Luke Smith is a prideful man, full of conceit and contempt. He insists in his own worldviews, who doesn't, but calls most other worldviews cucked, bluepilled, and so on. Bluntly, he's a dick. Additionally, he drapes all his content in the vague sense of the OrthoBro aesthetic, where everything is about returning to tradition and freeing yourself from society, and instead living a Godly life, without actually doing any meaningful discussion on said Godly life. A lot of his views and opinions and statements do run contrary to Christianity itself. He should be reminded of how we are urged by Jesus and the Apostles to humble yourself, not think of yourself as superior to others, and that we should be blameless before the unbelievers. Stirring up controversy, using intentionally offensive verbage, and so on is absolutely ungodly, and blasphemes the faith in general. We should be reperesentatives of Christ, and by insisting such outrageous claims like how vegans are unthinking drones, he cannot be representing the faith in a manner befitting of the Church. Besides even the religious aspects, a lot of his articles are riddled with flaws and hypocrises that even someone as unqualified and uneducated as me can plainly spot. Now yes, I know that it is easier to break something down than to build something up, but when you build something up, you should ensure that it's sturdy, no? And a lot of the language he uses feels like someone who is far too serious. Calling making your own website being a digital Landchad, give me a break dude.

This should serve as a reminder to everyone, that nobody is perfect. Someone you idolize and think is brilliant is just as ignorant and vain as everyone else, and often just as wrong. Take every word and statement in this world with thought and care, take nothing truly at face value.

In Brief: This article bases its assumptions on misrepresentations of groups, frequent contradictions, a fundamental misunderstanding of politics conceptually, and large amounts of ondescension.

This is Luke's first article on his web-page. It opens with a strong start: "It's not a huge secret that I'm somewhere in the high echelons of the red-pill," what a claim. He begins the first article discussing how he doesn't get involved in politics on his channel. He lays out his reasons as follows: a bunch of Chinese text, and politics are unnecessary in daily life. He then talks about how the Chinese text is so concise and perfect and how good of a language Chinese is and how it's criminal to try and translate it to English, but he'll make an exception for us this time since we can't read Chinese, unlike him. The Chinese text is not really relevant to the message of the article. He translates it as "The Dao (way) that you can follow isn't the true eternal Dao. A name that you speak, isn't its true name." He then talks about how becoming redpilled is a journey undertaken over a long time, by various means and paths personal to each individual, and there is no one way to become redpilled.

He then talks at lengths about how the media and society programs us to think certain ways. He says how the media and state program us with emotional responses to certain values, where the questioning and individual assessment of such values may prove an existential threat to liberal democracy. He gives the examples of feminism, racism, Naziism, and so on. He then discusses how in certain parts of Europe and even America, certain speech is being banned. Then he talks about how being redpilled is a mystical experience of reprogramming your own mind -- mystical of course in the ancient Greek sense, not the modern sense. Not like langauge is a dynamic construct of any sort.

His second article, a continuation of the first, essentially state that politics only matters to those who:

• Live in cities
• Use proprietary software
• Use social media
• Have no transferable or universal skills
• Have replacable jobs

He then wraps it up talking about how people like tradesmen don't have to care about politics, since they are 'free' in the system by virtue of not being constrained by twitter cancellation and by HR departments. The article finishes by urging against revolutionary thought, because revolutions necessarily also tie your thinking to politics. Finally, he finished by recommending some books written by various figures, including revolutionaries, and telling us that life in the countryside is like life after the system has already collapsed and we're rebuilding.

Let's go through these statements one by one. For one, his entire conceptualization of politics is a mess. Politics in his mind just means political correctness. When you replace the word politics with political correctness, the entire article becomes coherent. Political correctness doesn't matter to a tradesman, correct, because he's irreplaceable so society will tolerate these views for his useful life. Similarly, those who live in the countryside and rural environments also don't need to worry about political correctness. Why is that? Why do larger populations induce more social pressures for political correctness? This is an interesting phenomenon that Luke Smith does not explore.

