Home Creators Posts Import Register Favorites Logout

Content

Hello there,

Just a quick update to let you know that the next main decoding will be focused on none other than Naval Ravikant, tech entrepreneur, investor, and philosopher-king of Twitter, known for dispensing bite-sized wisdom on everything from wealth and happiness to… well, mostly wealth and happiness.

For this episode, we’ll be using his long-form interview with Chris Williamson as our primary source material. Yes, it’s nearly three and a half hours of Naval musing about money, meaning, mindset, and 'philosophy'?

Expect trademark Navalisms, including his serene detachment from material concerns (spoken, naturally, from atop a very large pile of angel investment returns) and his habit of weaving together ancient wisdom with a healthy sprinkle of Silicon Valley self-optimisation.

Fun for all the family...

Files

44 Harsh Truths About The Game Of Life - Naval Ravikant (4K)

Naval Ravikant is an entrepreneur, investor and co-founder of AngelList. What does it mean to win at the game of life? Is it tons of wealth, pure happiness, infinite time, or a loving family? Today we explore the timeless question of what it means to truly live well. Expect to learn the true price of success, whether sacrificing your happiness is worth it, what advice Naval would give to his younger self, what the true source of unhappiness is for most people, how to overcome low self-esteem, what Naval would add to his ‘How To Get Rich’ thread, how to become comfortable being unapologetically selfish, what Naval sees as the next big trends in science and technology, his take on the escalating culture wars, how to get comfortable with death and overcoming grief, the best and worst ways to spend your wealth and much more… 00:00 Is Success Worth It? 07:43 Ways To Shortcut Our Desires 10:47 Is Changing Our Opinions Hypocritical? 14:35 How To Become Less Distracted By Status Games 21:02 Ways To Raise Your Self-Esteem 29:46 Why Pride Is The Most Expensive Trait 32:19 Identifying Our Happiness 44:22 The Key To Being Your Authentic Self 49:08 Objectively Viewing Our Own Mind 1:00:40 How Can We Avoid Cynicism And Pessimism Within Ourselves? 1:07:20 What Is Happiness? 1:21:24 Learning How To Deal With Anxiety 1:28:07 Optimising Our Quality Of Life 1:32:36 Why We Can't Change Other People 1:45:22 Why We Shouldn't Take Ourselves Too Seriously 1:52:38 How Being Observant Of Yourself Allows Change 2:00:23 Why Did Naval Come On This Podcast? 2:09:31 The Best And Worst Places To Spend Wealth 2:18:03 Philosophical Beliefs 2:23:55 Recent Insights Into Naval's Opinions 2:30:50 Are People Choosing To Have Less Kids? 2:37:40 Trusting Our Instincts Throughout Parenthood 2:50:26 What Does The Future Of The Culture Wars Look Like? 2:59:01 What Is Currently Ignored By The Media But Will Be Studied By Historians? 3:11:49 Is There An Advantage To Starting Out As A Loser? 3:15:20 Naval's Foreseeable Plans - Get $350 off the Pod 4 Ultra at https://eightsleep.com/modernwisdom (use code MODERNWISDOM) Get the best bloodwork analysis in America at https://functionhealth.com/modernwisdom Get a Free Sample Pack of all LMNT Flavours with your first purchase at https://drinklmnt.com/modernwisdom Get 35% off your first subscription of the best supplements from Momentous at https://livemomentous.com/modernwisdom - Get access to every episode 10 hours before YouTube by subscribing for free on Spotify - https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn or Apple Podcasts - https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Get my free Reading List of 100 life-changing books here - https://chriswillx.com/books/ Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic here - https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: https://chriswillx.com/contact/

Comments

MoooinkForYourSupper

Problem with his happiness advice is that he seems emotionally out of touch with many people. He has a point on paper, but then he doesn't caveat it or extend empathy towards the opposite experience. He has a bias towards universal axioms, and his lifestyle permits him certain extreme quirks, like the phobia of commitment. Most people cannot live like that, and he is kind of arrogant to assume that everyone even wants to live like him

Sam

Happiness is a warm gun... bang bang shoot shoot.

ChrisH

Chris Williamson is infuriating.

