John Clarke: The Art of Fighting and the Pursuit of Excellence
音乐与艺术心理与人性体育与武术历史与文明生物与进化
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donfightpersongotputdidntryingdoinggoingguysocialtalksaidbostonmartialmediaconnorstuffrelationshipshit
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🎙️ 完整对话（4078 条）
Lex Fridman (00:00.000)
The following is a conversation with John Clark.
以下是与约翰·克拉克的对话。
Lex Fridman (00:02.520)
He's a friend, a Brazilian jiu jitsu black belt,
他是一个朋友，巴西柔术黑带，
Lex Fridman (00:05.640)
former MMA fighter, and at least in my opinion,
前综合格斗选手 至少在我看来
Lex Fridman (00:08.980)
one of the great UFC corner man coaches to listen to.
值得聆听的伟大 UFC 角人教练之一。
Lex Fridman (00:12.300)
And also, he's my current jiu jitsu coach
而且，他是我现在的柔术教练
John Clarke (00:15.200)
at Broadway Jiu Jitsu in South Boston.
在南波士顿的百老汇柔术。
Lex Fridman (00:17.600)
He was once, for a time, a philosophy major in college,
他曾经一度是大学哲学专业的学生，
Lex Fridman (00:22.160)
and is now, I would say, a kind of practicing philosopher,
我想说，现在是一种实践哲学家，
Lex Fridman (00:26.320)
opinionated, brilliant,
有主见、才华横溢、
Lex Fridman (00:28.360)
and someone I always enjoy talking to even when,
和一个我总是喜欢与之交谈的人，即使，
Lex Fridman (00:31.720)
especially when, we disagree, which we do often.
尤其是当我们意见不一致时，我们经常这样做。
John Clarke (00:36.040)
He's definitely someone I can see talking to
他绝对是我能看到的与之交谈的人
Lex Fridman (00:38.040)
many times on this podcast.
在这个播客上多次。
John Clarke (00:39.960)
In fact, he hosts a new podcast of his own
事实上，他主持了自己的新播客
Lex Fridman (00:43.280)
called Please Allow Me.
称为“请允许我”。
John Clarke (00:46.760)
Quick mention of each sponsor,
快速提及每个赞助商，
Lex Fridman (00:48.440)
followed by some thoughts related to the episode.
接下来是一些与这一集相关的想法。
John Clarke (00:50.880)
Thank you to Theragun,
感谢塞拉贡，
Lex Fridman (00:52.920)
the device I use for post workout muscle recovery,
我用于锻炼后肌肉恢复的设备，
John Clarke (00:56.080)
Magic Spoon, low carb keto friendly cereal
Magic Spoon，低碳水化合物酮友好谷物
Lex Fridman (00:58.800)
that I think is delicious,
John Clarke (01:00.720)
Eight Sleep, a mattress that cools itself
Lex Fridman (01:03.320)
and gives me yet another reason to enjoy sleep,
Lex Fridman (01:06.120)
and Cash App, the app I use to send money to friends.
Lex Fridman (01:09.880)
Please check out these sponsors in the description
John Clarke (01:12.480)
to get a discount and to support this podcast.
Lex Fridman (01:15.640)
As a side note, let me say that martial arts,
John Clarke (01:18.240)
especially jiu jitsu and judo,
Lex Fridman (01:20.120)
have been a big part of my growth as a human being.
Lex Fridman (01:22.960)
So I think I will talk to a few martial artists
Lex Fridman (01:25.360)
on occasion on this podcast.
John Clarke (01:27.280)
I hope that is of interest to you.
Lex Fridman (01:29.520)
I won't talk to people who are simply great fighters
John Clarke (01:31.920)
or great athletes, but people who have a philosophy
Lex Fridman (01:35.040)
that I find to be interesting and worth exploring,
John Clarke (01:37.640)
even if I disagree with parts or most of it.
Lex Fridman (01:41.520)
I like alternating between historians
Lex Fridman (01:43.440)
and computer scientists, fighters and biologists,
Lex Fridman (01:46.440)
and between totally different worldviews and personalities,
John Clarke (01:50.000)
like Elon Musk and Michael Malice.
Lex Fridman (01:53.360)
This world, to me, is fascinating
John Clarke (01:56.320)
because of the diversity of weirdness
Lex Fridman (01:58.800)
that is human civilization.
John Clarke (02:00.920)
I love the weird and the brilliant,
Lex Fridman (02:03.400)
and hope you join me on the journey of exploring both.
John Clarke (02:06.600)
If you don't like an episode, skip it.
Lex Fridman (02:09.360)
For an OCD person like myself,
John Clarke (02:11.360)
sometimes not listening to a podcast episode
Lex Fridman (02:14.160)
is an act of courage.
John Clarke (02:16.040)
It's like not finishing a book even though you're 80% done.
Lex Fridman (02:19.640)
Try it sometimes.
John Clarke (02:21.200)
Listen to ones you like, and don't listen
Lex Fridman (02:23.360)
to the ones you don't like.
John Clarke (02:25.000)
I know, it's profound advice.
Lex Fridman (02:27.920)
If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube,
John Clarke (02:30.360)
review it with five stars on Apple Podcast,
Lex Fridman (02:32.480)
follow on Spotify, support on Patreon,
John Clarke (02:35.160)
or connect with me on Twitter at Lex Friedman.
Lex Fridman (02:38.840)
And now, here's my conversation with John Clark.
Lex Fridman (02:43.760)
You ready for this?
Lex Fridman (02:45.240)
I've been ready for this my whole life.
John Clarke (02:46.720)
All right, I was thinking of doing a Kerouac style road trip
Lex Fridman (02:50.040)
across the United States,
John Clarke (02:52.560)
after this whole COVID thing lifts.
Lex Fridman (02:54.920)
You ever take a trip like that?
John Clarke (02:56.840)
I've done a handful of long distance driving trips
Lex Fridman (03:01.320)
up and down the East Coast, but also from the West Coast
John Clarke (03:04.840)
back to the East Coast, and then returning to California.
Lex Fridman (03:08.600)
So I've definitely done my fair share
John Clarke (03:10.440)
of driving in this country.
Lex Fridman (03:12.600)
Do you have the longing for the great American road trip?
John Clarke (03:16.360)
I think there are so many things
Lex Fridman (03:18.400)
that I've been lucky enough to see in the world
John Clarke (03:20.560)
that I now, at this point in my life, realize
Lex Fridman (03:22.720)
there are tons of things that I need to see here
John Clarke (03:25.440)
in this country, and a road trip could potentially
Lex Fridman (03:27.680)
be the best way to see them.
John Clarke (03:30.760)
I think to do it effectively, you need an amount of time
Lex Fridman (03:34.160)
where you can be as leisurely as possible.
John Clarke (03:36.560)
There's no deadline, and there's no,
Lex Fridman (03:38.480)
I've gotta make it from Chicago to St. Louis by sundown
John Clarke (03:41.480)
to get to this place at this time.
Lex Fridman (03:43.520)
I think you really need to be able to take your time
Lex Fridman (03:45.960)
and kind of let the road take you where you need to go.
Lex Fridman (03:51.280)
It feels like you need a mission though, ultimately.
John Clarke (03:54.160)
There's a reason you need to be in San Francisco.
Lex Fridman (03:56.080)
That's like the Kerouac thing.
John Clarke (03:57.720)
You have to meet somebody somewhere kind of loosely
Lex Fridman (04:00.120)
in a few weeks, and then it's the,
John Clarke (04:03.280)
as you struggle on towards that mission,
Lex Fridman (04:06.440)
you meet weird characters that get in your way,
Lex Fridman (04:08.480)
but ultimately sort of create an experience.
Lex Fridman (04:11.480)
I think having a loose deadline is good,
Lex Fridman (04:13.560)
but that's a beginning and an end point,
Lex Fridman (04:16.080)
and what I mean is I don't wanna have to be,
John Clarke (04:18.520)
all right, we're leaving, say, Boston on Sunday night.
Lex Fridman (04:22.280)
Let's get to New York by Monday morning,
Lex Fridman (04:25.200)
and then from New York, we're gonna go to Philly,
Lex Fridman (04:27.680)
and we've gotta be in Philly at four.
John Clarke (04:30.120)
A vague beginning and end is fine,
Lex Fridman (04:32.080)
but I think having very strict guidelines in between
John Clarke (04:36.520)
will rob you of certain experiences along the way.
Lex Fridman (04:39.800)
If you have a timeframe to get from Philly to Indianapolis
Lex Fridman (04:43.880)
and some awesome shit starts to happen in Philly,
Lex Fridman (04:46.080)
do you really wanna have to cut it short
Lex Fridman (04:47.440)
because you gotta be in Indianapolis by sunup?
Lex Fridman (04:50.280)
Why do you have to be anywhere by any time
Lex Fridman (04:52.680)
for any reason, really?
Lex Fridman (04:54.280)
Plans change.
John Clarke (04:55.520)
Plans change all the time, exactly,
Lex Fridman (04:56.960)
but if we're talking about having a mission
John Clarke (05:00.160)
or the type of road trip,
Lex Fridman (05:01.960)
I just think it would be best to have it
John Clarke (05:04.040)
as loose and flexible as possible.
Lex Fridman (05:07.680)
I don't know.
John Clarke (05:08.520)
You gotta make hard deadlines and then break them.
Lex Fridman (05:12.320)
Totally change the plans.
John Clarke (05:13.520)
Disappoint people, break promises.
Lex Fridman (05:15.680)
That's the way of life.
John Clarke (05:17.080)
Somebody's waiting for you in St. Louis,
Lex Fridman (05:19.160)
and all of a sudden, you fell in love
John Clarke (05:21.560)
with a biker in New York.
Lex Fridman (05:23.640)
I don't know.
John Clarke (05:24.480)
I don't know what you're up to.
Lex Fridman (05:25.400)
I can appreciate that, but on a trip like that,
John Clarke (05:29.680)
I feel like a trip with deadlines
Lex Fridman (05:33.120)
is for a different point in your life,
Lex Fridman (05:34.920)
and at this point in my life,
Lex Fridman (05:35.960)
I don't want any of the deadlines
John Clarke (05:37.440)
because it's not about meeting someone
Lex Fridman (05:39.760)
and disappointing them in St. Louis.
John Clarke (05:41.640)
It's about me not disappointing myself.
Lex Fridman (05:45.320)
You wanna have enough time in what you're doing
John Clarke (05:48.360)
to make sure that you get the full breadth
Lex Fridman (05:50.480)
of every experience that you encounter.
Lex Fridman (05:52.800)
How would you fully experience a place?
Lex Fridman (05:55.320)
How would you?
John Clarke (05:56.160)
I don't think I've actually fully experienced Boston.
Lex Fridman (05:59.160)
If you were showing up to a city for a week
Lex Fridman (06:02.080)
on this road trip, what would you do?
Lex Fridman (06:04.440)
So I'm gonna answer that in two parts.
John Clarke (06:06.600)
A few years ago, I had an opportunity to move out of Boston,
Lex Fridman (06:09.080)
and the thing that kept me here, no question about it,
John Clarke (06:12.280)
was the fact that I felt like I had a contract
Lex Fridman (06:16.040)
with my students, and I did not.
John Clarke (06:18.560)
I felt like a great many of them took a leap of faith
Lex Fridman (06:22.280)
by joining my gym and asking me to teach them what I know,
Lex Fridman (06:26.320)
and when I had an opportunity to leave Boston,
Lex Fridman (06:29.360)
I thought of those people,
Lex Fridman (06:30.720)
and I thought, I wanna fulfill my obligation to them.
Lex Fridman (06:33.560)
So because I made a decision to stay here,
John Clarke (06:35.840)
I then that summer made a decision
Lex Fridman (06:37.560)
to endear myself to the city of Boston,
Lex Fridman (06:39.440)
and I tried to find lots and lots
Lex Fridman (06:40.920)
of different things to do.
John Clarke (06:42.360)
I can tell you that the coolest thing
Lex Fridman (06:43.840)
that I found to do in this city is the MFA,
John Clarke (06:48.400)
where they have on Friday nights,
Lex Fridman (06:50.560)
they'll have different exhibits and stuff,
Lex Fridman (06:52.440)
and they'll have little beer carts and food tents,
Lex Fridman (06:55.160)
and you can go do a painting class off on the side.
John Clarke (06:59.040)
Very cool night of things to do.
Lex Fridman (07:01.640)
But in general, whenever I'm in a new city,
John Clarke (07:04.600)
I try not to pay attention to Google,
Lex Fridman (07:06.560)
and I try not to do anything that I find on a travel site.
John Clarke (07:10.160)
The best thing to do is to walk out of your hotel
Lex Fridman (07:13.160)
or wherever it is you're staying
Lex Fridman (07:14.480)
and find the most normal looking bar,
Lex Fridman (07:17.240)
have a drink, and talk to a bartender.
Lex Fridman (07:19.280)
So the people, the people.
Lex Fridman (07:21.000)
The people, and then you can experience that town
John Clarke (07:23.440)
the way that they experience it.
Lex Fridman (07:25.560)
Even in a city where there are tons of tourist attractions,
John Clarke (07:28.880)
locals probably visit the same tourist attractions
Lex Fridman (07:32.280)
when they have visitors come from out of town,
John Clarke (07:34.080)
you wanna see how they view those places
Lex Fridman (07:36.680)
and how they visit them.
Lex Fridman (07:38.040)
And you wanna go to eat where they're going to eat.
Lex Fridman (07:40.640)
Like, you're gonna, for the most part,
John Clarke (07:44.600)
the North End is not a place where I would take someone
Lex Fridman (07:47.080)
and say, hey, this is Boston's,
John Clarke (07:49.320)
the pinnacle of Boston dining,
Lex Fridman (07:51.320)
because it's very touristy.
John Clarke (07:52.400)
There are a handful of really good restaurants there,
Lex Fridman (07:54.280)
but I wanna know where the,
John Clarke (07:56.520)
I wanna go to Bogie's Place.
Lex Fridman (07:57.840)
I wanna know the down low spots where.
Lex Fridman (08:00.480)
The hell's Bogie's Place?
Lex Fridman (08:01.520)
It's like a little steakhouse in the back of J.M. Curly's.
John Clarke (08:04.080)
Exactly.
Lex Fridman (08:04.920)
It's like a shitty bar?
Lex Fridman (08:06.000)
J.M. Curly's?
Lex Fridman (08:06.840)
No, it's just a bar with like bar food.
Lex Fridman (08:09.080)
But I think that like.
Lex Fridman (08:11.280)
In South Boston?
John Clarke (08:12.360)
It is in Boston, yeah.
Lex Fridman (08:13.200)
It's not South Boston?
John Clarke (08:14.200)
No, it's in, it's in the downtown area.
Lex Fridman (08:18.680)
Like, I don't know what the neighborhoods
John Clarke (08:21.360)
are called here, honestly,
Lex Fridman (08:22.360)
because they have an area called Downtown Boston,
Lex Fridman (08:25.280)
and I don't even know what the hell that means.
Lex Fridman (08:27.080)
And they used to have the Financial District.
Lex Fridman (08:28.280)
Where's Southie?
Lex Fridman (08:29.440)
Cause I've heard about the Southie.
John Clarke (08:31.080)
Southie is South Boston.
Lex Fridman (08:33.000)
But is there a difference between South Boston and Southie?
John Clarke (08:36.400)
No, it's the same thing.
Lex Fridman (08:37.760)
No, but like, you know, the mythical Southie.
John Clarke (08:39.400)
I think the mythical Southie
Lex Fridman (08:41.280)
is something that's long gone now.
Lex Fridman (08:44.040)
And the term now actually is Sobo.
Lex Fridman (08:48.960)
Oh no.
John Clarke (08:49.800)
Yeah, it's.
Lex Fridman (08:50.640)
It's changed, what, who took over what?
John Clarke (08:52.800)
What's the, you know, the good will hunting personality.
Lex Fridman (08:55.240)
That's Southie, isn't it?
John Clarke (08:56.280)
Strong accent, those bad ass dudes.
Lex Fridman (08:58.440)
I came here right at the end of like,
Lex Fridman (09:00.840)
what was South Boston.
Lex Fridman (09:02.280)
So when I got, and my gym is in South Boston,
John Clarke (09:05.040)
the neighborhood was just starting to change.
Lex Fridman (09:07.480)
So I think,
John Clarke (09:12.880)
as gentrification happened
Lex Fridman (09:14.440)
and they started building more luxury condominiums,
John Clarke (09:16.880)
they were buying all these old businesses out,
Lex Fridman (09:18.600)
all the mom and pop businesses.
Lex Fridman (09:19.840)
And I think that kind of changed
Lex Fridman (09:23.480)
the makeup of the community.
Lex Fridman (09:25.840)
And it wasn't only because there was an influx
Lex Fridman (09:27.920)
of new young people with disposable income,
John Clarke (09:31.160)
it's because there's an exodus of the older people
Lex Fridman (09:34.200)
who kind of grew up and raised their families there
John Clarke (09:35.800)
because they were being offered
Lex Fridman (09:37.080)
humongous sums of money for their homes
John Clarke (09:39.000)
that they had bought like in the late 70s and early 80s
Lex Fridman (09:41.480)
so that they could develop those areas.
Lex Fridman (09:43.200)
So you have a combination of the influx of new people
Lex Fridman (09:46.000)
and the exodus of the old,
Lex Fridman (09:47.480)
and now you just got this totally new neighborhood
Lex Fridman (09:49.640)
in its place.
Lex Fridman (09:52.040)
What do you love about Boston?
Lex Fridman (09:53.520)
Is there a love still for Boston?
John Clarke (09:58.520)
You certainly have the love of the thing
Lex Fridman (10:00.280)
that's gone as well.
John Clarke (10:01.760)
Yeah, I think, I don't wanna pinpoint pin this on Boston
Lex Fridman (10:05.080)
because it's happening in all great cities.
John Clarke (10:08.040)
As these areas become gentrified,
Lex Fridman (10:10.160)
what's happening is the personality
Lex Fridman (10:11.680)
and the character of the neighborhood
Lex Fridman (10:12.960)
is just being run out.
Lex Fridman (10:14.960)
And I have nothing against people coming in
Lex Fridman (10:16.920)
and making money and things like that.
Lex Fridman (10:18.240)
But when you do it at the expense of the culture,
Lex Fridman (10:21.400)
the character and the personality of the neighborhood,
John Clarke (10:24.400)
I mean, you're kind of standing on the shoulders of giants.
Lex Fridman (10:27.160)
These are the people that came here
Lex Fridman (10:28.360)
and built these areas up.
Lex Fridman (10:30.200)
It happens here in Boston,
John Clarke (10:31.800)
it happens in all over New York,
Lex Fridman (10:34.560)
happens on the West Coast.
Lex Fridman (10:36.680)
So what I love about Boston is not nearly as romantic
Lex Fridman (10:41.160)
as what it might've been 15 years ago
Lex Fridman (10:42.960)
and what I used to love about New York.
Lex Fridman (10:45.080)
What I love about Boston is that it's walkable.
John Clarke (10:51.640)
The food scene is on the rise here.
Lex Fridman (10:55.880)
But I think you're hard pressed to find the charm
John Clarke (10:59.600)
that people think of when they think of old Boston
Lex Fridman (11:03.440)
and old New England city.
Lex Fridman (11:04.600)
So yeah, I see it differently.
Lex Fridman (11:05.880)
People sometimes criticize like MIT
John Clarke (11:08.560)
like for the thing that it is now.
Lex Fridman (11:11.440)
But I think it is always like that.
John Clarke (11:13.600)
I tend to prefer to carry the flame of the greatness,
Lex Fridman (11:20.320)
the greatest moments of its history
Lex Fridman (11:22.440)
and like sort of enjoy the echoes of that
Lex Fridman (11:26.160)
in the halls of MIT.
John Clarke (11:27.320)
In the same way in Boston, you think about the history
Lex Fridman (11:29.800)
and that history lives on in the few individuals.
John Clarke (11:33.080)
Like you can't just look around what Boston is now
Lex Fridman (11:36.960)
and be like, what has Boston become?
John Clarke (11:38.840)
I think it was always carried by a minority of individuals.
Lex Fridman (11:43.400)
I think we kind of look back in history
Lex Fridman (11:46.000)
and think like times were greater
Lex Fridman (11:48.400)
in a certain kind of dimension back then.
Lex Fridman (11:50.360)
But that's because we remember,
Lex Fridman (11:53.880)
this is a ridiculous non data driven assertion of mine,
John Clarke (11:57.400)
is to remember just the brightest stars of that history.
Lex Fridman (12:02.640)
And so we romanticize it.
Lex Fridman (12:04.160)
But I think if you look around now,
Lex Fridman (12:05.800)
those special people are still living in Boston
John Clarke (12:07.960)
for which Boston will be remembered as a great city
Lex Fridman (12:10.480)
in like 50 years.
John Clarke (12:11.920)
I think you're probably right, but isn't there some sort
Lex Fridman (12:14.040)
of theory about the point that there's like a certain age
Lex Fridman (12:20.040)
in your life where things resonate differently to you?
Lex Fridman (12:22.400)
Like, I think they've done studies
John Clarke (12:23.600)
where most people stop searching for new music
Lex Fridman (12:26.560)
after age 19.
John Clarke (12:28.080)
Most dads you see like wearing super old clothes,
Lex Fridman (12:30.600)
like that's the style of the time period
John Clarke (12:33.840)
of the last great part of their life.
Lex Fridman (12:35.960)
So like there's an evolution in people
Lex Fridman (12:38.760)
and it could also be the memories of where they live.
Lex Fridman (12:41.560)
And when I was 17, of course my neighborhood
John Clarke (12:44.160)
was the best then because I was having the most fun.
Lex Fridman (12:46.520)
And we always kind of look at things through that tint,
John Clarke (12:49.640)
I think, and you're right.
Lex Fridman (12:51.720)
And I don't think there's anything wrong
John Clarke (12:53.120)
with the way cities are evolving now.
Lex Fridman (12:55.600)
It's just not, I prefer the time of like a mom and pop store,
John Clarke (13:01.400)
not a fabricated like gastropub that could just be like
Lex Fridman (13:06.600)
on a four lane super highway
John Clarke (13:08.320)
on your way out of Epcot Center.
Lex Fridman (13:10.520)
And it's actually owned by like some conglomerate.
Lex Fridman (13:13.480)
But there's still the special places.
Lex Fridman (13:15.200)
Like I, this takes us back to the road trip
John Clarke (13:17.760)
is maybe I tend to romanticize the experiences
Lex Fridman (13:22.560)
of like the diners in the middle of nowhere.
Lex Fridman (13:25.520)
What would you say makes for like,
Lex Fridman (13:29.520)
it feels like life is made up of these experiences
John Clarke (13:33.240)
that maybe on paper seem mundane,
Lex Fridman (13:36.400)
but are actually somehow give you a chance
John Clarke (13:39.720)
to pause and reflect on life
Lex Fridman (13:42.000)
with like a certain kind of people,
John Clarke (13:45.080)
whether like really close friends or complete strangers,
Lex Fridman (13:47.920)
maybe alcohol is involved in the middle of nowhere.
John Clarke (13:50.040)
It seems like a road trip facilitates that
Lex Fridman (13:52.800)
if you allow it to.
Lex Fridman (13:54.120)
Like what do you think makes for those kinds of experience?
Lex Fridman (13:56.000)
Have you had any?
John Clarke (13:57.760)
I think in the context of a road trip,
Lex Fridman (14:00.640)
I think it's like hyper localization.
Lex Fridman (14:02.880)
And I think it is those experiences along the way
Lex Fridman (14:10.640)
with people and the people that you're with
John Clarke (14:14.200)
will color the experiences differently
Lex Fridman (14:15.600)
depending on the person.
Lex Fridman (14:17.840)
The road trip you took was with somebody else or alone?
Lex Fridman (14:20.000)
So I've driven up and down the East Coast several times.
John Clarke (14:23.240)
When I drove from LA to New York,
Lex Fridman (14:26.680)
my friend was on the run from the cops.
John Clarke (14:29.960)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (14:30.800)
So we were trying to get out of.
Lex Fridman (14:32.200)
Traffic tickets?
Lex Fridman (14:33.240)
Yeah, traffic tickets.
John Clarke (14:34.520)
Yeah, allegedly.
Lex Fridman (14:35.520)
We were trying to get out of LA
John Clarke (14:36.960)
because he was going to have to go away for a little while.
Lex Fridman (14:40.520)
So we drove from LA and we just,
John Clarke (14:43.200)
we were young kids, we had no idea what we were doing,
Lex Fridman (14:45.120)
and we drove East.
Lex Fridman (14:46.840)
And then we had an unbelievable trip,
Lex Fridman (14:49.680)
mostly because we didn't really have a destination,
John Clarke (14:52.000)
we didn't really have a timeframe, thank goodness,
Lex Fridman (14:54.760)
because he got arrested again in Pennsylvania.
Lex Fridman (14:57.120)
So we got kind of stuck there.
Lex Fridman (14:59.080)
And then we drove back to LA
John Clarke (15:02.040)
when he got out in Pennsylvania.
Lex Fridman (15:05.920)
But all the stops along the way
John Clarke (15:08.960)
were kind of like weird things,
Lex Fridman (15:10.800)
like you have no money, right?
Lex Fridman (15:11.880)
So you're finding that like a little diamond
Lex Fridman (15:14.160)
in the rough place to eat,
John Clarke (15:15.800)
the diner you talk about, like that place.
Lex Fridman (15:18.160)
I once was in, where was I?
John Clarke (15:20.840)
I think I was in Buenos Aires.
Lex Fridman (15:22.080)
And the guy that I was with, he said,
John Clarke (15:23.880)
I know this quaint little spot around the corner.
Lex Fridman (15:26.920)
And I was young, I was like 25.
Lex Fridman (15:28.440)
And I thought the coolest thing in the world would be
Lex Fridman (15:32.040)
to be such a citizen of the world
John Clarke (15:33.960)
that you know these quaint little spots around the corner
Lex Fridman (15:36.800)
in like all these great cities.
John Clarke (15:38.240)
Like I know where to get this great chicken sandwich
Lex Fridman (15:40.720)
in Argentina.
John Clarke (15:41.560)
I know where to get this great meal in Costa Rica.
Lex Fridman (15:44.080)
I know where to get this super local egg in another country.
Lex Fridman (15:48.400)
And I just thought that that was really cool,
Lex Fridman (15:50.000)
the ability to do that anywhere in the world.
Lex Fridman (15:52.920)
Did you get closer with that guy through the trip?
Lex Fridman (15:55.880)
I found that like, so I took a trip across the United States
John Clarke (15:58.880)
with a guy friend of mine.
Lex Fridman (16:01.200)
We had different goals.
John Clarke (16:02.280)
I was searching for meaning in life
Lex Fridman (16:04.000)
and he was searching for,
John Clarke (16:06.800)
what's the politically correct way of phrasing it,
Lex Fridman (16:09.680)
but just basically trying to sleep
John Clarke (16:12.480)
with every kind of woman that this world has to offer.
Lex Fridman (16:15.360)
What's the difference between those two things?
John Clarke (16:17.080)
Well, I guess he was searching
Lex Fridman (16:18.360)
for the different kinds of meanings.
John Clarke (16:20.080)
Yeah, I mean, I still think that you can't find meaning
Lex Fridman (16:26.280)
between a woman's legs, I suppose.
Lex Fridman (16:28.520)
Have you tried all of them?
Lex Fridman (16:31.720)
But there was a tension there.
John Clarke (16:34.160)
We grew closer with those experiences,
Lex Fridman (16:36.400)
but we've gotten in fights.
John Clarke (16:39.280)
There was a lot of like literal almost fights
Lex Fridman (16:42.080)
and then we were close and there was like silences,
Lex Fridman (16:44.760)
but then we were like brothers
Lex Fridman (16:46.240)
and this whole weird journey of friendship that we went on.
John Clarke (16:49.920)
I think anytime you spend that much time
Lex Fridman (16:52.840)
in like a small space with another person,
John Clarke (16:55.720)
you're gonna have the different parts
Lex Fridman (16:57.600)
of the relationship will manifest themselves.
John Clarke (16:59.200)
You'll have the periods of closeness.
Lex Fridman (17:00.840)
You'll have the periods of vulnerability
John Clarke (17:02.320)
where it's like maybe you're driving through Denver
Lex Fridman (17:04.720)
and it's three in the morning
Lex Fridman (17:05.680)
and you talk about something
Lex Fridman (17:06.720)
you might not have otherwise talked about.
John Clarke (17:08.600)
You'll have the periods
Lex Fridman (17:09.440)
where you don't wanna see that motherfucker ever again.
John Clarke (17:12.240)
He didn't, and depending could be because of anything.
Lex Fridman (17:16.520)
But the guy that I drove twice with,
John Clarke (17:19.520)
we're still in contact, we're still buddies.
Lex Fridman (17:24.480)
We have very different goals also,
Lex Fridman (17:27.000)
but at that point in our lives,
Lex Fridman (17:28.120)
we never even contemplated the meaning of life.
John Clarke (17:31.760)
We were about probably more to the point
Lex Fridman (17:34.600)
of the friend that you drove with.
John Clarke (17:35.920)
We were more about racking up experiences,
Lex Fridman (17:38.080)
whatever they were.
John Clarke (17:40.120)
I wanna be able to retell this.
Lex Fridman (17:42.720)
Stories.
John Clarke (17:43.560)
Yeah, I wanna be able to retell this
Lex Fridman (17:45.080)
and it's gotta sound cool.
John Clarke (17:47.200)
Like I don't wanna retell a story about,
Lex Fridman (17:49.040)
yeah and then we drove through Alabama
Lex Fridman (17:50.400)
and they've got a lovely library
Lex Fridman (17:51.760)
and I checked out this book
Lex Fridman (17:52.960)
and I'm not interested in retelling that.
Lex Fridman (17:54.640)
Do you remember any, this is a kid's show,
Lex Fridman (17:58.200)
do you remember any stories that the kids would enjoy
Lex Fridman (18:01.160)
from those times that were profound in some kind of way?
John Clarke (18:05.400)
There were some impactful moments
Lex Fridman (18:08.360)
on the beginning of our road trip where we had no money
Lex Fridman (18:11.200)
and as a couple of kids who knew nothing,
Lex Fridman (18:13.320)
we literally had to, we stopped in Vegas
Lex Fridman (18:15.560)
and we went to Circus Circus.
Lex Fridman (18:17.440)
At the time they had $3 blackjack
Lex Fridman (18:19.280)
and we had like 12 bucks
Lex Fridman (18:20.720)
and my buddy was a kind of a degenerate gambler
Lex Fridman (18:22.560)
so he knew what was up.
Lex Fridman (18:23.440)
I was just like kind of stuffing chips in my pockets,
John Clarke (18:25.480)
making sure we could pay for the gas.
Lex Fridman (18:28.200)
And just being at a point which is like a starting line
Lex Fridman (18:31.280)
and like we drove from LA to Vegas,
Lex Fridman (18:34.240)
which is only about four hours
Lex Fridman (18:36.040)
and being at the starting line and realizing like,
Lex Fridman (18:38.280)
we may not even like get off the starting line here.
Lex Fridman (18:41.200)
And if we don't, what are we doing?
Lex Fridman (18:42.800)
We're gonna be two guys stuck in Vegas.
John Clarke (18:44.320)
We have no money.
Lex Fridman (18:45.160)
We can't go West because you're gonna get pinched.
John Clarke (18:47.040)
We have no money to go East.
Lex Fridman (18:48.240)
What the hell are we gonna do?
Lex Fridman (18:49.080)
Are we gonna wind up in Vegas?
Lex Fridman (18:51.640)
So, you know, that was kind of a profound thing
John Clarke (18:53.840)
where you just, it's a turning,
Lex Fridman (18:56.440)
it potentially could have been a turning point in our lives
John Clarke (18:59.300)
had we not made enough money to continue going East.
Lex Fridman (19:03.880)
That's the beautiful thing about road trips
John Clarke (19:05.680)
when you're broke is like,
Lex Fridman (19:08.040)
in retrospect, everything turned out fine,
Lex Fridman (19:10.920)
but you're facing the complete darkness,
Lex Fridman (19:13.840)
the uncertainty of the possibilities laid before you.
Lex Fridman (19:16.720)
And like, I don't know if you were confident at that time,
Lex Fridman (19:20.200)
but like, I was really full of self doubt.
John Clarke (19:23.940)
Like just, all I could see is all the trajectories
Lex Fridman (19:27.280)
where you just screw up your life.
Lex Fridman (19:28.560)
Like, what am I doing with my life?
Lex Fridman (19:29.820)
I'm a failure, like all these dreams I've had,
John Clarke (19:32.300)
I've never realized I'm a complete piece of shit.
Lex Fridman (19:34.640)
All those kinds of things.
John Clarke (19:35.480)
I had no concept of consequence.
Lex Fridman (19:38.000)
I probably had toxoplasmosis.
John Clarke (19:42.080)
I had literally no concept of consequence.
Lex Fridman (19:45.060)
Immediate gratification was all I cared about.
John Clarke (19:47.320)
Oh, so existentialist.
Lex Fridman (19:48.860)
Yeah, it did not even enter my mind in my like early 20s
John Clarke (19:55.180)
that anything that I was doing at that point
Lex Fridman (19:57.440)
could reverberate for the rest of my life.
John Clarke (19:59.680)
I think part of me didn't even think I'd make it this far.
Lex Fridman (1:00:00.900)
Yeah, you're so right, actually, on a personal level,
John Clarke (1:00:03.260)
it feels very good.
Lex Fridman (1:00:05.180)
Exactly as you said, it's liberating
John Clarke (1:00:07.420)
because you're free to then think as opposed to.
Lex Fridman (1:00:10.860)
Defend.
John Clarke (1:00:11.700)
Yeah, without thinking.
Lex Fridman (1:00:14.020)
Yeah, you get so sick of defending the same thing
John Clarke (1:00:16.580)
over and over and over.
Lex Fridman (1:00:18.060)
And you start to think about it and it's like,
John Clarke (1:00:20.700)
well, I would really like to evolve my thought process here.
Lex Fridman (1:00:25.380)
And when you're constantly defending one point,
John Clarke (1:00:29.020)
it's difficult to let other ideas in.
Lex Fridman (1:00:31.380)
You discount the possibility
John Clarke (1:00:34.700)
that you can have your mind changed
Lex Fridman (1:00:35.940)
when you're constantly on the defense.
John Clarke (1:00:37.740)
You have to have a crack in the front line
Lex Fridman (1:00:39.980)
in order to let a new idea come in and possibly flourish.
Lex Fridman (1:00:43.380)
And maybe the new idea doesn't even prove your current
Lex Fridman (1:00:46.900)
belief system to be wrong,
Lex Fridman (1:00:48.340)
but maybe it's like the water to a seed and it grows
Lex Fridman (1:00:51.940)
and now it's something even bigger and better.
Lex Fridman (1:00:54.180)
And you can start to work with that instead.
Lex Fridman (1:00:57.060)
And it's a tough thing because I'm a stubborn fuck
Lex Fridman (1:00:59.780)
and it's very difficult for me, it was historically,
Lex Fridman (1:01:03.140)
to say I was wrong about this one,
John Clarke (1:01:05.060)
or I messed this one up,
Lex Fridman (1:01:06.420)
or I wish I could have that one back.
John Clarke (1:01:09.660)
There's a public figure for me thing too,
Lex Fridman (1:01:11.820)
which there's a difference between changing your mind
John Clarke (1:01:16.180)
with a small circle of friends
Lex Fridman (1:01:17.700)
and changing your mind publicly about something,
Lex Fridman (1:01:20.740)
but it has equal, one echoes the other.
