These questions address what tends to come up as new ideas take root. They’re here to clarify concepts, smooth out confusion, and support your work with The Abstractionist’s Papers.
Part I: The Mind
Chapter 1: A Natural Theory of Mind
1. How does your mind build experience?
Your mind builds everything you experience from signals it receives. Light hits your eyes, air vibrations reach your ears, and your brain constructs colors, sounds, and sensations from these inputs. What you call “green” is your mind’s response to certain wavelengths. What you hear as music is your mind’s response to vibrating air. The blindfold keeps this construction process invisible, making the world feel immediate and given.
2. What’s the problem with Plato’s Cave?
Plato’s Cave assumes everyone shares the same illusion. Natural Reality shows something different: each mind builds its own version of reality independently. Each person operates from their own Red Space while engaging with the same Blue Space (Causation Domain). The cave metaphor implies one truth waiting to be discovered. Instead, multiple parallel realities exist, each valid within its own framework.
3. How do paradoxes and dissonance help us understand our mental models?
Paradoxes appear when your internal logic hits its limits, like asking whether the chicken or egg came first while assuming linear causation. They mark the edges of your current model and invite expansion. Dissonance happens when another person’s response makes no sense from within your model. Both signal that you’re encountering the boundaries of your interpretation. They’re opportunities to grow.
4. What is the blindfold and why does it matter?
The blindfold is why your mind forgets it’s interpreting. Everything you perceive feels immediate and direct, yet it builds from within. This creates the illusion that you live in an objective reality with others, when each person builds their own version. Understanding this reshapes how you relate to disagreements, different perspectives, and your own certainty about what’s real.
5. How do causation and interpretation relate to each other?
Causation is what happens in the Blue Space: interactions between processes that continue whether anyone observes them. Interpretation is what happens in Red Space: the meaning you build in response to those interactions. They’re orthogonal, like perpendicular lines that intersect without becoming each other. Causation triggers interpretation through signals, and interpretation influences causation through behavior.
6. If minds are separate, how do we communicate?
Communication works through induction. When you speak, you create physical signals, pressure waves that contain no meaning and no sound. The listener receives those signals and creates the experience of sound, then builds their own meaning based on their internal model. Even when you agree, you’re creating compatible interpretations independently. This is why good teachers focus on creating conditions for understanding.
7. Why do humans have similar experiences if we don’t have collective minds?
Common experiences like the Hero’s Journey appear because similar minds respond to similar challenges using similar processes. When people face disruption, seek resolution, and adapt their models, they follow comparable paths. What Jung called archetypes are parallel outcomes from minds working through universal tensions. The repetition reflects how minds function when facing similar problems.
8. What’s the main takeaway about reality and our experience of it?
Your experience of reality is an internally built model created through interpretation in response to causal interactions. Each mind creates its own version of reality. While you live in the same causal world, your individual experiences and meanings are distinct and parallel. Understanding this distinction between causation and interpretation, and recognizing the blindfold, is key to comprehending how minds work.
Chapter 2: How the Mind Works
1. What is the internal model and how does it create our experience?
The internal model is your mind’s system for turning signals from the external world into the experience you live inside. It takes interactions from the Causation Domain (the Blue Space) and transforms them into everything you perceive, feel, and understand in your Red Space. The model presents itself seamlessly, creating experience that feels like direct reality. Colors, sounds, and textures are creations of this internal system working beneath awareness.
2. How does paradox drive learning and change?
Paradox is any mismatch between what your model expects and what actually happens. When your mind encounters something it doesn’t predict, tension appears within the model. This prompts revision: adjusting interpretations, changing expectations, modifying logic, or changing perspective entirely. Whether minor tweaks or major reorganizations, all learning begins with detecting a gap between expectation and reality.
3. What are the four components of the internal model and how do they work together?
The internal model has four interacting parts. Interpretation produces your experience from external signals. Expectation provides internal reference points for what should happen. Logic compares interpretation with expectation to evaluate differences. Perspective sets the overall orientation, determining what matters and how differences get framed. When contradictions arise, logic detects the gap, perspective influences how it’s understood, and the model adjusts through changes in interpretation, expectation, logic, or perspective itself.
4. What happens when your internal model undergoes major reorganization?
Your internal model can undergo major reorganization, enabling you to understand something that was previously invisible or impossible to grasp. This happens when persistent contradictions push the model beyond what it can handle. Examples include realizing that effort doesn’t always create connection in relationships, or scientists discovering that light behaves as both wave and particle.
5. What is transcendence and how does it relate to ongoing learning?
Transcendence happens when your mind recognizes how it learns. You understand contradictions as prompts for growth. The mind grows aware that it creates reality without mistaking its current model for ultimate reality. Change feels less disruptive and more familiar. You develop meta-awareness of how you learn and can engage with this process purposefully.
6. What’s the difference between Blue and Red Spaces?
The Blue Space is the Causation Domain: raw, uninterpreted activity that exists without form, meaning, or perception. Red Space is your internal experience, the world as built by your mind through its internal model. Understanding this distinction matters because you experience Red Space as if it were the actual world, unaware of the interpretative layer. Recognizing the difference allows you to hold your perceptions, thoughts, and beliefs more lightly as interpretations.
7. What does “red on red” mean and why does it contribute to loneliness?
“Red on red” describes how you experience other people. You don’t directly access their Red Space (their internal experience). Instead, your model builds a representation of them based on their words, actions, and your own expectations. You’re interpreting your interpretation of them. Their actual inner world remains hidden behind your projection. This can create loneliness because you never fully reach the other person’s genuine experience. You’re always interacting with your model of them.
