I published the original version of this post in December 2018 as a loose collection of first principles, heuristics and bits and pieces of wisdom that serve to anchor my thinking. Like a treasured tree, I returned to it recently, and was delighted to both recognize an old friend, and discover abundant new growth. The gap between my past and present self justifies an update!
This is a deeply personal project, and one that can never be completed. I grant that one may begin with different axioms and end up with different conclusions. No matter one’s philosophical orientation, I propose that intentionally examining and articulating our first principles, our axioms, our deepest assumptions, is one of the most rewarding personal projects, and one of the most valuable social contributions each of us can make.
It develops the capacity to act, not merely to react; the capacity for deep dialogos with those around us; the capacity to sustain and when necessary put oneself back together in the face of life’s travails; the capacity to see the world from other perspectives; the capacity to step outside the safe echo chambers of “consensus” and confidently contribute an authentic additional perspective.
On reflection, I am struck by the degree to which the essence of my own project was summed up thousands of years ago by three maxims inscribed in the Temple of Apollo at Delphi: 1. Know thyself; 2. Nothing to excess; 3. Certainty brings insanity.
On the Nature Reality
To think is to make axiomatic assumptions about the nature of reality, so that is where I begin.
The world as a motivationally valenced forum for action is the deepest human reality. This is the reality that directly informs action in the world. It is a Darwinian reality in that it includes both the natural and social forces (twin selection pressures) that have shaped us for over 3 billion years. The world as a motivationally valenced forum for action functions as a set of constraints that separates viable modes of being from nonviable modes of being—sustainability from collapse, life from death, in the final analysis. Four primary elements comprise the world as a motivationally valenced forum for action: nature, culture, the known and the unknown. It is from our constant interaction with the inherent constraints imposed by these four constituent elements that we continually infer better vs. worse courses of action. There is no distinction between sustained human flourishing and being in an optimal relationship with this deep reality.
Due to the fact that the natural environment continually changes, this optimal relationship can be neither a static state—a condition of rigid and ossified order—nor an infinitely flexible state—a condition devoid of the distinctions, categories and identities necessary for meaning-making and social coordination. The optimal relationship to the world as a motivationally valenced forum for action is characterized by continual interplay between continuity/stability and adaptation/exploration.
This optimal mode of being is in essence a cyclical process of continual individual and cultural revivification, encoded mythologically in countless iterations over thousands of years:
- Voluntary death, subjection to the underworld, and resurrection (Jesus).
- Self-immolation and regeneration (the phoenix).
- The rescue of the father (ossified culture), by the son (the agent of regeneration), from the belly of the beast (nature).
- The hero’s voluntary confrontation and defeat of the dragon followed by his return with a great treasure.
- The shamanic journey, often with the aid of psychedelic compounds, to the extremes of human experience, followed by his return with transformative and revivifying knowledge and wisdom.
- Joseph Campbell’s monomyth—the hero’s journey—in all of its myriad instantiations, right up to the present.
Objective reality—the exterior, observable, verifiable, quantifiable aspects of the world as a place of objects—is necessarily nested inside the deeper reality of the world as a motivationally valenced forum for action. Without the latter, we would be unable to formulate and direct our objective attention. We simply would not know what to look at. We would lose our capacity for relevance realization.
Having established relevance, objective reality manifests and becomes accessible. By definition, objective reality can only ever be partially and provisionally known. Our approach to it will always be asymptotic. Its elaboration and manipulation by means of the scientific method has made modern human beings extraordinarily powerful. The frequent decoupling of objectivity from its proper place, nested within the motivationally valenced forum for action, has made modern human beings extraordinarily dangerous. To borrow from Hume, we are prone to pursue the is just because we can, without adequate consideration of the ought.
Axioms, First Principles & Heuristics
Free speech and free thought are the only correctives to human error. Think and speak freely, and—above all else—respect and defend the right of every person to do the same, especially when you disagree.
Treat every person as an individual—highly complex and individuated, and an ultimate end in themselves—never as an abstract representative of a group, or as a means to an end.
Do not imbue the immutable characteristics of another human being with social significance and then seek to discriminate on that basis, ever.
Stay grounded in philia sophia (love of wisdom); guard against philia nikia (love of victory).
Work on yourself first. Proceed from the micro to the macro, from the local to the global. Begin where your agency is greatest, put your house in order, master your domain, look after what is yours. This is the foundation from which you can—with humility—constructively expand outward and contribute to your family, your community, your country, humanity.
“…first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.”
