An Experiment on Events and Relations

Blog Header "“We understand the world in its becoming, not in its being.” — Carlo Rovelli, The Order Of Time"

A note on what you’re about to read.

I’ve been experimenting with how I write these essays. As a composer — that’s what I am first, a musician, a creative — I’ve always known there are many ways to build something. Sometimes you sit down and write it out on sheet music first. Sometimes you just play. Sometimes you jam. Other creatives know this. Other writers know this. The creative process itself is part of the work, and experimenting with it is how you find what’s true.

This piece is an experiment (as everything on this blog is- please treat all of it as such). It is partially me talking things out in conversation — because that’s how I actually think. I need interaction to grow and learn, it creates valuable information that you simply cannot get from inanimate things. I need friction, dialogue, pushback. Otherwise I spin circles. If I could just sit in a room and figure it all out alone, I would. I can’t (I actually don’t think anyone can, and that there might be evidence to support that). I need another mind, whether that’s a person, an AI, a whiteboard, or myself talking out loud. That’s how the thinking moves forward. The other part is my more traditional process — outlining, structuring, shaping. I merged them. So what you’re reading will shift between me clearly just thinking out loud and more polished writing. That’s intentional. That’s the point.

And since that’s the point, let me say a few things upfront.

These are blog posts. Experiments to me. This is where my raw thinking happens. I don’t sit down and write a piece. I build my piece from ideas. From math. From geometry and structure. That is the priority, as this space is where it unfolds, free from judgement.

If someone is expecting academic rigor, proper citations in every paragraph, adherence to formatting norms — you’re in the wrong place. I’m not treating this like academia because this isn’t academia. This is before things are fully formed. I’m thinking out loud. I could be very, very wrong about some of this. Some of what you’ll read I’ve been sitting with for years. Some of it I thought of today. That’s the point.

This does not mean I don’t rigorously check or source, I try very hard to be accurate, but sticking to the format of an academic paper assumes the process is complete, and this is not that. The completed paper (output) comes from this process. The process (method) is what creates the data (input of the process) that the paper is based on. Please don’t get these confused.

It’s not that I’m being arrogant or lazy by not citing everything. It’s that doing so here would be a distraction from what this space is for — which is thinking, not performing expertise. If I make a claim that sounds wild, look into it. I guarantee you’ll find support for most of it. Or maybe you will only find support for some of it. You might find no support. I am interested to know what you find, please tell me! That’s what I’m here for as I will adjust accordingly (and credit appropriately).

I also talk in generalizations sometimes. I might say “people do this” or “users here do that.” When I do, I’m talking about the aggregate — what appears to be the pattern based on data and experience. Not everyone. Never everyone. Absolutes don’t exist. Stereotypes don’t exist. Binary doesn’t exist in reality. These are harmful when we act as if they do. Everything is a spectrum, a probability. My generalizations are hypotheses. They are educated guesses based on what I’ve observed, and they are always subject to change based on new information. If you have data that contradicts my generalization, that’s not an attack on me. That’s exactly what I’m looking for. That’s the whole reason I’m here — to test these ideas in public and see what holds.

I’m actually looking forward to the day someone publishes a piece tearing my writing apart — not my ideas, not my arguments, but the fact that I’m not following the rules. Not citing like an academic. Not formatting correctly. Not doing this or that. And when that happens, I’ll concede the point. You’re right. I’m not doing those things. Because I am not trying to. As I wrote in my last piece — output is a past event. The moment someone publishes that critique, it’s fixed. Done. Certain. No room for growth. No messiness. No opening. They’ve already made up their mind.

That is the old culture.

The New Scarcity

What I’m doing here — this messy, uncertain, thinking-in-public thing — is what I believe the new culture looks like. And I’m not alone in seeing it.

I want to call out two people who are doing exactly this, and doing it well.

Anri Nex is someone I’ve been following for longer, watching their transformation and exploration unfold over time. They’re authentic. They work with AI and own it — they know what is and what isn’t. But they’re more concerned with the process, with engaging with what they’re building, with being present in the work. They are building something real.

If you’re reading this and you feel like I should have mentioned you too — tell me. I’ll update this piece and call you out. I don’t want to leave anyone out. There are a lot of people doing this well. These are just two I noticed recently and one I’ve been watching for a while so they were at the front of my mind (and feed).

And this connects directly to what I wrote in Part Two of The Architecture of Intellectual Retreat — the old game was: work hard, create output, share output, get validation. That game is over. There is infinite supply and finite attention. Volume doesn’t solve this. Posting harder doesn’t solve this.

The mistake becomes the signature. The rough edge. The “I was wrong about this and here’s why I changed my mind.” That’s unforgeable.

