Hey everybody, today I am excited to have an old friend of
mine, Tim Urban, on the show. He's a brilliant mind behind the
popular blog Wait But Why where he breaks down complex topics in
a thoughtful and extremely entertaining way.
In 2019, Tim embarked on an ambitious project called The
Story of Us. The goal of the project was to
explain why it seemed like everybody was losing their
minds, despite the fact that technology was amazing and
everything seemed to be going great.
This eventually evolved into his first book.
What's our problem? A self help.
Book for societies and it was released in 2023.
Now the book digs into the psychology behind tribalism and
in Group out group hatred. Tim painstakingly explains these
mechanisms using real world present day examples from both
ends of the political spectrum. Now, as you can imagine, he got
cancelled by everybody for it. Now Tim's writing style, it has
depth, width, and accessibility. It has earned him praise from
world leaders, CEO's of some of the largest companies in the
world, and millions of everyday readers alike.
His work is at the intersection of psychology, politics,
science, and technology, always with an eye toward making the
complex feel more understandable.
Today we talk about the psychological roots of
tribalism, what it feels like to start hating an out group
without realizing it, and how you can hopefully stop.
We look at how our minds can become locked inside of idea
prisons and what the simple way out of those idea prisons is.
We disagree briefly on how AI might make our mental health
problems better or worse, what Tim has learned as a new parent,
and we get a sneak peek of his upcoming book on the history of
the universe. That's right, it's only a book
on the history of the universe. So sit back, enjoy, draw some
stick figures, and try not to hate the out group so much.
This is Tim Urban. It's the Subtle Art of Not
Giving a Fuck podcast with your host, Mark Manson.
Tim, it's so good to have you here, dude.
Yeah. It's it's fun to hang in this
weird environment here. It's been a long time.
We've known each other a long time.
One of the things in my personal life I've started doing, which
has been great. One of my favorite things to ask
people now is over the last five years, what are the biggest
things you've changed your mind about?
And I've noticed that like if I meet somebody new and they can't
really answer that question or they seem to like be taken aback
by it, to me, that's kind of like a signal that they're not,
they're probably like tribally minded, you know, whatever their
tribe is. The other thing I especially
this last election cycle, because I, I have both
Republicans and Democrats in my family and things get heated.
I just started asking people. I'm like.
What are three? Things you disagree with your
own party about. And again, if they can't really
come up with anything, then I just, I know not to listen to
them well. What you know is that they are
in a little idea prison and even just calling yourself a Democrat
or a Republican or I, I think that is.
Like why would you do that? What?
I want to tell people is you're, you're, you're like cooler than
this, you're better than this. Like you're going to allow what
I, I think I want people to think of the Democrats or
Republicans as like Coke and Pepsi or Verizon and you know,
Amazon, like you're going to let some like big lane corporation
basically hijack your identity and like, say we own we we own
it now. So once you're a Democrat, when
the Democrats start doing something that deep down, you
know, your principles would disagree with, you have to
violate your own principles or violate you this identity you've
given yourself. So you're in kind of like a noun
prison. You know, you put yourself in
this, this idea prison and that's when you're in a prison,
you can't go anywhere, right? Where do you disagree with your
party? Well, I'm in the prison, so no
where, where, how how have you changed your mind?
Well, I'm stuck. I'm in, I'm I've been just been
sitting in this jail cell. So I haven't changed my mind.
I haven't gone anywhere. Well, well, you, you are also
choosing how to delude yourself. It, it reminds me of sports
teams. You know, it's like when you
watch your favorite sports teams and your team obviously commits
a foul or a penalty. Like you scream at the ref, like
the refs the problem, right? But but like, if you're watching
A-Team, you don't care about, you're like, oh, yeah, obviously
that's a foul or a penalty. And I feel like a lot of
Americans especially identify with a political party the way
they identify with the sports team and they and they blame the
refs instead of their own team when a foul's committed more
often than not. And you'll notice that they they
have a completely different reaction to the same foul when
it's one party versus the other. Oh, absolutely.
I mean, it's so obvious the, the IT it rank hypocrisy.
And again, with sports, you're supposed to be a hypocrite.
It's OK. And sports is.
Functions all the time. We all like sports.
Tribalism. Great.
When you cheer, you put your arms up like you just want a
tribal battle when your thing wins and you go like this to
protect your head when your team loses.
I mean, it's great. It's it's play.
It's play tribalism, politics is shitty because it matters and it
affects, you know, it affects real things and and and and the
hypocrisy. It's like that's another thing
you can do is just just test your just just is a simple
litmus test to test your hypocrisy, which is what how
would I feel if the other team were doing this, whether it's
something good or bad? How would I feel this for the
other team? And if it was like, well, in
your head kind of explodes, you have a, you're not thinking
straight. Yeah.
Speaking of which, what have you changed your mind about in the
last, say, three to five years? What are some of the biggest
things that you've changed your mind about?
There's some like very factual things like nuclear energy.
I'm like, I thought it was bad. Now I think it's extremely good,
but in like a more philosophical way.
Five years ago, maybe more like 8, but I, I was in the process
five years ago of I, I was a, I'm a Democrat and also I'm an
atheist and you know, right wing religious people are stupid and
bad, right? That that was maybe not five
years ago. There's a little longer ago, but
20/12/2015 I was, I was in that zone.
I grew up in that zone and I was just and I have like I look at
that person right now, I'm like, Oh God, you are a lost like you
are you are a little boy. You are a little boy with that
attitude like so a few things is I I was in the zone where I saw
blue good, red bad, and that's your prior that's at the very
base. Now.
Maybe blue does something bad, but it's for a higher thing or
because, or then you as everyone does whatever, but and red, you
know, does something good, but they have some bad.
