Precision Agency

J.

Feb 01, 2026

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This is a write up on my current thinking around how humans procedurally generate their model of reality and its implications. I do not claim for all things here to be 100% true in the “mapping directly to objective reality” type of way, but rather “this is my understanding, and there is valuable stuff going on here.”

When I began reading Wittengstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, I came across some things I disagreed with or found problems with. One of those things was that the world is made of facts, not things, and objects have pre-judged possibilities for combining into facts (1.1, 1.13, 2.012, 2.0121, 2.01). Wittengstein seems to claim that this logical structure is objective and fixed.

This is not to be a critique of Wittengstein’s work (since my understanding of it is quite shallow), but rather a detailed synthesis of information that his claims spawned in my working mind. I do not claim to be “more correct” than he is, I simply want to propose a combination of a multitude of facts I have come across that synthesize into something interesting and useful.

Quick primer on emptiness in case you need it: In Buddhist philosophy, emptiness doesn’t mean nothing exists. It means things lack inherent, independent existence. Objects and experiences arise dependently because they’re constructed through the meeting of causes, conditions, and the perceiving mind. Nothing has a fixed essence “out there” independent of the conditions that bring it into being. All things are made of co-arising conditions. For example, a water bottle is “empty” because its nature depends on the mind that is perceiving it.

The reason I found a problem with some of Wittengstein’s claims is that which facts about things are pre-judged depends on individual perception, which is empty. Facts then, are dependent on many things like conditioning, language, culture, etc. There is no shared unified objective reality facts can build. Sure there may be “out there” reality, but out there reality is always going to be a map, a model, we cannot touch it. What this means is that things don’t have inherent possibilities; what seems possible depends on your framework & conditioning. If I see a cup on a table in front of me, this cup has many pre-judged facts in it, such as “this cup is on a wood table”, or “this cup is in front of me.” But, these facts are dependent on my sense of sight, my language, and sense of direction. What if one did not have a sense of sight, blindness? Their facts would be entirely different from mine. I’m guessing one might try and disagree and say “but you guys are both pointing at the same thing,” but that POINTING is not at the same thing. The pointers may be in the same direction (parallel), but how can the Thing be the same if our perception is entirely different? What if their perception did not have color? Is it the same thing then? Reality can never be judged without the model.

This project “““““fails””””” because it tries to describe reality independent of perception, which is impossible— all access is mediated by facts dependent on the subject.

Furthermore, facts about things are weighted more depending on the model’s precision policy. You and I could generate the same facts about the word “left,” but one fact in your mind that you favor would differ from another fact in my mind I weight heavily. For example, maybe your model weighs “political affiliation” heavily in the context of “left,” but mine weighs “direction” just as heavily, however we still might carry the other facts, they are just behind our PREFERRED ones. This helps demonstrate that logical possibilities aren’t objective features but perspective-dependent structures.

Your brain is stuck inside a skull, receiving only noisy electrical signals. It has no direct access to reality. So it builds a model of the world based on many things such as past experience and genetics, constantly generating predictions like “that’s a table” or “this is my hand.”

Perception is a controlled hallucination. What you experience is your brain’s best guess, constrained by sensory input.

The brain continuously compares its predictions (part of its model) against data from the six senses (sight, sound, smell, taste, touch, and thought). When predictions don’t match the data, you get a prediction error. The brain then resolves this mismatch in one of two ways: update the internal model to fit the data, or move the body / change behavior to change the input so it matches the prediction (active inference).

The brain uses precision weighting to navigate this process. Precision is the confidence or importance assigned to each signal.

Two people can have the same basic model of reality but weight things differently, creating completely different experiences. High precision means the brain treats something as reliable fact and lets it dominate perception. Low precision means the brain holds it lightly, stays open to alternatives, or ignores it entirely.

Your precision policy is the pattern of what your brain habitually weights as high or low precision. It determines what you notice, trust, and act on.

For example, in a crowded room, an anxious person assigns high precision to threat signals (faces, body language) and low precision to neutral details. A relaxed person does the opposite. Same room, same sensory data, completely different experiences.

This framework has many interesting implications, but the main one that comes to mind is in regards to meditation. It reveals what it actually does. Instead of mystical transformation (these views can still be valid), meditation is precision agency. You are deliberately retraining the brain to withdraw weight from stressful things and defabricate the models that create suffering. You’re “simply” reconstructing how your brain generates reality (its map).

