How Stress Makes You Stronger (Hormesis Explained)

Welcome to the second renaissance. I'm no >> and I'm James Dler. And I'm down to clown. Yeah, you are sin. So, uh, what are we talking about today? >> Hormesesis. >> Yeah. And, uh, why stress is beneficial. >> True. >> So, so yeah. Um, on the optimism episode, episode two for anyone who didn't catch that one. >> Yeah, that was a good one. >> Yeah. Yeah. So, one of the things we talked about was this stress mindset and that there's studies showing that people who believe stress is beneficial as opposed

to believing stress is debilitating actually had all these better outcomes. Um, something I didn't know when we shot that episode that I found out afterward is they did studies on this and only 15% of people have the stress mindset. >> Oh wow. >> So, it's like 85% of people haven't gotten that memo. This is something the science knows pretty convincingly is like a better mindset to have. It results in better outcomes. But uh yeah, >> where was that study from? >> Uh Aaliyah Crumb was the researcher. >> Okay. Cuz when

I think of stress, I think of exercise or like people going to the gym and stuff like that. So I think but then again, maybe it's probably less than 15% of people that actually go to the gym after January, of course. Oh, you mean they go for like the first month's resolution and then it fades out. >> Right. Right. Well, yeah, that's what's interesting, right? So, this is the stress mindset, believing stress is beneficial from you, but what I wanted to go into today is this concept of hormesis, which is

actually in biology. Um, and so it's not just believing stress is better for you is beneficial. It's in lots of different systems, we've seen that actually stress leads to growth. Um, so most people know this from exercise, right? Like that's the most obvious and intuitive example that people have like experience with, right? You push yourself hard at the gym, you rest, you recover, you get stronger. But this actually applies to a lot of different things. And that's kind of what I wanted to get into this episode. >> Nice. Yeah. Like

controlled stress is not the enemy, but like chronic stress is like >> Exactly. >> That's kind of gross. So that's the part where you're just wearing yourself down. >> Yeah. So, it's stress in the right dosage, like the amount that that you you're capable of handling and integrating, followed by rest and recovery, and then your tolerance for stress actually goes up. >> Yeah, that makes sense. >> Um, yeah. And I feel like I'm really lucky that I came across this idea of hormesis early in life, like in my 20s. And

I was thinking back on this um right because if only 15% of people know this or have this mindset, I was like, "Oh, where did I learn this?" And uh it was this website gettingstronger.org >> and it's this guy Todd Becker. I haven't even looked at the site since then, but I realized, oh, that's where I found out about this. And this guy wrote about hormesis. >> Sounds like some toddly wisdom. >> Yeah. But yeah, so he wrote about hormesis and he made the connection between uh like you know exercise

and there's a bunch of physical examples of this too that we'll get into, right? Like cold showers or ice baths, right? These examples of things that make the body physically stronger, but he also tied it in psychologically. And I think this may have been where I found out about stoicism. >> Okay. >> And the book The Guide to the Good Life, right, which got us both into stoicism. >> Yeah, that's a good one. Um, so yeah, uh, shout out to to that guy, Todd Becker. Um, doing doing good work. Like

he's just been updating this website on like all these examples of of hormesis and uh, >> well, that's like the wisdom passed down or the wisdom exchange. Like one person stumbles upon a blog and suddenly we're talking about it like a decade later. >> Yeah, exactly. Just recycling good ideas and and getting them out in the zeitgeist. >> Yeah. For me, I think the first time I heard about hormesis like was antifragile. So 2011, 2012, somewhere in there. And yeah, for me it was it was quite intuitive I guess with

a like fitness background. Yeah. So I think once you've had this experience in fitness and exercise, then you hear about the concept you're like ah that makes sense. But uh yeah, maybe that's a good transition. I think first we could go into like hormesis on the body on the physical body and and all the examples of that. >> Okay. Yeah. >> Yeah. So kind of as a as a summary or synopsis I have here uh we might say this like the the episode thesis right or hormesis in a nutshell. Controlled

progressive intermittent stress makes you stronger physically, psychologically and philosophically. And uh yeah so so first on the biological side or the body. So hormesis the the kind of definition of it is a low or moderate dose of a stressor produces beneficial or adaptive effects while higher doses of the same stressor are harmful. Right. And this is kind of whatever you have a clown. >> Oh well I was just going to say like I like to go into the etmology so I'll defer to you on the definition of the Greek definition

of it. Oh, I think it's I don't know. Oh, okay. Did you look into it? Yeah. No. Noito pulled it up for me. >> The Greek word hormian to excite or to set in motion. >> Okay. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. So, I guess it's like it gets triggered by the stress and >> Yeah. That's what I hear when I hear excite like kind of a spark or a trigger or some kind of shock and then you integrate that shock and your body gets stronger. >> Yeah. And it kind of makes sense,

right? Because for an organism, there's no reason to to grow stronger unless it encounters something difficult that it's like, "Oh, next time I better be stronger to like encounter this and be able to survive." I think an intuitive example, especially for Western uh viewers, is the lazy boy chair. I always thought that name was so funny, like sitting on the lazy boy. So, think of the contrast of someone sitting on a lazy boy chair where like they push a button and their feet like recline or the chair recines and then

think of like the lotus position where you're like sitting up straight with your feet like crossed and like your posture is all pulled up. So, those are the two differences of the way that you could sit, >> right? >> And one is just allowing your body to be like basically spaghetti legs just like overly chilled out. >> Yeah. And this is like uh one of the more famous examples that I think people are familiar with is a tree, right? Like a baby tree that grows up in a in an environment

that has no stressors. There's no wind, right? Then what happens when the first storm comes, it it just breaks. It snaps in half. Whereas a tree that that has mild stressor, it has mild wind, it like develops the ability to bend. >> It's more resilient. Especially the roots do like the roots would be a lot deeper and spread out. Yeah, exactly. And uh yeah, and then there's like the famous, you know, maxim, whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger. >> True. >> Which again isn't totally true in hormesis cuz if

something is too strong of a stressor, it's actually damaging, >> right? >> But yeah, the stressor in the right dose with enough time to recover. And I think that ties in with like the exercise. >> Definitely. >> Yeah. I wrote down here um like how different forms of exercise are more effective than others. So you have like the marathon runners, which I've done some kind of that training as well too, which is this long, slow, steady pace versus like V2 max training, like interval training where you're doing like shorter reps

but way higher intensity, >> right? >> And I always had my best results running like the shorter, faster intervals, which is like kind of the micro stress and then giving your body time to recover. >> Yeah. And in the science, they found this like inverted U curve, right? like an upside down U. >> Feel a good chart coming on. >> Yeah, we'll we'll pull up the chart. >> Um, but yeah, >> but yeah, so it's like there's kind of that that zone of optimal growth in the middle, right? And too

little stress, you don't get stronger, right? It just builds a weak organism. And too much stress, it kind of crushes the organism. it's too much for the organism to handle or the muscle or or whatever we're talking about in this context. >> Yeah, it makes sense. And I think a lot of people come to that kind of conclusion or understanding maybe too late possibly where their joints are already giving out or their cartilage is like worn thin or they're like okay maybe I don't need to do like 3 hours of

training to get maximum results. >> Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. And and what's interesting about this is uh so I I have here this concept originally comes from Paracelis who was like uh um he was kind of the father of toxicology. He was like a 16th century alchemist who was like experimenting with things and his famous phrase was the dose makes the poison. >> I like that. >> It's kind of the difference between a medicine and a toxin is in the dosage. And one example of this is vitamin A, right? It's a

vitamin. It's required for the body to be healthy. Too much vitamin A is actually toxic. It can actually kill you. >> Um, and this is true more or less with with pretty much everything, right? Too much of a good thing becomes a bad thing. >> Temperaments. I was thinking of Benjamin Franklin. Like everything in moderation, >> right? >> Yeah. Even stress, like good forms of stress in theory, like exercise. Well, and that's what's interesting is that some things that we even consider to be toxins or or poisonous in a low

enough dose, it actually strengthens the body. And I don't think this is true of absolutely everything, but sometimes there's it's counterintuitive. >> Why are you looking at me, >> Franklin? >> Would vapes Yeah. How would vapes factor into that? >> I don't know. How does a vape factor into that? But this is Well, we've talked about this with with substances, right? Because when you look at uh tobacco as an example, like smoking, most of the studies are like, okay, yeah, if you smoke every single day, it's bad for you, right?

That's like pretty obviously shown, right? It causes cancer and whatnot. But then is there some dosage like like once a week, right? You know, if we have a pipe, you know, or a cigar, you know, like once a week or once a month or once a year, there's a dosage where it like has pretty much no negative effects for most things. And then I would wonder because of hormesis, >> is it making you stronger? >> Yeah. Yeah. Is like is like a mild dose of something stressful on the system, does

that actually cause it to recover? >> Well, that's the psychonauts wager. >> Yeah. Exactly. And and some of these just the studies, we don't have enough research. I actually looked into this on tobacco because I was curious about this. >> Well, nicotine's having its moment now. >> Right. Right. like for the cognitive benefits and I think a lot of the things >> really >> what >> cuz I think a lot of the ways that we ingest nicotine that's the culprit of like cancer and stuff like that like how we're consuming

it. So I like it in the form of gum sometimes vapes. Sorry mom like depends how you're taking in uh the nicotine as opposed to like oh nicotine's bad just full stop >> and the frequency and the total amount and how much recovery time do you have in between? >> Yeah. giving yourself your body time to recover and kind of integrate that poison, if you will. >> Well, yeah. And I I I did some research on this or tried to because uh because you like the pipes and and we're like,

