 In my travels and my conversations with people, I have come to an unsavory conclusion. Most people have a religious methodology, they have a religious way of thinking about the world and I don't mean that in a good way. What I mean is this, almost everybody outsources essential parts of their critical thinking to other people. They have a method of trust and faith in the reasoning capacity and accuracy of conclusions of other people that they import into their worldview. This is not in any way exclusive to the traditionally religious, it is also rampant in the professional academic world and the formal world of ideas. I'll give you a few examples. Most people in the world of ideas, even if they are seen as being rational, think that understanding a subject matter is identical to understanding what other people have said about that subject matter. They think that understanding a subject matter is being able to repeat orthodox opinion on that subject matter. They think that if I can repeat what those other thinkers thought, that is synonymous with me being educated and knowledgeable about that subject. This gets lots of criticism when it's in the world of religion and people think that what being religious and being knowledgeable and being a good Christian is is repeating what's in the Bible and people think that's dogmatic and yet it gets a free pass when we're talking about everything from math to economics to politics to social theory, nearly everybody that you engage with sees the world through the lens that other people have seen them. And this is a really weird psychological phenomenon and sociological phenomenon too. I think it has to do, I'm not sure, I think it has to do with people's desperate desire for social acceptance and for being somewhere higher up in a social hierarchy. People think that there are these geniuses out there, the Einstein's of the world. And they think the way that I get the social respect of Einstein is by understanding what Einstein said and repeating what Einstein said. So I think a lot of people that go and get their PhDs and become professors aren't doing that because they're even fundamentally knowledgeable about their subject matter, depending on how you define that, but because they're seeking social status. And it shows when you examine their ideas and you press them and you say, you know, tell me about the fundamental concepts in economics or math or whatever it is. And what they'll do is almost universally say, oh well we know from these other thinkers, you know, as Adam Smith talked about or as Tarski showed us or as Gertl showed us or as Rothbard showed us, they almost always resort to, oh yes, I have this particular belief system and I'll just repeat what this other person said. Now I don't consider this a sound methodology for reasoning. I don't consider this a good thing. I think it's understandable as a sociological phenomenon, but I think it's kind of a tragedy because when you're outside of the system, especially of academia, most people conceive of, you know, the professors and the academics being these super knowledgeable people about being able to grasp conceptually their subject matter. And I just don't think that's the case. They're able to regurgitate at a very high level. They're able to tell you the history of some particular subject matter, the history of the world of ideas, they're able to tell you, you know, orthodoxy. They're able to repeat to you orthodoxy. And I don't think that has a very strong connection with actually understanding the fundamental concepts in a subject. Again this is no different than if you were to go down to your average church, find the pastor, ask him some fundamental questions, and I practically guarantee you the entirety of his argument is ultimately going to go back to what's in the Bible. It's not about the concepts, it's not about what the concepts make sense, it's about repeating orthodoxy. So fortunately this is starting to change in the world of ideas now that we have the internet. It is no longer necessary to comment in a particular subject matter that you're interested in that you've researched. It's no longer necessary to have a PhD in order to do so. In other words, this filtering mechanism that the academic system has been, which filters out the orthodox from the unorthodox, the independent thinkers from those who are, want to play the game of repeating the orthodoxy and participating in this insular kind of conversation that's happening amongst everybody that already agrees with one another. That system's being bypassed. You can actually dive into now without permission from anybody any set of ideas that you're interested in. Learn about them yourself and develop your own independent opinions. I'm sure there are lots of people out there, lots and lots of people I imagine that are genuine independent intellectuals that want to know more about the world, that couldn't cut it in academia because they don't have the psychological traits that are rewarded in academia, and now have a new option. Rather than getting a job in the normal non-world of ideas or being forced to go into this academic system which would kill them, there's a third option. This other option is being your own independent thinker online. Totally historically unprecedented. You don't have to repeat orthodoxy. You don't have to participate in the game, participate in the system. You can be an actual independent intellectual and master your field and maybe be aware of other people's arguments, but do as much independent research and thinking as you want. You can actually make a go at it. I see this as a very good thing and over the coming years I'm going to elaborate in some detail why the parallels between the traditional academic system and the church are many. If you start understanding most academics, not all of them, but if you start understanding most academicians and the system of academia, it makes much more sense when you understand it as kind of an orthodoxy generator, as a kind of religious type system. The academics might be more clearly understood as clergymen than as independent thinkers. Of course, don't take my word for it, but I think I can make a pretty compelling argument that in fact that is the case. There are plenty of exceptions, of course I've spoken with many, but I think this holds true for most people in that old system. So if you like the world of ideas and you don't like orthodoxy, you're an anti-authoritarian intellectually, but you're still interested in the world of ideas, take heart. We are in the beginning of something absolutely extraordinary emerging. Contact me, shoot me an email. Let's be in contact. Let's start building the unorthodox system that can now exist outside of the traditional establishment. It'll be fun.