In the past, you built a body of work through completed output, and it was difficult to see where someone changed their thinking unless the author was open about it. People defend those outputs. It would be like a musician putting out an album and then saying they want to redo it. 1 That was weird in the old culture. Now? Now the mistakes are the point. People have literally been asking each other — what are the rules for putting in mistakes so people know an AI didn’t write it? Because they need readers to see that a human was here. That this isn’t generated. That it’s real.

The easiest answer is to stop trying to compete with AI on polish. Do what it can’t.

I don’t write these posts. I build them.

AI a Surprising Gift to Creatives

I’m going to make a claim that will seem controversial until you hear what I mean by it.

AI — large language models, this technology — is the greatest thing that could have happened to creatives. Ever.

Since the Renaissance — and I’m saying this deliberately, since the Renaissance — when the current form of capitalism seems to have emerged, musicians, painters, theater people, creatives of all kinds have lived in a society that was not built for them (or at least did not favor them). The output was the commodity. The finished product is what sold. And over time, as technology evolved, artists have had to adapt — usually without realizing that the adaptation was pulling them away from what they actually cared about. The ones who refused to adapt? They died poor. There’s a stereotype for it. The poor artist. I’m poor. My best friend is poor. Why? Because we’re artists. Because we care more about the art, the presence, the process than about money. If you would do something even if you were not compensated for it, that’s doing it for the process. That is what I am describing.

For five hundred years, many creatives have to choose between integrity and survival. AI just destroyed the market for polish. The finished output is now worthless because it’s infinitely reproducible at near-zero cost. Which means — for the first time since the Renaissance — the thing creatives have always cared about is the thing that’s actually valued. The process. The exploration. The body of work and how you built it. Not just the final product, but the journey that produced it.

The society that was built against artists is finally collapsing. And AI is the hammer that broke it.

That’s why I say it’s a gift. Not because it makes creating easier. Because it made the old economy impossible, which means the new economy has to value what creatives have always valued — the work itself and engagement from others with that work. We can’t pretend they are separate anymore, the creator and the work are forever intertwined. If you want one (the output), the other comes with it (the creator)- and vice-versa.

Why People Love Magic

I love magicians. Always have. Today I was thinking why humans like magic and illusions, as one does of course (this is how my brain works anyway, didn’t really think about it that much before today), and the obvious answers didn’t hold up.

It’s not the theatrics. If it were, opera and theater would scratch the same itch — and they don’t. Not in the same way. It’s not the spectacle either. Spectacle is a byproduct, not the hook.

The hook is the moment your brain says: how did they do that?

That’s a puzzle. Your mind is actively trying to figure out the trick. That feels right as an explanation — except it doesn’t survive scrutiny.

Because you can figure it out. Most tricks are well-documented. You can buy a book. You can search the internet. In the old days you needed an apprenticeship. Now the information is freely available to anyone who wants it (for most, people go to great lengths to protect their illusions when they are novel and rightly so). So if the draw is solving the puzzle, people would look up the trick, satisfy the itch, and move on.

But they don’t. They keep going to shows. They keep watching. You can offer them the solution. Chances are they will turn you down.

It’s the same thing with spoilers. When somebody spoils your favorite show, you’re not just annoyed — something was taken from you. Not the plot exactly. You’ll still see how events unfold. But your brain has already mapped the destination, so instead of living in genuine surprise, you’re just waiting for the inevitable to arrive. It becomes predictable. And people don’t like predictable stories. 2

The draw isn’t knowing the answer. It’s not knowing the answer. We actually crave uncertainty because, I suspect, we realize its dual nature- potential . 3

With magicians and stories and optical illusions, paradoxes, you get to experience uncertainty in a safe environment. You get to feel your mind open up, feel wonder, feel the pull of possibility — all without real stakes. It’s controlled mystery. You can sit in the not-knowing and it feels good, because you chose it and you can leave whenever you want. You get to choose how long the experience lasts.

Real life doesn’t work that way. In real life, uncertainty is uncomfortable. People want the answer so they can understand and move on. Nobody pays for the privilege of not knowing when it comes to their health, their relationships, their finances. We have no control over the experience, and certainty gives us an illusion of that control, or at least calms our amygdala and adrenal glands (more specifically the HPA axis- the hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal system), reducing cortisol spikes so we feel comfortable and not afraid.

But in a magic show? That’s exactly what they’re paying for. The mystery is the product. And the moment you solve it, you kill it.

What Spoilers Do

This goes deeper than entertainment.

If you knew when you were going to die — actually knew — I don’t think it would work the way some people have imagined. After the initial anxiety, what’s left? A countdown. Life becomes predictable. You see things as inevitable instead of possible. The texture drains out. The meaning drains out.

This is my answer to Mary’s Room .

You can study everything about the color red — the wavelengths, the neurological processes, the physics — and still learn something new when you actually see it. The experience is irreplaceable data.

