Terminal Coffee Updates, and Dax Analyzes Adam (again)
Oh, say more, say more words. What does that mean? I'm not following because I'm not smart. Hey.
Dax:Hey.
Adam:What? I don't know.
Dax:Are you tired?
Adam:I am something. I am tired. Yes. In the metaphorical sense. In the large scale sense.
Adam:Also the physical sense. I'm tired.
Dax:I feel like you haven't been sleeping a lot.
Adam:I wasn't I wasn't sleeping a lot. I get these little bouts. I don't know if you talk about it on the podcast. I talk about it ad nauseam on stream and probably Twitter. But I do get these, like, these little bouts of not sleeping, where I feel like I don't need sleep.
Adam:Like, I literally just feel like like 4, 5 hours is fine. 6 hours is like sleeping in. I go through that for, like, a couple weeks, and then I crash. Or sometimes, I mean, sometimes longer, sometimes a couple months, and then I crash really hard. And I go into, like, sleeping a lot.
Adam:Not a lot, like, 7 and a half hours is a lot for me. And I will say the last couple nights, 7 and a half hours. So I'm doing a little better. But last night, 4th July, we stayed up late, fireworks, all that stuff. So I slept in.
Adam:The power was out all night right after literally right after the fireworks show, and our our neighborhood does, like, a little fireworks show. As we're driving home, it starts raining and then, like, this crazy thunderstorm. And, like, I'm sure people were caught on it. We were the first ones to leave. We got a 4 year old.
Adam:I'm sure people were out there just standing on the sidewalk getting drenched. I mean, it just started pouring and, like, crazy wind. Our furniture on our porch is literally all on one side of the porch, like, it got blown
Dax:Wow.
Adam:Across the porch. I mean, like, trees down all over the place. Power's out all night. So we've had some power outages since we had solar. We've never had to run all night on battery like that.
Adam:But the air conditioning doesn't run when the solar's out. So it's just very hot. It's summer here.
Dax:Oh, is air conditioning, like, really It
Adam:just uses a lot of power.
Dax:Depleting?
Adam:Yeah. Mhmm. So they'd left it off the solar circuit. It's like the only thing in our house that doesn't run on battery, which our battery lasts so long. Like, we use, like, 10% of it for 8 hours overnight.
Adam:I'm like, why not let's just put it all
Dax:in there. You know
Adam:what I mean? Let's just not sweat.
Dax:I don't know. Just turn off the AC. Right? It's weird to, like Yeah. Like, physically disconnect the
Adam:They were yeah. They were really, like, not wanting to put it on this special circuit for the solar thing. I don't know why. It's the amperages or something. Something about electricity that I don't understand.
Adam:Anyway, what was I talking about? I'm tired. Oh, sleep. Yeah. So I actually did sleep enough last night.
Adam:I've been sleeping the last couple nights. 2 nights. It's not the best.
Dax:You you said you slept late yesterday, but what does that mean for you? Like, 11 PM?
Adam:Yesterday, like, went to bed late last night? Yeah. 10, Dax. 10 PM was extremely late for me. We go to bed at 8:30.
Adam:Okay?
Dax:10 PM would be going to bed, like, early for me. Yeah.
Adam:I'm sure. Most most people, most normal people. That that's another thing. I just have this sense that I'm not normal. You know what I mean?
Adam:Like
Dax:No. You're not.
Adam:Do you ever just feel like you don't belong in the society you live in? Like, we're just so counter everything in our society. And, I get that sense whenever I try and do something with other people. Like, last night, we tried we went to my parents' house, and they, like they're eating. They eat late.
Adam:We don't eat late. I just feel like this, like, Ferrari.
Dax:You eat later than grandparents?
Adam:Earlier. Earlier than grandparents? No. Earlier than grandparents. Crazy.
Adam:I know.
Dax:That is really crazy.
Adam:Everything in my life is so hyper specific and so not the way people do things. And I feel like this, like, well oiled machine that if it gets off by, like, a microfraction of a deviation, everything collapses. Like, if I go to bed an hour late, my life is ruined. Why do I feel that way? Because
Dax:that's how you set it up.
Adam:Did I do that intentionally? I think semi intentionally and semi as a side effect of a bunch of other people. I
Dax:think semi intentionally and semi as a side effect of a bunch of other things.
Adam:But could you please tell me what all the other things are, and I could start fixing it?
Dax:Because I'm I'm going insane. Okay. So I have this really, really large grand analysis, but I've also been trying to be better about not like I've been trying to be better about just letting people live the way they do.
Adam:Yeah. But I'm invited. I want to live differently. I or I I don't wanna live differently. I wanna stop feeling this way.
Adam:And I feel ways. I have frustrations, and they're bubbling over.
Dax:Yeah. So, I mean, I know you're asking for it, but, like, I I think the reason that I have been intentionally trying to be better about this is I spend, like, an inordinate amount of time, like, thinking about kind of stupid things really. Like, for any topic that somebody has kinda thought of, I feel like I've spent 10 times as much time talking about it or thinking about it.
Adam:Like that too. I mean, about you. I feel like when you start talking about things, I'm, like, how have you spent so much time thinking about this thing? Because I've never thought about this thing.
Dax:I literally will just sit and stare at a wall and just think about, like, stupid shit like this. And so whenever I get into these discussions, I end up sounding, like, overwhelmingly persuasive, but it kinda was like a unfair setup. You know? So I've been I've just been trying to, like, be a little bit more aware of that. I I can still get into it, but I don't know.
Adam:Could you give me yeah. Get into it. I mean, I don't I don't care at this point. I feel bad for the podcast listeners, but I need this conversation, and this is when we have these conversations. So I'm sorry.
Adam:It's we'll talk about something. Just hang on. We'll talk about tech and coffee and whatever. We'll talk about stuff. Just give us a bit.
Adam:I just need a little mental health cleansing. The reason we're doing the podcast early, by the way, I'm gonna go to jujitsu. I need to, like, I need to wrestle. I need to, like, exert a lot of force. I haven't been doing a lot of, like, physical activity the last couple of weeks.
Adam:Just been too busy. And when I do that, when I neglect that, it just gets bad. So, anyway, that's why I'm doing it early. So continue.
