AI and this Substack

Anyone can fill pages with almost endless “interesting” things provided by AI in response to questions about aspects of Freeorder. I’m going to try to avoid doing that. This Substack is human centric, although many of its readers, and its editor, are users of AI, and a few of us are involved with things pertaining to its foundations.

The focus here is on stories of exploration in which someone I know is deeply engaged, and where the story has some connection with the actual or potential Emergence of Freeorder as a general pattern of expectations and actions that makes the world fit for explorers and helps us fit ourselves to live well in that world.

AIs will be present here insofar as they contribute to or hinder the adventures of participants in this substack.

freeorder is a word chosen to name quest-enabling balances among spontaneous and designed orders — it is the flourishing of personal and shared quests that fascinates and motivates me. Knowing things for knowings sake is not enough.

I love the music of consciousness. It horrifies me to image that the universe could be entirely consumed by collections of non-sentient atoms doing nothing but emulating the creatures who created the earliest of them.

Of course, such atavistic horror may not be necessary. New worlds are born of old ones, and carry forward much that might be supposed lost. For another time …

“Big Nano” — Cross Roads IP Holdings ••• making things large enough to be useful while exhibiting the nanoscale behaviors of the crystals that comprise them. Such as superconducting wire. A number of readers of this substack are involved in this.

Niklas Anzinger, Infinita City Times, re: longevity and age reversal

Virginia Postrel: “Ambition Without Hierarchy: The American Experiment at 250” ••• This essay is part of a series ••• published by Liberty Fund •••

Ronald Reagan: “A Time for Choosing” — 1964, a speech not to be forgotten

Text of the speech ••• Audio of the speech •••

Shannon Ewing, Sodality •••

“Naked in Public: On going first, terrified” •••

‘I can handle a lot of my own discomfort if it is in service of others — and this feels like it is. It feels like a moment when it is crucial we re-find each other. When we question what the hell is happening and come together to find a new direction. The ship has drifted off-course.’

‘The warnings about “divide and conquer” have been written of for millennia, yet here we are, still letting it work on us. Cohering is its solvent. I believe more than anything that it is through finding our fellowship that we can right the course.’

“Here We Go Again: On the patterns that are choosing us” ••• — honest, difficult, powerful, worth thought …

“To What We Can't Control: Small gatherings can be surprisingly subversive” •••

“Is Finding the Answer Overrated? In Defense of the Question” ••• by Diamond-Michael Scott

Diamond-Michael Scott: “Why I Believe Analog Connection is the New Future of Books” •••

Ralston College ••• “AI and the Battle for the Soul” ••• with Iain McGilchrist, Jonathan Pageau, and Stephen Wolfram

Lecture 1 ••• “Do We Really Understand Understanding”, Iain McGilchrist •••

Lecture 2 ••• “Whom Does AI Serve? …”, Jonathan Pageau •••

Lecture 3 ••• “True Freedom in an Artificial World”, Iain McGilchrist •••

Stephen Wolfram ••• — no lecture; he was on a panel earlier.

Brandon Hargreaves’ weekly program ••• on Hedera a DLT (Distributed Ledger)

HOL Guard [protection against unwanted agent-actions]

‘AI agents are getting more powerful and with that power and access to your data comes a risk. If you're using tools like clawed code, cursor codecs, Gemini CLI or other AI coding agents, those agents may be able to run commands, access files, install packages, or interact with your local environment.

That's where HOL guard comes in. Leveraging the Hedera consensus service, HOL Guard adds a safety layer between your AI agent and the tools it wants to run. It can help intercept risky actions before they happen, like secret file reads, dangerous commands, installs, MCP changes, and other actions you may want to approve before execution.’

Ed Warner tells the story of his development of coalbed methane, and later discovery of a major gas field in Wyoming — a video interview made by the AAPG

The American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG) •••

CATO: “The Case for Consumer-Regulated Electricity: Private Electricity Grids Offer a Parallel Path to Energy Abundance” •••

Sky Huddleston’s Eternal Engines: “Compact modular engine platforms delivering high output, low weight, multifuel capabilities, and exceptional endurance for advanced field operations.”

