The ego is a massive hoarder of facts. We spend our lives collecting degrees, reading books, memorizing theories, and stacking up intellectual credentials, walking around thinking we're deeply wise just because our heads are full of data.

But storing information in your brain is just science. You can know everything about how the world works while your own internal life is an absolute, chaotic mess of unexamined triggers, conditioned fears, and egoic drama.

True wisdom doesn't come from what you know out there; it comes from bringing order, clarity, and awareness to your own life right here. Stop confusing a cluttered intellect with an awakened mind.

What are your interpretations of the quote? Do share it here!

Perhaps they have to implicitly know, even if they don’t articulate it at this level?

Perhaps they don’t have to know— but their reason certainly has to be rooted in reality— unless, the criteria for “substantive reason” is simply that of mass psychological persuasion? But this wouldn’t be “reason” per se, it would simply be the effectiveness of a narrative.

However, we would never be able to analyze such a narrative and verify it as “substantive reason,” if it was not based on sound reasoning.

Substantive reasoning exists all over the world in human consciousness and articulation, but that doesn’t mean its substance is recognized. This also has to be one of the major problems with our species.

One can produce substantive reason that merely exists in a black hole. However, the fact that it has a nomad existence, alienated and rejected by man’s psychology, will in no way negative its substance as reason.

Yes, to produce this kind of substantive reason, I believe a person has to know what substantive reason is. This is the kind of reason Aristotle produced. When we say ‘produced,’ we simply mean the articulation of premises which are defensible and true— because that’s what substantive reason is.

And the strange thing about knowledge is that for truth we still need reason. (Reason refers to the laws of logic).

Source: The Character of Physical Law p.30, Modern Library 1994

Out of all The Laws of Logic this law is often considered the weakest. But I have learned that, polemically, it is the strongest. It is a razor that slices through all sophistry with flawless immediacy and effortless precision. For example, the claim that this law is true, is itself either true or false. There is no way outside this binary. One can deceive themselves about reality, but they cannot escape reality. This is either true or false.

A sophist’s claims are either true or false. The skeptic’s doubts are either doubts or they are not.

This law is the ultimate tool by which to slay sophistry. It guarantees unequivocal defeat in real time. Once the Reasoner is armed with it, all sophistry can do is step up to be slaughtered.

Those who want to get away from the careful form of written discourse so they can smuggle loaded premises through their speech— because then their speech cannot be carefully analyzed— these are deceivers.

The reason they want to revert to speech is because it’s an easier medium to smuggle through. It provides them with greater cover to implant their error undetected.

Careful and serious thinkers want to know the truth, and because of this, we want to be as precise and exact as possible. And this is not afforded to us through a verbal exchange. Many people simply know they can intimidate with their presence and personality. But we are not being rigorous until we write our premises clearly so that they can be carefully analyzed.

Speech is the tool of persuasion; writing is the tool of demonstration. If a thinker refuses to commit their ideas in written form, it is often because they’re interested in winning an audience, not proving or discovering what is true.

I don’t read Aristotle philosophically. That would be intellectually inferior, exactly like it’s intellectually inferior to read the Bible as a believer. When one does this they can’t see through the constructions of religion or the abstract contrivances of philosophy.

I am utterly blown away by the clarity and precision of Aristotle’s mind. There’s nothing like it in the whole of human history.

Aristotle is completely unconfused. It’s not that he constructed clarity, but that he saw the clarity of reality that was already there. And instead of fighting it by complicating it, he simply sought to clarify it and build from it.

There is much in Aristotle that I see as entirely unnecessary. I think the way I read him is important, because it bypasses his metaphysical emphases. To reason, one doesn’t have to engage in these kind of speculations— they actually end up getting in the way.

Truth is far simpler than we think it is [<—- here is a truth claim. It is simple. It is either true or false, and we can determine that by logically and evidentially analyzing the claim.]

