A Reference Volume · 217 Entries
The Critical Fallibilism Dictionary
Critical Fallibilism is Elliot Temple's philosophy of how to think, learn, and decide: judge ideas in a binary way — refuted or not — and act only on those with no known error. This volume defines its vocabulary and the traditions it draws on: Critical Rationalism, the Theory of Constraints, and Objectivism.
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Four Traditions
All traditions →- CF 210
Critical Fallibilism
Elliot Temple’s philosophy: evaluate ideas with decisive criticism and accept only those with no known errors.
- CR 75
Critical Rationalism
Karl Popper’s epistemology: knowledge grows by conjecture and refutation, never by justification or induction.
- ToC 48
Theory of Constraints
Eli Goldratt’s management theory: a system’s output is governed by its single binding constraint.
- Oism 41
Objectivism
Ayn Rand’s philosophy: reason as the means of knowledge, oriented to an objective, context-bound reality.
Foundational Entries
Full index →- № 039 Critical Fallibilism Elliot Temple's rational philosophy that evaluates ideas in a binary, error-correction way and acts only on ideas with no known refutation, synthesizing Critical Rationalism, Theory of Constraints, and Objectivism.
- № 217 Yes or No Philosophy Temple's framework that idea evaluation is fundamentally binary: you judge an idea refuted or non-refuted for a purpose, never scoring its degree of goodness.
- № 048 Decisive Criticism A criticism logically incompatible with the idea it targets, so accepting it forbids accepting the idea; it either refutes the idea or accomplishes nothing, with no degree in between.
- № 033 Constraint Applied to Epistemology CF's transfer of Goldratt's constraint concept into reasoning: spend detailed attention only on the few factors that actually bind an idea's success, and grade the rest pass/fail.
- № 012 Binary Epistemology The thesis that ideas should be judged by exactly two outcomes—refuted or non-refuted—rather than placed on an analog scale of strength, goodness, or probability.
- № 146 Paths Forward A methodology for organizing one's ideas and discussion so that errors others already understand can actually reach and correct you.
Reading Paths
All paths →- 08 Start Here A gentle on-ramp to Critical Fallibilism: what it is, the traditions it draws on, and its central binary move.
- 13 CF Epistemology Core The heart of CF's theory of knowledge: decisive criticism, binary refutation, and the rejection of degrees of certainty.
- 14 Decision-Making and Theory of Constraints From the broken math of weighing factors to binary evaluation, breakpoints, and the constraint-focused logic CF borrows from Goldratt.