I went from failing pre-calculus three times to getting the highest score in the entire school on calculus and DiffEQ finals—the only way through was putting in the hours, not finding a shortcut.

(00:00:00) The following is a conversation with Michael Paulson, better known online as the Primogen. 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, (00:00:24) The Primogen is a legendary programmer and a great human being with an inspiring roller coaster of a life story. And now a quick few second mention of each sponsor. Check them out in the description. It is in fact the best way to support this podcast. We got InVideo AI for video generation, Shopify for selling stuff online, NetSuite for your business, BetterHelp for your health, and AG1 (00:00:52) for delicious nutrition. Choose wisely, my friends. Also, if you want to work with our amazing team or get in touch with me for whatever reason, go to lexfreatment.com slash contact. And now onto the full ad reads. As always, no ads in the middle. I try to make this interesting, but if you must skip them, please still check out the sponsors. I enjoy their stuff. Maybe you will too. (00:01:17) This episode is brought to you by InVideo AI, a video generating app that allows you to create full length videos using just text prompts. I have been using it more and more myself and trying to figure out how can I integrate it into the visual presentation of the podcast or some of the other videos so that we can kind of (00:01:42) add to the experience of what the person is talking about. And it's a real challenge because when you generate, even in a simple overlay image, you don't want to interfere with the imagination of the listener. Me as a fan of a bunch of podcasts and obviously a fan of film, I think part of the experience is the Hitchhock thing. Say less, show less, and allow the viewer, the listener, (00:02:10) to fill in the gaps with their imagination. For me, I think imagination is such a limitless world that somehow has deep roots in the subconscious of the individual person that I think you don't want to rob them of the chance to use their imagination. And so the challenge with AI and the possibility with AI is to be a catalyst for the imagination, to add material for the imagination to flourish. (00:02:39) versus a thing that adds constraints and reduces it down to where it's an interference to the imagination. Anyway, you can try in video AI for free, saving you lots of time and money you'd otherwise spend on editing, animating, and other production costs. Go to invideo.io slash i slash lexpod. That's invideo.io slash i slash lexpod. (00:03:04) This episode is also brought to you by Shopify, a platform designed for anyone to sell anywhere with a great looking online store. I think of the digital marketplace that Shopify creates as a kind of cognitive interface between the seller and the buyer, economic interface too. It's a mind meld, a network plugged in into the collective intelligence of our species. The wants and desires fueling the network and theoretical computer science (00:03:34) It's a multi-commodity optimization problem. So sometimes I like to visualize that network, lighting up, people selling, buying, thinking of what they want, looking for things they want, and finding it. In fact, the process of search and discovery in itself is fascinating. It's a technical problem, it's a psychological problem, it's a social problem. It can be abused. (00:03:59) It can be used, and with the right tools, it can significantly increase the quality of life of an individual. That's why ads can be abusive or ads can make a person's life better. When ads are done well, they legitimately connect you with a thing that will spark your life full of joy. Anyway, I set up a store on there, I think, lexfreeman.com/store, has a couple of T-shirts. (00:04:27) Nothing fancy. It was super easy to do. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period at shopify.com/luxe. That's all lowercase. Go to shopify.com/luxe and take your business to the next level today. This episode is brought to you by NetSuite, an all-in-one cloud business management system. That was one of the fascinating things that Jeff Bezos said, that all businesses eventually die. And it's true, of course. (00:04:56) All empires eventually fall. And so the task of a business, I think it's the day one thinking that he's referring to, is to delay the inevitable death of a company for as long as possible. Much like the heat death of the universe. There's a heat death of a business, and that's the point. What you're trying to do in your life, in your business, is to delay the inevitable. (00:05:26) and have fun doing it. So yeah, NetSuite is a good tool for that, for all kinds of messy things that you need to do to make a business run. That kind of sounds like I'm talking about the mob, but it's not the mob. Everything's legal. That's the point. Download the CFO's Guide to AI and Machine Learning at netsuite.com/lex. That's netsuite.com/lex. (00:05:51) This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp, spelled H-E-L-P, help. Boy, have I been going through a mental rollercoaster over the past few months and certainly over the past few weeks. This may not be the right place to talk about that, but the point is talking helps. It's the paradox that in order to fortify the castle of your mind, you have to first be vulnerable enough. (00:06:22) to reveal the fears, the anxieties, the weaknesses of the castle. Although referring to the mind as a castle seems like a very douchey thing to say. Which by the way, the whole castle world was my favorite Lego world. I think there's a bunch of worlds. This is how I knew I wasn't a sci-fi Lego person. I didn't care about the spaceships and all that kind of stuff. (00:06:48) I wanted knights and I wanted dragons and I wanted castles and pirates and boats with cannons and just war when face-to-face combat was the way that war was conducted. Technology made military conflict less personal, less human, cold, and somehow in doing so makes it too easy (00:07:18) to slide in the deeply immoral. Anyway, talking helps and BetterHelp makes it easy and accessible to get a licensed therapist that you can talk to. Check them out at betterhelp.com/lex and save on your first month. That's betterhelp.com/lex. This episode is brought to you by AG one and all in one daily drink to support better health and peak performance. (00:07:44) I need to get back to jiu-jitsu. I tweaked my knee, ACL, not torn, just sprained, white belt going crazy on me. Oh, life. Life is full of adventure, of surprises, of turns and twists. And all of a sudden, an excited white belt takes you on a detour because of a minor injury. Anyway, it takes time to heal, you know, and I'm very cautious with things that (00:08:14) prevent me from moving about this world and actually prevent me from exercising because, I have fun running. And by fun, I mean it's torture, but I enjoy it. But, running is part of my regular daily life is, yeah, it overall makes me feel good. I can push my body limit. I can push my mind to the limit. It's an escape from the intellectual world into the natural world. I run outside and really enjoy the fresh air and all that. (00:08:42) And so if I get injured in jiu-jitsu, it affects that. But then, of course, I love the chess, the puzzle, the complexity of jiu-jitsu and all the combat sports, judo, boxing. And so, yeah, I need to get back to jiu-jitsu because I think I'm getting close to that 100%. And I need to also talk to John Donoher soon. (00:09:06) We've talked 17 times. So this is gonna be the 18th time. No, I don't know. I don't know how many times we've talked, but it's never enough. The man is brilliant. And there's the Craig Jones CGI 2 coming up where there's going to be a lot of athletes clashing, a lot of ridiculous humor from Craig. I can't wait to see the spectacle of it all. And of course, I think John is participating. That'd be a good super fight, Craig Jones versus John Donahar. (00:09:35) but not jujitsu, it would be slap fighting. Anyway, I can't wait to talk to John. It's been a while and there's a lot of interesting philosophical things to discuss. This all somehow has to do with AG1 because of health. And let's see, jujitsu health equals AG1. Let's go. They'll give you one month supply of fish oil when you sign up at drinkag1.com/lex. (00:10:02) This is the Lex Friedman Podcast. To support it, please check out our sponsors in the description. And now, dear friends, here's the Primogen. (00:10:28) What do you love most about programming? 