Precepts of redngee

WIP: This is a WIP, and it will probably never reach an absolute final state too. I lost interest in it for now so I might come back to this another year or never again, it's already in a readable state tho.

Most precept banks (religions, philosophy) are either extremely unoptimized or are extremely hard to decipher, the Bible is so bloated that everyone ends up breaking many rules, here's my precepts in an attempt to fix that.

It's inspired by actual good area-specific philosofies, like GNU: 4 rules is all they need. I've identified two variables on rule-making: specificity, clarity. So by expanding it, we have: very specific and very clear (basically law), very specific and not clear (i guess shakespeare), not specific and not clear (buzzwords like 'Empathy'), and finally, not specific and very clear (GNU)

As given in the examples, all these have particular uses. In informal and for quick references, you can't recite the full precept so you just go with a buzzword. For law it's very important to be both, in order to prevent some clever people from exploiting the system.

I think that for studying the precepts and then applying to a wide range of subjects the GNU one is very bullet-proof, because it works like a specification standard: there's the part that's hard coded for every implementation to be compatible, but it doesn't try to find out everything that people can do with it. Kind of decoupling vibes, like universal interfaces.

I didn't read any formal philosophy (if any, there's the categorical imperative, from which I stole the word), as it would be a waste of time. All my thoughts are my own, built from my own experiences and studies. Although I do have consumed some philosophical content, which is inevitable for anyone. There's some precepts that I copied from other people because they work perfectly with my worldview.

I'm always refining and refactoring my philosophies, so this could change completely. If you like something in this version, save it to your computer. Everything is ephemeral especially stuff out of our control.

Writing this could or could not be an inspiration from Zote. Or it could just be my brain thinking they're clever, although I still wrote protections to combat any of these bad feelings.

Rules: every rule or precept has a number, and can be referenced somewhere else in the precepts. Rules are ordered from most important (being above all subsequent rules) to least important.

Imperatives: Inside rules, I assign some sentences an imperative number. These sentences act as constants for the entire rule and can be referenced inside the rule itself, their scope is local to the rule.

Definitions: natural language is a subjective mess. I include definitions to words that we might or might not have the same definition, so that we're all on the same page. This is a standard on formal documents too, so nothing new.