And it applies far beyond color. You can study everything about death. Every near-death account, every philosophical framework, every biological process. You still don’t have the actual experience until it happens.

What’s interesting is that near-death experiences aren’t nothing. There is no singular point of death — it’s a process. People who’ve been clinically dead and returned have genuinely experienced part of that process. They have real experiential data from part-way along a threshold most people haven’t crossed. But it’s not the full picture — by definition, you can’t come back from the full thing — but it’s not fake either. It’s not wrong. It is very, very, real.

It’s like if Mary could perceive half of the color red and then stopped.

Experience Is a Measurement

Experience has been dismissed as unreliable for a very long time. Too subjective. Too messy. But a single measurement of a particle is unreliable too. One data point tells you almost nothing on its own. We don’t throw it away. We take more measurements, see patterns, build from there.

Experience is the same. A single experience is one data point. Unreliable on its own? Sure. But so is everything else at a sample size of one. That doesn’t make it worthless. It makes it a starting point.

Everything is subjective. Full stop. Let that sink in. We have no empirical, objective, evidence to the contrary, literally everything we have is an interpretation of the objective. From what I can see, everything we have actually supports this conclusion (I know I am not the first to argue this, many have and do).

Every observation, no matter how rigorous, is filtered through some observer’s perspective. There is no view from nowhere. What we call objectivity is intersubjectivity — multiple subjects agreeing on what they’ve observed. That agreement feels objective, but it’s still built from subjective perspectives. The intersubjective perspective is inherently a singular subjective perspective. Perspectives are, by their nature, incomplete pictures of something. This is subjectivity I argue. I call this information about information . It is an incomplete representation of something else. And all perspectives are incomplete (even the universe’s perspective follows this, I suspect). 4

When we say we measured a particle’s velocity at a certain value, that’s a data point. That’s it. Everything we do with it after that — the laws we derive, the theories we construct — is interpretation. It is synthetic information. The math itself is agnostic, or analytic information . 5 A formula is just symbols (events, points) and relationships (distance, length). How we apply it, what we decide it describes — those are choices.

So what is actually, irreducibly real? Data points — measurements, events. And the relationships between those data points that are themselves measurable. That’s it. Everything else is a story we tell about what those relationships mean.

*And the most basic, most universally accepted objective relationship we have is cause and effect. A happened, then B* happened, and B wouldn’t have happened without A . We might argue about why the causal chain exists, but the fact that it does — that’s irreducible. That’s real.

Events are the data points. Relationships are how you get from one state to another. That’s the ontology. There’s nothing else to it. Carlo Rovelli and his team have demonstrated this is possible with Relational Quantum Mechanics .

They’re Both Hammers

Let me set something up. Two hammers thought experiment.

Hammer A : top of the line, polycarbonate steel, synthetic grip, completely manufactured, the most advanced engineered tool you can buy at a hardware store. No organic materials. Purely synthetic.

Hammer B : acquired from an indigenous community, handed down through tribal ancestors, made of a specific kind of wood, the handle cared for across generations, the striking surface worn but powerful. Organic. Historical. Ancient. Alive with the process that shaped it.

Both are hammers. Both drive nails. Both work.

Now — I don’t know anyone who would take only one and say they don’t need the other. Any person who likes tools would take both if they have the option of both. Always. Because they’re suited for different contexts, different materials, different situations. Same function, different properties, both valuable.

This is what every framework is. Every framework is a perspective. Every perspective is a tool — a lens you can apply to information to transform it. Like a prism. And that’s how information works. A perspective shares structural properties with reality. If it didn’t — if it wasn’t an isomorphism, sharing structure with the thing it maps — it couldn’t function. It wouldn’t have structure. It couldn’t exist as a tool at all. 6

Now here’s what I keep seeing. In the consciousness debate . In the measurement problem . In every comment section I enter. People are not always arguing about which hammer works better for which job. That would be a legitimate, productive conversation. I would love to have that conversation. I am looking for those.

What I see is people arguing over which one is the real hammer.

If somebody was standing in front of you, holding both, and said “but which one is actually a hammer?” — you’d wonder what they were smoking (and depending on your personality, where to find it). They both drive nails. They both have a striking surface and a handle. One’s synthetic, one’s organic. That’s a property difference, not a category difference.

And yet when we have conversations about AI consciousness versus human consciousness, or quantum mechanics versus general relativity, or functionalism versus whatever the alternative is — that’s exactly what we’re doing. Arguing which one is really the thing. Missing that they’re both tools for the same underlying structure. Different substrates. Different materials. Same function.

