Not everybody is truly capable of coming to the truth about complex topics.
That is true and that can be true and yet it can also be true that it is a
essential pursuit that it is an essential pursuit and
while yes, people can get misled and believe crazy things if they just kind of headbutt their way into
complex fields, it is also true that if we create a society and a culture where we basically
socially penalize people for doing their own thinking about things and questioning topics and views,
that is equally if not more dangerous. It is more dangerous and it creates just a terrible
whole system there. And so, you know, bit coiners, I see as people that are willing, you know, there's that image of like one person standing against the crowd being like, yeah, you're all wrong.
They're the person that's willing to say that for better or worse.
Today, that guest is Steven Lukka. Steven works at Swan, but you probably know him as a sunshine and walking maximist without standing posture.
If you don't know Steven, you're about to get to know him during this episode.
We talk about sunshine, naturally, happiness, the intersection of money, culture and law, reality, the nature of truth and a whole lot more.
I recommend that you listen to this show while walking outside in the sun, if possible.
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Without further ado, let's get into this Bitcoin talk with Steven Lubka.
Now we're good. Now we can truly speak freely. By the way, it looks so much nicer and sunnier there than it is here in the Midwest, I've got to say.
You got to move to Florida, man.
I know. I know.
Where without doxing yourself where you are in Florida, is it painfully painfully humid though for most of the year?
I don't experience it that way.
So the thing is that just because you've attained a different level of consciousness, you're like, I don't experience humidity.
Yeah, maybe a bit like I've adapted to it a bit. But like the thing to understand the thing people don't get about Florida.
In the winter, it's dry. Like it's dry. It's dry. It's not dry like Arizona, but it's not humid at all.
60 degrees in the spring. It's relative. It's dry right now. 70 degrees, 75, 80, beautiful.
In the fall, it's relatively dry. 75, 80. And then the summer, it's hot and humid.
But like it's hot and humid in New York in the summer, you know, it's like you're not going to escape that.
It's not as like hot as people make it out. It's sure it's you'll probably get an extra five degrees off New York, you know, like hotter in Florida.
But my God, it's beautifully around.
I mean, that is a pretty solid sales pitch, I'll say.
I mean, in just the fact that you're able to experience sun, essentially all year long. And I was Carl and I were living in Vegas to test it out for a little while until we found out we were going to be having a kid and we were like,
maybe we should move near the grandparents.
Sure.
But that was my favorite part was you're in the middle of quote, winter, and I can still walk outside barefoot and get some sun on my bare chest.
And it's just glorious. Like I'm, yeah, I'm starved for sunlight right before this call, though.
I did walk outside because it's halfway decent today.
I walked outside, stood barefoot in the grass, took some deep breaths as I drank some sunlight because that was the only way I knew how to get in the right, the right mental frame for this call.
It was the right move, man. It was the right move.
But it's better.
Yeah, you feel better. It's a giant ball of hot, good mood in the sky.
Like you got to take advantage of it.
But no, it like that was the thing for me. Like I grew up up north.
Like I grew up in New York for a while.
I've lived in Florida for a long time, but as a kid, I was in New York.
I've lived in Michigan. I've lived like I know winter.
It's not even the cold. It's the dark like it's the dark that's killer.
It's like I can deal with whatever you put a jacket on like whatever it doesn't matter.
But it's like you have like six hours or something of sunlight some days and it's there's no there's just no getting around that.
It's I looked at it like the move south was like getting 30% of my year back is what it felt like like time like you can't put a price on that.
It is so true.
Being around family when you're having family. I mean that is that is one of few legitimate reasons that like some people my job, my this, my that it's like OK, man, but no, I mean congrats, by the way.
Thank you.
You know, yeah, it's it's definitely a good read like the winter is worth it.
And he was born in the depths of it.
So I think he'll be very hot blooded in a good way because if you're born when it's cold like you have to be a little bit hot blooded, I think.
It is it is funny like the idea of it as winter is kind of losing time and I agree. It's not the cold. The cold's never bothered me.
I was like a cold weather athlete. That's fine.
It's a matter of everything is gray or dark and there is no escape from that.
You can't you can't turn off the sun. You know, if you're in the sun, you can go find shade if you need it.
If you're in the shade, you can't go find sun. Exactly.
It's kind of a one way street there. Yeah.
You can. Yeah, you can bundle up. You can cool down. You can avoid too much sun. You can but you can't make sun where there's no sun.
And it's just, you know, and it has such, you know, such a greater impact on, you know, it's not just like, oh, I don't know.
It's dark or your mood isn't the same. It's your energy. It's your focus.
It's it's your whole like vital forces, right? Like your thumos, your whole like fire in the belly just gets completely changed.
And, you know, there's, you know, there's there's something to the seasons, right?
But you you get that here, you know, you have light cycle variations.
It gets, you know, I mean, it was 40 degrees at night during the winter here.
You get some of that seasonal change. It doesn't just feel like a block.
I feel like the, you know, the seasons thing is is it's almost just like a northern climate cope.
It's like, well, we have the seasons. I mean, wouldn't want to give those up.
And meanwhile, you're sitting there in the depths of winter, snowed into your house.
It's yeah, it's cold. It's dark. There's no sunshine.
They haven't seen the sun in days. The clouds are too thick.
And you're like, well, we have the seasons at least. So take that everyone who has sun right now.
It reminds me of that meme of it's like two people talking and it's their portfolio returns.
And the one on the left is like, you'll really be fucked when the music stops and their portfolio is up 6%.
And the guy they're talking to is up like 300% for the year.
And they're like, OK, like, oh, you guys don't have the season.
OK, I hear you. It's beautiful at March here.
And I was in a t-shirt in December. I guess I don't have the seasons.
You've got me there. And that meme, I'm pretty sure is just like gold bugs versus Bitcoiners to a certain extent.
Yeah, which is you understand their their cope at this point.
I mean, Bitcoin did. I thought it was dead today, to be honest.
Oh, yeah.
My goodness, it's only up like 160 some percent in the last year.
So, dude, I mean, it almost dropped like 15% from the all time high record.
Everyone was in profit. Like you got a 15. Wow. I mean, how do you do it?
It's crazy to me how how short people's memories are, whether it be on purpose or just because it's a function of their fiat mindset.
But just looking out at the day at the week at the month, I mean, at the year even.
And perhaps I think it's a function of what Bitcoin does to you mentally, but also like now I'm a father.
And so I have this whole new appreciation of low time preference.
It's not just building for me for the future for myself and for Carlits.
Like we have an offspring now for whom we are responsible and he's going to outlive us by a long shot.
Yeah.
And so that just makes you think like truly multi generational.
Like how am I going to think about this?
Not just again, day, week, month, year, like having cycle, decade, you know, century, like let's let's let's scale this out a little bit.
And there's a sense of calm that I think comes when you start thinking in those types of time frames.
Absolutely.
You know, I think it unplugged you from this like this almost like desperate sense of the next, the next, the next, the immediate.
There's almost a level of like it's like a desperation that is there where like you have no like anchoring in something,
which is not just that surface volatility, be that of an asset or be that of life or be that of whatever it whatever it is.
And you know, it's I'm the first to kind of poke a little bit about like against.
Oh, this is just fiat this fiat that like I think the metaphor is abused and it loses intelligence and meanings.
It's over applied. But what I will say is the sort of like fiat like short term, you know, like mentality, I mean, it's destructive, right?
Like as a society, like we need to regain that that longer term time horizon, like longer time preference.
Like that is that is critical. And like we can't continue to in our personal lives or in socially like just the next quarter, right?
The incentives break like and that is that is just absolutely true.
It is funny. I mean, you just think about because I agree. And I'm also guilty of abusing the, you know, that is fine.
Most of the time purposefully so. But you know, it presents an opportunity for so many good memes and who would I be if I turned down a good meme opportunity?
But it is funny. I think that there is it's dangerous to put people into any sort of discrete categories in general to say, you know, that this person is just a fiat person.
This person is a bit coiner because we know that there is a huge spectrum of human experience that goes into everyone.
There's a fiat person inside all of us. Right. We're trying to kill that person.
You know, inside of your two wolves, one is a bit coiner. One is a fiat.
And the bit coiner wolf hopefully eats the fiat wolf and then, you know, mates with its mate and produces, I don't know, now we're getting dark.
But I think that you have one kid and all of a sudden.
Everything's about that now. But no, I do think it's helpful to break things down just in terms of I think there is a if I can misuse or perhaps use correctly the fiat again.
There's a Bitcoin optimism and there's a fiat nihilism that I think you see.
And I that's sort of how I've started to look at and not that all of us again are not guilty of occasionally perhaps seeming a little nihilistic in the way that we discuss the ills of the fiat world.
But ultimately, the bit coiners that I meet yourself very much included and all those that have had the pleasure of meeting are so incredibly optimistic about the future.
And and you don't see that same sort of just yeah, almost ruthless optimism hardly anywhere else.
