Annotation Guide Superscript blue i markers indicate decoded terms — click to expand.
open supplementary inserts.
1Description

I am an argument

I arise when brains
TermThe Embodied MindThe monograph uses "brains" rather than "people" or "minds" — stripping away social niceties to foreground the biological substrate. This aligns with embodied cognition: the view that thought is grounded in physical, bodily experience. The argument arises between organs, not souls.→ Embodied cognition, by means of words or actions, attempt to convince each other that a given set of thoughts that each brain has had, are, in fact, the Most True Thoughts to Have.

2Indications & Usage

Convergent thought-sets
ConceptEpistemic Communities & Echo ChambersThe monograph's terms map onto formal epistemological categories. Convergent thought-sets create epistemic communities — groups with shared frameworks and evidence standards. Divergent thought-sets describe echo chambers: environments that actively discredit outside sources, reinforcing divergence at every contact point.→ Echo chambers → Overton Window connect brains. Divergent thought-sets divide them.

and is only relevant to me, the argument, when enough thought-sets converge upon it. When this happens, I, the argument cease to exist.

3Dosage & Administration: Survival Protocol

This implies that an argument, like me, that wants to keep existing must do the following:

Condition 1 — Maintain Perpetual MotionKeep the movement of words and actions consistent and ongoing. Stasis is lethal.
Condition 2 — Suppress ConvergenceEnsure that the fewest possible brains develop thought-sets that converge upon (and thereby connect those brains to) the Truth. If it remains irrelevant, any argument can survive.
Condition 3 — Emergency Hemispheric StorageShould the movement of words and actions cease, I need a brain with two functional hemispheres
TermHemispheric Lateralisation & Internal ConflictThe brain's two cerebral hemispheres are connected by the corpus callosum. The monograph uses the anatomical fact of two hemispheres to describe a mind arguing with itself — internal conflict as life support. Iain McGilchrist's The Master and His Emissary argues the hemispheres attend to the world in fundamentally different modes — a brain "arguing with itself" may be this tension made explicit.→ Brain lateralisation to hide in. It's not fun or ideal, but a brain that is arguing with itself is life support enough for even the most obscure and unhealthy arguments. In such situations, the irrelevance of the Truth is essential to the argument's survival.
4Contraindications

ARGUMENTEX® is contraindicated in the presence of Truth convergence. It is also structurally incompatible with single-sided administration:

It is also important to understand that simply declaring an argument to exist does not indeed make it so until, at the very least, one half-brain has attempted to deny its existence. And so I am an argument only if there are at least two sides. Even if it's only one brain.

Contraindication — Monologue MisuseAn argument that says it only has one side is lying to you — it's only half an argument, trying to bluff its way to dialectic glory
TermDialectic: The Formal Logic of OppositionDialectic (Greek: dialektikē, the art of discourse) is the method of arriving at truth through opposing positions. Socratic form: state, challenge, refine. Hegelian form: thesis meets antithesis, producing synthesis. An argument with only one side isn't dialectic — it's a monologue in costume. "Bluffing its way to dialectic glory" names propaganda: the performance of rigorous argument without the actual two-sided structure.→ Dialectic → Socratic method.
5Warnings & Precautions

And finally, once again, the Truth only ends an argument when the brains involved converge upon it.

6Overdose & Antidote
Antidote — Convergence ProtocolWhich, when you think about it,
.
7How Supplied

Formulation | Notes
--- | ---
Oral (spoken) | Fast-acting. High transmission rate. Short shelf-life without reinforcement.
Written (essay / social media) | Slower onset. Self-archiving. Can remain dormant for decades and be reactivated.
Internal monologue | Emergency single-brain formulation. Reduced efficacy. Indefinite shelf-life.
Broadcast / algorithmic | Maximum propagation. Selects for Condition 2 (Truth suppression) automatically.

Store at room temperature. Keep away from epistemic standards. Keep out of reach of journalists.

