not fantastically talented club promoters, we've just made ten years of mistakes that we've only ever made once.

• 6:58George Mack?

  Okay.

• 7:00Chris Williamson?

  Because it is really technically only a 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.

• 7:16George Mack?

  So let's use, let's actually look at like Club Pro 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 getting a DJ in, getting X, Y, Z in. But instead you should start from what would like make this go like absolutely awfully like whether it's you want to get your health and safety stuff in order, right? So focus on the stuff.

• 7:34Chris Williamson?

  Fuel management, too expensive drinks, poor service, bad smell, bad DJ.

• 7:39George Mack?

  Yeah, she's that whole quote like, show me where I'm going to die, so I'll never go there. That's the key. And I was using this, like, this is one of the things I love about mental models is that they 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% away through my twenties. I'm like, what do I want the rest of my twenties to look like? And that was just one of those overwhelming questions, like what I couldn't answer. So I was like, huh. What do I definitely not want to go to? Um. So hold on, because I wrote this down on my phone, let me get it up. So I was thinking like, what mistakes do I see people make in their twenties? 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 twenties.

• 8:22George Mack?

  Because if you're comfortable in your twenties, 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 moats that you can just compound and iterate off the back off. Four, neglecting or like abusing your health. Five, gaining liabilities and 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, 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 just setting some goal where I want to earn X or I want to be A, B, C.

• 9:05George Mack?

  I'm just focusing on avoiding those seven because I think it's so easy for people to get caught up in like chasing this big, big goal. And forgetting like the dogs that are at the door that are coming to eat them. So focus on those seven, like particularly like a great example, like is the toxic relationships one. Like I've thought about this one quite a lot because you've almost got the two categories of toxic relationships, right? You've got. The toxic, like the cliche one that you see on the news or an episode of the bill of like somebody being like physically abusive, right? But the one that's, I'd say affects people way more are the much more like passive ones that people like see, like, like sleep their way into. Um, 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.

• 9:49Chris Williamson?

  That's by a thousand cuts.

• 9:50George Mack?

  And you start changing, which gets onto another mental model, right? So you then have like contrast, so you know, Charlie Munger, and it's called the Psychology of Human Judgment, where he's talking about the frog in boiling water, you know, the famous anecdote 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, he goes, I don't know if that's like a, a true thing about frogs, but it's, 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.

• 10:17Chris Williamson?

  Power of contrast.

• 10:18George Mack?

  Yeah, so that's almost like another mental model, right? So you look at contrast. I would say contrast is probably the most important thing for like human happiness. You, like, you can see everywhere, like 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?

• 10:37Chris Williamson?

  So I spoke to Professor Rick Hansen, New York Times bestseller, um, writer of Hardwiring Happiness and his most recent book, uh, Resilience. Um, 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 a hundred grandfather, a hundred thousand years ago, 10,000 years ago, the bottom of his pyramid would have been a lot more poorly serviced. Safety, food, shelter, warmth, hydration, um, all of that sort of stuff.

• 11:17Chris Williamson?

  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.

• 11:28Chris Williamson?

  The top end of the pyramid was looked after quite well. Whereas I think what's happened now is we flipped that 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, their safety, their 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 serviced less. Previously, you you would have been your job. It would have been a job for life. Your job might have been a craft or a trade that you could have taken some pride in. Flow from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi like alludes to that. Deep work from Carl Newport also alludes to that.

• 12:12Chris Williamson?

  There's neurologically myelin creates around neurons that are continually firing. Neurons that fire 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 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, oh, you you are adding value because you have that. Whereas in the modern world now, a lot of knowledge workers have no feedback mechanism.

• 12:54Chris Williamson?

  Like you wake up, you had a hundred emails, you go to bed, you've done a hundred but received a hundred and three. I've got a hundred and three 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 an 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, your hierarchy of needs began and ended with keeping your family safe and having enough food to eat. Once you've achieved that.

• 13:38Chris Williamson?

  There you go, that's your self-actualisation 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.

• 13:54George Mack?

  That makes a lot of sense. I think from an element of contrast about how we actually utilise contrast in particular. So I had a real word, this is where it all came from, I wrote to a friend on this. Like, last year was at Salford Hospital, which is like a couple of miles away from where we are now, and had a family member that was ill. So literally, four, five, six days of the week, I'd go in after work and go there. And 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

• 14:34George Mack?

  the hospital, you're looking at real lives who would do anything to change like positions with you. I remember once, I was sat opposite a guy who was obviously a former soldier who had like severe dementia. So the contrast of like going through a hospital ward, because I look at my lives, let's say for example, my life's an eight out of 10. When I'm on Instagram, I'm looking at 10 out of 10 lives, and I'm contrasting my eight 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 your eight out of 10 with, you could argue like a zero out of 10 or a one out of 10.

• 15:15Chris Williamson?

  You told me, I think it was around exactly the same time that you recommended I read The Last Highlander by Alistair Ercard.

• 15:21George Mack?

  Yeah, Forgotten Highlander.

• 15:22Chris Williamson?

  Forgotten Highlander.

• 15:25George Mack?

  We'll check afterwards.

• 15:27Chris Williamson?

  Anyway, Alistair Ercard, book is fantastic. For anyone who's read Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor 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 Kwai, 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 over a hundred degrees Fahrenheit. For like a week as he travelled across the ocean, then got out, then got put in another death camp.

• 16:06Chris Williamson?

