ThePrimeagen: Programming, AI, ADHD, Productivity, Addiction, and God | Lex Fridman Podcast #461

The following is a conversation with Michael Pollson, better known online as the primagen. He is a programmer who has entertained and inspired millions of people to have fun building stuff with software. Whether you're a newbie or a seasoned developer who has been battling it out in the software engineering trenches for decades. In short, the primagen is a legendary programmer and a great human being with an inspiring roller coaster of a life story. This is the Lex Freedman podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's the primogen. What do you love most about programming? Uh what brings you joy when you program? I can tell you the first time that I ever felt love in programming or felt that joy or that excitement which was in college. It was the second class in data structures and the teacher that was teaching Ray Babcock, he was talking about linked lists. Now you you have to learn Java at Montana State University when I went and so he's off there kind of explaining this whole linked list thing and all that. And then he shows code and in the code it's like abstract class node or whatever it was. I can't remember what it was. And then it had a private member and that private member was of type node. And I've never seen that before. It is a class that is called node with a member that is of itself. And for the first time ever, I was like, "Oh my gosh, like there's no end. There's no way to iterate. This is not like a set of 10 items. This is a set of infinite items." And so like my mind kind of like exploded in that moment. Like there's actually you like what you can express is huge. I can see what memory looks like. Like I can see this kind of hopping through space. And I just remember being just so blown away cuz up until that point everything was just all right, I have a list of 10 items. I have a list of 20 items, right? It was very rigid and small. And the things I built were really small and trivial. And all of a sudden, I felt like I could build like anything in that one moment. And it was so amazing. I just remember sitting in class for what I don't even remember how long those classes were or anything, but I just remember being just completely like profoundly impacted by this notion. And so I just sat there and I watched I had the exact same experience in heavens forbid my uh software engineering class when we talked about the decorator pattern where you can keep on constructing these objects in this recursive way. Not that I think that's actually a good idea to do, but just watching that and realizing like there's so many weird and unique ways you can solve problems and like you can just anything your mind can think of, you can just create that. And I just remember getting just so excited about the possibility that anything is possible. Yeah, let's uh wax philosophical about a link list. It is pretty profound. For people who don't know, a node in a link list doesn't know anything about the world it's in. It only knows about the thing it's linked to, its neighbor. Maybe that's symbolic. It's a metaphor for all of us humans. There's billions of us on this planet and we only know about our local little network. Yeah. And it's kind of beautiful and you realize like in that little simple data structure, you can construct arbitrarily large systems and they they're like roots that go through memory. And then of course that's where you get all the programming languages that allow you to uh dump junk into memory and have memory leaks and then there therefore create infinite pain as you try to figure out where that uh unfreed memory is. Uh for me, yeah, probably it's so so beautiful the way you put that. Link lists are indeed beautiful. Recursion also for me when I finally wrap my brain around what it means to write a recursive function. What was the what was the thing? What was the like the one that taught you? Cuz I think we all probably you probably did factorial where you like, you know, just do like a quick factorial of it. It just doesn't hit home. What was the thing that kind of made it hit home? I don't remember the first I remember mine first. How do you not remember your first? It was magic. I've had so many that just You were a list guy. You're probably pretty used to the recursion. Yeah. All I remember is just surrounded by C of parentheses. I mean, that's that's really probably when I uh in high school, I think it was either Java or C++. Wow. How do I not remember that? It must have been C++. And then college, it was the generic bullshit software engineering classes were uh Java, but then the the renegades, the cool kids were all using lisp. That's that's when you're doing the AI, the quote unquote AI at that time. That's that was lisp. If you want to write a chess engine, you would use lisp. And so for me, probably the moment I really fell in love with programming was was lisp and writing like a programs and uh chess engines, all kinds of engines that play a game and then I could play against that thing and that thing would beat me. The joy of being destroyed by the thing you've created and oh um game of life too, cellular automa, that's when I I built that, you know, all kinds of programming languages. that's less about programming language and more about the system you create. And that just filled me with infinite joy. Uh having now similar to the link list situation, creating a system where each individual cell only knows about its neighbors and operates in a very simple rules. But when you take that system as a whole and allow it to evolve over time, it can create infinite complexity. So I I just man those are many pthead moments where I'm just like looking at the beautiful complexity that can be created with cellular automa. That's that filled me with just infinite joy for sure. But yeah the par all I remember is parenthesis. So my first memories of my first are drowned in a sea of parenthesis. Oh man. Mine is I have well first off mine was in Java. Though my first was a little bit more rigid, kind of a corporate, you know, a corporate experience, but cold, meaningless. Yeah. I was in a lab. Everyone was using CentOS at that or CentOS or however you say. I always call that CentOS, the Freshmaker. And so it's just like I'm in this very cold. That's nice. Thank you. I'm in like this cold, rigid environment uh with my Microsoft keyboard programming away in Java and I still I have just such this memory of despair because I love programming. This was after the linked list and I cannot figure out recursion. And so I go to you know the university store and I buy a book and it's Dell and Dell learn Java and it has a section recursion. And so I open it up and I start reading it and it just doesn't hit home. And I'm like I'm spiraling into this like kind of I maybe I'm not a programmer. Maybe I'm not worthy enough to enter into this circle of people who can figure out what what the heck recursion means. And so Dell and Dell is like I still remember this. Their phrase their exact phrase was every young budding developer solves this recursion program and it was the tower of Hanoi. And guess what? I don't know if I can solve the tower of Hanoi to this day. It's it's like a very hard recursive problem. And I just sat there and thought, "Oh my gosh, I'm not going to make it." And I sat there in the lab for 8 hours, 10 hours doing these things. So worried, it's the week of recursion. We have to do a lab assignment. I'm not going to be able to do it. And I just remember being like genuinely worried about that. Uh and then because I always my big problem was is like, okay, do factorial. Why not just use a for loop? Okay, what about Fibonacci sequence? Why not use a for loop? Like I don't understand what's the purpose of recursion. I don't understand it yet. It's so powerful. Why? It looks like a really complicated for loop. And so I just could not understand it. And then lab came that day and it was I'm going to give you a 2D array you have to read from a file. This is what a starting position looks like. This is what an ending position looks like. This is what a wall looks like. I want you to find me a path through the maze. And so I just sat there like, "Okay, I guess I can just go up and I can create like a visited grid that's so I know not to visit these places anymore." And all a sudden it just started clicking. I'm like, "Well, wait a second. I don't know the maze, but if I just go up, right, down, and left, and hop back every time I've been to that square, don't visit it." Like, I can just it will just go forever. And I realized in that moment, I'm like, I actually understand rec I've understood recursion this whole time. I just never had a problem in which it actually made sense to use. And that was like my big downfall is that I I was measuring my understanding with the problems that I had available which were just you know list traversal which is not a good use of recursion. And so I just I just remember that freeing oh man recursion it was a great moment in my life. I mean it does require to be fair a leap of faith like because people will tell you those uh conformist dogmatic Java instructors will tell you that this is you know um that's important to understand uh recursion but it takes a leap of faith that this is something this is a different way of looking at the world and it's a powerful way of looking at the world. I actually remembered when I think I first I think I remember my first now. All right. Uh I think it was uh dub first search for one of the games maybe a something like that and for that implementing recursion understand that you