If that's in the base, every single thing can can always fit
into that. You know, you can so coming out
of that, just like releasing again, realizing this prison has
I have the key. Oh, Oh my God, you know, and
then you come out and it's not that I'm now like, well, do blue
bad, red good. It's that I I just once I came
out of that, I realized how much of A prison I was in.
So things like, I also was like, you know, religion bad.
And I'm just like, first of all, that is so arrogant to have
this, this religion is this thing that's been going on.
You know, where I was thinking mostly in Christianity, in this
case, 2000 years of like trial and error and like it's maybe
there for both good and bad reasons.
Maybe there is something really important about this for our
species. And I, I think now I've come to
think there's a lot of wisdom in religion.
And it's also a very it can be it it, it, it, it's we're all
we're a religious species. And so when we don't have a
religion that's tested for 2000 years of refinements, we end up
with a new religion, maybe a political religion is just
worse. So a lot of these things that
that guy was so sure about. And now I'm just much more kind
of like open about like in as far as atheism itself.
Regardless, I still, I'm not, I'm not a Christian or a Muslim
or a religious Jew. I'm not, I don't believe in
those books, but I also had stopped being a staunch atheist
in that what I would have said as a staunch asiat is there's no
creator. There's, there's, there's this
is, you know, everything is, you know how we think, you know, the
spontaneous generation of life on this planet.
And then it evolved through evolution to today.
Now I believe in evolution. I believe in this.
The things we've proven, the science.
But how about all the things we haven't proven?
The science. We don't know how life started.
It could have been planted here by another species, an alien
species. It could, we could be in a big
computer simulation and just starting to have those things
again. It humbles you and it makes you
realize like that atheist was so sure about a bunch of things
that he, he was sure in a way that he was criticized a
religious person for being sure that, you know, Adam and Eve
existed and that the flood is why the Grand Canyon has
seashell fossils on it. But the atheist Tim was just as
sure about that. There's none, nothing, you know.
And so now I would call myself like very firmly agnostic.
So a lot of these, the theme in a lot of these is I'm less sure
than I was and much less likely to just like dismiss.
Likewise. Now coming out of not being
associate, I don't want to identify with the left at all
anymore, but I also don't want to identify with the right
because I feel like it's so I, I, I also likewise because some
people, I think if you're not fully, you come out of the
prison, but you're still in that mindset, you'll go fling to the
other side and now suddenly you're a full red pill.
Do you know the left is the problem?
I don't, I don't think that either.
I think there's probably a lot of wisdom and progressivism and
there's a lot of wisdom and conservatism and both of these
parties suck and a lot, there's a hypocrisy on both sides, but
underneath that, there's actually very important
principles that need to but against each other.
So I, you know, a staunch partisan would call me like an
insufferable, you know, enlightened centrist.
But I would say both sides, what they used to call them, Yeah,
but. Both sides, both sides.
And I think I think it's misinterpreting because a
centrist or both sides of them is someone who says that like
these, the parties are equally right about each issue.
You know, there's somewhere in the middle.
That's not what I think. I think maybe the right is way
more right about certain things. Left is way more right about
other things. It's that I, I'm on the side of
the people who don't identify with any party who said that
each of these issues is like a complex puzzle that needs like
an endless debate and, and testing and experimentation and
balancing many different values of compromise.
That doesn't say anything about where I am on left to right on
any issue. It's not a horizontal
distinction. It's what I would say is like a
vertical distinction. And that's mistaken.
Bipartisan people who say you're either left or right as both
sides ISM as centrism because they only seen this horizontal
axis. If you're not left to right.
You must be this annoying person in this who wants to say they're
in the center that I don't. That's not misinterpreting when
I when I am. Yes, we are the tribe of no
tribe. I try to be and by the way, then
you can get sucked into you can get sucked into the no tribe
tribe becoming quite tribal. You know, you have to constantly
watch it. But yeah, I also looked.
I always, you know, I always respect someone who I see
disagree with their own in Group.
And when I say their own in Group, I don't mean someone who
like used to be on the left and they're criticizing the left now
is their is their thing because the left is now they're out
group. I'm talking about the people who
are like totally agreeing with them about what they're saying
this week and then totally disagreeing with those people.
That's like that shows someone I'm like, this person is truly
rogue. They're not like afraid.
They're they're not trying to appease, you know, they're not
in any prison. I mean, it's hard to find.
I'm not sure I've fully gotten there.
It's like hard to the people who really are, you know, love
what's our problem? Like it's hard to fully, you
know, disagree with them on something.
You wrote this book kind of at the fever pitch of just
political misery in the country. I don't know about you, but like
I I personally feel like this last election cycle seemed less.
I don't know. Apocalyptic than previous ones
like I, I, it could just be me, but I feel like we're, we've
like we peaked maybe 3 or 4 years ago and we're like on the
downhill side. Do you agree with that?
And if so, do you want to take credit for it?
If I, if I could take credit for that, I would be like demanding
a Nobel. Nobel, right?
But. If so, like why do you think
that's happened? I'm curious so if.
If you look at like history, not one of the things I, I think one
of the things that helps a lot understanding the current moment
is just looking at history because you start to see
patterns and you're like, oh, we're doing that thing from the
50s, we're doing that now. Like the Red Scare in the early
50s has a lot in common with what happened in the last five
years. It was different, you know, the
the Mad Lib had different things in the blanks, but the idea was
kind of a tribal wave sweeps over the country.
And when it happens, it's like what you'll see is when you're
not in it, it almost you forget how scary it can be in a moment
when it becomes really tribal, You suddenly are like, you know,
it's hard to even have a you're, you're you know, with three,
four friends at dinner and you're suddenly like, where are
you? Like are, are we, are you one of
them? Or like, are you going to judge
me or like, are we allowed to still?
And even small little things, everyone starts to get kind of
scared and then forget like a classroom, you know, one person
in that moment can start really being like a bully.