  And then got hit by the aftershock of Nagasaki's bomb drop, like literally got blown off his feet by the heat. And then kept quiet about it for sixty years, fifty years. And then basically wrote this as a memoir, which is also a movement to call the Japanese government to account 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. It was a Gutenberg trial, wasn't it?

• 16:33George Mack?

  I'm not sure.

• 16:34Chris Williamson?

  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.

• 16:52George Mack?

  Yeah.

• 16:52Chris Williamson?

  We've had contrast. The Charlie Munger speech that you mentioned about is pretty seminal at kind of starting this off, right? Video guardian will make the link to the video appear in the top corner. And if you are watching, if you're listening on iTunes, it will be in the show notes below. But it's

• 17:12George Mack?

  Just a bit on the contrast one, because we've we've chatted this metaphor 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. You know, the buckets hands experiment, right? So I think it comes from Bob Chiodini'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 hot, whereas the one that had been in the boiling hot water, that water felt incredibly cold. So objectively, the water

• 17:57George Mack?

  Is the exact same temperature, but it's just what you're contrasting against. And that is like the true power of contrast that I see. It's so good.

• 18:06Chris Williamson?

  So Charlie Munger's speech was actually delivered, it's like a, was it a graduation speech?

• 18:12George Mack?

  No, so it was two. There's the one, I think, at University of 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 Misjudgment. When he breaks down sort of mental model by mental model that people should look to, look to apply to their lives.

• 18:30Chris Williamson?

  There's a shortened version of that, which will be linked in the show notes 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 Farnam Street.

• 18:46George Mack?

  Which by the way, many people don't know, Farnam Street is the address of

• 18:49Chris Williamson?

  Do you know what it used to be before that?

• 18:52George Mack?

  No.

• 18:53Chris Williamson?

  What it, 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 Parrish from Farnam Street. He did a podcast on Brett McKay's Art of Manliness podcast. And that is fantastic and tells you an awful lot about just how Farnam Street came to be. And that's where I found out about the beginning. Charlie Munger's Psychology of Human Misjudgment was basically what triggered, or appears to be what triggered Shane Parrish to start up this blog, fs.blog, which is one of the best resources on the internet. The fact that it's free blows my mind.

• 19:33Chris Williamson?

  Just for learning about these mental models. He has a list of 109, which will also be linked in the show notes below, and you should definitely check out. You can clip the entire page with Evernote 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 today.

• 19:56George Mack?

  So what I'm thinking, so we can go into one that like, that people hear a lot about now, mainly because it's been popularized by Elon Musk, which is like first principles, which comes from physics. So this is the eye, like the basically art form of decon. Constructing something so you can, in order to reconstruct it. So like a, um, a great example of that is where Elon talks about, I believe it's like the batteries for, see the Tesla or SpaceX and people would say, and it was particularly SpaceX and it was like, let's say for example, it was twelve hundred pounds of batteries. No one was like, reasons from analogy. So they just reason 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. Yeah. Which is called reasoning from analogy. Yeah. What's that? So reasoning from analogy, so this is the example, right? So let's say with the batteries, it will, an example of reasoning from analogy would be,

• 20:42George Mack?

  it's always cost twelve hundred pounds to create this battery. There's no way you could do it on a, like, uh, 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, he goes, breaks down all the, 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 battery. So that's literally like first principles.

• 21:24George Mack?

  Thinking like fully breaking it down to its core components. Paul Graham has like an unbelievable essay called like, um, why not to start a startup? And he basically, like, if you ask like people, like, you'll have mates who want to start businesses, right? And there's, 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 life. There's like all this stuff going on in their head. There's like twelve different reasons all into one that are all intertwining. So what Paul Graham 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, um, that's stopping you from doing something.

• 22:08George Mack?

  But first principles is a fascinating one. Like, I remember we chatted about this before, but like where to actually apply it to, maybe we could try that 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. Um. So let's just look at like education from like a first principles perspective. So like a great example, like instead of talking about what subjects, let's just break it down to what time should school start? Like, because that's a huge part of it, right? The time they arrive and the time that they leave. Um. So like Daniel Gross, who has like some amazing mental models talks about this, he goes, why does school start at nine AM?

• 22:48Chris Williamson?

  It's so that parents can drop the kids off before they go to work.

• 22:50George Mack?

  Right, but all the research suggests that kids start, you remember, right? When you're a teenager, you wake up, you want to wake up at twelve. So you have a whole nation of kids who are underslept and sleep deprived. No wonder they fucking hate school.

• 23:03Chris Williamson?

  Well, that's why they changed the start time of high school in America in a particular state. I can't remember, this is cited in Joe Rogan's Matthew Walker podcast number eleven oh nine. 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 twenty five percent in people under the age of twenty one. Because the sleep deprivation that was being suffered was out of the 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 downstreamed 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.

• 23:47George Mack?

  So going back to, yeah, I completely agree. So going back to the first principles 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 ten fifteen subjects at once. So why are we doing this for kids? Like, 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 ten rabbits and get none?

• 24:23Chris Williamson?

  Maybe a bit of that is due to. Low attention, like if 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 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, why are we accepting of certain things? What are the best practices that you can move through?

• 25:03Chris Williamson?

  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. Um. So yeah, first principles, anyone who's watched Elon Musk on Joe Rogan will have heard him talk about this a lot and he's a big proponent of it, right?