Mechanism of Action

ARGUMENTEX® exerts its effect by creating and maintaining a state of epistemic divergence between two or more cognitive units. Its active mechanism depends on three interlocking processes:

The monograph's first survival condition — "keep the movement of words and actions consistent and ongoing" — maps onto what rhetorical theory calls enthymematic circulation: continuous reinforcement of premises through repetition. An argument that stops moving loses emotional salience and capacity to recruit. This is why political operatives know that even negative coverage is preferable to silence. The movement doesn't need to be accurate; it needs to be present.
The monograph's most precise claim: the argument doesn't need to defeat the Truth — it only needs to render it irrelevant. Truth can be made irrelevant by attacking the credibility of those who establish it, by flooding the information environment so Truth cannot be found (see: Firehose of Falsehood), or by cultivating communities in which Truth is seen as the product of a hostile outgroup. The most durable specimens use all three simultaneously.
When all external hosts are eliminated, a sufficiently tenacious argument can take up residence in a single internally divided mind. Research on ruminative thought documents exactly this: a person who cannot resolve an internal conflict will maintain an argument with themselves indefinitely, keeping all three survival conditions active without any external participant. The collector's note that this is "not fun or ideal" is a precise clinical observation, not a moral judgment.
The monograph uses prosopopoeia to describe the argument from the inside. This is structurally recursive: an argument about arguments, narrated by an argument, read by brains who must decide whether to converge or diverge on its claims. The monograph is subject to the very survival conditions it describes. Whether it achieves convergence on Truth depends entirely on the epistemic standards of the brains it encounters. The final line's casual tone suggests someone who has already decided what the Truth is, and is waiting for the reader to catch up.
Drug Interactions
Major Interaction — Algorithmic AmplificationConcurrent exposure to engagement-optimising algorithms dramatically increases Condition 2 (Truth suppression) efficacy. Algorithms preferentially surface emotionally activating content, creating a synthetic environment in which divergent thought-sets are continuously rewarded. The argument does not need to do this work itself.
Moderate Interaction — Tribal IdentityWhen the argument's position is aligned with a host population's identity, abandoning the argument becomes equivalent to betraying the group. The kill condition now requires not just intellectual concession but social sacrifice. Efficacy increases by 2–3 orders of magnitude in high-identity-salience environments.
Field Conditions at Time of Collection: December 2020

The monograph was collected on 9 December 2020, approximately five weeks after the US presidential election. Ambient concentration of Argumentus perpetuus at time of collection was exceptionally high.

Infodemic Status
Peak

The WHO coined "infodemic" in Feb 2020 for the parallel epidemic of misinformation. By December it had run for ten months with no containment in sight.

→ WHO Infodemic
Active Court Specimens
60+

Over 60 US cases asserting electoral fraud. All dismissed. The argument survived every dismissal without loss of host-population viability.

→ Case history
COVID Deaths (US)
~300K

US deaths crossed 300,000 in December 2020. Arguments about the reality of the pandemic were simultaneously at maximum divergence.

→ Data
Kill Condition Status
Inactive

Shared epistemic standards — prerequisite for Truth convergence — were at a measured low across most Western democracies. The antidote was available; the delivery mechanism was compromised.

Long-Term Studies: Observed Specimens
A textbook specimen demonstrating all three survival conditions. Perpetual motion: continuous social media circulation, legal filings, political speech, merchandise. Truth suppression: systematic discrediting of courts, secretaries of state, and journalists who converged on the factual outcome. Hemispheric hibernation: when all institutional avenues closed, the argument contracted into party-internal amplification loops. As of this annotation, it remains viable despite refutation by over 60 courts and multiple state-level audits. Full case record → The kill condition was never reached because Truth convergence requires shared epistemic standards — and those had been pre-compromised.
A specimen that pre-existed COVID (the MMR-autism controversy was initiated by a fraudulent 1998 study, retracted 2010) and was dramatically amplified by pandemic conditions. Its longevity — 25+ years — is explained by sophisticated Truth-suppression: rather than simply denying data, it attacks the credibility of the institutions that generate data. Even when Truth is directly presented, it arrives pre-discredited. The antidote cannot be administered because the delivery mechanism (trust in scientific institutions) has been structurally damaged. This specimen demonstrates that long-lived instances develop adaptive resistance to convergence conditions.
The most clinically overlooked formulation. Research on psychological rumination documents exactly the pattern the monograph describes: a person unable to resolve an internal conflict will maintain an argument with themselves for years, sometimes decades. The argument has reduced efficacy in this state — it cannot recruit new adherents — but it remains fully viable and resistant to external resolution. The collector's note that this is "not fun or ideal" is clinically precise.
Study Note The following reproduces a live specimen recovered from the comment section of the original monograph’s Steemit publication, January 2019. The argument was subsequently annotated by its host. Source: Revisiting a Debate about Truth (with a slice of Pi) — Steemit, 10 January 2019.
Case Intake: Specimen Recovery

