Transcription
Have you ever seen the midwit meme? Do you know what that is? Oh dude, so imagine a bell curve. It's an IQ bell curve, and on the left-hand side's the sort of Neanderthal-looking meme guy with the heavy brow. And then in the middle at the top is the sort of raging lib guy. And then on the far side is the sage that's got his hood up, looking like a Jedi.
The joke is that the guy on the left and the guy on the right always arrive at the same conclusion, and the guy in the middle tries to overcomplicate it. So we, me and George, my friend, have spent—I'm not kidding—like months talking about this. He sent me another meme about it this morning. It's like the most—I think it's the most philosophically important meme—because, uh, let's say it's getting in shape. Yeah, lift weights, eat protein; lift weights, eat protein. I must ensure that my pre-digested whey is consumed within a 30-minute window. I have to make sure that my blue blockers are put on before… it's just the guy in the middle ruins everything; is overcomplicating things. And what you've got, what you found, is a bunch of people that are on the left. And here's the thing that people don't get about the midwit meme; this is—we've refined this over a million dinners—every guy in the middle is a guy on the left trying to be the guy on the right. That's for sure. You can't be the guy on the right; it's impossible to be the guy on the right. The only thing you can be is the guy on the left. And some people just don't know they're the guy on the left; some people are aware.
Precisely correct. Precisely correct. Yes. So there's some people who are naturally gifted with that. Now, they've got some challenges too, that maybe they're going to get hit by things that they didn't quite see, you know, rolling the dice and having these sorts of stories where like the miraculous recovery because of this guy's, is like, uh, like inability to realize how ridiculous his goals are because he's not trying to be the guy on the right and ending up being the guy in the middle. He's like, "I'm going to beat this thing." Yeah. Uh, but yeah, you can't be the guy on the right; you can only be the guy on the left. So what you're trying to cultivate—it's like cultivated stupidity is the best you can hope for if you don't—if you're not gifted with it—if you're not gifted with, like, ah, you got the natural stupidity; congratulations. Like if you didn't have that, it's like you just need to be okay, "I'm going to default to being the simple thing; not trying to be the over-complex thing, which ends up being the simple thing anyway." But what you end up doing is just being stuck in the middle. You don't want to be the loud dumb guy; just be dumb and quiet, basically. Like the—nothing worse than like the ignorant—the most ignorant people are always like yelling about it, and you're just like, "Man, you just don't—you don't want to have to be like that."
Do you ever think—because another bell curve thing—somebody, I forgot who, brought this to my attention—was the idea that, you know, there's a—the average IQ is like a 100, right? And then you think of like people with developmental issues who are, you know, let's say technically under 70, right? It's like, yeah. And you kind of go, "Oh yeah, average is it." But then you go like, "Do you realize how many people are 90, 80, 75?" Like it's not a couple; it's millions and millions of—for that to be the average—that like you're surrounded by a lot of noise from people that are barely putting sentences together, you know? And you can—if you stop and have enough conversations—you'll figure it out. Like there's a lot of nonsense that you should ignore, and they have a voice too. And the best thing you can do is tune them out. Like seriously, there's like—yeah, I mean you might not be on the far other side of that equation where you're—you're not 140 or something—but if you're even just lucky enough to be blessed with the average or slightly around there, there's a lot of people you should not be listening to.
