Valhalla Research

a better world is possible. but it has to be built.

most of the modern progressive and left-of-center critique on the world rests on critique-without-action. the anarchist philosophy has nailed critique over the years, adeptly describing the problems with capital, politics, power, oppression and the state. the Very Online Left has seemingly nailed all manner of discourse on the problems with the state, and I don't say this in a tongue-in-cheek way. they are often right.

technology is flawed, the state oppresses, privacy is evaporating, war and conflict is increasing at an alarming rate. while the world, by most metrics, is becoming richer, healthier and more educated, there are some massive asterisks next to these improvements that do warrant discussion. some of this site will be dedicated to this discussion, of diagnosing problems with technology, research, science, politics, governance, culture, philosophy.

critically, though, I don't believe in stopping with critique. I think stopping at critique is lazy, and it's easy: anyone can look at a complex system and say "this is broken and here are the ways it's broken" but almost nobody can tell you how to fix it. where we end up is a world where problems and their descriptions are plentiful and solutions are nonexistent, and I'd argue this is roughly as bad as living in a world where the problems are wholly unknown.

so this site is dedicated to solutions... or at least my search for them. the overly online among you may correctly see that this site, formerly "just a blog", is inspired heavily by Gwern's site: I will write soon about why I changed and why I think this format is better. its organization is still to-be-determined, but I'm starting to organize it around hundomentals: topic maps that trace ideas down to their precursor knowledge and back up through higher-level systems.