• 25:22George Mack?

  A hundred percent. And like, I was thinking about, I was away in Gran Canaria recently and it was like saying, it's one of those holidays like where usually I'll go to like Amsterdam or 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.

• 26:03George Mack?

  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 your life. 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, should I care about how many followers I've got here? Whereas 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?

• 26:39Chris Williamson?

  So Cal Newport talks about work done equals time times intensity.

• 26:42George Mack?

  Yeah.

• 26:42Chris Williamson?

  That's the formula that he comes with as part of deep work.

• 26:45George Mack?

  Mm hmm.

• 26:45Chris Williamson?

  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, 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.

• 27:05George Mack?

  Mm hmm.

• 27:05Chris Williamson?

  So what have we got next? What are we moving on to?

• 27:07George Mack?

  Um, so what we've got next, um, let's say, just, just to finish off the first principles one, because he used the perfect like metaphor, similar to the buckets one, right?

• 27:14Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 27:14George Mack?

  Is that, um, up until, if you look when the wheel was invented, it was invented like two thousand, 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 seventies or eighties, one guy realised, why the fuck aren't we putting wheels on these things? He puts wheels on it and now you could, could you imagine suitcases without, without wheels now?

• 27:38Chris Williamson?

  Rory Sutherlandism, isn't it? 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.

• 27:44George Mack?

  Yeah, it's crazy.

• 27:46Chris Williamson?

  Part of that, he says, is likely due to the fact that inline skates and skateboarding costs and casters and things like that became cheaper as a byproduct of the proliferation of those minor sports. But the fact that you could have, like, you could have definitely put at the very least a little roller or something on the bottom of it. Yeah, you're completely correct.

• 28:05George Mack?

  So next one, um, what I think this one's like, I've not really seen it fleshed out as much elsewhere, but it's one I've been thinking about ages. I'm going 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 go, okay, I've got Fred now. Um, so like double think, which comes from George Orwell's nineteen eighty four, right? Which is the whole two contradictory beliefs in your head at the same time. We was chatting about this, like, and it comes, you see these mental models elsewhere, right? So Nassim Taleb has like 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 grey is where you go to die. So anything like.

• 28:46George Mack?

  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, cause I know Nick Sasbo, I heard a podcast with him and Naval where he calls it like quantum thought, where he's sort of holding two opinions at the same time and he's running through, running, running them through his head. Like Conor McGregor's coach, John Kavanagh, he talks about how during training,

• 29:25George Mack?

  he wants his fighters to be completely egoless and think they're basically losers and just constantly obsessed with 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 Syed 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 I be using here? What's the perfect swing? But as soon as he's gone through all that self doubt and gone through with it all, he then needs to switch to a state of complete and total confidence. So it's that double think,

• 30:11George Mack?

  two ends of the spectrum that you have to exist between. Whereas if you sort of are midway between it, where you're a little bit confident, but a little bit of self doubt, those shades of grey is just where you go to die.

• 30:21Chris Williamson?

  I totally get that, man. Matthew Syed, if you are listening, please reply to my email. I would love, I'd love to have you on the podcast, but you're pining me harder than some girls do. So.

• 30:31George Mack?

  It's pretty hard.

• 30:32Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, it's pretty hard. Yeah, I, I, I do, 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.

• 30:47George Mack?

  Yeah, of course.

• 30:49Chris Williamson?

  Which is another, we were discussing last night over dinner about how steel manning another person's argument can be a fantastic way to get around this.

• 30:58George Mack?

  So Charlie Munger has, he calls it his iron 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, we chatted about this last night, 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, that's a great idea. That's absolutely, yeah, completely great. Great immigration policies, great economic policies. But at the end, he'd basically reveal to them that it was Trump's policies.

• 31:41George Mack?

  And you'd see like the cognitive dissonance where the MPC computers were just about to like explode, right? And that's, 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, 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 either be a superpower or like the death of you. Like if you, for example, identify as like a non-smoker, which James Clear talks about, it's a way of kicking smoking, right? But if you, like, I know Robert Sholdini, he got to the stage where he wouldn't want

• 32:22George Mack?

  to sign a petition for something that he believed in, because he then begins to identify with that cause and would find it very difficult to think clearly. Identity is a really, really weird one.

• 32:32Chris Williamson?

  It is a difficult one. Can we do signal versus noise?

• 32:35George Mack?

  Go for it. So signal versus noise, like.

• 32:39Chris Williamson?

  This is one of my favourites, by the way.

• 32:40George Mack?

  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 tie in another mental model there, which is like the Lindy effect. So the Lindy effect, I believe it was a load of comedians sat around in a cafe and they realised that a comedian's lifespan was almost their, well, how, 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.

• 33:06Chris Williamson?

  It's the minimum future lifespan, right?

• 33:08George Mack?

  Exactly. So if, 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 going to be around for a couple hundred years more.

• 33:16Chris Williamson?

  At least.

• 33:17George Mack?

  But the fucking blog post you've just read on BuzzFeed, that if it's been around for a day, it's probably not going to be around there tomorrow.

• 33:23Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. So, I mean, 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. Naval Ravikant, Rory Sutherland's just, just recently done you as well, hasn't he? There's like, there's a, there's a, there's a number of others. But, yeah, he has, he's done you. And the, the circles that these guys move within, you'll see them talk a lot about, read a Lindy book.

• 33:56George Mack?

  Yeah.