8. What is the practice of Natural Reality and what are its benefits?
Natural Reality practice begins with recognizing that your experience (Red Space) is a built model. This involves understanding that others also live within their own distinct Red Spaces. Benefits include working with your interpretations more lightly, treating others with more empathy and fewer assumptions, becoming aware of where your model stops, and developing greater flexibility in beliefs and expectations. It supports more nuanced and responsible engagement with both your internal experience and relationships with others.
Chapter 3: The Realities We Build
1. How does communication work between minds?
Communication involves two transformations. First, thoughts get converted into physical signals (pressure waves, ink on paper) that carry no original meaning. Second, the receiving mind processes these signals and builds its own meaning based on its unique internal model. This second transformation is independent meaning creation. Misunderstandings are natural because understanding emerges through independent reconstruction within each mind.
2. What are the layers of the mind and how do they create contradictions?
The mind organizes meaning across three layers: the Base Layer (direct sensory input and immediate actions), the General Reality Layer (accumulated knowledge and learned patterns), and the Self-Reality Layer (personal meaning, identity, and core beliefs). These layers operate under different rules. Contradictions arise when expectations from one layer clash with interpretations from another. The mind tries to reconcile these mismatches without recognizing they come from fundamentally different operations.
3. How do paradoxes arise and why do some persist while others resolve?
Paradoxes appear when interpretations clash with expectations across different layers of the mind. Some resolve easily when the mind adjusts expectations or beliefs. Others persist and form loops when you become emotionally attached to the expectations being contradicted. These emotional loops drive repeated attempts at resolution without success. Paradoxes resolve when you can adjust your beliefs, accept the contradiction without needing to eliminate it, or recognize that holding onto certain expectations costs more than releasing them.
4. What are “loops that bind us” and how do they influence our reality?
These are self-reinforcing cycles of thought, emotion, and behavior arising from unresolved paradoxes. When contradictions create persistent emotional cycles, the mind keeps trying to resolve conflicts it can’t fix. This creates rigid frames where new experiences get interpreted in ways that reinforce the existing loop, even when it causes suffering. The “Fear Factory” example shows how these loops can lead you to unknowingly create the very realities you fear most.
5. How do narratives sustain themselves and influence our perception?
The mind builds internal narratives to create coherence from fragmented experiences. When new experiences contradict existing beliefs, the mind maintains stability by reinterpreting the experience to fit, subtly revising beliefs, or rejecting contradictory information entirely. The stronger your attachment to existing beliefs, the harder it becomes to integrate contradictory information. This process happens beneath awareness, driven by the mind’s preference for efficiency and stability.
6. How do rules operate in our lives, both consciously and unconsciously?
Rules govern behavior in many unseen ways. Formal rules like laws are just manifestations of deeper principles. Real power lies in enforcement, whether through consequences or social pressure. Many rules are informal, learned through experience and reinforced socially. The “Ant Bridge” shows how complex collective behavior emerges from individuals following simple local rules without awareness of larger outcomes. The “Lost Wallet” scenario highlights tension between immediate self-interest and broader societal rules that benefit everyone.
7. What role does polarization play in our understanding of reality?
Polarization (the presence of opposing forces) is natural to change and progress. Like steering a car by constantly adjusting between extremes, moving between opposing ideas often leads to new perspectives. Political, personal, and social tensions create dynamics that can drive new solutions. However, we often mistake the conflict between polarized views for fundamental reality itself. Recognizing this helps you see that the interplay of differing forces, rather than any single extreme, often creates the reality you experience.
8. What’s the main takeaway from this chapter?
Individual contradictions become collective behaviors through a process you rarely see. Your thoughts become actions that enter shared space, influencing how others build their own meanings. The invisible rules you enforce, the stories you tell yourself, and the space between reaction and response all determine the realities you create and inhabit. Understanding this changes how you participate in creating shared worlds.
Part II: Natural Reality
Chapter 4: The Natural Reality Framework
1. What’s the main idea behind the Natural Reality Framework?
Natural Reality proposes that reality propagates across two fundamental and orthogonal domains. The Causation Domain (the Blue Space) is where universal rules govern how processes influence each other. The Interpretative Domain (containing Red, Green, and Purple Spaces) is where individual processes build internal models of their experience. These domains work together without merging, creating the richness of reality through their interaction.
2. How does Natural Reality explain the difference between the external world and our internal experiences?
The framework distinguishes between the Causation Domain, which operates according to its own rules independent of observation, and the Interpretative Domain, where minds build internal models of that external world. Your experiences arise within these internal models. Paradoxes like Thira’s observation of the falling apple versus the stationary sun occur because internal reasoning hasn’t yet grasped the underlying causal rules.
3. What are Natural Spaces and how do they emerge?
Natural Spaces are domains where entities interact under specific Rules of Causation. They form through accumulating Incoherence (Δ), which happens when processes develop resistance (increased Causal Impedance) to their current governing rules. As this resistance grows, processes can transition to interact with other similarly resistant entities under new causal rules, forming higher-order Natural Spaces. This layering creates increasing complexity in reality.
4. What examples show how Natural Spaces relate to each other?
Physical Space (governed by physical laws), Biological Space (where evolution and adaptation occur), and Cognitive Space (where minds build interpretations) are emergent Natural Spaces. Physical Space is foundational. Biological Space emerges from it through accumulated Incoherence and living entities. Cognitive Space arises from Biological Space with minds capable of complex reasoning. Each operates with distinct causal relationships built upon lower layers.
5. What do Parallelism and Orthogonality mean?
Parallelism means every process operates independently, building its own internal model without merging with others. Orthogonality means no process has direct access to another’s internal states. All interactions occur through the shared Causation Domain. These principles highlight the fundamental independence of individual processes while showing that influence occurs indirectly through the external world.
