Finding Your Way Back to Truth
Are you tired of all the lies?
Do you sometimes feel like our society is built on lies?
You're not paranoid. You're perceiving accurately.
Here's what to do about it.
This isn't about secret plots. It's about everyday distortion—misaligned incentives, self-deception, and social pressure.
This is not another self-help program. This is training in how to resonate with reality instead of with lies. Here's what becomes possible:
Before we train, you need to understand something about love. There are two channels through which love flows, and some people have only ever experienced one of them fully.
Love as doing.
Necessary. But not sufficient.
Love as being-with.
What the soul was designed to receive.
This is the first lie. It doesn't deny love—it redefines love to exclude what you most need. And once you accept this redefinition, you can no longer recognize what's missing. You can no longer resonate with genuine wholeness because you've been taught it doesn't exist.
This is why truth matters. You can't find what you've been taught isn't real.
There's a pattern that repeats at every scale of reality. Ancient traditions called it by many names. We call it the Circumpunct:
Want the full framework? Read The Circumpunct Theory of Pathology →
You are a circumpunct. So is everyone else. So is every system at every scale.
Your center (aperture) is how you orient. It finds its target by resonance—it tunes to what matches its frequency. When healthy, it resonates with truth, with genuine connection, with reality.
But the aperture can be retuned. Through repeated exposure to lies—especially lies delivered through power imbalance—your aperture learns to resonate with falsehood instead of truth. It's not broken. It's miscalibrated.
The Problem: Your aperture is still working. It still orients toward what it resonates with. But it's been tuned to the wrong frequency—like a radio locked on static, unable to find the music.
The Solution: Retune the aperture. Train it to resonate with truth again. This is what Steelman Training does.
Steelmanning is the practice of finding the strongest possible version of a position before responding to it. It's the opposite of strawmanning (attacking weak versions of what people believe).
But it's more than a debate technique. It's aperture training. Each level opens you more to resonating with what's actually true, rather than what's comfortable.
Find the strongest version of what someone else is saying. Before you respond, before you disagree—can you state their position so well that they would say "yes, that's what I mean"?
Find the strongest version of positions you think are wrong. Not people you're talking to—positions in the abstract. Political views. Philosophical stances. Things you've dismissed. What's the best case for them?
Build the strongest possible case against what you believe. If you wanted to defeat your own worldview, what would you say? This is where ego starts to burn. This is where real training begins.
Locate the beliefs you hold that contradict each other—the ones running beneath awareness. These are the installed lies, still operating. Finding them is mastery. This is where the aperture truly retunes.
You don't need a partner or community to begin. Do this once a day:
That's it. One minute. One belief. One honest attempt.
The aperture retrains through repetition, not intensity. Daily matters more than dramatic.
Most people argue against strawmen—weak, distorted versions of what their opponent believes. This is easy. This is satisfying. And this teaches your aperture to resonate with winning instead of truth.
Steelmanning inverts this. Instead of finding the weakest version you can defeat, you find the strongest version you must genuinely contend with.
Strawman: "You believe X? That's stupid because [attacks weak version of X]."
Steelman: "You believe X? The strongest version of that would be [articulates best possible case for X]. Is that right? Okay, here's what I think about that version..."
Strawmanning trains your aperture to seek easy victories.
Steelmanning trains your aperture to seek what's actually true.
Note: This will feel uncomfortable. That discomfort is your aperture used to looking for easy targets to attack. Stay with it.
Here's the problem: manipulators use the language of openness. "Be open." "Don't be defensive." "Let go of your resistance." These can be genuine invitations to growth—or they can be crowbars to pry you open for someone else's purposes.
How do you tell the difference?
Does this help me find what I resonate with?
Or does it demand I resonate with it?
Real steelman training makes you harder to capture, not easier. If any practice makes you more dependent on an external authority to know what's true, it's counterfeit. Walk away.
Pick a political position you find abhorrent. Not one you mildly disagree with—one that triggers you.
In your next disagreement (online or in person):
Notice what happens to the conversation.
Pick a belief you hold strongly.
Warning: If this doesn't feel threatening, you're not doing it right. Find a belief that matters to you.
This is advanced practice. Proceed with care.
Example: "I believe I deserve love" + "I believe I'm fundamentally flawed" = contradiction. One of these was installed. Find it.
Steelmanning can be weaponized. Watch for these corruptions:
Steelmanning as Performance
"Look how fair and rational I am." The point becomes appearing open-minded rather than actually being open to change. You steelman, then dismiss anyway. The form without the function.
Steelmanning as Dominance
"I understand your position better than you do." Using steelmanning to establish intellectual superiority. This flips the practice into another power game.
Steelmanning as Delay
Endlessly refining the steelman to avoid ever actually responding. "But wait, let me make sure I have your position exactly right..." Used to escape commitment to your own view.
Pseudo-Steelmanning
Appearing to strengthen the opposing position while actually strawmanning it. "So the strongest version of your view is [subtle distortion]..." The form is there, the substance isn't.
The Test: After steelmanning, are you more able to be changed by what you heard—or have you just performed openness while staying exactly where you started?
How do you know you're advancing? Not by how much you know—by how you respond.
This practice is hard to sustain alone. The lie-gradient is the water we swim in. You need others who are also swimming upstream.
Every good thing gets co-opted. Every truth movement eventually gets captured by the lie-gradient. How do we prevent that?
Fail-Safe 1: The Method Over the Leader
No person is above being steelmanned against. The moment someone becomes un-challengeable, the gradient has flipped. If you can't question it, leave.
Fail-Safe 2: Falsifiability Requirement
Every core claim must state what would disprove it. "This can't be questioned" is the signature of the lie-gradient. We question everything—including this.
Fail-Safe 3: The Exit Door
Leaving is always legitimate. No guilt. No "you're abandoning the truth." Any community that punishes leaving has become a trap.
Fail-Safe 4: Your "No" Matters
If your resistance is consistently pathologized—"that's just your ego," "you're being defensive"—the counterfeit has entered. Real training welcomes your no.
Fail-Safe 5: Demonstrated Not Just Claimed
We don't ask you to believe we're different. We show it. Watch how we respond to challenge. Watch how we treat dissent. Judge by action.
Fail-Safe 6: Harder to Manipulate, Not Easier
If this practice makes you more susceptible to influence, something is wrong. The test: are you more able to think for yourself, or less?
"You are not the lies you internalized. You are the one who can finally see them."