 You're not going to get to the end of your life and be like, oh, if only I'd posted this blog poster, you know, you're going to be like, why didn't I spend more time with my family and my friends? And why didn't why wasn't I a real life maxi? All right, everybody. So yeah, we are here at, I guess we'll call it the annual meetup of the other life and other life adjacent community, let's call it. And here in rainy California, as it is today. And I invited Luke Smith here as the special guest this weekend for a few different reasons. I know some of you here know of his YouTube channel, but I know some of you don't as well. So I thought I would give a personal introduction as to, you know, why I'm interested in Luke's work and why I brought him here. So Luke, most people will know Luke who people who know Luke will know him for his YouTube channel where he talks about digital sovereignty, Linux, free and open source software and kind of associated topics having to do with generally, you know, building an independent life today. And as people know who follow my podcast and my own writing, you know, I'm very interested in this new wave of opportunities for people who are exiting institutions and embarking on new, weird, creative and independent lifestyles, because it looks to me like weird. I'm a little offended by that. I don't know. Well, to a lot of people, it looks weird. And I think honestly, even for those of us who are doing it as well as anyone could hope, it's it's weird. Nonetheless, it's navigating it, navigating it is weird. Even for people who are succeeding in it. It's like there are a lot of people right now trying to carve out. Yeah, weird, weird pathways to to to achieve different forms of independence. And basically, Luke, I see you as as an as one example of someone who's done this in his own way and successfully. We obviously have in common a kind of academic history for those of you who don't know, Luke was a PhD student in linguistics at Arizona. And he has a kind of interesting story where he eventually kind of defected from the academic institutions, kind of similar to how I did in his own way in a different context, but he's never really told that story. And we have overlapping audiences. So I've received over the years, I've received many requests to have Luke on the podcast. So I've been meaning to do this for a while. Yeah, this has been like four years in the making. Like, I think it was four years ago, you contacted me first, which is probably better. We waited this time because, you know, I think, I don't know, you can you can sit on things longer and also more stuff has happened. And, you know, it's more real now. So yeah, totally. Exactly. And so, yeah, Luke had a promising academic trajectory as a grad student in linguistics. And he through, you know, the things he's learned and observed and the decisions he's made for himself, he decided that it would be better to just exit the institutions and carve out his own path. And he's done quite a good job of that, doing it in a very unique way with a very unique style. For instance, you know, something Luke is kind of known for is that he's he's very anti-internet, basically. He, you know, in his content, he frequently is, you know, making fun of YouTube and making fun of and really criticizing quite harshly a lot of the norms and patterns that we see kind of dominating people's lives today when they get addicted to different forms of content, as it's called on the internet. And so Luke has a very interesting style where he's basically built, you know, this kind of niche for himself, this platform for himself where he's able to, you know, express his ideas in the ways that he wants to over time to a to a non-trivial audience. He has a very healthy following on on YouTube. But and he does it in this really honest way that is pretty unique that you don't find a lot of out there on these channels where everyone is kind of like, you know, tends to do the same mimetic kind of saccharine, you know, like coaxing of their audience into, you know, dubious, you know, pathways, basically dubious, cognitive and emotional traps. Luke is always basically he's built a kind of a brand around not doing that. And so I think it's just very unique and interesting and admirable and anti-brand brand. Yes. Yeah, basically brand. But you pulled it off and you're and you're doing a good job with that. But a lot of the point that I'm driving at is that a lot of people don't actually know your whole story, even your audience, people who people who love your content don't actually know the whole story. And it's a topic that I've avoided for a long time because I felt like I mean, this is this is why we first came in contact because, you know, people would ask me, oh, you know, why did you leave academia like just at the beginning, you know, why do you do all this kind of stuff? And it's like kind of the, well, the thing is like, I don't want this to be, I don't know, maybe I don't think you agree with this or I think you agree with this as well. I don't want this to be about me because I think a lot of you who have been in academia, you've experienced this too. And a lot of us have similar stories. And really, I guess we're going to talk about kind of biographical stuff about me. But also the whole point is like, how how has that changed my way of looking at philosophy of science and lifestyle and stuff like that? That's right. And that's what matters, you know, totally, totally, totally. A lot of people in my audience are interested in these questions and how to figure this stuff out for themselves. So am I, I'm still figuring it out for myself as well. So yeah, I see you as an interesting case study. And a lot of people don't know exactly, you know, how things transpired for you and the decisions you made at different points. So my goal for this podcast is to basically tell that story and kind of pull out from you, your, you know, heuristics and frameworks for just how you how you've made these decisions and how you've kind of built this platform for yourself and this this quite independent and resilient lifestyle that you have now. So yeah, that's kind of the context here. I just wanted to kind of lay that out for people who yeah, maybe are curious about what we're going to be talking about today. So I think the best place to start is I want to learn more about just the basics of your your academic story, your academic narrative, because you like I said, you've never really told this. I know that you studied, you were a PhD student in linguistics at Arizona right in the same department where Chomsky was for some time. Yeah. And I know all I really know from talking to you is that you things kind of over time gradually just felt inhospitable to you or not promising to you. And you decided to you know, make a run for it. But but what happened exactly like how would you summarize your experience and and what what went down? Well, you know, the funny thing is, I did a master's at the University of Georgia. And it was a very it was a great experience. I think for a lot of people, you get in the graduate school. And especially if you're, you know, more intelligent person, you've always been acclimated to to that way of light that lifestyle, you get into grad school and you're like, oh my goodness, this is greatest thing that has ever happened to me. And that's how I felt when I did my master's degree. It was just like awesome. Like I really you really feel like the alpha chat in the room. You know, you can do basically whatever you want. Or really, you're now getting paid to do the stuff you were doing anyway. And I think it's a that's kind of how it felt. And that the department I was at, actually, it wasn't even a department at the time. The linguistics program was was very small and not very bureaucratic. And I really enjoyed that. But you know, we were talking a little bit before. One symbolically weirdly enough, you know, people talk about their academic influences. One of the people who ended up influencing my academic life a lot was Donald Trump. Because like, once I finished my master's degree, that was that was in the before times. That was like back in 2014, 2000 at the beginning of 2015, right? And I remember like it was it was I don't know if you ever seen the movie. What is it in the mouth of madness or something like that? Where it's not actually that good of a movie. But like in it, there's this point where he goes to, you know, it's this guy who's trying to find this like weird novelist kind of styled after H.P. Lovecraft. And he goes to this he's going to this weird town. And like driving there, he just has these supernatural experiences on the way and stuff like that. And it's just you can tell in the context of the movie he's going to like some kind of clown world. And that like literally happened for me. So I was when I finished UGA, I was going to drive all the way to Tucson, start my life in Arizona, didn't even have an apartment yet. And halfway through, I stayed the night in Dallas, Fort Worth. And that exactly was the night of the first Republican presidential debate, right? That was the night of only Rosie O'Donald and, you know, what's the other, what do you say to Rand Paul? You're having a hard time tonight. Classic, classic Trump one-liners. And so weirdly enough, like at the time I didn't think of this as like being a weird, any relevant to me at all. But I think Justin, everyone who's been in academia at this period realizes this was like a weird, like everything just went haywire. And so when I arrived in Arizona, I wasn't just arriving in a more bureaucratic department or something like that. I was arriving in like a kind of a weird inquisition. That's the only way I can describe it. It was kind of like a lot of departments, like, you know, we are far past the day of like even pretending to dispassionally study things. I think we've really degenerated, you know, this isn't even to say that I think that that's an ideal that we can reach. But, you know, things, it was like walking, it was like working in a, working as a janitor in a cult. That's how I described it to people, where it's like everyone there, like they know that you're not really a member of the cult and you know that they know that there's a reason you're there. But it's like kind of weird interacting with them and they can, they can always kind of sniff you out. I was not like at the time, I was, I never talked about politics. I wasn't, I didn't, I mean, frankly, I was, I was kind of like a maybe like a maybe libertarian leaning leftist kind of guy. But like, I think for a lot of people, I mean, this is the, you know, I, I had read earlier in my life, some, some of the kind of courtesy Arvin stuff, who, who have these, these views of the bureaucracy and the university system. But it was only around then things started like clicking like, oh, like, I understand like the kind of social nature and the, the systemic nature for the things that are going on in academia. And so that weirdly enough, so yeah, Donald Trump was like a weirdly not influential on me, but influential on the circumstances, because you really, you realize the kind of crazy