can search trajectories through the the space of states and do that recursively that was mind-blowing. just imagining like you can just see the possibilities. Yeah. Just like numbers flying. It was uh like the beautiful mind and then um and that's when I also uh discovered conspiracy theories. That was and I just saw I saw the truth. Uh okay. Yeah. So what were we talking about? Oh, what was the most painful aspect of programming for you? Uh like what what memories do you have of uh deep profound suffering in terms of programming in the early days? Uh, I would say the biggest one that I can really hold on to had to be one of two experiences. The first experience was when I was at a place called Schedulicity. And am I not allowed to say the place? There's I'm not sure if they're even operating still at this point, but they're in there something funny about the name. I'm sorry. Oh, scheduleity. They actually the name was so bad that when you looked at their like paid for Google ad terms that they would make sure that they're at the top of the list, the spellings were just insane cuz no one knew how to spell the word scheduleity. And so it was just like this the Google optimizing for that is just hilarious. Uh but okay, go back to the thing. And the the thing that kills me the most about programming, what I actually considered the worst aspect of programming is when you know everything. And so when I was at this job, it's just every single day I'd come in, there were no surprises. There was no questions. I didn't understand the codebase. Sure, that's that's fair. I didn't understand all the things about the codebase, but I knew I was going to go in, I was going to generate some sort of object from the database. I was going to take that object from the database, and I was just going to map it over and just display it on the web page. There's no creativity. There's no there's nothing to it. It's very like almost factory line kind of work. And that was a very kind of difficult moment for me which is I didn't enjoy programming because like I knew everything about it. I already knew exactly what I was going to do that day. I knew all the hurdles I was going to have to go over. There was no unknown unknowns if you will. It was just known at all times. And it's just that is for me that is the worst part about programming is when you already know the solution and it's just a matter of how fast you can type and get it out from your head to your hands. So, the absence of uncertainty, the absence of challenge was the pain. Yeah, that's pretty profound. Prime I'm more than just good looks. I want you to know that it's a low bar. What do you identify as? I'm enjoying asking the general question. 38 male. Uh male, husband of beautiful wife. Okay. You stream about all kinds of programming. Uh but what kind of programmer are you? Are you full stack developer, web programming? Uh, and maybe can you lay out all the different kinds of programming and then place yourself in that in terms of your identity, sexual identity as well? Yeah, I can get it. We can put it all in there. Uh, plus I mean obviously those two are very very tightly coupled. I have seen you like on the border of sexually aroused by certain languages. I think you got real excited about Okamel or O camel. Let's go. Thank you, Dylan Moyward. Okay. Wow. Yeah, I did not expect that. That escalated quickly. Anyway, what do you identify as? Okay. So, first you let's let's do the previous or the in in between question first, which is the different kind of archetypes. I think that's a really interesting kind of question because if you go on Twitter or you're new, your thoughts are probably that there is just web programming and maybe there's some other stuff. Yeah, like game programming, but you do like game programming in JavaScript and on the web, you know, like there's this very kind of very myopic view of the programming world and I bet if you ask a lot of people these days like what is the most popular form of programming they'd probably say web if you said what contains the most amount of repos how many percentage of repos on GitHub are web-based they'd probably say 90% or some huge number but the reality is that there's an entire embedded robotics world you know you're familiar with the ML side of things there's networking there's going to be just like performance operating systems compilers there's just huge amounts a variation of all these different type of programming verticals that you can be. And so we often talk about programming in perspective of web or something that's pretty narrow. And I think that's just a social construct of Twitter more than anything else that it's actually I don't believe it's that representative of of the entire kind of programming world out there. And I think a lot of programming is really really fun. There's some really great stuff. Building a your own language is just a very fun experience to do. every programmer should just do that once just to have a completely different, you know, perspective on how things work in life. But as far as what do I do? Uh I've always looked at myself as a tools engineer. So at my time at my my jobs, typically I would start off on the UI and then they'd be like, "Okay, well, hey, we need a library for this thing." So then I'd be the one writing like the library. So in 2012, 2013, I was writing a UI library for the web that can behave just like an iPad. So you can pinch and zoom on it, but it's still a web page because we didn't have any of that stuff back then. It was a canvas. Had to do all the like matricy operations and all that stuff to kind of, you know, it felt like you're on an iPad, but it actually wasn't on an iPad. And this was iPad 2, by the way. So this is a long time ago. And so every single time I got into a job, it's like, okay, hey, we need to do a library. Hey, can you work on a build system? So back then, there was no Grunt, there was no Gulp, there was no any of those things. So I had to hand roll my own JavaScript build system. And so I always fell into these positions of building tools for developers to be successful. And I've always really enjoyed that region. And so as I went on to say Netflix, uh spent 10 years there, I'd say the majority of my 10 years were building things for developers to use that they could be successful at their job. And so I just I've always really enjoyed that aspect because your share your stakeholders and the people that use your program understand programming and they're going to say like, "Hey, I need this." And typically the thing that they need they actually want. Whereas with people people want stuff but what they actually need versus what they actually want often are kind of like this weird separation. People you know that's like the old Henry Ford quote. I just want a faster horse and he's like no what you actually want is a car. And so it's like this like you have to play this game of trying to really figure it out. Whereas developers it's like I know you know what I'm doing. I know what you want. Let's figure it out together. That's actually that gives you a really nice big picture view of programming in general. So, I love the idea of just kind of starting at the interface like you need to pinch and all that kind of stuff and then figure out the entire thing that requires to make that happen including maybe the side quest tooling how to make it more productive and efficient all that kind of stuff. So the entirety the entirety of the thing that's really cool. Okay. So that mean that would be full stack by the general definition of full stack meaning like perhaps yeah versus like systems engine like starting at the bottom and trying to optimize a certain kind of specific thing without seeing the big picture of like what the the resulting interface would would look like. And a lot of people you know in web programming they never go beyond the front end of how the thing looks. They kind of always assumed there would be somebody some some uh grunt in the shadows in the darkness of the basement that will implement the back end. Some gil foil out there will be doing the back end. Yeah. Like I like to call myself a generalist. Um just to kind of give some ideas is you know at at one point at Netflix I built the websocket connection. So for TVs how websocket works is code I just wrote. And so I you know built the framing thing and before that I was doing stuff with memory and before that I built the UI for a tool. It's just like I can just do the thing. You just tell me the thing to do and I'll just go do the thing. I don't worry too I don't try to get super good at one specific activity. Like I don't want to be a Kubernetes engineer who's the world's greatest deployer. But if I had to go learn Kubernetes, I'd go learn it and learn how to deploy some things and then hopefully move on to like the next thing if that makes sense. Uh I posted about the fact that I'm talking to you on Reddit and there's a lot of wonderful questions. Uh somebody mentioned that I should ask you about DevOps. Can you explain what DevOps is? Is it a kind of special ops of programmers? Is it Cal team 6 of developers? What's DevOps? Can you define what are you a DevOps engineer? Well, people keep telling me DevOps isn't real. There's actually you want platform engineers, cloud engineers, info engineers. Uh I just often think I think the easiest way if we're doing like just kind of like some basic nomenclature. It's just DevOps are the people that make sure that when you launch a service and all that, it doesn't just disappear, right? It's all the kind of backbone of being able to operate something at scale. Like you really don't if you think about if you're just writing a mom and pop like website. People that do PHP that are doing WordPress and all that, they're going to build something. They're going to hand it off to I don't know, Lenode, Digital Ocean, some company. They don't really need a really complicated build, deployment, all this. It's just someone with a simple website so they can sell their goods. And so they don't really need that. And so that's kind of how I think of a DevOps is when things need to scale. that's kind of the person you hire. Yeah, those people are actually amazing. Yeah. Of uh the time I spent at Google, it's like, oh yeah, yeah, there's all these fancy machine learning people, but the the folks that are running the compute, the infrastructure basically that make sure the shit doesn't go down. They're like wizards and they're very incredible like vertical of job. And obviously I'm using a very broad term to describe I'm sure like a bunch, you know, because making sure stuff doesn't go down. And you could also say that's like an S sur, right? Site reliability engineer, whatever. You know, the ones that wear the the bomber jackets at Google. And so when we say DevOps, I think people get very particular about terms specifically in this category. They're like, well, actually, you're mentioning infrastructure engineer versus, you know, versus site reliability engineer. It's just like, okay, yes, I hear you. But generally, when someone thinks DevOps, they think somebody that manages the servers and their life cycles and the reliability. There's DevOps. Is it real? I'm not sure. Okay. Did Verscell kill DevOps? Wow, that's You're almost a journalist. That's a headline. Uh, let's go back to the beginning. All right. Baby Prime. So, you mentioned Netflix. You've uh Oh, I worked at Netflix, by the way. For people who don't know uh who uh the primigen is, he mentions uh the fact that he has been very successful and has worked at Netflix and basically every other sentence. Correct. Almost as much as I mentioned Neoim. Oh, great. Tell me more about Neoim. No, please don't. So, Baby Prime at the very beginning, you've had one hell of a life and I think it's aspiring to a lot of people. You've you've gone through a lot of painful low points including meth addiction loss and like you mentioned you've come out of that to become a successful programmer and a person that inspires a huge number of people uh to get into programming and just to find success in life. So maybe I would love it if you laid out just your whole life journey from the beginning. So, I guess if we're going to start with this whole journey, I think it's probably best to start when I was about four or five years old. That was the first time I was ever exposed to pornography. Uh, and it's kind of just earwormed me for a large portion of my life. And so, I don't think there was a day that didn't go by from when I was a very young lad all the way up until I was 20ome years old where I didn't think about porn on the daily basis. And so, it's just like every single day, even at that young. And so it's just a very mind- conssuming, time-consuming, thought-consuming thing that kind of plagued me from a starting at a very young age. When I was 7 years old, my dad died. Um, that was kind of a really tough period of life. I I still think about this time that I went over to China and there's kind of some rules that we were given and one of the rules was just like, "Hey, don't talk about God and if you do, use the word dad instead." And I was just like, "Okay, dad." It was like the first time I said that word in like 17 years or some long time. Like it was like so weird to say that phrase and I was just like, "Oh, that was just the strangest thing I've ever said in my entire lifetime." It just felt so weird. So, kind of rewind as I got older, obviously was very good at computers, good at accessing porn, of course, uh played uh video games on the internet. Fun fun kind of like side quest story. I think the guy's name is Lord Talk on Twitch. I can't quite remember his name, but he built this game called Grail, G R A A L, and Grail Online. And when I was a young lad that it was just like Zelda, except for it also had a level editor and it had like a seike language. And that's how I discovered how to program is I looked at these symbols and figured out what they meant. And then I was able to make things happen in the game. And that was like a that's my introduction into programming. So, thank you that guy, whatever your Twitch name was. But all right, so keep on going. As I got older, I was super bad socially. I was not a very great social person. I high school was brutal. Got made fun of a lot. Uh really didn't en I wouldn't say I had a great time during high school. Uh definitely felt very out of place or offset or maybe misplaced, if you will. I'm not sure what the right word is. And so, of course, at that point, I just always wanted to I wanted to be accepted to fit in and all that. I did forget to say one side story. After my dad died, my brother, older brother, he got started getting into drugs and along with that he exposed me to pot. So at 8 years old, I was smoking some marijuana uh for a while there until like maybe 11 or 12 and took a break and then again did a lot of that as I got a little bit older. But so I kind of got a lot of these exposures fairly young, 16, 15 through 18. A lot of drinking and all that. when I graduated or as I was graduating high school, it's just like I had such sadness, if you will. I was very sad about how everything went. Tried to commit suicide. Um, obviously, it was a very poor attempt. And I'm still here today. I'm very happy about that aspect. I'm glad that I didn't follow through with anything. Had to go to the hospital and all that. And when I was done, I just still remember kind of coming out of the hospital and at like that moment, it's kind of like something broken you. Have you ever read the book uh Wheel of Time? It's 14,000 pages or something like that, but right around page 12,000, Rand has to intentionally kill a girl, the main character, and that's like the moment he breaks and he gets into like hard Rand uh uh Quindelar Rand, if you will. For those that know Wheel of Time will appreciate all that. Uh for those that don't, it very confusing and I understand. Not the Amazon movie show. Not that not that Wheel of Time. So, now that we kind of go back onto it, at that point, it's just like something kind of broke in me and it's just like I just didn't care anymore. So all the kind of social awkwardness, if you will, all that kind of just died away with me, but also so did everything else. And so I started using a bunch of drugs, LSD, mushrooms, meth, did a bunch of math, did a bunch of that stuff, and then went off to college and continued to do a bunch of stuff. I took too much acid to where for like quite a few years I had like little squiggies on the side of my eyes whenever I'd walk by high contrast objects. And so it's just like that whole period of life was just kind of marked by um just poor decisions. And then sometime when I was about 19 years old, somewhere in that range, I just had this one evening where it's just I felt the very dramatic and real presence of God. And it's just like I kind of had this choice like Froto uh on a razor where it's like if I go either way, I'm gonna fall off and I need to change my life. you just you get to make the choice now. Do you want to do that or not? And so I remember going, okay, I do I do want to change my life. Like I don't like this experience. I don't like what I'm living. I am still very sad. I still feel very desperate. I still feel all those things. I'm just like pretending to be this other person. And then I just went to sleep that night. Nothing changed in my life. Everything was still the way it was. I woke up the next day the same person. And I was just like, "Oh, that's just like such a strange weird kind of experience. And I just went about my day. And then I remember I think that evening I looked at porn and all of a sudden I just had a conscious I just like this deep profound like shame. And I was like I've never felt shame in my life, right? Like I I have no idea what's happening now. And then all a sudden when I smoked pot I just felt deep shame. And when I hurt somebody or did something wrong all it's just like I got a conscious from that evening. That's what kind of my gift was if you will. And it's just like at that point I didn't even have a choice. I had to change my life cuz for whatever reason I've kind of been changed in the moment. And so from there I started actually trying in school. I always kind of joke around that I got 2.14 in high school. I had a teacher handw write me a note saying I was the worst student she's ever had. All that kind of stuff. I was not a really great student. And then in that moment it's just like okay now life's changed and I start trying to learn. You know I try to become a good student. And it turns out it's really hard. Like I was I was really bad. I still got C's. I went and took pre-calculus and failed pre-calculus. And I'm like, "Oh my gosh, I used to be the smart math guy and now I'm kind of the idiot failing." And so it's like I'm just questioning myself and all that. And I spent hours upon hours in in like a studying uh math learning center and then just at some point years into this journey, I'm like a year and a half into this journey at this point. It's just like something clicks and I go from being the worst person to just immediately becoming the best. Everything after that is just I don't know what happened. All of a sudden I was the best person at math. I started