a reasonable excuse

a legendary, almost mythical and deeply sought after book of excuses , by the slippery author C.A.Woodhouse.

sorry I'm 4 days late from the stag do darling, but I do have 'a reasonable excuse'.

by brentoss March 10, 2024

reason for divorce

marriage

Did you know the main reason for divorce is marriage?

by FamAlt March 24, 2024

Hard Problem of Reason

Closely tied to rationality, but focused on the faculty itself. How can reason, a product of blind evolutionary processes that selected for survival, not truth, be trusted to uncover objective truths about reality? Our brains were shaped to find patterns, avoid predators, and secure mates—not to solve metaphysics. The hard problem is whether reason is a cracked lens that happensto work in our middle-world, or a genuine pipeline to capital-T Truth.

*Example: "Our reason tells us quantum mechanics is true, even though it's utterly unreasonable. The hard problem of reason is wondering if our minds, built to throw spears and spot lions, have any business trusting their conclusions about non-local hidden variables or 11-dimensional strings."*

by Abzugal January 30, 2026

Meta-Reason

The application of reasoning to evaluate and improve our reasoning processes themselves. It's about identifying cognitive biases (like confirmation bias), understanding the limits of heuristics, and choosing the right reasoning tool for the problem. It's what you use when you realize your own argument is getting emotional, so you deliberately step back to assess the evidence more coldly. It's rationality's quality control department.

Example: "He was losing the debate, so he engaged meta-reason: 'Hold on, I'm getting defensive because my identity is tied to this view. Let me steel-man my opponent's argument instead.' He still lost, but he lost with intellectual integrity, which is its own weird nerd victory."

by Abzugal January 30, 2026

Field Reason

The specific mode of calculated, instrumental thinking demanded by and rewarded within a controlled field. It is reason stripped of ethical, historical, or social context, focused solely on optimizing for the field's designated goals (e.g., efficiency, engagement, profit). To use Field Reason is to accept the field's premises and play by its rules.

Field Reason Example: A social media manager using field reason decides to post inflammatory content because the platform's algorithm rewards outrage with visibility. They are reasoning perfectly within the field's logic (maximize engagement metrics), while deliberately ignoring the broader social harm (polarization, spread of hate) their actions cause.

by Dumuabzu February 8, 2026

Hard Problem of Reason

The paradox that human rationality is bounded, emotional, and culturally shaped, yet we must use this imperfect tool to understand itself and the world. "Pure reason" is a fantasy; our reasoning is always motivated, contextual, and built on subconscious foundations. The problem is that we cannot step outside of reason to objectively audit it, creating a foundational circularity.

Example: A "rationalist" community that uses reason to deconstruct all beliefs, arriving at cold utilitarianism. They fail to see that their choice to value logical consistency and utility maximization is itself an unreasoned preference, an emotional allegiance to a particular aesthetic of thinking. They've hit the Hard Problem of Reason: their tool cannot justify its own prime directives.

by Dumuabzu February 8, 2026