“Discovery requires serendipity but serendipity is not a chance event alone. It is a process in which a chance of event is seized upon by a creative person who chooses to pay attention to the event, unravel its mystery and find a proper application for it.” In this episode of Made You Think, Neil and Nat discuss Happy Accidents by Morton A Meyers. In this book we look at the serendipity of so many scientific discoveries and the author suggests how we can foster these chance happenings to make giant leaps in research and discovery. “Penetrating intelligence, keen perception, and sound judgment — is essential to serendipity. The men and women who seized on lucky accidents that happened to them were anything but mindless. In fact, their minds typically had special qualities that enabled them to break out of established paradigms.” We cover a wide range of topics, including: Penicillin, Petri Dishes and Moldy Mary The impact of freedom on research Tangents on Private Schools, Social Media & Conspiracy Theories Modern Diets, Drugs and Toxins turned into cures Self experimentation, Ostracism and changing Medical opinions A possible special kayaking retreat for supporters And much more. Please enjoy, and be sure to grab a copy of Happy Accidents by Morton A Meyers! You can also listen on Google Play Music, SoundCloud, YouTube, or in any other podcasting app by searching “Made You Think.” If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check out our episodes on Skin in the Game by Nassim Taleb where he shares other stories of scientists trying treatments firsthand, and Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Erik Cornway for more on controversial science, academia and Pharma companies. Be sure to join our mailing list to find out about what books are coming up, giveaways we're running, special events, and more. Links from the Episode Mentioned in the show Bottom Up Methodology [01:31] Scientific Method [1:48] Penicillin [05:27] LSD Discovery [05:48] Contact High [06:01] Dogmatic [06:19] Petri dishes [08:01] Lifehacker [08:47] The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn [9:31] Narrative Fallacy [16:17] Fleming Nobel Prize Speech [17:38] Peoria, Illinois [26:03] Corn Steep Liquor [26:09] Merck [26:48] Squibb [26:48] Pfizer [26:48] World War I [27:42] Aquatic Apes [29:04] Sippy Diet [30:27] Tetracycline Antibiotic [31:47] Acid Inhibitors [34:14] Statins [34:36] Carbohydrates [36:16] LDL [36:20] LDL receptors [36:33] Viagra [38:26] Asbestos [39:46] Facebook Groups [42:14] Discord Groups [42:15] Carnivore Diet [42:49] Shake Shack [44:04] M&M’s [44:07] Purina Dog Food [46:08] Stats of College Debt – Tweet [46:32] CMU [52:40] Choate School [53:45] Sidwell Friends [54:23] Boarding Schools [54:34] Alkylating Agents [57:15] Geneva Convention [58:08] Patreon [01:02:08] Google Trends on episode 35 [1:02:00] Epidemics [01:02:27] SARS [01:02:54] Influenza [01:02:56] Syphilis [01:03:22] Fish Aquarium Antibiotics [01:04:53] FDA [01:07:51] Nazi Testing [01:08:04] Japanese testing on Chinese prisoners [01:08:08] Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male [01:08:19] Eugenics [01:10:18] Darwinism [01:10:31] (related podcast) Russian Gulag [01:11:38] Thalidomide [01:11:52] Diethyl Glycol [01:12:59] Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act [01:13:10] Accutane [01:15:06] Doxycycline [01:16:26] Microbiome [01:16:52] Eczema [01:17:43] Steroids [01:17:36] Spartan Race [01:20:09] Nat’s Instagram [01:20:15] Blockchain [01:21:06] X-Rays [01:22:29] Morphine [01:23:51] American Urological Association [01:24:48] CVS patient statistics for Viagra [01:29:42] Netflix [01:31:18] Spleen [01:32:47] Confirmation bias [01:34:43] Ego death [01:39:38] Dissociative experience [01:39:40] Magic mushrooms [01:40:02] LSD Therapeutic Research Study [01:41:03] NASA [01:46:22] Direct to Consumer Drug Advertising [01:46:29] ADD [01:47:41] Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder [01:47:58] Prozac / Seraphim [01:48:09] Paxil [01:48:18] Female Sexual Dysfunction [01:48:24] Lipitor [01:48:57] Zoloft [01:49:16] UBI [01:53:07] Ethereum [01:59:48] Books mentioned Happy Accidents by Morton A Meyers Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch [00:42] (book episode) The War on Normal People by Andrew Yang [00:51] (book episode) Antifragile by Nassim Taleb [07:02] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn [9:31] Boron Letters by Gary C. Halbert [14:44] Skin in the Game by Nassim Taleb [30:00] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway [01:02:02]] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway [01:02:02] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Homo Deus by Yuval Harari [01:02:36] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Words that Work by Frank Luntz [01:28:24] LSD My Problem Child by Albert Hofmann [01:40:51] Brave New World by Aldous Huxley [01:48:46] People mentioned Morton A Meyers David Deutsch [00:42] (Beginning of Infinity episode) Andrew Yang [00:51] (The War on Normal People episode) Winston Churchill [05:04] Alexander Fleming [05:29] Nassim Taleb [07:02] (Antifragile episode) (Skin in the Game episode) Thomas Kuhn [09:21] Peter Thiel [10:12] Gary C. Halbert [14:44] Charles Darwin [18:39] (Daniel Dennett’s book) Ernst B Chain [22:31] Moldy Mary [25:56] Barry Marshall [31:07] Robert Koch [32:10] Bill Clinton [01:00:32] George W Bush [01:01:18] Erik M. Conway [01:02:02] Yuval Harari [01:02:45] (Homo Deus episode) (Sapiens part I and part II) FDR [01:13:08] Claude Bernard [01:22:24] Frank Luntz [01:28:24] John William Gofman [1:31:35] President Eisenhower [01:34:48] Timothy Leary [01:40:28] Albert Hofmann [01:40:51] Steve Jobs [01:41:00] Louis Pasteur [01:45:32] Aldous Huxley [01:48:46] Show Topics 00:26 – The book is fun to read, light, enjoyable, easy going. An exploration of scientific discovery and progress and how consistently it is influenced and driven by the role of Serendipity. A case opposite or complementary to the Scientific Method. Serendipity defined as a combination of accidents and sagacity. 05:05 – Not all discoveries are immediately realized or understood. Winston Churchill – “Men occasionally stumble over the truth, but most of them pick themselves up and hurry off as if nothing had happened”. Penicillin and LSD examples. The dangers of being dogmatic without leaving room for the unexpected. 06:53 – Central theme of the book–How do you foster that serendipitous mindset? Nassim Taleb says that serendipity comes from chance encounters, like a cocktail party. The potential gain from a chance encounter is worth the effort of stepping outside your comfort zone. 07:42 – Trying to harness serendipity for your own benefit. Serendipity through disorder and randomness. Investigating how scientists can foster serendipity in their lab work and how academia and education and research grants, peer review could change because of that. 09:41 – Normal vs revolutionary science, Meyers is dismissive of puzzle solving. Normal science is making incremental improvements on existing knowledge, whereas serendipity fosters revolutionary discoveries as they come from a change in the ordinary methods. 10:51 – Two stages to serendipity. You need something unusual to happen and you have to recognize it to take advantage of it too. 11:21 – Innovation departments rarely come up with paradigm-shifting ideas and products. Need a certain mindset to make the most of these opportunities. Reason, intuition and imagination. Too much experience in a field can cloud your judgement on new ideas. 13:51 – The book is primarily about serendipity in medicine and science but it can be applied to most fields. Breaking out of the norm and finding inspiration for innovation in other industries. Looking at magazines to apply to blog copywriting. 15:33 – "Analogical thinking has certainly been a cornerstone of science." Another theme in the book is looking for one thing but ending up on a totally different path. All of the people making discoveries seemed to have a level of independence in their research to follow a new path when it interests them. The narrative fallacy involved in serendipitous scientific discovery or startups growth. 17:40 – Alexander Fleming and discovery of Penicillin as anti-bacterial.  Fleming said that if he was working on a research team at the time it would have been ignored as it wasn’t what he was working on. Being free allows you to pursue these anomalies. 19:04 – Darwin and the finches in the Galapagos. Being told to go and study something brings different results than if you’re free to follow your own curiosity. The constraints of research impose harmful limits on discoveries. 19:54 – Structure of the book is Introduction of the premise, 30+ chapters of examples and the conclusion. Myers suggests at the end of the book that the structure for scientific research and funding is counter to the ability for these serendipitous events to happen. 20:50 – More on Fleming and Penicillin. Odds of it happening were astronomically low. He was away for two weeks and on returning and viewing his petri dishes on his desk discovered an anti-bacterial zone around the mold. It wasn’t until 7 years later that another researcher realized what he had found. 23:09 – For Fleming it took a number of environmental factors that allowed Penicillin to be discovered at all: heat, location, time. Penicillin wasn’t originally pitched as a drug, originally suggested as a way to isolate bacterial colonies. Then there was the huge scale up and production process of the drug. Peoria (IL), the role of corn syrup, and the mold discovered by chance. 29:00 – Bonus Material Discussion, Aquatic Apes, Patreon, future episode ideas. 29:52 – Causes of ulcers, used to be thought of as stress and spicy food. Discovery that it is caused by bacteria in 1981. Marshall ran an experiment on himself to take the bacteria, give himself ulcers and cure himself with antibiotics. Pharmaceutical industry had a strong incentive to not prove this as the cause, current drugs of acid inhibitors were reaching sales of $6 Billion dollars in 1992. 35:04 – Pharma companies lobbying to decrease acceptable cholesterol ranges to induce more people into treatments. Changing opinions of statins within last 10 years. Effects of low cholesterol on longevity, links to all-cause mortality. Reducing cholesterol and precursors to creating testosterone in diet has lead to a reduction in testosterone and erectile dysfunction requiring a need for Viagra. 39:59 – What are we currently doing in society now that we will look back on and question in the future? Possible future problems associated with over consumption of social media. Mental and physical health complaints are unknown. 41:53 – Pull away in society from open sharing, moving towards private communities. Effectiveness of diets, feeling good vs having long term health benefits. Benefits of adopting a new diet may be equal to reducing other harmful choices – like stopping drinking for a month. The changing conventions of meal-times, quality of dog food, college debt. 47:12 – Tangent. Education and the need to change the K through 12 program instead of starting with College reform. The benefits of private vs public school. Mixing with different socioeconomic backgrounds, expense of private school. Both build very different sets of social and academic skills. Bay Area dystopia, where citizens pay lots in taxes that go into public schools, but parents end choosing private ones. 55:53 – Chemical weapons, World Wars and the changing use of toxins into cures. Bombing a ship leading to the first chemo treatments for cancer. North Korea and the development of nuclear tech (more info in the Bonus material). Google health trends being able to predict health outbreaks based on search volume. Sex hormones and noticing the change of tumors in animals after castration. 01:07:55 – Consequences of controversial testing on wartime prisoners that have given us useful data. Study of African-American men with syphilis, they were told they were having free medical treatment but they were mislead and were being studied for the untreated effects of syphilis over 40 years. Possibilities of current testing on prisoners or other conspiracies. 01:11:52 – History of Thalidomide being marketed as a sedative and pain management. Widely distributed before it was realized it had the side effect of severely inhibiting fetal development. U.S avoided this because the FDA already setup due to a drug being administered alongside Diethyl Glycol which was toxic, killing over 100 children. Testing required before products could be marketed. Thalidomide now used as an anti-cancer drug as it inhibits new blood vessel growth. 01:15:05 – Acne treatments and the imbalanced side-effects on fertility. Use of cleanser on the face strips natural oils. Use of antibiotics for acne which causes destruction of the microbiome. Latex gloves that may transmit more bacteria than your hands. Effects of steroids and keto on curing eczema. Nat not using shampoo even after a Spartan race. Body naturally cleansing. 01:21:06 – Tangents, aquatic apes, blockchain, negative reviews. 01:21:59 – Heart chapter and testing of catheterization. Self-experimentation and the need to prove theories. Ostracism and dangerous procedures. 01:24:44 – Viagra, originally for treating angina, it was found that this medication increased blood flow and became a cure for impotence – renamed to erectile dysfunction. Self-experimentation on erectile dysfunction. "The annual scientific meeting of the American Urologic Association is usually a pretty staid Affair but one meeting has entered the annals of folklore in the early 1980s. During the course of his lecture on the effectiveness of injecting substances directly into the penis to increase blood flow one urologist announced that he had performed such injections on himself only an hour earlier. Stepping from behind the lectern and he dropped his trousers and proudly demonstrated to the audience his own erect manhood. Urologists who attended this meeting still shake their heads at the memory." 01:28:00 – The power of names and the words used, like pro-life and pro-choice. How you phrase something changes the impact. Pharmaceuticals changing the names of conditions to promote sales of new drugs. Sales of Viagra were $780 Million in the first 9 months of 1998. 01:30:02 – 1% of women take Viagra to increase arousal and sensation and orgasm strength. Netflix’s biggest competitor is sleep, Viagra’s biggest competitor is death. 01:31:48 – Cholesterol testing on rabbits. Cholesterol data seems outdated with the book being 11 years old. Comparison of Chinese soldiers and lifestyle and diet. Lack of nutrition education in Doctors, mostly educated by pharmaceutical companies. People seem to want to take a pill rather than change their lifestyle or diet and doctors have lack of trust in the patient that they will try to improve their own situation. 01:38:07 – Psychiatric stuff. Hoffman discovering LSD by accidentally pouring it over his skin. LSD microdosing experiences. 01:42:40 – Tangents on kayaking, LSD microdosing and the Made You Think – Patreon $1000 Tier. 01:43:06 – Conclusion. Modern sciences are antithetical to the process of serendipity and how our institutions penalize our ability to take advantage of it. Government contracts and grants impose constraints. If you're getting money to research a specific topic you will be disincentivized from exploring things that deviates. If you're a free agent, then you can run down those rabbit holes. 01:44:31 – Peer reviews. Most businesses are judged by their customers but academia is judged solely by their peers. Ostracism as a consequence of investigating fringe theories. Direct to consumer advertising for drugs. Diseases and disorders that seems to be created and renamed just to increase drug sales. Long terms effects of drugs. 01:52:19 – On Patreon you get all kinds of goodies. Bonus materials, detailed notes for each episode and book highlights. You get a space to discuss the show with both of us. You can also join for our monthly live Hangouts. If you join the $1000 a month tier you can join us for a major excursion – Made You Trip! 01:54:57 – Patreon is a great way to support the show and let us keep doing this ad free. So we don't have to break up the episode with ads and we keep rolling with the tangents. 01:55:48 – Leave a review on iTunes that is super helpful for us because we show up as a recommended podcast and also is a great way for us to book guests. Other ways to support the show, you can go MadeYouThinkPodcast.com/support and tell your friends. 01:57:58 – If you want to talk to us, you can talk to us on Twitter anytime. I'm @TheRealNeilS and I am @NatEliason. If you're shopping on Amazon click through on our link. We super appreciate that.  All right, we will see everyone next week. See you guys next time. If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to subscribe at https://madeyouthinkpodcast.com

