Polynon Theory: Tib Roibu on Cognitive Gravity & Boyd's OODA Loop

What if thought has shape—and that shape guides what we notice, believe, and decide?

In this mind-expanding episode of No Way Out Podcast, Romanian researcher Tib Roibu unveils Polynon Theory—a revolutionary geometric framework where consciousness is primary, cognition is measurable spatial unfolding, and every polynon vertex = pure consciousness (non-event) while edges = holographic measures. 

Forget materialism vs. idealism. Tib charts a third path: a rigorous geometry of mind embracing paradox and precision. Revisit John Boyd’s OODA Loop through cognitive gravity—the invisible force where attention collapses around conceptual attractors, curving meaning, emotion, and decision trajectories just like mass bends space-time. 

Phenomena, fantasia, and noumena become coordinates in one cognitive space. The embedded observer is not external but a self-reflective function of consciousness, driving live feedback between perception and reality. Tib connects holographic edges, non-event vertices, cymatics, wave dynamics, and geometric deep learning to predictive processing, ecological psychology, conceptual spaces, and Eastern philosophy—without dogmatic orthodoxy. 

From psychedelic topology and meditative geometry to cognitive architecture and context-aware AI design, discover how Polynon Theory builds intuitive tools that reduce cognitive friction, deepen OODA orientation, and amplify novelty in living systems.

Watch the full geometric breakdown on YouTube

Tib Roibu on LinkedIn 

Polynons

Geometry Matters

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Chapters

• 0:00 Guest Intro And Origins Of Polynon
• 5:01 Geometry In Mind: Cognition, Cognitive Geometry, Neurogeometry
• 10:26 Observer, Space-Time, And Consciousness As Fundamental
• 16:41 Boyd’s OODA, Eastern Thought, And The Noosphere
• 24:26 Polynon Defined: Phenomena, Fantasia, And Noumena
• 32:06 Holography, Measurement, And Paradox
• 38:16 Cognitive Gravity And Conceptual Spaces
• 45:56 Materialism, Idealism, And Multiple Truths
• 52:56 Why Study Consciousness And What It Serves
• 1:00:26 Waves, Cymatics, Psychedelics, And Geometric Patterns
• 1:06:26 Where To Find The Work And What’s Next

Transcript

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 0:56

Hey, Moose, good to see you. Our next guest, I came across a LinkedIn post by Dan Mapes. Dan Mapes is the creator, uh co-founder of the Spatial Web. He was bent on the show and he put this thing on LinkedIn about cognitive gravity, and there's some links to consciousness. So I followed that thread a little bit and I came across Tim Wibu, who's our guest today. I don't know much about Tib, uh, and I'd like to start off by asking Tib to introduce himself. And I can only imagine this is going to go into about a thousand directions uh once this conversation gets going. So, Tib, could you give us a little background on who you are and what you do?

Tib Roibu: 1:38

Hi, yes. Thanks for having me. I've been following you for uh some time now. Um so I'm a Romanian researcher, currently based in uh Romania. Um I am a researcher that's really focused on cognitive systems, uh especially through a geometric lens. So I have a very uh particular focus on understanding how cognition works in a lot of uh in a lot of fields, especially in innovation, especially in philosophy of mind, especially in uh science and technology. So I look at uh various aspects of cognition through a geometric lens. Um this has been going for uh a lot of years now. Plenty of research has been done in uh geometric cognition, cognitive geometry, and uh neurogeometry. And this kind of led me uh to my own theory of mind uh that's called the polynomial, which is a geometric uh uh concept that allows us to look at uh cognition through various aspects that I uh we that we will probably discuss along the way.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 2:52

Oh, absolutely. So one of our friends and and several of our guests have come on the show to talk about sacred geometry, uh, Euclidean geometry, and then sacred geometry. We've seen that there are some amazing connections, not just on our planet, but inside of our minds. Uh there may be a connection to how we see beauty and time in the world that's connected to geometry. We understand that that's out there. Um, one of our theories or hypotheses or assumptions is that in markets, um, we have a consciousness, a global consciousness that is projected onto markets, and therefore there may be a geometric um shape being formed in front of us as we watch price and time move around. Um, that's not to say that that's true or not. It's just to say that, hey, if all of this consciousness is true and we're projecting these things out onto reality, shouldn't geometry have a play in a lot of this? And I think a lot of people push back on that and say, how does geometry have anything to do with how we perceive reality? I don't know. I don't have a I don't know how to answer that, but maybe you do. So can you give us a little background on um like what is the difference between geometric cognition and cognitive geometry? Can you start there? Is that a good place to start?

Tib Roibu: 4:07

Yeah, that's a very good uh good start. So, first of all, I do believe as well that there is uh uh like a collective consciousness, not necessarily that we tap into or it's emergent. That's still up for debate depending on you know um whoever has the most um holistic theory of everything, let's say. Uh, but I do think that you'll find geometry all the way down and all the way up. And this is not just a belief, it's at this point, it's uh like I called it um hidden uh in plain sight science. So I use this to describe cognitive gravity, but uh basically uh to answer your question, um the mind uses various aspects of geometry in various aspects of uh cognition. So when you say cog uh geometric cognition, we refer to the content of a thought or of an emotion. So basically, how do I rotate certain objects in space or how do I orient to refer to the UDA loop, right? Uh now when you say cognitive geometry, you will look at what is the structure of that content, how is it organized within specific um categories in specific dimensions, let's say cognitive dimensions, or specific um areas of geometry that will allow us to understand what is the um the actual structure of that cognitive space, that framework or whatever is being uh thought about. Now there's a third one as well, it which is called neurogeometry, and that is um talking about the actual substrate. So, what is the physical substrate, the neurological aspects, by biochemical aspects that that are being involved, you know, how do we trigger um sensory motors, um nervous systems, whatever is uh within the body, or perhaps outside the body when you take uh this kind of analogy and uh put it into an LLM, for example, right? So, yeah, there is um there's a lot of geometry involved in cognition, up to a point that my postulate uh would be that geometry is cognition, so there is an equivalence here between the two, because everything happens within a particular setup, which is which is uh traditionally called it's uh the space-time. Now, the space-time is this construct within perception, and it is relative to an observer. Now, okay, this space-time exists as a projection, exists as a um probability that has to be explored and so forth, but then it would still be relative to an observer. So I think these are useful um properties, let's say, of perception that we can play around and understand through geometry, and then can be applied in um any number of frameworks, be them abstract about philosophy or you know, forms that go beyond our uh perceptual capability or within specific technologies, um AI, LLMs, you know, military through Woodaloops and so forth.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 7:30