world you're living in. Yeah, people don't remember that I'm many of you, I'm sure it do remember, like, generally in every institutional context, things just got crazy, like people got crazy. Like I don't, don't they call it Trump derangement syndrome is a, is a meme? That was real, like during those years, everyone seemed to get weirdly crazy and the atmosphere or the mood in, especially these kind of left leaning bureaucratic contexts got really, really kind of wild. So, so like, how did it manifest? Like, what did, like, what was your experience? Um, you know, it's not, the thing is, it's, firstly, it starts as a feeling. You kind of get this conspiratorial, you know, feeling about things. And I, there, I think, I mean, you know, I don't want to name names or anything like that. But there was a small group of graduate students who were agitating against me, not because, you know, again, I'm not a political or I wasn't a political person at the time. And I don't consider myself a political person. You were making YouTube videos, but they were like, no, no, I wasn't. Oh, this started, this started much later. Okay. So I started, um, you know, I, I, we were talking before this started, I think there's a sense in which also, like the, the system is naturally, um, I guess suspicious of people who have any kind of stern opinions, any kind of principled opposite, not even opposition, but I think who have a little too much testosterone in their system and might be liable to criticize you, even if they don't disagree with you. Yeah, they can tell, they can tell you're not going to fall in line. Right. So you're a problem. And that's kind of how it started for me. I think, um, you know, it's weird. Um, uh, I don't know that the Arizona stuff is, is, is interesting, but, uh, and there are a lot of details with also, you know, this was a period where, um, the witch hunts were happening for all, all of these, these people, not just, of course, no one in my department supported Trump, right? Um, I mean, eventually I did, but it was more like because of my exposure to this, like you, you kind of seen, see the psychosis of the system. And you actually realize, you know, what Trump was about, you know, it's not, it's not about some specific policy thing or something like that. Um, but the, the thing about leftists, uh, the, the thing about like institutionalized leftists is that like they might be saying crazy things, but they can definitely detect threats very well. And I think whatever you say about Trump's politics, there was the sense in which he is extremely dangerous for the, the kind of the, the background radiation of like the smug institutional leftism and like this, this, uh, uh, mightier than that, that'll kind of, um, uh, mindset, I guess. And like he was just unabashedly against this absolutely lampoon, the American political structure. And so that, that's why, um, you know, one of the reasons that things were just nuts, you know, in academia at this point. And, um, you know, anything can snowball into things getting more crazy. Um, you know, and it also, at other times, I remember, you know, one, one other thing that was going through my, my head at the time is it was getting to the point, uh, most departments, right? I, at least at the time, I think it's probably gotten worse now, but I would estimate like, you probably have like 10% of a lot of these departments that are just like hardcore, you know, stereotypical SJW types, right, that, that people always make fun of. And then the rest are like, they're, they're left leaning. Um, and they might even have like strong principles of like, you know, old school, free speech, kind of, kind of guys. And that's, that was the case at Arizona. But when push comes the shove, that 10%, they, everyone else is going to acquiesce to them. It's one of those, you know, uh, tyranny of the minority kind of things. Uh, and that's definitely how it was at Arizona. There were a lot of people in charge, a lot of professors in charge who, who frankly, I think felt kind of like they had to acquiesce to a lot of the very small number of students that were forcing this kind of stuff on them. And it was really common actually, you know, I don't want to give too much away, but you know, my advisor there, um, who's Tom Bever. Um, he's famous in the field. I don't know if anyone's heard of him, but, um, there, there's one point where someone had sent out some email on the listserv about transgenderism or something like that. And, and Tom, of course, he's, he's an old man. He's not, I mean now he's a impeccable, he has impeccable political credentials, right? In, in terms of like, uh, I don't know this in terms of what you're supposed to be as a professor. In fact, back to the, back in the day, actually, I didn't learn this till after I, I left Arizona, but he actually appeared on Bill Buckley's, um, what is it, firing line or something that's called, uh, he was debating against, uh, who is it? Like Richard Hernstein, the guy who wrote the bell curve with Charles Murray, right? So of course, you know, he was taken the, you know, uh, IQ isn't, you know, biological or more, you can look it up. It's on YouTube. He has this ridiculous mustache. Either way, you know, there was this time where, uh, he responded to something about transgenderism on the listserv or something. And he just got publicly chewed out by this graduate student, this like snot knows graduate student, just like berated him for like email after email, just in front of everyone. It's one of those things. And it just made me think like here, here is this guy who's like extremely accomplished in his field. And like he's achieved so much in the system. And you know, he even is like politically, you know, perfect in all the senses you're supposed to be if you're a member of the intelligentsia, intelligentsia. And here he is getting chewed out by this like bratty girl who it was just ridiculous. If I persist in the system is one of the things. Okay, so you're seeing things like this right happening, right? And in your case, like when let's fast forward a little bit to when you're starting to think about like, oh man, maybe I got to book it, right? You know, I think we I kind of think we should go back before even Arizona, right? Because I think maybe we talked about this yesterday, but I think there's a sense in which every academic, like academics don't do anything. Like I mean, I mean, most of them like they don't really accomplish things. And there's this there's this mindset in your brain. You always have to be like, okay, the money that I'm getting is somehow justified, right? And I think this is something I'd struggled with for a long time before I went into grad school for linguistics. I was actually in in economics and this was a big concern and you have to puff up the field you're in to, you know, megalomaniacal, you know, proportions to justify you doing it sometimes and receiving state money and stuff like that. And so I think, you know, I think the first thing is, am I actually contributing to the world in a meaningful sense? Like, is this Rube Goldberg machine where we're funding people to do like very insular research or like even theory internal research? Is that something that's actually even meaningful in the first place? So I think this wasn't, you know, I didn't leave academia because of, oh, crazy liberals. I actually thank those people because it really, I mean, they're they're kind of a symptom of a deeper problem. That's what I perceive. Like I don't hold it against any of those people. Anyone who has seriously wronged me, I will happily forgive them and I don't hold it against them. But I do think that it's it's more this is just a sim. This is it only happens because there are deeper problems. Okay, that's interesting. You said you would thank them. So like what did they teach you? What did they force you to realize sooner than you might have? Well, what did they teach me? I don't know. What do you thank them for? It's it's more like, you know, you can't be too mad when someone is using the system for their own enjoyment, right? It's it's not really their problem. I mean, it can be a very morally wrong to wrong thing to do that. But ultimately, I think the issue is not the people themselves. It's, you know, the the structure of of academia and what actually is going on. So but anyway, before this, of course, you know, I had I think starting out in economics, right? So just to give a background on that. When I was a kid, I suppose, well, started at the beginning. You know, when I was in high school, right? The first way I got into linguistics is I started learning Latin and Greek and stuff like this. And this was just something I personally studied. I just kind of randomly found a Latin book one day, found it really interesting. I would skip class in high school and run to the the library and like read like this commentary on the Bible and stuff like that. It's just just like whatever I wanted. And then when I when I went into, you know, when I went to do my bachelor's degree, right? So I decided on economics mainly because I thought it was a field that was like kind of interesting. And like it was it was it had it touched the real world, at least in my mind. But it was also kind of this this at least in my view at the period, it was a way of making politics kind of scientific, right? And I think a lot of academic disciplines, economics is definitely a perfect example where the entire epistemology of it is based on what is most convenient for people to preach to others, right? So economics is like one of these fields where it like if you want to offend an economist just call economics a pseudoscience. Like that's something they very much have like physics envy about all this kind of stuff. And it was one of the first times in my life when I had to grapple with, OK, so what does it mean to actually have like a theory? What does it mean for it to, you know, correspond to the world in some way? Like how can like is aggregate supply actually a thing? So let's talk about this. Let's talk about scientific method because, you know, you're you're you're well trained and you know these debates. And I believe that you're into, you know, fire fire Robin and epistemological anarchism. So talk about that. Like talk about what is your what like what is epistemological anarchism and why do you subscribe to that epistemological anarchism is just like the normal way of looking at science in all times and places. That's my summarize it for people. So I mean, I guess we we should summarize it by explaining the opposite of that. OK, so normally how things work nowadays I'll I'll make kind of a meta argument on an institutional argument. So the United States government more or less decides how to give us money in academia based on the peer review system. Now, this is a relatively recent invention within the 20th century. Now, people did peer review before, but it was something like very public, right? You you publish something and then someone like judges it, right? Now, all of that part is done privately, you know, in journals and then you you publish stuff and then they can talk about it, but