The following is a conversation with Ryan Hall, one of the most insightful minds and systems thinkers in the martial arts world.

He's a Black Belt and Jiu Jitsu, a accomplished competitor, an MMA fighter undefeated in the UFC, and truly a philosopher who seeks to understand the underlying principles of the martial arts.

Jiu Jitsu is such an important part of who I am, and I was hoping to share that with folks who might know me only as a researcher.

I think there is no better person to do that with than Ryan, who somehow remarkably I can say is a friend, and also a modern-day warrior philosopher of the Miyamoto Massage line of especially dangerous and brilliant humans.

Also, his amazing wife, Jen Hall was there as well, so if you hear a kind of voice of wisdom coming from above, you know who it is.

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As a side note, let me say that renaming this podcast to just my name gave me intellectual freedom that I really didn't anticipate was so empowering, especially for someone who's trying to find their voice.

I hope you'll allow me the chance to really try and do that, to step outside of AI and even science, engineering, history, and so on, and on occasion talk to athletes, musicians, writers, and maybe even comedians who inspire me, especially up in common comedians and musicians like Eric Weinstein, who yes, will do a third conversation with soon.

I think if I allow myself to expand the range of these conversations and occasion, when I do return to science and engineering, I'll bring a new perspective and also a little bit more fun.

And a few extra listeners that may not otherwise realize how fascinating artificial intelligence robotics, mathematics, and engineering truly is.

All that said, please skip the episodes that don't interest you. You don't have to listen to all of them. Trust me, as someone who is a bit or a lot OCD, that idea is quite unpleasant.

But life, friends, is full of unpleasant things.

But as Hunter as Thompson suggested, and I suggest as well, you should still buy the ticket and take the ride.

If you enjoyed this thing, subscribe on YouTube, review it with 5 stars and not a podcast, follow on Spotify, support it on Patreon, or connect with me on Twitter, and Lex Friedman.

As usual, I'll do a few minutes of ads now and no ads in the middle. I try to make these interesting, but I give you the time stamp, so please skip if you don't want to listen to the ads, but it does mean a lot to me when you do.

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I use it for muscle recovery for legs and shoulders, but you can also use it to build muscle, endurance, or even just warm up.

In fact, I first heard about this kind of electrical muscle stimulation device and reading that Bruce Lee used it.

He was an inspiration to me as someone who practices first principles thinking, especially in a discipline where conventional thinking is everywhere.

He created a martial art called Jit Kundo that is in many ways at least philosophically in his hybrid approach, a precursor to modern day mixed martial arts.

There's a special kind of deep philosophical thinking that combat athletes or jiu jitsu practitioners do that is unlike any other.

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