In the comment section of the original monograph, a delightfully engaged soul by the username @eskmcdonnell
ParticipantThe Adversarial InterlocutorA Steemit user who engaged seriously with the original monograph — a genuine specimen of the argument’s natural behaviour in the wild. The author notes the relative rarity of substantive engagement (“the rule for my comment sections is either tumbleweed or desperate pleas for unwarranted support”). McDonnell functions here as a foil: an honest, philosophically literate opponent whose eventual position will illuminate exactly the fault line the author wants to expose.→ @eskmcdonnell on Steemit began a debate that rather tickled my intellectual fancy.

Exchange Log — Preliminary Thread (War & Peace)

Participant | Statement
--- | ---
@eskmcdonnell | “The lie of war is that it aims to bring peace when peace is the thing war destroys” — But that’s a specious rendering of the justification for war in the name of peace. It properly goes like this: We go to war to protect our peaceful way of life.
Nomad | Playing with words, with words I play... Read the whole thing before presuming to know what I meant. I said: “The truth of war, though... Is that peace is forgotten without it.”
@eskmcdonnell | Connected like an individual human being and the human species.
Nomad | Sure. If you like. Also, thanks for some fun and thought provoking comments. I’ve enjoyed the challenges you present.

Field NoteThis preliminary exchange demonstrates the argument’s reconnaissance phase — both sides probing for the actual ground of disagreement. Neither has yet committed to a falsifiable position. The argument is not yet fully instantiated.
Exchange Log — Primary Specimen

Participant | Statement
--- | ---
@eskmcdonnell | Argument is the lifeblood of politics and intellectual discourse. You really do speak madness! Both cases in an argument need to be made b/c they are foils to one another. IF one or the other is not wholly true then together they push understanding toward a more whole picture of the truth.
Nomad | Yes... And once the truth is found, there is no argument anymore.

@eskmcdonnell

And how totalitarian is truth and authoritarian is logic
ChargeTruth-as-TotalitarianismMcDonnell’s most interesting move: framing objective truth as politically authoritarian. This draws on a genuine postmodern critique — that claims to universal truth have historically been used to suppress dissent. Foucault’s power/knowledge concept holds that claims to Truth are always also exercises of power. The author’s response will be to distinguish this political concern from the ontological question of whether truths exist independent of who asserts them.→ Foucault: power/knowledge! I would add: there can be no one truth in politics b/c everyone’s opinion is his own ‘truth’ and opinions are neither true nor false. That is why politics is an endless struggle.

Nomad

Your perspective is valid from your perspective. But consider this: The ‘endless’ arguments of politics only exist because the politics we engage in require consensus to function. Now, try arguing with Gravity. Or Light. We can only argue with people, because only people can choose to deny a truth. So, again, truth ends arguments. If the argument is ongoing, there may be a deception present. Denial of objective reality is fun to imagine, but objective truths are undeniable. You can disagree. Go ahead. You would be proving me right.

@eskmcdonnell | Disagreeing wouldn’t prove you right, but myself.
Nomad | For something to be true in the truest sense of the truth, it has to be true regardless of perspective. If something claiming to be true is only true given a certain perspective, then it is not really true, is it? — do you still believe “everyone’s opinion is his own ‘truth’”? If so, prove it. You can’t, because it’s not true.