• 33:56Chris Williamson?

  And what they mean by that is read something which has been around for a significant period of time.

• 34:01George Mack?

  So to inves that on the head, David Perel has a great point, has, he has a great podcast, North Star One. I think he was chatting to Keith Raboy, maybe, about this. And if 99% of people, all the content they consume was made in the last 24 hours.

• 34:15Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 34:16George Mack?

  Headed by social media. And it's all, and then that ties into another mental model. You see how these are all linked, right? Which is like evolution, which, by the fact it's only been around for a day, you can assume it's half span, it's lifespan's only been another 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 how these all tie together.

• 34:37Chris Williamson?

  That's why the classic books are the classics, right?

• 34:39George Mack?

  Yeah.

• 34:40Chris Williamson?

  That's why War and Peace or Nineteen Eighty Four is a good read.

• 34:46George Mack?

  Do you know the best fucking example, this is the ones, but that I that I'm a, I made this mistake. And like, I know for a fact there'll be loads of other people with like, particularly in that entrepreneurship and business. So the amount of people, and I love Gary Vee, I I like Tyler Perez, I think they're probably doing a lot of good for the world. Grant Cardone, all these like modern YouTube entrepreneurs, which A aren't even the richest dudes like people in the world. They've probably got about a seven, eight figure net worth, but let's leave that aside. Um, 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.

• 35:14Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 35:15George Mack?

  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 the first billionaire, like his net worth at one point, I believe, is like three percent 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. Like I'll give you some examples, like I was watching, I listened to that and I was going, that's how it applies to me. So I thought, shit, I need to watch some documentaries on these guys.

• 35:46Chris Williamson?

  You get seduced, people get seduced by newer is better.

• 35:50George Mack?

  Yeah.

• 35:51Chris Williamson?

  Which is just a bias.

• 35:52George Mack?

  Recency bias, again, another mental model, right, it's recency bias.

• 35:54Chris Williamson?

  Recency bias, yeah. And on top of recency bias, there'll be, um, uh, what's the one like closeness bias? Like where it's just the fact that it's more visible or visibility bias, I suppose. Um, that it's the brand new self-help book, which just came out one month ago. You're like, that that's got all the latest research in, it's got this, and you're like, well, yeah, but look at, look at Lindy. Like that, it's not a Lindy book, like it's been around for a month, so presume it's probably gonna be around for a month, maybe more.

• 36:24George Mack?

  Yeah.

• 36:24Chris Williamson?

  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.

• 36:35George Mack?

  Yes. So what's crazy about Bob Childdine, just off topics briefly, so his book, Persuasion. I believe it's true that Charlie and Warren loved that book so much. You've got to think, he probably made a, he sold millions of copies. So he's probably done well from that. But Charlie and Warren loved that book so much. I believe they gave him series A shares in Berkshire Hathaway. I don't know what that means. Um. So as in like Berkshire Hathaway, their business, they gave him like high end shares within Berkshire Hathaway because they loved the book so much. Just because he'd contributed. Fuck. Apparently Bob Childdine was behind, because then you tie into like Scott Adams and go through a couple of mental models from him, because I know Scott's a big like, uh, fan of his. Uh, but he was behind a lot of Obama's presidency, like a campaigns, which goes to show like, that's one of the best campaigns that's like ever existed.

• 37:18George Mack?

  Apparently when Clinton was beginning to turn it around, because you look at like, uh, Trump and Clinton's persuasion techniques. Um, Trump just completely shat all over Hillary, right? But when Hillary hired Childdine and brought him in, it hers began to improve, like considerably, considerably. But whilst we're on the topic of Scott Adams, he has some great mental models, which is like. Who's Scott Adams? Scott Adams is the creator of Dilba, um, like one of the most controversial slash interesting Twitter feeds. If you ever want to learn how to write, you can learn within two minutes. Uh, the essay is called like the best, uh, sorry, 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. Like completely changed the way I write. It was just pure, pure simplicity.

• 38:01George Mack?

  But he has like, like goals versus systems, um, 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 you're 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'd know it better than anyone, right? 90% of people never even reach their goals. Um, whereas a system and similar to Ja, I know James Clear covers this a little bit with Atomic Habits. Um, 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 goal. So you're more likely to get there, but also through doing systems thinking.

• 38:46George Mack?

  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 you told me last night?

• 39:03Chris Williamson?

  So there's a couple, 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 Clear uses, which is fantastic, is that if you are on the

• 39:43Chris Williamson?

  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 analogize that, it sounds so juvenile to go, oh, we're not there yet. And like, and you know, 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

• 40:25Chris Williamson?

  hitting the gym every day, and look, I'm still not 5% body fat. And you're like, look, man, like, 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.

• 40:38George Mack?

  Signal versus noise. Remind me to come on to the Lola Poser effect, because that's the ultimate mental model. But signal versus noise is then, sorry, we were chatting about this last night, weren't we? Me and Chris often have this thing where we have strands of conversations that just end up like absolutely everywhere.

• 40:51Chris Williamson?

  You've got to bring you back to the main trunk.

• 40:52George Mack?

  Chris is good at this stuff. So signal versus noise is detecting like the information that actually Versus ninety nine percent of the noise that's out there that is just absolutely garbage that people can often get confused with.

• 41:06Chris Williamson?