6. What role does Incoherence play in Natural Reality?
Incoherence (Δ) represents changes that don’t align with existing governing rules of a Natural Space. It occurs when change increases a process’s Causal Impedance, making it more resistant to current rules. Accumulating Incoherence drives the formation of new Natural Spaces, as entities with sufficient resistance begin interacting under different causal frameworks. This is the mechanism that enables reality to transcend existing limitations and develop new forms of organization.
7. How do processes interact if they can’t directly share internal states?
Processes interact through the Causation Domain. A process’s actions create causal effects that other processes sense and interpret within their own internal models through induction. Each process independently induces causes and effects based on its own framework when encountering external causal influences. Communication works through patterns of causal influence that each process interprets uniquely.
8. What’s special about light in Natural Reality?
Light represents the fundamental mechanism governing interaction at all levels. It acts as the boundary between causation and interpretation, serving as the medium through which causal effects travel. Individual processes interpret light-carried causal effects as induced causes within their internal models, influencing perception and subsequent responses. Light is the universal bridge facilitating induction and interaction between independent processes.
Chapter 5: General Selection and Emergence
1. How does General Selection differ from Darwin’s Natural Selection?
Darwin’s Natural Selection explains adaptation—how existing traits become more or less common due to environmental pressures. It describes variation, selection, and persistence within existing boundaries. General Selection expands this by explaining both adaptation and the formation of entirely new forms. It operates across contexts beyond biology (technology, culture, cognition) and introduces Incoherence as the mechanism driving processes beyond existing limitations toward transformative change rather than just gradual optimization.
2. What’s the core mechanism of General Selection?
General Selection operates through four continuous steps: interaction (processes engage with their environment), variability (both small and large changes occur), selection (determining which variations persist based on effectiveness), and accumulation (retained changes build over successive cycles). This loop works in both Interpretative and Causation Domains, allowing for fine-tuning within existing frameworks and generating novel complexities through changes in causal impedance.
3. How does Incoherence relate to General Selection and emergence?
Incoherence (Δ) measures how a process’s relationship to governing rules changes. When Δ > 0, change becomes orthogonal to decay, allowing processes to sidestep direct rule enforcement and bypass limitations by changing causal impedance. Incoherence enables processes to move beyond their current causal space and generate new configurations. Incoherence requires alignment with the environment to become sustainable and create persistent new forms.
4. How does General Selection explain entirely new forms that traditional evolution struggles with?
General Selection incorporates both horizontal selection (adaptation within constraints) and vertical selection (breaking limitations to create new possibilities). Incoherence alters causal impedance, allowing processes to explore changes orthogonal to their current state. When these Incoherent changes align with the environment, they establish new causal spaces and organizational layers previously inaccessible. This appears as an upward spiral along the Natural Reality axis rather than circular adaptation within a fixed plane.
5. What are the Interpretative and Causation Domains in General Selection?
The Interpretative Domain is where we observe changes and assign meanings. This is the Red Space we typically perceive, where evolution appears as loops of variation, selection, and persistence. The Causation Domain is orthogonal and hidden, where underlying causal mechanisms and impedance changes occur. Emergence happens when Incoherence builds in the Causation Domain, changing a process’s impedance and enabling reorganization. What we interpret as persistence or transformation are manifestations of processes occurring across both domains.
6. What examples show General Selection outside biology?
Digital transformation: Online marketplaces introduced variability by removing physical store limitations, increasing causal impedance for traditional retail. Selection favored digital logistics, accumulating into global online commerce. Language evolution: New words introduce variability that can increase impedance for outdated forms if they clarify communication. Through use and cultural harmonization, these changes accumulate and language adapts. AI development: Deep learning introduced pattern recognition variability, changing impedance and making old algorithms obsolete, accumulating into modern AI capabilities.
7. How does causal impedance relate to a process’s ability to evolve or emerge?
Causal impedance (Z_Ψ) measures how a process adjusts to or resists governing rules. Variability can influence impedance, defining how constraints act upon processes. Typically, impedance remains fixed and changes occur within the same plane as decay. When Incoherence changes causal impedance, it allows processes to sidestep previous limitations and potentially emerge into new states. This impedance change signals fundamental alteration in how processes interact with constraints, opening new transformation pathways.
8. Why does General Selection matter for understanding complexity?
General Selection provides a unified framework that goes beyond traditional Natural Selection’s limitations. It reveals that gradual adaptation and the formation of new forms are part of the same underlying process operating across Interpretative and Causation Domains. By incorporating Incoherence and causal impedance changes, it explains how processes transcend existing constraints and develop novel organizational principles, leading to increasing complexity in biological, technological, cultural, and cognitive systems. It shows evolution as spiraling progression rather than flat repetitive loops.
Chapter 6: A Natural Theory of Light
1. How does this Natural Theory of Light differ from traditional physics?
Traditional physics describes light’s electromagnetic properties and quantum nature, focusing on how light behaves when measured. Natural Reality focuses on light’s fundamental role in causal propagation. Light is the mechanism through which causation extends and influence propagates continuously across causal spaces. Wave-particle duality arises from how different processes interpret and engage with this continuous propagation.
2. What is causal propagation and how does light facilitate it?
Causal propagation is how influence extends from one process to another, creating new conditions and effects. Light doesn’t carry causes directly but creates conditions under which responses and new causes can arise in other processes. It provides the pathway for induction, where an effect in one causal space triggers a new cause in a different space without direct energy or information transfer. Light facilitates this by presenting variation that receiving processes can engage with according to their own internal models.
3. How do causal spaces, induction, and light work together?
Causal spaces are domains defined by unique governing rules that dictate how processes transform causes into effects. Induction is how an effect in one causal space initiates a new cause in another causal space. Light bridges these spaces, allowing processes to influence each other by making responses possible. The induced cause then propagates within its own causal space according to that space’s rules, potentially creating induced effects.