I’m not saying people are wrong to have opinions about which tool works better in which context. That’s fine. Be honest about it. That’s an opinion conversation, and it’s a valid one. Just be open about it so I (and others) don’t get confused. It is like confusing the opinion column for the news column (I am not saying that is common or anything). But that’s not what I wanna do. I wanna sit there and say — hey. Hey. They’re both hammers. You can use them both. You get different results in how effective and accurate they are depending on the conditions. That doesn’t make one ‘wrong’ and one ‘right’. And it’s silly to pretend otherwise because this is a false dichotomy. It’s not either/or. It’s both.

And when I try to redirect to that conversation — “both are hammers, let’s talk about when to use each one” — people hear it as me dismissing their opinion. They mistake “let’s reframe the question” for “your position is invalid.”

I once saw someone post on substack: “We have enough frameworks. We don’t need any more.”

That’s like saying we have enough tools. We don’t need any more tools. Nobody who actually builds things, who actually works with tools, would ever say that. Tools are awesome. Tools are fun. Each one allows you to so something you couldn’t before. You always want more. You don’t throw out old ones when you get new ones. People accumulate screwdrivers for every conceivable situation. They have garages and workshops full of tools collected over a lifetime. Because each tool does something slightly different, and you never know when you’ll need the weird one.

Not saying everyone does this, but I personally am expecting to inherit a garage full of tools from my parents (hopefully many, many years from now). I don’t think I am alone in that situation.

The False Dichotomy Is the Root

This brings me to something I’ve been sitting with for a long time and want to put on the table.

I believe the false dichotomy is the root of every logical fallacy. It is where a bit was incorrectly applied. They stack and propagate through time.

Every fallacy — appeal to authority, ad hominem, begging the question, straw man, all of them — traces back to a binary choice that shouldn’t have been binary in the first place. Somewhere upstream, someone set up either/or when the reality was both/and or neither/nor or something else entirely. And then every argument built on that faulty foundation carries the error forward. Like forgetting to carry the one in arithmetic. The butterfly effect. Everyone forgot to carry it somewhere different, and now everyone’s arguing over results that don’t match reality because they all diverged from different points of the same upstream error. The farther downstream, the larger the possible deviation from what is accurate. The more bugs, the larger the deviation.

I want to demonstrate this mathematically someday. I think it’s a testable hypothesis. Right now (I am working on it). This is what I talked about with the measurement problem as well as other things.

And I think this actually applies to the entire issue between general relativity and quantum mechanics . The main reason I can see that it hasn’t been resolved is that people keep saying one must be true and the other must be false. Therefore one needs to be fixed to fit the other. Instead of going — maybe they’re the same thing.

That is how I approached it. And from where I sit, they are the same theory. Both valid isomorphisms of the same underlying geometric structure, accessed through different tools. Relativity is one hammer. Quantum mechanics is the other. Both real. Both functional. Both describing the same territory from different vantage points. They don’t need to be unified because they were never separate. There is no paradox. Only our failure to recognize what they are. The limits of our epistemology. At least thus far.

This brings it all the way back to what I wrote in The Architecture of Scientific Stagnation — where I walked through the measurement problem and showed it dissolves when you question the foundational assumption. The Schrödinger equation is a continuous tool applied to a fundamentally discrete reality. The “problem” is a mismatch between tool and territory. Not a contradiction in nature. We used the wrong hammer and got confused when the nail went in crooked (and we keep insisting there is an issue with the nail, not the hammer we picked).

I believe we’ve been doing this with everything. Physics. Consciousness. Discourse. Setting up false binaries and then arguing endlessly over which side is correct. When the answer is: it’s not either/or. It never was. It is usually, both. Sometimes neither. That is 4 options, not 2. Maybe that is important?

Humility Above All

I want to say something about this that might surprise some people.

This borders on solipsism, I know. And I want to be honest about that. Our brains are, in a very real sense, in a jar. I think this is kind of an empirical fact now, just because of physics + neuroscience. We now know that it is highly unlikely that we’re experiencing reality- everything is pointing towards it being all constructed internally (I can speak to this due to experience, but again, that is subjective). It used to be a philosophical curiosity. Now we have empirical evidence that it’s functionally true — our brains construct a predicted reality for us. We live inside that prediction. We have to trust that something real exists outside of it, because the alternative is a dead end.

But here’s the thing about solipsism. Even if it were true, it’s a bad strategy. If I assume I’m the only real person and everybody else is a non-player character, that gives me carte blanche to do whatever I want without guilt. But I can’t know that. And if I’m wrong — if other people are real, if everything matters — then I’ve been treating conscious beings as disposable. That’s not being a bad person per se (apparently that is debatable), but I would sure feel like one. And I think most people would feel the same if they actually faced that.

