Charter
Epistemic Standards & Rules of Engagement
Our Purpose:To facilitate rigorous, ego-detached discourse on the perpetuity of consciousness, human enhancement, and humanity's trajectory beyond biological limitations — and to develop the systemic reasoning skills that these questions demand.
Section I: How We Think
This organization is defined by its epistemic culture before its subject matter. The following rules govern all discourse.
Absolute Freedom of Topic
All topics are on the table. We do not censor subjects; we regulate how they are discussed.
Attack the Idea, Never the Person
Ad hominem arguments, personal attacks, and harassment are prohibited without exception. We dismantle concepts, not people. You can tell someone their argument is structurally incoherent; you cannot tell them they are stupid for making it.
Explore, Don’t Defend
This is a space for investigating ideas, not protecting them. You are expected to minimize personal bias and emotional defensiveness. If you notice someone — including yourself — shifting from analysis to advocacy, name it.
Expect Uncomfortable Analysis
Religious convictions, political positions, moral intuitions, and deeply held philosophical commitments are all treated as claims subject to evidence and logical scrutiny. No category of belief is exempt. If having your core assumptions rigorously questioned would be a negative experience for you, this group is not the right fit.
Intellectual Humility Is Non-Negotiable
You may be wrong about any belief you currently hold, without exception. Voluntarily closing yourself off to a source, framework, or conclusion without examining it on its merits violates the foundational purpose of this group.
Section II: What We Think About
We are interested in the long-term survival and expansion of conscious life, and the technologies, philosophies, and risks that bear on that trajectory. Discussions will primarily navigate the following domains:
- Transhumanism: The enhancement of the human condition through advanced technology, including the pursuit of substrate independence.
- Cosmism: The case for expanding conscious life beyond Earth as a survival strategy for consciousness itself.
- Longtermism & Existential Risk: The ethical weight of the far future and the active mitigation of catastrophic threats to conscious life.
- Singularitarianism: The anticipation of artificial superintelligence and the challenge of safely navigating that transition.
- Extropianism: The drive to continuously expand intelligence, longevity, and order against entropic decay.
These domains are starting points, not boundaries. Any subject that intersects with the perpetuity or enhancement of consciousness is fair game.
Section III: Standards of Reasoning
To keep discourse productive, members are expected to practice the following cognitive habits — adapted from Igor Grossmann's model of wise reasoning — and to remain vigilant against the failure modes that undermine them.
What to Practice
- Intellectual Humility. Your current model of reality is incomplete. Operate accordingly.
- Perspective-Taking. Before critiquing a position, attempt to reconstruct it from the inside — accurately enough that its holder would recognize your version as fair.
- Recognition of Change. Technologies, institutions, and contexts evolve. Avoid reasoning from static snapshots of the world.
- Integration of Perspectives. When multiple viewpoints contain valid elements, synthesize rather than forcing a binary outcome.
What to Watch For
These are the most common ways intelligent people reason badly. Recognizing them in yourself is more important than spotting them in others.
- Confirmation Bias: Selectively seeking or interpreting evidence to support what you already believe while ignoring or discounting evidence that contradicts it.
- Motivated Reasoning: Constructing logical-sounding arguments backward from a conclusion you want to reach — usually because the conclusion is emotionally comfortable or identity-protective.
- Sunk Cost Fallacy: Defending a position because you have invested identity, time, or reputation in it — not because the evidence supports it. This is especially dangerous in a group where you have publicly committed to a claim.
- Straw Man Fallacy: Weakening or oversimplifying someone’s argument before addressing it rather than engaging the strongest version. The antidote is steel-manning: reconstructing the opposing position so well that its holder would endorse your summary.
- False Dichotomy: Collapsing a complex, multi-variable problem into two options when a much larger design space exists. “Either we do X or we do Y” is almost always a sign that the analysis is incomplete.
- Anchoring Bias: Giving disproportionate weight to the first piece of information encountered — including the framing of the discussion itself. Be aware that the way a question is posed shapes the space of answers you consider.
- Motte-and-Bailey: Making a bold, provocative claim (the bailey), then retreating to a much weaker but defensible version (the motte) when challenged — as though the two were the same position. This is more sophisticated than a straw man and harder to detect, which makes it more dangerous.
Section IV: The Self-Diagnostic Rubric
When a discussion becomes heated, or when you notice yourself becoming defensive, pause and answer these questions honestly:
"What specific evidence would change my mind?"
If the answer is "nothing," you are operating on dogma.
"Can I state the opposing argument so accurately that my opponent would say, 'Yes, that is exactly my position'?"
"Am I trying to find the truth, or am I trying to protect my ego?"
"Is my conclusion derived from evidence, or am I reasoning backward from a conclusion I find comfortable?"
These are not rhetorical. If you cannot pass at least three of the four in a given moment, you are not currently reasoning — you are reacting. Step back, recalibrate, and re-engage when you can.