Visakan Veerasamy on what the good stuff is, getting stuff, done, etc.

I would say this one was hard to summarize, since we jumped around and covered a lot of ground, but I had a ton of fun finally talking to Visa from Twitter in realtime.

Transcript:

Divia (00:02)

Hey, I'm here today with Visa from Twitter. That's mostly, I know you're on other platforms too. You have essays, you're on YouTube, but that's definitely how I think of you. When I got back on Twitter in like 2019, I think of you as really the one that kind of created the Twitter scene that I then joined. I don't know. I don't know to what extent you see it that way, but like, you you really the guy that started with all the threading and like the...

Visa (00:10)

Mm-hmm. Yes.

Divia (00:30)

actually friendly norms and I don't know, maybe nothing ever starts, but like you popularized it in the corner of Twitter that I'm in anyway, so I'm super glad to be here with you today and get to actually talk.

Visa (00:43)

Yeah, it's nice. I still remember there were a couple of things that you responded to on my tweets that I remember thinking were uncommonly insightful. One of it was, I think it was I was asking my timeline to psychoanalyze me about why I like angry women, like my wife or my friends. And your answer, think, was one of the best ones. Something about them being able to express something that you feel like you can't express.

Divia (01:02)

Yeah, I remember.

Visa (01:11)

And that just struck me as so true. And all the other responses were so, I don't know, superficial. And yours was like, I think that it's correct. And I think it helped me shift my understanding a little bit. And so I'm grateful for that. And yeah, so.

Divia (01:24)

Yeah, thank you. It's definitely, mean, I don't know, maybe one reason I think of it is just because, you know, I'm female, I'm like five feet tall and you're, you you're a guy, you're tall, you're like browner than the other people around you. I think it's hard, I imagine, with the anger, right?

Visa (01:35)

Yeah. Mm-hmm. You become the threat. mean, it's like the beauty and the beast dynamic, Where, yeah, I am the danger when I walk down the street at night. so I don't fear for my personal safety around other people. But like, if there's something like, you know, if I'm in a random country and there's like a bar fight and like someone blames me, I'm not going to get the benefit of the doubt. And I think that's

Divia (01:51)

Yeah.

Visa (02:05)

Subconsciously, think that influenced my whole friendly game game thing, so that I have people around who know me and can vouch for me. think there's this bit from, I can't remember, it Chris Rock or Dave Chappelle. And they got into a traffic stop, and they were stressed out about it. But then the cop recognized them, and then they had a good interaction. And then they're like, yeah, being famous kind of, it sucks that that's, you know, it's.

Divia (02:11)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

huh.

Visa (02:34)

as a solution to that kind of problem that's not ideal. But it is a solution. yeah.

Divia (02:39)

Yeah, I mean, if you can swing it, right? And as you've said, also, I think it's different when you go around with a baby,

Visa (02:47)

so much. So much. It's like, man. And sometimes I remember, think I'm walking with my wife and my child. And then the world around me just feels so warm and open. And then let's say we're going to the park or something. And I'm like, I should go and get some water or something. And I'm like, OK, I'm going to go to the store. And I separate from them. And I cross the road. instantly, it's like, the warmth is gone. It's like people are like, you know.

Divia (03:13)

Yeah.

Visa (03:14)

And I get it, know, it delivers society, people have to make snap judgments and whatever, but like it's so striking. I think I might have been motivated to have kids sooner if I knew that, but I mean, and not knowing it intellectually as well is not, I don't know if that's helpful, but so my recommendation to a lot of young guys is try and borrow a baby, like you're like a nephew or a niece or something, like borrow a baby and like walk the streets with that and feel it for yourself. And I guess some people tell me that,

Divia (03:25)

Yeah, it's interesting.

Yeah.

Visa (03:41)

Having a dog is kind as opposed to having nothing.

Divia (03:44)

I think especially if you have like a little puppy, or at least this is my brother said, he goes around with his kid a lot, but he also, he said it was pretty similar when he had a puppy that people would just come up to him and like be really friendly.

Visa (03:47)

Yeah.

Yeah.

I can imagine that. Yeah, that makes sense. Maybe I might be likelier to get a puppy after my kids are grown or something like that. It is very addictive when people are so nice.

Divia (04:09)

Yeah, that makes sense. actually, know, I some other stuff, my most extreme story of this, because I don't really, I don't know, I didn't notice as dramatic a contrast. It's true that people are more likely to talk to me when I have my baby, but I feel like people are pretty warm regardless. But I would, so one time, this is when I just had one kid and my midwife had organized like a, I don't know, like a walk around with your baby type activity, so there were like five of us.

Visa (04:21)

All right, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Nice. So important, yeah.

Divia (04:37)

with babies and our midwife and then I ran into this guy that I kind of knew and he had been climbing around in some off-limits area and he was wearing these like distinctive, they were like red or orange pants or something and the cops came over and then he started talking because I knew him, we were talking to him and the cops came over and they were like, you know, we heard someone was like climbing around in that area and they were like, and I think we heard, it was, and they sort of.

