btrmt. | Betterment

ideologies worth choosing

btrmt.

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About

betterment

noun

making or becoming better;

ideology

noun

rituals of thought, feeling, and action;
the science of ideas;

Humans are animals first. responding adaptively to the environment around us. We see this in our habits, our routines, and our rituals: automatic patterns of behaviour that gracefully handle the predictable shapes of everyday life. But rituals of behaviour are preceded by rituals of thought—this is what brains do. Left unexamined, these rituals will be chosen for us, not by us.

So, let me help you choose them.

More about me →

Projects

The btrmt. projects aren't random. They follow the credenda laid out in Animals First.

  • analects

    I have a terrible memory, see. So, everything I learn I have to leave somewhere I can find later. This is where. With a background in brain and behaviour science, my analects are me teaching myself and anyone else interested in our patterns of thinking and behaving.

    See them all →

  • animals first

    You might have read about me, but now, let me introduce you to btrmt. Animals First walks you through this little website of mine. The philosophy, and all the major threads and minor projects that make it up. Let’s see if you can’t find something worth your time.

    Check it out →

  • neurotypica

    Lots of people ask me “what’s a good neuroscience book to read?” I never really had a good answer. So I made one. This is my experimental attempt to teach you how a brain scientist thinks about our patterns of thinking and acting. Neurotypica is my guide to brain and behaviour. See what you think.

    Check it out ↗

  • black cortex

    Black Cortex is the place I send people looking for leadership consulting. Myself and a colleague at Sandhurst delivering transformation that goes beyond buzzword. We take on select work where outcomes are measurable.

    Check it out ↗

  • lectures

    I mostly write my articles for me. These lectures are for you. I spend so much of my time teaching, why not do some of that in front of a microphone. The btrmt. lectures, where I take one concept I write about or teach, and try and teach it to you. Currently hosted on Substack.

    Check it out ↗

  • omen

    It’s not silly to be superstitious. The placebo effect is an ‘effect’ because it works, and the scientific method is a ritual like any other. Rituals surface meaning regardless of the mechanism. Omen is a daily tarot draw. One card, personalised, as a moment for reflection. Bring your friends. Currently Invite only.

    Check it out ↗

Content

Latest and best the Analects, or my latest Missives to you all.

Random Featured

Featured

article

We think of cults as the product of dangerously charismatic leaders but on examination this narrative falls apart. Really, the most successful prophets are not a person, but the followers, who use the leader as an emblem.

Successful Prophets

article

I’m starting to suspect that something is missing from our narratives surrounding the influence of cult leaders. We see destructive cults as the product of the tragic influence of one dangerously charismatic leader. But on closer inspection, this doesn’t really seem to be true. Cult leaders are often pretty weird. What gives?
We think of cults as the product of dangerously charismatic leaders but on examination this narrative falls apart. Really, the most successful prophets are not a person, but the followers, who use the leader as an emblem.
Check it out

filed under:

spiritual-architecture collective-architecture connection on-leadership on-thinking-and-reasoning

audio

Men and women engage in identical behaviours—complaining, offering solutions, needing validation, resisting criticism. The difference isn’t biological, it’s interpretive. We cast the same behaviour as reasonable for one gender and unreasonable for the other. Gray’s book is a perfect case study: emotionally troubled men are normalised while women’s ordinary needs are pathologised.

Men Aren't From Mars

audio

Gender essentialism is having a moment. Everyone’s reading books about what it means to be a man or woman, and Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus keeps getting recommended to me like it’s gospel. Here’s the thing: the book perfectly illustrates a pattern we see everywhere. The same behaviours—complaining, offering advice, needing reassurance, getting defensive—are cast as reasonable when men do them and unreasonable when women do them. Gray’s men are emotionally fragile and his women just want basic partnership, but somehow it’s the women who need to lower their expectations. This isn’t about men and women. It’s about how we frame identical behaviours differently based on who’s doing them.
Men and women engage in identical behaviours—complaining, offering solutions, needing validation, resisting criticism. The difference isn’t biological, it’s interpretive. We cast the same behaviour as reasonable for one gender and unreasonable for the other. Gray’s book is a perfect case study: emotionally troubled men are normalised while women’s ordinary needs are pathologised.
Check it out ↗

filed under:

betterment connection somatic-architecture collective-architecture on-(un)happiness on-culture on-love

Latest Content

Latest

article

Lots of things are happening, but anything <em>can</em> matter, and whatever gives meaning will eventually demand sacrifice. The agony of attention. I’m not going to spend more time trying to reduce the core idea than that.

