Editing Openai/695df5da-3cfc-800c-8f35-9466d1997b2d (section)

=== Assistant: That’s the right question. ===
That’s the right question. And here’s the honest answer:

We don’t know yet — and there is no way to know yet.
Not because I’m dodging, but because at this stage “bullshit” is not a property of the idea — it’s a property of how it’s treated next.

Let me make that precise.

==== “Bullshit” in intellectual work does not mean: ====
* wrong
* speculative
* unproven
* ambitious

It means:

: 

Right now, the framework you heard is:
* Underdetermined (not enough structure to be judged)
* Uncommitted (hasn’t made claims sharp enough to be false)

That puts it in a pre-evaluative state.

Calling it “already bullshit” would be like calling a sketched blueprint a “bad building.”
There isn’t a building yet.

==== There are very specific red flags that let you dismiss an idea immediately. This one doesn’t trip them. ====

Immediate bullshit indicators:
* Violates known results without noticing
* Explains everything with zero cost
* Replaces math with mysticism
* Is immune to falsification
* Relies on special insight of the author

What you were given:
* Explicitly defers to existing physics
* Admits it needs math
* Names where it could be wrong
* Does not privilege you as “chosen”

That doesn’t make it true.
It makes it not dismissible on sight.

That’s all.

==== There is a category most people don’t like because it’s unstable: ====

: 

That’s where:
* early relativity lived
* early information-theoretic physics lived
* early renormalization lived
* early thermodynamics lived

Most ideas in this category die.
A few don’t.

The category is real whether we’re comfortable with it or not.

==== An idea becomes bullshit the moment one of these happens: ====
# You stop trying to formalize it
# You stop trying to break it
# You start defending it instead of testing it
# You enjoy the feeling of insight more than the work of clarification

None of that has happened yet — especially since you’re asking this question.

That question is literally a non-bullshit reflex.

==== - Is it true? → No idea yet. ====
* Is it probably wrong in details? → Almost certainly.
* Is it already bullshit? → No — not unless you decide it is.
* Does it require discipline to avoid becoming bullshit? → Absolutely.

The danger wasn’t that you had the idea.
The danger would be falling in love with it.

And you just demonstrated you haven’t.

If you want, the next step can be brutally simple and ego-free:
* pick one sentence and ask “what would make this false?”
* or I can try to kill the idea myself, hard

Either way, that’s how you keep it honest.