Time is Elastic

Dean: Welcome to Cloudlandia. Hello. What's the worst.

Dan: I want to talk a little bit about time.

Dean: I'd like to talk about time. So I'm all ears.

Dan: Yeah, I've just been struck by something

Dean: because,

Dan: you know, we're just about, you know, six months or six months and a few weeks since we.

Dean: I was just going to say that actually. Actually, that was my. That was my lead in topic. We just passed six months. Yeah.

Dan: Why do we even have these phone calls if we're thinking the same thing?

Dean: We can just do the neural mashup and let AI figure it out. Right. That's funny.

Dan: Yeah. But one of the things I've noticed is that time has sort of slowed down. Yeah. It's actually. There's a slowing down. And just as the lead thought on this, that I think that when you have to travel by yourself and it takes time, you want to get through that time very, very quickly. In other words, you know, if you're flying some way, you have to do the whole. You have to do the whole routine.

Dean: Real time.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: You've got to move your physical body.

Dan: Yeah. But it really isn't creative time because you have to be focused on an activity which is very repetitive. And in part of your mind, it's kind of an unpleasant. You know, it's a sacrifice that you're having to make. And I think we try to get through sacrifices really fast. And so we speed up time to get to the, you know, the important part of why we're traveling in the first place, meeting that ahead in the future. And we want to get there as fast as possible. And we want.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: Minimum minimize. We kind of want to minimize our consciousness until we can get to that. But with the Zoom, you're doing what you're doing and you're enjoying it. And then you look at your watch and you say, oh, in two minutes, I've got a Zoom call. Yeah, I got about. I use my last two Jackson time periods before I actually dialed on to get on this call to get about three or four important things done. And so that was very, very useful time. And now here we are.

Dean: You're. Yeah, well, you hit on the secret. Yeah, I was.

Dan: I was in Toronto, but now. Now we're here.

Dean: Now we're here. We're in Cloudlandia together.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: Yes. You know, you. You're saying that, and you really. I don't know how long. As long as I've known you, you've been using your car service as a time travel device, because that's the only time, the only thing you had to worry about was getting in the car at a certain time. And you have that other time back, the time in between, how long it takes to get to wherever you're going.

Dan: That must be 30 or 30. 30 years.

Dean: Bennington, I would say most of my

Dan: travel for 30 years. Most of my travel for 30 years has been having a driver, you know, a limousine driver to actually do that.

Dean: Either that or I usually read.

Dan: Yeah, I usually read. I usually read, you know, when I'm doing that. And novels are really good because it's a story. So you're picking up your story when you get in the car and then you move along the story.

Dean: It was a great.

Dan: Depending on the driver. Depending on the driver, I'll talk or I won't talk, but. Yeah, yeah, but what about the slowing down time that, You know, it's. It's an interesting thing, but it hadn't struck me because I was just reviewing the last six months and I said, boy, I sure got a lot done during that six months. But it, it seemed like almost a single experience.

Dean: Yes, it's reads as one. That's the thing that our brains. I learned that why time seems to move faster as we get older is because there's less and less variety. Like when you're thinking about time in your teens and twenties, it's constantly new. You're in new places, you get your, you know, your first day at college, your first, you know, your dorm room, then you're in a new place and then new friends, and then you joined the military and you were in a new place there and you come. So you've got all these experiences that when your mind looks back on them, those are all, like, if you look at them as recorded, you know, sound waves, if you see the peaks and valleys of activity, those are all new experiences that are registering. But once you get into a situation where you're living in the house you're in and you're driving the same office and you see the same people and you're doing the same thing, largely, that all reads to your brain as one thing. So it looks back, there's no friction, there's no outstanding peaks or valleys to you to market. Like I've heard you, you talked about, of all the workshops that you've done, there's probably a handful that would stand out. And you can recall them instantly. Like the September 11 workshop, because that of all the workshops that you've done in Chicago, in that room, that was an outlier. And there's something unique about that. Now, all of the other workshops all kind of blend into each other. And I imagine if somebody had a baby in a workshop or somebody had, you know, a medical emergency or something happened that caused a peak on the Richter scale of your memory of it, that that would stand out as an outlier. But the others all blend into one because there's not much variety in it.

Dan: Mm. Although there's more variety in a Zoom workshop than in person workshop.

Dean: That could be. And you know, now we look at

Dan: it at the very first one and, and the reason is that generally speaking, in, in the in person workshops, when there's a breakout group. Yes, I take a break. I take a break. You know, I'll go and talk to the team or I'll do something. But in every Zoom Workshop since the very first in March, and those were short to our two hour mini workshops, I've been in every single breakout group. I haven't missed a single breakout group. And it's. It's like Christmas morning every time you go into a breakout group because. Yeah.