Visa (04:50)

Hmm.

Divia (05:03)

I think they picked up, were like, yeah, they said he had red pants or something, but they looked at him and they were like, but it obviously couldn't have been you, because he was standing with all these people with babies. And I don't know if they were like, I don't know if they were like, it was you, but like wink, wink, nod, nod, we can tell you're not actually dangerous, or they were just like, no, it couldn't possibly have been you, this guy standing with the babies. But either way, it was pretty dramatic.

Visa (05:09)

Yeah, moms, yeah.

Right.

think that's quite plausible. There's a bit in Modern Family that does that where, again, I think a bunch of people knock over some private property, but then there's a realtor and his wife and all the upstanding citizens around. So the cop comes over and when he sees the guy that he knows, he's yeah, everything's fine because of that guy. And similar, think one, I Chris Rock has a bit, which is like, if you're in...

If you're in some random city in the middle of the afternoon and there's a bunch of unemployed women around, chances are they are upper middle class, upper class strollers. And they're likely in very nice neighborhood because they can afford to do that. And whereas if you're in random city and there's a bunch of guys in the middle of the afternoon hanging around, are probably either unemployed, homeless, or druggies, whatever. Statistically, that's how it shakes out.

Divia (06:01)

Mm-hmm.

Right.

Yeah.

Visa (06:20)

And it is what it is. I don't know how deep you want to get into that, but it's just a thing that once you observe, think you can use it to your advantage, I guess. It's a thing that is worth trying to figure out. I not necessarily to your advantage, but I never thought about these things very much. How much your experience of reality is sh-

influenced or determined by like the meat bag that you're in, your height, your gender, your... and you don't realize the degree to which that is the case until you share a space with someone who's not like that and you get to witness their experience or like yeah I think one of my...

Divia (06:53)

Yeah.

Yeah. lot of, mean, trans people also, I think, tend to have really interesting perspectives on this. I feel like some of my most, some of the experiences that people describe that I'm like, okay, I better pay attention to that, is someone who's like, you know, I never felt like anyone valued me for me when I was walking around as a man, but then people start reading me as a woman, it was a whole different thing. Or the other way, the one I tend to hear the other way is something like,

Visa (07:14)

Mmm.

Right. Mm. Mm.

Divia (07:32)

People seemed to listen to what they were saying more and respect them more and take them more seriously when they start presenting as a man. And I'm sure it's all more complicated than that, but those are at least some of the things.

Visa (07:36)

Yeah. All right.

Yeah. Yeah. So it's very useful to have. I think, yeah, so there's like downsides to each thing, but we can kind of, if it's like, it's like a comparative advantage, something, traits, something, it's like in a friend group, like people can stand up for each other and kind of mitigate the worst of each. So yeah, make friends, you know, it always comes back to that somehow.

Divia (07:49)

Yeah.

Definitely. Okay, so one tweet you made recently, I was like, all right, we definitely have to talk about this. This is after we'd already scheduled this time. And it was, because I tend to be most interested in talking to people about the things that they haven't quite figured out yet. So I don't know, maybe you've figured out since, but what you said was a thing. So I'll read it out. This was like a brainstorm in response to a potential essay that you would really wish like you could figure it out.

Visa (08:12)

Mm-hmm.

Nice. I don't know. Let's try it.

Great.

Divia (08:35)

So something about smartphones, chaos surfing, information architecture, network scenes, Twitter, containers, episodic, incompleteness, focus on what you want, maniac thread, win loops, MVP, attractors, word magic. You wanna thread that all together. And you have a little bit more about it. Cursed artifact, memed into existence, strange loops. But you haven't quite assembled the mind city. You were like, no, not quite. So yeah, has that been percolating? You have any new thoughts there?

Visa (08:44)

Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah, mean, yeah, I mean, so I have thoughts about every one of those things. I have written about them. So it's not, you like I always am wary of like, you have these big ideas, but you haven't even started describing them. But I think I have spoken about each of those things in some detail on Twitter. But, you know, so the current way to get it to like internalize what

Like what does Visa mean by all of those things? Like if you follow me for a long period of time and you've read all of those threads, that's probably the best way to internalize it in general. But like very few people get to do that. So it's just our mutuals on Twitter who happen to be around for so long. they're yeah, I kind of like just seeing those words and seeing Visa's name, I kind of know what he's grasping at vaguely. Yeah. And I'm like, how do I talk about these things in a way that is relatively succinct that

Divia (09:47)

Yeah, it's like your dominoes are kind of similar.

Visa (09:57)

like kind of, I don't know if downloads is the right word, but just conveys a lot of that in a succinct way that people can relate to, I mean understand, I don't know, I'm still...

