# Good to Know™ - My personal, opinionated list of ideas, concepts, theories, principles, intellectual skills, etc. that have proven useful, explanatory, interesting, and Good to Know™. ## Concepts - Thought, effective conversations, Good thinking, principles, etc - [[Good Thinking]] - [[Intellectual humility]], [[Honesty]], [[authenticity]] - contra [[Bad faith]] - contra [[Quoting out of context]] or [[Quoting out of context|Lying by Omission]] - [[Open-mindedness]] - [[Sources/The Scout Mindset]], holding ideas lightly - Everyone thinks they are a "[[Freethought|Free thinker]]", but *I* for one *know* I really am. /s - [[Lateral Thinking]], [[Creativity|Creative thinking]] - [[Consilience in lateral thinking, binary opposition, conatus, super position, paradigm shifts, transcendence, emergence, simulation and simulacrum]] - [[Freethought|Independent thought]] and [[critical thinking]] - Importance and difficulty of truly independent thought and critical thought and the universal human nature to suppress it, [[Conformity]], etc. - [[Skepticism]] - against [[Conformity]], [[Sycophancy]] - Studies on [[Conformity]] and [[Groupthink]] - [[Contrarian|Contrarianism]] - [[Divergent Thinking]] - [[Metacognition]] - [[Self-reflection]], [[Self-awareness]], [[Know thyself]] - The leaps involved in [[Compatibilism]], e.g. about [[responsiveness]] - Non-linear aspects of mental experience and choice such as the [[Mutual constitution of culture and mind]], [[Reciprocal determinism]], and [[The extended mind]]. - Virtue and science of [[Thinking Fast and Slow|Slow thinking]] contra the limits and flaws of quick, [[Intuition|Intuitive]] thinking. - [[Logic]] Fundamentals - [[Necessity and Sufficiency]] - [[Tautology]] - [[Deductive Logic]] vs [[Inductive Logic]] - [[Validity (logic)]] vs [[Soundness]] - [[Heuristic]] - [[Inference]] - Canonical forms of logic - [[Rule of inference|Rules of inference]] - [[Syllogism]] - [[Principle of Bivalence]] vs [[Fuzzy Logic]]/[[Many-valued Logic]] - [[Mu (negative)]] - [[Binary opposition]] - 2 sides of the same coin metaphor - [[Abductive Reasoning]] - [[Holism]] - [[Antireductionism]] - [[Synoptic Philosophy]] - [[Codex/Academia/Humanities, Arts, & Social Sciences/Philosophy/Consilience]] - [[Pluralism]] - [[Collectivism]] - [[Eclecticism]] - [[Syncretism]] - Limit [[Bad thinking]] - [[Fallacy]] - [[Argument from ignorance]] - [[Argument from ignorance|Absence of evidence]] is not [[Evidence of absence]] - [[Correlation does not imply causation]] - [[Bias]] - Mistaking [[Proximate and Ultimate Causation]] - Flawed ideas - [[Essentialism]] - [[Anthropomorphism]] - [[Anthropocentrism]] - [[Reductionism]] - [[Principle of Bivalence|Bivalence]] - Useful ideas, models, paradigms, etc. - [[Scientific Method]], specifically its ability to self-correct, adapt, via openness and [[skepticism]] and defined philosophy of [[empiricism]], [[Falsifiability]], etc. in a way that is still open to idealism, e.g. not just materialism. - [[Microcosm–macrocosm Analogy]] - Metaphors, we live by - [[Antifragility]], [[Chaos Engineering]], [['What does not kill me makes me stronger']] - [[Process of elimination]], [[Reductio ad absurdum]], [[Binary Search]], [[Reductionism]], [[Neti neti]] - [[Consilience in thought models, theoretical frameworks, paradigms, and conceptual distinctions, principles, strategies, mapping, categories, classification, and abstraction]] - How to have conversations and disagreements, etc. - [[Principle of Charity]] - [[Principle of Humanity]] - [[Empathy]] - [[Hanlon's Razor]] - [[Feynman technique]] - Be able to say I don't know and to be comfortable in not knowing - Be able to be wrong and admit it - [[Intellectual honesty]] - [[Authenticity]] - [[Logic]], consistency - [[Language, Linguistics, Literature, Lexical, Logos, Semiotics, Meaning, & Rhetoric|Language]] - [[Philosophy of language|Language]] as [[Meaning as use]] - understand definitions are determined from context. Limit inertia of language and [[Linguistic determinism]] - [[Ludwig Wittgenstein|Wittgenstein]] - [[Meaning