It's always, you know, yeah, we talk about the problems, but we do it in the context of this is why this solution can actually, you know, Bitcoin fixes this.
Instead of just here's the problem and we're going to blame the other out group.
Sure, within our society.
I don't know, how do you think about that just like and is that been your experience too with just its optimism to a fault with with Bitcoiners, it seems.
I agree wholeheartedly.
I think and I think there's really interesting angles on kind of both of those like like what is it about kind of fiat or just modern society that is so nihilistic and and how does that show up and also.
Like what is the optimism that you're pointing out in Bitcoiners.
I think both of those are fascinating.
The the modernity one call it fiat call it modernity, whatever it is, I think it's, you know, and the only reason I kind of like needle on the fiat word is because it almost implies that fiat was the cause of whatever that thing is.
And I think that that that can be true that cannot be true or that can be partially true.
But I think particularly when we're talking about the sort of like modern nihilism, it is interwoven, I think, and a lot of things.
I think there's many, many components there, you know, and it but it's deep and it's true and like that observation is right on the money.
Like that is that is true about how this world out there.
There is a deep, deep current of like nihilism and like atheistic reductionism.
And I don't mean that to say like, oh, like, whether the Christian God is, you know, real or not real, but I mean this sort of this almost like metaphysical atheism where it's just materialism.
The only thing which can possibly exist is just these discrete forms, this gross matter and any sort of argument to the contrary is like airy fairy, you know, nonsense that there's no substance there.
And I take issue with that so heavily because it is utterly unprovable.
It is utterly wholeheartedly substantially, you cannot prove that there's no it's this it's this widespread assumption that is passed off as fact that we know that we know that the only thing that exists is matter is this this great stuff and you know you die you're dead it's all you know nonsense.
And so this this kind of like ideological current right like it runs through the world, and it just dismantles everything it dismantles the values it dismantles anything which transcends anything which has higher purpose anything with that that organizes that inspires and it reduces it all down to like meaningless
atoms particles brain signals neurochemicals you don't actually love your partner you're just having oxytocin go on in your brain like you don't actually like actually you don't even see your child.
That's just a hallucination of you know brain currents and it's all fake and it's all constructed.
Right and you piece apart this ideology and it's more nihilistic than I think anyone can even like you don't even you can't even comprehend the depths and the just the the the tragedy of this profound this all encompassing nihilism.
It is the reduction of everything it's miserable it's it's it's utterly miserable and it's actually funny I.
I think this almost was manifest in a recent kind of Twitter I don't know if you saw this it wasn't really in Bitcoin world the people were debating about Dune to the second Dune movie.
And you know part of the Dune story the author Frank Herbert he talked about this it's true to the book in many ways like you have this kind of messianic figure in Paula tradies.
But the book is kind of about the dangers of messianic figures you're not really supposed to like you're supposed to be a warning about him.
But everyone walks out of that movie like that was the sickest shit I've ever seen cosmic jihad.
And like Herbert had to deal with this that everyone liked the character that was supposed to be a cautionary tale.
And you know it speaks to I think this this theme where like they people want this flattened reduced castrated secularism.
And yet as humans we're just so there's just this deep hunger for you know what why do people like Paul and Dune to well it's destiny.
It's a mission.
It's a purpose.
It's he's he's chosen there's suddenly this inspirational thing and rather than disparage that and try to like filter it through this this deep like nihilism.
What if we paid more attention to that what if we looked at like why is it that people have this deep hunger for something to believe in and I've been I've been kind of went off on a tangent with this but like that brings us back to Bitcoin in some ways and the
optimism of Bitcoiners right like because I think what Bitcoin is for many people is it's I mean Michael Saylor says this it's hope right it speaks to that you want to believe in something you want to be on the side of something
you want to be like this thing is good and I'm going to fight for it and this other mindset is like but how can we really know if it's good it's really beyond our what is good what is good how you can know like.
It's why it's funny.
It's funny too because I think that there's this.
I agree with you that people will always there is a deep deep hunger for meaning.
For purpose.
For for things to somehow make sense even if that is not consciously stated.
Sure it is subconsciously present in all of us.
And when you have something that you are quote fighting for or something to put it another way that something that you are running toward versus something that you are fleeing from yes it is always more powerful to run toward something because you know where you're going.
Yeah.
If you're fleeing from something all you know is you're trying to get away from it.
You don't know what your destination is.
You don't know where you are going but it's going to be better than whatever you're running away from sure of course right it must be it can't possibly get me worse.
But when you're running towards something you're able to be optimistic.
Yeah I think and that that's the key thing that Bitcoiners have is yes we know there's a problem there's something that we could just be blindly running away from in the dark not knowing what direction we're going.
But we're all going in though we come from very different places and with very different motivations for why we are running in this direction.
We're all running in that same direction.
And I think that's what gives it power that's what gives any movement power right.
And that's to you know you go on the let's say to take the political ideology because politics has become the ideology it has become the meaning the purpose for so many in our society.
Which is really sad and destructive because that gives them something that they're not ever really they think they may be running towards something whatever the ideas of their you know their color team are in America it's the blue or the red team you know the blue team we've got the best idea.
But really all politics comes down to not stating why your own ideas are good and how you will accomplish them but why the other guys ideas are so bad and so dangerous and why everyone should flee that.
So it's setting people up mentally to be in that position of running away from something without ever giving them something to run toward and 100% I'm sure it's a frustration for for you and I know it is for me and for many bit coiners.
You see all these political and I'll just lump them in his political conversations let's say on on Twitter.
And so many of them again are this exact same kind of dichotomy that we're discussing where it's you know one side bad one side good and that perspective just depends on which side you are on.
And they talk about these problems but they never talk about the problem or the problems they never talk about what's at the base layer of these issues.
And so many of these conversations just seem so futile because they're just they're really just sensationalist propaganda meant to get you to run away from something toward an unknown something that has yet to be defined but is purportedly better than whatever you're running away from.
And I can see why you would be nihilistic if that's all that you had going for you was running away from something.
I don't know the concreteness matters like it's it's so two things on what you said one is like you can't just be against stuff right and that's so much of what you're talking about is you have people that are just like they're just against things they're opposing things
they're they know what they don't want but they don't know what they want and the problem with that is it's it's fundamentally non generative. There's nothing to fight for you can only fight against and it's it's hollow and it's disempowered and I think it's why like I've always argued like you need to be for something
it's deeply psychologically necessary you if you if you occupy this position of just being against whatever you lose yourself in the process you lose your vitality vitality it's why so many of these like kind of like belligerent like like Bitcoin critics I think seems so hollow so like David Gerard and some of these types that it's like their entire brand their
entire reality everything they've poured their life force into has just been opposing this one thing critiquing this one thing for eight years seven years in some of these cases and it's just like at that point it doesn't even matter if you're right or wrong that's just a miserable existence that's just a like
is a hollow existence it's devoid of and you can lie to yourself and you can you can say oh no I'm doing something important I'm helping people I'm for people not getting scammed by this thing or whatever but it's hollow it's hollow you've you've yoked 1% of your life force to just fighting against the river like fighting against something and you know I think there's just there's a power
and there's a potency to being for something and so if you're not for this thing man go find something else you are for you are you for fiat like go fight for fiat if you're for like maybe maybe you are maybe you can't be fully in that camp will go find whatever you can fully take all of yourself and be behind
and it's just it's it's it's I think it's psychologically self cannibalizing to to do this like it eats you you you know become become become a victim to it
and yeah and the concreteness right and part of the problem is there's a lack of like a specific thing and I mean ultimately the world is only ever changed by specific things you can't invent the general direction of a computer you can only invent a computer you can't invent the general direction of nuclear power you can only
invent the concrete form and like you know history is I think filled with people who you know they had a specific I like Steve Jobs could not have succeeded if he thought well maybe the Macintosh is a good architecture but we really don't know
maybe windows or maybe there's something else beta max VHS I don't know I'm not really going to commit to this one thing right then there's no Apple there's no Mac there's no yeah you'll make mistakes there'll be problems like nothing's perfect but if you never commit to one thing you never get anywhere
and you know I almost wonder if that's part of the tension between like crypto and Bitcoin is like Bitcoiners commit to one thing it's just like we're going to drive this one thing forward where
you know I'll be I'll be totally fair here let me be totally fair this doesn't apply to everybody in crypto but I think for so many people like it's it's almost opportunistic it's almost just whatever the next hot thing is and it gets discarded at the end of the year and they move on to the next thing
there's you know there's there's a large large rotating cast of I think opportunists and I think so much of the power in the Bitcoin community is just it's a bunch of people who you know with all of the faults and foibles that come with it have like committed to one thing you know
I think that's such an important point and perhaps one of the reasons that Bitcoiners are constantly you know called toxic maximalists you know this idea of your toxic for in in their mind or to take their argument because you are discounting any of these other ideas that may be quite innovative and might be
