Why do I keep a public list of principles on my website? 2 reasons:
- Writing out my thoughts helps me find errors in my thinking.
- Stating my principles publicly helps me stay accountable.
OK, here’s the list…
It is immoral to prevent the growth of knowledge
Only the most flagrantly evil institutions will say they want to stop progress. Yet most institutions do exactly that. Mostly, it happens as the result of people who have convinced themselves they are the “good guys”, in possession of a final moral truth or solution. You can spot these people from a mile away, because they hold their core ideas immune from criticism.
Note: You might say that this principle is flawed because it’s a steadfast moral claim, since I appear to be claiming to have access to some higher moral truth. But that would be wrong, since the principle also applies to itself. If there is an improved version of this principle available, I would happily switch to it.
Lies are wrong, including noble lies
It’s wrong to lie, even for a good reason. Lying is wrong because it prevents other people from making good decisions based on actual reality. It is a form of totalitarianism where the liar attempts to make reality conform to what they wish it were like, rather than what it actually is.
When you lie for a supposedly good purpose, that’s called a noble lie. Typically noble lies come from speculating what other people will do if they learn some piece of information, then telling them a lie so they don’t do what you think they will do. But trying to control people by lying to them is gaslighting. It’s wrong. I don’t want to live in a world where noble lies are acceptable because it leads to the breakdown of trust. Even if you lie to someone for a so-called “good reason”, every claim you make after that will be subject to suspicion (exponentially so for each additional lie you tell).
Humans are special because we can explain things
The thing that makes humans special is our ability to form and understand explanations.
Humans are the only beings we know of with universal minds which can make up and understand new explanations about what reality is like and why, then test and improve those explanations with logic and/or experiments.
You cannot explain things to any other being. Other beings which we regard as intelligent (dolphins, chimpanzees, large language models) need to be trained many many times to learn something. And even then, they are only copying (“aping”) the behavior without understanding the reason for it. By contrast humans only need to hear the behavior explained once, and they can start doing it right away.
Some people confuse language for the thing that differentiates humans from other animals. But it’s not the language that matters, it’s the explanations.
There is also no logical reason why there should be any type of knowledge that humans can’t understand. Human brains are physical computers, and subject to universal computation. Thus any computable program which runs on another brain must also be able to run on ours. The only limitation is speed and memory, which we can augment via artificial computers and storage.
Humans can also form explanations and do experiments to test and improve our understanding of anything. “Aliens so smart we couldn’t even understand them” doesn’t make any sense. We could always come up with new ideas about the aliens and test them out. And if the aliens are so smart, they could explain themselves in a way which we could understand, which would then allow us to understand them.
No other animal or artificial intelligence has had an enlightenment or scientific revolution because they don’t have the ability to conjecture new explanations and test them. One day we will better understand the process by which we do this. Once that happens, we can program it, and then we will have true artificial intelligence.
Some people will say “humans aren’t special, we’re just animals who have learned to talk or use tools” or something like that. These people are wrong. They are pessimists. They are likely to think the world is overpopulated, or that humans are a negative force on the natural world. They see the worst in others and want to knock humanity down a peg.
Others think humans are superior to animals because we’re on one end of a spectrum. Like bacterium > ant > dog > chimp > human. This is wrong too. We are not just chimpanzees with more computing power. Put another way, there is no logical path to making a chimp’s brain X times faster/more powerful and that somehow leading to human intelligence.
Or, if you left a million chimpanzees alone for a million years, they would never launch another chimpanzee to the moon. If your argument is that chimps would evolve into something like humans, that just reinforces the notion that there is something special about humans, but doesn’t explain what that is.
Persuasion over coercion
We should avoid coercion as much as practically possible. If you need to force someone to do something, you don’t have a good explanation for why you need them to do it. If you’re frustrated because your argument isn’t persuading people, it’s probably because you are not understanding something and you don’t have a good enough argument.