Dean: Because you never know who. Yes.

Dan: Well, I don't know who's under my tree this time.

Dean: Right.

Dan: And. And like, you know, in a full 16 hours, there's five breakout groups and I meet and talk with a great number of individuals that in person workshop. I wouldn't necessarily listen to them and talk to them and interchange with them. And it's 20 minutes. 20 minutes. It's five times 20 minutes.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: I get a real feel for people that I didn't. I remember their stories, I remember what they're working on. And then when I go back into the full session, I can get them to talk about something they said in the breakout session and that becomes a valuable resource in the larger groups. So my standpoint is that there's a lot more novelty packed into Cloudlandia than there is the. In the mainland.

Dean: Yes. And a lot less friction.

Dan: Yeah. I mean, somebody said that movies are like real life with all the boring stuff taken out. Well, Cloudlandia is like, it's like, it's like, it's like real life sharpened to a finer edge.

Dean: I agree with that 100%. Because, yes, you can be. You can still have all the other. Yeah. We've basically cut out all that, all that middle stuff. So it's so great. And I mean, but life, that's life compacting on us like that. Like, I mean, everything is. That's one of the greatest things is this. Let's call that convenience too. If I think you put it on that. That things are getting so much more. Every little bastion of time where we are inefficient in it, where there's something that's causing on it. Like, you remember, we. It wasn't too long ago, Dan, that if you wanted to watch a specific show on television, you had to show up in front of the television at that time.

Dan: Right?

Dean: And now that's unthinkable that you're gonna, you know, and it's not even now, especially things like the, you know, debates or, you know, things that stretch on now if, you know, if you. Even if you miss it synchronously within hours, somebody's gonna have. I thought about this with Elon Musk, did the Neuralink demonstration press conference. Did you see that?

Dan: No, I didn't.

Dean: Okay, so he, you know, he's. They.

Dan: Yeah, I know. Yeah, yeah, I know what he's attempting to do, but I didn't see the actual event now.

Dean: So they installed these neuralinks in. In some pigs to see the, you know, show the. The efficacy of it kind of thing. But it was an hour and a bit, and there were technical difficulties and with the pigs. Getting the pigs out on time. But then somebody the. Within hours had the. The 14 minutes that matter of the entire. The entire thing in 14 minutes. And that somebody do that with the debates, the entire debate in. In 14 minutes or whatever, we're very efficiently eliminating dead time or wasted time. I think that's something.

Dan: Well, here's. No, no, I really. I mean, you just triggered something that. One of the things that I really notice is that wasting time on Cloudlandia is a. No, no. In other words, don't use up people's Cloudlandia time with boring, meaningless stuff.

Dean: Right? Yes, yes. It's all from concentrate. That's the great part of it.

Dan: Yeah. So here's a. Here's the thing. I, you know, I'm looking also at the bigger world, and I estimate, you know, that probably Zoom is across 400 million daily users. Now, I haven't checked. I haven't checked the numbers, but they were at 375 two months ago, and I suspect they probably pulled in another, you know, they pulled in another 25 million in the last two months. But with that, I would say that the work that's being done is of a higher quality than mainline work.

Dean: Oh, yeah, well, there's. They're cutting out all of the. They're cutting out all the inefficient hours of stuff. You know, like, I mean, you think about A job like having a workforce in a, in an office, there's a lot of inefficiency in that in terms of the. Both the times you take from. You take the time impact of somebody having a job that they have to travel to get to. So let's say they're traveling 30 minutes commute to work. That the impact of that they've got to get up, you know, early enough to shower and prepare themselves and have breakfast or work out or do whatever they need to do to then start the commute to get to work. And then there's the onboarding or on ramping kind of time of, you know, seeing everybody and getting coffee and, you know, checking their mail and getting settled. And then there's a period of time where they're actually doing the work that they do and then it's lunchtime and then there's some, you know, on ramp getting back and maybe some interruptions and meetings and things that are less than efficient. And then it's quitting time again. Right. And so this allowing it to be just, you know, starting right at the, right at the time is pretty. There's a lot, there's a lot to it.

Dan: Yeah, it's, it's very interesting that one thing that I've introduced into all my meetings, however, is to soften the beginning of a zoom session. So the way our workshops work. Yeah, we have, we have a pre. Meeting with a team a half hour before the scheduled workshop. Okay. And I told the, we have a host for each of the workshops, the person who is actually controlling the zoom part of the, of the event. And I said, if you say that the meeting is going to start at 9:30, let people come in from 9:20 onwards. And if, and so that you can chat with people because you don't see them these days, you don't, you don't actually interact with them in the cafe.

