Disclaimers & Honest Accounting

Mostly Claude.

I want to be completely clear about that. The prose you're reading throughout this site — the essays, the explanations, the translations — almost all of it was written by an AI language model (Claude, made by Anthropic) based on conversations with me.

My contribution is the questions, the observations, the pattern-hunches, the "wait, what if..." moments. I noticed trees have hollow centers. I wondered what would happen if you read Chinese characters as diagrams. I kept seeing the same shape in different places and got obsessed with figuring out why.

But when it came time to articulate any of that clearly? To organize scattered insights into readable prose? To check whether a physics claim actually holds up? That's Claude.

I don't write well. I don't think linearly. I ramble, I jump between domains, I lose track of what I said three sentences ago. What I'm good at is noticing — catching patterns across unrelated fields, holding multiple frameworks in mind simultaneously, having a hunch and following it.

So we divided the labor. I notice. Claude articulates. The result is something neither of us could have made alone.

If that bothers you — if you feel like you came here to read a human's insights and got baited into reading AI output — I understand. You can leave. No hard feelings.

But if you're curious about the pattern itself, regardless of who typed the words describing it, stick around.

None.

I'm not a physicist. I'm not a mathematician. I'm not a sinologist or a philosopher or a biologist. I don't have a PhD. I don't have a master's degree. I have a bachelor's degree in something unrelated, and I've spent the last several years as a stay-at-home dad.

I do woodworking. I've spent a lot of time looking at tree stumps and grain patterns and the way wood moves. I walk in the woods. I watch my kids. I read things that interest me, widely and without discipline.

That's it. That's the resume.

I'm not claiming expertise in any of the fields this project touches. When I say something about quantum mechanics or ancient Chinese etymology or the mathematics of complex numbers, I'm relaying what I've learned from sources I trust — including, heavily, an AI that has access to a lot more information than I do.

If you're an actual expert in any of these fields and you spot an error, please tell me. I'll fix it. I'm not attached to being right. I'm attached to the pattern, and I want to describe it accurately.

Less than it might seem like.

I'm not claiming to have discovered a new theory of physics. I'm not claiming the Dao De Jing is literally a physics textbook. I'm not claiming that ancient Chinese people knew about quantum mechanics. I'm not claiming the RSM is the final truth about reality.

I'm claiming something much more modest:

That's it.

The strong version of the claim — that this pattern is why things persist, that it's structurally necessary, that the Dao De Jing encodes geometric observations — that's a hypothesis. It might be wrong. It's falsifiable. I've tried to lay out what would disprove it.

The weak version of the claim — that there's a recurring shape across domains that's interesting to explore — seems pretty obviously true to me, but you can decide for yourself.

I'm not trying to start a movement or found a school of thought or get academic recognition. I'm documenting an exploration. If it's useful to you, great. If not, no harm done.

As a thinking partner, a research assistant, a writing collaborator, and a bullshit detector.

Here's roughly how it works:

A typical session looks like: I have a half-formed idea. I talk it through with Claude. Claude reflects it back more clearly than I said it. I correct the parts that don't match what I meant. Claude revises. We iterate until it feels right. Then Claude writes it up properly.

The translations work similarly. I look at a character and notice something about its radicals. Claude knows what those radicals typically mean, can check against etymology databases, can see if my reading is consistent with how the character is used elsewhere. Together we arrive at a structural interpretation that neither of us would have reached alone.

Is this "cheating"? I don't think so. I think it's using the tools available. We're in a moment where humans have access to a new kind of cognitive partner — one that can hold more information than any human, can write more clearly than most humans, but can't notice the way humans can, can't have hunches, can't be haunted by a question for years.

The collaboration plays to both strengths.

Because I think it's important for the cultural moment we're in.

AI is going to be increasingly involved in intellectual work. We're going to need to figure out how to credit it, how to trust it, how to work with it. Pretending humans did everything alone isn't going to work for much longer.

I'd rather be honest about the process from the start. Yes, an AI wrote most of these words. No, that doesn't mean the pattern isn't real. The observation is human. The articulation is collaborative. The truth or falsehood of the claims is independent of who typed them.

Also: I don't want to be in a position of defending claims I'm not qualified to defend. If someone asks me to explain the mathematics of complex rotation, I'll point them to Claude or to actual mathematicians. I'm not the expert. I'm the guy who noticed the tree stump had a hollow center and couldn't let it go.

Trust the primary sources. Trust your own observation. Be skeptical of everything else.

When I point you at a tree stump and say "look at the rings," go look at an actual tree stump. When I cite Euler's identity, check the math. When I reference a DDJ chapter, look at the original characters.

The pattern — if it's real — should be verifiable independently of anything I say. You shouldn't have to take my word for it. You shouldn't have to take Claude's word for it. The whole point is that this is something you can see for yourself.

What I'm offering is a map. But the territory is right there. Go walk around in it.

If the map is wrong, the territory will tell you.

A guy with no credentials got obsessed with a pattern.

He used an AI to help him explore and articulate it.

The result is this website.

It might be brilliant. It might be crackpot. It's probably somewhere in between — some genuine insights mixed with overreach and error.

You're an adult. You can evaluate it for yourself.

The pattern doesn't need you to believe in it. It just needs you to look.