Dax:Okay. So let me let me figure out how to how to start. So I think what is not norm and I I even wanna say not normal because I think there's actually a lot of people that actually are on the same track as you, just like the varying varying extremes. I wouldn't consider myself at all in, like, that same kind of space. But there are a lot of people.
Dax:So Mhmm. I I've observed this interesting thing where, so you you you have, like, a hyper optimized life in a lot of ways. Like, you're always looking for, different ways to push different dimensions of it. Mhmm. So understandably, you end up with a very brittle day to day because, like, if it's so pushed to a certain space
Adam:Mhmm.
Dax:Like you said, one thing goes off, like, it's a delicate thing. It's like Yeah. Like driving an f one car. Right? Like, if a tiny thing breaks Yeah.
Adam:That's what I said earlier. It's like I feel like it's a Ferrari. Like, you put a little bit of the wrong kind of fuel in it, and it just everything blows up.
Dax:Yeah. Exactly. But if you step back to where that all comes from, I think there's something really interesting. So I'm gonna describe a scenario to you. Mhmm.
Dax:K? Mhmm. Imagine a person that believes in, that there is a book that has truth in it. Okay. There's fundamental truths about the world.
Dax:They don't have the time
Adam:say a bible. Sorry. It feels like you're describing.
Dax:Yeah. They don't have the time to deeply go into it. So they rely on an interpreter who is dedicated to interpreting this text.
Adam:Okay.
Dax:Okay?
Adam:Mhmm.
Dax:And they spend time with the interpreter to like understand, like, the takeaways from it. Daily rituals, what to do, what not to do, what to care about, what goals, etcetera. And it helps them, you know, live their life. And it also helps them deal with, like, existential problems, like death or, like, life. Just all the big fuzzy questions in life.
Dax:Yeah. Yeah. And if I asked you what that sounds like, like you said, sounds like the bible. Yeah. It sounds like religion.
Dax:Is there anything else that you think that it sounds like?
Adam:Are you gonna say, like, next year's or something? I don't know. No. What? Do do
Dax:you think there's anything in your life that fits this pattern?
Adam:Like, does that sound familiar from, like, my worldview?
Dax:Like, I'm describing the scenario of a person living like, engaging with life in this way.
Adam:I don't yeah. I don't feel like I do. But do I? Tell me. I
Dax:think you you have so when I describe this, everyone thinks, oh, that's obviously religion. Mhmm. But there's another form of this that is one to one exactly the same.
Adam:It's the Internet or something?
Dax:It's like your relationship with Huberman is is actually exactly this.
Adam:Huberman. Oh, I didn't even see this coming. I totally didn't see it. Listen. Can I just say, do you even know that I don't listen to the Huberman podcast?
Adam:Did you know that?
Dax:It's an example. Okay. It's a general example. So I I yeah. Of course.
Dax:Like, you engage with it to some degree. But you can imagine that there are people that have this exact same relationship with them. Yeah. They believe in this concept called science. They believe it has fundamental truths about the universe.
Dax:They don't directly engage with it because, you know, who can as, like, a hobby. You rely on the interpreter. Interpreter gives you rituals. Yeah. You live you live your life.
Dax:No.
Adam:It really is the exactly the same. And and I I shouldn't clap back if I don't listen to it because I do so many things that, like, come out of his podcast. It's just I hear them from people. I don't, like, actually directly consume it so much.
Dax:Yeah. So I think everyone like, when I describe this way, people I think the net net reaction is, oh, it's not the same because it's like the root thing is science. Right? But it is
Adam:But it's the same. Yeah.
Dax:It is eerily, like, the exact same as the other thing. And there's actually foundationally wrong with it. I think the only thing that come that that's wrong with any of the type of relationship is when you actually so I think it's great when you understand that you are engaging with these things because humans need, like, culture and rituals. And, like, they can't decide every little aspect of them of their life on their own, so they engage with they, like, choose a vibe of something that provides this that they click with, and they're following it. The problem comes when they'd act they literally believe that their choice is, like, the fundamentally the correct one.
Dax:And it, like, starts to, like, you know, conflict with other people's other people's things. Mhmm. But I think that the tricky thing with the science one is I don't think people actively chose it. I think people what I think people believe is that actually is true. Like, people literally believe it Mhmm.
Dax:As as strongly as, like, like, the most religious faith oriented person would believe in in their thing. So Am
Adam:I a scientologist? No. That's a different thing.
Dax:No. That that that that just has the word science in it. But to be honest, this isn't any different. Like so the thing for me is, I obviously I'm not saying science is fake. I'm not one of those people that are like, oh, it's it's, you know, a scam.
Dax:But I do differentiate between complex domains and non complex domains.
Adam:Oh, say more say more words. What does that mean? I'm just not I'm not following because I'm not smart.
Dax:I think the great advances in science that we can think of have been in the physical sciences, like like, again, like physics.
Adam:Like material?
Dax:Yeah. So, like, you know, there's stuff we've discovered about the universe, formulas, math, that there's, like, a unified model.
Adam:Mhmm.
Dax:It is for most of physics history, it's not hasn't been a complex domain. Like, it's just individual properties that apply whether you're looking at a single pebble or you're looking at a giant planet. It's like the same
Adam:Yeah. Yeah.
Dax:It scales to the like, the rules scale to both. But there's other domains that are complex. Think about psychology. Think about economics. Think about biology.
Dax:These domains are domains where if you zoom into the micro, it's pretty simple. But then when you go to the macro, it's like an impossible complex. Like like one cell versus a 1000000000 cells is like infinite complexity. Right? It's so hard to understand anything about it.
Dax:And this is where I think we I think as a culture, we kind of assume that or we, like, don't differentiate between these two things. We kinda expect the truths of the physics world to also apply to complex domains.
Adam:Yep.
Dax:And that's why you can see everything from again, it takes, like, psychology research. None of it replicates, like, at all. Like, the research is horrible. Like, it just does not
Adam:Oh, what do you mean, like, replicates? Like, oh, like, they the each study kinda, like, stands alone. No one ever finds, like
Dax:No. No. So so when I say replicate, I mean, someone will find discover a finding. And then 10 years later, someone will redo the study, and they'll be like, oh, it, like, was wrong. You know?
Adam:Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like, they like, no one's reproduced the results of the study.
