Ryan Hall is a martial artist, BJJ black belt, and MMA fighter undefeated in the UFC. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
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EPISODE LINKS:
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OUTLINE:
0:00 - Introduction
1:17 - First principles approach to martial arts
8:59 - Illusion of choice
12:32 - Game theory
20:53 - First fight
25:09 - Defense
33:53 - Waiting for a fight
44:01 - Free will
1:01:48 - Freedom and compassion
1:10:50 - Social media
1:17:11 - Leadership
1:22:59 - How to get good at jiu jitsu
1:43:12 - Learning how to learn
1:51:18 - Questioning the foundations of jiu jitsu
2:10:23 - Humans cannot fully comprehend reality
2:14:34 - Artificial intelligence
2:27:27 - Deadlines
2:34:19 - Tie choke
2:42:48 - Hardship
2:47:09 - Love

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is a conversation with Ryan Hall, his second time in the podcast.

He's 1 of the most innovative scholars of martial arts in the modern era.

Indeed hiring website, Audible Audiobooks, ExpressVPN, and Element Electrolyte Drink.

Click the sponsor links to get a discount and to support this podcast.

As a side note, let me say that I've gotten a chance to train with Ryan recently, and to both discuss and try out on the mat his ideas about grappling and fighting.

What struck me is his unapologetic drive to solve martial arts.

It reminds me of the ambitious vision and effort of Google's deep mind to solve intelligence.

In Ryan's case, This isn't some out there martial arts guru talk.

This is a style of thinking about the game of human chess, of seeking to define the rules and to engineer ways from first principles of escaping the constraints of those rules.

This style of thinking is rare, but it's ultimately the 1 that leads to the discovery of new revolutionary ideas.

If you enjoy this podcast, subscribe to it anywhere, or connect with me at Lex Friedman.

And now, here's my conversation with Ryan Hall.

You're known as a systems thinker in martial arts, but you also, I think,

are willing to think outside the rules of the game, outside of the system.

When you're thinking about strategies of how to, you know, solve the problem, particular problem of an opponent, whether that's Jiu-Jitsu or in mixed martial arts, what's your process for doing that, for figuring out that puzzle?

I would say I don't know if I have a specific like a to b to c process for that sort of thing.

I try to do my best to Appreciate that I think a lot of the thinking or maybe not all the thing but a lot of great thinking on Conflict on battle on war on martial arts has been done already.

Not that we don't have to do any sort of background investigation or reassessing of these ideas or axioms that have come down through things like the Book of 5 Rings or the Art of War or like von Clausewitz, even anything like that, really, but is trying to understand the lessons of the past that I think oftentimes we don't take with us.

Problems on we pay lip service and like, oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you know, a victorious fighter, the great fighter, you know, he knows victory is there, then he seeks battle.

Everyone else is looking for victory in battle.

And that's why I'm gonna double jab and throw my left hand.

And I think a lot of times our actions don't reflect our stated belief structure.

And I think that oftentimes you can tell what I believe really or what my fundamental operating system is based on my actions, whether I'm aware.

I have an operating system internally, whether I'm aware of it or not, or certainly whether I'm fully aware of it.

So I guess when it comes to strategy, I try to think about how things interact.

You mentioned systems thinking, and I try to do my best to understand how systems exist, but I think that systems have a fundamental strength and a fundamental weakness.

They work how they work, and that's great, but they're readable.

So if you are aware, if I am operating on a system of which you're not really read into, then I think oftentimes I can seem like shockingly effective, particularly if my system preys on certain weaknesses that maybe you're given to.

But what happens when you've read the same books that I have?

I think that a lot of times that makes me deeply predictable.

I think about systems in Jiu-Jitsu, and a lot of times people think that they're doing Jiu-Jitsu when in reality they are doing an expression of it.

Let's say I'll use, there's the Marcelo Garcia system.

There is the Henzo Gracie, current Henzo Gracie system.

There's the Gracie Academy, classic Gracie jujitsu.

There's the art of jujitsu, kind of Atos approach.

