Given our current cognitive architecture, the level of self knowledge that is achievable depends a great deal on your awareness of that architecture. The structure and source of your mind/brain, is one of the central tenets of any philosophy of self that hopes to have any success in allowing real introspection. Understanding your biological basis is the first step to transcending it in a substantial way. (Yes, I did just use the word transcend, please do not misunderstand, This is not an endorsement of the emotional context that the concept of transcension finds itself in these days, it's just the only appropriate word. When your biological substrate is that of a social predator that's sole evolutionary purpose is to have complexly successful progeny, and lots of them, doing maths, and building houses, can all be understood as transcending your design. Real Transcendence, manipulating your substrate, channeling and directing your evolutionary impulses, only comes with understanding, and effort. Unfortunately, we're not at a place where we can flip switches and get better. It takes real time to become aware of the processes of your mind, and move them closer to where you want to be.)

With that in mind, I'd like to discuss daily life. Daily, or moment to moment, is the way most people really experience life. Noble thoughts, and works of poetry can have great emotional impact, but ideas only alter a person, when they begin to intrude upon their actions and a decisions in a detailed way. The Ideas of Rationality, of the Scientific Method, of Altruism, and of Transhumanity, can have great emotional impact, but in many cases, I see it having little impact on daily life. People continue doing their jobs, and driving their cars, and may make plans to do things, but rarely get up the next day and alter. It may be that rationalist thought has a weakness, which prevents it from deeply affecting the majority of humans who encounter it. I'm tempted to say this is a weakness of the human design, that our cognitive architecture is too specialized towards our context and evolutionary environment to embrace rational ways of thinking. But it is more likely that as a memetic trigger, the concept of rationalism has been missing something in it's presentation to most people.

A major, if informal objection to the way I think and formalize and act, is that it has little passion or inspiration. I invariably disagree, and say that I feel very strongly about the things I do and think. But the point is well-taken. I come across to people as dry or unfeeling so often, that there appears to be a pattern I am unable as of yet to correct for. I am not unfeeling. But communication is one of my claimed strengths, and I am evidently failing to communicate. It has it's roots, I think, in the emotional quality of poetry vs. Scientific Journalism. It is said, usually by proponents of emotional quality, that less is more. Perhaps it is the endless qualifications and adjunct specifications that kills the 'passion' of my positions. Or perhaps it's the bad formation. Usually, when I am writing or talking, the subject has a quality of exploration. Because I range so far afield, when I do spend time on a specifics, often, it's for the first time. So my speaking or writing is always littered with new ideas, expressed well or badly, or limpingly explored. Perhaps it is this quality that seems to make my rationalism passionless. Example: Richard Feynman, perhaps one of the best scientific authors I've ever read. His deep understanding of physics paradoxically allowed him to make some concepts absurdly simple, and easy to understand. His talks and writing are both full of excitement and passion, and almost always well thought out. Perhaps as a function then, understanding always progresses towards poetry, simple, exact, and emotional.

I'm not certain, but I don't it's quite that simple. It never is, in my experience. The truth is likely halfway between, that rationalist thought has never really been presented clearly, only being represented in human beings, whose understanding of it has been flawed and oppositional. And our poor evolved brain seems likely to defend against any incursion by concepts that are unrelated to reproductive fitness. Lucky and strange that such mishmashes of adaptations and instincts could converge upon the tenet of rational thought. That doing the right things for the right reasons is more effective and powerful than any shortcut of knee-jerk reactions. Relating to the universe directly, instead of through a veil of abstracted adaptation.