Adam:Yeah. Like, each study is just kinda like an ad hoc thing that stands alone without yeah. I gotcha. Okay.
Dax:And and we can kinda see this even in our lifetime. Like, we live through a lifetime where in biology, like, fat was the most evil thing ever. Mhmm. Then there's, like, a zone where, you know, fat is like, oh, we found out it's actually not that bad, and it turns out it's like sugar. You know?
Dax:Like, it's it's really Yeah.
Adam:Yeah. It's it's like the eggs thing where it's like eggs are good or eggs are bad just depending on the year.
Dax:Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And there's a study of cholesterol too. Like, you know, the the there's a period of time where we obsessively focused on it.
Dax:And now we're like, do we even understand what it means? So
Adam:Right. Right.
Dax:Right. And the problem is it is a very complex domain. Just like all the topics that religion talk about, it's very, like, crazy and, like, mind bending and and weird. But people are set up to sell it to you as though it's not. And I think you can accidentally, like, put your life into a pretty crazy place because, again, this belief in,
Adam:yep,
Dax:you know, science and the truth and, you
Adam:know, and all of that.
Dax:So I think there is in the world right now a really large trap that is pulling people into that stuff. And it's not, like, a 100% bad, but, you know, you can see how it's very easy to, like, get sucked in infinitely more and more and more.
Adam:So it's just the Internet, like, is it Internet native problems, like, being on the Internet so much? Is that how we're getting sucked in? Am I blaming a big bad boogeyman?
Dax:Yes. In this case. But I think, like like I said, this is like an ancient thing. Like, people need rituals. People need rituals.
Dax:People need to be told how to
Adam:live their lives. The underlying need, yeah, yeah, is there, and it's built in to humans. The problem is the default in modern society, in this Internet age, we all kinda get we're we're seemingly getting pulled into this similar state, this this thing that's filling that void.
Dax:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And I think people it's okay if that happens and you're aware of it.
Dax:It's not okay if you act I think a lot of people believe that they don't need that, but they're still getting sucked into it and not realizing it. Right? Mhmm. And I and I need this too. Like, I I also do this, but I think my approach for it is I try to pick like, everyone kind of needs, like, a leader type person to look at and, like, model their life after.
Dax:I'm very particular about picking people that seem really happy, seem like they have the type of kind of life that I would want. I feel like they value things that are correct. I do find that a lot of people that are in this position don't seem happy, seem really afraid if you really look at how they live their day to day, but still are in this position where they're, like, leading, you know, millions of people.
Adam:So you're saying the people and I'm not picking on Huberman, but the person in Huberman's position, like, Huberman represents that, the person you're talking about. Right? That seems like, they don't seem like they actually model a life that you would want necessarily.
Dax:Yeah. And this is all, like, gut feel. Like, when I see Huberman, I, like, look at him and, like, I can look at his face the way he talks, and I just, like, I don't sense happiness. I don't sense, like, this is a fulfilled life. I sense, like, some I sense, like, weird desperation.
Adam:I
Dax:have the equivalent person, by the way. So I have a a guy named Mark Sisson. Mhmm. Same exact thing. He does exact same stuff as Huberman.
Dax:He, like, has spent a lot of time focusing on things like nutrition and exercise and all of that, and he has no way as he talks about it. But when I look at his life, I'm like, this is, like, the happiest dude ever. He's got, like, such a great life. I'm so jealous of him. And, the other way I click with him is and, again, this comes out of personal choice.
Dax:Right? So he used to be an ultra marathon runner, like, crazy crazy, like, distances, like, pushing himself to the extreme. Yeah. And he, like, almost killed himself doing that. Like, he, like, destroyed his body in a lot of ways.
Dax:Yeah. So now he has this really interesting balance of, like, doing things in the optimal way, but not forgetting that the point of life is to to have fun and be happy and to enjoy it. He always talks about he's, like, always talks about exercise being like for him, you know, I don't go to the gym because I have fun going to the gym. I go to the gym so I can go play ultimate on the weekends, and I can keep doing that in my sixties, seventies, eighties. Like, it's, like, you know, 70 something now.
Dax:So, So, you know, like, that just clicks for me. And I I understand that I'm, like, kind of taking his word. He might be wrong about a bunch of things, but I'm, like, treating him as a leader Yeah. Not believing that there's truth involved, but because I'm fulfilling this need that I have.
Adam:So that that fulfills your ritual need or, like, the whole thing we described that everyone seems to have a need for? That that guy is kind of your, like he sets the rituals in place that you kinda follow?
Dax:Like, when I have questions, like, I in a new answer, I think that's where I'll go. But, again, it it it's, like, really mild for the most part. Like, I I just like the way he views life, and it clicks it clicks for me, you know. And he and he seems happy, so that seems like a good leader.
Adam:Okay. I think I I wanna replace Huberman in my life with, Wim Hof. He's awesome. Do you know who Wim Hof is?
Dax:Yeah. He's great. Yeah.
Adam:Yeah. The breathing room. People are gonna think it's just because of the cold exposure. Like, I just like cold baths. But that's not it.
Adam:He's just he just seems happy. He does he seems happy. Right?
Dax:I don't know much about him. So a few but I've said he seems happy.
Adam:Yeah. I don't know if he's offering answers to a lot of the things. He doesn't seem to care about much. He just, like, goes up in the mountains in his underwear.
Dax:But but that in itself is, you know, something, a detail.
Adam:Yeah. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. I need less I need to have less answers to questions, I think, in my mind.
Adam:I think I have too many answers, and it's stressful.
Dax:Yeah. So and and if you saw it tweeted yesterday, like, the the more money you have, the more, like, increasingly complex grifts you have to avoid.
Adam:Yeah. I was trying to imagine what I saw that tweet. I was trying to imagine what, what you what spurred that what grift.
Dax:I feel like so much in my life and I feel like I've gone through this phase where I was at a point where I had no money, you know, early in my career. Then I started making a good amount of money. Then, like, all these solutions to all my problems started showing up. Like, oh, you have this problem. Here's solution.
Dax:You have this problem. Here's a solution. But, like, it just it technically solved that problem, but then it created a new problem, and then there was, like, another solution for that. And there just felt like this cascading thing, and I got I hit a point where, like, I just ejected out of it. And I'm, like, none of these problems are actually real problems.
