Transcript
This isn't your average business podcast, and he's not your average host. This is The James Altucher Show. Today on The James Altucher Show. Think like a Nobel Prize winner. Brian Keating, who you've probably listened to before in this podcast, he's interviewed a dozen or so Nobel Prize winners, and he wrote a book about what he learned from them. How can we start thinking the way Nobel Prize winners think? And I actually first off, a lot of them have imposter syndrome. I didn't know that. But now I have imposter syndrome because I wrote the foreword to the book. Oh, as always, a great conversation with Brian where I learned so much and heard so many interesting stories, particularly about what wasn't included in some of these interviews. So here it is. Brian, think like a Nobel Prize winner. I really first off, I've read it twice because I read it when I wrote the forward. Thank you very much for asking me to write the forward. Talk about imposter syndrome, which is something many of these Nobel Prize winners seem to experience. I definitely had impostor syndrome writing a foreword for a book called Think Like a Nobel Prize winner. And I yeah. As I say, you know, just because you have impostor syndrome doesn't necessarily mean you're not a total fraud. So Right. It could be it could be you have imposter syndrome because you really know you're an imposter. So That's right. Yeah. It could be totally accurate. But what was so surprising to me, you know, thinking about it was, say, I've looked up you know, I've had my issues with the Nobel Prize as you know, but never with the winners. You know, it's not like the winners literally cannot choose themselves as we spoke about when you were on my podcast over a year ago. They can't choose themselves. Like, that was the one instruction that I got when nominating Nobel Prize winners in 2015 was I could not nominate myself. And that was basically the only thing that they adhere to from Alfred Nobel's will, so they couldn't choose yourself. So they got there. Someone else must have chosen them. And I've never had problems with the people that won it, but the process, I think, is very corrupt. You've had my friend, Unni Turotinyan, who wrote, betraying the Nobel. Yeah. She she focused on the Nobel Peace Prize, which is really enlightening the way some of those people were selected. But, you know, I think what with physics, you've so think think like a Nobel Prize winner. I described it in the intro, which I'll say after this podcast. But, you focus on I think I I always think of physics and the Peace Prize, maybe the writing prize as kind of the the most known Nobel Prize, but I always think of physics as the smartest Nobel Prize. This is the one that rewards intelligence. These are people who are not just producing something good, like the Nobel Peace Prize or the Nobel Prize in literature. They're discovering something completely new. And you interviewed, you know, all of these Nobel Prize winners in physics who they won the Nobel Prize ranging over the decades. So you're right about how what what do they have in common, your takeaways, what are what could the readers' or listeners' takeaways be? And one there's several themes through it, but the first is you talk a lot about imposter syndrome in this book. And you and and but, also, there was other things I picked up too. Some had no self confidence. Some had a lot of self confidence, and some criticizing others said they were too they weren't self critical enough. So what's the story? Is there a real common thread? Do they all have impostor syndrome, but also a lot of confidence? What's the story? Yeah. According to themselves, you know, 7 out of the 9 that I interviewed and since then, I've interviewed another Nobel Prize winner that'll be in volume 2. So get your typing hands ready for Well, I haven't won it yet. Yeah. So, it's interesting that you mentioned that about, about the literature prize. The, there was a Japanese Nobel Prize, literature prize winner in 1995 who, was recently saying that, you know, when he won the Nobel Prize, he said to his mother, see, mom. I said, I would win the Nobel Prize as a kid, and I did it. I just won the Nobel Prize in literature, and this is in 1995. And she said, yeah. But you promised me it would be in physics. So even in the even these, like, the categories that you exalt so much, there is this kind of yeah. Even the he must have felt like an imposter because it's not, you know, quote, unquote, you know. And what would he what would an economics prize remember that prize was changed the name was changed from the Nobel Prize in Economics by dint of a lawsuit and legal wranglings between Alfred Nobel's, you know, next of kin. He had no, direct heir, no children of his own, but his brothers had children. And, they made them change it to the very winsome and and beautiful name, the Swedish Central Bank prize in honor of the memory of Alfred Nobel. So that's that's the actual economics prize. Well, so can you say if you win that prize now, can you say you won the Nobel Prize? Well, look at, you know, Paul Krugman's bio in Twitter, and you'll you'll get your answer there. Yeah. They they all I'm sure he says he won the Nobel Prize. I'm not even I don't even have to look. Exactly. So, for for those reasons, yeah, there is this this recurring theme. It's not in all of them. But what's interesting, and they all think about it. Even the ones that don't claim not to have the the imposter syndrome all felt it. And that was really you know, when you start writing a book, you never know where it's gonna go on a good day, you know, but let alone, like, kind of in the middle, and then you're like, wow. This is, like, the 3rd or 4th person to mention the the imposter syndrome. And, really, for me, it hit home, as I mentioned, by your co laureate, who wrote the co forward with you, doctor Barry Barish, formerly of Caltech. In the book. Yeah. So he is, he's a phenomenal, individual, kinda like I call him my avuncular avatar because he's, he's really what I aspire to be in many ways. I I think even using the word avuncular starts to qualify you for the Nobel Prize, but but go ahead. Well, it's funny because this guy that I wanna introduce you to, eventually, my friend David Perrell, runs a very, very successful online writing course and this building a second brain project he's involved with. Anyway, he he has a video with this, other guy, Ali Abdaal, and they talk about, like, words that people know and use, words that people don't know but use, words that people use and don't know, and then words that people don't use and don't know. And he's like, you could describe our relationship as, you know, as, you know, funny or hilarious, but you would never call it risible. And I'm always like, I I wanna I wanna aim for that vibe. I wanna aim for the risible vibe that that nobody ever it means, like, laughable or hilarious, but usually in interrogatory sense. He he But, anyway yeah. So I'm using a buncular. You're you're you're putting him down if you