Yeah, UAPs, aliens, you name it, right? So I we're we talk a lot about John Boyd's Observe Orient Decide Act Loop on here. We talk about orientation. Uh I want to go back in time and I want to bring Moose into the conversation uh to bring up some of the folks that John Boyd was looking at 30, 40 years ago. So let's go back in our, you know, back 100 years, 200 years, or 50 years, whatever it may be, and and let's talk about the people that influenced not only John Boyd, but also you, Tib. And I think uh there's there's one in common and and Moose, uh, I want to start with you.

Mark McGrath: 8:02

Well, Tib, when I was listening to you, I thought of uh TheR des Chardins in the no sphere when you're talking about like you know, like a shared state of consciousness that becomes uh you know widespread. I think you you use the term collective collective concept. Um and I don't I don't know if you've ever looked at Pierre Taydard Theard des Chardins, but that was uh that was an influence on uh Boyd. It's one of the books that he read. And then it's there was also a lot of uh similarities with the work of Marshall McLuhan around around Theyard.

Tib Roibu: 8:39

What about bookminding? I'm familiar with Noah's Fior. You're familiar, so like I like so like I mean, does that is the Polynon is there, do you do you see the connections and the and the similarities to basically um there's a lot of uh similarities between um any number of uh work that tries to capture all of these levels between uh so going basically between uh a dualistic approach where the mind and body are uh separate, and coming into this kind of equilibrium between worlds up until a point that you either have uh an emergent aspect, which traditionally would be called consciousness, or you understand that consciousness is the fundamental substance or field for which this uh cognitive uh construct that we are perceiving as reality. And upfront uh the polynon and myself, I am an idealist, so I do believe consciousness is fundamental, but uh I don't uh believe that mind and body are separate entities or uh you know there's some kind of emergence. I do believe in uh non-dual uh monism, so that would imply that um any both extremes are just two sides of uh one coin, and this wine coin is uh eventually the consciousness. So this is the proposal of the polynomial in this way. Um to answer more specifically, um when you talk about observation, for example, so coming back to just the first O in Udalu, and you'll see it makes sense. Um you talk about perception, you talk about geometry, all of these aspects, but there's a specific loop that happens here between uh the observer and what is being observed. And this is what we um try to represent, try to um define with physical laws, define with all these frameworks that allow us to push forward uh as humanities and to understand what is the purpose uh for us here. And this loop has been a very um repetitive theme and a motive up until you know Plato and Pythagoras or the Greeks, because everyone has this intrinsic um understanding that there is no difference between um what what is my internal representation of the world and the outer representation with which I am interacting with. Now, of course, this uh loop has been represented in physics as a possible uh a possible uh wave function collapse, uh, you know, in uh predictive uh free energy uh uh sorry, can't quite recall the name, free energy principle. Uh we have uh the prediction uh and updating the belief system and so forth. So you keep stumbling up upon this kind of loop, which inherently is a loop between the observer and the observed. And now in the polynon, this is uh tackled through a geometric lens. So all of these frameworks are uh kind of arranged through geometric principles, uh geometric constructs. Uh what is this framework tapping into? Is it tapping into geometric cognition or is it uh more abstract and it's about the construct that we use with our mental capability?

Mark McGrath: 12:41

So um I don't know if this answers your question, but it's probably I was hitting along the lines that you know you talk about um like like like I thought like the nosphere that that Tayard speaks about, it's where every mind is this is the center and they're connected, and and you're talking about holography, um which is the it seems to me to be extremely similar. Um his his sort of has an end state in mind when Tayard says that we do all these things and think all these things, or whatever, there's the omega point that we're that we're evolving to. Paulinon doesn't necessarily have uh an end state in mind the way Tayard does. And I understand his because he was a Catholic priest and he's thinking, you know, leading to salvation or the end of the end of time or whatever. And I think that might be maybe sort of a a structural difference is like he's he's explicit to say that all that we observe, all that we see in in history is trending towards um to trend towards the omega point where I don't the polynomi doesn't really have a convergence endpoin in mind, does it?

Tib Roibu: 13:55

Uh absolutely it does. And now this is a good question. Uh basically the convergence of the polynon is it's one true vertece, vertex. Basically, uh consciousness being fundamental, consciousness cannot be known. So every time we try to have a cognitive experience, or we have a cognitive event, or we measure something, when we measure quantum fields, for example, or the you know we have a wave function collapse, what happens is we disrupt the consciousness continuum with a cognitive experience or with experience. So now what the polynomial states is that everything that's within cognition has this geometric aspect to it, and we can measure it, we can have a representation of it, and this is in line with you know everything that's happening uh in any kind of field that have that uses math, that uses physics and so forth, but also is aligned with um the traditional idealistic uh framework that we see, for example, in uh Advaita Vedanta, or in ancient traditions that were more uh connected, let's say, to this kind of approach where they understood the underlying uh mental or cognitive aspect of reality. So the endpo of the Polynon.