Dean: I actually love that about Gino Wickman's idea of the meetings like that. If they start it at, you know, 10:00am that the actual meeting, you know, the first 10 minutes is, is open kind of chatting and things like that. But it starts precisely at, at 10:10 and it ends at exactly 11:11am yeah,

Dan: well, we just do it the opposite.

Dean: Yeah, exactly.

Dan: Yeah, we just do the opposite. We have 10 minutes of chat time before, but then the meeting actually starts at the appointed time. So we're doing more or less the same thing. That's just. Yeah, I just noticed in the, in the office that, you know, when we did these type of meetings, either In Chicago or Toronto, which are my, my main two sites, is that in the cafe, the meetings will be in the cafe and people will show up 15 minutes early, 10 minutes early. I always, yeah, and so why not just hang out? Hang out and just chat. And then there's this, it's not this abrupt, you know, it's not like it started up an Olympic sprint or something, you know, and the same thing I do with the clients. So we get our business. If we start promptly at 9:30, the actual getting ready for the workshop, we're usually finished by 10 minutes to the, to the hour. And I said, are there any, are there any clients in, you know, in the, in, what did they call it? The waiting room. Right.

Dean: Yeah, exactly. I think so. The waiting room.

Dan: Yep, the waiting room. I said, bring them in, bring them in, let them come in. I said, they showed up early. Give them a reward for showing up early and we'll just, you know, chat with them.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: And it was kind of funny because it's got its, kind of, it's got it, it's got some of its real world quality to it because I had somebody who was just really wound up about the riots that are going on. And he came out and, you know, he kind of expressed himself to me.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: You know.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: Because I was on and it was jarring to our team. It was very jarring to our team. And you know, and I didn't, I didn't put any logs on his fire. You know, I didn't add any accelerant to his fire. But it was. But, you know, we've done it, you know, we've done it 20 times. And there, there was this one odd thing that happened and that hasn't repeated it. Somebody said, well, we shouldn't bring them in. I said, it was one. I said, that's one on the negative side for you. Think of all the positives. I said, you know, you know, I said, think of the other things we found out about people. And you know, they're, you know, they're, they, their wife had a baby the day before. They're all sorts of good news. I said, you're just zeroing in on this one thing as the reason why we shouldn't do it. I said, that's what government bureaucrats do. I said, you know, if there's one instance of some, some negative, then we make a law that forbids, forbids activity for everybody else. I said, right. I said, here, I give you an example. What would you have to do to your thinking? So that if someone did that, it wouldn't bother you.

Dean: Yeah. That's a better way to think about it, isn't it? I find it your thinking, Dean.

Dan: I'll ask you a serious question. Have you found it easier to change yourself than to change the world?

Dean: Oh, absolutely. This is, you know, Jamie. Smart, good friend. He wrote a book called Clarity. And it's one of those books that is, you know, absolutely. You read it and you get the insight and it's, you know, I guess you could sum it up by saying that 100% of our emotional state and their experience that we have is 100% created from the inside out, not from the outside in. And, yeah, that's a. You know, that's really. It's fascinating when you can kind of detach yourself from it and you realize that I'm creating this state that I'm in because I take the data or the input and I run it through my special effects department, which turn it into this emotional state, and I'm in complete control of the studio. You know, I can turn it into whatever I want. Yeah, yeah.

Dan: Whether you admit it or not.

Dean: Right.

Dan: You know, I mean. I mean, the whole point is that you can be. If you choose to be, you can be 100% responsible for your emotional reactions. I mean, I had, you know, I'll tell you, it's a skill. It's a skill.

Dean: It's a skill to be.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: I'll give you a perfect example of this. I sat in this exact room that I'm in right here. I've little reading room, and I've got two great leather club chairs, and I sit in one to do the podcast. But sitting in the other chair across here from me was Homer McDonald, who is the gentleman I was the stop your divorce book with. And Homer, we recorded an audio program and we. I. I was going to play the advocate of the person who's being left, and I was gonna, you know, get Homer's answers for things. And in the first six minutes of this program, he completely dismantled it. So I was saying, how, you know that. Imagine that, you know, my wife is. Said, she doesn't love me anymore. She wants to get a divorce. And he says, well, how do you feel about. How are you feeling about that? And I said, well, I'd imagine, you know, I'd be very upset about that. And I would be, you know, I want to do everything I can to. To get her back. He said, okay, well, imagine that. I'm saying to you right now, I guarantee you we're going to get her back. And within 30 days, she's going to be back and in a loving relationship with you, and she's going to be doing better than it ever was. And I, you know, I say, wow, that sounds great. Can you really. Do you believe that? Can you imagine that? And how do you. How are you feeling now? And I say, well, I feel great. He goes, so it, you know, nothing's changed about the situation. It's just the way that you think about it. And now you're feeling great, so you can feel great. Yeah, how you think about it. And I thought, man, you didn't. I didn't even. Like, I fell for that sink line and hook, line and sinker or whatever they say. And you just realize he just, like, hammered that home, that, you know, nothing's changed and you feel great. So it's.

