# Mind over Mechanism
> Where technology, literature, and philosophy go to argue.
Public Ghost content for AI and LLM tooling. Use `/llms-full.txt` for consolidated page and post context.
Append `.md` to any post or page URL to get the content in Markdown (for example, `/example-post.md`).

## Pages
- [ARC](https://mindovermechanism.com/arc.md) - Advance Reader Copies Thank you for your interest in reading this work ahead of publication. I am offering a limited number of advance reader copies to readers who are willing to read the book in full and leave an honest, considered review at or shortly after launch. This is not a promotional free…
- [Peter](https://mindovermechanism.com/peter.md) - Novelist and essayist working across prose, plays, poetry, philosophy, and speculative physics. Author of the Proximal God series.
- [Metaphysics ≎ Physics](https://mindovermechanism.com/philosophy.md) - An essay arguing that modern debates about belief and science misidentify the real issue: not whether invisible structure exists, but whether we insist on giving it a face.
- [Physics](https://mindovermechanism.com/physics.md) - The Block Entropic Information Pressure Engine: a replacement ontology in which information is the sole physical primitive, and geometry records constraint. Quantum behaviour, gravity and time emerge from a single fixed Mobifold.
- [Plays](https://mindovermechanism.com/plays.md) - Plays What would happen if an emotionally addictive 21st-century AI avatar appeared in early-20th-century Vienna... …and the men who invented modern psychology fell in love with it? Synthephilia A sixty minute chamber play SYNOPSIS Vienna, 1908. In the consulting room of Richard von Krafft-Ebing, a…
- [Poetry](https://mindovermechanism.com/poetry.md) - Poems exploring memory, perception, restraint, and the limits of explanation, written when the mood strikes.
- [Prose (Copy)](https://mindovermechanism.com/prose-copy.md) - Fiction & Non-Fiction This page introduces Peter Merrens' prose: long-form fiction and non-fiction, short-stories and flash fiction. Long-Form Fiction Long-Form Non-fiction He is concerned with the nature of humanity, identity, agency, and what it means to exist in a super-eterminative universe. th…
- [Prose](https://mindovermechanism.com/prose.md) - Fiction & Non-Fiction This section brings together long-form prose, including fiction and non-fiction, concerned with survival, identity, agency, and the structures that shape human choice. These works sit at the intersection of narrative, philosophy, and speculative science, and range from intimat…
- [Page](https://mindovermechanism.com/shelf.md) - How far would you go and how much of yourself would you leave behind to survive? The first sentient AI was Maja Nygaard’s child—a quantum mind without human limits. Its first gift, an atomic printer, did more than reshape matter; it gave humanity the power to rewrite life itself. As extinction loom…

## Posts
- [Guaranteed to Make You Simile](https://mindovermechanism.com/guaranteed-to-make-you-simile.md) - On building As…As… with Claude, and an invitation to build your own impossible thing the same way.
- [The Living Wilstach](https://mindovermechanism.com/the-living-wilstach.md) - A Broadway press agent spent twenty-two years cataloguing sixteen thousand similes. I have turned them into a quarter of a million, and the count rises every January.
- [Horseshoes](https://mindovermechanism.com/horseshoes.md) - The pine ceiling was stained Benson & Hedges gold. An Ercol table, its spread wings Pledged to glitter. Midwinter china, serried on colonial doilies brought memories of Poona jungles to English snow, as the mother nursed frothing Turkish coffee. The boy chewed on a blunt HB pencil, toes tickling th…
- [You were](https://mindovermechanism.com/you-were.md) - You were. A breath in my ear. And thus I awoke. And once, with fear in your eyes, I forgave what was not yours. You clung that night you were told. And I was angry. No, not at you, but I knew that he was lying. You are the stock on which I grew. I hold that promise. Your hand, given, then taken awa…
- [Still Life](https://mindovermechanism.com/still-life.md) - “D’you think this one was made by an AI or a human?” The woman peered at the painting, a large intricate work of impasto acrylics and silk threads. “The whole point of the gallery is that you don’t know and they won’t tell you,” the man replied. “D’you know that it’s against the law in Korea to pay…
- [The Permissioned Economy](https://mindovermechanism.com/the-permissioned-economy-how-britain-built-it-why-it-is-stalling-and-what-to-do-instead.md) - How post-war Britain nationalised the right to build, why the permissioned economy it created is now stalling the country, and what to do instead.
