The conversation delves into the importance of learning through understanding rather than just memorizing information, advocating for individuals to derive knowledge independently. It explores the impact of podcast consumption on thought diversity and the need for personal interpretation. The discussion touches on the concept of people before ideology and the commonality of stories across cultures. It emphasizes the value of conversation over passive consumption, highlighting the dangers of groupthink and the importance of natural dialogue for societal success.
Yeah, but how did, like, really, how did you learn math? Like, did you, did you rederive, did you learn to rederive everything yourself, or did you learn by being given a formula? Learned by being given a formula. I learned it by rederiving everything myself, and that's sort of my guiding philosophy for, like, knowledge and shit. Like, I think every human being has the ability to learn everything they need to know themselves, and fully learn it, not just memorize a formula, not just get a number, not just something like that, but, like, fully figure out everything from scratch.
And I think that by making every person do that, they'll have their own, like, unique platform, or unique way of understanding things that will contribute to the vision of diversity, as opposed to just, like, general podcasts, where you get, like, Joe Rogan, like, like, I can't tell you how many guys I've met who just, like, will listen to, like, Joe Rogan, or something like that, and, like, they'll be introduced to all these new ideas, and people won't think about it.
They don't have their own unique, that's, like, interpretation. Like, look at what we're doing now. We are having our own unique interpretation of things, because we're having a discussion, and most people will just be like, oh, did you hear about that Joe Rogan thing? Yeah, that was pretty cool. And I don't know, maybe I'm generalizing too much. No. No, you're good. But I think, I think those fans completely misinterpret what Joe Rogan wants to do, because Joe Rogan, the point of him is that he doesn't want to do it.
He's just speaking. So, I can say it this way. Joe Rogan is pro-conversationalism. Those fans are anti, because they idolize him as, like, a pinnacle point of view, so they just take his point of view as gospel, let's say, and then they inherit it without having their own perspective. Without realizing that, actually, the anecdote to this is conversation. The anecdote to this is copy what Joe Rogan is doing, not listen to him as gospel. Take his idea and talk about it with your friends.
That's how you develop your own perspective. That's good, but I like that. I really like that interpretation, but I'm curious about how do you, like, you guys, like, I don't know, I've always been a pessimist when it comes to human behavior. I've never been a believer in democracy or anything like that. I've always believed that, like, you've always got to factor in the least positive. Like, everybody, at the end of the day, like, no matter how strong a person might think they are, like, at the end of the day, you're going to feel subject to, like, you're always late, and most people, like, things are inherent.
Like, in my experience, I've found a lot of people are just inherently late. Like, not even necessarily lazily pessimistic, but, like, lazily pessimistic. Like, they just, like, won't think through things themselves. They'd rather just, like, listen to a podcast. Rather than, like, for example, like, are you, like, you know the movie, like, Full Metal Jacket? Yeah, I can't tell you how many kids I've met who told me that, yeah, Full Metal Jacket is the reason why I joined the Marines.
You want to know how retarded that sounds? That's like watching, like, that's like watching, like, Thor and being like, yeah, that's the reason. Why are you always being hammered? Yeah, that's being like, yeah, that's why I like, I like being, like, chopped, like, chopped. Like, essentially, it's like the interpretation of art, like, I don't know, maybe the message flies over some people's heads, but I guess at the same time, like, perhaps it's a positive thing that everybody has their own unique interpretation, but at the same time, like, it's unfortunate how many of the interpretations only gradually have too small surface levels.
Yeah. There's a lot of complexity that goes into it, which I'm clearly not discussing, but there's a lot of interesting stuff there. What do you, because this was before we started talking about this, but what do you think about the least common denominator thing I brought up earlier, or the least common denominator as an apology? Should I explain it first? Yeah, sure. Okay, so the idea behind this is that the least common denominator of all humans is a commoning story.
So what this means is that regardless of culture, right, let's say if you're African, let's say you are, or if you're Asian, right, you got told, let's say, bedtime stories by your parents, right, and then these stories have a lot of things in common, even though they are in different languages, different cultures, and then so I think if all humans go back to this baseline, right, of saying, hey, what is the story that, you know, your dad told you when you were going to sleep as a kid, let's say, right, and then I share mine, and then we share that, oh my gosh, we have so much in common, right, like, what if that was the first conversation you had with anybody, right, instead of just assuming that they're, oh, you're a Democrat, so I hate you, or you're a Republican, so I hate you.
This ties to my concept of people before ideology. People before ideology. Yeah, so reactions. I don't know, that's very interesting. Let's just start out with an experiment. What was the most moving bedtime story your father told you? It's probably the one, it's just one that pops up in my memory. My grandmother told me about the race between the turtle and the hare. Have you heard of that one? Yeah, I've heard of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, it always ends over time.
Speed is power. Just like a river, it overcomes a mountain. Yeah, but that's not, I'm going to try to use a typically Chinese one, because that's not the Chinese one. I think that's Acom's favorite, probably. Yeah, probably. Okay, so the Chinese one is Monkey King, Song Wukong. Have you heard of it? No, I haven't. So, this is a story, I'm going to try to TLDR, but he is basically, within Chinese myths, he is my favorite character, by far.
And it is because he is the anti-god. He's the anti-god. But not like devils. He's the anti-god because he's anti-authority, which actually makes him godly. He's like the god of being anti-authority. So, his story is like, he's a monkey who, I probably might get this wrong, but he was a monkey who was born by bursting out of a rock. And then, like, a lot of his story is like, he's just a monkey. So, all the gods go, all the gods go.
And then he goes up to a god and says, What do you think of me? And then the god says, Oh, you're just a monkey, who cares? And then he's like, Oh, actually, I have a big stick and I can fight you. And then he defeats him. And then that's like, basically everything. But that's like a description of the character. And then Monkey King, Song Wukong is very popular in pop culture nowadays. Like, he's in League of Legends.
And then he's in a lot of these, like, new games. Yeah, so that's, I would say that's my concept. So, what would you say is your, is that maybe like a bedtime story? Probably. My dad used to like to make up a lot of stories. Yeah. But, I don't know, probably one of my favorite ones was a story of, I don't know, partially based on, maybe this is a failure in my memory here. But I believe part of it was based on the fact that there's a historical battle where a great army was surrounding a smaller army.
They had a force that was easily ten times the smaller army. And there's a lake nearby. And there's a flock of storks. So, in the middle of the night, the hero of the smaller army gets up. And he alarms the storks. And they all pick off. And the beating of their wings wakes up the enemy enchanters who believe that there's a night raid. And there's cavalry coming towards them. So, they scatter. And they run in many different directions.
Many of them lose their lives. Blah, blah, blah. That was a, I don't know, that's something I've always thought of. And a big theme of it, I personally think, is whether you're going to let your surroundings dictate you. Or whether you dictate your surroundings. That's perfectly to somebody's soul. Mm-hmm. Yeah. The monkey let himself dictate his surroundings rather than his surroundings dictate him. We just did it. Yeah. We found a comedy factor in these things. Yeah, yeah.
That's a good, I like that a lot. Yeah. And then, the point, the largest part of life is called conversationalism. You have to converse in order to get to these points. Yeah. And then, so, something like doomscrolling is not conversationalism. It is being fed. Yes, it's being fed. That's right. So, a lot of modern stuff, like, a lot of modern stuff that typical, let's say youngsters, like, youngsters interact with is basically you're getting fed. Rather than you have the option to.
Yeah. That's what makes people like sheeple. Yeah. That's what makes people like the groupthink. Because the groupthink comes from anti-conversation. Like, the whole point of 1984 can be distilled down to anti-conversation. That's how dystopia is created. Mm-hmm. That's interesting. Yeah. I like this a lot. Yeah. You definitely, this is definitely convincing. Yeah. There's a novelty here. Yeah, because, like, because I was just going to say, I guess the question becomes, how do you get this to become a natural state rather than something that's forced out? Because we right now, we are, we're talking here.
Yeah. But I'm not sure that this would be a thing that would arise naturally. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Well, I would say the solvent to this is to say that we humans don't need to, again, we don't need to invent anything. Mm-hmm. We have to just realize that it's a natural all along. Mm-hmm. That's it. How did, how, why are humans so successful? Within the realm of anaphylia. Anaphylia? Because it worked in the group. Exactly. Because we converse.
That's it. We converse to a death.