Maximum Observational Diversity: NTARI's Theoretical Foundation
- the Institute
- Dec 7, 2025
- 11 min read
The Pattern Repeats
In 1633, the Catholic Church forced Galileo to recant his claim that Earth orbits the Sun. The evidence was overwhelming - observations of Venus's phases, Jupiter's moons, mathematical predictions that matched celestial mechanics. But the Church controlled observational infrastructure. They owned the universities, funded the astronomers, decided which observations counted as legitimate. A single institutional perspective could suppress truth through sheer monopoly on credible observation.
The suppression failed. Not because Galileo won the argument - he died under house arrest - but because telescopes proliferated. When enough observers from enough positions confirmed the same pattern, the false projection (Earth-centered cosmos) became computationally too expensive to maintain. The Church would have needed to suppress observations in Rome, Paris, London, Prague, Amsterdam. The coordination costs exceeded the value of the lie.
Today, corporate platforms control observational infrastructure in the digital realm. Google decides what information surfaces. Meta decides what news spreads. AWS decides what services can exist. But this isn't conspiracy - it's architecture. The platforms respond rationally to incentives created by centralized infrastructure, capital returns, and attention-based revenue. Nobody needs to intend the outcome. The system produces it.
NTARI's framework inverts this power structure: maximize observational diversity until false projections collapse under their own coordination costs. We're not building consensus to create truth. We're building infrastructure that makes truth impossible to ignore.
Learn more about Galileo's conflict: The Galileo Affair
Two Kinds of Patterns
Walk through a park on a cloudy afternoon and you'll see faces in the clouds - a nose here, eyes there, maybe a bearded profile. The face exists only in your pattern-seeking brain. Remove the observer and the water droplets remain, but the face disappears. This is a projected pattern: the observer imposes structure onto elements that don't confirm it.
Now look at a snowflake. Six-fold symmetry emerges from the molecular structure of ice crystals - from how water molecules bond when they freeze. The pattern exists whether anyone observes it or not. The elements themselves create and confirm the structure. This is an emergent pattern: the pattern arises from the elements that make it up.
Abarim Publications articulates the critical distinction: "Truth is a pattern that is confirmed by all elements that make it up or are covered by it." Truth doesn't depend on observers. It exists before observation, during observation, and after observation stops. But humans have a problem: we project constantly. We see conspiracy where there's randomness, intention where there's pattern, human nature where there's cultural construction.
The question becomes: how do we distinguish projected patterns from emergent ones? How do we perceive truth when our primary cognitive mode is projection?
Learn more about emergent vs projected patterns: Pattern Recognition in Human Cognition
The Anthropocene's Normalized Lies
Since the dawn of agriculture ten thousand years ago, human civilization has relied on normalized cognitive dissonances - comfortable lies that served survival, adaptation, and flourishing. The anthropologist calls them myths. The theologian calls them principalities and powers. The systems theorist calls them stable equilibria built on false premises.
Examples that have mostly died:
Divine right of kings (collapsed when enough observers compared monarchies to republics)
Racial hierarchy as biological fact (collapsed when genetic science proliferated observations)
Geocentric cosmos (collapsed when telescopes multiplied)
Examples still persisting:
Extractive hierarchy as inevitable ("someone must be in charge")
Scarcity as natural state requiring competition ("not enough to go around")
Privacy as individual responsibility ("you agreed to the terms")
Value flowing upward to capital as natural law ("job creators")
These aren't maintained through explicit enforcement. They persist because observational infrastructure remains concentrated. When Google, Meta, and AWS control what information surfaces, what communications propagate, what services can exist - they control which observations reach which observers. They don't need to suppress truth. The architecture makes false patterns sustainable while truth-telling becomes expensive.
Biblical language called these "principalities and powers" (Ephesians 6:12) - not human enemies but systemic patterns that shape human behavior independent of individual intent. The technical term is emergent properties of information architecture. Same thing.
The Diversity Principle
Here's what NTARI discovered studying Elinor Ostrom's commons governance research: successful commons weren't primarily about allocating resources. They were about maintaining observational diversity over time.