Individualism and collectivism have their merits, but you should err on the side of individualism
It is true that forces outside our control can influence our behavior. But in contemporary society, the single greatest determinant of your success is the decisions you make. Our systems should put the burden primarily on the individual to improve his or her own circumstances. One reason is people generate new ideas when forced to solve problems. These new ideas can help others, which allows them to focus on difference problems, and a virtuous cycle is created which benefits everyone.
Another reason is people’s lives are better when they have feelings of agency and self-esteem. Taking responsibility for your own problems is a way to earn those feelings.
Lastly, society functions better when people take responsibility for solving problems. The murder of Kitty Genovese in 1964 was an example of the problems that can occur when people don’t take action because they believe others will.
Postmodernism is a dead end
The postmodernist ideas that reality is unknowable or X is a social construct (implying that it is invalid) are a bad foundation for life. There are things we do not currently know, and social problems we have yet to solve, but neither of those facts should make you throw up your arms and say “we can’t make progress in understanding this thing”.
When you apply postmodernist thinking to postmodernism itself, it vanishes in a puff of logic.
Be as direct as possible, even when it’s uncomfortable for you
People create ambiguity when they try to say things in-between hinting and being blunt. Usually, they err on the side of indirectly hinting. They will say they do this because they are afraid to hurt the other person’s feelings, or they want to avoid conflict. They may want to avoid being seen as rude.
But disrespecting someone by not telling them the truth is much more rude. And tiptoeing around each other is a net drain on society. It wastes time. It assumes that you know how someone is going to react. It reduces another person to a caricature, and places you in a self-assigned Godlike position, as if you could easily predict another person’s feelings or actions.
This robs the other person of their ability to improve by depriving them of valuable information. And even if you did hurt their feelings, that would be temporary. Compared with the permanent improvement and lifetime of better experiences they will have by learning the new information.
Not to mention you’re lying by omitting something important to someone you care about.
You should be direct and kind, with a priority on direct.
Everything has a tradeoff
People often get jammed up and fail to act because they are worried about causing harm, danger, or some negative consequence. But everything we do has a tradeoff, often unintended or unforseen. It’s OK to take action with known downsides. Problems are opportunities to create solutions, not reasons to stagnate. Do not freeze in the face of tradeoffs. Instead, accept responsibility, explain your reasoning to the people affected, and move forward.
Practice saying “I considered the options and decided Option A was worth the tradeoff X.”
“Why don’t we just…” is a huge red flag
This phrase is often used when introducing a new rule. People will say “Why don’t we just INSERT NEW RULE HERE.” Two issues with this are
- We never have a complete understanding of the system.
- All rules have costs.
When we add a rule to a complex system, there will always be some tradeoff, regardless of whether we see it or not. Usually, the anticipated cost is accurately expected to be low. But sometimes it ends up being high. And small costs always add up to big ones.
Give a fish today, teach to fish tomorrow
When a person is in immediate trouble and there is a short-term way to help by providing food, shelter, protection, or money, society should do that. But habits form easily, and continually getting things for free creates dependency and the expectations of more.
Dependency makes slaves out of people. It robs them of one of the greatest experiences of life, that of learning from problem solving, trying new things, finding success, and looking back on a positive personal achievement.
Societies should provide immediate help to stabilize those in need, with the primary goal of quickly helping the person to take personal responsibility for their own situation. We should prioritize “teaching a man to fish” over “giving a man a fish.”
“One of the consequences of such notions as ‘entitlements’ is that people who have contributed nothing to society feel that society owes them something, apparently just for being nice enough to grace us with their presence.” —Thomas Sowell
Some limits on speech are presently tolerable, but we should always err on the side of freer speech
Shutting down legal speech has terrible consequences, which are worse in the long run than the harm that could come from any legal speech. Free speech is worth the tradeoff of allowing many kinds of speech which you might not like.