Lex Fridman (1:01:23.740)
It is equally liberating,
Lex Fridman (1:01:25.180)
but people will not make that change easy,
Lex Fridman (1:01:31.300)
but it doesn't matter.
John Clarke (1:01:32.420)
That's the point.
Lex Fridman (1:01:35.500)
I think it's ultimately liberating as a human being,
John Clarke (1:01:38.540)
public figure or not to just think deeply about this world
Lex Fridman (1:01:43.580)
and to keep changing, which is like,
John Clarke (1:01:47.020)
I think there's a deep hunger for that
Lex Fridman (1:01:49.140)
in like political discourse,
John Clarke (1:01:51.060)
that people are so tribal currently about politics
Lex Fridman (1:01:55.460)
that they want to see somebody who says,
John Clarke (1:01:58.100)
you know what, I changed my mind on this.
Lex Fridman (1:02:00.860)
And then keep changing their mind and keep asking questions,
John Clarke (1:02:03.820)
keep showing that they're open minded,
Lex Fridman (1:02:05.340)
all that kind of stuff.
Lex Fridman (1:02:06.180)
But when you want someone in a position of political power
Lex Fridman (1:02:10.100)
to change their mind because they realize
John Clarke (1:02:12.340)
that there might be a better way,
Lex Fridman (1:02:13.700)
not because they realize that by changing their mind,
John Clarke (1:02:15.980)
they're gonna get a new demographic to vote for them.
Lex Fridman (1:02:18.100)
Like that's transparent as shit.
John Clarke (1:02:19.660)
Nobody wants to see that.
Lex Fridman (1:02:21.020)
Like that's a person who can't separate their position
John Clarke (1:02:26.020)
from their people they're supposed to be helping.
Lex Fridman (1:02:27.660)
Yeah, and you can usually smell that.
John Clarke (1:02:29.140)
That's, we're just talking offline about,
Lex Fridman (1:02:34.140)
there's something about Hillary Clinton
John Clarke (1:02:36.140)
where she talked about changing her mind on gay marriage
Lex Fridman (1:02:40.380)
that it felt like this is a political calculation
John Clarke (1:02:44.900)
versus like really deeply thinking about like,
Lex Fridman (1:02:47.980)
what things do we do in this world
Lex Fridman (1:02:53.060)
that violate basic human rights?
Lex Fridman (1:02:55.060)
Like really thinking about deeply.
Lex Fridman (1:02:56.900)
And of course politicians are calculating this,
Lex Fridman (1:03:00.380)
but you can see it.
John Clarke (1:03:01.700)
This is the thing.
Lex Fridman (1:03:02.540)
That's why I like on the human level,
John Clarke (1:03:06.220)
there's like political policies, but there's also humans.
Lex Fridman (1:03:08.800)
And I've always liked Bernie Sanders, for example.
John Clarke (1:03:11.320)
I don't know, not the later perhaps Bernie Sanders,
Lex Fridman (1:03:13.680)
but I used to listen to him back in the day.
Lex Fridman (1:03:15.540)
And it felt that people might disagree with me,
Lex Fridman (1:03:18.820)
but it felt like there was a real human struggling
John Clarke (1:03:22.300)
with ideas, whatever, agree with him or not,
Lex Fridman (1:03:25.500)
it felt like he wasn't doing political calculation.
John Clarke (1:03:27.860)
He was just a human.
Lex Fridman (1:03:28.740)
He couldn't be further away from my political ideals,
Lex Fridman (1:03:32.180)
but also like, there's an obvious authenticity
Lex Fridman (1:03:36.180)
to his passion for what he's saying
John Clarke (1:03:38.540)
that is not present in other candidates.
Lex Fridman (1:03:40.780)
And you could see it,
John Clarke (1:03:42.260)
all these people that have been in politics forever,
Lex Fridman (1:03:44.500)
like from all the way back
John Clarke (1:03:45.820)
when Hillary was a lawyer in the 70s.
Lex Fridman (1:03:47.860)
There's a couple of shots of her in a courtroom
John Clarke (1:03:49.700)
in the 70s though, she's looking all right.
Lex Fridman (1:03:52.500)
She's got those big glasses on.
John Clarke (1:03:53.980)
She's kind of a little bit of a nerdy babe back in the day.
Lex Fridman (1:03:57.220)
Oh, you mean like.
John Clarke (1:03:58.380)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:03:59.220)
Well, John Clark says Hillary Clinton was a babe
John Clarke (1:04:03.460)
back in the day.
Lex Fridman (1:04:04.300)
73 Clinton, yeah.
John Clarke (1:04:05.620)
That's an interesting question
Lex Fridman (1:04:10.660)
about authenticity in politicians.
Lex Fridman (1:04:12.300)
Do you think like Hillary Clinton,
Lex Fridman (1:04:15.300)
just the Clintons in general are a good example
Lex Fridman (1:04:17.340)
that why do you think they become over time so inauthentic?
Lex Fridman (1:04:21.700)
Is it the system that changes them?
Lex Fridman (1:04:23.420)
Is it their own hunger for power?
Lex Fridman (1:04:25.460)
Is it, what is it, or are they always inauthentic?
John Clarke (1:04:29.860)
Well, first I'd like to say that,
Lex Fridman (1:04:31.300)
I don't know if you know this,
Lex Fridman (1:04:32.140)
but I come from a bit of a political dynasty myself.
Lex Fridman (1:04:36.740)
I was on the student government several times
John Clarke (1:04:38.900)
in high school and my dad won the runoff
Lex Fridman (1:04:42.220)
in a special election in Bradenton Beach, Florida.
John Clarke (1:04:45.260)
I think there's like 700 people there.
Lex Fridman (1:04:47.540)
So.
Lex Fridman (1:04:48.380)
So your dad got you the job?
Lex Fridman (1:04:49.660)
Yeah, we're basically,
John Clarke (1:04:51.660)
a lot of people compare us to the Kennedys.
Lex Fridman (1:04:54.100)
My guess with the politicians is that,
Lex Fridman (1:04:56.540)
and you can see it now as we're becoming more cognizant
Lex Fridman (1:04:59.700)
as people to the political process,
John Clarke (1:05:02.140)
I think the process corrupts people.
Lex Fridman (1:05:04.300)
And I think that, I don't know the ins and outs of it.
John Clarke (1:05:06.980)
I've listened to people who are far more educated
Lex Fridman (1:05:09.300)
on it than me and I'm unprepared to cite
John Clarke (1:05:11.940)
any of their points.
Lex Fridman (1:05:14.500)
I think you can see it a little bit in Dan Crenshaw.
Lex Fridman (1:05:16.820)
Can I say this?
Lex Fridman (1:05:17.660)
Yeah, I like him.
John Clarke (1:05:19.620)
I really liked Dan,
Lex Fridman (1:05:21.500)
especially like a year, year and a half ago.
John Clarke (1:05:23.540)
He seemed very level headed.
Lex Fridman (1:05:25.900)
It's clear to me now that as he panders
John Clarke (1:05:28.620)
more and more to the right,
Lex Fridman (1:05:30.140)
it's because he's setting himself for a presidential run.
John Clarke (1:05:33.980)
It's clear that that's happening.
Lex Fridman (1:05:35.620)
And he just doesn't seem like the same authentic
John Clarke (1:05:38.060)
ideals oriented guy that he did a year and a half ago.
Lex Fridman (1:05:42.380)
Now I could be wrong on that.
John Clarke (1:05:43.540)
It could be way off.
Lex Fridman (1:05:44.580)
But I think that you can take someone
John Clarke (1:05:46.980)
as honest as you want to.
Lex Fridman (1:05:49.260)
When you start them on that path to the presidency,
John Clarke (1:05:52.540)
you become so unbelievably beholden
Lex Fridman (1:05:56.180)
to so many people and entities along the way
John Clarke (1:05:59.860)
that by the time you get to the final destination,
Lex Fridman (1:06:02.460)
the Oval Office, all you're doing is paying back
John Clarke (1:06:05.500)
the favors that got you there.
Lex Fridman (1:06:06.940)
And you never get to serve the people
John Clarke (1:06:08.460)
you're supposed to serve.
Lex Fridman (1:06:09.820)
Your primary focus is on your office
Lex Fridman (1:06:12.460)
and not on the people that you're supposed to be helping.
Lex Fridman (1:06:15.140)
And I think that that's a humongous problem.
Lex Fridman (1:06:17.020)
And like we could talk all about campaign finance reform
Lex Fridman (1:06:19.780)
and the two party system.
Lex Fridman (1:06:20.980)
But at the end of the day,
Lex Fridman (1:06:22.580)
the people who are running for political posts,
John Clarke (1:06:27.300)
they're working to keep a job.
Lex Fridman (1:06:29.060)
They're not working to improve the lives
John Clarke (1:06:30.700)
of the constituents, which is different.
Lex Fridman (1:06:33.340)
A long, long time ago, like a lot of politicians,
John Clarke (1:06:36.060)
those were like part time jobs.
Lex Fridman (1:06:38.340)
And they held other posts out West.
John Clarke (1:06:40.780)
They were ranchers by day and sheriff by night,
Lex Fridman (1:06:43.420)
whatever the case might be.
Lex Fridman (1:06:44.780)
But now, such a cushy path for the rest of your life
Lex Fridman (1:06:48.460)
that the goal is to just be a politician,
John Clarke (1:06:51.060)
not do the things that you think a politician
Lex Fridman (1:06:53.060)
is supposed to do.
Lex Fridman (1:06:54.620)
And that's a problem.
Lex Fridman (1:06:55.460)
By the way, I'll talk to Dan on this.
John Clarke (1:06:58.660)
It's funny, I like the version of him from a year ago
Lex Fridman (1:07:02.340)
and I haven't been really paying attention.
Lex Fridman (1:07:03.740)
So I'll be, I'll actually pay more attention now
Lex Fridman (1:07:07.140)
and ask him that exact question.
John Clarke (1:07:08.780)
Like, how do you prevent yourself from changing,
Lex Fridman (1:07:11.500)
becoming what the Clintons became?
John Clarke (1:07:14.140)
I tend to believe like there's conspiratorial stuff
Lex Fridman (1:07:16.460)
about Clintons and all these politicians.
John Clarke (1:07:17.860)
I tend to believe that they were actually
Lex Fridman (1:07:19.820)
good, thoughtful people back in the day.
Lex Fridman (1:07:21.660)
And the system changes them.
Lex Fridman (1:07:25.060)
It's not even the system.
John Clarke (1:07:27.340)
There's something about just the process of campaigning.
Lex Fridman (1:07:30.620)
I just think it wears you down to where
John Clarke (1:07:33.380)
if you look at the percentage of time you spend
Lex Fridman (1:07:35.920)
on the kinds of conversations you have,
John Clarke (1:07:38.380)
it's like one, you do these speeches,
Lex Fridman (1:07:41.720)
which you repeat the same thing over and over and over.
John Clarke (1:07:43.980)
It beats the process of thinking.
Lex Fridman (1:07:47.620)
You just exhaust your brain to where
John Clarke (1:07:49.340)
you're not thinking anymore, you're just repeating.
Lex Fridman (1:07:51.260)
It's very, it's exceptionally difficult
John Clarke (1:07:54.020)
to keep making speech after speech after speech,
Lex Fridman (1:07:57.580)
saying the same thing over and over and over again,
Lex Fridman (1:07:59.920)
and at the same time thinking deeply
Lex Fridman (1:08:01.900)
and changing your mind and learning.
Lex Fridman (1:08:04.020)
And then also the pandering to financial,
Lex Fridman (1:08:07.780)
like having phone calls, like fundraising,
John Clarke (1:08:10.180)
all those kinds of things.
Lex Fridman (1:08:11.460)
That's what they do now.
John Clarke (1:08:12.300)
They spend most of their time fundraising.
Lex Fridman (1:08:13.820)
They're not worried about anything.
John Clarke (1:08:15.620)
Sorry to interrupt you, but I was gonna say
Lex Fridman (1:08:16.960)
that you can see there's a fuel.
John Clarke (1:08:19.500)
Like the more attention and the higher regard
Lex Fridman (1:08:24.700)
you're held in in your community,
Lex Fridman (1:08:26.260)
and the more sycophants like continue
Lex Fridman (1:08:28.860)
to blow smoke up your ass,
John Clarke (1:08:30.460)
the more it changes the way you present yourself.
Lex Fridman (1:08:32.860)
And you can see it in every walk of life.
John Clarke (1:08:35.100)
I mean, jiu jitsu is a tiny, tiny little section
Lex Fridman (1:08:37.620)
of the world, but you see it in the jiu jitsu community.
John Clarke (1:08:40.200)
When someone all of a sudden starts a social media page
Lex Fridman (1:08:42.500)
or whatever, and they get a bunch of people,
John Clarke (1:08:44.500)
like basically like cyber fellating them
Lex Fridman (1:08:48.140)
on their Instagram page, they change.
Lex Fridman (1:08:51.220)
Fellating, is that a word?
Lex Fridman (1:08:52.660)
I think so.
Lex Fridman (1:08:53.500)
So giving fellatio?
Lex Fridman (1:08:54.860)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:08:55.700)
So fellating.
Lex Fridman (1:08:56.600)
Yeah.
John Clarke (1:08:57.440)
Jamie, look it up.
Lex Fridman (1:08:59.740)
I think, but in those people, it changes their character.
John Clarke (1:09:03.500)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:09:04.340)
It changes who they are because they become emboldened
Lex Fridman (1:09:06.860)
and now they've got this like mythical cyber mob
Lex Fridman (1:09:09.980)
behind them.
John Clarke (1:09:11.340)
There's a sign at the entrance to your gym
Lex Fridman (1:09:13.620)
that reads, for every moment of triumph,
John Clarke (1:09:16.660)
it's a quote by Hunter S. Thompson.
Lex Fridman (1:09:19.260)
It reads, for every moment of triumph,
John Clarke (1:09:21.300)
for every instance of beauty, many souls must be trampled.
Lex Fridman (1:09:27.020)
What does this quote mean to you?
John Clarke (1:09:29.940)
That quote to me is about, mostly about sacrifice.
Lex Fridman (1:09:34.980)
And it's about to achieve anything great
John Clarke (1:09:38.260)
or anything beautiful or to triumph,
Lex Fridman (1:09:41.220)
you have to have sacrificed so many things to get there,
John Clarke (1:09:44.620)
unless you're the most unbelievably genetically gifted person
Lex Fridman (1:09:48.340)
in the world and greatness is just, you know,
John Clarke (1:09:51.500)
falls upon you, it's just raining from the sky.
Lex Fridman (1:09:53.920)
I think on your path to greatness,
John Clarke (1:09:58.260)
on your path to success and triumph,
Lex Fridman (1:10:00.360)
you leave a lot of carnage in your wake,
John Clarke (1:10:02.460)
personal relationships, other goals,
Lex Fridman (1:10:04.840)
things that you didn't pursue, you know,
John Clarke (1:10:08.540)
other unfulfilled dreams.
Lex Fridman (1:10:10.060)
And you kind of have to sell a lot of that out
John Clarke (1:10:12.260)
in order to be really at the peak of your field
Lex Fridman (1:10:18.180)
or what you want to be.
John Clarke (1:10:22.060)
I know that that's happened in my life.
Lex Fridman (1:10:23.440)
I mean, there's tons and tons of relationships
John Clarke (1:10:26.820)
that, you know, couldn't survive the way
Lex Fridman (1:10:31.100)
that I was living my life,
John Clarke (1:10:31.980)
because when I was trying to be a big time fighter
Lex Fridman (1:10:34.420)
or like when I was just training all the time,
John Clarke (1:10:36.900)
tons of relationships dissolve themselves naturally,
Lex Fridman (1:10:41.020)
some not so naturally.
John Clarke (1:10:43.100)
Some people get it, some people don't get it,
Lex Fridman (1:10:44.740)
some people hate you, you miss tons of other opportunities.
Lex Fridman (1:10:49.260)
And I think that's kind of what that quote means to me.
Lex Fridman (1:10:51.600)
It's about sacrifice.
John Clarke (1:10:52.740)
It's about you're giving up what you want now
Lex Fridman (1:10:57.180)
for what you want more.
Lex Fridman (1:11:01.100)
And it's the trampling of souls, it's messy too,
Lex Fridman (1:11:05.780)
because it's not clear what the right path is.
John Clarke (1:11:10.840)
Like that sacrifice is not obvious
Lex Fridman (1:11:13.500)
that those are the right sacrifices to make.
John Clarke (1:11:16.660)
You might be ruining your own life,
Lex Fridman (1:11:19.820)
but the fact that you're willing to take that risk
Lex Fridman (1:11:22.980)
and sort of go all in on whether it's stupid or not,
Lex Fridman (1:11:29.700)
go all in on something,
John Clarke (1:11:32.220)
that the possibility of creating something beautiful
Lex Fridman (1:11:35.700)
is there.
Lex Fridman (1:11:36.540)
Who says it's stupid?
Lex Fridman (1:11:37.660)
If you're going all in on it, you don't think it's stupid.
John Clarke (1:11:40.060)
Someone else might think it's stupid,
Lex Fridman (1:11:41.780)
but I mean, who really cares?
John Clarke (1:11:44.020)
Well, I'm of many minds on many things,
Lex Fridman (1:11:46.460)
so I feel like there's certain minds,
John Clarke (1:11:49.380)
certain moves of the day where you think it's stupid.
Lex Fridman (1:11:52.220)
Like relationships is a beautiful one,
Lex Fridman (1:11:54.020)
which is, you've seen the movie Whiplash, by any chance?
Lex Fridman (1:11:56.980)
Yes.
John Clarke (1:11:59.220)
It seems like in a man's life,
Lex Fridman (1:12:02.820)
or it could be a woman's, but I don't identify as a woman,
Lex Fridman (1:12:06.620)
so I know the man, the lived experience.
Lex Fridman (1:12:08.900)
It's 2020, bro.
Lex Fridman (1:12:10.380)
But my lived experience for now is that of a man.
Lex Fridman (1:12:13.780)
We'll see about tomorrow.
Lex Fridman (1:12:15.220)
And there is, in the pursuit of excellence,
Lex Fridman (1:12:19.940)
there's often a choice of,
John Clarke (1:12:24.540)
some of the souls that must be trampled
Lex Fridman (1:12:26.420)
are personal relationships with humans in your life
John Clarke (1:12:29.640)
that you might deeply care about.
Lex Fridman (1:12:30.940)
It could be family, it could be friends,
John Clarke (1:12:33.420)
it could be loved ones of all different forms.
Lex Fridman (1:12:36.780)
It could be the people that, your colleagues
John Clarke (1:12:40.140)
that are dependent on you, people who will lose jobs
Lex Fridman (1:12:42.840)
because of the decisions you make, all this kind of stuff.
John Clarke (1:12:45.820)
It seems that that moment happens,
Lex Fridman (1:12:48.660)
and I'm not sure that sacrifice is always the correct one.
John Clarke (1:12:52.100)
Like, to me, the movie Whiplash,
Lex Fridman (1:12:53.960)
for people who haven't seen, spoiler alert, maybe?
John Clarke (1:12:56.780)
I don't even know if that movie has any spoilers,
Lex Fridman (1:13:00.260)
but there is a relationship with a female.
John Clarke (1:13:02.860)
There's a student, there's a drummer
Lex Fridman (1:13:04.860)
that's pursuing excellence
John Clarke (1:13:06.380)
of this particular art form of drumming,
Lex Fridman (1:13:09.380)
and he has a brief, fleeting relationship with a female,
Lex Fridman (1:13:14.780)
and he also has an instructor
Lex Fridman (1:13:16.400)
that's pushing him to his limits
John Clarke (1:13:18.380)
in what appears to be awfully a lot
Lex Fridman (1:13:20.460)
like a toxic relationship.
Lex Fridman (1:13:22.820)
And he chooses, not chooses,
Lex Fridman (1:13:26.780)
he naturally makes the decision
John Clarke (1:13:31.180)
to sacrifice the romantic relationship with the woman
Lex Fridman (1:13:34.780)
in further pursuit of this chaos of,
John Clarke (1:13:39.380)
this chaotic pursuit of excellence.
Lex Fridman (1:13:41.420)
And that doesn't feel like a deliberate decision.
John Clarke (1:13:45.520)
It feels like a giant mess of like an emotional mess
Lex Fridman (1:13:49.120)
where you're just like,
John Clarke (1:13:51.460)
kind of like a fish swimming against stream,
Lex Fridman (1:13:55.420)
just like, fuck it.
John Clarke (1:13:57.560)
You let go of all the things that convention says
Lex Fridman (1:14:00.760)
you should appreciate.
John Clarke (1:14:02.300)
You throw away the possibility of a stable life,
Lex Fridman (1:14:04.780)
of a comfortable life,
John Clarke (1:14:05.840)
of what society says is a meaningful life,
Lex Fridman (1:14:10.140)
and just pursue this crazy thing
John Clarke (1:14:12.180)
full of seeming toxicity
Lex Fridman (1:14:14.980)
with crazy people surrounding you.
John Clarke (1:14:16.920)
I don't know.
Lex Fridman (1:14:17.760)
So I don't know what the right decision is.
John Clarke (1:14:19.460)
Part of my brain says, you should stay with the girl.
Lex Fridman (1:14:22.620)
Fuck that instructor that's making you,
John Clarke (1:14:26.060)
that's pushing you to places where it's like,
Lex Fridman (1:14:29.180)
that are destructive, potentially destructive,
John Clarke (1:14:31.240)
like could lead to suicide,
Lex Fridman (1:14:32.780)
could lead you to completely
John Clarke (1:14:39.820)
fail or fail on your pursuit of excellence
Lex Fridman (1:14:43.920)
or destroy the dream,
John Clarke (1:14:47.100)
the passionate pursuit of the thing
Lex Fridman (1:14:48.740)
that you've always dreamed for,
John Clarke (1:14:50.060)
in that case is drumming.
Lex Fridman (1:14:51.440)
I don't know.
John Clarke (1:14:52.280)
There's so many minds there.
Lex Fridman (1:14:53.220)
Like what is the right thing to do?
Lex Fridman (1:14:54.500)
So my first two thoughts are,
Lex Fridman (1:14:55.700)
number one, fuck convention.
Lex Fridman (1:14:58.300)
What is convention?
Lex Fridman (1:14:59.260)
It's like some laid out path,
John Clarke (1:15:01.660)
some linear progression of the way your life
Lex Fridman (1:15:03.620)
is supposed to go,
John Clarke (1:15:04.820)
like that someone can draw a picture of at the end.
Lex Fridman (1:15:07.620)
That shit's, first of all, it's just boring and whatever.
Lex Fridman (1:15:11.940)
And it's, I don't wanna say that it's cowardly
Lex Fridman (1:15:14.720)
because it isn't cowardly,
Lex Fridman (1:15:16.100)
but for someone who's not conventional
Lex Fridman (1:15:18.500)
to not be nonconventional is cowardly,
John Clarke (1:15:21.060)
to get sucked into the convention.
Lex Fridman (1:15:22.660)
That's first.
John Clarke (1:15:23.540)
Second of all,
Lex Fridman (1:15:24.900)
I believe that scene in the diner in that movie
John Clarke (1:15:28.420)
where he tells her you're in my way
Lex Fridman (1:15:30.700)
because I'm gonna want to be with you,
John Clarke (1:15:33.680)
or you're going to want me to be going out to dinner
Lex Fridman (1:15:35.940)
with you and I know I should be practicing,
John Clarke (1:15:37.640)
or I know I should be training.
Lex Fridman (1:15:39.100)
And ultimately I'm gonna make,
John Clarke (1:15:40.640)
I'm either gonna feel bad about not being with you
Lex Fridman (1:15:43.340)
by training,
John Clarke (1:15:44.180)
or I'm gonna skip the training to be with you
Lex Fridman (1:15:46.040)
and neither one is right.
John Clarke (1:15:47.660)
The whole thing that they don't mention in that
Lex Fridman (1:15:49.500)
is that that's the wrong girl.
John Clarke (1:15:51.980)
That's the wrong girl.
Lex Fridman (1:15:53.140)
The right girl is a gangster.
Lex Fridman (1:15:55.840)
The right girl says, oh, you've practiced tonight?
Lex Fridman (1:15:59.860)
I'll leave you a sandwich and some milk
Lex Fridman (1:16:01.820)
so that you can, outside the door,
Lex Fridman (1:16:04.740)
let me know when you're done,
John Clarke (1:16:05.760)
or you have some free time.
Lex Fridman (1:16:07.740)
The right girl compliments that.
John Clarke (1:16:09.400)
She's not an impediment in any way.
Lex Fridman (1:16:11.780)
Even if what you wanna do is be with her so much
John Clarke (1:16:16.340)
that you're putting the drums down,
Lex Fridman (1:16:17.620)
or you're putting the bass down,
John Clarke (1:16:18.700)
or you're picking up the pizza,
Lex Fridman (1:16:19.860)
or you're not going to training,
John Clarke (1:16:22.340)
that girl, without even telling you
Lex Fridman (1:16:24.660)
why she's making decisions,
John Clarke (1:16:26.280)
is making decisions to help you achieve your goal.
Lex Fridman (1:16:29.400)
Now that might sound like some sort of chauvinistic
John Clarke (1:16:32.880)
king of the castle type shit
Lex Fridman (1:16:34.360)
where everyone should cater to you,
Lex Fridman (1:16:36.180)
but the fact of the matter is
Lex Fridman (1:16:40.700)
that person is a compliment to your life
John Clarke (1:16:42.940)
in helping you do your thing,
Lex Fridman (1:16:44.740)
and in your own way you're helping them
John Clarke (1:16:46.620)
to achieve whatever their goals are also.
Lex Fridman (1:16:48.860)
It's uncommon that you have two people under the same roof
John Clarke (1:16:51.860)
striving to be unbelievably excellent in one small area.
Lex Fridman (1:16:56.620)
It's not impossible, but it's uncommon.
John Clarke (1:16:59.460)
Relationships have to be like binary systems,
Lex Fridman (1:17:01.900)
like two stars.
John Clarke (1:17:03.260)
The gravitational pull is what keeps you together
Lex Fridman (1:17:05.800)
and circling around one another, right?
Lex Fridman (1:17:08.060)
And one is bigger than the other,
Lex Fridman (1:17:11.180)
and they'll fluctuate,
Lex Fridman (1:17:12.420)
and the stars will get bigger,
Lex Fridman (1:17:14.380)
and they'll get smaller,
Lex Fridman (1:17:15.220)
and they'll contract based on positioning and composition.
Lex Fridman (1:17:19.780)
That's the way a relationship should be,
John Clarke (1:17:21.700)
not an asteroid coming in to disrupt
Lex Fridman (1:17:25.620)
the surface of your planet.
John Clarke (1:17:27.100)
It's a binary system, it's a compliment.
Lex Fridman (1:17:28.820)
That girl was the wrong girl for him.
Lex Fridman (1:17:30.740)
So you shouldn't,
Lex Fridman (1:17:32.660)
like the big unconventional dreams
John Clarke (1:17:36.220)
should not be adjusted to fit into this world.
Lex Fridman (1:17:41.260)
Because I mean, there is a part of me
John Clarke (1:17:42.860)
that's like full of self thought,
Lex Fridman (1:17:43.940)
well, maybe you're just a dick.
John Clarke (1:17:45.740)
Maybe.
Lex Fridman (1:17:46.580)
Yeah, who cares?
John Clarke (1:17:48.020)
Lex, so first of all,
Lex Fridman (1:17:51.540)
who cares?
John Clarke (1:17:52.820)
This is, by the way, somebody who's,
Lex Fridman (1:17:56.580)
you have recently gotten,
John Clarke (1:17:58.660)
well, in the span of the history of the universe
Lex Fridman (1:18:01.540)
is recently you've gotten to a relationship,
Lex Fridman (1:18:03.140)
but you haven't always,
Lex Fridman (1:18:04.740)
you have not felt the need to be in the relationship
John Clarke (1:18:08.980)
just because you're supposed to
Lex Fridman (1:18:10.620)
by society's kind of momentum.
John Clarke (1:18:13.780)
If you, I think that if you really want anything,
Lex Fridman (1:18:16.900)
you've got to be prepared fully to be the exact opposite.
John Clarke (1:18:20.700)
If you're a person who's looking for a relationship,
Lex Fridman (1:18:22.860)
the only way you're going to get in an awesome relationship
John Clarke (1:18:24.700)
is by being comfortable being alone,
Lex Fridman (1:18:26.740)
because that's the risk.
John Clarke (1:18:27.940)
If you're a person who's driven by money,
Lex Fridman (1:18:29.380)
you've got to be comfortable being totally poor
Lex Fridman (1:18:31.460)
because that's the risk, right?
Lex Fridman (1:18:33.540)
And when you're constantly hedging your bets,
John Clarke (1:18:37.180)
you're never all in.
Lex Fridman (1:18:38.740)
You're never all in on the thing you're trying to do.
Lex Fridman (1:18:41.340)
So a relationship has to compliment your life.
Lex Fridman (1:18:45.500)
You can't say, it's okay to want to be in a relationship,
Lex Fridman (1:18:50.460)
but you can't want to be in a relationship so bad
Lex Fridman (1:18:53.660)
that you take someone in who fits the suit.
Lex Fridman (1:18:56.300)
And it's like, oh, our schedules kind of work out.
Lex Fridman (1:18:58.540)
You live near me and this and that and the other thing,
John Clarke (1:19:00.620)
because the logistics of a relationship
Lex Fridman (1:19:02.660)
are not always perfect.
John Clarke (1:19:04.140)
It's what matters is when the two people are together.
Lex Fridman (1:19:07.020)
That's the perfect part of it.
Lex Fridman (1:19:08.660)
And it's great to want to meet people and say,
Lex Fridman (1:19:14.260)
if we meet and some sort of a relationship develops,
John Clarke (1:19:18.900)
I'm willing to run with it,
Lex Fridman (1:19:20.500)
but I'm not meeting you hoping a relationship develops.
John Clarke (1:19:23.580)
I think you kind of put the cart before the horse
Lex Fridman (1:19:25.460)
in a lot of those situations.
John Clarke (1:19:27.220)
It's like when guys meet.
Lex Fridman (1:19:28.900)
No guy goes out and is like, I'm looking for a bro, right?
John Clarke (1:19:32.420)
Nobody does that.
Lex Fridman (1:19:33.260)
You go to the gym and you run into a bunch of dudes
Lex Fridman (1:19:35.100)
and the next thing you know, someone's cool
Lex Fridman (1:19:36.540)
and they want to talk about fighting
Lex Fridman (1:19:37.900)
and you're fucking shotgun and beers.
Lex Fridman (1:19:39.380)
And all of a sudden you got a bro and that's how it works.
John Clarke (1:19:41.740)
It works the same way with women.
Lex Fridman (1:19:43.140)
What's a shotgun and beers?
John Clarke (1:19:45.140)
I'll show you after this.
Lex Fridman (1:19:45.980)
You poke a hole in the bottom and you open the top.
John Clarke (1:19:49.260)
Yeah, this is the problem with America.
Lex Fridman (1:19:52.660)
Drink vodka like a man.
John Clarke (1:19:54.980)
Okay, now don't poke holes in beers.
Lex Fridman (1:19:57.220)
This is the problem with the frat culture.
John Clarke (1:19:59.380)
They don't really know how to drink.
Lex Fridman (1:20:00.580)
They think they know how to drink.
John Clarke (1:20:01.620)
They don't know how to drink.
Lex Fridman (1:20:02.940)
What do you think makes a successful relationship
Lex Fridman (1:20:07.900)
if we can linger on that a little longer?
Lex Fridman (1:20:09.740)
Like, let me ask John Clark about love.
John Clarke (1:20:17.540)
I didn't ask a question, but let me just say love.
Lex Fridman (1:20:22.220)
About love.
Lex Fridman (1:20:26.660)
Are you one of those people who never says I love you?
Lex Fridman (1:20:31.660)
No, no, I'm an extreme person.
Lex Fridman (1:20:34.580)
And like my emotions are also extreme.
Lex Fridman (1:20:37.700)
And one of the things I concern myself with,
John Clarke (1:20:43.380)
maybe this is philosophical and martial arts warrior
Lex Fridman (1:20:45.980)
soldier type related stuff is like, I don't want anyone.
John Clarke (1:20:50.300)
If I die tonight on the drive home,
Lex Fridman (1:20:52.380)
hopefully that doesn't happen.
John Clarke (1:20:54.140)
I hope that no one is left questioning
Lex Fridman (1:20:56.300)
how I felt about them.
Lex Fridman (1:20:57.460)
And people I don't like probably are not questioning that.
Lex Fridman (1:21:02.780)
And so the thing that I've had to learn
Lex Fridman (1:21:04.860)
how to do later in life is to tell the people
Lex Fridman (1:21:06.660)
that you care about, that you care about them.
Lex Fridman (1:21:10.100)
And each thing can be equally off putting
Lex Fridman (1:21:14.820)
to the receiver of the message.
John Clarke (1:21:18.540)
Each thing can be equally off putting
Lex Fridman (1:21:20.060)
to the receiver of the message.
John Clarke (1:21:20.900)
When you're letting someone know how much you dislike them,
Lex Fridman (1:21:22.700)
that can be off putting to the person
John Clarke (1:21:24.100)
receiving that message.
Lex Fridman (1:21:25.260)
And when you tell someone how much you care about them,
John Clarke (1:21:27.100)
it can also be off putting to the person,
Lex Fridman (1:21:29.860)
depending on how they view their relationship with you.
Lex Fridman (1:21:32.620)
But it's still important to get it out there.
Lex Fridman (1:21:34.580)
Like you shouldn't hold those things in
John Clarke (1:21:37.180)
because you're worried about how they'll be received
Lex Fridman (1:21:39.220)
or if they'll come back at you.
Lex Fridman (1:21:41.540)
So you're okay going all in on these?
Lex Fridman (1:21:45.460)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:21:46.300)
Not afraid of commitment?
Lex Fridman (1:21:47.700)
No, I'm not afraid of commitment.
John Clarke (1:21:48.860)
Anyone who says they're afraid of commitment
Lex Fridman (1:21:50.140)
is full of shit.
Lex Fridman (1:21:50.980)
You know what they're afraid of?
Lex Fridman (1:21:51.820)
They're afraid of commitment with that person.
John Clarke (1:21:54.660)
That's what they're afraid of.
Lex Fridman (1:21:56.020)
Like when someone knocks you on your ass
Lex Fridman (1:22:00.220)
and they come into your life
Lex Fridman (1:22:01.820)
and you're flush with all these emotions,
John Clarke (1:22:04.540)
you're not worried about,
Lex Fridman (1:22:05.900)
oh, I don't really like commitment.
John Clarke (1:22:07.420)
No, because they've knocked you on your ass.
Lex Fridman (1:22:08.900)
You want to be with them.
John Clarke (1:22:10.020)
You want those things.
Lex Fridman (1:22:11.580)
The two most alive points in your life,
John Clarke (1:22:13.820)
I think people feel is the euphoria of a new relationship
Lex Fridman (1:22:16.700)
and then the loss when that love is gone.
John Clarke (1:22:21.300)
You'll never feel more, I don't think,
Lex Fridman (1:22:23.620)
than in those moments in your life.
John Clarke (1:22:26.060)
See, the nice thing about the loss is it lasts longer.
Lex Fridman (1:22:31.340)
Yeah.