it's all approved by basically the field beforehand. So the reason this is important is because that is often the metric of how people get funding. Right. So what that means like the the institutional incentive that provides for academics is pretty clear. It you want to rule out everyone else who's not a part of your party by virtue of them not being fit for science, right? So in the case of linguistics, right, there are actually a couple different linguistic frameworks, you can say linguistics weirdly enough, I have a lot of bad things to say about it. But one one good thing that you can say is that it's kind of polycentric at this point. And that's kind of an accident. Maybe a couple decades ago is all all Chomskin stuff. But now there's a bunch of different pockets, right? But in general, each of these frameworks will try to, you know, get their buddies funding and exclude everyone else by default. And what what this creates is an environment where people aren't necessarily like disproving each other's theories. They're more like just trying to say, well, they're not real science. So like Chomskin will be like, well, if you do statistics, if you do too much statistics and language, that's that's really like butterfly collecting. That's the word he like the expression he likes. Like it's you got to think about core principles. You can't look too much at data. That that's a little hefty, right? You're actually going to do that. Basically, it creates all these turf wars over like what is allowed. Right, right. Yeah, yeah. So epistemological anarchism would be kind of the opposite where I mean, it's more one of those let let a thousand schools bloom kind of thing. And I think although you look you can look at the history of science and you can see a whole lot of schools of thought and things like this. But there was never really like, you know, stoic philosophers didn't want to say, oh, all the other philosophers, they should just like not even be considered. Oh, I'm sure individual people might say that. But now there's very much like this institutional side of it that, you know, like and this is one of the reasons actually I think that science in nearly every field has kind of kind of become calcified in the 20th century. Right. So in linguistics, you know, Chomsky is the pioneer of this. Like Chomsky is an effective figure not because like his ideas are so great and people and I mean, we were talking before, right? A lot of linguists, they look at like Noam Chomsky's contributions and they're like kind of confused by his writing and like it's like opaque and like they're not even clear. Like what really is generative generative linguistics? What really is universal grammar? Right. Those terms, they sound like they mean something, but when you really get deep at it, it's kind of ambiguous. And you look at other fields like like economics and and where, you know, Keynesianism, this kind of neoclassical Keynesianism is now the norm or even frankly on the Steinian physics, right. And you see in the 20th century, as this peer review system, as this metric of funding different, you know, academic disciplines became, you know, more common, you kind of feel this slow down or I don't even want to say slow down, but there's this kind of stagnation in that there's one way that we can look at things in each of these fields and that's basically it. And you know, one of the things about this is just now this is not me saying, oh, I love diversity for diversity's sake or anything like that. But I think foundationally, you have to understand that like human reason is not fit to understand the world in a very simple sense. And I think that the use of different theoretical frameworks is that by their own nature, they can clue you in by their their underlying structure to different just like fundamentally, you will find data problems you wouldn't find in other cases or really, really, I think a better way of putting it is that actual scientific progress, if you want to use that term, it's very, I don't know, iffy, is having better and better phenomenology. And what I mean by that is like not developing better theories or like better equations, but phenomenology would be like relating, oh, the fact that, you know, this happens in an economy causes prices to increase or decrease like a kind of, or, you know, that's in the case of economics, but phenomenology increasing or improving your phenomenology would basically be finding out new things about the world, okay, to put it in a very simple sense. And in that sense, like I think mainstream science in many different disciplines is actually very bad at doing that. And if, when they do do it, they do it in very rarefied circumstances. Most scientific disciplines I really think at this point are solving, this is 100% the case in linguistics and generative linguistics, they're mostly solving theory internal problems that don't even make sense when you try to explain them to your grandma at, you know, Thanksgiving. So let me ask you this when, so you're going through your PhD program and you're kind of in this Trump deranged context where you didn't do anything wrong. There's no accusations against you. You just kind of feel like ambiantly the things are closing in on you and things feel inhospitable and things feel like your potential is feeling to you foreclosed. To walk us through like, how do you think about the decision to like, I got to pick up and go. I need to pursue a different life path. But I want you to tie it into this question of epistemology. I want you to tie this into the question of like, how do we know what we know? Like if you feel that you should do something or you feel that something else, somewhere else would be better, a different path would be better. How do you evaluate that critically and independently? How do you decide, oh, this other leap is the true leap that I should take for myself? How do you think about that as a kind of inferential question? How do you know that a different path is the true path? Well, I don't know if it's a question of epistemology, but I'll say, you know, the reason I said that I'm thankful to people who might have witch-hunted me, not even to accuse them of anything, but the reason I'm thankful for that is I think they really encourage, like by depriving me of this one path or by making it more difficult, it made it easier to do the thing that in my heart of hearts, I knew was the right thing to do, right? And that meant cutting my losses, leaving academia and pursuing a life where I can be more personally independent and things like this, right? That I think is, that's why when these bad things happen, you have to be very thankful. And the reason they happen is not just like magic, it's because when you're in a corrupt system, it does corrupt things. And so in the second half of your grad school career, you did start doing more YouTube videos, right? Yeah, yeah, eventually it was, well, really I started it as kind of an outlet, like I was kind of bored. I think I was doing, I was learning law tech at the time and I decided to put up some law tech tutorials to help my friends or whatever. So I started doing that kind of nervously and I started doing, at that point it was nearly all technology stuff and simple stuff. It wasn't until really I left academia that I started doing things that were more like a lifestyle-y or I could speak more freely. Did your work on YouTube affect your decision to leave academia? Were you kind of feeling like, oh, there's this whole other world out there and people are paying attention to what I'm saying. This I could just do this instead. Sure, I mean, I told you beforehand that there's a point where I realized, okay, I get way, I mean I was a very small channel back then, but I was like, I get way more views on YouTube than students I will ever have in class. You know what I mean? So you kind of realize however well-paid and academic may be, your influence on the world is actually pretty minimal. Like maybe you're part of this lovecraftian beast that it has an effect on the world. But as an individual, you don't really have that much unless you're just like the alpha of your particular field. So it did, it made me more intransigent, I think. And that's why as time went on, like I pretty quickly was like, okay, yeah, this is not gonna be for me. Maybe that made me more abrasive. But again, like I was never confrontational with people in graduate school. It's not like, I'm not like a hothead. Like very much the opposite of a hothead. If anything, it was like me sitting silently and them knowing that I thought they were idiots. So the YouTube channel did kind of make you feel like, okay, I have these other opportunities to build a life where I can express ideas, develop ideas, share ideas, and have some level of influence. Yeah, that's definitely true. But I will say that I think the end goal is, YouTube is not a real job either. I mean, that's just the fact of life. I think the real thing is getting back to, all right, let me change, I'm not changing subject, sure. I remember when I was a teenager, right? I was reading about like Chinese philosophy and there's a point where the philosopher Zhuangzi, he's an interesting guy, but he has this point in one of his writings where he says like, what is the ideal life, right? And if you're a kid who's a megalomaniac or something or you wanna have like this kind of effect, massive effect on the world, delusions of grandeur, right? Which I probably was as a teenager. And even as I grew up, like you wanna be the best, like you wanna kind of work within the system, work up the system, right? But Zhuangzi says, what is the ideal life, right? And I heard this first when I was a teenager and he says, well, the ideal life is this, right? So you live in a small village, okay? You live around family and friends and you have everything you need, you have everything you want. And then sometimes if you go on a stroll, you can walk out at the edge of the village and if you listen really hard, you can hear the chickens from the village next to you. But never in your life do you actually feel like you ever need to go to that village and you might forever be in the village you came up in, right? And I think that's really the ideal. And I'm not just saying like at an individual level, but I think that the world, I mean, there's a natural, like human psychology is built to survive in that world. It is not built to survive in the world of academia. Okay, this is something that is a historical accident coming from medieval monasteries or classical schools and things like this, nor is having a YouTube channel obviously because that is a weird parasocial thing. All of these things you have to look at as being like temporary. And like the only thing that I think humans are ever really going to enjoy is the environment they've been created in or evolved in if you prefer, right? That's what our psychology is for. Okay, so let's unpack this because so now you live in rural Florida, you have a very independent lifestyle. So you say thanks like you have an independent lifestyle. Oh, you have a weird lifestyle. I'm not saying that, but like I want to be