Mark McGrath: 15:21

And by that you mean Eastern, you're just talking about Eastern and Eastern, yeah, mostly mostly of it, yeah.

Tib Roibu: 15:26

So basically the the postulate, let's say, of the polynon is that you cannot measure consciousness, but you can measure the way it's representing itself through cognition. So there's a lot of paradox here that you kind of have to allow into your mind in order to understand the purpose of the polynon. But once you do, uh things become really easy in terms of um not thinking linearly, for example.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 15:56

So we haven't really we we haven't really talked about polynon yet. So we're just talking about it. Can you can we go into that a little bit deeper and just explain what that is?

Mark McGrath: 16:56

Well, before before we do, can I just tag on what you said? So Boyd studied a lot of Eastern philosophy. So there was a considerable amount of Eastern philosophy and eastern thinking, eastern religions that went specifically into his later work, um, which beyond Sun Tzu included a lot of the religious texts of the Hindus and the Buddhists and the Taos and things like that. So I'm I'm wondering when you when you were when you brought up the comparisons to things like Vedantic and other things, um when you when you show this theory, I mean it seems to me there's a very clear distinction between this and like your standard run-of-the-mill, you know, Western theory, you know, that's possibly limiting to what humans are capable through their cognition.

Tib Roibu: 17:46

Yeah, so that's a very good argument, but this is by design, let's say. So while I work on the um concept and really um capturing all this philosophy within a geometric construct, I look at uh what can be done with current technology, with current um, let's say, uh philosophy of mind and so forth. So I'm looking at what are the contemporary arguments for um consciousness being fundamental. But um I'm looking at through a very I try to be as you know scientific and uh try to follow the scientific method, try not to go too speculative because it's really easy to do uh this, especially when you talk about these kind of uh abstract or even metaphorical uh subjects. But coming back to uh consciousness being fundamental, I think this is this topic hasn't changed or the debate hasn't changed you know for thousands of years. We only manage to have a very good description of what uh reality is through our senses, so what reality uh looks like when we perceive, when we smell, when we touch things and so forth. Now, this uh has been also discussed and uh you know captured by all of these wonderful theories which allow us to have these conversations and so forth, but what the polynomi does is trying to look at what cannot be described. So when you say a polynomial, you say multiple non-events. Now, if you consider that consciousness is a continuum, what you try to do is to measure consciousness. Now you cannot measure consciousness, so this is the most abstract and elusive, let's say, uh topic. So what you do instead is you measure your own experience of consciousness, and this is where everything unfolds as the reality we understand and we uh live within. So now the polynon being a measure of the non-measurable, if you ask me, okay, what does a polynomi look like, well it's an actual, it's just a dot because everything is in superposition, everything is just everywhere and nowhere at the same time. But if I try to, you know, if you think of uh the continuum of consciousness as a uh this continuous uh string, if I try to measure it, what I'll do, I'll kind of uh divide the string in into edges or whatever geometric uh aspect you want to think about. Now that thing becomes the representation I have of a specific you know div division or a specific segment of my continuum. But that continuum doesn't stop because there's no difference between now and a particular now in the past or in the future. It's just my representation of it that changes. So this is where the polynon comes in and allows you to kind of uh understand the uniqueness of uh consciousness as a source. So the postulate here is that all uh all the vertices of the polynon or any other uh geometric representation we are going to visualize, all the vertices are pure consciousness. So this is where you know a lot of the uh trickness that paradoxes come into uh all of this kind of abstract truths and multiple truths existing at the same time come together. And this is where holography, and you mentioned earlier, this is where holography comes in, and this kind of unfolding uh a substance that doesn't have any representation, you enfold it or unfold it into representation, and you start to um allow you know experience, cognition to come in and define that uh that subjectively, I'd say.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 22:17

And the connection to geometry with the polynon, is it uh is there something called a polytype, is that right? I'm I'm just trying to understand like where you came up with the idea or where this emerged from.

Tib Roibu: 22:26

Yeah, I did the idea I came up, you know, studying basically all of the concurrent uh theories of mind. They all use geometry in a more direct or in a more representational way. In the polynomial, for example, uh geometry is more structural, so geometry is cognition. It's not just a tool to allow us to understand uh reality and so forth. So the idea came up um during my research for uh uh perception. I was heavily interested in uh why things are the way they are, you know, the traditional uh philosophical answers. I was trying to look at um how uh we represent the world, why do symbols work the way they do, and so forth. And I stumbled up uh upon uh geometry as uh as a tool of representation. And you mentioned uh secret geometry. Uh you can easily uh you know go down the rabbit hole with uh occult and metaphysics and all these representations, and uh this led me to um an understanding that these are very good representations of not just the world outside but the world within. And this all was ultimately followed by um very good uh understanding of you know that the mind and the senses are only um a representation, and they're only a a small part of something that's outside of what our senses allow us to perceive. And it's not just you know, there's a lot of theories for why this happens, you know, evolutionary theory, you have the entire uh Plato's cave, let's say, uh slash illusion illusion uh uh lineage, where now you can see it in uh the headset theory or the um uh all kinds of simulations or all side all kinds of constructs that just don't allow us to see reality as it is.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 24:39

Yeah.