Yeah, I just want to not require such a large time investment to convey these ideas, even for myself, I guess. I do feel like maybe I haven't identified the precision points. If you see Picasso's bull, the drawings that he does, he made them progressively simpler and simpler. Or Steve Jobs has a bunch of quotes about how like,

and sophistication is simplicity is the ultimate sophistication where you can take away all the elements that are not relevant. But you don't quite know in advance what elements are not relevant. So even with both of the books that I've written, they are longer than they need to be. let's just talk about introspect because Sven was like a, it's not even finished. Well, introspect is also not finished.

Divia (10:56)

This is, by the way, this is friendly, ambitious nerd and introspect, right?

Visa (11:10)

In retrospect, it's like 100,000 words. And I don't want it to be. It's just that to include everything I want to say, that's how big it swelled up to. And I tried to compress, compress, compress. But there are some compressions that you don't know how to do until you've seen how people understand and misunderstand it and how it passes through conversations and stuff. So it's like I had to write the book.

in order to, and I don't think I've arrived at another better thing, but like, you know, that's like something like 50 sections. And I haven't figured out like, if I had to narrow it down to like 12, I'm not sure precisely. I know I was rereading it yesterday and I now know some of the things I would like set aside because some of the other elements imply some of the other, some elements imply other elements. So you can kind of identify the elements that

you know will imply the ones that you need so that the, yeah, you don't know which are the most load-bearing elements when all seem important, but even so, some elements are always more load-bearing than others. And it really takes time to identify what they are. So I need to circle back to the things that you're asking about. I think at the heart of everything, there's an understanding of dynamism and

attention. Those are probably the most central things and like frames, are all the same thing again. It's like, you know, that things change and what you see is not necessarily what it is. And a sufficiently advanced understanding of that is something that you can use to re-derive everything else. But that thing that I just described is very, very succinct and people who get it

They already get it because they've already synthesized a lot of things in their own experience. And they're like, yeah, that reminds me of this essay, or that reminds me of that book, or that reminds me of something someone said. And they connect the dots and they recreate the picture, sort of. I just, yeah, so what I just described does not solve my problem for me. I'm trying to, I guess I need to project manage this better for myself because the kind of,

like version 999, like final holy grail, not holy grail, but the really grand design is that, you can share this with anyone anywhere in the world, and they're going to get it very, very well, and they're going to be able to use it very, well as well. And to get to that point probably requires a bunch of prerequisites states that I don't currently influence. So I probably need to narrow it down and be like, I want to help this subset of people who

This is very helpful when you say out loud. So our current mutuals will get it already. So I don't really need to explain it to them. But if I did, it would be helpful anyway. And then there's another layer outside of those people who are sympathetic to these ideas, but they don't actually think about it very much. And elegant, succinct framing for these words would help them see what I see. And again, so I guess should say what I see.

Divia (14:30)

Yeah.

Visa (14:31)

The thing that usually, I think the best anecdote that I have to kind of open this is like a bunch of things people say about the internet and about smartphones and about media in general, I guess, is that, I I think the stereotype is like someone goes on the internet a lot and they just get increasingly deranged and crazy and like lose their s**t. And my experience has been the opposite of that.

It seems like the more time I spend online, I feel I get smarter. I get more well-informed. I make new friends. I make more money. Everything just gets better for me the more I do it. And so it's like, I'm looking to understand and convey, what is that? Is it something special about me? don't think I'm, I mean, I'm a bit different from some of my peers, I guess, but I don't think I'm like an alien, like a literal supernatural whatever. I guess I have some configuration of

Divia (15:24)

You

Visa (15:29)

how I filter information or how I respond to things, like some energetic posture that allows me to go into quote unquote, like the sludge, toxic sludge or whatever you want to call it, like like waste water or something, it's a metaphor I'm getting, and come out of it cleaner somehow or like fresher or healthier or happier. And...

Divia (15:48)

Yeah.

the pure all things are pure. I don't know, it's some quote. But I think there's something to it where like if you have a certain internal clarity then what you're saying like you can go into something and you come out and it's net like you weren't it didn't make you worse.

Visa (15:55)

Is that true? Do you think that's true? Yeah, don't know if... Yeah.

Yeah, so I think, you know, and like I've been kind of like testing this on the timeline. mean, testing. Testing sounds like I'm doing experiments on people, but I I share my experience and I've witnessed people saying, yeah, you the way you said this made me think about that. And then I changed something in my behavior and then that's a little bit better. And if these things can be condensed into some principles, some ideas, some, and I don't think

anybody learns these things from like a lecture about how to do it. So that's the tricky thing. know, and here I'm reminded of one of the, there's like a story I've told. It's like, okay, there's a subreddit for Zen, rzen. It's full of people like one-upping each other about being more spiritual and bickering with each other. It's so bad, it's good. But like, you know, it's like, if you go there for like spiritual instruction,

Divia (16:47)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah, it's weird. It seems like a pattern on my Twitter timeline that some of the most one-upping I see is among the spiritual path, like official I'm on a spiritual path people, right?