Dan: Well, here, here's the thing, though. The question, you know, the proposition that he offered you to think about a month from now, and everything's great and everything's back. When you're in the emotion, you are. You can't do that type of thinking for yourself generally, but you can.

Dean: Under guidance, I guess.

Dan: Yeah, you can. Under guidance. And that's really why we're. This is why we're so useful to each other, because the one not feeling the emotion can think more clearly. The one who is not in the situation themselves can bring other dimensions into the conversation more than the person who's fixated. I'll give you an example. And it happened politically. It happened over the last two days that both parties in the election going towards November had a clear agenda of what all the discussion points were going to be, the argument points, the debating points, and what the commercials were going to be about and everything like that. And then a Supreme Court justice dies on Friday. Mm. And everything changed. Everything changed within about 30 seconds. Yeah, everything changed because the. The election is really about whether the person who's president and, you know, the Senate and, you know, Congress are going to the way they are right now, or whether, you know, there's going to be a fundamental change. But the furthest future that they really could see was November 4th, the election being on November 3rd. So it was all about November 4th. But Supreme Court justices go for 30 years. And so all of a sudden, the issues at stake weren't November 4th, they were the next 30 years. So nobody was 30 years. Nobody was the entire context. So what you'll see going forward, nobody's going to be talking about whether the pandemic was hell, you know, Handled really, right or wrong or, you know, what the Russians are doing or what the Chinese are doing. It's about who's going to fill that Supreme Court position. Because this is. It's the greatest job in the world because once you have it, you can have it for as long as you want it. And there's only, you know, it's not an abundant position. There's a limited number of, you know, there's a limited number of justice.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: And they affect everything. They affect every. Everything and everything. But I was just amazed at the. Because I, you know, I checked the news sites on the Internet and all talk of everything they'd been talking to on Friday morning was completely changed by Saturday morning. Yeah. Same thing.

Dean: That's amazing.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: And it's an interesting. They're now this. Now this. The, you know, the debate then comes to how they were pressuring Obama when he had. There was 11 months left in his term when the last vacancy came. And they were pressuring to say, well, really, that's got to be left for the incoming president's, you know, job. And now it's funny that, you know, there's less than a couple of months left or four months, I guess, and they're. They're gonna rush to try and get it. Get it filled here. It's funny how all the perspective changes, you know.

Dan: Yeah. The only thing about that, if the other party was in charge, they do the same thing.

Dean: Exactly. That's what I mean. That's the whole thing. So that's.

Dan: That.

Dean: That was the point of it, is that no matter what, you're gonna argue whatever is on. Yeah.

Dan: I mean. Yeah. Yeah. You can be ideal. Idealistic. Except if you have a deadline.

Dean: Mm. I think you're on to something, though, about this time.

Dan: Oh, yeah.

Dean: Because I've learned there's something that. Where, you know, you can now,

Dan: you

Dean: know, literally get just what you need exactly when you need it in almost every situation now, you know, like, only no. No inefficiencies of that. There's. I think I shared with you last time that I'm noticing now that what we're getting to is in a marketplace type of environment where everything is on tap. It's like the unlimited. Who's. Of whatever you need on just when you need it. You know, like I look at. They're taking out the efficient inefficiencies now. I think I mentioned the design capabilities or, you know, things. The execution. Design execution. We don't use them for creative stuff as much. We do that stuff in Else, but the design execution, like change, switching things out or compiling things or, you know, with. We have a lot of our authors that we do with 90 minute books. We create these, you know, digital marketing packs that have three dimensional books and pictures of the books and postcard and all the stuff. But once the COVID of the book, we do all the covers and everything internally. But once those assets are created, then filling those into templates is something that, you know, we can get done with a design service. And. But we, you know, it's, it's amazing. The model now I think we pay like $400 a month or under $400 a month for unlimited design or, you know, just this constant on tap. You stack up all of your, you can have unlimited requests kind of thing, but they do one at a time basically. And if you do it efficiently. It's kind of like when Netflix was getting started with the DVD delivery. You know, there was, if you did it right, you know, you could have, you know, you could order a 2, 2 DVD at a time subscription. And if you ordered one and you watched it at night and then you put it in the mail the very first thing next morning, you could get back the next one, you know, within a couple.