“That's really one of the most powerful things about Universal Basic Income. You start to believe in a sense of abundance and possibility.” In this episode of Made You Think, Neil and Nat speak to Andrew Yang, the author of The War on Normal People, a follow up to our previous book episode. Today we are discussing the possibility of Universal Basic Income for all. “The bigger people think, the more they wake up. We can make this real together.” We cover a wide range of topics, including : Objections and barriers to adopting UBI The cost of UBI and if can we afford it Video games vs the real world Social Credit Systems and Basic Jobs VAT and economic migration Trump and running for president in 2020 And much more. Please enjoy this interview with the author of The War on Normal People by Andrew Yang. You can also listen on Google Play Music, SoundCloud, YouTube, or in any other podcasting app by searching “Made You Think.” If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check out our episode on Sovereign Individual by James Dale Davidson and our episode on Emergency by Neil Strauss for related topics discussed in today’s show. Be sure to join our mailing list to find out about what books are coming up, giveaways we're running, special events, and more. Links from the Episode Mentioned in the show Universal Basic Income [00:30] Roosevelt Institute [04:02] VAT [06:16] Freedom Dividend [07:49] Twitch [10:00] Social Credits [13:24] World of Warcraft [13:50] Pink Collar Jobs [11:19] Blockchain [16:45] (Crypto episode) Ypsilanti, Michigan [18:15] Yang Ventures [18:18] Mynt  [18:31] UBI Pilots [18:59] Solyndra [20:18] The Hamptons [34:32] Enlightened Self-Interest [34:38] Allegiance [30:36] Scrooge McDuck [39:48] Reddit Andrew Yang AMA [43:35] State of the Union Address [43:47] Yang2020.com [47:23] One For Humanity [48:14] Cryptocurrency [54:09] (Crypto episode) Joe Rogan Podcast [59:40] Tim Ferriss Podcast [59:41] Vocal fry [01:01:59] Books Mentioned The War on Normal People by Andrew Yang [00:17] (book episode) Homo Deus by Yuval Harari [07:10] (Nat’s Notes) (book episode) Sovereign Individual by James Dale Davidson [35:20] (Nat’s Notes) (book episode) Emergency by Neil Strauss [38:08] (Nat’s Notes) (book episode) Raising the Floor by Andy Stern [47:44] Skin in the Game by Nassim Taleb [52:02] (Nat’s Notes) (Neil’s Notes) (book episode) Sapiens by Yuval Harari [53:22] (Nat’s Notes) (part 1, part 2) Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch [01:00:40] (book episode) College Dropout by Kanye West [01:00:56] (book episode) People Mentioned Andrew Yang Yuval Harari [07:06] Sam Altman [19:09] Chris Hughes [19:10] Cory Booker [25:11] Jeff Bezos [32:04] Donald Trump [40:43] Barack Obama [41:50] Bernie Sanders [41:47] Chris Rock [42:31] George Bush [42:34] Jesus Christ [42:41] Kanye West [1:03:24] Questions Asked 01:01 – What are the main challenges and objections to UBI? 01:36 – Are any of these objections compelling? 05:04 – Isn’t UBI just cycling money from the top consumers to those that are below $120k a year in spending? 08:18 – Do you see any differing objections between liberals and conservatives to UBI? 09:24 – Do you think there will be a portion of society that replaces work with video games and do you see a growth in the gaming industry because of UBI? 14:40 – How would we implement the social credits app in cities for real? 17:33 – Does it have to be the government that starts a social credit initiative? 20:35 – If you were elected, how are you viewing the idea battleground? 21:10 – How do you get past the inertia to convince people UBI is necessary? 25:00 – How do you feel about basic jobs? 26:40 – What makes the basic jobs idea attractive to other candidates and some voters? 29:15 – Is making the majority of the population reliant on a government subsidy making it easier for a totalitarian president to take control after you? 30:58 – You said in the book we are moving to a winner-take-all economy in a variety of fields, where you have a handful of companies controlling Government policy. Do you see a future where that is possible and how do you stop that? 35:20 – Have you read Sovereign Individual? 35:32 – In Sovereign Individual there is an idea that as wealth disparity grows, eventually the elite will separate themselves from the rest of the population. Do you see any concern for that? 38:54 – Will we see countries trying to attract citizens to move and will VAT be a factor in that? 39:59 – How bad would it have to be before more people left? What’s the threshold? 41:24 – Do you think that Trump getting elected is helpful to someone who’s not a career politician, helping them get elected in 2020? 45:40 – Has communicating a very statistics and quantitative approach been a struggle for you when speaking to audiences? So much of politics is about the emotional appearance. How have you adapted to that? 54:09 – Extra Question that we didn’t get to ask - Would adoption of a VAT accelerate a crypto economy and how does that change the estimates of how we would pay for UBI? Show Topics 1:11 – The main objections to UBI are : How can we afford it? Will it turn people into less happy, lazy wastrels? Won’t it cause mass inflation? 1:44 – Universal Basic Income is affordable but we’ve poorly managed budgets in the past and there is stigma around hoarding money. We need to believe in sense of abundance and possibility. Culture and mental barriers and block around hoarding money. 3:28 – Cost of UBI in the US would cost $2 Trillion. It would be $1000 per month given to each person, we call it the Freedom Dividend. It would cause economy growth due to increased taxes and spending. 4:27 – Benefits of UBI. We would get more out than we put in. It reduces health issues, crime and has many secondary benefits to putting the money into the hands of the people. 05:57 – How the money would be spent. The wealthy vs the majority. VAT taking from those who spend the most and given to the bottom 80%. Money sitting in bank accounts causes a stagnant economy. 07:27 – Basic Income as both appealing Liberals and Conservatives. Most people seem to think it is impossible, shows decline of society and lack of faith in democracy. 10:21 – Video games and the growth of the eSports economy. Parents as an early form of UBI for large groups of young people. Will additional income cause people to withdraw into games more or will it allow them to participate in real life more? 11:03 – Lack of appealing opportunities for men in the real world. The digital world as the cheapest form of entertainment, more money equals more options and less time spent in the digital world. 12:05 – Games used as a sense of accomplishment and emotional highs, which can wear off over time. UBI will give opportunities at a time when people are looking for something new. 13:24 – Social credits as a socially constructive gamification of the real world. Gaming impulse transferred into the real world and other outlets. Current philanthropic trials are small by comparison and Government could apply resources. 20:02 – Yang’s plans as president. Government currently too risk averse. Electing a president with UBI as a main objective would be a huge step towards it. Congress people would have to listen to their constituents. 24:08 – Nothing is as effective as cash to people when talking about control of programs. People losing faith in government programs. Basic jobs as a bad idea, no long term value in unproductive work as more jobs get automated. Unproductive jobs lead to unhappy people. Instead find out what work is inside of each person. The idea of Basic jobs doesn’t value people. Valuing people as stakeholders and not serves. 30:10 – People heading towards reliance on the government. UBI as better way, gives people a higher-level of integrity and self-determination. Any government change to UBI would cause riots and is still a powerful check on the government. Doing nothing will lead to bloodshed and revolution. Antitrust laws and harm to consumers. 32:38 – Defining human success independent of economic or monetary measures. Wealth getting concentrated in ever smaller pools is bad for all businesses. Riots in America looking more likely, how can we prevent that instead of waiting. 37:54 – Enlightened self-interest and lifting others up. Renouncing citizenship for tax reasons. Ad campaigns trying to encourage economic migration. VAT not a powerful factor. 40:17 – Lack of entrepreneurial migrants. Electing Andrew Yang would be a compelling message to immigrants. The opposite of Donald Trump is an Asian guy that likes facts and figures. Clear message through recent politics, people are desperate for change. 44:54 – Using Universal Based Income as a lever to address a crisis. The road to the 2020 election. Challenge of evolving as a person over time. Humanity First and One For Humanity project. Reduction of labor as a central role, the rise of automation and an economy that values people first. 48:36 – Possibility of a follow-up episode. Listeners, send in any questions. Next time we could dive deeper on Venture For America and his other policies. Check out his site Yang2020.com. Follow Andrew on Twitter @AndrewYangVFA and @andrewyang2020 53:29 – Influences of Yuval Harari. Andrew’s perspective is super refreshing for a politician. Getting other authors on the podcast. 57:44 – If you’re enjoying this show we would love to see you over on our Patreon page. You get the bonus material, detailed book notes, all of our questions from interviews and upcoming books and the opportunity to join Neil and I on a live Q&A hangout. Patreon helps us to keep the show as we want it without ads interrupting the flow of the conversation. 01:01:22 – Keep telling your friends about the show, leave a review on iTunes. It helps us to show as up as a recommended podcast. We read all of them and we super appreciate it. If you want to support the podcast in another way you can go to MadeYouThinkPodcast.com/Support. We do have a bunch of products there that we use on a regular basis. If you click through or use the coupon code it does help support the show, I guess we should mention Amazon as well as listed on there and you can go do your normal shopping on Amazon doesn't cost you anything. 01:03:08 – The interview format is new for us so we’d love to know what you think. Send us an e-mail or tweet. On Twitter I’m @TheRealNeilS and I’m @NatEliason and we will talk to you there, see you all next week. If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to subscribe at https://madeyouthinkpodcast.com

"The normal American did not graduate from college and doesn't have an associate's degree. He or she perhaps attended college for one year or graduated from high school. She or he has a net worth of approximately $36,000, about $6,000 excluding home and vehicle equity and lives paycheck to paycheck. She or he has less than $500 in flexible savings and minimal assets invested in the stock market. These are median statistics with 50% of Americans below these levels” In this episode of Made You Think, Neil and Nat discuss The War On Normal People By Andrew Yang. This book is a balanced and optimistic view on Universal Basic Income, the economic impact of the automation of jobs and our options for the future. "half of American households already rely on the government for direct income in some form." We cover a wide range of topics, including: Universal Basic Income and Government benefits Statistics on unemployment, labor and the changing workforce Technology, automation and robot dog walkers Centralization of certain jobs in certain cities Remote work, freelancers, the gig economy Taxes, Cryptocurrencies & Video Games Tangents on Fortnite, Rolex and ad revenue in sports And much more. Please enjoy, and be sure to grab a copy of The War On Normal People By Andrew Yang. You can also listen on Google Play Music, SoundCloud, YouTube, or in any other podcasting app by searching “Made You Think.” If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check out our episode on Sovereign Individual for opposing views. Along with our episode on The Elephant In The Brain for more on human nature and the desire for success. Be sure to join our mailing list to find out about what books are coming up, giveaways we're running, special events, and more. Links from the Episode Mentioned in the show Waking Up Podcast [01:08] Universal Basic Income [02:48] Mass Shooters [04:43] Social Revolution [04:46] Median Statistics [05:33] Labor Participation Rate [06:22] Manufacturing States [12:33] Detroit Riots [13:11] W-2 [13:43] Retraining Programs [15:12] Technology Industrial Wave [15:43] Amazon Warehouses [17:17] Walmart [17:25] Paralegals [19:33] The Sims [23:02] Hive Mind [23:27] UpWork [32:56] Slack [36:40] Esports [37:00] Twitch [37:09] Extremistan [37:12] Mediocristan [37:14] Gig Economy [40:44] Rover [40:52] Wag [40:52] Twilight Zone [42:10] Flywheel effect [45:35] Lincoln University [47:24] Biggest question Nat had have from reading @AndrewYangVFA's UBI book (on Twitter) [55:00] Unlimited Brewing [55:55] The world’s top economy: the US vs China in five charts [57:50] Cryptocurrencies [01:05:50] (Crypto episode) TransferWise [01:09:05] Blockchain [01:09:26] Winner-takes-all effect [01:09:54] Patreon Bonus Material [01:12:19] Fortnite [01:17:46] Call of Duty [01:18:03] Mad Max [01:21:11] ISIS [01:21:17] Social Credits [01:22:48] Million Dollar Bill [01:22:48] Vietnamese Dong [01:23:51] Trump’s Tax Plan [01:27:20] Totalitarianism Article [1:31:45] Yang2020.com [01:31:58] The New Deal [1:32:38] The Great Depression [01:33:40] Obamacare [01:35:22] Selection Bias [01:39:03] Books mentioned The War On Normal People by Andrew Yang Sovereign Individual by James Dale Davidson [03:17] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Dreams From My Father by Barack Obama [01:12:47] Sapiens by Yuval Harari [01:18:47] (Nat’s Notes) (part 1) (part 2) Homo Deus by Yuval Harari [01:18:48] (Nat’s Notes) (book episode) Skin in the Game by Nassim Taleb [01:31:47] (Nat’s Notes) (Neil’s Notes) (book episode) Elephant in the Brain by Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson [01:38:43] (book episode) People mentioned Andrew Yang Sam Harris [01:00] Winston Churchill [04:25] Nassim Nicholas Taleb [37:06] (Antifragile episode) (Skin in the Game episode) Donald Trump [01:03:10] Barack Obama [01:12:12] Youval Harari [01:19:04] Robin Hanson [01:38:05] Show Topics 01:42 – The book feels optimistic and fairly balanced and offers Universal Basic Income as a good solution to our current situation. Andrew sets the stage well with the magnitude of the problem. 