A short article to describe this website

A short article to describe this website

This section of the website, the thoughts page, is meant to be documentation of the things that I have thought about (and usually went into deeper research for), so I can inspire others like how I was (and still) inspired.¹

So a well done to you for reading this very sentence, because you have found the only self-referential/critical article on this site.

Okay, why is the such the case? You might ask

And I going to refuse to answer that question because this is not a section of the republic.²

However, that doesn’t mean this article is just a little Burlesque, I want to be slightly personal here and discuss my understanding of learning and how one should internalize their knowledge.

First, to define a concept, it is often clarifying to delineate what a concept is not.

Learning is not performative, or at least it shouldn’t be.³ This performativeness can manifest in many, many ways. To just list a few, one could learn to gain:

• the passing of some examination requirement for a institution
• the gaining of material possession
• the reputation and respect for their erudition

None of these are inherently wrong, but they place the purpose of learning outside of the learner. And when the motivation is external, the learning are conformative, and tends to be shallow, temporary, just enough to pass the arbitrary threshold and then forgotten.

True learning, requires understanding and application, not just retention. The performative approach can result in this, but it is inefficient at best and counterproductive at worst. One would end up with incomplete, disposable knowledge that serves the external goal and nothing else.

Of course, there exist no universal, eternal, axiomatic concept that exist with in learning. Learning, beyond from the physical change in the neurons in the brain, exist in a much nuanced, personal level. With all that said, learning to me is best when its internal, powered by the curiosity that took us here.

(Forgive me if this trivial description of learning seems redundant, if you are thoroughly reading this section, you probably didn’t have to. But I have included it in as a rigours introduction to my actual message.)

Necessity of a Directed Epistemic Responsibility

Okay, why should I listen? You might ask

And this time I am going to answer, because this is relevant to an idea that I hold close for the past three four years, since first I interacted with it. Soon after, I had established it a core pillar of Gaoism, the ideology I conveniently named after myself.⁴

It is the idea that being knowledge should be a basic expectation of a functioning adult in society. In other words, being ignorant, actively choosing not to be more aware of the world around them, is unethical.

When I present this ideas to others, the concept’s similarity with William Clifford’s Epistemic Responsibility and Kant’s Sapere Aude gets brought up. Indeed, all our concepts push for a responsible approach to information and belief formation. On that basis, there is ideas like Civic Republicanism and Willful Ignorance (in Law) which also demands epistemic action. However, this pillar of Gaoism is different in the way that is a set of societal logic, a (uncompleted) moral framework for the future, and thus there is the crucial component of “Directionality” in the idea.

This Directionality describes not only being able to thoroughly learn and understand the things around one, but also extend awareness to where possible. This Directionality and the idea in general is much more relevant, because Gaosim is for the future men.

Implementation wise, there is many technical way⁵ to increase the capacity and speed of human knowledge and the gaining of it. This allow decreasing the cost to uphold ones epistemic responsibility.

But why Directionality though? Why is this new component necessary?

Because a thorough context is what intrinsically differs us from AIs, or specifically AGIs. There is a need for redefine human to converge with the means of production, from agriculture to industrialization, we have reached the next step on this continuum.