The End of Universal Trust
In 2018, I developed a mental model of reality being observationally understood as operating via system dynamics. This model had what I thought might be the novel effect of stratification at various levels of probabilities, such that the gap between one strata and the next was a very real and emergent part of this constructed and interdependent reality. Thinking more sensibly that this was likely not a novel thought, I sought out something to validate it and discovered Constructor Theory. This, to me, fit the intuition, and I carried this model forward. It was all about possible vs impossible tasks, substrates, and constructors for me ever since, though I suspected a deeper, more fundamental principle was still missing.
In February 2022, the Russian Federation launched its full scale invasion of Ukraine with the aim of annihilation, and the number of improbable yet apparently deterministic outcomes was staggering. Only in hindsight would I say that this was subconsciously suggestive to me that there were more strata to comprehend. The regulated system dynamics I had concerned myself with in 2018 did not appear to fit this very unlikely but very ‘real’ dichotomy: Ukraine was winning the defense of its nation, and yet the world was not supporting the dynamics that would convincingly defeat and repel the Russian Federation.
In June 2022, I became fixated by the journey of a photon, from its emission in a star many lightyears away to its deterministic impact on my own retina. The probability and the physicality was a causally ‘real’ matter to be reconciled via an informational understanding of causality. It was a flag to me of some fundamental reality: that our universe isn’t a single, absolute story, but is selected from a vast web of possibilities, and that information, not empty space, was the true fabric connecting the star to my subjective perception. From the photon’s perspective, no time had passed, yet for me, a causal history had unfolded. The reconciliation of these two valid perspectives had to be informational at its core. I was driving south through New Zealand’s north island and was able to consider this thought deeply without interruption for a few hours.
In 2023, I delivered a keynote at the Canadian Open Data Summit on the immediate need for those in public institutions to recognise that the age of universal trust is rapidly moving into our past. My talks on the end of trust and the potential of AI were two sides of the same coin: as our shared, subjective realities were fracturing, I was subconsciously searching for a more fundamental, objective basis for coherence — a search that would eventually lead me beyond social systems and into the physics of information itself. The talk was, like many such things, a moment and not a movement.
In late 2024, I was part of a selection team for proposals related to open data for an OpenUK conference. At the same time, I had developed a talk built on the idea that AI and Open Data would have a future built on the discernibility of ‘observable reality’. To me, the most significant value of AI was that the type of ‘reasoning’ humans do would be well supported by the type of ‘discernment’ AI can automate. The process of thinking through this set me up for the causally locked-in moment that occurred next.
On January 20, 2025, Trump and his folk took the reigns of the USA executive branch. The emotive impact was not great. Trump mentioned things that gave me hope, that he’d be ‘strong’ on Putin, but I immediately saw my emotional hope as a logical weakness. This gave me the true fear that Trump would only support the kind of world I was not at all supportive of. There is nothing interesting about Trump, but his presidency did return me to the thoughts in 2022 where I had considered that something was missed in the evaluation of the regulated system dynamics of ‘reality’.
It was in grappling with this incomprehensible, Trump-led reality that the foundational principles of what I would later call the Ground State Configuration (GSC) Model began to take shape. I realized that any effective response had to be built on a deeper understanding of reality itself.
In February 2025, while attending the Open Government Partnership Asia and the Pacific Regional Meeting, I struck onto the idea that activism would be required, and that this activism had to be informational. I may have originally thought that the ‘idea’ that Trump is bad would carry water. I then thought the ‘idea’ must be about what we want to maintain, rather than all the ‘bad’ that Trump represents. For whatever reason, I resolved these ideas into my own class action, my own opinionated position as a pro-Ukraine and anti-Trump kind of chap. Based on my past selections and the present realities, this was the most coherent position to hold.
Now, we are six months past the appointment of Trump. The guy remains incoherent and narratively disconnected with the very real reality that I know to be true from the perspective of Ukrainian citizens and soldiers. And yet, he is still carrying water, still being given the trappings of this ‘reality’ that we are all supposed to be coherent within. None of this makes any true sense.