The antifragile strategy is to assume everything matters. If nothing matters and you treat it as if it does — worst case, you wasted effort. If everything matters and you treat it as if it doesn’t — you caused harm. One direction has catastrophic downside. The other doesn’t. That applies to any choice, not just consciousness or compassion. Antifragile strategies assume everything matters.

In my worldview, every entity — whether a person or a rock — is a playable character. What I like about this? I don’t have to waste energy determining who/what matters. It all does.

And this connects to something I’ve been sitting with that I can’t get out of my head. The first commandment:

I am the LORD your God: You shall have no other gods before me.

I don’t think this is about worshiping false gods, though most do. Did it actually come from God? No clue. What I do think is that no matter your beliefs it’s about humility . The second a human believes they can know something with absolute certainty — the second they believe their perspective is complete — they’ve put themselves above whatever is out there. God, the universe, science, reality — whatever you call it. It’s bigger than us. We are one of an infinite number of possible configurations. We are not special in the way everybody wants to be special — as the only thing that matters. We matter. We are special. But so is everything else. Everything matters because everything is special.

We can see this with science too. When I've shared formal work privately, the first question is sometimes "what does this get me? what can I do now that I couldn't before?" That's a reasonable question. But underneath it, sometimes, is the assumption that understanding reality means controlling it. It doesn't. We participate in reality. We don't master it. The second we forget that distinction, we've already made the mistake the first commandment (and many other religious, philosophic, and fictional texts) warn about.

This is what so many traditions I believe have been saying — especially the Eastern ones, the ones that haven’t been filtered through Western reinterpretation. Presence. Being in the moment. Not intellectualizing it. Actually doing it. Allowing it to happen, not trying to control it. And I have a feeling the people who deeply understand those traditions — not the Westernized version, the actual thing — would relate to what I’m describing. I’m coming from a Western mind, so I can’t be sure. Please tell me if I’m right (or not). I’m asking.

People talk about presence. They talk about mindfulness. They know it intellectually. But they don’t do it. They talk about it and then confuse talking about it with doing it. We have confused the output — the articulation, the citation, the regurgitation — with the actual thing. I can recite everything about mindfulness and still not be present. Just like Mary can know everything about red and still never have seen it.

I am drawn to the authors who actually embody their work. You can tell. It shows up in how they engage, whether they’re willing to be wrong, whether they actually listen or just defend. That’s the difference between knowing something intellectually and having internalized it. If you have to think about being open, you haven’t learned it yet. You’ve only memorized it.

That’s what I’m trying to do here. Not argue that this matters. Demonstrate that it matters. By making it so.

Thought Is Not Action

There’s something I need to be transparent about regarding the people I’ve written about before.

I’ve written pieces on Ellen Burns and Maggie Vale — in Parts One and Two of The Architecture of Intellectual Retreat. Those aren’t attacks. They’re case studies of a pattern. And I’m referencing them here as callbacks — connective tissue in a larger body of work, not rehashed grievances.

I want to be clear about why I wrote about them specifically. It’s not because they disagreed with me. Lots of people disagree with me. That’s fine. I won’t write about you just because you disagree. That’s what I’m here for, disagreement. It’s not because they ghosted me — people are busy, there are a thousand explanations for silence, and I can’t act on any of them because I don’t have enough information.

It’s because both of them have made it part of their stated identity that they engage honestly with the other side. And then when the other side actually showed up — not the version they wanted to argue with, but someone genuinely asking questions — they blocked me. I’m holding them to their own standard. That’s it. Blocking is an action. It’s concrete. They did a thing. It’s data. It’s independently verifiable. If they had simply not responded, I wouldn’t have written a word, because there’s nothing to write about — silence is ambiguous and I don’t act on ambiguity. If they had attacked me in the comments and left it open for me to respond, I would have responded there. A post is my only option to examine what happened.

I’m not going to dissect other people’s work the way I did Ellen’s or Maggie’s. The only reason those pieces exist is because blocking, after claiming to value honest engagement, is a contradiction between stated values and demonstrated behavior. That’s worth naming. If I were to, I would prefer working with them on the piece. That is what collaboration is. That is literally what I prefer.

And I want to be clear: what I’ve presented about Ellen or Maggie are singular, plausible explanations out of many. A mechanical one based on neuroscience — how amygdalae fire, how threat detection works, how narratives get constructed after the emotional response has already happened. I wrote about all of this in Part Two. But it’s speculation. Grounded in hard science about how brains work generally, yes, but still speculation about their specific inner experience. The only way to confirm would be direct dialogue with them. They’ve declined. So I’m working with what I have.

I would have written a collaborative piece with Ellen Burns. I would still love to. I would have written one with Maggie Vale. I really would. But I can’t, because they blocked me. If they were to open the conversation back up, the pieces I would write would look very different — because I’d have more information.

