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Applied Virtues

• Curiosity: The drive to find new problems and generate conjectures.

• Self-Criticism: The primary tool of intellectual honesty.

• Clarity: The virtue of refining thoughts to be less ambiguous and easier to criticise.

• Epistemic Humility: The consistent recognition of one's own fallibility.

• Thoroughness: The commitment to accounting for all known uncontroverted ideas and pending criticisms that may pertain to the problem at hand. {This seems weak}

• Good Faith: The commitment to "steel-manning" ideas and criticisms.

• Resilience / Fortitude: The ability to recover from failure and re-apply the process.

• Decisiveness: The will to act once a conjecture is provisionally accepted and criticism is exhausted.

• Self-Discipline: {This one needs work. I don't understand it well enough to write a good summary.}

• Courage: The will to face the potential pains of the epistemic process (facing uncomfortable truths, acting on counter-intuitive conclusions, thinking alone).

• Accountability: A social manifestation of integrity; the willingness to "own" the consequences of one's actions.

• Reliability: The practice of meeting one's voluntary commitments.

• Proportionality: The skill of acting proportionately to a given situation, criticism or event.

• Intellectual Impartiality: The skill of separating the content of an idea from its source, allowing criticism to be applied fairly.

• Fairness: The consistent application of the same critical standards to all ideas.

• Intellectual Patience: The willingness to give a problem the time it needs, rather than using a problematic solution (a solution with pending criticisms). {Okay but what if it is an emergency?}

• Foresight & Planning: The application of conjecture and criticism to problems pertaining to future circumstances.

• Diligence / Industriousness: The sustained application of effort to the problem-solving process, usually to a particular problem.

• Creativity / Ingenuity: The skill of generating novel conjectures and criticisms.

• Efficiency: The drive to reduce the work, resources or steps it takes to solve problems.

• Resourcefulness: The skill of solving problems within constraints.

• Purposefulness: The skill of defining a hierarchy of problems to solve, ensuring one's productive effort is directed at goals worth pursuing.

• Focus: The ability to sustain mental effort.

• Sharpness: Raw mental processing power.

• Energy / Vitality: The capacity to be highly productive, especially over long durations.

• Athleticism / Physicality: The capacity of the body to execute actions.

• Memory: The ability to store and retrieve important conjectures and criticisms.

Applied Virtues

• Curiosity: The drive to find new problems and generate conjectures.

• Self-Criticism: The primary tool of intellectual honesty.

• Clarity: The virtue of refining thoughts to be less ambiguous and easier to criticise.

• Epistemic Humility: The consistent recognition of one's own fallibility.

• Thoroughness: The commitment to accounting for all known uncontroverted ideas and pending criticisms that may pertain to the problem at hand. {This seems weak}

• Good Faith: The commitment to "steel-manning" ideas and criticisms.

• Resilience / Fortitude: The ability to recover from failure and re-apply the process.

• Decisiveness: The will to act once a conjecture is provisionally accepted and criticism is exhausted.

• Self-Discipline: {This one needs work. I don't understand it well enough to write a good summary.}

• Courage: The will to face the potential pains of the epistemic process (facing uncomfortable truths, acting on counter-intuitive conclusions, thinking alone).

• Accountability: A social manifestation of integrity; the willingness to "own" the consequences of one's actions.

• Reliability: The practice of meeting one's voluntary commitments.

• Proportionality: The skill of acting proportionately to a given situation, criticism or event.

• Intellectual Impartiality: The skill of separating the content of an idea from its source, allowing criticism to be applied fairly.

• Fairness: The consistent application of the same critical standards to all ideas.

• Intellectual Patience: The willingness to give a problem the time it needs, rather than using a problematic solution (a solution with pending criticisms). {Okay but what if it is an emergency?}

• Foresight & Planning: The application of conjecture and criticism to problems pertaining to future circumstances.