say, oh, he's he's too riseable. He's Well, I'm having on a very controversial guest this week who's, you know, advocating along with his wife. This is Brett Weinstein for a change. I get the other half of the Weinstein, clan that's showing up on my podcast talking about their, you know, novel approaches to COVID, etcetera. That'll be out hopefully by the time people listen to this. Oh, yeah. That sounds interesting. I because he was he was arguing for ivermectin. I remember there was a a Facebook thread I was in that that, he was he people were, I think it was on Quillette, actually. People were very upset at him. And they were shutting down his YouTube channel or demonetizing it. And since he got fired from Evergreen State University for not participating in the whites leave campus movement a couple years ago. He and his wife were basically fired even though they had tenure. You know, his income stream was severely reduced to say the least, so he is not a professor anymore, and you know how lucrative that is. So, yeah, he has his so they when they threatened to demonetize his YouTube channel, it was pretty controversial. Anyway, getting back to the imposter syndrome. I mean, the reason that really spoke to me with Barry is that he said the imposter syndrome got worse after he won the Nobel Prize. In other words, like, we all have a basal threshold level of imposter syndrome if you're, like, if you're not a total, you know, kind of narcissist. And, what really revealed to me since he had it more, I said, it's kind of unusual, James, that the opposite of something is the same as that thing. In other words, like, if you're what's the opposite of jealousy? Like, if I'm jealous of your success you're in the top 0 I I checked. You're in the top 0.01% of all podcasts worldwide. And That's good to know. I'm I'm not jealous of you. I would like to be, you know, kind of within a factor of, you know, a a million of no. No. I'll just get there someday. But but, but, you know, I'm not jealous of you. What's the opposite of like, I'm happy for you. I I feel there is a there is a word. There's a mitfrode, which is Oh, yeah. As opposed to Shadenfreude, which is Freud is the opposite. Yeah. You're happy for someone's failure probably because you're jealous of them, so you're happy for their failure. And and in Mitt Freud is you're happy for someone's success, and, this was in Robert Greene's book, the the Influence or laws of law? Laws of, nature the laws of human nature. And, he he recommends people should practice mittfroid. But And I agree. And and, actually, this guy so so just to close sorry. To close the loop. The the opposite of the so impostor syndrome is based on insecurity, inadequacy, and, and fear of being discovered as a charlatan or not fitting in. Obviously, I've mastered and overcome those fears. But, but the opposite of that is arrogance. Right? It's like, which also stems from insecurity, inadequacy. So in other words, the root cause for both of these psychological phenomena, impostor syndrome on one hand, narcissistic arrogance on another hand, they stem from insecurity. So I found that very interesting, because you don't normally see that. Like you said, Mitt Freud and Schadenfreude, they're stemming from 2 different psychological compulsions. 1, you know, envy and and and and and wishing harm, essentially, and taking pleasure in someone's, this, favor, and then the other one is this totally opposite. And yet these two emotions, imposter syndrome and arrogance, they're they come from the same root emotion. Yeah. And it's it's so interesting because, first, I think all of these Nobel Prize winners who think that they're that who experience imposter syndrome, so they they're accepting the Nobel Prize, and they're probably thinking of the historical significance of this. You know, Einstein won and, you know, all these great minds won. And I think they're probably right, actually. Like, I I I think our reaction when when we hear someone has impostor syndrome is to think, oh, that's crazy. They just won the Nobel Prize. They're not impostors. They they they deserve I think they're actually right. Like, they they they, you know, they for for most of their lives, they revered, for instance, Einstein or Marie Curie or whoever. Mhmm. And and their their accomplishments probably seem to them insignificant to the theory of relativity and e equals m t squared. It's interesting. Do you know that Einstein thought almost every one of his thoughts about his own theories was either wrong or not proven in his lifetime or he thought was irrelevant and insignificant? In other words, there are only 2 things that were that saw confirmation during his lifetime, and he wasn't known for insecurity, by the way. He used to say once one of these theories was confirmed, the theory of general relativity via the famous eclipse of 1919, that you and I witnessed, back way back when, that, that he if if a reporter asked him, what if the results of the observation were not consistent with your theory of relativity? And he said, then I would have felt sorry for the good lord because my equations are correct. So he had no, imposter syndrome that we know about except that he was in awe of Isaac Newton, who, as I point out, when Barry told me, Barry Barish, winner of the 2017 Nobel Prize, who really inspired me to start asking questions about the imposter syndrome, he told me that he had the imposter syndrome when he saw Einstein's name in this logbook that he had to accept the Nobel Prize, you know, when he accepts it from the king of Sweden. You have to sign. I got my chunk of gold. I got my share of the $1,000,000 prize purse, etcetera. I got my portrait. And he said, I've had such imposter syndrome never before and and only since then it has gotten worse. And I said, Einstein felt the imposter syndrome about Isaac Newton calling him the greatest contributor, not only to science, but to Western thought. Not not in other words, he and it's true. By the way, Newton influenced Thomas Jefferson in the writing of the constitution as Jay knows, from his studies of the constitution. And then lastly, Isaac said to him Wait. How did how did how did Newton, influence Jefferson? I didn't know that. So he used Principia. The Principia were the principles of mathematical, and physical logic. So the laws of, you know, of of all of, what we call mechanics and and aspects of calculus, etcetera, etcetera. And those would were predicated on axioms that were, that were going back to the to the ancient Greeks, were sound they would say things like such and such is self evident. So they would say that 2 parallel lines, James, that pass through 2 different points, they never meet. That was claimed to be self evident because, of course, they don't, that that the angles interior to a triangle all sum up to a 180 degrees. That was considered to be self evident or it could be proven. By the way, those aren't true. They're only true in flat what's called flat space. But as you know from losing the Nobel Prize, the universe could be flat. It