All right, So this is a little bit different style of episode than the run I've been on. That's for a couple of reasons. One, as you can probably tell, I get bored talking about the same things over and over again, and after two episodes on the kind of daily grind, politics, some history, I wanted something else. But there's a philosophical line that runs through this episode and a few others, which is asking the question, well, what is the social utility of analysis?
Right?
What is the point of constantly examining a system? Emil Cairrick Guard, a bizarre man who I have complicated feelings on, believe that the point of introspection was to move outward.
Right.
The point of looking inward isn't to just form a human oroborus eternally descending into yourself, but it's so that that knowledge can be applied elsewhere, to the outside world, and that's what matters. We see something similar happen on the Internet, which is what is the point of the Internet. Is it to win the Internet, to gain the most height, to gain the most clout, or is it to do something real in meat space? As the yunks would say, But in all seriousness, I think that our guys have
a tendency towards analysis paralysis. A lot of this comes from our origins as a reactive movement, not the left. Whatever they're doing is bad, and our guys can tell you why it's not, why it's bad, how it's bad, and it can really get into a lot of fights about exactly when it started. But the point is, well, what comes next? Granting all of those premises, what is the conclusion? And so my guest today, grit Colt, has a lot to say about the importance of decisive of action.
He takes as an example Napoleon right, the great Corsican general. Boldness, boldness, boldness, he said, and this is something I think we need to take from the classical world, take from history, our collection of heroes, the men we idolize. Is that decisiveness, that desire to quickly make a decision and act on it. This does not mean to be hasty, does not mean to make poorly considered bad choices, but to say something
must be done. Simply sitting back and analyzing the tenth piece of woke slav culture, well, that isn't really going to make a difference. That doesn't meaningfully make anything better. So I think that this is an important episode for that reason and also because, well there's some adventure to it. For a lot of guys who grew up when I did and a little bit afterwards, your progression through life
depended on an infinite number of these little checks. Right, what was your GPA, not just in high school, but even going into middle school. What extracurriculars were you involved in? Did you get a letter from such and such person? Did you check all of these boxes so that you could pass through the gate and become a member of the professional Managerial Class, the PMC, the laptop people who
make money. That was the goal. And this led to, or it could a situation where your life was tightly managed. You were going from one activity to the other. You couldn't really afford to miss something, you couldn't afford to have something drop off your resume because you were competing for a vanishingly small amount of spots for guys like you. And I've seen this even worse with the general not even the generation, but guys who were five to ten
years younger than me. I mean, I'm sure we've all had the conversation with an older family member who, you know, maybe went to college. Maybe didn't who is not particularly bright but got into that school, and maybe you went to it, or you knew people who did, and you're like, well, I mean, I know my uncle, I know whoever that guy is. He's not that smart. But for the guy who's forty years younger, that was a stretch. He really
had to get it done. And the guys who were five years ten years younger than me have it even worse. I mean, I know a kid. I won't send any details because you know, this is public and I try not to blow people up on the internet. Who is smart? Captain the soccer team, athletic And if he was even my age, he would have been a shoe it or at least made a good run at not the IVS he was wouldn't have been able to do that even
ten years ago. But the public ivy's a school like you know, Villanova, Uva, Notre Dame, something like that, you know, a ha hi tier school. And he ended up at a to be honest, kind of a po dunk regional college. Now look, I'm not a college guy, per se. That is a determinate factor in your life is in my mind, largely overstated. Particularly when we consider the last several decades
of just absolute distortion that system has gone through. But point is right, the deck is being stacked more and more aggressively, and so for parents who were trying to motivate their children, trying to get their children a good life, the pressure is mounting. But nonetheless that leaves us in a system with very little agency. You don't actually get to choose, you don't actually get to express any sort of courage. Really, you're checking off boxes. There's no for that.
And so I think it's why so many of our guys have been drawn to entrepreneurship, have been drawn to making a run of it on their own. One because it's for many people one of the first times in the life in their life where they feel like they have access to what Kazinski would call the power process, decisions that meaningfully shape your life. But also because well,
they've been locked out of the traditional way. They can't really get the job that their parents or grandparents expected they would, and so whether it's a push or a pull, they're on their own and in that situation. And I say this as technically a small businessman, technically someone who's self employed. It require me to admit that this is a job, which I mean, I work like it's a job, but you know it's kind of fake. But point is right.
I see why that's attractive. And in that context, the example of Napo, the example of Caesar, the example of Alexander's vital that sort of decisive courage is something needed and it's something absent in much of culture. Now when we talk about risk, it's true the Generation Z in particular is risk averse. Look at how many of them drink, Look at how many of them have sex risky activities. The numbers are plunging off a cliff. Now, part of that has to do with an epidemic of loneliness and
you know, weird sexual paraphilias. We will set that conversation aside for now, but a lot of it is that culture of risk avoidance. You were raised that any one thing could ruin your life. Well, if you get kicked out of school for a scuffle, well, all of a sudden, you aren't going to school. You aren't going to the school, and you aren't getting the job. And okay, sure that's a minute example, but it's echoed many times, and I have a feeling anyone under thirty knows what I'm talking about,
at least kind of right. You have been raised to be risk averse. Sorry, my cat's trying to eat a rubber band. Hopefully doesn't swallow it anyway, And that same attitude is expressed you through school, expressed to you at home. Every adult is constantly looking at you as if you were one bad decision away from blowing it all up. And to a certain degree that's true. You know you shouldn't do stupid things. But that over adversion to risk, well,
you know it carries very real consequences. Now, conversely, we've also seen the rise of sports betting, of basically betting it all on black. Now, part of that, I think is due to a feeling of basically financial nihilism. You know, if I don't hit big, I'm never gonna win at all. So let's hit the casino, go to prediction markets, let's you know, make an eight like ignorant sports parlay. But I think another part of it is that desire for risk, that desire for agency. Okay, it may not be the
most smart way to express it, but it's at least understandable. Now, maybe not the most appropriate reaction.
Right.
Maybe not the best situation for a society to be in, heavily financialized, heavily gambling dependent, but it's the situation we find ourselves in. It is regardless really of how you or I feel about it from a moral perspective. Now, other things that I think we have to bear in mind is there's no free lunch. There's really no way to get out of paying. You can shift those variables around, but there's a limited amount of optimization you can do.
You see this in the kind of goofy Brian Johnson desire to live forever, you know, to to sort of balance your biomarkers so that you can have, according to him, the penis of an eighteen year old, the blood of a seven year old. This kind of ghoulish desire to live forever, to be a perfected being, and not in kind of Greek way, in a very bizarre Mormon scientific way. Sorry Mormons, it's probably rude, but I think he is
a former LDS dude. Also, this is something that is very easily apparent in dating culture, the desire for prince charming, the desire for the person who will make everything perfect. Weirdly enough, this is kind of tied to the Catholic idea of lust. I think this is in Dante. It might be in Dante, if not. One of my Catholic friends said it to me, maybe Peter Kreeft, who I
don't know, but you know what I mean. The idea is that lust is the idea that there is a person out there who can make you happy, who can fix your life. Obviously women have this as well, looking for you know, Prince Charming, the broody billionaire who reads and has washboard apps, who wants to marry a forty year old girl boss with frozen eggs. And that's laughable. That's not true, that's not real in either case. You know,
I'm sorry. You know, if you're the north side of three hundred pounds, you're probably not gonna you know, score a you know, a ten out of ten trad wife. But the point is a choice needs to be made. You have a finite amount of life, and if you are going to settle down and have a family, you need to make a choice, a decisive one, a commitment, and that commitment will have drawbacks, there will be strengths
and weaknesses, but that is the human condition. A decision must be made or you're simply sitting out of the game. We're waiting for conditions to improve, and they may well, they may well improve rather at some point in history. But the question is, well, are you alive?
Then?
The old wisdom is the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent, and that applies to many aspects of life. Modernity is very uncomfortable with commitment, very uncomfortable with the idea of a bond you can't immediately jet. Obviously, the sexual example is one that comes up very easily. But the idea of the chosen family that you see predominantly in trans circles is the same idea expressed differently. No bond is legitimate unless I choose it, and I
can enter or leave it at any given point. But that is by no means a family. It is just as much a real family as the trans woman is a real woman. It's a synthetic, fabricated imitation of the real thing because it is chosen, because it is fundamentally rational. It is a decision weighed on a cost benefit system. Your real family isn't like that. You don't have to like your family to be bound to them. You didn't
choose it. And this is exactly what we see from the progressives talking about immigration when they say it's not your country, you didn't choose it. That guy who walked across miles of rusty nails and broken glass, he's the guy who deserves it more than you because he chose, He sacrificed, he gave something up. And okay, I'll admit, you know, walking on miles of broken glass, it's certainly impressive. But I am an American. I didn't choose to be one.
My family has been here for four hundred years. It's simply what I am. I couldn't be anything else. If I moved to South Africa or Austria or Somolia, I would be an American in Somalia or Austria or South Africa. That's what I would be. It's bone deep, it's unchosen. It is more real than the unchosen commitments. That is what defines us, that is what makes us who we are.
And modernity can't stand this because it says, well, what if you don't want to be an American, what if you don't want to be a woman, Well it doesn't matter.
You are.
That commitment, that choice, that bond was made for you, and that's what gives you identity. And for us, these sort of children of the ashes, children of a civilizational winter, who are uncomfortably one foot in one world and a desire to place that other foot in another. We can say,
we can proclaim the importance of these unchosen bonds. But when it gets down, when it becomes time to make a decisive choice, one that will irreverably change change your life for good or for ill, you will never be the same person before or afterwards, we get uncomfortable, understandably, so it's a serious decision. But that is the time for decisive action. That is the time to make a choice.
And again, if we're talking about what makes us unique, what makes the young men who make up the broad right people interested in timeless things, we've added a couple things. We've added a monopoly on men who care, a monopoly on adventure, and hopefully, I think this can be fostered a monopoly on decisive action. Anyway, we'll get into the interview. I think you guys are gonna like it, again, outside of the sort of guys I normally talk to, but I think it was pretty good. This is what I do.
This is all I do. So if you want to support me, one of the best ways you can do that is heading over to Patreon, Substack or gum Road. Give me a couple bucks a month and you get every episode early in ad free. I'm not hiding anything from you guys on the free feed, not holding anything back. But if you want them early, you want them without ads. Pay me a few bucks. Sorry, it's sort of the what I gotta do. I know the ads are annoying,
but they pay my mortgage. That's what I got. You can also head over to Axios Remote Fitness and Coaching. Jad's a good guy. He understands this exact dynamic. You want to be surrounded by light minded fellas, you want to get strong, you want to get big. Well, he's a good way to do it. Tell them I've sent you without further ado, here's Grit Clt.