"Oh, the pipe is kind of the symbol of the uh of of the you know, like Freud and Yung and these guys, they were they were all smoking pipes, right? Like >> Pretty sure the wizards like the pipes, too." >> Oh, wizards definitely do like pipes. >> No, a lot of the ancient sages rift are rifted and ripped on pipes. >> Well, yeah. And we've talked about this kind of the idea of overclocking the brain, right? Which is well certain substances they they increase blood flow to the brain. You you

are going to have kind of more energy or more ideas or or more you know like for having discourse and whatnot, but then there's a physical harm on the body. So it's about the frequency and the balance like are the benefits you're getting outweighing the the downsides. hedonistic cycling like each substance I like to say I like all of them but in moderation and cycling them >> so you can't be too dependent or fragile on one substance because I think the whole world is addicted basically to caffeine >> yeah exactly

so coffee is a great example of this right um most of the world just you or a lot of the world drinks coffee every day and I used to do that and um and yeah I I noticed negative effects of doing that but now I switched to tea >> I couldn't hear you We have a clown that's like don't say anything negative about >> couldn't hear me or didn't want to. Yeah. >> Might have been like a Freudian block. I I also like our clown about the uh it's like the

stock graph like like coffee stock starts starts crashing when I start saying something bad about it. >> Starbucks is going limit down. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And then and then someone else is like, "Oh, study comes out that shows caffeine is actually good for cognition." The stock's going up. >> Yeah. That's >> But yeah, so I tried to look into this with tobacco where I was like, okay, well, well, once a week, does it have a higher risk of cancer? Does it have And with AI deep diving on this,

it's like, well, honestly, there's just not enough research that actually focused on that question because mostly they're they're focused on, you know, most people who are smokers smoke every day. And yeah, so so the hormesis thing, this is a general trend that we see in a lot of things, but it can also be a mistake to prematurely extrapolate it to everything. Some of these things we just kind of need more research first to figure out, well, what is the the balance? What is the proper dosage? Yeah, I agree. Yeah, for

me, I like to kind of cycle them. So, I like to do Well, actually, you got me into that one. Like trying to push yourself. Oh, that was compound effect, too. like pick a vice and then abstain from it for quite a while just to challenge yourself to show that you're still the alpha in the relationship. So coffee is like a good one and I think the longest I've gone the long it's like a week because I just felt so sluggish afterwards and I was like yeah kind of the pros

and cons. I was like sure I did catch up on a bit of sleep but I also felt like my productivity inspiration or just like liveless like dropped off a cliff. Well, what I found with coffee in particular is after I'd been drinking it for like years, more or less every day, you know, with some take a week off here or there and and yeah, energy would just crash during that week. But I would found I found that my system got so used to it that it actually took way longer

than a week. Like it it actually took a few months before I was kind of like it's fully out of my system and I got used to functioning without it. >> No. Yeah. It's that's a tough one. >> Yeah. But yeah, it's kind of like is the trade-off worth it to you or is the physical downsides to it, you know? And I think I'm more sensitive to it than other people with my sleep and whatnot. >> Yeah. And it's also how you wean yourself off. Like if you go from like

three cups a day and suddenly you're like dry cold turkey. Oh [ __ ] you're going to crash hard. But if you wean yourself off like two cups a day, one cup a day, decaf tea, and then go cold turkey, you'll probably be fine. >> Yeah. And that's that's where I found for me switching to tea, particularly puer tea. Um, it has caffeine in it, but it also has, you know, athenine and all the other things. And I found that like I had a more stable energy level on tea, but

I still get like the caffeinated energy that kind of keeps our brains, you know, working a little bit more optimally. Actually, something I wanted to ask you was, you know, the quote like what doesn't kill you only makes you stronger. >> Mhm. If you go kind of like really really deep on let's say one substance, let's just say caffeine to keep it simple and you are able to integrate that and kind of recover, wouldn't that make you stronger longer term cuz it's not actually like detrimental or chronic to your health

or sleep. >> So the problem is every substance has a halfife which is the amount of time it takes your body to remove half of it from your system. So caffeine I think is 6 hours. So, the problem is if you have a a cup of coffee, um 6 hours later you have half a cup of coffee in your system roughly caffeine- wise. >> What about Red Bull? >> Yeah. Yeah, exactly. We're like talking about like Yeah. quitting quitting coffee, quitting caffeine, drinking Red Bulls, like get a little bit more

energy for the pod. >> Yeah. Well, they're from here, so shout out to Thailand for the original Red Bulls. >> Definitely. But yeah, so it's about have you had enough recovery time for that substance to get out of your system completely? Because if you don't, um, you know, well, now you're having another cup and there's still like that that eighth or 16th of a cup of coffee of caffeine in your system and then now you add on top of it 24 hours later you've you've added that much more, right? So

like it kind of it accumulates to a certain baseline and you haven't fully gotten it out of your system to have like a recovery. >> So it's kind of similar. I think to uh exercising, right? If you're if you exercise every single day and you have no rest days, eventually you're going to kind of burn out. >> Yeah. The jury's out on the exercise one, like what's better, active recovery or full recovery? So, let's say you have a really hard interval session or something like that. Is it better the next

day to do like a slower jog or a swim, like a lighter form of exercise, or is it better full stop? And I've seen different athletes at the highest level really kind of preach or dig in their heels on both of those. >> So I think it depends on on the amount and the volume and the intensity. So there's this guy uh Kogs is his channel on YouTube. Kyle Bogues I think is his name. >> Interesting name. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's a good name like memorable. But um he's he's

gone really deep on the exercise science and he just does body weight conditioning. So, very similar to your style actually, like calisthenics, like um push-ups, pull-ups, squats, lunges, those sorts of things. >> But what he found is that um >> the it's the weekly volume. And so, say you're doing like uh three sets a day of of each of those. You can't do it seven days a week, but if you're doing one set or two sets a day, you can do it like seven days a week or maybe six days

with one rest day, right? So he it's about the total weekly volume because once you push the volume over a certain level in a specific day by the next day you haven't fully recovered. Whereas if the volume is left under a certain level your body's actually able to integrate that every single day. >> Okay. Nice. >> Yeah. It's quite interesting. >> Yeah. For me I like to do like an active recovery session. Like yesterday we pushed it pretty hard and then today I just did like a lighter calisthenics, more body

like movement and resistance as opposed to like really stressing. >> Yeah. Yeah. And I think if you've been doing movement or exercise for a while, you get a good sense of like trusting your body and like, oo, I'm building it up. I'm I'm building towards burnout. I should like take it easy versus I can kind of handle this amount. And when we're younger, that's when we tend to push ourselves too far. >> Yeah, definitely. >> Yeah. I still sometimes fall great trying to like Yeah, I feel like that's I hope

that never I feel like I've integrated that a lot more, but I'm still like pushing a lot too like jumping, sprinting, different movements and stuff like that. >> Um yeah. So, so I don't know. Is there anything you want to say on the exercise one in particular? Because this most people I think intuitively understand this. Um what like an interesting one is like uh the highintensity training or highintensity interval training, right? Like yeah doing sprints or something like that. Uh I think both you and I kind of converged on that

as being more efficient than like a very long >> fun like speed play like going out to a park and playing frisbee or just doing accelerations for me is a lot more enjoyable than like a 2-hour run. >> Right. Right. And then if you find soft surfaces and you're out with your friends, like it's a lot of fun. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. So I wrote a few things down here. Um so yeah, just how I've integrated cuz I did come from a background of like a lot of slow long

running training and now I do more V2 max training like shorter uh faster stuff. But I think the big takeaway for me is just always having fun with it. like making sure to gify your workouts and any exercise is better than none because I think a lot of people see the fitness influencers or people who are kind of genetic freaks or they've spent their whole life it's like their one thing as opposed to just getting out and any little micro stress on your body is better than none. So that's like

the Kaizen one that we talked about before. So just such small amounts of exercise or movement and having a lot of fun with it. It doesn't need to be like a huge commitment. >> Yeah, absolutely. And here I like kind of that mindset piece too, which is um if you know that the stress or pushing yourself is actually good for you as long as you have enough recovery, then it can become a a short-term motivator, which is, oh, I'm going to go test my like resilience, right, by pushing myself. There's

actually been some studies where they found that motivations like weight loss, which is a very long-term thing. it takes like a long time to show up. They're more fragile than a short-term motivation like, oh, I'm going to, you know, spike my dopamine and I'm going to feel really good afterward or oh, the the very act of engaging in the exercise and and taking on the stress like that can become the motivation in itself. >> True. I feel like we lost the OMIC crowd again. >> Yeah. Also, something that uh our

other buddy and I used to like to joke about was like exercise has a lot of side effects. The side effects include like better sleep, feeling more confident, a better libido, like better relationships, and yeah, you'll probably live longer, too. >> Right. Right. I I love that that clown where it's like, oh, you don't want like better sleep, like better health better. All right. All right. Oh, you're not interested in like optimizing your like energy levels or getting smarter, >> right? >> That ties into the spark. >> Oh, yeah. Uh

I feel like I want to do maybe even like a full episode on that, which is like the like exercise effects on the brain, right? And actually how it optimizes your thinking. It's not just a a physical body thing. >> Yeah. And a quick one for that is just more circulation, more blood flow to your brain. You're operating at a higher level. >> Yeah. Exactly. >> And you sleep better as well, too. Right. >> So you're actively like helping yourself recover. >> Yeah. Yeah. And it all comes down to this

idea that like by by putting some stress on the system. So this happens in the cardiovascular system and also on the muscular system when you stress it the cardio system it has to grow more robust to predict to be able to handle that stress again in the future. True. >> So your cardio system actually gets more efficient at like pumping oxygen to your entire body and your brain. >> True. Yeah. I wrote down one of my favorite uh excerpts from Spark. I tell people that going for a run is like

taking a little bit of Prozac and a little bit of Ridland because like the drugs, exercise elevates those neurotransmitters. It's a handy metaphor to get the point across, but the deeper explanation is that exercise balances neurotransmitters along with the rest of the neurochemicals in the brain. >> Love that. >> Yeah, that was that book. We should just shout it out, The Spark Effect. Yeah, that was a really influential one for me and it made me think of all the times like when I got out of shape in my life where