Tib Roibu: 24:39

I think we see reality exactly as we supposed to do as uh as you know entities uh in this particular uh sliver of reality. And now uh I was heavily influenced by uh German uh German idealism. Uh can't really open my mind in terms of the limits of uh what can be known. So, for example, when you look at knowledge, uh you easily can conflate cognition with knowledge. So I think this is a very clear distinction that can be made uh further down the line between LLMs and human cognition. Uh but then once you kind of look at the tradition and how uh knowledge is treated as limited through the senses, but also limited through its own capacities. So even if you extract, let's say, uh some of the senses, you do have a capacity of knowledge, but there is a boundary to that. So my question was always what is beyond that boundary?

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 25:48

So we have the phenomenal world, right? So this the world that we experience, and you brought this up, and I want to kind of throw something at you or out there. So there are things out there that we don't that are available to us that we just don't need. We talked about on the show quite a bit how our our brains, our minds are very expensive organs. Uh the brain is an organ, and that it needs to reduce energy. So through the sensory organs, it you know, it receives sensory information. Um animals have different sensory organs potentially, dolphins have different sensory organs than we do. Um and then there are things in the world around us, we'll just call it the world or environment, that we just don't have access to because we just don't need it. It doesn't mean it's not there. Um so that's you know, we have our phenomenal world, and then what's the other world called? Is it is it um the phenomenal?

Mark McGrath: 26:39

What's the phantas, and then there's the phantot.

Tib Roibu: 26:42

Yeah, fantasy.

Mark McGrath: 26:43

Fantasia. Fantasia. So when I look at that and I think of the the way the you you explain that through your map, like the phenomena uh you call that P plus, right? And that's that's that's our senses, right? That's our that's our observations, that's the things that are unfolding in reality. And then the the the fun the fantasia is the P minus, right? And that's what we're representing internally from our orientation, like our experience, our understanding, our our knowledge, our our ability to sense and see. That that's the holography, or that's that's our thoughts and imaginations. And then the numina, that's the that's what we can't perceive, right? That's the un that's the unknown, that that's the uncertainty of why we even have to decide and act in the first place because of the nature of the numina, where there is no there is no certainty, right? Am I following that right?

Tib Roibu: 27:39

Yeah, that that's correct. And even even more, you can think of so traditionally the numenae is uh is called the thing in itself. So what does the thing look like uh beyond the senses? And sometimes, you know, you can call it uh once uh numena becomes a phenomena in the polynon, uh this has two valences. One is physical and one is mental. There's no clear distinction between them, and I'll give you an example. Uh, if now I say apple, your mind will immediately see an apple, even though there's no physical, there's no phenomenal apple in in that you can touch, right? But there is an apple uh within your mind. So there's no the brain doesn't understand the difference between these two valences that we keep toying around with, and you know, we keep adding granularity, let's say, and we keep uh creating frameworks, the mind doesn't care about that too much. So this is where the holographic principle comes in, uh, you know, more difficult uh aspects. Uh but to keep uh to return to the nominal, uh you can think of it as a form of uncertainty. Uh like it's a it's an unconditioned thing. Uh, this is uh something that I picked up from Melly P. Hall, and it's kind of it has driven my understanding that the unconditioned is the source for the conditioned. So um this also speaks to a very uh good mechanism that I I have been using using it's called via negativa. So you have to understand that when you one if you speak about a thing, you automatically speak about another thing because you are conditioning that thing to exist. So you are applying a boundary.

Mark McGrath: 29:41

Like I can't know light unless I know dark too, right?

Tib Roibu: 29:44

Exactly. So this is also where you know uh Markov Markov uh blankets come into where you have the distinction between uh what's being predicted and the sensory apparatus that's uh measuring that prediction or that's measuring.

Mark McGrath: 29:59

But but in the fantasia, do I destroy and create do I cognitively destroy and create my own internal representations based off of my being and myself and my feelings and my emotions, my experience? I'm I'm I'm constantly destroying and revising that fantasia based off of the phenomena that I I come into contact with or the numena that turns into phenomena is that that reorients me, and then my old previous models get destroyed and new ones get cognitively written.

Tib Roibu: 30:30

Yeah, yeah, of course. I mean, this kind of cycle happens ad infinito, right? So we constantly uh perceive, we constantly update our neural circuits, we have this capability, you know, uh this neuroplasticity that allows us to update beliefs and so forth. Of course, some of them are kind of too too embedded, some of them are hard-coded, so you cannot change them. But that doesn't mean you cannot uh you know add effort and try to work against them. Let's say, you know, various beliefs or various uh neural structures don't allow you to believe something. I don't know. Or they're just an impediment to your specific goal, then what you do is add effort and you try to uh go against uh against the river, let's say.

Mark McGrath: 31:19

I mean here's the question I would ask Ponch, then it brings Ponch back into this. It's like I mean, this is this is another example of where we've run into something. We've caught up with Boyd. Yeah. You know, we we've caught up to him that he may have had a difficult time articulating this, but as I read Tibbs work and I and I see it, it it it really does amplify what Boyd was trying to point us to. Um

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 31:48

No, absolutely. The uh again, this is next level Boyd work, and I hate to call it that, but this is a continuation of what we learned over the last thousands of years, you know, hundreds of years, fifty years, twenty years. Um what I believe Tib adds to this is um a better helps us understand the Odo Loop in a way where we can put that Markov blanket on it and potentially say that there's uh that geometry. Because sometimes, Tim, I'll take um Metatron's Cube and put it in orientation, John Boyd's orientation, and say that is the center of everything. Um, you know, because Metatron's Cube kind of represents all the possible, if I understand it correctly, all the possible geometric shapes in the universe. Uh if I might I might have that wrong. And that orientation is inherently built in and potentially it is uh is below our our conscious level, if you will. Um, and everything around us has some type of geometry, some type of attractor in it. It moves to that attractor space, which makes us see it, makes reduces the energy we spend on seeing it. So that that that's kind of what I'm gaining from this. And I may be completely off off target here, but there is a there is an element that helps us understand how we understand uh and shape the reality we're in.