Dax:They're things that I would totally forget about and not notice if someone wasn't in front of me being like, hey. Remember this thing that you have a problem with? Yeah. And I just feel like, yeah, like, the richer you get, there's just more and more incentive for people to, like, be like, oh, like, you have this problem. Like, you know, you gotta buy this thing.
Dax:You know? And it's just so and I feel like so much of my life is just dodging that now. It's just it's so effective. Like, when someone brings up something, you're like, oh, yeah. I should be paying attention to that.
Dax:Or, like, that is something I need to fix or
Adam:that is something I need to optimize. I've definitely felt that.
Dax:And here's where the Next. Js punch line goes. Yeah. Next. Js is a great example of that.
Dax:Yeah. They're like, we saw this problem. Uh-oh. Here's a new problem. Okay.
Dax:Like, we've mentioned this new thing, and then, okay, that fixes that. Okay. No. But here's another
Adam:Literally had those problems this morning. I'm extremely stressed this morning, and about 20% of it is Next. Js. And it's so stupid.
Dax:It's their caching. Their weird caching thing. Yeah.
Adam:But I've let this be a thing in my life that stresses me out, but whatever.
Dax:I was gonna conclude. So anyway
Adam:So anyway yeah. Maybe we don't talk about any of this anymore, my mental health or any of it. Because I just don't want this to become my therapy. And it is kind of I'm sorry. Listen, I've tried therapy.
Adam:I've tried the BetterHelp thing.
Dax:This isn't your therapy. This is just us talking broadly. I don't think it was about
Adam:Yeah. Broadly.
Dax:It wasn't too much about you. Anyway, my my conclusion is, like, I think for you, if you feel like your life is very brittle, it doesn't it doesn't have to be. Like, you Okay.
Adam:Doesn't have to be. It's not inherent to my personality because I feel like I'm so, like, like,
Dax:I have this, like, weird inherent to your personality, but it's also that I'm saying the world is set up to tap into into that.
Adam:The world is set up to tap into that. Okay. So the world is taking advantage of my personality is what you're saying, kind of?
Dax:Yeah. It's not just you. Like, it's it's all about us. It's like a broad We're all, like, very lost right now because we've been given so much freedom to choose, and we're like reinventing our lives over and over.
Adam:So do you feel lost?
Dax:Yeah. I do. Because I'm also seeing all the same stuff you are. I'm also thinking about all the same stuff where I'm like, should I be eating this? Should I be doing that?
Dax:Like, should I be doing this thing? People are saying I should be doing that. And it's just like, it all sounds so smart, but below all of it, it's just, like, just lost. Like, everyone is just kinda, like, completely lost.
Adam:That's a great great way to describe it. And I feel I I can hear myself when I say, like, yeah, lost is a good way that describes how I feel. I can just hear a lot of, like, people yelling on the other end of the podcast with, like, their solution or, like, their beliefs or their like, you're lost because you don't have this. And I get it. I've been there.
Adam:I've held belief systems where I felt that way about other people. Just, like, hear me out. Like, I've tried things. I've done things. I've believed things.
Adam:And I'm not unhappy with my broad worldview in terms of like, it's the nitty gritty. It's when you get down to the details. Yeah. Yeah. It's the the day to day that, like I I just constantly blame the Internet, and it's stupid because the Internet isn't really a thing.
Adam:I don't know. What am I blaming? Like, the physical network that is the Internet? Like, I'm blaming the information. I've not done a good job of putting constraints on how I consume this thing that's available to us now where we have the world at our fingertips at all times.
Adam:I've not done a good job of shielding my brain from the wrong parts of it or something, and that's what I blame. I don't it's not like I'm blaming big companies in the Internet. I'm not, like it's not a boogeyman thing. It's just like I don't feel like I've done a good job of balancing this very powerful thing that we have in our lives, this ability to communicate and consume and do these things at any given moment. I haven't balanced that with, like, stuff that we just need as people.
Adam:I feel like you just need people around you. You need to, like, have, like, socialization, but I just basically shut off in terms of the physical world. Like, I literally just don't interact with people within a 100 mile radius of me. I don't know. Like, I I happen to live in a place, but I don't really belong there.
Adam:I don't really have the things that people probably need. You know? We've talked about that before. But anyway
Dax:Me me and Liz were talking about this too. Liz said something the other day. She was like, I think the only thing I care about anymore is, like, being around people I care about. And it's just become so
Adam:feel that in my soul.
Dax:Yeah. It just becomes so hard to do that. Like, it's, like, so rare that we get to actually do that. So now it's just become, like, the number one thing we try to optimize our life around. Like, when I went to go visit Alan in, in Maine
Adam:Mhmm.
Dax:Because his family's been has been spending summers on that island in Maine, like, forever. And I was like, we should just do that because at least literally we're, like, willing to, like, go there and spend summers in there just so we can hang out with 1 person that we're close with, like, one one group of people that we're we're close with. But for us, there's, like, nothing else that matters more than that. It's just, it's crazy that like, yeah, all of us are so crazy isolated. And you're right.
Dax:It's like, this comes up in the most trivial things, right? It's like the micro nitty gritty stuff.
Adam:Yeah. Yeah.
Dax:Like, I think about our parent, like, I remember our parents, like our grandparents. They never once thought about, like, what should I be eating? They've never once thought about it. And Yeah. I, like, I think it's maybe different because in America, that was maybe a very bad thing.
Dax:But my grandparents were in India. They never once thought about what they should be eating, and it was fine because it was all healthy, good food anyway. Yeah. Like, not a single day, not a single minute of their life they spent thinking about that. And, like, that just leaves so much more room for thinking about other things.
Adam:Oh, man. Yeah. They're not worried
Dax:about the nitty gritty at all. They it's been established. It's been that way for years years years. Yeah.
Adam:There's also, like, every other aspect of my life. Yeah. Like, activity physical activity, moving, like, exercise, all that stuff. Do you think, though, is to play the other side of it, like, you you mentioned in America, maybe that's it'd be a bad thing to not think about it. Do you think there's something about our environment here?