• Diligence / Industriousness: The sustained application of effort to the problem-solving process, usually to a particular problem.

• Creativity / Ingenuity: The skill of generating novel conjectures and criticisms.

• Efficiency: The drive to reduce the work, resources or steps it takes to solve problems.

• Resourcefulness: The skill of solving problems within constraints.

• Purposefulness: The skill of defining a hierarchy of problems to solve, ensuring one's productive effort is directed at goals worth pursuing.

• Focus: The ability to sustain mental effort.

• Sharpness: Raw mental processing power.

• Energy / Vitality: The capacity to be highly productive, especially over long durations.

• Athleticism / Physicality: The capacity of the body to execute actions.

• Memory: The ability to store and retrieve important conjectures and criticisms.

• Conscientiousness: The opposite of negligence. A commitment to making genuine efforts; not cutting corners.

• Excellence: The opposite of mediocrity. Man can go “as high as his ability will carry him” (The Virtue of Selfishness, ch. 12).

Applied Virtues

• Curiosity: The drive to find new problems and generate conjectures.

• Self-Criticism: The primary tool of intellectual honesty.

• Clarity: The virtue of refining thoughts to be less ambiguous and easier to criticise.

• Epistemic Humility: The constant recognition of one's own fallibility.

• Thoroughness: The commitment to accounting for all known uncontroverted ideas and pending criticisms that may pertain to the problem at hand. {This seems weak}

• Good Faith: The commitment to "steel-manning" ideas and criticisms.

• Resilience / Fortitude: The ability to recover from failure and re-apply the process.

• Decisiveness: The will to act once a conjecture is provisionally accepted and criticism is exhausted.

• Self-Discipline: {This one needs work. I don't understand it well enough to write a good summary.}

• Courage: The will to face the potential pains of the epistemic process (facing uncomfortable truths, acting on counter-intuitive conclusions, thinking alone).

• Accountability: A social manifestation of integrity; the willingness to "own" the consequences of one's actions.

• Reliability: The practice of meeting one's voluntary commitments.

• Proportionality: The skill of acting proportionately to a given situation, criticism or event.

• Intellectual Impartiality: The skill of separating the content of an idea from its source, allowing criticism to be applied fairly.

• Fairness: The consistent application of the same critical standards to all ideas.

• Intellectual Patience: The willingness to give a problem the time it needs, rather than using a problematic solution (a solution with pending criticisms). {Okay but what if it is an emergency?}

• Foresight & Planning: The application of conjecture and criticism to problems pertaining to future circumstances.

• Diligence / Industriousness: The sustained application of effort to the problem-solving process, usually to a particular problem.

• Creativity / Ingenuity: The skill of generating novel conjectures and criticisms.

• Efficiency: The drive to reduce the work, resources or steps it takes to solve problems.

• Resourcefulness: The skill of solving problems within constraints.

• Purposefulness: The skill of defining a hierarchy of problems to solve, ensuring one's productive effort is directed at goals worth pursuing.

• Focus: The ability to sustain mental effort.

• Sharpness: Raw mental processing power.

• Energy / Vitality: The capacity to be highly productive, especially over long durations.

• Athleticism / Physicality: The capacity of the body to execute actions.

• Memory: The ability to store and retrieve important conjectures and criticisms.

Applied Virtues

• Curiosity: The drive to find new problems and generate conjectures.

• Self-Criticism: The primary tool of intellectual honesty.

• Clarity: The virtue of refining thoughts to be less ambiguous and easier to criticise.

• Epistemic Humility: The consistent recognition of one's own fallibility.

• Thoroughness: The commitment to accounting for all known uncontroverted ideas and pending criticisms that may pertain to the problem at hand. {This seems weak}

• Good Faith: The commitment to "steel-manning" ideas and criticisms.

• Resilience / Fortitude: The ability to recover from failure and re-apply the process.

• Decisiveness: The will to act once a conjecture is provisionally accepted and criticism is exhausted.

