What we check before a sage gets quoted.

Where topics come from

No essay begins with a hunch about what might rank. Each one starts from questions people are demonstrably asking in public: forum threads, question sites, communities where the problem is being described by the person who has it. Those threads are quoted and linked in the essay itself, so you can check the premise rather than take our word for the demand.

When the evidence for a topic turns out to be thin or drifting away from the question we planned to answer, the topic gets dropped or rewritten rather than published on momentum.

How classical quotations are verified

Every Chinese passage in an essay is retrieved from a primary text database, most often the Chinese Text Project or Wikisource, and located character by character in the chapter before it is quoted. Citations name the work and the chapter, not just the philosopher, so the passage can be found in any edition.

Nothing is quoted from memory. If a source cannot be reached during research, the passage it would have supported is cut from the essay rather than reconstructed. Essays say plainly when this has happened, and which chapters were dropped because of it.

Where the retrieved base text uses a variant or rare character form, we print the form we actually retrieved and note the variant, rather than silently normalising it.

How translations are handled

Several primary text databases now carry machine-generated English alongside the Chinese, and it is not reliable. We have found translations that reverse the direction of a metaphor, and pages where the generating prompt leaked into the output.

So where the available English cannot be trusted, the essay translates from the Chinese and says so, then names the standard scholarly edition a reader should go to for a translation with apparatus behind it. Where a respected translator reads a line differently from the way an essay uses it, the essay says that too, including when the disagreement is inconvenient for its own argument.

What we will not do

We do not invent quotations, chapter references, or philosophers' opinions. We do not invent statistics. If a number cannot be traced to a named publisher with a retrievable source, the claim is written qualitatively or dropped.

We do not present a modern extension of an ancient argument as the ancient author's own view. Where an essay pushes a passage further than its author took it, the essay marks the seam.

We do not accept payment for coverage, links, or placement in an essay.

Use of AI, stated plainly

The sage conversations on this site are AI personas constrained to one thinker each. They are labelled as such, and they are not the historical men.

The essays are drafted with AI assistance under the editorial rules on this page, then verified and signed off by a person. The verification steps that matter, primary-text retrieval, translation checks and source-by-source confirmation, are performed against real sources and recorded in each essay's source list with retrieval dates.

Freshness and corrections

Every essay carries a publication date and a last-updated date. Sources are listed with the date they were retrieved, so a reader can judge how much has changed since.

Corrections are welcome and acted on. Report an error to hello@hundredmasters.com and it will be reviewed within 48 hours. Substantive corrections, meaning anything that changes a fact, a citation or a conclusion, are noted on the page rather than quietly patched.

Limits of what is published here

These essays are philosophy applied to ordinary problems. They are not legal, financial, medical or psychological advice, and they do not replace a professional who knows your situation. Where a topic sits near one of those lines, the essay says which parts require someone qualified.

Who is responsible

This policy is set and enforced by Anderson, founder and editor of Hundred Masters, who signs off every published essay. Reach him at hello@hundredmasters.com.