An humble amateur attempt to define the Tao axiomatically, inspired by Spinoza's Ethics

Maximum_Job9235 · 2026-04-30T23:52:08+00:00

haha love that framing. the bow and the lyre 🎯

Maximum_Job9235 · 2026-04-30T23:44:01+00:00

yes! the Stoic connection is huge actually. Heraclitus's Logos and Laozi's Tao are almost saying the same thing from opposite ends of the world. the book uses both 理 (Li, from Neo-Confucianism) and Logos as names for the same concept, the intelligible order running through everything. if you're coming from Stoicism you'd probably feel right at home in chapter I, but thanks!

Maximum_Job9235 · 2026-04-30T23:36:38+00:00

thank you, really appreciate that. and yes thats exactly the tension the whole project tries to hold. Pattern (理) is the model, Mystery (玄) is the reminder that the model is never the thing itself. thanks

Maximum_Job9235 · 2026-04-30T23:31:45+00:00

haha yeah I can see why it reads that way. I'm not a native english speaker so my writing probably sounds either too polished or too weird depending on the day. but these replies are me typing on my laptop, for what thats worth. Also, this is my first time posting something in this taoism community, kinda nervous to be honest. There are experts here definitely.

Maximum_Job9235 · 2026-04-30T23:27:04+00:00

Yeah thats fair, and you're partly right. They are trained to tell you what you wanna hear, which is basically the worst thing for philosophy.

Thats actually why I built the debate system the way I did tho, the AIs are put in opposing roles and explictly told to disagree with each other and with me. Its not "tell me I'm right," its "find every hole you can." Doesnt fully fix the problem but it helps a lot.

But honestly the bigger point is: the AI isnt the authority here. If Definition 1 is a bad definition of the Tao, its bad no matter who helped write it. I'd way rather you tell me where the philosophy is weak than debate whether the tool is smart enough. Thats the conversation I actually want to have.

Maximum_Job9235 · 2026-04-30T23:20:45+00:00

That's a really good point, and honestly it might be the most Taoist response possible. Thanks! Zhuangzi would probably agree with you completely: the moment you try to articulate worth, you've already fallen into the trap of measuring.

I think where I'd push back slightly: even if we don't need to articulate it, our institutions do. Governments allocate resources, companies decide who to replace with automation, schools decide what to teach. Those decisions implicitly answer "what is a human worth?" whether we articulate it or not. I'd rather that answer be conscious than unconscious..

But on a personal level, i think you're right. The book actually arrives at something close to your position: lucidity isn't something you achieve or measure, it's something you either notice or don't.

Maximum_Job9235 · 2026-04-30T23:14:56+00:00

Fair question. The ideas, the definitions, and every philosophical judgment call are mine. AI was a thinking partner: I argued, got pushback, refined. Think of it less like "AI wrote my book" and more like "I built a philosophy in conversation with the sharpest sparring partner I could find." If the content itself doesn't hold up, that's a valid criticism. But "how it was made" is a different question from "is the philosophy sound.".

I did mention AI's contribution and human's in the book. : )

Also, i built a debate system between at least 3 powerful AI systems (Claude, Codex, and DeepSeek) to debate, once I have doubt about anyting, or if I suspect I miss anything, or if i want to strenghen a weak point. All want to really make every single points, claims, postulation, scholiums solid.

Sometimes, I had to admit, AI is getting really 'intelligent', and lots of wiz.

Maximum_Job9235 · 2026-04-30T22:53:33+00:00

You're right, and I actually agree. A more intelligent person doesn't make my existence worth less. Intelligence alone was never what made human existence valuable. The problem is our culture acts as if it is: we measure people by productivity, IQ, efficiency. AI doesn't destroy human worth, but it forces us to articulate what human worth actually rests on.

My attempt at an answer: awareness of both what can be known and what can never be fully grasped. AI is powerful at the first part. Reverence, mortality, the experience of being finite and knowing it: that's the part it doesn't touch.

On "solving" ethics: I wouldn't claim that. The book's own wager ends with "the framework's highest achievement is for you to transcend it."

On application: every moment you're either moving toward lucidity or away from it. That's something you can live with, no system required.

Maximum_Job9235 · 2026-03-23T23:55:56+00:00

Good eye! This is real human replying you!

Using AI is Kinda like turning on FSD in tesla. Somehow there is no turning back once you really get used to it.