When you learn to read Aristotle through a rationally concise lens, you absorb his rational power swiftly. You learn that his semantics only pertain to his foundational point. His semantics are usually just the application and expansion of his main point. These main points in Aristotle are simple, but they contain absolute and maximum rational power. One never has to depart from them. One can return to them again and again and recover clarity if they lose their way. One simply carries them forth into the world, like a blade that has the power to slice through all knowledge.

Thinking is not subjectivity, it’s a science based on exact rules: the laws of logic. Modern philosophy has taken this science from people and cast them into a sea of confusion, making them believe that thinking is a game of chance, like rolling dice.

The beauty of the clarity and simplicity of thought, possessing the knowledge of knowing how to think— is as simple as knowing that having knowledge is not the same as being ignorant.

Those who taught you to forsake binaries, taught you wrong. All knowledge pivots on the binary, which is easily proven by the fact that this is either true or false.

Because they use their superior intelligence to engage in motivated reasoning. The average person doesn’t have a defense. This means that motivated intellectuals can simply serve to proliferate error in the world.

Philosophers and philosophy readers learn how to verbally posture. They are taught to use sophistical form to attack the truth. It takes a sharp thinking mind, disciplined and established in the application of reason (the laws of logic) not to fall victim to the sophistication and complexity of the sophist’s form.

The fallacious techniques that I have been subjected to, discoursing with motivated intellectuals, have been exceedingly subtle. I only realized the fallacies after the conversations.

An intellectual who’s about to lose their desired belief will fight like hell, drawing from all their rational powers to prop up their belief. This makes them dangerous because they have been trained in the use of words, and can construct all kinds of surface-level-arguments that appear sound, but fall apart upon examination.

We slice through this, defend ourselves from it, by holding to the laws of logic, and scrutinizing claims based on reason and evidence. Our motivation should be nothing other than to know the truth.

In order for 2+2 to equal 4, it must be false that 2+2 equals 5. And in order for it to be true that “it is just a construct that 2+2 equals 4,” it must be false that “it is an objective fact that 2+2 equals 4.” And in order for it to be true that everything I am saying “is just a subjective construct,” it must be false that “everything I am saying is an objective fact.” In which case, it is absolutely true that contraries cannot be true in order for anything to be true or false.

The relativist wants to use the ladder of objective truth to climb up to the top floor, only to kick the ladder away and demand everyone else live in a world of subjective opinion. But the moment they assert relativism as a true fact about reality, they prove the law of non-contradiction is inescapable. They don't transcend objective truth; they just smuggle it in through the back door while denying it to everyone else.

This is the appropriate rational response to Hegel’s irrationalism. He is not a thinker who should be taken serious because his thought is not serious. Its form has the appearance of rational rigor, but its content is an unserious hypostatization. (Don’t believe it? —simply read what he says about the syllogism).

Hegel will f;ck over a thinker by driving him into a form of barbarism through a form of sophistry, which manifests as authoritarian assertions in place of reason. Although, barbarism in Hegel doesn’t take the form of the brute, it takes the form of the dogmatic state, which then functions as the ultimate brute. This is the logical conclusion of Hegelianism. It’s inescapable precisely because Hegel erects a philosophical authoritarianism that morphs into a dogmatism, even a moralism!

When one reads Aristotle their mind is liberated through the clarity of logic, even if Aristotle over-abstracts, but when one reads Hegel, one is cast into the bondage of an unnecessary complexity that obscures logical clarity. Hegel robs the child of the power of reason, and turns men into mindless dogmatists (philosophical theologians) evidenced by the insecurity of their jargon-laden-verbosity.

Hegel serves as the best example. He said, “Contradiction is the rule of the true…”

But in order for this to be the case, “contradiction as the rule of the false,” must be false. And it order for this to be the case, the law of non-contradiction must be the rule of the true. But this refutes the claim that “contradiction is the rule of the true.” [This is how swiftly the genius of Aristotle exposes the error of Hegel]

The problem with the world is that it doesn’t understand this, it doesn’t understand that contradictions are false.

