The Exchanges

Q Is that because you're specifically asking for a granular level? Like you're like, go deeper on this. Like, I really want to understand your criticism or is it more effective to pick those people in the first place that are naturally prone to do that?

A I, I, I think I definitely, I think it's both. And I think I've also, Kind of try to be the reverse. How do I become the kind of person who's giving granular criticism? Like, how do I, or feedback positive or negative? And it's, it's, it's shockingly hard. So you're definitely right. Picking people is a big part of it, but, but you'd be amazed with like a little bit of guidance. Like part of it is leaning into the wind, which is really hard when someone says, oh, I just don't think this will work. You kind of, and they're not giving anything granular. It's like, You have to say, okay, I don't like hearing that. That's really painful, but I have to just like swallow and just say, okay, tell me why you think it won't work. And their first response, most notably is some high level thing. So you're like, okay, I have to, I have to sit here and let that wave pass me. That's going to be high level, whatever. And then you have to say, okay, is there something in their high level thing that I can latch onto and say, oh, you mentioned X. Tell me more about X. Not everybody, but even people who start high level, a big fraction of them with a little bit of patience, you can get them down to the specific kind of thing that they're, that is bothering them. And it, it's, it's really hard because it's your instinct, like every, every fighter instinct in you Is to push back. It's like, no, no,…

AI assessment note: “I think it's both. ... Picking people is a big part of it”

Q I think there's a really, really good segue into sort of the next topic, which is you're somebody who straddles academics and sort of practical application. How do you see academics sort of contributing to society and business? And how do you see that role? What, like, what should that role be?

A Academics produce the law of Ingredients, not in every place, but in many places, produce the raw ingredients off of which are converted to creativity and intelligence into product. And I think that that pipeline happens in the very banal, like you see it in pharma. In pharma, bio labs produce molecules that might be useful for certain things or technologies. So you see it in a very tight pipeline. But you see it in like the conversation we're having, like all this great behavioral science work that was done as pure research was raw material. By itself, it's just a set of studies. People have to then take that. So I think this conversion process is, is really one way I think about it. But the other way I think about it is that I think academia needs to also realize that it flows back in the other direction. You know, so if you think in physics, And you say, what are the great fields of physics? You know, uh, classical mechanics. Fine. That went in one direction. That's clear. But electricity magnetism, that did not go in this direction. That went in the other way. People playing with electricity, find these cool things, blah, blah. That created one of the core physical laws was going this way. Thermodynamics did not go this way. It went this way. So I think academia has this illusion that it can, it's going this way as the only Force, but there's a strong feedback loop. And so …

AI assessment note: “produce the raw ingredients off of which are converted to creativity and intelligence into product”

Q Are there specific sort of pieces of feedback that you're giving to people that seem consistent? Like, is there a pattern to some of the feedback that you're seeing that you, you offer?

A No, that's a really good question. Uh, I think. One piece of feedback that I've noticed applies to many, many, like, you know, sometimes they're business ideas, sometimes they're ideas for research papers. It doesn't matter what the discipline is. One piece that I've noticed, and it goes back to our sort of creativity and filtration thing, is that many people, when they're exploring something new, get stuck in the middle. They don't let the novel part of the thing fully express itself. Because they're afraid that, like, that's too wild. But then they don't let the filtration part fully express itself. So one thing I often say to people is like, okay, let's call this offense and defense. You're stuck in this middle ground right now with your idea where you're sort of playing some offense, you're sort of playing some defense. Let's actually just let one side develop a lot before bringing in the other side. And it's kind of this weird thing. It leads to ideas without, when you're stuck in this weird middle, it leads to these ideas that are neither bold, nor are they particularly pragmatic. Like, cause you're not, you don't have the discipline to be brutal on the pragmatic side, nor do the, the courage to be brutally bold. And it's, and it's like, I think people imagine that if you look at the timeline of their thinking, like if I could just plot it, I can attach something to your …

AI assessment note: “many people, when they're exploring something new, get stuck in the middle.”

Q I wonder if that'll affect our feelings differently. Like, is it different that if you have this nostalgic moment and you remember traveling with your kids versus Facebook prompting you with the exact same thing? So you're actually getting the same memory, but the way in which you get it is different and how that would, would change, um.

A You're right. I think that's, that's very, that's a very astute observation. I think one of the reasons we have this feeling about the brain is that we, we attribute Too much meaning to it. So when you remember this nice nostalgic trip with your wife somewhere, you not only enjoy the nostalgia, but you attribute to it as, oh, that's something that's important to me because I remembered it spontaneously. And if it were forced upon me or not forced, but you know, for triggered externally, I wouldn't have that same attribution of like, I must think that's important. I think this is this crazy view we have of the brain is that like, we know That we belch and fart, and we don't attribute deep meaning to belches or farts. But the same belches and farts produced by the firing of our neurons are like, oh, I thought about that. I wonder what, what the hell? You're just like interpreting these, these, you know, Detritus that's produced by the mind. Like, it's just, it's just, it turns out shit. That's its job.