1. Hurt nobody: (I1) This includes yourself. (I2) This has no exceptions (even the worst person on earth is included) and is general (also applies to animals). (I3) This includes all types of hurting (physical, psychological, moral, etc.).
Since it's impossible to make everyone happy, you should try to minimize the amount of hurt people midterm (shortterm and longterm are bad) as much as possible, respecting Imperative 1, regardless of shortterm consequences (but since some people don't like when others do crazy stuff under the excuse of longterm benefit, this last atom can be dismissed).
It shouldn't matter if they hurt you first, as there's many other, better, ways of solving conflicts. Violence only leads to grievance, which leads to more violence.
2. Your freedom ends when another person's freedom begins: This is a definite and easy counter to those clever people who think freedom automatically means the entire world is theirs to do whatever.
Everyone, at least should, get the same amount of freedom as everyone, and the freedom space is enough for anyone to live comfortably.
If you're low on freedom space, you should think about what is bloating it and optimize it. A need for more freedom, as good as the reasons may be, is an easy way to get lost from yourself.
3. Do things as an end, not as a means: (I1) But don't go thinking you should stay in comfort zone.
AKA: Do things because they're fun
About Imperative 1, end does not mean not having a cause to live for, it just means the end should be your cause [to live for]. If you live for a cause in the world (i.e. being poor), chances are someday that cause will get solved (winning the lottery) and you will lose your meaning of life.
I'm pretty sure this has been said many times by different people with different wording, but Khatzumoto said it well: in Khatz words, it's much easier to learn something if you're having fun learning that thing, also it will be a much more enjoyable process.
Most of the time the brain only evaluates if the activity is worth doing on the external basis of if it's fun (there's some other variables that are more rarely used), to allocate resources for that activity (memory, ATP, etc.). I call these the worthness variables, since they are used by the brain to see if something is worth the energy to keep doing.
If you're starting to treat the thing as a means (like a chore), either it's time to reevaluate what's making it not fun (most things done as a means are not fun, i.e. work to gain money, but it's possible to make them be), or evaluate if it's worth doing it at all. That is because eventually the brain will do a periodic check on that activity to calculate it's worthness, and if it's not worthy doing (according to brain) you'll start to forget it spontaneously, and if you force it through anyway, you'll burnout or start to get crazy (I know I did).
Commentary: When eating something, anybody with due respect to their bodies won't keep forcing it through if it's not being enjoyable, else they would get sick and get it all out. It's quite the same with any other activity, forcing yourself to get through won't be fun in the process and much less longterm (maybe you'll get a cool story to tell the kids of how x turned your life into hell for y time).
4. Be bold, but don't be irresponsible: PT Wikipedia does a better job at explaining this than me
AKA: Know your limits
5. Commit to your promises: If you can't commit to your promises, don't start them in the first place. If you already started and can't do it, cancel it in the most graceful way possible and assume the responsibility of failure.
It's infuriating when people promise something to me and in the last minute they cancel it, and get angry that I got angry at their irresponsibility.
6. (IDK) Consistency is key: (I1) You gotta be consistent on your stuff. (I2) You gotta be consistent on your consistency. If you can't settle on anything everything will become a mess and you'll get nowhere, because you keep changing volately.
There are ways to manage your inconsistency and still be successful, and that might fall in Imperative 2.
7. Be the change you want to see: AKA: Make stuff happen
History has shown that (I1) change doesn't naturally come if nobody does anything, and (I2) change doesn't come when only 1 person does it. If you want change, do your contribution by studying, teaching, and protesting, it doesn't matter if you're a nobody (see Imperative 2), in fact, most rebellions consist of a few thinkers and organizers and a huge army of people like you and me (nobodies). It also doesn't matter if you're not going hardcore doing the 3 things at the same time, you can just study, or just protest, or teach and protest only (if you're not cultured about the subject, there's other forms of lightening the bulbs in people's minds), but you have to do a minimum work to keep the flame burning. And as always, you gotta have fun doing it (Precept 3 - Do things as an end, not as a means), else you'll eventually burnout or start to hate it.
8. Don't groupthink: This might get merged with the next rule. It's easy to let into the temptation of following others to feel part of society, but this eventually disincourages change, creates hostility towards difference. Your feelings should not be the main (emphasis on main, because there are cases where feelings give good contributions to logic) decision maker
9. Don't turn implants into your personality: AKA: Dont internalize (i forgot this word existed all this time LMAO)
(I1) This is anything that is put into your body and mind (with or without consent) after you're born. (ex. morals, stereotypes, prejudices/beliefs, body changes, ). (I2) Everyone has implanted thoughts to some extent, since it is impossible to get rid of everything back to your birth.
You shouldn't let anybody tell you that their perspective is the absolute truth, in fact, history has shown us that nothing has an absolute truth. Try to evaluate every perspective without bias (bias is the direct consequence of implants) and see which one is a best candidate for building your own perspective, and after building it, append your perspective to the list of perspectives and repeat it all again. Given some iterations, it's possible to get rid of the implant almost completely, and create something that closely aligns with your actual personality. But don't run many iterations very fast, as you might run out of memory and then the OOM killer[^1] will run. It's basically like a recursive self-reflection.
Often an implanted thought will get deeply rooted and merge with your personality, which will be very hard to get rid of when you get into trouble because of it. And you will get in trouble someday.
The brain (your actual personality) and the implants might not agree, which gives great stress.
Given Imperative 2, you should still maintain your implants controlled so as to not control you (as in, have more implants than actual self). If you get too many implants, you'll stop being true to yourself.
Commentary: I've been working on killing most implants for a while, and found out most of them are made-up bullshit. Killing the implants is making it a lot easier to see other sides and change, and align myself better with the brain, which makes me a happier person. But it makes me think, wouldn't this be the biggest self-implanted vice of all vices?
10. Respect other people's philosophies: Sub: Nobody is the same - people need to stop believing this shit that everyone is equal and blablabla, and I think schools are indeed going strong on it, but i'm also going to say it. It's true that with some effort anybody can be a world-shaker, but you see, i said some effort, because everyone has different disabilities and abilities which need to be worked carefully. EVERYONE. Don't go thinking you're normal because you have all members of your body and no brain disorders (chances are you actually have). Nobody knows what an 'ideal human' would be and honestly it's best to forget it as it would be boring, also we already know what happens when you try to reach perfection (see: purebreed dogs; FullMetal Alchemist)
(D1) Philosophies is a synonym of methods, or any of the stuff that oneself uses to guide their life. It can range from religions to even just tools (D2) Respect here is basically keeping other people's philosophies valid, as bad as they seem to be.
As said in Rule 5 - 'Dont turn implants into your personality', hardly any method will be the best one for everyone, so you shouldn't impose your method even if it's perfect for you.
Commentary: it's never fun when people point fingers at you because you did something dumb, or didn't know something seen as trivial, so you shouldn't do it (also, dont do it just because they do it, aka Groupthinking). We are all a Work In Progress till the end of our lives, everyone is born differently, learns differently, and at different times, so it is antiproductive to assume everyone knows things, or that everyone's brains work the same.
11. Ignore all the rules mentioned here: This is self-explanatory, and shouldn't be needed to say, considering you've read everything.