Thank you.
All right, Grit Colt. Welcome to the Jay Burden Show. How you doing that?
I'm doing good. It's a pleasure to be.
Here, definitely. It's always fun when you can use Twitter for you know what it's supposed to be used for, which is just the world's biggest roll of dex and you can you can meet people that you just hadn't come in contact with before. You and I we were put in contact by a few friends in a group chat, and so yeah, I'm glad to have you on, but for my audience might not be familiar with you. Well, who are you and what do you do?
Yeah, I mean that that question itself is quite interesting.
I always feel like who a man is is really by his actions, what he's done.
What he does, and how he lives his life. So I mean, I think the best way to kind of.
Like you know, give myself, like you know, to the audience is kind of describe what I've been doing, what I've done, and what's like, you know, the experiences that have shaped me. So, you know, studied you know, economics
at university. From there really start into the whole philosophical you know, economic you know, heterodoxy kind of thought streams that were around the time that led me down to a path of like really exploring but not any technology, but also like crypto and crypto technology as an ideological kind of alternative to the current system that we live in. So from there, you know, also had a brief stint
working at these very large consulting mega corporations. But for the last like you know, six years of most of my career has been working in very early stage startups, you know, growth consulting product like trying to building, strying to you know, put things out there, get feedback, hit the market. Like you know, it's been brutal, but it's
also been very rewarding at the same time. Aside from that, you know, sorry, I'm just gonna go on a bit run no, yeah, but yeah, aside from that, it's kind of you know, been been building on Twitter, like you know, been posting, I've been sharing my thoughts for a very long time. I've been on you know, I've crossed past with some of your guests previously. We've got you know,
quite a few friends overlapping as well. I've explored all sides of you know kind of like you know, the different thoughts and different you know, subcultures that have existed on Twitter. There's time all the way back to like the Pine Tree Boys, you know, the.
Accelerationists, all all these kind of things.
So yeah, I mean, like Twitter is a great place kind of network meet people, and it's probably the greatest app in you know, my experience in my life. You know, I definitely spend an extreme amount of time on it, and it's also led to like you know, im mental career opportunities as well, you know, like you know, all these companies I worked with, it's been through Twitter primarily nowadays.
So yeah, I mean, any of your audience, our workers, I would, you know, tell them, look, start bursting, start networking, and start sharing what you sing.
Yeah, a couple of things there. I did not get an economics degree, although I got a finance degree, And I'm curious to get your thoughts on those sort of programs because I went to and I won't box myself, but you know, a decent program you know, in that kind of like top tier, and I was honestly pretty unimpressed with who I found myself alongside. Now, there were certainly many people there who were much smarter than me, but it was a very interesting mentality. Part of the
reason why I left that industry. It was a lot of and this is a term I'm going to Butcher, I'm stealing from you Brits right, the sort of first girl syndrome, you know, the sort of people who have collected all the gold stars and are looking for one more in this kind of sequence of like different gates they've passed through. And so I'm curious as someone who is you know, a founder, right, did you see other people like that in your program or were you kind of on your own in that?
Yeah, I mean it's in So I went I went to a pretty unique program.
I went to probably dogs myself here, but like I went to the University of Budbeck and they're an evening school. They've got some pretty good alumni. Bag Rolls famously is one of them. So they were essentially like it was started as like the Workingman's University, like you know for workers, you know, after like.
Their nine to five had come to the university.
So, I mean I had a very heterodogus kind of like you know, study life, I guess in a sense because I was always the youngest person on like every course I was on, and I was like, so I was next to like, you know, a thirty five year old you know who's he was into the university for the first time, or like a guy who's just like you know, who goes to study for fun. So it
was a pretty strange experience. But I mean the university was definitely it was definitely like tilted more towards like the Marxist kind of you know, very socialist, Fabian society kind of people. I mean, at least that's what they're kind of espousing. And that's why I really started into a wok like you know, cryptoiarchy and a Cais libertarian school of thought, which was not very explored you know
at this you know, London University. So and in terms of like the coreho of people, yeah, I mean I think I think in general in life there's just like, you know, these people that just kind of like follow the rules all the instructions and you know, they you know, colleged two hundred dollars, you know, every time to hit go whatever. So I mean not that surprises me. I think I've always had like it's always a streak of rebellions,
you know, rebellion in me. So like I was, did find myself Bill and outside of so yeah, I mean I don't think that answers your question directly, but.
Out of personal curiosity because you know how it is, and you meet certain people from a background that's not the same as yours, and you wonder was my experience reflected right so you post a lot on social media about boldness decisive action, and you had a great I think you called it a manifesto on telegram, originally posted to Twitter, talking about the tax, that there is no free lunch. Any decision you make comes with a cost. And oftentimes I see you guys both just kind of
you know, our guys for whatever that term means. And also people in broader culture sort of looking to optimize, right, looking to find that perfect path with no downsides. And yeah, especially if you have sort of a engineering mindset. Nothing against engineers, but that desire to optimize a system, it can lead to a sort of paralysis, right, a refusal to act. Yeah, and so I'm curious if you could one explain that idea of the tax, and then well,
why is decisive action the correct course of decided? Saying action in twice in one sentence is horrible English, but you know what I mean, why is that the way to do it?
Yeah?