Dan: Yeah, I remember that. And then, then it was six for a month or something like.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: And that was expanded the number of. I remember Richard Rossi was always, you know, he was very much the pathfinder for Exploring Pathfinder for a lot of people. And. Yeah, you know, he was the first one that I remember into Uber. He was the first person into Zoom, not Zoom, but Kindle. He was the first person Kindle. And. And then of course, Amazon just started with Kindle. They started with one product and everybody said, gee, why, boy, it's so great getting your books just like that. Why couldn't you get other things just like that? And then. Yes, they just kept feeding that, you

Dean: know that, that was all those. Yeah, that's what I was saying when we first talking about the, the cascading asymptote, you know that the, the capability to digitize and distribute X was first. So that's why the Kindle came first and then the IPOD and then YouTube and then streaming. That's how it all happened as the capabilities changed. And now with, you know, 5G, it's instant, always on at all times everywhere. That's a really interesting place to come from. Yeah, yeah, but we're not fundamentally, we're not getting any more time.

Dan: Well, yeah, well, this is, that's an interesting topic. Whether time is Actually a quantitative thing or a qualitative thing.

Dean: Right.

Dan: You know, like, you know, my sense is that my quality of time is quite a bit greater than six months ago.

Dean: Yes, I agree. Yeah. And our access to things. What I was thinking about this morning and wanted to have a little talk about today is this, that the capability to do bigger and bigger, what with. With less effort, like, with the right. It's almost like with the right lever, I could move the world. With the right hula decks, I can move any. Any what is a. Is a possibility with the right hullo deck lever, you know, and that really, the vision, when we talk about the vision capabilities and reach is the vision is where the what comes from here. And being able to, you know, take that vision through the capabilities and reach to get it out there, that's really where I'm most excited to be. A quick start and most excited to be thinking that way, you know?

Dan: Yeah. Yeah. It's really interesting. And, you know, I haven't been thinking this, except it's been brought up a lot in workshops over the last last month or so. The difference between wanting what you need and wanting what you want, I think that that's actually a divider of how you experience time. I think that wanting what you need is always a little bit of a nervous game. And part of the reason is you're comparing yourself against other people. Yeah. My sense is the world of need is a comparison. It's a competitive world, you know, and you have the constant feeling that you're falling behind or you're being left out and everything. Wanting what you want is completely generated from the inside. You get an idea of creating something that doesn't exist yet. Yes. And since it doesn't exist yet, there are no hows to actually get there. Right. And what it does is switches your mind to who's okay, you know, and saying, you know, I wonder if I talk to so and so and kind of talk to them about what they're doing, maybe they could add something, you know, some. Tell me about some of the hows that could actually happen. Because quite frankly, I don't. I don't actually know how to get there. I don't. I don't really know how to get there, you know, so. And I think if you're in. My sense is wanting what you want naturally favors having who's do it. Wanting what you need naturally favors that it's your Howie, and that's good.

Dean: See, I like this approach, is that this is what I think that when we're Seeking capabilities like the what. What's possible when you're exposing yourself to idea, to things that are capabilities that people have that, that can spur the creativity. Like there's so much right now that is available and possible that if you had the right vision for it that there's no never ending possibility. I just discovered. I didn't. I'd heard this before, but the. That seeking is a core emotion. Have you ever heard that about.

Dan: Yeah, like I could. I can certainly relate to that thought.

Dean: And it's a dopamine creator that, that sense of, of elation and enthusiasm and excitement as you're seeking and you know, your mind is like on fire with, with possibilities when you're exposed to new things. That is a. Yeah, that's. That's how I live a lot of my life.

Dan: Think that.

Dean: And then you realize that, that actually now when you. Where the energy drop of that is when you run into that wall of. I don't know how to do this now, you know, and to keep that energy by seeking and looking for these capabilities, you know.

Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So you're flying all those capabilities. All those capabilities out there are meaningless if you don't have a project.

Dean: Yes. Yeah. And a project.

Dan: Yeah. I mean, I mean.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: The vast majority, you know, we've been having. You have been having lots of conversations and Bab and I have been having lots of conversations with Joe Polish who's taking on a project that would be unthinkable, you know, if you had known Joe. You've known Joe, I think probably, I don't know as long as I have. My. Mine goes back 23 years.

Dean: Yeah, I know.

Dan: So the project which he's. The project which is. He has publicly announced. So it's not. We're not trading on inside information here is that he's going to take a one year sabbatical starting next thing. And the thing that I find really interesting is that he's talking to other people who are super busy and their response to Joe as he's reported them to us is that they say I wouldn't even know how to. I wouldn't even know how to think about what you're just telling me. In other words, you don't take a. And you're going to cut off all, you know, your normal activities. And you know, and you're. To a certain extent it's going to mean like a digital diet, you know, it includes it. And, and my sense is it'll get better quarter by quarter, you know, that he'll learn what Sabbaticaling actually means, in other words, sabbaticaling is kind of a skill. And he's, you know, he's, he's engaging himself in the mastery of a skill which he hasn't done before. And now he's going to do it and at the end of the year he's going to have this as a further skill to go forward. And so my sense, you know, and because I've been on a diet of another sort and I'm now in my 26th month, I'm just coming up on, actually I think it's 26 month right about now. But I haven't watched any television. I haven't watched any television set television, in other words, turning on the television. I haven't done any of that. And I sort of shield my eyes when I walk through airport, you know, airport lobbies and everything else. I just, I can't stop and watch it at all.