clear, what I'm advocating for people is a return to normalcy. Okay, that's really what it is. Or you can call it exit, you know, whatever meme words people like, we're exiting those institutions and we're returning to normalcy. Like that's really the goal. And the thing about this is when people are plugged into the system, they're so we got to win elections. We got to do this, that and the other. I have to be a part of this. When, if you just kind of unplug from it, you realize, oh, I actually have a massive amount of control over my life. I can be a big deal in my community. I can have a lot of effect on the world and my family and all this kind of stuff. So I definitely don't want to look like, you know, independence is like, it's the norm in all times and places. And even 100 years ago, it was perfectly normal. Everyone was a doomsday prepper back then, right? Everyone kept as much food as they could to survive the winter and more. Like that's just normal. And so I want to be clear, I'm not endorsing like a meme lifestyle. I'm endorsing like the human lifestyle. Totally, that's a great point. So sorry to nitpick that one word you said. No, it's very good. And to be clear, before when I said weird, I was more referring to myself. No, I didn't. But yeah, yeah. This is awesome, let's unpack this because the reason this is so interesting is that you're right. You're just returning to normalcy, but very few people who have a go at a kind of more cosmopolitan, highly educated, you know, high status career path, very few of them actually make the transition back to normalcy successful. Well, because it's comforting. Well, this is what you have some alpha on and this is what you are kind of unique and impressive on. There are not many people who, you know, do a PhD program, they're, you know, rubbing elbows with Chomsky, their advisor is saying that they're gonna be the next Chomsky. You know, there's not many people like that who kind of look at it. They're kind of like, this is a sinking ship and it's also corrupt and awful. And I'm going to go live a normal life in rural Florida. So let's unpack that. That's what I want to understand, like how you think about that because a lot of people can't make that transition. Like a lot of people, once they're kind of, you know, they're trying to get a PhD, they're living in a big city, they have all these aspirations, you know, it's like, how do you uncut from that? You have to pray for bad things to happen in your life. Okay, that's the real thing because that's what happened to me. The decision became a lot easier when you feel the pressure like, oh, I don't know, I mean, well, okay. So I told you this before we started about the thing with my qualifying paper. So, you know, just to say it very briefly. So I was a PhD candidate, which means basically you got everything but your dissertation. I'd written two very, well, I don't want to say they were fantastic qualifying papers because I wrote them and it sounds arrogant, but they were innovative. I'll just say that. You're proud of that. Yeah, I thought they were very good. But anyway, so there's one time I get called in to the, by the department head and my advisor, I'm like, ooh, what is this about? I'm sure they're going to give me a ribbon because of, you know, all the great things I've done. And they basically said, well, you know, we went through your qualifying paper with a fine tooth comb and, oh, you know, we don't feel you cited this example correctly. You know, I think you put it at 42A or you put it at the end of the block of 42. It should have been on 42A. I don't think you got 42B from this original source, all this kind of stuff. This is like totally, you know, inconsequential stuff. But because of this, they decided, well, you know what? We're going to have to revoke your PhD candidacy status, right? And at this point, this was like such a bizarre, you know, they're not like accusing me of like, you know, fraud or anything like that. It's basically like you punctuation problems, the equivalent, right? And I fixed it actually that day, but I was extremely upset. This was like after I decided to leave, right? And so, what was I going to say? But like the, oh, and they also called me back. I didn't go to classes for like two weeks after that because I was like, steaming. I mean, I don't really get angry about things, but I'm like, why do I even bother? But eventually they called me back and said, well, actually we looked at the rules. We can't actually do that. So I guess you're still a PhD candidate, which is, you know, well, that's how this, that's how they work. You know what I mean? Like that's not his, but I'm just very thankful that stuff like that happened, right? Because that is the kind of thing when you feel the walls closing in, in like, again, a corrupt system, like it just, it clears things up for you. Because there's so many people who basically right now are living like a fairly cushy life. Maybe they're a software engineer or something. They're like making good money, but they, or they're an academic, you know, whatever, making good money, have some status or whatever. But they feel really unhappy. They feel like, you know, they know that there is probably a better, more wholesome life out there for them if they were to try it, but they can't make that leap. So what do you think is holding most people back from like taking chances to pursue a more independent wholesome life? Well, firstly, most people are gonna be taking a pay cut. It might not actually be a real, like in adjusted terms, a real pay cut. Like it might just be, like you're making less, but you're also paying less. But that's one difficult thing to sell to your wife, firstly. I did all this while I was single. So like, I was almost delusional because I was like, oh, you know, if I really try hard on YouTube, I can make like maybe $1,000 a month and I'll survive on that and I'll buy a house eventually. Which, you know, thankfully other things worked out, but if you're a single guy, you could do that, right? Like you can take those kind of risks. So like, you know, having to make decisions for other people, that's a difficult thing. So if you wanna do this, do it, if you're single, do it now, if you're a guy. Also, I think like, honestly, that might be a lot of it. Like just the financial risk. And also, I think there's the sunk cost fallacy, right? So I definitely had that idea. I've been spending 10 years in this. What am I gonna do? Just like leave. I mean, that's fallacious reasoning, but like if you're dying in a fiery furnace, oh, I've been in here for like five minutes now. I guess it's been a waste if I didn't. Yeah, it's stupid. Get out of it. So I think that's another thing. And you know, I have a friend now. He's probably watching this, but I'm gonna say it anyway. You know, he's doing a PhD. I'm not gonna say where, because you could identify him. But which I was trying to convince him out of for a long time and he's there in his cope. This is a cope that I had as well. Is that, oh, well, you know, they just be paying someone else instead of me, you know? So I'm actually taking money from the system. Like that's how you rationalize it, right? Which, no, like actually this is really bad for you. I wanna talk about mental independence or maybe mental hygiene is a better word. Because for people who don't know, Luke like basically only uses free and open source software. He doesn't use anything else he refuses to. But he also doesn't have Netflix. He doesn't have a TV. He was surprised when I said I didn't have Netflix. So Luke has very conscientiously kind of, yeah, exited kind of the entire kind of like amusement matrix that most of us certainly myself are still very much trapped in. And I just find it fascinating people who can do this. And so what you- It's not difficult. Like that's- It's not difficult, but yet it is for some people. So this is what's paradoxical about it, you know? But like most of the people in this room, I think people who follow my stuff, like we all aspire to, you know, basically spend less of our time wasting it on like bullshit social media, bullshit, you know, like computer stuff that's just like destroying our brains. And really like most of us have a deep intuition that if we just spent as much time as possible just reading books and writing, like that would be the best possible thing. And you know, all of us do that to it, to our own degree to the best of our ability. But you kind of have like gone further on that point then maybe anyone, because you've really cut yourself off from everything else. So walking us through that like, do you think everyone should do that? Is that like a no brainer? Like is your view that like everyone is being mentally poisoned and they should like really cold turkey like cut themselves off from all of it? Or like how do you think about it? Yeah, cold turkey if you can. Yeah, I mean, don't you all agree? I don't know. I mean, like, I would say that if I look back at my life, what's my biggest meta regret? My biggest meta regret is not being more absurd and intransigent and true to my principles earlier. You know what I mean? And I think most people, like if you're weaning yourself off Netflix, that's how you're gonna feel too. You're gonna be like, why didn't I do this earlier? I don't, I don't actually need this. I think that is usually how it is. It's just people are comfortable with what they're comfortable with. And you know, as you stand around, I mean, the thing is like also in my personal life, I'm not like, you know, I might state opinions on YouTube and stuff like that, but I'm very, I like to think. I don't know, you can say if I'm actually like this. I like to think I'm very accommodating of people who are very much Netflix junkies and, you know, they're all in this kind of stuff. But I think just having the aura about you that like, oh, I find cell phones annoying. Like I think that has an effect on people just like being around them. They can just, I don't know, maybe it's your pheromones or your testosterone level. I don't know, they just detect, you know, they feel like it's funny. Actually, every girl in my life recently has been preemptively apologizing to me for listening to Taylor Swift's new album. I didn't know she had a new album, but they feel like they need to come up to me and say, Luke, I know what you're gonna say, but I've been listening to Taylor Swift. I'm sorry, like, I don't know. Anyway, so. So you're saying that when you cut yourself off from the amusement matrix, then you start to like, zood this kind of like subtle power that people. I've always been exuding something. I don't know if it's a me thing or what. But I guess what you're trying to communicate is that it actually, people feel it and see it and understand it more than you might expect. Right, so we had this conversation before we turned on the mic. Oh, we should have just had the mics going like all day. But you asked me something about, oh, who's influenced me? So here's my take on influencers. I don't believe they actually exist. I don't believe I'm an influencer. I think really what happens is that in your heart of hearts, like you kind