Visa (17:19)

Right. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, you're still stuck in stage three. How's stage four of you? And that sounds like Keegan stuff. in every tradition, there's people being like, you are still in this stage of enlightenment or whatever. Whereas on the other hand, one of the most beautiful, elegant, simple things I've read was from my friend who's into kitchen knives sent me a link from a kitchen knife forum.

Divia (17:25)

Yeah.

For sure.

Visa (17:47)

And the guy's like, and people are saying, how do I get the, what's the best kitchen knife? And this random poster, this red is very eloquent. Like, know, it's about, like, in your journey into knives, you're going to try a bunch of different things. And you're going to find that what fits your hand is the whatever, what fits your purpose. And I'm reading it, I was like, that's so, like, it's so spiritual. It's so like, there's this deep appreciation for yourself, for your tools, for your task. And I guess it's like zen in the art of motorcycle maintenance kind of.

Divia (18:07)

Right.

Visa (18:16)

But this guy wasn't trying to be spiritual or give instructions. Yeah, he was just trying to help some other guy manage his knives better. And so I think if I am to do what I'm trying to do, I cannot tell people, I cannot announce that this is what I'm doing and everyone come and let's do this thing. Because it's it's too on the nose, I think. And so I get conflicted about.

Divia (18:20)

was probably part of what was so successful about it, right?

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Visa (18:43)

Should I even say that? Should I be talking to you or anybody else and tell them, I'm going to do this thing, but actually it's about that thing? I don't know if that works. But so my approach is, OK, let me do a thing that I actually want to do. instead of pretending to care about kitchen knives when I don't, I'll just pick up a thing that I actually do care about. And then because I have those things on my radar, that should come through. And so one of the things I think I'm going to do is media studies, media analysis, movies.

TV shows, that's stuff that I like to talk about anyway, and video games. And so that might be how I approach it. So maybe all the things I was talking about earlier about episodic thinking and whatever, that's. Well, so the episodic stuff is about form, right? So it's how you present information in a way that you can make it as a creator and re-

audiences can receive it as audiences. And so again, I think one of the more profound things similar to The Kitchen Knives was the rules of show running by some TV producer who produced TV shows. And again, it's remarkable what goes into producing a good TV show. You have so many different people, have the story, you have different interpretations, set design, and the project management of that is remarkable.

Divia (19:56)

Okay.

Visa (20:10)

And so a person who's good at it has some domain-independent insight. The insights from that domain can be translated into project management and lot of other domains, I think. So that's the kind of thing I'm interested in. And I don't know if I answered your question. I'm just going in circles.

Divia (20:28)

Yeah, okay, let me see if I can try to reflect back what I heard you say, okay? So there's something that, at least the way you've been thinking of it is you kind of, you have like a, there's something that your body of work on Twitter tends to communicate to people, or at least like tends to communicate to the sort of people that like stick around and maybe are interested in some of the same stuff and read a lot of your stuff. But what you're really hoping is that you could make it more, make it more of an elegant concept.

Visa (20:32)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yes, more accessible to people.

Divia (20:57)

And one day you're, sorry, yeah.

Right, and ideally you want it to be sort of such a good concept or such a good conceptualization that you can communicate to almost anyone, regardless of any more like prerequisites or something like that. But then it seemed like you were like, but that might be a little bit of a leap from where you are. So maybe just like one, I don't know, like one circle out or something from the people that currently seem like they get it. Maybe with some context, maybe that should be sort of what you're thinking about next.

Visa (21:11)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Divia (21:31)

And then it seemed like you started to be like, look, there's some way of being that you have that's sort of like if you, where for you the internet can be a force multiplier. And probably not just the internet, probably like sort of regardless of what you expose yourself to, you can kind of like inhabit it and things will get better because you have more reach.

Visa (21:55)

It's happened. Yeah. I found some screenshots from like a WhatsApp group from like my early 20s where like all my, it's a bunch of my friends were all in a group chat. And then they were like, how do you guys, how do we all know each other? Like Visa was the one that introduced all of us. And like this person's dating that, but they're married now. And you know, it's like this person's in a band with that person. And it's just, I just introduced people to people and it works out, you know? And I guess, so when I say that,

Divia (22:02)

Mm-hmm.

