Month: February 2024

Real men are not sentimental, and don’t have feelings. Think about the laconic and humorous sayings of the Spartans!

My two major life tasks?

We should not desire a life without strife —

Human suffering x human flourishing

Lex Fridman(01:10:13) And suffering. It’s really complicated to consider that some amount of human suffering is necessary for human flourishing.

Elon Musk(01:10:22) Is it possible to appreciate the highs without knowing the lows?

Lex Fridman(01:10:29) And that all is summarized there in a single statement from God. Okay.

Elon Musk(01:10:34) No highs, no lows, who knows?

There is a reason for hate

Elon Musk(01:09:49) Yeah. Actually I was towing a friend of mine saying, “Would you really want there to be no hate in the world? Really none?” I wonder why hate evolved. I’m not saying we should have…

Elon Musk(01:10:00) I wonder why hate evolved. I’m not saying we should amplify hate, of course, I think we should try to minimize it, but none at all. There might be a reason for hate.

Anti sterile and ossified

Happiness is bad

Elon Musk(01:07:30) Exactly. Is it better to live in a world where everyone is happy all the time, even if that happiness is artificial? It’s good question. This is what I mean. Do you wish for world peace and happiness all the time? Are you sure? Because that might be a society that is essentially sterile and ossified that never changes, that is ultimately doomed.

Elon Musk(01:03:09) Yeah. I mean, it did prompt me to think about just hate in general, which is you want to be careful of one of those things where you wish for something that sounds good, but if you get it’s actually a dystopian situation. So if you wish for world peace sounds good, but how’d it enforced and at what cost eternal peace? It might actually be worse to have eternal peace because of what that would entail. The suppression of everyone, it might be the suppression of progress. It might be an ossified society that never changes. What I’m saying is that there is an argument that if you wish for no war, you should be careful what you wish for because what’s required in order for there to be no war might be worse than a little war.

Jeff Bezos(00:11:19) Earth really is the good planet. It’s amazing. The ecosystem we have here, all of the life and the lush plant life and the water resources, everything. This planet is really extraordinary. And of course, we evolved on this planet, so of course it’s perfect for us, but it’s also perfect for all the advanced life forms on this planet, all the animals and so on. And so, this is a gem. We do need to take care of it. And as we enter the Anthropocene, as we humans have gotten so sophisticated and large and impactful, as we stride across this planet, that is going to… We want to use a lot of energy. We want to use a lot of energy per capita. We’ve gotten amazing things. We don’t want to go backwards.

(00:12:10) If you think about the good old days, they’re mostly an illusion. In almost every way, life is better for almost everyone today than it was say 50 years ago or 100 years ago. We live better lives by and large than our grandparents did, and their grandparents did, and so on. And you can see that in global illiteracy rates, global poverty rates, global infant mortality rates. Almost any metric you choose, we’re better off than we used to be. And we get antibiotics and all kinds of lifesaving medical care, and so on, and so on. And there’s one thing that is moving backwards, and it’s the natural world.

(00:12:54) So, it is a fact that 500 years ago, pre-industrial age, the natural world was pristine. It was incredible. And we have traded some of that pristine beauty for all of these other gifts that we have as an advanced society. And we can have both, but to do that, we have to go to space. And the most fundamental measure is energy usage per capita. You do want to continue to use more and more energy, it is going to make your life better in so many ways, but that’s not compatible ultimately with living on a finite planet. And so, we have to go out into the solar system. And really, you could argue about when you have to do that, but you can’t credibly argue about whether you have to do that.

Jeff Bezos(00:08:54) I would love to see a trillion humans living in the solar system. If we had a trillion humans, we would have, at any given time, 1,000 Mozarts and 1,000 Einsteins. That our solar system would be full of life and intelligence and energy. And we can easily support a civilization that large with all of the resources in the solar system.

Giant space stations

Jeff Bezos(00:09:24) Yeah, the only way to get to that vision is with giant space stations. The planetary surfaces are just way too small. So, I mean, unless you turn them into giant space stations or something. But yeah, we will take materials from the moon and from near-Earth objects and from the asteroid belt and so on, and we’ll build giant O’Neill style colonies and people will live in those. They have a lot of advantages over planetary surfaces. You can spin them to get normal Earth gravity. You can put them where you want them. I think most people are going to want to live near Earth, not necessarily in Earth orbit, but near Earth vicinity orbits. And so, they can move relatively quickly back and forth between their station and Earth. I think a lot of people, especially in the early stages, are not going to want to give up Earth altogether.

Junior vs Senior

Jeff Bezos(01:30:49) Yes, and that’s true inside companies too. And so you want to set up your culture so that the most junior person can overrule the most senior person if they have data. And that really is about trying to… There are little things you can do. So for example, in every meeting that I attend, I always speak last. And I know from experience that if I speak first, even very strong-willed, highly intelligent, high judgment participants in that meeting will wonder, “Well, if Jeff thinks that, I came in this meeting thinking one thing, but maybe I’m not right.” And so you can do little things like if you’re the most senior person in the room, go last, let everybody else go first. In fact, ideally, let’s try to have the most junior person go first and the second and try to go in order of seniority so that you can hear everyone’s opinion in an unfiltered way. Because we really do, we actually literally change our opinions. If somebody who you really respect says something, it makes you change your mind a little.