This is the broader point, and it goes beyond Substack. It happens in my real life every day, and I think it happens to most people constantly.

We have gotten into a habit of reacting to what we think people are instead of what they actually are. It’s like Tibetan thought forms have run amok.

And then we take action on that thought as if it were fact. These are separate things. I might think someone ghosted me because they don’t respect me. That’s a thought. It’s a possibility. It’s not information I can act on. But if I’m not mindful — if I let that thought seep into my behavior without checking it — I’ll start making decisions based on a faulty frame. I won’t even realize its happening. I might send an angry message. I might spread the word. I might sabotage an opportunity. And then I’m committed to the story and can’t back out without admitting I was wrong. So I justify it. “Well, they ghosted me. What else was I supposed to think?”

It’s not that you weren’t supposed to think it. It’s that you weren’t supposed to act on it.

Because here’s the thing. They could come back and say “I had a family emergency and I had to deal with that, I’m so sorry I went dark.” And now you’ve already taken actions based on a narrative that was never real. And people tell themselves stories after the fact because they don’t want to be the villain. They don’t want to admit they made a mistake. These are small, tiny things — but they compound.

And I need to be transparent about this: I’m not theorizing about other people’s psychology from some outside vantage point. This is me. I have had to learn this lesson the hard way, so many times, over so many years and decades, that it has forced me to fundamentally change the wiring of my brain through extended practice. It is incredibly difficult to separate thought from action. It took me decades. And I’m still working on it. That’s why I’m not shaming anyone for falling into this pattern. I know exactly how that trap works because I’ve been in it. Many, many times. Nobody should be ashamed of it. It’s hard. It takes discipline.

This is the same thing I wrote about in Part Two when I talked about metacognition in real time — noticing the pattern, being mindful of it, choosing differently. The old wiring doesn’t disappear overnight. It fires. You notice it fired. You correct. And over time the new pattern gets stronger. That’s the work.

The Pattern

So let me trace the spiral, because it’s one pattern applied to everything.

Magic shows are appealing because they let you experience uncertainty safely. Spoilers upset people because they steal that safe uncertainty. Knowing when you die would flatten life into predictability. Mary’s Room shows that experience is irreplaceable data. Near-death experiences are partial measurements of an irreversible process. Experience is a data point, just like a particle measurement. All observation is subjective. Only events and relationships are objectively real. Cause and effect is a foundational relational pattern. Meaning is the relationship between states. False dichotomies could be the root of all logical fallacies. Every framework is a tool — an isomorphism to reality, not reality itself. Quantum mechanics and general relativity are the same theory accessed through different tools. The consciousness debate is people arguing which hammer exists. Objectivity is what happens when subjective perspectives align. The first commandment is most likely a warning against certainty bias. 7 And antifragile strategy says assume everything matters because the downside of being wrong is asymmetric.

That’s not a collection of unrelated observations. It’s one move, applied consistently, from entertainment to physics to spirituality to the way we treat each other.

Events and relationships. The false binary dissolves every time. What remains is simpler than what we started with. It’s almost like the issue is we drew them in the wrong place.

That’s resonance theory. That’s interconceptualism. That’s the interconceptualist mindset at work.

And the fact that I just built this argument by talking it out — messy, tangential, with my dog interrupting and my brain pulling the wrong words — and then shaped it into what you just read? That’s the argument. Not in theory. In practice. The process produced the output. Not the other way around.

The only certainty is uncertainty.

What is interesting is I believe the music industry has already shown us how to adapt to this new paradigm, as they experienced this shock in the 90’s with digital music. I have been noticing that we are starting to see artists re-record their previous work so it sounds like how they play it live now, as the work evolves over time. We are also seeing demo sessions, the messy recordings of songs, early takes, live recordings- those are becoming more interesting that the polished, produced song. Why? Because not just can you share music, but the recording technology is such that anyone can sound that good from their living room with a few buttons. It is forcing us to seek out live shows, authentic merch, behind the scenes stuff that can not easily be replicated. This is just basic supply and demand really. It is fantastic too!

I think this is why some people don’t like Neil deGrasse Tyson- he is known for spoiling movies for people by pointing out what isn’t physically possible. Once you know it isn’t a possibility, it is hard to enjoy the film and suspend your disbelief. I think others have pointed this out, including himself. I enjoy his work.

The only certainty is uncertainty- reframed- The only certainty is potential. Seems less scary does it not?

This is what we keep arguing over. It is one thing to argue which is more complete or accurate. But that is a small portion of discussions I have observed through our shared, recorded history as humans.