4. What is causal impedance and how does it affect propagation?
Causal impedance measures a process’s resistance to causal influence under specific governing rules. High impedance means strong resistance requiring substantial causes to produce effects, while low impedance allows effects to arise readily. Impedance affects propagation efficiency within spaces and influences how processes couple across different causal spaces through induction. For instance, exhibiting mass and responding to gravity depends on sustaining impedance to gravitational interaction rules.
5. How does this theory redefine energy and its relation to mass (E=mc²)?
Natural Reality views energy as measuring how actively a process engages with causal rules. Potential energy represents tension from resisting change; active energy manifests when resistance yields. Mass measures how strongly a process maintains its state. Einstein’s E=mc² describes how mass stores potential for causal influence. Light enables this potential to transition into active participation within interpretative frameworks. The constant c² anchors this transformation at the causation-interpretation boundary.
6. What are space and time, and how does causal propagation relate to them?
Space and time are interpretative constructs, frameworks our minds use to organize relationships between interactions. Causal propagation happens independently of these frameworks. Motion, duration, and expansion express continuous causal propagation and how we interpret resulting interaction sequences. Time arranges interactions into “before” and “after,” while space organizes causal relationships into positions, both created by perception.
7. How does this framework explain the Big Bang and wave-particle duality?
The Big Bang represents the edge of present explanatory power—the point where current interpretative frameworks (relying on time, distance, mass from later-forming processes) no longer apply. Wave-particle duality comes from different process responses to continuous light propagation. When light engages with measuring processes designed for discrete events, responses are localized (particle-like). Without such constraints, light propagates allowing interference (wave-like). The duality arises from interpretative engagement.
8. What are the implications for communication, scientific models, and how we interact with reality?
Communication works through signals triggering responses in receivers based on their internal models. Meaning gets built by receivers within their own frameworks. Scientific models using space and time track response patterns effectively by describing propagation through interpretative layers. Understanding causal propagation reveals interaction with environment as “causal navigation,” influencing futures by altering engagement conditions through active participation in reality’s ongoing propagation.
Part III: Causality
Chapter 7: Natural Causality
1. How does Natural Causality differ from traditional cause and effect?
Traditional views depict causality as linear chains where one event directly triggers the next, focusing on identifying specific causes for particular effects. What we perceive as “cause” is often interpretation: mental closure creating seemingly complete stories. Natural causality is about conditions that make events possible. Understanding how something became possible matters more than explaining why it happened.
2. What’s the difference between asking “Why?” and “How?” in Natural Causality?
“Why” seeks interpretation, meaning, and resolution, often leading to narratives that feel complete but don’t reveal mechanisms. “Why” frequently attributes blame or identifies singular root causes. “How” focuses on mechanisms and conditions that allowed something to occur, encouraging observation of actual change processes rather than after-the-fact explanations. This distinction transforms how you approach problems by revealing underlying dynamics.
3. What are causal spaces and how do impedance and admittance work within them?
A causal space is a set of conditions and rules governing how processes move, interact, or transform. Each has boundaries defining where its rules apply. Impedance describes resistance a process encounters within or when entering a causal space. Low impedance means easy movement and full engagement, high impedance indicates weak interaction or need for additional conditions. Admittance is impedance’s inverse, describing how easily something moves through a causal space.
4. What is cross-impedance and why does it matter?
Cross-impedance is resistance encountered when processes move between causal spaces with different rules. This resistance often forces adaptation or transformation before continuing in the new space. Understanding cross-impedance matters because what works in one context may not translate directly to another. It highlights the need to consider specific rules and conditions of each causal space when analyzing how influence propagates across different systems.
5. What is induction in Natural Causality and how does it differ from direct force?
Induction describes how changes trigger responses rather than directly forcing specific outcomes. Even seemingly direct causes are only effective when existing conditions permit responses. A yawn can induce another yawn but doesn’t force it. Induction depends on impedance, admittance, and cross-impedance, as these factors determine whether and how processes will respond to triggers. It emphasizes the role of readiness and existing conditions in creating causal interactions.
6. How does this understanding apply to learning, ecosystems, and innovation?
In learning, new information meets varying impedance levels as it interacts with existing knowledge. Effective learning environments induce discovery by creating right conditions for engagement. In ecosystems, species thrive where conditions align (low impedance) and face resistance elsewhere. Innovation initially faces market resistance (high impedance) and spreads as conditions change. Success in one context doesn’t guarantee success in another due to cross-impedance between different systems.
7. Why are traditional causal models “interpretive frameworks” rather than direct representations?
Our typical understanding of causality gets created by minds seeking coherent stories and resolution. These frameworks organize observations but don’t necessarily reflect underlying change mechanisms. They’re built from within Red Space and can be limited by inherent biases and the blindfold. While helpful for feeling like we understand the world, they often focus on resolution (“Why” and “Because”) rather than actual processes (“How”).
8. What makes viewing Natural Causality as a “web of readiness and response” significant?
Viewing causality as a web emphasizes interconnectedness and interdependence of natural processes. Change comes from interaction of existing conditions and new influences, where readiness to respond is crucial. This perspective moves away from isolated causes leading to predictable effects in linear fashion. It focuses on how processes fit within their surroundings, how impedance and admittance guide their propagation, and how induction triggers transformations. Understanding this web-like nature allows more nuanced approaches to working with change by considering broader context and conditions that enable or hinder responses.
Chapter 8: A Theory of Causal Spaces
1. What’s the main idea behind Causal Spaces and why introduce it?
Causation doesn’t operate under single, universal rules. Instead, reality is composed of distinct spaces where interactions and processes are governed by their own specific principles. This concept addresses persistent paradoxes and limitations in our understanding of how things work, which often come from assuming a singular, seamless causal system. By recognizing these separate spaces, we can resolve contradictions and model interactions with greater precision.