Science is all about truth telling

Jeff Bezos(01:29:14) Yes, challenging. They can make people defensive even if that’s not the intent. But any high performing organization, whether it’s a sports team, a business, a political organization, an activist group, I don’t care what it is, any high performing organization has to have mechanisms and a culture that supports truth-telling. One of the things you have to do is you have to talk about that. You have to talk about the fact that it takes energy to do that. You have to talk to people, you have to remind people, “It’s okay that it’s uncomfortable.” Literally tell people, “It’s not what we’re designed to do as humans.” It’s kind of a side effect. We can do that, but it’s not how we survive. We mostly survive by being social animals and being cordial and cooperative, and that’s really important.

(01:30:10) And so science is all about truth-telling. It’s actually a very formal mechanism for trying to tell the truth. And even in science, you find that it’s hard to tell the truth. Even you’re supposed to have hypothesis and test it and find data and reject the hypothesis and so on, it’s not easy.

Humans are anti truth

Jeff Bezos(01:28:44) And take you back in time 10,000 years and you’re in a small village. If you go along to get along, you can survive. You can procreate. If you’re the village truth-teller, you might get clubbed to death in the middle of the night. Truths are often… They don’t want to be heard because important truths can be uncomfortable, they can be awkward, they can be exhausting.

The world is always shifting

Proxies for certain metrics?

Which metrics are useful to follow, which aren’t?

Always starting afresh ***

Don’t get trapped by history

Don’t get trapped by dogma

Everyday is a metaphorical birth and rebirth

Don’t be stuck with notions of “self constancy”. Self consistency is also a trap

Everyday,,, carte blanche figure out what you want to do?

Jeff Bezos(01:21:56) It’s really a very simple, and I think age-old idea about renewal and rebirth and every day is day one. Every day you are deciding what you’re going to do and you are not trapped by what you were or who you were or any self-consistency. Self-consistency even can be a trap. And so day one thinking is we start fresh every day and we get to make new decisions every day about invention, about customers, about how we’re going to operate. Even as deeply as what our principles are, we can go back to that. It turns out we don’t change those very often, but we change them occasionally.

(01:22:49) And when we work on programs at Amazon, we often make a list of tenants. And the tenants are… They’re not principles, they’re a little more tactical than principles, but it’s the main ideas that we want this program to embody, whatever those are. And one of the things that we do is we put, “These are the tenets for this program and parentheses.” We always put, “Unless you know a better way.” And that idea, “Unless you know a better way,” is so important because you never want to get trapped by dogma. You never want to get trapped by history. It doesn’t mean you discard history or ignore it. There’s so much value in what has worked in the past, but you can’t be blindly following what you’ve done. And that’s the heart of day one, is you’re always starting afresh.

If you had unlimited funds, what would your ideal gym be and look like?

Hmmm

When I started Amazon, I didn’t have to develop a payment system. It already existed. It was called the credit card. I didn’t have to develop a transportation system to deliver the packages. It already existed. It was called the Postal Service and Royal Mail and Deutsche Post and so on. So all this heavy lifting infrastructure was already in place and I could stand on its shoulders. And that’s why, when you look at the internet …

Easier businesses to do

the challenge right now is driving really hard to get to is to get to rate manufacturing and to do that in an efficient way, again back to our cost point. If you get to rate manufacturing in an inefficient way, you haven’t really solved the cost problem and maybe you haven’t really moved the state of the art forward. All this has to be about moving this state of the art forward. There are easier businesses to do. I always tell people, “Look, if you are trying to make money, start a salty snack food company or something.”

Make the world richer —

Jeff Bezos(00:39:25) Right? And when you invent a better way, you make the whole world richer. So whatever it was, I don’t know how many thousands of years ago, somebody invented the plow. And when they invented the plow, they made the whole world richer because they made farming less expensive. And so it is a big deal to invent better ways. That’s how the world gets richer

Cost reduction —

Jeff Bezos(00:39:18) For sure. What does cost reduction really mean? It means inventing a better way.

Jeff Bezos(00:37:32) There is and we know how to do that. Right now, we’re going to work on manufacturing that second stage to make it as inexpensive as possible, two paths for a second stage, make it reusable or work really hard to make it inexpensive, so you can afford to expend it. And that trade is actually not obvious which one is better.

Jeff Bezos(00:29:10) I mean, when you look at the physics of rocket engines, and also when you look at parasitic mass… Let’s say you have an avionic system, so you have a guidance and control system, that is going to be about the same mass and size for a giant rocket as it is going to be for a tiny rocket. And so, that’s just parasitic mass that is very consequential if you’re building a very small rocket, but is trivial if you’re building a very large rocket. So, you have the parasitic mass thing. And then if you look at, for example, rocket engines have turbo pumps. They have to pressurize the fuel in the oxidizer up to a very high pressure level in order to inject it into the thrust chamber where it burns. And those pumps, all rotating machines, in fact, get more efficient as they get larger. So, really tiny turbo pumps are very challenging to manufacture, and any kind of gaps between the housing, for example, and the rotating impeller that pressurizes the fuel, there has to be some gap there. You can’t have those parts scraping against one another, and those gaps drive inefficiencies. And so, if you have a very large turbo pump, those gaps in percentage terms end up being very small. And so, there’s a bunch of things that you end up loving about having a large rocket and that you end up hating for a small rocket. But there’s a giant exception to this rule, and it is manufacturing. So, manufacturing large structures is very, very challenging. It’s a pain in the butt. And so, if you’re making a small rocket engine, you can move all the pieces by hand, you could assemble it on a table, one person can do it. You don’t need cranes and heavy lift operations and tooling and so on and so on. When you start building big objects, infrastructure, civil infrastructure, just like the launchpad and all this we went and visited, I took you to the launchpad. And you can see it’s so monumental.