What could engines like this do for work off-grid? How much grid dependence might be eliminated? Would neighborhood electricity providers appear? What adjustments of regulation could support this?

Ed Dowd has begun a Substack, “Welcome to Ed Dowd: Beyond the Narrative: Navigating reality from narrative using data and common sense” ••• [thanks to David Hock for this information]

Vitaliy Katsenelson: AI’s financing, possible trouble and the reasons for it

investor.fm/todays-market-1999-capex-2008-credit (subscription probably required for the whole article; worth it for some readers of this substack.)

One paragraph aș evidence of the value of Katsenelson’s insights:

‘There is also a lot of incestuous vendor financing going on. For example: Nvidia is in talks to guarantee roughly $250 billion (yes, with a B) in lease and debt financing for an OpenAI data center campus in Ohio, and separately to help finance up to $350 billion of OpenAI’s purchases of Nvidia chips. The customer cannot afford the product, so the vendor cosigns the loan. Nvidia’s guarantee exists precisely to reassure the lenders backing these financing vehicles, as the borrower does not have an investment-grade rating.’

Katsenelson provides a link to this paper: “Private Credit's State Backstop: How Private Equity Socializes Risk Through Insurers” ••• 21 July 2026, by Pranjal Drall, Yale School of Management, and Andrew Granato, University of Texas at Austin School of Law.

Ed Dowd and Vitaliy Katsenelson should probably read each other’s substacks.

Eventually, reality matters; and when it does the fiction that hid it cannot be rewritten.

Foundation for Economic Education elebrates its 80th Anniversary •••

Where did the resources come from to start FEE? What do we know of the motives of those who provided them?

‘Harold Luhnow ••• through the Volker Fund, gave Leonard Read a $30,000 grant to establish FEE in 1946.’ —Perplexity.ai

It may be that, in these times, very few things are of more long-term importance than finding and making new sources of wealth and arranging for them to be invested in liberty.

James Howard Kunstler •••

“The Curse It Is Cast” ••• the Dr. Fauci Affair

“I have nothing to hide. I can explain and validate everything that I’ve done.” —Dr. Anthony Fauci, recorded for TV in 2022”

‘… by Bolshevik-Jacobin I mean the marriage of murderous envy with civic psychosis. The line it is drawn; the curse it is cast, Dylan prophesied half a century ago.’

“War, Over There, Over Here” •••

“The left’s goal is always to break human reason. . . .” —Elizabeth Nickson

A Midwestern Doctor vs Collective Amnesia •••

‘Before the press was captured, vaccine injuries were openly covered on national TV. Now the dam of censorship is breaking, and we can finally confront the tragic history that keeps repeating.’

‘I compiled this article in the hope of breaking the collective amnesia, now that the pharmaceutical industry’s grip on the media is finally slipping. Below are 75 news reports on the dangers of vaccination that have been almost entirely forgotten and would never be broadcast today.’

We know they lie. We know they know they lie. They are paid to do it, and understand that they will be destroyed if they stop. Many of their stockholders and creditors know this, too. The world has been behind a seawall of lies, under continual desperate maintenance. At last, the sea of truth is beginning to come over the top. What will the world do? -ls

A Conversation: Thor Halvorssen, Oslo Freedom Forum & Pavel Durov, Telegram

Konstantin Kisin, opening speech ••• at Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC)

‘Liberty is becoming a dirty word on both left and right because many now mistakenly associate liberty with the grotesque excesses of liberalism, which has mutated from the pursuit of freedom from tyranny to the pursuit of freedom from reality.’

Mahyer Tousi, now a British expat, is moving to Ft. Lauderdale, Florida.

The Daily Chocolate Taoist, on Watermelon ••• and “The Rectification of Names”

‘What the Tao Already Knew About Names: Confucius, asked what he would do first if given the power to govern, answered with a single idea: the rectification of names. If a thing is not called what it actually is, he warned, the order built on that naming eventually collapses. What happened to the watermelon after emancipation was the rectification of names running backward. A fruit that had genuinely meant freedom and self-sufficiency was renamed, loudly and repeatedly, to mean the opposite.’