could be curved like a basketball. It could be curved like a Pringle chip. It could have all these different, geometries, and so it's not true that parallel lines never meet. They meet on the surface of a sphere. They don't meet on the surface of a piece of paper. So Newton used those same terminologies, including the notion of self evidentiary proof. And then, obviously, what is the first line of the Declaration of Independence? We hold these truths to be self evident. Yeah. That's interesting. I didn't know, and he knew Euclid, and he knew Newton. And he wasn't that much older than him, right, or younger than Newton. Right. And I guess then you're right. So declaration of independence sort of starts with a essentially, a set of axioms as he makes the proof that there's a better way to live than being indentured to England. But I don't really think Einstein had impostor syndrome. I don't think he got the Nobel Prize and walked around like, I think part of impostor syndrome is not only feeling like you got something or you're someplace where you don't deserve to be, but I think it's also a fear that everyone else feels the same way that you do. Isaac Newton also claimed the imposter syndrome, but it kinda dovetails in what you just said. But he felt that he was inadequate compared to Jesus Christ, who he said that he failed to live up to except in one respect, which is that he died a virgin. Isaac Newton died a virgin, and he claimed that was his greatest accomplishment because that was the most Christ like that he could be. So now he's also famous for this phrase I'm sure you've heard, you know, standing on the shoulders of giants. So he said, if I have seen farther than others, it is only because I stood on the shoulders of giants, which sounds really cool. Right? But, on the other hand, he was partially they think that he was partially, like, burning or roasting one of his enemies. He was a very vindictive person, apparently. He spent a lot of time thinking about how to torture counterfeiters and and do all sorts of alchemy. He had he had a vicious battle with, Liebnitz as who as who invented, calculus. Calculus. That's right. And, but so and I think Liebnitz was short, and so he was making, like, a play at his expense that, like, I looked over the shoulders of little people. In other words, that's why I saw so far. On the other hand, you know, it could have been, like, false humility because, like, didn't the other people stand on shoulders of giants too? Anyway, the the the point I'm trying to make is that, you might be right because, like, we all just as he stood on the shoulders of giants, so everyone can stand on the shoulders of giants. Right? There's something unique about standing on the shoulders of so it's kind of deflecting a compliment in a sense that maybe wouldn't be so genuine. I mean, hopefully, he won't retaliate, Isaac Newton, against us. But, but the point being that, you know, I want to write the book because so many of my students and postdocs and just people I know, if you look around anywhere on the Internet, like, I would say right now, for some reason, the zeitgeist is full of examples of the imposter syndrome, where people don't feel like they deserve a certain number of followers or or creators or, like, they do things to get followers, and then they get them, and they don't feel they deserve it because the way they got it and blah blah blah. And, again, most of those people who who do feel that way deserve to feel that way. I will say every time I have felt impostor syndrome and it's been often, I was an imposter. Like, I just It was justified. Yeah. And I think you you don't really know if you're an imposter or not until much later because think of Yeah. Think of, like, legacy. You don't really know what your legacy is until after you die, but you're dead. So Right. Like like, Einstein has this huge legacy, and a lot of the things he did has had ramifications over the decades. He lived to see a lot of the ramifications, but, you know, some people do, some people don't. Some of these people who won in the Nobel Prize in your book won for very esoteric theoretical things, and you and you have to question. Okay. Yes. What they did was clearly the cutting edge on understanding how the universe began, what the universe is made of, how the universe works. But But in terms of easy to understand things. So the the ones that are hard are topological states of matter that only exist in 2 dimensions instead of Some of those people, though, are involved in in that stuff. I didn't understand what what most of these people did. They have to question. They bring this up in your book in some cases. Yeah. You know, you don't you can't really think about the outcomes. You can't think about whether it's practical or how important this is. You have to do what you love. You have to do what you're curious about. You know, we could talk about the do what you love part. My sense is Exactly. They really loved doing what what they do. But Mhmm. Some of these things again, even one person, I forget which one, said you can't focus on whether it's practical or not. You just have to you have to do the work. Yeah. And Sheldon Glashow called it, you know, the importance of doing useless research, and he had this incredibly esoteric and by the way, it's not a science book as you know. Neither was my first book. These are the first book was a memoir, and the second book's more of a self it's actually in self help. The yeah. No. This is insanely readable, and it is self help. It actually you know, we were talking earlier about Robert Greene's books. It it reminds me of those a little bit and that those are so filled with stories of historical people and and the lessons you can learn from them. But these are people you spoke to who are alive, who are among the smartest people on the planet as denoted by, you know, winning the Nobel Prize in Physics. And when they talk, they're not talk they're not giving a physics lesson. I would say a central theme of the book is curiosity, and this is, like, almost like a guide into what the most curious people in the world are like and how you can sort of cultivate that kind of curiosity in yourself because that does they all attribute their success to curiosity. But the Yeah. The imposter syndrome made me think, though, and we'll talk about curiosity in a second and the methods they use and you use to to cultivate it. But how many of them do you think are depressed or anxious? And the reason I ask is because when you have a goal like, you know, figuring out how the universe was born, that's on the one hand, that's a an an as you put it, even possibly an arrogant kind of goal, like, to think that you could even come close to such a an answer to such a question. And and and yet if you know, there's so much competition in science and academia for the Nobel Prize, for, you know, for money and and monetary prizes and funding and so on. There must be an incredible amount of anxiety around that they have around the research they do, and and they