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 data structures. And the teacher that was teaching, Ray Babcock, he was talking about linked lists. Now, you have to learn Java at Montana State University when I went. And so (00:10:52) 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. (00:11:22) And so my mind kind of like exploded in that moment. Like there's actually, like what you can express is huge. I can see what memory looks like. I can see this kind of hopping through space. And I just remember being just so blown away because 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 (00:11:52) 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 and I had the exact same experience in heaven's forbid by a 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. (00:12:17) 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 wax philosophical about a linked list. It is pretty profound for people who don't know. A node in a linked 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. (00:12:46) There's billions of us on this planet, and we only know about our local little network. And it's kind of beautiful. And you realize, like in that little simple data structure, you can construct arbitrarily large systems, and 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 dump junk into memory and have memory leaks, and therefore create infinite pain. (00:13:14) as you try to figure out where that unfreed memory is. For me, yeah, probably, it's so beautiful the way you put that. Linked 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 that? What was the thing? What was the? (00:13:37) Like the one that taught you. Cause I think we all probably, you probably did factorial where you like, just do like a quick factorial of 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 my first. How do you not remember your first? It was magic. I've had so many that just. I mean, you are a lisp guy. You're probably pretty used to the recursion. Yeah, all I remember is just. (00:14:02) surrounded by sea of parentheses. I mean, that's really probably when I, 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 Java, but then the renegades, the cool kids were all using Lisp. That's when you're doing the AI (00:14:31) the quote unquote AI at that time. 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 Lisp and writing like Othello programs and 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, (00:15:01) game of life too, with cellular automata. That's when I built that in all kinds of programming languages. That's less about programming languages and more about the system you create. And that just filled me with infinite joy. Having, now similar to the linked 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 (00:15:30) and allow it to evolve over time, you can create infinite complexity. So I just, man, those are many pothead moments where I'm just like looking at the beautiful complexity that can be created with cellular automata. That filled me with just infinite joy for sure. But yeah, all I remember is parentheses. So my first, memories of my first are drowned in a sea of parentheses. (00:15:57) man, mine is, I have, first off, mine was in Java. So my first was a little bit more rigid, kind of a corporate, a corporate experience, but. Cold, meaningless. Cold, yeah. I was in a lab. Everyone was using CentOS at that, or CentOS, or however you say, I always call it CentOS, the fresh maker. And so it's just like, I mean, it's very cold. That's nice. Thank you. I'm in like this cold, rigid environment. (00:16:22) 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 Ditel and Ditel, Learn Java and it has a section recursion. 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 (00:16:49) Maybe I'm not a programmer. Maybe I'm not worthy enough to enter into this circle of people who can figure out what the heck recursion means. And so Dietel and Dietel 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 like a very hard recursive problem. And I just sat there and thought, oh my gosh. (00:17:17) 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. And then, because I always, my big problem was, is like, okay, do factorial. Why not just use a for loop? (00:17:37) 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. (00:18:05) And so I just sat there and I'm like, okay, I guess I can just go up and I can create a visited grid that's so I know not to visit these places anymore. And then all of a sudden 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, (00:18:25) I actually understand, 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 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, (00:18:55) conformist, dogmatic Java instructors will tell you that this is, you know, that's important to understand 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. (00:19:26) I think it was Dub first search for one of the games, maybe Othello or something like that. And for that, implementing recursion. Understand that you can search trajectories through the space of states and do that recursively. That was mind-blowing. Just imagining like the possibilities. Yeah, just like numbers flying was like the beautiful mind. (00:19:51) And then, and that's when I also discovered conspiracy theories. And I just saw, I saw the truth. Okay, yeah. So what were we talking about? Oh, what was the most painful aspect of programming for you? Like, what memories do you have of deep, profound suffering in terms of programming in the early days? I would say the biggest one that I can really hold onto had to be one of two experiences. (00:20:21) The first experience was when I was at a place called Schedulicity. (00:20:24) And am I not allowed to say the place? (00:20:30) I'm not sure if they're even operating still at this point, but they're in both. (00:20:32) There's something funny about the name. (00:20:33) I'm sorry. (00:20:34) Oh, Schedulicity. (00:20:34) Yeah. (00:20:35) 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 because no one knew how to spell the word Schedulicity. (00:20:48) It was just like the Google optimizing for that is just hilarious. (00:20:52) But okay, go back to the thing. (00:20:54) And the thing that kills me the most about programming, what I actually considered the worst aspect of programming is when you know everything. (00:21:02) And so when I was at this job, it's just every single day I'd come in. (00:21:06) There were no surprises. (00:21:08) There was no questions. (00:21:09) I didn't understand the code base. (00:21:11) Sure, that's fair. (00:21:11) I didn't understand all the things about the code base, but I knew I was going to go in. (00:21:15) I was going to generate some sort of object from the database. (00:21:17) 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 webpage. (00:21:22) There's no creativity. (00:21:23) There's nothing to it. (00:21:24) It's very like almost factory line kind of work. (00:21:27) And that was a very kind of difficult moment for me, which is I didn't enjoy programming because I knew everything about it. (00:21:35) I already knew exactly what I was going to do that day. (00:21:37) I knew all the hurdles I was going to have to go over. (00:21:39) There was no unknown unknowns, if you will. (00:21:42) It was just (00:21:44) knowns at all times. (00:21:45) 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. (00:21:55) So the absence of uncertainty, the absence of challenge was the pain. (00:21:59) Yeah. (00:22:00) That's pretty profound, Brian. (00:22:03) I'm more than just good looks. (00:22:04) I want you to know that. (00:22:07) It's a low bar. (00:22:09) What do you identify as? (00:22:10) I'm enjoying asking the general question. (00:22:12) 38 male. (00:22:14) Male. (00:22:15) Husband of beautiful wife. (00:22:16) Okay. (00:22:17) You stream about all kinds of programming, but what kind of programmer are you? (00:22:23) full stack developer, web programming? (00:22:27) And maybe can you lay out all the different kinds of programming and then (00:22:31) place yourself in that in terms of your identity, sexual identity as well. (00:22:34) Yeah, I can get it. (00:22:35) We can put it all in there. (00:22:36) Okay. (00:22:37) Plus, I mean, obviously those two are very, very tightly coupled. (00:22:41) I have seen you like on the borders sexually aroused by certain languages. (00:22:45) I think you got real excited about O camel or. (00:22:49) O camel, let's go. (00:22:53) Okay, wow. (00:22:54) Yeah. (00:22:55) I did not expect that. (00:22:56) escalated quickly. (00:22:57) Anyway, what do you identify as? (00:22:59) Okay, so first, let's do the previous or the in-between question first, which is the different