of already know what's true and what's not. And what you don't need is someone to influence you to that opinion. What you need is for someone to say that and then you're like, yeah, you know what? I've always thought that. Right. And so when I look back at like people I've read, I've never really felt influenced by them, but I've been like more inspired to allow myself to think the things that I already thought. And I think that's usually like, when you are on your phone, when you're like eyes are crusty, staring at your phone on your bed before going to bed, I think you already know that you're doing something really weird. And like I am not to blame for highlighting that. It's so true. It's so true. And as someone who's like not, I spent a lot of time reading and writing, but I'm not at all above these like super normal, like common, abnormal, but common, bugman habits that you describe. I'm guilty of all of them occasionally. And so I understand maybe my questions almost sound a little stupid because you're just like preaching normalcy. And I'm like, but how do you do it? Well, normalcy is not very common. It might be normal, but it's not common. But I guess are there any other things that you've seen that people might not know? Like so you said, for instance, like when you do this, you know, people see it and notice it and it has an effect that you might not expect. Are there other things you've noticed, maybe benefits or powers that you've gained from cutting yourself off from all this stuff that maybe would surprise people to learn about? Are there other forms of happy surprises that you get from this kind of thing that you wouldn't necessarily expect? I would just say you learn to appreciate life more. And like, I'm already preemptively tearing up. Maybe I'll change what I was gonna say. You have like a more sensitive, just like nature. No, I mean, like... No, man, this is awkward. Like I would just say that, well, I'll say something different because, you know. I would just say you learn to relate to people. It's cool, yeah, it's cool, man, it's cool. Whatever. Yeah, say the thing you're gonna say. Like you learn to enjoy conversations with people you wouldn't enjoy otherwise. And you learn to really get out of your comfort zone. And you savor communication with people you have in real life. And so when you're reliant on Netflix or something like this, you really are losing something that I don't know. I just, in my life, when I was a kid, right? The idea of like talking to an old person or like talking to, like basically, actually when I was a kid, the only thing I wanted to talk to is like girls who were my age or younger. And that was about it. And I think like overcoming that and being able to look at people as individual people and appreciate them. And that is something that I think, like you're gonna go through a phase of boredom, okay, when you cut yourself out of this stuff. But then you're gonna realize I was on a drug the whole time. And you start like just craving, like I don't know, when I was a kid I always thought I was like extremely introverted, right? And kind of autistic. And I realized, no, that was like the environment I was in. That wasn't actually me. So that's what I would say, like I don't have anything tear-jerking to, I don't know, maybe when you experience it, you'll understand it. Which I'm sure all of us experience some of that, but you'll just feel like a fool. Because you're really like piddling your life away if you're just like too invested in this like consumer like entertainment culture. That's what I have to say. And what do you think are the biggest mistakes that people make in like normie bug men, like myself, who kind of like have big aspirations to like, you know, live in a big city and be like cosmopolitan or whatever. Like what are the biggest kind of mental mistakes or pitfalls or traps that you think like normal kind of like or abnormal, like unhealthy aspirational bug man types make? That lifestyle appeals to people because it feels good and like it's fun to, I don't know, like the spontaneous enjoyment is so great that the long-term psychological effects, they're just kind of, they're long-term and the long-term are all dead, right? And I think it's more, I don't know, like I, this might be my psychological type, but I, very young as a kid, like I got really annoyed by kind of superficial entertainment. I always hated like, I don't know, Disney stuff and like, you know, I got around the age of 10, I stopped watching TV entirely and I've never picked TV up again. Just because like you kind of, like what I would actually recommend to people is not in your attempt to quit all of the stuff called turkey. Like think about how often you're actually complaining about all these things. Like about, oh, the media's all propaganda, the media's all weird pedophiles and stuff. Like really, like you could just not watch it at all. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And you know, the thing that annoyed me for so many years is like all the, you know, people I know who are conservatives who are always complaining incessantly about Amazon or Facebook and all this kind of stuff. And they're using and buying stuff from Amazon literally every day. Like could you please just go, could you stick to your principles and you'll enjoy your life a whole lot more? And again, as I said, my biggest regret is not being more like that earlier and not being more intense. And like you don't have to be like a butthole to people. Like, you know, I'll stand for print. I'm not the kind of guy who goes to like Best Buy and says, I'm not wearing a mask. I don't care, blah, blah, blah, it makes the scene. I'm not like that. But like, I don't know, does Best Buy still do that? Either way, I'm never buying from Best Buy again. I don't know, but I had a friend who was like bragging to me that he did that at Best Buy. And I was like, dude, come on. But like I do think at an individual level you have to stick to your principles. And the sooner you do that, the sooner you admit to yourself what you actually know to be true. I don't know, this sounds like really like obvious self-help stuff. Yeah, I know, I hear you. I feel bad. But you know, again, sometimes people just need to hear someone else say the stuff they know that's already true. Yeah, no, totally. So one of the things that's interesting about you though is that you have this like really, you know, return to normalcy, back to the land, independence, clear yourself from the matrix kind of attitude and lifestyle that you're true to. But you also publish to the internet. And it's not in any way a contradiction necessarily. No, it is a contradiction. Well, it's not necessarily. But my point is that it's interesting just because a lot of the people who feel the way that you do and who have the principle character to actually follow through on it are also gonna be highly likely to say, oh, posting videos to YouTube isn't worth it. So like how do you think that through? Like why, given these feelings and attitudes you have and your consistency with living them through, like how do you see the judicious and wholesome use of the internet to do things like express ideas, develop ideas? I am weaning myself off the internet as well. You're trying to stop publishing as well? Well, it's not an issue of trying. Like I mean, I think it's kind of obvious if you watch my videos, a lot of it. I mean, a lot of times I'm complaining about things I used to do, you know, five or 10 years ago, right? And I think everyone still has, I think my goal is to be kind of independent of that. Like I don't psychologically need my YouTube channel right now, but I do think occasionally it's nice just, as long as it doesn't interfere with the rest of my life, I think it's not like disturbing me too much. Now there was a brief period back in 2018 when I was doing a video every day and I thought about it way too much. But I think if you look at it as kind of just this thing, you like writing in a journal every once in a while, in that sense it's not really affecting me that much. And I think that's the appropriate way to deal with like making videos, posting blog posts, stuff like that. Where you know, you get, it's, you know, you have a thing with people you've met online and that's fair, but it's just like the people you know in real life have to be number one and eventually you can, you know, let those groups intermix and meet new people and stuff like that. But I just wanna make sure that that internet life does not interfere with the things that matter. Like if I, I might get a lot of important GitHub pull requests, but like if, I don't know, someone needs me at their house for some reason, I'm gonna go there. Like no matter how trivial it is. So it's just an issue, it's kind of an issue of priorities and I'm not totally against using the internet for like as kind of a soapbox. But I do think also like the more I'm invested in it, the more problematic it is. So it's a vice, I think it's doing good for people. But you see it as a vice. It's hard to say, I don't know. I feel like you give a lot of good advice to young guys and stuff like that. I feel like it's- I'm conflicted of it. Like I'm worried how it affects me. I hope that it affects other people in a positive way. But I wanna make absolutely, I'm conflicted about it. I understand like, listen, I've met lots of people who know me online and have been positively affected by me, but I will just say, again, my goal is returning to Zhuangzi's village. And so you still do see it as essentially like a kind of, almost an indulgence on your part. Like you let yourself do this because it's kind of fun or whatever. No, no, no, not even because it's fun. It's because this is the world we live in, right? Like I'm not against someone like using Facebook or something for a good end or something like that, right? Like ideally also I'd like to live in a community where I don't have to use a car, okay? But I own a car, right? And there's a, because I live in a place where we use cars, right? Like we have to survive. And I think there's a sense in which I'm not gonna knock. I think it's very clear to people when you are using social media and stuff as a vice versus you're using them for some utilitarian end. And I think in most cases they just suck up so much of people's lives that it's really vicious. And have you ever thought about growing the channel more aggressively and then let you consider it? But did you even like think like, and then reject it? But did you think like maybe I could do this? Should I, did you ever like evaluate that? Or it was never on the table? I think my channel is our, right now I have way more subscribers than I ever thought I'd get. I mean, I thought I was always gonna be like, you know, 5, 10,000 or something like that. So I kind of already feel like I've overstayed my welcome. I think a part of my mind was like when I hit 100,000 I'm quitting or something. So now I'm, excuse me, all the kombucha is just going straight to my head. I have a very healthy gut right now. So like I kind of feel like I'm, I've never been like I want to be really big on YouTube because