03:04 – We have both come from a place of not thinking UBI was a good solution and our views have been changed several times on this, since reading Sovereign Individual and now this. 04:19 – It feels like this could the best of the option that we currently have if we want to maintain this current system and avoid social revolution. 05:10 – Yang starts the book off by emphasizing the scale of the problem using median statistics or labor participation rate, unemployment rate and number of disability claimants. 06:30 – There is a massive number of people who are working age but are no longer looking for work. This is not evident when viewing the unemployment rate as they are discounted. However the labor participation rate is 63% which is lower that all other industrialized economies. 06:58 – One in three people have left the job market entirely. They have self-selected to no longer participate in the search for work and are not counted as unemployed. 08:09 – "half of American households already rely on the government for direct income in some form.". The majority of these are on disability for muscular tissue issues, mood disorders, anxiety or depression. 09:09 – There is a whole industry of lawyers who help people get onto disability who then take a cut of the back dated payments. 10:26 – Similarities between the level of disability payments and the proposition of UBI. However with disability payments, you are dis-incentivized from trying to find work as payments would stop. This causes a large number of people to stay on disability for longer and find untraceable ways of earning additional income. 11:10 – Yang says that 94% of all jobs created within the last 10 years were temporary contractor jobs with no benefits. People are not going to risk their $12,000 disability payment for a job at $7 per hour. 11:35 – Disability has less than 1% churn rate, very few people get off it. It’s like the anti-SaaS startup. 11:59 – Increases in disability payments correlate to the areas with the biggest job losses. Highest in the old manufacturing states. Does the government recognize that these payments are just another type of welfare for those that have lost their jobs? 12:31 – In Michigan of the 310,000 who left the workforce between 2003 and 2013 half went on to take disability payments. They don’t have any other options available. 13:29 – The Government doesn’t seem to actively fight benefit fraud with more people joining but few leaving. Missing of checks to see who is health is improving enough to move back into work. 14:29 – Inefficiencies of job retraining programs and the lack of transferable skills between old industries losing jobs and new (mostly technical) industries with jobs available. "The test is not 'Will there be new jobs we haven't predicted yet that appear?' Of course there will be. The real test is 'Will there be millions of new jobs for middle-aged people with low skills and levels of education near the places they currently reside'. And the answer to that seems almost certainly no." 15:44 – In previous industrial waves people have been able to adapt due to similarities of skill. Automation is now removing low skilled jobs entirely. Automation in car factories, Amazon warehouses. 18:30 – Automation isn’t solely for low skilled, Blue Collar jobs. Anything repetitive and routine can be automated. This will impact White Collar workers too. “Routine jobs of all stripes are those most under threat from AI and Automation and in time more categories of jobs will be affected.” 19:21 – Automation in law, research and reduction in personnel. Repetition as a tool for learning. Loss of high-level expertise as no-one has the foundational knowledge that comes from early repetition. 20:42 – Tangent. A Science Fiction story to make you think! In a distant future, expertise on computers has been lost and no one knows how to resolve a computer bug. A future where humans are reliant on computers to retain the knowledge for them. 22:42 – Computers no longer needing humans. The Sims, the hive mind of the Internet. Memes, Russian hackers, and Wikipedia created by AI destroying humanity. 25:19 – Assumptions of UBI imply an increase of entrepreneurship. What happens when you pay people to not work? Current level of cash wealth for the average American is $500. The expense of Healthcare means that one ER visit can put people into long term financial difficulty. Defaulted medical bills are then just another form of welfare. 27:50 – Median salary in the US is $31,000. Cost of living in New York and San Francisco. Impact cost of living has on average job wages. Manhattan vs Brooklyn. 32:14 – The author criticizes the idea that those that lose their job can just start working remotely. Those in the US can’t compete due to cost of living with locations like the Philippines and Sri Lanka. Tech skills required are also a barrier to entry. 36:10 – Professional eSports players and the popularity of Twitch and the platform reinforcing the popular streamers causes them to be more popular. Extremistan vs Mediocristan. 39:11 – Lack of service jobs, the rise of the gig economy, dog walking apps. Robot dogs and cyborg owners. 42:39 – Hyper-concentration of money and talent in 6 cities: Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles, New York and Washington DC. Reinforcing loop effect. Venture Capital money and secondary cities that are on the rise. The effects of anchor companies in smaller cities. 50:01 – Potential to see an exodus of people moving away from high cost of living areas due to remote work. The increase of remote working technologies which helps team collaboration. 52:32 – Geography is destiny. Jobs disappear where society falls apart and the smartest leave first. Reduction in families relocating across state lines. 54:14 – The ‘useless’ class being subsidized by the 1%. Will this cause talent to leave on a international level? Yang says inertia, lower taxes, standard of Education keep people in the U.S. 55:40 – VAT, international transactions, selling to the UK from the US. Micro economies and city-states. China GDP. Impact of taxes in lower cost of living regions. 01:01:50 – Moving abroad, spending in different economies. Moving to Canada because of Trump. Tipping point for people leaving their state or country because of high tax levels. 01:05:41 – Tangent. Cryptocurrencies as an alternative to being taxed. Adoption of Bitcoin and untraceable payment systems. Exchange rates and paying freelancers. TransferWise, PayPal. UBI as being a better option than the status quo. 01:10:20 – Yang doesn’t present UBI as a perfect solution but it’s an option to divert us from the direction we are already headed in. 1:12:00 – If you want to hear Neil’s comments about Obama’s book, support us on Patreon and listen to the bonus material for this episode. 01:13:14 – The explosion in popularity of video games for unemployed men. The average playing time went from 3 hours per week to 8 hours per week in just a few years. 01:14:32 – E-sports, ad revenue, disposable income of an unemployed audience. Comparisons with NBA, NFL, tennis, golf and other sports. Sponsorships vs engagement of an audience. 01:16:35 – Power of in-app purchases, revenue making game mechanics. Popularity of Fortnite, going to $318MM in monthly revenue in just eight months. Comparisons with Call of Duty, game play and enjoyment. 01:18:55 – Harari's comments on the ‘useless’ class moving to VR as a stimulus. Swapping religion for video games. Lack of creative outlets and sense of reward in modern life. People turning to games for the feeling of progress and adventure. 01:20:31 – Implications of having unemployed young men roam the streets are a recipe for disaster. Preventing social unrest of large group of unemployed people by videogames. 01:21:35 – Lack of stimulation causes unwanted behaviors. People don’t always direct their energy in productive ways. Social credit apps, psychology of spending millions in other currencies. 01:24:07 – UBI as an economic stimulus, makes new businesses more viable. Additional disposable income. Decreasing customers causes decreasing investment. Spending on subscriptions like Netflix causes income to flow back to those already rich cities. 01:26:55 – Trump’s tax plan, government waste. UBI puts money in the hands of the individual and reduces government control. Appealing to both political sides - as a safety net and as a way for individuals to have more control. 01:29:52 – Welfare increasing risk of totalitarianism. Government and citizens in harmony - taxes in exchange for infrastructure and protection. Does reducing taxes reduce how much the government listens to the people? 01:31:36 – Andrew Yang is a presidential candidate for 2020 against Trump. Danger of using UBI as a re-election tactic. An issue so powerful could lead to a potential dictatorship. The Great Depression, introduction of Social Security. Congress, altruistic presidents and Obamacare. 01:35:47 – If you want to hear more about some of our thoughts related to the book get the bonus material for this episode at Patreon. We got to say it a lot of times to make sure everyone remembers what it is. Patreon.com/madeyouthink 01:38:03 – You can also leave a review for this show on iTunes. That is probably one of the best ways to support the show, that helps us show up as a recommended podcast. It makes us feel good. It'll make our mother's proud of us. Keep tweeting about it. We love hearing from you guys and getting your questions and your thoughts. 01:40:23 – You can check out some deals from our wonderful sponsors at MadeYouThinkPodcast.com/Support. That's where you can find the mushroom coffee, the Perfect Keto ketones the Kettle and Fire bone broth, the Cup and Leaf tea and also you can click through to Amazon. Buy anything there and that helps support the show as well. This is a topic we're definitely interested in so if there are articles, other books, videos definitely send them our way on Twitter. I’m @TheRealNeilS and I’m @NatEliason. See you guys next week. If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to subscribe at https://madeyouthinkpodcast.com

“Of every thousand dollars spent in so-called charity today, it is probable that $950 is unwisely spent, so spent indeed as to produce the very evils which it proposes to mitigate or cure.” In this episode of Made You Think, Neil and Nat discuss The Gospel of Wealth by Andrew Carnegie. An essay written later in Carnegie’s life on his philosophy on using money, wealth (and the power that comes with it) well. While still very relevant today it goes against the idea that successful business people are bad people. It’s a model for how wealthy people should use their money for the good of the community. "The man who dies thus rich dies disgraced." We cover a wide range of topics, including: Billionaires through the ages Monopolies and antitrust laws Ways of disposing of wealth (including our Patreon page) Tangents on life expectancy, intergalactic travel and cyborg pets! Carnegie’s legacy of libraries, music halls and universities Using wealth to enrich the lives of others How to help others and effective altruism And so much more! Please enjoy, and be sure to grab a copy of The Gospel of Wealth by Andrew Carnegie You can also listen on Google Play Music, SoundCloud, YouTube, or in any other podcasting app by searching “Made You Think.” If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check out our episode on The Psychology of Human Misjudgements by Charlie Munger to uncover your mental biases and Skin In The Game by Nassim Taleb for more on responsibility and reciprocity. Be sure to join our mailing list to find out about what books are coming up, giveaways we’re running, special events, and more. Links from the Episode Mentioned in the show Carnegie’s Wealth [01:50] Richest People in History [01:58] Monopoly & Antitrust laws [02:55] Microsoft [03:24] Google [03:33] The Giving Pledge [04:58] Robber barons [06:08] GM [06:28] Amazon [06:45] Medicare [07:08] Income Tax [07:13] Hunter-Gatherer Tribes [07:41] Feudal Societies [07:49] Invention of the Telegram [08:05] History of the Railroad [08:08] Stratification [08:18] Mæcenas [08:44] Ghana [09:21] Garden of Eden [09:29] Socialist Societies [10:01] Subsistence Farming [10:19] Internet Explorer [11:33] Bing [11:35] Safari [11:38] Yahoo [11:39] Google Ventures [12:16] Alphabet Inc [12:22] Google AdWords [12:33] Justice Department [12:42] Carnegie Steel [13:00] AT&T [13:05] Market cap [14:20] Dell [14:25] Microsoft Windows [14:28] Microsoft Office [14:30] Skype for Business [14:32] Windows Phones [14:47] Microsoft Hardware [14:49] Facebook [14:54] Apple [15:16] iPhone [15:36] iMac G3 [16:55] Instagram [17:25] WhatsApp [17:26] Facebook Messenger [17:28] Growth Machine [19:13] WordPress [19:27] AmazonBasics [20:23] FBA [20:38] Costco [21:03] Bud Light [21:21] Super Bowl Ads [21:43] Kirkland Products [21:48] Absolut [22:00] Anheuser-Busch [22:35] Strand bookstore [24:19] Forest fire analogy [24:39] Economics [25:11] Mythology [25:19] Psychology [25:33] MadeYouThink Podcast Patreon [25:36] Bitcoin [28:35] Monarchy [30:29] Denial of Death [30:39] Darwinism [31:35] Evolution [31:37] Creationism [32:30] Dictatorship [34:27] Democracies [34:32] Russian Roulette [35:16] Athenian Democracy [35:28] Gmail [35:33] Hotmail [35:37] Social Security [35:37] Skin in the Game [35:55] Ponzi Scheme [37:09] Baby Boomers [37:14] Life Expectancy [37:28] Genetic Engineering [38:22] Stem Cells [39:24] Telomeres [39:26] Mars [40:06] Carnegie Library [41:49] Carnegie Mellon University [41:52] Carnegie's Daughter [43:30] Facebook Aquila Drone [46:01] SpaceX Satellites [46:03] Amazonian tribes [46:29] MIT Courses [46:36] Stanford’s Courses [46:38] DuoLingo [47:04] Reddit [47:26] Pornhub [47:36] Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation [49:16] Gates Centre [50:01] Steve Jobs Theatre [50:21] Effective Altruism [50:31] GiveDirectly [50:45] Kiva [51:51] Heifer International [52:24] Toms Shoes [53:23] Medium [56:34] Marshmallow Test [57:13] Power Posing [57:14] Stanford Prison Experiment [57:15] Smiling To Make You Happier [57:17] Inattentional Blindness [57:25] Relativity [59:34] Flat Earth Theory [59:51] Flat Earth Subreddit [01:00:05] Climate Change [01:00:37] Twitter [01:01:17] Ice Wall Theory [01:01:49] Strong man Argument [01:02:22] Sphinx [01:02:26] Aquatic Apes [01:02:41] Polynesian Islands [01:03:36] Intergalactic Travel [01:03:52] Milky Way [01:04:04] Hawaii [01:04:38] Jupiter Moons [01:06:03] Give a Man a Fish Quote [01:08:33] Compound Effect [01:09:05] Almsgiving [01:09:21] Cannibalism [01:10:28] Gun Control [01:12:01] (podcast episode) Books mentioned The Gospel of Wealth by Andrew Carnegie Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand [00:34] Skin in the Game by Nassim Taleb [04:38] (Nat’s notes) (Neil’s notes) (Book Episode) Andrew Cargegie - A Biography by David Nassau [05:11] The Jungle by Upton Sinclair [25:33] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Denial of Death by Ernest Becker [30:39] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) The Fat Tail by Ian Bremmer [35:14] Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter [43:07] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch [59:07] (book episode) People mentioned Andrew Carnegie Rockefeller [01:58] J. P Morgan [01:59] Jeff Bezos [02:08] Mellon family [02:34] Vanderbilt family [02:38] Henry Frick [02:40] Paul Allen [3:25] Google Founders [03:33] Warren Buffett [04:56] Elon Musk [27:01] (Elon Musk episode) Socrates [27:15] Ron Paul [36:20] Bill Gates [49:10] Nassim Taleb [51:30] (Skin in the Game Episode) (Antifragile Episode) Charlie Munger [55:41] (The Psychology of Human Misjudgments Episode) Amy Cuddy [59:27] Kanye West [01:11:51] (The College Dropout Episode) Senator Stanford [01:13:03] Show Topics 00:14 – This episode has been planned since April, however other books and travel got in the way. So we pushed it on so we could record a good episode for us. Carnegie’s still here and relevant whenever we do the episode. 