So I think with that piece, I'm trying to, like I was trying to outline the fact and no matter what you do, there will be some like you know, cost of to to it. So, like you know, decision or indecision I mean that itself is you know, kind of a binary, and like either of those options, you know, there's like, you know, even paths you go down, there's good, there's gonna be outcomes that you may not predicted.
It's gonna be downsides.
And I think the best way to kind of illustrate these points is when it comes down to.
Men finding a wife.
I am of the belief that men's natural for you to you know, want to have sex, but also want to find a partner and start a family. I think, like, you know, if we if we think like ancestrally, like our you know, our evolution you know, has like pushed us towards you know, starting and raising family. And the fact that like most meant my age, you know, late twenties, thirties, like you know, they don't have a family these days. And I think that is causing a huge evolutionary mismatch.
And you know, we we have like all these desires and I think there's like these you know, this whole Paleolithic movement. But one thing that's not talked about in the Paleolithic movement is like how naturally it is for like a man to have a family.
And I think you know.
The upstream causes of that is the indecision of like finding a wife, finding a woman. So you know, I'm not going to be like one of those guys who just be like you know, like you know, the tradcap.
Guys will be like, yeah, just get a wife, get everything. I'm not saying that.
I'm saying like, you know, you're not going to be able to like optimize the perfect ten out of ten. In the kind of like red pill sphere, there's always this notion that a ten out of ten never exists. Every woman you meet is going to have some downside, and you know the tax or you know you must pay the tax is like kind of a another illustration of that kind of you know idea.
It's like, no matter what you do, there is.
Going to be some sort of burden, there's going to be some cost attached to it. And I mean, like you know, we could like talk and go into the whole path of like you know, we live in a fallen world and you know everything is going to be drudgery and you know from the brow and so on. So yeah, I mean that's just like an acceptance of like, look, you know you were given you know, various tools at your disposal, and you need to take the best of them.
And one of the things that runs very deeply in my character I feel, is like this whole like optimism, Like no matter what the situation is, like you should, like you know, just due.
To your human nature, just due to like you know, being.
An animal man in a sense, so like you should, like you know, try to overcome various precarious situations.
Yeah, and this is something that we are very willing to point out in women because and when I'm talking about women as a class, you understand what I mean, of course, right, the kind of you can have it all girl boss fantasy. You can be the high power to executive, you can freeze your eggs, you can get married at forty and still have a family and make no sacrifices for that. And that's plainly ridiculous.
Right.
We see that dysfunction constantly, But when it comes to us, when it comes to you know, our priorities, it becomes much harder, Right, And I think that there is a there's an uncomfortable reality the fact that you've got a very finite life span, right, You've only got so much time to play, And look, I see a lot of guys myself who are accurately pointing out that we're kind of being screwed. You know, there's certain things that are now harder than they would have been in a previous era.
And that's true. But the problem is if you let that analysis halt you from taking any action, like, oh, dating is horrible, so I'm going to sit it out, or oh the economy is horrible, so I'm just going to wait for you know you or you know, on shoring industry, any of these things that may or may not be happening. It's like, well, okay, man, you've only got x number of years left, You've only got a finite number of hands, and if you keep folding every time,
well you're sort of losing out to entropy. And that doesn't that doesn't mean that you have been given a good hand of cards to continue belaboring this poker analogy. But it does mean that there is a cost to inaction, right. It's sure it's not necessarily the catastrophic loss of betting it all and losing it all, but there's a bleed, right,
there's a slow entropy to it. Even setting aside what that sort of passivity does to your psyche, particularly as a guy, and so I think that there is a danger in even correct analysis that it will lead to this sort of an action. And it's funny because, like I said, I was not aware of your social media
platform until you know, we got connected. But I'm going through and I'll admit I'm a fan of Napoleon, not to the degree that many people are, but that that classic aphorism right action, action, action or courage, courage, courage, however you translate it, that idea that you need to do something decisive and bold to win the day. I mean that's common in all of the great man of history. Like I'm a sort of a seize a boo whatever
you would call a fan of Julius Caesar. You see, the exact same thing, even when right the initial sort of way the table is laid is not in your favor. Sorry, a bit of a rant there, grit.
Yeah, No, I mean it's all good to rant. Yeah, I agree.
I think like, especially in the online political kind of like you know, reactionary circle, it is very common. And I've like known a lot of those guys, I've seen them, and yeah, I feel like over intellectualism is always going to be a very corrosive thing. I think you should always pair it with you know, not only action, but like you know, just doing things and kind of learning like by a different mode, different means by actually like
you know, doing things, experiencing things. I can't remember the Greek term for it, but yeah, like that's my whole kind of thesis.
So that's what I've kind of just like really gone deeper into this whole. You know. I like working, I like, you know, building things, and.
I think there is a whole kind of undercurrent of like you know, neat culture. Don't get me wrong, I've been in meat, I've lived off you mysterious sources of income as well. But I think it's like, if you get too deep into that, we do end up in a territory where like you just you know, it's it's it looks similar to the lifestyle of like a hipster stoner, and it's if your lifestyle is exactly the same as like that. You know, I think the ideology that you
have is just a lie that you're telling yourself. And I think this is very common in like, you know, debates I have with religious people. I say like, okay, you're like, you know, let's let's take a look, let's take a stock of your life. Right, So you you know, you don't go pray, you don't go congregation, you don't need all these things. Your life is secular based around consumerism. Like,
how are you different from an atheist? So I think that's the very same of like you know, barb Stoners, all these people that you know, everyone likes to denegrade. But like if you're living in the exact same, similar kind of ways, then you know, how are you different?