Mark McGrath: 33:06

I think, Tib, you're also challenging us that to you have to explore reality beyond what's empirical that you can see. And this is where Marshall McLuhan would tell us like you can't just focus on figure of what you can see. You have to focus and think about ground what you what you can't see. Um I was explaining this to theologians the other day. Like in the Creed, it says all things visible and invisible. Well, most people only focus on the visible, but your work is reminding us that there's observable realities that the universe governs, and then there's things that we can't see that are outside of those regular patterns that create the mismatches that we have to that we have to encounter and we have to redefine and we have to rediscover. Um, you know, you talk about like uh gnomic, non-nomic, uh, non-vent, or no vents, non-events. I mean, those those sorts of things that aren't necessarily predictable, aren't necessarily visible by KPIs or metrics or market data, that there's ground beneath it shifting behind our senses that we're not aware of, given the nature of uncertainty and other things, which is why you're saying what you're saying and why Boyd is telling us to constantly we have to keep creating and destroying, creating and destroying our our interpretations of the of the world.

Tib Roibu: 34:30

Yeah, it's that's very well explained. I think this is um in line with the via negativa approach, where you define a thing by what the thing isn't. So this allows you to shift your boundary, your perceptual boundary that you kind of already have decided upon. So you have your belief system that tells you, look, this boundary of this thing I'm perceiving is based on these particular expectations or these particular properties, but then I'm only looking at you know what's in front of me. But if I have a specific uh framework that tells me, look, there's more beyond this, there's more uh more substrate than representation, then everything kind of shifts this boundary, and you understand that the boundary is only perceptual. So it's it's much more uh much like a lens. So if I put uh you know my uh microscope, I'm going to see that there's no actual boundary between my finger and the table, it's just atoms uh looping around and create this kind of energy space that prevents me from pushing forward. And now if I add a you know more powerful lens, I go to the Planck scale and I see wait, there's actually just information below. But what is information? Well, information is this kind of elusive things that we use in our computation models, and it allows us to understand reality as it is and uh have a representation of it in the first place. So now if I add a less powerful or different kind of lens, I'm going to look at uh you know, moons, the moons uh uh circling around Saturn, or I'm going to add a very powerful lens that allowed me to look at the end uh uh far end of the universe. So it's all about perception and it's all about you know um let's say aperture, cognitive aperture if you want. And uh Poncho, you you mentioned uh you know attractors, uh yeah, that depending on what you observe and what you um kind of analyze in your uh Wooda loop, you have these attractors that um push you to a specific uh decision to a specific action. And this comes into uh the the concept of cognitive gravity. So uh when you talk about space-time and especially space-time relativity, uh you have to look at uh at it through a lens of from the uh observer's perspective. And the way I I was uh looking at it was so if the observer is you know uh defining the space-time through its representation of it, let's say, and uh amongst the properties of this space-time we have a curvature that allows uh objects to have gravity, uh that means you can talk about a specific kind of cognitive gravity in which elements that are elements of representations of that space-time are going to follow the same rules. Now, uh you've probably seen what I wrote in terms of how gravity has been used along uh a key uh a few how it has been used uh across economy, across uh computation uh earlier, even you know, 2023, we have a mental gravity model proposed by a scientist in Australia, I believe. So there's a lot of metaphor and also a lot of direct connections between Newtonian gravity and how we can compute various aspects of semantics, various aspects of um you know structure structure uh um structured cognition, let's see. So now when you look at this uh holistically, you can understand that the property of what we consider an outside space-time can be um analyzed and um used in what we would traditionally call mental space. And there's a lot of theory uh uh about this as well. You have uh one of the most influential would be uh Peter Gadderford's uh cogni cognitive uh conceptual spacesologies. Um it has been a very influential work in terms of understanding how cognition is being uh arranged mentally, how you can apply various uh geometric uh properties, spaces to organize uh cognition, and this has been further uh used in the development of artificial intelligence. So there's a very clear um influence on how uh the LLM um geometric deep learning, let's say, has been influenced by uh geometric cognition in all this area, and now coming back to cognitive gravity, you can use this kind of um structure to understand why the certain decisions are being made. Uh, why do we use language the way you use, for example, you know, uh if I feel sad, I'm going to feel heavy, uh, if I'm happy I'm lighter, and so forth. So there's a lot of uh already embedded uh analogies, gravity analogies or gravity-related analogies in our language. So it's kind of sitting there waiting to be analyzed and waiting to be uh kind of developed into this uh beautiful holistic framework that allows us also to transition between domains, between various fields of science.

Mark McGrath: 40:38

Well, it it it also reminds me of the conversation we uh we mentioned before recording with your your countryman Adrian Bijan, that it really does negate the concept that the universe is just some random happy accident that that just came out of nothing. Like like it, there's clearly there's structure, there's clearly design, and you can you can define that however you want, but it doesn't necessarily negate uh uh the concept that all all of this is by design and all of this is with intentional intentional structure. Now we don't have to say Catholic or Orthodox or Jewish or Buddhism or anything like that. We don't have to get into those arguments, but it does really seem to negate like uh orthodox atheism that rests solely on science, because what you're showing here is that science is actually proving that, hey, we don't know everything, and there's a lot of uncertainty, and there's a lot of uh things that phenomenally appear that were uh previously, I forget, uh uh that our fa our fantasia uh encounters phenomenon that was Newman before, right? Like it wasn't it wasn't anything before. And it goes also too back to to John Boyd Snowmobile that when you know uh it it it wasn't there and now it is. Yeah. And the reality was it was there all along, you just couldn't see it. You know.

