Epistemic Archetypes
Epistemic archetypes are recurring patterns formed by different alignments of skill, perception, and belief.
Why Archetypes
Archetypes make the model memorable. They are not permanent identities or diagnoses of whole persons. They are local patterns in a given belief state.
The Main Four
The ideal agent has high skill and high integrity. The honest novice has limited tools but good faith. The biased expert has strong tools but uses them defensively. The epistemic delusion pattern shows severe detachment between credence and evidence.
Use With Care
The archetypes are meant to diagnose belief states, not insult people. A person may be an honest novice in medicine, a biased expert in politics, and an ideal agent in a narrow professional specialty.
Use Archetypes as Snapshots
The archetypes are best read as snapshots of a particular belief state. Someone may reason like an ideal agent about their craft, like an honest novice about medical statistics, and like a biased expert about a cherished political identity.
This prevents the archetypes from becoming insults. The question is not "What kind of person are you?" but "What is the structure of this confidence, in this domain, under these pressures?"