Does a really interesting stat that guys in high school who have got IQs of 70 are more likely to not be virgins than guys in high school have got IQs of 130. Well, like, stupid people only know how to [ __ ] That is kind of a thing, right? I mean, I've been to those countries, and they're underdeveloped, and that's what their whole currency is. There's like, "I [ __ ]" So it's not crazy to me to—they—yeah, they have their own showering system; they're—there's a lot of sand. But dumb people—if you ask a lot of chicks like, "Who is the best [ __ ] of your life?"—they're going to be like, "It was a dumb guy. That guy was a machine; didn't overcomplicate it. He—yeah, he just got in there and knew what to do." And like that's his—if you're dumb, I mean that might be like the thing you're best at, you know, cuz it feels good. Good. It's like it's this dumb equation; you're like, "Touch this; it feels good." They—that makes sense to them. I feel like they're not—they're not introspective; they're not going to have any—well, they don't get in their own head about it, right? They're not the—they're not the urologist reading his sheets; no, just in the moment. They're just in the moment, and they just go—the guy on the left is the best [ __ ] in the world. Who knew? He definitely is. It's definitely not the guy on the far right. No, no. Well, yeah, I—I don't know—the uh, the idea of trying to be a little bit more simplistic. Another perfect example of this—um, in *Atomic Habits* by James Clear, he talks—I think it's like the head of the Chinese weightlifting team—and they're super advanced; they're getting these kids from like five years old, right? It's a religion, weightlifting in China. Uh, and he asked what is the difference between the guys who are world champions and the rest of the elite, and he said the guys that are world champions are prepared to come in and do the boring things without complaining and realizing that it's not supposed to be—there—it's like, "Oh, okay." So if you have this cultivated stupidity where you can say, "Look, this is going to suck, and I shouldn't rail against the fact that it sucks…"
Um, Matt Fraser, who won the CrossFit Games five, six times in a row, uh, he did an engineering degree, and there's a story in *Chasing Excellence* by Ben Bergeron where he says—I—he would rote-memorize his entire engineering textbook, page for page. And if he got one word wrong, he'd go back to the start and do it again. So this guy, basically, very, very smart, very, very driven, but then he had to have this cultivated stupidity thing. If you're going to go and do monotonous structural work on a rowing machine or a ski erg or an air runner or whatever, you need to go and go, "This is going to be 90 minutes at 140 BPM; it's the zone two; boring. It's the most boring thing; it's not even going to give me the satisfaction of feeling like I've worked…" Yeah, yeah. Like I've got to just—but I know—I know that it's going to help my steady-state kind of, uh, you know, conditioning improve. Go slow to go fast. And so like it's kind of back to the thing though that like those elite athletes are either so smart that they know to be the guy on the left, or they are the guy on the left—left—who just goes, "Show up and do it." This feels good. The [ __ ] midwit meme is—is undefeated. But I mean that's why I have a—I—I find it interesting when sports stars get criticized for boring or basic post-match interviews.
I do too. It—it's—what did you expect? Yeah. And also, we didn't—he didn't sign up to be a great interview, you know, he or she—like they—that—that's not part of—you're making—you're putting that on them—that they have to be fantastic and charismatic because you're using your own barometer for what you consider to be successful as a non-elite athlete. Yeah, this person is just [ __ ] hitting forehands and backhands; that's what they're supposed to be good at. Lift weights, hit ball; that's it. And like they—they did it well. So like whatever comes after that is like, you know, you're projecting onto them. "Oh, I can't believe that they said this, or they had an attitude, why? Or that they didn't give like an eloquent answer." Like this is supposed—supposed to be a philosopher; it's like it's a [ __ ] Neanderthal half the time. For every—for every Tom Brady or Aaron Rodgers, there's like 200 guys on the left. Like someone that I've thought really deeply about this; I understand exactly what it means to me, etc., etc. Tell you one sport that actually feels like that's not the case where everybody is the guy on the right: Formula One. I don't see many people—many of the drivers in Formula 1—Dean, is anybody in Formula One—Dean, is here? Anyone in Formula 1—the guy on the left? Is there any like Neanderthal super simple like, "Drive car fast; go sideways" people? Danny Ricardo, maybe, but he's more like the party guy on the left. He's like the guy on the left put in a party hat. Uh, but you know what I mean? You like—you like Danny is, though. He's a pretty nuanced thinker. Like he has this—he has this persona of like—because he is like fun—that—but then you sit with him and you talk and you realize—yeah, these—these guys are all—oh [ __ ] you went to that—that's where you met Zach at that party, right? When you—at some F1 party—was that not something to do with Danny Ricardo last—was it last year or the year before? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'd met Danny uh, at—in Australia at his place. I went to—and then when he had his party—that's right, Zach was at that thing. Here, yeah. And everyone accused him of being Pedro Pascal from Wish. That's right, on Instagram. I mean, he looks a lot like [ __ ] Pedro P—he still does. It's not a bad thing, man. He's got a good thing going on. Um, I thought the new hair was for a new part. I was like, "What are you—what are you in?" Yep. Um, no, but you're right; those guys are—they're pretty bright; they're pretty bright guys. Um, maybe there's some correlation between high-performance driving and—you can't be a boxer—rocks to—I just—there's certain things that are so technical. Yeah. Uh, I would imagine, for instance, golf. I don't know golf, but I would imagine that it's probably pretty difficult to be a golfer and also be the guy on the left because a high-level one—yeah, yeah. Because—and most of the—well, I guess there's other factors—most of the time when you see these—most PGA people had a certain upbringing; they're usually well-educated, you know. That sport is usually associated with a certain socioeconomic level. I mean, obviously there's people who have started elsewhere, but for the most part you find it in well-to-do, you know, environments and people who have a certain level of education. But you're right; there's—there's not a lot of—I don't know—like back-n-[ __ ] I've thought this—I've thought this through carefully. Yeah, yeah. Well, that's the difference. If you were to go—I'm going to—again, I'm going to NASCAR at Kota in a couple of weeks' time, so please don't take this the wrong way—I don't imagine that the NASCAR drivers have quite the same mentality that the Formula 1 drivers do. I imagine you could get some more guys on the left in NASCAR, despite the fact that it's probably a very similar sort of sport. Yes, that's 100% true; for sure. Yeah, I mean, there's—yeah, the Formula One guys, for the most part, are more sophisticated. Yeah. But also, yeah, I mean there's definitely some really bright people who've done the NASCAR, and then there's some people who would just go like [ __ ] foot down to foot down; just hold on, baby. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's definitely true. And then like I think you find more guys on the left if you're talking about violent sports too, right? So like for—I mean, no one's going to Nate Diaz for like his sort of deep philosophical insights about stuff, but holy [ __ ] yeah, he's gonna annihilate you. And there's that—you know, I've heard these stories about his—and his brother's—un—like they do triathlons and sort of this endurance racing thing—their ability to put the head down—I don't—that's one that I—you know, you always—you're drawn to do things that you naturally have some skill at, right? Or it feels good to do. And then we—you naturally—you reject things where you're like, "I—this doesn't—I don't—I'm not good at this, and I don't like this." Like with sport, right? Like you just always are like doing the things you have some skill at; you're like, "I don't like this other thing." These [ __ ] ultramarathon people—like part of it, I realize, is that like it's just not in me, and I don't even understand this mental aspect. I've talked to a few; I'm like, "I—I don't understand how you're doing this 150-mile horrible idea. Like how—but like that just speaks to like—it's again, I feel like you want to be the guy on the left for that; you don't want to have as much awareness. There's certain sports where it's—it's a real competitive advantage. There's this kid called Ned Brockmann out of Australia. So I—when I did my tour over there, I had him on the show. He ran a thousand kilometers or a thousand miles around a track, uh, and it took him just over a week, and he—like his shins were just torn apart, and he's got shaved on top—like the classic Aussie—like real Aussie mullet—not one—not one of these trendy wanky Aussie things, you know, where there's like a bit of hair up top to make it balanced. It's like—like the—the Devon—the Devon, basically. And he—he did that; he ran across Australia; he tried to break the record for running across Australia. And you speak to him in particular—I—he—like I was trying to find the Goggins ancestral trauma void, yeah, inside of him. I'm like, "Oh, you're just—you're just doing this because you like the thrill of it; like you're just doing this because—run, feel good."
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