don't know if they're gonna succeed or fail. They have no idea. You could do a project for 20 years. Like you said with Einstein, it what if he what if what if 13 years after he published this theory of relativity, something disproved it? That's anxiety producing. Yeah. And especially one of the laureates, Frank Wilczek, is a extremely prolific author and Wall Street Journal, contributor. He had to wait 30 years between the theory that everybody told him would result in the Nobel Prize someday. He had to wait his turn because it needed to be confirmed and replicated, etcetera, etcetera. But this took an a staggering amount of time to get replicated or to get, the the preceding awards to be won. And it made me think of these guys that wanna live forever, you know, with life extension prominent in the news now and my doctor's, you know, phone call notwithstanding just a couple minutes ago. You know, people wanna live to a 150 and, you know, and whatever. So you and I can live a 100 more years hopefully. But, but then there's first of all, there are questions about, you know, there'll be disparities in wealth because only the rich people, like plasma TVs when they came out, could be afforded by rich people only. And so what about us common people, etcetera, etcetera? And then there would be, you know, kind of concerns about, well, if natural causes of death come off the table, then only you have to worry about, like, being killed in an accident and or being killed by a fellow human being, which is solved by COVID because we all just stay indoors. Jay hasn't left his house in a year and a half. I know. I saw his fingernails. I don't know how he texts me all the time with those fingernails and the tissue boxes on his feet. But thinking about that for a guy who had to wait 30 years to guarantee imagine if you knew you'd win the Nobel Prize. Like, in other words, he knew he would win the Nobel Prize. It was a it was a foregone conclusion just like with the Higgs boson. It's there's no way the universe could have been structured otherwise. Waiting 40, 50, 60 year you know, whatever. How do you know you're gonna live that long? Imagine the anxiety that would produce. So that was one interesting thing. By the way, I should say that, you know, for James Altucher show listeners, this week, I wanted I don't want I didn't write this book. First of all, you inspired me or goaded me, however you wanna say to write. Acknowledgments, but I think you you had the book in you, and I I appreciate you mentioning me in the acknowledgments. You you this is a great book, and and and, you know, it was it was a really good job. But but just like you wrote Think Like a Billionaire, which obviously inspired the title, and and guided me a lot of the, you know, kind of, early connective tissue of the book, and kind of this brand that I'm cultivating, whatever, it's not like you read think like a billionaire, you'll become a billionaire. But you think like a billionaire and anybody can think like a billionaire. It costs nothing to think like a billionaire. It costs nothing to think like a Nobel Prize winner and so much so that I wanted to reduce the price as much as possible. So the ebook is only 99¢ this this week, you know, as the for launch week, we made the the ebook. I don't care about making money. I want this message to go out. As you say, curiosity, inspiration, collaboration, overcoming anxiety, depression, all these things are on display, and the one thing this book isn't is a physics book. It's not you know, there there is a, you know, a couple chapters of equations, unremitting equations, and homework assignment. But besides those, but you got a 100% on the very impressive think that's true, but it's it's not true of just the salary. Right? There's no equate. I don't even think I have e equals mc squared in here, which is Derick UHr for most, authors in science. But, anyway, I wanted as many people, especially young people, because these people have tremendous knowledge as the Nobel Prize signifies, but do they have wisdom? I think wisdom is far more interesting than knowledge because Wikipedia has a lot more knowledge than any of these people or the whole of human species could ever have, but it has 0, absolutely zero wisdom. And, actually, I don't think that that's as valuable. Like, nowadays, we're in a we're in a current like, the currency of the new world is wisdom. It's not knowledge anymore. Because everyone is has kind of reached parity with with knowledge. You can get as much knowledge as as Elon Musk in a in a nanosecond, but can you get as much wisdom as, you know, these wise individuals can? And it's it wasn't clear to me in the beginning that people who won the Nobel Prize would have any wisdom. In fact, one of them said, you know, if you think these guys are smart, just watch them on the on the day of the ceremony trying to get their eggs at breakfast. Like, you'll quickly be disabused that these are some, like, supernatural people. But in this case, I happen to find these 9 special individuals that have a tremendous amount of wisdom. But it was my job to extricate that from their because they don't think in those terms. They're much more technically savvy than I am. And but I think in terms of the soft skills that actually made them partially so successful. First off, I agree with you that knowledge and and information is just a commodity right now. Like, it's it's everywhere. You don't have to spend years learning it in school. The real as you you you put it as wisdom, I'm gonna change the name a little bit and call it discovery. So having an ability to discover what nobody else knows seems to be real wisdom because breaking discovery down, you have to have an ability to go against the crowd because it's completely new, and and people will often contest you for even trying to find something new. Why don't you respect the established view of things? You have to have, the the skill set to to, you know, you have to have the creativity to even wonder where there might be a new thing that exists. You have you have to know what you don't know and know where it is to find. And then you have to go and find it and and prove it. Like, I think I and I think all of these people, almost by definition, they've discovered something completely new, and it's a big risk. They could have been wrong. Maybe Right. Maybe they could have spent their whole lives thinking there was something new over here in this dusty little corner of the universe, and turns out there was nothing. And That's right. Some people prob that probably has there's probably a whole list of people who that happened to, but these people, I don't say they're lucky. Clearly, they've used all their skills to A lot of them credit luck. A lot of them credit luck with their success. Well, let me ask let me ask you this. So we've talked about Dunning Kruger bias before. It's the idea that when you start doing an activity, you have this cognitive bias where you think you're great at it. So Yeah. I'm the I'm the world's leading expert in the