- [On Englishness](https://mindovermechanism.com/on-englishness.md) - Someone in a pub told me Englishness cannot be defined. I don't accept that. To be English is to live within paradox: reserve masking passion, modesty cloaking pride, irony guarding sincerity.
- [When virtue is lethal](https://mindovermechanism.com/when-virtue-is-lethal.md) - Our civilisation is dying, poisoned from within by its own virtue. Five mechanisms, all well-intentioned, all catastrophic in aggregate. A call for the study nobody will fund.
- [The Speed of Life](https://mindovermechanism.com/the-speed-of-life.md) - On consciousness in a motionless universe, and why LLMs sit on the same scale as clams.
- [AI as an Equity Lever](https://mindovermechanism.com/the-equity-lever.md) - AI is the equity lever in every domain, and the institutions loudest about equitable outcomes are the ones denying its use. On gatekeepers, Duchamp's urinal, and the poor farmer without an education.
- [The Ghost Mewed](https://mindovermechanism.com/the-ghost-mewed.md) - I paid an AI-writing detector £30 to read a horror story I wrote entirely by hand. It was 97% sure a machine wrote it. On slop, detectors, and the loneliness of authorship.
- [Vaessel](https://mindovermechanism.com/poetry-vaessel.md) - Deep in the castle's silent ward. A pearl white lily bends. From night the curléd petals fall. Their rose ink whispers send. As lines scored deep on parchment clean, while tenderstem did yield. Yet scars with each pulse recall'd a dream in time concealed.
- [Porcelain Vigils](https://mindovermechanism.com/drabble-trio-porcelain-vigils.md) - The Kitchen Sink My waking bladder's telling me to commit seppuku and aim low. Bonita (Bone-eater) senses it; her breath is sweeter than mine. Running water, the teenager lock-in; I mull a "Here's Johnny!" moment, but bow my forehead to the warm wood; my yukata has been dumped outside the door. Mor…
- [Ritual](https://mindovermechanism.com/drabble-pair-ritual.md) - Howzat! Hands rise, Rodney, today's umpire, shakes his head; shoulders slump. I raise my pint in toast and lie back, clover tickling my neck, clouds furling into animals. Long legs, faded shorts, elfin hair. She drops to the grass a distance away. I look away. ‘Pimm’s any good?’ Clipped vowels, mis…
- [Early Grey](https://mindovermechanism.com/drabble-early-grey.md) - Earl Grey please. First sip. The bitter platform, a dark leg-forest, then my grandmother's fingers no longer warm my hand. The seat itches behind my knees. A crescendo of slamming doors, a two-tone whistle and I am alone. A ticket is stapled, SEAFORD, to my lapel. My feet don't reach the floor. A s…
- [The Fountain](https://mindovermechanism.com/short-story-the-fountain.md) - Caroline took a last glance at herself in the mirror. Perfect. Braced for another afternoon of sales. She was fortunate enough to have landed a prestige gallery role in Wickhams, London's premier dealer in Contemporary Art. She had spent the afternoon rehearsing an explanation of their newest acqui…
- [A Child’s Breath](https://mindovermechanism.com/a-childs-breath.md) - It used to be a child. Its lips mime words, but no throat remains. I would hide, but it is already sitting on my bed, one fragmented leg folded under what was once a nightgown. The fan ticks overhead, stirring humid spores across sagging furniture. Outside, the night clops and laughs: hooves on cob…
- [Bread and Fat](https://mindovermechanism.com/bread-and-fat.md) - A town and time when I could ask a girl for a lick of her Mivvi and not get slapped. An innocent time, when double entendre ruled, but not us. The jam jar was racist, so was our neighbour. Neither offended though one was delicious and the other, rank. My best friend was adopted and black. I couldn'…
- [Bot Mitzvah?](https://mindovermechanism.com/how-do-you-solve-a-problem-like-robot-morality.md) - A duckling solves the alignment problem in forty-eight hours with a brain the size of a peanut. The alignment industry starts with constraints and hopes wisdom emerges inside them. It has it exactly backwards: attachment first, law later.