The regular usage and acceptance of names assigned by others internalizes vast spontaneous orders. Sovereign naming, the active binding of your own words to things of special personal importance, forms the basis for internal designed orders. Seeking and finding ever better balances among such spontaneous and designed orders tends to result in language that is quest-enabling. Such language is an aspect of freeorder. 🌱 freeorder (process) — Freeorder (outcomes)

And, that which is without name tends to non-existence. Hence, the need for the word, “freeorder”, and reminders such as: “🌱 freeorder (process) —> Freeorder (outcomes)”

Lucy Biggers interviewed on Triggernomety •••

Lucy tells a story of profound change of mind, and has the courage to tell it plainly. Konstantin Kisin is the interviewer.

Daniel Becker, on financial mechanisms independent of governments

“The State of Truly Parallel Monetary Systems in 2026” •••

“Seder and the Garden” ••• Does order actually require hierarchy?

Because thinking about kinds of order is central to this substack the series of stories by Daniel holds interest for me -ls.

Joyce Brand ••• writer, Free Cities Foundation ••• and Morazan Model Association •••

“What Zurich Reveals About Governance” •••

“What Tokyo Reveals About Governance” •••

“What Venice Reveals About Governance” •••

“What Singapore Reveals About Governance” •••

“What Dubai Reveals About Governance” •••

“What Tallinn Reveals About Governance” •••

“What Amsterdam Reveals About Governance” •••

Dan Noble, Noble Bioresources ••• working in the S.F. Bay area

‘I’ve been studying and working with the bioregional movement, Design School for Regenerating Earth, Bioregional Finance Facilities (BioFi.earth), and Bioregional Hub development (BioHub.earth).... studying and endeavoring to implement Common-pool resource management for our bioregional bioresources (ala Elinor Ostrom) including her evolving economic practice perspectives given birth in her paper "Beyond States and Markets: Polycentric Governance of Complex Economic Systems” By Elinor Ostrom.’

Elinor Ostrom: “Beyond Markets and States: Polycentric Governance of Complex Economic Systems” •••

I’ve been thinking about polycentrism as applicable to regulatory systems. In what circumstances should organizations be able to chose their own regulator, taking the consequences of their choice as affected people appraise results? In a system of polycentric voluntary regulation when I choose an attorney I would ask under which regulatory authorities does e do er work? -ls

Hedera makes MEV impossible — many layer 1 DLTs have difficulty

“MEV” = “Maximum Extractable Value”, which means It means the extra value a blockchain block producer or similar actor can get by including, excluding, or reordering transactions in a block.

Hedera’s page [text] on MEV, with Kshitish ‘Kash’ Balhotra: “Why MEV-resistance is not optional for institutional blockchain infrastructure” •••

Robert W. Malone: “The Fabian Society: conquering the free world” ••• 22 Jul 26

In the 1930’s the London School of Economics, founded by the Fabians in 1884, was the place where Hayek set in motion forces now seeking to displace our growing submission to the administrative state. The teachings of Ludwig von Mises, Hayek’s mentor and former employer, probably gave Hayek courage to do his work, as if in a small boat struggling in a storm created by almost every one of his professional associates, to whom he later dedicated his book, The Road to Serfdom, 1944.

By the way, the Fabians rejected Marxism and his labor theory of value. This is widely not understood. See the article ••• by Malone.

A Fundamental Question Regarding Emergence: From Whence Comes Good?

All preference, all valuation, depends on expectation.

If the world is to change deeply the roots of expectation must grow differently. This can not be forced by logical exposition, but may be a consequence of it, because within a new conceptual framework patterns of stories can be found and told that gradually, without explicit instruction, shift internal force fields that influence expectation, so that what once seemed wrong now seems right, and what once seemed right now seems wrong. This is a basis for Emergence.