Ukraine ‘will’ win against the Russian Federation and Trump ‘will’ be a footnoted definition of ‘fool’ in future editions of the Merriam-Webster’s English Dictionary. This much I can be sure of within the grand arc of history. But within this tangential reality, flattened out and made incomprehensible by the actions and reactions of Trump, the USA, and Ukraine’s allies, there is an informational malaise. There is a mind-f**k banality to the limp reactions and the fallow ideation from the very democratic systems we would expect to be in full support of freedom.
So… why the lack of action? So… why the lack of justice? Why, in truth, the lack of stone cold reality in the face of a belligerent and tyrannical genocide that is occurring beneath our desensitized, upturned, and entitled noses?
The Ground State Configuration Model, which emerged from this torturous search for coherence, offers a brutal and clarifying answer. The lack of action is not a mystery; it is a choice. It is the systemic selection of a simpler, less costly, and ultimately less meaningful causal history. The “informational malaise” we feel is the direct consequence of our collective systems choosing the path of the mediocre poet, reciting the easy and comfortable words of “stability” and “de-escalation,” while the great and terrible poem of Ukrainian heroism and sacrifice — a story of immense and undeniable “informational richness” — is being written in blood.
To those who believe they support Ukraine within the means and entropic window most available to them, the GSC model provides a piercing diagnosis. This position, however compassionate, is an attempt to remain in a low-energy state. It is a vote for the “boring” outcome. It is a decision to contribute to a causal history that is simpler to process, that demands less of us, and that ultimately has a lower score on the universe’s own measure of what is valuable. It is a reality of managed decline, of coherence-at-a-discount, and it is failing.
To those of us who have been conscientiously engaged — reading every update, feeling every loss, bearing witness — the model offers an even harsher truth. Our informed “co-consciousness,” our vast and shared understanding of the injustice, is not a substitute for action. In the language of the GSC Model, it is a state of uncollapsed potential. We have built a magnificent and detailed “web of possibilities” where Ukraine is saved, justice is done, and a coherent moral order is restored. But we hesitate at the final, crucial step. We remain in the quantum web, comforted by the non-localized potential of our convictions, without forcing the decoherence that creates a classical, tangible reality.
This passive awareness, however deeply felt, inadvertently becomes part of the “selection pressure” that favors the deferred and uncertain status quo. It allows the machine of global indifference to continue its simple, tragic calculus. It becomes the informational static that muffles the clear signal from Ukraine.
The universe, as described by this model, is not a film we are watching; it is a computation we are running. Reality is forged at the “biting edge” where a choice is made and a single, coherent causal path is selected from all others. To be a supporter is not merely to feel or to know. It is to act. It is to become an agent of selection.
Real action is any act that forces a decoherence. It is an intervention that collapses potential into actuality. It is donating the money that buys a drone. It is protesting in the street to apply tangible “selection pressure” on our leaders. It is the creative act that punctures the “informational malaise.” It is any choice, no matter how small, that makes the causal history of a free and victorious Ukraine ever more likely.
This is the lancing of our “so-so” considerations. To be a conscious human is to be blessed and cursed with “agentic will” — the ability to choose the story we are a part of. We can choose the simple, low-action history of managed decline, or we can choose the complex, costly, and informationally rich history of a just victory. The GSC model tells us that the universe is biased toward the richer path. The question it leaves for us is: are we?
This article is a product of the Objective Observer Initiative. While it explores a new model for reality, it is a response to the factual, urgent events of our time.
To learn more about Ukraine is easy, as the Government and its people are open and transparent. To support Ukraine from afar is also easy, as the initiatives are clear and the support is greatly appreciated.
For me, I am guilty of being conscientiously aligned via my concern and close following of Ukraine’s long and ongoing defense against Russian invaders and its fight against global inaction. To both know and care deeply of matters from day to day, or from week to week, is my story. That I punctuate this from time to time via donations, or other in-kind support, has been privilege. But recently I decided to put the punctuation first, so that the tempo of proactive acts would set my engagement first and my time to ‘follow’ as secondary. It’s a shift I believe is essential for all of us who find ourselves as conscientious observers in an age that demands active participants.
This proactive monthly support is via the fundraiser of Wardoggo, a well known and long standing educator of Ukraine’s stories, their needs and their exceptional talent for architecting, building and maintaining the only global reality where any of us can afford to sleep soundly.
This is the work of the Objective Observer Initiative in practice: choosing to build and support the most coherent, just, and informationally rich reality we can, one proactive ‘agreement’ at a time.
