Internet Manifesto

Some of my online goals are broad and socially oriented. That means I like to "discuss" things forcefully. By way of introduction, and admonition to myself, here are the principles behind all this arguing. there’s some righteously impossible stuff in here but hey, it’s a mission statement: you gotta aim high.

Mission: Change things for the better by winning people over to and through reason and empathy, and make life fun and interesting doing it.

Themes:

• Improve the quality of discourse here and in RL. Be sure to listen. Be welcoming to all but pay more attention to my friends. 
• Try to address issues as they deserve, atomically vs as an indivisible federated system. (Plank by plank, not monolithic political platform.) A favorite tack is to introduce the schism between a Christian (or secular humanist, take your pick) approach to people, and Darwinistic economics.
• Language is a tricky sword. We have to communicate in meaning, but we use words. Words carry context, deep and precise, but not the same ones for everyone. Further, you can assert one meaning and access another, sometimes invidiously. I aim to clarify these mistakes of argument, flush them out.
• Understand confirmation bias and media and social “tribe” participation in that phenomenon. Watch for it in myself and proselytize against it.
• Attempt to discover “righteous” economic policies, those being ones that are generally good for everyone, long term, and abusive to none.
• Brew fine quality beers with minimal investment in ingredients, obscene devotion to equipment, slavish investment of time, and barely sufficient patience.
• Productionize disruptive argumentative technique to improve the reasoning and decisionmaking of all my customers, with the effect of multiplying stockholder equity with justice and improved gas mileage for all.
• Continually improve this mission statement until it stands as a shining paragon of truth and beauty, with rhetoric surpassing Newt Gingrich, poetry to shame Johnnie Cochran, principle outshining the Constitution, permanance outlasting the Hyundai warranty, moves like Jagger and acumen that breaks the very Speed of Light. Amen.