John Clarke (1:22:33.780)
That's a Louis C.K. point that he makes,
Lex Fridman (1:22:36.020)
which is like that,
John Clarke (1:22:39.700)
like in his show, I think,
Lex Fridman (1:22:41.740)
is a conversation with an older gentleman
John Clarke (1:22:44.460)
that says like that's his favorite part
Lex Fridman (1:22:45.980)
of the relationship is that period
John Clarke (1:22:48.340)
between the loss of the relationship
Lex Fridman (1:22:51.900)
and the real death, which is forgetting the person.
Lex Fridman (1:22:56.220)
But that period lasts the longest
Lex Fridman (1:22:58.060)
and that's like the most fulfilling,
John Clarke (1:22:59.940)
like missing the other person
Lex Fridman (1:23:02.900)
is as fulfilling as the actual love,
John Clarke (1:23:07.060)
the early infatuation, which is interesting.
Lex Fridman (1:23:09.740)
I also think of the Bukowski.
John Clarke (1:23:11.740)
I return to that.
Lex Fridman (1:23:13.580)
There's a little clip of him in an interview
John Clarke (1:23:16.620)
saying that love is a fog
Lex Fridman (1:23:21.220)
that dissipates with the first light of reality
John Clarke (1:23:25.820)
or something like that.
Lex Fridman (1:23:26.660)
So basically emphasizing
John Clarke (1:23:28.220)
that it's this very, very, very fleeting thing,
Lex Fridman (1:23:31.260)
that it's a moments thing and then it just fades
Lex Fridman (1:23:36.460)
and everything else is something else.
Lex Fridman (1:23:38.980)
So love is only a temporary thing, which is interesting.
John Clarke (1:23:41.780)
I think some people say that's cynical.
Lex Fridman (1:23:44.820)
I don't know.
John Clarke (1:23:45.660)
I don't know what to think of it.
Lex Fridman (1:23:46.500)
I think it's important to understand
John Clarke (1:23:49.220)
that everything is fleeting
Lex Fridman (1:23:51.340)
when you don't put effort into it.
John Clarke (1:23:54.100)
Almost everything will be fleeting.
Lex Fridman (1:23:55.740)
If you don't put effort into it,
John Clarke (1:23:56.740)
most people will get fat and lazy.
Lex Fridman (1:23:58.060)
If you don't put effort into something,
John Clarke (1:23:59.340)
you're gonna not be good at playing guitar or playing bass.
Lex Fridman (1:24:03.980)
You've got to put effort into it.
John Clarke (1:24:04.940)
The same thing goes for a relationship.
Lex Fridman (1:24:07.380)
That the awesome part of it, that like love part,
John Clarke (1:24:12.100)
that dies soon and early on in a relationship
Lex Fridman (1:24:15.700)
because it's so good
John Clarke (1:24:17.700)
that we think we don't have to work at it, but you do.
Lex Fridman (1:24:20.180)
You have to keep doing the things
Lex Fridman (1:24:21.780)
and you gotta keep things new and crisp and fresh.
Lex Fridman (1:24:24.500)
And different people probably feel differently about this,
Lex Fridman (1:24:30.460)
but I don't know, you walk around your girl
Lex Fridman (1:24:33.700)
and you start like farting and stuff,
John Clarke (1:24:35.220)
like that's when it all dies.
Lex Fridman (1:24:37.260)
That's when it dies.
John Clarke (1:24:39.100)
We're all human beings.
Lex Fridman (1:24:40.340)
We're all here and our bodies work in the same way,
Lex Fridman (1:24:44.340)
but you start to chip away at this beautiful thing
Lex Fridman (1:24:48.140)
when you buck conventional courtesy and things like that.
John Clarke (1:24:56.660)
Well, take it for granted, basically.
Lex Fridman (1:24:58.060)
You take it for granted, yeah.
John Clarke (1:24:59.140)
I mean, that's the same thing with life.
Lex Fridman (1:25:03.540)
I'm a big fan of meditating on death
John Clarke (1:25:06.260)
that you could die today.
Lex Fridman (1:25:08.060)
In the same way you should meditate
John Clarke (1:25:09.620)
on this relationship could end today,
Lex Fridman (1:25:11.980)
this connection with another human could be.
John Clarke (1:25:13.540)
This is the last time you could be interacting.
Lex Fridman (1:25:17.300)
And your chances of that increase
John Clarke (1:25:19.140)
when you take it for granted and you shit on people.
Lex Fridman (1:25:21.420)
But when you work at it, the chances of that decrease.
John Clarke (1:25:24.500)
It's never gonna be zero, but it decreases.
Lex Fridman (1:25:27.020)
And when you do that, when you're the person
Lex Fridman (1:25:30.100)
and you're trying to maintain
Lex Fridman (1:25:32.140)
and you're trying to work at the relationship,
John Clarke (1:25:35.020)
you gotta make sure that both people are working at it.
Lex Fridman (1:25:37.580)
Otherwise, you're just a fucking chump.
John Clarke (1:25:39.700)
Okay, let's return back to mixed martial arts.
Lex Fridman (1:25:43.420)
Let me ask the ridiculous question
John Clarke (1:25:44.940)
of who do you think are the top three,
Lex Fridman (1:25:47.780)
maybe top five greatest fighters of all time?
John Clarke (1:25:51.740)
It's so hard to compare fighters across generations.
Lex Fridman (1:25:57.220)
And maybe one way to say it is which metrics
John Clarke (1:26:00.100)
would you put on the table
Lex Fridman (1:26:01.420)
as to measure what a great fighter is?
John Clarke (1:26:05.860)
There was a guy named Dioxapus.
Lex Fridman (1:26:08.260)
And in the fourth century, and he was such a badass
John Clarke (1:26:16.260)
that in the Olympics in 336 BC,
Lex Fridman (1:26:18.820)
no one even showed up to fight him in the Pancration event.
John Clarke (1:26:22.060)
Nobody even showed up because he was fucking everybody up.
Lex Fridman (1:26:24.620)
Years later, he was retired.
Lex Fridman (1:26:26.460)
And this crazy Macedonian dude came there
Lex Fridman (1:26:29.460)
at some dinner for Alexander the Great,
John Clarke (1:26:32.220)
everyone's chilling, drinking,
Lex Fridman (1:26:33.820)
whatever they were drinking out of their chalices.
Lex Fridman (1:26:36.500)
And this Macedonian dude threatened him and challenged him.
Lex Fridman (1:26:40.740)
So Dioxapus said, yeah, man, we'll throw down.
Lex Fridman (1:26:43.740)
And they set the time and the place.
Lex Fridman (1:26:45.780)
Macedonian dude comes out like body armor,
John Clarke (1:26:49.460)
spear, shield, all this other shit.
Lex Fridman (1:26:52.420)
Dioxapus came out absolutely naked with a wooden club
Lex Fridman (1:26:56.420)
and took on this much younger guy,
Lex Fridman (1:26:58.500)
beat the living crap out of him
Lex Fridman (1:26:59.740)
and then put his foot on his throat
Lex Fridman (1:27:01.540)
and then didn't even kill him in the show of ultimate power
John Clarke (1:27:07.380)
for the time.
Lex Fridman (1:27:08.380)
So I think.
John Clarke (1:27:09.220)
There's something about the guy being naked too
Lex Fridman (1:27:11.300)
is just extra demeaning.
John Clarke (1:27:13.020)
Extra demeaning, yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:27:14.740)
Okay, can we rephrase the question then?
John Clarke (1:27:18.580)
Because those are clearly going to be
Lex Fridman (1:27:21.020)
some probably forgotten warriors in history.
John Clarke (1:27:23.940)
Well, let's take it to like modern day mixed martial arts
Lex Fridman (1:27:26.540)
in the UFC, perhaps.
John Clarke (1:27:27.660)
Well, just mixed martial arts there.
Lex Fridman (1:27:30.380)
Who do you think are the top fighters of all time?
Lex Fridman (1:27:32.180)
What metrics would you consider
Lex Fridman (1:27:34.180)
in trying to answer this perhaps unanswerable question?
John Clarke (1:27:38.260)
I think one of the things you want to think about
Lex Fridman (1:27:40.060)
is strength of opponent at the time you fought them.
Lex Fridman (1:27:44.140)
So for example, fighting BJ Penn in his prime
Lex Fridman (1:27:48.220)
and beating him is far different
Lex Fridman (1:27:50.340)
than beating BJ Penn last year, right?
Lex Fridman (1:27:52.740)
So to say you have a victory over BJ Penn
John Clarke (1:27:54.780)
is not the same given the timeframe of when it happened.
Lex Fridman (1:27:59.020)
Not to take anything away from anyone who's beaten BJ Penn.
John Clarke (1:28:02.980)
Just use that as an example of someone whose career
Lex Fridman (1:28:05.300)
went into a different direction.
John Clarke (1:28:07.780)
I would say the guy who I think is probably the best
Lex Fridman (1:28:14.460)
that people are the least familiar with
John Clarke (1:28:17.300)
would be Marillo Bustamante.
Lex Fridman (1:28:19.660)
And I think he was a guy who was one of the guys
John Clarke (1:28:23.260)
with the first really good physical build for MMA,
Lex Fridman (1:28:26.740)
which I think is narrow from the chest to the back
Lex Fridman (1:28:29.860)
and long shoulder to shoulder
Lex Fridman (1:28:32.260)
and kind of sinewy made out of steel cable.
John Clarke (1:28:34.900)
That was a guy who could box,
Lex Fridman (1:28:36.700)
that was a guy who could wrestle,
Lex Fridman (1:28:37.980)
and that was a guy who had great jujitsu.
Lex Fridman (1:28:39.900)
He wasn't a great kickboxer,
Lex Fridman (1:28:41.700)
but at the time he didn't need it.
Lex Fridman (1:28:43.140)
Fought everybody and gave everybody a run.
John Clarke (1:28:46.700)
I think he's probably one of those guys
Lex Fridman (1:28:50.020)
who's gotta be considered.
John Clarke (1:28:52.740)
Yeah, there's a few killers that never,
Lex Fridman (1:28:55.140)
because why is he not in the discussion?
John Clarke (1:28:57.940)
Because I think greatness requires both the skill
Lex Fridman (1:29:03.860)
and the opportunity to meet each other.
Lex Fridman (1:29:06.780)
And when you talk about a fighter,
Lex Fridman (1:29:08.020)
the other thing that really a good fighter needs
John Clarke (1:29:10.620)
to become great is a foil.
Lex Fridman (1:29:12.900)
And so many fighters don't have a foil.
John Clarke (1:29:15.540)
That's one of the biggest detractions, I think,
Lex Fridman (1:29:17.460)
of early Mike Tyson's career.
John Clarke (1:29:19.220)
He didn't have a foil.
Lex Fridman (1:29:20.460)
He had no one driving him.
Lex Fridman (1:29:22.020)
And by the time he did,
Lex Fridman (1:29:23.100)
by the time he had a foil in Holyfield,
John Clarke (1:29:25.140)
his career was in a different place.
Lex Fridman (1:29:26.740)
But he's one of the greats of all time,
Lex Fridman (1:29:28.620)
and he never really had a foil,
Lex Fridman (1:29:30.100)
so his greatness was in unparalleled destruction
John Clarke (1:29:35.980)
of like nobody as well, of lesser opponents.
Lex Fridman (1:29:42.220)
Right, and so when people debate
John Clarke (1:29:46.500)
the level of greatness of Mike Tyson,
Lex Fridman (1:29:48.020)
that's one of the things they say,
John Clarke (1:29:49.060)
like he didn't fight a lot of killers in their prime.
Lex Fridman (1:29:51.940)
I think you've obviously got to say in that conversation,
John Clarke (1:29:55.940)
I have a really difficult time
Lex Fridman (1:29:58.380)
keeping George St. Pierre out of the conversation,
John Clarke (1:30:02.100)
only because he was able to beat you with anything.
Lex Fridman (1:30:06.380)
He could out jab you, he could out wrestle you,
Lex Fridman (1:30:09.740)
and he could submit you.
Lex Fridman (1:30:11.940)
The problem I have with Fedor
John Clarke (1:30:13.540)
is his career also took a drastic turn towards the end.
Lex Fridman (1:30:18.540)
And when he was fighting in Pride,
John Clarke (1:30:21.020)
he was doing a lot more grappling,
Lex Fridman (1:30:22.660)
and then he just started casting
John Clarke (1:30:24.060)
that overhand right at people.
Lex Fridman (1:30:26.580)
And his game kind of changed at that point.
John Clarke (1:30:29.540)
You can't take anything away from his greatness,
Lex Fridman (1:30:31.020)
but at that time, the great heavyweights
John Clarke (1:30:34.980)
were not really fighting in Pride,
Lex Fridman (1:30:37.540)
and they didn't really exist yet.
Lex Fridman (1:30:38.700)
And by the time he fought a really good one,
Lex Fridman (1:30:40.140)
Fabricio Verdun, he did get submitted there.
John Clarke (1:30:42.860)
Does his later performance color your and our perception
Lex Fridman (1:30:47.860)
of his greatness in general about fighters?
John Clarke (1:30:51.700)
Not mine, but I'm someone who's intimately involved
Lex Fridman (1:30:55.220)
in the sport, but it colors everyone else's.
John Clarke (1:30:57.660)
Same with Anderson Silva.
Lex Fridman (1:30:58.940)
I don't think Anderson Silva doesn't want to fight
John Clarke (1:31:00.460)
in like seven years or something, or he's like one.
Lex Fridman (1:31:03.020)
That's a guy who in his prime was one of the best fighters.
Lex Fridman (1:31:06.900)
Is he in the top five for you?
Lex Fridman (1:31:08.500)
I think he's probably in the top five, yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:31:10.020)
Greater striker of all time or no?
Lex Fridman (1:31:11.940)
In MMA?
John Clarke (1:31:12.780)
In mixed martial arts.
Lex Fridman (1:31:13.900)
In mixed martial arts?
John Clarke (1:31:15.020)
In mixed martial arts, that's a tough question.
Lex Fridman (1:31:19.620)
The greatest MMA striker of all time.
John Clarke (1:31:22.300)
Because like the timing,
Lex Fridman (1:31:25.340)
we're talking about foot sweeps, right?
Lex Fridman (1:31:27.620)
Who makes it look easier than Anderson Silva?
Lex Fridman (1:31:31.420)
I think in an incredibly short sample of his prime,
John Clarke (1:31:36.660)
it's gotta be Anderson Silva,
Lex Fridman (1:31:37.940)
and I think you have to consider discussing Leota Machida
John Clarke (1:31:41.860)
for his unbelievable manipulation of distance,
Lex Fridman (1:31:45.540)
which is something that people don't really talk too much
John Clarke (1:31:47.660)
about in terms of fighting,
Lex Fridman (1:31:48.940)
unless you're someone in the sport.
John Clarke (1:31:50.940)
That his use of distance and the ability to like,
Lex Fridman (1:31:54.340)
what we call pop out, like make you miss by one inch
Lex Fridman (1:31:57.820)
so that he could follow your fist back in
Lex Fridman (1:31:59.940)
as you retract it and it hit you over the top,
John Clarke (1:32:02.900)
that that's a thing of beauty.
Lex Fridman (1:32:06.180)
Anderson Silva, when he became a counter striker,
John Clarke (1:32:08.540)
when he got to his prime in the UFC,
Lex Fridman (1:32:10.220)
that was a thing of beauty.
John Clarke (1:32:11.820)
That was a thing of beauty.
Lex Fridman (1:32:13.540)
So I think definitely those two guys
Lex Fridman (1:32:15.060)
and Murilo Bustamante's gotta be the third guy.
Lex Fridman (1:32:18.540)
There's just so many good guys now.
John Clarke (1:32:20.140)
It's just.
Lex Fridman (1:32:20.980)
So where do you put, in terms of metrics,
John Clarke (1:32:23.100)
you mentioned GSP and Anderson Silva,
Lex Fridman (1:32:24.940)
I think they have a large number of defenses of a title.
Lex Fridman (1:32:28.780)
Is that important to you?
Lex Fridman (1:32:30.140)
Like this kind of consistent domination?
John Clarke (1:32:32.780)
No, because it's easily manipulated
Lex Fridman (1:32:36.180)
by the people making money off the fights.
Lex Fridman (1:32:38.340)
So there was a great quote one time
Lex Fridman (1:32:40.660)
when the UFC was coming to prominence
Lex Fridman (1:32:42.460)
and Vince McMahon from the WWE, he said,
Lex Fridman (1:32:46.620)
you know, the difference between what we do
Lex Fridman (1:32:48.260)
and what UFC does is that when we have a superstar,
Lex Fridman (1:32:53.900)
I can make sure he stays on top
John Clarke (1:32:55.460)
until he's no longer a superstar
Lex Fridman (1:32:56.700)
because we have predetermined results.
John Clarke (1:32:58.900)
UFC can't do that because they're actually having fights.
Lex Fridman (1:33:01.500)
Well, it's true and false.
John Clarke (1:33:02.860)
You can't do that,
Lex Fridman (1:33:03.700)
but you can give your superstars the most favorable matchups
John Clarke (1:33:07.580)
to keep them on top for the longest.
Lex Fridman (1:33:09.540)
So people always talk about title defenses
John Clarke (1:33:11.500)
as if the guy they're fighting, the challenger,
Lex Fridman (1:33:13.980)
is always the person most deserving of the shot.
Lex Fridman (1:33:16.620)
And it's just not true.
Lex Fridman (1:33:17.460)
So I don't put that much stock in it.
John Clarke (1:33:19.660)
Is it possible to put a guy in consideration
Lex Fridman (1:33:23.700)
as one of the greats
Lex Fridman (1:33:25.540)
if all they had is one or two amazing fights?
Lex Fridman (1:33:30.940)
I'll tell you, like an amazing
John Clarke (1:33:33.900)
could be a lot of different definitions.
Lex Fridman (1:33:35.740)
It could be just the war.
John Clarke (1:33:37.340)
Like they never really reached
Lex Fridman (1:33:39.060)
the highest of excellences of domination,
Lex Fridman (1:33:41.460)
but they've, like this,
Lex Fridman (1:33:44.140)
we had this discussion about Kyle Bokniak, right?
John Clarke (1:33:47.180)
Yep.
Lex Fridman (1:33:49.140)
To me, that's a perfect example.
John Clarke (1:33:50.460)
He had this famous fight against Zabit Magomed Sharapov,
Lex Fridman (1:33:59.100)
where on one side you have an Anderson Silva type of fighter
Lex Fridman (1:34:03.620)
and Zabit, like just a very good striker.
Lex Fridman (1:34:07.460)
Like, and then there's like the warrior on the Kyle side.
Lex Fridman (1:34:13.740)
And just the fight,
Lex Fridman (1:34:14.660)
they created something special together.
John Clarke (1:34:16.380)
It was fight at night, whatever.
Lex Fridman (1:34:17.620)
But the, you know, that fight was special on that night
John Clarke (1:34:23.060)
because the two dance partners.
Lex Fridman (1:34:25.860)
You can have a great performance
John Clarke (1:34:27.700)
without being a great fighter.
Lex Fridman (1:34:28.900)
Not saying neither of those guys is a great fighter,
Lex Fridman (1:34:30.660)
but to answer your first question,
Lex Fridman (1:34:32.340)
I think that having one or two great performances
John Clarke (1:34:36.220)
does not necessarily mean that you are great.
Lex Fridman (1:34:38.380)
I need a larger sample size.
John Clarke (1:34:39.860)
I have no idea what that is.
Lex Fridman (1:34:41.740)
I don't have any idea what that is.
Lex Fridman (1:34:42.820)
And also,
Lex Fridman (1:34:48.540)
where, how much weight does toughness have
John Clarke (1:34:52.220)
when you're thinking about the criteria
Lex Fridman (1:34:53.940)
when you define a great fighter?
John Clarke (1:34:56.380)
That's a good question.
Lex Fridman (1:34:58.980)
And I don't have the answer to it.
John Clarke (1:35:00.740)
I admire the underdog that rises to the occasion
Lex Fridman (1:35:03.220)
through brute force.
John Clarke (1:35:04.420)
They didn't have,
Lex Fridman (1:35:05.260)
they didn't bring the skillset to the table
John Clarke (1:35:07.100)
that perhaps some of the greats have,
Lex Fridman (1:35:09.580)
but they rose to the occasion.
John Clarke (1:35:12.260)
I mean, there's something about that.
Lex Fridman (1:35:13.740)
There's something about that.
Lex Fridman (1:35:14.580)
And so now we're more talking about like
Lex Fridman (1:35:17.500)
the internal attributes
John Clarke (1:35:18.900)
as opposed to the external physical attributes.
Lex Fridman (1:35:21.260)
And those are the things I think that you cannot teach.
John Clarke (1:35:25.300)
Those things, you come in the door
Lex Fridman (1:35:27.620)
and you either have that or you don't.
John Clarke (1:35:28.820)
I think, and we talk about this all the time,
Lex Fridman (1:35:30.940)
and this is one of the things
John Clarke (1:35:31.900)
where my mind changes regularly.
Lex Fridman (1:35:34.180)
Like on what makes a fighter,
Lex Fridman (1:35:35.460)
is it born or is it bred?
Lex Fridman (1:35:37.780)
And this week I'm of the opinion that it's in you.
Lex Fridman (1:35:42.740)
And maybe it's in you and you suppress it
Lex Fridman (1:35:44.500)
and people can tease it out of you,
Lex Fridman (1:35:46.140)
but I don't think you can make someone
Lex Fridman (1:35:48.060)
who doesn't have that seed in there.
John Clarke (1:35:49.980)
I don't think you can turn them into that great warrior
Lex Fridman (1:35:53.020)
with that level of grit and mental toughness.
John Clarke (1:35:56.300)
Now, when that fight, when Kyle fights Zabit,
Lex Fridman (1:36:00.060)
it's a unique situation for both guys.
John Clarke (1:36:02.180)
It was kind of a later replacement fight for Kyle.
Lex Fridman (1:36:06.300)
Zabit's star was on the rise.
Lex Fridman (1:36:08.220)
And Kyle put the blueprint out there on how to beat Zabit.
Lex Fridman (1:36:12.420)
Which is?
John Clarke (1:36:13.460)
Which is pressure him
Lex Fridman (1:36:14.740)
and try and drag him into the late rounds.
John Clarke (1:36:16.140)
You notice that later on when Calvin Kader fought him,
Lex Fridman (1:36:19.540)
they wouldn't give him five rounds.
John Clarke (1:36:21.740)
They wanted five rounds.
Lex Fridman (1:36:22.820)
And Zabit's camp, from what I understand,
John Clarke (1:36:24.380)
would not agree to the five round fight.
Lex Fridman (1:36:26.300)
Well, he didn't look.
John Clarke (1:36:28.060)
Right, so with Kyle, it was a three round fight.
Lex Fridman (1:36:30.580)
Three round fight.
Lex Fridman (1:36:31.420)
And did it went to decision?
Lex Fridman (1:36:33.900)
It went to decision.
John Clarke (1:36:34.740)
Well, Zabit won the decision, clearly.
Lex Fridman (1:36:36.660)
Did Kyle have a shot at winning the third round?
John Clarke (1:36:39.380)
I don't remember the exact score,
Lex Fridman (1:36:40.660)
but Kyle could have won the third round
John Clarke (1:36:43.100)
had he done a couple things differently.
Lex Fridman (1:36:46.260)
But I do believe in the fourth round,
John Clarke (1:36:48.500)
I think Kyle wouldn't have won a fourth round.
Lex Fridman (1:36:50.020)
And I think maybe even won the fight
John Clarke (1:36:52.060)
if there would have been a fifth round.
Lex Fridman (1:36:53.500)
And he was pressing forward,
John Clarke (1:36:56.980)
perhaps in a funny way that you could tell me I'm wrong,
Lex Fridman (1:37:00.460)
but it felt like he wasn't emphasizing head movement
John Clarke (1:37:04.100)
at that point.
Lex Fridman (1:37:04.940)
He went full Mike Tyson.
John Clarke (1:37:05.900)
There was a point at which,
Lex Fridman (1:37:07.620)
so it's funny that you say that.
John Clarke (1:37:09.180)
Which is a contradiction, actually, because.
Lex Fridman (1:37:11.300)
Mike Tyson had great head movement.
John Clarke (1:37:12.940)
I actually don't know exactly what I mean
Lex Fridman (1:37:16.020)
because he was in the pocket.
John Clarke (1:37:17.780)
I think he was trying to do the movement.
Lex Fridman (1:37:19.140)
He was just in the pocket and pressing forward.
Lex Fridman (1:37:21.260)
And the fuck you attitude of just not pressing down.
Lex Fridman (1:37:23.860)
That was a little bit later
John Clarke (1:37:24.700)
when Zabit's back was towards the cage.
Lex Fridman (1:37:26.620)
Towards the end of the round.
John Clarke (1:37:28.460)
We get that fight.
Lex Fridman (1:37:30.540)
And I said to Kyle, I was like,
John Clarke (1:37:32.500)
look, this kid has been training martial arts
Lex Fridman (1:37:34.580)
since he was three years old.
John Clarke (1:37:36.180)
There's not an area where you're gonna out technique him.
Lex Fridman (1:37:39.100)
And so we've gotta now channel some of that grit
John Clarke (1:37:41.380)
that we know you have.
Lex Fridman (1:37:42.380)
This is an opportunity to showcase it.
Lex Fridman (1:37:44.460)
And I don't know how long I did it for,
Lex Fridman (1:37:47.300)
because Kyle's much shorter than Zabit.
Lex Fridman (1:37:49.300)
So for a good long while,
Lex Fridman (1:37:50.780)
while we were training for Zabit,
John Clarke (1:37:51.980)
I didn't even say anything.
Lex Fridman (1:37:53.340)
And I just had clips of Mike Tyson training
John Clarke (1:37:55.740)
on the TV in the gym and the head movement.
Lex Fridman (1:37:58.220)
And I didn't even mention it.
Lex Fridman (1:37:59.500)
And then we started to like get into it
Lex Fridman (1:38:01.620)
and talk about getting inside the length
John Clarke (1:38:03.900)
of the longer fighter and things like that.
Lex Fridman (1:38:06.540)
And we kind of, which when some people train MMA,
John Clarke (1:38:09.740)
they say, okay, this guy's a really good wrestler.
Lex Fridman (1:38:12.780)
Let's think about avoiding the wrestling
John Clarke (1:38:15.460)
or being a better wrestler.
Lex Fridman (1:38:16.940)
And I think that when the difference in skill is so great,
John Clarke (1:38:21.220)
those are both the wrong answer.
Lex Fridman (1:38:24.020)
If a guy who's a really good wrestler wants to take you down
Lex Fridman (1:38:26.220)
and you don't have a lot of wrestling experience,
Lex Fridman (1:38:27.540)
he's probably gonna get you down
Lex Fridman (1:38:28.700)
if he's got a good coach, right?
Lex Fridman (1:38:30.580)
So you have to deal with that.
John Clarke (1:38:32.620)
To then say, I'm gonna then learn in eight weeks
Lex Fridman (1:38:35.500)
how to wrestle better than a guy who's been wrestling
John Clarke (1:38:37.220)
since he was eight years old is also a bad idea.
Lex Fridman (1:38:39.500)
So what we concentrated on for that camp
Lex Fridman (1:38:41.340)
and it worked beautifully was
Lex Fridman (1:38:43.380)
not getting caught in chain wrestling.
John Clarke (1:38:45.900)
These are the takedowns you're gonna get caught with.
Lex Fridman (1:38:48.060)
This is how to not get caught with the next step
John Clarke (1:38:50.460)
while you're defending takedown one.
Lex Fridman (1:38:52.620)
Cause it's the chain of techniques
Lex Fridman (1:38:54.140)
that are gonna get fucked, right?
Lex Fridman (1:38:56.100)
So we talked, we did a ton of work on get ups
Lex Fridman (1:38:58.820)
and breaking the hands from the various takedowns.
Lex Fridman (1:39:01.220)
Like it was a while ago now.
Lex Fridman (1:39:02.460)
So I don't remember exactly the techniques we worked on,
Lex Fridman (1:39:05.260)
but we concentrated on defend the first takedown
Lex Fridman (1:39:08.580)
and stay out of the chain.
Lex Fridman (1:39:10.220)
Don't get chained into a bunch of wrestling techniques
John Clarke (1:39:12.700)
cause you will be out wrestled.
Lex Fridman (1:39:14.980)
And that was really successful.
Lex Fridman (1:39:16.060)
And then in the third round, Zabit was tired.
Lex Fridman (1:39:18.740)
And...
John Clarke (1:39:19.900)
He was tired.
Lex Fridman (1:39:20.740)
He's Zabit got tired.
John Clarke (1:39:21.580)
He cuts a tremendous amount of weight.
Lex Fridman (1:39:23.500)
Like I can't see him staying at 145 forever
John Clarke (1:39:26.300)
when they start giving him five round fights.
Lex Fridman (1:39:28.100)
I don't even know if he's had a five round fight
Lex Fridman (1:39:29.460)
and he may have, but I can't see him staying down there.
Lex Fridman (1:39:32.900)
He's, the guy's like six one.
John Clarke (1:39:35.060)
Guys, he's a giant of a guy.
Lex Fridman (1:39:36.900)
So Kyle pressed forward there and he said,
John Clarke (1:39:40.980)
he felt that there was no power left in Zabit's hands.
Lex Fridman (1:39:43.220)
And so he felt fine.
Lex Fridman (1:39:44.820)
And I think part of it was he fed off the crowd
Lex Fridman (1:39:47.100)
as he moved forward and, you know,
John Clarke (1:39:50.260)
saw that he wasn't taking a lot of damage.
Lex Fridman (1:39:54.580)
Like the punches weren't staying him.
John Clarke (1:39:56.220)
He started walking right through him.
Lex Fridman (1:39:58.580)
It goes to your question of what makes a fighter.
John Clarke (1:40:01.060)
Was the, him walking forward like that,
Lex Fridman (1:40:06.220)
something that you're born with
Lex Fridman (1:40:07.860)
or is that something you were training?
Lex Fridman (1:40:09.420)
Is that the Mike Tyson on TV?
John Clarke (1:40:11.300)
He's born with that.
Lex Fridman (1:40:12.620)
Kyle is born with that.
Lex Fridman (1:40:14.140)
And the crowd, I've been in a lot.
Lex Fridman (1:40:16.580)
Was he in Boston?
John Clarke (1:40:17.420)
No, he was in New York.
Lex Fridman (1:40:18.260)
He was in Brooklyn.
John Clarke (1:40:19.100)
I've been in a lot of arenas
Lex Fridman (1:40:20.260)
for a lot of different sporting events.
John Clarke (1:40:21.620)
That's one of the loudest things I've ever heard
Lex Fridman (1:40:23.700)
when he did that.
John Clarke (1:40:24.540)
I was going crazy.
Lex Fridman (1:40:26.060)
And you ask about that being like taught or not.
John Clarke (1:40:29.820)
Kyle is so much like that,
Lex Fridman (1:40:31.540)
that I have to try and tease some of that out of him,
John Clarke (1:40:33.740)
pull it back.
Lex Fridman (1:40:34.980)
Because he's also so very technical when he wants to be
John Clarke (1:40:39.740)
that the emotion and the fun of it
Lex Fridman (1:40:42.220)
gets in the way of his technique.
Lex Fridman (1:40:43.980)
And probably has cost him a couple of wins.
Lex Fridman (1:40:47.540)
And so that's one of the things
John Clarke (1:40:48.380)
we work on with him right now.
Lex Fridman (1:40:49.300)
It's like staying within yourself, being a professional,
John Clarke (1:40:52.300)
taking your time to download the information in round one
Lex Fridman (1:40:54.940)
and then starting your fight in round two.
Lex Fridman (1:40:56.780)
But the tension between those two things,
Lex Fridman (1:40:58.420)
what makes, what on that day created one of the,
John Clarke (1:41:02.740)
in my opinion, one of the greatest fights I've ever seen.
Lex Fridman (1:41:06.700)
Joe Rogan agrees.
John Clarke (1:41:07.860)
Yeah, it's one of the greatest fights
Lex Fridman (1:41:09.140)
I've certainly ever seen.
Lex Fridman (1:41:10.580)
So like, it's funny that you as a coach,
Lex Fridman (1:41:13.940)
I can see the frustration of like,
John Clarke (1:41:16.860)
like throwing away some of the strategy kind of thing.
Lex Fridman (1:41:20.580)
Like you seeing like being not happy
John Clarke (1:41:23.180)
that there could be things
Lex Fridman (1:41:24.300)
that he could have done to win the fight.
John Clarke (1:41:26.020)
It's in retrospect.
Lex Fridman (1:41:26.900)
I think that at that time,
John Clarke (1:41:28.500)
we were playing with incredible house money.
Lex Fridman (1:41:30.740)
Like Kyle was a gigantic underdog in that fight.
John Clarke (1:41:33.180)
Zabit was unstoppable.
Lex Fridman (1:41:34.340)
I think people were probably picking him
John Clarke (1:41:35.820)
to finish the fight in round one.
Lex Fridman (1:41:37.180)
I think at that point,
John Clarke (1:41:38.020)
no one had ever gone the distance with Zabit.
Lex Fridman (1:41:40.060)
And no one certainly had, you know,
John Clarke (1:41:42.100)
put that kind of performance together.
Lex Fridman (1:41:43.620)
And I think Kyle put the blueprint out there.
Lex Fridman (1:41:47.260)
And in retrospect, when I look at the last round,
Lex Fridman (1:41:51.340)
yeah, there were things that could have been done differently,
Lex Fridman (1:41:53.500)
but we're playing with house money at that point.
Lex Fridman (1:41:55.140)
Like, I mean, let it fly.
John Clarke (1:41:57.340)
You get to a point where you've got it,
Lex Fridman (1:41:59.060)
you're down three rounds and there's 20 seconds left.
John Clarke (1:42:01.540)
You got to move all your chips to the center of the table
Lex Fridman (1:42:03.420)
and, you know, see what happens.
Lex Fridman (1:42:05.500)
Do you remember what Joe Rogan said about it?
Lex Fridman (1:42:07.460)
I remember like he got won over.
John Clarke (1:42:09.620)
I think I have trouble remembering
Lex Fridman (1:42:11.900)
because offline we talked about that fight
Lex Fridman (1:42:13.500)
and he's exceptionally impressed by,
Lex Fridman (1:42:15.420)
I mean, Joe's from Boston, so it's like,
John Clarke (1:42:18.740)
I mean, there's a story there.
Lex Fridman (1:42:20.820)
Okay, it sucks not,
John Clarke (1:42:23.100)
you naturally want to romanticize,
Lex Fridman (1:42:25.300)
like there's a Rocky versus like,
John Clarke (1:42:28.460)
there's a Rocky IV, a Draga.
Lex Fridman (1:42:30.380)
I mean, similar, I suppose, kind of chemistry.
John Clarke (1:42:35.820)
Kyle's style represents the American.
Lex Fridman (1:42:39.540)
Ideal, right?
John Clarke (1:42:40.580)
The spirit.
Lex Fridman (1:42:41.420)
Yeah, I mean, he's from Gloucester.
John Clarke (1:42:42.540)
It's like, you could have dragged him off the docks
Lex Fridman (1:42:45.740)
three hours before the fight and said,
Lex Fridman (1:42:47.540)
hey, you want to go fight?
Lex Fridman (1:42:48.420)
And he would have said yes.
John Clarke (1:42:50.300)
Oh man, that was a special fight.
Lex Fridman (1:42:51.940)
But that's, as per a discussion
John Clarke (1:42:53.780)
of like greatest fighters of all time,
Lex Fridman (1:42:55.540)
I tend to believe that that fight is more special
John Clarke (1:42:59.580)
than the championship belt defenses by George St. Pierre.
