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THE DIALECTICAL EVOLUTION OF THE TRUTH ENGINE LOGOS
The Truth Engine Logos is the Primary Synthesis, the result of the primary cultural dialectic.
The Enlightenment development of democracy, the full expression of the mind of Helios (the collective human mind), as made possible and lasting by the institution of universal education, with traditional debate, with its flaws, is the thesis.
Postmodern truth-relativism with anti-debate is the intolerable antithesis—it is now discovered that universal education and traditional debate are not adequate to give democracy permanence; they do not protect Helios' mind's full expression for long.
Truth-Engine debate, the Game of a Trillion Worlds, is the synthesis—democracy, the full expression of Helios' mind, will be made permanent through the use of Truth Engine debate.
In our Truth-Engine debates, we will seek to discover what is true, what is good, and what is beautiful; but none of this would make sense if Truth, Goodness and Beauty were relative.
The next step in the cultural evolution of earth must be to provide Helios in Gaiaon (the human collective on earth) with a central intellectual organizing faculty, a CIOF, that is, with the Truth Engine. This must be done in order to raise vastly Helios' IQ so that he can be born. This is how the CIOF raises Helios' IQ:
Those to whom it will fall to do this work—let us call them dialecticians—can and should raise Helios' IQ vastly by adding this central intellectual organizing faculty to his psyche. Since debate is a colossus' (collective person's) thought, human debates constitute Helios' thoughts, his pondering, his seeking to know what is true. Therefore, the dialecticians must bring truth engine debate, which is an improved kind of debate, into the public sphere—in so doing, they will install the CIOF into Helios' psyche and allow him to be born. Improved debate, once it begins, will constitute the installation of the CIOF.
In this way Truth-Engine debate will represent an improvement over traditional debate. There are three main kinds of traditional debate: (1) synchronous debate, where each of two or more debaters responds immediately to the opponent's argument, (2) asynchronous engaged debate, where two or more individuals are participating, but the responses do not immediately follow the arguments, as can happen, for instance, in an exchange of emails, (3) asynchronous unengaged debate (the most common form), which happens when, for instance, someone writes an opinionated book, and someone else writes a book in which he or she responds to the argument of the first author, perhaps without even mentioning the first author's name. Synchronous and asynchronous engaged are the kinds that most efficiently bring forth truth, because each debater is directly challenged to deal with the weak points in his or her argument. But traditional debate of all kinds, which has not changed since Aristotle, is unclear, unconcise, not current, repetitive, incomplete and barely improvable–a good debate point is often heard just once, by only a few people, and never heard again.
Truth Engine debate, on the other hand, is of a new kind: in accord with a timeless blueprint, it will be clear, concise, current, complete, and fully improvable. A Truth Engine debate series, a Truth Engine tournament, for the Truth Engine will take the form of The Game of a Trillion Worlds, will pool people's mental powers as never before, so that the participants will become as a single super-brilliant individual, so that Helios, that is, will become a super-brilliant person.
the general operation of the Logos
Just as the physical powers of many human beings can be combined by all of them pulling together on a single rope, such that they function as a single super-strong super-being, the intellectual powers of the many humans can be combined vastly more fully than ever before by all of them directing their debates into a suitably-formatted article, such that they will become transformed much more completely into the single vastly brilliant and benevolent thinker that Helios can become, and must become in order for him to be born.
if we do with collective brain what we can do with collective brawn, the resulting Great Thinker, postnatal Helios, many orders of magnitude more intelligent than any single human being, will, with dazzling authority, be able to tell us what is true, what is good and what is beautiful—Helios will finally have been born and our civilization will experience a golden age such as the world has never known.
The topics of the Truth Engine's articles will fall into three divisions: The Truth Division—Pure Truth covers the sciences and fringe sciences, and Truth encompasses the Goodness Division—Pure Goodness covers the sociopolitical realm, and Goodness encompasses the Beauty Division—Pure Beauty covers the arts.
• Each of the articles (Helios' memory) will be written in a transparently logical format.
• Each of the articles will be written as a simulated debate.
• Each of the articles will lay out the best known arguments, pro and con, pertaining to a single controversy,
• Each of the articles will continually be amended by the public, who will be able to read it for free online and send the Truth Engine editors suggestions for improving it.
• The suggestion-and-amendment process will be supercharged in the following way:
there will be online debates (Helios' thinking).
• Each dialectical article will guide a series of informal, moderated, public, person-to-person debates on the topic, online and in communities and will inspire the audiences to submit suggestions for revising the article's text.
• In an open-ended cycle of positive feedback fueled by collective intelligence/crowdsourcing, the debates will inspire ideas for changing the article. This recursive process—the article shaping a debate, the debate re-shaping the article, the new edition of the article shaping the next debate, etc.—will sharpen the arguments more and more over time, clarifying truth with unprecedented velocity.
At a Truth Engine debate, there will be a moderator, two debaters in opposition, and two guides, who will, at least to an extent, keep the arguments of the debate tied to those in the book.
The audience will decide the winner of the debate. If a debater declared him- or herself at the beginning to be playing the game, he or she will be judged on debating skill; if the debater declared him- or herself to be engaged in the search for Truth, that is, in the pseudogame, he or she will be judged on ability to bring forth Truth. In the latter case, points will be given for admitting error, for helping the other side of the argument, and for pursuing threads that are difficult for one's own side.
Instead of ropes facilitating the pooling of physical powers, the articles will facilitate the pooling of our intellectual powers, because we will, for the first time, all be literally on the same page as we debate the issues. For the first time in history, all participating minds will be completely in sync, able to think as one far more effectively than ever before—finally, we will be fully leveraging all our intellectual powers.
The ultimate memory of cultural selection is the article—the dialectical conflict is debate. This is the Truth Engine circle of conflict and memory [dialectic]
The Truth Engine will create such debate-formatted articles and such companion video debates within a living Encyclopedia of Truth.
The Truth Engine will create such debate-formatted articles and such companion video debates in a Truth Engine news site called The Truth Engine Chronicle.
The articles of both the Encyclopedia of Truth and the Truth Engine Chronicle will reside in the Precinct of the Engine, in the restricted Sanctuary of Truth, but copies will be available online.
There is objective Truth and we desire to know it, and the more fully we know it, the greater is the happiness that we can bring into the world.
The Dialectician's Oath
The dialectician must be a champion of Reason, Debate and absolute Truth, and must, to the best of his or her ability, be dedicated to Truth, Goodness and Beauty. If ever called upon to present earnestly the claim of either ally or opponent, the dialectician must present that claim in the strongest form in which he or she is capable of presenting it. Every dialectician will be sworn to abide by this code of conduct.
The Philosophical, Critical and Practical Divisions of the Logos
The Philosophical Dialectic
The Philosophical Division of the Truth Engine Logos (& Logikon) will comprise the gameplay of the Game of a Trillion Worlds pertaining to the most general sub-topics; for instance, if the topic is the UFO controversy, the question of what, in general, constitutes evidence will be found in this division, and the same division will be referenced in the texts covering many different topics.
The Critical Dialectic
The Critical Division of the Truth Engine Logos (& Logikon) will comprise the gameplay of the Game of a Trillion Worlds pertaining to the less general sub-topics; for instance, if the topic is the UFO controversy, the dialectic concerning the specific cases will be found in this diviision.
The Practical "Dialectic"
The Practical Division of the Truth Engine Logos (& Logikon): will comprise (1) myriad No Learning Curve (NLC) Step by Steps (SbSs) called "algorithms" (these are workflows, decision trees) + the related tools, and (2) the products of these algorithms + tools.