Is my kind of philosophy here.
Oh, and I think the religious analogy is is apt that look like Twitter is great, social media is great, but there's an open question is you know, is this something true about you? Is this a part of your identity or is this a brand on social media?
Right?
Is this something that has actually kind of worked its way into your bones? And a lot of that comes down to what do you actually do? And this is a technically religious idea, but it's broadly applicable that effectively your time is worship, right, that is what changes you in one way or another. And of course, you know, the line goes, you know, man cannot serve two masters and of course, you know, we all have divided attentions, but functionally, no matter what you say, how you're living
your life determines what you are. So I want to pull back a little bit into a kind of broader discussion about the kind of you mentioned, the kind of crypto anarchy crypto space, which I'll admit I do not know a ton about. I sort of funded my way through college day trading ethereum. But you know that there was not the most sophisticated strategy, I'll put it that way.
And it seems as if there are some efforts to sort of legitimate cryptocurrency and with that obviously comes a kind of like ossifying effect, right, it's less of a wild West, But like where is attention now? Obviously bitcoin is what hits the timeline, but like, what's the interesting part of that industry right now?
Yeah, there's then a barbell aspect to the current crypto industry. One is that there's this whole institutionalizing pause that's happening. So we've seen companies like Stripe develop their own blockchains Tempo and they you know, trying to build on these blockchain rails. Across border settlement is way more efficient on blockchain rails, and it's kind of like you know, taking over a stable coin settlement across borders. So you have the institutions, the guys in suits, and the other side
you still have the dg AND culture. So the dj AND culture, you know, it was kind of more very libertarian. Now it's just pure speculation and you have all these like people just like trying to make as much money and extract as much as they can in a short period of time, and it's become very PvP. So I mean, those are the two layers that we can kind of find ourselves in.
And on the speculation side, it's a whole like gambling aspect to it.
So like you know, pump fun is a meme coin launch pad where you can likely launch a coin and then you you know, you can buy it and then in.
The hopes of like it builds life changing money.
So there's a whole casino on one side, and then of the institutions you know on the other side. So that that thing, that's it's kind of state of crypto right now.
Yeah.
It also it's interesting, you know the old the joke right about the big short is, you know, when they went to the strip club and they saw that, you know, the strippers were taking out loans. They realized it was all done. And obviously the the kind of combined failures of ft X and then Celsius. Uh, And look, you know, I lost some money there too, So I'm not going to present myself as some sort of a you know,
wise see or in this. But is there a danger in that sort of oversaturation because it felt like right before that, particularly like FTX and Celsius had gotten very very mainstream, you know, you had kind of s tier celebrities, you know, major you know, sporting league sponsored by these So I'm curious and I realized it's a genuine or a generalized and uneducated question. But you know, I am
what I am, grit. Uh, how do you think that there's this or do you think there's an interplay between the kind of like dumb money general population and that sort of casino because it seems as if we've sort of reached a point where a lot of people are very very cautious about putting their money into that casino. I mean, you've seen these series of kind of celebrity rug pulls, the infamous you know, Hawktua coin others like that.
Do you think that that is a permanent thing or do you think that that's sort of a teething problem in this industry.
I think it's a permanent saying.
I think it's more to do with human nature than any specific industry.
I think it is always going to be full set.
Will you know, lose their money, and every industry you look at, like especially in the markets, you know, eighty percent of people will lose their money and give it to the top twenty percent. It's like the same that I'm appears in crypto as well. You have like people from the Third world losing their life savings in some you know, scam coin, and.
That's very common.
I would advise, I advise most people just like you know, donocost average or you know, I mean S and P has been doing pretty like, you know, very good as well. So I would even suggest like, yeah, just you know, buy some stocks and shares.
This is a this is a jungle, you know.
Well, and and someone of profoundly limited intelligence, have I've learned that I am just I have to invest like a retard or I will lose my shirt. I had a friend no longer a friend who is really into the kind of first wave of DeFi and he sunk like, you know, big money into a project. I put in you know, a commensurate like a you know, a decent amount for a guy in my situation, but not a lot, and uh yeah, both of us lost our shirts. He lost a lot more. He basically had to restart his life.
And I learned variable very valuable lesson, which is I'm not smart enough to do this, which you know, better to learn that at.
Empty I guess, I mean, so with the experience, I think that's too like takee with like most people.
I think most people they get greedy, they want to like, you know, get a quick run.
But like, oh look, I put like, you know, fifty k into this and it goes like five x whatever.
You know, I can buy a house and you know, start my life.
So I think, I mean, I think that's the wrong way of like thinking about things.
I think about life. I think, like, you know, try and do like a shortcut.
It doesn't always work, even though I do appreciate the risk take and it's just like ye very.
Low little brow.
And there's loads of loads of loads of these stories in the crypto industry.
Pretty much everyone has one.
So yeah, I mean I'm generally like risk off when it comes to these kind of things. I will allocate you know, a very short amount a small amount of money to like things, and then if I if I'm right, I'm right. If I'm wrong, then you know, I'm not going to lose any sleep over these kind of things.
And I think that's the best way to kind of do it.
And I think I think the best people who kind of make MOE into these things from my experience, have been like those that are very very kind of like you know, plugged in. They have to be online like eighteen hours a day and they're very quick in and out. Even those guys like will make mistakes and lose everything.