Lex Fridman (1:43:04.460)
Like, you know, there's something to that.
John Clarke (1:43:06.340)
It's like Rocky, Rocky I is more special
Lex Fridman (1:43:12.220)
than like Rocky III, right?
Lex Fridman (1:43:15.420)
So like, it's the underdog or it's whatever,
Lex Fridman (1:43:19.820)
like the dance partner is like going to war
Lex Fridman (1:43:21.940)
and like that moment, I mean, it's bigger.
Lex Fridman (1:43:24.580)
It's bigger than any individual fighter.
John Clarke (1:43:26.980)
They create that and that,
Lex Fridman (1:43:29.740)
I know it's not perhaps good for a career.
John Clarke (1:43:32.100)
It's not good for like in terms of money,
Lex Fridman (1:43:34.300)
in terms of longevity,
John Clarke (1:43:35.220)
in terms of all those kinds of things,
Lex Fridman (1:43:36.340)
but that's a special moment in the history of fighting
John Clarke (1:43:39.020)
that you both created.
Lex Fridman (1:43:40.140)
I can remember like right after,
John Clarke (1:43:42.560)
like there was so much excitement in the air
Lex Fridman (1:43:45.060)
during the third round.
Lex Fridman (1:43:46.160)
And I remember being in the corner
Lex Fridman (1:43:47.460)
and like, I was so excited at the end of it
John Clarke (1:43:50.660)
that I had forgotten what happened in the other two rounds.
Lex Fridman (1:43:53.060)
I didn't even know.
Lex Fridman (1:43:53.900)
And I looked to Sean, one of the other corner men,
Lex Fridman (1:43:56.620)
and I think I said to him, did we win?
John Clarke (1:43:58.860)
When you rewatch the fight,
Lex Fridman (1:44:00.220)
clearly we didn't win the fight.
John Clarke (1:44:01.380)
I mean, we lost the other rounds,
Lex Fridman (1:44:02.500)
but I got so caught up in that moment
Lex Fridman (1:44:05.020)
and I just remember like,
Lex Fridman (1:44:07.020)
I was so in awe of his performance
John Clarke (1:44:10.360)
that like I forgot what was going on.
Lex Fridman (1:44:12.360)
And it's so hard to not be a fan at that moment
Lex Fridman (1:44:16.060)
and to stay within yourself and try and like coach,
Lex Fridman (1:44:18.340)
but then what the fuck you even coaching at that point?
John Clarke (1:44:20.660)
It's like, we're rumbling.
Lex Fridman (1:44:21.820)
We got 30 seconds.
John Clarke (1:44:22.660)
We're trying to win here.
Lex Fridman (1:44:23.480)
And I remember like the performance itself,
John Clarke (1:44:26.580)
I'm not a fan of moral victories,
Lex Fridman (1:44:28.040)
but if ever there was gonna be one, that was one.
Lex Fridman (1:44:30.140)
And when the fight was over and I grabbed Kyle,
Lex Fridman (1:44:32.140)
like they hadn't even been to the center of the cage yet.
Lex Fridman (1:44:35.460)
And I just hugged him and I said, you're my fucking hero.
Lex Fridman (1:44:38.460)
And I remember being very emotional about that,
John Clarke (1:44:41.420)
that I was able to be a part of that.
Lex Fridman (1:44:43.260)
It feels wrong to say, but I was,
John Clarke (1:44:45.460)
I kind of avoided saying it,
Lex Fridman (1:44:46.860)
but I think if I'm being honest with my feelings,
John Clarke (1:44:49.740)
this is a safe space for feelings.
Lex Fridman (1:44:52.380)
Is I think it was the greatest mixed martial arts fight
John Clarke (1:44:57.620)
I've ever seen.
Lex Fridman (1:44:59.180)
And I don't think I'm being biased.
Lex Fridman (1:45:00.780)
I was honestly thinking like, am I being biased?
Lex Fridman (1:45:02.860)
I honestly don't think so.
John Clarke (1:45:05.020)
I think that was the greatest fight.
Lex Fridman (1:45:06.380)
Like if you wanna rank fights I've ever seen,
John Clarke (1:45:08.300)
I think to me that was the greatest fight I've ever seen.
Lex Fridman (1:45:10.780)
It certainly was one of the greatest displays
John Clarke (1:45:13.820)
of like just dogged effort from an underdog
Lex Fridman (1:45:17.900)
who was out experienced and probably outsized.
Lex Fridman (1:45:22.500)
But I mean, like you just,
Lex Fridman (1:45:25.140)
Kyle's one of those kids,
John Clarke (1:45:26.180)
you're never gonna tell him he's out of a fight.
Lex Fridman (1:45:27.980)
He has something you can't teach.
Lex Fridman (1:45:29.900)
And I've seen tons of people with more physical attributes
Lex Fridman (1:45:35.260)
and they're just mental midgets
Lex Fridman (1:45:36.820)
and they got a million dollar body and a 50 cent heart.
Lex Fridman (1:45:39.700)
And Kyle is not that.
Lex Fridman (1:45:42.220)
And you can't teach it no matter what you do.
Lex Fridman (1:45:44.340)
But that was, I would say like my career in combat sports,
John Clarke (1:45:49.060)
which spans, if you wanna go all the way back
Lex Fridman (1:45:51.260)
to like wrestling, like that was one of probably
John Clarke (1:45:53.980)
the greatest experiences I've been a part of.
Lex Fridman (1:45:57.940)
It's a bittersweet sport.
John Clarke (1:45:58.940)
She's a fickle mistress.
Lex Fridman (1:46:01.820)
Yeah, I mean, the tragic aspect of that is
Lex Fridman (1:46:08.020)
like, I guess Kyle lost, right?
Lex Fridman (1:46:10.580)
So like if you look at the record
Lex Fridman (1:46:12.540)
and all the kind of things,
Lex Fridman (1:46:14.140)
perhaps like you look at the career,
John Clarke (1:46:17.820)
maybe like as a financial,
Lex Fridman (1:46:21.940)
from a financial perspective that perhaps is not
John Clarke (1:46:25.540)
the greatest thing for Kyle's career
Lex Fridman (1:46:28.340)
or that or in the history of the UFC,
John Clarke (1:46:32.140)
perhaps it's not like maybe many people
Lex Fridman (1:46:36.740)
didn't even watch that fight,
Lex Fridman (1:46:38.060)
but it was a special moment that stands in the history.
Lex Fridman (1:46:40.860)
There's not many of these in the history of fighting.
Lex Fridman (1:46:44.900)
But at the end of the day,
Lex Fridman (1:46:45.780)
when you look at someone's career in the UFC,
John Clarke (1:46:47.500)
like financially, there's a handful of people
Lex Fridman (1:46:53.500)
that make real money.
John Clarke (1:46:54.820)
Everybody else makes nothing.
Lex Fridman (1:46:56.540)
There's a handful of people that make real money.
Lex Fridman (1:46:58.740)
So did that loss cost him in the near term?
Lex Fridman (1:47:02.460)
Sure, but when you look back on your life,
John Clarke (1:47:04.220)
you're not gonna look back on that loss
Lex Fridman (1:47:05.620)
as something that derailed my life financially
Lex Fridman (1:47:07.740)
and I never recovered from it.
Lex Fridman (1:47:08.900)
That's not gonna happen.
John Clarke (1:47:10.580)
Like the sad thing is, is unless you were a champion
Lex Fridman (1:47:13.180)
and most people are gonna be forgotten
John Clarke (1:47:15.580)
right after they're gone.
Lex Fridman (1:47:16.960)
Most people will be forgotten.
Lex Fridman (1:47:18.220)
And if you're not forgotten,
Lex Fridman (1:47:19.560)
certainly your accolades are gonna be misrepresented.
John Clarke (1:47:22.520)
Either they're gonna be inflated or diminished
Lex Fridman (1:47:24.540)
one way or the other.
Lex Fridman (1:47:25.360)
So looking back on it, it's just so hard to quantify that.
Lex Fridman (1:47:31.020)
But it's an experience.
Lex Fridman (1:47:32.340)
And when you're in that moment
Lex Fridman (1:47:34.540)
and you're one of the people intimately involved in it,
John Clarke (1:47:38.140)
the value of that experience supersedes any financial gain.
Lex Fridman (1:47:44.140)
Where would you put Khabib
Lex Fridman (1:47:46.860)
in the discussion of the greatest of all time?
Lex Fridman (1:47:48.620)
So you recently, we worked together,
John Clarke (1:47:50.700)
we watched the fight of him and Justin Gaethje
Lex Fridman (1:47:56.500)
and Khabib retired.
John Clarke (1:47:58.740)
Would you put him up there as one of the greatest
Lex Fridman (1:48:02.140)
or did he never truly find his foil,
Lex Fridman (1:48:05.620)
like the great warrior that challenged him?
Lex Fridman (1:48:08.500)
And maybe do you think he's fully retired now?
John Clarke (1:48:13.660)
To answer the question about being fully retired,
Lex Fridman (1:48:15.620)
I don't have any idea.
John Clarke (1:48:16.660)
I can't for a second pretend to think that I understand
Lex Fridman (1:48:22.660)
the way that people from that part of the world
John Clarke (1:48:24.300)
think and respect their family and things like that.
Lex Fridman (1:48:26.900)
To an American who says,
John Clarke (1:48:27.840)
oh, I promised my mom I wouldn't do it.
Lex Fridman (1:48:29.580)
I mean, I promised my mom I wouldn't do a lot of things.
John Clarke (1:48:31.660)
I went right out the fucking back door and did them.
Lex Fridman (1:48:33.940)
But I think that that means something different
John Clarke (1:48:36.020)
to people in different parts of the world.
Lex Fridman (1:48:37.940)
So I have no idea what kind of weight that carries.
Lex Fridman (1:48:41.240)
So I can't answer that.
Lex Fridman (1:48:42.780)
I can say a lot of times when people think
John Clarke (1:48:45.960)
about great fighters,
Lex Fridman (1:48:47.260)
they think about the aspects that make up MMA.
John Clarke (1:48:50.540)
Like they think of MMA as a pie
Lex Fridman (1:48:52.860)
and they're all these different pieces that make up the pie.
Lex Fridman (1:48:56.300)
And how good is this piece?
Lex Fridman (1:48:57.340)
And how good is this piece?
Lex Fridman (1:48:58.160)
And how good is this piece?
Lex Fridman (1:48:59.780)
When the fact of the matter is
John Clarke (1:49:00.960)
is you only need one really, really, really good piece.
Lex Fridman (1:49:05.260)
And the other pieces are complimentary pieces
John Clarke (1:49:07.300)
to get you to where you're the strongest.
Lex Fridman (1:49:10.540)
And if you want to tell me
John Clarke (1:49:12.620)
that Khabib's not the greatest MMA fighter
Lex Fridman (1:49:14.820)
because he doesn't have really slick striking,
John Clarke (1:49:17.820)
you can make that argument.
Lex Fridman (1:49:19.180)
But what I can tell you is Khabib has good enough striking
John Clarke (1:49:22.160)
to get him to his grappling
Lex Fridman (1:49:23.780)
where he is clearly the best guy at 155 they've ever seen.
Lex Fridman (1:49:27.360)
So does that make him the greatest fighter
Lex Fridman (1:49:29.100)
in that division or not?
John Clarke (1:49:31.940)
To your point about the foil,
Lex Fridman (1:49:33.520)
they wanted Connor to be his foil
Lex Fridman (1:49:35.340)
and he just manhandled them.
Lex Fridman (1:49:37.080)
I mean, they wanted that to happen.
John Clarke (1:49:39.320)
Did not happen.
Lex Fridman (1:49:40.240)
Well, there's a kind of argument to be made which we kind of,
John Clarke (1:49:45.040)
now you get haters in this argument
Lex Fridman (1:49:47.800)
and you're going to be one of the haters
Lex Fridman (1:49:50.160)
because I know your, how should I put it?
Lex Fridman (1:49:53.280)
Lack of admiration for Connor McGregor.
Lex Fridman (1:49:59.000)
But, what is it?
Lex Fridman (1:50:01.560)
Football is a game of inches?
John Clarke (1:50:03.160)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (1:50:03.980)
There's a sense where that Connor,
John Clarke (1:50:08.920)
there's an argument to be made
Lex Fridman (1:50:10.340)
that Connor wasn't exactly dominated,
John Clarke (1:50:13.020)
that he ended up being dominant,
Lex Fridman (1:50:14.240)
meaning, let me phrase it differently,
John Clarke (1:50:16.680)
is there's a lot of points in the fight
Lex Fridman (1:50:20.280)
that a different trajectory could have happened.
Lex Fridman (1:50:24.440)
So he wasn't so far from having a chance
Lex Fridman (1:50:27.460)
at winning that fight.
John Clarke (1:50:28.600)
It's just the end.
Lex Fridman (1:50:30.280)
You can focus.
John Clarke (1:50:31.120)
Those are the most important moments at the end.
Lex Fridman (1:50:34.040)
You've lost the most important moments.
John Clarke (1:50:35.740)
Right, but the road less taken.
Lex Fridman (1:50:37.940)
It could have been,
John Clarke (1:50:39.400)
if he didn't lose those very important moments,
Lex Fridman (1:50:42.640)
he had a chance.
John Clarke (1:50:43.560)
I'm saying out of all the people that Khabib fought,
Lex Fridman (1:50:46.700)
it's arguable that Connor was up there
John Clarke (1:50:49.080)
of the people that had a chance.
Lex Fridman (1:50:51.080)
Let me say this first.
John Clarke (1:50:54.960)
I love.
Lex Fridman (1:50:55.800)
I'm going to get so much heat for this.
John Clarke (1:50:56.620)
I do love Khabib.
Lex Fridman (1:50:57.640)
I'm a huge Khabib fan
John Clarke (1:50:59.080)
because I'm a grappler first and foremost.
Lex Fridman (1:51:01.200)
Me too, because I'm also Russian.
John Clarke (1:51:03.020)
I love Khabib, calm down.
Lex Fridman (1:51:05.280)
Okay.
John Clarke (1:51:06.120)
When Connor came on the scene,
Lex Fridman (1:51:08.760)
I loved Connor because I'm an Irish American
Lex Fridman (1:51:10.800)
and I want to support him and things like that.
Lex Fridman (1:51:12.800)
And he was good fun.
John Clarke (1:51:14.540)
He got to be, for my personal taste,
Lex Fridman (1:51:17.920)
he got to be too much.
John Clarke (1:51:20.020)
Of all the people Khabib has fought,
Lex Fridman (1:51:22.240)
I would never fight Connor again if I were him.
Lex Fridman (1:51:25.440)
And here's why.
Lex Fridman (1:51:26.480)
And I said this about the Diaz fight.
John Clarke (1:51:29.500)
Nate Diaz, who was one of my favorite fighters,
Lex Fridman (1:51:32.240)
has fought the exact same fight for 12 years.
John Clarke (1:51:34.720)
Connor will switch something up to give himself an edge.
Lex Fridman (1:51:38.800)
And I believe that Connor would figure something out
John Clarke (1:51:41.440)
in fight number two, I think,
Lex Fridman (1:51:43.800)
but I also thought that Gagey would give Khabib problems
John Clarke (1:51:46.460)
where it wouldn't be a matter of
Lex Fridman (1:51:48.320)
I'm going to out wrestle Khabib
John Clarke (1:51:49.800)
or become better at defending his wrestling takedowns.
Lex Fridman (1:51:54.040)
Connor would have figured out a way to not get wrestled.
John Clarke (1:51:56.520)
I feel like he's constantly changing.
Lex Fridman (1:51:58.800)
He's constantly evolving.
Lex Fridman (1:52:00.440)
And whether or not people realize it or not,
Lex Fridman (1:52:02.520)
I think Connor's one of the better overall athletes in MMA
John Clarke (1:52:05.520)
just from looking at his body and his movement
Lex Fridman (1:52:07.840)
and the way he's shaped.
John Clarke (1:52:08.840)
He's got a very tiny waist.
Lex Fridman (1:52:10.280)
He's got really pronounced glutes and shoulders.
Lex Fridman (1:52:13.120)
And I think he's a for real athlete.
Lex Fridman (1:52:15.400)
Whereas a lot of guys in MMA are not for real athletes.
John Clarke (1:52:17.560)
They're just good at one of the things that makes up MMA.
Lex Fridman (1:52:21.400)
I understand what you're saying about
John Clarke (1:52:23.720)
if this happened, if that happened,
Lex Fridman (1:52:25.560)
but I mean, you could say that
John Clarke (1:52:26.520)
about every single combat sports event ever.
Lex Fridman (1:52:29.700)
If Spinks's hook landed on Tyson,
John Clarke (1:52:32.280)
maybe that fight didn't end the way that it did,
Lex Fridman (1:52:34.760)
but you know what?
John Clarke (1:52:35.840)
It didn't.
Lex Fridman (1:52:36.920)
You're absolutely right.
Lex Fridman (1:52:37.800)
But if we could talk about just Connor McGregor
Lex Fridman (1:52:40.520)
for a second,
John Clarke (1:52:43.400)
I can't wait to get your fan mail or hate mail.
Lex Fridman (1:52:47.840)
Speak to the innovation of Connor.
John Clarke (1:52:50.360)
I don't hear very many people making this argument,
Lex Fridman (1:52:54.240)
but is it possible to make an argument
John Clarke (1:52:56.400)
that Connor McGregor is one of the greatest fighters
Lex Fridman (1:52:58.680)
of all time?
John Clarke (1:53:00.320)
It's an interesting argument.
Lex Fridman (1:53:01.480)
And the problem, the only problem with the argument
John Clarke (1:53:03.840)
is there's so much emotion on either side.
Lex Fridman (1:53:06.040)
Yeah, I had a conversation, sorry to interrupt,
John Clarke (1:53:08.280)
with Yaron Brook, who is a philosopher,
Lex Fridman (1:53:13.640)
objectivist, which is the philosophy of Ayn Rand.
Lex Fridman (1:53:18.860)
And the amount of emotion around that particular human
Lex Fridman (1:53:22.760)
is fascinating to me.
John Clarke (1:53:23.720)
It's similar to the amount of emotion around Donald Trump.
Lex Fridman (1:53:27.320)
You can think of different personalities, maybe Elon Musk.
John Clarke (1:53:30.120)
Those are the people that aren't willing
Lex Fridman (1:53:31.240)
to have their mind changed.
John Clarke (1:53:32.280)
They're too emotionally attached to the argument.
Lex Fridman (1:53:34.640)
Yeah, but it's weird that why do we,
Lex Fridman (1:53:37.400)
why some people inspire so much emotion and others don't?
Lex Fridman (1:53:42.040)
But Connor McGregor, I feel like nobody's able
John Clarke (1:53:46.040)
to have a calm fight analysis of the guy.
Lex Fridman (1:53:52.220)
Look, to me, as just a fan of martial arts,
John Clarke (1:53:57.220)
like I studied judo, I love watching just hours
Lex Fridman (1:54:00.700)
of Olympic judo and appreciating the art form.
John Clarke (1:54:04.500)
Like I forget the humans involved.
Lex Fridman (1:54:06.980)
Teddy Renner, who's a heavyweight,
John Clarke (1:54:09.900)
the most probably the most dominant heavyweight
Lex Fridman (1:54:11.940)
in the history of judo, just studying his gripping,
John Clarke (1:54:14.620)
just the art of it.
Lex Fridman (1:54:16.180)
And who cares if there's shit talking?
John Clarke (1:54:18.340)
Like to me, I put all of that aside
Lex Fridman (1:54:21.860)
and just look at the art.
Lex Fridman (1:54:23.460)
And like what I really appreciate about Connor McGregor
Lex Fridman (1:54:27.860)
is his innovation, like of movement,
John Clarke (1:54:33.540)
of maybe it's romanticized, maybe you can correct me.
Lex Fridman (1:54:36.980)
I'm just a Cheeto eating fan of mixed martial arts,
Lex Fridman (1:54:41.620)
but like I seem to detect more innovation
Lex Fridman (1:54:45.340)
than almost any other fighter
John Clarke (1:54:47.540)
that I've paid attention to in Connor McGregor.
Lex Fridman (1:54:51.660)
I think first, I'll answer in two parts.
John Clarke (1:54:54.180)
I think, well, I'm not gonna answer the first part.
Lex Fridman (1:54:56.500)
It's just a comment, because you didn't ask the question.
Lex Fridman (1:54:58.720)
What was the question?
Lex Fridman (1:54:59.560)
I don't even remember.
John Clarke (1:55:00.780)
It's about how Connor McGregor fans are very emotional
Lex Fridman (1:55:04.740)
and Connor McGregor detractors are very emotional.
John Clarke (1:55:07.220)
I think fans become very emotional.
Lex Fridman (1:55:09.060)
They become cheerleaders of someone like Connor McGregor
John Clarke (1:55:11.340)
or Donald Trump, because they see that person
Lex Fridman (1:55:13.860)
exhibiting the qualities that they themselves lack.
Lex Fridman (1:55:16.780)
And so they become cheerleaders for that, right?
Lex Fridman (1:55:18.500)
And I think that for the most part,
John Clarke (1:55:20.860)
people who are detractors of Connor McGregors,
Lex Fridman (1:55:23.380)
they're not really Connor McGregor detractors.
John Clarke (1:55:25.700)
They're detractors of Connor supporters.
Lex Fridman (1:55:28.340)
There's a beef that they have
Lex Fridman (1:55:29.660)
with the people in that bucket, right?
Lex Fridman (1:55:31.380)
Like, it's not really a problem.
Lex Fridman (1:55:33.620)
And that applies probably in our current political climate,
Lex Fridman (1:55:37.380)
Donald Trump with the left and the right.
John Clarke (1:55:39.460)
It's more about like, they actually don't like
Lex Fridman (1:55:44.340)
on the other, the caricature, the most extreme versions
John Clarke (1:55:47.420)
of what they see in the supporters of the other side.
Lex Fridman (1:55:50.380)
Yeah, that's a good point.
Lex Fridman (1:55:51.220)
But I think the more interesting thing
Lex Fridman (1:55:52.460)
is the fighter himself.
Lex Fridman (1:55:53.540)
So let's put the supporters aside.
Lex Fridman (1:55:55.220)
I would say that, you know, what some people know
Lex Fridman (1:55:59.580)
and some people don't know is that Connor's base
Lex Fridman (1:56:01.180)
is in karate and the karate style of Connor McGregor,
John Clarke (1:56:06.540)
Steven Thompson, of Lyoto Machida,
Lex Fridman (1:56:10.620)
that type of distance management,
John Clarke (1:56:12.660)
a lot of times we think as martial artists,
Lex Fridman (1:56:14.540)
we think that the sport version of the art
John Clarke (1:56:17.460)
we've chosen to pursue somehow taints the authenticity
Lex Fridman (1:56:21.060)
and the effectiveness of it.
Lex Fridman (1:56:24.020)
But point karate is what led to that
Lex Fridman (1:56:26.020)
in and out distance management style of Connor,
John Clarke (1:56:28.940)
of Lyoto and of Steven Thompson.
Lex Fridman (1:56:31.100)
They all kind of use it a little bit differently,
Lex Fridman (1:56:33.420)
but they use it very effectively, all three of them.
Lex Fridman (1:56:36.260)
And that comes from a world of trying to kind of like
John Clarke (1:56:41.180)
step in, land contact on you from my point
Lex Fridman (1:56:43.860)
and then get back out before you can counterstrike me, right?
Lex Fridman (1:56:47.380)
And that's where that comes from.
Lex Fridman (1:56:49.020)
Connor is blessed to have a longer arms
John Clarke (1:56:52.380)
than someone his height probably normally has.
Lex Fridman (1:56:54.580)
And his movement is just so fluid.
John Clarke (1:56:57.700)
He's so athletic with the hinges of his body,
Lex Fridman (1:57:01.540)
the knees and the hips and the swivel of his body,
John Clarke (1:57:04.820)
which is also the hips and the shoulders.
Lex Fridman (1:57:07.780)
His movement, his distance,
Lex Fridman (1:57:09.900)
and the way he sets people up for the straight left hand
Lex Fridman (1:57:12.740)
while you're circling away from it
Lex Fridman (1:57:14.220)
and he can still land it,
Lex Fridman (1:57:15.140)
which is what he did to Chad Mendes.
John Clarke (1:57:17.060)
Hit him with a straight left
Lex Fridman (1:57:17.980)
while he was circling away from it.
John Clarke (1:57:20.100)
That is something that is very beautiful to watch.
Lex Fridman (1:57:24.060)
And sometimes people see the kicks
Lex Fridman (1:57:27.100)
and they see all the flashy snap kicks and the sidekicks.
Lex Fridman (1:57:30.740)
All that stuff is doing is setting people up
John Clarke (1:57:32.860)
for the left hand.
Lex Fridman (1:57:34.140)
It's all it's doing.
John Clarke (1:57:34.980)
It's you're corralling people, you're funneling people,
Lex Fridman (1:57:37.140)
or you're leading the dance and you're bringing them
John Clarke (1:57:39.140)
to a spot where you know you can land that left hand.
Lex Fridman (1:57:41.740)
And his ability to do that is masterful.
John Clarke (1:57:45.780)
People constantly shit on his ability to grapple
Lex Fridman (1:57:48.820)
because a couple of his losses
John Clarke (1:57:50.020)
have been to jujitsu guys or grapplers,
Lex Fridman (1:57:52.860)
but they've been to really good guys.
John Clarke (1:57:55.380)
Anyone who's gonna sit here and tell me
Lex Fridman (1:57:56.780)
Conor McGregor's not a good grappler, go grapple him.
John Clarke (1:58:00.180)
Let me see you grapple him.
Lex Fridman (1:58:02.020)
To that point, I'll also say a lot of people
John Clarke (1:58:05.020)
will use Conor McGregor's X guard sweep on Nate Diaz
Lex Fridman (1:58:08.380)
as evidence to his high level grappling in that fight,
John Clarke (1:58:11.500)
to which I would also counter,
Lex Fridman (1:58:13.460)
Nate Diaz didn't fight that off
John Clarke (1:58:14.780)
because he knew he was so much better at jujitsu
Lex Fridman (1:58:16.820)
off the bottom that he didn't even care if he got swept.
Lex Fridman (1:58:19.660)
So is Conor McGregor innovative?
Lex Fridman (1:58:21.860)
Absolutely.
Lex Fridman (1:58:23.780)
Is he one of the best fighters ever?
Lex Fridman (1:58:25.540)
It's tough to say because he's such a cash cow
John Clarke (1:58:27.580)
that he was fed people.
Lex Fridman (1:58:28.940)
I firmly believe no one who put
John Clarke (1:58:32.700)
that Conor McGregor Khabib fight together
Lex Fridman (1:58:34.420)
thought Khabib would win.
John Clarke (1:58:36.620)
Wow.
Lex Fridman (1:58:38.140)
I remember, so at that time it was not completely clear.
John Clarke (1:58:42.940)
There was a myth of the great Khabib.
Lex Fridman (1:58:45.220)
It wasn't completely clear how good is he really.
Lex Fridman (1:58:48.420)
So that's interesting.
Lex Fridman (1:58:49.820)
And it was unclear how good is Conor also.
John Clarke (1:58:55.500)
Because I think to me,
Lex Fridman (1:58:57.780)
maybe part of my admiration of Conor McGregor
John Clarke (1:59:00.500)
is rooted in the fact that I thought
Lex Fridman (1:59:02.340)
there was no way he beats Jose Aldo
Lex Fridman (1:59:05.300)
and I thought there's definitely no way
Lex Fridman (1:59:07.660)
he beats Eddie Alvarez.
Lex Fridman (1:59:09.140)
And so like when he did,
Lex Fridman (1:59:10.740)
I was like, my brain was like,
John Clarke (1:59:17.060)
there's something broken.
Lex Fridman (1:59:18.060)
It was like shut down, like on windows, like froze.
John Clarke (1:59:20.220)
We have to rethink this.
Lex Fridman (1:59:21.740)
Like this is a special human.
John Clarke (1:59:23.380)
Now people who argue he's not even in the running
Lex Fridman (1:59:25.780)
of like top 20 is,
John Clarke (1:59:28.340)
if you look at the number of defenses, for example,
Lex Fridman (1:59:30.380)
of his belt that he had very, very little.
Lex Fridman (1:59:32.660)
But like to me, I'm one of those people
Lex Fridman (1:59:34.580)
is back to our discussion of like,
Lex Fridman (1:59:36.540)
do moments make great fighters?
Lex Fridman (1:59:38.340)
That I think just being able to beat Jose Aldo
Lex Fridman (1:59:41.300)
and I would argue in his prime,
Lex Fridman (1:59:43.300)
some people might disagree in this,
John Clarke (1:59:49.020)
in a way where he like figures out the puzzle,
Lex Fridman (1:59:51.820)
gets in his head the entirety of the picture.
Lex Fridman (1:59:53.940)
And then to be, I mean, Eddie Alvarez,
Lex Fridman (1:59:57.580)
would he be considered a really strong wrestler?
Lex Fridman (20:02.360)
And so I was not interested in like the long play.
Lex Fridman (20:05.560)
I remember thinking like,
Lex Fridman (20:06.400)
why should I be acting now in a way
Lex Fridman (20:08.900)
that might impact a point in my life I never reach?
Lex Fridman (20:12.040)
And yet now you are a man who searches for meaning in life,
Lex Fridman (20:17.240)
at least I would say to put another way,
John Clarke (20:20.760)
you think deeply about this world
Lex Fridman (20:25.260)
and in a philosophical context
John Clarke (20:27.480)
while also appreciating the violence
Lex Fridman (20:30.480)
of hurting other friends of yours, right?
John Clarke (20:35.400)
On a regular basis.
Lex Fridman (20:36.400)
So why do you think, I mean,
John Clarke (20:38.960)
maybe there's a broader question there,
Lex Fridman (20:40.680)
but it calls a personal question.
John Clarke (20:42.500)
It seems that people who fight for prolonged periods of time,
Lex Fridman (20:49.040)
like Jiu Jitsu people and mixed martial arts people,
John Clarke (20:52.080)
even military folks become over time philosophers.
Lex Fridman (20:57.400)
What is that?
John Clarke (20:58.280)
Is that, is there a parallel between fighting and violence
Lex Fridman (21:02.160)
and the philosophical depth with which you now have arrived
John Clarke (21:05.160)
from the starting point of being the full existentialist
Lex Fridman (21:07.740)
of like just living in the moment
Lex Fridman (21:09.800)
to like being introspective human now?
Lex Fridman (21:14.800)
I would say to that being a soldier
John Clarke (21:18.360)
or a warrior hundreds of years ago
Lex Fridman (21:22.660)
is probably what started the marriage
John Clarke (21:24.820)
between martial arts and philosophy.
Lex Fridman (21:28.160)
If you're constantly under someone else's charge
Lex Fridman (21:31.060)
and you're told to go out and walk in a line
Lex Fridman (21:33.080)
and overtake some Germanic tribe somewhere
Lex Fridman (21:36.840)
and that happens all the time, your job is being a soldier.
Lex Fridman (21:43.760)
On any given day, you might not come home.
Lex Fridman (21:46.560)
So I think that you have to start your day
Lex Fridman (21:48.240)
by thinking deeply about how you've lived to that point
Lex Fridman (21:52.240)
and the people that are living in and around you
Lex Fridman (21:54.500)
and how you've treated them.
Lex Fridman (21:55.800)
And I think that probably is what started the marriage
Lex Fridman (21:58.140)
of being kind of like a philosophical martial artist.
John Clarke (22:02.200)
You've got to really like on a daily basis,
Lex Fridman (22:06.080)
take stock of what's going on around you and inside you
John Clarke (22:09.960)
because we all suffer with this kind of idea.
Lex Fridman (22:13.880)
If today's my last day, did I do it right?
Lex Fridman (22:16.440)
And we don't really do it so much nowadays
Lex Fridman (22:18.160)
because we're so comfortable,
Lex Fridman (22:19.860)
but if we were being marched out to war every day,
Lex Fridman (22:22.300)
I think you'd see people live a little bit differently.
Lex Fridman (22:26.280)
And you treat the people around you
Lex Fridman (22:28.000)
a little bit differently.
Lex Fridman (22:29.040)
Do you think there's echoes of that
Lex Fridman (22:30.720)
in just even the sport of like grappling and Jiu Jitsu
Lex Fridman (22:35.320)
where you're facing your own mortality?
Lex Fridman (22:37.200)
We don't really think of it that way, but.
John Clarke (22:39.640)
To be honest, I think that a lot of people
Lex Fridman (22:41.560)
that train in a martial art in contemporary society,
John Clarke (22:45.520)
I don't consider them all martial artists.
Lex Fridman (22:48.080)
I think just because you train in martial art
John Clarke (22:50.000)
does not mean you're a martial artist.
Lex Fridman (22:51.480)
There are so many people that use martial arts
John Clarke (22:53.880)
as a form of exercise and like this little piece
Lex Fridman (22:57.200)
of self concept.
John Clarke (23:00.120)
They use martial arts as a tagline in their Instagram bio.
Lex Fridman (23:04.800)
And it's really a form of exercise.
John Clarke (23:06.640)
It's something they do, it's not something they are.
Lex Fridman (23:09.320)
And I think there's a big difference there.
John Clarke (23:11.720)
There's a bunch of stuff mixed up in there
Lex Fridman (23:13.520)
because the Instagram thing is something you do for,
John Clarke (23:17.880)
it's also, it could be something you are for display
Lex Fridman (23:20.800)
versus who you are in the private moments
John Clarke (23:24.000)
of searching and thinking and struggling
Lex Fridman (23:26.560)
and all that kind of stuff.
John Clarke (23:27.400)
Instagram is a surface layer
Lex Fridman (23:29.680)
that much of modern society operates in,
John Clarke (23:34.000)
which is really problematic because there's that gap
Lex Fridman (23:37.320)
between the person you show to the world
Lex Fridman (23:40.520)
and the person you are in private life.
Lex Fridman (23:42.440)
And if you make majority of your project
John Clarke (23:45.680)
of the human project of your sort of few years
Lex Fridman (23:48.080)
on this earth, the optimization
John Clarke (23:50.560)
of the public Instagram profile,
Lex Fridman (23:53.200)
then you never develop this private person.
Lex Fridman (23:56.000)
But it does seem that if you do jiu jitsu long enough,
Lex Fridman (23:58.280)
it's very difficult not to fall into like,
John Clarke (24:00.720)
this has become a personal journey,
Lex Fridman (24:04.960)
an intellectual journey.
John Clarke (24:06.440)
Because like, if you get your ass kicked thousands of times,
Lex Fridman (24:09.400)
there's a certain point to where that,
John Clarke (24:12.200)
maybe it's like a defense mechanism,
Lex Fridman (24:14.440)
but that turns into some kind
John Clarke (24:15.920)
of deeply profound introspective experience
Lex Fridman (24:18.520)
versus like exercise.
John Clarke (24:20.720)
It's not yoga.
Lex Fridman (24:21.920)
Yeah, so let me go back first
Lex Fridman (24:24.960)
and address the Instagram point,
Lex Fridman (24:26.360)
which I think there's a difference
John Clarke (24:28.080)
between people whose Instagram is intrinsically tied
Lex Fridman (24:32.440)
to their profession and they have
John Clarke (24:34.080)
to put a specific profile out there.
Lex Fridman (24:35.880)
And I think in general,
John Clarke (24:38.640)
people who truthfully their business is tied
Lex Fridman (24:42.560)
to their Instagram profile, I wanna exclude them.