Adam:I'm gonna say in the US because I don't have any other context. Maybe it's the whole western world. I don't know. But do you think there's something about our environment that's sort of, like, actively hostile against you just having a default lifestyle? Like, if you just live the life that society sort of, like, seems to be defaulting to.
Adam:Like, in India, your grandparents, they were surrounded by a culture that was, like, setting good here's, like, a good food environment. Here's a good whatever environment. And if you just live a default life here, you're gonna be healthy and happy. Do you feel like that's the case in the US today, or do you feel like corporate interest or something have created an environment where if you just default to the default, you're gonna die at, like, 80, and you're gonna be on meds from, like, 55 and on for low blood pressure or whatever? Like, there's all these things that are gonna happen if you just default to the default here in America.
Adam:Do you think that's true? Or if I just Huberman myself into that?
Dax:No. I think that that that no. That is true, but it has nothing to do with what I think it has to do with is America is young and has no it has no it has no culture. Like, it has no ritual. It has no, like, unified thing.
Dax:Like, you know, again, going back to India example. This is like an ancient civilization with, like, rituals that have been around for 1000 of years. There's a lot of wisdom in those things. There's so many I think we've taught this before. There's so many examples of, if you look at certain dishes, they'll, like, pair a bunch of ingredients together.
Dax:And then, like, later, science will tell us, like, oh, this one ingredient is actually potentially you know, has this thing that can kill you, but when paired with this other ingredient, it, like, neutralizes it. There's like Mhmm. Nobody understands that when they're eating the food, but there is, like, this ancient something over the years built up with it. Like most older cultures, if you look at their the food they eat, it tends to be very nutritious, covers a full spectrum of everything you need. Again, nobody understood why they're doing any of that, but it's just built in.
Dax:So I think America is young, so it doesn't have have that and the like, we're exceptionally lost here, I think.
Adam:Yeah. So we're young, but we're also, like
Dax:A mix.
Adam:From a technology standpoint. We're very mature. Or, like, we've done things we've been able to create things that, like, in India a 100 years ago, they weren't gonna be able to create some of the food and some of the things we've created in our society. Do you think any of it's part of, like, the timeline we're in, just like where we're at in terms of technology? Because we can make very delicious tasting things that are not really food anymore, and that's, like, a big part of the default diet in America.
Adam:I'm getting on the food thing a lot. Maybe this is just about food for me. Maybe I'm too hung up on food. But I do feel like the default American diet is called, like, the standard American diet, and it stands for SAD, Or, like, SAD is the acronym, and I think there's something to that. SAD diet.
Adam:It's just SAD.
Dax:Yeah. But I think that's only that only, like, proliferated because there isn't an existing thing that's, like, established. Right? So we
Adam:Oh, I see. So if America were older and we had, like, an if we had come to the right answers over a long period of time, which is what other cultures have done, basically.
Dax:Like, I'm sure every part of the world is now dealing with this to some degree just because of the globalization stuff. But Yeah. Obviously, like, you could like, your grandparents or maybe your parents, people your parents' age are probably eating a lot of, like, really crazy stuff. People my parents' age in India were not. Like, it hadn't really made
Adam:it there.
Dax:And, like, it's a much harder displace, like, their routines and everything. Like, when you have a 1,000,000,000 people all kind of doing the same thing, it's that's they've been doing for 1000 of years. It's, like, a lot harder to disrupt that. You can imagine, like, other countries too, like, just I can imagine, like, Japan, like, it's it's hard to imagine them doing kind of the stuff that we're doing again because they have, like, all these rituals that date back. So
Adam:Yeah. It's hard for me. I think it's hard. I'm just I'm trying to compare, like, India and America. It's just hard for me because I don't think, like, a 1000 years ago, at the early when they were young when India was young, whenever that was, I don't think they were, like, let's start with McDonald's cheeseburgers, and then we're gonna evolve to, like Yeah.
Dax:I I think you're right that
Adam:there's, like, this technology element.
Dax:And also having the amount of freedom and power that you do now Right. As, like, a bad combination.
Adam:Yeah. Yeah.
Dax:Yeah. Like, there's a period I feel like it, like I don't know when this was. Maybe I think I think it was, like, after the fifties. I feel there was a period that was, like, let's try to make food as weird as possible. Like Yeah.
Dax:I feel like
Adam:The post World War
Dax:2 They were trying to make, like, the craziest stuff. They were like, here's orange juice, but it's like a cube of ice. And here's, like, here's Jell O, and there's, like it's like this wobbly crazy thing, and there's, like, something in it. You know, it's just, like, all this really weird there's this era of being, like, we can engineer anything.
Adam:And Yeah. Experiment all
Dax:that weird stuff came out.
Adam:Yeah. Rebellion. Yeah. We're just young. We're teenagers.
Adam:America is doing weird stuff. Okay. That's enough about food. I feel like we should talk about something that anyone that listens to this podcast would wanna listen to. Because I've just I've taken over and
Dax:I think this is, like, prob I think what we talked about is probably I think a lot of people could relate to what we talked about. Yeah. I think this is, like, the problem of our time.
Adam:So maybe this is, like, another problem of our time, and it's not unique to me, that I feel like such a snowflake. Like, there's so many things about my life that I think, like, I just wanna rant, and I wanna complain about this stuff because I'm so frustrated. And I think, like, no one can relate with me. I don't I don't feel like I have relatable problems. Do you know what I mean?
Dax:You are an extreme individual in a lot of ways. That's in a very unique way, and that's what makes you interesting. But I think the root things they'll stem from, I think people can relate to.
Adam:Are universal? Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
Adam:Well, if you're also lost, let's form a a a support group. Well, it's everyone. So I guess we just need it's everyone. It is lost. And I
Dax:think we all just need to acknowledge that we're not smart. We're lost. Because a lot of this stuff sounds very smart.
Adam:And then what's the next step after that? So I've acknowledged. I am dumb. I believe this genuinely. I am not smart, and I, am lost.
Adam:Now what? I believe you. All of it is true. Now I gotta
Dax:find what you really care about. Like, what does what is the thing that you really care about?
Adam:What I really care about, I think it's what you and Liz just said. I think I do crave like, ever since React Miami, just, like, hanging out at your house for a week, realizing, like, I just don't have that in my life. I don't have, like, people that I just wanna spend time with. And I had that earlier in life. I feel like in school, you've got, like, this built in you know, we spend a lot of time together, friends.