  The perfect analogy for this, for understanding signal versus noise is that trading one that I 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 on in some stock and the plan was to leave it long term. If you were to look, and this is a Shane Parrishism, if you were to look at it at the beginning of year one and at the end of year one. You've probably got fifty percent of the information or fifty percent of the movement is going to be signal. And fifty percent of the movement is going to be noise. So you think, oh, okay, like, you know, fifty percent 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 movements, let's say that you now look at it every six months.

• 41:50Chris Williamson?

  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?

• 42:17George Mack?

  Yeah.

• 42:18Chris Williamson?

  And Lindy ties into that quite nicely.

• 42:20George Mack?

  This is it, right? All these mental models, kind of like a lattice work, right? They all fit together, but the the godfather for me, the ultimate meta mental model. I don't know, you know, do you know the Lollaposer effect? This comes from Charlie, right? Which is that. Like, so 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 momentum on itself. So when you have multiple mental models working together or multiple cognitive biases working together, that's when you have like a holy shit effect. So like, 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 like 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.

• 43:06George Mack?

  Them, you've got contrast because it's like the frog in boiling water. So let's say you said twenty pounds to begin with. But now you're at two grand, because every time you're just going up a little bit more, 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.

• 43:27Chris Williamson?

  Probably got sunk cost fallacy.

• 43:28George Mack?

  You've got sunk cost. So when you have, that's a lot of poser effects is 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 intricated and within themselves. It's fascinating.

• 43:46Chris Williamson?

  Is it direction over speed or is it a speed over velocity? That's a Shane Parrish one. Which is, 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 inoptimal direction.

• 44:14George Mack?

  Okay.

• 44:14Chris Williamson?

  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 a, 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. Like, if you know. In your heart of hearts that another decision would make you more happy, another direction would make you more happy.

• 44:50Chris Williamson?

  Bounce off and go that way. So what else have we got? Give me, give me some more.

• 44:52George Mack?

  This is one that I sort of, not, sorry, I didn't create it. I got it from Eric 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 gonna do shit and friends who I know probably aren't gonna do shit. High agency is by far like the single biggest factor. So the way Eric Weinstein talks about it is. Like, do you believe the story that's given to you? Like so, let's say, for example, I go, Chris, you can't set up an events company. You're twenty years old. Okay. Low agency people go, all right, okay, I'll just go and get a job X, Y, Z here. Whereas the high agency person is like, fuck, fuck you. I'm going to like, figure out a way of doing this. And I, there's some almost like core tenants of high agency. When I see people and I, I want to get much better at this.

• 45:34George Mack?

  I'm not an expert here, but it's almost the ability to have like a real high locus of control. So like Josh Waiskin has this metaphor where what he's doing to teach his son right now, almost like a locus of control is whenever the weather 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. And the next one, you're obviously going to 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.

• 46:18George Mack?

  It comes from Jeff Bezos. And he calls it resourcefulness, 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 like you can immediately, you'll think now, take 10 seconds, you go, which friends would I call? And then you've got, okay, that's a high agency person. Because you, by their very nature, you're going to have to be quite smart to do that. You have to reason from first principles. You're going to 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. Like my, one of my favorite examples of high agency behavior, and I hope they make a film on this, was, you know, the whole Silk Road stuff, right? So Silk Road, the arguably the biggest drug empire, certainly ever online, one of the biggest drug empires ever.

• 47:01George Mack?

  Do you know who took him, took Dread Pirate Roberts down, the guy who's running it all? So bear in mind, the FBI was after him, couldn't do shit. DAA was after him, couldn't do shit. The person who took Ross Ulbricht down was a IRS tax inspector via Google.

• 47:19George Mack?

  For me, that is mental. And then we can go into like asymmetry, right? So the fact that one individual on their fucking computer with an internet connection can outperform the FBI and the DEA. Do 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 [email protected]. And this is how it gets mental. So he then presents it to his superiors who didn't believe him for months. And then as they finally began to catch up with him, they actually realised he was correct all along. And this is like the power of high agency behaviour where like you have Mark Zuckerberg in 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,

• 48:04George Mack?

  who's definitely- Redesigning 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? So like high agency behaviour is the most like important personality trait out there. Like another question that Peter Thiel has, which is, he asks people like, what's your 10 year goal? And they'll go, okay, so I want to build XYZ. 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 behaviour is probably the most important thing to cause. And this explains why. You have people who've read all these fucking books and they don't do anything. Because by it's very, whereas you have like, I know you chat about your business partner Darren, right? Who's not that book smart, but I bet you could say he's high agency. If he was in a field world prison, I bet he'd be one of the people

• 48:49George Mack?

  you caught right you are. He'd be out immediately. He'd have done their accounts for them and they'd be, they'd have let him, they'd have let him free. No, you are, you are completely right. Can I do another example? Watch 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 high agency behaviour is because by its very nature, because it's so low barrier, if you go above and beyond everyone else, you stand out like a fucking sore thumb. So you know what he did? He found out, he just searched, where is the richest part of London? Realised 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 Blackrock? Who just said you want an internship? Yeah. And then you got an internship there?

• 49:31George Mack?

  And like that for me is like, wow, that's some like real high agency stuff. Yeah.

• 49:36Chris Williamson?

  I love that. Um, I want to talk about asymmetries. I know that asymmetry, I don't know if it classes particularly as a mental model, but it's something that you said.

• 49:44George Mack?

  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, 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 horrific. Almost bottomless. Perfect example, texting whilst driving.

