Biography
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About
When I was six years old I decided that all of mankind’s knowledge fell into three categories: (#1)other people’s opinions, (#2)fad knowledge that while actually true, nobody would care a few years later, and (#3)actual definable facts that would be remain, experimentally true no matter who looked, with what approach, over any amount of time. Further it seemed a waste of time to spend a lot of effort on the first two as only the last would still be there and worth anything a year later, much less later in life. Half a century later the picture looked a lot more complicated, but the general divide I had so early applied still held. Some information made surprising leaps from one division to another, and a lot more information I had cast aside leaked into my brain anyway. Mostly this was a good thing. Religion, Philosophy, and the nature of Society, all fell into that first category, but there were more opinions than people and few reliable facts, and often as facts became available, people often preferred their opinions to the facts, no matter how easily the facts of the matter could be checked. I found this very confusing. Worse as one lives their lives, everywhere one turns there are decisions that hinge on such things with few, if any, facts to guide you, and so of necessity I built my own at first flimsy structure that has stiffened over time. Sometimes it resembled the work of a great philosopher, but as convergent evolution, made from different stuff, but faced with the same issues. Other times I came upon a shiny bit and stole it shamelessly working it in to fit the rest of the structure. As noted this was not a primary occupation but an edifice born of necessity, deeply considered as the problems of life arose, without a “cookbook” solution, too often ending up learning from that insane professor that only teaches what you need to know after you have spectacularly failed the test. And even then he often holds some information back. It was often at these times that such flimsy scaffolding as useful assumptions was replaced with more substantial, but blood stained, observed results of the experiment. And so the edifice was built, in the background, and of observation and introspection, rather than reading all the great works and digesting them whole to decide which opinions I admired and those I did not so it largely stands apart, as much as possible built on those type 3 data foundations.