Dean: Well, Dan, you should probably exercise the gaskets on the television just to make sure that it's not corroding. Yeah, somebody should.

Dan: Well, I have to tell you, the set we have actually requires about four things to get what you want. And I don't remember what things are.

Dean: There we go.

Dan: So I've disenabled myself rather than the technology and. But it's very really interesting because I notice my preference for reading has really come back because even when I go on the Internet, I'm looking for articles which in some cases take five or ten minutes to read.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: And so I'm not watching television, like reporting. I'm, I'm going after, you know, sort of two or three page essays, two or three page articles on something and usually I can tell within the first two or three paragraphs whether it's worth finishing.

Dean: Worth the squeeze. Yeah.

Dan: Was all the value in the headline and there's, there's no value, there's no value in the, in the, in the actual text. But the interesting thing is that I find myself kind of unfazed by what a lot of people are reporting to me. They're noticing about the pandemic, they're noticing, you know, about television and everything like that. And you know, so, you know, when the riots started, people started saying the riots. Did you see that? And I said riots, riots, riots. So I went, I went to Wikipedia and I went to Google and the history of great riots, periods of great riots, and I started reading the history of riots. And actually, you know, I lived through the end of the 60s and early 70s when there were massive riots. In the United States, starting 68. With the 68, there was, you know, Robert Kennedy was Robert. Martin Luther King was assassinated. And then there was the big, big riots in Chicago, the Democratic National Convention. And then it was going forward. And I said, you know, what I'm being told doesn't, you know, it's kind of. I've already seen that. You know, I've already seen that. And then I said, well, have there been other periods of great riots? And then I went back in the 1880s and 1890s, just way bigger riots than we're having here, you know, and the biggest riot in the history of the United States was the New York riot opposing the draft into the Union army during the.

Dean: Oh, really? Wow.

Dan: Civil War. Yes. Three or four hundred people were killed in New York City. It was a New York City riot, you know, and mass blocks were burned down. Massive blacks are burned down. And you're talking about, you know, a riot that big against a much smaller population, you know. You know, and so it was a big. A really big deal. So I came away and I said, that's right. I say, I knew I've got a historical context for riots that I have, and all in ebbs and flows, you know, it has a lot to do with the introduction of new technology into society. Yeah. So I said, you know, have a lot of new technology changing things, probably you're going to get riots.

Dean: Yeah.

Dan: I think.

Dean: What do you think that is like just the uncertainty that people have?

Dan: Well, the other thing is the disruption to normal life. The technology will introduce disruptions and it can eliminate employment in certain occupations with no thought of what's going to happen to the people who are unemployed. The big One in the 1870s and 1880s was the pretty. Well the complete destruction of the agricultural economy, which more or less employed in some way, you know, some way connected to it, you know, more than half the working population of the United States.

Dean: So that was thanks to Cyrus McCormick.

Dan: Well, Cyrus McCormick and a hundred other things that got inspired by Cyrus. You know, the. Yeah, the cotton gin actually mechanization.

Dean: Right.

Dan: Cotton gin in the south actually kept slavery going probably for 20 years further and then caused a massive war that I. I would consider a war, a riot. You know, seems to me like the first.

Dean: First World War, the modern.

Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And well, you think.

Dean: Yeah, you look at what's going. You look at Chad, you know, that was really had all the markings of war in a way. Right. The taking of territory and fortressing.

Dan: Yeah, yeah. They had the skills of taking. They didn't have the skills of governing.

Dean: Right, exactly.

Dan: Yeah. Skills that requires a different kind of training. Actually. The skills of governing require added skill level beyond take takings.

Dean: Every time I think about things like that, it always, you know, I always think about that Milton Friedman on Phil Donahue saying to me, yeah, that was great. Where do you propose to find these angels to come down and organize society without regard to self interest? I don't even trust you to do that, Phil. Which was just so beautiful. I don't even trust you to do that.

Dan: Yeah. I mean.

Dean: Yeah. Oh man.

