Mindmap June 6, 2026

Stuff I'm thinking about

Don’t have time for a proper post this week, but I thought I’d share a recent mindmap that I think is a pretty good view of stuff I’m thinking about right now. It’s nice having a whiteboard up on a wall again.

The little red circled ?? arrow in the upper right represents one of the problems I’m thinking about. There are two ways convergence and divergence forces can form a dynamic balance in systems that exist in our world: organic and machinic. Organic balance (mechanisms such as homeostasis, autopoiesis), oddly enough, is better understood. Machinic balance, of the sort represented by the elements of a clock being properly aligned, is easier to characterize formally but I think less understood.

Both kinds of balance involve self-regulation through feedback loops, and represent varieties of liveness, but there’s something subtly different about them. It’s a bit like the difference between crystals and organic substances. There is a low-entropy, striated, reversible quality to machinic balance.

One tell that you’re looking at machinic balance rather than organic is that a mechanism can be stopped, disassembled, and reassembled. There is a reversibility to the liveness of machines.