Adam:Now it's just like my family, and I love my family, and I know my family needs this too. Like, my wife would say the same thing. Like, we just need people. We just need to be around people more. And I feel like the isolation has gotten more extreme over we've been married 15 years.
Adam:It wasn't like that at the beginning of our marriage, and I feel like it's just progressively gotten worse. And I don't know what the driving factor is,
Dax:but we gotta fix it. Yeah. Exact and this again goes back to just these older ways of living. Like, this was never a problem historically. Like
Adam:Mhmm.
Dax:You were you were never like, how do I stay in how do I make sure I, like, stay in touch with my community? Like, no. Your community was your whole life, and there was no escaping it. Yeah. Right.
Dax:Right. Which has other problems. Right? So we've been granted the ability to escape those problems, but we've lost all this stuff. So, yeah, it's crazy how and it's funny you bring up the school thing.
Dax:Like, this also goes back to, like, these older structures. I think the school education system was so stupid and it wasted so much of my life in it and it sucks and it was not optimized and I think it set up a lot it sets up people for, like, a lot of misery. But it did provide the thing you're talking about where you didn't have to try at all, and you would have you have certain needs that are, like, just met and fulfilled for, like, years, Potentially, even would even say you have for a lifetime with, like, you know, friends and stuff. Mhmm. But in our modern world, well, that gets, that gets decimated.
Dax:I I posted this the other day. We have a friend whose wife has I literally haven't seen her in, like, 5 years. Like, she's always avoids hanging out with us. And my last memory of hanging out with her was we were at this Vietnamese place getting pho, and I talked about how Voldemort was, like, a really great character. I haven't heard this yet.
Dax:You were. Do a horcrux, and she got really pissed. She got really, really, really pissed.
Adam:Hang out with you now. And, yeah, I think she
Dax:I I think them I think that was like she, like, was like, oh, Dax is a bad person. Like, that was her, like, definitive you
Adam:know, it's like
Dax:I said something that definitely told her I was a bad person, and she should avoid me. So
Adam:Yeah. That was it. Bold of work. If that's
Dax:not true or not, it's a story I'm I'm gonna say. But it's funny. People people on the table next to us also found it funny and started getting into it with us too.
Adam:Can we can we talk about pho? Is that how you say it? I always said foe, I think. It's pho,
Dax:Yeah. I have this thing where it's I apply it very inconsistently. There are certain things that I feel like if you pronounce it a certain way, even if it's correct, you're being pretentious. So I'd say it the wrong way on purpose. But I'm just thinking some sometimes I just do it.
Dax:Like, I think for pho, I feel like I I hear enough people saying that where I'm not, like, showing off that I know how to how to say it by saying it a certain way.
Adam:Okay. I just looked it up. I mean, it is spelled p h o, but we'll go with pho. I'm good with that. Pho it is.
Dax:I love pho. There's not.
Adam:Speaking of pho, what what's going on right now? I need to, like, distract myself. Do I? Maybe I don't. Maybe I need
Dax:to think about my problem.
Adam:But I think I wanna distract. Distract. Let's just anything else.
Dax:What is going on right
Adam:now? Oh, this this episode is sponsored by Terminal Coffee. You can buy your coffee in the terminal right now. S h terminal dot shop. Literally, right now, you can do it because we launched Open up your terminal.
Dax:S h terminal.shop. Did you see the, did you see a multiplexer thing I posted?
Adam:Yes. Oh, I can't wait. I'm so tired of having multiple panes open to do this stuff. I just wanna, like, cycle through it.
Dax:It solves a bunch of problems too. Like, it's not like you have to kill them all the restart. Like, it's it's gonna be it's gonna be nice.
Adam:How soon? How are we how soon are we talking here?
Dax:I'm hoping I have Hennesett in the next day or so. Oh, nice. I'm close.
Adam:Everything moves fast with SSD.
Dax:It was fun because I got to I the way I built it was I actually didn't build anything SC specific for the multiplexer. I built, like, a very simple multiplexer that can, you know, show up multiple processes, and I'm, like, using it for SSC.
Adam:Mhmm.
Dax:Isn't it crazy how deep into the terminal we've we've gone?
Adam:Yeah. We've really gone. We've gone deep.
Dax:We're in deep because I finally understand all this stuff that I, like, never really got. Like, I I never really got, like, how is SSH working? Like, how it's, like, streaming to me? Is it, like, a video feed? You know?
Dax:It's
Adam:Yeah. There's things I care about now that I just never ever thought about. Like, there's, like yeah. How much data is being transferred over an SSH session. Not a thing I cared about, like, a year ago.
Adam:Now suddenly, I'm very concerned with the internals of these libraries we use and how it all works.
Dax:And I I'm amazed at how capable the whole terminal system is. Like It really is. Yeah. Again, it's obvious if you think about the fact that we're using Neovim, and Neovim is a terminal app that Yeah. Can work locally, can be streamed over a stage, all that stuff.
Dax:But it is wild because the stuff that's in reality is old. The console terminal is extremely old. All those escape codes codes are very old. But, yeah, you can use it to do anything. And it's,
Adam:it's wild. By contrast. Terminal dot shop. Yeah. We we did we haven't talked about it since we launched.
Adam:Right? We haven't had an episode since it was Monday. We launched, with 4 new blends.
Dax:And I think we've officially sold more than we have in our 1st round.
Adam:Feels good. Which is great. We don't sell the the coffee that we sold in the 1st round. No blend. It was a limited time run.
Adam:Now you can buy 4 different blends that, whatever matches your preference. We've got
Dax:We've got light, medium roast.
Adam:Yeah. And a decaf.
Dax:A decaf, which is reasonably popular.
Adam:Surprisingly.
Dax:It's at least popular for sure. But, like, there's
Adam:Surprisingly more popular than I expected. Yeah.
Dax:Yeah.
Adam:I guess all the people who wanna buy our coffee to the terminal, but they don't drink coffee. And they're like, I can do decaf maybe?
Dax:That I think the 4 the 404 is a decaf one. I think that one, it has the best packaging. That's my favorite packaging.
Adam:It's the coolest packaging. Yeah.
