Eric Jorgensen
Appearances
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
He wrote a book called The Network State that is like about some of the challenges that the modern sort of nation states are in and like the way bureaucracy really comes to constrain technological advancement.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
And what I think is the most important idea is like the fundamental moral importance of technology and seeing all of history through this lens of new technologies, unlocking new opportunities, improving lives all over the world, changing the sort of geopolitical moment slowly over time and That lens that biology taught me really is also, I think, quite a helpful answer to what you shared before.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
Why are some people just unwilling to see change or embrace change? And working on that biology book and following him for so long showed me that. There is a technological frontier in every single industry, and those who prosper are almost always close to that technological frontier.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
And that there's so much to be gained, even in a small business as an individual operator, by embracing technology and moving closer to that frontier. I mean, technology fundamentally is a way of doing more with less, and there's always opportunities there.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
I mean, there are so many reasons to that. Like, that it's... I think everyone gets to kind of pick their own. I think there can be a very selfish reason to be optimistic, which is just it feels good.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
Like you are happier every day if you walk on the sunny side of the street, if you focus on the opportunities that are new and exciting and find reasons to look forward to the future, of which there are many. I think there's a lot of...
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
I could also make a pretty strong argument, I think, and this is sort of where we get to David Deutsch that Naval has helped popularize, which is like, optimism is a moral imperative. You know, there's some extent to which, you know, when you're doing rally driving, the the advice is always like the car will go where you're looking.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
I had been following Naval for maybe 10 years. I really resonated with even his very early stuff, writing at Venture Hacks. He was one of the early bloggers about the game theory of venture capital and talking about Silicon Valley back in the 2000s, basically. So I'd followed him for a long time for his startup stuff and watching his following grow as he sort of achieved all of his goals.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
So even if you're skidding towards a tree, just keep looking down the road and the car will end up there. Like your body knows what to do. And I think that's, that applies to like at a civilizational level. Like if you remain optimistic with a light dose of paranoia about our real problems and addressing them.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
But if you believe, if you manifest dystopia by focusing on the negative and the tensions and the challenges and the, you know, the things that basically make headlines every day, you'll miss the fact that things have been getting better steadily for almost all of human history and everything. I mean, look, look at what we're doing right now.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
Like we're sitting in a heated and or air conditioned building, well fed, well clothed, recording on absolute alchemy device that is computer and zero margin digital products and making a podcast that will preserve this hour of our time for thousands, tens of thousands, millions of people like years into the future. It's fucking crazy.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
Like we forget that we are surrounded by miracles that are the fruit of labor and sacrifice of life.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
millennia of our ancestors um and we are so grateful we are so lucky to have be alive right now in this moment and we owe it to all the future generations to continue that progress you know there's there are parallel universes where we are all like wearing loincloths and scrabbling around stabbing each other to eat moss off a rock like there's a lot of
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
dark and terrible things in our past and a lot of bright and beautiful things in our future. And I think it's very important, like the other through line of these three people is that they are very well studied historically. They are optimistic about the future because they understand the past.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
And understanding the past gives them a different lens on the present than the media is going to present or than... If you just consume the news or the feed or the social media, what you're going to see. Biology talks about this a lot. There's a great whole section on truth and the media's sort of, and the incentives that they have to...