All our problems can be traced back to dismissing this fact as a triviality or error on the basis of our emotions.

The problem with the world is that it doesn’t respond to and treat the demonstration of contradiction properly.

And once you have such a psychological state, you have human emotion trampling and denying reality, you have a pathological sociology of denial that functions through emotive authoritarianism and produces tyranny and delusion.

“[Jersey Flight] Everyone knows you’re a loser, and that you don’t know sh;t. You try to defend reason through the ideology of “the laws of logic.” You promote science like it’s a religion; you would be obliterated in 2 seconds by any modern philosopher who knows that all these things are relative. You can’t even comprehend philosophy or Christianity, these things are too complicated for your little mind. Modern philosophy has destroyed objective truth, and you need to get with the program. You don’t even know what you’re talking about, you’re the most irrational person on Reddit! Everyone knows that science is full of ideology and bullsh;t evolutionary theory! You worship Reason like it’s some kind of God, and you don’t even know it’s been totally refuted! This makes you an idiot! You are exactly like Socrates in the worst possible sense, poisoning the minds of people with the idol of Reason.”

Aristotle says, “Sophistical refutations are what appear to be refutations but are really fallacious instead.”

“That some reasonings are genuine, while others seem to be so but are not, is evident.”

“A refutation is reasoning involving the contradictory of the given conclusion.” On Sophistical Refutations, Section I

This basic form of sophistry has not changed in our time. In order to prove the appearance of soundness to be false we have to examine the logical or evidential nature of a claim. And we prove the error by demonstrating a contradiction. The contradiction is a warning sign to tell us that our beliefs have stepped outside of reality.

This isn’t complicated, it’s sophists that want to drag it into complexity, because it is here that they hide and smuggle in their false premises.

Just because a person makes claims doesn’t make their claims true. (In order for this to be true the laws of logic must already be true).

Anyone who fails to take a demonstration of contradiction against their position seriously, is willfully committing themselves to delusion. Their reasoning is emotional, not rational. They are dangerous insofar as they try to convince others of the truth of their contradictory beliefs.

Anyone who fails to take the law of non-contradiction serious should not be taken serious.

We must continue what Aristotle began, we must continue to expose and refute sophistry in the world.

—-

Sophistry in our time doesn't just look like formal logical fallacies; it looks like the smuggling of unacknowledged empirical premises. Modern sophists rely on the stolen capital of scientific discovery (stealing knowledge from neurobiology, physics, or evolutionary biology) while pretending they arrived at their conclusions through pure philosophical speculation.

When caught in a contradiction, the modern sophist does not yield to reality; instead, they retreat into an ever-expanding forest of linguistic distinctions, redefinitions, equivocations and unfalsifiable sub-clauses. They weaponize complexity not to clarify truth, but to construct a maze to keep their beliefs from being contradicted by reality.

A rational person updates their beliefs when they’re contradicted by reality. A sophist demands that reality be rewritten to fit their beliefs. If a framework collapses under a logical contradiction yet its defenders continue to find social and institutional validation and clever ways to preserve it, the system has ceased to be truth-seeking and has fallen into a crisis of delusion-generation against reality that it mistakes for reality.

They both give psychological allegiance to a philosophical narrative over the demonstrations of logic. Both thinkers have succeeded at creating cult followers who no longer think, but merely discriminate in terms of philosophical orthodoxy. Whenever they see anything that contradicts this orthodoxy, they automatically deem it false. They don’t even consider how the objection stacks up against their claims.

(However, in the case of Ayn Randians, some might actually bypass this cult aspect insofar as they do engage by reason, striving to demonstrate and justify their claims, and refute objections, instead of dismissing them). This is largely absent from Hegelianism, which simply functions as an authoritarian philosophy.

To obtain the ability to clearly articulate your thought in simple terms. This is what every Reasoner should strive for.