John Clarke (24:45.400)
I think that most people,
Lex Fridman (24:47.400)
Instagram is how they want to be seen.
Lex Fridman (24:50.160)
And that's not always congruent with who you are,
Lex Fridman (24:53.360)
but I think there is a level of dishonesty there.
John Clarke (24:58.640)
Like this is how I want people to see me.
Lex Fridman (25:00.440)
I'm gonna put all this stuff in my Instagram bio,
Lex Fridman (25:02.280)
but that's really not me.
Lex Fridman (25:05.000)
And when you do that,
John Clarke (25:08.080)
I think it's a little disingenuous and you're right.
Lex Fridman (25:11.640)
There's not, you're never really gonna marry
John Clarke (25:13.760)
those two things together and it gets tough.
Lex Fridman (25:15.840)
Let me, sorry to interrupt,
John Clarke (25:17.320)
let me push back on something.
Lex Fridman (25:18.720)
This is a good time to address the many flaws
John Clarke (25:23.080)
of the great and powerful John Clark.
Lex Fridman (25:25.600)
Okay, let's go there.
John Clarke (25:29.360)
Cause it's interesting.
Lex Fridman (25:31.440)
You strive so hard for excellence in your life
Lex Fridman (25:35.840)
and for extreme competence that you are visibly
Lex Fridman (25:40.720)
and physically off put by people
John Clarke (25:43.120)
who have not achieved competence.
Lex Fridman (25:46.960)
Do you think we should be nicer to the people who are,
John Clarke (25:51.960)
like you mentioned, a person who first picks up an art,
Lex Fridman (25:56.520)
picks up, becomes vegan, starts doing CrossFit,
John Clarke (26:00.360)
start doing Jiu Jitsu for the first time
Lex Fridman (26:02.400)
and create that as their,
Lex Fridman (26:04.280)
they're struggling through this like, who am I?
Lex Fridman (26:07.120)
And they're really overly proud and it's kind of ridiculous.
Lex Fridman (26:11.040)
And you and your wise chair have seen many battles.
Lex Fridman (26:15.760)
Yeah, that you see the ridiculousness of that.
John Clarke (26:19.820)
I tend to, I'm learning to give those folks,
Lex Fridman (26:25.320)
not to mock them and to sort of give them a chance
John Clarke (26:28.520)
to do their ridiculousness because I think I was that too.
Lex Fridman (26:32.400)
Let me first clarify.
John Clarke (26:34.200)
I wanna be clear about what you mean
Lex Fridman (26:36.320)
when you say a level of competence.
John Clarke (26:38.320)
Now I've never won a world championship.
Lex Fridman (26:41.240)
I've never, you know, there are plenty of things in my life
John Clarke (26:45.280)
where I've not achieved what most people would consider
Lex Fridman (26:50.200)
to be the penultimate level of success.
John Clarke (26:54.080)
Now.
Lex Fridman (26:54.920)
That's accomplishments.
John Clarke (26:56.160)
It's accomplishments, it's ribbons, it's things like that.
Lex Fridman (26:58.480)
And it's not that those things don't mean anything to me.
Lex Fridman (27:00.560)
And the fact that I haven't in some arenas
Lex Fridman (27:03.240)
is something that I wanna change,
John Clarke (27:06.640)
which is, we can talk about that in a second.
Lex Fridman (27:09.320)
But I think that there's a difference
John Clarke (27:11.680)
between the very eager noob of whatever it is they're doing
Lex Fridman (27:17.160)
who does the thing so that they can signal
John Clarke (27:22.340)
they do the thing.
Lex Fridman (27:24.040)
That's a person I have less respect for.
Lex Fridman (27:26.800)
So we know each other primarily through jujitsu.
Lex Fridman (27:29.860)
Look at a jujitsu tournament.
John Clarke (27:32.740)
There's this idea that people espouse online.
Lex Fridman (27:37.280)
I respect anyone with the guts to get on the mat
Lex Fridman (27:40.680)
and put it on the line and sign up for a tournament.
Lex Fridman (27:43.240)
That is the biggest load of shit I have ever heard.
John Clarke (27:47.480)
This is great.
Lex Fridman (27:48.320)
Do you know how easy it is for you
John Clarke (27:50.840)
to put your name on something
Lex Fridman (27:52.280)
and pay the registration fee and walk in there?
John Clarke (27:54.320)
That's not the hard part.
Lex Fridman (27:55.520)
That's the easiest part.
John Clarke (27:57.400)
I don't care if you lose your first match,
Lex Fridman (27:58.920)
but I respect the person who signs up for the tournament,
John Clarke (28:02.400)
registers for the tournament, goes on a diet,
Lex Fridman (28:05.040)
loses weight the right way, trains their ass off,
Lex Fridman (28:07.740)
and does the things properly and then goes on the mat.
Lex Fridman (28:10.720)
The person who simply signs their name
John Clarke (28:12.960)
on the registration form and jumps on the mat,
Lex Fridman (28:16.100)
if they haven't done these other things,
John Clarke (28:17.600)
they actually have nothing to lose.
Lex Fridman (28:19.680)
Because what they've done is they've stepped onto the mat,
John Clarke (28:21.920)
in the ring, in the cage with a bucket full of excuses.
Lex Fridman (28:25.760)
Sure you signed up, but you're not really vulnerable
John Clarke (28:29.680)
because you didn't run, you didn't do this,
Lex Fridman (28:31.800)
you didn't do all the things you're supposed to do.
John Clarke (28:33.640)
The person who eliminates every possible excuse
Lex Fridman (28:38.360)
and then steps on the mat
Lex Fridman (28:40.120)
and gets their ass kicked in the first round,
Lex Fridman (28:42.240)
I have so much more respect for that person
John Clarke (28:44.840)
than the person who does nothing
Lex Fridman (28:46.160)
and maybe on natural ability wins a couple of matches
Lex Fridman (28:48.800)
and then writes on Facebook
Lex Fridman (28:50.960)
on how I lost to the eventual champion.
John Clarke (28:54.040)
That's worth zero, that's worth zero.
Lex Fridman (28:56.320)
And in that process, what did you learn about yourself?
John Clarke (28:58.880)
You learned about yourself
Lex Fridman (29:00.480)
that you've got a natural level of aptitude
John Clarke (29:02.800)
for whatever this activity is that you're doing,
Lex Fridman (29:05.080)
but you didn't actually learn how to maximize it
John Clarke (29:07.760)
through training and through dedication
Lex Fridman (29:10.160)
and through all these other things.
John Clarke (29:12.440)
I'm an incredibly interested, novice musician.
Lex Fridman (29:17.440)
I like to play bass, but I don't put that on anything.
Lex Fridman (29:20.400)
And I stink at it.
Lex Fridman (29:22.280)
I would really love to be sick at it.
John Clarke (29:24.120)
I'm currently not, but I'm not running around,
Lex Fridman (29:28.680)
talking about entering, any of those other things.
John Clarke (29:31.360)
I do it, it's for myself
Lex Fridman (29:33.400)
and I wanna reach a level of competence in that.
Lex Fridman (29:37.240)
So the person that you have respect for
Lex Fridman (29:40.680)
is a person who takes it fully seriously,
John Clarke (29:44.400)
takes the effort fully seriously.
Lex Fridman (29:47.400)
So for bass, that would be that you agree with yourself
John Clarke (29:50.560)
that you're going to perform live
Lex Fridman (29:51.960)
and just in your own private moments, your private thoughts,
John Clarke (29:55.360)
you're not going to give yourself an excuse out,
Lex Fridman (29:57.880)
like, I'm just gonna have fun.
John Clarke (29:59.120)
This is a nice experience.
Lex Fridman (2:00:00.500)
Like, or not strong wrestler,
John Clarke (2:00:04.260)
strong striker and wrestler,
Lex Fridman (2:00:05.700)
the whole combination of it.
Lex Fridman (2:00:06.740)
And also what's the other wrestler he fought?
Lex Fridman (2:00:09.340)
Chad Mendes. Chad Mendes.
Lex Fridman (2:00:10.660)
So let me comment on all those if I may.
Lex Fridman (2:00:13.500)
So I was at the Chad Mendes fight live.
Lex Fridman (2:00:15.700)
And there was a jujitsu tournament, we're out in Vegas.
Lex Fridman (2:00:18.820)
And so me and my best friend came out
Lex Fridman (2:00:20.180)
and we got some tickets.
Lex Fridman (2:00:21.420)
That night was supposed to be the first Aldo fight.
John Clarke (2:00:24.300)
Aldo got hurt, like right after I bought the tickets.
Lex Fridman (2:00:27.300)
They pulled Chad Mendes in.
John Clarke (2:00:28.700)
He was a little bit out of shape, whatever.
Lex Fridman (2:00:30.380)
You still got to fight the fight.
Lex Fridman (2:00:32.340)
But I don't want to use that fight as evidence
Lex Fridman (2:00:36.900)
to Conor's greatness because they pulled Chad Mendes in.
John Clarke (2:00:39.700)
He was like hunting and drinking beers in the woods
Lex Fridman (2:00:41.860)
and was a little out of shape.
Lex Fridman (2:00:43.460)
But if you want to talk about greatness,
Lex Fridman (2:00:45.420)
like that surpasses your in ring accomplishments.
John Clarke (2:00:50.860)
I was in the stands that night
Lex Fridman (2:00:52.740)
and the people that came from Ireland
John Clarke (2:00:56.420)
to see Conor fight that night,
Lex Fridman (2:00:58.060)
single handedly set the market
John Clarke (2:01:00.740)
for hotel room prices and airline tickets to Vegas
Lex Fridman (2:01:03.820)
that weekend.
John Clarke (2:01:05.140)
These motherfuckers were all dressed like Conor
Lex Fridman (2:01:07.980)
in the stands.
John Clarke (2:01:09.020)
They had wool suits on and big beards
Lex Fridman (2:01:11.580)
and the whole thing.
John Clarke (2:01:12.420)
I mean, they probably weren't pocket watches.
Lex Fridman (2:01:14.540)
I never saw more people trying to be someone else.
John Clarke (2:01:19.100)
Never saw more people try to be someone else.
Lex Fridman (2:01:21.580)
I mean, there's a level of,
Lex Fridman (2:01:23.060)
is there a level of greatness in that?
Lex Fridman (2:01:24.540)
I mean, I don't know how to parse all that out.
John Clarke (2:01:26.700)
You're somebody who doesn't admire that.
Lex Fridman (2:01:28.420)
I love that in the sense, the following sense, I think.
Lex Fridman (2:01:31.700)
And people don't seem to hold this belief at all,
Lex Fridman (2:01:34.540)
but to me, fighting is not just,
John Clarke (2:01:37.900)
this isn't like a quiet street fight that nobody watches.
Lex Fridman (2:01:42.580)
This is also a spectacle.
John Clarke (2:01:43.820)
This is also a story.
Lex Fridman (2:01:45.580)
There's like, there's a professional wrestling element
John Clarke (2:01:48.460)
to this.
Lex Fridman (2:01:49.300)
This is not, like you think it's just about fighting.
John Clarke (2:01:51.540)
If it was just about fighting, you wouldn't,
Lex Fridman (2:01:54.220)
I mean, there's a story to it, I guess,
John Clarke (2:01:56.780)
is what I'm trying to get to.
Lex Fridman (2:01:58.580)
And greatness has to incorporate that.
John Clarke (2:02:01.300)
People that criticize, again, I might be wrong on this,
Lex Fridman (2:02:04.300)
but I honestly think that Conor McGregor,
John Clarke (2:02:07.620)
not nearly as much as Khabib,
Lex Fridman (2:02:10.060)
but he's a true martial artist.
John Clarke (2:02:13.460)
I think he respects his opponents despite the talk.
Lex Fridman (2:02:17.580)
Maybe I'm misreading it,
Lex Fridman (2:02:19.220)
but it feels like he is a storyteller,
Lex Fridman (2:02:22.260)
like Chael Sonnen type of like, he's constructed this image
John Clarke (2:02:27.020)
to play the story, like just the way he acts
Lex Fridman (2:02:30.060)
after the fight, the honor he shows to his opponents.
John Clarke (2:02:33.540)
There's a real martial artist in there,
Lex Fridman (2:02:35.980)
and to dismiss the fact that the story of the fight
John Clarke (2:02:41.820)
is part of it, because he doesn't just shit talk.
Lex Fridman (2:02:44.340)
This is what people don't seem to understand.
John Clarke (2:02:46.500)
He's good at shit talking.
Lex Fridman (2:02:48.300)
Very good, and I'm with you on basically everything you said.
John Clarke (2:02:53.380)
I think that there's greatness to that,
Lex Fridman (2:02:55.060)
and I think that he understands how to sell a fight,
Lex Fridman (2:02:57.940)
and I think what he did to Jose Aldo by getting in his head
Lex Fridman (2:03:05.620)
helped him win that fight.
John Clarke (2:03:08.620)
He insulted Jose Aldo and his country so much
Lex Fridman (2:03:12.180)
that he knew Aldo was gonna come forward
John Clarke (2:03:14.380)
right into that left hook.
Lex Fridman (2:03:15.660)
Was that fight in Brazil, by the way?
Lex Fridman (2:03:17.420)
Do you remember?
Lex Fridman (2:03:18.260)
I don't recall.
John Clarke (2:03:19.100)
Because I know he insulted all of Brazil,
Lex Fridman (2:03:20.540)
but I'm not sure if it was in Brazil.
Lex Fridman (2:03:22.460)
But when he tried to do that to Khabib,
Lex Fridman (2:03:23.940)
you could tell that he just was not gonna get
John Clarke (2:03:25.420)
in Khabib's head.
Lex Fridman (2:03:26.260)
Khabib was unflappable.
Lex Fridman (2:03:27.820)
But there is definitely something great
Lex Fridman (2:03:30.780)
about how he moves people.
John Clarke (2:03:33.420)
The Irish are like, I mean, Conor's walkout music,
Lex Fridman (2:03:37.660)
for people from Ireland of Irish descent,
John Clarke (2:03:41.260)
that shit is like very deep.
Lex Fridman (2:03:43.580)
You know, it's a very emotional song.
John Clarke (2:03:47.740)
I was, to be honest, a little bit upset with Khabib,
Lex Fridman (2:03:51.500)
that he didn't rise.
John Clarke (2:03:54.180)
I admire that entire culture.
Lex Fridman (2:03:56.780)
But there's an aspect to where he could have risen
John Clarke (2:03:59.300)
to the occasion of there's the same kind of depth
Lex Fridman (2:04:03.940)
of love of country that Russia has.
Lex Fridman (2:04:10.140)
Is there in Dagestan?
Lex Fridman (2:04:11.780)
Dagestan is a little weird in terms of like,
Lex Fridman (2:04:15.060)
but he could have, especially with Putin's support,
Lex Fridman (2:04:18.340)
wear for a bit the full Russian hat
John Clarke (2:04:22.220)
of like this is the great nation.
Lex Fridman (2:04:23.980)
Like rise above the culture of Dagestan,
John Clarke (2:04:28.260)
which is a small town boy with the small town values
Lex Fridman (2:04:31.100)
of family and all those kinds of things.
John Clarke (2:04:33.080)
There's a moment where you inspire entire nations.
Lex Fridman (2:04:36.620)
Like the step up and be the foil
John Clarke (2:04:40.340)
to the great Conor McGregor where also Khabib
Lex Fridman (2:04:45.900)
becomes the foil to, like both of them
John Clarke (2:04:48.780)
are the foil to each other and become like,
Lex Fridman (2:04:51.440)
that fight was already a great fight, right?
Lex Fridman (2:04:54.500)
But it could have been something historic.
Lex Fridman (2:04:57.060)
Ali versus Fred, I mean, it could have been really historic.
Lex Fridman (2:05:00.340)
And I would argue, I guess the biggest disappointment I have,
Lex Fridman (2:05:05.620)
and I understand it and I also honor it as a martial artist,
Lex Fridman (2:05:08.700)
but to, I'm disappointed that Khabib doesn't seem
Lex Fridman (2:05:13.300)
to even consider the possibility of doing in Moscow
John Clarke (2:05:18.580)
fight number two, and because that could be narrative wise
Lex Fridman (2:05:23.580)
if they do it right, that's one of the,
John Clarke (2:05:26.100)
could be one of the greatest fights in history.
Lex Fridman (2:05:29.420)
Yeah, I think in terms of Khabib and inspiring a country,
John Clarke (2:05:34.420)
is it possible that by staying true to the values
Lex Fridman (2:05:39.740)
that he had his entire career and getting to the zenith
John Clarke (2:05:44.260)
of his art form and still doing it in that humble way,
Lex Fridman (2:05:49.120)
isn't it possible that that inspires?
John Clarke (2:05:50.940)
Yeah, 100%, so I should clarify that I think
Lex Fridman (2:05:55.020)
they're just hearing from people,
John Clarke (2:05:56.900)
from my fellow comrades, no, is they love that.
Lex Fridman (2:06:01.900)
They love that, but they.
John Clarke (2:06:06.700)
There's also a brash, beer chugging, shit talking thing
Lex Fridman (2:06:09.420)
that people really like about Connor, and I do love that.
Lex Fridman (2:06:12.500)
But the beautiful narrative would have been the clash,
Lex Fridman (2:06:15.300)
the real clash of those cultures.
Lex Fridman (2:06:17.220)
So Khabib chooses to live the culture by walking away.
Lex Fridman (2:06:23.340)
There's also like a clash of them sort of walking,
John Clarke (2:06:27.540)
not walking away from the fire, but walking into the fire
Lex Fridman (2:06:31.580)
of this brashness.
John Clarke (2:06:33.740)
It's the sort of the cool collected calmness
Lex Fridman (2:06:40.020)
of the Dagestan people.
John Clarke (2:06:41.660)
It's like you were talking about the Saitya brothers.
Lex Fridman (2:06:43.740)
So they just view it totally differently.
Lex Fridman (2:06:46.580)
And there are stereotypes about the Irish
Lex Fridman (2:06:50.140)
where they're maybe potentially a louder,
John Clarke (2:06:52.800)
more boisterous culture.
Lex Fridman (2:06:55.660)
Haven't heard of that, yeah.
Lex Fridman (2:06:57.420)
And I mean, I thought they each played their part perfectly.
Lex Fridman (2:07:01.700)
And all those things that you're describing
John Clarke (2:07:04.780)
could have happened.
Lex Fridman (2:07:05.620)
Maybe Khabib steps up and he carries the proverbial flag,
Lex Fridman (2:07:08.340)
so to speak, for a nation of people and they go to battle.
Lex Fridman (2:07:10.940)
But the fight, if it plays out the same way,
John Clarke (2:07:12.740)
is still the fight.
Lex Fridman (2:07:13.980)
And it was an okay fight.
John Clarke (2:07:16.540)
It wasn't a great fight.
Lex Fridman (2:07:17.940)
It was, you know, the fight was okay.
Lex Fridman (2:07:21.180)
And I think that, again, I don't have any idea
Lex Fridman (2:07:26.100)
what Khabib's obligations to his family are.
John Clarke (2:07:28.820)
I don't think either of those guys want for more money.
Lex Fridman (2:07:34.100)
To do another fight is just a legacy thing.
John Clarke (2:07:38.000)
It's just about fulfilling some part of a legacy.
Lex Fridman (2:07:44.180)
And I just, I admire the possibility of a great legacy
John Clarke (2:07:49.580)
that is bigger than either of the fighters.
Lex Fridman (2:07:51.860)
I think with Khabib, he kind of, he's not as concerned
John Clarke (2:07:56.380)
about legacy, I think.
Lex Fridman (2:07:57.460)
Right.
John Clarke (2:07:58.300)
There's a...
Lex Fridman (2:07:59.140)
Your promoter's dream, because you want the rematch,
Lex Fridman (2:08:01.900)
and the only thing that makes more money
Lex Fridman (2:08:03.220)
than the rematch is the trilogy.
John Clarke (2:08:05.540)
You gotta split the rematch, you hope Conor wins,
Lex Fridman (2:08:09.020)
and then you have the trilogy fight.
Lex Fridman (2:08:10.500)
And now you're all in.
Lex Fridman (2:08:11.820)
Yeah.
John Clarke (2:08:13.020)
Yeah, I can't get into Khabib's head,
Lex Fridman (2:08:15.340)
but I know Putin, just the game, the entirety of it,
John Clarke (2:08:19.380)
especially at the time,
Lex Fridman (2:08:20.340)
especially if it was Trump as president,
John Clarke (2:08:24.340)
if he was as president at the time,
Lex Fridman (2:08:26.420)
and Putin, and in Russia,
Lex Fridman (2:08:30.280)
and just knowing how masterful Conor is at,
Lex Fridman (2:08:35.460)
because Conor would be a different Conor.
John Clarke (2:08:37.420)
I think he would be a calmer Conor.
Lex Fridman (2:08:39.300)
There would be a different,
John Clarke (2:08:42.060)
because you don't wanna be over the top Conor
Lex Fridman (2:08:43.820)
with the Russian people.
John Clarke (2:08:44.860)
Right, no, that's...
Lex Fridman (2:08:46.700)
It's like, ah, this is dangerous ground.
John Clarke (2:08:48.740)
See, that was the episode in the hotel in Brooklyn
Lex Fridman (2:08:53.420)
when some of the Russian guys confronted Artem,
Lex Fridman (2:08:58.420)
and then Conor came over.
Lex Fridman (2:09:00.140)
It's not, but the danger of that.
John Clarke (2:09:02.520)
I mean, there is the element of just like real danger,
Lex Fridman (2:09:05.940)
and the real, it was almost of war.
John Clarke (2:09:08.340)
It's, I don't know, it's...
Lex Fridman (2:09:11.260)
It was like when Chael Sonnen was talking so much smack,
John Clarke (2:09:14.940)
maybe it was against Vanderlei Silva.
Lex Fridman (2:09:17.380)
I don't know, and it was one of those fights
John Clarke (2:09:18.860)
where they just didn't think he was gonna make it
Lex Fridman (2:09:20.280)
out of Brazil.
John Clarke (2:09:21.120)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (2:09:21.940)
Yeah.
John Clarke (2:09:22.900)
Americans don't get it.
Lex Fridman (2:09:24.540)
Yeah.
John Clarke (2:09:25.380)
People take some of that shit in different parts
Lex Fridman (2:09:26.880)
of the world very, very seriously.
John Clarke (2:09:28.620)
Yeah, but that's what makes it beautiful.
Lex Fridman (2:09:30.420)
That's what makes a great story,
Lex Fridman (2:09:32.740)
and I think fighting is very much about the stories,
Lex Fridman (2:09:35.620)
not just about the particular outcomes of a fight,
John Clarke (2:09:39.700)
or the skillset matching, or the chess of the fight.
Lex Fridman (2:09:43.840)
It's also about the story of the greater,
John Clarke (2:09:47.500)
like context of societies, of warring.
Lex Fridman (2:09:51.740)
We're like warring cultures, but we're still,
John Clarke (2:09:54.220)
we're still good, we're no longer can have great,
Lex Fridman (2:09:58.180)
big, hot wars between nations because of nuclear weapons.
John Clarke (2:10:03.100)
This is our wars that we can have,
Lex Fridman (2:10:05.500)
and in some sense, I feel robbed of the great war
John Clarke (2:10:09.540)
that could have happened.
Lex Fridman (2:10:11.020)
It doesn't mean there aren't lots of wars going on,
Lex Fridman (2:10:13.780)
but yeah, the big one is not gonna happen.
Lex Fridman (2:10:16.060)
There's too much of a balance of power
John Clarke (2:10:17.320)
with nuclear weapons and technology and stuff,
Lex Fridman (2:10:20.220)
but it's not the end of war.
John Clarke (2:10:23.220)
No.
Lex Fridman (2:10:24.220)
Do you think there's always gonna be war?
John Clarke (2:10:27.020)
I think there'll always be war,
Lex Fridman (2:10:28.420)
especially in underdeveloped parts of the world.
John Clarke (2:10:31.780)
Isn't there always underdeveloped,
Lex Fridman (2:10:33.340)
relatively, parts of the world?
John Clarke (2:10:35.420)
Yeah, I mean, at some point, though, you'd think,
Lex Fridman (2:10:37.420)
I mean, the way that technology's expanding
Lex Fridman (2:10:40.780)
and we're bringing technology to weird parts of the world
Lex Fridman (2:10:43.440)
that you wouldn't think of as technologically advanced,
John Clarke (2:10:47.940)
the way that the Chinese are inhabiting certain areas
Lex Fridman (2:10:51.500)
for mining purposes and things like that,
John Clarke (2:10:54.340)
I think underdeveloped parts of the world
Lex Fridman (2:10:57.340)
will get developed quickly.
John Clarke (2:10:59.540)
I just wonder what the nature of that war might be.
Lex Fridman (2:11:02.060)
It could be cyber, it could be all those kinds of things.
John Clarke (2:11:04.300)
I think in developed nations, it's gonna be cyber.
Lex Fridman (2:11:06.380)
I think that's probably the next phase of war,
Lex Fridman (2:11:08.300)
but I mean, I think you talk about parts of the world
Lex Fridman (2:11:10.040)
like the Middle East,
Lex Fridman (2:11:10.880)
and it's just still gonna be warring tribal factions.
Lex Fridman (2:11:13.580)
We can't even begin to understand
Lex Fridman (2:11:15.380)
what those people are fighting about over there.
Lex Fridman (2:11:17.620)
Yet, everyone sitting in America on their couch
John Clarke (2:11:20.180)
has an opinion.
Lex Fridman (2:11:22.620)
You can't even begin to understand it.
John Clarke (2:11:24.280)
I sure can't.
Lex Fridman (2:11:25.580)
Yeah, it's back to the principle discussion,
John Clarke (2:11:29.300)
when what's violated is much deeper
Lex Fridman (2:11:31.420)
than just kind of anything we can even,
John Clarke (2:11:35.200)
in a middle class existence, can even comprehend.
Lex Fridman (2:11:38.500)
A lot of times, American soldiers will go to war
John Clarke (2:11:40.420)
because that's what they're told to do,
Lex Fridman (2:11:41.700)
and maybe they disagree with the orders,
Lex Fridman (2:11:43.460)
and maybe they agree with the orders,
Lex Fridman (2:11:44.620)
but I get a sense that people in the Middle East fighting
John Clarke (2:11:48.140)
all believe in what they're fighting for.
Lex Fridman (2:11:49.920)
It's not a thing where they're told to go do it.
John Clarke (2:11:53.060)
I believe they really believe
Lex Fridman (2:11:56.100)
that what they're doing is the right thing,
Lex Fridman (2:11:57.460)
and they're defending some sort of principle.
Lex Fridman (2:11:59.940)
Are you generally optimistic about the future,
Lex Fridman (2:12:03.740)
speaking of war, of human civilization?
Lex Fridman (2:12:05.660)
Do you think we'll, people talk about the Fermi Paradox
Lex Fridman (2:12:13.740)
and asking why haven't aliens visited us,
Lex Fridman (2:12:17.020)
if you believe they haven't visited us.
John Clarke (2:12:21.220)
One of the thoughts is that there's kind of a great filter
Lex Fridman (2:12:25.340)
that intelligent civilization reach a point
John Clarke (2:12:29.220)
where it destroys itself naturally,
Lex Fridman (2:12:31.180)
so that's why we haven't seen them.
John Clarke (2:12:32.420)
They don't last very long.
Lex Fridman (2:12:34.320)
There does seem to be a kind of,
John Clarke (2:12:37.580)
we seem to be advancing faster and faster and faster.
Lex Fridman (2:12:39.720)
We keep developing more and more powerful ways
John Clarke (2:12:41.660)
of destroying ourselves in all kinds of ways,
Lex Fridman (2:12:44.060)
not even, just even to say nuclear weapons alone,
Lex Fridman (2:12:48.820)
but there's all kinds of new ways,
Lex Fridman (2:12:50.940)
engineer pandemics, nanotechnology, AGI,
John Clarke (2:12:57.100)
all those kinds of things.
Lex Fridman (2:12:58.400)
It seems to be that the argument that we are going
John Clarke (2:13:06.880)
to destroy ourselves in some kind of creative way
Lex Fridman (2:13:09.080)
very shortly is not too crazy of an argument to make.
John Clarke (2:13:13.840)
Are you more optimistic or pessimistic
Lex Fridman (2:13:16.840)
about the prospects of human civilization
Lex Fridman (2:13:18.960)
in maybe the 22nd century?
Lex Fridman (2:13:21.400)
Like, is it possible that your generation
Lex Fridman (2:13:23.720)
is the last generation to be alive on Earth?
Lex Fridman (2:13:26.440)
No, but I wouldn't say that five generations
John Clarke (2:13:28.920)
from now that could be true.
Lex Fridman (2:13:32.140)
I guess I think of it really selfishly.
John Clarke (2:13:34.360)
I'm a big believer that when your time here on Earth is over,
Lex Fridman (2:13:39.400)
the overwhelmingly vast majority of people
John Clarke (2:13:42.400)
will be forgotten within 12 calendar months.
Lex Fridman (2:13:44.920)
People with no family will be forgotten sooner,
Lex Fridman (2:13:47.840)
and so I don't give a lot of thought
Lex Fridman (2:13:49.340)
to what will happen to Earth or mankind when I'm gone.
John Clarke (2:13:52.400)
I give more thought to maximizing my time here now,
Lex Fridman (2:13:55.960)
and I wanna do it in a way where I don't,
John Clarke (2:14:01.800)
I'm not overtly hindering the future of civilization
Lex Fridman (2:14:04.640)
or humankind, but I'm definitely taking a me first approach
John Clarke (2:14:09.140)
to how I live on Earth.
Lex Fridman (2:14:10.760)
Do you have a philosophy behind why you have
Lex Fridman (2:14:13.500)
or don't have kids on this topic?
Lex Fridman (2:14:16.720)
Because for many people, when they have kids,
John Clarke (2:14:20.220)
there's a sense, it's almost like a genetic sense
Lex Fridman (2:14:23.960)
or something like that, where all of a sudden,
John Clarke (2:14:26.440)
you do start caring about what happens
Lex Fridman (2:14:28.240)
five generations from now.
John Clarke (2:14:30.840)
I mean, I think I'm just too selfish.
Lex Fridman (2:14:34.120)
I mean, I think that's the easy answer.
John Clarke (2:14:37.600)
Like, I know that your whole life has to change.
Lex Fridman (2:14:40.440)
You know, your focus, everything shifts,
Lex Fridman (2:14:43.760)
and just don't wanna do that.
Lex Fridman (2:14:45.960)
And also, I think that there's a level of,
John Clarke (2:14:48.480)
I guess if I have to really unpack it,
Lex Fridman (2:14:51.520)
there's probably a level of lack of hope in the future.
John Clarke (2:14:56.400)
Like, I don't think it's, I don't think the world
Lex Fridman (2:14:59.400)
and humanity is going in the right direction.
Lex Fridman (2:15:02.460)
What does the right direction look like?
Lex Fridman (2:15:04.760)
I think the right direction looks like people
John Clarke (2:15:08.520)
coming back together in a more impactful human way,
Lex Fridman (2:15:15.040)
in person, touching, feeling, talking face to face.
Lex Fridman (2:15:20.040)
So all the things you're describing is what we had,
Lex Fridman (2:15:23.160)
as you mentioned before, when you were like a teenager.
Lex Fridman (2:15:25.960)
So the state of the world.
Lex Fridman (2:15:27.080)
But that's because your mind was formed then.
John Clarke (2:15:29.520)
It very well could be.
Lex Fridman (2:15:31.080)
It very well could be.
John Clarke (2:15:32.040)
It's very possible that the virtual reality worlds
Lex Fridman (2:15:34.160)
that we'll create will be actually
John Clarke (2:15:35.960)
a much higher level of existence.
Lex Fridman (2:15:37.760)
In fact, like now we're getting,
John Clarke (2:15:39.800)
we're moving slowly away from tribalism,
Lex Fridman (2:15:43.280)
perhaps you could argue the ideas of nations,
Lex Fridman (2:15:46.080)
and we're going, we're moving into the realm of ideas
Lex Fridman (2:15:49.760)
and it could be a higher form of existence
John Clarke (2:15:51.640)
where we're sort of moving past the constraints
Lex Fridman (2:15:56.040)
of our meat vehicles into the space of our minds.
John Clarke (2:15:59.520)
It depends what you value.
Lex Fridman (2:16:00.720)
Cause when you sit here and you talk about it,
Lex Fridman (2:16:02.720)
and you're talking about these things
Lex Fridman (2:16:04.120)
in these humongous levels, on these macro levels.
Lex Fridman (2:16:07.240)
And I don't think a lot of people view it that way.
Lex Fridman (2:16:09.080)
I think a lot of people view it as like,
Lex Fridman (2:16:10.400)
what kind of pizza am I getting tonight?
Lex Fridman (2:16:12.640)
Like it's a much different outlook.
Lex Fridman (2:16:14.760)
And sure, the virtual world that's on the horizon,
Lex Fridman (2:16:19.960)
I'm sure it's got benefits and will help people,
Lex Fridman (2:16:22.800)
but is it gonna help the things that you find valuable?
Lex Fridman (2:16:25.240)
Like, was it gonna help commerce?
John Clarke (2:16:26.760)
Okay, sure.
Lex Fridman (2:16:27.600)
Is that the thing you find the most valuable?
Lex Fridman (2:16:29.360)
Is it gonna help communication?
Lex Fridman (2:16:31.240)
Well, it'll help disseminating information.
John Clarke (2:16:33.400)
Is it gonna help explain the information
Lex Fridman (2:16:35.280)
you're disseminating?
John Clarke (2:16:36.120)
Probably not.
Lex Fridman (2:16:37.280)
Is it gonna hinder interpersonal communication?
John Clarke (2:16:39.560)
Absolutely.
Lex Fridman (2:16:40.400)
And those are things I find valuable.
John Clarke (2:16:42.240)
Interpersonal communication, talking to people.
Lex Fridman (2:16:44.960)
Like it saddens me when I go into a restaurant
Lex Fridman (2:16:49.040)
and there's five year old kids who like,
Lex Fridman (2:16:50.840)
slamming away on an iPad and can't make eye contact
John Clarke (2:16:53.240)
with anybody or teenagers who don't say please and thank you
Lex Fridman (2:16:56.280)
when they order from the waitress.
John Clarke (2:16:57.400)
Like that to me is wrong.
Lex Fridman (2:16:59.440)
That shit's wrong.
Lex Fridman (2:17:00.640)
And I don't know this for a fact,
Lex Fridman (2:17:02.480)
but I do attribute that to using technology as a crutch
John Clarke (2:17:06.640)
when we're raising raising kids.
Lex Fridman (2:17:08.440)
So, you know, I think those are things that I find valuable.
John Clarke (2:17:13.600)
I tried to empathize.
Lex Fridman (2:17:14.600)
I mean, I agree with you as a person who grew up
John Clarke (2:17:16.520)
in a certain age, but like prior to the internet, I suppose.
Lex Fridman (2:17:21.040)
But, or at least solidified the early philosophies
John Clarke (2:17:25.000)
of the way I see the world prior to the internet.
Lex Fridman (2:17:29.120)
During the time of AOL, let's put it this way.
John Clarke (2:17:31.360)
Mm hmm.
Lex Fridman (2:17:32.200)
Uh.
John Clarke (2:17:33.040)
Brr.
Lex Fridman (2:17:33.880)
Uh, what was your AIMS screen name?
John Clarke (2:17:36.680)
I never had one.