Dunning Kruger. Yes. Yeah. So it's like the the the classic example is in a survey, 9 out of 10 people think they're an above average driver, but really only 4 out of 10 could be. And Right. I always say I'm the one out of 10 that knows he's a below average driver. That's why I don't even have a license. But, I think Dunning Kruger bias is a real powerful cognitive bias in a positive way because it keeps you what everyone else is thinking, what's this guy trying to prove this theory? He's an idiot. He can't do that. Yeah. And but that guy thinks he's smart enough to do it. So because of Dunning Kruger bias. And and it keeps you persevering until you do it. Like, I I've been writing, you know, books for or or other things for for 30 years. I've been writing every single day. And for the 1st 10 years, I always thought from the beginning, I was great. But I now realize looking back at even stuff from a year ago, it sucked. Probably, I'll think that a year a year from now about separate apps. Let's hope so. Yeah. Let's hope so. So so I think I think imposter syndrome and and anxiety, they're always used in a negative context, but I think these are very positive forces that that keep you that could keep you going and keep you motivated. You know? But that's why I was curious, though. There is a negative side to it. Like, how many of these people have suffered rep from depression? Yeah. No. I think I think there's a lot, and I think part of it is yeah. It's it's a letdown. Right? When you reach the promised land, you know, say say what you want about, you know, religion or whatever, but, you know, Moses doesn't get into the promised land. It's a it's a very powerful lesson, which is that, you know, we all will have things, like you said, like, things that were confirmed. Like, Einstein's, you know, one of his greatest accomplishments was the inclusivity of this term called the cosmological constant, which, you know, wasn't discovered until 1998. It'd be dead 40 5 year you know, 40 years or something by that point. And, you know, and and so these that nobody would have predicted that that revolutionized our understanding of what's gonna happen in the far future of our universe, etcetera. And nobody could have predicted that, besides him perhaps, and he actually thought it was a blunder, so he had some humility about it. But later, it turned out his calling it a blunder was a blunder. So only Einstein, you know, we say, can make these mistakes. But on the other hand, you know, what if he had lived, you know, long enough to to witness that? I mean, would he have, like, overcome this this sort of, you know, whatever he again, I don't I agree with you. I don't think he was impede in any way by a lack of of confidence. So not everybody suffers from it. Like I said, 2 out of the 9 claim that they don't in this book, and and I think, those are instructive too. On the other hand, you ask a very good question. Now, obviously, I'm not a psychologist. I will prescribe medicine. No. No. I won't prescribe medicine. But, I wish you could. I need my I need there's a lot of medications I would get if I had free rein. Free. Yes. Exactly. Right. If you knew it would not affect your health care. Corrupt doctor, but you're just a doctor of physics. Contact him at his website. So I I I think, you know, that TS Eliot said something that is apropos. It happens not to apply to these 9 people, but he said and he won the Nobel Prize in literature. He wrote, a Nobel Prize is a ticket to your funeral because no one ever does anything after he wins it. And, obviously, you know, there are people that do stuff afterwards, but many of these people win it in their nineties or 8 late eighties, the average age, which is part of the reason I wanted to do the interview now as soon as I got, you know, enough material and interviews and and content edited it, because I thought, you know, these guys are getting old and, and the women won't talk to me. I tried to get the 2 living Nobel Prize winning women, and they both rejected me. So I took me back to high school, which is good. No. I I I'm not gonna let it. I I hope they are old. Why did they reject you, you think? I mean, first off, people should know. In order to get podcast guests, you have to ask 10 people for every one guest you get. So it's it's not out of the ordinary that for Think Like A Billionaire, it took a long time. I refused to write the book without a female voice. It took me a long finally, Sara Blakely, and and I included Tyra Banks in there because her franchise is a $1,000,000,000 franchise. But Yeah. Everyone No. I wanted to, and I I I considered holding it up until I could get, you know, somebody to, a a a female voice because I think it is it is incredibly instructive. And, by the way, about a third to a half of my graduate students are women, and I'm proud of that. And and I've had, you know, at least that many number, you know, of podcast guests be women. And it just, you know, it just couldn't there are only 2 of them that are still alive. One has a policy that she doesn't do interviews because, you know, it's like, you know, she just wants to be fair and not give, you know, podcast to Brian Keating, but not to Joe, you know, James Altucher or whatever. So she doesn't wanna have to think about, like, who she said yes to and who she said no to. And the other one is just, like, perceived because she won it only in 2020 less than a year ago now. Yeah. It's So she's just, like, totally overwhelmed and swamped, and so she just can't do it. The, the CRISPR the CRISPR woman, that would do that. Well, that was chemistry. That was do that. Yeah. She won it, and I'm trying to get in touch with her, you know, via back channels. And and, you know, like, I am serious. I am gonna put out a second edition, you know, because I Of course. I think, eventually This is the, a topic that only only grows. But but I I I do wanna ask you, like, well, now now now I'm forgetting what I wanted to ask, actually. Well, about the depression, the anxiety, the the letdown that you must feel, and and because of that, I think it's true. If you'd you can use it one of 2 ways as the Bible says. I put before you a double edged sword, blessing and curse. So it's a blessing on one hand. It's a curse on the other hand because they don't have any free time. The end of their productivity sometimes awaits, but these guys in particular have been exceptionally adroit at getting an in involved and being elder statesmen, which has a negative effect, by the way. Well well okay. Let let me ask you a couple of things on this because this this is a lot to unpack. First off, do you think it's really true that physicists, mathematicians, or or maybe anybody do their best work in their twenties? As as t s l t s l e is kind of suggesting that your best work is when you're young. And then when you win the Nobel Prize, that not only is it the highest honor so you don't feel motivated to do more work, but you're also older is what he's referring to. I don't think so. I I think it it can in mathematics. So