00:46 – Background on the book, written as an essay later in life. Covers his philosophy of wealth, based on his experience of getting more money and power as he got older. 01:25 – Historical context for the book, how the era it was written in was one of the first periods where it was possible to amass such wealth as an individual business man. 01:36 – Excess of money as a new problem to be solved. Posing the question - How do we use it well? 01:50 – Converting Carnegie’s wealth in today’s dollars and how far beyond current wealth it still is today. Comparing wealthy figures from the past like Rockefeller, Mellon, J.P Morgan and Vanderbilt with the likes of Jeff Bezos today. 02:55 – Monopoly laws, levels of wealth and disparity between the business owner and the second layer of workers within the company.  Microsoft, Google and their worth. 03:52 – Relevance of the advice Carnegie gives today. Going against the idea of super successful business people as inherently bad people. He says that people should be able to gain heights of success and then they can do good things with their wealth. 04:21 – Carnegie’s model of distributing wealth for good acts. He also followed these rules using his own money. This essay was a call to arms to voluntarily use wealth wisely. 04:56 – Warren Buffett and The Giving Pledge. Carnegie wanted to convince others but also rehabilitate his own image following strikes by his workers. Carnegie’s biography contained context to this essay. He originally saw himself as a self-made man however he realized that during the strikes at his own companies that he had lost his connection with the poor. 05:48 – He described the issues with amassing wealth as ‘the problem of his age’. First national corporations, the catalysts of the railroad creating a transformational era. 07:00 – Lack of social safety nets during Carnegie’s era which created freedom to build runaway success. Levels of wealth, tribal equality through poverty. 08:20 – He poses the question - is inequality a bad thing? Or are we all better off today? Irregularity of income is better than universal squalor. Garden of Eden concept. "The good old times, were not good old times. Neither master nor servant was as well situated then as today." 10:49 – Acceptable levels of inequality. Monopolies in technology today, Google, Yahoo, AT&T and the dismantling of corporations. Antitrust lawsuits impacting on the innovation of Microsoft. Apple, iPhones and the ‘non-corporate’ design of their devices. Breaking up Google and Facebook in smaller companies. 17:34 – Competition in business and the improvements it brings. Lowering prices caused by competition. Amazon as hyper-efficient. Removing bloat from traditional businesses. Costco and their own brand product range passing cost benefits on to the consumer. 24:04 – Revival of independent bookstores, clearing the playing field for those that can deliver true value. Competition forest-fire analogy. Podcast themes and common topics. 25:36 – Join our Patreon to get book notes, bonus audio, upcoming book info. 26:19 – Ways of administering wealth when it’s in the hands of the few. Three modes - Inheritance, Government or use it yourself. Bad impact on society when generational wealth is handed down or wasted when given to government. 31:30 – Darwinism, Evolution. Financial competence of government officials. Dictatorships vs democracies. 35:46 – Tangent. Opting out of social security, skin in the game problem. Young vs Old and who benefits most. Biological limiters for aging, extension of life expectancy. Intergalactic space travel and cyborg Pepper. 40:52 – Lump sums of money making the most difference. Small monetary gains don’t change the individual but collectively that could benefit the community. Libraries and universities as great uses for wealth. Books as a way of speaking to great people throughout history. 43:30 – Carnegie family and descendants. Priorities in wealth building. Unostentatious living followed by surplus revenues given to the community. By building wealth you are better placed to distribute it wisely. 45:29 – Modern community benefits, Internet access as equivalent to libraries. University education as accessible knowledge. Language learning simplified by technology. Impact on exposing tribes to technology. 49:10 – Bill Gates, philanthropy as a legacy. Effective altruism. Charity organizations and the second order effects of disrupting economies. 56:13 – Book on second-order effect follies. Medium blog posts, psychological fallacies. Gorilla tests and inattentional blindness. 59:51 – Flat earth theory, getting angry on the Internet. Climate change denial, ice wall theory. Strongman arguments. 01:02:26 – Sphinx, aquatic ape theory, Polynesian Islands and travel within our galaxy. Communication and sustaining life in space. 01:07:53 – Carnegie suggested that the goal of being wealthy should be to enrich the lives of others. Helping those that help themselves first. Compound effect of aiding those who are motivated to improve. Dangers of charity. "Neither the individual nor the race is improved by almsgiving those worthy of assistance except in rare cases seldom require assistance." 01:09:56 – How to help those that won’t help themselves? Tune in next week! Nat the cannibal. Kanye West episode, positive role models in society. 01:12:27 – Dying rich means dying disgraced. Wealth is like a trust fund that should be used for the betterment of society. 01:14:01 – So if you enjoyed this episode, definitely check us out on Patreon. It's a good way to use your wealth. It gets you access to discussions for these episodes, the book notes, show notes, what is coming up and any bonus material we record before or after the episode. Leave us a review on iTunes that just helps more people find the show. Tweet us, we love hearing from you guys. I'm @NatEliason and I'm @TheRealNeilS. Send book recommendations, what you think about the show, feedback. 01:17:31 – You can always also go to MadeYouThinkPodcast.com/support. We've got some show supporting sponsors there that'll give you discounts that give us a little kick back at no cost to you. We will see you all next week where we will continue some of the themes that we discussed today. Join Patreon if you want to know what that is ahead of time so you can read the book before then. Cheers everyone. See you next time. If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to subscribe at https://madeyouthinkpodcast.com

“It is inevitable that we face problems but no particular problem is inevitable we survive and thrive by solving each problem as it comes up, and since the human ability to transform nature is limited only by the laws of physics none of the endless stream of problems will ever constitute an impassable barrier” In this episode of Made You Think, Neil and Nat discuss The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch. It’s a playful, meandering book on explanations that transform the world, covering evolution, physics, philosophy, politics, ecology, money, memetics, epistemology, history. It ties everything to the central idea that with enough knowledge anything possible, is achievable. “Every putative physical transformation to be performed in a given time with given resources or under any other conditions is either impossible because it is forbidden by the laws of nature or achievable given the right knowledge.” We cover a wide range of topics, including: Wrapping our brains around the concepts of advanced topics like infinity Thinking of problems as a gap in our knowledge that can be solved The repeating cycle of problem > solution > new problem Tangents on Aquatic Apes, Egyptology and Sphinxes Universality of systems Optimistic vs Pessimistic view points And so much more! Please enjoy, and be sure to grab a copy of The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check out our episode on Godel, Escher, Bach by Douglas Hofstadter for a similar kind of book covering a wide range of topics. Also our episode on Leverage Points by Donella Meadows for how we should approach complex systems. Be sure to join our mailing list to find out about what books are coming up, giveaways we’re running, special events, and more. Links from the Episode Mentioned in the show Lindy Effect [3:20] Multiverse Concept [5:03] Quantum Entanglement [5:05] Theory of relativity [5:13] Infinity [5:25] Cholera [8:17] Empiricism [11:38] Fallibilism [15:02] The Mediocrity Principle [18:50] Anthropocentrism [19:00] Geocentrism [19:38] Garden of Eden [20:35] Rare Earth Hypothesis [20:40] Anthropomorphism [22:20] Quantum Theory [26:22] Aquatic Apes [30:43] Darwin’s Dangerous Idea [31:32] Confirmation Bias [31:50] Universality [33:22] Roman Numerals [33:30] Hieroglyphics [35:42] Reductionism [39:50] Lady Lovelace’s Objection [42:00] Chinese Room [48:00] Turing Test [48:02] DARPA [48:15] Netflix - Eddie Murphy Shows [50:55] Chris Rock - Controversial stand up [51:25] Chris Rock - Gun Control stand up [51:50] AlphaGo [52:43] MadeYouThink Podcast - Patreon Support [54:10] Death of the Universe [56:10] DMT [59:30] Neuralink [59:47] Neural lace [59:48] Malthus [1:01:04] X Prize [1:07:50] The Jungle - Characters [1:08:35] Sphinx [1:10:17] Joe Rogan Experience Podcast - Sphinx Episode [1:10:17] Semmelweis Reflex [1:15:30] Kevin Simler - Crony Belief [1:20:25] The China Study [1:23:30] Dos Toros [1:27:05] Toms Shoes [1:28:52] Postmodernism [1:29:30] XKCD Comic - Purity of Fields [1:34:01] Books mentioned The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas R. Hofstadter [1:22] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) The Jungle by Upton Sinclair [3:36] (Nat’s notes) Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand [3:39] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Darwin’s Dangerous Idea by Daniel Dennett [3:56] (book episode) The Denial of Death [8:55] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley [9:44] I Am A Strange Loop - Douglas Hofstadter [17:20] (Podcast Episode) Rare Earth by Donald Brownlee [20:25] Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari [24:23] (Nat’s notes) (book episode part 1 & part 2) The Secret by Rhonda Byrne [25:56] The Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle [39:40] Skin in the Game by Nassim Taleb [41:55] (Nat’s notes) (Neil’s notes) (book episode) Homo Deus by Yuval Harari [43:45] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) The Elephant in the Brain by Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson [43:50] The Jungle by Upton Sinclair [1:08:41] (Nat’s notes) Leverage Points by Donella Meadows [1:29:20] (article episode) Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault [1:30:10] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway [1:33:05] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins [1:45:40] People mentioned David Deutsch Daniel Dennett [1:45] (Darwin’s episode) Flatgeologist [3:00] Nassim Nicholas Taleb [2:50] (Antifragile episode) (Skin in the Game episode) Seneca [8:40] Matt Ridley [9:33] Nicolas Cage [13:43] Socrates [16:55] [1:09:00] Hermes [16:56] Jordan Peterson [21:29] Richard Dawkins [23:35] John Haldane [23:36] Freud [40:55] Plato [1:10:00] Dan Carlin [1:43:30] Show Topics 2:47 – In this book the author, David Deutsch, calls out some of the other authors that we have covered on the podcast before. He calls out Nassim Taleb on some of his ideas, which is something we almost hold sacred on this podcast. This book made us change the way we think about some of these things. 5:03 – Diving into advanced concepts like multiverse, quantum entanglement, relativity and infinity. You have to take your time to wrap your head around this. Our minds are not used to grasping these concepts. Explaining what’s the highest number to a kid. 7:00 – In the introduction the author says “all progress both theoretical and practical has resulted from a single human activity, the quest for what I call good explanations”. Everything is possible if it is not prohibited by the laws of physics. 8:10 – Deutsch uses the example of disease and cholera. People dying of diarrhea when they were right next to a fire and could have boiled their water. The problem was actually a problem of knowledge. A lot of problems we have today are the same and given the right amount of knowledge, can be solved. 8:55 – All other books that we have looked at, Seneca, Taleb and even the book Denial of Death. They all are predicated on the idea that we all will die. Deutsch says most likely yes we will die, but it doesn’t mean it’s not possible to solve. He isn’t saying there is one solution but there maybe solutions to each of the discrete problems - accidents, cancer etc, they are all problems waiting for the right knowledge to be able to solve them. 10:40 – Wealth as a society was another thing he called out in this book, as a species having the resources as well as the knowledge. Even if you had given cavemen the knowledge of how to build a plane, they don’t yet have the resources to get the metals out of the ground and shape the parts needed. Progress is a factor of both knowledge and wealth. 11:25 – He starts the book off in the intro with his refutation of empiricism, where we gain knowledge by experiencing things then learning from them. He makes this good distinction: “Experience is indeed essential to science but its role is different from that supposed by empiricism, it is not the source from which theories are derived its main use is to choose between theories that have already been guessed”. You really can’t learn from experience unless you have some guess about what should happen. You need to have conjecture or a hypothesis before you can actually test something. You’re trying to figure out what the truth might be. Startups “finding” insights in Big Data without an hypothesis to test. 15:00 – “Fallabilsts expect even their best and even most fundamental explanations to contain misconceptions in addition to truth and so they are predisposed to try to change them for the better.” This is like a life philosophy - anything you assume is true you should also assume part of it is wrong. Always look for ways to improve your understanding. 17:46 – Deutsch rounds out the first chapter by saying that “every problem is a signal that our knowledge is flawed or inaccurate.” Our goal as humans is to come up with better explanations which then inevitably leads to a new set of problems. That is this beginning of infinity, each problem leads to infinitely many more problems and the solutions that come with them. We are stuck with this continual loop of solve problem > discover new one > solve problem etc. The Principle of Mediocrity idea and Anti-Anthropocentrism. 23:20 – Deutsch says that humans can understand anything with enough time and knowledge. He is referencing John Haldane who said “The universe not only queerer than we suppose it is queerer than we can suppose”. Deutsch says that nothing is beyond our potential comprehension. 