Gesticism

article

I write alot about the importance of spiritual architecture. Tools to help navigate meaning in a world too complicated for certainty. But I’ve spent very little time collecting them for myself. Then, this winter break, I accidentally created one while I was designing a cosmology for my D&D world. Most stimulating thing I’ve done for years, and surprisingly productive. Might have reached the limit, but let’s see.
Lots of things are happening, but anything can matter, and whatever gives meaning will eventually demand sacrifice. The agony of attention. I’m not going to spend more time trying to reduce the core idea than that.
Check it out

filed under:

betterment gratification connection spiritual-architecture thought-architecture on-the-nature-of-things

audio

Values are virtue ethics in disguise—traits we’re expected to cultivate. But virtues are context-dependent (courage for a soldier isn’t courage for a teacher) and the situation overwhelmingly drives behaviour. The real task is designing the context, not listing the virtues.

Values Don't Matter

audio

Everyone loves organisational values. Corporates, militaries, sports clubs, schools—any place where people collect in a serious way has a list of qualities they want everyone to embody. But values are just virtue ethics by another name. And virtue ethics suffer two rather troubling problems: virtues are hugely context-dependent, and the situation overwhelmingly drives behaviour anyway. So if you want people to act virtuously, design the context.
Values are virtue ethics in disguise—traits we’re expected to cultivate. But virtues are context-dependent (courage for a soldier isn’t courage for a teacher) and the situation overwhelmingly drives behaviour. The real task is designing the context, not listing the virtues.
Check it out ↗

filed under:

betterment spiritual-architecture on-culture on-ethics on-leadership

audio

The hard problem of consciousness is just a complicated debate with no real outcomes. It’s the behaviour that matters, not whether there’s ineffable qualia behind the curtain.

Stupid Questions: Consciousness

audio

What is consciousness? From Mary’s Room to philosophical zombies, from panpsychism to eliminativism, everyone has theories about the “hard problem.” But under what realistic circumstances would it actually matter whether something is truly conscious versus merely appearing conscious?
The hard problem of consciousness is just a complicated debate with no real outcomes. It’s the behaviour that matters, not whether there’s ineffable qualia behind the curtain.
Check it out ↗

filed under:

betterment thought-architecture on-being-fruitful on-ethics on-the-nature-of-things on-thinking-and-reasoning

marginalium

Marginalia are my notes on content from around the web.

Marginalium

My commentary on something from elsewhere on the web.

Gnosticism in Blood Meridian.

Fantastic old essay on the Gnostic themes in McCarthy’s Blood Meridian. I am a little confused by his account of the Fates—I think he’s confusing them with the Furies. But the idea of the Judge representing the trappedness we experience as humans made me think of a quote from a completely different book:

There are superficial facts in life. And then there are truths. You’ll know when you’ve found a truth. It sticks to your heart.

Anyway. If you are new to McCarthy or Gnosticism, this might be enough to get you to check out both. It might explain why Blood Meridian’s gruesomeness doesn’t seem to really stop the book from being beautiful in a bleak way.

Check out the site ↗

filed under:

gratification on-being-fruitful betterment spiritual-architecture thought-architecture economy-of-small-pleasures on-(un)happiness on-the-nature-of-things

marginalium

Marginalia are my notes on content from around the web.

Marginalium

My commentary on something from elsewhere on the web.

Ethical astrology:

Astrological forecasting tends to describe the future more thematically or archetypically than concretely, and the vast majority of astrological prediction today falls into this category … Horoscopes work this way

Astrological prediction, wielded gently and skillfully, can help to “spot the meaning and the movement [going forward] by looking to what is different,”

The downside to the immense meaning-making potential of astrology? It renders the practice vulnerable to misuse by uncareful types with dubious commitment to honorable behavior.

See also the placebo effect.

Check out the site ↗

filed under:

gratification spiritual-architecture psychologia on-therapy on-ethics
All the Analects

Recent Missives

Missives

January 11, 2026

January 9, 2026

Last Changelog

Happy new year. On top of my updates last December, I have two new articles out: one on Hydraulic Despotism, and one on three questions that seem important, but end up being irrelevant. Specifically, questions about consciousness, free-will, and nature vs nurture.

Relatedly, I have four more podcasts/lectures out. Three are the audio version of the irrelevant questions article: Consciousness, Free Will, and Nature vs Nurture. Then one more on Mundane Cults.

Looks like it wasn’t a passing fancy, so I guess I should launch it properly now.

It’s hosted at Substack for the free storage and bandwidth for now, but you don’t need to subscribe there. I’ll still include the links in the normal newsletter.

Speaking of, I will be restarting the newsletter! I think you can tell I needed the break.

All the Missives
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