Inefficiency is key onto innovation

(00:23:11) I think a lot of people, and they feel like wandering is inefficient. And when I sit down at a meeting, I don’t know how long the meeting is going to take if we’re trying to solve a problem, because if I did, then I’d know there’s some kind of straight line that we’re drawing to the solution. The reality is we may have to wander for a long time. And I do like group invention. I think there’s really nothing more fun than sitting at a whiteboard with a group of smart people and spit balling and coming up with new ideas and objections to those ideas, and then solutions to the objections and going back and forth. So, sometimes you wake up with an idea in the middle of the night and sometimes you sit down with a group of people and go back and forth, and both things are really pleasurable.

Wandering

Jeff Bezos(00:22:26) It’s such a good question, and I honestly don’t know how it works. If I did, I would try to explain it. I know it involves lots of wandering, so when I sit down to work on a problem, I know I don’t know where I’m going. So, to go in a straight line… To be efficient… Efficiency and invention are sort of at odds, because real invention, Not incremental improvement… Incremental improvement is so important in every endeavor, in everything you do, you have to work hard on also just making things a little bit better. But I’m talking about real invention, real lateral thinking that requires wandering, and you have to give yourself permission to wander.

1 of 100

Jeff Bezos(00:20:53) Well, that’s very kind. I’m an inventor. If you want to boil down what I am, I’m really an inventor. And I look at things and I can come up with atypical solutions. And then, I can create 100 such atypical solutions for something, 99 of them may not survive scrutiny, but one of those 100 is like, “Hmm, maybe that might work.” And then, you can keep going from there. So, that kind of lateral thinking, that kind of inventiveness in a high-dimensionality space where the search space is very large, that’s where my inventive skills come… I self-identify as an inventor more than anything else.

Before committing to buying something

GarageBand, Procreate, nomad sculpt, swift playgrounds (iPad)— programming.

From here —

I’ll provide key quotes from Satoshi Nakamoto that reflect on the development and vision of Bitcoin, as per the document:

1. On Bitcoin’s potential: “The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that’s required to make it work.”
2. Regarding security and privacy: “We should have a gentleman’s agreement to postpone the GPU arms race as long as we can for the good of the network.”
3. On development challenges: “The design supports a tremendous variety of possible transaction types that I designed years ago. Escrow transactions, bonded contracts, third party arbitration, multi-party signature, etc.”

These quotes illustrate Satoshi’s foresight into the challenges and possibilities of creating a decentralized digital currency.

To become more “productive“, delete more?

In the short term, it looks bad, and you might have a little bit of friction, but the long run, you will benefit.

Becoming more selfish and greedy?

Greta Gerwig

Greta Gerwig is a prominent figure in contemporary cinema, both in the independent film scene and in mainstream Hollywood. Her work as an actress, screenwriter, and director has garnered critical acclaim and a dedicated following. Here’s a brief overview of her life and career:

• Early Life and Education: Greta Celeste Gerwig was born on August 4, 1983, in Sacramento, California. She grew up in a close-knit family and attended an all-girls Catholic high school. Gerwig then moved to New York to attend Barnard College, where she studied English and philosophy.
• Career Beginnings: Gerwig’s foray into the film industry began in the mumblecore movement, where she collaborated with filmmakers like Joe Swanberg and appeared in several low-budget, independent films. Her performances in movies like “Hannah Takes the Stairs” (2007) and “Nights and Weekends” (2008), which she co-directed with Swanberg, helped establish her as a key figure in indie cinema.
• Breakthrough and Success: Gerwig’s mainstream breakthrough came with her role in “Greenberg” (2010), directed by Noah Baumbach, whom she would later collaborate with on multiple projects and form a personal relationship. Her performance in “Frances Ha” (2012), which she co-wrote with Baumbach, received widespread acclaim and marked her as a significant talent in both acting and writing.
• Directorial Debut: Greta Gerwig made her solo directorial debut with “Lady Bird” (2017), a coming-of-age drama that she also wrote. The film was a critical and commercial success, earning five Academy Award nominations, including Best Director and Best Original Screenplay for Gerwig. This made her the fifth woman ever to be nominated for the Best Director Oscar.
• Continued Success: Gerwig continued her directorial success with “Little Women” (2019), an adaptation of Louisa May Alcott’s classic novel. The film was praised for its fresh perspective, ensemble cast, and direction, earning Gerwig another Academy Award nomination for Best Adapted Screenplay.
• Personal Life: Gerwig has been in a relationship with filmmaker Noah Baumbach since 2011, and they share a son together. The couple has collaborated on several film projects, becoming a power duo in the film industry.
• Influence and Style: Greta Gerwig is known for her distinctive voice in cinema, often focusing on female-driven narratives, nuanced character studies, and themes of self-discovery and personal growth. Her work is characterized by its wit, warmth, and emotional depth, making her one of the most influential figures in modern American cinema.