But like, I think that's a degree of which you have to kind of approach this is like, yeah, it's like it's always on industry and you have to kind of understand the dynamic and culture and all these like you know, microtel and all these signals as well. So yeah, for most people, I'll be like, yeah, like, there's there's no point for people to get in.
I think I think, you know, if you're going to get in, get in fully. Otherwise, you know, stay out.
Well, that's an interesting thing going back to that idea of like the tax or the trade off where look like I didn't have you know, a stellar experience in uh when I when I got my degree, but there
are sort of a couple lessons carried with me. And you know that the simple principle that you know, interest is payment for risk, which you know, Okay, it's not the most high level analysis, but uh that reframes a lot of things, right, like, well, there's a reason the potential payout is so high, and that's because it's so is the risk, right, And uh yeah, look like you know I did, you know quite well just kind of you know, holding right, you know, particularly during the like
extreme COVID dip where it was basically is the world
going to end? You know, might as well just kind of dump some money into the market because we're into crypto as well, because it's like, well, you know, either this works or it doesn't matter, in which case I won't be missing the money, right, But uh yeah, I think there is that sort of like chasing the dragon thing as well, where people look at the ten fifteen year graph, you know, and it's like, oh, well we can replicate that we can do that again, and I
mean maybe, but it's a fun It's a fundamentally different world, right, not to say it's a saturated market, but there's a lot more things happening, and so that sort of like
first to market exclusivity is sort of gone. And I mean, look like whether it's low level kind of consumer investing like Robin Hood, which really came in but like five six years ago, or the kind of proliferation of sports betting, there is this weird thing where especially for young guys, they're sort of like overdosing on risk, you know, this kind of like very casino mindset, which is fun. I get it, but it is, in my mind, not necessarily
an investing strategy. It's just gambling with mister steps.
So I have a see comments. Yeah, so one is the topology of risk.
So like when I basically you know, finished my quote unquote education, I was thrust.
I wanted to like, you know, I've got a normal job, you know, very respectable.
And if I stayed in that industry, if I stayed in that job, like I would have done moderately, well, I would have been a very different person, was sure, But like you know, it would it would.
Have been bad. I would have you know, it would have been okay.
So but and then the other path I took was it was more risk on in the sense that I wanted to work in an industry that was rising, it was fast as exciting, and it wasn't already tested. That's one thing, so you know, I knew the chances of failure. Failure exceeded the chances of success. And then not only in that industry that you know, I did that, but I also worked in very early stage startups. Pretty much every company, every startup, our work group you know, has failed.
You know, some have succeeded, some of like you know, still around, some like you know, most of them haven't. And you know, through that failure, like you learn, I think a lot more.
That's one of the things in my twenties.
I want to optimize book It's like how much can I learn, you know, how close can I get to you know, providing value to people, customers, consumers, users, whatever you want to call them. And then from that, I mean that that was also another risk. So, like my skill set probably exceed someone that would have just stayed
in a very corporate job. The smartest kid I went to is still a middle manager E. M. Kinsey, but due to me kind of like taking a risk on pers like you know, my outcomes over a longer period of time, you know, kind of outside his. So I mean that's one aspect of you know risk, Like you know, there's other ways of looking at risk. You know, if you work at stuff like there's you know, it's readything safer, but.
Like you know, there's still huge upside.
And like look, if you look at the people who worked at Cursor or Anthroptig, they're pretty much retired within a few years. So that kind of technology of risk. I think it's not only just like you know, ambling your money, but there's also like how you live your life.
And I think.
The decisions that you make and traces of your life will you know, have like various risk attached to them and goes back to your earlier point regarding you know, you must pay the tax.
So that's one thing.
And then you ever saying is modern man, you know, it's stuck in a hyper modern, post capitalist whatever you want to call it, like society, Like we're in an extremely you know, priated space. You know, there's all these kind of like structures and superstructures kind of surrounding us. So like, and I think one thing that's kind of been emergent is this form of hyper gammlification.
And this is an essay I wrote on X a while ago.
Last year sometime, is that like every aspect of human existence has kind of formed into a form of gambling.
And you know, we could like say this has always been the case.
You know, like with humans and hunter gatherers trying to you know, like going a hard it's a gamble whatever. And I actually pointed out in another essay, but like with modern society, it's like our apps, the feeds that we're looking at, the you know, the algorithms. It all functions around like big payoffs, but like the limited downside, so everyone's just like frolling. Just pulling of the timeline is very similar to a pulling of a slot machine.
I think that's my design. Like what poll will you get? You know what, like you know, rare video will you get? What? Will you know? Hit your dopamine? So that's one thing.
And I think just because everything is like super striated in like the normal world, you know, you have access to social media and they're just like uncapped upside.
To social media now.
So and this is another essay I wrote, like I think like two weeks ago about eggs and with eggs.
Yeah, like it's changed my life.
I'm assuming it's going to be changing you know, your life as well, like the trajectory that you're on and like, you know, decisions you've taken due to the exposure to X. We met through a friend, you know, a mutual friend on X who I've known for about almost ten years now, A met me in person all through X. So people see that normally see that, and like, I think that's kind of like you know, shifting the largest society or kind of mindset to like if I just make a
funny dance on TikTok, I can change my life. And that's exactly what happened with many many people. You know, hawk To whoever her name is, Halie Welsh, Like he's an example. So I think like this media has kind of like you know, it's conditioning us to think of like, oh, I just need one big hit too, you know, to change my life an instructor some degree.
