analects noun, pl

/ˈan.ə.lɛkts/

a collection of ideas, extracts, or teachings.

Thought Architecture

stuff On making chaos into meaning

show:

analects under the categories btrmt. believes in, as set out in the manifesto

analects organised according to the fundamental questions of philosophy

sequences of articles gathered around a more focused idea

  • there are no levels 1 May 2026 [article] Ideas that stick are shaped to be interesting, not true. Some of these are weaponised; snuck by our faculties of reason. AI uses them in spa...
  • gesticism 26 Jan 2026 [article] Lots of things are happening, but anything can matter, and whatever gives meaning will eventually demand sacrifice. The agony of attention....
  • stupid questions 1 Jan 2026 [article] Nature is just nurture over time, and nurture is far more obviously in charge; nothing changes if free will isn’t real; and the same is true...
  • hydraulic despotism 1 Dec 2025 [article] Control the water, control the people. Today’s water is energy, social media, infrastructure. We’re coerced through convenience, not malice....
  • ai hallucination is just man-guessing 1 Nov 2025 [article] Human reasoning isn’t flawed, it’s a social tool we use in the wrong places. It’s about sharing and evaluating intuitive claims, not generat...
  • positive intelligence pt.iii 30 May 2025 [article] This might be the most comprehensive example of the neuroscience confidence game I’ve ever written about. That and a heavy dose of self-indu...
  • positive intelligence pt.ii 23 May 2025 [article] Chamine’s ‘Positivity Quotient’ is based on nothing beyond ‘being happier is better than being sad’, and unless they appeal to you, there’s...
  • positive intelligence pt.i 16 May 2025 [article] It says it’s based on the latest research, but actually it’s based on a 40 year old version of the concept of an ‘inner critic’, and a pack...
  • preferring coherence 2 May 2025 [article] Cogntive dissonance often describes a bias towards seeing ourselves as coherent. Sure, it’s sneaky and prevalent, but entirely necessary. An...
  • cognitive dissonance isn't discomfort 25 Apr 2025 [article] Cognitive dissonance is often thought of as the discomfort we have with conflicting cognitions. But it’s really about how the brain will smo...
  • evolution is overrated 18 Apr 2025 [article] Without time-travel, evolutionary narratives can only identify theories that don’t make sense (like death drives). It can’t tell you what th...
  • ai is never human-like 14 Mar 2025 [article] AI has human-like output, but a very different environment and different values for than environment, and until all three align, they will n...
  • aesthetics are facts too 21 Feb 2025 [article] Cultural and aesthetic ‘facts’ are as real as any ‘objective’ truths. They’re just centred on different kinds of meaning. Trivialising them...
  • bdsm as a lazy ideology 17 Jan 2025 [article] BDSM is an ideology stack—a collection of behaviours borne of a culture that surrounds some core set of human needs. But is it lazy? Hard to...
  • bias is good 15 Nov 2024 [article] Bias reduces noise—if you know roughly what to expect, then being biased by those expectations means you won’t get distracted by less releva...
  • there are no levels 4 Oct 2024 [article] The ‘naming’ problem, where by naming something we feel we have explained it, the ‘language’ problem, where the words we use stop others fro...
  • great spirits of history 6 Sep 2024 [article] The ‘Great Man’ theory of history has the history of ideas moved forward by individuals. But by thinking of these as ‘Great Ideas’, or bette...
  • ai isn't that scary 22 Jun 2024 [article] AI alarmism thrives on speculative, worst-case scenarios, but our understanding of AI’s fundamentally alien nature and the complex forms of...
  • ideologies stack 15 Jun 2024 [article] Fringe theories always seem to cluster together. It seems weird, but mainstream theories also do, we just don’t often examine them. Examinin...
  • the trouble with objectivity 21 Dec 2023 [article] The obsession over objectivity is a confusion of two things. There’s rationality, the desire to be less biased. Then there’s truth which is...

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