AI assessment note: “triggered externally, I wouldn't have that same attribution of like, I must think that's important.”

Q I like that. I'm going to switch gears a little bit here. Uh, you founded a company ideas, 42, and then you sort of grew it beyond you. I'm curious as to how you did that. And that was a conscious decision. Like, how was that? And psychologically, like, how is that too, right? Where you create something and then it, it no longer needs you.

A I can tell you the philosophy and then the personal part, the philosophy part is if you've ever seen trees, it's almost obvious, but Not much grows underneath the tree. A little bit of grass, because grass can grow anywhere. And trees cast shadows that inhibit growth. And I think the toughest thing in founding things, whether it's an organization like Ideas for You, or whether it's in doing new research, the toughest thing is that you don't want to cast a shadow, but yet you have ego. And so I noticed early on in a lot of things I was doing, I was Building more to make myself central inadvertently than I was asking my question, asking myself the question, how do I make myself obsolete? And if you think about this phrase program cell death, if you just ask yourself, what can I do with this idea, this research or with this organization that would let it do what it wants to do, but that makes me obsolete. That's actually a much better heuristic, because it forces you to ask, wait, what parts of you are essential? Wait, okay, if that's essential, why can't you distill that, communicate that, so that now others can do, like, what is so magical about you? Like, what, is it, what, you have good taste? Okay, distill that, understand why you think your taste is good, and it actually is An amazing personal growth, because what it does is by preventing yourself from hiding behind your ego…

AI assessment note: “asking myself the question, how do I make myself obsolete?”

Q So am I. I mean, you grew up in India until age seven, right? And then you moved to LA where your, your parents owned a video rental store. I'm so curious as to sort of like what lessons you've learned from your parents.

A Oh my God. I, you know, for a while I contemplated, uh, writing a book about my dad. Okay. And it was going to actually be a genuine book about my dad, meaning I thought it would be a great way to convey lessons from psychology and social science through my interactions with him because he has, Just an insane font of good ideas, but also mixed with bad ideas. So there, it just shows raw creativity at work. So my favorite of his ideas, which is going to be the title of the book, was this idea. He, he called me up one day. This is when I, you know, I graduated. I had my PhD. I was a professor and he calls me up and his opening line, his opening gambit is, uh, so you're an economist, right? I'm like, well, At this point, this fact should be known to you. But I didn't like where this is going because I don't even know what my dad thinks an economist is. So he says, so you're an economist, right? I'm like, yes. He said, okay, I need your help opening a bank. Like, first of all, I, that's so far from anything I know, anything, but I want to know where the story was headed. So I said, okay, but why do you want to start a bank? He said, no, no, I've got a great idea. So there are a lot of people who believe in reincarnation, right? I said, yes, you know, no. So why should they go to the next life with nothing? So we'll start a bank, they give us a pin code, they deposit their money, wh…

AI assessment note: “it would be a great way to convey lessons from psychology and social science”

Q Most people don't think of economists and innovation going hand in hand. Can we dive into some of the work you've done on that in terms of how you're better at, um, I guess, lack of filtering on information. Like, how do you think about that? Like go deeper.

A One of the things that for me, I think helped with lack of filtration. I'll give you a couple of things. One very mundane, just, it's just, it's mundane, but it's fundamental, which is, um, you know, we're social animals. Actually, my favorite quote on this is Nick Epley, a colleague of mine has this awesome book, mind wise, in which, uh, he quotes these two primatologists and they're a husband and wife pair, I think. And They, they have been studied, they have studied baboons, I think, um, for their whole lives. And so they wrote a book with an awesome title, Baboon Metaphysics. And in that book, he has a quote, which is just awesome. Their quote is that no matter how you look at it, the problems of baboons can be summarized in two words, other baboons. And I think of that quote all the time. Other baboons. And so I think one of the filtration processes that's very like basic and obvious is the other baboon problem. Like if you are doing something creative, you can't expect the other baboons to be like, that's great. On the other hand, you got to somehow take feedback. You don't want to be the insane person on an island. Who's like, this is it. I've got a perpetual motion machine. So part of what I, I think creating a filtration mechanism is actually creating the right social filtration mechanism. How do you decide which other baboons to listen to? How do you decide what about…

AI assessment note: “creating a filtration mechanism is actually creating the right social filtration mechanism.”

Q How do you check yourself on that? Like, how do you, how do you not overfit what you're seeing when you're trying to fit it into sort of like this mental toolkit?