I think when you experience the weird parasocial relationships, you're like, I don't really, I don't wanna do that. This is why the so-called YouTube burnout is a thing. Sounds like the most bratty thing in the universe. Oh, I post a video on YouTube and it's just so hard to be me. And these people who are getting millions of dollars have millions of subscribers. But that happens for a reason, right? Because you are doing something, again, you're not living in the village. You're not living in Zhuangzi's village. You have this, you're in this like social situation where the incentive scheme is all screwed up, right? So you're not getting like your actions are not being repaid with the, I don't know, it's just unnatural, right? And so that's why I think a lot of people don't enjoy it when they get big. And I feel the same way because, you know, so that's why I never, I mean, maybe it'd be nice to have a million subscribers, but like that's never been like a, I don't really want it. Because you feel like trying to grow your channel more ambitiously would be a kind of unwholesome, a kind of betrayal of your values of what you think real life should be. Well, also as you said at the beginning, like I'm, you know, more like, I don't wanna say I'm authentic because now it's coming out of my mouth and it's silent sound. But like there is a sense in which I've always just turned on the camera and done stuff. Like it's never been like an official thing. So that said, that's my mindset. So I'm never like, oh, I hope I have this many subscribers by this day. It's just not, it's not, I don't care. Well, I think what's cool about your story and your YouTube channel as a case study for, especially more academically inclined, you know, sophisticated thinkers, writers, creators, whatever you wanna call them. Sophisticated. Is that, well, what's cool about you in my opinion, one of the reasons I wanted to have you out here is that you've built a pretty substantial audience with that attitude. Like that's what's interesting is cause a lot of people when they, a lot of people who build large audiences have a kind of more purposeful, ambitious, power hungry kind of mentality. And you've done it with this sincere detachment and kind of just like, you turn on the camera, you say what you think, you try not to get too into it, you try not to worry about it too much. And yet you've been able to make a dent in the world. I think more people, I think people, that's an undersold market. I think if more people did that, they would also be popular. That's all I can say. And the other weird thing about my channel is like, you know, I started out doing tutorials on like document formatting. Okay, like who watches that? Like who cares? And then like there's such a weird mixed bag, I started putting up weird linguistics presentations I give or just have videos talking about whatever. So like I've never had like a set brand, yet people just watch me. I think, I think kind of for that reason, because on one side, like I'm kind of genuine, but I think it really comes down to what we were talking about before. Like people just want to hear what they already know is true. So I'm not like kind of confirmation bias kind of way, but like when someone is like kind of honest about the things that, you know, they know are true, like. Yeah, it has this like soothing slash inspiring effect to just hear things you basically already know, but you're hearing someone else say them. No, it's like totally pathetic, but it's a very, very real, right? It's like, and frankly, sometimes like, it's just helpful for people to kind of like rehearse things that they already think and feel. But to hear someone else say it, like people get addicted to basically hearing on rewind things they already think and feel. It just has to be followed up with action. That's the only thing that I'm really, I think it's really important because if you just, if you like that because it's enjoying, enjoying, enjoyable, enjoyable. Enjoyable, yeah. Yeah, that's right. Then it just becomes, you know, you're just consuming another product, right? And it's not actually something that is actionable in your life, right? So it has to be, I want to inspire people to action. I don't want to inspire them to like good feelings. That's actually kind of stupid. Right, right, I like that. So you would eventually become an Orthodox Christian. Let's talk about that a little bit because it seems to me like there's a correlation here. I mean, I feel like I know so many people nowadays who are both, you know, embarking on some kind of exit from institutions who are also finding themselves, you know, going down the path of Christianity. Do you think there's an underlying correlation and what is it? I think there are probably multiple correlations here. At one level, I think specifically, well, firstly, there's the raw sense of like tradition, right? And you could argue that, oh, you know, maybe Roman Catholicism has this. I think Orthodoxy is the, you know, that historically the most historical church, right? It has the most continuity. And I think there is some sense in which, okay, here's a social institution which on its face value, right? Like, we can all be Reddit atheists at some point and analyze things like kind of logically and like from our own perspective. But I think one recurring theme, and this is like one of the most important themes in Christianity, and it's also one of the most important themes in kind of epistemology is that whether you believe that the human mind is created or evolved, it is not fit to look at the world and simply understand it, right? So we, and that's to say that like the logical categories that exist in our brains do not necessarily correspond to things out there, right? So that means that, and this, like modern physics is rife with this kind of stuff even if you're skeptical of the entirety of modern physics, right? There is some sense in which, okay, quantum mechanics, right? So this is something that our brain is like not really fit to understand. It's like so counterintuitive, right? And this is something that we're very much used to now or even something like gravity. Like gravity, in our society, we're used to this concept. We're used to this concept that like matter attracts matter. But when it was first put into words by Newton, that was like a bizarre and a cult idea that is obviously against intuition. That's not what happens on Earth. It's just this weird story that kind of unifies the movement of the planets with the fact that things fall on Earth. It doesn't seem to be at all related, right? So human reason is not fit to understand the world. And that's why, if I are a band actually in, sorry, this kombucha, I'm sorry guys, I'm sorry. I shouldn't have drunk it. But I can't stop drinking it. It's so good. It's my favorite flavor, pink lady apple. Okay, so like Fayyara Band actually even makes the argument that like when you're critiquing scientific theories, you have to be able to, you have to even take into account like myth and like biblical creationism and like all these theories that mainstream science would like totally dismiss. And one of the reasons is like when you have like a countervailing framework, like sometimes for reasons I said before, nowadays in institutionalized science, you have this very, you have this kind of stasis where there's this, we're at some kind of Nash equilibrium where everyone is just kind of circulating around some consensus that is nearly certainly always wrong. So sometimes what you need is just something to shake up the entire enterprise. You need some group of people who believe that the Earth is 6,000 years old to come in and say, oh, well this is what we believe. And that is actually gonna encourage a lot of like research and novel ways, okay? So that's what Fayyarraban argues. And I think that that's very much true. And that's what we don't have nowadays. And the thing also, how this is related to Christianity of course is, you know, human reason, I mean, this is one of the first, this is like an every other proverb, right? But like man's wisdom is ultimately insufficient, right? And so a lot of the things we look at in religion or human society, fundamentally like they don't make sense to us at an intuitive level. And the problem with the enlightenment and the problem with, you know, leftism, let's say that, is it, as its foundational assumption, it's the idea that human reason is the metric to which we compare everything, right? So if I look at an institution, let's say I look at marriage or I look at like gender relationships, right? Oh, so why are there different social expectations for men and women? I don't understand that. Therefore it's irrational, right? So that's a terrorist, that's a atrocious fallacy. Like that's a terrible way of looking at things because the reality is we might live in a world where quite literally no one understands why a social institution works the way it is. But it's a long-term kind of game theoretic solution for the problems that humanity faces. So in the case of marriage, right? So, you know, why does marriage exist? Oh, marriage is irrational for whatever reason. But, you know, I guess if you're a sociobiologist, you can say something like, well, you know, marriage, for men it solves the issue of, you know, it disambiguates paternity. And for women it assures that their children are gonna be raised, right? So there's some kind of efficiency to these solutions. Now no one sat down and thought that up. Okay, and this is the nature of human society and this is why I think the Enlightenment is such a problem because it says everything has to be subject to my perception of the world or reason as they call it. And that's one of the big problems, I would say. Yeah, so I guess what it has in common is that in academia one kind of starts to begin to feel like, you know, everything that we're doing here with our brains trying to be really smart and model the world. A lot of it is actually not even doing what it's saying it's trying to do. You start to see, there's a lot of falsehoods slipped in there, there's a lot of disingenuous motives, disingenuous kind of operations underneath the hood of all of that. You see that and you're kind of like, okay, you know, maybe this academia thing is not what it initially pretended to be. And then you start to look a little deeper and you're kind of like, oh, well, actually all of the Enlightenment and like the rationally controlled modern world kind of has a lot of the same characteristics. And so that kind of points back to a kind of just like you moved to rural Florida and returned to normalcy. You also on a kind of a deeper level you kind of returned to the normalcy of Christendom. Sure, sure. And there are a lot of other things that played into that. I think specifically, you know, why I reconsidered Christianity is. Sorry, can I put you. One of the reasons I reconsidered Christianity is just that I had, I started reading like classical philosophy and actually not even classical, more like post-classical philosophy where like hermetic stuff and like Gnostic stuff and just other like ways of looking at, I guess, philosophy