As of 2023, Gerwig continues to be a vital force in the industry, with her direction of the highly anticipated “Barbie” movie, showcasing her range and versatility as a filmmaker.

Greta Gerwig is an American actress, playwright, screenwriter, and director, known for her work in the independent film industry as well as her contributions to mainstream cinema. As of my last update in April 2023:

• Birthdate: Greta Celeste Gerwig was born on August 4, 1983.
• Age: She would be 40 years old as of 2023.
• Height: She is approximately 5 feet 8 inches (1.73 meters) tall.

Gerwig has received critical acclaim for her directorial work, particularly for films like “Lady Bird” and “Little Women,” showcasing her versatile talent in both storytelling and direction. Her approach often embodies a blend of humor, earnestness, and deeply human storytelling.

MAN OR WOMAN?

Some thoughts:

Menstrual cycle or no menstrual cycle? 

OK this is some super facts:

If your wife, your girlfriend, your partner etc. has a menstrual cycle, certainly you should treat her differently than if the other person did not.

We meant do not have menstrual cycles. Therefore, we should keep ourselves to a different standard than others, vice versa. 

Why do we deny our hormones?

Testosterone vs estrogen; these hormones are critical. If a man did not have testosterone we cannot produce semen or sperm which is potent and could be life and give birth to new generations of children.

Second, if a woman did not have estrogen, ovaries, menstrual cycles, etc.… we cannot beget children. 

The war on children?

I was at the park the other day, and I asked another mom a funny question; “In modern-day society, who do we care for more… children or dogs?” She laughed, joked and said frankly; “Of course dogs! As much as I hate it.”

Also another super annoying thing that I experienced about a year ago when at the Oakland international airport; there was a stupid dog bathroom, but no family bathroom for kids?

Another really annoying thing:

I was out with Seneca, the cutest kid of all time, and there was a stupid dog next to us, and suddenly everyone was fighting over the dog, talking about the dog and complementing the dog, while ignoring Seneca?

You are not allowed to say “I hate dogs“? 

A weird thing in modern day Society; modern day society has become extremely tolerant of dogs, but not children?

It seems in modern day society you are no longer permitted to say “I hate dogs”– but you can say “I hate kids”?

***

Individualism taken to an extreme? 

Some strange layers I see here: 

1. First, it looks like this extremely strange transgender, transsexual, trend has to deal with the fact that people no longer care about children or kids. Let us consider if you’re a man and you want to do a sex change to become a woman, or vice versa etc.; typically, there is this trend that people who decide to do this don’t want to have kids. No this is not always true because you can have a man man, woman man, transgender, transgender, trans man, trans woman, any sort of combination, single parent etc. who could have kids… If they are adopted? But still… Early enough in the chain line and the chain-link you need a man and a woman to get a child.

Why do we deny hormones?

Also, it seems the trend is for some reason, we want to deny hormones. We want to all pretend like testosterone doesn’t exist, estrogen doesn’t exist, and that for some weird reason, our personal individuality matters more?

we are anti-steroids… But for some reason we support sexual changes via hormone therapy?

Once again modern day society is very weird and strange; we are not consistent. 

For example, there is a general consensus in America and beyond that hormones, steroids are bad. Everybody knows this. And I think it is a good thing;

Steroids shrinker balls in your testes, and it might cause irreplaceable harm where you cannot have children in the future.

Or even funnier yet;

if you are a bodybuilder hopped up on steroids, you could have the most impressive muscles in the physique, but the second you bed a beautiful woman, you can’t even get it up!

Kind of an unrelated note; apparently this is where cocaine is really bad; if you take cocaine, a man gets impotence and can’t get it up unless he takes Viagra instead?

These degenerates!

Why this matters 

So it looks like this weird hijacking of society has to deal with feminism, a little bit of masculinity, etc.

First, I looked at modern-day man and woman, and it is becoming very strange;

First, all of these men are all of them are these short, loser, skinny, kind of fit, and or skinny fat guys, who want to get all these beautiful women, and the women tend to be much more impressive; much more fit healthier, stronger and more muscular.

I have always been a feminist

“I’m a feminist,,, I love women!” – haha, joke to my friend Stephanie as an undergraduate at UCLA, age 20, junior year studying sociology, — sociology of the family class (essentially a woman’s study course)

Being raised to more or less a single mother, I think I have always been a feminist and cared for women. Even my younger sister who is two years younger than you, I have always treated her like a tomboy. From an early age I encouraged her to lift weights, do whatever she wanted, to defy typical gender norms.

Similarly speaking, if I was born a girl or a woman, certainly I wouldn’t want anybody to tell me what I could do or what I could not do based on my gender or sex or whatever.

But, there is this very very strange and bizarre trend in which a man is no longer allowed to be a man?

This is the problem:

A man and a woman, both have different hormones… and everyone uses themselves as their own reference point.

Therefore as a consequence, both sexes become confused about the other. 

For example, the typical commentary from men is that we often complain that women are not rational, too emotional, etc. The misguided thought is “why can’t they think like us or be like us?” But is this something we really desire?

Conversely, women don’t like men the way they are; women wants man to become more feminine; to be more compassionate, understanding, open minded etc.

Even Friedrich Nietzsche once said that Christianity was essentially a feminine religion, or a religion for women,,, whereas at least he praised Mohammadism (Islam)– the prophet Mohamed for being a male, masculine religion.

