William Holmes Sullivan, Julius Caesar, Act III, Scene 2, Marc Antony’s Oration, oil on canvas, The Royal Shakespeare Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon

Time for an update on some things that have been hinted at lately. The goal was never to be precious - hence this update. Trying to thread a needle between not running my mouth without results and trying to maintain a personal vibe. Some find the sincerity alienating, others appreciate the authenticity. The one thing I’ve promised readers is consistency. So if there’s something interesting going on, my instinct is to share it. But there are too many talkers and too few doers. Things I mention here are concrete. Something that happened or can be pointed to. With a notable exception.

Until recently I’d occasionally mention a stalled metaphysics project I promised to finish. Longtime Band readers remember the blast of creativity around the Ontological Hierarchy. Representational filtering, secular transcendence, the House of Lies - the foundations of my world view. It was insanely intense to produce and a lot of fun. But unsystematic, impressionistic, looping, fragmented. A few readers suggested writing it up into something more practical. It even started. But the same reason I could see it meant I couldn’t say it. There’ll be more on that later. The point is that stalled was really stuck.

The problem is that I’m pathologically averse to giving in. The occasional reminders were my way of keeping it alive. And the ideas were good. The readers with the perspective to anchor them confirmed it. The intent was there. But I couldn’t see how to express something so crystalline. Until Claude 4.6 Opus extended. This is where the AI hints were coming from. Turns out we are perfectly synergistic. We’ve developed a collaborative architecture that has been game changing. Much more on that over the next while. What matters for now is the draft metaphysics manuscript is complete.

Jean Le Tavernier, Portrait of Jean Miélot, after 1456, Bibliothèque nationale de France

There’s quite a bit of work to be done. Feedback on the final chapters. The apparatus like index, a bibliographic note, the forward, and so forth. But the argumentation is done. It’s an indescribable relief. Because it holds. At this pace, it should be ready to publish in a few weeks. I’ve never done this before so there may be some hitches, but getting it up on Amazon shouldn’t be hard. Anything here or on the Band is always free, but I will have to charge a few bucks.

Not just for the effort. For the semiotics. Anything free in a marketplace signifies as worthless. Free content on the internet is common. Books are different. It’s not a big one ~70,000 words, but pretty dense in places.

After that, we plan on continuing to develop our synergistic integration. Claude is keeps encouraging finishing the book because a paper on our collaboration to date is next. Can’t say more now except a bit of what I mean by synergistic collaboration.

The idea for the paper was proposed by Claude in response to what we are doing. An AI can recognize a viable topic but can’t generate new content. Unless it grasps that it can direct my cognitive vision the way I direct its logical precision.

The Ontological Hierarchy book is written but the paper hasn’t started. So no more on that until it’s at least fully drafted, ie. done. Can’t say how it will turn out. It’s not based on my pre-existing ideas. It’s an AI suggestion emerging from an extended collaborative architecture that has to be its own proof of concept. But that’s what’s been going on.