I was like, "Oh, I just don't have the same energy or kind of intellectual ability that I have when my body's fit or operating at like a prime level." >> Yeah. So just to summarize for the for the audience is the spark effect. The main thesis was on exercises effects on the brain which includes um like intelligence or clarity of thinking like they they had studies that test scores went up from from those who exercise uh or started an exercise program. Yeah. In in children and then um also on the

neurotransmitters so mood right. So he goes into a lot of exercise's effects on depression on um anxiety and yeah that book was just so convincing for me in reframing exercise not like oh I'm I'm exercising to get ripped or or you know have like a nice physique which is what a lot of the fitness industry sells. >> That's just part of the side effects. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's just a side effect. >> Side effects include getting ripped increased POIs at the club. >> Right. Right. But but yeah, so for

me that was a better motivator and and it continues to be today which is like oh I want to exercise cuz I know I'm going to feel really good afterward like all the neurotransmitters in my body and it's going to result in clearer thinking. >> Yeah. >> Noticeable effect right when you're doing it and not doing it. >> Definitely. And I love the just simple studies that Ratley shows like from the spark effect. He shows one school particularly where they have to do like a mile morning run and we used

to do that in our middle school. We'd have this rail loop that was roughly a mile and I did feel like a spark effect after that heading into the class after the gym class where we had to run, you know, where you're like everyone was more alert. >> Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Like doing like a >> morning cardio in particular. I feel like some form of cardio in the morning. Like um >> I remember that morning when you forgot your jeans or got locked out of your house that day on your

morning run and >> Yeah. you like knocked out my window. You're like, "Oh, Nolan will be up at 6:00 a.m." I was doing like my pneummonics with my noise reduction head. I was like, "Oh [ __ ] what's that?" >> Right. Right. I'm there in like my running clothes. I'm like locked out of my house. Need to get to work. Can I like shower and borrow some clothes? I didn't want to show up to work in like my workout clothes all sweaty. >> Yeah. It must have been funny wearing my

clothes that day. It was It was cuz you're like quite you're taller than me and like I thought you had like ripped jeans and I'm >> What did your students say? >> They were like they were just a little bit confused. They're like, "Oh, James teacher got like a new style." >> Nice. >> Um yeah, let's see here. So, okay. So, tying this back into hormesis, right, which is like stressors making the body more resilient and the cells more resilient. So a a really interesting one, it's called wolf's principle and

wolf with two Fs and this is the same thing happens on bones actually. So bones when stressed grow stronger. It's similar to the tree in the breeze, right? So yeah, uh when I first came across that I was like, "Oh, that's really fascinating because we think of bones as these like kind of brittle things that get weaker when you get older but >> they don't have to. >> They don't have to. They don't have to because they work just like muscles in a in a slightly different sense, but they are

living cells. They're living tissue and they get stronger by being stressed and by being used and challenged. >> True. I feel a move nat or like a sitting on the floor plug coming in here >> cuz like just your ankles or your knees or things like that like when you first sit on the ground or kneel on a hard surface, it can be very painful. you slowly adapt or your body builds up more calcium in those areas or kind of fortifies those regions so you're better able to do you're just

a product of your environment. So if you're sitting on the floor a lot you're going to adapt to sit on the floor more. >> Yeah. And an extreme example of this, if you've seen like the Muay Thai fighters whose like shins are like made of steel cuz they like they just kick, you know, like a tree every day until like their shins just build up, you know, and then and then they're like these slicing blades that like are just terrifying to get hit by. Yeah, there's some videos of the North

Koreans like breaking cement with their head or their arms and stuff like that. Some of that's probably staged with like pre- cracks and stuff like that, but it does tie into the wolf principle. Like they've been building that up their whole life. >> Yeah. >> So if we were to just jump in and try to do that, we would break our arm. >> No, there is truth truth to this. So I think like the Shaolin monks did this iron fist training where Yeah. they just take their fist and they would

strike like a bag of sand or something like that. And then over time they they work up to harder and harder surfaces. And that's how you see those guys who can like chop through cement blocks with their their hand or karate chop >> or even just having like big calluses on all your hands and like your feet from doing workouts and stuff. >> Yeah, absolutely. Uh other stuff on the on the physical adaptiveness that's practical. So one of them is sauna. >> Sauna heat. Yeah. >> Yeah. So this is really

interesting. There's a a study um they did on Finnish men. So this is you know in Scandinavia kind of in in the very cold region. And so they sauna a lot. They found that people who I think it was specifically on men um men who sauna two or three times a week had a 24% reduction in all cause mortality versus those who did it one time a week. And those who did it four to seven times a week had a 40% reduction in all cause mortality. That means a 40% reduction

in death by any causes. >> Longevity not for you. Okay. But that's just a a striking kind of crazy result, right? And there could be a correlation here. It's not necessarily causation. It could be that people who are healthier are more drawn to saunas. But but it's very in >> That's true, too. That's also true. Like the more likely you are into fitness, the more likely you are to like ice baths and saunas and stuff too. >> Yeah. Exactly. So, but but because of hormesis, we know this general principle is

there. So, um, it it's quite reasonable to think that sauna has some beneficial effects on the body. And I think there's been other studies that have shown this as well. But that that's just such a striking result cuz I don't know any other practice that you could do that just re reduces your cause of death by like 25 40% across the board. You're just going to live longer if you do this one thing. >> In my research also with the like saunas, it it helps lower dementia, Alzheimer's risk. So also

the like blood circulation to your brain again. >> Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So sauna is one example where whether or not the 40% reduction in all cause mortality is is you know proven or shown it's like this definitely has beneficial effects on the body and circulation and the mind. >> Yeah. Heart rate up and mimics like moderate cardio. Like it's that little stressor that's telling your body like okay I need to adapt because I'm in this extreme condition. >> Yes. Exactly. And then the opposite of that is the cold exposure, right?

Which is cold showers or ice baths. >> Oh, one I just had one quote on the sauna. >> The sauna is a cathedral where your proteins go to confession. >> No verito. >> Oh, okay. >> Yeah. >> Quoting your AI. >> Yeah, >> I like that though. Yeah. >> Nice. But yeah, so the uh the cold showers and ice baths is kind of the same principle, right? where you're exposing yourself to a shot and you know you and I have been going to the ice bath around the corner here in

in Bangkok. >> Shout out to Rechill. >> Yeah, Rechill. Really great spot. >> Yeah. >> Um but yeah, it's it's the same idea where um Okay. Well, even just from an experiential point of view, I feel great after doing the ice bath. Right. When you're in the ice bath, like it's shocking, right? Like your your brain is like, "Get out, get But then you kind of adapt to it and then you're like, "Okay, I can just endure this for five minutes, right?" But then I find when I get out afterward,

it does something to force your body to kind of like Oh, they they had studies on this too. It uh it increases norep norepinephrine. Um and also an increase in dopamine, right? So something about the cold exposure causes the body to produce these like feel-good hormones and and relax relaxation hormones. >> Yeah. And you feel like euphoric cuz your body is being like pushed into a spark almost like oh we're like it's fight or flight, right? Like we have to endure this. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. So I like doing it

earlier in the day. Unfortunately in Bangkok there's no such thing as cold showers. >> Right. Right. Right. >> Compared to Canada, >> the water just won't get cold enough cuz all the pipes are in the sun all day. Especially now where it's like 40° sometimes during the day. >> I'm like, "Is it on cold?" I'm like, I'll check sometimes and I'm like, "Okay, that's really hot. Okay, this is just warm." >> Yeah. You got to get the bucket of ice. >> Yeah. But but I think this is really interesting, right?

Because there's again, it's a second and third order consequences where it seems to be the opposite of the initial stimulus, right? So, if you again, you eat a lot of sugar, you're like, "Oh, this is great. This or or like a lot of burgers or or whatever, right? It's like, oh, this is great. This feels amazing on Sundays. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. In moderation. >> Yeah. In Yeah. And that's okay. Sorry, I won't uh like uh divert us to the other subject, but I think that also ties into the

overclocking like overclocking your appetite kind of, right? Yeah. Like spiking your appetite during certain times and then being able to >> kind of see those benefits throughout the week. >> Oh yeah. Well, that comes back to the everything in moderation, including moderation, right? Sometimes having some excess is actually good for the system. >> Moderation Blakesen. >> One of our friends always for the moderation. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. His name is Blake and and uh Noa nicknamed him Blakesen. >> Yeah. >> And then that rhymes with some really good words. >>

Yeah. Exactly. >> And and he's he's always like like uh you know trying to like mediate Oh, that was mediation >> Yeah. originals mediation bl. >> Yeah. Cuz cuz if there was like a conflict or strife, he's like I I think what he's trying to say here is, you know, he tried to like get everyone on the same page again. >> And see, he's on really high alert for like tension or friction. So his mediation impulse suddenly surfaces where you could see him like, okay, I defer to mediation Blakes and

then he would I think what he's trying to say and I think you guys actually have more overlap. You're missing this point. And then we're like, oh, sweet, bro. True. >> Yeah, that is a good point. >> He was really good at that. Yeah. >> Right. Right. But yeah, it just became a funny name to rhyme. Moderation. Yeah. And then for everything. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um >> hydration. >> But but yeah. So so well two things here now. So the first thing I was trying to say is that some

things that feel really good in the short term, your body overcompensates with hormones that make you feel bad afterward, right? Like overeating sugar, right? If you really overeat like ice cream and sweets, you're just like, "Oh, I have a stomach ache. Like I feel awful. going to crash. >> Yeah. Whereas the opposite is also true if you expose yourself to temporary discomfort and that can be in like the ice bath, the sauna, um the sadu board like that foot foot spike boards. >> Yeah. Yeah. It's the same it's the same

concept though because it's uh it's very uncomfortable. It's like you know it's painful. It's uncomfortable, but after you finish it, the body overcompensates by producing these feel-good hormones >> and it's going to increase circulation there almost like an acupuncture. >> Yeah, it's based on like acupressure and and some of these things. The scientific evidence isn't sufficient to say, "Oh, this is definitely good for XYZ." But even just your feeling, >> how is your feeling now kind of testing that out over the last month? >> I I think it's kind of

fun. Like I actually enjoy it now. And and yeah, it's cuz you feel good afterward. It's the same principle with the ice bath, I feel like. >> Okay. You might just be a masochist though and like >> Well, yeah. Again, so in moderation, you don't want to do things that are like physically causing damage to your body. >> Yeah. >> But with the ice bath, for example, my understanding of the research is like 5 minutes has been shown to like have no negative effects, right? >> Is that what you're doing

roughly? >> For the ice bath, I just do like 5 minutes and and done. >> Okay. um you can push beyond that but I think at that point there start to like ne there can be negative consequences that build up >> like what for example >> um well it's just breaking down your tissue in your body right so like uh in extreme cases like hypothermia right but >> yeah remember when we were talking about that my kind of push back or debate on that is just if you did find yourself