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
not necessarily be truth-seeking or wide lens historical perspective um to today's information but when you do that and when you follow people like naval apology and elon you become you gain a little broader of a lens you become naturally more optimistic um i've always i feel like i've been that way i've been attracted to people and minds who
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
feel that way also and i feel like joy and compulsion to share that that perspective with others especially when um you know people feel feel stuck or feel trapped or feel like the future is going to be dark i feel like they're just wearing blinders that they can just take off by focusing on different ideas
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
like business goals and then turning to a little bit more of a like philosophical.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
Yeah. I mean this, um, the perspective that you get from studying history, I think is so useful and valuable. It makes you appreciate every day. It makes you appreciate what you get to do. Um, like I feel like insurance is probably often a, um, you know, not treated as like the sexiest, most exciting. No, it's never treated that way.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
Well, yeah. But like, broadening the lens to be like if you live in a time and place where you get the privilege to sell insurance you are in the top fraction of a fraction of a percent of wonderful times and places to live in all of human history because it is an absolute luxury product that is a sign of a very advanced civilization that cares about
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
socializing risks and pain and supporting people who are less fortunate. And that is an important and respectable thing that a lot of people don't appreciate the role that it plays, I think. But it also means you have a much better job than basically any other human who ever lived in history, who died either farming or fighting. And there's just so much to be grateful for.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
Yeah. Like Shane Parrish called him the angel philosopher and like that podcast he did on the knowledge project. Uh, I think it's one of the greatest podcast episodes of all time. Um, and that was really the like inspiration for me to write this book cause I was thinking about all the people that I'd learned so much from. And I like Munger, I like Buffett.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
That's the past-looking perspective. The forward-looking perspective is we often lack the imagination to see how much change can happen, even in the rest of our lifetimes, let alone... that we are participating in building the foundation of cathedrals that we can't even imagine over a few hundred year time span.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
There are people who are maybe closer to those sexy places like SpaceX that are very obviously building the future, but we are also all part of the sort of substrate that supports those people and creates the civilization that keeps expanding those frontiers.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
It just makes me very proud to like be a human, especially an American human, and continue to move forward with these good ideas about optimism and civilization and engineering and truth seeking. And, you know, how lucky are we to be alive when, you know, these things are getting developed. And I know you're deep down the Deutsch rabbit hole.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
Um, but I will like underline that as being, you know, he's also a very interesting read. Uh, you know, probably like if Naval is one Oh one, um, Deutsch is two Oh one or three Oh one. It's a little more difficult of a course. He's much more, he's a little bit more academic of a writer, but his interviews are incredible. His ideas are important. Um, it's a very, um,
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
philosophically robust approach to optimism uh and over a very long time horizon and it also will make you very proud to be a human and proud to be an american and proud to be a part of continuing to advance like our understanding of the universe
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
And to me, Naval is very much like in the spirit of Munger in a lot of ways, but with a really modern sort of like techno-utopian like valley essence to him that like really jived with how I see the world.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
I just saw a tweet from Naval yesterday in response to someone who was sort of asking about that. Like, hey, I'm rich and I'm successful, but I'm miserable and I don't feel like I have a purpose or meaning to my life. And Naval's tweet was like, kids, God, mission. Choose one or more than one, but the meaning of life is the meaning that you give it.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
And we as a society, I think the numbers of devout believers in any religion, it just has a trend, seem to be going down, at least in America. That's, I think, one source of multi-generational thinking. I think another is family and specifically the family multi-generational structure, maybe even living together or very near multiple generations of family.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
probably particularly if they overlap and you have kids younger, like that, that trend has been, we've had the reverse of that trend recently, but I think that's easier to have this sort of, um, feel a little more insular. The other thing is I think there's, um, a lot of selection around the media.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
Like I, I really wish like Marshall McLuhan was still alive and to get like his take on social media, like how extreme this has gotten just like, Not even – every new medium of sort of media like kicks off a new panic of like nobody's reading books anymore. Now they're all reading newspapers.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
Like there was a legitimate panic about that when newspapers became like the predominant technology of the day. And so there's some extent to which like there's always alarm about it. But I do – there is some real – the combination of –
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
our natural sort of psychological bias towards the negative with really, really high turnover, social media, um, and like very just of the moment feeds creates this really both a negativity and sort of a focus on the moment that pulls you out of that, the lens that we've been talking about, both the historical and the, you know, what are we contributing to over multiple generations that is
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
that gives my life and my work day to day meaning, you know, how do you see yourself in the broader lens of what you're contributing to?
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
I think we get a lot of joy out of service and being useful in our communities and however you want to define community and however you want to define useful, but trying to hide from that fact or pursue satisfaction in ways that are not, you know, utility and community are,
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
not well proven in history and, you know, might prove to just be detours or distractions along your way to finding something satisfying.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
Yeah, there's a great book that we just published at Scribe by a leader who's been the CEO of two different Fortune 500 companies. And he started, you know, a very self-made man, incredible sort of lessons. This is his, like, I'm going to give my lessons back to the community book. And he spends the whole first half of the book talking about the inner game.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
and how to not just, yes, obviously pay attention to your health, sleep well, like to perform at a high level in the world of business, you have to understand your inner game. And going in to that book, I thought it was gonna be like, yeah, drink water, you know, exercise, sleep well. It's actually, there is that, there is also a lot of
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
finding a positive relationship to your work, finding meaning, not just for yourself, but also creating it for the others around you.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
And it was a huge part of his philosophy as a leader and the stories that he told about successfully leading organizations were about imbuing the things that this company or this team was already doing with a new sense of meaning and a positive emotional relationship with that work.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
And they're incredible stories, and he's a visionary in that way, but I share this to say, this does not mean that you have to flip the table, have a midlife crisis, and go join the clergy or the Peace Corps or whatever. You can find a meaningful significance in what you are already doing if you just change the context around it, if you change your relationship to it.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
The old parable about there's two brick layers, and one is just laying bricks, and one is building a cathedral. And all of the work that almost all of us are doing, some bureaucrats excluded and grifters excluded, is part of building this incredible future for humanity. And that's how I've started to see my work and my wide variety of projects is just growing.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
contributing to a brighter future for humanity and our civilization. Seeing humanity as this gift that is the only consciousness we're aware of in the universe to date and doing everything that we can to perpetuate that. Are we inherently good?