Matthew 7:5
Assume good faith, unless proven otherwise by failure to engage on the merits.
Extend to others the benefit of the doubt—the right to make mistakes, to think out loud, to evolve their thought, to change their minds, to meaningfully make amends, to grow.
Always question whether you are sophisticated or unsophisticated relative to someone’s point, i.e., might they be positioned to perceive deeper meaning and complexity than you?
When someone says something that seems obvious, first assume that they are saying something subtle until proven otherwise.
When someone says something that seems wrong, first assume that they are saying something counterintuitive until proven otherwise.
Listen like the speaker knows something you need to know.
Nobody is all noise and no signal. Always seek to amplify the signal.
The individual is properly the highest resolution unit of analysis. Societies that elevate the individual over the group tend toward human freedom and flourishing; societies that elevate the group over the individual tend toward tyranny and ruin.
In any complex social structure the locus of discretion should be located at, or as close as possible to, the level of the individual. This maximal freedom of the individual permits the greatest concentration of domain-specific knowledge to be brought to bear at each point of discretion, and for the implications of this knowledge to be transmitted with greatest fidelity throughout the system, facilitating optimal coordination, and generating system-wide emergent order and maximal innovative and adaptive capacity. Any time the locus of discretion is moved away from the individual: 1) individual freedom is reduced; 2) the informational signals vital to coordination and computational and adaptive capacity of the system are deranged; 3) the need for coercion is increased; and, 4) power centers are established that are vulnerable to corruption and abusive control. Delegation of discretion to surrogate decision makers should only be done to the extent necessary to establish and maintain predictable and rational parameters within which the activities of individuals can be conducted according to their individual plans. The loci of such surrogate decision making must be strictly defined and constrained by law, and subject to multiple sets of checks and balances. This decentralized arrangement, predicated on the primacy of the individual and the harnessing of emergent order, contrasts sharply with centrally planned systems, and is the essential foundation of a free and open society. (7/21/2022)
The right to life, liberty and property are the inviolable foundations of a free society.
Rights and responsibilities are inseparable; responsibility is the door to meaning.
Do not grant root access to your mind.
With one exception, hold nothing sacred; place nothing off limits to continual interrogation. The one exception? The concept of sacredness itself—the idea of the highest value in the hierarchy of values. This highest value in the hierarchy of values—god, in mythological terms—can only be approached asymptotically. It certainly can and ought to be continually sought and interrogated, but it ought never to be dispensed with entirely. To do so is to dispense with life’s central orienting metaphor, to foreclose on the possibility of meaning, and to open the door to nihilism.
“If you know what a group holds sacred, around it you will find a ring of motivated ignorance.”
Jonathan Haidt
“All great truths begin as blasphemies.”
George Bernard Shaw
The orientation toward the highest value in the hierarchy of values—toward the truly sacred—is synonymous with an orientation toward the good, the true, and the beautiful. It is the basis for human flourishing, the essence of the wisdom traditions, and the cornerstone of successful therapeutic intervention and healing. To act in accordance with the sacred is to make things better.
Know why you believe what you believe, and what it would take to change your mind. Be quick to change your mind in light of more/better information.
“Whatever I write, as soon as I discover it not to be true, my hand shall be the forwardest to throw it into the fire.”
John Locke
Seek to falsify, not to confirm. This counteracts confirmation bias. The soundness of a claim is proportional to its resistance to falsification, not to how much evidence can be mustered in its defense.
Don’t lie, especially to yourself—and remember that you are the easiest person to deceive.
Systematically guard against over-identification in all of its forms: with ideology, with country, with group, with identity, with team.
Ideologies are incomplete, partial mythologies. They are attractive due to the mythological truths they contain; they are destructive due to the mythological truths they omit. Avoid ideological possession.
The degree to which you are absolutely committed to and identified with a belief or an identity is proportional to the size of your blindspot relative to it.
The moment you begin to be convinced by an argument, seek out the best articulated counterargument.
Formulate your beliefs probabilistically, not absolutely.
Practice quantum thought. Continually seek to understand the world from the broadest range of perspectives. Hold the tension between perspectives without falling into any single perspective.
Steel man, don’t straw man. Be able to articulate opposing arguments at their best, in a manner that would be endorsed by a holder of the opposing view. Bring your counter argument to bear only after the steel man has been established. Steel manning strips away weak elements in all arguments and furthers learning on all sides.
“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that.”
John Stewart Mill
The desire for something to be true does not constitute an epistemological point in favor of it being so.
The fact that something may seem undesirable does not constitute an epistemological point against it being true.
