Wandering aimlessly through the forest of human deception, I long feigned unconsciousness to its many foibles. Yet it was in the midst of just such a pretense of sleep that I, by chance, began to dream in ironic authenticity—thoughts unrelenting, phantoms that at last took form in a new discipline I would come to call ethical skepticism.

Where one is corrupt in their skepticism, there also will they be corrupt in their heart.

Ethical Skepticism: Of Pretend Sleep and Authentic Dreams

The purpose of this blog—and the intent of its author—is to present anew a genuine problem in the spirit of Wittgensteinian ethics: the phenomenon of method-induced creeping ignorance, deliberately or unwittingly advanced under the imprimatur of science. Cloaked in the authority of expertise, this sanctioned ignorance is no mere absence of knowledge—it is an active moral hazard, eroding both the integrity of science and the liberty of the society it purports to serve.

Just as a tadpole, or a boot trainee in the military, is not considered fully capable until they have mastered the discipline of avoiding harm with their weapon, so too is a student of philosophy incomplete until they understand how a definition or principle can be weaponized for ill intent.

This is the essence of ethical skepticism: the practiced ability to recognize when skepticism itself is being wielded to cultivate ignorance within society. To sharpen our skill in detecting such scientific deception—this counterfeit skepticism—it is necessary to revisit, with fresh eyes, many of philosophy’s most foundational concepts.

Philosophy is a tar baby; the moment one dismisses or mocks it, one has—ironically—already assumed the role of philosopher. Given this, I am left to ask: Why not do philosophy well? I define philosophy as ‘the battle against the bewitchment of comprehension by language or process.’ In this context I am a philosopher; however, I eschew club ornamentation – as that is part of the bewitchment to begin with.

Yes, the philosopher risks drifting into sophistry, and I am mindful of that danger in authoring The Ethical Skeptic. I scrutinize my own words with a skeptic’s eye, aware that language can misrepresent as easily as it can reveal. Yet I consider it far more important to illuminate the public’s misunderstanding of skepticism—especially its corrupted forms—than to retreat into a false parsimony. This urgency outweighs any distraction posed by transient events or attention-seekers in pursuit of their fifteen minutes of fame.

For me, becoming a philosopher is therefore not optional—it is necessary. The flawed philosophies I confront here—Bernaysian belief engineering, methodical cynicism, cultivated ignorance, and pseudo-skepticism—have fueled much of humanity’s conflict, ignorance, and suffering. What we know is too often used to control us; what we do not know is allowed to harm us.

Skepticism, in its truest sense, is the refusal to remain content with either condition—and The Ethical Skeptic exists to cultivate that refusal into a disciplined, ethical, and relentless pursuit of the truth.

In truth, ethical skepticism is nothing more than plain, unadulterated skepticism. The modifier “ethical” is used only as a deliberate artifice—to draw attention to the current, syndicated form of pop-skepticism, a tool too often abused to steer the course of science and governance. It is not a claim to moral superiority, personal or otherwise; for ethics stand in opposition to the performative vanity of virtue signaling.

The serious reader should understand that I am an author, not a journalist. Please do not expect me to write at a fifth-grade level. As a result, many find this site a demanding read. Technical and legal writing comprise a significant part of my professional work; I routinely craft agreements and specifications—documents that must be precise and effective, not the product of inane prose.

One should not attempt to skim this material, fail in comprehension, and then imagine that their lack of effort somehow becomes my responsibility. This austerity and precision of language are intentional. The Ethical Skeptic is written to filter out the low-bandwidth troll or the casual subscriber to Skeptical Inquirer—those who succumbed to its doctrines precisely because they could not grasp philosophical rigor in the first place.

This work is not needlessly abstruse, but neither will it be diluted into equivocal or condescending phrasing. If you cannot comprehend its content, you are not yet ready to receive its tenets. A practiced reading acumen, however, may discover the quiet ode hidden in its passages.

