started june 2017

Ideological Necessity: ideology is a system of ideas and ideals. Language is an aspect of ideology and in order to properly discuss ideas a common ideological grounding must be found. To do this properly we must start at the base assumptions.

Evidentialism: The world we experience is real and we can use logic to derive truth from experience.

Epistemological Pragmatism: Claims are true when they are useful, vis-a-vis, they produce predictable repeatable functional results. all general statements should prefixed with "all or for the most part" for if a statement is true 99 times out of 100 the one deviation does not invalidate the statement as it is useful.

Hypocrisy: in stoicism, The best indication of an individual's philosophy was not what a person said but how that person behaved. People take this as self evident. when you do not follow through with your beliefs, you are labelled as a hypocrite and not to be trusted. Therefore if your claimed philosophy is untenable to live by then it must not be your true philosophy.

The Universal Assumption: evidence of evidentialism requires evidentialism to be used as evidence so it cannot be proven. But any claims of reality requires it thus you cannot rationally claim that reality isn't real.

Occam's Razor: the explanation with the least amount of assumptions is accurate more often than not.
This is predictable repeatable and functional by virtue of being accurate most of the time.

Hitchen's Razor: what is claimed without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. Because the null hypothesis has less assumptions. Anything that claims unprovability by evidentialism is untrue by necessity.

Burden of proof: You cannot prove that something doesn't exist you can only prove an explanation of phenomena that fully excludes all other explanations. The validity of evidence itself does not need to be proven because no argument against evidentialism can be formulated that excludes it.

Bayesian Reasoning: when you are given any scenario with incomplete information (aka every scenario) you must list the possibilities of what is true and then gather information until one possibility is a clear front runner over the others and behave as if that is the truth.

Subjectivity: Our perceptions are limited and so the world must be sorted through cognitive filters, we see things primarily as tools and we limit our perception to what tools benefit us. This filtration will lead people to having inaccurate perceptions of the world.

Asceticism: things that aren't necessary to living virtuously are decadent and should be avoided. This includes excessive wealth, reputation, etc. Anything nonessential to living virtuously must be discarded.

Law of non-contradiction: Contradictions do not exist. Something is or isn't and it is the basis of all logics. X -> X is not true if X -> ~X is equally as valid, and thus deduction is impossible. To say that things can be and not be simultaneously is counter to all logic.

Superpositions: an electron is a particle with a clockwise or counterclockwise rotation. How the particle is rotating when observed can be predicted without looking at it but when it's not being observed it has the quality of both forms of rotation. The truth is that this is not a contradiction. The particle is uncertain. Electrons in an atom do not orbit like planets but occupy a section of space as a cloud of uncertainty and possibility that can be predicted with startling accuracy (due to it following a waveform). The electron is not a particle but a cloud. There's no contradiction only variance. A coinflip can land on heads or tails, until you flip it it has the quality of being both, but it can ultimately only be the one. When you have uncertain information: you must play the odds. Thus this classic example of something that defies non-contradiction holds no water.

Pathos is rhetoric, not an argument: fuck your feelings. My feelings are just as valid as yours so both of our feelings are moot in any argument, except if the argument is about how we're feeling. I cannot say that your feelings are wrong just that they lack justification.

Free Will: If free will didn't exist, would you live any differently? How could you? Free Will could exist on a continuum. Completely free on one end and absolute absence of freedom on the other, and we could all exist on that continuum at different places. My own experience leads be to believe that I have free will but this experience also tells me the earth is flat; thus untrustworthy. I can't answer this. As long as we all have the same level of agency then whether or not we have free will should not be important philosophically.

The Four Noble Truths (buddhism): Suffering, and it's undesirability, is imminently knowable to sentient creatures. Knowledge guides one to an end to suffering.