That's, you know, that that's that's emphasizing the current
tribal craze and everyone else in the classroom would be really
scared and start to like jump on that bandwagon.
And it's a reminder that we can be a very scary species.
You know, you hear about the, the, the most extreme example
always is everything is, you know, Nazis, Holocaust and you
hear about, you know, these, these people in, you know,
Poland who would turn in their Jewish neighbors, who they known
for 30 years and they've been friends and they, they would,
they would quietly turn them into the, you know, and these
awful stories and, and, and you start to, but I, I understand
why, you know, in this moment when things are really when that
fear kicks in, basically when, when tribe, when, when tribalism
is in the air in a really intense way and the stakes feel
really high. It's like pheromones, wolf
pheromones. And the primitive mind wakes up
and get into a crazy zone that completely takes over your
brain. And you get into this zone where
it's like you can't suddenly you can't trust anyone.
And then it's like, you know, so the, the, the less extreme
example is like the early 50s with, you know, the Red Scare
and you have, you know, anyone who even gets, you know, you
can, you know, it's like a witch hunt.
Actual Salem witches in the same thing.
It's like once you know that someone being accused of being a
witch might actually let lead to their execution, everyone gets
really scared and now you know someone might your friend, you
think it was your friend might accuse you so that they don't
get accused of being a witch and it becomes a very and that
that's how these crazy things kept the Salem witch trials
wasn't like it wasn't like that was just the times it was a
crazy thing that happened and then stopped.
The, the Red Scare in the 50s was a crazy thing that happened
and then it stopped and then sanity returned.
And I think that the, the 2020, you know, wokeness thing was a
crazy thing that happened. And I think at some point,
hopefully it will be something totally in the past.
And I think it's again to bring back your, you become more aware
of your own digging around. You can become more aware of
your own, you know, echo chambers while you also, I think
the society itself can kind of like, if it has been too long
since that happened, the society can get caught off guard.
And I think that once it now, I think now society starts to be
more self aware about that was crazy.
And now when you see signs of it, now you're less likely to
fall into it and more likely to be like, no, we're we don't do
that anymore. We're done with that.
And you see the corporations, you know, quietly reversing
policies that were insane. So I feel like we are on the
other side of the specific things that happened.
We're we're, you know, they're still good.
Look, there's still a huge fight that's going to be put up with
any institution's policies that were changed, admin people that
were turned over. I mean, that has that takes a
while. That gets into the vital organs
of a lot of institutions. That's going to be a long,
painful process to try to return to kind of the basic values that
those institutions used to have. But what worries me is that, you
know, why did this happen right now in the 50s?
It happened because, you know, it was on the heels of war,
which is kind of a tribal time. And there was a genuine fear of
the of communism, right? It was like this could this was
an existential threat. And when I'm like, why did this
happen now? And I feel like it's very tied
to social media. And this new force that's in
there in the world that, you know, had a huge impact scares
them. You know, the media is scared of
social media. Companies are scared of social
media and you empower a lot of the most tribally crazed people
who want attention, want to do damage, want to sensationalize
things, want to punish people. Those people have a lot more
power right now than they did 15 years ago.
Like they, they actually, you know, one of those people can
get a big following and suddenly, you know, scare a lot
of institutions into getting on their bad side.
So my, my worry is that like, you know, that the root causes
might still be there and that maybe it's not wokeness, that
that is the thing. Maybe it's a another thing comes
along, you know, maybe it's right wing, hardcore right wing,
you know, white supremacy, which is of course, the thing that I
spent years saying this is overblown by by what people Now
I'm like, well, this thing, you know, has now been trained to
actually be more of a real white identity by this thing.
And it it could right? Who knows?
I know I'm not saying that's what will happen.
I'm saying I just think that the we might be still in a
vulnerable situation in our society.
Yeah, and it's it's hard to. It's also hard to separate just
like how unique the, the COVID era was and like all of the
second and 3rd order effects that, you know, you can't
really, it's hard to know what is an actual part of cultural
evolution and what is just kind of this freakish happenstance
thing. You know, I, I've had a bit of a
pet theory. I'm sure I'm not the first
person or the only person who's who's thought of this.
But like when you look at the history of media, anytime
there's like a major technological revolution in in
media itself and like how information is disseminated
across society, you generally see like massive political
upheaval immediately after. So like when the printing press
is invented, you get the Reformation a few decades later,
and that creates 100 years of war across Europe and results in
a lot of, you know, the Enlightenment and all sorts of
other things. When TV and radio come along,
you get a lot of the fascism and communism of the 20th century.
And part of me thinks that, you know, with the Internet and
social media, it's probably inevitable that like, there's
this reconfiguring of social identity that has to happen
along these like new railways of information.
And, and I also think like it probably just takes a generation
or two to develop the antibodies.
You know, it's like everything that's in your book, what's our
problem? It it like all of that stuff is
probably going to be really obvious to our kids or our
grandkids. Like they're going to look at
that book and they'll be like, well, yeah, no shit.
Like you can't just believe anything that's posted on
Instagram. And but it it like it takes us
years of falling for it and then realizing that you can't fall
for it. And seeing the repercussions
happen over and over again, you know, it's kind of like the
first TV marketing in the first, the first radio propaganda in
the early 20th century was like wildly successful, like
massively successful. There's all these stories of
like the Orson Welles alien invasion radio story and like
thousands of people are like running out of their houses
thinking that it's real. You know, it's, it's laughable
from our point of view today because we're just so jaded by
an entire lifetime of listening to bullshit on the radio and,
and on TV. I I think it's like when a
mediums new, we haven't like developed that jadedness yet.
And because we're not jaded enough, we're more susceptible
like it's easier for, I guess, tribal, sinister and tribal
narratives to, to reach people and and seduce them because they
they haven't developed that the antibodies to it yet.