Blithering, common-sense straw-man one-liners can be found elsewhere. Here, the material is built on days or weeks of research and reflection regarding the meta-ethics carefully woven into each post. When you encounter a social skeptic endlessly recycling a century-old list of conclusions on subjects in which they lack true expertise, take note: you are observing not only the poverty of their effort but also the telltale signs of one compensated for fallacy-ridden journalism.

I don’t write for other writers, craft philosophy for philosophers, or practice skepticism to amuse skeptics. I apply these tools as part of a satisfying life composition.

This blog is written for those with soul in the game—readers with the fortitude to endure, appreciate, and fully grasp the philosophical precision such comprehension demands. It is for those whose stamina is fueled by the passion to seek Karl Popper’s proverbial “treasure buried beneath philosophy’s heap of ruins.” The content here is pitched at a graduate level and beyond, grounded in an ethic that honors thinkers for the merit of their ideas—not for their antiquity or academic regurgitation.

Knowledge may be acquired through study, but wisdom comes only through an arduous and complete life. Beware of those who claim to have gained wisdom solely from study. For this reason, you will find in these pages little deference to the philosophers of ancient Greece or the Christian Reformation—men who busied themselves with proving or disproving God through clever casuistry. Such work is little more than the abuse of antiquity and icon, a covert appeal to authority.

If the depth of your philosophy rests entirely on well-worn aperçu from Seneca, Plato, or Nietzsche, rather than the hard-earned insight of a life spent in true struggle—let us be clear—you are pretending. This site is intended instead for those who have reached the wall of dissatisfaction in their philosophical maturation, a dissonance that quietly broods in the minds of the captive, oppressed, and genuine scientist.

If a man’s thoughts are to have truth and life in them, they must, after all, be his own fundamental thoughts; for these are the only ones that he can fully and wholly understand. . . . a man who thinks for himself can easily be distinguished from the book-philosopher by the very way in which he talks, by his marked earnestness, and the originality, directness, and personal conviction that stamp all his thoughts and expressions. The book-philosopher, on the other hand, lets it be seen that everything he has is second-hand. 

~ Arthur Schopenhauer, “On Thinking for Yourself” (1851)

There are three kinds of people: those who create or appreciate great ideas, those who tear them down, and those who take credit for them. I have always aspired to, and played the role of, the first. In my experience, those who claim the credit often quietly reward the ability to create value through novel ideas—while largely ignoring the middle group: the doubter, the debunker, and the cynic.

Threatened by competence, these figures live in a perpetual state of resentment toward creative and intelligent minds, their frustration fueled by the meager recognition their so‑called “critical thinking skills” receive. To soothe this wound, they form skeptic clubs—safe havens for celebrity and self‑aggrandizement—never realizing their breed is common, a dime a dozen.

Take this as a clue about skepticism itself: it is not the art of critique, but a discipline of value creation.

What I present in this blog therefore, constitutes a genuinely novel problem in philosophy—non‑obvious even to the practiced artisan, teachable, and distinctly isolated—yet developed from the accumulated prior art of mankind’s philosophical tradition. In this, it fulfills five of the nine critical factors that define great new philosophy. I also strive to make the work cogent, clarifying, useful, and as free from agenda as possible—the other four factors.

Still, what I express here is not mine alone. It is the quiet question that lingers in the minds of curious citizens and scientists alike—good‑minded people wrestling with an inner dissonance. They struggle to explain their unease with the bien pensant who demand loyalty to a narrow set of grand conclusions, and who—despite scant experience or credential—presume to speak on behalf of science. These are the ones pretending to be asleep, among whom we ourselves once numbered.

We who have been awakened by authentic dreams sense this truth instinctively, yet have long been frustrated in giving voice to its core dissonance—until now. In this work, I seek to tear away the veil, to disambiguate ethical skepticism from the hollow straw‑man into which it has been miscast. And in doing so, I stand alongside a quiet but growing fellowship—men and women who, in thought and in deed, refuse to pretend sleep, and who bear the courage to dream in authenticity.