of the period, which okay, so here's the thing about the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment tries to categorize religion and non-religion as to like non-overlapping magisteria to use Gould's terminology. So there's reality and then there's this stuff called religion and that's like, oh, moral sentiments or something like that. And that's never been the way that anyone has looked at it until the modern world. And I started looking to like, you know, I read weird esoteric stuff like the Hermetic Corpus and looking at it, my brain categorized that as philosophy, right? And so here I hear, oh, they're talking about all this interesting stuff like the logos and you know, and they're talking about like consciousness and you know, how they relate to God and all this kind of stuff. And then like there's a point where it clicked and I was like, wait, the logos, wherever I heard that word before, like it's all, it's all, it actually is a derivative of Christian theology, right? So the thing about like Christianity, the thing about any successful religion, now I grew up in evangelicalism, right? And the thing, the most unfortunate thing about like evangelicalism in America is that, and I don't mean this as an offense to any evangelicals, but it's kind of, it doesn't really work for smart people. I really don't mean that as an offensive thing, but there's a sense in which it has an appeal, like it appeals to your lizard brain, the idea of God and his judgment and things like this. But traditionally like Orthodox Christianity, like for a religion to be a true and longstanding religion as well, it has to appeal to people of all cognitive stripes. So there's a sense in which you can interpret a religion orthodoxy in very much the way that, someone can, you can use simple terms like heaven and hell and punishment and all this kind of stuff. All of that is perfectly orthodox and Christian and that's biblical, but at the same time, there's kind of an intellectual strata where, okay, here's what's actually going on. Here's the process of theosis. Here is the logos and what all this means, what it meant in classical philosophy. So like modern evangelicalism kind of has lost that. It's just kind of utterly gone. And the only thing that's left, so if you're a high IQ individual, that sounds like a total masturbatory term, but a lot of like intelligent people, evangelicalism and a lot of modern religion, it's just so dumbed down, that they don't really even have a home. And so like re-familiarizing myself with orthodox theology was very refreshing because I was like, oh, so this weirdly enough, like because it's critical of reason because, well, there's logos, but human reason itself is deficient, right? It appeals to my view of epistemology and it's also like I can accept it as a philosophical framework and I see the historicity of it. All of this clicks, all of this makes perfect sense. And I never would have thought, I was probably an atheist for 10, 11, 12, 13 years. I don't know how long, but I went originally through the smug, I'm better than everyone else phase. Eventually I was like, well, maybe religion is for like dumb people or something. But again, not in a condescending way, but like, and I think as time, I never would have thought, I never would have thought I would have become a Christian again. I just can't, I can't even believe, even like maybe five years ago, I wouldn't have believed it. But I don't know, so yeah, that's kind of it. Yeah, so you're also a polyglot I believe in. So, and you don't have Netflix, so you read a lot of old books. Are there particular books or particular angles into all of this that on the Christianity front, particularly clicked for you? Like you mentioned, you mentioned some examples, but. Yeah, I read the Hermetic Corpus, which is not Christian at all, but. Yeah, were there particular realizations or moments where you're like saw something that maybe other people here, like people here would not know about because it's very obscure? Weirdly, like no, like I think that, you know, I have read a bunch of stuff, but that's more like after all this happened. I think that a lot of it is like God working on you individually. I don't think it's, I also like I'm not like, I'm not a big reader. I know that's a weird thing to say, like, but I'm not, I mean, I have a bunch of books. I've read a bunch of books, but like I don't really look at myself as a reader. And I think a lot of times, maybe books work for some people, but they've never really had that much effect on me. So I think it's more, I guess I'm more of a life experience guy. That's all I could say. I do, I don't know if there's anything else you're looking for there. Yeah, no, I was just curious, because you read multiple languages and you have a taste for some obscure books. So I just wanted to know where is the alpha in like obscure early Christianity stuff? I have, I would just say like read any of it, like read anything theological and you're gonna realize that, oh, the world is very different from how I expected. Like I used to tell people like, even when I just, you know, the first language I learned, aside from English, of course, was Latin. And, you know, the things that you learn from just looking at a different time and place and culture are very unexpected. Even one that seems superficially similar, you never really know exactly what's gonna happen with that. And I think that really it definitely, it puts, it gives you more of a postmodern view of like our kind of liberal universalism. It really calls out all of that into question. And that's the only thing that I can really say, but I think that could happen with anything. I mean, that happened when I learned Latin, when I was learning like Chinese and Chinese stuff, like Chinese writings and stuff. It could happen to anyone in any way. I think it's more just like unplug from the world that we live in just a little bit. Just from the time and place we are, like get off the Netflix, go find almost anything and you're gonna be fine or even better than an intellectual, I mean, one of the other big differences between the East and the West and Christianity. The Orthodox Church, right? So the Orthodox Church, of course, has a distinction between essences and energies, right? So that sounds like a weird theological point, but one of the things that means is that we can experience God within his energies in our lifetime. Whereas in the West, the idea, and this is like one of the defining features that would cause the enlightenment and everything else, but in the West, there's this idea that, well, we can't really experience God in our lifetime on this earth. So the greatest pursuit is actually intellectual pursuits. So it's learning things, right? So that's where scholasticism became such a big thing in the West. That's ultimately where the enlightenment came from because there's this, again, it's already rejecting that Christian notion of human reason is deficient in some way. It's incomplete, right? Where if you think that intellectual pursuits are the highest thing that you can do, you're kind of already doing something wrong. And I think that is one of the things, like reason got knocked off of its throne in my life, or at least human reason, right? There's a different, there's a very different thing. My own perception got knocked off from the throne, and that changed my view of epistemology and of religion and of many other things. And even how I interact with people, I think it's important to always give people the benefit of the doubt. Now, I will be very intransigent when I'm talking about groups and principles and stuff, but at an individual level, you have to, I mean, this is just a fact of life. People do things for reasons, okay? There are always, no matter how stupid the things they're doing, they're doing them for reasons. And I think if you're a sane person, you have to understand why that's happening. And of course it doesn't seem rational to you, but in order to reach someone, you have to understand how they think, right? You have to be able to talk to them. Now that's not something that I shout from the internet because it's more like a thing. When I meet a person in real life, that's how you have to act to them. But that's my view of it. Earlier today, you said you're a real life maxi. Did I? Yeah, that sounds like something I said. Yeah. That happens all the time. My friend, the other, I don't know if I could say that. Well, I just think that's interesting. I don't know if you wanna expand on that or say more about what that means because it is interesting, like what you're saying right now about intellectualism and how in the Western Christian tradition already the intellectual focus is arguably a kind of pitfall in itself. And so you're so much of a real life maxi that even books you try not to fixate on. Yeah, I wouldn't say I try not to. I actually just have a really lowest tension span. Thankfully, we can thank God for that. It's hard for me to read books sometimes. Even though I have like, I've read lots of books. But basically you're just all in on in-person relationships in your immediate surroundings and that is pretty much the most important thing in the world to you. Right, right, yeah. I mean, it's basically like every day I wanna have dinner with someone different. Like that's kinda how I look at things. And I would not trade that for anything. I don't know how else to say it. And like it's just an invent, like again, when you're gonna get to, I think I said this in a YouTube video at some, maybe sometime recently, but like you're not gonna get to the end of your life and be like, oh, if only I'd posted this blog poster, you know, you're gonna be like, why didn't I spend more time with my family and my friends and why wasn't I a real life maxi? Because again, like you don't wanna have delusions of grandeur. Like you don't wanna be like, oh, I wanna participate on the internet just because I wanna affect everything, right? Because it is true that you get, I have a platform on the internet. Like I can affect lots of things and stuff and that's nice to be able to do. But like that is not the enjoyment that you're gonna get from your life and that's really not what a human should be do. Like if you're doing it, it has to be like a pastime. Like you can't let it get in the way of the things that actually matter. That's what I would say, so. Because it is, it's unwholesome, it's sinful, it's bad. I wouldn't say sinful, that's. What exactly is the problem, do you think? Like how do you say, I'm curious. As I said before, like human psychology is built to a particular lifestyle. So it's just unhealthy. It's a trap that you could fall in and it's unhealthy, like you'll destroy yourself as much as anything. Yeah, yeah, even if it's just a little bit, I mean, obviously, again, like I'm not against using the internet or something like that, but it just cannot be something that takes up your entire life. That's basically what I'm getting at. I respect that. So maybe just one more question. I think dinner's coming up soon. So I think my final question is just, I'm curious how you see the near term future