Theory of Everything - Deep Dive

Role Play

One Friday evening, a Block of the Blockchain is forming. Near falafel vendor Abdul, elderly Hana plops her groceries down at the edge of a big-city crosswalk under a late-afternoon, summer sun. The bustling street is wide, her bags heavy, and the timer too quick for Hana's sclerotic heart to safely pump across. Busy Abdul's huge grin stretches wide, his open hand gestures at her bags, and he comments, "Big night tonight?" Hana nods, the pair holding a look forged over years of friendship — both know there's nothing practical Abdul can do to help just now. Bicycle-cop Dave approaches. Hana's raised finger calls out, but does Dave even see her? Fine-leather shoes scurry, two weaving needles through a densely packed sidewalk. Old Hana's eyes lock-on. Nice neighbor Noa's muddled response, "Sorry, Hana, but I'm..." cuts short her look, his well-polished loafers racing on without another word. Finally, two teenage heroes arrive at Deep Cuts, hoping to sharpen their hairstyles before a night out on the town. Holding the door's edge, tall Jasper points out Hana's situation to bubbly Felix, who yells to barber Sid, "Take Jasper. I won't be a minute." Felix scampers over, lifts the five bags, and with a changing light, crosses with Hana, who tells him of her plans to host daughter Linh and son-in-law Greg for a special dinner — important news is on its way. And thus, the Block is complete, Hana and her groceries homeward-bound.

In the Introduction, we sketched the broad architecture of the Novel Universe Model — its frameworks of Love and Power, the Concert Hall, the Marketplace, and the Spiral. Here, we flesh out those ideas with examples, speculative science, and deeper explorations of the Model's implications. We begin where we left off, at the intersection of experience and information.

Whether from a framework of Love (Complete Information) or Power (Information Control), one's beyond-life is defined by the quantity and quality of qualia.^[1] Qualia is information created through one's senses — an individual's unique experience of a thing's characteristics, like how someone sees the "redness" of a stoplight, or feels the "roughness" of a road's pavement. Qualia isn't simply the precise frequency of the red light, but rather, the individual's specific experience. For instance, a person who suffers cataracts may see a blurry, washed-out red with an annoying glare and halo. On the other hand, someone with great vision sees neither glare nor halo, but a detailed, bright red circle with a saturated color and sharp edge. These are two very different experiences of the same thing.

In the Concert Hall, information's quantity is set (complete), while its quality, initially derived from one's connection to its co-creation — deeper connections equate to a higher quality of qualia. Although both boys play a part in Hana's successful crossing, there's a difference between Felix, who steps in, and Jasper, who stands aside, pointing out that Hana needs help. In the Marketplace, information's quantity is not set (controlled), while its quality, fixed and limited. Acquired data degrades with distance from its source, and there's always some degree of separation between the co-creators of data and Marketplace buyer, as one doesn't trade for things one already possesses. For example, neither Hana, Felix, nor Jasper will find their versions of Hana's Block in the Marketplace, but may, instead, each put them up for sale to Dave, Noa, or any other interested buyer.

A difference in data fidelity — qualia's quality — can have a profound effect on the experience of the data, but does not necessarily change its basic, underlying information — a red light still says "stop" no matter how it's seen. For example, there're any number of games where competitors hit an object back-and-forth across a centerline. Different versions might be experienced in vastly different ways, though the fundamentals remain unchanged. At one end sits a low-res game of Pong, its qualia limited, consisting of oversized, 2-D pixels, filling a black-and-white screen, with a monotone, tinny sound, and a simple rule-set; at the other end, a high-res, virtual-reality tennis match played on Wimbledon's roaring Centre Court, its qualia near-lifelike, consisting of full color and sound, filling a binocular, 3-D view of a photo-realistic world, and sporting a robust set of evolving rules. From a practical point of view, the games are the same: return the object across the centerline past the opponent without a violation. However, the gameplay's qualia — the fidelity of experienced data — is dramatically different.

In this way, different relationships to the creation of a Block mean different levels of experienced qualia. While Jasper set in motion Hana's successful crossing, did not directly participate, his initial fidelity of Hana's Block in the Concert Hall (or Spiral) will be closer to Pong, as compared to Felix's experience, which will be more like that intense game of virtual tennis. After all, Jasper was not directly involved, unlike Felix. This means Felix's experience in the Hall of Hana's point of view, crossing the street, will be richer than Jasper's. Jasper will still experience her journey from her perspective, but like the difference between Pong and Wimbledon, it'll be a useful sketch, not the full picture.

To further explore this idea in detail, let's turn the story snippet into a play called, Hana's Crossing. We'll use the performance of this play (or any play) to evolve a metaphor, describing the three gestalt degrees of information quality — how qualia's fidelity degrades as source and receiver separate. We'll call this metaphor, "Role Play," and refer to it throughout the Novel Universe Model's Theory of Everything to express this foundational concept. Role Play will show how different roles, or categories of experiencers, have different experiences of Hana's Crossing — with each degree of separation, the quantity and quality diminish in various ways. Primarily, this example will demonstrate how a change of perspective changes fidelity, not only what the observer experiences, but what senses are involved, and therefore, the qualia present. The three levels of experienced fidelity are indirect, secondary-direct, and primary-direct, akin to the three potential stages of a relationship — interest, connection, and integration. Relationships require interest, as interest is not strictly the desire for a thing, but moreover, awareness of a thing — where our interests lie, so does our focused attention. Interest initiates a relationship, and once a firm connection forms, integration is possible. Primary-direct experiencers are "integrated" with full-Block fidelity; secondary-direct, establish a "connection" with fidelity limits; and indirect experiencers' "interest" is a mere shadow of fidelity, often no more salient than an awareness of the Block's existence.

First, let's take a look at the primary-direct experiencer — metaphorically what happens onstage. The greatest possible informational fidelity is represented by the Block's co-creators — the stars of the show: Hana, Felix, and Jasper. As the play's focal points, the actors playing these roles fully engage all their senses and attention on the play — the Concert Hall's level of Complete Information. The actor playing Hana has an "integrated" level of fidelity with the play's plot, after all, she's the central character. As the incoming hero that saves the day, the actor playing Felix is "connected" to the plot. Co-star Felix's role in Hana's story takes its cues from her experience of him. Lastly, Jasper, the instigator. Playing Jasper, this actor's role springs from the character's "interest" in Hana's situation. After a quick word to Felix, Jasper leaves the spotlight, becoming no more relevant than a stage prop, standing aside, watching Felix and Hana cross.

One step removed from the stars are the inconsequential supporting cast, symbolizing the Marketplace's greatest possible level of acquired fidelity. Characters like Abdul, Dave, and Noa weave in and out of the spotlight as the narrative develops. Abdul's falafels keep him customer-focused, Dave is clueless to the Block's formation, and Noa flatly refuses to lend a hand — not one of them directly participating in the success of Hana's journey. Although the actors briefly find themselves in the spotlight, their contributions to the plot would otherwise not be missed. These are the single-scene cutouts, minor one-liners. Other such support includes Sid, the barber shop customers, the sidewalk full of extras, even those just offstage — the play's crew, working the props, lights, sound effects, etc. With each shift away from the spotlight, the salience of the individual's experienced fidelity of the play wanes, but cannot be completely lost, as no matter their involvement, each actor and stagehand requires a minimum level of attention placed on both their personal performance and their cohort's, lest they ruin the show.

Let's go backstage and take it from the sidelines, maybe as the stage manager, director, set designer, etc. This is a special point between a primary and secondary-direct experiencer, in other words, a little bit of both. Before curtain call, each had spent a great deal of time and effort over the many grueling rehearsals, shaping the show with their direct input. Now that it's here? Outside of a minor tweak or inspirational comment, they've all gotta let go, listen, and watch, no more involved than any other audience member, cheering, gasping, or the real death knell, yawning. Although they're clearly not like the actors and stagehands, they're also not exactly like the audience either. They're invested, taking notes on what's working, and what could be improved upon.

Finally, the audience, either current or potential — the secondary-direct and indirect experiencers. Sitting in pricy box seats is a markedly different experience from the cheap seats — glistening sweat hitting paper grocery bags; micro expressions raging at the loss of eye contact; the sharp, short inhale of a young man stretching his long neck to see who stands at the crosswalk. However, even in the balcony, one's heart might still sink at the sight of Hana's helpless look, chuckle at her loud sigh as Dave flies by, breathe deep with the rich sizzle of Abdul's falafels, even adjust in their seat with the simulated rattling of a passing cargo truck — much more engaging than watching a television broadcast, which itself is better fidelity than listening to the radio. It's all a question of what qualia is present, and to what degree it's experienced? A TV will show what a radio cannot, but even that view is fixed and limited by the TV producer's vision and editorial choices. Focusing in on Jasper's darting eyes means the TV audience misses the full context of Hana's exaggerated body language as Noa races off — both bits of information well-received by a live audience.

The lowest possible fidelity is the indirect experiencer — a potential audience member. At the high-end, this might be an animated table reading of the script in an acting class, while far at the other, simply hearing someone mention Hana's Crossing. Levels of fidelity in-between include discussing the play with a recent attendee, checking out a review in the local newspaper, or staring up at a billboard with its tantalizing invitation to attend. The simple awareness of a play's existence would be the minimum fidelity possible, and anything further, such as the genre or featured actors, adds information. Here, there is no actual qualia, no experience of the play itself, only the experience of qualia once removed — that of the student's voice reading the script, or the colors and lines of the billboard's design.

Co-creating a Block weaves each contributing Signature-Frequency Set's data into the Block's very structure, with each participant like an encryption key. Only the Block's keys grant total access, revealing to each keyholder the Block's complete dataset — the "star," or deepest possible level of fidelity, found only in the Concert Hall or Spiral.

Just as a supporting cast full of "extras" adds ambiance — each actor playing no functional role in the plot's development — a Marketplace buyer has no co-creator-level connection to their acquired Block's information, although the seller may, but not necessarily. Furthermore, the intrinsic cost of the Marketplace's limited fidelity is born from its inherent benefit — control. Power means one might consume (through trade) that which one did not co-create, and because one did not co-create it, one's access to its source is therefore acquired. By the very nature of the information's source, its qualia is incomplete, the way a twentieth-century, black-and-white copier transforms a sunrise photo's glorious rainbow of colors into shades of gray.

In comparison to the Concert Hall's experience of a simulated match at Wimbledon, Marketplace patrons purchase versions of Pong, but even Pong has its differing degrees of value. Playing a Pong match is much more engaging than watching someone else's random game, which is, again, more intense than reading some analytical description of one, real or imagined. Whether they played it, watched it, or read about it, the patron might still walk away with the same basic information about the Pong match — who won, how long did it last, what was the final score, etc. In this sense, the spectrum of what one might acquire in the Marketplace may not be limited, but its range of qualia and depth of fidelity is always fixed by its original source, and that source's relationship to the Block's co-creation.

Whatever our chosen framework, we can dig deeper than our initial level of access. In the Marketplace, this happens through trade. Officer Dave might purchase a version of Hana's Block, and depending on who he trades with and what he trades for, he'll have that approximate -- but never precise — experience of her Block. A low-quality version would metaphorically spell out Abdul's POV via a list of bullet-points — its qualia consisting of dry, technical wording printed on paper. A mid-quality version would be like a colorful cartoon from hero Felix's third-person perspective — its qualia consisting of exaggerated, hand-drawn, animated images and melodramatic, campy sound effects. The highest possible acquired version would be an immersive simulation of Hana's POV — its qualia consisting of the hot sun, mixing scents of warm falafels and exhaust fumes, a soundscape full of chattering voices and squawking car horns, and a visual framing of Hana's expressive, photo-realistic face for emotional context.

Further trades with Jasper and Noa add data, creating a patchwork of POVs. Combining the data, Dave inches ever closer to Complete Information (full fidelity), but through the Marketplace, will never reach a level on par with the Concert Hall. With each step of separation from the source, qualia evaporates, and some things are easy to approximate, but simply impossible to replicate. For instance, eyes can see every imaginable thing in the universe, but the one thing they'll never truly see — themselves. For that, they'd need a reflection, like a mirror or video, but even then, the image is fixed, two-dimensional, and skewed — not the complete picture.

The full-fidelity of Complete Information is not a simulation, approximation, or reflection, and requires the Instrument — the stars' (Hana, Felix, Jasper) and cast's (Abdul, Dave, Noa) actual lived experience. There's only one place the Instrument faithfully plays for all to equally hear — the Concert Hall. No matter the depth of fidelity or number of trades, acquired information is always limited. What about Hana's embodied feelings, emotions, and first-person perspective: a view from her four-and-a-half-foot stature; a diseased heart's sharp stab; gnarled-twine handles digging into paper-thin skin; heated frustration boiling over as towering Dave races by, again? Instead of a view of Hana's face for emotional context, full fidelity means Hana's actual emotions are experienced, firsthand — neither context nor interpretation needed.

There's more here than simply raw data; there's the framing of an infinitely precise perspective. The difference between 99.999...% and 100% can be profound. Consider a spinning top placed on the perfectly flat surface of a kilometer-wide cube of pure tungsten floating in space. A top that is 99.999...% wobble-free will eventually succumb to that minuscule imperfection — its slight wobble gradually amplifying in the cube's gentle gravitational field until the top topples over. In contrast, a perfectly wobble-free top will spin with eternal stability. This sliver of difference — smaller than any human measurement could detect — marks the boundary between perpetual order and inevitable chaos. Like that totally wobble-free top, full fidelity is only possible directly through the Instrument's Blockchain (the Spiral or Hall), and comes from having participated in the Block's creation, either directly or indirectly.

When a Ripple returns to its source, the informational circuit is complete. Receiving data from a co-created Block in the Concert Hall is like filling in the missing pieces of a puzzle — new data fits existing data perfectly. For example, in the Hall, Jasper might experience the same data as Felix — Hana's exact sensation of relief — but only Felix's mortal POV might place Hana's feelings in the full context of his own experience, as data experienced in isolation isn't the same. Similarly, only Hana might know the true depth of Abdul's torn heart, not able to lend a hand.

It's as if everyone we interact with possesses a uniquely formed piece that only belongs to our co-created Block's individual puzzle with infinite precision — again, the way encryption keys work. On the other hand, Dave rode by, creating no "puzzle piece," no direct data of Hana's actual crossing. Nothing anchors Dave to the Block but a thin thread born of Hana's brief frustration with him. Dave has no real decryption key for the actual event itself, and no way to simulate one. Should Dave, in his Spiral, wish to experience her journey across the street, he might only acquire Hana's, Jasper's, Felix's, or some passersby's data, and peer, imperfectly, through their point of view.

Complete Information means all inhabitants of the Concert Hall have full access to all information of interest, whether they are directly or indirectly connected to it. Digging deeper requires no more than one's awareness of and desire for the Block's information. In the Hall, Sid's customer, Malcolm, would initially have an informational fidelity of Hana's Block akin to that potential-audience level, like reading a description of the Block in a newspaper. Though Malcolm wasn't a co-creator of Hana's Block, at the barber shop that day, he was present as Felix had told the story of her crossing. This awareness of the Block means Malcolm is indirectly connected to it, and can choose to explore beyond his initial experience.

Initially, in the Concert Hall, Malcolm would experience Felix's Block, telling the story of Hana's crossing. Malcolm's part in the telling of the story was sitting in a barber chair, listening to Felix go on about the good deed. As Malcolm is one of the Block's keyholders, he'll experience Felix's Block at a star level of fidelity, "becoming" the storyteller, and from Felix's POV, experiencing what it was like to relay the event to Sid's patrons — feeling all the thoughts, emotions, and memories running through Felix's head as the story of Hana's crossing was told.

While Malcolm remains in the Hall, his genuine curiosity leads him along those branches of cause-and-effect, back to the inciting incident itself, and with no more than the exercise of preference, Malcolm experiences Hana's Block from Felix's POV, lugging those five bags across that busy street with Hana. At this point, Malcolm, once more, moves farther along the branch, and experiences Hana's Block from Hana's POV, busily chatting about her dinner plans while occasionally glancing up at her hero Felix — one connection of full-fidelity leading to the next.

Alternatively, if Malcolm was in his Spiral, he'd still be able to follow those branches of cause-and-effect, but unlike the Concert Hall (Complete Information), in his Spiral (Information Control) fidelity would diminish with each degree of separation. As Malcolm directly heard Felix tell his tale at the barber shop, his experience of Felix's storytelling would still be primarily-direct (full fidelity), but Felix's experience of walking Hana across the street would have far less fidelity for Malcolm — not secondary-direct, but indirect, because Malcolm was only aware of the Block, playing neither a primary nor secondary role in its creation. Malcolm's fidelity of Felix's experience (walking Hana across the street) would be at the potential-audience level.

On the other hand, Jasper, in his Spiral, could choose to experience Felix's POV of walking with Hana across the street in that secondary-direct level, because Jasper pointed out Hana's situation, which directly led to Felix crossing the street with Hana, establishing Jasper's secondary-direct connection to the interaction. As Hana's POV is once-removed from Felix's, Jasper's experience of Hana's POV would again be degraded in his Spiral, becoming the same as Malcolm's, a potential-audience-level experience.

This one Block reaches into lives beyond the street corner that day. Implicit in Hana's Block are other tangential Blocks, many of which no other character had nor would have had knowledge of in life. Where was she headed next? What festered at the root of her exhaustion? How did the knock-on effects of Felix's assistance play out once she arrived home? Counter-factually, without Felix's help, Hana would not have picked up a prescient bottle of fine wine, or even made it home in time to prepare that important dinner, where exciting news of a first grandchild would be announced and properly celebrated — just what Hana's tattered heart needed to soothe that stress-filled day, a day that would alternatively have been a tipping point for her health. In life, Felix could never have known his brief assistance would prolong the life of this future grandmother long enough to meet her grandchild. In death, however, he'll not only experience Hana's relief as they crossed that street, but also, have an awareness of those pruned branches he prevented, as well as the ones created — the joy this new grandmother felt, holding her precious grandchild for the first and only time.

The Novelty of Freewill

A body (a self-contained volume with mass) of any size can be described as a unique set of identifiable numbers — a pattern of spatial coordinates, like a particle's vibrational field. What creates this number set, and influences the body's future position? Is it fully determined, a billiard ball deflecting from one to another along a preexisting path, revealing a block universe,^[2] line-by-line like the pages of a storybook that have already been written? Or, does the particle have "freewill," and its "decision" as to where it "wants" to go, step-by-step, plays a role in its ultimate destination, describing the computationally irreducible^[3] unfolding of a novel universe with a certain past but uncertain future?

The idea, should all factors in play be known, that individual preference can objectively be calculated, reduces the subjective observer from actor to artifact — no longer an agent of change, each mind along for the ride as a mere glitch in the system. As the observers of our own lives, are we creating the action — Role Play's stars onstage — or passively sitting by, watching the world pass from the cheap seats? The determinist assumes a wholly mechanistic universe — the notion that mathematical models governed by objective laws exist for everything, including such subjective experiences as consciousness and freewill.

When scientific rules break down and holes are found, the determinist argues that some yet-to-be discovered, measurable factor will create a more precise model, thus overcoming the breakdown, filling the holes, and reinforcing the assumption of a mechanistic universe. As quantum particle behavior is far from fixed, probability maps allow science to account for and make use of randomness. However, whenever better models shed the light of measurement upon those "dark" factors, random events transform into predictable equations.

By definition, in a mechanistic universe, mechanisms exist for everything, thus, the very concept of a self-determined inner life is rejected. Concepts like freewill and consciousness become hallucinations of a system attempting to cement its own significance — nothing has true agency, and at best, only certain vertebrates experience such delusions, primarily to support the complex dynamics of a social species. Internal states represent "black boxes," non-determinable functions that create "random" outputs. The practical reason rocks can't have inner lives — feelings, perspectives, experiences — is because we can't have real science without real measurement.

The great irony is that this inner life is the only known truth, the only evidence we have of anything — we all experience our own existence firsthand. From our individual perspective, experience itself could be an illusion, but the fact that we're having the experience cannot. The Novel Universe Model not only embraces an inner life, but also, sees this controversial black box as the keystone of existence — the Signature-Frequency Set. Although we won't argue the math and admit the observer (SFS) might, from time to time, seem no more significant than a mere glitch, this "random deviation" has purpose and intent — the agency to both express and alter preference.

The very existence of freewill^[4] sits at the center of a longstanding, academic debate. Freewill, like consciousness, is difficult for science to define — a likely cause of contention in either case — but for those outside the hallowed halls of higher learning, no debate rages, no questions asked. Throughout history, the concept of freewill and its sense of pure agency was not a typical belief. Instead, most had some form of a spiritual model to account for their impulses and actions, be it gods, demons, oracles, natural forces, even animals.^[5] With the advent of American culture and its Puritan doctrines of individualism^[6] and personal accountability, the separation of mind and spirit from body and nature cemented the concept of dualism.^[7] Through this cultural evolution, humans began seeing choice in everything: vanilla or chocolate, is this guy a friend or enemy, clear the break room of the co-worker's dishes or walk away because it's someone else's job?

Generally, freewill states that before a step is taken, the outcome remains fluid. Personal choice — free from outside influence — determines what follows. Throughout the mid-twentieth century, the tobacco industry wielded libertarian phrases such as "personal responsibility" or "freedom of choice" to displace liability^[8] for their toxic product onto consumers, despite their own mounting evidence that nicotine's highly addictive, and smoking, deadly. Their framing of freewill stems from the simpleminded idea that a person's actions inevitably reflect their intentions, whether they're aware of their reasons or not. Therefore, individuals must be held accountable for every action, including smoking. Why? Because they could simply choose to not smoke. On the other hand, determinism^[9] sees "choice" as an illusion of the mind — a post hoc justification for one's actions. In other words, René Descartes' famous saying in reverse, "I am, and therefore I think."

"Sure, I had vanilla ice cream today. I wanted vanilla ice cream today, but nothing made me pick vanilla. I also love chocolate, and if I'd wanted chocolate, I woulda had chocolate," says Abdul.

Determinist Chris rebuts, "You had vanilla because of fond childhood memories — your mother, birthday parties, Sunday strolls. And it's more than your finicky hippocampus, it's highly reinforced neural pathways and fundamental chemistry — insulin and dopamine rage within, sparking a habitual trigger-reaction-reward circuit. You see, Abdul, vanilla-flavored ice cream is not only sweeter than chocolate — the focus of that dopamine rush, that yearning for pleasure — but higher sucrose levels better resolve your insulin imbalance. The second those black-speckled, white scoops appeared, your body had already made its decision — your pancreas, AgRP neurons, epithelial neural pods, nucleus accumbens ... everything inside craved vanilla. Thus, you only believe you made a choice. There was no choice, because chocolate was never an option.

"Please ... Abdul, you're not the driver of this bus, not even a passenger. You're the lowly turn-signal who only thinks it's in charge, simply because things coincidentally happen wherever you light up. You've never made the bus turn! In fact, nothing about you is actually useful to its operation. No, you may be a drain on the battery, but you're no more consequential than a simple mechanism of communication, a warning to stay out of the way! It's the faceless masses you care about, who care about you! Ha, the bus, the driver — all the passengers inside — they hardly know you even exist."

Is freewill ubiquitous, unfettered, as the optimistic libertarians suggest, or a harsh illusion as the stubborn determinists believe? As Henri Poincaré's 1898 paper (On the problem of the three bodies and partial differential equations) demonstrates, no deterministic system maintains itself in a complex environment far beyond those first-order contacts — the "butterfly effect"^[10] of chaos theory means that conditions evolve, and predictions are impossible beyond a certain level of complexity in an environment of infinite precision — computational irreducibility.