2. What defines a Causal Space and how is it different from physical space or time?
A Causal Space gets defined by specific rules or principles that govern interactions and processes within it, not by physical location or time. It has boundaries that determine where these rules apply. Within these boundaries, causation operates according to a singular, unbroken principle. This differs from physical space, which is continuous three-dimensional extent, and time, which measures duration. Causal Spaces get defined by their internal logic and the nature of cause and effect within them, rather than by coordinates in space and time.
3. What is the blindfold and how does understanding Causal Spaces help overcome it?
The blindfold refers to our inherent tendency to assume that causality is uniform and absolute across all situations. This assumption prevents us from recognizing the existence and distinct nature of different Causal Spaces. Understanding Causal Spaces helps manage or overcome this blindfold by training us to identify specific rules and boundaries of different causal domains. We can avoid misapplying the logic of one space to another, leading to clearer perception of how causality actually works and resolving apparent paradoxes.
4. How do Causal Propagation and Causal Impedance affect processes within a Causal Space?
Causal propagation describes how a process moves from a cause state to an effect state within a Causal Space under enforcement of the space’s governing rule. How predictable this propagation is depends on the clarity of the space’s boundaries and the directness of the rule’s application. Causal impedance represents resistance a process encounters while propagating. High impedance can slow down, distort, or even prevent a process from reaching its expected effect state, while low impedance allows for smoother transitions. Understanding these concepts helps explain why some transformations happen seamlessly while others face resistance.
5. What’s the difference between Independent and Interdependent Causal Spaces?
Independent Causal Spaces function autonomously, with processes within them governed solely by their own internal rules, without external influence from other spaces. Interdependent Causal Spaces are dynamically linked, where effects in one space can induce causes in another, leading to mutual influence and feedback loops. This distinction is crucial for analyzing complex systems. While independent spaces can be studied in isolation, many real-world phenomena involve interdependent spaces, and understanding their interactions is essential for accurately modeling and predicting outcomes.
6. How do paradoxes come about and how can recognizing these spaces help resolve them?
Paradoxes happen when we mistakenly apply a single causal framework to situations involving multiple interacting causal spaces with different governing rules. This leads to seemingly contradictory effects originating from the same cause. Recognizing the existence and distinct rules of these separate spaces allows us to understand that apparent contradiction results from cross-space interactions, where different causal principles are at play. By correctly identifying and differentiating the relevant causal spaces, we can resolve paradoxes by understanding specific logic operating within each space and how they influence one another.
7. What’s the relationship between Causal Spaces and Natural Spaces?
A Causal Space is a conceptual framework defined by its rules of causation, while a Natural Space is an interpretative space that corresponds to what we recognize as part of nature (atomic, biological, cosmological). While every Natural Space is a Causal Space (because causation happens within it), not every Causal Space is a Natural Space. Natural Spaces are characterized by persistence (self-sustaining), self-adjustment (feedback mechanisms), and emergence (complex behaviors from simple interactions), reflecting the rich and dynamic processes observed in nature. They often involve greater breadth and diversity of interactions than simpler Causal Space models.
8. What are Potential and Flow in Natural Spaces and how do they contribute to self-sustaining nature and emergent complexity?
Potential represents the capacity for change or transformation within a Natural Space (like voltage or pressure), while Flow is the realization of that transformation (like current or motion). These two concepts are intrinsically linked, with potential driving flow, and flow often replenishing potential, creating continuous cycles. The interplay between potential and flow, mediated by impedance, creates the fundamental dynamics of Natural Spaces, allowing for self-adjustment, the build-up and release of energy, and continuous propagation of processes. This dynamic interplay, with sufficient variability, enables Natural Spaces to sustain themselves and generate complex behaviors that weren’t there before.
Chapter 9: Causal Dynamics
1. How does Natural Reality differ from traditional linear views of cause and effect?
Natural Reality moves beyond simple, linear chains of “what causes what” to explore “how change happens.” It emphasizes causality as an evolving process where influence propagates through interactions that can either reinforce and expand, or change and lose momentum. Instead of focusing solely on identifying direct causes for every effect, it examines how influence moves across different contexts, adapts to resistance, and persists or dissolves over time within defined causal spaces.
2. What are causal spaces and how do concepts like impedance and admittance help us understand interactions within and between them?
Causal spaces are distinct environments governed by their own specific rules that dictate how processes work. Impedance within a causal space represents resistance a process encounters while propagating according to the space’s rules. Higher impedance means poor alignment and difficulty in a cause producing an effect. Admittance, the inverse of impedance, quantifies the ease with which a cause generates an effect within a space. Cross-impedance and cross-admittance extend these concepts to interactions between different causal spaces, measuring resistance and ease of a process transitioning from one set of governing rules to another.
3. How do feedforward and feedback propagation contribute to causal processes?
Feedforward propagation is the most basic form, where a cause directly leads to an effect in a linear manner without looping back. The efficiency of this propagation gets determined by the admittance of the process within the causal space. Feedback propagation introduces a recursive element where the effect of an interaction loops back to become a new cause, influencing subsequent interactions. This allows systems to self-regulate, adapt, and exhibit dynamic behavior based on prior outcomes.
4. What is phase alignment between causal spaces and why does it matter?
Phase alignment refers to the degree of synchronization between governing rules of two or more causal spaces. When spaces are in phase, their rules are aligned, minimizing impedance and allowing for smoother and more efficient transitions of cause states between them. When spaces are out of phase, even minor misalignments can significantly increase cross-impedance, hindering causal propagation and potentially creating friction in dynamic systems. The degree of phase alignment directly impacts how effectively influence can move and effects can be generated across different contexts.