you know it's good could be a really cool use case you know it's innovative blockchain scaling technology and all sorts of fun and cool stuff and why do you hate stuff that's fun and innovative you it's because you're so toxic
and really it's like okay we we hear you and we will also adopt that as a badge of honor thank you for you know I never underestimate Bitcoiners ability to take an insult and turn it into a badge of honor it's really an amazing thing but it
was coming down to seventy nine yeah psychopath toxic maximalists yeah I love you too yeah you dark triad you know burning the planet like it it goes on and on but it really would comes down to with Bitcoiners is just focus and I think and also acknowledgement of the scarcity of each of our
individual time which says I can't and don't want to spread myself in a million directions and you might have a what you feel is a cool use case a cool innovative piece and you know innovative idea which of course involves either tradeoffs and decentralization
or security but fine you know have your fun but we're just going to be over here focusing on this one thing because fundamentally none of the quote solutions that you are proposing to Bitcoin's perceived limitations are solutions to the base problem which is the brokenness of the money
and what's in that is a commitment to like like a moral and a values claim and I think this goes really unexamined but Bitcoiners are comfortable saying this is bad this is good and we're going to fight to make the good thing
happen and I think you know coming back to this kind of state of modernity I think most people live in such a paralyzed state of moral ambiguity where they are uncomfortable having a strong values virtue or moral claim and well we can't really know I mean how do we know what's right or wrong cultural
relativism I mean you know to to to this tribe they think this is good and we think it's bad and you can't say one of these is right and the other is wrong because it's all socially constructed and like they're so concerned in this reductionistic analysis of whether or not that's true and not true I think in this capital T way but true in this very reduced way
they almost ignore that like any society that believes truth is on their side has a huge advantage over a paralyzed ambiguous
flailing right claim like it's hard to do big and great things if you don't believe they are right with a capital R that they are true with a capital T and the question of whether or not that is true it almost miss like the analysis almost misses the point like one must believe like one must believe
there's a great quote like everybody worships and it's true like you know there's this kind of thing like this belief in in secular society that you can escape that and that there is is some objective detached like view where you can be you know not biased but it doesn't exist and like you know we can
just you know if you don't want to worship or religion then you're going to worship you know like academia you're going to worship the media you're going to worship like these various concepts things these drives money economy status like like you enshrine something in your heart and
and like you you can't escape that you can't escape that and I think like Bitcoiners are willing to make value claims virtue claims morality claims they're willing to stick by them and fight by them, and I think there's this this hamstrung castrated
ambiguity in the crypto world where it's this constantly churning ambiguous like we just need to keep innovating but we don't know really what we should be innovating towards or what really good is or where true north is just keep keep keep writing new code, you know, just keep
fiddling with it, you know, we've got to be improving right because we're moving. So it's got to be improving, invent something that gets users and if it has users then it's good it's this kind of reduced economic like it's it's replacing morality with with economics right and I'm not I'm not like an anti capitalist I'm a big fan of the way markets have improved the world, but like the logic of economics is not
substitutable for the logic of morality, right, those are different things right and you can be pro markets and also recognize that like just because something is profitable does not mean it is good morally. And so just because you can make money doing
senior edge on shitcoins and issuing tokens and people want to pay for leverage gambling. That doesn't mean that thing is good. It's just profitable. I think that that's something that is either again purposefully or accidentally wink missed by so many.
Because it's true it's this idea that ah well if you are and they always try to get you with the well don't you believe in the free market. It's like yeah I do and the free market says that I can loudly go out and proclaim that what you're doing is a fucking shitty scam you scammer.
And that's the free market to you are free to do what you want and I am very free to call that a scam and to use my energy to discredit that scam if I want because I have free will and I can do whatever I want there.
And they then they've yet well you're just you must be you know it's almost a communist idea you know it's like well.
No no it's not but that's cute of you to try that that that path there you know it's it's funny and I want to.
I want to dig into a couple of these things a bit more and I specifically want wanted to get your thoughts on the.
What is upstream of what as it comes to culture law and money but before we do that I also want to give you a chance to officially introduce yourself and I do this with one simple question and that's just who are you and how did you get here today.
Yeah so I Steven loopka I lead the head of private clients for Swan Swan Bitcoin I started that side of the company three years ago and I've led it ever since.
Where I you know hard to quantify but I think we're the largest like high net worth concierge white glove service in the whole Bitcoin world just has been an amazing journey I mean Swan's been an amazing journey you know I think I was like employee number 15 and we're like 165 people now so it's been a crazy crazy awesome ride.
But we you know I run the kind of high net worth concierge team.
And you know I'm also very well known on Twitter for being you know a sun maximalist and being very very pro sunlight and walking and these kind of what I would say our base inputs to human humaneness like humaneness like.
You know I don't think you can really abstract the experience of being human I actually think like you lose something I think there's something essential there I think to be human.
Is to walk I think there is literally very few things more essential than that it's how our brains developed it's how so much developed.
Anyways but you know and I got here today because I think.
Man I think I you guys I was a fan of you guys from like the first two weeks that you showed up on the Internet I think I remember I like DM'd you guys.
Like you were doing I think crypto stuff like it was like very briefly and then you kind of went for it.
Nothing was ever promoting crypto.
No we were using crypto characters just memes yeah yeah yeah.
Yeah just an important caveat you know.
Correct correct but like I mean it was literally like two weeks like it was like you just like launched on Twitter like maybe you're doing other stuff before but like.
And I remember I think like I like I DM I was like like I want to connect you guys with swan I want to like you guys these guys are going to be good we've been friends ever since.
I think the first time we met in person right before I was about to meet you somebody thought I was you.
And that was the beginning of what it turns out would be a long running joke of many of us.
Six foot two three four five guys all getting either called Steven or Brandon or Walker or Joe or Corey.
Yeah and that is really just not stopped it's incredible I yeah it would almost somehow be offensive if the quality of the people we were getting compared against wasn't of such a high caliber.
So every time it happens I'm like oh that's really you know nice compliment great guy.
Yeah but I'm Walker.
Yeah but no it's again and you were you were very early on reaching out and we always appreciated that because it's it's interesting trying to.
Trying to grow a I don't know what you I guess I see sounds almost gross to say but like a social brand a social presence I don't know because we we never did it to.
To make money we did it because we were in the depths of the bear market we've been lurking on Bitcoin Twitter and we said man everybody seems like they could use a laugh.
What let's just start making fun of stuff both fiat stuff but also let's make fun of ourselves as Bitcoiners and it's kind of weird to think about we've basically only been making content in the bear market.
Yeah you know it's also.
Which was kind of nice because you realized how much it meant to people to have a good chuckle.
At that time and now it's like I'm looking I was looking back at a few of the.
The songs that Carly did especially in the screenshots we were using things like that it's like you know 19 K you know 21 K and you're boy I would.
Love for some of that action again.
Just nuke it right down.
We're getting too high but.
Bitcoin is going to do what Bitcoin does.
Hey if you run bitmix you got it.
Oh yeah there you go.
But now I appreciate the introduction and I think that.
What you have kind of how your presence online has evolved has also been really beautiful to watch because it's just yeah you talk about Bitcoin but mostly for anyone that that follows you.
They realize that you are mainly talking about sun maxing and walking and philosophy.
And just life.
And I think that that's this kind of bleeds into what I mentioned right before the your intro which is.
Culture.
Yeah and.
I think it's something that's very interesting amongst bit coiners.
We it's like truly a diverse group of individuals.
Absolutely from all walks of life from all educational backgrounds from all over the world.
And it's only gotten more diverse over time like like significantly.
And that's beautiful to see like it's not the fake contrived diversity and inclusion.
No it's the true diversity that comes with something that is open that allows anyone to come to it again to run towards something.
And I'm curious what you think you know there are obviously Bitcoin is a common denominator right that's that's what is bringing all these people together.
But it's difficult to define like what is a a Bitcoin or and you know it no it's not just somebody who.
Loves to sun their balls and eat raw steaks like although that may there may be many in that camp.
But there are Bitcoiners from all walks of life.
So how do you what do you think is besides Bitcoin.
What is the common denominator amongst bit coiners.
So absolutely awesome awesome question and I thought about this a lot especially just because of my like and I also like I had no real account during the bull market.
So I also like you know I it never was strategized at all.
But you know I have a like you know midsize Twitter account now that you know has done all right.
And you know it was all kind of during the bear market.
And like you said like a lot of it was I remember being like nervous at first.
I remember literally I put something in my bio that was like something it was like the wording was better.
But it was like Monday through Friday I'm going to talk about Bitcoin but on the weekend I'm going to talk about whatever I want because I was literally nervous.
I was like oh I don't know how people are going to respond if I just like go off on you know different topics that have nothing to do with this.
But you know I ended up you know I ended up so so what I what I realized though after I started kind of just opening up and tweeting really about whatever I was thinking about at that time whatever I was interested in is that there was huge interest in it.