kind of archetypes. (00:23:06) 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. (00:23:14) And maybe there's some other stuff, yeah, like game programming, but you do like game programming in JavaScript and on the web. (00:23:18) You know, like there's this very kind of (00:23:21) very myopic view of the programming world. (00:23:23) And I bet if you ask a lot of people these days, like, what is the most popular form of programming? (00:23:28) They'd probably say web. (00:23:29) If you said, what contains the most amount of repos? (00:23:32) How many percentage of repos on GitHub are web-based? (00:23:35) They'd probably say 90% or some huge number. (00:23:37) But the reality is that there's an entire embedded robotics world. (00:23:41) You know, you're familiar with the ML side of things. (00:23:44) There's networking, there's going to be just like performance operating systems, compilers. (00:23:49) There's just huge amounts of variation of all these different type of programming verticals that you can be. (00:23:54) And so we often talk about programming in perspective of web or something that's pretty narrow. (00:23:59) And I think that's just a social construct of Twitter more than anything else that. (00:24:03) It's actually, I don't believe it's that representative of the entire kind of programming world out there. (00:24:08) And I think a lot of programming is really, really fun. (00:24:10) There's some really great stuff. (00:24:11) Building your own language is just a very fun experience to do. (00:24:15) Every programmer should just do that once just to have a completely different, you know, perspective on how things work in life. (00:24:22) But as far as what do I do, I've always looked at myself as a tools engineer. (00:24:25) So at my time at my jobs, typically, I would start off on the UI, (00:24:31) And then they'd be like, okay, hey, we need a library for this thing. (00:24:34) So then I'd be the one writing like the library. (00:24:35) So in 2012, 2013, I was writing a UI library for the web that can behave just like an iPad. (00:24:43) 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. (00:24:46) It was a canvas, had to do all the like matrice 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. (00:24:55) And this was iPad 2, by the way. (00:24:56) So this is a long time ago. (00:24:59) And so every single time I got into a job, it's like, okay, hey, we need to do a library. (00:25:02) Hey, can you work on a build system? (00:25:04) So back then, there was no grunt, there was no gulp, there was no any of those things. (00:25:08) So I had to hand roll my own JavaScript build system. (00:25:12) And so I always fell into these positions of building tools for developers to be successful. (00:25:17) And I've always really enjoyed that region. (00:25:18) So as I went on to, say, Netflix, spent 10 years there, I'd say the majority of my 10 years were building things for developers to use. (00:25:28) that they could be successful at their job. (00:25:31) And so I just, I've always really enjoyed that aspect because your stakeholders and the people that use your program understand programming and they're going to say like, hey, I need this. (00:25:40) And typically the thing that they need, they actually want. (00:25:43) Whereas with people, people want stuff, but what they actually need versus what they actually want often are kind of like this weird separation. (00:25:51) People, that's like the old Henry Ford quote, I just want a faster horse. (00:25:54) And he's like, no, what you actually want is a car. (00:25:56) And so it's like this, like you have to play this game of trying to really figure it out. (00:26:00) Whereas developers, it's like, I know, you know what I'm doing. (00:26:03) I know what you want. (00:26:04) Let's figure it out together. (00:26:05) That's actually, that gives you a really nice big picture view of programming in general. (00:26:09) So (00:26:10) 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. (00:26:25) So the entirety, the entirety of the thing, that's really cool. (00:26:28) Okay, so I mean, that would be full stack. (00:26:32) By the general definition of full stack, meaning like, versus like systems engineering, like starting at the bottom, (00:26:39) and trying to optimize a certain kind of specific thing without seeing the big picture of like what the resulting interface would look like. (00:26:47) And a lot of people, in web programming, they never go beyond the front end of how the thing looks. (00:26:53) They kind of always assume there'll be somebody, some grunt in the shadows, in the darkness of the basement that will implement the back end. (00:27:02) Some Gil Foyle out there will be doing the back end. (00:27:05) Yeah, like I like to call myself a generalist just to kind of give (00:27:08) some ideas is, at one point at Netflix, I built the WebSocket connection. (00:27:13) So for TVs, how WebSocket works is code I just wrote. (00:27:17) And so I built the framing thing. (00:27:18) And before that, I was doing stuff with memory. (00:27:20) And before that, I built a UI for a tool. (00:27:22) It's just like, I can just do the thing. (00:27:24) You just tell me the thing to do, and I'll just go do the thing. (00:27:26) I don't worry too, I don't try to get super good at one specific activity. (00:27:31) Like I don't want to be a Kubernetes engineer who's the world's greatest deployer. (00:27:35) But if I had to go learn Kubernetes, I'd go learn it. (00:27:38) learn how to deploy some things, and then hopefully move on to the next thing, if that makes sense. (00:27:43) I posted about the fact that I'm talking to you on Reddit, and there's a lot of wonderful questions. (00:27:48) Somebody mentioned that I should ask you about DevOps. (00:27:51) Can you explain what DevOps is? (00:27:52) it a kind of special ops of programmers? (00:27:55) Is it CO Team 6 or developers? (00:27:56) What's DevOps? (00:27:57) Can you define, are you a DevOps engineer? (00:28:00) Well, people keep telling me DevOps isn't real. (00:28:02) There's actually, you want platform engineers, cloud engineers, infra engineers. (00:28:07) I just often think, I think the easiest way, if we're doing 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 of that, it doesn't just disappear, right? (00:28:18) It's all the kind of backbone of being able to operate something at scale. (00:28:22) Like you really don't, if you think about it, if you're just writing a mom and pa 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, Linode, DigitalOcean, some company, they don't really need (00:28:35) of really complicated build deployment, all this, it's just someone with a simple website so they can sell their goods. (00:28:42) And so they don't really need that. (00:28:43) 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. (00:28:50) Yeah, those people are actually amazing. (00:28:52) Yeah. (00:28:52) Of the time I spent at Google, it's like, oh yeah, yeah, there's all these fancy machine learning people, but the folks that are running the compute, the infrastructure, (00:29:03) basically that make sure the shit doesn't go down. (00:29:06) They're like wizards and they're essential. (00:29:09) And they're incredible, like vertical of job. (00:29:11) 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, you could also say that's like an SRE, right? (00:29:19) Site reliability engineer, whatever, you know, the ones that wear the bomber jackets at Google. (00:29:24) And so when we say DevOps, I think people get very particular about terms specifically in this category. (00:29:28) They're like, well, actually, you're mentioning infrastructure engineer versus, you know, versus site reliability engineer. (00:29:33) It's just like, okay, yes, I hear you. (00:29:34) But generally, when someone thinks DevOps, they think somebody that manages the servers and their life cycles and the reliability. (00:29:42) There's DevOps. (00:29:42) Is it real? (00:29:43) I'm not sure. (00:29:44) Okay. (00:29:45) Did Vercel kill DevOps? (00:29:48) Question mark. (00:29:48) Question mark. (00:29:49) Wow, that's you're almost a journalist. (00:29:52) That's a headline. (00:29:54) Let's go back to the beginning. (00:29:56) All right. (00:29:56) Baby Prime. (00:29:58) So you mentioned Netflix. (00:30:00) You've... (00:30:01) I worked at Netflix, by the way. (00:30:03) For people who don't know who the Primogen is, he mentions the fact that he has been very successful and has worked at Netflix in basically every other sentence. (00:30:15) Correct. (00:30:17) Almost as much as I mentioned Neovim. (00:30:18) Oh, great. (00:30:20) Tell me