My name is Luke. Let's create the world we want to live in.
Co-Founder and CTO of FoxyCart.com. Passionate about living life on purpose. Interested in Bitcoin.
Who Am I?
Identities are hard to pin down because ideally they're constantly changing for the better. My name is Luke Stokes, and today I'm a thirty-seven-year-old husband living in Nashville, TN, a husband to a beautiful wife, a father to three children, a PHP programmer, and a business owner. While maintaining a day job and with many late nights and long weekends, I worked for four years building a business which has now employed me full-time for over five years. It's an incredible thing to have thousands of businesses relying on you, your business partner, and your team to run their ecommerce. Since 2007, we've helped complete over half a billion dollars in transactions. I built my first website in 1996 (yes, AOL and Geocities), and I've been blogging for a while on various topics, though never seriously. Just this year I finally got a domain and a Wordpress blog over at http://lukestokes.info with my first post about a significant worldview change which is continuing to shape my life. More on that later.
Lifestyle
Running an online business allows for great flexibility. I can't remember the last time I woke up to an alarm clock. I work from home and get to see my little ones (2, 5 and 7) all day long. I've also been able to travel, speak at conferences, and sponsor events with my company. We love to travel as a family and hope to see the world once we pay off our house. My favorite trip so far was right after quitting my day job. We spent 10 weeks in Costa Rica (where I got the picture above). Here's a shot my wife took of my office while we were there:
Having grown up in Huntington Beach, CA, I surfed my brains out at Playa Grande the whole time we were in Costa Rica.
Passions
I want to live life on purpose. I like encouraging people through programming, writing, and speaking. Though I've given a few conference talks on Hypermedia APIs, Bitcoin, and business, lately I've been a little stage-shy. I haven't submitted to a conference in a while, but I did get asked to give a keynote at PHP World last year (Turning Your Code Into a Company: The Parts They Don't Tell You if you want to check out the video). I love camping with the family, promoting entrepreneurship, learning about new ideas, debating the need for a monopoly on the use of force in a geographic region (i.e. government), and, of course, Bitcoin. Also, I love me some sushi! Sad to say, the restaurant near my house where I got this beauty is now closed:
Bitcoin All the Things!
I started learning about Bitcoin in late 2012 and bought my first in 2013 at $20. Sadly, I didn't cash in when it reached $1,200 because I was too ideologically attached. I've spent days (literally) on bitcointalk.org. At one point I risked my stash and purchased an Avalon miner which then melted down in less than a day due partly to bad wiring and partly to my stupidity. That's a quick way to loose a lot of btc (though I was able to part out the boards and case and get about 65% of the investment back). I'm convinced decentralized technologies like Bitcoin will play a significant role in the future of humanity. I've been blogging about bitcoin to spread awareness and hopefully get more businesses to accept it on their websites. If you're still not sure what it is, you can fully understand it in 30 minutes (includes links to several other bitcoin posts I've written). I've also failed at creating a non-profit, the Tennessee Bitcoin Alliance. What started as a local meetup group morphed into bureaucracy which then voted me to the board. Long story short: lots of wasted time and effort.
Peace, Love, and Anarchy... but no Religion?
Since 2014, I started exploring the philosophy of anarchy which basically means no rulers. I also started caring more about epistemology which is the mechanisms we use for justified belief. That led to questioning so many things, including my Christian upbringing. I was homeschooled as a child, lived on a boat for 2 years, watched my parents pass away in 2007, worked in full-time ministry for 6 years after college at UPENN, and, eventually, came to the conclusion much of what I've been taught needs to be questioned. The more I learned about logical fallacies and improved my epistemology, the more I lost my assuredness in a theistic worldview. You can read the whole story in the Losing Eternity blog post I eluded to earlier. This has been, by far, one of the most challenging life changes I've ever experienced, and I'm still navigating through it with my family and friends. The truly amazing part of this journey is the deep love I have for my wife who has put up with me through it all. Ain't she cute?
My Place in the World of Steemit
On July 1st, 2013, one of my tweets ended up getting 226 RTs. I was Internet famous! I even blogged about it (Admit It. You're Insecure. We All Are.), but never got a check from Twitter. I also really enjoy great discussions on Facebook about whether or not taxation is theft, why you shouldn't spank your kids, or how we might thrive with no government at all. Steemit, to me, is a way to do the things I love while actually justifying the time spent because I can see real value being created not just for those liking the posts or engaging in the discussions, but for myself and my family as well.
So... What Should We Talk About?
Talking about myself so much feels a little weird. What do you want to talk about? Lately I've been interested in exploring universal moral frameworks, especially as it relates to super intelligence, philosophy, transhumanism, and future technology. Does that sound interesting to you? If you want to connect more, please leave a comment and a link to your #introduceyourself post so I can learn more about you and keep the conversation going.
Thanks for welcoming me to the Steemit community!