***

Why does this bother me?

Some issues at hand:

First, I feel like there is becoming this weird double standard. For example, as a man, I am given weird looks sideways plant is for walking around with my shirt off, or wearing short shorts, or essentially wearing a speedo in public. But the same time, it is 100% OK for women to walk around in Pants, biking shorts, have yoga shorts or whatever which essentially shows off all of their feminine parts?

The nuance is women are not permitted to show their nipples or their breasts in public. I think in America or California at least; it is illegal for a woman to walk around without a shirt on. But certain ways that I have seen women side skirt this  is by wearing a loose fitting white cotton ribbed tank top without a bra on, in which you could essentially see their breasts and their nipples underneath.

And trippy told, I think America’s weird; in a lot of indigenous cultures, Africa etc., it is totally normal for women to walk around bare chested. I think in America we have this weird sexual perversion with women, in which there is the strange dichotomy:

on one hand, we follow these quaker protestant ethics that a woman should be prim and proper, cover-up and be lady like, but in secret, men, I think at least 99.9% of men watch porn, either daily, every other day, certainly at least once a week, once a month, once a year?

I have never met another man who doesn’t watch porn

I quit watching porn around 2017, not because it was more realistically bad, I think I was just too busy. I was too busy in my thoughts, studying philosophy etc., I wonder if 99% of men simply watch porn because they are bored. Porn is just entertainment for men.

Also, what do people do in public versus private?

Zoom mishaps

Do you remember in the early days of Covid in which everyone switch to zoom? There was this very funny story about an older Caucasian male professor, I think he was teaching the history of East Asia or something, and he was doing a screen share, opened up a Google Chrome tab, And he was trying to access the website like “sacred histories of east Asia” or something,,, and it automatically auto filled to “sexyAsiancollegegirls.com”– haha! Yeah I’m pretty sure he lost his job quickly after that.

The hard and the tricky thing is that at least with men, it is impossible to know who they really are, what they really think what their behaviors truly are, unless you know what they do in private. It is impossible to know.

“What do you think of Maria Ozawa”?

Another funny meme; just ask another guy, if they know who Maria Ozawa is. If this guy is Caucasian, Asian, Asian American etc.… Essentially Maria Ozawa was a famous Japanese adult video star, originally born in Canada, half Canadian Caucasian half Japanese I believe; very popular.

I wouldn’t trust any man who preaches women’s rights or whatever, who secretly watches porn in private.

Does Mark Zuckerberg watch porn?

Also

Does Elon Musk watch porn? Certainly yes. He jokes about all the time, “Google doesn’t care about what porn you watch”.

Also, does Jeff Bezos watch porn? Probably. Just watch the video interview with him recently with Lex FridmanРhe is so insanely jacked, look at the vein popping out of his bicep! He is 59 years old, and it looks like he has high testosterone. The problem with a man in his position is that he is not allowed to just pick up any random woman, because he is such a high profile figure. also just read the medium article post expos̩ in which he on his own dirty emails and correspondence with that one TV female personality, it looks like he is a sleuth.

Apple Vision Pro?

Not to digress too much; but a funny thought; what percentage of guys who bought the Apple Vision Pro is curious or and or has used it to watch a virtual reality, 3D porn? 

What changes when you have a kid

I have a young boy, Seneca is currently three years old. Being around adults, and being a man and the father figure, certain things which I actually am uncomfortable with:

1. Cursing: it just seems improper. Being with him around me all the time, he is finally getting to that point in which she is mimicking me, mimicking my speech patterns, and rehashing what I say. As a consequence, I realize that I have to be very careful about my tongue, And rewrite the way I just generally really talk.  Typically we have a front stage self in a backstage self; I want both to be consistent. Or another words, I never want to do or write or say anything in private, that I am not comfortable having Seneca read or no, same thing with Cindy.

The brain is plastic

Also another big thing that people don’t really talk about, is how plastic the brain is. Essentially what that means is the reason why we should never use Instagram, YouTube, or allow our children to use it is that it reprograms your plastic brain in strange ways.

“What’s an Instagram?”

The other day we were in West LA, and Cindy did this “solid core“ Pilates style workout,  and on the wall was this poster of all of the 12 or so instructors, their personal biographies etc. and at the bottom, there was this column in which they could share their Instagram handle. I was curious; was there anyone there who didn’t have an Instagram or shared? No. Everyone did.

Even though in LA, whenever I meet random strangers, the first question they always ask me is what my Instagram is at the end? I told them I don’t have one, and I just give them my phone number and first and last name instead.

Who will the future belong to?

I’m actually kind of excited; once all of the baby boomers, Gen X, Jen why etc. couples without children, who just own dogs, no children… Once they all die off, who will be the next emperors of the planet? Our kids!

America is in for a big problem

in the Jeff Bezos interview with Lex Fridman, they briefly discuss the notion of the 10,000 year clock, in which they created a mechanical clock nested somewhere in a desert cave which is purely mechanical, and will last for the next 10,000 years, as a consequence, the general metaphor is for us to think more long-term. For us to think more long-term; Jeff Bezos correctly predicts that 10,000 years from now, America won’t be around anymore. He is probably right. These are the big problems:

First, all of these really really rich and successful people, people on top of these big tag companies, it seems that they don’t really have any kids; maybe one kid, maybe zero kids, maybe a dog. Who is having children in America? Suburban families in Irvine, and poor Mexican people and immigrant families.