Yeah, it's like it's like, you know, and and certain, you know,
companies can jump in and get really, really, really rich
during the inoculated phase. Yeah, the the non that, that the
pre inoculated phase like I just think about also like think
about cigarette companies. They made a killing in a window
when they when they really could.
And then awareness spread, laws changed.
We built kind of antibodies to protect the protect ourselves
around for that from that thing. And and now they make way less
of a killing, at least in the US.
Yeah, I mean, it's, it's one of the things, it's funny, my wife
and I, we went back and started watching Mad Men again and one
of the things I didn't fucking still.
Amazing show, by the way. One of the things that I didn't
put together the first time I saw it.
I, I saw it for the first time maybe 1215 years ago.
Watching it now as somebody who's like a lot more well
informed about advertising and U.S. history and business cycles
and stuff. It's there's like this
realization that it Mad Men takes place in the 50s and 60s
when television is new and like people have literally never seen
a television commercial before. And so you could literally just
put anything on the screen and people would want to buy it.
And so it's like, no wonder Don Draper was making a fucking
killing sitting around drinking whiskey all day.
Like it's there's just this low hanging fruit that comes with a
new medium and it comes from with advertising.
It comes with building a business or marketing.
It comes with people like you and I building audiences.
And then it it also comes with with like political movements,
right? Like it's people are most
susceptible when there's some like newfangled technology that
that nobody's like. Everybody's wide eyed and has no
idea what to expect. It's like it, it, it's, it
almost reminds me of just like an evolution when you have like,
I don't know, some event, some weather change, you know, to the
climate, like this predator dies off and now there's this power
vacuum and this other predator comes in this, this species
thrives. It gets too big and blah, blah.
And all these things happen. And then it eventually settles
into a new, like interlocked into the equilibrium.
It's hard to change. And so that happens rarely in,
in, in evolutionary history. But here it's like a new thing
drops into society. There's a, it, it, you know,
another example is the Iron Age. You know, iron came around and
suddenly people who were kind of in the outskirts of society
could make weapons in a way they couldn't before.
And they, the, the, the, the cities lost their advantage And
that and it, and it just, it changed all kinds of, you know,
geopolitical things back then. So you have social media drops
in and in the Internet and it's almost a society takes a while
to even figure out that that where the new opportunities are,
where the power vacuum suddenly are, who suddenly has way more
power than they ever did before and who has less power.
And so like, I think that in in in a world like that, you see a
lot of things where like media, the media model of trying to be
neutral and be professional doesn't work so well in this new
environment. And so somebody like Fox News
catches on to that quicker than others, gets huge.
And then all these other things copying before, you know, New
York Times is acting like Fox News, right?
They're all acting like, like Fox News, right?
And so it's like the, the, the, the, there's like a new, there
basically is an environmental shift.
And now in the new environment is going to reward different
things and, and empower different things.
And, and you see all, everyone reacts to it, you know, it's
like everyone reacts to it to try to stay successful, to stay
afloat, to survive. And then you see people and
their behavior changing cause new behavior is rewarded.
And there's a new thing, which is followers on social media and
that becomes this new shiny thing.
You know, it's not just money. That's one thing.
There's a new way to get status with this number and its
attention and status. So suddenly all these primitive
minds become set for this thing. And then, so how do you, you
know, and then the algorithms are sitting there and they're
trying to maximize attention in this new thing.
And so the algorithms now favor a certain, you know, a certain
way to get, you know, certain behavior gets more followers and
you can just see this whole new environment configured.
The people who get there first get really rich.
You know, when you if you can notice the changes in the
environment, you can capitalize on attention, you know, wealth,
whatever. And then it kind of starts to
crystallize into a new thing. And then I think like you're
talking about, I think then there starts to be a reflection
on wait, this is hurting people. Wait, maybe 13 year old girls on
Instagram isn't good. You have something like John
Height's book that just came out, You know, the ancient,
ancient generation you have. And then you start start to see,
you know, like surgeon, you know, his book is like a, you
know, going to lead to hopefully like a surgeon general's warning
about cigarettes type thing where you start to have, you
know, rules and parents don't allow this anymore.
And you can look back and say, I can't believe the kids were
allowed on Instagram. At some point it's going to
sound like kids in child labor or child prostitute.
There's crazy things from the past you hear about.
And it's going to be like, wow. And so the antibodies then form
and we develop a healthier way to we start to figure out where
what the harm is in these in this thing.
We tweak things to make it healthy.
Now, what's scary is that if this happens once a century,
it's like, OK, there's a rough 20 years and then we figure it
out and then we kind of develop a healthier thing with this.
And there's laws and there's norms that, you know,
understanding that comes around. What's scary is how is the rate
of change of speeds up, right? Because AI is probably.
Going to do this again. AI and who knows when you start
having the VR starts getting better and better and before you
know what, everyone has one of these things like a visor
glasses that we're wearing. AI is, you know, I feel like the
ChatGPT in these things right now is like is like the really
old Internet where it's like this new thing and it's like the
OR like the really, really beginning Twitter when you just
like you post, there's no retweet button.
There's no like button. It's just kind of like, you
know, our old, old Facebook feels like it's very early and
it's like they haven't even figured out how to make it
addictive yet. That hasn't even started yet,
you know, and I'm like, that's going to be a whole cycle.
And there's going to be a whole new set of, you know, some
people, some people who can see now where it's going to get
really rich and get it, you know, really powerful.
And then others will win. And then everyone will then,
then the mainstream will really, really, you know, conform to
this new thing. And then we'll start to figure
out what, oh, wait, this is bad. But at that point, AI is getting
smarter and smarter really quickly.
It's like, but if you don't have time to do the antibodies phase
and new changes are happening, it's a little scary.
It gets very chaotic. Yeah, yeah, I've I've no idea
where any of this is heading. This episode is brought to you
by Fuel. Ever feel like you're stuck in a
battle between your growling stomach and a pack schedule?
