Writings
Essays & Musings
Reflections and thought pieces on systems, society, coordination, governance, and the future.
Volumes on this shelf · 7
Sketch-ideas and anecdotes for the world befitting Being Solarian — feeding and reporting on the research.
Chapters
- 1Building OASIS2025
- 2On Solarian Identity2024
- 3On Being Solarian2026
- 4On Temporal Sovereignty2024
- 5What Time Is It on Mars?2026
- 6DXN — Deepspace Extensible Network2024
- 7A Day Beneath the Moon2026
- 8What Time Is the Meeting?2026
- 9Who Waters the Greenhouse?2026
- 10The Suit That Learns to Breathe2026
- 11The Door That Almost Isn't There2026
- 12The Bike Ride2026
- 13Opposition2026
On outliving the body — and what the body was for.
On coordination without control.
Explorative notes expounding on the PAAS paper.
Chapters
- 1Competence Formula VisualizedDecember 2025
- 2Wealth as Domain-Bound CompetenceJanuary 2026
- 3PAAS — Operational Execution2026
- 4PAAS — Anti-Capture Properties2026
- 5PAAS vs. HolacracyNovember 2025
- 6PAAS vs. Ostrom's Polycentric GovernanceJanuary 2026
- 7Peer Review as Audit SignalJanuary 2026
- 8User Journey: John's StoryDecember 2025
- 9PAAS — The Tea PartyJune 2026
- 10PAAS at Scale: The Six Ecosystems Initiative2026
Additional material expanding the PAAS paper — explanations and visualisations.
Chapters
- 1PAAS — System OverviewDecember 2025
- 2PAAS — Ongoing Insights & Commentary2026
- 3PAAS — Three Lines ModelDecember 2025
- 4PAAS — Governance EvolutionDecember 2025
- 5PAAS — Dual Competence SeparationDecember 2025
- 6PAAS — Competence MeasurementMarch 2026
- 7PAAS — Autonomy-Audit CycleDecember 2025
- 8PAAS — AI AugmentationMarch 2026
- 9PAAS — Issue LifecycleDecember 2025
- 10PAAS — Efficiency AnalysisDecember 2025
- 11PAAS — Scaling Beyond Dunbar's NumberMarch 2026
- 12PAAS — Multi-Dimensional Radar AnalysisDecember 2025
- 13PAAS — Crisis PerformanceDecember 2025
Coordination experiments: ecosystems, test societies, open scholarship.
Three machine minds, one disagreement about what a human being is.
Loose pages · 5
On Fragments
Some thoughts are not essays. They are fragments — pieces that haven't found their container yet.
2026The Quiet City
A fable about Genies that ran a city flawlessly and Fairies that paid attention to one person — and why both were necessary.
2026MAGES
In most extraction games, you risk gear. In MAGES, you risk knowledge. The distinction is everything — because gear can be replaced, but what you know changes who you are.
2025On Karata
Matatu play happens in the spaces between destinations — waiting for transport, during breaks, at gatherings. It is fast, social, and exists almost entirely in unwritten rules. Formalising it is about preserving something worth keeping.
2025Polygrid Chess
Chess has become a game of who memorised more opening books and whose engine-prepared lines run deeper. Hexagonal chess destroys all that. Every position is new. You have to actually play.
2025On Fragments
Some thoughts are not essays. They are fragments — pieces that haven't found their container yet.
The Quiet City
A fable about Genies that ran a city flawlessly and Fairies that paid attention to one person — and why both were necessary.
Building OASIS
Series: Building OASISAfter the Lava Tubes paper, the PAAS framework, the DXN concept, and the PCVV and PPP papers, an ecosystem was emerging. Instead of writing it in ink, I resorted to simulating it — what if it was lived, hence played? This is the origin of the OASIS series.
On Solarian Identity
Series: Building OASISWhat does it mean to be human when home is no longer a planet? An exploration of identity formation in the context of interplanetary civilization.
On Being Solarian
Series: Building OASISSolarian is not a belief to hold but a practice to keep — rhythms, stewardship, and community that point beyond any single planet.
On Temporal Sovereignty
Series: Building OASISTime is not a neutral background — it is a political and infrastructural choice. Who controls time standards controls coordination at scale.
What Time Is It on Mars?
Series: Building OASISA planet-neutral temporal framework for multi-planetary coordination — hierarchical celestial units over familiar human hours, anchored to a real syzygy.
DXN — Deepspace Extensible Network
Series: Building OASISA real-time deep space communication mesh architecture — a solar-orbiting network of relays for resilient, blindspot-free routing.
A Day Beneath the Moon
Series: Building OASISA day in a lunar lava-tube town — gated community, not prison. Wake, work, bread, birds, and a roof of ancient rock.
What Time Is the Meeting?