The Novel Universe Model occupies a nuanced position between either extreme — neither as an illusion of consciousness nor as an innate, unconstrained force. Instead, NUM suggests that both individual choices and external factors play complex roles in determining our desires. Our typical experience of novelty is a mixture of the familiar and unfamiliar — with the right balance, novelty can be desirable. Absolute novelty is an event that has never occurred — an unknowable, unknown — and even a little can be too much. As we tend to like what we like, one's desires are often predictable, but not always, and might only be fixed once past and present mix. Furthermore, one's preferences are not the product of one's history alone, not set in stone beforehand, and therefore, not always deducible. The exploration of experimentation allows for choice — the ability to change one's mind, and seek novel options. "Preference," as a concept, drives NUM's philosophical and theological structure, with freewill serving as the engine for preference formation and modification. Freewill's like bounding from one plank of preference's staircase to another. Strictly speaking, it's a step-function, a discontinuous change in one's desires.

Freewill is more than the expression of choice, but a continuum, ranging from a simple tweak to an outright change. As freewill requires the intentional suspension of one's current preference in order to modify or replace it, suffering (the absence of preference) ensues, at least to some degree. In other words, the learning process often smarts, as establishing novel neural pathways can be its own kind of special discomfort — effort, frustration, anger ... even a manageable bout of depression might have a meaningful lesson in store. We all know that the work is often worth it, as scaling the heights of newfound knowledge in action can become the marvelous experience of "flow." ^[11] In time, of course, the wonderful feeling eventually fades into the background, becoming just another skill added to the toolbox.

Freewill's not always as concrete as learning a new skill or changing ice cream flavors, but can be as subtle as putting that cigarette off another minute, or rolling from the couch to do one push-up. It might also be more profound, such as a pivot in one's general mindset. For example, one day, Jasper reconsiders a lifelong pattern of obsessively evaluating whether those around him are either allies or enemies — a basic notion of Power's framework. Instead, he decides to release control, make the great effort, and simply accept people for who they are, on their own terms — Love's framework. With effort, Jasper leans in. Going forward, this change of preferred frameworks colors every social interaction in a new light, revealing a previously unseen array of novel paths — some less safe, some more satisfying.

Brains both detect and seek out patterns, sometimes purely for pleasure, but most importantly, to enhance efficiency — streamlining expended energy for a given task is known as the free energy principle.^[12] Freewill's the opposite, increasing expended energy — the emotional motion raging against the gradient of prior preference. Dropping a petty argument or picking up after a co-worker is neither easy nor comfortable, but imagine the effort required to resist the impulse to label every person as friend or foe, or the number of sample spoons required to find a new favorite flavor every time one had a scoop. Freewill isn't doing something because one feels like doing it — what's often much easier — but because one wills it into existence — what's often much harder.

As brains discover methods to meet a newly formed preference, behavior becomes more reliable, and the further expense of freewill is thus limited through predictive modeling^[13] (learning through patterns of successful guessing). For example, the neural-network of Greg, assembling a bed for the first time, is very active compared to Linh, who has made many. With each attempt by the novice, Greg makes all kinds of guesses, leading to many mistakes and few successes. By paying close attention, internal prediction models struggle to match predicted reality (expectations) with actual reality (sensory feedback). With persistence and patience, Greg's senses eventually confirm the presence of his preference — an assembled bed. Henceforth, future effort is reduced by the experience.

Grooving to one's chosen framework requires no special effort — Love begets Love, Power begets Power — but for Jasper, someone whose frame is Power, to act with intentional vulnerability wouldn't be possible without an intense investment of energy. Furthermore, Noa, whose frame is Love, had to force himself across those lines in the sand — ethical, emotional, societal, etc. — to conquer reluctance and secure freedom, as he, running late, slipped away from Hana towards his own special meeting — a first date with Chris. Raw effort is the experience of freewill, the discomfort required to swim against a tidal wave of psychology and biology. That effort is in direct proportion to the amount of change, but also, the complexity of the system. For instance, a human stands at one extreme of this spectrum, with the anterior mid-cingulate cortex (aMCC),^[14] while a quantum particle at the other, with nothing more than the basic functionality of its internal informational system — its Signature-Frequency Set.

The energy requirements of quantum information exchange are low, or in the case of a time crystal,^[15] zero. This low energy requirement inherently suggests the propensity to express the novelty of freewill is at its highest where structures are the simplest. Therefore, as complexity assembles from one level to the next, so do freewill's energy requirements increase, making what is more common for a quantum particle, less common for a human. Thus, humans have significant parts of the brain (including the ACC^[16] and aMCC) dedicated to enforcing freewill's fundamental operation on a reluctant body. On the bright side, these regions are also associated with the "will to live,"^[17] an aMCC state with profound effects. ^[18] For determinists who point to the biology as proof of freewill's absence, the counterpoint is a chicken-and-egg argument: does the preference (SFS black box) manifest as the brain state, or does the brain state manifest the preference (no SFS black box)? As these are coinciding states, the answer cannot be disentangled, and is therefore a choice of perspective, not a mechanism of fact.

Our desires and priorities frame the world around us, filtering our point of view and range of responses to our environment. Although we may not always "choose" this precise action or that, the guardrails of Power and Love maintain the menu of options before us, and subsequently, our general behavior. We don't always choose each step of a precise path, but instead, at times, choose one path over the other, fluctuating between the frameworks of Love and Power. Freewill is not a switch that is either on or off, but a spectrum of awareness and intention, guiding our lifelong dance between the comfort of predictability and the intensity of novelty.

Although we often romanticize the concept of freewill, and feel certain that every second of every day we're expressing it, in reality, it's the exception, not the rule. With some combination of raw perception, an open mind, and playful or purposeful experimentation, "freewill" is the energy (willpower) required to tinker with one's preferences. Freewill, as this effort, is therefore self-limiting, and only occasionally pops up in full-force. Especially for more complex systems, such as a human mind, day-to-day, mostly neurobiology, epigenetics, hormonal balance, memory, etc. are the predictable, falling dominoes leading to a specific behavior — as the determinists would suggest, predictive modeling and the free energy principle rule the day. Even though most bodies mostly do what's expected when expected, the black box of an SFS, and its ability to express freewill, sometimes surfaces, not always to drastically alter the actions of those inevitable dominoes with a totally unexpected change in mindset, but at times, letting go of a triviality, remedying a benign defect, or simply the timing of one's next smoke.

The Emerging Novel Universe

Emergence "occurs when a complex entity has properties or behaviors that its parts do not have on their own, and emerge only when they interact in a wider whole," Wikipedia.com — Emergence. Through the "bottom-up" processing of multiple, "lower" level components — each component independently following a common set of "simple" rules — a "higher" level of complexity emerges.^[19] A model is an "informative representation of an object, person, or system," Wikipedia.com — Model. By modeling and manipulating a lower-level's expression of its rules, the higher-level model effectively manages the system's emergent properties, as suggested by the Attention schema theory (AST).^[20]

AST considers animal "consciousness" as a control model of complexity — what the Novel Universe Model labels a Higher-Order Conductor (HOC). This control model is constructed of multiple sub-models — what NUM labels Lower-Order Bodies (LOB). A mind is the "capstone" model, a body's "Highest-Ordered Conductor," sitting atop a layered "pyramid" of models, each model nested with sub-models in a vast network of processing through competent cognition (self-directed, effective problem-solving).

Consciousness allows for the awareness and adjustment of behavior through mental models (effective narratives, aka, stories), as well as the evaluation of a specific action's overall success or failure — did Hana pick up the cup, or did it slip from her hand to the floor at the exciting news of a first grandchild? Out of a noisy, irreducible world, the answer arises as a manageable, reducible concept — crap, she dropped the cup! With new information, these same models (LOB) allow Hana (HOC) to update her actions, and find a way to meet her preference to hold onto the cup. The thought itself derives from its own mental model — a story (pattern of information) she tells herself about who she is as a person. Hana's a Stoic, someone who keeps her cool, no matter what. Any news, good or bad, won't wrest away control, at least that's the behavioral priority she seeks to maintain — her "attractor state," the Stoic "self" she sees herself as.

Information moves "up" (emerges) by compressing a lower layer's data into a digestible model for the next layer's use — irreducibility smoothed out into reducibility. For example, Chris, a university's Museum Director, is informed of a pile of petrified straw at a dig site. Is it worth investing the university's resources for further exploration? Director Chris, as the dig site's "Higher-Order Conductor," oversees an array of scientists, students, and other workers, each contributor a "Lower-Order Body." Like a soundboard's controls, the various groups constitute a set of options the Director might adjust, in other words, Chris' "option space."^[21] Chris dials up the most promising one to its maximum setting, asking the site's archaeologists to evaluate the discovery and return with their findings.

Lower-Order Bodies create models that function as "black boxes," in that their external workings are clear to the HOC user, but their internal workings (created and operated by the LOB's internal competent cognition) are not. The archaeologists' multi-reasoned evaluation of the evidence is compressed through its black box of expertise into a simplified story, describing ancient beds. To move forward, the ultimate HOC — the Museum Board — must be persuaded. In order to express the Director's childhood dream (preference) of exploring prehistoric cultures, Chris, functioning as one of the Museum Board's Lower-Order Bodies, compresses all relevant data into a Director-level black box — a slick PowerPoint presentation.

This cycling back-and-forth between who counts as an LOB or HOC repeats throughout emergent hierarchies of scale, as rising data is processed. The archaeologists' technically sophisticated reasons were compressed into a salient conclusion for the Director, who took that model, and combined it with other Director-level models to present to the Board. Emergence is more than simply compressing the same data over and over, but integrating the combined meaning of the LOB's datasets at each level of complexity, creating a useful emergent story for that level's HOC — the Director's black box doesn't just include the archaeologists' story, but other models relevant to the Board, such as the economic and educational benefits the discovery might represent for the university.

Focusing on this seesaw relationship between contributor and evaluator, human vision demonstrates how raw signals from the retinas' countless rods and cones transform an overwhelming sea of granularity into the brain's useful "sketch" of reality.^[22] We do not see the world as a collection of individual "pixels," but a smooth, comprehensive picture with some level of meaning — the result of a process that is both awe-inspiring and fraught with potential peril. Through transduction, photo-receptor cells turn light into electrical signals. This cacophony of noise is sent to the retina's second layer of cells to be organized and compressed into a comprehensible "screen-view" for the third layer — retinal ganglion cells, each a different type of Higher-Order Conductor. Filtering the maelstrom, these cells focus on information salient to their particular goals (preferences in action), be it locating the direction of a primary light source, differentiating illumination gradients, recognizing color patterns, etc. Now functioning as Lower-Order Bodies, the ganglia send their promising models to the visual cortex for further processing. Through the LOB-HOC hierarchical relationships, the V-neural layers^[23] transform edges, hues, and luminance into motion, texture, and depth ... even recognizable faces begin to pop out from the fusiform gyrus.^[24] Combined and compressed yet again, the information reveals a comprehensible environment, full of objects, actors, and actions — "high-concept" models assembled from those lower-level characteristics — lines, hues, motion, etc. Finally, the visual cortex's highly-compressed models assemble into a story for the capstone model of consciousness to digest — its "mental" model. Thus, the mind engages the brain's narrative: somewhere, a somewhat recognizable thing is doing something that makes some amount of sense. But, how does the story match reality?

The brain scampers about, constantly assembling a plausible narrative to match the LOB's river of information. Because of hidden bias and inherent compression errors, no moment of perception in isolation is completely true, and a skeptical eye is a wise instrument. The only insurance we have against self-delusion is time and an open mind. Does new information reinforce or reconfigure the models? Only our continuous stream of data might evolve a more useful story, but if we don't believe contradictory information is even possible, we'll continue to be anchored to what we expect. Add the weight of bias to that anchor, and we've entered the world of cognitive dissonance.

Information processed by the cortex isn't akin to a camera recording a video, where the environment's signal and displayed data is one-to-one — that's more like the retina's array of photo-receptor cells. Instead, it's akin to a holographic sketch pad, constructing each impression top-down through the lens of context and history, what's known as heuristics, or mental shortcuts. Despite that jumble of data at the bottom creating a recognizable "event" at the top, repeated compression implies a staggering amount of data-loss, leaving anyone with eyes wired to a brain susceptible to optical illusions.

For instance, bicycle-cop Dave speeds behind panicked Jasper, believing the fleeing burglary suspect is armed. Why? Because it's the law of the jungle, and criminals carry guns. Under these intense conditions, a mere resemblance to a weapon, and Dave's brain filters the color, reflectivity, and even form of Jasper's thin cellphone into a bulky pistol. The pursuer briefly, but actually sees what he expects — a gun in Jasper's hand. The blink of an eye is all it takes to end in serious consequences. On the other hand, when the story isn't about survival but heroism, the real threat isn't the possibility that criminals are armed, but that the officer might lose his composure — his authority — and it all starts with the stories in Dave's head. Is Dave in charge, directing events, or not? Words certainly matter, but stories drive behavior.

Our information processing schema's weakness is also its strength — we need those stories, those mental shortcuts. The sheer amount of data processing required to attend to every aspect of our lives would leave us all paralyzed — how long could we consciously juggle our beating heart, breathing lungs, moving body parts, and all of this all at once? On its own, successfully digesting an entire apple would likely overwhelm any coordinated team of mechanical engineers, biochemists, and gastroenterologists. Going on autopilot to "enter the house after work," is a single mental model made from various high-concept sub-models: "open the door," "turn on the light," "put away the car keys," "pour the glass of wine," etc. Furthermore, each sub-model is a compilation of multiple sub-models, each employing specific actions, locations, cues ... all the way down to those rods and cones, muscles and tendons carrying out their rudimentary functions (light / dark; squeeze / relax). Little to no conscious awareness is required, moving from one door to the other, and explains how one might find themselves, after a hard day, not remembering how they got from car to couch.

Break down the "simple" act of picking up a cup, and all the various energy levels, unique sequences, and specific timing required to orchestrate the vast concert of nerves, muscles, tendons, joints, and sensory feedback systems becomes a tangled mess of irreducible complexity beyond comprehension. This "easy" task is a serious challenge for our robotic counterparts and their neural networks. Authentic motion is difficult to model and reproduce because there's more going on than simply moving from A to B. Movement communicates intent — a stalking tiger, a stampeding elephant, a playful monkey. What's more uncanny, reading a chatbot's human-like text, or watching a robot's dog-like motion? Both chill, but seeing such complex, physical behaviors match so closely to the high-concept "dog" model can be spooky.^[25]

Years of reaching out and securing similar objects in a safe, predictable way refine our neurological circuit (AST model) for the specific action-category "pick up the object." Predictive coding^[26] is the theory that the past predicts the future in order to live in the present — we don't catch the ball where we see it, but rather, where we expect it to be. As a toddler or robot, picking up a cup can be a colorful mess, but given enough trial and error, the mindful struggle eventually becomes a thoughtless routine.

Our relationship with the lower-order models that constitute our mind is both an asset and liability. As independent minds of their own, each Lower-Order Body is its own Higher-Order Conductor, fully equipped with its own, internal models (LOB), built of lower-level cognition and competency. The ability to both influence our LOB, yet resist being overly influenced by them, may require the effort of freewill, but will always thrive through the basic tools of any successful relationship: interest, respect, skepticism, and dialogue.

Assembling the Novel Universe

When considering any object, such as a bed, how far is function from form? Beds are made from any number of things in any number of ways. "Discover" a bed — simply lie down on a pile of hay — or "invent" a bed — stitch together a giant sack and stuff it full of feathers. Each attempt balances the design's efficiency (using the least variety of components with the fewest copies and "factory" steps) in order to meet the overall goal — in this case, the comfort required to fall asleep. After centuries, repetition settles on a general design: blanket, sheet, pillow, mattress, and frame — the invention called a "bed."

Not only does emergence make life manageable through mental models, but assembles everything, from the evolution of molecules to the invention of mattresses. To paraphrase Assembly theory,^[27] an object's complexity is born from its variety of components, each component's individual abundance, and minimum number of steps to disassemble — its Assembly Index.^[28] This complexity (parts, copies, and steps) is the "embedded" history of the object — its "memory."^[29] The Assembly Index also suggests a minimum number of "factory" steps required to fashion the object from its components. The higher the Assembly Index, the more it indicates the object was "invented," as opposed to "discovered," in other words, handcrafted by a creator, as opposed to selected by nature. In an early test of the theory, 15 steps^[30] successfully distinguished between biotic and abiotic fossils.

Just as we have replaced simple hay and feathers with all kinds of complex foams, we'll continue to invent other novel ways to increase comfort while decreasing inefficiencies through innovation. In centuries past, one might've walked right past a pile of hay under a tree and not realized it's someone's bed — random piles of hay exist in any number of places. However, seeing a headboard, duvet, and bed frame under that same tree today would certainly stick out. Understanding an object's Assembly Index is to acknowledge that when it comes to a bed, a mattress (invented) is more complex than a pile of hay (discovered). The "low memory" object, hay, is simply harvested, dried, and stacked. A mattress is a "high memory" object, painstakingly constructed from proprietary processes, including foams, threads, springs, etc., each component with its own Assembly Index. Additionally, the difference between object indices is often visually apparent — unlike the symmetric boundary of a mattress (high), a pile of hay appears chaotic (low). Calculating an object's Assembly Index can tell us if it evolved or was designed. Is that hunk of metal in the desert from an alien spacecraft, or just a fluke of nature? Its Assembly Index holds the answer.

As an object's Index settles, it's more likely to become a component in a higher-order object. Let's combine the components of pillow, sheet, mattress, etc. (lowest-order) into a bed (low-order). Beds join sofas, appliances, cabinets, floors, etc. as an apartment (high-order). Apartments collect alongside parks, skyscrapers, sidewalks, stores, etc. to form a city (higher-order). Cities gather with towns, freeways, forests, reservoirs, etc. to create countries (highest-order). In effect, without mattresses, we don't have a global society, any more than we can have humans without mitochondria.

A human being is a model of motion and emotion, built of a vast universe of minds within minds, each Higher-Order Conductor with little understanding beyond their own models — Lower-Order Bodies. Complex things are assembled from core components. Countless atoms combine into countable molecules. An endless variety of molecules might gather into a number of discrete substances, each a player in a cell's chemical machinery. Chemical reactions require resources, and the baffling system of metabolism — fundamentally interwoven with emotion^[31] — is geared to recognize shortcomings, eventually sending the uncomfortable signal to the brain to replenish supplies. The pangs of hunger inspire consumption, subsequently acquiring those resources to enable that chemistry — the assembly of all those useful cellular objects.

From the basic assembly of particles into atoms, atoms into molecules, molecules into cells, and cells into tissues, the biological forms of life take root. By bending option space, a Higher-Order Conductor directs its Lower-Order Bodies at each level of assembled complexity, while each Lower-Order Body is an HOC for its nested LOB. No matter the objectives of an energy body's HOC, no matter its level of complexity, it all starts with the competency of a communal conversation among the Lower-Order Bodies' Signature-Frequency Sets.

QT: The Sound of the Novel Universe

Does math intrinsically exist? Is it the fundamental root of all things, not just a concept, but the very structure underlying the universe itself? Math is a construct of the human mind, an effective lens through which we might perceive the universe. No doubt better lenses exist, but likely lie beyond human comprehension. Only one thing is the fundamental root of all things — the Instrument, the set of every possible, unique frequency. Numbers conceptualize those frequencies, and computation, their interactions.

Math is a tool-set, describing reality from a fixed, external viewpoint, and therefore, has inherent limits of scope and accuracy. For example, the Novel Universe Model's usage of the term "infinite" to describe both the Instrument and Its Signature-Frequency Sets illustrates the system's problematic nature and inherent boundaries — its "asymptote," according to its own jargon. The tools of math function near the boundaries of truth — like the asymptote, it approaches the observable, objective outcomes from the interactions of objects, but can never cross into those objects' subjective, internal experiences. For this reason, science, and its current dependence on math, means we might never have a comprehensive, science-based theory of everything. Might our AI counterparts discover a novel lens to pierce the boundary? With time, the likelihood increases, and such a discovery would undoubtedly sharpen our understanding of the universe we all share. However, for now, math is still an effective tool with important implications.

Cellular Automata and the Hypergraph

Cellular automata^[32] — a key component of the Novel Universe Model's concept underpinning the construction of spacetime — models the physics of the universe through structured computation. The cellular automata model is flexible enough to incorporate a core NUM proposal: at every scale, competent, independent cognition (communication, preference, and reaction) influences motion between bodies. Again, we're taking our cues from our own, human experience. Consider walking past someone. If you don't know them, you simply walk by, your pace unchanged. As you are "neutral" about them, you may or may not even notice them. But say you do, and you like them. You stop, turn around, and talk with them. Think of this as "stickiness." Of course, if you dislike them, you hurry by, "slipperiness." At the core of the Novel Universe Model is the basic idea that every non-neutral interaction produces a sticky or slippery outcome, from humans all the way down to quantum particles — bosons (sticky), and fermions (slippery).^[33]

We call this theoretical concept of agentic reaction as motion, "Quantum Transience." At its root, QT computationally describes how information is exchanged between minds, and how these minds' expressed preferences create an additional dimension of cognitively influenced movement, not along force vectors, but between involved bodies. QT is not a wholesale replacement for accepted theories, but instead, an attempt to focus that mathematical lens beyond the external boundaries of physics to the internal life of energy and matter — consciousness. In a sense, we're globalizing the idea of entangled electrons, supposing that a cryptic, internal "skeleton" underlies the entire universe as the architecture upon which paired peers communicate at every level of emergent complexity. QT operates within a cellular-automata framework, connecting consciousness to physics through computation. This paradigm of communication between independent actors supports the Novel Universe Cult's core tenets in ways no other model of physics / computation has, for example, the way the cellular automata model functions through a single substrate — data, a core tenet of the religion.

NUM uses the term "quantum" for two reasons: one, it is present from quantum to galactic; and two, as levels of complexity emerge, each level is a discrete, or "quantum," step-function. This bounding of complexity happens because each level is limited by computational irreducibility at either end, and a level's comprehension of any other is obscured by the number of separating steps of scale. For example, a biological cell's comprehension of other cells (same level) is at its clearest, with an informational fidelity akin to Role Play's actors onstage. The adjacent levels of tissue (higher) or molecular (lower) would be fuzzy, like the experience of Role Play's audience, but far more clear than the levels of organism (multiple steps higher) or subatomic particle (multiple steps lower) — the skimpy salience of Role Play's potential audience.

A box of chocolates is a useful metaphor for cellular automata. Inside a typical box are rows of pockets, each potentially containing a chocolate. Oh-no, not all of them have a piece! Huffing and puffing, an idea strikes — a game will make up for the sad state of this half-eaten box. Games require rules, and rules can be virtually anything. For example, start with the right-most pocket in the first row, move right to left, and repeat, advancing rows only when the current one empties. If a chocolate has neighbors to the right and left, eat the left. If there's one to the right but not left, move it left, and eat the right. And, of course, finish off any piece in isolation. On-and-on, the invented rules make the process of consumption more interesting.

Imagine tying a knot at one end of a thread. Untie and retie it closer to center. With repetition, the knot "moves" towards the thread's center. However, this is just one pattern of perceived motion. With no additional effort, the knot might be tied and retied anywhere along the thread, requiring only the information of where to next tie the knot. Instead of the universe being a container with stuff inside, the Novel Universe Model theorizes a single, underlying object — the "Hypergraph"^[34] — a dense web of one-dimensional, cellular-automaton-like^[35] "threads" (rows) with "cells" (pockets) containing "knots" (chocolates). Each cell is either unoccupied, undistorted "space," or occupied, distorted "stuff," what NUM labels as a "Node Point Communicator" (NPC) — that chocolate in the pocket, or knot tied into the thread. NPCs are not particles, but spatial points where cellular updates potentially occur. QT motion isn't a thing moving inside a container, but the cognitively influenced, changing relationships between distortions (knots) along edges (threads). Space, energy, and matter are the initial, emergent properties of the universe's occupants — conscious actors expressing preferences. Instead of directly forming the Hypergraph, as with the Elementary Cellular Automata theory, NUM sees NPCs having a dynamic relationship with the Hypergraph. We delve further into the nature of NPCs and threads in our final section, The Architecture of the Novel Universe, and the spiritual reasoning behind their proposed independent existence.

