Hello, I'm Michael, Michael Montgomery, and, well, this is Michael's study. And what Michael's study is supposed to be is this excuse for me to explore ideas. An idea that I've been wanting to mess with is how do we know what we know, which I will get to probably in actually writing in the future. But I have a few bullet points why I'm starting this podcast, mainly to explore ideas. I have a lot of books that I enjoy reading, like Robert Greene's Laws of Power, Laws of Human Nature, 33 Strategies of War, Laws of Seduction, and all that stuff. I love his books, and I would love a place to talk about what I'm reading in his books, even though I've read his books several times over. I am interested in Stoicism, and I would love to talk about my obvious misunderstandings of that. I am generally interested in science and technology, and I would love to talk about that and where it looks like it's going, and what I think about it, even though I'm horribly misinformed. I, for a couple of years, was interested in cryptocurrencies and then Bitcoin, and I would love to talk about those adventures, if you want to call them that, dives down a rabbit hole. I have ideas for fantasy books and sci-fi books that I would love to write that maybe this isn't the best platform for it, but I could talk about those ideas and kind of explore them and then write them down later for other things. So yeah, there's a lot of reasons why I want to have this platform. I've got a bullet point list on the laptop over here. I don't know how much I should waste your time on this first video. There's several books I would like to write. There's a fantasy book that I want to write about where the main character is in a world where someone causes... It's kind of like a Thanos snap. Basically, a lot of people just disappear and nobody understands why, and they are tasked with figuring out what happened and trying to fix it. There's also a book I want to write where basically one day everyone wakes up, and the only thing that they really remember is what they could prove to be true. So, like, suddenly the entire planet is a rational planet, and they only believe what they can prove with evidence. Like, you could do a test, a blind study, and whatever was the result is what they would believe kind of thing. It's hard to... It sounds more interesting in my dreams than it does when I try to explain it. A big piece of why I want to do this is... I read a lot of Steven Pressfield, like The War of Art, and what he talks about, this resistance, this force that keeps you from working on what you want to work on. And I thought, maybe, just hitting record, like Joseph Gordon-Levitt talks about. Just hit record, make the content, and publish the content. What can I possibly do to keep this as simple as possible, like Tim Ferriss talks about? What is the minimum effective dose, in a way? I just want to start. I've always wanted to do this. Since, like, 2017, I've wanted to do Michael's study, where I talk about what I'm reading, or I talk about what experiments I'm screwing around with, or whatever it is that I'm working on. And it's 2025, we're halfway through, and I don't feel like I've even attempted to start at it. So, this is me forcing myself to start. I don't really know what else to mention at this point. I don't know how often I want to do these, whether it's daily, which would probably cause burnout, or weekly, which would probably be best, then it would be more like an update. Monthly doesn't feel often enough. A kind of side goal is to get good enough at talking to the camera, or having something interesting enough to talk about that I could maybe invite people to talk to me, and we could do, like, a Zoom call and record it, and essentially I would want to build a platform up where I could interview authors that I respect and admire, and have follow-up questions that their books don't cover, or just I selfishly want to talk to them, that kind of thing. I don't know how much of this will be me wanting to talk about or publicly work on fiction. I do love the idea of trying to figure out how we know what we know. I would love to write essays that I can't write yet, because I don't know enough to write them, about how we know how old the planet is, how we know how old we think the universe is, how we know how old fossils are, how we know how electromagnetism works, how nuclear fusion and fission works, how we make energy from it. How do we know how cells divide? Like, there's limitless things that I would love to explore about how we know what we know, and that's all this could be, which I'm sure would be really boring for everyone but myself. But it would be a great opportunity to practice writing. I could write out a script and then read it to you guys. I could just talk about what I've been reading about. Say I'm reading books about whatever talk it is that I want to talk about or want to explore. For instance, I mentioned Bitcoin and cryptocurrency earlier. I would love to write, and I've even already begun, what I know about Bitcoin or what I think I know about Bitcoin or what I think Bitcoin is, which technically I've actually written all three of those. And every time I've written it, I've realized the gaps in my knowledge, and I'm pretty sure that's why people write, to figure out what they don't know. Or when they try to educate someone else, they really figure out, oh man, I really need to fill in this gap, because if I'm going to teach such and such person this topic, obviously I don't understand how this part of it works. Ideally, if I do this, if we can make this work, it's not just me coming up with a hypothesis I already believe to be true and then attempting to prove it to be true. It's more like I have a question about reality. I explore it, and then I tell you guys what I found out. And whether or not it meshes with my preconceived notions about reality, my cognitive dissonance about what I already think is true, hopefully it becomes kind of like iron sharpening iron. It's an opportunity for me to improve myself, and then whatever it is that I happen to learn, I get a pass on to whomever it is that happens to come across this and thinks it's an interesting idea. So while I'm not sure where we'll be starting for the next recording, this was my attempt at getting the ball rolling. So if you want to see more, I hope that you follow this account, which I have no clue how you do. I'm new to recording this kind of thing, and I know that I should just be writing, but video is easier: hit record and get going, so that's the whole point of this. And, yeah, I hope to see you guys in future videos. If you can leave comments, please do. Let me know what your thoughts are. And ideally, the next bit of content will be something with more meat on the bones than just getting the ball rolling. So thanks again. Catch you in the next one. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.