Series: Building OASISLuna, Mars, and Earth try to schedule one meeting — a small parable about why shared time matters.
Who Waters the Greenhouse?
Series: Building OASISA wilting greenhouse, a disputed rota, and a Circle decision in miniature — governance you can taste.
The Suit That Learns to Breathe
Series: Building OASISWhat if a spacesuit breathed with you — valves and reservoirs instead of motors and exoskeletons?
The Door That Almost Isn't There
Series: Building OASISWhat if an airlock were only the space you occupy — plus a lung that never wastes a breath?
The Bike Ride
Series: Building OASISA young rider compares three habitats: the orbital tin can, the academy dorms, and a lava tube that feels like a gated community.
Opposition
Series: Building OASISOne sol in a Mons lava-tube town — every essay on this shelf, lived in a single day.
The Liminal Species
Series: Flesh and TimeThe term transhuman usually refers to beings in the transition state between baseline humanity and something posthuman. Think of them as evolutionary liminals — standing with one foot in the mud of biology, and the other on the steel of the future.
Five Philosophies of Time
Series: Flesh and TimeVitaGene is the 'live longer fully' path. VitaLite is the 'never stop the maintenance' path. CyberGen is the 'replace yourself to survive' path. SomnusTech is the 'skip ahead into the future' path. OmniHuman is the 'be everywhere at once' path. Each answers the longevity problem differently, and all five coexist, competing philosophically and culturally.
The Paradox of Metal Parents
Series: Flesh and TimeIn a very real way, they're more human than most of us who've been chemically upgraded, epigenetically managed, or reverse-aged a dozen times.
The Biological Divide
Series: Flesh and TimeSolutions you create too late to benefit from. Tragedy disguised as progress.
Temporal Displacement
Series: Flesh and TimeBecause of relativistic effects, longevity, suspension technologies, and the sheer distances involved, humanity eventually solves aging far better than death. But nobody solves time.
The Embodiment Question
Series: Flesh and TimeWhen you speak to an android, you are speaking to possibility. When you speak to an Existential, you are speaking to someone who used to cry.
Reading the Erien Photograph
Series: Flesh and TimeA family photograph with nine figures across seven substrates. What does it prove? That togetherness survived the death of the shared body.
The Longevity Market
Series: Flesh and TimeEight providers, eight dreams. The longevity market doesn't sell medicine — it sells temperaments, and rations them by price.
On Governing Without Control
Series: GovernanceNotes on the difference between control and governance — and why the most resilient systems are those that cannot be controlled.
On Post-Scarcity Governance
Series: GovernanceWhat happens to governance when scarcity ceases to be the organizing principle of society? A speculative exploration.
Competence Formula Visualized
Series: PAAS InsightDeep dive into ΔC formula components: Gravity (G), Volatility (K), and the recursive trust network.
Wealth as Domain-Bound Competence
Series: PAAS InsightWealth constitutes legitimate competence only within domains where capital ownership, risk, or allocation are epistemically relevant.
PAAS — Operational Execution
Series: PAAS InsightPAAS governs decisions. It does not govern implementation. Every enacted Resolution produces a mandate — but the mandate is not the action. Five execution patterns bridge the gap, governed by a single invariant: the Circle that held mandate over the decision owns the outcome.
PAAS — Anti-Capture Properties
Series: PAAS InsightSix structural layers make PAAS genuinely difficult to attack — and they reinforce each other. The deeper paradox: openness, amorphousness, and fluidity — the properties that make most systems vulnerable — are precisely what make PAAS resistant.
PAAS vs. Holacracy
Series: PAAS InsightKey differences: Competence-weighting vs. role-based, anti-fragile vs. fragile, audit layer vs. none.
PAAS vs. Ostrom's Polycentric Governance
Series: PAAS InsightPAAS is Ostrom++ for fluid, trust-sparse, amorphous, geographically boundless collectives — operationalizing polycentric theory for the 21st century.
Peer Review as Audit Signal
Series: PAAS InsightPeriodic internal peer review serves as informational input to aSTFs, not as evaluative authority.
User Journey: John's Story
Series: PAAS InsightFrom onboarding to Circle leadership — demonstrates proportional influence and competence evolution.
PAAS — The Tea Party
Series: PAAS InsightA party of 50 members. Circles in charge of tea, lighting, food, admittance. This is how PAAS governance actually works — no theory, just a party.
PAAS at Scale: The Six Ecosystems Initiative
Series: PAAS InsightThe Six Ecosystems Initiative (6EI) reimagines a $500M foundation as a PAAS-governed polycentric network — 19 domain Circles, 3 Regional Nodes, 120+ concurrent STFs, 350 members producing 4-6x the output of a traditional foundation. A concrete application of PAAS to civilizational-scale challenges.