And there's some crossover between a lot of these, but oftentimes I think, you know, when it comes to understanding how I'm making decisions and how my opponent is making decisions, I have to appreciate whether or not I'm an end user of something.

I was thinking of this the other day, and as an end user of my phone, I have no idea what it does.

You know, like Edward Snowden comes up and goes, hey guys, you realize your phones are listening to you?

And then of course that comes out, But to what extent?

I really like blue screens, not purple screens.

So like, as an end user, I can change some of the bells and whistles that have nothing to do with the underlying source code of it all or how it functions.

The same way my car, I'm an end user of my car.

If I do this with the steering wheel, it goes.

If I, yeah, I know how to fix it when it's out of gas.

I know how to fix it when it's out of oil, and I know how to fix it when a flat tire comes.

But short of that, or actually beyond that, I have nothing.

So I think that oftentimes, I've been around in jiu-jitsu long enough to encounter a new wave of good grapplers, and it's very, very interesting sometimes how they're running systems they don't realize they're running.

I'm like, oh yeah, I trained at Marcelo Garcia's academy for a long time, and a big fan of Marcelo's and was a student there.

Encountered a lot of the auto-style jujitsu a number of years ago.

Been very, very deep into foot locking and leg attacks and whatnot for a long, long time.

I understand your system better than you do, or I may.

And let's say you understand my system better than I do.

That was something that I encountered a long time ago trying to come up in jiu-jitsu where I was trying to utilize systems that were created by, let's say, Hoffman Mendez or someone else.

I'm basically trying to do what you're doing.

I'm just not doing as good of a version of it.

Not only am I not doing it well, but I'm entirely predictable.

And I think that that can be a big issue.

So to come back, I think of systems a lot of times now in terms of particularly like end user type of systems, like an iPhone is a really, really fast way for me to be able to do all sorts of things.

If you were to take it from me, I couldn't recreate any of that.

So you want to be more the NSA and less the end user.

But basically, I guess what I would come back and say is if you understand how things interact on a fundamental level and what type of games exist and what type of interactions exist, then you can transcend a lot of the systems.

It's almost like a cook versus, if I can make certain things in the kitchen, but I am not a chef, You could give me a bunch of ingredients and I could probably cook not well, but a couple of different things But a master chef, you know would be aware of the implications of all of the things that they're doing You know extra time in the oven less time in the oven putting this, you know flavoring or spice in you know What you're doing with various things and also they could make they could turn all of these ingredients into Chinese food, or they could turn all these ingredients into Italian food, and they could turn all these Italian food ingredients into chicken parmesan, or it could turn into lasagna.

But they're not limited to a specific thing because they have knowledge of how food interacts, what it does to create taste, what it does to create texture.

So to come back, let's take rock, paper, scissors.

Rock, paper, scissors is built on the idea of a couple of different things.

Actually, I'll tell you what, can I, may I ask you a question?

So, okay, so what's the first question when you say, hey, let's play rock, paper, scissors, it's like, hey, is it rock, paper, scissors or rock, paper, scissors, shoot?

And you're like, rock, paper, scissors, shoot.

You're like, okay, because if we go rock, paper, scissors, shoot, and I'm like, oh man, I got lucky and I won.

I'd be luck, be luck if I was honestly doing that.

But now let's say for instance, I go on rock, paper, scissors, and you go on shoot.

This is built on a parody thing where I don't get to pick second.

If I get to pick second, it's like being able to investigate your background before going to meet you.

Oh, I too love the New Jersey, you know, the New Jersey Nets, which is a statement that no 1 in their right mind would ever make when I was growing up.

So anyway, you'd have to have personal knowledge of somebody.

So anyway, to come back, if you understand how games are structured, you can start to realize that there's huge gaps and huge holes in a lot of the thinking behind all of it.

And if you can create the illusion of choice, I'll play 1 more if you don't mind.

Okay, May I ask you some questions, please?

pick 3 fingers and tell me what they are?

Your thumb, your pinky, and your middle finger.

Woo-hoo, okay, could you please pick 1 finger?