• Self-Discipline: {This one needs work. I don't understand it well enough to write a good summary.}

• Courage: The will to face the potential pains of the epistemic process (facing uncomfortable truths, acting on counter-intuitive conclusions, thinking alone).

• Accountability: A social manifestation of integrity; the willingness to "own" the consequences of one's actions.

• Reliability: The practice of meeting one's voluntary commitments.

• Proportionality: The skill of acting proportionately to a given situation, criticism or event.

• Intellectual Impartiality: The skill of separating the content of an idea from its source, allowing criticism to be applied fairly.

• Fairness: The consistent application of the same critical standards to all ideas.

• Intellectual Patience: The willingness to give a problem the time it needs, rather than using a problematic solution (a solution with pending criticisms). {Okay but what if it is an emergency?}

• Foresight & Planning: The application of conjecture and criticism to problems pertaining to future circumstances.

• Diligence / Industriousness: The sustained application of effort to the problem-solving process, usually to a particular problem.

• Creativity / Ingenuity: The skill of generating novel conjectures and criticisms.

• Efficiency: The drive to reduce the work, resources or steps it takes to solve problems.

• Resourcefulness: The skill of solving problems within constraints.

• Purposefulness: The skill of defining a hierarchy of problems to solve, ensuring one's productive effort is directed at goals worth pursuing.

• Focus: The ability to sustain mental effort.

• Sharpness: Raw mental processing power.

• Energy / Vitality: The capacity to be highly productive, especially over long durations.

• Athleticism / Physicality: The capacity of the body to execute actions.

• Memory: The ability to store and retrieve important conjectures and criticisms.

The Open Society

The concept of an 'Open Society' is central to the political philosophy of Critical Rationalism, detailed by Karl Popper in The Open Society and Its Enemies. An open society is characterized by individualism, where personal choice and responsibility are paramount, in contrast to a closed society (e.g., tribal or collectivist) which demands the subordination of the individual to the group. It replaces the justificationist political question, "Who should rule?", with the fallibilist question: "How can we structure our institutions so that we can remove bad rulers and bad policies without violence?". In this view, democracy is not "rule by the people" (an essentialist definition) but is valued as the only known institutional mechanism for error-correction and leadership change without bloodshed.

The Open Society

The concept of an 'Open Society' is central to the political philosophy of Critical Rationalism, detailed by Karl Popper in The Open Society and Its Enemies. An open society is characterized by individualism, where personal choice and responsibility are paramount, in contrast to a closed society (e.g., tribal or collectivist) which demands the subordination of the individual to the group. The theory replaces the justificationist political question, "Who should rule?", with the fallibilist question: "How can we structure our institutions so that we can remove bad rulers and bad policies without violence?” In this view, democracy is not "rule by the people" (an essentialist definition) but is valued as the only known institutional mechanism for changing policy and leadership without violence.

Fallibilism

This is the philosophical position that all human knowledge—every belief, theory, and observation—is conjectural, incomplete, and potentially mistaken. It holds that there is no conclusive justification and no rational certainty for any belief. Fallibilism is distinct from skepticism. Skepticism argues that because certainty is impossible, knowledge is impossible. Fallibilism agrees that certainty is impossible but denies that this invalidates knowledge. Fallibilism holds that people can and do possess real, objective knowledge, and that people can improve it through a process of error correction.

Fallibilism

This is the philosophical position that all human knowledge—every belief, theory, and observation—is conjectural, tentative, potentially incomplete, and potentially mistaken. It holds that there cannot be any conclusive justification or rational certainty for anything we might believe to be true (including observations).

Fallibilism is distinct from skepticism. Skepticism argues that because certainty is impossible, knowledge is impossible. Fallibilism agrees that certainty is impossible but denies that this invalidates knowledge. Fallibilism holds that people can and do possess real, objective knowledge, and that people can improve it through a process of error correction.