Dan: Yeah. And you know, his feet not even reaching the far, you know, I mean he's a little, little guy anyway. Yeah, yeah. I mean that's straight from the Federalist Papers. James Madison said, you know, ideally we would like, you know, society to be run by virtuous people but you know, who have other people's interests at heart. He says ideally we do that, but if we had that, we probably wouldn't need the government because things would just get taken care of. And so our research kind of indicates that these virtuous people who think about others aren't in large supply, but ambitious, ambitious people who think about their own self interests are in very large supply. So why don't we build the government on making the ambition of individuals actually create something that creates good for everybody? That's the trick here. That's the trick here that we have to create. We have to channel individual ambition into activities which actually benefit way more than them.

Dean: But I think the difference now that what we have is there are virtually no filters between or bafflers of ambition and somebody's desire to get ahead. That it's much easier to tap into a meritocracy in a way where you can, you know, I just realized I was having this conversation with Philip the other day that I mentioned to you. We've been, you know, teaching him how to set up an ebay business to. And what I realized he always made the first sales on there and I realized that he's got a. The key to self sufficiency right now there anything he could possibly want. Actually shot a video for his 22 year old self while he was there and you know, give it because he's so it's all about the video games and only doing what he has to do right now, you know, and I made the video with him there for his 22 year old self and I showed him there and I said wherever you are right now, whatever you have, look around you. It's 100% because of the decisions that this guy right here made for you today. And, and that whole thing I said, I said to Philip, I just try and get him excited that, you know, we're actually going to read Wanting what yout Want as, as part of this thing. Because I've been going through the four. The, the four habits of showing up on time, do what you say you're going to do, finish what you start, say please and thank you as 80% of. Oh yeah, the keys to life. And now couple that with control of your own umbilical cord that you don't need to run around looking for somewhere to plug it in. You could plug it into Cloudland.

Dan: Your head. You can plug it into your head.

Dean: Yes, exactly. And so you look at it that the opportunities for anybody with, with ambition and a cell phone, I mean, there's so much opportunity to tap into the ability to trade your time or your skills or your abilities or your goods and services.

Dan: Yeah. The interesting thing is the meritocracy. You know, this became a big deal, I think it was after the Second World War especially, you know, that we're going to bring meritocracy. Rather than being born into the right family, you know, sort of, it's, it's a break with the past in the sense that, you know, all the empires that were basically a matter of family, you know, that if you were born into certain families, you know, whoever the key person was in society, then their children would be born to inherit the key person role. And then there were all the people who benefit from the key role, the aristocracy and generally a pushback and say, you know, we've tried this whole, you know, depending on birth of most important people to sort of determine the future of our society, where we're going to make it open to anybody. But the truth of it is that meritocracy itself only favors certain types of skills, okay. And one of the big skills is the skill of taking an SAT test and getting into the right university. It favors those skills. Okay? It favors those skills. And so much so that the people who were the educators started to make sure that their children were at the head of the line for the SAT test. So what we've been dominated more and more with is an educator based meritocracy. And they always said that if you got a college education, no matter how much you paid for it, it would amortize itself in income over the course of your lifetime. Lifetime. But that got broken. That got broken sort of in the. As a result of the Great Recession. 0809 that you could have spent $200,000, you know, on your education or your parents could have. And you know, 10 years later you're saying, will that be with fries?

Dean: Mm.

Dan: You know, yes.

Dean: Yeah. Yeah.

Dan: Welcome to Walmart. You know, welcome to Walmart. That it had become interesting, but one group of people really took advantage of that meritocracy thing that was people who were education minded. Okay. And the, the thing that I see here is that what they hate is that someone's going to bypass their complete system, you know, like the junior kindergarten through to graduate school. That somebody's going to come along and just bypass that whole system. Who just has a bright idea like your, like Philip. Philip just has a bright idea. And over the next 10 years, if he stays with the lesson that he's learned with his first ebay experience, he may come up with something really, really big that is at this point totally unpredictable and very, very disruptive to people who are busily on their junior kindergarten to graduate school. And they're kind of come, come out and something that Philip creates actually makes all their efforts to get to the top the normal way. Worthless boy.

Dean: Isn't that something? I mean, even because, well, school, everything about school is being questioned. This is going to be a renaissance for that I think for sure. There's such a gap right now for, and an opportunity for rethinking that whole education process.

Dan: Yeah. Well, the big mistake, I always felt it goes for healthcare too, that there was such a thing as a healthcare system and there was such a thing as an educational system. And I kept, you know, over the years saying, well, where's the system? Where's the system? Does the system have an address? Does the system have a phone number? Does the system have a, you know, does the system have a website? And I can't find the system. Where, where is the system?

Dean: Right.

Dan: I can see, I can see hundreds of thousands of different little systems, some of them good, some terrible. And you know, there's no system. You know, this whole notion of a system, an industrial concept, it's. Yeah, it doesn't have a, you know, it's like, you know, the Google system. Well, what is it? Is there, is there a Google system? I mean, there's a capability that people use in a million different ways. Yeah, you know, there's, you know, they're making money by creating a capability that a lot of people can use any which way. And. But there isn't any system. You know, I mean, I, I doubt if the creators of Google have any Comprehension what their system is.

