Dennis Hackethal’s Comments

I don't immediately recognise this stance as a hangup and irrationality. It seems to be a recurring pattern amongst people who do deep intellectual work that they treasure long, uninterrupted stretches of time to do their best work, and try to minimise interruptions.

That isn’t the irrational part. It’s the “planning blight”, as he calls it. That sounds like a deep revulsion. My macOS Dictionary app says (for the verb) “have a severely detrimental effect…” I get that interruptions aren’t great, they bum me out too, but they’re not that big a deal. Feynman’s reaction to interruptions is blatantly irrational, of course.

I don’t know what you do for work, but among programmers, Rand’s words definitely ring true. Managers should be careful not to interrupt their team members too much. On the other hand, one’s mind shouldn’t be so brittle that it can’t handle fixed-time commitments or the occasional interruption. My manager should be able to schedule a meeting on Wednesday afternoon and still expect me to work all day Tuesday and Wednesday morning. (Imagine trying to explain otherwise.) A great programmer is able to switch immediately from deep work on a new feature to an urgent bug that affects the live app – and back again. If his mind is too brittle for that, then it’s his own responsibility to shield other people from that brittleness and not take on more projects than he can handle, especially if they might interrupt each other. And, as I wrote in my other comment, people shouldn’t take on too many ‘important’ projects at once anyway because that can be the cause of procrastination and stasis. It’s fine to work on easy things.

I do agree that it’s important to choose an environment that allows for deep work and concentration. For example, I’ve written about the importance of quiet. I suspect it comes down to practice. A furnace takes a while to get going but it also won’t go out that easily once it’s hot. You could have a big furnace for the important work and then a handful smaller campfires you can easily start and stop for less important work. And you can practice switching between them and getting the big furnace hot again when it does go cold. Once that’s easier, it’s not as big a deal anymore.

[Deutsch] sounds like a rather unpleasant person to deal with.

‘Unpleasant’ isn’t the word I’d use – he was pleasant both in person and online. To be clear, I didn’t get the sense that he wanted control over me, just over the project. Describing his work style as ‘frustrating’ hits the nail on the head. Undependable.

I see many things wrong with Graham’s essay, but the issue that stands out to me the most is that people shouldn’t strive to work on important things all the time. It’s too difficult. The procrastination is a result of that. If they did easier things, they could get way more done, both important and not so important, and they wouldn’t have to procrastinate at all. Your life can (and should) be smooth like clockwork. And you can always delegate things you don’t want to do yourself, like hiring a tax advisor to do your taxes for you.

The translation was far too difficult for Deutsch to check himself. That’s one of the reasons he procrastinated. He should have known that he wasn’t in a position to make the project depend on him. Just like he should know that it’s a bad idea for him to write three brooks at the same time.

It's possible that Deutsch's frustrating working style also lets him devote lots of time to thinking.

Then why hasn’t he made any meaningful progress in the past ~15 years, possibly 25? How could having too many irons in the fire and being overwhelmed, as he complains, help him think? Why take on more projects that will come knocking every and now and then and derail his ability to think?

As I recall, Einstein routinely forgot to wear socks. People think that’s adorable; that genius should be forgiven and necessarily comes at a price. I don’t think that’s true. You can have your shit together and be a genius. You can have it all. You don’t have to choose one over the other. Maybe Deutsch is a genius in spite of his other shortcomings. Think of all the other procrastinators who aren’t geniuses at all. And think of how much more progress Deutsch could make if he was more methodical and did fewer, easier things!

I believe it was Justin taking issue with a lack of evidence in the CF forum when he thought Elliot had been defamed. But they feel free to make or spread assertions without evidence. These people are walking contradictions.

For an example of the real-world consequences of cynicism, consider my discussion with Lucas Smalldon about Tarski’s correspondence.

Lucas claimed that truth was unattainable. For example, he said that “although problems are soluble, truth is unattainable.” (Then how can problems be soluble?) I think he got this idea from the cynics. This mistake then led him to reject correspondence as the aim of science and to conclude that “the concepts of truth and falsity play no role in epistemology.”

In fairness, I should mention that Lucas disagreed that he’s a cynic, but we were unable to resolve the disagreement.

John Horgan interviewed Popper:

I note that he seems to abhor the notion of absolute truths. “No no!” Popper replies, shaking his head. He, like the logical positivists before him, believes that a scientific theory can be “absolutely” true. In fact, he has “no doubt” that some current theories are true (although he refuses to say which ones). But he rejects the positivist belief that we can know a theory is true. “We must distinguish between truth, which is objective and absolute, and certainty, which is subjective.”

