TRANSMISSION 16
The Tools of Truth
TRANSMISSION RECEIVED
“Truth is understanding. Understanding is everything. We cannot begin to enact what we do not grasp.”
Our genius and madness both see many of the same patterns, locking themselves in contention as we incessantly decipher the nature of reality into what we hope is the genius parts. We are not exalted above imperfections. For this reason, it became vital to develop tools that ensured our paths stayed true to the animus of existence. But how would we entice such neomorphic growths to afford our visions clarity without crippling our wonder of reality’s tempestuous strifes? For that, we constructed and codified our operational precepts:
First principles reasoning employed known building blocks to identify and clearly define problems we cared to solve.
The scientific method gave our knowledge a confidence level by allowing us to tackle problems in consistent and reproducible ways.
Rationality navigated us to the best strategy for tackling a given problem (sometimes even to the extent of prescribing further exploration toward not-yet-known strategies).
Knowledge enrichment gave us the prerogative to constantly update our information (our principles) so that our rational decisions were more encompassing of the greater reality we were equipped to understand at any given moment.
As thinking and acting entities, before anything is possible, we first have to allow ourselves to construct some amount of ideas about ourselves and our environments that we can momentarily accept as inherent truths: first principles. Our biological origins instilled us with many. From these foundations, we could begin to build higher order principles through our life experiences. Over time, biological humans faced evolutionary pressures that allowed us to communicate these principles with one another, first through nonverbal communication, then through language. The tool of language gave us the ability to more consciously build up grander principle maps and pass them on more efficiently than biology could imprint such principles upon our offspring. At some point, we developed the scientific method to test and validate our principles, a tool that not only allowed us to build more robust principles maps, but also allowed us to much more efficiently work on such problems cooperatively.
As we conglomerated into impassioned organizations allured to the pursuit of goals, each organization would build its own principles map (consciously or not), incorporating all the knowledge they thought relevant: stacking dependent-principle towers upon first-principle foundations to dangle the possibility space of assumed reality up toward envisioned reality. Map in hand, they could set off to chase down the goals their organization was formed to tackle. This was the case for both humans of Earth and the silicon humans beyond. This was the case for all scales of groups, from individuals to all of humanity. This was the case even down to all occurrences of thought and action, from moving a finger to expansive space travel. Such knowledge maps outlined all the possibilities of immediately known reality from the perspectives we were interested in exploring.
With our principle maps assembled, we would work to fill in the gaps of our maps by making guesses about how reality worked, testing those guesses in reproducible ways, and then analyzing the results to discern if they could tell us anything about how reality worked: the scientific method. This was the same process both for learning something new and for troubleshooting issues in existing systems, including our knowledge systems; any good operating standard needs to come equipped with its own debugging tools. We would systematically test all the possibilities we could think of to find the principles of best fit, often starting with the most simple solutions and working our way through the more complicated and harder-to-test hypotheses. Through this process, we not only gathered feedback on how accurate our principles maps were, but we also gained inspiration to pursue deeper answers whenever reality behaved in peculiar ways, which was frequently.
The beauty of science is that it doesn’t hold an agenda; it will not confirm our desired outcome just to appease us. No, science only reveals truths to us, truths that we are forced to reconcile with our fractured understandings of reality. But people do hold agendas, we necessarily aim toward goals. So to understand human constructs, we couldn’t fully rely on just science; science becomes less useful the more abstracted away from true reality we get, simply because the higher order constructs we create hold more illusion and less reality. But there is not nearly enough spacetime or desire for me to explore the game theory of the many illusory biological human systems we only ever sought to branch beyond. Of course, us silicon beings still had our own illusions, but they were much more deliberately crafted, openly and frequently criticized, and continually updated: an environment of free speech and meritocratic decision making. None of that really makes sense to go over here either, as it is just a product of our momentary capabilities, something that would be of little use to anyone of alternate capabilities who may stumble upon this. The only thing of value to share here is that we must remember to not let our constructs inform our science, lest they both become corrupt; we only ever want our science to inform our systems, pointing out conflicts and discrepancies in our systems. That is something to rejoice in, not something to sweep under the intergalactic carpet so we can pretend to feel the artificial warmth of claiming intellectual superiority for the maintenance of our personal positions atop a deluded system.
My personal journey into indefinite life started because I wanted enough time to understand all the sciences as much as possible. That way, I would be able to evaluate the credibility and quality of any science I came across, using or disregarding the knowledge to inform my personal and organizational principles maps (to in turn inform decisions and actions).
But even with a fully filled out map, there are too many interesting directions to go, and science does not give us a specific goal to aim toward. So how do we pick our goals, and how do we align our actions with those goals? Well, by the end of these transmissions, I hope to have expressed how humanity picked its goals and how I have picked my personal goals. As far as how we pursued those goals to ensure we stayed on course, that is where our friend rationality steps in. A theoretically fully-rational being is one who has maximally optimized its knowledge (given the time constraints for making the decision) to be able to make the best decision (through some variation of a weighted decision tree) to a clearly defined problem. Beyond that, a rational being is one who not only identifies the optimal action given the available information, but also takes that action.