my my father was a mathematician, as you know, my late father. And, and it can in theoretical physics, which is as closely related to mathematics as almost anything, but it's definitely not true in experimental physics, which is, you know, why partially I thank god that I am an experimental physicist. Because we get better with age, like a fine wine. We get better because we add literal new tools to our toolkit. There's new technology being invented. Probably have a better sense of risk too. So experiments are riskier than theorem proving because you have to actually build stuff skip the line rule unless you follow the skip the line rule and do as many cheap experiments as you can. It's true. Well, that's how do. That's how you but that's using an experimental approach to Right. To determine what your big experiment should be. You know what a cheap experiment is called? A theory. You know? It's like a string theory costs nothing to write a paper, but but it could cost a $1,000,000,000,000 to try to build an accelerator to smash atoms together to test if little strings pop out. Right? So there's a high risk. You're absolutely right. And so for that reason, you have to get the low hanging fruit has to be picked, you know, way well beforehand. So for those reasons, you accrue just like, would you rather go to the, you know, to the neurosurgeon, you know, resident on his first day or her first day out of out of med school or, you know, the wise and dulled. So, you know, we're more like surgeons in that sense. So you built up, like, a huge repertoire of of experiences, encounters, and and a and a statistical distribution that's fascinating that can't be replicated when you're 20 years old. It just cannot be. So I think they're right about the very young, theorists. So so why why is that though about the very young? The is the mind set up so that they could calculate equations faster? Like, what what is going on in the young mind that may or or you just have more energy and and and this kind of work requires a lot of energy? It's not identical, but it has certain DNA in common with chess. Does it not? I mean, there are chess masters that are older, but but for a long time, it was a young person's game. And and I know you have on, the chess master, What do you call her? The grand master. Yeah. She she was just not And by the way, she she was the youngest grand master ever when she became a grand master. She'd be probably the best runner. But Now it's very theoretical. But I don't believe it though that young people I think young people have a lot of time to pursue their interests and That's the thing. When they don't have a family. But I wonder if I'm just rationalizing, and it re and the young brain really can memorize more, calculate more. We know with dementia, the older brain deteriorates. But, like Neuroplasticity But, like, for instance, there's nobody in the top 100 in chess who's over the age of 40, or maybe there's one person. But I wonder about this. I think that you need to do anything well. You could do it. I don't think there's any exclusion principle that prevents that from happening at an older age. Certainly not an experiment. Although you could argue, you know, it's sort of a clock that starts elapsing. So my father used to describe it as as a clock that turns on, you only have about 10 years. So you could start that 10 year period at 30, at 40, at 50, potentially in chess or in theoretical physics or in mathematics. But no matter what, it it's just very hard to concentrate on one productive line of you know, you can't pursue 80 different things. You can't be, you know, worrying about, extraneous things just like writing. Like, I heard something said by one of your guests, and he doesn't have any kids. He said, like, every kid you have is a book you don't write. And I'm like, that's horrible. Like, you know, James could have written 5 more books, you know, whatever. But, but the point being, how do you, that's that you're a good father. I don't know if I qualify right. Yeah. Yeah. For this quote. No. Your your kids are are incredibly, exceptionally accomplished and and owes much to Robin. But but the point being, if you have a period of time to think without ceasing, Isaac Newton, again, he was not a father because he died a virgin. Right? So he he that we know about. I mean, yeah, 23 andMe wasn't working back then. Right. But he, you know, he credited, they asked him, how did you do what he did? He's like, because I thought about them without ceasing. Richard Feynman did a lot of his great work after his first beloved wife died and before he really became more interested in parenting. Albert Einstein was a terrible father. I mean, he he he had one son who was committed to a sanatorium, never saw him after, you know, he was, like, 12 years old, despite writing letters to him, whatever. He just didn't make time. It's not like he couldn't get on a plane and go to Europe and see his kid, but so he never saw him. So I think, yeah, I would like to think that it's not because only because you have things like kids and and family. Although, you see with young women, you know, they are if they do wanna have families, it is incredibly challenging, a burden that we men don't have to deal with. Right? You know, it's not like a woman tax. In academia, it's just it's hard to, you know, simultaneously give birth and, and then also, you know, continue a laboratory or a theoretical program with graduate students and postdocs that you have to fund. You know, it's not just like, oh, you've got free money raining down on you. So I do think there are some aspects of it that's true, but is it correlative or causative? It could be a little of both. And and and I would say too, you know, as a situation changes, you have to continuously focus on what's good. So for instance, let's just say, hypothetically, that, okay, you you no longer have the brain that could calculate, you know, monster equations and prove them and this and that. Well, maybe start switching over to experimental physics because Right. You know, you could be still great at that or or or writing about physics. You're teaching or whatever. There's another thing too I wanna unpack on what you said earlier, and this is related to the depression and and anxiety and impostor syndrome and so on. It's not fun doing this work. Like, you could love it, and you could think this is the best thing ever, and this gives this could be the only thing you wanna do in life, but it's it's it's it's hard. And It gets. You know, watching I always say and I I probably say too much on this podcast. But for me, watching TV is fun and makes me happy, and eating popcorn while I'm watching TV, is even funner. And if I just wanted to be happy, I would do that all the time. But instead, I constantly set myself up for, like, these obnoxious challenges for myself, which are often things I wanna do, but I'm miserable 50% of the time. Yeah. I mean, writing is you know, what did Hemingway say? You know, it's very simple to be a writer. Just sit down in