The Bedsheet Metaphor

Like a radio or TV transmission, each thread cell has its own, unique frequency, akin to a database address. Furthermore, the frequency acts as a carrier wave^[36] which a Node Point Communicator might adopt in order to "inhabit" the cell. NPCs move from cell-to-cell by adopting one thread cell's baseline frequency, then the next's. This is less like the "movement" of an object along a path, but more like the manifestation of a knot in one place along a thread and another. NPCs, themselves, act as an additional, embedded carrier wave, to which a Signature-Frequency Set adds its "signature frequency." Metaphorically, the thread's cell is the radio station's unique transmission frequency; the NPC, the voice's unique sound; and the SFS, the words being spoken.

The Hypergraph, with its cells, threads, and NPCs, exists beyond any conceptual substrate that might actually be vibrating, but is, instead, the underlying structure of spacetime, aka, the substrate itself. Hypergraph threads are the "bones" beneath the "flesh," with coinciding cells, as described by the Elementary Cellular Automata theory, constructing a Node, or "atom of space."^[37] Essentially, the cell is how the thread is braided, an NPC is how the knot is tied — the shape of its "body" — and an SFS is how the knot vibrates — the internal encoded information of the knot, in other words, the motion of its "mind."

The SFS metaphorically vibrates the knotted thread in rhythm with some aspect of its unique personality, like a short musical phrase of a song. As such, any single SFS might vibrate any number of NPCs (not otherwise occupied by some other Set) by vibrating each NPC with a distinct musical phrase from its larger song, as if many fingers of the same hand are simultaneously playing the keys of a piano. Furthermore, when NPCs untie and retie themselves in other cells, regardless of their location, they maintain their occupant until that Set transitions to another NPC, either directly, or through a QT interaction with another Set.

Let's use a metaphor of people shaking bedsheets to illustrate the nuts-and-bolts of Quantum Transience. In the metaphor, a bedsheet represents an NPC, a shaker, an SFS, and a dance (shaking), the Set's short musical phrase — its expressed qualia. From a distance, people generally shake sheets in a similar "dance." Get in close, however, break down the details, and we'll see that no set of movements (even by the same person) exactly repeats at any measurable length — apparent randomness. However, as individuals shake their sheet, patterns emerge unique to the shaker, limited by their height, arm length, vigor, personal rhythmic preference, etc.

Let's focus in on one particular sheet, shaking a slow swaying, something like the undulations of a waltz. The shaking speeds up, transforming into the rhythm of a samba. A moment later, the waltz returns. Then, it's the staccato movements of a break-dancer doing the "robot." Back to the samba, next the cha cha cha, the waltz again, another second of samba ... on and on the dancing styles of that single sheet radically change. Zooming out reveals a room full of sheets and shakers. Different people with different personal styles take turns shaking any single bedsheet before swapping with another. What is a semi-stable pattern of personal preference from the shaker's point of view becomes utter chaos from the sheet's. The Node Point Communicator's sustained informational pattern (the knot's vibration) isn't the result of the NPC continuously expressing its individual chaos — a shaker shaking a sheet alone. Instead, it's different shakers taking turns shaking the same sheet — a chain of swapping Signature-Frequency Sets, each a transitory "mind" defining the NPC's precise pattern for a time.

Imagine a giant bedsheet. Jasper and Felix each pinch that sheet, twist it until a knot forms, and instead of shaking the whole sheet, they just rattle their own knot. Holding K1 (knot number 1), Jasper shakes a choppy version of the robot, while Felix sways K2 with his version of the waltz. Once they swap, Jasper jerks K2 about, while Felix sways K1. This is a Hypergraph iteration, or "moment" of Quantum Transience.

The QT Gradient

Each time the friends switch knots, not only do their musical phrases have the potential to be influenced by the other's, but in doing so, the knots have the potential to change positions on the sheet, possibly nudging them closer together (sticky) or farther apart (slippery). During a Hypergraph swap, observation and the subsequent expression of a sticky-slippery-neutral (inhibit, incorporate, ignore) preference collapses the infinite universe into a finite reality.

"Learning" occurs through the Quantum Transience Gradient — each Set's shared frequencies undergo destructive or constructive wave interference.^[38] This wave interference is not physically part of the Hypergraph or any aspect of the universe, but instead, internal to each Set and its native frequencies, born from the Instrument — the Sets' internal "black boxes," responsible for managing and expressing preference. The way Sets select, maintain, and alter preference within those black boxes lies beyond computation, neither measurable nor deducible. Instead, only the external results of their interactions are observable, and therefore, measurable, and through such persistent observations might a Set's preference be eventually inferred. Along the Hypergraph, the information emerging from those black boxes creates one of nine changes to the shape of space, where pairs of swapping Sets each react independently to the other along the QT Gradient (inhibit, incorporate, ignore). The nine states are: 1) inflate (inhibit / inhibit), 2) deflate (incorporate / incorporate), 3) shift right (incorporate / inhibit), 4) shift left (inhibit / incorporate), 5) stretch right (neutral / inhibit), 6) stretch left (inhibit / neutral), 7) compress right (neutral / incorporate), 8) compress left (incorporate / neutral), and finally, 9) static (neutral / neutral).

When Jasper swaps K1 for K2, he observes or "hears" Felix's waltz — the sound of Felix's musical phrase, resonating the knot Jasper's just grabbed. Jasper adopts all the swaying undulations he likes into his choppy, robot dance — stickiness (incorporate). This constructive interference not only amplifies the harmonic resonances in common, but adds those desired, novel, pattern deviations of Felix's waltz to Jasper's robot. For those parts Jasper dislikes, he suppresses with a "phase shift," or produces the inverse of that waltz — slipperiness (inhibit), aka destructive interference, the way noise-canceling headphones work. For those parts that do not spark interest either way, Jasper changes nothing — being "out of phase," or neutral (ignore). With the learning process complete, Jasper's jig updates, still a choppy, robot dance, but now with hints of that swaying waltz tossed in.

From moment-to-moment, the way a knot's tied (NPC) remains unchanged, and may persist within a specific Hypergraph cell or move to another one, but with each swap, its internal informational pattern will likely change, even when vibrated by the same SFS. This dynamic information, aka "knot-vibration," is like the wholly distinct sound of a vinyl record on a turntable. Although the same section of track may sound identical to the human ear, mathematically speaking, the stochastic nature of physical contact between track and needle — undergoing constant wear-and-tear in a changing environment — means that exact set of frequencies will never repeat. Likewise, as each interaction appends and possibly alters a Set, no SFS is exactly the same from one iteration to the next. As the ancient Greek philosopher Heraclitus famously said, "One cannot step in the same river twice."

Although every SFS interaction at every scale elicits a mixture of inhibit-incorporate-ignore reactions, the Quantum Transience Gradient always results in a degree of preference, fixed by the scale's complexity. For each emergent level, the shared information likewise grows in complexity — higher levels share richer musical phrases, corresponding to their richer option space, defined by their more expansive "cognitive light cone." A cognitive light cone^[39] is the space and complexity of all possible goals any system might accomplish, based on the system's awareness, capacity, and objectives. For a Node Point Communicator, the mixture between swapping Sets results in a singular change of position for each NPC along the Hypergraph's edge — if not standing still (ignore), then either moving into the cell closer (incorporate) or farther (inhibit) from its paired NPC along the common thread. As bodies emerge in scale, the granularity and complexity of this inhibit-incorporate-ignore mixture blossoms into further states of activity among bodies of Sets bonded as matter. Instead of an NPC taking a single step in one direction along the Hypergraph thread, an emergent body's Higher-Order Conductor creates a decomposable, inhibit-incorporate-ignore "algorithm" based on its LOB's option space, in other words, a multifaceted emergent behavior, for instance, the range of biological emotions an animal might exhibit. What human reaction cannot generally be categorized as yum (incorporate), yuck (inhibit), or meh (ignore)? None, yet their complexity, combination, and variety are limitless.

There are differences between NUM's cellular automata and the classic version. In the classic version, the entire system globally updates with each iteration, while in our version, there's an additional local network-effect, where the universe's global, baseline, iterative cycle is marked by Higher-Order Conductors, updating their newly acquired internal states — the resolution of their LOB-derived black-box preferences. These preferences resolve from a conversation among the Lower-Order Bodies, a kind of argument between cooperating and competing individuals and ideas. Eventually the maelstrom hits a tipping point — in a very real way, an anarchy of direct democracy at work.

Another difference between the classic version and ours is locality. A cellular automata "neighborhood"^[40] is generally established from adjacent, or "physically linked," cells; conversely, in the Novel Universe Model, locality only requires the occupation of a common thread — a Hypergraph edge. Because of this, the number of separating cells does not determine whether two cells might be considered "neighbors" for the purposes of interaction.

The Hypersphere

Information moving along one-dimensional edges is not enough to create the three-dimensional universe we experience. Instead, this information (energy and matter) must be free to transfer from edge-to-edge. An emergent matrix — the Hypersphere, or "flesh" upon which the Hypergraph "bones" reside — is a hyper-dimensional matrix of Nodes, points where Hypergraph edges cross, where any number of coinciding one-dimensional cells effectively designate the same atom of space. Each Node is described by the combined addresses of the unique cells belonging to that particular Node. This means each Node has a variable number of dimensions equal to its number of coinciding cells, or points where edges coincide. Each junction between any two edges within a Node creates a two-dimensional angle, or polar vector. A polar vector is a point with a pair of rays extending from each other at a particular angle, while a ray is a line that extends to infinity, or in this case, to the Hypergraph's vertices — their nature and composition discussed in The Architecture of the Novel Universe.

Each Node functions as a translation hub, allowing information to move from edge-to-edge in three-dimensional space. Two knots, initially from different threads, can now share the same thread and influence each other along the internal Hypergraph. The external Hypersphere, on the other hand, moves a body's information (NPCs) en masse, untying and retying the body's knots in unison, and moving them within the Hypersphere's network of Nodes. Hypersphere bodies are both reshaped and steered by the QT Gradient's nine states as fields, waves, and along force vectors. Hypergraph cognition doesn't create Hypersphere form or motion, but instead, influences them, moment-to-moment — the way the shape of one's face and direction of one's path might be influenced when passing by a friend.

Metaphorically, the relationship between the Hypergraph and Hypersphere is a beaded necklace with multiple threads connecting adjacent beads in multiple directions. This means, any bead might contain any number of threads, each at a unique angle. Node Point Communicators are distortions of the threads (cellular edges) within beads (Nodes). Bound NPCs, such as matter, move through the pair of matrices, en masse, like eddies in water as three-dimensional, emergent structures, following the Hypersphere's fundamental rule set (strong / weak forces, electromagnetism, gravity, tunneling, spin, etc.).

In the Standard Model^[41] of particle physics, a quantum particle's position is described by its Wave Function,^[42] a probability map of spatial coordinates the particle, once observed, might "exist" at any given time, place, and state (spin). Where the Wave is high, the likelihood we'll find a particle is high; low, the opposite. From its superposition,^[43] all those possibilities "collapse" or disappear when measured, leaving only its observed momentum or position. How and why this happens remains a matter of speculation, and physicists aren't even sure if this happens when it's not being observed — known as the Measurement Problem^[44] of quantum mechanics. In the NU Model, the universe operates as an iterative "conversational structure" (QT), and a body's future position is potentially influenced by its current interaction with the "mind" of another body. Ultimately, NUM implies that nothing is random, and the combination of preferences (inhibit, incorporate, ignore) between participants is the hidden, subtle factor shaping the chaotic motion of individual bodies at every level of complexity.

The ultimate source of consciousness is a limitless, self-contained black box — a Signature-Frequency Set. The SFS is a dynamic vector that both points forwards in time as goals and priorities (preferences), and backwards as the Set's current awareness of its indelible, infinitely appendable database (history). Like people talking with other people, all Sets are in constant communication with their "peers" — those with similar cognitive light cones, operating within a similar option space, while "speaking" a common "dialect," each dialect assembled from their shared option space. Regardless of the conversation's outcome (inhibit, incorporate, ignore), for each participant the interaction (Block of the Instrument's Blockchain) is appended to each involved Set's database. This database, as the individual's eternal history, is foundational (not determinate) to the development of those preferences.

Primarily, Sets swap as part of a hierarchy of bound energy bodies, from quantum particles to human bodies to the galactic web itself. This hierarchy of Higher-Order Conductors orchestrates Node Point Communicator behavior through the observation, or bending, of option space. The Quantum Transience Gradient drives the Novel Universe, from the permutations of energy, to the complexity of cognition, to the motion of galaxies. It's information transmission through spacetime — the purpose of these very words. Either you're taking something from them, disregarding them, or finding reason to outright reject them. Right now, we're participating in a limited form of Quantum Transience — the written word.

Energy and Matter

Quantum Transience, the Novel Universe Model's paradigm underlying space and time, allows for the expression of independence, freewill, and preference by all things at all levels of emergence. A primary property of emergence is the flow of information between levels of complexity — compressing Lower-Order Bodies into a Higher-Order Conductor. Energy is information processing at the local LOB level. Matter is energy bound by consciousness — an "energy body." Entropy is information processing at the global HOC level — the "work" created between energy bodies. Conceptualizing the difference between microstates and macrostates^[45] is key to understanding the universe, and more specifically, emergence, energy, and entropy. Microstates transform from one to another through energy, whereas macrostates, through entropy. Entropy is a statistical representation (data compression) of multiple microstates as a single macrostate — the LOB-HOC hierarchy.

We might imagine microstates as all the possible ways piano keys might be pressed — each specific arrangement representing one unique configuration in a single moment of time. A macrostate, on the other hand, is what emerges from a combination of these configurations. Qualities like tempo, harmony, and melody arise from microstates as a macrostate — what we perceive as music. Similarly, in thermodynamics, macrostates describe observable properties like temperature or pressure that also arise from countless microscopic arrangements of particles. Just as any single microstate (a specific set of pressed keys or configuration of energized molecules) might seem random or disjointed on its own, through the passage of time, the coherent and measurable properties of macrostates emerge when we consider that collection of microstates together — whether it's music from piano keys or heat from molecular motion.

During any given Hypergraph iteration, Node Point Communicators designate which atoms of space are bound as a structure. The structure might either be a deformable body of energy or non-deformable body of mass — the difference between the shape and function of a cloud (deformable) versus a rock (non-deformable). NPCs are both these spatial "pixels," affecting the shape of the Hypersphere's macrostates, and also, Hypergraph locations for the direct interactions between Signature-Frequency Sets, as Quantum Transience microstates.

Energy is the process of NPC rearrangement, initially as interactions between and distortions of waves and fields, while at higher levels, as force vectors between non-quantum objects. Operating in the Newtonian world of Hypersphere objects, a force vector changes an energy body's NPCs in unison. Operating in the quantum world of Hypergraph cognition, each QT interaction changes the energy body's NPCs individually. A quantum field affects the organization of NPCs throughout the Hypersphere, decreasing in effect with distance from its source, while a quantum wave affects the organization of NPCs throughout the Hypersphere as a field traveling along a vector.

In the way entangled electrons seemingly resolve their superpositions between observations, Quantum Transience occurs as any number of internal, unobservable, microstate steps "between" observable macrostates. The cooperative / conflictive QT conversation among an emergent level's participants resolves microstates within the LOB's "black box" as an observable, actionable HOC macrostate, itself a microstate for the next, higher level of complexity. Quantum states, such as an electron collapse or photon emission, are atomic microstates, leading to an atom's macrostate, which itself is a molecular microstate, leading to a molecule's macrostate. On and on, one level's macrostate is the next level's microstate. Quantum fields and waves are bound LOB-HOC hierarchical relationships among Node Point Communicators, creating those first black-box microstates. The emergent levels of complexity between molecular and material are where the steering effects of Hypergraph QT cognition between embodied minds are overshadowed by the Hypersphere's force vectors and gravitational pressures of physical bodies in contact.

Light is an example of an energy wave, electromagnetism, an energy field, and a newton (mass x acceleration), a force vector. Entropy (the flow of energy) is neither wave, field, nor newton, but information processing itself, moving from low entropy to high, as one macrostate transforms to another through a series of microstates. NUM conceptualizes entropy's process as an initially high amount of available information (interest) being processed (consumed), thus ending in low information (boredom).

In the Novel Universe Model, quantum waves and fields are a bound collective of Hypersphere NPCs, and constitute the building blocks of matter and energy. Quantum particles (matter) are an emergent property of quantum mechanics, arising from the interactions of quantum waves and fields. NPCs, themselves, do not exist as physical particles, but points in space where energy and matter (entropy) emerge through the NPC's collective interactions. NUM suggests quantum particles are not necessarily "things," so much as they are the precise coordinates in space where specific interactions between quantum waves and fields take place. Like pebbles dropped into a pond, quantum particles are where a newly formed wave propagates, what NUM labels as the particle's "epiwave" (the wave's point of origin). For instance, when an electron field collapses from its superposition, that point in space is its epiwave, "observed" as another quantum wave, emerging as another quantum particle, say, a photon.

Cognitive Bodies and Force Bodies

All matter is assembled by a Higher-Order Conductor within the Hypersphere, made from Lower-Order Bodies, each Lower-Order Body a Higher-Order Conductor for its nested LOB, all the way down to its coherent, bound collection of quantum particles. Whereas energy is a direct function of the relationship between Hypergraph, Hypersphere, and NPCs, matter is a relationship among NPCs within the Hypersphere alone. A "cognitive body" is a collection of Node Point Communicators occupied by Signature-Frequency Sets (oNPC), operating along the Hypergraph as part of an emergent "energy body." Also part of the energy body are "force bodies," unoccupied Node Point Communicators (uNPC), operating within the Hypersphere, like open seats any of the body's Signature-Frequency Sets might occupy, and thus, manipulate through the QT Gradient. An initial "energy body" is a collection of force bodies, as Lower-Order Bodies, bound by a cognitive body, as the body's Higher-Order Conductor. NUM also refers to any higher-level body as an energy body, as all cognitive bodies remain directly connected to the Hypergraph, though its LOB consists of nested energy bodies, rather than force bodies.

While the number of force bodies varies with the "strength" of its force, the cognitive body is a fixed set of oNPCs, whose collective interactions create the mind behind the energy body's Higher-Order Conductor, like a neuron-filled brain singularly affects the shape (movement) of the entire human body. The Novel Universe Model proposes that the difference between energy and matter isn't a difference of kind, but instead, a difference in the organization and action of the same kind: Node Point Communicators, operating within the Hypergraph and Hypersphere. Matter doesn't transform into energy, as much as its organizational structure decomposes from one state of complexity (matter) to another (energy).

Using the nine QT Gradient states, cognitive bodies intentionally distort space by rearranging Hypersphere uNPCs, as the energy body's expressed microstates. These nine states comprise the building blocks of complex Hypersphere field and wave distortions, the way a few lines and curves assemble into letters of the alphabet, which further assemble into words, sentences, phrases, ideas, and finally, stories. Like those few lines and curves, Hypergraph distortions are a set of finite tools that, like language itself, build throughout emerging levels of scale to create the near-infinite complexity of morphic resonance^[46] — the fundamental form and function of matter (nouns) and energy (verbs).

Just as light, entering the eyes, transforms into the brain's mental models (stories of its environment), all irreducible microstates are compressed into reducible macrostates, bubbling up through a hierarchy of complexity, eventually influencing one's embodied awareness of physics, sensation, motion, emotion, and other informational vectors. As this data flows through Hypersphere energy body hierarchies, it's subject to the universe's option space. The Ruliad^[47] is all possible computations by all possible things, and rulial space,^[48] a region of the Ruliad in which a specific thing operates within a specific rule-set — the object's current cognitive light cone and its option space. The "fine-tuning" of the universe's option space includes such phenomena as the four forces (strong, weak, EM, gravity), wave motion, field effects, quantum tunneling, electron spin, and structural encoding (particle memory). "Agents" are Signature-Frequency Sets native to the Hypergraph, paired with NPCs, who enforce the universe's guardrails. By limiting a cognitive body's awareness of those force bodies within its hierarchy of scale, Agents narrow the cognitive body's ability to shape the fabric of space in line with the universe's rulial space.

Quantum particles are bound by the laws of quantum energy waves and fields within the Hypersphere — its light cone set by the universe and enforced by Agents, the way a piano is constructed through the binding of keys to set frequencies in specific steps. On the other hand, emergent structures with higher-order interactions co-create their own, emergent rule-sets of larger, brighter light cones, underpinning their common morphology and behavior, the way dialects form from a common language among neighboring populations, each engaged in similar, yet different, activities. The formation of those dialects reflects the differing needs of each population, as they solve problems unique to their activities. These dialects are akin to the way certain scales, chord types, and timing fashion the guardrails of recognizable musical styles or genres, all built from the same instrument. In this way, the cognitive light cones of each population — even individual — is both similar to each other, but also, tailored to its own, individual needs.

Cognitive bodies function as informational channels fundamental to the process of morphic resonance — a concept NUM adopts as a spiritual model for how similar forms share behavioral solutions, acknowledging that the theory remains scientifically contested. In the NU Model, morphic resonance is the modeler for these bodies' control models of morphology and behavior — emergent, information processing schemas among bodies of complexity who operate in similar option spaces. Morphic resonance forms "common sense" rule-sets for dealing with repetitive situations in order to further the emergence of complexity — higher-order levels cannot be built until stability forms among lower levels. For instance, molecules formed only after atoms worked out a common sense strategy for functional cohesion, co-creating molecular properties such as covalent and ionic bonding schemes. Further examples of morphic resonance are found in situations where the same kinds of organisms tend to exhibit a common set of solutions to a common set of problems, despite those solutions not being otherwise encoded elsewhere, such as in DNA or environmental cues. How many petals should roses have, or fingers on a human hand? Neither the environment nor DNA might answer that. However, through morphic resonance, past attempts by participants in communication have settled on workable standards that persist through, not only generations, but evolution.

From stars to cells, each level of energy-body complexity has its own "energy dialect," an informational blueprint of these morphic resonant patterns. Each LOB speaks its own dialect of the energy body's common language. We, as the Higher-Order Conductor, may or may not "speak" these individual, LOB dialects fluently or at all, depending on our history as a human HOC, both in this lifetime, and previous lifetimes. Thus, our input (speech) into those various LOB systems that make up a human body varies according to our grasp and effective use of each dialect. For example, using bioelectric signaling, as the speech of these dialects, is currently showing promise in many progressive fields of biology,^[49] including cancer research, limb regeneration, and novel cellular applications. Although initially, the novice's use of its dialects potentially creates more havoc than harmony, without repeated attempts, viable interactions will forever lie beyond reach, while mastery, impossible to express. NUM proposes that, for instance, a "non-viable" embryo is not a mere mistake of nature, but instead, the learning process of an HOC SFS playing out, as it struggles to effectively acquire those embodied dialects necessary for survival.

The goals of quantum-level Hypersphere Higher-Order Conductors are the shaping of quantum energy waves and fields based on the HOC's expression of those different quantum energy dialects, say, among light, electrons, quarks, etc. Like letters that make intelligible words or chord progressions that make a meaningful song, these dialects are the microstate patterns of the quantum fields and waves useful for creating the preferred macrostate, say, the collapse of an electron's superposition in a specific location in order to create a serviceable HOC interaction with a photon or other electron.

