Ryan Holiday
Founder & Host, The Daily Stoic · 4 appearances on the record.
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Ryan Holiday is an author and former Director of Marketing at American Apparel who popularizes Stoic philosophy. He is best known for bestselling books including The Obstacle Is the Way and Ego Is the Enemy, as well as the Daily Stoic platform and podcast.
71statements → 8claims → 3claims resolved → 67%fully supported → 3.72/5average certainty → 2.07/5average debate potential → ≈4.0/5argument clarity, estimated → 18said about them ↓
2 supported 1 partly supported 0 contradicted 5 not checkable as stated how the 8 claims stand · each chip opens the sources
2 predictions · 6 assertions · 13 opinions · 43 insights · 5 disclosures · 2 what ifs · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 8 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 3 are resolved, and 5 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.
The record, in short
What the tape says about how Ryan argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.
Their most notable supported claim
How they sound: not measured why? →
We measure speaking style by listening to the audio itself, and a fair number needs at least 2,000 words from one person on tape we have measured. There is too little of Ryan Holiday on measured tape to publish a rate. This says nothing about how they speak.
Everything Ryan Holiday said on the Knowledge Project that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →
Holiday: Trump's effectiveness stems from enraging opponents rather than genius
“What Trump does is I don't think it's so much a function of genius on his part, so much as a confluence of personality traits, so enrages his opponents and disorients them, and is so the opposite of what they have experienced dealing with, that It's almost lik…”
Holiday: Elon Musk's ventures relied on massive government subsidies
“Elon Musk sees himself as this groundbreaking, you know, Precedent shattering entrepreneur. And another version to look at is this guy who took massive government subsidies at critical points that allowed him to do those things.”
Holiday: Trump's effectiveness relies on disorienting opponents rather than strategic genius
“What Trump does is I don't think it's so much a function of genius on his part, so much as a confluence of personality traits, so enrages his opponents and disorients them, and is so the opposite of what they have experienced dealing with, that it's almost lik…”
Holiday: Singular domain excellence creates inherent psychological imbalance
“There is something inherently unbalanced about Excellence in a singular domain, because you are focusing all of your energy on one thing. There's something dysmorphic about like the athlete's physique. And that's probably just the physical manifestation of als…”
Holiday: Externally imposed discipline is not a true virtue
“So the discipline of an army sergeant is obviously important, but I don't think that's a virtue because it's being imposed on you.”
Holiday: Cold plunge health claims are largely nonsense
“I'm pretty skeptical at this point of like all of those claims, because I've seen what nonsense like these same communities will propagate.”
Holiday: Cancel culture pushes disgraced public figures into radicalized caricatures
“And what would happen today is that this person would be basically shoved by one half of society, and then perversely, like, embraced by another darker side of society that Doesn't like those people, right? And you would see him get radicalized and fight again…”
Ryan Holiday: Virtue signaling is preferable to cruelty and vice signaling
“But if I had to choose, you know, like people are today are like, oh, it's all this virtue signaling, you know, it's like certainly better than the alternative, you know, totally. I'm not sure this sort of like this, the cruelty is the point vice signaling is …”
Holiday: AI cannot match good writers but outperforms poor writers
“I haven't seen it do anything that even a pretty good writer can do, but it can do things a lot better than people who are bad at writing.”
Holiday: AI Will Eliminate Average Workers but Boost Elite Leverage and Pay
“These technologies aren't eliminating They're going to be eliminating large chunks of the people who are able to do that thing. But the people who could do that thing at an elite or an excellent level will probably it's leverage will be better at it and be mor…”
Holiday: Creative professions overly tolerate spotty output unlike sports or trading
“Maybe it's because writing is a creative profession that people don't treat, like professional sports or, you know, trading or anything where it's just sort of excuse, like, because people think it's hard and they don't understand how it works. They're just a …”
Holiday: Delaying decisions costs more than making the wrong choice
“Whatever the margin of error would be between one decision or the other is far smaller than whatever the opportunity costs of not having it done. And moved on to the next thing are.”