Alpine villages managing shared forests succeeded when:
Multiple families monitored from different positions
Observations crossed generations (temporal diversity)
Monitoring systems were distributed, not centralized
Evidence accumulated faster than it could be suppressed or distorted
They failed when:
External authorities imposed single-perspective rules
Generational knowledge transfer broke down
Monitoring became centralized
Observation became monopolized
The pattern extends beyond resource management. It's fundamental to perception itself.
A single observer sees projected patterns - their biases, their assumptions, their cultural constructions.
Multiple observers from similar positions still see shared projected patterns - their collective biases.
Multiple observers from radically distributed positions across time encounter a threshold: projected patterns become computationally expensive to maintain. To keep everyone believing the false pattern requires coordinating observations across too many positions. Meanwhile, emergent patterns (truth) remain consistent from every position.
This is why Galileo won eventually. This is why racial pseudoscience collapsed. This is why every monopoly on observation eventually fails when observation diversifies.
Learn more: Ostrom's commons principles
Maximum Observational Diversity -> Minimum Sustainable Projection
NTARI's framework crystallizes into a single architectural principle:
Build infrastructure that maximizes observational diversity. Projected patterns collapse. Truth becomes unavoidable.
Not because we build consensus around truth. Not because we vote on reality. But because lies become too expensive to maintain when observations proliferate across distributed positions.
Think of it as information entropy maximization - but in service of truth-revelation rather than chaos. The more diverse the observational positions, the fewer false patterns can remain stable.
Three Infrastructure Components
1. AGPL-3 Software: Transparent Tools
AGPL-3 prevents observational tool capture. When Google runs proprietary algorithms, they control what information surfaces - which observations count. AGPL-3 makes this impossible: if you run software as a service, you must share the source code. Every observation tool becomes transparent. Every algorithm becomes auditable. Projected patterns can't hide in proprietary black boxes.
Historical parallel: Before movable type, monasteries controlled text reproduction. They decided which observations got preserved, which arguments got copied. The printing press didn't create new truth - it multiplied observational positions until false patterns (indulgences, biblical illiteracy as divine plan) became unsustainable.
Learn more:
2. Distributed Hardware: Independent Positions
When AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure control computing infrastructure, they control observational positions. They decide what services can exist, what data can be processed where, what observations can be made. Distributed hardware breaks the monopoly.
Think of mesh networks after Hurricane Sandy: when centralized towers failed, distributed routers kept communicating. No single point of control. No monopoly on observation. Each node both broadcasts and receives - every participant can make observations and share them.
The principle extends beyond disaster resilience. Independent hardware means independent observational positions. You can't suppress observations by shutting down a central server. You'd need to suppress thousands of independent nodes simultaneously - coordination costs become prohibitive.
Learn more:
3. Library Networks: Temporal Continuity
Libraries preserve observations across time. They're humanity's defense against cultural amnesia - institutional memory that outlasts individual lifetimes, political regimes, corporate existences.
But libraries do more than store. They provide neutral observational positions. A library in Kentucky, a library in Kenya, a library in Kerala - each preserves different observations, different perspectives, different local knowledge. Together they create temporal and spatial diversity of observation.
When libraries network through cooperative infrastructure, they become distributed observational commons. No single authority controls what gets preserved. No platform monopoly shapes what information surfaces. Observations accumulate across positions and persist across time.
Historical parallel: Before public libraries, wealthy individuals and institutions controlled book collections - which observations got preserved. The public library movement didn't create new knowledge. It distributed observational access until false patterns (literacy as elite privilege, knowledge as proprietary) became unsustainable.
Learn more:
Not Building Truth, Destroying Lies
Here's what NTARI is not proposing:
NOT: Building consensus through voting: "Let's all agree on what's true"
NOT: Accumulating facts toward truth: "Stack enough observations and we'll reach it"
NOT: Creating truth through collective belief: "Reality is what we decide together"
Those are Tower of Babel strategies - human systems attempting to construct truth through systematic effort. Gödel proved they fail: no logical system built on axioms can prove its own consistency. You can't stack conclusions to reach Truth. It must reveal itself from outside your framework.
What NTARI proposes instead:
Maximize observational diversity until projected patterns collapse
Make false patterns computationally expensive to maintain
Remove the infrastructure that sustains comfortable lies
We're not building toward truth. We're destroying the scaffolding of lies that obscures it.
