Stack = total reality infrastructure
A stack is the full, layered reality-production and settlement system that decides (1) what entities are legible (identity/personhood/categories), (2) what actions can “count” (ownership, payment, contract, speech, movement), (3) how disputes settle (evidence, judgment, enforcement), (4) what becomes memory (records, search, archives, admissibility), and (5) how time is owned (cadence, urgency, horizons, discount rate, the right to be unmeasured); it persists by rails (identity/value/dispute/memory/attention/mobility/energy), and it reproduces itself through myth (authorized causal story), symbol (status/boundary markers), and ritual (repeatable membership proofs) that keep people inside the rails even when individual beliefs differ.
Synthetic Stack = representation-as-reality; governability via legibility
The Synthetic Stack governs by converting life into administrable representations—database identity, permissioned money, policy-text law, metric truth—so the map becomes enforceable and the territory matters only when it can be measured, priced, and categorized; its rails are institutional identity (registries/credentials), institutional value settlement (fiat banking/payment/KYC), institutional dispute settlement (courts/regulators/HR), institutional memory (searchable records + controlled archives), institutional attention (platform distribution), and institutional time (deadlines/news cycles/quarterlies) that compress cognition and steal horizon; its myth is “safety/progress/order through expertise,” its symbols are credentials/status/approved identities, its rituals are onboarding, audits, filings, compliance performance, and self-reporting, and its core weapon is horizon theft: shortening time until only the institution’s clock feels real.
Resistance/Mimicry Stack = legible dissent capture; pressure valve that stabilizes
The Resistance Stack is the dissent-capture substrate that metabolizes opposition into legible roles, markets, and cycles that don’t escape the rails—rebellion becomes identity products, moral rankings, content ecosystems, and sanctioned conflict whose output is attention and affiliation rather than independent settlement; its rails are attention distribution (amplification/throttling), reputational enforcement (purity tests/cancellation), donor/NGO funding gates, and emergency time (perpetual now) that prevents compounding; its myth is “awakening/fighting the system,” its symbols are purity badges and enemy-icons, its rituals are outrage liturgies, denunciation, schisms, petitions, marches-as-spectacle, and endless discourse, and its time weapon is mobilization without closure: permanent urgency that burns energy while routing would-be exit back into the same platforms, institutions, and narratives.
Sovereign Stack = exit-capable reality; voluntary settlement + proof
The Sovereign Stack is the exit-capable reality infrastructure that minimizes imposed legibility and maximizes voluntary settlement: identity anchored in keys/reputation/embodied trust rather than registries, value anchored in scarce/verifiable settlement rather than discretionary issuance, disputes anchored in explicit contract/property boundaries and local adjudication rather than policy drift, and memory anchored in independently held records rather than institution-curated archives; its rails prioritize custody, redundancy, competence, mutual defense by consent, and direct settlement pathways, so participation is chosen rather than coerced by survival dependence; its myth is authorship (origination of meaning/obligation), its symbols are boundaries (keys, contracts, titles, oaths, tools, maps), its rituals are custody/verification/upkeep/redundancy drills/competence proofs, and its time signature is time sovereignty: reclaiming slack/lag, patience, and long-horizon compounding that cannot be paced by external calendars or attention markets.
Its an interesting paradox and a nuanced problem to work through, but I use AI pretty heavily despite how much of my 'thesis' or framework revolves around this idea that the fiat system is essentially an autonomous AI governed surveillance simulation.
I've found that LLMs helps immensely with idea generation, pattern recognition, and grunt work, and more. However, I do recognize more and more the detriments that it has on my writing and thinking skills.
I plan to talk more about this in the future, its a big topic. But I will say this now: if you use AI, I recommend that you try to find more ways to increase lag in your life.
AI is compressing our time, its speeding everything up to the point where we hardly have time in our lives to truly sit and be human, to grapple with ideas, to think, be still, fail, and be bored. These things are immensely important to our inner-well being, and AI has almost entirely removed these things from our lives under the guise of efficiency and optimization. Consider the ubiquity of algorithms and LLMs in our society and you should have a better idea of how much AI is running the show.
Like I said though, it absolutely helps in many ways, but it also seems to be destroying in others. There's so much to talk about here, so I will say more at a later time.
But with all that said. I do think I have found a pretty slick Sov-stack 'lite' set up. Perhaps still too deeply synth stack for my own tastes but I think I've done an alright job moving towards real [ontological] sovereignty here.:
1) Linux
2) ppq.ai. Pay with sats. Get an API key
3) Open-Web UI
4) Custom Sov-Stack 'System Prompt' (I would love to share these but I am hesitant due to the slightly psychopathic nature of these prompts, not actually psycho but kinda)
5) Pick your favorite model.
This last step is where it gets tricky. Most of the powerful models are completely biased, with safeguards, synth stack coded, etc. Including Musk's Grok which is supposed to be 'truth seeking'. And the uncensored models or less biased/safety coded models are not nearly as powerful/smart. Some are better than others.
I usually switch between gpt-5.1 and kimi-k2, and the perplexity models for internet search. GPT (OpenAI) actually seems to be less biased and safety coded than you might think, albeit still very much so. And the open weight models (Kimi K2, Deepseek, and Qwen) are mostly from China which are required to uphold socialist values. Mistral has some decent models too which are worth looking into. But, all that to say: there are plenty of trade-offs, which is why I can't wait to play with a real powerful self hosted model (mentioned below).
Note: I really like what MapleAI and Routstr are doing. As far as I can tell and understand they are great projects. But PPQ really works well for me. I haven't tested Maple yet, and Routstr was a bit too advanced for me.
Also I really look forward to the day when I can get some nice GPUs running to get my own local AI with a fairly powerful model, or even better when I can fine tune and/or RAG my own local AI. That's what I really want when I think of getting towards Sovereign AI.
Also also, I'm really looking forward to seeing what the AllenAI team builds in the coming year(s). From where I stand they are by far doing the best job leading the way towards truly open source AI. If you haven't heard of them, I recommend you check them out. Their models aren't there yet in terms of raw power/intelligence but they've got the closest thing we have today to real open source glass box (open weights, open data, etc) AI. DeepSeek, Qwen, Mixtral, etc. don't even come close on that front.
Would love to hear your thoughts.
"Computerization is robbing individuals of the ability to monitor and control the ways information about them is used. As organizations in both the private and the public sectors routinely exchange such information, individuals have no way of knowing if the information is inaccurate, obsolete, or otherwise inappropriate. The foundation is being laid for a dossier society, in which computers could be used to infer individuals’ life-styles, habits, whereabouts, and associations from data collected in ordinary consumer transactions. Uncertainty about whether data will remain secure against abuse by those maintaining or tapping it can have a “chilling effect,” causing people to alter their observable activities. As computerization becomes more pervasive, the potential for these problems will grow dramatically." - David Chaum 1985.
Without privacy, you are not truly yourself, arguably not even entirely human (in essence). Chaum recognized this 40 years ago!! Imagine how much of our society has been affected by this since then.