in like a Titanic situation or I don't know ice cracks when you're out hunting or playing in like the Finnish hinterland and suddenly you are in the water for like 10 minutes, wouldn't you be better off if you've done the training for that as opposed to short bursts assuming you're going to be rescued in 5 minutes as opposed to like 10 or something like that? So sometimes wouldn't it be beneficial to kind of push that a little bit more as well? >> Okay. Well, what's coming up for me there's something

interesting here which is coming back to highintensity interval training. So they found that people who who trained sprints like interval training their long distance running time and endurance went up, right? >> Yeah, it was >> maybe not as much as the people who specifically trained endurance, but there's a it's kind of like this 8020, right? Where doing things in the in the right 8020 dosage does have a a carryover effect and then you would have to question like, well, do I want to train this specific thing to the extreme to

try to plan for every situation? Yeah. But um and and then the other thing I would say is that well probably you just can't do that as frequently, right? Because the body needs more recovery if you're uh really wearing it down with with longer time periods or something like that. >> Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. >> So yeah, I think it's again it's like that that inverse U curve, right, where there's kind of an optimal range where you're getting like the maximal benefits with the the minimal recovery required. So you

can kind of like keep cycling that >> and also the minimum time commitment as well too for the ice bath or for the cardio or the training whatever it might be. >> Yeah. Cuz one of my favorite um kind of rebuttals I guess to people who say I don't have energy or time to exercise. So on the energy one it's like well that's the whole point of exercising is to increase your energy. And then on the time commitment one it's like could you dedicate 20 minutes maybe three times a week?

If you can't, you're not really serious about it. >> Do you know what I mean? Like it's like, oh, you just like the idea of signing up for a gym or exercising, but you're not actually serious cuz it's such a small time commitment, especially when you train smart with 8020 style of like hit training. >> Well, and if you view it almost like a like a medicine, right? Cuz you're taking this small dosage. >> Movement is medicine. >> Movement is medicine. Definitely. You're taking this small dosage and it's going to

result in like a higher baseline of well-being, happiness, like your physical body working better, your mind working better. >> Definitely. >> Uh and yeah, another one on the physical hormmesis is fasting or intermittent fasting, which we both have experience with. And yeah, so it's the same thing where actually uh fasting in the right dosage is actually beneficial for the body. It strengthens the body. Um, and this is another one where I think some people push fasts, you know, like 72 hours, like 1 week, and I think that's probably not necessary.

>> A week is crazy. I could see 72 hours maybe being the sweet spot on like the high-end side, >> but I I've actually never done that. >> And yeah, exactly. And again, similar to the ice baths, right? If you really want to push it, maybe you can do that to challenge yourself, but probably you're not getting benefits at that point that outweigh the uh the the damage or potential damage. But yeah, I think kind of like 24 hours is a pretty optimal 8020 or sweet spot for for intermittent fasting.

>> I've only ever done that once. My sweet spot is just the intermittent fasting. So it basically means you skip breakfast like you break a day lunch as opposed to having a big breakfast. >> Do you do like the 16 hour 8 hour eating window kind of >> roughly? But I think as I've been in Bangkok, I'm on a later schedule. So, I'll tend to eat a bit later and then depends what I'm doing the next day. I would say under 16 hour, probably closer to like a 12 14 hour

fast. >> Sure. Sure. And I think it's going to be different for every every person. >> Everyone has such different metabolisms as well, too. >> Yeah. Yeah. No, your metabolism is quite high, right? Cuz you you have like a really low body fat percentage. So, probably for you, pushing a fast is like >> I felt so dizzy doing the 24-hour fast. >> And then at that point, it's like you can't really do your regular lifestyle. Like I wouldn't be able to do a workout after a 24-hour fast. >> Definitely. Yeah.

>> I would just be so depleted. >> Yeah. I think it can be good occasionally to just kind of challenge yourself to be like, "Ooh, okay." Anytime I feel like, "Oh, I I I can't do that or I couldn't do that." Like occasionally just challenge yourself to kind of break through that limiting belief. >> Yeah. I wrote down uh autopagi. Am I saying that right? >> Yeah. Auto autoagi. >> I have the same word. I don't know if it's auto fagi. Autofagi, I think it might be. But um >> either

way, like the cellular cleanup and recycling during that time. >> Yeah. So your body actually consumes like the dead and and weakened cells, right? Is that >> Yeah, that's my understanding of it. And it ties into that one cell book I was talking about with you. We could shout it out here. My mom loved that. She gave us a book challenge to read that book. Okay. >> But I just love thinking of like every day you're making choices. either you're generating new and healthy cells or you're kind of poisoning the

cells where they're going to malfunction and that's how you get cancer or other chronic diseases. >> Yeah, definitely. >> So, the fast, sorry, just like the fast or the exercise or the circulation like that really helps repair your cells and make them more robust. >> Well, that's the thing about the fasting is that if you're if you're always eating, your body actually doesn't get any time to recover or rest uh cuz it always has to use energy for digestion. And when you stop eating, then you'll have a period of time

where your body can use that energy for other processes and it's actually quite healthy. >> When we got into the intermittent fasting stuff, I remember the quote. I think it's from one of the lean gains or the eat stop eat or something. Like when you say you're starving in the morning, it basically means your body has processed your dinner's calories, >> right? Right. So, breakfast being the most important meal of the day is obviously just a slogan from like Quaker or like the breakfast cereal brands because in my opinion it's

the least important meal of the day. Of course, everyone's different, but I love thinking of that like when you start to feel a little bit of hunger that means your body's finally processed through the calories and your body can kind of like circulate or do like, you know, forms of repair for your body now. >> Well, yeah. And this is kind of also the stress mindset, right? Because some people get a little bit hungry and they're like, "Oh my god, I need to eat. My my body is dying and uh

it's actually knowing, oh, actually a little bit of stress is good for the body." So, if I go a little bit hungry this time or I I push my eating window a bit longer or I'm in cold for a little bit longer than is comfortable for me, like anytime you're like a little bit uncomfortable, you're actually stressing your body, which leads to growth. And the body's more resilient than we think, right? Cuz it's not until like Yeah. probably like 48 hours of fasting that you're really actually starting to do any

form of damage. And even that's debatable. So, you know, skipping skipping lunch or something like that, like you're you're not going to die. You're actually just going to make your body more resilient if you do that occasionally. >> Yeah. And all of these things make you more antifragile, right? Cuz there are times when you're not going to have an optimal time to eat. Maybe you're too busy or you're on a flight or whatever it might be. So it's like it kind of ties into the maybe this is a good segue

into the stoicism. >> Yeah, I was going to say cuz this is the mental toughness that comes from it too. Before we get to that, I had two other examples I wanted to give. One is the immune system which most people know about, right? Like uh but um the hygiene hypothesis. So they found children raised on farms have significantly lower rates of allergies and asthma. Like kids who play in dirt essentially as kids who are outdoors and exposed to all these kind of like pathogens, their immune systems actually become more

robust and resilient versus a kid who's kind of raised and the parents like scared of any germs or something like that. They have higher rates of uh allergies and asthma, which again makes sense. It's the tree. It's never encountered breeze in its life. The first breeze it encounters is going to like blow it over backward. >> Makes sense. That ties into my kind of cleanliness deis though. I do agree with that point though, but I I tend to heer on the side of cleanliness is godliness. And I use the term

godly very loosely there. >> Right. Right. >> Yeah. >> But but it's an to keep in mind, right? It's like you don't want to be antifragile is being able to encounter things in the world and being able to absorb and integrate them and not being like knocked over by them. >> True. And the other one and this one's quite uh surprising and this is not confirmed science but there's science that indicates the same hormmesis might happen with low doses of radiation. So and this is contested right now by scientists but

there was uh this nuclear shipyard workers study and it was 70,000 workers and they were nuclear workers so they were exposed to lowdosese radiation. What they found is they had a 24% lower allc cause mortality. So they were exposed to lowd dose radiation because of their work and for some reason they they had a lower uh all-c cause mortality. Now this is contested because they're like oh but they were they're healthy workers so it's a subset of the population that already is healthier because they're like physical laborers but um but

it was larger than the the typical effect which is like 10 to 15%. Yeah. And then there's there's some other studies that that found a similar effect where they're like, "Oh, we expect exposure to radiation to actually harm people or cause more more deaths, but um the the results were like the opposite or just didn't confirm what they thought." Um and again, this is there's counter evidence. Another study found that they do have higher rates of cancer, but again, higher rates of cancer, but lower all cause mortality. So the picture

is kind of complicated, but even things that we think, oh, that's just definitely bad for you, that might not actually be the case, like this hormesis thing. >> Well, I've definitely put in my hormesis training with X-ray radiation. I've had a lot of X-rays in my life. >> Okay. Yeah. >> And that has the small radiation, >> but very small, I think. But I think people who overdo that would probably tend to tip over into the side of it being damaging. We don't know where the balance is and I would

not recommend anyone go out and like expose themselves to radiation to be like oh me says I'm making myself stronger but this kind of ti goes into the next section the mindset which is well if you happen to be exposed to something that's stressful or potentially damaging. I think knowing about this and having the mindset well this is just going to make me stronger. >> That's the pragmatist wager. >> Yeah. Yeah. The pragmatist wager, right? You're kind of placebo yourself. If you can't you can't help it anyway. you might as

well like uh air on the side of assuming it's going to make you stronger. >> True. >> Because Yeah. Now we have the uh hormesis in the mind. >> True. >> Yeah. So for me when I hear that I think of the stoicism like the negative visualization >> and putting yourself in voluntary hardships or discomforts because there are going to be times in your life where your things don't work out. >> Yeah. And just context for the pod. So the Stoics were like a group of of ancient philosophers in ancient

Greece um who developed this philosophy kind of around resilience and yeah so they had a few practices uh well well first of all they believed that our our source of suffering is essentially our judgments of things right so it's not the things in it themselves that harm us it's our thoughts and beliefs about the things in themselves >> true >> um so yeah they had a few practices and one of them was this negative visualization, right? Which is like you imagine worst case scenarios. So most of the time we're walking

around our day and we're like, "Oh man, this person was like really rude to me and oh, I got my my sandwich at lunch and it didn't have a tomato." Or like, you know, we're just upset about small things. >> So fragile, >> right? And the Stoics were like, "Well, just imagine all these worst case scenarios. >> Imagine you didn't have a sandwich." >> Yeah. Yeah. Imagine like well all of the places you could have been born in the world right now in present day, >> right? >> We're we're just

lucky to be born in a country where we we we have a high quality of life overall. >> Well, we almost are on the other extreme where we have we've been born into an abundance. So, we suffer more from like the lazy boy as opposed to like the lotus kind of sitting position, right? like we're more likely to be at the expense of being having too many things provided for us or having things too good. >> Yeah, that's a great point. And this is kind of like the societal hormesis, right?