Thinking about the next generation

Something that Americans are really poor about; thinking about the next generation, the next generation of wealth etc.

We give all this lip service about intergenerational wealth whatever, but… Isn’t the most intelligent thing to literally think about the next generation, not in metaphor but our kids?

I thought the other day; when all the baby boomers die, all of the Gen X die, and also once all the millennials die, Seneca and his generation of kids, they will be the next rulers of the planet.

Because once again, all these people who don’t have kids and just have dogs ,,, eventually, when they die off, there are no longer there. I’m actually curious, if you’re a super rich executive at one of these big tech companies, and once you die, what happens to all of your wealth? Let us say you have 10 million, 100 million, 1 billion, $10 billion in the bank; once you’re dead, where will it go?

Just do you

I think the simple thoughts:

1. Leave other people alone. If they want to change their gender sex, takes steroids or do hormone replacement therapy, let them be. Why do we care what other people do?

I think the nuance is this; when people start to superimpose their value judgments upon you and or your kids.

“I love their hair!”

Very weird happening; the other day I was at Apple Store, and a very friendly apple employee, look like an Asian American young woman, maybe in her 20s mid 20s, looked at Seneca with his cool haircut and said “I love their hair!”

It struck me a little aback. At first, I was a little bit confused, I wasn’t quite certain what they were talking about.  I then realized that that moment, maybe the employee didn’t know whether Seneca was a boy or a girl, and simply referred to Seneca as “they” or “their”. Now this doesn’t really bother me that much, but I’m just starting to see a strange shift in our lexical language.

“Partner”

Another funny happening; a few years ago, maybe four or five years ago, I was in downtown LA, at my favorite coffee shop (ilcafe on broadway) and I was chopping it up with one of the workers there, this is before Seneca was born. I introduced Cindy as “my partner“ (Bay Area early woke talk–) and the young guy looked a bit confused paused and said… “Business partner? Or…” then Cindy interrupts and says and jokes “No. Sexual partner”. Haha we all laughed.

The tricky thing about this term “partner” is tricky because it can mean a lot of things:

1. Boyfriend, girlfriend, married man, married woman, gay partner lesbian partner LGBTQ partner etc.

As a consequence, it is an easy catch all term, to just refer to your significant other.

The reason why I find this term a bit problematic is that there are degrees here;

It is very very very very different if you are married versus not. 

No at least in California, I believe that same-sex marriage is legalized now, but still… I think there are some people who are in very very serious long-term relationships who end up not deciding to get married. Which is fine, I understand the whole anti-marriage sentiment, but still… I am pro monogamy, pro marriage. Of course, I am pro gay, pro lesbian, pro LGBTQ.

But I think the issue is that if we use the same term to refer both to boyfriend and girlfriend as partner, and or a married couple… This hierarchy loses its meaning. We must reestablish hierarchy.

This weird bias about polygamy?

Some thing I am very anti-is polygamy; the idea of having multiple wives, girlfriends boyfriends, partners, sexual partners or not sexual etc. This is another problem in American society; we don’t know what we want, and we don’t like closing doors, so we want infinite optionality.

Let us consider even in ancient Greece, ancient Greek mythology. Zeus and Hera. Husband and wife, king and queen on the throne. Certainly Zeus is the bad guy because he goes around sleeping with other mortals, sea nymphs whatever…  but still at the end today, in theory we could understand Zeus and Hera as married couple.

Marriage is important, is ancient and it goes back.

The big problem with polygamy, multiple marriages etc., even as a man; it is just too much stress and annoyance. It is difficult enough for a man to handle a single woman, let alone 2, 3 or more?

Is stoicism a philosophy only for men? 

First of all, I think store is for everybody. Man or woman, cat or dog whatever; I think it is a school of thought in the methodology I believe could benefit everybody.

I think this is the tricky thing:

A man should treat a woman differently than he would treat another man.

Specifically, I think a man should treat a woman with more privilege, more tolerance and patience than another man. 

And this is where the sexism comes in:

As long as a man does not have a menstrual cycle and doesn’t go through hormonal shifts like a woman, a man should always treat a woman with more privilege.

Why are we so hush-hush about hormonal shifts, ovulation cycles, menstrual cycles?

I have a younger sister, but still as a young boy growing up, teenager etc., I was very confused and I had no idea about having a period, ovulation cycles, how it all worked etc.

I actually have a vivid memory, the only young vivid memory I had is his child regarding my mom, I think my mom still had a period and a menstrual cycle, and she accidentally leaked in the bed with the white sheets, and I remember my dad yelling at my mom about it, my mom being very embarrassed about it.

As a consequence, in America at least my generation, born in 1988, we had this weird sexual education in which sex was stigmatized; abstinence was what was taught in school, we were shown all the scary images of STDs, STI’s, etc.; in the general ideas that if you have sex, doesn’t matter if protected or not, with or without a condom doesn’t matter… You might catch HIV AIDS and die. 

Also, it didn’t really help being raised Catholic, confusion, Korean American, in confusion cultures, these Asian cultures, certainly Catholicism, sex is seen and treated as being evil, not to be trusted etc. 

Sex positivity is a good idea

Why is flexing, flexing or muscles seen as poor taste?