30:43 – Tangent. Aquatic Apes fringe theory. Go listen to Darwin’s dangerous idea episode. We don’t want the aquatic apes theory to be refuted, plus it would make a really good band name. 31:42 – Chapter 4. Form of infinities in the Universe: the process of biological evolution and knowledge growth. Ideas can be replicators same as genes can. 33:22 – Chapter 6. Universality. Some ideas are useful and functional in a contained, local sense and some make the jump to actually being universal and infinite. Roman Numerals were never really universal. It would always require more numerals to count higher and higher. Where as our Arabic system 0-9 they are just 10 symbols plus 1 rule, gives us an infinite number. Same as using an alphabet vs hieroglyphics, having a character represent a word, you will always need more characters. Asian scripts. 40:10 – Reductionism and the concept of the brain as a computer, the way we think about our brain is influenced by the technology of the day. Scaling problems. Knowledge creation for AI. Knowledge ownership. “First the brain was supposed to be like an immensely complicated set of gears and levers, then it was hydraulic pipes, then steam engines, then telephone exchanges, and now that computers are the most impressive technology brains are said to be computers. This is still no more than a metaphor and there is no more reason to expect a brain to be a computer than a steam engine” 47:55 – Tangent. Hofstadter and the DARPA Turing Test, AI joke creation and changing nature of humor through generations. Consciousness Test. 54:44 – Hotel Chapter. Understanding Infinity. Being at the beginning of infinite progress. Time subjective to our mental processing power. 1:00:11 – Optimism Chapter. All problems and evils in the world are caused by insufficient knowledge. All can be solved with enough knowledge. Evils are just situations where we haven’t solved the problem yet. There is never going to be a Garden of Eden state as you always unlock new problems. Deutsch says “We do not yet know what we have not yet discovered.” Sounds similar to the idea of blind faith, that we will just figure it out. We can be optimistic because if there is a necessity to solve something the market really impacts it, it’s a powerful corrective force. Investment and money gets put towards solving the problem. Ebola example. 1:08:33 – Multiverse Chapter. Funny dialogue between Socrates and Plato. 1:10:20 – Tangent. Sphinx theories, Egyptology and the Semmelweis reflex. Respecting and disproving Fringe Theories. Politics vs science in Medicine. 1:17:05 – Tangent. Anthropomorphising food. Now low cholesterol is tied to mortality causes. Where as previously high cholesterol was considered a huge health issue. Eating fat doesn’t make you fat, like Taleb says eating a cow doesn’t make you bovine. The cause for bull penis powder. 1:20:07 – Bad philosophies. Philosophies that prevents you from developing other philosophies. Religions, top-down theories, bad company traits. Crony beliefs. if you feel personally attacked when someone questions your belief, that shows it’s not a well reasoned idea and a bad philosophy for you – that may show you what you are believing because you want to. You often only believe things that are socially beneficial. Vegans, palm sugar, plastic activism, foreign orphanages and stupid activism. 1:29:40 – Postmodernism as bad philosophy. Problems in different types of Sciences. Explanational science. Tossing old knowledge requires an explanation. Chemical imbalance for depression. Second and third effects of drugs use. 1:39:41 – Politics Chapter. Separate essay. Beauty Chapter. There is objective universal beauty. Beauty in flowers and music. 1:45:33 – Evolution of Culture. Rational and anti-rational beliefs. Memes as a way of spreading ideas “Consider how you would be judged by other people if you went shopping in your pajamas or painted your house with blue and brown stripes - that gives a hint of the narrowness of convention that govern these objectively trivial inconsequential choices about style and the social cost of violating them. Is the same thing true of the more momentous patterns in our lives, careers, relationships, education, morality, political outlook and national identity. Consider what we expect to happen when a static society is gradually switching from anti-rational to rational memes”. Liberalism-conservatism conflict. Turning child into political statements. 1:58:15 – The Unsustainable Chapter. Easter Island culture diminished as they didn’t solve their problems. We often think things are finite when they can be solved in other ways. Pessimistic and Optimistic conceptions. “Pessimistic conception is that humans are wasters - they take precious resources and madly convert them into useless coloured pictures. This is true of static societies those statues were what my colleagues were what color televisions which is why comparing our culture with the old society of Easter Island is wrong - we are not a static society. The optimistic conception is that people are problem solvers, creators of the unsustainable solution and hence also of the next problem. In the pessimistic conception that distinctive ability of people is a disease for which sustainability is the cure - sustainability is the disease and people are the cure.” Trying to get people to work against their selfish desires isn’t going to work, so find a way to make what you want to work out for the greater good. For example with hotels and reducing washing. It’s a win-win for both the hotel and the environment. They will then encourage environmental acts like that. If it cost them money then they would not encourage that. "What lies ahead of us in any case, is in any case infinity - all we can choose is if it is an infinity of ignorance or of knowledge, wrong or right, death or life." 2:03:48 – Subscribe to Patreon to get our book notes, highlights, bonus material and more for the price of a book. Also, Nat will stop doing saying “it will make you think” once Patreon hits 10k. Participate of the private community! Leave us a review on iTunes to get possible guests on the show. You can write just a 1 sentence description of the show and how you like the tangents. Check our supporters at madeyouthink.com/support. We are drinking delicious Lapsang Souchong tea from Cup & Leaf. If you want some tangent fuel, try the Mushroom Lemonade  Coffee and Chai Latte from Four Sigmatic. Perfect Keto Nut Butter is amazing. Try it frozen for an incredible texture. Check Kettle & Fire Mushroom-Chicken blend, now available on their site. Use our Amazon affiliate link, it doesn’t costs you anything extra and helps support the show. Keep tweeting to us at @Neil Soni (@TheRealNeilS) and @Nat Eliason (@nateliason). If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to subscribe at https://madeyouthinkpodcast.com  

"Now happiness, more than anything else, seems complete without qualification. For we always choose it because of itself, never because of something else." In this episode of Made You Think, Neil and Nat discuss The Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle. Aristotle "wrote" this book for his son, Nicomachea, in which philosophizes about the pursuit of happiness and how to find the point of flourishing of our lives. “We become builders building, we become harpists by playing the harp. Therefore we become just by doing just actions, temperate by doing temperate actions, brave by doing brave actions.” We cover a wide range of topics, including: How to find the perfect middle point to flourish in our activities Why happiness is a path that requires action, and not a destination Why sons may vote for the opposite of their parents Stones, horses and slaves that find their purposes in life Harvard admission problems with Asian-Americans Blaming the 2a.m. pizza And much more. Please enjoy, and be sure to grab a copy of The Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle! If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check out our episode on Letters from a Stoic by Seneca, a book that approach happiness from another perspective, as well as our episode on Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, whose author proclaimed to be strongly influenced by Aristotle. Be sure to join our mailing list to find out about what books are coming up, giveaways we're running, special events, and more. Links from the Episode Mentioned in the show Nihilism [2:55] Postmodernism [2:55] The Donald on Reddit [22:39] Eugenics [23:21] The Office “Business School” – 4 types of business [26:33] 23andme [31:29] Asian-Americans Suing Harvard Say Admissions Files Show Discrimination – NYTimes [35:05] Chinese Room Experiment [55:38] Turing Test [55:46] Kantian Deontology [1:26:35] Lindy Effect [1:27:54] Books mentioned The Nicomachean Ethics Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand [10:03] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Blank Slate by Steven Pinker [20:40] Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari [30:06] (Nat’s notes) (book episode part 1 & part 2) Skin in the Game by Nassim Taleb [42:38] (Nat’s notes) (Neil’s notes) (book episode) The Power of Habit - Charles Duhigg [50:16] (Nat’s notes) Homo Deus by Yuval Harari [55:05] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Letters from a Stoic by Seneca [1:14:27] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) People mentioned Aristotle Socrates [0:59] Plato [0:59] Alexander the Great [0:59] Saint Thomas Aquinas [2:23] Ayn Rand [10:03] (Atlas Shrugged episode) Steven Pinker [19:57] John Searle [55:46] Scott Adams [1:05:18] Lucius Annaeus Seneca [1:14:27] (Letters from a Stoic episode) Zeno [1:14:45] Marcus Aurelius [1:15:02] Epictetus [1:15:02] Nassim Nicholas Taleb [1:26:59] (Antifragile episode) (Skin in the Game episode) Show Topics 0:00 – Were these philosophers famous at their time or they became famous later? Plato's and Aristotle legacy and influence up to our days. Christianity and Virtue Ethics. Aristotle’s argumentation as a lawyer and dichotomy in opening speeches. 5:19 – Human flourishing as a better translation for happiness from Ancient Greek. 8:07 – Book 1. A book of ethics, how we should behave. Being able to judge what is happiness. Happiness Hierarchy. City Happiness before the Individual Happiness. Who decides what happiness is? How the Christian Church decided it was the source of morality. 11:51 – Aristotle and Buddhism. Appropriate level of moderation in all things. Difficulty to know what the a good middle is, but extremes are always bad. Alcohol during pregnancy. Using edge cases to find a good mean is not always possible. 16:46 – Extremism in politics. Family and switching to the opposite extreme view. 20:40 – Personalities traits pre-influenced by genes. Questions not allowed to be asked. "Nepotism" in professional basketball. Where to draw the line from extreme left or right. 25:56 – Hierarchies of a good life. Pleasure, political activity, philosophy. 28:06 – The perfect version of anything is what is most meant by nature. What sets human nature apart. Neanderthal and Sapiens stats. 32:02 – Hairy tangents. Why Indian people are hairy. Shaving dogs by mistake. Harvard discriminating Asians and Jews. Why colleges can ask for your race. 41:42 – Being virtuous requires action. One can't say its virtuous and become automatically it. Going to church doesn't make you a good person. Fasting before a feast. 44:20 – Learning the boundaries by experiencing and living. How to find the middle point by shooting to extremes first. Dating, relationships, meditation, etc. 47:24 – Book 2. Virtues of character. Virtue of thought arises and grows from teaching. Pulling from the observable to apply to the unobservable. The power of habits. Blaming the pizza for feeling bad after staying wake up past 2am. Post hangover foods. 52:48 – Being virtuous while being asleep doesn't count. Avoiding sin while sleeping. Concept of mind. The Chinese room experiment. Religion not being true, however still being useful to control people's behavior. One just can't just hope to do the right thing. One should know why it is a good thing, it is our duty as citizens to learn the why. 59:40 – Criticisms to religion based more on faith than reason. Christianity, Muslim, Pagans. Book as instruments to spread a Church's mission. Realism of a perfect God or person. Paganism vs monotheistic religions. 1:02:54 – Virtue ethics does not try to perfect ethical laws, it's a find-what's-good-by-yourself approach. Natural tendencies. Looking down on other people's tendencies while not recognizing our owns. Vices. 1:07:28 – Skimming through books 3, 4, 5. Common idea at the time: everyone knows everything, one just have to draw out of them (by using the Socratic method). Learning as a mutual discovery between teacher and student. 1:10:40 – Aristotle's Physics. Stones and horses flourishing, chemical stable states. Slaves feeling fulfilled. 1:13:11 – Book 7. Incontinence. People who know the right thing but then they don't do it. Putting down Stoicism. 1:15:21 – Book 8. Friendship. Land owning as a proxy for a good person throughout history. Proxies for intelligence or wealth: job, city where you're living, table manners,etc. 1:18:10 – Book 10. Pleasure. Main dichotomy: happiness of a base nature vs happiness of a higher nature. What pleasure is and why it is not sufficient for happiness. Pleasures relative to context. The problem of pleasure as a metric. 1:21:35 – The problem of happiness as a destination. The importance to know what shit one is able to put up with. Why entrepreneurship porn is popular. Acting in such a way it can become a universal rule for people in the same situation. Taleb's Platinum Rule (compared to the Golden Rule). Aristotle principles vs postmodernism. Ranges of mean where things are acceptable. Good enough vs overspecialized. 1:32:20 – Subscribe to Patreon to get our book notes, highlights, bonus material and more for the price of a book. Also, hang out with us, recommend books, and participate of our private community. Find us on Twitter @Neil Soni (@TheRealNeilS) and @Nat Eliason (@nateliason). Leave us a review on iTunes to get possible guests on the show. You can just write "Love this podcast! Neil and Nat are super fun.". Check our supporters at madeyouthink.com/support. We are drinking delicious Lapsang Souchong tea from Cup & Leaf. If you want some tangent fuel, try the Mushroom Lemonade  Coffee and Chai Latte from Four Sigmatic. Perfect Keto Nut Butter is amazing. Try it frozen for an incredible texture. Check Kettle & Fire Mushroom-Chicken blend, now available on their site. Use our Amazon affiliate link to support the show effortlessly. If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to subscribe at https://madeyouthinkpodcast.com