I forgot to mention in the main article: somebody at RF suggested I start a movement called ‘Hackethalism’. I rather like that name, especially because it sounds similar to ‘catholicism’ (the ‘kethal’ in ‘Hackethal’ is pronounced the same as ‘cathol’).

You forgot to quote the parts of scripture that threaten people for disobedience:

Mark 16:16 – “Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned.”

Matthew 12:31–32 – Jesus says blasphemy against the Holy Spirit “will not be forgiven.”

Revelation 22:18–19 – “If anyone adds to [this book’s] words, God will add to him the plagues… if anyone takes away from the words… God will take away his share in the tree of life.”

(These results are from ChatGPT but I did verify them.)

And what was that little thing about being punished for eating from the tree of knowledge?

But let me guess, those passages don’t count or shouldn’t be taken literally, for some convenient reason.

It’s exactly as I said in the main post, religious people want to have their cake and eat it, too. You can live your life like that, aiming for the impossible; that’s your prerogative. Just don’t pretend this has anything to do with rationality when clearly it does not.

Basically, my current view of reason is this:

If an idea has no pending criticisms, it’s rational to adopt it and irrational to reject it. What reason could you have to reject it? If it has no pending criticisms, then either 1) no reasons to reject it (ie, criticisms) have been suggested or 2) all suggested reasons have been addressed already.

If an idea does have pending criticisms, it’s irrational to adopt it and rational to reject it – by reference to those criticisms. What reason could you have to ignore the pending criticisms and adopt it anyway?

If you follow these two simple rules without exception, then by definition, you live a life guided exclusively by reason. And when I speak of ‘criticisms’, that includes the inexplicit kind. So these rules imply the fun criterion since they say not to act on ideas that have pending (explicit or inexplicit) criticisms.

Fun means consistent application of these two rules because you don’t automatically favor one category of idea over another (ie, explicit vs inexplicit vs unconscious) and never coerce yourself (ie, act on ideas with pending criticisms).

In this sense, it’s true that reason is fun.

Fun does NOT mean you can depart from these two rules whenever you feel like it. That would be a departure from reason.

There’s even more evidence now. In the Rat Fest Telegram channel, Lulie just wrote, in response to John Horgan’s claim that Rat Fest “feels a little cult-y”:

I think what Horgan & others are pointing to is real.

- Some of it is good, like Micah’s religion aspirations (community; shared philosophy that applies to life and bonds people).

At Rat Fest, Lulie had previously asked Micah, a ‘Christian transhumanist’, whether we could turn CR into a religion (!).

Lulie advocates mysticism and opposes reason and rationality pretty openly now (despite her Twitter handle being ‘reasonisfun’).

I didn't start the conversation.

Yes you did. You were the first to leave a comment. I didn’t reach out to you. You came to my blog with a lot of negative energy. Then you made more accusations in your next comment and doubled down with more implicit accusations and even insults.

If your goal was to get me to give the speaker’s claims a second chance, you’ve achieved the opposite. Take care.

Surely, to "reject faith" is to assert certainty of what is unknowable?

No. Faith means not questioning or criticizing something. So to reject faith means to question/criticize. That should answer your other questions from the same paragraph.

You shouldn’t love your enemies. That’s altruist nonsense. And what gave birth to the improvements in the West was the ingenuity of inventors and their desire to improve their lives and pursue their interests against overwhelming cultural pressures to just fit in and not ruffle too many features, most notably exerted by the church. It was ultimately a tradition of criticism that enabled progress, as Popper explains. That includes the emergence of human rights (as opposed to the many crimes against humanity the church and other religious organizations perpetrated). This tradition of criticism stands in opposition to faith. But that doesn’t stop religious people from taking credit for that tradition’s achievements. (This is a pattern in mixed systems, like governments routinely taking credit for the achievements of the free market: “Bush’s administration created x jobs…”)

I don’t belong to any organization. I don’t know what organization you’re thinking of.

I don’t reject religion as a source. I (try to) reject unreason. Religion is a form of unreason because it refers to the supernatural, the inexplicable, and other mystical concepts. It is nonsensical on its face and doesn’t stand up to very basic criticism. Rejecting unreason is Popperian. Rejecting faith is not another form of faith, no. The concept of a simulation is becoming popular, yes, but as Deutsch has pointed out, it’s just a restatement of a belief in the supernatural and should be rejected on those grounds alone.