Yeah, and I think that we've spoken kind of there is a certain negative aspect to it, but I think that there is also something white healthy, which is like risk allows for agency, or to use an older term, courage.
And I think that for a lot of people in the kind of thirty and down, there was this feeling that you know, going through school, going through this kind of series of checks was kind of on a knife edge, right, you had to you know, And I think of like the admissions into school in the US, which has gotten even more ridiculous since I went through ten years ago, where you know, parents are basically micromanaging their children, trying to stack, sort and optimize you know, their GPA achievements
and other things different you know, micro factors so that they can compete in this sorting system, so that they can compete for an internship, so that they can compete for, you know, eventually one of these kind of coveted jobs. And yeah, sure that requires a lot of dedication, a lot of IQ. I'm not going to take that away, but that is fundamentally, I mean, that is a track. There's not much agency allowed. You were checking off an incredible number of boxes, and so yeah, departing from that
brings a risk with it. There is a possibility for great upside as well as downside. But I think that there is an opportunity for agency courage if you want to use an older word. It is really attractive to young men because it's very rare. You're not allowed to make choices in that way, and once you've had that
taste of being kind of out on your own. And I say, this is someone who is self employed and has been in a series of sort of odd, highly unstructured roles, you know, whether it kind of like sales jobs or other sort of industries where that's I mean, that's incredibly attractive to a certain sort of guy, especially if it's been sort of hidden from you. You see what I'm getting at their grit.
Yeah, I think there is a sense of adventure. I think, you know, I know a.
Bunch of people that are like, you know, just you know, buying one way tickets to certain places in the world, picking.
Up random jobs. Yeah, And I'm all for that.
I mean, I'm pro just like, hey, just like figure it out and then obviously time will come where you have actually a quiet results.
And I think it's also.
I don't know, I feel like it's there is an aspect to it that's always been in society, Like I mean, Confucianism is probably, like you know, ancient China is probably like the most extreme example of people you know, just setting exams and wrote tutoring.
So that's one example.
But like even even in like you know, different societies, I think that's been the case, and there's always been on the current of like adventurism. But I don't know, like I think maybe maybe it's more common now.
I'm not sure.
I don't even necessarily know if it's more common, But I can see why guys want it, you know, I can see why that's such an attractive thing. I mean, especially when I think for a lot of guys there's sort of the feeling that they don't have another choice, that it's basically there, you know, if they're going to make it right, it's this kind of internet aphorism goes,
they're going to have to do it themselves. And yeah, I mean, look like I think that's that is a silver lining to what is often presented as a as a cloud, so to speak. So grit to refocus this slightly. We've mentioned before Napoleon. You had an edit out the other day when I was rolling through your timeline that I particularly enjoyed because look, the edit is the art form of the twenty first century, at least so far. And I'm curious, right, how were you drawn to this figure?
You know, what do you like about him? And uh, yeah, why do you keep mentioning it?
Yeah?
I think I'm in awe at what a human being can achieve. And I mean just some of the stories I read about him and understand about him, it's like I'm you're thinking, like, wow, this is this is quite something. And and I think it's kind of like, you know, the whole purpose of myth. You know, there's a whole meme that goes around that says, you know, actually, actually it's real, you are not. I think I kind of speaks to something. And I think this is like, you know,
in vain of that. And I haven't a tweet that, you know, Hitler wanted to be like Napoleon. Napoleon wanted to be like Caesar, season wanted to be like Alexander, and Alexander wanted.
To be like Achilles. And I think it's just that kind of like aspect of hero worship. And I think, like I think these figures.
Having like idolizing, maybe idolizing it is a bit of a strong word. I don't like it, but you know, like looking up and having reverence for people who have achieved things is a good thing.
And I think people.
You know, in our kind of sphere, so to speak, even the a bit outside it.
But I think it's like there.
Is value of like value and achievement in the general sense, like no matter who has done something, you should achieve it, no matter your background, no matter their background or whatever.
Like you know, I think we should you recognize that.
And I think that's like a just common theme of like you know, human nature in love general sense of like, yeah, like what he did was quite extraordinary. And I think this kind of like culture like demonizing quote unquote strength, which you know people use or you know whatever power in another way, I think is like has led to you know, various decays of you know, social norms and structure. I guess, yeah, hopefully that since I mean with Napoleon, it's like he just had like such a large impact
in society that we kind of take for granted. School system, Margarine use it. Yeah, like the various legal aspects, you know, modern fighting and army structure. I mean, there's just so much.
French cooking, right, he's sort of in a weird way dictated the structure of a French kitchen anyway.
Sorry, oh yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, military. Yeah. And I and I think like.
It is good to kind of like call these people up in Reverends and I think that it's like undercurrent of culture that's just like very anti that.
