My Practicalism

The correct religion is either Karaite Judaism or Conservative Mennonitism, depending on the nature of God's agency. Because my core axiom is that induction works, I look to historical precedents to determine which systems consistently produce reliable, trustworthy results. Karaite Jews are followers of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) that reject the oral traditions of the Talmud (and the New Testament). Conservative Mennonites are Christians that follow their local Ordnung and the teachings of Menno Simons. There are several historically robust religions: Calvinism (e.g., Presbyterianism and the Dutch Reformed Church), Mormonism, and Classical Islam. By Classical Islam, I mean the religion of the Islamic Golden Age—Islam before it banned the printing press and fractured into movements like Wahhabism, late-stage Sufism, Ash'arism, and Mu'tazila. These religions are valuable because they share a strong lineage of nominalist scientists, critical thinking, and values that help socie...

Debate lacks a mechanism for resolution, making it pointless. There are two kinds of assumptions: starting assumptions (axioms) and auxillary assumptions. All belief systems require axioms. To deduce something about reality, you need to start with assumptions about reality. Where do assumptions come from? The answer is our subjective experience. One chooses axioms based what best fits with the nature of one's mind. By implication from definition, an axiom does NOT require logical justification.  Axioms are subjective and therefore non-negotiable. That is to say: nobody can evaluate anybody else's axioms. Since debates are inherently formatted to compare peoples axioms against each other, it follows that debates are pointless. There is no point in negotiating things non-negotiable. What can in fact be negotiated is how strongly or weakly a person's statement is supported by said person's axioms. However, the way that debates are formatted lack this capability. A more com...

Catholicism has a strong lineage of philosophers that comprise today's frontier of academic Christian philosophy. As a truth relativist, I do not attack Catholic theology. While Catholicism affirms absolute truth, its theology is internally coherent—meaning it can easily coexist with my worldview. Since my truth relativism views truth as relative to paradigms, my critiques focus on behavioral norms rather than coherent ideas.  I reject modern culture. Catholicism has a strange conviction to negotiate with modern culture, and does a poor job of resisting its vices. So, I reject Catholicism. I reject modern culture for a reason: it ruins almost everything it touches. This is an evidence-based observation and not prejudice. Negotiating with modernity has damaged Catholicism much. The most reliable metric for foreseeing societal decay is a high out-of-wedlock birthrate. Unfortunately, specific data on Catholic out-of-wedlock births is scarce (though it roughly mirrors modern Protestant...

Simplicity is conceptual minimalism, meaning fewest concepts needed to master. Chess is a battle of ideas. Ideas are relative to a position's elements. Chess games have three stages—opening, middlegame, and endgame—each defined by a characteristic set of elements. In all stages of the game, always keep your eyes peeled for tactics. Tactics are just ideas that ought to be prevented. You ought to prevent your opponent from using a tactic, and you ought to use a tactic should you have one. A good example of this is a forced checkmating sequence. In the opening stage, you should play moves that: develop your pieces; get your king to safety; or, fight for the central squares. Alekhine—a former world champion—argued that the opening shapes the middlegame, and the middlegame shapes the endgame. At the highest level, this makes opening theory critical. Below the master level, opening theory rarely decides the game. But the concepts still matter for everyone. Piece development, king safety...

The Best Argument for God's Existence The Bayesian Fine-Tuning Argument Contents Introduction Defining God Understanding Bayesian Epistemology Understanding Fine-Tuning Arguments The Bayesian Fine-Tuning Argument Why it Outperforms Rival Arguments Addressing a Potential Criticism: The Bayesian Problem of Evil Verdict  INTRODUCTION "You don't answer the question, you answer the questioner." —Dr. John Lennox I think Lennox—a renowned mathematician and theologian—is right to say that the strongest argument for God's existence depends on the person;  he does an excellent job of explaining why . And as a truth relativist, I already have to agree by default. So, instead of trying to find the best argument for everybody (or even for the majority of rational agents), I will just write about the strongest argument for me personally. It is the Bayesian fine-tuning argument. Disclaimer: This is by far the longest blog I have written yet, and I apologize in advance for the le...

I am a truth relativist, but I am NOT a Postmodernist. In fact, I hate Postmodernism with a passion.  Postmodernism purports that truth is subjective, not relative. The difference between the two is this: Truth subjectivism asserts that a truth is a personal preference or personal experience; Truth relativism asserts that a truth is relative to a paradigm. It has been debated whether truth subjectivism is a type of truth relativism, since personal preference or experience is arguably a type of paradigm. However, it does not matter; my truth relativism is not subjectivistic, and Postmodernism affirms a specific type of truth subjectivism, not just any kind. What is Postmodernism? I would define it as Godless Satanism. Satanism is essentially a lust for hedonism, greed, and power. Postmodernism is not only a metaphysical view about truth, but also a mature and complete philosophy. But what exactly is its metaphysical view of truth? For Postmodernists, truth is specifically power...

Orthodoxy is Platonic. I reject Platonism. So, I reject Orthodoxy.  What is Platonism? For our purposes, Platonism is the view that truth—specifically correspondence truth or absolute truth—is the paradigm of good. As a truth relativist, I have to disagree by default. That said, even if I were a truth realist, I would still disagree with truth being the paradigm of good. To be good is to function as intended—to lack privations—and a pursuit of truth leads to a dysfunctional and complicated mess. So, truth is not the paradigm of good unless truth is your preferred subjective core value. Since I have only one axiom—that induction works—I would like to show how history supports what I am saying. The scientific proficiency of Western Christianity stagnated for about 1700 years. Platonism is to blame. When critics point to the Church’s historical persecution of scientific challengers as a defect of the Christian religion, they are mistaken. It was a defect of Platonism and not of Christ...