• 50:11Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 50:12George Mack?

  Drink, uh, drink driving. Like there's, there's so many out there.

• 50:16Chris Williamson?

  Unprotected sex.

• 50:17George Mack?

  Unprotected sex. Yeah. Cause let's say, let's go back to the texting whilst driving one. The benefit that you get is probably responding lol to a group chat, which you, you not even remember that message in a week from now. The, the risk that you have is maybe being paralyzed for the rest of your life, ending up in prison, um, killing someone. So that's like asymmetrical risk, but there's a flip side of that, right? Which is like asymmetric opportunities. And we chat about this all the time. So you flip it on its head. Uh, my, one of my favorite ones for like asymmetrical opportunities is, um, just DMing people. Anyone who you think is doing like something interesting, just go, hey, I love this. And it's particularly if you have a skill you can offer, just go, oh, you know, you could do X, Y, Z. And that's, I guess that's how me and you is sitting here right now. That's how I met you, right?

• 50:58George Mack?

  And then the, that took me, so the downside there was 30 seconds of my time. Like say nothing happened, I've lost 30 seconds.

• 51:05Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 51:06George Mack?

  If, if it goes well, you've met like a new good friend, right?

• 51:08Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 51:09George Mack?

  So the asymmetry, you can, you can see everywhere.

• 51:12Chris Williamson?

  Uh, asymmetrical opportunities and asymmetrical risks are something that I try and map a lot of my life onto 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, uh, and.

• 51:38Chris Williamson?

  Five million listen minutes over the last year, are you up for it? And he replied and said, yeah.

• 51:42George Mack?

  Yeah.

• 51:43Chris Williamson?

  Downstream from that, me and Daniel 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 fifty K views in like a couple of weeks on that. And you're like, that was asymmetric opportunity.

• 51:57George Mack?

  Mate, it's, it's, it's crazy. Next one I want to go on to, second and third order thinking, or like, oh, just first order, second, third order thinking. So the way, this is like a very like simple one, but it's one of those things until you break it down to the first principles, you never really understand it. Which is the first order effects of your actions. So I, like 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, might get a bit of a stitch, you're out of breath, right? Whereas if you take the elevator, the first order consequence is great, you're just there, right? Just stood there, you don't have to do anything. But then you look at the second order consequences. So the second order consequences of taking the stairs is that you get like some cardiovascular exercise.

• 52:40George Mack?

  And particularly if you do this over like 10 years, I know Jeff Bezos apparently never takes the lift, he always takes the stairs. So once you do that over 10 years, you get the cardiovascular benefits. And then the second order consequences of being in the lift.

• 52:51Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 52:52George Mack?

  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 or an 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 the 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.

• 53:28Chris Williamson?

  But James Clear 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.

• 53:53Chris Williamson?

  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 it's going to 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 to, 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.

• 54:36George Mack?

  Yeah.

• 54:36Chris Williamson?

  Because you right now is transient and you tomorrow is forever.

• 54:39George Mack?

  Well, Kahneman has that bit where it's like, um, where it's much easier to spot those mistakes in other people.

• 54:47Chris Williamson?

  Than it is.

• 54:47George Mack?

  Than it is to see them in yourself.

• 54:49Chris Williamson?

  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.

• 55:11Chris Williamson?

  And we, 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.

• 55:19George Mack?

  Yeah.

• 55:20Chris Williamson?

  Like you have peritoed.

• 55:24George Mack?

  Another mental model.

• 55:26Chris Williamson?

  Peritoed, yeah, that's another one. You've managed to get the vast majority of the benefit.

• 55:30George Mack?

  A hundred percent.

• 55:30Chris Williamson?

  Already there.

• 55:31George Mack?

  Like one, uh, this is a mental model I've sort of created. It's more of an activity than a mental model, but again, it all ties together, right? Which I call the, um, the Buffett Franklin Super Stack. Like I do have to work on the naming a bit yet, but I'll explain it.

• 55:42Chris Williamson?

  I don't think that that one's going to catch on.

• 55:44George Mack?

  Basically, I mean, wait till you hear it, right? So Warren Buffett has like this great exercise. So you know how people talk about values, right? Like what are your values? Like, what do you believe? And it's very Woolley thinking, again, going back to the happiness one, right? So the way to looking at it from like Kahneman's 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 ten percent in of your friends, like which friends? And which friends would you short? And the great thing about this, you can obviously 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 ten percent in, who would you short ten percent?

• 56:29George Mack?

  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 in a social interaction, they always go the extra mile for the other person. Or they're incredibly honest, or they're incredibly hardworking. 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, Buffett 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 Buffett, and then Franklin kicks in, because Benjamin Franklin used to have a list of thirteen 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 it's like, 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?

• 57:14George Mack?

  No, I didn't. Okay, so where, and I think where could I have done that? Okay, and I write that in the sheet, okay, I could have done that. And as a result, then you're like, you've actually made value, something which you can understand and apply, which I think is like incredibly difficult for people.

• 57:26Chris Williamson?

  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, like if I continue to do this at a high enough pace.

• 58:11Chris Williamson?

  I mean, like the other side is coming, like it's just, it's just a case of me getting there. What else have we got?

• 58:15George Mack?

  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 I'm fascinated with, and I'll open it up to you because I 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've I assumed I wasn't sure which one would rank highest, but I assumed it was relatively 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?

• 58:57George Mack?