more about Neovim. (00:30:21) No, please don't. (00:30:23) So, Baby Prime, at the very beginning, you've had one hell of a life. (00:30:29) And I think it's inspiring to a lot of people. (00:30:30) You've gone through a lot of painful low points, including meth addiction, loss. (00:30:36) 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. (00:30:47) to get into programming and just to find success in life. (00:30:50) So maybe I would love it if you laid out just your whole life journey from the beginning. (00:30:56) 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. (00:31:01) That was the first time I was ever exposed to pornography. (00:31:05) And it's kind of just earworm to me for a large portion of my life. (00:31:11) 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 20 some years old where I didn't think about porn on the daily basis. (00:31:21) And so it's just like every single day, even at that young. (00:31:24) And so it's just a very mind consuming, time consuming, thought consuming thing that kind of plagued me from starting at a very young age. (00:31:32) When I was seven years old, my dad died. (00:31:34) That was kind of a really tough period of life. (00:31:39) I still think about this time that I went over to China and there's kind of some rules that we were given. (00:31:48) And one of the rules was just like, hey, don't talk about God. (00:31:52) And if you do, use the word dad instead. (00:31:54) And I was just like, okay, dad. (00:31:57) It was like the first time I said that word in like 17 years or something. (00:32:00) I'm like, dad. (00:32:00) It was like so weird to say that phrase. (00:32:03) And I was just like, (00:32:04) that was just the strangest thing I've ever said in my entire lifetime. (00:32:08) It just felt so weird. (00:32:09) So kind of rewind as I got older, obviously was very good at computers, good at accessing porn, of course, played video games on the internet. (00:32:20) Fun, fun kind of like side quest story. (00:32:22) I think the guy's name is Lord Tok on Twitch. (00:32:25) I can't quite remember his name, but he built this game called Grail, G-R-A-A-L. (00:32:30) and Grail Online. (00:32:31) 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 C-like language. (00:32:38) And that's how I discovered how to program, is I looked at these symbols and figured out what they meant. (00:32:43) And then I was able to make things happen in the game. (00:32:46) And that was like a, that's my introduction into programming. (00:32:48) So thank you, that guy, whatever your Twitch name was. (00:32:51) But all right, so keep on going. (00:32:54) As I got older, I was super bad socially. (00:32:58) I was not a very great social person. (00:33:00) High school was brutal, got made fun of a lot. (00:33:04) Really didn't, I wouldn't say I had a great time during high school. (00:33:08) Definitely felt very out of place or offset or maybe misplaced, if you will. (00:33:13) I'm not sure what the right word is. (00:33:15) And so of course, at that point, I just always wanted to, (00:33:18) I wanted to be accepted to fit in and all that. (00:33:21) I did forget to say one side story. (00:33:23) After my dad died, my brother, older brother, he got and I started getting into drugs. (00:33:27) And along with that, he exposed me to pot. (00:33:30) So at 8 years old, I was smoking some marijuana for a while there until like maybe 11 or 12 and took a break. (00:33:36) And then again, did a lot of that as I got a little bit older. (00:33:41) So I kind of got a lot of these exposures fairly young. (00:33:46) 16, 15 through 18, a lot of drinking and all that. (00:33:50) When I graduated or as I was graduating high school, it's just like, I had such sadness, if you will. (00:33:57) I was very sad about how everything went. (00:33:59) Tried to commit suicide. (00:34:01) Obviously, it was a very poor attempt. (00:34:03) And I'm still here today. (00:34:05) I'm very happy about that aspect. (00:34:06) I'm glad that I didn't follow through with anything. (00:34:09) Had to go to the hospital and all that. (00:34:10) And when I was done, I just still remember kind of (00:34:13) coming out of the hospital and at like that moment, it's kind of like something broken you. (00:34:17) Have you ever read the book Wheel of Time? (00:34:19) 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. (00:34:26) And that's like the moment he breaks and he gets into like hard Rand, Quindalar Rand, if you will. (00:34:32) For those that know Wheel of Time will appreciate all that. (00:34:36) For those that don't, it's very confusing and I understand, not the Amazon movie show, not that Wheel of Time. (00:34:42) So now that we kind of go back onto it, at that point, it's just like something kind of broken me. (00:34:47) And it's just like, I just didn't care anymore. (00:34:49) 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. (00:34:56) And so I started using a bunch of drugs, LSD, mushrooms, math, did a bunch of math, did a bunch of that stuff. (00:35:06) And (00:35:07) then went off to college and continued to do a bunch of stuff. (00:35:10) I took too much acid to wear for like quite a few years. (00:35:12) I had like little squigglies on the side of my eyes whenever I'd walk by high contrast objects. (00:35:17) And so it's just like that whole period of life was just kind of marked by just poor decisions. (00:35:25) And then sometime when I was about 19 years old, (00:35:28) Somewhere in that range, I just had this one evening where it's just, I felt the very dramatic and real presence of God. (00:35:35) And it's just like, I kind of had this choice, like Frodo on a razor, where it's like, if I go either way, I'm gonna fall off and I need to change my life. (00:35:45) You just, you get to make the choice now. (00:35:47) Do you want to do that or not? (00:35:49) And so I remember going, okay, I do want to change my life. (00:35:51) Like, I don't like this experience. (00:35:53) I don't like what I'm living. (00:35:54) I am still very sad. (00:35:55) I still feel very desperate. (00:35:57) I still feel all those things. (00:35:58) I'm just like pretending to be this other person. (00:36:01) And then I just went to sleep that night. (00:36:06) Nothing changed in my life. (00:36:08) Everything was still the way it was. (00:36:09) I woke up the next day, the same person. (00:36:11) And I was just like, oh, that's just like such a strange, weird kind of experience. (00:36:15) And I just went about my day. (00:36:16) And then I remember, (00:36:18) I think that evening I looked at porn and all of a sudden I just had a conscious. (00:36:24) I just like this deep, profound like shame. (00:36:26) And I was like, I've never felt shame in my life. (00:36:30) Like I have no idea what's happening now. (00:36:32) And then all of a sudden when I smoked pot, I just felt deep shame. (00:36:34) And when I hurt somebody or did something wrong, all of a sudden it's just like I got a conscious from that evening. (00:36:39) That's what kind of my gift was, if you will. (00:36:41) And it's just like at that point, I didn't even have a choice. (00:36:44) I had to change my life (00:36:47) Because for whatever reason, I've kind of been changed in the moment. (00:36:50) And so from there, I started actually trying in school. (00:36:53) I always kind of joke around that I got 2.14 in high school. (00:36:56) I had a teacher hand write me a note saying I was the worst student she's ever had, all that kind of stuff. (00:37:00) I was not a really great student. (00:37:01) And then in that moment, it's just like, okay, now life's changed. (00:37:07) And I start trying to learn. (00:37:09) You know, I try to become a good student. (00:37:10) And it turns out it's really hard. (00:37:12) Like I was really bad. (00:37:14) I still got C's. (00:37:15) I went and took pre-calculus and failed pre-calculus. (00:37:18) And I'm like, oh my gosh, I used to be the smart math guy. (00:37:21) And now I'm kind of the idiot failing. (00:37:22) And so it's like, I'm just questioning myself and all that. (00:37:25) And I spend hours upon hours in like a studying math learning center. (00:37:32) 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. (00:37:39) And I go from being the worst person (00:37:42) to just immediately becoming the best. (00:37:44) Everything after that, it's just, I don't know what happened. (00:37:47) All of a sudden, I was the best person at math. (00:37:50) I started going into my computer science classes. (00:37:51) I just really got everything. (00:37:53) It's just like everything at just years after trying just all of a sudden became