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
yes like i think humanity is inherently good and if we expand our understanding of ourselves our understanding of the universe and continue to do um grow ourselves like that is an inherently good pursuit and a mission that we are all a part of whether you know intentionally or not we can use that to sort of shape our relationship with the things that we do
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
Sure, yeah. So Scribe is the leading professional publisher. So it's kind of a new breed that basically does the opposite of what traditional publishing does. Our belief is that authors should have complete control over their book, their rights, their royalties, and all the final creative decisions.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
A lot of people don't realize that when you enter the machine of traditional publishing, you actually give up all of your rights and all your creative decisions. You sort of become... You don't even own your IP anymore. You don't control your pricing. You don't control any of those things.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
And that may have made sense 100, 150 years ago, but given where we are now with Amazon and print-on-demand and social media... it's so many authors having direct control of their own audience or direct connections with their own audience.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
What authors really want is control over their book and the full upside of their work that they've spent years in many cases, creating this, this community around. Um, so we help entrepreneurs, executives, creators, speakers, coaches, uh, for the most part, right, publish and market their books. Um, and our model is the opposite of, of what they, the sort of traditional publishers do.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
We get paid for our work and our expertise a flat rate, and then authors make all the final creative decisions, keep 100% of their rights and royalties, and get to do whatever they want with their book forever.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
Yeah, I mean, he's an incredible sort of distiller of truth. You know, like he'll get things down to a very principled level. Like when I was writing this book, I really thought, you know, there'd be a thousand of all nerds like me who would really love it.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
And it keeps books from getting trapped in that kind of netherworld of, oh, it didn't earn out your advance, you've been going out of print, and you don't really have control, but you can't buy your rights back. It's just this whole messy thing that a lot of people don't talk about. But
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
this company was started maybe 10 years ago by, uh, Tucker, Tucker Max, um, and Zach Obron, who Tucker was an incredible author and Zach's an incredible operator. And they, they built this up into a great company. I mean, they really pioneered this category.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
And I think especially 10 years ago, seeing where publishing was going and that this was the future of it, I think it was absolutely visionary. And, uh, about, uh, a couple of years ago, two, three years ago now, they stepped back and the person who took over that company did not run it at the standard that the founders did, sort of to put it lightly.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
Tucker's written a lot about this and there's some amazing, I mean, like nobody writes a business post-mortem like Tucker Max. He really writes about some of the journeys that the people involved go on in a way that I think is incredibly fascinating. It just makes for an interesting story. But I was an author who got caught up in sort of the the turbulent times that Scribe went through in 2023.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
And I'm a huge believer in this company. I think this is the future of publishing. I published both of my books with them and I've been a fan of the company. And so when they went through hard times, I was like, oh man, I know people who buy companies. This is an interesting one. I love the team. I had a life-changing experience as a customer. Maybe I can help out.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
So I started making some phone calls and I found a team with the right experience to basically buy the IP from the company and hire over the team and restart a new company that just ensured that the good that Scribe did didn't get drugged down by the bad of this interim leader. And so we're a year and a half after that transition now.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
So I kind of took a strange side door into becoming CEO of this publishing company. But it's such a dream to work with authors and get to help shape books and ensure that people reach their visions.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
It blows my mind that we've now sold like a million copies and there's, you know, yoga teachers in Bali and like moms and little brothers reading it. Like that's so awesome. And I think it's a testament to how you know, if you really... articulate a principle. Well, it's universally applicable and it sort of feels right to almost anybody who picks it up.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
We have this sort of meritocratic approach to who's publishing books and what ideas are getting out there and that people can really control their message and use their book to achieve whatever their goals are. A lot of people come in trying to impact... a very specific issue or reach a specific community or, or just grow their business.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
You know, for some people it's, uh, it is very explicitly like a credibility and authority and like, I want to own this space. I want to be this guy or girl, and I want to be known for this thing. And there's no better way to do that than to like write the definitive great book on the topic. And so we, um, we do a lot of that with, uh, with a wide variety of people.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
Yeah, the fear is a good indicator. Learning to see and feel fear as just a meter on the dashboard, I think, is a good mental frame. And Tucker's got a great way of putting this. Fear and excitement are the same biologically. And so you have to just...
