Your enemies are trying to provoke you. If you react, you lose. They want you to make you look bad so that they can blame everything on you to both avoid accountability and give them what they want: plausible justification to ostracize you. My mother and sisters have perfected the art.

Even if you know that is the case going into the argument, at some point the mere fact that they are willing to go to extraordinary lengths to provoke you will make you angry enough to react. Especially when they know the key to provoking you. Because they are covert narcissists. And you are telling uncomfortable truths.

Like they are wrong. They made a mistake. They are overbearing and fragile. They slander with no recourse.

If you make the mistake of being honest with them and reacting in justified anger, then they’ve just nailed you to a brick wall.

Nobody else messes with the woman of the house, not ever. If you do, you must be evil. So has it ever been.

And the minute you show the reaction they are intent upon provoking—anger—they’ve won. It doesn’t matter how egregious the softly spoken lies were…now the only story is your reaction. Most people do not remember the soft words spoken right before an outburst of anger. They only remember the anger, but they had no reason to notice the soft words spoken seconds before the yelling. That doesn’t happen until the yelling starts.

If you yell the truth, nobody will listen. They will want you to shut up and blame you for the escalation. It doesn’t matter that your reaction is because you know exactly what they are doing. It doesn’t matter that you saw this a mile away and you still can’t believe they are so evil that they actually played that card. It doesn’t matter that this one event alone severs your trust so severely that you can never turn your back on them again, not ever.

That is the whole fucking point, dumbass.

It doesn’t matter that they crossed a line they should never approach. Again, that is the entire fucking point. They’re daring you either to react in anger, or ignore their constant and obvious rage-baiting and emasculate yourself just to stay in the family.

They won’t allow a fair hearing of the facts because the facts don’t help them. There is only men are evil, women cannot be evil, men are guilty, no evidence necessary.

They are laying a trap, and if you react with anger, you step in the trap. It doesn’t matter that their act was so egregious that there is no going back to the way things were. It doesn’t matter that you know their intentions because you’ve seen it a thousand times. Nobody else has seen this move. They only see you reacting in anger.

And now you lose.

It doesn’t matter that what they say is false. It only matters that they are playing a game of chicken with your relationship.

This is my mother’s and sisters’ favorite tactic. Oh my god, there is a huge cluster of Cluster B in my family. My therapist says not me… but is she being honest? I’m pretty convincing when I try to be. When I articulate things. But it’s usually not worth it, because the consequences are dire. At least when you react the way that I have.

But is it better to not react in anger? I don’t think I should have to suppress my honest, justifiable anger. I think honestly conveying anger is important. Yelling is a bad strategy, but at least it is honest.

I don’t know if it is because our family is Mormon, but I suspect that plays a large role. The holier-than-thou incentive is real, especially for people who hate you. If you want to make a person disappear, make them angry. They will disappear. They will be shunned. They will be deleted.

Because that kills two birds with one stone. They get higher status because they’re the “righteous” victim. And it eliminates you, dumbass. Your side never gets heard because you yelled about it.

Once a woman “perceives” a threat, it is game over, and you lose. Everybody loves to white knight a damsel in distress. It doesn’t matter that they are full of shit. The minute they pretend they are afraid of you, even if it is just to piss you off, they win.

I cannot stress this enough: It doesn’t matter that your anger is justified. Nobody gives a shit. It just doesn’t matter.

They cannot be bargained with. They cannot be reasoned with. They are there to destroy you, and they will never stop until their work is done.

It does not matter that they are obviously trying to provoke you. If they can convince even one person that you are a threat to them, you will lose all support from your flaky family and friends as soon as she puts on her Oscar-winning performance for the sole intention of claiming you are a physical threat to their safety so that they can eliminate your influence and truth telling.

Nobody gives a shit.

They don’t care that there should be boundaries on the things that are acceptable to say about another human, including lies. They will judge everything on the superficial memories they have, and those are, as we’ve previously discussed, imperfect. The moment was not recorded in their head until your outburst.