easier. (00:37:58) 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. (00:38:06) 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, because I just was motivated by this desire to do something, not thinking it was going to get any easier. (00:38:20) And then all of a sudden it just started getting easier and it was great. (00:38:23) And that's kind of really where I guess I started having the biggest parts of my life change. (00:38:28) At that point, I started (00:38:30) really, really, really wanting to never look at porn again, because every single time, just such shame, and I really wanted to stop. (00:38:35) And that was by far the hardest addiction to quit. (00:38:38) Like smoking cigarettes was also a really hard addiction to quit, shockingly hard addiction to quit. (00:38:43) But porn by far was just the worst of them all. (00:38:46) And then I think about 22, I was finally done with all kind of addictions, if you will. (00:38:53) And then for a year, I just worked in all that. (00:38:55) And I think right around, (00:38:56) maybe it's 21 and 3 quarters, somewhere in that range. (00:39:00) I'm not really sure where I stopped all the addictions part, but, or at least the outwardly addictions. (00:39:06) And then at some point, six months later, a year later, met my beautiful wife. (00:39:10) Things just started falling more and more into place. (00:39:13) I loved more and more work. (00:39:14) I loved programming. (00:39:15) I started programming like 12 hours a day. (00:39:17) I watched the Social Network movie. (00:39:19) And after that, I was just like, I'm doing a startup. (00:39:22) And it's like that night I started my first startup and I was just like, so it was in PHP, by the way. (00:39:27) PHP, yeah, 5.2 or something like that. (00:39:29) It was great, great times. (00:39:31) And I was just so motivated to do that. (00:39:33) And I would just program for, sometimes I'd program for 24, 36 hours straight. (00:39:37) And I just like, (00:39:39) non-stop, just that's all I wanted to do at all points. (00:39:42) I think my wife got a little sick of me. (00:39:44) I wouldn't, she would be like, can you drop me off at school? (00:39:46) And I'd be like, no, I'm programming. (00:39:47) I was not a very nice, you know, I didn't think through things that well. (00:39:50) And I was just so into it and I just did it non-stop. (00:39:54) And that's kind of like how I became me is that story, if that makes sense. (00:39:58) Let's try to reverse engineer. (00:40:00) 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 seven 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 at that time? The best way I can kind of put it is that I just never knew what a dad was. (00:40:23) I was young enough that I could kind of maybe repress or just even have the capability of remembering things long-term. Because 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, 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. (00:40:52) that 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 socially. (00:41:06) 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 was to psychoanalyze my actions. During the time, it's not like I was actively thinking that. 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. (00:41:34) like being the outsider, being picked on, struggling through a lot of different complexities at home, what advice would you give to them? The worst part about high school is that you're surrounded by a bunch of people your age and it feels eternal. You don't think, like the people that are around 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 (00:42:03) they are going to be some of the least consequential people in your life, 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 your experience is your whole reality. And then one day, it all stops. (00:42:20) And then real life starts to begin. Yeah. And it's just, that's such a shocking thing. And if I could just tell myself that, maybe I would have been a bunch of 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 to try shit out, to take risks. (00:42:45) Because real life will begin where there is more consequences after that. Here you can, 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 take some jiu-jitsu and learn how to take them down. And then that girl that rejected you will be like, maybe I'll give that guy a second chance. (00:43:10) 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, I think, especially, 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 (00:43:38) It's just like, 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, it's just like a huge help. I mean, the way you phrased it is exactly right. That's what it feels like, that this is (00:44:03) 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 somewhere low in the hierarchy. (00:44:17) 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 carries A tremendous amount of weight. It's just why psychologically it's extremely difficult to be. I think it's understated 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. (00:44:47) Yeah. I think it's even, I, people always say back in my day, 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. I mean, 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. (00:45:17) And I can imagine that there's a lot of just so much weight put on 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 in high school thinks you're uncool, (00:45:46) it actually might mean you are cool. 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 think. (00:46:03) If anything, high school is really bad at picking out the cool people. That like, 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 heuristic, I mean, even the objective function, (00:46:30) for that greedy search is just a really shitty one. 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 try stuff out. The weirdos are the ones that are going to succeed. The weirdos in high school (00:46:52) 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. Because if you're winning in high school, you're not being challenged. 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. (00:47:20) that I think will probably resonate with a lot of people. And it's interesting that you say that's one of the hardest addictions to overcome. Let me say it this way. Some addictions have a much bigger societal look. (00:47:33) And porn is just not one of them, which makes it super hard. None of your friends are gonna cheer you on. If you go on Twitter and say, I quit porn, they're gonna 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 gonna be like, well, not everyone has to quit meth, okay? It's actually a fine industry and people who, you know, are the ones producing it, they're good also, right? No one's gonna make that kind of argument, whereas with porn, you're gonna have like a whole (00:47:56) thing and 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's certain addictions that are harder to hide from the world for prolonged periods of time. 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. (00:48:27) because the porn is so accessible, so easy to go deep into that addiction. 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 male's perspective, that (00:48:54) porn in its just like most basic thing is that you use another person for your own 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. (00:49:20) And so I think you carry this around. 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 humanity just in general is my perspective of it. And then it makes people into commodities. And I don't think people are commodities. I think everyone has value. (00:49:47) And so during that, for me, that's kind of like the great effect of porn, is that, 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. (00:50:06) no one's gonna know. No one's gonna 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, then go out to lunch, right? You're gonna be, you're gonna, your whole day is gonna be a very different day. And so there's a. (00:50:21) It's very quick, easy, accessible. And then obviously there's like all the science and 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 5 minutes of porn and call it a day. There's like, you know, the 100 tab joke that's always made on the internet. It's because you, it's just this constant dopamine cycle you're constantly doing. And all that stuff is great to say. And (00:50:50) 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. (00:51:17) psychological impact it has on your relationships with human beings in general. That's my more generally than just porn. My problem with the quote unquote sort of manosphere is I think sleeping with a bunch of women is great, wonderful. But the problem is making that the primary objective of your life, similar with porn. (00:51:43) 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. And I think, again, going back to high school and the manosphere, (00:52:08) The objective function, if it's to get laid, which helps with status and confidence and 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 romantic partner. Like that's also fucking awesome. And both of those (00:52:30) 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, sure it could be, it could feel great, but there's no meaning to it. There's no value, there's no actual real value to it. That's absolutely correct. I do think that getting laid (00:53:01) 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 (00:53:23) and to actually find that one partner that with whom you could be deeply intimate with. Sometimes like the nervousness around like this societally 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 that the world clearly that getting laid is not as nearly as important, as you said, as finding the right. (00:53:50) human, including I should put in that pile, not just like a romantic partner, but like friendships, like deep lasting friendships. 