Dax:Yeah. If you
Adam:were just buying them for the packaging, it's the coolest for sure. We really need to get photos of the of the coffee packaging Yeah.
Dax:We do.
Adam:On the website or something because they're not in the terminal. So you never see what you're about to get. It's like
Dax:I figured that, well, we should post photos for sure. I figured we could do that, like, a week out so we can Yeah.
Adam:We'll take some photos here. I I should be getting the copy soon. Right?
Dax:But, also, people are about to be gets. People some people are getting their copy today. So I'm sure there'll be tweets and stuff so we can, retweet those so people people will get
Adam:the Yeah. You're just reminding me I got stuff to do. I got see, this is the problem. Like, I'm like, oh, I'm gonna go to jujitsu at 10. And then I'm like, no.
Adam:I got so many things I gotta do today. Why do I always feel like I have so many things to do? There's always gonna be so many things to do with work. It's never gonna be like, oh, I really don't have that much to do right now. It's always gonna be, there's so much to do.
Adam:Why is that? Is that how everyone feels about work? Is this universal?
Dax:Because you are you're, like, running a business. That's how it feels when you run a business. Is that
Adam:what it is? When you're running 3 businesses, this is how you feel?
Dax:Yeah. Exactly. Because it's like the thing I always bring up is, being a freelancer and going on vacation and or whatever vacation costs twice amount. Yeah. It's like that exact thing.
Dax:It's like it's not like you're done with work. There's always more stuff you could be doing, and you're totally getting paid for every minute you work, which is not the case when, you know, you have a fixed salary.
Adam:Yeah. Yeah. It's like yesterday as a holiday, and it's like, I'm not taking off on 4th July. Like, I've got it's not like, my day job's giving me the day off, so I'm just gonna Yeah. Hang out and barbecue.
Adam:Like, what? No. I don't get to do that. Like, there's always so many things to do that, like, every moment seems precious. I don't like that feeling, though.
Adam:I don't like that feeling of it's just it's this never ending treadmill that I will never get off of. That's what it feels like.
Dax:Well, it's funny because holidays are exciting for me because external things coming into my life slow down.
Adam:Yeah.
Dax:Like, support questions or people asking me stuff. So if holidays are days where I can, like, really focus
Adam:I don't stop. The stream of my support request keeps flowing.
Dax:Yeah. So that that is super nice. But, yeah, I don't know. It just I'm sure eventually something or maybe not.
Adam:Yes. Yeah. Eventually, it'll slow down. Sure. Yeah.
Adam:Uh-huh. That's what yeah. No. It won't.
Dax:My one of the yeah. Because I'm at the beginning of the of the podcast. Warren Buffett, he's 90 something years old, and he's so I bring this up so much. He's so articulate. He's so all there, especially now we've we've been seeing Biden the past week.
Dax:He's, like, his mind is a 100% there. And guess what? He worked probably every minute of his life.
Adam:Okay. I like that outcome. Work a lot.
Dax:So I I choose to believe that again, none of this is based on fact or science or anything, but Yeah.
Adam:Yeah.
Dax:It makes sense to me that he's he's making sense.
Adam:I mean, my grandpa lived to be 90 4, 8 terribly. I mean, like, he was completely unhealthy in every metric, like, had to have his arteries from his neck scraped clean and all that. Like, just didn't do a lot of things lifestyle wise you would think would keep him ticking till 94, but perfectly there till he died mentally and he was working until he was 94. He had a clothing store he ran for 60 years or whatever and went today went to work every day. Thinking about how he can make these jeans a little cheaper for people to buy, like, that kind of stuff.
Adam:I mean, like, I I do think there's something about having your work and having this, like, mental exercise every day. I think that's good. Yeah. I just but, like, when I talk about this with Casey and how stressed I am, how overwhelmed, all these things, there's so much going on. It's like, well, you gotta cut something out is her answer.
Adam:And it's like, I don't there's nothing I would cut out. I love all the things I'm doing. Like, it's all good things. I want all these things. I I've narrowed it to 4 things, and I just why can't I just feel good about the pace?
Adam:I think it's the pace. Why can't I just feel good about the pace that, like, just naturally happens? Why do I feel like everything's going too slow and I gotta go faster?
Dax:Okay. So I have a perfect metaphor for this, and I think I'm gonna be able to explain 2 things at once. So you know how when there's there's, like, a road and there's a lot of traffic and there's it's always, like, always uncomfortable amount of traffic. It's, like, annoying. They expand the road, and then it's, like, the same amount of traffic even though there's twice amount amount of room.
Dax:Yeah. And the reason is, like, every individual is willing to drive up to a certain level of discomfort. So that's just a level that it's always gonna be at. If you add more capacity, the discomfort goes down. So then more people start driving and the discomfort
Adam:Yeah.
Dax:Goes back up. So it's like the natural state of everything is just gonna be this discomfort. Because if you cut something out, then you're gonna be like, I feel good now. And then you're gonna feel like you'll probably do another thing, and you fill it with something else. And then you're, again, you're at the zone of discomfort forever.
Adam:Yeah. I describe it as a liquid. It's like it fills the container. Yeah. Yeah.
Adam:Exactly. It's not it's a gas. Like, it it will fill the container. It's probably more like a gas because it can be compressed or something. And, like, it ultimately or may maybe it can't.
Adam:I don't know. But it fills whatever crevice I give it. If there is an opening, I will fill it with something to do. And Yeah. It's overwhelming.
Adam:Okay.
Dax:Yeah. The thing that me and this talk about is a lot because it feels like every time our life gets settled, we seem to completely randomly make a decision that just inserts chaos into it again. It's like, we we're gonna move from New York to Miami. Chaos. Chaos.
Dax:Chaos. Okay. It's kind of settling down. Okay. Let's get a dog.
Dax:Chaos. Chaos. Okay. The dog is, like, kind of grown up and, like, you know, he's he's, like, chilling now. Okay.
Dax:Let's get another dog. Let's have a kid. You know, it's just like we're always just resetting. We're gonna move again, you know.
Adam:It's there's always something.
Dax:There is before we load, there is one tech thing that happened this week that is
Adam:Let's talk about it.
Dax:Interesting. Have you seen all this stuff with RS pack?
Adam:No. Have you ever heard of RS pack? Is that a Rust thing? What is it? Yeah.