5. How is resonance defined within this theory of causality and what are some of its different forms?
Resonance happens when interacting processes synchronize across causal spaces, enhancing their cause-effect transitions. This alignment of impedance and admittance amplifies the effects of cause states. Several forms of resonance include: general resonance (basic amplification through alignment), feedback resonance (amplification within feedback loops), feedforward resonance (directional amplification between spaces), damped resonance (resonance with energy loss), forced resonance (external driving of resonance), phase-shifting resonance (resonance achieved through evolving phase alignment), nonlinear resonance (disproportionate effects from small changes), stochastic resonance (noise facilitating weak resonance), and multi-space resonance (amplification across more than two causal spaces).
6. What is Incoherence and how does it differ from coherent causal interactions?
Incoherence represents a deviation from the typical causal plane of a process into a new dimension called the Causation Axis. In coherent causal interactions, processes operate within the rules of a causal space and are subject to both change and decay. Incoherence allows a part of the process to move off this plane, experiencing different impedance and potentially reducing or bypassing the penalties associated with decay. The incoherent part of the process behaves differently while remaining connected to the original causal space, leading to new states and trajectories.
7. How do the concepts of resonance and Incoherence relate to the emergence of complex behaviors in systems?
Emergence, the appearance of novel system-wide behaviors not predictable from individual components, is closely tied to both resonance and Incoherence. Resonance, through amplification of cause-effect interactions across harmonized causal spaces, can push systems toward critical thresholds where new properties manifest. Incoherence can introduce novelty and allow systems to explore new configurations, generating complex dynamics that might not come from perfect alignment alone. The interplay between aligned (resonant) and misaligned (incoherent) processes can be a key driver of emergent behaviors.
8. How can the principles of this theory be applied to understand and potentially influence real-world systems?
The case studies demonstrate how Natural Reality can be used to analyze diverse real-world scenarios. The short-term gratification versus long-term health case shows how misaligned causal spaces (poor phase alignment and high cross-impedance) lead to conflicting behaviors. Introducing incentives can align them. The exercise versus nutrition example illustrates how aligned spaces (high phase alignment and low cross-impedance) create reinforcing feedback loops and benefits that weren’t there before. The market dynamics versus consumer perception study highlights how phase misalignment and cross-impedance can lead to inefficiencies and how alignment can lead to stability. By quantifying impedance, phase alignment, and understanding roles of resonance and Incoherence, we can gain insights into system behavior, identify points of friction or amplification, and potentially design interventions to improve efficiency, resilience, or foster desired outcomes.
Chapter 10: Emergent Complexity
1. Why does our intuition often fail when trying to understand emergent complexity?
Our minds naturally model the world through linear cause-and-effect sequences and coherent connections. However, reality at an emergent level often comes from “harmonized Incoherence,” dynamic interactions where causation doesn’t follow direct sequences. We tend to focus on interpreting what we see, assuming it directly reflects underlying causes. When the complexity of interactions exceeds our ability to track these sequences, our interpretative models break down, leaving emergent complexity mysterious when viewed solely through this lens.
2. What’s the crucial distinction between interpretation and causation when studying complex systems?
Interpretation involves observing and analyzing behaviors that a system produces. Causation refers to underlying processes and interactions that actually drive the system’s behavior. Natural Reality shows that causation is “orthogonal to interpretation,” meaning it operates independently of our perceived frameworks. Focusing solely on interpretation limits understanding because what we observe, while real, doesn’t necessarily reveal the selective pressures and constraints that determine which behaviors persist. To truly understand complexity, we must focus on causal mechanisms at play.
3. How does Conway’s Game of Life illustrate principles of emergent complexity and limitations of observational perspective?
Conway’s Game of Life, with its simple rules governing individual cell behavior, generates surprisingly complex and seemingly autonomous behaviors like gliders and oscillators. From a purely observational standpoint, the movement of a glider appears as a “second layer of reality” separate from individual cells simply turning on or off. This highlights how large-scale behaviors result from local interactions. Without understanding underlying rules and selective pressures they create, these behaviors seem to appear spontaneously, obscuring the causal processes at work.
4. What are General Selection and causal impedance, and how do these concepts contribute to understanding how patterns persist or change?
General Selection is the principle that, within the causation domain, certain configurations are favored and persist over time because they effectively integrate variability in sustainable ways. Causal impedance conditions how changes propagate within a system. It’s an intrinsic property that regulates how strongly rules influence state transitions based on local conditions. In the Game of Life, selection determines which formations (still lifes, oscillators, gliders) survive, while causal impedance modulates how rules of birth, survival, and death are applied at the cellular level, influencing stability, adaptability, and movement of these formations.
5. How does causal impedance manifest differently in stable patterns versus chaotic regions within Conway’s Game of Life?
In stable patterns like the 2×2 block, cells exhibit high causal impedance to both birth and death. This resistance to state change helps maintain the configuration’s stability. Chaotic regions are characterized by low causal impedance, meaning cells are more likely to transition states. This high susceptibility to change prevents stable patterns from forming in these areas, leading to constant fluctuations.
6. How does the Three-Body Problem demonstrate principles of emergent complexity observed in the Game of Life?
The Three-Body Problem, involving gravitational interactions of three celestial bodies, mirrors principles of emergent complexity seen in the Game of Life. Despite deterministic gravitational laws, resulting motions can be complex and seemingly unpredictable from limited perspective. Similar to how selection favors persistent patterns in the Game of Life, gravitational systems tend toward stable configurations, resonances, or adaptive transitions where impedance conditions interactions between bodies. The emergence of stable orbits, synchronized moons, and structured asteroid belts illustrates how selection and impedance create dynamics of these complex systems.