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 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 sure that exists. But (00:54:15) And there's probably some truth to the sense that after you've, who was it? Jim Carrey, I hope that everyone can get rich so they realize that money solves none of your problems. 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. (00:54:39) which means we are no longer on the same plane, 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, I forget 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 my guess is just all the dopamine effect that it is. (00:55:07) But for me, like the most important part and the thing that actually has real reward is having just my wife. I do not look at, I desperately try not to look at any other woman. I'm hopefully not gonna get caught Mark Zuckerberg at the White House like that. You know, like I don't look at porn. My wife has complete confidence in me that there is not gonna be a situation in which she has to question me in any kind of sense. And that builds a much more deeply, I would argue a very, (00:55:35) 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. It's very hard to have a deep relationship with no trust. Yeah, and 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. (00:55:58) And that vulnerability, when reciprocated, builds this really strong trust. And it's a beautiful thing. Yeah. I personally just given my position, 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. But I think it's worthwhile anyway to be vulnerable. It's always worth it. The risk is always worth it in some sense. Like obviously everyone has a different kind of (00:56:28) life they have to filter through their actions with, right? Because the person that has no, say, social following or anything, their risk reward 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, because like finding my wife has been (00:56:46) 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 that, 19? 'Cause it feels like that was a big leap for you to escape. (00:57:15) escape the pain to escape the addiction or the beginning of that journey. 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 of a sudden, just in that moment, it's just like I had a, I guess, some sort of deep fear and understanding, like, I'm going down a path. Is this really the path you want to go down? (00:57:43) 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 don't understand. I just know that in that moment, I had the option. And I just chose, 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 was just such a, like a terrible place to have your worth. (00:58:13) 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. 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. Because the night, 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 (00:58:44) Because you find in that advice that you can give to others who are probably, there's probably just an endless amount of people that are struggling with porn addiction, not young people. 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. (00:59:06) Some people be like, you just, 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, 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, (00:59:32) 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 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, he was a very depressed man. And (01:00:00) He was struggling with suicide and he kind of writes about this in this memoir. (01:00:04) And he goes to these doctors and the doctors effectively say, well, here's antidepressants, it's going to help you. (01:00:09) And he says that, well, the problem was is that scientists told me that I could just touch my brain and make myself happy. (01:00:15) And that's it. (01:00:15) Like they could reach in, they could configure some stuff and I'll be happy. (01:00:18) 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. (01:00:24) I could look out, see the rain, it would fall down, it'd be silvery, it'd be beautiful. (01:00:28) but all the crop would still die because there's not actually any rain. (01:00:31) I had to discover how to be happy myself. (01:00:34) And so for me, it's like the reason why I looked at porn is because I was unhappy. (01:00:38) I was trying to find meaning. (01:00:39) I was trying to find value in something, right? (01:00:41) Something that was supposed to finally give me this ultimate satisfaction. (01:00:44) And it just does not. (01:00:46) No matter how hard and no matter how much you think it will, there is no escapade. (01:00:51) There is no pornography that will ever give you that satisfaction you're looking for. (01:00:56) That's the reason why it's addicting. (01:00:58) 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. (01:01:05) I think that's really brilliantly described. (01:01:12) You knew that this thing you're doing is preventing you from finding your future wife. (01:01:17) And future wife could mean more, even broadly, this path to a flourishing, to a (01:01:27) to a beautiful life. (01:01:28) I think there's a lot of choices we make that are just preventing us from opening the door to whatever future. (01:01:36) 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. (01:01:48) And you need to construct your life in a way where you have the chance to travel down those paths. (01:01:53) And there's a bunch of addictions, there's a bunch of choices that prevent us from traveling down those paths. (01:01:58) So just believe that you're gonna have an awesome life and remove from your life the things that are preventing you from walking down that path, which is essentially what you did. (01:02:09) 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. (01:02:17) Yeah. (01:02:19) 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, 'cause I couldn't value, like I couldn't value my wife in the way that was proper for who she was. (01:02:37) I would've valued her through the index or the lens that I currently was looking through, so. (01:02:44) Gotta ask, so I've never done math. (01:02:48) I've never done meth. (01:02:49) That was a great segue, by the way. (01:02:50) Oh man, I don't know what the fuck I'm doing, honestly, with this interviewing thing. (01:02:57) But yeah, meth and LSD. (01:03:00) You know, I did ayahuasca, I did shrooms a bunch of times. (01:03:03) Oh, and this topic, I should say that like, there's a lot of on Twitter and on tech, in the tech community in general, sort of people speaking negatively about ayahuasca and some positively. (01:03:15) I don't, (01:03:16) I think it's such a roll of the dice. (01:03:18) Like, I had incredible experiences, but I don't think I want to recommend it to anyone. (01:03:24) It's a risk. (01:03:25) It's a serious risk. (01:03:26) It really is a roll of the dice. (01:03:27) 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. (01:03:38) I'm pretty sure they're somewhere in the basement, but I've never met them on drugs. (01:03:44) I'm always really happy. (01:03:46) I'm a happy drunk. (01:03:47) I'm a super happy an ayahuasca, just full of love. (01:03:51) I don't understand. (01:03:52) I don't understand where the demons are, but that's my biochemistry, whatever that is. (01:03:56) some others, one trip could be amazing and the next one could just completely destroy you and wreck your life. (01:04:02) So I don't know what the recommendation from that is. (01:04:06) Maybe avoid it, but then