All knowledge is ultimately uncertain (in the sense that there is no criterion of truth), but this Popperian insight is not a defense of relativism, ie it doesn’t mean that we should treat unreason as an equal of reason or that religion has any validity or that all ideas are equally valid. They are not.

Religion is one of the deepest cesspools of so-called ‘thought’. Just the other day, Jordan Peterson’s daughter tweeted about him and other family members being sick due to a series of “spiritual” attacks. It’s like she still lives in the dark ages. What is wrong with people?

Is that honestly the reason?

Yes. And starting a conversation with an implicit accusation of dishonesty is not a good move.

By the way, what is the epistemic status of a reasonable man who makes poor assumptions once in a while?

I didn’t make poor assumptions. I’ve studied irrationality. I know a clown when I see one.

But okay, do you have any new arguments, some reasoning why this proposed unification of rationality and religion would work, maybe even a refutation of Rand’s work on the incompatibility of reason and unreason and the impossibility of compromising on fundamental matters?

These past few months, I’ve been trying to go to bed at a more reasonable hour (at around 11pm, say – I used to routinely stay up far past midnight). But one recent night, at around 10pm, I felt like starting a movie. Then I was conflicted: it was a feature-length film. If I watched the whole thing, I’d stay up past midnight.

Part of me suggested simply stopping halfway through and finishing the next day. But another part of me urged me to be honest with myself: halfway through the movie, I may be too tempted and keep watching. Plus, being able to watch the movie in one go is more fun anyway, so why not just watch it tomorrow at a better time?

‘You’re right’, I said to myself, and went to bed instead. I suspect that some advocates of the fun criterion would consider this response self-coercive. But in reality, once I was honest with myself, the desire to watch the movie tonight went away, and no further resolution was necessary. I suspect that these advocates would end up staying in the conflicted state because they would be too worried they could end up coercing themselves. (That might explain the lack of their productivity.) I think that, ironically, remaining in that state is self-coercive.

Honesty with oneself may be at the heart of resolving conflicts between one’s preferences. Deep down, you often already know which preference is problematic and which isn’t. The key is ‘just’ acting accordingly.

I just returned from Rat Fest 2025, where I gave a talk with the same title as this blog post.

It’s better if someone steals only once a month instead of once a week, but he’s still a thief.

I suggested something similar during my talk: that stealing once in a while is better than being a full-on kleptomaniac, but you’re still a thief.

During the Q&A session after the talk, Aaron Stupple suggested the following: it’s true that improvement toward stealing only once in a while isn’t good enough, but what you could do is make gradual improvements toward figuring out why you want to steal. Once you’ve figured it out, address the cause and you can stop stealing at once.

My best guess at this moment is that any solution will in some way or another invoke Popper’s characterization of rational revolutions. As I recall, he argued that revolutions can be rational if they preserve the knowledge of what came before. For example, scientific revolutions have a rational character because predecessor theories get to live on in them as approximations.

Not that we needed any more evidence of Temple’s hypocrisy, but I just found some more juicy texts of his to the group chat I mentioned in the main text.

On 2019-03-06, Temple linked to a pirated copy of the entire book The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal by Robert Murphy.

Temple admits to using the site to download the pirated book (“DL” means ‘download’):

As always, I won’t give the full link Temple shared, for obvious reasons. I’ve also redacted the name of the website so as not to drive any traffic there. But to give you an impression of the kinds of sites Temple uses, here’s a description from a Redditor:

Clearly it's a site for people to share illegal copies of books while maintaining a flimsy pretense of ligitimacy [sic], and it appears that they're funded by some very scammy ads.

Re DOS: Back in May, I noticed Elliot’s website behaving strangely.

I loaded the site once, then instructed my firewall to block any additional requests to it. My browser tried to make thousands more requests to it over the next three hours as it remained open in the background (see first screenshot). The majority of those requests happened within 60 minutes (second screenshot).

I didn’t investigate further or check his site’s source code but my browser had no reason to send those additional requests unless his own site instructed it to.

Roughly 2,000 requests over the course of an hour isn’t an earth-shattering amount, but that’s only one visitor. Plus, his site is just a static blog. It shouldn’t make any additional requests. That’s behavior of dynamic sites that load additional content after the initial page load; his site isn’t dynamic like that.

Emotional eating is an example of the dangers of being driven by one’s emotions, of acting on whim.

Some people eat because they’re stressed, bored, anxious. But eating alone doesn’t address those emotions.

This creator asks, if food wasn’t available to numb out your anxiety or stress, what would you do instead? https://www.instagram.com/reel/DOl7iBKkQvu/

Emotional eating can cause obesity. Which means obesity can literally be caused by irrationality.