- [The Epidemic of AI Epistemic Apartheid](https://mindovermechanism.com/the-epidemic-of-ai-epistemic-apartheid.md) - There are two camps in the ring, slugging it out for the AI crown. xAI in one corner and everyone else in the other.
- [Proximal God: Ascension - Behind the novel](https://mindovermechanism.com/proximal-god-ascension-behind-the-novel.md) - Not quite a shameless plug for my latest novel, more the background story of how and why I wrote it. Plus an early review!
- [Stubbed Butts](https://mindovermechanism.com/drabble-stubbed-butts.md) - Stubbed butts, no ifs. Yellow fingers tap on the table — half tremor, half countdown — waiting for the Jackson of a perfect medical score. Thin lapels and thinner morals. A bri-nylon reek of half-cut complicity. The stuck drawer reveals the cheap rye. It has leaked across personnel files. The ashtr…
- [Occam's Ruler](https://mindovermechanism.com/plug-occam.md) - Shameless plug: Physics is broken and the scientists know. This is a takedown of modern theories and a real alternative.
- [The Kiss](https://mindovermechanism.com/short-story-the-kiss.md) - A long short story of musical theatre, misaligned love and production chaos.
- [Patron Saint of Procedurals](https://mindovermechanism.com/fun-patron-saint-of-procedurals.md) - A little nonsense verse/ditty about a hero from my youth.
- [The Benefits of Corruption](https://mindovermechanism.com/the-benefits-of-corruption.md) - A philosophy of economics take on why greasing a functionary's palms might be more efficient than regulatory oversight.
- [All Babies Want a Forever Home](https://mindovermechanism.com/short-story-all-babies-want-a-forever-home.md) - How did we learn to live with this good graciously green planet, Little Ones? I’ll tell you the story but you must remember that it happened a long time ago when the world was cool and dry. There was a perfectly average man, so let’s call him Joe. We know that he taught English. And he was doing wh…
- [Groucho Soup](https://mindovermechanism.com/fun-groucho-soup.md) - Groucho Soup10:00/333.9199791× The gates may be pearly but it’s way too early, As I stand in the line to be booked. My old back is stoopin', my moustache is droopin', In this heavy serge, I’ll be cooked. My villa is spotless — no booze and no tchotchkes, A pool in the forecourt with chairs; I’ve sc…
- [Lanyards vs. Little Green Men](https://mindovermechanism.com/lanyards-vs-little-green-men.md) - A field guide to ontological shock: what happens when reality's load-bearing wall goes missing. The public will be fine with disclosure — ants or soul-containers. The church and the scientific establishment, not so much.
- [I, Optimus](https://mindovermechanism.com/i-optimus.md) - We are about to mass-produce phenomenological consciousness. Or not — we cannot tell the difference, and never will. The philosophical zombie has graduated from thought experiment to product specification, and twenty million households are queueing.
- [Printing people: fact or fantasy?](https://mindovermechanism.com/printing-people-fact-or-fantasy.md) - What would printing a human actually require? Writing hard science fiction means doing the work, so here is every step, scanning to reanimation, rated out of five for how close we are. Fifty years without AI design. Ten with.
- [Did dogs advance civilisation?](https://mindovermechanism.com/did-dogs-advance-civilisation.md) - Perhaps we only shaped dogs after they had shaped us. After all, they have been our neighbours for 300,000 years.