Interestingly, there exists a common hierarchy of predictions the mind holds that act as a “house of cards” in which the “top” predictions rely on the predictions below them. So, knock out one layer and the layers above it are knocked out too. The layers exist as such (this is a purely hypothetical guess by me informed by these sources & my own meditation practice):

The "Narrative/Story" Model (Time, context, situation)

This is possibly one of my favorite tweets in general, and it’s only now that I can explain it in actual helpful & grounded terms.

Essentially, the mind procedurally generates content based on what it’s looking for. What the mind is looking for is determined by its model and its precision policies. For example, if you hold the view of “I must find all trauma and fix it because trauma is bad,” it is guaranteed you will habitually generate the same patterns you want to fix. This is NOT discovering pre-existing structures, but rather it’s generating them through exploration while constrained by actual sensory data. You’re not creating trauma from nothing—you’re selecting which aspects of complex reality to weight heavily and build models around. The mind generates experience matching its high-precision predictions. No frame is objective reality— they all construct experiential reality.

The labyrinth builds itself as you walk through it. This becomes clear when contemplating emptiness and the present moment. Why does the present moment appear as X rather than Y even though both are present? Because the mind weights and models them differently. That’s all. X and Y don’t exist “out there” waiting to be perceived. They come into being the moment they’re experienced. The only way X and Y exist is through experiential generation happening with each arising and passing.

This connects to my complaint with Wittgenstein’s claim that things have “objective facts” pre-baked into them. Sure, in some metaphysical frame this might be true, but even if it were, we have no way to access it. In practice, the facts about things are determined by minds, models, and precision policies. Reality as we experience it is always filtered through the brain’s generative process.

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By speaking the truth—as you perceive it—you give an opportunity for the social field to reorganize around you

3:36 PM · Jan 22, 2026 · 2.58K Views

2 Replies · 2 Reposts · 31 Likes

I like this one because it demonstrates something powerful and actually useful— when you speak your truth, you give things around you the opportunity to update their position in your field of life.

But this applies to everything, in every moment. You are always, so to speak, “speaking your truth.” Through your actions, you constantly reorganize reality to conform to your model. Choosing the subway over a bike actively reorganizes things around your life. Even through lying, you speak your truth by signaling discomfort with reality and its emotional effects.

Everything is constantly reorienting itself around your SOURCE. And this mystical-sounding SOURCE is just what we talked about earlier: your brain’s model and precision policies.

This is what “““““manifestation””””” traditionally is. It’s simply reconditioning your source so it actively chooses actions, beliefs, and thoughts that make desired things appear in your life. Unfortunately this has been co-opted by grifters and the delusional, so people dismiss the concept entirely. But it’s actually extremely practical. Unfortunately, most people are quite bad at good pattern matching so they select for the wrong things (eg “money” instead of “I have high agency”).

Your brain “““““manifests””””” constantly— you want to make it conscious (deliberate), not unconscious. If your model and policies are oriented around fear, you will move things around to bring more fearful items in your life.

This is exactly what Joe Hudson calls the Golden Algorithm: “When you avoid an emotion, you invite that emotion into your life in exactly the way that you avoid it.” This works because avoidance means the emotion never moves through you. It stays frozen, so your brain keeps generating situations that trigger it (you model and policies are actively selecting for it), hoping you’ll finally process it.

Meditation is manifestation. You are retraining your weights and models to actively select for things that bring less suffering.

This gets more practical. Your brain’s model and precision policies aren’t fixed. They can be rewritten through a process called memory reconsolidation. When you reactivate a belief or emotional pattern, it becomes temporarily unstable for about 4-6 hours. During this window, if you provide strong contradictory evidence—not just think about it, but actually FEEL the mismatch—the original trace can be strongly updated. This isn’t supposed to be suppression or just positive thinking. You’re potentially overwriting the old model through a well-documented mechanism (though it requires specific conditions to work reliably, conditions may apply :) ).

The key is mismatch. This is using prediction errors I mentioned before. If you have a belief like “I’m not capable,” you can’t just affirm the opposite and expect change. You need to activate the belief (feel the incapability), then immediately experience genuine contradictory evidence (actually do the thing while holding the previous belief in cousioness). The brain registers a prediction error: “Predicted I couldn’t → but I am → model was wrong.” This mismatch helps destabilize the brain’s schema. Real reconditioning requires deliberately activating what you want to change, providing visceral contradictory evidence, and sleeping on it. Your source will change, and thus things will reorient themselves around you differently.

(Memory reconsolidation is actually very important and helpful in shaping beliefs and I recommend doing more of your own research)

(epistemic status: speculative but supported by traditional contemplative frameworks)

There’s a beautiful synthesis here involving both emptiness and our versio