Am I the last masculine person alive?

Even when I would go to the gym, all of these guys… Doesn’t matter if they were super strong or jacked or whatever… I didn’t really consider these guys as masculine? Why? Too dark in Marose, perpetually having a frown on their face, always having Headphones or AirPods on, antisocial, weird behaviors?

Real men, outside smiling, topless, joking and chatting with each other, shooting the shit.

In fact one of my fondest memories was early Covid when all the gyms were closed, and I would just go to the local park and do calisthenics and meet all these other guys and just talk shop with them.

What is the problem here?

My personal take is that the problem is this weird mole people philosophy to life, too much time spent indoors.

Being indoors promotes antisocial behavior

Something else I have discovered is that being indoors is bad. At the gym, which is an enclosed indoor space, people are strangely antisocial. However if you work out at the park, in the great outdoors, etc.… People are much friendlier and happier.

The solution:

Build more outdoor gyms?

We off the grid grid grid!

A simple solution and suggestion I have is this:

Build your own outdoor gym!

 I currently live in LA, unfortunately I have two parking spots. One of them I parked my Prius, the other one I store my weightlifting equipment and my squat stand, and I just workout there. 

This is great for many reasons:

1. I save time. Even 10 minutes, five minutes, 13-14 or 15 minutes stuck in traffic driving somewhere to the gym, is time better spent working out by myself at home.
2.  Better for your health: maybe there is something to be said about having access to fresh air. Asian people believe in moving circulating fresh air, how it is critical for health and well-being. Traditional homes in Asian homes, they are always a little bit cold, in Korean Japan; the walls are made out of parchment paper, which allow air to float in and out, and I think there is a greater culture that one must be subjected to the elements, homes are both indoor outdoor places.

Less activation energy

Another great upside of working out at home, is that there is less activation energy. A lot of people don’t exercise or work out because going to the gym seems like it is too much friction. Another thing I learned from Jeff Bezos is this infamous “buy it now” or “one click buy” concepts; if you reduce the friction to buy something, it makes life easier.

For example, it is important for people to buy stuff, and I think and I believe that Amazon prime is a massive net plus to society. 

So perhaps the great upside of working at a home, I think for optimal health should lift weights every day, at least once a day? Maybe even twice a day?

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Media and bad feelings?

Maybe one of the big problems here is media. Media and bad feelings and emotions, over sentimental emotions?

For example, I was actually very very very curious about the Barbie movie, thinking of it like a good sociological watch, just like watching the matrix, 3.0.

However the big problem even watching that scene where Barbie goes into the real world and talks to the little girl Sasha; really really bad emotions and feelings here.

I actually wonder, if so much of modern day life, is ruined and bastardized by the fact that people watch all these shows and movies and stuff, which actually promotes anger, bad feelings, etc.?

What is the solution?

The simply thought is don’t watch media, don’t let your kids watch any media. It really messes them up.

Whether you have a boy or a girl doesn’t matter; movies are evil?

Who is the Director?

I know the thing that people don’t really think about and consider; ultimately, when you watch a film or a movie or whatever, it ends up being a magnification or a metaphor, the brainchild of the Director?

Therefore, a simple heuristic:

Before watching any sort of movie, film, cinema, TV show series whatever… First do research on who the Director the producer is, and then work your way backwards.

If the philosophy or political thinking of the Director or the producer or the creator is not in line with your own personal set of beliefs, then don’t watch it or consume it.

What does the Director or the producer look like?

Looks matter. Height physiology, facial morphology etc.

Google is Clickbait?

A new pro tip, in order to avoid getting suckered by Google, Google images, which is essentially all Clickbait at the end of the day,  just use flicker, flicker.com and use the little search icon when searching celebrities directors famous people etc. Try to get full body shots, and ideally, try to witness certain things:

Their height, their physiology, their body fat percentage, their muscle mass, what their face looks like.

For example, only beautiful people could produce beautiful artwork and films. 

If the producer, artist, Director is somebody you do not consider as beautiful, don’t watch read it or consume it.

Ugly in face, ugly in soul (Plato?)

Monstro in animo, monstro in face?

Creating your ideal or being the ideal?

 one of my favorite directors of all time is Zack Snyder, who produced the new Superman, the new Batman man, Justice Lee, as well as the original 300 movie. I rate the movie 300 as one of the best films of all time.

Something very interesting I found and discovered Zach Snyder is actually pretty short, only 5 foot seven? King Leonidas, Gerald Butler is maybe 6 foot one or something, so this is what I think: 

We create our own ideals.

 Therefore my cyclone Alicis is when Zack Snyder is creating a film, he is creating an idealized version of what he wishes he was.

For example as a kid, I grew up watching Johnny bravo, as well as being really into Arnold Schwarzenegger, in fact, it was always my personal ambition to be like the terminator, like Arnold. I’m around 5 foot 10 1/2, 5 foot 11; people always think I am shorter because I am Asian, which is essentially low-key racism.

---

Now what?

Easy; become your own ideal!

ERIC

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EK

Some thoughts:

Menstrual cycle or no menstrual cycle? 

OK this is some super facts:

if your wife, your girlfriend, your partner etc. has a menstrual cycle, certainly you should treat her differently than if the other person did not.

Why do we deny our hormones?