Meet your new secret weapon, Fuel.
No, it's not alien food. It's Fuel HUEL, the world's
complete nutrition brand trusted by millions.
Picture this. You're rushing out the door, you
have no time for breakfast, and you're already dreading the sad
vending machine lunch. But wait, a Fuel ready to drink
meal is in your fridge ready to save the day.
It's like having a personal nutritionist and a chef all in a
plastic bottle, minus a tiny chef hat, which would go right
here. Packed with 27 vitamins and
minerals and up to 35 grams of protein in a fuel black
addition, it's like a superhero Cape for your insides.
I don't even know what that means, but fuck it, it's in the
ad Reed. We've got chocolate and vanilla
flavors that feel like a milkshake with a degree in
nutrition. And no, it's not pricey either.
These complete meals are under 5 bucks each.
They're cheaper and way better than that sad salad that you
were eye before. Go to huell.com now.
And as a bonus for being one of my awesome listeners, if you use
the code IDGAF, you'll get 15% off your first order plus a free
gift. That's 15% off plus a free gift
if you use the code IDGAF at. Huell.com don't let the hunger
win. People fight it with Huell it
is. The AI thing is super
interesting too, because I feel like it, you know, one of the
issues, especially in the social media era, but also kind of
going back into the more conventional media era as well
as like is the information fragmentation, as you put it,
echo chambers, right? Like there's just some certain
topics or certain sets of data or like just not included in
various narratives for political reasons.
And in the social media era, people actually just get caught
in these little bubbles of hearing the same 3 or 4 things
over and over again because that's what the algorithm feeds
them. I feel like AI, you know, the
potential of AI is that it, it, it commoditizes all information
universally. Like everything is just always
there for everybody and all context and relevance can be
provided, you know, in each situation.
So there, there's in a way it can like I feel like it could
solve a lot of the informational side of things.
But then it makes me wonder, I'm like, if you, if everybody just
has all the same information all the time, it might actually make
us, it might actually drive us like more in the tribalism
because then that's really the only thing we're going to have
left is like, you can't, you can't argue over the facts
anymore because the AI is figured that out.
So we're just going to argue over our subjective moral
principles, which are, you know, essentially non resolvable and
and we'll just be like more entrenched than ever before.
It's. A little.
It's a little like, you know, when I, you know, against 22
year old Tim would have been like my if I had a genie, I
would say all religion is gone and now I would go to that guy
and think, no, don't. Be careful what you wish for,
right? Be careful what you wish for
because we were a religious species, and we're going to find
other religions that you might realize are not tested and new
and really, really, really bad and leading, you know, the kind
of religion that can lead to hundreds of millions of people
being murdered. And it's the same thing here
where it's like you're saying kind of like, oh, this tribalism
sucks. We wish if only we could just
all get on the same page and have facts, you know?
You know, no more, you know, fighting about facts.
And it's like, be careful what you wish for because we're a
tribal species, and we'll find tribalism elsewhere.
And like, where is that? It's almost like you're not
going to eradicate tribalism. How can we?
You know, of course, the classic example of what we would love is
an alien attack. And then we're all tribal in the
best possible way, which is earthlings, you know, humans.
I love you because you're another human.
OK, It's not, it's still a childish tribalism, but it's,
it's it's productive and it's nice and for everyone.
But then you course you have an alien attack, which is its own
shitty thing, But we're not going to have that probably.
And and so the question is, you know, yes, does it turn into,
well, first of all, the question is if is it better if we're
arguing about moral principles and like trying to find the
edges of what's, is that worse or better than arguing about
facts? Like maybe it's maybe it leads
to more like hardcore, like political violence in a way.
But maybe also it's more productive because we're
actually arguing about things that need arguments to happen
versus things that are just, we shouldn't even be arguing about
this if we were just not being deceived in two different
directions. Yeah.
You know, I've just been like, this is kind of been my where my
brain has been a lot lately is just thinking about it.
If, if information becomes universal and commoditized, like
free, essentially, like there's, there's most ambiguities
removed, most misinterpretation is removed.
Anything that's knowable is available, like typing a couple
sentences and what, what, like what effect does that have on us
socially, politically, psychologically?
Because I, I, I feel like when you remove one scarcity, you,
you create another one. And I feel like if you remove
the informational scarcity, like if we're no longer are debating
over what exactly is the wealth inequality or what exactly is a,
you know, were these tax cuts stimulative or not?
You know, once you remove those debates now, now you're getting
purely into the like philosophical foundational
equality versus freedom, collectivism versus
individualism, like, and those don't really have resolution.
But but maybe, but maybe, I mean, it's, I feel like that's
what politics is supposed to be, right?
If you think about like what the Greeks thought about politics,
like what were they doing on the Acropolis?
Like they weren't, they were probably doing this kind of
really core things. And I feel like that is how a
society, the best way for a society to grow and evolve.
What's nice about democracy is that it has a solution, which is
that there's not like a king and we have to all convince the
king. It's like the country would be
in the mood for more individualism, will be sick of
looking at all the stats and will vote for that.
And then it'll go too far a little bit.
And then we'll the the country is a certain part of the country
will feel like, you know, left out and they'll be a rebellion
and they'll be a vote for more collectivism and and it will
kind of evolve like a shape shifting thing that meets the
needs of the moment. I mean that that to me is it
sounds idyllic. I'm sure.
Of course it comes along with a lot of other things, but I feel
like that's how you actually, what you want is democracy to
express the will of the people, to serve the will of the people
all the time. And what we'd like is if we're
on the same page about facts and what we're and then, you know,
you have these philosophies butting against each other and
then you know it, that is actually going to get to the
best will of the people possible.