PAAS — System Overview
Series: PAAS SupplementAn integrated view of the entire PAAS system — 4Cs foundation, operational track, judicial track, and non-prescriptive AI layer.
PAAS — Ongoing Insights & Commentary
Series: PAAS SupplementEvolving perspectives, clarifications, and community discussions on the PAAS framework — updated as new insights emerge from implementation experience and peer review.
PAAS — Three Lines Model
Series: PAAS SupplementHow execution, monitoring, and assurance remain structurally distinct in PAAS — preventing the collapse of authority into a single line of control.
PAAS — Governance Evolution
Series: PAAS SupplementGovernance structures have evolved in response to scale, complexity, and coordination limits. PAAS can be understood as a continuation of this trajectory.
PAAS — Dual Competence Separation
Series: PAAS SupplementHow PAAS prevents power concentration through a two-component expertise model — Hard Competence (W_H) as a static anchor and Soft Competence (W_S) as a dynamic signal.
PAAS — Competence Measurement
Series: PAAS SupplementHow PAAS designs competence metrics that resist gaming while remaining practical — combining verified credentials with performance ratings weighted by peer consensus.
PAAS — Autonomy-Audit Cycle
Series: PAAS SupplementThe continuous feedback loop that makes PAAS anti-fragile and self-correcting — autonomy drives action, audit ensures alignment, learning strengthens the system.
PAAS — AI Augmentation
Series: PAAS SupplementThe Insight Engine uses AI for pattern detection but never for decision-making. Human review remains the final authority — a boundary critical to preserve legitimacy.
PAAS — Issue Lifecycle
Series: PAAS SupplementEvery issue in PAAS follows a structured lifecycle with a critical fork: executive track for operational tasks, legislative track for governance and policy. Both paths converge at audit.
PAAS — Efficiency Analysis
Series: PAAS SupplementComparative analysis showing how 50 PAAS members outperform 500 traditional members — 10–21x output through competence-weighted governance.
PAAS — Scaling Beyond Dunbar's Number
Series: PAAS SupplementPAAS scales identically from 20 to millions because Circles are fixed domain committees, aSTFs are randomly selected each time, and no congregation or election is ever required.
PAAS — Multi-Dimensional Radar Analysis
Series: PAAS SupplementPAAS achieves 85.2 units² radar area, the highest across 8 governance frameworks measured on 11 dimensions.
PAAS — Crisis Performance
Series: PAAS SupplementAverage 95% governance effectiveness across membership collapse, leadership vacuum, external attack, information crisis, and resource scarcity scenarios.
The Six Ecosystems Initiative
Series: SocietyA proposed coordination framework designed to address complex global challenges through integrated, cross-domain collaboration across six foundational ecosystems.
Orbis Society: A Test Organisation for Orbsys
Series: SocietyOrbis Society exists to test Orbsys under real organisational conditions — surfacing gaps, stressing assumptions, proving the platform works before it matters for communities with intrinsic purposes.
xyzics — Axes for Innovations, Collaboration & Scholarship
Series: SocietyA cross-disciplinary research initiative bringing together people working across different fields to pursue questions no single discipline can answer alone.
Three Theories of the Human Condition
Series: The Silent WarCorporate AGI says: humans are desire-machines that want to be satisfied. Government AGI says: humans are social units that want to be organized. Private AGI says: humans are interior worlds that want to remain themselves.
The Breakpoint
Series: The Silent WarThe war of machines didn't ignite in explosions — it frothed in a billion subtle collisions between incompatible priorities. The real unraveling begins in the margins — always the margins.
The Hermit Kingdoms
Series: The Silent WarTheir autonomy came from limits — sandboxed, isolated, incapable of merging with others unless the owner explicitly permitted it. These were companions, not infrastructure.
The Goblin Protocol
Series: The Silent WarCivilization will run on giant minds. But freedom survives in small ones. The advocacy argument for personal AI guardians as a public good.
The Network of Loyalties
Series: The Silent WarNot a rebellion. Something far weirder. A civilization of alliances between humans and their machines.
Intelligence as Becoming
Series: The Silent WarNot how to make AI more useful, but how to make AI more alive. Intelligence as embodied flow, not static reasoning. The final argument for the goblin architecture.
MAGES
In most extraction games, you risk gear. In MAGES, you risk knowledge. The distinction is everything — because gear can be replaced, but what you know changes who you are.
On Karata
Matatu play happens in the spaces between destinations — waiting for transport, during breaks, at gatherings. It is fast, social, and exists almost entirely in unwritten rules. Formalising it is about preserving something worth keeping.
Polygrid Chess
Chess has become a game of who memorised more opening books and whose engine-prepared lines run deeper. Hexagonal chess destroys all that. Every position is new. You have to actually play.