Visa (22:23)

Someone else might then come along and be like, I tried that and it didn't work. And I'm like, did not realize that I did not think to include the fact that, OK, first of all, you've got to filter for a certain level of pro-social thing. And so it's layers and layers of that. And sometimes I don't know what I know. sometimes I don't know. Oftentimes, I don't know what is implicit until I encounter a misunderstanding. And I'm like, OK, that's because I assumed.

bunch of things. So I have good assumptions, which is kind of, you know, yeah, it's a strange, and I don't know what they are. So it's kind of, slightly, it's it's, guess it's because, yeah, I don't even know why, you know, like I can, I can like recite my like, words that come out of my head, that, you know, kind of say words around the thing. But if I really investigate it, I don't really know why. Like I have theories, right, like just like, okay, I,

When I was a kid, I wanted to be wiser because I felt unwise. And so I did a lot of reading. But a lot of people do a lot of reading. that doesn't quite. Until then, I'm like, OK, maybe it's something very particular to. So my current leading theory is something like my leading story that I'm still. my family runs a family business. And so I was raised a lot by helpers, domestic helpers, who left.

Divia (23:28)

A lot of people do that, yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Visa (23:50)

And I remember that, I think, from a very young age, that was kind of devastating. remember, and I forgot about it, sort of, but it was, I was never like close to my parents emotionally. I mean, we get along. It's not, you know, I wouldn't say they're like bad people or neglectful or whatever. And like a lot of Singaporean kids are basically raised by helpers who they don't know anymore. It's like a movie about it. And then, but yeah, so again, that's part of the story, but lots of other Singaporean kids also.

Divia (24:02)

Yeah.

Visa (24:19)

do that. So why am I different? Then there's like, okay, I remember reading. So I spent a lot of my childhood reading a lot about like disasters. And I didn't connect the dots that disasters and like, know, collapse of civilizations and stuff like that. It's like emotionally similar to abandonment, or feelings of like, you know, why is everything over? why, you know, so there's that. And then I remember reading about, so in school, when I was like 10,

Divia (24:31)

Okay.

Visa (24:49)

In Singapore, you learn about the Japanese occupation in World War II. And it's like a classroom thing. in 1945, this happened, and then the Japanese came, and then this happened. And everyone's just like, yeah, I'm like... And specifically, the thing that blew my mind was the currency became worthless. So the Japanese introduced a new currency, which they called banana money, and it quickly became worthless. And I was shell-shocked in that moment. I was like, what? Money can just become worthless? And everyone else turned to page for whatever. I'm like...

Divia (25:07)

Hmm.

Visa (25:19)

wait, can we discuss this? What's going on? And yeah, so I think it's something of those two things. It's like having that childhood experience, which quite a lot of people have, and then reading a lot about ancient history stuff and just having a lot of context, I guess, and then learning that that's also true in very recent living memory in my country. And yeah, maybe being a minority might have something to do with it.

Divia (25:19)

You

Okay, so sorry, I think I need to connect these dots for me. So how exactly the experience of being raised by the helpers and then they would leave, like, I think I don't quite, I believe you, but I don't quite see the through line from that to the sort of success that you're trying to put your finger on.

Visa (26:03)

Right, I think, and you know, there are a few other stories of a few other people that to me feels emotionally similar. So like one of the, like also in Singapore, one of our top diplomats slash foreign policy experts is this guy called Billahari. And I mean, people dispute whether, a lot of people don't like him because he's very abrasive, but he's like, the consensus is like he's kind of a genius.

Divia (26:12)

Mm-hmm.

Visa (26:29)

And one of his experiences, think, was that his father was in an embassy in Indonesia, I think, when there were riots and stuff. And he lost contact and something. It was a very traumatic experience, basically. And there's a few other things. If you look into like, where else do I want to tell stories about? There's something about having a rock. So I call these rock pool experiences, which I have a draft about.

And it's from crypto. So in crypto, say, run pool is when you lose your money or whatever. But I think it's an excellent phrase for just having your reality pulled out from under your feet. So you have some model of reality. this person, my mate, this lady who takes care of me will always be there for me. she's gone. And this money will always have value. it's gone. And when you have an experience,

Divia (27:00)

Yeah. Totally.

I see. Okay. So this is, this is when you were saying that you seemed like you had pretty solid assumptions. I think now you're like, because you questioned all of your assumptions due to some of these experiences.

Visa (27:35)

I think it seems like it. that's my leading current theory. People who have not yet experienced something of a Rumpool event, there's something different about, it's like you're trying to explain stuff to them and they will say they get it and they'll nod and be like, that makes sense. But they don't really, and it's, same for even, guess one of the most universal things is when people become parents, right? And then you think about,

whatever you've heard people say before you became a parent, and you're like, yeah, I get it. And then the reality of it, there's a certain reality shock where whatever the description of the thing is very, you know what mean? So it's like, do some people have a better time adapting to shocks than other people and why? I think that's one of the big questions that I don't know the answer to.

Divia (28:27)

parenthood thing, I think conventional wisdom is you can't really explain to someone what it's like to be a parent. They just have to experience it,

Visa (28:34)

Seems like it, yeah? And you don't agree?

Divia (28:35)

Yeah.

Visa (28:40)

You can prepare quite a bit.