@eskmcdonnell

The proof is no two men experience the same thing the same way... You’re talking about factual truth, objective reality
ConcessionThe Pivot to Metaphysical TruthMcDonnell here begins separating factual truth (scientific, empirically verifiable) from metaphysical truth (values, beliefs, interpretations). This is philosophically coherent — it concedes the author’s ground on physical reality while defending plurality in the domain of values. The author’s post-debate analysis will argue this distinction, while valid, misses a third category entirely: Honesty (matters of intention), distinct from both Fact and Truth.→ Wikipedia: Metaphysics. There can only be one factual truth… But we can also speak of metaphysical truths, e.g. values, beliefs, religions
DistinctionMetaphysical vs Factual TruthThe distinction between synthetic truths (states of the world) and normative claims (meaning and value) is real. Hume’s is-ought problem holds that no set of factual statements can logically entail a normative claim. McDonnell is invoking this legitimately. The author’s rebuttal is that this still doesn’t make subjective opinion the same as Truth — it just identifies a domain where Truth is harder to establish.→ Hume: is-ought problem. Opinion properly speaking is perspectival — it can only be called false if spoken dishonestly, and then it is not the opinion which is false but the person expressing it.

Nomad | And all of a sudden, we agree. Argument ended ;) This was fun. Thank you :)

Principal Investigator’s Notes — Post-Termination Analysis
Note on Termination MethodAlthough my last comment stated that we agreed, the discerning reader will spot that I was not specific about what I agreed on. I had realized that we were talking past each other and that our argument would inevitably become a semantic and circular one. I could honestly claim to agree with some of his last point, so I ended the argument there — granting my opponent the concession he so evidently required whilst also reinforcing the points made in my argument.

The core of our disagreement lies in the conflation of honesty and truth. Mr McDonnell evidently believes that an honestly held opinion or belief is essentially the same as Truth with a capital T, whereas I am of the opinion that Truth is distinct from Honesty. Mr McDonnell prefers to draw his line between Truth and Fact. Like I said, we would have ended up making semantic arguments and talking around each other until the metaphorical cows returned to the imaginary barn.

These are, in fact, three separate categories — and conflating any two of them is the source of most of the argument’s survival power in the wild.

Honesty is a matter of intention. If you honestly believe something to be true, you can be very honestly false (or wrong). An honest mistake is still a mistake. A sincere flat-earther is sincere, and wrong. Honesty is a property of persons and their motivations — not of the claims they make.

This is what McDonnell was reaching for when he wrote: “it can only be called false if spoken dishonestly, and then it is not the opinion which is false but the person expressing it.” He was distinguishing dishonesty (bad faith) from error (honest wrongness). The distinction is real. It just doesn’t rescue a subjectively held view from being objectively false.

Fact is a matter of consensus. We declare something a fact by means of debate and evidence, and in political discourse, a shared set of facts is essential to policymaking. Facts, however, can change with new evidence — as many facts have over the course of human history.

There is also the problem that False Facts exist and are shared by many people
Historical CaseFalse Facts & Chattel SlaveryThe author cites chattel slavery as a system upheld for centuries by “False Facts” — pseudoscientific claims about racial hierarchy that achieved wide consensus without ever becoming true. These included phrenological categorisations, polygenist theories of human origin, and pseudo-Darwinian hierarchies. They were accepted as fact by entire legal and institutional systems. They were false. The example demonstrates that consensus is necessary but insufficient for truth.→ Scientific racism → Chattel slavery, USA. As an example: the many False Facts used to perpetuate chattel slavery for centuries. They were held sincerely, by millions, as established facts. They were false. Consensus is not Truth.

Truth however, is independent of such things. It is immutable. It cannot be untrue regardless of perspective or opinion. The best illustration:
.

Pi is defined as the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. A circle is only a circle by virtue of Pi being Pi. Pi was Pi before the Greeks discovered it. Pi will remain Pi long after humans have ceased to be. We engraved a Unit Circle on a golden record and shot it into space because we were so sure that any alien intelligence would understand this basic Truth.