A I think, I think the first stage of learning is overfitting. I think you go with, when you have a new idea and you're trying to like upload it, so to speak, to use some crass, uh, A computer science, uh, uh, metaphor. You're trying to upload it. I actually kind of lean into overfitting because think of it as there are ideas that have been so rehearsed. They are over activated to find any, it's like being, think of this way. Like when you're in a bad relationship or romantic relationship or friendship, You're like on edge about some things. Oh, this is just another example of blank. Like there are ideas that are just top of mind that are looking to be instantiated. But in your regular life, you also have that. Like right now, people in the US have just, whether you're on the left or the right, they're on high alert for certain things, either as evidence of racism or evidence of, and, and, and that's not to say they're not right. I mean, it's just, it's just a fact of the mind. Um, there is a lot of racism, but that's, that's a separate issue. It's just your mind is on high alert. And so what happens is when a new idea is trying to enter this ecosystem, it's competing against these highly active ideas. They're, they're kind of blocking out the sun. So part of what you need to do is to just let them live for a bit. It's okay if they overfit because the goal of this mulling is not …

AI assessment note: “I think the first stage of learning is overfitting. I actually kind of lean into overfitting”

Q Right. Exactly. Which is a perspective. It goes back to sort of like being on the train, right? Like, what do you see? What's your lens into this that I can't see because I'm me.

A That's right. That's right. So I think that, that angle, I think is very clear. I think we're going to see a revolution both in behavioral science as a research discipline. So for example, here's a telltale sign. Psychologists don't work on self-help. That doesn't make any sense. There's a whole ocean of people who in good faith want to improve themselves. How does the research discipline of psychology largely ignore this? And if you look at most people buy behavioral economics, behavioral science books, they're sort of very highbrow self-help. You wouldn't call it self-help lest you be chastised, but it's, it's the deepest of human desires to improve oneself, understand oneself. So I think you see it at every level that, that angle That that area is about the bubble and we have the technology to implement it. I think is really is one happening like clear area. Um, but your question was more meta. How does one try to make such calls? I guess it comes down to thinking about not just your own thinking, but other people's thinking. So if I look at self-help, there's a big desire. So now you have to ask yourself, wait, there's a research discipline called psychology over here. There's, Why is the market not being made? Why is supply not meeting demand? So then it's partly about saying, what is it in a research psychologist that makes them allergic to doing this? And then if you can…

AI assessment note: “I guess it comes down to thinking about not just your own thinking, but other people's thinking.”

Q And it sticks, right? Like you can hear a thousand positive comments and then one negative. And it's that one negative one that, you know, it's 11 PM at night and you're like, ah, it just can't shake it. Um, speaking of PhDs, you were super young in college. You started your PhD at like 19. What was that like?

A Uh, yeah, yeah, I was, I was 20, I, I, I think I was, um, I couldn't drink, uh, in the U.S., it's 21. I, I was always ahead of my grade, um, weirdly, I was actually ahead by one less, when I came here to the U.S., when I was in fourth grade in India, then I come here, and the U.S. has age restrictions, actually, and so they said, you're too young to be in fourth grade, so I had this period where they put me back, And it was like all stuff I knew. And so I was still ahead of my quick and it was painful, but the reason I actually ended up being so far ahead has nothing to do with like, oh, like you must've shown young promise. It had nothing to do with that. It was that.

AI assessment note: “the reason I actually ended up being so far ahead has nothing to do with”

Q you compare, like, how do you factor in, I guess, feelings, love, family on one side, which is, um, largely unquantifiable. And then on the other side, you have money, you have, um, other things that we seek as humans, like status, power, uh, wealth, and those are, are more quantifiable. And you're often trading these things off against one another. Can you just riff on that for a second?

A It's a good question. Let me, let me do something lateral and then we'll come back to the exact question. At one of the other moments we have in peak is to help people see that they don't, we're all hoarders. Here's what I mean. You invest a lot of time acquiring a partner or a spouse who cares about you and loves you. Like you put a lot of energy into that activity. You spend time, I'd say dollars, but that sounds creepy, but it is, it's also dollars. It is like a lot of, okay, so now you've acquired in very crude terms, this quote asset. How much do you actually enjoy that asset? You'd say, no, I value it. You know, my spouse and I do things together. Okay, great. But say you're on a, Train ride somewhere and you're bored. Here's a simple way you can cherish that asset. You just sit there and go, oh, let me think about one thing I really like about my spouse. I mean, that's the consumption of an asset you've hoarded, but like hoarders, what we actually do is acquire this shit, put it away somewhere and never actually consume it. So like you have love that you've invested in. You've had experience. So one of the things we have people do is something very trivial. It's just an exercise. Take out your camera. Zoom to a random period in your, in that thing. Look at one of the photos. You know, you can do that anytime. That's how you keep taking these photos. But how many photos h…

AI assessment note: “Let me do something lateral and then we'll come back to the exact question.”