Divia (28:41)

It doesn't seem right to me. when I, the way I, and I don't know that I'm right, but like on an emotional level, I'm like, no, I totally could have explained it to myself, but just nobody would explain it to me. Again, I feel like I was asking. Like when I was pregnant, I went around to everybody I knew. I go up to strangers. I'm like, okay, like, please tell me about it. Like, what am I missing? And like, might be fooling myself, but I'm like, I could have given myself.

Visa (28:53)

People are very, yeah. Yeah.

Divia (29:07)

Of course it's like, it's unfair to be like me and me, but still, I'm like, no, I could have explained it. Those people just didn't, and that's why I didn't get it.

Visa (29:09)

No, I, yeah.

I believe you. I think so and I think this is one of those things where we are both like kind of Both of us are a little bit strange, right? Like so like when I was asking people to psychoanalyze me I had like a hundred response yours was good. Everyone else's was meh and so, know that there's differences in quality of explanations and most people are really bad at it and like, you know, I look around and like People who are trying people who are parents who want to encourage other people to become parents

Divia (29:26)

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's true.

Visa (29:43)

try to sell them on being parents and they do it horribly. They're like, it's going to be the most meaningful experience. Nobody wakes up in the morning and be like, I want a more meaningful experience. Not in those terms, right? Like you have to describe. And I'm not even talking about explaining what it's like, but just selling things to people. just pitching and I can think of so many things that were poorly sold to me. I'm putting on my marketing guy hat. But I got into marketing in

Divia (29:46)

It's true.

Yeah.

Visa (30:12)

Part because I felt like some things were well pitched and some things were poorly pitched and I wanted to understand the difference and I wanted to get good at it. And it's like, you know, one of the best ways of thinking about meditation that I like is that it's like you stop feeling like a guest in your own body and you start feeling like it's yours, like you're a native. Right. And it's so welcoming and inviting and it's not, you know, I think people have some kind of profound experience and then they...

Divia (30:32)

I do like that.

Visa (30:41)

they want to tell you that it's profound, but that's not the nature of profound experience. So it's like the moment you decide, I'm going to tell people how amazing it is, the experience of amazingness is not, wow, how amazing it is. So it's to understand how to convey the thing. guess it's a kind of literacy. It's like a language management, storytelling skill where

Divia (31:04)

Yeah.

Visa (31:09)

The way to convey a thing is not necessarily to name the thing as the thing, but to give the, you know, I'm reminded now of Andrew Stanton, who wrote Finding Nemo. He gave a TED Talk when TED Talks were good. And he was explaining that, you know, like storytelling is like, you don't want to tell people, you want to put two plus two and let the audience connect and say it's four. You don't want to be like four. You you want to like present in a way that they can complete.

Divia (31:34)

Great.

Visa (31:38)

the interpretation and then it's Diaz. And yeah, I think that's true for parenting. It's true for like, so I've had so many people tell me that my tweets about my son make them look forward to becoming a parent or make them likelier to want to become a parent. I've had so many people tell me they love my wife entirely based on my tweets of her, which is like my intention. have intent, like it's on purpose that I want people to like her because she's kind of a loner and like I want her to friends and but like.

Divia (31:59)

Yeah?

Visa (32:08)

You can.

Divia (32:09)

It worked on me. I think she's cool. And the way especially you talk about like all the research she does and like the way she seems really tuned into all this stuff going on in Singapore seems really impressive.

Visa (32:14)

Mm.

Yeah, she is really cool. And the thing is, there are a lot of cool people who we don't know about because nobody's helping them tell their story in a way that's compelling. And that's really what decisively made me go from, I want to try and, so you can innovate, you can sell, and you can manage the invent. I think the quote was like, you build it, you sell it, you handle the money, or you keep the house in order.

like illegal accounting, HR, whatever. like, so build it or sell. And I can't do, I can't manage a checkbook or I'll go crazy. So my choices are either I build it or I sell it. And then I investigate. First, on one level, the people who build stuff, have, like, at the cutting edge of building, they have like a sensibility that I see it and I recognize that I don't have it to that degree. Like really that maniacal, I'm going to get all the details right, I'm going to trial and error, whatever. Whereas,

I can experiment with, let's try telling this story like 25 different ways and see what resonates with people. For some reason, I'm drawn to that of all the things. And also, I hear things like when flight was invented by the Wright brothers, it took years before people even realized that it had happened. people had seen it. Yeah. So right now, if you want to accelerate innovation or whatever in the world,

Divia (33:23)

Yeah, interesting.

I do think there are a lot of things like that.

Visa (33:45)

It's already here, not evenly distributed. And so you can actually just, and to the person who didn't know about a thing, the person who did it and the person who told them about it are almost equal in importance. Because if the person did it and somebody didn't tell them, then they didn't know about it. It's as good as if it never happened to that person. And then you multiply by everyone. Anyway, so the thing I.

Divia (34:06)

Yeah.

