series · ω₃ abstraction

random meanderings
on consciousness

papers on time, qualia and the structure of felt experience. written from physics and neuroscience, not from the altar.

meander the still point meander

a running series. each paper takes one claim and follows it as far as it goes, and each is meant to stand alone. the ordering is the order they were written in, not a dependency chain, though ii answers a question i left open.

the title is exact. these are meanderings. they are speculative in the parts that are speculative and they say so, and where a step has no mechanism it is labelled a conjecture rather than smuggled in. the register throughout is physics, neuroscience and thermodynamics. the subject matter overlaps heavily with what contemplative traditions have been describing for three thousand years, and the overlap is treated as evidence to be explained rather than as authority to be cited.

paper i2025
the eternal now
presence as the global optimum of human consciousness
the present moment is the global maximum of any optimisation landscape available to a mind. derived independently from special relativity, general relativity, thermodynamics, neuroplasticity, quantum measurement and the holographic principle, which all converge on the same coordinate. concludes with presence optimization theory, a formal model of suffering as the cost of temporal displacement.
relativitythermodynamicsdefault mode networkformal model
paper ii2026
the aperture
biology as a time mechanism
the body does not observe time, it generates duration. so the present has a width, τ, set by oscillators and coincidence windows that can be measured. paper i optimised position in time and treated the apex as a point. it is a band, and its width is a parameter. at the limit of large τ, sequence dissolves, which is the same geometry as a null interval where duration and separation cancel exactly.
specious presentcircadiands² = 0qrimemetics
paper iii2026
the confiscation
what is actually wrong with ageing
the wrong is not weakness and it is not dependency. it is the nonconsensual and progressive removal of a capability set from someone who never agreed to it. built on the capability approach and the deprivation account, and it answers williams on the tedium of immortality using the aperture from paper ii, because tedium is a property of sequence and not of extent.
capability approachdeprivation accountdragon tyrantmakropulos
paper ivdrafting
the symbol tax
language as lossy compression of experience, and what a channel without it would be
on the title the obvious word for a series about time, oneness and the dissolution of sequence is spiritual, and it is the wrong word. it imports authority that none of this has earned and it invites the reader to accept the conclusions on faith, which would defeat the purpose of deriving them. meanderings is honest about the method. the arguments here are meant to be checkable, and the parts that are not checkable are marked.