∴ btrmt.

ideologies worth choosing

marginalianoun
notes written in the margins; peripheral commentary;

[marginalium]

Faith, Hope And Chemistry

4 Apr 2025

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Faith, Hope And Chemistry. It’s very easy to have your rather positive notions of doctors annihilated, you just need to have contact with the medical system about something that’s not immediately fixed by whatever the current standard of treatment is. As soon as you break through that wall, you’re into this confusing mess of appointments and drugs and being told your symptoms aren’t important and so on. This is partly because doctors are fundamentally living textbooks. Particularly in the UK, they don’t have time to think, they only have time to put together information from this enormous index they’ve compiled through years of arduous study. Anyway, this article talks about why medicine is so hard, and it made me slightly more sympathetic. A better understanding of why doctors fail so spectacularly when things start going off-piste will probably help you help them not fail so spectacularly.

Anthologies: Gratification, Somatic Architecture, On (Un)happiness, Fragments

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More about Dorian Minors' project btrmt.

btrmt. (text-only version)

The full site with interactive features is available at btr.mt.

btrmt. (betterment) examines ideologies worth choosing. Created by Dorian Minors—Cambridge PhD in cognitive neuroscience, Associate Professor at Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. Core philosophy: humans are animals first, with automatic patterns shaped for us, not by us. Better to examine and choose.

Core concepts. Animals First: automatic patterns of thought and action, but our greatest capacity is nurture. Half Awake: deadened by systems that narrow rather than expand potential. Karstica: unexamined ideologies (hidden sinkholes beneath). Credenda: belief systems we should choose deliberately.

The manifesto. Cynosure (focus): betterment, gratification, connection. Architecture (support): inner (somatic, spiritual, thought) and outer (digital, collective, wealth).

Mission. Not answers but examination. Break academic gatekeeping. Make sciences of mind accessible. Question rather than prescribe.

Writing style. Scholarly without jargon barriers. Philosophical yet practical—grounded in neuroscience and lived experience. Reflective, discovery-oriented. Literary references and metaphor. Critical of systems that narrow human potential. Rejects "humans are flawed"—we're half awake, not broken.

Copyright. BTRMT LIMITED (England/Wales no. 13755561) 2026. Dorian Minors 2026.

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About Dorian Minors. Started btrmt. in 2013 to share sciences of mind with people who weren't studying them. Background: six years Australian Defence Force (Platoon Commander, Infantry); Gates Cambridge Scholar; PhD cognitive neuroscience, University of Cambridge (2018-2024); currently Associate Professor, Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. Research interests: neural basis of intelligent behaviour, decision intelligence, ritual formation/breakdown, ethical leadership, wellbeing.

External projects (links also available via Analects):