I mean, it just seemed like the sort of thing you're well suited to.

Visa (34:14)

Yeah, I mean, it's hard to tell. Is it that I was always like that? Was I innately like that? Did I optimize for it along the way? A bit of both, maybe. And yeah, if it...

Divia (34:27)

So, yeah, I think it's so interesting to think about like where.

where people's kind of like fundamental dispositions really come from. And I thought about it a lot this time when I was pregnant. I don't mean it in some mystical way, but sort of like what is a soul in the sense that like sort of the most fundamental parts about how someone is. Because obviously a ton of it's genetic, but I've seen a bunch of identical twins and they come out of, they're different. And what I've determined when I try to talk about it,

Visa (34:37)

Mm.

Mmm.

Divia (35:03)

to them or their parents is they come out different. And so I'm like, it's whatever it is, it's gotta be pretty early. Even though, yeah, like again, they really are pretty similar, genetics is a lot, but it's not the only thing. And some of these fundamental dispositions, I don't know, it really, it's the sort of thing that I probably keep thinking about it. Like in particular, one of my bigger updates, not even just from having my own kids, but like,

Visa (35:11)

Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Divia (35:31)

You know, ever since I had kids, hang out with more people with their kids. And I can't tell if I'm exaggerating or not when I say this, but the basic update is that babies are about as different from each other as adults are. And I think there's some, like some sort of overall cultural attitude and also some part of me that's like, yeah, but don't think some people sort of start out similar and then diverge. And I'm like, kind of, but also kind of the opposite. Like kind

Visa (35:45)

Yeah, I think so too. Correct.

Yeah.

Divia (35:59)

they're right there from the beginning and then they try to fit in and like I don't know.

Visa (36:01)

Yeah, yeah. Again, even before I had kids, I would show up at a nephew's birthday party, like two-year-olds, three-year-olds. They're so different. They all do different. Some will be running after each other. Some will be approaching adults. Some will be off in a corner somewhere. you look at them, you're like, these are people. They might be unskilled in certain ways, but their inclinations, especially, I think.

Divia (36:13)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Visa (36:31)

You can't change your... You can't... You know, you can... I don't know how much you can influence these things. My son is clearly more social even than me. He loves people. We go anywhere... And my wife is very much not. So she's like, god, what have I brought in the world? Because we brought him to this play area in a mall where you pay to go in and there's toys. And we kind of... Not forgot, but we didn't really think about how... there are going to be other kids there as well.

Divia (36:38)

Interesting.

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Visa (37:00)

And okay, so we bring him in and Sharon's thinking, okay, you sit down on the floor and let him get used to you because we're in a new space and he's small and like let him get used to you first and let him watch you play and then he'll start playing. And so she put him down and he races off to go meet the other kids. Yeah. And he just goes right into it like, wow, that's fearless, fearless and

Divia (37:19)

To the other kids.

Visa (37:29)

so energetic and so and you look around other kids and there was at least one kid that's kind of just hanging out hanging out by himself and seemingly happy to just chill and like we can make some very you know he's it's unlikely that my kid and that kid are going to be the opposite like 20 years from now where right it's it's i mean you could have some major event that revises something for you you might whatever whatever but like i don't you

Divia (37:48)

This seems right.

Visa (37:58)

People will always, when you tell people, no, where am going with this? Whatever you become later in life, there's always a through line back. And it could be because there's many, many branching paths. So whatever path you take, there will always be a path back. that then seems like a very significant thing. And yet, just the fact that that exists, I think, is, and the same with my writing, for example. I have never written a good

Divia (38:26)

Mm-hmm.

Visa (38:28)

piece of writing that I did not already have like a proto-primitive version of like years earlier. Like every single one of my books, even so right now when I finally decided, okay, this era is going to be called frame studies, I can do like a from visa frames. I'm like, I've been tweeting about this for a long time. But at the moment when I do it, it feels like, I've got a new, like a fresh take on things or something. And which tells me that my next thing after this is also something that I've already done.

Divia (38:35)

Right.

You've been talking about it.

Visa (38:57)

Right? It can seem a little bit limiting from a certain point of view, like, there's nothing new. Everything's already done. But on the other hand, it's also exciting because you see it with fresh perspective and it becomes more activated. Like, you realize that, this thing that was set in passing is actually so much more to it than I initially thought. And that kind of makes

Divia (38:58)

Seems right, yeah.

Visa (39:27)

everything around you actually becomes so much more lively like like you can't write anything off entirely

Divia (39:33)

You can see it as like these are these things that I'm thinking now they're going to grow into more later.

Visa (39:38)

Yeah, as long as you're following your nose about whatever's interesting, there's always... You can't know in advance what will resonate with you later on. I feel like we've gone in a bunch of circles and there were some questions that we had that were interesting that we didn't finish answering. Was it?