Instead he goes on a tangent about how society programs our thinking to respond in certain ways to ideas like Naziism, saying that because these ideas are a threat to a liberal democracy if considered, the system must then subliminally implant anti-Nazi rhetoric into our minds. Is this a simplification of his argument? Yes. An oversimplification? No. Here's the quote from the man himself:

"[Moldbug] still was surprised that if he saw a group of Nazi LARPers, he would reflexively have a pang of emotional stress, but if he saw Stalinist LARPers, he wouldn't have the same kind of emotional reaction. I think everyone raised in the West has that same programmed reaction. [...] If it was not a weak spot, there would be no harm in you being allowed to calmly investigate it. People's thoughts are regulated in liberal democracy not by laws, but by psychological programming that goes off when someone is tempted to evaluate an idea they're not supposed to."

Let's seriously think about this, what did he mean by this?

Now if you didn't need further clarification that he meant political correctness when he said politics, let's take a look at something he said. He lamented how in Europe and even beginning in America, people are now being legally prosecuted for their speech. So how, then, is withdrawing from politics the solution to these issues? By withdrawing from the democratic process, you are submitting yourself to the will of those who wish to impose upon you the very laws you decry. Nonsense! Leaving the city doesn't make you immune to federal laws and jurisdiction. It makes it more difficult, yes, but you are still bound by the law. And let me remind you that in the Book of Romans, and the letter to Titus and first letter to Peter reaffirm that a Godly man -- someone who he claims to be -- should be submissive to authorities. OrthoBros put strong emphasis on following church fathers, is the apostle Paul not among them? Even if they are unrighteous, was Jesus not subsimssive to the pagan Roman authorities, submissive even to the point of death? Our democracy gives us some say in government, especially local government. Why, then, withdraw your voice from politics if you believe that the political direction is going poorly, instead of increasing your political activity? Moreover, are these articles themselves not at least a form of political engagement?

He also makes claims about how we shouldn't be dependent on the system. But are we not all dependent on it? To draw on the philosophy of Leviathan, the state provides us with security, and without that we would have no confidence or assurance in commerce, manufacturing, production, transit, anything. Does he then mean rejection of the current system? No! He preaches self-sufficiency, not relying on others, building up your own skills as if you can be reliant on only yourself throughout life. A mindset that frankly opens the soul about trust issues and insecurities.

The article also makes great use of generalizations. He says how people who work blue-collar jobs are indispensible, so they are not constrained by things like political correctness, forgetting that many construction companies have HR departments and such. He assumes that if you live in a large city, you're under immense pressure to be politically correct. This ignores the many, many lower class neighborhoods. In fact, you wil find that political correctness is more aligned with class than urban environment. He also makes the assumption that people reject things like segregation and Naziism, because of subtle mental manipulation, rather than the fact that people can evaluate these things and see the flaws and harms in them. His statements speak of gross generalizations that do show that he largely doesn't understand the groups he portrays, and that is perhaps why he is so conceited.

Also, he decries submitting yourself to the ideals of a revolutionary, while in the very next few lines putting forward a few recommended readings that you should internalize, including the Unabomber's Manifesto. Ted Kaczynski was very openly a revolutionary, the very person who Luke Smith discourages submitting yourself to the will of

In Brief: The article has major flaws and contradictions, is overly vague in actual implementation of his Poeticist worldview, and again relies on many assumptions and generalizations without nuance or actual understanding of the subject matter.

This article is a very odd one. To begin, he discusses asceticism and hedonism, and compares them. He describes hedonism as pleasure-seeking to the point of being self-destructive, and how hedonism isn't even hedonism, because the self-destruction prevents pleasure-seeking later in life. Then he discusses how asceticism instead is a reactionary thought in modern society to hedonism. The ascetics instead intentionally make themselves miserable, ascribing all fun as sin. He also says most are liars, claiming that the ones who talk so frequently about abstaining from sex are heavily addicted to porn. He discusses that by rejecting all worldly pleasures, an ascetic is essentially surrendering to hedonism by making yourself miserable. He then says that society essentially gives us a choice, to choose between one or the other.

He instead posits his own thought: Poeticism. Not poetic as in those silly little poems, but poetic in the ancient Greek sense. He sure loves using his ancient Greek root words to sound intellectual. In his view, poeticism is essentially a life that is focused on creating things. As such, things like pornography, video games, and social media are all distractions that do not create anything, and so are bad. He also ascribes a religious component to this, by saying that since God created all things, and we should emulate God, we should then create things. Not a bad idea. But then he takes it further, saying "In the Poetic Worldview, the highest moral goal is creation" and "an individual is good insofar as he reflects this creative tendency of God". Additionally, he says that things like the internet and living in spaces with high-wealth allow you to create more things.