Self-interest: People will always act in a way they believe will reduce their own suffering, even if they're wrong. and the suffering of others can be perceived as causing them to suffer so relieving suffering of others is an expression of relieving suffering of the self. No one knowingly acts in a way to maximize their own suffering. If they do act in a way to maximize their own suffering, they do so under the pretence that such suffering is justified or necessary towards a greater abolition of suffering.

Moral Iterability: any attempt at a cohesive moral philosophy must work on multiple levels of analysis. In Kant's deontology that required taking moral concepts and making them axiomatic.

Hanlon's Razor: do not attempt to explain a phenomena with malice when it can be explained by ignorance.
Ignorance is a necessary outcome of our experience being filtered (as omniscience is unavailable) so the explanation of ignorance has no assumptions compared to the explanation of malice. You don't have to prove people are ignorant, this is a known quality.

Individualism: subjectivity comes a result of our enculturation and biology, and people are only mutable within the limits of their biology. People lead different lives, have different competencies, and life is chaotic. Everyone knows something you don't. Thus the correct level of analysis of people is at the individual level.

Materialism: humans are all apes. We evolved to be the way we are over millions of years from single celled organisms and we have things in common due to this, as we have things in common with other mammals, as we have things in common with other animals, etc. We are not special.

Hellenic Cynicism: The way to eudaemonia  (the good life) is to live a life in accordance to nature with all else cast aside. Become the dog to your philosophy. Guard the tenets and path to virtue, distinguish between friend and foe, and seek and speak truth.

Fitness: to ensure you can gain the truest sensory experience you can, you must constantly undergo mental and physical training. Cognitive abilities atrophy, and if your brain doesn't get enough oxygen it accelerates. To ensure it functions the best it can you need to be in good physical health.

Aesthetics and Inquiry: Additionally one must be immersed in the arts and strive to understand as much as possible. There is only one form of measurable intelligence, IQ, and without constantly testing and challenging yourself, you won't ever reach the fullest expression of your physical capabilities.

Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma: in the game of prisoner's dilemma there are two players and you are given a choice to stay silent or snitch. You get 1 point if both people stay silent, 3 points if you snitch and the other person stays silent (they get 0) and -1 point if both people snitch. The mathematically most effective strategy is tit for tat with the first turn play to stay silent.

Interaction as Markets: All human interactions can be understood as a function of commerce. Information has value, sex has value, being considered valuable has value, and people acquire those commodities through exchange.

Truth telling: if all human interactions can be understood as a game like the iterated prisoner's dilemma then the strategy that interests both parties the most, over the long term, is one of honesty. Truth telling should be considered an axiomatic moral good when you are trying ingratiate yourself to another person over the long term. I used to think Kant was wrong but I was not thinking about long term interaction; just short term advantage. So in any long term deception there should be only a single lie, that there are any plans of betrayal at all.

"Jews in the attic...": in the thought experiment do you lie to nazis about the jews you have in your attic. Of course you would because you already are not in the interest of complying to their ideological groundwork. If you want to be a nazi, you should absolutely tell them the truth.

Sisyphus & Sisu: a sense of one's self-determining power and the ability to call upon it to the greatest extent is essential. Life is challenging and to live virtuously is initially harder. One must think long term and adhere to the long term no matter the burden weighed upon you. The hellenic mythical culture hero of existentialism, Sisyphus is crushed over and over again but he has purpose and strives to achieve it without fail. Sisyphus pushes the rock because he has sisu.

Consilience: things must exist in multiple distinct perceptual lenses in order to be true. Insofar that they must be repeatable over multiple lenses and be predictable in multiple lenses. You reach the conclusion that these multiple perspective lenses produce accurate information in aggregate via bayesian reasoning.

The Value of Liberalism: To attain consilience, multiple ideological perspectives are needed. As thus authoritarian or totalitarian principles are detrimental to the goal of truth-seeking. When the framework of society treats everyone the same, their intrinsic natures are most evident. Equity is an unrealistic outcome as people are different and as thus make different choices.