Where I Am Online
https://lukestokes.info/
https://www.facebook.com/bestoked
https://twitter.com/lukestokes
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bestoked
https://keybase.io/lukestokes
https://onename.com/lukestokes
https://about.me/luke.stokes
Wow! Just read this for the first time
Been trying to startup a business for a while but never had enough funds set up a even basic structure... but steemit is changing that
Getting "funded" is not a destination.... trying to get funded sucks man
I'ld love to chat up some more on steemit.chat
In my perspective, it's more about time and effort than money when it comes to building a business people want to use. These posts may help a bit:
I just saw @nextgencrypto mention in Slack that introduceyourself posts should include a self verification, so I'm adding it here as a comment.
(Oh, and if you're curious about the unicorn pooping rainbows and lucky charms, it started as our 404 picture on FoxyCart, then became stickers, and eventually tshirts).
As a newbie on Steemit I am just finding my fellow entrepreneurs, technology lovers, etc. It's nice to find you! I'll be following :) Also, you asked for a link to introduce yourself posts so here is mine! I'm just getting warmed up around here :) https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@infinitemedia/introduce-yourself-to-steemit
Looking forward to your articles!
Welcome and thanks for reaching out!
Looking forward to reading your articles!
So great to get to know you better!!! :)
Thanks for reading!
Regarding this statement about you buying $20 of bitcoin:
"Sadly, I didn't cash in when it reached $1,200 because I was too ideologically attached."
Which do you favor more? The $20, or being ideologically attached? My guess is the latter.
We have people constantly saying "I should have sold when it was $1,200". What if in 10 more years, its at $120,000. We never know where things are going to go if this takes off.. if anything takes off... :)
Great question @intelliguy! I definitely favor the ideologically attached. I would have preferred to sell, pay down debt and then continuously buy a bunch back after it crashed back down to the $250 range. That would have been nice, but, as you said, no one has a crystal ball. Thanks for the comment.
Also, a lot of people did sell at 1200, withdrawing them from mt. gox was another thing...
Great introduction, hadn't heard of Voluntaryism (from your anarchy link) until today. After reading Ayn Rand, I too like these concepts but wonder if they could ever be a reality.
Thanks @discombobulated. Yeah, you can probably guess I've read a few Ayn Rand's books (Atlas Shrugged, The Fountainhead, and Anthem). I recently enjoyed some great interviews and presentations with Yaron Brook (check YouTube), head of the Ayn Rand foundation. I was recently at the Porcupine Freedom festival where they had daily presentations on Objectivism. Really interesting stuff.
As for whether or not it could be a reality, I'd argue 90%-95% of all our daily interactions are voluntary. No coercion is involved to tell you where to live, who to marry, what to eat, what car to drive, where to shop, etc, etc. Humans high enough up on Maslow's Hierarchy of needs seek self-actualization. As automation moves forward, my optimistic hope is we'll become so prosperous as a species that more and more people will move up that hierarchy and work towards win/win interactions. Game theory in nature shows tit for tat everywhere as being the most advantageous stable strategy. Someday in the future, I think we'll laugh at how silly the time of governments were.
I'd never heard of tit for tat, and it sounds interesting. My only knowledge of game theory comes from trying to wrap my head around the attempts being made at finding optimal poker strategy. I like the concept that cooperation can be the most successful strategy when it is a shared strategy. Though one thing stuck out at me when I was reading about tit for tat just now. The word "opponent" kept cropping up. That's a very specific social relationship; one which I would not want to consider the foundation of any ideal society. But I found your use of the phrase "game theory in nature" very interesting. I think you might enjoy the book "Mutual Aid," by Kropotkin. He is my favorite anarchist writer, and his studies in biology found that cooperation had evolutionary advantages.
I haven't yet read any Kropotkin, but I plan to. Thanks for the recommendation. Game theorists use competitive language, but that doesn't mean it can't be mutually beneficial in a cooperative sense. I recently read the Selfish Gene, and it's interesting to me how much evolutionary stable strategies involve cooperation and tit for tat game theory. In many ways, tit for tat (as far as I understand it) is similar to the NAP. It's not pacifism, but it also won't initiate negatively. It rewards cooperation.
“Anarchism is not a romantic fable but the hardheaded realization, based on five thousand years of experience, that we cannot entrust the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, generals, and county commissioners.” —Edward Abbey
voluntaryism will set us free! cheers @discombobulated
Welcome, nice intro!
Thank you. I really enjoyed your recent Steem Community Building post. It's kind of neat to click on a user name in a comment and see the first post on their blog one you've already read, enjoyed, and upvoted. :)
I find that something to happen all the time lately when I've been sitting here non-stop 24/7. :P
Excellent introduction! Welcome to the community.
Thanks @bacchist! Glad to be here.
Can you posting your photo with a sign that says Steemit and the date that you take the photo?
Hello @ibnu. I added one as a comment about 23 hours ago.
Welcome! Great intro all the way through!
Thanks Jun! I loved your intro and congrats on BitCash.
Thx Luke!