I praise simplicity, but not minimalism.  Many use the two words interchangeably, but doing so is a mistake. Minimalism is not simplicity. (Simplicity is—however—a type of minimalism). Simplicity can be defined as conceptual minimalism, meaning fewest concepts needed to master. So, simple means easy for an intelligent person to master. Minimalism just means sparsity. Here are two examples illustrating the difference: 1. Skeuomorphism is simple but not minimal. 2. Consider two means of getting meat for dinner—buying meat in a store or hunting for meat with a spear. The first means is simple but not minimal, and the second means is minimal but not simple.  Members of modern culture hate simplicity and often choose between minimalism or messy complexity. Both make things more difficult. As for an example of how minimalism makes things more difficult, consider this: some general-purpose Linux distributions and desktop environments (e.g., Arch, Gentoo, GNOME, Xfce) are unfriendly t...

I don't know whether or not the future of AI is a good thing. But I don't care. Since the reality is that AI exists, it behooves me to use it as well as possible. That is challenging enough to do without worrying about impractical speculation. I find practical AI to be very interesting. I think using AI effectively requires more intelligence than computer programming does. There will be very few people who can really do this, so it will be a valuable skill.  I am not worried about AI replacing good jobs. Since AI acts as a cognitive lever, it amplifies a person's baseline habits. That is to say that AI makes productive people more productive, and lazy people lazier. Not only will prompt engineering skills set users apart, AI's vast knowledge and ability to generate ideas does not overpower its terrible judgement. Indeed, AI is only useful in areas where the person using the AI have good judgement. I once attended a seminar with Priya Natarajan—a top-of-the-line astrophy...

What is the difference between a religion and a cult? In my view, religions are eugenic strategies, while cults are dysgenic followings. I felt compelled to write this blog because I have ideas that are simple yet overlooked. For example, religion is not about changing who you are as a person, but rather about changing which kind of people will be your descendants. This is simple enough a statement to be self-evident, but it never occurs to almost anyone. Most are caught up on the issue of whether or not religion can change your heart and soul, an issue irrelevant to religion. Historically, religion operates not by altering individuals, but by gradually shaping the heritage (genetics and culture) of its descendants. An insular religion with strict rules and punishments will eventually fine-tune the genetic makeup of its population. Over time, its followers will be mostly people with the natural inclinations to follow those rules without struggle. This happens because they expel individ...

Philosophy is Useless In this video, Jack Lawrence argues that philosophy is useful. The video is shallow. The question is what is philosophy. I think philosophy is the theology of Plato's beliefs. Specifically, I see philosophy as a pursuit of correspondence truth that is entirely rationalistic and not at all empirical, and that is useless.  The proper way to develop a belief system is to start by clearly stating one's axioms. Then consider statements based on those axioms and empirical evidence to see if they should be added to your belief system. From my experience, the statements made by philosophers almost invariably fail, while statements from religious texts that have stood the test of time usually succeed. Questions: Math is entirely rationalistic, so is it useless? The answer is no. Math is useful. Unlike philosophy, math doesn't use rationalism to make assumptions about reality. It merely reasons about a preconceived reality. The only useful assumptions about real...

I affirm moral relativism. Specifically, I affirm cultural relativism and reject moral subjectivism.  It has become extremely common to conflate relativism with subjectivism. Even W.L. Craig  made this mistake in one of his videos. From my observation, most who think themselves cultural relativists are not such. Instead, they are usually moral subjectivists. Indeed—at this rate—moral subjectivism trends to be the hottest meta-ethical theory of the 21st century. So, what is the difference? Well, relativism means to work relative to a paradigm, and subjectivism means appeal to personal preference or individual experience. Moral relativism itself evaluates action relative to a paradigm—in the case of cultural relativism, culture is assigned as the paradigm—and moral subjectivism holds evaluations of action to be personal preferences. Contemporary literature has debated whether moral subjectivism is its own meta-ethical theory, or a subcategory of moral relativism. One might ...

Pragmatism is not appealing. Neither American Pragmatism nor Kantian Pragmatism appeal to me. As a Practicalist, I hold that our top focus in life should be to create not just any value, but value that is functionally reliable. The difference between me and a Pragmatist is that I focus on what works, and Pragmatists focus on analyzing statements which congrue with their axiom that a belief is true if it works in practice. I don't have any axiom about truth in the first place. Anyway, practicalism is a disposition toward action and pragmatism is a theory of truth. American Pragmatism in particular has strange ideas of truth. Charles Sanders Peirce, William James, and John Dewey can be considered the three fathers of American Pragmatism, starting with Peirce: Peirce defines truth as "the opinion that would be agreed upon at the end of inquiry by an ideal community of investigators." James defines truth as "a belief that is verifiable, workable, and fits experience in a...

Professor Destroys Relativism in 4 Minutes! In this video, Timothy Fortin attempts to refute truth relativism—the view that truths are relative to our paradigms.  The video is full of nonsense. I will have to pick it apart one piece at a time. A direct way to expose nonsense is to provide a practical counterexample. Professor Fortin's views imply that a mathematician working on Euclidean geometry cannot communicate with a mathematician working on non-Euclidean geometry. This implication is wrong; the two mathematicians can easily communicate with each other. Truth can be relative without communication becoming impossible. Hence, Fortin is spewing nonsense. If I'm a truth relativist speaking with another truth relativist, then I do not have to choose between yielding to their truth or forcing them to yield to my truth. Our truths are grounded in our axioms, and we can state our axioms and statements so they can be understood by us and understood by people in general without requ...