as use]] contra definition or [[Prescriptive Linguistics|Prescriptivism]] - Theoretical problems as confusion on [[Semiotics|Meaning]], specifically using words outside the context of their intended use. - [[Descriptive Linguistics|Descriptivism]] vs [[Prescriptive Linguistics|Prescriptivism]] - [[Semantic ambiguity]] vs [[Syntactic ambiguity]] - [[Thomas Nagel]] - [[What is it like to be a Bat]] - [[Ludwig Wittgenstein|Wittgenstein]] - [[If a lion could talk, we could not understand him.]] - [[George Lakoff]] - [[Metaphors We Live By]] - [[Learning]], how to learn, how to do focused, concentrated work - [[Feynman technique]] - self-critical, be able to quiz yourself - learn via question formulation - a la Stockton's class - Use variety of sources and perspectives, including very biased sources - Don't try to memorize many things - technology is shifting even more toward being a system of retrieval of knowledge, and making understanding and other virtues more important - [[Deep work (concept)]] - Learn by doing - fail fast - [[Teaching]] and development - learn as a community - Kohlberg's theory of development - [[Worldview]], the power and *prefiguring* nature of our understanding and sense of [[My Atlas]], [[Conceptual framework]], [[Paradigm shift|paradigms]]. - Similar to and extended by [[Nietzsche]] - in that [[science]] makes certain things unbelievable (in a bad way). - And [[Ludwig Wittgenstein|Wittgenstein]]'s system and [[Philosophical Counseling|Philosophical Therapy]] as unraveling the way that our questions and issues have put us on the wrong path and need to walk it back. - The emergent understanding from awareness of intellectual history, changes, and [[Becoming (philosophy)|"becoming"]] of [[Homo sapiens|Humans]] - [[Intellectual History|History of Ideas]] - understanding as understanding how something came to be/got here and is currently in-motion all the time. - [[Thomas Kuhn]]'s [[Paradigm shift]] in [[The Structure of Scientific Revolutions]] - Cultural origins in [[Microcosm–macrocosm Analogy]], [[Geocentric model|Ptolemaic cosmos]], [[Flammarion engraving]], [[Great Chain of Being]], [[Firmament]] - Transition to [[Isaac Newton]]ian [[physics]] to [[Albert Einstein]]ian physics and then [[Quantum Mechanics]] - The [[Universe]], [[Astronomy]] - Universe is very big - eg scale #to/expand more galaxies in our universe than stars in our galaxy - Universe is very small #to/expand atoms, quarks, etc. - Universe isn't that old and won't live that long, and not eternal. Big Crunch, heat death, red shift. Big bang origin of universe. #to/expand - [[Chronology of the Universe]] - [[Mathematics|Math]], [[Quantification (science)]], [[Physics]], and [[Metaphysics]] - [[Quantification (science)]] vs [[Quality (philosophy)]], [[McNamara fallacy]] - Understand numbers as a supervenience on numeral systems like [[Roman numeral system]], [[Chinese numerals]], etc. and how the concepts of [[Zero]] the [[Positional notation]] system, and [[Radix]]es allowed for the scalability and power of the modern [[Hindu–Arabic numeral system]] and [[Decimal|Decimal notation]]. - [[Exponentiation]] & [[Recursion]] - [[Chaos Theory|Sensitivity to Initial Conditions]], [[Chaos Theory]] - The power of directed, recursive aggregation - thousand monkeys with enough time would write [[William Shakespeare]] - technically, with enough time, yes. But with even simple feedback or selection, it happens really fast. #to/expand - [[Recursion]] - [[Consilience in Recursion, Sublation, Dialectics, Emergence, Non-linearity, Lateral Thinking, Meta, Intension, Feedback Loops, etc.]] - [[Statistics]] & [[Probability]] - [[Law of Averages]] - [[Regression to the Mean]] - [[Bayesian Probability]] #to/expand - Initial expectation - Clarifying and not modifying initial expectation... - [[Randomness]] - [[Uncertainty]] - [[Gambler's Fallacy]] - that thing where if you choose one door, you should choose the other door regardless - [["Lies, Damned lies, and statistics"]] - Issues in range compression, intentional or otherwise - permutation, combination - Bell curve - [[Discrete Mathematics]] - [[Graph theory]] - [[Travelling salesman problem]] - [[Voting System]], [[Social Choice Theory]] - [[Law of large numbers]], [[Law of truly large numbers]], [[Infinity]] - [[Asymptote]] - Cartesian point system, fundamental linear algebra - fundamental geometry - [[Metaphysics]] - [[Time (concept)]] - perdurance, endurance, sp? #to/expand - [[Quantum Mechanics]] - non-locality - relativity - wave-particle - superposition - Properties - Identity - PII & PII - Theseus - [[Anthropology]], [[Life Science]], [[Evolution]], [[Archaeology]], and history of life and humans - Pre-civilization - Clovis - modern humans, genetically, existed for around 200,000 years - Origin of life. Epochs. Ice ages. - Humans once, maybe twice were down to only a few hundred humans on earth - [[Evolution]], pre humans, genetics - Cultural evolution as in [[Not by genes alone - how culture transformed human evolution]] - [[Ethics]], [[Value]]s, [[Value Theory]] - Fundamentals of [[Normative Ethics]] - [[Consequentialism]] - [[Deontology]] - [[Virtue Ethics]] - [[Care ethics]] - The critique of justice/rational basis of normative theories by [[Carol Gilligan]] and [[Nel Noddings]] - [[Metaethics]] - [[Emotivism|Boo-hurrah]] theory - [[Moral Relativism]] - [[Ethical Egoism]] - [[Applied Ethics]] - [[Abortion]] - [[Euthanasia]], [[Physician-assisted suicide]] - [[Just war theory]] - Death penalty - Fundamental concepts, virtues, and considered beliefs - [[Justice]] - [[Intergenerational justice]] - [[Fairness]] - moral obligation vs moral praiseworthiness - Challenges in establishing morality - Incommensurate values, [[Value pluralism]], [[Cosmopolitan|Cosmopolitanism]], other cultures, other religions, change in values overtime within cultures, etc. - [[Diversity]] - [[Perspectivism]] - [[Moral luck]] and its role in motivating the establishing of basic ethical principles contra imperiousness and fickleness of our fates. - Meritocracy contra circumstances and [[Moral luck]] - [[Expanding moral circle]], Kant's claim of importance of feeling in moral universe - [[Moral Psychology]] - [[Jonathan Haidt]]'s [[Moral Foundations Theory]] - George Lakoff - Political paradigms of strict father vs nurturant mother - [[Hegel's Master-slave Dialectic]] - Rank ordering of values - Nietzsche - [[Iris Murdoch]]'s notion of being understanding and giving others space to be something unjustified and non-rational and not needing to justify it or be understood - [[John Hodgman]]'s people like what they like - as that being enough, not needing to justify it. - The significance and effect of ordinary people doing ordinary things, a la [[Sources/Web/Readwise Mirror/Books/The Plague]] - Contra [[Great man theory]] - Importance of [[Sentience]] and [[Suffering, Discomfort]] - [[Egalitarianism]], equity, [[Egalitarianism|Egalitarianism]] - [[Philosophy]], [[Science]] - Maxims, razors, etc. - [[Occam's Razor]] (parsimony) - [[Russell's Teapot]] ([[Burden of Proof]]) - [[Hitchen's Razor]] - [[Sagan Standard]], [[A wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence.]] - [[Falsifiability]] - [[Is-ought Problem]] ([[Naturalistic fallacy]]), aka Hume's Guillotine. - [[Emergence]] - [[Codex/Academia/Humanities, Arts, & Social Sciences/Philosophy/Consilience]] and its role in epistemic aggregation/strengthening/confidence via disparate/independent domains - [[Consilience in Recursion, Sublation, Dialectics, Emergence, Non-linearity, Lateral Thinking, Meta, Intension, Feedback Loops, etc.]] - [[Allegory of the Cave]] - [[Euthyphro dilemma]] - [[Stoicism]] - Issues in [[Essentialism]] - Subjectivity vs objectivity - [[Becoming (philosophy)]] - [[Sublation]], [[Thesis, Antithesis, Synthesis]], [[Dialectic]] - [[Willard Van Orman Quine|Quine]]'s indispensability argument - The big failures of 20th century intellectual projects - systematize natural language - [[Arrow's Impossibility Theorem]] - [[Godel's Incompleteness Theorems]] - [[Thomas Kuhn]] - [[Postmodernism]], [[Post-structuralism]], [[Relativism]], [[Moral