going into my computer science classes. I just really got everything. It's just like everything at at just years after trying just all of a sudden became easier. And I'm not sure if it happened over the course of weeks or when the easier started, but it was just first predicated by just a huge amount of difficulty. And then this is kind of where I started really desiring and loving the process of learning was when things started getting easier after all those years cuz I just was motivated by this desire to do something not not thinking it was going to get any easier. And then all a sudden it just started getting easier and it was great. And that's kind of really where I guess I started having the biggest parts of my life change. At that point, I started really, really, really wanting to never look at porn again because every single time just such shame and I really wanted to stop. And that was by far the hardest addiction to quit. Like smoking cigarettes was also a really hard addiction to quit. Shockingly hard addiction to quit, but porn by far was just the worst of them all. And then I think about 22, I was finally done with all kind of addictions, if you will. And then for a year, I just I just worked in all that. and I think right around maybe it was 21 and 3/4 somewhere in that range. I'm not really sure where I I stopped all the addictions part but or at least the outwardly addictions. And then at some point 6 months later, a year later, met my beautiful wife. Things just started falling more and more into place. I loved more and more work. I loved programming. I started programming like 12 hours a day. I watched the social network movie. And after that, I was just like, I'm doing a startup. And so like that night, I started my first startup and I was just like, so it was in PHP, by the way. PHP. Yeah. 5.2 two or something like that. It was great great times and I was just so motivated to do that and I would just program for sometimes I'd program for 24 36 hours straight and I just like non-stop just that's all I wanted to do at all points. I think my wife got a little sick of me. I wouldn't she would be like can you drop me off at school and I'd be like no I'm programming. I was not a very nice, you know, I didn't think through things that well and I was just so into it and I just did it non-stop and that's kind of like how I became me is that story if that makes sense. Let's try to reverse engineer some of the pain and some of the triumph. You made it sound easy at times. Let's try to understand it better. Maybe when you were 7 years old, what do you think about the pain you've experienced there losing your dad? What do you think? What kind of impact did it have on you? What kind of memories do you have of that time? The best way I can kind of put it is that I just never knew what a dad was. I was young enough that I could kind of maybe repress or just even have the capability of remembering things long term cuz I know most people don't remember a lot from when they're young. And so I'm not exactly sure. I probably as at one of the best possible ages if I'm going to lose a dad to lose a dad, you know, uh if you're going to lose one, if you're 11 or 12, it's like a terrible age. That's what my brother was and he fell into drug addiction and never got back out. And so I just kind of have more of like a fuzziness and just kind of a longing that I I just wish I had a dad. What impact did that have on your evolution, on your life, sort of having that longing. I think that's why I was so bad uh socially in the sense that I was looking for approval, right? Like something I needed approval. I think a lot of people kind of desire that approval or that loving figure and I just didn't have that and so I think I just looked for it in everything else right like if I to psychoanalyze my actions during the time it's not like I was actively thinking that uh but yeah I just always wanted something to fill in whatever that was I felt I think a lot of people listening to this will resonate with your experience in high school like being the outsider being picked on uh struggling through a lot of different complexities at home. What advice would you give to them? Man, the worst part about high school is that you're surrounded by a bunch of people your age and it feels eternal. Yeah. You don't think like the people that are around you, you feel like are the people that will be there for the rest of your life. At least that's what I kind of like I thought and I didn't really even realize this until many years later that they are going to be some of the least consequential people in your life. Yeah. which is very shocking to kind of think about especially if you're in it right now right like right now they are the everything that you're experienc one day it all stops and then real life starts to begin it's just that's such a shocking thing and if I could just tell myself that maybe I would have been a much different person that's so beautifully put I mean it is a it's like a trial run you know like at the beginning of video games there's a little tutorial that's what that is yeah And actually that should be a chance uh to try shit out to take risks. Uh because real life will begin where there is more consequences after that. Here you can you know if you like a girl ask her out try shit. If you get picked on, hit that guy back. Try shit out. I'm not going to condone punching another person. I will beat the shit out of them and uh take some jiu-jitsu and learn how to take him down. And then and then and then that girl that rejected you will be like, "hm, maybe I'll give that guy a second chance. Be a bad motherfucker." It's a chance to try stuff out. This is a very motivational speech for kicking ass. It is true there. I mean, there is something very true about that that I think especially I I mean, I have no idea what the girls experience of high school would be like, but as a guy, there's definitely a lot of like physical requirements in high school. There's a lot of physical measurement, at least where I grew up. I think that might not be true in all high schools, but if they're filled with boys, it's probably true. And so, it's just like, yeah, it probably does help to do those things, to go to BJJ, to do any of these activities because even if you don't ever kick someone's ass, just having some level of confidence in yourself is probably a very valuable thing. But just remembering that this is such a short tiny moment in your life is just like a huge help. I mean the way you phrased it is exactly right. That's what it feels like that this is these are the people that will be with you for the rest of your life and this is the whole world. And so that means that there'll be just tremendous amount of impact. If somebody picks on you or if you fall somebody low somewhere low in the hierarchy uh in the status hierarchy of this high school that means you'll be low in the status hierarchy of the world and you're fucked for the rest of your life. And that that carries a tremendous amount of weight. It's just why psychologically it's extremely difficult to be I I think it's underated often by parents by society how difficult it is to be a high schooler. How difficult psychologically it is. How it actually makes sense that some people would suffer from depression and be on the verge of suicide. It's very very difficult. Yeah. I think it's even I you know people always say back in my day you know blah blah blah. I think it's genuinely harder today than it's ever been in the sense that when I was a kid there was a qualification to people meaning this is a cool guy this is not a cool guy today there's a quantification of people you have 32,514 people following you have 12 like there people can visually they can inspect your exact social value on whatever platform you're on and that has to be just so much harder and I can imagine that there's a lot of of just so much weight put on that that it's just it feels probably way worse and way more damning to be uncool because you have an exact number of how uncool you are. Yeah. The challenge there and the task the quest is to remember that just because your social circle on social media and uh in high school thinks you're uncool, it actually might mean you are cool. Yeah. And you need to find that cool and grow it and let it flourish so that when real life begins, you can fucking come out of the gate firing on all cylinders. That's a great way to put it. I I I think if anything, high school is really bad at picking out the cool people that like uh the whatever the system, the hierarchy that forms, it is so it's such a basic bitch hierarchy. Like you're good at very generic shit. That's how you rise. Your parents bought you an expensive car. Expensive car, right? Materialistic shit. Yeah, exactly. It's a greedy search. See, they didn't have a proper search, so they're just hitting that local optima. But the herist, I mean, even the objective function uh for that greedy search is just a really shitty one. Yeah. Where those people that win the game of high school are very often not going to be the people that win the much more exciting, beautiful game of life. So, do epic shit and uh try stuff out. The weirdos are the ones that are going to succeed. The weirdos in high school, uh, probably because they also get bullied and they get to be tormented more psychologically and get to explore their own mind and think through what it means to be a human being more. Cuz if you're winning in high school, you're not being challenged. Yeah. You're not self-reflecting. You're not trying shit out. So, there is some degree to like being tormented as long as it