Research
Papers, essays, and memos — each links to a dedicated write-up with full citation metadata.
Cybernetics
Three Self-Organizing Systems
Seven invariants applied to an ant colony, a market, and the immune system — same structural class, no shared substrate.
The Invariants of Self-Organizing Systems
Seven structural conditions, independently discovered across physics, biology, and economics, that jointly define any self-organizing system — from a cell to a market.
Knowledge Work
The Desk Is Where You Write It Down
Discovery and capture are different kinds of work. The office debate argues about buildings when the real question is which conditions let ideas form and get written down.
The Chisel Fallacy: What Pangram Actually Measures
Why an AI-detection score can't settle who supplied the intellectual work — and the Intellectual Work Ledger, a proposed better standard.
Essays
How Frontier Model Training Became a Public Utility
Dario Amodei asked Congress to restrict AI distillation while admitting it's more efficient than his training process. Why that can't work, and where the real moat is.
An Engineer's Guide to Structural Financial Aid Exploits
Modeling the FAFSA as a rules engine: five structural mechanisms that squeeze middle-class families out of financial aid, and the rational responses to each.