Who am I? Why am I here?
Admiral Stockdale famously didn’t seem too sure … but the Cogent Provocateur is here to stagger you with ideas you have never imagined having, and body-check the facts all your little friends are jumping off the cliffs for.
[Note to readers: If you are offended by lavish use of dashes — and ellipses — … kindly read no further.]
I’m a fact-checker — and often a thread-killer. In heated online debate, both sides often bite ravenously on a proffered bone of contention — without knowing if it’s a real bone at all … or even a rubber chew toy. Six decades of interest in AI, and four decades diversified experience in IT, led me to explore principles of inference and foundational tenets of disciplines from predicate calculus to lit crit.
I have fact-checked in public and private. I have done some “oppo”, and rapid response, and have fact-checked fund-raising fodder back when reputable fundraising pro’s thought the best appeals were build around kernels of truth. And I’m the go-to for too many friends when thick-sliced baloney from their friends hits the inbox.
I strive to fact-check myself before anybody else gets to, and to correct any error that does get out the door before it comes back thru the window wrapped around a rock.
And like Liz Cheney, I have been drummed out of positions of influence for siding with truth at the expense of tribal dogma.
Popular democracy is increasingly unpopular. Folks still favor the IDEA (though it’s trending down), but nobody feels good about the PROCESS … or the RESULTS. And few who practice it full-time — amateurs and big-time pro’s alike — have ever dug into its foundations.
Starting from the foundation blocks, I will suggest a radical reinvention of the democratic process — and with it the entire ecosystem of public discourse. Not just government, journalism and opinion research, but large swaths of discourse within and between other voluntary and de facto communities, real and virtual, including collective decision processes in management, science, law, and indeed … fact-checking!
I’ll also introduce an alternative approach —less costly and more effective where applicable — to broad domains of conventional philanthropy and public policy. The introductory article (Jackpots for Vacc Shots) exposes the tip of a mother lode of potential “Golden Ticket” applications.
And I may take deep digs at the foundations of conventional thinking in other disciplines.
Posts may be longer, deeper, and less frequent than most blogs and newsletters. I lean toward long-form thinking and writing, in a short memory, short attention span, short-form twitterpated culture.
If and when I institute a paid subscriber option, subscriptions will be in the nature of voluntary contributions to support the work … likegetting alaptopwitha dependable spacebar. Most or all content will still be freely accessible here.
What will a subscription get you? New material in your cluttered inbox, immediately as it is published, instead of having to look the at the website repeatedly to see if I’ve done anything. And by all means:
To learn more about the publishing platform, visit Substack.com.