doesn't break you. the porn addiction. That's another powerful one that I think will probably resonate with a lot of people. And it's interesting you say that's one of the hardest addictions um to uh overcome. Let me say it this way. Some addictions have a much bigger societal look and porn is just not one of them, which makes it super hard. None of your friends are going to cheer you on. If you go on Twitter and say, "I quit porn." They're going to be like, "Well, that's good for you, but not everybody." You know, not every, you know, no one makes that argument with meth, right? No one's going to be like, "Well, not everyone has to quit math, okay? It's actually a fine industry and people who, you know, are the ones producing it, they're good also, right?" Like, no one's going to make that kind of argument. Whereas with porn, you're going to have like a whole thing and friends friends are going to think you're dumb for doing it or whatever. It's like you have it's a much more difficult one in just like that. So, it feels accepted. And I think it's also an addiction you can practice, participate in privately, and hide it from the world. There are certain addictions that are harder to hide from the world for prolonged periods of time. Yeah. And porn addiction is probably one you can just have for many years and then it can deepen. That's probably like a serious issue. Boy, am I glad I grew up before the internet because the it's porn is so accessible, so so easy to go deep into that addiction. Uh I mean what can you speak about what impact it had on your life? Maybe some of the low points but also how to overcome it. I'd say as far as impact goes is that you will have such a long and broken look at women by the very like I can again I'm only speaking from a a male's perspective that porn in its just like most basic thing is that you use another person for your own uh desire or your own want. It's not something that is deeply needed. There's no need there's no like need for porn. It's purely a want-based activity or a lust, however you want, whatever word you can fill in there. And it is purely an objectifying activity. Like someone else is on display for your own enjoyment. And so I think you carry this around. Like I do think that the women that I dated during high school or the women after high school and college, like I looked at them as a means to an end. I think porn greatly kind of shifted that kind of perspective in my head that I did not give the value that was desired to another person. It really devalues uh humanity just in general is my perspective of it and that it makes people into commodities and I don't think people are commodities. I think everyone has value and so during that for me that's kind of like the great effect of porn is that you know it's just consumerism gone wild or materialism maybe you could ask argue gone wild and it's extremely hard to quit just like you said because I can look at porn and then I can go out to lunch. Mhm. you know, no one's going to know. No one's going to have any ideas. Like, it's a very private. It can be very short session. It doesn't have to be something that takes like, you know, you can't take acid than go out to lunch, right? You're going to be you're going to your whole day is going to be a very different day. And so, there's a it's very quick, easy, accessible, and then obviously there's like all the like the science and you know, statistics like men make worse decisions for some period of time after looking or being exposed to sexualized images. There's the whole dopamine effect that's just like you constantly need more and more dopamine. That's why people typically don't just watch five minutes of porn and call it a day. There's like, you know, the hundth tab joke that's always made on the internet. It's because you it's just this this constant dopamine cycle you're constantly doing. And all that stuff is great to say. And I'm sure statistics and science and all that stuff is really great arguments for some amount of people, but for me it just comes down to like is it really a good thing to do? Like is it really actually something we want is to value people in such a profane or kind of just like disregarding way. Like I just really think it's just bad for the soul. Even if all the stats said it was great for you, I still say it's actually bad. Yeah. You have to look at the long-term big picture psychological impact it has on your relationships with human beings in general. That's my more generally than just porn. Uh, my problem with the the quoteunquote sort of manosphere is I think sleeping with a bunch of women is great, wonderful, but the problem is is making that the primary objective of your life. Similar with porn is you devalue one of the most awesome things which is intimacy. That's true for deep friendship. That's true for relationships. And I think porn does that like in its purest darkest form which is like the thing that matters is the sex not the like the deep connection with another human being. I think again going back to high school and uh the the manosphere the objective function if it's to get laid which helps with status and confidence and all all that is wonderful I think again can be an addiction but the thing that's even more awesome for a lot of people is a deep friendship or deep intimacy with a with a romantic partner like that's also fucking awesome and both of those are great. It's objectively better to have like I would say that there's no universe that exists or there should be no argument possible that exists that a guy who has meaningless sex has a better or a more meaningful life than say me and my wife who've been together for 15 years. We have a very like I can depend on her in all circumstances. Whereas if you live that other life it sure it could be it could feel great but there's no meaning to it. There's no val there's no actual real value to it. That's absolutely correct. I do think that getting laid can have a tremendous positive impact on the confidence of a young man. I think just there's a certain number of sexual partners from which you can collect a lot of data and you can free you about like not to be so nervous about the opposite sex, not to be so nervous about human interaction. And that will allow you to see the world more clearly and to actually find that one partner that with whom you could be deeply intimate with. Sometimes like the nervousness around like this society uh constructed like value in getting laid can cloud your judgment. And if you just release that by getting laid a bunch of times, then like you could see the world clearly that getting laid is not as nearly as important as you said as finding the right human, including I should put in that pile not just like a romantic partner, but like friendships, like deep lasting friendships. Well, I mean, I think you're right that our society puts a lot of emphasis on getting laid. And I'm sure that's true among any group of males uh throughout any point in history. I'm sure that's a very common joke that's never actually like never stopped at any point. So, I'm I'm sure that exists, but and there's there's probably some truth to the sense that after you've you know who was it? Uh Jim Carrey, I hope that everyone can get rich so they realize that money solves none of your problems. Yeah. Like the realization that this thing that society told you is hyper important is actually not the important part. Like it is a very important It's a great sign that your relationship is healthy. Like if me and my wife were to have no sex at all for months on end, like something's gone wrong, which means what, you know, we are no longer like on the same plane, something, you know, but it's not also a good identifier. Just because you're having a lot of sex doesn't mean you're having a good relationship. And so it's kind of like a unique kind of um I forget the the right term here, but it's a unique way at looking at the problems. And our society puts so much emphasis. And maybe that's why porn was so hard to quit. But I my guess is it's just all the dopamine effect that it is. Uh but for me like the the most important part and the thing that actually has real reward is having that having just my wife. I do not look at I try I desperately try not to look at any other woman. I'm hopefully not going to get caught Mark Zuckerberg at the White House like that. Um you know like I don't look at porn. My wife has complete confidence in me that there is not going to be a situation in which she has to question me in any kind of sense and that builds a much more deeply I I would argue a very deep relationship because the trust is that much bigger. I think the deepness of the relationship is probably proportional to the trust you have in each other. Mhm. It's very hard to have a deep relationship with no trust. Yeah. And uh a probably a prerequisite maybe a component of trust is vulnerability to where you like take the leap of being vulnerable with another human being and that vulnerability when reciprocated builds this this really strong trust and it's a beautiful thing. Yeah. I I I personally just given my position uh that's even more challenging, you know, being vulnerable with the world and there's a bunch of people out there that want to hurt you for it and um but I think it's worthwhile anyway to be vulnerable. It's always worth the risk is always worth it in in some sense. Like obviously everyone has a different kind of life they have to filter through their actions with, right? because the person that has no say social following or anything, their riskreward profile could just be local impact which could be just as you know