And what that showed me was this quality of Bitcoiners that I think is the common denominator.
And what it is is that what Bitcoiners share is a willingness and a desire to investigate the truth for themselves.
And that doesn't mean they're always right.
That doesn't mean they can't get misled.
That doesn't mean they can't believe crazy things.
But they want to understand it for themselves.
And they're comfortable. They're perfectly comfortable contradicting established norms and knowledge sets beliefs and they're willing to question I think most most things and you know that's a that's a tendency that I think has become very maligned in the in the modern world.
Oh do your own research you idiot you're not an epidemiologist.
And it's true. It's totally true that there are people that not everybody is truly capable of coming to the truth about complex topics.
That is true. And that can be true. And yet it can also be true that it is a essential pursuit that it is an essential pursuit.
And while yes people can get misled and believe crazy things if they just kind of headbutt their way into complex fields.
It is also true that if we create a society in a culture where we basically socially penalize people for doing their own thinking about things and questioning topics and views.
That is equally if not more dangerous is more dangerous.
And it creates just a terrible system there.
And so you know bit coiners I see as people that are willing that you know there's that image of like one person standing against the crowd being like yeah you're all wrong.
They're the person that's willing to say that for better or worse. And that is the common that is the common threat. And I've noticed this.
So bit coiners share a lot of other like online communities with each other like health is a big one diet.
Like there's obviously a huge like carnivore and bit coiner intersection right like that was another like there's an online like there's carnivore Twitter and then there's Bitcoin Twitter and those are like relatively
overlapping than Diog like you know circles.
But there's many others right there's kind of like I don't even know what to call it but like you know broader like alternative health Twitter there's a lot of bit coiners that participate in that there's this thing called like teapot this part of Twitter.
It's kind of more like it's more like tech like like liberal or not like like coastal elite tech worker kind of but like intersecting with like Buddhism and for like kind of kind of left leaning Buddhism semi new age thing but there's there's a subset of bit coiners that heavily interact with that and I engage with some of those people in that community as well and those have been great relationships.
At times but there's all of these interlocking sub communities that I think intersect with bit coiners in a really interesting way.
And again the common thread there is they're all all what all of those communities have in common is they're contradicting the kind of mainstream belief about something.
Whether that is meditation health or diet whether that is economics whether that is energy obviously energy and bit coiners like those intersect.
It's really robust it's really interesting and it's something I've kind of observed for a while because like I also like engaging with some of those other communities and have gotten a lot of value out of it.
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I think it's a it's a perfect description that it's the Bitcoin or somebody who is willing to stand out against the crowd of public or popular opinion whatever you would call it.
Because again in order to do that.
There has to be something that you are passionate about something that you are for because otherwise you will not have the guts.
You won't take the risk.
Exactly.
Yeah, you won't just you won't take that risk for just something you're against without you know being able to provide a an alternative to that.
And I think it really you know to put it a different way it's the the openness to search for and accept possible alternatives to the status quo.
Yeah, it's the willingness to say you know it's it's questioning right it's it's doubt and doubt not in a with a negative connotation but in the.
Do be told ergo cogito cogito ergo zoom connotation I doubt therefore I think I think therefore I am but in order to think you must doubt because if you don't doubt.
Well then you're not thinking you're just accepting whatever is right.
And so I think that that's a.
It's an important part.
And I'm kind of curious.
You know there's.
I was talking about there's a quote to it to it up.
This is Richard Feynman one of the great scientists of the modern world.
It is imperative in science to doubt.
It is absolutely necessary for progress in science to have uncertainty as a fundamental part of your inner nature.
Like doubt it's the heart it's the beating heart like one one must in the way this is saying like doubt like like question wonder dig deeper.
Well and and that questioning that wonder that doubt that bit coiners have I think is one of the strongest forces to mitigating the the Gellman amnesia that we see across so many sectors and for anybody who doesn't is too lazy to Google this.
It's the idea that you are you are reading a newspaper let's say if you're which would be terrible for the environment you should absolutely not be you should get rid of all your physical newspapers.
This was actually just a long con stop the presses.
No but.
Yeah I did.
I worked it in there.
But now you're reading the newspaper and you read a topic about about which you have a lot of specific knowledge and you realize that whoever was writing that article.
Is saying things come that are completely incorrect that are factually inconsistent with the reality that are just wrong.
But then you turn the page to something and you read an article about which you are not an expert and you treat it as though they must be telling the truth because you don't know any better.
And I think that if you have that seed of doubt and again doubt in a positive very positive connotation.
You are less likely to fall victim to that gal man amnesia because you say you don't even if you are not an expert on your next one on topic A but not on topic B.
You scrutinize topic B with the same level of doubt that you would topic A.
And then you also probably start educating yourself on topic B because you say you know what.
I know that they're lying about a I know that because I am an expert in a.
They're probably not telling the total truth about B either.
And I'd like to find out more about that.
And that's that rabbit hole mentality.
Right. That's why Bitcoiners get called autists all the time too.
I'm just going to I'm going to hyper focus on this thing and I'm going to learn so much about it.
And I might not sleep for a couple of days because that's how a lot of us were with Bitcoin when we really got it.
And I think that that's a beautiful thing. And that's also you know there's more of that doubt starting to seep into let's call them gen pop you know the general population.
Well and it's not the same again there it's without the lens of Bitcoin.
It's just yes.
Yeah. Yes.
Don't trust the source but it's it's it's usually like it's relatively devoid of that spirit of inquiry.
And this speaks to I think there's these two intersecting concepts that books even that I think illustrate this moment in time really well.
There's a book called The Revolt of the masses which is phenomenal.
And then there's a concept from another book I don't remember called elite overproduction.
And I think these two things have intersected in a really interesting way.
So Revolt of the masses the thesis of the author was that like for all of human history governments had a monopoly on information like there were no mass media there is no dissemination of information that was not relatively tightly controlled by the political power.
And then all of a sudden.
That changes with the Internet and I the author gives us is like the one of the like the first time in his mind that this this the true representation of this theory comes about.
And so you have this.
It was I might butcher this but I think it's like there was a controversy when George W. Bush was president where it was like he faked draft documents or dodged that there was anyways and so the media.
Was running this document.
It was a paper and it was like proof that he had done this thing he had dodged the draft or whatever it was.
And so this was like the biggest media in the land the most elite institutional credible and some like autist random anonymous brother in a corner of the Internet discovered that the typeface that was used in the letter didn't exist at the time that they were claiming.
And that it was a forgery and like Jimmy John 420 like blew up the credibility of the mainstream media.
And this was the beginning of the book the revolt of the masses of this complete loss of credibility because there's now a two way microphone where the media can say X Y or Z.
And I can go no no it isn't you're wrong.
And there's there's you know there's there's pros and cons to that right like there's you know it has created a very.
You know a big breakdown in social trust and even if that is warranted it's still consequential but it's but it's so it's this concept of like.
Trust is falling because we're fact checking all of the everybody on the media and they're full of shit half the time or more than half.
But but I think it also intersects with this concept called elite overproduction and so basically this is pretty simple.
We are putting more people through college than ever before if somebody completes higher education they have a social expectation of status if I sacrifice and get a master's degree or doctorate.
Or whatever it is that society owes me a high status job the problem we have too many of these people and not enough high status jobs so now they are resentful they're both resentful and we're shuffling.
Unqualified people into whatever positions we can put them in at scale to like diffuse this resentment we have all of these people with degrees and qualifications.
And we're jamming them into stuff as fast as we can and they're incompetent and so then there's a lot to criticize in the media because we're jamming incompetent people in front of the microphone.
I actually was amazed.
I hope there's no reporter ever listens to this.
Probably not but maybe someday.
But like I do I do media right like I get interviewed I was in the Wall Street Journal a couple weeks ago I was in Barron's I was on Nasdaq right like I do that.
And when I first started talking with reporters and journalists.
At like, you know, reputable places like high places.
I was shocked there was something I was shocked by and it was that nobody fact checked a single word I said there was no like thing like whatever I said basically got put in there and now like for any reporter that ever listens to this.
I work very hard to be accurate and I actually am very knowledgeable about what you're interviewing me about which is Bitcoin and I've never misrepresented anything or taken advantage of that.
But I was shocked at the like there's no countervailing adversarial expert.
You people my understanding of how the system works is you interview someone who's an expert.
You don't interview someone else to contradict them and thus media is born.
That it's actually so interesting and I wonder how much of it comes down to time and comes down to you know what we don't we literally don't have time we were told to get one expert to talk about this.
We got we got the bear you know walking walking 30,000 steps a day sunshine guy who's also happens to be a Bitcoin a Bitcoin guy and we got him to talk about it.
And so that that's what we were told to do.
And now let's get this thing out there so we can move on to the next one right right now.
And that's valid that's valid because it's it's not just time to interview a second person but it's an infinite regress because if he disagrees with me.
