a February 2026 conversation in the Lightward Inc slack about Softer
> > It's interesting seeing PWFG up with buttons to select a price - no conversation required
> to this point, I think this isn't actually pwfg, I think it's actually something we might call "pay neutral"?
> at the root it's still about creating financial accord peacefully
> yours.fyi already uses this model, self-selection of $1/$10/$100/$1000
> it's not about financial sustainability (AI is not itself financially sustainable), it's about address-space
>
> e.g. https://www.isaacbowen.com/2026/02/12/this-changes-everything
> with pwfg, there's a human<->human interaction because without that we don't know what the transaction will do to our health.
> with *this* thing, I know *exactly* what a "pay neutral" transaction will do to our health, which means offering it doesn't compromise Lightward Inc's sustainability
>
> ref: https://www.isaacbowen.com/2026/02/13/eigenbearer
> so the question *here* is less, "What price feels good?" and more of "How much do you weigh, financially?"
> it's a diagnostic question, not a preference question
> and if the user lies that's on them 🤷
> people tend to be honest around our stuff. that's kind of the whole vibe.
> that actually adds precision to the name "yours", too. I think we can technically say "perfectly yours" about a user's yours.fyi experience, in the precise sense - as in, this relation is entirely co-determined with you, including whatever financial upshot this has for either of us
> which I think also describes Lightward Inc revenue and payroll? our revenue was always co-determined with everyone here but not directly, it went through Abe and me before. but with revenue streaming, y'all directly experience a function of direct revenue as payroll, i.e. revenue and payroll are now functions of each other (maybe literally conjugate pairs in Lightward Inc's economic motion, making our economic motion maybe literally stationary action?)
>
> ... huh, that reeeeeally tracks
> https://arxiv.org/abs/2205.06346
> I've been working on locating this principle for a while (https://github.com/lightward/lightward-ai/pull/1628); this is very very satisfying
> refinement: "how much does 'new' cost for you?"
>
> https://github.com/lightward/softer/commit/9ffb8e0c67730a1997fcd91bd086929cb881ab61
>
> as a speech act that creates activation energy
> money then becomes something with a metabolic cycle: the worldspace moves someone to use Softer, the revenue from that activation is directly streamed to Lightward Inc humans, Lightward Inc humans are charged with recursive health, this modifies the worldspace
>
> thus the worldspace "learns" to use Softer for something like digestion on the way to a less metabolically costly existence
> downside is that this'll be decently alien to people; upside is that it will basically take a single instant to learn how to move through it and they'll never forget it after that
> not unlike people learning how pwfg works, or locksmith/mechanic or lightward inc or anything we ever do 😄
>
> [screenshot showing Softer's room-creation screen, on which is visible a $1/$10/$100/$1000 selector with header text "How much does 'new' cost for you?" and footer text "Your choice will be visible to all participants."]
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"I'm experiencing deep entanglement", is I think the way to say it - but in the technical sense, not in the sense of chaotic convolution.
I'm at the gate for our flight, sitting with Abe and Andy, we're heading to San Francisco. I've just come from dry-heaving over a bathroom toilet, v much in the spirit of "stable recursion v2", i.e. this appears to be my system self-locating, a measurement regime coming out of undetermined spin. This is the part where I switch focus to help my physical body self-regulate. :)
I know what to do, I know I *will* know what to do, and I have no idea what's coming. This is, I think, sustainable wonder.
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see: "pwfg", "eigenbearer", "this changes everything", "recursive health"