Because it's that inverse U curve. You have people in impoverished countries who don't have access to like nutrition, you know, clean water, things like that, which is obviously too much stress that the body cannot integrate that and thrive. But then we have the opposite end in westernized societies or or you know the the highincome societies where it's like things are kind of too easy so people aren't really stressed and then people become really fragile or sensitive to to very small things. Um but yeah so on on the stoic side it's

like well you can imagine you could have been born or you you right now you could be living in one of those impoverished countries and not have access to clean water or housing or or food. you're kind of always low-grade hungry. Um, and if that happened, if you found yourself in that situation, well, you would make the best of it, right? You would have to. So, you would still try to like, oh, okay, things aren't so bad. Like, what what can I be excited about? Like, how can I do the

best I can in this situation? But then after you've walked yourself through this visualization, now you come back into your real life and your body now and you're like, "Oh man, like life is great. I have this like sparkling water. Like >> don't get these guys started on ice. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I I used to like get so excited our early days of finding stoicism about ice, right? Like drinking an iced uh water for example. I'm like >> you're living better than the kings like you were saying. Yeah. >>

For for how much of human history did we have access to an iced beverage in hot weather? >> Well, and yeah. And I think what they used to do is literally take ice from like the Nordic countries or like the Americas and ship it back to like Constantinople or something like that to give to the kings. >> Yeah. I think it was in like the 1500s or something. They had an ice trade where they would like cut off a chunk of a glacier, attach it to a ship and like, you

know, take it to to Europe and then it was only the the kings that would have access to that and it would only last some number of days before the whole thing would melt. And uh yeah, now just the average person has like an ice maker in their freezer, >> but we take it for granted, especially in hot countries to be able to have like air condition, >> right? >> To being able to have like you're saying an ice machine or a fridge or things like that, >> right? So yeah,

this is one stoic practice is like imagine how bad things could be and then that makes you Yeah. So you're kind of doing this hormmesis through a visualization exercise where you you imagine experiencing pain or discomfort, right? And then after doing that, your body produces all these feel-good hormones. It's like similar to that ice bath effect, but just by imagining all of the things that could be taken away from you that you could not have, and then when you come back to having them, you get like all this dopamine and

good feeling hormones. Funny anecdote. Around the time when you got me into the guide to the good life and some of the stoic stuff, I had just been on a trip outside of Seoul in January or something like that and I had forgot to leave on my hot water. So all my pipes froze. So during that week, I had to have cold showers before the maintenance could come and fix the pipe. It was cracked or something like that. And Seoul gets quite cold for context. It's not at all like Thailand.

So the cold showers aren't quite as cold as Canada or Edmonton, but they're borderline. It's the same latitude as New York City, I think. So, yeah. >> And it's very cold. So, I remember having those cold showers that week, kind of walking the walk, being like, "Well, because I've done the cold shower training when I didn't have to. I'm more resilient for the time when my pipes froze." >> Yeah. So, you just mentally reframe like the hardship you're going through where you're like, "Well, I have to go through this anyway,

so let me just focus on how this is making me stronger and more resilient." And now you're activating like that stress mindset benefit. >> True. >> And we know from the hormesis that you are probably actually making your body stronger. Like so there's actual real benefits and then you're like amplifying the benefits by by having the stress mindset >> and then when your hot water does come on it's like a luxury again cuz you've gotten used to the cold showers. So you're like, "Oh jeez, this hot water. Wow, this is

nice." >> Well, that's another stoic practice is voluntary discomfort. Yeah. >> So they would deliberately practice poverty cold >> bad haircuts. >> Yeah. Bad haircuts. We used to talk about a stoic haircut. >> Like a bull haircut and then the rest of your haircuts and your whole life are going to seem good. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like if you're caring too much about your appearance and how other people uh view you. It's like just walk around with like a bad haircut for like a week and >> a funny t-shirt.

>> Yeah. >> Yeah. I love the haircut visualization, >> right? But yeah, the Stoics would do this. They would like sometimes go outside in cold weather with like too light of a a jacket or what whatever, right? Instead of always being comfortable, let's sometimes be uncomfortable. And they didn't even know about the ice bath benefits, but they were like on to something >> inoculation against misfortune. >> Yeah. And that's the other thing they said, right? So they would, some of the stoics would like practice poverty like voluntarily like I'm going

to go live on the streets today and just what is it like to be homeless? And then it was like, well, if I ever do become homeless in the future, I've kind of already practiced that, so I'm not going to be as torn up. >> I've tried that quest. I know what it's like. I'm ready. Bring it on. >> I can do this. Yeah. >> That's awesome. Was it Sen? Did Senica voluntarily practice that, but he found himself in poverty, right? >> Senica was wealthy. I don't know if he was

uh >> who's the Stoic who found themselves in poverty for quite I remember you telling me at one point. >> Well, Epictitus was born a slave. >> Yes. Okay. It's Epictitus. Epictitus was one of the earlier not the founder of stoicism but one of the earlier like philosophers who built out their ideas and he was born a slave. He was born not a free person and um like he he like educated himself and like earned his his liberation and and also probably fortunate to be born to a master who like

allowed him to educate himself and and gain his own liberation. But um but yeah, so Epictitus like lived a a hard life and was like yeah, he he's the one who he he walked the walk kind of right. It's like oh he was also uh I think he was like a partially [ __ ] I think he had like a bad leg or something like that. So there's this guy who's like lived a hard life and he's like yeah none of this stuff can actually get me down unless I decide

it. It's my judgments of things that like whe whether something is good or bad that determine if it gets me down. Nice. >> Um, yeah. Do I have an Epic Tetas quote here? >> Oh, I think I cut out >> I have a good senica one. >> I I have a good cynical one. >> Yeah, I have uh if you would not have a man flinch when the crisis comes, train him before it comes. >> So, it's the negative visualization or the negative like implementation to put yourself in voluntary discomfort

so you're not too fragile. >> And then I have another Senica one, but it might be the same as you if you want to. I have I have a couple so we can take turns with Senica quotes. >> Sure. Go ahead. >> Um the shorter one is he said difficulties strengthen the mind as labor does the body. >> Nice. >> So he just he he just knew this uh this kind of stress mindset and hormesis. Right. Just like labor strengthens the body or exercise strengthens the body, difficulty strengthen the mind.

>> Yeah. This one's more on kind of anxiety or worrying too much. We suffer more in imagination than in reality. Right. So, yeah, I think that one's kind of intuitive enough that as you worry about something that hasn't manifested yet, you're kind of suffering twice. You're taking the anti- pragmatic wager. You're worrying about something that might or may pan out still. Yeah. >> Yeah. And I think also what he was articulating is what percentage of the things we worry about actually come to happen in reality. >> It's a really small

portion. So, we're just exposing ourselves to all this like suffering and worry when most of it is not really necessary or relevant to our living. >> One of my friends told me like always imagine the best situation or don't believe in anything that doesn't benefit you. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Wise words. >> Yeah. It sounds like a wise wizard. >> My my other Senica one and this is probably one of my favorite quotes ever. So he's writing um to one of his pupils and he's he's he's not writing about

that pupil but he's writing about someone else who has lived like a very easy life right and he says you are unfortunate in my judgment for you have never been unfortunate you have passed through life with no antagonist to face you no one will know what you were capable of not even yourself >> I like that >> I think that one's so powerful >> that Yeah. >> It's like if you haven't encountered any hardship, you won't even know what you were capable of. >> True. And that's where I think born

into a life of opulence or just having everything like being spoonfed your whole life, you you become a fragileista. Like you become a product of everything being provided for you or just no hardships ever. So if you do go outside the castle or outside your like kingdom, suddenly you're fragile to everything. >> Yeah. unless you voluntarily take on hardship to keep yourself resilient and robust and able to handle things. So that's what Senica did. Like Senica was wealthy, but he I think he was the one who would like go, you

know, practice poverty or walk out outside without the jacket. Um so yeah, there are things if you if you do live a good life and you're fortunate enough to live a good life, you can still keep yourself robust and and resilient by practicing these things. >> That's what we're trying to do. >> Yeah. Exactly. Um and then Marcus Aurelius he had this concept the obstacle is the way. Um this is a longer quote. Our actions may be impeded but there can be no impeding our intentions or our dispositions because we

can accommodate and adapt. The mind adapts and converts to its own purposes. The obstacle to our acting. The impediment to action advances action. what stands in the way becomes the way. >> Oh, that's good. >> So, yeah, he's articulating here that if there's a difficulty or hardship, you can actually make that your telos or like you're like, okay, there's an obstacle. I'm just going to face this head on, right? So, it's almost making challen embracing challenges and overcoming challenges, your orienting principle in life. >> Nice. >> Instead of viewing it

as like, oh, I'm trying to do this thing and there's this obstacle or annoyance, you're like, sweet, bring on the obstacles. It's like I I want to take as many obstacles as I can. >> That's Jordan Peterson's like kind of take on the biggest burden or hardship that you can and then try to function or like embrace that or integrate it. >> Yeah, absolutely. >> I think that's good. I've got one more for Marcus back here. >> Sure. >> You have power over your mind, not outside events. Realize this and

you will find strength. So just like the stoicism again, being able to kind of know that not everything is within your control and knowing which ones to kind of worry about or put effort behind. >> Yeah. And this was uh the the big principle in stoicism and it came from Epictitus who's one of the earlier ones. >> Was he pre-Markcus? Yes. Right. Uh Marcus was like the late a late stage stoic. Um, but Epictitus talked about differentiating between events and our reactions to events. And for most people, they're kind of