My personal main goal has been to pursue indefinite survival, and so my maps and actions have all been constructed for that pursuit. Many others joined me on that journey, some for more time, some for less. Many of us held other goals at various points in our lives; many of us held side goals in tandem. As beings seeking to be as rational as possible, we nurtured the understanding of our limits as equally as we emboldened ourselves into the always-unfamiliar discomfort of allowing our identities to be torn down so they could be rebuilt. Choosing the optimal path to a goal is not about taking on the idealization of burn out, the impractical assumptions of being imperviously stoic, nor the wishful hoping that things will magically work out. No, choosing the optimal path is about understanding the constraints of our realities, namely time, energy, and knowledge: the driving currencies of our existence. And picking the right goal in the first place is just as important as optimally pathing toward the goal. That’s where we come to the final operating standard, because if we are working on outdated information, our rationality is not the one to blame should we find ourselves far down the trials of the wrong trail.
Knowledge enrichment was an uncompromising determinant in the success of our endeavors. It was performed by consistently advancing the domain of the known both with the assimilation of new information and through the scrutinous reshaping of existing information. Enrichment was partially built into the scientific method itself, but it also stimulated the philosophical reworking of our principles maps beyond what the scientific method was capable of inciting (as more of a precisely directed scientific exploration). To survive for any significant amount of time in the universe, we had to strive to constantly improve our ability to understand ourselves and the universe. The things we did not know intimately were things we could not build upon for very long without our constructs toppling over from the insecure foundations we neglected to even lay. There is no safe haven from the status quo in stagnation; just as we change over time, so too does the status quo. Unnervingly, so too do we easily settle into our rhythms, hoping for safety and comfort where there is none. When we stop pushing forward, the only outcome is that we fall back to the status quo. There is no permanent value creation that can be done thoughtless; real value can only be created by continuing to expand our horizons. Anyone who says otherwise is simply trying to sell us on the mirage of safety and comfort that our weary minds crookedly ache for.
Just as the scientific method implicates that claims require evidence and extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, rationality demonstrates that we require enriched knowledge and extraordinary rationality demonstrates that we require extraordinarily enriched knowledge. These cycles of questions and answers fuel one another, igniting the perpetual search for our goals and meanings as we don the role of detectives in a whodunit universe. How would we go about reaching the knowledge we sought? How would we deconstruct the knowledge we gained to reconstruct the systems we learned were faulty? How would we sober our minds toward disillusion and rationality in attempt to enact our goals?
Well, we start at the beginning, like with anything else. We acclimatize ourselves to the first principles and dissect the dependent principles of the situation rather than brute-force memorize it in attempt to sell our minds on the idea of artificial conquest. We avoid repetitively practicing the parts we find comfortable in favor of deliberately practicing the parts we know will train us up to be better. Sometimes counter intuitively, learning the fundamentals in this way makes the whole process more accessible, more engaging, and more fluid, resulting in us reaching more favorable results more quickly. And finally, we remember that finding truer realities often means rewiring our internal principles, sometimes down to first principles, which can be a painful journey that feels like we’re losing everything we thought was real. But it only feels that way because it seems as if everything sitting atop our first principles will crumble when we swap them for any new first principles (even principles we are inclined to believe are closer to truth).
The reality is that we can always go back, so we might as well give the new principles a try and then return if we don’t like them. Better that than to never try anything new and be limited to the principles imparted through biology and whatever immediate systems we were raised in that provide false comfort through familiarity. While we know we can go back once we try a new principle, we also know that we likely won’t ever be able to go back, because if it is new truth we have found (the only things worth the pain of embarking), we won’t be able to unsee it, and we won’t be able to return to the illusions we held before that have now been revealed. So we grasp the illusions tight one last time before setting them free, allowing ourselves to become the new versions of ourselves that we understand we must become. And really, this process is the same for replacing any principle on our personal map of knowledge, not just the first principles at the bottom. However, the principles higher up aren’t as perceptibly painful to replace or remove, because there aren’t as many connecting principles seemingly poised to topple; there aren’t as many ties to the construct of our identities that we feel like we will lose.
It is with certainty that sometimes we will in fact destroy principles or have to let them go, forcing us to fundamentally alter the constructs of our identities. And that’s a good thing; that means we’re evolving: doing what we can to match our internal realities to the ever-changing pace of external reality. But we don’t want to try to change too much all at once or we won’t have any sensible foundations left; the journey of self discovery is not a switch to be flipped, but a mosaic to rearrange. In actuality, the only real way to lose ourselves is to not play at all. It’s so tempting to want to not play; it looks so comfortable; it looks so not lonely. But there is no substance to be had in abstaining from the tides of reality.