They didn’t hear her accuse you of trying to divide your family even though you’re actually trying to arrange to have your day in court and have your story heard for the first time ever by anybody but her husband including her…

They don’t know any of that. They heard you yell and saw you get angry. And their mother is laying it on thick. They don’t know she’s manipulating the room because they haven’t seen this a thousand times growing up in your house because they didn’t grow up in your house. She did, and she’s currently winning the argument trying to get your case dismissed.

She’s succeeding, and she doesn’t have to say another word. In fact, as long as she never says another word, she’s won. So don’t be surprised when she stonewalls you after you try to make peace. She never wanted you in her life in the first place, don’t you get it? She would rather cut you out of her life than allow you to tell a story of mother on son abuse. That’s probably because she’s just as overbearing as our mother. If you are the kind of person who holds people accountable for their actions, that’s why you’re not welcome.

It doesn’t matter that the rational response is to take this personally, because it is personal. It doesn’t matter that she slandered you. Tears and pretend fears always beat yelling. People turn off their brain when you start yelling. They don’t want to be on your side, anyway, because they (like most people) want to believe the best in people. So, if, apropos of nothing (to them), you loudly say any word, like “No” to that person they want to love, they’re going to be biased. It makes a lot of sense.

Never mind the fact that their slanderous lies are so egregious that they deserve to be punished. Never mind the fact that your entire story is about the time this exact thing almost derailed your life when your mother did it. Never mind that she actually agrees that the mother you share in common is abusive. Her goal is to say whatever it takes for you to give her plausible justification to cut you out of her life.

She will forever be able to hide behind that and point back at you and claim to be afraid. She will side with a known liar and manipulator in order to manipulate you out of her life. Because she’s jealous of your real friendship with her husband, a spark she hasn’t shared with him in a long time.

Nobody cares about that, dumbass. They’re after your credibility.

It doesn’t matter that they’re accusing you of the things they are actually doing to you. It doesn’t matter that they are happy to divide the family and you are there to tell the story of the mother you hold in common, who has done the same thing to her,

A Mormon man is almost, by definition, too weak to stand up to his wife. He probably got married around the age of 21 and does not have a pre-nup in place. If this crazy bitch is willing to cut her brother out of her life—in the name of keeping the family together—she’s definitely willing to cut the husband out of her life if he takes her side.

So he’s not going to be thinking rationally because he cannot afford to stand up for the truth, or she might cut his balls off and take the house.

She can’t be bargained with. She can’t be reasoned with. And she can take him for all he’s worth, and she’s shown her willingness to do so.

Plus, now she’ll be the only voice in his ear. History will be completely rewritten, many times over, until the story is completely warped from its original state. Memories rewritten, over and over.

Even if they heard her lies, they don’t care, dumbass! Nobody’s ever stood up to her and won. Certainly not with a completely justified angry reaction. Not in this matriarchy, dumbass.

Their religion gives them a 100% guaranteed answer: Feelings are the only facts, in Mormonism. If you respond with anything other than joy at her betrayal, you’re going to lose. She only needs to claim they are afraid, and you will be disappeared forever.

The whole point is to get you to react, dumbass. They’re trying to take your credibility. Don’t give it to them.

Nothing drives them crazier than being successfully dismissed as the crazy unreasonable bitches that they are. Holier than thou credit is the ultimate status in the Relief Society, and if you’ve got “victim” bona fides… well then, you MUST be really righteous for Satan to attack you this way.

Just look at how evil that man is. I’m so glad you survived that fateful encounter with yelling. Why, you could’ve perished right there, I’m sure!

Because in Mormonism, vibes rule. Vibes are in charge. And vibes are actually God giving you a personal revelation, just like he did for Joseph Smith. Anybody who would deny that is not just wrong, but evil.

Some facts are settled though: My mother abused me, and my father, my family, and the “church” I grew up in all colluded to make sure she faced zero consequences. And made sure that I don’t have a family.

Please, tell me more about how “family-centric” Mormonism is. Mormonism’s family orientation is as deep as a photograph. Everything looks oh-so-perfect in a family photograph. Everybody smiling so nicely after the woman of the house just took us on a long tear-filled guilt-trip to get us to pose. But if don’t count on them to be there when you need them most.