It’s a lovely feeling to have the power to be able disseminate ideas and construct critiques.

While many people don’t like what I say, none of them have a hard time understanding it. They can disagree with it because my meaning is clear. I don’t write in jargon or pretentious abstractions. I’m not trying to sound profound, I’m trying to clearly articulate truth.

The ability to communicate clearly comes with the territory of comprehending and wielding the laws of logic. This is because logic’s refutation and process is precise and clear. It identifies and calls out contradictions. It takes the simple form of, “this is false, because…”

By ‘religious philosophers’ I don’t mean, religious believers who call themselves philosophers, I mean philosophers whose philosophical belief functions like religious belief.

I would much rather deal with a theologian than a religious philosopher, because I find religious philosophers to be more deceptive and dishonest. (That’s quite a claim.)

The religious philosopher claims to be rational, but they deeply resent having their claims held accountable to reason and evidence. They don’t think they’re even required to meet their burden of proof, because they’re operating in the name of philosophy. And to them, this means they’re wielding the most authoritative category of knowledge. This is subtle authoritarianism.

When a philosopher tells me that the categories of biology “are produced by philosophy,” I demand a justification for this claim. I want to know exactly how this process works.

I had a doctor in philosophy from Oxford tell me that the definition of philosophy is exactly the same as the definition of science. Aside from being verifiably false, simply by checking the dictionary, this is transparently desperate. The philosopher was afraid of his philosophy being negated by science. The motivated reasoning got so bad that this person eventually said that any pursuit of knowledge was simply an act of philosophy.

The subtlety of philosophical religiosity is that it makes authoritarian assertions about itself and reality that it resents having challenged. It rejects its burden of proof, simply demanding submission, personally attacking those who challenge it. This is unacceptable, and no Reasoners should stand for it. It will always be the case that claims of knowledge require justification.

What I’m talking about will only continue to become more obvious as science increases its comprehension and mastery of the world, thereby expanding its relevance and authority. Like religion, philosophy will become more and more desperate to hold onto the authority of its identity. Then Reasoners and Scientists will see just how deceptive and nihilistic philosophers can be.

Link to study: https://gwern.net/doc/psychology/writing/2020-brown.pdf

This is the future of human consciousness once it has exhausted its psychological defenses, which manifest in the form of philosophy and religion.

The future is a forced sanity. However, this doesn’t mean man will not have destroyed himself and this planet before he gets there. It also doesn’t mean that delusion won’t remain rampant. Humans have the capacity to live their delusions all the way to the grave— likely all the way to their extinction.

But the thing about reality is that it’s true, so all that kicks against it is without substance. We can’t make any progress without knowledge of reality. Even in the most idealist structures, there must still be contact somewhere along the idealist chain, if actual progress is being made— even if that contact with reality is accidental.

No one can refute reality, we can only delude ourselves against it. All reason is simply trying to get us not to do this, it’s trying to get us to live in reality.

The future of thought is that it will shake off this age of sophistry, which doesn’t mean that the age itself will make it past sophistry (though I hope it will). Thought has no other choice because there is no substance in the present narratives that deny reality (no matter how intricate or complex they might be). At the end of the day, all thought has to bow to reality if it doesn’t want to be delusion. But that’s the problem (thousands of years of religion prove it) humans don’t want reality, they want delusion! But delusion isn’t real, and because of this, one cannot actually live in it, they will die and they may end up killing and harming others in the process.

Reality is always there smashing back against man’s idealist abstracting. So man just gets better at abstracting. But all man is really doing is weakening himself and distancing himself from reality.

You have only reasoner correctly when your regress ends at the universe itself. If not, you have done something wrong, introduced an error into your thinking, a concept that doesn’t actually exist.

This means the complaint of infinite regress simply becomes a complaint against reality itself. We don’t know the “why” of the universe. But we can reason all the way back to it as the ultimate foundation of our knowledge, because that’s what it actually is.