The "we are all one, all equal before YHWH" truth doesn't need to be constructed - it's already real. But our behavior doesn't align with it because observational infrastructure lets us maintain comfortable projections: hierarchies look natural, extraction looks inevitable, inequality looks justified. These projections persist because we observe from limited positions where they seem coherent.
Distribute observation radically enough and the projections collapse. Not through argument. Through observation.
Learn more about limits of logical systems: Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems
Behavioral Shaping Through Architecture
Here's the mechanism:
Current internet architecture -> Centralized observation -> Projected patterns remain stable -> Behavior aligns with false patterns
Cooperative infrastructure -> Distributed observation -> Projected patterns become unstable -> Behavior aligns with truth
Not because we force behavior change. Because the information environment makes deceptive patterns unsustainable.
Example: Extractive hierarchy persists partly because platform architecture makes it invisible. When you use Facebook, you don't see the extraction - your attention flowing to Meta's servers, your data becoming their asset, your social connections becoming their property. The architecture hides the pattern.
Now imagine federated social networking on AGPL-3 platforms. You see the code. You run your own instance. You observe data flows. Extraction becomes visible from your observational position. Scale this across thousands of instances - thousands of observational positions - and "social media requires corporate control" collapses as a projected pattern. The lie becomes too expensive to maintain.
The behavior change follows naturally. When you can observe extraction, you route around it. Not through moral conviction but through rational preference. Truth-aligned behavior becomes the path of least resistance.
This is what Abarim calls "consciousness running on the software of common law - but a law that emerges organically... from observing how free humans do." The infrastructure shapes behavior by shaping what we can observe. Distribute observation and behavior aligns with reality.
Learn more: Federated social networks
The Weak Force: Testing and Purging
Abarim's Household Set framework identifies four forces at each level - atom, cell, mind, and the emerging United Peoples of Planet Earth (UPPE). At the mental level, the weak force operates as:
"That which attacks whatever emerges as global nucleus; purges unstable convictions"
This is crucial. The weak force isn't enemy action - it's natural law testing projected patterns. When a false pattern (unstable conviction) tries to become global consensus, the weak force attacks it. Not through human agency but through the fundamental instability of lies.
Maximum observational diversity is the weak force at scale. Distribute observation radically and every projected pattern faces constant testing from multiple positions. Unstable convictions - comfortable lies, normalized cognitive dissonance, principalities and powers - get purged not through argument but through exposure.
The "we are all one" truth doesn't get purged because it's stable across all observational positions. It's emergent, not projected. The architecture we're building doesn't create this truth - it removes the barriers that prevent us from perceiving what was always there.
Learn more: Abarim's Household Set
The Architecture of Comfortable Lies
It's tempting to frame this as corporate villains suppressing truth. That's too simple and misses the deeper pattern.
AWS, Google, and Meta aren't conspiring to maintain false projections. They're responding rationally to architectural incentives. The system works like this:
Centralized platforms -> maximize extraction efficiency -> require concentrated observation -> make projected patterns sustainable
Nobody needs to intend the outcome. The architecture produces it.
Follow the money:
Advertisers need attention -> platforms optimize for engagement -> truth becomes secondary to virality
Investors need returns -> platforms maximize data extraction -> privacy erosion becomes rational behavior
Businesses need efficiency -> platforms concentrate infrastructure -> monopoly becomes inevitable
Capital needs growth -> systems optimize for extraction -> equality becomes unprofitable
The false patterns persist not because anyone maintains them intentionally but because the economic architecture makes them rational. Extraction looks inevitable because extractive systems are more profitable under current architecture. Hierarchy looks natural because hierarchical systems concentrate returns to capital. Privacy erosion looks necessary because surveillance capitalism generates revenue.
Perhaps money itself - as currently architected - is the deepest projected pattern. Money flows upward to capital not because humans are greedy but because the monetary architecture makes upward flow thermodynamically favorable. Like water flowing downhill, capital concentrates where architecture directs it.
The principalities and powers aren't human enemies. They're systemic patterns that emerge from architecture and shape behavior independent of individual intent. You could replace every tech CEO tomorrow and the extraction would continue - because the architecture produces it.