Versus here, if people are on the wrong page about facts, they
think they're having a philosophical voting for their
philosophies, but they're actually not because they've
been misinformed. So they think that, you know,
something is 10 times worse than it is and they're going to vote
now to fix that when it actually is not that that's not the
problem. So it feels in a way like it's
better. And then you have right now, you
have actually like the media and a lot of big social media
accounts. Their their game is in
misinforming you like making you.
Feel 100%. My, my, my, my aunt is glued to
MSNBC everyday and she sends me like, you know, we need to move
out of the country, stuff like that.
They have that, that, that, that, that is a company, MSNBC,
whose business model is making people like her feel as extreme
as possible about stuff and believe things are as extreme as
possible. So her vote is not going to be
accurately like linked aligned with her actual will because.
Right. So, yeah.
I, I, I. Yeah.
Yeah, the way you describe it sounds much nicer than the way
it sounds sounded in my head. So maybe you're giving me some
hope. But yeah, it it is.
It is the, the, the, the informational thing is, is
interesting. I don't know, like I, I feel
like when you remove the, the informational games or like the,
the, the pursuit of facts and truth in that for the majority
of the population and it's just kind of like handed to us by AI.
That kind of all that leaves is status games for us to play in.
And and I don't know that like concerns me.
Yeah, I I think that tribalism will always creep in.
Nasty base tribalism will always find a way to creep in.
I think even that goes in waves. Like the country is generally
has like a higher amount of it happening for a few years and
then it it comes down. I also wrote it in my book about
how one of the things in like the 50s is, you know, it seems
like a very untribal time politically.
You know, the parties were very mixed.
They didn't, it wasn't like that.
It was, but I but actually try the same quantity of tribalism
was there. It was just that it was
distributed in like different tiers.
SO1 tier was US versus Soviet Union, Oregon, Hitler before
that. And that takes a bunch of
energy. A bunch of people's minds are
just fixated on that. That's where their head is.
Other people's were like, no, like Republicans versus
Democrats, whether in the state or in the country.
And that's where their head was. And then as some other people
were the, there are Democrats, you know who the thing they hate
the most is the other Democrats who are the other faction, who
are actually much more because it was much more mixed to the
factions themselves hated each other.
And what you have is the the the the big high level tribalism,
the biggest US versus the biggest them is a uniting force
below it make it chills out the things below because it like,
well, we also we're at least we're together with this thing.
And then the lower ones, the the fighting there simmers the
national one. You don't want the national one
goes too far. You start to, you know, just the
xenophobia goes out of control and you want to you know, you
dehumanize the other part of the world when you hate each other
so much. Suddenly, you know, you almost
want to, you know, you, you know, part of the left felt, you
know, on more on the side of the Soviets than they did on the
than they did with the riot or whatever.
And I think that all of that kind of that the, the three
tiers being distributed evenly. Like I think it's nice because
it simmers it on all levels. It keeps it from.
And what happened since then is the national threat went away.
the US stopped having a serious existential threat outside its
borders and the factions went away because within the party,
the lowest level, because the parties purified.
So all the progressives went over here, all the conservatives
went over here. And then you have the media.
And so there's this one thing now, red versus blue, this
middle one was the only one left in the media and flames that and
suddenly becomes this crazy thing when people stop caring
about local politics. All these kind of kooky local
politics people I feel like are all, have all had their minds
channeled into this national thing, which they can't, which
doesn't even affect their lives nearly as much as the local
politics. It's concentrated into this one
tier and that is bad. That's an interesting way to
look at it. It's because, yeah, it does seem
like there's a kind of a tribalism is constant conflict
itself is kind of constant, but it can be distributed in
different amounts across different layers, as you call it
it it. Makes me think.
You know, I lived in Latin America for a while and my
wife's Brazilian and one of the things that I found really
interesting is that there have been almost no wars in South
America. And it's primarily due to
geography. And it like reading, reading up
on some of the history of some of the countries down there.
There's been so much internal political conflict, like so many
coups, assassinations, revolutions, like mass murders,
civil wars in every single country down there.
Yet they've they like have, I don't think they've never fought
each other in like over 150 years.
And part of me wonders if it's just like when you can't turn
that aggression outward, you find somebody inward to face it
towards and and it's it's. Did you say the opposite about
the Middle East, where whenever Israel, Palestine becomes a huge
thing and that comes in waves, it's obviously we're in the
middle of a big, big one now. Yeah.
All of these Arab countries that actually have very little in
common, you know, feel you more unified.
And if you actually dig into any of what's going on in any one of
those countries, most of them have a good reason to really
hate their dictator. And this is maybe not a
coincidence that, you know, it's very helpful to that dictator to
deflect all of this anger you feel Israel.
And so that's, that's something that would bring people up to
that top tier of, you know, the, you know, kind of Muslims versus
Israel or, or the West, the West and you know, the US is another
one, of course, the Iraq war. I'm sure you've had this, all
this unity. So you it brings all this unity
here. But it's so much that, you know,
it's like that, that instead of, you know, you should be really
angry at your own dictator and whatever.
So I, I feel like you see the opposite there of Latin America
in a way that's interesting. But it is interesting.
It's like where, where, where is the like Brazil, Argentina war,
right? It just doesn't happen.
I think in East Asia. You have the countries that have
this long history of hitting each other, Middle East,
obviously. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's, it's
crazy. I think there was one war
between Brazil and Uruguay in like 1850 or something and then
that's it. That's like basically it.
And but meanwhile, every single country down there has had
multiple revolutions, civil wars, multiple coups, military
dictatorships like Mass. Africa, Africa seems
sub-saharan. Africa seems the same.
Yeah, there's, there's all kinds of, it's a mess within each
country, but you don't see, you know, Burundi and Rwanda going
to war. Yeah, totally.
Well, hello fellow entrepreneurs and business enthusiasts.
This episode is brought to you by Shopify.