Adam:RS pack?
Dax:Okay. So do you remember how
Adam:Wait. Can I guess? Hang on. Hang on. Hang on.
Adam:Hang on. This is gonna be fun. I'm gonna guess. Somebody rewrote a bundler in Rust. I've never heard of RS Pack in my life, but I just know that's what it is.
Adam:Okay. Great.
Dax:So a couple years ago, I do remember when Purcell at their conference was, like, introducing TurboPack, the successor to my
Adam:pack. Uh-huh.
Dax:And then the Webpack people were like, what?
Adam:Yeah. Wait.
Dax:What what do you mean the 6th episode? No. No. It's not people that worked at Vercel. It was just, like, the people that
Adam:Well, the guy yeah. Oh, the the people who actually worked on Webpack Yeah. Didn't work at Vercel. When like,
Dax:we're we're still working on webpack.
Adam:We're still working on webpack.
Dax:And that, like, annoyed people enough that they kicked off RS pack, which is just targeting the existing webpack config and API. Just need plenty
Adam:of that
Dax:thing to go up. Sorry. Continue. No. No.
Dax:Wait. Let's just listen.
Adam:Ground
Dax:up in Rust. And it's Okay. A lot of these engineers work at ByteDance, which is a company that owns TikTok. Oh. And you often hear from them.
Adam:Mhmm.
Dax:They are like, they're insane. These are, like, some of the craziest engineers I've seen. They shipped RS Pack with a 100% working with webpack faster than Turbo Pack even replaced Next. Js. And they started
Adam:after, I'm
Dax:pretty sure. And they move super, super, super fast. So and they've been working on this thing. It's it's, like, hit a milestone where, like, you can totally replace Webpack. It's faster than v.
Dax:It's faster than, like no. It's great. Across the board, it's winning. Last week, Zach Johnson, who is someone that works on it, works at ByteDance, said, oh, one of my coworkers is, like, gonna get RS pack building Next. Js just for fun and getting all the tests passed.
Dax:And we're planning on throwing it out, but This
Adam:is hilarious.
Dax:This sounds useful. So I messaged him being like, like, what is this? This sounds, like, really useful for OpenNext. Like, can we talk about it? And he goes, oh, it's funny.
Dax:My coworker was like, can I can we donate this to Opennext? And then so we got in a call and I was talking to him, and they, like, take this stuff so seriously. They are like, if the way ByteDance treats things is if there is a large user of an open source project, they treat it like a business product. So they will literally, like, fly someone to you and work with you if you're having issues with it. Like, they're just, like, just on it and, like, just crazy engineering power and and resources and stuff.
Dax:So they're literally gonna build an alternate compiler for Next. Js that targets, like, your code. Like, the Next. Js APIs. But it doesn't depend on, like, the Vercel build output, which, like, is constantly changing and breaking in and all this stuff.
Dax:You can maybe
Adam:say it's like a successor to turbo pack.
Dax:Yeah. The successor to turbo pack isn't even launched yet. It's a it's a successor. But what's cool about this is that completely decouples, Next. It's, like, the biggest way to decouple Next from Vercel because you just target the same API, which I'm sure they just all design.
Adam:But a
Dax:lot of places where they, like, really mess with stuff is in the build process where they, like, make certain things, like, overly complicated as a side effect of making it, like, work nicely with certain products that Vercel offers.
Adam:So an
Dax:example of that is Vercel has a cache like, a proprietary caching product. But if you just made Next. Js work with module federation, which is like an open thing, like, you wouldn't really need that. But they make it not work with it. So things like that, it would just fix.
Dax:Yeah. So, yeah, it is wild that now there might be this we might be getting this, like, crazy set of resources to help with OpenText. Cloudflare also, coincidentally, has been talking about doing the exact same thing. So they're also very potentially into this. So it finally feels like Interesting.
Dax:We can kind of band everyone together and have this, like, completely separate
Adam:Alternate solution. Yeah.
Dax:A way of of doing of doing next, which I'm I'm pretty there's a lot of potential I'm pretty excited about. Again, these engineers are insane. They're, like, so fast.
Adam:I love these kind of stories. I love learning about these. But I do feel like we haven't even scratched the surface on what people are capable of from a software development standpoint. I feel like we're just discovering, like, there's these people who are insane. I mean, I've I've just seen it in the open source community.
Adam:It's mostly people you found, like, oh, look at this library that this random 15 year old in India made. And, like, oh, this person's a genius. Yeah. And I feel like there's just more and more of that. And then you start, like, putting them on little teams together, and just, like, there's no telling what we're gonna be able to build.
Adam:It's amazing.
Dax:Yeah. He the guy was really like, I'm pretty sure I can get all of Paige's router working in a weekend. But oh, cool.
Adam:That's funny.
Dax:That sounds great. Alright.
Adam:We gotta get off here so I can go to jujitsu. I, I'm realizing I I need to I need to do some physical exertion. I'm sorry that I just truncated the only interesting part of this podcast. You guys have to listen to, like, 40 minutes of existential crisis and then you get, like, a little blip of Dax talking about tech that's actually interesting. Such is life on the the podcast.
Dax:People don't care about the tech part. I'm very convinced.
Adam:Okay. Maybe not. Maybe not. We just need to position the podcast appropriately. I guess it's not really branded as being a tech podcast, so I don't know why I feel like I have some obligation.
Adam:It's
Dax:branded about, as being tomorrow.
Adam:Yeah. It's about tomorrow. It's very broad. Future. It is very broad.
Adam:We can basically talk about anything we want.
Dax:It's about how the future requires us visiting our past.
Adam:Oh, that was deep. Did you just make that up on the spot? I'm gonna change our tagline and So the description podcast and everything.
Dax:That was
Adam:so good. You're gonna be the person I put in that place. I need that that wise person in my life that's not Huberman. It's gonna be Dax for me.
Dax:No. It's gotta be someone in the in the next phase of life.
Adam:No. I'm going with you. You're a little younger than me, but I don't care. There's no rules. There's no rules here.
Adam:Alright. Oh, 1 hour exactly. Let's just stop it now. Okay. Bye.
Adam:Oh, no. I didn't hit the button. I can't reach it. There it is. Okay.
Adam:My trackpad died.
