Naval Ravikant is an entrepreneur, investor, and co-founder of AngelList. What does it mean to win at the game of life? Is it tons of wealth, pure happiness, infinite time, or a loving family? Today we explore the timeless question of what it means to truly live well. Expect to learn the true price of success, whether sacrificing your happiness is worth it, what advice Naval would give to his younger self, what the true source of unhappiness is for most people, how to overcome low self-esteem, what Naval would add to his ‘How To Get Rich’ thread, how to become comfortable being unapologetically selfish, what Naval sees as the next big trends in science and technology, his take on the escalating culture wars, how to get comfortable with death and overcoming grief, the best and worst ways to spend your wealth and much more… Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: https://chriswillx.com/deals Get $350 off the Pod 4 Ultra at https://eightsleep.com/modernwisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM) Get the best bloodwork analysis in America at https://functionhealth.com/modernwisdom Get a Free Sample Pack of all LMNT Flavours with your first purchase at https://drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom Get 35% off your first subscription of the best supplements from Momentous at https://livemomentous.com/modernwisdom Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: https://chriswillx.com/books Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: https://tinyurl.com/43hv6y59 #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: https://tinyurl.com/2rtz7avf #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: https://tinyurl.com/3ccn5vkp - Get In Touch: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the relationship between happiness and success?
Happiness is being satisfied with what you have. Success comes from dissatisfaction.
Is success worth it then? Oof, I'm not sure that statement is true anymore. Like I made that statement a long time ago. And a lot of these things are just notes to myself and they're highly contextual. They come in the moment, they leave in the moment.
Happiness, okay, so very complicated topic, but I always like the Socrates story where he goes into the marketplace and they show him all these luxuries and fineries. And he says, how many things there are in this world that I do not want, right? And that's a form of freedom. So not wanting something is as good as having it. In the old story with Alexander Dionysius, right?
Alexander goes out and conquers the world and he meets Dionysius who's living in a barrel. And Dionysius says, get out of the way, you're blocking my son.
and alexander says oh how i wish i you know could be like dionysius in the next life and dionysius says that's the difference i don't wish that i could sorry diogenes diogenes diogenes says i i don't wish to be alexander so two paths to happiness and uh one path is for success you get what you want you satisfy your material needs or like diogenes you just don't want it in the first place and i'm not sure which one is more valid um
And it also depends what you define as success. If the end goal is happiness, then why not cut to the chase and just go straight for it? Does being happy make you less successful? That is a conventional wisdom. That may even be the practical earned experience of your reality. You find that when you're happy, you don't want anything, so you don't get up and do anything.
On the other hand, you still got to do something. You're an animal. You're here. You're here to survive. You're here to replicate. You're driven. You're motivated. You're going to do something. You're not just going to sit there all day. Unlikely. Some people do. Maybe it's in their nature. But I think most people still want to act. They want to live in the arena.
And I found for myself, as I've become happier is a big word, but more peaceful, more calm, more present, more satisfied with what I have, I still want to do things. I just want to do bigger things. I want to do things that are more pure, more aligned with what I think needs to be done and what I can uniquely do.
So in that sense, I think that being happier can actually make you more successful, but your definition of success will likely change along the way.
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Chapter 2: Is fame a worthwhile pursuit?
Okay. Yeah, it seems like... I don't know if you're from the Bostrom camp or whatever. No, I'm not an AI doomer.
I think that's such a flawed line of reasoning.
But let's say that you came out of the lesswrong.com slate-style codec world, and there was this sort of lineage from computers... And AI gets more powerful, more powerful, more powerful. And then you end up AGI, ASI. ASI, yeah. And it seems like LLMs have been this sort of orthogonal move from that, which are you saying you don't believe they are a step on that?
It's kind of a little bit of an additional branch.
I think Stephen Wolfram puts it better. It's a different form of intelligence. It's like if you see a jaguar in the jungle, it has a different form of intelligence. And you're like a plant has a form of intelligence, how it can like photosynthesize and grow. It's a different form of intelligence.
It's not an intelligence again, like love or like happiness is overloaded word that means many things to many people. But by my definition where, you know, the true test is you get what you want out of life. It doesn't even have a life. It doesn't even want anything. It's a different thing. Um, I do think it's unbelievably useful. I'm glad that it exists.
You don't see it much yet in large-scale production systems replacing humans because there's a tendency to hallucinate, so you can't put it into anything mission-critical. Confidently wrong one time out of ten. Correct. And it doesn't even know when it's wrong.
And maybe they'll get that one out of ten down to one out of a hundred, but you kind of always want human oversight for critical, critical things. I... I always feel so bitter.
I'm petty sometimes. My less equanimous version of me is petty. And I always want to teach it a lesson if it gets something wrong. Like, no, you were so confident. I'm treating it, but I'm anthropomorphizing.
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