Instead, a proper relationship between eating and emotions, ie putting eating and emotions in the proper order, is rational: the enjoyment of a delicious, nutritious meal after a demanding workout, say.

Looking at makes this clear: …

You left out a word there. Looking at what?

Elliot is pretending it’s a free-speech issue but defamation isn’t protected speech.

The issue is really that, like any other cult leader, he wants to act as gatekeeper of his former cult members’ lives.

If he can make himself that gatekeeper by defaming me, ruining my presence on search engines (and laughing about it) – thus impacting my ability to network and find jobs – threatening to get me in trouble at work, promising to always hold past grievances over my head and bring them up with my followers anytime, etc, then that’s what he will do (and has already done).

I’ve just checked my emails from that time. There wasn’t much to oversee for the Twitter competition. And before I took on the responsibility of running it, he actually suggested being more involved (operationally) than he ended up being. His primary concern was the legal responsibility of running an ad/competition like that transparently. Worse, he tried hiding the nature of the competition a bit from the public to evade that responsibility, which I pointed out to him was unethical.

Deutsch sees no issue taking on far more projects than he can handle, like writing several books at once when he can barely handle one, blocking the production of the German audiobook unless he is involved, and insisting on checking the German translation of his book in the first place when he barely speaks German – ie, “the other stories” you mention, and I have more. During initial negotiations for the translation, I offered him a ‘let me take care of everything for you’ package in anticipation of his increased mental load. He did not want it.

He does not operate the way you think he does. Reducing mental load isn’t a high priority for him. If it was, he’d just delegate where he can or choose other options that would make his life easier. My impression was that he actually wants control, but without responsibility – and that he will pay the price of additional mental load in exchange for that control.

I largely agree. If someone keeps being late to work, the physical explanation won’t cut it – but if it’s a rare occurrence, sure, blame the physics of the situation in the name of social cohesion.¹

Maybe traffic is usually ok in their area and so it would be unreasonable to expect them to monitor traffic every day. Things happen.

If someone has chronic pain, that’s a data point to consider in your evaluation of them. If their performance suffers only a little and you can see they are trying their best, great. Better yet, if they rise above this limitation, they deserve special praise. But if they do poorly and it becomes their go-to excuse for everything, that’s bad. Everyone struggles in some way.

What I’m suggesting in the article is for spotting evasions and dishonesty rather than grilling someone. Knowing that there’s a difference between physical and moral explanations can help with the former.

An example of rational error prevention:

Eating undercooked chicken makes people sick. It’s a known error, but some people are unaware. This leads to unnecessary error repetition.

So a rule is instituted that a warning label be attached to all packaged chicken indicating the required temp.

As a result, fewer people get sick.

Re productivity:

[C]riticizing the Fun Criterion on the basis of its proponents’ productivity only really holds if they themselves claim to be highly productive through the use of it.

Lulie does imply that she is productive, and she claims that the FC is not just a productivity hack – no, “the true productivity hack”. So she’s saying: if you follow the fun, you will be productive (the inversion/reversal I spoke of). But she isn’t very productive either, from what I know.

In that case, calling out the inconsistency makes sense. But as far as I can tell, that isn’t what David is doing.

The connection is this: fun is the result of productivity. David advocates having fun while being unproductive himself.

There are two possibilities here. Either they are mistaken about the connection between fun and productivity (Lulie more so than David, I think, at least in her reversal). Or they are hypocrites.

[A] theory is best criticized on its content, not its source or the personal results of its proponents.

I preemptively addressed this argument in the main text, in the paragraph starting with “What business is it of ours…”. I also provide criticism of the theory itself, not just its proponents.

In a nutshell, the fun criterion says: don’t coerce yourself. Ok, great. I agree. People shouldn’t coerce themselves.

But that isn’t much to go on. And David coerces himself a lot. Lulie maybe coerces herself, too. So the question is: is their self-coercion a result of their attempts to meet the fun criterion? If so, that would reflect poorly on the fun criterion itself; that would be relevant when evaluating the fun criterion itself. Or is their self-coercion a result of their failure to meet the criterion? That would likewise be relevant because it could vindicate the fun criterion.

If Popper had not only written at length about falsifiability but spent the remainder of his time trying to prove scientific hypotheses inductively, that would have been worth investigating.

