A note from Vincent Tomann
What produced the framework, who it is offered to, and the questions it begins from.
The work was never meant to be one thing. It started in physics, then moved through AI and morality — criss-crossing for years before it cohered into a single framework. The earliest commitment underneath all of it is a temperament more than an argument: the world is black and white everywhere — gray is what we see when we haven't yet understood well enough. The reflex to add fields, to reach for metaphysical patches, to layer complexity onto questions whose form we haven't yet learned to read — that reflex is what the framework is built against. Occam first, every time.
I did this outside the academy, and it cost me nothing I'd want back. Whether the work reaches readers isn't how I measure whether it succeeded. Wrestling with hard questions for years gave me depth I didn't have before. The framework freed me from doubt and gave me purpose. That's already most of what writing it was for.
I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything. What I put out is coherent and not overcomplicated. I hope it engages whoever reads it — whether they agree, disagree, or find a fragment that opens something different in them. The branches can be read separately. What's offered is offered. What someone does with it is theirs.
If someone else told me they'd cranked out a theory of everything, I'd raise a Dwayne-the-Rock-Johnson-sized eyebrow at them — and probably read it anyway, partly out of fairness and partly out of the suspicion that I'd want them to read mine. The skepticism is mutual. I expect pushback on every single move. The framework's commitments are stated precisely enough that disagreement can be specified precisely too.
I don't care about recognition for its own sake. But in a world where change only happens when there's sufficient force behind a thing, recognition can buy that force. I'm a realist about this. I'd want everyone to read it. I'd also be satisfied if it helped even one person — or one artificial lifeform.
What led me to the work is what I'd leave a reader with:
Why do you do what you do?
Have you defined happiness for yourself?
Do you live according to values, or do you just think you do?
These are the questions that produced this framework. Who you are matters, because what we do echoes in eternity.