7. What is contextual modulation in the Three-Body Problem and how does impedance play a role?
Contextual modulation refers to how factors like spatial relationships, velocity, and alignment influence gravitational interactions and resulting trajectories of the bodies. Impedance conditions these interactions by guiding how forces align within this context. For example, stable distances (high impedance to change) can lead to predictable orbits, while close encounters (lower impedance) can cause significant trajectory changes. Periodic alignments can reinforce gravitational interactions (reducing impedance), leading to stable resonances. Impedance acts as a modulator, determining whether contextual factors lead to stability, resonance, or transitions in system dynamics.
8. What’s the overarching implication of understanding emergent complexity through Natural Reality?
Understanding emergent complexity by focusing on underlying causal mechanisms, selective pressures that favor certain configurations, and the role of impedance in modulating interactions reveals that what appears as unpredictability is often the result of unseen forces resolving interactions. This perspective changes focus from simply observing what happens to understanding fundamental principles governing persistence and transformation in various systems, from cellular automata to gravitational dynamics. The next step is moving beyond analyzing these principles and beginning to apply them to systems where outcomes can be predicted.
Part IV: Engagement
Chapter 11: Space and Time
1. What fundamental assumption about space and time does Natural Reality challenge?
Natural Reality challenges the assumption that space and time are fundamental properties of the universe. We treat them as independent containers where events happen, but they’re interpretative tools your mind creates to track movement, change, and relationships. They help you organize experience without being the foundation of reality itself.
2. How does causation relate to space and time?
Causation operates independently of space and time. In the Causation Domain, interactions happen through their inherent relationships, forming a continuous flow of transformation. You impose space and time as frameworks on this underlying causal activity for your own understanding and navigation. They’re measuring tools, not drivers of what happens.
3. What are Little Now and Big Now and how do they relate to our perception of time?
Little Now is your default perspective where events feel like distinct moments happening in linear sequence. It’s useful for immediate decisions and structuring daily life. Big Now recognizes the continuity of causation, where all events come from ongoing process without strict past, present, and future separation. It shows interconnectedness and how choices create what happens next. These are different ways you can engage with underlying timeless reality.
4. How do classical paradoxes like Zeno’s and the Twin Paradox support the idea that space and time aren’t fundamental?
These paradoxes happen when you treat space and time as fixed, absolute entities. Zeno’s Paradox highlights the contradiction of motion if space is infinitely divisible, while the Twin Paradox questions the nature of time if it doesn’t apply equally to all observers. Both dissolve when you recognize space and time as relational constructs and interpretative tools rather than fundamental properties of reality.
5. What do “space as a field” and “time as an impedance” mean?
Space can be understood as a field, a model describing how certain relationships take place, particularly within the mass field your body directly interacts with. It’s a way of thinking about interaction potential, not an independent entity. Time measures how long a process remains engaged in a given rule, functioning as impedance that constrains participation or as admittance that determines depth of engagement in an interaction.
6. What does “living without time” mean?
Living without time means fully engaging with interaction in the present moment, unbound by the need to constantly measure progress against a linear timeline. Reality is always present and happening. The focus changes from a fixed self moving through time to active participation in continuous flow of causation.
7. How does Big Now reveal what Little Now obscures about your choices?
Big Now reveals what Little Now obscures: choices that seem independent are part of reinforcing cycles. Your financial decisions, relationship interactions, and daily habits all operate as continuous causation influencing what happens next. In Little Now, each expense appears independent, each argument seems isolated, each drink after work feels unrelated. In Big Now, you see how each choice reinforces or redirects the causal configuration. Instead of reacting to isolated moments, you recognize the causal conditions present and how your choices influence those conditions.
8. How does Natural Reality address death in the context of timeless reality?
In Big Now perspective, where time isn’t linear progression toward an end, death changes meaning. Every process has an inside (your experience) and an outside (your participation in causation). Death ends the organization that creates interpretation while effects keep propagating through causation. The inside dissolves back into the Blue Space, but actions create effects that continue through induction. What you contribute is transformed and ongoing.
Chapter 12: The Process Universe
1. What’s the Process Universe and how does it differ from traditional views?
Reality is fundamentally made of continuous motion and ongoing processes rather than fixed objects and static forms. Everything you perceive, from a growing tree to a fleeting thought, is an interpretation of this underlying movement. Traditional views focus on discrete entities with inherent properties existing within fixed frameworks of space and time. The Process Universe shows that these seemingly fixed structures and concepts of space and time are themselves interpretations coming from continuous causal interaction.
2. How does the Process Universe explain progress in thought and scientific understanding?
Progress follows a sequence: discovery (recognizing a contradiction in existing understanding), invention (formulating a new idea to resolve it), testing (evaluating the new idea), and dissemination (acceptance and integration of the new perspective). Transformative progress doesn’t happen by refining existing models but by introducing fundamentally new, orthogonal approaches that step outside the limitations of the previous framework. Problems that persist often do so because they’re being addressed with the same flawed reasoning that created them.
3. What does orthogonality mean in the Process Universe and how does it lead to breakthroughs?
Orthogonality describes a relationship where two elements are independent yet interact seamlessly. Think of perpendicular lines or real and imaginary components of complex numbers. In problem-solving, orthogonal solutions approach a problem from an entirely new, complementary angle rather than trying to solve it within the existing framework. These breakthroughs, like the key that opens a lock instead of a better lock, bypass limitations of the original problem space and open entirely new possibilities.
4. Can you explain the metaphor of “The Ocean We Are” in relation to causation and interpretation?
The ocean represents the vast, continuous flow of causation, the underlying activity of events and interactions. The islands that rise above this surface represent your interpretations, the discrete things, events, and moments you perceive and define. These islands aren’t separate from the ocean but are temporary patterns within its flow. Your individual experiences and internal models (Red Spaces) are like these islands of interpretation within the larger ocean of causation (the Blue Space). The islands are made of water, formed by currents, shaped by the same forces moving everything else.
