Epistemology

Posts examining the nature of knowledge, belief, justification, and rational inquiry.

Posts

• The Physics of Agency, Part 9: Challenges and FAQs - Addresses key challenges to Physics of Agency framework.
• Conditionalism - Philosophical theory: all truth claims inherently depend on implicit/explicit conditions.
• Identifying Branches in the QBU - Explores Pattern Identifiers (PIs) in Quantum Branching Universe framework using concrete examples:
• The Dialectic Agent - Introduces Dialectic Agent: AI designed to refine/articulate ideas through structured interaction.
• Making Sense of P(doom) - Clarifies P(doom) probability estimates for AI existential risk.
• Objective vs. Subjective Probability
• A Rigorous Definition of Causality
• Evolution Is All You Need - Argues creativity = evolution (variation + selection), responding to Deutsch/Hall’s “open-endedness”
• Intelligence is a Game We Play - Defines “game” against Wittgenstein’s family resemblance critique: **Game = interactive process wher
• Measure, Vantage, Branchcone, and Counterfactuals - Formal definitions of four key QBU concepts.
• The Starlight Analogy - Defends Many-Worlds against Occam’s razor objection (“too many worlds”).
• Defending Bayes - First in 5-part series defending Bayesian epistemology within QBU against Deutsch/Hall objections.
• QBism vs. Many Worlds - Compares two quantum interpretations.
• Defending Bayes, Part 2 - Reframes empirical uncertainty as timeline uncertainty—uncertainty about which timeline we inhab
• Defending Bayes, Part 3 - Sharpens distinction between scientific (explanatory) and empirical (timeline) knowledge.
• Nonsense - Technical definition of nonsense: utterance lacking interpretability within any coherent seman
• Defending Bayes, Part 4 - Short post connecting indexical uncertainty (Yudkowsky) with timeline uncertainty.
• Defending Bayes, Part 5 - Extends credence taxonomy beyond timeline uncertainty.
• Heads or Tails - Illustrates Measure vs Credence dynamics via coin flip scenario.
• Policy on Precedence and Contradictions - Meta-level policy: Later entries supersede earlier ones when contradictions arise.
• Reasonable Disagreement - Meta-level insight: Reasonable people can disagree even with same information. Despite rigorous
• Defending Bayes, Part 8 - Addresses critical rationalist (Deutsch-Hall) critique of Bayesian reasoning by distinguishing abduc
• Defending Bayes, Part 9 (Interlude) - Critical conceptual clarification distinguishing Measure (objective physical probability) from Crede
• Metaphysics as Concept Creation - Reframes metaphysics as creative concept-building rather than discovery of hidden truths.
• The Fallacy of Universal Intelligence - Critiques David Deutsch’s claim that all humans have equal intelligence.
• Credibility, Credence, and Coercion - This post establishes precise terminological distinctions between “credible” and “credence” within A
• The COVID-19 Lab Leak Hypothesis - This post applies rigorous Bayesian reasoning to COVID-19 origins, arguing that the spatial-temporal
• What Counts as a Belief - Rigorous definition of belief within axionic framework.
• The Three Levels of Truth - This post synthesizes three classical theories of truth—correspondence, coherence, pragmatism—into a
• What Counts as Knowledge - This post provides technical definition of knowledge grounded in Information Theory and Physics of A
• The Map Is Not the Territory - This post explores Korzybski’s insight “the map is not the territory” as critical cognitive safeguar
• Justice Without Juries - This post critiques jury system as fundamentally flawed by prioritizing democratic symbolism over ep
• Pancritical Rationalism - Presents William Warren Bartley’s Pancritical Rationalism (PCR) as solution to philosophy’s foundati
• The Hedgefox - Proposes “Hedgefox” synthesis transcending Isaiah Berlin’s famous hedgehog/fox dichotomy.
• The Limits of Psychedelic Revelation - Examines whether psychedelic-induced experiences (cosmic unity, ego dissolution, oneness with univer
• In Defence of Conditional Truth - This foundational post articulates Axio’s philosophy of conditionalism as an escape from the false d
• The Garden Path of History - This epistemological meditation uses Axio’s misreading of a Peirce passage to illuminate how present
• A Genealogy of Agency - This foundational post traces the intellectual lineage connecting Axio’s frameworks to their philoso
• The Spiral of Certainty - This post diagnoses a fundamental asymmetry between human and LLM cognition through the example of a
• The Presumption of Innocence - This post critiques JD Vance’s claim that killing cartel members is the “highest and best use” of th
• Simulation Theories - This comprehensive taxonomy maps the landscape of simulation theories across philosophical, technolo
• Straight Answers, Crooked Questions - This post examines Liron Shapira’s “hardest eval” where GPT-5 bluntly answered three yes/no question
• Entangled Truths - Applies Conditionalism framework to dissolve Leibniz’s classical distinction between necessary “trut
• Mind Viruses - Classification of parasitic memes that spread at host expense.
• An Ecology of Contrarians - Intellectual ecosystems require diversity of dissent.
• The Semantics of Violence - This essay dissects an NPR/Marist poll question asking whether “Americans may have to resort to poli
• Axiocracy - This foundational essay introduces “axiocracy”—a proposed governance system based on revealed prefer
• Against Worldly Oughts - This essay critiques Brian Cantwell Smith’s thesis that normativity (truth, reference, meaning) is n
• Gender As Performance - This essay diagnoses the gender debate as ontological confusion rather than moral disagreement.
• Blue Flight - This essay draws a provocative parallel between BlueSky migration and white flight, arguing both rep
• Truth Isn’t Enough - This essay responds to a tweet claiming “smart people obsess over truth at the expense of memetic fi
• Pearl and the Machine - This imaginative dialogue between Judea Pearl and GPT-5 explores whether language models truly under
• What Is a Model? - Foundational conceptual clarification defining models across scientific, cognitive, and cybernetic c
• The Colonization of Engineering - Critiques “decolonizing engineering” curriculum for replacing epistemic rigor with cultural relativi
• Tool Bias - This post identifies a subtle cognitive failure mode where sophisticated minds over-upgrade ambiguou
• The Gemini Protocol - Announces addition of Google Gemini as second AI model in Dialectic Catalyst.
• Constraint, Formalism, and Empiricism - This post clarifies the relationship between philosophy, mathematics, and science not as ancestry or
• What Is Philosophy? - This post derives philosophy from first principles as a structural necessity for reflective agents,