a chair and bleed out on the typewriter. Yeah. Or or stand up comedy. Volunteer to do. Like like, you know, trying to do stand up comedy for the past 6 or 7 years, it's sometimes it's great, and sometimes people are laughing at you and not with you. And Yeah. So Right. You know, everything So balancing that. Mhmm. Yeah. And so so how do they how how do they how does anybody justify like, they all these people, they're so smart. They could have gotten tenure easily, not pursue a Nobel Prize. Like, is something wrong with them that they then spent essentially an extra 20 years of energy going the extra lengths to to be one of the few people who would ever win this? And, James, by the way, we're saying this with, survivorship bias, at least in my case. So in other words, I've got it and I'm the chancellor's professor of physics here. You know, I've I've gotten all the 20 years ago, you know, like, it was much you know, think about what's happening now when people see, this this thing where these people in their day and age you know, some of these people got tenure at age, you know, 27, and, you know, I didn't get tenure until I was in my 30 early thirties. You know, these these you know, it was different, and it's getting worse. So I've had students quit recently and say, basically, like, I don't wanna be like you, dad. You know? Like, I don't I don't want I've seen your life. I see how you, like, are in this constant struggle. You're, like, rarely in the laboratory with me working on stuff, and I feel guilty, Jay. It's like, you know, with your kids, I have to drive my kids to school. And I'm like, I try to rationalize that that's parenting, you know, because we try to talk about, like, spiritual or philosoph philosophical things or even physics or or even, like, driving or politics with my older kids, and increasingly, you know, with the younger ones. But but, you know, is it really the same as, like, you know, really quality time without my phone or not driving rather or whatever? No. It's probably not. But I do think about that, the guilt that I feel with my graduate students and postdocs because, like, the thing that got you into it, it's like sex. You know, sec the outcome of sex, James, produces children, which then prevents you from having sex ever again. Right? So unless you're you're self sabotaging. Unless you're, you know, Genghis Alticher over there. But, but the but the point that I'm trying to make is, you know, the act of becoming a successful professor now means that you no longer have time to be a successful physicist, and and rarely do I get into the laboratory. You know, I do get satisfaction from meeting with my students who are then in the laboratory, but it's not the tinkering. It's not the playful attitude, which I think, you know, as as Ray Weiss who won the Nobel Prize alongside Gary Barry Barish in 2017 for LIGO, detecting 2 black holes colliding a 1000000000 light years away, you know, with a vibration in their system at less than a billionth the diameter of a proton. I mean, this is a successful guy. He says, if it's not fun, get out of it. And you mentioned in in the book a couple of times, and and I think maybe it's just a matter of definitions, but you mentioned that passion is not important. And I kinda think passion is a little important, but there might be a cause versus correlation here. In that Mhmm. As you start succeeding at something that you're good at, you're gonna feel more passion for it. And as opposed you know, maybe there was an initial spark that got you going. But, you know, to sit down and do something hard requires energy. And if you don't like it, then part of the like, if you really don't have passion for it, part of the energy required to do something amazing is gonna be spent, convincing yourself to just sit down and do this. So you need some passion. Yeah. I have a mathematical explanation for that. So I think that passion in the beginning is like, is like the learning curve, the Dunning Kruger curve, you know, where it's very steep in the beginning. It's very satisfying. You get a lot of, you know, kind of, like, oh, I now know that, you know, you know, George Washington, you know, had these different, know, failings as a human being. You know? And, like, you learn all these things, but you don't learn a lot of nuance in the beginning. And, and then so that curve is very steep, and it's kinda it's an exponentially rising curve that then saturates and gets flat or maybe peaks. And then and then there's another curve called the forgetting curve, which is also exponential. So, like, when you learn something, if you don't review it, that decay your knowledge will decay over time. There's just other things are going into your brain, and and you're pushing out other things. As Homer Simpson said, every time I learn something, it pushes something else out of my brain. And, so you've got this exponential decay and this exponential growth. And what do you get when you multiply those 2 curves together? You get kinda like a bell shaped curve where it rises steeply in the very beginning, kind of plateaus, and then declines. So passion can get you started on the left side of that curve, but I think curiosity keeps you going, and it gets you back to, like, every now and then, the way to to reestablish the forgetting curve and reset it back to the baseline when you knew something is to be cure like, why was this important? Why is this equation so fast? Why is this experiment? And that curiosity is not passion. It's actual curiosity for the the thing that sets you out seeking in the very beginning. This, I think, is the the the fundamental thread. There's a lot of great threads running through this book, but everything to to me boils down to how these individuals cultivated such extreme curiosity. They're able to discover new things about the entire universe, and it's amazing. And and so I wanna I wanna break down what are the there's there's curiosity, but but I don't believe there's such a thing as curiosity. These people all talk about it in different ways. So Mhmm. What would what are kind of the, what's the DNA or what's the, the nucleus of of curiosity? Because this is fundamental to this being a self help book. It's not only about persevering through a tough experiment. It's about, you know, how they each develop curiosity. Like, one Mhmm. One quote. I kept reading these different quotes and or your your different takeaways, and I kept thinking this sums up the book. But I always I said that about almost every single quote. So but but there's one thing that I really related to because it's true in almost every activity. Ask if there's a better way. And I forgot who said it. Maybe Mathers or Weiss. Mhmm. But he he he he pointed out, ask if there's a better way. Now that's interesting in for a couple of reasons. One is he doesn't say look for a better way. He said ask if there's a better way, and I don't know if there's a difference there. Do you think there's a difference there? Yeah. I I think that there is a difference between asking