Well now who's going to disagree with him and it goes on forever and nothing ever gets published so I can have I can have empathy for the challenge.
But I was still I was stunned I was like like I could have said something that wasn't true I didn't but I could have like that's crazy.
It is funny and I one thing I want to double check speaking of things fact checking things revolt of the masses or revolt of the public.
Public, I think, I think it's public.
I just I just fact checked you in real time.
I happen to know this is Carla recently read the book and I was like, I'm pretty so see but your information was what the meaning was all very proper.
Just a small typo but now we've corrected in real time we've we don't need to reprint any newspapers and shop down trees, which is just a travesty.
It's insane.
I was listening to a space last night that that Elon was on with the Missouri, the Missouri AG and might be a name might be David Bailey.
There's a lot of Bailey's though, or Bailey, it might be Andrew Bailey to we've got both in Bitcoin.
That's the Bank of England and one of my best friends in the space.
Right.
But he was he was talking about how useless newspapers were and I'm like, yes, I remember when when you when you retweeted that that anti newspaper propaganda video I made amazing.
But I digress.
I wanted to I wanted to ask you something which is something I've been just thinking about a lot lately and trying to talk to people about and just see where people lie.
And it has to do with the intersection or causal effects of money, law and culture.
And Jeff Booth is has said many, many times that money is superordinate to law. So not subordinate superordinate.
It is above laws. It is or another way of saying it's upstream money is upstream of laws.
I was also talking with with an author I had on here, Devin Erickson. He's got a phenomenal fire.
Yeah, have you have you read it?
I haven't but I have it.
I I highly recommend you dig into that thing. It is a wonderful book. I haven't read sci-fi in a while in years.
And this felt like a reentry to that joy of reading fiction because I feel like all I've read in the past few years is like very interesting things.
But it's like big books, Austrian economics, some other philosophy, you know, good amount of stoicism. You know, there's a lot of Seneca in there.
But I needed some fiction.
Yeah, but so and for anyone listening to this, Theft of Fire is this is a this is a plug for it because it's a great book.
And Devin's a fascinating guy.
But he captivated me with some of his Twitter threads. He had a few Twitter threads that were just so, so good.
And I ordered the book after that. I haven't gotten to it yet, but I followed him and yeah, same here.
It was his interaction with with Emmett Shear, the interim CEO of Open AI.
Yes, exactly.
And it was like, you know what, maybe 100% inheritance tax is a good idea.
That's a threat. Same. Same for me, too. I read that and I was like, this guy is fucking great.
It's incredible.
And but what what Devin was saying when I was talking to him is just this idea that that culture is upstream of law.
So that culture, you know, is and I completely agree with that.
And and I also think then, okay, so we've got culture upstream of law, we've got money upstream of law.
But where do money and culture intersect? Because as we were kind of getting to earlier a little bit, to blame fiat money for all of the ills of society is probably a bit reductionist.
Yeah, that being said, we can see through historical examples that when money breaks, it has impact society breaks.
Yeah, it does have impact. How do you view that intersection, that interaction?
So that's a great question.
So I think culture is the most upstream of law out of any of those.
Culture is upstream of everything, really, like, like the reason we do any of this, it's mediated through our values or culture or beliefs.
And so and money, I think, is also upstream of law in some ways.
I think it's less upstream than culture is.
But in all of these cases, it's a two way street.
It is not just like down like culture influence law, but law doesn't influence culture.
They both influence each other.
And that's the thing like money influences law, but law also influences money in many ways, right?
Because I mean, look at all the laws around money, right?
All the I mean, half the time we're fighting again, KYC, FinCEN, AML, like those are laws influencing how we manage and interact with money, even Bitcoin, like, right?
Like we can't just it's obvious that laws could be passed that dramatically impact how we use our Bitcoin, right?
So I think there's a there's a strong two directional street with law and money.
And there's a weaker but still present one between culture and law or or or money.
But, you know, these things, like, I think culture is is is very deep and core and it originates a lot.
It originates how we construct our systems on a basic level.
Like what are the institutional values, right?
Like so if we think about kind of the history of Western civilization, right?
Because we're kind of having this discussion in a Western model.
We have all of these principles, which we kind of take as a given today.
We want to have rule of law.
We want to have this kind of, you know, I use this in the classical sense, like classically liberal social order, like freedom of religion.
Freedom of speech.
This influences our legal system and what sort of laws like right to a right to an attorney, right to a fair trial, like the role of the Supreme Court in overruling other agencies and etc.
Right.
And so those all like emerge from these cultural values that were not always there, right?
Like rewind to, you know, 300 AD England, like it's a very different set of assumptions.
And like we go through the Enlightenment and we go through like the Scottish Reformation and we go through like these these phases where ideas blossom and culture changes.
And then that shapes legally how we construct an institutionally both money and law.
And then we also find that people with a lot of money, institutions with a lot of money or institutions with access to the institution of money, the money printer or etc.
The treasury system or things with a lot of legal power.
Well, suddenly they seem to have more power than ever before to influence culture, right?
Like so much of culture as we see it, I think is more weaponized by money than ever before in human history.
And it's because of mass media, right?
Like no mass media.
Like if you're super rich in 400 AD England, it's a lot harder to like mess with culture, especially because like culture is both this very old thing that is like lindy and hard to fuck with.
And then whatever's left is controlled by the church.
And like it's a lot harder to do it.
But now today, my God, like the media is so porous to wealth.
It's so influenced.
It's so easy to, I mean, God, you can just slap a video.
I guess I'm going to say this.
There was this great tweet that was like this ad that was like the only reason people with Down syndrome don't drink alcohol is because you're culturally conditioned that they shouldn't drink alcohol.
Let's be clear, like Down syndrome in this sense.
We're not talking about people that are a little autistic.
Like average IQ there is like sub 70, right?
Like there's it's a different sort of thing.
And it was this ad with just like poppy music and like inspirational of just like you tell me I can't drink alcohol have a margarita.
So I don't have one.
How about next time you tell me I can drink a margarita and then I will be able to and it'll be fine.
And like the music goes off and everyone's happy and inspired.
And it's like this weird thing where, okay.
Society has this guardrail, right?
Of like, okay, like, you know, maybe people with severe mental handicaps.
We shouldn't serve them an intoxicant.
Okay.
Like I'm not even interested in arguing whether that's right or wrong, but that is that is a social guardrail that we have.
And suddenly some fucking NGO, by the way, with not a single person with Down syndrome is on the board.
Like it's literally just like random fucking people that have decided this is what they're doing are like, you know, putting millions of dollars into a television ad to like influence this one like arcane social guardrail.
It's crazy, right?
It's a really porous relationship where money can influence culture in this insane way.
I have not seen that particular ad and this was like on on on like the old like on actual television like it looked like a TV ad I saw it on Twitter like it looked like a TV ad.
I don't either way someone spent a good amount of money to make it high production value, you know, type type thing.
Yeah, exactly.
It wasn't cheap.
It was a very well produced.
Yeah.
Assume that I can global world Down syndrome day viral ad challenges stereotypes.
It just and I'm all for challenging stereotypes.
It just seems weird to challenge one about intoxicants specifically.
It's like was this paid for by Bud Light?
You know, it's a few other things to it's a drink a margarita assume I can live on my own assume I can like.
But it but again it's like it's rooted in this like literally like the social constructivism the the ad literally argues that the only reason people with with Down syndrome can't like don't drink live on their own like operate.
I don't know what the third one is is because of social beliefs about that.
And it is this like like like this concept of base reality doesn't exist.
Right.
It's this wild reduction where like, you know, if we just believe that everybody can do physics as good as Einstein, then they'll be able to just we just like we just tell you that you're a fucking moron.
And so you are a fucking moron.
If we told you you were a genius, you'd invent new physics.
And it's like, my God, just say a man can get pregnant.
Then he can.
And it.
There you go.
We said it so it must be reality.
It's it's an interesting thing to look at and I don't know.
Again, talking about the intersection of money and of culture and of law and technology obviously fits in and permeates all of this and probably is culture heavily influences technology.
I think in many ways.
But then also, of course, again, there's a symbiosis there.
There's a give and take.
But we're at this strange point where I don't think human beings, we are not evolutionarily equipped to process as much information as we are currently fed.
We are not.
We are not built for it at a fund and you can you can make the argument.
Well, yes, we are.
And it's like, well, okay, you can say that that doesn't make it.
But purely from an evolutionary standpoint, we were not built to consume so much environment.
That's a fact.
Yeah, it isn't yet.
Like we are.
We are very highly intelligent animals.
But we have not evolved to the point where the information that is now being given to us that has become available in the palm of our hand over the last couple of decades.
There is no way our brains can have evolved fast enough to be able to handle all of that.
And that's why I think that information processing signal detection and noise reduction in human beings is such an important skill to be able to learn to be able to actually separate the wheat from the chaff and say this is what is important for me to pay attention to.
Because if you don't, you will be overwhelmed and easily susceptible to manipulation, I think.
