A Starting Point

Welcome! Let this be a small marker for how I want to approach writing here: as a place to think out loud, refine messy ideas, and stay open to being wrong.

Before getting into anything more substantive, it seems worth writing down the basic stance I want to keep coming back to:

• All views are my own unless explicitly stated;
• I will make mistakes and get things wrong--please point out anything you find;
• My views and opinions are by nature non-stationary and will be readily updated as new information comes up;
• There will probably be lots of contradictions and cognitive traps at first. I aspire to continually improve my reasoning processes;
• I do not intend to take credit for ideas that aren't my own and will do my best to assign credit appropriately;
• Everything I have read, seen, or heard has influenced my opinions and ideas to varying degrees. If anything, the only thing I can take credit for is connecting the previously unconnected -- which is sort of what creativity is and how we all come up with something anyways;
• I want to seek the truth in all aspects and hope to minimize biases;
• I definitely would never deliberately offend anyone;
• I will try my best to appreciate the complexity, do my due diligence, and not unduly polarize/simplify matters, even if that turns a seemingly simple problem into chaos