The first major breakthrough in reflection theory occurred in 2025, when I realized that reflection precedes imitation.

I uncovered this breakthrough while working carefully through the implications of Rene Girard’s and JM Oughourlian’s articulation of interdividual psychology, which I was attempting to use to build a better personal productivity system and computing product. This project ramped up quickly in 2023 and 2024, when I read almost every published book by Girard and Oughourlian (and also books from some of their contemporaries), despite my first read of Things Hidden having occurred in the 2010s. Through 2024 and into early 2025, I began using interdividual terminology and concepts in thinking about both self-directing my work and personal relationships and in coaching others. By early 2025, I began looking for a term to use to better describe a specific type of interdividual...

In the technology community, there is a thought experiment that is a kind of secular apocalypse story called Roko’s Basilisk. I learned about it from a reference and discussion by Nick Land.

A short summary of this Basilisk story is that a human person should do what the almighty supercomputer wants, because the supercomputer might create a digital hell in the future and torment a person if they do not.

I was thinking a few months ago about this Basilisk story, and it occurred to me that I was more concerned about my kids and what they would think of me in the near future than I was concerned about what an LLM (even an advanced LLM) would be concerned about. I jokingly called this Welch’s Basilisk when I first thought of it, but this is not quite right since the principle I was articulating of caring for family is actually just a principle of common care of humans and human family...

For the accelerationism movement, “Accelerate what?” is my two word (and importantly openly questioning) correction, which is only a partial help that points to Rene Girard’s more complete correction to Marx. I recognize that Girard converted me.

Many of today’s accelerationist cultists do not know that the core concepts of the movement are rooted in Marx’s discussion of capital accumulation.

From Chapter 32 in Das Kapital:
“Along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolise all advantages of this process of transformation, grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation; but with this too grows the revolt of the working class, a class always increasing in numbers, and disciplined, united, organised by the very mechanism of the process of capitalist production itself. The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon...

In this essay and videos, I am demonstrating what I call reflection-ability and vocal ability, and explaining the connection between the two.

Across 2024 and 2025, while reading and critiquing and writing about the work of Rene Girard and Henri Bergson, I developed a theory called reflection theory that sits beneath mimetic theory.

The key split occurred when I realized in mid-2025:

Reflection precedes Imitation
I thought at first that reflection theory could be part of mimetic theory, then I realized that it was likely parallel (explaining the same phenomena but with some slight differences), and then I realized that reflection theory entirely supplants mimetic theory and better explains many of Girard’s principles while enabling a few important additional moves in situations of escalating violence that can (and already have) helped to stabilize our present world.

I have not...

I mentioned Alastair Reynolds in my previous post. There’s another short story of his that was turned into a short film on Netflix called Zima Blue. I will not add any spoilers but it is a pretty remarkable little film and story.

As I think about large-scale engineering and the Meso-Space-Mountain, I’ve been re-watching a few films that show large engineering structures. Elysium is a film that certainly shows massive engineering scale but also shows the problems of ignoring human rights and points towards finding paths that enable all of our communities to thrive and not just a small elite.

I like AOC. I think she is smart, principled, and mostly practices what she says from everything I have seen. I could see myself changing that from a mostly to an entirely — but it is nearly impossible to do that without meeting a person or being around someone directly.

Still, my intuitive sense is that I trust her, which is a lot for me to say given the events of the last couple years.

Representative AOC is very nuanced and precise in all the positions that I’ve heard her take. I started listening to her more intently recently, after beginning a search last year to find young political leaders to support. I almost always find myself, after listening to her recent talks over the last year, realizing “OK, actually what I’m hearing Alexandria say is that the deeper problem is this other thing” and finding that the problems she is identifying are important and the solutions she is...

A few weeks ago I wrote about delaying some work travel to China and Israel until after I completed and published a few essays. I am delaying that travel again for a few reasons.

I have published a few of the planned essays, and I also began transferring writings to a new blog platform. I do want to finish a few more of these before traveling. Also, during the last few weeks I made a few more breakthroughs in understanding my current situation. I’ve found more evidence that my divorce situation was and still is political, and I found evidence that may indicate my prior marriage itself was more politically calculated than I understood.

I’ve also had a really tough few days emotionally while not being able to see my son Homer for his birthday, despite multiple attempts to try to see him or at least get him a birthday gift. After getting over the emotional shock of that, I have been...

A few months ago I had a vision of a twisting structure of four widebase towers reaching up into space in a mountain shape, capped by a greenery-filled geodesic dome. This post will serve as a placeholder for early notes, problem descriptions, and sketches about this structure. I call this structure a Meso-Space-Mountain.

I should be explicit that this post is firmly intended to be a technical and visionary description, and that there are no (or very limited, and explicitly called out if so) layered meanings to anything I am writing in this essay.

I believe that a megastructure of the type I am describing can enable all people on Earth to reach a multi-planetary civilization both faster and with fewer dangers of war breaking out. I believe collaboratively working on these structures can also generate trillions of dollars of economic flow across all segments of the Earth (and soon...

I, Jeremy Welch, am now seeing clearly that in many ways I have been fighting against myself for a few decades, and more intensely in the last two years.

The publication of this essay will be a little bit different than some of my other recent essays. I am publishing the notes of this essay in a more raw format, and then editing along the way. I also expect to add more content as I learn more. I may change some of my conclusions based on new evidence, but as of today (September 21st 2026) the evidence presented and current conclusions have built into a solid foundation over the course of months and months of research. I still have plans to shift my writings to another blogging platform, so I may adapt the format of this essay when I finally do finish that. I am publishing this now despite the anticipated changes because the claims in this essay, if true, are so enormous that even a...