So I thought that enhanced the illusion of choice.

If I'm asking the questions, provided I ask the right questions, there can be no correct answer.

Doesn't mean that, I mean, ultimately, if that's what you wanted, let's say, like I thought I was guiding you to something I wanted, it turns out that was the outcome you wanted.

For people that might be just listening to this, that no matter what trajectory we took through that decision tree that Ryan was presenting, it was always ending up with a middle finger, ironically enough.

All right, so now I'm gonna, now I'll ask some different questions, if you don't mind.

Can you please pick 2 fingers to put down?

That's so awkward, that's like the worst finger positions.

Okay, can you please pick, wait a minute, that's, ow, Hold on.

Well, what if you pick 2 other fingers to put down?

Okay, your middle finger and your pointy finger.

Ah, okay, can you pick 2 fingers to put down?

It's the pointy 1, that's the 1 we usually point, it's weird to point with your ring finger.

Man, what if you pick my ring finger and my index finger?

So even though I'm asking the questions, it's not impossible that I arrive at a good outcome for me, but it's no longer guaranteed.

I went from a situation where I literally can't lose.

And the second you realize what I'm doing, you would never let me win because the ball's truly in your court.

So I guess that's kind of what I'm fundamentally trying to put into play almost all the time.

Can I develop the ability skills-wise, understanding-wise, and then discipline-wise, and then have the courage and the constitution and the discipline necessary, the patience necessary to ask the proper questions and wait for the proper answers?

And if I can, assuming the perfect world, I win, period.

So I don't know if you know sort of the more mathematical discipline of game theory.

There's something called mechanism design.

So game theory is this field where you model some kind of interaction between human beings.

You can model nuclear conflict between nations that way.

And you set up a set of rules and incentives and then use math to predict what is the likely outcome depending over time based on the interaction given those rules.

So like the design of systems that are likely to lead to a certain outcome.

And so what you're suggesting is you want to create, you want to discover systems whose decision tree, all the possible things that could happen, feel like there's choice being made, But ultimately 1 of the parties doesn't have any choice in what the actual final outcome is.

You're making them feel like they're playing a game too, so it's not like You don't feel trapped.

Well, the best traps, you don't look very threatening.

I guess that's kind of an interesting thing.

It's an interesting thing when you watch lions hunting.

When they want to move you back, they do stuff like that.

When they actually want to come and get you, they're pretty slinky.

It's like water covered, it's like furry water.

And I guess when you keep that in mind, it's funny how, for us, a hobby actually, a brilliant guy, 1 of my MMA coaches and the head coach at TriStar, he brought this up 1 time, I thought it was a really salient point.

He said, let's say we have a million person bracket, it was impossibly huge, like Frank Duke's winning the Kumite level, huge bracket.

And he claimed to knock out like 250 consecutive people.

And you're like, that is all of Hong Kong was in that thing.

But to come back a little improbable, pretty cool.

So let's say for instance, like there's no cheating going on, no cheating going on and we're flipping coins, right?

Someone is gonna have an unbroken string of victory through that bracket, which is pretty insane.

How many consecutive like toss ups this person won.

And then at the end of it all, imagine we like aliens show up and we go, hey, they want to flip a coin for whether or not Earth, you know, gets to, gets to continue.

We could argue that effectively you're incredibly lucky.

But basically, is that an actual ability?

Is that like a perk in a video game or is that just this thing that happened?

Anyway, how many times are someone, you could go through an entire career, particularly in a fight sport.

Well, let's say you get 15 knockouts and 15 toss-up scenarios, because you see that happening all the time in the fight game, a toss-up scenario.

It's not like you're mounted on me and that's not a toss up scenario.

Many, many, many, many, many striking scenarios, a lot of grappling ones, but tons of striking scenarios are dead toss ups.

Somebody wins by knockout, they win 5 times in a row.

Then they lose a couple of times in a row, we go, what happened?

You're like, what do you mean what happened?

And then they win 5 more and they go, ah, back on track.

You're flipping a coin and I'm like, heads, heads, heads, heads, tails.