Re emotions:

Even if fun itself isn’t an emotion (though I think most people are correct to think of it as one), for the reasons I’ve given, it’s still at the very least deeply related to emotions, and its advocates operate on emotion and whim. To determine whether you’re having fun, you need to look for emotions telling you otherwise. If they are missing, you can tentatively conclude that you’re having fun. Just like in science you can tentatively conclude that a theory is correct if an experiment designed to falsify it fails. It would be wrong to conclude that experiments play no role in science, just like it’s wrong IMO to say that emotions play no role in fun. I’m on board saying that fun itself is technically not an emotion, as defined by Deutsch. But the main text should already reflect that. And saying that fun is “emotion-agnostic” would be going too far, IMO.

More evidence of David’s and Lulie’s lack of productivity: the official BoI website at https://www.thebeginningofinfinity.com/ is currently down, and seems to have been down since the last time I checked on August 3rd. I believe Lulie manages the site.

At the time of writing, there have been no archives of the site on the Way Back Machine since June 17th, indicating that the problem may have been going on since then: https://web.archive.org/web/20250000000000*/https://www.thebeginningofinfinity.com/ The site was archived regularly before then.

In addition, the site has always been buggy, and the errata page has been outdated for a long time. For example, there used to be a second erratum attributed to me; last I checked there was only one. (That’s not to mention the many potential errors I pointed out here – I don’t think anyone ever posted as detailed a review of the book as me.)

I’m not aware of any announcements that David or Lulie are aware of the problem or working to solve it, not to mention an ETA on when to expect the site to be back up and running.

They could start with the outcome they desire – a functioning website – and then work backwards to determine the steps required to achieve that outcome. For example, if they don’t have time or aren’t qualified to run the site themselves, they could just hire a professional to do it for them.

Imagine if they did hire someone, and that person neglected their responsibilities, citing a lack of ‘fun’. That would obviously be ridiculous and unprofessional. It would be the same as saying ‘I don’t feel like it’.

[T]he sharp, personal criticisms that “the FC isn’t productive” because its proponents aren’t productive don’t seem like strong or necessary arguments to me.

I think it’s a mistake to assign strengths to arguments. Arguments should be considered true unless they have outstanding criticisms. See here.

It isn’t always clear in your comment when something is a literal quote vs a scare quote. I never wrote or implied that the FC itself isn’t productive. That wouldn’t make sense. Productivity is a property of people.

[…] David has said several times (such as in the Dwarkesh Patel interview and in this tweet) that fun is not about emotions.

Not quite. He didn’t say fun isn’t about emotions. He said fun itself isn’t an emotion. But it’s still related to emotions since, as he says, the way you tell that you’re not having fun is via your emotions.

Therefore, although I appreciate and support your account of the risks of following your feelings instead of reason, I don't view it as a critique of the FC. Admittedly, there are quotes and descriptions that could lead people to misinterpret it as “Follow the fun.”

It wouldn’t be a misinterpretation since that’s literally the phrase David has used. So that’s his responsibility, not others’.

My reading of David’s view is that emotions are downstream from the three types of knowledge, much like Ayn Rand describes.

Based on the evidence I’ve provided, I think he’s advocated two conflicting stances on this topic. Sometimes he views them downstream, sometimes upstream.

You mention rethinking some stances from your original “Unconflictedness” article (one of my favorites). I reread it, and couldn’t find anything I disagreed with. I’m curious which parts you feel you’ve moved away from.

The article reads like an unconditional endorsement of David’s and Lulie’s thoughts. That has changed. Also, this paragraph contains the same reversal I now warn against:

On the whole, in the long run, I expect greatness almost always to come from enjoyable activities, and rarely from suffering. In other words, of all the greatness at any given time in history, most of it will have been the product of fun – and I expect the ratio to improve in the future. Do not take that to mean that fun will always lead to greatness – any search for a guarantee of greatness will almost certainly produce suffering. Greatness is not the goal. Fun is the goal, even when you have fun pursuing greatness. And if you pursue fun, you may sometimes achieve greatness as a pleasant side effect.

Another way to think about it: you can know what goes on (or must have gone on) in someone’s mind the same way you can know what goes on inside a star. Lack of direct visibility doesn’t preclude knowledge. We never have direct visibility into anything anyway: all observation is theory-laden.

Since the publication of this article, some people have reached out to me privately. They tell me they now recognize that they used the fun criterion to justify being irrational and/or irresponsible in their own lives. This article helped them be honest with themselves about that.

Separately, I have been asked to explain why Lulie Tanett attacks reason. I don’t know for sure, but I suspect it could have to do with her history with Elliot Temple. A member of his cult from a young age, she originally thought he represented reason. Recognizing that he is awful, she eventually left his cult. But she failed to draw the next conclusion, which is that he does not represent reason. Instead, she concluded that reason is awful.

Again, I can only speculate, but if I am right, she should recognize that reason is good and that Temple does not represent it – meaning there is no need to reject reason.

[I]t seems to me that the videos are solely verification attempts of the hypothesis that animals are automatons.

Have you read my other articles on the topic and also my book? I have written extensively on the subject. For example, there’s my FAQ about animals and the section about explaining animal behavior.

Also, there’s this post explaining that the same evidence can be interpreted in opposite ways depending on which theories you use to interpret it. A lot of people would consider the above videos evidence of animal sentience.

Re elephants: I’ve heard theories about ‘mourning’ and found this video. “The hovering foot seems to be trying to deduce who this [corpse] was.” What? 😆 “It’s as though they’re paying homage to someone they once knew.” Or they’re just rooting around the corpse to find nutrients. Who on earth would “fondle the bones” of a lost family member to mourn them?? “[S]uch an interest in death suggests a recognition of their own existence. Only a fully conscious being can think in such a way.” Meanwhile, all you actually see is an elephant awkwardly trying to place a bone in its mouth.

Keep in mind, these are animal shows designed to get people to identify with animals and keep watching. The makers of such shows may embellish things if it gets them more views.

That said, feel free to cite other animal behaviors and I’ll take a look. People have challenged me to explain dozens of animal behaviors in terms of mindless automation. I haven’t been stumped yet…

I am sure there are other behaviors that are difficult (but not impossible) to explain via genetic knowledge alone.

Some animals also have culture. So, just because we cannot refer to genetic knowledge alone does not mean creativity is the only other possible source of knowledge for a given animal.

Oh and I hope it is obvious I am writing in good faith—my conscience would deeply benefit from finding better explanations that involve animals’ insentience. 😅

If you feel guilty about eating animals, I don’t think there’s any reason to. As in: it’s 100% a non-issue, morally.

If your mother orders you to take off your hoodie against your wishes, even gets angry if you don’t, that’s coercive, yes. From what you describe, it sounds like she doesn’t have enough regard for your consent.

It wouldn’t be coercive if she only made a gentle suggestion and respected your decision either way; or if she persuaded you with arguments and reasoning (if you felt like discussing the issue) and then you saw by your own light that you wanted to take off the hoodie.

You are you own person and you have a right to wear your hoodie whenever you please without giving any reasons.

As I wrote to a parent in the footnote here, parents need to be sensitive to situations where their child may feel like saying ‘no’ but suppresses this desire. In such situations, parents should back off on their own. From what you write, it doesn’t sound like your mother is/was willing to do that.

I’m sorry you’ve had that experience. Feel free to follow up if you have any more questions, I’ll be here to answer them.

Here, Deutsch gives an example of “you having an explicit theory that conflicted with another explicit theory and one of them was false and the other one was true and you can realize that by criticism.”

So then… he does think that theories can be true after all? That not all human knowledge is false?

In response to Edwin:

You’re right that ‘better’ depends on context whereas truth and falsehood are absolutes. True statements can still fall short though, eg ‘x or not x’ is true but doesn’t tell you much. So my answer to your first question is ‘no’.

As to your second question, relativity is ‘better’ than Newtonian physics in the sense that progress was made, errors were corrected. But I know of no universal way to compare explanations as ‘better’ or ‘worse’. In some contexts, Newtonian physics is better in the sense that it’s more useful (eg applied physics, AFAIK). But Popperian epistemology doesn’t even have a notion of support for (ie ‘goodness’ of) a theory anyway.

In general, I would avoid comparing explanations. I think it’s better to criticize them. After several rounds of criticism, there’s usually only one left standing anyway. If we keep doing that, we may discover some truth.

In response to Bart:

Are you referring to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZ-opI-jghs

Re verisimilitude, it’s been ages since I read Popper’s thoughts on it, but I can’t recall ever needing the concept. Seems like another attempt to compare explanations.

[B]asically, rights can be violated only by means of force. In a capitalist society, no man or group may initiate the use of physical force against others.

Reading this again, it seems odd for Rand to think that rights can only be violated through physical force. She was a proponent of intellectual-property rights, which can be violated without physical force. For example, piracy websites don’t use any physical force.

So that seems like an inconsistency in her stance.

Also, Justin thought it was hilarious that Elliot ruined my search results “forever” but then also says after five years I should just “move on”. Makes no sense at all.

I’d have to double check but didn’t Justin join Elliot in criticizing Aubrey de Grey for something he allegedly did a decade ago?

By the way, Elliot Temple is a cult leader and a bad, dangerous person.

I strongly suspect the preceding anonymous comments were left either by cult leader Elliot Temple aka ‘curi’ or one of his henchmen. Readers should exercise extreme caution when visiting links to his website curi.us. Instead, learn more about him in my exposé of him.

Elliot’s defamation stance is basically: guilty until proven innocent.

Legal has cleared the publication of the pictures, so here you go. I have more but these should suffice for now.

The person who shared them with me had no part in my decision to publish them.

I wrote in the context of Elliot’s twisting my words about Connor threatening me with violence:

[Elliot Temple is] implying that I would tacitly endorse violence. Nonsense.

His implication is particularly outrageous since I was the victim of said threat.

I can confirm the age gap but do you have evidence for the other claims?

One thing that stands out to me is that [Elliot, in his new posts] doesn’t link to my exposé once. He doesn’t want his readers to see it.

He won’t link to my exposé and he’s been evading several issues such as plagiarism, disregard for copyright, invasion of privacy, etc. Like, he hasn’t commented on them at all. He just cherrypicks topics to respond to and hides the rest.

I am reminded of this insight by Ayn Rand:

When opposite basic principles are clearly and openly defined, it works to the advantage of the rational side; when they are not clearly defined, but are hidden or evaded, it works to the advantage of the irrational side.

More evidence that Elliot is a lousy objectivist and a hypocrite.

I received an email a while back (see #3421) from ‘n2ab’ taking credit for some of the harassment Elliot alleges.

However, contrary to Elliot’s claims, this person disavows any coordination or conspiracy (so I take it the subject line is in jest).

Looks like Elliot slandered not just me and David but even Andy, and Elliot has made more enemies than he thinks.

As always, I have no interest in getting involved in his conflicts with others. I’m publishing this email because it contains information the public should be aware of. I do fully expect that he will try to use it (and this stated expectation) against me somehow.

------- Forwarded Message -------
From: 2andyborandynot2b@tutamail.com <2andyborandynot2b@tutamail.com>
Date: On Friday, March 8th, 2025 at 5:06 AM
Subject: an "andy b" collaborator
To: Dh <dh@dennishackethal.com>

hi! i recently stumbled on your blogs about elliot temple. i have some info or context related to the "harassment campaign" that you might find interesting...ormaybe not! 

im one of the people elliot has accused of being an "andy b." basically i left a bunch of goofy comments on his blog/forum ranging from vaguely insulting, picking fights to copy/pasting whole wikipedia articles. why? well because i think it's funny. elliot thinks this is part of a coordinated harassment campaign against him. it's not!!!

i am not a critrat and ive never been part of his circle...AT ALL. we had a few unpleasant interactions many years ago on a forum he joined but im sure he does not remember who i am. why did i post these things on his blog? well because its hysterical to troll him. example 1, he banned my IP so i switched to using mobile data on my phone to keep posting and he said this was illegal hacking and he was going to involve the authorities. O M G!!!!

if your curious i have my own reasons for being interested in doing this in part because i think he is a manipulative toxic psycho control freak who destroys lives...and he doesn't know i'm watching!! it is SO funny to me that he thinks this is part of some psyop against him directed by a freaking oxford physicist. to be very clear ive NEVER been on FI, TCS, 4 strands, critical rationalism, fallible living, or any of the other groups ET is associated with, i am NOT david deutsch nor have i ever spoken to him, i am NOT andy b nor have i ever spoken to him, i am obviously not YOU, et cetera!!!!

oh and i am not the "DOSer"...if that ever actually happened.........

i wish i could say more here but unfortunately i need to guard my own privacy here. but I AM SO SORRY you are going thru this although i dont blame myself because eliot would find reasons to harass people no matter what i did. but you obviously dont deserve any of this from him and he is a psycho nutjob. i actually feel proud of myself for pushing himself further into his tiny internet corner of paranoia, im basically entirely personally responsible for getting comments on his blog shut down and pushing him to his forum, ending his discord and getting him off basecamp too. this is really a good thing if you ask me being that he has less public presence for innocent newecomers to interact with him and has become more paranoid and untrusting so he can recruit less!

but anyways i just thought you might be interesting in knowing all of that! i hope it is useful to you!

xoxo NOT andy b

I’ve changed the example quote in #2629 from…

Many people consider Erwin Schroedinger a terrible intellectual, but I think he’s great.

…to…

Many people say Erwin Schroedinger is a terrible intellectual, but I think he’s great.

…so that the misquote doesn’t omit the word “is” and is only missing ellipses.

Elliot and Justin laughing about Elliot’s blog post ruining my reputation on search engines forever:

[03-Apr-20 10:14 PM] curi#0644
oh dude lol

[03-Apr-20 10:15 PM] JustinCEO#3132
ROFL

[03-Apr-20 10:16 PM] JustinCEO#3132
you nuked his yahoo SEO forever bro

From fi complete.txt starting at line 249,337. A bit further down:

[03-Apr-20 11:37 PM] JustinCEO#3132
curi dominating the search scene

[03-Apr-20 11:40 PM] curi#0644
heh

Further down:

[05-Apr-20 05:08 PM] curi#0644
dude how funny would it be if this blog post ends up all over the news due to veritas thing

[05-Apr-20 05:08 PM] curi#0644
and then dennis's plagiarism is seen by millions of ppl

[05-Apr-20 05:08 PM] JustinCEO#3132
ROFL

[05-Apr-20 05:08 PM] JustinCEO#3132
irl loling

So funny! “It’s just a man’s name, right?”

I’ve been trying something similar for my armpits. Instead of applying deodorant, I now scrub my armpits with soap using these exfoliating gloves when I shower. After I dry off, I apply Cerave SA cream.

Following this routine, my armpits do not smell. (They didn’t smell when I used deodorant either, but deodorant often made my armpits itchy.)

However, unlike the routine I use for my feet, I need to both scrub and apply the cream. Just doing one or the other does not eliminate odor in my armpits. (For my feet, scrubbing is not necessary.)

I looked a bit into the reason why armpits smell. Wikipedia says:

The human body produces perspiration (sweat) via two types of sweat gland: eccrine sweat glands which cover much of the skin and produce watery odourless sweat, and apocrine sweat glands in the armpits and groin, which produce a more oily "heavy" sweat containing a proportion of waste proteins, fatty acids and carbohydrates, that can be metabolized by bacteria to produce compounds that cause body odor. […]

Human perspiration of all types is largely odorless until its organic components are fermented by bacteria that thrive in hot, humid environments. The human underarm is among the most consistently warm areas on the surface of the human body, and sweat glands readily provide moisture containing a fraction of organic matter, which when excreted, has a vital cooling effect. When adult armpits are washed with alkaline pH soap, the skin loses its protective acid mantle (pH 4.5–6), raising the skin pH and disrupting the skin barrier.^[6] Many bacteria are adapted to the slightly alkaline environment within the human body, so they can thrive within this elevated pH environment.^[7] This makes the skin more than usually susceptible to bacterial colonization.^[7] Bacteria on the skin feed on the waste proteins and fatty acids in the sweat from the apocrine glands and on dead skin and hair cells, releasing trans-3-methyl-2-hexenoic acid in their waste, which is the primary cause of body odor.^[8]

In short, certain body odor is caused by bacterial fermentation of waste products contained in sweat. Bacteria feed on those waste products and also on dead skin. The skin has a protective acid mantle but it gets disrupted by some soaps, allowing these bacteria to thrive.

My guess is that the salicylic acid in the Cerave cream combats odor by restoring the requisite acidity levels in both armpits and on feet. Scrubbing helps remove dead skin, further reducing the environment bacteria thrive in.

The Wikipedia article also says that deodorants usually contain alcohol, which temporarily kills bacteria. I’m guessing contact with alcohol can irritate the skin, which is why my armpits get itchy sometimes when I use deodorant. I’ve also tried antiperspirants, but those make my skin even itchier.

Using SA cream to restore the requisite acidity levels seems better to me since it prevents the growth of bacteria in the first place (rather than kill them after the fact) and does not irritate my skin.

The root cause, however, seems to be the disruption of the acidity levels by alkaline soaps. (It’s a bit strange how some companies sell both soap and deodorant.) I will be looking into different kinds of soap to see if that reduces the need to apply deodorant or SA cream.

I don’t believe Elliot mentions in his new articles that I have long addressed his complaint about ‘plagiarism’. (Five years ago!) By not mentioning that, he misleads his readers yet again.

Well, if your thoughts re copyright are true, Elliot should have just correctly quoted the article he had originally linked instead of adding a link to the older one.

He doesn't credit Dennis for pointing out those issues even though he expected Dennis to credit him for addressing his criticisms of Dennis' book.

The word “for” threw me off a bit there. To be clear, I did the addressing. Elliot did the complaining.

But yes, great catch overall.

Elliot has misquoted David Deutsch again: