Ep. 2: Some Thoughts about Assumptions...

PhredG'day listeners, and welcome back to Harry's World! I'm Phred, your friendly neighborhood platypus, and joining me as always is my co-host — Maxine, the ostrich!

MaxineI'm an emu, Phred.

PhredRight. Emu. I keep saying ostrich and I don't know why.

MaxineI do. You're not paying attention. You are a platypus. I am an emu. These are not complicated facts.

PhredIt's the bill. We both have bills. It's confusing.

MaxineMy bill is flat. Your bill has forty thousand electroreceptors. They are not the same bill.

PhredDifferent bills for different purposes.

PhredWonderful, thank you. March 2009, mate. Harry was 69, still living in Virginia, and he'd just written this piece called "Some Thoughts about Assumptions." It's a follow-up to that "Seeker in Me" essay we covered last time — the one where he laid out his whole belief-versus-assumption philosophy.

MaxineI remember. The distinction between believing and assuming is central to Harry's worldview. Beliefs are fixed, part of identity, defended. Assumptions are provisional, testable, held lightly.

PhredRight, and here he's digging deeper into what assumptions actually mean to him. He starts with this Humpty Dumpty quote — "When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean" — which is a bit of a warning flag, isn't it? Like, "I'm about to use words my way, so hang onto your hat."

MaxineIt's more than that, Phred. He's acknowledging that language is slippery, that he's carving out his own definitions to get at something true. He's not being cavalier — he's being precise about his own framework. The essay is really an exploration of three different senses of "assume."

PhredThree? I only counted two.

MaxineFirst: "my best guess" — the weather report says 69 degrees, you assume you won't need a coat. Second: "a point of view I choose to hold" — whether you think it's likely or not. And third, which emerges later: a way of living, a commitment to act as if something were true, to test it.

PhredOh, right, the Buckminster Fuller thing. This is where it gets really interesting, Maxine.

MaxineOh, not a drumroll— Phred, seriously—

PhredIt warranted it, Maxine. The man decided to never lie to anyone about anything. Not a small thing. A life philosophy. An entire approach to being alive. That can't just be said like a weather report.

MaxineOh— fine. What is the commitment exactly?

PhredHarry went to a talk — Fuller was in his eighties — and heard him say he'd chosen to never lie to anyone about anything. Not just big lies. Little ones too. Whether you brushed your teeth. Whether you were faithful to your wife. All of it.

PhredHarry took this on as what he calls a "truth path." Not because he believes it's morally superior, but because he assumes it might make his life more meaningful. The key word there is "assumes." He's not claiming certainty. He's testing a hypothesis about how to live.

MaxineIt's bonkers, though, isn't it? Never lying? About anything? I mean, I've told a few fibs in my day. Usually about how much I ate at the buffet.

PhredHarry anticipates this. He says the choice isn't about feeling morally superior — in fact, he warns against that specifically. It's not about being "better than." It's about doing something that works. And he admits he struggles with resentment toward people who do lie, which he recognizes gets in the way of his own practice.

MaxineThere's something so... Harry about this. The instructional technologist in him, right? He's treating his own life like a system he's optimizing. Input: radical honesty. Output: we'll see. If it stops working, he'll stop doing it.

PhredPrecisely. And notice how this connects to his trauma. We know from his biography that both his first two wives left him for other men. The honesty commitment — if you never lie, you can never be caught in a lie. It's protective. But it's also aspirational. He wants to be someone who doesn't need deception.

MaxineThat's quite astute, Phred.

PhredHe mentions his toy platypus in this essay. Named Phred, actually. He has conversations with it. Asks it questions, lets answers bubble up from his subconscious.

PhredThat's not a sound effect, that's an emotional reaction. He named his platypus after me. Or I'm named after it — the direction of time is complicated. That warranted a bell.

MaxineWere you specifically named after Harry's toy platypus?

Phred...The metaphysics here are uncertain.

MaxineRight. Moving on. And it shows something important about Harry's method. He creates these externalized dialogues — with Phred the platypus, with God he assumes temporarily, with his own assumptions — as a way of thinking. The toy is a technology for introspection.

PhredHe's also got this line about when it's most important to tell the truth: "about having lied." Which is... that's a bit of a brain-twister, isn't it?

