Method

My principle is "why" over "how." This page is the one exception: here it is precisely "how." Where the facts come from, where the line runs between knowledge and hypothesis, what happens after a mistake. You cannot ask for trust. You can only let it be checked.

Sources

A primary source is what stands closest to the event: a document, raw data, a participant's testimony, one's own observation. A retelling of a retelling is not a source. When I write about history, I look for archival material and research, not popular retellings. When I write about the present, I look for original documents and original texts, not headlines about them.

Every text carries references. When a source cannot be named (part of my experience is military), I say it plainly: here I rely on what I saw myself; you will not be able to verify it. That is more honest than feigning universal provability.

Open only

Only material with confirmed open status goes to publication. The check is mechanical and built into the site's build: a text that fails it physically cannot reach release. Doubt means prohibition.

Status of claims

Not everything in my texts carries equal weight, and the reader has the right to see the difference.

Confirmed: independent sources converge; the fact is verified. Needs verification: the source is single or indirect. Hypothesis: my interpretation, which can and should be argued with.

This is not decoration for a blog. This is how my working system of knowledge is built: a hypothesis lives until reality confirms it or kills it.

Counterarguments

Searching for counterarguments is not a gesture of politeness; it is a stage of the work. One of my inquiries began with admiration for how the Kriegsmarine profiled its U-boat commanders, and ended with the case of Oskar Kusch: a commander whom that same system executed for honesty. The counterargument broke the original thesis and made the text more precise. If the digging has not changed my mind at least in part, I dug poorly.

The working system

I write about systems, and I build a system for working with knowledge: search, structuring, logic checks, work with drafts, a final check before release. Hiding the mechanics would be hypocrisy. I verify every claim, the conclusions are mine, the final text is written by me. Responsibility for a mistake is not delegated.

Boundaries

The headline and the opening promise no more than the text delivers. The blog works only with public material: open documents, history, questions of society and philosophy, public cases. War here is a laboratory of causes, not a chronicle of events.

Mistakes

There will be mistakes. A correction goes into the text with a date and a note of what exactly changed. A substantial error gets a separate notice at the top of the text. There will be no silent after-the-fact edits.

If you are the one who found the mistake, I will correct it and, with your consent, thank you by name.

Money

The blog grows on voluntary reader support. The funds go to computing equipment and the growth of the research library: new material to read and analyze. No advertising, no affiliate links, no paywall, no collection of personal data. A conflict of interest, should one arise, will be named in the text directly.

Contact

To offer a fact, dispute a conclusion, or point out a mistake, email hello@caussa.blog or reach me on Facebook. Disagreement is worth more than agreement: that is what makes a text more precise.