damning or harming to them. And so it's always worth the risk though in my personal opinion cuz like finding my wife is been obviously the most impactful or changing thing in my life. So or second most. I'd argue that one night with God would probably be the most impactful thing that led to everything else, but then the wife would be the next most impactful. I mean I'm like cleaning up after myself and stuff now. changed man. I'm a changed man. Can we try to reverse engineer that moment of you finding God? What is it at 19? Because it feels like that was a big leap for you to escape to escape the pain to escape the addiction or the beginning of that journey. Uh what do you think what do you think happened there? I think it just felt like I just there was no line that I wasn't willing to cross. Like everything was fine and just like it just all a sudden just in that moment it's just like I had a I guess some sort of deep fear and understanding like I am going down a path. Is this really the path you want to go down? And I don't know what the result of that path would be or anything like that. I don't tend to speculate on things I I don't understand. I just know that in that moment I had the option and I just chose I I didn't want it anymore. Right? It's kind of mixed in this whole thing where it's just like I had no value. I wrapped up all my meaning or value in having sex or getting laid. I had, you know, all that stuff. All the things we just talked about like that was where all my worth was. And that is just such a like a terrible place to have your worth. And it's just like kind of all came to a point. And I can't tell you the day of the week. I can't tell you anything other than it was nighttime and I was in South Hedges in Montana State University. Go Bobcats. Um that's about Yeah, that's the sign that we do at football games. Don't worry about it. But like that's all I can really that's all I can really tell you cuz the night it that night was no more or less special than some other night. It's just the specialness was I got at least a chance to make a choice. Because you find in that advice that you can give to others who are probably there's there's probably just an endless amount of people that are struggling with porn addiction, not young people. What what advice could you give to them? How to overcome it? For me to overcome it, I had to realize that I was taking something away from my future wife. Some people be like, "Oh, well, you just, you know, once you get a girlfriend, then you can stop." And it's just like, "No, because you never stopped the problem. You don't stop a problem by replacing it. And so I didn't have a girlfriend. I didn't have all that. I just realized that I was truly taking away from something for my future wife. And I didn't even know my current wife at that time. I didn't she was not in the picture. I'm not even sure if she was at Montana State University at that point. And so it's just that's uh once I made that realization, I think it went from my head to my heart, which they say is the greatest distance in the universe. I finally like got it. And that's really where things change. So if the the ability to say like what's going to help you change and all that, I don't know if there's I don't think there's silver bullets, right? If someone could offer you a drug, I forget who says this phrase, but there's this really interesting phrase that goes something like um he was a very depressed man and he was struggling with suicide and he kind of writes about this in this memoir and he goes to the these doctors and the doctors effectively say, "Well, here's anti-depressants. It's going to help you." And he says that well the problem was is that scientists told me that I could just touch my brain and make myself happy and that's it. Like they could reach in, they could configure some stuff and I'll be happy. He's like for me it was a lot like going out into a field and being able to take a drug to see the rain. I could look out, see the rain, it would fall down, it'd be silvery, it'd be beautiful, but all the crop would still die cuz there's not actually any rain. I had to discover how to be happy myself. And so for me, it's like the reason why I looked at porn is cuz I was unhappy. I was trying to find meaning. I was trying to find value in something, right? Something that was supposed to finally give me this ultimate satisfaction. And it just does not. No matter how hard and no matter how much you think it will, there is no escapade. There is no pornography that will ever give you that satisfaction you're looking for. That's the reason why it's addicting. That's kind of like my call to why you shouldn't do it. But how to get out of it, I only got out of it by realizing. I think that's really brilliantly described. You knew that this thing you're doing is preventing you from finding your future wife. And future wife could mean more even broadly this path to a to a to a flourishing to a to a beautiful life. I think there's a lot of choices we make that are just preventing us from opening the door to whatever future. Like I think what's really nice to do is to imagine just like we said with high school that there are a bunch of trajectories in life where you'll be truly happy. And you need to construct your life in a way where you have the chance to travel down those paths. And there's a bunch of addictions. there's a bunch of choices that prevent us from traveling down those paths. So, just believe that you're going to have an awesome life and remove from your life the things that are uh preventing you from walking down that that path, which is essentially what you did. It's a leap of faith that like if you let go of porn that a better life is waiting for you on the other end. Yeah. I definitely can't say how long it will take a better life, but for me, there's no way in the universe I could have had the relationship that I have without first making those steps cuz I couldn't value uh like I couldn't value my wife in the way that was proper for who she was. I would have valued her through the index or the lens that I currently was looking through. So, got to ask. So, I've never done math. I've never done meth. That was a great segue by the way. Oh man, I don't know what the fuck I'm doing honestly with this interviewing thing. But yeah, meth and LSD, you know, I did Iaska, I did shrooms a bunch of times. Oh, on this topic, I should say that like uh there's a lot of uh on Twitter and on tech in the tech community in general sort of people speaking negatively about Iawaska. Uh and some positively. I don't I think it's it's such a roll of the dice. Like I I had incredible experiences, but I don't think I want to recommend it to anyone. It's a risk. It's a serious risk. It really is a roll of the dice. Like you could meet your demons and they could destroy you or you can meet your demons and let go of them or you could have experiences like I did which is like never apparently I don't have demons. I'm pretty sure they're somewhere in the basement but like I've never met them on drugs. Yeah. I'm always a really happy. I'm a happy drunk. I'm a uh super happy an Iaska just full of love. I don't understand. I don't understand where the demons are. But that's my biochemistry, whatever that is. And for some others, you know, one trip could be amazing and the next one could just completely destroy you and wreck your life. So, um I don't know what the recommendation from that is. maybe avoid it, but then all of us die and life, you know, I I tend to lean into adventure, but but drugs is a it's if you fuck with the biochemistry of your brain, you can really destroy yourself in a way that's going to torment you. though. I would generally recommend that people avoid drugs altogether probably unless you're crazy motherfucker. Hunter S. Thompson. What an intro to this topic. Uh I'm sorry. What's meth like? That is it's it's that's a great intro. I I I like you are very correct in the sense that there is at least when it comes to hallucin what you're going to experience and there is no guarantee there's no you know just because you buy the product doesn't mean you're going to have a good time right there's a lot of uh personally I find that stuff uh to be very I believe in the spiritual realm right like I believe demons and angels exist I believe God exists and that kind of whole realm is like I don't know what it opens you up But it's much much different experience. Now, some people be like, "Oh, it's just a bunch of chemicals in your brain. They all get mixed up." LSD just takes all of your pathways and they all go, you know, they all get kind of scrambled up in your brain. It's just like, yeah, the experiences are profound. I had some really bizarre, very cool, very awful. I've had all the experiences in them all. I can just tell you that I like I personally always say the same thing. It's like choices that I made I can never take back. I would never take that away from myself because I don't know if I would be who I am today without all those experiences going up to it. But if you have not had that experience, I'm on your team or at least partially on your team, maybe more severely. I don't think you need those experiences. I don't think they're going to you don't have to put yourself through that to make a good decisions or to realize that uh people have value, right? You can you you don't have to do that. So, as far as like what is meth like? Meth is like, if you've ever done cocaine, cocaine starts off with like a 15-minute dance party just like like it's just so intense. It's like so great. And then it's just followed up by like like a 5 hour like