About Me: Nathan Sweet

Nathan Sweet · Independent Researcher · Framework Developer · Knowledge Systems Architect · Naturalized Epistemologist (Constraint-Based)

I develop epistemological and computational frameworks that improve how reasoning systems operate under uncertainty, scale across domains, and remain accountable to physical, informational, and thermodynamic constraints. My work sits at the intersection of computational theory, scientific methodology, systems engineering, process modeling, and Indigenous knowledge systems treated not as metaphor but as long-running empirical control systems tested under survival constraints.

At a high level, I study how complex reasoning systems fail. At a practical level, I design frameworks that force those systems back into contact with reality.

What I Do

My work focuses on the failure modes that emerge when large technical and organizational systems scale across time horizons, domains, and stakeholders. These failures are often mislabeled as philosophical problems, consciousness problems, or alignment problems. In practice, they are engineering failures caused by hidden assumptions, reified abstractions, and missing falsification criteria.

I approach these problems from the bottom up. I begin with constraints: energy costs, information flow, error correction, and control. Abstractions are introduced only when they demonstrably reduce error, improve robustness, or increase predictive power. Anything that cannot meet those criteria is excluded from system logic.

Engineering Background

I have over 30 years of hands-on experience in web development, systems engineering, and server administration, including Linux, Windows Server, and FreeBSD. I have designed, deployed, and operated production systems spanning hosting, networking, storage, security, and deployment pipelines.

This engineering background is not separate from my theoretical work. It is the reason for it.

Distributed systems do not fail because of vague ideas. They fail because abstractions leak, feedback loops are mis-modeled, costs are hidden, and edge cases compound faster than intuition expects. The same patterns recur in AI systems, knowledge graphs, decision engines, and institutional governance. My work treats these as engineering problems first, not narrative or metaphysical ones.

Current Work: Recursive Constraint Falsification (RCF)

I am developing Recursive Constraint Falsification (RCF), a falsification-first, constraint-grounded framework for reasoning systems.

RCF treats intelligence, cognition, and decision-making as emergent behaviors of systems minimizing error under energetic, informational, and structural constraints. It makes no appeal to hidden essences, transcendent forms, or unexplained primitives.

RCF is not a prompt trick, a language-model wrapper, or a speculative theory of mind. It is a methodological system for:

  • Identifying invalid or overextended abstractions
  • Forcing contact with physical and operational constraints
  • Auditing reasoning for hidden assumptions
  • Preventing unfalsifiable claims from entering system logic
  • Maintaining coherence across scales, from local decisions to global outcomes

The first formal RCF paper is in progress and will be released openly. It specifies the framework’s structure, failure conditions, and implementation strategy.

How I Use Philosophy Without Letting It Break Systems

Senior engineers are right to distrust philosophy when it substitutes vocabulary for mechanism. I use philosophy only where it functions as systems engineering under another name.

Process philosophy becomes process modeling.
Epistemology becomes error detection and model revision.
Ontology becomes interface design.
Ethics becomes constraint propagation across stakeholders and timescales.

If a concept cannot be operationalized, measured, or falsified, it is excluded from system logic. At most, it may be quarantined as a communicative heuristic, never as a driver of inference.

My work is informed by researchers who treated abstraction as something that must pay rent, including Karl Popper and Imre Lakatos on falsification and research programs; Rolf Landauer and Charles Bennett on the thermodynamic cost of computation; Ilya Prigogine on far-from-equilibrium systems; Karl Friston on prediction error minimization; Carlo Rovelli on relational, measurement-dependent modeling; Gregory Bateson and Francisco Varela on enactive, non-centralized cognition; and Michael Levin on bioelectric control systems, stripped of metaphysical excess.

Indigenous knowledge systems enter this work not as symbolism or analogy, but as empirical frameworks that have persisted for tens of thousands of years under real constraints. Such longevity warrants engineering-level scrutiny, not dismissal or romanticization.

Core Skills

Framework and Systems Design
Constraint-based reasoning systems, falsification criteria specification, recursive self-audit mechanisms, cross-scale coherence testing, failure mode and edge case analysis.

Engineering and Infrastructure
Full-stack web development, Linux/Windows/FreeBSD administration, deployment pipelines and hosting architecture, security and reliability tradeoff analysis, performance tuning under real resource limits.

AI and Knowledge Systems
Framework-level prompt engineering, cross-model behavioral analysis, training-data risk and confabulation auditing, alignment failure mode detection, and interpretability-oriented system design.

Epistemology Applied to Engineering
Identifying unfalsifiable assumptions in technical systems, converting vague requirements into testable constraints, auditing models for anthropocentric bias, and preventing abstraction-induced harm.

Why I Do This Work

Unfalsifiable beliefs cause real harm when embedded in technical systems, policy decisions, or public narratives. They block correction, enable authority laundering, and scale errors faster than they can be detected.

My goal is to replace mystery with mechanism, not to reduce the world to something simplistic, but to make explanations accountable to reality. Systems grounded in constraints are safer, more adaptable, and more humane.

This is not anti-meaning. It is anti-illusion.

Current Status

I am an independent researcher without institutional affiliation by design. I route around credential-based gatekeeping by producing systems, frameworks, and analyses that either work or fail in public.

I am available for research collaboration on reasoning and alignment frameworks, technical consulting on complex system architecture, epistemological audits of AI and decision systems, framework development for cross-disciplinary teams, and advisory roles connecting engineering practice with theoretical rigor.

If you are looking for someone who treats philosophy as an engineering discipline, insists on falsifiability, and is comfortable dismantling attractive but broken ideas, we will likely work well together.

Would you like to get in touch? Click here to contact me.