MoooinkForYourSupper

"I'm as guilty as anyone of doomscrolling on X" "Go out and fix your own shit before you try to change things / give advice" Okay then

MoooinkForYourSupper

I also notice that him reframing common life situations as computer science problems, allows him to give the impression of insight of having "proven" the answer - when in reality he reaches the same basic advice as we should already know - keep your head up, don't settle on the first thing you see, cut your losses quickly when you know it's not working, etc... (~1hr in)

Justine

Wow what a load of w@nk. Self esteem is you judging how well your behaviour aligns to your values? Uhuh, sure.

Sam Hall

Chris Williamson absolutely laps up this sort of rubbish

Linda Sears

Okay. I don’t think I have the stomach for this. I’ll give it a few minutes.

Frances goulart

Holistically selfish, yeah! Get rid of that calendar. Be spontaneous! I'm going to the beach today, fuck the job!

livintheilife

Mild aggravation setting in around 19:45. Time for a breather. I have better tolerance for this than for McConaughey. If Naval Ravikant is famous, he’s unknown to me, at least. Guess he didn’t play the game well enough to get noticed by me. Point to McConaughey, on that one. I see another Silicon Valley asshat with an overinflated sense of self importance. Let’s see how much more of this I can stomach. Do these guys really think they’re insightful? Pressing play again…

livintheilife

“If I had to summarize how to be successful in life in two words I would just say: productize yourself“ Easter egg unlocked! You have fully integrated and successfully internalized capitalism.

Empty_Cognizance

Holy shit, I used to see this fucking dork on my twitter feed all the time before they did the different “for you”/“following” tabs… I hope he says something stupid about “meditation” in this interview 😂

livintheilife

“I like to think that my stuff is incompressible; I’m saying it in the tightest way possible.” Said with a straight face *2 hours and 17 mins* into an interview with an hour yet to come.

Damien

This chap is famous? I had never heard of him until the video was posted. And after listening to him for twenty mins I want never to hear him again.

Linda Sears

Got to about 32 minutes. Lots of basic self-optimization stuff. He’d be better if he didn’t rely on studies that haven’t been replicated and gotten his references correct, for example, Emerson is the one behind the quotation about foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds. I think a lot of very wealthy people become wealthy for the status, so I find it odd that he decouples wealth and status. And Musk is definitely proud.

Sam Hall

The last 20 minutes or so is pure, unadulterated galaxy-brainedness

iffydonatello

A stupid amount of this is BS Stoicism.

MoooinkForYourSupper

2:36:00 ugh god Chris why would you quote that... You're 37 for heaven's sake...

Keepy

Is this advice supposed to be universal..? Imagine trying to manage a large complicated project where you had to arrange meetings with numerous stakeholders but none of them believed in schedules and only turned up to meetings when they felt like it 😆 it would be a nightmare! Sounds like a nice way to live if you’re loaded though..

MoooinkForYourSupper

"3:14:00 nothing worse than a lazy man. You should take care of literally everyone around you (except for showing up to birthday parties I guess) and in return society should reward you with status, which is a zero-sum game I keep saying you shouldn't play." He's contradicted himself so many times in this video, and for all his love of universal principles he doesn't even realize it.

MoooinkForYourSupper

On a positive note: he is at his best when talking about (his) kids. He wants to love them unconditionally and foster curiosity about the world, but doesn't think he has much control beyond that. Sounds like he really did come from a good family and so isn't going to be passing down his issues to the next generation. Now if he would just show up to a wedding every now and again...

Neely McCormick

Are these guys under the impression that this conversation is somehow “deep”? Jesus, sounds like two kids puzzling out a college selection

George

The having no schedule thing is such total bollocks

Chris Clark

Ok so I’m taking notes on this genius-I got the secretary theorem and that you become an expert after 10,000 iterations. So you leave relationships when they are good or bad? I think it’s good AND bad. You hire the best secretary, but there *will be* a better version of this secretary out there, you’ve already set the bar high with this current secretary who is the best you could find, but you just need to iterate. All human relationships are like this, dating, friendship-even marriage? Iterate, iterate, fools!

Christopher Lin

"Productize yourself" is so incredibly bleak.