(don’t worry, just feel it)
On Signal Collapse, Fractal Memory, and the Shape of Thought
We are meaning machines wrapped in soft wet circuitry.
Inside each of us is a 4D manifold—three spatial axes and the arrow of time—through which we sift signal. This limited dimensionality is not a flaw. It’s the interface through which we experience now. But something strange is happening: the volume of incoming information is outpacing our architecture. We are saturated. The manifold is folding too fast.
We no longer sense just our immediate environment—the crunch of gravel beneath foot, the rustling of leaves, the wind off the Baltic. We sense a thousand worlds bleeding into our bubble: genocides scroll past like furniture ads, texts arrive encoded as emojis, an AI’s sentence feels like a whisper from a god. Every layer of interface—radio, newspaper, web, touchscreen, neural net—compresses meaning into tighter, more urgent packets. We call this communication. But it might also be dilution.
To cope, we filter. And sometimes, we forget we are filtering. We mistake the spectrogram for the song. The schema for the sensation. The echo chamber of our input systems gives us the illusion of comprehending reality when in fact, we’re just watching shadows flicker across the inside of our manifold. Meaning isn’t in the ping. It’s in the resonance. One receptor’s activation from a soundwave isn’t meaning. One calcium flux isn’t meaning. But something emerges when enough signals echo within a living system and reflect against memory. Meaning arises not from signal alone, but from the moment that signal meets relevance.
Let’s propose a model.
Let:
- S: Signal strength — the intensity or clarity of incoming data
- C: Contextual memory matrix — the accumulation of lived experience, pattern recognition, emotional and narrative memory
- R(C): Relevance function — a dynamic filter of what matters right now based on the shape of context
- M: Meaning — the emergent resonance felt when a signal successfully maps onto a relevant part of the context matrix
Then:
M = S × R(C)
Meaning (M) becomes the weighted product of external signal and internal pattern. This is not a proof—it’s a scaffold. A sketch of where molecules and metaphor meet. The protozoan drifting through pond water doesn’t “know” it’s meaningful—but it responds. Its vesicles modulate, its cilia adjust course. Maybe it swims through proto-meaning. Maybe we’re not so different.
Let’s run the equation at its limits. A single-cell organism receives a glucose molecule, binds it at the surface, and triggers a localized calcium influx. A ripple of chemistry cues a behavioral shift. But the cell has no memory matrix—no narrative, no relational tether. Its (R(C)) approaches zero. It acts, but it does not remember. It survives, but it does not mean.
Now shift. You find yourself in Stockholm on a warm June night. The Glenn Miller Café glows amber with human warmth. The room pulses with presence. Saxophonist Håkan Broström draws ribbons of breath through brass—slow, exploratory, molten with feeling. The pianist, Leo Lindberg, plays like he’s tracing the arc of an emotion he can’t quite name. But it’s the bassist, Mats Sandahl, who draws your gaze. He’s bowed inward, eyes closed, locked in the moment. You can almost see the resonance of his neurons firing in synchrony with the room. He’s not playing a note. He’s playing a memory—or becoming one.
The signal is not loud. It is focused. It is alive. You let it in. And in that moment, your own context comes alive. You remember the first time you lowered the needle onto your late stepfather’s record player, the dust crackling just before the sound bloomed. That music wasn’t just sound—it was his signal. His map. His weather. You understood something then—his taste, his sorrow, his time. But more than that, you felt your own (R(C)) shift. His emotional geography reshaped your capacity to resonate. And now, years later, as this quartet plays, his imprint flares awake. Your resonance matrix isn’t just yours. It’s partially inherited. His weather left pressure marks in your system. You’ll never know what pressured him—what winds carved his contours—but you carry the echo. That is the transference of meaning. This is how memory becomes geometry.
This is what we forget. Meaning does not always scale. Sometimes, the deepest meaning arrives from reducing input, not increasing it. The cell doesn’t need all of reality to act. Just one chemical trail. One vibration. One spark that fits the context of its membrane-encoded past. Likewise, a single breath of music, a quiet sunset, or a glance exchanged across a candlelit table can ripple deeper than the firehose of media saturation.
Contrast that with the modern condition. We are handed signals of overwhelming power: war, fascism rising, genocide broadcast live. Egos intoxicated by control trade empathy for empire. Children die beneath drones while algorithms debate their humanity. The planet burns. Freedom of thought is rewritten in real time. Individual justice is reframed as treason. The signals are too strong. But we are offered no matrix—no time, no tools—to make it resonate properly. And so:
M = high S × R(C, fragmented or unstable) → false, chaotic, or numbing meaning
This is meaning without scaffolding. Reaction without reflection. We cry, we doomscroll, we burn out. We feel everything and nothing at once. This isn’t apathy—it’s signal collapse.
So we must return to resonance scaled to our manifold. The sound of birds before dawn. The feel of sun on weathered wood. The smell of lilacs in early summer. The Baltic wind as it cuts across your skin and makes you feel awake. These aren’t distractions. They’re recalibrations. They return us to a manageable signal density—one where our (R(C)) can activate fully, without distortion.
We are not blank slates. We are patterned gradients. Fractal carriers of all the signals we’ve ever let shape us. Meaning isn’t built from quantity. It’s grown from fit. The single cell doesn't need omniscience. It needs one pulse of sugar. You don’t need the entire world. You need one truth that lands, deeply and clearly, against your lived geometry.
And so we must slow the manifold.
We must listen.
We must allow ourselves to hold the fold.
The signal is soft.
The context is deep.
The manifold is aligned.
And meaning—
finally—
resonates.
Not through noise,
but through structure.
Not by more signal,
but by deeper reverberation.
When S is gentle,
and R(C) is vast,
then M = S × R(C) becomes not just a formula—
but a lived phenomenon.
It is in this quiet calibration
that our wet architecture—this soft circuitry of being—
holds meaning across time.
And perhaps,
this is what consciousness is:
a shape evolved to cradle meaning.