  And I'm thinking, I know some people who are unbelievable at video games, like world champion level or like elite level. And are absolute messes at their own life. And if you go down like, I don't want to bore people, but if you go down the whole simulation hypotheses, 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 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? What so what do video games have that that most people's lives are missing in your opinion?

• 59:36Chris Williamson?

  Sense of escapism, sense of belonging, sense of community.

• 59:41Chris Williamson?

  Obvious feedback mechanism that shows progression.

• 59:46George Mack?

  So what I agree with loads of points there. One thing that I thought was really like obvious is parameters. Um, which you, if you ever do like basic programming, you need parameters to define the function, right? So you need like, let's say right now, my the parameters of my life or the everyday person, it could be so wide. Like I need to check Facebook, I need to check Instagram, I need to research five, 10 different careers. I need, I 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 its highest of ever because it's just unlimited parameters and people just.

• 1:00:18Chris Williamson?

  Paradox of choice.

• 1:00:18George Mack?

  People just melt in it, right? Whereas in a video, let's say me and you are playing FIFA or Madden or what whatever the kids play these days about are more for 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 a hundred 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 their goal was to make a hundred pound 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.

• 1:01:03George Mack?

  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 ten is making a hundred 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 lookalike ads, they learn how to set up an online store, they learn how to research niches. They get to level four, right? And you go, I'm not hit level ten, 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 Gross talks about this, CrossFit is an unbelievable video game. Because it has 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.

• 1:01:44George Mack?

  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 that 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 Buddhism, right? Detachment's key. And in a video game you have that, you don't, if the character fails, yeah, of course you're a 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?

• 1:02:20Chris Williamson?

  Treat yourself as if you're someone you're responsible for helping.

• 1:02:22George Mack?

  Exactly, but look at, look at it from an eye, 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 what, whoever takes these psychology models from video games and applies them to real, real life is gonna, is gonna win big.

• 1:02:41Chris Williamson?

  Awesome. Man, what have we got left? Shall we do a quick fire round? What have we got?

• 1:02:45George Mack?

  We can do. So I have a really, really basic one, which is inputs versus outputs. This comes from like computer science. I got this from an episode of Tim Ferriss where there's a guy called Sammy. I can't remember his last name. He's like one of the world's leading cybersecurity experts. And he, if you search MySpace Sammy, like he hacked into MySpace back in the day, basically added himself to everybody's friend.

• 1:03:10Chris Williamson?

  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. And then exponentially and he got like all, all of MySpace within like a few days.

• 1:03:20George Mack?

  So, but it was interesting, like Tim Ferriss asking like, what did you learn from programming or like that you've applied to your own life? So like a mental model from programming or computer science, which is inputs and outputs. If you want different, it's that whole Albert Einstein quote, right? If you want different outputs, you have to have different inputs. Like Sam Altman, who's part of Y C, has this like great quote, which is like, 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 like one of the most powerful things that you can do.

• 1:04:01George Mack?

  Because if you're not weird, by the very definition, you're progressing to the mean, you are average.

• 1:04:07Chris Williamson?

  Man, I sing from the same hymn sheet as yourself. Why We Are Fated to be Lonely by the School of Life, Alan de Botton 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 atone 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, contrary or alarming to be acceptable by society at large.

• 1:04:48Chris Williamson?

  And 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.

• 1:05:04George Mack?

  So this is it, right. So one of my favorite people for this is Youssef, right? Because he's just, he's the niche guy amongst niche guys, as the uncommon amongst uncommon metaphor would go. And if Youssef's okay with it, could Dean put the video of him doing the

• 1:05:18Chris Williamson?

  Snatch.

• 1:05:19George Mack?

  Snatches in public?

• 1:05:20Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, so.

• 1:05:22George Mack?

  Bing! So that video right there, I think could say so much about the way to behave. And I've started embracing this. So my favorite quote is that people think, we never even got onto this mental model, the map versus terrain, right?

• 1:05:36Chris Williamson?

  Let's do that one after.

• 1:05:37George Mack?

  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 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 Thiel called Zero to One, I'm Going to be a Billionaire. No, it's about what you drill every single day.

• 1:05:57Chris Williamson?

  Same reason that Neil deGrasse Tyson doesn't have a cover on his phone.

• 1:06:00George Mack?

  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, yes, I want to invest X, Y, Z. No, you have to practice being fucking weird every single day. So the Youssef one there, what's great about it is that he's drilling people looking at him like he's a weirdo 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 are eating McDonald's, there's another person smoking there, right? And nobody's judging them, and that's an action that's negative for them.

• 1:06:35Chris Williamson?

  Just more acceptable.

• 1:06:36George Mack?

  But I'm doing one that's, yeah, exactly. So you have to condition yourself to be able to deal with that and drill it into your consciousness.

• 1:06:42Chris Williamson?

  That's high agency again.

• 1:06:43George Mack?

  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 would do with my kids, every single month, we do the ASH conformity test. You know the ASH conformity test? So they have like a rule, they have like loads of lines, it's like Derren Brown 101. And they'll go, which line's the 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 drill it into their consciousness.

• 1:07:22Chris Williamson?

  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.

• 1:07:31George Mack?

  I disagree.

• 1:07:32Chris Williamson?

  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.

• 1:07:42George Mack?

  But if we like drill, create enough Satoshi Nakamoto's, enough software engineers who people thought for themselves, like we'd all be automating a couple of years' time, right?