Limiting speech limits solving problems, because how can you work with others to find solutions to problems which cannot be discussed? And it radicalizes people who feel resentful about not being able to express themselves, even if they are wrong or evil.
Free speech is a special type of right because it can create other rights. The reason you currently have any legal rights at all is because someone spoke up for them before.
And free speech has benefits far beyond establishing rights. Freedom to express new ideas and critique old ones is what leads to every form of social, technological, and economic progress.
Even when you’re really really really sure you’re right, critique from others will either a) help you communicate your explanation better, spreading it to more people, b) point out flaws in your explanation which you can then correct, or c) point out ways in which your explanation is fatally flawed in which case you can abandon it and move on with your life. This is the only possible way progress can be made, through a process of conjecture (making up new ideas) and criticism (testing them).
Limiting speech is conservative and narcissistic. It assumes that you know all there is to know on a topic and that you don’t want to listen to dissenting opinions.
There is good reason to limit some kinds of speech. Direct incitement of imminent lawless action, for example. But that by itself is not justification for new limits on speech. Saying “we limit X so it’s reasonable to limit Y” does not logically follow.
Anyone should be able to criticize anything they want
It’s wrong to tell someone they can’t criticize an idea or voice an opinion because they don’t have the right background or experience. It doesn’t matter if they just learned of an issue 5 minutes ago, what matters is whether their critique is sound. If the idea is bad there is no reason to attack the background of the speaker. If their idea is good their background is not relevant.
It will get weird (Option C)
Most people have a model of the future where they think it will go one of two ways. They think about it as Option A, or Option B.
Example:
- Option A – The economy will go into a recession.
- Option B – The economy will keep growing.
But often, what happens is some other weird option:
- The stock market goes up with inflation and certain sectors get wrecked OR
- There is an overall recession but certain sectors take off OR
- There is a prolonged period of low growth and volatility OR etc. etc.
The key is understanding that Option C is often the most likely outcome, but is completely overlooked by most analysts, journalists, and the public.
You never, ever get away with it
Any time you try to get a free or low-cost benefit, you will end up paying a price for it. Always. Rationalizing your own bad behavior, taking a handout, using drugs, cheating, stealing, or lying. They are all the same in the sense that you are getting a positive benefit today which you will have to pay for later.
This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be free to do any of these things. Only that you shouldn’t be surprised when the bill comes due.
Seeing is believing, but it’s not a requirement
It is helpful to see something with your own eyes to understand it. Seeing what something looks like helps you create a picture or explanation of something more easily than simply hearing about it.
But this doesn’t mean experiencing something first hand is necessary to know something. When you look up at the night sky, you know you are looking at stars even though no one has ever left the solar system. And we know what happens inside stars, even though we don’t have to knowledge required to actually go inside one.
Explanatory knowledge is the key to understanding things which we cannot see. When someone tells you you couldn’t understand something because you’ve never experienced it, you could just as well tell them that they are not explaining it well enough.
Compromise and consensus are bad ways to solve problems
Compromise leads to solutions which nobody wanted in the first place. By compromising, we can never learn whether our ideas are good or bad because we never get to try them out them fully. When we learn how a compromise is flawed (often after it’s implemented), no one is responsible for the outcome, everyone blames the other side, and there is huge resistance to try something new because “it didn’t work last time.” But why should the compromise work? No one wanted it in the first place.
Consensus is wrong for the obvious reason that people can be mistaken. If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you do it too? This applies to experts too. At one point, nearly every scientist believed gravity was a force emanating from objects. Now no one does. Here’s a long list of other great examples.
Anything can be improved upon if people are willing to try
There is no knowledge which cannot be improved. And there are an unlimited number of problems which we can solve.
“If something is permitted by the laws of physics, then the only thing that can prevent it from being technologically possible is not knowing how.”
― David Deutsch, The Beginning of Infinity
I run a small SEO consulting business in San Francisco, CA. I like to write a little bit and get in arguments with my friends. It’s the only way I can make sense of the world.