Analects

Filter by type: All · Articles · Audio · Marginalia

Filter by anthology: All · Betterment · Gratification · Connection · Somatic Architecture · Spiritual Architecture · Thought Architecture · Wealth Architecture · Digital Architecture · Collective Architecture

Noetik — On thinking well in a noisy world

• [audio] Sages and Wisdom — 16 May 2026
  Empiricism and reflection rest on a third, intuitive way of knowing. The doctor and the guru run on the same authority structure—the only difference is the costume. Pick your sages by what sits underneath the figure, not the coat, or you lose to charlatans.
• [audio] The Scientific Ritual — 2 May 2026
  The scientific method is just another belief system, a ritual subject to errors of application like any other. And the consequence is a machine for generating exaggerations.
• [article] There are no levels — 1 May 2026
  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 spades. I call them karstica—superficially pretty, but hiding sinkholes. If you don’t learn to detect it, the thinking gets done for you.
• [audio] Overengineering calming down — 4 Apr 2026
  Pop neuroscience theories are elaborate scaffolding around trivial advice. They’re attractive because they give us something to point at, make us feel scientific, and—crucially—make our problems someone else’s fault. The scaffolding is mostly harmless, but it hides the stuff that actually matters.
• [audio] Bias is Good — 21 Mar 2026
  Bias isn’t a flaw in human thinking—it’s a precision tool. The brain trades variance for consistency because the world is noisy. Stop trying to eliminate bias. Start identifying the beliefs that drive it.
• [marginalium] AI use and skill formation — 5 Feb 2026
• [article] Stupid Questions — 1 Jan 2026
  Nature is just nurture over time, and nurture is far more obviously in charge; nothing changes if free will <em>isn’t</em> real; and the same is true of consciousness. They’re just complicated debates with no real outcomes.
• [article] AI Hallucination is just Man-Guessing — 1 Nov 2025
  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 generating rational ones. AI is fundamentally this but crippled: without the grounded intuitions and social friction that makes it work.
• [marginalium] Against McAskillian Longtermism — 10 Jul 2025
• [marginalium] The Practical Inconsequence of the Free Will Debate — 7 Jul 2025
• [marginalium] Critiquing Utilitarianism — 2 Jul 2025
• [article] Moral Blindspots — 27 Jun 2025
  Most people think better ethical decision-making is just a matter of stopping to think before acting. But many moral judgements are intuitive, and then we rationalise them to ourselves. We have to train both intuition and reasoning, not rely on one to correct the other.
• [article] Beyond System 1 and System 2 — 13 Jun 2025
  System 1 vs System 2 is a useful shorthand, but our minds aren’t two-speed engines—they’re multi-process coalitions of specialised agents working in parallel and in series.
• [marginalium] Understanding Bayes — 6 Jun 2025
• [article] The Neuroscience Con — 6 Jun 2025
  The neuroscience confidence game trades content for cosmetic filler, making vacuous advice look smart.