Holiday: Idealists fail because preoccupation with ideals clashes with reality
“I think the problem with a lot of idealistic people, particularly people who are interested in social change or social justice, is that they're, This preoccupation with how they want things to be puts them at odds with how they are and actually makes it much l…”
Holiday strongly disagreed with Dov Charney's actions as American Apparel collapsed
“I read that book about Seneca around the time that American Apparel was collapsing, and Dov Charney, who's the CEO, sort of went through, you know, did some things I very much disagree with”
Manual transcription creates a vital physical ritual for processing research notes
“The idea of just quickly being able to copy and paste stuff is antithetical to what I'm doing and why, like, it's the ritual that's important, and the act of taking it longhand is very important. Obviously, if it's like a, you know, huge paragraph, I'm gonna t…”
Writing non-fiction without a discrete target and outline is highly dangerous
“What you don't do, what I think is the most dangerous thing for writers to do, is to just, and maybe it works when you're writing fiction, I don't know, but sitting down and just writing. Like, you can't hit a target that you didn't aim for.”
Consultants should charge for strategic thinking instead of pitching for free
“People think, like, the execution is the hard part, but to me, the thinking is the hard part, so I'm not going to think for free and then get paid to execute. I would rather get paid to think and then maybe get paid a little bit more to execute, or if you want…”
Holiday: Succeeding by ignoring critics creates a dangerous anti-feedback mindset
“Often to be successful as an entrepreneur, you get there by not listening. You get there by not listening to the odds, not listening to the doubts, not listening to the critics, and then You succeed. So then you get this very wicked learning environment where …”
Ryan Holiday: Dissecting past blame distracts from choosing immediate action
“How I got here is separate and independent from the fact that I currently am here. I might need to, at some point, examine those causes so I can learn from it, but my impulse to dissect And blame and question what has happened is actually just a really conveni…”
Holiday: Journaling is to Stoicism what meditation is to Buddhism
“Journaling is to stoicism as meditation is to Buddhism. It is the practice of having a conversation with yourself about your thoughts, and beliefs, and values, and actions”
Holiday: Framing interpretations as personal stories invites clarification instead of conflict
“By you saying what I make up about that is, or the story I tell myself about that is, Or the way that sounds to me is you are not expressing your interpretation of reality as reality. And therefore you are offering the person the opportunity to correct or upda…”
Holiday: Stoicism teaches processing emotions rather than suppressing them
“And so I think, to me, Stoicism is a set of exercises and insights and practices to help you understand those emotions, process those emotions, and not be ruled by those emotions.”
Holiday: Stoic joy is resilient flourishing amidst adversity, not superficial cheerfulness
“And I think when the Stokes thought about joy and happiness, they were thinking about a more resilient form of that emotion, not Fun smiling, cheerfulness, happiness, but like a happiness of a person who is surviving the blows of fate and flourishing as a huma…”
Holiday: Marcus Aurelius resisting power's corruption surpasses any military victory
“What I think makes Marx real is such a fascinating example. Here you have one of the few humans to hold absolute power as we Would really define it and doesn't seem to have become deranged or grotesque is into an overwhelmingly cautionary tale. That to me is a…”
The other half of the tape: Ryan Holiday's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 17 times in 5 episodes on the Knowledge Project. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Les Snead 8Robert Greene 3Charlie Hoehn 3Shane Parrish 2Jeff Annello 1
Statements about Ryan Holiday, by other people (1)
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
2024 4 mentions in 1 episode
2022 8 mentions in 1 episode
2018 3 mentions in 1 episode
2016 1 mention in 1 episode
2015 1 mention in 1 episode
Appearances (4)
| Episode | Date | Speaking time |
|---|---|---|
| Ryan Holiday: How to Win the War with Yourself | Nov 26, 2024 | 1h 12m |
| TKP Insights: Philosophy | Jul 4, 2023 | 5m |
| #128 Ryan Holiday: A Stoic Life | Jan 11, 2022 | 50m |
| #11 Ryan Holiday: The Stoic Whisperer | May 16, 2016 | 34m |