Tib Roibu: 42:03

Yeah, that so this speaks to this kind of space, which you know has a lot of plenty of um descriptions. Sometimes is the akashic space, sometimes is you know, uh the quantum field that is just the field of probabilities. Um for LLMs it's a latent space, it's just vectors sitting around waiting to be tokenized. So you can approach this depending on uh let's say your preference, uh let's say from your bias or your training, but in the end we all come to the same conclusion that this underlying uh uncertainty that lies outside of our phenomenal experience is there, and we have to acknowledge it by understanding that it is also the source for what we experience. And I think once you understand this kind of dichotomy between the things, and there's no causality in between them, let's uh let's keep this clear as well, because we're you know we're built to to to perceive reality in a very linear fashion, but you know, it's already been established, there's no locality of uh any cognitive event, there's no linearity of time as well, but we keep pushing into this direction with all these frameworks, which is fine because this is how the world works. But in order to have a you know complete transcendence, let's say, we have to allow a paradox, we have to allow this kind of non-identity principle where I'm not going to identify with either the phenomenal, with either the nominal. I'm going to have an experience, I'm going to understand it. But uh as I push forward, you know, towards my final entropic state, let's say where my information is going to go back into uh whatever the source is, I am going to be very aware that uh that is that that source, I was a representation of that source. I was uh a diffracted version of that that of that source. And you can think of uh and I I use diffraction for a specific reason reason because it's a good analogy to think of how we have local experiences uh even though we are uh part of the same source. Um so if you find if you look uh at a river or you you sit by the sea and you find uh waves that are refr uh reflecting light or diffracting light, you have this sense that each individual light has its own source of uh light, but it's actually the only one single source. And uh you can easily do this with cognition through uh geometric models and through the polynomial.

Mark McGrath: 45:08

Like you're you're not you're not making a God versus no god argument. You're basically saying, you know, what what's the nature of the numeral ground that that consciousness continues to reveal? Like there's there's there's clearly something going on, or or there's there's there's clearly uh more than just you know trust the science and and and and that's it. Because because of the numinal ground that that consciousness arise to as phenomena presents itself, right? Is that is that a fair Yeah, yeah, that's correct.

Tib Roibu: 45:40

And of course, like you you can say you can uh define this uh as God. I mean uh tradition has been uh used traditionally, uh this realm has been defined as God, you know, by Spinoza, by Leibniz, by all of uh all of these big thinkers, even Einstein believed in God, right?

Mark McGrath: 46:03

Heisenberg that Boyd uh Boyd Heisenberg said something along the lines of you go into you go into this thinking that there is no God, and the deeper that you drink from the glass of science, the the closer you get to God, like you realize there's something something I I I butchered the quote.

Tib Roibu: 46:21

But so you have this kind of uh substrate to which we are trying to uh find what is the boundary of I'm just sharing what's on your website right now um on the screen.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 46:39

It's coming back up, the uh state of consciousness, and it's kind of related to the topic you're on, we're on. Um I mean, I I we'll we'll give a link for everybody to see this, but can you walk us through um I mean, many of the things we already brought up are on this uh webpage? Yep. Um but can you walk us through a little bit more on this? And and uh before you do that, I'm kind of interesting here. Yeah, you have like constructor theory, you have assembly theory, um a lot of things that we've had on the show, we we've a lot of you know, there's a lot of uh commonality between what you're talking about and what we look at in here. You got David Chalmers on here, uh, but can you walk us through a little bit more on what this is? Again, there's an old Seth right there, right? Um, which is fantastic. So uh take us through this a little bit.

Tib Roibu: 47:21

Yeah. So basically, uh right about the time um the paper from uh uh Robert Lawrence Cohn came out, uh, the state of consciousness science, I was looking at um you know the most prevalent theories in order to understand uh where is the polynomial uh coming from, how does the polynomial with uh existing theories, what are some of the blind spots as well. And uh Robert Lawrence Kuhn made this uh very comprehensive landscape of theories of consciousness, and uh this allowed me to look at uh some of them and most of them actually through my own uh individual um topics of interest, let's say. And I was and I am specifically interested in how most of the theories uh talk or integrate the observer. Some of them don't even take uh uh take into account the observer. Um how is uh the wave function used? Because if you are going to talk about the observer, if you are going to talk about this specific type of reality of uh or another, you have to take into account the wave function, especially because it hasn't been um you know defined other than some kind of an epistemological boundary condition or some kind of effect between um systems that interact within what we call measurement. Uh, I'm also interested in how numena is treated. Now you have Bernardo Castrop who is um favoring, let's say, uh integrated information theory as uh the num the most uh effective theory in uh explaining or defining reality through the nominal. Um so there's a lot of blind spots that uh I try to build upon because this is uh also that's coming in from my um uh my training as a foresight practitioner. So I'm used to look at a specific market or a specific industry, try to identify uh the properties of that system, try to look at it you know from various angles, and build uh where people are not looking at, for example. And this also comes into uh draws back into the the negativa and looking beyond the borders and um yeah, looking at what's the what's lying outside of specific uh theories, and I try to build on there.