Our second recap! In this episode of Made You Think, Neil and Nat revisit the previous books and topics discussed on the podcast. We delve into the most useful lessons that we’ve learned so far. It's perfect for newer listeners to catch up with the older episodes. Listen to this episode irrigated with Malbec. We cover a wide range of topics, including: The first 20 episodes summarized in one sentence. Reviewing books, speeches, articles, and even a music album. An article that changed our view on guns. Two books with an opposite view on Capitalism. Harari’s three part saga. Which book episodes were the most listened. And much more. Please enjoy, and be sure to check out all of our episodes here. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check out our first Recap episode. Be sure to join our mailing list to find out about what books are coming up, giveaways we're running, special events, and more. Links from the Episode Mentioned in the show Sesame Street [7:08] Blinkist [21:44] MentorBox [22:14] GE – General Electric [23:50] Aquatic Apes Hypothesis [25:03] Joe Rogan on Gender Warfare with Milo Yiannopoulos [38:20] Jordan Peterson on Joe Rogan’s Experience [38:32] Jordan Peterson on Jocko Podcast [38:59] Breaking Bad [44:58] A vegan diet in children may lead to spinal cord degeneration [46:51] Psychological Priming [47:20] Marshmallow Test [48:15] Lindy Effect [49:37] Vox [49:52] Fox News [1:07:01] Tesla [1:09:41] Prius [1:09:41] Starbucks [1:21:56] Distracted Boyfriend meme – Socialists vs. reality [1:36:26] Freakonomics [1:38:58] Genius [1:41:39] Stitcher [1:47:56] Books mentioned Antifragile by Nassim Taleb [2:46] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Letters from a Stoic by Seneca [3:30] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Mastery by Robert Greene [4:00] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell [4:18] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) The Sovereign Individual by James Dale Davidson [4:42] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) In Praise of Idleness [5:44] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman [7:02] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Finite and Infinite Games by James Carse [7:22] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Way of Zen by Alan Watts [8:23] (Nat’s notes) (Neil’s notes) (book episode) Emergency [9:06] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas R. Hofstadter [10:09] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) The Goal [12:52] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Principles [13:50] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) The Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey [14:39] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) The Psychology of Human Misjudgments by Charlie Munger [15:03] Work Clean [15:35] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) The Denial of Death [16:55] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Influence by Robert Cialdini [17:18] (book episode) Revolt of the Masses by Ortega y Gasset [19:01] The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck [22:41] Lean Startup [23:10] Darwin’s Dangerous Idea by Daniel Dennet [24:24] (book episode) What Every Body is Saying by Joe Navarro [28:50] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Hiroshima Diary by Michihiko Hachiya [32:59] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) 12 Rules for Life by Dr. Jordan B. Peterson [35:59] (Nat’s notes) (Neil’s notes) (book episode) Merchants of Doubt by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway [42:18] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Leverage Points by Donella Meadows [49:55] (article episode) Daily Rituals by Mason Currey [54:15] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Skin in the Game by Nassim Taleb [59:40] (Nat’s notes) (Neil’s notes) (book episode) The Black Swan by Nassim Taleb [1:01:03] The Bed of Procrustes by Nassim Taleb [1:03:14] Blink by Malcolm Gladwell [1:01:48] The Riddle of the Gun by Sam Harris [1:06:11] (article episode) Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault [1:12:20] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari [1:16:42] (Nat’s notes) (book episode part 1 & part 2) Homo Deus by Yuval Harari [1:16:42] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Solitude and Leadership by William Deresiewicz [1:22:44] (speech episode) Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand [1:25:22] The Book of Five Rings by  Miyamoto Musashi [1:29:58] (Nat’s notes) The Jungle by Upton Sinclair [1:32:55] (Nat’s notes) The Elephant in the Brain by Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson [1:37:58] The College Dropout [1:41:15] (album episode) People mentioned Jordan B. Peterson [0:51] (on Twitter) (12 Rules episode) Jeff Bezos [5:40] Adil Majid [6:05] (Crypto episode) Elon Musk [12:08] (on this podcast) Flatgeologists – Flat Earth Society [12:35] Joseph Campbell [14:09] Nassim Nicholas Taleb [19:49] (Antifragile episode) (Skin in the Game episode) Tim Cook [19:50] Eric Ries [24:19] Albert Einstein [41:42 Taylor Pearson [51:21] (Crypto episode) Ayn Rand [56:07] (Atlas Shrugged episode) Eric Weinstein [1:13:31] Friedrich Nietzsche [1:14:20] Malcolm Gladwell [1:21:11] Winston Churchill [1:35:36] Show Topics 1:25 – This episode is entirely sponsored by YOU via Patreon! Follows this link to directly support us. Check out the lovely bonuses you receive by supporting the show. 2:46 – Antifragile. Barbells strategy. Learning how to take advantage of chaos in the world. 3:30 – Letters from a Stoic. Acquire a new mental model for handling stress and challenges in your life. 4:00 – Mastery. 4:18 – The Power of Myth. Why we should take religions more seriously. 4:42 – Sovereign Individual. Rethink the permanence of the nation-states and what your future might look like in a society dominated by technology. 5:44 – In Praise of Idleness. Stop working so hard and reasons you should consider working less hard. 6:05 – Crypto episode. Principles of the tech behind Bitcoin and why you should care. 07:02 – Amusing Ourselves to Death. Don't watch the news, but listen to MYT. 7:22 – Finite and Infinite Games. Look at yourself as part of parallel finite and infinite games played in the world, and recognize artificial constraints to play infinitely. 8:23 – Way of Zen. All what you know about Buddhism and meditation is wrong. 9:06 – Emergency. Steps you should take to protect yourself when the society breaks down. 10:09 – GEB. Strange loops. Patterns that hint at the meaning of intelligence and why it may create issues while trying to understand our intelligence or building AIs. 12:08 – Think Like Elon Musk. Thinking independently vs copying the routines of others. Reasoning for firsts principles. 12:52 – The Goal. Theory of constraints, bottlenecks in businesses. 13:50 – Principles. Lots of business tactics. 14:39 – The Inner Game of Tennis. Learning how to get out of your own way to perform better. 15:03 – Psychology of Human Misjudgments. Guide for better decision making and catalog of human misjudgements. 15:35 – Work Clean. Keep your desk organized to get less distracted. 16:55 – Denial of Death. Our lives are driven by our fear of our mortality. 17:18 – Influence. Classic marketing tactics to make people trust you. 18:06 – Recap #1. 19:01 – Revolt of the Masses. Interesting ideas of the stratification of society. Against rent seekers and bureaucrat layers. Reading summaries will not convert you in Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO. 24:24 – Darwin’s Dangerous Idea. There's really no meaning to life if Darwin's evolutionary theories are correct. Aquatic Apes theory! Evolution makes life inherently meaningless. Superstition in animals. Should we eat humans? 28:50 – What Every Body is Saying. Textbook to decipher body language. Communicating with body language, and dating. 32:59 – Hiroshima Diary. Private diary of a doctor from Hiroshima injured in a blast. How much humans are capable of enduring without breaking. Perspective on hardship. 35:59 – 12 Rules for Life. Peterson is a quite controversial character. Gender ideas, misinterpretation, toxic masculinity. 42:18 – Merchants of Doubt. Scientists that get paid to create fake science to support destructive practices of some companies. The problem of Media communicating science. 49:55 – Leverage Points. 12 points you can intervene in a complex system to create some change, and the relative power of each of them. Which President is sitting in the Oval Office is less important than the rules, the government and context inside and outside the country. 52:26 – Support the show on Patreon and help us buy a Tangents Button. 54:15 – Daily Rituals. People doing a lot of drugs. Historically geniuses were drug nubs, drunks, and not sleeping. It's hard to evaluate instant productivity. 59:40 – Skin in the Game. Appendix to Antifragile. Comparing this book with others by Nassim Taleb. Good way to structure your own compensation. Curious notes on Taleb's personality. 1:06:11 – The Riddle of the Gun. A concise, clear, apolitical, view-changer article in favor of gun ownership. Nuances of a black-or-white issue. Micro and macro level incentives. The naive reaction of liberal people. 1:12:00 – Subscribe to the show's Patreon, and discover the secret Nat's misadventures on Facebook. 1:12:20 – Discipline and Punish. Not a BDSM-sex book. It requires discipline to go through the book, and, after it, you'll feel punished. Better to listen to our episode :). A book about post-modernism. Listen to our analogy on Nietzschism and Nazism. 1:16:42 – Harari's 3 parts saga. Sapiens part 1, part 2, and Homo Deus. Mythology and shared stories as big driving forces for human development and organization of large sets of humans. Examples: Money, Cities, Companies. 1:21:21 – Listeners Questions #1. Flow, happiness, power, future of work, personal backgrounds. Subscribe on Patreon to ask questions for the next Listeners' episode. 1:22:44 – Solitude and Leadership. Our first speech. Spend time on your own having the freedom from interruptions, to become a better thinker, doer and leader. Otherwise, amuse yourself to death or be an excellence sheep. There are so many differences between our reality and our biology that we have to construct our reality to be more in line with our biology. Think about your solitude the same way as your diet. 1:25:22 – Atlas Shrugged. The Behemoth. Compelling case for physical Conservatism. A book that will make you respect entrepreneurship. 1:29:58 – The Book of 5 Rings. Applying strategy, military tactics, and sword fighting, to life. 1:32:55 – The Jungle. A "funny" counterpart to Atlas Shrugged. Differences between Anarchism and Libertarianism. "Capitalism is the worst economic system except of all the others". 1:37:46 – The Elephant in the Brain. Secret motivations for doing things that we don't like to talk about because they are ugly and focusing on the pretty side of our actions. Evolutionary reasons to hide those motives even to ourselves. A case for not being so introspective. 1:41:15 – The College Dropout. Our first music album! Growing up poor and making it big. Poetry, well constructed, and with many levels of interpretation. even if you don't like rap, consider listening to the episode, it will make you like rap a little bit more. Kanye as a brilliant marketer. 1:45:05 – Sponsors. Sign up to Patreon to get more notes, goodies, and chat with us. Try Perfect Keto's Nut Butter. A frosting experience, great texture, great flavor, macadamia, cashew, coconut and MCT oil and sea salt. Try Four Sigmatic’s Lemonade, a jet black lemonade with activated charcoal along with chaga mushroom. Reach us on Twitter, TheRealNeilS and nateliason.  Review us iTunes. Keep telling your friends, that's the #1 way people hear about MYT. If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to subscribe at https://madeyouthinkpodcast.com

We, human beings, are a species that’s not only capable of acting on hidden motives—we’re designed to do it. Our brains are built to act in our self-interest while at the same time trying hard not to appear selfish in front of other people. And in order to throw them off the trail, our brains often keep “us,” our conscious minds, in the dark. The less we know of our own ugly motives, the easier it is to hide them from others. Self-deception is therefore strategic, a ploy our brains use to look good while behaving badly. In this episode of Made You Think, Neil and Nat discuss The Elephant in the Brain Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson. In this book the authors dig into the true motives that drive our decisions and behaviors. We cover a wide range of topics, including: Being selfish without noticing it Outsmarting other humans Gossiping, signalling and laughing The truth about Rolex watches (and is not about time precision) Metrics used to measure a charity effectiveness Mona Lisa conspiracy theories And much more. Please enjoy, and be sure to grab a copy of The Elephant in the Brain Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson! If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check out our episode on What Every Body is Saying by Joe Navarro, a cited book that explains the true language of our body, as well as our episode on Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault, another book that talk about different types of signalling. Be sure to join our mailing list to find out about what books are coming up, giveaways we're running, special events, and more. Links from the Episode Mentioned in the show The Redistribution of Sex - Robin Hanson’s Tweet [1:18] Jordan Peterson about the Toronto school shooter [2:00] Chinese app to watch attractive women [3:18] PornHub [3:35] Melting Asphalt – Kevin Simler’s Blog [4:20] PayPal Mafia [23:40] Spotlight Effect [24:26] Bret Weinstein & Heather Heying on the Joe Rogan Experience - hot vs beautiful [30:25] Game of Thrones [40:40] Uber [4224] Bill Simmons Podcast [47:33] Game of Chicken [47:55] Birchbox [57:01] Superbad film [1:06:48] Harvard students case publishing offensive memes in a private Facebook group [1:10:02] Buzzfeed [1:25:00] Pavlovian Theory [1:29:57] Mona Lisa ashes vs replica [1:35:14] Against Malaria Foundation [1:40:07] Good Street [1:41:14] Effective Altruism [1:42:04] Give Well [1:42:09] Red Cross [1:46:30] Susan G Komen Charity [1:46:50] United Way [1:47:30] Books mentioned The Elephant in the Brain Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson (Nat’s notes) Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari [6:56] (Nat’s notes) (book episode part 1 & part 2) Homo Deus by Yuval Harari [6:56] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Daily Rituals by Mason Currey [7:47] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Chimpanzee Politics [14:20] 12 Rules for Life by Dr. Jordan B. Peterson [24:14] (Nat’s notes) (Neil’s notes) (book episode) Lying by Sam Harris [38:18] Switch by Chip and Dan Heath [40:26] Lord of the Rings [40:40] What Every Body is saying by Joe Navarro [1:03:20] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) The Sovereign Individual by James Dale Davidson [1:21:50] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas R. Hofstadter [1:25:14] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Antifragile by Nassim Taleb [1:25:14] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Discipline and Punish by Michel Foucault [1:53:02] (Nat’s notes) (book episode)   People mentioned Kevin Simler Robin Hanson Jordan B. Peterson [] (on Twitter) (12 Rules episode) Adil Majid [38:29] (Crypto episode) Sean Spicer [54:00] Donald Trump [54:00] Ronaldinho [1:13:37] Geoffrey Miller [1:33:53] Alex Jones [1:39:21] Nassim Nicholas Taleb [1:49:11] (Antifragile episode) (Skin in the Game episode) Show Topics 4:50 – “Elephant in the brain, n. An important but unacknowledged feature of how our minds work; an introspective taboo”. Is there a survival advantage to not being too much introspective? Pros and cons of meditation. Stated reasons for doing things when we interact with other people. The effect of open offices, cafes and music on Neil. 9:17 – Underlying motives of our actions. Figuring out other people: what's making them tick? Example: parents who believe that college is a good idea for their kids, once they already paid. Starting a bitcoin mining company to pay studies at CMU. 11:41 – Thesis outline: we all have selfish modisms. However: People are judging us all the time. Because they are judging we are eager to look good. It’s better if we don’t show our selfishness. This applies not just to our words, but also to our thoughts. In some areas of life, especially polarized ones like politics, we’re quick to point out when others’ motives are more selfish than they claim. But in other areas, like medicine, we prefer to believe that almost all of us have pretty motives. 