You know we all dream of creating the next All Birds or
SKIMS, right? Well, here's the secret, it's
not just about a cool product or a flashy brand.
Nope, it's the behind the scenes magic that turns dreams into
cold hard cash. Now enter Shopify.
It's the wizard behind millions of businesses.
Now you may be thinking another e-commerce platform.
Boring. But hold on to your wallets
because Shopify is a master platform of selling.
It's smooth, efficient and it's always closing sales.
Their Shop Pay feature can boost sales by up to 50%.
That's enough to bring in most abandoned shopping carts
crawling back and shop. Shopify doesn't just live
online, it's everywhere. Your customers are on their
phones, in your store, even in your fucking dreams.
OK, maybe not the dreams part, but you get my point.
So if you're ready to turn your side hustle into your next big
thing, here's what you do. You go to shopify.com/I DGAF.
That means I don't give a fuck and you sign up for a $1.00 per
month trial and watch your business grow faster than your
credit card bill on Black Friday.
Shopify.com/I DGAF. Your wallet and your future
empire will thank you. Well no not you thank me.
Last thing before we go, you are a new parent.
I'm curious what what what? What is your biggest?
Your two years end? What are what?
What are your biggest parenthood?
Takeaways so far. Well, it's like there's a
massive pile of cons and a massive, massive tower, towering
pile of pros. And when I can say when I look
at the two of them is that the pros pile is bigger, OK, it's a
net positive, but there's a big pile of cons as well.
I think you're the first person who's ever described their kid
as it's a net positive. Net positive.
Net positive because yeah, the, the, the it's it's like, you
know I, I, I when I first got a dog I was like, wow, this is
such like a source of joy. Joy is hard to find in life,
right You know, like real, like just pure joy just purity of
that like I see my puppy runs up to me and it's just this feeling
of pure love and joy. So this is even this is like
there's even more of that here just like there's so much like
it's it's there's a real purity to the to the pros like it's
just it's just pure love. She's also so little.
Her world is so small. She doesn't know about war or
death or tribalism or religion or politics.
She she doesn't know anything. She's just a little like pure
little little like drop of humanity.
And and so it's just that our relationship is so pure, that
love I feel is so pure. The joy, the feeling, the way
she sees me is so like, you know, idyllic.
That's not going to last. Of course, everything, like
everything, she will become a human.
It will get become complicated. She will become complicated our
relationship. But at the moment it's just,
it's just like a, it's like a puppy.
It's just like such a delight. So that's all amazing.
It's, it's definitely made me grow up in certain ways.
These are all the pros, though. The cons are legit.
Like travel, like I used to go on these writer retreats, couple
friends, I go for two weeks. That's over unless we do them
with the whole family. You know, I, I summer 14, I went
away for 10 weeks, 2 weeks to each of five countries so I
could write about them like that was awesome.
Can't do that anymore. That's a big loss.
You know, we one of us is up every morning at freaking 77 AM
that we're not early morning people like that sucks.
We want to just spontaneously get dinner with a friend.
We can't, we don't have a babysitter like real, like, you
know, genuine, you know, my wife and I went to two new countries
every single year. That was like our thing.
It's just, you know, when they get older, maybe we can start
traveling with them. But like, so we have another one
on the way. So it's about to be two and a
baby. So those are genuine real major
losses. And for my wife, just being
pregnant, some women like it, she does not.
So, you know, that's like huge toll on her body twice now.
So the cons are very, very real and I'm not and I don't, I don't
think it's obvious that everyone should have kids.
No, I think that the pros and cons are huge on for for
everyone probably. And I think some people it's not
a net positive and they shouldn't do it.
I think it's OK. Once you have a kid, you can't
be selfish anymore. But you can be selfish before
you have a kid and say, I want to, I don't want to dedicate my
life to raising a kid, I want to be selfish.
I think that's a totally reasonable decision as well.
Question has been a parent changed your evaluation of the
importance or the value of some of those things, such as
traveling to a new country every year or traveling with friends
for a week or whatever? Like has it raised your
perception of how valuable that is or has it lowered it or is it
not changed at all? I don't think it's changed very
much. It's, you know, I, I think that
like the things would change maybe that some people say like,
oh, they're like petty fights with their friends or like
feeling like they're excluded from like, you know, getting
invited to this wedding or whatever, like that stuff.
Just, you care less about. And that's probably true, but
the things I'm talking about are like, you know, they're not, I'm
not like now I realize that those like travelling wasn't
important after all, Like, Nope, it really was important.
It's really great. It's like, it's not critical.
I, I'm, it's, it's a nice to have.
It's not a need to have the that freedom was was nice and I miss
it and it's great. And but so I I think I don't
think I'm not sure I've had some like massive shift in like
values or priorities. I I do feel like it is, you
know, it was it was before it was like it sucked to go away
from my wife for two weeks, but like worth it.
You know, she would agree worth it.
You should go like away some other time.
It it feels like not OK to go away from a 2 year old for two
weeks. Like again, she'd be fine.
But I feel like our bond is like a very core important thing for
her and I don't want to just to not be there for that.
So, so I'm prioritizing her over those things, but that's not
because I think those are less important than they were.
And the other thing is, you know, I think that a friend
reminded me these the other day that like this phase when you're
really, you lose a lot of freedom because the kids are so
little and you're kind of like, you know, they, it's relentless.
If we're doing, you know, if we do an afternoon on Sunday and
it's just like me and her, there's a 5 hour wait window
between nap and sleep. And it's like, this is a very
low IQ person to be spending five hours with.
Like this is, you know, again, I, I, I, she delights me, but
like an hour 3 1/2 and I'm like, I, I cannot read that book again
that you want me to read for the. 5th time and like.
You know, it's it, it is, it is relentless and like that phase
is temporary because at some point these two little kids are
five and seven now they're playing with each other, playing
with themselves. They go to school.
