Codex.os31.xyz/blog-posts/technology/aristotelian_digital_infra_guide.md

Last modified on Mar 21 2025 00:05:04

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Flowchart for maintaining a digital infrastructure in line with Aristotle's principles


      [ does it have a clear purpose? ]
                ┃
        ┏━━━━━━━┻━━━━━━━┓
        ┃               ┃
       yes              no > discard or redefine
        ┃
[ is the purpose well-defined? (no excess) ]
        ┃
        ┣━━━━━━━no━━━━━━━> refine scope & remove bloat
        ┃
       yes
        ┃
 [ does it promote self-sufficiency & order? ]
        ┃
        ┣━━━━━━━no━━━━━━━> reduce dependencies
        ┃
       yes
        ┃
[ does it rely on centralized control? ]
        ┃
        ┣━━━━━━━yes━━━━━━━┳━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━┓
        ┃                 v                     v
        ┃      [ is the control necessary? ]   restructure for independence
        ┃                 ┃
        no                ┣━━━━━━━no━━━━━━━> decentralize or remove reliance
        ┃                 ┃
        ┃                yes
        ┃                 ┃
 [ does it encourage virtue? (mastery, security, stability) ]
        ┃
        ┣━━━━━━━no━━━━━━━> restructure for resilience & self-mastery
        ┃
       yes
        ┃
 [ does it respect moderation? (no excess, no waste) ]
        ┃
        ┣━━━━━━━no━━━━━━━> simplify & remove unnecessary features
        ┃
       yes
        ┃
        v
     system is in line with Aristotelian pirinciples

You can use this flowchart to evaluate your digital systems, and refine them to be more inline with Aristotelian principles.

If you want digital systems that actually serve you, Aristotle's guidance is quite useful. His principles, commonly considered only for philosophy, have significant merit when applied to digital systems.

If something fails on these points, it's safe to assume it's designed to serve itself, not you.


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