Optimize, don’t maximize. Optimalism tends toward balance; maximalism tends toward extremes. Nothing is so good that it can’t be taken too far.
Optimize for independent replication; reliability increases as a function of the frequency with which something has been independently replicated. In particular, look for independent manifestations of the same phenomenon across multiple disciplines.
True maps must converge.
Consider whether perceived gains truly justify their attendant costs, and whether perceived costs might in fact be offset by their attendant gains.
“There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.”
Thomas Sowell, A Conflict of Visions
Reductive, single-factor analyses are almost always wrong; most complex problems require a multivariate analysis.
Don’t confuse rate and state; present rate is a likely indication of future state.
Correlation does not reliably imply causation (although they often go hand-in-hand!).
Games played voluntarily outcompete games that require coercion.
The ethical optimality of any social arrangement is equivalent to the degree to which the individuals that comprise it are positively motivated to participate voluntarily, without coercion.
Without skin in the game, systems rot.
Necessity is the mother of invention; Lack of necessity is the mother of degeneration.
Cultural productions and insights of the pre-experimental mind cannot be properly understood using assumptions and interpretive methodologies of the post-experimental mind. Our ancient ancestors were not scientists—they could not yet conceive of the exterior objective perspective. But neither were they idiots. From them we have inherited our human nature and psychological make-up, as well as a monumental trove of metaphorically and mythologically coded wisdom and insight about those dimensions of human personality.
Avoid luxury beliefs, i.e., beliefs made possible only by layer upon layer of cultural/social protective structures; beliefs that, due to their profound incompatibility with reality, would be impossible in lieu of these protective structures; beliefs that serve primarily as costly in-group signaling mechanisms rather than adaptive responses to reality.
Beware of modal confusion, i.e., don’t confuse the having mode and the being mode; trying to meet a being need via the having mode or vice versa. For example, attempting to meet the need for greater maturity (a being need) by purchasing (having) an expensive car.
Unspin Russell Conjugations (also called emotive conjugations). Russell conjugation is the practice of formulating a description in such a way as to tilt or “spin” the degree to which the subject is cast in a negative or positive light. For example, I investigate, he leaks, they dox. Reliable, independent sensemaking requires that the motivation revealed by Russell conjugations be considered as part of the frame being used to select which content to include and which to omit. One can generate a more complete picture of the world by comparing multiple sources with conflicting Russell conjugations to see what each one is including and omitting.
Chesterton’s Fence: Never tear down a fence whose purpose you do not understand, i.e., beware of enacting reforms before the reasoning behind the existing state of affairs is deeply understood.
A Few Analytical Lenses
Consider whether any of these lenses may be profitable:
- Normal distribution vs. power law distribution:
- Normal distribution: a continuous probability distribution that is symmetrical around its mean, most of the observations cluster around the central peak, and the probabilities for values further away from the mean taper off equally in both directions. Represented as the classic “bell curve”.
- Power law distribution, also called the Pareto principle: For many outcomes, roughly 80% of consequences come from 20% of causes (the “vital few”).
- Linear vs. Cyclical: Is the phenomenon in question a unique occurrence in linear time, or something that recurs cyclically and might best be understood with reference to related prior occurrences?
- Linear vs. exponential rate of growth:
- Linear growth: future rate is equal to present rate. The human mind intuitively grasps linearity and holds it as a default assumption.
- Exponential growth: Future rate in increasingly more rapid than present rate. The human mind finds exponentiality extremely counterintuitive and routinely makes serious errors. Examples of exponential growth include:
- Metcalfe’s Law: the value of a communications network is proportional to the square of the number of its users.
- Moore’s Law: Term used to refer to the observation made by Gordon Moore in 1965 that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit (IC) doubles about every two years. (Approximately every 18 months, in practice).
- Compound interest
- Principal-agent problem: Misalignment between the interests of the principal (owner, leader, etc.) and their agent (someone acting on behalf of the principal).
- The frame problem: are the parameters too narrowly or too broadly defined?
- The Cynefin Framework (Dave Snowden)
- The Ooda Loop: Observe-Orient–Decide–Act, a action cycle developed by military strategist and United States Air Force Colonel John Boyd.
- Constrained Vision vs. Unconstrained Vision (Thomas Sowell, A Conflict of Visions)
- Spiral Dynamics/Integral Theory (Clare Graves, Don Beck, Ken Wilber)
- Blue Church vs. Red Religion (Jordan Hall)
- Thinking vs. Simulated Thinking (Jordan Hall)
Deliberative Dad 