12:51 – #1 Animal Behavior. Biological social reasons for selfish modisms. Social grooming. The monkeys example: they over spend grooming others, much more than really needed and they'll fight to groom the higher rank monkeys. Analogies with employees in the corporate context. We do things that on the surface look pro social, but in reality we are just looking to increase our social standing. Altruistic behavior is not quite what it seems. 15:18 – Altruistic babblers example: these birds work to earn “prestige” in their community. Prestige will give them more mating opportunities. Analogies with student and religious groups. Knowledge suppression: we hide our big motivators from ourselves because other people are better at reading to our intentions. For example we can read bad sellers. 19:06 – #2 Competition. We are more selfish than we let ourselves think. Evolution first was about competition with the environment. Since we outsmarted other animals, we evolve to outsmart other humans. Unconsciously we try to increase our elements of social status: dominance (intimidate others) and prestige (being an impressive human being). 23:04 – Envy. “But the prestige-seeking itself is more nearly a zero-sum game, which helps explain why we sometimes feel pangs of envy at even a close friend’s success”. Signalling. The most honest signals are expensive. Nowadays being in shape is more expensive than being fat. Facebook and Instagram as tools for signalling. The King and the whisperer. 26:46 – Deceiving signals. Digital Nomads showing off while not being able to support themselves in the US. Behaviors that can be explained by competitive signalling. Luxury consumption is our version of the peacock tail. No one buys a Rolex to tell the time. There is sexual sense to men paying for the first meal on a date. Hot vs Beautiful: most products are advertised to make women hotter than attractive, and that may be a cause of unhappiness. 33:21 – #3 Norms. Gossiping and reputation. Gossip is to tell our group other people is not following norms. We lose reputation when others gossip of us. Gossip is cross cultural, and it seems to exist to enforce reputations and norms. Useful and harmful gossiping. Gossiping as valuable recommendations of people to employ and work with. 37:27 – Gossip are learned behavior or inherited genetics? Gossiping to get attention. Arguments that telling small lies in front of friends erodes your reputation and trust. Telling small lies to ourselves to prove ourselves an action we took. Analogies to the book: Chip & Dan’s elephant and the writer in Switch, Plato’s horses and the chariot driver. 41:01 – #4 Cheating. In order to cheat people, we need to be able to hide our intentions because we are good at sniffing out cheaters. Drinking in public, hiding the bottle in brown paper bags. Pipes and vape pens for... tobacco? Finding ways to encourage good behavior that one wouldn't do otherwise. Recycling. 44:09 – Tangent. Danish study on grocery bags: plastic bags beat paper bags 40 to 1. Electric cars CO2 impact much larger than gas cars. 47:53 – #5 Self Deception. Convincing others that you had sabotaged yourself, and the best way to convince someone for something is for you to actually believe it. Iran’s nuclear deal with the US. North Korea wanting to be taken seriously. Looking like the mad man in town. Closing or degrading a channel communication. Strategic ignorance. Avoid looking at kidnappers face. 52:02 – #6 Counterfeit Reasons. We make up reasons to explain why we do things or why we want things. Split brain patients test. Narrative fallacy. Making up reasons to deny a disability. Press secretary. Sean Spiner on the podium trying to explain Trump's decisions. We accentuate and exaggerate our pro-social motives and downplay our ugly selfish ones. 55:32 – Sponsor! Scentbird. Monthly subscription for premium perfumes and colognes, delivered at your door in convenient packaging for only $15/mo! Avoid the weird and bulky shapes of perfume bottles. Scentbird has a very compact and handy rechargeable cartridge system. Neil is using Dolce & Gabbana’s Light Blue which is very summery. Nat buyed Gin by Commodity, Bergamote by Commodity, and Encens by Rag & Bone. Use our code to get 50% off the first month. Neil is drinking Milk Oolong from Cup & Leaf Tea (a tea that tastes milky but doesn’t have milk!). You can reinfuse Oolong up to 5 times! Try it iced too. Cup & Leaf will give a 10%  lifetime discount to its first 100 customers. The Cream Earl Grey is great too. Replace-your-coffee and MYT kits coming soon. 1:03:11 – #7 Hidden motives in everyday life. Body Language. Cue is like a signal but it only provides value to the receiver. Catching cues reading other people while playing poker. Eye contact ratio while speaking and listening is a sign dominance. 1:06:12 – #8 Laughter. “We laugh far more often in social settings than when we’re alone—30 times more often”. Laughter is a social way of initiating play with each other. Flirting with the edges of acceptable behavior. Comedians can talk things in ways no one else can talk in public. Laughing seems to come from an instinct. Great apes laugh too. Oscar Wilde said, “If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh; otherwise they’ll kill you”. Making offensive statements in a playful manner with friends. 1:11:39 – Theory that laughter relieves nervous energy. Comedians make jokes about things they really don't believe, but many people extrapolates them wrongly. Laughter to test relationships with new people. Argument that humor normalizes bad behavior. Rape jokes. Jokes in the wrong audience. 1:22:49 – #9 Conversation. Conversation is not primarily an exchange of information, but mainly we do it to prove we are a reliable and good source of information. The backpack full of tools analogy. Reading and curiosity. Staying on topic, but not repeating ourselves. 1:27:43 – #10 Consumption. We buy things to look good. Prius example: it was designed ugly on purpose. Lifestyle ads. Corona beer theories: the first, Pavlovian, associating Corona and the beach, the second, one would buy Corona worrying about what others may associate the brand with. Super Bowl ads. BMW have to show their ads to poor people as well, so rich people associate the brand with luxury. Car ads reinforcing owners' believes. Products can be marketed for utility or lifestyle. Guinness and Budweiser have the same amount of calories, but they are marketed and perceived differently (surprisingly, Guinness is very keto-friendly). 1:33:33 – #11 Art. We find waste sexually attractive, because wasting resources is kind of a proof of wealth. People that hold a group in conversation are attractive. We tend to value art because we associate effort and skill with it. Mona Lisa's ashes and replicas survey. Is it the real Mona Lisa in the Louvre? Motivations behind mass shooters. Dinosaurs bones in museums. Conspiracies. 1:39:54 – #12 Charity. People donate in very inefficient ways. Donating for malaria vs high schools. Ivy League schools as hedge funds with an educational side. Comparing malaria deaths with other diseases that lower the quality of life. Is it dollar-to-lifes the best metric to look at when donating? The problem with Red Cross and other famous non-profits. Hollywood movies as non-profits. 1:49:34 – #13 Education. Kids don't learn much in class compared to unschooled ones. National GDP does not rise with education, but individual earning does. School seems more a filtering mechanism where, if you graduate from Harvard it doesn't mean you learned a ton but that you survived it. School as domestication. The most performant students are those more domesticated. 1:52:08 – Required attendance shows that the teacher is insecure of being interesting. Learning topics through other mediums than class subjects. School is more a signalling tool to show conformity to society and employment. For parents, it's a tool to brag that “made it”. School may be useful from a network standpoint. Why we haven't franchised the Ivy League. 2:01:54 – #14 Medicine. We get much more medicine than we need mostly as a way to show we take care of each other. Medicine is great for saving lives, but doesn't perform well on life and quality of life extension. 2:03:21 – #15 Religion. Proving you are a member of the community by sacrificing part of your freedom, time, resources and even identity. 2:04:10 – #16 Politics. We often vote to show loyalty to a community. You’d better don't want everyone to participate in an election, especially if they'll vote the opposite candidate you'll vote. Cheering for your party, as in sports.   2:06:31 – #17 Conclusion. It's easy to spot others doing it, it's difficult to pick up ourselves doing it. “The biggest lesson from Part I is that we ignore the elephant because doing so is strategic. Self-deception allows us to act selfishly without having to appear quite so selfish in front of others. We have a gaping blind spot at the very center of our introspective vision. If we’re going to second-guess our coworkers and friends, we shouldn’t give ourselves an easy pass. In fact, knowing about our own blind spots should make us even more careful when pointing fingers at others”. 2:07:56 – Support us by buying the book through our Amazon affiliate link. Support us by buying stuff from our sponsors, Perfect Keto for all your keto diet needs, Kettle & Fire for grass fed bone broth, Four Sigmatic for delicious mushroom coffee and other low caffeine drinks. If you enjoyed this episode and want to read along with us, don’t forget to subscribe at https://madeyouthinkpodcast.com

Jurgis, too, had heard of America. That was a country where, they said, a man might earn three roubles a day; and Jurgis figured what three roubles a day would mean, with prices as they were where he lived, and decided forthwith that he would go to America and marry, and be a rich man in the bargain. In that country, rich or poor, a man was free, it was said; he did not have to go into the army, he did not have to pay out his money to rascally officials—he might do as he pleased, and count himself as good as any other man. In this episode of Made You Think, we discuss The Jungle by Upton Sinclair It is a novel that portraits realistically the life at the time of immigrant families. Aimed to promote socialism, it ended conceiving the first laws of consumer protection in the United States after the scandal created by the revelation of meat packing malpractices. “Leave it to me; leave it to me. I will earn more money—I will work harder. Jurgis.” We cover a wide range of topics, including: The 3-day weekend A list of malpractices in the meatpacking industry that ended Embalmed meat killing soldiers in Spain Children labor in tech startups Monstrous sized apples and food stamps diets Businesses taking advantage of illegal immigrants Fiverr ads in NY and the Gig economy And much more. Please enjoy, and be sure to grab a copy of The Jungle by Upton Sinclair! If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check out our episode on Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand, counterpoint to The Jungle, a book that vows for Capitalism, as well as our Recap episode, where we summarize our first 20 books, all under the effects of alcohol :). Be sure to join our mailing list to find out about what books are coming up, giveaways we're running, special events, and more.   Links from the Episode Mentioned in the show Lacroix [0:41] Pure Food and Drugs Act [2:46] Meat Inspection Act [2:46] Kettle & Fire [48:26] Food stamps don’t cover the cost of healthy eating [49:01] Costco [50:43] Peter Attia at the Joe Rogan experience - Cocaine Revolutionized Surgery [59:19] Snus – Chewing Tobacco [1:01:28] Lindy Effect [1:02:34] Verizon AT&T-Time Warner Trust [1:14:17] Interstellar [1:15:52] North Star Podcast [1:17:29] Foxconn [1:19:50] Nike [1:19:50] Patreon [1:38:19] Distracted Boyfriend meme - Socialists vs. reality [1:42:17] Uber [1:50:25] Fiverr Ads in NY [1:50:25] UpWork [1:51:28] Hinge [2:01:55] Books mentioned The Jungle by Upton Sinclair (Nat's notes) Uncle's Tom Cabin by Harriet Beecher Stowe [3:20] Seeing Like a State by James C. Scott [3:52] Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand [4:11] The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker [24] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Liar's Poker by Michael Lewis [25:] Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari [37-42] (Nat’s notes) (book episode part 1 & part 2) Skin in the Game by Nassim Taleb [1:03:18] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Leverage Points by Donella Meadows [1:22:15] (article episode) The Elephant in the Brain by Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson [1:23:32] Animal Farm by George Orwell [1:44:49] The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell [1:48:12] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) The Sovereign Individual by James Dale Davidson [1:49:38] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Das Kapital by Karl Marx [2:04:37] War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy [2:05:22] Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance [2:05:35] People mentioned Upton Sinclair Adil Majid [37:42] Nassim Nicholas Taleb [56:01] (Antifragile episode) (Skin in the Game episode) Chris Christie (sports betting in New Jersey) [56:52] Neil deGrasse Tyson [1:17:02] David Perell from the North Star podcast [1:17:29] George Orwell [1:44:21] Jordan B. Peterson [1:45:16] (on Twitter) (12 Rules episode) Warren Buffet [1:46:23] Elon Musk [2:04:05] (on this podcast) Jeff Bezos [2:05:06] Show Topics 0:00 – The Jungle It is a book commonly read in High School, but probably the intention gets missed when read young. The content of the story is very dark. At first it seems to be a book about the terrors of the meat industry, but Sinclair aimed at the perils of Capitalism. It shows the problems with pure Laissez-faire economic systems (while other books as Atlas Shrugged critique Top-Down economies). 4:28 –  Sinclair was upset that his book didn’t meet the goal to promote socialism, all it had was the effect of changing how the US regulates the meat industry.  The value of safety nets and consumer protection laws. 7:14 – We didn't had weekends as we know them today. Some people suggest we will be able to mitigate some of the effects of automation by shortening the work week even more. Some startups and companies already offer Summer Fridays, where employees take Friday off. This is backed by noticing that does not affect productivity. 11:47 – Sinclair disavowed Socialism, he said it was not well implemented. Also, that Unions are an equally corrupt part of the system too. However, the book seems quasi religious, as lacks critics to Socialism. 14:39 – The book tells the story of Jurgis, who decides to move from Lithuania to Chicago with his family. He first feel betrayed with his friend, which he thought was rich. At that time, moving was one-way, people didn't have the money to travel back. The experience to moving to a completely extraneous place you never saw and with different language. Practically there is no culture living in complete isolation today, given the spread of the Internet and the English language. 