just feeling wiggly, right? I don't know how else to describe it. Meth is like that except for I didn't get as much dance party or any dance party, but instead I just got that part for like 12 hours. Yeah. So did a lot of skateboarding, did a lot of, you know, running around. Would you say it's a pleasant feeling or is it more like an escape from the loneliness of life? What is it pleasant or negative? In the actual moment, not the consequences, but in the moment. So there I mean this is this is just like a very interesting kind of area which is that not universally you can't say that. Um often you'll find that there's kind of these two um groups of drug addicts. There's those that like the the opioids and those that like the uppers. They typically don't like there's there's very few people in the drug world that do both. They're really just kind of like find their side and they go for it. So, will is meth a thing that everybody's going to enjoy. Well, categorically as you can see and just like how people experience drug addiction. No. Uh but for me, it's just like I had a really it kind of like feeds into like the ADHD nature of like this like cuz you know you're kind of high energy. You're kind of like always in the moment. So, it's just like you're in the moment, but it's just like, "Oh, I'm in the moment," you know, like it's like everything's just so intense, you know, like you just want to like really be in the moment. Uh, and so it's just experiencing that constantly. And so, was that great? Well, some people, you know, my wife always tells me this, like being like nervous or I forget the anxiety of a situation can also be the same thing as like thrill. I forget the exact way. She she's probably super disappointed that I messed this up, but it's like you could perceive those two experiences in very different lights. Some people, you know, get in front of a crowd and it's like thrilling. Some people get in front of it and it's just like the worst experience of their lifetime. They would actually literally rather die, which is a crazy thing to think about than stand up and speak. And so for me, meth was that kind of thrilling side, but at the same time is it didn't it still didn't like quite give me that thing I wanted. whatever I was looking for, I'd use it to help try to get that thing I want, but it was never giving me that thing I wanted. Yeah. Uh, for me, I've had all really wonderful experiences. Do not recommend them, but like what was like a YouTube policy, by the way, that you have to say, by the way, don't whatever you do, do not do illegal activity. But I had great experience, but don't whatever you do, don't do it. Mr. Primigen, I have no master. I don't have YouTube or whatever. I'll say whatever the fuck I want. I'm just uh But seriously, no, I don't No, I don't give a shit about YouTube or anybody. Honestly, I'm just kind of careful about the words I say because just because I had positive experiences. I don't want young people listening to this think they should try the experience. I think the much more powerful message is that life is awesome even without that. That's something I definitely experiment with on the alcohol side. So for me, you know, I'm an introvert. I'm afraid of the world. Social interaction fills me with with anxiety. Alcohol is definitely a thing that helps with that sometimes. But I think honestly like it's not even the alcohol. It's like having to do something while a person is talking to me. I could just like drink a liquid if they Yeah. Mhm. There's like a social thing with a beer. It's like Yeah. Uh-huh. Yeah, we're having fun. And I think it's it work for me. It works the same as if the if the liquid actually looks like alcohol, it does the same purpose often because like alcohol from like if you have of a a whiskey or a beer looking thing, it kind of sends a signal that we should be having fun. So, we're socializing, right? We're fucking getting crazy. And then that mean you don't actually need the alcohol. You can get fucking crazy without the alcohol substance. Yeah. But there is some kind of uh like uh social signaling that happens when you have a drink in your hand. So I've been to gettogethers where I'm not drinking but just doing like a fake drink situation and I can also have fun. So I've been uh but that said, you know, traveling across the world, there are times when you be able to dawn a bottle of vodka. That's very essential for the for my line of work. But but that's that's sort of that's almost like a cultural experience versus like a necessary component of a successful uh social interaction, one that brings you happiness. So uh not drinking. I think you can have fun and not drink too. So all of this man I'm so careful saying drugs have had a a good effect on my life because I think for most people no for majority of people they will in the long term long term have a negative effect. So, I think if you were to choose one or the other, just no drugs, uh, and no drinking means one day you can be the president of the United States, kids. And I should say, oh man, his funniest line. Diet Diet Coke is great. That's his funniest line, which is, you would hate me if I drink, which I just like to me that tickles me like to no end. Just like, oh my gosh, that is such a funny line. Self-awareness and humor is wonderful there. But I I am on your team. Like all of the reasons why I used drugs and all that was a form. It's some level of escapism. I'm sure that's like would be the archetype or the box I'd put that into or the pursuit of trying to feel something that cannot come from them. It's like trying to find meaning in your job. You can find satisfaction in what you do. Like that is a very good thing. You can find satisfaction and be happy with what you've created. You can be, you know, thrilled by the experience. But you cannot find I doubt you can find purpose. you know, maybe some people in specific jobs, you know, like this obviously of very broad strokes I'm painting with like if you're an EMT and you save someone's life, maybe, you know, there can be purpose in that whole experience, right? So, I'm not saying all things, but like as programming goes, most programmers, you cannot just simply find your purpose. And same with drugs, like you cannot find that thing you're looking for, but they are a very great distraction. Mhm. And then at some point, that distraction comes with a heavy cost. I think Dr. FA would probably know the best about the heavy cost, but it's just you're making one trade for another and at some point the the bill comes due and that bill can be very very large. The other moment you mentioned that I think is really inspiring is that you know you failed pre-calculus, you really struggle in school like you realize that school is really hard and then eventually you're able to sort of persevere and um I don't know break through that wall of struggle. Can you by way of advice figure out what happened and what the kind of advice you can give to people who are struggling? Yeah, I I'll paint it in kind of more clear picture, a very fast speedrun of it is that I took pre-calculus, failed, I took pre-calculus again, failed, took pre-calculus again and got a C. So, I took it three times. Uh, then I took calc over the summer. So, calc one in one at the end, the final, the final was a two-hour final. I finished it in 30 minutes and that was the highest score in all of the school and I proceeded to be the highest score in all calculus and diffyq. I was the only person out of 400 people to finish the diffyq final. Uh and I got the highest grade and so I was like I got really good. So I somehow went from really bad to really good and so my only the thing that I did is that I had to win. It was not a option. It was not like oh you know this would be really great. It's like I will not graduate. I will not finish my stuff if I cannot do this. And so every single day I got up, I went to my what, however many hour class it was. Right after that, I went straight to the math learning center, did those problems. When I got home, I just got the book and it had the odd answers in the back and I would try to walk through the problems over and over and over and over again until I absolutely got it. And it just became this thing where I just I it just simple wrote memory took over. and the ability to just effectively have the times table but for calculus all stuck in my head inverse trig substitution trig substitution doing Taylor McLaren series like all those things kind of just over and over and over and over again eventually they became easy they became very easy it's just that I had to cram it in there and some people you know you hear these stories where they they barely show up to class and they get A's I've never been that person I've always been the person that has to sit down read through everything and I'm bad at abstract concepts I like the concrete into the abstract, not the abstract into the concrete. Very bad at talking about things theoretically then trying to apply them. But if I can do it once literally, then it's really easy for me to go into the abstract. And so it's just like for me, it just I had there's no substitute for the hours. So if you if I were to give advice, it's just that you have to have time in the saddle. Hour after hour will make you slowly better. And at first it's crushing, it's defeating and it's not fun because you are bad at it. But then at some point it you're just not bad at it if you can just do it long enough and you'll start getting okay at it. And then at some point you might even get good at it. And when you get good at something it feels amazing. There's like an exploratory