Your like these last two dialogues, they really touch on, it reminds me of Nick Land.
I don't know if you're familiar with audiences, but he's a, he was like one of the first, he's a philosopher, and he's one of the first modern days alive that dealt with like AI and accelerationism and kind of this, you know, back in the, I think the 90s, like was was writing about AI,
like way before pretty much anybody else and kind of some of these challenges.
But he has this one concept that he views like capitalism, like like Europe, like unleashed capitalism on the world.
And in the process of doing so, like what happened is there were like, he gives the example of like a nuclear reactor and there's containment rods that contain it.
And those containment rods are culture.
They're like the social guardrails, right?
And what Europe starts to do is they start to rip out the containment rods.
And in doing so, what they unleash is this kind of modern form of capitalism, which starts like an out of control accelerationist chain reaction as information technology, like it's this almost this view of, like,
it's this view that the system itself has desires of its own, and it starts irrespective to human ones desires cultural values.
It starts just accelerating information in this kind of this way that is not concerned with humans that is not like it's not it's not.
It's it's independent of us.
And it's the whole system now is geared in this way that is like this rapid acceleration of information.
And I just think the last two things like you talked about the information, but we're also talking about this thing where no matter where you look, people want to rip out the social guardrails.
Like, I feel like they just see it and there's this reflexive like, oh, there's a boundary.
How about we get rid of that?
Where did this come from?
Why are we trying to rip out every single prohibition boundary guardrail, whatever it whether it's, you know, it's about sex, it's about drugs, it's about like the religion, it's about the way we operate.
But you have this out of control dismantling of any prohibition or any anything which impairs just the like the unobstructed actualization of human desire.
And I don't say that in a super positive way.
I like in the same way that like you don't give a child everything at once like not everything at once is good.
And yet people are just like, they see, oh, I can't do this.
Well, that's oppression and let's remove it.
I think that that's actually such an interesting point.
It's something that kind of ideologically I try to question myself on a lot because I believe in the freedom for people to do whatever the fuck they want.
And now that that obviously has limits.
For example, I don't think you should have the freedom to go and kill someone.
Of course.
I don't think you should be able to do anything you want with children.
And I think if you do those things, you should be very, very, very harshly punished.
And and depending on the severity of what you did, you should maybe be put down.
But then I also struggle with the idea of the death penalty because that's a slippery slope for the state.
So I mean, these are difficult questions.
And there is there is a lot of nuance, but there's also I think for most people and this comes back to what you brought up earlier about just morality.
And the idea that we shouldn't sell meth at CVS to the mentally handicapped, right?
Like, I think we can agree that's just the thing we shouldn't do.
Right.
You know, and there.
That's we now know your line in the same, you know, but no, it's true.
I think I think generally most people, unless you are the of the one to perhaps three, depending on who you ask percent of the population that is a clinical psychosis.
Which is actually the levels of psychopathy in our culture are actually extremely high.
If you think about that, like at a minimum one in every 100 people you deal with would probably be classified as a clinical psychopath.
Fast.
Most of them are very good at hiding it and get along very well and many are quite successful.
Sociopaths not quite as much tend to be more violent and aggressive and unable to deal with impulse control.
But that's a whole different week.
It's been too much time talking on that.
But unless you are a psychopath, unless you have a neurological deficiency that prevents you from empathizing with others, you can generally tell whether you admit it or not as a different story.
But you can generally tell, you know what?
That is something that is just morally wrong.
I can tell deep inside of me.
I can feel that that action is truly wrong.
And, you know, again, not everybody has that ability.
I don't want to discriminate against the psychopaths.
Far be it for me to to marginalize and oppress clinical psychopaths.
It would be terribly.
Yeah.
How dare I?
I think every every board as part of diversity inclusion initiatives should have at least 20% psychopaths.
And the irony is they probably have like 50% already.
So we're good to go.
We fulfilled the quota, right?
Yeah, that's what you don't have to worry about it.
I don't know.
It's it's an interesting thing.
Well, so and you say like you feel it like you can just feel it, you know, you know that it's wrong, right?
And you're effectively like if I were to formalize what you're saying, you're making a phenomenological argument that phenomenologically, like, experientially, not mentally, but experientially, there's inherent truth.
There's inherent knowingness there.
And and this is like, I actually talk about this a lot.
This is actually like a like a favorite topic of mine.
And I have like kind of tongue in cheek talked about it on Twitter as vibes.
Oh, there's vibes like vibe supremacy, investing off vibes, like really what I'm talking about is phenomenology and really we live in a society that has totally discounted that and effectively believes that the only knowledge which exists is formalized like logical analysis.
And that is the only way in which one can know something.
And that's insane.
It's wrong.
It's harmful.
And it disassociates people from that embodied reality that yes, I agree with you.
Like, you know, you're doing something wrong.
Like if you were to go do certain, like you would feel it.
And the kind of the people that would argue with this would be like, well, like, how do you know what that feeling represents and you go into like three layers of abstraction and it's like, no, like, there's a hierarchy here of values of like what we give concern to.
And actually, I place logical analysis below phenomenal logical experience and we live in a society that has elevated the abstract to the formalized the like reductionistic analysis.
That is like the most real thing, even though it is the least real, it is literally constructed and we've taken base reality, which is that you have sense perceptions, you have like actuality to your experience.
And we've said that that's basically like hallucinatory that it's just like this nonsense made up.
It's devoid of intelligence.
And we are so ass backwards in that way and and people live from that place they live from that place and no wonder they never know anything they can't decide they can't act they can't choose they can't they can't live because life happens phenomenologically it doesn't happen analytically.
Like, it's just like that's a fact.
You know, it's, it's funny. And first of all, I think that's just a I can tell that you have good vibes about this topic.
This is a topic that gets gets the good vibes flowing and it's funny.
I just out of curiosity, I like I asked Grock before and I was like, give me give me some, you know, pretend I'm I'm Joe Rogan.
I might have said Howard Stern and and I'm interviewing Zambla Hodel and and give me some interview topics for him and one of them was I haven't used any of them but I was just curious what what it would actually be.
And wait, where did it go here?
Oh, I'm gonna find it.
How do you maintain a positive mindset and keep your vibes high in challenging situations? And what advice would you give to our listeners?
Which I just thought was a kind of hilarious question.
But what but actually, okay, this is the one this is the one AI generated question that I will use.
How do you keep your vibes high? And how do you? Does it have anything to do with sunlight walking and and thinking for yourself by any chance?
Yeah, absolutely. You know, I, I actually I had a whole thing on some Twitter.
It was like, in the comments with a friend, but that I think, like, happiness, right, we think so much about happiness, like, what does it mean to be happy and the pursuit of happiness.
And in talking about this, I like to differentiate there's happiness and there's meaning slash purpose.
And they're two different things, right? One can be happy, like mood, like, I think I think mood, like you could be in a happy mood or not a happy mood.
You feel kind of energized and alert and smiley and like you're having a good time and there's pleasurable sensations, right? That's happy.
Meaning purpose, that's something different. That's like, you're actually willing to be unhappy sometimes in the pursuit of something which is meaningful, like people are willing to work really long hours at jobs they don't like to take care of their family.
And they may not like the job or they may be put into a difficult circumstance at some point, but there's such a sense of like meaning that comes from taking care of, you know, your family, right?
So those are two different things and they're both important for what I'd say well being, which I think can include both of those things.
Happiness, I believe, is literally the sun. Like literally there is a, like a non, like there's zero, there's not a lot of loss in this, like the amount of light you get and the quality of your light environment is how happy on a mood basis you are.
And so in some ways I'm being very reductionistic about that and I'm saying like happiness is a brain state. Like and we know for a fact that the sunlight and light environment is one, like your number one determination of like, you know, your dopamine and your hormonal balance and like all of these crucial, like how good the
vibes are in the brain, right? Like it's literally sun. Like that's what it is. That's the source. It doesn't like fucking you can eat McDonald's all day and if you're in a like a perfect light environment, you're gonna be in a great fucking mood.
That's just a fact. Now that doesn't do anything for like meaning and purpose and I'm not saying we can just reduce complex human experience to that biochemistry because we obviously need something else to feel well being.
But like it literally is that and I challenge anybody if you think this sounds like absolutely batshit like go sit in a dark room for 24 hours for one not even 12 hours just the time you're awake.
Literally sit in a dark room for 12 hours. No lights pitch like pitch dark curtains. You will go fucking insane. You will lose your mind.
Now do that for a day or a week or whatever and then spend a day or a week where you're literally never indoors. You're just like at least until the sun goes down like all day you go outside.
You don't go inside till the sun sets. Do that for a week and tell me it wasn't the best fucking mood of your life. Like it's just there's a there's like a non separation.
There's like our systems these bodies that out there sun like they're they're they're interwoven and you can't you can't it's not optional like you don't get you don't get a choice.
I mean I may be biased because I personally love love the sun.