20:02 – Jurgis gets his first job is sweeping guts and parts of cattle into a pit. The joy of having a job and the feeling of being settled. Not being paid for partial clock ours or waiting ours. Investment banking seems like a modern upper middle class version of the same problem. 25:44 – No security. Jurgis get injured and rests at home, without being paid. Hard work spirit. “Leave it to me; leave it to me. I will earn more money—I will work harder.” 26:05 – Sinclair attacks meritocracy. It's not those who work hard that are the ones who are wealthy. The people who had made it are not the people who'd done a good job, it's the people who'd figured out how to rig the system. Meritocracy, honesty (or dishonesty), conditions at birth and luck as the shapers of one's future. Reconciling the victim mentality with the meritocratic attitude. 28:45 – White privilege is probably true, but people started very poor and developed wealth through generations. The leap from "making money to stay alive" to "making money and build wealth". College funds compounding. 32:52 – Part of why we create wealth is to pass it to our children. Taking out inheritance plus giving immigrants upper-middle class quality of life from the start, as Socialism suggest, would take out incentives to create wealth. Socialism as the evolution of King-and-Serve model, in the way that somebody else take care of you once you pay the access to the system. 35:30 – Parents that bring their kids to America but want them to maintain their customs of origin. Contingencies buying a house. Having to send the kids to sustain the mortgage payment. Our senses ignore the static, concentrate on changes. 38:45 – Child labor was common 100 years ago. Is it OK to forbid child labor? Imposing modern values to pre-modern societies. China negating climate protocols. What if children work in tech positions at startups? 43:36 – How bad the meat packing industry was in terms of what went into the final product. A list of malpractices in the meat industry. Embalmed meat killing soldiers in Spain. Poisoned bread for rats. Sausages diluted with potato flour. Diluted or doctored food. The bargain of the peasant and hunter-gatherer lifestyle vs modern society. 49:01 – Optimizing food stamps to get the best diet. Why produce are not nutritious any more. Charging crops by weight as a bad incentive to produce nutritious crops. Size difference between wild and domesticated fruit species. Comparing fruits with candies and soda. Coca tea good for altitude sickness. 56:00 – Drugs and gambling becoming ubiquitous in the US. Libertarian trend legalizing gay marriage, suicide, drugs, poker and weed, MDMA. Cocaine and marijuana schedules for trials for medical treatments. Consuming opioids and tobacco in natural form, reducing cancer and other unwanted long term effects. Overdosing sugar. 1:03:18 – Jurgis back to the job market at Packagetown, finds a job in the fertilizers plants. 1:05:27 – Scentbird: monthly subscription for premium perfumes and colognes, delivered at your door in convenient packaging and at incredible rates! Nat's favorite is Blue by Chanel, Neil's using Dolce & Gabbana's Light Blue. Use our code to get 50% off the first month. 1:08:43 – Jurgis passes through jail. Spoiler alert! Jurgis is blacklisted from all jobs and becomes a bum. Parallel between the beef trust and the communications trust. Jurgis finally gets a better job in Downtown. 1:18:09 – When the supply of work is much greater than the demand. Working by the day. Immigrants taking US jobs working in illegal conditions. Unfair systems that can't be fixed by just replacing the pieces at the top. Businesses aren't much penalized, individuals are, when talking about illegal immigrants. 1:24:24 – The Government job to protect citizens. Markets can take care of most of their problems, but sometimes rules are needed. GMOs at Walmart. 1:26:24 – Jurgis loses all his family and becomes a bum, a modern version of the hunter gatherer. Jurgis gets into the underground. Suggestion that the only way to get rich in America is by breaking the law. 1:32:52 – Jurgis gets back in a meat packing business, but in a better position. Finally gets out of Chicago. 1:35:35 – The book slides down into Socialism. Blind political speeches. Distinguishing Socialism from Communism. Free associations and Patreon. Degrees of Libertarianism. Anarchism. Countries not implementing Socialism properly argument. 1:42:17 – Is Socialism impossible because of Human nature? Strong man arguments for and against Socialism. Orwell and Peterson common background at the Socialist Party. Socialism as a satisfying and seductive system for the intellectual part of our brains. 1:46:00 – Top-down beats Bottom-up messy chaos on paper, but the opposite happens in reality. We tend to give more importance to things that can be measured, but that doesn't mean unmeasured things doesn't exists. Argumentative tactics. The miss of a Socialist hero in the plot. The Gig economy. 1:53:14 – Sinclair shows that each individual who is involved in the system is following the incentives they have. Seeing a true need for government. 1:54:08 – Sponsors! Scentbird. Only $7.50 for your first month subscription using our code. Kettle & Fire’s grass fed bone broth to reconstitute your gut health, up to 28% discount plus free shipping using our code. We highly recommend the mushroom chicken and mushroom flavor. Get 20% off for your keto related products on Perfect Keto. Exogenous ketones supplements, and MCT oil to supplement your good fat needs. Drink Four Sigmatic, delicious mushroom coffee. Try their new Golden Latte Mushroom Mix with shitaki and turmeric, and the Chai Latte Mush with turkey tail and reishi. None of these have caffeine, ideal to drink them the whole day. Get 20% off your first order from Cup & Leaf. Try the Cream Earl Grey and the Lopson su chong, the whiskey of black teas. Get the black tea sampler to try all black teas. De-fund Bezos' rocket company by using our Amazon affiliate link. Hit us up on Twitter (Neil, Nat). If you enjoyed this episode, don’t forget to subscribe at https://madeyouthinkpodcast.com

"When I reached thirty I looked back on my past. The previous victories were not due to my having mastered strategy. Perhaps it was natural ability, or the order of heaven, or that other schools’ strategy was inferior. After that I studied morning and evening searching for the principle, and came to realise the Way of strategy when I was fifty." In this episode of Made You Think, Neil and Nat discuss The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi. Musashi was the greatest Samurai ever, famous for winning over 60 samurai duels. In this book he uses the art of sword fighting to develop a set of principles that can guide you through your personal and professional life. Study strategy over the years and achieve the spirit of the warrior. Today is victory over yourself of yesterday; tomorrow is your victory over lesser men. We cover a wide range of topics, including: Strategy in business and in life Lots of Japanese aphorisms Giving excuses when failing The importance of mastering different skills How it’ll look like when we reach 100 podcasts And much more. Please enjoy, and be sure to grab a copy of The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi! The teacher cannot force learning on the student, and the student cannot learn in isolation: "The teacher is as a needle, the disciple is as thread. You must practice constantly."   If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to check out our episode on Way of Zen by Alan Watts, a book that about Buddhism and mastering skills, as well as our episode on Inner Game of Tennis by Timothy Gallwey, another book starts with a specific activity to infer global principles. Be sure to join our mailing list to find out about what books are coming up, giveaways we're running, special events, and more. Links from the Episode Mentioned in the show Kindle [0:49] Quip Toothbrush [11:58] ButcherBox [11:58] Kettle & Fire [11:58] Perfect Keto [11:58] Four Sigmatic Mushroom Coffee [11:58] Cup & Leaf [11:58] Uber [14:42] Black Mirror [15:16] Jocko Podcast [17:46] Virtue Signalling [42:59] Joe Rogan’s Podcast [47:08] Haidong Kumdo [49:10] Tailored Fit [53:48] ModCloth [53:48] Chess [57:11] Go [57:11] StarCraft [58:13] DOTA [58:13] Lyft [59:19] Tesla [1:00:31] Books mentioned The Book of Five Rings by Miyamoto Musashi (Nat’s notes) Musashi the Novel by Eiji Yoshikawa [1:25] Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand [2:51] Homo Deus by Yuval Harari [2:51] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari [2:51] (Nat’s notes) (book episode part 1 & part 2) Striking Thoughts by Bruce Lee [3:56] (Nat’s notes) Levels of the Game by John McPhee [7:11] The Inner Game of Tennis [7:33] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Principles [7:52] (Nat’s Notes) (book episode) Mastery by Robert Greene [8:00] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas R. Hofstadter [8:08] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Letters from a Stoic by Seneca [19:03] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Way of Zen by Alan Watts [19:39] (Nat’s notes) (Neil’s notes) (book episode) Lanterns on the Levee by William Percy [25:23] Skin in the Game by Nassim Taleb [26:19] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) The Secret by Rhonda Byrne [34:35] Fifty Shades of Grey by E. L. James [34:57] 12 Rules for Life by Dr. Jordan B. Peterson [35:33] (Nat’s notes) (Neil’s notes) (book episode) The Art of Seduction by Robert Greene [35:38] (Nat’s notes) Tao Te Ching by Laozi [45:27] (Nat’s notes) Finite and Infinite Games [1:08:54] (Nat’s notes) (book episode) Zen and Art of Motorcycle Maintenance [1:12:23] People mentioned Miyamoto Musashi Rumi, Persian Poet [2:21] Bruce Lee [3:56] Lucius Annaeus Seneca [19:03] Robert Greene [36:40] Jocko Podcast [37:42] Nathan Latka [38:58] Elon Musk [1:00:06] (on this podcast) Sebastian Marshall [1:11:15] (on Nat Chat) Jocko’s book on the Tim Ferriss’ blog [1:11:28] Adil Majid [1:15:14] Show Topics 3:14 – Musashi's background and how he became the most famous samurai. In this book he writes about strategy and philosophy through the lens of sword fighting. His writing style starts with examples at micro level and unfolds them into general principles. Development of the Niten Ichi-ryū school, the style of fighting with one short and one long sword. Books that use sports or physical activities as a canvas to explain strategy, psychology, and philosophy. 9:45 – Sponsor time! Scentbird. Online subscription plan to receive at home all perfumes you want to try. Go to Scentbird, build your queue, and get 50% OFF with the coupon mentioned in the episode. They don't take much space in or bag, so very convenient to travel with. Very helpful if you want to go into subscription mode for everything in your life like Nat. 12:40 – Time period where guns were spreading but swords were still popular. 15:26 – Ground. Foundation for the other books and the most applicable to real world problems beyond sword fighting. Four personas: the gentlemen, the farmers, the artisans and the merchants. The teacher can be guidance but one has to move through the process. Symbiotic relationship between teacher and student. 19:16 – “The way of the warrior is resolute acceptance of death”. Does acceptance of death make you a better warrior? "The Dojo" example applied to Marketing. There are so many marketing gurus pushing for their school as it is the only true alternative, while they are truly looking for profit. 23:12 – “This is a truth: when you sacrifice your life, you must make fullest use of your weaponry”. It is false not to do so, and to die with a weapon yet undrawn. You can't allow yourself to fail without trying everything you have at your disposal. Romanticizing failures and not learning from them. The fine line of failure and ego protection. Not going all in gives you an excuse if you fail. 26:23 – “It will seem difficult at first, but everything is difficult at first”. Everything is hard when you start. Having a diversity of abilities. In sports, a winning strategy is to water the opponents favorite strategy. Having a favorite weapon or skill is a weakness. Bruce Lee's fighting against his own Martial Arts school, by following his philosophy of non-philosophy. Coping other does not make sense because what works for others may not work for you. 31:39 – Water. “With water as the basis, the spirit becomes like water. Water adopts the shape of its receptacle, it is sometimes a trickle and sometimes a wild sea”. Being able to break over the rocks and not being stopped by them. Being able to work around an obstacle and being fluid. The difference of learning indoor techniques with learning into the wild. Book summaries visitor stats. 36:56 – Our private behavior and public behavior should be the same at all times. Instagram and social media push us to build a fake personality, and pretend we are a different person from what we really are. Me too stuff. White people trying to win points between minorities. 43:45 – “In strategy it is important to see distant things as if they were close and to take a distanced view of close things”. Japanese aphorisms. Detaching from personal feelings to get the big picture. How Rogan can make so many podcasts. 48:15 – Fire. Here Masashi starts to get very technical on fighting. Training to the point it becomes an innate knowledge. You know when something is natural to you when you have a hard time explaining it. The best mentor is not someone far along and super successful but most of the times, just a few steps ahead from you. 55:12 – Methods to slow down enemies' attacks. Attacking first, counter attacking, and attacking at the same time. Maintain control of your position. It is bad to be led about by the enemy. Taking the initiative may have psychological advantages by not being responsive to the enemy but making him responsive to you. Acting vs reacting. Having the enemy to respond to your moves so they don't have time to develop their strategies. Staying relevant and on the news in order to push the competition to show their cards. 1:01:46 – Wind. “Crossing at a ford”. Knowing when to enter in a negotiation, in a position of strength. Having the discipline to delay to act when it's the right time. Being able to put oneself in the enemy's shoes. Criticizing other schools. 1:08:00 – Void. Conventional and unspoken knowledge. True mastery is something you cannot put into a book, it has no end. Anti dogma. 1:14:08 – Sponsors. If you want to smell lovely and have an easy solution for all your perfumes and colognes needs checkout Scentbird. Use our code to get 50% off your first month subscription. Get your mushroom coffee from Four Sigmatic. They have a new Think blend! Try also the Cordyceps blend, their Reishi blend for sleep. Nat is drinking Lapsang Souchong black tea from Cup & Leaf. It tastes like a brandy, whisky, smokey dark liquor flavor scotch. Try the Earl Grey cream one too! Kettle & Fire has mushroom-chicken bone broth available on their site now! Great flavoring. You may get up to 28% off your first ordering using our code. Nat likes to cook with their beef broth and Neil turns his quinoa in a nutritional powerhouse. Perfect Keto is perfect if you are trying to get into keto. Check out their ketones supplements and their exogenous ketones. They have a mocha flavored MCT oil powder. It’s of the best kind of fats, and you can mix it in your smoothies, have it straight in the morning, or mix it with athletic greens. Use our Amazon link to help support the show. Hit us up on Twitter (Neil, Nat). Join the mailing list to participate of the next Q&A episode and recommend us books to discuss.