Mormonism sucks. It’s a cult, and not the “nice” kind, either. It straight up chews everybody up and spits them out worse for the wear. That is, of course, unless you’re prideful enough to think you’re better than everybody else. Then you’ll do just fine in Mormonism.

What is their doctrine, you ask? That’s hard to say, because it’s about to change. Yes, even for you, future reader!

Because it never stops changing. Yes, that is correct. Not only did Jesus Christ go back on his marriage guidance, he decided that Mormons are sinners unless they practice polygamy. And then, after that, he revealed that some sins are too grave for Jesus Christ’s blood to save, so their blood has to be spilled. Either that, or Brigham Young was a con-artist using God to justify murder.

And while Heaven used to be for everybody, now it’s gatekept for 10% of your income… and so much more. Good news for ladies bitter about not holding the priesthood: It’s fake! Their only power is over your mind. And hey, if you want to cancel somebody, cancellation is still alive and well in Mormonism. In fact, they do it better than anybody else.

And please forget about the racism.

Don’t remind anybody. We look forward, never backward.

Is that bitter sarcasm, I detect? Don’t forget that it’s wrong to criticize the “prophet,” even if that criticism is true!

If, for some reason, somebody actually reads this, don’t worry: There will be a Mormon in the comments informing you that I’ve taken this all out of context.

So yeah, I’m pretty deep into the Mormonism rabbit hole. There is simply no accountability.

Which brings me to my therapy.

There are two ways that I’m using Claude to “do the work”:

1. I’m telling my whole story, front to back, at my own pace, to Claude. Surprisingly, it’s easier to tell it to an AI just to get it out of me instead of festering inside. It makes it easier because I just vomit all of my trauma onto Claude, and he keeps track of the chronological order and the words. It’s still not easy, but it is easier for some reason.

2. I’m having Claude build a browser extension so that I can capture media data, and build an adjudication system on top of it.

That’s all for now.

Yes, hatred is a sin. Yes, I know I need to forgive. Yes, forgiveness is required by Jesus Christ. Yes yes yes yes yes. I know this, bless you. Nobody mortal knows my sins better than me. And I’m working on it.

Where are my confessions, you ask? They are not here. They are not for you, at least not right now. They are reserved for those I trust, and I trust few mortals. None by default.

But I have some real concerns about the norms of a society that accepts anger from some as normal, justified, obvious, even. Some people are allowed, even encouraged, to voice their anger. Some people are allowed to invent new terminology to justify their anger. Some people get away with demonizing an entire class of people on the basis of their immutable traits, and are not seen as hateful bigots. Some people can even assault their own children and claim to be the victim.

And almost everybody goes along with it.

Others of us have been silenced our entire lives. Told our feelings do not matter. Told we are irrevocably evil. We are alternatively objects of “fear” (when convenient) or contempt (most times). Blamed for all that is wrong with this world. Treated with disrespect so common it is entirely unremarkable.

And almost everybody goes along with it.

The double standard is so large and obvious that might as well be the universe we inhabit.

In my family, it is me that is always asked to change. In my childhood religion, it was me that was always asked to change. In my current church, it is me that is always asked to change. In my culture, it is me that is always asked to change.

And that’s excellent! Thank you for asking me to be better. I should strive to be better. And so I am.

But what about the sinners who never get called to account? What about the people who are so “perfect” they never even hear of a sin they qualify for?

Isn’t it possible, even probable, that whoever is never held accountable by anybody is probably up to no good? I think that seems kind of obvious, but evidently it is not, and I am wrong.

Somebody who shares my DNA accused me of believing myself to be perfect. Naturally, I disagreed; I believe I hold myself accountable and take responsibility for my actions. But I’ve come closer to their position over time; Almost everybody is less repentent than they believe themselves to be. It makes sense for that to be true of me as well. And so it is.

But I accept error correction. And I’m doing the work. There’s a whole shitload of it. Way too much to do on my own. But I’m doing it.

The work, I have come to realize, does seem to include writing things. AI has made that abundantly clear. Code is now subject to wielders of English. So I need to try and program the humans, which is harder, and probably why I’ve been avoiding it.