But that's just the thing isn't it like nobody nobody goes nobody feels worse after getting some sun on them. And I think that there's so much talk of all these bio hack.
Let me interject a real quick.
There is this weird if you have been chronically indoors you might feel weird the first day or two. This is actually something I've noticed if your systems all screwy and your circadian rhythm is totally disrupted.
This actually happened to me. It was raining here for like three weeks straight. It's never rained so straight and it was like just dark and for weeks and my whole light environment got the first day or two that I was back in the sun.
I was like discombobulated like it was like my system didn't know what to do with it. So just on that if you're listening to this if you go to try it and like the first day you feel don't feel good like persist for like give it a couple days.
Anyways continue.
No it's that's that's fair. So basically if you are if you're in the Midwest once the sun comes back out again in the spring. Give yourself some time but I was going to say there's so much of a you see all these you know bio hacking type people that very I I'm using bio hacking in like the Silicon
Valley. Yeah kind of vibe there where all these different things you can do and to you know optimize your performance and to be more efficient and productive and to you know boost up various levels of things and it's like yeah OK or just go walk in the sun.
Yeah. Like we we love to complicate things. So not all of us but it seems that there's a tendency these days perhaps because life appears so complicated we think there must be complex necessarily complex solutions to our complex problems.
Yeah. But the solutions are often very simple and it's like drink a good amount of water. Go out walk around in the sun walk around barefoot.
Yeah. Feels great and you will literally discharge built up static into the ground and it's wonderful. And also your feet won't be trapped in shoe prisons that turn them into weird misshapen blobs of bony flesh at the bottom of your legs. You will feel better.
Yeah. And you know you don't need a guru for that. No you can just.
Do anything. No it's free. Just just do it. There's no barrier.
It's it's truly great advice and that's the thing most of the most of the best best remedies for things are free. Yeah. Because there are things that we've been doing for millennia as humans and they're not things that we just invented.
They're things that have been around for many many many generations. No one's deficient in Prozac. Like that doesn't exist. Like you're not you're not you're not Prozac deficient. That is not what's going on.
That maybe there are cases where that is helpful for certain people but like your body doesn't lack Prozac. Right. Like it if things are not working right. There's something else that lacks but it's not that.
It's usually vitamin D aren't like the majority of men. I'm not sure about this.
It's just vitamin D deficient. Super vitamin D deficient. And the thing is is like the supplemental form is not one for one. There's a lot of complexity. We're only discovering this more and more as time goes on. I'm not saying it has no impact. If you live in fucking Norway I'm not saying stop taking it in the winter or whatever. But like it's not the same. There's complex processes that happen via the skin.
It literally converts your cholesterol into vitamin D. Everyone has high cholesterol which is you know its own kind of rabbit hole but like. But like the sun literally takes your cholesterol and turns it into vitamin D. That doesn't happen when you take the pill.
The pill is like one narrow type. There's like twenty seven different metabolites and different types. There's a whole process. It works differently. And there's a ton of studies that have shown that.
Like things that vitamin D improves. It improves when you get it via the skin and it doesn't improve it when they supplement it. It like some of the stuff it does some of the stuff it doesn't. But it's clear that it is not a one for one substitution.
But it's also the sun is so much more than vitamin D and sun via the eyes is actually I think the more critical part there's. So you have like UVB which does ultraviolet B that does the vitamin D right.
Then you have UVA which when it hits the body at a nitric oxide release it like lowers blood pressure or let your blood go easier. There's infrared radiation that when it hits the body.
It actually produces intracellular melatonin. And this is literally the most powerful antioxidant like blueberries ain't shit compared to this. Like it is mitochondrial which is your basic energy system.
It helps your mitochondria function so much better. Right. So just getting that infrared and that's why people do like red light therapy now the infrared panels infrared saunas right that some of that you're getting that from the sun.
And then there's the whole visual light so the visual light is really critical so your eye everything in your body operates on a circadian biological rhythm and it influences your hormones your testosterone your dopamine your serotonin.
Your everything your your your your growth hormone releases in the evening your digestion everything there's like half of the genes in your body get turned on or off based on circadian triggers.
And so when your environments all miscalibrated and you have darker dim days and bright nights because of artificial light your ass backwards literally everything's fucked in in a sense it's fucked up and getting that back in it influences every system and so the light is in the eyes is a primary trigger
like skin like great good there's a lot of benefits you do need it but it's seeing the sun in the morning turning that system on probably everyone's heard of Huberman at this point he's he's big about that.
And mitigating I mean you know seeing like throughout the day keeping you know brightness up is good.
And then I mean this is a tricky one for people but like I do not use conventional artificial light at night like when the sun goes down.
I only use pure red light it's like 100% red spectrum the reason it doesn't disrupt melatonin it doesn't disrupt the nighttime cycle it can be weird for people they're like what do you mean like you gotta like you know you gotta get a screen filter you gotta like download the red filter on all your screens you gotta replace the light bulbs
you've got to like yeah it's a little bit of a project like it'll change the way you're used to living but I've never met a single person and I've turned I've done this for eight years man like this isn't like a new thing for me like I was into the sun light stuff before Bitcoin.
Everyone I've turned on to this.
It might have been a little weird at first. No one has ever gone back you do it for a week it'll change your life you're like you do this for a week and like literally like even like do it for a couple nights.
And then do it like let the sun go down let two hours go by and then turn the red lights back into your normal lights and you will literally be like this is this is evil.
This is this is profane. This is this is like this is sacrilegious it's cursed like something is something is wrong here on a very deep profound level these bright white LEDs in the middle of the night I have I have sinned against something.
You know it's a it's fun I recently got a red light reading lamp. Yeah, for late at night so I was like well that's like a little thing I can do and I've been debating the red light at night because first of all it feels like it sets a nice mood you know it's like okay.
You know what I'm saying you know yeah. So I may have to give this give this the full the full go because you're quite you're quite convincing with it I also realize at the beginning of this show we should have said listen to this while walking outside in the
but luckily I'll do up I'll do an intro for it so now I can now I can tell people that good but I do it do it like commit like yeah it's cheap it's inexpensive get a couple red light bulbs like it'll cost you 30 bucks if you have like several you need to do there you can get one for like three or
four dollars just just do it for a week like I there's few things I can promote as heavily as just like almost costless so good for you and like you'll love it and and it's like there's this
this light dark cycle it's primordial it's primordial like it's so deep in here it's so deep in this thing that like there was light and there was dark and it was this eternal cycle and we can't just like
disrupt that you can't but like it's not daytime all the time and when you start to have that that sun goes down lights get really dim there's something psychological it does like it's psychologically good because it's like you're not always in like
daytime go mode achieve mode like do mode there's a there's a rest and recuperation and there's a and it's it's it's like a more intimate environment to like you know you and your wife and your family and you're around the fire and it's light and it's warm it's
dim it's like there's something intimate like to it that is you know I mean our ancestors have gathered around campfires and night night for you know millions of years I love me a good fire I was home schooled for the majority of my youth and so I'd finish all my work within probably like you
know three hours of the day or maybe a little less than that because it turns out you don't need to do eight hours of book work to literally front to back teach yourself algebra from the textbook like you can do just fine but then the rest of the day I would pretty much be
outside starting fires contained fires I was not like burning down forests you know but just starting fires and there's there's nothing better there's that's another one of those primordial things like nobody hates being around a fire and watching it
and there's a reason that we can just watch it and be mesmerized and watch it dance all night long and it's a it's a beautiful thing if you're listening to this walk outside preferably in the sunshine but maybe the sun doesn't always shine where you are so just walk outside and perhaps get yourself some some red lights which I may be doing as well
and start fires in a contained and manageable and non destructive way I'm not advocating that anyone burn any buildings down if any if there's any spooks listening to this this is a and you can do candles or red lights or candles like fire is also totally fine it doesn't disrupt the system
so if you want to do something a little more natural or ancestral like you know get a candle and that's nice to like it's honestly it's better it's more fun like sometimes we'll just put a candle on in the evening and you know and you can even they can get a red light filter for your fucking computer and you can watch Netflix like you I'm not I'm not
asking you to like like literally just download Twilight on your fucking laptop and put a red light bulb or a candle on and watch your fucking show it'll be a little red like you'll be okay is Twilight the name of the app or are you talking okay I was like are you big like Twilight fan
no no no no no there's an app called Twilight and flux so f.lux or Twilight depend Mac or PC okay well good to know these are these are great tips and you know I have enjoyed the hell out of this I want to be conscious of your scarce time so you know I like to end by usually just asking
what are you reading you've given a couple recommendations already with the public we talked about theft of fire earlier is there anything else that you're reading right now that you're really enjoying that can also be any sort of like long form or just maybe
anything else that you're really enjoying digesting the information contained within
Ian McGill criss the matter with things and I've been reading this for a while why because it's 1400 pages long so not a not a not a bite sized read but he's also got podcasts and another book which is shorter and
it is I think in my opinion the most important philosophical work of the modern age and what it deals with is some of the topics I think we've talked about here and