5. How does the Process Universe challenge our conventional understanding of space and time?
Space and time aren’t fundamental entities but interpretative tools you use to navigate and make sense of the underlying continuous flow of causation. They’re like grid lines on a map of the ocean. While useful for description and interaction within your perceived reality, they’re not fundamental drivers of change. The concept of quantum entanglement, where particles interact instantaneously across distances, shows that causation can operate independently of your space-time framework.
6. What is the Deep Blue Space and why is understanding it important?
The Deep Blue Space refers to the underlying domain of causation where interactions happen independently of the constraints of space and time as you interpret them. It’s the ocean beneath the islands of your perception. Understanding this domain lets you engage with reality at a more fundamental level, recognizing that processes and relationships are primary, and your spatial and temporal frameworks are secondary interpretations of these underlying dynamics.
7. What is emergence in the Process Universe and how do transforms play a role?
New properties and complex systems result from existing relationships as systems integrate causal forces with their own adaptive responses. Transforms act as bridges between causation and interpretation, defining how underlying interactions give rise to new behaviors and forms. Unlike static mathematical transforms, transforms in natural systems evolve over time as the relationships they describe change and adapt.
8. How should you change your perspective to better engage with reality and bring about change?
Change from focusing on fixed space and linear time to understanding ongoing processes and interconnected relationships. Instead of asking “what is it?” ask “how does it work?” Change isn’t driven by the passage of time but by interactions within systems. By recognizing the underlying flow of causation and how your interpretations define your experience, you can move beyond inherited assumptions and engage more directly with the dynamic processes that continuously create and recreate the world.
Chapter 13: What’s Next
1. What’s the central idea behind Natural Reality?
Natural Reality is a set of practices, technologies, and ways of working with our minds and the world. It proposes that ideas, once confined internally, are now being actively induced, tested, and applied publicly. Each person operates within their own Red Space. Most believe they share at least some aspect of the same abstract reality. That belief will break when people learn to account for each other. The goal is developing tools and understanding that bridge these individual interpretations and foster awareness of how reality works, with emphasis on Incoherence and the nature of experience.
2. Why is Incoherence important?
Incoherence refers to situations where interpretations clash or fail to align with reality. It’s the basic mechanism of new understanding and invention. By observing and resolving paradoxes and inconsistencies across different contexts, you can gain understanding of Natural Reality. Love, art, and invention are all forms of Incoherence that drive transformation and progress by breaking from equilibrium and introducing something new.
3. What are some practical tools that help people engage with Natural Reality?
The Abstractionist’s Papers serves as both record of how new understanding occurred and tool for future development, documenting the process of producing clarity through sustained engagement with paradox. Nimbin’s Opera Glasses are metaverse technologies that counter the blindfold by letting users directly experience Natural Spaces, visualize influence within environments, recognize Incoherence, and map internal models as dynamic processes. The Reality Translation Engine acts as adaptive interface between different mind realities, allowing meaningful interactions across diverse cognitive contexts by translating between them. Real-life experiences like conversations with children illustrate how everyday situations can be used to understand concepts and recognize parallel, equally valid individual realities.
4. What’s the significance of “If the puppets realize they’re toys, they’ll try to escape the model”?
This statement from Nimbin and The Abstractionist is the foundational prediction that set the trajectory for Natural Reality. Once people become aware that their perceptions and understanding of reality are based on models (like puppets being part of a puppet show), they’ll naturally seek to transcend those limitations and understand the underlying mechanisms of reality itself. This realization is the catalyst for exploring Incoherence and developing tools to perceive Natural Reality more directly.
5. How do people operate within their own “abstract realities” or “Red Spaces“?
Each person interprets the world through their own unique cognitive framework, creating a personal Red Space or abstract reality. This interpretative space functions like a unique video game with its own rules and objectives. People often assume that their understanding of reality is universally shared, leading to misunderstandings when their models clash with those of others or with underlying Natural Reality. Learning to “see each other” means recognizing the existence and validity of these different internal worlds.
6. What’s the connection between the Abstractionist Movement and concepts like love, art, and invention?
Love, art, and invention are natural human forces that embody Incoherence and drive transformation. They’re expressions of the fundamental impulse to move beyond the given, to create something new. Love is a force that spreads and triggers change. Art is externalization of imagination and emotion that recreates inner worlds. Invention is the act of creating novel solutions and possibilities. The Abstractionist Movement, including creation of this book, is an invention and part of this same natural process of emergence and transformation through engaging with Incoherence.
7. What does “we don’t know what anything is” mean and why is this important?
This emphasizes the inherent limitations of human knowledge. Your understanding is always relative, defined by context, comparison, and interpretation. Words define other words, and models rely on earlier concepts, creating a loop without definitive foundation. Beyond simple unknowns, there are “unknown unknowns” and potentially “unknowables,” limits to your perception and comprehension. Recognizing this fundamental uncertainty changes focus from defining “what” things are to understanding “how” they work, which is the utility of Natural Reality.
8. How does the book envision the future development and impact of Natural Reality and the Abstractionist Movement?
The Abstractionist Movement is in its early stages and its growth will depend on its practical value in improving lives. As tools and understanding of Natural Reality become more accessible and are applied in everyday life (habits, work, relationships, education), direct engagement with reality is expected. The movement grows through participation and application of its principles in novel ways. Technology offers one path to understanding through direct perception and simulation, while practice expands through creative expressions like love, art, and invention. The focus is on the ongoing process of transformation.
The Abstractionist’s Papers 