Nihilism]] - [[Perspectivism]], Rashomon, etc. and how it can either motivate toward a nothing matters, is real, etc. or paradoxically via the understanding of the fragility of truth, etc. toward an increased valuation of Truth, science and all their necessary virtues. - [[Hoax]], [[Old Wives' Tale]]s, [[Conspiracy Theory]], etc - Chomsky on 9/11 conspiracy theories - the exception proves the rule - [[Systems Thinking]] and its limits, a la [[Friedrich Nietzsche|Nietzschean]] critique - [[Thomas Kuhn]]'s [[Paradigm shift]] - [[Justified True Belief]] - [[Analytic-synthetic distinction]], and [[a priori and a posteriori]] - [[Transcendental idealism|Transcendental aesthetic]] and its answer to the [[Tabula rasa]] vs [[Universal grammar]] debate - also how I see ontology of numbers and indispensability argument. - [[Existence Precedes Essence]] as radical freedom, freigeist/free spirit, etc. yet we are not a blank slate. - What is color? - What is sound? Music? Why are there such a thing as chords that sound consonant vs dissonant - [[Age of Enlightenment]], [[Humanism]] [[Renaissance]] [[Secularism]] [[Civil rights]] values ideals and way of life - Sweetness and light - Arnold - [[Christopher Hitchens]] - [[Science]] and [[Empiricism]] - [[Explanatory power]] - [[Intentional stance]], design stance, explanatory stance - [[Thorngate's Postulate of Commensurate Complexity]] - [[Replication crisis]] - [[Woozle Effect]] - [[Scientific Method]] - Chomsky's video on 9/11 conspiracy theories - [[Correlation does not imply causation]] - Empiricism entails causation as [[David Hume#Necessary Connection]], causation only via an indispensability argument. - The idea of objectivity, unbiased, etc. is flawed - [[The View from Nowhere]] and [[Journalistic objectivity]] and [[Noam Chomsky]]'s You can't be neutral? - [[Perspectivism]], etc. - [[Thomas Kuhn]] - [[Politics]], [[Civics]], & [[United States|America]] - Civic and government fundamentals - [[Constitution]] - US is constitutional republic - literally no higher authority - [[Democracy]] - [[Representative Democracy]] - [[Voting System]] - [[Ranked Voting]] - [[Government]] - Branches of government - [[Bicameral]] [[Legislative branch|Legislature]] - [[Separation of powers]] - State vs federal government bodies, [[Federalism]] - History, People's History, etc. - Historical fictions, like Columbus, etc. - [[Secularism]], [[Separation of church and state]], and the importance of these things *for* the practice of religion in particular. Essentially motivated and created by religious people? - [[Ideologies, -isms, & -ocracies]] - [[Conservatism]] - [[Wilhoit's law - "There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."]] - [[Liberalism]], [[Progressivism]] - [[Socialism]] - [[Libertarianism|Libertarian]] - [[Anarchism]] - [[Marxism]] vs [[Communism]] vs [[Socialism]] - [[Economic Inequality]] - Tax rates during most economically prosperous times - ie 90% tax rates on ultra rich - [[Thomas Piketty]], the inherent tendency in capitalism toward wealth concentration via the difference between labor value and capital. - Share of total productivity has increased at a rate much higher than wage increases - Robert Reich - [[Occupy Wall Street]] - The sheer numbers of billionaires - The myth of the feasibility of a wide-scale, universal [[Meritocracy]] - High-frequency trading, Flashboys - Corporations write our legislation - ALEC - [[Midwestern Nice]] - [[Fargo]] - The modern issue of [[Globalization]], and [[Multi-national corporation]]s and large, impersonal, [[Stochastic Process]]es, etc. that make even national control, let alone local or community control of one's well-being increasingly severed and action as neutered. A cause of both [[Conservatism]], [[Progressivism]], yes, but in particular extremism such as [[Fascism]] white nationalism, etc. - This in combination with the most-pressing issues of the day being [[Climate Change]], Pandemics and global health, [[Existential risk]], [[Tech|Technology]], etc. occurring as our social-cultural