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
sort of reframe fear as excitement that you are getting close to the truth um there's so many writing quotes i think it's a hemingwayism but like writing is easy just write one true sentence now write another one like the things that make i i think you hit correctly like tucker is
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
so uniquely honest like his superpower is just blunt straight honesty and so few people can actually do that like it is because it is it is you valuable because it is so rare um and it's scary you know it's you never know how people are going to react um but watching him sort of
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
And like now that I've seen what this book, you know, five years, almost five years on, like seeing what this book has done. Um, I think there's no human on earth who could pick up this book and not take something useful away from it.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
live his life that way good and bad that comes of it um i think is incredible i mean the value that you get when tucker tells you something is good because you've watched him or you've heard him tell you the last five versions were bad is is remarkable um because as you point out you know a lot of people um default to a kind of appeasing bullshit
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
by nature and just don't choose to live their life willing to fight about any idea all the time. And it's so easy to, to let that slip away and just feel like you're being shaped by the, the hands of the opinions of the people around you rather than holding your shape almost no matter what kind of comes your way.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
That's a complicated question because I think there's... there's a lot of use like learning to define you as precisely as possible, I think is a really helpful exercise. And Naval has talked about this. Um, not just like, you know, there's a few ways to visualize. I think one is like, you are not the voice in your head. you are the one hearing the voice in your head.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
And the second level to that is recognizing that you can control the voice in your head. You can program it, you can teach it.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
And so I think on the one hand, you know, the, the naive to go back to sort of your example or the question that you asked, like the naive view or the first order view of my truth is pessimism is like, that's just the voice in your head that says like, Oh fuck, my tire popped. Like today's terrible. Um,
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
The recognition that you aren't the one saying that, you're the one hearing that, and you can choose how to react to it and how to interpret it and whether to agree with it is sort of the second level. The third is to sort of recognize, oh, I didn't want to hear that voice and I need to like hammer on that because I don't want that to be my reaction to events like this.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
I want to be a person who says, well, at least it wasn't two or at least it wasn't my engine or I'm still so lucky to have a car or... Glad thing I've got a cell phone and there's a towing company right here and I've got enough money to pay for the tow. No big deal. 20 minutes out of my day. back to it. Really looking forward to, you know, having a cup of coffee when I get through with this.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
Like all of those things are the meta lesson that of all teaches that I think is the most important is that like, is basically skill issue, right? Like if you are not wealthy, you can develop the skill to become. So if you are not happy, you can develop the skill to become. So if you are not optimistic, you can develop the skill to become so. And so learning to
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
see that and control, create the environment that makes you into the person that you want to be. Like if you want to have an optimistic reaction to things, surround yourselves with people with optimistic reactions to things, follow people who are optimistic, read people who are optimistic, train yourself out of those pessimistic reactions. Like pay attention, do this exercise for a week.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
If you're listening to this and you want to start this, Everybody that I've noticed in my life tends to start their, like when you ask how are you or what's going on, there are people who will always, always, always start with a negative observation. Hey, how was your flight? Good to see you. Oh, it was fine. There was a baby behind me that was crying.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
or they'll say it was great no issues everything was on time like there there are people who 80 20 90 10 or 10 out of 10 will always start with a negative versus always start with a positive and i at least try to always be a person who starts with a positive who observes or shares something positive about whatever i just went through and you know help other people see that if you see you know your your partner your business partner or whatever like
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
always starting with a negative, be like, do you, do you mean to do that? Like the last five times, like I wrote them down, I bet you can tallies. Like, do you want that?
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
Yeah, all my personal stuff is at ejorgensen.com. There's a podcast, a newsletter, both links to all my books and my little investment fund. And then Scribe Media is where to go if you're interested.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
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The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
Thank you.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
Yeah. So first principles is a great, um, is one of the common sort of mental models. So if you're somebody who's been reading like Munger or Nassim Taleb maybe, or now Naval, I think there's these sort of like tricks you can pick up along the way. And First Principles is a really powerful one that just has a way of clearing out all of the kind of dust and fog and
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
getting to the essence of like, what is truly possible in this situation? Like one of the most famous kind of stories actually comes from Elon Musk. So there's, I'm writing a book on Elon now in the same style, and there will be quite a few sort of first principle stories. And that's one of his most powerful things.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
And the way he looks at it, the question that he asked himself, which is maybe a little more clear than, you know, if you don't know what first principles are, is like, does this break the laws of physics? If not, then it's possible to improve it, right? It's possible to do something better. So the example that he tells when he started SpaceX is, you know, why is this rocket $100 million?
