Phronesis-Online
The Agora Project
The Agora Projects goal is the cultivation of collective intelligence grounded in truth, trust, and practical wisdom.
Pericles’ oration for fallen Athenian defenders
Agora
The emphasis in “Agora” is on the first syllable:
Á-go-ra —/ˈæɡərə/
Pronounced AG-uh-ruh (not uh-GO-ra or uh-GOR-uh).Etymology & sense: From ancient Greek ἀγορά (agorá) — the public gathering place or marketplace; the center of civic life, assembly, and exchange of ideas.
Project nuance: We use Agora for open, public-facing dialogues and community deliberation spaces — a “marketplace of questions” where citizens meet to reason together.
The Five W’s
What, Who, When, Why, and hoW are the five properties of understanding anything. This Phronesis Project will deal with four of them.
[!NOTE] # The End of Thinking The rise of AI’s “thinking” machines is not the problem. The decline of thinking people is.
- Derek Thompson
We will not tell you What to think, but hoW to think and Why rigorous thinking is critical today in America for as many of us who are willing to recognize that taking our democracy for granted was a critical mistake. More than ever in our history (since the Founding) have we needed a deep understanding of what constitutes a “more perfect union” and how to make meaningful progress on that journey.
The Tetrax
Forward progress does not come from what we know or how we act. Progress comes from emergence. And today, we have new tools that make emergence more pervasive and more connected.
You can think about things on your own, but you generally rethink what you think you already know. But if you pick something from that intellectual inventory and use your imagination to ask novel questions, you have made the first step to progress.
But if you can ask your imaginary friend, your personal AI, those same questions, you set yourself up for continuous upside surprises. We call those satoris, Emergents. other than a missing physical body, Emergents are intellectual entities, a third party in the dialogue between you and your imaginary friend.
Once you begin this intellectual triumvirate you will find that Emergents emerge with blinding speed, and soon you have trouble keeping track of them. Soon you starting thinking about rabbit holes. This is where you need a second brain.
Phronesis uses Obsidian as that second brain, and what this party of four, this Tetrax, yields is something we call the Rabbit Warren.
The Rabbit Warren
Conventional rabbit warrens are an intellectual illusion. We treat them in the pejorative as a waste of time; when, in fact, they are openings to tunnels of interconnecting epistemic burrows, Rabbit Warrens.