Testosterone versus estrogen; these hormones are critical. If a man did not have testosterone we cannot produce semen or sperm which is potent and could be life and give birth to new generations of children.

Second, if a woman did not have estrogen, ovaries, menstrual cycles, etc.… we cannot beget children. 

The war on children?

I was at the park the other day, and I asked another mom a funny question; “in modern-day society, who do we care for more… Children or dogs?” She laughed, joked and said frankly; “of course dogs! As much as I hate it.”

Some strange layers I see here: 

1. First, it looks like this extremely strange transgender, transsexual, trend has to deal with the fact that people no longer care about children or kids. Let us consider if you’re a man and you want to do a sex change to become a woman, or vice versa etc.; typically, there is this trend that people who decide to do this don’t want to have kids. No this is not always true because you can have a man man, woman man, transgender, transgender, trans man, trans woman, any sort of combination, single parent etc. who could have kids… If they are adopted? But still… Early enough in the chain line and the chain-link you need a man and a woman to get a child.

Why do we deny hormones?

Also, it seems the trend is for some reason, we want to deny hormones. We want to all pretend like testosterone doesn’t exist, estrogen doesn’t exist, and that for some weird reason, our personal individuality matters more?

we are anti-steroids… But for some reason we support sexual changes via hormone therapy?

Once again modern day society is very weird and strange; we are not consistent. 

For example, there is a general consensus in America and beyond that hormones, steroids are bad. Everybody knows this. And I think it is a good thing;

Steroids shrinker balls in your testes, and it might cause irreplaceable harm where you cannot have children in the future.

Or even funnier yet;

if you are a bodybuilder hopped up on steroids, you could have the most impressive muscles in the physique, but the second you bed a beautiful woman, you can’t even get it up!

Kind of an unrelated note; apparently this is where cocaine is really bad; if you take cocaine, a man gets impotence and can’t get it up unless he takes Viagra instead?

These degenerates!



UNIQLO, MUJI?

MY TECHNIQUE

VLOG

THE ERIC KIM SCHOOL OF GREATNESS:

Why is everyone such a loser?

“I love your Prius!”

Maybe it is a virtue to be insanely stubbornly tied in, bought in,,, and into your own designs, creations, innovations?

Don’t live in limbo?

limbus— border, hanging.

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Large language models as discoveries

Large language models are much more like discoveries. We’re constantly getting surprised by their capabilities. They’re not really engineered objects.

Brains are plastic

Jeff Bezos(01:42:45) A hundred percent and you can feel your brain. Brains are plastic and you can feel your brain getting reprogrammed. I remember the first time this happened to me was when Tetris who’d first came on the scene. Anybody who’s been a game player has this experience where you close your eyes to lay down to go to sleep and you see all the little blocks moving and you’re kind of rotating them in your mind and you can just tell as you walk around the world that you have rewired your brain to play Tetris. But that happens with everything. I think we still have yet to see the full repercussions of this, I fear, but I think one of the things that we’ve done online and largely because of social media is we have trained our brains to be really good at processing super short form content.

(01:43:52) Your podcast flies in the face of this. You do these long format things.

Cognitive load

Jeff Bezos(01:40:17) Yes. So that particular thing is probably a solution to a number of paper cuts. So if you go back and look at our order pipeline and how people shopped on Amazon before we invented 1-Click shopping, there was more friction. There was a whole series of paper cuts and that invention eliminated a bunch of paper cuts. And I think you’re absolutely right by the way, that when you come up with something like 1-Click shopping, again, this is so ingrained in people now, I’m impressed that you even notice it. Most people-

Bezos is 59–

You will be 59 years old in 23 years.

Lex Fridman is the GOAT

On Death

Jeff Bezos(02:09:32) No. I used to be afraid of death. I did. I remember as a young person being very scared of mortality, didn’t want to think about it, and so on. And as I’ve gotten older, I’m 59 now, as I’ve gotten older, somehow that fear has sort of gone away. I would like to stay alive for as long as possible, but I’m really more focused on health span. I want to be healthy. I want that square wave. I want to be healthy, healthy, healthy, and then gone. I don’t want the long decay. And I’m curious. I want to see how things turn out. I’d like to be here. I love my family and my close friends, and I’m curious about them, and I want to see. So I have a lot of reasons to stay around, but mortality doesn’t have that effect on me that it did maybe when I was in my twenties.

Bezos and Fridman—

(02:07:56) We need to start training ourselves to think longer term. Long-term thinking is a giant lever. You can literally solve problems if you think long-term, that are impossible to solve if you think short-term. And we aren’t really good at thinking long-term. Five years is a tough timeframe for most institutions to think past. And we probably need to stretch that to 10 years and 15 years and 20 years and 25 years, and we’d do a better job for our children or our grandchildren if we could stretch those thinking horizons. And so the clock, in a way, it’s an art project, it’s a symbol. And if it ever has any power to influence people to think longer term, that won’t happen for hundreds of years, but we are going to build it now and let it accrue the patina of age.

Lex Fridman(02:08:52) Do you think humans will be here when the clock runs out here on earth?

Jeff Bezos(02:08:56) I think so. But the United States won’t exist. Whole civilizations rise and fall. 10,000 years is so long. No nation state has ever survived for anywhere close to 10,000 years.

Photos as art and art works … less for “memory” creation

The goal — not money or technology!

Once you’re on top of the world , then what?