So yeah, yeah, I mean one hundred percent. Man, I think that there's a couple there's a couple of aspects to it. I'm glad you brought up hero worship because one of my favorite books ever is Thomas Carlyle's on Heroes, hero Worship, and the Heroic and History. I think I've got that title right. He's Victorian, so all the titles are like five times longer than they should be, but he basically talks about exactly that. He's like, look, hero
worship is the basis of civilization. You have you know, Caesar crying in the temple looking at a bust of Alexander Napoleon, you know, living in conscious imitation of those two men. You know, Washington, I realized you're a breat might be a source of source of OBJ but doing a similar thing looking at Cincinnatus and then Lee himself right, considering that he was a he thought himself a failure
in relation to Washington. But point is, each one of these men had that sort of conscious imitation, and you know, the denigration of the great man his theory of history. Funny enough, a line from Carlisle himself is I think a certain part of it is just like civilizational sour grapes, which is like, well, I'm not anything like that, and I don't want to feel bad, so you're not allowed
to like them. But I mean another part of it is this like deliberate focusing on the other kind of more venial aspects of it, like the Napoleon movie where it's like, well, we're not really interested in Napoleon as a great general, We're interested in how much of a simp he was? Now is that true? Discussion for another day? Or Alexander right, well, Alexander may have conquered the world,
but did you know that he was gay? He was a gay alcoholic And it's like, well, I mean, okay, maybe man, but like I don't care about Genghis Khan because he was nice to his mom. You know, he changed the world. That's the interesting thing. That's the way that he sort of remade history. And I think a lot of those discussions are in bad faith. A lot of those people don't seem to be actually concerned with the history of it. It is much more I want to tear down something great or I want to minimize
something great. We can psychologize as to why, but I know exactly what you're talking about, and it's why I'm always interested in like a guy's favorite historical figures, his heroes, because it does sort of tell you a lot about a man.
Yeah.
I mean, so it's probably has been kind of biased to Napoleon, and yeah, I totally agree with all that.
I think is very much due to you know, it's downstream of.
Like many bad things, you French Enlightenment and you know, the Marxist kind of discourse of.
Class warfare. I think of the course it not does.
I mean, you know, I don't really like to prescribe things as good a bad in history, but that's that's my kind of take on that.
Yeah, sure thing. Man. Uh So, as we sort of you bring this bring this to a close, if you could, could you sort of give sort of the pitch right the kind of you know, action items because I look at my demos and there's a lot of guys in you know, our age demo to a little bit younger and you know, look, I get it, man, you're not
you're not a counselor. I'm not asking you for for life advice, but like, what's the practical conclusion to this, right Where is there sort of an opportunity for that decisive action even in the face of risk.
Yeah, that's a interesting ask.
I would like to kind of say that, you know, I mean when I kind of give advice, I always trying to give it in terms of in the lens of like this is why I did and this.
Is why I did it.
So yeah, I would say, like, try to seek out the you know, less trodden path, whether that's risky or not. You know, that's a whatever to decide. And then I would say, like, think think of your life. And this isn't some advice I read and it really stuck with me, is think of your life in terms of third So the first third of your life should be in like education,
you should be learning. And that's why I've done I've I chose a career path that would optimize me for like learning more than you know, like.
A stable check salary.
That's one thing, like try and learn as much as you can in you know, we're in that first third, and then in the second third of your life, you should be you know doing like public work. So you know, in the past when this feat of advice was rare, it was like you know, getting involved in local politics, you know, putting your thoughts out there, being a public figure in some sense of the world, trying to you know,
improve the world, whatever that means. And then in the third act of your life, you should kind of like you know, retreat from the public and you know try to like you know, pass on all these kinds of things. So that that's a kind of like long arc of life I'm kind of taking. I'm entering probably my second arc. I've already kind of built up following on Twitter. You know, I'm like I have you know, I've got some experiences, I've got some failures under my belt, and yeah, I
wouldn't be afraid of failure. I would take a failure as a positive. In the gym, when you hit failure, like that's an achievement, you know, like you've gone to failure. So I was like to think in that kind of mindset, it's like, Okay, cool, you've learned something. And then when it comes to prescribing action.
It's like action itself provides information.
So if you if you're going to do something, you know, action is one way to kind of like you know, deliver that outcome where you can actually can learn.
Those are my kind of takeaways.
It's like, yeah, put yourself out there, you know, don't be afraid to like experiment risk.
And then the other thing I would say is like.
When a man who becomes too kind of carried away with this kind of life, don't forget that, like, you know, you're also you know, you also have a duty to like have a family in a sense, have a family, you know, get married, have kids.
You know.
Obviously some people you know don't want to do that, but like that's the way I would like, you know, I'll tell everyone. I'll everyone I meet, Like, I tell
them start posting on Twitter more. And I also tell them, like, if they're over twenty five, start looking to sell down and start taking that kind of like aspect seriously, because it takes a while to get married, you know, finding the right person, takes time, getting them, making sure they're the right person, make sure the family is a good family, and like you know, that impacts your future children. You shouldn't really get married to have children in my opinion.
But I think that's like a huge part of life and advice that people kind of like you know over or Robert under index On and like kind of forget. So I think, you know, like try to try to try to try to think in those senses. And then one of the reasons why I use the spore motif and I use these momentum more kind of images is because like it's extremely short.
You know, if you only have three arcs to your life, like you know that that's like a movie be over in a blip.
I remember when I was very young stign on Twitter or whatever, and you know some of the other podcasts have been on you know, it's like those are years ago and you know time ha sparned extremely quick.
So those would be my kind of like you know, passing pieces of advice.
And then I think, do you have a piece of advice I have is like if you're smart, like you know, saying things will generally work out for you.
You know, if you're like exposed to write, you influences. So yeah, hopefully, hopefully that helps.
Oh no, definitely, man, it was super helpful. So where can people find you if they're interested in you and your ideas?
Tuta is my main habitat.
Well, sure thing those will all be linked down in the description. I appreciate it man, and everyone at home, keep your head up. I can't last forever. Good night,