appetite to advocate for the virtues of broad, collective organization. - the decline of journalism and the erosion of trust in institutions and authority - The messenger - spotlight - Universal healthcare and the incompatibility of health decisions in markets - the question of what things should be decided by markets - [[Annotation - Why Some Things Should Not Be for Sale]] - [[United States|America]] - [[Citizens United]] - Us tortures people - The report movie, etc - Us operates in violation of the constitution - Us spies on people - patriot act - [[Edward Snowden]] - Civil rights reversals - voting rights act - gutted, multiple times recently - voter suppression and voter fraud - Trump is who he appears to be - a childish narcissist. - There was an attempted coup, it is still going, and Trumpism is now about participation in this coup. We are whistling past the graveyard. - zeitgeist - anti-democratic - crisis of truth - the cruelty is the point - Corporatism is the bigger problem, not the government - Far right populism - White power, nationalism, Christian nationalism - nationalism and wars - Conspiracy theory and [[Hoax]]es - Mistrust of authority - Mistrust of media - Anti elitism, anti intellectualism - Crisis of conversation - Partisanship - Living in a bubble - Love it or leave it - racism - homophobia, LGBTQ, etc. - sexism - in-group outgroup tribalism - Cultism of politics - Attack on [[Age of Enlightenment]], [[Humanism]] [[Renaissance]] [[Secularism]] [[Civil rights]] values ideals and way of life - [[Terrorism]] - domestic terrorism - [[Stochastic Process|Stochastic]] terrorism - American History - The scale and legit modern genocide of native americans by the US - Chatel slavery of the sort the US participated in and couldn't stop doing without fighting a civil war over it was fundamentally different than just about all other forms of historical slavery. Utter horror and in the modern world, with eyes wide open. - slave boats - people in coffin sized boxes - [[Colonialism]] - [[Critical Race Theory (CRT)]] - Identity politics - Cancel culture, [[Political correctness]] - [[Social Justice]] - [[Racism]] - Systemic vs individual - Civic duty, participation, activism, protest, etc. - [["Speaking Truth to power"]] - [[The Indispensable Opposition]] and the value of [[Free Speech]] and the 1st amendment. - Yes, the 1st amendment is about what the government can impinge, but the value of free speech precedes it and requires active championing beyond simply following the 1st amendment. Free speech can be fatally attacked not just by the government. E.g. corporations, technology, erosion of commons, etc. - [[John Rawls]] [[Original position|Veil of ignorance]], [[Elizabeth S. Anderson]] what is equality? - What is Feminism - 1, 2, 3 wave - [[Care ethics]] - unpaid labor - second shift - second sex - suffrage - [[Simone de Beauvoir|de Beauvoir]] - legal obligation to maximize profit at expense of pro social things. Eg Craig Newmark Craigslist eBay case? - Subsidies of gas, even when not counting externalization. But with externalization gas should be like $20/gallon (some study) - [[Law]] - Habeus Corpus - [[Right of reply]] - Innocent until proven guilty - [[Economics]] - [[Marginal Utility]] - [[Externality]] - [[Tragedy of the Commons]] - [[Capitalism]] vs [[Market]]s - [[Laissez-faire]] - [[Innovation]], [[Creative destruction]], and [[Joseph Schumpeter]] - [[Internal Contradictions of Capital Accumulation]] - [[Iron Law of Wages]] - [[Labor]] - [[Money]], [[Currency]] - [[Cryptocurrency]] and what it's good/bad for - store of value vs exchange of value (currency/payment system) - [[Regulatory capture]] - [[History]] - [[Great man theory]] flawed vs [[History from Below]] - [[Psychology]] - [[Simulacrum]], [[Simulacra and Simulation]] - [[The extended mind]] - [[Motivated Reasoning]] - [[Bias]] - [[Personality Psychology]] - [[Narcissism]] - [[Psycopathy]] - that study where students went undercover in an insane asylum and couldn't get out - [[Gender and Sexuality Studies]] - [[Gender Essentialism]], [[Sex