thing like if you're if you've ever played a musical instrument, you stop having to think about all the little teeny things you have to do to be able to play something correctly and you start thinking about how you can explore that space. It's like it you a completely different problem. And same with programming. Programming has an identical kind of feel to it. It's just like you'll cross that barrier and it becomes magical as opposed to a chore. Yeah. Once you cross that barrier, somehow other things become easier. But then if you want to have a truly successful life, then you find the next barrier. Yeah. The next barrier. Yeah. I've always been the same. It's everything's come really hard. Yeah. I do not I had I've had no free lunches. Everything's just been a lot of a lot of pain and struggle. Uh I think somebody said that the on this topic that you think work smarter not harder is a phrase that you dislike. Somebody on Reddit told me this. Yeah. I don't just dislike it. I hate that phrase. Okay, tell me tell me tell me about your hatred. How how do you feel? The reason why I dislike that is that there is a kind of a a hidden suggestion there which is that you already know what smarter is. So just do that. That actually things should be easy. You should just not have to like try that hard. You should just do the quick easy obvious path and boom, it's done. It's like I've never experienced that in anything I've done. everything is actually really hard and most the time I don't even know what I'm doing. So therefore, I don't even know what smart looks like. And so for me, the only way I can learn how to work smart is by working very very hard and knowing that there's no shortcuts. And then when I finally figure out what smart is when I work smart and work hard, it is that much better. I think there's a deep profound truth to that. There's a lot of these phrases that just drive me nuts in our society. But but that one is sorry that one is really accepted if we can just linger on it because it really bothers me as well. So one which is a really nice thing you said the presumption there is things should be easy and you're a failure if you don't see the easy path. That's kind of the work smart dog. Why why you putting in all those hours? And so it makes a lot of people that struggle feel like they're a failure. Yeah. Cuz like I don't see it. And then the choice I have, well, I'll just go with the uh with the l I'll just be lazy and then maybe the profound truth will come to me somehow. And and yeah, I think I don't think I've ever and I don't think I've met great engineers uh that find the smart way without the extremely hard work. The annoying thing about those great engineers is then looking back they forget the hard work because they remember all the joy they they now are experiencing from all the efficient smart work they figured out how to do. They forget. So when they give advice, they give the stupid fucking advice of well just do it like you know the easy way and here's the easy way. But no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. You have to put in the hours. Like, you know, musical instrument is a beautiful example of guitar and piano. I've put in I don't know how many thousands of hours. And now when I'm explaining stuff, jiu-jitsu as well. I'm I sound like I sound like one of those people like just, you know, just relax, you know, in jiu-jitsu. By the way, just relax is a really wonderful thing for physical endeavors like piano and so on. But to learn how to relax your hand, how to relax your mind, your body, and uh use the the whatever the biomechanics of your body to apply the correct kind of leverage and the timing and all that. That takes thousands of hours of learning. Just to learn how to relax takes a lot of really hard work. In jiu-jitsu, that takes many months of getting your ass beat over and over until you like uh you know ride the bus home crying, your your ego completely shattered and destroyed and then like a little element is figured out late that night or next morning. And from the depression, there's this uh little plant that grows this flower of uh insight. And you use that insight to then get your ass kicked again all next fucking month and year. And then you grow and grow and grow. And from that you discover how beautifully simple jiu-jitsu is or judo is for just speaking for myself or piano or guitar. And then yes, the the profound truth or the mastery of a skill feels simple when you finally arrive to it, but the path is for most people is uh is going to be a hard one. Can Can I I think I should make an addendum to the phrase. I think the phrase should be work hard, get smart. Nice. That's a t-shirt. That's what it should be. Yeah, agreed. Okay, that was a tangent of a tangent. Can I say one more phrase, cultural phrase that I absolutely hate? Yes. Uh the journey is better than the destination. Right. Everyone's heard this, right? Mhm. Just take one second to apply what that means. That means forever starting from now, you are only going towards a place that's worse, right? Like that that literally is what it means, right? Enjoy the journey, celebrate the destination. That's like that should be what it would be. But no, people say these phrases are everywhere. There's these very shallow phrases that have no logical bounds to them. You're just like, what does that why would the journey ever be better than the destination? Cuz you're always this I think this might even be a CS Lewis uh quote is that CS Lewis was like, nope, this is terrible. Don't the journey is not in fact better than the destination. I love the demotivational posters. Uh progress moving forward is better than moving backwards even if you're still going nowhere. There's a there's a I feel that one so so much being in California for a few years. That is that is painful. Positivity. If it doesn't break you today, don't worry. It will try again tomorrow. It's just a lot of really great posters. I didn't even know this was a thing. This is a thing. Oh my gosh. I want that. Yeah. Hey. Hi. This is the primogen. You know, one thing that I forgot to mention in this podcast, which feels just so foolish to me for forgetting is just what a big role my mom played in my life. She had to work 18 hours a day after my dad died. She really made our house be able to survive. I always looked up to her and I always thought her amazing and she really was the reason why when I decided to get my butt kicked back in gear, she's just someone who I looked to as like an internal kind of inspiration for me to continue to keep on going cuz I really wanted to make her proud. and all those years of just high energy effort. I really wanted to make sure that she knew that I was just so dang appreciative for it. So, hey, I just wanted to say thank you. Love you, Mom. For people who don't know, you worked at Netflix, by the way. by the way. Now, how did you go from there from the hardship that we mentioned from the struggle from the addictions and so on to a place where you were working at this this incredible engineering company and uh building cool shit there. So, tell the Netflix story. Yeah. So, you know, I kind of alluded to it earlier that I wanted to do my own startup. So for I forget how long it was, one or two years or 2 and 1/2 years, built a startup, PHP, jQuery, everyone's favorite languages all put together. Uh you can solve math stuff with jQuery. So I just was like totally into just non-stop doing that. This is like the height of Stack Overflow. Us asking really dumb questions on Stack Overflow, like what is more Pythonic? And then you get a bunch of up votes and try to steal a bunch of karma away. Like all the fun stuff to do, good times. And I was just like so into it breathing and I just breathe it in, breathe it out and that's what I do all day every day. And so it's just like non-stop building of a startup. Ultimately that startup failed and so I had to get you know go get a real job. Can you say what the startup was? It is so wild thinking about it in the past. I before I tell you what it is I want to tell one quick thing about my dad. My dad in the early 90s, like 91, 92, was building kind of like a phone card company where you'll be able to pre- purchase long distance minutes. Now, if you remember the '9s and about like what 97, 98, 99, 10, 10, 220, all those different things, dial down the center, right? Like all those companies where you can pre- purchase long distance kind of came out and were very, very big. And so my dad was like six years early to that notion. and ultimately his startup failed but he was just really early to something that would catch on really really big specifically in the telecommunication space. me as I grew up and did my own startup. I did a startup where was text message marketing. This was in 2010 where you could receive say texts about various deals, all that kind of stuff. And of course 10 years later now you don't stop receiving texts. And text message marketing is all the rage. And so I also much like my father had a startup in the telemarketing space in which was just like a half decade too early. So is it fair to say you're almost always ahead of your time at your visionary of sorts? No. In fact, I am not ahead of my time. I just got un some would say I got unlucky on that uh situation, but I did see it was it seemed so obvious to me at that time when I was doing it. 80% of phones were dumb phones. Most people had flip phones when I went and sold uh via text is what the name was of that specific product. It was and we had the short code via text, too. So, it's pretty, you know,…

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