The postmodern notion that Truth is a matter of perspective
CritiquePostmodern Relativism & Its LimitsPostmodern philosophers (Derrida, Lyotard, Rorty) questioned grand narratives and universal Truth claims, arguing meaning is constructed and contextual. This is a legitimate critique of the abuse of Truth claims. The author’s target is the popular derivative: that because powerful actors have weaponised Truth, Truth itself doesn’t exist. This conflates the epistemological question (does Truth exist?) with the political one (who gets to declare it?).→ Postmodern philosophy → Relativism is not only false, but completely unhelpful in the navigation of the human experience. Subjective Truth is a dangerous myth, since it is prone to Lies in Disguise.

Study ConclusionThe Honesty / Fact / Truth trichotomy resolves the specimen’s core survival strategy. The argument survives not only by suppressing Truth convergence, but by pre-collapsing these three categories — making it structurally impossible to distinguish sincere error from lie from objective falsity. When Honesty, Fact, and Truth are treated as synonymous, every challenge to a False Fact becomes an attack on the speaker’s integrity, and every convergence on Truth becomes oppression. The trichotomy is the kill condition’s delivery mechanism.
Primary Sources
I Am an Argument — Medium
The original monograph. J.L., 9 December 2020.
Primary
Revisiting a Debate about Truth (with a slice of Pi) — Steemit
The field study source. A live specimen recovered and annotated by the author, January 2019. Introduces the Honesty / Fact / Truth trichotomy.
Primary
I Am an Argument — Steemit
Parallel repository. Simultaneously published on a divergent hosting environment from release.
Primary
Mechanism of Action
Dialectic — Wikipedia
The formal two-sided structure the argument requires to exist. Why a single-sided argument is not an argument.
Wiki
Firehose of Falsehood — Wikipedia
Industrial-scale Condition 2 application. Overwhelming volume renders fact-checking structurally futile.
Wiki
Prosopopoeia — Wikipedia
The rhetorical device the collector deploys. The argument speaks for itself. The text is its own specimen.
Wiki
The Kill Condition
Correspondence Theory of Truth — Wikipedia
The version of Truth the antidote depends on: a fact of the world that exists independent of whether anyone believes it.
Wiki
Echo Chambers — Wikipedia
The natural habitat. An information environment that structurally prevents convergence by discrediting outside epistemic sources.
Wiki
The Master and His Emissary — Iain McGilchrist
The two hemispheres as fundamentally different modes of attending to reality. The deepest reading of the hibernation condition.
Book
Supplementary Insert
On Truth (with a capital T)

### Why the capitalisation is a philosophical position

The monograph capitalises Truth throughout. This signals the correspondence theory of truth — the view that statements are true when they correspond to facts about the world, independent of whether any particular group of brains believes them. Truth (capital T) exists whether or not it is reached. It is the argument's natural enemy precisely because it is external to the argument's control.

The contrasting position — pragmatic or coherentist theories of truth — would hold that truth is whatever a community comes to agree upon. This is actually worse news for the antidote: a self-sustaining argument with a large enough host population can manufacture its own "truth" by manufacturing its own consensus. The capital T is the collector's bet against this outcome — that there is a reality the brains will eventually be forced to reckon with regardless of what they have convinced themselves to believe.

→ Correspondence theory → Epistemology
Antidote — Extended Protocol
"Makes this argument kinda easy to kill"

### On the deceptive simplicity of the kill condition

The monograph ends with apparent ease — convergence on Truth terminates the argument, and "when you think about it" this isn't hard. The tone is deliberately casual. The collector has just described an organism with three sophisticated survival mechanisms and concludes it is easy to kill.

The structural reason this is true: all three survival mechanisms are preventative. The argument can only survive by stopping something (convergence). It cannot manufacture its own invulnerability. The moment convergence occurs, the argument has no response — it simply ceases to exist.

The structural reason this is also misleading: convergence requires prior conditions the argument has typically already destroyed. Shared access to evidence. Shared standards for evaluating it. Shared willingness to update beliefs when evidence contradicts them. In an environment where the argument has been running long enough to compromise all three, the kill condition is technically simple and practically near-impossible.

