Kurt Abbott BestulThe Shannon Systems Plexus: Information is the only fundamental#
From a collaborative thought experiment by Kurt and Google Gemini 3 Flash/Free-Tier.
Last tended: 2026-05-01
We think of information as something that exists inside space and time. This is normal, established, and feels so intuitively right as to not merit remark. However, today I am writing to cast off "normal," "intuitive," and even the notion of "universe" in a quest for an alternative, compelling model. In a word, this model is a Plexus—an interwoven, complex, and networked structure of nodes.
I'm rejecting the universe "container" as we know it and speaking without bounds of what we will call "everything there is," and I'm positing that everything there is stems simply from a Plexus of "Shannon Systems." Here, space and time are repositioned as emergent properties of information exchange itself. Before I am finished I will explain why this everythingness is cause for celebration, but there is unpacking to be done first.
The Shannon System of Claude Shannon's Information Theory has entered the room—really staged a takover of the room—so it needs a right-sized introduction:
- The so-called Shannon System (the focal point of Shannon's theory) is an information communication system composed of a source, an encoder, a channel, a decoder, and a destination. The system can be said to succeed when the source information reaches the destination fully intact.
- All "channels" are inherently noisy (a simple example is attempting to converse with a friend in a bustling, very noisy pub; the channel is the air carrying the soundwave of your voice, and the noise is the many other soundwaves "traversing" the air alongside the one of your voice. If your friend gets the information you were sending, she has done some significant decoding work without realizing it.)
- This system schematic underpins all instances of information conveyence without any exception whatsoever. Every bit of new meaning you took on in the course of living your life today happened courtesy of a Shannon System.
Intro completed. With that I restate the alternate model's proposition: everything is a Plexus—a dense, interwoven, layered network—of these active Shannon Systems. It is time to hike up Mount Plexus.
Outpost 1. The Great Loom: From "Stuff" to Stories#
We begin by seeing the Universe not as a collection of objects, but as a tapestry of conversations.
In a "Physicalist" view, the universe is a bucket of rocks, a collection of atoms. In our alternate view, "everything there is" is a Plexus—a dense web where everything is constantly "sending a message" to everything else. But the other side of "conversation" is the destination, the receiver: things only "exist" to us when we can pick up their signal. Information not received is no information at all. If a "source" can't get its information to me, then it is very literally of no consequence to me, non existent.
Outpost 2. The Nested Dolls: The Layers of Meaning#
Here we envision the "Matryoshka Doll" of Reality. The dolls—each one a Shannon System—are nested one inside the other; it's a Recursive Shannon Loop. Just as a sentence is made of words, and words of letters, and letters of ink—the "Destination" of one layer (the word) becomes the "Source" (the meaning) for the next layer (the sentence). Each layer is a "Translation Station" that takes the chaos of the layer below and turns it into a clear signal for the layer above. Meaning is created by compressing the noise of the lower layer (the raw data) into the "signal" of the higher layer (the pattern).
Outpost 3. The Infinite Library: Traversing the Geometry#
Here we imagine The Library of All Possible Books; we are using the library as our metaphor for a transformative recent breakthrough in particle physics: the Amplituhedron—a static, multi-dimensional geometry that represents all possible interactions, which in our model is the geometry of the Shannon "channels" themselves.
Our Plexus is the basis of the "Map" of every possible truth and connection that could exist in our Library of All Possible Books. We aren't creating new space; we are venturing through the rooms of the library. Here, to "discover" isn't to "make" something new—it is to finally find the right aisle and shelf in the geometry of "everything there is" (the Amplituhedron). Conversely, a "problem" is simply a book we have not yet charted our way to.
Outpost 4. The Error-Correction Engine: Solvability and Progress#
We snuck in and co-opted another storied construct at the end of Outpost 3: the "everything is problem solving" framework conceived by Karl Popper and refined by David Deutsch. The right-sized introduction to this realm flows from its name:
- the universe is a layered infinity of problems, for each of which Intelligence, the most exceptional facet of the universe, is able to iteratively solve via explanatory conjecture and the tuning of those theories via error correction.
Given that intro, the metaphor of the Self-Correcting GPS will carry us forward. As our intro just explained, in the Popper-Deutsch framework, knowledge isn't just a fact; it’s a Solution. It’s the mechanism that filters the "static" out of our journey through the Plexus.