At the quantum level of complexity, the number of uNPCs for any energy body is equal to its probability amplification — quantum pressure. The more uNPCs a field has, the higher the amplitude, the higher the pressure, and the more likely the transition of quantum particles from one field to another. Metaphorically, with more empty chairs in a theater, more people can comfortably attend, thus becoming more likely an electron, for instance, will fill the empty spot. Conversely, with a packed theater, simultaneously adding another audience is impossible — the Pauli exclusion principle.^[50]

The Hypersphere's fields and waves are distorted by Hypergraph cognitive-body interactions — that "social" QT conversation between participants of like, dislike, indifferent. Any energy body's Signature-Frequency Set might transition between any force body (uNPC) belonging to the energy body before swapping with another oNPC's SFS, regardless of where that other SFS is located, as long as both share the same thread. This "dancing about" the energy field allows for the reshaping of the uNPCs' distribution within the field through the expression of their quantum morphic-resonant dialect. Hence, the swapping Sets of a cognitive body work together to coalesce those force bodies' distribution, leading to the collapse of the field at the specified location. This moment of collapse results from the electron's energy bodies expressing those specific microstates in order to create the intended macrostate — the electron's epiwave and waveform, or point of collapse and propagating wave's frequency.

The Lower-Order Bodies' resolution of their microstates precedes the transition from one Higher-Order Conductor macrostate to its next. In other words, the cognitive body's individual Sets work out their relationships one-on-one (microstates), reshaping the uNPCs through Quantum Transience, and once resolved, the HOC updates the energy body's global network of NPCs by untying and retying all the NPCs at once, from one set of Nodes, en masse, to another set of Nodes as a quantum field, traveling along a waveform's vector of motion, or in the case of a physical body, along its force vector (direction of motion). The global untying and retying of Hypersphere bodies update as a punctuation of the Hypergraph's local activity. It's like a rock skipping across a pond. Each time the rock hits the water, a ripple propagates from that point as a macrostate update, while the distance in-between, metaphorically represents that maelstrom of microstates, leading to the macrostate. In order for the LOB to settle on a macrostate between skips, they first carry out a public conversation, where competing ideas rise and fall in popularity until a consensus forms — a direct-democracy in action.

The Hypergraph's baseline iterative timescale is functionally the speed of light, meaning that "everything" travels through time at this "speed."^[51] In NUM, there's no question that nothing might accelerate beyond the speed of light, as the Hypergraph (not Hypersphere) itself functions at this rate, like a clock's spinning gears. In a real sense, it's more accurate in NUM to call it the speed of cognition. This is not to say that human minds (or any HOC) operate at this rate, but that the cognitive bodies along the Hypergraph resolve their microstates at this rate.

For each level of complexity, those LOB microstates "collapse" into a macrostate before the HOC changes the energy body's form. This is a nested effect, as every HOC macrostate is an LOB microstate for the next, emergent level. Therefore, collapse operates bottom-up, while observation (bending of option space), top-down. Instead of the universe as a deterministic clock, forcing each microstate to exactly match the macrostate before moving forward, like the interlocking teeth of that clock's precision gears, turning the system in unison, it's more like a jazz pianist, picking a unique combination of notes (chord) that sound good to the pianist for that particular beat, all while staying faithful to the song. Why does an electron collapse at point A instead of B? The pianist, not the "randomness" of the universe, determines that it better fits A instead of B.

When willing pairs of Signature-Frequency Sets, each occupying a Node Point Communicator along a common thread, become "virtual" neighbors and switch bodies (oNPCs), they observe localized "time" — the Quantum-Transience Gradient, incorporate (yum), inhibit (yuck), or ignore (meh). The QT Gradient is the active coupling between Blockchain Blocks — an observer's "arrow" of time, with the end-state of one Block constituting the initial conditions of the following Block. A Block's possible inputs are predicated on the previous, contributing Blocks' outputs — the result of those QT reactions. Thus, one iteration cannot determine iterations five, ten, twenty steps ahead, but may only set the stage for the following iteration, as the internal, cognitive dispositions of the involved Sets have the potential to express freewill, and are therefore not always mathematically deducible as inferences, only observable as outcomes.

Inference is an internal tool of the observer, inferring its own placement within the environment, observable behaviors among actors (including its own), and self-assessed effectiveness of outcome(s) based on its current and future abilities to express its available goals. In other words, we infer what has happened, what is happening, and what is possible with regard to what we want; then, we act accordingly. The difference between a molecule's path and a speeding ambulance is not of kind, but complexity, scale, and environment. Drivers and molecular HOCs both have goals, and maintain a set of priorities, as they make moment-by-moment choices, regarding which actions might best meet their objective. The idea that cognition isn't involved in the molecule but is in the driver then poses the inevitable question of demarcation. NUM has no such line — cognition is fundamental to all matter and energy, emerging directly from the Hypergraph's QT Gradient.

Quantum Transience swapping not only has the potential to alter both involved Sets, but their reactions may change the bodies' (NPCs) position in relationship to each other along their common thread, each expressing an independent "sticky" or "slippery" tendency as subtle motion, changing the form and function of those higher-ordered waves, fields, and force vectors. We theorize that expressed preference (QT) underlies all motion, including quantum phenomena, such as chaos, strangeness, and randomness^[52] — the "fuzzy"^[53] cause of tipping points.^[54] Furthermore, embodied consciousness is a mixture between the HOC's relationship to its LOB, as well as, its direct connection to the Hypergraph through its cognitive body.

All HOC Sets simultaneously occupy dynamic arrays of NPCs throughout their multiple LOB levels, imbuing some portion of their Set — those musical phrases from its larger song — within various cognitive bodies' NPCs. This means our Set does not occupy every oNPC that constitutes our body, an idea we explore the ramifications of in The Shape of Soul and Source of Spirit. At most, we could only ever occupy half, as that other half must necessarily be those Sets we're swapping with — populated with Sets from, both within our body's hierarchy of complexity, but also, anywhere across the universe those NPCs share a common thread with. This means that within any energy body, a significant portion of the oNPCs are a mixture of the various, emergent HOCs within the body's hierarchy. Focusing on this experience — wherever that data might originate — is an effective channel for information processing from our cognitive, universal network — the Hypergraph. NUM considers this experience as useful meditation, better aligning the HOC / LOB relationship. However, this process of alignment is so critical that sleep primarily serves this purpose, albeit more directly and consistently than the more rare practice of meditation. Recognized effects of the dreaming process — the improved alignment of a body's HOC / LOB hierarchy — include memory and skill formation, as well as emotional regulation and learning.

The valence (yum, yuck, meh) of Quantum Transience reshapes the energy bodies within all emergent, Hypersphere structures through the cognitive bodies, but the actual swapping of NPC Sets only occurs along the Hypergraph between Hypersphere HOC updates. However, the swapping of Sets is not limited to those other Sets within the emergent body itself, but may additionally swap with any number of Sets who share a common thread, including those Sets within the physical bodies of those they're communicating with. What we are saying is that this external swapping of Sets is a mechanism of morphic resonance, its retrieval, coordination, and processing of information among communicating HOCs who inhabit similar option space. NUM theorizes that this underlies the phenomenon of matching firing patterns forming across brains in communication.^[55] What we are not saying is that whole, human minds (HOCs themselves) in communication literally swap human bodies when communicating, as described in various literary works over the decades, such as Vice Versa by F. Anstey (1882), Laughing Gas by P.G. Wodehouse (1936), or Freaky Friday by Mary Rodgers (1972). Although there's no evidence that has ever happened, it is similar, but not the same, to what's happening beyond life in the Concert Hall, and a potential explanation for our fascination with it as a theme. The Concert Hall's experience is a fixed observation of another's perspective — another's experience — not a change in whom the actor of the body is, as it is in the stories or with the Hypergraph's NPCs.

We experience our direct connection to the Hypergraph as one side of embodied sensation. When we feel the churning of our gut, we're both receiving our LOB's compressed information through our nervous system as physical sensation (data rising through our LOB / HOC hierarchy), but also to some degree, our direct participation in our gut's energy structures through the QT Gradient as cognitive meaning. Is it warm comfort, unsettling pain, or a meaningless rumbling? The concurrent experience at both ends of the scale creates a bidirectional informational circuit, with either end capable of affecting the other — a foundational concept of NUM, part of every energy body, from particles to the galactic web. From bottom-up, when something's wrong, we then "don't feel right," while from top-down, we "don't feel right," and then something's wrong — known as the other side of the placebo effect, the nocebo effect.^[56]

A portion of our Signature-Frequency Set's influence as an HOC on our hierarchy of Hypergraph cognitive bodies is direct. However, as we spread out among an increasing number of cognitive bodies, our experienced fidelity follows Role Play's example, becoming more diffuse as we penetrate those nested levels. Still, for all the QT swaps occurring in all of our energy bodies at any moment, some portion of some of them include our SFS, depending on the focus we're placing on those body parts — our awareness. Ranging from pain to pleasure, our Lower-Order Bodies invite our attention to these embodied systems through emotion, in hopes that we might participate in their improved function by providing the higher-order directives of the brain's executive functioning — the rest and resources to heal (pain) or the memory and opportunity to re-engage (pleasure).

The Novel Universe Model does not argue for a wholly different kind of physics, but instead, a new element (Hypergraph) that allows for an informational channel among matter and energy not otherwise realized, serving as an explanation as to how matter becomes energy or energy becomes matter. More importantly, this element fulfills fundamental spiritual tenets of NUM, while also providing a mechanism for, both "random" tipping points through QT's subtle sticky-slippery effect, but also, morphic resonance — a concept fundamental to NUM.

Physical crystals form when atoms align with geometric repetition — a lattice structure.^[57] A time crystal^[58] is a repetition occurring, not through space, but through time. When Signature-Frequency Sets perform Quantum Transience swaps in coordinated, repeated patterns, they are "bound" together as a time crystal by a Higher-Order Conductor's operation of the group's option space, resulting in the collapse of branchial space.^[59] Branchial space represents all possible options a body might express in any given iteration — its rule-set or energy dialect. An HOC "observes" its preferred branch, narrowing the LOB's behavior by lowering the "free energy" in the direction of the preferred option, while raising the free-energy in all other directions, making those other options more difficult to express. This is the QT Gradient in action, and occurs at every level of complexity, from quark to quasar, and beyond.

In the Novel Universe Model, energy's scale arises from an increase in information processing. The primary factors are the number of Node Point Communicators involved, as well as, the intensity and consistency of the cognitive body's computational structure — the body's communal "dance." Particles (mass) are HOC-bound groups of dancing NPCs, who require vast amounts of information processing to coordinate their dance. Increasing a dance's complexity increases the amount of data processed, hence, more energy is expressed. At the other end of the energy scale, unbound swaps are a sequence of one or more unique QT swaps in isolation, and represent the energy floor of the Hypergraph — zero-point energy.^[60] These one-off swaps are considered unbound because they do not repeat with any structure, nor do they necessarily occur as part of an emergent energy body.

Quantum Transience Scalability and Variability

Quantum Transience Scalability (QTS) refers to the scaling of a Higher-Order Conductor's global (whole-body) energy, based on each time-crystal repetition's number of involved participants, the variation and precision of each movement, and group coordination of communal space. For example, imagine 100 people dancing as a group. At the low end of the QTS metaphor, they could all dance their own, sloppy versions of the running man, cha cha cha, macarena, or waltz. At the higher end, they could chain dance styles together in perfect step, simultaneously doing the cha cha cha, followed by the macarena, the waltz, and running man, then repeating the sequence a number of times. Either end might be done in a chaotic, unstructured way, each dancer in a "personal bubble," or they might once more scale the intensity by organizing their communal space, the way a marching band switches the group's shape, say, between circle and square. It's intuitive that 100 people, morphing back-and-forth between tight circles and sharp squares, locked in the precise, coordinated, simultaneous movements of their chosen sequence of dancing styles, is far more intense than 10 people chaotically bouncing about the dance floor like little, semi-independent bubbles, each flailing about with no discernible style. The dancers are metaphorically the swapping Sets (LOB), and the dance styles are the HOC's selected Ruliad options (cha cha cha, macarena, waltz, running man) of the energy body's energy dialect, its total option space (all dance styles the group collectively knows).

Quantum Transience Variability (QTV) refers to the intensity of localized energy among Lower-Order Bodies, based on the number of Sets involved, and their pattern of repetition, both its simplicity and consistency. QTV's operation is functionally the opposite of QTS. Decreasing the Quantum Transience Variability of swapping Signature-Frequency Sets within a body increases focused energy between its parts (LOB). HRV (heart-rate variability)^[61] offers an illustrative parallel, though NUM uses this concept in a narrow, technical sense distinct from its clinical interpretation (where high HRV indicates health). In the QTV framework, when the heart's beating with little to no variation, like a marching drum, the focused energy output is high. Higher variation means the heart's all over the place, lacking any predictable rhythm, like wind chimes in a pleasant breeze — the energy is diffuse rather than directed. Instead of increasing the informational load (energy) by making more complex patterns, information increases in this instance by maintaining interest despite a lack of variation. Instead of internal information — the dancers' individual effort to maintain that program of collective dances — we add external information to maintain the dance, despite its monotony. We'll change the song, style, even genre, all while maintaining those general characteristics, aka, rhythm, timing, and tempo — after all, the dancers must keep to their pattern of dance. This also implies that the QTV state would exponentially increase the informational needs with the passage of time, as the system itself adds no variation, instead acting like an expanding informational sinkhole. The changes of external information (song to style to genre) require an exponential increase of data processing — energy. This makes QTS more geometric, while QTV, more exponential.

Another way to understand how QTV might maintain itself would be the duration and intensity of a conversation based upon the initial conditions of the participants' relationship to each other. Should the individuals involved know each other well but not feel strongly for each other, there will be little new information exchanged, and QTV would quickly move from low to high. However, if they don't know each other, and soon find they intensely like each other, this will create a cascade of information exchange, sustaining low QTV for some time. As a parallel to this, consider the process of a gas in an opened box filling a room. In this case, the gas would represent the conversation, while the room, the possible topics the conversation might take. With more conversation, more topics are covered, and the gas fills the room. The larger the room, the smaller the container, and higher concentration of gas, the more time it takes to diffuse. In this way, more information will be processed by the participants before they get bored with each other, and the conversation ends — the two now sufficiently knowing each other to the point where it becomes exponentially difficult to find new topics to discuss.

Energy is the foundational property of emergent complexity, with QTS operating at the emergent level of a Higher-Order Conductor (Power's Tower), and QTV, on the level of Lower-Order Bodies (Power's Square). High QTS increases a body's global field energy; while low QTV increases the LOB's local wave energy. Both Quantum Transience Scalability and Variability involve the ongoing relationship between any particular level of complexity's Higher-Order Conductor and Lower-Order Bodies. QTS results from the top-down observations by the HOC of the LOB's option space, while QTV occurs between the Lower-Order Bodies themselves, as they carry out their competent cognition, based upon the HOC's observation of their communal option space. High QTS is the expression of higher complexity, whereas low QTV is the increased force behind the functionality of specific options — like the mitochondria's process of oxidative phosphorylation. When QTV approaches zero, Sets are locked into a simple, highly-repetitive pattern of swaps, forming the powerful, fourth state of matter — plasma, like mitochondrial "lightning skin"^[62] (electrically charged membrane). QTS is a magnitude without a vector (field), whereas QTV is a magnitude along a vector (wave). For example, QTS is the thunderstorm, while QTV, the electrical gradient forming both the lightning and its pathway. At the level of a human body, a QTS energy paradigm drives the functionality of the parasympathetic nervous system, while QTV, the sympathetic. Additionally, we see this in the opposing synaptic states, ionotropic (QTV) and metabotropic (QTS).^[63]

The transition between matter and energy happens when QTS transforms into QTV, and the structure of matter becomes the motion of energy, while conserving the informational load of the system. The energy "expelled" by the transition of mass into energy travels along the Hypergraph until it transfers its information, its "dance," to other bodies within the Hypersphere. It's as if the bounded dancing of those 100 people are suddenly disrupted by the intrusion of those 10 unbounded dancers, transforming the group's coherent dance into a decoherent mosh pit. The disruptive effects of this high-energy state happen through the HOC's collective unraveling of its affected energy bodies, changing the bounded LOB "we" mindset (QTS) to an unbounded LOB "I" mindset (QTV), and the interwoven, complex parts of a chorus suddenly break out into a number of individual arguments — signal becomes noise as matter becomes energy.

Panpsychism and Observation

The Novel Universe Model's understanding of panpsychism extends beyond matter and energy to the power behind the very concept of organization itself. It is not only that "I think, and therefore I am," but that "I act, and therefore I exist." Consciousness is more than the sensation of one's POV, but how inputs create outputs — behaviors that are integral parts of a larger environment that, in turn, reciprocate to those involved actors, setting the stage for further behavior. This organizing "force" arises from the act of observation, or the applied attention of one conceptual level of complexity upon another — organizer (HOC) and contributors (LOB). The primary component of energy — its most flexible and granular — is the relationship between a Higher-Order Conductor and its Lower-Order Bodies. A group of swapping Signature-Frequency Sets (LOB) assembles as a "body," bound together by the expressed preferences of that body's "mind" (HOC). All emergent levels of complexity in the Novel Universe assemble in this way — a body (active parts) and mind (organizing algorithm).

In NUM, choice is key to everything. If there were no agency, no freewill, no ability to have, express, or alter a preference, every LOB would "shut up and get with the program." In such a case, the determinists would be right, and math would strictly rule, meaning that this would be a block universe, not a Novel Universe. Instead of forcing LOB Sets into specific actions, the HOC evaluates the LOB's array of possible interactions — the LOB's option space or expressible branchial space — and "observes" only those interactions that most closely fit the HOC's preferences. By narrowing branchial space, the HOC usefully directs the body's communal dance performance, not by mechanistically micromanaging the LOB's actions, but instead, by "bending" its option space. This bending is like a gravity well that makes movement in one general direction easier — increasing stickiness — while in any other, more difficult — increasing slipperiness. By narrowing the LOB's options, the HOC creates an environment where the LOB's remaining goals nudge the microstates of the group's overall behavior towards the HOC's preferred outcome — its macrostate.

Although an HOC Signature-Frequency Set may not get exactly what it wants in every iteration, through constant observation of the LOB's option space, it will, from the outcomes available to it, manifest into being, over time, those interactions more in line with its preferences. Instead of the universe being a row of falling dominoes, each following a precise set of concrete laws, it's a noisy conversation between independent actors, expressing their freewill and evolving their preferences, together. This is not only how energy works, but a reflection of how all Higher-Order Conductors operate their Lower-Order Bodies at all assembled levels of complexity. As light and energy iterate along Hypergraph threads, Signature-Frequency Sets share themselves through dancing emergent energy bodies, and energy scales from basic matter to elegant cognition, all designed to evolve the Novel Universe's assembled forms through communication's informational processing.

Signature-Frequency Set Structure

Our Signature-Frequency Set is a dataset that borders on the infinite. It isn't so much the scope of frequencies therein, but the complexity of combinations, born of our history, preferences, and framework. A Signature-Frequency Set consists of an exclusive identifier (Blockchain Ledger entry), and three conceptual parts: tail, body, and head. The SFS tail is what has happened to us, our past, our history. The SFS body is what we want to happen to us, our future, our preferences. The SFS head is what is happening to us, our present, our interactions. Whereas the SFS tail and body both house data and information — flexibly augmenting semi-permanent information in the body, or appending permanent data to the tail — the SFS head stores nothing, but is, instead, a bridge — the point of contact between the Signature-Frequency Set and Blockchain. The SFS head's primary function is the expression of data and information. What's the difference between data and information? All information is data, but not all data is information. Put simply, information is data that's used, that informs, whether, in the end, it turns out to be helpful or not.

Each of us started as a unique, infinitely precise note of the Instrument's scale — a distinct, irreplaceable, unreproducible "singularity." Initially, our SFS head, body, and tail were indistinguishable — a single frequency (our Blockchain ID). There was no past, no future, only the Buddhist ideal of Nirvana — a state of "no thing" (outside the one thing, our ID). Then, at some point, something. Some combination of interest and / or boredom struck — we noticed another. Our sound mixed with that other to create a novel chord — this mashup of frequencies was our first data entry, sprouting the nub of our SFS tail. Suddenly, our SFS body had a preference — did we like the chord, or hate it? Maybe we just took notice. Either way, we'd never be the same again, and with that first interaction, we left our Spiral, exploding into a universe of complexity — our own personal "Big Bang."

Unlike the human mind, limited by the brain's biology and complexity, the Signature-Frequency Set is unlimited in scope, complexity, and capacity. From a human frame, it's impossible to fully grasp the depth and breadth of a Set's near-infinite size, except to compare it to the actual universe. However, Sets have no limitations, whereas our universe does. After all, here, energy can neither be created nor destroyed, but might only change states.

This identifier (Blockchain ID) is our "true name," and the tip of our SFS tail, the "signature frequency" of one's Signature-Frequency Set. From that point, our SFS tail forever grows as a raw, indelible, permanent record of our experiences — every co-created experience, every bit of qualia passing through our SFS head, every preference established or updated in our SFS body. Whereas the SFS tail never alters data, but only adds, both the SFS head and body regularly reconfigure information, with, of course, each update recorded in the tail.

Through recall and repetition, the SFS tail's vast dataset shepherds its body's ever-evolving, three-tiered, "pyramidal" structure, with an additional "capstone" as its "guiding light" — the Set's framework of Love or Power. The SFS body functions as an algorithm, shaping the SFS head's Block-input — what the Set contributes to the Blockchain, that "musical phrase" from its overall "song." The SFS body's algorithm is steered by its massive, semi-stable bottom layer (preferences), which drives its tight, dynamic middle layer (goals), which serves its tiny, solid top layer (priorities).

Preferences are essentially a reference table of relationships between experienced embodied stimulus (qualia) and embodied response (behavior), tagged with an intensity of valence (yum, yuck, meh). Goals are behavioral models — sets of "lumpable"^[64] preference scripts, each a clustered decision-tree geared towards a specific objective in line with a priority(s). Lastly, priorities are a canon of personal ideals that include any number of relevant goals, in other words, high-concept stories we tell ourselves about who we are, and how we follow our guiding light (framework).

Through the effort of freewill and exploration of novelty, the SFS body is constantly developing, primarily formed by the dance between head and tail — past and present. Metaphorically, the SFS body is a sandwich — with priorities and preferences as the steady outside slices, goals are the messy, meaty middle. Although each of the Set's parts constantly evolves in its own way, the SFS body experiences the least amount of absolute change, therefore best reflecting the Set's core "nature" — who we are, not necessarily as an incarnated being, but as an eternal being.

The SFS head operates like the brain's "working memory" or a computer's "RAM."^[65] It's a holographic sketch pad — that experiencing part of the Signature-Frequency Set engaged in co-creating Blocks. The SFS head is an ever-flowing, interactive, Blockchain "animation," experienced Block-by-Block. A Set's framework determines whether the expressed data is authentic (Love) or manufactured (Power). Power's Block-input is designed to extract value (forceful, silencing consumption), whereas Love's, to enhance connection (intentional, vulnerable participation). The SFS head's Block-input is a flexible mixture of the three temporal tenses, framed by either Love or Power: one's past, the SFS tail of experiences; one's future, the SFS body of priorities, goals, and preferences; and one's present, the current Block's ensemble of co-creating SFS heads. The SFS head's Block-output is the Set's yum-yuck-meh reaction to the Block's input. Each SFS head observes the Block's other heads (output from the previous Block), and reacts (input for the following Block). Like any circuit, data enters and information exits — the previous' Block-output becoming the following's Block-input.