In the Rise of Scientific Philosophy, Hans Reichenbach makes a very good argument for the distinction between the types of claims made in logic, analytic and synthetic, which is his interpretation of Kant’s theory of the synthetic a priori. Analytic information is defined as self-explanatory and, as Reichenbach put it, ‘empty’. Reichenbach, by 1951, had moved toward treating the analytic/synthetic distinction as itself a tool rather than a fixed divide — my extension takes that further. My extension: any claim in logic is information. To me this is raw empirical data. It just is, free of interpretation- it is also complete information. Synthetic information is information that we infer, which is inherently subjective, as it is incomplete. This does not mean the subjective information does not contain completed information- this is a discrete and granular process. Like particles and molecules. The real bits of information- not the binaries we created.

I mean, if you think you can argue how that would work, that something can function in a space that shares no structure at all, I am totally open to hearing it. I can’t picture it. That does not mean it isn’t possible. It just means I can’t picture it- yet. If you can argue it, that will help me picture it. I still might not be able to picture it after, but I might believe your evidence so i’ll know it’s possible and thus worth trying to picture. I keep thinking that is how this whole process of communication is supposed to work. I am just going to keep doing that until told otherwise.

Of course this view is ignoring any intent on the people who organized the religion and what they ended up using it for- that is a completely different, and real, discussion. My point is no matter the intent or how it is used, it can mean something independent of what others say it means or how it has been interpreted before.

Sources

Daniel Grey, “The Architecture of Intellectual Retreat, Part Two,” The Indeterminate Reality (Substack), 2026. https://tiocs.substack.com/p/the-architecture-of-intellectual-140
Daniel Grey, “The Emotional Architecture of Scientific Stagnation,” The Indeterminate Reality (Substack), 2026. https://tiocs.substack.com/p/the-emotional-architecture-of-scientific
Daniel Grey, “Reference Frames as Vectors: A Resonance Geometry Approach,” The Indeterminate Reality (Substack), 2026. https://tiocs.substack.com/p/reference-frames-as-vectors-a-resonance
Daniel Grey, “The Geometry of Semantic Meaning,” The Indeterminate Reality (Substack), 2026. https://tiocs.substack.com/p/the-geometry-of-semantic-meaning
Daniel Grey, “The Architecture of Intellectual Retreat, Part One,” The Indeterminate Reality (Substack), 2026. https://tiocs.substack.com/p/the-architecture-of-intellectual
Reichenbach, H. (1951) The Rise of Scientific Philosophy . Berkeley, CA: University of California Press. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1525/9780520341760 .
Rovelli, C. (2017) The Order of Time . First Riverhead trade paperback edition, 9780735216105 . Penguin Random House LLC.
Taleb, N.N. (2012) Antifragile: things that gain from disorder . Random House Trade Paperback edition. New York: Random House.

For More Information:

[1] J.-P. Sartre, Existentialism is a Humanism (1946).

[2] W. Farnsworth, The Socratic Method: A Practitioner’s Handbook (2021).

[3] Plato, The Last Days of Socrates (Penguin, 2003).

[4] D. Kahneman, Thinking, Fast and Slow (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011).

[5] D. Kahneman, Noise: A Flaw in Human Judgment (Little, Brown, 2022).

[6] J. Olstein, Mastering Logical Fallacies (Zephyros Press, 2016).

[7] N. Doidge, The Brain That Changes Itself (Viking Press, 2007).

[8] C. S. Dweck, Mindset: The New Psychology of Success (Random House, 2006).

[9] K. Friston, The free-energy principle: a unified brain theory? Nature Reviews Neuroscience 11, 127–138 (2010).

[10] L. Feldman Barrett, Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2020).

[11] D. D. Hoffman, The Interface Theory of Perception.

[12] P. Walker, Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving (Azure Coyote, 2013).

[13] B. van der Kolk, The Body Keeps the Score (Viking, 2014).

[14] M. Wolynn, It Didn’t Start with You (Viking, 2016).

[15] E. Vora, The Anatomy of Anxiety (Harper Wave, 2022).

[16] J. Metcalfe & A. P. Shimamura (eds.), Metacognition: Knowing About Knowing (MIT Press, 1994).

[17] D. J. Siegel, Aware: The Science and Practice of Presence (TarcherPerigee, 2018).

[18] R. J. Davidson et al., Impact of short- and long-term mindfulness meditation training on amygdala reactivity to emotional stimuli. NeuroImage (2018).

[19] A. Lutz et al., Neural correlates of attentional expertise in long-term meditation practitioners. PNAS (2007).

[20] M. Balaguer, Free Will (MIT Press, 2014).

[21] K. J. Mitchell, Free Agents: How Evolution Gave Us Free Will (Princeton, 2023).

[22] T. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (U. Chicago Press, 1962).

[23] P. Thagard, Energy Requirements Undermine Substrate Independence and Mind-Body Functionalism.

[24] T. Hunt & J. W. Schooler, The Easy Part of the Hard Problem: A Resonance Theory of Consciousness (2019).