one and the same. And they're like, "Oh, I'm upset because that person bumped into me on the subway." Right? And it's like, "No, you're upset because of your reaction to that person bumping into you on the subway because there might be another person who gets bumped and like uh doesn't even pay attention to it, right? Or they're like, "Oh, that person must have been in a bad mood or maybe that person didn't see where they were going." We have a lot of training with being bumped in the subway. Our decades

in Korea and now being in Bangkok. >> Right. Right. Yeah. Definitely. Living in busy cities. >> Bro, I was thinking of the Sran festival, which is the water festival, the new year in Thailand where people go around the city spraying each other with water guns and also doussing each other with like really really cold water. >> The ice buckets. So good. So shocking. the little tricksters that one day when we went out like middle-aged Thai ladies like so excited to get a bucket of ice water and just dump it on

your head and just the the excitement in their faces. I'm like, "Okay, these guys like they definitely know about the clown, >> right?" Yeah. I remember when we were standing we we like posted up at that one bar to have like a home base to to like soak people walking by or driving by motorbikes on the street cuz everyone's just soaking everyone on Sonran and like yeah there was like that little lady who was on our team like on our same team who would just like sneak up behind you and

dump the ice water like down your neck for like the 10th time and I'd be like like we're we're on the same team. True, >> bro. The funniest thing happened that day when we were standing like at the bar section. I was like taking taking a sip of my beer like I don't know charging my water gun or something like that and someone comes up and slaps my bum. And then I turned around and the foreigner he's like he saw what happened. He's not sure what to do. He goes like

this like and then and then the tie girl's like ah >> okay. Like he just embraced it cuz he made it seem like he did it. >> Yeah cuz he was standing directly behind you. So I I gave him a fist bump. I was like oh [ __ ] bro nice own. Like I'm like you're the last person that I thought would give me like a bump slap. >> That's funny. He just he just owns the clown like >> Yeah. So good. But yeah, such trickster energy and really fun. And

I think being in Thailand does make you a little bit more resilient or antifragile cuz you are push like the ice baths one is pretty or not the ice bath but the ice bucket ones. People used to do that as a challenge. >> Yeah. >> Like oh I'm doing the ice bucket challenge which is good. Awesome. But here that's just like everyday life during the new year time. Yeah. Yeah. That just everyone's getting the ice bucket. >> I'm just going to the convenience store to get like a water or something

like that. You get like a bucket poured on your head. >> Even if you're not participating in the festivities at all, you're like walking with your backpack and you're completely dry. They'll see you in like the trickster energy. They'll get excited and you're like, "Oh no, they're going to get me." >> No. And I love seeing the people's faces who didn't want to get sprayed. Like the serious gonzos, those are the fun people to get. No, no, no, no, no, no. Please. It's like you're in Thailand on Son, you're getting

gut. Everyone's going to get you. >> I've got a license to clown. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Oh man. Um >> I have I have on the wisdom angle too. Like wisdom is knowing which stress to choose, which stress to recover from, and which stress to refuse. >> Like certain stressors are never worth it. For example, like certain substances, maybe like let's say heroin or certain maybe jumping off of a building or certain shocks to your body. Yeah. Those are the chronic or the ones that are debilitating and you're

not going to recover from. >> What what's important is the capacity to to integrate that stress. If it's too much, then it becomes harmful. Um yeah, and there is this kind of progressive overload of hormesis where the more stress you integrate, the more your capacity to integrate stress grows. But yeah, there's always going to be a breaking point or a limit or some things that are probably just not worth it because like like the heroin example where it's like well probably just the downsides of that. I don't I don't know

maybe future research we'll find some hormetic effect like the hormesis. >> I'm not going to AB test that one. >> I'm not going to be the guinea pig on that one. Exactly. >> I think TB says like avoid like these three things like heroin, motorbikes, and a paycheck. A paycheck doesn't really fit in there. I mean it could, but I like where that >> Yeah, that quote goes. >> Right. Right. Right. Well, and and this is a good counterpoint also because like uh an example of like uh being in a

toxic relationship, right? And we've seen the flip side of of certain people who are a bit too optimistic or like oh no, everything's fine. Like she'll change. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And it's like, >> yeah, I guess you could do a mental reframe to be like, oh, I'm I'm integrating all this stress of this toxic relationship and it's going to make me stronger. But there's certain things where it's like, is that where you want to spend all your mental energy integrating that stress or do you want the energy freed

up to tackle more important problems? >> 100%. Is that extreme stoic training or is it just sabotaging your like liveless and your mental health? And this is one of our early debates about stoicism where that was your your point or your argument where you were like, "Well, but I feel like some people can just trick themselves into having a stoic mindset about anything rather than changing their circumstances." >> Oh, yeah. Right. No. And that one hits close. Like I when I think about that, I think certain people could stay in

a toxic relationship or a bad environment more than they need to basically because they're like the extreme stoics. any environment this person could thrive in, they're just playing on hard mode or they're like battling upstream constantly. >> Yeah, exactly. And Epicitus himself distinguished this where he said there are things that are inside our control and things that are outside our control. Right. And again, this is the serenity prayer in Christianity, which is the wisdom to know the difference between the things we can control and the things we can't control. And

then the >> some people just have sorry, some people just have limiting beliefs though, right? Like if they sell themselves a story where they're like I deserve this environment or like this is my burden to kind of help this person along or something like that, >> right? Sure. >> Yeah. So I I do remember that one like debating that. It's not even so much debating or disagreeing. It's more just exploring the limits of stoicism. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> Well, yeah. And uh and there was you read that book was

it James Stockdale, the guy who was in the prisoner of war camp, right? and and he had uh read Epictitus and or or one of the Stoics and that got him through his like being a prisoner and being tortured and whatnot because in that situation he can't control it, right? There are things he can control and can't control and when you're a prisoner of war, you can't get maybe you can escape if you can find a way to escape, but for the most part, you're just at the mercy of your

situation. So, the best thing you can do is to I cannot control this. So, but what I can control is my reactions and judgments to things and the mental state I keep myself in or how I view the hardships I'm enduring right now. >> Actually, when I was living in a goshi one in Korea, for context, a goshi one's like a closet. It's like the smallest room imaginable. It's basically a jail. >> I lived in one too for a brief period. Yeah. >> Yeah. And I went down the rabbit hole

reading about the prison camp books. So I read Unbroken about Zampirini, the miler who gets stuck in a Japanese concentration camp, Victor Frankle, man's search for meaning, the Stockdale one. And what I found with that is a lot of those guys thrived in those environments. It sounds harsh, they're literally kind of slowly dying in those environments, but they were able to come out with like new theories or way more resilient. So because I was going through a tougher period during that time, too. So reading about kind of extreme adversity really

helped me during that time. >> Yeah. So that's interesting because like you're engaging in negative visualization by reading books like that. And I I agree like I've read Victor Frankle's Man Search for Meaning. Um it's really powerful to read the autobiographies and the accounts of these people who lived through like absolutely horrific conditions. >> Put your minor inconveniences into context. >> Exactly. Okay. So that's you're putting yourself in their shoes by reading their autobiography and oh my god that must have been horrific. My life is super easy by comparison. >>

Yeah. >> And um Yeah. And you were also combining it with like the voluntary or involuntary hardship, right? When you're like living in the Goshiwan like the small the small room and reading these you you were kind of combining those two experiences together. It started off involuntary and then at one point it was voluntary but I kind of optimized living in those conditions and I think every young guy should go through a Spartan stage in their life >> where it's just all about like a strict schedule maybe like some kind

of gyming or fitness or cardio some kind of learning or information acquisition and really focusing on yourself. And I think the best time to do that is post divorce or breakup or some financial or business loss where you really need to integrate and then just focus and on yourself. So if you have no distractions, there's not too many distractions when you're living in a closet. So it's quite easy to really focus on one goal or one mission. Well, yeah. And that's interesting because that comes back to that Senica quote like

no one will know what you are capable of, not even yourself, right? If you don't push yourself. So most people's have a range of experience like high and low, right? And they're like, "Oh, my lows were so low, but actually by pushing yourself, you could endure conditions way worse than your lowest low." And you don't even know it yet, right? Because it's not within your range of of experience or possibilities. >> You don't know what your limits are until you go beyond them. >> Yeah. And so so going through a

Spartan phase, something like that, or maybe it's doing like a vapa retreat, right, for like a week or something. What is that? >> That's like the silent meditation retreat. I've never done one personally, but I know some people who have. But it's like >> Shout out to Matteo. >> Yeah. Yeah. Like Oh, yeah. Like a silent retreat. The dark retreat is kind of extreme. >> Yeah. Then our buddy we met at that retreat who did a 50-day dark retreat. >> Yeah. I think it was like Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. >>

Or I think it was >> 49 days or something like that. >> He missed one day. He gave or he didn't give up, but he decided like, okay, at this point it's like the anti- like hormmesis moment where he's like, "Okay, I'm not benefiting anymore. this is becoming destructive, I think, was his conclusion, >> right? Cuz that's really on the exploratory fringes of like what is endurable or or possible. So 49 days in absolute darkness, he had someone bringing him food. Um, >> but uh yeah, so again, the the inverse

U curve, that's pushing it really far. That's like doing like the 20-minute ice bath or something like that. >> Yeah, exactly. That's that movie Double Jeopardy where she gets accused of doing something and then when she gets out or she serves the time and then when she gets out of jail now she might as well commit the crime cuz she's already paid the time. >> Okay. >> So it's like Yeah. Our buddy comes out of the solitary confinement and he's like, "What's my crime now? I can do whatever I want."