• 1:07:50Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, okay, that, yes. You would also then have a bunch of people who are, you would have a lot more revolutions, which I think would be quite chaotic and potentially quite, quite dangerous. One of the things, before we finish, I want to finish on Matt versus Terrence.

• 1:08:05George Mack?

  It's my favourite one.

• 1:08:06Chris Williamson?

  It's a lovely one.

• 1:08:07George Mack?

  It's my favourite one.

• 1:08:08Chris Williamson?

  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 waft in the smell of cheese. The rats' tails are attached to a spring and the spring gives the force back, it records the force back to a computer. The rats are running to try and get this cheese and they're 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

• 1:08:51Chris Williamson?

  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 Jordan Peterson's UnderstandMyself.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 fear.

• 1:09:31George Mack?

  I look, yeah, that exercise is really powerful. Um, the map versus terrain point, which is if you break it down to its first principles, right? 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 like advice I give to my 20 year old self and probably I'll give to myself right now in five years' time. That's the biggest one, like in, I, 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.

• 1:10:16George Mack?

  And we live in a world where you, you think, cause 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, on a, a true feeling perspective, it's a two out of 10, cause you're sat there in your warm bedroom. And you're picturing like, for example, that you've not got X, Y, Z. But if, for example, you walked around the hospital ward and like looked at people who were dying in their eyes. That is terrain, like you're really fucking seeing it. And until you drill something into your consciousness, you can't like 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?

• 1:10:58George Mack?

  Right? Like, you like, always go to the terrain. I think people seek out maps because it's easy. And you can avoid do, and I do this more than anyone, right? So you can avoid doing the hard work.

• 1:11:08Chris Williamson?

  But you, um, I remember Yusuf 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, resolution simulacrum of what is actually occurring. And this is one of the reasons why people become plan addicts.

• 1:11:52Chris Williamson?

  It's why they love like 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.

• 1:12:11George Mack?

  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 direct to map and terrain and plank knowledge. So the green lumber fallacy, it was related to a trader who was trading in green lumber. And this guy knew everything about fucking green lumber, like knew it better than anybody else, but was losing money every single day. And 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 was winning, so he didn't 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 have read articles on these platforms. But I know someone who doesn't know who Sheryl Sandberg is, doesn't know who the COO of Facebook is, but can build you a Facebook page better than every single person. And this comes down to plank, have you heard of plank knowledge? It's my favorite one, right? So it comes from Charlie Munger's speech.

• 1:12:55George Mack?

  So there's this theoretical physicist, Max Planck, around about the 1930s. So there's obviously not many images out there. So nobody knows what he looks like, but 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 chauffeur with him. So the chauffeur like had done like a hundred of these and would sit and watch the lecture. And the chauffeur said, can I do this lecture? And so basically he just recited it word for word and, and at the, I absolutely smashed it. And at the end, somebody asked the chauffeur who they thought was plank, excuse me, Mr. Planck, 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 what, they never know whether that's a true tale or what. But that's, so Munger calls this the difference between chauffeur knowledge and plank knowledge.

• 1:13:39George Mack?

  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 recite all the good stuff, but what's your P and L? What have you actually produced here? Like, do you actually know when you question go why, why, why? When you apply the fireman technique, can you really answer those questions?

• 1:13:55Chris Williamson?

  That's, 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 life coaching.

• 1:14:12George Mack?

  I'm 24, I'm talking about mental models, fuck me.

• 1:14:14Chris Williamson?

  No, but you understand the 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, the latticework 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.

• 1:14:35George Mack?

  So you know what Nassim Taleb says about life coaches? He says, the only, the only thing you can learn from a life coach is how to be a life coach. It's great.

• 1:14:43Chris Williamson?

  Nassim Taleb is,

• 1:14:46Chris Williamson?

  he's such a motherfucker, 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 Gad Saad as well are 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.

• 1:15:06Chris Williamson?

  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 Taleb I did, I, I probably will do Gad Saad 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 are kind of on the same wavelength. Doesn't really matter how fucking awry the conversation goes, can always just bring it back to crack.

• 1:15:47George Mack?

  Yeah.

• 1:15:47Chris Williamson?

  Like, but.

• 1:15:50Chris Williamson?

  How the fuck do you have crack with Nassim Taleb? 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.

• 1:16:02George Mack?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:03Chris Williamson?

  Nassim Taleb.

• 1:16:04George Mack?

  I've been telling you, if you listen to his interviews, he's a bit different.

• 1:16:06Chris Williamson?

  Is he? Is he less, less kind of militant?

• 1:16:09George Mack?

  Yeah, yeah, he's, I think he's really cool.

• 1:16:10Chris Williamson?

  Okay, well, that'd be, 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, it would be longer than the tweets would allow. At George Mack, M A C.

• 1:16:29George Mack?

  On Twitter, M A C K on Twitter.

• 1:16:31Chris Williamson?

  On Twitter, you need to follow this guy.

• 1:16:33George Mack?

  I need to tweet more. I'm busy.

• 1:16:35Chris Williamson?

  You can't tweet.

• 1:16:36George Mack?

  But I don't, but I don't want to be a map, I don't want to be a map guy. Like, we're just talking about life and you're never actually living it. So with a zero sum game, we didn't get on to that, but like, time's limited. I do need to tweet more, but, um, but yeah, it's been good fun.

• 1:16:47Chris Williamson?

  Man, thank you very much.