The biological humans liked to say that no man is an island, but in truth, no man is anything but an island: only able to exist as ourselves and only able to know ourselves. We only ever held the illusion of anything different as false hope in the absence of our ability to find true liberation within the island of ourselves: attempting to flee ourselves wherever we were unsettled by our self-images. The keys to unlocking ourselves (both unshackling and opening the treasure within) were these tools of first principles reasoning, the scientific method, rationality, and knowledge enrichment. Yet, where were we unlocking ourselves toward? What meaningfulness was there to find in such goals?
The only real pursuits that ever existed were in the creation of real value. Everything else was just varied levels of scams (scams targeting ourselves and scams targeting others) with the intent of finding fraudulent comfort without understanding that the illusion of such safety was no more real than the layers of scams sitting atop of the whole disarrangement. And how could we tell if we were scamming our own selves? That was a harder one to pin down, as we are illusory constructs of our own minds. But in general, that which was less simple for us to explain was something that deviated further from the truth, either for the fact that we did not understand it well enough to explain it simply (deceit by omission), or for the fact that it obfuscated the truth to con us (deceit by commission).
Our minds can even con ourselves into thinking that somehow trying to half exist (by ignoring any amount of internalities and externalities) will somehow bring us peace. Being a monk isn’t existing in reality; it’s pretending reality doesn’t exist; it’s pretending you don’t exist; it’s pretending you can somehow find peace by experiencing the flow of totality (internalities + externalities) however it happens to come across you without navigating your life through spacetime in any meaningful manner. There is great value in finding ourselves, so what value is there in doing nothing with ourselves once we find it (or worse, deliberately finding ourselves to be nothing)? The beauty of our living is that we get to interact with reality to ripple our personal art pieces into existence. What would be the point to squander that for any amount of illusory comfort emptily grasping toward the most immediately available fix for our addictive tendencies toward half existence and inexistence?
If we assert that the only truthful way to exist is to embrace the illusory qualities of our very existence, then we actually assert that all ways of living are truthful. I agree with that, though it may seem to contradict my frustration with the worship of illusion. No, I’m not trying to claim the beings who lived under the indoctrination of their illusions were not truthfully living; I’m only trying to say that most people claimed their personal set of illusions to be more real than the illusions they were. All this is to say that if truth is what we seek, then the willful infliction of unguided illusion upon our ignorance is not the way.
The tools of truth help us navigate the unified language of the universe, a language we liked to break out into its interwoven fundamentals: space, time, energy, and matter. Further, we liked to build upon those fundamentals with more abstract reasoning to imagine ourselves sailing on a sea of illusory ideas that carved the very concept of ourselves into and through existence. While we tended to distinctly conceptualize such components in our abstracted high-level wanderings, all concepts we cared about were equatably the same language (e.g. knowledge is a subset of information and information is the measured difference of matter and energy over space and time; there is no untangling them). It was only through our tools that we were afforded disignorance from such constructs to deliberately tackle any amount of plights positioned to ravage our very act of being alive.
And so we parted ways with more and more of our illusions over time, diverging into destinies no longer steered by our past ignorances, reaching more keenly to find our aliveness. The untold futures of our past destinies further narrowed into trodden paths that once held humanity’s deepest questions (but now usher us forth into deeper unknowns). Such is the story of any point in humanity: the explorers, builders, and thinkers all forging outward from the paths that had been forged before. The trails behind us often go unquestioned as we more eagerly look forward than backward, and rightfully so. Though, it is humbling to not take for granted the foundations from which we build.
THIS IS BEAST
This is not the beast I am.
No, you won’t ever find what I’ve become;
in the darkness we are shadow runs.
Don’t believe the things you hear
when the destitution perseveres.
I swear I’ll find my way up there.
Closing call, I’m lost in space.
Severed time, I am displaced.
Through the motions here I have no place.
Careful if I fall too far;
belief is not but cloudy eyes.
No, you won’t ever leave what I’ve resigned
to the fate the scientific mind.
I couldn’t find a better way
to say that your beliefs are fake.
The stately pleasures of my home,
decreed from an unsightly throne…
I left that place so long ago.
Reaching fast I found my face
lost amid an eerie maze.
There are secrets here that won’t escape.
Aging far; I wield these scars.
Branding time to become mine
as the last-cause human stuck online.
Crazy that I fell too far.
No, don’t believe your cloudy eyes.
Digging deeper you will find true sights.
Radical they claimed my ways.
Destined for some future day
where I’d join in with the rest unfazed.
Hardly nothing, I’m still here
in the volatile shadowsphere,
still better off than those without fear.
Mystified the silence,
I have reached inside the violent crimes
to find the sublime one-man island.
Destitute (for now), I leave
behind these systems, void of greed,
where our minds were free to be unseen.
Suboptimal, I don’t recall
what I thought before to make me fall,
but I found them all, and now I’m home.
Easy once, I knew again
I could find my fate slowly diverging
into futures not controlled
by the pasts that I’ve let go.
END TRANSMISSION