What does he list as things that are virtuous and good under the poetic worldview?

• affecting the world,
• improving what is around you,
• having children,
• making money not to spend it on pleasures, but to make something new and great with it,
• writing or making something useful or edifying for others,
• clearing up misconceptions that get in other people's way in accomplishing these things.

Some of the major flaws should be obvious. Firstly, we don't have to choose between total asceticism and hedonism. In fact, most people don't. They live normal lives, something which Luke seems to have not realized. This further reinforces the idea that he's likely quite out of touch. Additionally, most ascetics aren't miserable. If they were miserable, they'd stop doing it. They enjoy it, seeing how far they can bring themselves, how detached from the material. They enjoy seeing how little they can live with, they are very convicted people.

Secondly, the religious foundation is simply wrong. We should live as servants to Christ, this is plain in Scripture. Do the Scriptures not emphasize that we should focus not on the world, but on the spiritual? How much then do you focus on the world, when you ascribe all moral good to material production and creation? It is plainly anti-Christian to say that moral good comes from productivity, not from submissiveness to God.

And look at the list of items he gives as examples of Poeticist behavior. Affecting the world? Improving your surroundings? Spending money on making new and great things? Writing or making something useful or educational? All of these are vague and non-specific. The only actual example he gives is having children. It's like he has an idea but can't form it into words.

And he lauds the fact that the internet and high-development countries give greater access to the ability to create and produce. Never mind the fact that he earlier decried living in cities, which have the most wealth and development, especially of internet. And never mind the fact that higher-wealth areas have often become post-industrial, resulting in less actual creation and manufacture.

In Brief: The entire argument is essentially that scientists are too focused on models and minimal, simple formulas, and are closed minded to possibilities of their assumptions behind those models being wrong. That's all it's saying. It didn't need this long of an article. Also, it's tainted with that typical Luke Smith hypocrisy.

Luke Smith tells us a parable. The article is titled The Parable of Alien Chess. Interesting word, parable. You know who told parables famously? Jesus. I'm not saying that he's calling himself Jesus. I'm saying that Luke is coming off as smug and condescending, raising himself up as a pillar of wisdom and reason comparable to Jesus.

Essentially, he describes how an alien race who could not see a chess board but could measure the outcome could put the results of a chess game up to a coin flip. This is because they don't know the underlying mechanisms of the game, and so they ascribe a formula to the outcome without actually knowing what the formula represents.

He then uses lots of fancy words to describe that essentially modern science does the same thing, obsessing over formulas and models. He also says that scientists often become to fixed on their models, and that they will tweak their formulas to fit the data rather than reevaluating their methodology entirely, and that's why science may be stagnating. He also says that science may be better when the scientists have biases, private funding, religious views, etc. because that may open up the researchers to new perspectives and ideas that could yield new thought. He then says most scientists are elitist and have inferiority complexes, and that most of their work has no real-world application.

He also uses plenty of fun, big phrases. Here's a particularly egregious example: "[...]it has to lose or at least jeopardize empirical solvency and/or parsimony: embracing the abstractions of chess pieces means introducing mess and deviating in some way from the empirical generalization[...]" He could have made this entire article only a couple paragraphs. Instead, it's a 1,300 word mess of ten letter words, where five letter words would suffice.

And again, there is that irony. Luke is a man with a linguistics doctorate, and he is writing about academics being elitist and how their works are useless in the real world, while he writes needlessly complex articles about his own philosophy like he's an enlightened genius. Can you not see the hypocrisy present?

Besides, a lot of what he says about models and formulas being too simplistic and inflexible to be true is just rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding of the sciences. A lot of these simpler formulas really are only as long as they need to be, while others are indeed quite complex. For example, many formulas in the field of thermodynamics are very complex and cumbersome, while others such as Newton's 2nd Law or Kepler's 3rd Law are really only as complex as they need to be, because that's all the complexity there is. Further analysis can be done into why some of these fundamental formulas are this simple, but again, these formulas being simple doesn't make them false.