About

I'm fallible, just like you.

Welcome. I'm Aaron Brinton.

I grew up in Boise, Idaho.

One day when I was 4 years old, my mother had been reading me bible stories. A bit later, she and my dad heard me yelling out on the front porch. They came out and asked me why I was yelling. I said “I’m yelling for God to come down and talk to me.“

I have no memory of this. But it’s the only story my parents both tell. They divorced a year later. Both remarried.

My father was a philosophy professor at Boise State University. He married a high school English teacher.

My mother had her masters in psychology and worked for the state, providing grants to educators. She married a math professor at the University of Idaho.

More interesting, my mother grew up as a fairly strict Jew before converting to Christianity at 16 and getting kicked out of her house.

I lived primarily with my mother. I grew up in a very religious household that embraced both Judaism and Christianity.

May 19th, 1984. Bar Mitzvah.

May 19th, 1985. Baptized.

Philosophy, psychology, probability and statistics, a belief system based on actions, and a belief system based on faith.

I was pretty confused as a child.

On graduating from high school in 1989, I did what you would expect from a child of four educators.

I joined the Navy.

My first letter home was to tell my mother I was an atheist. In hindsight, I didn't really understand what that meant.

But none of us really know what the hell we’re talking about when we’re 18. Or 30. Or 40. Or 54, I suppose.

In 1995, a couple years after I left the Navy, I read "As A Man Thinketh" by James Allen. This kicked off a spiral of introspection that led me to an extreme ownership mindset and also a realization that I can't really know anything with true certainty.

It was several years before I learned the actual term for it: fallibility.

I was divorced in 2004. During my post-divorce self-reflection, I figured out a deductive proof for it.

In 2023, I decided to write an article about it called Universal Fallibility. This was written for myself, not for others, and it has just been sitting in my notes. I've written quite a bit more since then.

Now, in 2026, I'm sharing. Much of this is just ideas I've picked up from other people put together in a way that makes sense to me.

This blog is an exercise in fallibilism. I invite criticism and will accept correction.

2026-01-28 Aaron Brinton