A curated archive of conceptual and philosophical work by Stephen A. Putman on models, meaning, interpretation, simulation, governance, symbolic systems, and human-AI interaction.
This repository provides a redundant public mirror of selected preprints originally published on Zenodo. The Zenodo DOI listed for each work remains the canonical citation identifier. The mirrored PDFs are provided here for accessibility and continuity during temporary repository outages.
Unless otherwise noted, the papers retain their original CC BY-NC 4.0 licensing. See LICENSE.md.
| Work | Focus | Published | Version |
|---|---|---|---|
| A Practical Simulation Theory: How Modeled Reality Becomes Lived Reality | Model-mediated reality, perception, media, AI, and model governance | May 20, 2026 | v0.2 |
| Models, Meaning, and Continuity: A Three-Part Essay Cycle on Models, Metaphor, and Story | Models as cuts into continuity, metaphor, story, and transmission | May 28, 2026 | v0.2 |
| Another Monday: Four Linked Essays on Symbols, Recurrence, and Human Meaning | Symbols, recurrence, frames, shared meaning, and consequential labels | May 17, 2026 | v0.2 |
| The Right Not to Be Modeled: Privacy, Surveillance, and Involuntary Model-Building | Privacy, inference, surveillance, modelability, and institutional consequence | May 22, 2026 | v0.2 |
| The First Levain: Communication, Transmission, and the Human Drive to Share Meaning | Communication, story, cultural transmission, models, media, and AI | June 3, 2026 | v0.2 |
| Government as a Sensing System | Public sensing, weak signals, federalism, feedback, and governance | August 26, 2026 | v0.2 |
A Practical Simulation Theory: How Modeled Reality Becomes Lived Reality
This working paper distinguishes metaphysical Simulation Theory from Practical Simulation Theory: a model-mediated account of how living beings perceive, remember, communicate, coordinate, and act through layered simulations arising from within reality. It argues that “fake” is the wrong frame; perception is modeled contact with reality, and the practical task is to govern models so they clarify reality rather than replace it.
Zenodo: https://zenodo.org/records/20301862
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20301862
Models, Meaning, and Continuity: A Three-Part Essay Cycle on Models, Metaphor, and Story
A three-part essay cycle examining how models selectively stabilize continuity, how metaphor transfers relational structure across domains, and how story preserves meaning through temporal sequence. The opening essay defines models as repeatable procedures that select and stabilize part of an ongoing process so it can be recognized, recorded, transmitted, or acted upon.
Zenodo: https://zenodo.org/records/20420348
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20420348
Another Monday: Four Linked Essays on Symbols, Recurrence, and Human Meaning
A linked essay cycle exploring symbolic overlays, recurrence, shared meaning, authored frames, and consequential labels. It examines how useful symbolic compression can harden into stronger claims or consequences when the model, label, or frame is mistaken for the underlying reality.
Zenodo: https://zenodo.org/records/20259890
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20259890
The Right Not to Be Modeled: Privacy, Surveillance, and Involuntary Model-Building
This essay reframes privacy as partial governance over modelability: the degree to which a person can be inferred from, classified, predicted, simulated, scored, or acted upon through available traces. It focuses particularly on models that become involuntary, opaque, persistent, consequential, and difficult to contest.
Zenodo: https://zenodo.org/records/20335428
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20335428
The First Levain: Communication, Transmission, and the Human Drive to Share Meaning
A public-facing opening essay for The Levain of Logos. It explores communication as the transmission of usable inner states between minds and follows that process through language, story, song, models, media, and artificial intelligence.
Zenodo: https://zenodo.org/records/20518585
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20518585
Government as a Sensing System
This working paper develops a conceptual model of government as a layered public architecture for making shared conditions observable and actionable through the recurring sequence:
Notice → Interpret → Shape → Govern
It examines weak signals, differing observational resolutions, institutional interpretation, feedback, and the recursive relationship between governance and the conditions subsequently observed.
Zenodo: https://zenodo.org/records/22119627
DOI: https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.22119627
Stephen A. Putman
Independent researcher working on meaning, weak-signal interpretation, agent architecture, AI governance, and model-mediated systems.
- ORCID: https://orcid.org/0009-0007-7698-0737
- GitHub: https://github.com/putmanmodel
- Mastodon: https://mastodon.social/@StephenAPutman
- Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/putmanmodel.bsky.social
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephen-a-putman-0ba70a36b/
- X/Twitter: https://x.com/SuperPutman
Please cite the canonical Zenodo record and DOI associated with the relevant paper rather than this GitHub mirror.
Unless otherwise noted, the works mirrored in this repository are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC 4.0).
See LICENSE.md for details.