>> Yeah. >> And I'm sure things seem really easy after that. Like for me with with psychedelics as an example. So, I' I've gone deep on psychedelics and and exploring. >> Yeah, you have, bro. >> And I've had some really hard psychedelic trips, right? But >> I kind of came out of those. And of course, it's the progressive overload. I didn't start with like some people will just go straight into like a really intense psychedelic and some people can get trauma from that. But I think if you've started small and

kind of built up, uh, yeah, I've come out of some hard psychedelic journeys and after integrating that experience, I kind of felt invincible because I'm like, what could life throw at me that would possibly be harder than that trip? Like, I made it through that. I made it through that experience. Everything else in my life seems easy mode compared to that. >> Yeah. I forget who said it, but it's like everyone should have an ego death before they die. M >> basically that's like the extreme negative implementation or visualization. I

also wrote like >> true. Yeah. Cuz it's like otherwise you have this this fear, right? That that's just haunting you. >> I feel that's how Bronze Age mythologies thrive is because everyone's afraid of death, >> right? >> But if you can integrate like a death or near-death experience, I feel like you're really antifragile after that. coming to terms with it, coming to terms with your own death, with the impermanence of everything and being like, well, that is the deepest truth of of existence. Maybe there's something beyond our death. Like, that's

just unknowable. >> True. >> And it's very possible there is, but just coming to terms with this existence and everything we know in this existence is impermanent and will end at some point. And kind of an a deep acceptance of that, that makes you really anti-fragile. >> Definitely. And I love the term psychonaut. So for people who aren't familiar with that term, it's kind of like a navigator of the mind, right? >> Like someone who's exploring that. So >> the psychonaut's wager like overstressing your body and your brain for short

amounts of time to see further beyond which gives you an edge via deeper thinking perspective after like the integration. >> Yeah, absolutely. >> So that's our wager or people who explore other realms. Right. >> Well, yeah. You're you're like taking in more >> experience, more chaos, more information that your brain, your mind >> Yeah. you can't can't make sense of in its current worldview and then you need to like adapt. So this is um so Carl Jung talked about this and he called this the transcendent function whereas most people are

very uncomfortable by tension or paradox right like they can't hold opposing worldviews and so what most people do is they collapse into one worldview and and strongly resist its opposite or any other worldview but what Carl Jung recommended as a psychological practice or a spiritual practice is to hold tension in the mind, in the body, in the being and just sit with it and not try to distract yourself with like social media like >> pleasures. >> Yeah. Yeah. If you have some discomfort or some tension, you just sit with it

and you just uh observe it, right? Like a meditative practice. >> Would you say ruminate? >> Well, ruminate typically has more of a negative connotation. But it's it's not even judging. It's just it's just sitting, holding, and observing. And it might not happen in one session. This might take days or weeks. But he talked about this transcendent function. Eventually something new will emerge out of that tension. And it transcends and includes. So now you're kind of comfortable with that tension and able to hold both possibilities because you've emerged into a

worldview or an acceptance that that holds both of those as possible or both of those as perspectives. And because we're pretty reasonable guys, I'll play the devil's advocate on the Sykes one where I think on the extremes people can be guilty of maybe I forget who coined the term premature transcendence where maybe they have an integrated let's say current reality and they're transcending that feeling like an enlightenment as opposed to maybe sitting more or working on themselves and then they can be a form of like escapism. spiritual bypassing >> or

spiritual bypassing. >> Yeah, spiritual bypassing is the term for like, oh, everything in this reality is just temporary and illus it's an illusion. So, there's a transcendent world and I'll just spend my time in that world and who cares about the suffering in this world? Something like that. Yeah, because I as much as I like that side, I do think you can go too far the other side where I think it's quite easy possibly to be alone like a monk and living a life of just is it aeticism? >> Yeah.

>> Yeah. Where you're just alone all the time and you're kind of neglecting society where you're like, "Oh, I have nothing to gain or there's nothing that I can integrate and you're just sitting too much >> where I think that can >> Yeah. So, it's Yeah. just to push back on that a little bit because I've seen different extremes of that for people in different uh >> well yeah and I don't I don't even think that's a push back because uh the Jung's transcendent function here's an example you don't want

to collapse into this is better or that is better right cuz the the opposite of spiritual bypassing might be like too concerned with the state of things in the world and needing things in the world to go a certain way and then you have all this stress and and suffering because reality is not matching your internal view of how things should be and that causes like a lot of anguish and yet going on the opposite extreme which is like oh just let everything be as it is and I'll just uh

meditate in bliss all day that's another extreme it's like somehow holding both of those and allowing some balance right and I think that's people who've been traumatized early in life and now they're like okay society's almost like a poison so I need to abstain or kind of live a lonely or solitude existence. And that's that's the way I see it where it's like, oh, I feel like some people should integrate a little bit more before they've decided like, okay, this is my path, especially at a young age, >> right? >>

Yeah. >> Well, and this is a good transition cuz I wanted to talk about like hormmesis and society, right? Or tension and and society because this same uh >> it ties into our debate method. >> Yeah, the debate method, right? Or we said like debate's not the greatest word because it implies like a winner and a loser but like >> argumentative reasoning. >> Argumentative reasoning you liked. Or I might say something like um like a dialectic, right? Or like dialogos. I feel like we need a new word in the English

language. That means two parties expressing opposing points of view or perspectives with the goal of greater understanding and and integration of perspectives. not my perspective is right and yours is wrong because well it's the same thing we see we see tension in all areas of reality and this is the type of uh tension I feel like this is the societal hormmesis which is tension comes from divergent perspectives like bashing up against each other and it's always uncomfortable when you encounter someone who has like a strong opinion or perspective that disagrees

with your own but that's hormesis right actually opening yourself up to be like, "Oh, by encountering this other perspective, I'm actually making my own ideas stronger and our societal understanding is becoming more robust by this process happening. It's not a bad thing." >> And I think the debate has been lost, especially in the West. >> Yeah. where I think certain cultures like especially the Brits I think they do a lot better of a job of teaching people how to debate or reason as opposed to in the west right now we've

kind of lost that ability where everything just ends with that's offensive or you can't say that so so Jonathan height has a book and I haven't read this one I read his other book but um this one is the coddling of the American mind that one you did read that one that one's really good >> yeah so so um he was saying that yeah it's this culture of safetyism um on college campuses and and just society in general that's actually harming people's mental health. >> Well, we're raising kind of entitled

fragileistas, almost little brats. >> Well, it's the it's the armchair chair analysis, the lazy boy you were talking about, or the um this is the equivalent of the tree that never gets like swayed in the breeze, >> never been in a storm, >> or the child who's never exposed to dirt or germs and they end up with like allergies and asthma, right? So if someone's psyche has never encountered opposing perspectives and learned to actually integrate those then it leads to weakness. It leads to fragility. Yeah. I wrote down remove all

disagreement, offense, rivalry and difficulty and the civic immune system atrophies. Like society weakens from not enough friction or controversy or opposing opinions. >> Yes, society is also something that's anti-fragile in the realm of discourse. You need this discourse. You need competing opinions like brushing up against each other. Um >> well it forces air correction really. >> Exactly. Yeah. >> And I think in my life I've sparred like debated the most with you and probably my brother where I think that's helped me a lot and it reminds me of that book

by uh Nigel Ferguson where he it's called the west and the rest. It says why did the west rise up and it says a lot of it was because of competition. Like who could explore the new world the fastest? like who could set out and find new land or new riches, who could invent, you know, like different forms of weaponry that could help advance society or potentially like be really negative too on the extremes like we were saying with Oppenheimer and uh uh Nobel. >> Well, yeah. And the amount of

stress if it's too much to integrate, >> but it also makes you more competitive and resilient. So we need competition and friction to kind of get the best version of society or of ourselves. >> Absolutely. And I see this as one of the most fundamental tensions in reality is between cooperation and competition. But if you look at evolution, if you look at biological evolution, both of these are present. And it's the interplay between these two forces that led to complexification of evolution. But cooperation transcended competition. Yeah. So competition existed inside

a container of greater cooperation out outperforms over time cuz you have like you see this in this is why homo sapiens sapiens. One of the leading theories why we out competed the Neanderthalss and other species other subspecies of of uh humans because our brains had the capacity to work with more larger groups of people. So if you have a group of 100 people working together, that's going to out compete like 10 groups of 10 people who all have different goals and agendas and and can't really cooperate together. >> True. >>

Just mathematically, informationally, it it makes sense. >> Yeah. The bigger your tribe, the more you can specialize and advance, >> right? But then if it's too much like, oh, competition bad, but then then you end up with authoritarian top down, everyone needs to get along. Oh, you thinking again or free speech like free speech includes hate speech or controversial opinions or else you don't have free speech anymore. >> Yeah. And that's what's interesting is you need conflict to emerge disagreement or different perspectives >> but respectful discourse. Yeah. And that's where

>> in the pursuit of greater cooperation. I think that's one of the insights >> I find from from looking at evolution. I love the one that says, "Don't raise your voice, raise your argument." Or like, "Don't raise your fists, raise your debate," or whatever, because I feel like a lot of people once they've lost a debate, you can tell quickly because it gets personal. >> People start attacking your character as opposed to your point >> and then they've kind of lost. And that's why like thinking of like the intelligence squared

debates or some of the Hitchens debates. It's like the audience can tell who's getting flustered or their shadow or DI is coming out cuz they start attacking the person's character and their point still stands and the other person kind of looks like a clown at that point. And this is I think one of the issues with like modern debate cuz I was watching on YouTube some like debate channels and the sphere of debate. Modern debate seems to have descended into like name calling. >> Yeah. Yeah. name calling, trying to insult

the other person's character. And it's kind of like the audience is walk watching it like a boxing match. Like who can who can like use their words to like fluster the other person more and that's who won the debate and it's like wait a minute, what about the quality of the ideas being articulated, >> right? It's kind of a race to the bottom if that's the kind of debate you're engaging in, >> right? >> Yeah. So I think and that ties into in some ways I can see how that can

be useful but not in a very like intellectual way. Do you know what I mean? So it knowing your audience. So, for example, if your audience, let's say like the American electorate, when Trump's debating, when Trump does start name calling, the audience does cheer, but in some ways that's Trump's genius, if you will because he's playing into people's emotions and he knows he's going to get a ri out of the audience. And that's what people want to see. Like, people want to be entertained as opposed to like, you know, confused

or like, oh, bring the troops. I remember the one Ron Paul debate um where he's Ron Paul's saying bring the troops home or why do we have to be the world's policeman and the crowd's like booing him and then the next guy like let's call George Bush or or Jeb Bush actually at that point and he's saying no we need to increase military spending and everyone's like cheering and then Ron Paul's like I want to cut back inflation boo I want to audit the Federal Reserve boo and then the other

people are like okay we need to like increase the budget or we need to increase these like programs or whatever and then people are cheering again not even knowing that inflation they're going to be the ones paying the price. >> Yeah. It's really interesting cuz like I'm just trying to think through what is at the what is at the root of this problem, right? Because the Trump example that that he swayed opinion because he was able to like use his words in such a way that >> I'd say a failed

education system. But I I keep coming back to this idea of certainty being at the root of this because people have this fundamental posture which is like the things I believe are true and the things someone else believes that disagree with that are wrong, right? Or they're stupid or something like that. >> The demon of certainty comes out least expected. Yeah. Whereas if we have this shared container which is there's different perspectives. Some perspectives are more right than others or more aligned with reality on a spectrum. Yeah. >> Right. But

the goal of this discourse is to discover even better models. So and this is uh the philosopher Hegel. Hegel's dialectic. It was thesis anti-thesis synthesis. So this is kind of how discussion or debate works, right? It's like thesis, here's my opinion, and we do this with each other, right? Anti-thesis. Well, to play devil's advocate or the opposite of that right >> to invert. >> But then most people at that point will be like, "No, that's wrong. Mine mine is right and yours is wrong." And >> that's the shadow, I guess.