and and finding something. So all these projects start off as research. In other words, that they weren't known. The answer wasn't known ahead of time and that this could have been a wild goose chase. It could have been pointless. Some of these things are serendipitous. In other words Oh oh, and by by the way, I I wanna, I'm sorry to interrupt, Ryan, but I wanna explain. Like, ask if there's a better way. In just real practical life, like, let's say you wanna buy a car that is you know, saves on gas, and you find a Toyota Corolla, you know, asking if there's a better way means you do research on cars to see if there's a cheaper car out there that might be more effective at saving on fuel prices and and so on. So there's practical applications to to this question. And and, you know, so I just wanted to say that. Or in Yeah. Yeah. No. In in in chess, by the way, there's a saying, if you find a good move, find a better move. So Right. This applies to everything in life. It's such an important question. Aviation. Yeah. Aviation. So sometimes, you know, as I I talk about, you know, I fly a little, little tiny Cessnas around, and and I started off trying to become a flight instructor while I was interviewing one of these laureates, and he's the one that focuses on debunking Malcolm Gladwell's, you know, Anders Ericsson's 10000 hour rule. He says it's total BS. And and, anyway, we go through it. And I say, you know, one point first of all, one thing that really strikes me of that the difference between being a university professor and a flight instructor who, like, some 20 year old kid or 18 year old kid could theoretically, I think, be a a flight instructor, is that that's the only place in the government handbook of regulations for, you know, certified, people, you know, in the IRS handbook, in the, you know, Department of Energy handbook or what. They don't have, like, your students or your your clients will need love. You know? They'll need because they actually show Maslow's hierarchy of needs. I was never taught that as a professor, you know, Maslow's hierarchy of need. I I was never taught how to be a teacher, and I think it's it's instructive to learn. You know, one of the lessons that that you learn from a flight instructor, if they're any good, is that you have to learn from the mistakes of others because you're not gonna live long enough to make all of them yourself. And so I started to think, well, how can you apply that to physics? And and another lesson, you know, I think from aviation is or not just physics, but being a car salesman. Again, my avatar is not a physicist in this. It's like a car salesman in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It's it should be applicable to anybody. You know, sometimes the best, way home is is to turn around. In other words, so, like, just, like, you you're flying into a thunderstorm or near the mountains or whatever. Like, sometimes your best option is just to stop. You know? I'd rather be on the ground wishing I was in the sky than in the sky wishing I was in the ground. And so the important thing about that is not only is it a life saving way to think. It's hard for people to take a step backwards. It's hard in anything in life to say, okay. This is not working. I'm gonna start all over. This flight, I really wanted to get from Santa Barbara to Santa Monica, but I have to turn around. Yeah. Right. The sunken sunken cost fallacy. That's a style of thinking that needs to be cultivated because Yes. You're like, let's say you're starting a business. It's really hard to say, listen. It's not my business is not working out, or maybe I can change it to some other model. Like, you'll fight to to the death sometimes for your business idea. I've seen entrepreneurs do it much to their detriment. And so that in itself is a a DNA component. To be able to turn around is one important component of ask if there's a a better way. The better way might be to go home. Yeah. I mean, the one thread between this book and losing the Nobel Prize is confirmation bias, which is another fancy way of saying, you know, sunk cost. I don't know. Sunk cost is kinda fancy too. But the point being that you get so much invested in in a direction in aviation again. You know, there's a disease called get there it is, which kills, you know, many pilots because they're like, I'll be there, James, at your, you know, at at your party at, you know, 5 o'clock sharp on Sunday afternoon, and I'll get there, and you please meet me. Yeah. Like, you start to invest, like, I'm gonna let James down. I'm gonna look like a fool. I'm gonna be embarrassed. I'm not a good pilot. And you got the imposter syndrome, but then it can lead to a real world consequence, not just like, oh, you know, I have to now, you know, kinda maybe talk to somebody about my imposter syndrome. It could be like you get killed. Like, you force the flight. You don't have enough fuel. You go into a thunderstorm. You hit a mountain. All these things are real world consequences. So I started to think, well, how can you map this into, you know, into physics, into science, but also into, yeah, being a car now you're a car salesman. So sometimes the best option for a customer might be to turn them away and say, well, this Camry that James really wants to buy, it's really not that what he needs because he's got 5 kids. You know? No. No. No. We should instead, you know, go for a Suburban. And then when his daughter like, I noticed in your interview with this guy from, you know, Allied Moving, you know, that you did last week, which I found really interesting. I was listening to it with my one of my kids in the car, and he thought it was really super interesting. And it's like like, originally, I was, why is he talking to some guy from Allied Moving? You know? Like, I used to move in high school to move people, you know, earn some money. I'd most of the guys I I, you know, was with, I I probably didn't have that much to, to really benefit except how to, like, bulk up and carry a refrigerator on my back by myself, which I can no longer do, thanks to being 50. But, anyway, but those guy like, he he said some things like, we can't compete with some smaller rival. So, like, he actually said, like, I would refer them to, like, Joe Brother you know, Altucher Brothers moving company rather than Allied because they'll be effectively more nimble. And guess what, James? That probably earns him a client or maybe 2 clients or 3 clients later on down the road just like the car salesman who doesn't force you into a a Camry but puts you in tell recommends a Suburban. Then your kids, when your daughters can drive, now you send them to him because they don't need a Suburban. Right? So sometimes the best way forward is is sort of backwards against your best supposed interest of, you know, that you've sunk so much of your of your resources into. That was the end of part 1 of Think Like a Nobel Prize winner. Also available today is part 2. So learn the techniques of Nobel Prize winners, so maybe you could win 1 also.
Comments