all of us die and life, you know, I tend to lean into adventure. (01:04:13) But drugs is a, if you fuck with the biochemistry of your brain, you can really destroy yourself in a way that it's gonna torment you. (01:04:23) So I would generally, (01:04:26) Recommend that people avoid drugs altogether, probably, unless you're a crazy motherfucker. (01:04:35) Hunter S. (01:04:36) Thompson. (01:04:38) What an intro to this topic. (01:04:40) I'm sorry, what's meth like? (01:04:42) That's a great intro. (01:04:44) I like, you are very correct in the sense that there is (01:04:47) At least when it comes to hallucinogens, there is a wild variance to what you're going to experience. (01:04:53) And there is no guarantee. (01:04:54) There's no, you know, just because you buy the product doesn't mean you're going to have a good time, right? (01:04:59) There's a lot of, personally, I find that stuff to be very, (01:05:05) I believe in the spiritual realm, right? (01:05:06) Like I believe demons and angels exist. (01:05:08) I believe God exists. (01:05:09) And that kind of whole realm is like, I don't know what it opens you up to, but it's much, much different experience. (01:05:15) Now some people will be like, oh, it's just a bunch of chemicals in your brain. (01:05:17) They all get mixed up. (01:05:18) LSD just takes all of your pathways and they all go, you know, they all get kind of scrambled up in your brain. (01:05:22) And it's just like, yeah, the experiences are profound. (01:05:25) I had some really bizarre, very cool, very awful. (01:05:30) I've had all the experiences in them all. (01:05:33) I can just tell you that I personally always say the same thing. (01:05:36) It's like choices that I made, I can never take back. (01:05:38) 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. (01:05:44) But if you have not had that experience, I'm on your team, or at least partially on your team, maybe more severely. (01:05:49) I don't think you need those experiences. (01:05:50) 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 people have value, right? (01:06:00) You can, you don't have to do that. (01:06:01) So as far as like, what is meth like? (01:06:02) Meth is like, if you've ever done cocaine, cocaine starts off with like a 15 minute dance party. (01:06:07) Just like, it's just so intense. (01:06:10) It's like so great. (01:06:10) And then it just followed up with like, a five hour, like just feeling wiggly, right? (01:06:15) I don't know how else to describe it. (01:06:16) Meth is like that, except for I didn't get as much dance party or any dance party, but instead I just got that parked for like 12 hours. (01:06:25) Yeah. (01:06:26) So did a lot of skateboarding. (01:06:32) Would you say it's a pleasant feeling or is it more like an escape from the loneliness of life? (01:06:41) Is it pleasant or negative in the actual moment? (01:06:45) Not the consequences, but in the moment. (01:06:47) So I mean, this is just like a very interesting kind of area, which is that not universally, you can't say that. (01:06:56) Often you'll find that there's kind of these two (01:06:59) groups of drug addicts. (01:07:00) There's those that like the opioids and those that like the uppers. (01:07:04) They typically don't like there's very few people in the drug world that do both. (01:07:08) They're really just kind of like find their side and they go for it. (01:07:11) So will is meth a thing that everybody's going to enjoy? (01:07:14) Well, categorically, as you can see, and just like how people experience drug addiction, no. (01:07:19) 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, because you know, you're kind of high energy, you're kind of like always in the moment. (01:07:28) So it's just like, (01:07:29) you're in the moment, but it's just like, oh, I'm in the moment. (01:07:31) it's like everything's just so intense, you just want to really be in the moment. (01:07:37) And so it's just experiencing that constantly. (01:07:40) And so was that great? (01:07:42) Well, (01:07:43) Some people, 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. (01:07:52) I forget the exact way. (01:07:53) She's probably super disappointed that I messed this up. (01:07:55) But it's like you could perceive those two experiences in very different lights. (01:07:59) Some people, you know, get in front of a crowd and it's like thrilling. (01:08:03) Some people get in front of it and it's just like the worst experience of their lifetime. (01:08:06) They would actually literally rather die, which is a crazy thing to think about than stand up and speak. (01:08:11) And so for me, (01:08:12) Meth was that kind of thrilling side, but at the same time, it didn't, it still didn't like quite give me that thing I wanted. (01:08:21) 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. (01:08:28) Yeah. (01:08:29) For me, I've had all really wonderful experiences. (01:08:32) Do not recommend them, but like what was true. (01:08:35) That's like a YouTube policy, by the way, that you have to say, by the way, do whatever you do, do not do illegal activity. (01:08:40) But I had great experience, but don't have whatever you do, don't do it. (01:08:43) Mr. (01:08:43) The Primogen, I have no master. (01:08:46) I don't have YouTube or whatever. (01:08:48) I'll say whatever the fuck I want. (01:08:50) I'm just. (01:08:51) But seriously, YouTube. (01:08:54) No, I don't give a shit about YouTube or anybody, honestly. (01:08:58) I'm just kind of careful about the words I say because just because I had positive experiences. (01:09:04) I don't want young people listening to this think they should try the experience. (01:09:09) I think the much more powerful message is that life is awesome even without that. (01:09:13) That's something I definitely experiment with. (01:09:19) on the alcohol side. (01:09:20) So for me, I'm an introvert. (01:09:23) I'm afraid of the world. (01:09:24) Social interaction fills me with anxiety. (01:09:26) Alcohol is definitely a thing that helps with that sometimes. (01:09:29) But I think honestly, it's not even the alcohol. (01:09:33) It's like having to do something while a person is talking to me. (01:09:36) I could just like drink a liquid. (01:09:40) There's like a social thing with a beer. (01:09:42) It's like, yeah, uh-huh, yeah, we're having fun. (01:09:46) And I think it's, it worked 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 a whiskey or a beer looking thing, it kind of sends a signal that we should be having fun. (01:10:06) So we're socializing, right? (01:10:07) We're fucking getting crazy. (01:10:09) And then that means you don't actually need the alcohol. (01:10:11) You can get fucking crazy. (01:10:14) without the alcohol substance. (01:10:16) But there is some kind of like social signaling that happens when you have a drink in your hand. (01:10:24) So I've been to get togethers where I'm not drinking, but just doing like a fake drink situation. (01:10:30) And I can also have fun. (01:10:32) So I've been, but that said, (01:10:35) traveling across the world, there are times when you need to be able to don a bottle of vodka. (01:10:38) That's very essential for my line of work. (01:10:40) But that's sort of, that's almost like a cultural experience versus like a necessary component of a successful social interaction, one that brings you happiness. (01:10:51) So not drinking, I think you can have fun and not drink too. (01:10:55) So all of this, man, I'm so careful saying drugs have had a good effect on my life. (01:11:03) Because I think for most people, no, for majority of people, they will in the long term have a negative effect. (01:11:13) So I think if you were to choose one or the other, just no drugs and no drinking means one day you can be the president of the United States, kids. (01:11:25) And I should say, oh man, that is his funniest line. (01:11:29) Diet Coke is great. (01:11:31) That's his funniest line, which is you would hate me if I drank, which I just like, to me that tickles me like to no end, just like, oh my gosh, that is such a funny line. (01:11:38) Self-awareness and humor is wonderful there. (01:11:40) But yeah. (01:11:41) I'm on your team, like all of the reasons why I used drugs and all that was a form, it's some level of escapism. (01:11:47) 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. (01:11:55) It's like trying to find a meaning in your job. (01:11:57) You can find satisfaction in what you do. (01:11:59) Like that is a very good thing. (01:12:00) You can find satisfaction and be happy with what you've created. (01:12:03) You can be, you know, thrilled by the experience, but you cannot find, I