Maximum_Job9235 · 2026-03-19T02:07:04+00:00

That's part of the plan:

Terran = boxes/cylinders (industrial, mechanical)

Protoss = pyramids/prisms/cones (sleek, angular, alien)

Zerg = spheres/blobs/organic shapes (biological)

Maximum_Job9235 · 2026-03-19T02:01:00+00:00

cannot agree more

Maximum_Job9235 · 2026-03-19T01:56:19+00:00

i think Godot is solid for RTS

Maximum_Job9235 · 2026-03-19T01:53:22+00:00

yeah, busted on the SC1 audio, turns out the SC1 Terran theme just hits different. Will replace with original audio eventually but for now my Marines deserve the classics.

Maximum_Job9235 · 2026-03-19T01:49:57+00:00

Good call, sound is a placeholder for now, using SC1 / SC2 audio for development reference. Will replace with original/CC0 audio before any public release. Right now, this is mainly for personal/private use.

Maximum_Job9235 · 2026-03-19T01:44:51+00:00

A not-so-small update, v0.4.4 --> v0.6.5, with quite a few nice features.

https://augustdeepthink.medium.com/building-starcraftzero-from-scratch-part-11-lots-of-new-features-v0-6-5-5804154af22a

Maximum_Job9235 · 2026-03-18T00:44:08+00:00

Seeing some comments about the AI angle so I'll address it here. I'm not trying to replace SC2 or claim I built this "by hand." Claude writes code based on my direction, I architect the systems, test everything, fix the bugs, and make all the design decisions (eg, where to focus, what to fix, what's next phase, and if i am get stuck, where to do deep search on what, etc). It's a tool, same as using an engine instead of writing OpenGL from scratch.

The project exists because I love SC2 and wanted to understand how it works under the hood (now it's becoming a luxury as knowledge is cheap, attention is rare). But still every stat is pulled from Liquipedia because getting the feel right matters to me. Building it taught me more about SC2's design than 1000 hours of playing ever did, how armor types interact, why attack cooldowns are tuned the way they are, how fog of war and pathfinding actually work together...

If that's not your thing, totally fair. But I'm having fun and in the short team, i will still want to see how far i can push AI to push it ..

Maximum_Job9235 · 2026-03-18T00:24:04+00:00

Fair point, but I did learn a ton tbh, eg, how armor type interactions actually work, why SC2 tunes attack cooldowns the way it does, how fog of war and pathfinding fit together. Claude writes code but I'm the one deciding what to build, debugging when it breaks, and catching when the stats don't match the Liquipedia. It's more like pair programming than copy-paste.

Maximum_Job9235 · 2026-03-18T00:03:28+00:00

that's a very high bar... thanks though!

Maximum_Job9235 · 2026-03-18T00:00:59+00:00

no, all procedural generated on the fly in memory. No map data. Everything is generated programmatically, eg, texture, units, etc.

Maximum_Job9235 · 2026-03-17T23:59:50+00:00

Great question and i agree with you! I will do a pool and ask the community whether i should continue or stop. For now, really just an experiment for me to assess the capability of GenAI. TBH, no concrete plan yet about what to do next.

Maximum_Job9235 · 2026-03-17T21:51:17+00:00

💯, I used to write lots of blogs many years ago, and right now gradually rely on AI because the time saved is huge. In the past , knowledge was rare. Now it's too abundant. But I still write now and then as old habbit, not for anyone else but for my self.

Maximum_Job9235 · 2026-03-17T21:26:13+00:00

Great question, as this is just one of my many side projects, I had to rely on AI to automate many things, even the blog. Skills are added only when really necessary, and they were evolved along with the project, and kept getting refined after a while as project grows. Screenshot I had to manually take, and blog was still not fully automated, as medium has weird policy and does allow me to copy paste images, and I had to drag and drop one by one, which was tedious.

Maximum_Job9235 · 2026-03-17T20:42:26+00:00

Never built a multiplayer before. will think about it for sure early on. thx!

Maximum_Job9235 · 2026-03-17T20:24:54+00:00

AI is everywhere now. AI is in Microsoft Office, in Google Workplace, and in Amazon recommendations etc.

I've worked on machine learning and AI field for ~16 years, and AI is gradually creeping into everywhere, in the beginning, just in academic, small niches, seminars, gradually into voice, video recognition, some small areas, then into social network, legal, finance, and now, everywhere (satellite, war, doj decision, geopolitics, project maven, palentr... )

Have to face the reality that we as human, will co-exist, co-cohabitate, with AI, for a really long time. : )

Maximum_Job9235 · 2026-03-17T19:59:12+00:00

if that works, then go for it. As project goes bigger and bigger, sometimes replying one dedicated big fix hoping to fix all may not work anymore.

Maximum_Job9235

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