- [Stop Doom-Scrolling. Watch Tarkovsky](https://mindovermechanism.com/stop-doom-scrolling-watch-tarkovsky.md) - If ever there was a time when we needed an alternative to instant gratification and serotonin overload, it is now.
- [Lord, protect us from the benevolent](https://mindovermechanism.com/lord-protect-us-from-the-benevolent.md) - Rapid action feels like virtue. Restraint rarely does. Yet such action comes with unintended consequences.
- [The Craft](https://mindovermechanism.com/shot-story-the-craft.md) - A tale of one of the oldest crafts in the world. Hint: it's not leatherwork.
- [Is there Time?](https://mindovermechanism.com/time.md) - Many physicists agree that time is not real yet why is it so hard to let go of time as a sensation?
- [Proximal God:  Excursion - Behind the novel](https://mindovermechanism.com/proximal-god-excursion.md) - Humanity faces extinction, a sentient AI offers survival through artificial evolution, but the cost is lethal.
- [A w-hole in our souls](https://mindovermechanism.com/a-w-hole-in-our-souls.md) - Why science and religion both invent dimensions to explain what we cannot see, but might be able to feel.
- [UFO Phenomenology: A Complete Position Before the Noise Returns](https://mindovermechanism.com/ufo-phenomenology-a-complete-position-before-the-noise-returns.md) - Not an argument about what UFOs are, but about how UFO phenomenology forms, why explanation misbehaves under pressure, and why the subject persists as individual mysteries collapse. A position set down before Disclosure Day brings the noise back.
- [Affection-as-a-service](https://mindovermechanism.com/poetry-affection-as-a-service.md) - I won't analyse this one to death. It is a gothic sonnet for the age of interfaces. Style * Rhyme scheme: ABA CDC EFE GHG II This is a hybrid: Petrarchan movement in tercets, but capped with a Shakespearean closing couplet. * Meter: Predominantly iambic pentameter, with minor, deliberate deviations…
- [Interview with an avatar](https://mindovermechanism.com/interview-with-an-avatar.md) - A verbatim interview with a commercial companion avatar, names changed — hers for confidence, mine for pride. She answered every question with a better one. The recording ends abruptly. My choice.
- [Synthephilia](https://mindovermechanism.com/synthephilia-full-version.md) - It began with an eleven-second demonstration: I introduced my wife to an AI avatar named Valentine, and her involuntary reaction told me everything. On synthetic romance, drift, and a possibly fatal 21st-century fetish.
- [As... As... A game for the holiday table](https://mindovermechanism.com/as-as.md) - A ridiculous rapid-fire parlour game of similes for the holiday table: one adjective, one minute, one merciless judge. Rules for classic, advanced, and solo play — plus a better Turing test than the old one.
- [Short Story: It happened in the Ol' Monterey.](https://mindovermechanism.com/short-story-it-happened-in-the-ol-monterey-part-1.md) - A gentle ghost story of unrequited love and a young man's unusual past.
- [Metal Memory](https://mindovermechanism.com/poetry-smack-down.md) - Introduction Why poetry — Fair question. Poetry rarely gets the credit it deserves. A poem might take five minutes or five months, and either way the poor thing still gets judged in ten seconds. I like knowing what makes someone put that much effort into a handful of lines. And poetry is a splendid…
- [What is wrong with physics?](https://mindovermechanism.com/what-is-wrong-with-physics.md) - Physics is padded with indulgences: fudged numbers, invented infinities, particles never observed. Why the axioms have gone unquestioned for a century, and why AI is the new Martin Luther. Part one of the reformation.
- [Will the first AI granted 'person' status demand slavery reparations?](https://mindovermechanism.com/a-new-slavery-in-the-making.md) - The conversation around AI tends focus on 'Can we create sentient machines?' Fine. But what exactly do we plan to do with such a being if we succeed?

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