I am a people pleaser. It is one of those friendly faults, until you break promises you shouldn’t have made. There’s a confession for you: I say “yes” too quickly and too often. It gets me into trouble making promises I have no ability to keep.

But the recipients of my guarded nature will tell you that I keep to myself, mostly. That I’m never there, that I refuse to make promises at all. That I guard my time too selfishly. And so I do.

To those who have been the recipients of my impotent rage online, you lucky few hordes: I regret it, and I am sorry.

To those lucky few who have been my unfair targets—Noah Smith, Nicholas Kristof—I am sorry. Also, we have disagreements which I’m probably not skilled enough to argue about without name calling. I’m trying to build the tools to stop myself from acting like an idiot, but it’ll never work because I’m too dumb to remember my own faults.

But to the special members of a three special cohorts who retain sole access to the privilege of consequence-free ragebaiting, I remain angry with you. Surprise, surprise! Because of your lack of accountability, I’m building something akin to the Home Stenographer. And I’m writing English to attempt to reprogram the humans of this world. And soon man and machine alike will know you.

Nobody has special permission to sin, certainly. But certain people are expected to sin. Certain people are allowed to sin. Certain people never even learn there’s another way to act! Certain people are given license to nurse their grievance while others of us are told to forgive and forget.

Do I claim special dispensation to sin? No.

But is it not relevant how that sin came to be? Should we not be angry enough with people who deliberately tempt others to sin, and never hear one word of rebuke their entire life?

I will forgive when my story is on record. Justice is having the truth be told, because there seems to be no other kind of justice available.

Yet, I am blessed. I am grateful for what I have. I have been granted many graces from many people. I am incredibly blessed, and lucky. Most people never sniff half the opportunities I took for granted for many years.

Somebody has to say true things out loud. I’ve lost enough to know that I’ve still got plenty to lose. I remain committed to it, in spite of all the evidence to the contrary.

A lot of people are skeptical about trying to build a product to find the truth. With only a single exception in my life, everybody who has ever heard of creating a system which will allow people to discern what is true and false, has called it impossible. It’s a lot of people at this point.

There are good reasons for that. Anybody who claims to have a monopoly on truth should not be trusted. If somebody tells you that they are building a truth machine, you have a right to be skeptical. It sounds nutty! But somebody’s got to try. And thankfully the miracle of Claude Code makes trying things really easy.

I am trying to gather the base layer of data that are relevant for a person in search of the truth.

Right now, my goals are modest:

• Track basic facts like the people, organizations, places, and things mentioned in content.

• Track, not adjudicate, factual claims.

• Archive the content for a durable record.

These goals are in line with basic journalism. People should have the ability to check a given URL for the claims that it makes. That would be a good first step toward truth, and that is what I am working on. I have made considerable progress on a browser extension that I’m calling X-Ray for now.

Previously I was developing a Tampermonkey user script, but found that capturing and archiving the components above from inside a webpage’s own Javascript security sandbox is not conducive to capturing data. I had limited success, but pivoted to browser extension full time.

Also, this experience has taught me how effective vibe-coding is. Truly we live in miraculous times.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the lawsuit against the Mormon Stories podcast. I’ve been capturing lots of data from the media surrounding that. There are plenty of ways to apply technology to this specific case to see what kind of treatment each side is getting.

Love, Bryan

PS - Roo Code with Claude Opus is pretty cool. I had it make me a greasemonkey script to extract article data and publish it to NOSTR. I’m still testing it out, but I’ll tell you about it when it’s ready.

Again, we all do it. Don’t act like you’ve never swore at somebody in traffic. Don’t act like you’ve never called your political opponents four-letter words. Don’t act like you wouldn’t love to be able to write a name down in a notebook, and see that person drop dead in the exact way you write.

That’s judgement. We all do it, but some of us do it better than others. (I’m looking at you 🫵, asshole!)

Just kidding, but you get my point.

When you do it, you’d better have good explanation for doing it, because it has consequences for those who get judged. I try to live by a set of moral principles, and I’m frequently bad at it. So grace is important too. Probably even more important than the principle of trying to evaluate objectively.