That's basically what's going on, I think, the vast majority of the time.

And then humanity's tendency to see a sign in almost anything starts to present itself.

And then we build a narrative in our mind to convince ourselves that we're in some sort of control.

When in reality, I was in a marginal situation at best the whole time.

Yeah, without having much control, without having a deep understanding of the system, the same story is told in the stock market.

With many of these distributed human systems, we start telling narratives and start seeing patterns without understanding actually the system that's generating these patterns.

So if we can see the system, that's incredibly valuable.

But then you go, well, what system is above all of the systems?

I guess maybe physics, maybe, like game theory explains these things, but I guess what aspects of the system can I put my hands on that I can touch and understand?

What's going on in the world all around me to continue to lean on Dune that I don't have, that I don't, you know, you talk to a blind person about the world, about sight, and talk to someone that doesn't have everyone, who's got coronavirus now, so no 1 can taste or smell, They're like, this is delicious.

So anyway, again, what senses am I missing or what understanding am I missing that's preventing me from seeing the dots connect in the world all around me?

And I think sometimes if we, oftentimes, at least personally, I've screwed this up a lot.

I'm so nose deep in the trench of trying to understand what I'm doing that I can't take a step back and realize that I'm in a forest, not just headbutting a tree.

So I would say when it comes to strategy, trying to understand that, but then also you go, well, okay, well, how can that sounds cool, but how can you actually do that?

And then I'd say that's a really good question because if I imagine I say, man, I should fight like Steven Thompson, I should fight like wonder boys.

I would fight like Khabib Nurmagomedov if I could.

Anyway, you go, well, what if I could take my time developing skills so that when these strategies become apparent, they are executable to you.

You actually have the ability to, again, to be the person in the arena, to be the person required, whereas there's plenty of great ideas.

Dunking a basketball is a fantastic idea.

Alas, for me, unless there's a small trampoline nearby, I'm not the guy.

But that doesn't make it any less good of an idea.

I just don't have and develop the ability or I lack the ability.

So anyway, I think a lot of times, at least when I watch people in fighting, I'll use an example, we're so concerned with trying to win early on rather than develop skills that I'm going like, well, what's the best way to fight with my current set of skills?

And usually the path forward is like the barbarian route.

Like you put on the 1 ring, take the damage you need to take to hit that guy.

And that was something I realized very early on in my MMA career was like, I'm not that good at striking at that time.

Not a world-class striker now, but I'm way better at striking than I'm given any credit for because it helps people sleep at night, I think.

But- Yeah, yeah, you're always introduced as like this master grappler.

And, but the funny thing is where I'm like, just cause people almost go like, well, Lex, like, so you're really good at this, but you gotta understand like, we're equal, man.

So there's plenty of people that define themselves as a striker that do that just because that's for lack of other options, not because they're a really good striker or like I'm a grappler, I was a grappler as a blue belt.

So anyway, I guess to come back, if I'm constantly going, how can I win with what I've got right now?

I think oftentimes I never take the time to develop the skills that I want to develop, and I also never take the time to develop the strategies that I want to develop.

And that has actually been 1 big blessing of fighting so infrequently, which has been really frustrating as a result of injury and time away and some of those people being hesitant to get in the game.

But it gives you so much time to be out of the trenches and focus on developing your abilities so that now it's almost like developing money, like you mentioned, the stock market that you can now put in.

Imagine you told me Bitcoin was a great idea 5 years ago and I had 8 bucks.

Man, if someone told me Bitcoin was a great idea 5 years ago when I had 50K, I'd be like, oh my God, I'd be sleeping in my bed of money that I would then set on fire later today just to do it.

So all the, due to all the injuries, you've been mining Bitcoin all this time and Now you're a rich man.

Well, no, actually, someone told me, I was trying to mine for Bitcoin, actually, like in a cave.

And then I found out recently that it's actually, mining is like a figure of speech, not like a literal thing that you do.

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Ryan Hall: Solving Martial Arts from First Principles | Lex Fridman Podcast #169