Common Belief
A group of people has ‘Common Belief’ of ‘p’ when each person in the group believes each person in the group believes each person in the group believes [sic.] ’p’. This is independent of whether they personally believe ‘p’.
E.g.: The “Emperor’s New Clothes” is a story about Common Belief and its collapse: each townsperson believes everyone else believes everyone else believes [sic.] they can see the invisible fabric, up until the moment the kid shouts the King is naked, and everyone realizes everyone else is thinking the same thing.
Bullshit
Communications that both intend to persuade and lack any intention as to whether the people receiving them come away from the interaction with a view that’s either more right or more wrong than the one they had before.
Just saying words, to an end.
Black-box thinking or doing
Exclusively thinking with signifiers (labels, icons, memes).
No parts, thus no affordances, thus ultimately unsustainable.
Effectively, the Subordination, in one’s thinking, to an iconic depiction or understanding.
“What is the sound of one hand clapping?”
What is writing if not putting down notes and editing them?
Exactly.
Related to Emptiness, Icons, Black-box thinking or doing. Contrasts with Wisdom-think.
A Confusion of mistaking map for territory. A failure of Finding the referent. Solved via Emptiness.
Belief
Another word for “map”. Also known as “aliefs” or what you’ve “grokked”. What (you think) is.
You believe, for example, that you’re awake, right now, reading this essay. (And you probably are, but you could be dreaming, hallucinating, in a Matrix like vat, etc.).
Notably beliefs are what the world feels like.
Anti-Agency
Generally, whatever decreases relevant phenomenological possibilities and increases irrelevant ones. Whatever gets you oriented.
Whatever brings you towards this:
