Why this Substack and why now?

I have always thought of myself as someone who really strives to understand reality. I had a poster of all the major cognitive biases on my wall during high school. It was a constant reminder to be humble and cautious about my own thinking. I always kept striving to be better, but I really thought I was doing pretty good. Then I met Ford.

What I had was a goal -- an aspiration to be a good thinker. Ford had a process. The difference in our approaches made me feel really dumb: I realized that I had named the biases, but I couldn’t consistently avoid all of them all of the time. Ford wasn't any smarter than me, they just followed some rules -- their 'process'. The rules seemed obvious after they were explained. Once I was armed with the rules, I got a lot better. Over the years we stayed in contact and kept discussing...well everything: Philosophy, Religion, Politics.

Time passed. As the information ecosystem rapidly adapted to the internet, the amount of new claims and assertions skyrocketed. I had improved my thinking, but which sources should I trust? What information was worth considering? It all felt very overwhelming. Ford, like before, was ready for this: the 'process' already accounted for it. They helped me improve how to handle information from any source. As things evolved our discussions turned to why 'the process' was so effective even against the wild west of the internet.

The story would have ended there. But then the worst parts of the internet metastasized and caused our entire information ecosystem to degrade. Bad ideas multiplied. Carelessness with truth became standard. The worst consequence: truth nihilism. People want to believe that truth matters, but they get overwhelmed when they try to engage. Eventually they give up and become careless themselves. We all know this is a problem. We all agree it's dire. There have been countless articles, blogs, vlogs, etc. talking about it in great detail, and explaining why it happens. So why does nothing ever seem to get better? Why do people keep getting overwhelmed and giving up? It dawned on me: everyone has this goal -- an aspiration to make the truth matter again, so we can get back to real discussion. But so far no one has put forth an effective and actionable process. People keep pointing out the problem, but knowing the problem doesn't tell you what to do.

So I asked Ford if they would help me translate all the bits of their process to a shareable format. We had developed our own terms and references for ideas. We had years of discussions compressed down to a short list of rules. We're now going to share these as a series of toolkits. The advice here can be used no matter how little effort you can spare. And it will help the truth to matter again. It will help people feel less overwhelmed. It helped me.

We will probably drop the 'core' toolkit documents all at once (at some point in the coming weeks). The weekly posts will cover examples on how to use the toolkits, how various aspects were developed, analysis of the information ecosystem both past and present, and spontaneous contemplation on various topics that intersect with the broader project.

P.S. -- If you're like me and read lots of rationalist blogs and books, all of this may sound like other stuff you've heard. But for me, so far all that other stuff boils down to: "Just do a better job thinking. Keep an open mind. Figure out who to listen to. Be scientific. Make predictions and check them." This is what I was trying to do before I met Ford. Ford’s ‘process’ (toolkits we will share) is the only thing I've found that is ACTUALLY focused on practical action. It is a categorical algorithm, that you can learn by rote and apply every time.

Plus, most of that other stuff is paywalled. ...So there's that.