Obsessing about speed

`2:00:19`

It's funny because it's like that the old limit on, what was it? It was a four-minute mile or something-

`2:00:28`

... like that in 1952-... that people thought was impossible for humans to beat. Then one guy beats it, and literally within the next few months, three more guys do, right? So we had this goal. I originally had the goal it was two minutes. And then we beat two minutes, and I'm like, "Well, if we beat two minutes, why can't we beat one minute?" And I remember thinking like, "That'd be crazy. You can't install a modern operating system in one minute when they're all..." If the other ones are taking 42 minutes, right? Like Apple, full of a lot of smart people, like, it took 42 minutes, so that's gotta be the bar. No, no, it's not the bar because there's no speed limit. Like, none of the things you take for granted are fixed pillars of reality in almost any case. Until you get down to the seven gigabytes per second that drive is able to transfer, you've not reached the limit yet, so you should just keep pushing. And of course, then it becomes a game in itself and a satisfaction itself. Every second I could shave off was an excitement. And when we broke the one-minute barrier, which was really only broken, I think, three weeks ago or something like that, maybe even two weeks ago, I just got crazy. And then I got a swarm of agents to run all these auto research loops of trying all these different theories on like, oh, if you change this thing, if you change that thing, what if you cut this out? What if you do things in parallel?

What if while you were typing in your username, we start preloading packages into memory system, we can fire them in faster. And it becomes a fun game. And I think that's how you should think about product development. It should be fun. You should, it should be frivolous. It should be trying to overshoot the target and making it so much better than what it quote unquote needs to be.

`2:02:09`

Yes, that just makes it more satisfying. But I think this was always true. If you look at the greatest Mercedes-Benz of all time, I think it was called the W126. I saw this wonderful documentary on it. It was steered by this guy who for years had worked in Mercedes' department for safety. And suddenly he gets put in charge for the whole S-Class project, and he just puts in all of it. This is where you got the auto-retending seat belts and washers on the headlights and everything. This car was so overbuilt for the market. It was unbelievable. But you look at that and go like, "Well, I want that." In just the same way that you look at a mechanical watch and go, "It could go down to 100 meters?" Or I think Rolex has one that can go down to 4,000 meters, the, the deep ocean, the deep diver ocean... or whatever it's called. No one outside of three people in the world, whoever buy that watch, will ever put it to the test. But don't you wanna be the kind of person who is a patron of people who wanna push the human race that much forward? I want the fastest car breaking the speed limits. I want the diver watch that can go down the Mariana Trench. I want the operating system that can install in less than 60 seconds.

`2:04:32`

And setting a grand goal is even better. When you refuse to just do what's practical and you strive for what's slightly beyond plausible, that's when the magic happens. And we should be going all in on that. This is one of the reasons... And in fact, to some degree, this specific goal was motivated by seeing others do this. I mean, Elon is the singular individual in this conversation. The guy is so out there in his goals. They seem so preposterous at first glance. I've certainly considered them preposterous on many glances. And then you realize that they come true sometimes. Maybe not always on schedule, and so what? So what? So we didn't get the self-driving car on schedule. I gave Elon a lot of shit for that back in '17. But now it's here, and who would have gotten us here except for the person who thought it was possible in '17, who is so impatient with reality that the sheer force is just gonna propel that reality to the place he wants it to be. I think that's deeply inspiring, and we need these kinds of, goalposts to be moved. We need someone to run the four-minute mile, so the rest of us realize, "Well, okay, but I guess I can run it quicker." That's what I try to strive for, and I really strive for with Omarchy because it's just more fun to live that way, to have high aspirations and ambitions. And I will say I've actually changed my mind on that a little bit.