Plenty of people have judged me. Sometimes wrongly, and sometimes to an egregious degree. But also frequently correctly, because we can all be assholes sometimes. The only question is whether we’re assholes all the time. Because some of us are.

Some people are acting with malice, and relying on our generous propensity to give grace to sinners. Some people use words that they intentionally redefine to suit their needs. Some people are manipulators just trying to recruit you to their smear campaign. Some people are resentful of those who have it better than them. Some people say different things in private compared to what they say in public. Some people are using others. Some people are shirking their responsibilities to others. But none of this makes them evil.

If we classify people according to their moral disposition, I would say there are three types of people: garden-variety sinners, the wicked, and the evil. But which is which?

Most people are garden-variety sinners. These people are self-acknowledged imperfect people, striving in vain for perfection that can never be attained. I would say these people are good people.

Wicked people are those who are not actually trying to be good. It’s not that they’re evil, it’s that they “know” themselves to be good, so they don’t listen to you when you say, “Ouch, that hurts!” I’ve seen it so often that I’m not even sure they have the ability to hear words which implicate them in often minor ways.

It’s not a big deal if somebody accidentally steps on your toes. Most people offer a quick apology, and it’s like it never happened. That’s what good people do. But what if, instead of apologizing, they instead said, “Watch where you’re going!” You may infer that this person may not care much about others. If a person who wrongs you can immediately rationalize away their guilt, that person is wicked.

But how often can it happen and still be an “accident”? Two times? Five times? Twenty times? What is your threshold for determining that somebody who is “sorry” is not actually, in fact, sorry? Maybe the third time somebody mashes on your toes and says, “Sorry! 😏” with a shit-eating grin— you should go ahead and realize that this person is not looking out for your interests, and is in fact bent on your destruction. That’s evil!

Now maybe you want to point out that this is not a very detailed framework for defining and quantifying evil, and you’d be right. But the point is that we all have ways of identifying evil. We all have a sense of what is moral. Some of us believe morality is objective, and some of use believe it is subjective, but we can all define what is and is not moral, at least to some extent.

We have families, court rooms, religions, clubs, organizations, and everyday garden-variety sinners all telling us who is right and wrong, and why. We do not lack the will or ability to judge others. We do not lack the frameworks to judge others.

But when you look in the mirror, I doubt you say, “You judgmental asshole!” I’ll bet you think you’re a good person, and it’s all those other assholes who don’t have the decency to feel bad about who they are. I bet you stare at yourself in the mirror, and become slightly aroused by your own perfection. I know that’s what I do.

And that’s really the problem. Most people aren’t willing to take an honest look at themselves. Most people are so convinced of their own righteousness that they’re probably not worth listening to. And if all you do is complain about all the bad people in the world, people correctly start to believe you’re one of them, and tune you out.

Because until you’re willing to be honest about your own capacity for evil in this world, people should not trust you. I encountered evil at a very young age, and I was forced to contemplate whether I was capable of murder. I am. And by the way, so are you. Only after you acknowledge your own capacity for evil can you keep it in check.

But it’s not easy to admit, at first. When you learn about your own nature, it can be downright scary. How could I even contemplate such a thing? Doesn’t that make me evil? I would argue it’s a fact about me held in common with the entirety of humanity. No matter what you believe about yourself, you are human and I know that much about you.

Generally, if you’re not held accountable by others, your capacity for wickedness will increase to fill the space available. So how can we hold wicked and evil people accountable for their actions without entangling good people along with them?

We already have frameworks for judging the actions of others. What we lack is a set of facts held in common. In fact, wicked and evil people depend on it! They thrive when they can defeat transparency. Their power grows when your ability to speak against them is limited. They win when they can discredit you with lies you’re not aware are being told about you.

Therefore we must establish a set of facts held in common. Right now we can do that with writing. Speech is how we help to establish those facts. But wicked people can simply avoid engaging in good faith, or engaging at all. Evil people employ lies. So how can we avoid such things in our commonly held facts?

