E214 - Tom Bilyeu: Humanity Is Splitting into 4 Futures… Choose Wisely

Tom Bilyeu (0:00)

What does the future hold? It's so crazy how far we've come in three years, and right now, we stand at a precipice. We can step off the cliff, we'll turn and go backwards. Humanity's response to AI is going to be interesting, but assuming it's non-fatal, which we can talk about that, what you're looking at is basically perpetual retirement for everybody. You won't have to fight for anything. But unfortunately, some people need to be chased by a lion. They have to wake up, be disciplined, go to work. What happens when that all goes away? They completely derange.

André Duqum (0:30)

You speak about the bifurcation within civilization as four possible futures.

Tom Bilyeu (0:34)

Yes.

So we have the new Amish. They're going to absolutely refuse to engage with AI. The second are people who numb out. They're going to have sex, get drugs. Then they're going to be people who want to live life on hard mode. They'll live on the moon, they'll live on Mars. Then there are the people who will build and inhabit virtual worlds. This is exciting.

André Duqum (0:52)

What is it that you think is irreducibly human?

Tom Bilyeu (0:54)

You asked, so I'll be honest. I don't believe there is meaning. There is only the things that we assign meaning.

André Duqum (1:01)

But is it not reducing life down to a set of mechanisms?

Tom Bilyeu (1:04)

You're missing a fundamental fact. Meaning is evolution's way of making you resilient. So we all get to decide what that is, but there's one idea that I want to put out into the world. It's what I call the only belief that matters. I really want people to listen, but what they have to understand is-

André Duqum (1:27)

Welcome back to the Know Thyself Podcast. Our guest today is a well-known successful entrepreneur who founded and sold Quest Nutrition. He's also the founder of Impact Theory, which is one of the most viewed long form interview channels in the world. He's also building a video game called Kyzen. He's up to many things, and I'm really excited to chat with him. Tom Bilyeu, thank you for being here.

Tom Bilyeu (1:47)

Thanks for having me.

André Duqum (1:50)

We always build these parasocial relationships. I feel like I've seen your podcast and your show online for many, many years now, and I've also seen the arc of it. You know what really was one of the most predominant personal development podcasts and shows years ago has shifted to be more about future tech and AI, and where humanity finds itself. And there's many through lines within both of our interests. I'm curious to just ask you about that shift and that arc. What was it that really kind of tipped that for you?

And tell me a little bit about your journey there.

Tom Bilyeu (2:24)

The honest answer is when COVID hit, I had, at that point, I was still very close in terms of years from having 3,000 employees, 1,000 of them had grown up in the inner cities. And I had a policy that even if you had a felony conviction, I would consider you for employment. So we had all kinds of people, former drug dealers, gang members, everybody you can imagine. And when COVID hit, I thought, they're all going to get obliterated because I didn't understand money printing, so I didn't know what was about to happen. I just thought they were all going to lose their jobs. And so I was like, I need to start doing financial content to help people like that weather this storm.

And then the storm never came. And it ended up me asking questions like, what is money? How does this all work? How do you print money? How do you just get it out of thin air? I don't understand. And so I realized that I was good at making money, but I didn't know anything about investing money. And so as I started going down that journey, I became profoundly angry at what I learned about the way that the system actually works. And so what was meant to be just me sort of helping people with Finance 101 became me realizing that we are currently existing inside of a structure that is deeply troubling in terms of its core design. And it is leading us somewhere incredibly dangerous in terms of populism, just to put it in a quick basket. And so I quickly realized there was a whole other set of things that if I really wanted to have impact, which is the only reason that I do the things that I do, I needed to be addressing the biggest problems of our day. And on what I think of as the mindset side, personal development, I felt like I'd said what I came to say.