So it's like less time. They go to maybe go to camp in
the summer. So very quickly.
And then I think, you know what everyone says, of course, that
happened so quickly and then you miss the time.
So we're trying to savor it and appreciate and appreciate that
the freedom is not, it's not a permanent loss.
It's a loss right now in return for something nice.
So I'm trying to frame it that way.
So it's like I'll have I'll writer retreats later, you know,
I'll have plenty of time in my. You got the rest of your life
for that. Yeah, like, you know, so they,
if they go to camp, I can do it in the summer.
Like there's just plenty of times you can do that later.
Totally. All right.
Speaking of which, you are currently in grind mode on a
book. Are you talking about that book
yet or you are you? Yeah.
Yeah, it's, it's a, it's a, it's like a, it's, I don't know the
exact title yet, but it's like everything, the story of
everything. It's the history of the
universe, right? Big Bang to the end of the
universe. It's basically an excuse for me
to cover all my favorite topics along the way.
And it's way easier than the last book in terms of it's, it's
a, it's a hard project, but it's just every 10 pages I'm on a
different topic. So it feels like blogging and
I'm not getting sick of the topic.
And it's not like current events were happening before they
changed the book. I'm like, well, now I have to
incorporate this. There's none of that other than
some stuff with the, the near future and, and also I think I
have figured out my, you know, my systems a little bit more
with them. So I, I, it's, it's moving
along. It's going to be done in like 2
years as opposed to seven for the last book just in total
disaster. I'm.
Happy to hear that. Yeah.
And and there's a deal when it's when it's supposed to come out
well. Afrin's in print now, which is
really fun, so I'll send you one of.
These. Oh, cool.
Yeah, I'd love to have that. But yeah, and I think you owe it
to me to start another book because it's not fair.
I don't like what's happening here where you're like somehow
feel like you're free of the hell that we signed up for.
You know, it's funny, I was actually under contract to do
another book and the deadline was in the OR beginning of 24.
And I just got on a call with my publisher and I was like, you
know what? I haven't started writing and I
don't think I'm going to and. Imagine the freedom.
And then they, they were like, well, fuck you Manson, give us
our money back. And so I get I wrote a check and
gave the money back and life's been good.
Yeah. Life's been really good.
After I finished this book, I might have to experiment with
not being in hell for a little bit.
Yeah, it's it, you know, after I think between starting subtle
art and finishing Will's book, I think it was 778 years of
writing pretty much non-stop. So yeah, it the the last two and
a half 3 has been really nice. But I am starting to have ideas
for the next book and like get a little bit of the itch.
You know, it's it's it is kind of like, it's what I hear
pregnancy is like is that you forget how hard it is and
totally. And so it's you start, I I'm
already like playing those head games where I'm like, well, you
know, it's like, that's a simple concept.
I bet I could bang that out in six months.
And you know, I'm like, clearly. I know, I know, I, I, in my
head, I have this, this vision for a future book because these
books are both going to be, you know, the first draft is 200,000
words plus for both. And then I cut it down to, you
know, 140, whatever. I'm like, what if I wrote a
60,000 word book and I wrote 2000 words a week for 30 of the
50 weeks of the year with some weeks off in the middle and I
just wrote, I just woke up in the morning, wrote 400 words and
got on with my day and I'm like piece of cake.
Somehow that seems why can't I just do that?
That sounds so easy. Wake up, right One Microsoft
Word page, five days a week for 30 of the 50 weeks of the year
handed in. It always sounds, it always
sounds great when you say it out loud and then when you go to try
to do it, you it's like eating glass for. 18 months.
I know it really, really is. Right now I'm on.
I'm like, I'm, I'm like, I'm 170,000 words into this draft.
I don't know. I've got.
One big chapter left and then I'm going to then have the
hideous process of cutting it down and fact, there's over 1000
fat checks my fact checker has ready for me that I haven't even
looked at yet. But the other thing to think
about is, you know, we both have experienced both books and
articles. Like you also could just be
like, you know what, I'm going to write a go back to the days
when I write like a killer viral article twice a month and do
that, you know, but it's hard to know because that feels like you
do all this work and it's not really it just kind of goes
away. It kind of like fades away.
On the other hand, it's just like you get the instant
gratification of publishing right then and you can, you can
hop on something you're thinking about right then and just get it
out. Or you can, I mean, I guess you
can do that on your other mediums.
I, I, I will say I am really, really enjoying being in, back
in Internet land. It's, it feels like home.
It's like, it's like coming home after living abroad or
something. But yeah, there is an
impermanence to it like that. There is a little bit of a
treadmill type aspect to it of like you just have to keep
producing month after month after month and it feels like it
nothing lasts for very long. Like every once in a while, like
one thing will hit and it'll last for a few.
Years if you were done subtle art as a as a series of each
chapter just was a post, it would have been much worse, much
worse decision, right? So yeah.
Yeah. Yeah, it's it's a hard one.
There is but but but if I had done the year 1 of wait, but
why? You know, you're as as one big
book. It would have been worse because
it what it it was better to have that.
Be this kind of viral to me. There's like each has its
strategic place. Yeah.
And and also like some ideas, you know, obviously some ideas
don't merit a book and some ideas shouldn't stick around for
more than a few months or a year or two.
But it, it is it, I have been having a lot of fun with it.
But yeah, I do like there is a permanence and a significance
that comes with a book that you, you just, you don't really get
any other way. So I will be back at it at some
point. OK.
All right, dude. Well, this has been a blast.
Thank you so much for making the time, and good luck finishing up
the manuscript. Thank you, I'll keep you posted.
Cool. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a
Fuck podcast is produced by Drew Bernie.
It's edited by Andrew Nishimura. Jessica Choi is our videographer
and sound engineer. Thank you for listening and we
will see you next week.