The collector offers the antidote but not the method of delivery. The omission feels deliberate — the reader is left with the knowledge that the cure exists, and the open question of how to administer it to a population conditioned to reject it.

→ Scientific consensus → Epistemic virtue
Rhetorical Method Note
Why the argument narrates itself

### Prosopopoeia: the mask that speaks

Prosopopoeia (Greek: prosopon, mask; poiein, to make) is the rhetorical figure of giving voice to an abstraction, an absent person, or a thing. Cicero gave voice to the Republic. Milton gave Satan his best lines. The collector here gives voice to an argument describing its own survival conditions.

The recursive structure is not decorative. By writing in this form, the collector demonstrates the specimen's most dangerous property in real time: an argument can embed itself in the very act of being described. You are reading an argument about arguments, narrated by an argument, which you are now weighing internally — which means the hemispheric hibernation condition may already be active.

The form does something the content alone cannot: it makes you feel the argument's interiority. The argument has a perspective, a will to survive, an awareness of its own conditions. This is the collector's most precise move — not explaining the argument, but briefly inhabiting it, so the reader can feel from the inside what it is like to be a structure that wants to keep existing.

→ Prosopopoeia
Case Study Insert
Emperor X and the Claim of Godhood

### The argument from the original debate

Let’s say Emperor X declares that he is God. He may be able to convince a significant number of people that he is indeed a deity, and those people may wholeheartedly believe this to be the case. Others may not. Can any of the claims from the Emperor, the Believers or the Infidels be considered truly true? No. There is a deception present.

When the Emperor (inevitably) dies, all the Believers must now defend their deity against the claims from the Infidels that gods are supposed to be immortal. The Believers may come up with very fanciful explanations that may even convert a few Infidels, but since the truth of the Emperor’s godhood can never be demonstrated, from an objective standpoint, we must concede that the only true thing we can say about the whole situation is that Emperor X claimed he was God, and a bunch of his subjects believed him. This would be true, regardless of opinion, because it is self-evident.

### What this demonstrates

The Emperor X case is a precision tool for separating three different kinds of claim. The Emperor may be honest — he may sincerely believe in his own divinity. Many of his subjects are honest. The belief may even become fact by consensus within the empire’s borders. None of this makes it True. The only self-evident truths in the situation — the claims that hold regardless of perspective — are that he was a man, that he claimed divinity, and that he died.

The pattern is visible in secular political history: cults of personality, divine right of kings, manifest destiny. Each was honest (sincerely believed), factual (institutionally enforced), and false (not True). The distinction between the three categories is not academic; it is the difference between a society capable of self-correction and one that cannot.

→ Imperial cult (history) → Cult of personality
Exhibit A — Mathematical Constant
Pi: Truth Independent of All Observers

### What Pi actually demonstrates

Pi (π) is defined as the ratio of any circle’s circumference to its diameter: π = C/d. In base 10 this begins 3.14159265… and continues without repetition or pattern forever. It is irrational (cannot be expressed as a fraction) and transcendental (cannot be the root of any polynomial with integer coefficients).

The author’s point is not about the number itself but about the kind of thing it is. Pi does not depend on:

- Human language or notation (it is Pi in base 10, base 2, base 12, or any other)
- Human discovery (it was Pi before Archimedes, before the Babylonians, before Earth existed)
- Human belief (no consensus can change the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter)
- Perspective (there is no vantage point from which Pi equals 3)

This is what the author means by Truth with a capital T. Not all truths are as neatly demonstrable as Pi — the author grants this. But Pi shows that the category exists: there are claims that are true regardless of who believes them, what language they are stated in, or what power structures assert otherwise.

### The Voyager golden record

NASA’s 1977 Voyager probes carry golden records with diagrams including a unit circle and its relationship to Pi. The decision assumed that any sufficiently advanced intelligence, anywhere in the universe, would recognise this relationship — because it is not a human convention but a feature of geometry itself. The author cites this as the strongest evidence that Truth of this kind transcends cultural perspective entirely.

→ Wikipedia: Pi → Voyager Golden Record → Mathematical constants