(81) Belief-speaking ‘in joint’
By Onno Hansen-Staszyński | Last Updated: 11 December 2025
In my view, what is most deeply human about belief-speaking (cf. blog post nineteen) is its essence as an organic, creative process. Nick Chater’s description of how the human mind works (see: blog posts nine to twelve; see also: the updated EMoD learning path ‘demand side’) resonates deeply with me.
In Chater’s vision, our brain executes cycles of thoughts that try to come up with some output. The starting point of these cycles are previous cycles, so that a continuity is preserved. But at the same time, our brains improvise. They do not simple repeat the same cycles over and over but creatively add new elements.
This description mirrors how I experience writing longer texts. I build on existing thoughts based on experience and literature but I do not rehash the existing building blocks into a pre-given structure. Rather, I juggle with nuggets and unleash cycles of thought to explore what should follow up on each consecutive nugget. Many explorations yield nothing of note. Then, unexpectedly, a cycle produces something valuable. Sometimes it even upends the text’s entire logic. Yet in every case, a breakthrough brings with it a clear moment of satisfaction.
The thrill of writing in this fashion is that I do not know where the text will take me. I might end up at a completely opposite position compared to the one with which I started the venture. This means, that my assumptions do not form a meta-frame that steers my thinking. There are other frames, unknown to me, that let me decide whether the breakthrough is organic and valuable. What I do know is that none of these frames involve probabilities.
Returning to belief-speaking, this feels to me like the core. It is not about being right but about constructing thoughts that are congruent with something that I would call ‘procedural honesty’ for lack of a better concept - with something that feels right for the right reason: not because it links to a preconceived truth, not because it is in line with the beliefs of those close to me, and also not because of the benefits it might bring, but only because it feels ‘in joint’.
Maybe this is my response to the current times that feel out of joint - thinking and writing in joint.
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