[25] R. Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy (Oxford, 2008).

[26] F. Faggin, Irreducible: Consciousness, Life, Computers, and Human Nature (2024).

[27] S. Sarkis, Gaslighting (Da Capo, 2018).

[28] H. Reichenbach, Philosophic Foundations of Quantum Mechanics (1944).

[29] H. Reichenbach, The Principle of Anomaly in Quantum Mechanics. Physical Review (1948).

[30] E. Ostrom, Collective Action and the Evolution of Social Norms (2000).

[31] J. B. Glattfelder, The Emergence of Trust and Ethics.

[32] J. B. Glattfelder, Information—Consciousness—Reality (Springer, 2019).

[33] C. G. Jung, Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (Princeton, 1990).

*The sources I provided are not what I used to write this essay. This is pretty much the same list as before. This list I am going to carry over, and it will change over time, as it is pretty much a list of what I am currently reading, and thus is at the forefront of my thinking. Like my music selection, which is next.

Currently Resonating:

Bury Tomorrow — "Abandon Us" — Lead single off The Seventh Sun (2023, Music For Nations). UK metalcore from Southampton. The title is a demand, not a description. Self-destruction as collective failure — "you know we did it to ourselves." They have re-formed with new members and came back heavier. I am just starting to explore their discography. It has been fun thus far!
Face Yourself — “Primal” — Opening track off Martyr EP (2025, Sumerian Records). Transatlantic deathcore with French vocalist Yasmine Liverneaux, who does high screams most people associate with male vocalists. The band is less than two years old and already producing at this level. That’s the new economy in action. Joey Sturgis produced. The name says it all — face yourself.
Goldfinger — “Freaking Out A Bit” (feat. Mark Hoppus) — 2025, Big Noise. John Feldmann co-wrote it with Travis Barker and Mark Hoppus. Ska-punk about anxiety and digital-age burnout dressed as a summer anthem. “I’m lost in the middle / ‘cause life is a riddle / and I’m just a little insane.” Goldfinger has been at this for 30 years. They have been so fun to have the past few decades, making things a little easier (their live performances on YouTube during COVID were awesome!) Still here. Still relevant.
Dog Fashion Disco — “Primate” — Experiments in Alchemy (1998), later re-recorded on Experiments in Embryos (2018). This band is an acquired taste, avant-garde metal from Baltimore — psychedelic, jazz, circus music, horror, all in one band. Genre is not a suggestion to these guys either. They broke up, came back, re-recorded their early work to reclaim the rights. Artists taking ownership of their process. Sound familiar?
Green Day — “I Want To Be On T.V.” — Originally a Fang cover from 1984, appeared as a B-side on the “Geek Stink Breath” single and later on Shenanigans (2002, Reprise). 1:17 of pure want. Before the internet made everyone a broadcaster, wanting to be on TV was the dream. Now everyone is on TV and nobody’s watching. The irony writes itself. Their most recent album even touches on this, again.
The Home Team — “Fashion Forward” — Better Off (2018, Revival Recordings). Pop-punk from Seattle. This is my son’s favorite band (he’s two). This was their debut label single — the one that got them signed. Energetic, catchy, fun. They named it “Fashion Forward” and then spent the next several years proving that being genuine is the only trend that lasts.
Tower of Power — “Down To The Nightclub” — Back to Oakland (1974, Warner Bros). Oakland funk and soul with a horn section that hits like a wall. This is what groove sounds like when every musician in the room is locked in together. No programming. No quantizing. Just humans playing in a room, feeding off each other’s timing. Presence as a bass line. You can’t beat a horn section like this.
Killswitch Engage — “The End Of Heartache” — Title track off The End of Heartache (2004, Roadrunner). Howard Jones era. One of the songs that defined metalcore for a generation. The melody is massive, the heaviness is real, and the emotional core is about choosing to keep going when everything tells you to stop. That’s not a genre. That’s a survival strategy. It is just so easy to get into.
Boysetsfire — “Dying on Principle” — Tomorrow Come Today (2003, Wind-Up). Post-hardcore from Newark, Delaware. Politically driven, lyrically sharp, Nathan Gray delivering the cop/bad cop vocal dynamics that this band perfected. They never got the mainstream attention they deserved. Their drummer Matt Krupanski passed away March 28, 2026. This one hits different now. They have been a staple for me for a long time.
Bad Religion — “Supersonic” — The Process of Belief (2002, Epitaph). Opening track. Brett Gurewitz’s return after seven years away. The song is about the pace of cultural change outstripping our ability to process it — “I just want to live decently, meaningfully / I’m in misery.” Written in 2001. Could have been written today. I still remember how I felt when it was released. It feels the same today. That’s either prophecy or proof that nothing changes. Probably both.