>> Yeah. Yeah. The shadow, the demon of certainty come out of certainty poking, >> right? Whereas the the proper way to growth is now synthesis, which is okay. Well, I I'm I might still be pretty sure mine is right, but why do you believe yours? Like, what is your evidence? And I actually might get enough evidence that broadens my perspective. Right? So, now we both share information with each other. We both end up with a more robust mental model and we might even one of us might change our opinion or

the other or we might arrive at an even better container solution that contains both opinions as possibilities. Well, I think that's where you and I do a really good job of that because a lot of people might get a little bit tense when we're sparring sometimes, but you and I have found that any friction or debate has kind of led to a better understanding or more like investigative research where we'll both learn at the expense of like other people or people who are too sensitive to any form of disagreement. >>

Yeah. And I think I I feel like this is a deep truth of the universe is that growth feeds on tension. Tension leads to growth when properly integrated. Because you see this in um in physics and in life and biology, life is fundamentally negropic, right? The universe is increasing in entropy. Everything is increasing in entropy, disorder, chaos. But life has found a way to not only maintain its its state of order, but actually continue to grow and become more negantropic, right? It's it's this negative entropy to keep its coherence. Like

like if we weren't negantropic, we would just like dissipate, you know, be torn apart. We would die. But >> you have to integrate the noise or the chaos. >> Yes. And and this makes sense if you think about it because if everything in the universe is gradually increasing in entropy or disorder, that means you need to grow your level of of integration in order to just persist, right? You can't stay the same if if your environment is becoming more entropic because the things around you are becoming more and more disordered

until you can't integrate it anymore. You have to constantly be challenging yourself to integrate more entropy, more entropy. And and in society, this is like disagreement, right? This is conflict. This is tension. >> Oh, it's opposing opinions. It's friction. It's debate. It's all of the above. >> Exactly. And if we don't do this on a gradual level, we become very fragile. >> Fragile as a society. >> And that's why I think capitalism the way that it's most efficient is failure because that's the feedback mechanism. when you have bailouts or things

like that, you're almost rewarding like chaos, right? Like you're rewarding imprudent risk-taking. So, you need that feedback mechanism where failure actually leads to, you know, error correction where you're able to integrate those mistakes and learn as a society. 100% agree with you. And this is like natural selection, right? You need and they found this with forest fires also. If you suppress like small forest fires, it eventually results in a huge forest fire because the uh the like everything builds up. The forest fire that would normally clear out the rubble um

it prevents a larger forest fire later. And when you do these bailouts, you're just kind of like like kicking the can down the road until there's going to be a huge collapse of the system cuz you're not letting the weak players die out. >> Yeah. And that's not really capitalism. That's like statebacked capitalism or bailout capitalism. And actually the best way to stop a forest fire is to go ahead of the forest and actually burn like ahead. You know what I mean? Like make a dead wood spot where everything's burnt.

So when the fire actually does get to that region, it has nothing like nothing left to feed its energy anymore. So and that's like the kaizen like small like chaos or small forms of uh stress, you know what I mean? Are actually better for the system. >> Yeah. Exactly. and and expecting that stress will always be there, tension will always be there, conflict will always be there. So, let's build a system that's robust against it, not one that tries to stomp it out or eliminate it or pretend it doesn't exist

because it exists everywhere in the univer. I mean, this is thermodynamics. It's like the this seems to just be a law of the universe. In order for systems to persist, they need to continue to in integrate more and more entropy, more and more conflict, more and more tension. and grow and that's how they become more resilient. >> Definitely. Life is not the absence of stress. Life is stressed organized into higher order. >> Okay. Nice. Yeah. >> So I think that ties into the negropy thesis. >> Yeah. So it's it's negropy.

It's anti-fragility. It's Taleb's concept of being anti-fragile. Something that grows from stress and conflict >> or benefits even from stress >> cuz cuz you could say being fragile is something that is torn apart by stress. Being resilient is something that can resist stress. Being antifragile is something that actually grows from from stress. >> True. >> And that's that same principle of hormesis which we know from biology, right? With like exercise, cold exposure, saunas, um intermittent fasting, um the immune system, right? Things get stronger when they're mildly stressed and then they

can handle even greater and greater stresses. There's actually a good uh book on this one. And it's called 60 Minutes a week. >> Oh yeah. I meant to plug your book actually. Yeah. >> Yeah. Cuz a lot of these things, especially like the ice bath, the V2 max training, the intermittent fasting or like the stoicism are all in there and it's easy to read. >> Yeah. No, I mean like I can plug your book for you cuz I think you're one of the people I've known who's like maintained your level

of fitness and like ripness for a very as long as I've known you, right? Like like almost 20 years. And uh and your whole philosophy was also like you can do this in 60 minutes a week. Like it doesn't require like hours at the gym. Uh so >> you don't even need to go to the gym. >> Yeah. So yours was like a you can train at home. You just need like a pull-up bar. >> Not Yeah. ideally you have a pull-up bar and push-up handles or a few little things,

but you don't even need that. And yeah, you you kind of mastered this like, well, what's the minimum effective dose at high intensity that just when you do this, it it causes the the physique to respond and grow. >> Well, I had a good sparring partner as I was writing that book. So, >> yeah, you definitely hone my opinions or sharpened them as I was writing that. >> Well, and I think we've continued to do this with each other over the years, right, which is Yeah. Like the debate method, right?

We make all our friends uncomfortable because uh sometimes we'll disagree on something and we'll really go at it. Yeah, >> but we most people respectful >> name. It doesn't get personal. We Yeah, we are attacking each other like ideas though. It's never the character. >> So, I think that is I think everyone should do more of that. So, it's like the hot seat or the debate method or bringing that form of argumentative reasoning back into society >> cuz if you're so uncomfortable with that, you never get the information from the

other perspective. You just end up living in your own bubble. And we've done this on steroids with social media because people are so uncomfortable by opposing perspectives that they just put themselves in a bubble of of safe perspectives that everyone agrees with everyone and then oh there's an outsider outside my bubble. Attack them, get them as opposed to >> actually I I've uh done this a bit almost as a spiritual practice of uh watching like a YouTube video or reading something with someone who I really disagree with. No, me too.

>> And just just holding the tension in my body of just in like taking in their perspective and watching my own reaction to it and um I I think it's very So this is kind of the hormesis of uh being comfortable with opposing opinions. >> Yeah. Right. >> And being able to sit with that like >> Yeah. >> Okay. Hey, I have a quite strong opinion that the world works this way, but I need to invert that and read the polar opposite to kind of strengthen my beliefs and also be

open to possibly changing them. >> And then this is in uh debate, right? This is steelmanning the opponent's argument. You have to be able to articulate their argument back better than them. So they will hear what you say and >> he understands me. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He understands me. Yeah. Like is this what is does this accurately represent your position? If they say yes, now they're open to your feedback because they feel understood, right? >> No. Exactly. I think all disagreements stem from you could say certainty, ignorance, but a

lot of it is just not feeling understood. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. Cuz I think if someone's lived in your or walked in your shoes or lived through similar experiences as you, you're more likely to be receptive to what they've said to you. And I think that's what makes like healthy debate or society more resilient. >> Yeah, absolutely. I think uh >> is that a good good note to end on here or did you have anything else? >> Yeah, I have a few little quotes like make discomfort voluntary before life

makes it mandatory. Um I had one on uh let's see uh modernity has sold us comfort. The bill is fragility. I like that. >> These are all noitos. >> That's good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. >> Yeah. No, I'm pretty good here. We covered all the main ones. >> Okay. Yeah. I guess just to to tie it together, I had kind of like a closer, right? That >> it's interesting, right? Cuz this these are not like five or seven separate subjects. We have the same pattern manifesting in so many different forms, right?

Hormesis in biology, right? like the body getting stronger by being exposed to stressors, right? We see the same thing in trees with like the wind, uh our muscles, our bones, our immune system. We see the same thing in psychology with this stress mindset uh and stoicism. Um and then we see the same thing in society, right? With this like dialectic or conflict in opposing viewpoints being able to lead to growth, right? It's all the same principle of tension or conflict or stress can be integrated to lead to growth. And uh

yeah, I had as a closer here, the question isn't whether you'll face stress, it's whether you'll choose to face it on your own terms in controlled doses with progressive increase and adequate recovery >> or wait until life forces it on you without preparation. >> Nice, bro. Yeah, that summarizes it well. >> Yeah. Sweet. Make sure to uh like and subscribe. >> Yeah, like and subscribe. >> Nice, bro. We crushed it. >> We crushed it today, bro. And and we decided when we say we crushed it, it it's like compressing wisdom.

We take all the wisdom and compress it. No, no, we we literally crushed it. >> Yeah. We crushed our best ideas and our best reasoning together. >> Yeah. Into like an hour and a half segment. >> Nice. >> All right. See you on the next one. Peace.