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
All right, well, let me look at what are the raw components of a rocket, not engine and like flaps, but how much aluminum? How much oxygen? How much carbon? Like what is this thing made of? And what is the cost of those things? And he came up with this index. It's like the raw material of stuff in this rocket is...
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
you know, like maybe it's half a million dollars and the rocket is selling for a hundred million dollars. So what accounts for that 2000 X increase? Um, that's probably off by an order of magnitude, 200. Yeah, whatever. Um, what accounts for that? And so thinking in the limit of how could you approach this problem? Like how cheaply could you possibly arrange these materials in the,
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
shape that they need to be to have a rocket and how much more cheaply could you build it? Um, and this is like a universal thing that you can look at anything in your life through this lens. Um, you know, first principles might be like, it just opens your lens of problem solving to see a lot of different opportunities that you might not have included.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
Yeah, I think the whys is almost the inverse of first principles. So if you ask enough whys, you can drill down to – and that's why it's not just why. It's like the five whys or the six whys. Like keep going down. Why is it so expensive? Well, why is it manufactured that way? Well, why is it only – like –
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
maybe it had to travel a really long way why is it only manufactured in china like why why why why but the first principles version just like cuts all of those and if you can make that creative leap to go all the way down from the very beginning um you know like the opposite of reasoning from first principles is reasoning by analogy which is how almost all of us do almost everything
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
If you say, oh, I need to get to work, I can't afford a car. Because that's how you see everybody else get to work. You don't necessarily think, I need to get to work, what is the cheapest possible way for me to get to work? Or what is the most efficient way? You just, by nature, observe what everyone else is doing, and that's your starting place, rather than starting from...
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
What are your full set of options? Because it's exhausting to think that way. You can't do that for everything in your life. But for the most important problems, either the most important or the most valuable, that is a really effective way. And they continue to do this. I'm just going to keep using Elon examples because that's where my head's been at. But that's where the tower came from.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
What is the best possible solution? What is the way to get the lightest possible craft? And one of the really heavy things are the landing legs. And so how do we not have landing legs? It's like, well, put the landing legs outside the vehicle. It's like, is that even theoretically physically possible? It's like, sure, it's physically possible. It seems extremely difficult, never been done before.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
But like, let's try it because they just run towards trying the... most theoretically beneficial thing, even if it is the most technically difficult. And that's where so many of these breakthroughs have come from. And I think thinking in these first principles is actually one of the unlocking things.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
And it takes a lot of courage and it takes a lot of talent to actually run down those ideas once they've been created. but you've got to break the constraint of reasoning by analogy and you've got to run towards that really clean, terrifying idea that emerges when you strip away all the bullshit.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
There's so many reasons for, and usually they're overlapping reasons, for people either letting themselves off the hook or defending the status quo or defending the method that they've been using for the last 5, 10, or 50 years. It's, you know, Balaji has a great line, like, their incomprehension is your moat.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
um like when there's just an obvious idea that people are refusing to see and especially if it like agitates them a little and it seems so obvious to you and they're like attacking you for it there's probably a good sign that like you're onto something it scares them enough that they're angry about it subconsciously they are unwilling to do the work to see what you see or to change themselves to accommodate you know the environmental change that has happened to you
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
create this new opportunity, which means they're going to be slow to follow or not follow at all. And you're going to have a moat and an advantage that just comes from their inability or unwillingness to think more clearly about the space.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
I think Balaji is now where sort of Naval was when I wrote this book about him. It's like, you know, three quarters of a million followers, well-known inside tech, but not really outside tech. And I think he's brilliant and contrarian and interesting and unique as a thinker, but not very... Not followed in the mainstream in the way that he deserves.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
And I think a lot of people could benefit from... It all comes back to what can I do for the reader? I followed Naval for 10 years. Everything that I learned from him made my life better. I followed Bology for 10 years. And everything that I learned from him made my life better. And I want to package this knowledge that sort of...
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
lost in tech Twitter that has benefited me for 10 years and put it in a book and get it out to a broader range array of people and package it in a format that is accessible to people sort of all over the world and gets translated and gets shared and gets gifted. And, um, I think books are really, really powerful in that way. Apology. Sorry. No, go ahead.
The Ryan Hanley Show
Mastering Optimism: The Contrarian Lessons Naval, Elon, and Balaji Want You to Know | Eric Jorgenson
Biology is kind of interestingly parallel to Naval in both sort of American dream stories, like biology is a first generation immigrant family, clearly a brilliant guy, multiple degrees in like biomedical engineering and biology. Very successful startup founder in that space. Then went to become a great investor at A16Z and is angel invested in hundreds of startups.