Mark McGrath: 50:08

I keep go so um you know I I went to Jesuit school, so it was extremely philosophy heavy and and Thomism uh with Thomas Aquinas' five proofs of the rejection of to demonstrate the logical rejection of of atheism. And I feel like the more that um again, I I keep coming back to this, but the the matter-first approach that the physicalist orthodox atheist has, I mean, you're you you're you're really making that argument wobble. Like you're really making that argument seem shallow and and and contradictory because it negates our own uh cognition and understanding and ability to process the the phenomena that we encounter in the in the world. I mean, in a lot of ways, it defines that as it's its own fantasia, right? Like, like that matter-first atheistic approach, that physicalist approach or whatever that that uh that's that that's that's someone's fantasia based off of of phenomena that they that they they came into contact with with the numinal thing that we don't even we don't even know. Yeah, but I absolutely like the observer, the observer is the lens, like the always is like the observer is the lens that's filtering what it is that they they see.

Tib Roibu: 51:28

Yeah, so uh coming back to the holographic principle, I think this is something that allows us to understand that both matter or non-matter depends on you what not that non-matter is, mental, uh metaphysical or whatever, they're both uh complementaries uh of the same substance. Now the observer is defined in the polynon as the function of self-reflection for consciousness. And this comes back to um some of the properties of the polynon. So when you look at the um, let's say if I ask you now to visualize a cube, now the edges of that cube would be our own measurement of that specific cube since the vertices are all equal and identical because they're pure consciousness. So there's no distinction between them. And this is in some sense it's uh similar to uh the one electron postulate from uh Wheeler, where you don't have any distinction between any type of uh this kind of entity. So there's no distinction between any uh conscious experience you have, there's a difference between the experience itself, but you're there's no valence between conscious moment, uh conscious moment itself. So that's why the postulate here is that the vertices of this particular cube are you know uh in superposition or they're equal and identical. And what we're doing, we're just adding our own expression, our own experience of that cube. I'm trying to visualize it. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to unfold my cube into cognition. I'm going to add edges, and this is where you know the specific mechanism that I'm currently working on uh allows us to have this um binome between phenomena and fantasia, you know, where all this comes together.

Mark McGrath: 53:29

I mean, you're you're basically like I think a polynon, it it sort of kills that arrogance of that only the measurable is what's real.

Tib Roibu: 53:40

To some extent, yeah, but um we have to make uh also room for this kind of um equilibrium between worlds. So it doesn't, you know, say that uh materi the materialism uh side is not uh correct or that uh reality is an illusion, therefore it's a lie, and you know, whatever is out there, it's much more. No, everything is correct as it is, and we have to acknowledge that it's just only uh one side of the story or one particular uh you know narrative or folder within all of these uh so many stories. And I I usually look uh and use the um there's a very clever uh analogy I like to use here. So you have a cylinder that looks like a square from one side and as a circle from another side, and you know, both parties are arguing about no, this is a circle, but no, it's actually a square. And you have a third observer that sees you know the uh the cylinder and points, you know, yeah, that there's an underlying truth, and both of you are right. And this is where you know that's the void pyramid discussion.

Mark McGrath: 54:59

Yeah, yeah.

Tib Roibu: 55:00

So this is where the paradox comes in, and we have to allow paradoxes, and we have to allow multiple truths existing at the same time without being in uh uh in contradiction, uh that but they are in some kind of complementary structure. And yeah, I mean again the polynomial allows you to kind of have this transcendence, and you can see this uh this type of mechanism in um in quite a few other theories, let's say, or loops, um, especially in uh the strange loop of uh Hofstadter. Uh you can see it in Gold Gdel's loop. So um you can see it also in Twister's theory from uh uh Roger Penrose, but they do have ontological differences. Uh so for example, the commitment uh I do hear in the polynon is that every representation or every uh geometric aspect is cognition. So every number, every line you you are going to do, so any kind of theory you are going to create out of these uh shapes and representations are only going to be about cognition. Uh now what the polynon does is flip this. So if I I'm going to draw now a whatever uh geometric shape or whatever, uh that's an inanimate representation of something that's um purely subjective, purely conscious. So that's why the polynon flips this by keeping you know the same kind of via negativa approach, looking at what defines this representation. So if my consciousness is uh the source for this representation, that's why uh you know every vertices of any polynon, denon, uh hexanon, and so forth, no matter how many edges I'm going to add or vertices, every vertice is going to be uh pure consciousness, and anything else is just my representation, just my experience, and so forth.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 57:16

So there are a bunch of uh competing theories and principles out there that uh are not necessarily diametrically opposed, but they're to me they you know they look at whatever from their own lens, and I'll throw a few out there. Um free energy principles suggest that we have uh act uh excuse me, an active inference suggests that we actively go through a simulation and we actively engage and we get some feedback from the environment. We get predictive processing, and then on the other side, you get ecological dynamics, ecological uh psychology that says we there's no way we have any prediction, there's no way we have a role model, and we just do these things. Our view is nobody's wrong or right. It's just that collectively they're looking at this elephant and go back to the description of the uh and we have a video of that, by the way, where we we show at an object, look, look, you know, you're looking at it from different angles, like uh um Moose brought up with the uh with the pyramid. Um nobody's right or wrong. We're all we're all seeing this from our own perspective from our own lens. Collectively, we're going to build a better understanding of why we're here, potentially, right? So let me ask you this why why is this research to you, why is it important? Why why do people study consciousness? What's the end state? Where are we going or the direction of travel? What why why are people interested in this?