Divia (39:56)

Yeah, no, it's so, that's okay. I wanted to ask you about the thing that you've sort of been circling around. So this is, it makes sense, but about like what you're trying to distill. one description of it that I heard was like, what makes it so that things work out for you basically? Like there's something, you have some kind of...

Visa (40:03)

Okay, cool.

Divia (40:20)

Visa magic and you're like, what is it? And you want to share it.

Visa (40:24)

Yeah.

Hmm.

Some of it is just not giving up, I think. But no, that's even that. I mean, that's like, well, yeah, like so if you give up, then it's game over. Then you can't stay in the game long enough to start getting the rewards. even like with, so part of it is try to do things that you enjoy doing that you can do for a very, very long time. Because a lot of the mainstream games that people play, all the rewards are like,

downstream and a lot of people give up early and so they get like the worst of both worlds which is very common.

Divia (41:11)

think, yeah, so the thing that seems, and obviously you talk about this all the time, but if I had to say what seems most fundamental from what you've been saying is the part about focusing on what you want.

Visa (41:22)

But interestingly, came to me kind of late. I guess I was sort of doing it, it came in when I was like, I don't know, 28, 29? So my early 20s were not there. So this points at a thing I want to get to about, I call it blessedness versus wretchedness, which is like upward-downward spirals,

Divia (41:28)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Visa (41:51)

The wretched thing about wretchedness is that you try to help someone and it gets worse. And so then they don't get help. then that gets worse. Whereas with blessedness, it's like, you introduce a friend to another friend and you trust that they will take care of things. So you can just let them be and everything just gets better. And it's like, you, yeah, I feel like I've been in the wretched place before.

Divia (42:01)

Yeah.

Visa (42:18)

But then I have since heard from people who are way, way worse. I'm like, almost like, is this stolen better? When I was like 17, that felt true for me. Everything I was doing seemed to make everything worse. But I guess I was never truly down. I didn't go as far down bed as some people can, I guess. But I'm still contextualizing that.

Divia (42:38)

Yeah, I wonder. I think some of why that one resonates with me a lot. So something, I probably don't talk about it that often in terms of my main influences, but when I was in my mid-20s, this guy recommended, so have you heard of Holosync or Bill Harris? Probably not, but. So Holosync, I don't know how, it's Binaural Beats. And my impression is it's kind of a, yeah, and I think.

Visa (43:04)

OK. yeah, OK. I know by the orbits.

Divia (43:08)

it might even kind of scam me because I haven't totally ever fact-checked this, but I think the idea is that it has like slightly different sounds in each ear and it causes some like, I don't it's like a little trippy when you listen to it. But I think when the guys started selling it, was when like on a cassette where that couldn't even really have necessarily been true. I might be wrong about that. But anyway, so he introduced me to Holosync, but also he had these

Visa (43:19)

Yeah

Sure

Divia (43:37)

life integration courses, this guy, Bill Harris. And he never, I never really did the Holosync that much. I think the basic theory and he would, I also like something I still think about all the time is prig gene and disabative systems. I don't even really, I understand what it means more now that I did that, but his basic theory was like, look, you kind of just perturb the system a little and then it makes it like more plastic. And then if you learn better concepts, it's then then everything will be better. And he, so he had these, he was like a,

Visa (43:38)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Divia (44:07)

sort of hypnotist guy who was trained in like neuro-linguistic programming. He was a big marketing guy and he had probably had three courses, I say like 12 lessons each. And my friend gave me these MP3s. I used to listen to them. And that was just his top thing is you have to focus on what you want instead of on what you don't want. But he said it like 50 different ways and he tried to really drill down to the details and he's like, look, a lot of people have learned a shallow version of this. Some teacher told them to do that. So they started framing their sentences in positive ways. He's like, but you've got to.

Visa (44:20)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Nice.

Divia (44:37)

drill down to the actual mental representations and a lot of it anyway with a whole I don't know that's

Visa (44:44)

I see it. I see it. Yeah. It's, you know, it's like the inverse is like, so people say things like, I don't know if that could work or whatever, but like most people are doing the opposite all the time and it's clearly working. It's clearly working that like focusing on the worst things is making things worse. So.

Divia (44:58)

Yeah!

No, and I think there's there's some really wrong and cringey stuff out there, like, you know, the secret video or people are like, just focus on bills, you know, on checks instead of bills. And I'm like, no, no, like, like, of course not. Like, and of course the way this works is through people actually doing things. Like it's not, but the idea that on like a pretty low level, that is sort of how brains work is they're kind of like, all right, let me, this is what I'm picturing. Let me kind of try to.

Visa (45:09)

yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Divia (45:31)

it feels better when that kind of lines up with what I'm seeing. I think it's true.

Visa (45:34)

Yeah. Yeah, we are like pattern recognizing creatures. And again, if someone says don't look down, you don't process the don't very well yet. The don't has to, we hear the instruction and instincts is to follow the instr