doubt you can find purpose. (01:12:09) You know, maybe some people in specific jobs, you know, like this obviously have very broad strokes I'm painting with. (01:12:14) Like if you're an EMT and you save someone's life, maybe, you know, there can be purpose in that whole experience, right? (01:12:18) So I'm not saying all things, but like as programming goes, most programmers, you cannot just simply find your purpose. (01:12:25) And same with drugs, like you cannot find that thing you're looking for, but they are a very great distraction. (01:12:31) And then at some point that distraction comes with a heavy cost. (01:12:35) I think Dr. (01:12:35) Faust would probably know the best about the heavy cost, but it's just you're making one trade for another. (01:12:40) And at some point the bill comes due and that bill can be very, very large. (01:12:45) The other moment you mentioned that I think is really inspiring. (01:12:49) is that you fail pre-calculus, you really struggle in school. (01:12:53) Like you realize that school is really hard. (01:12:55) And then eventually, you're able to sort of persevere and I don't know, break through that wall of struggle. (01:13:05) Can you, by way of advice, figure out what happened and what kind of advice you can give to people who are struggling? (01:13:11) Yeah, I'll paint it in kind of more clear picture. (01:13:14) A very fast speed run of it is that I took pre-calculus, failed. (01:13:18) I took pre-calculus again, failed, took pre-calculus again and got a C. (01:13:22) So I took it three times. (01:13:24) Then I took calc over the summer. (01:13:26) So calc one. (01:13:27) In that one, (01:13:29) At the end, the final, the final was a two-hour final. (01:13:32) I finished it in 30 minutes, and that was the highest score in all of the school. (01:13:36) And I proceeded to be the highest score in all calculus and DiffEQ. (01:13:39) I was the only person out of 400 people to finish the DiffEQ final, and I got the highest grade. (01:13:45) And so I was like, I got really good. (01:13:46) So I somehow went from really bad to really good. (01:13:48) And so my only, the thing that I did is that I had to win. (01:13:54) It was not a option. (01:13:55) It was not like, oh, this would be really great. (01:13:57) It's like, I will not graduate. (01:13:58) I will not finish my stuff if I cannot do this. (01:14:02) And so every single day I got up, I went to my, however many hour class it was, right after that, I went straight to the Math Learning Center, did those problems. (01:14:11) When I got home, I just got the book and it had the odd answers in the back. (01:14:15) And I would try to walk through the problems over and over and over and over again until I absolutely got it. (01:14:20) And it just became this thing where it's just, I just simple rote 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. (01:14:37) Eventually they became easy. (01:14:40) It became very easy. (01:14:40) It's just that I had to cram it in there. (01:14:43) And some people, you hear these stories where they barely show up to class and they get A's. (01:14:47) I've never been that person. (01:14:49) I've always been the person that has to sit down, read through everything. (01:14:52) And I'm bad at abstract concepts. (01:14:54) I like the concrete into the abstract, not the abstract into the concrete. (01:14:58) Very bad at talking about things theoretically, then trying to apply them. (01:15:01) But if I can do it once, literally, then it's really easy for me to go into the abstract. (01:15:06) And so it's just like, for me, it's just, (01:15:08) I had, there's no substitute for the hours. (01:15:12) So if I were to give advice, it's just that you have to have time in the saddle. (01:15:17) Hour after hour will make you slowly better. (01:15:20) And at first it's crushing, it's defeating, and it's not fun because you were bad at it. (01:15:25) But then at some point, you're just not bad at it if you can just do it long enough. (01:15:30) And you'll start getting okay at it. (01:15:31) And then at some point you might even get good at it. (01:15:33) And when you get good at something, it feels amazing. (01:15:36) There's like an exploratory thing. (01:15:37) Like 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. (01:15:47) And you start thinking about how you can explore that space. (01:15:50) It's like a completely different problem. (01:15:52) And same with programming. (01:15:53) Programming has an identical kind of feel to it. (01:15:56) It's just like you'll cross that barrier and it becomes magical as opposed to a chore. (01:16:00) Yeah, once you cross that barrier, somehow other things become easier. (01:16:05) But then if you wanna have a truly successful life, then you find the next barrier. (01:16:09) Yeah. (01:16:09) The next barrier. (01:16:10) Yeah, I've always been the same. (01:16:11) Everything's come really hard. (01:16:13) Yeah, I do not, I've had no free lunches. (01:16:16) Everything's just been a lot of pain and struggle. (01:16:21) I think somebody said that on this topic, (01:16:25) that you think work smarter, not harder is a phrase that you dislike. (01:16:32) Somebody on Reddit told me this. (01:16:33) Yeah, I don't just dislike it, I hate that phrase. (01:16:35) Okay, tell me about your hatred. (01:16:38) How do you feel? (01:16:40) The reason why I dislike that is that there is a kind of a hidden suggestion there, which is that you already know what smarter is, so just do that, that actually things should be easy. (01:16:52) You should just not have to try that hard. (01:16:54) You should just do the quick, easy, obvious path, and boom, it's done. (01:16:58) It's like, I've never experienced that in anything I've done. (01:17:01) Everything is actually really hard, and most of the time, I don't even know what I'm doing. (01:17:06) So therefore, I don't even know what smart looks like. (01:17:08) 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. (01:17:16) And then when I finally figure out what smart is, (01:17:20) When I work smart and work hard, it is that much better. (01:17:25) I think there's a deep, profound truth to that. (01:17:28) There's a lot of these phrases that just drive me nuts in our society. (01:17:31) But that one is, sorry, that one is really accepted. (01:17:33) If we can just linger on it, because it really bothers me as well. (01:17:37) So one, which is a really nice thing you said, the presumption there is things should be easy. (01:17:43) And you're a failure if you don't see. (01:17:45) the easy path. (01:17:47) That's kind of the implied thing. (01:17:47) Just work smart dog. (01:17:48) Why are you putting in all those hours? (01:17:50) And so it makes a lot of people that struggle feel like they're a failure. (01:17:54) Yeah. (01:17:54) Because like, I don't see it. (01:17:56) And then the choice they have, well, I'll just go with the, I'll just be lazy and then maybe the profound truth will come to me somehow. (01:18:05) And yeah, I think, I don't think I've ever, and I don't think I've met great engineers that find the smart way (01:18:15) without the extremely hard work. (01:18:17) The annoying thing about those great engineers is then looking back, they forget the hard work because they remember all the joy they now are experiencing from all the efficient, smart work they figured out how to do. (01:18:30) They forget. (01:18:31) So when they give advice, they give the stupid fucking advice of, well, just do it like, you know, the easy way. (01:18:38) And here's the easy way. (01:18:39) But no, You have to put in the hours. (01:18:43) Like, (01:18:44) You know, musical instrument is a beautiful example. (01:18:47) Guitar and piano, I've put in, I don't know how many thousands of hours. (01:18:51) And now when I'm explaining stuff, jiu-jitsu as well, I sound like, I sound like one of those people, like, just, you know, just relax, you know, in jiu-jitsu. (01:19:03) By the way, just relax is a really wonderful thing for physical endeavors like piano and so on. (01:19:08) But to learn how to relax your hand, how to relax your mind, your body, (01:19:14) and use 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. (01:19:26) Just to learn how to relax takes a lot of really hard work. (01:19:29) In jiu-jitsu, that takes many months of getting your ass beat over and over until you like, you know, ride the bus home crying. (01:19:41) your ego completely shattered and destroyed. (01:19:45) And then like a little element is figured out late that night or next morning. (01:19:53) And from the depression, there's this little plant that grows, this flower of insight.