Credo

This document is forever under construction.

Epistemology

  1. Finite beings can never know absolute truth.
  2. The scientific method -- guess, test, repeat -- is the best recipe yet discovered for finding closer and closer approximations to truth.
  3. A seeker of truth is willing to abandon beliefs when faced with contrary evidence.
  4. Faith is the desire not to know what is true.

Ontology

  1. The belief in an omnipotent god who monitors and meddles in our personal affairs is a paranoid delusion.
  2. If existence has a purpose, it is to discover, create, and understand.
  3. Consciousness is the degree to which a complex information system is capable of observing itself.
  4. Conscious systems, such as the human brain, are the tools with which the universe contemplates itself.
  5. Information exists as patterns or signals represented in some physical form.
  6. We don't yet know all of physics.
  7. The identity of a person is the sum of their information content and processing -- memories, emotions, knowledge, desires, prejudices, and attitudes.
  8. Identity is an emergent property of a person's physical structure.
  9. Information, and processes performed on it, can be copied from one kind of physical substrate to another.
  10. Human beings are, in principle, duplicable.

Ethics

  1. Any being capable of conceptualizing about future events, communicating their conceptions to me, and acting in accord with their expressed conceptions, is a person.
  2. Wrong consists of harming another person unnecessarily.
  3. Evil is the enjoyment of doing wrong.
  4. A contract is an agreement between persons, expressing their intentions and obligations contingent on future events.
  5. A duty is an obligation, voluntarily accepted, to act or not act in a specified way.
  6. Fraud is the willful acceptance of a duty or a contractual obligation with the intention of not fulfilling it.
  7. A right is the expectation of freedom from interference in choosing how to act or not act.
  8. Rights are created and maintained by being asserted and defended.
  9. Rights are not inherent, "natural," or "god-given".
  10. Rights are not granted or created by laws or political documents, although they may be recognized by such conventions.
  11. Rights are negative in nature. The assertion of a positive "right" that creates some positive obligation in others without their consent is a disguised demand for subsidy, tribute, or ransom.
  12. A person alone on a deserted island can assert the "right" to an education, to food, housing, or health care, but they will not be provided.
  13. The universe is not a person. It does not recognize any obligations to us, nor do we owe it anything.
  14. Ownership of something is the right to use, abuse, or destroy it.
  15. I own my body and my mind.
  16. I assert the right to nurture, feed, medicate, exercise, and develop my body and my mind as I will.
  17. I assert the right to think as I will.
  18. I assert the right to speak, write, and publish as I will.
  19. I assert the right to conceal and keep private what I will.
  20. I assert the right to read, hear, view, and enjoy what and how I will.
  21. I assert the right to love how and whom I will.
  22. I assert the right to live where and how I will.
  23. I assert the right to end my existence when and how I will.
  24. I own my time, my labor, and the products of my labor.
  25. I assert the right to plan, build, create, invent, and program as I will.
  26. I assert the right to destroy what I have created.
  27. I assert the right to trade how and with whom I will.
  28. I recognize these rights in any person who recognizes mine in turn.
  29. I assert the right to arm and protect myself from interference with these rights.
  30. Beings incapable of recognizing the rights of other beings are not persons.

Aesthetics

  1. Statements that are scientifically meaningless can still hold emotional truth.
  2. Uniformity is monotonous.
  3. Smooth, hairless brown skin is the sexiest.

Politics

  1. Governments were created by the powerful as a cheaper and more efficient means of controlling the weak.
  2. The leftist fallacy, that the powerful can be weakened by strengthening the government, is akin to thinking that the rider can be slowed down by speeding up the horse.
  3. Taxation is theft.
  4. Any political system that relies on some segment of the population acting contrary to their own perceived self-interest will degenerate into tyranny.
  5. Indiscriminate law-making fosters contempt for the very concept of law.
  6. Taxing A to help B is piracy, not charity.

Economics

  1. Immigrants are a boon to commerce, culture, and cuisine.
  2. The government has no business minding my business.