Framework Elements

The 10 elements of the world model

Physical Constraints & Resources
“What do physics and geography allow or forbid?”

The material and energy basis of society. Energy sources, EROEI, geography, climate, resource locations. Surplus energy per capita is crucial - if it were to halve or double, many societal structures would change.

Human Biology & Cognition
“What kind of animal is stacking this tower?”

Human behavior rooted in biology and psychology. Tribal, status-seeking apes with cognitive biases and emotional drives. System 1 vs System 2 thinking. Predictable irrationalities and social instincts.

Incentives, Games & Conflict
“Given payoffs and power, what will these human apes do?”

People respond to incentives and strategic environments. Game theory, prisoner's dilemmas, signaling games. Cooperation, conflict, rent-seeking, deterrence. Schelling points and Nash equilibria.

Production & Technology
“How do we turn energy + knowledge into goods and capabilities?”

Material standard of living depends on applying knowledge to resources. Invention vs diffusion, incremental vs radical innovation, general purpose technologies, learning curves, path dependence.

Specialisation, Exchange & Economic Systems
“How is work divided and surplus allocated?”

Comparative advantage, trade, markets, hierarchies, networks. Prices convey information. Externalities, credit and debt, boom and bust cycles, inequality and its tensions.

Information, Memory & Communication
“Who knows what, when, and how does it spread?”

The flow of information as civilization's nervous system. Capacity vs latency, information asymmetry, media ecosystems, disinformation, the medium is the message.

Scalable Trust & Legitimacy
“Why do millions of strangers cooperate (instead of looting each other)?”

Large-scale social order requires shared narratives and trust systems. Money as shared fiction, legitimacy, social capital, imagined communities, religion and ideology.

Institutions, Law & Governance
“How is power formally organized, and how are rules enforced?”

Institutions as rules of the game. Principal-agent problems, bureaucracy, path dependence, Goodhart's Law, seeing like a state, self-governance of commons.

Feedback, Measurement & Adaptation
“How does the system learn (or fool itself)?”

How societies know if they're succeeding or failing. Measurement tools, scientific method, feedback loops, metrics gaming, probabilistic thinking, iteration.

History & Path Dependence
“Why does the world look like this, not some other way?”

History as the laboratory of the world model. Contingency, lock-in, cycles, structural history, critical junctures, counterfactual thinking.