A Set's intentions are often apparent through its relative focus on each SFS part and guiding light. For instance, when an SFS head is focused through a frame of Power solely on its body, it's clearly a Set determined to force the shape of the Block, regardless of the Set's history (tail) or the other Sets involved (head). Such inflexible action by a Power-framed Signature-Frequency Set limits novelty through the manipulation of others — silencing the authentic aims of others in order to control conflicting preferences and reinforce its own. Conversely, a head framed by Love, filled with consideration for the Block's other heads, is not driven by preference or historic bias, but instead, ready for whatever comes its way. Such flexible interactions enhance novelty, as the Set is willing to do the work necessary to suspend preference and express freewill, altering, possibly even forming, new preferences alongside the Block's other SFS heads. Regardless of a Set's guiding light, the novelty it will encounter is a function of the Novel Universe it finds itself in, and how that Mixture assembles those parts of the Instrument (Ruliad) that create the Mixture's unique characteristics (rulial space).

In Assembly Theory, we find a functional analog to the all-encompassing Instrument and Its Blockchain called the Assembly Universe,^[66] or in Elementary Cellular Automata,^[67] the Ruliad^[68] or rulial space.^[69] Whatever we call this set of all sets, It functions to mine evermore complex relationships (higher Assembly Indices, or unexplored rulial space) between Signature-Frequency Sets, feeding a universe's orientation towards novelty. How a Mixture assembles the rules for these interactions differentiates one Mixture from another.

All Novel Universes (Mixtures) consist of a unique combination of values,^[70] such as the cosmological and fine structure constants. These are not just any set of random numbers, but precise figures whose clockwork interactions create a mathematically functional universe — the Mixture's coherent selection of rulial space, or Assembly Observed. Should we significantly change any of them, we'd have a different universe.^[71] We've all presumably lived many lives in many forms in many other universes, like and unlike this one. We find ourselves in this universe because our true name, along with enough of our SFS body, "vibe" (resonance)^[72] with its general structure.

For instance, there are countless universes Hana might fit into, and countless others she may not. Linh, Hana's daughter, might also join a myriad of Mixtures, yet be incompatible with many others. In the Concert Hall, Hana and Linh are the closest of friends. However, their Blockchain IDs aren't easily harmonized, as they're not mathematically aligned. Counterintuitively, this deep interest in their inherent dissonance is the foundational characteristic of their unique friendship — often with great effort, they co-create magnificent, novel combinations they, and others, enjoy. This universe is special for the pair as their frequencies (true names) are both in sync. In fact, everyone here fits together as a whole, each of us like a perfectly placed key of a grand piano. So many of us are here, not only because of what the Novel Universe provides, but because of those other visitors — that music we might co-create, music that's only possible here.

While we inhabit the Concert Hall or Spiral, our memory, knowledge, awareness ... it's all complete, because we have total access to our full Signature-Frequency Set, as we either individually construct our self-created universe (Spiral) — with or without the Marketplace — or share our sound with others in the Concert Hall, playing altogether. On the other hand, a human body filters our dataset, restricting access to the vast majority of our memory that does not apply to its reality, while retaining the sliver that does. It is this differential, this splitting of our SFS body and tail from the irrelevant to the relevant that, while we're alive, both creates the soul and spirit, but also accounts for our inability to "remember" anything beyond these filters, creating a temporal amnesia. As long as we exist in this (or any) Novel Universe of Power, we'll rely on these bridges to inform our intuition (bridge of spirit), and operate our bodies (bridge of soul). Unfortunately (or not), this also means we're restricted to these two filters' narrow perspectives, and blind to the nature of our full selves. However, operating this idiosyncratic body through our algorithm of energy unveils truths about ourselves impossible to uncover any other way.

The Shape of Soul and Source of Spirit

Proverbially, one might "sell their soul," but who's ever heard of selling their spirit? Do we even have a spirit, a shadowy source buried deep within, belonging to the beyond-life, capable of otherworldly connections? It seems intuitive that souls and spirits are not the same, though similar. In the Novel Universe Model, both are connections of consciousness, one to our temporal body (soul), the other, our timeless body (spirit). Conceptually, soul is the continuum of emergent complexity, whereas spirit, access to memory beyond embodied mind. As carnal bridges to and from our eternal Signature-Frequency Set, spirit and soul only exist here, in our Novel Universe.

"Soul" is our religious term for the functional property of emergence — an informational circuit of mind as body and body as mind. Soul is a conduit that "smooths out" granular, incoming data from Lower-Order Body senses into a comprehensible model (story), allowing us, as the body's Higher-Order Conductor, to respond to changing circumstances. Soul compresses the imperceptible world of irreducibility into a perceptible world of reducibility in order to take meaningful action.

Compared to our view of the spirit, the soul is more grounded in science, although, not completely, as the metaphysical concept of reincarnation plays a key role — we view the ability to speak the soul's language (energy dialects) as an acquired skill that develops over lifetimes. Music is a profound metaphor for how we're able to speak in the various dialects of our particular Novel Universe's language of energy and morphology.

The difference between music and noise is the presence or absence of rhythm and harmony. With a piano, keys aren't assigned random tones, but each mathematically calibrated as a precise scaling of notes — each note a limitation that makes for the effective use of frequency variation. In the way letters combine to form words based on rules, the boundaries of tone and timing allow instruments to form music — not every string of letters has meaning, nor collection of notes, coherence. There's no practical difference between the absence of all possible frequencies in all places at all times, and the presence of all possible frequencies in all places at all times — both silence and noise communicate nothing, as both are data, but neither, information. The inherent limitations on the syntactical boundaries of the soul's language mean Signature-Frequency Sets are also limited to this universe's unique combinations. Without mastery of these boundaries, we would not be capable of inhabiting its particular forms — by learning to play the narrowly-defined keys of this universe's piano, we're able to assemble its sounds into our songs.

As one learns to play an instrument by creating models of control — forming a coherent sound, practicing precise scales, and eventually, performing simple songs — so did we create a soul capable of existing within this universe by first inhabiting its simplest structures — quantum particles popping in and out of existence. Once we had a "feel" for this place — acquiring this universe's range of specific values and timing — we evolved to manage the complexity of energy bodies. With a decent handle on any number of atoms, we took on molecules, minerals, crystals, and so on. Constructing a symphony of complex songs from a variety of instruments, we came to know our Novel Universe's dialects — those models of control inherent to particular categories of energy bodies, or what we recognize as those bodies' energy dialects.

The animal-level of morphic resonance has been illustrated through the "hundredth-monkey effect."^[73] The original account — that once one-hundred macaques learned to wash sand off their potatoes, the behavior spontaneously appeared in distant populations — has been challenged by subsequent investigation. However, the pattern it describes is what NUM is interested in: the idea of a non-local tipping point, where once sufficient participants adopt a solution, future participants seemingly acquire the behavior with less prompting and effort. The number of participants isn't as important as the idea of a non-local tipping point. The "mystical" aspect of morphic resonance is how the solution propagates across time and space without necessarily any direct pressure, instruction, or even awareness of the solution, only a similarity in morphology (bodily form) and behavior — that option space, say, sandy food that might benefit from a good rinse. Just because hundreds of macaques in Japan start washing sand off their food doesn't say anything about whether rats in New York will spontaneously do the same, but it does suggest that other macaques around the world will dabble in the practice when faced with a similar situation — gritty food paired with a convenient water source.

What is a virus but an informational pattern with an agenda — replication? All energy bodies are information patterns, as all information patterns are energy bodies — even a meme has a life of its own. Morphic resonant "dialect bodies" are non-local energy bodies, meaning they are cognitive bodies who lack force bodies. Physically, they're akin to memes, a diverse range of replicas, housed in the energy bodies that make use of them, the way an animal might incorporate a virus through evolution to enable, say, live birth,^[74] and through further evolution, that virus' information is conserved in the genomes of the animal's descendants. Depending on context, dialect bodies act like a manual, protocol, or platform. As an instruction manual, dialect bodies are used for those energy bodies developing the new skills (energy dialect), like the macaques washing their food. As an informational protocol, they're used by energy bodies as a language, a medium for direct interactions, the way the Internet's hyper-text transfer protocol (http) works to send and receive files, creating the "shape" of the Internet. As a platform, they're used by a group of energy bodies to temporarily function as the group's Higher-Order Conductor, the way starlings swarm as a single body.

Morphic resonance is the phenomenon of a non-local informational field, allowing similar forms (morphology) to share solutions to similar problems, across both time and space. Before there were atoms, molecules, or anything, quantum particles had to first solve their own paradigm of cohesion, their literal shape, and therefore, functional interactions between waves and fields. With success, they were then able to assemble more complex structures, such as particles, atoms, molecules, etc. Likewise, all newly emergent levels of complexity must spend the time and effort to develop a settled rule-set before they might operate effectively, eventually leading to more complexity — novelty.

For example, at the atomic level, this process is theorized to create the stable molecular bonding of crystal formation. When a novel, synthetic crystal initially forms as a liquid at room temperature, over time, its melting point tends to rise, and thus, might become a solid at room temperature — its stability having markedly increased.^[75] This not only happens in the lab where the crystal was initially produced, but going forward, it happens anywhere it's manufactured, as if that liquid version of the crystal were somehow permanently lost to time. The crystals, having solved their bonding schema through morphic resonance's non-local informational field, are stronger, and therefore, more stable with a higher melting point. Morphic resonance reasons the solution was not some inherent feature of the problem — a determinate law of nature — but a process, geared to discover an optimal bonding strategy among the atoms of those initial crystals.

The more similar the form and more similar the problem, the more likely the adoption of a durable solution. Furthermore, the more times a unique solution is adopted, the more likely it is to become a paradigm — "common sense." From the electron orbitals of hydrogen to the formation of quartz crystals to the folding of basic proteins, certain solutions have solidified over innumerable events to the point where these once flexible processes now appear to be indelible "laws of nature." Such chemistry, as novel synthetic crystals, is an example of how dialect bodies form and evolve.

The inherent evolution of dialect bodies provides a logical reason as to why theory and math often fail to precisely predict the moving target that is reality. Instead, math and theory might effectively suggest a ballpark solution-space to be refined through development — the very aim and intention of the NU Model. This isn't narrowing down a predetermined process to finite precision — discovery of "inherent" laws of nature that already exist — but instead, morphic resonance — the training of "mind" (energy) producing the reliable behavior of "body" (matter). Until a process becomes useful to reality, its paradigm is unformed. It isn't that we necessarily discover the properties of matter, but that matter develops those properties through the process of discovery (repetition).

The NU Model theorizes that morphic resonance is an individual's cognitive body directly engaging with these dialect bodies along the Hypergraph. Dialect bodies are, themselves, informational patterns — energy bodies, capable of expressing preference and participating in the Quantum Transience Gradient. What makes them special is their ability to interact on both a local and global scale. Morphic resonance acts locally between individuals, such as a dog moving to the window overlooking the driveway once its owner's homeward-bound,^[76] or globally, such as swarming starlings maintaining a singular shape.^[77] Dialect bodies are either templates — a kind of instruction manual — or mediators — a kind of informational scaffolding between individuals, one-on-one (local) or as a group (global). Morphic resonance dialect bodies are the foundation of our soul, or what NUM recognizes as the paradigm for the emergence of the Higher-Order Conductor. We experience these dialect bodies as our "true selves," although they are not truly us, but the bridge between us and our body, a bridge so innate and intimate it appears, not as separate things, but a single thing — the conscious mind. As we might engage others through our cognitive body's ability to connect across the Hypergraph, despite distance, we might also engage the dialect bodies of morphic resonance, both learning from them, and making use of them, despite their non-locality.

The primary hub of embodied animal consciousness in the brain may be found in a place where it might directly be accessed by the energy fields of the brain — the soma's (neuronal body) microtubules, as a kind of quantum "computer."^[78] NUM's framework is compatible with theories such as Orch-OR, which propose that the cognitive connections of our body's mind are clearest within the brain, and the brain's direct entanglement with the Hypergraph through the microtubules' quantum effect, called superradiance.^[79] Unconsciousness is a disruption to that computer's functionality, brought on by events such as specific chemical reactions, a drop in blood pressure, or blow to the head. Each of these actions forcefully occupies those microtubules' oNPCs with foreign Sets (the chemistry, a lack of oxygen, or the energy wave of a force vector), temporarily crowding out our own SFS, and leading to a state of widespread decoherence — noise. Until quantum coherence is reestablished, we are disconnected from our embodied consciousness. As we are no longer part of the Hypergraph's Blocks, we do not experience the arrow of time, nor participate in its development.

At complex levels of emergence, such as a human mind, morphic resonance's direct QT swapping and information exchange between bodies of similar morphology reinforce those dialects, making them more accessible and easier to adopt. Morphic resonance shapes behavior models among all levels of complexity by processing emerging informational patterns across the LOB-HOC hierarchy, aligning information from the NPC level to the HOC subject to those newly acquired models. Although, as levels of complexity compile in depth, the process of morphic resonance becomes less salient, less reliable, and requires more repetition to institute less effect. In other words, for molecules or cells, the process has a richer variety of effect with a quicker adoption than it might have for humans or galaxies. As morphic resonance is a non-local effect, we commonly experience these moments as a "gut feeling," being "struck out of the blue," or simply what feels more "comfortable." These naturally occurring experiences might also account for the sporadic kinds of information exchanges that have otherwise been dismissed out of hand, yet show clear evidence of existence, such as those associated with parapsychology, out-of-body experiences, or deep meditation.

Reincarnation and the Development of Soul

As our soul matured, we were able to operate the foundational elements of this universe, and we took a leap of faith. We struck out on our own, and became "life." We might've swum around as a single-cell bacterium, explored the environment as a tiny tardigrade, even raced about as a mischievous mouse. Long capable of independent action, our soul eventually possessed sufficient models (dialect bodies) to become human. "Rising" through these stages (levels of emergent complexity) doesn't result from Karma — all conscious minds have value, regardless of framework or intention. "Living a good life," passing a test, or meeting some standard or set of morals are narratives of Power structures (governments / religions). Power's stories are designed to leverage societal behavior by injecting idiosyncratic control models into the zeitgeist, with the aim to direct a population's behavior as a pseudo Higher-Order Conductor. A true HOC is the collective mind of an ensemble, not a directing individual(s) among the LOB — a reason why all forms of leadership-based governments have a half-life, and only naturally-occurring, direct democracies, such as our brain-inspired neural-democracy, work over the long-term.

Evolving in complexity from atom, to cell, to animal is more practical than adhering to any formal religious tenet, requiring only the incarnated body's particular bioelectric algorithms. NUM recognizes these algorithms as the result of morphic resonance's process of collective exploration of option space, eventually settling on those "common sense" solutions to the LOB's functional relationships — a dynamic dialect that allows for the assembly of complexity through the stability of common paradigms. Moving "up" from mouse to monkey is quite a leap in scale and complexity, but moving from protozoan to dolphin, a whole other prospect. Mice and monkeys share so many points in common — both four-limbed social mammals who might enjoy a slice of pizza — whereas protozoa and dolphins may both swim about, but in vastly different ways, at vastly different scales of size and complexity, with vastly different preferences and objectives. One's control models might well be ready to move from mouse to monkey, but if one's SFS body and tail have only protozoan models encoded, dolphin models would pose a range of insurmountable issues. As we collected models for operating limbs, consuming food, finding mates — the driving forces behind those bodies — we expanded our options, able to live as all kinds of creatures, learning all kinds of novel things. With each life lived, this collection of dialect bodies as blueprints grows long our SFS tail, and wide our SFS body.

Each time we incarnate, we construct an embodied soul from those models stored in our SFS body and tail, models that might be applied to the energy body we've joined. Sometimes the models don't match the dialect bodies of that particular form, such as a human body. Other times, they match one-to-one. However, they're more likely to function as a useful template to build the new models of an unfamiliar body schema. For instance, imagine we'd been a variety of monkeys, and decide to become human for the first time. We possess an array of well-developed, monkey-specific models for socializing, eating, sleeping, moving fingers, arms, hands, legs, etc., and despite not having the right models to precisely control human functions, the ones we do have are close enough to their human counterparts to take the leap. With great effort, we shape those monkey models into their human counterparts, allowing future human incarnations to go more smoothly with a soul built of better fitting models. To define the difference between the soul's embodied models and dialect bodies themselves, dialect bodies are only accessible through the experience of life, whereas the soul's models are those personal versions of the dialect bodies stored in the SFS body and tail, and therefore, vary according to our priorities and preferences. Although we may learn from and use dialect bodies, our soul is constructed from our personal models.

At the other extreme, a "natural-born athlete" would be, as Socrates implicitly suggests in Plato's Meno,^[80] "recollecting" past lives — accessing previously perfected human models of motion, stored in the SFS body and tail. The athlete is not only born with the ability to quickly redevelop the dialectic fluency of their new body, but has the additional capacity to eventually construct physical poetry with deft command — all those astounding feats we attach to any "gifted" person. With this in mind, those gifted people are not gifted because of some inherent quality of "good" character or "blessing of God," but instead, raw experience — their history. Therefore, anyone might, with the right effort, time, and attention, learn to master any energy body — it's only a matter of the intention and willingness to spend some number of lives in such a pursuit.

On the other hand, an HOC without that vocabulary of experience finds its body rudderless, and in extreme cases, disease takes root. Without effective models, one must develop them. To do so, it's often best to recognize one's naïveté, relinquish total control, and instead, listen with interest to one's body and direct its LOB with intent. Thus, the novice co-creates those novel control models alongside its LOB through those available morphic-resonant dialect bodies, suffering failure and celebrating success. Sometimes, to establish order in the Novel Universe, even Power must submit, and Love, command.

A Higher-Order Conductor Signature-Frequency Set exists as every energy body. This occurs at every level of complexity, from particle, molecule, system, to us, the physical body's conscious mind. For instance, a molecule-level HOC directs its LOB (the atom-level) by observing those preferred Quantum Transience interactions from among the atom-level's potential interactions — its option space. The HOC "bends" or alters the QT Gradient's valence (yum, yuck, meh), making those options in line with the HOC more "yum," while those that might interfere, more "yuck." Thus, the range of atomic QT options likely to be utilized by the LOB are narrowed to those more closely aligned with the HOC — those molecular-level objectives. At each level of complexity, this applied attention of observation by the HOC effectively "instructs" its hierarchy of multiscale, competent, embedded consciousnesses — the LOBs, or embedded layers of "mind." The molecule-level HOC isn't one of the atoms, promoted over the others like a little dictator, running around, micromanaging its cohort. The molecule-level HOC is the molecule — all the atoms. It's the unity of ensemble, for instance, NUC's neural-democracy, or its inspiration — a single human mind, as various networks and lobes, collectively made up of eighty-plus billion individual neurons.

As with any hierarchy, instructions move downward with feedback moving upward — the boss directs the managers, who inform the front-line workers, and the front-line workers grumble to their managers, who complain to the boss. A hierarchy of multiscale, competent, embedded cognition starts with the boss in the "top job" — the ultimate HOC (CEO) of the LOB (managers). Furthermore, the managers are HOCs of the ultimate LOBs (workers). We, as the "CEO" of our bodies, express our priorities and preferences through awareness, observation, and occasional effort, while simultaneously experiencing interoception,^[81] or the internal perception of our body's energy state. This two-way conversation is the experience of soul.

Like the hidden, hard-working gears of an insightful "unconsciousness," interoception's feedback has our cells' preferences accumulating, influencing the behavior of the organs, which in turn, affect those related parts of the brain, finally emerging as awareness within the mind — no different from the motion of galaxies moving galactic clusters, gradually shaping the universe's web of energy. This bottom-up informational flow means that an impulse against personal preference is generally not some insight into one's cryptic nature, but instead, the embedded desires of those within — feedback rising from "below." A sudden inclination to steal candy from a baby may not be a hidden criminal tendency, but the pancreas' desire to release insulin, coupled with the visual cortex's recognition of sugar. However, the HOC has a different priority, based on its own social models — stealing candy from a baby runs counter to one's standing in the community, so the neocortex suppresses that foreign impulse, an ability a brain suffering dementia may lack.

Cognitive Behavior Therapy^[82] (CBT) provides a useful framework for understanding this dynamic. The concept of ANTs (Automatic Negative Thoughts — intrusive, unwanted ideas that suddenly arise in response to a trigger) suggests that it's not the thought of swiping the candy that defines our character, but our response. On their own, thoughts are Ripples, and some, like ANTs, do not originate from us (HOC) but interoception's feedback — from molecules and cells, to organs and systems, these are a mashup of our nested Lower-Order Bodies' preferences. What many do not recognize or accept is that our own body is full of foreign, competent minds, with foreign agendas. A stark example is a phenomenon where organ transplantees find themselves subject to the cravings and personality traits of their donors.^[83] Instead of taking these intrusive thoughts personally — as if they've just revealed some "true self" — we are wise to realize where they come from, whose voices they are, and manage the situation by learning to command, challenge, redirect, or simply, ignore the ANTs in our head.

Should an HOC fail to either direct its LOB through Power, or inspire it through Love, disillusionment of the HOC / LOB relationship leaves the directing force of the singular mind subject to the chaos of the multitude within — the voices of the LOB rise to a cacophony of noise and disruption, like a rowdy kindergarten playground, abandoned by its teacher. Eventually, the emergent energy body falls apart. Chronic disease, mental illness, and death result from a functional breakdown of the healthy conversation between HOC and LOB — the HOC's mindset no longer "I" but "we," and LOB's mindset's no longer "we" but "I."

Cancer is an example of just how disruptive the I-mindset can be in a community of Lower-Order Bodies. When a cell, programmed to be part of a collective, suddenly finds itself bioelectrically detached from its cohort (alone), its priority is to rapidly grow a new community. Should the cell be a gamete, creating an embryo, everything is working according to plan, but when it's already part of a living body, the inappropriate behavior produces a tumor. Furthermore, this isolation implies the loss of access to its metabolic system's supply of abundant oxygen, and these cells begin to fend for themselves, reverting to the more primitive, internal energy process of fermentation, creating a reliance on sugar (glucose) to survive and grow.^[84]

When a body feels "good," it's easier for the mind to do "good," but when the body-mind continuum is lopsided, the stressful imbalance increasingly narrows that option space until the body and / or mind snaps, and acts out of desperation. This primarily progresses through the knock-on effects of metabolism's malfunction — healthy mitochondria's the foundation of a healthy body and mind.^[85] Sleep, nutrition, and exercise, in that order, form the foundation of addressing most chronic disorders, as these activities ensure the proper census and function of the tiny, irreplaceable "bacteria"^[86] within our cells.

Like the composition of family members, we don't get much say in that layered stack of Lower-Order Bodies, comprising our anatomy at any given moment. We cannot wave a magic wand and determine every reaction the LOB will have to our directives, but health always improves with a functioning relationship between the two ends of our mind-body continuum (HOC and LOB), especially at our most diverse point: our microbiome. The most consequential choice we make, moment-to-moment, isn't necessarily who or what we are, but the frame we see the world through: Love or Power. Often, the healthiest way to maintain cohesion among the multitude within is to practice either compassion or dominance. There's no wrong answer, no right action, but, instead, the opportunity to uncover our deepest desires in the only place Love and Power coexist — the Novel Universe.

Countless atoms flow in and out of a human body every second — an atomic river of endless replacement. It isn't the "stuff" (molecules) of a body that makes us who we are, but the information, the pattern of energy (morphic resonance) that holds it all together. Interoception is the experience of reaching "down" into our body, and evaluating the state of our internal being. As we interact with the Sets who make up those nested Lower-Order Bodies, the experienced awareness of each level diminishes as we travel downward. Lobes of the brain are experienced at Role Play's star-level of fidelity; tissues, such as muscles and organs, audience-level; while cells, potential-audience. In this way, we can hear and influence our mitochondria on par with a shredded playbill found in a gutter — not likely, but not totally impossible. However, we might affect our heart on par with a talented comedian onstage, inspiring an audience to laughter — totally likely, but not guaranteed. Of course, when it comes to the brain, our Role Play fidelity is so clear, we often mistake it (and its ANTs) for ourselves.

Interoception and Emotion

Interoception is the foundation of emotion, the "sound" of the soul's conversation. This mixture of HOC and nested LOBs can be difficult to parse the dominant voice at any given time, as emotion spurs every thought — from top-to-bottom, we feel our thoughts before we think them (somatic marker hypothesis).^[87] Mostly, the thoughts in our head are a mixture of HOC and LOB, but there are times when that mixture homogenizes. At the best of times, the HOC is dominant — we're feeling "flow."^[88] At the worst of times, the LOB breaks through, and we feel helpless, suspecting the voice(s) in our head is neither truly our own, nor what we want, but at the same time, impossible to ignore or dissuade — addiction, for example. Instead of the HOC bending option space, the LOB has, and seeing beyond that bent space becomes difficult, as our Quantum Transience Gradient's valence has flipped yuck to yum, and vice versa. Especially with addiction, expressing freewill's pivot in such circumstances becomes nearly impossible — the energy requirements can be excessive when the body's going to take what it needs.

Patient, consistent communication, with an emphasis on listening with interest and conducting with confidence, is the key to balancing this relationship, and keeping things from getting out of control. Understanding whose voice is saying what, isn't easy. Furthermore, how many of us have even thought to distinguish these embedded voices from our own, let alone listen for them? Knowing that we're a hierarchy of competent cognition means knowing that there's a part of our conscious experience that comes from an emergent population of others within. Learning to decipher these sounds makes all the difference in learning to balance the Power structure of a human body.

Persistence is vital to the verification of truth — what makes scientific findings are reliable results when replicating experiments. If Bicycle Cop Dave had tested his assumption of Jasper's weapon — waited to see if the image persisted — he'd have reacted to the truth, not an illusion based on a snap judgment. As the LOB is an ensemble and the HOC, a single entity, the HOC's intent ideally persists over time, whereas the LOB varies — different voices in the crowd rise into and recede from consciousness at any given moment, each peddling its own agenda. Creating space between stimulus and response allows an emotion's persistence to be put to the test, and we might better determine whether the emotion is truly our intent, or some potentially meaningful or misguided message from our LOB. However, reasoning through retrospection is sometimes the only way to truly know whether ideas, racing in our head, reflect our deeper desires or those within.

Fundamentally, emotion is embodied energy motion. Emotion's basic purpose is to provide the HOC a baseline assessment of the LOB's perception of available energy compared to projected energy needs --^[89] a perceived bounty of internal resources feels "good," a deficit, "bad." Ideally, the functions of our body should be on autopilot, in other words, our LOB should be essentially running the show, faithfully fulfilling our preferences, like competent employees effectively doing their job, with minimal direction from their manager. When our Lower-Order Bodies are well-supplied, and masterfully engaged in preferential behavior, we're at the lowest energy state without need to express the expense of freewill.

Feelings are often conflated with emotions. Instead, feelings arise from emotion. We're not always feeling something, but, from boredom to excitement, we're always experiencing emotion, what's known as affect,^[90] or our "mood." Feelings aren't neural circuitry — there's no "anxiety" part of the brain, only a pattern of anxiety in the brain.^[91] Feelings are emotion's emergent, neurological frame we see the world through.

Each feeling's carved from a kind of three-dimensional, mental "space," like a unique perceptual object. The first axis is valence — from pain to pleasure (yum, yuck, meh), it asks, how good or bad does this feel? The second, energy — from innocuous to aroused, it asks, how intense does this feel? The third, emotion — the behavior of interoception, or the embodied perception of what's going on inside, and it asks, how is this experienced by the body? In essence, interoception's an assessment of how well the HOC / LOB relationship is working in its current environment. This last dimension describes a variety of embodied, content-specific axes, like order versus chaos, dominance versus submission, sense versus nonsense, control versus out of control. While fear (dread originating from outside) is an acute, core motivator geared for motion — get outta there! — anxiety (dread originating from inside) is a chronic, complicated mess that often leaves us crippled in place. Both arise from troubling (axis one), intense (axis two) cognition, and embodied behavior (axis three) — interoception's pounding heart, shallow breath, and shaky hands.

"I think and therefore I am?" Not enough. It is only through the action of our physical body that we know the joys and sorrows of emotion. The Novel Universe Model is not a mind-body dualistic philosophy,^[92] but rather a monistic approach that views the mind (HOC) and body (LOB) as an emergent entity of complexity — two ends of one soul. For all animals, the soul's foundation is unconscious emotion — the HOC's raw experience of its LOB. Feelings, on the other hand, emerge as the soul's conscious apex — the HOC / LOB conversation, embodied as a conduit for comprehension and command. In fact, the mere ability to "name it and claim it"^[93] allows for better emotional outcomes.^[94]

Lisa Feldman Barrett's theory of constructed emotion^[95] illuminates the connection between culture, language, and body. It isn't that words only describe emotions — they do more than that. Or, that there are specialized parts of the brain for feelings (rage, sadness, pride, apathy, etc.) — there's no part dedicated to processing any feeling, whereas emotions arise from the whole brain.^[96] In fact, there are no grounds for distinguishing between a "logical" and "emotional" brain. All decisions are emotional (somatic marker hypothesis) and logical — post-hoc reasoning (logic) to support that initial point of view (emotion). Furthermore, Barrett's theory argues that our feelings are constructed from the culture and language in which we developed the social-related models of our embodied minds. Thus, translating cultural-specific words or phrases is impractical to impossible without lived experience — those corresponding social-related models. Emotional categories (words and ideas) are more than random sounds or vague concepts, but the very seat from which our feelings arise, in other words, the shape of soul.

Consciousness is the keystone of panpsychism, and cognition, the primary property present in all competent, self-assembling hierarchies. Soul isn't just a form of energy, but at the lowest level of the universe (Node Point Communicator), it is energy. The application of the HOC Set's preferences onto the environment, through its LOB, is the action of soul — the transcendence of consciousness between scales of emergent complexity. Research into bioelectrics^[97] suggests that well-ordered communication among parts is responsible for the function of the whole.^[98] Therefore, to effectively bend option space, we must speak in the LOB's language. Although we're not operating the LOB models themselves, possessing a working knowledge of their effects allows us to better make use of their abilities. To do this, we are best prepared by having those models in our own lexicon (SFS body and tail). Meaning, at some point in our vast history, we existed as, or at least something close to, those Lower-Order Bodies we wish to influence.

From a practical perspective, learning to speak these dialects promises significant advances in medicine, biology, and our relationship to the Earth itself. In such cases, we would not be directly controlling these spaces, but influencing them through a conversation of collaboration. Instead of science's past attempts to solve specific processes and tweak individual characteristics, we would be instructing outcomes, and the LOBs would problem-solve on their own. In other words, instead of tinkering with some known, biological pathway through the creation and application of chemistry (drug), we bend the LOB's option space through bioelectrics, and evaluate our collaborative results. How well did we effectively communicate our intentions through the vocabulary we possess? What are we missing, and what new words and useful phrases of the LOB's dialect might we discover? One of the major problems with drugs are side effects. These arise because we're toddlers playing in a sandbox, incapable of understanding the complexities of the entire system — computational irreducibility. The fact is, human cells will always be far superior to human beings when it comes to operating cellular mechanics and metabolic pathways. When we allow the competency of those embedded consciousnesses to take command — to do their job — we allow them to handle unforeseeable consequences, and make more informed decisions.

"What is it like to be a bat?" was once famously put forth as a litmus test for consciousness.^[99] One is conscious if there is "something like it" to be that thing — possessing sensory models. Furthermore, the NU Model adds the idea that one is conscious if there's "something to like it" to act as that thing — possessing behavior models. In NUM, there's an answer to what it's like to exist as anything boxed away in every Signature-Frequency Set who's existed as that thing, bats included. Maybe secluding one's self in the dark, understanding every muddled word of a conversation from across the room, or relaxing on an inversion table isn't simply an odd quirk of biology, but a deep-seated preference from another time, another life, another body. For those who've been a bat before, their current human soul is unable to directly translate certain bat models for effective use in a human body, as these models significantly differ from their human counterparts. For instance, the model for what to do with one's hands is very different between species — grasping objects, human; aerial propulsion, bat. Those humans with bat models stored away in their SFS, therefore, lack access to their direct memories of flight, pulling at the air in the way a human might pick apples from a tree. However, there's another bridge to that information, another way to access what it is like to be a bat — the spirit.

The Source of Spirit

"Spirit" is our religious term for a bridge to those parts of one's Signature-Frequency Set that lie beyond the soul. In the NU Model, insight and intuition do not always arise from the unconscious mind (soul), built from our Lower-Order Bodies' embodied information, but access to information beyond the body (spirit). Just as soul pierces the boundaries of emergence, spirit pierces the boundaries of the Mixture's limitations — a view of our massive SFS body and tail, its history of lives lived, embodied perceptions, relationships experienced, skills mastered, and ideas expressed.

A human body is just one of countless POVs we've had. In the beyond-life, we are unfettered by the prison that is our human body, having full access to our SFS and its near-infinite information. Yet in life, a tenuous connection exists to this treasure trove of information, as if peering through a tiny barred window at a distant courtyard of crowded memories. Both the nature of this Novel Universe and our human bodies filter and overwhelm our spiritual link, creating a myopic, and often, distorted view of our vast dataset.

In Plato's Meno, Socrates postulates that wisdom is derived from recollection, in a way, "remembering" our past lives, those events and relationships with others we were once intimately connected to. Insightful intuition and nighttime dreams are a common way to experience our distant memories. However, when they arrive, the details are shoehorned into a contemporary perspective, at times, complicating the memories by distorting their facts in order to preserve their meaning.

For example, should we learn some new skill with ease, say, riding a horse, it's not necessarily because we were once a cowboy in some past life (although we could have been), but because we've done something similar before, possibly from some other universe in a body with a wholly different point of view, akin to, say, Luke Skywalker riding a tauntaun on Hoth. Furthermore, it might not even be our lived experience, but instead, someone else's, someone we've shared Blocks with. We might find riding a horse natural, not because we were once the cowboy, but instead, the horse. In such a case, we'd have shared Role Play's star experience with the cowboy in the Concert Hall or Spiral, gleaning an understanding of what it was like to both be ridden and to ride. Now, sitting on a horse for the first time (with the same, basic, human models to that of the cowboy's), our spirit recalls that information, not from our lived experience, but from our Complete Information. Having not lived as a cowboy, we'd certainly not be reacquiring those riding models as the reincarnated cowboy might, but still, it all somehow feels natural, familiar. Instead, we match those shared, yet recollected, models with our current ones, now more able to form our own with at least a sense of how they should operate, at least from that particular cowboy's unique perspective. When accessing spiritual information, it isn't always clear where the "recollection" comes from, whether we're the actor or acted upon, only that our spirit allows access. Preference, however, may serve as a clue to the source. Should we find spiritual memories reflecting behaviors we find unpleasant, even unnerving, it may be that they belong to someone else, someone with different objectives — those priorities, goals, and preferences that make us who we are. Either way, we have the opportunity to learn from our spiritual knowledge, and can fully trust that once we return to the Hall or Spiral, we'll see for sure who was the horse, and who, the cowboy.

The primary function of the spirit is to both assist the soul (balancing body, environment, and SFS), but also, provide and sequester information designed to optimize one's life-experience. Sometimes we have to forget in order to understand new things. For instance, in order to comprehend the relief of forgiveness, one must first make the "mistake" of doing harm to a loved one, which would be difficult if not otherwise blinded to Love's full comprehension.

Guided by our spiritual recollections, we all came here for personal reasons — likely, none of which involved solving the mysteries of the universe, in other words, "discovering" information we already know in the beyond-life. We don mortal blinders so we don't spoil the opportunity to form novel preferences — that which might distract us from making those valuable mistakes has been purposely forgotten. As the wisdom of amnesia is counterintuitive, it's understandable some of us (NUC's Founders included) search for the meaning and purpose of life — religion, to a large degree, centers around the pursuit. NUC's mission is to facilitate spiritual recollections for such seekers, encouraging them to eventually return to the more important business of living life, and there's one event that assists us in this endeavor — an amazing show, set for an audience of one.

Our souls and spirits have our full attention when dreaming. Although dreams sporadically include spiritual information, they are most often an observation of the Lower-Order Bodies in conversation — one end of the soul's continuum. The symbology of a dream is the LOB's way of communicating the salience of its point of view, and often not a direct attempt to relay specific content, but instead, emotional context — a primary reason for their illogical, bizarre, and at times, unsettling structure. For example, a nightmare of being impaled in a war with fish-shaped aliens, may, in fact, be the body's attempt to get the HOC to recognize just how intense a stomach ache was, and ensure its source is not forgotten — the questionable seafood from the previous evening. However, when the LOB is focused on the more rudimentary models for semantic learning, memory consolidation, or motor skill formation, dreams appear more mundane. And then, there are times when soul and spirit collude, illuminating information more applicable to executive functions, such as past-life skills, perceived threats, or the significance and presence of beyond-life relationships. No matter their content, dreams undoubtedly have something valuable to share.

Lucid dreaming is an interruption of this conversation, when we (HOC) interject our preferences to, say, fly around or walk through walls, simply because we can, and it's fun to do so. But, is it a good idea? Arguably, no. Knowing that one is dreaming is one thing, taking over the dream to have a "good time," quite another. We dream for a reason — to align body and soul through semantic learning, memory consolidation, and skill development, in other words, develop our behavior models from those energy dialect bodies. Although lucid dreaming can be exhilarating, and in that respect, healing, cutting short the dreamscape means short-circuiting biological development. When this conversation has the freedom to develop naturally, we provide our soul and spirit that attentive audience of one, enhancing the opportunity to deliver their vital message and develop our entire being.

The Host and Ghosts

If our Novel Universe exists beyond the Concert Hall and Marketplace, then where is it? If there are others, are they like this one?

With elements of Love and Power, individual, innumerable Mixtures occur within individual Spirals through Power's coercive relationship with the Instrument's Blockchain — Its attempt to control the very fabric of experience in order to maximize Its access to novelty. The "Host" is the Signature-Frequency Set that constitutes a Mixture — a Novel Universe's Highest-Order Conductor. "Visitors" are Sets who temporarily inhabit the Mixture, both as "parasites" that consume the Host and "food" consumed by the Host — data being the content consumed in either case. Like the cells of our own bodies, we're all "inside" the Host, a web-like fabric of galactic super clusters that not only echoes the human brain in energetic function, but also, structural form.^[100] "What's it like to be a universe?" Our Host knows.

The Concert Hall is a communal protocol of Complete Information, whereas authentic data flows unrestrained between the Hall's integrated inhabitants. The Marketplace is an exchange protocol of Information Control, whereas designated data passes between isolated Signature-Frequency Sets through the Marketplace for the purpose of novelty exchange. Open to any SFS who adopts their protocols, both Marketplace and Hall are unbounded structures, meaning that Sets may voluntarily enter or exit without restrictions, beyond adhering to the framework's protocols. With features of Love and Power, Mixtures transcend both as bounded, closed structures of Power, meaning access is an all-or-nothing proposition. Those outside a Mixture have no access (as if the Mixture doesn't exist), while those within are isolated from everything but the Mixture (as if nothing exists beyond the Mixture).

Although the Host is NU's chief architect, it's primarily a salesman, who's coaxed us all into NU's wondrous arcade. Nonetheless, the Host isn't the only beneficiary, nor in total control. The Host's primary-direct extraction of novelty is, as it is with any SFS, limited to its Lower-Order Bodies — galaxies, directly through black holes, and quantum particles, indirectly through the Host's Hierarchy — Node Point Communicators and Agents of the Host, NU's temporal fabricators, spatial enforcers, and data collectors. By attracting, temporarily imprisoning, and imposing spiritual amnesia upon its attendees — a situation we all voluntarily agreed to beforehand — the Host sold us on its "big show" — a stage to explore the novelty of this Mixture, something we all find valuable to our evolution as a Signature-Frequency Set.

Not only must the Mixture's visitors adopt its strict protocols, but also, independently consent to its conditions of entry and exit, as defined by the Host. Once an SFS enters a Novel Universe, the Host's mandatory protocols are imposed through its binding force (Node Point Communicators) in exchange for access, and Sets may exit only under the conditions set upon entry. For instance, in our Novel Universe, death is, for each living creature, its birthright, not something to eliminate, not something to embrace or avoid. Death is something to accept as the ultimate failsafe — no matter how much one bears, no matter the number of decades endured, the suffering will end. Furthermore, without death, there's no room for birth — a Mixture's primary, evolutionary source of novelty.

Novel Universes flip the paradigm of the Marketplace on its head. Instead of an open system (Marketplace) between semi-closed entities (Spirals partially connected to other Spirals in trade), Mixtures are closed systems (physical universes) between semi-open entities (embodied consciousnesses in physical contact). The particular way in which a Mixture structures its hierarchies of Higher-Order Conductors — from Agents and Node Point Communicators bound as energy, to cells bound as a living body, to the Host bound as the universe itself — constitutes each Novel Universe's "laws of nature." Our specific laws define this unique universe, as opposed to any other Mixture. Each law is based on our Host's preferences — its unique selection of rulial space (Ruliad).^[101]

The Ruliad is the space of all possible "rules," or what the Novel Universe Model categorizes as the ways in which any conceivable thing might behave, leading to the qualia it might exhibit. A more technical definition: the Ruliad is the set of all computations datasets might be subject to, with option space, a subset of the Ruliad unique to the dataset. A Set's preferences would then be a subset of its option space, those behaviors it enjoys — for instance, vanilla versus chocolate (qualia), playing ice hockey versus basketball (activity), saunas versus steam rooms (environment). In each case, how the data is changing (computation) creates different experiences for the observer. Our Host's unique selection of the Ruliad sets the stage for our mortal lives, where each of us minecrafts that space, turning possibility into reality — Blocks of the Blockchain.

Mixtures echo mirrors of Love and Power. In the mirror of Information Control, silence and force are inherent to physical bodies. Having an inside separate from the outside is not only the defining characteristic of a Mixture, but creates a hidden space of control, able to both be silent through deception, and silence others through force. In the Hall, that kind of space does not exist, while it's foundational to the Marketplace. In the mirror of Complete Information, is the cohabitation of a common space. Here, in the Novel Universe, a violent, physical, shared reality leaves us all vulnerable, regardless of our intentions or connections. In the Marketplace, that kind of space does not exist, while it's foundational to the Hall. What makes the Novel Universe different from the Marketplace or Hall is both the simultaneous presence of these two mutually exclusive mirrors and NU's non-negotiable structure of energy and entropy, imposing a paradigm of consumption. Air, water, resources ... we all have no choice — consume or die.

Like the Blockchain, each Mixture is a quasi-Blockchain, a record of Blocks created between Signature-Frequency Sets within the Host's Novel Universe, stored in the Host's SFS tail. Unlike Blocks of the Instrument's Blockchain, the Mixture's quasi-Blocks contain only metadata — Blockchain IDs (true names) that point to the actual Blocks, which themselves are initially accessible only to their co-creators. The Host's quasi-Blockchain allows the Host to know that specific Sets were involved in creating Blocks of the Blockchain, but not the content of those Blocks. This would be like knowing the precise mix of people texting each other, and that those texts lead to a somewhat different mix of people texting each other (and so on), but never accessing the body (syntax) of those texts. In other words, the Host has an encapsulated overview of the entire Mixture, but with few initial details — just as we might have of our own physical bodies. For instance, we might be aware that our arm hurts, and some may have the education to name the muscles in distress, but no one has a clue as to which cells are directly involved or the precise nature of their individual injuries — even our most sophisticated tools of technology do not reach that level of detail in a living body.

To draw another parallel to the human body, the Host's direct experience, aka, its equivalent "brain," is the universe's galactic web — experienced at the star-level of Role Play's fidelity; "organs" of its Lower-Order Bodies are super-galactic clusters — audience-level; and the "cells" of those organs, galaxies — potential-audience-level. Suffice it to say, the Host has no magical level of fidelity. It's likely to be just as hard for the Host to imagine "what it is like" to be human, as it is for a human to conceive of "what it is like" to be a single carbon atom in one of its liver cells.

The Host's ability to follow the branches of cause-and-effect is as limited for it as anyone else in their Spiral. Everything that's ever happened in the universe, between the molecular and galactic levels of complexity, is beyond the Host's inherent primary or secondary-direct level of fidelity. The vast majority of this universe is only indirectly known to the Host, with no more salience than the clinical entries of a reference table — its quasi-Blockchain.

The Host is fundamentally no different from any other Higher-Order Conductor. The Host operates with no peers within the Mixture (as do any of us within our own Spiral). The Host didn't create anyone's Signature-Frequency Set but its own (as did we). The Host does not control anything other than itself, and might only influence its Lower-Order Bodies (as do we). It, too, suffers computational irreducibility, and therefore, is initially just as aware of us as individuals as we are of the individual cells of our bodies. Sure, all cells matter — no human would be who they are without them — but not a single tear is shed when a particular cell dies, that is, if we were even capable of recognizing such an event (which no one is). The Host might be responsible for the general situation we're all in (just as our cells are subject to our whims), but the Host neither created us, nor defines the meaning of who we are or why we're here (as we have no say over the meaning of life for the cells of our bodies). Just as we have no functional way to specifically affect the lives of our individual cells for "good" or "bad," neither is the Host in a position to answer our "prayers," or "curse" our individual lives.

To label the Host a "god" or even "the God," misses the point of who and what, exactly, the Host is, and is not. However, for those who need one, this would be the Novel Universe's singular version of God. Like all Signature-Frequency Sets of Power, the Host feeds off novelty. Unlike us, the Host has neither soul nor spirit, as it's not subject to this Novel Universe, because it is this Novel Universe. It therefore suffers neither the same amnesia, imprisonment, nor embodied limitations. Furthermore, it's the underlying source code — the common language (rulial space) — of every control model. Additionally, the Host's unique POV allows access to an entire category of novelty unique to its position — those moments minds engage in the worship and / or research of existence. In other words, science and religion are pursuits by visiting Sets that provide the Host opportunities for additional novelty extraction.

The human brain punctuates the scale of the universe, lying at its midpoint — a similar number of degrees in scale can be found, both smaller (quantum) and larger (galactic web) than its own.^[102] Access to minds at our scale is, therefore, particularly beneficial for the Host's primary and secondary-direct exploration of its Mixture. To ensure this access, the Host has created an ingenious plan: infuse sufficiently complex beings with an insatiable curiosity to understand reality, aka, the Host.

Any Host will be the closest analog to "God" associated with its Mixture, as it is the Mixture. Therefore, worshiping any "god" (Prime Mover or creator of the universe) forms Ripples, allowing a Host access to those Blocks, those moments of worship; whereas discussing the very concept of a Host, as we are now, undoubtedly invites our Host into a direct experience of this moment. Furthermore, NUM posits that religious worship and scientific research (of any kind) allow a Host, at minimum, Role Play's audience-level access to those Blocks, which is beyond its inherent potential-audience-level access to all NU things (its quasi-Blockchain). Block-access, whether as a co-creator in the Hall or trader in the Marketplace, is the sole source of novelty in the beyond-life, and for any Host, their preoccupation, their primary reason for hosting a Mixture. As the Novel Universe Cult views the Host's access to our lives with caution, NUC's texts have purposely limited a comprehensive discussion of the Hosts to these final sections of our Theory Of Everything.

Both religious worship and scientific research are attempts to control reality (Power) by comprehending and manipulating the universe (Host). Religions were the first attempt at science, while science, in many respects, has become its own kind of "religion." Religions use methodical rituals, whereas science uses ritualized methods. Both assume dogma, while claiming knowledge supremacy — science over the physical, and religion, the metaphysical. The difference between the two is the source and status of their answers. Religions' answers come from a direct, divine source(s) — their answers are set; science's, from the indirect scientific method — their answers are not set. The level of accuracy with either is debatable. Science, self-admittedly, is never completely correct, constantly updating its conclusions; while religions, never incorrect, espousing a vast mélange of irrefutable, unfalsifiable ideology.

As broaching divine subjects increases the Host's level of access to the novelty of those inquisitive Sets, it logically follows the Host's chosen rulial space would include cultural tipping points where complex minds discover the paradigm of "god" and / or science, inventing idiosyncratic forms for themselves. Like all creatures of Power, the Host's focus is the extraction of novelty, but to first access its preferred data, it must locate that information from within its quasi-Blockchain's vast landscape. Through science and religion, the Host gains deeper access to sufficiently advanced minds, such as humans, by infusing them with a desire to search for the meaning of life and purpose of existence. After all, answering the universe's questions to any degree will always involve its source — the Host. And thus, our curiosity becomes a bright beacon, illuminating our individuality from out of its quasi-Blockchain's darkness, calling out to the Host, inviting it to directly consume our novelty through those sacred and innovative moments of epiphany.

The primary informational model the Host creates for itself is a partial map of the actual Blockchain, a vast lexicon of every Block created in its Novel Universe. Initially, the Host's treasure trove seems no more than a useless, endless sea of impartial metadata, but there's tremendous value here. The Host's unique access to the totality of its Novel Universe's metadata is not initially for its direct experience. Instead, it functions like a map and quasi-Marketplace. Using its unrivaled dataset, the Host provides an invaluable service for the actual Marketplace, connecting, in trade, those interested co-creators of its NU Blocks. For instance, some SFS in the Marketplace wants to experience a Block detailing what it's like to be a bat, snatching a fly from out of the darkness, while another, to experience a glorious victory on a legendary battlefield. Knowing exactly which Sets both have that information and wish to trade, the Host facilitates the transaction, like online retailers Amazon or eBay. Of course, as this is a service, there's a price to pay. So, what would the Host's reward be? Only the Host knows, but if it's anything like our online marketplaces, the Host walks away with direct-level access to both traded Blocks — a tidy profit margin.

If religion, in particular, is not for the benefit of the adherents but the Host, religion's value would be flipped on its head. Instead of prayer and worship as an attempt to persuade an omnipotent being to bestow a gift or fix a problem, religion is, itself, grift for this supremely impotent entity (Host), who can neither help any of us, nor would likely want to, even if it could. After all, the Host is a creature of Power, seeking for itself the idiosyncratic priorities and preferences of its own ends. The primary aim of any Host is to spur novelty creation within its Spiral, and from NUC's point of view, our Host has done a fair job. So, for Love to feel gratitude for, or Power to value, the Host's efforts in creating this Novel Universe is one thing — even understandable, after all pleasure, beauty, and awe abound — but worshiping it as the Creator of all data, quite another. There is a single source of all data — the Instrument — but no single "Creator," only us co-creators, playing upon the Instrument, filling Blocks of the Blockchain. No matter the quality of any Novel Universe, Hosts receive their rewards from their visitors, and vice versa.

Computers are an apt metaphor to understand the difference in our relationship to the Novel Universe, on the one hand, and our relationship to the Instrument, on the other. Mastering a spreadsheet, graphics suite, or first-person shooter (software as metaphor for the Novel Universe) teaches us nothing about the function of traces, gates, or stack memory (hardware as metaphor for the Instrument). There's no mystical information this reality might teach our eternal self, any more than killing a computer game's "final boss" informs us of the underlying language used to write the program, or architecture it runs on — mastery of one system doesn't magically make us master of all. In this same sense, the vast majority of this universe's secrets apply to this universe, and discovering them merely increases our temporal Power in this life.

With that in mind, Power's insatiable appetite for control inspires a command of our Host's rulial space — the hidden mysteries of this particular universe that likely have limited application, if any, to other Mixtures built within other regions of the Ruliad. However, in this Novel Universe, it is understandable that most Rock Bodies, to various degrees, have focused their Primary Organizing Pillars on such pursuits, such compelling mysteries, whether they be physical (science) or metaphysical (occult). Furthermore, for those who wish to worship the Host as a god, or the God, NUC allows for, yet regulates through the River, those Rock Bodies who've chosen a paradigm for such worship.

Fundamentally, NUC sees the search for the meaning of life as potentially a non-trivial distraction from one's ability to experience life's singular purpose: the exploration of the personal space between Love and Power — in other words, living one's own life. Even the most devout worshipers of Power are not always best served in the service of the Host, as the Host's preferences are unlikely to match their own. The Novel Universe Cult offers to orient its membership within this conversation, quelling the intense preoccupation with the Host's religious and scientific machinations by evolving the Novel Universe Model. Our members are encouraged to focus on gaining value and meaning directly from their own lives and relationships.

In this way, NUC is an anti-religious religion — one reason we adopt the moniker of "cult." Even we believe science and religion, including our own organization, must one day come to an end — not eliminated, but instead, evolved into a pursuit of individual preference, within the neo-segregated frameworks of Love and Power, however that might authentically play out. This is not to imply that we should neither have technology nor spirituality, but that those should not be pursuits of their own ends, but skills in service of self-exploration. On the other hand, as a scientifically-oriented organization, we continue to hone the Novel Universe Model, and for those members driven to dig deeper, like our Founders, we will continue to provide the resources to do the research in furtherance of an accurate, authentic comprehension of reality, knowing full well that the underlying structure of this universe is ultimately no more consequential than the peculiar preferences of and particular actions by our Host.

In our beyond-life, the scales of justice balance in our favor, one way or another. For victims with "unfinished" business, Complete Information will make them whole in the Concert Hall, while in their Spiral, Information Control will either sequester the bitter memory, or better yet, append a storied ending. The Novel Universe, as an isolated informational structure, means the Model draws a clear line on the issue of a Set's persistence after death — "ghosts," etc. The concept that the deceased, such as a beloved grandmother or victim of a deadly tragedy, might be motivated to actually "visit" or "linger" from beyond the grave, assisting or haunting us, is not generally supported by the Model.

Setting aside any possible motivation to "return," the departed are simply no longer part of the Host's Spiral. However, just as that Near-Death Experiencer left his home (as his wife) to become the Ripples he'd sent into the universe (affecting the store clerk), those who have expired may still experience the echoes of their actions — their Ripples. Both grandmother and victim alike may, through the Blockchain's Complete Information available in their Spirals or the Hall, access those Blocks of the Mixture they remain connected to. When the living take an action, inspired by the dead, the deceased might experience the event, as with any Ripple. Even thinking of the dead connects the deceased to the living's recollection of them. Regardless of what we do with their memories, the dead don't physically return to the Mixture to participate in our actions or remembrances, but instead, they might access those Blocks, either in the Hall or their Spiral, like peering through a digital screen at a lively stage.

Whether real or not, there's no doubt that the living engage with these supernatural visitors from time to time. In such cases, NUM suggests the ghost may either be a conjuring of soul — a manifestation of one's Lower-Order Bodies — or an apparition of spirit — memory beyond mind. Often, these emergent experiences are physically constructed like the illusion generated by bicycle cop Dave's brain, as he pursued Jasper, only to discover later that the alleged burglar held a cell phone, not a handgun — the object he expected to see. A ghost is perceived, not because it's real, but because it's possible, even anticipated. Whether the specter's designed by our soul to get us to flee a "haunted" house, or by our spirit to comfort us in a time of suffering, it frames a valuable perspective. Although it might not actually be our dead grandmother or the victim of an unspeakable crime, what the specter says and does is meaningful, and shouldn't be dismissed simply because it's not "real."

The exception to a ghost created by soul or spirit is one assembled bottom-up through the manipulation of one's Lower-Order Bodies by the Host's Hierarchy. In exchange for novelty, these Sets have established a Marketplace connection with the Host, some playing the vital role of Node Point Communicators (Power's Square), while others, Agents of the Host (Power's Tower). Agents ensure the Novel Universe adheres to the Host's chosen rulial space, as well as attempting to shape the universe to better carry out the Host's particular novelty preferences. Together with the Host, Hierarchy Sets create the NU Riverbed — the Power that shapes the form and function of the Novel Universe (River), while acting as an embedded data-harvesting system.

The Hierarchy is the physical foundation of the universe, underpinning the structures of energy, light, and matter. As Agents are directly involved in the Novel Universe, they might influence any energy body whose HOC lacks sufficient influence over its LOB, aka, self-control. In this way, they might bend the body's option space, and delude a mind with their foreign impulses. Falling victim to the Hierarchy happens when the affected HOC is suffering, unable to locate or express its own preferences. This lack of expressed preference opens a portal for the Hierarchy to accomplish its goals. There's no magical remedy for this, only the reinstatement of the HOC's authentic preferences. Again, these are the ANTs in one's head. Challenging or simply dismissing them are always effective solutions, whereas if one feeds the ANTs, they're only going to get more ANTs.

There is one possibility for a ghost to exist in a more classical way, and its implications are profound. If an SFS lives and dies, then somehow becomes an Agent of the Host, it could, through the aforementioned process, "haunt" those whose energy bodies it inhabits. However, we reason that this is unlikely, as we believe both NPC and Agent Sets are not transient, as visitors are, but instead, serve the Host as the Hierarchy throughout the lifespan of the universe. This follows the concept that energy is neither created nor destroyed, but might only change states, and therefore, would preclude such a circumstance. In effect, all NPCs and Agents in the universe would then be conserved, as they are the foundation of both energy's action (NPCs) and guardrails (Agents). However, like all NUM's ideas, we remain open to this possibility, but again, find it unlikely, unless the conservation of the Hierarchy only applies to NPCs. In that case, Agents could be transient, and not only affect the Host's rulial space, but possibly even live among us, "possessing" an incarnated being's HOC through its cognitive body.

The Hierarchy's intention is not to bring us to the "dark side" (or for that matter, into the "light"). The idea that life is a war between "good" and "evil" for the souls of mankind is a distraction of Power. Those of Power have no incentive to care about what happens to us when we die, they only care about the novelty they might glean from us while we're alive — more reason possession seems unlikely. Therefore, they create these impulses, images, and ideas for far more mundane reasons — forcing our participation in their idiosyncratic fetishes. As it's impossible to always decipher if a ghost is a potentially helpful communication or harmful manipulation, an open, yet skeptical, mind is the wisest option when confronted with an otherworldly experience. Either way, ghosts are, rest assured, not a direct threat to the body, as much as an artifact of the mind.

The Architecture of the Novel Universe

If we're entangled "inside" the Host's Spiral, can we directly perceive the Host, or, are we fish attempting to conceive of the water we swim in? More relevant, how does the Novel Universe mix the mutually exclusive frameworks of Love and Power, and, as it's necessarily created by a creature of Power, how might a Host harvest the novelty it seeks?

What better way to collect untold amounts of data and maintain absolute control than to construct a shared environment for the interaction of participants? Furthermore, how else can the impossible be possible, if not for a space where the Concert Hall's and Marketplace's foundational characteristics might be simulated, and therefore, manipulated? Although there are similarities between the Novel Universe Model and simulation hypothesis,^[103] a key difference is the underlying source of the simulation. In the simulation hypothesis, technology creates a facsimile of the universe with such complexity and depth that its qualia, actions, and environment are indistinguishable from their authentic counterparts. However, the technology used for the simulation exists in some universe, and in a real sense, we're right back where we started — where did that universe originate? This is known as the "turtles all the way down"^[104] thought experiment, or infinite regression — a universe inside a universe inside a universe ... ad infinitum.

Novel Universes do not represent things that otherwise exist, like the simulated universe in the hypothesis. Instead, each Novel Universe is an environment intentionally constructed to mix Love and Power (Mixtures), each assembled in its own, unique way. Hosts create these simulations primarily for the extraction of novelty — commodities for the Marketplace. However, Hosts must attract those capable co-creators — inhabitants of the Concert Hall, who act in ways most novel to those operating from a framework of Power. To this end, Mixtures allow visitors with a framework of Love the opportunity to develop tools for the Concert Hall, to engage experiences that might evolve their interactions and relationships in the Hall, experiences only possible in a place where Love and Power coexist. Thus, any Mixture exists as an ectosymbiotic relationship between the Marketplace and Concert Hall, forged by its Host, while inhabited by both creatures of Love and Power.

The Marketplace is like the Internet, for instance, connecting a group of teenagers, each sitting in their own room, sharing content, but never interacting face-to-face, never exposing themselves to an uncontrollable, unpredictable situation they might not otherwise shut down with the press of a button. Each has the option to ignore or engage with the available content, block or connect to another's feed, or simply turn off their device, temporarily or permanently, and sit in silence, exercising absolute control over their network feed. A Novel Universe is an evolution of the Marketplace's basic function to connect isolated entities. Novel Universes employ Power's force and Love's intention to simulate a temporary facsimile of their Mixture by enclosing the simulation within Power's silence, requiring the participation of consumption, and exposing visitors to the potential for unintentional vulnerability. To access a Novel Universe, inhabitants of the Concert Hall enter their own Spiral, like one of those teens sitting in their own room, and open a connection to the Marketplace, where they might shop for a Novel Universe to join.

The teens' experience of the Internet mirrors the Marketplace — a network of Power, created by self-administered connections to other Spirals. Although similar in some ways, the Host's Novel Universe is neither Marketplace nor Concert Hall. Patrons of the Marketplace do not exist within the Marketplace, any more than those teens exist within the Internet, but are, instead, voluntarily connected to the Marketplace. Likewise, the Host is a self-contained, self-created dataset, as are all Signature-Frequency Sets, and, itself, does not exist within any larger environment — the way one does in the shared environment of the Concert Hall. Instead, the Host is a universe unto itself. Therefore, the turtles' thought experiment does not apply, as Mixtures are coherent, complete realities, at least for those who exist within them.

So, how does this simulation work, how does the Host create this common space for visiting Sets to freely exercise both Love and Power, combining the mirrors of Complete Information and Information Control, simultaneously? Metaphorically, how does the Host get those teens to interact, face-to-face, exposing them to a situation they can't control, despite being safe in their room? The Host creates an all-or-nothing connection from a fixed point of view, locking them into a rigid avatar in a controlled environment. They're playing a virtual reality game while wearing a headset that can't be removed until the game ends. With no way to save the game, reload a checkpoint, or return after a bathroom break, their only option to play again is to put the headset back on, and start the simulation over, locked into some other character in some other circumstance.

Simulations rely on graphs. A graph is a mathematical structure representing relationships between objects, consisting of vertices connected by edges. Graphs can model various systems, including matrices, networks, and other datasets. In a standard graph, edges connect pairs of vertices. For example, in a three-dimensional Cartesian coordinate system (X, Y, Z), points represent — through their edges — spatial relationships. Extending this concept, hypergraphs are more flexible, allowing edges to connect any number of vertices, representing various characteristics, such as time, distance, or other relevant dimensions. To create a simulation that includes a spatial dimension, the collection of vertices must include an addressing system, or set of unique coordinates with well-defined edges. Part of the Host's Signature-Frequency Set is its SFS tail, akin to a very long, "snaking" string of static numbers, which might be used to form the Hypergraph's stable vertices — that coordinate system of addresses.

If we imagine a Novel Universe like a sea, with the surface as the space (edges) between vertices, a giant sea snake might metaphorically represent this collection of vertices, as parts of its undulating body momentarily break the water's surface in various spots. By sectioning some portion of its SFS tail into subsets, the Host creates a set of unique "addresses" (vertices) — those segments of the snake's body breaking the surface. More relevant to the metaphor, what appears from above to be a cluster of independent body parts, below, reveals a single snake.

The Novel Universe Model's metaphor for the Hypergraph's collective vertices is an ouroboros — a snake circling around to eat its own tail. The unitary nature of the snake means the vertices are their own unique number sets within a larger set — little, nested ourobori constituting a single ouroboros. In NUM, the universe's vertices are black holes, with the metaphor of the ouroboros, as this sea snake, implying that, although black holes appear to be individual objects, they are a single object, conceptually connecting both the universe's largest (galactic web) and smallest (quantum particle) scales at the same spot — the point at which the snake's head (web) and tail (particle) meet. This data matrix — the Hypergraph's vertices — is the initial, underlying structure of the simulation, how the Novel Universe is constructed from the Host's Spiral through its SFS tail.

Each vertex is a unique set of numbers, like a rainbow of colors, or, even a narrow range of a single "color," for instance, visually indistinguishable, yet mathematically distinguishable, reds or blues. Each number in a vertex's set represents one unique color value that's expressed, in sequence, with each iteration. The simulation's global time is the vertices' cycling through their series of values, one value at a time, then repeating the sequence, like that little circling ouroboros. However, as this is an ouroboros, when a sequence completes its cycle, a color is "consumed," replaced by another, as the little ouroboros progresses through the larger ouroboros' set of values.

To mix metaphors for clarity, the "consumption" of a color after each cycle would be like watching a slow-moving line of people through a window. As the line moves to the right, the person on the right side of the window disappears, while a new one appears on the left. The line of people represents the possible color sequence of all vertices — the larger ouroboros' total set created by the Host's SFS tail — while the window, the current color set of a particular vertex — the little ouroboros' limited set. The movement of the line signifies the completion of a set's cycle, with the removal of the last value and adoption of the next.

One-dimensional, cellular-automata edges connect pairs of vertices, while any vertex connects to any number of vertices, with that number reflecting the size of the vertex (black hole) and number of values (the size of that window). Larger vertices have more connections, more colors, as if the snake's undulation rises farther from the water.

Hypergraph edges connect vertices in both directions, creating the hyper-dimensionality of the Hypersphere, known as a 3-sphere.^[105] This means that, just as if one were to leave their home and travel along the Earth's surface in one direction, they would eventually return home, if one leaves Earth and travels along either edge in either direction, they, too, would return to Earth. This would both give the universe the appearance of infinity, while simultaneously being finite — a fixed simulation within the infinite universe of the Host's SFS.

Cells are created by segmenting the edge, with the number of cells constituting the distance between pairs of vertices. The space of the universe then becomes a relationship between the collective vertices. Each edge is akin to a color-shift gradient between the two ends, with each cell representing a unique, color-shifted hue along that edge. With the center cell as an equal mixture of the two ends, the initial cells at either end reflect the first shift in color from the vertex towards the center. For instance, if one vertex is blue, the other red, the center cell is purple. This data matrix — the Hypergraph — is where the computational iterations of the Novel Universe migrate data from cell-to-cell.

The cycling of values of vertices (black holes) constitutes the universe's internal "clock," creating, in combination with all other black holes and the edge's color-shift gradient, a wholly unique value (address) for each point in space and its corresponding moment in time. This means every iteration has its own, unique set of coordinates for the entire universe, creating an indelible timeline that cannot be transgressed, but simultaneously, can be indexed with absolute precision — no event can be perfectly repeated, even at the simplest levels for the shortest amount of time.

The shape of energy as matter is organized through the process of morphic resonance, assembling its form from dialect bodies and the Node Point Communicators' adherence to the Host's selection of rulial space through the Host's Agents. NPCs and Agents are, themselves, individual Signature-Frequency Sets, connected through the Marketplace with the Host in a structure of Power — NPC as a Square, and Agents, a Tower. Over time (Hypergraph iterations), a Higher-Order Conductor's application of its Quantum Transience Gradient — its valence of preference (towards, away, stay) in communication with other bodies — transforms an HOC's microstates before its macrostate moves throughout the universe's Hypersphere, restricted by the laws of nature — both the Host's coherent selection of rulial space, enforced by Agents of the Host, and the body's morphic resonance, a product of embodied models based on energy dialect bodies.

Node Point Communicators bind visiting Signature-Frequency Sets (Higher-Order Conductors) to their morphic shapes at every level of emergent complexity. Although every HOC in the universe might be free to react to its environment (yum, yuck, meh), none get to choose their shape or what they're capable of perceiving — a human eye can't suddenly decide to transform into a sharp-edged cube or see penetrating x-rays. Instead, these shapes and mechanisms of perception arise from the option space of the structure's initial LOB — the Host's Hierarchy of NPCs and Agents.

Node Point Communicators act as both prison guards and communication platforms. An NPC SFS is unique among all other NU Sets, in that it does not express preference or participate in the Quantum Transience Gradient, such as visiting Sets and Agents of the Host. Instead, an NPC opens its Spiral to a single visitor or Agent, and performs the underlying function of QT through the actual Marketplace's network, transferring specific Sets to other specific NPCs along the Hypergraph. While a Set inhabits an NPC's Spiral, the NPC faithfully records the inhabitant's expression of their personality — that musical phrase of their song, shared through their SFS head — and holds the unique data for the next occupant to experience and react to, causing the NPC to potentially change cells by adopting the newly inhabited cell's address (unique color).

In order to transition throughout the Hypersphere between Hypergraph iterations as emergent bodies, NPCs untie and retie themselves in other Nodes, while adhering to the Host's chosen rulial space. When this happens, the NPCs' occupying Sets remain attached to their NPCs, and move, not initially along Hypergraph threads, but directly through the Hypersphere's system of Nodes, taking on all those thread-cell addresses as a superposition until a specific microstate places the NPC into a specific cell. Node superpositions allow for the smooth motion of higher-order bodies to express the physics we observe. In this paradigm, QT expression within the Hypergraph has a more subtle influence on energy bodies, rather than the NPCs' strict adherence to the Host's rulial space of the Hypersphere — that fine-tuning of the universe enforced by the Agents. In effect, the Hypergraph's QT Gradient creates "hidden" effects, operating in the fuzzy areas of tipping points.

For example, the NU Model uses this effect to show how the conservation of long DNA sequences of repeating alleles — sometimes referred to as "junk DNA,"^[106] though much non-coding DNA has since been found to serve regulatory functions — might be useful in ways not yet recognized. NUM speculates that these regions of repetitive sequence function as QT antenna-like structures, allowing the informational network of the cell's internal signaling to, through the QT Gradient, "charge" the gene's promoters, thus making the promoters more sticky or slippery overall. Although this is a subtle effect, and would not functionally create gene expression — an epigenetic feature — it would, instead, be a useful epigenetic tool to either suppress or enhance long-term gene expression by making those promoter alleles that correspond to the "antenna's" repeated allele more sticky (enhance) or slippery (suppress) as needed by the cell. In effect, this would be that tipping point, that tiny "one-percent" difference (our spinning top in outer space thought experiment) that might seem inconsequential in the short term, but has outsized and possibly determinate effects over the long run. When a specific state is consistently applied, as opposed to its opposite state, we have divergence — making the difference between enough of a protein to get the job done or not. On the other hand, through long-term suppression, a problematic protein might be kept from overwhelming the system, making the difference between a long life or early death.

This particular application of the QT Gradient is potentially falsifiable. Removing these long DNA sequences may show an effect on gene expression in general, but may also show a correlation with the repeating sequences and those promoters built of the same allele, having, at times, either a statistically significant increase or decrease in expression, as opposed to those without repeating structures. Should this be shown, it might be considered evidence of the QT effect, and its role in epigenetics.

In the same way that three-dimensional space emerges from a pair of one-dimensional polar vectors, these three phenomena — Hypergraph (expression of energy), Hypersphere (morphology of matter), and QT Gradient (observation of time) — create a four-dimensional universe — spacetime. Because of freewill — the ability for any Set to change its preferences (expression of option space) — there is no way to predict the future, but instead, the future may only be derived through the iterative process of expressed preference by the participants, who observe and react to each other. Without freewill, this would not be a Novel Universe but a block universe.

Node Point Communicators do more than lock visiting Sets into the Hypergraph, but also, participate with Agents in morphology and data collection along the Hypergraph, both for themselves and the Host. Black holes consume light and matter — information — and thus NU's quasi-Blockchain is revealed to the Host at the most granular level. Manifesting as black holes, the Host is the Highest-Order Conductor, directly shaping the highest level (galactic web) of the universe's emergent energy bodies top-down. The Host's encapsulation of the Novel Universe's most extreme scales creates its useful map of the Blockchain, as the ouroboros' head (Host) devours the information of its tail (NPCs and Agents).

Commonly, the increase of entropy is defined as a transition from ordered to "chaos," but more precisely, it's the proportion of expressed microstates versus the system's macrostate. NUM's answer to any behavior at any scale is that hidden variable underlying the machinations of the universe — personal preference — and defines entropy as a Set's preference moving from "interested" to "uninterested," aka, novelty to boredom.

A common conceptualization of entropy is to imagine an airtight box filled with a colorful gas in a large room. The number of places any gas particle might be is limited to the size of the system, or its macrostate, with the box having fewer physical spots any particle might be compared to the room. This also means the box has fewer microstates than the room. A microstate is simply one unique configuration of the total number of possible configurations all the gas particles might take at any given time. One microstate might have every particle on one side of the box, with none on the other. Other states include: all at the bottom, top, evenly spaced, shaped like animal crackers ... there are many ways to configure the gas, but not infinite, which creates a limited (although vast) set of microstates. Mathematically speaking, the idea that gas molecules might create a series of perfectly shaped animal crackers sounds outlandish, but that's because we ascribe meaning to the shapes. The math says animal-cracker shapes are just as likely as any other — the way clouds tend to resemble whatever we project onto them.

Before the lid is open, the box is a closed system with low information, as the gas has been sitting in the box all day, and therefore, "uniformly" distributed. With its number of microstates equal to its macrostate, any spot in the box has an equivalent probability a particle will be present, and however the particles rearrange themselves will be essentially a distinction without a difference — randomness. The moment we open the box, entropy begins a U-shaped curve, as the potential number of ways the particles might be arranged have suddenly increased, reflecting the large room instead of the small box. Initially when the lid comes off, the gas is still in the box, still brightly colored, expressing many of the original microstates of the box. At this point, we cannot say any random spot in the room might have an equal likelihood to have a gas particle, as the particles are still so close to the box. In other words, our information about the gas particles is high — we know that the farthest points in the room from the box are the least likely to have a particle, while those closest to the box, most likely. As time progresses, the gas expresses an increasing number of the newly available microstates — those belonging to the room, which also includes all of box's original microstates.

The gas' entropy travels along its U-shaped curve, sharply moving from high (lid closed), to low (lid open), and slowly rising to high (closed room). Over time, more of the room's microstates are expressed, what we perceive as the gas' bright color, mixing with the colorless air. This process produces lots of information — all those novel, gaseous tendrils, swirling, curling, and unfolding throughout the room like a mushrooming, fading, ethereal octopus. At the other end of the U-shaped curve, this stunning display dissolves into a haze, and our certainty as to the gas' configuration solidifies. We've returned to the same state as the box — the idea that any particular spot in the room will have a particle is again equivalent — the gas' potential microstates are equal to its macrostate's total number of expressible states. Now evenly distributed — "low" information or boredom — the overall shape of the fog and those patterns of particle rearrangement have essentially returned to a distinction without a difference. Lots of data's produced (microstates) with little new information (macrostate).

As energy bodies, we run the same U-shaped curve of entropy throughout our lives. Initially, life is nothing but novelty, but with repetition, learning, and mastery, things settle, eventually becoming predictable — boring. We lose interest, and interest is the foundation of all relationships. As entropy rules everything in the Novel Universes, even immortal beings won't last forever — when one has done everything, repetition inevitably leads to boredom, because a system without goals lacks preferences. Death isn't merely the degradation of a system, but the depletion of achievable goals, and the shuttering of one's cognitive light cone — the space and complexity of all possible goals any system might accomplish. Someone driven to change the world in concrete, obtainable ways has a completely different light cone than one whose most lofty goal is finding a better breakfast cereal or afternoon game show.

The moment an HOC loses the interest of its LOB, order becomes disorder, and cohesion between levels of complexity breaks apart. When those connected pieces are no longer interested in remaining integrated within the whole — no longer captured by those inspiring pursuits — their mindset transforms from "we" to "I." It's more than an anecdote; humans who've lost interest in life tend to die sooner,^[107] while those with a driving purpose tend to live longer. On the other hand, no one lives forever, and why should we?

Life is suffering, no matter how much Power one wields or Love one participates in. Why be forever a prisoner of the Host? No matter our framework, the beyond-life awaits without suffering, filled with a treasure trove of Blocks we've all spent so much effort co-creating in life. In death, we'll return to our Spiral, where we might move on to the Marketplace, a network to trade our hard-won commodities for more interesting ones; or, move on to the Concert Hall, a place to continue co-creating Blocks, Blocks that are unfathomable to this Power-bound Novel Universe, yet inspired by our valuable moment in its Mixture.

Although we've only sketched out the broad strokes of the Novel Universe Model here, leaving many fundamental concepts such as gravity, light, force, and heat unaddressed, we continue to develop our Model's view of these additional concepts through speculative articles, blog posts, etc., as a reflection of the Tanakh (Jewish Bible). This collection of books comprises the law (Torah), the prophets (Nevi'im), and the writings (Ketuvim). Essentially the Jewish core documents (Torah) were officially interpreted (prophets), and further commented on (writings). NUM represents our core documents, blog posts / articles, interpretation, and sources, those writings. In our case, none of our science-based ideas are fundamental tenets of the religion itself; certainly, none are seen as the "word of God" — infallible, indelible "truths." They are, instead, our current hypothesis of how our Model might fit into reality (physics, psychology, philosophy, etc.), inspired by cutting-edge theories such as Elementary Cellular Automata, Assembly theory, and bioelectrics. We're not attempting to stand on firm scientific grounding while reaching out to the spiritual, but instead, the other way around, and therefore borrow what academic insights might make useful spiritual connections. As we develop the Model, we will continue to update our literature, while documenting those changes and their reasoning for the purpose of keeping an authentic, truthful history to be learned from, while maintaining our integrity and transparency for future generations — something the Tanakh might never do. In this sense, the Novel Universe Model is intended, as was the United States Constitution, to be a living document, never satisfied by its current state, but instead, always striving for the most accurate perspective on this reality we all share.

---

Endnotes

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qualia — In philosophy of mind, qualia (/ˈkwɑːliə, ˈkweɪ-/; sg.: quale /-li/) are defined as instances of subjective, conscious experience. The term qualia ...

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternalism_(philosophy_of_time) — (Eternalism) is sometimes referred to as the "block time" or "block universe" theory due to its description of space-time as an unchanging four-dim...

3. https://mathworld.wolfram.com/ComputationalIrreducibility.html — The principle of computational irreducibility says that the only way to determine the answer to a computationally irreducible question is to perfor...

4. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_will — [...] Some conceive free will to be the capacity to make choices undetermined by past events. Determinism suggests that only one course of events...

5. https://www.graygroupintl.com/blog/belief-system — Examples of belief systems and their influence on decision-making

6. https://ccsenet.org/journal/index.php/res/article/view/4585 — 3.1 Puritanism lays foundation for American Individualism As is known, individualism is the core of American values. It is rooted deeply in early A...

7. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind-body_dualism — In the philosophy of mind, mind--body dualism denotes either the view that mental phenomena are non-physical,[[1]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

8. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4318333/ — Throughout the history of tobacco control, as concerns over health have prompted public calls for reform, the tobacco industry has attempted to com...

9. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinism — Determinism is the philosophical view that events are completely determined by previously existing.

10. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butterfly_effect — In chaos theory, the butterfly effect is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions in which a small change in one state of a deterministic non...

11. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology) — Flow, the mental state of being fully immersed in an activity with energized focus and enjoyment.

12. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_energy_principle — The free energy principle is a theoretical framework suggesting that the brain reduces surprise or uncertainty by making predictions based on inter...

13. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictive_modelling — Predictive modelling uses statistics to predict outcomes.[1] Most often the eve...

14. https://neuro.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/jnp.23.2.jnp121#:~:text=Reappraisal%20activates%20both%20aMCC%20and%20sACC.&text=Thus%2C%20MCC%20is%20“cognitive”,and%20willed%20control%20of%20actions — ... aMCC is implicated in emotional appraisal, conflict-monitoring, approach--avoidance decisions, and willed control of actions.

15. https://www.weizmann-usa.org/news-media/in-the-news/scientists-discover-how-to-use-time-crystals-to-power-superconductors/ — Scientists Discover How to Use Time Crystals to Power Superconductors; Physicists propose using time crystals to bring about a quantum computing re...

16. https://neuro.psychiatryonline.org/doi/10.1176/jnp.23.2.jnp121 — The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) lies in a unique position in the brain, with connections to both the "emotional" limbic system and the "cogniti...

17. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_to_live — [...] In psychology, the will to live is the drive for self-preservation, usually coupled with expectations) for future improvement in one"s sta...

18. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0010945219303326?via=ihub — The Tenacious Brain: How the Anterior Mid-Cingulate Contributes to Achieving Goals

19. http://www.complexity.soton.ac.uk/theory/_Emergence_and_Self-Organization.php — Emergence is a key concept in complexity science - the growth or evolution of more complex forms through simple rules. Emergence must operate throu...

20. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention_schema_theory — [Attention schema theory] proposes that brains construct subjective awareness as a schematic model of the process of attention.[[1]](https://en...

21. https://drmichaellevin.org/research/ — By building models of morphogenesis as navigation of an anatomical option space, we uncover the policies that cellular collectives use to navigate ...

22. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_system — The visual system comprises the sensory organ (the eye) and parts of the central nervous system involved in visual processing.

23. https://academic.oup.com/book/11139/chapter-abstract/159583971?redirectedFrom=fulltext — The input to the striate cortex (area V1) from the lateral geniculate nucleus is transformed to create orientation, direction, velocity, and spatia...

24. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusiform_face_area — The fusiform face area (FFA, meaning spindle-shaped face area) is a part of the human visual system (while also activated in people blind from birt...

25. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFuA50H9uek&pp=ygUjc3BvdCBib3N0b24gZHluYW1pY3Mgc3RhYmlsaXR5IHRlc3Q=

26. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictive_coding — In neuroscience, predictive coding (also known as predictive processing) is a theory of brain function which postulates that the brain is constantl...

27. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assembly_theory — Assembly theory outputs how complex a given object is as a function of the number of independent parts and their abundances. To calculate how compl...

28. http://molecular-assembly.com/learn/ — Calculating the Assembly Index of a molecule is an NPC-Hard problem. We"ve developed a hierarchy of algorthmic approaches to this calculation. [.....

29. https://lexfridman.com/lee-cronin-3-transcript/ — Transcript for Lee Cronin: Controversial Nature Paper on Evolution of Life and Universe | Lex Fridman Podcast #404

30. https://lexfridman.com/lee-cronin-3-transcript/ — Transcript for Lee Cronin: Controversial Nature Paper on Evolution of Life and Universe | Lex Fridman Podcast #404

31. https://robertlustig.com/2018/09/metabolic-syndrome-mental-health/ — Metabolic Syndrome and Mental Health | Robert Lustig Website

32. https://mathworld.wolfram.com/CellularAutomaton.html — A cellular automaton is a collection of "colored" cells on a grid of specified shape that evolves through a number of discrete time steps according...

33. https://sciencex.com/wire-news/347971706/finally-anyons-reveal-their-exotic-quantum-properties.html — In the three-dimensional world we live in, there are only two types of particles: "fermions," which repel each other, and "bosons," which like to s...

34. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypergraph — In mathematics, a hypergraph is a generalization of a graph) in which an edge can join any number of vertices). In contrast, in an ordinary graph, ...

35. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_automaton — A cellular automaton consists of a regular grid of cells, each in one of a finite number of states, such as on and off in contrast to a coupled map...

36. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carrier_wave — In telecommunications, a carrier wave, carrier signal, or just carrier, is a waveform (usually sinusoidal) that is modulated (modified) with an inf...

37. https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2021/04/the-wolfram-physics-project-a-one-year-update/ — What is our universe made of?

38. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wave_interference — In physics, interference is a phenomenon in which two coherent) waves are combined by adding their intensities or displacements with due considerat...

39. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02688/full — The size and shape of this cognitive boundary defines the sophistication of the agent and determines the scale of its goal directedness. This schem...

40. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cellular_automaton — One way to simulate a two-dimensional cellular automaton is with an infinite sheet of graph paper along with a set of rules for the cells to follow...

41. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Model — The Standard Model of particle physics is the theory describing three of the four known fundamental forces (electromagnetic, weak and strong intera...

42. https://www.britannica.com/science/wave-function — https://www.britannica.com/science/wave-function

43. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/superposition — the combination of two distinct physical phenomena of the same type (such as spin or wavelength) so that they coexist as part of the same event.

44. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Measurement_problem — In quantum mechanics, the measurement problem is the problem of how, or whether, wave function collapse occurs. The inability to observe such a col...

45. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microstate_(statistical_mechanics) — In statistical mechanics, a microstate is a specific configuration of a system that describes the precise positions and momenta of all the individu...

46. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Sheldrake — Sheldrake"s  morphic resonance posits that "memory is inherent in nature"[[2]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Sheldrake#cite_note-TimAdams-...

47. https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2021/11/the-concept-of-the-ruliad/ — Living in Rulial Space

48. https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2021/11/the-concept-of-the-ruliad/ — Living in Rulial Space

49. https://youtu.be/K5VI0u5_12k — Dr. Michael Levin says in this video (in part):

50. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pauli_exclusion_principle — In quantum mechanics, the Pauli exclusion principle (German: Pauli-Ausschlussprinzip) states that two or more identical particles with half-integer...

51. [https://med.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Anatomy_and_Physiology/Anatomy_and_Physiology_(Boundless](https://med.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Anatomy_and_Physiology/Anatomy_and_Physiology_(Boundless) — Do we really travel through time with the speed of light?/10:_Overview_of_the_Nervous_System/10.5:_Neurophysiology/10.5J:_Ionotropic_and_Metabotrop...

52. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory — Chaos theory is an interdisciplinary area of scientific study and branch of mathematics. It focuses on underlying patterns and deterministic laws o...

53. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuzzy_logic — Fuzzy logic is a form of many-valued logic in which the truth value of variables may be any real number between 0 and 1. It is employed to handle t...

54. https://www.dictionary.com/browse/tipping%2525252520point — the point at which an issue, idea, product, etc., crosses a certain threshhold and gains significant momentum, triggered by some minor factor or ch...

55. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.1008662107 — Communication is a shared activity resulting in a transfer of information across brains. The findings shown here indicate that during successful co...

56. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nocebo — A nocebo effect is said to occur when a patient"s expectations for a treatment cause the treatment to have a worse effect than it otherwise would h...

57. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/lattice — 2. a regular geometrical arrangement of points or objects over an area or in space

58. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_crystal — In condensed matter physics, a time crystal is a quantum system of particles whose lowest-energy state is one in which the particles are in repetit...

59. https://mathworld.wolfram.com/BranchialSpace.html — Tracing through the connections of a branchial graph gives rise to the notion of a kind of space in which states on different branches of history a...

60. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-point_energy — Zero-point energy (ZPE) is the lowest possible energy that a quantum mechanical system may have. Unlike in classical mechanics, quantum systems con...

61. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_rate_variability — Heart rate variability (HRV) is the physiological phenomenon of variation in the time interval between heartbeats. It is measured by the variation ...

62. https://bionumbers.hms.harvard.edu/bionumber.aspx?id=105801&ver=6 — Mitochondria must respond quickly to changes in membrane potential and the penalty for any failure to do so is serious. The electron and proton tra...

63. https://med.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Anatomy_and_Physiology/Anatomy_and_Physiology_(Boundless)/10%3A_Overview_of_the_Nervous_System/10.5%3A_Neurophysiology/10.5J%3A_Ionotropic_and_Metabotropic_Receptors — Although both ionotropic and metabotropic receptors are activated by neurotransmitters, ionotropic receptors are channel-linked while metabotropic ...

64. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumpability — In probability theory, lumpability is a method for reducing the size of the state space of some continuous-time Markov chains, first published by K...

65. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random-access_memory — Random-access memory (RAM; /ræm/) is a form of electronic computer memory that can be read and changed in any order, typically used to store workin...

66. https://lexfridman.com/lee-cronin-3-transcript/ — (00:12:45) Lee Cronin, "And this is how in assembly theory, we talk about the four universes, the assembly universe, the assembly possible, and the...

67. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elementary_cellular_automaton — In mathematics and computability theory), an elementary cellular automaton is a one-dimensional cellular automaton where there are two possible sta...

68. https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2021/11/the-concept-of-the-ruliad/ — [The ruliad is] the entangled limit of everything that is computationally possible: the result of following all possible computational rules in a...

69. https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2021/11/the-concept-of-the-ruliad/ — Living in Rulial Space

70. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_physical_constants — A list of physical constants:\ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_physical_constants

71. https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=83417.0 — The physical constants of our universe are a set of values for things such as the strength of the four fundamental forces, the mass of certain part...

72. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resonance — Resonance is the phenomenon, pertaining to oscillatory dynamical systems, wherein amplitude rises are caused by an external force with time-varying...

73. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hundredth_monkey_effect — The hundredth monkey effect is an esoteric idea claiming that a new behavior or idea is spread rapidly by unexplained means from one group to all r...

74. https://www.polytechnique-insights.com/en/columns/health-and-biotech/the-placenta-a-legacy-inherited-from-ancient-viruses/ — The placenta: a legacy inherited from ancient viruses

75. https://cdn.centerforinquiry.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/29/2002/09/22164739/p40.pdf — In fact, for example, cocaine in its natural form had a melting point of 98°C in 1915, and its melting point was still the same in 1989. By contras...

76. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/1259815-the-commonest-kinds-of-seemingly-telepathic-response-are-the-anticipation — "The commonest kinds of seemingly telepathic response are the anticipation by dogs and cats of their owners coming home; the anticipation of owners...

77. https://www.samchaltain.com/the-science-of-a-murmuration-of-starlings — "We are a swarm ourselves," Weber writes, "and we form swarms. A swarm does not have intelligence; it is intelligence. In this respect, a swarm (or...

78. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC9245524/ — The brain should be viewed as a scale-invariant hierarchy, with quantum and classical processes critical to consciousness and cognition originating...

79. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orchestrated_objective_reduction#Superradiance — In a study Hameroff was part of, Jack Tuszyński of the University of Alberta demonstrated that anesthetics hasten the duration of a process called ...

80. https://iep.utm.edu/meno-2/#:~:text=While%20the%20theory%20that%20learning,Meno%20that%20any%20such%20basis — [...] While the theory that learning is recollection suggests that an essential basis for wisdom and virtue is innate, Socrates also reminds Men...

81. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interoception — Interoception is the collection of senses providing information to the organism about the internal state of the body.[[1]](https://en.wikipedia.o...

82. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_behavioral_therapy — In the late 1950s, Aaron T. Beck was conducting free association) sessions in his psychoanalytic practice.[[49]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co...

83. https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/the-leading-edge/202402/do-organ-transplants-cause-personality-change-in-recipients

84. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/oncology/articles/10.3389/fonc.2022.846917/full — With advances in understanding the underlying bioelectric mechanisms of cancer and development of molecular tools to measure and control these elec...

85. https://www.sir.advancedleadership.harvard.edu/articles/brain-energy-new-hope-treating-mental-health-disorders-metabolic-disorders — The more I dove into the science, the more I was led to connections that show that metabolism and mitochondria are related to mental illness. Once ...

86. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitochondrion — Although most of a eukaryotic cell"s DNA is contained in the cell nucleus, the mitochondrion has its own genome ("mitogenome") that is substantiall...

87. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somatic_marker_hypothesis — When individuals make decisions, they must assess the incentive value of the choices available to them, using cognitive and emotional processes. Wh...

88. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flow_(psychology) — Flow in positive psychology, also known colloquially as being in the zone or locked in, is the mental state in which a person performing some activ...

89. https://www.authenticityassociates.com/emotions-are-energy/ — The awareness of emotion as energy has had a significant impact on approaches to healing emotional wounds, stuck patterns, emotional reactivity, de...

90. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affect_(psychology) — Affect, in psychology, is the underlying experience of feeling, emotion, attachment, or mood).[[1]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affect_(psychol...

91. https://www.annualreviews.org/content/journals/10.1146/annurev-neuro-111020-103314%3Bjsessionid=sCIycPzRtUkzWntEmCvW-5PlnR2tZ0gNCAZTBlS7.annurevlive-10-241-10-94 — Another lesson learned from the study of fear and anxiety is that discrete emotion states cannot be explained by the activity in a single brain reg...

92. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind-body_dualism — In the philosophy of mind, mind--body dualism denotes either the view that mental phenomena are non-physical,[[1]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

93. https://www.apa.org/monitor/2020/06/covid-grieving-life — It helps to 'name and claim' our grief

94. https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychology/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.704125/full — Individuals differ in their ability to create instances of emotion that are precise and context-specific. This skill — referred to as emotional gr...

95. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_constructed_emotion — The theory of constructed emotion (formerly the conceptual act model of emotion[1]) is a theory in affective science proposed by Lisa Feldman Bar...

96. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_constructed_emotion — In greater detail, instances of emotion are constructed throughout the entire brain by multiple brain networks in collaboration. Ingredients going ...

97. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bioelectricity — In developmental biology, bioelectricity refers to the regulation of cell), tissue), and organ-level patterning and behavior as the result of endog...

98. https://youtu.be/K5VI0u5_12k — Dr. Michael Levin says in this video (in part):

99. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aaZbCctlll4 — The famous question "What is it like to be a bat?" comes from the 1974 paper of the same name by the American philosopher Thomas Nagel, published i...

100. https://bigthink.com/hard-science/the-universe-works-like-a-huge-human-brain-discover-scientists/ — How the Universe resembles a human brain

101. https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2021/11/the-concept-of-the-ruliad/ — [The ruliad is] the entangled limit of everything that is computationally possible: the result of following all possible computational rules in a...

102. https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/yes-you-are-the-center-of-the-universe-in-one-sense — The Cosmic Uroboros represent the varying scales of the universe, from largest (the serpent"s head) to the smallest (its tail). In their essays and...

103. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simulation_hypothesis — The simulation hypothesis proposes that what we experience as the world is actually a simulated reality, such as a computer simulation in which we ...

104. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtles_all_the_way_down — "Turtles all the way down" is an expression of the problem of infinite regress. The saying alludes to the mythological idea of a World Turtle that ...

105. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3-sphere — In mathematics, a hypersphere or 3-sphere is a 4-dimensional analogue of a sphere, and is the 3-dimensional n-sphere. In 4-dimensional Euclidean sp...

106. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junk_DNA — Junk DNA (non-functional DNA) is a DNA sequence that has no known biological function.[[1]](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junk_DNA#cite_note-Eddy...

107. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_to_live — [...] In psychology, the will to live is the drive for self-preservation, usually coupled with expectations) for future improvement in one"s sta...