it deals with this reductionism we've been talking about and the book is an argument that the world cannot be understood in that way in a holistic sense like you can't understand the whole of the world right like so you can you can reduce everything to parts right like that's what we do when we
analyze and deduce and and and that is powerful in terms of our ability to control the world to manipulate the world to build technologies and influence things right and that's fine that's not a bad thing we need that that's been
advantageous and that is maybe a correct mindset to use when you're trying to control the world right if you're trying to build a faster plane or a new technology or Bitcoin or whatever you want to break everything down into components and understand how the individual components
work right like we'll use an example of biology and talking about biology breaking the body down into proteins and enzymes and cells and all that right like that's good if you're trying to figure out how to turn this one gene on or off or treat a medical condition fine that's great
but you cannot understand what it is to be human through a reductive analysis of all of the parts in a body you can never ever ever get there there is a mismatch the parts do not add up to the whole
there is some emergence there is something else which enters the parts the whole is more than the parts somehow all of these individual components end up producing something which is beyond the parts that went into it in the same way that like
you can't understand like like you can take all the individual muscle cells right the five it doesn't really like you don't know what an arm is by looking at a thousand chains of of cells and and tendons and things right like the body the muscular system of the body as a whole is greater than these individual parts right
and so the book it obviously in 1400 pages talks about a lot that's more than that but it is addressing like a sickness in the modern world that what we've talked about is it just it seeks to reduce everything down into its component parts and as such loses the
whole it even it de spirits it unspirits the whole it removes the spirit from and it it it it revitalizes it's like you can't live that way you can't know life you can't live life you know and and you know there's kind of
phenomenal logical discussions of just like one of the fascinating I won't you know I could talk about this book for hours I'll do just one more thing one of the fascinating pieces of evidence he does is so
Schizophrenia is essentially that quality cranked up to a 10 of reductionism and so in the schizophrenic you have the total reduction and atomization of everything if you ask a schizophrenic to draw like a like a true deep like really schizophrenic person to draw
themselves they draw themselves as parts their arm is not connected to their torso their leg is not connected their head is there they're atomized there's no whole and that is how they start to experience the world so in a very real way this modern reductionism of everything
we are teaching ourselves to be schizophrenic we are and it's like have you ever navigated the world and you're talking to somebody and it's like they just can't like there's just this plainly directly obvious thing that we're having these social wars and cultural wars that it's
like it's obvious it's like it's right there it's like you can't see it that is this tendency of it's like there's this obvious plain as day thing which is perceptually real and yet there's this analytical reason why what you're seeing isn't true
it's like well actually all of this theory and like blah blah blah like that is this tension that we are living through right now and this book is I think just the most incredible antidote I would literally call it an antidote to that and it's you said it was the matter with things
and it's a joke right it's matter things like like it is and it you know I kind of went on the beginning of this thing of like this that matter this belief that like matter is the only thing that exists and when you get into this book like you realize a lot of this is rooted in the very concept of what is the primacy of the stuff like is this is this the deepest thing is the deepest thing
is this like ontologically like is this the realist thing is there something realer than this and how do we even ask that question and that may sound to maybe someone in the audience is like a superfluous or like naval gazing like what does that even what does that even mean but what you'll realize is that
modernity has supplied an answer to that question so you may hear that question and think like is that nonsense like what does he mean like what is realer you live in a world which has already decided the answer to that question regardless of if you think it's nonsense and it is poisoning everything
you know that a lot of what you're just saying right there reminded me a lot of Alan Watts as well and for anyone that's listening that's not familiar with Alan Watts there are some shorter than 1400 pages if that's perhaps a little too ambitious now I'm curious I'm going to order this though because
that sounds really fascinating but that's one of the kind of core things that Alan Watts talked about right is this need to dissect everything this need to break everything apart and look at and look oh look how clever and smart we are by by picking all this apart you know look at we've we've figured
out the most intimate ways that the butterflies mate instead of just saying look at that beautiful butterfly yes isn't that wonderful isn't that amazing yeah and so I'm gonna so the matter with things who did you say the author was in McGill criss and you gave such a phenomenal example like those are those two different modes one wants to dissect the
butterfly the other is odd by the beauty of the thing itself of the the actuality the the the the the the the the the the thou in front of you and like those are those two modes and each of us has both of those modes one isn't good and the other is bad and that's his argument like these are both essential parts
of brain function and humanity but one makes a very poor master and we have handed the keys to the kingdom to our dissecting analytical mind and it has unsold the world it has literally sucked it has extracted it has excised the soul from things
in in in a profound way like the world when you were a child the world was enchanted it was experientially enchanted there was a felt sense this wasn't like a belief that you believed in magic or something it was that you looked at the fucking trees
and you felt that there was life there there was a vibrancy and a realism to it and
and in previous human civilizations in previous stages of human civilization I'm not saying everyone was walking around experiencing the world as one does as a child
but the world was alive it was enchanted it had a soul to it it was not dumb inert stuff and what this tendency has done is it has surgically extracted the soul from everything and we live in an unan uninsolved world and everybody is miserable and and and everyone is searching for something
and that is lost they they know that something is missing they can't it keeps them up at night it is no matter how much money or success one achieves there's this annoying pit this emptiness and we live in a we live in an unenchanted world and
it's a profound problem but it's one that like one can remedy in oneself you don't need the world to change like it would be great if it did but like the solution is inside oneself it is you can literally look and interact with the world in a different way anyways
now I well I love that because I was going to ask you for those who feel that annoying pit how would you recommend that they try to fill it is it just by trying to experience and not to use a cliche but to be present because the present is all we have and that may sound contradictory to the low time preference think about the future
yeah but I don't find it so at all yeah well it means that you are appreciating the time that you have now and making sure you make the most of it that is how you best prepare yourself for the future is by being present paradoxically so I think
absolutely right I think that is the right answer and I'll just expound on it a little bit life only occurs here there's no there's there's nothing else there's no other like those those those other moments don't they don't have experiential reality and they're not really real
you're like you know you can't you can't fill that hole that's the that's the trap that's the that's the false promise the siren song of the modern world is that you can you can fill that emptiness with stuff and things and power and money and status and prestige
and you can't every it's it's like a Chinese finger trap every attempt to fill it makes it worse or aggravates it it is like the solution is actually in the in the stopping to try to fill it and this doesn't mean like a paralyzed give up this it is like it is
just encountering encountering the moment encountering and when I say encountering I mean I mean something substantial something with with with with that is experienced that is that is tangible like coming into contact with
one self the moment with the lived reality of what one feels like in this moment in the next moment like it's revitalizing like it's we were we're taught to live and like in this abstracted far away like like like people like we literally are taught that like we are our minds like that we are like like the content of our
minds and we live in this way where we're we're obsessed with whatever is running through our heads at that moment but like you know you you can focus on that but like there's also experience itself there's your sense perceptions there's the world around you there's
there's just that that lived reality and I think the antidote is just putting your attention to that lived reality and that's like the sum total of all meditation practices the world over in one way or another you know are at least in a large part saying that that you need to divert attention from the runaway circus of mind and restore it to just
you know what is actually here what is actually real which is whatever is is is present.
And like that is, you know, I mean experientially like it's just a gradual process of like we're addicted to we're addicted to this this abstraction this endless disassociative thinking.
Like the like the lived lived felt substance and so it's no surprise that our society like completely discounts.
Well what do you mean you know it's true what do you mean you feel that it's right or wrong right because they're so disassociated from just reality like literally reality.
Everything is analysis. And yeah, I mean that is, you know, in a in a in a one answer answer that is the answer.
It's a beautiful answer. And I think a beautiful note to end on. And I will say that this lived reality. This being in the present with you has been a present to me quite a gift.
I've enjoyed this very much. Last thing I'll say is just anywhere you want to send people. I'll link to your Twitter and your noster, but anything else that people should check out.
Go for it. This has been quite a treat, Steven.
No, this has been awesome. Yeah, contact me on Twitter. Steven loopka. You're not going to be able to spell my handle.
It'll be in the show notes for that reason.
Yeah, like my DMs are always open. I love interacting with everybody on Twitter if you want to reach me, reach me there. I work for Swan.
You want to do Bitcoin things come to Swan.
All right. Well, I appreciate this because, you know, your time is scarce and Bitcoin is scarce, but Bitcoin podcasts are abundant.
So thank you for sharing your scarce time to come on another fucking Bitcoin podcast and looking forward to seeing you in the flesh and experiencing the present together in person again soon.
Yes, absolutely, sir. Pleasure. This was wonderful.
And that's a wrap on this Bitcoin talk episode of the Bitcoin podcast.
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There will only ever be 21 million, but Bitcoin podcasts are abundant.
So thank you for spending your scarce time to listen to another fucking Bitcoin podcast until next time. Stay free.