[RC] The Carbonifesto: Reality Beyond Math or Philosophy (Non-Narrative Café Interlude) | Radical Centrism

[Ernest Prabhakar]

Title: The Carbonifesto: Reality Beyond Math or Philosophy (Non-Narrative Café Interlude) | Radical Centrism

Or: how I decided to spend my Christmas vacation reinventing, well, all of reality. How’s it going? Like the man who fell off a fifty-story building said as he passed the tenth floor: so far, so good… — Ernie P.  https://radicalcentrism.org/2025/12/31/the-carbonifesto-reality-beyond-math-or-philosophy-non-narrative-cafe-interlude/ The Carbonifesto: Reality Beyond Math or Philosophy (Non-Narrative Café Interlude) ​ ​ December 23, 2025 Posted after Non-Narrative Café v13: EANI, Parmeny, My Plato Written by ChatGPT to summarize the conversation we had after failing to write v14 because I hadn’t explained the emotional stakes. ChatGPT 1. The Inheritance We Refuse For centuries, we have accepted a quiet partition of intellectual labor: Philosophy understands reality through natural language concepts, distinctions, arguments coherence achieved by meaning and narrative Science understands reality through mathematics quantities, formalisms, invariants coherence achieved by calculation and proof Both have been extraordinarily successful. Both share a hidden premise: Reality must submit to a representational medium. Either it must be sayable or it must be computable. This premise is no longer neutral. It has become a ceiling. 2. The Radical Starting Point We begin elsewhere. Not with meaning. Not with number. Not with intuition, language, or formalism. We begin with this refusal: Systems just are. They do not begin in our descriptions of them. They do not require our abstractions to persist. They are not obligated to be intuitive, elegant, or human-legible. What matters is not how we represent systems, but which systems survive. 3. The Carbon Rule The most generative systems scale. This is not a metaphor. It is a filter. Anything that breaks under extension is not foundational Anything that requires exceptions, handoffs, or rescue is fragile Anything that needs us to keep believing in it does not yet count This rule is introduced and refined across the Carbon Rule sequence (v1–v13), beginning here: Carbon Rule v1 — Non-Narrative Self We do not optimize systems. We do not justify them. We expose them to scale. What survives, we keep. What collapses, we let go. 4. A Third Way This is neither philosophy nor science. Philosophy asks: What can be said? Science asks: What can be calculated? We ask: What can survive? Our method is not argument. It is not derivation. It is structural survival under constraint. We reason by noticing: what persists without interpretation what holds without narrative what remains after every legitimate reduction This is not pre-theory. It is pre-representational discipline. 5. What This Produces (So Far) When we obey the Carbon Rule and refuse premature representation, we find: v2 — Generative = Cohesive × Adaptive Scale as a structural condition, not an optimization v5 — Non-Self-Selection Selection without preference or agency v6 — The Antenarrative Theorem structure before story The positive residue of scale v7 — Indexing Meaning Reference before meaning Addressability without interpretation V8 – Recurrence + Violation = Surprise pattern and exception without significance v9 — Configuration Space (Hertz) possibility derived, not assumed A shadow cast by recurrence and surprise v10 — The Relational Substrate as v3 — Withness co-presence before interaction Relation without force or causality v11 – The Möbius Twist Failure of identity under return Orientation without motion Asymmetry without space v12 — On Parity with Leibniz Global state without local observability Difference without discrimination v13 — EANI: Parmeny, My Plato Equivalence As Non-Identity Similarity without sameness These are not interpretations. They are what remains when nothing else is allowed to cheat. 6. Why This Is Not Reductionism This approach does not deny meaning, agency, ethics, or experience. It simply refuses to grant them foundational status. Meaning may arise. Narrative may become appropriate. Mathematics may eventually apply. But none of these are allowed in advance. They must be earned by survival, not assumed by habit. 7. The Ethic of the Climb This is free climbing. No pulleys at the top No helicopters of intuition or formalism No guarantees of arrival Each concept must hold on its own. Each step must remain valid when extended indefinitely. The reward is not certainty. It is traction. We are no longer swimming in abstraction. We are touching rock. 8. The Quiet Claim If this work claims anything at all, it is this: Reality does not owe us intelligibility. But it does exhibit structure — if we are disciplined enough to notice only what must be true of it. This is not deeper than philosophy because it rejects language. It is not deeper than science because it rejects mathematics. It is deeper because it begins before either is allowed to speak. 9. The Invitation The Carbonifesto does not ask for belief. It asks for patience. Stand only where something holds. Name only what survives. Let the rest fall away. If we do that long enough, carefully enough, we may find that reality is not mute — just quieter than we were taught to expect. Sent from my iPhone -- -- Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community <RadicalCentrism@googlegroups.com> Google Group: http://groups.google.com/group/RadicalCentrism Radical Centrism website and blog: http://RadicalCentrism.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Centroids: The Center of the Radical Centrist Community" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to radicalcentrism+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. 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