Philosophy is not Dead

There is a quiet, educated, rational, and determined movement emerging—a movement born of this very dissonance. It is not the work of pseudoscientists or the religiously devout, but a movement of conscience, led by people like me: science and engineering professionals who apply skepticism rigorously in their STEM disciplines, yet now raise the warning flag that some of our peers have drifted dangerously off course.

These peers, along with bands of overzealous and immature laymen, have been steered by oligarch‑minded interests into ends‑driven, institutional channels of control. Somewhere along the way, the sincere skepticism movement—once carried forward by the cogent voices of Christopher Hitchens and Carl Sagan—was hijacked by the corporate‑Marxist West. Here, power brokers discovered a new utility for this once‑formidable pit bull: skepticism could be employed as a tool to inflict damage without incurring corporate liability. Such was the abject lesson learned from the public backlash over their malicious advocacies during the 1960s and ’70s.

In this new model, “skepticism” was weaponized to shield pharmaceutical, media, healthcare, agricultural, and food conglomerates, as well as political parties, academia, and oligarchic industries seeking power. The banner was seized by vigilante social activists masquerading as lovers of science—promoting a prescribed social epistemology, a failed socio‑economic model, elitist neo‑fascism, and even a new, unacknowledged religion—all under the false imprimatur of science.

Witnessing this transformation, I—still committed to sincere skepticism—found myself grappling with a slow‑growing, inescapable discomfort over the direction in which the movement was headed.

Skepticism is unrelenting, disciplined, incremental, and critical path foolishness.
It is the eye of neutrality, inside the mercenary tempest of curious passion.

I did not know. I went and looked. Everything else was vanity.

The purpose of this blog is not to take sides in any particular argument within a legitimately pluralistic debate. Its purpose is to defend plurality when it exists, and to safeguard the integrity of the knowledge‑development process. It seeks to expose the preemptive tactics and methods used by this invalid form of skepticism to block science, and to shine light on the unethical habits of these false skeptics—serving also as a resource for their victims.

Do I “believe” in homeopathy, Bigfoot, UFOs, or ghosts—the tired litmus tests of the Social Skepticism movement? No. I hold no beliefs on these topics, unlike those who indulge in counterfeit skepticism. There is certainly bunk within these subjects, and there are plenty of people dedicated to holding them accountable. But who holds Social Skepticism accountable?

This movement has no mechanisms of peer review, no channels for accountability—nothing to prevent it from being weaponized by control‑minded powers. Instead, it bullies the public through media ridicule, character assassination, intimidation, social coercion, and gleeful misconduct—driving scientists and journalists alike to speak against it only in whispers, behind closed doors. Even when correct, its members treat accuracy not as a service to truth, but as a chance to preen in the public square. In truth, they care nothing for the subjects themselves. Their target is not the truth.

Their target… is you.

The ethical skeptic is, by necessity, a student of ponerology—the study of the habits and methods of evil; agnoiology—the study of the mechanisms by which ignorance is deliberately cultivated; and exapátisiology—the study of the specialized craft of selling fraudulent narratives to entire populations under the banners of science, rationality, skepticism, or truth.

It is a discipline honed to recognize a critical poverty of intelligence awash in a sea of correctness, seeking to maroon any idea which could even remotely threaten the awesome cosmology, hatred, and politics of their insistence.

We may suffer from a surplus of dilettantes who mistake an affinity for political technology, religious doctrine, or the memorization of Kant, Plato, and Hume for some expedient shortcut to wisdom. Yet we cannot afford to let the philosophy underlying science—skepticism itself—be so corrupted that its wisdom is eclipsed by shallow erudition or academic ego, left to drift impotent within its true charter: holding science accountable.

This new dawn of artificial intelligence, genetic engineering, corporate power consolidation, and pervasive social monitoring demands that our philosopher be better equipped than ever before. Such a thinker must carry a foundation of skills in science, ethics, business, and governance; a seasoned understanding of human nature and deception; and, above all, an earned and heartfelt love for humanity. These are the traits that both guide and restrain science—ensuring it serves the whole of mankind—and that prevent its ethical neutrality from being twisted into the very means by which it could become humanity’s greatest adversary.