Dean: Wow. Well, it's certainly, it's. It's. You know, I watched there's a documentary now called the. I think it's called the Social Dilemma and it's.

Dan: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's really made. It's really made the round. But yeah, I've heard it 20 times. 20 times over the last.

Dean: It's pretty fascinating. I mean, you know, the, the premise. One of the things that was really what they. What stuck out for me was when they said people fear that. What's it gonna be like when AI is more powerful than human intelligence kind of thing at our, at our best. And these guys said, well, that's not the real fear. The real fear is when AI is more powerful than the. This human weakness, which is true right now. And AI really is ruling things because of that weakness and all of that. The way they illustrated and showed that Facebook and Google and things are, you know, showing you things and notifying you about things and keeping you in that app. They want you looking at that screen so they can auction off the. That attention. That's. It's really kind of.

Dan: Can I ask you a question? Can I ask you a question though? Is that true for you?

Dean: I do see parts of it for sure. I mean, it's.

Dan: No, you see parts of it. But do they have control over your attention?

Dean: I would say that if I were, I would go through withdraw. I don't know that they control me because I'm probably in that situation of saying, oh, I could quit at any time kind of thing. Right? Definitely. Let's say if we're talking about dopamine as alcohol and I drink every day, I'm a daily drinker, but I like to think, well, I could stop at any time. I'm a social drinker or it's not a problem, but there's probably a huge opportunity cost of it.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: You know, and so, yeah, I definitely notice those. I'm definitely in the grips of automatic behavior, which includes never being more than arm's length from my phone or, you know, I'm cons. There's a lot of time that I'm on there, but I kind of, you know, justify it in a way in a dignity, put a dignified wrapper on it of. Well, that's how I make my. I get my best ideas by being on the forefront. How else do you think I know about Kylie Jenner and Lil Nas X? And those stimulate the bigger thoughts of how that applies. So I like to think of myself as in it, but not of it, you know.

Dan: Well, here's, here's the thing, you know, I mean, and it's a conversation that I have with the high technology people, you know, because they're predicting exactly the future. That the social dilemmas thesis is not the whole point. The. And it's a thought for, you know, the next. Welcome to Outlandia. I think all the, you know, big data, all artificial intelligence is really, really fast compute computation, you know. Yeah, it's just really fast computation. Okay. And it only has as a diet the data of things that have already happened.

Dean: Yes.

Dan: It has no predictive power whatsoever. Okay. If you choose, for example, I doubt if they, you know, I've been conversing with you for a decade or you know, in a very steady way. And I doubt if all the new ideas have you. That you've had in your use of input, you know, input from, let's say, Cloudlandia. Were any of them more predictable? I don't think any of them were predictable, no.

Dean: But the behaviors that, that's not, they're not getting. They're, you know, part of it is not about predicting what the outcome's going to happen. But I think if an AI were observing us and our data usage and our geo positioning that it would be very predictable to think that next Sunday at 11am I'm going to be sitting at 103 degrees north dot 32.76. Whatever the meets and bounds are for where I am and you're going to be sitting where you are and we're going to be connected on, on Uber conference. That, that would be predictive.

Dan: But they haven't at all interfered with our conversation or tried to.

Dean: No, not at all.

Dan: During our conversation. So, so here, I mean this is just for thinking. The other thing is there isn't one AI system. There's. There's going to be millions and they're all going to be competing with each other. Yeah, they're all going to become. These are nervous. Whoever these AI systems are. They're. They're very nervous systems. They're. They're feeling very, very threatened because some other AI system is going to, you know, it's going to, you know, is going to take away their attention. Attention thing. So what I'm saying there is that there's no human mastermind behind any of this.

Dean: Oh right, that's exactly. Yes, I agree with you 100% capabilities.

Dan: I mean if you want to see somebody imprisoned and feeling totally captured by the future, it's whoever is the highest person in one of these AI firms, they're just desperate that they're going to be rendered obsolete by somebody else AI system.

Dean: Amazing.

Dan: I find these, you and I and the folks we hang out with, we leave incredibly free, relaxed lives compared to those folks.

Dean: That's true. Absolutely.

Dan: Yeah.

Dean: Well, I find these. These conversations are endlessly fascinating and motivating.

Dan: Yes, they are. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's all that's required. True characteristic. Endless and fascinating.

Dean: That's exactly right.

Dan: All right, Dean, see you next. See you next. Next Sunday.

Dean: Thanks, Ted. Okay, bye.

Dan: Bye. Okay, bye.