Cosmologies.
The framework engages almost exclusively with Western traditions. Klein, Bowlby, Kernberg, Tomasello, Axelrod, Brand, Acemoglu, Kauffman, the acequia read through anthropological framing. The substrate canon has been tested against substrates that share Western metaphysical assumptions about the individual, about object constancy, about what a self is.
A genuinely substrate-invariant theory of trust would have to engage with substrates that do not begin from the individual, that do not assume object constancy, that have specified relational architectures older than the framework's oldest canonical example. The Cosmologies Project is the discipline that claim requires.
Eleven traditions over twelve months. One tradition at a time. Predictions locked before reading. Primary sources from within each tradition. Findings published whether they confirm or refute. The framework is revised when the contact warrants it. The project is signed. It runs whether or not anyone is watching.
The framework cannot claim substrate-invariance until it has been tested against substrates whose metaphysical assumptions differ from its own.
Until then, the substrate-invariance claim carries a footnote: tested only against Western substrates so far. The Cosmologies Project removes the footnote — or, where the contact forces revision, replaces the claim with a more honest one.
The first three traditions are chosen to stress-test the highest-leverage uncertainties: non-self framing (Buddhist sangha, does Class 1 survive?), substrate-anchored identity (Ubuntu, does C687 acquire a non-Western ancestor?), and Western-pathology scope of Class 1 (Amae, is the architecture partly individualist pathology?). The remaining months extend the cohort across kin systems, federation, reciprocity, study, transmission, network capital, and plural identity. Month twelve is synthesis.
- 01Read the prediction memo for the current month before reading any of the framework's findings. The discipline is the lock; the lock is exposed, not just claimed.
- 02Listen to the NotebookLM podcast trio per tradition: Predictions (end of week 1), Engagement (end of week 3), Findings (end of week 4).
- 03Watch the cohort table. Months change status from upcoming → active → complete. Active months publish weekly; complete months hold their findings.
- 04Subscribe to the monthly Cosmologies dispatch — one short newsletter per tradition at the end of synthesis week. The score, the surprise, the revision.
- 05Reply where you can correct the outsider read. Send sources from within your own tradition. Suggest traditions absent from the cohort that ought to be in a future one.
Each month follows the same standardized 4-week cycle: Predict (lock the memo before reading begins), Read (primary sources from within the tradition), Watch & Listen (lectures, podcasts, outreach), and Synthesize (score every prediction, draft findings, publish). Source discipline: scholar-translators within the tradition, no second-hand Western readings, no encyclopedia entries treated as primary.
Full methods →I am an outsider. Please correct me.
The Cosmologies Project engages every tradition it studies in good faith, from the outside. It tests the framework against substrates whose metaphysical assumptions differ from its own. That is the work. The discipline is the prediction memo locked before reading begins, the primary sources from within the tradition, and the willingness to publish findings whether they confirm or refute.
If you read these pages and the framework gets something wrong about your tradition, please tell me. If you can point to sources from within the tradition that the project should engage with and has not, please send them. If you think a tradition is missing from the cohort that ought to be in it, please name it — a future cohort can absorb what this one cannot.
Reach me through the project's contact channels. Replies are read. Corrections enter the findings memo for the relevant month and, where warranted, revise the framework in the graph.
Shipwreck →
The 2026 Bau Lab red-team study read through the framework. Where Cosmologies tests the substrate canon against non-Western traditions, Shipwreck tests it against empirical AI-agent failure data. Both ongoing. Both signed.
Canon →
The framework's substrate canon — the concepts, claims, tensions, and motifs the Cosmologies Project is testing against eleven traditions. Where this project surfaces revisions, the canon absorbs them.