of all of these things. I think there's a lot of people are starting to realize how badly their brains are being destroyed by the different kinds of technologies that we're all now dependent on and the amusement matrix that we're all very much kind of stuck in or at least many people are stuck in. So there's, I think an extraordinary kind of awakening and realization of how bad it's become. And there's a lot of smart, capable people who are pretty willing to do what it takes to get out of that. There's a lot of demand nowadays for just technological independence, mental independence, independent lifestyle. So it seems like, and then there's also many interesting kind of technological trends, let's call them, or developments going on, whether it's cryptocurrency or many different things going on right now where it seems like there's this gradient where there's more and more ability and opportunity for people to actually carve out truly independent lifestyles to exit these systems that a lot of people are finding increasingly onerous and corrupt. How do you, I'm just curious if you have a kind of high level mental model of where you see this all going. Like do you think more and more people are going to be doing what you're doing and kind of dropping out of the institutional rat race and living in a rural place somewhere living in a small village that's like optimal for human flourishing in your viewpoint? Do you think that's gonna become way more popular and people who do that are going to kind of thrive and excel and all the people who are kind of stuck in the cathedral or whatever you wanna call it are gonna kind of become more and more kind of unhealthy and unhappy and miserable and pathological. Do you see that kind of exacerbating or do you see something else? Like how do you see this shaking out in the near to medium term? No number one is that it, firstly it shouldn't matter because you are not acting for everyone else and you're not predicting for anyone else you gotta do, I'm not trying to say you need to be selfish but like whatever's gonna happen like you have to do what's best and like I think that's pretty unambiguous like what an individual's decision should be. That said how are things gonna play out? I don't know but I will say that in my personal life with the people I know things are very positive. That's all I can say. Like not just because I'm a highly charismatic influencer that's influencing people or something like that in my life. I think that there is such an overwhelming, like so many people my age and younger, they very much wanna be independent. They're all about growing their own food not sending their kids to public schools not just in every single way being apart from the system where kids don't have cell phones. I hope no one's kids have cell phones here. Okay awkward looks. I don't wanna hear about it. But so there are just so many things that like in my life I just can't even describe. I know I was kind of saying oh I don't like it when people don't follow through their principles by not buying Amazon or something but there is a sense in which in my life I can say that I can't help but be very optimistic for my corner of this country and just how great things are doing and how many people have just turned things around and I think it's important for people to just set an example for those around you because that just has a massive effect and you don't have to be super, we were talking before like sometimes you just have to be around and people can detect what you're thinking and doing and they see how you react to things. I think that's most important just but so I look at things very positively it might be that in cities things are gonna get worse and worse and the cathedral's gonna eat itself up and I don't know maybe they'll all starve and there's gonna be collapse. Like I'm not- But you don't even know and you don't care. It's like whatever. It's kind of like I don't care. Like I think it does make a difference what happens like how painful the process is gonna be but either way it's not a big deal for me because my optimal decisions are the same going the same path and I wish everyone else the best and many of those people many of the people who are you know we didn't go too much into my early life but I was the worst of them all like in terms of being a bug man and yeah in terms of like if I can turn myself around everyone can and you know I don't know that should be an- Yeah no your perspective on that final question is fascinating to me a little surprising but in a really cool way because people who are still embedded in institutions it's like they're the mood right now is so pessimistic and good and kind of sad. Yeah. Like pretty much anyone like who has any kind of power inside of any institution whatsoever even like low level people but anyone who's kind of like who sees their future as kind of like invested in current institutions the mood whether the left and the right the mood is just like everything is going to shit everything is doomed everything seems like unfixable and horrible and you know you only see the people in like your small village and you're just like everything's perfect what are you talking about? Things are fantastic and they're getting better like every single day and I will say for those people who are still in the system like you might feel painful to leave but I will tell you, sorry if this isn't optimistic it's only gonna be more painful if you keep doing it you know what I mean like and that's if I had left graduate school earlier it would have been way easier for me and I don't mean that in a bad way but yeah like things are great like the transition was different you know before we started this interview there's a question you forgot to ask me so I'm gonna answer it so the question you said you were gonna or I said you should ask me this is like a lot of people are like oh you know I'm very intellectual like I'm a smart guy I'm well read what am I gonna move to the country with all these country bumpkins like that's weird who am I gonna talk to right? Right, right so that's me making it sound more weird or like mean than how you said it but like that's something that people people email me about this and I will just say like from the perspective I have now that's a concern that seems so obnoxious and condescending and ignorant because like let's put it this way like there's an intelligence okay so I have a friend who just randomly came to my head so I'll talk about him he does mechanic stuff he's just amateur mechanic and you know the thing is something can go wrong with my car and he'll come over and he'll do one or two things and he will be able to you know when you think in logical chains like the amount of like Boolean logic involved in like determining like a the what's going wrong in a wrong in a machine is like extremely complex and so he's the kind of guy where he can just judge based on two sounds exactly what's what's going wrong and that's a level of intelligence that frankly most academics just don't have like they have like this extremely simplistic way of looking at like rarefied issues and often are very scared when they see people who are like you know I think we said beforehand that like people in academia they almost want to study things that don't matter because it's safe like they don't have to ever get burned and so like seeing someone with like skin in the game and being able to like make these intelligent decisions like in in it's very impressive so I think you'll have a respect for people you wouldn't have respect for normally and I think you I'm never like wow I sure wish I could talk about I don't know what's a philosopher who cares no I don't care I don't there's none of this stuff that I really miss talking about or like it's just not it may be a desire that's big in your head but a lot of those desires are really like kind of sociological like we grew up in a different class than a lot of these people not not even like that much higher yeah but like if you go to graduate school you you really just get a culture rated to a different right culture and your culture is like honestly kind of like you're going to be the one who's like defending yourself like in front of these people like they're they know what they're doing and so like it that's why also it's very awkward to me like explaining to people that you like I have a YouTube channel in real life that's one of the most embarrassing things you possibly do so like usually like I literally there have been times in my life where I've literally just told people oh I'm unemployed like that is less shameful than having a YouTube channel um my common thing is I'm retired I like to think of myself as retired so all right well that's fascinating I think that covers a lot of ground and you know thanks for coming out here to to this little community we have for paying for me to come out here of course you're the special you're the special guest it's interesting to hear your story yeah these were questions I've been meaning to ask you for a while so I'm glad we got this on the record and was there anything else I forgot to ask you that I should um I don't know we can we can do it so oh yeah you have oh yeah sure I would say repeat the question so the question he asked is like if a young guy is going to move to the country should he get a girl before or after and I will say um I would probably say I mean if you have the perfect girl beforehand you know I'd contemplate that but I would say it'd be easier to get her after for two obvious reasons one it's hard to make a sacrifice and move out for a girl who is an urbanite like it's hard to argue you know get her to move out secondly um I would say that the quality of women is probably better in the country I'm just gonna say um for many different reasons they might be different they might be weird to you um but I'm just gonna say they're gonna be like a lot more not all of them but they're gonna be in general more pure and and I don't know so you you meet a lot of chicks in rural Florida not originally but now like yeah there are lots of I think I was telling um you know these other guys before that like I I regularly like put on parties for and lots of people uh calm like who originally when I moved down I didn't know anyone remotely close to my age now I know lots and lots of people and uh there are lots more people and also the other good thing is like um if you're in this environment this is what I mean by like having influence on people like me being here there are a lot of people who would have moved away who didn't and there are a lot of people who moved back because of those people and like so like you have like a big effect and so you will attract other people just because you're highly attractive um not it yeah just because you're doing the thing like you become the focal point that makes other people want to stick around yeah yeah just because you're like supporting the culture not because of any special reason yeah yeah yeah you don't have to be as charming as I am well thanks for the question Adam and uh thanks Luca this was fun I appreciate it all right great thanks for having me