and Gender Distinction]] - [[Fixed vs Growth Mindset]] - [[Cognitive dissonance]] - [[Dunning–Kruger Effect]] - [[Folie a deux]] - [[Puer aeternus]] - [[Sociology]] - [[Max Weber]]'s [[Tripartite classification of authority]] - [[Individualism]] vs [[Collectivism]] - [[Diffusion of responsibility]] - [[Moral Panic]] - [[Milgram experiment]] - [[Stanford prison experiment]] - [[Bourdieu's Theory of Capital]] - Community, local, cities, etc. - That video Cayden sent me - [[Tech|Technology]] - Technology's zeitgeist is cognitive augmentation/enhancement via extended /external cognition within an experienced conceptual framework qualitatively experienced as a simulacrum in which knowledge, intelligence, ability does not inhere solely in an individual or localized aspect of a person, it extends both beyond semantic externalism but also to shifts from knowing what vs how (a la a simulacrum), and further from an individual as a supposed romantic/natural/unaided/pure state into an individual's relied on objects and technology like clothes, paper, books, computers, notes, references, internet, phone etc. - the how to, not memory, etc, and finally from the individual to the social, distributed, collective, systemic, structural, organizational, standardized, interfaced, and ultimately economic, political, and directed intentional teleological, including at least a weak form of determinism, technological determinism, and the intensification of systemic and structural circumstances and an element of momentum, arrow of time, and needing realistic, practical steps that recognize nothing can cause right turns, it will be iterative, cumulative, adjacent possible, etc. But not gradualism - we just underestimate what is possible. #to/expand - semantic externalism not to social, collective but also the how vs what - but also collective, distributed - witt - nothing, something - empirical nature of cognition resolves not to atomism or essentialism but to the extended relationality of neural networks - contra essentialism - contra atomism - toward relationality, extendedness, networks - also the fundamental and inescapable role of meaning via perception with [[Transcendental idealism|Transcendental aesthetic]] and within some version of metaphysical idealism - Technology fundamentals - Electronics and circuits - [[Binary numeral system]] - [[Binary-to-text Encoding]] - [[Networking & Internet|Networking]] - [[Sources/Web/Web]] & The Internet - [[Cloud]] - [[Cryptography|Cryptography]] and the flaw in making backdoors - [[Privacy]] and [[Identity, Authentication, & Authorization]] - [[Electronic Frontier Foundation|EFF]] - [[Open Source]] - [[Shell|CLIs]] - [[Programming]] - Portability, owning your data, local, standards, file formats - [[Existential risk]] - [[Banality of Evil]], [[my lai massacre]], responsibility to disobey direct orders if immoral, [[Nuremberg defense]] - [[Laughing with Kafka]], identity, finding value and exertion and relation to ethics of ambiguity - [[Form of life (philosophy)|Forms of life]] - [[Conflict resolution]], [[Truth commission|Truth and reconciliation]] ## Miscellaneous terms, words, definitions - [[Zeitgeist]] - [[Supervenience]] - [[Deus ex machina]] - [[Conatus]] - [[Ouroboros]] - [[Matryoshka Doll]] - [[Droste Effect]] - [[Singularity]] - [[Commensurability & Incommensurability]] ## Sources - books - music - movies - tv - [[Watchman]] - Calvin and Hobbes - Heartbreaking work as my catcher in the rye ## Humor - standup, comedians, jokes - [[Norm MacDonald]] - ability to use humor in life - Hitchhiker's guide, Catch-22, hearbreaking work of staggering ## Inbox - sense reference - Type token class - Use, mention - Parameter vs essence as ontology, related to empiricism, semantics, and Wittgenstein's beetle etc, nothing works just as good as something - [[Non-linearity]] vs arrow of time - Interstellar, [[Paraprosdokian]] and similar larger scale backwards-directed reevaluations, Proust, identity, reflection, [[Life can only be understood backwards; but it must be lived forwards.]]