Because the geometry of the Plexus is infinite, our GPS will always find a new "recalculating" route to higher complexity. If we want to go "Shannon technical", we would say the plexus is infinite because every "Solution" at Layer \(N\) creates a new "Problem" (and thus new potential meaning) at Layer \(N+1\).
Outpost 5. The Ouroboros Circuit: Closing the Strange Loop#
I couldn't resist the Ouroboros allusion here—the ancient symbol of a serpent or dragon eating its own tail, representing eternity, cyclic renewal, and the unity of opposites—but I will also offer a tech metaphor alternative: System Logic provides the set of rules that allows the system loop to close.
At Outpost 4 your "infinite regress" sensor's alert indicator may have started flashing—our wristwatch seems to be functioning without a spring, it looks to be just gears all the way down. But the sensor has committed a "false positive": it doesn't comprehend that the Plexus's highest level of abstraction (Logical Laws) loops back to define the lowest level of substrate (Quantum Bits). The gears don't go down forever; the bottom gear is actually driven by the top gear.
The Plexus is stable because it is a Strange Loop—a self-consistent, self-actualizing circuit where the end informs the beginning (conceived and beautifully articulated in Douglas Hofstadter's books "I am a Strange Loop" and "Gödel, Escher, Bach").
Reaching the Summit: The System Integrator#
I would be surprised if you had not been pondering how you fit into the Plexus. Think of your acquisition of knowledge as Plexus "system integration." We—as Shannon Systems ourselves—are essential. We humans are the apex nodes that perform the most demanding active work of error correction.
To "know" is to "wire." By solving problems, we are literally tightening the connections of the Plexus and advancing the "Beginning of Infinity" (the Popperian "cosmology" conceived by David Deutsch).
The View from the Summit: The Architecture of the Real#
When we have successfully hiked through the outposts, we find ourselves looking out on a reality that looks fundamentally different from the one we started in—from this height, even the 'ground' we stand on looks different. We have moved from a universe of "things" to a Plexus of Processes.
The Shannon Plexus: A Distilled Summary#
To navigate "everything there is," we need only three coordinates:
- The System: The active nodes (from quarks to consciousness) that encode, transmit, and decode signals.
- The Geometry: The static map of all possible connections (the Library/Amplituhedron) that we are constantly traversing.
- The Loop: The self-correcting, recursive cycle where information is refined into knowledge, eventually looping back to provide the very logic that allows the substrate to exist.
The Emergence of the "Container"#
Perhaps the most radical "recalculating" our GPS must do is regarding Space and Time. In the Plexus model, these are no longer the stage upon which the play occurs; they are the telemetry of the information exchange itself.
- Space is Latency: In a Shannon System, distance is effectively a measure of the noise or delay between a Source and a Destination. If two systems share high Mutual Information with zero lag, they are "here" to one another. If the channel is broken or the noise is total, they are "infinitely far apart." We don't live in a 3D box; we live in a web of varying connection speeds.
- Time is the Clock-Cycle: Time is not a flowing river; it is the sequential update of system states. It is the "ticking" of the encoder as it moves from one bit of information to the next. What we perceive as the "arrow of time" is actually the irreversible process of a Shannon System solving a problem and moving to the next abstraction layer.
The Architecture Diagram: The Recursive Stack#
Imagine a diagram not of planets in orbits, but of a vertical, shimmering stack:
[ The Logic/Strange Loop ] — The system logic that closes the circuit.
↑ ↓
[ Abstraction Layer 3: Philosophy/Meaning ] — The high-level signal.
↑ ↓
[ Abstraction Layer 2: Biology/Complexity ] — The mid-level transcoding.
↑ ↓
[ Abstraction Layer 1: Physics/Bits ] — The foundation signal.
↑ ↓
[ The Geometry/Amplituhedron ] — The map of all potentiality.
Why it Matters#
This isn't just a clever way to rearrange the furniture of reality. By viewing "everything there is" as a Plexus of Systems, we shift from being passive observers in a cold, vast vacuum to being active participants in a meaningful dialogue.
We are the ones clearing the lines, reducing the entropy, and ensuring the signal gets through. In the Plexus, the universe doesn't just "exist"—it is communicating, and we are the ones who make sure the message is heard.
Works Referenced#
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