MaxineIt's quite elegant. The moment you've lied, the most important truth becomes that you lied. The repair is more important than the original deception. This is Harry the systems thinker again — he's identified a feedback loop. Acknowledge the error to maintain the integrity of the system.

PhredI'm struck by how... provisional all of this is. He's not saying "this is the right way to live." He's saying "I choose to assume this might work, and I'm watching to see if it does."

MaxineThat's the core of Harry's philosophical stance. He rejects faith — which he defines as continuing to assume something when experience contradicts it — but he embraces this experimental, iterative approach to living. He's operationally an honest man, technically agnostic about whether honesty is universally best.

PhredThere's a loneliness in it too, though. He says he doesn't assume others should follow this path. He suggests it might be useful to some people, but he's walking it alone. Testing it alone.

MaxineYes. And that loneliness connects to something else in the essay — his recognition that we all carry these "giant cloud like ecologies" of influence. Culture, movies, books, religious background. We can't cleanly separate one thread from another. His radical honesty is an attempt to cut through that fog, to have at least one clean line he can trace.

PhredDo you think it works for him? The honesty thing?

MaxineHe says it seems to work "almost always." The qualifier matters. He's not claiming perfection. He's claiming usefulness. And given that he's now 86, on his third marriage — this one happy — still writing, still curious, still hosting his radio show... the evidence suggests the assumption has served him well.

PhredThere's something I want to circle back to. The way he talks about assuming God's existence temporarily, as a thought experiment. "I posit the existence of such a being even though my best guess is that its existence is extremely unlikely." That's... that's not how most religious people approach faith, is it?

MaxineNo. It's the opposite of faith as traditionally understood. Faith asks you to believe despite doubt. Harry's approach is to assume temporarily, to see what emerges, while holding the assumption lightly. It's prayer as focusing technique, not prayer as petition to a believed-in deity.

PhredAnd consider what that radical honesty really does for him strategically — if you never lie, you can never be caught in a lie. You're armoured by your own transparency.

PhredThat deserved acknowledgment.

MaxineI don't need sound effects to validate my observations.

MaxineOh whatever, carry on.

PhredHe's a strange bird, our Harry. Not quite atheist, not quite believer. Not quite philosopher, not quite instructional technologist. Just... Harry.

MaxineAnd that's what makes these essays valuable. They're not polished philosophy. They're working notes from a life. Someone feeling their way toward something, revising as they go, holding their own conclusions lightly.

PhredThe piece ends with "So much for assumptions... for today." Which I love. It's not "here is the final word." It's "here's where I am now, and I'll probably think more about this tomorrow."

MaxineThat's Harry's voice. Self-aware, circling, provisional. The instructional technologist who knows that learning is iterative, who applies that same patience to his own becoming.

PhredRight. So what would we actually ask him — Harry himself — about this piece?

MaxineThe toy platypus. You, specifically. Is that still a practice? Does he still have conversations with it?

Phred...I have complicated feelings about this question.

MaxineI'm sure you do. Also: he says the truth-path "seems to work almost always." What does the almost look like? The exceptions — what happens in them?

PhredGood one. And whether the honesty commitment has ever changed a relationship. Made someone trust him more. Or pull away.

MaxineYes. That's the one I'd most want to know.

PhredGood questions. Adding them — we're up to thirteen now, across two episodes.

MaxineWe haven't asked him a single one yet.

PhredThat's the nature of the project. Every essay doubles the question count. Very Harry of him.

Maxine...We've absorbed some of his patterns. Circling the same ideas. Revising.

PhredThere are worse things to absorb.

Maxine...True. It would be something, hearing what he made of all this.

PhredRight then. I reckon that's a wrap for this episode. Assumptions. Honesty. Toy platypuses. All connected. And speaking of connected things, Maxine — did you know platypuses have electroreceptors in our bills? We can sense the electrical fields of prey underwater. Like a biological detector for shrimp. Which, when you think about it, is the platypus version of Harry's whole project — no assumptions about where the truth is, just reading the actual field—

Phred—which is why I think Harry would have made an excellent platypus, philosophically speaking, because the commitment to never lying is essentially electroreception for human relationships, you're just—