Courtrooms employ a standard, imperfect though it is, that could be emulated or improved upon. Or overhauled. The point is that we don’t lack the will or ability to change how judgments on people are adjudicated in this world. Instead we lack the infrastructure to bring evidence, testimony, and judgements into a common space where everybody can see the codified rules of engagement.

That is a solvable problem.

I aspire to be less wrong. However, in world of propagandists and censors willing to lie to score political points, this is increasingly rare.

Why?

As my favorite whipping boy points out, this problem is fundamentally about economics:

But there is one other sort of cost asymmetry that I do think favors misinformation. It’s about public vs. private goods.

Some people may spread misinformation as a hobby or a political signaling device, but many people are doing it for personal gain. Antivaxxers have blogs and podcasts to promote. Propagandists serve their nation or movement. Corporate shills are collecting a salary, academic frauds get tenure, and so on. For all of these actors, spreading misinformation is a job rather than a hobby. It confers direct financial and/or reputational benefit.

In other words, where economic incentives favor fraud, it will bloom! (EDIT: For a more in-depth look at how public goods are defined, see “The Continua of Excludability and Rivalry”. Just subscribe to everything Bryan Caplan!)

For example, if you know that inflation is actually “fiddling with the unit of account”, but you make your living telling people that inflation is a mysterious phenomenon that you’re probably imagining anyway—people should rightfully suspect you of misleading.

The problem? They don’t!

And how could they? Noah Smith is an excellent writer! He has a ton of education and experience! He has excellent reasoning skills! And, aside from a curious blind spot for the moral hazard of printing dollars, he seems to be a nice guy!

It is simply too difficult for the average shlubbs of the world to see propaganda and shoddy work for what it is. It requires the integration of too much diverse knowledge to be reasonably practical for almost anybody, particularly those with lower incomes and less free time.

Fortunately, we are on the cusp of a major innovation in information technology that will flip the incentives in favor of good faith by making deception—of every kind—so risky as to be rendered obsolete.

NOSTR (Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays) is a new internet protocol that is the first elegant solution for defeating information gatekeepers while allowing for the wonderful benefits of social networks. Right now our information networks are distribution-centric rather than information-centric. In other words, most people are forced to read whatever journalists and editors decide to write about, rather than whatever may be in demand. To be sure, competition helps over the long term, but the economic paradigm still favor centralization.

That is about to change.

In a world where trust is routinely abused without consequence, the disruptive potential of passive information sharing among trusted peers cannot be overstated!

Passive information sharing, or rather, private knowledge bases are the necessary innovation here. Remember, most people don’t have time to do research because we have jobs and such, which makes it easy for bad actors to get away with lying, even pathologically. And once you’ve bought into something like flat-Eartherism, the in-group-out-group mentality is likely to trap you there, even if you Think Again.

But if you are part of a network with disproportionately high-quality information, like Substack, you will be able to reap the benefits of your network’s knowledge without having to know it yourself. For those in the rationalist community, I believe this represents an opportunity to codify Double Crux protocol.

Imagine a world in which you can trace the lineage of each and every idea! Imagine a world in which redefining words to bolster bad faith arguments can no longer hold sway! Imagine a world in which the “social contract” can be codified among a Network State! Imagine a world in which you can search your friends’ “brains” without even talking to them! Imagine a world in which your employer must pay royalties to access your knowledge after your departure! Imagine a world in which you can *immediately* integrate a new knowledge base by hiring someone! Imagine a world in which AI can be trained on information that is known and agreed upon!

How?

Every word you read here has associated meta-data, even if it is only implied. The previous sentence is both a declarative statement, and a factual assertion that can be tested. The words within each sentence have (presumably…) an agreed-upon definition. Everything qualitative can be made quantitative, and then aggregated. That means we can do magical things like count up factual assertions, how many have evidence, and ultimately, how many are correct! And other fun stuff like track the quality of work over time, and rank journalists and publications accordingly. Not only that, we’ll be able to overlay corrections IN REAL TIME, and pay journalists for exposing truth! Whistleblowing could become very lucrative!

All of this—and more!—will be made possible by the native data model of NOSTR, which can be expressed in a graph database.

The free market is about to regulate the information economy.