Lex Fridman (2:17:37.520)
Okay.
John Clarke (2:17:38.360)
I was the last person I knew to get a cell phone.
Lex Fridman (2:17:40.840)
I was so anti all that stuff because I just felt like
John Clarke (2:17:45.280)
I didn't want to be a part of it.
Lex Fridman (2:17:46.520)
I did not want to be a part of it.
John Clarke (2:17:47.640)
I joined the underground forum about MMA in 2000 or 2001
Lex Fridman (2:17:52.240)
when I first started training.
John Clarke (2:17:54.600)
I think right at the tail end, I got a MySpace,
Lex Fridman (2:17:57.200)
but I didn't have any of that stuff
Lex Fridman (2:17:58.360)
and I didn't want any of it.
Lex Fridman (2:17:59.760)
I don't know why.
John Clarke (2:18:00.680)
It just was, I was not into it.
Lex Fridman (2:18:03.680)
I felt like, like what are the good things
Lex Fridman (2:18:06.800)
that are going to come out of it?
Lex Fridman (2:18:07.720)
Oh, I'm going to get my package in two days
Lex Fridman (2:18:09.480)
instead of four days?
Lex Fridman (2:18:11.200)
Does that make my life better?
John Clarke (2:18:12.880)
I try to, I try to deeply empathize
Lex Fridman (2:18:15.240)
with a lot of experiences of other people.
Lex Fridman (2:18:17.000)
And like one of the things I love,
Lex Fridman (2:18:18.920)
like the smell of paper books and books in general.
Lex Fridman (2:18:22.240)
And early on, this is like five years ago,
Lex Fridman (2:18:24.720)
I just gave away all my books.
Lex Fridman (2:18:27.120)
And I said, you know, I'm really going to try to
Lex Fridman (2:18:30.160)
fall in love with the books in the same way I did before,
Lex Fridman (2:18:33.360)
but now with a Kindle or not a Kindle,
Lex Fridman (2:18:36.440)
like paper, white, whatever, the ebook reader.
Lex Fridman (2:18:40.400)
And I'm still not there,
Lex Fridman (2:18:42.520)
but I've been kind of trying to fall in love
John Clarke (2:18:45.960)
with that experience.
Lex Fridman (2:18:46.840)
And the same way I try to think like,
John Clarke (2:18:48.880)
teenagers are really into TikTok now,
Lex Fridman (2:18:50.760)
like making these short videos.
John Clarke (2:18:53.240)
I try to consider the possibility that their existence
Lex Fridman (2:18:56.240)
will be a much happier one than I've had
John Clarke (2:18:58.480)
because of this kind of interaction.
Lex Fridman (2:19:01.040)
From my sort of skeptical perspective,
John Clarke (2:19:02.920)
it's like the attention span is so short,
Lex Fridman (2:19:05.440)
they don't really deeply think or deeply experience things.
John Clarke (2:19:08.880)
They construct a social layer that they present to the world
Lex Fridman (2:19:13.480)
and they work on creating this social layer,
John Clarke (2:19:15.960)
like the presentation to the world much more
Lex Fridman (2:19:18.800)
than really sitting alone with their thoughts
Lex Fridman (2:19:20.800)
and the sadnesses and their hopes and dreams and fears.
Lex Fridman (2:19:23.560)
And like working on the project that is their own,
John Clarke (2:19:28.360)
like actual person that exists in this physical world,
Lex Fridman (2:19:31.240)
as opposed to working on the project
John Clarke (2:19:32.720)
of a particular social platform that they show.
Lex Fridman (2:19:35.800)
But like, perhaps that project,
Lex Fridman (2:19:39.120)
like who cares who you are in the physical space?
Lex Fridman (2:19:42.000)
Maybe what you are is what your Instagram shows.
John Clarke (2:19:46.000)
That's the more important project to work on.
Lex Fridman (2:19:48.080)
Well, what's reality?
Lex Fridman (2:19:49.200)
Yeah, what's reality?
Lex Fridman (2:19:50.040)
Perception is reality, right?
Lex Fridman (2:19:51.240)
So how other people perceive this constructed thing,
Lex Fridman (2:19:54.720)
that's their reality of you.
Lex Fridman (2:19:56.440)
But is it your reality?
Lex Fridman (2:19:57.560)
Like that, I mean, like we said earlier,
John Clarke (2:19:59.080)
it's how you want people to see you
Lex Fridman (2:20:03.360)
is very rarely in line with how you really are
John Clarke (2:20:06.640)
or how you see yourself.
Lex Fridman (2:20:08.560)
And I mean, I can remember being like a 13 year old kid
Lex Fridman (2:20:11.640)
and like when you go through a bunch of weird
Lex Fridman (2:20:13.720)
13 year old kid shit, like sitting in my room,
John Clarke (2:20:16.800)
like turning a red light on
Lex Fridman (2:20:18.280)
and listening to like a sad record
Lex Fridman (2:20:20.280)
and like trying to figure out what's going on inside.
Lex Fridman (2:20:23.320)
Sometimes you like it, sometimes you don't like it.
Lex Fridman (2:20:25.400)
But I feel like those experiences are lost
Lex Fridman (2:20:28.000)
on kids constantly connected to a phone.
Lex Fridman (2:20:29.880)
And like, you know, I don't know what the remedy
Lex Fridman (2:20:32.000)
for those situations is nowadays.
Lex Fridman (2:20:33.880)
Like, I don't know, do they make a TikTok video?
Lex Fridman (2:20:35.480)
Do they blog about it?
John Clarke (2:20:37.200)
Do they, you know, make a video or a...
Lex Fridman (2:20:39.440)
Nobody blogs anymore, bro.
John Clarke (2:20:40.760)
Whatever, man.
Lex Fridman (2:20:41.840)
Or a video, a story about,
John Clarke (2:20:46.000)
oh, this is what happened to me
Lex Fridman (2:20:47.400)
and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Lex Fridman (2:20:48.480)
Does that actually help them work it out?
Lex Fridman (2:20:50.560)
Or does it just create more noise and more static
John Clarke (2:20:52.680)
on how to get to the root of the problem
Lex Fridman (2:20:54.320)
and learn about themselves?
John Clarke (2:20:55.800)
I don't know what future social networks are exactly.
Lex Fridman (2:20:58.520)
I do know on a shallow level,
John Clarke (2:21:00.400)
it does feel good when somebody clicks like on something.
Lex Fridman (2:21:03.120)
I think that is more of a drug
John Clarke (2:21:05.080)
than an actual deep long lasting fulfilling happiness.
Lex Fridman (2:21:09.040)
But perhaps there's a way to make a social network
John Clarke (2:21:11.120)
that does lead to long lasting happiness
Lex Fridman (2:21:14.200)
that's somehow detached from the physical meat space.
John Clarke (2:21:18.240)
I don't know, but it feels like
Lex Fridman (2:21:19.920)
you want to give that a chance.
Lex Fridman (2:21:21.760)
Do you think when people are liking things on social media,
Lex Fridman (2:21:25.920)
do you think there's just a group of people,
John Clarke (2:21:27.800)
an overwhelming majority of people
Lex Fridman (2:21:29.160)
that are gonna like whatever you put out there,
John Clarke (2:21:30.920)
they're clicking like,
Lex Fridman (2:21:32.000)
and then there's another section of people
John Clarke (2:21:33.480)
that just constantly scroll and like,
Lex Fridman (2:21:35.440)
scroll and like, and scroll and like.
John Clarke (2:21:37.400)
Like, do you think when you get a like
Lex Fridman (2:21:41.480)
on content you put out,
John Clarke (2:21:42.880)
that that like perhaps came from someone
Lex Fridman (2:21:45.000)
who normally doesn't like your content,
Lex Fridman (2:21:47.200)
but like you've just changed their mind on something,
Lex Fridman (2:21:50.760)
you've turned them around on it.
John Clarke (2:21:52.720)
I tend to think that when I get likes on social media,
Lex Fridman (2:21:55.320)
those are just the people that like all my shit
John Clarke (2:21:56.840)
no matter what I say.
Lex Fridman (2:21:57.920)
Like they probably don't even read it.
John Clarke (2:21:59.120)
Like I could put the most preposterous thing up there
Lex Fridman (2:22:02.080)
and you're still gonna get a handful
John Clarke (2:22:03.120)
of the same exact likes.
Lex Fridman (2:22:04.280)
That's interesting.
Lex Fridman (2:22:05.120)
But I tend to, the way I see likes,
Lex Fridman (2:22:07.800)
you're kind of, you said multiple things.
John Clarke (2:22:10.000)
I think in one sense you see social media
Lex Fridman (2:22:13.600)
as like a battleground of ideas
Lex Fridman (2:22:15.640)
and like is a kind of indicated,
Lex Fridman (2:22:17.480)
like the best possible like is an indicator
John Clarke (2:22:19.520)
of like, of you winning over somebody on an idea
Lex Fridman (2:22:25.040)
and they really appreciate that idea.
John Clarke (2:22:26.320)
That's the best possible like.
Lex Fridman (2:22:27.760)
To me, a like is just two strangers smiling at each other.
John Clarke (2:22:31.720)
Like a moment of like, like.
Lex Fridman (2:22:35.440)
I got you, bro.
John Clarke (2:22:36.280)
Yeah, I got you, bro.
Lex Fridman (2:22:37.280)
Yeah.
John Clarke (2:22:38.120)
Yeah, like fist bump.
Lex Fridman (2:22:39.200)
Like, yeah, we're in this fucking thing together.
John Clarke (2:22:42.120)
This whole thing doesn't make any sense,
Lex Fridman (2:22:43.600)
but we're in this together.
Lex Fridman (2:22:44.800)
And yeah, it's possible for likes to be that.
Lex Fridman (2:22:48.600)
I don't think the actual clicking of a like,
John Clarke (2:22:51.840)
I think social media at its best might be that
Lex Fridman (2:22:54.560)
where it's like, I got you, bro.
Lex Fridman (2:22:56.840)
And it's a large scale as opposed to kind of
Lex Fridman (2:23:02.040)
this weird, like crazy pool of dopamine
John Clarke (2:23:06.080)
where everyone's just obsessed with this likes and likes
Lex Fridman (2:23:08.960)
and then the division drives like more
John Clarke (2:23:12.680)
of this like weird, anxious engagement.
Lex Fridman (2:23:16.200)
I think that's just the dark version of it
John Clarke (2:23:18.200)
in the early days of social media.
Lex Fridman (2:23:19.840)
I think you called it a battleground of ideas,
Lex Fridman (2:23:22.720)
but I think social media is nothing but a battleground
Lex Fridman (2:23:24.880)
of fragile egos.
John Clarke (2:23:27.080)
Well, but humans are fragile egos.
Lex Fridman (2:23:29.880)
I mean, maybe, but I think the people,
John Clarke (2:23:33.200)
I think particularly on social media,
Lex Fridman (2:23:35.200)
they're the most fragile.
Lex Fridman (2:23:37.360)
Like, would you be doing all the things you're doing?
Lex Fridman (2:23:41.680)
What would you be doing if you weren't,
John Clarke (2:23:43.640)
if you weren't podcasting and posting the things you do
Lex Fridman (2:23:50.120)
on social media, what would you be doing?
Lex Fridman (2:23:52.520)
You'd probably be much the same guy, right?
Lex Fridman (2:23:55.720)
But I think that on social media,
John Clarke (2:23:57.800)
the fragile ego people, what you see on social media
Lex Fridman (2:24:01.080)
is not what they'd be doing without social media.
Lex Fridman (2:24:03.600)
Does that make any sense?
Lex Fridman (2:24:04.440)
Like you're probably,
John Clarke (2:24:06.200)
your mission is probably somewhat congruent, your path.
Lex Fridman (2:24:09.480)
You're just utilizing social media.
Lex Fridman (2:24:10.960)
But I think a lot of people,
Lex Fridman (2:24:12.600)
social media has changed their path
Lex Fridman (2:24:14.520)
and now they're doing something totally foreign to them.
Lex Fridman (2:24:20.080)
And they're only able to do it maybe
John Clarke (2:24:22.440)
because of social media.
Lex Fridman (2:24:23.520)
I think you're focusing on a particular moment in time
John Clarke (2:24:27.160)
of people in their less great moments,
Lex Fridman (2:24:31.560)
like in their less great version of themselves.
John Clarke (2:24:34.120)
I think you're just focusing on the masses struggling
Lex Fridman (2:24:37.080)
to become the best version of themselves.
Lex Fridman (2:24:39.880)
And then you, yeah, sure.
Lex Fridman (2:24:41.920)
For stretches of time, whether it's days, weeks, and months,
John Clarke (2:24:45.640)
you could be a shady person on the internet.
Lex Fridman (2:24:47.640)
I think you're focusing on that.
Lex Fridman (2:24:51.520)
And unfortunately, social media platforms emphasize
Lex Fridman (2:24:56.200)
they love it when you're like that,
John Clarke (2:24:58.200)
when you're not doing great in your own life
Lex Fridman (2:25:01.360)
because it increases anxiety, increases engagement,
John Clarke (2:25:04.960)
makes you more susceptible to an argument,
Lex Fridman (2:25:07.320)
and then really get pulled into like conspiracy theories,
John Clarke (2:25:09.640)
all that kind of stuff.
Lex Fridman (2:25:11.320)
But the other side works too.
John Clarke (2:25:12.640)
I think there's also the people who are on social media
Lex Fridman (2:25:15.360)
fronting like they're these positive figures
Lex Fridman (2:25:17.520)
and going to the gym, whatever it is,
Lex Fridman (2:25:21.440)
the positivity that they spew out.
Lex Fridman (2:25:23.280)
But in real life, they're the most negative fucks
Lex Fridman (2:25:24.960)
you've ever met in your life.
Lex Fridman (2:25:26.040)
And they're just so full of crap.
Lex Fridman (2:25:27.600)
And it's just people playing to an audience.
John Clarke (2:25:30.220)
It's like you said, it's like a politician sometimes.
Lex Fridman (2:25:34.000)
A politician wakes up one day and they decide,
John Clarke (2:25:35.840)
who's the group I can pander to the best
Lex Fridman (2:25:38.280)
to get the most likes equals votes?
Lex Fridman (2:25:40.600)
And it's the same thing on social media.
Lex Fridman (2:25:42.080)
People wake up and whether it's conscious or not,
John Clarke (2:25:45.120)
what's the group I can pander to the best
Lex Fridman (2:25:47.560)
to get the most likes?
Lex Fridman (2:25:48.720)
Is it the positivity motivated crowd?
Lex Fridman (2:25:50.840)
Is it the woe is me crowd?
Lex Fridman (2:25:52.440)
Like what is it?
Lex Fridman (2:25:53.280)
Who's gonna give me the most likes?
John Clarke (2:25:54.760)
That's what I'll do.
Lex Fridman (2:25:57.200)
I don't know how to argue against that.
John Clarke (2:25:58.640)
I guess it rings true what you're saying,
Lex Fridman (2:26:03.600)
but I just kind of refuse to believe it.
John Clarke (2:26:05.520)
I guess I'm pandering to the optimistic crowd.
Lex Fridman (2:26:08.560)
Like I met with my marketing team
Lex Fridman (2:26:10.600)
and I just feel that love has the best,
Lex Fridman (2:26:16.780)
what do you call it?
John Clarke (2:26:17.620)
No, I don't know.
Lex Fridman (2:26:18.440)
There's a lot of people that accuse me
John Clarke (2:26:19.560)
of being like exactly that,
Lex Fridman (2:26:21.160)
which is like, why are you always being positive?
John Clarke (2:26:22.840)
It's like, well, cause I'd like to be that.
Lex Fridman (2:26:26.640)
Yeah, but I wouldn't consider you someone who panders.
John Clarke (2:26:30.120)
No, but I guess what I'm saying is like,
Lex Fridman (2:26:33.320)
it's easy to say that everyone is pandering,
Lex Fridman (2:26:39.160)
but like maybe they're just trying.
Lex Fridman (2:26:42.480)
I do believe that social media platforms
John Clarke (2:26:44.840)
could encourage people when they're trying
Lex Fridman (2:26:46.200)
to be the best version of themselves, whatever that is.
John Clarke (2:26:48.320)
It could be like Conor McGregor talking shit.
Lex Fridman (2:26:50.600)
It could be just being positive.
John Clarke (2:26:52.160)
It could be actually creating cool things in this world,
Lex Fridman (2:26:55.360)
putting out instructional videos for Jiu Jitsu
John Clarke (2:26:57.440)
or like inspiring students to competition.
Lex Fridman (2:26:59.840)
I don't know.
John Clarke (2:27:00.680)
All those kinds of things, educational content.
Lex Fridman (2:27:03.280)
I think that people are trying.
John Clarke (2:27:05.040)
Like I tend to believe that people want to be good.
Lex Fridman (2:27:09.560)
Like they want to be successful
John Clarke (2:27:12.760)
in whatever that definition of success is.
Lex Fridman (2:27:14.300)
And they're kind of struggling to do that.
Lex Fridman (2:27:15.920)
And they're just awkward at it at first.
Lex Fridman (2:27:18.320)
And like, it's easy to focus on the awkwardness
Lex Fridman (2:27:21.160)
and the stumbling around as people have that.
Lex Fridman (2:27:24.000)
And they start shitting on each other.
John Clarke (2:27:25.480)
It's easy to kind of focus in on that.
Lex Fridman (2:27:27.340)
But I think that's just like people, you know, white belts.
John Clarke (2:27:30.760)
There's more white belts in the world
Lex Fridman (2:27:32.000)
than there are black belts.
Lex Fridman (2:27:32.880)
But you gotta give them a chance to kind of grow.
Lex Fridman (2:27:34.920)
I think on social media, if you put your stuff out there,
John Clarke (2:27:37.080)
whatever your stuff is, your content, your views
Lex Fridman (2:27:39.000)
or whatever, you let the chips fall where they may.
John Clarke (2:27:41.780)
Like that's a different thing than being like,
Lex Fridman (2:27:43.960)
I'm gonna tweak what I normally might say
Lex Fridman (2:27:46.880)
and put it up this way
Lex Fridman (2:27:47.720)
because I want these people to like it.
Lex Fridman (2:27:50.280)
And in terms, I also think I have a different viewpoint
Lex Fridman (2:27:54.360)
than you do on people wanting to be successful.
John Clarke (2:27:56.760)
I actually don't think that many people
Lex Fridman (2:27:58.280)
want to be successful.
John Clarke (2:27:59.840)
I think people want to have the appearance
Lex Fridman (2:28:02.100)
of wanting to be successful.
Lex Fridman (2:28:04.000)
But to be successful takes a shitload of work.
Lex Fridman (2:28:06.600)
And most people don't want to put that work in.
Lex Fridman (2:28:08.560)
So they craft this persona of a person
Lex Fridman (2:28:11.000)
who's trying really hard, but just can't catch the break
John Clarke (2:28:13.680)
or, you know, these motherfuckers
Lex Fridman (2:28:15.880)
with getting back on my grind.
John Clarke (2:28:18.360)
You've never been on a grind.
Lex Fridman (2:28:19.680)
You've been on the couch.
John Clarke (2:28:20.920)
I so disagree with you.
Lex Fridman (2:28:22.080)
I get it.
John Clarke (2:28:23.000)
I get it.
Lex Fridman (2:28:24.360)
That's your foil.
John Clarke (2:28:25.240)
You enjoyed that guy on the couch with the cheetah.
Lex Fridman (2:28:27.640)
That's your motivation.
Lex Fridman (2:28:29.840)
But just own it.
Lex Fridman (2:28:30.680)
Don't be like back on the ground, back on the couch.
John Clarke (2:28:33.960)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (2:28:34.800)
Well, you're like David Goggins,
John Clarke (2:28:36.720)
who was like talking shit to the one guy
Lex Fridman (2:28:38.200)
with the eating Cheetos.
Lex Fridman (2:28:39.160)
And so doing inspires millions
Lex Fridman (2:28:42.260)
to actually pursue their success.
John Clarke (2:28:44.660)
I get it.
Lex Fridman (2:28:45.500)
But I just think that most people
John Clarke (2:28:46.560)
really do want to be successful
Lex Fridman (2:28:48.880)
and are trying to work hard and they keep failing.
John Clarke (2:28:53.000)
So, I mean.
Lex Fridman (2:28:54.120)
But why is it continue?
John Clarke (2:28:55.920)
I'm sorry to interrupt you.
Lex Fridman (2:28:57.040)
But like, let's take a person who's overweight.
Lex Fridman (2:28:59.320)
Do you not think that person wants to be skinny?
Lex Fridman (2:29:01.440)
Of course they want to be skinny.
John Clarke (2:29:02.960)
They just don't want it enough
Lex Fridman (2:29:04.800)
to put the pizza or the pie down and go to the gym.
John Clarke (2:29:07.680)
They want it, but they want it to be easy.
Lex Fridman (2:29:10.180)
Of course they want to be skinny.
John Clarke (2:29:11.720)
Well, everyone wants it to be easy.
Lex Fridman (2:29:13.120)
Right.
Lex Fridman (2:29:13.960)
And of course people want to be successful,
Lex Fridman (2:29:16.120)
but do they want it enough to do the work?
John Clarke (2:29:18.640)
I don't think they do.
Lex Fridman (2:29:19.960)
I think the easy thing to do is to create
John Clarke (2:29:24.320)
an outward facing persona of the person who really wants it.
Lex Fridman (2:29:28.800)
And you get the same reward from a lot of people
John Clarke (2:29:32.840)
as the person who actually is successful.
Lex Fridman (2:29:35.200)
Very few people differentiate
John Clarke (2:29:36.720)
from the person who's found success
Lex Fridman (2:29:38.480)
and the person who's showing you
Lex Fridman (2:29:40.480)
how they're trying to get success on social media.
Lex Fridman (2:29:43.120)
People see that as the same.
John Clarke (2:29:44.960)
I see you're going after the marketing dollar
Lex Fridman (2:29:47.800)
that represents the people that want to work hard.
John Clarke (2:29:50.480)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (2:29:51.800)
I like it.
John Clarke (2:29:54.160)
You started a podcast recently.
Lex Fridman (2:29:57.680)
Hell yeah.
John Clarke (2:29:58.520)
It's called, which people probably from this conversation
Lex Fridman (2:30:02.480)
can, I guess we didn't really talk about politics much
John Clarke (2:30:05.120)
or the fact that you're a business owner
Lex Fridman (2:30:06.480)
or the fact that you're a red blooded American
Lex Fridman (2:30:08.960)
and love this country, America.
Lex Fridman (2:30:12.680)
We didn't really talk about that,
Lex Fridman (2:30:14.060)
but from the name of the podcast,
Lex Fridman (2:30:15.640)
they can probably infer it.
Lex Fridman (2:30:16.760)
And the name is Please Allow Me.
Lex Fridman (2:30:20.580)
Good name.
Lex Fridman (2:30:24.220)
What have you learned from doing this podcast?
Lex Fridman (2:30:27.660)
What's your hope of doing this podcast?
John Clarke (2:30:30.440)
People should definitely listen to it.
Lex Fridman (2:30:31.680)
You have a few episodes out.
John Clarke (2:30:32.920)
You're damn good at it, which is very interesting.
Lex Fridman (2:30:36.360)
I'm sure you'll evolve and change.
Lex Fridman (2:30:38.840)
So this is like the early days.
Lex Fridman (2:30:40.160)
I'm curious to see where it goes,
Lex Fridman (2:30:41.920)
but what's your thinking around it
Lex Fridman (2:30:44.760)
as an intellectual putting your thoughts out into the world?
John Clarke (2:30:48.880)
I think that one of the things that COVID did
Lex Fridman (2:30:52.360)
when we're all kind of in lockdown was as a business owner,
John Clarke (2:30:56.120)
made me take stock of what's the future
Lex Fridman (2:30:57.880)
of brick and mortar businesses.
Lex Fridman (2:30:59.200)
And I've always been reluctant
Lex Fridman (2:31:01.920)
to be an online presence in any way,
John Clarke (2:31:04.500)
just because it's not my thing,
Lex Fridman (2:31:05.640)
because I believe that I'm a force of nature
Lex Fridman (2:31:07.240)
and people need to experience me, right?
Lex Fridman (2:31:10.360)
And the few characters that Twitter has are phasing.
John Clarke (2:31:13.600)
It's not enough to experience.
Lex Fridman (2:31:14.440)
It's not enough.
John Clarke (2:31:15.280)
The force of nature, there's John Clark.
Lex Fridman (2:31:17.080)
I want you to feel physically uncomfortable around me.
John Clarke (2:31:19.880)
This has been three hours
Lex Fridman (2:31:21.220)
of me being physically uncomfortable.
John Clarke (2:31:23.440)
I'm scared for my life.
Lex Fridman (2:31:25.160)
And so I thought that that would be one of the ways
John Clarke (2:31:27.560)
in which I could increase.
Lex Fridman (2:31:29.200)
I came to the conclusion that with the lockdown
Lex Fridman (2:31:33.240)
and potential future lockdowns,
Lex Fridman (2:31:36.200)
in order to pay my mortgage and my bar tab
Lex Fridman (2:31:39.960)
and my Grubhub's out of control,
Lex Fridman (2:31:42.240)
that I would need to find ancillary ways to...
John Clarke (2:31:45.480)
Door dash slash Lex.
Lex Fridman (2:31:47.520)
You don't want to use Grubhub, Grubhub sucks.
John Clarke (2:31:49.820)
Door dash.
Lex Fridman (2:31:50.660)
They actually do.
John Clarke (2:31:51.480)
Door dash.
Lex Fridman (2:31:52.320)
No, I'm just kidding.
John Clarke (2:31:53.140)
You can go back to your local fooder.
Lex Fridman (2:31:55.320)
711.
John Clarke (2:31:56.160)
Yeah, and get the food.
Lex Fridman (2:31:57.560)
You can order 711 from Door Dash.
John Clarke (2:31:59.600)
Or from Postmates.
Lex Fridman (2:32:00.600)
Code Lex.
John Clarke (2:32:02.680)
Okay, I'm sorry, go.
Lex Fridman (2:32:04.520)
But anyway, I thought it was like,
John Clarke (2:32:05.560)
oh, I should probably increase a little bit
Lex Fridman (2:32:07.440)
my online presence and what would be a way to do that
John Clarke (2:32:12.160)
that would be fun for me and entertaining.
Lex Fridman (2:32:14.960)
And I thought, well, a lot of people, yourself included,
John Clarke (2:32:18.720)
that I know have done some podcasts
Lex Fridman (2:32:20.520)
and I find that inspiring and I'm fortunate enough
John Clarke (2:32:24.440)
to know a bunch of cool motherfuckers
Lex Fridman (2:32:25.920)
that I can talk to about a wide range of topics.
John Clarke (2:32:31.160)
Then they're starting to drop in.
Lex Fridman (2:32:32.440)
There's an aspect to which podcasting
John Clarke (2:32:34.000)
does capture the force of nature better.
Lex Fridman (2:32:36.600)
In the digital form, podcasting captures
John Clarke (2:32:39.280)
the force of nature of a human being
Lex Fridman (2:32:40.860)
better than other mediums, perhaps.
John Clarke (2:32:42.440)
Yeah, definitely, there's that.
Lex Fridman (2:32:43.800)
I just felt like, you know when it's midnight
Lex Fridman (2:32:48.560)
and you're in the bar and you get the sense
Lex Fridman (2:32:51.720)
that the bar's gonna close in 90 minutes
Lex Fridman (2:32:53.760)
and you think, you know, not enough people have seen me yet
Lex Fridman (2:32:57.000)
and maybe we should go to another bar
Lex Fridman (2:32:58.220)
so more people can see me.
Lex Fridman (2:33:00.040)
I feel like podcasting is like that for me.
John Clarke (2:33:03.720)
Not enough people have heard my thoughts
Lex Fridman (2:33:05.680)
and I feel like, my mom raised me to be a giver.
John Clarke (2:33:08.800)
She didn't want me to be selfish.
Lex Fridman (2:33:10.800)
And I have these thoughts that I think.
John Clarke (2:33:15.120)
It'd be a waste if you didn't give it to the world.
Lex Fridman (2:33:17.000)
People seem to really enjoy them.
John Clarke (2:33:18.600)
Yeah, no, I enjoy them.
Lex Fridman (2:33:20.760)
While I've probably been on my best behavior today
John Clarke (2:33:23.360)
on this episode of the podcast.
Lex Fridman (2:33:25.720)
So if you want the uncensored, unfiltered,
John Clarke (2:33:29.840)
the full spectrum of the force of nature,
Lex Fridman (2:33:31.920)
there's John Clark, you go to the podcast.
John Clarke (2:33:35.680)
Funny enough, I think you're drinking
Lex Fridman (2:33:37.960)
throughout most of the podcast.
John Clarke (2:33:39.440)
Yeah, yeah.
Lex Fridman (2:33:40.440)
Tequila, so they only last like an hour
John Clarke (2:33:42.960)
because you seem to like, I'm guessing
Lex Fridman (2:33:45.040)
that you just lose it one hour.
John Clarke (2:33:47.160)
Like it's like Cinderella turns into a frog or whatever.
Lex Fridman (2:33:50.360)
One of the things I'm learning is
John Clarke (2:33:54.880)
sometimes you have great conversations when you're drunk
Lex Fridman (2:33:57.680)
and sometimes you don't.
John Clarke (2:33:58.600)
Like I went into it with the write drunk,
Lex Fridman (2:34:01.240)
edit sober mentality.
John Clarke (2:34:03.760)
Yes, Hemingway.
Lex Fridman (2:34:05.120)
Hemingway, yes.
Lex Fridman (2:34:06.360)
But turns out that sometimes you don't have that much
Lex Fridman (2:34:10.800)
to edit when you're super shit faced.
Lex Fridman (2:34:13.120)
And so I've been scaling that back a little bit.
Lex Fridman (2:34:17.120)
What do you mean exactly by that?
Lex Fridman (2:34:18.440)
Like, where does it go wrong when you're drunk?
Lex Fridman (2:34:20.440)
I'm curious about that, because.
John Clarke (2:34:22.840)
It gets, especially when you have a personal relationship
Lex Fridman (2:34:26.180)
with the person that you're talking to,
John Clarke (2:34:27.780)
rather than trying to put some ideas on display
Lex Fridman (2:34:29.860)
for other people to hear and maybe talk about,
John Clarke (2:34:32.000)
you wind up just having like a conversation
Lex Fridman (2:34:33.760)
with your bro about inside jokes and things like that.
Lex Fridman (2:34:36.040)
And it's like, it's not that interesting.
Lex Fridman (2:34:37.760)
No one wants to like watch, you know,
John Clarke (2:34:40.240)
go to a bar and watch two people at the,
Lex Fridman (2:34:42.360)
sitting there getting drunk and talking to each other
John Clarke (2:34:44.360)
is different than listening to like strong discourse.
Lex Fridman (2:34:48.480)
Yes.
John Clarke (2:34:49.320)
One interesting thing as a fan of Joe Rogan,
Lex Fridman (2:34:51.440)
I'm a fan, I've been a fan of Joe Rogan for a long time
Lex Fridman (2:34:53.520)
and he has his friends over a lot, right?
Lex Fridman (2:34:56.200)
And there's a aspect to those three, four,
John Clarke (2:34:59.000)
five hour conversations that I really enjoy.
Lex Fridman (2:35:00.760)
There's a magic to those.
John Clarke (2:35:02.360)
I think he taught the world that those kinds
Lex Fridman (2:35:03.880)
of long form conversations can work.
John Clarke (2:35:06.240)
The, what you forget is Joe Rogan is a comedian.
Lex Fridman (2:35:10.640)
His friends are also celebrities.
John Clarke (2:35:12.400)
Like they know what it's like to be on the mic.
Lex Fridman (2:35:14.800)
They know there is a challenge
John Clarke (2:35:17.280)
to actually having your friends on a microphone.
Lex Fridman (2:35:20.240)
Totally.
John Clarke (2:35:21.080)
Like they've never,
Lex Fridman (2:35:22.040)
this is the first time they've been on a microphone.
Lex Fridman (2:35:24.040)
And that's actually what you've been doing,
Lex Fridman (2:35:25.520)
which is a very interesting experiment.
Lex Fridman (2:35:28.000)
And you find that some are more awkward than others.
Lex Fridman (2:35:31.880)
Like they're trying to find like,
Lex Fridman (2:35:33.520)
what do I do with this kind of thing?
Lex Fridman (2:35:35.180)
Why do you not talk to strangers?
Lex Fridman (2:35:37.720)
Why did you go with people that you're actually know?
Lex Fridman (2:35:41.480)
So the simple answer is the people
John Clarke (2:35:43.160)
that I selected are both interesting
Lex Fridman (2:35:44.880)
and I thought would be good at talking.
Lex Fridman (2:35:46.640)
But then I noticed the thing you just mentioned.
Lex Fridman (2:35:48.760)
My buddy Paul did the first one and Paul's a wild man.
Lex Fridman (2:35:51.560)
And if you went out with Paul,
Lex Fridman (2:35:52.880)
he can talk about a bazillion topics
Lex Fridman (2:35:56.040)
to a certain, to a significant level of depth, right?
Lex Fridman (2:36:00.200)
And he's got a good understanding
Lex Fridman (2:36:01.200)
and he's got a unique perspective on a lot of things.
Lex Fridman (2:36:03.800)
And I think he was the first guy invited on my podcast
Lex Fridman (2:36:10.920)
and it was almost like he was on a little bit
Lex Fridman (2:36:15.200)
less than natural about it.
Lex Fridman (2:36:16.880)
And then by the time he loosened up with some drinks,
Lex Fridman (2:36:19.120)
he was, it just, we were all shitfaced.
John Clarke (2:36:22.520)
There's a face shift though.
Lex Fridman (2:36:24.080)
Totally, totally.
Lex Fridman (2:36:25.440)
And so he's gonna come back on
Lex Fridman (2:36:27.760)
and he'll be more comfortable with it.
Lex Fridman (2:36:29.240)
And it'll probably be awesome
Lex Fridman (2:36:31.000)
because he's a great person to talk to.
John Clarke (2:36:33.480)
I had my friend Dave on who's a restaurateur
Lex Fridman (2:36:35.400)
and a musician, that one will be released pretty soon.
Lex Fridman (2:36:39.280)
But yesterday I had a guy on
Lex Fridman (2:36:40.760)
who you might really enjoy listening to
John Clarke (2:36:42.440)
who's a friend of mine, his name's Mark Clem.
Lex Fridman (2:36:44.640)
He's an endurance athlete and he's been compared,
John Clarke (2:36:48.480)
he's been called the white Dave Goggins.
Lex Fridman (2:36:51.080)
And he talks about like those comparisons
Lex Fridman (2:36:53.880)
and what he hates about it and the various events and stuff.
Lex Fridman (2:36:56.960)
And he's just a guy who's just always kind of like natural
Lex Fridman (2:36:59.520)
and like, I knew he'd be great to get on the podcast.
Lex Fridman (2:37:01.880)
And so I started with friends who I thought could handle it
Lex Fridman (2:37:07.480)
and who also are just really interesting people.
Lex Fridman (2:37:10.480)
And I did it so that I could also establish
John Clarke (2:37:13.960)
a level of comfort because it was a new thing for me.
Lex Fridman (2:37:16.520)
And I knew that they wouldn't really give a shit
Lex Fridman (2:37:18.240)
what I was doing and be like, hey, this is cool.
Lex Fridman (2:37:20.080)
I'm going over to JC's house.
John Clarke (2:37:21.120)
We're gonna drink some tequila and talk shit.
Lex Fridman (2:37:22.680)
There's just gonna be a microphone there this time.
John Clarke (2:37:24.640)
I mean, it's amazing what you're doing, the freedom of it.
Lex Fridman (2:37:26.480)
I mean, you're not currently doing any advertisements
John Clarke (2:37:28.560)
or any of that kind of stuff.
Lex Fridman (2:37:29.440)
You're just exploring your voice.
John Clarke (2:37:30.480)
This is one of the mediums that you're just trying it out.
Lex Fridman (2:37:32.920)
My 11 subscribers know what I'm about.
John Clarke (2:37:34.800)
Your 11 subscribers, it's in the double digits.
Lex Fridman (2:37:40.320)
For both you and I, do you have advice for me
Lex Fridman (2:37:43.520)
as a podcaster and for yourself as a podcast?
Lex Fridman (2:37:46.600)
Like if you were to think like you're gonna do say,
John Clarke (2:37:49.480)
I mean, who knows, but say you do a thousand more episodes.
Lex Fridman (2:37:53.560)
Like imagine a world where your life continues
John Clarke (2:37:58.180)
in that direction, that this is like a little parallel.
Lex Fridman (2:38:01.160)
Like for me, this thing is like a little side hobby,
Lex Fridman (2:38:03.440)
but it's also one that's deeply fulfilling.
Lex Fridman (2:38:07.100)
So not just from a business perspective,
John Clarke (2:38:09.080)
which is not the way I think about it.
Lex Fridman (2:38:10.480)
I just think from a life human perspective,
John Clarke (2:38:13.000)
it's I probably wouldn't have this kind of conversation
Lex Fridman (2:38:16.200)
with you off mic, like this long, this deep, this attentive.
John Clarke (2:38:20.900)
There's something really fulfilling
Lex Fridman (2:38:22.300)
about these conversations.
Lex Fridman (2:38:23.640)
So what advice would you have for me?
Lex Fridman (2:38:26.380)
What advice do you have for yourself?
Lex Fridman (2:38:28.040)
Oh, have you not introspected this that deeply?
Lex Fridman (2:38:31.000)
Oh, I have advice.
John Clarke (2:38:32.480)
I think the first advice I would give to you
Lex Fridman (2:38:34.320)
is I think you should have me on more often.
John Clarke (2:38:37.160)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (2:38:38.000)
Yeah.
John Clarke (2:38:39.760)
That's first and foremost.
Lex Fridman (2:38:41.120)
And second is go on your podcast and have a conversation.
John Clarke (2:38:43.920)
Well, I would say you come on my podcast when you're ready.
Lex Fridman (2:38:49.000)
Yeah.
John Clarke (2:38:49.840)
When you feel like the product that I'm putting out
Lex Fridman (2:38:54.040)
would benefit from your presence and vice versa,
John Clarke (2:38:57.000)
not as a favor to a bro, but at the right time.
Lex Fridman (2:39:01.680)
I do sense, actually, it's an interesting,
John Clarke (2:39:04.160)
there's a dance to it, which is like Joe Rogan,
Lex Fridman (2:39:07.800)
I recently did, like Joe Rogan had a conversation with me
John Clarke (2:39:12.120)
on this podcast.
Lex Fridman (2:39:13.740)
There's a very specific kind of thing
John Clarke (2:39:16.080)
where you're helping each other out.
Lex Fridman (2:39:19.560)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (2:39:20.400)
But the timing on that has to be right.
Lex Fridman (2:39:22.300)
Right.
John Clarke (2:39:23.140)
You know, like if that makes any sense,
Lex Fridman (2:39:24.880)
you're like supporting each other.
John Clarke (2:39:26.480)
It doesn't make sense.
Lex Fridman (2:39:27.640)
It doesn't make a difference, you would think.
John Clarke (2:39:30.680)
Right.
Lex Fridman (2:39:31.520)
Because it's just people talking,
John Clarke (2:39:32.760)
it doesn't matter what microphones,
Lex Fridman (2:39:34.160)
but it changes things.
John Clarke (2:39:35.300)
It does, and there's an order to the guests
Lex Fridman (2:39:36.900)
that I've had on.
Lex Fridman (2:39:38.120)
And the next guest that I'll have on
Lex Fridman (2:39:39.700)
will be a friend we have in common,
Lex Fridman (2:39:42.640)
and we'll be talking about teaching
Lex Fridman (2:39:44.200)
and how to teach different styles of teaching
Lex Fridman (2:39:45.960)
and what you're teaching and all these other things.
Lex Fridman (2:39:47.520)
Your mind's saying who?
John Clarke (2:39:48.640)
Oh, Sean Fisher.
Lex Fridman (2:39:49.840)
And I think there's an order to,
John Clarke (2:39:53.120)
it's not scientific, but it's based on my gut.
Lex Fridman (2:39:56.760)
Is it astrologically based?
Lex Fridman (2:40:00.720)
What do you mean it's not scientific?
Lex Fridman (2:40:02.520)
Your gut, so you have a sense,
John Clarke (2:40:05.440)
like Joe Rogan, for example, tries to do left, right.
Lex Fridman (2:40:09.560)
He tries to alternate like this gut feeling
John Clarke (2:40:12.440)
of like these bins of people,
Lex Fridman (2:40:14.480)
and he tries to alternate worldviews.
John Clarke (2:40:17.440)
That's interesting.
Lex Fridman (2:40:18.280)
Like he kind of, so that he doesn't feel like it,
John Clarke (2:40:21.120)
like it constantly shakes him.
Lex Fridman (2:40:25.040)
It's more about him,
John Clarke (2:40:26.400)
like constantly pulls him in multiple directions
Lex Fridman (2:40:28.800)
about like how he sees the world,
Lex Fridman (2:40:31.240)
and that keeps him balanced.
Lex Fridman (2:40:32.760)
That keeps the conversation kind of exciting.
John Clarke (2:40:34.600)
That's interesting.
Lex Fridman (2:40:35.440)
I did it in a way where I knew Paul was gonna be wild
Lex Fridman (2:40:39.240)
and we might get a little out of control
Lex Fridman (2:40:40.640)
and like have some technical hiccups along the way.
Lex Fridman (2:40:43.640)
And then my friend Jake,
Lex Fridman (2:40:44.600)
who's a CEO of a pharmaceutical company,
John Clarke (2:40:47.020)
that was very timely because he was able
Lex Fridman (2:40:49.360)
to speak to vaccines.
Lex Fridman (2:40:50.720)
And that was kind of scientific flavored.
Lex Fridman (2:40:52.600)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (2:40:53.440)
And what I learned listening back on that
Lex Fridman (2:40:55.600)
is like I learned for myself about,
John Clarke (2:40:58.920)
I wasn't asking the next level questions
Lex Fridman (2:41:02.120)
to really draw out great answers.
Lex Fridman (2:41:04.320)
And part of it is you're simultaneously hanging out
Lex Fridman (2:41:09.360)
with a bro, but also I was trying to learn something
Lex Fridman (2:41:11.240)
and I didn't learn what I wanted to learn.
Lex Fridman (2:41:12.920)
And that's my fault because I didn't ask the questions.
John Clarke (2:41:15.600)
He's an expert in that field.
Lex Fridman (2:41:17.280)
He doesn't know that I'm an absolute dipshit
John Clarke (2:41:19.680)
when it comes to that stuff.
Lex Fridman (2:41:20.920)
And so I didn't do a good job.
Lex Fridman (2:41:22.040)
And if I don't know it,
Lex Fridman (2:41:22.880)
that means the thing I was trying to tease out of him,
John Clarke (2:41:25.040)
no one who was gonna listen is gonna learn that either.
Lex Fridman (2:41:27.960)
So I learned that.
John Clarke (2:41:30.400)
Then I had the one with soap on,
Lex Fridman (2:41:31.800)
which I thought was pretty good.
John Clarke (2:41:34.800)
He's a wrestler, he's also a farmer.
Lex Fridman (2:41:36.880)
Right, and a social worker.
Lex Fridman (2:41:38.600)
And kind of humble and thoughtful.
Lex Fridman (2:41:40.720)
Yeah, thoughtful.
John Clarke (2:41:41.560)
Thoughtful guy.
Lex Fridman (2:41:42.480)
Like slower, he's not a wild man, that kind of thing.
John Clarke (2:41:45.160)
Not a wild man in the sense that I'm wild,
Lex Fridman (2:41:46.960)
but he does preach this philosophy of being more wild.
John Clarke (2:41:51.080)
Like being in touch with nature.
Lex Fridman (2:41:52.960)
Nature, that kind of wild.
John Clarke (2:41:54.800)
Right, right, right.
Lex Fridman (2:41:55.640)
And then my buddy Dave, he came on because I love music.
Lex Fridman (2:42:01.640)
And I wanted to talk a lot about music.
Lex Fridman (2:42:03.240)
And he's one of the most knowledgeable people
John Clarke (2:42:05.200)
about music that I know.
Lex Fridman (2:42:06.400)
And he's got a restaurant coming up.
Lex Fridman (2:42:07.600)
And I thought my buddy Mark Clem,
Lex Fridman (2:42:11.160)
being an endurance athlete,
John Clarke (2:42:12.360)
like when you hear some of the things,
Lex Fridman (2:42:13.480)
I didn't even know these things existed
John Clarke (2:42:14.920)
that this fucking kid did.
Lex Fridman (2:42:16.240)
He's out of his mind.
Lex Fridman (2:42:17.760)
And I think Sean and I will have
Lex Fridman (2:42:19.760)
probably the most intellectual conversation
John Clarke (2:42:21.760)
that I'll have had on my podcast to date.
Lex Fridman (2:42:24.200)
And so there's a little bit of alternating there,
Lex Fridman (2:42:26.560)
but I did it that way so that.
Lex Fridman (2:42:32.200)
There's a gut feeling behind, oh, so that what?
Lex Fridman (2:42:34.760)
Is there, where are you going?
Lex Fridman (2:42:36.600)
Do you know where you're going?
John Clarke (2:42:39.360)
I don't have a destination, but I want to,
Lex Fridman (2:42:42.160)
I want to see it to its end, whether that's,
John Clarke (2:42:48.680)
it gets somewhere of its own volition
Lex Fridman (2:42:51.600)
or it takes on a new life at some point.
Lex Fridman (2:42:53.760)
And then I know how to drive it where it needs to go.
Lex Fridman (2:42:57.760)
I think the advice I have for both of us is,
John Clarke (2:43:04.920)
I think I need to, no, I don't think so.
Lex Fridman (2:43:09.920)
I think for you, I see an inner turmoil.
John Clarke (2:43:12.960)
I see a storm that bruising you
Lex Fridman (2:43:14.880)
because I feel like there's a concern
John Clarke (2:43:17.720)
for what you're saying.
Lex Fridman (2:43:18.880)
And is it gonna lead to negative feelings towards you
Lex Fridman (2:43:27.360)
or the thing that you're doing?
Lex Fridman (2:43:29.400)
And I feel like we're different people
Lex Fridman (2:43:33.760)
and I have such an easier time saying fuck off to everybody.
Lex Fridman (2:43:37.320)
And that's a liberating thing,
Lex Fridman (2:43:40.000)
but it also can keep me from achieving the thing
Lex Fridman (2:43:43.440)
that I want to achieve,
John Clarke (2:43:44.960)
because I'm so flippant with opinions
Lex Fridman (2:43:48.280)
that I don't listen to them
Lex Fridman (2:43:49.480)
and let them direct me when they should.
Lex Fridman (2:43:51.120)
There's a balance.
John Clarke (2:43:53.400)
Let me push back on that.
Lex Fridman (2:43:54.560)
Please do.
John Clarke (2:43:55.400)
I think you believe that about yourself
Lex Fridman (2:43:57.600)
and nevertheless, your social media presence
John Clarke (2:43:59.800)
indicates otherwise.
Lex Fridman (2:44:01.000)
If I were to be very harsh,
John Clarke (2:44:02.640)
you're like one of the mentally strongest
Lex Fridman (2:44:05.600)
character wise people I know.
Lex Fridman (2:44:07.280)
And yet on social media,
Lex Fridman (2:44:09.000)
you don't put your face to the world.
Lex Fridman (2:44:11.640)
So one of the reasons you sense the fear in me,
Lex Fridman (2:44:15.480)
which exists, I of course want to let go of it,
John Clarke (2:44:18.800)
is because I put my face and my name on things.
Lex Fridman (2:44:23.200)
And so when I say something stupid,
John Clarke (2:44:26.160)
it hurts when people say like,
Lex Fridman (2:44:29.760)
look, that guy said something stupid.
Lex Fridman (2:44:32.040)
And so there's a fear of saying something stupid
Lex Fridman (2:44:34.120)
in all of his different forms,
John Clarke (2:44:36.520)
like of being my lesser self.
Lex Fridman (2:44:38.280)
It's the same feeling I have in competition
John Clarke (2:44:40.040)
of losing, not just losing.
Lex Fridman (2:44:42.520)
Losing doesn't matter.
John Clarke (2:44:43.480)
It's embarrassing myself.
Lex Fridman (2:44:45.920)
I like losing, being the lesser version of myself.
Lex Fridman (2:44:48.960)
And when you put yourself out there in a full way,
Lex Fridman (2:44:50.760)
I think you,
John Clarke (2:44:52.560)
I would venture to say you're also,
Lex Fridman (2:44:54.800)
because you said you wouldn't give yourself that advice.
John Clarke (2:44:58.240)
I feel like you're also afraid
Lex Fridman (2:44:59.720)
of standing behind some of the ideas,
John Clarke (2:45:01.520)
because right now you're doing guerrilla warfare.
Lex Fridman (2:45:03.320)
You're free to be,
John Clarke (2:45:07.080)
to say things, to speak your mind from the sidelines.
Lex Fridman (2:45:11.600)
But the moment you're standing,
Lex Fridman (2:45:13.360)
and when people can throw shit at you,
Lex Fridman (2:45:16.120)
I feel like you haven't faced that fire yet.
John Clarke (2:45:19.520)
You've been avoiding that fire.
Lex Fridman (2:45:20.840)
I'm not sure, maybe I'm projecting.
John Clarke (2:45:22.840)
No, to a degree you're right.
Lex Fridman (2:45:24.320)
I think a big thing for me was putting ads on
John Clarke (2:45:27.960)
for our Jiu Jitsu online curriculum.
Lex Fridman (2:45:32.920)
That was a big thing for me,
John Clarke (2:45:34.840)
because for several reasons,
Lex Fridman (2:45:36.960)
like in the climate of everyone under the sun
John Clarke (2:45:39.480)
having a Jiu Jitsu tutorial online and social media,
Lex Fridman (2:45:44.120)
not social media necessarily,
Lex Fridman (2:45:45.280)
but forums specifically that critique and shit the bed.
Lex Fridman (2:45:49.520)
One thing I have not done that I've thought about doing,
Lex Fridman (2:45:51.760)
and probably you're right in your analysis of it,
Lex Fridman (2:45:54.440)
is I've not gone the way that I do see you
John Clarke (2:45:56.920)
on things like Reddit and say,
Lex Fridman (2:45:58.560)
hey, Reddit, I'm doing this.
John Clarke (2:46:00.200)
Like I could easily go to Reddit and say,
Lex Fridman (2:46:01.720)
hey, Reddit, I got this website up.
John Clarke (2:46:04.440)
Here's a sample video,
Lex Fridman (2:46:05.640)
whatever the fuck people do on there.
Lex Fridman (2:46:07.000)
But yeah, you're right, I haven't done that.
Lex Fridman (2:46:08.520)
And part of it might be because I know also,
John Clarke (2:46:15.680)
if I get suckered in for one second into the negativity,
Lex Fridman (2:46:18.760)
I'm gonna become an online warrior,
Lex Fridman (2:46:20.560)
and I don't wanna be that person.
Lex Fridman (2:46:22.400)
So yeah, you're probably right.
Lex Fridman (2:46:23.240)
So you're self aware about that.
Lex Fridman (2:46:25.120)
I mean, one of the things I've early on decided
John Clarke (2:46:27.720)
is like, I'm just gonna be,
Lex Fridman (2:46:30.920)
I've always really enjoyed being positive.
Lex Fridman (2:46:32.920)
So I'm going to make sure I stay that way.
Lex Fridman (2:46:35.760)
And when there's negativity, it's like,
John Clarke (2:46:38.680)
I'm not just ignoring it.
Lex Fridman (2:46:40.320)
I'm literally just returning it with positivity.
John Clarke (2:46:43.960)
I probably am the same way as you,
Lex Fridman (2:46:45.800)
most people are with egos.
John Clarke (2:46:49.040)
You wanna become the warrior against the negativity.
Lex Fridman (2:46:51.200)
And like many wars, there's no winning.
John Clarke (2:46:56.040)
There's no winning that war.
Lex Fridman (2:46:57.360)
Especially online.
John Clarke (2:46:58.200)
Especially on the internet.
Lex Fridman (2:46:59.120)
And so in that sense, that's been a journey
John Clarke (2:47:02.520)
to try to face the fire of the negativity.
Lex Fridman (2:47:07.520)
And it's not actually that bad.
John Clarke (2:47:08.760)
It sounds like very dramatic.
Lex Fridman (2:47:09.960)
There's not many people that are negative,
Lex Fridman (2:47:11.600)
but it's like when you put advertisements,
Lex Fridman (2:47:14.000)
so you put your face on an instructional
John Clarke (2:47:15.920)
or something like that.
Lex Fridman (2:47:17.440)
It just, there's an aspect to it
John Clarke (2:47:19.360)
which you're being a salesman,
Lex Fridman (2:47:20.720)
you're being a gimmicky thing.
John Clarke (2:47:23.400)
It just feels wrong.
Lex Fridman (2:47:24.960)
And people will point out, look,
John Clarke (2:47:26.440)
that guy is a fraud, like it's fake.
Lex Fridman (2:47:28.000)
Look, he's trying,
Lex Fridman (2:47:29.320)
but those people are going to be out there.
Lex Fridman (2:47:31.200)
And if you're like trying to do your best,
John Clarke (2:47:33.520)
trying to be authentic and not trying to like
Lex Fridman (2:47:36.480)
be a snake oil salesman
Lex Fridman (2:47:40.680)
and being like the shady kind of salesman,
Lex Fridman (2:47:44.720)
I think they keep you honest.
John Clarke (2:47:46.320)
They keep you honestly being the most authentic self.
Lex Fridman (2:47:49.160)
And podcasting is like the best medium
John Clarke (2:47:52.360)
because you're being real.
Lex Fridman (2:47:53.360)
Those one hour plus that you put out there,
John Clarke (2:47:56.760)
that's like real John.
Lex Fridman (2:47:58.680)
That's not a,
John Clarke (2:48:01.520)
like people fall in love with that.
Lex Fridman (2:48:04.040)
And that's the beautiful aspect of podcasting
John Clarke (2:48:06.480)
is there's no,
Lex Fridman (2:48:09.040)
long form doesn't give any possibility
John Clarke (2:48:12.320)
for you not to be authentic.
Lex Fridman (2:48:14.920)
And that's why it's a magical medium.
John Clarke (2:48:17.080)
The tough thing is you're not,
Lex Fridman (2:48:21.120)
popularity takes time, not popularity.
Lex Fridman (2:48:25.000)
And so like you shouldn't be doing it for that reason.
Lex Fridman (2:48:27.840)
And I don't,
John Clarke (2:48:29.480)
it's not the thing that really drives me.
Lex Fridman (2:48:33.640)
Yeah.
John Clarke (2:48:34.600)
Is there three books,
Lex Fridman (2:48:35.880)
technical fiction philosophical that had an impact on you?
John Clarke (2:48:38.440)
Like, is there books that you kind of return to
Lex Fridman (2:48:40.240)
that you enjoy and that you find profound in some way?
John Clarke (2:48:44.840)
I would say like probably the thing I read
Lex Fridman (2:48:46.920)
is in one of Emerson's essays that I read
John Clarke (2:48:49.160)
at a point in my life where I needed that type of thing.
Lex Fridman (2:48:52.880)
And I read self reliance and,
John Clarke (2:48:55.320)
he's got a ton of good essays,
Lex Fridman (2:48:56.440)
but I thought self reliance was probably
John Clarke (2:48:58.120)
the most impactful to me.
Lex Fridman (2:49:01.800)
I've read later in life,
John Clarke (2:49:03.120)
like a handful of existential authors
Lex Fridman (2:49:07.400)
and they're all great,
Lex Fridman (2:49:09.000)
but at the time a lot of it has to do with timing.
Lex Fridman (2:49:12.120)
And when I read self reliance
Lex Fridman (2:49:14.000)
and it was about the individual that was really good
Lex Fridman (2:49:17.360)
and made it was impactful.
John Clarke (2:49:19.800)
There's also a book called Jonathan Livingston Seagull
Lex Fridman (2:49:22.680)
by Richard Bach, I think.
Lex Fridman (2:49:25.240)
And it's kind of along the same lines.
Lex Fridman (2:49:27.840)
It's about this seagull who wants to break conformity
Lex Fridman (2:49:30.960)
and learn to fly and do all these other great things.
Lex Fridman (2:49:33.520)
And so it's a very short read.
Lex Fridman (2:49:35.360)
So if people are interested in that, that's good.
Lex Fridman (2:49:39.200)
The book, which I was lucky enough to read
John Clarke (2:49:42.240)
before the movie ever even came out,
Lex Fridman (2:49:44.160)
which is just a pleasure of mine was American Psycho.
John Clarke (2:49:47.920)
Just from a writing standpoint,
Lex Fridman (2:49:49.600)
I found that the writing was awesome.
John Clarke (2:49:52.760)
Brett Easton Ellis is the author of that
Lex Fridman (2:49:54.360)
and several other books
John Clarke (2:49:55.280)
who have like intertwining characters.
Lex Fridman (2:49:57.520)
He's a New England prep school guy.
Lex Fridman (2:49:59.000)
And so a lot of like the stories
Lex Fridman (2:50:00.680)
and a lot of the visuals rang true for me
Lex Fridman (2:50:05.400)
and anyone who can write four pages of prose
Lex Fridman (2:50:07.760)
on like a Huey Lewis album, I mean, kudos to you.
Lex Fridman (2:50:11.640)
And I also would say no one will do this,
Lex Fridman (2:50:14.720)
but I would at some point read as much
John Clarke (2:50:19.600)
of one of the big three religious texts as possible.
Lex Fridman (2:50:24.080)
It really gives you perspective.
John Clarke (2:50:25.480)
There are so many overlapping stories of religious texts.
Lex Fridman (2:50:30.280)
And then the way that they're written
John Clarke (2:50:31.760)
gives you a unique perspective
Lex Fridman (2:50:33.680)
on different people throughout the world.
Lex Fridman (2:50:37.520)
And if you're a Roman Catholic,
Lex Fridman (2:50:41.160)
maybe don't read the Bible, read one of the other texts.
Lex Fridman (2:50:43.640)
And that would be an interesting take, but.
Lex Fridman (2:50:45.800)
I'm embarrassed to say that, first of all,
John Clarke (2:50:47.400)
I've never read the Bible, which is embarrassing to say.
Lex Fridman (2:50:50.520)
It's like I read a bunch of stuff about the Bible
Lex Fridman (2:50:52.200)
and not the Bible itself.
Lex Fridman (2:50:53.160)
And the same, not equating them,
Lex Fridman (2:50:55.240)
but I haven't read Marx directly.
Lex Fridman (2:50:58.560)
I haven't read Mein Kampf by Hitler directly.
Lex Fridman (2:51:01.200)
And it feels like sometimes,
Lex Fridman (2:51:02.360)
cause you think like it's better to read stuff
John Clarke (2:51:05.000)
about the books, but ultimately you want,
Lex Fridman (2:51:08.360)
because like the analysis will be better
John Clarke (2:51:10.440)
in texts that followed it,
Lex Fridman (2:51:13.960)
but there's value to actually reading like the actual words.
John Clarke (2:51:20.680)
Yeah, there's this power in the words
Lex Fridman (2:51:22.880)
that there's a reason why like the Bible
John Clarke (2:51:25.920)
is one of the most impactful books ever.
Lex Fridman (2:51:29.040)
You know, it's in those words
Lex Fridman (2:51:32.120)
and it's a value to return to those words.
Lex Fridman (2:51:34.960)
The communist manifesto is truly frightening
John Clarke (2:51:36.920)
if you read it in like modern context.
Lex Fridman (2:51:41.880)
It's worth reading.
John Clarke (2:51:42.760)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (2:51:43.600)
It's worth reading.
Lex Fridman (2:51:44.440)
And so is Mein Kampf, not obviously,
Lex Fridman (2:51:46.240)
well, it's not obvious, but it is not very well written,
Lex Fridman (2:51:50.720)
but all the ideas that led to the evil that is Hitler
Lex Fridman (2:51:53.520)
are all in there, which is fascinating to think about
John Clarke (2:51:57.640)
because probably some of the world leaders at the time
Lex Fridman (2:51:59.920)
should have probably read the books.
John Clarke (2:52:01.040)
He outlined everything he's gonna do.
Lex Fridman (2:52:02.840)
Offline, you mentioned an Emerson quote that I really like.
Lex Fridman (2:52:08.560)
So let's try to end on this powerful quote.
Lex Fridman (2:52:12.440)
It's easy in the world to live after the world's opinion.
John Clarke (2:52:15.000)
It's easy in solitude to live after your own.
Lex Fridman (2:52:17.400)
The great man is who in the midst of the world
John Clarke (2:52:19.640)
keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
Lex Fridman (2:52:24.320)
What does this quote mean to you?
John Clarke (2:52:26.440)
It kind of reinforces the idea
Lex Fridman (2:52:29.920)
that you're here to live your life
Lex Fridman (2:52:33.200)
and that even when people are trying to
Lex Fridman (2:52:39.400)
influence you or comment on the decisions
John Clarke (2:52:43.680)
that you make for your life,
Lex Fridman (2:52:44.800)
you should have the strength to stick by living your life
John Clarke (2:52:48.760)
the way you want to live it,
Lex Fridman (2:52:50.480)
that there's one immutable truth for you
Lex Fridman (2:52:53.480)
and it doesn't apply to everyone.
Lex Fridman (2:52:55.360)
And so people who frown upon
John Clarke (2:53:03.920)
or judge the way that you live
Lex Fridman (2:53:06.440)
because it's not, air quotes, conventional,
John Clarke (2:53:10.160)
their opinion should not be something
Lex Fridman (2:53:13.320)
that impacts the choices that you make.
John Clarke (2:53:17.080)
You're in a relationship now.
Lex Fridman (2:53:18.600)
Yes. Is that deeply meaningful?
Lex Fridman (2:53:20.640)
Or are you ultimately still alone?
Lex Fridman (2:53:23.120)
Are you still just a man in the cold
Lex Fridman (2:53:24.920)
of the life that is suffering?
Lex Fridman (2:53:27.480)
No, I'm a man who's warm, nestled in a bosom.
John Clarke (2:53:31.320)
I don't think there's a better way to end, John.
Lex Fridman (2:53:37.320)
You're a friend, you're my coach.
John Clarke (2:53:39.240)
I'm sure we'll talk many more times in the future.
Lex Fridman (2:53:41.440)
Thanks for wasting all your time with me today.
John Clarke (2:53:44.600)
Thanks brother.
Lex Fridman (2:53:45.440)
Thanks Lex, I had an awesome time.
John Clarke (2:53:46.760)
Hope to be back soon.
Lex Fridman (2:54:16.760)
Thank you for listening and hope to see you next time.
John Clarke (30:00.400)
You're going to think I'm going to try
Lex Fridman (30:02.960)
to be the best possible bass player
John Clarke (30:05.040)
given everything that's going on in my life,
Lex Fridman (30:07.760)
but I'm going to do my, like actually,
Lex Fridman (30:10.280)
and put it all on the line.
Lex Fridman (30:11.920)
And if I fail, that's not because I didn't try,
John Clarke (30:16.640)
it's because I'm a failure.
Lex Fridman (30:18.320)
Exactly.
Lex Fridman (30:19.160)
And then sit in that sick feeling of like, I'm a failure.
Lex Fridman (30:24.880)
But isn't that an important thing to know?
John Clarke (30:26.440)
Absolutely.
Lex Fridman (30:27.520)
But there's a, that's like the best thing it could be,
Lex Fridman (30:34.280)
but sometimes it's fun to lose yourself
Lex Fridman (30:36.560)
in the bragging, in the lesser ways of life.
Lex Fridman (30:42.320)
And I think I'm careful not to,
Lex Fridman (30:46.840)
because too many people in my life,
John Clarke (30:49.720)
when I brought them with like a little candle
Lex Fridman (30:51.880)
of a fire of a dream, they would just go like,
John Clarke (30:56.200)
they would just blow that fire out,
Lex Fridman (30:58.880)
that they would dismiss me.
John Clarke (31:00.640)
Cause they see like, I would say,
Lex Fridman (31:03.960)
I've said a lot of ridiculous stuff,
Lex Fridman (31:05.800)
but I've always dreamed about like putting,
Lex Fridman (31:10.880)
I always dreamed of having this world full of robots.
Lex Fridman (31:15.680)
And every time I would bring these ideas up,
Lex Fridman (31:20.240)
they'll be shut down by the different people,
John Clarke (31:21.960)
by my parents, by, then you need to first get an education.
Lex Fridman (31:28.080)
You need to succeed in these dimensions.
John Clarke (31:30.840)
In order to do all these things,
Lex Fridman (31:32.080)
you have to get good grades.
John Clarke (31:33.200)
You have to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Lex Fridman (31:34.680)
Like there's all this stuff that it's indirect
John Clarke (31:38.240)
or direct ways of blowing out that little ridiculous dream
Lex Fridman (31:41.720)
that you present.
Lex Fridman (31:43.240)
And it's like, I remember sort of bringing up,
Lex Fridman (31:46.960)
I don't know, things like becoming a state champion
Lex Fridman (31:53.000)
in wrestling, right?
Lex Fridman (31:56.320)
It's a weird dance because of course the coaches will tell,
John Clarke (32:00.080)
they'll kind of dismiss that.
Lex Fridman (32:02.200)
It's like, okay, okay.
Lex Fridman (32:04.760)
But at the same time, it feels like in those early days,
Lex Fridman (32:07.640)
you have to preserve that little fire.
John Clarke (32:10.800)
Johnny Ive, I don't know if you know who that is,
Lex Fridman (32:12.480)
is a designer at Apple.
John Clarke (32:13.840)
He was a chief designer.
Lex Fridman (32:14.760)
He's behind most of the iPhone, all that stuff.
Lex Fridman (32:17.560)
And he always talked about that he wouldn't bring his ideas
Lex Fridman (32:21.000)
to Steve Jobs until they were matured
John Clarke (32:23.280)
because he would always shit on them.
Lex Fridman (32:25.440)
He wanted them to as little babies live for a little bit
John Clarke (32:30.040)
before they get completely shut down.
Lex Fridman (32:31.880)
And I always think about that when I see a beginner
John Clarke (32:33.840)
sort of bragging on Instagram, you have to be careful.
Lex Fridman (32:37.200)
Let them play with that little dream.
John Clarke (32:40.960)
Are you playing with a little dream that you're nurturing
Lex Fridman (32:43.400)
and you're trying to take that little flame
Lex Fridman (32:44.960)
and you're trying to create a roaring blaze with it?
Lex Fridman (32:48.240)
Or are you playing with the idea of it
Lex Fridman (32:50.680)
and behind that there's no substance?
Lex Fridman (32:54.120)
It's hard to know the difference.
John Clarke (32:55.160)
That's what I struggle with.
Lex Fridman (32:56.600)
I don't think it necessarily is.
John Clarke (32:58.000)
Certainly you're wrong.
Lex Fridman (32:59.160)
And when I say Instagram,
John Clarke (33:01.440)
I don't wanna impugn a bunch of strangers,
Lex Fridman (33:03.880)
but I have a gym with a lot of members.
Lex Fridman (33:05.560)
And I can tell you that the number of years
Lex Fridman (33:07.680)
I've been in the gym,
John Clarke (33:08.720)
when someone comes to me and says, this is my goal,
Lex Fridman (33:11.000)
I don't tell them yes or no in general, but I know.
John Clarke (33:15.200)
I can tell by the way they say it to me,
Lex Fridman (33:17.320)
I can thin slice it.
John Clarke (33:18.680)
I've seen the look on people's faces.
Lex Fridman (33:20.600)
And when people start to say they wanna do X, Y, and Z,
John Clarke (33:24.360)
I know right off the bat,
Lex Fridman (33:26.120)
this person's either gonna put an effort in
John Clarke (33:27.720)
or they're not going to put an effort in.
Lex Fridman (33:29.600)
So to me, it's about the effort behind that.
John Clarke (33:33.640)
If you're busting your ass and you're a new at something
Lex Fridman (33:36.160)
and you're brand new, but you're working really hard
Lex Fridman (33:38.480)
and you have a series of like moderate successes in that,
Lex Fridman (33:42.480)
like that's the guy I wanna champion
John Clarke (33:44.280)
because that persistence and that grit over time,
Lex Fridman (33:47.280)
those successes will no longer be moderate.
John Clarke (33:49.760)
They'll be huge.
Lex Fridman (33:51.040)
But the person who's having moderate success
John Clarke (33:52.720)
by doing nothing, chances are they'll never learn
Lex Fridman (33:55.600)
to put that work in and the successes will never grow.
John Clarke (33:58.920)
You have an admiration for Mike Tyson.
Lex Fridman (34:01.560)
I love him.
John Clarke (34:03.640)
I'm just gonna let that sit for a brief moment.
Lex Fridman (34:06.080)
So why?
John Clarke (34:09.240)
I think there's a combination of factors.
Lex Fridman (34:10.640)
One is like the timeliness of his career
Lex Fridman (34:13.400)
and like the age I was when he like came to prominence,
Lex Fridman (34:18.920)
the raw, brutal violence
Lex Fridman (34:23.000)
and the raw, brutal honesty when he speaks.
Lex Fridman (34:26.520)
I think it's easy for people to hear him or see his life
Lex Fridman (34:29.640)
and cast him aside as some simianesque,
Lex Fridman (34:33.120)
like just cretin scourge on society.
Lex Fridman (34:36.160)
But when you hear him speak,
Lex Fridman (34:37.640)
like this is not a guy who's unintelligent.
John Clarke (34:40.160)
This is a guy who knows himself better
Lex Fridman (34:42.280)
than probably most of us know ourselves.
John Clarke (34:44.640)
It's disarming and that's a humongous part
Lex Fridman (34:48.840)
of my admiration for him.
Lex Fridman (34:52.440)
Who is Mike Tyson?
Lex Fridman (34:54.000)
Because it feels like there's similarities
John Clarke (34:56.640)
between him and you.
Lex Fridman (34:59.160)
It feels like there's a violent person in there,
Lex Fridman (35:02.880)
but also a really kind person.
Lex Fridman (35:04.760)
And they're all like living together in a little house.
Lex Fridman (35:07.800)
And you're the same.
Lex Fridman (35:08.760)
There's a thoughtful person,
Lex Fridman (35:10.400)
but there's also a scary, violent person.
Lex Fridman (35:12.600)
And they're like having a picnic.
John Clarke (35:14.560)
They're having a picnic.
Lex Fridman (35:16.040)
I think there are dialectical tensions in everyone,
John Clarke (35:18.760)
these like opposing forces
Lex Fridman (35:21.160)
that are constantly pulling at you
Lex Fridman (35:22.880)
and at different points in your life,
Lex Fridman (35:24.560)
like it's sliding scale.
Lex Fridman (35:26.360)
And I think that certainly when I was a younger person,
Lex Fridman (35:31.360)
that there was a lot more manifestation of the violence
Lex Fridman (35:35.120)
and a lot less of the kindness.
Lex Fridman (35:38.880)
People who were not as close to me
John Clarke (35:40.520)
probably saw more of the violent side
Lex Fridman (35:42.280)
and only the very close people to me saw like
Lex Fridman (35:44.680)
what would pass for the kind side.
Lex Fridman (35:46.640)
And now that's sliding in the other direction.
Lex Fridman (35:49.720)
And I worry actually sometimes that
Lex Fridman (35:53.520)
there could be a situation where I need
John Clarke (35:55.200)
that old version of me
Lex Fridman (35:57.280)
and he's getting further and further away
Lex Fridman (35:59.280)
and I can't call him up if I need him.
Lex Fridman (36:01.840)
And that concerns me to a certain degree.
John Clarke (36:07.160)
The sad aging warrior seeing his greater self fade away.
Lex Fridman (36:12.400)
But you still compete.
Lex Fridman (36:13.800)
Does that person return?
Lex Fridman (36:15.200)
It seems like for Mike Tyson,
John Clarke (36:16.440)
that person returned at the prospect of competition.
Lex Fridman (36:20.040)
It returns, but I've learned better
Lex Fridman (36:23.400)
how to manifest it in competition
Lex Fridman (36:26.040)
in terms of like the effects
John Clarke (36:27.600)
that that type of emotion has on you physically
Lex Fridman (36:29.800)
in the middle of a competition.
Lex Fridman (36:31.200)
So I've better learned how to utilize that energy.
Lex Fridman (36:34.400)
But I think another side effect of this
John Clarke (36:36.960)
is like having a gym where you're a bigger guy
Lex Fridman (36:39.440)
and you're the head instructor,
John Clarke (36:40.920)
you can't be as mean and violent as you once were
Lex Fridman (36:43.880)
because you're also not trying to run a business.
Lex Fridman (36:46.400)
And you spend so many years trying not to be mean
Lex Fridman (36:51.160)
and to soften your technique a little bit
John Clarke (36:54.520)
that that all of a sudden just becomes who you are.
Lex Fridman (36:56.640)
And I don't necessarily like that.
Lex Fridman (36:58.520)
So I've been trying to reclaim that a little bit
Lex Fridman (37:00.760)
on the mat, but I think in competition,
John Clarke (37:08.720)
there has to be an athlete really wants to score the points.
Lex Fridman (37:15.000)
A fighter really wants to incapacitate you
Lex Fridman (37:18.560)
and put you in a position where they can
Lex Fridman (37:20.240)
do their own bidding.
Lex Fridman (37:21.600)
And the result in a jujitsu match
Lex Fridman (37:23.680)
might just still be two points,
Lex Fridman (37:25.560)
but the motivations are very, very different.
Lex Fridman (37:28.320)
What do you make of Tyson on Joe Rogan
Lex Fridman (37:30.480)
saying that he was aroused by violence?
Lex Fridman (37:32.560)
Do you think that's insane?
Lex Fridman (37:34.120)
Do you think that's deeply honest for him?
Lex Fridman (37:36.720)
And do you think that rings true for many of us,
Lex Fridman (37:40.280)
others who practices in different degrees?
Lex Fridman (37:43.120)
I can't speak for a lot of people.
Lex Fridman (37:45.800)
And I think that it was a brutally honest statement by him.
Lex Fridman (37:48.840)
And I think it's something that even if a lot of people
John Clarke (37:51.640)
feel it, they're not that comfortable
Lex Fridman (37:53.720)
admitting it or saying it.
Lex Fridman (37:55.600)
But I think there's great joy
Lex Fridman (38:01.480)
in landing a flush right hand on someone's jaw
Lex Fridman (38:05.800)
and then watching them crumble.
Lex Fridman (38:07.320)
You don't even feel it.
Lex Fridman (38:08.480)
You ever played baseball as a kid?
Lex Fridman (38:10.240)
You can hit a base hit off the end of the bat
Lex Fridman (38:11.960)
and it will sting your hands
Lex Fridman (38:13.360)
because of the way that you hit it.
John Clarke (38:15.120)
You can hit a home run and you won't feel anything.
Lex Fridman (38:18.360)
It just feels so good in your hands.
Lex Fridman (38:19.840)
And that's, I think, one of the joys of physical contact.
Lex Fridman (38:25.160)
When you do it the right way,
Lex Fridman (38:27.040)
and that goes for all physical contact.
Lex Fridman (38:29.160)
When you do it the right way,
John Clarke (38:30.960)
the physical pleasure you can derive from it
Lex Fridman (38:33.600)
and the mental pleasure, it's unparalleled.
John Clarke (38:38.080)
See, but that's different.
Lex Fridman (38:39.400)
Let me draw a distinction.
John Clarke (38:40.920)
I'm not,
Lex Fridman (38:44.640)
I've had the fortune of being a wrestler.
Lex Fridman (38:47.560)
And I would draw a distinction
Lex Fridman (38:50.520)
between a very well executed in competition,
John Clarke (38:54.640)
double leg, single leg take down or a pin.
Lex Fridman (38:57.960)
There's some, as an OCD person,
John Clarke (38:59.600)
there's something so comforting
Lex Fridman (39:01.800)
about a well executed pin
John Clarke (39:03.520)
because it's like two seconds
Lex Fridman (39:05.040)
and it's just like everything is flush and nice.
Lex Fridman (39:07.640)
And like, it's all clean.
Lex Fridman (39:09.360)
I mean, okay, this OCD person who likes to align show,
John Clarke (39:13.280)
it's just beautiful.
Lex Fridman (39:14.360)
Okay, that's good technique.
Lex Fridman (39:16.120)
And wrestling also provides you,
Lex Fridman (39:20.680)
maybe more than other sports,
John Clarke (39:22.560)
the feeling of dominating another human.
Lex Fridman (39:25.680)
Yes.
John Clarke (39:26.520)
Of breaking, no, not just of them being very cocky
Lex Fridman (39:30.720)
and very powerful,
John Clarke (39:32.240)
you feel this power of another human being
Lex Fridman (39:34.880)
and then you breaking them.
Lex Fridman (39:37.440)
And like, I'm not as honest as Mike Tyson.
Lex Fridman (39:42.440)
But that, I don't think I've ever sort of looked in the mirror
Lex Fridman (39:48.200)
and said like, that that was, I enjoyed that aspect of it.
Lex Fridman (39:53.120)
But it certainly seems like you chase that.
Lex Fridman (39:56.400)
So when I was a wrestler in high school,
Lex Fridman (40:00.120)
I lost so many matches because of over aggressiveness.
John Clarke (40:05.040)
Like, I would pick the top position and let you stand
Lex Fridman (40:08.400)
just so that I could do a mat return.
Lex Fridman (40:10.160)
And I wasn't trying to return you to the mat.
Lex Fridman (40:12.200)
I was actually trying to like drive you through the mat
Lex Fridman (40:15.360)
and through the ground.
Lex Fridman (40:16.280)
Like I took, like, it gave me joy to do that.
John Clarke (40:20.600)
Like, it wasn't like I was trying to, you know,
Lex Fridman (40:23.200)
just return you to the mat so that I could pin you.
John Clarke (40:25.600)
That what you just talked about,
Lex Fridman (40:26.920)
like the dominating another person,
John Clarke (40:28.880)
I used to look at that as you've got someone
Lex Fridman (40:30.920)
who in theory is equally trained
Lex Fridman (40:32.280)
and equally skilled as you are.
Lex Fridman (40:34.080)
And you're absolutely out there totally dominating them.
John Clarke (40:38.320)
There's joy in that.
Lex Fridman (40:39.880)
You could get in an MMA fight
Lex Fridman (40:41.800)
and you could take someone down and you could mount them.
Lex Fridman (40:44.920)
And all that feels great.
Lex Fridman (40:47.160)
But when you start raining down the punches
Lex Fridman (40:49.160)
on their face from mount and like dropping elbows and stuff,
John Clarke (40:52.000)
like there's another level of satisfaction there.
Lex Fridman (40:55.080)
And it's tough to describe.
Lex Fridman (40:57.440)
And I don't think that everyone is made for it.
Lex Fridman (41:01.320)
When I was, I think when I was a senior in high school,
John Clarke (41:03.920)
my wrestling coach said, look,
Lex Fridman (41:05.480)
you've got to stop with all this crazy aggressive wrestling.
John Clarke (41:09.160)
Like they tried to turn me into a technician
Lex Fridman (41:12.080)
and it did work to a degree.
Lex Fridman (41:15.240)
And it was a humongous shift for me in terms of success,
Lex Fridman (41:18.760)
but it wasn't the same level of enjoyment out of it.
John Clarke (41:23.680)
Like, I mean, I got disqualified from New England
Lex Fridman (41:25.920)
because my coach said cross face and I cross face
Lex Fridman (41:28.080)
and he said harder.
Lex Fridman (41:29.040)
And I basically wound up and blasted a kid in the face
Lex Fridman (41:31.400)
and his nose got busted everywhere.
Lex Fridman (41:33.760)
But I didn't think not to do it because that felt good.
John Clarke (41:37.360)
It felt good to cross face him like that.
Lex Fridman (41:39.560)
I was a lot of like.
John Clarke (41:42.600)
That's a weird American warrior ethos that I've picked up,
Lex Fridman (41:46.560)
but I also have in me the Russian, the Setyaev brothers
John Clarke (41:49.920)
that don't see it, don't see it as that.
Lex Fridman (41:53.720)
They don't get draw,
John Clarke (41:56.480)
they think that there is a tension between the art
Lex Fridman (42:00.480)
of the martial art and the violence of the martial art.
John Clarke (42:04.520)
I agree with that.
Lex Fridman (42:05.360)
It's a poetic way I could put it,
Lex Fridman (42:06.840)
but they're not so fascinated with this Dan Gable
Lex Fridman (42:10.200)
dominating another human.
John Clarke (42:12.040)
They think of the effortlessness of the technique
Lex Fridman (42:18.760)
and your mastery of the art is exhibited
John Clarke (42:20.600)
in its effortlessness,
Lex Fridman (42:22.360)
how much you lose yourself in the moment and the timing,
John Clarke (42:25.080)
that just the beauty of a timing.
Lex Fridman (42:27.200)
Like there's much more, like one example in judo,
Lex Fridman (42:30.480)
but also in wrestling, you can look at the foot sweep.
Lex Fridman (42:33.920)
Wrestlers in America and even judo players in America
Lex Fridman (42:38.320)
and much of the world don't admire the beauty
Lex Fridman (42:40.840)
of the foot sweep, but a well timed foot sweep,
John Clarke (42:43.680)
which is a way to sort of off balance
Lex Fridman (42:45.760)
to find the right timing to just effortlessly
John Clarke (42:50.280)
change the table, turn the tables of,
Lex Fridman (42:53.800)
I mean, dominate your opponent is seen as the highest form
John Clarke (42:58.480)
of mastery in Russian wrestling.
Lex Fridman (43:00.840)
In the case of judo, it's in Japanese judo.
John Clarke (43:04.280)
It's interesting.
Lex Fridman (43:05.160)
I'm not sure.
John Clarke (43:06.000)
I'm not sure what that tension is about.
Lex Fridman (43:08.560)
I think it actually takes me back to,
John Clarke (43:11.880)
I don't know if you listened to Dan Carlin,
Lex Fridman (43:13.720)
Hardcore History and Genghis Khan, if you've ever.
John Clarke (43:17.360)
I've read a great, great book.
Lex Fridman (43:19.640)
On Genghis Khan?
John Clarke (43:20.480)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (43:21.320)
I'm still trying to adjust.
John Clarke (43:23.200)
Most of my life said Genghis Khan,
Lex Fridman (43:25.440)
but the right pronunciation is actually Genghis Khan.
John Clarke (43:31.080)
There's a tension there.
Lex Fridman (43:32.920)
We kind of think, I don't know we,
John Clarke (43:35.120)
I kind of thought as Genghis Khan is a ultra violent,
Lex Fridman (43:41.440)
a leader of ultra violent men, but another view,
John Clarke (43:45.920)
another way to see them is the people who warriors
Lex Fridman (43:50.920)
that valued extreme competence and mastery of the art
John Clarke (43:58.600)
of fighting with weapons, with bows,
Lex Fridman (44:00.920)
with the horse riding, all that kind of stuff.
Lex Fridman (44:03.480)
And I'm not sure exactly where to place them
Lex Fridman (44:07.480)
on my sort of thinking about violence in our human history.
John Clarke (44:12.800)
I think in the context of like combat sports,
Lex Fridman (44:16.880)
I think there's a difference between an athlete
John Clarke (44:19.080)
winning a contest under a certain set of rules
Lex Fridman (44:22.280)
and a fighter winning a fight under those exact same rules.
John Clarke (44:26.280)
There's a different approach to it.
Lex Fridman (44:28.400)
And I don't think one is any better than the other.
John Clarke (44:32.080)
Like in MMA, I think a great example would be
Lex Fridman (44:35.560)
George St. Pierre.
John Clarke (44:37.000)
George St. Pierre is a tremendous athlete
Lex Fridman (44:40.120)
and he considers himself to be a martial artist first.
John Clarke (44:43.440)
He's trying to win an athletic competition.
Lex Fridman (44:45.960)
Like Nick Diaz is trying to bust your ass, right?
John Clarke (44:49.560)
There's a different approach to it.
Lex Fridman (44:51.360)
And yes, they've had different results
John Clarke (44:53.200)
at the highest level of competition,
Lex Fridman (44:55.400)
but it's difficult to attribute the difference in results
John Clarke (44:59.040)
just to their approach to the sport
Lex Fridman (45:00.520)
because they're different human beings
John Clarke (45:01.680)
with different abilities and different physical attributes.
Lex Fridman (45:06.960)
The PsyTF brothers have that luxury of being able
John Clarke (45:09.640)
to talk about the beauty of a perfectly timed slide by.
Lex Fridman (45:14.360)
There are other wrestlers that will never be able
John Clarke (45:16.120)
to pull that off and therefore they have to pursue
Lex Fridman (45:18.760)
other ways to defeat someone.
Lex Fridman (45:20.960)
And maybe it is the Dan Gable breaking a man's spirit
Lex Fridman (45:24.040)
by outworking him type thing,
John Clarke (45:25.400)
which is beautiful in its own way.
Lex Fridman (45:28.720)
But we tend to self select the ways in which
John Clarke (45:33.240)
we're able to be successful
Lex Fridman (45:35.000)
and then kind of take a deep dive into that.
Lex Fridman (45:37.440)
What do you think is more beautiful?
Lex Fridman (45:39.760)
Brute force or effortless execution
Lex Fridman (45:46.440)
of a technique that dominates another human?
Lex Fridman (45:49.560)
I think it's a subjective thing
John Clarke (45:52.160)
based on what skills you perceive yourself to have.
Lex Fridman (45:55.360)
I'm never, I've never been a slick, super athletic,
John Clarke (45:59.720)
dexterous competitor in anything.
Lex Fridman (46:02.400)
And I've always been more of an,
John Clarke (46:04.320)
I've gotta outwork you, I've gotta out grind you,
Lex Fridman (46:06.080)
I gotta out mean you.
Lex Fridman (46:07.400)
And so because I've lived that,
Lex Fridman (46:09.520)
I tend to see the beauty in that more
John Clarke (46:11.520)
because I have a perceptual awareness
Lex Fridman (46:13.680)
that I don't have for the people who have the luxury
John Clarke (46:16.480)
of being very slick and athletic
Lex Fridman (46:18.080)
and using beautiful technique.
John Clarke (46:20.760)
Now that said, there's a phenomenal little video
Lex Fridman (46:23.800)
the other day I sent to a friend of a compilation
John Clarke (46:29.040)
of foot sweeps by Leota Machida in MMA.
Lex Fridman (46:32.000)
And they're so beautiful and they're so awesome.
Lex Fridman (46:34.800)
And it's not that I don't have an appreciation for those,
Lex Fridman (46:38.040)
but I can't emulate those because I lack
John Clarke (46:39.840)
the physical ability to do that.
Lex Fridman (46:42.520)
Whereas I at least have a chance to emulate
John Clarke (46:46.280)
some of the people who do it through grit
Lex Fridman (46:48.760)
and through outworking people.
Lex Fridman (46:51.040)
But I would love to return to Genghis Khan
Lex Fridman (46:54.400)
and get your thoughts about,
John Clarke (46:56.680)
like I have so many mixed feelings
Lex Fridman (46:59.400)
about whether he is evil or not,
John Clarke (47:04.400)
whether the violence that he brought to the world
Lex Fridman (47:09.880)
had ultimately, the fact that it had maybe
John Clarke (47:14.440)
kind of like Dan Carlin describes,
Lex Fridman (47:16.800)
cleanse the landscape.
John Clarke (47:19.280)
It's like a reset for the world through violence
Lex Fridman (47:22.160)
had ultimately a progressive effect on human civilization,
John Clarke (47:29.640)
even though in the short term it led to massive,
Lex Fridman (47:33.680)
you could say suffering.
John Clarke (47:36.160)
I don't know what to make of that, man.
Lex Fridman (47:38.360)
What are your thoughts on Genghis Khan?
John Clarke (47:40.680)
I think it's always difficult to look at a historical figure
Lex Fridman (47:44.400)
and their actions of their time through a modern day lens
John Clarke (47:48.120)
because it's easy for us to kind of impugn
Lex Fridman (47:54.480)
their achievements and the things that they did
Lex Fridman (47:56.720)
and say, oh, well, what he did was wrong.
Lex Fridman (48:00.600)
Well, of course that can be true,
Lex Fridman (48:02.720)
but a lot of times we don't actually have
Lex Fridman (48:04.680)
any real good context or concept
John Clarke (48:06.960)
of the times they were living in
Lex Fridman (48:09.520)
and what really was deemed wrong and what really wasn't.
John Clarke (48:11.920)
We're looking at it through a very cushy modern lens.
Lex Fridman (48:14.160)
That being said, from what I've read about Genghis Khan,
John Clarke (48:18.560)
yeah, he was a violent dude,
Lex Fridman (48:19.760)
but also he gave you an option.
John Clarke (48:22.360)
When he got to a village, he said,
Lex Fridman (48:24.040)
look, you have a choice,
John Clarke (48:29.120)
you can come with us or you can run.
Lex Fridman (48:31.680)
And he gave them an option to join his legion of fighters
John Clarke (48:36.440)
who he took very good care of.
Lex Fridman (48:38.080)
He was the first military leader
John Clarke (48:41.200)
to pay his soldiers families when they died.
Lex Fridman (48:45.600)
And he did that based on the booty that they got
John Clarke (48:48.720)
when they raided a village.
Lex Fridman (48:50.840)
He took that money, he took his share
Lex Fridman (48:52.480)
and they divided that up amongst the soldiers
Lex Fridman (48:54.080)
and then the soldiers families.
John Clarke (48:55.560)
I think he also is credited with first horseback mail routes
Lex Fridman (49:02.560)
or something like that, right?
Lex Fridman (49:03.720)
Isn't he the godfather of the modern postal system?
Lex Fridman (49:06.680)
There's something like that.
John Clarke (49:08.080)
Yeah, he's the Bernie Sanders of the Mongol Empire.
Lex Fridman (49:14.520)
I do think the offering of surrender is an interesting one
John Clarke (49:18.920)
because it's interesting as a thought experiment,
Lex Fridman (49:23.920)
whether you would sacrifice your way of,
John Clarke (49:26.040)
like the pride of nations or the nationalism,
Lex Fridman (49:28.640)
pride of your country,
John Clarke (49:30.000)
whether you're willing to give that up to survive.
Lex Fridman (49:38.120)
It depends on who depends on you.
John Clarke (49:40.600)
If you have a family and young kids and stuff like that,
Lex Fridman (49:44.520)
I think your obligation is primarily to them
Lex Fridman (49:47.600)
and therefore surrender has to be something
Lex Fridman (49:49.560)
that you consider in that moment in time
Lex Fridman (49:52.400)
so that you can take care of those people.
Lex Fridman (49:55.480)
If you're a man alone and you've got all these principles
Lex Fridman (49:57.680)
and all this other stuff and you're not down
Lex Fridman (50:00.240)
with what Genghis Khan is doing and what he's selling,
John Clarke (50:02.640)
yeah, try and escape, do your thing
Lex Fridman (50:04.320)
and just know what waits on the other side of that
John Clarke (50:06.920)
for you potentially.
Lex Fridman (50:08.080)
But I think if there's someone else out there
John Clarke (50:09.960)
that depends on you, your obligation should be to them.
Lex Fridman (50:13.120)
It feels like historically people valued principles
John Clarke (50:17.640)
more than life in this weight of like,
Lex Fridman (50:22.720)
what do I value more?
John Clarke (50:23.840)
The principles I hold versus survival.
Lex Fridman (50:26.520)
It seems that now we don't value principles as much.
John Clarke (50:30.280)
Principles could be also religion,
Lex Fridman (50:31.760)
it could be your values, whatever.
John Clarke (50:33.720)
We're okay sort of sacrificing those
Lex Fridman (50:36.520)
for to preserve our survival.
Lex Fridman (50:38.680)
And that applies in all forms like actual survival
Lex Fridman (50:42.040)
or like on social media, like preserving your reputation,
John Clarke (50:46.920)
all those kinds of things.
Lex Fridman (50:48.480)
It seems like we, especially in America,
John Clarke (50:52.720)
value individual life,
Lex Fridman (50:57.240)
that death is somehow a really bad thing.
John Clarke (51:00.560)
As opposed to saying sacrificing your principles
Lex Fridman (51:04.120)
is a very bad thing and everybody dies
Lex Fridman (51:06.800)
and it's okay to die.
Lex Fridman (51:08.840)
What's horrible is to sacrifice your principles
John Clarke (51:12.120)
of who you are just to live another day.
Lex Fridman (51:15.880)
I think a big problem is people don't really even know
Lex Fridman (51:17.840)
what their principles are anymore.
Lex Fridman (51:19.600)
People, social media and just the way that we live nowadays
John Clarke (51:26.080)
where we're separated from the human contact like this,
Lex Fridman (51:29.320)
like you're not contacting people in a community anymore.
John Clarke (51:33.480)
You're not, whether you're religious or not,
Lex Fridman (51:35.840)
like you're not congregating at a church,
John Clarke (51:37.800)
you're not part of a parish
Lex Fridman (51:39.000)
like you would be like in down South,
John Clarke (51:41.160)
you're not part of that community anymore.
Lex Fridman (51:44.080)
And so it's difficult to figure out
Lex Fridman (51:48.440)
what your principles and values are
Lex Fridman (51:50.360)
because you're constantly jumping from one bucket
John Clarke (51:52.560)
to the next online.
Lex Fridman (51:55.360)
And you don't get a lot of like direct,
John Clarke (51:58.160)
like reasonable feedback from people.
Lex Fridman (52:01.160)
You just get dipshit feedback.
Lex Fridman (52:02.640)
Like, oh, you don't believe this?
Lex Fridman (52:03.880)
Well, you're a jerk.
John Clarke (52:04.960)
I think the hard thing currently
Lex Fridman (52:07.680)
is having the integrity and character
John Clarke (52:09.440)
to stick by principles one under.
Lex Fridman (52:11.280)
I don't want to equate murder in the Genghis Khan times
John Clarke (52:15.720)
to social media cancel culture,
Lex Fridman (52:19.040)
but it certainly doesn't feel good
John Clarke (52:20.800)
when people are attacking on social media.
Lex Fridman (52:22.840)
And it does take a lot of integrity to,
John Clarke (52:26.840)
without anger, without emotion,
Lex Fridman (52:28.960)
without mocking others or attacking others unfairly,
John Clarke (52:34.680)
standing by the ideas you hold,
Lex Fridman (52:38.920)
or in another way, standing by your friends,
John Clarke (52:45.160)
standing by this little group,
Lex Fridman (52:47.160)
like loyalty of the people that you know are good people.
John Clarke (52:51.760)
I find that in cancel culture,
Lex Fridman (52:54.200)
one of the sad things is whenever somebody gets
John Clarke (52:57.120)
quote unquote canceled,
Lex Fridman (52:59.240)
everybody just gets all their friends become really quiet
Lex Fridman (53:02.640)
and don't defend them or worse.
Lex Fridman (53:06.280)
I mean, quiet is at least understandable.
John Clarke (53:08.960)
They kind of signal that they throw them out of the bus,
Lex Fridman (53:12.960)
I guess is one way to put it.
Lex Fridman (53:14.960)
And that's something I think about a lot
Lex Fridman (53:18.360)
because from coming from me, it's like,
John Clarke (53:22.240)
I hold an ethic.
Lex Fridman (53:23.880)
I don't know if others hold this ethic.
John Clarke (53:25.480)
Maybe it's this like Russian mobster ethic of like,
Lex Fridman (53:30.480)
you should help your friends bury the body.
John Clarke (53:34.440)
You shouldn't criticize your friends for committing
Lex Fridman (53:36.680)
the murder.
John Clarke (53:37.560)
Like there are certain levels of like,
Lex Fridman (53:40.680)
yeah, you have that discussion after you buried the body
John Clarke (53:43.880)
that like maybe you shouldn't have done that murder thing.
Lex Fridman (53:47.360)
I don't know, I understand that that's a problematic,
Lex Fridman (53:51.880)
what's the terminology?
Lex Fridman (53:54.320)
That's a problematic ethical framework
John Clarke (53:57.120)
within which to operate.
Lex Fridman (53:58.080)
But at the same time, it feels like what else do we have
John Clarke (54:00.880)
in this world except the brotherhood, the sisterhood,
Lex Fridman (54:04.240)
the love we have for a very small community.
Lex Fridman (54:06.600)
But perhaps that's the wrong way of thinking.
Lex Fridman (54:08.200)
Perhaps the 21st century would be defined
John Clarke (54:11.240)
by the dissipation of this community,
Lex Fridman (54:13.180)
of this loyalty concept.
John Clarke (54:14.880)
No, we're all just individuals.
Lex Fridman (54:16.560)
I think you're right.
Lex Fridman (54:17.400)
And I think you have to have some sort of core framework
Lex Fridman (54:20.080)
of principles and beliefs that you operate on.
Lex Fridman (54:22.840)
And I think what I was referencing is a little bit different.
Lex Fridman (54:26.880)
But to speak to your point,
John Clarke (54:28.960)
you need a framework of core principles
Lex Fridman (54:34.360)
on which you can then base a lot of your other decisions.
John Clarke (54:38.440)
Like I believe these three things to be true,
Lex Fridman (54:40.480)
whatever they are,
Lex Fridman (54:41.480)
and that will help inform other decisions
Lex Fridman (54:43.400)
you make in your life.
John Clarke (54:45.600)
As far as how you treat your friends,
Lex Fridman (54:48.980)
I've got probably three friends that,
John Clarke (54:52.560)
if they called me right now and said,
Lex Fridman (54:53.880)
let's bury the body, sorry, Lex, I gotta go.
John Clarke (54:56.460)
There are other people in my life that if they said,
Lex Fridman (55:00.700)
hey, we've got to go bury the body,
Lex Fridman (55:02.420)
I would say, who is this?
Lex Fridman (55:06.700)
So I think it depends on the relationship.
John Clarke (55:09.980)
I wonder if that's a good, that's a really good measure.
Lex Fridman (55:12.180)
I would love to have,
John Clarke (55:14.100)
I would love that to be in your profile.
Lex Fridman (55:15.980)
People put like pronouns.
John Clarke (55:17.620)
I would love to put like, honestly, like objectively,
Lex Fridman (55:22.220)
not self report, but objective,
Lex Fridman (55:24.820)
how many people in your life, if they committed murder,
Lex Fridman (55:28.380)
you would not ask any questions
Lex Fridman (55:29.820)
and you would help them hide the body.
Lex Fridman (55:31.900)
Like, I would love to know that number for people.
John Clarke (55:33.940)
Yeah, and I think it's a weird thing too,
Lex Fridman (55:35.900)
because you think right away, like, okay,
John Clarke (55:37.620)
it must be the group of people that are the closest to you.
Lex Fridman (55:39.920)
That's who you're first thinking of, right?
Lex Fridman (55:41.860)
But obviously for like my best friend,
Lex Fridman (55:44.140)
I would do it, no question about it.
Lex Fridman (55:45.820)
But I've got other people that are close to me
Lex Fridman (55:47.660)
that are close to me in other ways.
Lex Fridman (55:50.580)
And I probably wouldn't do that only
Lex Fridman (55:52.100)
because I don't think they'd do it for me.
John Clarke (55:54.220)
Yeah.
Lex Fridman (55:55.060)
And that is a consideration.
Lex Fridman (55:57.660)
So I guess, is the principle there
Lex Fridman (55:59.900)
then that you do for your friends
Lex Fridman (56:02.020)
what you think they would do for you?
Lex Fridman (56:03.420)
Is that the underlying principle?
John Clarke (56:05.260)
Or do you just have a blind loyalty
Lex Fridman (56:06.900)
to people in your life for different reasons?
John Clarke (56:10.540)
I got people that are not on my inner circle
Lex Fridman (56:12.700)
that I probably wouldn't help change a tire
John Clarke (56:15.740)
at two in the morning if they're on the highway.
Lex Fridman (56:17.340)
But if they called me and said,
John Clarke (56:18.340)
hey, we gotta bury the body, I might show up for that.
Lex Fridman (56:20.780)
It's just these weird different connections you have.
John Clarke (56:22.420)
Yeah, it's fascinating.
Lex Fridman (56:23.340)
Yeah, I have close friends that like,
John Clarke (56:25.980)
I'd probably be, exactly, the tire is a good example.
Lex Fridman (56:28.460)
I'd be like, can't you find somebody else to do this?
John Clarke (56:31.460)
I think part of that is just this leap of faith
Lex Fridman (56:35.980)
into like giving yourself to the other person
John Clarke (56:39.900)
that creates a deep connection
Lex Fridman (56:43.820)
that makes life fulfilling, like meaningful
John Clarke (56:49.140)
that doesn't exist if you don't take that leap.
Lex Fridman (56:51.580)
I mean, it's not about the murder.
John Clarke (56:52.820)
We're sort of focusing.
Lex Fridman (56:53.900)
I think that's a, I think you have to,
Lex Fridman (56:57.060)
what is it, cross that bridge when you get there.
Lex Fridman (56:59.020)
I'm not exactly sure.
John Clarke (57:00.060)
This is just a thought experiment.
Lex Fridman (57:01.820)
But it's, I think about that a lot,
John Clarke (57:05.140)
especially these COVID times.
Lex Fridman (57:06.700)
And as like people become more and more isolated
Lex Fridman (57:09.420)
and separated from each other,
Lex Fridman (57:11.060)
like how important is it to have those deep connections
Lex Fridman (57:14.780)
to other humans?
Lex Fridman (57:16.420)
I think especially like what you're talking about there.
Lex Fridman (57:18.540)
Have you ever seen the movie, The Town?
Lex Fridman (57:20.220)
There's a great line in the movie
John Clarke (57:21.500)
where one of the main characters
Lex Fridman (57:23.420)
walks into his friend's house and he says,
John Clarke (57:26.340)
I need your help.
Lex Fridman (57:28.380)
We're gonna go hurt some people
Lex Fridman (57:29.860)
and you can never ask me about it again.
Lex Fridman (57:31.900)
And the friend looks up and he says,
Lex Fridman (57:33.340)
whose car are we taking?
Lex Fridman (57:35.620)
Like that is the type of person you need in your life.
Lex Fridman (57:38.180)
And the people, like there are people
Lex Fridman (57:40.180)
that will walk through that door and say that to you
Lex Fridman (57:41.980)
and you drop everything you're doing.
Lex Fridman (57:43.340)
And then there's the people that walk through your door
Lex Fridman (57:44.700)
and you're like, you know what?
Lex Fridman (57:45.660)
I got a hot pocket in the microwave.
John Clarke (57:49.460)
I'm a little bit tied up right now,
Lex Fridman (57:50.860)
but I'd love to help you out.
Lex Fridman (57:52.060)
But you know, I don't wanna do that.
Lex Fridman (57:54.500)
And you don't have that deep connection with those people.
John Clarke (57:57.220)
You mentioned some principles
Lex Fridman (57:58.980)
that you've changed your mind on.
Lex Fridman (58:02.340)
Is there, do you wanna go there?
Lex Fridman (58:04.740)
Is there some interesting principles
Lex Fridman (58:07.620)
and the process of changing that is useful to talk about?
Lex Fridman (58:11.940)
I can't really cite a specific thing,
John Clarke (58:14.420)
except that understanding that the principles
Lex Fridman (58:18.700)
that you have at different points in your life
John Clarke (58:20.740)
can change and it's okay to change them
Lex Fridman (58:22.460)
without being a total pussy
Lex Fridman (58:23.620)
and being bullied by other people
Lex Fridman (58:25.140)
into thinking what you thought was wrong.
John Clarke (58:27.180)
If you come to these conclusions of your own volition
Lex Fridman (58:30.420)
and you decide to change them, that's great.
Lex Fridman (58:32.220)
And it can be really, it can be really liberating.
Lex Fridman (58:36.300)
It's really liberating to have an idea
John Clarke (58:38.100)
that you hold so true to your core belief system
Lex Fridman (58:45.220)
and then to actually have someone change your mind for you
Lex Fridman (58:47.980)
and be okay with it, as opposed to being like, no,
Lex Fridman (58:50.780)
I gotta die with this.
John Clarke (58:52.500)
I gotta die with this.
Lex Fridman (58:53.340)
It's really liberating.
John Clarke (58:54.180)
There are definitely are ideas you wanna die on that hill
Lex Fridman (58:56.020)
and no one's ever gonna change your mind.
Lex Fridman (58:58.340)
But it's really liberating to be confident enough
Lex Fridman (59:02.100)
to say, change my mind.
John Clarke (59:03.940)
I'm lucky enough to have some smart motherfuckers around me
Lex Fridman (59:06.380)
who can tell me, listen, you're being a total dipshit.
John Clarke (59:10.060)
Like let's rethink this.
Lex Fridman (59:12.380)
Or like I have one friend who does the five whys all the time
Lex Fridman (59:15.380)
and he loves backing me into a corner.
Lex Fridman (59:17.300)
And.
Lex Fridman (59:18.140)
What's the five whys?
Lex Fridman (59:19.060)
You just, like when someone makes a statement
John Clarke (59:20.940)
about something, to really get to the core issue,
Lex Fridman (59:24.100)
they say, if you ask why five times, make a statement,
Lex Fridman (59:27.940)
well, why is that?
Lex Fridman (59:29.140)
And you answer that, well, why?
Lex Fridman (59:30.820)
And you phrase the whys differently, obviously,
Lex Fridman (59:32.700)
but then you get to the core.
John Clarke (59:33.820)
They say five times, you can get to the core of the issue.
Lex Fridman (59:36.660)
And that's a challenging thing.
Lex Fridman (59:38.220)
But I find later in life, it's so liberating for me
Lex Fridman (59:41.460)
to be confident enough to be like,
John Clarke (59:43.500)
man, was I fucking way off the mark on this
Lex Fridman (59:46.820)
and have my mind changed.
Lex Fridman (59:48.060)
And be able to say that to others that I was wrong.
Lex Fridman (59:50.780)
Totally.
John Clarke (59:51.740)
That ability, and I never used to have that.
Lex Fridman (59:54.980)
And it feels real good.
Lex Fridman (59:58.300)
And there's a hunger for that too.
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