Tib Roibu: 58:30

That's a good question. And I think this comes down to um understanding our own subjectivity in a place that feels not suited for subjectivity. So because you're conscious of yourself, you're conscious of yourself and so forth, this is kind of lets me know that I have a specific uh experience of this world that's unique, but that also fits within a larger scope. So while everything seems to revolve around my own subjectivity and my own experience, so everything feels really anthropocentric, let's say, uh all the uh uh evidence points towards something bigger than my own subjectivity. And I think we all try to understand does this experience end when you know our life ends, or does this experience uh comes comes or is part of something beyond my own uh local experience of this reality? And there's no intrinsic, sometimes there's no intrinsic motive for why do we ask. So sometimes we ask because it's it's just beautiful to discover and to create. And I think this is one of the actual purposes of uh the human species, to just to discover. And this comes back to the observer being the function of self-reflection. There's no intrinsic uh purpose. We're just here to have an experience. Now, due to you know various properties of this reality, this experience comes with properties, comes with morality, with uh judgment, with you know, social structures, with culture and so forth, with beauty, uh, with what we can assign as truth. So we keep uh unfolding this experience into various models, various geometries, uh, but in in the end we're not going to have a complete or true answer until we are not phenomenal, not part of the CRLTA. So we what we can do is have uh better and better representations that uh are aligned with the majority, let's say, and that allow other theories uh to be uh captured in. So this is one of the other um purposes of the polynon to look at and kind of embrace all the theories and not uh create more um you know friction between uh theories.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 1:01:14

So I want to thank you for your time. And before we wrap up, I'm gonna have a few other questions here. Um this is there's so much to go back and look at again from this, just what we recorded, and would love to have you back on because I know we're gonna have many, many questions. Uh but I want to make uh see if there's any connection to like cinatics, to music. I know music is geometry. There's a reason we like to hear things certain ways. Music is is in the universe, uh, the spaces between um planets and all that, there's geometry and all that. And now there's reports that uh psychedelic assisted therapy or psychedelic experience. Experiences allow us greater access to more geometry, right? Geometric shapes. This may be true when you meditate or go through yoga or whatever it may be. But have you looked into any of those reports or or fields where they're saying people are seeing a lot of geometric shapes when they're when they're when they're in a flow state?

Tib Roibu: 1:02:09

Yes. And I think this is a very complex subject because it taps into all of these realms. So you mentioned cymatics, which is which is uh the science of sound, you mentioned waves, which goes into, let's see, quantum mechanics, uh, you mentioned perhaps some kind of psychedelic or meditative state where you uh detach from uh cognition. And um I think the underlying motive here is that everything is some kind of wave, and everything has um this underlying structure to which we can tap into once we don't uh focus so much on the cognitive aspect or so much uh of our attention is focused on a particular subject. So um I think for me this uh this geometric uh construct comes from uh a very particular um loop I have been describing in for the polynomial, and it's a loop that uh appears when the observer observes itself. Or uh when you have uh two two two states, one is the observer, one is the observe. You can depending on the positions uh in a state space or in uh any kind of space, uh you can create a Lisage curve, it's called, you'll see in one of my papers. Uh so basically you have two things that are uh perpendicular or orthogonal depending on their trajectories, and you have a geometric uh curve that appears naturally when they uh when you look at the geometry uh between them. So this is a very simple way to look at any kind of wave. So the wave is not uh representing anything else but my experience of myself, and once you extrapolate this to cognition, to meditation, to any kind of representation, uh it allows it to unfold all the geometries we see when we don't uh have a cognitive experience. Um, it allows us to look at cognition through a very simple geometric uh perspective, uh, but also that connects into already existing uh theories. I hope this uh answers this uh there's no simple answer.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 1:04:36

No, and like I said, I believe we're gonna have to have another conversation in the future if that's if that's fine with you. Yeah, happy, happy to do it. There's so many things that you brought up, and so much that I think our listeners need to dive into, we need to write about to kind of make the connections and synthesize some of the things that were said said this uh episode. Um but before we leave today, Tib, uh where can people find your work, uh, what you're doing? Of course, we'll share that on the uh show notes. And then what's next for you?

Tib Roibu: 1:05:04

So you can find my work on polynomials.com. I usually post uh there my papers and my research. Uh I'll post their soon updates as soon as I have uh something more concrete. Uh now next steps are uh formalizing this into a very specific framework. So uh all of my papers currently act more like white papers. So I do have a specific uh framework that supports some of the claims I'm doing, but I'm not uh published uh they're not public right now uh because I'm missing some of the pieces, and I don't want to go into specific uh, let's say, arguments or specific postulates without having a very scientific background. I'm very careful about making uh these kinds of claims. I'm also very specific in having a very uh balanced approach between philosophy and uh science. So I do look at why some of the arguments are done in this way, you know, in the Eastern tradition, how are these replicated in current scientific models? And you can see this across uh, you know, all the other theories. So, yeah, basically, I'm trying to uh go to market, let's say uh with the polynon, I'm building a small venture in terms of uh building cognitive uh buildings. So we're trying to look at how the environment is uh influencing us through um what's being called a cognitive building and especially cognitive space. So I'm bringing some of this information uh into actual uh concepts that are going to allow us to better uh uh have better experiences uh in the built environment. So uh plenty of development coming uh in the next year. So I hope uh I hope this makes a very good uh adventure for all of us, not just for me.

Brian "Ponch" Rivera: 1:07:04

That's fantastic. Uh Moose, you have anything to wrap up with?

Mark McGrath: 1:07:07

No, I want to be I I this is mind-blowing. Um I mean it affirms a lot of what we talk about, but it also too it challenges us to keep doing what we've been doing in the developing of this because there's nothing that ever should have been static about Boyd's work um or McLuhan's or Teard's and everything. These things are supposed to be developed and discussed. So um yeah, to participate in this with you, Tib, any way we can is uh is certainly an honor. And it it's it it resonates and hits because I think it's it it's very uh it's very in line with what what Ponch and I collaborate and talk about every basically every day.

Tib Roibu: 1:07:48

So yeah, truly, truly. So well, thanks for being here, Tib. Thanks for having me and looking forward for our next next discussion. Absolutely.