This is actually more fundamental than corporate control. Corporate control is a symptom. The underlying pattern is: centralized architecture + capital-seeking returns + attention-based revenue = rational behavior that maintains false projections.
What we're really building isn't infrastructure to fight Google. We're building architecture where truth-aligned behavior becomes thermodynamically favorable. Where distributed observation becomes more efficient than centralized control. Where cooperative ownership generates better returns than extractive monopoly. Where reality-aligned patterns become the path of least resistance.
Not because we make people virtuous. Because we change what's rational.
Why It Works: The Coordination Cost of Lies
False patterns persist when maintaining them costs less than revealing them. Before Galileo, suppressing heliocentrism required controlling a handful of universities. After telescopes proliferated, suppression required coordinating across hundreds of independent observers. The coordination cost exceeded the value of the lie.
Today's false patterns (extraction as inevitable, hierarchy as natural, privacy as individual responsibility) persist because centralized platforms keep coordination costs low. Google, Meta, and AWS coordinate observations across billions of users from their server farms. The architecture makes truth expensive and lies cheap.
NTARI's framework inverts the cost structure:
Centralized infrastructure:
Lies: low coordination cost (single point of control)
Truth: high coordination cost (requires fighting platform algorithms)
Distributed infrastructure:
Lies: high coordination cost (requires coordinating across independent nodes)
Truth: low coordination cost (remains consistent across all positions)
Natural selection favors truth when the cost structure inverts. This isn't idealism - it's information theory meeting network architecture.
From Prokaryotic to Eukaryotic
Abarim's framework describes humanity's current state as "prokaryotic" - gathering around global awareness but lacking the unified "mental DNA" that would cause minds to organize into differentiated functions (like cells in a body).
The distributed observational commons might be that mental DNA. Not a creed or doctrine but a shared protocol: systematically doubt individual perspectives; cross-check observations from distributed positions; maintain temporal continuity; test patterns against reality rather than belief.
When enough minds adopt this protocol, the eukaryotic transition happens - not through central coordination but through self-organization around truth. Different minds perform different functions (observation, analysis, preservation, communication) while remaining unified by the protocol.
This is how cells organized. This is how minds organize. This is how United Peoples of Planet Earth organizes - not through imposed uniformity but through diversity united by shared observational practice.
What NTARI Builds
The infrastructure components:
Software Layer: AGPL-3 platforms that preserve transparency, prevent capture, enable forkingHardware Layer: Distributed nodes that maintain independent observational positionsInstitution Layer: Libraries and cooperatives that preserve observations across timeProtocol Layer: Shared practices for cross-checking, verification, systematic doubt
Together they create an observational commons - infrastructure for maintaining accurate perception of reality over time.
Not building Truth. Building the distributed lens through which Truth becomes impossible to miss.
The Stakes
Every day without distributed observational infrastructure, false patterns persist:
Extractive platforms extract
Hierarchies concentrate power
Inequality compounds
Privacy erodes
Truth becomes harder to perceive
Not because people are evil. Because architecture shapes behavior and centralized architecture makes lies sustainable.
The alternative exists. The technology exists. The theory is sound. What's missing is the infrastructure built and the community organized to maintain it.
Join the Work
NTARI builds cooperative internet infrastructure through community participation. If this framework resonates - if you see how maximum observational diversity collapses projected patterns and reveals truth - then you understand why this work matters.
For developers and technical contributors: Join the architecture discussions, contribute to specifications, build the platforms that make distributed observation possible. The technology won't build itself: Join NTARI's Slack workspace
For mission-aligned supporters: Fund the research, development, and organizational capacity that makes cooperative infrastructure viable. NTARI operates as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit - we answer to the mission, not to shareholders: Support the work
For everyone: The infrastructure we build shapes the future we inhabit. Distributed observation, transparent tools, cooperative platforms - these aren't technical details. They're the architecture through which truth either becomes visible or remains obscured.
The weird, wonderful truth waits. Build the infrastructure that makes it unavoidable.
Questions or partnerships: info@ntari.org
Learn More
Elinor Ostrom's Commons Governance:
AGPL-3 and Copyleft:
Abarim Publications Framework:
Distributed Infrastructure:
Public Knowledge Infrastructure:
Economic Architecture and Systemic Patterns:
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