---
title: Epistemic State
date: 2011-09-03
techne: :done
episteme: :believed
non_cognitive: true
---

So, what's with these markers of [epistemic][Epistemology] states everywhere?

They signal my attitude towards the content. I wanted a way to show whether I still believe something I have written or not. Or only partially, or never at all. I didn't want to throw away old texts just because I changed my mind, but I also couldn't let them sit around without an annotation or someone might think I still endorsed them.

I'm not happy just going around like RAW, claiming I'm agnostic about everything. And taking care to notice when you change your mind is very valuable. Hence the markers.

Here's a short explanation what each epistemic state roughly means:

- **believed** - I pretty much endorse it as-written
- **semi-believed** - most of it is fine, but there are some gaps or minor problems; maybe needs a rewrite or two
- **not believed** - just wrong; I changed my mind since I wrote it
- **fiction** - It's complicated. Generally speaking, *some*  aspects of it I do believe. Sometimes it represents a marginalized aspect of me. Some days I just don't want to care about making my reasoning clear; I just want to *write* something. Or maybe I felt like trolling. Regardless, don't base your world-view on fiction, please. Fiction is treason.
- **speculation** - some random idea that I wanted to write more about so I could better understand it; typically not believed
- **emotional** - some cluster of ideas that got itself entangled with a complex emotional state, and I needed to externalize it to even look at it; in no way endorsed, but occasionally necessary (similar to fiction)
- **log** - log entries that simply describe what happened without any judgment or reflection
